Hadrians villa at Tivoli

Not all people wanna stay in Rome, not even all emperors wants to live there. who knows why.

An example of such a emperor is emperor Hadrian, born in 76 ad in Spain, son of the brother of Trajan. But after his parents died, he was put in care of the the emperor Trajan and ended up as the successor and ruled in the period 117-138 ad. Trajan did actually never name Hadrian as is official successor, but his wife claim him

The reason I have chosen to bore you guys about this guy, is that we went to visit the place where he actually wanted to live, namely villa Adriana (Italian for Hadrian).

This ruin which was luckily forgotten for the after time, but sadly discovered by a cardinal Ippolito II d'Este in 1550 how removed all the marble and statues from the Hadrian's villa to decorate his own villa (villa d'Este) which is also around the villages of Tivoli. The state of Hadrian's villa at that point is unknown (at least by me), but today there is a lot of ruins but only a few places where you can get an hint of how magnific this place must have been. One of these places is were the picture below is taken. We were luckily (Even in Rome the weather is bad some times) with the weather. So we had a great Italian picnic, with mozzarella cheese, prosciutto and red wine. And then a tour around the place with our rented audio guides (which is these phone looking things, where you press a number and it will tell you about the place you are standing)
. We also saw a nice view of danish efficiency, in the form of a guy, who must have a record (if any exists) in the unknown Hadrian villa race, we felt a little bit like we were watching an episode of road runner cartoon, with this slim guy appearing in front of us, taking a picture and then bip-bip running on to the next view post.


We didn't actually talk with the poor efficient guy, but the politikkens Rom guidebook gave him away.

In any case it was a great day, and the villa is definitely a mustsee if you have more than a few days in Rome.

The battle star of the empire

Even though I am very busy telling everybody that it’s very stressing to move to Rome, I sometimes do the tourist and go and look at some old building. The other day I actually came in time for my bus, and arrived almost half an hour too early for work (My key to the office only works after nine in the mornings(forced to sleep late:-)). So I decided to go and say hello to good ol' saint Pietro (Peter). Usually around 8.30, when all good tourists are to busy to rush to the queue of Vatican museum, to realise that you can walk straight into the Peters church, you can walk right in. The funny thing is that later on there will be a huge queue in front of the church too.

Even though I despise the richness of the Catholic Church, it is hard not to be impressed with the size and grandeur of the Peter’s church (which is located at 41°54′08″N, 12°27′12″E). I think that if you took it apart you could build the entire village, where I grew up, from the material, even a deluxe edition. Actually I also think that the inside of the church is big enough to cover the village - whether this says most about the size of the church or my upbringing, I will leave for the reader to decide. In any case its a place I would recommend to everybody to see, god fearing or not. Because the splendour of this grand building from 1625 is hard to gasp.

Its almost too impressive, its too showoff, because it seems that the church is just this very big hall, where only a small area is actually used for the practice of serving the god, the rest seems just for show… And it works, if there is a thing as to feel vertigo when looking up, it should occur when you look up into the Dome of the church (42.3 meters) - again the question is if its the actual height or the strobe light effect from the Japanese cameras (blink blink), which seems to try, in turn, to persist every centimetre of the building. The number of statues in that single church is probably the same amount as in all the major cities of Jutland (part of Denmark), and the grand paintings is, well… grand.

Well that's it, after kissing the foot of Peter, I went to work. While wondering if it was the present of god which made the reception of my cellular phone so bad or it was merely the columns which enclose the piazza.

The ride to work

Usually I take the bus to work, since there is 15 minutes walk to the nearst metrostation and the bus is not so overcrowded. Mostly I take the bus too late. It seems to be impossible for me to arrive at the busstop before 8.20 just in time to miss the bus.

Busses here in Rome, by the way does not have time schedules. If you ask a roman why they almost look insultet at you, and explain that that would be impossible with all the trafic jams. Which always have puzzled me because there are always trafic jams in Rome, it is infact one of the few static things you can count on every morning. So why it is that nobody can calculate a schedule for the bus where the trafic jams are included is beyond me. Anyway the bus seems always to arrive around the same time.

The bus which I take ends almost next to the vatican museum (which is (for those of you without culture), the one of the most visited museums in the world), but luckely no guidebook never wrote number 81 in its lists of buses which goes this way, and are therefore primarly full of people going to work, and not so many scared foreigners, which every morning try to match the impossible street signs with the overview map in their guidebook. Which is almost a shame, because its actually a quite nice trip - I of cause cannot enjoy since I am to busy not looking at all the tourist things so I will look like a native :-).

After getting of, I have a little bit of a walk to work, where I luckily (or sadly because it always makes me a bit more late) have found a nice little bar where they make a great cappuccino and sell warm cornettos. Each morning I try to avoid it, but almost every morning I find myself entering. By now they know me, and says "cappuccino!!" as soon as I enter - Its nice already to have somebody how recognizes me in this new country.

And with a cappuccino and a cornetto in the stomac I feel much more ready to create software in italian