Before I begin to describe my voyage to san Gimingano, I would like to say that I do not appreciate facebook for treating me like a different person while I am abroad. how does making me type "postulate vinyl" or "loaded anomaly" help them know that I am not a hacker or something? I feel small, facebook, when you oblige me to type these words that are so humiliatingly unrelated.
Now that that's out there, Tuscany:
No homo, but has anyone else seen the movie "under the tuscan sun"? I have, and Tuscany is really like that. It is beautiful and sexy at the same time. The whole place just glows with greenery and rows of vineyard vines (registered trademark) as well as a ton of olive orchards. The houses are yellow and have dusty red roofs and in a simple way they are undescribably gorgeous. I saw this all from a bus window as we headed through the country up into the town of san gimingano (pronounced jimmin'-yawno). S. G. is a beautiful place and has a pretty cool museum loaded with creepy artifacts which include tombstones and horribly graphic carvings of the crusifixion of Christ. Makes you think about how much getting crucified would hurt... Also majorly cool were some fourteenth century musical texts. Gorgeous. Back then they had a pretty weird (different) way to write music. To say the least though, the museum was inspiring in that you really get a grasp of how ancient the local history is.
The basilica of SG was even cooler though. There was an alter dedicated to a woman saint inside the basilica and the remains of the saint were incapsulated in the altar. However, in the upper part of the altar, through a glass window inside a little box, the brain of the saint was preserved independently of the body. It was really creepy and you have to wonder why that was even necessary. If the whole saint was right there in the altar, why did the brain need to be stored in a separate location? Maybe they need the brain in an easy-to-reach location just so they can grab it when they need it. OR... maybe after they had sealed the saint in the altar, they realized they had accidentaly left her brain lying on the floor, so, rather than re-open the tomb and put the brain in with the rest of her, they just made a cool box for it and put it in another part of the altar. Who knows?
Anyway, that was pretty much the trip in a nutshell. I left some unblogworthy parts out, but the take-home message here is that San Gimingnano is cool and worth visiting.
- Jibreel
p.s I think an altar dedicated to my brain would be nice too.
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