Journeys to coffee-drinking lands

The past few weeks have, as per usual, been a bit of a whirlwind, as I pop in and out of Ankara like the most seasoned business traveller. Luckily, not all of my travel is for business. Easter weekend, I headed out to Istanbul on an overnight bus to catch a way-too-early flight to Rome for the holiday. I flew in Friday, arriving midmorning and catching the train (somewhat whimsically named the Leonardo Express, after Leonardo da Vinci) into central Rome. I had booked a hostel for my first night, and was meeting up with Kevin and his sister the next day and joining them at a bed and breakfast for the next two days (or so we thought, story below on how that didn't quite work). Luckily the hostel was 4 blocks from the train station, so I was able to find it quickly; not-so-luckily, my room wasn't quite ready yet. So I dropped off my bag and went out to wander the area.
I ended up walking down a high-end shopping street before finding the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiano, which was immense and overdecorated and beautiful. The most striking thing about though, to me, was the confessionals lining both sides of the church: they all had small signs indicating which languages the priest inside spoke, and I think they must have had almost every language spoken in Europe (not Turkish though, I checked). I spent the rest of the day wandering around in shock over Italian prices: I paid 4.5 Euro for a cappuccino and just tried not to convert anything to lira.

The next day I got up bright and early to check out of my hostel and check in to the B&B; good thing I gave myself extra time, as it took a decent amount of time to find the place--people in the neighborhood had never heard of the street name. I fortuitously ran into Kevin, and we headed up to check in...only to be told that they had no record of our reservation. After a brief internal panic (after all, it was Holy Saturday and we were right outside the Vatican), we were able to get a room for one night, use their internet to get another hotel for the next night, and negotiate extra bedding. The hotel guy's English was a little less than spectacular, but he was Peruvian, so I got to bust out my painfully rusty Spanish to get on the same page. Good times. We then headed over to the Vatican to pick up our tickets for Easter Mass and meet up with Kevin's sister, who'd been travelling through the region. Easter Sunday was great: we got up to see warm weather but overcast skies, which was perfect for sitting outside for a few hours. We walked over to St. Peters and waited in a mob-like line before getting in to the Square, finding the seating area, and looking for seats. We were lucky and got some of the last chairs. Mass was quite nice, the music was beautiful, and the service sounded beautiful as well although it was in Italian of course so I didn't understand all of it. The readings were in various languages, as were the intentions. Apparently our section of the crowd appeared on Swiss television twice. After Communion, Pope Benedict ended Mass and went up to his balcony to give his Easter blessing. This part was really cool, as he went through blessings in dozens of different languages. As the crowd heard their language, they'd cheer and hold up flags from their home countries. I was again listening for Turkish, but to no avail, maalesef. I did hear Arabic, Tagalog, and Esperanto though. We left after that, and decided to try and get far away from Vatican City for lunch, to try and avoid the masses of people also looking for lunch. After a nice stroll across the Tiber, we ended up at a very cute side-street cafe, where I had gnocchi and the waiter looked horrified at the prospect of serving spaghetti carbonara with a cappuccino. Ah tourists, we are so gauche.
The rest of the trip was predominantly spent meandering from one historic site to the next, with frequent stops for gelato and cappuccinos. On Monday we took a rather circuitous route through the center of the city and ended up on an island in the Tiber, reclining on cement pilings and watching the world go by. It was wonderful, a tranquil center in the hive of activity that is Tourist Rome. That evening I caught a flight back to Istanbul, but not before missing the train to the airport by literally 2 seconds (it was so painful watching it pull away in front of me), catching a cab, ascertaining that I had caught a gypsy cab, and finding another cab for the expensive privilege of a ride to the airport. Ah, travel... I got back to Istanbul at an inconvenient hour, took another cab to the otogar (after midnight, so the Metro was closed and the cabs were night rate, harika), and boarded a bus to Ankara, where I had less than 48 hours before heading out again for another flight out of Istanbul.

Great weekend, all in all, and after my first Easter in Turkey (ended up celebrating with fish and chips in the ODTU student center and listening to Chinese engineering students) I'm quite glad I spent this one in Rome. Maybe if I'm here next year I'll try for Jerusalem...
kib,
-R