Rome

I failed to mention that I shaved off the conquistador when I was in Budapest. I'd grown it thinking that it would be an extra way not to look like an American soldier, in case anti-war sentiment was high, but, as it's been a non-existent or at least not expressed, I figured I could do away with it. It took me a few days to recognize my face without it. Oh, and when I shaved of course I paused for a moment when it was down to a Hitler 'stache, laughed, and then finished up.

There was no way to get to Rome from Budapest so I had to go back to Vienna to catch an overnight to the Eternal City. I barely made the connection and was joined in my compartment by an Aussie girl and an Austrian man. Sure enough, the Austrian, an artist, wanted to talk about Iraq. Yippee.

I dodged and deflected as best I could, shifting the conversation as far away as possible, sometimes to very unexpected places such as AIDS, immigration reform, drug dealing, nazi-ism, declining birthrates (and the Roman Emperor Augustus' opinion on the problem), the particular particularities of both European and American toilets, and the Coriolis effect, to name but a few.

The Austrian, Wagner, meant well and was an interesting guy in his own right. Though 30, he was starting grad school for video art without ever having gotten an undergraduate degree. He also worked full time and had a three year old son with his girlfriend of seven years. When he mentioned that his girlfriend's father is the head of Siemans, a multi-billion dollar global corporation, I told him that she might be a keeper. Wagner got off the train fairly early, but Leah, the pretty Aussie and I gamely rode on through the night, vainly trying to sleep in our uncomfortable seats while ignoring the stench.

Our train smelled like feet. I might have been accused of that sort of thing before, and rightly so, but this had nothing to do with me as I never took off my shoes (especially not in front of a pretty girl). The Italian train was just filthy. Compared to the other trains I've ridden this was the worst. The bathroom didn't even have a septic system. The toilets were just holes that opened to the ground speeding below. Consequently, the stations smell wonderfully as well. What the hell is wrong with Italians?

My primary concern had been acquiring lodging since I figured the pilgrims would be filling the city for Christmas. Leah took me to the hostel where she had a reservation and it turned out they had a space. The place was so dingy that Leah refused to stay there and went off to another hostel. I didn't mind since it was cheap so I stayed. We agreed to meet up later to catch a bite to eat before we made out way to the Vatican for midnight mass. I went and saw the Pantheon in the meantime, as the last time I was in Rome it was closed due to a museum workers strike. They objected to working 35 hours a week or somesuch if I remember correctly.

After taking a nap, I met Leah and we found ourselves in a pizzaria. As we walked in, we were greeted by a table of unrefrigerated assorted meats, in various stages of preservation. Yum. Italian pizza is different from American. At least ours was. All the ingredients were separated. There was a slab of ham on one half, while a quarter got all the mushrooms and then an artichoke heart and two olives got the other fourth. Oh and there was a sliced egg somewhere on there as well.

We ate the bizarre pie, drank wine, and were serenaded by an Italian Christmas album sung by the Chipmunks. It was all very romantic in a Satanic sort of way. Italian, ordinarily an exquisitely beautiful language, becomes the tongue of hell when rendered into Chipmunk.

As we had some time and brain cells to kill we went searching for bars. Ordinarily that's not hard to do, but, with it being Christmas eve, it took all our skills of alcohol divination to accomplish. We found ourselves at the forum buying cans of Beck's from a sandwich vendor.

While in the area, I couldn't resist the opportunity to wax on about the minutiae of Roman history as I bombarded the poor girl with all sorts of useless facts about the colosseum. The alcohol no doubt exacerbated the problem, but I know myself well enough to know I'd have done it sober. Alas.

After I'd exhausted her on the Colosseum I dragged her to the Arch of Titus, next to it, and went on and on, particularly about how Titus sacked Jerusalem and took away the temple menorah and other sacred objects. The arch is protected by a fence and so I circled, trying to find the best place to point out the interior frieze which showed the Romans carrying away the holy items.

"Um...If this is Titus, why does it say Constantine up there?" she queried, pointing to the Arch's engraving.

"Because I'm an idiot." I tried to recover by telling her whatever I could think of about the Arch of Constantine, but I petered out quickly, still embarrassed, and so off we went in search of more booze.

Thank God for the Irish. An Irish pub was open and in we went. I sat Leah down next to a group of American sailors watching an NFL game and went to get her a black and tan, which she'd never had before.

There at the bar was a hispanic with the military haircut.

"You're a sailor too?"

"Hell no! Soldier."

Chris Navarro was a 121 Signal Battalion soldier from Darmstadt, Germany. We had both been to Iraq at the same time and he knew my good friend Liz. As those who have been over there are wont to do, we commiserated for some time before I remembered the pretty Aussie and extricated myself.

Leah and I drank as I tried, rather unsuccessfully, to explain why American football is wonderful, even when I had to agree with her that most of the time it is "everyone standing around for a long time before a man runs a couple of meters and falls down. Then they stand around again."

I had just gotten another guinness after the requisite Iraq complaining with Chris and sat down when Leah mentioned we had best get a move on. I may not have simply gulped once, like fellow law student Matthew Baden is able to do, but I polished off the pint in ten seconds. Leah's eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open, before she heartily congratulated me on such a display. Draining that pint would turn out to be a bad idea.

Our brisk walk to the Vatican turned into a staggering stumble at some point as the final guinness kicked in. Leah was thoroughly amused, so I was too, even though the world was a blur and my motor skills had regressed to a baby's.

In spite of such condition, I not only made it there but even insisted on us buying more beer from a vendor, which we took with us to the square, which I have to think was rather sacrilegious looking back on it.

I had been most certain that the flocks of pilgrims would make getting around difficult, but the square was mostly empty. We walked straight up to the barricades which were thirty yards or so from the steps of the Basilica and staked our claim. Perhaps the fact that it was cold, far colder than anywhere else I've been so far helped keep the crowds away in droves; I know for certain that I could have done without the fierce wind, though it did give me an excuse to share my trenchcoat with the shivering lass. Though entirely inappropriate to the situation, the beer mitigated the cold as well.

We watched the mass going on in the Basilica on giant video screens and hoped against hope that it would finish soon and the Pope would come out on the balcony in his Miter and robes and do or say something Pope-y. Alas by 0130, when I remembered I had to be back at the hostel by 0200, he was still going strong in the church.

We skeedaddled but when it became apparent we weren't going to make it on foot, I walked out into the street directly in front of a taxi. I pleasantly accepted his tongue lashing and then he gave us a ride to our respective hostels.

Christmas morning, I groggily woke up and joined my hostel mates in the lounge. I was a bit loopy, what with my chemistry being in a supreme state of flux, though apparently the Aussie lad and lass and the Texan found it amusing. As the Aussies ate Christmas cake, the Texan and I competed in entertaining them. Finally, the Texan, a devout Catholic, mentioned that besides having gotten in to the Basilica for mass last night, he was about to go back to the square to hear the Pope's address. The Australians and I invited ourselves along.

The square was packed this time and we impatiently waited for the Pope to speak English. He went down a roll of about thirty languages, including Arabic and Swahili, and when he spoke English we cheered wildly, just as every linguistic contingent did before and after us. Surprisingly, even though Benedictine is a German, he speaks English with an Italian accent. When he finished his stunning display he switched to Latin and absolved us all of our sins, to the great approval of the crowd. The Aussies and I were quite thrilled until I realized that since we're all heretics we're still going to burn. Still, I suppose it was the thought that counted.

We walked towards the forum and stopped off at the area sacra along the way. I'd given it a quick once over on my way to the Pantheon. I paid more attention this time and, reading the posted sign, saw that it was where Julius Caesar had been murdered 2050 years ago. We walked over and took pictures of the site.

The interesting part of traveling so far is that names are by and large incidental. As so many people pop in and out of a traveler's life, we tend to forget to introduce ourselves and simply enjoy others' orbits for the time allotted. Though we'd been wandering around the city for hours and even shared in absolution, it took us quite some time to remember to ask names. Thus I met Daniel and Dana from Brisbon and John the Texan. I already knew that Dana was a science major, Daniel a business major, and John was studying neuroscience on scholarship at UT Dallas, but just didn't have the names. Strangely enough, none of the four of us wielded the accents to be expected from our places of birth.

John, as should be apparent, was an especially intelligent guy, and so, after he regaled us with his knowledge of church Latin at the Vatican, he and I played dueling tour guides for Dana and Daniel in the forum. Not at all used to having others tread on my territory, I had to dive deep into minutiae to finally put him to rest; our Nerd Arms Race was entertaining to the Aussies at least.

On the way back to the hostel, we were treated to a stunning display of the famous Mediterranean temper as a small man screamed, "Bastardo, Bastardo, Bastardo!" while walking behind and pointing to a relatively large, swarthy man, who apparently was ignorant as to his paternal heritage. It was only when the swarthy man got to his own neighborhood and five of his swarthy friends joined him that the town crier backed away, though he kept up his cacophonous din even while doing so.

John picked up three bottles of whine and when we got back to the hostel he proceeded to lecture the three of us on Texan and Scottish history and then when a NYer came in, they teamed up to teach the bewildered Aussies the finer points of American football. John polished off two bottles during the course of his lecture so, shortly before we left for supper, he'd begun, much to our amusement, to repeat himself egregiously. That, to go along with his penchant for staring at himself in the mirror across from him and behind us as he talked, obviously admiring the great conviction and passion with which he thundered, was truly hysterical.

We hid our laughter at him by way of a long-running, obscene train of thought which I'd started earlier in the day which cannot be properly appreciated out of the moment. Indeed, a fellow hostel mate, a homosexual Syrian, asked what was so uproariously funny and when we briefly tried to explain it he asked, "What does the Kama Sutra and the Queen of England got to do with each other?" We nearly cried laughing, much to his bewilderment.

Though John could barely keep his eyes together at the pizzaria he proceeded to buy an extra box of wine on our way back to the hostel as I bought a bottle. Once back, he polished off the third bottle and tore into the box as he continued on his diatribe. By then, thoroughly smashed, he returned to his favorite topics of the Alamo and the Battle of Culloden, though this time he acquired a brogue and spoke as though he were the narrator of a documentary.

"The morning of the 20th of July, 1743, was clouded with ill omen and fog as the leader of the Scots, Bonnie Prince Charley, made a most ruinous tactical error and listened to that bastard Irishman O'Sullivan, on account of a falling out with his Scottish General. He chose boggy lowland for the place of battle, which along with th fact that he waited several hours into the battle to use it, completely negated that most famous weapon of the Scots, the HIGHLAND CHARGE!"

Suffice it to say, as his synapses misfired we heard all about the bastard O'Sullivan, the foolish Bonnie Prince Charley, and the fearsome HIGHLAND CHARGE! at successively louder repetitions, until finally someone came out of one of the bedrooms and said, "I don't know which one of you he is, but I can't sleep because of the Texan."

We managed to quiet him down a bit but John continued in his brogue to tell us yet agoin about the Alamo and how legend had it that a Scottish bagpiper amongst that doomed group had done musical battle with Davy Crockett and achieved no less than a draw. Finally, after he told us of his clan, the McCleans, and how all but 40 of 800 threw down their lives in a battle for their chieftain, we managed to convince him to pass out. Dana and I sat up drinking wine and saying wonderfully prurient things about royalty until nearly four in the morning.

Blessedly groggily and miserably, I woke up four hours later, aware that Boxing Day was going to be a horrible travel day. In the lounge, Daniel, Dana and I sat quietly as the three NYers and their Floridian friend acted like perfectly horrible American tourists.

Obnoxiously loud, impossibly US-centric and ignorant, they babbled on, to my horror and the Aussies delight. At one point the Floridian girl made some statement to the effect that she didn't know how people lived before the internet. As I myself had miraculously managed such a stunning accomplishment, I made a smart-ass remark to that effect.

"Well, if you're so smart, what's the word for the time before the internet?"

"I don't think there is one, but I think if anybody should, you should come up with it."

"Okay then, the word is going to be B.N. Since it was before knowledge."

I didn't so much other than laugh, which she did too since she thought I appreciated her joke. One of her friends tried to clue her in that knowledge doesn't start with an 'n', but to no avail. She laughed on, howling like a banshee in full satisfaction of her stunning wit.