I headed toward Italy by way of Belgium and Germany. In the train, I accidently met a couple of Korean travelers and got some information sharing trip stories. I think the real charm of traveling is to feel fresh, having new experiences with new people in new places, getting out of monotonously repetitive daily life. As leaving behind Korea two weeks ago, I enjoyed myself traveling alone. I walked toward the Coloseum as soon as I arrived in Rome. As it was described in lots of movies, the largest of the Roman Amphitheaters exuded an atmosphere of greatness and majesty the Roman Empire once had.

When I was about to leave there after I did sightseeing, some people all dressed in the Roman Empire costume came up to me. They suddenly grabbed my camera and started taking a picture of me with some of them. I thought that they provided visitors with this splendid service sponsored by a city government. But, after taking some photos, they asked me to pay for it. Now I am familiar with the tipping culture for street performance since I moved to San Francisco, which is famous for busking, but at that time I did not understand why they expected me to pay. Unwillingly, I gave them 1000 lira, but they began getting mad at me. (A lira was the unit of money used in Italy, but now it has been replaced by the euro.) They had every right to be pissed off because it was about fifty cents worth in those days. I could not afford to pay more as a hungry backpacker. After the five-minute of haggling over the tip, I got out of there with my camera.