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Seeing Places

The villages of Tuscany just before the holiday season appeared extraordinarily bleak. I am not sure what I was expecting to see but the lack of people, light and activity felt quite remarkable - a far cry from how the bigger cities were decked out for Christmas. People come to this part of the world hoping to see their mental image of Italy come to life in some way. My earliest ones of Italy were formed from black and white movies by De Sica, Rosellini and Fellini. 

So there has to be disconnect there - too much time has passed between then and now. The cars on the roads of the Tuscan countryside are not much different from those in America. Everything feels to big for the size of the roads but people make it work. Each time, I see a large SUV parked on a cobbled road hundreds of years old, I have to wonder how it got there and why. After a while, the villages blend into a singularity of The Archetypical Village. Since the people are nowhere to be seen, the personality traits of each one does not quite shine atleast not in a way that a foreign traveler can discern.

The more the world gets photographed, recorded and socially shared, the less the reality of it fails to move the soul. The tourist hotspots during off-season are impossible to enjoy in solitude. It is a variant of getting a glimpse of the Monalisa. Where the off-season does not support services, the scene is devoid of life - like you walked into Disneyland afterhours. I felt like I experienced a bit of both lately since we have been traveling off-season. 

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