10 posts from 2007

Long story short, in case it gets lost later on, Assisi is an awesome place to visit.  Now on to the details...

Thursday's journey up to Assisi began with the realization that Assisi itself is at a fairly decent elevation in the highlands of Perugia.  The train station, of course, is in the valley, which initially presented the daunting task of hiking the distance and height up to Assisi proper.  Fortunately, they have a bus network to get people up there, so one climb among many was saved here.

The dinner at the hotel, like all of the 6 meals they served while I was there, was long, generous, and quite satisfying.  After dinner, a little expedition was made up to the Rocco Maggiore, where the ruins of an ancient medieval fortress are located.  They were explored later; the really neat part of this trip was the contrast between the two different sides of the hill on which the fortress is located.  To the one side, all the lights of the towns in the valley gleaming bright and inviting, while on the other, darkness and desolation in the many hills, particularly eerie with the moonlight and the wind whipping about.  The immediate impression was that of sitting on the boundary between good and evil, particularly as the darkened hills gave the chills looking at them, with only the lonely outpost of light here and there.

Friday was a day of heavy footwork.  Following Mass at the Cathedral - San Rufino - there was a little tour of some of Assisi's churches, the Basilicas of Santa Chiara (St. Clare) and San Damiano being the two main stops.  The quakes of ten years ago did a lot of damage at the former, as is obvious upon visiting.  Many frescoes have huge chunks missing, some are completely obliterated, hardly any are undamaged.  About the only place that didn't seem too bad was the Blessed Sacrament's chapel.  As a note, the famous San Damiano cross that spoke to St. Francis is actually kept in one of Santa Chiara's side chapels.  San Damiano was neat to see some of the original items of St. Francis, plus it provided a very rigorous walk uphill on the way back...though it was to be minor compared with what came later.

After lunch, the plan was to walk to a hermitage of St. Francis, called Le Carceri, which unknown to me at the time was a very long walk, and also a very high climb.  From the point of departure in the upper end of Assisi, which was already some walk uphill, it took me approximately an hour of walking a slow and mostly steady pace uphill to reach the hermitage.  The place was nice and quiet, but I didn't have a lot of time to linger, having taken so long to get there to begin with.  I followed the path, somewhat amused to find that the first branch was entitled "No Way Out Path" and led down into the forest below.  There's a nice horror movie choice...now it's easy to see why the place closes before dark.  The second branch was simply titled "Closed Path" and was really closed.  I only had enough time to visit St. Francis's altar and a couple other small sanctuaries here - St. Francis lived here a while - but it was enjoyable, followed by another hour-long walk back down.  A check of the elevation at the bottom revealed that the climb to the hermitage involved a 361 meter trip uphill - or just under 1200 feet.  That's not a pleasant trip to make on standard pavement...and I don't even want to think of the horizontal distance involved.

Saturday was a bit more relaxed, with Mass at the tomb of St. Francis in the crypt of the lower basilica of St. Francis.  This was a bit humorous to watch, seeing the liturgically loose Franciscan way meet an altar that happened to be attached to the tomb with no alternative present, thus requiring an ad altare consecration.  This basilica has also taken some heavy damage from the quakes, though not as obviously as Santa Chiara.  The frescoes were on the whole in better shape, but honestly, the lesser damaged lower-church was far more impressive than the upper-church, even had there not been the question of fresco damage.  Following the visit here, a quick tour was taken of Assisi again, after which I had the opportunity to shop for a few souvenirs.  I found what I think will make a perfect gift for one of my sisters...

After lunch, I decided to drop by Rocca Maggiore to actually explore it.  The castle has two explorable branches, the wall and towers to one side, and the keep to the other.  The wall and towers are the more fun, but also more perilous side to take.  I went there first, going first up a tower near the complex, then took a long hallway through to the next part.  The hallway was arguably the most fun part, as it was nearly pitch black even in daylight, and gave something of the experience of a defender tramping down the thing.  On an odd note, the defenders must have been small, since the height was only just enough to permit me to walk upright, and it was fairly narrow.  At the end was a something called the pentagonal tower, basically an octagon stuck on top of a dodecahedron, and with arguably the most perilous set of spiral stairs I have ever seen (concrete, damp, uneven, no handrails, and narrow).  At the top, one has an excellent view of all of surrounding Perugia, but the winds were furious, which is not the greatest feeling when cliffs of several hundred feet are to 2 sides.  The keep was less interesting, being basically an unadorned stone complex, but it was still the most fun I've had exploring ruins in a while.

The day was capped by a visit to the Portiuncula - which is not in Assisi proper but in the town below by the rail station - and then the train ride home.  A rather fun and enjoyable trip, and one that didn't break the bank either.

A week between posts, but there wasn't a lot to write about for a while.  The weekend brought some guests from Spain to the house, which resulted in a free dinner, sitting in on some dinners where I understood not a word, and a mysterious case of disappearing toilet-paper in the house.

Steubenville's Austrian students dropped by the same weekend, and I was able to tag along on several tours in the city, starting with a general city tour on Sunday, a Forum tour on Tuesday, and a St. Peter's tour today.  The Sunday tour visited the Basilica of San Clemente, which sits over some of the oldest ruins of Rome, a Mithraic temple that is nearly 2500 years old.  It's been excavated, so it's possible to journey both through the remains of the old San Clemente basilica - some frescoes remain - and the Mithraeum down below.  An impressive set of ruins.  Sunday also took us to Santa Maria Maggiore, where the relic of the manger was displayed, as it was the 25th of the month.

Monday was a neat opportunity for Mass in at St. Peter in chains, the station church of the day.  Tuesday's tour was of the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, and the Roman Forum.  The Colosseum looks a bit odd up close, as it's apparent some of the brick/stonework is a restoration, though it's not often clear which is which, making the restoration pretty good, I think.  I haven't been inside yet, though it's planned for later.  The Circus Maximus isn't much of anything to look at anymore, it's simply a wide open field where Christians were once martyred.  I find it odd that given the number of martyrs at the place, no church was ever built there.  The Roman Forum I'd previously visited, though this time I picked up a few details on it.  The Vestal Virgins story was easily as interesting as the Abelard and Eloise introduction to my Medieval Mystics class.  The love story behind Anthony and Faustina was also good, as was the astonishing fact that the columns of their Basilica, which still stand, have huge gouges in them from ropes, as builders once wanted to bring them down to use elsewhere, but were unable to do so.  We also had the chance to see the building the Roman Senate met in, which is much smaller than one would have expected.

Today's St. Peter's tour was not quite what was expected, though one interesting fact is that now all tours must use a headphone system to keep the noise down inside, which is good, especially when around for Confession or Mass in the Basilica.  It's also amazing that St. Peter's has no paintings or frescoes save one in the entryway.  Everything is a mosaic, even things I'd swear were masterpiece paintings...which is also why it's possible to take pictures galore in there.  Apparently the letters decorating the walls are bigger than me too.

I also paid a visit to the Scala Santa, the Holy Stairs.  They're covered with wood to protect them, and I imagine the knees of the faithful, though it goes without saying that my knees, even several hours later, are sore from the effort, but it was worth it.  You can't really describe the feeling of making the climb, except that it's a rather prayerful time with actual suffering going on physically, and it lasts a good 20 to 30 minutes.

Tomorrow, a small pilgrimage to Assisi will be undertaken, which is likely to cost about 150 to 200 Euros, which isn't too bad for a 3 day journey.  More from that when I get back to Rome.

And oddly enough, despite two tries at it, I don't think I managed to get any ashes during the course of the day.  The first attempt came in an early morning visit to Santa Sabina, the station church of the day, for the English Mass.  Unfortunately, due to poor planning, we arrived just after they'd distributed the ashes.  The second attempt came later at St. Peter's, where I arrived in time for the complete Mass, but yet the priest distributing the ashes didn't seem to make physical contact when I went up.  Either that or the ashes were very light, which is possible, since the ash at the basilica was the lightest color I have ever seen.

Overall, it's not a bad start to Lent.  I could have managed better, but it also could have gone far worse.

On a sidenote, upon leaving the Basilica's evening Mass, they had blocked up the colonnade as the Pope was returning from Santa Sabina.  Owing to position, I was only able to see him in a flash in his car, not when he stepped out to an impromptu cheer from a small crowd a bit further up in the colonnade.  Either some youths were just being typically reckless, or they wanted to see him badly enough to leap a barricade with at least a dozen cops nearby, as many leaps were made over the gates.

Although I missed the early morning class I wanted to sample, on sacramental character (my 5th choice backup, due to its inconvenient timing and more dry-sounding content), the evening class on God and the poets was a good selection, and likely will be for the term to come.  Dr. Martin would probably get on splendidly with the professor of this class, Father Murray.  Father Murray is also a Dominican, which is my usual preference when it comes down to which set of friars to pick (hopefully the Franciscan TORs here are not reading!)

The professor is quite engaging and interesting, and happens to be teaching a class that I probably need more than the others, since poetic expression and imagination is less my suit than the two big cores of theology, dogma and morals.  But it's easy to see his point that since God opts to use poetry to approach man in the Scripture and also in the person of Jesus - via parables, for example - instead of simply leaving a to-do list, that it's important not to overlook this dimension.  The good Dominican sees this as a weakness in scholasticism - hard to argue, despite what little I know of it - but he's not selling St. Thomas short, as he plans to include some poetry from the founder of the order as we move on.

This class should be fairly relaxed, as most of it appears to be poetry and the corresponding reaction to it.  I should enjoy it though, since I haven't taken the time to enjoy poetry much in recent years, to say nothing of the great Christian patrimony of such works.

The other planned-upon courses for this semester are:

The Divisions of the Virtues in St. Thomas Aquinas (drab-sounding, but I haven't had much chance for Thomistic study elsewhere...)

Man, Image of God (holding on as 4th choice, mainly for time convenience)

The Humanity of the Medieval Mystics (this should be good)

Today was mostly spent taking a walking tour of the Roman Forum, which is literally right outside my bedroom window.  I spotted a booth that offers a self-guided listening tour for 4 Euros, so I may opt to do it sometime in the near future.  Also located here is the ticket office for the Palatine and the Colisseum - I am advised that if you want to visit the Colisseum, it is best to buy tickets here to avoid the long lines at the Colisseum for tickets.

Santa Maria in Antica, an ancient church in the Forum, is presently closed for repairs.  Although the signs posted indicated a 3-phase project scheduled for completion in 2006, the posted signs are for a phase 2 that was supposed to end somewhere in 2004.

The size of the buildings in the Forum is impressive, particularly the Basilica of Maxentius, the ruins of which are located southeast of the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian.  All that is left is the north wall - with three impressively huge vaulted ceilings and decoration - and some intact archways in the east wall, aside from the scattered ruins of columns and walls, but it still makes its size felt standing below.  While probably not quite as large as a football field, it certainly gives that impression, and seems to be about 4 stories tall.

The Forum has several arches, the most interesting of which to me is the one depicting Roman soldiers carrying back booty from the sack of Jerusalem.  One other interesting find of today was looking at a set of columns that still hold up a bit of marble, near the Capitoline.  The inscription has SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus, which is ubiquitous everywhere in Rome, from ruins to churches to modern day posterboards and drain covers), and a note that seems to imply restoration in the year 1943.  That has me wondering if it's referring to the restoration of those columns or the overthrow of Mussolini in 1943.

Later in the day, I wandered into a church where they happened to be celebrating a wedding.  It has to be a bit weird, getting married while tourists are wandering around, chatting, and snapping photos, but they seemed to take it well.  Still, where they were getting married seemed appropriate enough - an inscription overhead referred to the Queen of the Angels and the Martyrs.  The bride was on the left, the groom on the right - or, as I thought, respectively, the angel and the martyr of the newlyweds.

Today was the first time using Rome's metro system which, compared to other major European capitals, is much smaller by comparison.  Only 2 lines operate in the city, and they only meet at the city's train station, Termini.  At least they are more useful than the single line, 1-road system at home; a third line is under construction, as can be seen at various locations in the city.

The Metro fees aren't too bad compared to some places, though I think I will take the advice to wait for the opportunity to purchase a monthly student pass for 17 Euros rather than try to do the 4 Euro daily pass.  The system seems to do reasonably well, and was helpful in learning to pronounce a bit of Italian thanks to the loudspeakers.

One thing that is quickly learned in Rome is that 1 pm to 4 pm is a bad time to be looking for shops to be open unless you want a bite to eat.  The majority of the small stores were closed during those hours - the best time to go is either in the early morning or late afternoon and early evening.  I managed to successfully purchase a mouse for the notebook and a 9V battery for my clock, as apparently even with a voltage converter, it cannot keep proper time connected to the wall.

I also discovered that McDonald's sells a product in Italy that is very much like southern fried chicken wings - 3 of the wings sold for 1.5 Euros, which was cheaper than the french fries at 1.8 Euros.  And I did have a little fun at what the group is dubbing "Aldi Roma" - a cheap little market tucked into a dead end alley near Santa Maria Maggiore, where the purchase of 10 hamburgers, 2 pizzas, some chicken/mozzerella strips, a bag of apples, a loaf of bread, a 1.5 liter bottle of generic cola, butter, sauce, and maybe a couple other things only ran to 15 Euros, which isn't bad considering I expect the food to provide at least 7 meals, if not a few more.

So said a woman who spoke English at one of Rome's PostItalienne branches today, as the four of us struggled to fill out paperwork to get formal permission to stay from Italy.  The procedure so far has rather Byzantine in character, made worse by the fact that the whole process has changed since it was done for the last group.  So far, we've had to get a hospitality form from the friars, get registered at the Quaestura, make copies in triplicate of most things only to find out they now want single copies, and fill out other forms that will be mailed to the Quaestura, which will then call to make an appointment so we can get approved.  Today's headaches involved finding out we had to make copies of every page in our passport, that one form couldn't be filled out in blue ink, and that we had to pay over 70 Euro just to mail the forms to the Quaestura (30 in the form of a tariff, 27.50 to pay for a form, and 14.63 for postage).  We started out for the Post at just after 1, and didn't get out of there until nearly 4:30.

After that, it was time to head for home, since the whole experience was rather draining.  I got a bit of a laugh looking at the past marks in my passport from 2001's journey, since the stamp from Heathrow that I got at the airport merely granted a 6 month stay without any fuss or money, while this 4 month stay in Italy is neither simple nor cheap to get approved.

Today was quite a long day, as one expects when first visiting a new place.  It began with a visit to the post office to buy insurance and then to the Angelicum to set up a meeting to get registered for classes next week.  Technically, classes will already have started before we register, but apparently this is the way things work over here.  A little exploration was done of the Angelicum and more copies were made of documents that we need to get legalized over here.

One annoyance has been the amount of money required to actually get everything squared up over here.  The insurance was roughly 40 Euros, the stamps required for our paperwork another 30 Euros, and the actual process itself will cost another 40 to 60 Euros.  Add in the $30 required to get the student visa, and it's close to $200 just for the paperwork on the Italian side of the pond.

The rest of the day involved a little exploration and goofing off, and also a little education on scam artists, as two of us were hit at the same time by an enterprising troupe of pushy guys who make quite a ridiculous profit margin.  Needless to say, you not only have to keep your hands in your pockets to protect your wallet, you also need to do it to protect you from the stealth picks.

We paid a visit to the area around the Vatican, and probably at least a half dozen churches in between, including the Pantheon and the Chiesa Nuova, which would be a favorite of mine due to my like of St. Philip Neri, founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, which still runs that church.  They also offer English confessions, which is a nice luxury not too far away.

Rome's prices in general are high at the restaurants - it was not unusual to expect to pay upwards of 15 to 20 Euro per person most places - but there is a ridiculously cheap market not far from home, in which 2 pounds of pasta, a jar of sauce, and a 1.5 liter bottle of water cost probably somewhere around $1.30.  It's not the greatest of food, but it's edible and cheap, which will do.

Dinner was followed up by an hours long chat, which was nice, given that I now know that considerable amounts of time can and will be taken up by conversation.

I made it to Rome in one piece, which is a good first start to the trip.  The laptop's all set and ready to go, and I'm posting from it now in my room, after several rearrangements of furniture to get the two plugs in the room and the ethernet cord to actually be in convenient places.

One thing that stands out from the series of flights is how nice it is to fly out of Buffalo.  Arriving just over two hours early, I got checked in, checked bags, got my boarding pass, and was through security in 15 minutes.  Neither Logan airport in Boston nor Heathrow was able to come close by comparison.  Logan proved to be the biggest pain, where a few people decided to show up to the British Airways counter completely ignorant of the restrictions on both checked bags, carry-ons, and liquids and gels.  The end result of this was a half hour of the line not moving as these nuts unpacked and repacked their luggage numerous times to get it all just right and deal with the liquids.  Needless to say, everyone was extremely annoyed as the line backed up on account of people who hadn't bothered to show up prepared.  Heathrow was somewhat better, though they made the odd decision to use a gate that required a 10 minute bus ride to get to the plane.

One bit of advice for travel is to avoid the UK if at all possible in your travel plans, as they are currently restricting carry-ons to one bag not much larger than the size of a decently stuffed laptop bag (roughly 22 x 18 x 10) for all flights going through the country.

The Rome program this semester is operating rather thin, as only 4 people are here this time, instead of the usual 8 who can go if they choose.  It seems like it will be a good group to get along with and the portion of the convent attached to the Basilica we're using is fairly modernized and should be nice and comfy after a while.

More after the process of getting registered to stay here, which is apparently both newly complicated and highly expensive.

Tomorrow, Sunday afternoon, I leave Buffalo to fly to Rome to begin a 4 month stay in Italy for a semester abroad at the Angelicum.  My home base during the trip is going to be right by the Roman Forum, as the TOR Fathers in Rome graciously host a small number of Franciscan University students each semester near their motherhouse at the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian,

The blog's former location has been idle due to problems with my host, a lack of much to talk about, and generally being a bit lazy.  This new home should be kept busy with posting from Rome, especially with pictures, since I anticipate having much more time without the distractions that normally consume my time.

Feel free to say hi, offer suggestions of things to see or do in Europe, and offer prayers for my safe journey and return.

More to come when I arrive in Rome, sometime early Monday morning in the US.