The wonderfulness that is ROME

Again, I apologize that this post is coming out a few days after the fact. Monday was my first rehearsal with the brass ensemble, and Tuesday night was Family Night, when all the students cooked dinner, served, and entertained our host families. More to come on those after Rome. :)

Thursday, my friend Claire and I arrived at the train station about an hour before our train was scheduled to leave. What we didn’t know, however, was that sleeper trains are actually quite popular in Europe, and when we tried to make our reservation for the Thursday overnight train, there were none. :( We decided instead to take the Friday overnight train, which meant we had one less day in Rome than we were originally hoping for. Very sad, but I still think we did a good job with our day and a half we spent there.

Saturday morning, when we got to Rome, we went straight to our hostel to take care of all those related things. Our room wasn’t ready yet, so after dropping off our bags, we set out to explore Rome. We first walked through a couple piazzas, decided not to go into a museum that we had to pay for, and continued exploring. We found the Triton Fountain, which was pretty cool, and a little intersection that had a fountain/statue at each corner (the road leading up to it is called the Road of Four Fountains). From there, we made our way to Rome’s most famous fountain, the Trevi Fountain. It is quite an amazing fountain – not only is it huge (it covers the entire front of a palace), it’s very pretty, and uses very interesting effects for the falling water. We forgot to throw our coins in to guarantee our return to Rome, but I think I’ll be OK. There’s no way I’m not going back – someday. After the Trevi Fountain, we walked through the Pantheon, another very amazing building. It is the only remaining building from Ancient Roman times still standing, and though was originally built as a pagan temple, is now a Catholic church. It was really cool to see how the ancient architecture has been treated in a Christian manner, and the building itself was an impressive piece of architecture. I think I overheard someone say that people have no idea how to restore or reconstruct the Pantheon, as they cannot figure out how the ancient Romans constructed the domed ceiling, which is still standing strong today. Once we were awed enough by the Pantheon, we stopped for lunch (pizza and spaghetti – getting into the Italian spirit) and gelato. Our hunger satisfied, we walked through Piazza Navona, still in the shape of an oval course for chariot races, we passed by Castel San Angelo (a pretty name for the Catholic Church’s primary place of imprisonment and torture, which also has an escape path for the pope that starts inVatican City and ends here in the event of emergency), and the Spanish Steps (I think they’d be prettier on a sunny day when the flowers are out, but it’s a very interesting construction of a staircase to follow the hill they’re built on). We then went back to our hostel, hoping to shower, but were running out of time… We were then hoping to meet some of Claire’s friends who were in Rome this weekend (her college’s choir is on an Italy tour this week), but after finally finding their hostel after two hours of searching, we found that they were all in the city already. Bummer. The bus we took back into the city went straight to St. Peter’s, though, so we decided to see the world’s largest church by night. When I say world’s largest church, St. Peter’s Basilica certainly lives up to the name. We were only able to see the front of the church, but even that was huge. The piazza of sorts that is in front of the church also does justice to the large size of the church it preceeds, and we just stood in awe of the awesomeness of this humongous church, a little bit wishing we could go inside, but that will have to be for my next trip to Rome. We also decided, though, that you can’t go to Rome and not see the Colosseum, so we stopped by the home of the gladiators before dinner, though again we couldn’t go inside. However, the outside is enough to make you realize you’re in Rome, really, truly seeing the Colosseum, and living 2000 years of history. Claire and I both wondered which was taller – St. Peter’s Basilica or the Colosseum – as they are both very, very tall, and both quite imposing in their own special way. We also saw the Arch of Constantine, right by the Colosseum, and looked into the fora, though they would be extremely sketchy to wander by night, so we didn’t try. After a scrumptious Italian dinner of Italian pasta, we called it a night (after finally showering). We shared a hostel room with two Belgian girls who were very nice, and concerned that we hadn’t forgotten about the time change (European Daylight Savings time was last weekend), and that we wouldn’t be bothered when their alarm went off early. And, when my blanket fell off in the middle of the night and the Belgian girl below me even kindly gave it back to me (she was already awake). I always like crossing paths with nice people. :)

Sunday at first dawned not so pretty, rainy and cloudy as Saturday had been. (The Roman umbrella sellers had tried very, very hard to sell us an umbrella Saturday, but sadly, we weren’t interested. Everywhere we turned, someone was there laden in umbrellas, asking, “Umbrella?” To which we replied, “Non, grazie” every time.) We first went to stand in line at the Vatican Museums to see the Sistine Chapel. We arrived at the Vatican Museums at 9:00, right when they opened, and the line wrapped around 3 blocks at least. While we were standing in line, a whole line of cars began passing, with their lights on, and surrounded by motorcycles. At first, we thought the important person was the young man sitting in the black car in the middle, but seated next to said young man was a much older man, dressed in white, with an unmistakable white cap on his head. We saw Benedict!!! In the flesh!! Sadly, we didn’t realize it was the Pope until he was just passing, and we couldn’t get a picture. But, we definitely did see him. It was quite exciting. However, that was the only exciting part about waiting in the ridiculously long line, albeit a definite plus. We decided that we’d be able to see more than just the walls of Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel if we were lucky if we left the line and wandered through the fora, so we let the line take its own course without us. Fortunately, when we left the Colosseum metro station, the sun was shining, and we proceeded to spend a very nice two hours wandering through the fora and walking up the Capitoline Hill. (You needed a ticket to see the Palatine Hill, where all the emperors had their palaces, and again, we were being a little cheap.) As I was walking through the fora, it truly hit me that I was in Rome, walking amongst ruins I had seen in books and studied in Latin in high school. It was simply amazing to really, truly see all these ruins in the flesh, and walk where the Roman citizens (and slaves) would have walked. After the fora, we were contemplating if we had enough time to wait in line for the Colosseum and go inside, when a tour guide explained that an English tour that would take us inside the Colloseum in much less time than waiting in line was about to begin. We couldn’t take advantage of the free tour of the Palatine afterwards, as we had a plane to catch. We were still able to see the inside of the Colosseum, and take in the grandeur of such an enormous building that is such a central part of Rome’s history. Again, the glory of the Roman Empire hit me pretty hard as we walked around inside. All the gladiators, Christians, and animals who had come through those gates, all the spectators, the Emperor, the Vestal Virgins, the couples who had met outside the Colosseum as the gladiators were cleaning up after their fight (if they were successful) … There is just so much history, and to see it with my own eyes was amazing, after hearing about it or studying it.

After the Colosseum, we got back to our hostel as fast as we could, ended up missing the bus to the airport we were hoping to take, but managed to get the next one, which still got us to our plane on time. Both Claire and I napped on the plane from Rome to Baden-Baden – we were pretty exhausted after two nights of not excellent sleep (first on the train, and then in a hostel bed – our hostel wasn’t bad, but it was still a hostel). In the Baden-Baden airport, we ran into Dr. Nick, our theory professor and the professor in charge of the music program, and his wife Adrienne returning from Florence. The rest of Sunday was completely uneventful – bus back to Strasbourg, and then home for some R&R.

Now, Thursday morning, I think I’ve maybe finally recovered from the weekend. It probably helped, of course, that I didn’t get home until 22:30 on Monday night and 23:30 on Tuesday night… Monday, again, was my first rehearsal with the brass ensemble at the Conservatoire. We spent 3 hours on just one piece, and hence the late return home. The piece is really interesting, and though my part is easy (I’m percussion 3, which means all the extra stuff – no timps, mallets, or snare, but I get to play the chimes, triangle, and pitched gongs), it’s still a fun part. Tuesday night was Family Night, where all the students of Syracuse cooked a dinner or dessert for our host families, and we had a huge buffet with some entertainment to separate dinner and dessert. All the music students had arranged a French folk song, and the eight of us sang our folk songs. The highlight of the entertainment, probably, was the four guys who had put a dance together. I had seen this dance on the internet (that’s where they found it), but to see college-aged boys dancing, and enjoying it, was quite amusing. Even my host family commented on it last night, when we were talking about Family Night.

So, it’s been a busy few days, but at least I’m not bored. :) That’s an interesting thing I realized this week – I had so much free time in January and February, and didn’t know what to do with myself. But, ever since I had to start studying for midterms, I’ve been busy. I think I’ll stay busy at least through April, with finals to study for and the trip the music students will take at the end of April. I much prefer to busy than not, though, so I think it will be nice.