Nova Roman days

I've said over and again what Nova Roma is and who novaromans are and the fact they can be the most different people put together by their love for ancient Rome. Recently, a new member joined who happened to be the owner of a hotel in a touristic place on the Adriatic Sea and who invited over any Novaromans who would had liked to go there. Chance was seized and it was quickly organized a national meeting which was joined by a bunch of representatives of Dacia (ie, Romania). Of course, Murphy's law (renamed for the occasion Murphii lex) struck and we happened to schedule the meeting in what turned out to be the week-end with most catastrophically bad weather of an otherwise insanely warm and dry winter.

A premise must be done: on friday, after months of absence due by conflicting scheduling with my travels to Germany, I had finally returned to a VCN happy hour, eventually making it back home at around 2 am. That was probably the cause that made me live the traveller nightmare: having accepted a ride and having set an alarm clock after having said to my mother to wake me up at the established hour, I was indeed brought back to life by my mobile ringing and my ride announcing me he was basically under my house. Obviously, my mom had overslept and my alarm hadn't fired or I had simply ignored it. If you consider I still had to do my bag, you have the complete picture.

Anyway, I managed, skipping breakfast, to be down in less than 20 minutes and after having recovered the other representative of the roman novaromans we were set to cross the Appennini mountains and facing the snow in what was a travel that I spent mostly sleeping. After arrived in Vasto and got our rooms (single ones, the generosity of our host was incommensurable), we had just 15 minutes to say hi to the others as it was already time to go eating.

Indeed, the whole week-end was a never ending series of eating and visiting of monuments or museums, but especially saturday the eating surpassed anything else. After a gargantuan banquet in a farm and a few hours spent in the ancient part of Vasto (interesting especially for the newly discovered roman baths and for the odd facade of a church, only thing left standing when the rest of the building fell in the sea), it was once again time to eat, this time in the hotel, but with a dinner prepared for the eventuality that the mayor would had attended (which means, even richer than the lunch) and completed with a cake prepared for the occasion.

The day after, rolling rather than walking so full our stomachs still were, it was the time of Chieti, the famous (for the ones into such things) Capestrano's warrior, it's twin temples and the theatre, the visit made somewhat harder by a vicious wind blowing from the north. After the thorough visit of Chieti, in which we were taken by an uncommonly cute archaeologist, we Romans decided it was time to leave and avoid the ice and possible snow that was forecasted for the night and so we parted, regretting not being able to have such week-ends more often and inviting everyone to be in Rome the 21st of april (Rome's birthday).

The last days

The weekend was a very busy one. The fact is that, considering I will be in Germany for 7 of the next 9 week-ends, I tried to concentrate everything over the last 4 days. And in fact:

Saturday morning I had lunch out with most of the Nova Romans of the roman community. It was nice and for a chance, there were new faces (wives and children of a couple of members), food was good and wine even too abundant. So much that most of us went walking in that little and scarcely known gem that is the a-catholic graveyard afterwards (from which, incidentally, one can enjoy a very different view of the Cestius' Piramid).

Just the time to get back home and rest a moment, and was time to leave again for the bi-weekly VCN happy hour, held in testaccio this time. Weather is being so good these days in Rome that we spent the night sitting at the outdoor tables chatting, drinking and making new acquaintances (most notably, this time, Karina and Sofia, respectively Sweden and Honduras). Also birthdays were celebrated as, we found out, between the 5th and the 7th october, three people had they birthdays (ok, one was me obviously) and a cake was presented. All in all it was a very good time, made even better by the fact Liesbeth was there (for a change) and even Alessandro and my former highschool's mates made a brief appearance.

As the group split (some to go dancing, some home), it was already quite late and it was only at around 3 that I got back home. At that point, with Japan's F1 GP starting at 7, I decided not to go to bed at all in what turned out to be a very poor decision, given the final outcome. As a consequence, sunday I was, for most of the day, totally dazed.

Monday the week started again and the only positive news was that I started to go back to swimming in what seems to be a very nice, and not too crowded, pool. For the rest, more bad news at work in what is becoming a torture. The end line is, i want to change sector in my firm and possibly change firm altogether as it has been a long time since I learned something new here, it is pretty evident they simply do not want me to learn anything more (first, I thought they just didn't care, now I know it's done on purpose) and I'm starting (or maybe I've started a long time and just realizing now) to forget what I knew. Very dangerous.

Anyway, today I'll be heading again to the pool (despite my shoulders are crying not to) to forget, tomorrow never knows and on thursday I will have guests from Hungary. And friday... finally... Mainz.

Week-end

Too much politics, too little blog. But time being a scarce resource, I shall have to be quick.

Thursday was interesting as, checking my mobile after having finished at the swimming pool, out of the blue I found two missed calls from a friend of mine from Milan, Elisabetta, who I hadn't seen in almost 2 years, who announced me her presence in Rome for her work. 20 minutes later I was downtown, touring her and her colleague around the tiberina island, the Jewish ghetto, Marcellus' theatre and back to Largo Argentina. I should actually speak a bit about her, being that she's probably the most long term italian female friend I have and the only one I ever was at the wedding of, but time is a tyrant today.

Friday was, on the other hand, a goodbye day for another friend from Milan who, after having lived here for over a year and finding it impossible to stay longer despite his efforts, is going back home. It was an interesting evening, the table finding sat around all the romans members of Nova Roma (link to the right) and I suppose the waiters were a bit puzzled of this strange group of people speaking of history, archeology and such things calling each other with strange, latin, names (as we take a full latin name joining the association and we usually address each other with that). It was a sad dinner, but a great discovery about the restaurant, as I shall have to get back there again.

Saturday was a day of waiting in a what was hopefully the warmest day of the summer (if it gets any warmer, we have a real problem). Waiting for a word for a given someone far away, waiting for the warmth to lower so to be able to get out 8it never did), waiting for some friends to decide about what to do in the evening and waiting for going to what should had been a mega-party at the beach, anticipated for the whole week. And as it usually happened when there's much of waiting, nothing came out of it at all and so the day was spent reading, helped by air conditioned which can indeed be a problem for environment, but it's so good when temperature is 38 degrees with 90% humidity.

And sunday... sunday was VCN bbq time again, this time with twice more people than the previous time, especially with an unexpected large group of french-speaking boys and girls, three times as much food, three different kinds of balls (volleyball, light football and american football ones) and... the police paying us a visit (it's not legal to have an open fire or even a barbecue on a beach). Luckily, they were of the policemen (and woman, three of them) of the nice kind who, after having praised our organization and sort of tidiness, simply suggested us to extinguish the fire until past 8, when the people who had called them would had been probably gone. Time waiting was spent playing beach volley (where effort and laughters often made up for lack of style and technique) and chatting around (I even managed to try a bit of german and french, amazing).

Some pictures here, altho most of the ones I took were blurry this time, who knows why (click to enlarge).