Envoi

Last night, I came home, took a hot (at last!) shower, and immediately fell asleep. I woke up early this morning, and, for a few moments just sat in my bed. Everything seemed far too normal. I believed for a moment that the last two weeks had merely been a dream. (I suppose the fact that my dreams had involved the Trevi fountain and the Pantheon didn’t help.) But, I definitely have memories that my subconscious couldn’t have created.

I remember I was terrified at the airport. I’m a worrier, (I swear, I inherited this from my mother,) and had so many fears running through my mind at that moment. I had a small panic attack (consisting of “AHH! I can’t believe this is happening!”  said on repeat to my parents.) I couldn’t believe that I was in fact going through with one of my plans, that I would soon be abroad, that nothing had canceled the trip like I was sure would happen. My other worries, though, I didn’t voice to my parents. What if I got there and found myself so out of my depth and too homesick that I wouldn’t enjoy it? What if I didn’t befriend anyone? What if I got bored? (Two weeks? In one city…?)

 I cursed myself for not taking at least one class of Italian, for not pestering my friends that took Italian this past semester for pronunciation lessons. What was I thinking, going to a foreign country where I couldn’t speak the language?!

…What if I hated it?

             

Now, I’m looking back on those two weeks, and I can, in all honesty, say: those were some of the best two weeks to my life. I made excellent friends, and had some lovely adventures. I learned (some) Italian, most of it admittedly gleaned from the repeated directions on the Metro. I got to solidify what knowledge I had of the city, and expand on it. I was able to turn Rome from a soft city to a hard city made up of wonderful art, fantastic food, gelato, and a combination of tourists and locals.

And, above all, I fell in love. I fell in love with Roma.

Beyond the obviously wonderful food and awesome coffee that I loved, I enjoyed the strange layout of the streets, the way you could know exactly where you were going, and still end up somewhere else. How everything was so close together that you could stumble on some places while walking, and indeed that for the most part you could walk everywhere. Of course, the Metro did help, as did the buses (when the right ones came.) And yet, even if I could easily get lost, I felt utterly comfortable walking around, more so than walking around Boston, a city that I have been walking in for years. Rome possesses a busy atmosphere that, at the same time, manages to be relaxing.

And, the incredible monuments! They towered over me, to a greater extent than I thought they would. I knew that they would be immense, but neither Piranesi's sketches nor any Google images truly prepared me for the real grandeur of these buildings. The breath-taking Pantheon, the gigantic Basilica Maxentius: the only thing more amazing than the size of these buildings was their age. Then, beyond the ancient places, the art! Oh, the art: the Berninis spread throughout the city, in the Vatican, in Santa Maria del Popolo, and the Piazza Navona. The awe-inspiring statues he created, that stand in the Galleria Borghese that made me come so close to crying, but that also brought me the greatest joy. And, to add to Bernini’s masterpieces, the gorgeous ancient paintings that the popes took for themselves and the (for the most part) wonderful modern art in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, the Caravaggios, and the work of Nicola Salvi. Rome proved to be heaven for an artist. Even outside of the museums, beauty shone in building facades, and in the lines of the buildings piled upon one another.

Now, having spent just over a day away from Rome, I miss the trees (where else could you find Italian cypresses, normal pine trees and palm trees all together?) the seagull that squawked in such a bleating manner outside the room I shared with Katie every morning, without fail. (It made me laugh, every day.) I miss the way that the birds circled above the Wedding Cake and Termini even though that rather scared me, reminding me too much of vultures in a desert. And, above all, I will miss the beautiful swallowtails that swooped and twirled around the Trevi fountain (and pooped on Gia, Melissa, and me when we went there one night.) I tried to draw their graceful shapes in my sketchbook, but only managed to create blocky versions. While I won’t fully miss the Campo de’Fiori because my town has its own farmer’s market, and I will miss being able to, however briefly, converse with a stall-keeper in Italian: to be able to pretend that I was someone else, a local Italian.

I learned so much from this trip, from the actual history of the city to little realizations about myself that the trip gave me, to the way that the course changed the way I see things now. The writing assignments forced me to actively take in my surroundings, and to consciously think of how I felt in a space, and all the details that I could notice, from people to the art.

A toast! (of sorts) to Rome: to the layers of the city, to the wonderful people with whom I traveled, to the people who humored my attempts at terrible Italian, to the night life, to the beautiful hidden spots, to the woman who was just as struck by Bernini’s work as I was and who told me so: Thank-you!

Oh, and, I won’t miss needing to have correct change.

(I never did have it.)