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| Parma railway station |
Previous: Reflections Upon Returning from Italy
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first.
JFK and Rome’s Fiumicino Airport were predictably crowded, overpriced, and slow. I nearly missed my flight home after being subjected to a “random” explosives screening. The food aboard both flights was dreadful, bordering on an act of culinary terrorism.
Rome’s train terminal was worse. Traveling to and from the airport, I occasionally felt as though I were riding the New York City subway, with its cramped seating, foul odors, and conspicuous lack of manners. The Northern Italian countryside remains beautiful, but traveling by train through the cities revealed another, less appealing landscape, with refuse and graffiti everywhere.
I have little patience for those who defend the vandalism of public and private property under the pretense of artistic expression. If you wish to deface your own home or business with the scrawlings of so-called street artists, that is your prerogative. Imposing them upon everyone else is quite another matter.
My hotels in Rome and Parma were both near the train stations, areas I discovered, through personal experience and conversations with locals, have reputations for crime and drug activity. In Parma, some of it appeared to unfold openly. I encountered young foreign men who appeared to be dealing drugs and visibly strung-out European girls who looked prematurely haggard. I noticed similar scenes around certain monuments and fountains.
If such things are readily apparent to an occasional visitor, surely they cannot escape the attention of local authorities. As in the United States, those entrusted with maintaining public order and safeguarding the welfare of their communities seem to have other priorities or are hamstrung by inane bureaucratic and political obstacles.
None of these experiences diminishes my affection for Italy. Much of what troubled me is hardly unique to the country, but reflects problems increasingly prevalent throughout the Western world. Italy remains a place of extraordinary beauty, history, culture, and tradition, possessing a richness that the failings of contemporary society cannot entirely obscure.
Next: Among the Treasures of Mercanteinfiera
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, October 12th, Feast of Our Lady of the Pillar
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first.
JFK and Rome’s Fiumicino Airport were predictably crowded, overpriced, and slow. I nearly missed my flight home after being subjected to a “random” explosives screening. The food aboard both flights was dreadful, bordering on an act of culinary terrorism.
Rome’s train terminal was worse. Traveling to and from the airport, I occasionally felt as though I were riding the New York City subway, with its cramped seating, foul odors, and conspicuous lack of manners. The Northern Italian countryside remains beautiful, but traveling by train through the cities revealed another, less appealing landscape, with refuse and graffiti everywhere.
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| The Northern Italian countryside, viewed from the train |
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| Hammer and sickle graffiti in Parma |
If such things are readily apparent to an occasional visitor, surely they cannot escape the attention of local authorities. As in the United States, those entrusted with maintaining public order and safeguarding the welfare of their communities seem to have other priorities or are hamstrung by inane bureaucratic and political obstacles.
None of these experiences diminishes my affection for Italy. Much of what troubled me is hardly unique to the country, but reflects problems increasingly prevalent throughout the Western world. Italy remains a place of extraordinary beauty, history, culture, and tradition, possessing a richness that the failings of contemporary society cannot entirely obscure.
Next: Among the Treasures of Mercanteinfiera
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, October 12th, Feast of Our Lady of the Pillar