Dear Italy... From Berlin

In Italy:

...men wearing orange pants is high fashion all year round.
...the internet cafes play opera tunes such as "Funiculi, Funicula" and "La Donna Mobile."
...people honk at you if you sit at a red light at night.
..."mopeds don't have to follow traffic laws." (said by Ruggero, Lucia's boyfriend who happens to be a lawyer in Rome.)
...walking around anytime between noon and 4pm is similar to the opening scene in 28 Days Later.
...women are always dressed to kill. (How they walk in heels on those cobble stone roads I'll never understand.)
...the North spouts water from every possible faucet as if it´s a renewable resource while the South´s suppy of it shrivels up like a raisin 8 months out of the year.

(More to come...)
I´m slightly irked by the fact that the state of Rome is not tip-top and to be perfectly honest, it´s very dirty and polluted. I realized that yesterday when, after bicycling in and around Villa Borghese and Piazza di Spagna, I scratched my upper chest area only to immediately see the grimy, disgusting black soot that had gotten underneath my fingernails. Gross. It´s just that you´d think such a gorgeous city, filled to the brim with archaeological & architectural beauties would be better taken care of. But, that´s really Italian and Mediterranean mentality for you.

On my way to Berlin yesterday, I met this Aussie from Melbourne at the Rome airport and we had so much in common, it was oddly comfortably to be on the same exact page as him having only known him for an hour. Isn´t it strange how like meets like? But that´s really the beauty of travelling, I gather: realizing that the you are really not alone. Oh and speaking of not being along, on the train to Rome central station, this guy was chuckling at a comment I had made while speaking with the new Canadian friends. Struck up a convo and it ends up he´s from Freehold... good old New Jersey. Of course, the first thing I said was "Oh really?! My dad built the Toys R Us there!" ...And his name was Anthony.

Ok, I need to get exploring this awesome city then watch the WC. Tschüss.