A Roman Column

Whoever said it's a small world did not travel much. If it is such a small world then why does it take so long to get places? I have been in Europe now and if there is one thing I have learned it is that Europe is not just a different country, it is a whole different continent. And there are other continents too. In school we learned that there are 5 to 7 continents depending on the position of Australia. But there seem to be many more than that now. There's America, South America, Canada, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, India, Eastern Europe, China, and some place called the dark continent because it is on the side of the moon facing away from the sun. Continents have many features, but one of everyone's favorite continental feature is the coastline. Colorado is away from its continental coastline, so geographically speaking Colorado is in-continent.

The part of Europe my family has been in is called Italy. If you think the New Sheridan Bar is old, you ought to see this place. There are whole towns here where every single building is older than the entire state of Colorado. The house we stay in has plumbing problems dating back to when pipes were made of animal bones and palm fronds.

But Italy is more than just old stuff and bad plumbing. For a while Italy was so hip that the Roman Empire even moved its headquarters here and imposed a degree of tranquility on the ancient world called the Roman Peace, or (in Latin) the Appian Way. This tranquility was available to not just the ruling classes but also to the extremely wealthy.

But eventually the Roman Empire fell. Most scholars today attribute the fall of Rome to something called The Decline of the Roman Empire. Italy still plays an important role on the world stage though. Whenever and wherever important heads of state sit down together to discuss pressing issues of global significance you will find that Italy has brought a major contribution to the table; pizza.

I know I've written here in this column before about the subject of wine, but now I'm here in Italy where wine grows on trees. Everyone here seems to make their own wine, and they love to share it. We have had people give us their homemade wines in used plastic water bottles. We have been served wine usually in plastic cups too, and it has always been delicious, contrary to what many wine snobs might imagine. On the store shelves they sell wine in juice boxes, presumably for school children to drink during their smoke breaks.

So the weight I had lost through diet and exercise before coming here (.03 ounces) has all been put back on.Of course the food here is amazing. Be warned though, that if you go to an Italian's home you will be served an enormous plate of spaghetti; this is NOT supper. It is an appetizer. If you finish your spaghetti and you say it was good ( it will be) you will get a second helping bigger than the first, and supper has not even started. Then comes out the meat course and some sausage and peppers and salad and plates of cheese. Then you eat fruit, then dessert. If you tell your host that you only want a little to try it because it smells good, but you are not really hungry, you will be served enough food that if you had to buy it you would single-handedly solve the world financial crisis. If you say you do not want to eat anything at all, you will only be served the type of portion that I imagine Luciano Pavarotti would have eaten to celebrate winning some opera award. If you say that doctors have warned you that one bite of food could instantly kill you will only be served enough food to feed a small neighborhood.