We’re in the middle of winter. Inverno, in Italian. Not to be confused with inferno, which means hell. By now, I have a good memory of the meaning of the two words, which differ only by one letter, but until last year it sometimes happened that I mixed them up by accident. Then I would say inferno instead of inverno during the well-known chats about the weather. “What a cold hell it is, right?”, instead of “What a cold winter…”. The standard answer from the Italians, with their distinctive sense of drama, then was that the two are almost the same anyway.
There is one phenomenon that manages to enchant even the greatest lover of the summer heath (yours truly)
It is no secret that the majority of Italians are true summer people, just like me. Oh, that beautiful summer. When the whole family sets off to the beach with boxes stuffed with parmigiana, lasagne and fresh panini to enjoy under brightly coloured parasols, while the sound of the waves reaches your ears and you blow yourself some cool air with a fan. These sweet summer memories form a sharp contrast with the cold, the rain, the wind, and the grey skies through which not a ray of sunlight penetrates for days on end. Especially that latter I will never really be able to get used to. However, there is one phenomenon that manages to enchant even the greatest lover of the summer heath (yours truly). And that is snow. For there is little more magical than snow-covered fields or a city glittering in the sun under a layer of white.
Because despite Italy being a country much more focused on summer than winter, January is perhaps Rome’s best kept secret
And that luck struck us here, in the most southern and highest part of the Netherlands, for the second time this month already. As if the weather gods wanted to make it even more beautiful than it already was, it was once again a morning during the weekend that we woke up in a magical winter wonderland. For me, it makes up a little for missing the month of January in Rome. Because despite Italy being a country much more focused on summer than winter, January is perhaps Rome’s best kept secret.
It was by accident that I discovered this secret five years ago
It was by accident that I discovered this secret five years ago. Although everything is different this year and the city is almost completely devoid of tourists at the moment, also in other (non-COVID) years, January is the only month in which tourists do not dominate the streets of the old city completely. It’s the month in which the city belongs a little more to the Romans again. When life gets back to normal after the Christmas holidays (which last until the sixth of January in Italy) and all the expats and international students start trickling back into the country very slowly.
In the university café, I finally got to know my favourite baristas better, who normally had very little time for a chat as, at any time of day, dozens of students were crowding the bar for their quick shot of espresso just before the start of a lecture
It was January fifth in the year 2016 when I flew back to the Eternal City as the first of my very diverse group of international friends. I didn’t want to miss a moment of my exchange year in Rome. What I didn’t know was that the rest would only arrive sometime in the second half of January, as lectures would not commence before the beginning of February. Whereas I hadn’t been alone for a moment in Rome before the Christmas holidays, always running from party to daytrip to yet another party, now there was hardly anyone to go out with. Julia, my best friend from Brazil who was there and with whom I went to a party on the day after I returned, had an unfortunate fall that evening and was subsequently confined to the house with a badly injured knee and two crutches. And that’s how I found myself exploring the city on my own for the first time. I wandered through the old streets for hours, had my caffè macchiato at the world-famous café Sant’Eustachio – where coffee is made from home-roasted coffee beans and water that’s taken straight from an ancient aqueduct – and took the time to truly admire the artworks created by the street artists at Piazza Navona. The sky was a brilliant blue every day, chestnuts were roasted on every street corner giving off their distinctive winter fragrance and the music made by the buskers vibrated brighter than ever in the cold January air. I finally had the time and the peace of mind to read books on the balcony in the winter sunshine and I introduced my Italian roommates to the traditional Dutch stew (my stew adventure was a one-time culinary splurge however: the Italians liked it much more than I did). In the university café, I finally got to know my favourite baristas better, who normally had very little time for a chat as, at any time of day, dozens of students were crowding the bar for their quick shot of espresso just before the start of a lecture.
To my surprise, the Romans pondered nostalgically about that one night from 3 to 4 February 2012, when no less than 20 centimetres of snow fell and the most beautiful city in the world seemed like a gigantic film set at the crack of dawn
By the time my friends returned at the end of January, it was exceptionally warm. Eighteen degrees and abundant rays of sunshine gave us a taste of spring and we eagerly went out into the city. However, to my surprise, the Romans pondered nostalgically about that one night from 3 to 4 February 2012, when no less than 20 centimetres of snow fell and the most beautiful city in the world seemed like a gigantic film set at the crack of dawn. Very unusual, and all the more magical for the collective realisation that this was not likely to happen again soon.
The Italians and their exuberant way of describing things, in which superlatives are not shunned, must have spoken about a paradiso instead
Therefore, I do not believe that there was a Roman to be found who spoke of an inferno, a hell, that morning. The Italians and their exuberant way of describing things, in which superlatives are not shunned, must have spoken about a paradiso instead. A paradise on earth. The exact opposite of hell. And when I now google photos of a snow-covered Piazza Navona, Pantheon and Colosseum, I can only conclude that if this inverno (winter) was to be the inferno (hell) on earth, even the biggest summer fanatics like me have nothing to be afraid of. But that’s something I’ve known for a long time already, ever since that beautiful month of January in Rome five years ago.