I ended up enjoying Changi Airport a little too much - found a mini movie theatre and made myself comfortable watching the highly intellectually stimulating Terminator 3. As the final credits rolled by, I casually glanced at my watch and realised my flight was leaving in 15 minutes! So I got a bit of exercise sprinting through Terminal 1 to my depature gate, to the sound of the announcement urging me to report there immediately!
La città eterna, the eternal city. Rome at this time of the year seems to be blessed with a near perfect climate: high 20s/low 30s every day and loads of sunshine. Nadia's father Ennio lives in Casalpalocco, a satellite suburb of Rome close to the beach and near the ancient port of Rome, Ostia. It's a lovely area here - low density housing with lots of green space and quiet, tree-lined boulevards. It's a bit of a hike to the nearest Metro station but once there only a short journey into the city. My language-learning efforts in the few weeks before leaving Melbourne have only helped a little - perhaps I'm understanding one word in ten instead of one in a hundred! Although I do seem to surprise people with what I do understand - the most unexpected things and probably due to the Latin over the last 6 months, plus rather bizarrely, "foreign words" from German, e.g. costruiere "to build", which isn't too different to "konstruieren", a Latin word "borrowed" into German.
We went to the beach this morning and got there extremely quickly thanks to Ennio's rather typically Roman style of driving! Mireille spends a lot of the time shouting "attento! attento!". The beach here is great - even had a few waves to dive through. Nadia and I have also made a couple of trips into town - one just to wander around and soak up some Vita Romana, then yesterday we went over to see her Aunty, who lives not far from St. Peter's. Nadia and Anna spent the afternoon chatting away, while I did my best to get the gist of what was being discussed! Anna has lived in the same apartment since 1962 and now shares it with her late husband's brother, Rolando. They are both very friendly, welcoming people with big laughs and warm hearts. Anna has a strong Roman accent, even noticeable to a novice such as myself - instead of the standard Italian pronunciation of "ci" like "chee" in "cheese", she pronounced it more like "shee" as in "sheep", e.g. dieci sounded like dee-eshee. Nadia and her father speak much more softly and without the strong Roman accent - it's been lovely just sitting listening to them, even if I haven't understood everything! Ennio's wife Mireille comes from Provence and is a keen history and literature buff, so we've had some interesting but rather amusing and laborious conversations across the linguistic divide! The other family member I had the privilege of meeting was Anna's little terrier Cleopatra, who took to me as soon as I walked in the door. Interestingly, she seemed to understand Swiss-German, her tail wagging vigorously when I said "Schaetzeli" to her :)
Neither Nadia nor I are particularly commited tourists so we wilted in front of the swarming crowds around the Forum on Tuesday and eventually gave up and retreated to the Giardini della Villa Borghese - large gardens just behind the Spanish Steps. We were sitting in the shade near a large fountain, getting out of the heat, and watching the children cooling off in the water. A couple of bikini-clad women nearby were catching some rays. All of a sudden, two policemen on motorbikes burst onto the scene and ordered the children out of the fountain and told the women to get dressed! Rather unexpected and imagine how they'd react in the Englischer Garten in Munich!
