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 In the interest of fairness, I do not judge all the men of a particular nation by the examples I meet on holiday as the ones who target tourists are generally of a lower standard than those to be found in regular life. I suspect that these people are actually taking part in a government job creation scheme designed to a) get academically unqualified sexual deviants into useful employment and b) keep them out of the way of their fellow countrymen.
Several members of this worthy scheme were to be seen outside the Coliseum in the afternoons, dressed up as Roman Centurions. The costumes were perfect in every detail except the Nike trainers (worn to hide the electronic tags). Their task was to chat to tourists (I can’t understand Italian but the conversation probably went along the lines of - "would you like to hold my spear; have you ever been invaded by a Roman" etc) and pose for photos. When posing with women they invariably took advantage of the proximity to cop a feel, showing a skill that implied it was part of their job training. The extremely strange thing about it all was that none of the women objected to having their private parts kneaded, pinched and squished. What a laugh they all had as they were sexually molested. Their choice I suppose, but I personally would have seized a Roman sword from the Centurion in question and used it to annexe his outposts.
We gave up on tourism after one day spent staggering round historical sites heated to gas mark 6, and took to eating ice cream, drinking beer, sleeping on the benches in air conditioned museums, only going out at night, and sitting up to our necks in water. After practising these activities one at a time - and with careful planning - we were able to perform most of them in the same day.
By night some of the Roman landmarks looked their very best, they really did. The Coliseum was lit up from within and stood out against a black sky - arrogantly dominating the area: making modern Rome invisible and quelling the traffic noise. And as two girls wandering the streets of Rome at night we may as well have been spotlit from within too; we were examined by the over-optimistic local sleazeballs as closely as we inspected, say - the Parthenon, but with a far more expert eye. No, we weren’t singers or models. And no, neither of us had ever had an Italian man (you can’t get a whole one into the oven). Nor did we want a lift anywhere… But er, thanks for the offer.
All that machismo contrasted oddly with the sweet tooth of the local menfolk. Where in England you would see men strolling about with a can of lager; in Rome the men walked around gently slurping an ice cream. It’s so reassuring if you hear footsteps behind you in a quiet street, to turn round and see some guy with his face stuck in a dripping cornet. Probably going to visit his mum. We were sitting outside a cafe one night when two police cars screamed to a halt and eight large policemen raided the premises, to emerge soon after in triumph, clutching tubs with enormous dripping scoops of pistachio, strawberry and chocolate. Travel tip: If you are lost in Rome don’t ask a policeman - you’ll get wafer crumbs all down your front.
 In search of beer one afternoon I went into one of those cafe-bars which display a motorway of cream cakes, and sell coffee and alcohol on the other counters. I asked for a ‘birra’ in my best Italian accent, whereupon the barman raised his eyebrows in query and held up a pear. Why, I wondered, was he showing me a piece of fruit? The man was either a fool or an evil torturer trying to prevent me having a drink. Since beer is a word understood all over the world, or all the parts of the world worth visiting, I tended towards the torturer option. It was a desperate situation that could easily have escalated into a diplomatic incident. After much miming and pointing it turned out that the Italian word for beer is almost the same as their word for pear, but the ‘r’ is rolled more, so it was all an innocent misunderstanding. Yup, restores your faith in human nature, almost.
The Romans very sensibly go on holiday in August, leaving the tourists to sweat in the underground trains and drag their feet around the ancient ruins, dreaming of a nice air-conditioned hotel room. Naturally they can’t go back to the hotel because they came here to enjoy themselves!? Which of course they are. In our case we didn’t even have the comforting memory of a cool hotel to sustain us in the baking monuments as we were staying in a small apartment in a seven-storey block to the east of the city.
The flat contained a museum-piece – a tribute to atmospheric control techniques of the past - in the form of a four-wheeled box the size of a seventies chest freezer. When switched on, the box produced a noise like five elephants in hobnail boots and a totally insignificant drop in temperature. We had the flat in Rome while it’s original occupants, a group of students, stayed in Our House in London. From the evidence later gathered it seems that they spent the time in Our House making coffee; spraying Italian air freshener around the toilet (the scent of fresh-baked-pizza I should imagine) and sniggering at the thought of us being really hot in their flat while they were nice and cool… Bastards |
