June 9, 2005

Hello Fellow Adventurers,

 Since my last epistle from Malta in March, I have been traveling north, following the migratory geese and ducks and watching the springtime flowers blossoming as the sun warms Europe.  I wintered in Malta, which is as far south as you can go in Europe: about the same latitude as Casablanca in Africa.  By the first day of spring I was in Greece, visiting Athens and Rhodes.  On April Fools’ Day I arrived in Istanbul and on May Day I went to Budapest.  Continuing north I visited Vienna and then stayed in Salzburg before spending a few days hiking in the Bavarian Alps.  I am now in Munich and today I went into the mountains to explore “mad” Kind Ludwig’s castle of the swan, Neuschwanstein.

 Other than moving north with the spring, it is difficult to find a common thread woven into this diverse itinerary so I will forgo the usual ponderous pondering and supercilious speculation and simply toss out a few rambling, bullet-point lists of various stuff (yeah, “stuff” is the most precise technical term to describe these lists).  You can connect the dots to draw any picture you want.

 What I did this spring:

 The flowers of spring:

Musical sounds of spring:

Historical notes and randumb thoughts:

 I have had a varied and very entertaining spring.  Tomorrow I will go to Bourbourg, France, to meet the nice host family that has taken care of Robbie while he has been studying there since last August.  Then Robbie and I will rent a car and take a male-bonding road trip through Provence and down to the French Riviera.  That should be fun.

 And summer starts in just a few days.

Tim

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Two Shipwrecks, Some Crusaders and an Audience with the Pope

(March 3, 2003, Missive from Malta)

Dear Friends and Fellow Adventurers,

I left San Francisco one year ago so it seems like an appropriate time to write to let everybody know that I am still having far too much fun and will not return to the City until after Halloween.  However, in response to the multitude of requests I received for an updated travelogue (thanks to both of you who sent requests) and in deference to the scores of messages suggesting that if I insist on writing another longandboring travelogue I should be more succinct and laconic, in this epistle I will strive to be neither as magniloquent nor as multiloquent as St. Paul but will instead try to achieve the concise brevity of Ogden Nash.  Except, perhaps, in that last sentence.  It is Academy Award time so I will toss in a few marginally relevant movie references along with the usual rambling anecdotes and historical asides.  The short version of this travelogue: I visited Dubrovnik and Rome and I am now in Valletta.  I recently updated my website to add lots of new photos so, if you are like me and have a low threshold for boredom, you can choose to skip most of the following and go straight to the pictures at www.timemert.com.

Leaving London

By the date of my last travelogue in early November, I was done with London.  The cold winter sun shining through the bare branches of the trees did little to warm me and the wet foggy chill coming off the Thames seemed to bite down to my bones.  London was fun but it was time to leave.  Where to go next?  Head south was the obvious winter choice and I decided to take a cue from English history to pick my next destination.  

In 1187, in an historical event eerily echoed in today’s headlines, the most powerful leader in the free world unilaterally declared war on the infidels of the Middle East and the leader of England promptly responded to the call.  Although modern critics of Pope Gregory VIII (he had no critics in his time – he was the Pope!) suggest that his call for a Crusade was motivated more by the promise of booty to be pillaged than by any actual threat posed to European civilization, Richard the Lionhearted, King of England, set out with his knights to free the oppressed citizens in the Holy Land.  He left his cranky brother, Prince John, on the throne to oppress the citizens of England and left heroic Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest to defend truth and justice.  (Local SF movie note: The Sherwood Forest scenes of the epic Errol Flynn film, Adventures of Robin Hood, were shot in Chico!)  A few years later, when good King Richard was on the way home from the Crusades, he was caught in a storm and shipwrecked near Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea.  He spent a wonderful winter in the beautiful city with the massive walls and, in gratitude for the hospitality, paid a considerable sum of money to build a commemorative chapel in Dubrovnik.  (Not, however, as considerable a sum of money as he paid a few months later, when he was captured by King Leopold of Austria and held for a king’s ransom, but that is a story for another time.) 

DUBROVNIK

Richard Coeur de Lion got to Dubrovnik in a shipwreck but I flew there on Air Croatia by way of Zagreb.  Described for centuries as the Pearl of the Adriatic, it is a marvelously maintained old city, little changed since it reached its medieval pinnacle of power. In 1979, the entire walled city of Dubrovnik was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site because of its “well preserved urban complex of Renaissance streets and squares.”  Dubrovnik had the delightful opportunity to rebuild a planned “urban complex of Renaissance streets and squares” when most of the city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1667.  The fortified walls survived intact but most of the buildings were reduced to rubble.  

The compact port city has been completely surrounded by massive walls since the 10^th century.  In part because of the incredible effectiveness of the fortifications and in part because of a judicious policy of buying protection from bigger neighbors, Dubrovnik has never been captured by force.  The huge towers at the corners of the city rise up in round turreted majesty, looking exactly like immense rooks in the corners of a chessboard.  The sunlight dancing on the deep blue waters of the Adriatic (Jacques Cousteau remarked, "The sea round Dubrovnik is the cleanest sea in the Mediterranean.") surrounding the granite gray walls of the city is an awesome sight.  (Photos on my website only hint at the surreal beauty.)  The narrow, steeply climbing streets are not only quaintly picturesque but their very design means that wheeled vehicles cannot navigate and, except for very limited access for deliveries on the single main street running east/west from the Pile Gate to the Ribarnica Gate (there are still only four gates piercing the walls) cars/trucks/motorbikes are completely absent from the truly pedestrian friendly city.  

Dubrovnik’s impressive walls were of little help when it was subjected to intense shelling in 1991 and 1992, during the Yugoslav/Serbo/Croatian fighting.  Dubrovnik is only about 100 miles from Sarajevo and its turreted rooks became pawns in the ethnic struggle.  The Yugoslav army (always referred to as “the Serbs” by local residents), captured the airport and then encamped in a fortified hilltop just above the city, casually raining artillery, mortars and rockets onto old Dubrovnik.  Most of the city has been repaired but the garden gate next to the home where I stayed still bears gaping holes ripped by shrapnel.  In a Disneyesque twist of fate, the remains of the hilltop artillery base previously occupied by the Serb troops now serve as a huge dog kennel, where a group of young women use the buildings as shelter to raise and breed about 101 dogs.  And with its location on the Dalmatian coast, it is no surprise that most of the dogs sport the familiar fire-house-dog white pelt with black spots.

The sun shone bright and warm most of the days I was in Dubrovnik, making it pleasant to wander up and down the steep streets inside the walls.  Churches, convents, palaces and simple homes from the middle ages crowd together on “streets” that are often less than seven feet wide.  Walking along the high walls and parapets opens vistas of the sea and offers fascinating glimpses of the structured chaos of the town planning.  As a thriving port for over a thousand years, it is not surprising that the seafood is fantastic.  I went scuba diving in nearby Cavtat, where an earthquake 2000 years ago left ancient Roman ruins underwater.  

The war seriously curtailed the emerging tourist industry and I saw very few tourists while I was there.  The local residents were all very friendly and seemed eager to let me know that European tourists are flocking back to the Dubrovnik beaches in the summer months and that they would welcome the return of more Americans.  I was totally charmed by my visit to Dubrovnik but I fear that the charm would be overwhelmed by the polyester cacophony of the tourist hordes that the local economy so desperately needs.  

ROME

From the relatively isolated tranquility of Dubrovnik, I flew due west about 300 miles to the deliciously delirious chaos of Rome.  There is not much I can say about Rome that has not already been said or sung or painted or cursed.  The city is impossibly crowded and indescribably enchanting.  TJ flew in from San Francisco and spent about three weeks with me and Robbie flew in from France to join us for the Christmas holidays.  We wandered the ancient ruins, ate late night meals in snug little restaurants and immensely enjoyed our Roman Holiday.  We were initially befuddled by the Italian Christmas tradition of the Befana, a witchlike woman who brings gifts to good children and leaves a lump of coal for bad kids.  We eventually warmed to the idea and had a small Befana (complete with broomstick) hanging on our mantle place right above the exquisite nativity figures we got at the Christmas Fair at nearby Piazza Navona.  The boys even made sure there was a large lump of coal in my Befana stocking.

In a more familiar traditional Christmas celebration, we went to Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.  Pope John Paul II said mass and there were pilgrims from all over the world filling the church and the piazza outside.  I am not often mistaken for a deeply religious person but I found the event to be quite moving and I was particularly pleased to be sharing it with my boys.  

I reserved tickets for the mass when I first arrived in Rome, escorted by a Swiss Guard up the stairs into the papal offices of the Prefettura della Casa Pontifica.  In my execrable Italian, I tried to explain to the priest in the office that I wanted three tickets to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.  He smiled warmly at my efforts and, with a thick Irish brogue, offered me reservations for mass and also for an audience with the pope.  Most Wednesdays the pope holds a general audience (Udienza Generale) in the intimate little 8,000 seat papal auditorium.  I expected a rather solemn event with lots of Latin and incense but the papal audience was more of a wild celebration, with groups of people from around the world (often in ethnic costumes) standing to offer songs and cheers to the pope.  There was even a blue robed choir from Stockton, CA (ethnic costume?) singing an exuberant song when the English speaking pilgrims were welcomed.  It was so entertaining that when TJ got to Rome he wanted to attend and we went again when Robbie arrived.  Our apartment (in an old tower built in 1250 to house Vatican troops guarding the Ponte Sant’Angelo) was only a few minutes walk from the Vatican so we also came to St. Peter’s Piazza on a few Sundays for the noon Angelus and blessing by the pope, where he sits in his library window to address the crowd, often over 100,000 people when we were there.  (Photos on my RomePage show some of the blessings as well as a shot of TJ and Robbie trying to convince the Swiss Guards to let them into the Prefettura Office to pick up our tickets.)  With the current medical issues with the pope, I am happy that we had the chance to see him in person a few times before he goes to meet with his Boss.

We also enjoyed the more secular delights of Rome, riding the insanely crowded buses and the very efficient MetRo(me) all over the city, visiting the Forum, Spanish Steps, Via Veneto, catacombs and Colosseum, generally pretending to be tourists having a wonderful time.  I am not sure where the boys went when they went out at night to go “clubbing” but they seemed enthusiastic about it, even when they came home at 4am.  It is a Christmas holiday that I will long treasure.

MALTA

I am now in Malta.  For my two month visit here, I rented a great old townhouse (built in about 1650) in Old Valletta.  My place consists of three stories (one room on each floor) with great views of the Grand Harbor from my rooftop terrace.  Not a bad place to spend the winter, with pleasant weather, friendly people who speak English, the best scuba diving in the Mediterranean and tons of fantastic seafood.  Music abounds on the island and I even saw an excellent production of Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods at the Manoel Theatre, an exquisite little theater that first opened to the public in 1732.

Two out of three Americans (and that includes our Canadian neighbors) could not find Malta on a map but I am certain my erudite readers would have no trouble locating this tiny island nation that sports such a disproportionately large history.  With ancient temples built of monolithic stones on the cliffs above the sea identified as the oldest man made structures on the planet; with massive forts built by the Knights of St. John withstanding fierce sieges by the Ottoman Empire in the 16^th century; with the entire population of the “island fortress of Malta” awarded the George Cross (Britain’s highest award for civilian bravery) after surviving intense Nazi bombing; and with the movie industry paying frequent visits to Malta to take advantage of the fortuitous multitude of forts (the Turkish prison in Midnight Express, the Roman arena in Gladiator and several scenes in Troy are among the views of Malta you may have already seen), this little island has long been at the center of the sea of history.  

The strange currents of history also make English and Malti the official languages so communication is easier here than in London.  The ruling Knights (see below) were chased out by Napoleon and just a couple years later, when Admiral Nelson wiped out Napoleon’s fleet in Egypt, England took control of the islands.  Until the 1970s, Malta was part of the British Commonwealth and the familiar red mail boxes and phone booths of London are fixtures of Malta.  The currency is the Maltese lira but everyone simply calls it “the pound” and uses it to buy British ale in the local pubs.

And, of course, the obvious SF connection with Malta is being celebrated even now with the 75^th anniversary of Dashiell Hammet’s Maltese Falcon.  John Houston’s film of that name was shot in San Francisco and the location was as much a star as Bogie’s memorable Sam Spade but the jeweled bird at the center of the story was purely a creation of Hammet, fabricated from a few threads of Malta’s history.  When the Knights Hospitallers of St. John (a group founded during the Crusades to tend the wounded and to slay the infidels) were chased from their fortified sanctuary on Rhodes by the Turks in the early 1500s, they went looking for another port to build forts so their ships could continue to harass Turkish shipping lanes.  The Turks of the Ottoman Empire considered the Knights to be pirates because their fierce raiding ships captured gold and silver and slaves.  Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, considered the Knights of St. John to be valiant soldiers because they only captured Turkish gold and silver and slaves.  Charles V gave the islands of Malta to the Knights of St. John (nobody ever asked the Maltese if they wanted to be ruled by the aristocratic Knights) and asked only that they pay rent of two falcons each year.  Maltese falcons, a subspecies of peregrines, were magnificent raptors, famous for their extraordinary hunting skills, and the rent was to be paid with two live falcons.  There is no historical record (or even legend) of payment with a jeweled bird but Hammet used the device effectively as a red herring in his story.  In a sad side note, the real Maltese falcons have been hunted almost to extinction except for a couple captive breeding pairs.  

The Knights of St. John, often now called the Knights of Malta (local Maltese regard the Knights as oppressive rulers and never call them Knights of Malta, often referring to them as “the Rhodians” because they were formerly called the Knights of Rhodes) were aristocrats and becoming a Knight of St. John required proof of noble heritage.  They were very effective, however, at using local citizens and slave labor to construct massive fortifications.  In 1565, over 30,000 Turks landed in Malta with the sole objective of destroying the Knights.  The Knights took refuge in Fort St. Elmo and Fort Sant Angelo (both within sight of my place in Valletta, click MALTA to see fort photos) and repelled the invaders after a lengthy siege.  

Nobody expected the small force of 700 Knights and their 8,000 Maltese soldiers and mercenaries to withstand the siege.  The Ottoman Empire had been terrorizing Europe and was at the gates of Vienna only a short time earlier.  After the victory, money poured in to the Knights from a grateful Europe and they proceeded to build more forts on Malta.  Today, the entire city of Valletta is surrounded by walls twenty feet thick and a hundred feet high in places.  Most of the land around the Grand Harbor sports forts and protective walls, the defining feature of the Valletta area.  The city of Valletta was built in the late 16^th century, right after the Great Siege, as Europe’s first planned city, with narrow straight streets (to allow better circulation of sea breezes for cleaner air), a standardized building code (requiring statues at every corner) and odd looking steps going up the hills, designed so a knight in armor could climb them.  Valletta is almost unchanged from that time, with the exteriors of the honey colored limestone buildings looking just as they did when the Knights struggled up the steps in their armor. 

Although the Maltese regard the Knights Hospitaller of St. John as aristocratic oppressors for the way they (mis)treated the local people, the Knights always continued their medical mission, even when they were playing pirate.  “Borrowing” many medical developments from the Arabs they fought, the Knights operated the most modern hospital in Europe and people came from all over the world for care.  The Knights treated everyone who came to their hospitals, rich or poor, and even non-Christians and slaves were cared for, albeit on a separate ward.  Even the Grand Master of the Knights spent one day each week tending patients in the hospital.  The world’s largest hospital – in its time – is the 600 bed Sacra Infermeria, the Knight’s hospital in Valletta (now used as an impressive conference center).

The Maltese population is 98% Catholic and religion is an important part of life here.  Devotedly espousing slightly different values than the SF Bay Area, divorce is illegal and even discussing abortion can result in criminal sanctions.  Religious values are so integral to the culture that I don’t think these will change when there is the inevitable changing of the guard in the Vatican.  In 60 AD, when St. Paul was being transported from Jerusalem to Rome to be tried for his heretical preaching, he was shipwrecked on Malta.  For three months, he lived here and, although it was a Roman province, he preached and converted the island to Christianity, even making the Roman governor the first bishop of Malta.  Paul then went on to Rome and was beheaded by Nero.  

Right across the street from my place is St. Paul Shipwrecked church (called San Pawl in Malti), the church of the patron saint of Malta and the most important church in a country full of churches.  (Nearby St. John’s Co-Cathedral is bigger and fancier but is (dis)regarded as the church of the Knights and the Maltese embrace San Pawl’s.)  Saints’ feast days are celebrated with fervent enthusiasm (my guidebook lists over 100 “festes” each year) and every parish church and village marks the feast of their patron saint with parades, music and fireworks.  Feste San Pawl is on February 10.  For several days leading up to the feast day there were brass bands playing in the street in daily parades – with the parades beginning and ending right under my balcony and the sounds of over 100 horns in each band reverberating loudly.  On February 10, the parade included sacred relics, such as an enormous statue of St. Paul (carved in 1651), a silver arm encasing the wrist bones of St. Paul and a cylindrical block of stone said to be the pillar where St. Paul placed his neck when his head was separated from the rest of his body.  As the parade rambles through town, residents lean out their windows cheering and dumping tons of confetti.  The confetti rains down so heavily that some people actually carry umbrellas!

And the week before Feste San Pawl saw the five day Karnival of Malta, a pre-Lent festival celebrated here since the 15^th century.  There are huge parades with marvelous floats winding through the city every day and throngs of costumed revelers.  Unlike the drunken debauchery that characterizes the Carnivals in New Orleans and Rio, there is a more family atmosphere here, with even the adults showing a childlike delight and wonder at the gaudy colors and magical anonymity of elaborate costumes.  Although tourists come from all over Europe for Malta’s famous Karnival, I never even heard of it until I was in the middle of it!!

Well, this travelogue is not as brief as I intended way back when I was drafting the first paragraph.  When I wandered through the meadows of wildflowers on the way to visit the cliffs with the Neolithic temples of Malta, I did not follow the beaten path so brambles, stickers, twigs, leaves and dirt stuck to my shoes and pants legs.  When I wander through the places I visit, I do not always stay on the beaten path and bits of history, culture, myth, humor and irrelevancies stick in my mind.  It seems these odds and ends find their way into my tales.  As readers, you have the option of skipping some or all of the parts or even pushing the delete button.  I am going to keep going on my little adventure for a few more months and I will continue occasionally to inflict these rambling travelogues on my friends because I want to share those bits and pieces mingled with my boastful descriptions.  If you don’t like it (or if you really like it), go have your own adventure.  

Sahha, Tim

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Tricks and Treats: History, Politics and Beer 

(November, 2004 - after Halloween and the Presidential election)

My Dear Fellow Travelers:

I came to London in early October, looking forward to the opportunity to discuss politics and the World Series in a city where people speak English and drink good beer.  Instead, it appears that they only speak several incomprehensible variations of English, they don’t have a clue about baseball (no, it’s not just like cricket) and they understand American politics even less than Americans do.  But the beer is quite tasty and very strong. 

 November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated in Britain with a sky filled with fireworks.  In 1605, a group of dissident citizens piled explosives in a tunnel under the Houses of Parliament in London, planning to blow up all the legislators and King James I, when he appeared to open the Parliamentary session on November 5.  A little more aggressive change of leadership strategy than superciliously categorizing voters based on red-state/blue-state but maybe worth considering.  Anyhow, the plot was discovered.  Guy Fawkes was caught in the tunnel and, after some tortuous persuasion, he willingly identified his co-conspirators and they were all convicted of High Treason.  (http://www.bonefire.org/)  For over 600 years (not abolished until 1821), the penalty for High Treason in England was “hung, drawn and quartered.”  The traitor would be hung by the neck until almost dead then his (women traitors were burned at the stake, for the sake of decency) intestines were surgically removed and tossed into a fire while the crowd cheered and the victim watched in a state of shock and awe.  Then his heart was removed and thrown into the fire and, in a rather superfluous climax, the traitor was quartered (arms and legs removed for display around the country) and his head was removed for display on the Temple Bar (where British the lawyers have their Inns of Court today).  England does not celebrate the Fourth of July (well, duh!!) so Guy Fawkes Day is their time of nationalistic fireworks celebration.  And Hung Drawn & Quartered is now only the name of a pub near the Tower of London.

 This grotesque but historically accurate introduction reflects the theme in the title of this edition of my longandboring travelogue.  With the recent American elections confounding and confusing Europeans (I was with a group of labour lawyers one evening right after the election – yeah, every night is a wild party for me – when I heard someone say, “If the US population is polarized now, just wait until the 2008 election when Hillary runs against Arnold.”) and the recent deaths of British troops near Baghdad outraging the few allies America has in this part of the world, I have been trying to discover some historical perspective for the current situation.  That means that my usual magniloquent tales of travel will be laced with history and politics, as viewed through the bottom of a tall glass of beer.  (Even a few website links for those who are interested in further information or who just have too much time on their hands.)  If all the history is simply too boring (there will not be a pop quiz), you can skip the historical bits or delete the email entirely and just look at the new pictures on my website, www.timemert.com .

The next couple sections describe Paris and Prague.  You can skip directly to London stuff by clicking LONDON.

  Paris

My last missive left me in Paris, caught up in the celebration of Lance Armstrong’s victory.  Inspired by Lance, I rented a bicycle for a couple weeks to ride around Paris.  (Perhaps inspired by my itinerary, Lance left Paris to go to Prague.  He participated in a minor bicycle race and a major appearance at the cancer ward of the Prague children’s hospital, where he was hailed as a hero by the kids.)  I rode my bike all over Paris, which has excellent bike paths throughout the city and, in August, much less of the insane traffic that terrorizes the city.  I also took a couple rides to the countryside around Paris, riding along the old canal paths through derelict industrial areas, upwardly mobile suburbs, surprisingly dense forest areas and a couple quaint villages (even a little village with a large Stanford Shopping Center, apparently displaced from Palo Alto, complete with its own Wal-Mart).

 I was fortunate to be in Paris on August 25 for the 60^th anniversary of the liberation of Paris in WWII, complete with parades with convoys of old Jeeps and American tanks with (young guys dressed as) American soldiers tossing candy and cigarettes to the cheering crowds (and, imitating the Yanks 60 years ago, enthusiastically kissing the young Parisian girls).  Paris was occupied by the Germans for the entire war, starting only about two months after the Blitzkrieg, which resulted in almost 1,600,000 young French soldiers being taken POW and held in Germany throughout the war.  After the Allied landing at Normandy in June, 1944, Eisenhower planned to bypass Paris and attack directly into Germany.  Hitler personally ordered Gen. von Cholitz, the general in charge of Paris, to destroy the city if the Allies tried to attack and explosives had already been set on the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and other landmarks.  Perhaps with visions of the future trials at Nuremberg dancing in his head, von Cholitz cut a deal through the ambassador of Sweden (a neutral country in the war), agreeing that if the Allies could get to Paris by the morning of August 25, before Hitler actually ordered him to destroy the city, he would surrender quickly.  (This event was interestingly portrayed in the 1966 French/American movie, Is Paris Burning? or “Paris brûle-t-il?”)  The resistance fighters (finally) rose up in Paris and the American and Canadian troops (with a few French soldiers and tanks) swept into Paris on August 25, 1944.  There were a few firefights but most of the German soldiers gave up quickly after von Cholitz surrendered.  http://www.paris.org/Expos/Liberation   

 As part of the elaborate 60^th Anniversary celebration, the Parisian government set up a huge screen on the parvis (big open square) of Notre Dame, and showed old newsreel footage of the fighting and liberation.  It was a bit disconcerting to look at the prefecture of police building just across the parvis, where there are still big chunks taken out of the stone façade, while watching the actual newsreel footage of the German tanks parked on the parvis and shooting at the resistance fighters holed up in the prefecture building, taking those very chunks out of the façade.  While the Parisians claim that they liberated Paris with only a little help from the Americans, they still expressed real gratitude to the Americans for their help.  It was another manifestation of the phenomenon that the Parisians I have met really seem to like Americans even while they vehemently criticize political decisions of America.  (I think I read somewhere that many Americans also criticize political decisions of America.) 

Footnote:  My 16 year old son, Robbie, arrived in Bourbourg, France (near Calais) in August to attend 11^th grade there as an exchange student.  One of his first activities in France was marching in a liberation parade in Dunkerque, carrying the Canadian flag as the representative of the Canadian troops who helped liberate France.  (Go to the London section of this missive for more about our adventures when Robbie visited me in London.)

Prague

I rented an apartment in Prague for the month of September, eager for my first peek behind the Iron Curtain.  A dear friend from SF was visiting me in Paris and she took the train with me to Prague to visit for a couple weeks.  We made an unplanned overnight stay in Dresden when we missed our connection after our train stopped unexpectedly in Leipzig and the conductor said simply, “Train is kaput.”  Dresden displayed sort of a Frankenstein quality on many buildings.  Intense (and some say unnecessary) fire bombing leveled most of the city near the end of the war.  In an effort to reconstruct precious old buildings, many of the old stones and bricks were incorporated into the rebuilt structures, eerily melding large pieces of the old building into the new with a stitched-together appearance.

 Crossing the border into the Czech Republic, I got my first reality check (Czech?).  There was a young American (from Kansas) in our small train compartment traveling on a Eurail pass.  The Czech train conductor came in to check tickets, a 20-something guy with long greasy hair pulled back in a pony tail and a goofy grin that showed several teeth missing.  He was very pleasant but in broken English explained to the kid from Kansas that he must get off at the next station and pay a fine because his Eurail pass was not valid for rail travel in the Czech Republic.  When the kid looked crestfallen (and a bit scared) the conductor said, “Wait, I be back soon.”  A few minutes later he returned, still grinning.  He said that the kid could buy a ticket from him for 30 Euros.  The kid (also a 20 something) gratefully handed over 30 Euros.  The conductor promptly gave him back 10 Euros and, with an even wider grin, said, “Is OK but do not tell others because is not proper.”  The bribe was not only discounted but everyone ended up with a smile.  Welcome to the former Soviet bloc.

 Prague, a magically magnificent city with a couple of grand castles, is often known as “stovezata praha” or “hundred spired Prague” because the skyline is punctuated by countless turrets and towers, spires and spikes, domes and belfries, cupolas and pinnacles.  http://www.prague.cz/  It was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither holy nor Roman) from the early 1300s to the early 1600s and many of its towering buildings are well preserved from that period.  When Czechs were unhappy with their rulers, they resorted to a unique practice called “defenestration,” where the angry mob would throw the offending officials out the window.  Usually from several stories high and often onto the waiting pikes and spears below.  (In 1618, two Imperial Governors were tossed out the window of the castle and they survived.  The Imperial story says that angels caught them and carried them peacefully to the ground.  Others say they simply had a soft landing in the dung heap by the moat.)  Anyway, this rebellious practice, combined with the religious wars of Jan Huss (preaching church reform like Martin Luther, only 100 years earlier), the Holy Roman Empire moved its capital to Vienna and Prague became a minor backwater town.  This twist of history helped preserve all the wonderful 14^th century buildings from Prague’s proud past because the city did not have a major building development until the late 1890s, when art nouveau was the rage and dozens of delicately beautiful art nouveau buildings rose to decorate the city.  http://art-nouveau.kubos.org/en/villes/prague.htm  In fact, Alfons Mucha, probably the most influential artist of the art nouveau era, made his reputation in Paris but returned to his birthplace in Prague, where he designed not only buildings but the first currency and stamps for the country. 

 Like Paris, Prague’s dazzling architecture escaped damage in WWII because the Germans occupied the city without much of a fight from the beginning of the war.  Czechoslovakia first became an independent nation after WWI, when the Hapsburg/Holy Roman Empire collapsed.  (Archduke Ferdinand, whose assassination started that War To End All Wars, lived in castle just outside Prague.)  As a small nation, Czechs have always emphasized art and intellect over brawn and belligerence.  The first president after independence, Tomas Masaryk, was a professor of philosophy.  The first president after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when Russian domination was broken, was a playwright, Vaclav Havel.  Before WWII started, France and Britain tried to appease Hitler with the Munich Agreement, giving the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland to Germany.  Although this was almost ½ of Czechoslovakia, the Czechs were forced by their “allies” to cede the territory.  The concession did not stop the aggression and less than six months later, Prague itself was occupied by the Nazis, who stayed there for the entire war.  Eventually, the American troops captured most of western Bohemia (the old name for the Czech region) and were only a few miles outside Prague.  As with Paris, the resistance fighters in Prague rose up against the Nazis, confident that the Americans would arrive soon to liberate the city.  Unfortunately, politics forced the Americans sit by idly while the resistance fighters of Prague were cut down by the Nazis.  A few months earlier, in February, 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had met at Yalta and carved up post-WWII Europe, expressly agreeing that the Russians would be allowed to liberate Prague.  So Czechoslovakia was behind the Iron Curtain for the duration of the Cold War because the Big Military Powers unilaterally dictated the plight of the less powerful countries.  Well, in the last bit of history to set the stage for this travelogue, Czechoslovakia freed itself from the yoke of totalitarian communist oppression in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, led by a group of musicians, writers and artists, gaining independence from the Soviet bloc and evicting the 75,000 Soviet troops stationed there, without firing a single shot or sacrificing a single life.  Prague’s Lennon Wall (not Lenin Wall) became a focal point for dissident graffiti shortly after the death of John Lennon, with artistic graffiti (not necessarily an oxymoron) covering a long wall with slogans of freedom and Lennon lyrics of peace, regularly painted over by the police and regularly reappearing in even greater profusion.  What lessons did we learn from the various and varied historical observations in this paragraph? 

 The Czech Republic (in a Velvet Divorce, Slovakia became a separate country in 1993) welcomes foreign visitors (VISA and MasterCard accepted here) and there is a very large American ex-patriot community in Prague.  Food is served in large portions (heavy on the meat and starch) with huge steins of beer, the national drink.  Pilsner beer was invented in nearby Plizen.  Very strong (and very cheap), I enjoyed beer with every meal – and often in between meals.  My favorite Czech beer is Budweiser.  No, not the swill produced by Anheiser-Busch but the real stuff, brewed for over 600 years in the town of Czesky Budovice (called Budweis in German).  The American brand simply appropriated the name but not the brewing secrets.  In this city of artists (so many great musicians) and universities (Einstein taught at the University of Prague), I went to several concerts, including the opera Carmen at the Statni Opera and Don Giovanni at Theatre of the Estates, the theatre where Mozart conducted the world premier.  (More about Don Giovanni below, in the section about music in London.)  I also went to the old communist built arena to see the Prague Sparta hockey team (which proudly notes that five of its former players are now in the NHL but does not mention that this NHL season is paralyzed by a capitalistic strike/lockout) defeat the local rivals from Zlin.  An exciting match between world class hockey teams played in a huge arena with very few amenities but great enthusiasm and lots of beer.

 The Soviet regime focused on heavy industry and built big ugly factories and ugly concrete block apartment buildings (and a few Chernobyl style nuclear power reactors) outside Prague, leaving most of the old city untouched: not changed but sometimes not well maintained.  Another serendipitous historical anomaly that helped to preserve the ancient magic of the city.  Each of the many twists and turns wandering the narrow medieval streets and alleys revealed magnificent palaces, amazing churches, ancient shops, and unexpected marvels.  The town square boasts a huge astronomical clock from 1410, which marks not only the hours (hour of the day, hour since sunrise, etc) but the month, phase of the moon and planets and saint’s feast days.  (The photo of gaping tourist on my web page was taken from top of the clock tower.)  Dozens of the old buildings predate street addresses and still bear the signs that identified them to travelers: blue swan, stone bell, three fish, unicorn and others.  In Amadeus, the multi-Academy Award movie filmed in Prague, Mozart lives in the house at the sign of the black sun.  A fascinating town with deep cultural roots and a totally unpronounceable language. 

 Day trips outside of Prague were enchanting.  Kutna Hora, an old silver mining town, has a church that is decorated entirely out of human bones: starting in 1511 the monks made statues, chandeliers and other creations out of the remains of 40,000 burials.  Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad, in English) is a turn of the century spa town built around several therapeutic hot springs in the hills of the western part of the country.  Czesky Krumlov is a miraculously well preserved medieval town huddled around a hilltop castle and wrapped in the encircling river, seemingly oblivious to the modern world around it.

 In the middle of September, an old law school friend visited me in Prague.  (A few friends have visited me at various times on this trip, enjoying the charm of my company or maybe just tolerating me while taking advantage of the wonderful places I’ve stayed.)  After a few days of sightseeing in Prague we were in a bar one night and, fueled by beer and bourbon, had an inspired idea: Road Trip!!  We rented a car for a few days and braved the highways on an expedition to visit the three national capitals on the Danube River – Bratislava, Slovakia; Budapest, Hungary; and Vienna, Austria.  Counting Prague, that means four different countries with four different languages to decipher on the road signs and four different currencies to calculate to pay for beer.  It was an adventure that helped us get a quick overview of the footprints of history in these countries, with their great differences and their great similarities overwhelming us as we got lost wandering each city. 

 Budapest is a city of magnificent buildings, impressive statues and a tumultuous history.  After the Romans pulled out of the area (which included Transylvania at the time), Magyar tribes swept in.  Terrorizing Europe with raids as far away as Spain, Italy and northern Germany, the Magyars established their base at Buda (and the newer town across the Danube River, Pest).  Huge statues of the Magyars, looking like angry Hell’s Angels on horseback, are proudly displayed all over town.  The first ruler of Hungary was not a philosophy professor but the Magyar warrior king, St. Stephen, who became a saint because he forcibly converted the country to Christianity.  Bratislava, adversely affected by years under Soviet rule, was interesting but, in spite of its ancient history and cool castle, left few memorable impressions.  Vienna was sublime, with an old city center full of history, music, art and beer.  If you Czech out my itinerary, you will see that Vienna and Budapest will probably be the subject of travelogues in the spring. 

 LONDON

Musical Interludes

Let me introduce my tales of London by contrasting music I heard here with music I heard elsewhere, sort of a musical Tale of Two Cities (without the clever lyrics).  When I first arrived in London I went to the English National Opera production of Don Giovanni to see how they would handle the story.  Don Giovanni (Don Juan, in Spanish) is Mozart’s opera of an amoral cavalier who, in a tale with a moral, met a grisly death because he led a dissolute life of lying and womanizing.  In September I saw the opera performed in Prague at the Estates Theater – a beautiful little theater where Mozart himself conducted the orchestra for the world premiere of Don Giovanni in 1787 – and it was sublime.  The Estates Theater, a small wooden structure with a jewel box interior, is almost unchanged from the time it was built in 1782.  http://www.estatestheatre.cz/   The director Milos Forman went to film school near Prague and he filmed most of the theatre scenes for Amadeus in the Estates Theatre.  The music in the London production was exactly the same as the Prague production, note for note, but that was the only thing they had in common.  The London production was sung in English instead of Italian with modified modern lyrics and they moved the setting from 16^th century Spain to modern London east side and made Don Giovanni a drug dealer.  The music was pure Mozart and the singing was fantastic but it was a bit bizarre to see sopranos (the singers, not the New Jersey guys) in their underwear (their Victoria’s Secret left very little secret and left old Queen Victoria spinning in her grave) singing soaring arias while snorting coke from the bar.  I think I prefer the more traditional approach.

 I also went to see/hear a marvelous rendition Carmina Burana by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall.  This is one of my favorite symphonies and even if you do not recognize the name, you probably heard some of the memorable melodies used in commercials, cartoons and similar sophisticated settings.  (The San Francisco Symphony and Chorus won a Grammy for their recording of it in the 1990s.)  Carmina Burana means “Bavarian Songs” and Carl Orff wrote the symphony in 1936, based on a collection of 13^th century minstrel songs that had recently discovered in some documents in a German monastery.  The last time I saw it performed was in the ethereal elegance of Sainte Chapelle in Paris, with four performers in medieval costume playing ancient instruments (some rather weird looking) while singing the original melodies.  At Royal Albert Hall (a truly marvelous venue – www.royalalberthall.com – built in 1871 and named for Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria – the October schedule had Beethoven and Bizet but also included concerts by Rod Stewart and the Moody Blues, International Ballroom Dancing Championships and National Television Awards – the British Emmys) there were over “400 voices in monumental harmony” and a full symphony orchestra, including nine percussionists (that always means lots of sound).  I was almost stunned by the power (and decibel level) of the musical sound filling the beautiful old hall.  While the small group performance embraced the intimacy of Sainte Chapelle better, with lightly lilting voices over the gentle strumming of lute and lyre, the huge orchestra and chorus (400 voices!!) was a perfect sound to show off the acoustics the round immensity of the Royal Albert Hall.  Fitting the right performance to the right venue makes the magic and both performances still play in my mind.

Footnote:  The program at the Royal Albert Hall opened with a very entertaining march by Berlioz, Rakoczy March.  I had never heard it before but it is based on Hungarian folksongs and is quite rousing.  During the world premier in Budapest in 1846, the crowd was wildly enthusiastic and loudly demanded that the march be played again.  Confronted with the cultural heritage of Hell’s Angels on Horseback, you better believe that the orchestra played it again.

 A Tourist in London

London is a city of contrasts, of culture and beer and history and beer and soccer and beer.  I still get a thrill every day when I ride on the top of the big red double deck buses and I marvel at the hundreds of acres of extraordinary parks all over the city.  I saw some interesting films at the London Film Festival and saw a live production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starring Christian Slater, who has made a career out of pretending to be Jack Nicholson.  Football (soccer) is as much of a London experience as Big Ben or a West End show and I managed to get a ticket to see the British premiership champion team, Arsenal, play their cross town rivals, Everton, tonight.  These teams have been fierce competitors since 1878 so I may also see some infamous English soccer hooliganism along with world class soccer.  If things get too rowdy, I may need to call one of you to make my bail.

 One Sunday’s wandering offered me a great sample of the energetic contrasts of London, starting with a couple hours gawking at the speakers and the hecklers at Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.  Since an 18^th century act of Parliament, Speakers’ Corner has been a haven of free speech, where anybody can stand on a box and say anything.  The law opines that by standing on a box, the speaker is, technically, not on British soil and cannot be punished for any speech – unless it maligns the monarchy – giving us the term “soapbox speaker.”  Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell and many others stood on soapboxes to give speeches there.  The current crop of speakers is just as passionate but not quite as articulate and some are downright crazy.  Not surprisingly, religion and politics (often thoroughly mixed) were the most common themes of the speakers, although sex, astral projection and some incoherent mumbling were also vigourously presented.  I then went to the National Gallery and on the way was caught up in a huge anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Blair, pro-party (using “party” as a verb) demonstration that filled Trafalgar Square with noise, invective and music.  Early that evening, when I finally left the National Gallery (fantastic display of works of art looted from other countries when English Empire dominated much of the world) and walked through nearby Leicester Square (center of West End theatres) on the way home, I was caught up in a huge crowd that gathered to greet the appearances of Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet as they walked the red carpet to the charity premiere of their new movie, Finding Neverland.  (The film is about JM Barrie during the time he was writing Peter Pan and a couple days earlier I wandered through Hyde Park by the Peter Pan statue near JM Barrie’s (former) house.)   And that was just Sunday.  On Monday I was part of a crowd of over 200,000, cheering the parade of the British medal winners from the Olympics, a big event because London is still in the running (against Paris and a couple other minor metropolitan areas) to host the 2012 Olympics.  The speeches in Trafalgar Square mentioned (several times to wild applause) that the underdog British team stunned the heavily favored “bloody Yanks” to win the 4x100 meter relay.  The British really are the closest allies of America and even they enjoy tweaking the big American nose when possible.

 This is a big city and everywhere I go I find big crowds.  To escape the crowds for a while, I took day trips to Stonehenge, Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon, and to Bath.  Stonehenge was wonderful and even a touch more mystical than my cynicism anticipated.  There has been a temple/astro-magical observatory there for over 5,000 years.  That is more than 1,000 years before the very first pyramid and even before Moses brought the commandments down the mountain.  I really appreciated the fact that there the site was still a simple, isolated hilltop, with no sign of any tourist joints selling hot dogs and miniature plastic Stonehenges.  The state run gift shop, the only sign of civilization any where near (other than sheep), was tucked discreetly behind a hill, out of sight with the tour buses.  Not a bad way to preserve a monumental environment.  http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/stonehenge  Bath is a beautiful town: the ancient Roman baths are impressive and the light brown Bath stone of the Georgian buildings has a warm glow but the commercialism is a bit over the top.  Oxford has its own Harry Potter magic (the movie sets of Hogwarts are based on Christ Church, one of the 39 colleges of Oxford), with extraordinarily old college buildings.  (Hitler planned to make Oxford the capital of the “new England” and, although bombs devastated many parts of England, Oxford was completely untouched.)  Stratford-upon-Avon has so many pubs and inns dating back to the 15^th century that I could not have a pint in every one of them.  But I tried.  And I was lucky enough to have decent weather and the autumn colors were spectacular in the English countryside, including the Cotswolds (with thatched roofed cottages), the Wiltshire downs and the chalky Salisbury Plains. 

 And the social life in London has been exhilarating.  I met Uri Geller at a dinner party and I saw Jeremy Irons having a drink by the fireplace when I was at dinner with some friends (at a private club in Soho in a cool converted mansion).  One night I went with Georgina (a labour lawyer friend of mine) to a lecture on human rights.  I thought this would be a meeting of a labour lawyers group but it turned out to be a seminar at the London School of Economics.  The audience was mostly graduate students and professors and the speaker was Conor Gearty, a very entertaining Irish lawyer, who is also the chair of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE.  The topic – “Is the Idea of Human Rights Doing More Harm Than Good?” – was just a springboard for him to decry the American (and British) abuses of human rights (invasion of Iraq, prisoners held in Guantanamo without due process, intrusive security measures) that are (mis)characterized as protection of human rights (invade to give democracy to Iraqis, security to protect the human rights from terrorists).  It was a very articulate presentation and even though I disagreed with some of his assumptions (and many of his conclusions) the long q&a session after the speech helped me understand better the views of these top students and professors about the American global presence.  Sort of like the discussions I have had in the pubs but with bigger words.  Actually, the main point that I accepted is that the US will probably be the only major world power for the next ten years or so (and then other counties or groups of countries will challenge for the top spot) and it should use the time as a window of opportunity to claim moral leadership of the world, not just impose parochial demands on everyone.

 The next night I went to a book launch party with Shami, a delightful woman who lives next door to me.  A friend of hers worked with the Victoria & Albert Museum to catalogue a historical collection of photos of maharajas and nobility of India and the photos were being published in a big coffee table book.  There were about 75 people at the Nehru Centre, the cultural center for the India High Commission.  Fortunately, I dressed in a nice shirt and tie.  As I was standing next to the bar chatting with some people over a glass of wine, a bodyguard gently pushed me to the side to make way for the Duke of Kent, who was there to join support the book.  The Duke seemed like a nice guy (although as jug eared, horse faced and dumb as his cousin Prince Charles) and every one there sucked up to him, referring to him as “Royal Highness” etc.  He is, I believe, #21 in line of succession to the throne.  The High Commissioner of India (like the ambassador but a little higher because India is part of the British Commonwealth) was also there.  I was surprised at the level of dignitaries who showed up but it was quite cool.  After the party, I went to a late dinner with several of the cultured guests and I did my best not to embarrass myself (or my country).  I got home about 2am and, after spotting a wild fox in the parking lot by my flat (I am staying near Battersea Park in a friend’s loft apartment in a converted Victorian school house), I went inside in time to turn on the TV and be embarrassed by the clowns in the Presidential Debate pissing on each other while the future of America and the world hung in the balance.   I mailed in my Absentee Ballot, saddened that neither of the choices offered had the qualifications to lead the country.

 A highlight of my stay in London was a visit from Robbie, my 16 year old son.  He is an exchange student in France, spending 10 months as an 11^th grader in Bourbourg, near Calais.  He took the Eurostar train through the Chunnel to visit with me in London for a few days of male bonding adventures.  We assailed the city in a whirlwind of enthusiasm.  We visited the Tower of London (crown jewels and cruel torture), the Saatchi Gallery (extraordinary modern “art” installations) and the Tate Modern Museum (a monstrously huge converted power plant on the Thames); Robbie saw his first live theatre production (Phantom of the Opera) and had his first pint of British ale (at Princess of Wales pub); after evensong services at St. Paul’s Cathedral we saw a full moon rise over the Tower Bridge and after watching the heavily armed guards at 10 Downing Street we saw the Trooping of the Colour at the Horse Guards Parade; and at dinner late one night (Tex-Mex food at the Texas Embassy) we talked with two Beefeaters in full uniform (and armed with big spears) who had stopped by to eat (but I think they ordered the chicken fajitas).  We had a great time.  http://www.timemert.com/tj.htm

 CONCLUSION

Well, if you are still reading this you have waded through many historical and political observations and I will leave you to draw your own conclusions from them (I have reached some conclusions and this paragraph is, in fact, my conclusion to this missive).  I will leave London in a few days to spend a couple weeks in the warmer climate of Dubrovnik, Croatia, which was a thriving seaport town on the Adriatic even back when Richard the Lionhearted spent a winter there after his shipped crashed during the Crusades in about 1190.  (English troops were fighting in the middle East long before today’s problems.)  In December, I will move to Rome for six weeks, staying in an old apartment near the Piazza Navona, my favorite neighborhood in Rome.  Both TJ and Robbie will join me there for the Christmas holidays, a very special treat for me.  I hope that the future is bright for all of us and will offer many good tricks to amaze and delightful treats to amuse.  And, of course, lots of beer.

Cheerio, Tim

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US Postal Service Delivers in Paris

 (August  2004)

Last Sunday afternoon was a bright and cloudless day in Paris, with a slight breeze to take the edge off the summer humidity.  I left my flat on the Île de la Cité and took a short walk, 1½ blocks and ½ a river to the north, to the square beside the fountains of the Hôtel de Ville, where a large crowd was gathered.  Barricades blocked all access to the usually bustling Rue de Rivoli for the entire length of the street, from the Place de la Bastille to the Place de la Concorde, while a couple hundred bicyclists clad in dorky helmets and a visual cacophony of neon Spandex flew down the road on their way to the Champs-Elysees.  Although it took less than 30 seconds for the entire pack (herd? flock? covey? gang?) of fancy bicycles to pass me, I was inordinately pleased to see the leading wedge was composed solely of riders wearing blue & white team jerseys peddling with furious focus in a protective huddle around the guy in the yellow jersey.  And when I saw that this lead group all wore the logo of the US Postal Service, including the guy proudly sporting the yellow jersey for the 6^th consecutive year, I recalled that it was probably time to send out another junk mail missive to my friends to brag about my travels.

I am living in Paris for a couple summer months in an old apartment near Notre Dame on the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the Seine River where Paris got started as a sleepy little village – until the Romans arrived around 100BC to impose their own ideas of grand civilization.  It is unclear when my apartment building was constructed (many records were destroyed when the English occupied Paris during the 1450s, right after the 100 Years War) but the building appears on the 1551 Paris survey map so it is quite old and wonderful, with a funky Parisian sort of charm.  The central location in the historical/cultural/geographic heart of the city puts me in easy walking distance to most of the places I love to wander about (and wonder about).

And the island location in the middle of the river means that I only had to cross ½ of the Seine, going over the Pont d’Arcole, to get to the Hôtel de Ville (Paris City Hall) on the Right Bank to watch the Tour de France roll into Paris on the final leg of the grueling 3,400 kilometer race.  Crowds line the streets the entire distance of the course through Paris, cheering wildly for all the riders but bestowing particular enthusiasm on Lance Armstrong.  In one of those bizarre juxtapositions, I was a bit disconcerted to watch this prestigious bicycle race whiz past while listening to the raucous shouts of a volleyball game being played by bikini clad filles and other beach bums in deep sand in front of the magnificent City Hall.  From mid-July to mid-August, Paris Plage (Paris Beach) springs up along several kilometers of the Seine, with tons of sand trucked in by barges to cover the riverbank that is decorated with palm trees, beach chairs, umbrellas and hammocks, stages for musical performances and game areas scattered throughout, including an Olympic size swimming pool set up along the river just for this popular event.  Even the dignity of the imposingly monumental City Hall building gets mocked with a sandy beach area covering the huge plaza in front, complete with volley ball net, Frisbee tournament area, wading pools for les petites and showers to hose off the sand when you return to the streets.  It was a strange venue to watch thousands of French people cheering for Lance and the US Postal Service as the Americans once again pedaled to victory.  

They cheered a great athlete, regardless of nationality.  I have, in fact, seen no unusual anti-American sentiment in Paris (unless you count the incredible popularity of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11 as anti-American) and the Hôtel de Ville was even decorated with a hundred American flags on the Fourth of July.  There were no Fourth of July parades celebrating American Independence Day here but I was caught in a mass demonstration on the night of July 4, complete with about 40,000 delirious (and somewhat intoxicated) celebrants and several hundred police dressed in fancy riot gear that made them look like a confused cross between Robo-cops and crazed skateboarders.  Actually, the riot police mostly stood around with bemused smiles as the crowd took over the streets in the Latin Quarter around Place St. Michel, chanting and screaming in delight about the surprise victory of Greece in the Euro 2004 football (soccer) championship.  This major event has dominated sports news throughout Europe since it started late last April, with 16 European nations competing in a 10 week round robin tournament and the final match played on July 4.  (The sporting news here also gave significant coverage to Copa America, a similar 16-nation soccer tournament for the Americas, where recently Brazil beat Argentina to win the cup.  A friend has been sending me occasional copies of the Chronicle Sporting Green to get my baseball fix (thanks, Carol) and I saw a couple articles on the Copa America.  The Paris media gives me no information about my beloved – and apparently bedraggled – Giants.)  There is a large Greek community in the Latin Quarter as well as a large community of students (the Sorbonne and other major universities have been located there since 1253 – the neighborhood is called the Latin Quarter because all classes used to be taught in Latin).  The student population is not Greek (unless fraternities/sororities count) but, as with students anywhere, whether speaking Latin or not, they embrace any excuse for a party and enthusiastically take to the streets given the slightest provocation.  In the midst of the 1968 riots in Paris (no, not about the Democratic Convention or even about Vietnam), the students took over Place St. Michel for several days and, in a rather Berkeleyesque gesture, declared it a free state.  The French labor unions, in a rather un‑Berkeleyesque gesture, went on strike to support the students.  Shortly after those riots, the streets in that area were paved with asphalt because the police had discovered that the picturesque cobblestones were easily pried up by the students and thrown at the police.  Anyhow, except for the drunken debauchery of a typical fraternity party, the demonstration I saw on the Fourth of July was rather tame, and the very visible presence of the Paris riot police was, apparently, a measure often implemented early and effectively to deter problems.  And the Greeks were just getting ready for the jubilation of the Olympics.

After Lance Armstrong led the Tour de France riders past my vantage point on the way to savor his victory laps on the Champs-Elysees, I hopped on the Metro and headed for the same destination.  The Tour de France enters Paris from the east and follows the Seine (more or less) through the heart of the city before the riders end by sprinting eight circuits up and back the complete length of the Champs-Elysees, from the base of the boulevard at Place de la Concorde (formerly called the Place de la Revolution when it was home to the guillotine that reduced the height of a couple thousand citizens of Paris, including Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and a couple years later, in a bit of historical irony, Danton and Robespierre, the two revolutionaries most responsible for beheading the king) to the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs-Elysees.  Riding eight times around this circuit (about six kilometers up/back each time) gives all of the riders a chance to show off in front of the massive crowds (estimated at 375,000 on the Champs-Elysees alone) and gave me a chance to arrive in time by Metro (George V stop on the #1 line) to fight my way into the crowds to see the riders complete the last five circuits.  And in time to snap a pretty good photo of Lance speeding up the Champs-Elysees toward the Arc de Triomphe on the very last lap of the race, still protected front and rear by the loyal team that is enhancing the reputation of the much-maligned U.S. Postal Service.  (The photo is posted on my updated website, www.timemert.com.)  Although the French were gracious hosts (no French riders were even in the top ten) and played the Star Spangled Banner as Lance mounted the podium in the Place de la Concorde (and later several loudspeakers blared songs by Sheryl Crow, Lance’s current girlfriend), I was a bit embarrassed to see far too many Americans arrogantly chanting and boorishly waving American (and Texas) flags a bit too exuberantly.  (David Steele’s column in the 7/26 Sporting Green also noted this behavior.)

Bastille Day

The French had their opportunity to demonstrate a bit of boorish exuberance a couple weeks ago on their independence day celebration, Bastille Day – July 14.  Although there were only seven prisoners in the Bastille when it was attacked by the mobs back in 1789, the event is still celebrated with parades and fireworks.  (Mobs of tourists who still flock to see the Bastille and its torture chamber seem a bit dazed when they arrive at the Place de la Bastille to find no trace of the former fortress prison - only a large traffic circle dominated by the ultramodern Opera Bastille, which some boorish tourists consider simply another torture chamber.)  The Bastille Day parades have no marching bands, colorful floats, long legged baton twirlers or pseudo-celebrities waving desultorily from rented convertibles.  French Bastille Day parades have only military troops and military hardware.  And lots of it, dramatically displayed, starting with an aerial flyby of dozens of planes representing most of the flying toys in the French arsenal.   If you look at a map of Paris, you can see it was designed with a straight line axis running through many major monuments, from the center of the ancient palace of Cour Carrée through the pyramid in the Louvre next door, straight through the Arc du Carrousel, then the middle of the Jardin des Tuileries and the 3,200 year old Obelisk of Luxor standing rigidly erect in the Place de la Concorde, up the Champs Elysees, going under/through the Arc de Triomphe and ending at La Grande Arch de la Defense on the far west side of Paris.  The pilots/navigators of the airplanes must have looked at the map and observed this axis because the parade started with nine jet planes trailing colored smoke (3 with blue, 3 with white and 3 with red – to form a smoky aerial French tricolor) going the length of the route I just described. 

I was standing by the Arc du Carrousel (next to the Louvre) at the head of the Tuileries to watch the dramatic flotilla of more than thirty airplanes thunder over the city, following the tricolor trail left by the leading jets.  After the mighty warplanes rumbled the skies, the troops and tanks and other military stuff hit the road.  The grounded part of the parade starts at the Arc de Triomphe and marches down the length of the Champs-Elysees, a boulevard designed with grand parades (and joyful bicycle sprints) in mind.  To catch a better view of this rolling military display, I walked along the river to the Place de la Concorde at the end of the Champs-Elysees, where the official reviewing stand offered comfort and shade to President Chirac (the president always reviews the troops on Bastille Day) and the numerous generals and dignitaries showing off their ribbons and medals.  I was tall enough to see over the eager crowds and joined them in watching the seemingly endless variety of French military uniforms parade past: quaint, colorful, almost absurdly gaudy uniforms on serious looking soldiers who sang melancholy battalion marching songs as they sweated down the course of the parade.  They also dragged out all the fancy military toys, from tanks, artillery, armored vehicles and water craft (carried on the back of trucks) to troop transports and heavily armed jeeps. At the Place de la Concorde, the parade split into four contingents, each marching in a different direction to take at least part of the mighty military parade to each of the arrondissements of Paris so the citizens could feel more secure knowing the Fifth Republic had lots of firepower.  In spite of the comments about “Vichy cowards” by some Freedom Fries Americans, the French have a proud military history (remember Napoleon – they sure do) and still have a powerful military.  They simply chose not to send their troops to Iraq and, in retrospect, it is now harder to criticize the wisdom of that choice.  But vacation is the time to party, not to argue politics.

And there are street parties all over Paris on July 13.  The night before Bastille Day, the Mairie (City Council) of Paris and the mairie of each arrondissement throw big parties for the citizens, complete with music, food and lots of drink.  The biggest of these parties is held, appropriately enough, at the Place de la Bastille, so that is where I started my review of the festivities.  The huge plaza was closed to traffic and there were two bandstands set up.  I listened for a while to a very good tango band (4 violins, 2 violas, cello and bass, piano and, of course, 3 accordions) with an excellent singer joining in on a few of the numbers.  There were two couples of professional tango dancers on the stage but there were also quite a few people in the crowd dancing, including a few very old couples doing a very dignified tango.  The other stage started blaring disco music when the tango set was over so I left there and stopped at the Caserne Sévegné in the 4e arrondissement (the arrondissement where I live) for a bit.  The local parties are held at the neighborhood fire stations and are called Les Bals des Pompiers (parties at the firehouse – sort of a pun because pompier means fireman but it also means pretentious). 

I visited a few different street parties and ended up at the Hôtel de Ville late in the night, where the Bastille Day party was joined with the closing party for the ParisCinema Festival.  (This month long movie festival with over 400 films gave me a chance to see a few old French movies so I could learn more of the language/culture without enduring the ignominy of too much fish ice cream.)  It was a bit odd.  They had a large screen and showed an old film clip from the mid-1950s of a cool dude showing a hip chick how to do a certain dance step (sort of line dancing with hip wiggling, jumping and finger snapping).  Then some dancers came on the stage and asked everyone to join them in doing the dance.  I was amazed as a couple hundred people rushed to the area in front of the stage and assiduously worked at learning the dance.  In America, I think the process would have been greeted with hoots of derision and everyone would have been too cool or too independent or too afraid to step in.  A couple days ago, I took a boat cruise down the Seine and then up the Marne river to have lunch in the countryside at Bry-sur-Marne.  The boat was full of French tourists and everybody sang along with many of the songs played on the loudspeakers.  Once again, I thought that Americans would never sing along in public and wondered about the meaning of this cultural difference.  I am finding that French culture really is different from American culture, with deeply rooted differences that sometimes surprise me, such as the French eagerness for public group activity and the surprising (to me) embrace of authoritarianism (coupled with a history of very public revolution).

On Bastille Day night, after the military parades and long meals with lots of drinking, the fireworks explode all over the city of Paris.  Like an eager kid, I wanted to see all of the fireworks, of course, but mostly I wanted to see the fireworks around the Eiffel Tower.  I went up to Montmartre, a delightfully anachronistic village on a hill overlooking the city, home to dozens of little bistros echoing with the songs sung by the ghosts of writers and artists who lament that they have been replaced by hordes of tourists.  And, as the largest of the rather puny hills of Paris, it offered a breathtaking view.  After a leisurely meal and couple drinks (one must drink when one is in Montmartre, famous for Pigalle and its many varieties of vice), I found a great place by a fountain near Sacre Coeur to stand to watch the displays of the city.  And I stood for quite a while.  Paris is really quite far north and it was not dark enough for fireworks until after 10:30 p.m., and a large crowd had gathered.  It was just like an American crowd waiting for fireworks, with restless kids climbing on their parent’s shoulders every few minutes, a little jostling here and there, people climbing trees and fences for a view and lots of friendly conversation.  Just as I find differences in cultures, the similarities also abound.  And I was able to see spectacular fireworks all around the Eiffel Tower as the tower itself was lit with a tacky/brilliant display of flashing electric lights. 

Fish Ice Cream

I will not bore you with further details about the stuff that happened on my travels from Florence to Paris except to mention that I spent a joyously relaxing week hiking in the Alps at Lake Como and I spent fabulously frenetic week in Venice, exploring the canals and back alleys.  I will offer one anecdote that gave me a motto that I mumble to myself in those altogether too frequent times that I suffer cultural confusion.  I try my best to immerse myself in the local culture – food, events, history, literature – including trying to force my clumsy Yankee tongue to speak the local language as much as possible.  When I was in Florence, I took several day trips to the ancient hilltop towns of Tuscany. 

One warm afternoon I was in San Gimignano, a magical, mystical Brigadoon of a town that has managed to retain the look and feel of a 14^th century hilltop redoubt, complete with a dominating fortified wall and dozens of towering towers.  There is an old shop, near the main gate, that has been famous for its homemade gelato since at least 1920 and I heard that their peach gelato was uniquely extraordinary.  I read in my little language book that the Italian word for peach is pesca so I confidently asked, in Italian, for two scoops of “pesh a” gelato.  The young woman at the counter looked at her friend and tried to stifle a giggle but they both broke out in laughter.  I looked at them and sheepishly asked, in English, if I had just ordered two scoops of fish ice cream.  They nodded vigorously and I quickly changed my request to “pesk a” gelato.  I received a generous serving and a huge smile.  Now, whenever I commit one of those frequent social/cultural blunders arising from my efforts to understand the local customs, I simply recite my motto: “I will keep trying, even if it means that I have to eat fish ice cream sometimes.”

Fortunately, none of my many delicious meals in Paris has included fish ice cream (at least not literally) and the wine is fabulous and cheap.

Au Revoir, Tim 

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B to C to D

Barcelona to Cinque Terre to Diversions in Italy

Lake Como in the Italian Alps

June 20 to June 30

Travel in March and April, 2004

Happy Trails, tim

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