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Monday, December 5, 2011

Thanksgiving Over the Rainbow

We left Vienna the day before Thanksgiving for another visit to Rome, and, because of the holiday, the contrast between Vienna and Rome felt starker than ever.  Thanksgiving dinner this year was with our friend Cheryl at Popi Popi, a Trastevere restaurant decorated with bicycle paraphernalia and named for the sound of a squeeze horn--and famous for its pizza.  It was hard to picture a Thanksgiving more different from the traditional American holiday, and that was the point.  Since we could not be home with family, we did not especially want a dining experience that would put us in mind of what we were missing.

Earlier on that cold, damp Thanksgiving Day, we walked by Teatro Argentina, where Verdi's operas once debuted, and I was happy to see the same fiddling gypsy who played there when I lived nearby 10 years ago.  His hair had much more silver than the last time I saw him, and his face looked more lined.  The skritch-skreek-skrawk of "Over the Rainbow" cut like a dull saw through the exhaust-filled air.  Buses, trams, and taxis rolled past the ruins of the four temples of Torre Argentina, and Romans cocooned in winter coats bustled along the sidewalks and threaded the slow-moving traffic.  The gypsy's wife crouched on the walk next to him, bundled against the cold, shaking a castanet, and looked up with her large green eyes to thank me as I dropped a coin in the open violin case.  We did not stay for his other song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."  Both of them looked older; I look older; his repertoire, however, is the same.  Rome is the same.  It just gets older.

Ruins

Friday morning we headed out on a local, graffiti-covered commuter train to the ancient Roman port of Ostia Antica, silted up for almost 2,000 years.  Several of its imperial-era roads are still largely intact, running through an urban petrified forest:  stone stumps of houses and shops, storage buildings and public baths, fire houses and whore houses, an amphitheater, a fish market....  It reminded me of Pompeii, yet preserved not because of layers of volcanic ash but because of malaria-infested marshy lands, which limited the treasure-hunting and quarrying of the ruined town over the centuries.  When we returned to Rome at midafternoon, we stopped in another of our favorite spots, the Protestant Cemetery, an acre or two of expatriates, mostly Americans and British, who died in Rome over the past two centuries.  There is a kinship between ruins and cemeteries--both are suited to peaceful strolling and are gentle reminders of change...stone connections with the people and times that have gone before. 

Sulmona

On Saturday morning we drove with our friend Cheryl to Sulmona, a small town in the Apennines near Abruzzo National Park and birthplace of Roman poet Ovid.  The town's website mentioned Saturday as a market day, and we managed to arrive in time to see it.  Unfortunately, the market was primarily local produce and clothes made in China.  But the town had another attraction in addition to mountain views:  confetti shops.  These offered brightly colored displays of candied almonds arranged like floral bouquets, and browsing through them was like a tour of an arboretum.  And the dinners were wonderful, this being the season for sauces and dishes with truffle.

Filler

-- Most churches in Rome at this time of year put up presepe, or creches.  St John Lateran, one of the largest in the city, has a presepe with a 4'-high plush camel and a 3'-foot high plush cow.  Next to them are plaster human figures shorter than the cow.  Among the items next to the manger are three coffee grinders and three clothes irons.  There is no baby in the bed; it will complete the scene on Christmas day.

-- The Christmas markets in Vienna are up and thriving.  At one we saw for sale boiled potatoes rolled in marzipan.  Our favorite so far is the one by the military museum, which has a medieval theme.  The stands were full of local products and crafts--hats, ocarinas, honey-wine; crystal balls, ceramic skulls, cross-bows, quivers, swords, knives, maces, and armor of many varieties; hot mulled wine, berry wine; chestnuts and bratwurst on the open grill.  The vendors were all dressed in period costume.  It was a trip yoking today and a thousand years ago, and implements of violence with fun food and wine:   the spirit of Christmas meeting "Onward Christian Soldiers." 

-- In the Schönbrunn's crowded Christmas market, a boy of perhaps 12 months sat on his father's shoulders as we all stood in the cold listening to a group of carolers.  The child was dressed in a bright blue coat and matching wool cap, and, cheek resting atop his father's head, he slept soundly.  A young Chinese man standing in front of me stared at the scene for a moment and then framed it in his camera, angling to get the child in the foreground and the palace behind it.

-- A drive up the Danube Valley to Durnstein on a recent sunny Sunday brought us to sloping cobblestone streets winding between medieval buildings; they now house shops with local wines and liqueurs, candy, wool clothing, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, tote bags, and toys.  High above the town is the ruined fortress in which Richard Lionheart was imprisoned while the English gathered his ransom.  We climbed a path that seemed almost vertical to the skeletal remains of the 12th-century fortress, where we got some of the finest views of the Danube Valley to be had.

-- One recent Saturday we toured the pre-eminent Art Nouveau church in Europe, the Kirche am Steinhof, designed by Otto Wagner.  Vienna is also blessed with many metro stations in the Art Nouveau/Art Deco style, also designed by Wagner.  These wonderful structures are a trip back a hundred years--they are black and white movies come alive.

-- In early November we visited the lovely old wine village of  Heiligenkreuz and its Cistercian abbey and monastery before going on the Mayerling, scene of a 19th-century Hapsburg murder-suicide, the details and records of which are still under official state seal.  The poor dynasty.  How embarrassing.

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