Rates of exchange

I have never been so short-changed as I have here in Rome. Shop assistants charge me double; waiters add and subtract dishes from my bill seemingly at random; at the market, the first delicious fragoline (tiny wood strawberries) of the season cost 5 euros at one stall, 2 euros at another.

In the supermarket on the Corso Vittorio Emmanuelle, wine is cheap; milk is expensive.

I am carrying back from the supermarket, a six-pack of litre bottles of water; a litre of milk, a bottle of red wine and a jar of Nutella, along with less substantial groceries. The supermarket bag handles are starting to cut into my palms. How does everyone else manage? I don't see Romans hauling the sacs a roulettes I see in Paris. Do they have it all delivered? Do they just not eat?

When I reach the Piazza Navona, I have to sit down. I don't want to sit in the Piazza at this time of day. I love the Piazza in the morning when the sun has hardly risen and the square is a deep shadow-gulley with only the whirr of the cleaning truck and the clank of waiters putting out the endless rows of cafe chairs. But later in the day, the portrait artists arrive;the tour groups, the school trips, the men selling battery-powered toys, sunglasses, cheap jewellery.

The famous Bernini fountain is under wraps for restoration. It's plasticized outline fills the whole of the square. Nevertheless, Navona is crammed with people who stand and turn on the spot and try and try to see. They peer through the windows in the plastic that shrouds the sculptures, sometimes catching the angle of an elbow, a knee.

The groups in the middle of the square - teenagers and coach tours who cannot afford the cafes' prices, stand disconsolately or sit on the edges of the two smaller unwrapped fountains. They look at the people in the cafes. The people in the cafes, sitting in compariative and expensive comfort, look back.

As I pass the corner of Viccolo della Pace, the waiter from Tre Scalini says,

A table for lunch, Signora?

It's 10.30am

No, grazie.

A table, Signora? How many?

No. Grazie!

I hold out my hand in a basta gesture and walk away.

I have to sit down. There are no public benches in Rome. People sit on the walls of fountains, on steps. At the monument to King - built, with staggering arrogance, to dwarf the Imperial Forum on the Piazza Venezia, there is a notice requiring visitors not to sit on the steps as such lack of respect for this national monument would offend the Italian people. On chuches of far greater architectural and historical importance; on ancient Roman sites, there are no such notices. Romans, disrespectfully, have nicknamed. the interfereing monument the Big White Typewriter.

Like the teenaged and old-aged tour groups without the money the cafes, I sit on the edge one of the fountains where a group of ragazzi (boys) are noting with pleasure that one of the stone tritons is blowing water out through his nostrils.

As soon as I sit down, the street sellers arrive: a man selling Italia football shirts and lycra shorts decorated with a picture of the stone genitals of Michaelangelo's David; another with small magnets which buzz when tossed in the air. They offer me the magnets, the shorts.

No, grazie.

Signora?

No, grazie.

A man selling cheap metal and enamel jewellery takes my hand and folds it around a necklace.

I try to give it back but he backs away, hovvering at a safe distance.

Five Euro, Signora. Only five Euro!

He won't take it back.

You want to give it to me?

For you, two Euro, only two Euro.

If you want to give it to me, I'll take it. But I don't want to buy anything.

One Euro? Signora?

But I don't want it.

I lay the necklace on the fountain. He picks it up and leaves but as soon as he moves on, another moves in.

Rosa, Signora, Roses?

Please

One rosa; only two Euro!

don't try to sell me anything.

I am irrationally and suddenly angry.

I stand up.

I stand unecessarily close to him.

He's wearing a long, brown djebellah which smells strongly of sweat. I don't know whether it's brown from dirt and age, or whether this is it's natural colour.

I look directly into his eyes, which are very close to mine. There isn't any Piazza Navona any more. Just this man and me.

I say, quietly and as firmly as possible,

Go Away.

Signora?

Louder

Go. Away.

I'm not quite sure what I'm prepared to do at this point. Luckily, nor is he.

After a long moment:

Ok, Signora,

he says. I go away.

...

Round the corner, at Caffe della Pace, I drink prosecco. The waitress brings me unasked-for olives, peanuts and elaborately lumpy spicy-flavoured lumps.

I begin to feel bad about the man in Navona; about the bartenders, the shopkeepers; the market stallholders. After all, it works the other way too: grocers put extra oranges in my bag after I've paid; waiters forget to charge me for dessert; this morning, a flowerseller ran up to gave me a perfect canna lily, the stalk broken too short to use in his display.

I think all transactions in Italy are just less fixed; more open to negotiation which offends my firmly entrenched, Anglo-Saxon sense of fixed value. Italians are also more willing to enter casually into negotiation, and expect you to haggle even if you don't want what they're offering.

I finish my prosecco. Although this is one of the most fashionable cafes in the area, the bill is much small. Wine is cheap: milk is expensive. But I can't get the waitress's attention. I leave the money on the table, along with a generous tip to make up for what? For not asking for the bill? For the peanuts? For the flower-seller? I wonder whether the staff will think I've skipped without paying. I do not want another encounter of any kind.

I'm half-way down the street when the waitress catches up with me.

She touches my arm.

4 euros, please.

I look at her. She looks anxious. She is younger than me. She doesn't want to be asking this question.

It's ok - I left it on the table.

She believes me. It's funny. I laugh; she laughs. I have paid correctly the correct sum which has been correctly demanded of me. We are both relieved.

Comments

[nancy]

i feel your pain...i have experienced what you have experienced in italy every single i have been there so needless to say, even though i think the country is quite beautiful....it just becomes bit too much for me after a while. (and btw, you should check out "lola is beauty" blog, she has a post from a few days ago...you migt find handy! ;)

[nancy]

i feel your pain...i have experienced what you have experienced in italy every single i have been there so needless to say, even though i think the country is quite beautiful....it just becomes bit too much for me after a while. (and btw, you should check out "lola is beauty" blog, she has a post from a few days ago...you migt find handy! ;)

[badaude]

I love the lola is beauty post!
(http://lolaisbeauty.blogspot.com/2008/04/indispensable.html). Thank you for leading me to it.
The question for most Brits, who know perfectly well when to complain in their own country, exactly WHEN is it OK to completely lose it in a different culture? We stil seem to be in E M Forsterland when we cross the Italian border. It reminds me of a terrible Englishwoman I met in a perfectly lovely small restaurant just of the Piazza Farnese. Recognising me as a fellow-Brit, and unable to allow herself to complain to the staff, she hissed to me (somehow feeling the need to use French 'devant les etrangers'), "I don't think you will like it here. I ordered 'un peu d'ag-new' but it is all bones!"

[Alice]

You paint the scene so well, I can almost see myself there with you... As much as I love Italy, I agree that it can be frustrating. And as much as I know I SHOULD be able to speak Italian, I've never made enough of an effort to learn the language. So whenever I've been there, I've had to fumble with either French or English -- but more often than not, English!

It can be tough at times in Italy, but AH, the beauty -- and the gelato! -- truly make up for it, don't they? ;-)

I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay!

[badaude]

...and the coffee, the still, cool mornings, the hot middays, the priests on mopeds... It's about 90% great, which is a pretty fine score. Hope all's going well with you, Alice!