the Fourth of July.... in Rome

Day 35: Munich train station - Monday, July 4, 1988 When we gathered at the Munich train station, we found an overbooked midnight train to Rome. Dr, Mrs, and Kari Groth skipped the train so there'd be enough spaces. Dr Trennepohl had already planned to stay in Munich, so this left Mike Flick in charge. Not that we noticed or anything. With the Groths and Dr T in Munich, that left us with 41 people - 37 students, plus Mrs Trennepohl, Paige, Adrienne, and Dr T's mother. Which didn't QUITE fill up 7 booths. Six of the booths would be all Aggie affiliated and either all men or all women; I was one of the 5 leftovers. Our coach would feature Melanie, Debbie, Darren, Wally, me, and a player to be named later. Once we'd settled unto the train, the player to be named later arrived. He was a short, thin, bespectacled man, somewhere between middle-aged and elderly. He spoke no English, but understood just enough that when we asked what nationality he was - and guessed "German?" "French?" "Swiss?" "Greek?" etc. - he finally told us, "Italiano." Wally laughed. "That makes sense. We're going to Rome!" And we still couldn't guess the man's nationality on our own. What a bunch of Aggies. I think we were stuck in two mindsets. One, WE were visiting, so it didn't occur to us that somehow might be GOING HOME on the train we were taking to just one more stop out of a dozen plus. Two, we were going to Rome, which we unconsciously think of as its own country, what with the Roman Empire and all that. Sure, if you ask us what country Rome is in, we can all answer "Italy," but if you ask us what you call natives of Rome, we won't think of "Italians." They're "Romans."

Our Italian bunkmate wasn't too talkative after professing his nationality. We Aggies tried to be friendly. Javier even came over to speak with him; none of us spoke Italian, but we figured Javier's Spanish would be close enough that we could communicate with a little effort. Our Italian bunkmate wasn't up to it, though. "Como se llama?" Javier asked. Our Italian bunkmate responded with but a puzzled look. "Que es su nombre?" Javier tried again. The idiomatic "How are you called?" hadn't worked, so he tried the literal "What is your name?" Our Italian bunkmate turned away from Javier. I decided we should call our Italian bunkmate Pedro, just for something a little more personable than "the Italian guy." Pedro caught on pretty good as a name. (Robert corrected me the next day, saying "Pedro" is not an Italian name, and "Paolo" would have been better. But by then, "Pedro" had stuck.) When we were just about ready to leave, Alan said, "you know, we could be in for some serious partying on this train," referring to all these Aggies confined in close quarters. "Well, let's not be hasty," I warned. "We don't know if Pedro's any kind of party animal." "Are you kidding?" Darren countered. "Pedro's a drinking fool!" Score one on the quipmeter for Darren. Pedro turned out to be a mixed blessing. He seemed hostile to us because we had so much luggage, and he lit a cigarette at one point, flaring Debbie's allergies for tobacco smoke. On the other hand, he showed us a couple of convenient storage compartments, very important since each of us (except Pedro) was carrying a month's worth of luggage. Also, we could tell from the sheets and pillows provided by the train that they expected us to sleep, but we had trouble figuring out how six people would sleep on two benches. Pedro flipped a few well-disguised wooden switches and pulled out bunks for each of us. Crud, we're Texans. We drive everywhere. This mass transit stuff is pretty mysterious to us. Not that we were model roommates ourselves. Once Pedro showed us the way, we set up the bunks, divvied them up, and got ready to go to sleep. As I opened up my bag to unpack my glasses, Melanie spotted the Hard Rock Teddy Bear I'd bought in London. Melanie thought it was cute, and asked to borrow it for the night. (Of course I let her.) Darren made sure I didn't forget my Bible when I closed my backpack without placing it in. Just when I thought everyone was going to sleep, Melanie decided we were at camp and suggested we all read aloud out of our journals. She wanted me to start, too, and my efforts to delay failed. I said, "well, there's some personal stuff in here I don't think I want to read. Melanie answered, "I want to HEAR the personal stuff."

Too bad. No one in this car was going to hear about my emotional turbulence. I read the first page (about Amsterdam) and the last page up to that point (about Alan and I running around Munich) and managed to weasel out of reading any more. Then Wally read his first few pages; he worked several jokes into his, continually referring to Schiphol Airport as $#!^hole Airport. (I'm not sure why he did that. Schiphol seemed like a decent enough airport to me.) Then Darren took a turn at our invisible podium and, starting at the beginning, read halfway through his. I sensed that he discretely skipped over parts. He threw in some very kind words about me and particularly my musicianship. During the Greek cruise, he described our nights at the piano. "I think Mark plays piano very well," he announced to us from the pages. It's always great to hear stuff like that, especially from a guy like Darren, who doesn't give cheap compliments. I've got to give Wally and Darren this - nothing phony about them; they each write just like they talk, cuss words and all. Of course, while we're doing all this reading, poor Pedro isn't getting any sleep. And I don't think Melanie and Debbie had read from their journals by the time we all dozed off. I'd managed about six hours sleep when someone working for the train (we presume) came around at 8 a.m. and woke us all up to take away the pillows and sheets. They even made us fold away all our beds, although I don't know why they cared about that one way or another. Obviously, they hadn't heard of student hours. Especially traveling student hours. None of us was too happy with this wake-up call. At least we knew Pedro wasn't to blame for it, but Pedro made his own trouble by lighting up another cigarette. Darren and I are ready to pitch him out the window. I wrote in the journal, "the rest of the trip will be a pain and a drag, I'm sure." I don't think the pun was intentional. Anyway, it didn't matter how much we liked him; we were stuck with Pedro for a 12-hour train ride regardless. With the bunks closed up for the day, Melanie was forced to sit up, her head gently wedged into a corner, pillowed by my Hard Rock teddy bear. Pedro had the seat next to her until around 10:30, when he left the coach for another smoke. At least he went "outside" for this one, but Pedro would pay a price for his attempt to work with us. Melanie, who hardly opened her eyes to notice the movement, fell over on her left side, occupying Pedro's seat in the process. As she slowly leaned into a semi-reclining position, she moved the teddy bear from her right cheek to the left so it could continue its pillow duties. Pedro poked his head in our coach several times over the next hour waiting for Melanie to get up, never speaking up for his seat. Later in the morning, another member of the train's goon squad gruffly asked for our passports. I felt like I could make a mint setting up a chain of charm schools in Italy. The need sure seemed to be there. These guys we'd met so far had no couth.

Once enough Aggies were awake, we began swapping adventure stories about the previous night. Come to find out, several Aggies did indeed sleep on the floor of their coach, or with their heads on one seat and their legs across the car on the opposite seats, because they didn't know about the bunks. Heck, how were they supposed to know? The train didn't come with operation manuals when we boarded it. The other Aggies envied us Pedro's company, despite our protests that our Italian bunkmate was at best a mixed blessing. We also noticed that, low and behold, it was the Fourth of July. Independence Day for the U.S. of A. Our celebration of America's 212th Birthday would be spearheaded by Ines, the woman who was returning to her native Paraguay in less than two months. Our possibilities for the Rome stop were broadened when the money was passed out. With the dollar surging since our stay in Paris, we'd come in under budget on our stops since France. Dr Groth arranged for the difference to be distributed to us for our last stop; it came to 120,000 lira. Before you get too excited, that's "only" about $92, though still plenty for our three days in Rome since the room was already covered. Alan Cooley and I were especially pleased; this windfall allowed us to budget all our remaining traveler’s checks for our stay in West Berlin. Speaking of Alan, he came around with a cool t-shirt idea. The front would say "Finance 421 - 1988 European Tour," and all our stops would be listed on the back, just like the shirts the rock stars sell. What a way to immortalize this trip. Everyone liked the idea. Pedro finally did get his seat back. I have to admit I did feel kinda sorry for the guy toward the end of the train ride. Here he was, ostensibly in his native country, surrounded by people who don't speak his language. He helps a bit, trying to be a part in his own way, but all he really wants is for no one to invade his space. Unfortunately, a train filled to capacity is a lousy place to cop such an attitude. By 11 a.m., the train was rockin' around too much for anyone to sleep. I spent the rest of the ride reading Bob Dylan lyrics. No one was sorry when the train ride was over. On our way from the train station to the hotel, we passed a bunch of baby-faced policemen with sub-machine guns escorting a cavalcade of official-looking cars. From what little we could tell, an ambassador or dignitary was being transported to this hotel near our own. Wally suggested we stick around and figure out what was happening. I declined: "No. If he needs an Uzi, I need to be elsewhere." What a welcome. I think I preferred the moonshot in Athens. The Hotel Venezia didn't seem to cater to student types. Our room was quite nice, don't get me wrong. It's just that the chandeliers, the small, cute lamps, and the pillow cases with baby-blue fringe don't reinforce the average college dude's macho self-image. It looked a bit effeminate, actually, but at least it had personality. The view outside was kinda drab - stone cubic buildings. *yawn*

As Darren would say, my "roomdogs" were the definitely-not-effeminate Joe Hirt and Rick Cazares. Once again, we had a double-bed and a cot in the room. I volunteered to take the cot again, but Rick insisted he take it. "You got the cot in Munich," he reasoned. "It's my turn this time." My roomdogs and I decided to go sight-seeing right away; the Roman Coliseum seemed like a great start. Marta joined us. But first: lunch. A small hole-in-the-wall place called Pizza Rustica seemed like a good start, and it was. They do pizza differently in Italy; it's cooked in squares and rectangles and folded over like sandwiches. The ingredients are the same, though, so the taste was familiar. And this was good stuff. Unfortunately, the Pizza Rustica is where I had a flash of Ugly American Syndrome. We'd been warned about gypsies in Rome; my folks warned me and Dr Groth warned us all. There are gypsies roaming Rome who would pick your pocket and weren't shy about doing in it. Unfortunately, I wasn't clear about how gypsies looked different from anyone else. Well, while we were standing around waiting for our order, some more customers came in. Their clothes were dirty, they were a bit overweight, and they looked like stereotypical people-you-shouldn't-trust. So I moved my wallet from my back pocket to a front pocket. The restaurant manager saw what I did. He patted me and told me not to worry. To prove his point, he pulled out a wallet full of bills - a baseball-sized wad of bills, although in lira there's no telling how much that's worth - and said, "I don't need your money." So I say, quick wit that I am, "hey, it's the customers I don't trust, not you." Yeah, like that would make him feel any better. ("Oh, you're okay, sir. It's your fellow countrymen, natives of the nation you're proud to call home. Those people I don't trust.") The manager laughed and said, "I was a customer once." I sure blew that one big time. Soon, however, events would prove my caution not to be misguided, just mistimed. We left the Pizza Rustica for the Colosseum; along the way, a couple of kids about half my height approached us. The younger child, a boy, held a handful of newspapers; the older child, a girl, apparently his older sister, spoke to us. She didn't speak to us in English, so we can't know for sure if she was trying to sell us a newspaper or two, but that's what it looked like. At first. I couldn't understand what they said, and I couldn't read the newspapers because they weren't in English, so I held out my right hand like a stop signal to say "no." Then the girl grabbed my left arm and began shaking it. The boy's hands were suddenly moving pretty quick, too. Instinctively, my left hand, resisting the little girls' pulls, snapped to my left front pocket; my wallet was still there from the Pizza Rustica misunderstanding.

The kids left pretty quickly after they noticed that. They may have gotten my metro tickets, but that was it. This failed heist sure gave Rick, Marta, Joe and me something to talk about. Later, we found out Rick Dalton had a similar incident happen to him. The aborted pickpocket attempt, fortunately, was in no way an omen of the rest of the stay. Rome may be past its prime, but the residue of its prime is impressive all by itself. So you can walk along a street of offices or apartments and suddenly stumble upon a lot filled with marble ruins. We were on our way to the monument to Victor Emmanuel, and *bam* - there's the Forum. I guess that shouldn't surprise me; I'm from a city that built its downtown area around the Alamo. Turns out we didn't exactly invent the idea of building the city around the historic sites. San Antonio wasn't built in a day, either. The monument I mentioned is a humongous memorial to Victor Emmanuel II. There were actually 3 Victor Emmanuels; the first and third weren't much - the third gave up Italy to Mussolini - but the second unified many small mini-states and provinces into the modern nation of Italy, winning armed conflicts against the Austrians while aiding the French and the Prussians. Victor Emmanuel II peacefully developed Italy the eight years of his reign as king. Words that looked like "Civil Liberty" and other equally grand concepts were inscribed in Latin on the stones of the monument. Even though I didn't know who Victor Emmanuel was at the time, the sight was inspiring. The monument to Victor Emmanuel bears a striking - and I'm certain in no way coincidental - resemblance to the Lincoln Memorial. Ironically, Victor Emmanuel's wars with Austria took place from 1860 to 1866. From there, it was a short walk to the Roman Colosseum. We were all looking forward to this, and started talking about what we expected long before we could see the place. No, no Christians were thrown to the lions here; that was at the Circus Maximus, which held over 150,000 people. As Ray Davies of the Kinks said in "Give the People What They Want," "throwing Christians to the lions/sold out ev'ry night," and apparently the capacity of 50,000 made the Roman Colosseum too small for such a popular attraction. After we straightened out some facts about the Colosseum, we picked a time to meet and broke up to each explore the stadium at our leisure. For me, the size of the Colosseum was hard to gauge since it's an open-air facility. I was expecting a facility the size of Kyle Field, where the Aggie football team plays their home games. Kyle Field help 78,000 people in the 1980s, but almost all of them stand or sit between the endlines on the stadium's three decks; the only end zone seats are in a single deck on the north end, called the "horseshoe." The Colosseum, however, is symmetrical all the way around, although only a franction of the Colosseum at its largest remains. To my eyes, it looked possibly not as big as the Summit in Houston, which holds only 18,000.

There were parallels to modern stadia even I could spot. One of the entrances to the spectators' area of the Colosseum (we didn't find any real "seats,") bore a truly startling resemblance to the passageways to the third deck seats of Kyle Field. All four of us noticed it. The symmetry was there. The size was right. The angle was such that you couldn't see anything beyond the steps besides the sky. Several, if not all, of us took a picture. We felt connected at that point. The rough-hewn stones making up the ramp made for the only contrast to the perfectly smooth concrete steps leading to the third deck of Kyle Field. And the steps at Kyle Field are dangerous when it rains, so I'm not sure we have the Romans beat where that's concerned. As for the Colosseum's size, we got a better measure of that late in our visit. Marta, Rick, and I found each other on the upper levels and looked over the arena. From up there, I spotted Joe on a lower level. At first, Rick and Marta thought I was fooling with them when I said "there's Joe," but they found him, too. I only recognized him by his red shirt and blue shorts, and he could barely hear me when I shouted at him. Then he had trouble spotting us once he heard me. I think he was 40 feet below us. Even underestimating the place's capacity by nearly 2/3rds, I found a lot to like in the Colosseum. You just think the Astrodome and Three Rivers Stadium are "multi-purpose facilities;" the Colosseum had a removable floor with channels built under it. The Romans could fill these channels with water, and boats could float through them and engage in miniature naval battles. This served as a change of pace, I suppose, from the usual battles between gladiators. "I say, Julius, will you be going to the Colosseum this night?" "Perhaps if they're having a naval battle. You know how it is; you've seen one gladiator fight, you've seen them all." Caesar's box is still there. The Colosseum was dedicated by Roman Emperor Titus in 80 A.D., so the Big Two Caesars, Julius and Augustus, never enjoyed any events there. But it's still Caesar's Box, and we still marveled that the head of state of the Roman Empire had been there. In fact, several of the Roman Emperors had used the box, and used it regularly, and we could see the exact spot. The four of us met up with Mike Flick and Lisa Felak at the Colosseum, so from there we joined forces for the day. We stood outside the Colosseum for a while to get our bearings; we wanted to find the Spanish Steps before we returned to the hotel.

And we did. At the bottom of the Spanish Steps is the Piazza di Spagna, the art center of Rome. (Actually, these must be across the street from the bottom of the Spanish steps, but why nitpick?) The Spanish Steps lead up to the Church of the Trinity, but the Steps themselves seem to be the feature attraction here. The Steps are about 66 feet across at the bottom, and lead to the Church's steeple and bell towers, complete with Big Clocks in Europe Part VI. The layout of the Spanish Steps gives the illusion that you can keep walking past the actual stair steps all the way up the face of the Church of the Trinity. The steps and the rails on each side are all charmingly uneven, calling from a lost time when flawless lines and angles were not so easy, and maybe not so much a priority as the structure's humanity. On our way from the Steps, we found the Trevi Fountain , one of the world’s most famous fountains, featuring stone statues Roman titans and gods trying to control horses. Actually, many of the figures look rather uninterested; titans have a way of doing that. Still, the fountain is very large, with tall, looming columns, and it must make a terrific landmark. Why several Popes were involved in creating a momentum featuring figures from Roman mythology is a puzzle, though. Later along our return, we found another fountain across a traffic-choked street, and an even better landmark - a tree five stories tall, standing alone among taller office buildings. Storefronts in Rome, like everywhere else, have samples of their wares on display in the windows. Even television sets, no surprise in this twentieth century. Flick, a big tennis fan, was taking advantage of this, keeping an eye out for televisions broadcasting live Wimbledon action. Lisa asked him who his favorite players were; I think he liked Becker on the men's side. He added that he was undecided about the women's players, but would probably cheer for Martina Navratilova because she's an American. A couple of things in Flick's statement surprised me. One: that Flick thought of Navratilova as an American. And HE'S the one who's right; I'd always thought of Martina as being Czechoslovakian, in keeping with her birthplace. But she'd become a U.S. citizen by 1988, and was even living in Fort Worth, Texas at the time. She's as American as I am now. The only differences in the eyes of the law are 1) she can afford better lawyers, and 2) I can run for president. Since Navratilova is not a native-born American, she is constitutionally prohibited from doing so. The second thing about the situation was the idea of LIVE Wimbledon action in the heat of the afternoon. In the States, all the live broadcasts start at 8 in the morning because of the time difference. But in Italy, we weren't six hours back in relation to Wimbledon; we were one hour ahead. For some reason, this was one of the most compelling reminders to me that I was, in fact, in Europe, not the United States of America. Shortly after we returned to the hotel, it was time for our Fourth of July picnic. Dr Groth and family had arrived in Rome by then, so they joined us for the celebratory meal. We Americans were by ourselves as far as partying was concerned. The Italians couldn't care less about our holiday. (Not exactly a shocking thing.) It didn't feel like Independence Day because everyone around us wasn't collecting fireworks, going to the river, planning a drinking binge, or whatever, but we knew our calendars and this was indeed the day we Americans cherish.

Near the hotel, we found something resembling a park; it was actually a traffic island with an attitude. The island was about six paces across, but extended for a ways down the road. Benches were set up both along the road and in semi-circles in the middle of the island, and ferns and trees were growing throughout it. They still had three-foot tall advertising billboards, eye level to pedestrians. One series featured the following advertisement: IL TUO TEMPO È PREZIOSO AL SAN GUISEPPE LO RECLIPERI IN FRETTA San Giuseppe ISTITUTO DE ESTRUZIONS Most of the time, we had no sense that we had three lanes of traffic on either side of us. Inés ordered pizza for us - we think from the Pizza Rustica, although no one I asked knew for sure. We pretty much had the island to ourselves, although I have a picture of Alan Robbins, Mike Flick, and Chris Bordovsky seated next to an unexplained motorcycle. Alice in particular took a lot of pictures - and we did get the mandatory group shot with about 12 of us. As usual in the group shots, Alan looked like you woke him up without his permission, and Wally looked inebriated. The real excitement came when Sam suddenly decided to wrestle with David. I don't know where Sam got this silly idea; Sam's tall and lean, but David is taller and built like a rock. My picture shows David on two hands and one foot, Sam having been knocked him down mostly by surprise, but an instant later, Sam was knocked halfway through a bush. Even so, the biggest shock was not Sam's decision to take David on, but John reaching from his wheelchair toward the fracas like he's reaching for his tag team partner. Hey, no one wants to arm wrestle with John; his upper body is as strong as anybody's in the class. But he lacks he mobility and quickness to be a factor in David and Sam's scuffle. Bottom line: David Patton wins with a first-round TKO.

My college Spanish came in handy in the Hotel Venezia. The hotel floors were laid out in an unusual way, and I lost track of which turn I had to make to get to my room. As I was wandering around feeling silly, I passed a maid, who asked me - in English - "what room do you need?"

"One twenty."

She didn't understand.

"One twenty."

She still didn't understand.

"Ciento veinte," I said, trying the Spanish this time.

"Ah! Ciento veinte!" she exclaimed, immediately scooting toward my hotel room, her Italian showing through in her pronouncing "ciento" with a "ch" at the beginning instead of "s." And I'm not complaining. I also managed to get some of Buck's junk sorted using some Spanish.

In the room, Joe Hirt and Rick Cazares were already studying for final exam, which was the next day. Everyone in our class (aside from project people like me) was studying and hoping for the best. Joe, looking for every edge he could get, even complained that he needed some chewing tobacco. Rick asked where I'd been. I told him I'd been chatting with Inés.

While my roomdogs crammed, I documented my day in the journal. I had been writing on just the front side of each sheet of paper, but that day, I'd run out of pages. I turned over page 55 and wrote page 56 on its back, and would continue writing on back pages for the rest of the trip.

Before I went to sleep, I read my daily devotion, this time out of the Psalms. It included this verse.

"Have your delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, too, and he will bring it about."

-Psalms 37:4,5

Amen.