Fun in the theme parks - Mirabilandia and Oltremare

Adriatic coast of Italy, from Ravenna down to Ancona is one long stretch of seaside towns that come alive with tourists every summer. Parts of this seaside route between Savio to Riccione are the most famous and thus, most crowded. These are also the parts that are full of tourist attractions that open around the end of March and remain open till the end of tourist season in September. This post is a photoessay about two theme parks in this area - Mirabilandia in Savio and Oltremare in Riccione.

Both these theme parks have an entry ticket of around 30 Euro per person, but they have special offers for hotels-plus-entry and for families, which work out much cheaper. The tickets are valid for two consecutive days.

Mirabilandia theme park

Mirabilandia is a games and adventure theme park. It has many kinds of roller coaster rides including those that splash into water and those that run entirely in water, passing through water falls.

My favourite ride in this park is where the lift takes you up to the top of a tower and then drops you down, stopping just before you touch the ground. It brought me a big rush of adrenaline.

The park also has some cultural shows including dance and music shows, clown shows, and a film stunt show with cars and bombs.

The entry ticket covers the cost of all the rides, the only problem is due to the long queues in front of the popular rides, especially on the weekends and especially in July-August. Therefore, I prefer going there during April-May, before the tourist rush starts!

Oltremare theme park

Oltremare is a nature theme park with dolphins, fishes, birds and animals.

My favourite part of this park is the dolphin show which is simply incredible. I know some persons who do not like the idea of using living beings as part of game shows and would like to close all zoos and animal based shows. I agree with them that even with the best of conditions, an animal in captivity is never in the same condition as being free.

However, I also feel that the world is very careless towards animal lives. The human capacity for killing animals and fishes and destroying the environment in their greed for money is endless. In this situation, I feel that zoos and theme parks play a fundamental role, much more effective than all the books and films, in educating the young people about nature and environment. Thus while acknowledging that zoos and theme parks are not the best thing to happen to the animals that live inside them, I think that these are useful and  can play an important educational role.

I also love the animal theatre of Oltremare where small birds and animals are the actors.

The park also has lot of different areas for looking at close at fishes, other marine beings and animals, including farm animals.

Conclusions

I love both the theme parks, Mirabilandia and Oltremare. However, if I had to choose only one, I would choose Oltremare, since I love watching the animals. So if you are holidaying in Romagna, the Adiatric coast of Italy, find time to visit these two parks!

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20 New Stunning Flower Wallpapers

I am always on the lookout for new and beautiful wallpapers because I love changing the look of my computer screen. Spring is the time when the park is full of colours and flowers and I felt that it would be good to photograph some flowers for my wallpapers folder.

Yesterday morning I spent some time going around the park near our home in Bologna (Italy) to click pictures. So I thought that I should share the best of those images with you all.

Here are 20 of my favourite wallpaper images, completely free for you in high resolution with advance greetings of Holi, the Indian festival of colours.

Click on the picture you like and it will open a new page with that image in high resolution. You can then save it on your computer and use it as you wish!

If you do not know what are wallpapers and how to use them, click the "Wallpapers" tab above (towards the top of the blog) for instructions.

And if you like these wallpapers, do share the link of this page through Facebook, Google plus and Twitter.

I hope that you have liked these wallpapers.

Please do remember to share the link of this page through Facebook, Google plus and Twitter. And if you use any of these images on your blogs or websites, do remember to give a link to this page! Thanks in advance.

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Loving the child you didn't expect

When we dream of love and a family, we dream of children like ourselves - bright and happy, who will conquer the world and who will bring joy to our lives. What happens when the child you had dreamed about, comes out very different from your expectations?

This is the premise of Andrew Solomon's wonderful book "Far from the tree: Parents, children and the search for identity" that touches with great empathy on the journeys of a group of "different" children and their parents to reach a surprising conclusion - difficult and unexpected journeys have their own joys.

Introduction

Diversity is an indivisible part of our lives - each of us is unique, even the similar-looking twins. Yet that diversity is within some undefined limits - the seed of each plant, would come up a unique and a different tree, but it would be still like its parent plant - the seed will not fall too "far from the tree." But what happens when the seed does fall too far and the extent of diversity is too big to be ignored?

With about 650 pages of stories exploring this theme of parents and their unexpectedly diverse children (and an equal number of pages with notes and references), Solomon's book did seem a daunting tome when I began reading it. However, soon I was lost in it, often thinking of events and people from my own life and my extended family, in a new way. The book tells mainly American stories, with only a few persons from Britain or Rwanda. Yet, I could feel and share the emotional journeys of the people described in it, because even though there are social and cultural differences from the persons in other countries, the essential human emotions are still the same.

Themes of the book

The book starts and ends with two personal chapters - "Son" and "Father" - these explore the relationships between "diverse" children and their parents with a special reference to Solomon's own life, as a gay person who suffered through depression and his decision to have children while he was writing this book. These two chapters are the emotional anchoring of the book.

In between those two chapters, there are six chapters dealing with disabilities - deaf, dwarfs, down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia and other disabilities. All these chapters are about conditions that the society and the parents usually look at as "negatives". The next, chapter VIII, is about a diversity that most of us would imagine as "positive" - the child prodigies.

Then there are three more areas of "negativity" - children born of rape of their mothers, children who end up in the world of crime and children who feel imprisoned in wrong bodies - the transgender persons.

On each theme, the book tells stories - each story is told from different point of views of the persons involved in it - persons themselves, their parents, their siblings, their friends, etc. In between the stories are scattered some reflections and information about some of the key issues regarding the different dilemmas that those people face.

For example in the chapter on dwarfs, there are stories of "little people" and in between the stories, you can understand about organisations of little people, the different names they prefer to be called, their dilemmas about having children like themselves or "normal" children, how looking at them individually we tend to focus on their shortness while when they are together as a group, we can see them as individuals, the different kinds of dwarfing conditions, the long suffering for getting "elongation operations", etc.

This way of telling stories is like building a story-pyramid, where each stone shows a different facet. In the end you realize that each diversity is made of countless diversities, each is similar to others and yet unique, and that you can't take for granted anything because as human beings, we continue to surprise ourselves and others, not just with prejudice and ignorance, but also with generosity and dedication.

Comments

It was a long time since I had read a book that touched me so deeply and I would like to thank Solomon for that. Diversity surrounded me since childhood and probably that is true of everyone else as well.

Diversity raises barriers around you, I had experienced it as an immigrant in Italy - you are different from others, and in many different and subtle ways, people react differently to you. I had had long discussions about the nature of those barriers with a friend who uses a wheel chair and negotiates different kinds of barriers all the time. As a child, I had grown up with two of my aunts being "diverse" - one because she was born with a few fingers missing in a hand, and another who had small pox as a baby and carried the signs of that infection on her face. Growing up, I had seen how we all behaved differently with the deaf brother of a close friend. A few years later, first one of my school friends and then another aunt, both had had children with Down's syndrome.

I chose to work in the area of disability and community-based rehabilitation. Often I have also interviewed persons with disabilities and their families. Many of the issues about which Solomon has written in the book, were not new to me. Yet, I found the book illuminating because it went much deeper and had a more profound connection with people it talks about. I must have read countless books, articles and journals on the issue of disability, but still Solomon's book gave me new understandings.

So if you work with development issues or in a community programme, even if not specifically in a disability related programme, read this book. If you are a health professional, don't miss it. Even as human beings, I think that everyone should read it. I hope that it will be translated into other languages.

Among all the different kinds of diversities Solomon writes about, for me the most difficult part was reading about the severely autistic persons. Not to be acknowledged, not to receive even a tiny smile or a flicker of recognition in the eyes - I think that I will find that the toughest thing to bear. However, there are different stories in the book that show that when we become familiar with a person and his/her condition, we can deal with it. It is the unknown, the "other" that makes us afraid.

Solomon writes very well, his empathy makes you understand people's feelings, fears and pains, but it is only in the chapter on Prodigy, that I could appreciate the poetic beauty of his words.

For example in the story of Zhenya (Evgeny Kissin) Solomon gives a vivid understanding about his early life in a state-controlled country with his words, "The Kissins lived the life of the Soviet Jewish intelligentsia: physically uncomfortable, constantly frustrating, the pleasures of the mind partially filling in for ordinary discomforts of the flesh and ideology’s constant intrusions on the spirit."

Or, this description of Zhenya that brings him alive so beautifully, "Zhenya is too tall and too thin, with a strangely large head, enormous brown eyes, pale skin, and a mop of crazy brown hair in which you could mislay something. The overall effect is slightly gangly, and his bearing combines the tense and the beatific. Watching Zhenya sit down at the piano is like seeing a lamp plugged in: decorative though it may have seemed, only then does its real use become apparent. You feel less that he is pouring energy into the instrument than that he is receiving energy from it. “I don’t know if I would be able to live if I suddenly became unable to play,” he said. Zhenya plays as though it were a moral act that could redeem the world."

Limits of the book

In terms of the stories that Solomon presents, I think that there is an inherent bias - people who did not want to care for their "problematic" children, for whatever reason, are under-represented in this book. I think that at one level our societies ignore or actively discriminate against "different" families, but at another level, people who feel that they can't take care of their children and give them up to institutions or to foster care, are also seen negatively. We expect people to "look after whatever God has given them, even if it is a difficult task!" And, thus I think that for such people, it is very hard to overcome feelings of being judged and probably feelings of guilt, so they do not share their stories in this book.

In the Indian context (and in other developing countries), often there are no institutions or foster care where you can "give up" such children. I am sure that communities have ways of "dealing" with this issue. Thus in my work, often I did meet persons who have chosen to take care of their "different" children, but there was no way for me to meet those had made other choices. I am saying this without any intention of judging others - for poor families that struggle to survive, there are not many choices and none may be easy.

The book explains that internet has given new opportunities for "diverse" people to find others like them and to create "communities". I wonder if through internet there are groups of parents who had chosen to give away their disabled children and can find solace and understanding with each other. Their stories remain largely unknown.

I also felt not completely convinced about the chapter on the prodigies in this book. I could understand the sense of alienation of these persons and their families and the sense of their diversity, and yet, this chapter is very different from all other chapters in the book. Solomon focuses on musical prodigies and the chapter is almost halfway in the book - it comes as a relief because, for once he is not talking just about pains and difficulties, but also about common joy, success and pleasure.

Conclusions

I think that if there is only one book from 2013 that you can read, then it should be Andrew Solomon's "Far from the tree". Not just because it talks of people who face enormous challenges and find joy in those challenges. But because it makes you appreciate and understand the emotional anchors of your life and how important are the love and affection of people in our lives.

You can read more about this book and get a glimpse of many of its stories on the book's webpage. The two images used for this post are from this same webpage.

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My favourite squares - People's Square in Rome

If you ask me about the most beautiful square I have seen during my travels around the world, I will be hard put to answer you. From Sukhbataar square in Ulaan Bataar  (Mongolia) to the futuristic square of the Brazilian National Congress building in Brasilia (Brazil), the world is full of beautiful squares. Still, the People's square in Rome, called Piazza del Popolo by the Italians, would be near the top of the list. This post is for sharing some of my favourite photographs from the People's square in Rome.

An overview of Piazza del Popolo Square

"Piazza del Popolo" is an oval shaped square, elongated at the two ends. The picture above, showing a night view, gives an overview. It was taken from a small hill (Pincio hill) on the eastern side of the square  and shows the back of the Rome statue with two rivers sitting on his two sides.

In the middle of the square, there is an Egyptian obelisk surrounded by fountains. On the opposite end, there is the Neptune statue and the road behind it goes towards St. Peter's.

On the right side, to the north, where we see the branches of a tree, is Santa maria del Popolo church and the Flaminia gate. On the left side, we can see one of the twin churches, and the three streets between them (the Trident) going towards the centre of Rome.

Story of Nero's shrine

Historians say that this square was the site of a shrine to the Roman emperor Nero and that shrine was destroyed in 11th century, replaced by a church.

Some people believe that Nero was greatly loved by the Romans. The church did not like Nero's cult so his shrine was destroyed and his reputation was deliberately smeared by saying that he had made Rome burn and then played fiddle, while people were running around, trying to salvage their belongings. Others' say that Nero's shrine was destroyed because his ghost used to trouble the Romans.

Another story about this square is that once there was a forest of Poplar trees that gave this square its name, though now the word "popolo" is understood as "people".

The gate & the church from "Angels and Demons"

Any way, let us start a virtual tour of this square. We shall start from the northern end, which has the Aurlian walls and the Flaminia gate. Flaminia was one of the ancient roads of Roman empire that went towards Rimini on the north-eastern coast. Along the Aurlian walls was Muro Torto (crooked wall) with the un-sanctified cemetery where criminals, prostitutes and other marginalised persons were buried.

The picture above shows square side of the Flaminia gate and on the right, Santa Maria del Popolo church. This gate was designed by Michelangelo and built by Vignola in the 16th century. In 17th century, to welcome the queen Christina of Sweden, who had converted to Catholicism, welcome words were written above the gate.

The picture below shows the same gate, also called Porta del Popolo (People's gate) from the outside, from the side of the Flaminia metro and railway station.

The picture below shows Santa Maria del Popolo (St. Mary of the people) church, next to the gate. This church is full of mosaics, paintings, sculptures and is made in rich baroque style. I love the two paintings of renaissance artist Caravaggio in this church. It became even more famous because of the popular writer Dan Brown, whose book "Angels and demons", on which a film was also made, had scenes based in this church. Thus, this church is often on the tourists' visit list.

The almost twin churches

On the other side, opposite the Flaminia gate, are two churches, also known as twin churches. I love the picture of the twin churches below because it was taken on an early morning, around 6 AM and thus, the square was almost empty.

If you just take a casual look, the two churches look similar, however they are not exactly the same. The church on the right, Santa Maria dei Miracoli, has an octagonal (8 sided) dome while on the left, Santa Maria di Montesanto church, has a ten-sided dome. If you look again at two domes above and count the number of sides you can see, clearly the dome on the left has narrower sides.

As the whole square is so imposing and monumental, it is not easy to stop and look at the details. However, if you have time, stop and look carefully and each building is full of interesting details. As an example, the next 3 images show some details from the Santa Maria dei Miracoli church.

3000 years old Egyptian obelisk

Now let us look at the Egyptian obelisk at the centre of the square. The picture below is from my early morning visit in 2005 when this obelisk was undergoing restoration. Except for that one occasion, I have always found this place teeming with persons.

In the image below, you can see the dome of St. Peter's in Vatican city, against the Rome skyline. This view of the square is from the Pincio hill. Coming back to the obelisk, it is more than 3000 years old. It was brought to Rome in 10 AD by Roman emperor Augustus when Egypt had become part of the empire. For centuries, this obelisk was placed in Circo Massimo, the site of Roman sporting events, near Colosseum.

This obelisk, from the times of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, was shifted to this square in 16th century. In 19th century, 4 fountains with Egyptian looking lions were built at its base.

The images below can give you an idea of this place in summer, when the whole square seems full of people and there is hardly a place to sit here.

Piazza del Popolo in films

Gus Van Sant's "My own private Idaho" was shot here, and there was a scene where Mike (River Phoenix) wakes up at the base of the obelisk.

Many other films have been shot here. In 1945, Rossellini had shot here "Rome, open city". Via Margutta, a side street of Via del Babuino, near Santa Maria di Montesanto has the house which was shown as Gregory Peck's home in Roman Holidays (1953). In 1974, Italian director Ettore Scola had shot  here "We all loved each other so much" (C'eravamo tanto amati). In 1978, Weber had shot "Hotel Locarno" at the eponymous hotel on the side of this square.

However, the most significant film shot here was probably, "In the Year of the Lord" (Nel anno del signore) by Italian director Gigi Magni in 1969. This film was about rebellion against the rule of the Pope Leo XII in Rome in 18th century when two Carbonari resistance fighters, Angelo Targhini and Leonida Montanari were executed here. A plaque on one of the walls of the square commemorates their fight.

Rome and Neptune fountains

Let us take a look at the two fountains and sculptures on the eastern and western corners of the square. On the east, the group of three sculptures has Rome standing with the two rivers, Tiber and Anniene, sitting by his sides. In the centre, in front of Rome, is the symbol of Rome - a female wolf feeding the twins, Romulus and Remus. According to this story, Romulus had founded the city of Rome.

I was a little surprised by these statues because I would have imagined Rome and the two rivers in female forms and not as men. Around the central sculptures, there are many other sculptures on the sides and at the back, as you can see in the 2 images below.

Below, in the night image of the Rome sculpture on the eastern end of the square, you can see also see the Egyptian sphinx as well the fountain underneath.

Above the Rome group of sculptures, you can also see the terrace at the top of Pincio hill.

On the opposite side of the square, the group of sculptures is dominated by Neptune, holding the trident in his hand.

Arts, Events and People in the square

Piazza del Popolo is a hugely popular place, often the venue of music concerts and art exhibitions. The images below present some of those special events.

The image below has a Michael Jackson look-alike showing the dance steps of his idol in the square.

The two images below are from a sports function in the square, where Rome statue seems to be playing the role of the referee.

The image below has a street artist called Fabio Cicirelli showing acrobatics.

The next two images are of a wonderful art installation called "Trash People" made by Hu Schult in 2007.

Finally, to close this post, the group picture from the marriage of a naval officer in front of the Santa Maria del Popolo church.

Conclusions

I hope that you have liked this virtual tour of the Piazza del Popolo square.

For almost 20 years, I have crossed this square so many times, on my way to the meetings, as usually I needed to change the bus at Flaminia. I have enjoyed visiting this square so many times, sometimes only rushing through, at other times, sitting under the obelisk and thinking of the history this place must have seen.

This post is my way of saying thank you to this square for all the pleasure I have received from it!

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