You realize you have been converted into a runner when the first thing you pack when you are traveling abroad, are your running shoes and clothes.
On a recent conference trip to Florence last week I packed my running gear and promised myself that I would run by the beautiful Ponte Vecchio. Sure enough on my last day, I woke up bright and early on a Sunday morning and started out at 6.30 am blindly through the streets of central Florence. My beautiful run showed me a side of the city that I did not expect. I saw the underbelly of beautiful, picturesque Florence that Sunday early morning - the beer bottles strewn on the central streets from the previous night’s excesses, Bangladeshi souvenir street vendors were already setting up their stalls outside the Duomo, the homeless were on the streets eating food they had managed to lay their hands on and young boys on the street still drunk from the previous night. This is not the beautiful Firenze that the guide books tell you about.
My morning run gave me access to the heart of the city - it showed me how under the guise of a picturesque tourist destination, Florence was a city like any other and struggling with own share of problems, of poverty and homelessness and immigrants eking out a living. It was a city where I saw its residents hard at work. Local municipality employees cleaning up the city before people were out on the streets, young cafe staff preparing for the breakfast customers they were expecting in a couple of hours, and roadside vendors putting up their wares. I also saw other runners, and we nodded and acknowledged each other as we passed. I saw a bride and her bridesmaids, in complete finery, with her photographer trying to catch the perfect ray of sun light for a pre-wedding shoot over the Ponte Vecchio. Florence seemed so much more real that Sunday morning.
