Meeting people in Sienna

My impression of Sienna is a city similar to Segovia in Spain. In my opinion, Sienna is a larger version of Segovia, or vice versa if you visited Sienna first then Segovia. Having been in Segovia, Sienna did not surprise me that much.

I had a challenging experience in walking around Sienna. That is to carry my backpack sack with me the whole afternoon, while walking around the uphill and downhill slopes of Sienna without a map on my hand. Let me try not to be negative about this and think of the positive effect of all this challenging experience.

Carrying my luggage around the slopes of Sienna is a good training for hard work, persistence and determination. Walking around without a map forced me to talk and inquire for directions and guidelines from people around. This is a good training for “connecting with people” (Nokia says). Confucius said in his teachings: “三人行必有我师”, i.e. there is always something you can pick-up and learn from other people.

I met a couple from Singapore, they were feeling cold and want to sit somewhere and warm up. The wife suggested sitting in the nearby restaurant, but the husband said no since they were not going to order anything from the restaurant. I knew how cold was the wind and I could see that the wife was feeling very cold, so I approached them and suggested them to go inside the church.

Close to the end of the day, I got confused on the direction back to the train station. Perhaps it was obviously written in my face because a strange guy approached me and asked if I needed help. The safe answer of course is to decline his kindness. Who knows what he is up to? It so happened that I met this guy again in the mall behind the train station, while I was waiting for my train to Florence. His name is Alexandro. He was born in Rome and lived most of his life in Sienna as a chef and a tour guide (he just told them without me even asking). This might explains why he approached me and offered to help me when he saw me in front of the church. Then, the conversation started to get strange again because he started to convince me to stay overnight in Sienna and have dinner at the restaurant where he works. Again, for safety reason, I have to excuse myself. He might mean it with kind intention, but it is better to doubt his intention than to put myself into some kind of trouble that I will regret.

Along my way back to the train station, I asked a Filipina and an Italian lady for direction. Also, I met an interesting lady from Finland who is teaching French in Italy. She asked where I came from and I usually asked back to people who ask where I came from, “have you been to any Asian country”. Then, she started to talk about her interest in the historic background of a place rather than the touristic spots of a place. So, she had been to China and Japan, and is interested to visit Vietnam, not Philippines :(

In the train to Florence, there were four young Filipina chatting and laughing LOUDLY in the cabin. Of course, it is normal in Philippines but I guess not in Europe, at least not that LOUD. Obviously, they did not recognize me as their “kababayan”, otherwise, they might have watched their words. Although they were saying a lot of dirty words, but somehow their conversations appeared to be RAP in my ears. I guess I missed speaking the language and enjoyed hearing (not listening to) their conversations.

Overall, it is an interesting day filled with interesting people.