Magnificence abounds in old Italy, an ancient world so far beyond imagination that you don't really see it per se--you step through some huge, carved door and you're simply in it, inescapably. Magnificence is so abundant that you fall into silence. You have to remember to breathe.
You don't even half to go inside in some places to feel your lungs constrict. So much around you just takes your breath away.
It's good to be reminded that the Italian economy is a long ways from healthy, run as it is on a huge service industry--tourism. Even though hundreds of thousands of tourists line the streets in Rome any day of the year, tourism is just about all there is to Italy right now. As a result of their economic woes, Italians suffer from the same political tensions, the same splits as most of us in the West do. They too have their Trumps.
Establishment politics favor continued reliance on the European Union, while upstart nationalists rage about keeping Italy, Italy in the face of out-of-control immigration, especially from Muslim lands across the Mediterranean, as well as something akin to colonization--as nationalist leaders like to say--by its European neighbors, Germany especially. The Five-Star Movement has become immensely popular, even though as a political party it has been around for less than a decade. Five-Star rads are defiantly "Eurosceptic"--skeptical about the EU. Nationally, divisions are huge and conflicts rage. Thus, occasionally one sees new political slogans on ancient stone facades.
Graffitti in public toilets.
Occasionally, just occasionally, you'll see some homelessness, some vagrancy.
Economic and political woes aside, Italy isn't much different from other Western democracies. But, as throughout Europe specifically, where two or three hundred thousand tourists mingle, there will be more than a few pickpockets. They're worse in Barcelona, some say, but there must be hundreds, even thousands in Italy.
At one stop, two girls--literally, girls, maybe 12 years old, probably less--crowded on to a subway beside us and a thousand others. It was madness. When the doors were finally closed, we became sardine subjects. They were children really, but one had already grabbed a bag from one of our party's purse when two Italian women howled and screamed and pointed at the perps, chewed them out as if the girls were their own daughters.
In a moment, tiny as they were, the two perps were gone, that little bag one of them had swiped retrieved from the floor.
It was a strangely wonderful moment. No one had lost anything, a blessing; and we'd been saved from Italians by Italians. It was the locals who screamed and, in all likelihood, cursed at the two little perps, made them disappear. In an odd way, we felt privileged to be under the wings of those women.
If one or more of us had been robbed in that subway, our entire sojourn would have been affected greatly. Instead, a couple of locals yelled and screamed and kept us safe.
My advice? Go ahead, love the place. Fall into sheer awe at St. Peters Square. Let the Coliseum and the cathedrals snatch your breath away.
But no more. Keep your hand on your wallet.
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