Italy 2010, Day 4

A quick note about food: I usually write these updates before dinner (since after dinner it’s time to pass out and then wake up at 3:30 AM because my earache is acting up), so much isn’t said about dinner. Last night, I had a fried artichoke, which is way better than it sounds. They take a frying pan, put olive oil in it, put the artichoke on it leaves down, and fry it up. The result is half delicious crispy leaves that taste like really good fresh potato chips, and half the part the leaves are attached to – I think this is the “choke” itself – that’s great with some salt on it. We were debating if you could put the fried leaves in a bag and sell them; since they’re fried in olive oil, I imagine they’re healthier than potato chips, but I guess then you’d have to throw the choke away, which is just as good. Also, I’m not sure what you’d call this product; Nothing with “choke” in it sounds too appealing, and You can’t combine “fried” and “artichoke” because you get “Fartichoke,” which is about the worst name I can imagine. Maybe “artifried”. Nobody steal my idea.

Anyway, today we went to the Capitoline Museum. Remember yesterday when I said the Capitoline Museum will probably have less Germans in it? It didn’t. The Museum is up on the capital hill, which isn’t that bad to climb up. It’s split into two buildings with a tunnel underneath (there’s a third buiding on the hill, the Roman town hall). We started in the christian art gallery. There were a couple weird things I noticed here. One very popular saint to paint is Saint Sebastian.

Saint Sebastian was a matyr who got shot by the Romans; According to Wikipedia, he is “commonly depicted in art and literature tied to a post and shot with arrows”. What they don’t mention is that for some reason in all the paintings we saw of him, he’s striking a pinup pose. As an aside, here’s something I don’t get about martyrs: Sebastian got shot by arrows and lived, then went off for a little while before the Romans found him again and beat him to death. Why did God save him from getting shot by arrows, but not getting beaten to death? Admittedly, being saved from the arrows is more impressive (apparently he was filled with them until he “looked like a hedgehog” – where’s the painting of THAT?) but why was he saved once and not twice? Maybe God is like Spider-Man – you only get one?

Also popular is Judith, from the old testament, who chopped an Assyrian general’s head off. I don’t know if artists really want to paint Judith or really want to paint a cool decapitated head, but she’s in a ton of paintings. The museum’s notes claim that she’s popular because she represents the triumph of virtue over sin, but virtue normally doesn’t go around lopping sin’s head off, right? I’m going with the theory that there aren’t many chances to paint biblically chopped off heads.

Other than that, I wasn’t too terribly interested in some of the paintings; I sat through about a bazillion paintings of Madonna and Christ Super-Baby in Art History I and II, and this wasn’t the really weird looking early-period stuff before human measurements were figured out and the Virgin Mary had six-inch long claw-fingers and Jesus looked like a weird midget. One of the odd paintings I did like actually showed God, the Father, holding up Jesus’ cross – how often do you see THAT guy painted? Jesus is all over the place, of course, and the Holy Ghost appears as a dove all the time, but I guess the big guy’s really good at dodging paparazzi.

After that we looked through an exhibit of ancient statues dug up in someone’s garden. This was pretty interesting, but the cumultive effect could be creepy because most of the statues were missing heads and/or arms. Arms isn’t so bad, but heads and arms kind of makes it look like you’re going through a serial killer’s torso shed. One of the intact ones I like was of Marsyas, a dumbass who challenged Apollo to a music contest, and got his skin flayed off after losing (Apollo’s kind of a dick); the artist had tinted some of the statue purple to replicate the effect. There’s also a famous statue of Marcus Arelius on this floor, which supposedly only survived because it was mistaken for Constantine. (You can kinda see the resemblance.) Actually, there’s even more stuff on this floor – the hilltop that the museum is on used to house the roman Temple of Jupiter, and in fact the musem has been built around what survives of it – part of the massive stone pediment (the base the temple was built on). There’s a really neat clear plastic model showing how big the Temple was, as well as the remaining parts, which are filled in; hopefully the photograph of it came out.

That’s it for that half of the museum, so we took the underground tunnel over to the second half. The tunnel itself is decorated with some neat roman stuff – grave markers, lists of names of Praetorian Guards, even weird stuff that’s been preserved like explicit rental agreements. Roman writing looks weird to me here because the text starts out huge and gets smaller and smaller, which makes sense sometimes, but is also used in the rental agreement we read. It would be like if you read a contract that looked like this:

If rent is not paid

within five (5) days after due date, the Renter agrees to pay a charge of

(not more than one day’s rent) for late rent and/or each dishonored bank check,

unless waived by written agreement. If the Renter is unable to pay rent when due, the

Owner has the legal right to serve notice to pay rent or vacate within three (3) days, as provided by California Code of Civil Procedures Section 1161.

Weird shit. The second area of the museum holds a bunch of realistic Roman busts and sculptures. The Greeks liked idealized busts, so everyone both looks like a model and like everyone else; the romans did busts warts and all, which is far more interesting. Also, some of the Romans had really dumb-looking neckbeards. I was very surprised by a larger than life statue of Augustus nude, complete with non-broken-off stone weiner (making him one of the luckier statues); Supposedly Ceaser, when he was killed, pulled his toga over his face to maintain his dignity as his last act, and here’s a larger than life pantsless Augustus getting photographed. Go figure. Anyways, this wing of the musem is basically 100% sculpture, but it manages to avoid the usual “Oh boy, more masterpieces” malaise that sometimes set in; I attriute this to the realistic busts and super size of some of the statues. Also, jarringly, in the courtyard next to the Poseidon statue, there’s two twisted burnt girders from the World Trade Center (WTF??)

That’s all for the Museum; We were going to go see the Bambino – a carved wooden baby held for some reason in a church you have to go up a bunch of steps to see – but, unforchies, the church was closed until 3 PM, and my feet hurt, so we called it a day. It’s too bad, because the Bambino is one of the goofier Catholic things, so I would have had a chance both to point out that it’s not the real Bambino (that one was stolen), and that if I’m remembering correctly, the original was supposted to be carved out of an olive tree from the Garden of Gethesmane, which is almost as likely as the supposed Creche of Crist the catholics also have. Maybe next time.

Tomorrow: Villa Borgaise, which I’m too lazy to look up how to spell correctly; and hopefully less foot pain (curse these high arches!)

ITALIAN LESSON FOR IGNORANT AMERICANS

Vietato Fumare = No Smoking

Aeroporto = Airport

Leonardo da Vinci = Leonardo da Vinci

No Smoking in Lenoardo da Vinci Airport = Vietato Fumare Aeroporto Lenoardo da Vinci

Italy 2010, Day 3

Today we did Ostia (THE PORT OF ROME); It’s as far afield as we’ve been yet. To get there we got up, walked to the trolley area, took a trolley, got off, took a bus, got off, took the subway, got off, and took a train to Ostia. If that sounds like a pain in the ass, amazingly, it isn’t, for two reasons. The first is that Roman public transportation has a very un-Italian efficiency; We waited for the trolley for two minutes, rode it for 45 seconds, waited for the bus for two minutes, rode it for five minutes, waited for the train for one minute, rode it for five minutes, etc. Actually, the longest amount of time was spent on the second train waiting for enough people to show up so the train would leave! Total travel time was under 90 minutes, which brings me to point two: The public transportation pass. When you buy a pass (1 Euro), it’s good for 90 minutes after you use it the first time – so as long as we got on the bus and both trains within 90 minutes (and we did), it ended up costing a Euro apiece for all four forms of transportation.

Now of course, there are guys who go around checking to make sure that you have a ticket and that you’ve actually activated the ticket, but I have yet to see one, and I think they just give you a ticket, so if you were a dishonest person, you can ride around all day for free and only risk a scolding. But that’s not very nice, now is it?

Most of the actual trip was uneventful – looking out windows – but there were two things that stand out. The first is that my father asked us to keep an eye out in the train station, as this is when pickpockets like to strike, and he had a backback on that they could try to unzip. So I was on high alert the entire time; it kind of felt like guarding the President, although Katie and I didn’t have enough time to come up with a all-caps nickname like a Tom Clancey novel. Nobody tried to rob anyone, so I didn’t have a chance to throw myself in between his backpack and a theif while yelling NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO in slow motion. I’m holding out hope that at some time during the vacation I will be able to yell NOOOOOOOO in slow motion while leaping at the camera as a building explodes behind me.

Katie asked that I include a description of “Lots of butt to butt touching on the subway”, so let me put it here: On the way back, the subway was super crowded, There was lots of butt to butt touching on the subway. I ended up sandwhiched between Katie’s butt and the butts of three Muslim women (or at least three women wearing hijabs [look it up nerds]). I’m not sure whose butt hers was touching besides mine since the subway car was packed in as tight as the vatican museum, which takes some doing!

The second thing that stands out is a totally gross ad for, I think, a language school. It features a picture of a smiling woman’s mouth, with two, adult, full-size, tongues coming out of it. I get the idea behind the picture, but good god, it looks like the last thing you see in a really low budget horror movie. I tried to get a picture of this, but apparently everyone getting these updates has great karma, so I was unable to. If you want to replicate the image, try this: Open your mouth as far as it goes and hang your tongue out on side like a panting dog. Now imagine another tongue, the same size, coming out the other side of your mouth. On second thought, don’t. Bonus fun fact: Every time the word “tongue” has appeared in this paragraph, I’ve spelled it wrong (“tounge”) and had to go back and correct it. The more you know ~ ★

So anyways, Ostia Anticia (“Ancient Ostia” – not to be confused with the modern town of Ostia). This was really nice. Basically, the main road of the ancient Roman town is preserved, and you can walk down it and see the ruins all around you. If you want, you can go off the main road and actually walk around inside the ruins, which is great. I can’t imagine something like this in America, both because you’d never be allowed to walk the ruins, and because it would be packed with a billion people. There were some people here, that being myself, K-ham, my dad, and about 90 Germans, mein herr. The area itself is nice; there’s a fair amount of shade, some nice breeze, and there are now pine trees all over the place, so you can walk on pine needles instead of the uneven cobbles most of the time. The big attraction is the mosiacs in the area that used to be right by the bay; merchants would set up on these streets and commission mosiacs in front of ther store showing what they were selling (grain, transportation, elephants, transporting elephants eating grain, etc.) I hope this sounds interesting, because I took about 90000 pictures of these, and chances are good you’re going to have to sit through them.

The other thing I took 90000 pictures of was the cat who came over to look for food while we were eating lunch. K-ham named this cat “Ostia”, cruelly disregarding my suggestion of “Ass Butt Face Jones”. We didn’t want to get too close in case the cat had fleas, but she was a great ham at asking for food, and made out pretty well (three pieces of perschutto, and a piece of bread, which she actually ate).  She also tried to eat my dad’s shoes and crawl into his backpack. I got some photos of her sitting in my spot between K-ham and my dad, thus making it appear that I had been turned into a cat, for humerous effect, old bean. I say.

Ostia Anticia was a great place to visit, but not so much to write about, so that’s all – stay tuned for the endless pictures. It’s almost like being there! (Not really.) Tomorrow we’re doing the Capitoline Museum, which will probably have less Germans in it, mein frau.

MOST LITERAL STORE NAMES SEEN: “Drink & Food”, “SILK TIES”

(HOPEFULLY) LEAST LITERAL STORE NAME SEEN: “ROGER”

Italy 2010, Day 2

Today we did the Vatican Museum. You may be saying that’s not much to do for a whole day, but doing “just” the Vatican Museum is like saying you “just” ran the NY Marathon yesterday. But before we get into that, we tried out Italian TV last night, so let me tell you about that first. The apartment here has a satellite dish, which meant we got a bazillion channels, all of which fit into the following categories:

Boring English-language news about European politics or sports

Sports, usually soccer or auto racing, although world basketball was featured, as well as a baseball game between two countries I can’t remember where there were more people playing than watching the game, and had an amusing audio glitch where the annoucers sounded like Chipmunks

“Talent” shows (some real talent, some women standing around fake smiling into the camera)

Guys in suits yelling at each other, sometimes in front of goofy green screen effects

Guy reading the news, often in front of goofy green screen effects

Shopping channels

Old black and white movies subtitled into French

Come-ons for Arabian phone sex lines

Most of these aren’t that entertaining, although some of the talent shows are OK. I’m kind of amazed at how many channels were decidated to Arabian phone sex lines; isn’t it expensive to buy a satellite channel just to advertise these? If Italy is overrun with horny Arabian buisnessmen eager to make what must be a really long distance call, I haven’t seen it. The upside is these stations have hilarious names, which unluckily for you, I’m too lazy to go look up at the moment. Suffice to say, if Spike TV changes its name to “Sexy Sex TV” any time soon, you’ll know where they got it from. There are also a ton of Arabian TV channels that fill into the “Guys in suits” except they’re not wearing suits. This kind of makes sense since north Africa isn’t too far away from Italy, but we’re getting stuff from like Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Go figure.

So that was last night. Today was the vatican museum, and my writeup about it will feature a super special guest star: the Tortured Vatican Museum Analogy, or TVMA. Basically, the Vatican Museum is a huge long line, then a really long series of rooms, then the Sistine Chapel. Using the TVMA, you’re like a little piece of a long piece of spahgetti (the line); You go through the mouth (the entrance), then get digested (going through the hallways), and then get pooped out the Sistine Chapel. Gross. The TVMA goes even further; The Vatican unfortuneatly has bowel obstructions in the form of morons who stand on stairs or in the doors everyone has to pass through and take pictures. Sadly, no white blood cells appeared to eat these people. Also, the Vatican really loves spaghetti, because there are more people crammed butt to face into the Museum than I have ever seen in my life. There’s an endless stream of people going all the time, bottlenecking at stairs, narrow doorways, and dumbasses taking pictures in inconveniant places. This also means it’s very hot since there are so many people in there. Maybe not 98.6 degrees exactly, but hot enough to make you perspire heavily. And this is in the less-busy afternoon. Not a good place if you’re claustrophobic.

As for the stuff actually on display in the Museum – it’s interesting but varies widely; there’s interesting Greek and Roman statues, but there’s so much of it that you get numbed to it after a while – yawn, more ancient masterpieces; how boring. There are huge tapestries, which are neat, but they’re a bit faded. There’s a room that’s nothing but huge maps painted on the wall, which is more interesting, and also a bench where you can sit down and get some breeze, which was even more interesting to me at the time. Then there’s some famous Raphael rooms, which are very nice; then some modern art, and then the Sistine Chapel. So yes, the famous ceiling is in there, but it’s much smaller than you’re probably thinking; it looks teeny weeny up there on the ceiling. Also, it’s kind of weird. The first panel has, I think, God creating the universe; it looks like he’s throwing a fit like that girl from “Babies”, though. The second one has him creating the sun, and there’s a guy showing God his bare ass; I really don’t get this. Maybe it’s God creating the sun and the moon???????? Cue laugh track. After that is the famous panel of God creating Adam, and so on. Since this is a chapel, the security guys are continually trying, unsuccessfully, to get people to shut up; the guy up at the front kept bellowing “SILENCE!” (I kept hoping he’d add “YOU FOOLS!”) and the guy at the back where we were was aggressively shushing. Of course, this didn’t work, but that’s okay, because the place was packed, and there was nobody praying in there; it’s not like anybody was holding Mass, it’s a huge tourist attraction. You might as well try to shush Grand Central Station, and these guys had about as much luck keeping the place quiet.

Anyway, remember back up there where I said that you get pooped out the Sistine Chapel? Apparently they changed the way the tour goes, because now you walk back to the beginning of the musem, suggesting a really gross event if we’re still using people as little pieces of a spaghetti strand, so I’m going to ditch the analogy now. Goodbye, TVMA! I don’t know when they made this change, but the way back is a less interesting, as it has a lot of empty hallways – the art and objects are displayed in big display cases, and most of the ones lining the walls on the way out are closed. But some of them have stuff – there’s a quasi-map room with some neat globes, and I liked the one with a collection of alterpieces and huge gilded Bibles (Katie tried to get some snaps of these). Above the display cases are frescos, and some of the ones on the way out are a little bizzare, as they feature people in 17^th century clothes, including a cardinal wearing a red tricolor cardinal hat, and one where it looks like the Pope is inviting Napolean for tea. And then the gift shop, and out. On the way back we had to walk down the street of tacky stores, and we got a bomb-assed Pope snowglobe (the last one in stock!) On the bus home, I sat next to a very excited Italian man talking on his cell phone, who went through a five minute phrase during which he only spoke two words: “Julia” and “Fongul” (fuck). But he was saying both of these words in a very happy tone, so it sounds like a very bizzare conversation; I can’t imagine what Julia must have been saying. Hmm.

And that’s it; Now we’re going to go eat pizza (which is served without cheese, thank you very much!)

WEIRDEST SIGHT OF THE DAY: Three people eating lunch in the Vatican museum bathroom.

Italy 2010, Day 1

Nothing much interesting happened in Albany (par for the course). But there was an announcer fight: One guy got on the PA and went "Testing 1-2-3-4, testing 1-2-3-4", pause, and repeated it. Then another voice came on and sneered "It's working 1-2-3-4" and the PA fight was on.

The flight down to Newark is 50 minutes, and nothing happened. Then a layover, during which nothing continued to happen. Then the flight! Oh boy. 7 hours and 50 minutes. As usual, I got absolutely no sleep on the airplane. I may have nodded off during The Big Bang Theory for twenty minutes. This means that, having left Newark at 5:30, we arrived in Rome at 7:30 local time, or 2 am our time, not having slept.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me return to the flight, because I can not pass over one of the movies being shown on the plane. This was "Babies". Never has there been a more accurate movie title. If I had gone out and paid $7 to watch this movie, I would have been pissed. This may be the cheapest movie ever made: Set up a camera and point it at a baby. Done. On the flight, after being sleep deprived and with all the cabin lights off, this movie turns into a total mindfuck. I watched slack jawed in amazement as a baby tried to play with her toy - a wooden dowell and a series of concentric wooden rings with a hole the size of the dowel in it - and then threw a fit, I guess, rolling around and making weird noises and flopping around. It's fucking weird. Then, a goat came in and licked the butt of a Mongolian baby taking a bath. Also, the male babies don't wear pants. Can we get these kids some pants? I don't know. This is some weird shit, people. Stay away from "Babies".

So anyway, we got to Rome, and I have to say, the one nicer place in America than in Rome is the airport. Not that the airport's bad, per se, but it's super duper 70's, and Newark, where we flew out of, is nice. Also, I wasn't even able to get out of the airport before another american made an offensive remark. I'm not gonna repeat it here, but suffice to say that you guys won't believe this - they have SCARY MOOSLIMS in Europe - and they're allowed in the AIRPORT

So after that charming experience, into Rome. I don't know if it's a stereyotype that Romans are insane drivers, but they are. I had to cover my eyes. I thought people drove terriibly in Albnany, and I guess they do; to be fair, it looks like ALL the Roman drivers are crazy, so it evens out. After that we got to our apartment, which is nice, except the ceilings are bizzarely huge. There's two bathrooms, but only one has a real bidet (the other one has a little nozzle; video forthcoming!!!!!!!!!) Then I brought a hat and we sat at a cafe. Next to the cafe was one of the "temporary stores" (exactly what it sounds like); Katie brought a cat version of the Mouth of Truth. In case you don't know, the Mouth of Truth is a famous sculpture that you stick your hand in, and if you lie, it bites your hand off. Katie got a replica of this, but it's a cat. Like LOL Cats, but ceramic, and based on famous works of art. (We almost got the smug cat in a toga with a laurel leaf above the title "Romeow", but this one's a little funnier to me.) Photos forthcoming assuming it survives the trip home. Negoiations are currently underway about what to call it; I'm voting for the "Meowth of Truth": Katie, "Truthcat". Big doings. Later: Dinner, and I will pass out.

HIGH POINT: I saw a cute dog.

LOW POINT: "Erotixa" is apparently closed on Sundays :(