I Finally Got To See My Church

I finally got to see my church.

Well and some other things on the way. Whats a trip to the historical center without having a look at the Colosseum. This grand old slaughter house is in my opinion one of the most beautiful buildings in Rome. I also managed to take 18 pictures of it, but I will spear you and only put one:



Going towards the church I tried an alternative road, behind the Trajan markets, which is the year 100 AD version of a shopping center. It housed around 150 shops and offices, ranging from lawyers offices to olive oil shops. This picture is taken from behind, and actually shows the Foro Romano more than the market itself.


Walking on I found this cupboard hanging on the wall, which I am still wondering what it is for:


The intelligent guess would be that some picture of a saint is hidden behind, and is only opened on selected days, I don't know, maybe a nice reader could put the answer in a comment, does he/she know it.

Further on I saw distant view of the Trajan column build to honor the same emperor which build the markets. Now, however, its not a nude statue of the emperor as in the beginning, but a statue of St. Peter, put there in the sixteenth century by a pope.



When I got to the church it was open, and practically empty, I met a monk in the entrance, which held the door for me, as he was trying to get out and I was in the way (wonder if I broke some monk courtesy rule here, not letting him pass first).

Inside there were only some low whispers from the confession stands. It sounded like somebody had had a busy night. And a Spanish tourist, who did everything he could not to make a sound. He tiptoed, slowly. If he made a sound he would stop and look startled around, to see if he had bothered anybody ( meaning me, course I was the only one there). Then this funny thing started, apparently it was only selected sounds that he deemed wrongful in the church. Because after a while he took out a camera, standing maybe 10 meters in front of me, looking at the ceiling behind me. This camera – digital - was very small, but that did stop him from entering in very artistic positions, to get the ceiling from the right angle. The camera was one of these user friendly ones that makes a loud beep when the flash was ready, and the tks-sciazzzzz when it takes a picture. In the silent church it sounded like he had an amplifier and some speakers in his bag pack, but I guess it was just because everything else was so silent.

So picture this a skinny guy from Spain ( I think), long messy ponytail with an neon orange t-shirt with some political statement and squeaking shoes. Tiptoeing around, stopping at times to make this BEEP [break] tks-sciazzzzz, which he didn't seem to hear. The poor guy stiffen in mid air, when the confessing man exited the confession box. He turned around, took another couple of pictures, in new artistic angles and ran for the exit.

After this I wasn't so keen to take out my own camera, even if I had figured out how to remove the sound effects. But I took one fast picture of the wonderful ceiling, walking towards the exit:




Go and see it, cause my photo does not do the ceiling much justice.

The good and the bad news.

Back just to cite another blogger "cato-at-liberty" for commenting on berlusconi´s promise about tax reduction.

The good news, according to Tax-news.com, is that newly-elected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants to reduce Italy’s top income tax rate from 43 percent to 33 percent. The bad news is that he made similar promises the last time he held office, but never delivered.


I found this on Reuters, who was in fact citing the blog. so I'm citing a citing I guess (link)

After...

a night where we slept really bad, got up a bit too late, left home too late (but still so early that I thought I would have half an hour to spend in a bar with my book.). After an hour and a half stuck in traffic, I ended up walking quite a piece of road, since we agreed that it would be faster to walk. It rains, and instead of arriving half an hour too early, I arrive an hour too late. So what next, wonder? will my computer explode, or my lunch be stolen.

Luckily I don't believe in bad luck.

On my walk to work I passed through a market, where I bought some peas. which I am now eating here at work. This causes quite a lot of concerned looks, since peas are something that you don't eat raw down here. The lady who sold them to me, at first didn't believe me, when I asked for "mezzo chilo", because what would a young man like me do with half a kilo of raw peas. No, I should go home to my mum, who could prepare me something instead, if I really wanted to eat something raw, she had apples.

"no, no, you don't need two stomachs to digest raw pies. Its grass" I respond to my colleague, but he still looks skeptical, and refuses my offer to try one :).



Maybe the sun will come out again after all.

remembering the my inner tourist

To be honest I don't really know where all the my plans about going to all places described in my guidebook, went. But I can say that its pretty much in the planning phase, or what ever you call plans that was never followed in a positive word.

That said, I do have some sudden urges to go and see something ancient, or at least historical, and when that happens I try to go as fast as possible. So yesterday when I was reading my book in italian number 2, and found a reference to a saint called Ignatius Loyola, and looked on wikipedia(link), to see who he was, and then led me to look at Sant'Ignazio di Loyola a Campo Marzio (link) a Baroque church. According to wikipedia the Church had some really nice frescoes so I thought that I better go and see those ceilings in real life (also because it was 10 min from the cinema, where I was going to see IRON MAN (cool movie))



Sadly some things work on a very tight schedule here, namely the closing times for museums and churches. So when I arrived five minutes after closing time, everything was locked and closed. But the square was nice. And I also had some time to go back to Piazza Colonna and see if I could spot any famous people going in and out of the government building. I also spend some time wondering who the target audience of the statue on top of the column was. I understand the column is decorated to tell the story of Marcus Aurelius triumph over the Teutons and Sarmatians in the year 176 and was finished in 190 (after his death).




Its a beautiful sculpture, which was put in this place many centuries before the square around put there... In fact it was in the northern part of a 2 km² square. Outside of the roman walls of that time. Another funny detail is that the street level have raised 3 meters, since it was put there.

Looking close at the picture, one would probably start wondering about why it is that its a statue of st.Peter and not good old Marcus thats standing on top. But that was a personal touch made by the pope Sixtus V in 1589, when he ordered the column restored.

Anyway I went on to the cinema to see IRONMAN. and it was great.

Some Funny Statistics

I have this theory that the amount of car accidents is more or less the same in Italy and Denmark. The thing is that in Denmark everybody expects other drivers to respect the rules of driving, which works perfectly as long as there are no cheaters that try to break them, which often end in accidents. Here in Italy everybody expects everybody else to not follow the rules, and therefore expects everything. These two paradigms works pretty well, if there is no exceptions - Ok, I don't know if anything would happen to a person that follows the rules in Italy other than he would be stuck in traffic, but at least the other way around would cause trouble.

Either way, if I however had to choose one of them, I would guess that there would be most accidents in the chaos. But according to new numbers from the EU, Denmark has more accidents on the streets than Italy and France, where you traditionally (at least in Denmark) expect more accidents. (link to danish newpaper article)

Other statistics claim that men doesn't want to have sex anymore (link), which I personally think is a lie. Sweden should be the best place to be a mum (link) and some American scientists claims that painkillers prevent Alzheimer's (link). So should we eat more painkillers?

In Denmark it's 25 degree and here it looks like its going to rain. What a wonderful and surprising world we live in.