Monkey Bones

Last weekend was the longest weekend of my life, but in the best way possible. Since I have no classes on Friday (and only one on Thursday) my weekend starts on Thursday night. Most of the people from the ND group decided to take advantage of our new cultural setting and all the history that abides in Rome and go on a pub crawl. Yep, pub crawl. We heard about the pub crawl when a guy handed us a flyer about it in the Metro. For the bargain price of £20, you got to spend your night at 4 bars, with free wine and beer at the first bar and a free shot at each subsequent bar. Plus, you got a t-shirt! The result of this was a culmination of all that is American youth culture: drunk American college students. It was an interesting night, to say the least, but I'm glad I went. I will never go again. The meeting place for the pub crawl was the Spanish Steps. It was here that a group of tragically unattractive Italian male youths asked Caitlin and I if we would dance with them later. We said no, and then they asked me if I liked to eat (their English was about as good as my Italian). I responded with, "Only when I'm hungry." This, to them, was the funniest thing ever. I don't really get Italians all the time. I did manage to meet one other European...from Belgium. I know nothing about Belgium so in trying to make conversation with him, I attempted to discuss the only piece of Belgian culture I know--Belgian waffles. The Belgian man seemed unenthusiastic about his own country's international export, simply saying that the waffles were "alright."

Friday was a much more culturally satisfying day. I spent about 3 hours in the Vatican Museum, though I could have spent weeks there and still not have seen everything. By the end, I was actually a little tired of gorgeous famous paintings and statues because there were just so many of them. The Sistine Chapel was the last room before the exit and it was nothing like I had thought it would be. I expected a domed room with one single painting on the ceiling, but its actually a flat ceiling with many little paintings. The famous one of God and Adam is only one small part of it. Besides the beauty and art and blah blah blah, the best part of the Sistine Chapel were the guards I have dubbed the Sistine Shooshers. It is their esteemed job to stand around the Chapel saying "Shhhhh" every 5 seconds. The Chapel is supposed to be a place of silence and prayer, but this is hard to accomplish with 300 tourists from all over the world in one room. However, since shhh is a universal term, the Shooshers must work very hard to silence the crowd with their superhumanly loud Shhhhhhhhs. I wonder when the tryouts for this job are...

Friday night, I went to La Baffetta (the mustache), which is the first pizza place in Rome. Best. Pizza. Ever. Mine had a little bit of everything on it, including an egg, which doesn't sound appetizing, but it was wonderful.

Saturday, I went to the crypt of the Cappuccini Monks. This was by far the most unique thing I have seen in Rome (a close second is the way people make out in public, but we'll get to that later). The crypt is at the bottom of a church and is only about 6 rooms, but each room is completed decorated with the bones of over 4000 monks. Real human bones line the ceilings, walls, and even serve as chandeliers. (When I was researching this site, I thought it said cappucin monkey bones, but I eventually caught on that they were Cappuccini monks). It is very eerie, but oddly beautiful. One might not even know right away that they are bones because of the intricacy and beauty of the designs they are made into. There are everything from skulls to pelvises to rib bones and even whole skeletons in the crypts. The words What you are know, we once were. What we are now, you will one day become appear in one of the rooms, making the scenario much creepier. One of the best parts was that it was free, so I am definitely going back sometime.

Saturday night was La Notte Bianca, which literally translates to The White Night, but means a night that you don't sleep. Events were going on all throughout Rome and many stores and restaurants and museums were open all night. The events started around 10 at night and ended around 6 in the morning. It was hard to figure out where each event was going on and when they were happening, so I just decided to wander around. The city was a total madhouse. I have never seen huge crowds before as the ones in Rome that night. Walking to Centro Storico, I happened upon a concert on a float, complete with trapeze artists. The rock band plus an opera singer were eventually lifted into the air by a crane so they looked like a giant mobile in the sky. It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen, but so cool. The metros were open all night and were free, so it was super crazy trying to get home by metro, but we made it in time to get to bed at 3:30.

I woke up the same morning at 5:30 to leave at 6 am for a 7 am bus to Pompeii. As you might imagine, I was not too pumped about having to hike up a volcano that morning. But after sleeping on the bus and catching my first glimpse of Mount Vesuvius, I was super excited (this emotion was followed by an intense feeling of "Holy crap that mountain is huge and I have to climb it!"). The trip to Pompeii was a JCU coordinated event, so everything was planned out, which was nice. We had a tour of the ruins of the ancient city, which was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was really cool because you could still see where all the stores and houses were. After getting some very unauthentic Napoli cuisine (the restaurant was like a truck stop that only served pizza and pasta), we began our hike up the mountain. Actually, the bus drove most of the way up (big bus + no guard rails + Italian driver = kinda really scary) then we walked up some pretty steep trails and reached the top. The view was incredibly breathtaking, and not just because the air was thinner at the high altitude. You could see all of Napoli and Capri. We literally walked through a cloud at one point. The actual volcano was not what I expected, as there was no lava and no dragons. It was like a giant canyon with ash but you could still see parts that were steaming. The whole experience was very cool, even despite my 2 hours of sleep. The bus ride home was quite unpleasant, however, as our bus broke down a couple times and we hit heavy traffic, causing us to not get back to JCU until 9 pm for our hour walk home.

And here's some random notes about Italy:

The apartment directly below mine is having construction done on it. It seems the only consistent and diligent workers in Italy work in this apartment, as they are hammering away at 7:30 in the morning. On top of that, our apartment smells like an ash tray because, like most hard-working Italians, they are chain smokers and the smoke wafts up. Excellent.

One of the classes I'm taking is Intermediate Microeconomics. In my intro econ class at ND, the professor used a hamburger and a Pepsi as perfect compliments. In Italy, my professor described this concept with the example of "a beer and a cigarette." I suppose both are examples of unhealthy lifestyles...

JCU decided to test their emergency announcement system the other day during class time. This included a recording of a woman telling us in Italian and English to leave the building because of an emergency. About a minute later, the recording instructed everyone to calmly reenter the building in an organized fashion. These same recordings went on for 2 hours, interrupting classes the entire time. Before they had begun, an announcement was made that they were just a test. However, if you came in during the 2 hour window that the test was going on, you might panic in thinking there was an actual emergency. Result: no one knew what was going on, professors were constantly interrupted, and we are all 100% sure that the emergency loudspeaker system is in perfect working order.