Kerry Spot: Lesson From Rome

Kerry Spot [ jim geraghty reporting ]
[ kerry spot home archives email ]
http://www.nationalreview.com

LESSONS FROM ROME [11/19 09:05 AM]

So a bunch of readers have asked, "Hey, besides all this politics stuff, how was Rome?"
More than I ever could have imagined, good and bad.

HIGHLIGHTS:

All the sights lived up to the hype. The Colosseum? You look down at the center of the arena, at the tunnels underneath and the replica floor on one end, and you just want to strap on your best Russell Crowe-esque armor, pick up a sword, and skewer somebody.

The Vatican is like the Catholic Smithsonian, and it would take a lifetime to see all of its marvels. I had an interesting stumble on the way there — Mrs. Kerry Spot and I approached in a torrential downpour, and the tread on my Clark's size 101/2 walking shoe apparently wasn't designed for navigating wet cobblestones. I took a horrible face-first Chevy-Chase-level fall about two blocks from St. Peter's Square, and scraped up my knee pretty badly. The monologue went something like this:

[Whump!] "Arrrrrgh! #&$#&...I don't want to curse in front of the Vatican, I don't want to curse in front of the Vatican, I don't want to curse in front of the Vatican!"

The site of me sprawling, then wincing, then trying to assure the concerned Italians around me that I was fine brought tears to the eyes of Mrs. Kerry Spot — mostly from attempting, unsuccessfully, to stifle a burgeoning tsunami of laughter.

We came with three guidebooks — National Geographic, Let's Go, and the Irreverent Guide to Rome, and each one had four or five pages of photos and descriptions listing a dozen or so highlights. What was truly striking was the stuff that didn't make the highlight list. I would stand there, marveling slack-jawed at some stunning painting, or carving, or gold-leaf covered decoration — with a tapestry and seemingly ancient Bible or papyrus — and ask, "What room is this?" And Mrs. Kerry Spot would consult a map and reply, "The secondary broom closet, decorated by a student of Michelangelo. Not even listed among the must-sees."

That actually applies to the whole city. Around every corner, there is some stunning fountain, or piazza, or statue, or church, or picturesque street, or a big pile of ruins from ancient Rome with a label I couldn't understand.

Foooood: I think I gained about 40 pounds over six or seven days. In our photos, you can tell how many days we've been there by counting my chins.

Roman restaurants have an oddly uniform menu style, though. (Keep in mind that Mrs. Kerry Spot and I went to pizzerias and trattorias about two-thirds of the time, and ate in restaurants for the remaining third. The plummeting dollar had us cost-conscious, so I'm sure there are fancy places with wide menu varieties.)

We would start with an appetizer, usually bruschetta or antipasti — cheese and some sausage and prosciutto. About half the places offered soup, which was almost always pasta and bean.

The standard Roman way of eating, which apparently was the peasant way, was to have a primi course — almost always pasta — and then a secondi course, usually meat. The pasta was usually terrific; the secondi course comes with literally nothing else, unless you specifically order a side dish of vegetables. You order fish, you get fish. You order veal, you get veal. The idea from peasant days was to fill up on carbs so you didn't notice that your lamb shank or piece of fish wasn't all that big.

And European servings are smaller, as you may know. One plate at a place like the Cheesecake Factory would be about the entire food supply in a Roman restaurant.

All of it was good — I think we had one bad meal while we were there, in a place that got rave reviews in the guidebooks. After a while, I did want a bit of variety, and Rome didn't have much — during all of our walks, we saw one or two Japanese restaurants, maybe three Chinese, and maybe three or four British/Irish pub types.

Oh yeah — many places have pizza, and it is good. But it's also distinctive, and different from pizza in America. Let me put it this way: In America, there is a wide variety of types of pizza. There's a range of styles from Bertucci's to California Pizza Kitchen to Domino's to your local place around the corner. The four or so pizzas that I had in Rome were all pretty much the same style: thin crust, and maybe three possible toppings at a time (they don't pile the toppings high like they do here in America). Often the only meat topping was prosciutto, of which I've eaten approximately 40 metric tons in the last week. There was really not much sausage, certainly no ground beef or chicken or bacon. There was, however, more variety in the cheeses you could have on your pizza.

Also: If you order mozzarella as an appetizer, they bring you this giant wad of mozzarella cheese — bigger than a baseball. And you just eat it with a knife and fork. Mrs. Kerry Spot did order fried mozzarella at one point (in a place with no menus, the proprietor just came out from the kitchen and said, "You want pasta?"), but apparently that was a fried baseball. I guess no one has figured out how to make sticks out of it.

The wine was dirt cheap, and pretty darn good, but then again, I'm no sommelier.

MIXED REVIEWS:

Almost too much everywhere: Mrs. Kerry Spot and I spent about six and a half days just walking around Rome, and I still feel like we only got about half the picture. For example, there is just so much to places like the Vatican. With huge room after huge room packed to the gills with stunning art, paintings, murals, sculptures, jewel-encrusted antiques, etc. in one place, I can see how the Vatican spurred resentment from the rest of the world in times past (and perhaps today as well). And I felt kind of mixed about Rome's intense concentration of great art, architecture, and history in such a small place. There is a stunningly beautiful church almost literally on every corner. And a lot of them seem to be, if not in disrepair, then not getting a lot of work — because, obviously, there's one on every corner, and each individual one is nothing special to Romans, I gather.

LOWLIGHTS:

Sidewalk traffic: Italians are verbally polite, friendly, and willing to help lost tourists; but physically, when they're walking down the street, it's like a rugby match. On every sidewalk, I'd have three Roman grandmamas standing or walking slowly in front of me, while three speed walkers were pushing behind me.

And the motor scooters! Rome's parking problem is as bad as any major city's, and Romans adjust by using motorcycles and scooters. Of course, there are probably six of them for every car, and they relish speeding directly at you while you're walking down narrow allies and streets.
I was warned about pickpockets, but didn't have any bad experiences over there. They may have been on strike, or perhaps there's some sort of complicated new EU regulation that limits the number of hours they can work in any given day.

The Continent is burning down: I'm not a fan of cigarette smoke, and in Italy, everyone smokes like a chimney. Young, old, man, woman, wealthy, poor, morning, night — every corner, every shop, every café, everybody is puffing away and you feel downwind 24/7.

What's really striking is that this comes from the continent full of folks who lecture Americans about a) healthy living and b) pollution. Hey, here's the deal, Fabio: I'll sign on to the Kyoto Treaty when Europe quits smoking, because for all of the greenhouse gases I'm emitting by using electricity and living in a country with a thriving economy, I'm not constantly burning things. And take your stinky diesel-sputtering cars and Vespas, too.

By the way, in many parts of Europe (including the Munich airport), the smoking section is the general area and the "non-smoking" section is a corner with absolutely nothing keeping the smoke out. This system makes some American restaurants' methods of separating the two look like the Berlin Wall.

I am surprised that all of Europe hasn't burned down by now.

European size: Like most European countries, Italy makes me feel as if I'm walking around in a dollhouse. I realize it is an ancient city, with streets and buildings constructed before the advent of cars. And I realize that ages, poor nutrition and medicine meant people were smaller, and thus they required only small doorways and didn't need such large rooms or sinks or furniture.
I also admit that I am not a small guy, and as I kept loading up on the pasta, I probably swelled like Karl Rove's reputation.

Still, I felt at times like I was visiting the City of the Roman Hobbits. Mrs. Kerry Spot would recommend a cappuccino, and my Starbucks-trained appetite would have to be satisfied by a cup that contained about as much as your average water-cooler paper cup, with a porcelain handle I could barely fit my pinky through. Even the cans of Coke Light (what they call Diet Coke) are smaller. Bumping my head in doorways, barely able to put my tush on chair, hunching in my shoulders to rotate in a restroom. I think the first time I fully extended my arms was when I stepped off the plane at Dulles.

Now, here's a bit of a political observation (besides the Communist-party march I found myself walking through).

The last evening we were there, Mrs. Kerry Spot and I were sitting in a wine bar when, over at the next table, some British banker was discussing Italian culture with a woman who was (I think) his coworker. The guy seemed like the epitome of British propriety, coupled with an incensed mood — picture John Cleese. The gist of his rant was that Italian society is dominated by a patronage system riddled from top to bottom with rampant nepotism and impropriety.

Apparently this made getting anything done nearly impossible, as every business had to find room on the payroll for the boss's mistress, as well as his slow-witted nephews and cousins. One had to wait one's turn for 50-some years to get into any position of responsibility, and then once one got there, the primary method of relieving those decades of stress was browbeating subordinates. Attempting to promote a promising and energetic young employee over an older and mundane employee who had paid his dues by showing up for a quarter of a century was seen as phenomenally risky and a societal taboo.

"It is holding them back in the modern economy," Cleese fumed. "They don't know what's in their self-interest. The Italians are stupid."

"Aren't the Americans stupid, too?" the woman asked, having the audacity to nod her head in my direction. (Cheerio to you too, toots.)

"Of course, but that's different," Cleese said, not willing to be distracted from his current fury at the Italians.

I wouldn't want to base my entire opinion of the Italian economy on the irritation of one wine-sipping Brit, but I would cite it as anecdotal evidence that Old Europe hasn't quite worked out all the details of the opportunity society and the benefits of the free market. Just keep it in mind the next time you read that the EU is going to be the economic superpower of this century.
Sitting in those cafés, eating the good food, it was easy to conclude that Europeans sure know how to live...because they don't know how to work.

For example, all of the guidebooks say, Don't be in a rush when you sit down at a restaurant. Your waiter is used to his culture's leisurely pace. He'll bring you the menu within about five minutes of when you first sit down. He'll ask what you want to drink, and the drinks will come within ten minutes. You could probably knock off a chapter of a book or a section of the paper by the time he returns to take your order. The appetizer will come in about 15 minutes. First course, maybe twenty minutes later. Secondi course, within an hour. Dessert will come after his cigarette break and/or stroll to Florence. The check will come sometime in the spring. If you're paying by a credit card, he'll process it sometime before 2006.

In short, you just have to budget one-and-a-half to three hours for lunch and dinner in these societies. Now, far be it from me to tell the Italians how to run their society, but do you think some of these restaurants might do better if they had more than one party per table per evening? I don't like being rushed out of my table at a restaurant, but American restaurants seem to seat two, three, even four parties at a table in one evening, and the waiters actually hurry, if not hover, over their customers.

It's a different approach to work, and if the Italians prefer it that way, that's their right. But Europeans shouldn't be shocked when the American economy — with its exponentially higher priority on speed, efficiency, and productivity — somehow gallops ahead with much higher growth rates.

Still, I liked the place a lot.