Went out for a very early walk this morning, so I was lost earlier than usual. It wasn't 7:30 when I found myself below town walking a road I'd never been on, wondering how to get back up to the center of Assisi. I saw a steep street heading off to my left, with a traffic control arm that was up and a no-entry sign. Because the arm was up and because I don't read Italian, I had no idea what the rest of the sign said and I assumed it had to do with when you could and couldn't drive there. And anyway I wasn't driving. So I clomped up this slope and found myself in a parking lot full of police cars. I'd found the police station. It was on my right, with a staircase running up alongside it. Now, here in Assisi, half the public streets are staircases. So thinking nothing of it, I start up. A young cop face appears in the window, gets that superior another-dumb-civilian look, and goes away. I continue up. I climb three stories of uneven stairs to the next street. And there's a locked gate at the top.

So I had to climb back down again, and go back through the parking lot and down the steep street, and keep going and going around the town on the lower road to get to the gate in the wall. Since the whole point was to be taking a walk, this wasn't so bad. What would have been irritating if it weren't so funny is, that young cop knew I wasn't about to get anywhere. He knew I'd do all that climbing, and then just have to climb down again. But he didn't tell me. I wasn't committing a crime, or being the victim of one. So I wasn't his problem.

All over the world, a cop's a cop.