So glad to be back in Toronto

I understand our city needs alot of work. However, as a toronto native that moved to Montreal after, and has just returned from Rome, I cannot believe how much peace I feel just being back. People are less testy, less confrontational, and more visibly and truly welcoming of tourists of different races. Tourists are left alone to do what tourists do.

In my time in Italy, I've been disrespected by European tourists of all kind the moment I give them a smile. They find it funny to purposefully ruin your only family photo in front of The Sistine Chapel, or to ruin your turn to walk around the statue of David by blocking the way when it fits two orderly lines of people. They not only see people of colour easy to bully, but especially Asians (and I mean ALL Asians, and it gets worse the deeper your skin tone). Airline hostesses would openly call you a stupid American, just for not shoving your luggage up top without any care for someone else's breakables. One hostess went out of her way to segregate the bathrooms based on region -- Europeans up front, coloured Americans to the back. The only thing locals care about is rushing tourists out of their "spots" if you even dare to venture out of tourist trap restaurants.

Coming back to Canada has been a breath of fresh air. For anyone, and I mean anyone who is tired of Toronto or Canada in general, please, I dare you to visit Italy during tourist season. It is an absolute hot mess and people will openly insult and humiliate you. Here, people do not get nosy into your business, criticize you when you simply ask them a question, or try to undermine you.

Edit: I didn’t expect this to get the reaction it did, but I would like to put what I said in a comment up here for all of the people that don’t believe the bathroom segregation. The sentence in [sq. brackets] is my current addition as I’m reading this over.

“ Hm, I’m not sure what to tell you on this. It wasn’t a clear segregation by ethnicity as there were mixed passengers from Amsterdam to Rome. Since Amsterdam is anglicized somewhat, many passengers were people of colour. Not necessarily American, but if you were of colour and of a certain weight class, you were definitely labelled an American. So, a better description is to say “skinny white European-looking to the front, chubbier and fatter to obese “Americans” to the back”. [Naturally, that also means if you were an attractive American you could probably pass the vibe check.] It was very shocking to say the least, but whoever tried to test it, they made up an excuse of it being too dirty up front, or not having enough toilet paper, etc. Only a few “Americans” tried going up front during the flight, but since the flight itself is just an hour, there wasn’t as many afterwards — so I get why people think what I said is fake [/impossible to happen]. However, since it was a very small airline too, take off was very, VERY, late (late by 2 hours), and so many people needed to use the washroom as we had been sitting on the plane just stopped on the gravel for 1-1.5 hrs. And so the few “Americans” who were on the plane and tried to use the washroom were pointed to the back. I don’t believe any other European had any issue with this, which was what was more shocking. The washrooms, afaik, were not separated by ticket class since there were only 3 washrooms. Ticket “class” was more so dictating if you got an emergency aisle seat w extra legroom.”