Rome: A homecoming

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 11/19/2006 12:12 PM  |  Life

Adrian Thirkell, Contributor, Rome

When in Rome -- as you surely need to be at some point in your life -- you needn't do as most Roman tourists do and go five-star.

Try, instead, any of the many tiny boutique hotels clustered inconspicuously in the grid of cobbled streets between Via Veneto and Via XX Settembre -- some of which are characterized by a single door opening onto a tiny hallway and a staircase inviting you up a narrow flight of stairs to rooms on the second floor.

The best of the idiosyncratic bunch of hotels in that area is the newly refurbished XX Settembre on Via Macau. Its uncluttered, crisp-white walls seem to open up the tiny space functioning as a reception -- and which leads into a higgledy-piggledy corridor and stairway only just wide enough to drag a suitcase.

The hotel exudes just the sort of coziness you need if you holiday late in the year -- and it's best to do so to avoid the mobs that descend on Rome to pick over the carcasses of ancient ruins in the summer months, when the heat is at its worst. And if you're flying from Jakarta -- probably transiting in Dubai -- you'll feel the benefit even more.

Not only are you in a city which has protected its past from being absorbed by the heritage industry, but Rome is best savored under November's clear blue skies.

Wrap up warm and set off for what Rome invites all visitors to do: walk, and walk some more. Shun the coach tours. Forget the map. Take Rome haphazardly, on foot, when it becomes a smorgasbord of accidental delights, all of which are never anything but a seductive delight to the eye.

In Rome it's impossible to be disappointed: Everything, without exception, entrances, whether you're marooned in the vast piazza in front of St. Pietro or scooped within the arches of the Colosseo or in mid-clamber on the Spanish Steps trying to invoke a sense of architect de Sanctis' exuberant mind.

And, from Hotel XX Settembre, they're all within easy reach. Villa Borghese is a 5-minute walk; Termini, the central station and a Metro stop (with easy, 10-euro train and bus connections to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport) are just around the corner; and from nearby Piazza della Republica, any bus will take you in glorious panoramic display to Castel Sant' Angelo, on the Tigris, or Fontana di Trevi or wherever!

Such trips are Rome's best bargains: buses and the spanking new, green-liveried trams are a euro for 75 minutes' travel, with tickets from any tabacci, interchangeable with the two lines of the Metro, which you'll only be tempted to use when your eyes have tired of the vistas, which they never will.

In fact, being in Rome is like having a cataract operation. We've grown so accustomed to the unplanned and graceless sprawl of modern cities that we look, but don't see. Rome is a shot in the arm. It invigorates the senses. It sends a shock wave through the retina and has every visitor craving for more.

But there's also another Rome to be sought out -- one that's synthesized within the city's ancient, religious and pagan fabrics. It's that ""other"" Rome that also needs savoring, and which offers, for a while, a sense that you are not just passing through, but are actually in possession of Rome, aping the manners and customs of real Romans.

A bit of jet lag can help in this wonderful piece of self-deceit. The morning after our arrival, I woke at 4 a.m., bright as a button, and slipped out the hotel in search of ... well, whatever Roman thing would come to me at that hour.

The startling aspect of Rome at pre-dawn is that the city is wholly given over to its immigrant populations. It's the Asian and Arabs who are delivering fruit, opening the bakeries, manning the newspaper stands, and generally being about, as if each one of them is a nocturnal colonist enjoying a Chinese or Tunisian or Moroccan or Cambodian Rome.

On that near-dawn walk, the only bar open between the hotel and Termini -- where many of you will have slept on cardboard pallets as backpackers in your youth -- is Tabacci, a 20-foot deep cafe that you'd think quintessentially Italian until you discover it has been run for the last four years by a Chinese, Mr. Lu.

And it's Mr. Lu and his female Chinese compatriot from Guangzhou who ironically sustain, before Rome's fully awake, an authentic Roman life.

They speak fluent Italian. They serve cappuccinos so creamy you're a fool to order the same at five times the price in a hotel. And they do it at a time in the morning at which no born-and-bred Roman would get up.

It was very cold that day, and along with an assortment of Arabs and fellow Asians who downed espressos in a single flick of the wrist, an extraordinary camaraderie emerged from morning greetings and remarks about the weather. And when, an hour later, the city's ancestrally white Italians came in, they also appeared blithe to the fact that it was the Chinese who were now kick-starting their morning in as Italian a manner as possible.

When in Rome, do as the Chinese do!

Don't leave the cafe without incanting the lovely and obligatory ""ciao"", turn immediately left, and walk a few steps to the tiny deli almost next door. It's there you can rummage along the narrow aisles for the best gifts to take home: some well-aged salami hanging from the rack about the counter; a few slices of Parma ham, cut to transparency and tasting of woody smoke; apricots stuffed with ricotta and pine nuts and some bottles of Limocello, a liqueur stuffed with lemon slices and looking like bottled summer sunlight.

You'd think the natives of the city would resent the influx of tourists like you and me -- after all, we're a lesser species, variously ogling and going into ecstasy as we cream off the top layer of our cappuccinos with a spoon.

Perhaps Romans take us all in such good grace because nothing in the Italian character seems to begrudge anyone anything. Take their cafes, for example, which I suppose don't have to be laid out like an Aladdin's cave, but always are -- each one an emporium of visual and aural delight, and each with a stainless steel bar top shining like a slither of ice from behind which the cameriere unfailingly greets you with a ""Buon giorno"".

From where does this flamboyant civility emerge? After all, who has greeted you in such a manner when you've entered a cafe in Jakarta or elsewhere!

In an instant you're rejuvenated, as if the mind and body have responded to some unexpected therapy: the ""Buon giorno"" is for you, just as it is for a real Italian! You're included, no matter how cack-handed your attempt at ordering. You're invited to belong; you too may be Italian for these few precious cappuccino minutes!

And when at night you return to your to Hotel XX Settembre (because I am sure that is where you will stay) you're more exhilarated than exhausted from all that exposure to life as it needs -- must -- be lived.

Then, you may creep into your tiny room, ducking so as to avoid bumping your head, and think not so much that you'll be back, as indeed you will, but rather that once you've been to Rome, you can never really go away.

* Hotel XX September may be booked over the Internet using Expedia.

The writer is a teacher at the British International School (BIS), Jakarta, and was in Rome as part of the BIS delegation to the Mondialogo School Contest, where they placed first.

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