Blog 2: My Summer Romeing Around the Eternal City

I was drawn to Italy for its rich history and culture, for its food and its wine, but also for an internship at a publication called Romeing. Romeing is a magazine for English-speaking travelers and expats which offers a local’s perspective on lifestyle and travel in the eternal city. As an editorial intern, it was my job to construct various travel guides and articles on local events. Initially, I felt extremely under-qualified. My first assignment was a first-timers guide to Rome, incidentally from a first-timer.

My supervisors only used the office for important meetings, so my internship was mostly remote. Of course there were no Starbucks or Panera’s in my neighborhood, but I noticed a lot of creative-looking types with laptops working at Baylon Cafe, right around the corner from my Trastevere apartment. I did my research on coffee in Italy and what would and wouldn’t make me stand out as an ignorant tourist. I ordered a cafe shakerato, a cold expresso drink, shaken with ice and strained, and decided that Baylon would be my office and this would be my drink. I sat in the same spot every day for two months. The waiters drew chocolate hearts in my drink and trained the new staff to know my order before I even sat down. I knew it would break my heart to leave them at the end of the summer.

A week or so into my internship, my supervisors sent me off to report on my first events: two new modern art exhibitions at Palazzo delle Esposizioni. This is when I realized that my art knowledge was not quite where it should be. Then I received the press releases and realized that my Italian was not quite where it should be either. Still, after a lot of research and a lot of Google Translate, I headed towards the expositions, press pass in hand. Two days later, I surprised myself and submitted two of my favorite pieces from the summer. I also reported on Plessi a Caracalla, an immersive exhibition inside the newly-revitalized underground sector of the Baths of Caracalla. The hallways were divided by shelves of ancient artifacts, and in one long passage way stood twelve fluid video installations which artist Fabrizo Plessi created to convey truths about the bath’s complex history.

I was also given the privilege of attending a press release dinner at Cresci, a new restaurant near the Vatican. I brought Sunny, one of my roommates, and we were seated at the end of a long table with the local media, none of whom spoke any English. I felt a little out of place at first, but I was soon distracted by dish after dish of mouthwatering cicchetti, small plates which function similar to tapas. Cresci’s menu offers creative twists on home-style Italian cooking, and I felt like I got a crash-course on Roman staples, from anchovies to suplí, balls of deep-fried rice with tomato sauce and mozzarella. I decided I could spend the rest of my life living off of the eggplant, smoked prosciutto, and buffalo mozzarella pizza. A week later I submitted my very first restaurant review.

I was incredibly humbled that my supervisors entrusted me with these narratives of food, art, and culture. Eventually, I began to feel less that I was out of place and more that I was right where I should be. My experience with Romeing quickly confirmed my career ambitions. The longer I stayed in Rome, the more dynamic it became, as did my abilities as a traveler and a writer.