Yes. There are days when I look at my city and feel a sense of shame. When I decide to take a walk downtown and arrive in the area near the train station, now called the "red zone," and the name alone already suggests that it’s not a good thing... I pass through the station area and see groups of irregular immigrants sleeping on the steps, hanging out on the sidewalks, and loitering while the police and institutions turn a blind eye. It’s not a question of racism, but of feeling powerless in front of a level of decay that no one wants to fix. A few weeks ago, it made the news that one of these people, for no reason, took a baby from a crib, luckily then being stopped. And I think of tourists who might arrive to visit the city, quite famous for its works of art, and see this mess...
And this connects to the issue of going out at night. Dark streets, streetlights off, because we have to save electricity to reduce consumption and be more green, and the people mentioned above free to roam, maybe in groups: every sound makes you turn your head and wonder if it’s safe to continue. It’s not paranoia, it’s reality. In what kind of place is it normal to be afraid to go out at night?
Traffic, then, is a Greek tragedy. Cars everywhere, endless lines, bicycles brushing past you without mercy. And then the air: the pollution here is one of the worst in the north, in the morning thinking of walking down the main street is madness, you can only get in the car and turn on the air recirculation to avoid breathing the filth.
And then there are the politicians... we know they all suck and even the cleanest one has lice, but the local politicians are the worst of all... They leave schools with broken heating in winter and children eating in the cafeteria at 14°C, bridges closed for months for mysterious works that sometimes proceed, sometimes don’t, streets that flood, and thieves who often visit people, but they calmly don’t ask for more police. You wonder if anyone actually does something once in a while or if they are all too busy pretending to do something.
If I think of a tourist or someone from outside coming to the city and seeing these things, yes, I feel ashamed of how we are taken care of. But I feel ashamed because I love this city, and seeing it in this filthy condition, knowing what it could and should be, really hurts.
Carnival photo taken this weekend
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