Mythology and Rome

I've neglected this blog, busy elsewhere. I return to place here something I wrote today, adding to treasures others have just added on this subject.

I wrote:

Thanks MMMike and others. Your lists bring much to life.

For reviewing the past we must thank the BBC for putting Mary Beard’s documentaries online at YouTube

And it’s possible to get lost in Bill Thayer’s pages for days

I find it interesting to think about the fact that nobody then thought of it as ‘myth’, just like we fail to see the way we wrap things up in supernatural meaning. Not just religion but the whole array of political and social and economic hoohaa in our countries and the world, with mythical status and power. Because of national power your US myths have global weight, are giants, so forgive me if I mention. POTUS, PUTINIUS, JONGUNIUS, SCOTUS, SENATUS, MUELLEROTUS, MURDOCHOTUS, SACROSANCTI DIVERSI. A rage of gods in their temples, not sitting neatly like chess pieces but feuding and scheming. We should not think of the populace as all-fawning together, but some scoffing, some using their bunch against your bunch. Back then you didn’t just appeal to bits of legal or other legitimacy but to the real force of these powers over life. In traditional Melanesian life in Papua New Guinea there were and for many still are no boundaries between the natural and supernatural. A plant won’t grow unless the right words are said... just as now the life of a US plant is dependent on a futures market and a Farm Bill or the intervention of Monsanto. Understand why such hoards are drawn irresistibly to the Amalfi Coast.

…blogspot.com/2016/10/legendary-creatures-of…

Back in the Americas I’m shocked to discover that my somewhat mythical relative, [Samuel Argall]

sevamarkers.umwblogs.org/category/jamestown/

...the kidnapper of Pocahontas, the first head of state in North America subject to a congressional recall motion, may have been a smoker...!

https://www.postandcourier.com/jamestown-une…

how to dress, part 2

I wrote earlier with a little note on the subject of what to wear, click on label at end of this entry. The discussion thread wandered on variously, including to hats and American men who leave their baseball caps on in restaurants in Italy. On hats I wrote:

Source

I have to wear a hat or beanie 24 hours a day to defend against chronic headache.
My best and youngest, purchased in Florence in 2010 are from Roberto Calamai, hat with a brim and berets
http://www.robertohats.com/chi_siamo  ...when he was here, fighting for the integrity of the San Lorenzo market
https:/…   

My finest oldest friend is a Borsalino Classico purchased from a tiny long-closed shop on Via Arenula in Rome, March 1978. I will take it to Italy in September, it still folds up like a cheese or cake section. It is no more battered than I am. We go most places together, but unlike my Borsalino I am unable to fold up and pack among my beloved's jumpers, such an inexpensive and pleasant way to think of traveling. 

My other excellent brimmed friend is brown, of uncertain age, purchased in the Porta Portese market in 2011 from the people who sell there at half the price offered in their second had shop in Via del Governo Vecchio [number 36?]. I lent it to a visiting French person come wandering in summer without a hat. He stained it with sweat, but that came out with a soak in slightly warm wool wash. 

Style is accessible. Comfortable. Individual. But do read these: 

triviumpublishing.com/articles/nobleinitaly.… 

https:/… 

on sumptuary laws, ambitions and desires. 

In my country, the baseball cap is worn backwards, is normally on the empty head of a person with a car with damaged exhaust shaking other cars stopped at traffic lights with its 500 watt speakers.

I mention in the preambular remarks top of page that the Tripadvisor supercomputer sticks links in things you write. As indicative of the prospects for Artificial Intelligence, I refer to my Borsalino Classico hat and the link inserted from the word 'Classico' is to a restaurant in northern Italy.

food intolerances

Someone asking about gluten and dairy intolerance, visiting Sardinia.

I cannot speak of shopping in Sardegna but in general gluten avoidance or intolerance are understood and covered by EU regulations.
Senza glutine means without gluten. Which is the term used. Celiaco means celiac. The first c is pronounced ch, the second as a k.
Dairy foods are latticini. Milk is latte, despite widespread English-speaking-world belief that it means.a light brown coffee. You are wanting to avoid prodotti di latte, dairy products. Panna as in panna cotta or in a fridge container is cream. Formaggio is cheese.
You may find almond or soy milk. Mandorla, soia.
In supermarkets and small shops you will find same ingredient requirements on packages as in rest of EU but with vocabulario as above perhaps also English etc. In markets as well as shops you will find unprocessed things.
Italy is not all pizza and pasta. You should find abundant fresh fish and meats (but I’m hoping especially fish in Sardinia) and fruit and vegetables in particular.

Restaurant eating

At the dead centre of Rome in tourist season, yes, maybe book a table, but I question people trying to do this from home, especially if reliant on recommendations at TripAdvisor.

I don’t know how many days you have in Rome but I’ve never booked a restaurant, you will find menus generally in English as well as Italian posted outside and a peek at lunchtime is worth more than a thousand wonderings back at home.
We follow these principles:
... wander away from the big tourist things to find the possibly authentic.
... if there’s a sign saying tourist menu keep walking
... if nobody is smiling keep walking.
... find prices that look sensible, plates in front of people that attract.
You have a number of categories on the menu. You do not have to eat from each.
Antipasti, has nothing to do with pasta, means before food, appetisers. Share if you wish
Primi: first courses including pasta and soup
Secondi: second courses which are precisely as described, meat, fish, etc, but no automatic side things
Contorni: side dishes you might share
Dolci: sweets

Well, um, not actually in Rome, but our wonderful restaurant in Soriano nel Cimino 2010.
I suppose we go for good food and good mood, rather than grandeur.

Padova in WW2

People from time to time get upset when they are pulled up and fined for not having 'validated' - date stamped - their tickets on public transport. Elderly British visitors to Padova upset that they had been to the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery and were fined on the way back. Some messages of the unfairness given the circumstance. I felt obliged to write about what the people of Padova themselves went through in WW2.

For perspective. There were Italians in Padova in WW2. This provides a rough translation of one story of the aerial bombardment of the city
https://translate.google.com/translate… 

And here a translated extract from wikipedia
Quote begins:
World War II and the Resistance
The Second World War was also for Padua, bearer of death and devastation, with the loss of the priceless paintings of the Ovetari Chapel of the Church of the Eremitani , of Andrea Mantegna and of Ansuino da Forlì , during an American air raid on March 11, 1944 : only fragments remain. The fate for the frescoes of the Cappella del Podestà, made by Filippo Lippi , Niccolò Pizzolo and, again, Ansuino da Forlì, was the same.
Many university students and teachers were protagonists of the partisan struggle . Important was the speech of the rector Marchesi Concept on 9 November 1943 for the inauguration of the academic year in which he invited students to take up arms against the Italian Social Republic , in the name of the Universa Universis Patavina Libertas (the University's motto).
Palazzo della Ragione

Padua was the headquarters of the Veneto Regional Command of the Resistance, the CLN coordination center for the whole of Veneto . It was this Command that gave the order for the attack of April 26, 1945 . The partisans took control of the bridges on the Brenta to block the movements of the Xª Flottiglia MAS Republican coming from Salboro who attacked with the artillery the city causing victims both among civilians and between the Germans and the forces of the Italian Social Republic . On April 27th, towards the evening, the RSI forces surrendered, followed in the night by the German troops of the twenty-sixth division . At the end of the insurrection among the partisans of Padua there were 224 fallen and almost as many wounded, while the forces of the Italian Social Republic and the Wehrmacht counted about 500 dead and around 20,000 prisoners.
The University of Padua was the only Italian university awarded with the Military Valor gold medal for merit during the Resistance .
...quote ends 

Important not to regard Padovans as extraneous extras on the stage. You cannot wander into a foreign country unprepared for local rules.
I lost two great uncles in WW1 on the Western Front. One never found in the mud after buried by a comrade. Were I to go to France to find some plaques, I would not imagine that I did not need to know how to travel in France. My age, 74, makes no difference.

A one day visit to Padova

Mostly tourists sail through Padova (Padua) station on the high speed train. It's just 30 minutes from Venice. Here someone was asking about a one day visit. Time for practical advice...

There is an excellent tram line that runs past the station and (in one direction) goes into the centre. There will be somewhere at the station to buy tickets. 1.30 euros for 75 minutes.
fsbusitaliaveneto.it/index.php/offerta/titol…You could spend the night for the must relax opportunities, as well as scooting about. But if you are moving with baggage, that loses time, may be simpler to take a late train back.
Try youtube searching for padova.
Here's the tram
https://www.youtube.com/watch…and hear is the route
https:/…Mappa_tram_Padova_2007.png

Florence versus Naples

In reply to a question from someone not sure whether to visit Florence or Naples, north and south of Rome, respectively:

These are totally different places. One of them historically a republic of wealthy men who cut off each other's heads at times to put on spikes in a piazza to which sweet tourists now go to ogle a famous nude guy. A bunch who over a couple of centuries assembled literature from near and beyond the approved world so that as a place of maybe 40000 or so they succeeded in upturning how people thought about the world though mainly it's the art people go to see. A town where when his Medici boss went out of power, Nick Machiavelli went 30km home to wife and farm, fed the chickens in the morning, drank in the pub in the afternoon and in the evening put on his courtier gear and by candlelight wrote the most influential book on politics for the next 500 years. Which he took back to show the boss when the boss got to be powerful again and the boss said ho hum. A modern city run by the Communist Party in the postwar period, and since the Party went away by its approximately successor the Democratic Party. 

Naples, the cast, 1799, see this blog page

Whereas Naples. A huge still somewhat Greek city which survived when Pompeii buried. Curiously tourists whip past Naples to go to see the entombed. Some find Naples uncomfortable because it's not pristine like say Toronto might be or Green Lake Seattle is. Others love it. You could spend weeks there and be discovering more enthralments. For centuries ruled by foreign kings taxing southern Italy to death, it was by 1800 the biggest and richest city in Europe. With some foibles.
…blogspot.com.au/2011/…The unification of Italy took away the taxation power and there have been tough times but it's a jewel of multicultural life and glorious history.
https://youtu.be/pIrKADAY0CA

Link also at end of text above, from John Turturro's musical essay on Naples, Passione

Where to stay in Emilia-Romagna

Sometimes really wonderful extensive discussions develop, as here, about where to stay in the Emilia-Romagna region. Of course people can search the web for information, but the Tripadvisor discussions can be special.

I am very glad that I built a blog when planning a visit for early 2017, that had to be cancelled. From it I extracted a link to writing about the Este family, of relevance to staying in Ferrara.

Emilia-Romagna, screenshot from google map

cost of taxis

Red line indicates Aurelian Wall. Area to which fixed fared from airports apply.
Source wikimedia

In Rome there are fixed prices for taxis to and from the airports to the city, written on the door of official taxis which stand in taxi ranks at the airport and elsewhere. Taxis from Fiumicino [FCO] have a reputation for sticking to the fixed price. Taxis from Ciampino [CIA] are apparently a bit tricky. The fixed prices are to and from the airports to places within the Aurelian Wall. Where most people stay.

Taxis can be called by phone and found at taxi ranks, but not flagged down in the street.

from a newspaper article about people complaining
that too many taxis are waiting for tourists,
not serving locals
This is a taxi rank outside St Peters.

The website numbeo, with general info on expat life, has taxi calculators for various places. It and other calculators can be found with a search for "[name of place] taxi calculator." Thus for Rome:

Use this for calculating taxi fares
https://www.numbeo.com/taxi-fare/in/RomeObviously traffic and waiting times will vary.

the weather

People ask about what the weather will be like at some time in the future. Accuweather.com is a good guide, I refer people to the appropriate month last year, which will show the long term average but of late last year seems often warmer or wilder than the long term average. The accuweather info does not include rain.

People sometimes write from a place saying "It's raining, what can I do?" I suppose one does as elsewhere... but perhaps also wise, in booking, to look at the street or town and ask that question before leaving home.

I take the liberty of quoting here as there a few remarkable words by someone else. That person replied to say he had laboured long over those words and that he, not in England, thought it summed up a standard day in England. Shakespeare might have been pleased to use these words in quotes below.

This was last year.

https:/…Early September slightly more heated with tourists. The decline and fall of Roman temperatures more evident in October.
A****, I bow and congratulate on such a beautiful triple negative:
"But never was it uncomfortable when not raining."
You can arrive without an umbrella S****i. If a rain shower begins there will be someone on a corner to sell you an elegant collapsing umbrella at tiny price.

the elderly traveler

Someone wrote about a week in Rome with a much older than I am family member. With ideas for visiting the Colosseum and Vatican Museums etc. I said:

I will be 75 when next in Rome.
We will be in an apartment near your hotel. For four weeks.
Our greatest pleasure will be in wandering. Pausing, snacking. If someone asked me if I wanted a tour of the inside of some place (other than perhaps the Borghese or less well known gallery) I would say "Are you kidding, I thought that doing that stuff was a waste of time fifty years ago, why now?" I trust your capo di capi is being consulted.
There are so many interesting places near your hotel, nearer than the Colosseum. Peruse the google map, click on names, use street view.