Alkies in Roma

I've had a most disturbing experience just now and thought that I would share.

I'm here in Rome at an ok hostel where I've had occasion to meet a number of really interesting people. In the few nights I've been here, I've met two nice girls from Ohio, four cool guys from Australia, three friendly Germans and a family of four (two girls and their parents) from Melbourne. However, I also met someone else, and this is where our story begins.

His name is Tim and he's from Kamloops, British Columbia.

At first, it was cool to be able to share some of the same background with a fellow traveller. We sat around the common room with the Australian family and chatted about all sorts of fun stuff like politics, the environment, our occupations etc. But as the night wore on, more and more alcohol was brought to the table and I slowly came to remember one of the things I was fleeing from when I left BC: stupid-ass drunks.

To put things into some perspective, I should mention that at the Canada Day celebrations on Grouse Mountain, it is tradition to have to lie to the partiers and tell them that they are out of alcohol as the evening wears on. This is because BC'ers tend to lack that bone in their heads that tells them when they've had enough to drink and without propper corralling, they've been known to get out of hand. The idea for some it would seem, is that everything is always better when hammered, and you're only hammered when you have trouble standing.

Now Tim wasn't too fargone, but I suspect that had he been able to afford more Yeager, he'd have been well on his way. I noticed the signs though early on: his respect of personal space disappeared, his voice got louder and louder, and his insistence on being the centre of attention was punctuated by yelling across the room. It brought me back to 6years ago, living in BC, having to deal with this seemingly consistent malfunction and having no idea how to make these people get the fuck away from me... So I got the hell away from them instead... 4349.9km away to be exact.

...and now I'm going back. Jesus Christ, what have I done?