Notes from Rome
I recently spent a few days in Rome, riding buses and walking around the main tourist sites. As a lone female, and quite obviously an American tourist, I expected some amount of harassment not only from those who prey on tourists, but also from Italians who aren't too happy with the United States right now. I was pleasantly surprised to encounter only the typical annoyances and inefficiencies of moving around an unfamiliar urban area.
While jet-lagged at three in the morning, I sketched some of my thoughts, for those of you who are interested:
I walked with my hand clamped over the zipped closure of my daybag, and as I approached Termini [the central train station] I steeled myself for a gauntlet of pickpockets, beggars, touts, and romeos. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the central section was a modern, clean shopping mall, and that people were simply rushing past in the familiar, urban way of transit stations in Boston or New York. No one singled me out or bothered me, because they were too busy with their own agendas. They were either rushing past just like Boston commuters (if much more kempt and stylish), or they were more harried and lost than I was: lots of people were dragging suitcases and yelling to each other in English about where they were going or who’s got the map. Everyone without luggage had a cell phone clamped to their ear.
I needed food and a metro ticket and had no idea where to find either, but I knew that I couldn’t stand around the station and stare. I started using the perpetual-motion-with-zero-data algorithm that I use in cities: I pick a likely direction and stride off trying to look like I know exactly what I’m doing, and once that peters out, I charge off in a different direction as if I’d meant to all along. I rely on the crowds and large spaces to disguise the fact that I’m circling around like an idiot, and I quarter the space until I have a better lay of the land and can find a landing spot.
I also adopted my urban face, the one where I attempt to radiate “I had a really bad day and I am -so- late to something far from here and don’t you even THINK about getting in my face.” I hope to convey a sort of abstract grumpiness, no attack on anyone actually around me, but a discouragement against bothering me.
I don’t know whether those things actually made a difference, but I wasn’t approached at all until I was in a grocery store below the station, of all places. I was finally standing still, and I’m sure I was looking out of place and bewildered, because I had walked through the whole store three times without finding anything resembling breakfast cereal and was about to start my fourth circuit. (I was jet-lagged, hungry, and perseverating.) A woman came up to me jabbering in Italian in a way that sounded like begging, but I just said “Non capisco” and turned away, leaving her trying a few other phrases before yelling “Money!” at my retreating back.
Later, as I left Termini with my groceries, a man standing around the door did start talking at me in Italian, but I completely ignored him and strode by, and he didn’t even follow me. My friend K traveled to Rome by herself earlier this year, and her advice about the Italian men who approach women on the street seems to be very good: don’t make eye contact at all, and just treat them like they’re trying to sell cheap knockoff goods on the sidewalk (which some of them actually are). And she’s right - I didn’t understand the Italian, but his tone sure sounded like “Hey lady, you want sunglasses? I got the best in town, they just fell off a truck…” That made it much easier to just ignore him like a buzzing fly, and walk by without feeling overly bothered or frightened.
(I have further thoughts on flirtation, harassment, and cultural differences, which I'll post another time.)
A minute later, a rushed-looking woman dragging a suitcase asked me in British English if that was the way to Termini, so I must have eventually succeeded at looking like I knew were I was, at least to other lost tourists!
In retrospect, I realize that Rome was under tremendously heightened security while I was there, and that the huge presence of police and security guards that I saw in almost all public and touristed areas is probably what kept away the gangs of pickpockets that had bothered almost everyone else I’ve read or spoken with who has traveled to Rome.