a similar symbol and acronyms was on the television, marketing the plight of pandas throughout the 1980s. I therefore assumed it was some Italian version of the World Wildlife Fund, with the letters changed to reflect the different sentence structure of the Italian language.
I was asked to come back tomorrow and do some preliminary tests. Here started my career in the United Nations. Buried in the bowels of HR administration procedures, where nobody ever referred to the organisation in full but only by acronym, before the days of branding, websites, email, the need to have a market ‘presence’ and a corporate identity, I diligently managed tasks and processed documents, wondering why there was always so much reference in them to rice and the costs of shipping, while pandas were hardly mentioned at all. It turned out I was not, in fact, working for the World Wildlife Fund but for the World Food Programme of the United Nations. I was equally happy, however, to be working for the world’s largest humanitarian organisation providing emergency food to millions of people in times of natural disasters, war and famine.
A few years after I had been living in Rome, I met a diplomat at a toga party. We were side by side, pushing a supermarket trolley disguised as a ‘chariot’ and in which rode his wife, around a circular driveway as part of a race against other party guests. It was after the belly dancing display but before the fake human sacrifice. Here started my stint in Foreign Affairs.
I was happy and peaceful for the first time I could remember since I was a young child. The day I realised this, I was walking down my street on the way to the shops and something stopped me in my tracks. I stood on the footpath, wondering what this thing was that I was experiencing, this difference that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I was missing something, and the thing that had gone had been so much a part of me for so long that its absence made me feel something was wrong. I realised that it was the absence of anxiety. So this is what peace feels like, I thought.
So the man who took my breath away the first time I ever set eyes on him was kept at a distance for six more years before I was sure that giving up my singleness was going to be worth it. And it was. Like winning the raffle ticket all those years before, marrying Alfredo felt like I had won first prize again.
My heart responded to Italy’s maternal character, the firm agreement that everyone needs to be cared for and forgiven. The greeting of each other every morning, the time taken to chat for a few minutes before serving the customer, the acknowledgement of each other as humans that have good days and bad days. And, as we all have bad days, the forbearance of someone who is having one, not expecting too much of them, giving them time and space, frustrating as that is if you are waiting for them to cut your hair, cash your cheque, make your sandwich or answer your call. You know that it will be the same on the day you need others to wait for you.
Twenty years here has included setting up my own practice working as a Management Consultant for international foreign affairs organisations and flying to over thirteen different countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East; working for the United Nations emergency response, development and health organisations in Geneva, Rome, Budapest, Barbados, Bonn and Dakar; hearing Fidel Castro speak live on May Day in Havana, Cuba, and having my hire car commandeered by his soldiers with me as their designated driver for the day; taking a train back to Australia via Russia and Mongolia; co-driving a hovercraft to Capri; and never ever having to own a car.
I have had the chance to get to know Rome, my love, very well; its history, its failings, its short-sightedness, its arrogance, its self-doubt and its secrets. I have had the chance to give tours of it, write about it and apply my natural curiosity as a social anthropologist to its inhabitants, its myths, beliefs and identity.
This book is a personal guide to a city seen from the inside. It is an insider’s experience of the mystery, misery and magnificence which is modern-day Rome. It includes important facts, such as why Sunday is a re-enactment of the Middle Ages, what ‘The Changeover’ means and when to do it, when it is okay to go calling in your pyjamas, what to do on a day off in Rome, tips for how to survive the blistering heat, and how to recognise and take advantage of a money laundering enterprise.
Like all infatuations, I expected my feelings for Rome to wear off and decided that I would leave when I no longer noticed the Coliseum, when I treated it as just another roundabout for traffic, the way the locals do. I am still waiting.
Chapter 1
Liars, food wars and spring in Italy
I’ve had the opportunity to host a lot of visitors during my seventeen years in Rome. It is always difficult, mostly because they think you are constantly lying. Like when you tell them that if they plug the hairdryer in at the same time as the washing machine there will be a power blackout. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes in the whole apartment block, even though Italy is one of the seven most industrialised countries in the world.
Or when you tell them about springtime. That just a few short weeks before April the city is bare and freezing cold and that in a few weeks, just after April finishes, the city will be sunburnt and exhaustingly hot. It is hard amidst the lush, cool, waving green foliage and brilliant flowers to imagine the city bare, or that the air could ever warm up so much that you don’t want to be outside.
But both are true. Rome’s electricity grid was built for another time. The amount of electricity allotted per household is not usually enough for more than one or two electrical appliances. Fridge and washing machine, okay. Fridge, washing machine, hairdryer, not okay. Fridge and hot water heater, okay. Fridge, hot water heater, DVD player and several lights, not okay. There are many different combinations. Most of them I have learnt well by now, but guests take about two or three days, and several power cuts, before they believe me.
Guests are often also intrigued by the electric sockets in our apartment. Each one is an individual, like a snowflake. Some have two thin holes, some have two thick holes. Some have three thick holes, some have three thin holes, and some have two thick holes and one thin hole in the middle. They each require a different kind of adaptor. It’s okay though, most hardware stores sell many kinds of adaptors. It seems to be easier to make an adaptor than standardise electrical sockets in Italy.
The electrical sockets in my apartment are, for my guests, a good introduction into Italian society. If guests can accept that within the parameters of electrical sockets there may be a world of difference, that no two sockets may be alike, and that you need to adapt to them rather than vice versa, then it helps them to understand Italian society. Italy as a society is rigid with rules, bureaucracy, rituals and traditions that are slow to change. It is therefore important that within these structures that keep Italy essentially Italian, individuals be allowed to express themselves and flourish. This means that room is made for everyone to be different in their own way.
This is reflected in the traffic and in Italian politics. In spite of the enormous amounts of congestion and time it takes to get anywhere, if someone wants to stop or slow down and have a conversation with a person on a motorino, a moped, driving next to them, everyone waits. If someone wants to cross three lanes of traffic at the last minute everyone lets them do so, without tooting. If someone is in a hurry and doesn’t want to queue at the toll booth they just drive up to the front of the line and someone will let them in.
In Italian politics, the ruling party is usually made up of a spectrum of smaller parties all joined together from the full breadth of left to right. It explains the constant elections and referendums at a State, province, and city level, and the occasional dissolution of the government due to a lack of a quorum.
Individual rights to opinions, at whatever the cost, is highly tolerated as a collective principle. Each person is made room for in their uniqueness, while being supported by communal traditions
