The next day I got up and journeyed to Schloss Hellbrunn (translates to something like 'light-fountain castle') which is the royal palace complex a little south of Salzburg. It's pretty picturesque and the grounds are nice.
It is also the site of the pavilion from the film The Sound of Music. You know, the one where Liesl and her man-squeeze escape the rain and dance around singing "I am 16 going on 17." Anyway, I stood in front of that and took a picture, but it was locked so I couldn't go inside and dance around singing out of tune. I think I found some hill overlooking the grounds and sat down to smoke my cigar and eat some food. I followed some signs to the stone theatre, which is this awesome theatre stage carved out of stone in the side of this big rock. The shape lends natural acoustics. Here's a picture:
After Hellbrunn I went to explore the city of Salzburg, photograph some churches, the usual. I saw these two guys playing chess on a gigantic board outside the cathedral. The board was so large that they had to stride across it and grasp the chessmen, which came up to their waists, and haul them over to their new squares. It was pretty fun to watch. There was also a quartet of uncommon instruments playing nearby. I hiked up some hill and found a bench to eat and smoke. I took a video of a slug eating a crumb I'd dropped. I thought of going into the house in which Mozart was born, but decided I'd miss my train back to Vienna, so ended up not. It also looked super super touristy.
I don't think anything really notable happened for the rest of my journey. I returned to Vienna, took a subway line to the airport, and slept fitfully on some chairs until my flight. When I first arrived, in the middle of the night, or wee hours of the morning, there were these two guys talking over coffee. Very poetic at such an hour. Anyway, nothing too notable, I don't think. Then I went back to university at UCSD. The end.
In the morning this couple that has slept in my car were talking, and I thought they were Czech and that they had mentioned Olomouc, but I didn't want to butt in on their conversation so I didn't ask them. Also I don't speak Czech and thought it might be rude to interrupt them and then insist they speak to me in something other than their native language.
Before we reached Vienna, I started thinking about what I would do with my few remaining days, and I pulled out my Eurail map and eventually decided that I had already seen Vienna, and instead of seeing a museum or coffeehouse I'd already visited (lovely as the Viennese museums and coffeehouses are), I wanted to go see Salzburg. When I reached Westbahnhof (the main rail station in Vienna), therefore, I asked the information guy for somewhere to get internet, and ended up walking down the street a little ways to this gambling café thing. I ordered an espresso to be polite and used their internet station, which was operated by the insertion of coins. I looked up the Hostelling International website (H.I. tends to have decent hostels, which are perhaps not the cheapest hostels, but are still cheaper than a hotel and aren't extremely sketchy, like some of the hostels I'd been in (see Rome, Innsbruck entries)) and wrote down the directions to a hostel there.
I walked back to the train station and got a cigar in a tobacco shop. They guy there was pretty nice and helped me pick out a cigar. He had a bit of trouble converting numbers between the German and English systems (Germans would say 'four-and-eighty' instead of 'forty-eight', for example), but fortunately I speak enough German that we could get past our differences. I boarded my Salzburg train, and ended up sharing a car with the punk teenager looking Austrian girl. I worked on this blog on my laptop. Eventually this old guy came in and was mean to this girl for some reason. I think he was another passenger, but she had some problem with her ticket when the actual conductor came by to check. The details are kind of hazy, but the old guy was pretty mean to her and didn't really have a reason for being so. When the food cart came by he bought a beer, which I guess made him seem a cranky old alcoholic. This girl and I exchanged glances and kind of shared a giggle.
I arrived in Salzburg and found my way to the hostel. One of my roommates was this overweight white American guy who was researching the area because he wanted to be a tour guide. He was, as you may expect, full of facts. However, I remember I didn't quite like him for some reason. Anyway for the rest of that day I think I just went to the grocery store and worked on the blog. Even such a mundane thing, though, is pretty cool when you're in Europe.
Got up and there was breakfast for the hotel guests. It was pretty good. I don't remember the specifics (sorry again, I waited like half a year to write this. My notes only say 'delicious breakfast') but I believe there were a lot of rolls and spreads involved.
I left my luggage at the hotel and went to the train station to book my sleeper car to Vienna. While standing in the ticket line, I met some women who worked at University of California Santa Cruz. They were all very friendly, and seemed amazed that someone as young as myself was travelling across Europe alone. Upon their recommendation I went to try to book a ticket into the museum that contains Michelangelo's famous David sculpture. However, I think they weren't letting people book tickets in advance or something.
Instead of waiting in the extremely long line, I decided to go check out Florence. I started wandering around, some Italian guy came up to me and asked me for twenty cents (I didn't give it to him) and I crossed the Ponte Vecchio, which is a pretty cool bridge that looks like this:
It has a lot of shops and that sort of thing on it these days, but it's a pretty ancient structure. After crossing the Arno (the river that runs through Florence) I climbed up a hill to the Piazzo Michelangelo, a kind of square on a big hill overlooking the city, which a good view of the city scape. One can see the Duomo and take some good photos.
There is a bronze copy of the David.
After a while I returned to the city and found this square (I believe it was called the Piazza Vecchio) outside the Uffizi (a pretty famous art gallery) with a bunch of very delightful statues. Here's one:
There was also a collection of statues of famous Florentines, including da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dante Alighieri, Macchiavelli, Amerigo Vespucci, and Galileo. I managed to find the church in which Dante is buried. Dante has been an object of great respect for me since I read the Divine Comedy. I thought about buying a flower or something and entering to pay my respects, but in the end I think I decided I didn't want to spend the time and Euros when there where still other things I wanted to do in Florence. I did take a photo of this giant statue of him outside the church though.
I came across the Via Dante Alighieri (via seems to mean street or ally in Italian) on my way to the Duomo. Once in the Duomo I took some pictures of nice-looking things, including a pretty famous painting of Dante and his Divine Comedy afterlife-world and the inside of the giant dome, which is well-decorated.
After this I went to stand in line to get into the Galleria Accademia, which is a pretty nice museum but is mostly famous because it houses Michelangelo's David, which is pretty much the most well-known piece of art in the world. They had an exhibit on musical instruments and some other stuff that I really enjoyed, but the David is really something else. I managed to snap a photo before I realised they were forbidding this, but I'm sure you can find much more flattering images online somewhere. I will say this though: it was a completely different experience being in the room with that sculpture, circling it and studying it from different angles, and taking in the details. It's amazing. It took my breath away. I could have stared at it for hours, and I am not exaggerating. I tried to go see other wings of the museum, but I kept coming back to look at David. It really is perfect. It's an exquisite statue, and definitely deserves the reputation it has.
On the way back to my hotel, I kept my eye out for an internet café or something with internet access, but didn't find anything. I got my luggage from my hotel and sat down to complete my blog and write my paper, which were due soon. I typed until my laptop died, then put the stuff on a flash drive, found an internet point in the train station, and uploaded it on one of their computers. This internet place was super sketchy. It looked pretty dirty and the computers were slow, and it was really crowded. In my notes for today I wrote, 'internet point, totally sketchy, kids checking facebook, shitty keyboard.'
Anyway I turned in all my work and went back up to the platforms to wait for my sleeper train to Vienna. However, I found out that the employees of the Italian national rail company (in Europe, each country has its own government rail company that pretty much operates all of its trains) were on strike that day, so all of the trains in Italy were very delayed. I found this really chill English couple who were about my age, and who were also waiting for this train. We decided to wait together, and after figuring out what was going on with the strike, settled down to talk. I remember that one of the things they asked me was whether Americans really drank from red plastic cups at parties. It seems that this is an American cliché that has charmed the European population. I had never heard before this that we were the only country that brought plastic cups to parties, or that it was considered comical by other nations. We talked abut a lot of other things, probably what we were doing in Italy and the university systems in our respective countries or something. We also ate pretzels during this time. After two and a half hours of waiting an Austrian train arrived to rescue us. My English friends were bound for Salzburg and so got on a different part of the train that would disattach in the middle of the night and head in another direction. I found my sleeper car and managed some position that wasn't too uncomfortable with my most valuable belongings next to me where they would be difficult to steal. I think one of the employees came around to ask me what I wanted for breakfast in the morning. The beds were arranged kind of like submarine bunks, with the mattress very close to one another to fit the maximum number of people in each car, and you were sleeping in this kind of slit. Anyway I slept pretty well and in the morning someone came around with breakfast, the price of which was included in your ticket, so that was nice.
Had breakfast at the bar again, and said my goodbyes to Myrjam (we've since kept in touch via Facebook). After breakfast I went to Termini (Rome's train station) to book tickets to Florence. After getting tickets I went to a grocery store to get food for the journey. Outside the store I was arranging my stuff in my backpacks, and there was this woman who was missing a nose. I don't know if it was cut off or if there was some disease involved. Anyway, I didn't much pay attention to her, and was fitting all my food and whatever into the packs. Then I put my change from the store into the pack, and as soon as she heard the coins rattle, she whistled at me to get my attention and gestured with her hand that I should give her some of the money. I shook my head. I remember that it pissed me off pretty good. What makes her think she deserves any of my money for nothing? She wasn't begging before she heard the coins and knew I had cash. And she seemed to have a sense of entitlement when she motioned with her had - like she was convinced she had a right to my dough. Anyway, there are lot of beggars in Europe, and especially in Rome, and me looking quite like an American tourist, they all targeted me, but for some reason I fumed over this one for quite some time.
Anyway, when I got to the train station, I found the platforms very confusing, and ended up getting on the wrong train, which left for Florence at the same time as mine and seemed to be the right platform. Anyway, instead of the posh express train I had booked, which would have gotten me to Florence in two hours, and which I assume would have been as posh as the one I had taken to Rome, I was on a slow train that had a lot of stops between Rome and Florence, and was hot, unairconditioned, and crowded. There was nowhere to sit, so I sat on the floor in the gangway. Someone told me I was on the wrong train. I'd guessed as much. One of the ticket checkers came by and examined my ticket and told me I was on the wrong train. I said I knew. She didn't charge me or anything, though. Anyway, I sat on the floor for most of the ride, until at one of the stops this black man got off and told me that his seat was now vacant, and insisted I took it. I thanked him and did.
After a while this guy came into my compartment, and was the most passive-aggressive dude ever. He really wanted me to move out of the seat next to him so he could have more space, so he'd feign sleep and then be all up in my space - at one point his hand was literally almost in my lap. I picked it up and put it back in his seat, and after a while he pulled the same stuff. Eventually I moved far enough away from him that he wouldn't bother me and spent the rest of the ride glaring at him while he tried to sleep.
When I finally reached Florence, my tribulations continued. First off, Florence stinks. Like Rome, it is beautiful but has a terrible odor. The whole place just smells until you get used to it. Maybe it's the lingering warm Italian summer causing everyone to sweat. I don't know, but it wasn't that pleasant. Both of the hostels recommended by the people in Rome who had already been to Florence were full. Not knowing where to get Internet to look for more hostels/compare prices, I began to simply go into any place I saw. Everywhere was full, and I started walking into any and every hotel and asking whether they had space. I found no vacancies.
I headed back to the train station and asked the hotel booker person about hotels, but they were pretty expensive. The lady there told me that there wasn't much room in Florence because there was some sort of a 'congress' that week. I decided maybe Florence wasn't worth all this trouble and went to the ticket counter to book a sleeper car back to Vienna for the night, thinking I'd just skip Florence, get to Vienna early, and spend some time sitting in my favourite coffeehouses or using my museum card again. However, all the spaces on the sleeper car that night were taken. In true desperation, I returned to the hotel-booking place in the station and bade them do their worst. They found a place for me, and when they called informed me that in order to sell their vacant rooms for the night, the hotel had lowered its price! So that was cool.
I trekked to the hotel, which was a family-run bed and breakfasty-type place. After checking in, depositing my stuff, exploring the bathroom (it was down the hall from the bedroom, and if I remember correctly they have me those old-timey keys that look like a golden stick with a little notched plane at the end, it was pretty cool) I got ready to go find some food. I went to the counter where there was an old grandma-type at the desk. I began to ask about food, but she stopped me and went into another room, whence came an extremely muscular young Italian guy. He was super cool. I asked him about food and we got to talking; he was very friendly. He said 'Tonight you eat traditional Florentine food,' and directed me to a nearby place that wasn't too expensive. We also talked about Tijuana for some reason. He gave me a map and circled the area with all the bumpin' clubs, telling me that that was the place to find girls, since I was traveling alone. I thanked him and we parted on the friendliest of terms.
I went to the restaurant he had suggested. I don't remember what I ordered (sorry, it's been too long between doing this and writing it) but I think it was some sort of pasta dish, with a pitcher of house red wine. It was pretty good. The three guys at the table behind mine heard me order in English and saw that I was by myself, so they told me to come join them. They were Kirby Liu of Emory University (I later saw via Facebook that he made this website for women to apply to be his date to some dinner thing he was attending, by way of a social experiment. Not in a creepy way. He seems like an interesting, intelligent guy), Phil of Colorado and Sumit from Toronto. They were studying in Milan, and were on a weekend trip to Florence. They were extremely friendly, and invited me to spend the rest of the evening with them. I accepted and we went to their hostel with beers. In my notes for today I wrote 'Met polite English guy.' It's been too long now and I don't remember what that's about, but I have a vague impression that he was in the kitchen table area while we were sitting around.
Soon we left to look for clubs. We were trying to navigate Florence, and when I pulled out my compass they laughed and said they'd traded their previous white guy for a more useful one, I guess meaning I was resourceful since I carried a compass. We found something called Club Twice which seemed really lively, and my companions wanted to check it out. I was wearing my trademark shorts and flip-flops, and the black bouncer guys at the entrance said I had to be wearing pants and shoes to enter. I waited outside while Sumit and Kirby (who were appropriately dressed) went in to check it out. After a while they came back out and said that it was awesome and we absolutely had to go to this place, so they insisted we go back to my hotel so I could change and we could return. We walked across Florence and back to my room. The young built Florentine (hotel owner's son?) who had given me advice about dinner earlier gave me the building keys so I could let myself in after he went to bed and was very friendly and helpful despite my being in and out at god knows what hour of the morning. He seemed pleased that I was out partying and enjoying myself during my stay in his city.
We returned to Club Twice and did some dancing, and they chatted up some girls that were there. There was a fight between these two bro-y looking guys. I'm not sure what they were fighting over, but there was a sudden commotion across the dancefloor and the crowd parted for these two guys that were furiously and quickly swinging their fists into one another. I think the bouncers took care of it pretty quickly. Eventually we left the club and talked with these American girls who were at the club and were studying fashion in Florence. We finally parted ways, promising to look one another up on Facebook, the great communicator. Which I did. Facebook has proved very useful for staying in touch with people I met in Europe. I went to bed.
Got up and went to breakfast, which was at the bar where we’d been hanging out. There were these cream-filled rolls, and these crunchy bread things and this bland cereal and orange juice. Also we all got a cappuccino, but it didn’t taste like it had much espresso in it, if any. I’ve heard that Italians normally have really light breakfasts anyway. I met my German roommates and explained to them how I showed up to the Spanish Steps after they’d already left. They were really nice; even though they probably speak better English than I speak German (most young Europeans do, especially Germans) we conversed in German. I like it when people understand that I’d rather practice German and use that. Also they weren’t mad or anything that I hadn’t met them at the Steps, though I said I would. So I met up with the Swiss girl and we set off together. We went by this place called Campo de’Fiorni, which I think used to be a Roman camp but now is this big open air market. People were selling various things, among them furs and fruit. Myrjam went into a clothing store to look at stuff. She asked me I got bored walking into clothing stores with girls, and I said a little but I was used to it from travelling around with Martha. The cool thing about hanging with Myrjam all day was that, firstly she’s a really cool person, my age, and interesting to talk to, and not bad-looking to boot, and second we were speaking German, and she’d always correct me when I messed up the grammar, which as I said was helpful. She was amused that I carried a compass around, but said it was useful. We also went into a bunch of churches, and went to this little island in the middle of the Tiber River, which turned out not to have much on it, really. We went to the Vittoriano, the giant classical structure with the equestrian statue of Vittore Emmanuelle II, the first king of Italy. Inside is a free museum dealing with the wars of the last few centuries. We went to this café on top of the Vittoriano and I got an espresso doppio (double espresso, i.e. two shots. Also I think café and espresso are interchangeable in Italian, because they, like Viennese, drink only espresso drinks and never what Americans think of as regular coffee) to get some more energy for the day. Myrjam was writing a postcard to her best friend in Swiss German and asked me to try to read it. She laughed a lot at my attempts to pronounce the Swiss words. In my defence, her handwriting isn’t super legible, though it’s not bad, but that added to my inability to read it. Anyway I did get the basic gist of what she was saying, because it was similar enough to High German. Myrjam wanted to return to the hostel to take a nap; she was staying in Rome for a few more days and wasn’t in a super big rush. I, however, was planning on leaving the next day, so I wanted to go see the Colosseum and other stuff that day.
So we parted ways and I headed to the Colosseum, waited in line for a bit listening to Flogging Molly and paid my €15 to get in. It is a cool feeling to be standing inside the famous Colosseum, which is about two thousand years old. It’s all ruinous, too. There are old ruins lying around everywhere which you’re not allowed to touch, in fact you can be punished for it under Italian law. I’m not sure what the punishment entails, but knowing how much Italians value their history I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it. So it’s this big falling apart ring with multiple levels. On the ground there’s this kind of labyrinth where I guess the gladiators ran around trying to find and kill one another? There is also a new-looking stage. Makes me wonder if they ever have concerts or performances there today? That would be cool as hell, to attend something in the Colosseum. They also had some exhibits showing old gladiator armour and weapons and stuff, and giving information in Italian and English about old Roman and gladiator life. One cool thing that happened was that this old German couple said, ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ and I tried to give them instructions as to how to get onto the ground level. I’m not sure I helped them much, but it was cool to meet yet more German speakers in Italy. I’m not sure if I look like I speak German or if they just decided to ask a random fellow. The second cool thing was that I was wearing my UCSD John Muir College T-shirt that day, and these three guys accosted me and said they were UCSD alumni! Two of them were from Muir and one from Sixth or ERC or one of those unimportant colleges. Anyway, how fucking cool! To meet UCSD alumni in the Colosseum! What an insanely amazing coincidence. So we talked about UCSD and Muir College for a bit. I think they’d graduated a few years ago; they looked maybe late twenties or thirty. So that was really cool. After the Colosseum I think I just walked around the forum a bit. I found the Circus Maximus, but it was just this field where they were doing some sort of earth-moving or construction. It didn’t even look like a race track. I’m pretty sure that was it, anyway. I heard it was unimpressive. Think I saw a few more things before heading back to the hostel.
Went up to Myrjam’s room, and she said to meet in the bar, and I worked on my paper a bit and then went down and got some wine, Myrjam was talking to this French dancer who was in Rome to study dance. Then we ended up talking to these Japanese guys. Apparently there are Japanese travelling all over Europe right now. They spoke varying degrees of English, but they were fun to talk to. Myrjam kept trying to learn Japanese words. I guess five languages isn’t enough for her. One of the guys asked me if I watched Full House. You know, that show from the early 90s, where Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are like 3 years old, and I think Bob Saget’s in it? Well he really liked it. I have no idea how a Japanese guy my age ends up liking an American sitcom from twenty years ago. It was totally bizarre and unexpected. Maybe American producers recycle their shows to foreigners once American stop paying for them? I don’t know. Another amusing thing is that they had this little pocket computer thing that would translate Japanese to English. One thing cool about that is that it had only English letters, but they type with those. Certain combinations of those letters are used to type Japanese characters, I guess. I’ve heard Japanese has over 2000 characters, so of course it’d be impossible to have a keyboard that large, but I didn’t know they typed with English keyboards. That’s interesting. (Side note: I later saw a German keyboard in Vienna and I totally want one now.) Anyway, so they pulled out this pocket computer and typed something into it, and the translation was ‘get drunk.’ They then showed me and pointed to it and pointed to their friend, I guess telling me that he was drunk? I’d been wondering why he was speaking less than the others. Also the Japanese guy who likes Full House has bright orange hair. Also he gave Myrjam and I his email address, and it contains an l, so he made this little diagram where there was a circle next to a capital L and an x next to a 1, so we’d know it was the letter L and not the number one. It was cool and efficient. Anyway so they were pretty cool to talk to. Eventually some of them went to bed and this Dutch couple came by with a South African guy they’d met. They all spoke pretty good English. Eventually the Dutch girl decided she wanted to dance and Myrjam also liked dancing, so they made us get up and dance with them. One of the Japanese guys who was still up danced really enthusiastically; it was fun to watch him. Eventually we stopped dancing; I talked to the South African for a while. He was pretty cool and also like, kinda built. He said his native language was Afrikaans, and English was a foreign language for him. He was pretty good with it though. He said South Africa has 11 official languages, but Afrikaans and English were the only ones he spoke. I asked him how similar Afrikaans was to Dutch, since South Africa was settled by the Dutch, and he said if he spoke Afrikaans and the Dutch couple spoke Dutch very slowly, they could kind of understand one another. But it was easier for them to converse in English. Anyway he was a pretty cool guy, I think he was in Rome for an electrical engineering conference or something like that. So after we’d talked for a while the Dutch and Swiss and Japanese came by and decided they wanted pizza and ice cream. It was like, 2 am by this point, so we set off looking for stuff, but the only things still open were those shady food stands. They got some food. Myrjam got this popcorn that turned out to be horrible, I mean just horrid. It was so bland and kind of staleish. It was the worst popcorn I’ve ever had. No one really liked it and she kept trying to get me to eat more of it, because she didn’t really like it either and wanted to get rid of it, but despite liking her I refused. After wandering around for a while having fun and talking with a bunch of foreigners (I swear it is the very coolest thing ever to be in a group of people hanging out and be the only American there, or even the only native English speaker), we headed back to the hostel. I slept.
Got up and noticed a sign saying the hostel had free pasta from 7.30 to 8.00 every night. Wasn’t too remorseful I’d missed it though. Knowing that place there probably wouldn’t have been any sauce or something. I was waiting for the guy to get back so I could ask if it was all right to leave my stuff there for the day, but he never came back and I wanted to get an early start to hit the Vatican before the crowd. So I used his computer to look up other hostels in Rome (the second time I’d used hostel Internet to look up other hostels in the same city, after Innsbruck) and marked a few on my map. I left my big bag of clothes and non-valuables in a corner and hoped he wouldn’t throw it away or anything, then took the dirty, crowded subway to the Vatican. There wasn’t too big of a crowd there. I went saw a couple Swiss guards, went through security, and went into St. Peter’s Basilica, which is free to get into.
St. Peter’s is bloody amazing! It’s the cathedral, the bishop of which is the pope (the pope is the bishop of Rome) so of course, knowing how obsessed Catholics are with materialism and hierarchy, it’s going to be the biggest, grandest Catholic church of them all. It’s bloody huge. It’s just a gigantic structure, and the ceiling is very, very high. It’s filled with giant statues of saints, and there are tombs of deceased high-ranking clergymen everywhere, with statues of them as well. There are like, three or four places in which mass can be conducted. The very middle (the intersection of the cross; most Catholic churches have floorplans shaped like crosses) has this giant black decorative thing above where they discovered what they think are the bones of St. Peter, the first pope and Jesus’s homeboy, even though Peter was kind of a scared little bitch about the whole crucifixion thing. But forgive and forget (or if you’re a Catholic, just look the other way). Dom Ambros was telling me that people were exploring the vast catacombs beneath Rome, and they saw with little note scratched into the wall that said “Here lies Peter” or something. They found a skeleton complete except the feet. Supposedly after Peter was crucified upside down, his followers cut him down at the ankles and made off with his body lest the Romans steal it. Then they sent the bones to this bone specialist university in Israel, without telling them where they found it or that they thought it was Peter, and everything the specialists came up with matched Peter. They said he was a fisherman from Galilee who lived around the first century, &c. So they’re pretty durned sure it’s ol’ Petey. Anyway so they built this massive cathedral over where they found him. There’s kind of this stairway that leads down to his tomb, but you’re not allowed to go down it. I assume the Swiss Guards would come and beat you to death with their pantaloons if they caught you trying. So St. Peter’s is just really really big and really really full of stuff. I think that’s where the popester conducts mass when he’s in Rome. There’s a museum attached to the cathedral, but I decided not to pay for it because I’m cheap and it didn’t sound too terribly interesting and I did the Vatican museum later anyway. There’s also some little gift shops and stuff. I went outside and there was this place where they’d let you climb to the top of St. Peter’s cupola for €5, so I did that. The stairs are super tiny, so they’ve got to have two different sets for people going up and going down; there’s no way you’d ever be able to fit two people on the same stair. Once you get to the actual dome the stairs are really close to the outside, so the walls are actually slanted along with the dome, so you can’t stand up completely straight. Anyway, once you get to the top there’s a really spectacular view of Rome, and you can walk around the entire cupola to get a 360° view. Unfortunately the Vatican is kind of on the edge of Rome, but it’s still a really nice view. After this I asked a guy in a suit (lots of them work at the Vatican) how to get to the Sistine Chapel, and he showed me on my map, and said in a really funny way something like, “You must go around here and then walk, walk walk walk walk.” I enjoyed it. Anyway so to get to the Sistine you have to buy a ticket for the Vatican museum for €15 and then you walk through the entire museum and the chapel’s at the end. So I did that. One of the first things I saw was this statue called Laocoön and His Sons, and it’s one of my favourite pieces of art. It comes from the story of the Trojan war where Laocoön was I think this Trojan prophet that pulled some dick move to get the Greeks killed (you can get the more accurate details by Googling the bloke), and so the Greek gods sent these serpents to come kill him and his sons. So the statue is of this muscular guy and these two young boys, and they’re all naked (they thought sculpting clothing was a cop-out in those days, I guess), and these serpents are wrapped around them, and they’re all struggling but their limbs are entangled and they have these fraught expressions on their faces. I really like it. Some farmer was digging in his fields in the 16th century and just found it underground, which is amazing because it’s taller than I am. It’s a big sculpture. They think it was made around the first century, which puts it at around 2000 years old, which is cool. When they found it parts of it were missing, for instance one of Laocoön’s arms. This sculptor decided to guess how it originally looked and sculpt the rest of it, and they kind of restored it. But then this German scholar was in a Roman antique shop and he saw this stone arm and was like, “Hey, that’s Laocoön’s arm!” So they compared it to the statue and it fit, so they took off the fake bits and put on the real arm, and it was actually in a completely different position from what they thought, so they had guessed wrong. Anyway I learned about it in this art history class I took in high school and it was my favourite piece of art, so it was completely cool to stand in front of the real deal. It’s all cracked with age.
Pretty much as Catholic as a human can be.
Michelangelo's Pietà.
Laocoön and His Sons
There’s a bunch of other cool old stuff that the popes collected over the years in the museum, lots of ancient old sculptures and statues and things. Some of them are really famous, I guess. They had this room with all animal sculptures, and a bunch of them were of carnivores and herbivores in mortal combat, for instance these dogs fighting a deer or something, so that was a really cool room. They also have an Etruscan wing (the Etruscans lived in Rome before the Romans), so it’s all really, really old pottery and spearheads and stuff. Like, really old. Two to three thousand years old or more. That stuff would make your great granddad feel like a spring chicken.
Perseus holding Medusa's head.
Anyway there’s a lot in there, including some more modern stuff. They even have a couple paintings by Salvador Dalí, which I was really surprised to find in there. But then again, knowing Catholic priests and their history of encounters with little boys, maybe I shouldn’t have been. Sorry, Catholic readers. It’s just really easy to make fun of you. But I deeply love a few devout Catholics, so you know, nothing personal. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, so they’ve got some modern stuff, and in fact a lot of Dalí’s work had significant religious meaning, it wasn’t all melting clocks and dicks (just most of it was that). Anyway I only saw two Dalís. There was also a bit where they had all the carriages driven by popes through the years, so you start with big elegant Baroque horse-drawn deals, and work your way down until you get to automobiles, finally ending with that popemobile that John Paul II went around in, that Mercedes-Benz white ugly truck thing with this glass case in the back and a chair where he could sit and do his wavy thing to his adoring crowds.
Finally the Sistine Chapel, which was bloody amazing. Unfortunately they had stern Italian guys in there who kept saying “No photo!” and if they caught you taking a picture they’d come and make you delete it. As I’m sure you’ve heard, that famous God-and-Adam-trying-to-grope-one-another bit where their fingers are about to touch is only one tiny part of the Sistine, up in the middle of the ceiling. There are bunches of other frescoes everywhere of various Biblical scenes, from both the old and new Testaments, and it’s a really big place, which is why it took Michelangelo four years of just working on that one building to get it done. Also, it’s a rectangular building with a flat ceiling. For some reason I always thought it was a circular dome deal, but it’s not. I think my favourite bit was Michelangelo’s Last Supper, in which they’re all around the table similar to da Vinci’s Last Supper, except eleven of them have golden halos and Judas has like a silver halo and he’s sitting on the other side of the table. Guess he’s kind of an anti-saint. Though really I don’t see why they’d make Peter and everyone saints after they were always falling asleep on watch and denying they knew Jesus and not being faithful enough to walk on water, and not make Judas a saint. I guess they draw a line. Someone’s got to take the fall. Oh, also Judas committed suicide, I guess that’s minus points in the Catholic book. Anyway, the reason that’s my favourite bit is because on the floor in front of the table there is this cat and this rat, and they’re facing off. And they’re both baring their teeth and they look like they’re about to go for one another’s throats. It’s just so silly and unnecessary. You’ve got this big famous Biblical scene, and then this cat and this rat about to fight for no apparent reason. I loved it. Go, Michelangelo, go.
Right, so that was my Vatican experience. After the Vatican I looked around for a place to sleep. I went to this sort of cheap bed and breakfast that I’d found online. But it was kind of a walk, and then when I got there they were full. They called another hotel that his boss owned closer to downtown Rome, but it was like €60 a night, and I needed to stay two nights, and that was kind of over my budget. So then I went to one of the hostels I’d found online. It was one that was in the guy’s guidebook on Rome that I met in the shitty Innsbruck hostel a few posts back. I found it online in the shitty Rome hostel that morning, and then went to it that afternoon. It seemed like a nice place so I took it. It was so, so much better than the other one. On the way down the stairs from my room, who should I meet but the guy from Toronto that I ran into outside the station the day before! You remember, the one who asked to borrow my Czech map. It turns out this was the hostel he was staying at, which he eventually found. We were passing one another on the stairs and he said, “Hey!” and I kind of stared at him for a bit, then said, “. . . Toronto, right?” and he said, “Yeah! California, right?” I said, “Yeah!” and then I knew it was that guy. So that was a cool thing.
I went to my old hostel to get my stuff (which was still there, fortunately; I’d been worrying all day) and then went back to the new hostel. Outside this bar next to our hostel was the same Canadian. He was eating pasta and drinking wine, and invited me to join him for a glass. So I deposited my stuff and returned. It turns out his name is John, and we ended up hanging out together for the rest of the night. I had some wine and pasta, and noticed that his accent is basically American, but certain words he says with a Canadian flair, which is funny. Because you’d never know he was Canadian, and then all of a sudden he’ll say something in a really Canadian way. Particularly the word ‘out.’ Anyway so we relaxed for a bit and then went back up to the hostel. I met two of my roommates, who hail from Germany and were pleased that I spoke some German. We got along well. I went down to the main area to do some work; that’s where the Internet is, I think I was just working on my blog though. Eventually the Germans came by and said they were going to the famous Spanish Steps in Rome to sit and drink some beers, which I guess was a thing that a lot of people do, and invited me to join them. I said okay, and a bit later John the Canadian comes down, and I said hey, let’s go to the Spanish steps. So he said okay and we met down in the bar in a bit. We had some wine and got to talking, and ended up staying there a good long while. We had espresso with a shot of this Italian liqueur that tastes like licorice, but not quite like Jägermeister. It was delicious, and I wish I remembered what that stuff was called. I think it starts with an S. Anyway, we had some more drinks and met some people from the hostel. Of note is that we met this Swiss girl named Myrjam, with awesome long blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. She speaks like, five languages, it’s crazy. Swiss German, High German, French, Italian and English. Anyway she was completely fluent in High German so we conversed in that, but she was also really good at English so she could help me out if I had some trouble. She also really cool to talk to because she has a passion for learning languages, and if I misspoke she’d correct my German, which was extremely helpful; most native German speakers will just nod their heads as long as they know what I mean. We also met this French girl named Matilde (possibly misspelled) who was really sweet, and some other people. John found a couple of Austrian girls from Vienna and tried to hook me up. I went up to talk to them but they were sitting in an area with really loud music. It’s hard enough to speak German for me, it was almost impossibly when we’re both shouting over music. Also the less hot one was doing most of the talking. Was nice anyway. We invited the girls to come to the Spanish Steps with us, but they went to bed. However, since the Swiss girl and I had both done the Vatican that day, and hadn’t yet seen the rest of Rome, we had both been planning to explore Rome the next day, and agreed to meet up at breakfast and set off together.
So John and I set off alone for the Spanish Steps, getting beers to go. On the way we ran out of beer and stopped by this bar to get more; we got this Italian stuff that was kind of weak, but whatever. I’d forgotten my Andechs bottle opener, so John taught me how to open a bottle with a lighter. Just now, I’m typing this from a hostel in Salzburg, and my bottle opener is in my other backpack in my room, and I’m too lazy to go in and get it, so I opened it with my lighter. Thanks, John. Anyway, by the time we got to the Spanish Steps it was after one in the morning, and almost no one was there, including my Germans. John and I talked about girlfriend troubles. He has a huge crush on his best friend’s sister and no one to open up to about it, poor guy. Since I don’t know any of his friends, obviously, he told me about his feelings and stuff, and I told him about my own girl troubles. By the time we finished the beers we were kind of tipsy; we’d been drinking for a few hours by that time. Anyway, we eventually headed home (this one guy tried to sell us roses . . . not sure why, it was just two guys alone). Along the way he decided to call one of his friends, who also knows all of his other friends, including best friend and sister, and talked to him about stuff. We got to the hostel and he kept talking, and I sat down to keep him company, and he smoked and handed me a cigarette, and I was drunk enough to smoke it (though normally I don’t smoke cigarettes; I think that was the fourth one I’ve smoked in my life). Went to bed. That was the last I saw of John the Lovelorn Canadian from Toronto; he had to catch an early flight to Amsterdam to meet up with his best friend (the one whose sister he likes).
Got up, ate breakfast, which was nice and free, and headed to the train station to head to Rome. Took a few pictures on the way, but don’t think anything interesting happened. When I asked for a timetable (I guessed correctly that the German for timetable was Fahrplan! I hadn’t ever learned this word. I’m proud of myself!) the ÖBB (Austrian national rail company) lady told me I’d have to make a reservation in Bologna for the train to Rome. While waiting for the Rome train I read a copy of Süddeutsche Zeitung that I’d bought in Munich, and I was sitting next to this black guy, who was talking on a cell phone and gesturing with his hands the entire time. It was really amusing, because obviously whomever he was talking to couldn’t see him, but he kept waving his hands around for emphasis during the entire conversation. Fortunately I arrived in Bologna early and had no problems. From Florence to Rome I had this fast train that didn’t stop anywhere, went pretty fast, had a screen that showed where on your route you were, and was in general pretty nice, which must have been why the reservation was €10. The only other person in my car was this nice older guy that confirmed that posti was the Italian for seat. I had a table, and there was a working electrical outlet, so I worked on my paper.
Arrived in Rome and pulled out my map of Rome which I’d purchased in Olomouc. It was in Czech, but all the street names were in Italian, so it wasn’t really a hindrance, most of the Czech words were similar enough to English that I could tell where the Vatican was, Trajan’s Column, &c. Also it was really cool and was this folded pop out map, so it fit in your pocket and was like a book, and you pulled it out and it popped open and showed Rome, then you closed it and it folded back together automatically. By the end of my stay in Rome it was pretty battered and didn’t do the folding/popout thing properly anymore, but it was still super cool. Also how many English speaker can say that they’ve explored an Italian city with a Czech map? Anyway I was walking, looking at the map and this guy asked if he could see it. He had also just arrived by train and was wearing a big backpack, and was having trouble finding his hostel. He turned out to be from Toronto. I let him see my map and we kind of got along because we were both native English speakers. He couldn’t find the street his hostel was on, but he thanked me for the use of my map and we parted ways in good standing.
Walked to my hostel, which turned out to be kind of sketchy. It was like, in an apartment. Originally the guy was going to put me in another building in which the electricity was down and have me come to the original one to shower. I didn’t get a key to my room. Determined to find a better hostel the next day, I deposited my stuff and headed out to explore a bit of Rome. I went to the old Roman part, with a bunch of ruins preserved. The Vittoriano was amazing. I’m not certain it was built by ancient Romans, since I later learned the big equestrian statue was of Italy’s first kind and the place was named after him, but in any case it was gigantic and in the classical style. Glorious all lit up at night. It really gave me a sense of being in the old capital of Europe’s greatest empire. I also saw Trajan’s Column, and walked by a bunch of ruins to the Colosseum. It was closed but it was cool to be there. I kept thinking, “I’m standing in front of the Colosseum! I’m actually standing in front of Colosseum!” There were a bunch of people selling wares and busking and begging around there. In general, I found Rome to be FULL of people. There were just so many people. Lots and lots of tourists, even though peak tourist season was over. I get the feeling Rome is full of tourists all year long. The city also smelled. I’m glad I went there, and as just mentioned it really feels you with a sense of being in a really ancient place, the capital of an old empire, and it’s super cool. There’s also a hell of a lot to see in Rome, and I could have used more time there. But I would never ever want to live there. I like cities, but Rome had way, way too many people, and it was dirty and it stank. The public transit is horrible. You get on an (un-air-conditioned) bus and wait like 10 minutes for it to start moving from Termini (the central train station). The subway only has two lines, so you can’t take it everywhere like in Vienna. And the subway cars are always crammed with people, so that you’re always rubbing shoulders with four other people and you can seldom find a place to sit down. There were also far more beggars there than anywhere else I’ve been.
Trajan's Column!
The Vittoriano.
THE COLOSSEUM! With something being projected onto its side from somewhere.
I passed by the Fountain di Trevi, which is completely huge and amazing. It’s all these sculptures, and it’s a fountain, and there’s just massive amounts of water flowing out of it with a big pool at the bottom and it’s completely beautiful, especially at night. I loved it. There were these two boys and two girls, I think younger than me, and they had these signs inviting people to come kiss them and take a picture with them. I’m not sure if they were asking for money or what, but they had a good thing going, those blonde little Italian guys! I’ve got to hand it to them. They were sitting in front of the gorgeous Fountain di Trevi, and there was a huge crowd looking at them and every so often a girl their age or a bit old you come down they’d kiss on the cheeks and get some pictures. And if they were getting paid, too? I’m not sure they were, but even if not, damn. They had it going on.
Anyway, so after seeing a bit of historic Rome at night I headed back, stopping at a grocery store along the way. I got to a place near the hostel that I think was some sort of museum. Reluctant to return to my sketchy hostel, I sat down on some steps and drank an Italian beer I’d picked up at the super market and smoked another cigar. A lot of the beers in Italy come in 66 centilitre sizes, which is interesting because in Germany and Austria (definitely more renowned as beer countries, Germany at least) beer comes in half litre bottles. For those of you who suck at math, that’s 50 centilitres. So I found it slightly odd that in Italy the beer sizes were larger. However when I got a beer at a restaurant a couple days later it was 0,4 litres (40 centilitres) and it would have been half a litre in Austria or Germany. Also at Italian supermarkets, the little price tags are all little screens that display the price, I guess so they can be changed. They also display another price, which I think may have been price per litre or per kilogram or something so you can prepare the values of different size products. Anyway I thought that was innovative. So I smoked and drank for a bit. The people who passed me kind of looked at me like, “What’s this kid doing here smoking and drinking on these museum steps?” but there weren’t many passersby so I didn’t get uncomfortable.
Finally headed back to the hostel and the guy gave me a bed in the building with electricity (yay!). The bed had no sheets though (boo!) so I used my towel and jacket to keep warm. The one redeeming quality of the place was that it was insanely cheap for Rome, less than €11 per night.
