We were seventy people cramped into two busses early in what was still a September morning. Heavy heads rocked along with the droning 5 speed convoy as we creeped along the roads that lead away from Rome and towards Cuma, Baia, Capri, Pompeii, Sperlonga, and our homebase, Paestum. We stayed in the same hotel as every class before us has ad infinitum and there was a mighty reputation to uphold for the University of Waterloo and although we definitely left with a reputation I'm not sure how well we upheld anything. Jazz piano in the lounge courtesy of Duncan 'Richard Manuel' Paterson until the wee hours and folk ramblings and dirty harmonies pouring out of the hotel piazza from the guts of the canadese may have sullied the otherwise stiff atmosphere of Casa del Mar. Fortunately there was still time for the collective group to venture down to the mediterranean for a bonfire of boxes, tree branches and driftwood. The guitars came, leaving the piano behind, and were the only things to not throw off their dress and run naked into the black of the night sea. It had been a full moon and from the shore specks of white danced in the waves, mirroring the stars doing the very same in the sky.
Paestum is home to the oldest, largest collection of Doric Temples, impressive in its duality just as Lethbridge, Alberta claims the longest, tallest wood truss bridge. Although the locomotive cuts through Alberta, Paestum sees very little in action, save for the drive and romanticism of our director, Eric Haldenby. In his youth he bought a bicycle and rode from Greece through the mountains and descended upon the valley in Paestum to find the valley of temples. For a young architect/archaelogical draftsman it was cause (after pleading with an innkeeper for board in his attic) to stay and to think while practicing his hand on the altars of Apollo and Venus. It was through this journey that he came to work on an excavation site and met his future wife who had sent word for an architect as she was tired of drawing all the material they were unearthing. Standing in front of the temples that he sketched 30 years previously he told us both of their history and his own. It was a wonderful story and a pleasure to learn of something other than Apollo or Venus and instead, Eric and Rosemary.
It was from here that we took daily to the bus or ferry to explore the neighbouring cities such as Pompeii, Capri and Sperlonga.
Pompeii left me a little ragged, spending the day walking through a city absolutely frozen in its daily activity some two thousand years ago. Casts of people cowering on the ground, or children in mothers arms are haunting as the buildings crumble around them. Architecturally and culturally it is an absolute paradise as it acts as an intensive learning tool. Practice and routine are preserved, evidence of the methodology which they built and designed with. It was wonderful; bittersweet knowing the consequence of having such a great register of life in the past.
The next morning, we woke early and caught the ferry to Capri. There has never been 60 more green faces than ours after the ferry finished its battle around the approach to the island. The waves were high and since we had been warned of this a handful of people took gravol and so there was only one person that threw up. I would have been hugging the porcelain right beside them had I not stuffed the pills in me before setting foot to the sea. Feet back on steady ground we climbed the 1000 some steps up to the bluffs that look back on our ferry ride. The city was fairly labyrinthian following the road up the hills. The steps cut a straight narrow path up to the top; the road bisecting it as it snaked along the same ascent. The old dirty walls give way to polished storefronts at the top of the path and the commercial Capri appears; the Capri of movie and rock stars. We ate a meager margharita pizza here and set off into the fabric of the town. Small streets were only vehicular accessible by strange golf-cart machines that deliver goods and people to their homes or shops, otherwise all travel was on foot. Along this path the homes slowly become more sparse as you climb around the landscape that looks out onto cruise ships, sailboats and small fishing dinghies that weave around the rocky crags the cut out from below the water. Finally, once entirely surrounded by florae and faunae we finally get our first glimpse of modern/fascist architecture. The stark buildings associated with this description fit snug into their landscape, their surroundings very much a part of their identity. This particular building (Villa Malaparte) by Italian Architect Libera hangs out over the rocks and sits low against the hills, cutting the sea breezes as its stepped approach looks out to the horizon.
We walked the rest of the way around the island before coming full circle again into the commercial peak. I slipped on my headphones and listened to the Velvet Undeground as I walked down the hillside by myself, reconvening in time to catch the ferry back to Paestum.
The last day we took the bus from Paestum and headed to Sperlonga on our way home for a day at the beach. After a temporary stop at a museum that commemorated a lengendary landing point by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey we took to the sand for frisbee, soccer and swimming. Sperlonga itself is heavily influenced by the Arabic world and so the buildings that look down onto the beach are white washed and tall, fitting snug against one another on broken and stepping streets. Lines of drying laundry hung over head as we walked; staring up happiliy like children in their first carwash. The view out was a gradient of water and then beach, tree and hill and I sat on a stone ledge and drew the panorama with odysseus' grotto in the far distance, ending my journey in succession with his.
