GL 350 Blog #2

Global Learning 350

Prompt #2: The history of Rome, according to the British journalist H.V. Morton, is both “exhilarating and oppressive for the traveler.” In what ways have you found Rome to be exhilarating and oppressive?

            Nothing is perfect and so much is complicated. You can travel anywhere in this world and you will never be able to find someone or something that has no faults or no imperfections. Rome is the same way, and I have learned that in only two weeks. I have had instances here where I have felt the most exhilarating and peaceful moments of my life. On the contrary, I have had moments of complete irritation/oppression. Today in class professor Dinilo said, “Italy is like a rose, and yes it does have thorns.” One of my favorite parts of Barzini so far has been the forward, where he speaks about how it is hard for him to write about a place that he knows so well. He quotes, “It is notoriously easier to write about things and people one does not know very well. One has fewer doubts.” I feel as though we must leave the place that we have come from in order to truly appreciate it. We must see other places, and peoples, exhilaration and oppressions to truly understand our own.

            “One has to be born again, so to speak, and then one will learn to look back upon one’s ideas as upon the shores of childhood” (Barzini). When we arrived to our campus in Rome, one of the first things I did was go out onto the balcony and look over the city. If I looked hard enough I could see the ocean in the distance, cars passing through the city, and other people standing on roof tops most likely for the thousandth time in their lives looking over Rome. This was the first exhilarating moment I had in Italy. It was hard for me to take it all in honestly; I had never seen a view so beautiful in my life. Another exhilarating moment that came quickly, as it also did for my classmates, was stepping one foot out of the metro and seeing the magnificent Coliseum. Hundreds of people were gathering around to take pictures of one of the most popular pieces of history in the world. I couldn’t help but question if this was really my first day in Rome. It didn’t even seem real! Walking into the building holding the Holy Steps was also a moment to remember on this trip that made me feel a sense of exhilaration. I was actually there at steps that had been believed to be where Jesus once walked on from Pontius Pilots palace. There is just something about Rome’s natural beauty that at first, feels as though you may have a lifelong intimacy with it.

            We received a tour of the Coliseum on the second day in Rome, where I learned more about how many thousands of Christians and slaves were killed there. On the third day we were in Rome I bought a book on the Holy Steps and learned that these were the steps Jesus walked on the day he was crucified on the cross. How could these places be exhilarating to me? I have already seen more homeless people here than I ever have in my life, and the noise and traffic can only be shut out by the headphones I now feel are a necessity to take with me everywhere I go here. In the short story Such is Rome, from Smiles, Ginzburg quotes, “In the Rome of today I don’t see the slightest trace of the reasons for which I came to love it. It’s not even possible to exchange an affectionate word or glance with the city anymore. Cars overrun its sidewalks. Nothing, nowadays, feels as distant and remote as the countryside.  It’s as if it no longer knows what to be.” The lack of home can be exhilarating at first, but picking out faults of the new life soon becomes easy. Rome is not like the place we all come from, and now we are all beginning to see the imperfections here as well.

            I don’t mind the moments of oppression. They remind me that everything is a rose, and every rose has a thorn. I know that I must take this trip as it comes to me, and if moments of oppression are a part of that, I will accept them. As Barzini says in our readings from this week, it is what the traveler takes with him or her that will provoke adventure. “Is la dolce vita really more dolce in Italy than anywhere else?” It cannot always be found by where I travel, but how I travel. One can never truly appreciate what has been given to them until they leave it and then return. As I take in future moments of exhilaration and oppression on this trip, I will remember what Barzini says about la dolce vita: it is what the traveler makes out of it that counts.