Philadelphia

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21 days of pure, unsalted American life.
Body and mind?
Still ok.
I think.

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Preliminary remark.
Face it. Blogging is for people with too much time on their hands. Unfortunately, I am in no such position… So, my dear readers, I trust you will excuse me for being at once late with and incoherent in my writings.


Made a very nice trip to Philadelphia last saturday. Almost arrived late for the bus, weren’t it for my roommate Ben, who woke me in the middle of a (irrelevantly saucy) dream. Ate a banana, took two Perdolans to lighten my hungover head and off I went.
A little over an hour later, Philly greeted us with its impressive skyline. (Thought this sentence would suit a travel blog.)


China, Mexico, Japan and me went straight for water (the consequence of the party I will talk about later) and lunch in a lively roof-topped food market. I loved it, for some reason. Loved the hustle-bustle, the activity, even the smell, and found myself surprisingly tolerant towards other people. I had one of those ‘intercultural’ moments, I think. Ate at a buffet with an elderly black women to the right, and Esther (China) to the left of me. Nice buffet. Nice conversation. Nice, happy Esther.
Walked several miles (yes, miles) through the city. Philly is clean, with wide sidewalks and an overall spacious feel. The architecture is fascinating, even the historical buildings (which I always thought unconvincing copies of European models) impressed me. I got surprised several times; by subtle and funny decorations, by enormous paintings clad against blind apartment walls, by ‘postmodern’ art - which for the first time in my life didn’t feel displaced at all. I will try to put some pictures on this blog, some things just have to be shown.





Final destination of the walk was the Museum of Art, for which we arrived late. Didn’t bother me at all. I was still loving everyone and everything around me. (Might have to do something with those two Perdolans?) China and Mexico took some very nice pictures of Philly, standing on top of the stairs leading to the Museum of Art. By the way, those stairs reminded me a lot of that powerful scene in “Rocky”; can any of my well-educated readers confirm that it was actually shot in Philly?





Reunited with Japan and part of China, we went for dinner in Chinatown. Managed the chop-sticks fairly well. (To those who were present: I really did manage those chop sticks well. It was all acting.)


I’m getting too chronological again. You don’t like chronology, don’t you, reader?

Yes, I’ll talk about that party.
It was great fun.


By the way
Made vegetable soup the other day.
Tastes like vegetable.
It’s terrible.