Madrid, Rome etc

Dear friends:
A lot has happened in my life since my last entry. I went to Madrid, I went to Rome, I had a few visitors here in Athens, I turned 23, I got really really sick,  I felt incredibly lonely and hit my lowest point thus far while in Greece, I got over it, I packed my bag for Santorini, I decided not to go because it was pouring rain, I drew some weird characters and wrote some songs.


First of all, Madrid:

All the buildings look like this

Probably my favourite city I've visited so far. I stayed with a friend who's doing a similar "teach abroad" thing, and spending time with her and her two lovely roommates definitely made the experience. The weather was also great. The architecture is simply stunning, there's plenty of green space, the people were friendly, the food was delicious, the art incredible. I saw a really neat photo exhibit at Caixa Forum, a contemporary art gallery. The exhibition, titled "The Floating World" and composed of photographs by French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue, dealt with Lartigue's fascination with speed and movement. It's on until June 19th, and I highly recommend it if you're in Madrid. Obviously I also loved the Prado - Goya's da MAN, which I hadn't previously realized. The giant carnival rave dance party in a hockey arena certainly didn't hurt, either. I really have nothing bad to say about Madrid. You should go.

Lartigue photo

Tapas 

Rome:

I'm not going to blab on and on about the architecture. It's beautiful, and it's ubiquitous. But Rome has a certain intensity that Madrid does not, and can feel a little overwhelming. This intense feeling was certainly intensified because I spent most of my time in Rome alone. I stayed with a friend from high school, but she had work and an Italian boyfriend to attend to, so the time I got to spend with her was limited. Luckily I got to enjoy two very nice Italian dinners with her, on the Thursday and Friday nights before she went away with her boyfriend for the weekend. Both nights we went to restaurants in Trastavere, which is a very funky area on the West Bank of the Tiber, south of the Vatican. I would definitely recommend this laid-back area for eating and strolling, if you're ever in Rome.

Trevi Fountain

 On Thursday we went to a very good little pasta restaurant, and were seated very close to a party of six Italian men, who inquired whether my friend had a boyfriend. When she replied yes, they told her that since it was spring, "Prima Vera," it was naturally time to find a new one. On Friday, we went out to drinks with her boyfriend and his friend, who were both very pleasant. However, her boyfriend was one of the most maniacal drivers I've ever been in a car with, and altered my opinion of Greeks as the worst drivers on the planet.

Trees I liked

Spring was certainly in the air - it was warmer in Rome than it's been in Greece thus far. The lovely weather gave me that strange contradictory happy/sad feeling that spring weather does. Although it means new beginnings ("Prima Vera" in Italian, Anoixi - like "opening" in Greek), it also means endings. I guess I feel this sense of simultaneous openings/closings, because spring has always meant the end of a school year, which is both happy and sad. It got me thinking a lot about how my time here is almost up, and scared about what's to come next. I can't believe I only have three months left.

I went to the Vatican without knowing that once you reach the Sistine Chapel, you can't turn around and see the rest of the museum. So I rushed through the entire museum to get to the chapel, and once I'd seen it, that was that and I couldn't turn around. So if you ever go to the Vatican, take your sweet time in the museum. Fortunately, as I was breezing through the museum I did linger for a while in a room full of old maps. There's something very enchanting, almost Narnian, about old maps. A nice break from the Madonna and child, for certain.

Hall of Maps

I thought I would enjoy travelling alone, but I actually found it rather stressful and depressing. This negative feeling was certainly compounded by things going on in my personal life at the time, so perhaps it was just bad timing, but I also realized that you have to be a lot more careful and spend a lot more time figuring out where you are, and that ain't no fun. On my birthday, I nearly burst into tears in the streets of Rome, completely alone. I wasn't in any danger, but I just felt so frustrated not knowing where to go. Navigating on my own was a lot more difficult than I'd expected. I got lost a lot, and not always in the most charming areas.

:(

It also felt a bit strange to have an anonymous birthday, with no one to say "Happy Birthday!" to me except myself. I try not to get too worked up about birthdays because they usually end up feeling like just another day anyways, but being around no one at all that you know on your one special day of the year is an odd feeling. For instance, I went out to my birthday dinner on my own, and I felt like people were just staring at me the entire time wondering why I was alone. I sort of felt like screaming at them, "Fuck off it's my birthday!!!" (but didn't). I also dislike how Italian restaurants sit you so close to the next table. I was right next to an old Italian couple who said maybe three words to each other for the whole meal. I felt like I may as well have been part of their party. Maybe they'd run out of things to talk about. But is that how marriage goes? I hope my parents still have conversations when they go out for dinner.

Later on the night of my birthday, I stood in the Piazza by the Pantheon and watched a four-man string band play live. They were great, and a toddler of about three years old was dancing wildly along. I guess I had a big smile on my face watching this kid dance, because a young man approached me and said, "Your look deserves to be written." I gave him a questioning look and told him to go write about it. "I will, " he said. "I'm a writer," and then showed me the back of his book, on which his picture was plastered. I politely declined to ask him about his book, or himself, nor did I mention that I, too was a writer. Then he said something about the light of the moon and how I was gonna make a great mother one day... European men, man. Could they lay it on any thicker? Ugh.

Cool Green Birdy

I had some interesting experiences in cabs in Rome. My first driver attempted to charge me forty euros for a fifteen minute cab drive, after he turned off the meter when we crossed over the Tiber. "The meter doesn't work on this side," he said, "so it's another price." Jerk. I gave him twenty five and got out.  Another, much kinder one, actually gave me more change back than was owed, simply because I had helped him practise his English. All he knew how to say was, "I have run out of food."

Back in Greece..

I think being in Rome alone set something in motion inside of me that made me feel really really lonely, even back in Greece. There's also been some rather unfortunate stuff going on (or not going on) in my personal (read:romantic) life that has been rather upsetting, and has had a more profound effect on my state of mind than I'd like to admit. I could go on and on about that, but that's not what this blog is about.

Anyways - after I got back from Rome, I got really really sick. In Romeo and Juliet (which we finally have finished in my grade ten classes), after Mercutio's famous Queen Mab speech, Mercutio tells Romeo, "True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain." So sometimes is misery, in my opinion.

This was the lowest point I've had so far while in Greece. It's funny, because I'd always expected the hardest part to be the beginning, but the beginning was easy as pie. My bad mood didn't stem from anything culturally related, but instead from being sick in bed with an idle brain, with nothing to do and no one to talk to. It kinda caught me off guard.

Anyways, I'm doing much better now. Currently I am on my two week vacation from school for PASKA (Easter). This past Sunday I was supposed to go to Santorini but opted not to because of bad weather. These few days at home in the apartment have actually been incredibly productive, and now that I'm healthy my brain is not so idle. I've been playing a lot of guitar and drawing weird characters inspired by a Greek artist named Christina Christoferou, who illustrated the cover of "The Magus," the total mindfuck of a book I'm currently reading. Tomorrow my parents are coming to Greece (hooray!) and we are off to Corfu for a true Greek Easter celebration, then to Crete.

New friends

Let the sun shine.

Come visit me in Greece, already.