1/7/2002 » Travel

My Rome distillation: Nuns, scooters, and nuns on scooters. This place is the United Nations of nuns. Rome is mellow. Nightclubs aren’t the thing here. They are content, thousands milling around on the streets, eating, drinking, talking, chilling, no crime problems, no cops in sight. This is essence of Latin-based countries vs. the Ingleses: high quality of life for employees, low for consumers. Surely you can have a synthesis.

I was in the tiny nightclub quarter, there were hundreds in line, yet it was quiet as Christmas Eve. Surreal. Bump into someone and you didn’t even need to say sorry, they’re so chill, as if they’re drugged.

These maroon and saffron jerseys with a she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, wow. Now soccer is a proper national game. Not as boring as baseball. Much more action-packed than football. And you don’t have to be a 300 pound side-of-beef genetic freak. You don’t need special padding. Wish I’d seen Inter-Lazio here yesterday, but I’ll catch a real Madrid match in the future.

You can crisscross this little country by train in a day. I’m weighing Napoli, there’s still time. Firenze is about art, chianti and olive oil; Napoli about people and pizza. Roma is about brutal power, its statues of emperors, its pantheon a retro brutalism, cobblestones. Firenze is renaissance, strong pastels, sophistication, clean lines, more modern paving stones, its statues of Galileo, Michaelangelo and Dante Alighieri. I left bits of my blood on the Ponte Vecchio.

This city, Roma, is prettier than the States. The buildings are painted strong colors, winter colors - haldi, red, maroon, not the bland pastels of the States. It doesn’t have the stunning views of SF or the skyscrapers of NYC, but for smaller manmade things- art, buildings - you can’t beat it. The U.S. has no indigenous architecture styles, it copied wholesale. People are walking around at all hours, old, young, families, babies, a social cohesiveness the U.S. lacks. No teen rebellion to speak of. Where will I raise my children?

Today I bought a banana and a succulent orange from a fruteria and walked along on sprumante (fresh-squeezed) joy. Quite an orange. And it was no problem with the shopkeeper, the trains or nada, I feel at home here now. But think back to a week ago when everything was strange. Darkness was falling, temperatures dropping, dragging luggage, feet aching and no place to stay.

Smiling at the Piazza del Popolo at the shimmery fireworks, the weeping willows of red, green and gold sparks. The Italians do leisure goods very well. They do better holiday lighting than any I’ve ever seen, wire meshes of streamers and spheres. Fireworks? Amazing, better than the States. New Year’s giddiness? Couples and six-person groups dancing in pink spotlights to the ‘Blue Danube Waltz.’ The gelato has the actual ingredients sprinkled on top so you can see what it is—real figs, blackberries, bananas, marsala wine. It is halfway to India culturally, yet the payphones don’t work, so I go back to my age-old quandary: where do I live?