Top 10 List

Bill and I have had two weeks to observe the people and activities in Rome. Here is our top 10 list of strange, amusing, and/or interesting things that we have seen in Rome:

10. Nuns run in packs, priests travel in pairs. There are more priests and nuns in Rome than I have seen in any other city in the world. Nuns generally travel together in a group. For the most part, priests seem to travel with one fellow priest.

9. The bus drivers in Rome make it a point to try and knock people around. Did you ever see the Bob Newhart skit where he is the teacher at a bus driving school, and he is telling his students how you should start out really fast so that people go flying and then stop really fast so that they run into each other? Well, Rome bus drivers attend that school. It HAS to be on purpose. Plus, there is the bus driver we observed who was driving the bus with both hands behind his head….

8. Women drive scooters wearing high heels. When we were here seven years ago, there weren’t many women driving scooters. Now, a large number of the scooters you see zipping around town are ridden by women. And they very often are wearing fancy shoes with very high heels. They also walk around on the cobbled streets wearing these same kinds of shoes.

7. People with fewer groceries than you cut in front of you in the grocery line. Romans are great line cutters. They stand in lines waiting patiently and lull you into thinking that when the bus comes, or the doors open, or the time has arrived for whatever you’re waiting for, there will be an orderly procession in. But without fail, that does not happen. Instead, there is inevitably chaos. And at the grocery store, they apparently believe that if they only have a few things, it is their right to go in front of you. Meanwhile, as you let them do so (as if you could stop them), you hear the people behind you muttering to each other and sighing loudly.

6. Scooters don’t think traffic lights apply to them at all. In fact, scooters don’t think any traffic rules apply to them at all. Many Romans drive cars with this same misguided thought, but it’s more apparent with the scooter drivers. Here’s an example: There is a pedestrian light right by our apartment that you press to get across the street. When that light turns red for the cars and green for the pedestrians, the scooters (and some cars) just keep going through it until they see the whites of your eyes. They won’t hit you. They’ll stop only when they must. At least you hope they’ll stop.

5. There is no bus or metro car too crowded for a Roman to enter. I mean this quite literally. I have seen seven or eight people waiting for our bus out front. When it pulls up and is packed to the gills (I’m talking people smashed against each other as they stand in the aisle), Bill and I will choose to wait for the next bus. Not the Romans. They absolutely push their way onto the bus. I have seen instances where the doors have trouble closing because people’s backsides are hanging out. But they just push harder against their neighbor. I have never seen anyone besides us wait for the next bus or train.

4. The fashions are very different here in Rome than we have seen anywhere else in Italy. The young women are very scantily clad. That might be because of the heat, but they have plunging necklines, short tops, strapless shirts, and so forth. Also, the women’s fashion expression that Bill has noticed the most, and that probably drives him the craziest, is that no matter what type of blouse or dress they are wearing, they wear the same type of bra. So the bra straps show, which isn’t that unlike the United States. However, they wear regular bras that cross their back when the shirt they might be wearing is backless. In fact, I think they use their bras as part of their fashion statement, because they are often the same color as their blouse, or perhaps a contrasting color that might go with the skirt. As for the men, they almost always have at least two buttons open on their shirts, and very often more than that.

3. The older women here all dress the same. The women above the age of 60 must all shop at the same store or outdoor market. They all wear the same type of housedress, usually with flowers. Then when they get to 80, they change to black dresses. My question is, how, and at what point, do the fashionably dressed young women with fancy underwear and high heels morph into the women wearing shapeless housedresses?

2. Scooters love ambulances. Scooter drivers are extraordinarily happy when they hear the sound of the ambulance. Instead of pulling over and respectfully letting the ambulance pass and continue down the street, they fall into place right behind it, and as the ambulance blows through the stoplight, the scooters follow right behind it. Many cars do the same thing.

And number one on our list of strange, amusing, and/or interesting things that we have seen in Rome,

1. A young woman running to catch the bus, holding her three-year-old’s hand, with her infant attached to her exposed breast, nursing. Bill said the infant was having a great deal of difficulty hanging on. No doubt that baby is tired of breakfast on the run.