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!

In which there is music and Massachusetts is an easily pronounceable word.

 

The sky did this really cool thing somewhere between Arizona and Massachusetts. Never had I seen day and night so clearly divided, at least not in one place and with my own eyes.

  

A while after that was taken, I landed in Boston (on the night side), landed in a bed, and had to wake up three hours earlier than when my body had just gotten used to waking up. The next few days consisted of mostly quiet things, spending a lot of time with my brother, doing last-minute preparations for the Big Few Days, going through the boxes of my life that I had hurriedly packed on Commencement Day and left in a friend's basement, expecting to come back after a year in Germany and need all these things again. There were many thoughts of what to keep and what to pass on into other hands, all of which revolved around the question of where I was planning to live for the foreseeable future. This became pretty clear to me as the pile of things to give away kept growing and as I started carefully wrapping up my favorite tea mugs and other sentimental-but-also-functional things, preparing them for a transatlantic journey.

 

Only in New England:

A brilliant name for a laundromat:

 

Passing time around South Station on a windy day. I sat on a bench at the edge of Chinatown and watched the cloud puffs zoom overhead, listening to Chinese-speaking families around me and imagining myself to be in a very different place.

 

 

 

Eggs, water, jelly beans, and a fat, yellow Hummer.

 

Shocked and a little heartbroken to find Ritter Sport and Milka at Rite Aid, of all places. Why does America have to have EVERYTHING? Haribo, too, but at least it's clear that the Gummibärchen have to take a chemical dye bath upon crossing the border.

And then there were American supermarkets. Whole aisles of salad dressings, twenty kinds of canned tomatoes, holy surplus. C'mon, is this really necessary?

The main to-do of this 'merica trip was the wedding of my brother & sister-in-law -- oh, bliss! In truth, none of the very few pictures I took ended up being any good. After having seen their work, I knew that the photographers hired to squint through the lens all day would to an amazing job, which of course is what happened. Here is their photographic summary of the day. There was no time or thought or want to take photos on my end anyway -- not with all that delicious revelling.

A few fleeting moments involved in the makings and happenings of the big day: cookies, day-before trying out the dance floor, parading T-takeover.

I did, however, take a few mini videos on my dinky Point&shoot. The quality is poor indeed, but it gives you a better idea of the wonderful chaos that was the wedding parade. After the service, we paraded to Harvard Square, down into the T and out again one stop later, finally switching party modes once we'd reached the reception location -- led by the B&G (or the J&G as the case may be) on t-bone and flute and one of the bands of which the brother is a part. Then came the food (the food!), the toasts, the silly socks, the contra dancing! (Followed by the resting, the quiet family togetherness, the bubbles on street corners.)

After the festivities and once all the family had gradually trickled out of town, I hopped on the bus and made my way to the Valley of Happiness to see my alma mater and many dear persons. Northampton hadn't changed a bit, though it felt strange to be at Smith as an alum -- there was a mix of a katrillion memories and feelings wooshing through my veins with all the familiar sights and smells, but on the other hand I felt somewhat excluded, as I had no key, no user ID at the library, no home. Overall it was a happy time, happy to walk the path to the swimming hole and see campus glimmering over Paradise Pond, happy to see so many keepers of our shared history, happy to sneak a photo of the ingredients list of my favorite café muffin so as to recreate them elsewhere, though I know they could never taste as tasty wholesome as in Noho.

 

 

Once out of the bubble, I went back to B-town to make last visits, have kickass cupcakes with my Kickass Cupcake, wrap up some Dunkin' Donuts in plastic (to preserve their freshness and nutrients) for the Germans, repack, and be fed a lot of amazing and endless lasagna and red wine before squeezing into my seat on a plane across the Pond. A couple hours waiting around Heathrow and I spread my wings and few back to Hamburg, cruising in through a beautifully crafted piece of sky.

Grateful to have had this precious time in so many of my homes and grateful to be back at home, I went to sleep. (My body, on the other hand, was not so grateful for having been subjected to three very different time zones in three weeks and had given up any sort of regular sleep schedule. Getting back to normality was kind of like having to restart a computer and wait for it to install 157 new updates. Yeah, like that.) One Sunday later and it was back to work, jetlagged and dreaming.