On This Date in History: No One Around to Ask
Twenty-five years ago today, I was in Rome -- the first and only time I've ever been in that beautiful city.
It's hard to select a passage from my journal because (1) it's full of cliches -- walking through the museums of St. Peter's was "like being part of a herd of cattle"; in the Sistine Chapel, people were "packed in like sardines" -- and (2) I had just had a traumatic falling-out with an American friend I'd been traveling through Austria with on our way to Italy, so my account of Rome is also the account of our "breakup" in the train station and the subsequent social nightmare of running into her, the very next day, with two other friends we had been planning to meet and continue traveling with as a foursome.
Rome ended up being my first real experience of seeing a foreign city totally on my own, and I loved it despite the pain and awkwardness of the adolescent drama that had deposited me there. Here, though, is a moment I remember well, even without a diary's prompting:
"I was glad to get out of there," I wrote of the crowded Sistine Chapel and Vatican museums. ". . . . I then set out to find the American Academy, where Mom studied. It was a nice warm day, so I walked along the river and then up the hill -- Gianicolo, I think -- hoping to find a park or a bench along the way to eat my lunch, but I never did, so I finally stopped at a church almost at the top of the hill, where there was a wall overlooking the city. I sat there for a while and ate my bread, salami, cheese, and apple. I enjoyed that a lot. It was so nice and peaceful in that part of town, out of the way of all the traffic and tourists. I found the American Academy and wanted to get a picture of myself in front of it -- I thought Mom would get a kick out of that -- but there was no one around to ask."
That pretty much describes my happiest moments in any city I've visited since then. Sitting, thinking, observing . . . often eating. Two summers ago, I was in New York City for a huge convention, and one of most memorable parts of the trip was having a lunch of Welsh rarebit and tea by myself here. When I was in Montreal with my ex in 1997, while riding the subway -- amazed and delighted at the sound of French all around me for the first time in fifteen years -- I got lost in a fantasy of what it would be like to live there for a time. I remember that was the specific image in my head at that instant: living there temporarily, perhaps six months, with my home to return to.
Today my mother wouldn't be able to remember much, if anything, from her time at the American Academy in Rome in the early 1950s. But on that day in 1982, I saw it, that piece of her past, that piece of what would become mine. That wide, sweeping, solitary view from the hill.
It's hard to select a passage from my journal because (1) it's full of cliches -- walking through the museums of St. Peter's was "like being part of a herd of cattle"; in the Sistine Chapel, people were "packed in like sardines" -- and (2) I had just had a traumatic falling-out with an American friend I'd been traveling through Austria with on our way to Italy, so my account of Rome is also the account of our "breakup" in the train station and the subsequent social nightmare of running into her, the very next day, with two other friends we had been planning to meet and continue traveling with as a foursome.
Rome ended up being my first real experience of seeing a foreign city totally on my own, and I loved it despite the pain and awkwardness of the adolescent drama that had deposited me there. Here, though, is a moment I remember well, even without a diary's prompting:
"I was glad to get out of there," I wrote of the crowded Sistine Chapel and Vatican museums. ". . . . I then set out to find the American Academy, where Mom studied. It was a nice warm day, so I walked along the river and then up the hill -- Gianicolo, I think -- hoping to find a park or a bench along the way to eat my lunch, but I never did, so I finally stopped at a church almost at the top of the hill, where there was a wall overlooking the city. I sat there for a while and ate my bread, salami, cheese, and apple. I enjoyed that a lot. It was so nice and peaceful in that part of town, out of the way of all the traffic and tourists. I found the American Academy and wanted to get a picture of myself in front of it -- I thought Mom would get a kick out of that -- but there was no one around to ask."
That pretty much describes my happiest moments in any city I've visited since then. Sitting, thinking, observing . . . often eating. Two summers ago, I was in New York City for a huge convention, and one of most memorable parts of the trip was having a lunch of Welsh rarebit and tea by myself here. When I was in Montreal with my ex in 1997, while riding the subway -- amazed and delighted at the sound of French all around me for the first time in fifteen years -- I got lost in a fantasy of what it would be like to live there for a time. I remember that was the specific image in my head at that instant: living there temporarily, perhaps six months, with my home to return to.
Today my mother wouldn't be able to remember much, if anything, from her time at the American Academy in Rome in the early 1950s. But on that day in 1982, I saw it, that piece of her past, that piece of what would become mine. That wide, sweeping, solitary view from the hill.
posted by Billy at 10:30 PM
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