I found myself spending a few days in the Hague for a conference and some research team meetings, and I have to say that I found it an absolutely charming city. The buildings, the canals, the sense of spaciousness in the streets coupled with the coziness of the shops and restaurants, and most of all the cheerfully helpful people, have convinced me that this is a city worth revisiting.
Everything on wheels
One thing that I did have to get used to was the close proximity of wheeled and pedestrian traffic. It is not unusual to find yourself sharing a few meters of what I would normally consider walking surface with a tram, a couple of cars, and ten women on bicycles. The cyclists in particular reminded me of their sisters in Copenhagen, each one a picture of the well-groomed professional on a sensible bike with a basket, going hell bent for leather past my elbow.
The girl with a pearl earring
The Mauritshuis art gallery, although unpronounceable by mortal tongues, does have a marvelous collection of Rembrandt, Steen, and Vermeer, including the famous girl with a pearl earring. In the gift shop, you can buy her on any number of items for around the house, including the usual postcards and coasters and keychains, but also an umbrella, a wristwatch, a box of wooden matches, and soap. Richard and I visited the place twice, applying our close scrutiny to the many details of Jan Steen’s paintings, which to my mind are in the same category as William Hogarth. We also joined Ruskin in subjecting to our critical judgment the many paintings involving water.
God of 5s
I was pleased to learn that the Hague was home to M.C. Escher (1893-1972), familiar to anyone who has ever bought a poster as the guy responsible for drawing hands, the 2D lizards who walk off the page, and an impossible set of staircases. I have a soft spot for him because I once took a senior math class in symmetry, where I painted a couple of tiled planes. I was particularly fond of one of them, which featured coelecanths and toucans, because I thought it combined one of the shiest creatures with one of the most flamboyant. It marks my only real commercial success as a painter, since my prof purchased it at the end of the term and hung it up behind the registration desk in the Math Dept. In any case, the Hague has an entire art gallery dedicated to Escher, with three floors packed full of prints of all kinds, as well as a few sketches and some sculptures. He had apparently once mentioned that some of the images should be read as small movies, so they also had digital films that people had made. On the fourth floor, there were a number of optical illusions, including a distorted room that made people look bigger and smaller than they are.
A Winter Wonderland
I woke up on my last morning here only to find that the night had brought a seriously heavy snowfall. It reminded me of Balgonie in some ways, with all the trees piled with snow and the snow on the ground up to your knees, when the night before there had been clear paving stones. I got to see a little toddler chortling with each step she took on the ice, clearly saying to her mother how interesting it was to try this out. There were also kids out sledding in the country, and ducks on the canal, standing around waiting for the water to open up again. Unfortunately, it also meant that the trains were shutting down and the flights back to Greece were being cancelled.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Hania
My introduction to Aegean Airlines involved them (one assumes) saving my hide. I’d made it as far as Athens, flying low over the various gorgeous islands, then waited a couple of hours to board to Hania. After we were all loaded, we sat and sat, waiting maybe an hour without moving, until finally they announced that we had to change planes, since there was something unresolvable wrong with the one we were sitting in. So we deplaned and road another bus back to the terminal, while they transferred our luggage to a replacement jet.
A Polite Harbour Cat
One of the first people I met here was a cat. She lives around the harbour and thought I might be interested in sharing my chicken gyros with her. Unfortunately, I had just eaten all the part that cats like. I finally spotted a scrap. It occurred to me, however, that the restaurant might have a policy, so I asked the maitre d’. “It’s okay,” he said, “I feed her something every night, from the side. She’s a very nice cat. She recently had kittens.”
The Skulking Hour
It turns out, of course, that the city is littered with cats, all of them feral. What this means in practical terms is that there are a couple of societies who take some responsibility for catching them, neutering and spaying them, giving them a little doctoring, and releasing them again. However, it is a never-ending struggle to keep the population at a reasonable level. Just up the street we have a set of garbage bins that are the stomping grounds of an entire colony of thirty or more, all of them ready to hiss at you while you are feeding them, as Susan quickly discovered, but also to bunt your leg and purr like idiots. As with cats all over the world, twilight is the skulking hour, when they spend their time in intense but silent negotiations with other cats. They wait until four or five o’clock in the morning before the negotiations turn noisy.
Staring into the water
One of the pleasant options available for the discerning traveler in Crete is to stand by the edge of the water and stare into it. You see all kinds of people doing it all over the harbour, from grizzled old ex-fishermen to round-eyed kids taking their first steps away from the strollers. Susan and I have spent a few hours now in this innocent pastime, and have seen shoals of minnows of at least ten different species, as well as a needlefish, a couple of kinds of crabs, and, on one occasion, a local brown dolphin who came up briefly for a breath of fresh air.
Scraping my knuckles on the antiquities
Here on the northwestern coast of Crete, we have a lighthouse, originally built by the Venetians in the sixteenth century, remodeled by the Egyptians in the nineteenth century, and subjected in the twenty-first century to a thorough renovation that ended in 2006. There are spotlights that shine on it every night, making for a picturesque harbour. There is also a stone pier, about a mile long, where young couples can take a walk that affords them some measure of privacy for discussion, while they remain in the full view of the entire city. Susan and I elected one day to stroll along the pier, walking at first on the second level. When we decided it was time to jump down to the lower tier, I managed to scrape, not my palms, not my nose, not even the improbable top of my head, but the back of my left hand. Luckily, the Greeks sell a very nice version of band-aids, made of paper white fabric.
Croissants with jam
Wherever you go, you need to figure out how to eat, and part of that equation involves learning what is normal or at least readily possible in each country, and what is odd or downright can’t be done. In London, for instance, there is instant custard from a packet. You can buy it at any shop and prepare it in a minute with a bowl, a fork, and a cup of hot water. Similarly with raisins and gruel. In Krakow, on the other hand, forget about custard, and watch yourself with the gruel, which may just as easily be barley as oats. In Hania, they’ve never heard of custard or gruel, but for entire shelves at the supermarket and at every corner cigarette shop, you can buy individually wrapped croissants already filled with chocolate or jam. The package for the peach version even has a glowing white halo around the sacred croissant in the middle.
A dip in the Aegean Sea
Crete is home to at least a couple of world-class beaches, but they both involve a bus ride from where we are staying. The buses at this time of year are not frequent, so it is a bit of a commitment to get there and spend a day. As an alternative, a ten minute walk along the sea wall will bring you past a sports arena, a little marina where the kids are learning to sail, a small fishing fleet, and on to a local beach populated by elderly people who are taking the sun and a dip in the Aegean as part of their health regimen. We’ve joined them now on several occasions, and the water, I must admit, does wake you up.
A Polite Harbour Cat
One of the first people I met here was a cat. She lives around the harbour and thought I might be interested in sharing my chicken gyros with her. Unfortunately, I had just eaten all the part that cats like. I finally spotted a scrap. It occurred to me, however, that the restaurant might have a policy, so I asked the maitre d’. “It’s okay,” he said, “I feed her something every night, from the side. She’s a very nice cat. She recently had kittens.”
The Skulking Hour
It turns out, of course, that the city is littered with cats, all of them feral. What this means in practical terms is that there are a couple of societies who take some responsibility for catching them, neutering and spaying them, giving them a little doctoring, and releasing them again. However, it is a never-ending struggle to keep the population at a reasonable level. Just up the street we have a set of garbage bins that are the stomping grounds of an entire colony of thirty or more, all of them ready to hiss at you while you are feeding them, as Susan quickly discovered, but also to bunt your leg and purr like idiots. As with cats all over the world, twilight is the skulking hour, when they spend their time in intense but silent negotiations with other cats. They wait until four or five o’clock in the morning before the negotiations turn noisy.
Staring into the water
One of the pleasant options available for the discerning traveler in Crete is to stand by the edge of the water and stare into it. You see all kinds of people doing it all over the harbour, from grizzled old ex-fishermen to round-eyed kids taking their first steps away from the strollers. Susan and I have spent a few hours now in this innocent pastime, and have seen shoals of minnows of at least ten different species, as well as a needlefish, a couple of kinds of crabs, and, on one occasion, a local brown dolphin who came up briefly for a breath of fresh air.
Scraping my knuckles on the antiquities
Here on the northwestern coast of Crete, we have a lighthouse, originally built by the Venetians in the sixteenth century, remodeled by the Egyptians in the nineteenth century, and subjected in the twenty-first century to a thorough renovation that ended in 2006. There are spotlights that shine on it every night, making for a picturesque harbour. There is also a stone pier, about a mile long, where young couples can take a walk that affords them some measure of privacy for discussion, while they remain in the full view of the entire city. Susan and I elected one day to stroll along the pier, walking at first on the second level. When we decided it was time to jump down to the lower tier, I managed to scrape, not my palms, not my nose, not even the improbable top of my head, but the back of my left hand. Luckily, the Greeks sell a very nice version of band-aids, made of paper white fabric.
Croissants with jam
Wherever you go, you need to figure out how to eat, and part of that equation involves learning what is normal or at least readily possible in each country, and what is odd or downright can’t be done. In London, for instance, there is instant custard from a packet. You can buy it at any shop and prepare it in a minute with a bowl, a fork, and a cup of hot water. Similarly with raisins and gruel. In Krakow, on the other hand, forget about custard, and watch yourself with the gruel, which may just as easily be barley as oats. In Hania, they’ve never heard of custard or gruel, but for entire shelves at the supermarket and at every corner cigarette shop, you can buy individually wrapped croissants already filled with chocolate or jam. The package for the peach version even has a glowing white halo around the sacred croissant in the middle.
A dip in the Aegean Sea
Crete is home to at least a couple of world-class beaches, but they both involve a bus ride from where we are staying. The buses at this time of year are not frequent, so it is a bit of a commitment to get there and spend a day. As an alternative, a ten minute walk along the sea wall will bring you past a sports arena, a little marina where the kids are learning to sail, a small fishing fleet, and on to a local beach populated by elderly people who are taking the sun and a dip in the Aegean as part of their health regimen. We’ve joined them now on several occasions, and the water, I must admit, does wake you up.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Milan
If you think Venice is a labyrinth, you should try driving in downtown Milan. It is Venice on wheels, right down to the approach to signage. We spent a couple of hours circling in on the railway station, which you think would be mentioned somewhere relatively prominent, but the city is large enough and we are illiterate enough that we weren’t able to figure it out. Piotr finally adopted the strategy of asking a series of random strangers, who helped us find our way, beginning with an elegant young woman whose answer was, as near as we could make it out, “it’s nowhere near here—I hope you aren’t walking.”
L’Eko Café and Cucina
Having eventually located our hotel, we decided to take a short walk to find dinner. There were some restaurants near the train station, but we hoped for something better and cheaper, so we headed away from the lights. After an hour and a half spent wandering in a desert of office buildings and closed retail outlets, we finally spotted a café. There were half a dozen people standing at the bar, and about three tables in total. We went in and said “Do you have food?” “Yes, we do!” was the enthusiastic response, so we sat ourselves down. More people kept appearing at the door, where they were greeted and introduced to the others. Eventually, the whole mob of about 25 people disappeared down the back stairs, and Piotr and I were left at our table. About half an hour had passed. “Can we order some food?” we asked. “We only have toast.” “Nothing else?” A reluctant pause. “One pasta.” “Just one?” “Yes.” “Okay,” I said. “We are interested in that.” It turned out that we had stumbled on a culinary night, where a guest chef from Rome was in town, and everyone had come for a private set meal. They kindly agreed to include us in, and since we didn’t speak Italian, we stayed upstairs at what was for all intents and purposes the chef’s table, since he was working in the open kitchen just a few feet away. We ended up staying and eating the best Italian food I could imagine for two and a half hours.
L’Eko Café and Cucina
Having eventually located our hotel, we decided to take a short walk to find dinner. There were some restaurants near the train station, but we hoped for something better and cheaper, so we headed away from the lights. After an hour and a half spent wandering in a desert of office buildings and closed retail outlets, we finally spotted a café. There were half a dozen people standing at the bar, and about three tables in total. We went in and said “Do you have food?” “Yes, we do!” was the enthusiastic response, so we sat ourselves down. More people kept appearing at the door, where they were greeted and introduced to the others. Eventually, the whole mob of about 25 people disappeared down the back stairs, and Piotr and I were left at our table. About half an hour had passed. “Can we order some food?” we asked. “We only have toast.” “Nothing else?” A reluctant pause. “One pasta.” “Just one?” “Yes.” “Okay,” I said. “We are interested in that.” It turned out that we had stumbled on a culinary night, where a guest chef from Rome was in town, and everyone had come for a private set meal. They kindly agreed to include us in, and since we didn’t speak Italian, we stayed upstairs at what was for all intents and purposes the chef’s table, since he was working in the open kitchen just a few feet away. We ended up staying and eating the best Italian food I could imagine for two and a half hours.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Padua
Piotr and I decided to take a few hours to explore Padua, since it is on the highway from Milan to Venice and is also home to our pals Jorge and Guille. They were unfortunately away at the time to give a talk in Edmonton, so we didn’t get a chance to visit, but we were able to enjoy the older area of the city, which features a small university where the architecture includes marble floors, ancient wooden arches, and interior surfaces of some of the entranceways and courtyards that are covered with commemorative plaques.
Not so fresh frescoes
Another thing worth spotting in Padua are the frescoes on the faces of some of the buildings. Worn with time, these frescoes may currently consist of just a few ghostly faces, in the palest colours imaginable, but one can readily imagine when they were bright colours freshly added to the wet plaster. Since these were so indescribably beautiful even centuries later, I began to wonder why all buildings don’t include frescoes by default, until I remembered that they require specialized artists to produce them.
Italian risotto
Speaking of specialized artists, those of you familiar with the apparently simple but in fact absurdly difficult things to cook on this planet will know all about risotto, which is a species of rice with a short grain and a tendency to absorb water and release starch. The result, if you add stock to it while stirring constantly, can be deliciously creamy, while if you do anything else, it can be an inedible crunchy or in some cases gluey mess. Piotr and I stopped for lunch at a restaurant that seemed to have the right attitude, so we risked a risotto with mushrooms. One of the indications was that they wouldn’t make it as a single portion but only if two people ordered it. So we took a calculated chance that if ever a place would have a decent risotto, it would be here. Our bet paid off.
Not so fresh frescoes
Another thing worth spotting in Padua are the frescoes on the faces of some of the buildings. Worn with time, these frescoes may currently consist of just a few ghostly faces, in the palest colours imaginable, but one can readily imagine when they were bright colours freshly added to the wet plaster. Since these were so indescribably beautiful even centuries later, I began to wonder why all buildings don’t include frescoes by default, until I remembered that they require specialized artists to produce them.
Italian risotto
Speaking of specialized artists, those of you familiar with the apparently simple but in fact absurdly difficult things to cook on this planet will know all about risotto, which is a species of rice with a short grain and a tendency to absorb water and release starch. The result, if you add stock to it while stirring constantly, can be deliciously creamy, while if you do anything else, it can be an inedible crunchy or in some cases gluey mess. Piotr and I stopped for lunch at a restaurant that seemed to have the right attitude, so we risked a risotto with mushrooms. One of the indications was that they wouldn’t make it as a single portion but only if two people ordered it. So we took a calculated chance that if ever a place would have a decent risotto, it would be here. Our bet paid off.
Venice
My friend Piotr and I arrived in the vicinity of Venice after nightfall by car, having navigated in pure paramecium fashion a comically arcane set of highway switchbacks and roundabouts. Feeling a bit anxious after this experience about finding our way further at night in a strange city, we ended up ignoring Jan’s sage advice to park the car on the mainland, and instead drove over the lengthy bridge into Venice, then paid an exorbitant price to take it on the half-hour ferry ride over to the Lido district, which resides on an island shaped a bit, Piotr says, like a leg bone. I can’t remember ever having taken a car on a ferry before, so this was a tonne of fun for me. We were sure that the parking rates would be punitive, but were fortunate enough instead to find rockstar parking, right on the street across from our little hotel.
Water Buses
Taxis and buses exist as usual in Venice, only of course they are all in the form of boats. We climbed aboard the waterbus from Lido to downtown Venice on Saturday morning, then elected to simply not leave for an hour and a half, until it reached the end of the line and they threw us off. By this method, we managed a tour without narration of the main thoroughfare, which weaves along between some very impressive architecture. Imagine Rome or Florence or some other awe-inspiring Italian city made of marble, then put it up to its knees in the ocean. You can watch the water lapping at wooden doors as you grind by on your bus.
Frog Strangling
We eventually overstayed our welcome on the water bus, and climbed off to find an alternate route back, circumnavigating the archipelago instead of traversing it. We arrived at noon at a stop of interest, near one of the major squares, just in time for a monumentally torrential downpour, which turned into a good, steady, heavy rain for the remainder of the day. Tourists with an ounce of sense immediately purchased and donned colourful translucent raincoats and rainboots, which fit right over their shoes. Enterprising umbrella salesmen also made the rounds, taking advantage, as Piotr put it, of the harvest season. We of course had just arrived from Poland, where people pull down their hats and pull up their collars, shaking their heads in sadness at the weak folly of their fellow mortals.
The Absence of Paperwork
We sat out the first 45 diluvian minutes by taking refuge in a restaurant run by a couple of energetic men, one of whom was a Marcel Mastrionni lookalike contest winner in a somewhat shabby white linen jacket. This wasn’t the kind of restaurant that stood on ceremony. Instead of providing a menu, the waiter came up and said: “What do you eat: pizza or pasta?” We said “pasta.” He began naming sauces until we chose one. “What to drink?” We said. “Tea, with lemon.” “Limon, certa,” he said, and in due course, things arrived. Similarly with the bill, which consisted of him naming a number and us conjuring some Euros from about our persons.
The Labyrinth
Venice, the brochures tell us, is actually a micro-archipelago, with more than 100 islands joined by something like 350 bridges. I can attest to this because I crossed most of those bridges in the course of repeatedly, some might say obdurately, violating my principle of “don’t go up that alley.” In Venice, if it isn’t a Square, or rather a Piazza, it is probably an alley, situated between stone walls that rise several storeys on either side. In many of them, two umbrellas can’t pass each other, and in some, a single umbrella is too wide. They are all streaming with people going both directions or sometimes just standing in everyone’s way and having an Italian conversation. You have the option every few metres of plunging into a canal, but usually the preferred method is to cross it on a little rounded stone bridge about as big as a minute. I had to admire a country where those aren’t just flat paths with railings, but instead there has been individual attention to their nature as bridges.
Bridges
As you sail under the larger ones, you can see that the designs are varied and impressive. There are many stone arches, of course, but also some ancient wooden ones that are simply amazing. Down by the ferry to Lido, there is a modern footbridge, made of metal and enameled white, so that it looks like the extended spinal cord of some prehistoric beast.
Signage--now you see it; now you don’t
They have quite good signage in Venice, if by good you mean a clearly legible sign with an arrow pointing some direction. If, on the other hand, you mean a series of signs of that kind, intended to get you somewhere, then maybe you want another city. As far as I was able to judge, signs in Venice are produced as individual works of art, never to be corrupted in their essential purity by subjecting them to the mundane methods of mechanical reproduction. As Piotr said, staring at yet another list of ten arrows, each pointing different directions: “Rome, Cairo, and Peru.”
San Marco Square
One of the places we had hoped to see was this historical location of Church and State, where the paintings on the marble fronts of the buildings are rivaled only by the sculptures and other carvings that flank them. They are sufficiently overwhelming that it is hard to give them the credit they are due. Perhaps it will help to say they are like the Cathedrals I’ve seen all over the world, only moreso.
Random Bell Ringing
If there is one thing that has been a consistent theme of my first sabbatical, it is the bells, bells, bells. Like the hunchback of Notre Dame, I love them but sometimes I think it may have been a case of too much of a good thing. I heard Big Ben when he wasn’t ringing in London, and only stopped hearing him in my dreams when I got to Krakow and he was replaced, not only by a different set of bells but also by the mad trumpeter--a civil servant who climbs the tower in the square every hour, 24/7, to play a song that breaks off in mid-note. He does it to commemorate the brave watchman who was shot in the throat in 1241 while warning the city of invading Mongols. In Venice, it was the churches, completely removed from this postlapsarian world, joyously ringing out the 2:37 or 7:19 or whatever it happened to be. Piotr explained that they were likely doing it in memory of the moment of someone’s death.
The Casanova Tour
Venice was Casanova’s home town, where he worked as an 18th century alchemist and quack doctor, and where many of his adventures occurred, including a dramatic escape from the Leads--a prison notorious for its solitary confinement cells up in the ceiling, where the hot sun would beat on the lead tiles and make life an intolerable oven for anyone within. Hence the nickname for the prison. Today’s Venice honours young Giacomo by offering tours in his name. We wondered how his amorous adventures fit in to the tours. “Perhaps,” Piotr dryly observed, “they contain special opportunities.”
A Domino for the Masque
Casanova enjoyed a lot of things in his long and eventful life, and one of them was dressing up and going to a ball. The labyrinth contains many places overflowing with absolutely gorgeous masks, each one calling out to the impractical, improbable heart of the Frahnkenshteens. I was particularly drawn to the ones that featured coronas consisting of about a yard of feathers. Luckily, I had Piotr there to help me keep a steady head, or I’d have been drawn in like a moth to the flame and ended up shipping bits of colourful shattered enamel to my family and friends.
The Doge’s Palace
The name of the place is a bit of 18th-century humour, since it is actually the seat of government, a bit like the parliament buildings, and not a palace at all. Venice was a republic. But the Doge apparently did sometimes reside there. Casanova’s prison is connected to it by way of a bridge called “The Bridge of Tears.” That seems somehow more romantic when you aren’t aware that every ten metres there is another bridge connecting something to somewhere.
Ants of Glass
There is evidence of glass craftsmanship everywhere, from the many shops selling glass sculptures and ornaments down to the railings in our hotel, which were metal bars with coloured glass dumbbells, or maybe they were thighbones, strapped vertically on their middles. One store had a display with thousands of tiny glass creatures, each one no bigger than the fiery end of your elegant Italian cigarette. Among them was a whole platoon of glass ants.
Architectural Festival 2010
Piotr was eager to see the last day of this month-long event, and he had a map to the many locations scattered around the city. We settled on one of the two main venues, the Arsenale, which is a building about a mile long, originally used I think as a dock warehouse. Despite the appeal of architectural models, I was too wet and cold to enjoy myself, so I suggested to Piotr that he go ahead while I rested and dried out a bit at the rather extensive bookstore and coffee shop. It also gave me an opportunity to dry my hat under the hand dryer, while I waited in the half-hour bathroom lineup. I saved the exhibit's 20 Euro entrance fee, but what I missed were some amazing projects, including an indoor cloud that some lunatics had engineered, a giant art installation/sprinkler system consisting of running garden hoses suspended from the ceiling, and an audio installation where they had miked each member of a choir separately, then reproduced them on individual speakers, arranged in the shape of the original choir, but manipulated so that the songs could be deconstructed into their components. What I did get to see were several displays about architecture in Hong Kong, including the history of the astonishing Walled City of Kowloon, where our pal Rosan Chow grew up. Take the apartment block in Stephen Chow’s movie Kung Fu Hustle, and imagine the same design packed wall to wall inside a single square mile.
Peggy Guggenheim
We also had dreams of getting to see the collection at the Peggy Guggenheim gallery, but alas we arrived after it had closed. So we contented ourselves with hanging for a few minutes on the elaborate metal gates, which look like tangled bramble bushes where some fist-sized chunks of glass have gotten caught. I say contented ourselves, but really we were washed up against them by a surge of umbrellas turning the tight corner of the alley.
Santa Maria della Salute
To console ourselves on the way back to the water bus, we joined the eisodus of pilgrims heading into the cathedral of Santa Maria. I saw Piotr eyeing the three-foot-long white candles that you could buy outside for the choirboys to light, but we managed to sidestep that particular rite. We also narrowly escaped the lineup to go behind the altar, but only because I baulked and Piotr realized that none of the people who went back there ever came out again. Make of that what you will. We ended up instead watching one of the many large-screen TVs. Each screen showed a live video feed of the same closeup of the face of the icon of Mary above the main altar. Piotr said they were perhaps waiting for it to do something miraculous, like weeping. The TVs were mounted above head height, apparently at random on the walls between pillars, which were draped in decorative red tapestry. We conjectured that all the festive appearance must have been put there in commemoration of whatever was signified by the random bell ringing.
Grotesques and Gargoyles
If you are a fan of making fun of The Man by carving his face in marble, whether with his cheeks blown out or with an improbably and wickedly irreverent expression on his bad face, then Venice is where you should set up shop. You can hardly light a candle without being startled by some manner of grotesque or gargoyle either leering at you or gurgling water on you.
Catwalks on the Waterfront
The water being absurdly located as it is, the locals occasionally find it expedient to produce artificially raised sidewalks, which consist of miles of gritted plywood, supported on knee-high scaffolding. They resemble nothing so much as fashion-show catwalks, only in this case they are keeping tourists a few additional inches above high tide. When we arrived, workers were just dismantling them and stowing them away.
Hotel des Bains
The hotel used for the movie Death in Venice is now closed, but it still stands, another marble monument to Italian architecture, overlooking the beach that runs the length of Lido. We were there in the off season, so the sand had been bulldozed to make a six-foot-high embankment to help protect the inhabitants from the Adriatic. There were also 530 (they were numbered) little wooden shacks facing the water, which people could presumably rent when they brought their families and friends for a day on the beach. Imagine, I said to Piotr, all of those Italians in their designer bathing suits and sunglasses. It would be something to see.
Water Buses
Taxis and buses exist as usual in Venice, only of course they are all in the form of boats. We climbed aboard the waterbus from Lido to downtown Venice on Saturday morning, then elected to simply not leave for an hour and a half, until it reached the end of the line and they threw us off. By this method, we managed a tour without narration of the main thoroughfare, which weaves along between some very impressive architecture. Imagine Rome or Florence or some other awe-inspiring Italian city made of marble, then put it up to its knees in the ocean. You can watch the water lapping at wooden doors as you grind by on your bus.
Frog Strangling
We eventually overstayed our welcome on the water bus, and climbed off to find an alternate route back, circumnavigating the archipelago instead of traversing it. We arrived at noon at a stop of interest, near one of the major squares, just in time for a monumentally torrential downpour, which turned into a good, steady, heavy rain for the remainder of the day. Tourists with an ounce of sense immediately purchased and donned colourful translucent raincoats and rainboots, which fit right over their shoes. Enterprising umbrella salesmen also made the rounds, taking advantage, as Piotr put it, of the harvest season. We of course had just arrived from Poland, where people pull down their hats and pull up their collars, shaking their heads in sadness at the weak folly of their fellow mortals.
The Absence of Paperwork
We sat out the first 45 diluvian minutes by taking refuge in a restaurant run by a couple of energetic men, one of whom was a Marcel Mastrionni lookalike contest winner in a somewhat shabby white linen jacket. This wasn’t the kind of restaurant that stood on ceremony. Instead of providing a menu, the waiter came up and said: “What do you eat: pizza or pasta?” We said “pasta.” He began naming sauces until we chose one. “What to drink?” We said. “Tea, with lemon.” “Limon, certa,” he said, and in due course, things arrived. Similarly with the bill, which consisted of him naming a number and us conjuring some Euros from about our persons.
The Labyrinth
Venice, the brochures tell us, is actually a micro-archipelago, with more than 100 islands joined by something like 350 bridges. I can attest to this because I crossed most of those bridges in the course of repeatedly, some might say obdurately, violating my principle of “don’t go up that alley.” In Venice, if it isn’t a Square, or rather a Piazza, it is probably an alley, situated between stone walls that rise several storeys on either side. In many of them, two umbrellas can’t pass each other, and in some, a single umbrella is too wide. They are all streaming with people going both directions or sometimes just standing in everyone’s way and having an Italian conversation. You have the option every few metres of plunging into a canal, but usually the preferred method is to cross it on a little rounded stone bridge about as big as a minute. I had to admire a country where those aren’t just flat paths with railings, but instead there has been individual attention to their nature as bridges.
Bridges
As you sail under the larger ones, you can see that the designs are varied and impressive. There are many stone arches, of course, but also some ancient wooden ones that are simply amazing. Down by the ferry to Lido, there is a modern footbridge, made of metal and enameled white, so that it looks like the extended spinal cord of some prehistoric beast.
Signage--now you see it; now you don’t
They have quite good signage in Venice, if by good you mean a clearly legible sign with an arrow pointing some direction. If, on the other hand, you mean a series of signs of that kind, intended to get you somewhere, then maybe you want another city. As far as I was able to judge, signs in Venice are produced as individual works of art, never to be corrupted in their essential purity by subjecting them to the mundane methods of mechanical reproduction. As Piotr said, staring at yet another list of ten arrows, each pointing different directions: “Rome, Cairo, and Peru.”
San Marco Square
One of the places we had hoped to see was this historical location of Church and State, where the paintings on the marble fronts of the buildings are rivaled only by the sculptures and other carvings that flank them. They are sufficiently overwhelming that it is hard to give them the credit they are due. Perhaps it will help to say they are like the Cathedrals I’ve seen all over the world, only moreso.
Random Bell Ringing
If there is one thing that has been a consistent theme of my first sabbatical, it is the bells, bells, bells. Like the hunchback of Notre Dame, I love them but sometimes I think it may have been a case of too much of a good thing. I heard Big Ben when he wasn’t ringing in London, and only stopped hearing him in my dreams when I got to Krakow and he was replaced, not only by a different set of bells but also by the mad trumpeter--a civil servant who climbs the tower in the square every hour, 24/7, to play a song that breaks off in mid-note. He does it to commemorate the brave watchman who was shot in the throat in 1241 while warning the city of invading Mongols. In Venice, it was the churches, completely removed from this postlapsarian world, joyously ringing out the 2:37 or 7:19 or whatever it happened to be. Piotr explained that they were likely doing it in memory of the moment of someone’s death.
The Casanova Tour
Venice was Casanova’s home town, where he worked as an 18th century alchemist and quack doctor, and where many of his adventures occurred, including a dramatic escape from the Leads--a prison notorious for its solitary confinement cells up in the ceiling, where the hot sun would beat on the lead tiles and make life an intolerable oven for anyone within. Hence the nickname for the prison. Today’s Venice honours young Giacomo by offering tours in his name. We wondered how his amorous adventures fit in to the tours. “Perhaps,” Piotr dryly observed, “they contain special opportunities.”
A Domino for the Masque
Casanova enjoyed a lot of things in his long and eventful life, and one of them was dressing up and going to a ball. The labyrinth contains many places overflowing with absolutely gorgeous masks, each one calling out to the impractical, improbable heart of the Frahnkenshteens. I was particularly drawn to the ones that featured coronas consisting of about a yard of feathers. Luckily, I had Piotr there to help me keep a steady head, or I’d have been drawn in like a moth to the flame and ended up shipping bits of colourful shattered enamel to my family and friends.
The Doge’s Palace
The name of the place is a bit of 18th-century humour, since it is actually the seat of government, a bit like the parliament buildings, and not a palace at all. Venice was a republic. But the Doge apparently did sometimes reside there. Casanova’s prison is connected to it by way of a bridge called “The Bridge of Tears.” That seems somehow more romantic when you aren’t aware that every ten metres there is another bridge connecting something to somewhere.
Ants of Glass
There is evidence of glass craftsmanship everywhere, from the many shops selling glass sculptures and ornaments down to the railings in our hotel, which were metal bars with coloured glass dumbbells, or maybe they were thighbones, strapped vertically on their middles. One store had a display with thousands of tiny glass creatures, each one no bigger than the fiery end of your elegant Italian cigarette. Among them was a whole platoon of glass ants.
Architectural Festival 2010
Piotr was eager to see the last day of this month-long event, and he had a map to the many locations scattered around the city. We settled on one of the two main venues, the Arsenale, which is a building about a mile long, originally used I think as a dock warehouse. Despite the appeal of architectural models, I was too wet and cold to enjoy myself, so I suggested to Piotr that he go ahead while I rested and dried out a bit at the rather extensive bookstore and coffee shop. It also gave me an opportunity to dry my hat under the hand dryer, while I waited in the half-hour bathroom lineup. I saved the exhibit's 20 Euro entrance fee, but what I missed were some amazing projects, including an indoor cloud that some lunatics had engineered, a giant art installation/sprinkler system consisting of running garden hoses suspended from the ceiling, and an audio installation where they had miked each member of a choir separately, then reproduced them on individual speakers, arranged in the shape of the original choir, but manipulated so that the songs could be deconstructed into their components. What I did get to see were several displays about architecture in Hong Kong, including the history of the astonishing Walled City of Kowloon, where our pal Rosan Chow grew up. Take the apartment block in Stephen Chow’s movie Kung Fu Hustle, and imagine the same design packed wall to wall inside a single square mile.
Peggy Guggenheim
We also had dreams of getting to see the collection at the Peggy Guggenheim gallery, but alas we arrived after it had closed. So we contented ourselves with hanging for a few minutes on the elaborate metal gates, which look like tangled bramble bushes where some fist-sized chunks of glass have gotten caught. I say contented ourselves, but really we were washed up against them by a surge of umbrellas turning the tight corner of the alley.
Santa Maria della Salute
To console ourselves on the way back to the water bus, we joined the eisodus of pilgrims heading into the cathedral of Santa Maria. I saw Piotr eyeing the three-foot-long white candles that you could buy outside for the choirboys to light, but we managed to sidestep that particular rite. We also narrowly escaped the lineup to go behind the altar, but only because I baulked and Piotr realized that none of the people who went back there ever came out again. Make of that what you will. We ended up instead watching one of the many large-screen TVs. Each screen showed a live video feed of the same closeup of the face of the icon of Mary above the main altar. Piotr said they were perhaps waiting for it to do something miraculous, like weeping. The TVs were mounted above head height, apparently at random on the walls between pillars, which were draped in decorative red tapestry. We conjectured that all the festive appearance must have been put there in commemoration of whatever was signified by the random bell ringing.
Grotesques and Gargoyles
If you are a fan of making fun of The Man by carving his face in marble, whether with his cheeks blown out or with an improbably and wickedly irreverent expression on his bad face, then Venice is where you should set up shop. You can hardly light a candle without being startled by some manner of grotesque or gargoyle either leering at you or gurgling water on you.
Catwalks on the Waterfront
The water being absurdly located as it is, the locals occasionally find it expedient to produce artificially raised sidewalks, which consist of miles of gritted plywood, supported on knee-high scaffolding. They resemble nothing so much as fashion-show catwalks, only in this case they are keeping tourists a few additional inches above high tide. When we arrived, workers were just dismantling them and stowing them away.
Hotel des Bains
The hotel used for the movie Death in Venice is now closed, but it still stands, another marble monument to Italian architecture, overlooking the beach that runs the length of Lido. We were there in the off season, so the sand had been bulldozed to make a six-foot-high embankment to help protect the inhabitants from the Adriatic. There were also 530 (they were numbered) little wooden shacks facing the water, which people could presumably rent when they brought their families and friends for a day on the beach. Imagine, I said to Piotr, all of those Italians in their designer bathing suits and sunglasses. It would be something to see.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Trieste
Piotr and Monika had previously been delighted by a few hours they’d spent in Trieste, so we made a special effort to drive down to this previously thriving port city of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Built on hills that are terraced down to the sea, the city is absurdly picturesque from above, although it quickly becomes a labyrinth of narrow streets lined with 8-storey buildings and jampacked with cars that are routinely doubleparked for entire blocks. There also appear to be something like two vespas for every citizen. After the second world war, the city was equally populated by partisans of Slovenia and Italy, so Trieste remained a free city, with no national affiliation, until the 1970s, when it finally became part of Italy.
James Joyce
I don’t know how familiar this story is to people, but Joyce apparently spent 12 years in Trieste, working primarily as a teacher of English as a second language for the Berlitz company. I’m not sure how I would feel about being taught English by the author of Ulysses. Privileged, I suppose, but it could very well lead to some awkward moments in polite society when I deployed my extended vernacular. In any case, there is a very nice little bronze statue of him standing just on the edge of one of the bridges over the grand canal, with his plaque embedded in the sidewalk at his feet. I am always interested to see in these cases what part of the bronze has been rubbed shiny by people interacting with the statue. In this case, it was his shoulders, since, as Piotr explained, people would stand and put their arm around him.
Illy
Trieste is also home to the Illy corporation, so we stopped off at a coffee shop for an espresso. It turns out, of course, that we were a bit gauche to ask for espresso, since the local convention is to call it a café negre, but the decorative pair of young men behind the counter, replete with sailor tattoos, seemed to laugh it off with good grace, and the coffee was delicious.
James Joyce
I don’t know how familiar this story is to people, but Joyce apparently spent 12 years in Trieste, working primarily as a teacher of English as a second language for the Berlitz company. I’m not sure how I would feel about being taught English by the author of Ulysses. Privileged, I suppose, but it could very well lead to some awkward moments in polite society when I deployed my extended vernacular. In any case, there is a very nice little bronze statue of him standing just on the edge of one of the bridges over the grand canal, with his plaque embedded in the sidewalk at his feet. I am always interested to see in these cases what part of the bronze has been rubbed shiny by people interacting with the statue. In this case, it was his shoulders, since, as Piotr explained, people would stand and put their arm around him.
Illy
Trieste is also home to the Illy corporation, so we stopped off at a coffee shop for an espresso. It turns out, of course, that we were a bit gauche to ask for espresso, since the local convention is to call it a café negre, but the decorative pair of young men behind the counter, replete with sailor tattoos, seemed to laugh it off with good grace, and the coffee was delicious.
Graz
Following three weeks of pampering by Piotr and Jan in Krakow, Susan flew off home to see her kids while Piotr and I rented a car and headed cross-country to Venice. We crossed through five countries in two days: Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, and Italy.
To Confuse the Enemy
On leaving Krakow, we were anxious not to miss our exit, since we had used something of a side road to avoid construction on the main route. Fortunately, we came across a road sign that showed that we were approaching a roundabout with three exits. The only problem is that there was no text on the sign at all. “It has been removed,” Piotr joked, “in order to confuse the enemy.”
A Cup with 2 Pieces of Chalk
We stopped for dinner at a roadside chain just on the outskirts of Vienna, where they kindly arranged to feed me some pasta that combined items that were not combined on their menu. For dessert, they had a special that provided Piotr with a coffee and me with a doughnut, and as a bonus they gave us a coffee cup. What was unique about this item is that it came with couple of pieces of chalk, because the surface of the cup is a kind of slate.
Peter Cook
Our first night was spent in Austria in the delightful little city of Graz, built on the pretty Mur river. Graz is home to a fanciful art gallery, designed by Peter Cook—an architect, like several of his 60s generation, famous for buildings that were impossible to realize. He once designed, for example, a city on legs that was intended to walk slowly across country. Graz, however, actually managed to instantiate one of his designs, in the shape of a giant plexiglass loaf with a row of nipples along the roof. Each piece of the cladding is a two-inch thick slab of translucent plexi, no two alike, averaging probably five feet across, and bound to the frame with giant rivets.
Sexy Female Robots
It was in Peter Cook’s gallery that Piotr and I went to see, appropriately enough, I thought, an exhibit called “Robot Dreams.” One of the items in the display was a reconstruction of the wicked robot who impersonates the heroine in Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis. Her face is currently plastered all over the city. The exhibit featured some interesting animated constructions, including a kind of complex array of cutouts and video cameras that filled a wall of video screens with constantly changing combinations. There was even a room of little spiders, about the size of your hat, who were triggered by motion detectors to begin scurrying around.
Artificial Handshake
As we were leaving the art gallery, we were stopped by two very polite information design students, who asked if they could videotape, not us, but just our hands, in the act of handshaking. They were making a collection for their web site. We tried it a few times from a couple of different angles, and they eventually cut us loose, but we really felt that we hadn’t managed to provide a satisfactory handshake that represented our actual manner of shaking hands. What they really needed, I think, for a natural-looking greeting, was to hire some actors who knew how to simulate it properly. Only later did I realize that we had missed what might have been a once-in-a-lifetime chance to carry out one of those elaborately artificial handshakes involving slapping our fingers and bumping our fists.
Open-Faced Sandwiches for Breakfast
We had breakfast in Graz at an absolutely delightful little sandwich place called the Café-Imbiss. It is a cozy spot with a very dynamic atmosphere, where tables of people are rapidly coming and going. All of them were there to enjoy oblique slices of fresh baguette that had been artistically supplemented with equally fresh delicacies. I ate, for instance, one open-faced sandwich consisting of folded prociutto that concealed at one end a small slice of melon, and I had another with a small set of smoked salmon slices, topped at one end with a tiny rosette of cream cheese and a miniature sprig of fresh dill.
The Abandoned Tollbooths of Slovenia
After leaving Graz, we drove through Slovenia, which reminded me in many ways of the Rocky Mountain foothills. It took about three hours to drive completely across the country, but every half hour or so we had to slow down to go through a tollbooth. Technology, however, has improved, so that the practice now is not to pay for each section of the highway, but instead to buy a highway pass that lets you use all the highways in the country for several days running. By the time we got to Venice, we had three of these stickers in the window, as well as a pay-as-you-exit toll pass, which is how these things are managed in Italy. Thank God I had Piotr with me, or I would have ended up in a series of confrontations with authorities over my lack of evidence that I knew enough to pay to use the highways. The guards at the final gate in Slovenia were pulling people over with submachine guns, so I was particularly pleased at that point that we had not been delinquent.
The Royal Lippizan Stallions
Who knew that Slovenia is the home of the traveling trick horses of my youth? I remember as a child that these magnificent white horses and their deft riders would make an annual appearance for three shows only in the city of Regina. Piotr tells me that they are considered somewhat of a national treasure by the people of Slovenia.
Arnold
Kim Hoyer tells me that the current governor of California (and former killer robot from the future) was born and bred in Graz, and sure enough, when I checked it out online, there he was, just as bold as brass. He actually came from a small town outside the city, although for some time he was apparently a carrier of the Honorary Ring of Graz, a gold signet given since 1954 to its most prestigious citizens. He returned it in 2005 for reasons unspecified, but one would assume political.
To Confuse the Enemy
On leaving Krakow, we were anxious not to miss our exit, since we had used something of a side road to avoid construction on the main route. Fortunately, we came across a road sign that showed that we were approaching a roundabout with three exits. The only problem is that there was no text on the sign at all. “It has been removed,” Piotr joked, “in order to confuse the enemy.”
A Cup with 2 Pieces of Chalk
We stopped for dinner at a roadside chain just on the outskirts of Vienna, where they kindly arranged to feed me some pasta that combined items that were not combined on their menu. For dessert, they had a special that provided Piotr with a coffee and me with a doughnut, and as a bonus they gave us a coffee cup. What was unique about this item is that it came with couple of pieces of chalk, because the surface of the cup is a kind of slate.
Peter Cook
Our first night was spent in Austria in the delightful little city of Graz, built on the pretty Mur river. Graz is home to a fanciful art gallery, designed by Peter Cook—an architect, like several of his 60s generation, famous for buildings that were impossible to realize. He once designed, for example, a city on legs that was intended to walk slowly across country. Graz, however, actually managed to instantiate one of his designs, in the shape of a giant plexiglass loaf with a row of nipples along the roof. Each piece of the cladding is a two-inch thick slab of translucent plexi, no two alike, averaging probably five feet across, and bound to the frame with giant rivets.
Sexy Female Robots
It was in Peter Cook’s gallery that Piotr and I went to see, appropriately enough, I thought, an exhibit called “Robot Dreams.” One of the items in the display was a reconstruction of the wicked robot who impersonates the heroine in Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis. Her face is currently plastered all over the city. The exhibit featured some interesting animated constructions, including a kind of complex array of cutouts and video cameras that filled a wall of video screens with constantly changing combinations. There was even a room of little spiders, about the size of your hat, who were triggered by motion detectors to begin scurrying around.
Artificial Handshake
As we were leaving the art gallery, we were stopped by two very polite information design students, who asked if they could videotape, not us, but just our hands, in the act of handshaking. They were making a collection for their web site. We tried it a few times from a couple of different angles, and they eventually cut us loose, but we really felt that we hadn’t managed to provide a satisfactory handshake that represented our actual manner of shaking hands. What they really needed, I think, for a natural-looking greeting, was to hire some actors who knew how to simulate it properly. Only later did I realize that we had missed what might have been a once-in-a-lifetime chance to carry out one of those elaborately artificial handshakes involving slapping our fingers and bumping our fists.
Open-Faced Sandwiches for Breakfast
We had breakfast in Graz at an absolutely delightful little sandwich place called the Café-Imbiss. It is a cozy spot with a very dynamic atmosphere, where tables of people are rapidly coming and going. All of them were there to enjoy oblique slices of fresh baguette that had been artistically supplemented with equally fresh delicacies. I ate, for instance, one open-faced sandwich consisting of folded prociutto that concealed at one end a small slice of melon, and I had another with a small set of smoked salmon slices, topped at one end with a tiny rosette of cream cheese and a miniature sprig of fresh dill.
The Abandoned Tollbooths of Slovenia
After leaving Graz, we drove through Slovenia, which reminded me in many ways of the Rocky Mountain foothills. It took about three hours to drive completely across the country, but every half hour or so we had to slow down to go through a tollbooth. Technology, however, has improved, so that the practice now is not to pay for each section of the highway, but instead to buy a highway pass that lets you use all the highways in the country for several days running. By the time we got to Venice, we had three of these stickers in the window, as well as a pay-as-you-exit toll pass, which is how these things are managed in Italy. Thank God I had Piotr with me, or I would have ended up in a series of confrontations with authorities over my lack of evidence that I knew enough to pay to use the highways. The guards at the final gate in Slovenia were pulling people over with submachine guns, so I was particularly pleased at that point that we had not been delinquent.
The Royal Lippizan Stallions
Who knew that Slovenia is the home of the traveling trick horses of my youth? I remember as a child that these magnificent white horses and their deft riders would make an annual appearance for three shows only in the city of Regina. Piotr tells me that they are considered somewhat of a national treasure by the people of Slovenia.
Arnold
Kim Hoyer tells me that the current governor of California (and former killer robot from the future) was born and bred in Graz, and sure enough, when I checked it out online, there he was, just as bold as brass. He actually came from a small town outside the city, although for some time he was apparently a carrier of the Honorary Ring of Graz, a gold signet given since 1954 to its most prestigious citizens. He returned it in 2005 for reasons unspecified, but one would assume political.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Ludlow
Having learned our lesson about train travel in the English countryside, we gave ourselves plenty of time for the next leg of our trip, and of course everything worked out beautifully. Our excellent fun on the trains ended in the most picturesque English countryside imaginable, replete with cascading river, quacking ducks, giant oak trees, and, in the near distance in the morning as you stand on your balcony, lowing sheep.
Loveliest of Trees
Those of you who are familiar with the work of the poet A.E. Housman may recall his famous poem about the cherry tree, and how since life passes quickly, it is good to spend time admiring it not just in the spring, but also in the winter. Taking this lesson to heart, the good people of Ludlow have planted a cherry tree in Housman’s memory in one of the local churchyards. We managed through trial and error to find this tree and its plaque. We were a bit troubled to see that it was quite a young tree, until we spotted, on the opposite side of the churchyard, another cherry tree, at least hoary with age, and although it did seem to have recently sported a leaf or two, perhaps actually dead. So we admired them both.
Ludlow Fair
Describing the tendency of rural people to have a drink or two when visiting the metropolis, Housman wrote: “I have been to Ludlow Fair, and left my necktie God knows where.” The fair itself is everything you could wish it to be, with tables full of local produce and small household items, but Susan couldn’t rest until we had found a shop facing the square where the Fair is held, and she bought me a neck tie. I’m not sure what people felt as I posed in front of the stalls to prove that I still had it before I left for home, but certainly I felt that I’d entered into the spirit of the thing. We also tried to pitch the local museum’s gift shop on the idea of producing ties for that very purpose, but we met with some resistance from the woman behind the counter. She didn’t say anything of course, but the words “loopy colonials” were written for a moment in the thought balloon above her head.
Loveliest of Trees
Those of you who are familiar with the work of the poet A.E. Housman may recall his famous poem about the cherry tree, and how since life passes quickly, it is good to spend time admiring it not just in the spring, but also in the winter. Taking this lesson to heart, the good people of Ludlow have planted a cherry tree in Housman’s memory in one of the local churchyards. We managed through trial and error to find this tree and its plaque. We were a bit troubled to see that it was quite a young tree, until we spotted, on the opposite side of the churchyard, another cherry tree, at least hoary with age, and although it did seem to have recently sported a leaf or two, perhaps actually dead. So we admired them both.
Ludlow Fair
Describing the tendency of rural people to have a drink or two when visiting the metropolis, Housman wrote: “I have been to Ludlow Fair, and left my necktie God knows where.” The fair itself is everything you could wish it to be, with tables full of local produce and small household items, but Susan couldn’t rest until we had found a shop facing the square where the Fair is held, and she bought me a neck tie. I’m not sure what people felt as I posed in front of the stalls to prove that I still had it before I left for home, but certainly I felt that I’d entered into the spirit of the thing. We also tried to pitch the local museum’s gift shop on the idea of producing ties for that very purpose, but we met with some resistance from the woman behind the counter. She didn’t say anything of course, but the words “loopy colonials” were written for a moment in the thought balloon above her head.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Birmingham
Susan and I spent August this year going to cultural institutions around London. Then in September, we decided that we’d make a pilgrimage or two. Our first adventure involved going to Shropshire to see the home town of one of our favourite English poets, A.E. Housman. Unfortunately, this effort also gave us a good taste of British rail travel, which consisted in this case of taking three and a half hours for a 45-minute trip to Birmingham, so we decided to stop the night and spend part of the next day exploring the town.
The Bull Ring
I had first visited Birmingham with Susan in 2004, when David Sless had a bunch of us to Coventry to talk about health information design. We had a few hours to spare when all the dust had settled, so we tootled over to Birmingham to take a look. She snapped a photo of me in front of a giant bronze bull that gives its name to the central shopping complex. I did my best to look as though I had no idea I was standing in front of this giant, charging animal, but I’m afraid the photo itself doesn’t quite manage to convey my fecklessness, since it is, after all, a statue of a rampaging bull, and not the real thing.
Pre-Raphaelites Galore
If there is one thing you can say about Birmingham, it is that they have an art gallery that is worth the trip. It is quite large and impressive, with a very good bronze statue of Satan in the lobby, and enough work by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood to make your head spin. If you’ve seen it in a book about the pre-Raphaelites, odds are good that the original is in the museum at Birmingham. Or rather, since many of the pre-Raphaelites had no compunction about painting the same picture more than once, it might be more accurate to say that one of the versions will be there. Perhaps, for instance, the Rossetti Prosperine where Jane Morris has red hair.
The Bull Ring
I had first visited Birmingham with Susan in 2004, when David Sless had a bunch of us to Coventry to talk about health information design. We had a few hours to spare when all the dust had settled, so we tootled over to Birmingham to take a look. She snapped a photo of me in front of a giant bronze bull that gives its name to the central shopping complex. I did my best to look as though I had no idea I was standing in front of this giant, charging animal, but I’m afraid the photo itself doesn’t quite manage to convey my fecklessness, since it is, after all, a statue of a rampaging bull, and not the real thing.
Pre-Raphaelites Galore
If there is one thing you can say about Birmingham, it is that they have an art gallery that is worth the trip. It is quite large and impressive, with a very good bronze statue of Satan in the lobby, and enough work by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood to make your head spin. If you’ve seen it in a book about the pre-Raphaelites, odds are good that the original is in the museum at Birmingham. Or rather, since many of the pre-Raphaelites had no compunction about painting the same picture more than once, it might be more accurate to say that one of the versions will be there. Perhaps, for instance, the Rossetti Prosperine where Jane Morris has red hair.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
San Diego
I flew in yesterday after a lovely flight in an Embraer, which has become one of my favourite kinds of jets. They feature roomy seats with a headrest high enough for my head, and every seat includes an individual television set. I watched Bruce Willis in *Surrogates*, which was a movie that I believe confused its own PR people. I also got a look at a couple of episodes of *Better off Ted*, which Milena had recommended to me. It’s a sitcom about a team of people who invent things for a living. I particularly love the commercial they include, which is based on the theme of each episode. For example, they explain how the company is one big family, which is why they keep everyone together on evenings, weekends, and holidays.
Just say no to $100 worth of sea salt
Those of you who have followed my adventures for a while, and, I suppose, anyone who has met me or seen me in a store, will recall that I am a sucker. This is especially true while traveling, when I get into the frame of mind of going with what’s going, and end up wondering if a bottle of wine with three snakes in it will really clear customs, or if they would prefer to display it prominently in their glass case of absurdly ridiculous, in fact bordering on criminal, foreign purchases. Today, however, you will be proud to learn that while stopping by the Fashion Street Shopping Mall, I not only experienced an entire demo of how my hands could benefit from exfoliation using salt from the dead sea, but I also managed to thank everyone and get out without buying an unreasonable quantity of these viscous liquids, by which I mean more than I could possibly carry in my luggage. I even held my ground when they offered to ship it to me. Thank God the woman wasn’t somebody’s Chinese grandmother, or I’d’ve been toast.
San Diego Zoo
World famous for its decent treatment of animals, the zoo here is huge. It takes 45 minutes just to ride around it in a bus, which I did today while getting glimpses of a wide variety of earth’s endangered and critically endangered species. Then, once you have your bearings, you can get off and walk around to look at everybody in more detail. I saw, for instance, lions and tigers and bears. There was a herd of what the man beside me described to his child as “the Pumbas,” which were surprisingly cute. I also found myself at one point in a hummingbird garden, where I was soon nose-to-beak with one of the little flying jewels, and I stopped by a couple of gorgeous parrots wearing, respectively, red and blue, with tails down to here. One of the main attractions for me, however, was the flora, which is sufficiently diverse that the zoo is also classified as a horticultural gardens.
Outdoor Whirlpooling
Say what you like about the cold weather (two degrees above freezing last night), strong winds (up to 75 mph yesterday), and rain (I believe the adjective is “torrential”), you still can’t beat eating some fresh papaya for breakfast, then going and sitting in the outdoor hot tub until you begin to wonder how seriously they meant the signs that say there are limits on how long a person ought to soak in there. I stayed long enough today that a buzzard begin circling the back yard of the hotel, although after a while I must have sufficiently waved a languid foot or something, because he gave up on me. A couple of hummingbirds also zipped by, busy in what passes for a conversation among their kind.
P.S. I noticed the next morning that the buzzard was back, so I’m guessing it was nothing personal. The hotel is apparently just part of his regular rounds.
Addictions While Traveling
I’m not sure what it is about being alone on the road, but it tends to bring out the obsessive and repetitive aspects of my nature. Perhaps that’s enough said, but I’ll go on. For this trip, I started by leaving home in the middle of an addiction to the TV series JPod. One of my brilliant graduate students recommended it to me a while ago, and sure enough, I started to watch all the episodes in rapid succession. Since they weren’t available here on my not very good wireless connection, I switched to all of the first season of Better Off Ted. Now that I’ve seen them two or three times each, I logged in (again on the suggestion of one of our genius grad students) to www.hunch.com, and I find myself answering dozens of random questions in the hopes that the system will tell me about new things I can get addicted to. Is this any way to live? I think of the line from the standup comedian Marc Maron: “I feel sorry for anyone who has never been addicted to something. Imagine wanting something really bad, then getting it, again and again.”
Four Brothers (Spoiler Alert)
I watched the other night a Mark Wahlberg movie that is essentially The Return to the Shire, except it is set in Detroit. Four brothers revenge the murder of their saintly adoptive mother, succeeding through a combination of direct action and shrewd knowledge of the people in the neighbourhood. I particularly liked the red herring where three of the brothers begin to suspect the fourth, since he received a large insurance claim when his business is going broke, and they subsequently watch him handing money to an underworld character. It turns out that of course he had paid for his mother’s insurance—he paid all her bills. The insurance is for the next generation of kids she’d adopted, and the money to the underworld figure is a bribe—you can’t do business in their neighborhood without paying off the corrupt people in the system. In the end, they defeat the villain, or Saruman, by giving money to all his henchmen instead of bribing him; the successful brother had made his early successes in union organizing.
Just say no to $100 worth of sea salt
Those of you who have followed my adventures for a while, and, I suppose, anyone who has met me or seen me in a store, will recall that I am a sucker. This is especially true while traveling, when I get into the frame of mind of going with what’s going, and end up wondering if a bottle of wine with three snakes in it will really clear customs, or if they would prefer to display it prominently in their glass case of absurdly ridiculous, in fact bordering on criminal, foreign purchases. Today, however, you will be proud to learn that while stopping by the Fashion Street Shopping Mall, I not only experienced an entire demo of how my hands could benefit from exfoliation using salt from the dead sea, but I also managed to thank everyone and get out without buying an unreasonable quantity of these viscous liquids, by which I mean more than I could possibly carry in my luggage. I even held my ground when they offered to ship it to me. Thank God the woman wasn’t somebody’s Chinese grandmother, or I’d’ve been toast.
San Diego Zoo
World famous for its decent treatment of animals, the zoo here is huge. It takes 45 minutes just to ride around it in a bus, which I did today while getting glimpses of a wide variety of earth’s endangered and critically endangered species. Then, once you have your bearings, you can get off and walk around to look at everybody in more detail. I saw, for instance, lions and tigers and bears. There was a herd of what the man beside me described to his child as “the Pumbas,” which were surprisingly cute. I also found myself at one point in a hummingbird garden, where I was soon nose-to-beak with one of the little flying jewels, and I stopped by a couple of gorgeous parrots wearing, respectively, red and blue, with tails down to here. One of the main attractions for me, however, was the flora, which is sufficiently diverse that the zoo is also classified as a horticultural gardens.
Outdoor Whirlpooling
Say what you like about the cold weather (two degrees above freezing last night), strong winds (up to 75 mph yesterday), and rain (I believe the adjective is “torrential”), you still can’t beat eating some fresh papaya for breakfast, then going and sitting in the outdoor hot tub until you begin to wonder how seriously they meant the signs that say there are limits on how long a person ought to soak in there. I stayed long enough today that a buzzard begin circling the back yard of the hotel, although after a while I must have sufficiently waved a languid foot or something, because he gave up on me. A couple of hummingbirds also zipped by, busy in what passes for a conversation among their kind.
P.S. I noticed the next morning that the buzzard was back, so I’m guessing it was nothing personal. The hotel is apparently just part of his regular rounds.
Addictions While Traveling
I’m not sure what it is about being alone on the road, but it tends to bring out the obsessive and repetitive aspects of my nature. Perhaps that’s enough said, but I’ll go on. For this trip, I started by leaving home in the middle of an addiction to the TV series JPod. One of my brilliant graduate students recommended it to me a while ago, and sure enough, I started to watch all the episodes in rapid succession. Since they weren’t available here on my not very good wireless connection, I switched to all of the first season of Better Off Ted. Now that I’ve seen them two or three times each, I logged in (again on the suggestion of one of our genius grad students) to www.hunch.com, and I find myself answering dozens of random questions in the hopes that the system will tell me about new things I can get addicted to. Is this any way to live? I think of the line from the standup comedian Marc Maron: “I feel sorry for anyone who has never been addicted to something. Imagine wanting something really bad, then getting it, again and again.”
Four Brothers (Spoiler Alert)
I watched the other night a Mark Wahlberg movie that is essentially The Return to the Shire, except it is set in Detroit. Four brothers revenge the murder of their saintly adoptive mother, succeeding through a combination of direct action and shrewd knowledge of the people in the neighbourhood. I particularly liked the red herring where three of the brothers begin to suspect the fourth, since he received a large insurance claim when his business is going broke, and they subsequently watch him handing money to an underworld character. It turns out that of course he had paid for his mother’s insurance—he paid all her bills. The insurance is for the next generation of kids she’d adopted, and the money to the underworld figure is a bribe—you can’t do business in their neighborhood without paying off the corrupt people in the system. In the end, they defeat the villain, or Saruman, by giving money to all his henchmen instead of bribing him; the successful brother had made his early successes in union organizing.
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