Rome via Brooklyn

413 words, 2 minutes read time.

During our taxi ride to Borgo Pio 191, I spent most of the ride gazing out the window at the unique architecture, monuments, and people. One structure that was particularly interesting to me was this pyramid placed roughly in the center of the street. What was equally, if not more, interesting was the fact that cars drove essentially right next to what looked like a historical monument, with a Burger King being a couple steps away. This reminded me of something mentioned in CultureSmart!, which stated that “unrestrained commercialism” caused many “natural beauty” spaces to be corrupted by the building of property (pg 48). It creates an interesting clash, but also blend, between the ancient and modern worlds, and serves as physical evidence of the passage of time.

One scent that really stuck with me was of the flowers we had stopped to smell on our walk from the subway to the grocery store. I rarely ever stop to “smell the roses,” and I usually don’t feel as though plants and flowers have a real smell. This was one of very few times where I could actually smell the scent of a flower and it was potent enough to stick in my memory. While today felt very fast-paced in a lot of ways, it was nice to be able to take that quick break.

One slightly random thing that reminded me of NYC was a banner advertisement for an Italian law firm. It reminded me a lot of the many law firm advertisements I see all over New York City for Cellino and Barnes or [insert another popular law firm], and kind of shocked me; I don’t know why I thought something as extremely common and necessary as a law firm would not be advertising itself in Rome. The most familiar parts of the day for me would be taking the public transportation and the crowds by the famous attractions. While it did have a different look and feel, the subway was structured in a pretty similar (but much more efficient) way to the trains in NYC. The look of the subway reminded me of some of the new carts which they are trying to implement on the A/C line. The large crowds for the tourist attractions reminded me a lot of the feel of being in NYC landmarks like The Met or Central Park, except I was much more worried about pickpocketing than I usually am.