Saturday 20 April 2013

Rome in April is heaven, of course

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I do not have food cravings but waiting for the plane to Rome I had the greatest urge to eat a good tortilla of the kind you find in a Madrid café. Life is like this.

To be in Rome is to be happy. Rome, the loveliest of all cities - so up top the minute yet so traditional. Conservative without being sinister, unlike Austria. So un-American. If only England could pull off those tricks.

I first came here on my way from Bucharest to Havana via Christmas with my family in England and had 8 sunny hours on 23rd December looking round. I met an American girl who lived here and loved the place. I remember how superior I felt and how I thought Rome, though perhaps the most beautiful place on earth, was the affluent West, a dull place to live compared to Bucharest. I no longer feel like that. Romania has changed and so have I.

Eastern Europe has become deplorably tidy and freshly painted and now Italy feels more East European than Prague or Budapest. I know a Romanian lawyer who, like many Romanians, does tourist sites with the pitiless efficiency of a termite eating through wood. I asked her what she thought of Venice which she had recently visited.

Oh I hated it.

Why?

Its so ugly.

Ugly, Andra?

Yes. The paint is peeling and the pavement is not repaired.

I have not yet been to Sicily but I think it might be the new Romania.

I muddled my dates and came when my priest historian friend was away not when he was here but instead I am scheduled to meet several new people, friends of friends. I love meeting new people. New intelligent people is heaven. I am spiritually promiscuous although my life is chaste.



2 comments:

  1. Very good all around. Oh but I do hope you can visit with your priest historian friend soon and then share it with us. How was the tortilla?

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  2. I don't know what kind of Catholic writers she means. Theologians ? I visit a number of blogs that do not shy from discussing the sin of homosexuality. Canada, Ya can't say much about anything there anymore.
    I have to admit I'm not familiar with the Bernini's you mention
    Bernini's last work (I think) is a Christ sculpture. It's very beautiful.

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