I wished I was a tourist today

Today for the first time, I actually felt envious of the tourists. Usually I pity them: lost faces, noses in maps, stumbling over each other among the ruins and being overcharged for their ice-creams and cappucinos - there's so little Italian "soul" in the Rome that they roam because it's all tourists just like them . Rivers of them streaming down the streets and flooding the ancient monuments. Tourists out-number even the pigeons, and they're pretty similar when you think about it.

But today I realised this little something: it must be so lovely to be ignorant of the difficulties of life in Italy. To come here and appreciate all the art, nature, wine, ruins, food and music and then to go home. To not have to worry about the politics and economics of the situation must be bliss. I really hope Rome does not become a city where the best possible scenario is to be a tourist, innocent and blissfully breathing in the past without knowing the present at all.

But something lovely did happen while I was wondering around feeling sort of blue Sundayish -

I was walking with my head down because I was thinking and I noticed at a certain point that I was walking next to a knee-high wall that stretched on for a whole block. On the wall, every few feet, an artist had placed a work of art with a title inviting the casual passerby to enjoy his/her work. The artist had even written little comments and titles on the displays. Right in the middle of the wall was a notice in Italian and English which read : "Saying that the city of Rome is nothing more than an open air museum is not good enough : it lives because we are here".

Every now and then, when you feel like shit, the universe doesn't mess around and give you veiled signs which you have to interpret - and for this, I am extremely glad.