Close to the most popular playground with my family lies a building most celebrated by myself, the greatest, most important location in a city: the library. These valuable institutions dispense knowledge and information to the people within the city. The one in Princeton was both my most visited and favorite location. On our second day in Trieste, I eagerly entered, ready to get both some new books and away from my screaming siblings.
As I walked into the library, the first thing I noticed was a surprising lack of books. The entry was bare. Right in front of me, there was a staircase leading vaguely up, and to the left, a doorway led to a yet to be opened museum. I decided to go to the right.
That room looked like a standard reading room. A lady at the front desk typed away, posters and pamphlets advertised literary events, tables and chairs were laid out to work upon, and in the back, shelves were filled with newspapers. Most were in Italian, but I decided to try my luck. I settled in and started to read Il Sole 24 Ore, one of the few national newspapers still on the shelf.
From what I could tell, it was a slow news day in Italy. The pope had said something offensive…again. The opposition was criticizing Meloni…again. Nonetheless, it was an interesting experience to try to read in Italian, only using my meager knowledge of Spanish and the pictures above the headlines to figure out what was going on.
The reading room of the library became my more frequent location. As I read more of the newspapers, I began to figure out their respective political standpoints, and, through that, the views of everyone else in the room.
The first newspaper to fly off the shelves is Il Piccolo, the unofficial newspaper of Trieste. Like most city newspapers in Italy, it’s quite progressive on everything except for immigration. This paper seemed to be enjoyed by everyone as the main updater on the times.
Beyond that, things got more interesting and controversial. The next most popular newspaper is always Corriere della Sera, the right-wing daily with views somewhere between that of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. The mostly elderly crowd certainly seemed to subscribe to those views. But there is always one dissenter. I saw an older woman come in everyday and read La Repubblica, the most popular newspaper on the left–sacrebleu!
My preferred newspaper, The Economist, is British, so on the American side of The Pond, it is always a week or so late. Despite being significantly close to the UK, this library gets its copy not one, but two weeks after it is published. Of course, when you read it, the most pressing news stories are that Biden and the Tories are deeply unpopular, so perhaps those two weeks of news aren’t the most important.
Moving back towards the front desk, I noticed something strange about calls to the lady managing it. Every time the phone would ring, she would sit there for a minute or so, and then pick it up. The mystery of why this happens still baffles me. Perhaps she consistently had important work to finish. It’s possible that she was filtering out impatient callers. Maybe she was just bored. In the end, all calls get answered, so who am I to judge?
Naturally, the most common group of people in the room isn’t the library staff, the conservatives, liberals, or leftists, the visitors, tourists, readers, or even those looking for a book. It’s the college students looking for a quiet place to study and write their essays. And in that way, there’s no real difference from Princeton at all.