Scotland the Strong and Mighty

26.11.2007

Yes, sung to the tune of the eternal bagpiper. Kind of like the eternal Jew, though not really.

It’s high time to recount some of my recent travels, even though this seems ages ago. Literally 3 weekends and I’ve already put it into the archives of memory.

To be fair, my first venture into the Royal island was quite pleasant. Lovely. Sudden as it was, visiting Edinburgh for a weekend is a resplendent little rest from the cosmopolitan horror that can be Paris.

In a whirl of 2.5 days, Kiersten and Chip showed me the best of what Edinburgh had to offer, slightly the side of a tourist but also from the local’s perspective.

Edinburgh astonishes with the somber, gothic, Scottish style architecture and the sometimes Gothic individuals who prowled the streets and squares. However, to countermand, it is endowed with the Firth of Forth (my favorite Firth I’d say), beautiful rolling downs, moors, hedges, midlands… (and all those English English landscape descriptives no American truly understands) which surround the city.

Needless to say, we climbed—though somewhat heroically given the wind and weather—Arthur’s seat, Edinburgh’s lookout hill, at a hefty 300m or so above the city for a breathtaking bird’s eye view of the firth, the city, and the surrounding suburbs and countryside.

Among other cool things: the writers’ museum. As Edinburgh claims SWS, RLS, and RB as its own sons, or rather longtime inhabitants, the writers’ museum gave us a peek into their lives and their relation to the city.
A brief resume:
Þ Sir Walter Scott—pretty much invented Scottish history…so they revere him, and there’s a large monument on Princes Street in his honor. Scott was a pretty cool chap, I’d say, and I did thoroughly enjoy Ivanhoe in middle school.
Þ Robert Burns—whoever doesn’t like or can at first glance understand this Scottish peasant poet is crazy. It took me awhile in 9th grade to unravel the ‘wee sleekit beastie’ and for good reason I think, in its relation to Of Mice and Men. Burns also defined Scot (I’m sure I’m mistaken here somewhere) as a language.
Þ Robert Louis Stevenson—A baller by all means. I’ve read Treasure Island 3 or 4 times and it’s quality every single one of them. This guy also went to live on Tahiti or around there, again, what a dude.

Fish and chips at 2am was a good idea. Enough said.

The Heart of Midlothian, a virtual spittoon or spitting ground in the form of a heart inscribed in a circle, near the center of the Holyrood Mile was also cool. Scott wrote a book about it, go figure.

Here’s a logic puzzle.

I like the Scottish. The Scottish love their Scotch. What’s next???


You thought wrong, I’m marginally seduced by whiskey, but when in Rome…

As a blatant advertisement—I recommend walking tours. It makes it fun without you paying for it or feeling like too much of a tourist.

I’m rambling. I’ll ramble more about this later. Next stop: Prague or London, you be the judge.

Strike 2.

18.11.2007

You don’t get to home base by strikes—everyone knows that.

Not the French.

The second (of potentially many) reprisal of the transport strike has choked the already somewhat precarious economic and political situation to near standstill here in France.

Now I’m all for a little adventure, a little labor union action here and there. Apparently, for examples, my old roommate, the venerable Mr. Jason Gutstein, is working for a union in Argentina. And you know I wish him well.

Well not in this case. First, it’s cold—really cold for walking 1.5 hours to work, which is the average amount of time it takes me to do so and many other Parisians walking alongside. I won’t even go into the plight of the outside-of-the-walls, banlieue-residing 9 million people, many of whom rely on some form of transportation to get to work, school…

This strike has evinced a slightly surprising fact: most Parisians, in fact, do own one or more cars. They just usually don’t use them, because transit is better, cheaper, easier…and avoids horrible traffic jams that arise from a centrally planned, circularly structured city.

Now, I will detail my own peregrinations since the strike began, November 14^th at 20:00.

Tuesday Nov. 13^th—I walk from work by Courcelles metro stop in the 17^th to the Blanche metro stop in the 18^th and get food on the way on Place de la Clichy, on my way to the Moulin Rouge with distant relatives. (45 minutes).
We get lucky on the way back and catch a stray train on line 2.

Wednesday Nov 14^th—I purposefully slept over at the relatives’ to only walk 5 minutes in the morning. Left work at 6pm. Got to Boulevard St. Germain at 7pm, got home at 8:20pm, cold, hungry and angry. (2h20 trajectory).

Thursday Nov 15^th—Tried metro in vain at 8am. Walked until Montparnasse, half an hour. Got on #28 bus to St. Lazare, seemed like a good idea at the time. I even had a place to stand, more than usual in these conditions. The bus took 1.5 hours, I could have walked equally fast if not faster. Walked 15 brisk minutes to work.

Class was canceled today…yippee! Turns out Brussels-residing teacher could have come to Paris (London, Brussels, Frankfurt, trains still run), but too hard to get to the school from the railroad station. So I leave work around 6:30pm, start walking with the thought of catching a public bike…I try four different locations, but either the bikes don’t like me, or they’re broken, or there aren’t any left.

I eventually catch the #80 bus around St. Phillippe du Roule, on Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 8^th. I have never heard of this bus and have no idea where it goes. Its terminus is far from where I want to be. Needless to say, I am hanging on for dear life in the bus’ back door, literally when the door opens outward, there’s a bar in the middle. I am hanging to its top and standing on its bottom. My adrenaline is rushing and I feel the adventure. I stay on the #80 for about half an hour, where there are these 2 middle-aged American tourists, who’ve clearly been to Paris before, but are braving this as though it’s there first and only time here. All I can hear is them talking, mainly about the French people around them, and how uncomfortable it is to be in that damned bus.
I laugh inwardly, I always do. Haha. Little do they know, most of the French people around them understand English, it’s 2007 in Paris. Hello people, are they f-ing stupid. French people don’t talk on public transit and they don’t make eye contact. It’s like a theater show.

I get off the #80 at Ecole Militaire, get on instantly, and luckily on the #92, straight to Montparnasse. This bus is uncharacteristically empty and I even sit down. 15 minutes later, I get off, walk to Gaîté (Gaiety as I call it) and finally find a bike willing to accommodate me. Too bad it’s a 4 minute bikeride home at this point, still I can’t complain. (Total day’s travel—4h20min, appalling).

Friday Nov 16^th. I decide on biking. Get up at 7am. On the bike by 8, but it’s a ‘cassé’, a broken one, as indicated by the friendly Post-it note. I battle on to Gaîté, switch bikes, and voila, I’m at work at 8:30am, an hour early, feeling great to have beaten that monster—French Socialism--for at least one day.
4pm, I leave work to go to the airport. Flight is in 3 hours, no trains or buses to Charles de Gaulle. I am forced to take a taxi, bourgeois class. I see 2 chaps getting into a taxi right at Courcelles. With my freshly extracted taxi-headed Euros in hand, I ask them to share a cab, ascertaining that they indeed are going to CDG.
They turn out to be 2 Swedish intellectual property lawyers in Paris on business for a day. Traffic is brutal everywhere, especially on the Perif., the circularly-abutting highway around the Paris city walls. I talk to the Swedes, they’re not as funny as one would assume, but very nice.

1h20 minutes.

Sunday Nov 18^th. It takes me less time to fly than to get home from the airport. The Air France-sponsored bus I take doesn’t leave for half an hour, then traffic and rain all the way to Gare de Lyon. Then, 2.5 hours later, Montparnasse, finally. I walk home in the rain, Chinese food in hand at the end. Total trajectory from CDG (3 hours about).

We’ll see what happens this week, I’ll try to not let it spoil my birthday…

I love France.

As an addendum, the Paris Opera and the Comedie Française are also on strike. Again, yippee! La di freakin’ da, almost.

More importantly, parts of GDF and EDF, the ‘publicly-traded’ (khem, national monopolies on gas and electricity), may also strike. In that case, I will be skipping town, straight one of the aforementioned cities still operating regular transit to Paris: London, Brussels, Frankfurt. So keep your phones on, just in case I come to your neck of the woods.

31.10.2007

Impression: Sunrise Paris.

Taken from: A Starbucks^TM window on the Cour du Rome, next to the Gare St. Lazare.

6:20 am. Turned out of Didot toward the Alésia stop. There’s a lady walking her dog, crazy people, the sun isn’t due for an hour.

The bakery on the way is closed. Damn it, it’s early. He’s usually open by now. Oh well.

6:37 am. Chatelêt is unusually empty, wow, that’s a first. This is the busiest station, now it feels like a backwater, somewhere on the Ronkonkoma LIRR. People in Paris don’t get up this early.

Indeed, most of the passengers are asleep, tipsy, or travelers.

6:50 am. We’re at Gare de Lyon. I bid Ben a farewell on his trip to Marseille and we plan to see each other in Prague. Strangely, we see each other much less during a typical fall semester. In Europe it’ll have been 3 by the end of our sojourns.

Lots of people are taking the TGV to Marseille and Montpelier, as far as I can tell, this is because of Toussaint—All Saint’s Day what have you, so the French take another vacation.

7:15 am. I’m at St. Lazare and I see the rays of sun barely coming up from behind the Haussmann-era buildings around the plaza.

It’s Halloween today, anniversary of the 1991 blizzard if you will, and I don’t care. It’s great or maybe not, but I just don’t care.

Tomorrow is vacation and that’s what matters anyway.

My first Starbucks, actually only my second American fast food experience in France. The first was Subway across from the Notre Dame de Paris, it was not great, but I got what I expected – like German efficiency.

In France, a ‘tall’ is actually a ‘moyen’ – meaning medium or average. I guess I assumed it was medium, because I wouldn’t want an ‘average’ coffee. (I sound a little like Cherney in this sentence, that makes me happy somehow). Also, the baristas say ‘have a nice day’ and they add ‘bon degustation’, literally translating to ‘have a good tasting’.

I like that. I thought, why yes, I will have a good tasting indeed. The cappuccino was as expected, ‘average’.

Smooth jazz in the background, cool wind in my hair…

A faint smell of urine, coming up through the air…

Up ahead in the distance, I saw the shimmering light…(it is, after all, the sun rising in Paris)

I started writing my reflections, but I didn’t know what to write…

I think the Eagles did it better.

On another topic, I would like to thank Mr. Michael X Cherney for his thoughts on life as shared through various, though mainly the written, media. I would further wish him well as he starts his new tour of duty in yet another American backwater, Myrtle Beach, SC. At least he can play golf here. And there’s no Rust Belt tradition, or Virginia Slims for that matter.

You all probably thought I died or something...

White nights.

07.10.07

I come from the city of white nights. Everyone knows St. Petersburg has the best ones—mid-July until end of August, the sun doesn’t quite go down. Ideal for strolling at 3am, it’s not cold there during the summer even, imagine that people. Lovers, couples, shady people…you get it.

So Paris tries to do the same thing, except for crammed all into one. Good idea maybe. Great idea if you pair it with a Rugby World Cup quarterfinal. Any and all bars were packed to the brim; there was no chance of seeing the game thus. Even at Hotel de Ville—city hall, where there were huge screens for all to see, the crowd was so dense and huge that we not only suffocated but were also unable to see the game.

(I did sing the Marseillaise with the French people though. Even better than that one time in the middle of APUSH class in 10^th grade, when Xian Wang and I busted out into the French National Anthem. Good times).

As an aside, France did beat New Zealand, the first-ranked team. There was much happiness and crazi-hood. I would have not dared to be a New Zealander then in France it would not have been pretty.

The Tuileries gardens were gorgeous tonight. An other-worldly fire display consisting of pretty much…fire made the night for me and my companions. Besides the fiery bush/chandelier/god knows whats, there were also alternately powered chimney-looking things which blazed on command of fedora-donned black-clothed fire wardens as I shall call them. I even succeeded in taking some sweet-ass pictures that indeed do resemble fire (and something purple-lit, probably barium chloride or one of those heavier rare-earths, maybe strontium iodide. I mean all the cool flames are just earths/rare earths mixed with halogens, so it’s hard to estimate.)

The other ‘modern’, ‘post-modern’, and ‘contemporary’ art installations slightly eluded my gaze and even when they didn’t they didn’t dare compare with the fiery magnificence of the magnificent fire. It helps that I like the color orange, a lot. (My cell phone service, btw, is also ‘Orange’.)

So yes, if anyone has Skype and wants to talk, let me know. My Skype ID is seva.rodnyansky

Artful reflections.

10.02.2007

Quote of the entry, that I steal here from some graffiti viewed from Parc Guëll in Barcelona: “Why call it tourist season if you can’t [even] shoot them?!”

Most of you know, I was in Spain last week, for 8 days. This entry will treat the subject of art—not the art of living, that’s what I usually write about; rather, art in its visible form.

I could write and talk about all the architecture I saw, but I won’t bore you all (or at least most)…I have pictures to do that for me. 2 notable mentions: Antonìo Gaudi, from where the word ‘gaudy’ comes from, was a genius, I now contend. If you don’t know him or his work, look it up. I also bought a little book so I will show it when I come back. 2^nd mention—the city of Toledo in Castilla-La Mancha (not in Ohio), a complete medieval treasure with streets narrower than the hallways in my house and great hills, skyways, churches, synagogues…

But, back to the subject at hand.

I don’t really know what it is: Russian intelligentsia education, my AP art history class, some sort of elite snobbishness, etc. All of these help explain why I go to art museums or museums in general. Perhaps it’s my quest for knowledge or something.

In any case, I managed to see at least 7 museums in 8 days, if not more (with so many, I may be forgetting). One thing to note. In the US, each painting/work of art has damned near an essay written next to it. I always that that was a good thing, up to a point, but really I was taught that nowadays one was supposed to appreciate art by looking at it and not learning about it. That’s not to say that I don’t read the notes. On the contrary, knowing me, I do. Not only do I read the notes, I play a game with myself trying to guess the name of the work, the artist, date, city even…
In Spain (and in France for the most part) there are no explanations. Hell, there frequently aren’t even signs telling who and what, which really helped me feel the artwork. Now I don’t mean ‘feel’ in the ‘small American liberal-arts college’ way, but to really react to it. That’s really all it takes to appreciate it.

I’ll try to be brief, but there are a lot of museums to go through, so please be patient. Notable omissions: Museu Xocolatica in Barcelona. Yes, unfortunately the Chocolate Museum closed at 3pm on Sundays (probably for siesta) and I was unable to visit it. Apparently there was also a Dalì (Domenech) museum somewhere in Barça, but I didn’t really see it. Also, the Nou Camp stadium where Barcelona plays, though I did see the Santiago Bernabeu stadium where Real Madrid plays, if only from the outside.

We’ll go in chronological order to simplify:

1. Museu Picasso—Barcelona’s version, because really every culturally self-respecting city has one. Like everything in Barcelona, they focus on the artist’s work in Catalunya, and not really anywhere else, go figure. Still, a cool old building and a large collection yielded for a good overview of all of his different styles from childhood to modernism and surrealism before his death. No real chef d’oeuvres (on the ‘you damn well better know this’ level).
2. Fundacìo Joan Mirò—Barcelona in Parc Montjuïc. I like some modern stuff, so this was pretty good. Miro is perhaps the best-known Barcelonan artist. It helps that I did a project on him in Art History at MHS. He’s pretty surreal and expressionistic, so Ben and I decided maybe one time was enough. Still, it’s famous. No real chef d’oeuvres.
3. Casa Mila or La Perdera—the Gaudi architecture museum, inside this masterpiece. This was awesome because it really showed how he used non-Euclidean surfaces to build in a new style. The roof rocks and it kind of looks as if one is on Easter Island, standing on it. A chef d’oeuvre in itself.
4. Victorio Macho and El Greco museum—Toledo, in a beautiful Spanish-style (duh) villa overlooking the Tago river. Frankly, this was kind of a small collection. For as well-known and prolific of an artist as Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco), I kind of wanted more. Still, beggars (tourists) can’t be choosers. One of the views of Toledo was there, and a bunch of portraits of Saints** (see below). No chef d’oeuvres.
5. Museo Sefardi—Spain’s Jewish Museum. Little did I know, this was probably the best (probably) Jewish museum I’ve ever been to. Located in an old synagogue (Synagoga La Transito), because Toledo had a large Jewish community before the expulsion and all that. Never mind that it was all in Spanish, the exhibits were truly well put, well done, and quite interesting. I managed to learn a lot and really improve my reading Spanish.
6. Museo de Prado—the jewel of Spanish museums and universally renowned. Let’s be honest, the outside looks like shit. Unimpressive is an overstatement (think the Met, the Hermitage, the Louvre…even the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, come on people. Then again, their royal palace in Madrid looked like someone had just hung it out to dry, not pretty). Inside though, it was wonderful. Imagine a museum where there were really only artists you knew, liked, and wanted to see; and what’s more, a lot of the works you liked and styles too were there. That’s the Prado. Though focusing on Spaniards mainly, the Prado does a great job of showing a lot while not showing too much, and of course, no explanations. I can go on and on, but chef d’oeuvres: 1) El Bosco’s (Hieronymus Bosch’s) Garden of Earthly Delights, definitely as cool as it looks in the books; 2) Velasquez’s Las Meninas, pretty cool, though I kind of like it better in print; 3) Francisco Goya’s May 1, 1815 (the one with the shootings and the martyr-looking peasant), definitely cool.
7. Museo de Reina Sofia—Madrid’s MOMA. All the modern art, specifically Spanish, with some post-modern mixed in. Lots of Picasso, Dali (full name, interestingly: Salvador Dali Domenech), Man Ray…even Henry Moore (hearkening to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden) and a Kandinsky that I didn’t think was really Kandinsky. If you like modern art, it was great. But, as Igor wisely, or perhaps unwisely said about a 1/3 of the pieces there, “[with some work], I could do this myself.” Chef d’oeuvres: Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, epic and cool better than in the books.

Well, this concludes the guided tour of multimedia Mavis Beacon.

Hope y’all aren’t asleep yet. I do appreciate the random emails, messages, wallposts, and etc. Even if they’re just to bitch at me for not blogging (khem Ilya).

I want to send a shoutout to all the MMSSers and AEPiers reading this (for no good reason really). And also to all those who have commented on the blog. You all rock.

And I conclude by wishing all a happy new year, once more, and a happy Tabernacle: that is to say, a swell festival of Booths. (Edwin and John Wilkes of course).

The first two days of spain

Some have complained I don't update frequently. You're right. enough said.

25.09.07

Oh Barcelona, Barcelona.

As usual haven’t written in a while, so apologies…

I have reached that intermediary period in my France-borne education where I’m not quite not a student, not yet a worker (yes, pun on horrible Brittney Spears song/album). That is to say, my vacation.

Why of all places am I going to Spain? It is cheap-ish. I have 2 very close friends there, Ben and Igor. I am bad at planning—didn’t buy my ticket back until 1 day before I left, nor did I reserve lodgings for more than one night at a time, nor did I think about what I was going to do until the night before the flight (or should I say mere hours before a flight). But, so far so good.

First to tell of getting there. To dispel some myths: low cost travel does not mean bad travel, it means inconvenient, though cheap travel. Hence a 9am flight necessitates a 5am awakening, a 5:40am metro train to the edge of town (Paris that is, not the Paris MSA), a 1.5 hour, 13Eu bus to Beauvais (read middle of nowhere), in a different Région (read state), 70 kiloms away. The airport, though reminiscent of Arlanda in Stockholm, in a bad way, could double as a large house, small warehouse, or medium-sized restaurant—it is tiny. At least there are a lot of people who do things as crazy as I and fly RyanAir. Surprisingly, the flight landed in Barcelona (Girona) 10 minutes early! But wait, 12Eu and another 70 kiloms and same 1.5 hour bus ride later, I’m in the center of Barcelona with hot weather and facing its very own Arc de Triomf. (Needless to say, all of this was fun on 3 hrs of sleep and Yom Kippur the day before).

To stop my patter…Barcelona is beautiful: palm trees, pretty girls, nice architecture, public art…and I happened to come in the middle of the year’s biggest deal—the festival of Mercì, an ancient Catalan tradition.

Before going further, I must clarify: Catalunya the province/region where Barcelona is located believes firmly in autonomy (understatement). Now, I’m all for regional movements, especially with their own languages, cultures, traditions, and cuisines. This is not regionalism, people; this is se-pa-ra-tism. But enough said.

This means, everything is written in Català, the local tongue, and sometimes Spanish, and generally not in English. Now some of you know, my knowledge of Spanish is limited to reading, and to very select 1^st grade vocabulario. So, I’m doubly screwed. Thankfully, Ben’s Spanish is good and we can get around.

In my absentmindedness, I left the address of my hostel, along with the list of attractions I had written out the night before, at home, in Paris. So, I proceeded to traipse from the bus station to where I perchance thought my hostel might be. I wasn’t completely poking in the dark as I knew the street name, Carrer d’Arago, and I knew the number was in the 200s somewhere. Needless to say, the first 2 times of walking through the 10 blocks that make up the 200s didn’t get me anywhere. I was really starting to feel like an idiot (well more than starting), and then Ben called and everything was ok.

Happily my phone is now out of minutes so don’t try calling/texting until I’m back in Paris, another one of those happy traveling moments.

Now for the good news: my hostel, Omni house, once I found it, is sweet. The people working are genial, breakfast is included, the cost is cheap, the lodging effective…

The festival that’s going on means all the locals don’t have work today, Monday, so Ben doesn’t have class. Also, there is live music and performances outside all over; many museums are free; fireworks and live shows every night.

Highlights so far—

o Museu Picasso—the Picasso museum. Definitely worth it, and it was free. It gives a great view into the art most people don’t know about: the very early, the very late, and the sketches, as wells as some ceramic pieces. A chronological arrangement, lending itself to learning about the artist’s life, introduced us to his Barcelonan presence and his earlier work which is an interesting mix of 1850s realism and 1940s-1950s American Regionalism, in my opinion. And we saw some famous ones too: Margot and the las Meninas sequence (a huge derivation on Velasquez’s work).

o Fireworks show(s), especially today’s at Avengida de Reina Maria Cristina, and Parc Montjuïc. Not only were the fireworks sweet, and I judged pretty shrewdly, but there was also a ‘tribute to pop and rock music’ playing in the background, which did everything from contemporary hits such as ‘Jesus of Suburbia—Green Day’ to name a good one, or ‘Girlfriend—Avril Lavigne’ on the other side of the spectrum, to ancient things. There was a water show with a large ornate fountain and a castle in the near background involved too. And did I mention the crowds—this makes Parisian riots seem miniscule.

o La playa—the beach. Lots of beachfront, though somewhat rocky, on the ever-beautiful Mediterranean. Lots of people tanning and some swimming. The setting is surrounded by apartments, modern 5* hotels, and odd looking modern public art (then again when is modern public art not odd looking?). Ben and I tanned and relaxed for a little and then we swam. The waves were rather large and the water rather salty, but fun anyway. Also, did I mention top-less was more than accepted here? Enough said.

That’s a good note to end on for now, that’s always a good note to end on.

Lions, tigers, bears, Oh My! (asyndeton).

09.08.2007

In the past 9 days I’ve been inside 6 châteaux (castles) and seen countless others from the outside. None of them have been within 10 miles of Paris. Pretty much all were royal at one point or another.

Personally, I am a fan of castles and palaces—and why not? Sheer richness, magnitude, art, furnishings, secret passageways…all hearkening to a time far (or not so far away). Before the narrative, I’ll give the interesting particularities of the French castles I saw as a whole:

• All have little letters carved into the ceiling/decorations signifying in one way or another who built them. For example, a salamander and a big ‘F’ for François I; a porcupine and an ‘H’ for Henri II; a big ‘N’ for Napoleon III.
• Fontainebleau was the first palace/castle that I have ever seen a royal bathroom in. This particular one was lived in as late as 1870 I think, by Nappy III who was a big builder and modernizer, but the bathroom dates from the time of Louis XIV. The bathtub was regal and the color was cool, though I couldn’t come close enough (glass/cordon) to see the WC, though I assume it exists.
• This point deserves special consideration—I’ve been to an awful lot of Palaces in Russia and elsewhere, and none had bathrooms open to the public.
• My opinion—Louis XIV ‘the sun king’ was a pretty damn smart guy and he liked the luxuries of life == the royal bath and adjoining crapper.

o Dancing in every château (at least 1 spin) was obligatory.

o I learned that I am not a big fan of tapestries as an art form, save perhaps the Bayeux tapestry and the tapestry of Martin the Warrior from the Redwall series I adored in childhood (Yeah Brian Jacques!).