A taste of eternity: Rome

Here I am, in a jet plane, touring the cradles of western civilization: from Athens to Rome. Athens is too strange and mysterious to cover, maybe another time. So l decide to spent my flight time watching a Hollywood blockbuster. "The Expendables" keep me company during the flight, but they affect me in a strange way, so when I'm trying to find my way from the airplane seat to the airport bus, I literally cut through them with my knife. The annoying japanese kid that was constantly crying next to me is now speechless (his head is cut off) and his mother pleads me to release her too, which I do with a fast cut that divides her head in two. The Greek couple on the front seat, who were fighting during the whole flight have now their heads stuffed to each others private parts. I cut and kill, I dismember peoples bodies. Most are dead, the others will be soon. There is blood everywhere. The sounds of the arriving police cars become noticable. They are not going to get me alive.

Then I wake up. We are really landing at Fiumicini Airport of Rome. The annoying couple and kid are still alive and annoying. Standing passengers have been carefully placed everywhere so that they keep me immobile and away from my handbag. They are moving slowly, as if they were honey moving out of a pot turned upside down. I'm in a hurry, although I shouldn't be. You see, Rome is not my actual destination, it's just a place to spent the night, before my next plane takes off.

The night will be spent at the airport. As usually, I'm between flights and I have to see Rome as fast as possible and still catch the last train to the airport. I could spend the evening at the airport but I feel like I have to see Rome, otherwise I will regret it. So I need to make the most of my 3 to 5 hours. After acquiring some information from the information desk, I plan the rest of my day. It's 17:10 and if I take the RF1 train line, I will be at Pyramid metro station at 18:00 (maximum). Then I will walk for about 4 hours to another metro station. My walking route will involve as many Roma sights as possible.

Rome is full of antiquities. They are on your left, on your right, behind every wall or fence. It is impossible to see them all. In order to see as many as possible, I had to use my camera for shooting the ones on my right, while I was looking at the ones on my left.

The pyramid metro station was selected because it is one of the two metro stations that connect the historical center of Rome with the train line to the airport, and also for the mysterious name. It stopped being that mysterious when I passed through the exit door of the station and looked straight ahead. I saw a pyramid. I took that as a good sign: this must be either part of the historical center, or an amusement park. I stepped closer to the pyramid. It was a real, really old pyramid, not as huge as the egyptian ones, but still a large elevation. Other ancient ruins are laying around the pyramid just to make sure it is an archeological site. I had to move on, I had a bunch of amazing places to visit. This pyramid was nothing and a new it.

A map can be useful even to a person like me. I surprised my self as I had downloaded a couple of maps and an iPhone version of lonely planets Rome guide. The last application offers a handy map of the city where you can zoom in and out in various places and look for sights, restaurants, etc. It is also GPSed, which means I could spot my position on the map and avoid being lost. I used that to find my way to Colosseum. 

Colosseum: the Hollywood of the Roman Empire.

 Most of the ancient ruins look strange to modern peoples eyes. They look unfamiliar, their purpose is not always clear. This is because each civilization used to believe in a certain set of principles and built their way of life on them. If you don't share their vision of the world and life, you won't be able to understand why they built their buildings like that or why they had clothes like that. I constantly have to deal with this exciting mystery when I visit an ancient ruins site. Not in Colosseum.

Colosseum was built for a very eloquent purpose. There is nothing strange to a huge spectacles theater. People used to go there to be amazed, to watch other people fight and die. In Colosseum one could feel part of the mass, one could sense the power of the crowd. We, modern people, are very familiar with that. We feed with spectacles, we even pay for them. Violent sports are not strange to our culture. Massive gatherings of crowds around a sports field is quite common to almost all modern countries on the planet. Colosseum is the great archetype of every mass media product, from football to popular films, from sitcoms to live TV and reality shows. It all started here or so it feels.

"What's so funny about Bigus Dickus..."

Colosseum is so impressive that you get to think "OK, that's it, the rest of the city will look mediocre". This is not the case at all. As I was walking north, I couldn't help my self from being amazed by everything around me. The glorious ruins of layer upon layers of Roman and Western history could be seen everywhere. If there was a wall and I could find a hole I could look through, I would discover even more glorious ancient ruins. Ancient buildings, roads, palaces, circuses, fora (the plural of forum) and obelisks, most of them covered with ancient egyptian scripts.

I managed to walk through ancient Rome ruins fast enough to reach the famous Fontana di Trevi with sun light. I was so amazed, I almost overgasped. The name "Trevi", says my lonely planet copy, means "Tre vie" (three roads). I counted four narrow roads connecting in front of the fountain, all stuffed with tourists. As amazing as it was, I had to leave quickly. I just took a self-portrait with the fountain in the background and another one showing only the tourists and no fountain.This is symbolic: the tourists are part of the attraction, they complete the scenery and if you think about it, I came here to see the tourists, not the fountain.

Dozens of tourists per moment are looking at this naked man. The chicks on his left and right are clothed, so nothing to see here. There are also semi-naked people who play with horses. They are all stoned (a.k.a. made of stone).

As I was approaching Piazza di Popolo, the color of the sun light changed to orange. The streets were crowded with people and cars, mixed together (they resembled the traffic in Athens). Food smelled delicious, but I knew it was the bad stuff they sell to tourists. I met 2 McDonalds in less than 500 meters walk. Finally I reached Piazza di Popolo and I noticed how nice it looked in the twilight. A guy was impersonating Michael Jackson for money. Tourists were cheering. A long obelisk is standing in the middle of the quite spacy oval square and there are four fountains around it, shaped as lions on small pyramids. I wish I had some psychedelic recreational substances at my disposal, it would be better that way. I walked through the blue air. Is it real, or am I just too tired?

Piazza di Popolo ("Peoples square") is trippy at this time of the day.

Tired or not, I kept walking, as I had no choice. I bought a piece of pizza from a random place near Piazza di Popolo. It was delicious. OK, that's a lie. But I think it was one of the oldest pieces of Pizza available in the city, an antique maybe. Still, I ate it without getting sick as I was passing some roads with milder tourist density. There I found much better and cheaper places to grab a pizza or a gelato, but I didn't have time to spare on luxuries like food. I know now that in every city in the world there is a place next to the place you choose when you visit it for the first time, that it is much better in all ways that matter to you.

I was led closer to the Vatican area. I noticed that a certain street appeared to contain a higher concentration of tourists and I followed it, hopping to find a metro station. It was late, and I had to return back to my airport (I considered it mine for the day, since I was hopping to get some sleep there). Instead, I found St Peters square.

If you haven't visit Rome, you should. It is always beautiful.

St Peters square has been designed to revive the religious feelings of uncommitted love to god and of the glory of the Catholic Church. I am not a religious person and if I were, I wouldn't be a catholic, but still, the square had a kind of spiritual impact on me. On the "head" of the area there is the glorious cathedral of St Peter. From there I could see the twin archways hugging the square like protective arms. In the center I could admire yet another egyptian obelisk. Some people say that the obelisks are like handles for controlling some kind of special invisible energy fields that emanate from and end to the center of the earth. Those who can control the fields, can control the world. Rome and the Vatican are equipped with quite a few.

In Rome antiquities are close to everyday streets.

It was late and I had a train to catch. I increased my walking tempo towards the closest metro station I could spot with my keen sense of smell (actually, my smelling abilities are below average, but that particular metro station stinks!). I had to fight with the ticket machine in order to take my 10 euros note back. I lost the fight (and my note0`, so I had to try again on another machine with another 10 euros note. I was almost successful this time (the machine decided to keep the change, but at least I got my ticket). When I reached the airport, I was quite tired and ready to sleep under any circumstances. I found my way to the terminal where my flight was going to take off the next morning.

Airports are for traveling, not for sleeping, although many people like to sleep there. In fact, they hate sleeping in airports, but it's free, and "free" is much cheaper to 100 euros minimum I would have to pay for a night in Rome. The logic of an airport sleeper is quite simple: since I will be exhausted from the sightseeing, it won't be difficult to get some sleep. Unfortunately, some times you just can't sleep there. That was the case with my flights terminal: it was very cold and empty and there were arms between seats which made laying flat impossible. Then, a cleaning lady came to the rescue. Se instructed me to seek for shelter at another terminal. She was speaking Italian, which I don't, but the instructions were crystal clear, so I followed them. i was too late: there were no good places left (good places are comfy chairs, warm and quite floors, dark and hidden corners). I had to compromise for the chilly top of a giant ventilation machine that seemed to be out of order. it wasn't, but they kept it shut down long enough for me to get three or four hours of sleep. I don't believe that anything below eight is enough, but the Eternal City worths the scarifies.