After 40 years of objectivity choking me of all subjectiveness, I now comprehend the fans’ anxiety, their depression, their anger. It hasn’t been easy being an A.S. Roma fan since I’ve arrived. Roma is a perennial second-tier club in Serie A, Italy’s top league. I take little solace knowing that only one club is first tier. Juventus’ six straight league titles, known as scudettos, kill my optimism by Halloween when Juve starts pulling away from the pack.
(To read more, click here.)
I’m pretty sure no one has ever written thank you to Mussolini, at least not in the last 70 years or so. Yes, he is a big reason Marina and I don’t have to board a plane or boat to relax on some of the best beaches in Europe. Papardo’ Beach is 85 miles south of Rome in an underrated part of the Lazio region that is sprinkled with cute towns and beaches that get more gorgeous with every kilometer you drive. Foreigners don’t come here much. Italians do. They know the convenience and pleasure of this area known as Agro Pontino, particularly now during Rome’s driest summer in the last 60 years. Where else in Europe can you get a tan and swim in a crystal-blue sea then eat a seafood feast for two with a bottle of local white wine for under 70 euros? Italians also appreciate this area for another reason.
They know in the 1930s this whole area was a swamp.
(To read more, click here.)
As Rome melts into its cobblestones and my water intake skyrockets, everyone in Rome is facing a crisis: water shortage. More than 400 of our beloved nasoni have been turned off. The city has about 2,500 nasoni, meaning 16 percent of these cute, ingenious, thirst-quenching little piles or iron are now dry. We barely avoided water rationing which would’ve turned off water for eight hours a day all over the city. The Vatican turned off 100 of its fountains, including the famous Bernini fountain in the middle of St. Peter’s Square. Excuse all 1.5 million of us Rome residents if we’re sweating this summer for more reasons than one.
(To read more, click here.)
As a public service to anyone planning a Rome vacation, I am providing a valuable guide to what not to do as a tourist here. Don’t feel bad if you’ve visited Rome and read yourself below. You have plenty of company. So clip it, save it, slip it in your money belt you must wear inside the waistline of your pants and I promise you’ll look less like a complete geek.
You can thank me later.
(To read more, click here.)
I’m starting to get more heavily into guided tours. Many aren’t very good. A good guidebook is a cheaper substitute and you don’t feel like a geek following someone holding up a flag. But one guide I always follow is Massimiliano Francia (guideromax@virgilio.it). Rome Explorers, an excellent Meetup group that does everything from urban tours to mountain hikes, hires “Max” out for English-speaking tours. He’s a Rome native with a library of history books that could fill one side of the Pantheon. What sets apart Francia is his voluminous knowledge of historical tidbits, oddities you won’t find in any guidebook or mainstream tour.
(To read more, click here.)
As the United States free falls into Donald Trump’s Let-Them-Eat-Cake healthcare plan, I am learning first hand the benefits of the healthcare American progressives dream about. It’s not by choice. It’s not by journalistic research. Instead, for the past two months I have had an inside look at Italy’s public healthcare through my own misfortune.
I am now half blind.
My right eye has gone from near 20-20 to non functioning. If I close my left eye, it’s like a steel door covers my right eye with slits to let in some light. I’m a prisoner in my own skull. My depth perception is shot. Most everything is blurry as if scuba diving without a mask. This didn’t happen gradually. It happened nearly overnight. And it’s frightening.
(To read more, click here.)
Rome and Paris are the two loveliest ladies of all the world’s capitals. Rome has my heart. I’ve lived there twice for nearly five years. But Paris is my mistress. Every so often, I must steal away to the banks of the Seine and have a weekend fling. I’ve been to Paris more than any other world capital. I always return to Rome, but my days in Paris always leave a lusty smile on my face.
Many ask which city I prefer. It’s like asking which Caravaggio I prefer. It’s a valid question. I just can’t decide. So when I went to Paris on assignment last weekend with my true love of my life, photographer Marina Pascucci, I did a comparison.
(To read more, click here.)
all over Berlin you can find chilling, haunting memorials to Germany’s ugly involvement in the Holocaust and communism. A four-story museum is dedicated entirely to the evils of Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. The Stasi prison still stands, as is, giving tours four times a day to show what they did to prisoners who merely had a negative thought about their lovely lives in East Germany. A Holocaust Memorial was erected as recently as 2005 and covers a space the size of a football field. A DDR Museum shows what life was like under communism, a system that strives for mediocrity, a quest that undermines all human emotion and drive.
(To read more, click here.)
The greatest of the gross, the lowest of the lousy, is a food so vile its legend — not to mention its aroma — has reached every corner of the globe. It’s called hakarl. If you know Iceland, you know hakarl. You just didn’t know the name, nor can you pronounce. In Icelandic’s inane pronunciation guide, you say it HOW-kaht. That’s Icelandic for — wrap your mind around this — rotted shark. While talking to Icelanders around the country, they’ve all tried it. It’s an Icelandic holiday tradition, kind of like American fruitcake but much worse — if that’s possible.
(To read more, click here.)
Iceland’s nature is a geological kaleidoscope filled with images that leave you open mouthed as you nearly drive off the Ring Road. Snow-capped volcanoes. Turquoise-tinted icebergs. Glistening glaciers. Lava fields. Molten magma. Puffin-covered cliffs. Half-destroyed islands. In a country the size of Colorado are enough geographic wonders to fill a volume of National Geographics. Iceland often only gets in the news when one of its 30 active volcanoes erupts and sends broadcasters scurrying to learn how to pronounce the damn things. But Iceland is more than Mother Nature blowing her fuse. You can’t compare it to one woman. Iceland is a beauty pageant, with spectacular sights at every turn.
(To read more, click here.)
