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These tourists in town seemed to look at things and read accompanying comment and explanations from tour guides like a subtitle-movie as a continuous historical track. From America they were going back in time to historical Europe, the land of kings and queens and your royal heinieness, but they get feelings they couldn't help actually, experiencing it as it is as opposed to how they had imagined it. However they were in a time machine, the context of memory.
Guess they needed to have their feelings labelled, instructions on the historical significance of caste and castle, whereas I knew nothing, read nothing to gain any intellectual insight to where I was, and only felt it. I felt it un-preconceived, no instructions as to how it should be felt. I was a plain-dealer. They wanted to know what I was doing ? "Now myself" they might say, "I la-da-tah-tah is what I do" and ramble into little asides until the 'what are you doing ?' are put in various aphorisms, usually "my son/daughter roughed it around Europe; I didn't know what they were doing". So what do you say ? Wish I knew. Probably just, "I am travelling Europe on a scooter". It more than likely would not make sense to them, and I would follow with the shy smile, which showed the innocence of my soul, without having to say anymore.
And besides - whereas we westerners in American have but two-hundred years of history, something one could get a handle on, Europe had two thousand years of history. So where does one start if not at kindergarten. Who built castles ? Shouldn't be that hard. Rich people and in the beginning the new crude rich. I would tend to look for the universals.
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