Thank God for Calabria!

Ciao amici!

Here’s a short post on one of the most amazing things that have happened to me in Rome. Long live the Italian people!!

Yesterday was my first full Sunday in Rome since the semester started, so I thought it would be great to go to the Pope’s Angelus prayer at noon to get into the Roman/Vatican spirit.

I got to Saint Peter’s Square at 10:30 a.m. so as to get a “nice view” of the window the Pope uses to give his speech. As we are technically still in summer and the weather had been nice last week, I was totally unprepared for three hours of pouring rain. No umbrella, no jacket, no raincoat or anything to protect me from the water and wind, I was just standing stoically in the middle of the piazza, wet as if just out of the shower, water dripping everywhere from eyebrows to my shirt. No money in my pockets, I couldn’t even buy one of the dozens of umbrellas and raincoats that street vendors offered me. To say that I was just “wet” is an understatement, and everyone–the “dry people” that is–just looked at me with pity, entertainment and, in some cases, surprise, that I was still there and not under the roof. (You cannot see the window from under the side arches of the piazza).

Well…although in hindsight I know everything was worth it, at the moment it seemed like a terrible idea that I had gone to the Vatican at all.

A good twenty minutes into my weather odyssey, a mother and his son (who was about my age and wore a Yankees hat) signed me to come and share their mid-size umbrella with them. I don’t speak Italian, they didn’t speak English, but they still found a place for me to protect from the rain. It turns out that they were visiting Rome, and were originally from Calabria. We could barely understand one another, but they were so kind I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that they would host a complete stranger, soaking wet, under their umbrella. Moreover, all the time they were smiling, gently. I have their faces fixed into my mind.

When the Angelus ended with the benediction from the Pope, I thanked them and returned to the train station to catch the train back to campus. As I seated, wet, in the station, all I could think about was these to kind calabresi.

 

Grazie mille, Calabria!