From Catholicpenguin

Contents 1 Overview 2 Before Leaving Thurs 3 Friday 3.1 Journey To Rome 3.2 Finding the Hostel 3.3 Visiting Fr. Mike 4 Saturday 4.1 Visiting the Vatican Museum 4.2 Lunch w/ Traveling Aggies 4.3 Visiting the North American College 4.4 Box wine, Spizzco 4.5 Seatbacks, saftey belts... (and stupid metros and busses) 4.6 Spanish Steps 5 Sunday 5.1 Breakfast and Beatification Mass 5.2 Lunch

Overview

This page describes my weekend trip to Rome, November 11-14th, 2005, with Tracie, to visit Fr. Mike before he went home.

Before Leaving Thurs

As is my typical style, I didn't do any preparation for this trip the night before, you know, things like packing, etc. Instead, before talking to Melissa, ~11 PM, I looked up for the first time when I needed to leave: 6:14 AM. :) Great. I then proceeded to stay up till ~ 2:30 AM talking to Melissa, and then a hasty 15 minutes packing. Still, for fifteen minutes, it was fairly impressive, as I fit 3 day's clothes, computer, camera, etc, and Alex's huge book over traveling the entire western hemisphere into my backpack, and with that I went to bed.

Friday

Journey To Rome

Waking up after 3-4 hours of sleep is never a fun experience. That almost sick experience is one I care to repeat as little as possible. Thanks to a wake-up call from Melissa I was up and off and didn't have any problems catching my Straßenbahn, train to Mainz, or to Düsseldorf.

<rant>

Right-o. Perhaps before we get into the flight I should talk a little about actually getting to Rome. Here in Europe we have these 'value' (read cheap, or in German, super günstig) airlines, one of which is called RyanAir, which will fly you to destinations within Europe for only 1 cent! In practice, just like your cell phone bill, they tack on at least about 17 euros more in taxes, etc, that they claim they have no control over. Still, 17 euros to Rome is a good deal no matter how you dice it (well, it's a slightly less good deal when you dice it only one way, but still. Stop dicing.) The catch, however: to get these 'value' (cheap) flights, they have to save money. One way they do that is by flying out of airports on the edge of nowhere. Not the middle, mind you, that's too expensive. In any case, this is related because, to get to the stupid airport from Darmstadt, I had to take a train from Darmstadt -> Mainz, Mainz -> Düsseldorf, (here's where it starts getting interesting) Düsseldorf -> Weeze (doesn't that make you sick just saying that town's name? Try it!) (also, this train ride is literally the middle of nowhere. It's the second time in my entire train riding experience that I've ridden on a non-electrified train, and the stop is one of those "we could almost afford to pour enough concrete to give you something to stand on" type places), and finally, mini-van (yes) from Weeze -> Weeze Airport. The entire journey from Darmstadt to the Rome took about ... 9 hours. :) I could have almost flown to Texas. Anyway.

</rant>

<rant #2>

If you remember about a page above, I was talking about lack of problems to catch trains, etc. Here's where it gets fun. See, in Germany there's 3 types of trains.

The first is el-Cheapo RB and RE type trains. You might describe them as Fr. Mike does, as bearing strange resemblance to cattle cars. There's seats, sometimes you get one, it's cheap, and almost always gets you there. Slowly. In any case, it's not for long distance travel, so, to do that, you take either an IC or ICE, Inter-City, and Inter-City-Express.

ICE's are newer, stop at a few less places, and are generally faster and cleaner. However, from A->B there's almost always an option to take both, and for cheap money-saving humans like me, IC's are much cheaper, and only slightly dirtier and slower. :) Hence, my choice.

The downside, however; is that they are ALWAYS late. a 'Verspätung' auf Deutsch. It was amazing. On Friday, my stop in Mainz was the 2nd stop on the line. It was 6 freakin 30 in the morning. It's not like a huge crowd of people amazingly showed up in Frankfurt and delayed the stupid train 15 minutes, but all the same, it was late. This is bad because once it starts late, it rarely catches up, and I had only 9 minutes to make the change in Düsseldorf.

I got to the other track about ... oh 1 min 23 seconds too late. Bah. Thankfully, being the smart, experienced German train rider that I am, I had a hunch that maybe, just maybe my train would be late, and yeah. I took the next one 30 minutes later and got there fine.

</rant #2>

<rant #3>

I'll probably comment more on this in the Sunday section, but RyanAir flights are amusing. I've got no problems with the plane or the pilots, both of with get me there, which is, as they say, "Hauptsache", however; the "flight attendants", that is, those who attend to my flight, crack me up. They act almost like this is still a fun game for them, like someone was like, hey, want to play flight attendant for a day? It'll be fun!

Seriously. Coming home on Sunday, especially, when it came time to land, you know, the captain made his announcement: "Ladies and Gentlemen, we're going to be landing." Relatively routine. Most flights that make it this far generally go through this phase where they land in some fashion or another.

You wouldn't know it from the flight crew. You can just tell from the tone of their voices. It's like, "Oh my gosh! We're landing? I wasn't expecting that to happen this flight! Everybody, quick! Quick! Buckle up! We're landing!"

The best part tho had to have been when we arrived back on Sunday, and we were at the airport. The captain was like, "Well, there's a slight emergency here in Weeze. Seems they're evacuating everybody from the terminal. We're not too sure wh... hang on." Then, like 3 minutes later, no news in between, "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Weeze airport!" Tracie's comment was priceless, something along the lines of, "Guess the emergency's over now." Seriously. No comment between those, no explanation. ... Ok...

</rant #3>

Finding the Hostel

Right-o. Rants aside, we arrived in the edge of nowhere without any insurmountable problems right not on time in Rome, got our bags, and headed into town. Calling Fr. Mike on my cell just for the heck of it yielded a nice surprise, and we made an appointment to have dinner with him that evening. We then proceeded to find the bus to take us into town, as this airport is small, dinky, and on the edge of nowhere, so there's no metro or train connection. Luckily a bus was there, and 30-40 minutes later, we were at the main train station, Termini.

Although I had been to Rome last year, and I knew a few basic things, like you normally buy metro tickets at a Tabak shop, one day a year ago does not count as city experience, and we were lost.

It's really weird experiencing that "tourist in a foreign land" feeling again. I've been in Germany long enough, and I can speak well enough, that it's no problem to do mundane things like, you know, ask questions like "I'm not from here. Not only that, but I don't plan ahead, and as such, know nothing about your city, much less how to get around or where the nearest metro station is. Could you look past all these faults and perhaps help me?", which, roughly translated, comes out to, "Gibt es hier eine Stadtplan?" or maybe "Wo ist der U-Bahn Haltestelle?" :)

In any case, I cannot ask such complicated questions in Italian. In fact, leaving the airport, I couldn't even remember how to say please or thank you. Given these harsh conditions, you're forced to use (hopefully) similar sounding words (like 'Rome') and point wildly. These techniques, along with the words, 'which', and 'good', helped me get a map. A bit more walking around and we found a place to get metro tickets.

Our hostel was, according to the small map on hostelworld.com that I of course didn't print out, located somewhere about 2 inches above St. Peter's square, and the Vatican. Armed with that knowledge, and "the best map of Rome", according to Fr. Mike, although you wouldn't know it the way 5 booklets fall out when you try to use it while walking, we set off. I had been to St. Peter's last summer, and knew how to get to the metro stop, which we did, with no problems. Once there, however; we were lost, and of course none of the streets there were on the map. Directions from the hostel reservations said to take a bus to the end of the line, then look "carefully", as it were, for a Mitsubishi dealership. Right. Found the bus. Took it till it stopped taking, which was a good sign that it was at the end.

No Mitsubishi dealership, and we were looking carefully. Therefore we were forced to resort to the comical task of asking random people on the street where, in this crazy neighborhood, we could buy a car. Not just any car tho, cause there's just something about those Japanese. A few helpful points in the right direction later and we found this dealership, and later, our hostel.

As it turns out, our hostel is a small establishment on the second floor of this huge European office building type structure, and finding it wasn't particularly the easiest thing to do. Nevertheless, the people were nice, spoke English (and apparently that's all, as Fr. Mike wasn't allowed to speak Italian when he called. :)), and we had a bed. Not everything was perfect; this was about 4 PM and our room had people sleeping. That, and the free luggage storage turned out to be a locker in the room. Luckily, Tracie had one of those cheap little backpack key locks, but there's something comical about locking up a 3 foot big locker with a half inch lock that just barely fits.

With all that "in Ordnung", we set off to get a snack, as neither one of had had lunch, before dinner. According to the hostel people, the road to the Vatican was just outside and across the street, which, as it turned out later, it actually was. Not knowing this, we ended up walking about 30 minutes the wrong way before finding a street that was labeled on our map, and yeah. On the upside, Italian pizza-sandwiches are pretty good, and it made a good snack, if the people were a little rude.

Basically, these things are rectangular slices of pizza, except not greasy, maybe ... 10 in. by 5 in., that they cut and stack so you get this square of pizza, wrapped up like a Freebirds' burrito. That, and they're only 1,5 Euro, so it's a good deal.

Visiting Fr. Mike

We arrived at the St. Peter's square, which isn't square, after our snack, about 45 minutes early, and took pictures. It's pretty.

In due time there was Fr. Mike. 4 months with no Fr. Mike, and it was wonderful to see him.

He showed us the 'centro de piazza' where all the rows of columns that are normally 4 deep line up as one, then we walked a little in the neighborhood behind St. Peter's square. He told us stories of how the current pope Benedict used to live here, he would walk around with a black robe and a suitcase, and everybody knew him.

Finally we arrived for dinner at a little restaurant that Fr. Mike had never been to, but had heard was the Pope's favorite restaurant, before he was the pope. Fr. Mike was really enjoying this, and it was awesome; he still has his awesome humor. We all got a kick out of observing that the whole night, only 2 groups came in that weren't all priests, or led by a priest. I got Penne (with the little ` mark), Fr. Mike, spaghetti carbanara, and I forgot what Tracie got. I wasn't really in the mood for more red sauce type pasta, which is what the Penne was, but despite that, it was extremely excellent. Very very good.

After dinner we went to get ice cream at a place that had "the best ice cream in rome" <picture of ice cream place>, and sat down and planned out what to do the next few days, with Fr. Mike's help. It was then that we learned that in fact, the lady at the train station was being helpful, as apparently we had bought "the best map of rome". Fr. Mike quotes abounded, including "And here's the train station". :) Heh.

Later, as the night was still young in Rome, said Fr. Mike, we headed to Piazza Navona. Fr. Mike took us to the bus station, and asked the bus driver which stop was best. Listening to him speak Italian was just amazing, as before that evening we didn't even know if he spoke the language at all.

He said that the bus driver would point out to us which stop, "cause he's your bus driver". :), and with that, we parted until the next day.

<interjection>

I just want to say that it was amazing having Fr. Mike help us. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, like having someone you know help show you around when you're visiting a foreign town, and there is no kinder person to do that than Fr. Mike.

Seriously, I was commenting to Tracie one time that peace and calmness just appear to emanate from Fr. Mike, and it's amazing how things work out when hanging around with him.

</interjection>

True to his word, the bus driver knocked on the glass and showed us where to get off, and pointed where the piazza was. It was beautiful, somewhat similar to Venice's St. Mark's Square. Lots of painters, etc, selling wares, fountains, you know. Typical romantic Italian stuff.

Later we wandered over to the Pantheon, which, although closed at night, is still beautiful lit up from the outside, and as usual, there was a street musician playing. That night it was just a guy playing guitar. He was quite good, but, as we found out Sunday, didn't quite have the song repertoire down. :) <picture of Pantheno>

<interjection #2>

I'm writing this while riding back home to Darmstadt, and I must say, if you ever want the 2 hour quick tour of the most beautiful scenic river tour in Germany, you've gotta take this train. We follow the river almost the whole way, and it's unbelievably beautiful. We just rode by the Lorely, the famous bend in the river where all the ships crashed and blamed it on the mythical mermaid lady, and yeah. Just beautiful. K.

</interjection #2>

That night at the hostel, I was lucky enough to get the top bunk.  :)

Saturday

Visiting the Vatican Museum

The previous night, with Fr. Mike, in the plan we had laid out, we were going to visit the Vatican museum this morning. As it was only open until 12:45, and it was Saturday, he recommended arriving at least by 8 AM. Well, one thing about traveling with Tracie is that neither one of us are particularly morning people, and when our alarm went off at 6:30 or whenever, neither one of us wanted to get up. Technically, I was the one who made us late, but you know. :) Hence, 8:30, we arrived.

<rant #3>

How come interjection is such a long word? Takes too long to type...

</rant #3>

<rant #4>

Stupid hostel showers, and stupid instant hot water heaters.

K. So I'm trying to do my part. I've lived in Germany; I realize the world is going to hell in a hand-basket (why is there a dash in this word?), and that its all George Bush's fault. Therefore, you know, I was attempting to only use as much water as I needed, which isn't all that much. But no, before these stupid instant hot water heaters will kick in, you've got to have a minimum flow rate, which means I end up cranking the water almost all the way up just to get a consistent temperature that doesn't cycle between 'oww oww owwwww' and 'cold cold damnit why the hell is it cold again'. Take that, the rest of the EU. Blame Italy and their water heaters, and get off our president's back. :-P

Also, what's the point of a shower-head (again, dash in the word...) on the faucet thing if all the water just goes straight thru and stays in this solid stream of water. Great for back massages, not so great for anything else.

</rant #4>

Anyway, back to all that's good and holy, and occasionally, not good or holy but still in the museum of the Vatican cause it's artsy.

Fr. Mike was partly right. 8:30 was definitely too late; I have my doubts that 8 would have been better. The line was definitely lined up. Seeing as we probably wouldn't be able to take Fr. Mike's suggestion of being one of the first ones in and then getting something at the coffee shop inside, I went in search of our "first Italian breakfast" ...ooooo... while Tracie held the line. (Not an easy task, it's heavy with that many people.)

Ended up going back to the place where we got pizza the night before, which was fine. They had pizza, (go and figure...), and also some little muffin things. All went well, until I discovered, verdammt, I only had a 50. If there's one thing I've discovered about Italy, it's that they do not like taking large bills. After a very expressive 'Mama Mia!' (I'm not kidding), the lady very begrudgingly gave me my change, but she wasn't happy. That's ok; the muffins and pizza were good.

We ended up getting in around 9:45 or so, so only 1 hr 15 min waiting, which I guess wasn't too bad considering the line.

On the recommendation of Fr. Mike we got the little audio guides, the ones where you type in the number displayed on the fancy artwork and it plays tacky music for 10 seconds to tick you off a bit, then tells you interesting facts. I must say that while they weren't probably 5 euros useful, they did help the experience, and one really could spend the whole day here.

Since I was foolish enough to bring my backpack (that whole not trusting a half inch lock to secure my $2000 computer in a youth hostel locker thing), and since it had my computer in it, I was forced to check my bag, which meant we couldn't sneak out the Sistine Chapel exit and save 20 minutes walking when it came time to meet Fr. Mike and the Aggies for lunch in St. Peter's square. Blast.

Speaking of the Sistine Chapel, it's really, as far as chapels go, not that impressive, and I'm not really so much an art guy, but the Last Judgment , I must admit, really captivates me. It's cool. Michalangelo was the man. I managed to get one crappy photo before the people told me to stop taking pictures (I honestly didn't know you weren't allowed, you are everywhere else in the museum).

Lunch w/ Traveling Aggies

For lunch we met up w/ Fr. Mike and a group of mostly former students from A&M traveling in Italy for a week, a group called the "Traveling Aggies". There were probably about 10 people, and were all interesting to talk to. We ate lunch at "a great restaurant" that Fr. Mike knew, apparently, we later learned, it's the favorite spot of the soccer team of the Swiss guard (the ones who guard the Vatican).

This time I ordered the Spaghetti carbonara that Fr. Mike had suggested the evening before, and it was good. Waaay to much food, but good. One of the other people in the group tried a bit and said it was some of the best he'd had, so hey. We also were serenaded with an accordion/guitar playing duo, which was mostly nice, and definitely a cultural experience. :) One of the guys made a joke at the end, as they were walking around asking for tips, that he'd tip the guy to stop playing in his ear. :)

Visiting the North American College

After a very long lunch (after the other table had finished eating, Fr. Mike came over to ours and asked if we wanted anything else. At this point we hadn't even gotten our food yet. :) He also made some comment about how the hardest part of eating in Italy is getting the bill. Seems that's true in most of Europe.), Fr. Mike took us where he used to/still is studying, the North American College.

The North American College, as I remember from his explanation, was built after WWII as one of the public works projects to help redevelop Italy, one of the others being Termini, the main train station. Fr. Mike describes it as a "monstrosity of an institution", and, yeah, it is big. It was built, and still serves today, as a dorm of sorts for seminarians from the USA studying in Rome. They don't normally take classes in the building; just live there.

It was fun hearing Fr. Mike talk of how he used to ride one of the small super super fast loud motor scooters every day to and from that building. "Very practical", he said, "otherwise you get stuck in all that Rome traffic." :) Crazy Fr. Mike.

In any case, he took us to the roof of the building, to see what he described as 'the best view of rome', and we spent probably at least an hour listening to him point out various buildings of Rome. See the pictures for an idea of the experience.

It was during this time that some of the best "Fr. Mike quotes" were to be had, wonderful morsels such as "now today... that's just a mediocre museum. not even worth your money", in reference to the [building here] that was once a sign to the pilgrims of the Vatican that they had almost made it. Also, when describing where St. Paul was martyred, "now there, that's where they chopped Paul's head off". :)

Afterwards we took a small tour of the building, which truly was beautiful. One of the most beautiful parts of the building was the interior courtyard, inside which was a unique fountain. As this was a place for American students to study, the fountain reflects that fact with (artificially colored) blue water, red marble forming the outside, and a while marble statue type thing inside.. Pretty cool.

Other fun times included seeing the tree that the pope planted ... oh.. about 15 years ago, along with pictures of the planting. While looking at these pictures, Fr. Mike commented, "Look at what he's wearing, planting those trees. Me, I'd be wearing jeans.", or something to that effect, as the pope was dressed up in ... popely clothing, all the robes and the like, in any case, not something you'd want to plant a tree in. :)

Box wine, Spizzco

By this time it was late afternoon, ~ 5 PM or so, and we said goodbye. Tomorrow we would be attending the blessing of the pope, where he would bless not only us, but also any religious gifts, etc, that we had with us. Therefore, before that big moment, we set out to buy some gifts to have blessed.

On the way, we stopped in @ St. Peter's with the goal of trying to get tickets for the ordination mass the next morning. For whatever reason, they security people told us sorry charlie (heh, no matter why, or what country, I've found the only phrase people know to express this fact, that things aren't going to work out, is "not possible". Can't get lunch here during WJT? "Not possible" Can't get tickets for mass? "Not possible" Why? "Not possible" Why? "Sorry, not possible" ... yeah), but, since we were there, we decided to pop in anyway for a peek. I got a pretty picture.

As we discovered the evening before, the neighborhood behind the Vatican is just teeming with little shops selling religious everything, not just stereotypical stuff like rosaries and crucifixes, but also chalices, monstrances, priestly clothing, etc. :) It was kinda funny.

In any case, we visited a few of the shops that Fr. Mike had pointed out the day earlier, and found several that were still open. Religious gift wise, I'm a sucker for two things, the first and foremost being beautiful monstrances, but sadly that's one of those things you don't usually just buy for fun on a weekend shopping trip. Either your church has one already, or a community goes together to buy one. In any case, pretty to look at, but not something I'm probably going to be buying anytime soon.

Thankfully my other item, for which I am a sucker, is slightly more accessible, and I did get several beautiful metal crucifixes.

After dropping the gifts off at the hostel (packing all this stuff into one locker was starting to be a fun challenge) , we decided to head to the spanish steps, despite the advice from some of the people at the youth hostel that it was a waste of time.

From last summer, I had fond memories of sitting on a hill above Florence, looking out over the city, drinking cheap box wine that we bought at the train station. Wanting to relive these memories, we went to the 24 hour grocery store (which, the mere fact that there exists a 24 hour anything is simply amazing, and a sign of how Germany needs to change its backwards working hours policy) in search. Sadly, all that was to be found was the normal wine-in-a-bottle type. We didn't have a bottle opener, and somehow, buying even slightly quality wine seemed like it would cheapen the experience. :) Still, apparently, there was wine with a screw top for only around 3 euros, and we figured we'd take it, along w/ some cups. Or so we thought. Upon checking out, we were told that these particular bottles of wine MUST be bought in a combo of 3. Buying one is 'not possible'. Attempts to ask if there was another bottle of wine we could buy were met with attempts by an annoying Italian man attempting to get us to buy two more bottles, and all would be ok. Fine. So we left with cups but no wine.

Having no wine, and since the pizza place we had been eating at was closed (what?), I suggested that since we had to take the metro anyway, we could just go to Termini main train station, where, I distinctly remembered from the previous year, was a grocery store where you could for certain buy box wine.

It turns out I couldn't quite find the same grocery store that I was at last summer, but we ended up finding a place finally, and at long last a box of wine. For dinner, since we were already there, we ended up eating at Spizzico, which is essentially the Italian equivalent of McDonalds, cept it sells only Pizza. :)

It was an interesting experience. At one point while we were ordering, a guy cleaning the floor with something that looked like a mini Zamboni came by and pretty much just ran us over. It's not like we were right at the counter ordering or anything. Didn't matter. :)

Seatbacks, saftey belts... (and stupid metros and busses)

After dinner, the plan was to head to the spanish steps. Simple matter, so we thought. Just hop back on the metro and take it down two stops, and there you are. Given that thought, we followed the signs to metro lines A&B, where we discovered that apparently you have to go thru the ticket machines to line B before you can get to A, which was fine and dandy except that our ticket didn't work. After futzing with it for a while, some person working for the transit authority came over and told us the ticket wasn't good, and we needed another, which we used, and he promptly disappeared.

About 10 seconds later we discovered that, in fact, we could not reach line A from here either, because it closed at 9. Not only that, but our original ticket was in fact still good, and we had wasted another ticket. Not only that!, but every other person going on the metro wasn't even bothering with the ticket machine, they were just bypassing the whole process, and no one was checking!

This kinda ticked me off, but I learned the lesson. You don't have to pay to ride public transportation in Rome if you do as the Romans do. Bah.

The metro line was the only way we knew to get to the spanish steps, or for that matter, anywhere from Termini. We were not without options... almost every bus that side of Rome stopped at the train station, rather, we had too many, and the "best map of Rome" wasn't particularly helpful in assisting us in locating which bus out from the 5,000 little blue lines to take.

So we wandered around outside by the bus stop parking lot sea of concrete type place for a while, till I finally asked one of the bus drives (once again, without verbs), how to get to the Spanish steps (Scuzzi? Spanza? *point point* *look confused*), and it was then that we learned there was a bus that replaced the metro line, and where to catch it.

Great. So we caught it, and all would soon be right with the world. Sure.

See, the thing about buses is, to be a bit more efficient, they don't stop at stops unless you push the button before you get there, to let the bus driver know that, as much as you find his bus pleasant and wonderful, you'd like to get off now. (A little bell goes ding and you feel happy. I promise. :)) All well and good.

The problem comes with the fact that none of the stops are marked on our map, and we, generally speaking, had no clue where they were. So, we hopped on and waited. Eventually somebody pushed the button, the bus stopped, and I quickly looked outside to see which stop we were on, and whaddayaknow, it matches up with a metro stop! Good. Bad. Next stop is our stop! Where is that?

We rode for a while; what definitely seemed like too long a while to me. We rode thru hill, valley, forest, street with people, etc. Finally, somebody pushed the button, and we stopped again. (There is, in truth, more then one button, but you know.) Hopping off, we soon discovered that, hey, we did indeed go one stop too many. Oh well, thankfully right across the street were two other buses going the other way. We quickly ran and caught one, which I thought was the same line. One we got on, Tracie informed me that actually, no, that wasn't the same line, and umm... yeah. Not knowing what to do, we immediately hit the button and got off at the next stop. In the middle of nowhere, in a park. :)

I write this like we ended up 10 miles out of town, but in fact it was probably only 500-1000 m away and we walked back in due time. It was about this time that we finally got around to realizing that, although these buses replace the metro lines, in true Roman style, they don't actually stop at all the stops, and, wouldn't you know it, our stop was one they didn't stop at. Bah.

Long story long, we took the bus to the stop before, did the whole point and use nouns thing, and got some people to point us in the direction of the spanish steps.

Spanish Steps

The person at our youth hostel had told us that the spanish steps weren't worth seeing cause there were so many tourist. You couldn't even take a picture of the steps w/ all those people on them! Heh. Well, of course there are tourists, that's part of the experience.

In practice, they are in any case quite a sight to see, although sadly there were no red roses (like they always show on the postcards). That's ok tho, because making up for the red roses was this sextet of ever so slightly but mostly not so much talented group of people sitting there, chilling out, playing guitar, and singing. When we arrived they were doing classical American favorites like Oasis, etc, and man were they bad. Nothing that a few glasses of really cheap box wine while sitting on freezing cold stone can't fix, however. <box wine> The fun part, however; came a few minutes later when they switched over to Spanish tunes, and we discovered that they weren't that bad after all. One guy in particular could really belt it out and you'd think people were about to spring up and go flamingo dancing. They didn't, but everybody clapped when he was done. :) This was nice, but we had to be up extra early to meet Fr. Mike for mass the next morning, so after about half an hour we decided to head back. In our time on the steps, we noticed that at least 3 or 4 times this cute little electric bus drove by on the street down below, and a quick check on the map revealed that it went... nowhere we needed to go. :) As was typical on this trip, this was about the point I gave up and gave the map to Tracie, who usually found another line or some solution that took us right where we needed to go, and so it was this time. She's quite good at sorting out all those stupid blue lines. :) In any case, we walked, caught the bus, and rode, , and everything was fine for about ... 45 seconds. Then we hit a traffic jam. Seems a fire-truck (what? there is NO dash in firetruck... is there?) was driving thru this street, and got stuck because a car parked too far out. ... this is our luck ...

After waiting a few minutes, the bus driver broke the bad news that probably we were going to be waiting a while, and we should get out, cause he said so. :) So we begrudgingly did, walked about 30 seconds, and witnessed before our very eyes that same fire-truck getting unstuck and driving off.

Super happy thoughts went through my head at this point, namely that we were now bus-less. Luckily, we had a plan. We stood almost in the middle of the road and waited. When that same bus drove by 10 seconds later, we looked lost, sad, and waved our arms around. At first, no go. He gave us this look like, hey I know I just dumped you out but this isn't a bus stop and hey, not my problem! But we persisted, and 2-3 seconds more of this hand-waving and sad-looking and he quickly opened the door and we jumped in and drove off, just like in all those mafia movies, cept they're usually doing it w/ a sexy sports cars instead of a small dinky Roman electric bus. :)

Anyway, no matter. We made it back, and went to bed. Since Tracie had a less then pleasant experience with sleeping on the bottom bunk the night before, I agreed to trade w/ her, and I brushed me teeth, took out my eyeballs, and went to sleep.

About half an hour later, when Tracie got out of the shower, I would soon discover why she didn't like sleeping on the bottom. By this time I was half asleep, but as she climbed into the top bunk, the entire bed, which looks like it's made out of the same metal that holds those little children's swings together on that playground you used to play on back when you lived in the projects, i.e., not so good, creaked and I just knew that any moment something was going to give loose and I would probably not see the light of another day.

Oh well. So I did what Gabe typically does when he's tired and doesn't want to get up. Said a few prayers, hoped God would forgive me should the bed not, and went back to sleep. :)

Sunday

Breakfast and Beatification Mass

Waking up at 6:30 wasn't fun, but on the upside, the people in the bunk next to us, the ones who were always sleep whenever we wanted to do anything inside the room, were also up and getting ready to leave, so as a bonus we didn't have to worry about waking them up.

Once again we left a little late; once again it's a bad idea to have two people who aren't morning people travel together when you've got to be places on time.

Getting a little ahead of myself, the reason we needed to be somewhere on time was we were meeting Fr. Mike at 8 AM to goto a mass for the beatification of three people, Charles de Foucauld, Maria Pia Mastena, and Maria Crocifissa Curcio,. See Beatification for an article, and an article for the story, which seems mostly correct on the process and the mass..

In any case, on the way we stopped for breakfast, where I had my first experience ordering Italian coffee. It seems when you ask for 'coffee' in Italy, you get expresso, which wasn't really what I was wanting, and being 7 in the morning, and since I was intending to use the coffee to become less grouchy, I wasn't terribly happy. Later I would find out that you have to ask for 'cafee americana' to get the standard normal kind. It's not just an american phenomenon... wikpedia says so! , although apparently we are the most popular market.

Anyway, whatever. I was proud; I rememered the entire way to get to Fr. Mike's place with almost no problems, which was impressive to me, as it consisted of several streets, tunnel (with escalators), across a parking garage, up a flight of stairs, and round another street. Go spatial maps in my mind!

In any case, we arrived just in time, which in any case wasn't a problem cause we ended up waiting a bit on a friend of Fr. Mike's. She works and lives in Rome, and has for the last 17 years, which means she speaks wonderful Italian. She is a permanent member of a relgious movement of the church, and it was really neat to talk to her.

By the time we arrived at St. Peter's plazza, ~ 8:15 or so, the inside of St. Peter's church was already full (mass was at 9:30), which really surprised Fr. Mike, but as usual, in everything he remains calm and optimistic. :) We took a seat in one of the thousands of chairs setup outside the Vatican, near one of the jumbotrons, and it was fine.

The rows directly in front of us were filled with pilgrims from France, here for Charles de Foucauld, and one of the neatest parts of the weekend was listening to them pray the rosary, chanting in multi part harmony the entire thing. It really facinated Fr. Mike as well, and we both took pictures and movies. :) <movie clip of them praying>

Upon entering St. Peter's plazza, there was the opportunity to pick up little mass booklets <picture of maass booklets> with small biographies of the blesseds, and the songs used during mass, parts, etc. The mass itself followed the booklet fairly closely, which was nice, and althought most was in italian, Fr. Mike's friend helped out by giving me blow by blow translations of the critical parts, (mass readings, etc). It was really nice.

The only downside was long, the sun was shinning, and I was really tired, and for parts of the homily, which I couldn't understand anyway cause it was in Italian, I kinda took a sorta nap. :) Oh well.

It strikes me that one really can't really start being catholic this way. At least, I don't know anyone who, not believing in the worth of the catholic church, would enjoy sitting outside in a cramped chair for three hours listening to someone go through rituals you don't understand all in Italian. Still, when understood, it's really neat.

Communion was interesting, and it reminded me a bit of world youth day. It was fun seeing all these priests coming out of St. Peter's w/ all their siboriums. As there was no practical way to get through the rows and rows of chairs, the ended up going to the railings at the ends of the sections where we were sitting and we all went up one at a time, just like the used to do it. Worked fine.

The sheer number of people at this mass was amazing, and reminded me a bit of the Marienfeld mass at world youth day. There was, by my very rough estimate, some where in the 100 thousands of people, in the church, in the chairs, packed like sardines just standing anywhere they could in St. Peter's square.

Mass ended around 11:30, after the pope came at the very end and gave a little blessing and happy greeting to all the people there. Just a little history, apparently in the early days, before JPII, the pope only did canonization masses, not beatification masses, with the reasoning being that only canonization masses are actual infaillable acts of the church. JPII, as Fr. Mike put it, "liked to do everything himself" :), and started doing the beatifications, but with the transition to Benedict, he reinstated the old practice. Whatever. Floats my boat.

In any case, at noon the pope was scheduled to give a blessing to the crowd from his apartment window, and we were all wondering how he was going to get from St. Peter's to his apt in 15 minutes to give the blessing at noon.

The seats we had during mass were great for seeing the jumbotron, but from there we couldn't see the pope's apartment, so Fr. Mike suggested we make our way over to the other end of the square.

In that regard, he is so funny. I don't know anyone else who can pull off trying to sneak through a crowd of people to get a better view and do it in a completely calm holy way. :) We did, however; and somehow the pope made it to his apartment, and sure enough, at noon, the pope stuck his head out the window and started talking. It was cool. I finally got to see the pope!

He said stuff in Italian for a while, then gave a quick blessing in English, German, and other languages I couldn't understand. :) It was really neat, and yes, I could understand the German.

Lunch

After all this was over and done with, Fr. Mike, Tracie and I departed ways. We thanked him for all his help, because, seriously, it was amazing, he really really was alot of help, and off we went.

Not wanting to eat lunch at the same old pizza place, we stopped at a sandwich shop along the road back to our bus (Panini Express I believe), and got something very similar but better tasting then a subway sandwich. :)

After a quick stop at the hostel to download pictures, we headed off to do something I've always wanted to do, but didn't get a chance to pull of last year; visit the catacombs. Actually, there's not just one 'catacombs', but several, most located on the south-eastern edge of the city (in the Roman times, burying people inside the city limits was illegal, hence, they were located on the outskirts of town.) In theory, getting there wasn't complicated, and Fr. Mike pointed out on our map which bus to take, etc, and so we set off.

Unfortunately, I was spending a little too much time updating my journal and not enough time navigating, and although our destination was on the same metro line we started on, we ended up changing lines at Termini, following a mistaken assumption of mine. My bad. A little backtracking later and arrived at our metro stop, which was, as seemed to usually be the case, not particularly close to bus stop we needed to find, and so we set out trying to determine where we were on the map, which of course didn't have the street names or quite enough detail. :)

In short, we found the bus, and as a bonus, right next to the stop was the cathedral of Rome. (St. Peter's isn't actually the 'cathederal' of Rome, as its part of the Vatican.) On the bus, we once again had this chicken-egg-bus-button problem where you gotta know where you want to get off to push the button, but after pestering about 8 people on the bus, we found a kind guy who helped us, and everything went fine.

Sadly I didn't record it, but this particular bus played a really annoying recording by some slightly too annunciated british guy warning that 'Riders without a ticket are liable for a fine of up to 50 euro.', really enunciating that 'euro' word. In actuality, it was more amusing then annoying, seeing as nobody, as far as I could tell, ever bought a ticket, and no other bus had any such warning anywhere.