Der Foreign Editor der australischen Tageszeitung The Australian, Greg Sheridan, war in Rom. Offenbar um vom Untergang einer großen Zivilisation zu berichten. Dazu reichte schon ein Besuch des Flughafens:
SOMETIMES a single episode, a single image, a moment of lived experience, brings into focus an entire new order. You may have been aware of this new order before, but the defining moment lets you see it in the flesh, so to speak.
My epiphany took place, appropriately enough, in Rome, specifically in Rome’s airport. I was travelling from Israel to Morocco via Rome, and returned the same way.
Nothing has quite so comprehensively shown me how far Asia has gone past Europe as the comparison between Rome airport, where I’d never been before, and the Asian airports I frequent all the time, such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Compared to them, Rome is a decaying backwater.