First, this isn’t meant to be a racist thing…it’s more of an observation based on stereotypes. After living in Texas for the past few years it seems that all Mexicans tend to ride in the back of trucks. That’s how they get between places and there’s nothing wrong with that. So why can’t they live in Rome? Because there are no trucks for them to get anywhere! In my five days here, I’ve only seen one truck and it wasn’t very big at that. Most of the vehicles here are small cars or motorcycles. Either they don’t feel the need to compensate for smaller things by purchasing Ford F350s (sorry Andy :)) or (and this is the real reason) it’s that the roads are tiny and there wouldn’t be any place to park them. It’s amazing how many more cars will fit on the road when you can stick said cars into your back pocket. Seriously, these things are tiny and I have pictures to prove it!
So what about the Vietnamese? Well, again from living in Texas and visiting Vietnamese restaurants quite a bit, one tends to notice the lack of stray animals in the area. Now I’m not saying that they are serving it to us in the food, for all I know they could have a house full of animals! Not so in Rome. One of the first things I noticed on the train in from the airport and in my travels around the city where the number of stray animals. They don’t seem to be hurting anything, but it is quite unusual.
Plus, I haven’t seen any Mexican or Vietnamese restaurants in the city 🙂