Dreamed I was in Rome

[Crispina]

Last night I dreamed I was on vacation in Rome, Italy. Not only that but I was on vacation with the Clark family from "National Lampoon's European Vacation" movie! They didn't exactly identify themselves as such, but I knew that was who they were. We walked around Rome and had a great time. And the very best part - I visited the grave of Spartacus! :lol:

It was in the middle of a stone courtyard and had a small, block of old marble for a headstone and had a carving of a gladiator on it. Then I was home and talking to some lady about my trip at a gas station, when the attendant told me I still owed $500 for the Rome hotel room bill. I gave him my AAA Card by mistake instead of my credit card. Best dream EVER.

 

Did I mention I've never been to Rome?

[Kosmo]

What a nice dream!

[caesar novus]

told me I still owed $500 for the Rome hotel room bill.

I daydream a lot of walking or flying over the Appian way or obscure parts of the Roman wall. But you remind me of when US credit card companies started freezing accounts after your first European charge, assuming that if you hadn't warned them of your trip it must be fraudulent use. Quite embarrassing on your second Italian hotel checkout, especially after a long friendly stay and rush to make a plane.

 

I've been listening to a lecture course on memory and it had amazing connections with dreams and that other mode of deeper sleep. I guess dreams are key to you working thru physical tasks and making them able to happen subconsiously with you just focusing on refining them while awake. Your body secretes chemicals to try to freeze your movement immediately before dreams. Histimine is involved, so anti histimine cold pills may alter this. The other mode of sleep helps integrate/store memories for nonphysical things. Somehow it all makes sense when they review how infants are always sleeping, elders not needing much sleep (no longer learning), and unusual people not needing much of one or the other kind of sleep (Napoleon, etc). But I forget...

Edited March 14, 2012 by caesar novus

[Crispina]

I dream alot and they are usually very vivid. Last night's dream could have been influenced by an episode of House Hunters International that I watch last night.

[caesar novus]

episode of House Hunters International that I watch last night.

Must be the Rome archeologist one, which I recorded but first must build up courage to watch. Maybe if I wear a hernia belt or something I won't writhe with jealousy so much. They have had several episodes in Naples and lesser known Italian villages. There is a book called something like Culture Shock Italy aimed at new residents which gives a darker side of a lot of annoying complications. Another way to live second hand thru a move to Rome is to follow Klingan's old blog http://ancientandold.blogspot.com/2009/03/day-one_4668.html (keep hitting the "newer post" button).

Edited March 14, 2012 by caesar novus

[Crispina]

The year I was due to retire from my job, I bought the book, "Living and Working in Italy" by Nick Daws, copyright 2001, and read it at my "newly appointed duty" as the telephone operator in the building (on top of all my other duties in the office). I was so ticked off at administration, and every time they walked by they saw this book and kept saying, "Are you really going to quit us and move to Italy???" ha ha. I wish. I never told them one way or the other. The book has loads of information and I quickly realized a person has to have a certain amount of fortitude to leave out the dream to move to a foreign country. Unfortunately, that isn't me.

[Crispina]

Oh, and yes it was the one with the archaeologist. I watch the show most often when it features Italy, France or anywhere in Europe. The tropical locales don't interest me. The one thing that bugs me is that potential home buyers expect the same type and size of house or apartment they left in the USA. I admit it might take me some time to get used to the bath facilities in some foreign countries.

[caesar novus]

Oh, and yes it was the one with the archaeologist. I watch the show most often when it features Italy, France or anywhere in Europe. The tropical locales don't interest me. The one thing that bugs me is that potential home buyers expect the same type and size of house or apartment they left in the USA.

Wow, it was with frequent documentary celebrity Darius Arya, whose discoveries have been well discussed in this forum, like

 

For several decades historians have been lifting their eyebrows at the Latin authors' portrait of Caligula as a madman who came to believe he was a god.

 

But Darius Arya of the American Institute for Roman Culture said a 35-day dig by young archaeologists from Oxford and Stanford universities had reinstated a key element in the traditional account.

 

"We have the proof that the guy really was nuts," said Dr Arya as he sat in the shade of a clump of trees a few metres from the excavation.

It seemed an unusually well done episode of House Hunters Intnl ("modern living in central Rome") and well worth watching for reruns. Not the usual whining that they demand space for their furniture and visitors. Less grandiose than in the documentaries, they give great vignettes of his kids among the ruins. Daughter: "How big is this guy?" Darius: "He wasn't a big guy per se, he just wanted to say 'I'm important'". Younger daughter when asked to say grazie (thank you) to gelato vendor: "Mineidiswatapaneeddowahad" (it was subtitled). Supportive Darius: "All right!". Younger daughter is seen hugging a plastic bag of pretty market food - I know just how she feels.

[caldrail]

I had a dream a while back that had some oddly romanesque qualities to it. Everyone in it was dressed in roman style clothing though the architecture looked more modern. It all got very confused and fraught with people getting pointed out by informers and dragged off to some unpleasant fate. There was a woman who tried to elicit my assistance before she vanished. Wouldn't mind bumping into her - except of course it was all a dream and even if by some strange quirk in the fabric of space-time I was recalling events in a former life, she's long gone.

[caesar novus]

It all got very confused and fraught with people getting pointed out by informers and dragged off to some unpleasant fate. There was a woman who tried to elicit my assistance before she vanished. Wouldn't mind bumping into her -

Now I ran across a SECOND brain-science lecture series with a similar neurological hypothesis for such dreams. It's not an interest area of mine; I just put them on my ipod to distract me from boring walks. Both suggest we are testing out scenarios and their implications, and hardwiring brain cell connections so that we can quickly respond to real life situations to either pursue or avoid memorized results.

 

They can wire up people learning new stuff, and find subjects sort new knowledge out with extended REM phase (dreaming) sleep. Contrast that with the oblivious expressions of a child in danger, or a new student in an extreme sport - not that instant recognition of unfolding problems. Not that this neuro explanation denies any symbolic interpretations, but it can give comfort to some of us who find our dreams weird or irrelevant.

 

Younger daughter when asked to say grazie (thank you) to gelato vendor: "Mineidiswatapaneeddowahad" (it was subtitled). Supportive Darius: "All right!".

Hmm, this dialog is remarkably close to the satire video by an Italian pop star posted here in Et Cetera some months ago on what english sounds like to non-english speakers. Maybe the toddler simply understood by gestures that she was supposed to say something. IIRC the video subtitles repeatedly said: "Prisincolinensinainciusol - Oll Raight!"

 

I bought the book, "Living and Working in Italy" by Nick Daws,

I found it can be interesting to read the version relating to your home country as well. It's surprising how there are conventions and rituals that not only outsiders find strange, but the native borne find annoying as well. I mean things that natives quietly endure because to defy them is such an insult. I expect such things in Japan, but not so many in Italy, or especially the US. Italians accept many obligations to family and their bureaucracy that outsiders and even some Italians may chafe under. I even found the Culture Shock USA book supporting my pet peeves about certain annoying partying conventions, which they claimed everyone silently hates as well.

Edited March 28, 2012 by caesar novus