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Locked down but not out in Italy

Singing from the balconies! One nice thing about this crisis ... solidarity! “Guess you’re not living like a tourist anymore,” was the funny, truthful and somewhat gut-wrenching message of a friend the day the lockdown in Italy began. Today is day 6. My beloved Italia has been hit hard with the COVID19 epidemic. With the second largest elderly population in the world, the epidemic has meant a disproportionate amount of deaths in the country. So though I haven’t been worried about contracting it myself, this isn’t about me or someone like me who, if contracted it would probably have a sucky couple of weeks and then recover. It is about if someone like me contracted it and then spread it to a person with a complicated health history or an elderly person with a weakened immune system. Eerily orderly: Lines for the grocery store, each person one meter apart In a country with no concept (and no physical room really) for personal space, and in a city with reproachable hygie
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The world outside

I have found it the case that many Romans have houses or property outside of Rome and use weekends and other holidays to get out of the city: the beach in the summer, the mountains or country side in the winter.

Expats have similarly acquired this habit of exiting Rome on weekends and days off because, more than being cultural norm, Rome truly has the capacity to drive you BONKERS. This may sounds like an ungrateful comment; someone blasé about living in the eternal city, heavily sighing from the window of a villa:
"Oh me. I really must away to my summer abode. This view of the Coliseum is just much too hazy today."  
It's not like that. But you know from some of my past stories that living in Rome is not all gelato-coloured and cappuccino-glazed merriment. It's a big, noisy, busy city. And sometimes big, noisy, busy cities get to you, even eternal ones.


So getting out of Rome last Saturday to go to Anguillara di Sabazia was exactly the breath of fresh air I needed. I didn't realize it, but I missed trees. I missed non-homo-sapien, living things. I missed bodies of water that don't collect in fountains. And Anguillara with its location on Lago Bracciano, its variety of birds happily strolling the beaches or floating on the waves and its restaurants with waterfront views made me immensely happy and kind of resistant to ever go back inside or back to a city again.

Alas, moments pass and things change. Sunshine diminished and night time came. So we went home, but I plan to enlarge some of my photos of the day to remind me of the world outside and to remind me that I should escape Rome every now and then, if for no other reason than to appreciate the fact that I can go back at the end of the day.










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