The sun is shining.  The day is perfect.

The banks of the Tiber are swollen.  The waters — sludge is a better word — continue to rise.  It swirls and whirls as it races onward wrapping thick putty-colored liquid around the trunks of the trees, flooding its banks and covering the walkways.  It is getting perilously close to the arches of the bridges that span its width.

Rome watches. Cameras click.

We walk on, running into a river of students as they cross the street.  They are as invasive as the waters that flood the Tiber.  In the next block, we see dozens of vehicles with the markings of polizia and carabinieri.  Five times that many men outfitted in bulletproof vests mill around the streets.

I whisper to Mike, “I think we should go home — I mean Wimberley home.”

Arriving at our temporary home in Piazza St. Egidio, checking the Internet we learn the reasons.

Rome in the News

Rome, November 14 – Police clashed with hard-line student protesters in Rome Wednesday amid a pan-European austerity strike. Protesters hurled rocks at a barricade set up to block them from the premier’s office, prompting a charge from police. Three officers were reportedly injured.

 guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 November 2012 19.30 GMT

In Italy, students were in the front line in noisy and often violent anti-austerity marches. In Naples and Brescia, protesters occupied railway tracks; in Genoa, the entrance to the ferry port was blocked. In Turin, a police officer was hit with a baseball bat. Trento, Trieste, and Palermo also saw protests. In Padua, two police officers were injured in clashes, and 10,000 people marched in Bologna. There were clashes in Milan, and in Venice, protesters draped a bank with banners reading: “You are making money out of our debts”. In Rome, where there were four separate marches, traffic was brought to a standstill following clashes on the banks of the Tiber after far-right students tried to get around a police line to reach parliament.

In Trastevere all is peace.