Trieste, Rome

November 12–16, 2008

Trieste

Venice isn’t very far from here, so Trieste has always been on the sidelines.

During the best years, all the good sculptors were occupied, and Trieste could only get the second-rate ones.

Italians can’t just write one word on the wall, they have to make a statement:

The traffic light has an inconspicuously built-in speaker that plays sounds to guide blind pedestrians (in Kyzyl, the speaker has its own dedicated traffic light section).

The information signs are small and excessive here; this is a typically Italian feature.

Special cloth covers exist for situations where a sign temporarily ceases to apply.

And traffic lights that aren’t operational yet are wrapped with black trash bags.

The holidays are coming up, so potted Christmas trees have been placed around the city. Kind of like how they sometimes put out palm trees in Moscow in the summer.

Telecom, traffic light and other cabinets have a ribbed surface to prevent flyer posting (in London, they use special paint for the same purpose).

Trieste is a rare example of a place where the design of the streetlights has been fully standardized. There’s a version with a pole:

And one without a pole for more densely built-up areas. The globe lamps are wrapped with mesh so that the shards, should they occur, don’t fall on people’s heads.

Rome

Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport is abominable. It’s even more horrible than the over-condensed font, which I at first thought was a mistake (until I saw that all the text on the signs was the same).

All the ATMs in Italy have a full keyboard.

A fire hydrant.

The Roman trash can, created in 2000. It’s so nice and well-executed that you want to put it in a museum immediately.

Illustrator Egor Zhgun once drew a caricature in which a group of tourists is gaping in wonder at the Coliseum (aka the Flavian Amphitheatre) while I’m busy photographing a trash can. It turns out there aren’t that many trash cans around the Coliseum, so I had to go searching for one just for Egor.

The new and the old sign. A rare occurrence.

Traffic light poles are painted dark green in some neighborhoods and yellow in others.

The curbstones on many streets interconnect like puzzle pieces so that they don’t fall out (like in The Hague).

Many Russians who come to Italy for the first time don’t understand why old FIATs bear such a striking resemblance to Zhigulis.

Ground-floor windows are often covered with beautiful heavy grates.

Much to my surprise, you’re not supposed to flag down taxis on the street in Italy. You could easily end up waiting half an hour without seeing a single cab. That’s because all the taxis wait at specially designated taxi stands. Sure, we have “Taxi” signs back home as well, but it’s not like there are ever any taxis there.

A street charging station for scooters. Yachts at a marina charge up in a similar fashion.

I absolutely love Italy, and during this trip I fell in love with Rome, which previously had seemed too big. Its colors, surfaces, rough textures, lighting, fonts, metal, shutters, windows and streets are simply made for living.

Even the sign prohibiting bill posting is made of marble here.

The law requires that all scaffolding must have an upwards-sloping canopy at the second-floor level to catch falling debris.

I’ve never seen so many Smart cars in any other city before. Even the Germans back in their homeland despise them.

There are some halfway solutions: little buses with one door.

The Geneva trolleybus with two accordion joints has been knocked out of the park by the Roman tram with six.

Meanwhile, in the metro, the entire train is just one long car. The poles in the center might resemble crutches somewhat, but the fact that they split into three in the middle is very useful.

If there’s a flag on a building, there will always be enameled plaques with coats of arms at the base of the flagpole.

The only truly horrid thing is the design of the phone booths in some places. It’s a good thing this preposterous agglomeration of glass surfaces didn’t become a widespread phenomenon.

It’s time to leave the Mark of Russian Culture and head back to the motherland.