Well, for us 4 guys here in Roma, it sure has been an interesting week since my last posting!
First off…The Steelers won the Superbowl! But, I already made my comments about that on the front page! However, it was a fun night for us all. The game didn’t start till 12:30am here so needless to say, we didn’t get back home till around 4:30am. Oh well…it was worth it!
Now secondly, we had classes during the middle of the week, so not much happened. My Art of Rome class did get to go to the Vatican Museums and Mikey and I stuck around after class and did get to check out the Sistine Chapel! It was pretty packed and Mikey got yelled at for trying to take a picture inside (I guess I did a bad job of “shielding” him so he could take one). There are some pics of some of the artwork in the Vatican Museums and the Vatican itself. There’s also a video of the Room of The Immaculate Conception (NOT Reception!) so check that out as well. Then the last video I put up was the view from atop a patio on one of the AUR buildings. It’s a great view into the city and whatnot. Oh yea…please excuse me for walking into a table (if you watch the video, you’ll know what I mean)!
Now lastly, the big news from this week: We switched apartments! Now, it may not seem like a big deal, but if you watched the video tour of our last place, we basically got an upgrade of about 10 times! The reason though for why we had to get a new apartment is what is the real story. I’ll try to make this brief and detailed as much as possible.
Since the first night we moved into our place, we had an issue with our neighbor below us. Now in Italy, there are quiet hours in the evenings and the first night, we unpacked at 1:30am. Well, we were told to be quiet and from then on, we honestly were quiet: shoes off at the door, no music, no carrying on…NOTHING! It came to a point even if we saw this man outside, he’d yell at us. And the real problem was that he didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Italian. We would tell him in Italian that we couldn’t speak, and he’d just keep carrying on. He would come up late at night while we were sitting at the table doing work or playing cards, and freak out! So finally, the last two instances, he started motioning with a beer bottle towards his head and then pointing to all of us. Well, the second time he did this, it was 11:30pm at night, Thursday evening. The only thing is that we believe could have prompted him was that Dave dropped a Heinz Ketchup bottle and I made a hard step around a chair. We didn’t hear anything for a few minutes and Dave was back on his bed on his laptop, Mikey was talking to his girl on the computer, and Josh and I were playing cards. None of us were even talking! Well, I heard a loud pounding on the door. I came to the door and saw it was the old man..I wasn’t answering it! Dave and Josh did and he began to flip out. He then kicked Dave in the No-No spot. Dave was shocked, couldn’t believe it but the man kept going on yelling. Neighbors were coming out screaming at him to shut up, but nothing. Finally he left and with this incident, we finally knew it was time to go to the school and apartment manager. Well, we didn’t have time to before he caused another incident! Now the cleaning lady was to come this morning. I heard a buzzer at 9:30am and it wouldn’t stop. I woke up and answered the door but nobody was there. I lied back down and then it started! Pounding underneath every room’s floor! Then Josh heard somebody pounding on the door, but he just assumed the guy was kicking the door but we were all in bed and it wasn’t worth answering! Well, at about 2am we all were leaving to go do some things and we couldn’t unlock the door! After some time we were able to get out but then we couldn’t lock the door from the outside! With some closer examination, the lock was completely dented in! It looked like somebody took a hammer and tried doing who-knows-what to it! Well, immediately we put 2-and-2 together and knew it was the old man. We called the apartment manager and then they said they’d be there to check it out. Dave and Mikey left to go talk to the school (where we were originally heading out to). So to make a long story short, the building managers, apartment agency, and the school rep came down, talked to the man and decided this guy was off the hook and wanted to get us out in an hour! Oh yea….they are filing assault charges against him on behalf of Dave as well. So within an hour, our bags were packed as well as our stash of food and we moved out!
We moved into a place 1 tram stop past ours…closer to AUR further from our normal stomping grounds, but it’s not a bad deal. We have a nicer building, nicer apartment, two balconies (one is off my room and Dave’s). The back balcony is large enough for all 5 of us to sit out at night and enjoy the Roman Air with laundry even drying behind us, so needless to say, we’re excited. As I am writing this, the internet and phone won’t be installed until tomorrow and we think our water heater is busted as well as the heat in the apartment. Only one person can shower at a given time for about 5 minutes with hot water and then it takes about 4-5 hours till the next person can get it…now Rome does have small water heaters, but this is REAL BAD! And we also can’t find a thermasat for the apartment’s heat. So tomorrow, I don’t have classes, therefore when the maintainence gets here, I have to ask for these 3 things to be fixed, so we can communicate and live in warmth!
Oh by the way, this blog was written in two days so right now I’m waiting for Mom and Dad to call on Sunday night. And I also just got back from checking out more of the Roman Forum area with my Art of Rome class that had a special class today on Sunday. We also got to go inside the Colosseum (actually the name is the Favian Amphitheatre…the Colosseum is just an incorrect nickname, if you want to know the real story, I’ll tell ya!) but it was amazing! I got a few video’s and pics up so check them out!
Anyways, I’m out, it’s been a long weekend, see ya!
