Hello faithful reader… it has been a long time coming. 2006 has been an entertaining and interesting year, however I’ve been so completely flatout this year I have had no time (and interest) to update the blog. So to make it up to all who do wish to walk a mile in my shoes, I’ll attempt to review this year as best as my memory will serve. The first few entries will focus on Italy and the rest I will try to compress into 11 entries of each of the subsequent months of the year if I can remember that well.
January was a real eye opener and got the year off to a good start. The university organized a tour of Italy for a month lead by Professor Frith and another Professor whom I was to meet later Flavia (incidentally an old uni friend of Justine). As this was my final year of university (should everything go to plan) I was not about to miss this opportunity, as I had never been to mainland Europe let alone Italy before. The first few weeks of the year were spent working to save for spending money and preparing for the trip – passports, clothing purchases etc etc.I have very fond memories of the time I spent there, so these will no doubt be long entries. Flying to Italy was definitely a funny experience. I met my fellow tourists at the airport, a good mix of people I thought… however, flying is hell. Our first leg was 8 hours to Thailand, which was extremely pleasant as the flight was mostly empty and we got to spread out get boozed up on free in-flight drinks and hang out and get to know everyone on a better level. It felt like I was on school camp again. We arrived in Bangkok; spirits were high however I was feeling quite tired. A short stop over of 2 hours and another flight of 12 hours to Rome. This was extreme pain for me. I felt sick for nearly the whole flight, I couldn’t sleep and we were packed in like sardines; far less pleasant than the earlier Sydney-Bangkok leg.
Upon arrival in Rome, we were greeted by the stringent customs of Italy – who basically looked at you and if you looked dodgy enough they might ask to see your bag, but for the most part you could walk through as you pleased – a marked change from Fortress Australia. Stephen greeted us at the gate and we made our way from Leonardo da Vinci to Termini. A short bus ride to our apartment gave us a snapshot into the history and life of Rome. As it was winter, it seemed that knee length puffer jackets and funky looking leather boots for women were all the rage.
After arriving at the doss where we were staying and unpacking, I said to the others I was gonna go look for St. Peters as we were pretty close. To my surprise I found out very quickly we were literally 100 metres away from Bernini’s great colonnade… the arms that stretch from the portico of the Basilica. As it was close to Christmas, the nativity scene was still set up in the middle of the piazza, surrounding the Egyptian Obelisk. The largest of all the obelisks in Rome – an urban intervention used to unite the sprawling city of Rome by Pope Sixtus V, also a sign of the conquer of pagan culture by Catholicism. Interestingly the great obelisk influenced the design and orientation of the later addition to the Basilica as it was placed slightly off centre of the Cathedral, and it was deemed easier to construct the aisles of St. Peters to match the position of the obelisk than to move it.
A group of us wandered the streets of Rome that day; jetlagged but overcome with the excitement of being in such an amazing city. Lunch in the Piazza Novona – formerly a Roman Hippodrome, with an obelisk in the middle; the figures at its base carved by the master Baroque artist and architect Bernini. Our first taste of Italy’s wonderful cuisine. We then wandered the city for a few hours, looking at the shops, orientating ourselves, uncovering the history of this place. The day of exploration culminated in a visit to the Pantheon, a truly amazing piece of architecture and history. Louis Kahn would often talk of seeing the Pantheon oculus as an almost spiritual experience, and its hard to not agree.
Raphael is also buried in the Pantheon, he was my favorite teenage mutant ninja turtle, but as I was to find out later one of the most accomplished and favored artist of the Renaissance period. I was particularly keen to see some of his work, as my mother would tell this story of me at about age 4 in London, some major museum or gallery that had a display of great painters of the Renaissance. I had wandered off, naturally, and was found standing in front of a painting by Raphael completely enthralled in it. Apparently I had been standing there for about 10 minutes admiring this thing, as one of the attendants who had been keeping an eye on me would later tell my mother. Now I cant remember the incident at all, but when I try, there is some deep seeded memory of a Christ figure on a cross with the Roman guard piercing his side – a typical biblical scene that would have been portrayed at the time of Raphael, so I assume that was the painting… I can still remember it quite vividly, in terms of the action and the colours. So naturally I wanted to see if the art work would have the same effect on me as an adult as it did when I was a small child.
Later that night we went back to the hotel and met the rest of our traveling crew – four guys who I studied with, had taken a number of years off to travel and work in England, they had just returned from Palestine, the rest of the crew was made up of first and second year students, a few from third year on the year out and a couple of friends of Stephen’s daughter who would travel for all or part of the tour with us. It was a nice group to travel with, inevitably there was conflict later in the tour between some of the group, and I attempted to stay out of it all – but had some issues of my own with certain group members. Its often my way to let these things slide and gravitate toward people I can get along with not having to deal with the fall out. In all, considering the situation things were pretty calm for the most part, and we all became friends or at very least acquaintances of some substance. Those who know me well, know that I tend to get pretty loose and naturally I found a group of guys who were similarly inclined – we established a RAB (Bar backwards) and drank ourselves stupid every night in Rome (the RAB disintegrated as we moved around more) largely because our roommates were heavy snorers or whatever.
The next day we met Flavia, who would take us around for the majority of our trip as essentially a tour guide. We met her at a place called Argentina – ruins of an ancient Roman plaza dedicated to Mars where three ruined temples stand. Significantly this was the place that Caesar was murdered, it is now a bird sanctuary, so naturally there are a lot of stray cats living there. A short walk and we were at Michelangelo’s Campodogglio, a wonderfully sculpted piazza sitting atop a grand staircase of sorts. In the centre sits a bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius the patterning in the pavement radiating from the figure based in part on converging circular geometries, masterfully treated by the hand of Michelangelo.
Behind it sits the Roman Forum. A magnificent set of ruins, the details of which are an entry in themselves. At the end, sits the Coliseum which we later visited. First a quick stop at the Palatine Hill, the place where the Palace of the Roman Emperors stood. The scale of the ruins gave you a sense of just how massive these structures must have been, truly fit for a king at the height of his power. Later that evening I bumped into Professor Frith, and we had an impromptu tour of some churches in the nearby area. I was particularly fascinated by the decoration of one of the churches – whos name escapes me. It is literally a stark rectilinear volume of very little consequence; however the walls and ceiling had been painted in fresco by a man called Pozzi. He had used some amazing tricks of foreshortening and perspective to create what at first glance seemed to be real domes and vaults, only on closer inspection did you realize they were completely fake… was this the first real postmodernist?
The next day we toured the great churches and cathedrals of the city. It was at this time I really became aware of the mastery of these architects – particularly Bernini and Borromini, two great rivals of the Baroque who pushed eachother to reach amazing feats of art and architecture the like of which have yet to be repeated. Part of our assessment (as this tour was being used for credit at uni) was to keep a drawing journal of the tour. Now I am a fine sketcher of things, however I was somewhat rusty at the time, and the first sketch I attempted to do was of the ceiling of San Carlo della Quattro Fontane, by Borromini.
As you can see this is no mean feat, and naturally I completely butchered it. Unphased by this, I vowed to myself that I would improve… as the most senior student on the tour I couldn’t look like the most retarded sketcher. So as the activities of the day wound down, a few of us visited a church built on a pagan temple, which was interesting; I snuck off back to the Roman forum, and spent a few hours (actually until I got kicked out) drawing the ruins. The forum is a wonderful place bathed in the afternoon winter sun, and after a slow start I began to produce good sketches at rapid pace. Satisfied that I was up to scratch, and having attracted a small crowd of Italian girls, whom I would later become friends with, I headed home. The girls I had met, lived nearby and wanted me to come out with them that night, so I prepared for a night out. Naturally I attracted a bit of an entourage from my fellow travelers, and when they saw the beauty of the girls, those who weren’t already keen suddenly showed an interest in the Rome night life.
We went to an area called Pistachio, a park of sorts that is surrounded by “super” clubs and bars. We started out in an American sports bar, because the drinks were cheap. One of the group drank too much and after narrowly avoiding be beaten up by some French dudes whom he’d vomited on, we decided to leave. The girls and I separated ourselves from the pack in all the commotion, and went to a Rastafarian club. They told me they liked it because it played drum and bass and the vibe was very chill. I walked in there and felt extremely out of place at first, as I was the only Caucasian male in the whole place. The locals soon found out I was Australian and welcomed me with open arms in typical Rastafarian style. After we were suitably hammered I disappeared into the night, somehow managing to end up at a place called pyramid alone… I jumped into a taxi (or what I thought was one) and headed to San Pietro. Unfortunately this wasn’t a cab at all, but some guy driving around shouting out “taxi taxi”. After I asked him to stop at St. Peters he suddenly became enraged and began to threaten me with what I thought was a knife, after screaming and running for a few minutes, the police took him down guns drawn and the like and bundled him off. Unfortunately for this guy, he’d left his car running and unlocked… no doubt he’d never see that again. It still baffles me as to why he got mad… After that experience I didn’t go out in Rome again except to the local bar, where we became good friends with the bartender, Igor – he seemed to think I looked like the guy out of “Conair”, having never seen the movie I don’t know but others have made the comparison before. The first few days of Rome in a nutshell… off to Naples!
posted by WillG @ 5:55 PM
1 Comments:
Will - the guy from Con Air that Igor was probably referring to was the child murderer, played by Steve Buscemi. Mr Pink strikes again!
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