Rome is difficult to describe. If you can imagine rattling by a 2,400 years-old wall in an air-conditioned tram, you’re a small part of the way there. People have been coming to Rome for the ruins for over 500 years and doubtless will keep coming for the next 500 years. It is astonishing how much has survived, given the centuries of dilapidation: temples were used for housing or shops; various popes reused marble from antique buildings in their palaces; things were buried; the Colosseum was a quarry for hundreds of years. Ironically, the impetus for much preservation came from two wannabe emperors, who worshiped the ideal of the Roman Empire: Napoleon and Mussolini.
The food can be glorious too, although the vast majority of restaurants share about 80% of their menus with each other: it can be difficult to get something different at times. A couple of neighbourhood restaurants are great resources for when we want to stay close to home. One has the best carbonara we’ve ever had; the other the best penne arrabbiata. Neither one has an English menu. One of them has no one who can speak a word of English: the menu is not so much brought out as recited (our outlander status does not merit a slowing of the rapid-fire speech) and we somehow muddle our way to a great meal. It’s a family-run place, and has been there since 1931. It’s also quite cheap, which is nothing to be sneered at in Italy. That is the advantage of living in a residential neighbourhood. It also means that most stores will close for 2 to 3 hours in the afternoon, all afternon on Sundays, and a day or half-day during the week.
Living in a residential neighbourhood does not mean that all is peace and quiet, however. We are on a fairly major street, and the particular road layout around here means that most streets are quite vital to getting around. Traffic in itself you get used to. What is more problematic is when the 20th driver in a 20-car traffic jam decides that what the other 19 ones need are an incentive, in the form of a long horn blast. This happens every three minutes at rush hour and it is of course perpetuated by the same illusion that makes some idiots repeatedly press the elevator call button: eventually, it works. The post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which underpins much belief in nonsense.
Italians have a reputation of being disorganized. We don’t really see that. Trains run mostly on time, although there is a difference with other countries: in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, they put out a schedule twice a year, and they can tell you right then which track the 3:10 to Yuma will stop 23 Sundays from now; and it’s in print. In Italy, you have to wait until 15 minutes before the train shows up to figure out which track it’s going to be on. That’s no big deal. Inter-City trains are clean and fast, with a good bar service. Restaurants, cafes and bars are run very efficiently. Public transit runs very smoothly; there are occasions when two buses or trams come almost simultaneously, but that will happen when you run them every 10 minutes in a busy city.
The city is festooned with scaffolding and dotted with fenced-in archaeological excavation sites. The one thing all these have in common is that there is absolutely nobody working on them. Italians seem to be very good at starting things, but not so good in the follow-up department. Another example: a few bus stops feature real-time arrival information, but it looks like 1980s technology: they either ran out of money or willpower to expand the experiment. Or it could be they are so used to downing tools: so far this year, there have been no fewer than 44 instances of strikes disrupting transportation at a national level for a day or part of it (numerous national strikes in other sectors and local strikes are in addition to that total). This means trains, Alitalia, air traffic control and, strangely enough, numerous times, EasyJet staff (as a discount airline, I don’t know how EasyJet got saddled with unions; why they don’t just get out of Italy is beyond me). These union pricks obviously get some sort of sick pleasure out of screwing up everybody’s lives for a day. This is a big reason I got out of Quebec: unions screwing up peoples’ lives with impunity.
Rome is also a shopper’s paradise, or so I hear. I have it on good authority that, if you require something as frivolous as a second handbag, or a third pair of shoes, this is the place to get them. I have let myself be swayed and acquired a couple of baroque shirts to liven up my otherwise drab wardrobe. The only issue is that they mostly sell clothes that will fit models. I’m still carrying 20 extra pounds from Paris pastries, but that shouldn’t make me a XXXL. All shoes are at least an inch too narrow for me. There is no evidence on the streets that everyone else is tiny. Where do normal people shop?
We’re soon off to Milan, to attend the opera at La Scala (at 250 euros a pop, it must be said, but it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing), and Naples, to visit Pompeii. When we come back, we’ll only have two weeks left in this great city. In a way, we don’t want to get busy like hurried tourists: we’ve enjoyed living here, as opposed to visiting, but the sights beckon. We’ll see.
A Night at the Opera
It is a great feeling to be at La Scala. Unfortunately, the opera we saw, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, is not one of his best. We also felt cheated by the minimalist set, which mostly features plywood in two colours, those being black and off-black. At least we could see the stage (by leaning forward a bit). We were in one of dozens of identical boxes around the orchestra (about 40 per level on 6 levels around the orchestra seating area). All of them have 5 seats: we were in the front two seats, fairly comfortable chairs and the English captions clearly visible in front of us. Behind us were two people on low stools. They could not see more than a third of the stage, nor see the captions. Beside them, another was perched on a high stool. He could not see the stage at all, nor see the captions. He probably felt he should have bought the CD instead.
The other must-see sight in Milan is the Duomo, one of the most impressive cathedrals in Europe (and yet another monument to the obscene wealth and ostentation of the catholic church). The marble facade has been recently cleaned and it is a staggering sight. I was, however, sorry about the two young Asian women who turned back (by armed soldiers, no less) because they were showing some knees (not mini-skits, mind you, just normal skirts cut just above the knee).The mind reels, still.
The world's best pizza is at Gino Sorbillo in Naples. It is busy, minimalist, cheap and delicious. The menu of 20 or so pizzas has not been reprinted in decades and comes in a crumbling plastic protector. The wine list is: red and white (my only quibble: the wine is not very good - but most locals seem to drink beer with pizza, something I never got into). There seem to be line-ups at the door, but both times we just walked in and got seated. I don't know whether we jumped the line or got lucky. My favourite pizza is the Marinara: San Marzano tomato sauce, garlic and basil. It sells for less than $5.00. At Pulcinella in Kensington, a very close approximation to the real thing, it is $13.00.
We were surprised at the lower level of graffiti in Naples, given its unearned reputation as a dirty city. Of course, the fact that the Camorra is so pervasive means that a sprayer may be vandalizing the property of some made guy: not the smartest move. This reminded us of Granada, where the only unblemished wall in the city was that of an army barracks with video surveillance at either end.
I got nothing.