When in Rome

Well, it is sometimes said that the Italians are the Europeans who are closest to the Chinese and I must say that on leaving the plane in Rome yesterday, that contention got its first little confirmation. There we all were strolling up the corridor only to find the door at the other end locked and so we all waited and waited, we were kept waiting of course, before, walking back, going through another little corridor, down some stairs and onto buses that drove us around the airport perimeter and to the terminus to collect our baggage. The train trip to Rome was uncomplicated enough but a nice little touch in the hotel when the guy at the reception gave us a map of the city; he just tore it out of a book that he had, not to worry that the rest of the book will now be incomplete, pragmatic, certainly but not very German but then I am not in Germany anymore, I am in Rome.
Today, we went to see the Kafflicks, down to St.Peter's and I have to say that these kafflicks, Bernini, Michaelangelo, Canova etc, were pretty good at painting and sculpting but then I have a wee theory that the best of them, Michaelangelo, believed at most, that if God existed it was only as a necessary creation of the brain, thinking that the human imagination had to believe in something "spiritual". One thing is for sure the Renaissance, as we all know, freed the human spirit, without, which the Reformation wouldn"t have been possible and as we all know, especially if we have read Max Weber's "Protestantismus and Kapitalismus", no Reformation, no capitalism and without capitalism, well, no socialism and an awful lot of socialists are atheists. Indeed, most socialists believe a priori in the feuerbachian thesis, which states that "man invented god and not the other way around." Anyway, some of these kafflick boys could really paint and sculpt, kafflicks or not!
The picture was taken of me in front of the boss of the Kafflicks house.