my BCN, updated as my ROME

Whoa, this time I will try to write in English. A sweet and beauty greek friend of mine Maria asked for it and since the last two entries ended up quite long, my poor vocabulary may help me to focus on the point and write briefly.

So il boun weekend. No, really I'm not joking. They do say like this. Even though Italy is surely somewhere in the bottom half on the rank that shows the precentage of the  English-speaking population in Europe, they are not ashamed to use English words totally unnecessarily. Salva il password, sala slot, okay-okay, and things like this. In the studio only Max (Massimiliano) speaks well English - he used to work in New York for 1,5 year -  but the other guys don't really do... so they figured it out they can practise their 'Spanish' with me. That may be fun for them but trust me it's not fun at all. I try badly to switch my mind to Italian and to do not mix the two languages and they started to insert spanish words into italian sentences just to 'make my life easier' :) You can imagine the speed of my responses... the algorythm is scratching my mind: first I need to understand what they're talking about, translate it to hungarian, think of it, translate back first in english then in italian, correct the spanish words and finally say something. I'm pretty sure I sound like an idiot.  In the same time I need to catch up with the italian talking-velocity so sometimes unconsiously I'm creating weird bi- or rather trilingual sentences what makes the office-life very funny.  And then comes the nice but still annoying: Non tipreoccupare! (Dont worry!) I hear it so often that I'm afraid it's gonna be my nickname soon.. :)

OK, about the weekend: it didn't start nice but ended even better. We wanted to go out on Friday but Sara said rather not to because there were a strike in the public transportation and was not sure how we would get home. Saturday in the morning I did the laundry and then cooked lentils for lunch, just to avoid the carbonhydrate-overdose of the italian cuisine. After that I could return to my original plan to discover the oldtown. The original plan was not to have a plan actually. I was very spontaineous, I got off the bus on Piazza Barberini, looked around and recognised a nice column. So I decided to walk there and see it. On the way I bought a weekly newspaper called L'Espresso to see what's going on in the country and in Europe and of course to practice italian:) When I arrived to the end of the street leading to the column I found myself on the top of the Spanish Stairs. The sun was shining and it was quite peaceful (do not imagine it as a peaceful swiss slope with smiling cows and blooming flowers, I ment peaceful measured on an italian scale...) so I decided to sit down for a while.  I smoked a cigarette, looked through the magazine and simply enjoyed the sunshine. A man started to play on flute and the whole situation was soooo lovely. After a while too many romantic couples started to gathering around me that I felt like I must leave. I went in the church to stay in stillness for a sec and gave thanks for everything I got. I checked the nearby Villa Medici hosting the French Institute in Rome, they have a respectful repertoire. After that I went down the stairs where you feel like you are in a wasp's nest and you need to escape ASAP. I always turned to the opposite direction as the crawd did just to walk on nice streets but somehow I ended up at the Trevi Fountain... (I can imagine what would have happened if I acutally would have wanted to find it... of course I would been walking for hours). If you see the amount of the tourists you cannot belive it's January. How it's gonna look like in the summer? Anyway, I turned right, crossed a wide street because I realised Giulio's favourite building on the opposite site. It's a hybrid of an ancient and renaissance building hosting the Collegio Romano if I'm not mistaking, but unfortunately it's closed now. I sat down to have some rest and just admired the facade. But then I needed to speed up and find the Pantheon quickly because I met there Anja. She showed me a cool and international coffeeshop because we wanted to have a totally un-italian coffee. We comitted the biggest sin ever, drunk capuccino in the afternoon, sitting in comfortable sofas and had a long talk. We spoke about the city and the studio which helped me a lot to wash away my doubts if I am on a right place and doing the right thing. [*Warning* boring architect stuff: I've been worrying about that Rome is just not the exclamation mark on the map of contemporary architecture and that I should work my soul out for some A-list stararchitect rather than work with these nice and smart but not really famous folks... but then Anja made me realise I'm overcomplicating the things (as usually), this city is far beyond anything else konwn in the europian culture and architecure, even Zaha and Gehry was living here and she also told me that I should be proud of myself that they choose me because she sees the inbox of the studio and they're getting lots of CVs and applications every day. I know that's sounds pathetic but that really helped me to build a little bit back of my self-esteem what I loose easily in foreign atmosphere. After that we was walking around and she showed me a great bookstore in the centre.

I went home and had dinner with my flatmates. Sara cooked pasta arabbiata but it was just so spicy that we could hardly manage to eat it... it became a good occasion to teach me the italian bad language :)) To make everything clear, they asked me to teach them the hungarian tranlations of the expressions and we had so much fun. Oh, gosh if my italian pronunciation sounds like their hungarian, I'm fucked.

After that Sara had to return to studying (this girls is just crazy... I would never be able to study so heavy books just to talk to people. I mean like she won't even prescibe a receipt but she needs to know everything) but we went out with Antonio to meet his friends. To go to San Lorenzo by car on Saturday night is like a suicide... We arrived there in 10 minutes but then going circles for almost half an hour to find a parking place. But we finally did so there was just another 10 minutes to walk back :) But I pretty liked the neighbourhood, some cool stuff going on every corner, slightly reminded me to Grácia quarter. His friends were finishing their dinner in a trattoria so we had coffee there and then changed for a pub. There were 3 guys from Sicily and a girl, all of them pretty nice. She is a comic designer, what a cool job, isn't it? She draws the comic version of Star Trek and True Blood for an american studio without speaking any English. They were really kind and patient with me so I managed to speak quite lot italian and it was also a pleasure just to listen to them.

Sunday morning I went to the market close to our house where I magically managed to buy all the gifts I wanted to buy for my marvellous family who all have their birthdays in February. In the afternoon I went to another ugly internet-coffee to check my mails and the opening hours of the museums I wanted to visit. It turned out that today the Piet Mondrian exhibition is closing so there were no doubts I wanted to catch it! The museum takes place in the Vittorio Emanuelle Monument so you enter it with not an ordinary feeling after climbing the stairs. The exhibition was crawded of course but I think I just need to get used to it. Beside a short leaflet there were no other English description of anything so again this city forces me to practice italian. The title of the collection was The Perfect Harmony but it did not focus only on his neoplasticist masterpieces but was rich of his early works. I especially liked his tree-studies and later on Compositions on trees. There were two genial carbon-drawn selfportraits and some of his paintings of his impressionistic period just amazed me. He used a light-turquoise instead of white on these paintings which made the colour-effect so vibrant that it was just really unique. The exhibiton showed the background of his artistic development and explained the most important trends and phenomenons that influenced him. Among these were the theosophy that I did not know before but catched my attention and will study more about it. The other interesting thing was his passion for jazz. He was not only analysing the rythms and worked on the transformation of the system of music into graphic signs and proportions but he truely loved to dance to jazz. That also made his studio a must-visit place in Paris during the 1920-30s:) So they were playing fine jazz music in the central hall and that made all the famous and very serious and strict artpieces of neoplasticism and De Stijl a lot more vivid and friendly. The exhibition ended a bit shockingly, you just found yourself in the museum shop eventually. And yes, this is the place where I always feel like if I'll ever be douchebag  I'll spend a serious amount of my money on useless but still wonderful catalogues, books, prints and other art gadgets:) But till then I just keep the leaflet as a memory.

During the time I spent inside it got dark outside. Imagine the darkness that hides away every creepy detail while the lights are emphasizing the endless beauty of the buildings, the ruins and the sculptures. This city is... still cannot find the proper words to describe it. I was just gazing around and felt again extremely thankful for my chance to be here.

OK, so that was my weekend. As I see it did not turned out to be short again... I don't know what's wrong with me, I even kept some funny parts for another time to not make this any longer. Anway, thanks for reading and sorry for my 'hunglish'.

I have to leave now, Sara will teach me how to cook some special risotto and I think I can upload this only tomorrow from the office so good morning in advance! :)