Sorry about the long wait. This entry covers my second week here, though I have a few to catch up on. I also am working on themed entries, addressing such wonderful things as food, smells, what I need to pack for field trips...
Without further ado, Week 2:
Our major theme of week two was an ancient culture that flourished in central Italy before the rise of Rome, the Etruscans. Through the Etruscans, the culture of archaic Greek sailors was filtered into a blend of Italian morals and practicality, syncretic gods, and Greek artistic tastes. This interaction ultimately produced the Roman pantheon, effective Roman infrastructure, and the Latin alphabet.
We celebrated our Etruscan heritage with a week of museums and tombs. Museums because, well, we do that all the time. Tombs because our biggest source of information about how the Etruscans lived is how they were buried. Etruscan, the language, can be found on pottery and other items throughout central Italy. We know sort of what it sounds like, because the alphabet was adapted from Greek, but what it says is anyone’s guess. It has no modern or ancient relatives that have been recorded. Therefore we depend on the physical evidence of archaeology and the historical tradition preserved by the Romans and in odd, obscure snippets here and there in Greek writings.
Tuesday, our weekly all-fieldtrip day, was cold and rainy. This was also our first trip outside of Rome, as we made our way through southern Tuscany to visit two major Etruscan sites and a related museum. First on the list was Tarquinia, a town whose acropolis we saw only from a distance. What really interested us (i.e., what archaeologists concentrate on for evidence) were the necropoleis. Along what otherwise would have been a desolate ridge were a series of odd hut-like structures—not the original tombs, but constructions by archaeologists to protect the tombs and the staircases leading down to them. In patches we could see large stone mushroom-shaped containers, and we recognized them as the ziri from Villanovan “pozzo” burials, in which a cinerary urn and grave goods were placed and buried in a shaft. These had been excavated and surely emptied; the stone containers were left to mark the places of burial. The Etruscan tombs themselves are blocked off with handle-less doors, but they have a lighting button and a glass panel through which you can see the inside of the tombs. Here they are cut into solid bedrock, often with sarcophagus niches or basins, and they are richly decorated in frescoes. The grave goods have all been moved into collections, but in one tomb I saw two femurs propped up inside a niche, so that they were visible to visitors. (Presumably they were representative of an entire skeleton left in situ, though I haven’t seen any other bones, in or out of sarcophagi or in museums.)
We stopped at a related museum, a converted building in the nearby medieval town. Here we saw some of the vast numbers of grave goods (and some artifacts from the town for the living) excavated in Tarquinia. These included coins, stoneware, chariot wheels (the iron rims left of them), sarcophagi, temple acroteria, entire tombs’ worth in frescoes, and lots and lots of pottery. Etruscan goods include an odd fusion of inspiration from different regions of Greek exploration. When the Greeks were orientalizing, the Etruscans absorbed those layers as well. I particularly noted the decorated ostrich eggs and Egyptian jars.
Much of the pottery was actually Greek, or local imitation thereof, and of those Attic pottery (from the region around Athens) was surprisingly common. I was surprised to discover that some of the most famous examples of Attic pottery were actually found in Italy, I suppose because undisturbed tombs led to preservation of nearly-whole pots. You’ve probably seen the krater with Europa and the bull… that’s in Tarquinia. There was also, of course, the requisite collection of erotic pottery, notable only because I saw my favorite example of the genre there—one of the two sides shows a bearded man sitting flat on the floor, obviously aroused as he lifts up his standing wife’s skirts and peers under them. (The other side shows a similar-looking couple going at it doggy-style.)
Our last stop of the day was the necropolis at Cerveteri. By this point it was cold and rainy, but the visit quickly became magical. Here the tombs were constructed differently, still cut into stone, but some were shaped like houses and temples; others were small chambers, some were exposed to the surface, and we were allowed to run around and explore. Many of them were slightly flooded with stagnant water; others had dangerous passageways. Some were ornately carved and painted. It reminded me of the Shire from the Lord of the Rings, little houses cut into the sides of round, perfectly green hills. The weather made it eerie, and the early spring blossoms provided unexpected droplets of color. This was my favorite stop so far, and pictures are coming, I promise.
We polished off the week with our first visit to the Palatine and the Forum Romanum. Here we got a sort of introductory overview of the site, just so that we’d know what is where (we’ll be back several times), and we talked more specifically about the earliest remains, up through some specific examples from the Republic. Since almost everything had been built and rebuilt over the centuries, we focused our attention on spots that either had early remains left, or were especially revered and recognized by later Romans for their earlier religious or historical significance. Often the facts related to these places’ origins or significance had been lost, but Romans have always had a keen sense of history (I’m sure they’d be really into the emphasis on archaeology in the modern city, though they might howl in dismay about the state of the ruins, and how we’re not rebuilding them to their former grandeur), and they not only continued to venerate spots, but they invented new legends (often many conflicting ones) to fill in the gaps of their oral history. Following the theme, we saw the bedrock remains of Iron Age huts that had occupied the Palatine hill (even well into the Empire, an “original” hut was kept in constant repair, rebuilt as accurately as possible when it burned down, and dubbed the hut of Romulus, the city’s mythic founder). We also examined the site of the Lapis Niger, an odd spot of spiritual significance mysterious even to the Republican Romans, where archaeologists found a black stone with an archaic Latin inscription; it had been paved over as the ground level rose but marked with dark paving stones surrounded by travertine. The Lacus Curtius (a stone lined, round, shallow hole without any water in it) was venerated for similarly not-understood reasons, and accumulated several heroic stories. The Temple of Vesta, the iconic round temple of the Vestal Virgins, was the home of a cult present on the site since perhaps the 6th c. BCE.
We ended on a more practical note, exiting the Forum near the Capitoline Hill to visit the ancient prison, where prominent prisoners were taken, tossed through a dark hole in the floor to the holding chamber and execution room, where, the executioner would strangle his victims. Often their bodies were hauled up and displayed on the steps of the Curia next door, as a warning. Its temporary inhabitants and victims were a long list of the Who’s-Who of Roman political enmity, including the Catiline conspirators, Jugurtha, Vercingetorix, and Saints Peter and Paul (both executed elsewhere).
Friday the Art History trip was to the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. There we listened to our long-winded professor speak for “just a few minutes” in front of a replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta (it took him more than half an hour, and the guard shooed us away), another forty about a painting of a pope and some of his connections, more than an hour in front of three Raphael altarpieces. Room after room and hallways and corridors were filled with bright frescoes of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. We bypassed other time periods, though to get to the chapel we passed through a section of more modern art, which seemed paltry and out of place after hours of splendor. Small, framed Dali paintings hanging in a plain white vaulted room seemed rather pathetic. (The Sistine Chapel was really not as impressive to me as some of the other things we had seen. The architecture was plain—the room is a gigantic box with a slightly curved ceiling, and I’ll take Michelangelo’s sculptures over his paintings any day. Otherwise, the trip was a huge, though exhausting, success. Sorry to end on that note, but that’s how the trip went. It’s really a very spectacular building.)
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Obelisk Project and Other Tales: Week 1
EDIT: For some reason this saved as being published on Thursday, but really, it was Sunday afternoon.
Tuesday morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (or otherwise-- see the end of my last post), the thirty-seven students trekked up to the fourth story conference room, where Jeremy gave us the day's assignment.
"Today, in accordance with time-honored Centro tradition," he said as he passed out the assignment sheet, "you will complete the Obelisk Project." We waited expectantly for him to continue. "You have been divided into six groups, and each group has been assigned a primary and a secondary obelisk. Your task is to locate these obelisks, visit them and take pictures of yourself with your obelisks to prove that you have found them. For your primary obelisk, translate all of the Latin inscriptions on it, research its history, where it came from, how it got there, why it is where it is, and give a fifteen minute presentation to the class. For your secondary, tell us something interesting about its location. You have your bus passes, or you can hoof it; you've got the internet and a pile of resources in the library. Presentations start at 5:30. Go."
What a brilliant assignment. Genius, really. In one morning all of the students would learn about the geography of Rome, including its major thoroughfares, bus routes, metro stops, and trams, the history of several monuments, practice their Latin, see some sights, work as a group, and learn to use the library.
It worked. My team, aided in part by one member's extra week of time in Rome, found both of our obelisks early on. On the first bus ride (the 75, one I will certainly come to know well) we chatted in close quarters and kept half an eye at the new city surrounding us. It was a moment of excitement when we crossed the Tiber, and at one point I glanced out my window to see an oddly slanting wall support almost behind us, the towering, colonnaded wall curving away. I gasped and quickly turned to Sam, a girl in my group.
“Was that—…“
“I think so!”
“Aaaah!”
And from there we burst into a series of uncontrollable giggles. The Italians around us were probably rolling their eyes at us brutti Americani, tourists who didn’t even know what we were looking for.
Our obelisks were an easy catch. One was at the top of the Spanish Steps, supposedly the hangout for American tourists and young Italians looking to …”practice their English.” The other was in one of the zillion piazze in Rome, this one on the Esquiline hill. Because Sam’s foot is broken and her ankle is sprained (an old wound, but still delicate), and because it was starting to rain persistently, we returned to the Centro before noon, ate lunch, and began work on the translation and presentation.
When we presented for the class that afternoon, the groups became competitive about their obelisks. Superlatives like “biggest,” “first made,” “first in Rome,” and “coolest” all were tossed around. We had no choice but to dub ours (what one member of the group described as the sadly-botched clone of one of the legit superlatives) the “scrappiest” because it had withstood all sorts of abuse and was still standing. Not that the others hadn’t.
Wednesday was the first day for my other two classes, Latin and Greek, which are unfortunately scheduled in back-to-back one-and-a-half-hour blocks. Were I to take Elementary Italian, that would make it three in a row. So, despite the fact that I feel bad every time I expose my bruttishness and really would like to learn Italian well enough to communicate in sentence form, I can’t even force myself to audit it. (Side note: this morning I had my first encounter with a friendly and linguistically helpful Italian, the barista at the bar (café) where I got breakfast. As my brunch buddy Lana attempted to ask about a certain stuffed pastry, he corrected her question of “what is it?” and started listing the basic ingredients to make it clear. The food was delicious, and I will definitely be back. On the other hand, last night I went to a Chinese restaurant and attempted rather unsuccessfully to deal with a double language barrier.)
I am in the Urbs Romana (“the Roman City”) Latin course, which is a survey of chunks of literature relating to Roman cities (as opposed to just Rome itself). Jeremy is my professor for it, and he seems enthusiastic about it and well on top of the material. We’ve started off with Varro and Vergil and are diving into a large pile of Livy, all of which to this point have to do with the founding of cities. (I believe… I can’t make any relevant sense out of what I’ve translated from Livy so far. Maybe he has to segue into it.) We are basically expected to understand the material, so that we are not nitpicking over grammar during class, and we will discuss it and how it ties together and to everything we’ve learned so far about the Roman world. It’s meant to go hand-in-hand with the main course, the Ancient City. The first session of class was very engaging, and I have high hopes for the course.
Greek (Medea), on the other hand, was awkward. Joel, the grad student, is quiet, and he didn’t seem like he wanted to be there. We discussed the expectations for the course, and he was sure to set boundaries between himself and the students. His attitude is a bit cynical, so even if he really is passionate about the play, and teaching it, it really didn’t come through. Instead of doing sight translation, which would have been nearly impossible for me (and at least a few of the other students), we ended class early, so a few students and I went into the computer lab to work on translation. After an hour, we had conquered 10 lines. I still have 38 to go for class tomorrow. Hopefully it won’t be quite as painful as this all semester.
The Centristi have had several great trips this week beyond the Obelisk Project, and I will summarize them briefly here. Thursday morning we visited the Piazza Navona (the one with the fountains and a gorgeous church), formerly the site of the Stadium of Domitian. The theme of the class this week has been the topography of Rome and how the ancient plans affected and still do the setup of the modern city. Where the racetrack was is the piazza, open, long, and rounded at one end. The buildings around it were built in place of more ancient buildings which were, in turn, built upon the foundations and ruins of the stadium (it’s all so much easier when you don’t have to supply your own foundations for your structures). As everywhere else in Rome, here the ground level has risen dramatically since ancient times, and the ruins of the stadium are well underground. One large part has been excavated (the building above now supported by other means), and the remains are partially visible from the street but are blocked off. We were privileged enough to be able to go down into them for a lecture from Nigel, which was very interesting. (I won’t bore you, Dear Reader, with the details.) After this we made a similar visit to the Crypta Balbi, formerly a large theater and sunken portico near the Forum Romanum, now almost entirely covered over. Recently a small part of it (a chunk of the porticus next to a colonnaded market) was excavated and the building above converted into a museum. The structure and everything above was a very strong example of the ways that the area had changed in the past 2000 years, how its ruins were a site for medieval houses, how walls had been built up, smashed, changed, burned for quicklime, quarried into, etc. We were permitted to tour, in small groups with Nigel and under the watchful eye of a custodian, the excavated remains, which extended at least two stories underground.
Friday afternoon we took a trip to the Epigraphic Museum, where we looked at inscriptions for several hours and attempted to translate them. (I realize this sounds boring…) One task we have been assigned is to choose some inscription, not necessarily from the museum, translate it, and write a paper analyzing it. The trip to the museum was partially meant to expose us to the task so that we can really think about what we’re doing when we select our inscriptions. I will certainly have to go back.
Stepping away from Classics for a bit: Thursday afternoon was the first session of the Art History class offered here, and I decided to audit. This particular course deals with Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, geared especially toward students of the Classics. We have the advantage of understanding without much effort many of the themes expressed in Renaissance art (for example, classical history, ancient mythology, and classical architectural styles, and many of us are fine on the Christian element, if not the iconography), but we lack any knowledge of Italian history post-700 AD, we don’t know much about Italian aristocracy, court life, papal priorities, artistic techniques and symbolism, and a slew of other details. We’ve heard of all the Renaissance artists lucky enough to get Ninja Turtles named after them, plus Bernini and possibly Pope Julius II.
The “lecture” was entirely the syllabus and “nuts and bolts” of the course. Despite the fact that the professor, whose name I still don’t know, rattled on at lightning speed and never paused for air, we took nearly the entire hour and a half and never got to even an outline of Renaissance history. I happened to be exhausted from the morning’s excursion and the week’s jet lag, the lights were off, despite the lack of slides, and it was cold in the room, so I kept nodding off. I was disappointed, but I wasn’t about to skip out on Friday morning’s field trip, a local introduction to low and high Renaissance art, religious and secular.
Our first stop was a church very near the Centro (maybe a 15-minute walk), dedicated to St. Peter and run until very recently by Franciscan monks (now it’s under the control of the Spanish Royal something-or-other). Unfortunately our long-winded but fascinating professor lectured outside in the frigid air, first outside and then in the much-colder courtyard when we were allowed in, for more than an hour. He discussed the contrast between the low Ren. façade of the church and the high Ren. little round building in the courtyard. Names, dates, and other important art-historical details have seeped out of my head already, though I think I would recognize them if they were brought up again, and I won’t attempt to enlighten you with what fascinating facts and stories I do remember. In any case, it was great. Following our 35-degree lectures we trekked into the church to examine one of the little chapels. Again we got a lightning-speed but still lengthy lecture, this time about the idea of sponsored chapels and the commission of Sebastiano, disciple of Michelangelo, to paint this particular one. Here I discovered elements of art creation that had never occurred to me before, and that had never been taught to me. (As a point of reference for myself more than for you, the chapel showed two prophets sitting on the vaulted ceiling, below which was a depiction of the flagellation of Christ—done in oil on stucco with a secret technique perfected by Sebastiano and never revealed, which art historians still don’t know how he accomplished—in the palace of Pontius Pilate, with Sts. Peter and Francis in alcoves off to the sides in the same painting.)
After the church we visited the Villa Farnesina (the little Villa Farnesi), which was originally the Villa Chigi, built by the man who was at the time the richest man in Europe. It was spectacular, and we focused our attention on three rooms. The dining room was my favorite, with an elaborate ceiling in beautiful panels and several different artistic programs. At first glance the artwork seems surprisingly familiar, many mythological figures standing around in their various panels. And then the art history hits you. The spectacular ceiling, it turns out, is a very precise astronomical chart of the constellations and their positions as they would have appeared two hours past sunset in central Italy on the date of Chigi’s birth. Another program was painted by Sebastiano, and two paintings done in competition with each other depict Polyphemus (again, Sebastano) and Galatea and her entourage (Raphael). A room in the upstairs is painted with architectural perspective to show a colonnade through various apertures, and the view off the supposed balconies around the room is the Italian countryside as it would have appeared at that time, and from that perspective. The last room we focused on was a bedroom shared by a and his mistress, who was of low birth and therefore not an acceptable wife. She stayed at the Villa, and he would visit her there. The room, richly decorated, has on one side a painting of Alexander and Roxanne, as he proposes to her and she is being simultaneously stripped by cherubs on an elaborate bed meant to look much like the sumptuous (I mean ridiculously extravagant) bed shared by the real-life couple in the room.
Yesterday (Saturday) I explored the neighborhood a little more thoroughly, and in the afternoon I made a mad dash to a museum with Ben to find a sculpture I must present to the class (when we visit the museum itself!) and write a paper on. I was pleasantly surprised to find it such an awesome statue. It is called the Terme Boxer (in English—the Italian title was Pugile), and it’s a Hellenistic bronze statue of a bearded boxer, beat up and exhausted after a fight. The museum (Palazzo Massimo) is full of gems of Classical art history, and as Ben and I raced through it, trying to absorb as much as we could before it closed, we would variously find ourselves face to face with Augustus as Pontifex Maximus and the Discus Thrower mid-swing. That is yet another museum I absolutely have to explore in greater depth.
Today, except for breakfast, dinner, and this crazy-long post, is devoted to my already-huge amount of homework. I may in the future discuss more about the individuals at the Centro, but probably not in much depth, because they all can read this without a problem (other than length), and there’s no reason to violate their privacy. I will also post pictures whenever I get around to reinstalling the software.
Ciao!
Tuesday morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (or otherwise-- see the end of my last post), the thirty-seven students trekked up to the fourth story conference room, where Jeremy gave us the day's assignment.
"Today, in accordance with time-honored Centro tradition," he said as he passed out the assignment sheet, "you will complete the Obelisk Project." We waited expectantly for him to continue. "You have been divided into six groups, and each group has been assigned a primary and a secondary obelisk. Your task is to locate these obelisks, visit them and take pictures of yourself with your obelisks to prove that you have found them. For your primary obelisk, translate all of the Latin inscriptions on it, research its history, where it came from, how it got there, why it is where it is, and give a fifteen minute presentation to the class. For your secondary, tell us something interesting about its location. You have your bus passes, or you can hoof it; you've got the internet and a pile of resources in the library. Presentations start at 5:30. Go."
What a brilliant assignment. Genius, really. In one morning all of the students would learn about the geography of Rome, including its major thoroughfares, bus routes, metro stops, and trams, the history of several monuments, practice their Latin, see some sights, work as a group, and learn to use the library.
It worked. My team, aided in part by one member's extra week of time in Rome, found both of our obelisks early on. On the first bus ride (the 75, one I will certainly come to know well) we chatted in close quarters and kept half an eye at the new city surrounding us. It was a moment of excitement when we crossed the Tiber, and at one point I glanced out my window to see an oddly slanting wall support almost behind us, the towering, colonnaded wall curving away. I gasped and quickly turned to Sam, a girl in my group.
“Was that—…“
“I think so!”
“Aaaah!”
And from there we burst into a series of uncontrollable giggles. The Italians around us were probably rolling their eyes at us brutti Americani, tourists who didn’t even know what we were looking for.
Our obelisks were an easy catch. One was at the top of the Spanish Steps, supposedly the hangout for American tourists and young Italians looking to …”practice their English.” The other was in one of the zillion piazze in Rome, this one on the Esquiline hill. Because Sam’s foot is broken and her ankle is sprained (an old wound, but still delicate), and because it was starting to rain persistently, we returned to the Centro before noon, ate lunch, and began work on the translation and presentation.
When we presented for the class that afternoon, the groups became competitive about their obelisks. Superlatives like “biggest,” “first made,” “first in Rome,” and “coolest” all were tossed around. We had no choice but to dub ours (what one member of the group described as the sadly-botched clone of one of the legit superlatives) the “scrappiest” because it had withstood all sorts of abuse and was still standing. Not that the others hadn’t.
Wednesday was the first day for my other two classes, Latin and Greek, which are unfortunately scheduled in back-to-back one-and-a-half-hour blocks. Were I to take Elementary Italian, that would make it three in a row. So, despite the fact that I feel bad every time I expose my bruttishness and really would like to learn Italian well enough to communicate in sentence form, I can’t even force myself to audit it. (Side note: this morning I had my first encounter with a friendly and linguistically helpful Italian, the barista at the bar (café) where I got breakfast. As my brunch buddy Lana attempted to ask about a certain stuffed pastry, he corrected her question of “what is it?” and started listing the basic ingredients to make it clear. The food was delicious, and I will definitely be back. On the other hand, last night I went to a Chinese restaurant and attempted rather unsuccessfully to deal with a double language barrier.)
I am in the Urbs Romana (“the Roman City”) Latin course, which is a survey of chunks of literature relating to Roman cities (as opposed to just Rome itself). Jeremy is my professor for it, and he seems enthusiastic about it and well on top of the material. We’ve started off with Varro and Vergil and are diving into a large pile of Livy, all of which to this point have to do with the founding of cities. (I believe… I can’t make any relevant sense out of what I’ve translated from Livy so far. Maybe he has to segue into it.) We are basically expected to understand the material, so that we are not nitpicking over grammar during class, and we will discuss it and how it ties together and to everything we’ve learned so far about the Roman world. It’s meant to go hand-in-hand with the main course, the Ancient City. The first session of class was very engaging, and I have high hopes for the course.
Greek (Medea), on the other hand, was awkward. Joel, the grad student, is quiet, and he didn’t seem like he wanted to be there. We discussed the expectations for the course, and he was sure to set boundaries between himself and the students. His attitude is a bit cynical, so even if he really is passionate about the play, and teaching it, it really didn’t come through. Instead of doing sight translation, which would have been nearly impossible for me (and at least a few of the other students), we ended class early, so a few students and I went into the computer lab to work on translation. After an hour, we had conquered 10 lines. I still have 38 to go for class tomorrow. Hopefully it won’t be quite as painful as this all semester.
The Centristi have had several great trips this week beyond the Obelisk Project, and I will summarize them briefly here. Thursday morning we visited the Piazza Navona (the one with the fountains and a gorgeous church), formerly the site of the Stadium of Domitian. The theme of the class this week has been the topography of Rome and how the ancient plans affected and still do the setup of the modern city. Where the racetrack was is the piazza, open, long, and rounded at one end. The buildings around it were built in place of more ancient buildings which were, in turn, built upon the foundations and ruins of the stadium (it’s all so much easier when you don’t have to supply your own foundations for your structures). As everywhere else in Rome, here the ground level has risen dramatically since ancient times, and the ruins of the stadium are well underground. One large part has been excavated (the building above now supported by other means), and the remains are partially visible from the street but are blocked off. We were privileged enough to be able to go down into them for a lecture from Nigel, which was very interesting. (I won’t bore you, Dear Reader, with the details.) After this we made a similar visit to the Crypta Balbi, formerly a large theater and sunken portico near the Forum Romanum, now almost entirely covered over. Recently a small part of it (a chunk of the porticus next to a colonnaded market) was excavated and the building above converted into a museum. The structure and everything above was a very strong example of the ways that the area had changed in the past 2000 years, how its ruins were a site for medieval houses, how walls had been built up, smashed, changed, burned for quicklime, quarried into, etc. We were permitted to tour, in small groups with Nigel and under the watchful eye of a custodian, the excavated remains, which extended at least two stories underground.
Friday afternoon we took a trip to the Epigraphic Museum, where we looked at inscriptions for several hours and attempted to translate them. (I realize this sounds boring…) One task we have been assigned is to choose some inscription, not necessarily from the museum, translate it, and write a paper analyzing it. The trip to the museum was partially meant to expose us to the task so that we can really think about what we’re doing when we select our inscriptions. I will certainly have to go back.
Stepping away from Classics for a bit: Thursday afternoon was the first session of the Art History class offered here, and I decided to audit. This particular course deals with Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, geared especially toward students of the Classics. We have the advantage of understanding without much effort many of the themes expressed in Renaissance art (for example, classical history, ancient mythology, and classical architectural styles, and many of us are fine on the Christian element, if not the iconography), but we lack any knowledge of Italian history post-700 AD, we don’t know much about Italian aristocracy, court life, papal priorities, artistic techniques and symbolism, and a slew of other details. We’ve heard of all the Renaissance artists lucky enough to get Ninja Turtles named after them, plus Bernini and possibly Pope Julius II.
The “lecture” was entirely the syllabus and “nuts and bolts” of the course. Despite the fact that the professor, whose name I still don’t know, rattled on at lightning speed and never paused for air, we took nearly the entire hour and a half and never got to even an outline of Renaissance history. I happened to be exhausted from the morning’s excursion and the week’s jet lag, the lights were off, despite the lack of slides, and it was cold in the room, so I kept nodding off. I was disappointed, but I wasn’t about to skip out on Friday morning’s field trip, a local introduction to low and high Renaissance art, religious and secular.
Our first stop was a church very near the Centro (maybe a 15-minute walk), dedicated to St. Peter and run until very recently by Franciscan monks (now it’s under the control of the Spanish Royal something-or-other). Unfortunately our long-winded but fascinating professor lectured outside in the frigid air, first outside and then in the much-colder courtyard when we were allowed in, for more than an hour. He discussed the contrast between the low Ren. façade of the church and the high Ren. little round building in the courtyard. Names, dates, and other important art-historical details have seeped out of my head already, though I think I would recognize them if they were brought up again, and I won’t attempt to enlighten you with what fascinating facts and stories I do remember. In any case, it was great. Following our 35-degree lectures we trekked into the church to examine one of the little chapels. Again we got a lightning-speed but still lengthy lecture, this time about the idea of sponsored chapels and the commission of Sebastiano, disciple of Michelangelo, to paint this particular one. Here I discovered elements of art creation that had never occurred to me before, and that had never been taught to me. (As a point of reference for myself more than for you, the chapel showed two prophets sitting on the vaulted ceiling, below which was a depiction of the flagellation of Christ—done in oil on stucco with a secret technique perfected by Sebastiano and never revealed, which art historians still don’t know how he accomplished—in the palace of Pontius Pilate, with Sts. Peter and Francis in alcoves off to the sides in the same painting.)
After the church we visited the Villa Farnesina (the little Villa Farnesi), which was originally the Villa Chigi, built by the man who was at the time the richest man in Europe. It was spectacular, and we focused our attention on three rooms. The dining room was my favorite, with an elaborate ceiling in beautiful panels and several different artistic programs. At first glance the artwork seems surprisingly familiar, many mythological figures standing around in their various panels. And then the art history hits you. The spectacular ceiling, it turns out, is a very precise astronomical chart of the constellations and their positions as they would have appeared two hours past sunset in central Italy on the date of Chigi’s birth. Another program was painted by Sebastiano, and two paintings done in competition with each other depict Polyphemus (again, Sebastano) and Galatea and her entourage (Raphael). A room in the upstairs is painted with architectural perspective to show a colonnade through various apertures, and the view off the supposed balconies around the room is the Italian countryside as it would have appeared at that time, and from that perspective. The last room we focused on was a bedroom shared by a and his mistress, who was of low birth and therefore not an acceptable wife. She stayed at the Villa, and he would visit her there. The room, richly decorated, has on one side a painting of Alexander and Roxanne, as he proposes to her and she is being simultaneously stripped by cherubs on an elaborate bed meant to look much like the sumptuous (I mean ridiculously extravagant) bed shared by the real-life couple in the room.
Yesterday (Saturday) I explored the neighborhood a little more thoroughly, and in the afternoon I made a mad dash to a museum with Ben to find a sculpture I must present to the class (when we visit the museum itself!) and write a paper on. I was pleasantly surprised to find it such an awesome statue. It is called the Terme Boxer (in English—the Italian title was Pugile), and it’s a Hellenistic bronze statue of a bearded boxer, beat up and exhausted after a fight. The museum (Palazzo Massimo) is full of gems of Classical art history, and as Ben and I raced through it, trying to absorb as much as we could before it closed, we would variously find ourselves face to face with Augustus as Pontifex Maximus and the Discus Thrower mid-swing. That is yet another museum I absolutely have to explore in greater depth.
Today, except for breakfast, dinner, and this crazy-long post, is devoted to my already-huge amount of homework. I may in the future discuss more about the individuals at the Centro, but probably not in much depth, because they all can read this without a problem (other than length), and there’s no reason to violate their privacy. I will also post pictures whenever I get around to reinstalling the software.
Ciao!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Unreal City continued.
My first night was a blur. It being a Sunday, not a lot was open, banking or food or otherwise. We (my new roommate and a large group of other students) trudged around until we found a promising pizza shop, which turned out to be closed. Then our next attempt was too small for the whole bunch of us, so about seven of us wandered around in search of something else, which turned out to be another pizza shop. Italian pizza shops are a bit different. There you order by the slice, and instead of saying "I'd like one slice," they assume you want one slice. The question is, how big. They cook huge sheet-pizzas and cut off whatever size you indicate with scissors, weigh it for price, pop it into an oven for a few minutes, and wrap it for you to eat on your way elsewhere.
We got back just as I was finishing mine, just as the olive oil that had been steadily dripping into the wax-paper wrapping spilled out all over my hand. (Olive oil is HUGE here. And I've never realized how tasty it is...) Some people were crowded around the small tv in the lobby watching a soccer match between Rome and Naples, so I joined (Rome won, but about 5 minutes after I started nodding off), then promptly went to bed.
Day 2:
A morning orientation followed a breakfast unusually rich for my ...unbreakfasty tastes. We were welcomed by Franco, the jolly and rotund Italian head of Centro administration, who quickly described how things worked, what wonderful perks the Centro (the best place in the world) had to offer, what fees to pay, that we are not to buy drugs at all ("we have better stuff here"), and that we shouldn't buy wine until he's taught us all about how to drink wine, and what sorts to buy. Then Nigel, our head professor, took the stand. Nigel teaches in Wales, and is in charge of the Ancient City course and the intermediate Latin course. He's British (obviously), middle aged, and seems very interesting. I learned today that he was in charge of a huge project in which all of the monuments of Rome were catalogued and described and published in a dictionary five volumes thick and in four different languages (not, unforunately, in four different language editions, but rather that each entry is in one of four languages, depending on the author's preference), which will probably come into heavy use in our classes and research projects. (Incidentally, we privileged Centristi will get access, not granted to anyone else, to the extensive library of the American Academy.)
Lynn, a professor with a more linguistic orientation, will teach Advanced Greek (Thucydides) and the second advanced Latin course (Suetonius' Nero). I will not spend a lot of time with her, apparently.
Jeremy, a professor from Wabash (w00t Indiana!), will help out with the Ancient City, and teaches the primary advanced Latin course Urbs Romana, which I am taking.
Finally, Joel, a NYU grad student who reminds me of Daniel Jacobs, teaches Intermediate Greek (Medea), another class I'm in.
Someone else who was not there, possibly and probably two someone elses, will cover Italian and Art History.
This introduction was followed by a tour of the neighborhood, divided into groups. Mine was led by Nigel, who answered questions and pointed out things like, "Italians don't really go to bars the way Americans do; they'll usually only have one or two drinks at dinner. There's an Irish Pub right over there. I'm not recommending it, I'm just saying it's there. It's quite noisy at night. I live around here, so I know. Not that I've been there..." His accent is distinctly British, but it's one I've never heard before. I don't know whether it's a Welsh thing, as he teaches there (and who knows where in Britain he's from), or whether its from his time spent in the States (Wisconsin) and Italy, or what. For example, where in an Oxford accent words like "there" tend to be pronounced like "theyuh" or "theuh," he says "theyah," with a harder, more emphasized, slightly nasal last syllable.
The neighborhood only served to heighten my impression of the unreality of Rome. Gone were the Midwestern suburbs of flattish land, wide streets, driveways and separate houses (or 3-story max apartments). Instead, a moist, crowded, colorful jumble of five- or six-story buildings heavily adorned in ornate balconies bursting with alien plant life competed for space, and tiny, bubbly European cars packed the space on either side of the street, crammed in at corners, sideways, and even on sidewalks. Despite assurances that this was an upper-middle class neighborhood, graffiti covered every surface available up to about eight feet off the ground. Shops and booths were built right into the apartments, with garage door openings that shut securely with the closure of the shops themselves. A nunnery next door to the Centro , faced with a tasteful tan stucco, has a statue of Mary above the entranceway, framed in bright blue neon lights.
In Italy commercial businesses aren't necessarily what they seem. I think florists are merely florists, and perfumeries sell perfume, but tobacconists sell, in addition to tobacco products, salt, stamps, greeting cards, and other odds and ends on a regular basis. Bars are primarily coffee shops. Most sell some sort of food, sometimes gelato, sometimes pastries, but alcohol is definitely not a part of their definition. They might serve it as an aperitif. Stands sell beautiful fruits and vegetables, including (it was comforting to discover) Chiquita bananas, imported from Ecuador. The oranges around here are simply succulent.
As we walked around these neighborhoods, trying (unsuccessfully, on my part) to memorize the locations of the nearby Chinese restaurant (also not recommended), the cartelieres (I will need to go buy additional school supplies as soon as possible, probably tomorrow afternoon), banks, ATMs, and gelato shops, I noticed that one of the peculiar aspects of Rome was how extra-three-dimensional it felt. As I looked around corners angles felt sharper, views were unexpected, lighting and road curvature were completely new. I quickly realized that I had never before spent time in a city that was not completely flat. I'm from Indianapolis, I've spent time in Chicago, in Fort Wayne, lots in St. Louis, and I've visited many other grid-patterned, flattish cities. But Rome has hills (famously), and hills make everything crowded and more cut off. You can't see past the block in front of you, the buildings to your left tower higher even than they would if you were level with them, and you never know what to expect around a corner, whether it will be two large and close buildings, or a picturesque view of an entire street.
Occasionally our windings around these streets brought us upon unexpected sights. A high brick city wall rose up next to an intersection, a few old trees peering over it. This, Nigel explained, was the 17th c. reconstruction of the 4th c. AD Hadrianic walls. We Centristi live outside Rome proper, according to this division. Later on, we came upon the gatehouse into Trastevere, and we received another enthralling, brief history lecture about the events that took place here when Rome declared itself a Republic in the 18th c. We continued on up the street and around a corner, glimpsing a small park, some orange trees growing private property behind a fence, and we could hear rushing water. As we approached it, the gigantic fountain (aptly nicknamed the Fontanone) drew all of our attention. Its marble structure, it turns out, was mostly stripped from ancient monuments (and we later learned that that is the case with a great number of Rome's grander buildings), and it faces down the hill, which drops sharply just across the street. We turned to look that direction and got our first (and a glorious) view of the city proper, spread out below us in a jumble of ornate stone and terracotta roofing. Again the feeling of unreality hit, but this time we had a guide. Nigel directed our attention toward a low grey curving roof just beyond this other building, and told us that it was the Pantheon. Over there, through the gap in those bushes, was a palace built much later by someone else whose name I've forgotten. It was beautiful, and I wish I'd had my camera with me. I plan to bring it along and to go back, and I will get those pictures posted as soon as possible.
The afternoon continued with a lecture on the topography of Rome, what features of ancient Rome carry through today (roads, for example, often follow ancient pathways), etc. Finally it was time for the dreaded Latin placement exam, for which all but three of the 37 students (those three planning to take only Greek) trekked into a crowded room, cowered as we scratched rust from our brains, and struggled through a chunk of Martial and a passage from Marcellinus. I didn't get a single entirely cohesive sentence out of mine, but I understood the gist of pieces of them. (The results came in yesterday; they took all of the students bound for the Advanced Latin and divided them in half. I made the cut for Urbs, and am glad of it.)
The evening was concluded with a welcome dinner, at which all of the students, faculty, faculty families, administrative staff and families, kitchen staff and maids were in one room. The food (as every in-house meal is, it was served in several courses) was delicious, topped with a fantastic tiramisu.
I went to bed tired, but had to read for a bit to fall asleep (that's a nasty habit-- I shouldn't train myself to sleep at the sight of my homework), and when I did I slept soundly until 3am. I struggled and lost that battle, getting up to take a shower shortly after 4 (stupid jetlag). By 3pm I was drained, so I took a nap, but only after an exciting morning in the city, where it finally sank in that Rome is for real.
We got back just as I was finishing mine, just as the olive oil that had been steadily dripping into the wax-paper wrapping spilled out all over my hand. (Olive oil is HUGE here. And I've never realized how tasty it is...) Some people were crowded around the small tv in the lobby watching a soccer match between Rome and Naples, so I joined (Rome won, but about 5 minutes after I started nodding off), then promptly went to bed.
Day 2:
A morning orientation followed a breakfast unusually rich for my ...unbreakfasty tastes. We were welcomed by Franco, the jolly and rotund Italian head of Centro administration, who quickly described how things worked, what wonderful perks the Centro (the best place in the world) had to offer, what fees to pay, that we are not to buy drugs at all ("we have better stuff here"), and that we shouldn't buy wine until he's taught us all about how to drink wine, and what sorts to buy. Then Nigel, our head professor, took the stand. Nigel teaches in Wales, and is in charge of the Ancient City course and the intermediate Latin course. He's British (obviously), middle aged, and seems very interesting. I learned today that he was in charge of a huge project in which all of the monuments of Rome were catalogued and described and published in a dictionary five volumes thick and in four different languages (not, unforunately, in four different language editions, but rather that each entry is in one of four languages, depending on the author's preference), which will probably come into heavy use in our classes and research projects. (Incidentally, we privileged Centristi will get access, not granted to anyone else, to the extensive library of the American Academy.)
Lynn, a professor with a more linguistic orientation, will teach Advanced Greek (Thucydides) and the second advanced Latin course (Suetonius' Nero). I will not spend a lot of time with her, apparently.
Jeremy, a professor from Wabash (w00t Indiana!), will help out with the Ancient City, and teaches the primary advanced Latin course Urbs Romana, which I am taking.
Finally, Joel, a NYU grad student who reminds me of Daniel Jacobs, teaches Intermediate Greek (Medea), another class I'm in.
Someone else who was not there, possibly and probably two someone elses, will cover Italian and Art History.
This introduction was followed by a tour of the neighborhood, divided into groups. Mine was led by Nigel, who answered questions and pointed out things like, "Italians don't really go to bars the way Americans do; they'll usually only have one or two drinks at dinner. There's an Irish Pub right over there. I'm not recommending it, I'm just saying it's there. It's quite noisy at night. I live around here, so I know. Not that I've been there..." His accent is distinctly British, but it's one I've never heard before. I don't know whether it's a Welsh thing, as he teaches there (and who knows where in Britain he's from), or whether its from his time spent in the States (Wisconsin) and Italy, or what. For example, where in an Oxford accent words like "there" tend to be pronounced like "theyuh" or "theuh," he says "theyah," with a harder, more emphasized, slightly nasal last syllable.
The neighborhood only served to heighten my impression of the unreality of Rome. Gone were the Midwestern suburbs of flattish land, wide streets, driveways and separate houses (or 3-story max apartments). Instead, a moist, crowded, colorful jumble of five- or six-story buildings heavily adorned in ornate balconies bursting with alien plant life competed for space, and tiny, bubbly European cars packed the space on either side of the street, crammed in at corners, sideways, and even on sidewalks. Despite assurances that this was an upper-middle class neighborhood, graffiti covered every surface available up to about eight feet off the ground. Shops and booths were built right into the apartments, with garage door openings that shut securely with the closure of the shops themselves. A nunnery next door to the Centro , faced with a tasteful tan stucco, has a statue of Mary above the entranceway, framed in bright blue neon lights.
In Italy commercial businesses aren't necessarily what they seem. I think florists are merely florists, and perfumeries sell perfume, but tobacconists sell, in addition to tobacco products, salt, stamps, greeting cards, and other odds and ends on a regular basis. Bars are primarily coffee shops. Most sell some sort of food, sometimes gelato, sometimes pastries, but alcohol is definitely not a part of their definition. They might serve it as an aperitif. Stands sell beautiful fruits and vegetables, including (it was comforting to discover) Chiquita bananas, imported from Ecuador. The oranges around here are simply succulent.
As we walked around these neighborhoods, trying (unsuccessfully, on my part) to memorize the locations of the nearby Chinese restaurant (also not recommended), the cartelieres (I will need to go buy additional school supplies as soon as possible, probably tomorrow afternoon), banks, ATMs, and gelato shops, I noticed that one of the peculiar aspects of Rome was how extra-three-dimensional it felt. As I looked around corners angles felt sharper, views were unexpected, lighting and road curvature were completely new. I quickly realized that I had never before spent time in a city that was not completely flat. I'm from Indianapolis, I've spent time in Chicago, in Fort Wayne, lots in St. Louis, and I've visited many other grid-patterned, flattish cities. But Rome has hills (famously), and hills make everything crowded and more cut off. You can't see past the block in front of you, the buildings to your left tower higher even than they would if you were level with them, and you never know what to expect around a corner, whether it will be two large and close buildings, or a picturesque view of an entire street.
Occasionally our windings around these streets brought us upon unexpected sights. A high brick city wall rose up next to an intersection, a few old trees peering over it. This, Nigel explained, was the 17th c. reconstruction of the 4th c. AD Hadrianic walls. We Centristi live outside Rome proper, according to this division. Later on, we came upon the gatehouse into Trastevere, and we received another enthralling, brief history lecture about the events that took place here when Rome declared itself a Republic in the 18th c. We continued on up the street and around a corner, glimpsing a small park, some orange trees growing private property behind a fence, and we could hear rushing water. As we approached it, the gigantic fountain (aptly nicknamed the Fontanone) drew all of our attention. Its marble structure, it turns out, was mostly stripped from ancient monuments (and we later learned that that is the case with a great number of Rome's grander buildings), and it faces down the hill, which drops sharply just across the street. We turned to look that direction and got our first (and a glorious) view of the city proper, spread out below us in a jumble of ornate stone and terracotta roofing. Again the feeling of unreality hit, but this time we had a guide. Nigel directed our attention toward a low grey curving roof just beyond this other building, and told us that it was the Pantheon. Over there, through the gap in those bushes, was a palace built much later by someone else whose name I've forgotten. It was beautiful, and I wish I'd had my camera with me. I plan to bring it along and to go back, and I will get those pictures posted as soon as possible.
The afternoon continued with a lecture on the topography of Rome, what features of ancient Rome carry through today (roads, for example, often follow ancient pathways), etc. Finally it was time for the dreaded Latin placement exam, for which all but three of the 37 students (those three planning to take only Greek) trekked into a crowded room, cowered as we scratched rust from our brains, and struggled through a chunk of Martial and a passage from Marcellinus. I didn't get a single entirely cohesive sentence out of mine, but I understood the gist of pieces of them. (The results came in yesterday; they took all of the students bound for the Advanced Latin and divided them in half. I made the cut for Urbs, and am glad of it.)
The evening was concluded with a welcome dinner, at which all of the students, faculty, faculty families, administrative staff and families, kitchen staff and maids were in one room. The food (as every in-house meal is, it was served in several courses) was delicious, topped with a fantastic tiramisu.
I went to bed tired, but had to read for a bit to fall asleep (that's a nasty habit-- I shouldn't train myself to sleep at the sight of my homework), and when I did I slept soundly until 3am. I struggled and lost that battle, getting up to take a shower shortly after 4 (stupid jetlag). By 3pm I was drained, so I took a nap, but only after an exciting morning in the city, where it finally sank in that Rome is for real.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Unreal City
It's probably unorthodox to refer to Rome by a T.S. Eliot description of postwar London, but the epithet is easily applicable. I remember flying in, waking up as we crossed over the coastline (?-- we came from Poland; I still can't figure out the flight plan), getting a glimpse of the city below the clouds, sprawling and low. It looked warm and peaceful, not like the bustling urban center I was expecting. I think it was the lack of skyscrapers that made it look cozy, not cold and corporate.
When I arrived at the airport, I found my luggage and also an open exchange booth, and headed for customs, where I waived through without so much as a check-your-passport. (This was opposed to Warsaw, where upon arrival I waited through a security and customs check for more than half an hour, only to get through to try to find my gate and to be told that I came through the wrong checkpoint; I would have to go back and start over at the passport verification booth, find another terminal, and go through security again.) I warily found a taxi, trying to avoid overenthusiastic and swindling drivers (Taxi, signorina?), and the driver misheard my request for "Via A. Algardi, 19."
"Egardi?" he asked me.
"Oh, is that how you pronounce it? Okay."
He looked it up on his GPS device near the meter. "Dis is on the north side of town," he warned me as if to say, "This is gonna cost you."
Luckily I had already looked up the Centro on a map and had bought a map of Rome in an Indianapolis Borders, so I was able to argue with him (while he was driving) about my destination.
"No, it's south of the Vatican!"
"No, lady."
"See, here it is."
The map, unfortunately, has an inset of none other than the Vatican one block south of the Via A. Algardi. "Oh, you want to go to the Vatican now?"
"No..."
When he got what I meant, he said, "Oh! AlGARdi," then dived into a short rant about similar-sounding Italian streetnames. (There are several named for the Algardi family, which I had already noticed from a Google Maps search. A. is for Alphonso, I think...) We found it, and I gave him a reasonably generous tip, which made him beam. (I asked today about tipping, and it seems that tipping around Rome is strictly optional, or much less than what we in the States offer. Jobs that pay poorly and depend on tips in the States are not the same way here, and a tip is more like a compliment.)
The Centro is gated, and I buzzed the intercom, greeted by enthusiastic students and Franco Sgariglia, the guy on staff here who runs everything. I got my luggage up to my room without really taking in my surroundings, started to unpack, and then met my roommate Staci, who was coming up to grab a jacket.
"A bunch of us are going out for dinner now," she said (very much like my first experience in college), so I dropped everything except the Euros in my pocket, grabbed my jacket, and blindly followed her through the streets.
Post to be continued after the Welcome Dinner.
When I arrived at the airport, I found my luggage and also an open exchange booth, and headed for customs, where I waived through without so much as a check-your-passport. (This was opposed to Warsaw, where upon arrival I waited through a security and customs check for more than half an hour, only to get through to try to find my gate and to be told that I came through the wrong checkpoint; I would have to go back and start over at the passport verification booth, find another terminal, and go through security again.) I warily found a taxi, trying to avoid overenthusiastic and swindling drivers (Taxi, signorina?), and the driver misheard my request for "Via A. Algardi, 19."
"Egardi?" he asked me.
"Oh, is that how you pronounce it? Okay."
He looked it up on his GPS device near the meter. "Dis is on the north side of town," he warned me as if to say, "This is gonna cost you."
Luckily I had already looked up the Centro on a map and had bought a map of Rome in an Indianapolis Borders, so I was able to argue with him (while he was driving) about my destination.
"No, it's south of the Vatican!"
"No, lady."
"See, here it is."
The map, unfortunately, has an inset of none other than the Vatican one block south of the Via A. Algardi. "Oh, you want to go to the Vatican now?"
"No..."
When he got what I meant, he said, "Oh! AlGARdi," then dived into a short rant about similar-sounding Italian streetnames. (There are several named for the Algardi family, which I had already noticed from a Google Maps search. A. is for Alphonso, I think...) We found it, and I gave him a reasonably generous tip, which made him beam. (I asked today about tipping, and it seems that tipping around Rome is strictly optional, or much less than what we in the States offer. Jobs that pay poorly and depend on tips in the States are not the same way here, and a tip is more like a compliment.)
The Centro is gated, and I buzzed the intercom, greeted by enthusiastic students and Franco Sgariglia, the guy on staff here who runs everything. I got my luggage up to my room without really taking in my surroundings, started to unpack, and then met my roommate Staci, who was coming up to grab a jacket.
"A bunch of us are going out for dinner now," she said (very much like my first experience in college), so I dropped everything except the Euros in my pocket, grabbed my jacket, and blindly followed her through the streets.
Post to be continued after the Welcome Dinner.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
In Transit: Day 1
January 24, 2009 1:54 CST (GMT-7)
I AM OFFICIALLY on my way. Sort of. I am currently parked outside a security checkpoint in the M (International) Terminal at Chicago O’Hare, well into a game of hurry-up-and-wait. I made the mistake of rushing out of one comfortable terminal and across the airport to figure out where I need to be for my next flight, Lot Polish Airlines #2, to Warsaw, four hours and twenty-five minutes later. Upon arrival I discovered long rows of international airline check-in counters, some of which were furiously busy. Lot was at the very end and there was only a solitary middle-aged man keeping a bench warm across the room from the counter. I walked up and waited for someone to appear, until I noticed an unobtrusive but oddly permanent sign that read: LOT Check-ins Start at 2:30 PM.
Fair enough, I supposed. I wanted to get the security check over rather sooner than later, and the squashed-looking food court was not exactly inviting, but I could hardly blame the airline for not staffing the counters when flight #2 (out of how many? My American Airlines flight from Indy to Chicago was #4491) wouldn’t board for another four hours. Food court it was. But first—MindWorks, a small, kid-oriented store with lots of loud and mobile toys. Must have been kid-oriented, or else no salesman in his right mind would have attached a tethered model airplane to the entrance ceiling, frenetically whizzing and threatening to decapitate any unobservant and taller-than-average dad. I passed over the baseball cards and the plethora of Hannah Montana dolls, throws and sour gummy chews, allowing myself to be amused by the ball-chasing “weasel” and the ball-encased guinea pig. A rack of Indiana Jones action figures looked promising until it yielded a total of two characters, both badly portrayed villains.
Lunchtime. I ordered a bratwurst at a gourmet hot dog stand, where the next customer, outgoing but less than intrepid, exclaimed in disgust at the odd-looking sausage on the grill. He then asked if it was mine, then if I was sharing, and then told the cashier that he’d pay for mine. (I already had.) That seemed to be the end of the conversation, so I sat down to enjoy my delicious-despite-appearances bratwurst in its poppy-seed bun. I’m still here; check-in begins in 10 minutes.
A recap of my earlier adventures: I packed as efficiently as I could, but the number of books I needed for my classes and Italian functionality was unmanageable with only one checked bag, which topped 50 pounds despite the rest of the weight distributed through a small duffel bag and backpack. My father thought bringing a second suitcase was a reasonable investment, so I repacked three times this morning, make another last-minute trip to the bank, picked up my mother and headed across town to the airport, where everything was smooth sailing. My disaster of a room I left for my generous mother to straighten up.
I spent most of the flight from Indianapolis in a daze of drool and my Allen and Greenough’s New (as of the late 1800s) Latin Grammar. (I learned yesterday, to my dismay, that in order to take the most advanced Latin course at the Centro, my school for the semester, I would have to pass a placement exam.) I came to conveniently as the stewardess came down the aisle with beverages (American Airlines, I’m happy to say, has not stooped to Northwest’s 3 oz. juice/water cups for short flights) and enjoyed the benefits of the smallest plane I’ve ever flown in (3 seats and an aisle wide, with room enough for only one row of overhead storage bins)—namely, a window-and-aisle seat. The view out my window was spectacular, for Indiana. The weather today is crystal clear, sunny, and there is a small amount of snow on the ground. I’d never seen snow from an airplane before, and I was shocked to see how varied the patches of ground were. It was just as if someone had taken the usual array of agricultural fields and domestic areas and had painted it over in different colors. Small herds of fluffy white clouds drifted lazily through the sky below us, looking like so many sheep under the watchful eye of the sun-shepherd. More impressive than this was Lake Michigan. It appeared to be frozen in strange fingers parallel to the waves, possibly with more ice on the surface further out. The sun reflected off of it so that it looked like nothing so much as blue leather, minutely creased and with a dull sheen. We flew over it and approached Chicago from the most grandiose angle possible, but the lake still dwarfed the enormous city.
2:42. I suppose LOT Airlines have started their business for the afternoon. Time to hit up security again.
January 24, 2009 9:34 CST (GMT-7)
The other side of airport security was completely barren. There was a concession stand by the metal detectors and a restroom further in. Otherwise it was only seats. Very much like purgatory, I imagine. You sit and wait and can’t talk to anyone because the only language the people around you speak is Polish, and you can’t stretch out and take a nap. Just sit and wait for hours.
LOT, when operating, is pleasant. The boarding passes are rainbow striped to keep you gay and cheerful, and this is the biggest plane I’ve been on in years (Boeing 767). When I boarded conversations were happening all over the plane. I only heard one in English. The flight attendant attempted to explain how I should find my seat, but the Polish was less than instructive. The tray in front of me has a label that explains, as clearly as possible to the passengers other than myself, “KAMIZELKA RATUNKOWA JEST POD TWOIM FOTELEM. SIEDZAC W FOTELU MIEJ PAS ZAPIETY.”
My seat partner is a middle-aged Polish man with a brown mullet. Despite having worked in the States for 20 years, his English is barely sufficient for the two of us to communicate. (My Polish is, of course, completely nil.) He is a semi driver for meat and produce companies, and in the process of delivering his goods he has visited all 50 states and Canada. (I imagine Hawaii was probably a side trip.) The other person who has attempted to communicate with me speaks far less English than he does (I have so far understood “socks” and “toothbrush,” both products thoughtfully supplied by the airline, and “baby,” a reference to me as I tried to take a nap).
The TV sets have been playing an odd selection of animated emergency instructions, informational panels (the outside temperature, at 20500 feet, 20 minutes after takeoff, was –14 degrees Fahrenheit), nature show clips, and nearly-pornographic music videos. (Never mind the dozen little kids on board…). Dinner was a choice of chicken or beef, though what the preparation difference was I have no idea. The beef dish turned out to be fantastic (not least because I was exceptionally hungry), a sweetish stew served piping hot with mashed potatoes, steamed veggies, a few sandwichy items and a fun-size Kit-Kat bar. European airlines serve alcoholic beverages as a regular option (here, either red wine or a Polish beer; my seat-mate showed it off to me cheerfully), so I had wine with dinner. My seat-mate is not a fan of Kit-Kat bars (“too sweet”), so he gave me his.
We are currently being entertained by Madonna’s underwear (how old is she now, and why can’t I have legs like that at half her age?), and last they showed the map we were just heading over the Atlantic Ocean out of the St. Lawrence area, due to cross Nova Scotia very soon. On their map Greenland is about the size of the Eastern United States. Little kids are running rampant in the aisles, and I can hardly blame them. We’re stuck on this plane until two hours after breakfast tomorrow.
The latest music video, although a first for the non-sex-related genre, only served to cement in my mind that Chad Kroeger really is an ugly man. Now we have moved on to some awards show red carpet where stunning women (and the occasional flamboyant male fashion guru) are interviewing other stunning women (haven’t seen any men being interviewed) about their stunning dresses (and one sweater-leggings combo). Unfortunately my eye is constantly drawn by the flickering TV displaying things on mute about which I really don’t care. I should try cramming some more Italian down my throat. Or Polish, if only I knew where to start.
Fair enough, I supposed. I wanted to get the security check over rather sooner than later, and the squashed-looking food court was not exactly inviting, but I could hardly blame the airline for not staffing the counters when flight #2 (out of how many? My American Airlines flight from Indy to Chicago was #4491) wouldn’t board for another four hours. Food court it was. But first—MindWorks, a small, kid-oriented store with lots of loud and mobile toys. Must have been kid-oriented, or else no salesman in his right mind would have attached a tethered model airplane to the entrance ceiling, frenetically whizzing and threatening to decapitate any unobservant and taller-than-average dad. I passed over the baseball cards and the plethora of Hannah Montana dolls, throws and sour gummy chews, allowing myself to be amused by the ball-chasing “weasel” and the ball-encased guinea pig. A rack of Indiana Jones action figures looked promising until it yielded a total of two characters, both badly portrayed villains.
Lunchtime. I ordered a bratwurst at a gourmet hot dog stand, where the next customer, outgoing but less than intrepid, exclaimed in disgust at the odd-looking sausage on the grill. He then asked if it was mine, then if I was sharing, and then told the cashier that he’d pay for mine. (I already had.) That seemed to be the end of the conversation, so I sat down to enjoy my delicious-despite-appearances bratwurst in its poppy-seed bun. I’m still here; check-in begins in 10 minutes.
A recap of my earlier adventures: I packed as efficiently as I could, but the number of books I needed for my classes and Italian functionality was unmanageable with only one checked bag, which topped 50 pounds despite the rest of the weight distributed through a small duffel bag and backpack. My father thought bringing a second suitcase was a reasonable investment, so I repacked three times this morning, make another last-minute trip to the bank, picked up my mother and headed across town to the airport, where everything was smooth sailing. My disaster of a room I left for my generous mother to straighten up.
I spent most of the flight from Indianapolis in a daze of drool and my Allen and Greenough’s New (as of the late 1800s) Latin Grammar. (I learned yesterday, to my dismay, that in order to take the most advanced Latin course at the Centro, my school for the semester, I would have to pass a placement exam.) I came to conveniently as the stewardess came down the aisle with beverages (American Airlines, I’m happy to say, has not stooped to Northwest’s 3 oz. juice/water cups for short flights) and enjoyed the benefits of the smallest plane I’ve ever flown in (3 seats and an aisle wide, with room enough for only one row of overhead storage bins)—namely, a window-and-aisle seat. The view out my window was spectacular, for Indiana. The weather today is crystal clear, sunny, and there is a small amount of snow on the ground. I’d never seen snow from an airplane before, and I was shocked to see how varied the patches of ground were. It was just as if someone had taken the usual array of agricultural fields and domestic areas and had painted it over in different colors. Small herds of fluffy white clouds drifted lazily through the sky below us, looking like so many sheep under the watchful eye of the sun-shepherd. More impressive than this was Lake Michigan. It appeared to be frozen in strange fingers parallel to the waves, possibly with more ice on the surface further out. The sun reflected off of it so that it looked like nothing so much as blue leather, minutely creased and with a dull sheen. We flew over it and approached Chicago from the most grandiose angle possible, but the lake still dwarfed the enormous city.
2:42. I suppose LOT Airlines have started their business for the afternoon. Time to hit up security again.
January 24, 2009 9:34 CST (GMT-7)
The other side of airport security was completely barren. There was a concession stand by the metal detectors and a restroom further in. Otherwise it was only seats. Very much like purgatory, I imagine. You sit and wait and can’t talk to anyone because the only language the people around you speak is Polish, and you can’t stretch out and take a nap. Just sit and wait for hours.
LOT, when operating, is pleasant. The boarding passes are rainbow striped to keep you gay and cheerful, and this is the biggest plane I’ve been on in years (Boeing 767). When I boarded conversations were happening all over the plane. I only heard one in English. The flight attendant attempted to explain how I should find my seat, but the Polish was less than instructive. The tray in front of me has a label that explains, as clearly as possible to the passengers other than myself, “KAMIZELKA RATUNKOWA JEST POD TWOIM FOTELEM. SIEDZAC W FOTELU MIEJ PAS ZAPIETY.”
My seat partner is a middle-aged Polish man with a brown mullet. Despite having worked in the States for 20 years, his English is barely sufficient for the two of us to communicate. (My Polish is, of course, completely nil.) He is a semi driver for meat and produce companies, and in the process of delivering his goods he has visited all 50 states and Canada. (I imagine Hawaii was probably a side trip.) The other person who has attempted to communicate with me speaks far less English than he does (I have so far understood “socks” and “toothbrush,” both products thoughtfully supplied by the airline, and “baby,” a reference to me as I tried to take a nap).
The TV sets have been playing an odd selection of animated emergency instructions, informational panels (the outside temperature, at 20500 feet, 20 minutes after takeoff, was –14 degrees Fahrenheit), nature show clips, and nearly-pornographic music videos. (Never mind the dozen little kids on board…). Dinner was a choice of chicken or beef, though what the preparation difference was I have no idea. The beef dish turned out to be fantastic (not least because I was exceptionally hungry), a sweetish stew served piping hot with mashed potatoes, steamed veggies, a few sandwichy items and a fun-size Kit-Kat bar. European airlines serve alcoholic beverages as a regular option (here, either red wine or a Polish beer; my seat-mate showed it off to me cheerfully), so I had wine with dinner. My seat-mate is not a fan of Kit-Kat bars (“too sweet”), so he gave me his.
We are currently being entertained by Madonna’s underwear (how old is she now, and why can’t I have legs like that at half her age?), and last they showed the map we were just heading over the Atlantic Ocean out of the St. Lawrence area, due to cross Nova Scotia very soon. On their map Greenland is about the size of the Eastern United States. Little kids are running rampant in the aisles, and I can hardly blame them. We’re stuck on this plane until two hours after breakfast tomorrow.
The latest music video, although a first for the non-sex-related genre, only served to cement in my mind that Chad Kroeger really is an ugly man. Now we have moved on to some awards show red carpet where stunning women (and the occasional flamboyant male fashion guru) are interviewing other stunning women (haven’t seen any men being interviewed) about their stunning dresses (and one sweater-leggings combo). Unfortunately my eye is constantly drawn by the flickering TV displaying things on mute about which I really don’t care. I should try cramming some more Italian down my throat. Or Polish, if only I knew where to start.
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