A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: Caffe Greco

As my trip to Lyon was thwarted by the high altitude powers of travel, I committed to carry out my travel plans here in Rome. I was taking a Hemingway novel and a notebook to France in order to truly read a book and write a few letters. As it happened, this can actually be done in Rome. And to think I had been traveling untold hours and trespassing against untold horrors to do this elsewhere!

I took a tip from a travel book and took a left, going north (these two directions do not always correlate with one another; be wary of such broad generalizations) towards the Spanish Steps, and eventually went into the Caffe Greco. The Caffe Greco, as it announces upon your entrance, is 248 years old - it was founded in 1760. Since then, it has been the swank haven of writers like Byron, Keats, and, yes, Hemingway, but really, was there a bar in Europe Hemingway didn't visit? The place was so overrunning with literary depression that an Italian named Giorgio De Chirico said it was the cafe where you sit and await the end. Writers are the most depressing people on the face and body of all planets, truly.

The cafe is one long hallway connecting several parlors, creating the biggest coffee shop I have ever been in. And it was filled to the rafters. The tables were marble topped and the chairs were wood and velvet, and there wasn't a free specimen of either, except in the hallway, where I sat. The walls changed color in each room, but were unified by a antique motif running throughout; the walls looked as if they hadn't been repainted since the Great War. Not that you could really see them, they were so covered with knick-knacks. Painting and scrapes of paper plastered the walls, from all the artists who had passed through them. The decorations even spilled over into sections usually deemed unfit for decor - door frames and crown moulding, too, held up portraits and even collector's plates. Ghosts of great minds drank coffee beside me; for myself, this was a sort of pilgrimage.

Sadly, the Caffe Greco has, for lack of a fancier term, sold out. The Spanish Steps are now home to Prada, Gucci, and the like, and I am almost certain they do not turn a profit, so steep are their prices. But shoppers flood the streets in a depressing way, and most people end up getting fleeced by men selling purses or watches on the sidewalks. Those who filled the Caffe Greco to the rafters were not poor writers but Japanese and American tourists, attracted by the aura. This wouldn't be so bad, if the Caffe Greco hadn't given in, but it sold it's soul, to the tune of six euros a cappuccino (which, by the way, is over six times the cost of a cup anywhere else).

Adding insult to injury, a further saddening me about the state of things in general, was Hemingway. Raise your hand if you knew Hemingway was so depressing? Well, that makes just you. I can't really say what I expected, personally, but I know that I did not expect life to be so terrible. I am going to rethink living for a little.

Or at least I was, until I went home and watched Pushing Daisies. I tell you truly, that show is all the fables and fairy tales that mankind has, run through a strainer of happiness. It could cheer up even Hemingway, if it caught him off guard.

I Get Asked Out On Valentines Day

I celebrated Valentines Day proper: with magnificent odds. A group of us (six girls and three guys equals 2:1 - score) went to a bar called the Old Bell for our waiter friend, Taina. If you read like an American, she's the second after me. In fact, here's the rundown, left to right: Martina from Minnesota, June from South Korea, Esther from Switzerland, then there's me, then Virginia from Memphis, Taina from Finland, Hilary from Missouri, and Danny from Washington. Martina and June are with Iowa State, Hilary and Virginia with Arkansas, Danny a perpetual foreign exchange student, and Esther and Taina are here working. I'm an international bachelor, as luck would have it.

(P.S. We all came together through Rome Baptist Church. RBC has provided an instant friend set and a home, even if the pastor's jokes are cheesy, and they have to be to come across to an multilingual audience. So - go you, RBC!)

The Old Bell is one of those prestige establishments that require a membership in order to use the pool tables by the bar, so the whole group had to fill out our names and addresses, and we all got printed cards back in the middle of dinner. Mine said: Captain Cass Trumbo. When asked about it, I said that I though that the nautical aspect of the restaurant made me feel as though I needed to include my rank, as well.

But this wasn't the date. No, that came earlier in the day. After school, I was walking home from school when I popped into a chic boutique to peruse the new men's fashions, because, if you haven't been keeping up with my personal life, I have recently become fashionable (and not in the way that, women want to carry me in their purse. Well, actually, in that way too, but that's not the point). So, in a nameless clothing store, I was looking through the assorted blazers (by TOGS clothing, no less) when the owner/operator/only worker in the store Rion decided he wanted to help me. He kept handing me things to try on, and watching me flip through the stretchy pants. As I was leaving, he stopped me and struck up a conversation about my studies, complimenting me on my Italian. Then he said we should get coffee sometime. Eager to leave, I agreed, and then he said, "Okay, let's go."

I got asked out by a guy on Valentine's Day. After I had stopped running, I reflected and thought about how nice it is to be appreciated by someone, even if it's a guy. It's the thought that counts anyways, like Ned from Pushing Daisies says, "on a holiday created to sell greeting cards, it's still kind of nice to get a card."

WGA Strike Ends! The World Rotates Once More!

A deal was reached this past weekend, a contract that should end the Writers Guild of America strike. By all accounts, it is not a fantastically positive deal that will make all writers fabulously wealthy, but it is a good deal, an improvement from the deal offered in November, the deal that started this whole ordeal (does that count as a pun? Uh...no, I don't think so). And the writers of Battlestar Galactica support it.

The WGA has announced a vote on Tuesday, February 11th, in order to ratify the new contract, and popular opinion is that it will indeed be ratified. What does this mean? More episodes of LOST, hopefully. A full season of Battlestar (which will sadly prove to be it's last). And, hope against hope, possibly a pinch more episodes of Pushing Daisies? I'll keep you posted, as I continue to read news articles then post about them, as if I uncovered this information in a fit of solo journalism.

For now, though, clap your hands and laugh, for the world which had once been stopped on its hinges, not by John Galt, but maybe by several smaller Johns (John August, John Logan, John Locke) and variously named career writers, has now begun to turn. And hopefully churn out more Battlestar.

Luda Says I'm Taking Trips from Here to Rome

There's this television show called Pushing Daisies which is pretty good - it's a clever murder-mystery-supernatural-comedy-pie-making-really-cute-girl show that makes me laugh. But the best part of the show is the entire world that it takes place in. It feels like a Christmas claymation world, with a pie-shaped pie shop, color saturated fruit, and mosaic tiled sewers. In this town (which has a French name; remember, when not used as an insult, French language and customs equal magic in fiction), there is even a narration by a very nice old man, or at least someone who sounds like a nice old man. I wish he was my grandfather.

The point it, this show Pushing Daisies is how I imagine Rome is: bright colors and entire shops devoted to pop-up books. It's a retreat from here to a Technicolor world, where, I imagine, some wonderful people who always wear scarves will feed me delicious free gelato.

Oh yeah, if you didn't know, I'm going to Rome. Sorry. But I don't mind.

Someone said I should have a blog, and when I said I'd think about it I was really lying, because back in November I created a blog and furiously related science fiction to the world. I was just trying to get more people to watch Battlestar Razor.

So I'm in Rome for a semester, and if you feel like it, you might read this blog once in a while. I strongly suspect the whole trip will be one extended picnic, with some mixed pastas and wine, so if you're into that sort of thing you should do it yourself and not read about it. But if you don't like the outdoors, old ruins, democracy, history in general, the Catholic Church, or the last Winter Olympics, yet have a sincere interest, maybe you might read this once or twice more.