Italy - Rome and Florence: Food, churches, and potable water!

This post is officially dedicated to all those who enjoy looking at the pictures on blogs more than reading the entries. I myself am oft times a perpetrator of this very habit, I confess. 

To all other loyal readers, my apologies and I promise my upcoming post from Istanbul will be  more verbose.

Italy. Was. Stunning. From the moment I stepped off the airplane, I could feel the difference. I was in Europe! I went into the restroom before heading down to get my bags and washed my face with the water from the tap. Tempting fate, I even let a little get in my mouth! 

Waiting for me after the baggage carousel was my good friend Anna from Cincinnati, who lives near Rome. Anna welcomed me with a huge hug and we went off with arms linked to remember where she'd parked her car. 

While catching up and grinning ear to ear I met Anna's fabu little car. Unfortunately, 30 minutes later the little car met the back of a tow truck when it jammed in 4th gear on our way to her house.

After squeezing ourselves into the cab of a tow truck with two large, sweaty Italian men ("they just yell because they're Italian, they're not actually angry" Anna kept reminding me), our little adventure ended when the father of the family Anna works for rescued us and we headed up into the hills to Marino, a small, picturesque town on the side of an inactive volcano about 30 minutes outside Rome. 

Over the next few days, Anna and I hung out with the kids of the family she teaches and rode around the beautiful countryside in Marino, enjoying the scenery, fabulous food and drinks and general Italian-ness of the environs.  

At this point I find it important to mention that I was still glowing from re-entry into the developed world. After running around through Cambodia, Nepal and India for the past 4 months, I was giddy with the prospect of paying the same prices as locals, utilizing public transport sans petting zoo and only minimally smelling of urine, and not being stared at everywhere I went. 

In fact, when Anna asked me what struck me as different in Italy, I answered... "uh, it seems kind of the same as home, actually." She seemed incredulous, as things are indubitably different in Italy than they are at home, and I reconsidered, countering with... "well, after India, anything in the developed world is going to feel like home." 

Had I really gotten to the point where Italy seemed like home just because I didn't get the shits every few days, see beggars around every corner or run smack dab into breathtaking Buddhist/Hindu or Jain temples while shuffling down side streets? 

I suppose my life had reached a new level of relativity, hopefully for the better.

Hiding out in beautiful and pastoral Marino as my body and bowels continued to recover from my trials and tribulations in India was lovely. Anna nursed me back to health with cough syrup and lemoncello and the normalcy of hanging out with the family she lives with and works for around the dinner table as they chatted happily away in French was wonderful. 

After a few days, however, it was time to hit up some of the old stuff. We headed into Rome to check out the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Saint Peter's cathedral, Hadrian's column, the Pieta, the Pantheon, Roman-Jewish synagogue museum AND..... Senor Toner! My brother John came in to meet us in Rome and we three had an amazing time exploring Rome with Anna as our superb guide.

In the middle of our day in Rome, just as I thought I might wilt and keel over from the heat, we came upon the Trevi fountain. It was a refreshingly lovely sight in the withering heat, but just as I was about to rip off my sweaty tourist gear to reveal my black bustier and frolic in its cool waters a la Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita, Anna reminded me that it was full of bleach in order to keep the sculptures clean, and a police woman blew her whistle at a fellow dipping in a bit too much ankle. The moment was lost.

After our relaxing and fun-filled stay with Anna in Rome, John and I caught the slow train north to Tuscany to meet up with my dad and step-mom in Florence. 

For anyone who has ever had a long trip, full of once-in-a-lifetime revelations and re-evaluations, for anyone who has seen the dark side of the world, the light side of humanity and feels as though they've grown as an individual and a member of the human race, I would like to videotape that person in a car with their immediate family and watch them swiftly revert to an 8-year old child once again.

After loving hugs, exchanged gifts and catching up on the past 8 months of my life with my family, we all piled into a car and proceeded to revert to the year 1988. Dad is always driving the rental car, although he refuses to look at road signs and instead gets more and more frustrated as he yells "where am I going???" while John and Carol and I start screaming out directions (often conflicting), based on mere conjecture and whim, yelling louder and louder in a frenzy of uninformed assuredness, until someone is either crying, angry, pissed that no one is listening to them although they're obviously right (this one is me), or giving the entire car the silent treatment (this one is also me).

Luckily, we made it to a restaurant safely, ate, and were stuffed to the point of relative silence on the ride back home for the evening.

It was both humbling and amazing to be around family once again.

Over the next week, we explored the tuscan countryside, stopping at wineries, farms and roadside attractions promising home sale of everything from olive oil to saffron. We ate amazing fresh food, sat by the pool, made it to the sea coast, and stuffed ourselves with melting gelato. We even managed to get on a "hello"/"bonjour" basis with the French famlies renting apartments near us by the end of the week. 

Heading into Florence proper, we broke every traffic law in the book, repeatedly, with Dad driving directly through the "Zona Traffico," in which tourists are heavily ticketed for entering, as it's only for locals, as we three yelled and directed from the back seat and urged him "don't stop!" when he inquired as to whether we should consult with the friendly-looking Italian police officers staring in our direction.

We walked by the Ponte Vecchio as I hummed "O Mio Babbino Caro" in my head (and thought to myself... ok, you can throw yourself off that, but you're gonna get a bad sprain at best!), toured the amazing Uffizi museum, with its stunning collection by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Botticelli and Caravaggio in room after room of breathtaking original works of art.

As the second week in Italy came to a close, our family finally began to relax and gel. And, as we were saying our goodbyes we lamented that we didn't have another week to enjoy the rolling Tuscan countryside, fine wines, fresh pastas and amazing company.

Carol and Dad made for the airport, praying that customs wouldn't slap them with parking tickets on their way out of the country, and John and I headed back to Rome, with him flying home to move to New York City to begin a graduate degree and me flying out to Istanbul to begin a new job. 

The world was pulling us all in different directions for the time being. But, if only for just 6 days, we had been together, yelling and screaming and laughing and giving directions and getting pissed, and I was going to miss it.

India: Holy river, holy cow, holy traffic jam

Hindu techno thrust

Gyrating orange, red, gold

Turn me inside out

I stumbled into India on a hot and humid day in mid-July feeling a bit like an awkward newborn filly. Heavy with backpack I plodded with flip-flopped feet into myriad smells, tastes and textures as we crossed the border near Lumbini, Nepal, close to where Lord Buddha was born, into the wonderful clusterfuck of the Indian sub-continent. 

The smell of urine, feces, incense and curry immediately swept up into my nostrils as I dodged wandering cows, tuk-tuks, bicycles, feisty vendors and begging children and we passed stalls selling assorted breads, sweets, yoghurts, milk tea and overseas phone calls. 

I had crossed into the land of lovely women, staring men, intricate, shimmering sarees, infanticide for baby girls, arranged marriages, holy cows wandering the streets, unimaginable and yet somehow fluid traffic, poverty, wealth, social castes still alive and well, stunning monuments to love, war and religion and, most of all, the land where 16% of the world's population - over a billion people - all clamor on top of one another for air, water, food, and the chance to postpone, if just for one day, the eternal suffering that is life.  

The group that I had joined in Nepal followed our guide through the border crossing formalities and into India with wide, guarded eyes. "Well, here we go" we said amongst ourselves. 

Over the next two weeks we traveled via train, camel, jeep, taxi, local bus, and foot to Varanasi, holy city on the Ganges, and over to Agra, where the monument to love, the Taj Mahal, soars white against searing blue skies. We then headed to the back roads of Rajistan, a hot northern desert state bordering Pakistan, traditional and conservative in its rituals, beliefs and day-to-day happenings, and finally back to New Delhi. 

 

Our first stop in India was Varanasi. At almost 3,000 years old, it is claimed by some to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. Varanasi is believed by Hindus to have been founded by Lord Shiva almost 5,000 years ago on the banks of the holy Ganges river, the river of life and death, and is a holy place for Hindus as well as Buddhists and Jains. 

As we got closer and closer to Varanasi, we passed ever more dense groups of young male pilgrims, dressed in bright orange, barefoot and balancing their tell-tale sticks across their shoulders with water vials hanging from each end with which to collect the holy waters of the Ganges, thought to wash away sins.

On the second morning there, we woke at 4:30 to travel down to the river to see the sunrise. As we approached the banks of the river, we saw more and more of the pilgrims carrying their water vials towards the waters. 

According to the guide books, nearly 30 sewers empty into the river Ganges at the point in Varanasi, not to mention that the ashes of over 200 cremated bodies are sprinkled 100 meters upstream into the waters each day, and yet, as we made our way towards the already crowded banks at 5 a.m., we saw women and men in beautifully colored sarees bathing and splashing with fervor in the water along the banks. In fact, over 1,000,000 faithful pilgrims come each year to perform ablution, burn their loved one's bodies and float lighted candles for loved ones in the holy waters. 

In Hindu religion, the ultimate goal is to break the cycle of reincarnation because life is, essentially, suffering. Many pilgrims believe that by bathing this way in the holy waters, possessing vials of Ganges water, or, ultimately, by dying near the Ganges and then burning your body along the banks and putting your ashes in the river, you have a better chance of avoiding rebirth and releasing your soul from the cycle of transmigration.

 

While we were waiting for our rowboat to take off, a little boy struck up a conversation with us while trying to sell us his postcards. “Look!” He said excitedly, “my postcards have dead bodies on them too!”

 

He pointed to the color pictures of funeral pyres on the front of his postcards, and once again I was reminded how strange it must seem that we are surprised at their custom of burning bodies on the banks of the river and throwing the ashes in so that the soul can escape re-birth. 

In the west, we hold death an arm’s length away, denying its existence and trying to escape its corporeal realities until the last possible moment. 

As we walked back to our tuk-tuks from the banks of the river we dodged roaming cows, piles of human feces and burial processions carrying gauze-covered, floppy bodies down to the banks for cremation on the funeral pyres. 

Although I tried to dodge them all, one of the bodies bumped against my shoulder as I tried to dodge a cow, feces and dead body at the same time. The gauze brushed lightly against my upper arm and I felt once again what it means to be in India, and how thin the line is between death and life. 

After leaving Varanasi, we caught an overnight train to Agra, home of the 17^th century mausoleum, the Taj Mahal, and holy land of the crappy trinket hawker. 

Although the Taj Mahal was originally built as an Islamic monument, complete with passages from the Qur'an along the sides of the marble exterior, the day we visited was a Hindu holiday and one of the only days that visitors are allowed to enter the musky, airless burial chamber of Shah Jahan and his favorite wife, for whom the Taj was built after she died in childbirth while bearing their 14^th child.

The sheer enormity of the Taj was made even more impressive by the wide, searing, bright blue sky framing it on the day we visited. The monument took over 17 years to build and required over 20,000 artisans and slaves and 10,000 elephants to complete. As we waited in line to file through the underground burial chamber, we marveled at the beauty of the white marble against the blue, blue sky and the beautiful colored sarees of the local tourists. 

After sweating it out at the Taj, the next week took us through the back roads of Rajasthan, where traditionally dressed Rajput men in colourful turbans and with huge moustaches made their way along crowded, dusty streets via camel, horse, motorcycle, bicycle and tuk-tuk.

 

Rajasthan is known for its warriors, and we visited its walled cities and forts with wide eyes, imagining how life in this traditional Indian backwater has changed and yet has stayed the same. 

When we wandered, dripping with sweat, up to one particular castle atop a Rajistani hill, I came upon a relief on the wall of 31 small female hand prints. According to my audio guide, these were the handprints of the wives of Rajistani men who had been killed in battle. After their husbands' bodies had been brought back to the town, they placed their palm prints into this wall (although they do not greatly resemble true hand prints) and then each proceeded, unaided and willing, to climb quietly onto the funeral pyre with their husbands dead body and, praying all the way, practiced saintly self-immolation. 

From within the huge hilltop castles I peered out of the intricate, thick window screens the women in the sultans’ harems peered out of, unable to leave the castles to see the world because of purdah (a state in which wealthy women in India are unable to go outside in public in order to show their status in society).

As I gazed out the window at this alternate view of the world that could have been mine to some extent (had I been dealt the 99% chance of being born to a society in which women cannot or do not travel) I once again pondered the opportunities I have had in my life. In many cases, I believe that we make our own future, especially for individuals born into societies such as the U.S., Canada or Europe. In these societies, it is often too many options, rather than no options that hold back our youth, crippled by our own indecisiveness.

However, what kind of person would I have been if I had been born into a society in which people have fewer options? Would I have raged against my cultural restraints and traveled around the world anyway? Would I have even been able to get the visas to travel to many of the countries I have seen? This too is something we often take for granted – as it’s much harder for people from many countries to be granted even the most basic of travel visas.

Friends often like to point out that for someone who would under most circumstances consider herself a feminist, I certainly have chosen strange locales in which to visit and live – Ecuador, Japan, Cambodia, India, Nepal and even Turkey… none of these countries would be considered particularly progressive when it comes to women’s rights. 

And yet, what I have learned so much from visiting these places. The status and inequity experienced by women in these countries is quite often perpetuated not only by the men, but also by the women themselves, through the perpetuation of social customs and continuation of cultural habits through which they judge and punish one another. And, in the end, this has changed what feminism; or rather humanism means to me – with the end goal being to decrease judgment – that men and women both should be able to make their decisions and life choices from a place of bravery and love, and should not be shunned for making those decisions, whatever they may be. 

 

I was often reminded when I was in India, of the story of a friend from India, with whom I completed the CELTA (Cambridge English Language Teaching for Adults) in Auckland this January. If she’s reading this I hope she won’t be angry that I share her story… my fascination with it probably indicates more my own cultural naiveté than any actual difference between it and the stories of most women around the world.

 

One morning, just before class was to start, I was sitting in my usual seat in class sipping my coffee from the travel mug I carried around religiously (marking me as an American, as no one else in any country I’ve visited feels the need to tote around the coffee they refused to take the time to drink when they made it). Just as class was about to start, she came in looking extremely stressed out and on the verge of tears, as was her habit. She sat next to me and I asked, while suckling my plastic mug, if she was ok.

 

Her response was unexpected. “Oh, you cannot understand what I am going through, Jennie. This is my last chance.”

 

Stupidly, I responded, “Oh no, it will be ok, that can’t be true…”

 

The story she told me next surprised, humbled and angered me greatly. She used to be a teacher in India (in fact, with her double masters degrees and extensive teaching experience she was probably one of the most qualified people in our class, with the exception of our Italian lawyer). Upon reaching a certain age, her father, who wasn’t getting any younger, had decided that it was time for her to marry and after fighting it for a while, she finally acquiesced, seeing little reason not to go through with the custom of an arranged marriage, which often works out quite well.

 

Her father found a suitable man from the same social caste and they were married soon after. Unfortunately, the fellow had misrepresented himself and as time passed and passed and it became more and more obvious that the marriage would not be consummated, she became worried and asked whether perhaps they should seek some kind of professional help. Her husband answered that in fact he was gay and although she could do whatever she liked there was little chance of a future for them as typical man and wife, meaning that male progeny was basically impossible.

 

Devastated, she made what had to be one of the most difficult decisions of her life, and went against custom, society and culture to begin the process of divorcing the interloper.

 

From my western perspective, this was the most obvious choice and she was well within her rights to do so (me coming from a society that chooses divorce when one spouse no longer matches the tapestries in the living room).  In India, however, this was the ultimate disgrace, not just for the individual suffering through the divorce (especially the woman) but for the entire family.

 

My friend’s father was in poor health and the stress of the divorce put him over the top (or so my friend believed). He passed away shortly after the divorce was complete and as I gazed, wide-eyed into her anguished face she said to me, “and I killed him, it’s all my fault. Living here in Auckland with my sister is my last chance. This course is my last chance.”

 

At this point tears were welling up in my eyes and I had long since stopped suckling my plastic mug. “But, you…. You just can’t blame yourself! That’s not your fault!” I said, disbelievingly.

 

“You just cannot understand, Jennie.” She said. “This is my last chance.” With that, she turned away, agitated, and began preparing her neat, extensive notes for class. 

 

As I sat back, I realized, after a few moments of internal struggle, that I could not understand. In fact, I will never understand. As class began and I wiped away my tears, I began to understand better not the vastness of her pain, but the depth of my own inability to understand the whole world just by traveling within it.

And, as I stood looking through the heavy, beautiful, awful, ornate screens in the Rajistani palaces, I gave thanks to God, once again, for my life, for my choices and for my ability to control, to some extent, both.  

One of the most traditional locales we visited during our time in Rajasthan was Nimaj Baj, a small orchard town. One of our tour guides was descended from the local nobility and amidst muffled grumbles about “a conflict of interest” we settled into his family’s “summer estate” and paid inflated prices for curries, beers and jeep rides to visit local communities of startled shepherds quietly minding their own business and tending to their flocks.

 

The best part about staying in his family’s estate-come-guesthouse, however, was listening to stories his mother told about the state of local affairs. Before coming to India I had read a book called “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons” by Elisabeth Bumiller – one I highly recommend for anyone traveling to India - and I was surprised to hear his mother complain about the cultural customs mentioned in the book, such as brides being set on fire by their husband’s family if enough dowry is not paid, “purdah” – the practice of keeping an upperclass wife in the house and not allowing her to leave nor uncover her face, infanticide and abortion of baby girls (boys are much more valued in Indian culture) and arranged marriages that more closely resemble indentured servitude in which the husband can easily choose second and third wives (although not legally binding) that were still common practice in her region.

Although Bouvon, her son, refused to walk through the town because of his erstwhile noble status, and instead followed closely behind our tour group in his car, we also had the amazing opportunity to walk through the town and stop by the local school as well as the hospital, where we got to meet the local student population and several day-old babies. The students in the school reminded me of the students in Cambodia, studious, eager, intelligent and hopeful. As we wandered through the schoolyard and out through the town towards the hospital they followed us, begging for just one more picture. 

After Nimaj Bagh we headed on through the Thar Desert bordering Pakistan to the town of Jodhpur, which is dominated by the Meherangarh Fort, run by the local Maharaja, which sits on top of a sheer rocky ridge in the middle of town. There we relaxed on the roof of our hotel and even woke up early to catch the lunar eclipse, stealing furtive glances amidst fears plunging into sudden blindness by staring too directly at the sun. 

 

We then continued on to Udaipur, the coolest and most pleasant city we had visited thus far, built near the shores of Lake Pichola, and completed our tour of Rajistani grandeur with a visit to an ornate lake palace.

 

As the last few days in Udaipur came to a close, we rested and did some last minute trinket shopping as we steadied ourselves for one last overnight train to Delhi. 

The reality of India as a country, spread thickly across vast chasms of caste, color, culture, and landscape was the most sensual and inspiring thing I have ever experienced. 

The graceful, complicated beauty of the men and women of India, their daily struggle, the force of their multitudes, the delicious smells, textures and tastes that interweave through their daily lives… from the man squatting down to take a dump on the sidewalk first thing in the morning to our noble-blooded tour guide ordering his servants to bring more chai; from the mother sleeping in the traffic median with her skin-and-bones children curled into little balls at her side to our tour guide’s kind, plump, lustrous mother offering up stories about bride burnings, purdah and her duties as a higher caste woman of wealth, as well as her own marriage at the age of 19 to our tour guide’s father, all of India seemed to be undulating with life and contradiction. 

And something, some part of me that had been sleeping; part fear, part anger, part desire, part hunger, woke up. 

And then, just as it was almost too much to bear, I performed my final act of privilege. I boarded a plane, took my seat and flew away.