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I always find it fasinating to learn how different people experience the world because each person lives such different realities, kind of like the blid men and the elephant. On the train ride to Pisa I sat with 2 girls from Sweden. They were backpacking across Europe as a high school graduation gift to themselves and to avoid the question "What are you going to do with the rest of youre life". After talking with they for a while I learned that they each knew 4 languages fluently and that they considered North Americans to be ill educated. Apartently their school shows clips from "Are You Smarter Then A Fifth Grader" to show just how stupid US citizens are. Out of politeness I didnt point out the fact that US kids did learn this stuff but that you forget stuff with age and dis-use just like with language (I also didnt point out that Canada also has their version of the show. LOL). While they have English all around them in music, ads and TV shows, we are bombarded with only 1 language. I took French for 7 years and dont know how to speak more then a hand-full of words
simply because Im not exposed to it.
Pisa was a welcome breath of fresh air after the stink of Florence. Ive come to appriciate how lucky Canadians are when it comes to how clean our environment is compared to the rest of the world. The Tower was cool and I got some nice pictures for my facebook profile. I wanted to go up into the tower but they only let 30 people at a time up and by the time I got around to getting a ticket the wait was till 9 o'clock at night and I didnt want to get back to Florence that late.
I always hear about the tower but I never heard about the Cathedral and Roman Ruins which surround it. Pisa was an important port city at the hight of Roma rule so after I saw the tower and fought the crowded merchant markets I spent some quiet time among the Ruins. No one visiting Pisa seemed interested in the Ruins perhaps because they had seen better else where. Either way, it was my first chance to see some Ruins and it was nice to get away from the crowds for a while,
slow my pace and reflect on my trip so far.
P.S. Look at the Mickle Jackson Memorial T-shrit I found in the Merchant market. Even without speaking the language I knew he had died. They are all talking about it over here.
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anonymous
non-member comment
DAMN! i was kinda hoping that i could drop the MJ bomb on you when you came back