Nowa that’s a Roma

PETER BUFFA

I’m not where you are. Well, actually, we could be in the same place,

but I doubt it. I’m in Rome, which is in Italy, which is in Europe,

which is far away.

My wife and I journeyed across the Big Pond as an anniversary gift

to each other. I’m not going to tell you which anniversary, but if

you can answer this question, you can probably figure it out: In what

year did men first walk on the moon, the Mets win the World Series

and the Jets win the Super Bowl? If you still can’t figure it out, I

can’t help you, but you should find someone who can.

HISTORY IS HERE

We are in Rome for a few days, then on to Florence, Milano, and

finally, Stuttgart, which is in Germany, which is a totally separate

country. The Italy part is my doing, due to the fact that I will find

any excuse to get here, no matter how transparent, in addition to

having relatives sprinkled up and down the country. The Germany part

is my wife’s, because she was an Army brat who grew up in Germany and

wants to see if there are any remnants of her misspent youth. But I

am just as pumped about going to Stuttgart because we will be there

in the middle of Oktoberfest, which I have not experienced, and which

will allow me to scratch off one more item on my “Do Before You Die”

list. I want to sit at a mile-long table in a massive tent and lock

arms and beer steins with an army of totally blitzed Germans while

all of us try to sing “Macho Man.” In the meantime, there is plenty

with which to be captivated in the Eternal City.

I have said for years that any American who can visit Washington,

D.C. and not feel moved should have their mover checked. The same

goes for Rome, but for anyone from anywhere, and that means

everywhere. I love Italy because of my background and prejudices. But

Italy is Italy and Rome is Rome, and while the history of Rome is not

the history of the world, it’s pretty darn close. As you stroll the

Colosseum, or the Forum, or the Palatine Hill and the grounds of

Nero’s palace, there is one, nagging thought that I just cannot wrap

my mind around. I am walking on the same stones, climbing the same

steps and passing through the same doorways as did emperors and

queens, popes and generals, rascals and saints -- many of whom

qualified in more than one of those categories -- for the last 3,000

years.

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF GODS

Our hotel is a few steps from the Pantheon, a massive, towering

monument to all the Roman gods built in the second century by the

Emperor Agrippa. We start every evening by watching the sun set to

one side of the Pantheon, and the moon rise behind the other. The

evenings end much, much later for some reason, with unspeakable

amounts of food and wine.

The arts? I’ll give you the arts. It is sensory overload, three

times over, squared, then doubled. Yesterday, we toured the Galleria

Borghese, which holds what was the personal collection of the

Borghese family, an outrageously wealthy band of aristocrats in

Renaissance Italy that specialized in producing cardinals, popes and

palaces. The three-story Borghese palace houses room after room after

room of oils and sculptures by Da Vinci, Bernini, Rafael, Caravaggio,

and on and on and on. At every turn, you’re stopped short and struck

dumb by a painting or sculpture that shares a room with 12 other

works that stop you just as short and leave you just as dumbstruck.

The works in marble are what I simply cannot get past. I just don’t

get it. Someone hacks a really big chunk of marble from a quarry that

is the size of a small house and weighs seventeen tons. I can

understand that part. But how do you get from that to a figure of

Jupiter, or an avenging angel, or a charging steed that looks

perfectly capable of leaping off its pedestal and into your lap? I

can, and do, stare at the mind-boggling works of Bernini in the

Piazza Navona, or Nicola Salvi’s Fountain of Trevi for hours on end.

If you can explain to me exactly what happens in between the big

chunk of marble and the figures on the Trevi fountain -- please let

me know at your earliest convenience. But so much for the important

stuff.

PATHS LEAD TO AND FROM -- SOMETIMES HARROWING

Rome is also a whole lot of fun. It’s a maddening, frenetic,

round-the-clock circus and one of the most international cities in

the world. Just pause a few minutes anytime, anywhere, from a piazza

to a bus stop, and you will hear most of the languages you’re ever

heard and some you haven’t. The Romans are amazingly stoic throughout

it all, dealing as best and however they can with the endless parade

of humanity from the four corners of the earth that has never stopped

and never will.

Let’s see. What else? Oh, yeah, the driving. My god, the driving.

You’ve heard something or other, I’m sure, about drivers in Italy and

especially in Rome. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s worse. Much worse.

I’m used to driving in Manhattan, where drivers believe that traffic

laws are a rough guide ... suggestions really. Italian drivers are

offended by them. They believe they are unnatural. They believe God

gave them their position on the road at any moment and protects them

from making contact with other objects, of metal or flesh, no matter

how close or how fast. Driving always requires a flurry of quick

decisions and apparently, I have not made a right one yet. I speak

Italian fairly well and thought I knew a few curse words, but I hear

things at every turn that are indecipherable, except I can tell

they’re not good. We were stuck in a traffic circle at Piazza Venezia

for so long, the centrifugal force was about to make us pass out and

I was sure we’d run out of gas before we broke out of it.

Well, the time has come to leave the Eternal City behind. I will

be back, and as always, it will leave me awestruck. Not to worry. We

will talk again, somewhere on the road to Tuscany. To borrow an old

Roman phrase, “Devo partire,” which means ... I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at ptrb4@aol.com.