Isn’t it nice when you meet someone who, talking to them, reminds you that there are interesting things about you too? The conversation touches so many different things, you remember how much you do know about, all your interests that normally lie dormant.
It can be really nice talking to other ex-pats, even if they’re from a country very different from your own, because you realize very quickly how much you have in common, comparing notes on this acquired home you both find yourselves in. Is it strange to feel you relate so much to someone from someplace so different, or are there some shared cultural assumptions in those of us from the New World, experiencing life here in the Old World?
Or maybe it doesn’t really matter where they’re from, maybe it’s just someone who’s interested in worldliness, knowing about it all, rather than insularity. Someone with some of the same frustrations I find myself with here, as well as marveling at all of it that is new, and fantastic.
Photos taken at the Ara Pacis, with a surrounding modern museum designed by Richard Meier.
