The May weekend in Rome was supposed to be about food, wine, photography and coffee. Not about iPods, smartphones, laptops, GPSs and all other sorts of gadgets. Except for the camera, the only device allowed to come along was my mobile. Not sure my faithful black w810i would be called a mobile really these days, but I’ll stick to it until it totally collapses or I’ve got infected by the iPhone bug like everyone else.
Thus, no laptop was packed for the trip and thus nowhere to make notes, like the draft for this blog entry for example, or the rest of the Rome story – which is still to come, I know. Didn’t have much stationary available at home either since the majority of my things were still packed away in moving boxes back in May. In other words, not much of handbag size to write on to bring along. No worries, I’ll just get a notebook at the airport to use during the weekend, easy as that…I thought.
First try, tax free shop – Not much of suitable size to write on in there and would be too hard to keep the flimsy perfume paper strips in the right order for a whole weekend. Could be an interesting concept for another trip though.
Second try, newspaper stand – Exclusive moleskin notebooks for half a fortune only, more suitable for the middle-aged businessman to match his briefcase and fancy pen, i.e. not for me.
Third try, toy store – “No, sorry, only colouring in books.” Hm…back-up plan perhaps.
Fourth try, book store – “A notebook? We’ll get more in next week, what size screen were you thinking of?” Ok, salesman working in a different reference system than me.
Started to get a bit frustrated by then, seemed like there was a whole airport without a simple A5 or smaller notepad to be found. At the second newspaper stand, I finally found one, which fulfilled my criteria. And there was only a single one left on the bottom shelf of the rack. 
Don’t know if that was because there are more people than me who still just like to use a pen and paper for making notes sometimes, or if the poor notepad had been sitting there since the 80’ies or so waiting for a blonde with an urge to use a pen again. Didn’t really matter at the time, because five minutes later I was waiting for the Rome weekend to take off with an enormous Caffe Latte and happy scribbling along on my new notepad.
Don’t know if that was because there are more people than me who still just like to use a pen and paper for making notes sometimes, or if the poor notepad had been sitting there since the 80’ies or so waiting for a blonde with an urge to use a pen again. Didn’t really matter at the time, because five minutes later I was waiting for the Rome weekend to take off with an enormous Caffe Latte and happy scribbling along on my new notepad. 
