Not very European

Just back from Rome. I want to be Italian! Prego! The coffee, cafes, the wild traffic, the shoes, the azure sky, cypress trees. In the fug of a Gauloises' fog the special last week in a movie-scene cafe just off Piazza Navona was Lobster and Gnocci! Heaven. In the blaze of the following afternoon I watch two men pull up in scooters at the Colunna Traiane. They unpack their boxes and start wrapping on togas, plastic breastplates and helmets. Moments later getting their pictures taken with every fabulous looking woman that passes. Tourist tat but somehow more impressive than the bagpiper in Glencoe.
There's an easy passion here that's not very celtic. Northern fringe people don't do Gladiator. They can get passionate, heated even, but but not like venus or vesuvius. No explosion of emotion. Any gesticulations are quickly brought to heel. At the Colosseo though, everyone is humbled. That's two thousand years and still standing still awesome. Not even the orbiting, dizzying traffic can rumble it down.
Had very limited time for sightseeing and gawping at Rome's shameless treasures. Time was spent in plenary, in discussion groups, in break outs and in smoky fugs with multi-lingual bright young europeans. A moment I remember in a discussion about funding for our campaign one UK fund had turned us down because they said they didnt think they had a remit for European issues. This brought smirks and guffaws of various franco, italian and slavic tones at the insular brits. I didnt find it funny but completely understandable. Because I was acutely aware of my otherness, my North Atlantic airs and aloofness. Being the product from the island of the mongrel race; roman, norman, viking, saxon, briton, gael. I saw how I had been blended into a root beer of insipidity. Not skillfully tongued but monosyllabic, monocultural, well almost, I knew some euro music..right?..
Perhaps I would have felt better if I was more culturally distinct. Not with tammy hat and kilt, but maybe bearing some northern edge, some longer hair and beard, leather and fur, tattooed celtic knot, some poetry and hipflask of dram. Actually I'd rather be italian.