HUM 325 Week 2

Rome is the most amazing place I have ever been. Yes, I have not been many places, but Rome, it just makes me feel warm inside. Maybe it is because I have been longing to be in this breathtaking, magnificent country since I was a young child, or maybe it is because that is what Rome does to people. Not only does Rome have incredible food, superb art, astonishing history, and brilliant culture, but as Barzini explains, it also has a “fatal charm” that people just cannot resist.

Everything I do here, from looking out the window in my room, to looking out the window on the train, from stepping outside our building, to stepping off the train at Termini, all I want to do is smile. Because I’m in Roma! It’s completely exhilarating! No matter how sick, tired, annoying, or moody I am, all I think about it how warm I feel inside and how all I want to do is smile. I just cannot help it. Everything about Rome, Castel Gandolfo, Italy, just blows my mind.

“Our feelings for cities, like our feelings for people, are always rather confused, with all sorts of things mixed in,” Ginznurg states in Such is Rome. The city is a “jungle of automobiles” with dangerous, crazed drivers, and it’s filled with foreigners to the point that sometimes natives cannot sit at mass without visitors taking pictures of the church. The metro is so crowded due to a shortage of more being built because ruins are constantly being found. There are gypsies everywhere. It is so difficult to get around because all the streets curve and the maps sometimes just do not make sense. But to me, all of the flaws of Rome give it more character.

Yes, the city can be overwhelming. The constant rush, the never ending history and ruins, the fear of being robbed, the foreigners, the transportation system, and so on and so on. But saying you do not like a city for it’s flaws is just like saying you would not date a guy because you do not like his accent, or his parents, or anything else. Everything and everyone has it’s flaws, but it has it’s upsides as well. You date the guy because of his smile, the way he looks at you, the way he makes you laugh. Just like you love the city because of the way it makes you smile, the fresh air, the fresh food, the school kids playing cards on the train, the old Signora sitting on the bus, the child smiling at you as you walk down the street. The little things. It’s the little things that add up that make you love that someone, or that city, Rome. As Ginzburg says, “This is the Rome today, which I no longer like, which no one seems to like, and yet we all love it, for the truth is that cities, like people, are loved for no reason at all or for a tangle of reasons, different for everyone.”