Esperanto Museum and a few (new to me) ideas about language

This museum was only two rooms, but quite possibly one of the best done exhibits I've seen. It was concise and informative, and obviously done by people convinced of the merits of Esperanto. Esperanto, and my motives for going to this museum in the first place, are related to the lecture I went to with my hostess the evening I arrived in Vienna: "Linguistic Justice and Global Justice" by Philippe van Parijs of the Université catholique du Louvain at the Institute for Human Sciences here in Vienna.

The lecture, broadly speaking, was about linguistic economy, and more specifically, about English as the world's lingua franca and what that means. Van Parijs is not an Esperantist. The lecture was fascinating, and more complicated than I could go into here and now, but I must say it is obvious that I am not the only one with a fear of the Hungarian language. Further, it was fascinating to listen to discussion about the idea of International English, and the idea that even if all other languages ceased to exist in favor of the world being uniglot English, there would still always be regional differences. Most of the lecture focused on implications for Europe about English -- and all of it was firmly and interestingly rooted in Continental philosophy, and I definitely want to keep my eye out for work from van Parijs.

So Esperanto. The idea for a universal language like this seems to have risen out of two things: the Hapsburg Empire and the Enlightenment. One of the things that the museum did not address was how completely Eurocentric the Esperantists seem to be: ease in learning Esperanto is kind of based on knowledge of a Romance language.

The number of languages used within the EU is huge and staggering, and only Bruxelles, the Eurocapital, is a trilingual city: French, Dutch, and English. All 21 (23?) languages of the EU are official, but it is inefficient and terribly expensive to translate everything. Esperantists were the first to advocate for a united Europe under a single government and currency, and looks like they've gotten their wish, without a united language.


I would be remiss in saying that the museum also mentioned other so-called "planned languages": Homeric Greek, Lingua ignota, Neo-Slavic, Solresol, Lingua Romana, Volapük, Ido, Latino sine flexione, Occidental, Interlingua, Starckdeutsch, and Klingon! Related to the idea of the lecture and neologisms was also some discussion of English as an artificial language.

All of this is so fascinating, because I think that we are, and need to be, really concerned about spoken language. English (or any other language) is mostly standard when written, but we do most of our communication verbally, and so it's really important to us. Fascinating.

VIENNA!

Being in Vienna has really been making me think about how for so long, and still today, Vienna is like the last stop before going into the great unknown that is Eastern Europe (PC now: Central Europe, East Central Europe). It's so lovely cosmopolitan exotic.

I kind of stumbled into the Secession Building, having planned to visit it but not expecting it to be at the end of the market I'd been walking through. I was nearly moved to tears, seriously.
"DER ZEIT IHRE KUNST, DER KUNST IHRE FREIHEIT": to every age its art, and from art, its freedom.

In the Leopold Museum, Kolo Moser's The Lovers (Liebespaar), from c. 1913.


Kolo Moser's Selfportrait with Mermaid (Selbsportrait mit Meerjungfrau), c. 1914.


The Kunsthistoriches museum is a little bit out of control, and one of those museums where the architecture and decoration competes with the collection itself. When I walked in, I was totally overwhelmed, but then rather redeemed my feelings when I looked up and saw the above fresco. As a passing thought, I though of it as an apotheosis, and it turns out, it is a fresco of the Apotheosis of Painting (therefore, study is beginning to pay off). I like it mainly because it's one of those post-Baroque frescos that is not classical (Carracci/Poussiniste), but rather dynamic enough to take the perspective of the viewer into consideration.

Andrea Solario. Salome with the Head of John the Baptist. 1520-24.

Bernardino Luini. Salome with the Head of John the Baptist. 1525-30.

A fraction of the coolness of the Prunksaal.

In addition, I also went to the Lipanzzaner Museum, which was small but very well done, and walked through the Hofburg. The churches I went to were the Stephansdom, the Peterskirche (the visit to which was ruined by my immediate realization that it's the Austrian Opus Dei HQ), the Minoritenkirche (the Italian church), and the kirche am hof (the Croatian church).

Right after I'd gone to the Leopold, I went to the Ludwig Collection across the Museumsplatz, but it was all a big Yves Klein show, and while the archival materials were interesting, I could only take so much and I wanted to save brain power for the Kunsthistoriches et. al. The last museum I went to was the MAK, which has connections to the Neue Galerie New York/Ronald Lauder via the furniture curator Christian Witt-Döring.

München

Inside the Frauenkirche.

So, Munich was interesting. Besides the Hotel change, I also went to the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Pinakothek, and walked around the Center. That evening, I also went to the opera, to see La Traviata.

The opera was fantastic, not because I could see the staging (I really couldn't), and not because there was some great singer (at least, not anyone I was familiar with). Instead, it was great because it felt like I was participating in a long tradition of Western cultural activity, and I came away from the experience with a better understanding of how the process of going to the opera (as opposed to listening to it or watching it on PBS) should be carried out.

I couldn't read my ticket, but I found the right 3rd tier and (seat) 58 and sat down. Then an older woman sat down next to me, and seemed kind of surprised I was sitting there, but didn't say anything. Then another guy came with his wife, and the idea that I was sitting in his seat was communicated to me. It turns out, I had standing tickets, standing at place 58 in the third tier, which was almost behind the seat 58 -- which is what you get for €11. But this was actually good, because I was participating in the role inherent in the opera experience on an economically challenged, budding connoisseur who was going to the opera out of love. I couldn't see most of the stage, although it was not the Zeffirelli School of staging, but rather late 1910s-early 1920s and the choral parts (which are always my favorite Verdi) were really creatively done, with great uses of props.

At the intermissions, the audience is not allowed to stay in the theatre but rather goes out and promenades around the lobbies and balconies and contemplates artworks in the loggias. Some people, especially women, were dressed ála Bavarian, which was cool. I understood the idea of seeing and being seen at the opera, plus the idea of moving around in the intermission as the opposite of the sedentary aspect of watching. Seeing that really made the architecture and decoration of the Palau de Música Catalana make a lot more sense.

The Banality of Travel

It´s not all sightseeing, cafes and rich food!
Normally I´m not freaked out by where I sleep, and I don´t even think I´d go so far as to say freaked out about where I did sleep last night, except that it was not especially suitable. It was reminiscent of a certain place in White House, NJ where I stayed once with my mum.
So, at the earliest possible point, I went down the street to a business budget hotel chain for a slightly more expensive, but definitely more McHotel and suitable situation. I knew what I was getting. So I prepaid for new McHotel room, and went back to unsuitable hotel to pick up my already-packed bags. Since I was paying for it, I also had the included breakfast. Then, at McHotel, I got showered and ready for my day, which has yet to actually begin in earnest, because I´m taking care of banal things.
My cellphone finally works, with the Liechtenstein number that also has something to do with Switzerland. Obviously, I´m practicing for being a spy, with all of these shady phone numbers and pensions.
Today, I´m off to the museums in München to kunsthistoriches myself, then maybe to this church with supposedly stunning tromphe l´oeil that Jimmy told me about, and then finally to see La Traviata tonight.
Off to Wien tomorrow morning, I´ll be on the train from about 9:30am-1:30pm.

written last night

After I got back from Aachen, I went to the train station in search of a small suitcase on wheels to accommodate my recent book acquisitions. For the price of the small suitcase, I could have sent home only one envelope. So, I will become considerably stronger while lugging around what is effectively a portable library, very strong in museology and art history, but not without some anthropology and European fiction. The other day at the bookstore in the train station, I got Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka, who is a hysterically funny Ukrainian-British writer. Her style is somewhat similar to Johnathan Safran-Foer's in Everything is Illuminated, although this is funny the whole way through, whereas Safran-Foer has some melancholy. Last summer, a recommendation from the Irish bookseller at The Almost Corner Bookshop in Rome led me to Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, and Two Caravans actually refers to the first at one point in the plot, so I'm happy to have found this. I love her writing because she uses English so well, and to her advantage. At times, I found myself laughing out loud, which is healthy and I can't remember the last time I read a novel for pleasure like this -- probably last summer. In Paris, I bought a bilingual edition of Pasolini's Novelle Romane (Roman Novels) which will help me with French and Italian at the same time. The prices for used books in Paris were insanely low even with the unfavorable Euro, and it made me feel apart of the bursting-at-the-seams intellectualism of the Latin Quarter.

Besides various German junk food/fast food of which I am fond, there is also German television. Right now, there is this show on about squid reproduction, which is fascinating even though I can't understand it, because I find squid to be kind of gross yet endlessly interesting. They are not something I enjoy eating, so I think that's kind of why I'm interested in them (aggiungi anche questi alle cozze, Bill). This morning, as I was getting ready to go, there was this show called Stein Zeit: Das Experiment. I think I saw the companion series meant for children, called Die ,,Steinzeit"-Kinder, and it features people somewhere in Bavaria recreating the Stone Age. This guy, without talking, cooked a rabbit, carrots, and potatoes over red-hot stones in a small pit, and then cut the rabbit apart using a piece of flint. It looked really good and he seemed pleased with himself.

The Museum Ludwig was open today because of the holiday, and it was nice, although my brain is exhausted. I'll go back tomorrow morning as planned to relook at some of the High Modern works and then go look at the Pop Art collection. It seems that they have representative works from all of the right people, from all of the right movements.

One general discovery of an artist this trip has been Nicholas de Stäel, who I wasn't aware of before seeing a fantastic non-objective piece in the Centre Pompidou. The Museum Ludwig has a interesting little objective still life, and I've decided I really like his work. The photography exhibit at the Museum Ludwig was quite good, featuring a good mix of photographers, and presenting an almost perfect visual comparison of Bernd and Hilla Becher's typologies with Andreas Gursky, especially including the fantastic Montparnasse. In painting, there were some excellent Max Ernst paintings, and I liked what I saw, which was generally a specific type of surrealism -- Ernst and his friends, including Picabia, another artist I'm appreciating more this trip. My favorites though were an exceptional group of Russian suprematism, with Rodchenko well represented in painting, sculpture and photography. In another area, there were some great Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy photos, which in some ways I think are complimentary to suprematism. Further connections to the Centre Pompidou, as there I saw again (it was a huge surprise and I'm so happy I got to see it again) the film Moholy-Nagy made of his perpetual motion/light reflection machine thing. I took 1 minute of the film with my digital camera, and one of these days I can post it here via google video. The actual perpetual motion/light reflection machine thing is at the Bauhaus-archiv in Berlin, and so I didn't think I'd see the video again until I got back there.

The weather is totally dreary, it's around 55°F/13°C and raining a lot, which does not promote a good mood. There were lots of people out in the streets today, but most of the stores were closed so everyone was window shopping. The galleries were open, and I walked into one to get out of the rain, where I came across tons of soggy Scouts hanging their wet outerwear over an escalator railing! There were a lot of Scouts in transit today whose day was ruined by the crappy weather. Despite the cold weather, I was roasting most of the day due to my 100% nylon rainjacket, which also makes me fit in with German fashion, because today everyone was wearing walking shoes like mine and nylon jackets like mine. Usually when travelling I am most often taken for German, and it is rather obvious why, although this also means that people assume I also speak German. This afternoon, while trying to make the most efficient exit from Aachen, I had issues pronouncing Hauptbanhof, which means train station, so the very nice gentleman repeated it for me.

I have yet to be able to get beyond the rear of the cathedral, because I always seem to walk in during a service and there are sextons in red and black robes stopping people from moving towards the front. It's a very impressive building, because it's actually a lot longer than it seems from the outside. Evidently, it was only completed in the 1880s, but it's definitely quite Gothic. If the cathedral in Köln is Gothic, then the cathedral in Aachen is a triumph of Romanesque exuberance. I must confess, it was exactly what I pictured from Janson's History of Art. The mosaics in there were great, and I think in the Treasury Museum I saw some mention or comparison to San Vitale in Ravenna. I went into the Treasury Museum because it was raining and there wasn't much else to do because everything else was closed. Normally I find Treasury Museums to be really boring, and this one was no exception, but I did see Charlemagne's right forearm and the rope used to scourge Jesus, His belt, and Mary's belt. There was also a collection of broken locks and keys, which has something to do with a connection between the church and city of Aachen, which I didn't understand. Kings from all over Europe sent things to Aachen, I assume to promote their own legitimacy, and so there was an interesting collection of things from farther east as well. The German Catholics appear to still be reveling in the fact that il Papa Ratzinger is pope, and this region is also the objective of pilgrimages from all over Europe, including a lot of Spaniards right now it seems.

Tomorrow, the Römanisches-Germanisches Museum, the Ludwig Museum again, and then off to the Köln-Bonn Flughaven to go down to Munich.

When I'm in large cities, like Paris or New York, I always find it hard to tell if people are really happy, which leads me to think they're not. Today, both here and in Aachen, people were smiling, laughing, and greeting each other in the streets, which makes me think that they are in fact happy, and this is a good thing.

Live von Köln Hbf

Ahhh to be back in the land with savory meats on bread with butter for breakfast! And Mezzomix! And currywürst! I'm totally pleased with where I'm staying, it's only €30/night, breakfast included. It is right on the Rhein, plus used booksellers all along the river. It's basically an inn, or rather rooms above a restaurant, which I think is very cool. The décor of my room is also charmingly old school.

Last night was also the antique market, and I was rather shocked to see that the Deutschebank elephant banks are a collectors item. Once when my dad was exchanging money somewhere in Bavaria, I got one. Now it makes me feel kind of old to see them in an antique market!
The big thing here besides the cathedral is kolsh beer, and the famous eau de cologne that my dad uses, N° 4711.
Right now I'm waiting for the train to take me to Aachen for the day. Tscuss!

Aachen: a dialogue

Upon leaving the train station, I saw a sign for the Dom and Rathaus, and went in that direction fot a bit before deciding to turn.
It's raining today, and there's no one in the streets.

Part First, in German
Self, to young woman wearing horse-riding pants: Bitte, where is the Dom?
Fraulein: (makes pfft noise and directs me to the right, the left, and then right again.)
Self: ok, danke.

Part Second, in English
Self: Do you speak a little English?
Fraulein: yes, a little.
Self: Is today a holiday?
Fraulein: yes.
Self: What is the occasion?
Fraulein: Ah, this is kind of difficult to explain. It has to do with the Holy Ghost. He is supposed to come today or something.
Self: danke.

So, -10 points for being a bad Catholic, and also for forgetting that the day after Pentecost is also a holiday. -10 more points for not realizing this earlier when I saw that the post office in Köln was closed, or when I got to Aachen and saw all of the stores were closed beyond the normal Monday-closedness.

I write this in a bakery while eating something magical called butterstreussel and having a cup of coffee on Willy-Brandt-Platz.

...Slightly later, having another coffee because I can't get into the Dom until 12:30: This is kind of turning into a comedy of errors. All I want to do is see this Charlemagne-built church, and that's about all that's even possible today owing to the holiday. I've taken the scenic route through Aachen to get here, and if I felt like walking another 5,5km through the rain, I could also go to Vaals, which is in the Netherlands. However, walking 5,5km through the rain is slightly too Pride and Predjudice for my taste at the moment.

Les Musées: Paris Museum Highlights

NB that by highlights, I mean highlights. I took over 1000 digital photos in the last week. Nor are all of the museums visited represented here.
And before I get into all of this, one comment: thank God Catherine de'Medici happened to Paris/France. That is all.

This is the chapel in Versailles, looking from the altar towards the vestibule. Louis XIV would have sat upstairs in the gallery.

The Fountain of Apollo in the Gardens of Versailles. There is no one there because it was raining like mad that day.

Stained glass in the Musée du Cluny.

This head of John the Baptist wooden tondo sculpture in the Musée du Cluny was so unique. The theme (also including Salomé) is one of my favorites in the history of art, because it always seems to produce interesting results.

Gothic architecture can be so elegant -- this is also in the Musée du Cluny.

The history of chairs display in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs

Normally Monet and I are in a fight, because I am not really fond of his mass popularity. However, our visit to the Orangerie was private, and as a result truly special and majestic. We're currently in an armistice.

The Musée du Quai Branly. This one was a challenge; it's probably the most talked-about museum in the world right now... I think the conclusion I'm arriving at is that it is still fundamentally, intellectually, and philosophically a 19th century ethnographic museum, but in 21st century French presentation.

I can tolerate Van Gogh slightly more than Monet. Really, this was quite brilliant to look at up close in the Musée d'Orsay, which was very spectacular in and of itself.

This is the staircase in the Musée Gustave Moreau. I really liked a lot of the spiral staircases I saw in Paris, because many of them seemed to be set up more as elipses than circles.

This was really cool, in the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie. These kids are touching a table, and what they're touching is being projected from LCD projectors above. So you touch certain places on the table/projection, and the table/projection responds. It was really amazing.

Part of a rather fanciful clock in the Petit Palais.

Staircase in the Petit Palais.

A Jean Carriès cinghiale in the Petit Palais.

Behind the scenes: the offices and some of the study rooms in the attic level of the Petit Palais. They were gorgeous, everything's recently redone and completely remodeled, and this seems like it would be an absolutely excellent place to work.

The Palais de Tokyo. Basically, the entire interior looks like this, and it's a contemporary art space. We had to leave early because it was raining really hard (a theme for this trip...) and the roof was leaking somewhere. Normally it's open until midnight every night, but they closed around 6pm because of this leaking roof.

Back in the day, I wanted to be a bathroom designer. In fact, my favorite part of the Palais de Tokyo was the bathroom situation, which I found to be just as innovative as the rest of the space.

Visit number two to the Louvre. This painting in progress was really clever, because it was the original sitter wearing a t-shirt, and on the t-shirt was the original painting that the artist was copying. I love meta-art, which I tend to think of as a subtheme through the Baroque, which this "original" belongs to.

the I. M. Pei pyramid

This is the main entrance to the Louvre, under the pyramid. It's kind of insanely packed with moving people.

A painting by Marius van Reymerswale, c. 1546. I think the expression on the guy on the right's face is hysterical. This theme of money counting is pretty common in the northern Renaissance.

GOÛT: Highlights of Parisian Food

Oh wow. Normally French food is not especially my favorite, but after eating richly for a week, I have many positive things to say about the topic.

So the week started off with the aforementioned pizza Marais. Then came a rapid sucession of entrecôte, cod au gratin, entrecôte with a walnut and shallot sauce (!), duck confit, some rather craptastic ravioli, an Algerian feast, the lack of a table at Chez Robert et Louise and therefore more pizza Marais.

What follows are some visual highlights, unfortunately smelloscreens and replicators have not been invented yet.

Above is what changed my view of eggplant. It is kind of like what Dad makes in winter, except that his is a lot tastier. Still, this is the eggplant that was effectively carmelized.

This was perhaps the best "Italian" food I ate in Paris. Note the pattern of eggplant consumption. I remember a guy I knew in Rome who used to say "a day without pasta is a day without life." I add the caveat of eggplant; the Eggplant Corollary, perhaps?

This was the salad for the not-very-good ravioli. Note the capers.

This was some apple tart. The more interesting thing is the mildly suggestive iconography on the spoon.

Ohhhh the Algerian feast. This happened al fresco on a terrace on the 9th floor of a building in Vincennes, with the Château, the Bois, a rather notable monkey habitat, the entire city of Paris, and the Eiffel Tower all within view. On top of the bed of couscous was lamb and beef meatballs, artichokes, and peas. For the first plate, we had exceptionally fresh tabouli. For dessert, sweet mint tea and amazing little cakelets of fig, cake, honey and rosewater. It was stunning. Afterwards, I talked a bit to the woman who made it about her process, as much as I could ask from my very patient Dutch French to English translators, which resulted in an entirely new perspective on artichokes.

Last night was rather adventurous. Last Monday night, we went to Chez Robert et Louise, and it was closed. Then, a few nights back, some of us went out and had some quite exceptional draft Edelweiss beer. So, the natural thing to do on our last night in Paris was to try to go to Robert et Louise and then have some of this exceptionally fresh beer. When we walked into Robert et Louise, they kind of laughed us out because we were sans reservation. So we went to the bar in the next block for some Edelweiss, and while there, decided to go and try to get a reservation for later in the evening. I went back, by this time having established rapport with the guy. He told me to go to a certain bar and wait for a call at 8:45, which never came. So at 9, we had the possibility of waiting, or sitting at the bar, and at that point, we were not really in the mood for sitting at the bar, so we went and got pizza instead. However. On my next trip to Paris, I will most certainly call and make a reservation and eat at this restaurant, because it seemed absolutely amazing, and it is a definite hole in the wall sort of place where you just get the special and deal.

I just ate this today for lunch. It was a little ham quiche, which in and of itself is good, except that this one was almost overflowing with large amounts of delicious pork fat! It was sooo good.

In between the quiche and dinner, I had Berthillon ice cream on the Ile Saint-Louis that was exceptionally impressive. The flavors I paired were caramel and nougat, which did compliment each other well.

So, all of the amazing food this week was not more than 20euro per meal. Usually we would get the prix fixe menu, which always worked out well. Still, after this week, I am rather doomed to supermarket food for the rest of the trip. It was well worth it.

This evening, while returning to the internet place I'm using, I noticed a place that said "Quality Hamburger Restaurant." This was intriguing, especially because of the ubiquitous and unmentionable competitor across the street.


The result? A Sandwich Club Poulet avec Sauce Provençale, Frites Rustiches, and The Peche. Not bad for French fast food, and it sounds just as exciting as some of what I described above.

Other Paris highlights

Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. This is right behind the Panthéon, and it is an excellent example of Mannerist architecture. I wanted to go there in the first place because by chance I read that it has the last remaining rood screen in Paris, but you can see on the facade the succession of pediments which is really unique and interesting: visually congruous to the succession of architectural orders on the Colosseum?

Said last-remaining-rood-screen. It's shaky because I don't think photos were supposed to be taken in the church, but also check out the amazing double-staircases and the gorgeous white marble.

Most of the Moët we drank in the courtyard of the Institut Nederlandais.

The UNESCO Annex building. Normally mid-century idealistic architecture is appealing to me, but this building was uglier than sin and in a state of great disrepair. However, on the inside was a beautiful quote by Gabriela Mistral: "No se trabaja y crea sino en la paz. Digámosla cada día en donde estemos, por donde vayamos, hasta que tome cuerpo y cree una 'militancia de paz' la cual llene el aire denso y sucio y vaya purificándolo."

The general decomposition of the UNESCO Annex as evidenced by the decay of the cool space age phone booths.

Poster against AIDS: the fight continues! and a very effective use of images as text to get the point across.

This guy was playing outside the Luxembourg RER stop -- note his right foot was just as much part of the jazzy Parisian creation of sound as his fingers were.

Obviously, Karl Marx has come back from the dead to play tennis (jeu de paume?) in the Luxembourg Gardens.

I love this ephemeral sort of graffiti. As we arrived more or less as Sarkozy was consolidating his new government, everything was still around. The above distinction seems pretty accurate, as the Marais was full of anti-Sarko, pro-Sego graffiti, posters, stickers, flyers, etc.

There's an interesting play on words here: this can either be interpreted as "keep to the right while you're on this fast-moving moving walkway" or "retain your rights" as in liberté, egalité, fraternité, the First Ammendment, etc.