Unfortunately, I haven't been able to be much of a tour guide for R, M, and C. I just haven't really been able to leave the house. And they haven't really wanted to be in the house for fear of catching ill themselves. In fact, they went up to Nicolosi (the last little town on the road up Etna) last night to see if they could get in some good Etna time today starting in the morning. The may blog about it even.
I did allow myself one little trip outside, since the sun was out, and I felt like I should get out of the apartment for just a bit. So I Walked down to Piazza Duomo, sat on the base of the monument with the elephant and the obelisk, and basically just chilled out. It was getting to be latish in the afternoon so the sun was only hitting the tops of the buildings and had taken on that nice golden color it takes on a couple of hours before sunset, crowning the top of the cathedral and the cuppola of the Church of Saint Agatha. Yesterday was All Saints day, a major religious (and state) holiday, so stores were mostly closed, but the cafes were mostly open. There were plenty of people out and about downtown, but it wasn't nearly so noisy and hectic as a normal work day--people were just out to be out, with no particular agenda. I certainly wasn't the only one sitting in the square watching the world go by.
When I'd had enough of that I decided to go ahead and take the bus home, so as not to overdo it. On the bus, an older signora asked me the time, and I guess I must've been worn out because I blanked on the word for 'five' for a second there. After tripping up trying to tell her that it was 5:00, there was a question whether it was 5:05 or just 5:00. Just 5:00, I assured here. Another still spry, older gentlemen sitting nearby assumed that I must still have my cellphone on daylight savings time and was changing it in my head--thus the confusion. No, I told them, I had changed the clock on my cellphone already. They were both quite friendly and thought nothing about talking to a stranger on the bus.
After another half a minute or so, the signora turns to the gentleman, whom she doesn't appear to know personally, and declares, "This government has ruined everything." He makes a kind of full body gesture, involving arms at his sides, palms faced upwards, a certain facial expression, all basically, expressing, "Well, I'm not so sure about that." The signora goes on to express, again, "This government has ruined everthing." She mentions the high prices of everything now. The gentleman smiles, changes seats to sit nearer the signora, and they begin a discussion. There are even a few glances in my direction to see if I'm going to join in, but the language difficulties, added to the fact that they weren't addressing me directly, meant that I had already basically lost the thread of the conversation and didn't want to make myself a nuisance. While I didn't get the impression that the gentleman was a cheerleader for the government, I think maybe he thought the signora's analysis was, shall we say, a bit reductionist and seemed to be presenting, with patience and good humor, a more nuanced point of view.
At any rate, it wasn't so much the content (which was largely lost on me) of their discourse, but the style of it. A couple of people who don't know each other striking up a political discourse on a bus ride. As much to pass the time as anything else, one imagines. Is this the mythical "word on the street"? Is a culture comprised of people who actually talk to each other more likely to have a healthy democracy than a culture that stays in, watches TV, and doesn't talk to strangers? I don't know. Maybe.
