Final days in Paris January 3, 2007
Posted by jlsd in Art, Random Observations, Travel.add a comment
As Oscar Wilde said its either him or the wall paper one of them has to go. Unfortunately Oscar died, and M and I will simply be leaving but it will be a pity as there is so much to see and unless you manage to stay for months there is little chance of seeing everything. However we have made a decent attempt to see what we could in the time we had.
Yesterday i went to Versaille having gotten lost for hours underground in the metro and then got drenched like i had gone swimming in my clothes, before arriving at the palace to see the line for tickets was 5 rows deep and long as the train itself. Upon discovering that a lot was under wraps for restorative reasons i decided not to get pneumonia in the rain queing to get a ticket, and just scooted around the palace grounds before going home again. A bit disappointing but i think that i made the right decision. Self taken drowned rat photos will be available for viewing shortly!
Today we went to the catacombs which were spooky and interesting. they contained the bones of several graveyards that were transported there in the mid 19th century to prevent a continuation of disease that was originating from there. The ossuries are located in a series of converted former limestone quarries beneath the streets of Paris, only one is open to the public for viewing.
After that we went back to the Pompidou Centre to see some exhibitions that we had had not been able to get into with our museum card earlier in the week. Yves Klein was very french and slightly wanky. Rauschenberg was interesting but also a bit wanky to be fair.
When I went to Versailles yesterday M went to see the cathederal at Chartres with its medeival stained glass and mismatched towers. 
One gothic, one romanesque. He reports that it was very interesting and he didn’t manage to come home looking like a drowned rat.
The day before we had been out to Monmartre and after nearly expiring climbing the hill had a wander through the big white Bascilica of Sacre Coeur 
follwed by an amble through part of the Monmartre cemetery. We didn’t manage to find any graves of famous residents such as Adolph Sax, Oscar Wilde or Jim Morrison (not that we looked to hard for that last one), but did see some rather ostentatious sepulchres and a collection of cats who looked very much at home. 
On the way back we passed Moulin Rouge but after finding out that the cheapest tickets were 87 euro we decided not to bother going in.
Now we just pack up and go back to Mannheim. and the good news we got from the travel agency/booking people is that they are going to do an investigation into our complaint re the first hotel. Hopefully we are one step closer to getting our money back!
Paris part 2 (tourist stuff) January 1, 2007
Posted by michael in Art, Random Observations, Travel.1 comment so far
Accomadation dramas aside we have seen a lot of amazing stuff here. A quick round up includes:
* the Louvre – quite astounding building (the Grand Hall certainly lives up to its name) and the architecture is just one part of the experience of course with so much important art housed here it is a must see. Just be prepared for all the other tourists to annoy the hell out of you (or maybe thats just me). In addition to the art J reports that the Napoleonic apartments were really interesting and completely over the top; giant chandeliers, gold on the walls etc etc (i missed that bit as i was wandering around looking at thousands of French paintings in another wing). We returned on another day to check out some more and saw the Mona Lisa which frankly was not very exciting, so much of the surrounding art was more appealing and didnt have a thousand tourists taking photos with their mobile phones.
* Notre Dame – for some reason i expected this to be much bigger, dont get me wrong it is pretty huge and impressive just that i had visions of something far larger (same goes for the Eiffel Tower but i’ll come back to that). At Notre Dame we also went into the underground archeological site which was impressive in size and presentation chronicalling centuries of history on that site.
* The Arc de Triumph is suitably impressive but the traffic takes away from the spectacle somewhat as do poxy Italian tourists trying to get their wives to pose in areas beyond the barrier to take photos with thier phone (a prevelant trend that i just fail to understand) but still taking ages to get just the right pose and getting in the way of everyone elses view. Champs Elysee just looks like a big shopping mall with very high prices and yet more tourists (yeah i know we are also tourists but at least we dont stand around taking photos of store windows or in the fake snow and xmas trees that were erected on the side of the street).
* my personal highlight so far has been the visit to the Centre Pompidou with its fantastic post modern building 
and incredible collection of contemporary art (i was so excited apparently i kept grinning and making exclamations of amazement according to J). There was a special exhibition on film in art in addition to the likes of Warhol, Du Champ, Raushenberg, Longo etc etc etc etc you get the idea. Am going to go back another day to see bits we didnt get to so far.
* the Eifell Tower looks kind of impressive from a distance on the skyline but up close is rather underwhelming and smaller than i thought it would be.
* went to the Sewers of Paris ‘museum’ which is situated in part of the actual working sewer system (and smells it too, you can see the waste water running past…) this was really interesting and had a quite informative display of the history of the sewerage systems development from the Roman era, definately worth putting up with the odour. Although am glad that didn’t experience the ’1 metre diameter methane bubbles’ of the open sewers of the 1800s…
* Saint Chapelle – stunning stained glass windows in this historic gothic church from the 13th century.
next part – observations re tourists, parisian waiters and sweets, marketing and other miscelania
back from Berlin December 10, 2006
Posted by michael in Art, Germany, Live Music, Random Observations, Travel.add a comment
Have i mentioned lately how much i love Berlin.
i’m not sure exactly what it is about the place but this trip (i’m just back from a week there), short as it was, has confirmed Berlin as my favourite city in the world (that i’ve set foot in so far).
So, a brief roundup of selected highlights of my trip in no particular order:
- looking at more contemporary art than you can poke a stick at. (and i’ll pre-empt any inevitable joke in the comments with ‘some of it may have indeed been made by poking sticks at things’, right, now that’s out of the way moving right along). seriously, so much interesting art my eyeballs were getting fatigued.
- going up into the dome at the top of the Reichstag building.
- looking around the Memorial To The Murdered Jews of Europe. the memorial itself is interesting to walk around and look at but abstract enough that you can forget what it represents if not careful. i guess it’s tricky finding a balance between presenting a memorial and going too over the top and ramming it down people’s throats. The underground interpretation centre is more formal, well presented and effective.
- buying a bucketload of CDs including (but not limited to) a couple of Iggy Pop bootlegs, Mingus, a 2CD Berlin punk anthology ’77-’89 and a 2nd hand find that may possibly feature the words Cyndi and Lauper and Christmas on the cover.
- watching live jazz at A TRANE. a very small but very cool jazz joint. there were maybe 40 people in the whole place including the band and the staff and it was almost full. i reckon just walking through the door automatically raised my coolness quota by several points. as an added bonus it was only a 10 minute walk from my hotel (30 – 40 minutes if you are a bit tipsy and take a wrong turn on the way back to the hotel a few hours later). the band were pretty good too and the bass players name was Pepe.
- ROCK! Jugend und Musik in Deutschland. an exhibition of music and youth in Germany with everything from a lock of Elvis‘ hair to the current clubbing/techno scene and tons in between – the mixing desk and ephemera from CAN‘s studio, metal ‘drum kit’ used by Einsturzende Neubeauten (i always spell that wrong but can’t be bothered checking it right now), a dress worn by Nina Hagen, guitars signed by Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Ray Davies, Chrissie Hyndes etc etc etc and heaps more. the info was all in German of course but with all the videos, posters, photos, music equipment and assorted other gear it didn’t matter and i had a great time checking it all out along with a few barely suppressed oooohs and ‘f*ck me that’s the[insert whatever piece of rock memorabilia i happen to be gawking at at the time]…‘slipping out occasionaly.
- generaly gawping at architecture in a way that suggests i have half a clue. i don’t. i just like looking at cool/interesting buildings and stuff.
- Matthew Barney and Joseph Beuys at the Deutsche Guggenheim. a small space and some strange installation pieces featuring lots of molded plastic, marble, and huge volumes of petroleum jelly. Barney is the guy who did the Cremaster Cycle or you may know him better as ‘the guy who is currently boinking Bjork’.
- 3 exhibitions at the Museum fur Fotografie.
Private Property – a collection of Helmut Newton miscellanea; photos, letters, cameras, car, mock up of his study etc etc.
Window – Reiner Leist. – hundreds of photos of the same scene taken over years out of his New York apartment window, more interesting than it sounds.
Men, War & Peace – Helmut Newton, James Nachtwey and David LaChapelle. The Newton component was a collection of his portraits of famous men and was of the calibre you’d expect. LaChapelle’s work is amusing in his own special hyper-reality way. Easily the standout though was the amazing, albeit disturbing and graphic, photos by Nachtwey, especially his Balkan war series.
- Hamburger Bahnhof. a HUGE old train station that has been converted into a museum for contemporary art. If names like Robert Raushenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst etc ring any bells you get the idea of the kind of work that is on display here. In addition to works by the aforementioned and many others this museum also had a few special exhibitions (they have different special exhibitions every few months in addition to the permanent display). Two of the special exhibitions were a collection of work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and a large exhibition under the banner of ‘The Art of Projection’ exploring film, video and installations involving projection of varying types and media from the Christian Flick Collection. i spent a good chunk of a day wandering around the giant halls and highly recommend this place to anyone passing through Berlin that has an interest in modern art.
as an aside i did raise a chuckle earlier in the day passing the antiquities museum on museum insel which had a large neon sign out the front that states ‘All Art Has Been Contemporary’.
- Sowjetisches Ehrenmal(Soviet Memorial, 1949). for sheer over the top-ness. the memorial has two large marble walls with statues of kneeling soldiers in front which open on to a big plaza. the plaza is lined with great big blocks covered in relief designs depicting war scenes and gilt quotations by the likes of Stalin. all of this leading to a big mound, topped by a big plinth, topped by a 13m high statue of a soldier with a child in one hand and a dirty great big sword in the other, standing on top of a broken swastika. subtle.
- Berlin Story. a multimedia (and i don’t just mean a few dodgy videos) exhibition over several levels detailing the history of the city of Berlin from the 13th Century to the present. Extremely well presented and informative. and the entrance price also included a brief tour of a functional atomic fallout shelter. cool. (i will blog about the fallout shelter separatley).
Food Highlights
- one word. currywurst.
- that dark stuff i was drinking at A TRANE. i hesitate to simply call it beer. i started calling it “i’ll have another one of those please.”
Not-Quite-So-High-lights:
- Berlin Zoo. was good but not great. i think i had set my expectations too high before going. they claim to have more different species of animals than any other zoo in the world. i did see some interesting stuff there. amongst other things the several varieties of Madagaskan mongoose were kind of cool. overall the zoo was ok but most of the enclosures looked a bit dated (they are currently renovating some).
- getting soaked to the skin while perambulating up Ku’damm on my first night in town.
- having a muscle spasm and as a result destroying half a tray of glassware at the hotel breakfast buffet with my spastic flailing arm.
- discovering that the hotel was indeed named after the song by the Eagles (shoulda seen that one coming – it was way too obvious) but it was a fine place to stay, especially seeing the cheap deal i got.
- thinking i was about to be mugged by the two very dodgy looking characters on the U-Bahn. one had a shaved head, the other had a mohawk, both had multiple piercings, heavy boots, grotty looking clothes, none of which i took any notice of or gave a second thought until i noticed they were furtively looking about the carriage before making subtle signals to each other and moving to either end of the carriage and blocking off the exits. at this point i started to wonder what was about to happen… turns out they were undercover ticket inspectors.
Berlin. i love it. i saw a bunch of other stuff too but that will suffice as a wrapup for now.
oh, before i sign off a quick aside on workplace health and safety standards in Germany – ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
example – sitting in a cafe in Berlin (drinking mighty fine coffee i might add) i was watching through the window two guys dismantling some scaffolding out the front of the building next door. one guy was standing on the scaffolding, two stories up, pulling it apart and half dropping/half throwing the parts (planks of wood, steel tubing, brackets etc etc) over the footpath onto the back of a flatbed truck. the other guy, who was standing on the truck, would then step over stack that piece then step back out of the way before the next piece was chucked down. this sort of thing is not an isolated incident, during our time here in Europe i have seen quite a number of dodgy work practices of varying types and degrees of scariness. for one thing i certainly will no longer walk under ladders without looking up anymore.
Conclusion: yes. I. am. a. nerd. (but a nerd who has been to Berlin. twice.)
Frankfurt round-up November 6, 2006
Posted by michael in Art, Food, Germany, Random Observations, Travel.add a comment
so we have just spent two days ambling about Frankfurt am Main. in no particular order here are some haphazard notes and observations:
Frankfurt is known for 3 things; banking – didn’t do any, international trade fairs – weren’t any on, museums – managed to check out 4 (well 3 and one small exhibition space).
the first thing you notice is all the glass skyscrapers (Frankfurt was pretty much flattened in Allied bombing raids in WW II so post-war boom allowed for massive expansion – skywards…) and they seem to be quite proud of them judging by the number of postcards and posters i saw showing the city skyline with the heights of about 15 or 20 different buildings noted for comparison
the second thing you notice are the drug dealers. lots of very obvious deals being done very openly around the place. on Sunday night about 7pm on a very busy street i overheard one guy offering a menu “you want some Ecstasy, you want some speed, you want some…”
noticed quite a lot of beggers and a few homeless people too, including one couple in a makeshift lean-to complete with matteress under some bushes next to a major road. several of the homeless people were shouting very loudly to themselves, quite animated.
the whole city has a very transient feel about it and a distinct lack of personality which i guess makes sense given that it is a major travel hub with biggest or second biggest (i’m not sure) railway station and airport in Europe
there is also a pretty big red light district too. the city guide that we got for free at the hotel (a big chain hotel that was supposedly 4 star – we got cheap last minute rates – but i presume whoever did the rating didn’t stay in the same room we did – not that it was dreadful or anything but decidedly not 4 star) had pages of ads for escort services, maybe to cater for the guys on trade fair junkets…
we went and had a look through Alt Sachsenhausen which is one of the night-life spots apparently but after seeing a few dodgy looking characters and several pools of dried blood (seriously i mean pools – looked like enough to have come from a broken nose or a serious cut) that were still on the ground late sunday afternoon we decided to go walking elsewhere
saw the very effective Jewish memorial which consists of walls with metal cubes each showing the name of a Frankfurt born Jew that was murdered during the Holocaust. not nearly as interesting or moving were the two junkies shooting up on the park bench nearby.
and of course being a couple of nerds we went to art museums. there is a bunch of seriously good museums in Frankfurt but given limited time we managed the following:
Ikon Museum – collection of Russian religious paintings – v. interesting
Portikus – this small exhibition space is housed in a building stuck off the side of one of the many bridges across the river Main about 1/3 of the way across the river. on the day we went there was an installation piece by Paul Chan which walks that fine line of post-modern art between interesting and too-clever-for-its-own-good wank – sometimes of course the wankiness is of a just plaim dumb nature. J’s initial reaction – “is this some kind of joke?”. the piece made more sense after i read the explanation of what it supposedly represented but i’m still not sure which side of the line it fell on for me.
Museum fur Moderne Kunst (Kunst is the German word for Art) – this is a really interesting building (apparently nicknamed ‘slice of cake’ by the locals because of its wedge shape) and a really interesting display space as well.there was a feature exhibition of pieces by an artist i can’t recall the name of which was rather underwhelming (falling on the wank side of the aforementioned equation largely in my opinion) and a selection of other works which were of variable appeal- some bad, some good, some really good. i have to admit for me the space itself was generally more interesting than most of the art. also we had lunch in the museum’s cafe and at the risk of banging on about food again i have to say mine was mighty, mighty fine (i may have been ranting about how good it was and making stupid food appreciation noises at the time) – for the record i had Creme of Water Chestnut with Pomegranate Soup (lip-smackingly good) and Ostrich Steaks with Lemon-Caramel sauce (the sauce was brilliant – the best way i can (badly) describe the (small) steaks was that they tasted like being lighter but with a similar texture to lamb minus the red meat taste).
Schirn – we saw two exhibitions here. ‘I Like America’ which documented 1820′s Germany’s obsession with the American Wild West which was only mildly interesting. And, ‘Anoynm’ which was a bit of a hit-and-miss affair with echoes of ‘the author is dead’ concept where the entire exhibition (artists and curator) is made up of pieces where the artists name is not disclosed. some of the pieces where interesting but nothing really stood out as exceptional to me.
maybe i’m a philistine/ignoramus or maybe i just had expectations that were too high but i found most of the art we managed to see in Frankfurt was pretty average. Just the luck of the draw for what exhibitions were showing while we happened to be there i guess or maybe, as i said, it’s just me…
the Schirn museum bookshop… well i may have gone a bit silly and spent up on few things but they did have a sale on and stuff was going cheap – the only thing that stopped me from walking out with armloads of gear was the cost of sending it all back home
on the sunday evening while we were out ambling about we came across a protest (we seem to make a habit of finding them accidentally while in Germany – it happened in 2004 in Berlin too) admittedly this was a very very small protest but still… Around one of the main Platz there was a group of hunters heralding in the new hunting season with their hunting horns (as in musical instruments you blow in not things that grow out of your head) and they were calling back and forth with another group of hunters in the next square over. And trying their damndest to drown them out (unsuccessfully) was a motley group of 5 or 6 protesters yelling, chanting and whistling holding up a few banners which said something along the lines of ‘hunting is murder’ (my German is not good enough to translate exactly – considering i know about 3 words total but that was the general gist). the protesters were giving it a good go but the large crowd that had gathered to watch were all applauding the hunters after each round of horn blowing. when we asked a nearby shopkeeper about it he said, “it happens every year”.
at least the horn blowers were mostly in tune which is more than can be said for the Asian guy who was in the main pedestrian shopping strip on sunday night with electric guitar (way out of tune – even to my cloth ears) and amplifier and mic who made up for his lack of ability with sheer enthusiasm, where he didn’t know the words he just screeched and his guitar playing i suppose came somewhere in the vicinity of chords occasionally. it was pretty funny, he even had the rock god stage moves down with lots of strutting and jumping etc. he had a small crowd developing when we went past. a bit further down the way was a hippy looking dude playing acoustic guitar and singing (both in tune) and he had no audience whatsoever. i preferred the dodgy screeching Asian guy by far as well.
and to wrap up just in case this all comes across the wrong way i want to point out that i did enjoy my time spent in Frankfurt (aside from worrying about sick relatives back home) and it probably has some very lovely areas but these were my general impressions of what i saw. J may wish to say more or different things later.
