In which the tourists missed this Rome (Part II).

June 2013. Here's a people-heavy post to make up for the lack of personalness in most of my other posts -- I'll even go so far as to use a name, Jesse, to represent my brother (though that may or may not be his real name... 'kay, Jess?). Righto, back to Roma.

The rest of our Roma days were spent in an overlooked suburb of the city with a giant, multinational blob of blasting brass bands -- an event otherwise known as Sbandata Romana 2013 (and this promo video is very silly, particularly with regard to Rome in June).

Saturday started out playing in the heart of the neighborhood with one of the Roman bands, which then turned into a surprise parade around town, led by one of the event organizers.

 

The first parade destination was an indoor market, and MY weren't they surprised. The band filed in, more than filling the echoey room. I followed behind, all smiles, and had a shock of my own when an adorable, Roley-Poley Butcher rushed out from behind his stand and grabbed me by the waist, swinging me around to the cheering and delight of the crowd. Once my brain caught up with the situation, I happily obliged and danced along before thanking him with a grin and a curtsy and catching up with the band. They played a few tunes amidst a bustling audience while the Sbandata organizer spread the word about the festival in town, inviting everyone to come to events. I liked the guy sitting on the bench with the green shirt and oxygen tank.

Another happy moment came as I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see the Roley-Poley Butcher snatch another surprise dance partner -- the surprise being entirely hers.

Next we paraded to a café where we were joined by another band and a bald street performer. The café owner was delighted and brought out bottle after bottle of wine, foccacia, olives, and other fine treats. He then asked the bands to play in front of the bakery across the street, an act which was met with similar hospitality.

The main event of the afternoon was a parade through the neighborhood with all the bands, many of which were costumed. As someone not playing an instrument, I had the pleasure of observing the effects of the parade on the locals. Balconies filled, people of all ages peeking out of windows with expressions of great surprise, confusion, wonder. All smiles.

Jesse and I decided to pass on the long lines for dinner that night and went to the little downtown for pizza. By pizza, I mean the tastiest pizza we had ever eaten, purchased by weight and dished out by a hilarious pizza fellow. When walking back to the park for the night's concerts, we were tickled to see a designated "jazz tram" at the usual tram stop, equipped with mood lighting and leaking smooth tunes.

There were four performance areas in the park, all of which were packed with bouncing people of all ages. Each band had their own set with some musicians invited to play around with new friends.

The final day began gently with a giant brunch for all musicians and tagalongs. Jesse's mind was blown by the GIANT BOWL OF PARMESAN that would have cost a hefty sum in Germany and an even heftier sum in the States. My being was blown by the natural jam session that ensued, as one naturally does when you put hundreds of well-fed musicians together with instruments. This big jam then split off into smaller jams around the park, with musicians migrating from one to another.

Jesse tried to entertain the little children by playing something they'd recognize and started twinkletwinklelittlestarring. Nothing but blank faces and arms crossed over adorabley rounded bellies. Luckily a musician better versed in European children came to the rescue with the Pippi Langstrumpf theme song, and, well, check it out:

The day proceeded like this until night fell and the final round-robinesque hoo-hah began. The invisible music-playing stick was tossed from band to band, though it was hard to tell where one band ended and another began. Solos were thrown to new friends and invitations to play common hits with one group or another only upped the integration and made the musical swarm all the warmer and swarmier.

We flew back north the next morning, luckily training out of the city just before a public transportation strike that ended up kinking the travel plans of many other musicians. Out the Train window, the City turned to fields and buildings to hay bales. Out the plane window, sunny Italy turned to chilly, rainy Hamburg, making the memories of the weekend all the more memorable.

 

In which there is touristy Rome (Part I).

In mid-June, I had the great, semi-spontaneous pleasure of going on a grand adventure with that most recently wedded of brothers of mine. He flew into Hamburg at the crack of dawn on a Thursday and we were back at the airport again at the very next crack of dawn, where we hopped on a plane and flew our way south through a beautiful, clear morning. The destination was Rome, where a wild and wonderful group of Bostonians was to make music with other wild and wonderful musicians all weekend long. The scenery out that tiny airtight window was delicious.

Far more delicious indeed than the scenery inside the makeshift bus terminal-not-terminal where we had to wait in line for an hour and a half or so, watching two buses fill up and leave before we could get on one ourselves that would take us into the city. This wasn't really a problem as we weren't in any rush, but we were both sleepy and not particularly in the mood to wait in a pushing, agitated crowd in a parking lot. The bus driver seemed to share this sentiment, as captured from the first-row seat after the successful board-the-bus attempt number 3.

Once we finally got to Termini and walked our way through the hot hot sun to our residing place for the next few nights, I was pretty out-juiced and ended up sleeping for the next few hours. Somewhat recharged but still in no mood for socializing, we siblings gelatoed and went our separate ways -- one to band happenings and one to sitting in parks and reliving ancient Roman wanderings of 2006, the year of my first and last visit to this most popular of tourist destinations.

City map as a safety guard, I started walking, wandering, quietly walzing down old, old streets with familiar long shutters, golden glow crescendo-ing on old bricks and stones as the day softly dwindled.

One wonderful thing about this city, particularly and most definitely in the summer months, is its abundance of old water fountains, some ornate and some not, but all oozing with drinkable freshness.

It's also not in every city that you can be strolling down a normal, everyday street and catch a glimpse of an ancient colosseum bathed in evening light at the other end.

Or where ruins of civilizations of long, long ago coexist with the ever-changing world as we know it today, caught like a stationary figure amidst a crowd in motion in a photograph. It's really a mind-blowing juxtaposition to see all the eras crammed together like they are, some crumbling but still there and certainly still an integral, even vital part of the city.

With the little daylight remaining, I decided to wander towards the Trevi fountain, where I'd spent a good deal of time sitting with my travel buddies and eating gelato and fresh coconut seven years before. Doubts started developing when I realized I could hear the fountain before it even came into view and knew that it was not the gentle burble blurble of the water, but rather the near-roaring babble blabble of the crowd. I thought it would be safe from such swarms at 10:30 p.m. or so, but this proved to be a naive assumption. People, everywhere people. Talking, laughing, entrenched in deep conversation, flirting, flinging flourescent glowy things up in the air, photoing, pushing, breathing, being. I felt torn between my full-circle content of being there again and my desire to get away from the crowd, which had me heading to the nearest metro station pretty quickly.

I had felt pretty safe the whole evening, though I was approached by three well-dressed older men in different places all asking me for directions and then quickly asking more personal questions about what I was doing, where I was staying -- the scam of the evening I suppose. My confidence was shaken as the crowd-shock sucked out the rest of my energy, I suddenly felt very aware of being alone (and grateful for that rape-aggression defense course I took senior year -- thanks, Smith!) and wanted to be back at the hostel in my private room behind a closed door as soon as possible.

A truly lovely, peaceful evening with a somewhat stressful but thankfully harm-free end. Later I was also glad to have had this time in the city itself, as the rest of the Roman adventure ended up playing out (and loudly) far, far away from any and all tourist attractions. Oh, the fun to be had in the coming days!