The Nerd's Eye View

Life at Faceless Corporation has taken a turn for the worse. I returned from Italy, as chronicled in this very same blog, to "interesting times" with redeployments for all (or at least many). This bold move has been followed by a reorganization, which is basically a reshuffling of personnel in such a way that you increase their workload. Who says matter can't be created?

My department has been split into essentially two groups, one that does development and another that doesn't. The one that doesn't is - do I even need to say it - not the plum position. It is also the position I have been put in. This is how I felt when I was told. I suppose I should just suck it up, but honestly, it's a bit difficult to look on the bright side at present. It certainly makes one question their previous hard work and sense of their own contributions.

link courtesy of Alex

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Odd vignettes:

- Passing a guy on the way home from the train station, with thin upper arms and forearms that looked like thighs. Popeye lives!

- Kid with a tape walkman, struting down the street, so happy that he has a walkman, singing loudly to himself

- An Ethiopian woman dressed in traditional clothes, with a man who looks like her father in the passenger seat, driving an old Camry stops me in the street and asks if I am Ethiopian. Then in broken English I try to help her get to Polk St (not spelled "Poork").

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In a stunning move, the news of Pluto's loss in the Planetary Primary has been reversed! A report filed by Nerd's Eye View astronomical policy correspondent Iain, this afternoon claims that Pluto has in fact decided to defy the International Astronomical Union and go it alone. It's quite a brave act by an planet known for its independence and espousal of the most patriotic views in the Kuiper Belt.

link courtesy of Iain

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Things have been somewhat unstable at Faceless Corporation, and I returned from my vacation to find that many people had been let go and some of those "redeployed" - an unpleasant euphemism for "layoff". It seems that everyone is getting into the act, even the cosmological community. Today I heard that they are going to demote Pluto from the ranks of the planets. If you guys see Pluto working a secondjob at the Discovery store in the mall, try to be classy about it and don't ask how it feels. I'm sure it feels awful.

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Not what I usually do, but I got this link at work and about fell out of my chair. It would have been more amusing if my boss hadn't walked into my cube moments afterwards. If you've ever wondered what goes on when you call customer support ...

link courtesy of the stepper guys ...

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This is only technically under travel since it occurred on the day I returned from Italy and on the way back from the airport. The incident encapsulates my life in SF to date:

The good doctor picked me up from the airport, where I was stir crazy and stiff from the 700 hours spent in the middle seat at the back of a 747. We dragged my belongings to the car and made it back into the city by noon. As we rolled down my street, I noticed a hunched figure outside my house. This was no big surprise as my house has some sort of homeless-person cat-nip on it. As we got closer it could make out that it was two figures, one seated on top of the other and I felt kind of happy for the homeless person, as he had a friend now, and gave it no more thought. Just then Dr Germ says, "Are those two shagging?" Of course they weren't, I mean it was noon on a Wednesday, no one would have public sex at a time like this.

At this point I should describe the couple in question. The man was in his mid to late twenties, with a bubble jacket and baggy jeans on. He was what might be described as a "thug" in the current vernacular. The woman was, I'd say, between 30 and about 90. She had seen "better days" and the whole situation made me think that this was a "business transaction".

Another look confirmed that the doctor was, in fact, right. The man was hastily pulling his jacket around to cover up the woman, who looked somewhat perturbed (who wouldn't be?). They then shifted slightly, as though to imply that they were having a serious conversation about US agricultural policy and the future of subsidies for soy farmers. At no point did it look like they were about to drop the pretense and perhaps pull up their trousers. The good doctor wanted to pull further forward on our street to park despite the fact that there was a space right in front of my house (and consequently in front of the two agricultural policy buffs). I was immediately outraged and demanded she stop in front of the house. I had had a long trip and I wasn't about to show some sensitivity to the privacy of the two people engaged in a sex act outside MY house. So I got out and began to pull my luggage out of the car. A glance in their direction further solidified my "business transaction" theory, as the woman seemed discomfited and the man had a resolute look on his face that seemed to say, "dammit, I paid for at least another 8 minutes and I'm not stopping now!" Mind you this is in the middle of the street, in the middle of the week in broad daylight.

Welcome back to San Francisco.

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An early rise and I was on a train for Venice. It was one of those trains that one sees in the movies quite frequently with compartments on one side with a corridor on the other side of the car. I was secretly delighted, despite the dinginess of the rail car, and wondered if there would be a murder or some of the other excitement that is common to these sorts of rail cars. Unfortunately there were no unusual deaths on the train that required me and a few intrepid travelers to solve it before we got to our final stop in Ferrara, and I finished a rather poorly written novel (you'll pay for that Mr Excitement, mark my words).

We approached Venice, rolling more slowly through the land part of Venice, which seemed unremarkable, when I suddenly was overcome with a lot of trepidation. What the hell was I doing? Venice had no roads for God's sakes! I could drown! How would I get to my hotel? The whole thing was multiplied when I caught sight of the water. Panic! Somehow I muddled through and found myself standing by the Grand Canal, in some disbelief that I was even there.

It was as impressive as I thought it would be, and lived up to all my expectations. The whole thing was terribly remarkable, if only for being an ancient city that was essentially unchanged in the modern world. While there is something of the Disney/theme park feel, it is undercut by the fact that this place functions: there are drinks and food delivered to the restaurants; hotels have supplies; and newsstands have periodicals. Where does it all come from? It's quite impressive in that regard.

Traveling to my hotel turned out not to be as difficult as I had thought it would, although I'd be lying if I said I figured it out myself (the addressing system alone on the damned island is mystifying). But I was soon on a vaporetto , or water bus, to the Saint Mark's area and then trudging through narrow alleyways to my hotel (this place has no wide streets to speak of at all - it's all just narrow alleys, some hiding amazing places.

aside: No wonder the Venetians ruled the seas! You can smell the sea at any canal. Two trips on the vaporetto and had to work to regain my land legs on arrival. Imagine living there all the time...

I didn't have much time in the city so I spent the majority of my time in the Piazza San Marco and specifically in the Doge's Palace. What an amazing place that is - I had no idea that the role of the Doge was mostly as a figurehead for the Senate and the various other councils that ruled Venice. It's amazing that they lasted so long and were so powerful with their government as complex as it was. Finally the scene in Othello where he is called back before the Council of Ten to finalize the plans for attacking Cyprus make sense. The Venetian Republic put a lot of work into projecting their strength, first to their citizens and then to the external world. Mind you I am exactly the type of mind they were trying to impress I think since that sort of "majesty and strength of the State" stuff always gets me.

I wandered around the city on foot, to get a feel for the place. It's labyrinthine and confusing. I can't imagine growing up here and learning to find your way back home from the corner store. There is a system - sort of - and you can get around by following the signs to the bridges that cross the Grand Canal, but there's a nagging feeling that there's a better way to get around. Still I can't complain too much, without all that walking around I wouldn't have happened upon a live band playing Glenn Miller's In the Mood in a piazza - wonderful.

The last thing I'll mention is dinner, where I found a place right by the hotel and was seated out front. I ate in silence, just watching the crowds, and trying to savor my food. The couple that was seated next to me, Stuart and Linda, turned and started to talk to me. I was so taken aback that it took me a few minutes to calm down and have a proper conversation, but when I got into it I was quite pleased. They were British and Scottish respectively and quite down to earth and pleasant. We ended up talking a lot longer than I thought, and looking back at it I see what happens when I say 'Yes'.

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Ravenna, the jewel of the western Adriatic and the heir to so many faded glories. It took rather longer to get here than I had anticipated, due to a delay of the trains in Florence and another one in Bologna (my bologna has a first name ...). Upon arriving, I was first struck by the heat - with a dull thwack, it hit me as I stepped out of the train station. I also managed to get myself lost ensuring that by the time I got to the hotel I was shvitzing copiously through my tshirt. This was to bode ill...

There's a sense of doom that stands over some hotel lobbies, giving you that distinct metallic tang that something pretty rotten is about to happen. In my case the rotten thing was the inability of the staff to find any record of my reservation, followed up by the bitter aftertaste: no rooms, of any kind, for any length of time, starting ... now. I stood there for all the world looking like a huge chump, and moreover a chump who was about to spend the night in the piazza. The staff, though, were extremely helpful and called around until they found me a room in a comparable hotel. It required yet another long walk through winding streets with the local gentry looking upon me as their parents and grandparents looked at gypsy caravans, but when I finally saw it, I felt like I was seeing Canaan. I dropped off my bags and armed with my guidebook, phrase book and camera I set out to see the mosaics of Ravenna.

They are quite a sight to behold. Both in terms of the art and the technical side of actually executing them. The most impressive to me were the ones in Mausoleum of Galla Placida. The detail of all the mosaics in the transepts is amazing but what really takes your breath away is the large mosaic in the central dome. It's a field of golden stars on a background of deep blue with a large gold cross in the center. What meager light gets into the room somehow wends it's way up to the ceiling and the starts glitter. It's bewitching and you can't take your eyes off it.

After my four hour tour of the city (and I did see everything there was to see in Ravenna) returned to the hotel, bathed and left for dinner, first choosing a trattoria by my hotel and trying to decipher the menu posted on the sidewalk. As I did a rather friendly woman sitting with her family asked if I needed any help, since apparently they'd also needed help figuring out the menu. Armed with my handy phrasebook, I politely said no and went back to trying to decode the menu. She came up anyway and continued trying to help, bless her, made some idle chit-chat ("oh, you're from San Francisco? We're from Germany but are actually living in Vienna ...") and then asked if I'd like to come and join them for dinner. A glance at the husband and child showed two extremely embarrassed people examining the ceramic structure of their plates intently, so I declined again, politely and perhaps a little more firmly than was necessary. She smiled and went back to her seat. I didn't find anything appetizing on the menu and walked off. As I walked away, though, I wondered if I should have said 'Yes' [D. Wallace, Yes Man, 2005]. I mean here was a person making a rather kind gesture, inviting a solitary stranger to join her family for a meal and I was rejecting it. It certainly didn't make me feel very good I'll tell you that, and gave me some pause. I could have actually used the company to be honest. The days since the wedding having been quite solitary and very quiet. In the absence of a companion I found myself completely silent for hours on end, and finally resorting to making some sort of noise just to exercise my jaws. Almost a dozen solitary meals, and "tavola per uno. Si, solo uno", had me feeling a bit sorry for myself - so why not take the nice lady up on her offer? I honestly don't know, aside from the silent panic of her companions at what may have been yet another stranger at their table. There was a sense, within me, that I just ought not to; that this offer was anything but a simple kindness. And that made me feel very ashamed of myself. What sort of person have I become that I am so mistrustful and dismissive of simple human kindness? It was certainly a revelation and not a very pleasant one, but the sort of thing that frequently comes up when one travels alone.

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The thing about the Leaning Tower is that it's not as big as you'd think it would be. This disparity in perception was the same when seeing Michelangelo's David which is much bigger than one imagines it to be. The tower's angle is quite dramatic which regrettably makes it quite easy for any of one of the many tourists around it to take quite original snapshots of people either pushing the tower over or propping it up (I frequently found myself wiping tears from my eyes from all the laughter). You still have to admire the fact that it hadn't toppled over till the foundations were reinforced in the 20th century.

Pisa itself is quite small and I was surprised at how quickly I was able to get to to the tower from the train station in the south of the city. I wandered around and took in the other sights in the Piazza del Miracolo, the cathedral and baptistry. The interiors are quite beautiful, having been renovated during the Medici rule of Pisa. There is a warmth and soft fragrance in the cathedral which contrasts with the dank, cold of the gothic cathedrals of Northern Europe that I've been to. That made the otherwise humdrum experience of the visit just a little nicer. Overall though Pisa is no great shakes. How can they neglect to even name a single piazza after Galileo? Not that, not a monument, not his old house, not the location of any of the experiments - it's rather depressing.

So I got back on a train and headed back to Florence. The weather was conducive to sitting quietly on a train headed east. It had been raining on and off since the wee hours when we had so much hail that it actually woke me up in my hotel room. By the time I got to the train station and out towards my hotel it was raining so hard that I was soaked by the time I got back to the hotel. More's the reason to stay in tonight I think.

This has given me some time to ponder why I've been so impatient or aggravated during my time here, as well as the odd sense of deja vu. It's Spike Milligan's fault. Reading his war memoirs (WWII) - in which many events occur in Italy as the Allied Army made it's way into Italy and then up the peninsula even as Milligan stayed back, a victim of shell shock - gave me an early impression of the peninsula. But his visits to the Uffizi and Pitti, as well as the Amalfi coast, took place in the ebbing tide of a world war and you can bet there weren't lines upon lines at the time. I'm not sure I wouldn't trade experiences although truth to be told, seeing these places in the immediate shadow of a war may not be the best option. Anyway Spike, I hope you're satisfied.

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8/11/06 Florence

The Leonardo exhibit reminded me that I am in fact a rather large nerd and that I needed to satisfy that side of myself. So I decided (thanks Blankie) to go to the Museum of the History of Science. Tucked away behind the Uffizi on the Arno, it is the bucktoothed younger sister of the Florentine museums - not pretty, but great personality.

aside: Mind you the back side of the Uffizi, where one exits looks bland and ugly like a tenement with no adornment to speak of. Seems like the pretty sister doesn't have much going on past the surface (which is a lesson to all you young folks out there). In hindsight it seems appropriate the merchant princes of Florence wouldn't spend money to beautify a side of the palace that only the hoipolloi would see.

It was fantastic actually. The museum is small but contains a lot of original scientific artifacts stretching back to just prior to the Renaissance, starting with an Andalusian astrolabe that had been gifted by King Alfonso of Spain to the Florentine rulers of the day. It's made of finely wrought brass and not very large but full of so much detail and mechanical skill that it had me wishing I was a machinist. The newest things in the museum are from the mid 19th century chemicals and electrostatic experimental apparatuses. Still it's the oldest stuff that's the most fascinating to me - that and Galileo's middle finger which is sitting in a reliquary of sorts in one of the first rooms.

There's a couple of reasons for my interest in the oldest instruments, but the first has to be the artful manner in which these objects were created. There was more to them than just function, they were also pleasing to the eye, which is a far cry from what I do now at Faceless Corporation. It's quite inspiring to think of a time when the arts and sciences were so closely linked; a time when people had to really make a huge leap away from the previous descriptions of the way the world worked to a more rational model. In that respect Galileo is really the main hero of the museum (a surprising lack of Leonardo objects, but he's always so hard to categorize), with his instruments that he made himself, sometimes for experiments that were the years ahead of where other natural philosophers' thinking was. What an amazing time that must have been!

The museum closes earlier than most of the others and so I just wandered around the city for a while and finally did some sketching. I'd been meaning to do that for quite a while and it seems to have been most appropriate here. The city is littered with stationary stores, selling the most amazing assortment of pens. I am obsessed with wet ink pens and have more fountain pens in my home than I have treaties to sign. It takes quite a bit of will to keep from just buying more and more of them. So far I've escaped without much damage but you never know when the urge will come upon me.

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8/10/06 Florence

Well despite my idea about leaving Florence, I decided to stay a few days more. Unfortunately that means leaving my cushy hotel by the station and had to move to the rather coincidentally named Arizona Hotel. It's on the other side of town and the walk, situated in the middle of what I can only imagine is the Jewish quarter of Florence. That's the only reason for the disproportionate number of Lubavitcher Jews all over the place, the chabad and of course the rather large synagogue right next door. Also I'm not sure where else a place like "Ruth's Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant" could be in a place like Florence.

I'll head to Pisa for a day trip and then to Ravenna before I head off to Venice to wrap up my Italian tour. The best part of that is that I will actually get to cross the Rubicon! I've always wanted to do that.

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8/9/06 Florence

Today was a brutal day of beauty with grueling forays into onto the steeper slopes of the Arts. I had originally intended to wake up early and make it out to the museums prior to the barbarian hordes, but that didn't happen as I'm sure you can imagine. When I arrived at the Uffizi at 10ish the lines curved around the courtyard to the other side such that the head and tail of the line were roughly even. I debated getting into the line but just then several groups left the line in despair and it moved forward quite a bit, which I took as a sign. I'm not sure who sent the sign but I spent some 2.5 hours in the line building up the image of the Uffizi in my mind. This was a bad move because I was thinking something along the lines of the Louvre times pi squared, and instead I got a lot less ... this was somewhat repeated at the Galleria dell' Accademia except for a shorter wait but in the sun.

Again I won't tell you the sort of thing you can see in any guidebook or catalog. The Uffizi did have have more than one surprise for me though. Specifically the portraits of Saladin and Mahomet (sic) the Great in the main hall among the grandees on display, and the statue of Laocoon and his sons being killed by the serpent as they tried to warn the Trojans about the large cliche in front of their gates. Those few objects made the long wait more than worth it, even as I was set to just curse the whole thing. But then there was something even better...

As I was trying to leave (and getting more and more agitated at the slow moving Germans around me) I found myself in a different exhibit: Leonardo, the Universal Genius. My eyes were opened. I had always taken it as given that Leonardo, the man, was interested in a lot more than young boys and the rather plain wives of second tier merchants but I had no idea how much. To see this exhibit you'd think that there was almost nothing in the arts, sciences and engineering that he wasn't interested in and innovating in. That's not including the minor work he did in mathematics, as evinced in the Vitruvian Man, which apparently links the dimensions of man to the mathematical Golden Mean. It's the ultimate melding of the mathematics, art and physiognomy and leaves me with only one question. Where did he find the time to do all this stuff? Art is time consuming and pain-staking, so how do you find time to do studies of perspective - including building experimental apparatuses to test and prove your theories? Engineering requires a lot of work, so how do you come up with the principles for flying machines and tanks and bicycles and cranes and clockwork...? Coming up with the ideas I can see, but the time to realize so much of it, and in a world where everything was inconvenient and required a lot of work (try to imagine getting a quick lunch in 1530) - it's simply staggering. The man was something else, and I walked out of the exhibit far more satisfied.

The time in line wasn't entirely wasted, though I do regret not having brought anything to occupy me but a copy of the New Yorker that I had was almost through with. I got to observe the movements of that most skittish of creatures, the illegal street vendor. Herds of them walk through the city, carrying sacks made of blankets or cardboard portfolios. These are actually sophisticated conveyances for their wares which can be quickly gathered up and moved - something that happens whenever the police happen by. You can tell before they arrive, because there is a ripple of awareness in the vendors like a wind in the savannah grasses. It's like watching wildebeest get wind of a lion in the grass and then scatter. It'd be amusing if one weren't standing in a slow moving line with no one to talk to.

After my adventure with the museums I retired to the hotel for a bit before venturing out to dinner. The air was soft as I walked along the Arno to the small restaurant I'd found the day before. I had been quite active and decided to treat myself and had a large and satisfying dinner. As I made my way back I crossed the Ponto Vecchio and heard the sounds of music. It was an Italian busker doing Coldplay covers to a rather large crowd on the bridge. I smiled at the odd sight and wandered to the hotel along the river as far as I could.

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Florence 244p

I arrived in Florence at 11 or so, tired from having had to wake up early for my train. Still it meant a long (and hopefully productive) first day in the city, which would be necessary since the city has a density of attractions rivaled only by the density of black currants in puddings. Unfortunately my hotel's check in time was 2p, so I left my bag with them and started to tramp around the city. I won't tell you about the attractions themselves, as it is information you can pick up in any guidebook, but mostly write about my impressions such as they are.

Whereas Viterbo was a small town, Florence is in every way a large city, which means that it has a significant immigrant population. It reminded me of Paris in that regard, the area around the central station with it's many north Africans, with the added spice of many Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis. As with my trip to Addis Ababa two years ago, I got a lot of hostile stares from folks positive that I was ignoring my heritage.

The other abundant species of human in Florence is the common tourist, who practically outnumber the roaches. Now I'm sure you're saying, "what's about you? Aren't you a tourist too?" To which I reply that I am not; I am a man interested in art and history and have come to Florence in search of those two things. This stands in contrast to the sunburned herds that clog the city streets and impede the entry into the galleries. Their only interest is to take snapshots of their friends and/or relatives making a pass at David's privates. I haven't mentioned the ubiquitous back packers, who slouch through town like snails, homes on their backs, leaving a slime trail of body odor mixed with cigarette smoke. It's a rather ironic contradiction that the healthy allure of the open road should be so intertwined with bad hygiene and habits like smoking - but I suppose it makes sense in a way since nicotine is an appetite suppressant. But I digress ...

I walked from piazza to piazza, soaking up the sights and setting my strategy for the next day. I crossed the Arno, and found myself a might peckish (perhaps I should take up smoking) and found a small trattoria tucked behind a take out place. I had one of the best meals I've had in Italy to day, ravioli florentine in a butter and sage sauce, accompanied by a cool caprese salad. It was exactly the right thing to have on a hot summer day.

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8/8/06 8:25a en route to Florence

The last three days have gone by so quickly that I have not had time to set anything down, which means you guys can forget about picturesque descriptions of the local waste paper baskets.

On the wedding day we met with all the participants at the couple's hotel just outside the city center where we were met with a large tour bus which would transport us all to the site for the ceremony and the subsequent reception. The bus had a festive atmosphere, with more guests having arrived for the wedding itself - mostly from far away Addis Ababa. The sun shone through the bus windows and the countryside waved at us as we rolled to the small village of Tuscania, which was yet another prepossessing Italian medieval village.

From our stop we walked through the ancient village gate and into a large piazza from which we could see what appeared to be a church. As the guests mingled the locals came out to see who these colorful foreigners were and we stared back. The ceremony itself took place in the church, which turned out to have been deconsecrated and as such, just a long stone hall with restored frescos on its walls. It was long and dull, being in two languages I don't speak, and consisting as it did of a complete recitation of the unabridged Italian civil code regarding marriages, civil unions and common law cohabitation. As the ceremony ended we snapped photos and glanced at the weather outside. It had been threatening to rain for the past 3 days and finally made good just as the newlyweds stepped out of the hall. Luckily it passed quickly and by the time we were taking photos it was mostly clear.

The reception was held at an agriturismo which was no more than a ranch style farm which rented itself out to events such as this. In many ways the reception was similar to a wedding reception anywhere you go, though the food was of a higher quality and bride and groom seemed to have chosen the theme to the "Love Boat" as their song. Don't get me wrong, I am full of respect for the role that Captain Stubing and his crew have played in repairing damaged relationships and beginning new ones, but there's something that just didn't sound right about it.

At the end of the reception I was fully prepared to go back to my hotel room and drop into dead sleep but that had to be put off as there was yet another party to go to. Without telling us where we were going we were hustled onto the bus and rode in the dark towards the after-party. All through the bus, the mood and the wine were taking effect and young couples were making out with barely restrained fervor. By the time we arrived in yet another darkened medieval village and were lead through the winding cobblestone streets designed to destroy high heels and the feet of those wearing them. Tenements and churches rose claustrophobically around us as we came to a gate. Through it were long, ramping steps lit only by candles leading up to the Castello Orsini. The whole day had been stunning but took on new dimensions as we walked up the ramp. Above us the stars shone brightly and were clearer than I have seen them, with no competition from street lights. This had been the central redoubt of the town and rose high above it. On the second level we had a view of the whole valley below us and the lights of the village twinkling. Tables were setup in the courtyard of the keep and a dj was beginning to spin the first in a long set of techno music that had the Germans more excited than a Hasselhof free concert at Oktoberfest. Suffice to say that the revelry continued long past the wee hours and we didn't arrive back at our hotels till 6a.

The following night was a dinner at the home of the groom's parents which was lovely and ended in massive amounts of cheese and bread being snacked on before yet another late night. I needed the strength though, since the next morning was a trip to the beach!

We assembled early, which is to say 10:30a or so, with towels and other assorted beach gear. Piling into several cars we drove through the Tuscan countryside towards the coast. The land was much as I have always imagined it, yellow with grain, brown with newly tilled fields and green with vigilantly erect cypresses. I had dabbled in water colors in secondary school and painted imaginary stretches of Tuscany that looked quite similar to what was passing outside the windows of the car. The rolling hills and the mountains of the background gave the overall impression that a cohort of legionnaires could be coming over the next hill, sandals dusty from the march.

This spell was banished as we approached the Tarquinia Lido, which was blandly papered over with ads for ice cream featuring overly happy children cavorting with benign cartoon predators. The beach was lovely though, and the sand dark probably due its volcanic origins I can only assume. I dove in immediately and the water was warm and lovely. It's been almost a decade since I've been in the Med and I was glad to get back to it. Still it's not as much fun without the typical beach horseplay. I was discovering that Germans viewed the beach mostly as an opportunity to lay out in the sun and turn red as they catch up on their reading. Very dull, especially with the prospect of beach soccer and volleyball so near! I'll never understand it but being unable to beat them, I joined them and fell asleep in a deck chair.

Right now I am on a train headed to Florence, having made my hotel reservations post-beach yesterday. Florence holds a lot of possibility and I am terribly excited about it, having only ever read about it in the past.

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8/4/06 10:45p Viterbo

I stopped the last entry due to sheer exhaustion although the day hadn't really ended after our return from Rome. After a quick clean up I dressed again and went to the bachelor night. The groom showed up late to my hotel to pick me up on the way up to the restaurant, dressed in a German national team soccer jersey and shorts. The quizzical look on my face lead him to explain that he'd been told to put on this outfit for purposes of the party which lead me to wonder if there would be a stripper dressed as a referee or whether there would be some head butting later in the evening, but I was told that there no strippers or prostitutes at the bachelor night by agreement of the bride and groom. So I dodged a bullet there. The specific reason he had that jersey on was that without Germany, there would be no wedding, since the bride is German.

We met with the German contingent who were already getting toasty, and the fathers of the couple as well as some other relatives at a small pizzeria in the upper part of the old town, Il Labirinto. The restaurant seemed was a series of small stone rooms and filled with the smells of meals being prepared which had my mouth watering. This was slightly too soon, I discovered as the antipasti came out and seemed to consist of layers of local hams, separated by other slices of pork. After some negotiation (and much disbelief that I couldn't partake of the delectable cured meats - was I a vegetarian?) I was brought a plate of cheeses and a savory olive bruschetta which defied the laws of epitaxy for it's coverage of the bread as well as my ability to describe it with mere words.

aside: One of the disappointments of my trip to Italy has been the inability on my part to enjoy the cuisine properly, due to the use of pork as an ingredient, a seasoning, cutlery and stucco. They use it for everything in much the way that Southerners in the US use it for "flavor". Mores the pity, since the thinly sliced hams look terribly delicious, especially in the form of prosciutto and melon antipasti. I have been sore tempted but have no given in yet, sating myself instead on the cheeses of the region which require a book and a tour to do them justice.

Our pizzas came out soon after and the muffled sounds of eating were seasoned with raucous laughter and introductions. I was sitting at one end of the table by the groom's father who bears an uncanny resemblance to US Soccer coach Bruce Arena in both his general shape and the breadth of his protruding smile. The conversation was marked with short notches as everyone filed out at intervals to smoke - more on that later - for increasingly longer periods as the dinner came to a close. We marched through the old town afterwards to link up with the ladies at a bar in a nearby piazza where we stayed until the lone policeman of old Viterbo came around to see what the noise was about and ended up engaged in a deep conversation with one of the revelers.

Throughout the night I had been paying attention, as I do sometimes, to the folks around me, particularly the Viterbisi themselves. For a small town, the inhabitants seemed particularly hip, although truth to tell the Italians as a whole seem to be on the cutting edge of fashion from the youngest infant to the oldest hipster. This does not always mean that they look good mind you, since the current edge is cutting the other way. Young women are sporting cowboy-style gold boots and the young swains who court them are rocking the most hideous of mullets as they strive to get their attention. The return of the mullet in Europe is apparently a full court press from a hairstyle that had deservedly been put down with isolated pockets of hold outs here and there. The new mullet is even more abominable than its ancestor and at times deviates from the form "business in the front, party in the back" to "party in the front and back, business on the sides". It is the Vegas casino of haircuts, and I wonder how long it will take before it makes its seemingly inevitable beach head on the Jersey shore.

It's a pity really, since overall the local youth is very attractive. I am ashamed to say that the hot small town girls of Viterbo have given me quite a turn. What's a red-blooded man to do but turn to history and art and cold showers?

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8/5/06 1p Viterbo

An interesting side note to my stay here is my observation of the large amount of graffiti everywhere. I suppose this shouldn't be too much of a shock, since the word itself is Italian and the practice dates back to the Roman era. It runs the range between Carlo é Julia Siempre to large murals of stylized mermaids on the sides of the Rome metro. It certainly seems more interesting than the stuff I've been seeing in San Francisco and its surroundings, although I have seen a disturbing number of swastikas all over the place. It's puzzling as they are extremely badly done, sometimes with the arms of the cross pointing in the opposite direction. I wasn't sure whether to feel threatened or just confused and settled for confused. While there are many neo-fascist movements brewing in Europe, I'm not sure if I should be afraid of one that doesn't know whether to be afraid of one that doesn't know clockwise from anti-clockwise.

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8/3/06 8:15p Viterbo

Went to Rome today, and was prepared for the best and the worst. What I found of course was dirt, much like any other city. It was also choked with tourists, perhaps not like any other city, but similar enough. Rome was an afterthought of this trip and luckily for me, the bridge and groom had organized this excursion for all their friends, so there would be no real need for a lot of planning on my part.

Since the group had a variety of goals, we decided to split up and meet up back at the train station for the trip back to Viterbo. Luckily, a short distance away was the Spanish steps and Trevi fountain. In the interests of not mucking about with the logistical and linguistic nightmare of taxi-cabs I got onto one of those tourist buses that makes a big circuit of the city, and allows you to get on and get off as you come to points of interest.

Truth to be told I was mostly interested in ancient Rome and not the Rome of the Renaissance, so I patiently sat on the top of the double decker bus taking photos of interesting buildings as we approached the site of the old city center. I must say, the Coliseum looks a lot bigger than you think it will and also a lot more solid. The place was mobbed with tourists so I decided against going inside. From the gate I spied a large cross with people gathered about it. I had seen a bus with the words "Christian Rome: Pilgrimages for the Third Millennium" on it earlier and deduced that this was that crowd. In fact Rome is chock-a-block with Christians lamenting all their early forebears who were used as entertainment and an example. They typically take the form of large groups of hormone addled teenagers being lead by a beleaguered church official, and looking for ways to be very un-Christian at every opportunity.

The Forum was full of these folks, who I tried my best to ignore. It's strange to imagine that there was a time when the sunny, open area of the forum was coated with the shadows of various temples and public buildings. At one end is the triumphal arch of Titus Vespasian (I think) with friezes showing the spoils of the conquest of Judea. You can see a large menorah from the Temple and the leader of the Jewish resistance in chains in procession. I have always been interested in Roman history and, to a certain extent, their military. It is in many ways a shorthand for political development in the Roman republic and then in the Empire.

The Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus flanked the Forum and I wandered through and around (not in that order) and became acutely aware of the fact that I had not eaten anything at all since that morning when I'd had an apple. I made several valiant attempts to find an authentic Roman trattoria and managed to find either places that sold hot dogs, Argentine cuisine (??) or cigarettes. To make matters worse there was a rapidly approaching deadline for getting back to the train station so I could hook up with the rest of the party (all Germans) - so I settled for a Coke to keep me going till I got to the area of the train station near the Piazza del Popolo and, hopefully, some restaurants.

What ensued was in fact the worst lunch in history. Ok perhaps I am blowing it all out of proportion but when you to a restaurant that has a menu that proclaims "assorted panini" you'd think they'd have an assortment. Instead they had a assortment of different garnishes with the prosciutto panini which helped me not at all. I did my best to find something to eat and gulped down some water, before heading off to the train station, 10 minutes late. The Germans were waiting as patiently as they possibly could - which is to say, not much, and we headed off to Viterbo and the bachelor's night.

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Viterbo, 8/2/06 11:08 PM

Italy has been a whirlwind of sensations that have me turned topsy turvy. From the first descent over the Roman landscape I was struck with the sensation that nothing had changed in the preceding two thousand years. There were still small farms dotting the landscape between the hills and the Mediterranean and by and large they seemed to be growing grapes and olives. The only difference of course is the motorcars on the roads, although the roads themselves may have been paved on top of Roman ones.

Rome's Fiumicino airport is also known as Leonardo da Vinci International, which is a pity since it is in fact the worst airport ever devised. It seemed much more likely to be based on plans made in crayon on construction paper by his slow brother, Charlie. The place seemed to be retrofitted with many of the amenities we take for granted, and in some cases was missing them altogether. A good example is air conditioning; on this sweltering Roman day, there was no A/C and the building seemed hotter than the outside was. The good Doctor was there to greet me, enveloped in a cloud of scent that threatened to suffocate the poor girl.

We were eventually collected by the groom, Matteo, and then off to the airport across town to pick up more guests. I tried to keep it interesting and ply the wit that has you fine folks coming back again and again, but was far too tired and eventually fell asleep soon after we got on the road for Viterbo. I only awoke once we were on the outskirts of town driving past large villas and well manicured wrought-iron fences.

The hotel where I'm staying is in the old part of the city, the imaginatively named "Centro". The old city is your typical walled casbah like many older European towns, dimpled with small piazzas and fountains of varying sizes, connected by narrow cobble-stoned streets. The hotel itself is about eighty meters away from a very large square, Piazza di Caduti. I checked in and went up to my room a discovered that it had a small balcony, overlooking the narrow Via Cairoli.

Follow the cobbled street down to the square and you see a medieval sanctuary and in front of it an artificial beach soccer arena where the local youth play with their family, friends and neighbors to egg them on. There's a surprising number of them on hand, and it strikes me that this may be a big attraction during the summer evenings. The flower of the local youth stands around and eat gelato as the games are played and all seems to be well in bella Italia.

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30000 feet above the earth and here I meet the Muse and become a member of the literary mile-high club. Before me are the remains of my meal (more on that later) and beside me a rather morose middle-aged Asian fellow who is the perfect seatmate (completely silent). Outside are cloud drifts that look like the Gobi on a good day with the dark shadow of the land somewhere below us, and I am on the worst 747 I've been on this millenium. I am literally in the last seat, huddled with my silent friend just to the right of the toilets.

The seat is slightly damaged I think as it will occasionally drop back a couple of inches before resetting itself. The entertainment screens, rather than being in the seat just ahead of you, are set into the cabin ceiling about 14 feet away. The appear to be postage stamp sized and discolored. In addition they are currently showing music videos of carefully disheveled young men, with well tended five o'clock shadows plucking desolately at guitar strings in empty rooms and mewling about something or other. I wish I was exaggerating but there were just three of them in a row. Fortunately there is a nice collection of 18th century German classical on one of the radio stations although that's beginning to wear thin also.

I'd like to take a moment now to discuss airplane food. Not that this is a surprise to anyone who's flown in the last 50 years or so, but, well, it's not very good. What is slightly remarkable though is the mannwe in which it is not very good. Bearing in mind that I was headed to Germany enroute to Italy, I was slightly concerned about the preparation of my food and so I requested a "Muslim Meal". This was rather a mistake, I found, because although my meal arrived earlier than the others' it was somewhat ... lacking. I can only imagine that there is a lab somewhere in the Black Forest where Lufthansa gnomes are putting together these meals based on extensive research at a small Pakistani restaurant run by a Norwegianin Thule, Greenland.

The food was mostly tasteless, a desultory chicken with sticky rice and a chick pea concoction that was rather dry. The salad was a stiff dollop of some sort of reconstituted hummus on two tiny leaves of lettuce, with a slice of tomato and a slice of cucumber stuck to it like piglets suckling. I had two types of gread, each made with flour that had been liberally mixed with Quikcrete (tm) , and a glass of mineral water (as it is common knowledge that that is what Muslims will drink if given their druthers. At least the dessert was somewhat palatable, although frankly the slices of melon garnished with strawberry did little to lighten my mood at the end of the meal. It does make me wonder if their kosher meals consist of gefilte fish and matzoh. Based on their narrow interpretation of "Muslim food" I can only imagine.

The only saving grace is the availability of broadband internet. I had read quite a bit about the new availability of airborne internet but wasn't aware that it was so easily accessible. I suppose transatlantic flights would be the first to get them, but frankly I'd rather they'd spent the money on personal video screens or maybe some decent food that is halal but not some sort of penance.

Still, I'm rather disappointed to tell the truth. I chose Lufthansa not just for it's cheap fare, but also because it has been a quality airline in the past. Now bracketed in by the bathroom smell, the sullen stewardesses and the cackling of a few teenaged German girls, I am beginning to wonder at my choice.

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