With the internship phase of my program nearing its end, I've fully settled into the full-time working life here in Berlin and resigned myself to only the occasional trip outside the country. Unfortunately, that means I have "only" been to Poznan, Warsaw, Krakow, Amsterdam, Budapest, and Münster ever since I returned from Rome and started my internship in early March.
No matter, I've been keeping myself busy, in part by resuming my highly promising handball career! After my first handball course at my university was agonizingly cut short due to the closure of the university gym, I had to make do without the physical, funky basketball-soccer mashup of a sport in my life. Until recently, that is - in Germany, a new university semester began late last month, and so a new weekly handball course at a different gym started up along with it! I came back in style, scoring several goals my first night back out on the court. I can't wait to bring my talents up to the big leagues.
And now, time to escape from the Alltag (daily routine) and time-travel back to late Febraury, when I was still in the land of my forefathers: Rome, Italy. My American friend Leah and I were wrapping up our brief blitz through Rome with a day at the Vatican, the world's smallest country, followed by a short trip to the Jewish district.
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| But first, some pictures I forgot to include in my post about our second day in Rome. This is another look at the Temple of Saturn, the oldest sacred place in rome (it was dedicated in 497 BC but later rebuilt) |
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| A panoroma of the inside of the Coliseum |
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| Back to day three. Each morning we passed through Piazza Repubblica |
With some help from the subway, we arrived at the Vatican Museum (which includes the Sistine Chapel) bright and early. And thanks to the tips in our handy Rome guide book from Rick Steves, who is the undisputed god of European travel, we were able to entirely avoid all lines in front of the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's Basilica. Both lines looked really nasty: the Vatican Museum line was blocks long, even early in the morning, and the line for the basilica circled all the way through the enormous St. Peter's Square in front of it. So it was fortunate that we skipped all of that mess and spent our day enjoying top-notch art instead!
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| Just part of the enormous Vatican museum, which houses a huge collection of art and artifacts before ending with the Sistine Chapel |
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| A three thousand-year-old mummy! This is already the third mummy I've seen since beginning the program (the first two were here) |
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| Apollo, god of sun and music, on the hunt (his bow is missing) |
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| Laocoön was a priest who warned Trojans to not accept Greeks bearing gifts, especiall gifts in the shape of an enormous Trojan horse big enough to fit an army inside. But the gods wanted the Greeks to win, so they sent snakes to kill him and his sons. Lost for over a thousand years, the statue was unearthed in the 1500s |
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| The creatively named "Round Room" features a huge statue of Hercules and an enormous basin made from rare purple marble, which once decorated Nero's palace |
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| A view of the city from the museum |
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| The museum building was once used as a papal palace. The grandeur remains |
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| We then found ourselves in the Raphael Rooms, whose walls were painted in the 16th century by none other than... Raphael |
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| Ah, the School of Athens, featuring ancient Greece's greatest thinkers. In the center are, naturally, Plato and Aristotle, and Socrates and Euclid are among the other figures portrayed |
The trip through the Vatican Museum ultimately culminates in the wildly beautiful Sistine Chapel. Photography there is rage-inducingly prohibited. Sigh. But it was amazing to see how Michelangelo portrayed the entire history of the world before Jesus in a series of dramatic scenes high above us. Everything was so incredibly colorful – too colorful, some would say. The restoration undertaken from 1980 to 1994 removed centuries of dirt and grime and thereby revealed stunning, bright shades, but was a dark coat of varnish intentionally added by Michelangelo also removed? We may never know. In any case, it was all very bright, and small patches that were left uncleaned looked unbelievably gray and dark in comparison.
Next up, after taking a secret passageway pointed out to us by travel god Rick Steves (ok, not secret, but it was not the exit that the museum wanted us to go through), we found ourselves heading directly into St. Peter's Basilica, the greatest church in the world. It was built over 120 years, starting in 1506, by a variety of artists and architects, among them Michelangelo.
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| In the atrium, which itself is bigger than most churches. Notice no one has shorts or a tank top - that is too revealing for this particular house of god |
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| This place is both breathtaking and enormous. The opposite end of the church is two football fields away |
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| This was only about the fifth church that Leah has ever seen (this trip was her first time in Europe), so she will forever be underwhelmed by any other church she visits in the future |
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| Bernini's bronze canopy is seven stories tall |
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| Michelangelo's 448-foot-tall dome |
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| You can see Peter's name in Latin (Petrvs) spelled out on the golden ribbon on the right above the canopy. What are purported to be Peters' bones are buried below us |
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| This foot belongs to a statue of Peter and has been worn smooth by the lips and fingers of countless pilgrims |
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| The dove in the window is six feet tall |
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| Michelangelo carved his dramatic Pietà when he was 24. Mary looks quite young and large compared to the 33-year-old Jesus in her arms. I hid it well, but there is a big sheet of glass protecting it ever since a crazy person attacked the statue with a hammer |
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| Tomb of John Paul II, who died in 2005 and was sainted in 2014 |
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| We forked over 5 euros to climb 551 steps up to the top of the famous dome and get a breathtaking view over all of Rome |
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| A look over Vatican City |
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| A sliver of the Coliseum is visible in the back right behind the big, white Victor Emmanuel Monument |
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| Postcard-worthy! |
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| A close-up view of the dome |
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| Out and about in St. Peter's Square. The genuine ancient Egyptian obelisk is 90 feet of granite and weighs 300 tons. The big building behind it and to the right houses the papal apartments. The triangular building way at the back and just to the left of the obelisk (and to the right of the basilica) is the Sistine Chapel |
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| The Sistine Chapel's triangular roof is more visible here |
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| The ring of 284 56-foot-tall columns was designed by Bernini |
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| Mussolini opened up this broad boulevard in the 1930s to make the magnificent dome of St. Peter's more visible |
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| Castel Sant'angelo was first built in the 6th century as a tomb for Roman emperors and then became a fortress and prison. The angels in the foreground are Bernini-designed |
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| We revisited the deserted St. Peter's Square after closing time |
That marked the end of our Christianity-related sightseeing. To wrap up our time in Rome, we did one last self-guided Rick Steves walking tour through the Jewish ghetto, as it was the only one of his seven Rome tours that we had not yet gotten to.
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| The once-swampy ghetto was the forced home of the Roman Jewish population for more than 300 years, starting in the 16th century. This is the main drag, Via del Portico d’Ottavia |
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| The edge of the ghetto: observe how on the left, five cramped stories are visible in this picture, but on the right, just outside of the ghetto, two and a half stories take up the same amount of space |
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| Bernini added some turtles to the top of this fountain |
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| We stopped for some pizza near this random pile of ancient ruins we ran into. Turns out that they are four two-thousand-year-old Roman temples and a theatre. It was in this theatre that Julius Caesar was stabbed to death |
We finally headed back to the hostel at 10:30 pm, thirteen hours after we had left. Just like that, we had seen the best of Rome in just 2 and a half days! Rome was the coolest city I had seen up to that point. There is simply an overwhelming amount of ancient history, jaw-dropping architecture, and famous artwork. And as our late-night pizza stop demonstrated, you might just turn a corner and then find yourself on top of ancient history. But in any case, our time was up, and it was back off to Berlin to explore my home base some more. Pictures from our next exploits soon!
