Sunday, January 29, 2012

Porta Portese

     Every Sunday at dawn trucks with all sorts of goods and wares begin setting up tables and tents in long rows down via Portuensis. They unload their trucks and set their stands full with shoes, toys, clothes, books, coats, food, crafts, antiques, art, kitchenware, fabrics, and everything that you could imagine. By 9am the stretch of several miles is crowded with thousands of Italians milling up and down the narrow corridor of pop-up shop fronts manned by salesmen monitoring their flocks of goods; they shout on encouragements to deal thirsty crowds browsing as they pass the tables. It's an unconventional orgy of consumerism; an alluring several miles of bartering, scams, greasy food, deals, junk, and one of a kind finds.
      There's an abundance of junk; This is the most apparent feature; a lot of knock off purses, watches, and rows of miscellaneous junk greet you on the long walk from the entrance at the head of via Portuenses.. Despite this initial sea of sport coats and Tupperware sets, we discovered a handful of interesting stands, some with antiques, some with crafts, even some with higher quality clothing.
    After about a half an hour of meandering at a casual pace, we came to an intersecting path of vendors taking the market in a different direction (in both senses of the phrase). In a matter of feet we found ourselves surrounded by tables and tables of antiques and art, tents over mountains of books, boxes filled with seashells, multi-tiered displays filled with assortments of vintage records and radios, and tons of other eclectic collections.
        I found antique scrimshaws for 60 euro, gold gilted frames, antique paintings from 100 euro, crystal chandeliers, marble mantelpieces, and hundred year old dining room sets. The list goes on. I fingered through leather bound books dating back to the 16 and 17 hundreds (priced at 20 euro), wound the stems of silver pocket watches priced at 35 euro, and picked through oil paintings ranging anywhere from 50 to 250 euro.
       While much of the market was unnecessary junk, this long intersecting avenue of people milling around proved to be loaded with an array of eye catching and unique finds.
  
  People really do 'mill' around the market, pushing past each other in a ceaseless sea of consumerism. Within the tides of these crowds, you find an assortment of traveling food carts with roasting nuts, beggars shaking plastic cups and pleading with sorry eyes, but also hidden among swarms of people in the middle of these streets are chances to win (but more likely to lose) some money. We found, hidden among the swarms of shoppers an illegal gambling table where passers by put up to fifty euro on one of three blocks with hopes that when flipped over there would be a red square. The man running the operation shuffled the blocks around as he collected the cash which he put into his bag after flipping the blocks to reveal that once again everyone had lost. As I held my phone over the table to snap a photo the man became agitated and pulled the table away shouting 'No Fotografia' before he was lost in the swarming crowds passing by.
           The market is certainly a different experience, and I can think of no immediate parallel in the US other than a flea market. The scale of the place is hard to imagine unless you've walked down the endless rows of vendors; the tables and tents swaying around curves with the flow of the street. Standing in the heart of the market you are lost in a two way road, both the entrance and the exit now too far away, all you see are the lines and lines of tents, and the ebbing crowd. It sort of swallows you up; there are no exits. The first time we went, my good friend and I walked in silence too busy absorbing all the activity around us to say anything. It is a physical and mental workout to digest the scenes as you move through this enormous monument to thrift.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Colazione Americano

A Roman breakfast is a dissapointing one to someone like myself who prefers to start the day off with a more American take on the morning meal. While Americans indulge in a more bountiful selection of eggs, pancakes, cereals, baked goods, juices, teas, and coffees, the Romans prefer a morning diet of caffe al vetro and un corrnetto porta la via (to go). The typical breakfast scene in the city consists of bars (the American equivelant being a cafe, think Starbucks but smaller) filled with Romans waiting at the counter for their coffee, finishing it in a gulp or two and heading back out to the streets. Coffee, or caffe, here is very different in both form and function from that of American coffee. Unlike our coffee, Italian coffee almost always comes in a small, almost shot glass sized ceramic mug contaning no more than two or three sips. Their size is compensated by the intensity of the drink. Each Italian coffee is esentially a shot of pure expresso, often taken without milk or

sugar. Needless to say it is very powerful, powerful enough apparently that when paired with a single crossaint (cornetto), it's enough to fuel the begninning of most Roman's days.
    Should you miss your American coffee, you can always order un caffe Americano, however you would not go unnoticed as you walk the streets or through the piazzas with a tall to-go mug of coffee. Unlike the streets of any city in America, you will never see someone walking to work or down a sidewalk with a mug of anything at all; it's just not how things are done here.
      Every now and then I choose to indulge my inner patriot and venture over to a small cafe that claims to serve 'Colazione Americano' (American breakfast). Though I will give them credit for their effort, no one here cooks eggs bacon, or even toast quite like the Americans do. The result is something that only ever assumes a similar image to that of a real American breakfast; close, but never quite right. For now, I'm giving their breakfast a chance, however, I'm not giving up my search for a place that gets my Colazione Americano correct.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

First Impressions

To get it out of the way early, the architectural atmosphere of Rome is beyond belief. To an American with a very American sense of time's scale (Reaching back to the 18th century), Rome shatters my sense of what old really is. Rome proper and its surrounding neighborhoods are constructed through and through of the most remarkable collection of Renaissance palazzos (the American equivalent lying somewhere between the city blocks of 19th century Manhattan and the row houses along the narrow streets of 18th century Beacon Hill); their size is incredible and their age is awing. These large collages of 200 to 500 year old buildings flow one          


The view from our living room window (left), and other various scenes around the streets of Rome


 into the next along the narrow back streets, meandering along with unpredictable cadence. On the broad avenues that cut through and link these dens of aimless medieval streets, grand palazzos line the busy streets, creating a symmetry and order containing the miscellany of winding streets that hide behind them reaching from the southern bend in the river to the northern. For an American it is hard to initially conceptualize the scale of time that is experienced even in the most insignificant streets and alleys of this city. Being a part of a culture with a historic identity that spans between a fairly

Piazza di Santa Maria (left) and night scenes around Rome

modern period in world history, most Americans have limited regular interaction with architecture that pre-dates the 19th century; as a culture we come into very little contact with highly developed and sophisticated architecture in our country dating any earlier than the 1700's. This may be why it came as such a shock to suddenly fall into a city where a building built in 1700 or 1800 is considered new.
       As we first rolled our suitcases down one of the hundreds of narrow cobbled streets to our apartment in Trastevere, a medieval neighborhood on south bank of the Tiber river, we got our first glimpse of the Roman aesthetic. Let it suffice that I've yet to find a street in this city that I find plain.