Today we were the only passengers in the little bus that shuttles people up/down the hill from the top of Cortona down to the train station. The 30 year oldish driver in his limited English asked us how we liked Cortona, where were we staying, etc. Then he asked where we were going next and we said Rome. He paused for a few minutes and then said "do you feel safe going to Rome?" I thought surely he didn't say "safe" but he did. We told him we were ok with going to Rome and that we were very careful about our surroundings.
What surprised us was then he talked about not feeling comfortable about being in Rome especially after the attack on the French priest. He said people in his area wonder when something will happen on Italian soil. He expressed concern about the pope. He said there was a strong police presence in Rome and I said that was good. I told him we were in Rome 1 month after the World Trade Center attack and we felt reassured about the strong military/police presence in Rome. We hope we were able to be sympathetic to how he felt but let him know that we weren't afraid. I'd never had this conversation with someone from Italy before, someone who said that they were afraid. We have had several conversations with friends in Paris about this feeling but it kind of threw me for awhile that out of his limited ability to converse with us, this was what he wanted to tell us.
It made the world seem so much smaller and more connected.