"Sweet" Redemption

For those of you who were shocked and appalled by our last news entry, maybe this will help you to forgive us.

On the way home from his last day of the work week, Charles took a detour on a bus through Zagarolo and ended up walking past a smell that his nose would not allow him to ignore. The smell came from a Sicilian bakery, and as his sniffer led him through the doorway he was overwhelmed by the sight of goodies galore. His saliva glands began to work overtime as he struggled to think of how he was going to manage to order some of these sweet treats.

In the typical manner of our communication, he showed the woman behind the counter his 5euro bill and let her decide what treats she would give. He came home proudly displaying a daintily wrapped package of seven Sicilian specialities.

After dinner we carefully opened the package and struggled to decide which treats should be eaten first, and which should be saved for last (and would any make it to tomorrow). There are no words to describe the light and delicious concoctions that we enjoyed, and so I will only say that you should let this be one more incentive to come visit us. These local goodies were so delicious that Allie plans to offer herself to the baker as a slave in order to learn even the most basic preparations for some of these heavenly treats.

Tomorrow is another Saturday market trip with Mariella, and you can bet that we will be doing our best to resist the urge to purchase more sinful desserts. Do not be surprised if the next time you see us we have gained 100 pounds, because each bite would be worth a pound of jiggly cellulite in itself.

We Have a Few Confessions to Make

We broke down. We gave up. We're so ashamed. We've done a bad thing. Okay, so it's not so bad but we had to tell you guys that after two months of resisting our nation's ultimate comfort food we finally broke down. We ate at a McDonald's. We loaded up on .50cent hamburgers and french fries and even a milkshake. I was so ashamed as I carried our giant pile of "food" back to our table. One bright spot was that we were able to eat outside with a view of Piazza di Repubblica and its beautiful fountain. Still though, we were ashamed that this was the American contribution to Rome and that we were supporting it. Oh well, we're not afraid to say it, it was good and we were starving. After we ate, we swore we would never do it again but then we lapsed back a few days later and ate at a Burger King by the Trevi Fountain.

That being said, we really are going to avoid eating there again, we were just feeling really homesick and Mickey D's is the closest thing to home for us. Now if we could just find a Taco Bell our lives would be able to complete the ultimate fast food trifecta.

Charles' First Day of School

Monday marked the official end of our nearly 4-month hiatus from working (aka the real world). Charles was the first of us to set out into the working world of the average Roman citizen. He teaches English to business men and women at a company called INAIL (in Rome's only skyscraper), as well as to Air Force personnel (mostly important generals and stuff). The day went well until the long hike home through dumping sheets of rain (it ended up raining about 8 inches through the day and night).

Allie starts work next Monday at another company and for the Air Force as well. It looks like we'll be getting closer to 30 hours each once our schedules are completely finalized in mid-October.

Today we were in Rome center, so we stopped by our favorite "exotic food" store and grabbed some comfort food: FAJITAS!! We got some cheddar cheese, sour cream, jalepenos and all of the exotic Mexican treats you people take for granted!

And as a side note for the interested parties: Charles was the winner of our tennis match (and the next one we played on Sunday).

Our Last Days of Laziness

Since Charles has to start work on Monday we decided to spend our last free weekend doing absolutely nothing! It was glorious. Actually we did go to the local market with Mariella and Donna. It's a really nice little market that has lots of good, cheap produce. After the market, we lazed about the house for a few hours. We decided to play tennis and Charles taught Allie how to serve like Serena Williams and hit a forehand like Steffi Graf (when they were just beginning at age 5). Tennis was fun and pretty much the most physically exhausting activity either of us has done in the last two months.

After we finished our grueling five set match, we sat around and chatted with our Romanian neighbors (Radu and Donna) for a couple of hours. We ate lots of sugary snacks and showed photos of our family and friends. The language barrier is still really tough but the more practice we get like that the better we'll get.

We're going to play tennis again on Sunday and Allie also has to help Charles figure out some lesson plans for Monday so he doesn't look like an ass.

Jobs at Last!

Well, after much stress, and a near move to Poland, we’ve finally done it! We were both hired today at a school. This is actually a school that we applied and interviewed with way back during our TEFL course. We probably would have been working already and saved ourselves an enormous amount of stress had we just given the guy a call at the beginning of the month like he told us to. What can I say; we’re slow learners.

And on to the fine print. To start with Charles will be working twenty hours a week, and Allie will be working 10 hours (still waiting to hear from another school on Monday, if no word there are more hours to come at the school we are current working for). We’re being paid twelve euros an hour (one of the highest in Rome) after tax, plus a travel bonus of five euros per day. The travel bonus is because the school doesn’t do much teaching in house but generally in the company’s office, so we’ll be commuting quite a bit. So combined we’ll be just a little under two thousand euros per month, which is quite good, and definitely enough to keep us here.

Now we’re relieved and finally feeling optimistic about our chances here in Rome. Now, as long as we can avoid being deported…

In the Beginning

In the beginning…this seems a little weird to write about moving to a place that we’re about to move away from. Most of you know the reasons we began our adventure abroad or maybe not. Sometimes we’re not even sure of the reasons but we’ll try our best to explain. We were in the midst of planning our wedding; we had the day picked out, the place, the kick ass band and quite a few other things simmering on the back burner of our minds. We were excited but totally stressed out at the same time, money being the main cause. The first question was how the heck were we supposed to earn all of this money prior to our chosen date? Then after saving we were to use it all for a few hours of entertaining a couple hundred of our closest friends and be left with no money leftover for our honeymoon to Italy? Selfish, right? Of course.

Soon we decided to forgo the big, elaborate two hundred person affair and go with the opposite approach to save money so we could have an even better and longer honeymoon in Italy. Even more selfish. This pattern of thinking gave way to a simple question, ‘How can we stay in Italy in order to truly learn about the food and culture, not just see the Colisseum and the Sistine Chapel?’

Our next thoughts centered on what kind of work we could do. We decided that teaching was something we could both do and all it required was paying for and passing a TEFL course (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). After researching the different TEFL programs, some in Seattle and some abroad, we decided to apply to a program in Rome. We made this decision a little over a year before we moved. We bought our plane tickets as soon as we could in order to prevent ourselves from backing out. Then we made the down payment for the class and everything else was set into motion.

The hardest part of the whole process wasn’t saving money or worrying about our safety in Italy but it was telling people that we were actually moving. Most people were like ‘Yeah, whatever, you are not.’ so we decided to kind of keep it mainly to ourselves for the first few months. We can remember when we had exactly one year before we moved and we thought to ourselves that the day was so far away and it would never come. Then it was six months, then three and time never stopped counting down and it seemed the day was coming faster and faster. Before we knew it, we were living in Federal Way and counting the days until we moved on our hands.

Not Dead Yet.

If you’ve read our previous posts, it would seem as if we had already moved out of the country. With a little shot of confidence we decided that we had to see this through and continue to try to find work. So we haven’t given up after all. In fact, we seem to be even more dead set on finding work.

The shot of confidence came at our darkest hour; we decided to call a friend from our TEFL course to see how she and her roommates were doing in their job searches. To our surprise, she had, in fact, been working for the past two weeks. She suggested we try the school she was working at and she knew of another that was hiring. Early Friday morning we went to Rome and followed up on her suggestions. Unfortunately, all of her schools teaching positions were full at the moment but the guy seemed certain that more hours would come available fairly soon. He also told us to lose our ‘anglo’ ways and be more aggressive when it comes to finding work in Italy; what seems annoying or pushy to us is just the way things get done here. Then we went to another interview and the woman told us that if she decided to hire us she would call by seven that evening. It goes without saying that the phone did not ring. That was a bit of a heartbreaker but we’ve got two more interviews next week and more applications to scatter throughout Rome. We’ve also decided to put up some flyers around Zagarolo for our services so hopefully more than a few people in town will be interested in learning English from us. I even applied at a pub in Rome; the bartender said the clientele is like 99 per cent English speaking, so my poor Italian wouldn’t make a difference.

In fact, while at that same pub we had a major moment of ‘Wow, it’s a small world!’ We met a couple of girls from Seattle, Kelly and Christine. Kelly was actually from Federal Way! They were both finishing up a month of studying Astronomy at the UW Rome satellite branch. We reminisced about all the great things about home and traded a few Rome war stories as well. It was fun to talk about home but it didn’t make us home sick; it really just made us want to succeed here even more.

The Death of a Dream?

The death of a dream? Most definitely not; we’ve seen sasquatch and we know that his legend’s real. Our dream is to live and work in Italy and this is just a minor set back in achieving that dream. We’ve come to learn that this is our typical ‘long way around’ pattern that we’ve been using for the last few months. You guys have seen it coming, the hours spent on busses and all of the other mistakes that could have been prevented with a little better preparation. We’re not chastising ourselves too badly, we’ve come to find it funny and it certainly makes for better reading, right? I mean, just imagine reading our website if everyday it said ‘Today, we visited (insert famous site here), it was (insert colorful adjective here), check out our pictures! Oh yeah, we got a little crazy and had a medium gelato and spoke to some locals that were perfectly friendly. Then we caught our bus home and fell asleep after another successful day!’ Super lame, right? Trust us, we would like to have a few completely successful days, and we have, but the real adventure lies in the muck ups.

This move to Poland will provide you guys with a million and one laughs. We don’t have a guidebook (If you’re reading this Rick Steves, get on it!), know a single thing about the language, the culture or the country aside from the fact that they’re willing to provide us with work. Right now, work and money are what’s most important for us (we’re truly Americans, after all), in order to keep the dream alive.

What We Were Thinking a Week Ago

So this job hunt thing is really tougher than we thought. Well, perhaps I should rephrase that; finding available jobs is easy but actually getting hired is very difficult due to our present legal standing in this country. Much like the early settlers of the west who were told that the California streets were paved with gold, we were told by most everyone that finding a job and working in Italy would be a breeze, even with less than legal status. I suppose, they were right about the availability of jobs, I mean, we literally had a women come to our house and offer us two jobs on silver platters. You’re asking what’s the problem, right? Well, we would have had jobs right then and there if it weren’t for one little (or huge) hang up. To the locals it’s known as the Permisso di Soggiorno, translated as “permission to stay”, and in order for a foreigner to stay longer than three months, work, or open a bank account, this little piece of paper is a necessity. This little piece of paper is not easy to get. We even went to our embassy searching for a friendly face with helpful information, but what we got was shot down. Without even a hint of hope we were told that we cannot legally stay in this country, and that, in fact, our looking for work while here as a tourist is illegal in itself.

So? What’s the problem with being illegal, right? Well, for us there are a few problems:

1. We don’t like the idea of keeping our money under our mattress since we can’t have a bank account.
2. There’s no telling when and if we could get caught and be asked to leave the country (in which case we would be coming home with our tails between our legs, and we are not ready to come home).
3. If asked to leave the country we may be slapped with a hefty fine, or even asked never to come back.
4. If we get kicked out of the country it will likely hurt our chances of being able to reenter with a permesso on a legal basis sometime in the future.
5. There are currently openings for teachers in other countries that are much easier for foreigners to legally acquire, and those openings may not be there a month from now if we were to get kicked out of Italy.

These are just a few of the problems we have with being an illegal resident in a country we love, and for these reasons and for our own sanity we are accepting teaching jobs in Poland.

Take a minute, compose yourself….there, it’s not so bad is it? Poland is a country desperate to learn English, their teachers are paid well and given great benefits, and the country is a great central location for all of our traveling adventures (so don’t cancel your flights yet). Plus, we figure that while we are in Poland (getting TEFL teaching experience to add to our resumes) we can research the Italy VISA situation and try and get ourselves back in under a legal standing for next fall’s hiring boom.

Sorry it's Been So Long!

Hey everyone, we've been busy, er, without internet access for the most part in Zagarolo but we're still writing at home so we'll do some major posting soon. Some of it may shock! But we're hanging in there. Allie and I had interviews today, Allie did well and she might have a shot, we'll know by 8 tonight. I crashed and burned though. We also have another interview tomorrow, the place is hiring a lot of teachers so hopefully we'll get hired on with them.

We're enjoying our little town of Zagarolo quite a bit. The people are very, very friendly probably because we're a bit of a freak show (because we're American). The butcher is our new best friend and the internet point guy is probably worried about us because we haven't been in for a few days. We're working on our internet access for our house right now, hopefully this evening we'll get it figured out...who knew dial-up was so complicated?

Anyway, we'll get all of our stories up as soon as we can.

The Job Hunt Saga Continued...

It was our first English teaching interview! In fact, it was more of an audition as we were asked to be there from 3-8 and to teach some lessons. We arrived just before 3, in a bit of a sweaty rush after our long night on the pub crawl and countless conversations wondering what would be expected of us. We didn’t know if the school taught scripted style lessons (where you basically just read from a workbook and do activities all laid out for you) or whether we would be required to create our own lesson plans as we had practiced in our TEFL training course. We soon found out.

Shortly after arriving we were given about two seconds of instruction, a handbook, and an eagerly awaiting student. This, to say the least, was slightly intimidating. We decided to dive in and do our best, but we were both feeling uneasy and fearful that our student would have a grammar question that we were not prepared to answer. Unfortunately for our students, this did happen, and we could only do our best to avoid the question and move on cursing ourselves that we didn’t bring some grammar cheat sheets we saved from our TEFL course.

We did our lessons, spoke to some of the regular employees and decided that basically this school sucks. They do a sort of round-robin with their students, shuffling them from one teacher to the next for each lesson, which doesn’t make much sense because most teachers should want to monitor their students’ progress and know where to begin the next lesson. Also, each student uses the same workbooks, which can’t possibly meet the needs of every student. Imagine that you know a second language fairly well, and you want to improve your knowledge of business linguistics for that particular language; does it make sense that you should be using the same workbook as a 16-year-old who is studying to pass her high school exams? Of course not. There were a few students who we wanted to tell to go to Interlingue where they could get a proper English education.

In the end, we did what was asked of us to the best of our ability, and we were paid for our efforts, so we decided that if this school asks us to work for them, we are not in a position to say no simply for the fact that we need to eat. Of course, we are hoping other schools will call us for interviews soon, so that we at least have the option.

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Contrary to what many of you read, things in Italy are really tough for us. It seems as if we’re in constant limbo. If we’re not waiting to move to Italy, we’re waiting to find an apartment and if it’s not an apartment we’re waiting for, it’s a job. You get the drift. We’ve been putting in applications, sending out emails and checking the job postings on the net but it seemed like we would never get an offer. Even though we were told to be patient, as most schools do their hiring towards the middle or even end of September, it just seems like we’ve been waiting forever. Payments back home and provisions needed here are causing us much stress during this waiting period.

We decided that we must try to remain here by any means necessary. Armed with our newfound creed and an oncoming sense of desperation we contacted a guy about a job leading pub crawls near the Coliseum. Not exactly what we had in mind moving to Rome but if it pays the bills, then it’ll do until we can find proper jobs. So Thursday at 21:30 (9:30) we’re meeting Francesco for a pub crawl and if they like us and we like them, we will start working for him. Don’t worry, we aren’t planning to make a career out of this but to only use this as a possible stop-gap until we find teaching work. It’s just that it has been so long since either of us has worked it’s starting to get to us plus it’ll be fun to meet some new people. The pay isn’t great but we get free drinks! Ha ha.

Finally Some Good News

Although it has only been two days and we know better, we were starting to think our phone wasn’t working. We were feeling pretty good about at least working with the pub crawl possibility. As we were getting lunch ready, the phone rang! We were surprised because the phone never rings. On the other end, it was the secretary from the first school we visited on Monday. She asked us both to be at the school on Friday at 15:00 to 20:00 (3:00 til 8:00) and that we would be teaching lessons! I guess it’s like a performance interview. We’ll keep our fingers crossed, put on our best and brightest smiles and hopefully kill them with our personalities. We’re not exactly sure what it’s going to be like but it’s a start and we’re really excited to even get an audition.

It feels like a massive weight has been lifted off our shoulders and we are finally starting to believe that we can make it here and that people weren’t just b.s’ing us about the job opportunities in Rome. We’ll try not to get too excited at this point because the school could be awful or a million other problems could occur but we’ll definitely be riding high during our pub crawl try out this evening.

Welcome to Villa Verde

A funny thing happened on the way to Spain, we really wanted to get back to Italy. Back to job hunting and our very own cottage, just to be settled down again and a return to normalcy. I wish I knew the Italian word for normalcy but that is a whole other topic/headache. Our landlord, Dante, picked us up from the Zagarolo train station and helped us get situated in our cottage. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and he offered to bring us a little lunch which we graciously accepted and devoured. Another pleasant surprise was that he brought us a couple bottles of the wine he makes. He also offered to show us where the supermarket was so we would be able to get some dinner. After the trip to the supermarket we were absolutely wiped out, we took a nice long nap and then made dinner. After dinner we watched a few episodes of Sex and the City (I’ve got Carrie-fever) and called it a night. Unfortunately, right before bedtime, Allie noticed a freaking scorpion that was trapped in a glass on the hutch in the kitchen! That gave us a bit of a fright and we started looking all over for the buggers. Surprisingly, this didn’t affect our sleep because we both fell asleep very quickly.

Saturday morning we went with Dante and his wife Marielle, and the Romanian couple, Radu and Donna, who live in the chalet, to the weekly market. It’s a nice market with one part having fruit, veggies, bread and cheeses and the other having clothes and home supplies. After the market, we spent the day doing all of the laundry we hadn’t done for the previous month. In our defense, we had done laundry, it was just all by hand so nothing every really got as clean as the machine gets it. You all have no idea how truly amazing clean clothes and fabric softener actually smelsl. While the laundry was doing its thing, we went swimming and also inspected the grounds a little more thoroughly.

Zagarolo is a pretty affluent area, Dante told us about a few television stars that live in the area but he was most proud to mention that Ursula (Anders), the quintessential Bond girl, lives in the area. He showed us a few places she likes to shop and where she bought her bread too. We suspect he has a little crush on her.

On Sunday, we sat around the war room and mapped out our strategy for dropping off applications on Monday. After we were satisfied, we gladly finished off the two bottles of Dante’s wine and went off to bed with hope in our heads and wine in our bellies.

La Tomatina 2006

It all goes down when The Ham hits the ground!

We arrived in Bunol before sunrise on Wednesday morning with our newfound friends. As we entered the city, even at this early hour you could tell the place was ready to blow up. People had slept/were sleeping in the town squares, beer gardens were being set up, sangria was being chilled and the locals were giving us the "you guys are idiots" eye.

After milling around through the town we made it to the center of the action around 10 A.M. The fight takes place along one street and about 35 to 40 thousand people crowd the street. All of the action begins around a 30 foot wooden pole that is covered in a thick coating of lard. At the top of the pole is a Ham Leg that is tied securely. As is tradition, the tomato fight won't begin until someone has climbed all the way up the pole and cut the Ham Leg down.

As the crowd grows bigger and bigger, people begin to converge upon the Ham Pole. Whomever cuts the Ham down from the greased pole becomes an instant hero. It takes all morning for people to keep climbing and climbing, each time taking a little more of the lard off the pole. In the meantime, the crowd begins to grow restless and evermore drunk. Traditional chants begin and the crowd grows into a fever pitch each time someone reaches new heights on the pole. It's a hilarious sight to see grown men climbing over each other and pulling each other down in attempts to be the hero of the festival. One girl made it really far up and just when she was about to reach the Ham, some guy had climbed up and grabbed her ankle to bring her down and dash her hopes of being the heroine. The crowd didn't like that and he was booed unmercifully. So this dance continues for the better part of the morning until finally there is a victor.

Once the Ham drops, a cannon sounds and the crowd goes berserk. The first thing that happens is that firehoses drench the crowd from every corner and direction. There is no escape. Then four dump trucks rumble down the street and part the crowd. Inside the dump trucks there are people who are throwing tomatoes at the crowd and then the truck dumps much of its load onto the streets. Then its basically kill or be killed; for an hour we were trying to avoid getting blasted by tomatoes and the water cannons. Though its impossible to do either. Sounds like fun, right?

After an hour, another cannon blast marks the end of La Tomatina. Everyone, looking dazed and confused starts to wander towards the community showers or in search of their lost flip flop. What was once the smell of a delicious tomato becomes the sunbaked stench of rotten tomato, stale beer and human stench. Most people are completely covered with tomato pulp and white shirts have become pink.

We met up with our international team of tomato throwers (which we had lost in the madness) and made our way towards the train station. Most people stay and party through out the day but we were exhausted and decided to get the hell out of dodge. The train ride was awful, the acrid stench of tomatoes was everywhere, our clothes were still sopping wet but the tomato on our skin had dried nicely.

Once we made it back to the hotel, we showered up and took an excellent siesta. We were exhausted but exhilirated and the team made plans to go out for a night on the town, which ended at exactly 24 hours from the time we caught our cab into Bunol to start the day (6 A.M.).

We had a great time and would gladly do it again with any of our friends or family who might be interested in a wild and crazy event like this.

We also bought a disposable camera but it got completely drenched so we're not exactly sure how those pics will turn out but if they do, we'll definitely add them to the page.

Our Holiday in Spain

Our trip to Spain began on Saturday the 27th. We had to spend the night in the airport because our flight was a few minutes past 7a.m. Sunday morning and busses and subways in Rome don’t begin running until around 5a.m. We wouldn’t have possibly been able to make it to the airport the requisite two hours prior to flight as is recommended. We thought about staying at a hotel near the airport but again, the shuttles from the hotels don’t begin to run until it would have been too late. Surprisingly, sleeping on the floor of the airport isn’t as fun or as comfortable as you might think.

We ended up only getting a few hours of sleep on Saturday night/Sunday morning but we were really excited to finally be on our way to Spain. The hotel was nice though a little far out of the action of city center Valencia. After taking a well needed nap in our room we ventured to the city center on the train. Valencia is a really beautiful city with architectural contributions from the Romans and Arabs. So you really find an amazing mix of religious architecture walking in the city.

We enjoyed a nice paella dinner in a picturesque square (there is a picture) while also imbibing on some nicely chilled Sangria. On that note, we called it a night and headed back to our hotel. It was a nice night but it left us wondering if this was all Valencia had to offer?

The next day we decided that we had to meet some people and make some new friends. When I was in the lobby I overheard a few English speakers talking about La Tomatina so I decided that we should meet these people. Later that day, we introduced ourselves and decided to meet up for a beer in the hotel restaurant. Joe, a Canadian from Montreal, had made his way by himself to Valencia via Paris. The other two we met were Diana and Anthony, a brother and sister from Sydney, Australia. Over the course of a couple beers we discovered we were all in Valencia for La Tomatina and with this common bond we became fast friends. We decided to form a team of sorts and travel to the festival together. It was a great night and Allie and I felt really excited that we had finally met and made friends with some English speakers for the first time in nearly two months

The Things We’ve Learned So Far (in no particular order)

1. Italian women do shave, Dutch women, however, do not.
2. Never vacation in Rome during August, the weather is miserable and three quarters of the town is on vacation themselves.
3. We are not above picking up something of use found on the street, ie a beach towel and a cool pair of sunglasses.
4. Italians love to talk to themselves, at the beach, on a bus, at a restaurant, etc
5. Italians have an extremely high tolerance for their neighbors’ dogs that bark throughout the day and night.
6. Cheap but good beer and wine are a right not a privilege.
7. Expect to wait upwards of 20 minutes for a bus that you will be on for 5 minutes.
8. “Ciao” means hello and goodbye.
9. Charles can actually tan but is more likely to burn.
10. The Internet still hasn’t really “caught on” around here.
11. Charles can still read and actually enjoys it.
12. Italians believe in changing the name of the street on every block in effort to confuse foreigners.
13. Being “on time” in Rome is the same as 15 minutes late in the States.
14. Italians aren’t as vain as most of the world supposes, otherwise they couldn’t walk around with growths on their faces big enough to require their own postal code.
15. “Uriney Goodness” more on that later.
16. Romans of all ages are more obsessed with the ‘latest and greatest’ cellphone, even more so than Americans.
17. There are still tomatoes that taste like tomatoes.
18. If you ride a motorcycle, you don’t have to obey the traffic laws. In fact, if you do obey them, you will probably get hit by a car driver not obeying the traffic laws.
19. Lunch with our landlord was painless and delicious.
20. Italians clap when their plane lands.

The Eternal Urinal

Ah, the smells of Roma. Enticing open air markets tickle our olfactory senses with the smells of fresh baked bread, aged cheeses, deliciously salty cured meats and fish freshly plucked from the sea. Walking down the neighborhood streets, the local trattoria and ristorante seize upon the stomach hunger pangs of tourists and locals alike. Wander past one of the many gelateria and sweet smells of ice cream flavors undreamt of in the United States will accost your nose, wallet, and waistline at the same time.

With all of these wonderful smells, all the time; what could possibly be wrong? I’ll tell you in two simple words: ‘Uriney Goodness’. This ‘Uriney Goodness’ pours out of so many of the lesser tourist trampled areas of the city (pun intended). It lurks around corners and at bus stops to confront the nose with its acrid stench. Of course, these corners and bus stops aren’t the ones most tourists are going to happen upon on their way to the Fontana di Trevi or the Basilica di San Pietro. Trust us, those places are remarkably well taken care of.

This begs the question, is it indicative of the citizenry of Roma that they’ll allow and accept the Eternal City to become the Eternal Urinal? Or is this simply the plight of all of the worlds major cities, Seattle included? We’re not even sure that Romans even care or notice this, I suppose to them it’s like the sun above; it’s just always been there. Maybe in some manner, it’s like a dog marking its territory, in a way (or maybe just in my twisted head), they’re letting the tourists know whose city Roma really is. Maybe it’s the end result of a discontented citizenry and their way to release some anger toward their political leadership.

Nah, on second thought, it’s probably that they simply don’t want to pay 70 cents for using a toilet.