Man On The Side: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: A European Diary, Part One

On my most recent trip to Europe, I kept a journal, and tried to write about the experience as much as I could. It was tough, as anyone traveling through the Old World and faced with spectacle after spectacle would tell you, but here it is, in all its gushing, perhaps slightly incomprehensible glory.

First picture in Rome: ruins of an old Fort in Tiburtina, near the Termini (main train station)

8:21 AM

20 November 2015

On the train from Rome to Florence

The old Japanese couple I sat next to on the plane from Tokyo to Rome was sweet. They kept bowing to me apologetically every time they requested to stand up to go to the bathroom. I really didn’t mind, although I would’ve much preferred it if I had the window seat instead. It’s not for the views so much as for the feeling of being comfortable and safe within a small, confined space. I’m weird like that.

The flight itself was uneventful. It was my first time flying Alitalia. I saw 500 Days of Summer, Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, and about a quarter of Spy with Melissa McCarthy. I had to pause it because I was too sleepy. Also I didn’t find it that particularly entertaining.

Next stop: Rome

I got to Rome soon enough. It wasn’t as cold as I expected. Outside the main train station (Termini), I got stopped by the police. Heightened security measures, I guess. I wasn’t really troubled, although I had to wonder what I would have done had I been trying to catch a train or a flight. Would they have reimbursed me if I were late?

The hotel was charming and clean. The old guy at the reception was friendly, but he forgot to give me the key when he showed me up to my room. He also served me pastries and my first cup of authentic Italian cappuccino on this trip.

Hotel San Lorenzo, where I spent my first night in Rome

Now I’m on the train to Firenze, sitting across from this guy from Cyprus. Nice enough. Not exactly the Before Sunrise fantasy, but an unexpected seatmate I can actually talk to is always welcome.

With Alex from Cyprus

Outside, it’s chilly enough for coats and scarves, but not quite cold enough to skin the leaves off of all the trees. The fields are brown and green, as if they haven’t quite made up their mind what color to put out for spectators gazing out of train windows, like me.

Smoke rising out from houses mingle and fuse with the slight mist blanketing the landscape. Outside a town called Camucia, a hill hosts houses with alternating colors of flesh and brick. I think it’s pretty, but then, I’m not quite used to sceneries like this where I’m from. Is it still beautiful to people who live here? Does beauty mean the same thing to people constanty exposed to it?

View of a town somewhere in Italy from the train

2:51 PM

20 November 2015

Galleria Del’Accademia, Florence

I’m sitting on a wooden bench inside the Galleria del’Accademia in Florence, on one end of a long and narrow hallway. On the other side is Michelangelo’s statue of David, arguably the most recognizable sculpture in all of human history. What’s so special about it, one might wonder. I keep thinking back to when I was a kid and I played with Play-Doh. I could barely make anything out of it apart from mutant worms and stick human figures. And here I am gazing at an eight-foot statue of what has come to be known as the perfect example of male beauty.

There's David

I’ll leave the artistic analysis to the scholars, but there’s something to be said about fashioning man out of a solid block of marble: the curls of his hair, the chiseled features of his chest and abdomen, the veins straining out of his arms, and the muscled, powerful legs. Michelangelo played god when he carved David, and, save for the actual breath of life, I daresay he succeeded.