Fictional Article and Photos
December 18, 2017 / featured on Kevin Kish Photography seaandcityblog
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We thought it would be fun if we went to the bus terminal directly from the bar. The bar closed at 4 and our bus left at 6:30 a.m. In between we figured we would occupy ourselves with a smuggled out beer and a walk up to Tallinn’s best viewing platform to see our adopted city one last time before Nina left for good, and I left for the summer. My first year of graduate school and of Tallinn was over. The longest winter of my life was, too. The high latitude that had produced the sunless days of December was now bringing midnight sunsets and “white nights” alongside cool sea breezes as the days marched towards the solstice, like some kind of ancient miracle.
Everything went according to plan up until about 5:45, when I discovered that Nina had promptly fallen asleep after we’d arrived home around 5:15, and only half-packed. A mad dash to the Tallinn bus station ensued, and then a four hour long coach journey to Riga. Once in Riga, we took a taxi to the airport—we were once again running late, having been overly optimistic about our ability to get to the airport via Latvian public transportation—and finally made it on a plane bound for Berlin, where we had a long layover.
Finally, at 9 p.m. Roman time (10 p.m. in Tallinn) we arrived, exhausted. We would be staying in the Eternal City for four nights and three days before heading to Florence and Venice by train.
Nina and I were staying in a campground outside of the city for the first night, and had splurged on an Airbnb for the next three. We had a quick celebratory drink at the campground’s bar, which was blasting pop music and overrun with teenagers, and then went to sleep in our little rented hut. The next day we ventured into the city to discover the chaos and vivacity of Rome.
We took a shuttle bus to Vatican City from the campground for three euros. The weather was supposed to be in the low to mid 90s every day we were there. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We waited excitedly for the shuttle, which, in true Italian fashion, was almost thirty minutes late.
The shuttle dropped us off on the edge of Vatican City, which was abandoned except for a few street peddlers and a couple of small shops. Soon we reached the Vatican Museum, which had a line down the block. Several men approached us with discounted ticket offers, but we declined, opting instead just to walk through the city on our first day.
We wrapped around the block to St. Peter’s Square. Suddenly Rome, which had previously been hiding behind the city walls, made a stunning debut. The large, open Square was packed with people headed to St. Peter’s Basilica, an opulent Renaissance cathedral at the end of the plaza. The plaza was circular, and then straight, and surrounded by Roman columns on all sides.
We continued into the center of Rome and discovered that there were domes, columns, churches, and statues of gods and emperors everywhere we looked. The city was a living museum. It also always smelled like pizza, was inhabited by Vespa riding maniacs and nearly devoid of traffic lights. We ran through the narrow cobblestone streets in between buildings covered in ivy, smoking cigarettes and trying not to get killed.
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Halfway through the first day we stopped to have an espresso and ask for directions. We had a map— and a laugh when Nina claimed that her childhood dream had been to be a cartographer—but we still kept managing to take wrong turns. I tried to help her figure out which direction we were going, but I was bad at maps and hadn’t really had any childhood dreams.
“Due espressos…uh, please,” I said. My Italian was very limited.
“Ah!” the man at the counter said, seeing that we were tourists. “To take, or stay?”
“To stay,” I said.
We sat down and took a much-needed break from the Roman heat.
The man served our espressos.“Are you enjoying Rome?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “Well, except for the fact that we’re a bit lost.”
“How lovely! Lost in Rome,” the man said. “I will tell you a secret. You can’t be lost in Rome. Rome is a smaller circle inside a bigger circle. Just go straight, and you will find the way.”
With that, we went out into the streets again.
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Rome’s charm and classic beauty was mitigated by one thing only: the Italian soldiers with machine guns that seemed to be everywhere. Terrorist attacks in Europe were on the rise, and everywhere was a possible war zone.
Rome was known as “The Eternal City” even by the Ancient Romans, who believed that the empire they had built was so impenetrable that it would last forever. They weren’t altogether wrong. Early on Friday morning, we visited the remains of the Colosseum, a glorious, elliptical stone structure used for gladiator fights and public spectacles in Ancient Rome, having been completed in the year 80.
The Colosseum was the largest amphitheater ever built at 614 feet long and 510 feet wide. Having been damaged in a series of earthquakes and fires in various centuries, only the northernmost wall has managed to survive in its original form. As a result, the structure towers above you, then dips down as you circle the massive building. A strange fate. Despite this, it remains intimidating. The entrance was heavily guarded. Inside the smell of victory and defeat lingered, and conjured up images of crowds cheering as men cut one another’s heads off and the emperor smugly watched.
Nearby, and included in your Colosseum ticket, was the Roman Forum, which held the ruins of several ancient governmental buildings. It was now noon and the Sun was directly overhead as we meandered through the maze of ruined things. I couldn’t tell what things had once been as I walked through objects of varying shapes and heights.
A hike up to the top of the Forum revealed the city’s sprawling skyline, made up of a labyrinth of church domes and zigzagging houses stacked on top of each other, almost all with terraces and rooftop gardens, places to be alive. The ruins were now below us, resembling a graveyard from my new vantage point.
Beyond the Forum lie the entirety of Rome, which had spun us in circles. The man was right. We had never been lost—not really. Rome, with its winding streets and its buildings haphazardly placed, its sporadic street signs and traffic lights, and its people, so full of life, so unafraid of death, had no plans to arrive on time. It had no need. Out of the city’s frantic energy and ruined glory had grown an unshakable faith in the state of things. The acceptance that we what will be will be.
