On a Wednesday night in Milan, we strolled home after a filling dinner that began at 10:30 pm. The strolling was less an attempt to mirror the Italian tradition and more a necessity of the quantity of food we had consumed. When we had gone to dinner, the streets had been lively, filled with people spilling out of restaurants onto the barely-there sidewalks. On our way back, many of them were empty and silent, as if everyone but us – and a few stragglers – was aware of some city curfew.

As we made our way to the Colonne area, however, we found that they had simply relocated. This one square, along with a few restaurants on its exterior, was buzzing with upwards of a thousand people. Mostly young, they were sitting, talking, drinking beer, drinking coffee, and otherwise milling about. Since the Colonne is an ancient ruin, with one row of columns remaining, it was quite the contrast.

We weren’t expecting to see so many people, making us wonder if it was an event of some sort. One of the buildings facing the square had a very large wall painted stark white, so we looked around for a movie projector. In the absence of that, B said it all looked a lot like Occupy Oakland! For those who saw that particular gathering, he was referring to number of people and central square location, not to tents, violence, socio-economic struggle, or police action.

Actually, speaking of police, there was none to speak of. A thousand 20-somethings gathered in a fairly small space, with alcohol, and we saw not a single cop there to prevent rioting or looting or disturbance of the peace, or any such thing. The barbarity!