When in Rome...

The nights in Rome, much like the nights in any big city, aren’t like the nights I’m used to. I’m used to the kind of nights that shroud you in darkness, where the moon and stars are the only thing scarcely lighting the world around you, just making enough visible to give you a legitimate reason to worry about the noises you hear. The nights in Rome where bright; there where streetlights everywhere and if those had gone out- something that was quite common- the overbearing and illuminating aura of the city made it seem more like early evening than whatever ungodly hour it really was.
It was only around 1 am when I got to Roma Tiburtina, the train station that would take me to Bologna, home of my new changing station, but even at 1 am, early to a European as I have become accustomed to their propensity to stay out at all hours, no one was there. I sat alone on a train station bench. Across a few train tracks there was a bum sleeping on another bench. I watched him for 45 minutes, waiting for him to move. Part of me thought he might be dead. I had heard stories about people dying on subways and being ignored for hours and hours until they fell out of their seated positions and refused to get up. It was because of people like me, people who didn’t go out of their way to see if every unconscious bum was actually alive, that these things happened.
I pulled my laptop out of my backpack, hoping that through this chaos I could get some work done; record my thoughts as they had happened. The next day I looked back on what I wrote- it was melodramatic and full of hyperbole- I felt as if my world had just crashed around me, it was only fitting that my writing expressed that. About thirty minutes into my tirade three security guards came up to me. Once before in Italy I had played the part of a possible vagrant and was surrounded by security guards asking me who I was and if I had a train ticket, but this time instead of asking for a ticket the guards said something to the effect of “That is a nice laptop, you should put it away, there are pickpockets”.
That kind of scared me, but I’m a big guy in fairly good shape, I think that I could take some emaciated Italian pickpocket any day (or night), but they went on, “They will, ehhhhh” he said, making a motion like he was a child in a zoo whom had just grabbed a branch from a nearby tree and was intent on ruining the lives of whatever animal was within jabbing distance, “stab you” he finished.
I must have looked surprised because he continued “They will do anything to get something they can sell”. Until this point I didn’t realize that pickpocket was the European way of saying thug. I had this romanticized version of some modern day Oliver Twist roaming the streets taking unsuspecting tourists wallets in order to survive, someone who adhered to a strict thieves’ code of ethics, not someone who stabbed tourists and stole their laptops. This was a rude awakening. Everywhere around me were thieves and criminals, no good-niks who would skewer me for spare change, and who most likely enjoy the sound of my final screams as they walked away from my dying self, covered in refuse in some unmarked alley.
I hastily put away my laptop and locked the zipper handles together. The guard pointed over to a small vestibule with a fluorescent light that made the walls look like they were coated in pond scum. “Maybe you should wait over there” he said, adding the maybe as if there was any other logical choice.
I sat on my bag in the station for a few hours, every twenty minutes or so noticing another depraved soul wander in, no doubt waiting to get on the same train as me. A sturdy black man with a square head dressed in beige suit with a leopard pattern button down flaring out from the cuffs and collar sat down on a bench across from me. He had his head completely shaved so that the lights cast a glare of it and a faint moustache rested on his upper lip.
“How are you my friend”, he said. He had a heavy Italian accent that made his words hard to understand, but being the friendliest person I had met that night, probably in all of Italy, I took extra care in trying to figure out what he meant.
“I’ve seen better days” I said, not lying in the least. “How about you?”
“I’m not doing fine” he said. I took conscious note that there were far better ways to explain his situation given the perceived neutrality of the word “fine”. He continued, “I have missed my train and I do not like having to wait so late into the night”
He spoke in a very roundabout fashion; the way non-speakers of the English language do when they have a very complicated thought and lack the right words to express it.
We began talking, finding out that we both missed the same train and then taking turns saying horrible things about the Italian train system. I felt like I was a prosecuting witness at a Salem Witch Trial. His name was Valentine and he had lived in Rome his entire life. The reason he was upset is that he had to be at a good friends wedding the next day- rather later that morning as the clock had now crept past three AM. He was going to be cutting it awfully close. He was obviously saddened by this- not angry as I was, but disappointed. I think he felt worse for his friend that himself.
“I don’t understand how they can do this” I said, unlike Valentine I was still very angry, “I don’t see how they can take out plans and spit on them- just disregard them and go on with their own agenda. This is the second time that TrenItalia has forced my arrival in Koln to be delayed, and frankly, I’m pissed off”. He laughed. I don’t think he understood every word that I said, but my demeanor transcended the language barrier.
“Man may propose” he said. He had been previously been sitting with his head down staring at the space between his feet, but then he looked up and over to me saying, “but God will Dispose”.
I felt defeated. But I felt better when he said that. When I heard him say it I decided that I was not yet broken. Before this, my journey had reached it’s nadir- a low point from which it would be impossible for me to sink any deeper (barring death)- but now I felt as if all the weight these failures put on me had been set free. I realized that no matter what situation I am in, getting upset over things that cannot be changed, like an apathetic and languid train station, is worthless.
The train came and took us to Bologona. I didn’t sleep at all on the way there- probably something about having to ride in the aisle since all the seats were taken, and when I got there I immediately checked into a hotel and slept for 26 hours straight.