when i was at the university of waterloo, at one point i worked full-time for professor oldford, a professor of statistics, and a great guy. it turned out that some italian guy, giovanni—gio for short—also worked part-time for the same professor. he saw me first, but from behind. unfortunately i had long hair at the time, 2" past my shoulders, and he thought i was a girl. he was very friendly initially, but then i turned around :) we ended up friends, and in november of 2002 the plane finally left berlin, several months and one hour late. i missed my connecting flight in münchen. i went to the counter to find out which plane i was meant to go on, and ended up behind a long angry line of italians trying to get home. there was much yelling and tempers flared, but eventually i reached the counter, last in line.

the frazzled airline employee looked at me like she wanted to plant a bullet in my forehead and said, in german, "yes?" i smiled, and acted as if it wasn't her fault that the flight computer had died in berlin, causing the delay. i let her know that i had missed my flight and needed to get to rome. when she asked what kind of seat i would like, aisle or window, i told her it wasn't important to me. the plane arrived and i boarded. people were arriving seemingly neverendingly, and i watched all the rows filling up, except... my three seats! even the most tired and frustrated airline employee has a way of saying thanks. people looked at me with a mix of curiousity and fear, wondering what kind of mafioso boss i must be to get three empty seats to myself on a plane that seemed not to have a single empty seat anywhere else. even the stewardess treated with me reverence. if you are the woman in münchen who gave me these seats, thank you! i had fun pretending that i always travelled like this.

for just a few seconds after leaving münchen, i saw beautiful jagged mountain tips covered with snow—the alps—and then clouds. after a while, just as we started to come out of the clouds, i saw more mountains. i figured it was still the alps, but we landed in rome soon after, so it was the appennines. i had no idea there were mountains in italy south of the alps, but apparently they go almost the whole way down the middle of italy.

the temperature when i left berlin was just a degree or two, but in rome it was close to twenty. although not sunny. after dropping off the car at gio's place, we headed downtown. the old part of rome is very large. people live in buildings that in other places would be national monuments. there are apartments everywhere, right next to all the famous tourist attractions, and all over in between. a very large part of this consists of these beautiful old, beat up buildings, mostly pastel in colour.

anyway, it got dark quickly, and we went to this cool standup bar somewhere famous. campo de' fiori? we bought some drinks and stood around for a while. i heard english, german and... danish, but little italian. neat place, but the tourists were out in full force.

they say the sky is small in rome, and for good reason. they also say that all roads leads to rome, but that doesn't fit into my story so neatly. the roman streets are very narrow, and the sky is often a mere sliver above you. the buildings are old, dirty, and worn, but charming, and everywhere there are churches. some don't look like much from the outside, but inside they are all stunning. the italians used to be very pious but apparently it isn't the same now, at least in central and nortern italy.

the elephant is by bernini. in one church, instead of a dome there was a painting of a dome. from near the door it looks right, but from below it just looks weird. one wonders what the story behind that was. "well, we have no money for a dome, but i have a cousin who paints...". there was also a caravaggio painting in this church. the tiny little church in the dark street was funny. they had slanted the walls of the neighbouring buildings together towards the church, and sloped the road upwards, so the church gave the impression of being much larger than it was. in fact it was tiny, not much taller than two average men stacked.

the joie-de-vivre in this restaurant was outstanding, something we would encounter again and again. romans love life. it took some getting used to initally, but now i love it. water, then wine, then antipasti arrived, slowly, and then my pizza quattro formaggio, which surprisingly had no tomato sauce, just dough and cheese. italians make very simple pizzas, nothing like in north america. i ended up appreciating that as i love simple food.

and then an indian magician passed through. he was deliberately using only the cheesiest of tricks which were completely transparent, and he spoke with a very thick accent (probably exaggerated, since gio remembered the guy from his early university days): wah-da wah-da wah-da (guarda, guarda, guarda, ie. look, look, look). wah-da carta (shows a card), wah-da mano (shows empty hand), wah-da, wah-da, and so on. very cheesy! his last trick was to point to his head, wah-da testa, and then rip off his toupée and collect tips in it.

after we left, we went past piazza navona, with its three fountains by bernini. this guy knew how to sculpt! the fountain of four rivers in piazza navona has four statues on its corners, and one is looking up at the church in front—which was designed by bernini's arch-rival—with an expression of horror. they say that bernini designed it like this, to show how ugly the church was. unfortunately for the story, the fountain was built first. perhaps bernini knew it was coming...

rome is incredibly compact and bursting with buildings, piazzas, cars, people, churches, and most of all, swarms of scooters, like swarms of mosquitos! they are everywhere, working their way through traffic, weaving in and out on both sides of the street, in both directions! on sidewalks, going through red lights, driving between cars, passing busses on the left, crossing over into oncoming traffic! with their buzzy little sounds they filter up to the front at each light, and then take off like a formula 1 grid! and they are parked everywhere. it is nearly impossible to take a picture of the streets of rome without a scooter in it.

unsurprisingly, italy is home to many of the smallest cars in the world. in fact, they now make a vehicle which is a cross between a car and a scooter, with a tiny little engine pumping out a few horsepower, but licensed as a scooter. the little red guy in the middle is a fiat 500, and is actually a proper car. the silver one on the left is a scooter, however. the one on the right is the smallest mercedes made, an a-class, and is considered small in germany. not so in italy.

the sign is from 1733 and says the following:

it is explicitly prohibited for anybody to do any kind of littering, or to have somebody do it, below or around this arch. The punishment will be a fine of 25 scudi in currency, of which a third will be given to the person that reported it, whose name will be kept secret, and other punishments, also corporal. The father will pay this fine for children, the master for the servants, conformly to monsignor excellent president of the streets' edit, published August the 14th, 1733

romans are initially a bit rude, but when you dig below the surface, they are very warm and friendly, and sometimes even a little shy. italian girls are very beautiful. dark hair, dark eyes, and precocious. but not shy! once i was riding in a bus with gio, i looked over, and this blonde beauty was looking me straight in the eyes... and she kept looking. it must have lasted at least 15-20 seconds. she just kept looking. in hindsight i think she must have been waiting for some expression on my face, but i was stunned, quite simply. i previously had no idea what it must be like to be a girl and have some guy check you out unashamedly, but now i know. whoa.

the average roman is much fairer than i expected. there were many people with light, or even blonde hair, and a few people with non-brown eyes. i guess the kinds of italians i am used to in toronto are probably from the south. this would make sense, as the first to leave a country are always those whose life is hardest. the south is poorer and life is tougher.

on the way back on the bus, the girl next to me offered to switch seats with gio, so we could sit together. gio said something or other to her, and we ended up chatting with her. surprisingly, she was half swedish, so i spoke a bit of danish to her :) then another woman took the fourth spot, and pretty soon there was a lively conversation going between the three of them about where to take me and what to show me. total strangers one moment, friends the next, and then strangers again.

near st. peter's, there was a souvenir shop which had a beautiful dalmatian. it pretended not to care much about people, but its tail would give it away, and if you were nice to it, it would come back to you again. i scratched it and massaged it gently (try this on a dog sometime: massage its shoulders, its back, and its scalp; they love it!), and it kept coming back, pretending not to care. i didn't take a picture, though i wish i had.

traffic in rome is abysmal. the streets are too small to contain busses in many places, and there are hardly any streetcars. there is only a tiny little subway as well. in berlin, a city of similar size, there are perhaps 20 lines, but in rome there are maybe 3. they have wanted to enlarge it, but rome has been around for millenia, way before the roman empire, and every time they dig, they hit something. work stops, the archeologists come in, the place is declared a national monument and is then excavated. therefore they have simply stopped digging.

it is a really nice morning, 16-17 degrees, and i can hear the gentle sounds of someone hammering, honking, traffic, scooters starting up below, scooters wizzing past grid-locked cars, a little girl of maybe 2 coughing somewhere opposite on a balcony, a jet flying by, a dog barking, someone using a circular saw, someone using an electric razor, and perhaps 2 or 3 conversations, all at the same time. rome is not a city for people concerned with privacy. everyone lives so close to each other.

we walked a lot today, and i took a tour of the colosseum. it is very interesting, but there is so much of it missing. apparently it has not been used since about the year 500, and it has continually been looted since then until it was protected. the marble was of outstanding quality, and there are many buildings in rome made from pieces of the colosseum, not the least of which is st. peter's.

the underground structures and the stories are fascinating. they used to have wooden structure under the stage, instead of stone, and in those days they could dismantle it and fill it with water, to swim. the came the stone and the elevators, with lifts pulled by slaves, balanced with weights, to lift up lions, tigers, gladiators, snakes, and even elephants. during a large celebration, the number of animals killed ran into the thousands. there is one section of seating which has been restored to show how it used to look. way back, the colosseum was actually round and symmetrical, but the looting has left less than half of the original perimeter wall. that is gio standing in front of the remaining section of outside wall.

st. peter's basillica is just immense. it cannot really be imagined, but has to be experienced. i thought the berliner dom was large, but it may well fit inside st. peter's completely. the scale of the people near the base of the columns gives an indication, since those columns are a fraction of the height of the façade, which is a fraction of the height of the dome... one could spend a month taking pictures here, easily.

on each side of the façade, there is an entrance to the vatican, of which i have cobbled together several images taken from the dome; it ends just beyond the near cluster of trees. the vatican is really tiny, and is really just one medium-sized park, where roughly 1000 catholics live. the trip to the top of the dome is well worth it, and comes in two flavours: by elevator and by stairs. i would only recommend the stairs for the hardy, but on the other hand, the lift kinda ruins the solemnity of the event, so if you can at all, take the steps. given the general flatness of rome, the view is somewhat subdued, but worth it nonetheless, not least for the interesting insight into a part of the cathedral not really meant to be a part of what people normally see. the little rooves within rooves were fun, and the six little domes look odd from up here.

inside, there are six smaller domes leading up to the large central dome. i have a picture of my hair next to one of these little domes. the inscription is at the front door, right in the middle.

as i left, it started getting dark, a fitting end to this visit. i snapped a (blurry) shot of st. peter's as i went down the street.

one impression that remains of italy is the depth of cultural appreciation. a roman would not bat an eyelid at the cost of restoring some important piece of architecture, but try to raise the cost of wine and you'll raise some eyebrows.

there were suprisingly few german and american tourists, and those americans i did see were surprisingly subdued, polite and careful. i suppose that with the recent terrorism, people are just being more cautious and polite. there were more japanese tourists, i think, but they are always polite, if you ignore their tendency to stand tightly packed together, blocking views.