Wherever I may roam: From Seoul, to Home, to Rome

Sunday morning comes early in Rome - a cacophony of bells to bring the faithful to their knees. It explodes at first and trickles out as though each bell is rung by a different altar boy and some of the cheekiest ones want to ring the last bell. This was a gentle awakening compared to my one morning back home.

The Korea trip ended with the standard plane-flight home (For no earthly reason I did begin my long awaited "photos from car mirrors" exhibit of photography - you can see the first photo to the left). I was separated from my Korean friends, so I slept as much as I could. We arrived at SFO at about 2:30 and I was back home by 4:30 and in the house. Kept myself up until about midnite and then slept til 9;15 or so, with interstitial moments all about sleep and schoolwork.

At about 4:30 am I woke up and looked around and didn't rcognize a thing. I looked out the window by my head and saw a lawn and unfamiliar trees. I KNEW this wasn't Korea or Rome and it startled me. I got out of the bed and walked towards the bedroom door. It led to another door, and that door was open to someone else's room. An office of some sort. I walked back to the bed an the POSSLQ was in it. This snapped me back - I was in my unrecognizalbe home.

When we awoe in the morning I was no longer confused and it was up to house of some relatives of the POSSLQ for a trip back to SFO.

In essence, I had a 22 hour layover.

Some slight confusion when we got to our ride... POSSLQ's brother wanted to come with us but, upon hearing that we were on our way, had mysteriously run off to do errands. We waited around and he showed up, so it was off to the airport and on to a KLM plane. This was a different experience. The last eight plane trips I had taken were on Asiana airlines and these flights were primarily made up of Koreans. Since Korean social structure is based upon relationship, these rides are stiff and a bit unfriendly. As no one knows anyone else, there is little conversation and most of the flight is spent involved in the screen on the back of the seat in front of you. Asiana spends quite a penny on in-flight entertainment - we had both modern versions of King-Kong, a movie from the hideous Harry Potter series, golf coverage, several Japanese fantasy/action movies, and a couple of other assorted movies. Til I took the KLM flight this didn't mean much to me, but it became clear after I saw how the Dutch worked the thing that Asiana's excellent entertainment was to keep people from interacting.

When I got on the KLM flight I was disspointed to see no back-seat screens and only very small screens hanging over the aisles. And there was only one movie offered for the entire flight. Once we got on the plane, however, it became clear more would have been lost on our largely Dutch passengers. As soon as the plane took off the flight attendants came by with drinks, including mini-bottles of wine (the man two seats to my left clearly knew the schedule and took advantage of it to get politely drunk). Soon after they came by with dinner, and the booze, soon after that they came by with refresher drinks, and after dinner they came by with coffee, tea, water and the booze, but this time including VSOP, Bailey's, and two other kinds of after-dinner drink. As soon as that was done there was an apparent MASSIVE rush to the bathrooms. I could see up to 10 people mulling around outside of them but, oddly, the "occupied" signs were not lit up on the wall. Then the captain came on and announced "You know, I am required to announce this by the American authorities. Please do not congregate in the aisles. They do not want more than three people in the aisles at a time. Now that I've said that, enjoy your flight."

And indeed, the people congregating were all just making introductions and talking. After dinner the stewardesses just parked the drink carts by the mid-cabin exits and left them there. So all flight long there were informal little parties in the planes, and anyone who put on the headphones was likely trying to nap.

The stewardesses were also quite different. The youngest stewardess on the KLM flight would have been about a decade too old for the Asiana flight, but they were much more personable.

Anyway, we landed in Amsterdam without time to go out and get stoned. :-( Then a short hop over to Rome, a quick ride to Aurelia in Rome and we were there. I got to my seat for that flight, second row from the back, sat down in it, and it flopped backwards into the poor person behind me. I was in the second to last row, so the poor person behind me could not decline their seat and we had to tackeoff anyway. So I grabbed the back of the seat to pull it forward and gave it a yank.

Swiiiiiiiiish!

It came all the way forward and put my face into the unreclined seat behind me. My seat back was completely loose. I called the extremely gay flight attendant, demonstrated the problem and shrugged.

He said, "air bubble" and vigorously slammed the seat forward and back about 15 times. This had no effect. He looked puzzled, tried it one more time to confirm it didn't work, then patted me on the shoulder in a friendly way, and walked off.

I was on my own. I can't imagine it was safe, and I had to try not to shift in the seat (takeoff was particularly interesting), but obviously I survived the trauma. ;-)

The flat is outstanding. Two full bedrooms, a full kitchen, bathroom, and foyer. We are right next to a train-line, which worried me at first, but Baxter demonstrated the totally cool slatted wall that you can pull down over the windows. Not only does this plunge the room into total darkness, but it also largely blocks outside noise, not a small issue in downtown Rome. Over there on the left you can see the view from our foyer out past the deck

Breakfast is on the solarium, and other than the idiots sitting next to us loudly disagreeing with evolution (we are right next door to the Vatican, after all) and explaining how useful AOL has been to them (I can't decide which stance reveals more stupidity) it is an outstanding venue. We can look over the wall and see the dome of St. Peter's Basilica (photo). The breakfast features local ham and produce and coffee I like but the parental units sniff at.

They don't spend much time at the 7-11, I guess.

The bells are ringing again, and I'll take that as my call to get down off of the roof here, take a shower and head over to the Vatican. I am told that the pickpockets are every bit as efficient as international rumor gives them credit for, so I will only take a small amount of money and perhaps this first day I will not bring my lenses until I've been out and about to figure out how dangerous they might be to goods.