V-Day Time Machine: Siena
Susan and I have been together for over 9 years. That isn't to say that the romance is gone, but occasions like Valentine's Day have taken on a different function, as I wrote about last year. For example, as I write this now, Susan is typing away on her own blog and we are sitting comfortably in near silence, yes, on Valentine's Day. To the outside observer, it could seem either strange or totally hilarious.
Getting to the point, it's been 5 years since I was abroad in Rome, and have been thinking back to where I was at this time in 2004. This particular weekend, for example, my fellow Italian Templars Andy, Andrew, Jess, Jay and I traveled to Siena on one of the several weekend trips to the cities and hill-towns of Lazio and Tuscany.
It was an amazing 2 days, but it stands out as the weekend where we started taking an extreme quantity of 'people-pictures', but it was also the scene of a rather epic argument/conversation about the nature of Valentine's Day, and whether or not it was worth a damn. It was really entertaining. The verdict, if I remember correctly, lay somewhere between indirect condemnation of artificial means of romantic expression, and an abiding tolerance of some of the more worthwhile aspects. Looking back, it was rather inconclusive, but as I mentioned before, good for a laugh. Here are a few artifacts from that weekend of overanalysis and overexposure. Happy Valentine's Day, whatever that means to you.
It was an amazing 2 days, but it stands out as the weekend where we started taking an extreme quantity of 'people-pictures', but it was also the scene of a rather epic argument/conversation about the nature of Valentine's Day, and whether or not it was worth a damn. It was really entertaining. The verdict, if I remember correctly, lay somewhere between indirect condemnation of artificial means of romantic expression, and an abiding tolerance of some of the more worthwhile aspects. Looking back, it was rather inconclusive, but as I mentioned before, good for a laugh. Here are a few artifacts from that weekend of overanalysis and overexposure. Happy Valentine's Day, whatever that means to you.
Oh, and I managed to find some photographic documentation of that great debate, at the Siena train platform, headed back to Rome:
3 comments:
the epic argument! I had totally forgotten about that until you mentioned it. I equally remember tat weekend as a transition from feeling like a tourist to feeling more like a long term resident.
That argument/discussion was...well, epic.
A bunch of things clicked on that particular trip of that particular time in Italy. I don't know if it had to do with the hot sugary dough baked stuff we had in the square, the fact that I spent the night trying to not have Andy 'cuddle' me to death, that sunset that we chased down, the strange foggyness in all our photos of that day.
Somewhere in there I changed my perspectives on alot of things, and htat weekend has, looking back, been a watershed moment (amoung the many of that semester) where I started to change the way I looked at things.
Thanks for the memorable look back.
-Andrew
That was a great weekend, I don't know what I enjoyed more....Andy's marathon around the piazza, drinking wine out of yogurt cups or the creation of back alley boys. In the end the hallmark holiday of love prevailed b/c we all recieved Valentines from Andrew.
Glad you boys both enjoyed the look back!...I had forgotten about Andy's incessant cuddling (not that it was out of character) and the yogurt-wine in the piazza! It helped that we each took hundreds of pictures and it was definitely a transitional weekend: after that I felt a lot more at home in and around Rome.
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