Unfortunately I don’t have any real terrace, I just have a small outdoor space in front of my door, like a little communal deck on the roof of the old building where I live, just in front of my neighbor’s window. Photograph: Stefano Montesi/Corbis/Getty Images Romans organized as a flash mob sing “Azzurro” from their balconies on Saturday, March 14. Every extra space becomes precious especially if you have a tiny house like mine. In Rome, when you are looking for a house to buy, the agent will tell you that “a terrace is an extra room,” due to the mild climate, but now that room is increasingly valuable. Surely they need more space: a terrace definitely helps. Will their children be called the coronaboomers? We go on talking about housing. It’s a story playing out among many couples in Italy right now. So, according to the new rules, if she goes back to Naples she won’t be able to leave home for who knows how long. For the first time she is living with her fiancée, who is from Naples, and the fiancée happened to be here in Rome for a visit just when the country was put under lockdown. “But I finally realized that an outdoor space is essential,” she goes on. She is looking for a bigger space, and she tells me she just saw an 860-square-foot flat here in the neighborhood. “The question is: quarantine with terrace or without?” she says abruptly as we stride along dressed in our improbable runners’ clothes. We have to yell a bit, due to the distance and because of the scarf covering her mouth.Īs in the Bay Area, the subject of real estate inevitably comes up. We make sure to keep the right distance (one meter apart, according to the rules). So it is with the greatest joy that I join my friend for this stroll disguised as a run. Still, especially for people like me who already work from home, going outside becomes an obsession. Sign up for the Backchannel newsletter and never miss the best of WIRED. This is the first great event for my generation (I was born in 1974) that forces all of us to adapt to new rules. Something that didn’t happen in response to terrorism, for example. Maybe it’s just denial, maybe I don’t want to accept that my lifestyle-our lifestyle-has so thoroughly changed. A kind of Stockholm syndrome sets in, and I find myself thinking that quarantine is not that bad. You get depressed.Ĭertainly, after a while, you get used to the lockdown. You wear your mask, and you don’t feel like making jokes about the virus. When you hear stories like that, you start following the rules. That is how one dies in the time of the coronavirus. But the scariest and saddest thing is how he died: alone, in an intensive care unit, with no chance to say goodbye to his loved ones. It was the 70-year-old father of a friend of a friend. The turning point, for me at least, came when I learned that someone real, someone on the fringe of my immediate circle, was in mortal danger. Photograph: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images People wearing protective masks walk near Rome's Piazza del Popolo. “If you look like a runner you have less chance that the Police will stop you,” she tells me. Nevertheless my friend shows up in a completely orange get-up-orange leggings, orange cap, orange scarf to cover her mouth. The fact is, we don’t actually plan on running at all. Seeing all those people in their shorts and running shoes reminds me a lot of San Francisco, where I lived from 2016 to 2018 while working as a correspondent for the Italian press.Įven the friend I am going to meet tells me on the phone: “Mi raccomando”-don’t forget-“dress up in runner’s outfit.” I don’t have any actual runner’s outfits. Romans are not known to be super sporty, though. They are near the Coliseum they are in the Piazza Venezia. Seems like exercising outdoors is deeply vital: I’ve never seen so many runners around the town. Only retailers deemed vital-supermarkets, pharmacies, tobacconists, newsstands-remain open (with a disputable choice of what kind of shopping is “vital”). It has been a week since the Italian prime minister ordered the closure of almost everything-schools, offices, banks-and the city is as empty as the set of a Fellini film. I have never been much of a runner, but on Saturday I find myself suiting up for exercise and meeting a friend for a run.
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