SE Slovakia!

Right now I'm in Vel'aty, which is down almost to the Hungarian border. For the last two days, I was close by in a village called Brehov, where there is an old Franciscan monastery. We went there, Petra and I, because her former students at the Greek Catholic high school in Trebišov needed a chaperone for their class retreat there. The monastery was built in 1775, and then maybe disbanded during the reign of Maria Theresa or Joseph II. Then, during communism, it was a place where old Vincentian sisters who could not work any more were kept, and they supported themselves by growing herbs and ginseng. The monastery was quite dramatic, as I normally find them to be.
We were with about 18 high school juniors, who were all very cool and fun to be around. Last night we had like a two hour church service because it was the feast of Corpus Christi, which usually involves a procession and it's quite impressive. We went around to four places in the village, and the town is at least half Hungarian, but the priests are not. So, the songs were in Hungarian and everything else was in Slovak. The head priest, who everyone referred to as Pater (latin), was Polish, and the three Franciscans there were on a mission, and they had this big monastery which is now used for groups like this high school retreat.
The people there were so nice, and in the evenings, we sat in the kitchen and had treats with the friars and the ladies from the kitchen, which was excellent. The one lady brought from her home in Sečovce some berries called tai berries or something like that, which were a cross of raspberries and black currants! Excellent!

I got here Monday afternoon, by taking a train from Vienna Westbanhof to Košice. Petra met me there and we took a smaller train to Michal'any, and from there we got on still a smaller train to Vel'aty. The last train is engine powered, not electric. The train ride from Vienna to Košice was beautiful, because it goes through the mountains, through Poprad and the High Tatras.

I feel so at home here. I'm eating well, like cherries off the tree, and soups at lunch and it's all so super wonderful. Today, Petra's mom and grandmother made these potato dumplings with prune (lekvar) inside, and then they're boiled, then they pour butter, poppy seed, and sugar on top. This is Petra's favorite food, and it's a good choice. We ate them right out of the pot, because then the butter stays with them!

On Wednesday we went to Kisvárda, Hungary. There, they have hot springs and swimming pools. So, you go and just kind of sit in a shallow (less than 1m) pool, there are seats built into it, and the water is either between 32-34°C or 34-36°C depending on which one you go into. This is pretty hot, if you think about how 40°C is 100°F! It's actually like one big bathtub, and it's so nice. The water is like a greenish yellow, but it's very clear. They also had a beautiful swimming pool and 2 smaller swimming pools. It was perfect weather to go, and after we got back is when we went to Brehov.
Getting across the border was interesting, though, because I have no stamps in my passport at all from this trip. We crossed into Hungary at like a local border crossing, and they didn't want to let me through because I didn't have an EU passport! The Hungarian guard was hesitant, but then the Slovak guard recognized Petra's dad, and let us through, but told us to cross back at a bigger crossing, Sátoraljaújhely (which is so fun to say). He also told us, if they asked, to say that we had also come in to Hungary at that crossing. At any rate, the stamp for Slovenské Nové Mesto is the first that I've gotten the whole trip.

So, Sunday we head up to Svidnik, and then on Thursday we go to Prešov. These are appointments for my research project, which should be exciting. We've gotten appointments, and there is some curiosity about this American who is studing museums of national minorities here in Slovakia... Hrm...

Österreichisches Blasmusikfest et. al.

Before I get started, a few food comments. Below, the Viennese equivalent of a hot dog. I got it from a kiosk, and was it good. Firstly, because it was not a hot dog per se, but rather a perfectly and freshly, immediately grilled sausage. Secondly, the bread was amazing. I wasn't sure what I was going to be getting, as what I got in Köln was basically a ciabatta 1/3 the size of the sausage itself. So anyway, I got this, in which the lady pre-inserted the ketchup (more akin to a watered-down mild barbeque sauce than Heinz) and mustard, and then the sausage.


Next, in the Volksgarten, the Temple of Theseus. Leave it to the Hapsburgs to create a mix of an English garden and a French garden; the fake ruins and the symmetry of the rose garden look so mutually incompatible!
Also, before the Blasmusikfest, I went to the Sisi Museum/Imperial Apartments. I also should have gone to the Imperial Silver Rooms, because it turned out to be the kitchens, but the name was discouraging because usually I'm not so into looking at old China patterns. Kitchens, along with bathrooms, I think are always the most interesting part of any home. Anwyay, the Sisi Museum was bizarre beyond words. I could not believe that the cult of celebrity for an empress dead 125 years was still so strong, and it was suggested to me by my Viennese-American hostess that the death of Princess Diana reawakened the cult of Sisi. The museum was staged dramatically, with lighting and Swarovski crystals everywhere (talk about product placement), but it was bizarre to see the right shoe Sisi wore on her 25th wedding anniversary. It was rather cool to see the triple-edged file that Luigi Lucheni used to assassinate her. Franz Joseph's apartments were very refreshing in their modesty. No pictures, because they were not allowed and there were gallery attendants all over the place.

So, the Blasmusikfest.
This was so cool! At 3pm, bands started marching up the Doktor-Karl-Lueger-Ring. The first band was from Süd Tirol, which is actually politically in Italy, but it was obvious due to the response of the crowd that it's still a sensitive issue. Relatedly, marches are the only form of patriotism/nationalism I can enjoy for extended periods of time, perhaps because they are music and above nationalism in most cases. Below, a selection of the marching band uniforms:


Then, after all of the bands had marched in, they gathered on the steps of the Rathaus and played together, which was beautiful. The whole Rathaus-Platz was full of people. I know they played all together St. Florian's Choral and Wach Auf by Wagner.

Last night, I saw Le conseguenze dell'amore, an Italian film, with German subtitles, at the Votivkino. The film was fascinating, and after the film was over, the entire audience kind of sat there for a good 30 seconds and you could have heard a pin drop. I've never had that experience before after a film was over. It was one of those films that could only be made by an Italian, because the character development happened mostly without words, which means that the director and lead actor/ess have to really be on point, and they were. It was a situation in which, while watching it, I could understand what was trying to be accomplished based on my knowledge of other Italian films. It was a great film, and it pains me that we get so little of foreign cinema in the US while crap American films flood the cinemas of the rest of the world, which severely limits funding for the movie industry in other countries. Le sigh. I'm also rather happy I've reached the point in my Italian that I can go and watch something and understand 90% of it without subtitles.

Naturhistorisches Museum

Really, I just wanted to see the Venus of Willendorf. I didn't go upstairs to see all of the taxidermied animals, and for my mother's benefit (or a subconsious result of my own overexposure as an impressionable child), I went to see the minerals, gems and fossils.

One aspect of the museum (closed right now for renovation) is anthropological/ethnological. The above photo shows how out front, positive (ahem) non-Western stereotypes are reinforced (ahem) in the iconography of the building. This shows how condescending and now seemingly archaic the views of patriarchal European monarchies (even progressive ones like the Austrians) viewed non-Europeans. Thank God the anthropological/ethnological section is closed -- I've got huge problems with the presentation of non-Western people as "science", and it still happens way too often, Quai Branly's own rhetoric being an example. It's as archaic and hateful as phrenology. Even archeology presented as natural history is problematic. Eh.

Off my soapbox. Above, the Venus of Willendorf.

The Mineral Rooms: 4 this size. I looked and looked for Bohemian garnets and Bohemian moldovite, thinking they would be there due to the historical Empire, but I couldn't find them. The meteor room was quite impressive, although this presentation I find is only responded to well by people who know what they're looking at, which I don't.

After quite a search (it turns out I was looking in the wrong x million-years-ago room), I found trilobites! They had quite a collection of these also, many preserved in 3D, I don't know how.

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.