Today is Pasquetta...that means everything in Rome shuts down, and everyone takes a little vacation. I should be writing one of my four papers, but I figured that since everyone else gets a day off, I should too. Mostly it's been spent procrastinating and gazing at the jar of Nutella on the shelf.
This weekend was packed, though. On Friday I went to Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum with Joe and Vanessa. There had to have been at least 10,000 people packed into the little space between the Colosseum, the Arch of Augustus, and the Roman Forum. We found a nice grassy spot by a bunch of nuns. We got there almost two hours early, but there was no way we could get near the railing to see the Pope. They hand out little books that have the readings and responses so you can follow along. For some reason I was under the impression that part of it would be in English, but nope, all Italian with some Latin thrown in there for fun. Other than the Pope being there and giving a little speech at the end (oh, and being at the Colosseum), it was like any other stations of the cross.
Saturday was Vanessa's birthday, and you know what that means...excuse to go to Hard Rock. Tasty and delicious like always.
Sunday was hardcore. I got up at 5 to start the tram ride/hike to the Vatican by 6. We got there at 6:45, and there was already a pretty sizeable crowd waiting outside the gate. It was supposed to be a line, but I don't think there's any concept of "line" in Italy, so it was a crowd. They started letting people in at 8:15, and I snagged some seats in the front section about 10 rows back. Not bad for battling with 50,000 other people with tickets. At least we got seats; people without tickets had to stand...and that Mass was a good 2.5 hours. It seemed like we were surrounded by Germans...and this crazy Santa Claus-looking guy who was waving an Austrian flag plastered with pictures of John Paul II (I saw him on Friday too).
I was listening to my iPod waiting for the service to start at 10:30 when I heard someone playing guitar. And I thought to myself, 'Who on earth brings a guitar to Easter at the Vatican? I think they supply some pretty good music and don't really need backup.' But then I realized that it was two nuns playing guitar and starting a sing-along because, well, I guess they just didn't bring their iPods. That was actually a lot of fun. They were singing something in Spanish that I couldn't understand (except "emanuel"), but even the Germans were singing along.
Mass was really nifty too. Except the singing, which was in Latin, almost every other section was done in a different language. And then when the Pope said his message at the end (the one CNN was all over because he said the war in Iraq produced nothing good), he said Happy Easter in over 60 languages. That was impressive.
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2 comments:
60 languages, that's awesome!
and um....Nutella, yummy!
Hi Anne,
This was so interesting and fun to read. I am going to make you the best cheese cake you've ever eaten when you get home. It has Nutella for the icing. Yummy! We'll see you in a month! Oh, I signed us up to get e-mails to track your glasses.
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