Regardless of if you agree with their messages or not, this is the latest rage in graffiti on the streets of Rome. As I wandered around Rome I saw hundreds of examples of this style of political graffiti sprayed on everything from trees to trash cans to temples. It seems as if there are some people in Rome who don’t agree with the Bush administration’s policies and the war in Iraq.
Does anyone have any idea what this graffiti was trying to say?
Video cameras.
I’m glad they know where to put trash in this town.
Our favorite Marine!
Some of these are very artistic.
This is an advertisement. A block down the street there was an internet cafe doing a roaring business.
I particularly like the stencil of Rumsfeld.
Terror underfoot. Rumsfeld underfoot.
The windup toy soldier ninjas were a nice touch.
And with a final wink, I boarded an airplane and a short hour and a half later I found myself back in the land of couscous and harrisa. My unexpected three week vacation was just what the doctor ordered. It gave me some time to relax and unwind from the daily stresses of life in Tunisia.
When I got back to Tunisia I discovered that I had been accepted to the DAAD RISE program for the summer in Germany. I will work in Karlsruhe, Germany on the border with France in a humanoid robotics laboratory. I now know the date that I will leave Tunisia. Sometime on or around June 1st. That will have put me in Tunisia for a total of about 8 months give or take a few days. I will finish my stint at the university in Karlsruhe on the 31st of August at which point I will travel around Europe to points as of this moment unknown. I plan to return to the USA, Oregon, and Oregon State University somewhere around September 22 making it exactly one year since I last was home. I wonder how many people will recognize me when I return.
I was on my way back from Albania to Tunisia on April 6, 2005. The pope had just died a few days before. I had a connection in the Rome airport to get to Tunisia. I decided on a whim to change my ticket to go to Rome for a few days and see what was up at the Vatican. Little did I know what a crazy time I’d have.
The first challenge was to find a place to stay. The hotel reservation service at Termini, the large train station in Rome, informed me that all of the hostels were filled and only a hotel for 100 euros a night could take me. I decided I’d rather sleep in a park which I found out later was what all of the pilgrims were doing.
I ended up wandering all over downtown Rome for the next few hours looking for a place to stay. Nothing. Finally out of desperation I went to an internet cafe to see if I knew anyone in Rome online. I didn’t find anyone. As I was getting ready to head to the nearest park I asked the man running the cafe if I could sleep in the internet cafe. He said no because the last time he tried that the Police almost arrested him. He said to hang on a second and he’d call up a friend who knew a friend who might have a room free. The next thing I knew, I had engaged a room in a small private hotel/hostel/bed and breakfast in the house of an elderly Italian couple. 25 euros a night for a private room down the hall from the toilet and shower. I also was the only guest in the entire place for the entire weekend. It was rather crazy considering that every other hotel in Rome was completely full.
The next day I started my wanderings around Rome.
The coliseum. I highly recommend getting up early in Rome to see the sights without touristic distractions.
Romans sure love their triumphal arches! This is the Arch of Constantine.
Proof that Romans couldn’t do math! XXXIIII. It should be XXXIV. (Note: depending on the time period, the XXXIIII style is correct)
Yet another triumphal arch in the area around Palatine Hill.
Monks on the move.
The old Roman Forum.
A statue of the myth of the founding of Rome. Supposedly the twins Romulus and Remus were raised by a she-wolf at the foot of the Palatine Hill. The myth says that Romulus killed his brother and then founded the city. Its funny to think that from such a legend such a mighty and massive empire was made. Now I’ve been to the western edges of the empire, the northern edges, the southern edges, places in between, and Rome itself.
Still in the area of the Roman Forum.
Saint Peter’s Basilica and Vatican City in the distance. Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. The pope was given full sovereignty over the Vatican City in 1929 by Mussolini under the Lateran Treaty. I only wish they stamped your passport! The Vatican even has it’s own standing army of Swiss guards, a train station, and it’s own postal system which I’m told is better than the Italian postal system.
Still on Palatine Hill.
Inside the Colosseum.
Archaeologists at work.
More Roman ruins!
No, this isn’t from olden times. It was built more recently.
Another Colosseum made into apartment blocks.
Another Roman ruin that used to be contained inside a building. There are many more Roman ruins yet to be uncovered inside buildings.
A new bridge behind an old Roman bridge ruin.
The Circus Maximus with a few campers staking out their places to watch the pope’s funeral on the megatron TV’s.
The only excavated part of the Circus.
Imagine this place filled with tens of thousands of spectators. War chariots careened around the oval track. Bets were placed. Blood was spilled. It was the NASCAR of the Roman Empire.
More random Roman ruins.
Random obelisk nicked from Egypt by the Romans.
Backside of the Pantheon.
Another stolen Egyptian obelisk. This is in the Piazza Navona.
Brazil always seems to get absolutely AMAZING places for their embassies and ambassadors.
Inside the Museo Nazionale Romano.
Two of these can fit in the space of one American sedan!
The Vatican: 2.5 million pilgrims surrounding Saint Peter’s Square? Sounds like a good place to go look for some food!
The Castel Sant’ Angelo which protects the entrance to the Vatican.
I was on my way over to a restaurant near the Vatican. I saw these massed crowds of people all over the place standing around near police barricades looking wistfully, longingly in the direction of the Vatican. I walked by a park covered in sleeping bags and tents and people sleeping on the grass or under a newspaper. I was given a free bottle of water from a civil defence volunteer. I resolved not to go within a half kilometer of the Vatican.
I was walking on the north side of Vatican City trying to find this restaurant that I had heard about when I found myself crossing a large street that had been barricaded off by the police. Just before I started across an ambulance had come whizzing by as it took away a pilgrim overwhelmed by the ordeal of waiting to see the pope. Two thirds of the way across the street I looked to my left to see a terrifying sight. Thousands of people running at top speed in a wall of humanity. There was nothing I could do. I was swept up by these pilgrims and physically picked up and carried along with the crowd. We ran down first one street then another then another with police at both sides yelling at us in Italian something along the lines of “Hurry! Hurry!” There was no escape. Both sides of the road were firmly barricaded with crowd control fencing. To stop would mean sudden death under the stampeding Italian and Polish youths who now surrounded me. I didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on until we suddenly stopped, I looked up, and found myself staring at Saint Peter’s Square.
I had been picked up and carried away into the papal viewing line. At first I thought about getting out of the line. After all, on the TV just that morning the authorities had been saying that the wait to see the pope’s body was over 30 hours long and that they had shut the line down because of it. Well evidently it had been reopened because I found myself standing directly in front of Saint Peter’s.
The waves of emotion surging through the crowd were amazing. It would go from a jubilant outing to a sad and somber funeral procession on cue with the gigantic televisions displaying alternately shots of the crowd, photos of the pope during his life and pictures of his body lying inside the Vatican. Every time the crowd would move forward the people around me would let out a joyful shout and surge forward. With every surge forward we got a litlte closer but we also got much more densly packed until it was tight enough that I took a nap for a while by letting the people around me hold me up.
At one point I wound up next to a priest from Oregon who was studying in the divinity school in Rome. We talked for a few seconds before we were pulled apart once more. I have no idea what part of the state he was from.
There were very few people in the line that spoke any English. The language of the day was Polish. The face of the crowd was Polish. This was a Polish pope. This was their pope. These people had taken every form of transport imaginable to get to the events unfolding in front of us. Some had come on train, some on busses, some on planes, some had hitchhiked, some drove. Everyone had a story on how they managed to get all the way down to Rome to attend the Pope’s funeral.
We slowly made progress forward until we entered Saint Peter’s Square proper. Gradually and slowly we inched our way closer and closer across the vast square. There were offerings to the pope littering the square spanning the range from flags to candles. A small group of what appeared to be either Italian or Polish scouts of some affiliation or another had setup shop in the square to put jam on some bread and serve it to people in the line. A small slice of frenchbread didn’t make up for my missed dinner but it did help tide me over and give me the strength to get through the massive crush of people.
Making my entrance into the Vatican.
Saint Peter’s Square
The next wave of pilgrims is led across the square.
The chairs were being setup for the funeral the next day.
Many movies follow. They are of inside the Vatican, the dead pope, the mourners, etc.
Videos of the stream of mourners approaching the Pope’s body and of the inside of the Basilica are below.
Exiting the Vatican.
The below movie shows some of the pilgrims still waiting in line to see the dead Pope.
After waiting only three hours in line the day before the pope’s funeral I was able to see the pope. It was by far one of the most random and chance events to happen to me in quite a long time!
I made my way back across town and to my hotel. I was thoroughly exhausted by the experience and by the fact that I had seen most of the ancient Roman ruins earlier in the morning.
Looking between the two closest church domes, Saint Peter’s Basilica can be made out in the distance.
The Spanish Steps.
The crowd gets ready and settles in to watch the funerary proceedings on one of the several jumbotron TV’s setup in this and many other squares around Rome.
Another stolen obelisk!
Near the entrance to the street leading up to the Vatican. People had been camped out since the night before to get close to the Vatican for the funeral.
People stretch all the way along the pedestrian walkway above the river trying to see the Pope’s coffin from over a kilometer away.
Since things wouldn’t get warmed up for a while, I decided to take a walk around town through the Trastevere neighborhood.
Candles on a bridge several kilometers from the Vatican.
This is normally one of the busiest streets in Rome. For the Pope’s funeral all traffic within the city of Rome was banned for the entire day.
If water starts pouring through the “eye” in the middle of the bridge, the people of Rome know the river is at flood stage.
A random monastery in the Trastevere neighborhood.
I headed over to the Circus Maximus to watch some of the events unfold. Every single tourist site in Rome was closed in remembrance of the pope. There were bus loads very confused Japanese tourists walking around the streets of Rome with nothing to take a picture of! No, really, there were!
In my wanderings I discovered the Belgian Embassy.
The Colosseum had been converted into another funerary TV location. I stayed and watched a bit.
I ended up across town after some more walking. This is a great park just past the Spanish Steps.
Another pilfered obelisk.
As I came down the Spanish Steps the funeral finished and the crowds started streaming away from the TV’s.
The next morning I woke up and headed over to the Vatican once more. This time it was to see the Vatican Museums. This is a photo of the Map Room and its amazing ceiling. Due to the proceedings underway to choose the new pope, the Sistine Chapel was closed. I guess that just means that I will have to return to Rome in the future!
I once again got in line at the Vatican. This time so I could have some time to wander around inside and take a better look without the crushing mass of mourners.
People were still lighting candles and placing flags.
Several movies follow this text. They are all taken inside the Vatican looking around at the interesting things to see.
Leaving the Vatican Basilica.
Everyone gets in on the act of stealing artifacts from Egypt!
And with that I left Vatican City and headed back across town to the slightly less religious tourist attractions.
The crowd at (I believe) the Trevi Fountain.
The fountain.
There was one thing I forgot over at Saint Peter’s Square. To get a picture of myself taken to prove I was there! These are some of the many thousands of volunteers making sure everyone stays safe and hydrated.
People were still lighting candles in force.
It appears to be a monopoly piece on steroids!
And here’s a hand for Rome.
A fitting final picture of the first two sections of photos of my time in Rome. Yet another obelisk gone missing from Egypt.
