Rome

Like New York, Rome is another of those cities that you feel like you know intimately before you've even been there. You've seen and heard about the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps so many times that it's virtually been transplanted into your own memory. Although its ancient history and way of life cannot be experienced, it can certainly be imagined. But while my mental image of New York came from movies and cop shops, what I imagine of Rome comes from drawings and boring high school text books.

I was a fairly capable Latin student – I always had a knack of excelling at the subjects that were of no vocational value – and recall well my early teenage years poring over page upon page of declensions and conjugations, and wondering why. I fear that I will never shake off the memories of my first Latin teacher, a severe, hulking brute of a woman who probably only taught Latin because she'd just been kicked off a nearby construction site. I dare not name her, lest she track me down, pin me to my chair and force me to recite third conjugation verbs in the pluperfect tense until I'm blue in the face.

In the early days of learning any language, one's vocabulary is naturally going to be limited, meaning there was a certain farcically improbable nature to our first sentence translations. “The farmers are attacking the poets” was a good early one. “The sailor is walking to the Roman house”, or “why is the girl throwing the table?”, and so on. And so those of my first impressions of Rome: towering ancient structures and broad forums, within which poets and farmers and sailors attacked each other and girls and boys threw inanimate objects about the place.

It's certainly a far cry from the Rome that greets you when you step out of the train station. Instead it's a massive bus depot on one side and a busy street lined with fast food joints and beggars on the other side. We could be anywhere in Europe, really. The only clue that it's Rome comes from the massive hulking ruin down the street that rises, quite unexpectedly, in an otherwise empty lot surrounded by cheap hotels and tenements.

The mingling odours of urine and decomposing garbage are almost enough to have the three of us retching as we haul our bags down to a nearby hostel and gratefully step inside into the relatively unspoilt air. Not that conditions inside the hostel are much more pleasant than they are on the street. An initial inspection of the premises finds it to be cramped, dirty and - like any hostel with its beans - depressingly full of Australians. Whether its their newfound mineral wealth or just a desire to distance themselves as much as possible from Germaine Greer, young Australians - all named Dazza, Shazza, or Josh - have scattered themselves around the globe in large quantities, all in search of cheap beer and cheaper women. Indeed, just as the noble salmon returns to its home territory to breed, Aussies do the opposite when they reach mating age, venturing forth into the fertile spawning grounds of Europe, Asia and the Americas in what is known as the Great Chlamydia Migration.

There's a Dazza standing over the sink in the kitchen when I enter, in what turns out to be a futile search for a bottle opener. I can't even get in the door because it's blocked by a Shazza, who is kneeling down and staring into the fridge. "Hello", I say, in a tone that registers my acknowledgement of their presence without betraying any feelings of cheer or goodwilld.
"Shazza, can you get me smokes from on top the microwave?", asks Dazza.

The bedroom is alright, except that I've been given one of those filmsy child foldaway beds with the wafer-thin mattresses that I used to enjoy lumping upon brattish youngsters during my portering days. Except even then I was usually nice enough to give them a pillow, a luxury that has not been afforded to me on this occasion. I'd really like one, to be honest. A quick look through my Italian phrasebook and I'm off to reception again, with my most polished Italian accent in tow.
"Scusa, uno cuscino, per favore".
"I'm sorry?"
"Uno cuscino..."
"Umm..."
"Can I have a pillow, please?"
"Ahhh! A pillow!", says the owner, suddenly animated. He disappears into the back room, rummages around in an unconvincing attempt to make it look like he's actually got spare pillows lying around, and re-appears several hours later with three beanbags stuffed into a pillowslip.
"But please, you return to tomorrow!", he says sternly. Oh don't worry buddy. I won't keep it a moment longer than I need to.

It'd be easy not to like any town if you spent too much time festering in a hostel room. By early evening we're back on the street and embarking on a bus ride to another of those “free buffet” restaurant/bar setups that Michael sniffed out in his travel guide. I have no idea how places such as this stay in business, but I'm determined to do my darnest to push them one step closer towards bankrupcy while I still have the chance. Presumably they rely either on that very British notion that to take more than your fair share is somehow shameful or rude (my American genes tell me that this idea is rubbish), or the Italian notion that small meal portions are the key to maintaining one's Mediterannean moviestar looks. Either way, I've just finished reading an article that blames the obesity epidemic on the advent of air-conditioning – since we tend to be neither too hot nor too cold for much of the time these days, our metabolism has less work to do – and since it's a hot day, I'll be able to eat as much as I like and sweat my way back to equilibrium. Easy.

We step off the bus at a handsome old street corner opposite the Tiber, another of Europe's famous waterways that was probably once a river but is now a mucky storm drain with concrete retaining walls on both sides. The bar across we're looking for is easy to spot, thanks to the telltale signs of hungry-looking people eating improbably-high mounds of food off plastic plates. Before eating we must enact the usual charade at the bar of ordering a beer for each person – buying a drink before you set about demolishing the buffet appears to be the only courtesy these establishments insist upon – and finding a seat near the food. And this is food not to be sneezed at either: a sumptuous spread of pasta dishes, salads, breads, dips, roast chicken, pork knuckles and more. There are even desserts for any diner who can get that far without exploding. “Oh Max, we've hit the motherload”, proclaims Ellen, but I can't even grunt in agreement because my mouth is too full of basil pesto penne and bulghur wheat salad. The meal is glorious and excessive, and after my fourth and final helping I cannot stand up without assistance – the mark of a truly world class buffet.

Knowing the possibility of finding any room for beer in our already distended stomachs, we instead take a table at a sheesha bar next to the Tiber. I've only smoked it once before and don't know much about it except that it's legal (just) and made from some sort of tobacco extract. That young mother over there at the next table is blowing it into her three-year-old daughter's face while teaching her how to dance to the Justin Timberlake tune on the sound system, so it can't be all that bad for you. “Just breathe it in real deep”, commands Ellen, so I do. Who am I to argue? Whether real or imagined, it does have some near-immediate relaxing effect.

All of a sudden Rome doesn't seem so bad. It's a mild evening beside the river and we're well-fed and content. The walkway is lit up with carnival lights and permeated with the sound of drunken chatter. The best part of the evening is that the beer, food and sheesha cost us a combined total of 25 Euro for the three of us. Who said Rome was expensive?

***

It's too late to do anything about it now, but we have picked just about the worst weekend to be in Rome. It's a holiday weekend – which means nothing to me since Italians seem to regard life in general as a holiday anyway – so all the locals are out of town, and all the tourists are in. The only Romans to have stuck around are the ones who know how to swindle money out of the naïve, clueless tourists that predominate the city. Just like the bastard who charged me five bucks for a gelato this morning.

Michael and I are in a queue for the Vatican City that seems like a thousand miles long, but is actually only 100 kilometres or so. Owing to the Italian holiday, it's been closed to the public for the last two days and will be closed again tomorrow, so every man, woman, dog, Catholic, Muslim, Jew and Australian is in this line. I hear this place is pretty holy and all that, and has a pretty painting on the ceiling, but somehow that doesn't seem worth standing out in the blistering heat for half the day just to get in the bloody place. Just quietly, the thing that excites me most is being able to tell people that I wandered over to visit another country this afternoon, all casual-like, as if I do it all the time.

A stout young English lady in front of us turns around, sees Michael's and my anxious faces and calms us with a few reassuring words. “Oh, don't worry, you'll be in soon”, she says cheerily. “I was in this very spot in the line last summer and it only took me forty-five minutes to get in from here”.
“That's good to know”, Michael replies, believing her words about as much as I do. Not at all.
“Whereabouts are you from?”
“New Zealand”.
“Oh! So you've come all the way around the world to see this, you may as well stick it out in the line!”.
I want to tell her that actually we've come all the way around the world to see more than just this bloody place, but I don't want to seem like a pedant.
“Anyways”, she continues, filling a conversation silence as I suspect she often does, “like I said, we'll be in an hour, bit over an hour at the most”.

Two-and-a-half hours later, we have rounded the final bend in the queue and can see the entrance for the first time. I don't even care about the Vatican anymore. I can't even remember what the Vatican is. I'm more concerned with working out whether the teenagers fondling each other in the line just ahead of us are boyfriend or girlfriend, or brother and sister. If the latter then they are rather affectionate than what we're used to back home; if the former then they may want to get their family trees checked before they advance the relationship any further.

The Vatican is impressive enough I suppose, but the interior is so clogged with sightseers pouring through its endless twisting corridors like blood through a fat man's arteries that much of its holiness and mystique are swept away with them. We are taken along in the tourist tide, occasionally holding our heads above the crowds long enough to get a good look at a tapestry, or an ancient map of the Mediterranean, or a window view out onto beautifully manicured lawns. The Sistine Chapel itself, accessed after half an hour of wandering through corridors, is the epicentre of the tourist chaos. People are yelling in myriad languages, which causes their tour guides to try and yell over the top of them, which results in the guards yelling at everyone to shut up. After a brief moment of serenity, the yelling begins again. Still, the walls do present an awe-inspiring sight. We've all been specifically asked not to take photos, so I just take five or so out of respect. Then before we know it, we're being flushed out the other end of the chapel, through the bowels of the building past souvenir stalls that are entirely inappropriate given the holiness of the site (besides which who comes to the Vatican to spend US$49 on “The Official Vatican Tour DVD”?), then out onto the street and down past the ever-lengthening queue of jaded tourists, many of whom are no doubt under the misapprehension that they'll get in before Christmas.

For an atheist and occasional pagan lout such as myself, however, the most holy site in all of Rome is the colosseum. Built almost 2000 years ago, it is almost as old as Eden Park and although it has fallen into a state of disrepair every bit as a acute as our very own home of rugby, just the fact that it stands defiant amidst the filth and chaos of modern day Rome is enough to warrant its iconic status. At its heyday, it held 45,000 fans on four levels of seating. Today there is a crowd approaching 45,000 gathering in the concourses and strolling about inside, though the lions, elephants and slaves being mercilessly being gouged by said exotic animals are long gone.

As we stroll around the main internal concourse imagining what a fantastically difficult task it must've been to build a structure of such immense height and mass two millennia ago, I can't help but feel we in New Zealand can take a lesson from the Emperor Vespasian, who authorised its construction in 70AD. I'm fairly certain – or at least I'd like to think – that the idea to build it came to old Vessy in a dream one night, whereupon he woke and said something dramatic like “and so shall it come to pass”. There'd have been no soil erosion tests, no planning consents, no environment court hearings, no building consent applications, no dickhead neighbours complaining about it blocking the sun, no furore in the papers, no crisis meetings at the council. He wanted a bloody colosseum, so got a bloody colosseum. And in this day and age when you need consent from the council just to put a sandpit in your own backyard, we should look to young go-getters like Vespasian, and do as the Romans do. Or did.

At evening time, we return to the scene of last night's buffet-related crime and fill our boots once again. Then we amble homewards through the near deserted city streets, wondering what all the tourists are doing and why we weren't invited. Are they gorging themselves at buffet dinners that you actually have to pay for? Or perhaps they're all in their hotel rooms eating room service and watching CNN. The eerie quiet of the streets is only punctuated by the occasional ambulance siren, and you'll be pleased to know that they sound like party buses in Rome too. We're just sitting waiting for the bus home when a party bus comes flying through the intersection next to us. It has to swerve and brake to avoid another party bus, also travelling at full steam, heading down the same road in the opposite direction. You know when you see two ambulances pass each other that someone somewhere has fucked up. Put it down to that wonderfully carefree Italian attitude to life and death, I suppose.

Back at the hostel, Shazza, Dazza and a bunch of Spaniard backpackers are out on the deck drinking cheap Italian beer and flirting with each other. To me the notion of sitting around drinking at the hostel seems kind of perverse when you have Rome's wild and diverse nightlife at your doorstep, then I remember that the Australians have been carried here by primitive forces far greater than I could comprehend. As I make my way to bed I silently wish them best of luck with their ancient mating rituals, then lie down on my three beanbags and drift off to a sleep occasionally disturbed by the joyful blaring of a passing party bus.

***

There's still no sign of the locals the next day as we haul our bags to the station and wait for the train back to Pisa. I can't say I have been overly impressed by Rome and the lack of local flavour has much to do with that. Ultimately, you can have all the history and mystique and remarkable buildings in the world (and Rome pretty much does), but if there's no locals around to make it real, it just seems like a great big Disneyland. I have seen no evidence of the pickpockets I was so thoroughly warned against; only marauding packs of tourists, talking loudly and brushing aside everything in their way. Rome's famous coffee-shop culture, with young Romans sipping cappucinos and watching the street scene while looking glamorous and important, seems almost invisible. This weekend, Rome seems like a glimpse into the future where the locals have been wiped out and tourists rome the streets at their leisure; the only survivors being the opportunistic vendors who thrive on the tourists' profligacy.

What saves Rome from being Disneyland is that all the great buildings and structures are actually real. They provide our only link to a distant past that the 21st century man can only dream of seeing for himself. It is possible to stand in the colosseum, block out all the noise and imagine for a moment the scenes of pandemonium that were once commonplace within, or glance up at the remains of an aqueduct and marvel at what an improbably brilliant feat of engineering it took to make water run all the way through it. Without these structures, Rome would just be another ancient European city with lots of pretty buildings. Their presence alone makes Rome a city worth visiting. And I don't know if they ate gelatos in ancient Rome, but they're pretty bloody good too.