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 07 May 2003
For last year or so, if I get a mail from a friend after a small gap, invariably its a "Wedding Invitation"!! And they ask me when will I send such a mail to all! As of now, I am not in a position to sent such a mail, so this invitation! Infact, 70% of readers who were Bachelors when I sent my first edition are now married family men with this edition. My heartiest wishes to all those guys & gals who entered into wedlock. (another three this month and counting ! :-) May be wrong time to go out of India, missing all the marriages! :-( As I am tied up with work upto my neck, I am not able to send the editions frequently. Kindly adjust!! The Italian Diary Continues... Day Five: Christmas in Florence check_immediately();
Within two hours, we were in Florence. A city which is second only in terms of traditions/Architecture ( means Churches/Cathedrals). Checked-in a Youth hostel (Santa Monaco) which was quite neat, but without breakfast. During Christmas, shops are closed, someone warned when we started. I could see why in the streets of Florence. Not a single shop was open including the restaurants. Yes, Not even a Pizzeria. Well, there is no way Italy can exists without Pizza, so we soon found (possibly!) only Pizzeria that was open on that day. People were waiting for Pizza in a Q. When we finally got the Pizza, it was the worst Pizza I had ever tasted. Probable made of low quality cheese, it was an apology for a Pizza. Threw it to the bin. Then what, we have our good ol' MacDonald, and the regular Burger & French Fries! ( I heard a funny bit of news: In US, French Fries are no longer called French Fries because of anti-US stand by France. Instead, they call it "Freedom Fries", just to imply that the war against Iraq was to give Iraqis the Freedom! Come on! I was laughing to tears when I heard that!) Except few churches, there was nothing to see. But it was peaceful small town where you could spend a weekend doing nothing.
The famous Michelangelo was born in this town. His famous David statue stands tall in the nearby hill. Another fellow called Leonardo da Vinci was also born nearby Florence. You always meet interesting
fellow travelers in youth hostel. Another American was reading "Thermo
Dynamics" the whole evening and took a shower and left to visit a nearby
village during night. He told that there is some festival nearby and it
will be fun. Also met an English fellow who wanted to visit India, and
asked whether it is safe to go South India or North India.
Day Six: Pisa & Siena! check_immediately(); Welcome to PISA, hour & half from Florence in train. One of the world's wonder is standing tall here (or leaning). Whole PISA town can be crossed in 20 minutes, there is nothing else in that town other than the "Leaning Tower". "Pisa Tower" - An architectural blunder which in turn became a World wonder. The engineer, who built this tower got away with his mistake and laughed all the way to the bank. How the Europeans market their mistakes!
We have our own "Quid-ib-minar"standing tall without any such problems, but I haven't even thought of visiting it. Why don't we make it to lean a bit and make it an attraction? May be add some small temples around it, get the Mac to open their shop and you have got a ready made tourist attraction in place. :-) You may see Kate Hudson & Leonardo di caprico singing "wonder-o wonder!!" in some Hollywood movie the next year, who knows!! But it was a pretty sight to see the dome with the Tower. But you cannot stay there for more than 2 hours. I didn't go up in the towers
for reasons: 1. It was quite expensive 2. What else to see from top of
the tower in Pisa.
Pisa was over by noon, we
left to another town called SIENA, yes (the fiat) SIENA.
FIAT UNO, SIENA,SEICENTO, TORINO, PUNTO - these are all some Italian names. TORINO is a city in Italy.
I don't know what PALIO means. If you still didn't get, FIAT is an ITALIAN company. Infact, Italian is an interesting language, but easy to learn. Let me tell you how. "Public Telephone center" is "centro telefono pubblico" in Italian. Got it? Just "O Podu!". For all those Tamilians, its easy to remember. If you want to speak Italian, "O Podu!" Not only "O", "I" also is
very common for names. Guess where Roberto Benigini, Inzhagi, Totti, Moretti,
Ferrari, Agnelli, came from? 'I'taly!! (So, sometimes "I Podu!")
Back to Florence for night
stay.
check_immediately(); Early morning we started to Milan, the fashion & financial center of Italy. Only place where we could see some handful of Skyscrapers in Italy. Damn! It was raining and the popular Cathedral (third biggest dome in the world) was under construction. Lunch : Surprise! Surprise! Burger (King) !! "The Last Supper" painting is another attraction here. More than anything, football lovers know Milan for its teams AC MILAN and INTER MILAN, two top Italian teams. Rivaldo is playing for AC Milan now, and Ronaldo played for INTER Milan before moving to Real Madrid. (Both the MILAN teams are meeting today for Champions League!) We went to the MILAN Football stadium, hoping to see a Football match with floodlights, but there was only flood and no lights. I mean, it was raining heavily and it was already dark by then. So just saw it from outside and returned back. So, you could see Jerseys,
T-Shirts, Caps with both the MILAN club logos. Italy being Ferrari's
home, you could also get all the RED colored souvenirs of Ferrari.
Train back to Stuttgart via Venice(which I have visited already) at late night. Day Eight: Good Old Stuttgart! After criss-crossing the whole Italy in a week, I was obviously delighted to return to Germany, where no longer I need to worry about my purse and passport. The week long trip and junk food had drained my energy and I need some R..e....s......t..... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........................ **********************************************
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted. - Steven Wright
That's all folks!! ciao! Your Friend,
Check the response for the
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Cut&Pasteright Euro Times 2002
