Ciao, Roma

How quickly these trips fade from the brain. Mine officially ended when I got my passport stamped at JFK by a guy with a heavy moustache and a severe Bronx accent whose nametag read “Wolynski.” He eyed me for a second, then asked me the ultimate New York City question: “How ya doin’?” After nine days of “ciao-ciao-caio, si-si-si-si-si,” it sounded like a foreign language. It also sounded good.

I’ve got a notebook full of stuff about Rome and the tournament that I didn't get a chance to mention in the blog, so let me finish by recounting a few final relevant—and perhaps irrelevant—highlights. Then we can move on to Germany. I see Andy Murray is hurt again. (I have a report from Berlin and Hamburg from my friend David Rosenberg that I’ll put up later today.)

Living without Luxury

For a few days, I couldn’t figure why I liked the center court at the Foro Italico, the Campo Centrale, so much. Then it came to me: there are no luxury boxes, just seats all the way to the top, all of them close to the court. Even better, there is no Jumbotron, and thus no fascist camera panning around forcing people to dance or kiss or otherwise attempt to be entertaining. Let me just say: no one misses it.

Press Legends

Bud Collins, fresh off a hip replacement, still made his way to Rome. You get the feeling he does it because that’s what tennis journalists did in the days of the “circuit,” when it was the Italian Championships and won by crafty, stylish hometown heroes. Bud sported bright-pink socks, and in the presser after the final he began his question to Rafael Nadal by raising his hand and shouting, “Complimente!” (is that Italian for “congrats”?). Nadal pushed his head forward and said, “What?”

Also in attendance was the Bud Collins of Italy, Gianni Clerici, another elder statesman of tennis journalism who recently wrote a monster tome about the last 500 years of tennis or so. I was walking out of the press room one day when I heard a crash behind me. I turned around to see Clerici on the floor. He’d fallen out of his chair, but he was OK and laughing a little. The rest of the Italian journalists turned to each other and cried, “Ah, Clerici!” I guess it was just Gianni being Gianni.

Doria Pamphili

After trying and failing for a few days, I finally made it to this terrific art gallery inside a 17th century palace. The rooms were spectacular and the audio tour was good. It was narrated by a present-day descendant of the Pamphili family—Pope Innocent X is the big name among his ancestors—who had obviously leaned a very posh version of English. He spoke with a slight lisp and said things like “momentrelly” (that’s “momentarily” to youz and me).

The palace gems were two famous Caravaggios (did you know he killed a man in an argument over a tennis match?) and Velazquez’s portrait of Innoncent X (pictured here). Those paintings are revelations—as Innocent said when he saw his portrait, “It’s too real!”

Pantheon

This is one of the few largely intact ancient buildings. Its scale and the symmetry of the dome are shocking–how did they build things that big way back when? More than the Forum and even the Colosseum, the Pantheon gives you an idea of what it might have been like walking around in ancient Rome.

The only problem was that after a few turns through it, the song “Round and Round” by Ratt came into my head and I couldn’t get it out. I even caught myself singing a few of its (indisputably brilliant) lines out loud as I left the building: “Round and round/With love we’ll find a way just give it time/Round and round/What comes around goes around.” Ah, the things that Rome will make a man do!

Watching the World Go By

Once the tourist sites have been covered in a Euro city, I inevitably end up finding a café across from a small park and heading to it each morning (try Le Rostand across from the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris). I found just the spot in Rome: the Gran Café Mazzini.

Cafés in Rome look like old-fashioned soda fountains in the U.S. For busy people, there’s an iron-and-glass bar inside where you can walk up and take a shot of espresso and then go about your day. For the indolent, there are tables outside under a canopy where you can be happily left alone for hours with a little mug of strong coffee (like Paris, the plastic cup has not penetrated here; I suppose walking and drinking is considered rude?).

I spent three or four mornings in this fashion. The café faces the Piazza Mazzini, a small park surrounded by a traffic circle. The usual contingent of scooters buzzed by. I had learned not to fear them by then. Tennis journalist Bill Scott, who once lived in Rome, gave me the key tip. “You can walk in front of them, if you do it with a certain style.”

I was always surprised when I caught a glimpse of a woman flying around on these motorbikes. I’d see them in their dark-blue work jackets and skirts, taking off their helmets and heading into the office. I’d see them in spiky high heels saying “ciao” to their friends and barreling out into traffic. On one of my last days, a woman got on a bike in front of me at the café. She was wearing knee-high black boots and giant sunglasses, and her long blonde hair stuck out from under her helmet. She backed her bike up slowly, flipped her hair behind her shoulders, and gave me a slight, crooked smile. Then she gunned the engine and was gone. That’s how I’ll remember Rome.