Monday, October 10, 2011
Rome, Italy and a Monday walkabout
Another sunny day, so Jan and I decided on a walk. Just a short one to the university district that is nearby our hotel at Piazza Bologna. So off we went after returning/resizing some clothes we bought yesterday at a store nearby. We sat again at the little coffee shop across from the clothing store 'Rudy' where we bought the stuff, and had lattes and croissants and enjoyed the morning sunshine and the Italians strolling by. This is a fairly affluent area, judging by the residents, and everyone was decked out in their finery for the morning promenade. A very nice and happy and friendly bunch. Finally, 'Rudy' appeared to open. Not at any particular hour, it just opened, gradually, first a door, then a window blind went up, then some lights, then another window blind, then more lights. Ehh, its Italy, don't worry about it, they have their own style. Jan and I finished our latte, then crossed the street. Our sales guy was there and remembered us, 'BON JOURNO, BON JOURNO', and was very happy to exchange the shirt from an XL to an XXL. That task done, we scooted the five minutes it took us to drop the clothes off at the hotel, then finally began the short walk to the university, by now about eleven oclock in the morning.
We set off with the hotel map, which was vague and not to scale but no matter as we were wandering and had a full sunny day ahead of us. Rome streets we found to be cleaner than Paris, by a far measure, but not up to Vancouver standard. But this country runs way different than 'home', and here the overall look and feel of the sometimes-dirty walls, and garbage, and traffic, just makes it more different and somehow more special. We definitely overlook things here, happily, just to get the ambiance of the Rome neighborhoods. Not far along, we came across a giant covered market, sort of like Granville Island market, selling 'everything'. Small kiosks, with vendors, featuring cheeses in one, meat and sausage in another, clothes here, running shoes there, kitchen appliances over by the door. Boxes, empty and full, and hand-carts everywhere in the kiosks and the aisles, a mix of smells in the air, and older men and women everywhere, shopping for thier day or week's supplies. Lots of bargaining, hand waving, raised voices, laughter and grumpyness, the whole human drama and panorama. Wonderful. Tara called as we exited at the back, and we sat on the edge of the steps, among the empty boxes, and chatted with her for a while. Various people, Gandma and Grandpa and workers, local younger women and men, all kinds walking out, or into, the market, barely glancing at us as it we were just part of the scene. I just watched and admired it all as Jan chatted. I love this place, I could live here. Its the people, always the people that make the place, not the piles of rock or the history but the people. And Italian people are nice, and happy.
On the road again, walking toward the university, not knowing what to expect. We did find it, its a huge university after all, but it is made up of a whole bunch of buildings spread out along a variety of streets. So it has no 'center', no common block built around a recognizable student union building, or campus center. No real congregation of students, just a bunch of them spread out over about a 20 square block range. We saw them, it was lunch time, and they were getting their pizzas and pasta and eating while standing out on the street as we walked by, typical student stuff. And masses of scooters, everywhere. We found the medical center, 'Urology' is recognized in any language although Jan had to work at it to decipher some of the other medical departments that were featured nearby. One of the local tube stops, between the coluseum and Piazza Bologna, is called Policlinica, which we had deduced to be an equivalent of 'General Hospital' and it looks like we were right.
Most of the university district behind us now, we consulted the map and found that we were fairly close behind the main train station. Hungry now, we decided to press on and grab lunch somewhere. We crossed 'behind' the main train station, the Trenni stop, at an underpass beneath the tracks, and walked toward the city center. It was a bit rougher part of town, but still not bad, but the shops along the street did not seem to be that prosperous, the proprietors standing at their doors watching us hungrily as we walked by. Looking down at the map, up at the street signs, down at the map again, we navigated our way to the Piazza Vittorio, a lovely green oasis. We walked along the left side, and saw what appeared to be a nice little sidewalk coffee/sandwich spot in a large old building, so we stopped. The coffee and sandwiches were just what we needed, and the staff was, as always, very helpful. Refreshed, we moved on down the steet toward a tube stop that we expected to be soon ahead, Cavour, but found as we neared it that we could see the forum in the near distance. What the hell, lets go the rest of the way, just to tell ourselves we had done it. So we kept going, downhill now, easy travelling, all the way to the forum. We hung out a short time, then on the the now familiar tube stop at the coluseum and then the metro line ride home.
A quick note about the architecture of Rome, as we saw it. St. Peters dominates the horizon, huge and imposing, but also dominating in the sense that NO BUILDING may be taller than St. Peters. Its the law in Rome. Further, Italy is a Catholic country, no separation of church and state here. With all the immigration it is much more diverse now than in the 1930's, when Mussolini signed the agreement with the Vatican that the only approved religion in Italy would be Catholocism, and all public education would be in religious schools by priests and nuns. Flavia told us this during our tour of the Vatican, and she said that the conflict between the theory and practice as regards church and state is getting very hard to manage. It is not politically correct now to require that a child attend a religious school if it contradicts the child's own religion, though Moussolini didn't see a problem back in the time of the Fascist state. But the laws signed then have never been repealed, apparently. Flavia indicated that the people just work around it, and alternative educations systems are available and in use, though not 'officially' state sanctioned. She said its hard, and getting harder in view of the news of recent excesses by the church, to be a practicing, observant Catholic. Everything that we saw today, on the backstreets of Rome away from the tourist crowd, points to what she says being true. Obvious immigrants are the rule, not the exception, on the steets and in the shops, and the character of the city and the country is obviously changing.
