Schedium

An MRT station in Taipei A few months ago I took a night bus from Rome to the seaside resort of Ostia. Halfway through the journey, a weird smell began to fill the air. I wasn't sure what it was and I didn't think much about it until I heard other passengers complain.  As the smell became more and more unpleasant, the bus gradually slowed down until it stopped. The bus driver came out of his cabin and asked everyone to get off. When I stepped out of the bus, I saw that the front right tire was sparkling. A few seconds later it caught fire. The driver ran to grab the fire extinguisher. We were stuck in the middle of the road for about one hour in the cold, with no shops or cafes nearby, until the next bus arrived. Burning bus tire This was not an isolated incident. There have been 21 cases of burnt buses in Rome in 2018 alone. The phenomenon is so widespread that the people of the city have created a special word for it: "flambus". Accordi...

Whenever I walk along via Marsala towards Rome's Termini train station, I see a middle-aged black man sitting in front of a church. He wears shabby clothes, and his left leg is wrapped in bandages that make it look as if his foot had been amputated. It appears as if he does nothing all day except for asking people for money.  One afternoon, as I was passing by that church, the man, after having received a coin from a tall, blond tourist, suddenly - and perhaps believing that no one was watching him - took off his bandages, revealing a perfectly intact, healthy foot.  As I drew closer to him, our eyes met. I smiled and shook my head disapprovingly. He, too, smiled, and I believe to have discerned a hint of embarrassment, if not shame, on his face.  Rome has a serious problem with people roaming around the city and asking for money. To be fair, this does not concern only immigrants, but also locals. Recently I bumped into a guy from Naples who claimed to b...