I scan the cheesecakes in the display case and inquire about coffee.
“Please take a seat, wherever you like, please, we will serve you at the table.”
I select a table and see the server standing a respectable distance away with her hands clasped in front of her apron watching me read the menu.
The moment I close the menu, she is at my side.
I order a hot chocolate – more specifically, a “hot milk chocolate” – and a piece of tiramisu cake.
I taste the hot chocolate when it arrives and realize it is literally 100 percent melted chocolate.
Very tasty.
The cake is served on a plate painted with the design of a hunter shooting at a pheasant while a dog waits for it to fall from the sky.
I’m sitting at a small table in a window niche, overlooking a square filled with tourists.
At the centre of the square is a fountain topped by a statue of a warrior I’ve never heard of.
Tourists are taking pictures of the fountain and statue, and I bet they don’t know anything about the statued man either.
On the wall beside me is a print in various shades of blue of a goddess with the circle of a moon behind her head, and she’s looking down on me with a hand to her lips hiding a smile.
Perhaps I should be ashamed of something.
There is a similar blue print on the opposite wall, but that goddess has her shoulder turned to me and is looking the other way.
As I finish my melted chocolate and tiramisu cake, I gaze out at the dozens of tourists holding their phone cameras out to the fountain, when suddenly a pigeon lands on the head of the statue.
I wonder how many photos on so many phones around the world will contain that image of a man in armour, a long knife in his belt, a sword in one arm, and a shield in the other arm, standing straight and proud as a warrior should, but with a pigeon on his head.
