Saturday 13 September 2014

La Dolce Vita

Rule 1 of living in Italy: there is this constant, delicate juxtaposition between copious amounts of complicated red tape and then the Italians, who do everything in their power to avoid it.

As a result of this, life here in Rome is an unpredictable journey but one that is captivating and beautiful. As I'm living here and not merely passing through I have had to take a much different approach to travelling and actually try and build roots here; with that in mind I can happily report I have a phone/ matriculated at the university/ made a couple of friends and, as of Friday, found an apartment!


I will be living just next to Santa Maria Maggiore, it's by a metro station but also walkable to pretty much anywhere. Couchsurfing at Pembos is open to business, drop me a line if you want to come out. It was great to see some friends last week and I very much look forward to another impending visit from a friend in October.


Getting a flat fell into the latter part of Rule 1. They have this huge biweekly buy/sell newspaper called Portaportese. In the back they have thousands of little two lined advertisements for people renting rooms of apartments in Rome. I had mentally named Friday as 'Flat Day' and was determined to come away with something. I cold called in Italian about 12 of the numbers, got a couple of viewings and off I went on the bus to have a look. Within 15 minutes of walking into the first one on my list I had keys in my pocket and was free to move in that afternoon. Ideal.


Sorting university out was more the former part of Rule 1. I read before I came out that if you ever had a job to do in Italy, mentally prepare yourself for that task to take about half your day. It could be something  really simple such as going to the post office but you never know what obstacles will be thrown in your way. The main barrier for me is that different organisations are open in different parts of the city on different days at different times. If you thought UK standard Mon-Fri/9-5 business hours were commonplace around the world, think again. Thankfully I was reading The Obstacle is the Way at the same time which encouraged diligent, perseverance until everything got sorted.

I knew I was only the student at my new university from Edinburgh but the helper at the Erasmus office said he had only seen about 10 UK students come to Sapienza in the last 4 years. I'm suddenly very much the minority at Europe's largest university. I'm enjoying this new international atmosphere but maybe I underestimated how different it is from Edinburgh. The uniqueness has also been noted by my fellow Erasmus students with one German friend commenting how I remind her of Harry Potter, this seemed to me like a rather broad generalisation.


Aperitivos are one of the many social/cultural benefits of life in Rome. Last week most of the students from my Italian class descended on a local bar to enjoy what I hope to be a routine added meal time. Italians eat around 9 so this drink/food activity is designed to bridge the waiting time. Basically you typically order some strong alcoholic cocktail and then you get free food either brought to the table or an unlimited buffet by the bar.


The weather helps the above and also encourages exercise, I have particularly enjoyed cycling, skating and running along the tevere. Plans for next week include applying myself to Italian lessons, completing the move from trastevere to the centre and maybe the occasional little adventure.


TJP



_________________

Top quote I read today:

"The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough" 
Ted Hughes

Also, I'm going to be tracking progress on books soon. Click back later if you're keen to follow and have any recommendations!

Friday 5 September 2014

The Big Move

Normality is a subjective thing which has the capability to shift and change. When you do one thing for a continued period of time your perspective on the enormity of potential that exists in our world starts to narrow. Leaping out of the comfortable environment that you settle into is the best way to regain that sense of exhilaration and opportunity. The university lifestyle, camino exploration and work routine were all consuming in their own unique way. I finished work in Edinburgh at 3pm on Thursday and at 1am Friday morning I was still in my suit wheeling a couple of big bags down the windy, cobbled streets of Trastevere. There were hundreds of revellers in the street and I enjoyed this obvious dichotomy between my old existence for the past 10 weeks and the new one that would confront me in the morning.

The basic brief is that I will be studying filosofia at Sapienza, Universita di Roma. My lectures will be in Italian and start in October. My language skills are currently a bit suspect, I don't really know anybody here (apart from the family of one of my good university friends) and I need to find a place to live. All of this provides a series of exciting challenges far beyond anything I have done before. 

I am a big fan of Ryan Holiday, he is proactive and thinks deeply; these are two things that people often don't blend together well. A few people I have met through life/travels have said they wish they could have a year of their life simply to read. While I think ideally you can combine a working existence with regular reading, it is very hard to do. I struggle as well, despite best 'post-camino' intentions I only managed to read about a book every 3 weeks while working over the summer. If I ever I had a year to read this would be it, so starting from today I will aim to finish 100 quality books before I return home next summer. I'm making this relatively public to add a degree of accountability. I want to do something like this too. I have no fixed genre or criteria except they have to be engaging. I have about 20 books waiting on my kindle but if you are reading this and have anything that you personally have found of value then drop me a line!

Anyway, it's day 1 and my first job is to head into central Rome get an Italian number...

A dopo,
TJP