I wake up. It's very early - but from outside swells already for some time smog teergetränkter together with an endless staccato croaking car and scooter horns through the closed windows in my studio.
Rome has awakened long ago.
And wakes me.
The breakfast is from barren - in the morning I usually tolerate only a coffee. And that I cook myself a typical Italian Bialetti machine. Is it so delicious that I decide I like in Germany even a need to. a shower and a couple of minutes later I Tummler Myriarden me with other tourists on historic paving stones to the places you must see. St. Peter's Basilica - it is so close to me - my first goal should be. It's not even 10 and I'm sweating like a pig. The others. Pleasant.
I look imported, the sun blinds me, and I think of the words of the receding: I took a wonderful desire, the head of the Church should open his golden mouth and that of the ineffable salvation of the blessed souls delight speaking, put us in delight.
So I stand with five thousand other tourists felt at the bottom of its window and stretch out my sore throat - "we" are now being expected to not over till the pope - but showed he still has not. Well, no wonder: In the heat I would also prefer my summer palace.
I save the eight hundred meters long Snake, which moves lazily in the St. Peter: Sure, this building, about which I have read so much, the Sistine Chapel and all the other architectural and artistic treasures, I would have liked. But not Sun Not today. I fight on through the hot city.
push back a group of gum chewing, chattering in English American, I am along a high wall to - I do not know where. Overtaking pointless, they occupy the whole width of the street. I contemplate the wall and mysterious - it is the walls of the Vatican?
An aqueduct?
I see at the end Castel Sant'Angelo. Ah! I find it again: It is the "Pasetto. A combination of armored bunker, secret passage, the wall and escape. If it was Brennan, was here to escape the pope in his stronghold.
interesting.
Outside the building, the Castel Sant'Angelo offer itself as a Roman Centurion disguised, more or less well-trained boys to the photo shoot at. 15 euros will cost the fun. And that plastic feathers on the head and sheet metal sword in her belt. make a few of my Yanks this
Awesome.
the view of the surprisingly fast-flowing Tiber I know already from yesterday, I enjoy it but today even more than that I think of how many millions it up from that, my body may have already enjoyed it - and how many thousands of years this here might now go that way. Rome. The eternal city. Incredibly old, incredible that here our whole European culture has been greatly influenced.
incredible how Rome has permanently influenced the whole world history. And today, Berlusconi. Well, at least provides the world today for amusement.
Roman is right there when I returned to the city, the historic center of fighting. The Forum Romanum me at your feet - forbidden to enter, clear, but enough to see here more more than that I can under me, 15 bi2 20 meters below the current floor level of the city in times of looking that are so incredibly long ago that it may very well be down there actually once the Emperor Constantine and Caesar went in person to the marble slabs may be. One can feel really captures the history of the world sees clearly in mind that big down there might have happened. I can not get enough.
disputes could be excellent at what I inspect me then: The National Monument, or "Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Piazza Venezia. huge Italian flags in front of a gleaming white, almost kitschy-monumental Columns orgy, a huge equestrian statue and architecture that has, in my opinion, nothing of the sublime, mathematically precise and subtly dazzling perfection of the ancient Roman temples, but the shows off and takes.
But in national shrines should not shake it - on our Quadriga yes I will get nothing ...
I am pleased when I discover amid the shimmering heat of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper stand - but today not a single German newspaper sold more. Would have laughed too, that ridiculous German enclave just outside the National Monument. 
Tourists seems Monument to please not right - use the big crowds on buses and exiting the plaza, groups gather, people find themselves - but rather to break up from here to the Roman Forum, St. Peter's, or - as I do now - to the Colosseum . 
The Colosseum yesterday so I had visited, now I take my time, enjoy the sights and insights into the building and must wonder: This superb, this abundance, this mass. Incredibly, as the have done earlier. Almost it seems as the roar of the crowds, hear the roar of lions irritated, if not again a plastic centurion and a cluster of fat Americans get one back again to the here and now would.
Goethe expressed his impressions thus: If you look at such a start, the two thousand years or more old, is altered by the changes of time as varied and from scratch and still the same soil, the same mountain, indeed often the same column and wall, and the people nor the traces of the old character, it will be a partaker of the great decrees of fate, and so will the viewer from start to develop tough as follows Rome on Rome, but the different epochs of the old and new self to each other. Yes, that is: In Rome, every stone breathes history. Each street. Each corner - unforgettable.
Past Emperor Augustus and other emperors and Caesars I bahne astonished me back steps into the streets, I know stroll, or on the Campo di Fiori and hit me in the direction of Villa Borghese by the smog and the thousands of scooters. A honking and din, a jostling crowd, and - where is the quintessential Italian comfort? In Rome, she is not in any case. Hardly something the Roman species differs from the one I've seen in Tokyo, New York or Seattle. Well, except for the oppressive heat.
I propose to break away from the Trevi Fountain, by this shoppende million city and I have always to wonder how this Luis Vuitton superstores - faceless and characterless - stop in all the cities can I visit. I mean, who drive for Rome, fly halfway around the world to Tokyo, 6 hours sitting in the plane to New York to be served then by ladies and buy a really expensive, design technically questionable, dark brown bag, which is also in Berlin-Charlottenburg get bought? I do not know.
But I am happy as I was on the piazza of the Popolo get some air to breathe.
I climb up the mountain to the Villa Borghese and I contemplate the city of five hills. In addition to the mine Although I know no more, but I guess from here the size of this city - and how they have worked for thousands of years as a juggernaut, wonder of the world and ruler of the known world needs. In me someone has a love message painted on the road - or a curse?
I almost 2 hours strolling through the park of the Villa, before I tell again - filled the lungs with fresh clean air - venture into the city. Smog and noise, go back, when I again suggest the narrow streets. stop short suddenly I stand there and: Before me the ingenious Pantheon.
But even in Rome is too little to worried that it is serious, the whole study. He has everything from infinite, together glean abundant although rubble. Of course is it less pure Ernst strangers to see something right and to learn.
said even after all the sir. And so I wonder in amazement at this milestone by the ancient architecture, can only shake his head to have found this gem so unexpectedly in such a colorless street and move on.
home. Finally. I make the door behind me, blocking out the smog. Patrol my sweaty things off and prepare me a great pasta dish. I resümmiere: Rome. The So you were! Overwhelming loud, hastily packed, breathtaking, sometimes disappointing trivial and yet so stimulating! For now, I've had enough - I think to myself, as I give the pasta into the boiling water - look at my Cervélo that stands motionless for 2 days in the corner of my studio, and can not wait to finally break up again. Finally take off their clothes and breaking civil. Cycling. Road cycling - MioGiro, my current di'Italia. It can go on. Naples is waiting. And Sicily. to see even that much.
Even Mr. Goethe may have similar thoughts going through your mind: I think of Naples, in fact even in Sicily, it is a both in the story than in pictures, that in these havens of the world, once the volcanic hell so violently open, and thousands of years residing and enjoying it startles and deceptive power. But I suggest to me the hope that like many great views from the senses in order before I left the old capital of the world still use right. burns in me already the anticipation is stirring fresh zest and energy flows through my legs. I see the Tour de Suisse and slurp my noodles at some point I fall asleep. The alarm clock will take me 6 of the hot springs.
So I fell asleep because the world go in dreams again to all the places of history, where the Connect fate of the world so fantastic to me of their own fantasy of glittering ancient leaves. Think of all the things I've seen and learned and I am pleased to finally have time to be here. because tomorrow I will have taken away my road bike again. To the south. In direction of Sicily.
