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Published: September 10th 2006
So I hear the weather 'non è molto bene' in Olde Canberry Towne lately? Well Rome continues to be ridiculously hot, with a minimum of 30 degrees most days. Maybe we could meet somewhere in the middle and everyone would be happy!
Have been pretty tired this week, I think school makes you tired as well as the heat, but I am pushing ahead and am still enjoying myself, don't worry!
Where to start? Well I guess first of all, Nicolas left this morning. It's a shame as he was a good balancing influence in the flat, what with the non-talkingness of L&L and the over-talkingness and general domination by Marianne! Plus he was good fun. I like Marianne and Sybille (who are actually sisters, I don't know if I ever mentioned that bit!), but this week I have been a little frustrated by them too. Because Marianne is the loud, outgoing, sometimes overbearing one, while Sybille is really nice but a LOT quieter (I think part of the problem is that she doesn't have a chance to get a word in half the time!) The other thing about M is that she
loves to have a whinge, almost constantly. So that's been getting to me a bit, and Sybille has been frustrating me too, but because she doesn't speak up/speak for herself, she just lets Marianne do it. So I'll ask Sybille a question directly and Marianne will answer FOR her, and Sybille still doesn't say anything. ANYWAY. I'm starting to like Lucia more, we have been talking a lot more lately (Luigi is away) but she is still strange. Like this morning the new girl who'll be living there arrived (by the way she is here for THIRTY-NINE WEEKS!!!). Her name is Tova (sp?) and she's Swedish. M&S were the only ones up (even though Lucia knew Tova was arriving this morning) so they welcomed her, showed her the flat etc, but then had to go out. So I got up and took her to the supermarket and the school, showed her where the bus/metro stops are etc. And still no sign of Lucia! I wanted to use the phone but as per usual it was in Lucia's room. Waited for her to get up/show herself but eventually knocked on the door and got it. Said to her did you know the new girl has arrived and so on, and she was just like "Oh, ok" and that was it. She still hasn't come out to even introduce herself! Bizarre.
So on Friday I finished my first Italian course (each course, ie level, lasts 2 weeks). That afternoon we had our test to go to the 5th level. It was harder than I thought it would be but I'm pretty sure I will be moving up (well I hope so since I was already there once!). Find out Monday. For the next two weeks my classes will be 2:00-6:00pm, which is a bit annoying but it's only fair that we do a swap every 2 weeks. My final week should be back in the mornings, much better for actually achieving anything!
On Friday Nicolas and I thought it would be nice to all go out to a pizzeria together with the girls and a couple of others from the school, since he was leaving this weekend. In the end M&S piked, which wasn't overly surprising, so we went to this pizzeria in Trastevere (lit. 'across the river Tevere', which is what they call the Tiber) that N likes. Was v authentic, we sat outside and when we first got there, there were guys in renaissance type outfits singing songs, which was cool. Apparently they were Spanish though so there you go. Bit of a complicated process to get home but I got there eventually!
We were up early Saturday to revisit the Colosseum and Roman Forum. When you arrive at the Colloseum there are lots of people lurking near the entrance offering tours. We decided to go with this one company, which turned out to be a great investment! It costs €12 to get into the Colloseum regardless, and then we paid €8 more for the tour (all up almost $35 AU!). BUT, we got to skip the long queue (one to get into the building, another, longer one to buy your ticket) which I thought was worth €8 in itself! Was very difficult to resist going "nyer nyer!" as we waltzed past the masses. We all got little walky-talky things to hear what the guide was saying without everyone else learning the secrets of the Colosseum for free haha. The guide was an Italian woman and she was really great - SO funny and lots of interesting things to say. At one point she was pondering the lack of clothing of the Ancient Greek (male) athletes and why women weren't allowed to watch, saying it was probably because the women would say "All these big 'muscools', such big men, great athletes...what's that tiny thing down there??" She also suggested that gladiators wore clothes to cover up a man's 'important bits' in the event of Unfortunate Sword Mishaps. After the tour we had about 45mins to wander by ourselves before another tour included in the cost, this time of the Forum. This was with an American lady, who was also really great and had heaps of cool little facts to impart. We also went up on the Palatine hill for free since we were part of this group, so all in all it was well worth it and I enjoyed it a lot. Now for a couple of interesting things I learnt yesterday...
- Gladiators used to fight lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, rhinos, hippos and for a little while - elephants. However, these were elephants from North Africa (ie. part of the Roman Empire), as opposed to Indian elephants. Indian elephants can easily become accustomed to being around humans, whereas African elephants are very nervy and never get used to it. Whenever they fought elephants it was extremely one-sided, but they continued to use them until one time when they escaped and went on a rampage through the Forum, destroying lots of buildings and killing the odd person or two. After this somewhat costly outing the emperor finally decided that maybe it wasn't such as good idea after all!
- In India, because there are so many elephants in the streets as taxis and whatever, they are currently trying to work out some kind of numberplate for their ample behinds because they have accidents with cars so frequently! Not only might this help improve visibility, but it also means they know which elephant in particular was responisble! No passing the blame here anymore...
- The Colloseum took eight years to build. Last year it took the whole year to clean 12 arches. At this rate the cleaning will be completed in 30 years time, at which point they will probably have to start back at the beginning again!
- The triumphal arch of Titus (I think?) commemorates the victory of the Roman Empire over the Jews. Every time you walk through a triumphal arch it is symbolically reliving and recelebrating this victory, so at one point the (modern, obviously) Israeli government asked that it be blocked of so that no-one could walk under it. (it is roped off, but only for safety reasons). Jewish people are invited to spit on this arch as a form of protest!
- The bronze doors on the Temple of Romulus in the Forum are over 1000 years old, but still function and can still be locked/unlocked.
- There are two columns in the Forum made of Porphry (definitely spelt wrong!) marble (which is purple, the imperial colour), the current market value of which is $14,000US per square foot! Also the Vatican owns the vast majority of this type of marble in the world. Today it takes one hour to cut 3cm into it with a diamond saw, so god knows how long it took the Romans!
- If you stopped to look at each thing in the Vatican Museums for 1 minute, you would be there for SEVEN YEARS!
There now, don't you feel intelligent and well-informed? Quick, get to a dinner party and demonstrate your knowledge!
Oh! I only just avoided a €52 fine (almost $90) on the way home that day. I've been paying for a bus ticket on a 'semi-' to 'less than-' regular basis. It's really easy to do because you buy your tickets at newspaper kiosks, bars etc
before you get on the bus and validate them on-board in the seating area, the driver doesn't regulate anything. So anyway I'm sitting there ticketless, exhausted and glad to finally be going home when a bloody ticket inspector gets on!! I'm going crap crap crap, I'll just pretend i don't understand, but I could hear him as he walked up the aisle going "Multa, multa!", which means fine, and not the good kind! So just as he gets to us the doors open for the next stop and I just jump up and push past the people getting on (it was an entrance door, not exit) and get off the bus and start strolling up the street as if it was really my stop! He's calling out "Signorina! Signorina! Stay here please!" and I'm just acting as if I have severe hearing loss and wander into the nearest shop. Realised soon after that I left my shoes in a bag on the bus but luckily the girls saw them and grabbed them. Marianne said it looked like he was going to come after me for a while! Took me another 40 minutes to get home. You know what? Today, I validated my ticket. 😊
Last night was La Notte Bianca, or the white night. Basically, all the museums are open all night for free, all shops (in the city centre) are open til at least 2am, and there are concerts, exhibits, activities and so on all night. So the streets are full of people (and lines for museums are long, long, long!) I went with Nicolas, a (nice) American guy from our school and two (COMPLETE STEREOTYPE) American girls from another school. They were OK to talk to one-on-one, but together they were like so totally ohmigod annoying like WOOF y'all, holler at me later!!!! Painful. Also the metro broke down when we we wanted to take it. (Apparently la Notte Bianca three years ago there was a complete blackout so the metro wasn't running, there were no lights etc etc! I can only imagine.) At one point we had to go up quite a narrow street for one block, which was about 20-30m. Yeah, IT TOOK ABOUT 15 MINUTES. You literally could not move there were so many people. But everyone was singing everywhere you went, and many people (un)fortunately had bullhorns, not
the most melodic instrument I've ever heard. But at least it's loud. 😊 We had a drink in Campo de Fiori while watching an incredibly intoxicated boy no more than fourteen, which was moderately disturbing. After my day of sightseeing I was flagging by this point so me and one of the American girls decided to go home. Only problem with this is that the streets are so full of people that the buses can't even get through! So we ended up having to walk for a fair while to get to the Metro (going through another full-on crowd, in which this time I was lucky enough to be in front of a male with a rather...'excitable front', shall we say. Eventually we managed to escape to the Metro, where there was an young (20s) Italian girl just completely trashed, falling off her seat, falling into people's laps, dropping her bag continuously etc. Actually really hilarious to watch because she was apparently finding it highly amusing as well, laughing and talking to all around her. Got home in the early hours of this morning and crashed, and have taken today as a 'rest day'. Back to school tomorrow!
Sorry about the lack of photos, a) the school is closed (Sunday), and b) last time I transferred the pics it did something not particularly good to my memory card so I just want to get them burnt to CD this week to be safe and then I'll post some after that!
Hope you are all well and enjoying life. Missing you all a lot lately so am enjoying hearing from you even more than I already do normally!
Un bacio per te,
tess xoxo
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isabel
non-member comment
trams/busessesesssess
I'm so impressed with your fraudulent behaviour, very common in melbourne to buy tickets from the 7/11 but not actually validate them. I did that for a while but they seem to have upped the inspector presence on my route, which also happens to go right past the uni of melb. Damn students. Oh and I got a new job! I would burn my headset but I know they'd make me pay for it. Where are the photos of the cute Italio boys? Or are they all really hairy?