Arrivederci Roma There are times when things go so badly that you say to yourself: Im sure we will laugh about this someday. Today was one such day, the bad part, not the laughing part. There was an incident with a man wearing green shoes. Jan Wilson Sheppherd and I decided to visit the Colosseum on our last full day in Rome. This was where I came unstuck. I dont wish to put my Facebook friends off from visiting Rome, but of all the places I have been to in Europe, Rome is currently at the bottom of the list. Even the city of Tirana in Albania was a better experience. I dont want this to turn into a rant but the streets of Rome dont look or feel safe. We were cautioned by people who live here to keep a firm grip on purses and bags, because there were snatchers and pickpockets everywhere. Staff and strangers in stores would warn us that our bags werent completely zipped closed, and suggested transfer any valuables away from outside pockets on our bags to the safer interior because of thieves with box-cutters. We were advised by the hotel manager to leave everything we didnt want stolen in the hotel room safe. You dont need to be an anthropologist to notice that the sense of cultural proxemics is absent, people will step into ones personal space with malice and suspicious intent. No exaggeration, everyday we went out, Jan and I held hands or stayed within physical contact distance and still we were accosted personally by a hundred street hucksters, hawkers, scalpers and ticks, who no matter what you do or say or not say or not do will stick to you like ticks as you walk along. In Spanish there is an expression that says it all: Mas tenido que una garrapata someone who clings closer than a tick. This barrage of harassment was everywhere except within the borders of Vatican City which is policed effectively. Once inside it was like the place was surrounded by an invisible force field. However, all along the pedestrian barricades and beyond the bollards, in the City of Rome, were the hordes of harassers, four or five deep, scowling, shouting, trinkets and ticket offers held aloft, waving their wares in the air, waiting for the moment when you had to leave the hollowed ground and go elsewhere. There was no escape, the menace was everywhere, side-walk waiters angrily touting for business every time we passed. The route back to the Flowerome Hotel was a gauntlet of abuse. The waiters kept count and would remind us how many times we had passed without dining with them. They knew where we were staying. Every evening Jan and I sought refuge in our hotel room to decompress. It was worse than the lucha libre tag team time-share salesmen of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on our honeymoon. This brings me back to the Green Shoe Tour Guide Incident. Jan and I were waiting in line to buy a ticket to enter the Colosseum when a British expatriate stepped into our personal space, got up in my face, and tried to bully us into hiring him to give us a guided tour. Nothing dissuaded him (Jan blamed the long black coat I was wearing, which she felt sent the wrong message). He wouldnt go away and the more we declined the more he embodied all of those others we had been subjected to for days. Finally, (this is the part I want to laugh about later) in the midst of hundreds of tourists, (hopefully none of them will ever know that I am a Bahai and should be above such things), I took a step back and shouted: HARASSMENT, HARASSMENT as loud as I could. Jan was very surprised. Hardened by the requirements of his foreign employment, Mr Green Shoes drew a long breath and delivered a loud theatrical soliloquy that offered various permeations on the words how and rude. No one in the ticket line came to our rescue or even seemed to care. The pair of policemen a short distance away paid no attention. Finally, Mr Green Shoes, moved on to other victims of his style of salesmanship, still finding new sentences featuring the word rude. This incident put a real dent in my day. I was very ashamed. After a while, Jan asked if this was a good time to say: Wait and see, we will have a good laugh about this someday. After seeing the Colosseum, I tried to find Mr Green Shoes, to apologize for shouting, but I couldnt find him. We headed back to the hotel and were harried by others at the train station and the bus stops. To complete the experience of our Roman Holiday, we had to dodge a threesome of would be muggers with what Jan termed an unnatural interest in us. With my camera as a defence weapon, I conspicuously took a few pictures of them and they stopped being so interested in us. Near our hotel, we bought a take away dinner and desert from a cheerful Turkish falafel maker, who called us back to his shop when we forgot to take one of his packages. With a wide moustached smile, he reminded us in basic English that: Without baklava theres no party. Tomorrow, arrivederci Roma.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 23:01:52 +0000
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