Impressions of Rome

My real reason for being in Italy was for A&K's wedding, but I'm skeptical of the merits of travelling so far for just one week, so I organised to spend the preceding week as a holiday. My original thought had been to head to Florence or one of the more "Renaissance" cities (or so I think of them), but in the end, for the sake of simplicity I settled on spending a few days in Rome. Like any solo holiday, there are lot of thoughts about the character of the city and my experiences that go unshared, so in the interests of getting them persisted somewhere, I figured I would jot them down here.

It may be the parts of Rome I visited, or the way I spent my time, but my overarching impression of Rome is of the tourist machine. So much of what I saw was surrounded by swarms of tour groups - from all over the world but above all Italian primary-schoolers, French adolescents, and English-speaking retirees - following around guides with little coloured cloths on sticks, used crook-like to lead their errant flocks. These packs were orbited by hawkers flogging the usual knick-knacks you find around tourist attractions - selfie sticks were, inexplicably to me, the dominant artifact during my visit.

During my six days I stayed in Trastevere, quite a hip and almost Parisian-Latin-Quarter style with lots of bars and restaurants in small winding streets ripe for exploration. Like the Latin quarter

All the tourist infrastructure left me, on many days, walking around seeking out places just to be, to sit and read or reflect on the other things I'd seen. Such places felt in shorter supply than in other cities I've visited, although I did find some good ones - the Borghese park, the Villa Celimontana and around the Domus Aurea. I also had a very pleasant morning at the botanical gardens (Orto Botanico), the highlight being a japanese garden up the top, watching apple blossoms fall over a koi pond while I read my book, before being brought harshly back to Italian reality by a swarm of Italian schoolchildren.

I kind of see Rome as being at least two cities, from a tourist perspective. On the one hand there is the Rome of Romulus - the remnants of the great civilisation that ruled the Mediterranean and so much of Europe for so long. This Rome has great romantic appeal to me, having grown up reading the myths and legends of the Greek/Roman gods. I saw a bunch of these - the Roman forums, the Coliseum (past but not in), the Argentina ruins, the Teatro Marcelo, and quite a few trips past and along the Circo Massimo (which had some Natale di Roma shows on the first days of my visit, with dancing Vestal virgins and parading legions). My favourite part of the ancient part of Rome, though, was the Palatino. Part of it was that it had some of the names I liked so much from stories like "I, Claudius" - Augustus, Livia, etc. Even more, though, the ruins of the Palatine were much more intact than those elsewhere in Rome, so I got a much stronger sense of how things had been. Whether it was its isolation on top of the hill or some other reason, it had been less picked over and scavenged (for marble and stone) than the neighbouring Forum, for example.

The other Rome of is that of the Catholic church - the Vatican and the works of all the popes, cardinals and other faithful in the millenium-and-a-bit since the other Rome faded from prominence. To be honest, not really my thing. I'm all for spirituality, but the kind of ostentatious gilt-ceiling brand of worship evidenced in the Roman churches is a difficult fit to my ideals. I visited some spectacular sites of this Rome - the Pantheon, the Basilica of the Vatican (past but not in), the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli next to the Vittoriano, and the extravagant Laterano de St Giovanni, whose chapels were bigger than a lot of churches I've been to. One of the things that's frustrating about the two Romes is that so much of the Catholic Rome is built from pieces of the ancient. One of the more beautiful churches I visited was St Maria di Trastevere, near where I stayed. It was flanked by giant columns, which all sported different capstones (probably not the correct term). I'm pretty sure, based on what our walking guide had told us, that these would have been taken from an ancient Roman site - the forum area was particularly ravaged by this - which made me a little sad. I'd be more interested in visiting temples to Mars or Juno than for St Paul or St Peter.

The complement to the churches is the wide array of things built by the popes, cardinals or others of the believers in the Catholic era. This is most obvious in the villas, many of them on the hills of Rome's founding. I spent a few hours walking around the parks of Villa Borghese, Villa Medici and Villa Celimontana, very pleasant green spaces but which don't really show any of their ancient heritage any more.

I did have a couple of glimpses of interesting aspects of a more contemporary Rome. At one point I got a little bit lost around the Quattro Fontane, and found myself in streets flanked all by orange trees, which is a pretty cool idea I haven't seen elsewhere.

(Ed: I have some photos, and given time and a more accomodating copmuter, I will try to weave them in at some point)

Les Rousses, le départ

In the morning, Nicolas very kindly dropped me over at La Cure in plenty of time for the train. Unfortunately, the SBB website's claim that even small stations have a ticket machine proved false, and I was forced to splash out and spend some precious roaming data to buy a ticket on my phone (admittedly an elegant system for locals); how much the 500kb costs me will be revealed in time, I guess. The train down was at least as pleasant as the trip up had been, and I was at Geneva Airport in plenty of time.

"Even the smallest stations in Switzerland have ticket machines." Yeah, right...

Perhaps it was that by this point I was very ready to get home, but Geneva would be among the worst airports I've been in, with at least twice as many people as it was capable of handling, and almost no seats for any of them. I ate my sandwich sitting on the ground outside a pharmacy, surrounded by loud-mouthed English ski tourists reminding me of all my prejudices against the accents of that country.

Nonetheless, eventually, three airports later, and having spent a much reduced (by time zone changes) Australia day most in an 777-300 and in Singapore Airport, at 2am on a Monday morning, and having ridden cars, trains, planes and taxis all around the world, I did eventually get home to bed.

Aachen to Dusseldort to Heathrow to Geneva

The trip from Aachen to Geneva was largely uneventful. I was conscious that I'd probably made a mistake by flying rather than taking trains, but I was happy to just live with it. I had a couple of hours at Heathrow, during which I principally amused myself by grinning about Australia having beaten England in another ODI.

Geneva, on this trip, struck me as a distinctly dirty city. This was an odd impression to take away, since it wasn't one I'd had on my previous visit 10 years ago, nor did it fit with my general stereotype of Switzerland, of order and organisation. Admittedly, my hotel was near the main railway station - never a good location in a European city, but I felt neither impressed nor even particularly safe walking around the streets looking (without great satisfaction) for a decent restaurant.

For the rest of the trip:

• Les Rousses, Day 1
• Les Rousses, Day 2
• Les Rousses, Day 3
• Les Rousses, Day 4
• Les Rousses, Day 5
• Les Rousses, le départ

Aachen

The dust is deep on this blog, but on my recent work/holiday trip to Aachen and the Jura, respectively, I felt compelled to write, and did. So, here follow, in episodes correspondingly loosely to days, those accounts.

View from hotel room in Aachen

The first week of my trip bears little discussion, really. Most days consisted of catching a cab around daybreak from the hotel out to the university, where we worked through the day writing and talking about the book, with lunches at the uni cafeteria. We generally broke between 7 and 8 for dinner in town somewhere. For the most part the days were uneventful and the dinners nothing to write home about (although one of the restaurants was apparently the birthplace of Reuters).

The Dom in Aachen

The change in Aachen on the Saturday was quite remarkable. Throughout the week, the streets in the evenings and particularly in the mornings had seemed almost deserted, but come Saturday the town was filled with people.

The back of the Aachen town hall

It was a lovely sunny day, and I'm not sure from whence they'd come (visiting from out of town or just emerging from the suburbs), but the town was buzzing with people from all walks. I had a couple of nice walks around town, past the town hall and cathedral, both bristling with a half dozen different architectural styles all mashed together over the centuries.

The front of the Aachen town hall

For the rest of the trip:

• Aachen to Düsseldorf to Heathrow to Geneva
• Les Rousses, Day 1
• Les Rousses, Day 2
• Les Rousses, Day 3
• Les Rousses, Day 4
• Les Rousses, Day 5
• Les Rousses, le départ

Travel Wrap

I had been doing so well with my reports on my trip through Europe, with 6 blog posts directly about it and another which was pretty strongly linked. Today, though, I'm abandoning what hopes I may have had of fully documenting the trip, with a hastily compiled summary of a time period which probably represents almost half of the time I was away.

I've already blogged about my weekend in Rennes and, like the weekend, much of the week that followed was spent in similar vain, in that it was a revisitation of my old life in Rennes.

My days were spent at Beaulieu, working with my old team. I say my old team, but times have moved on since I was there. Jean-Marc has moved up in the world, to be director of the laboratory, and Benoit B has moved into his role as team leader. There are a few more permanent researchers now - Benoit B, Benoit C, Olivier, Arnaud, Johann, Gerson and Noël (off the top of my head) - and it seems like a lot more doctoral students. The project as a whole faces an important year ahead, as the old project comes to an end and they prepare a proposal (or proposals) for new directions.

In the evenings I mostly hung out with M, who came over to visit on Monday. I had really been looking forward to showing her "my town", and some of the things I really like about it, but it was a very vague ambition, and I'm not sure to what extent it was met. We tried a range of crêperies and restaurants, including some that I'd frequented in the past. We met Nono - by chance, actually - for an apero, and had dinner with the Benoits. We tried a few new things too (new to me as well), most noticeably some really delicious macaroons from a chocolatier which I'd often walked past but never walked into. Oddly, we only went for one run, but it was a good one, along the canal

On the Friday we took a train, then a taxi, then a plane, then a bus, in order to get ourselves to Hammersmith, as I made a return to London (the previous visits having been 2003, 2004 and 2007, I think) for the trip's one week of true vacation (on my part - M was back to work).

Saturday was largely given to the Boat Race, the annual rowing 8s competition between Oxford and Cambridge along the Thames, in no small part because the house in which I was graciously hosted was ideally placed to watch the event. Being just a few yards from the river, and with a rooftop view giving both up and down the stretches graced by the boats, had lead to a call - well made if not well heeded - for a barbecue to celebrate. It was impressive to see just how many people turn out to watch, and with what enthusiasm they do so. I was on the light blues for the day, courtesy of my cousin's involvement in a few instalments, many years ago now.

In the end, the race itself was equal parts spectacle and debacle. About 2/3 of the way through the race, with Oxford perhaps ahead by a nose and well placed in light of the remaining bends, a swimmer emerged directly in front of the Oxford boat, and both crews were instructed to stop rowing. The guy, an Australian purportedly demonstrating against elitism, was unharmed, but what followed was a curious half hour in which the boats moved back up the river to eventually restart from just before where the incident had occurred. After the restart, a clash of oars left Oxford one blade down, which allowed Cambridge to cruise ahead to a comfortable win.

What was perhaps more curious about the event, to me at least, was the nature of the crowds. In the evening, hours after the official proceedings had mutely wound down, we headed to a local pub for a pint. What we found was a curious mix of would-be toffs (though I remain unconvinced that they weren't regular punters wearing velvet jackets out of irony) and others who fit to a T the drunken stereotype of the drunken English soccer fan, people who I would never have thought of as being interested in such a historically elitist event.

A week in London would, to someone else, represent an enormous opportunity for tourism, but I made little of it, really. I got to a few attractions - a morning in the national gallery, a lunchtime concert at St Martin-in-the-Field (Piazzola!), an afternoon at the Victoria & Albert - but left rather more unattended. I did manage a very pleasant day travelling out by train to Moreton-in-Marsh to see some family friends - whose acquaintance I was long overdue to make - for what turned out to be a very enjoyable and affable lunch.

What I spent most of the week doing, in reality, was running and reading. I managed 4 runs: one out to Richmond Park and back along the Tow Path, one past Craven Cottage down to Putney Bridge and back, a third down past Barnes and Chiswick Bridges and almost to Kew Bridge, and another short one to Mortlake, for a coffee, before coming back again along the Tow Path. I suspect that over the journey, I played the role of anchor to M&T, who were both in training for much longer (some would say preposterously long) events, and were clearly much fitter than I was.

The other activity for the week was reading. I borrowed up a book on arrival in London, from one of my absent hosts, and an iPad during the week, and alternated during the week of reading the former while at "home base", and the latter while out and about. I have since finished one, and will soon finish the latter, but I will leave a discussion of the merits of these and other books to another post. It is quite likely that, with my return to Australia, this blog will return to its regular programming of apologetically delayed book reviews. Still, hopefully this travel diary has served as an amusing distraction

An evening in Potsdam

On Sunday night I arrived in Potsdam for the second of my four-week swing through Europe (with apologies to British separatists). So far, I have been impressed by how helpful everyone has been. On leaving the airport, I immediately struggled with my extremely weak grasp of German, trying and failing to buy a ticket on the bus. Fortunately, though, a German hostess helped me out, and I managed to navigate my way to Charlottenburg S-bahn and from there to Babelsberg and my hotel. After orienting myself, and not having colleagues to meet (for a change), I decided to head out for a run.

Babelsberg, it seems, and Potsdam more broadly, is surrounded by parks, forests and lakes. According to google maps (thank goodness for hotel wifi), the closest of these green and blue blobs to my hotel is Park Babelsberg, so it was in that direction that I set out, headphones in, and braced against the single-figure temperature.

I had probably run about 300 metres when I became aware of a man running beside me wearing business attire and waving. As I stopped, so did he, bent over puffing and panting to regain his breath, before rising and handing me the key to my hotel room. Apparently it had fallen from my pocket a while back, and he had been chasing me to return it. I think my lack of German made it difficult for him to tell me to be careful as sternly as he would have wanted, and it certainly made it difficult for me to be as effusive in my thanks as his good deed warranted.

Ed: At this point I would love to embed the map for the run, along with the pictures I took, but runkeeper's embeddable maps are broken at the moment. Anyway, it can be found at http://runkeeper.com/user/jimsteel/activity/77584686, including a few pictures.


I ran on, past the local football stadium and across into Park Babelsberg. Almost immediately I was greeted by what a naive Australian would call a castle, but which I suppose in reality is just one building amongst some kind of feudal estate. As I ran on I encountered more, and more various, buildings, in very good condition and with scatterings of people wandering around looking at them. I ran on, along the edge of the lake (the Tiefer See), past a bar serving cyclists watching the sunset over the lake, around to a small bridge near a university embedded into the forest.

Running back, I abandoned my simple and easily followed route, and just wandered amongst the little trails winding through the park, heading towards and around towers and stately homes at whim. By the time I got back, I had racked up 7 or 8km, which I was happy with, given how long I had gone without running.

After showering, I again headed out, in search of dinner. I wandered into an Italian restaurant near the hotel, and sat down. Throughout the meal, I answered the waiter's fairly predictable questions in stuttering, broken German. He obviously knew I didn't speak much, but he humoured me and allowed me to struggle on, which I liked. The food itself, some bruschetta followed by tagliatelle with a gorgonzola, spinach and walnut sauce, was pretty good. I made the mistake, though, of ordering Lambrusco on the strength that it was the only red wine I recognised. I should perhaps have considered that the basis for my recognition was more of notoriety than renown - it was a pretty ordinary excuse for wine, especially for my Australian palate. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy sitting there, as the other patrons chatted away in German and I stared contentedly out the window at the sleepy boulevard.

Oslo a go-go

My doubts about my visit to Oslo were quickly allayed by being in Oslo. The first few days of meetings were a little dry, but with enough interesting presentations, and more importantly enough opportunity to meet the people doing interesting things, to keep my attention. In between, I managed to get out to see a little of the town, principally in the evenings.

Monday night I went down to the harbour for dinner with a couple of other people from the conference, which drove home both the expense but also the appeal of the Oslo waterfront.

Tuesday we had a dinner at a cultural museum on the curiously-named presque-île of Bygdøy, a strange affair whose central feature was the passing around the room of a bowl of beer, from which everyone drank.

Wednesday night found us at what seemed to be Norway's national construction industry awards night, an incredibly kitch affair with what could only be characterised as "cock rock", each category's nominees being ushered in by "We are the Champions" or similar. As it happened, this was the only English used for the night, and the combination of kitch music, plentiful wine, and the complete incomprehensibility of the dialogue made for a pretty good time at our table.

Friday saw an end to the official conference proceedings, leaving me to my own devices for a few days. I had arranged to stay with Franck and his family, and he also invited me in to SINTEF to give a presentation on Friday morning. I cobbled something together, and had a good time discussing the mix of MDE and BIM with Franck, Arnor and others in their group. In the afternoon, at Franck's recommendation, I took a T-bane to its terminus at Frognerseteren, high up in the hills above the harbour.

I imagine that in years less warm than this, there would have been more people up there using it as a base for cross-country skiing, as there were a handful of pretty little trails radiating out away from the train platform. Despite the facts that (a) the warm weather had made the trails simultaneously less than ideal for both skiing and walking, and (b) I was wearing town shoes rather than skis or even hiking boots, I was determined to see some scenery, and set out down a trail in the general direction of the appealingly named Tryvannstua. I wandered pretty randomly, to be honest, and learnt a lot about types of snow, specifically which types of glistening snow were slippery, or were likely to admit my wholly inappropriate shoes to wholly uncomfortable depths. In the end, I called a halt to proceedings and did an about-face what must have been only a few hundred metres short of Tryvannstua, but not having attained my randomly selected destination did not take away from my enjoyment of the surroundings. I suspect that had I been there a month earlier, on skis, or a month later, with leaves on the trees and flowers on the ground, it would have been more pleasant, but after a week in meeting rooms staring out windows, I certainly appreciated being outdoors.

On the way down the hill I stopped at Holmenkollen, site of Oslo's skijump, likely built for a long-past Winter Olympics, but looking a little forlorn without its coating of snow. Next door there was a track set up for some sort of nordic skiing sprint event, with lots of people walking around preparing TV gear, ticket offices and the like for the finals on the Saturday, while what I presume were the lesser skiers went down the hill attempting to qualify.

Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning I spent with Franck, Valentine and their son Sacha, much as I did on my visit there last year. I really like hanging out with their little family, even if at times I feel like a bit of a third wheel, when Sacha plays up (I suspect sometimes for my benefit), or when real life just takes a hand. I hope that one day I'll be able to return the favour with some of my European friends, and share my life in Australia with them as well.