August 23, 2009

Sunday

Aug. 23, 2009

Well, I made it to church this morning, but it was close, and I almost didn’t.

I woke up at about 9, went to breakfast at 9:30, and started talking to people about plans for the day. I found out that Karol, a guy from Poland, also wanted o go to mass at the Duomo, and was planning on going at noon, like me. We checked the bus schedules, and there were two times before noon: 10:35 and 11:45. We decided to try for the 10:30 one, since we thought it was only 10 and we had about 20 minutes. It was 10:15. I somehow showered and dressed in 10 minutes and we left at 10:28, hoping that the bus would be late as usual. We got there and Karol bought his ticket just as the bus was coming up. We laughed about that for a long time, out of relief and adrenaline.

On the way, we talked about art and movies. His dad is a cinematographer who’s pretty famous in Poland, I guess, and who knows people who worked on Black Hawk down. Karol has some pretty interesting ideas about art and whatnot, and since I don’t know much (at least about modern Eastern European art and media), I asked questions and let him talk. We got to town and the Piazza di Duomo by about 11, so we decided to see a museum – one of the smaller ones (another Etruscan Museum). European students of art and art history get into museums free (they have a card that looks like half a sheet of paper with info on it), so he haggled with them about that (the biggest problem was that his card was in Polish) and then got me in for free too. Our biggest pass in was the mention of Campo di Fiera and Prof.ssa Stopponi. As it turns out, there’s a whole case of her finds in the museum. It seems like every museum is Etruscan. I haven’t seen one art museum, natural history museum, or any other kind at all. Grainne said I’d get tired of churches. I think I’ll get tired of Etruscans.

After the museum, we went to church. It was beautiful, with the only music being an organ and of course the whole thing in Italian. I admit to letting my mind wander for a while (it’s hard to focus with no AC and mass in a language you don’t know). It reminded me of the latin masses, and made me glad that those are gone, except as novelties. Anyway, I was thinking about that and about the frescoes when Karol offered peace, which surprised me, since I didn’t know it was time for that yet.

After mass, we walked around for some time, talking and exploring Orvieto. He showed me some of the vistas, and we stopped at a shady one for a while to discuss American/European relations, opinions, and perceptions, as well as cultural similarities. He also told me about his experiences hitchhiking across Europe, which was really interesting. After visiting one more church, we parted ways; me to the internet café and him to the bar and convent.

The rest is normal – hung out online, came back for dinner, went home to prep for another week of digging.