Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Footsteps: Journey Of An Artist "City In The Sky (Orvieto, Italia)"
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Podcast Episode Summary
Last night I couldn’t sleep again. I set my alarm for 3:30 hoping i’d actually sleep but instead I stayed up looking out the window, watching time pass till my alarm actually went off. ; We had to be at the bus station in Zagreb before 8am. I grabbed a bite to eat, we'll call it breakfast, then we got on the bus for that 12 hour ride to Rome. I hate that feeling, knowing I went to the washroom but scared i'll need to go again as soon as the bus leaves. No-one wants to be the one with the weak ass blabber raising there hand up while hiding behind the seat to ask the bus driver to pull over.
From the highway we passed by some of Croatia's coastal towns like Trsat in Rijeka, Opatija, Pula then through Slovania stopping every now and then to stretch, unload, reload and have a cigarette. As we pass through Umbria Italy the people on the bus fumble to get out of there seats. Amidst the Owwws, awwwws and cameras flashing i get outta my seat to see a city which seems to rise out of the earth towards the sky. I know I've been on this bus for awhile now, so I rub my eyes to make sure I ain't seeing shit. Orvieto, the city in the sky sits on a flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff. We get off the tour bus and take two separate buses up this winding road to the top. As soon as you step off the bus you are dwarfed by the massive Orvieto Cathedral. According to Wikipedia on November 15, 1290, Pope Nicholas the IV laid the cornerstone for the present building and dedicated it to the Assumption of the Virgin, a feast for which the city had a long history of special devotion. The tour guide Josko said that Pope Leo the XIII described the Cathedral as the "Golden Lily of Italian Cathedrals" and was inspired by the miracle of Bolsena in 1263. The miracle, locals tell us, is that blood was said to have dripped from a consecrated host onto a corporal, the small cloth were the host and chalice rest during the Canon of the Mass.
We didn't have time to go inside but there is a casket that encases the altar cloth spotted with blood. There are also all kinds of underground passage ways and wells that lead deep into the volcanic tuff. The church is striped in white travertine and greenish-black basalt in narrow bands, similar to other cathedrals of Siena and central Italian cathedrals of that era. Josko was telling us that the 3D type images running up the face of the church like hieroglyphic's tell the story of Christ.
2 things we learned very quickly about our tour guide Josko. Not only is he very passionate about history, he's a walking encyclopedia of information. Awesome. Only problem is, is this tour was booked in Zagreb, yes he can speak English but for the tour he speaks in Croatian. Therefore, I have no clue what's going on. Second, he moves like a general with a cask loaded with expresso, so welcome to bootcamp tour guides It doesn't matter how hot. It doesn't matter how dehydrated. It doesn't matter if you gotta pee. It doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter if you leg is broken. It doesn't matter if your dead. Dude moves like the wind so I needed to move my ass in order to keep up. Orvieto was like a test to see how well we'll do in Rome. Many times I would look up and Josko would be almost be outta sight... Shit.
I love the way Italians talk and I love the way they express themselves with there hands. It's like poetry in motion. Italian words have and end in vowels as opposed the ex-Yugoslavia were vowels are in short demand. Words like Hrvatska and Srbija are, according to English language missing vowels which make the words difficult to say. Orvieto is a pretty big town and even though General
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