Our final night in Berlin we decided to go out to the Tacheles. Jess had gone there when she spent a summer studying in Berlin. The building used to be a squatters’ building but it had become a space for a beer garden and artists, studios. The whole structure was covered in graffiti and stunk like a toilet. All along the street there were entrances to various bars/clubs that are part of the building. We went into one of them which had stairs leaving up to the artists’ studios and another bar at the top of the place. Some of the artists had really cool pieces for sale. One guy had done “sculpture/diorama scenes” of marshmallows and photographed them. (He had used Jet-Puffed, smart man.) He also had T-shirts he had painted. Other artists had paintings for sale. This was all on the second floor of the building. Upstairs was a spray-painted hallway which was covered in graffiti, but none of those artists were in their studios. On the top floor, we went into a bar to look down at the beer garden space (which had a cover charge). It looked like fun downstairs, but it wasn’t that packed and not worth paying to enter. When Jess lived in Berlin, there was no cover charge and the place was packed all the time. You don’t have to buy alcohol at the bars because Berlin doesn’t have an open-container law. I had purchased a gluten-free rice beer the previous day and we walked around sharing the half-liter bottle. We didn’t even drink half of it because it was pretty bad. Jess didn’t like it because it was bad beer and I didn’t like it because it still tasted very beer-like. It confirmed that I don’t like beer. Being allergic to beer is actually pretty easy for me because I think it’s pretty gross.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
Last day in Berlin
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Museum days in Berlin
Wednesday morning we walked to the Hamburger Bahnhof Art Museum. It’s a contemporary art museum. I had never really been to a museum for contemporary art, I had seen some of it in galleries, but most museums (that I’d been to) don’t really go past modernism or post-modernism. This works in this museum were highly concept-driven. I’m still not sure I understood most of them. There was an entire wing of Joseph Beuys’s work. He is a German artist who worked internationally during the Cold War. Most of his works deal survival; some deal with education. Many of his pieces were installations or video performances. I was especially intrigued by a series of large sculptures made out of tallow, which is like lard and can be used for fuel. In another part of the museum, we saw some large-scale sculptures by Anselm Kiefer. There was a lead plane with books and rotten plants on top of it. These items were meant to weigh the plane down, but it’s made of lead and, therefore, cannot fly anyway. The museum was somewhat unsetting because I haven’t really come into contact with that many conceptual works in one place.
Next we headed toward Checkpoint Charlie passing through the high-end shopping area. Checkpoint Charlie was one of the main crossings through the Berlin Wall. It’s the one most diplomats used when visiting the city. Now, there is a replica guardhouse with two men dressed in uniform “guarding” it. You can pay to have a picture taken with them. You can also pay to have East German stamps in your passport. Large photos of soldiers are on display in the middle of the road. From one side you see a soldier from the Allied Forces. The other side shows a Russian soldier. Their photos are there to make you understand what you would have seen had you been at that spot between 1961 and 1989.
From Checkpoint Charlie, we walked to a place where a substantial amount of the wall still remains (actually most of these bits have been moved there). It’s also where the SS offices were. They’re building the museum, but an open-air exhibition called “Topography of Terror” gave a lot of historical information about the space and the city.
We ended our day by spending three and a half hours at the Berlin Jewish Museum. Jess hadn’t been there and I had learned about the building and wanted to see it in person. It’s insane. It’s one of the most complicated museums I’ve ever visited. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind who is an American architect of Polish-Jewish decent. He does a lot of Jewish/Holocaust museums and memorials and also did a building at Bar Ilan (I’ll update you on what it’s like). You start in the basement where there are three axis (aka hallways): the Axis of Exile which describes the flight of the Jews and ends in the Garden of Exile, the Axis of the Holocaust which introduces the visitor to victims of the Holocaust and ends at the Holocaust Tower, and the Axis of Continuation which takes the visitor to the rest of the permanent exhibition. The Garden of Exile is the only place in the museum that has right angles. It’s a grid of tall towers covered by Russian olive trees which form a canopy over the space. It’s meant to be disorientating: to show what exile and moving to a new place is like. The Holocaust Tower is an empty trapezoidal room, 42 meters high with the only light entering through a slit in the point. It’s not heated and doesn’t really have much of an explanation. The visitor is supposed to make his own interpretation (this is a common Libeskind theme). Also, these axis were not level; they sloped upward. We found upward sloping areas in other parts of the museum as well.
We went up the Axis of Continuation to a side gallery which had a photo display celebrating “100 Years of Tel Aviv.” The city had been founded in 1909 and this exhibit – put together by Magnum – included work by Robert Capa, Abbas, and other photographers. I really liked the Abbas photographs especially because he’s Iranian-French, yet spent time working in Israel. Photographs spanned from the creation of Israel up to present time.
At the end of the photograph exhibit, we found ourselves in the Memory Void – an indoor courtyard space where we encountered a pile of metal faces meant to represent victims of the Holocaust. We could see this space from the upper floors of the museum.
Upstairs the exhibit started with the history of Judaism. First we were introduced to three Jewish villages from the 10th Century. Called Worms, Speyer, and Mainz, they are generally referred to by an acronym of the first letter of their names Shum which means garlic in Hebrew. We watched a 3-D video which was terrible. The information in German was really basic – “The town had a temple and a bathhouse; the Talmud was studied in the temple” – and even more abbreviated in the English subtitles. Continuing along the zig-zag hallway we learned about the Hebrew alphabet on computer screens which told you how to write your name in Hebrew. Throughout the museum, there were also three large black stones. You put on headphones and moved around the stone. As you moved around the stone you could hear different voices talking and music playing. It was like scanning the radio except you were moving.
After the stone, we came to an exhibit about Glikl bas Judah Leib (born Hamburg 1646) who wrote the oldest autobiography of a Jewish woman. She was a merchant and we learned all about her family and work. One of the hands-on sections had a computer game where you had to pack her bags for her trip to Amsterdam. You had to pack things like “kosher snacks” instead of a “bunny rabbit” and “cell phone.” In that area of the museum were three video monitors with animations about objects (host, cup, headscarf), locations (Lourdes, Garden of Eden, Niches) and actions (pilgrimage, wedding). These were written in simple language to teach children about Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The animations were brightly colored and used symbols to convey their messages. The one about niches talked about the mihrab, the arc and the apse as different variations of the same idea. It ended saying that “every religion has a niche.”
The rest of this level of the museum dealt with Jewish traditions: as merchants, philosophers like Moses Mendelssohn, and how celebrations have changed over time. There were more interactive games and hands-on sections for children and adults. We spent some time looking at information regarding the various holiday celebrations. They had a chuppa and you could play wedding music while standing underneath it.
Downstairs we walked through an exhibit on what it meant to be German and Jewish at the same time. We started getting tired, so we sped through the exhibits about modernity which presented Jews in the arts and sciences along with the building of modern synagogues. There was a section dedicated to the Jewish experience during the WWI and the Weimar Republic and then during the Holocaust. The museum ended with present time and computer monitors which asked questions like “Should Turkey be allowed into the EU?” We said yes, and learned that half the museum-goers also said yes, while 50 percent said no.
Throughout the zigzags you could look into “voids” – empty spaces like courtyards which could be seen from both levels of the museum. These were integral in Libeskind’s design and are meant to make the visitor think about the space between the lines. In the end we decided that the museum was probably the best value (it only cost 2.50 for students) of any of the museums we had had to pay for thus far in our trip. Like the museum in Glasgow we appreciated the desire to teach and the hands-on approach in many of the exhibitions. Each section had something for people of all ages: children could color and watch cartoons drawn by Jews, while adults could read and listen to traditional songs sung during services. The building itself was worth seeing and experiencing.
As if we hadn’t had enough museums on Wednesday, we decided to spend Thursday on Museum Island, a small piece of land in the middle of the Spree River. We started at the Pergamonmuseum, which contains the Collection of Classical Antiquities, the Museum of Islamic Art and the Museum of the Ancient Near East. Entering the building, I was immediately struck by the enormous size of the Pergamon altar. Pergamon was in Western Turkey. The altar is shaped like the Ara Pacis, but five or six times larger; it’s in the Hellenistic (late-Greek) style. It’s a huge marble staircase surrounded by a ten-foot high frieze of sculptures. You can climb up the altar and take pictures. They’re removed the side and rear sections of the frieze and put them up around the room so it’s easier to see. In the next room we found a façade called Market Gate which is also from the same region in Turkey. This façade was greatly intact and had Roman imperial (1st/2nd century AD) sculptures around it. Walking through the gate, we were met with another gate: the Ishtar Gate. This alone would have been enough to draw me to Berlin: not just to the museum, but also to Berlin. Constructed in the 6th century BC with blue stones and covered with lions and other animals, the Ishtar Gate lead up to the palace in Babylon. All that remains is the lower gate, but even that was way to big to fit into the frame of my camera. The colors are bright and a large amount of the mosaics have been reconstructed. You can start at the far end of the gallery and pass the lions lining the hallway as you walk up to the gate. That part of the museum also contained reliefs, sculptures, and paintings of the areas done at the time of German excavation.
Upstairs was the Islamic art section which had calligraphy, carpets, parts of mosques and a small section with a Moroccan/Andalucian room. It also had a façade from a palace in Jordan which had been constructed in 743-4. Another small room called the Aleppo Room was covered in carvings and decorations. You could walk into it and get a 360 approach to the art. Basically, the Germans lifted entire sections of buildings and brought them to this museum.
The other half of the museum was the Greek section where we walked through an exhibit about Greek Gods. The pieces, which had not been displayed since 1939, were recently sent to Brazil for a big show there. They have since returned to Berlin and are back at this museum. This exhibit was good, but the pictures of the Brazilian version looked like it was much better organized.
Museum number two on Museum Island was Altes Museum which was largely under construction. We saw more Greek objects like vases, coins, helmets, jewelry, and statues. This museum houses Queen Nefertiti’s bust. She was the wife of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and lived from 1370 BC-1340 BC. She’s really beautiful, but I was surprised that she only had one eye painted on. People clustered around the case taking pictures like crazy (I was one of them).
Continuing along, we went to the Alte Nationalgalerie, another bizarrely laid out museum (this is becoming a theme here). This time, the actual museum was a rectangle (for the most part), but the galleries were difficult to navigate and dark. On the first floor we found one tiny room that was not renovated with the rest of the museum. It was meant to show how the museum used to look (which is better than it looks now). This floor was somewhat dull, with tons of dark pieces. I did like some of the works by Adolph Menzel, but nothing was that great. Upstairs we wandered through some more German art and some French paintings as well. On the upper floor we found Romanticism and the Dusseldorf School which turned out some pleasant paintings which I enjoyed. These focused on light and color and were mainly landscapes with a few cityscapes thrown into the mix.
Finally we went to the Bode-Museum which houses the Sculpture Collection, Museum of Byzantine Art, Numismatic Collection and Works from the Gemäldegaleria. The building was newly redone and probably the best space of all the museums. It had a room with a large dome and one with a small dome; these were connected by a room dubbed the “basilica.” Around the sides were wings with more galleries. I didn’t love the collection. It was mostly religious art: Baroque, Renaissance, Romanticism, and Byzantine. I did like how some of the altars were displayed – on metal stands about four feet in the air allowing the viewer to walk around them. They had a few other interesting pieces and the store was well stocked. There was also a coin collection in some of the upstairs galleries. Even though the building was newly redone, the floor plan was a bit confusing and it was difficult to walk around the museum without having to retrace your steps through certain rooms.
We were allowed to take pictures (without using a flash-light) in all of the museums. In the Pergamon, we could bring our bags in and no one said anything to us. At the Altes Museum we were allowed to bring bags in, but not water, and the bags had to be in front of us (not on my shoulder, but across my chest). As we were leaving, a girl was getting yelled at for trying to bring a tote on her shoulder. She then checked it, but brought her water bottle with her. The guard sent her back to the coat check once again. I should also point out that she spoke German and still wasn’t getting it….oye. In the Alte nationalgalerie we had to check everything and by the time we got to the Bode-Museum we decided to just check it and not bother with the crazies guarding the museum. At the Pergamon, we were stopped at the exit and asked to fill out a survey. The girl (about our age) asked questions in English about our experience at the museum and in Berlin. She typed the answers into a blackberry, which I thought was nifty.
Berlin
We arrived in Berlin Tuesday morning. Our bus came in near the Radio Tower. We took the subway to the center and went to the hostel. Jess spent six weeks here (two summers ago) on a study abroad program, so she knows the city really well and understands the language (I’m in “smile and nod” mode). We dumped our stuff at the craziest-decorated hostel I’ve ever seen. It’s called “Heart of Gold,” which refers to the spaceship in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Our room has diagonal orange and red strips and questions written all over the walls. The hostel has a great location and they don’t mind microwaving things (like rice for breakfast) for us.
Anyway, we walked to Alexanderplatz where we saw the TV tower. Inside the plaza, there was an exhibit set up about the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down and reunification. Panels explained the events leading up to 1989 and the early 1990s. It was entirely outdoors and free, so everyone could enjoy it and learn about it. Glass cases held objects from refuges of the time. One of these objects was a stuff animal I used to own (I called it Puffy). It was unnerving to see the same toy I had played with for most of my life sitting there in a glass case.
Also in Alexanderplatz we saw a huge clock which tells the time all over the world. It’s round and the hour moves around the various time zones. Leaving the plaza, we walked down Unter den Linden, a wide boulevard where many museums, memorials and university buildings are located. The burned books memorial is currently underneath Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. (I was not happy about this.) We passed the US Embassy, which is recently redone and right outside the Brandenburg Gate. The building is pretty ugly and doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the street. It does, however, have a great location, and overlooks the Tiergarten which is across the street).
Suddenly we were inside The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It’s a series of stelae (big rocks) which are arranged in a grid, but their number and measurements don’t have any meaning. The stones are also graffiti-proof. They were actually treated with chemicals produced by a company which produced chemicals used to kill Jews during the Holocaust. No one realized this until after the memorial was created. The designer was okay with this because it was like history coming full-circle and gaining closure. The stones are huge and it’s difficult to walk around without walking into people. Underneath the memorial there is an indoor museum space. The space housed a timeline of the Holocaust as well as rooms housing quotes from survivors and information about families. At the end there is a computer and a series of photos. You can look up the location of Holocaust memorials around the world.
We also walked to Potsdamerplatz where the world’s first traffic light was installed. The wall used to run right through the square and today there is a memorial set up here. The city is working on turning this neighborhood into a financial center. The Sony Center is here, along with many high-end hotels and restaurants. The Sony Center is actually an outdoor/indoor building. It’s covered, but the entrances are wide open and the buildings around the courtyard are full buildings with their own entrances. There is free wifi in the courtyard because they want to encourage people to use the space. There is also a fountain that can be covered with a stage. It’s in the center of a space and, therefore, people cannot walk up to it and touch actors or famous people on stage. This is also the place where movie premiere are held.
Walking toward the Reichstag, we passed through a bit of the Tiergarten, Berlin’s main central park. It was a forest before the war, and totally destroyed during WWII. In reconstructing Germany, the Allies donated trees to be planted here. It’s the only place in Europe where you can find Canadian maple. We didn’t go inside the park, but walked around it. At the Reichstag we went in and took the elevator up to the glass dome which was built in 1997. The original dome was destroyed in a fire one month after Hitler took power. This dome is awesome because you can go to the roof (it’s base) and walk around the inside. Then, there are ramps leading up to the very top. These ramps spiral around the dome. Everything is glass and the views of the city are pretty spectacular, especially because the whole thing is free. Jess has been inside the building and the main chamber (where the equivalent of the Senate meets) is right below the dome. Mirrors and windows allow light to enter, but the public can’t see down into that space.
Finally, we went to some Germany health-food stores and did some grocery shopping. There is so much food here that I can eat. It’s really quite amazing. There are three health-food stores with gluten free sections within five minutes of our hostel. I’ve found pretzels, American marshmallows, soymilk, rice, rice cakes, gluten-free beer, tons of cookies/crackers/cake mixes and other foods. The prices are reasonable and I’m able to eat really well. I can’t read the ingredients of most foods at the grocery store, but Jess can! So far, I’ve tried red cabbage and apple (frozen, prepared in our microwave here) and egg salad with mushrooms in it. She won’t let me buy the sweet-and-sour sauce because she can’t be sure there isn’t wheat or something hidden in it.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Beginnings of Amsterdam
The bus actually got to Amsterdam 45 minutes earlier than it was supposed to. We hung out in the bus station for a while, then took a city bus to our hostel. The man at the check-in desk told us that Michael Jackson had died. We thought he was kidding and chuckled. Then he told us he was serious and we were shocked. We dumped our stuff at the hostel and walked into the city (about 45 minutes from the hostel to the center) where we got coffee, breakfast (which was brunch by that point), and sat around using wifi for three hours. Then we walked around the city a bit getting information and planning what to do for the next few days. Throughout the city we could hear Michael Jackson’s music playing from bars and cafes. It was like a huge memorial to him. We could also hear people talking about it everywhere.
Amsterdam is small, and everyone rides a bike. I knew to expect that, but there are bikes everywhere. Cyclists have dedicated bike lanes on almost all roads. They don’t slow down for people; instead, they ring their bell. Crossing the street is complicated because, at some intersections, you have to cross the bike lane, then the car lane, then the tram tracks, then another car lane and the other bike lane. None of these lanes are particularly wide, but you have to be really careful and aware of your surroundings.
There are also canals and bridges throughout the city. We walked through the red-light district where we could see the girls behind glass doors. They stand around in their skimpy outfits hoping to attract attention from the passers-by. You’re not really allowed to take their photograph as you pass, but you are allowed to photograph the neighborhood during the daytime. On the way back to the hostel we stopped and got groceries, which was frustrating because the packaging is all in Dutch and I have no idea what’s in half the stuff the store, had. There were tons of prepackaged salads, but I couldn’t buy any of them because I couldn’t easily identify all of the ingredients. However, I did find a single serving of raw broccoli. I bought that, along with a cucumber and some fruit. Our hostel doesn’t have a kitchen, which is unfortunate. Otherwise, it’s a really nice place. It’s huge and used to be a school. Everything is new and shiny and there’s recycling!
Saturday I went around to museums while Jess hung out in the hostel. First, I went to the Anne Frank House. I got there at 9:15 (it opens at 9, but they hadn’t opened yet) and had to wait on a short line. Once inside, I began in the basement which was the storage facility for the jam company that her father ran. The museum had her quotes throughout it in both English and Dutch. On that level, I watched a short video about her life and the Jewish experience in the Netherlands during and preceding the Holocaust. On the first floor, I stood in the offices where Frank’s father worked and the “helpers” spent their days. These were the people who helped hide the family. On that level there was another short video, an interview with one of the helpers: the woman who rescued and safeguarded the diary. Passing through the bookcase/door I climbed the steep stairs up to the attic apartments. The stairs were so narrow that they were almost like a ladder. There was no furniture in the apartments. Actually, most of the museum was empty. There were some display cases and some quotes on the walls, but the focus was on the text and the space. Frank’s father did not want the apartment furnished because the original furnishings were taken when the Nazis ransacked the place just after taking the family. He did allow historians to furnish the place once and record a video of it. He also aided in the construction of scale models.
In 2009, I could see the rooms and there were some displays on the walls. These were of items the family used: Latin lessons, a Dickens book, a menu for a party. There were wall markings where the children’s height was recorded. Anne’s room had pictures up on the wall. There was also one place with a small map which Mr. Frank used to track the Allies as they moved through Normandy. It was a different perspective on something which I had just seen because I had just been in Normandy and stood in the places he had marked. The apartment was tiny, especially when you think of the eight people who had lived there. It was also dark: the museum-style lighting was bright enough, but the curtains were all drawn. This made it easy to see how claustrophobic the apartment must have been for the family. After going up through the space, visitors were guided into a new building where various versions of the diary are housed in display cases. They have copies of all the languages it’s been published in including Yiddish, Georgian, and Korean among others. They also have the actual red plaid diary that Anne used.
Exiting the museum, there was a new exhibit about Freedom. Two video screens were set up in a room which had theater-style seating. One screen was used for short videos, each ending in a question. For example: Should people be able to burn the flag as a means of protest? Should Holocaust-deniers be allowed to publish their thoughts on the web? Should the Spanish government shut down the Basque-language newspaper because it suspects possibly ties to ETA? Should headscarves be banned from French schools? (The video was a little outdated because Sarcozy just banned burkas from France.) After the videos the audience was supposed to vote (yes/no) for each question. The other screen had graphs showing the results of our voting and the results of everyone who had been to the exhibit. Because I had been there early in the morning, there were not many people in the room. After the French question, three girls got up and left. I knew that these girls were French because I stood behind them in the queue at the entrance. They didn’t even say anything to each other when leaving. They just shared a glance, stood up and walked out. I really liked the exhibit because it forced people to think. Most of the videos were about different countries, making it likely that a viewer would watch one about his or her country and, therefore, be forced to think about issues that are close to home.
The next museum I visited was the Rijksmuseum, dedicated to the 17th Century “Golden Age” in the Netherlands. I must have missed that bit of European history when I was supposed to learn about the Spanish, French and English fighting over Dutch territory. Apparently that was the case until the Dutch finally overthrew the Spanish after the 80s years war (1568-1648). Anyway, they established a republic, got some ships, started sailing around the world and became quite powerful. The lower floor of the museum focused on their wealth and acquisition of goods. My favorite room was dedicated to doll houses that rich women would maintain as a status symbol. These were elaborate and could cost as much as a modest (life-sized) canal house. The doll houses had several floors and miniature furniture much like the ones I played with as a child. These however were made of much more elaborate materials. The other interesting room on this floor was one which housed delftware. This is the name for blue-and-white pottery made in Delft to replace pottery of the same style that the Dutch imported from China. They started making their own version when they could no longer import because of a Chinese civil war in 1657. My mother later informed me that we have a piece of Delftware at house: a plate.
Upstairs was dedicated to Dutch art, which is one of my favorite collections in most museums. Because the Netherlands was predominatntly Protestant, there was little religious art. In most other countries, the Catholic Church commissioned most of the artwork, especially large scale works. In the Netherlands, artists produced small paintings and preferred landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. I wish they had more portraits by Frans Hals because I like his lose “rough” style. His subjects always seem happy because he gives them life instead of painting stiff, traditional portraits. The museum had landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael and his uncle S. J. van Ruysdael. Jacob is the better-known painter, but I like the uncle’s work better: he keeps the horizon line low and paints lots of sky. Even more than their works, I discovered that I really like the riverscapes because they remind me of Cape Cod. I saw many more at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The museum had a bunch of Rembrandt’s paintings including “Nightwatch,” his largest painting and the first painting of a militia company in motion. It’s a huge painting that was actually cut down from its original size because it was moved to a smaller space. In it, Rembrandt depicts all the wealthy men in one militia company that defended the city. Some still life paintings I really liked were those by Adrian Corte whose small paintings were of a few fruits or vegetables rather than an entire table-full.
Then there were the Vermeer paintings. The museum only had three because one was on loan. The first one I encountered was “The Little Street” (1658). This painting is what it sounds like, a picture of a little street in Delft. In it, he depicts the buildings rather than people (his norm). He applied the paint thick in some places, and thin in others. He also used smooth brush strokes in some parts of the painting and rough ones in other parts, like the bricks, for example. It’s a peaceful street scene, but not as great as some of his other works. I prefer his intimate depictions of women placed in a white-walled room with the light entering from the left. “The Kitchen Maid” (1658) is one of those paintings. In it, he used dots (kind of a mini pointillism) to show the reflection in the bread and the woman’s skirt. You can only see the dots if you look really closely at the painting. Vermeer was a genius with light. His third painting at the museum was “Woman Reading a Letter” (1663), another intimate scene, though not quite as iconic of his work.
Behind the Rijksmuseum was the Van Gogh Museum. I had purchased a museum pass (it’s actually an annual student membership to many Dutch museums; it was only 22 euro and it more than paid for itself). One floor of the museum was dedicated to Van Gogh’s work and life. The other two were used for another exhibit and another wing was loaned to the Stedelijk Museum (modern art) which is closed due to remodeling. I had not realized Van Gogh only painted for ten years. When he was 28, he decided to become a painter. He basically dropped everything and started painting constantly. His first five years as an artist were spent in the Netherlands where he painted dark, realistic, “pleasant” paintings. He then moved to Paris where his brother worked as an art dealer. He spent the next five years of his life (these were also the last five years of his life) in France, where he painted the works which made him famous. The museum had some of them, including “The Bedroom” (1888), which was a really interesting painting: very flat and planar with each plain representing “sleep” and “rest.” The colors were brighter than his Dutch paintings and, therefore, this painting was given a much lighter tone. Van Gogh was crazy. He cut off his own ear, then spent time in a mental institution, took himself out and shot himself. The museum had one of the last paintings he made: “Wheatfield with crows” (1890). This painting is more typical of the works he is famous for: it’s brightly colored and the brush strokes are flowy and loose. People think the crows represent “death” and that this painting was meant to foreshadow his death.
The special exhibit wasn’t great, but the modern art museum’s exhibit was nice. It wasn’t fantastic or large, rather one room dedicated to artists in the 1920s and another dedicated to the 1960s. In the 1920s section, there were works by Dutch De Stijl artists. These included “Contra Composition V” (1924) by Theo Van Doesburg. He used primary colors like Mondrian, but his lines are diagonal to show “restless dynamism.” I also liked a painting by George Geosz called “The Rabble Rouser” (1928) because it was somewhat dada – about a nightmare – but there were cartoon heads that had political meanings and the colors were muted. The works were around a curved wall. The artist’s name along with the city and year the piece was created were painted in black letters below each piece. The exhibit focused more on European artists for the 1960s section which I was glad about because I’m so used to seeing only American artists in that category. Instead, I learned about Yves Klein whose gilded panel called “Resonance MG16” (1960, Paris) was a large gold-leaf panel covering concave recesses. The best piece on the floor was the precursor to a piece we saw at the Tate Modern in London. It was a video called “Neo-Classic” (1971) by Robert Morris, an American. He filmed an exhibit he put on at the Tate (then London’s Tate Gallery) where he had three actors give a performance with his wooden objects. These “objects” were the same things we got to experience in the Tate turbine room: a large hamster wheel and the same slides and things to climb on. It was strange to see an almost 40-year-old representation of something I got to see in reality a few weeks ago. Especially considering that I thought it was new because it was in the Tate turbine room which is a large, open space used for special exhibitions only.
Wandering back through the city, I went next to Rembrandt’s House. He lived there when he was at the height of his career, from 1639 until he had to sell everything in 1656 because he went bankrupt. He wrote a list of everything he owned, so historians were able to recreate the rooms. You enter the museum through the basement where you see the kitchen, which was large. Then I went upstairs to the entrance room and his bedroom. At Rembrandt’s time, people slept in box beds – a kind of armoire with a short bed. They actually slept sitting up because they were afraid they would stop breathing if they lay down. The upper floors of the house were Rembrandt’s studios. Here, I watched a demonstration of how paint was mixed during the time period. I also saw his engravings which were incredible. The amount of attention he paid to the details and the care he took in creating the plates is evident in the prints. Unfortunately there weren’t many on display because most of the museum was showing his friend’s work. Jan Lievens was considered a “child prodigy.” He and Rembrandt did work together – in one series of prints, Rembrandt uses a figure from Lievens and adds to it.
That evening, Jess came to town and we met up and grabbed some groceries for dinner. While sitting on a bench, we discovered that pigeons really do eat just about anything. We got one to eat raisins with egg salad on them. Then we walked to the red light district, went to a bar and had beers/cider and fries. We sat on the sidewalk watching people go by. The bar we had picked had hilarious rules. People were allowed to smoke outside, but not inside. You could drink inside or outside, but only if you had a table outside. People were getting yelled at for taking their drinks outside with them while they smoked. There was a doorway next to the bar that had to remain unblocked, but a table could be placed within three feet (not too close, but it still blocked the residents from entering their building). The fries were good and the cider too; it was a really nice night and we enjoyed being outside.
Then we walked the red light district at night time and looked at the girls as we passed by their doors. Each girl stands behind a glass door which is lit with a red fluorescent bulb above it; most have black light inside or next to the door. Some of the girls are pretty and have nice bodies, while others are more full-figured. A few didn’t bother wearing skimpy clothing, but most had on thongs or short, tight skirts. People wave to them as they pass and we did see at least one guy going into a room. Some girls had their curtains closed to show they were “busy.”
Sunday we took the train to The Hague where we visited the Mauritshuis. I had always wanted to go there, but didn’t understand where it was when I first started studying art history. I was confused as to how there could be a town called “The Hague.” I didn’t understand the way a town could have “the” in its name. The Mauritshuis is an old palace, so the collection is shown in small, intimate rooms and the building itself is also on display.
Five years after my introduction to Vermeer’s work, I was finally seeing the town where his best-known painting hangs. “Girl With a Pearl Earring” (1665) is located here. It’s not actually a portrait, but rather an example of a Dutch tronie, a painting based off of a model but designed to show an expression or style rather than an exact portrait. The reflection off of her earring is enough to make the painting “a great.” In 1881, the painting sold for the equivalent of one euro. It would go for tons more if sold today.
The museum had only two more works by Vermeer. One was “Diana and Her Nymphs” (1653-4). One of Vermeer’s first works, this painting is large and shows five females in a woods scene. They’re outdoors, which is strange for Vermeer. After his lifetime, someone painted the dark, tree-filled background with a bright blue sky. In 1999 historians discovered that Vermeer intended the background to be brown and they, realizing it could not be restored correctly, painted the background black. I was pretty put-off by this because ethically I don’t think the work should have been changed. If it could have been restored, that would have been best, but changing it in this way was not appropriate. The third painting of Vermeer’s was “View of Delft” (1660-1). It’s his other townscape (see Rijksmuseum) and again he used pointillism ot show reflections in the water and on the ship. Vermeer had a short life: he died at 43 and really only painted two works a year. There are only 37 paintings attributed to him. During his life, anyone in town could own one of his paintings, including the baker of Delft. He was basically forgotten in the 18th century, but rediscovered in the 1850s when people began painting reproductions of his works.
The Mauritshuis had some other paintings which were interesting. These included a series by Cornelis Troost. Calle NELRI (1739-1740), he was an actor who did five paintings that are like a play showing the effects of drinking too much. I also found more riverscapes I liked, including those by Aert van der Neer (1650s). Apparently Cynthia Nixon (Miranda from Sex and the City) was at the museum when we were there. I didn’t see her, but Jess did.
After the museum, we wandered around The Hague a bit. There was an Iran-related demonstration in a plaza. We couldn’t understand any of the languages being spoken and there weren’t that many people there. The only police presence was a bike cop and a security guard from a nearby building. We walked around the pedestrianized streets browsing at the stores there and having a really hard time finding the train station. This was because all the signs led us to the same place. Finally we asked, went there and hopped a train to Delft.
Delft is where Vermeer was born, lived and painted. We found information kiosks where we could print out maps of the city. We walked through the downtown which is full of canals and pedestrian-zones to the Vermeercentrum, a museum on his life and work. First we watched a video about him, then we saw reproductions of all of his works (none of the originals are in Delft anymore). Upstairs the museum had recreated his studio and we could pretend we were in one of his works. Then we read about his techniques and his use of light before going upstairs again to an exhibit on symbols of love in his paintings. The museum was closing shortly after we got there. We managed to see the bulk of the space, but didn’t get to spend much time in the hands-on section in the basement. It taught about his friends and Delft during his lifetime. We bought a map that took us on a Vermeer walking tour. We saw the church where he and his mother were buried as well as the house he grew up in, the house his father grew up in and the house he and his wife bought. Throughout the town there were cubes with information about his paintings and his life. The panel about “Girl With a Pearl Earring” inaccurately attributed the role of the girl to Colin Firth instead of Scarlet Johansson (Colin plays Vermeer). We had a good laugh reading that.
We then used one of our printed maps to take a Dutch East India Company (VOC) walking tour of Delft. We saw some buildings where VOC administrators lived as well as the main warehouse and office building. Delft, with is canals, was a really important city in its height. Today, it’s really charming and a great place to walk around. We wished we had come here earlier in the day, or at least that we had more energy, because it really was a tranquil, pretty place. People were sitting outside at plazas, relaxing and enjoying the day. It was a nice side trip outside Amsterdam.
Monday we woke up and took the tram to the Jordaan district, which was the poorer part of the city in the 1800s. Now, it’s full of galleries and fits in with the rest of hipster Amsterdam. We peaked into windows and walked through a flea market. We wandered around the canals trying to see into as many houseboats (really more like floating houses) as possible. Some were quite posh and really nicely decorated. Passing more trendy cafés, stores and galleries, we crossed the city and wound up in another flea market where we spent a few hours looking at old postcards trying to find places we’d been to or knew well. Then we sat at a café for a while. We found an awesome place serving bagels, coffee and fresh juices. I had a soy latte, while listening to John Mayer and Jack Johnson and using the internet….so homey.
The Rest of Paris
Wednesday, after breakfast, we walked to the Pompidou Center where we saw an exhibit on women artists as well as the national collection of modern art. The women artists exhibit was actually somewhat boring for us. Walking through, we found pieces we had seen in Istanbul and Barcelona, among other ones we had seen on separate occasions. The permanent collection was okay, some highlights were Duchamp’s ready-mades, which I had wanted to see. The best part about the museum was that we got to see some of Alexander Calder’s Circus. Most of his work (this is why we went to the Pompidou) was in a separate gallery that cost 9 euro to enter (we did not). However, some of the sketches, a few animal sculptures and a great video were in a section that we didn’t have to pay for. (Jess gets in for free because she’s an art student with an EU passport. I got into this one for free because I’m “Spanish” with an expired Spanish resident alien card – the woman clearly didn’t understand Spanish because the card says I’m actually a US citizen and not European at all.) I love Calder. I like the idea that he invented the mobile – the moving sculpture. No one else did it before him, or at least no one did it like he did until he did. He mainly used primary colors, as influenced by Mondrian, another of my faves. I’ve encountered his sculptures in various parts of the world, from Yale’s campus (Joe, it’s the one across from Silliman, in the courtyard of the building where the war memorial walls are located) to a street corner in Mallorca. The video of his Circus was awesome because imagine a rotund adult on the floor playing with wire and cloth toys that he’s made. Every now and then he blows a whistle to signify a new act and announces it in broken French. It’s great! The acts were hilarious and he thought of everything, down to the horse’s poop and it’s pooper scooper. He even had a stretcher for a fallen-dancer and his tightrope walkers really moved. Actually, everything really moved: horses galloped around the ring, trapeze artists swung, heavyweight champs lifted and a belly dancer swung her hips. I actually watched part of the movie while Jess was on the phone and then again with her.
Leaving the Pompidou Center, which is famous for having it’s “guts” on the outside, we crossed Les Halles and walked up the Rue St. Honore, stopping at Colette. This crazy store had a “Water Bar,” specializing in bottled water from around the world, in its basement. One the entrance floor they sell books, 3000 euro Tag Heuer cell phones, and other assorted junk you never knew you needed. Upstairs they had a photography exhibit (mostly celebrity portraits) and clothing which is also somewhat of a temporary art exhibit. All the clothing and the pictures are for sale. The clothing is arranged in outfits on mannequins. You can try stuff on, but you have to ask a salesperson to go in the back and find it for you. This store is somewhere Joe and I went last time we were here and Jess enjoyed it as well.
Next we hung out in the Jardin du Tulleries. We sat in front of a Lictenstein statue because we had seen another one in Barcelona. Then we walked the Champs Elysee and had tea at La Duree. Actually I had tea and meringues and Jess had hot chocolate and macaroons (dark chocolate, salted caramel, blackcurrant, and rose petal). We walked to the Arc de Triumph which had a huge, Bosphorus Bridge sized flag in its center, and then the Eiffel Tower.
Finally, on the way back to the hostel, we went to Picard: a frozen food store. Everything they sell is frozen: meals, desserts, macaroons, bread, veggies, fruit, meats, fish, rice, soup, guacamole, sashimi. I bought rice and veggies; Jess got a pasta, salmon, sauce pre-made dinner. We came back to the hostel and ate it. Last time I was in Paris, I had really wanted to buy something and have it for dinner, but we didn’t have a microwave. I’m glad I go to experience Picard this time around. The rice was frozen individually, rather than in clumps like when I freeze it.
Thursday morning we went to the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise where we saw the graves of many famous people including Guillaume Apollinere, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, Theodore Gericault and, of course, Oscar Wilde. His grave was covered with lipstick kisses left by his many dedicated fans. After wandering the cemetery for a while, we walked toward Bastile. We went to the Place de Vosges, one of the oldest plazas in the city, where we ate a picnic lunch while watching a huge water fight break out. French tweens ran through the park hurling bottles of water at each other and narrowly missing the unsuspecting tourists dining on the grass. It looked like a lot of fun, and we didn’t mind the craziness. Some people yelled at the kids; others just got up and moved away.
Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables and Hunchback of Notre Dame, used to live on the plaza. His apartment is now a free museum, so we went to check it, and its bathroom, out. The museum was okay. Most of it was comprised of rooms of pictures and busts of him. One floor was decorated with period furniture. Next we walked across the river. We wandered through the streets between the Marais and the Seine, stopping at a store called “Thanksgiving.” It sold American food. Real American food; imported-from-America American food. We’re talking Ocean Spray cranberry sauce (4.95 euros), marshmallow fluff – regular and strawberry (5.90 euro), marshmallows (3 euro for a tiny bag), and cans of frosting (6.90 euro). It also had baking mixes, turkey basters, tons of jello and peanut butter. This store was made for homesick ex-pats or people attempting to make Thanksgiving dinner while abroad. I’ll be home in a month, so I resisted buying anything (and bought marshmallows in Amsterdam instead).
We walked around the Latin Quarter and the St. Germain area, stopping so Jess could fulfill a Fasian (fake-Asian) craving with sesame-free sesame chicken (called chicken in caramel sauce) and rice. I got some cabbage salad. Then we walked back towards the hostel. Along the way we decided to go shopping because there were really big sales going on throughout the city. We wandered the narrow streets of the Marais. I tried on some clothes, but didn’t like any of it. We bought chopsticks and I finally got a hairbrush, which I’ve needed since mine broke in Scotland (the second time we were there – but really it started breaking in Barcelona). We walked back to the hostel and hung out there before catching our overnight bus to Amsterdam.
Rouen and on to Paris!
The next morning we walked to the see the cathedral in daylight. We went inside it; it’s gothic and didn’t have too much interesting stuff inside. There was a poster about WWII damages, which were minimal. We walked to another plaza in Rouen where we saw the spot where Joan of Arc was executed. It’s marked by red and orange flowers. It’s also right outside a church which was built in the 1970s. The church looks like a boat and its roof is part of the roof of an adjacent market. The stained glass windows were much older than the church and Jess explained them to me (in terms of technique, etc.). Then we took another awesome train and were off to Paris!
We dumped our stuff in the hostel and headed toward the Ile de la Cite to see Notre Dame and St. Chapelle. St. Chapelle was the one touristy thing I couldn’t do last time I was here. It was closed the few times I tried to go. It was built as a private chapel for Louis IX. It’s actually two chapels in one, but the lower one is far less interesting. The upper chapel is basically a stained-glass lover’s paradise. There are 15 stained glass windows with more than 1,000 scenes depicted. There are also more than 100 painted columns with different foliage-inspired capitals. The chapel is not particularly large, but it’s not miniscule either. Light enters the room and the stained glass windows become as bright as candy. This was the one place in Paris that I had studied in art history class and really wanted to see. I’m glad I finally got to see it the second time around.
Crossing the Seine, we arrived in the St. Michel area and went to Shakespeare and Co., a fabulous English bookstore. We didn’t stay long because it was too tempting to buy everything there. Next we walked through the St. Germain area and went to Assouline, another amazing bookstore. It was easier to visit this one because the books are too large to carry in our backpacks and way too expensive to purchase. The store is arranged as if you are in someone’s personal library. We finished up our tour of the other side of the Seine with a visit to the Jardin du Luxembourg, where my French-book characters would eat lunch during breaks from their classes at La Sorbonne. We spent time watching people play tennis, then walked by the fountains and headed towards the river.
On our way back towards the hotel, we passed many theaters and people going in to see plays. We stopped to see what one theater was showing: an operetta called Pastorale. We impulsively bought student tickets for 15 euro and went to the opera! Everything was in French, so we’re not 100 percent sure what we saw. We do know that the “sets” were awesome because they weren’t traditional sets at all. Instead they were video projections. Guy in hoodies had video cameras on either side of the stage. Sometimes they filmed a mini-scene– like rocks in a pool of water or a diorama of a castle. Other times they filmed a person or paint dripping down a vertical board. They used three smaller screens in addition to a backdrop screen and, sometimes, a screen in front of the actors. One of the funnier “sets” was a countryside scene where a character was meant to be walking. She was on a treadmill in the center of the stage, walking slowly. There were three people with sheep puppets moving around in front of her. On the side screens, video was projected of the puppets. The center screen projected a feed of wooden sheep being moved along a table by another guy, off to the side of the stage. The company also used cameras when people were lying down, like in a bed. These cameras were placed above the actors, giving the audience a bird’s eye view. All in all, I was surprised at how much I was able to understand by reading the sub-titles, but was frustrated that I couldn’t understand everything. The show seemed to be about a guy in love with a girl but she’s with his brother. The guy then almost drowns in a stream, is saved by three crazy nurses and brought to a castle/tower. He’s imprisoned by a weird guy in all white, including white platform shoes and white hair, who controls most of the characters. The white guy than makes our lover dress like a girl to become friends with the girl he lusts after. They wind up in bed together, as two girls, she finds out, freaks and kicks him out. The girl (the real girl, not the guy pretending to be a girl) then dies, end story. Needless to say, it was a different night: a bit out of the norm.