Ostia Antica

What Rome doesn’t have is visible minorities. There are some, mainly South-East Asian, but I have seen very few people of African descent who could not legitimately have been tourists. My Roman friends confirm this: while Italy is actually a major entry point and transit hub for immigrants from the Mediterranean’s more exciting regions – what with a vast coastline and a thriving pleasure boating scene that probably makes immigration policing futile – very few immigrants, legal or otherwise, settle here. There seems to still be a lot of everyday-level racism here; not enormously evil (trivia from visiting the Jewish Ghetto: almost all of Rome’s Jewish community survived under Mussolini) but uncomfortable enough that people prefer to take their chances elsewhere. The upshot is that for a European city of this size, Rome is shockingly white.

In more ways than one, actually. Another thing that Rome does not appear to have is a counter-culture. There are no emo kids, no goths, not so much as a Metallica T-shirt in sight. Everybody seems to be dressed as if from Kaubamaja; the height of youthful rebellion is a football team’s shirt, or for the really preposterous macho types, a sleeveless maika. I tried doing the preppie thing at first, as you can see from the Forum video, but it’s just not me: I know I look good in business-casual, and I know how to tie a double Windsor, but I rarely do that. So Rome is a bit of a cognitive dissonance: the frame of reference for my dress style is Stockholm, and there my cargo fatigues and motorcycle club support tee barely register. In Rome, I’m the heaviest person around. Even the dudes on Harleys are wearing polo shirts.

Here’s a prevalent Roman mindfuck: bread in restaurants. While La Dolce Vita (Tartu’s culinary poster child, authentic enough to have a brick wood-fired oven and an Italian head chef) serves delicious freshly-baked rolls with your meal, these fuckers drop a basket with three dry, stale slices on the table whether you asked for them or not, and have the audacity to charge you a euro fifty for it. Well, that was your tip right there, buddy.

Roman nightlife is fun. The capital is the victim of much snobbery from Northern cultural outposts, but Romans really do not spend much time in nightclubs, preferring to go out at night, once it’s cooled down, and just sit there nursing a drink, talking about nothing. Less Atlantis, more Zavood, if you will. All the more strange that all the bars close at 2 am sharp. They’re doing it because it’s the law, and certainly not because they’re running out of customers by that point.

Assessment of Italian girls following several nights’ worth of pubcrawl in Trastevere: nice legs, shame about the face. I’m sure the temperament is exciting, but on the face of it (boo hiss), Northern Europe wins.