Please, bring out some tea for my new friends.

by Rebeca Álvarez Dobón (Spain)

Making a local connection Vatican City State

Isn’t it wonderful how a random encounter can change your life forever? That’s why I love traveling: you’ll always end up finding magical places and learning unplanned lessons. Vicenzo definitely taught me a beautiful one. And this is his story. ……………………………. - I need to sit down, I’ll faint if I keep walking. My boyfriend Dylan and I had been visiting the city of the Vatican during the whole morning. We had been waiting for long queues to get into the Basilica, wandering along endless corridors filled with astonishing paintings, argued with a grumpy security guard and admired marble sculptures of Roman Gods and Emperors. All about the Vatican was glorious. Every tiny detail crafted in gold was worth hours of appreciation. But our time was limited. And so was our energy. - I know, only a couple steps more. We buy the pasta-to-go and eat it along the river, okay? The plan was romantic and well put. However, my legs started sending signals of battery loss to my brain right after buying our food. So we took a few steps, sat down in the stairs around Piazza San Pedro and opened our carton boxes filled with freshly made fusilli. The views were absolutely magnificent. The mix between the rays of the sun and the water from the fountain gave a golden sparkle to the landscape. Seagulls flew in flocks above us, drawing indistinguishable shapes in the sky. A boy started singing and dancing in the middle of the square to cheer up all of the tourists queuing just as we had been doing some hours ago. Not to mention the astonishing architecture. You could breathe an air of wealth and luxury all over the place. How many billions were concentrated in here? The price of it all was completely immeasurable. We then noticed the man sitting right next to us. He was calmly drawing the face of a woman with a worn out pencil. The ashes of the cigarette in his mouth covered part of the paper. He was gray-haired and tanned, covered in an old red coat and the wrinkles on his face entailed a long life of smiling. When he noticed our glance on him, he gently smiled at us and asked if he could make a portrait of us two. We accepted right away and communicated with him with the few Italian we knew. He told us about his family and made jokes about how he would carry his home around all the time because all he possessed was limited to a small shopping cart. He was amazed by our love story and adored the fact that Dylan is British and I’m Spanish. Suddenly, it started raining. - Seguimi! He took us to a shelter just in between the columns at the back of where we were sitting. While he finished our portraits, he talked about the reason why he was living in the streets of the Vatican. - (In italian) One of the best things the Pope has done for poor people is this place. We can come here whenever we want to clean ourselves and for a hot drink when it’s cold. Everyday they give us buns after lunch time. Oh… one moment, wait here for a second! He left us with his things and shortly afterwards, a woman from the shelter came out with two cups of hot tea. Apparently, Vicenzo was very well known around this unknown community of the Vatican. She told us about what a good man he was and about the history of the organization. - He asked me to bring these teas for his new friends. Vicenzo had given away his daily dose of warm drink for us. He had finished off the ink of his favorite pen for our portraits and used two of the few papers he had for his drawing. He had nothing and still decided to share it with us. We gave him food, cigarettes, a new lighter and a new set of crayons. But it still felt like nothing compared to the great lesson he taught us and the beautiful moment we would carry in our heart forever.