Harbour City Ramblings

Along with the bizarre second meeting of Brian and Elizabeth in Rome on Monday, Sept. 22nd- also the Anniversary of Lost and the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 just 4 years back- a couple other strange occurrences happened.

In Search of Caesar

After seeing the Vatican Museum and other sights in Rome that morning, we had yet to do one of the top things on my Rome list: Finding the site where Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15th, 44 BC.  Even with all the bad omens, and warnings of negative dreams from his wife Calpurnia, Caesar’s good friend Brutus- one of the 60 conspirators in the assassination- encouraged him to go forth to Senate that day. Shortly after addressing the senate, he fell dead at the foot of Pompey’s statue succumbing to multiple stab wounds.

After searching the surrounding streets of the Sacred Area for a solid two hours, and even asking multiple businesses in the area for assistance, we came up short and I was crushed. Instead we decided to head out for a beer further north.

I’m not one to wait for a light to tell me to cross the street when it’s clearly safe, so when I made move and Dylan stayed put I lost him in a sea of people. After a few mins. of scanning across the street I spotted him standing near a below-side-walk-level fenced-in area. Clearly we were both exhausted, and needed a break and so I crossed back over to where he decided to rest his legs- and there it was.

Located in the Largo di Argentina square along Via San Nicola de Cesarini were ruins of several buildings including the Statio Aquarum, remains of a latrine in Pompey’s portico, and the very site Caesar met his fate.

If Dylan hadn’t have stayed put when I walked back and forth across the busy streets foolishly, we wouldn’t have found the site we’d searched for hours for. How’s that for an oddity?

Meeting Walt & Natasha

Roaming around Venice in the afternoon we passed another couple, the girl sporting a jacket with Scotland scrolled across her back. It was memorable simply because it got Dylan and I discussing how we wouldn’t wear a jacket displaying we were Canadian, but we would wear a souvenir shirt from a country along our journey. Then again when eating our last Italian meal that night they came into the same restaurant, the Ae Oche (American-style decor, but to-die-for-pizza) at the same time and sat a mere few tables back.

When awaiting our night train to Munich, Germany that night, oddly enough they happened to sit directly beside us on the bench. Natasha and Walt were from South Africa, touring Europe for a couple of months, and as we speculated they had simply visited Scotland on a previous journey. We got to chatting and discovered they were also huge Metallica and Tenacious D fans, as well as catching the same train and going to Oktoberfest.

The next morning when we arrived at the Munich train station we ran into them and mentioned, even though we’d spoken very little, that we were meeting our American buddies at the church outside Oktoberfest Thursday morning and the invitation were open. Too many bizarre meetings here in Europe, it’s still a mystery to me how these things came together.