THE PAIN IN SPAIN

The pain in Spain falls mainly . . . in between the fourth and pinkie toes on the right foot.  Max’s right foot, to be exact.   This pain in Spain comes mainly from . . . the Mediterranean Spiderfish.  (No wonder Rogers and Hammerstein didn’t use Mediterranean Spiderfish as a rhyming scheme to teach Eliza Doolittle the Queen’s Proper English – the rain falling on the plain is far easier.) In case, for some odd reason, you are not an aficionado of the Mediterranean Spiderfish, it happens to be the most plentiful fish occupying depths less than 1000 meters on the Catalan shelf of the Western Mediterranean Sea.  But who doesn’t know that?  What might surprise you to learn is that the nasty little bugger packs a long set of tentacle stingers on its dorsal side that when they make contact with the human foot – in this case, Max’s human foot – cause piercing pain that morphs into extreme burning pain. 

            Max and Jeff had been spending a pleasant afternoon frolicking in a bay that’s just outside of the town of Moriara, Spain, where we are doing another house exchange.  Moriara is halfway between Valencia and Alicante on the Spanish coast, right on the edge of the knobby bit of Spain that sticks out into the Mediterranean Sea.  I say that Jeff and Max, and not all three of us, were playing in the water because I had hauled my weary bones back to our house exchange apartment to attempt to get some sleep.  Why was I weary?  Because I had slept not a wink the night before.  This was due to the unfortunate confluence of three unpleasant factors:  first, every hungry mosquito on the Iberian Peninsula had flown into the apartment and was busy taking turns at the mosquito hoedown that was taking place on my exposed flesh.  Second, not a molecule of air was moving in the bedroom, adding a stifling element to the mosquito banquet which I think the insects really appreciated. And third, the beds in the “master” bedroom of this vile-la  -- oh, I mean “villa” –  are two single  campbeds, the kinds of beds you haul out of the garage when Aunt Agatha and Uncle Ferd and their five kids come to stay for a week in the summer.  The beds are twin-sized, which is a luxurious width when you are still too little to be able to go on most carnival rides, but is a good deal less luxurious when you’re a full-grown adult.  From the looks of it, the mattresses were evidently purchased at a time when the sun still did not set on the British Empire, and from the sounds of it, the mattresses are packed with a million pieces of crinkly paper.  Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle goes the mattress when you turn over (careful not to exceed the 2 inches of clearance you have on either side of your body.)  Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle goes the mattress every time you swat violently at the mosquito couples doe-see-doeing down your back.  Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle with each indrawn breath, crinkle, crinkle, crinkle with each exhalation.

            Not surprisingly, the vile-la was not advertised as such on the house exchange website.  And some elements of it are fine.  The size is fine, the little yard is fine, its proximity to the town is fine.  All fine.  What’s not so fine are the aforementioned camp beds in the “master” bedroom and the claustrophobic bunk beds in the second room which, coincidentally, is a room the size of a set of bunkbeds, give or take a few inches.  I’ve seen linen closets larger than the bunkbed room, which Max is gamely occupying, sandwiched between the upper bunk which is a scant eight inches above his face,  and the walls which are a scant six inches from his body when he’s in bed.  As they say in Appalachia, “this here room is right cosy.”

            Another thing not so fine is the plethora of signs posted around the vile-la warning us to be extremely economical if not downright abstemious in our water use.  This is not because the totally uncontrolled development that has swallowed up the Spanish coast and sprawled out over the hills and climbed up every nook and cranny adjacent to the sea is sucking dry the aquifers of the land.  No, that is a different problem.  The problem that we face is attributable to the fact that the vile-la is not on the city’s sewer system and if you flush a lot of water down the drain,  it can back up the septic tank right into the vile-la itself, adding another element of vileness to the whole affair.  Needless to say, this is a strong incentive for extremely quick showers, as is the fact that you can’t control the water temperature:  it vacillates from teeth-chattering Antarctica to a solar storm.

            So what with this and that, I had collapsed in the bedroom to the sound of many crinkles while Jeff and Max frolicked in the bay.  Until Max, jumping up to catch the ball, landed back down right on top of Mr. Mediterranean Spiderfish who apparently objected to this treatment rather strongly, and made his feelings known by stinging the holy crap out of Max’s foot.  Jeff and Max came staggering back into the vile-la with Max actually shuddering with pain.  Now Max is not a whiner when it comes to physical discomfort.  I have seen him catch air during a soccer game and land with a thud that sounds as if a wheelchair and breathing tube will be in his immediate future, and the boy will shrug it off.  Jeff is the same way:  the man can cut himself, slam his head into a low-hanging beam and otherwise hurt himself calamitously and also shrug it off.  As for me, well – I was in labor and didn’t realize it:  just thought it was part of the general discomfort one should expect when one is seven hundred months pregnant. 

            So between Max’s genetic heritage and his own innate toughness, seeing him shaking with pain ratcheted the situation from an oh-that’s-too-bad level to a how-do-you-say-emergency-room-in-Spanish? response. Plus we had no idea that the irate spiderfish was to blame, having never heard of same, so we didn’t know what was making Max weep and shudder.  Into the car we piled and off to a nearby farmacia, where Jeff managed to get directions to an emergency clinic which, according to the pharmacist, was located off in – vague wave of the hand – that direction.  Off we went in that direction, which covered an area from the Spanish coast to Atlantic City, New Jersey.  After exploring a lot of this direction and a fair amount of the other direction, we finally found that direction and roared into the empty parking lot of what appeared to be a medical, dental or possibly veterinarian clinic.  A woman was just leaving in her car, and she put it in reverse and came over to talk to Jeff, who was standing and peering through the locked front door of the body/tooth/critter building.  He explained to her that “son-foot-ow-hurt-help” in a mixture of Spanish-English-Mime (SPEM, for short) And she sighed, parked her car and let us in, the kind soul. She was the nurse, just leaving after a long day.  She steered Max into an examining room, asked him a few questions in functioning English, got the doctor on the phone who talked directly to Max and diagnosed the spiderfish sting over the phone, and within 15 minutes we were walking out of the door, Max’s foot cleaned, treated with an antiseptic salve, securely bandaged and instructions for foot care provided.  The cost?  35 Euros – about 50 dollars. 

Now hands up if you know the answer to these questions! 

#1:  Did anyone ask to see an insurance card before granting treatment?  No. 

#2:  Did anyone ask for a credit card imprint to ensure payment before granting treatment?  No. 

#3:  Was there a wait?  No. 

#4:  Were the nurse in person, and the doctor via telephone, kind and efficient?  Yes. 

#5:  Was the payment ridiculously small?  Yes. 

#6:  Does Spain, like most European nations, have national health care?  Yes.

Therefore, boys and girls, answer me this:  was this experience in any way, shape or form like anything we would have had in Washington, DC, the capitol of the most powerful nation in the world, even though we have full health insurance coverage for which we pay a small fortune?  NO.  No, it was not.

             So clearly, this was an example of why national health care is bad and why treatment under it is appalling and why we would never, ever want to trade in our own dear health care system in America for something like this.  Whew!  Glad we cleared that up!

            So join me in singing an ode to Spain and its health care system, which we’ll never get in America as long as the insurance industry and pharmaceutical lobbyists continue to control the majority of Congress.  I think you can guess the tune it’s set to!

Treating pain in Spain

Doesn’t cause all your savings to go
Right down the drain!

Treating pain in Spain

Is what we call, a no

A no-brain(er)!

Now once again, who charges amounts of money to treat the ill

that are quite insane?

It’s Amurika, controlled by lobbyists who are a pain

A giant pain!

So if you’re hurt and need a doc

Better fly, fly off to Spain

Fly off to Spain.

Cuz in the USA you’re screwed,

I’ll say it plain!

FAMILIARSICK

We have been traveling for nearly 11 weeks now, with another six weeks still left in our journey.  Eleven weeks of new:  new countries, new cities, new languages, new restaurants for lunch and dinner, new maps, new challenges, new choices.   Every day.  There are no week-ends off from the newness.   You go to sleep surrounded by new and you wake up knowing that the day will be spent within “new” – either reveling in it or finding a path through it or typically, both.  Our regular lives, at least during the school year, are the opposite of these travel days.  We are schedule-bound:  we get up at the same time every day, shop at the same grocery store, begin and end work and homework at the same time.  The continuing unfolding newness of these travels is, most of the time, exhilarating and intoxicating and joyful.  But there are times when you long not to have to make a conscious, thought-out choice.  It is not so much homesickness as it is familiarsickness.  You long for a day of easy movement through things that are familiar.  For a day where you don’t have to figure out which restaurants among those lining the unfamiliar streets are decent, or pore over a map to find your way from point A to point B.  We have studied maps for so many places now that I feel like we’re in some sort of cartographer’s graduate program, or the Great Cartographer’s Race in which you arrive in a town and must find a store that sells a map, figure out how to navigate around the city with it, and then move onto the next location just as you’ve finally gotten to the point that you can walk the streets of your current location without your head buried in a map. 

 

Familiarsickness has hit all three of us and we have been prone to grumpiness and edgy exchanges the last day or two.  We’ve also been in hotels the past four days, and the longer we travel the less I find myself liking the time spent in hotels between the house exchanges.   I want to spread my stuff out, and cook my own meals, and get a cold drink or a piece of fruit without having to locate a street vendor and negotiate the transaction through mime and a toddler’s vocabulary. 
 

The house exchanges let you focus more on the chosen area and less on the logistics of being in that area. They are sort of like a “friends with benefits” approach to lodging.  You don’t make a long-term commitment to any one place but you do become intimate with it:   you move in and enjoy the benefits of co-habitation (with your host’s home) but you always know that you’re going to move on soon.  Some house exchange partners hand over their home like it was their daughter’s hand in marriage.  They want to meet you, size you up a bit, make sure you’re not hauling along assorted cans of spray paint with which to graffiti their walls or packing acetylene torches or bringing along a rock band or worse yet – every house exchange nightmare – a bunch of college kids on spring break.  Once they are satisfied that you’re worthy of the gift they are about to bestow on you, it’s smiles and air kisses and bonhomie all ‘round. 

Our most recent house exchange partners should be hired by the Sardinian Chamber of Commerce or used in inspirational hospitality videos.  They appear to be the nicest people living on the planet today.  They met us at the airport in Alghero, leaving their work early and driving about 20 miles to get there.  This was in order to meet us (“good, no spray paint, torches or drunken dudes”) and then to lead us to their apartment, where they showed us the ins and outs and made sure we were set up and comfortable.  They provided maps and guidebooks and they gave us many good ideas about places to visit in Sardinia.  Then they took us to the grocery store below the apartment complex so we could buy some food.  They came and fixed the hot water heater when we mistakenly switched it off during our stay, driving 45 miles round-trip to do so; they met us at the airport at our departure and bought us drinks; and were generally as kind and pleasant house exchange hosts as you could ask for. 
 

Our Rome beach house hosts in Torvajanica were similarly nice.  This leads me to a Carrie Bradshaw-esque moment of pondering.  As she used to say when posing a thorny question, “I couldn’t help but wonder . . . ”  In this case, I couldn’t help but wonder:  do Italians have an inherently different approach than Americans to hospitality, making this a sort of cultural Italian versus cultural American thing, or is it simply a case of our Italian house exchange partners being a hell of a lot nicer than we are?  
 

I’ve always viewed house exchanging as a process in which you get to know your exchange partner as much as is possible via email exchanges, and then leave the rest up to fate.  The goal, as I’ve seen it, is to leave them keys to a clean, comfortable house, a bunch of maps and guides, and a welcome basket of goodies.  Then you get the hell out before they arrive.  If I’m still there when they get there, I feel I’ve failed to keep up my end of the bargain.  But our Italian exchangers take the opposite view.  If they aren’t there to greet you, show you around, buy you a drink or share a bottle of champagne, they evidently feel they’ve made a massive social faux paux:  a sort of social soiling themselves, so to speak. 

I wonder what this says about our two cultures.  Have we Americans lost the art of throwing open our doors to strangers and embracing them?  Do we exchange houses more as a business proposal than as an act of comraderie and good will?  Are we cold-hearted exchangers, seeing it as a way to simply use another person’s building, rather than as a way to welcome and embrace others into our homes? 
 

I couldn’t help but wonder:  am I missing something by not embracing the exchanger as much as I embrace the exchange?

 

 

SEA AND TIME IN SARDINIA

Sardinia is a checklist of passions.  Particularly for Jeff and Max and me.  My passion for the coast, not as an emasculated swimming pool backdrop for someone’s second home, but as a pure and wild wonder of nature.  Passion for history, for all that has gone before us and left its mark.  Passion for the beauty of this island’s sea and rock, of the curve of mountains, the stretch of fields rippling with sun-tanned grasses, of bushes dripping cream and pink and burgundy flowers.  Sardinia has long stretches of coast that are absolutely, gloriously, echoingly empty of people and houses.  Mile after mile of trees and grasses, rounded mountains, ice-white cliffs and water in every conceivable shade of blue, from royal to aqua to nearly green to, at times, almost purple.  And tucked away in silent grassy plots, or sheltering under trees, or edging the shore are ruins from cultures and peoples who go back in time to the 7^th century BC.  Human footsteps have walked this island for millennia, and yet in many places the island is empty.

            Sardinia is a heady mixture for coastal-philes and amateur historians such as we.  Initially, it was not a top destination in our trip.  I added it to the itinerary in a careless, “sure why not?” sort of way, having had to first look it up on a map to see where in the world it was.  When I realized it was part of Italy, and was an island with a reputation for good beaches, I thought that we could certainly pass a pleasant week there.

            Indeed. 

            Kansas is pleasant.  Oz is pure magic.  And as far as I’m concerned, Sardinia is all Oz.

            We stayed in Alghero, a 13^th century walled town on the wilder, less populated and less visited west coast of Sardinia.  We never made it off the west coast.  You could spend a month, a happy blissful month, just exploring the west coast, drifting from one jaw-dropping beach to another, interspersed with ambles into history that turn the island into an open-air museum. 

            Alghero perches on the rocks above the shimmering Mediterranean.  There is modern beach-towny stuff on its perimeter but its heart is a walled stone city, built by the marauding Catalans in the 1200s.  The walls encircle the old town like a mother’s protective embrace.  You can walk along the top of the walls, the narrow, cobblestone streets of the medieval town snaking off on one side, the sea sighing up against the walls on the other.  Periodically there are round towers, built of blonde sandstone, rising in impressive bulk along the wall.  The sky stretches above, without the interruption of skyscrapers, without the clutter of buildings.  And below the wall is the crystal clear sea.  We sat and watched cormorants diving for fish.  We could see their snakelike bodies fly-swimming under the water, necks outstretched, wings pinned back, zooming through the water like a dart. Then they pop up to the surface, throw back their heads, and swallow a wriggling fish. You can see the birds swimming like fish, the fish flying away from them like birds, the water like air, so clear that it appears the birds and fish are simply floating below you.

Long slabs of rock jut into the sea below the wall.  Then the wall turns, the town turning with it like dance partners well-used to each other’s bodies, moving in syncopation to the music.  The wall and the town curve in, and now wide sandy beaches appear, one after another.  The town goes to play there, the wall now replaced by a bike and walking path.  The beach town vibe kicks in.

We decided to explore south of Alghero, and drove our little square rented Fiat down to Tharros, an archaeological site and former Phoenician-Roman town on the very tip of the Sinis Peninsula in southwest Sardinia.  The drive from Alghero to Tharros is fantastic.  A two-lane highway ripples along the coast.  Hills roll down to the water’s edge, sometimes ending in sheer white cliffs and other times in bush-covered edges.  For 50 kilometers or more, there is nothing but treed hills, bushes and the shimmering sea.  Heaven.  A stretch of coast still wild in this world.  I long to be a millionaire to buy it, save it as it is right now before the developers and realtors and cruise ship operators discover this area and conquer it, like the Phoenicians and the Romans and all the bandits through time have done before.

Along the way to Tharros, we followed a few signs off the road into a dirt parking lot near a field.  We walked up a rutted dusty road, through sunbleached grass, to Cornus – or what remains of it.  It was built in 215 BC, first a Phoenician outpost, then a Roman one.  No one is around.  We walk through a little gate and we can see the remains of walls among the grass and bushes.  Then a stone sarcophagus, then another.  We are in the ancient town’s cemetery.  We backtrack out and walk over to another area. A short flight of stone steps leads up to nothing now – but before, a temple perhaps.  Near the steps is a round depression in the ground, lined with stones, with steps leading into it.  A well?  Then Max walks down the steps and sits onto a carved stone seat, leans back and drapes his arms along a circular wall.  It emerges from the mist:  it is a bath, with two seating areas and steps leading down into it.  A bath in a town built two centuries before Christ, still intact, still understandable, in a quiet field off a winding, two-lane road where machines the bath’s builder could never have imagined whizz by.

Further south we come to Tharros on the very tip of the Sinis Peninsula.  Here three civilizations left their mark:  the mysterious Nurraghic people of Sardinia, stretching back in time to the 7^th century BC, then the marauding Phoenicians, then the conquering Romans.  You park beside a blindingly white beach lined by the clear blue sea, then climb a hill beneath the blue dome of sky, and cresting the hill, Tharros is below you.  On one end are the circles of stones built by the Nurraghic people as homes, temples, offerings to the gods – it is not known.  Among them are Phoenician remains, including hundreds of clay pots that were found, beautiful and intact, from the 2^nd century BC.  The remains of a Roman road, the interlocked gray stones intact, leads down the hill to the Roman part of the town, and standing at the bottom are two white columns facing the sea.  The only thing not mysterious about the place is why civilization after civilization chose this spot to build upon.  A spit of land, jutting into the sea, with all-encompassing views over water and land.  No surprise attacks would be possible, and greeting all visitors, enemy or friend, would be the gleaming town of Tharros, climbing up the hill, and at its feet the never-ending sea.

LAND OF CONTRASTS

           

We’ve been in Sorrento, Italy, the past several days, using it as a base to explore Naples and Pompeii, and the town of Sorrento itself.  We got a lovely hotel outside of town, in the hills overlooking the Bay of Naples.  The hotel has a pretty outdoor pool, and marble floors that are gleamingly white and cool to the touch, and patios with gorgeous views of the water and nearby mountains.  And it is beside a narrow, winding two-lane road that has ear-shatteringly noisy traffic and is a threat to life and limb. 

When we sit out on our pretty balcony to gaze out to sea, we have to shout at each other to be heard as city buses, tour buses, motorcycles, cars and taxis, trucks and the occasional horse-drawn cart goes by.  The city buses honk to warn oncoming vehicles as they tend to slide into the oncoming lane of traffic; the motorcyclists yell at the cars and the cars beep back; trucks rattle; and tour buses with recorded music blaring out of the windows go by, and the whole thing results in an unholy din.  After an hour on the balcony I feel like my ears are bleeding.

            The hotel is perched on top of this road, and when you leave the front door, you walk down 4 steps and you are literally in, not near or parallel to or adjacent to, the road.  There are no sidewalks, and the only little rim of a shoulder is across the street, so we wait for a lull in the traffic and sprint across the road, praying that we’ll make it. It’s an invigorating way to begin a day and a real invigorating way to end it after a late dinner and a bottle of wine.

            But this is the land of contrasts, and the elegant hotel adjacent to Hot Rod Heaven is a metaphor for much larger contrasts.  Naples ushers you into this region, and Sorrento straddles its mid-section and between the two runs a local train filled with a mix of tourists and locals using its spray-painted and rattling cars.  From Naples to Sorrento is an hour and ten minutes on the train, with stops along the way for commuter towns as well as the archaeological gems of Herculaneum and Pompeii.   While only 70 minutes separates Naples and Sorrento, the cities might as well be in two completely separate universes.

            Sorrento has elevated self-promotion into an art form.  It has taken advantage of its limited assets and finagled them into an extraordinary tourist industry. It’s like a somewhat attractive woman who began with nice breasts and decent legs and added dieting, hair implants, a tummy tuck and lazer eye surgery to transform herself into a real looker.  Sorrento took its basic assets -- an attractive main street and some cool, labyrinthine side streets, good Bay views, and access to great historical treasures – and married them with an ability to transform lemons into the limoncella liquor that picks you up, kisses you on both cheeks, tells you it loves you, and then kicks your ass down the stairs, all with a frosty lemon tang.  Wa la:  instant tourist mecca.   The town exists for no other purpose than to serve, like an Italian Jeeves The Butler saying “Very good, sir” to tourists of every stripe and nationality.  Sorrento is a big, open-air shopping mall, selling lemon-themed pottery, food, drink, linens, housewares – anything on which a lemon can be prettily displayed.  Consequently, it is jam-packed, knee-deep, chock-a-block, cheek-by-jowel filled with tourists who come by boat, by train, by bus, by car, to be cheerfully served.

            Hop the train in Sorrento and chug along for 70 minutes and you emerge in Naples.  Naples is a mad, impoverished bag woman to Sorrento’s carefully coiffed and prettily dressed matron. 

We spent a day at the Archaeological Museum of Naples, wandering through its unparalleled collection of antique statuary, stunning mosaics, gorgeous frescoes and multitudinous items that were “removed” (i.e., ripped-off) from Pompeii and Herculaneum.  The collection is another study in contrasts:  world-class art of breathtaking value displayed in a haphazard fashion with extremely limited signage and absolutely no maintenance.  We’re talking major dust bunnies here:  the statues are covered with a film of dust that appears to be as old as the statues are.  I wanted to pass a hat and go outside and hire a char woman to come in and tidy up the priceless works of art.  Because there were any number of people just outside of the art museum who would have jumped at the chance of paid employment.  Naples is drowning in unemployment : nearly one out of three of its residents are job-less.  The poverty is jaw-dropping.  We walked from the museum back to the train station, a good brisk 25 minute walk, and we passed street after dismal street of crumbling apartment buildings with graffiti-emblazoned walls.  Even the porticoes and walls of churches – Mama Mia! – were not exempt from the spray-can’s orange and blue revenge.   People loitered on the street, watching us tromp by with our day packs on, feeling like a Rip-Me-Off-Now! sign was pasted to our backs. 

As we neared the train station we came into a big central square.  Garbage was piled in mounds on it, not just the odd over-turned bin’s worth of garbage but weeks’ worth of garbage, piled into heaps.  Inside the station a fist fight broke out, two men thrashing each other, yelling, drawing a crowd and eventually, train employees who waded into the fray, grabbing one guy, holding the other, everyone shouting and continuing to throw punches.  Welcome to Napoli!  Everybody sing together:  When the trash is thigh-high and you’re punched in the eye, that’s amore . . .

We climbed back onto the commuter train headed to Sorrento.  Everybody sing together:  Be our guest, be our guest, we will serve you without rest, an ice-cold limoncella shot will add a lovely bit of zest . . . .

As we were bouncing along on the rattly train filled with chattering Italian school kids, tired locals and sun-burned tourists, a series of musicians boarded and left the train.  First on was a quartet that included a guy lugging a full-size bass violin.  You don’t often see that on a subway!  The group did some nice Gipsy-Kings-meet-Italy numbers, passed the tambourine for donations, and then left a few stops later.  Next up was a saxophone player accompanied by bongo drums.  Not as good as the “Italian Kings” but not bad.  They lasted a stop or two and then split.  The last musician was a short, sad-faced man playing an electric keyboard, accompanied by a little boy of three or four.  The boy shyly passed through the carriage holding out a small leather purse for donations. Behind him strolled his sad-faced father playing, of all things, Beethoven’s Ode To Joy.  On a second-hand electric keyboard.  On a graffiti-laced rattletrap train.  Going from Naples to Sorrento, one extreme to another.  The mournful man banging out an electric version of Beethoven’s classic Ode To Joy. 

Salude! from the land of contrasts.

STREETS OF ANTIQUITY

           

There are ghost towns in Rome. Houses lurk below the modern streets, entombed by centuries of medieval and Renaissance and Victorian and modern-day homes built above them.  Outside of Rome, the ancient port city of Ostia Antica lies far from the sea that once splashed against its shores.  Millennia of silt deposited by the mouths of rivers created land where there once was sea.  Now the town is marooned in time and space, a port in dry dock, a metropolis of empty streets.  Mosaics of fish and dolphins, of ships in full sail and beckoning lighthouses, decorate a silent piazza in this abandoned port now far from the sea.

            It’s no surprise that other ages lay beside and below 21^st century Rome.   It doesn’t hide its age; no architectural tummy tucks or engineering face lifts for Rome.   Its wrinkles have come from the sun of Caesar.  The Coliseum, the Forum, Trajan’s Column are its age spots marking the passage of time on the skin of the city.

            Below the modern streets on which buses rumble, and tourists move in glassy-eyed herds, lie older avenues.  Underneath the five and six story buildings with their imposing weight, their windows covered by the Foster Grants of wooden shutters, lay the silent walls of houses that once stood, frescoed and proud, in the teeming hub of the capitol. 

            The home of a wealthy 2^nd century Roman, perhaps a senator, has been uncovered below an elegant palazzo built by a rich Renaissance merchant.  Archeologists and historians burrowed below the fancy building, like time-traveling gophers, and uncovered the remains of an ancient villa.  They then teamed up with lighting experts to create an eerie reconstruction of what the villa once looked like.  Called the Domus Romane Di Palazzo Valentini, it just opened for small, public tours in October.  It’s so new that it hasn’t yet made it into the tour books, so you can experience it in the company of a handful of fellow travelers, not multitudes.

            To enter the villa, you walk down a flight of clear plastic stairs built above the ancient steps.  It’s dark, and the clear steps seem to float above the time-dulled brick ones, throwing off your depth perception so that with each step, you feel like you’re falling – falling onto the ancient steps, into the exhumed villa, back into time.  A recorded voice (in whatever language the group chooses) points out what you are seeing along the way.  It’s dark, three stories below the current street level.  Lights focus on what’s being described:  a patch of frescoed wall, a segment of floor mosaics.  You look and try to imagine:  yes, you can almost see it – the wall would have been there, the mosaics might have been loops or swirls, but it’s hard to paint the picture in your mind.  Then gradually, the lighting changes.  The fresco fragment grows, the missing parts supplied by the lighting technician, and suddenly you see panels of vermillion interspersed with rectangles of gold, with leaves and flowers painted in a border.  The elegantly painted room comes alive. The lighting changes again, and the mosaic fragment on the floor expands, the missing patterns filled in, and all of a sudden the floor glistens in a beautiful pattern of interlocking, colorful circles.  Then the square hollows in the floor are tiled with light and filled with electronic beams of water, and there they are:  the baths in which the family immersed themselves.  A tape plays of children’s laughter amid the sound of splashing water. The ancient rooms live again.  The light becomes brighter, and now a curving staircase is revealed in the shadows, the steps wide and even, leading up . . . straight into a wall: the foundation of the Renaissance mansion above, which rests on these rooms below.  The mosaics circle across the floor, only to be cut in half by the foundation of the building above.  Half of the ornate mosaic pattern is stranded on one side of the foundation wall, the other half on the opposite side, twain in two like Berlin halved by the Wall.

            I am sure that ghosts prowl that subterranean villa, just as I am sure they roam the streets of Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome, located about a half-hour outside of Rome by train.  Ostia was once a teeming city of 20,000 in the 1^st and 2^nd centuries AD.  It served merchant vessels hauling goods destined for the million-plus residents of Rome.  The mighty Tiber River joined the sea at Ostia.  Vessels from around the Mediterranean called there, unloading their cargo to be transferred onto boats and shipped up the river to Rome.  The Emperor Hadrian helped maintain and expand Ostia, the same emperor who directed the construction of the wall across England marking the northern-most extreme of Rome’s territory, the same emperor who designed the reconstruction of the Pantheon around 140 AD.  The talented and multi-faceted Hadrian directed the construction of apartment buildings and baths at Ostia; the sea merchants came; the town boomed. 

An amphitheater was constructed in the middle of the city, capable of seating 4,000 people.  A special area was built between the stage and the seats that could be filled with water, so a pool would reflect the actions of the actors up on the stage.  Behind the stage was an elegant public square with a temple in the middle.  The four sides of the square were wide sidewalks, and edging the sidewalks were stalls for vendors.  The stalls were separated by low stone walls, and in front of each stall were inlaid mosaics advertising the merchant’s wares.  You can walk along the sidewalk and see them still:  leaping fish for a fish monger; beside it etched in white mosaics on a black background are two ships, rigging taut, sails unfurled, being guided into harbor by a flashing lighthouse.  Perhaps this merchant sold rope for rigging or canvas for sails: we do not know.  Beside the silent ships, frozen forever in mid-sail, is an elephant, perfectly proportioned, drawn in white mosaic stones.  This trader hailed from Africa, and used the elephant as his country’s calling card.  Turn the corner onto the next sidewalk and there are barrels portrayed for a barrel-maker, and further an olive branch is outlined for the seller of fine olive oil.  You can almost hear the merchant’s calls, almost see the haggling exchanges, the hands waving to acquaintances, the kiss on the cheek for friends.

            But the mosaics advertise stalls that are long gone.  Surrounding the square are the walls and roofless buildings of the ruins.  Over time, the Tiber River brought its own goods to Ostia:  silt, dirt, gravel and pebbles washed off the lands that empty into it.  The mouth of the river spat out the dirt it carried, depositing a plume of silt that grew and grew, pushing the sea further away.  There are maps showing the shoreline growing around Ostia, passing it, engulfing it in a sea of land where once was an ocean of water.  Ostia was stranded, left behind by the receding sea.

But the Roman road through the city still remains: big gray slabs of stone paving the ancient streets.  And much of the buildings remain, too, with fragments of frescoes still decorating walls.  You walk down the town’s main street and here is a road-side bar with a counter that’s still comfortable to lean against, and behind it a panel frescoed with images of the food and drink you could buy there.  A pleasant courtyard is just outside with a fountain, and stone benches built into the walls.  Here you’d pick up a snack and a cool drink, take it out to the patio for al fresco dining.

Further down the street are the remains of apartment buildings and baths.  You walk through the buildings and down side streets and you are alone.  The school groups are clustered elsewhere. Throughout the town and especially at its edges, you can be in peace and silence with the buildings, with the city.  Red poppies are blossoming, bushes grow amidst the cracks.  Exploring the remains of a villa, I idly push aside pebbles and dirt with the toe of my shoe and revealed beneath is a mosaic.  Bending down, I scratch away the dirt and there is a corner of a whirling shape, still beautiful, still in place, nearly two thousand years after the artist carefully fit the mosaic stones together to decorate the floor of what was once a beautiful room.  I rest my hand on the mosaic and imagine the feet that walked here:  the wobbly bare-footed steps of babies, the quick sandaled step of a businessman.   The walkers are gone but the floor remains, a carpet of dirt and flowers and pebbles resting on top of it.

  At the edge of the city is another complex of baths.  No one is around.  There’s an odd flight of steps leading below-ground and we follow it.  Down we go, emerging into an underground vault.  The air is cool and damp.  The vault becomes a tunnel, high enough to stand up straight but not much more.  Blocked from the bright sunlight above, the tunnel is shadowy.  There are stone benches running along both sides, and patches of slick green moss, feeding off the subterranean damp, appear on the vaulted ceiling.  No one is around, there are no voices, no chattering groups.  It is utterly still.

We look down the length of the tunnel.  Standing at the end, blazingly white, is a life-size statue of the god Mithras straddling a young bull, pulling back its head and reaching down to cut the young animal’s throat.  Both the muscular young god and the bull are carved from white marble.  An opening is cut into the roof above the god’s head so that a square patch of sun shines down upon him, lighting him so that he gleams in the dark gloom of the tunnel.  He is sacrificing the bull so that its regenerative blood will flow.  His calf muscles are flexed, his powerful forearms are sinewy and strong, the bull’s eyes roll in fear, and Mithras glances upward, toward heaven, as his arm descends with the knife.

This is a bath-cum-temple dedicated to Mithras, who once had quite a following.  His chief rival, in fact, for fame and renown, was Jesus.  The two shared similar stories and similar qualities.  Here in Ostia, the cult of Mithras ruled.  And in this cavern carved into the earth his followers would sit on these stone benches, the image of their god as big as life enshrined before them.

Now the tunnel is empty, except for us.  Mithras continues to glisten, powerful and imposing, enthroned here century after century, his followers long gone, his power disappeared.  The bull is frozen in the moment before death; Mithras is frozen in the act of sacrifice.   All is silent except for the voices of those long gone.

We quietly make our way out of the vault and climb back to the surface, to the poppies and grasses, to the quiet abandoned streets, the roofless, time-worn buildings.

There are ghosts in Rome.

ROMAN HOLIDAY

           

 We’ve been in Rome the past week and in Italy for nearly three weeks, and in this citadel of Catholicism, I’ve learned a little something about sins.  In the medieval church in San Gimignano in Tuscany, images of Lucifer and eternal damnation are painted on the ceiling above where the parishioners sit (or cower, if they look up and see what the hell’s above them, so to speak.)  A horned, hulking devil crouches on the ceiling, grasping Cassius in one claw and Brutus in the other, while below him demons skewer adulterers in unmentionable places – well actually, in the places that caused the adulterers to commit the sin of adultery in the first place (adulterate? adulterize?)  Near them obese gluttons yearn for platters of food that are just out of reach, and liars and cheaters and God knows what else-ers are punished by demons who seem to really love their work.

            Michelangelo’s version of the last judgment on the walls of the Sistine Chapel is similarly cheerless, featuring Chiron beating the crap out of sinners with his oar as he rows them across the river Styx, where they are greeted by more gleeful demons who have just spent the last bit of eternity thinking up new ways to drive home the message of “you play, you pay.”

            Amidst this milieu of crimes and punishments is a new entry:  house exchangers who fudge about their houses.  In Catholicism, I believe this is called a “sin of omission:” that is, failing to provide information in such a way that you are, in effect, lying without drawing a heavenly red flag and demonic penalty points by actually uttering an untruth.  In House Exchange-ism, I believe this is called “bullshitting about your house,” or in Latin, domicilius bullshitius.  We have run smack dab into a Casa BS that’s all about omitting certain details that, come to find out, are rather important.  Here’s an example of a sin of house exchange omission:  our current location was described as being a 35-minute train ride from Rome.  This is technically true, but that sentence omits certain other truths such as the fact that the 35-minute train ride is preceded by a bus ride that can be either 15 minutes if the driver is operating the vehicle as if he were being chased by the hounds of hell,  or 30 minutes if the driver indulges in what we call “mystery stops” where he pulls over on the side of the road and stares into the middle distance in a contemplative fashion, or even 45 minutes if the driver is fighting insane traffic caused by people leaving the beach to return to Rome.  In the traffic jams, the normally two-lane road turns into a five-lane road:  one lane for outbound traffic, one lane for inbound traffic, one lane between the lanes of traffic for death-wishing motorcyclists, and a lane on either side of the road for parked cars.  The bus ride, in turn, is preceded by a 10-minute walk to the bus stop.  So with the walk, the shall we say “mercurial” bus schedule, and the train ride, a good hour-and-a-half is taken up in getting from our house exchange house to Rome.  Then, once we’re in Rome, we face the exciting Roman subway, all two lines of it, or the city buses, which apparently went on strike a few days ago, which explained – unfortunately, in hindsight – why we stood for a bloody half hour at a bus stop waiting for a bus that never materialized.  I find the effectiveness of a strike is somewhat lessened when no one knows it’s happening, and the absence of a workforce is felt not as a political statement against oppression and poor wages  but as just another instance of crappy service.

            So to say that the house exchange house is a 35-minute train ride from Rome is sort of like saying that Nixon left office abruptly while failing to mention that pesky Watergate affair.

            But I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that it takes us the better part of 2 hours to get anywhere in Rome because there are undeniable perks about where we’re located.  Yes, it’s one of those glass half-full/half-empty situations. We’re in Torvajanica, which is on the Italian coast southwest of Rome.  It’s a little beach town clustered along the sandy shore and I’d like to say it’s adorable or quaint but I can’t because it’s kind of a dump.  It’s a cross between a Mexican beach town and a smaller, off-season New Jersey beach town, a place that’s in transition but it’s not clear if it’s going up or coming down in the world. At the moment, it’s not particularly ugly but it’s also not particularly pretty.  Our exchange is a 2-bedroom apartment on the ground floor that the family bought in the early 1990s and used throughout their children’s childhoods, which accounts for the detritus of 20 years that’s shoved into every closet and scattered across every countertop.  When you are traveling for four months, you cook whenever you can and that requires at least one flat surface in a kitchen not covered by plastic cups, mismatched salt-and-pepper shakers, assorted wicker baskets, and half-used bottles of olive oil.  God knows I am all too familiar with how your belongings can creep up on you, but there’s a microwave in this apartment that I swear the Allies brought with them when they landed, just down the coast from here, in WWII.  Then there’s the toaster, which is less effective than simply laying slices of bread out on the terrace in the direct sunlight. 

However – and here is where we get into the “glass-half-full” part of this situation – however, there is a beautiful, wrap-around yard that is a pure delight to sit out in, with stone walls covered by masses of blossoming jasmine that scent the air, and cool breezes.  There’s also a patio with a regulation-sized ping-pong table, and that counts for something when you’re traveling with a 13-year-old.  And of course, there’s the beach, which is just a block away.

            The Italian beach scene is not what I imagined, at least not around here, which is certainly not Capri or the Riviera.  The beachgoers are mostly families and couples, plopped down in the sand for a nice day out.  Most look pretty good but there is the occasional man wearing a speedo bathing suit who causes you to avert your eyes to avoid permanent retinal damage.  There are lone salesmen who roam the beach peddling jewelry and sunglasses, and they’ll come up to you and stand, arms outstretched with their goods, and just stare at you even after you’ve said “no thanks” in every known language, including that weird African language that consists entirely of mouth clicks.  But it’s a sandy beach and the water is shimmering blue and you can’t go too far wrong with that combination.

            So there are some big benefits from our location.  Plus the fact our house exchange partners met us in Rome and the man took Jeff and Max here in the car with our suitcases, and the woman took me via the train-bus connection so I would know how it works, all of which was very nice.  Plus they then toasted us with a bottle of champagne and drove us to a nearby restaurant to pick-up some take-out for dinner, so what’s not to love?  I’ve personally always followed the “out-of-sight, out-of-your-hair” approach to our exchangers, and made it my business to be out of our house when our exchange partners arrive and away from it while they are there, but who’s to say that actually meeting the people whose home you are using isn’t, in fact, a very rational idea?

            Along with the beach, the yard, and champers-upon-arrival, this exchange allows us to see a part of Italian life that we’d never otherwise witness.  Like the train into Rome.  There are two kinds of trains.  There’s a new, shiny train that has no internal doors through its entire length, meaning that you can stand in the first car and look down a stretch of ten cars to the last car with no interruptions, like staring down a long silver tube.  The other kind is like a classic New York subway train, covered with graffiti and old as the hills that rattles so hard you literally can’t hear yourself speak.  The train, old or new, is filled with commuters: it’s sort of like the MARC train from DC to Baltimore.  There are a few well-dressed businessmen but the rest are shop girls or workmen, going to work or coming home, and there’s not an American – or for that matter, an English speaker – among the lot.  To be among regular Italians, and stay in a beach town where we are absolutely the only Americans, is a big plus in my book.

            So too is the ability to see weird, freakish or funky things, which you can do much more easily when you’re walking down streets, waiting for buses, or bouncing along on trains.  We were captivated this week by a clearly crazy woman who boarded the bus wearing a fetching home-made bonnet crafted from what appeared to be colored paper coffee filters folded into an intricate arrangement that resembled a kerchief.  She’d also edged her blouse in an eye-catching border of duct tape, which she’d also used to create a stylish matching belt and attractive purse.  Accessorizing with duct tape has never occurred to me, but she pulled it off, proving that even insane Italians still have style.  She was like a poster girl for hardware chic, the “Miss Demented December” in the hardware pin-up calendar.

            If we weren’t staying out in Torvajanica, we would never have had the opportunity of living next to an Italian deaf-mute family.  You may ask yourself:  how did I know there was a deaf mute family next door since, presumably, they’d be about the quietest family on the block?  It was the bellowing screams that first caught my attention.  For reasons I simply do not understand, and here I am admittedly running the risk of a serious politically incorrect observation, both the man and particularly the woman insist on verbalizing even though they can’t hear each other.  It’s one thing if one was deaf and the other was not, and they exchanged comments both via hand language and the spoken word, but in this case, both the man and woman are stone cold deaf.  I tell you, it comes as a bit of a shock to be in the kitchen, working away on the two inches of uncluttered counter space, and hear what sounds like a guttural scream followed by a hollow shout-moan coming from the next-door yard.  It’s an unsettling sound, there’s no two ways about it, and it draws you up short when you hear it.  I glanced over to their house in shock and there they were, framed in their kitchen window, signing each other and bellowing at the same time, and since they are Italian, they are expressive signers:  arms flail as they spell out words, shoulders shrug, heads bob, all the time their fingers are talking a mile a minute and they’re interspersing their dialogue with the occasional guttural roar (man) or high-pitched wavering shriek (woman).  It proves that no matter your handicap, you’re an Italian first and foremost, and that means you’re going to talk a lot whether or not your partner can hear you.  

Italians gesticulate and remonstrate; their sentences tend to sound like “I’m-a  little-a  whiny-a” accompanied by expressive shrugs and throwing up your hands in a waddya-gonna-do? sort of way.  I wondered how this affected their signing: does a deaf Italian sign differently from a deaf German?  I imagine a deaf German must have to go home and soak his hands at the end of a long day since German words are about six thousand letters long and would be a real pain to spell out, but I also bet that he gets the job done with a minimum of dramatic remonstrances and expressive asides.  I can’t imagine a hearing Italian saying anything without using his hands for additional emphasis, which must create a challenge for a deaf Italian since how can you make grand sweeping gestures while trying to convey basic information like pick up a liter of milk on your way home? 

            Between Ms. Duct Tape and our shrieking next door signers, I thought we’d plumbed the limits of noteworthy behavior but that was before I watched the Italian maintenance workers “fix” a leaky toilet in the ladies room of our local train station.  The experience made me nostalgic for DC as it evidenced the same commitment to quality craftsmanship that I’ve come to expect from DC service providers.           

There were two workers tackling the problem:  an older guy wearing a baseball cap and his younger colleague.  First they stood and stared at the toilet, which was continually running.  Staring seemed not to fix it, much to their irritation.  So the next repair step was taken: getting a mallet and hitting random parts of the toilet bowl, the flush lever and the pipes.  Again, disappointment.  The third step of discussing the problem also failed to result in the longed-for repair.  Drastic action was needed.  So the older maintenance man set about hammering a nail into the doorjamb and then trying to latch the door shut with it.   The problem would evidently cease to exist if no one could see it, a sort of plumber’s version of a tree making no sound if it fell in the forest without witnesses.  But a particularly hefty whack caused the nail to bend over, at which point the younger man threw up his hands in despair and stalked off: no man should have to put up with these kinds of trials.  The bent nail meant the door’s latch wouldn’t attach to it, throwing a real monkey wrench – so to speak – into the plan of simply closing the door on the problem.  Creative thinking was called for and luckily, our man was just the fellow to do it.  He walked over to a piece of railroad equipment that was parked on a nearby set of tracks.  It looked like something you’d send out to repair a stranded train with.  Our guy zeroed in on a clump of cables running out of the machine’s engine.  He reached over and grabbed one of the cables and gave it a good tug, freeing it from the bundle of cables.  He then pried a wire out of it and, getting a firm grip on it, ripped the wire free.  Back he walked to the toilet door, the wire dangling from his hand.  In a quick second he’d wrapped it around the latch and run it over the bent nail, and then twisted it tight.  The door was now wired shut.  Problem solved!  Of course, bad news the next time someone tries to fire up the railroad equipment to go help a stranded train – there will be some wiring surprises there for him to deal with!  But the immediate issue of the pesky toilet had been resolved, though we could hear the sound of the water gurgling as it continued to run, unchecked, in the toilet bowl. 

As far as our intrepid maintenance man was concerned, the problem was solved.  He turned away from the bathroom, grinning with satisfaction, and it was then that I saw the single word emblazoned across the brim of his cap:  GENIUS.   Really.  So true, I thought to myself, so very, very true.

            So on balance, I have to conclude that the 2-hour commute and ancient household appliances and general clutter of our house exchange house are all worth it.  In fact, it could be said that finding this house exchange was – well – pure genius.