November and December under the rain

 

November and December are not the best months of the year to ride a bicycle in Rome because of the heavy rains and big storms.

I saw another Brompton a couple days ago. A black one, quite used and parked in front of a shop. Good to see that I am not the only one to ride a Brommie around here. I also noticed in the last weeks the arrival of new bikes, which seems to be the top models of Italy: cream or light blue, honey Brooks saddles, leather saddlebags and grips. Very Chic, we would say in French…I will try to find out who build them.

When riding near Campo di Fiori, I passed by an old bike with a beautiful colour: some kind of very shiny copper. In fact, when getting closer, I discovered that it was not really painted but it was some kind of layer on the chrome. Don’t think anyone would be able to do something like that nowadays.

Riding a bike in Rome, part one: sharing the street with others

 

 

UTINAM TUUS CURRUS DELAETUR! 

This Latin expression often heard in the streets of the ancient Rome is not used anymore. Who would shout “I wish your chariot will crash!” in the XXI century? Latin and chariots almost disappeared from the streets of the Italian capital, now invaded by all sorts of vehicles, speeding with often little respect for others. But, while Parisian drivers can easily argue and fight physically when they disagree, Romans are much more relax.

I think the first rule of the Roman driving book is something like “do whatever you wish”, which means “drive your car the same way you ride your scooter”: overtake from left and right, never respect lines, ignore some of the traffic lights, stop in the middle of the street to chat five minutes with a friend while blocking the traffic. Fortunately, the second rule is probably “But try to stay relax and use your klaxon if you really get mad”. 

So what should I do if I can’t argue with car drivers when riding my Brompton? 

I chose to simply follow the ancient expression “Do as Romans do”, when I understood that a bicycle is not considered as a real vehicle by local police and therefore I have full immunity to do whatever I wish :  riding in a one-way-street the wrong way and waving a ‘Salve’ (Hi!) to a policeman who smiles at me, going on the left side of the road, competing with scooters in overtaking cars blocked in a traffic jam or even riding on the pavement…

But of course, I also follow the second rule and stay relax and quite polite. You will never hear me shouting  Utinam tuus currus delaetur! to a car driver. Here, we are in Rome, not in Paris!

 

An Italian and British folding Fiat 500

 

I don’t know who had the brilliant idea to build a very small car, but for sure Italians managed to make one the best model with the Fiat 500, which can be in many ways compared to a Brompton, even if not a “folding car”: It fits perfectly the city, take very little space when parked and has an unusual friendly modern design. There are hundreds of these “Cinquecento”, dating from the late 50s to mid-70s still being used in Rome.

British, who don’t have (at all) the same temper as Italians made another amazing very small car as much popular and with the same qualities as the Fiat 500: the Mini.

So, why British invented the Brompton (and the Moulton) and why Italians never built a brilliant folding or small bike? Could you imagine a folding Bianchi with a great design, and equipped by Campagnolo…

I dream of this Italian version of the Brompton: a folding bike made for speeding through Rome and the Italian Alps, wearing sunglasses and hair in the wind. Basically, the opposite of the Brompton, which is much more a costume and tie’s vehicule, fitting perfectly the cold and rainy London…

Well, one of the main problems with a folding or small bike is the difficulty to have your girlfriend sat on the carrier, holding you tight. And this is something quite important over here…

All right, back to the beginning: the ideal Italian two-wheeler is a…Vespa. 

 

A devil riding an angel’s bike

 

The name of  the most famous Italian bicycle-maker, Bianchi, is directly related for me to Fausto Coppi, Il Campionissimo, the “champion of the champions”. Coppi had an amazing career, winning several Giro and Tour de France, performing legendary rides, and he was more than a cyclist when becoming with his eternal rival Gino Bartali, the symbol of Italy’s political division.

I always found his first name fascinating: Fausto. How could someone live an average life when named like the main character of Goethe’s story ? What kind of deal did he make with the devil when riding a Bianchi, a bicycle which brand’s name sounds just like bianco (white), colour of the angels ? What kind of Faust was he to wear a white and light blue jersey, like the sky, where angels live? When Coppi had a scandalous affair with a married woman, they were accused of adultery, still a crime at the time in Italy, and the lady was named by the newspapers “La Dama Bianca”. The angels’ colour was again following the path of the devil…

I discovered a few days ago in an Italian book that Coppi’s full first name wasn’t only Fausto. It was Fausto Angelo : a devil riding a Bianchi and becoming a legend while being followed by an angel…

The Bianchi bicycles come from Milan, Northern Italy, but some old ones can still be seen in the Italian capital and like an archeologist, I started to keep a record of them…

From Paris to Rome

Paris is becoming more and more a bicycle-friendly city: riding a bike is fashionable since Velib became THE new way of  traveling in the city. I witnessed a change of mentalities in the last years and these days, riding a bike could be seen as some kind of political act, showing how much you care for the environment and the city. People don’t even laugh anymore at me when I ride my Brompton, they tend to stop me to ask where they could buy one.

When I said to my Parisian friends that I was leaving the French capital for Rome, one of their first questions was about my bike: “You are going to sell your Brompton to buy a scooter, aren’t you? Please don’t get a Japanese one, but get an original Vespa, a Piaggio with enough room to carry a girl sidesaddle.” How could you imagine Rome differently? Movies taking place in the Italian capital from the 50’s Roman Holidays to Nani Moretti’s Cario Dario show a city full of “motorini”, symbols of the dolce vita.

A couple weeks before I left Paris, I had a lunch with a journalist from Rome, who was writing a story for a magazine on how cycling was becoming a big thing in the French capital. When I asked him what was the situation in the Italian capital, he smiled :

“Rome is testing a renting service like Velib, but when the French city launches it with thousands of bikes, Rome has a try at a very low level with only 200 or 300 bikes in the city center… and basically, you don’t see many people riding bikes on weekdays to go to work or to go shopping; maybe there is a bit more cyclists during weekends, riding for pleasure.”

As I was unfolding my Brompton when leaving the restaurant, he said:

“Are you going to bring your piccola bicicletta to Rome?

-Of course, why not?

I was probably over-confident, but I didn’t got a clear idea at the time of what Rome was looking like for an everyday’s bicycle user…

Here I am now, riding my bike in Rome’s streets, full of holes and slippery cobblestones, cars drivers ignoring the basic rules, dozens of scooters overtaking both on the left and on the right, tourists stopping in the middle of the streets to unfold a map looking their way for a Coliseum, a Sistine Chapel or a Trevi fountain…

Benvenuto a Roma, piccola bicicletta!