Shopping for Watch Bands in Rome, part 2

We know the kiosk is now a feature of US life - airports, malls, you name it.  And the truck is also a shopping feature in many cities, especially the food truck in Los Angeles. 

But this seems a variation on the theme to us - a truck that sells watchbands and batteries--"Orologeria" means, well, "watch store."  The truck is parked not far from our apartment in the San Paolo neighborhood of Rome; so we watched it regularly with curiosity.  For example, when it is closed, the signs are covered up. When it is open, they are displayed, the back opened up (as in the photo), and you are warned not to lean on the case.  

It's also just half a block from the street Katie Parla featured in her Atlantic food column recently; you can get a new watch battery and some great food at the same time. 

I never bought anything there (as some of you know from an earlier post (Sept. 6); I like getting my watchband near the Spanish Steps). But some friends found it a helpful spot to pick up a battery.

And, oh, btw, now that my watch isn't working (but my band of course is new), I wish I were going by there in the morning... so I could get it fixed easily.

Here's to the ingenuity of the watch band & battery truck. 

Dianne

Tutti Al Mare, or Why Don't Italians Love their Mountains More?



"I am a Med man," he wrote. 

 Tutti al mare!  Everyone to the sea!  It's a commonplace that Italians--Romans, anyway--love their beaches; a long weekend, a day off here or there, and you'll find them headed for the "Med," as a Facebook correspondent (left) labeled the waters that surround the peninsula ("I am a Med man," he wrote, celebrating an early October day at the seashore, to which Antonella responded, "I am a Med woman, too! Always at the sea."   And why not?  Why not, indeed.  Why not the mountains: the splendid Lepini, only an hour's drive to the southeast, the sublime Lucretili, even closer to the northeast, or the dramatic Abruzzi range, up to 10,000 feet in height, less than two hours to the east? 



A sweaty Bill surveys the landscape from Monte Semprevisa,
the highest peak in the Lepini range

To be sure, a handful of Romans--many of them partipants in one of several hiking organizations--have found these and other ranges and enjoy them.  But by-and-large the trails and peaks are empty, or virtually so.  With the exception of Monte Gennaro, a lovely, varied, and exceedingly accessible climb with a view of Rome's basin fom its peak, the city's nearby mountains don't draw much foot traffic.  We scaled Monte Marsicano, a spectacular peak in the Abruzzo, without seeing another hiker.  And most of our climbs are similarly solitary, with our only company the occasional herd of frightened sheep and, less often, their Albanian herder.

So what's up?  Why don't Italians--again, our focus is Romans--love their mountains more?  In response, we offer a few of what we call 50 cent hypotheses:  untested possibilities that might have some validity--and might have none at all.  An especially compelling hypothesis might be worth 75 cents, a mundane one 25 cents.   



Beginning the descent of Monte Nuria (Dianne at right)

 1) Hiking is hard work--harder than lying on a towel at the beach, let's say--and foreign to the dominant Mediterranean perspective, which favors short work weeks, lots of holidays, and early retirement (witness the latest crisis in Greece).  Too harsh?  Maybe, maybe not.  Hey, it's only a 50-cent hypothesis. 

2) Getting to the top doesn't matter.  This 50-cent hypothesis brings to mind our experience hiking with one of the local clubs. After several hours of (granted) quite physical climbing, we were approaching the top of Monte Nuria, when our leader called a halt to the effort and everyone hauled out their lunch kits. The peak was only a few hundred, easy yards away, and visible, yet only one of about 20 hikers agreed to join us for the brief trek to the summit. [For more on hiking with Italian groups, see our post from last February.  This group, Altrimonti (a take-off on "other mountains" and "otherwise") is the most serious of the groups we've joined.]



Of 40 hikers on the long ridge of the Cima di Vallevona,
only 5--the four above and Dianne, who took the photo,
reached the highest point,

That was true on  other peaks we climbed with groups of Romans.  They're not "baggers"; they don't care about conquering the peak.  We think this attitude may account for the small numbers of Italians who hike; if the pleasure of getting to the top isn't a pleasure, then one of hiking's stimuli doesn't exist.  We would suggest that this stop-short-of-the-top mentality is one aspect of  Italians' rather limited desire to conquer anything, at least since the fall of the Roman empire.  Italy came late even to the nation state (state-building requires the conquering mentality) and its imperial adventures, mostly under Mussolini, were feeble by European standards. 

3)  It's a Catholic country; not enough Protestant ethic to get Italians up those mountains (see Nuria story above).  "No pain no gain" is not in the Italian language.  The Italian fondness for bicycling on mountain roads (burning thighs unavoidable) would seem to belie this hypothesis, but we're keeping it anyway.  3a) Perhaps all the "no-pain- no-gain" Italians are on bicycles.  Put another way, with Catholic confession  available to deal with guilt, who needs the cleansing effect of a hard mountain climb?  This is a 75-cent hypothesis. 

4)  Italians hike to eat.  Of course, if that's your goal, you don't have to hike very far.  They do eat well--elaborate lunches, fresh dishes passed around, home-baked cookies.  And we're sitting there with our trail mix, a piece of cheese, and an apple; we eat to hike. 



The Apre-Hike Meal

5)  Italians hike to socialize.  That's fine, but if your goal is sociability a) you don't have to get to the top and b) the beach is a better option.  On a recent occasion, we joined a small group in the La Duchessa area for what turned out to be a rain-soaked and foggy expedition, conditions that forced a halt to the journey.  But that hardly prevented the bunch from repairing to a favorite local trattoria for an elaborate, delicious, and highly sociable mid-day meal.  That's guaranteed. 

Hikers with Umbrellas!

6)  Italians hike to be fashionable.  We offer this hypothesis for free, because we don't really believe it.  But we were surprised (see the story just above) when the rains came and our Roman companions responded not with ponchos, but (photo right) with--umbrellas!

7)  Italians have a long history of living in the hills and mountains; think of all those hilltop towns.  As a result, they have a utilitarian view of the surrounding mountains; they're places to pasture the horses, hillsides that require exhausting terracing, obstacles between towns.  Given that history, when Italians imagine a respite, a change, a "vacation," the preferred site is down not up--the beach they otherwise seldom see.  This is a high-level, 99-cent hypothesis. 

Monte Cassino, May 18, 1944

8)  Since the agony of World War II, when for more than 18 months Italy's mountains were a place of suffering and death for hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis soldiers and the inhabitants of hundreds of mountain towns and villages, Italians have identified this landscape not with pleasure and release, but with trauma and loss.    

Bill

RST Top 40: #14, Villa Medici



From the Villa Medici gardens, St. Peter's dome at right in distance



The Villa Medici sits just to the north of the top of the Spanish Steps (which probably should be called the French Steps.) It is so close to the heart of tourism in Rome and yet for many people, so far. They just don’t get here, and they should – that’s why we’ve put the Villa #14 on our Rome the Second Time’s must-see list.



 

In trying to figure out how to succinctly capture this extraordinary property, with its layers of Roman history, archeology, art, water-works, etc., I found I couldn’t do better than what we say in Chapter Six of Rome the Second Time when we guide people to the French Academy the villa houses – so here it is in one paragraph:



Exhibit on the ancient aqueducts IN the Villa Medici's cistern



“This magnificent 16th century palazzo, with interventions by Michelangelo and extensive gardens, is near the top of the Spanish Steps, on the Pincio. The art exhibits are high quality and sometimes occupy unusual spaces, including the villa’s 6th-century cistern, constructed to store rainwater should the barbarians cut the aqueducts [which they did]. Musical performances range from jazz to classical. To get there, walk up the Spanish Steps, then left about 300 feet, via Trinita’ dei Monti, 1.”



Everything about the Villa Medici used to be free – you could walk in the villa, the gardens, the art exhibits, the music. Now everything seems to have a cost, e.g. from Euro 8 for a show to Euro 11 for show + guided tour of the gardens.



the "snail shell" stairs in the Villa Medici



Through December 16 there are special Thursday evening visits to the current art exhibit with some special features like tours with the artists. For me, it’s another run, don’t walk; definitely worth trying. The website, with lots of good information, is only in French and Italian. Here’s the Italian link, and you can try translating it with Google or another program: http://www.villamedici.it/it/home/.



We highly recommend going to an exhibit or music offering and walking through the villa (see., e.g., "snail shell" stairs in right photo) and garden on your own. The art spaces in the outbuildings are modern and interesting. The Roman statuary all around is stunning. The expansive view all the way to St. Peter’s dome from IN the garden is magical (photo at top).   And, for a pausa (literally a “pause,” but we would say a break), there’s a small café inside as well. Being in the Villa Medici makes you feel like you are on the Spanish Steps without being mobbed by tourists, hustlers and buskers (or people who are all 3).

Dianne

Most Photographed Building in Rome: Palazzo di Fantozzi

We have no doubt that the most photographed building in Rome is the Coliseum.  But the building most often presented in the city's newspapers isn't the Coliseum--or the Vatican, or the huge memorial to the triumph of Italian statehood known as the Vittoriano.  It is, and by far, the headquarters of the government of the Lazio region.  The regional government was once housed in the "square coliseum" in EUR, but since sometime in the early 1970s has been located in a distinctive structure on viale Cristoforo Colombo, on the edge of the quartiere of Garbatella.  From above (below right), the building takes the form of a an "H," with each of the four standards curving gently outwards; pod-like buildings occupy the openings in the "H."  We've heard the building was originally constructed for the Michelin Tire Company, and that what we've described as an "H" was actually an "X," once a Michelin symbol. 

Despite a lengthy internet search, we couldn't find much about the origins of the structure or its architect.  Our guess is that it's a very good building from 1960s or the 1970s--that is, after modernism had run out of ideas--decades that produced much that was awkward but also a few buildings of merit, like this one.  Although the internet contains the merest suggestion that the building opened in 1984, it is well known  (or at least widely claimed) that the building was the setting for some of the scenes in the Fantozzi film series; it featured a hapless Italian clerk/accountant (Fantozzi), and the first film opened in 1975.  So strong is the identification that the building is sometimes referred to as the Palazzo di Fantozzi.  Also fond of the building is the administrator of a group called "Nostalgici degli anni '70 & '80 (Nostalgics of the 1970s and 1980s).    Bill

Architecture is Back

A fascinating June show on Rome's architectural heritage at the Tempio di Adriano, due passi from the Pantheon, with contributions by faculty and students from the city's leading American colleges and universities.  Bill was  photographing one of the exceptional panel displays when this young lady stepped in front of the camera.