It was my first night alone in Rome, an hour or so before a late spring sunset, and as I walked on a side street near the Colosseum, my attention was drawn to the sky above me. A seagull had caught a smaller bird in mid-air. It was probably a pigeon, but I could tell only that it was blue-gray and that its case was hopeless. The larger bird pinned the smaller one’s body to the sidewalk with its feet and clasped shut its small beak within its larger one. Then I and several other people, like Roman tourists of the ancient past, became spectators to a violent death.
Unlike our spectator predecessors, I was not entertained by the murder. But I did see it as a way to make friends.
A few hours earlier, standing at the threshold of the train platforms at the Milan station, I had parted with my mother as she headed off to Brescia, where she had gone to see her friend’s concert. Boarding the Rome train solo headed off for two nights on my own should have felt like freedom, like it used to feel, but it did not. It felt quite lonely. Italian trains and cities, to say nothing of me, are not as they were in the mid-1990s, when I lived in Milan.
The first time I headed out alone bound for Rome was in 1993, and in lieu of a sleek carry-on case, I carried a bulky backpacker’s pack. Another solo-traveling young woman named Nancy, it just so happened, had her eye out for just such a backpack on just such a woman. She was scoping out companions. She followed me into the train car I selected at random. We hit it off and toured for a week together. We walked the sights, discussed history, warded off drunk men, and thoroughly enjoyed what I know now to have been mediocre Italian food. Another time, an Italian train strike sent me hitchhiking from Urbino to Ancona. A nice man took me safely the first half of the journey and another the second, with both lecturing me at length about the dangers of hitchhiking. A few years later, on a flight from Bangkok to Rome, I struck up a conversation with the Italian guy sitting next to me, who was alarmed that I had not yet arranged for a place to stay. Once we landed, he called his brother to drive me into the city, buy me breakfast, and set me up with a convenient hotel. No payment expected for the kind services rendered. For mid-’90s me, there was nothing better than to head out without a plan and for serendipity to provide me with one, which it nearly always did.
Fast forward to 2025, when I had to reserve a spot on the fast train weeks ahead of time, where the “Business Silence” car on the 1:35 Frecciarossa from Milan to Rome was filled with un-silent people who were chatting through earbuds to people not physically present, staring past me as they discussed dinner plans, meeting plans, art exhibit plans. As they carried on, I observed the countryside and considered the possibility that I would have to add traveling by myself to the list of good things I have outgrown.
For this reason, I was primed to see a Roman bird massacre as an opening for community, because extraordinary events tend to create pop-up cohorts of witnesses, among whom there might be other folks seeking connection. I tuned in to who else was watching. A Spanish family group just ahead of me was tsk-tsking in Spanish detail. They were a self-contained club. French chattering behind and to my left led me to a similar conclusion. Then I clocked some English murmuring to my right, and I made my move.
“And I thought seagulls were peaceful creatures.”
“They are in Australia!” said the tall Australian lady without looking in my direction, as she and her equally tall partner strode briskly past me and away.
So much for community. (So much, too, for our knowledge of seagulls, who, I later read, are not peaceful.)
I followed slowly in the wake left by the Australian couple.
Well, I thought, if I couldn’t find human friends with whom to have a memorable experience, my iPhone friend could at least find me a spaghetti carbonara to serve a similar purpose. She told me to head straight 200 feet, turn right, and walk 0.4 miles toward my hotel. (She is so great, my phone friend.) This brought me to a bustling spot run by two older women I took to be sisters, whose matching hunchbacks, I assumed, had been caused by decades of enduring tourist offences like using the restaurant’s umbrella holder as a garbage receptacle, sitting down in outside chairs to rest rather than spend money, and who, like me, behave like it is perfectly natural for a married, middle-aged woman to eat dinner alone.
While I waited to be seated, there arrived a pair of local guys, much beloved of the sisters, who were promptly seated and asked for their off-menu selections. For me they offered no off-menu selections or even a regular, crappy menu. I held out greater hopes at the second place I found, well off the tourist trail. It reminded me of a trattoria in Milan in my friend Joel’s neighborhood, where everyone knew his name. As an Italian speaker, I could surely commune with the locals now, inquiring of the father or son owner how long they had been in business and such. Sadly, no. The father and son strode purposefully past me carting armfuls of food one way and armfuls of empty dishes the other for nearly an hour, until plopping a pale and watery carbonara on my table. The dish was an edible insult, an embarrassing simulacrum of the real thing I produce with great love at home, which is a gorgeous yellow color, full of creamy, salty flavor. I forced down the flavorless noodles while watching with envy as the local pair across from me, who had sat down five minutes earlier, enjoyed a four-course spread from the father and son’s secret store of excellent food they kept in the back for non-tourists.
I thought in going to Rome alone that I still wanted a “come what may” kind of life, but the truth is I have no tolerance for uncertainty anymore. I want my pre-ordered train ride to be followed by a pre-ordered hotel room, and now that I know what “good” means, I want good food. But the harder truth is that the reason for my inflexibility was fear. I thought I would relish the alone time, since I always seem to be seeking it at home, but in fact I just wanted to get back to my mother as fast as possible. And so I did. I arrived at her hotel in Brescia, where she waited for me in the lobby. We spent the next two days walking side by side through the quiet streets and piazzas of a lovely, unfamiliar, interesting city and ate delicious local specialties, like chestnut gnocchi and casoncelli.
My story, I am happy to report, ends on a still more delicious note. Milan airport’s duty-free shopping mall offers not only pointless perfumes, superfluous suitcases, and foolish fashion—it also has the stuff you need: real food. This is why, at 10 a.m. Italian time last Monday, on my walk to my gate, I picked up pancetta and parmesan cheese, and why, later on that very same day, I stood at my own kitchen counter and combined those ingredients with excellent Berkshire eggs and Barilla pasta. I made for my family, my most beloved community, a bright yellow, exceptionally flavorful spaghetti carbonara. If I ran the world, I would share it with everyone.
