II hadn’t been to Rome in seventeen years; nothing had changed. The columns were still there, the Colosseum was still going strong, the Pantheon too. If you don’t wear something for two thousand years, it is also quite durable.
The only thing different was that there were many more tourists. “That’s because of corona,” said a local, because everything is because of corona. Or through social media. Social media certainly has something to do with the fact that there are more tourists in Rome.
On the way to the Trevi Fountain, through the narrow street that leads to the cramped square where the oversized fountain was built, I noticed something: the latest hype in souvenirs. Or no, not souvenirs. Souvenirs are just magnets, key chains and aprons with a Roman penis on them. These were tourist trinkets. The latest tourist trinket was a piece of blubbery plastic that you can throw against something and it will stick to it – nothing new so far, because that already existed: the blob that you can throw against the window. But this blob, when it came into contact with whatever you threw it against, said ‘meow’.
No fewer than four men sold the blob that said meow in the narrow street near the Trevi Fountain. They brought small tables with them on which they hit the blob hard, and then it said meow. No one bought one, but I’m sure that will happen sometimes, otherwise there wouldn’t have been four sellers on that street.
The other tourist trinkets most often offered were power banks and selfie sticks. I thought power banks were a smart commodity, because the only thing you are concerned with when you walk through a busy big city all day is: ‘How much percentage do I have left?’ And it is always too little percent.
I thought the selfie stick was something from a past life, from the long gone time when people still thought it was useful to have a selfie stick. I didn’t want to make fun of the sellers, but I did want to give them tips, namely: start selling something else. But then I arrived at the Trevi Fountain and there were a few thousand tourists standing there taking pictures with their phones on a selfie stick.
The only souvenir I wanted to buy, I immediately knew for whom, was the black and white calendar with sexy priests. Our own priest every month. July a dumbass with a generous laugh, November a priest who read the newspaper with deadly seriousness. Some were more handsome than others, but they all had a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, or else sprezzatura, because we were in Italy after all.
