Nov 9, 2012
R O M A
Barely outside a five star hotel (wouldn't you imagine a clean place?) which is not even in proper Rome and I already understand why they say (they? who are they? They are the ones that know about every certain matter. 99.9% of the times, no one involved in the conversation actually knows them. Love it) that Buenos Aires looks like Paris and smells like Rome. After thirty or so years, I must admit, they were right.
But that was not the beginning. So I will start from the very beginning. After all, isn't Rome one of the beginnings of everything? To me, it is.
Upon boarding the aircraft, seeing my guests of the day makes my day. A good vibe in the air -and no, it wasn't because of my usual sparkling mood. Old. young, middle age crisisers, women, babies ... everybody all the way to catering men upon landing in Rome are beautifully sexy (saying babies makes it seem sick, I apologize, babies are just oddly beautiful, like they are not normal babies with those purple tones and wrinkles all over).
NOTE: catering people are usually not the prettiest selection of human beings. Definitely not sexy. This beauty phenomena only occurred in Vienna where even garbage man was so handsome and in East Europe where you don't know whether to focus on architecture or people!
So Italians, Europeans but not so much. My European concept includes English, French, Germans and other Nordic nations. No intention of offending anyone but Italians are a lot more Latin than the rest of Europeans: they have sun and winter is not S O cold. Everything, all, from infrastructure, vehicles to all the rest of the etc's is a lot more shabby, less technologically daring, and no, there are no surprising treats. It's like all has been seen, smelt, heard somewhere or at some point before. All is very used. Third hand feel to it.
Still, and despite all that, how cute is the POLIZIA, their uniforms, the sirens. Ah... big big sigh.
For a while, during the train ride, I felt I was in some sort of porteño neighbourhood. A familiar and cozy air that I can't really describe so I will not even try. I felt I am no stranger in that ghetto. There are lots of clothes hanging everywhere, people sleeping under the bridge! THAT was a surprise.
Graffiti blanketed the side of the roads. And this gives me a hint of what is well known: Romans (Italians I should say) are into demonstrations, expressions, colours. Passively, or not so much, they are loud. They d o n o t g o unnoticed.
Some buildings really lack in style and I wonder why. This is Italy after all, land where every word is beautiful. But they make up in decadent colourfulness. Those style-less buildings, so alive with their balconies full of either clothes or plants, they commingle with old day pompous palazzos -nowadays I bet they are overpopulated villas. Their glory, long time dead.
T H A T my dear reader, was my intro to ROME.
Finally I emerge: monuments, fountains, churches, forests, marble and all that Piazza del Popolo means to me, you and everybody that takes a first step in there.
And remember that all of a sudden I realized why they say that Buenos Aires smells like Rome? Well, even sharper, more abrupt was my realization that Rome is Rome and has kept her category during thousands of years for a reason. Zero Vanity. OR 100% vanity? The grandness , magnitude, prodigiousness (you know what I mean, right?) of what I was about to see sank in. And as loud, chatty, expressive, sentimental and demonstrative as I can be (you can take the Italian out of Italy but not Italy out of the Italian, or was that for the English only?) I am
speechless.
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