20070618

Dinner with Ashley was entertaining; we had a 3 course meal for EU17 with a Canadian she met by chance. Apparently Ashley always meets someone new in foreign countries. Before dinner, we visited the Vatican to use their toilettes, since there was not sufficient time to do any more. Ashley and Joseph also informed me that the day at the Forum and Collisseum had taken its toll on my neck. My neck does not yet hurt, but that's only because the nerves under the skin are probably also burned. Who would have thought that Italy would be so sunny? Carrie would. And she warned me. So much for remembering good advice; but I can tell you what happened in the Greenman v. Yuba Power case! Thank you law school for further advancing the damage already done to my common sense by engineering school.
So I went back to the hostel an hour outside the city, and slept another night with half my valuables stuffed at the far-end of my pillow case, and the other half locked to the bedpost in the corner by my head, and the rest of my belongings chained under the bed. This morning, I left with all my things and set out to find a place closer into the city. I also bought a train ticket to get to Cinque Terra, where the scenery should be more pretty and natural, and the lifestyle less chaotic. I found my hostel, for EU20 / night with a small locker. My clothes are now locked inside my bag under the bed, and everything else is "safely" inside a locker that a child could probably break into. But at least it's an improvement.
I wait now near the Vatican for my tour which will start in 15 minutes, and for which I should soon leave. The pasta is quite al-dente, and the cafe-latte is superb. Most wonderfully, I am finally calming down enough to soak up the Italian atmosphere, which seems to be relaxation amid chaos. It reminds me of living in a dirty rat-hole of a room; once you get past the ick-factor, it's quite comfortable, though perhaps extremely unsanitary.

( . . . time passes as I stand in line, and ultimately tour the Vatican, then have a pizza and then a cafe latte with Ashley . . .)


The tour of the Vatican was wonderful; my tourguide was the same theology student who was yesterday practicing by giving a free tour of the Forum. His performance today was equally good, and I would not recommend seeing Rome without a guide. Anyone going to Rome can contact Jason by email: toursofrome at hotmail. Additionally, using a tourguide gets you past some of the long lines, especially at the Collisseum. So far as I can tell, Rome is an exemplar of capitalism at its finest: the entire city is constructed to milk tourists as dry as possible. I am told that the entirety of Italy is this way; my destination tomorrow is CinqueTerra, and I am told that to walk the trails I must buy a metro pass.
Crossing the street is a test of will, as driver competes with pedestrian to prove that each is himself the least concerned with the physical safety of his current mechanism of transport. But, if it were only cars that one had to play frogger with, the game would be too simple; perhaps for this reason, the streets contain perhaps 1/3 motorbikes, which zip along faster than traffic, and which do not follow the predictable inertial paths of cars. It is these motorbikes which the pedestrians must fear, since they are already playing their own game of frogger, trying to jump into the very same spots between cars, on the other side of speed. In spite of this, I believe that the motorbikes, when they manage to see me, are more scared of me than the cars are.

Incidentally, I forgot to mention one of the reasons I bought the ridiculous sunglasses: Sarah mentioned to me from her previous trip to Italy that the Italians never remove their sunglasses;
even in the depths of the subway.
Also, I learned from the Collisseum tour that the bricks and stone were stripped from the Collisseum over the years, and that one reason part of the Collisseum later fell was that people had melted the supporting-iron from the stones between which it was poured, destroying the structural integrity originally designed by the Romans.
This wall on the other end of the city by my new hostel for the night seems to be made of Collisseum brick and stone!
Please "watch" my future posts for evidence of the newest fashion item I bought off the streets. From an opening offer of $50 from the seller, I talked him down to $20, but only after leaving once, right before the police arrived (dispersing him and the other sellers), then following him across the street and holding out $20 saying it was all I had on me. He was very reluctant, and I think I got close to his breaking point. Yesterday I bought a small tripod for $3 in similar manner, with the guy shaking his head even after the deal saying "no profit, no profit." I am really enjoying this cheap experience to hone my negotiating skillz.