Here are some little odds and ends you might find helpful when you’re in Rome:

Security screening:  You will find x-ray and other screening devices at the airport and at some selected historical sites around Rome. Don’t panic: they are only kidding. In the U.S., each person is assumed to be a terrorist. In Rome, they pretty much assume you’re a nice person. So you will often find the devices screaming warnings that your bag should be checked, or you should be searched for knives, explosives or other weapons of mass destruction. The same thing happened to the person in front of you, and the same will probably happen to the person behind you. No one pays attention to these alarms.

In the U.S., you would most likely be tackled and thrown to the ground—not in Italy.  Even if they are paying attention, which is rare, they will usually shrug at the alarm and hustle you right on through. In a way it restores faith in humanity. These people trust you, and its nice to see that in these times.  Sure they have their machine guns, but it’s pretty much a dress-up kind of thing for the tourists. You gotta love these people!

Parking:  It’s nearly impossible to park legally in Rome, and few people get tickets.  When you do get a ticket, it’s a big one, and it’s usually delivered by three, yes three, polizia municipale. One writes the ticket, one deals sympathetically with the irate owner of the vehicle and a third stands by watching it all happen. And don’t think you can ignore a ticket just because you are an American and about to leave the country. They have good memories here. For instance, due to a minor infraction years ago in Modena, I will never be able enter that town again to buy a bottle of its famous “aceto balsamico” without legal peril. The ticket followed me all the way back to the U.S. of A and I can’t for the life of me remember paying it, a possible oversight on my part. It was big.

Paper products:  They are precious and hoarded here. In the U.S., we take napkins by the stack, have brochures, maps, advertisements ad nauseam. Not here. Italy does not have a lot of forests left having harvested them for the past several thousand years, so paper is treated with great respect. Now there’s a downside to this in the sense that there is a great lack of printed information available to visitors of nearly all of the famous sites.  And even in the more upscale restaurants you may find yourself wiping your lips on your sleeve for want of a decent napkin. 

In many places, you can rent headphones for an audio tour, but brochures are usually unavailable.  Instead, you need to read up  in your guidebooks (hopefully purchased in the U.S. before you leave) on what you’re going to visit. There are few things more frustrating to a traveler than to be in a famous place and not know why. And it’s even worse when everyone around you is “oohing and aahing” taking pictures, and you can’t figure out why.

Cappuccino:  First, Italians usually don’t drink cappuccino in the afternoon. It’s considered a morning drink, and respectable Romans drink espresso after the noon hour.  Oh, you can get a cappuccino anytime of the day or night, but you will be identifying yourself as a tourist. Accept it. You are a tourist, and no matter what disguise you may employ, they not only know you’re a tourist, but know exactly what country you are from. It’s magical. I AM Italian, I wave my arms a lot when I speak and I dress in black as much as possible. They still hand me the American menu in restaurants and ask me about the health of our president—usually hoping for a bad report. 

Pizza:  It’s bad. Buy something frozen if you can. Better yet, wait until you get home and order a Domino’s. I have never had a good pizza in Italy other than Naples. We went to the best-rated pizza place in Rome early in our stay, and it was just like we remembered, awful. 

If you really want a pizza you can admire and brag about, go to a place called “Ciro” in Naples. You will not be disappointed; it’s awesome, the pizza against which all other pizza world-wide should be compared. 

By the way, if you’re in Naples, don’t wear any jewelry, especially necklaces, and keep your wallet in your front pocket. If you feel a hand in your front pocket (and it isn’t your own), it’s not someone trying to be friendly, but instead you’re being robbed.

The flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport arrived an hour early due to a tailwind that reached 184 mph over the north Atlantic.  At one point, our ground speed was 720 mph—not too shabby.  It felt like we were on a rocket.  Unfortunately, the same winds that blew us across the Atlantic created havoc with flights leaving Amsterdam, and we were delayed four hours on the flight to Rome. 

But not a big deal.  We arrived in Rome around 5 PM and took a taxi to our apartment.   It was a long day of flying, but we quickly took an inventory of needed kitchen supplies and food for the first couple of days and headed for the nearest supermarket about three blocks from here.  It’s not exactly a “super” market in the sense of being gigantic, but it had pretty much all we needed.  With packaging very different and labels in Italian, it took some time to figure out the difference between, for instance, dish-washing liquid and liquid hand soap.  And grocery stores are not laid out like in the U.S.  Eggs are not refrigerated here, so you won’t usually find them near the dairy case.  And paper products are very costly in Europe.  They don’t have the kinds of forests and a paper industry the size of ours.  As a result packages of paper towels, napkins, etc. are of modest size, and these products are not wasted.  We Americans will grind through a roll of paper towels in a heart beat.  Not here.   It’s a great reminder to me that there is not an inexhaustible supply of trees and paper products in the world and we shouldn’t waste so much.

As I thought back on the day, the most satisfying part of the trip was the two couples we met during the delay at Schiphol Airport.  They are Dutch and were on our flight to Rome.  One was celebrating a birthday and the other was a recently retired couple trying to see a little more of the world.  It’s amazing how open these people are about their lives—how they live and what they believe.  They are also well traveled, well educated and very much up on what is happening in the U.S. 

But it was the simplicity of their lives and the joy they took in it that so impressed me. 

One couple drove a small Opel and lived in a house that sounded not much bigger.  She takes her bike to and from work, about six miles each day, and does it both for the exercise and to put less carbon into the air.  She said she knew her little car was not putting that big of a dent in the ozone layer, but she wanted to do her part.  She has a vegetable and fruit chart on her refrigerator so she can buy these things only when they’re in season; she doesn’t want more fuel used to bring produce to her from afar. 

These people are amazing and humbling to talk to—such a sense of community and personal responsibility!  I was embarrassed to tell her we drove two cars that swallowed up about three times as much gas as she and her husband were using.

I’m sure these folks have their own struggles, disappointments and challenges as we all do.  But they seemed so at peace with their lives.  It’s not that the Dutch have everything right and we Americans have it all wrong.   We do some things pretty darn well ourselves.  But I couldn’t help but admire the kinds of lives they seemed to lead and the values they shared.  They were very polite about it, but they looked dismayed and almost embarrassed for us about what was happening to our country.   It seemed as though they were talking about a dear friend who had inexplicably gone mad.

I started out less than happy about the four-hour delay, but it ended up being the best part of the day.  In fact, often the best part of traveling is the people we meet along the way.  There is a certain camaraderie and anonymity when traveling that invites people to share things about themselves they might not otherwise share.  It’s quite a gift we strangers can give to one another.