This weekend, we’ve officially been Roman residents for one month. It’s been an enjoyable but intense first four weeks in the Eternal City and since I’ve always believed that initial impressions capture something magical and crystalline, I thought I’d jot some down here.
The first thing to note is, at the beginning of the end of the covid pandemic, Rome belongs entirely to the Romans. All the world class sites, postcard views and historical remnants are currently just the backdrop for everyday life; and not the draw of bus, plane and train loads of international tourists. This has worked out quite well for us. We take Friday strolls to the Colosseum, walk into St. Peter’s with no lineup and manage to take pictures at the Trevi Fountain with not a single unknown stranger in the frame. It feels like you’re the first one in a nightclub and you know eventually you won’t be able to move, but now the place is yours.
The weather has been cooler and wetter than we expected. Dalia and I both visited Rome in April some years ago and remember a sweltering and manic city, with heat radiating from the concrete with barely anywhere to hide. Thankfully, we now have a comfortable apartment to retreat to and more time to discover and linger in spots we enjoy, like the Villa Borghese park, our nearest and favourite big city green space.
The Romans have been very kind, energetic, welcoming, sincere, sometimes outlandish, most times impeccably mannered, elegant and straightforward. They ooze Italianness in a way that I don’t think I can describe any more precisely than that. Most people look good, their clothes seem to fit them all very well. They wear on average two more layers than a Canadian who’s just arrived but that’s ok. They love their families and take all the generations to the park on weekends. They talk to their dogs very seriously, which is particularly entertaining to someone who, like the dog, doesn’t understand the language. They’re emphatic when they talk on their phones – with no one, or everyone, around. When they’re with each other, they’re not on their phones. This is almost as astonishing as an empty Rome to a North American. We still stand out because we use our phones almost all the time for directions, pictures and translations. Eating in Rome is a rhythym we still haven’t figured out. Lunch is a hard stop by 3pm and dinner starts at 7, 730, earliest. So ya, no pizza or pasta when the belly is empty after work around 5 or 6. More coffee and gelato have become the caloric stand-ins of choice.
We’ve also had our fair share of linguistic challenges thus far. One of the main drawbacks of there being no tourists arounds is that no one expects you to be a tourist. In the best cases, we stare back blankly when locals machine-gun respond to us in Italian, somewhat like untrained monkeys. In the worst cases, we exit to hyperventilate and make a mental note to never return to the establishment where our entire family legacy has just been tarnished. It’s a bit of an exaggeration but also, in a very real sense, our biggest challenge, maybe one of the only challenges, until now. There’s something almost indescribably frustrating and embarrassing about not being able to understand the simplest things in a new language. No matter how many degrees you have or how solid your CV is, not being to understand a cashier ask you if you want a bag or teenagers ask if you want whipped cream on your three gelato scoops, makes you feel so humbled that you almost disappear.
Finding time and energy for language study, or any other ‘nice to have’ has been very hard to come by in our first month. With a new job in a new country with new colleagues; a gorgeously demanding six month old; and the myriad of things one needs to do to set up life: internet, groceries, SIM cards, pediatricians, ironing, there’s not much juice left for other concerns. Dalia tries (and mostly succeeds) to squeeze in a workout during Aleksander’s morning nap and I’ve averaged one workout so far every two weeks (far from a blazing start!). We haven’t eaten out because of covid, we haven’t travelled because we don’t quite know where to begin, and we haven’t shopped much because it just hasn’t really made much sense yet. We did buy an espresso machine and are perfecting our morning cappuccinos. We’ve tried almost every gelato shop in our neighbourhood and manage about 3 – 5 cones per week. And we’ve narrowed down some solid pizza options and toppings for any given moment.
All in all, our first month has been great. We feel incredibly lucky for an opportunity like this at a time like this. We look forward to the eventual visits of friends and family; to Aleksander’s first steps in the streets of Rome; and to the ability to share our thanks and gratefulness with Rome and the Romans in their mother tongue, without embarrassing either side.
Dad In The World 