Lens: Voigtlander color-skopar 35mm f2.5
Camera: NEX-7, ISO800, f2.5, 1/30, raw
One of Claudia’s best friends recently moved with her husband and baby daughter to the Roman suburbs. They bought one of the houses of Giardini di Ottavia, a shiny new, american-style settlement. Today we went to visit them, and as soon as we approached the area a song vividly started sounding in my head.
“Little boxes on the hill side, little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes on the hill-side, little boxes all the same… there’s a green one, and a pink one, and a blue one, and a yellow one, and they are all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same…”
Jeez, I really love Weeds.
OK, the houses here are not made out of ticky-tacky, they’re actually build solidly and according with all the rules. And there’s no blue one, nor a green one neither a yellow one, they’re more all on the pinky side. But yes, they all look just the same.
We had a wonderful day, Agata just loves playing in the garden, she runs, she (sort of) jumps, she crawls, she rolls (!). But mostly, she sits and pulls the grass, watches it on her hands, cleans them and starts over. And over. And over.
Claudia’s and my day was simple and great too: beers, hamburgers, hot dogs, and nachos. All day long. All very American. All very nice. And, yes, there was sport too. The lazy sport, obviously, the one on wide-screen TV. A couple of football matches, a perfect match with the day.
What can I say, I loved the place and I’m a bit envious of all the fun their daughter (and the coming daughter/son) will have with the garden and all the kids in the suburb. On the other side, I know I couldn’t live in a place like that. I’m sickly metropolitan, I need shops, and bars, and restaurants, and people, and traffic, and stuff happening just in front of my flat all day long. The more the better. We once lived in a very high classy residential area (my parents in law’s unused flat), very quiet, with a shared garden and pool, a park just near by. Nothing else. No way to walk into civilization. And I freaked out.