July 31st. Rome is empty as we cruise through the city with our motorbike. Entire perspectives unveil themselves and stay bare before us: the Lungotevere, à bout de souffle. The Caracalla boulevard is free of buses, cars and motorini.
Before our tour of the Simbruini mountains we stop at Cristalli di Zucchero for breakfast. Bliss!!
On the Arcinazzo plateau, metallic purple sparrows and Foscolo’s upupe…tomorrow, holidays.
Come August, Paolo Rumiz’s feuilleton kicks off! This year the Triestine journalist of Repubblica travels across Italy and discovers for us haunted NATO barracks, spooky hotels, deserted factories.
Follow Mr Rumiz’s adventures and videos here.
Photo: Repubblica (link above)
Things are happening in Rome.
In the previous post you saw the work in progress in via delle Carrozze. The pavement and the cobbled streets of the Tridente are being refurbished, courtesy of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy. Yesterday I was notified, as a fidelized public transport user, that the Piazza San Silvestro bus terminus will disappear on Monday and works will start for a new pedestrian-friendly piazza. The set-up you see here below will be a souvenir.
In the photo opening this post you see our local baretto. Also the baretto is being refurbished, I took the picture on the last day of operation with the old layout. This is where for the past 10 years, since June 2001 precisely, MeinMann and I have been consuming cappuccini, cornetti and news in the morning. Agnese (pictured), Sebastian and Gaia are the first multi-kulti smiles we see on our way to work – their assessment of weather conditions calls for cappuccino freddo, tiepido, caldo or the special-situations caffellatte con il miele…a friendly smile is much better than Starbucks’ stale marketing, I tell you.
So. Things are happening in Rome, and some trusted things are staying the same. In the middle of static institutions, stalling political representation, establishment and economy, some are moving and shaking indeed. And we will remember this Summer like this, pictured in a beautiful article in today’s D di Repubblica: “Roma: il grande backstage della vita” where the daylight panorama of the city is “a giant Twitter, buzzing endlessly from the past” but at night finally the visual, acoustic and historic noise calm down, and you can hear the song of crickets and fontanelle…
We’ll leave for the holidays on Monday. We love that forbidden feeling. So today a nice Saturday out in Rome, playing the tourist and indulging in self-indulgence.
The most perfect cappuccino with a fantastic cornetto. The fall/winter fashion in the magazines. A nice breeze, a kissing sun. The perfect pizza bianca con mozzarella, fiori di zucca e alici and a tall glass of that magic bar-made iced tea that you still find in some cafés, not sugary, with a spoon of lemon granita. Bliss! And windows adorned of pervenche-blue plumbago next to the Pantheon. Hmmm…I’m enjoying the savor of the city. And Rome is doing her best to make us stay.
And then, after a nice walk – zac! The disappointing moment arrives. A small event epitomizing many of the things we hate in Italy. This one:
This time round I paid and said nothing. Because this will be the last time. It’s not worth complaining anymore.
Only ten days ago I would have argued with the café owner. I price things for a living and I cannot stand when people make a fool of me.
An affogato al caffé is an ice-cream ball drowned in a cup of espresso. Now, the price of a cono with one ice cream ball is about 2 euro. The price of an espresso at the counter ranges from 0.80 euro to 1.30 euro (at Caffé Greco – but Vitti is no historic café). Now someone explain me why at the counter for an espresso and one ice cream ball – no extra labor-intensive value added – I should pay 5 euro instead of something in the region of 2.80 – 3.30 eur.
You’ll have to do without me, belli miei. Go screw someone else…may your quick bucks be the last.
MeinMann and I, we’re living interesting days – many things happening at full speed. Many decisions to be taken in the nick of time after months of plans, scenarios, probabilities, musings.
All the preparedness we piled up in the past is now coming in handy. We’re in the middle of a balancing act. Will keep you posted on the developments. Stay with us.
PS
Casey Stoner is unbelievable. Bending like Casey.
What a day! Oh la la…
And the most beautiful closing of it, is a sentence by Coco Chanel, quoted by Pulchra: “There are people who have money, and people who are rich”. Subtle…
Photo: Coco Chanel, the movie, with Audrey Tautou
This morning at 7.00 MeinMann and Teofilatto* headed to the Tiburtina train station with their bikes for a Tour d’Abruzzo. After a few minutes MeinMann woke me up with a call: “Don’t you worry, the station is burning so we’re coming back, fetching a car-sharing van and going East with the bikes – sleep well”.
Well, I was not that awake but I did wake up as I switched on my MacBook and saw the first pictures. Even if Tiburtina station is at a stone’s throw from home the wind was probably blowing the smoke in the opposite direction, that’s why I hadn’t noticed a thing. It was indeed burning. How odd is that?
Yesterday I had just entered Tiburtina in my list of Building Sites to Visit and Check Progress together with Fuksas’s Cloud at EUR, Ponte della Musica and Ponte Ostiense. You may recall, we went there a few months ago and bitched a bit about expensive and not-so-functional materials, but overall we were amazed by the budding architectural concept.
The strange thing is, yesterday the neighborhoods surrounding the station (but not ours) had been warned that water supply would be restricted during the entire Sunday and until midnight due to works at the building site. It took 15 hours to the fire brigade to limit the damages and extinguish the high flames. Strange. Very strange.
Living in this country you cannot avoid thinking set up each time something strange happens. The Alitalia lobby, pissed off by the increasing masses of happy commuters to Milan seduced by train? Competing rail companies Trenitalia and NTV tripping up each other? The concrete mafia of concrete? The usual tragic lack of safety measures (remember Thyssen Krupp)?
Anyway. Wonder who will pay that? Those selected citizens who are 1) taxpayers 2) users of the service (because not all Italians are taxpayers, you already know that do you?).
This should be the most important “kiss and ride” station in Italy, similar to Berlin Hauptbahnhof to give you an idea. Let’s hope it does not become the first “kiss my ass” station.
Photo: Repubblica
*you know who you are don’t you…fellow Aboozer! 
Today Gabriele Romagnoli in Repubblica reads through the Nordic thriller trend as a forerunner of the events in Oslo and Utoya. Literature has water divining powers, it perceives the undercurrents of society, says Romagnoli.
Ok, but in Stieg Larsson was not just a sensible novelist. He was actively engaged against fascism since a number of years with the Expo Foundation. This is something our journalists should know, right?
Expo investigates in depth the white supremacy issue in Scandinavia. I wish there were also in Southern Europe foundations and press organs dealing with the undercurrents of society.
Scandinavians are not so naïve as some international press want to depict them. But it is true that reality can overtake imagination and preparedness. And it is not the first time it happens. In a league of our own, stragismo in Italy went beyond imagination a number of times. Fascism is something we know very well here. But we keep on sweeping it under the carpet.
Here below I paste the message of the foundation. It’s interesting. Go through it. Continue reading ‘beyond the plot: vigilant against fascism’
