The Ugly American

1982 - that's me climbing the statue. What's funny is I didn't even remember this!
I met some friends after a Pittsburgh Symphony Concert a few weeks ago, and my friend's wife said she remembers this photo, with me sticking my tongue out posing behind this statue. :-)
So he scanned these old slides for me.

From my friend Simon Lowenfeld, who took these photos:
"these statues used to line one of the avenues of the Forum Romanum in Rome; the Forum was the center of Rome and therefore the center of the Roman Empire; the statues were no longer there when I was in Italy 2 yrs ago, undoubtedly removed to save them from tourists climbing all over them…"

He calls this: "The Ugly American"
A reference to a phrase apparently only known to Europeans, about some sort of yankee think or other, I'm not sure exactly ;-) (He's originally from Romania)

Here is another picture from that trip, this one taken in Austria:
www.flickr.com/photos/javadoug/305729943/

And for more of my exploits on that trip, this time in Romania, read half way down this essay I wrote a few years ago:
javadoug.googlepages.com/beauty.html