Editor’s Note: Rebuilding of the archives continues with this series…
ETERNAL CITY OF ROME
I was having a conversation about education and how the Army offers some great programs for soldiers to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees when I was overcome with memories of my days as a student…
I needed only one class to complete my Bachelor of Arts degree in History; one elective and I would be degreed, educated, learned, and broke. It was a good feeling as I had been attending classes four nights a week, after a full day’s work, for almost two years. I remember coming home as late as 2300 (11:00 PM for my Air Force friends) some nights only to fall asleep reading whatever assignments I had been given, dreading the alarm I knew awaited me at 0430 (4:30 AM zoomies) the following morning.
One of my history professors managed to convince the Dean (what a title, almost as ominous as “the Duke”) to allow him to teach a class on the American Civil War that final semester of mine, but I decided to sign up for a literature class instead (what the hell) as I needed only an elective and had had enough of history for awhile. The course, Expatriate Writer’s in Rome, was being taught by one of my favorite professors, a fascinating woman who in her late fifties had been teaching Art History and English Lit for the University of Maryland in Italy for fifteen years. I had been a student of hers twice before and found her to be a wonderful teacher. She owned an apartment in Venice, and a house overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey, which I thought ironic considering the history of the two warring navies of each nation. If I remember correctly, the Venetian flotilla defeated the Ottoman navy out of Turkey back in the early 1500s in one of the last battles between oar-driven galleys. They seemed to have since reconciled any differences and my professor didn’t appear to be taking any flak for her choice of residences (though she was followed by a dark car everywhere she went). Anyway, I would often receive papers back from her with a grade hastily written next to a wine stain, as she was known for grading papers over the weekends with a bottle of the local grape always within reach. What really sold me on the course, however, was the fact that it was being taught in the Eternal City of Rome, itself. I could not pass up the opportunity to study the works of some of the greatest American and English ex-patriate writers in the very place they had written them. Of course I would be required to pay the usual tuition and book fees as well as transportation, food and lodging costs; a price well worth it considering the symbolic significance of completing my degree in a city so rich with history.
Having made the decision and registered for the class, I purchased the required readings including the works of Twain, Hawthorne, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Henry James. I was expected to read them all before arriving in Rome three weeks later. Needless to say, I had my nose buried in a book every second of spare time I could find during those three weeks; especially enjoying Mark Twain’s travel adventures described in his chapter on Italy found in The Innocents Abroad. As the day of departure approached, however, I began to panic having only read my way through half of the reading list. I had been warned that the workload would be heavy as packing a three credit-hour literature course into two weeks couldn’t be anything but fast and furious. I began to wonder if I had the brainpower needed to survive the course never mind enough to learn something from it.
I met my fellow students at the Pordenone train station early one Saturday morning. Many of them I recognized from previous classes and some I met for the first time. We engaged in idle conversation at the station bar (not the kind of bar we Americans think of though alcohol is available) where smells of cappuccino and fresh pastries filled the room. The station itself was plainly decorated in the style of the old Mussolini fascist regime, yet I found it quite lovely from an historic point of view. Old pictographs of the city of Pordenone hung smartly framed on the burgundy colored walls with highly shined brass light fixtures strategically placed to keep the room as dim and homey as possible. I sat down at a table sipping an espresso and listened to the excited speculation of my fellow students as to what our next two weeks might entail. Eventually our chariot arrived, and the eight of us boarded the aluminum-skinned train covered with the dirt and dust accumulated from heavy travel. Stuffing our luggage into overhead bins designed to hold bags of travelers who tend not to over pack, we settled in for our ten-hour trek in search of higher learning. We filled four each to a chamber designed to seat six, defiant of the fact that our actual seat assignments were dispersed throughout the train. I was amused at the sight of everyone pulling out different books from the required reading list in a last minute effort to catch up on the assignments, myself included. That bit of dedication lasted until lunch. Sgt Hook out.
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This post is filed under: La Vita Dolce & Reconstructed
