Um homem e uma mulher. Um apartamento parcamente iluminado. Gaiolas vazias. Excesso de silêncio entre. Gestos. Demarcaçoes. Lugares Algo e Lugares Nada, “territórios onde se pode existir ou deixar de existir um para o outro”.
Porque Não Estou Onde Você Está, dirigida por Maíra Lour, é uma livre adaptação de partes do livro Extremamente Alto & Incrivelmente Perto, do escritor americano Jonathan Safran Foer, cujos capítulos intitulados “Porque não estouonde você está” correspondem a cartas que Thomas Schell, o avôdo protagonista, escreve ao filho na tentativa de explicar sua ausência. Thomas, que após os bombardeios de Dresden, em 1945, perde a esperança na vida e a capacidade de falar, passa a se comunicar através de blocos de notas onde escreve uma única sentença em cada folha em branco.
“Não fui sempre mudo, costumava falar e falar e falar e falar, não conseguia manter a boca fechada , o silêncio se apoderou de mim como um câncer”.
Da peça, cujo cenário e iluminação me lembraram uma mistura de Edward Hopper e Johannes Vermeer (um Vermeer um pouco mais sombrio; quase um Caravaggio, talvez), não tirei nenhuma foto, mas as imagens e diálogos ficaram defintivamente na memória: a história da minha vida é feita de espaços (…) como se pode dizer eu te amo a quem se ama?
And here comes the beginning of the grand finale. The party is about to end, but at least if life was a Felinni’s script, I didn’t need to worry about it. It’s been five months since I got back and here I am struggling with words. I’ve finished reading Curzio Malaparte’s La pelle, that I romantically wanted to coincide with the closing of the narrative about my last trip to Europe - it happened, actually, but other books came and Rome is still waiting for me. I just wrote to my friend James wondering if maybe this is a fear of facing reality, a late attempt to keep the dream alive. I am sure he will say, with his British accent/sarcasm: why do you hold such a high opinion of yourself?
thursday late afternoon.
A beautiful sunset, fatigue, joy and melancholy. Lots and lots and lots of people in the hotel lobby. Long twenty minutes waiting to take the elevator. The strange situation of recognizing people you don’t know but saw earlier that day in a restaurant in Florence. The sound of the suitcases wheeling across long carpeted hallways. The comfort of a big and good room. The emptiness of a too static view. Or, the stateness of a too empty view.
friday morning.
Late breakfast. A walk around the Vatican (outside). Meeting the group. Getting into the bus. Porta Portese, Porta Ostiense, Coliseum, Roman Forum, Baths of Carcalla, Campidoglio and Trastevere, one of the most picturesque areas of the city with its narrow and charming streets. I am not surprised to read now that “Rome’s principal foreign-language cinema is located there”. Trastevere has definitely an artisitic atmosphere, an invitation to a walk and talk.
letters to a young poet.
Leaving the group, we started to explore Rome by ourselves.
La luna, Bertolucci. L’eclisse, Antonioni. La dolce vita, Fellini. These were basically the references I had of Rome. With the exception of these images and one or another comment heard here and there, my mind was free. Rome could present itself as it wanted to.
And it did.
Rome is unquestionably beautiful. And chaotic and enthralling. Despite the ruins and history, it seems to be in a constant movement. I have to agree with Rilke when he says that “Rome has an oppressive and saddening effect during the first days”, although, I didn’t feel the “lifeless and unhealthy atmosphere of museums which it exhales, because of the numberless monuments of the past, which have been hauled out and laboriously restored”. The monuments, they are also in a constant change. They may appear the same and still in the millions of photographies, but you take a better look and you can see a sort of life and joy.
”(…) but there is plenty of beauty here, because there is plenty of beauty everywhere. Waters infinitely full of life flow over the old aqueducts into the great town. They dance in its many squares over white stone bores and spread themselves out in broad roomy basins. They murmur by day and lift up their murmuring by night, which is vast here and starry and soft with breezes. And there are gardens here, unforgettable avenues and staircases, staircases thought out by Michelangelo, staircases which are built in the likeness of downward-gliding waters—the steps in their broad descent-giving birth one to the other like waves. By such impressions does one pull oneself together and win oneself back from all the claims of the many things which talk and chatter here—and how talkative they are!—and one learns slowly to recognise the few things in which there dwells eternity, which one can love, and solitude, in which one can quietly share.”
saturday.
Very early in the morning. My aunt has gone to Napoli and Capri in a lovely trip that I politely decline. Once I was reading La pelle, my curiosity towards Napoli was immense, but in the next morning we would be packing to leave. Rome, la città eterna, was just there, within the reach of my curiosity and solitude. Wandering around all by myself was more than I could ever ask. Although things didn’t happen quite as I expected, they got an interesting turn.
After breakfast, getting back to the room, I met a Colombian couple of our group. They were going to take a boat to Spain in the afternoon and wanted to spend that last morning in the downtown. Fifteen minutes later, the three of us were getting the bus 32. More twenty and five minutes and we reached the Coliseum.
The whole morning was filled with walking arounds and chats. Only she, a retired doctor in her 60’s, spoke some English and could understand better my Portuguese. The missed sentences were replaced by polite smiles and nods by him. I learnt about their family and trips. We took a photo, we shared a pizza and we exchanged emails. After lunch, I accompanied them to the bus stop and waved bye. A brief moment of hesitation and I took one of the buses that go towards the Piazza Venezia. I am pretty sure it was the Route 170.
getting lost.
Like I’ve said before, there’s nothing better, in a trip, than feeling as if you live in that place. There’s nothing like walking without a destination and getting lost. Once the ticket bus is very cheap (1,00 euro), I didn’t fear where that bus would lead.
We passed for places seen the day before. People got on and got off. Near la Piaza Venezia, a group of German tourists came into the bus. I decided to follow them, wherever they were going to. A few stops. Several stops. Less people in the bus. Fewer tourists in the streets. And if the Germans were going to their hotel, somewhere in the outskirts of Rome?
I can’t precisely say how long that bus trip lasted, but I think it was around 40 minutes long because I remember to be worried with my ticket (valid for 75 minutes and to take any transport within this time period). It happeend that the bus went until a station (probably the Termini Station), turned back and took the road again. Some minutes later, the last stop - if I am not wrong, at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls - where the Germans and everyone got off. In less than fifteen minutes, what didn’t allow me a look around, I was getting into this same bus again to get back. Where to?
serendipity.
Making the whole way back to the Vatican to take another direction seemed too much. When I saw the surroundings of the Coliseum, I followed a young couple that had suddenly pressed the stop button and got off. They turned left and I turned right.
Wandering along the streets, I listened some people talking in English. One of the men was jokingly saying that that was the place where the Romans left the cats they didn’t want anymore. I looked around. Across the street, a big square full of ruins. Getting closer, those remains, in the middle of the city, were oddly impressing. Rilke’s words made sense: “though at bottom they are nothing more than the chance remains of another epoch and of a life which is not, and should not be, ours”.
But then, all of a sudden, I saw. First one, then two and three. And then, several of them. The cats of Rome. Being the cat lover that I am, I couldn’t be happier. Every step, every decision I took that day was not casual. From the bus I took to the stop where I got off, serendipity!
the cats of Rome.
The archaeological siteof Largo di Torre Argentina, where Brutus stabbed Julius Ceasar, is today home to hundreds of cats. There, you will find the volunteer-run Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary, an amazing place where cats are cared and fed.
“1929 was the year the sacred area of Torre Argentina was excavated. This was also the year the history of the cats residency began. Stray and abandoned felines took refuge in the protected area below street level. From 1929 until 1993, the cats were more or less regularly fed by a succession of cat ladies or ‘gattare’ as they are called condescendingly by the Romans.” One of the most famous gattare was the Italian actress Anna Magnani. In 1993, Silvia Viviani and Lia Dequel co-founded the cat sanctuary at Torre Argentina.
I spent more than two hours there, playing with the kittens (especially with Drew and Aretusa) and with the big ones. The place is incredible and you can listen to funny and cute stories like the Kenneth and Penelope’s love story: he doesn’t have an arm; sometimes, they welcome a third cat to their love nest.
“Penelope likes handicap guys”, said Silvia or Lia, a dark joke that a Canadian guy that was there didn’t seem to like.
Meet Kenneth and Penelope:
the epilogue.
My time in Rome could’t be better. I got back to the hotel with a big smile on my face. Walking through those streets full of tourists, carrying like trophys the cup and souvenirs bought at the cat shop, I took a last and long look to Rome. I think that the film La luna, especially its last scene,could represent Rome as I saw it in that late afternoon: a large stage with lots of figurants where an ednless drama is played not by real people, but played by characters… of characters.
Thus I ask myself: was my inability to capture Rome due to my view of Rome as a Greek tragedy piece?
Stranded Horse - European roads. Aaron Beckum - American roads. 18h33. I like Italy better after 6pm.
I just ask myself, now, if I would have the same impressions if the trip had begun in Italy. I mean, I am not sure of how fair is a wine tasting, for example. Wouldn’t the taste of the third wine be different it if was the first to be served?
We arrived in Florence later that night and went directly to the hotel. Once the hotel’s restaurant was not quite welcome, we decided to take a look outside. We got a table in the pizzeria accros the street, but being already late, more than half an hour awaiting would be too much. The decision was taken, of course, because they also had a sort of bakery.
- What’s this (snack)? - … - Does it have meat or something? - Non parlo inglese. - Quanto custa? Tem café? (How much does it cost? Do you have coffee?) - Ele não te entende, tia. (He can´t understand you, aunt). Something is said in Italian. A girl comes in. They talk, but she pays attention to us. - … espagnol. - It´s Portuguese, actually. We speak Portuguese. - Oh! Brazil? - and opened a big smile.
We got back to a picknick in the hotel room, taking drinks, croissants and other candies. If a “toilette´s visit” can cost 1,50 EUR in Venice, this night we ate well and cheaply for less than 4 EUR.
thursday morning.
The worst breakfast ever at Hotel Raffaello, a four stars hotel, what makes me remember what the tourist guide of the Swiss travel agency Frantour told when I first went to Venice. She alerted us that 4 stars hotels in Italy were the equivalent to a 3 stars hotel in France. Indeed.
On our way to Florence’s main historic center, I learn that the Stendhal’s syndrome was named after Stendhal’s experience when visiting Florence for the first time in 1817:
“I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty… I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations… Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call ‘nerves’. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”
Hearing this story, I started to feel heart palpitations. I was so excited and so afraid of what I would see that my eyes and legs were in a hurry. After the disappointments of Prague and Venice, would Florence comes to be the unquestionable beauty?
El Duomo, Pallazo Vechio, Piazza della Repubblica, the famous Ponte Vecchio and, finally, the Piazza della Signoria where you really have the feeling of an open-air museum. Florence is beautiful, very beautiful, but no, the Stendhal’s syndrome didn’t hit me. Expectation is the worst disease, “the worst enemy of a senstitive soul”, as I read somewhere, but maybe, just maybe, isn’t possible that I suffer of some syndrome that goes in the opposite direction? Prague, Venice, Florence. I liked Florence and I’d like to come back, but…
But then I find this amazing blog and read that Claudialucia had been in Florence when teenager, in the 60’s, and although she has not experienced the Stendhal’s syndrome, she was fascinated by the town. In 2005, she returned and couldn’t find that same Florence: “Regardless the European country to where I have been very young, I feel, when I go back, that each country has lost a little of what was its specificity. It always resembles a little more to the other countries of the Union”.
And then she says something that perfectly describes my general feeling specially for France:
“And then, like everywhere else, mass tourism has grown, the queues are interminable, the visit time severely controled in some places (Brancacci Chapel, Gozzoli…). Goodbye contemplation, meditation in front of the work of art of your choice. Stendhal would not have more time to experience the syndrome! The Italians no longer have the warm attention they paid to their tourists even to the penniless ones. They have neither the time nor the desire! Too many, too many of us, we surge over the city like a swarm of locusts. We take currency, certainly, but the human relationships are not anymore what they used to be.”
pizzaland.
Tired of eating margherita pizza in almsot every country we have been, we couldn´t choose anything else but… margherita pizza! The waiter was in a terrible bad mood and didn´t speak a single word in English, but we managed to ask a chocolate dessert that was nothing but Nutella. Croissants, pizza and Nutella, that´s how I could resume/call a traditional European cuisine for tourists. A creps in Berlin with: Nutella. In every hotel´s breakfast they offered croissant or some cake with: Nutella!! We were in the land of pasta and I have to say that the pizzas and the pasta in general were way worse than the ones we have in Brazil. Can it be explained by that old Italian immigration to Brazil and by the recent and large Brazilian immigration to Europe? A waitress in Venice, when asked if there was too many Brazilians living there, said: “There´re more Brazilians here than in Brazil”.
we breathe art.
I didn´t go to any museum or gallery, but I don´t feel for it. When I went to Paris, I had in mind that if I did nothing else but visited the Louvre, it was all great. Silly me! I did not go into the Louvre and in a next time, if I have to choose between the Louvre and to wonder arround in the narrow streets and small unkown book shops, I pick the second option. As the journalist Janer Cristaldo says, the intelligent traveleris the one that sees the outside of museums and goes inside bars. It´s not a matter of intelligence or of being a bon vivant, but a town pulses, lives in its streets. And that´s how I felt Florence. In long, narrow and dirty streets, I breathed art. Pure, imperfect, unconfined, necessary air/art.
Demain, New York sera une ville. Mais ce soir appartient à la magie.
On the road, sometimes I used to read Simone de Beauvoir´s L´Amérique au jour le jour 1947. Her description/impresisons of her first evening in New York perfectly describe my feelings towards Venice: tomorrow, Venice is gonna be a town. But this evening it is part of the magic.
We reached Mestre in the late afternoon. We made the check in and immediately left, taking a line bus that left us at the Piazzale Roma, in Venice, less than 30 minutes later.
As I imagined, the cold we got in the other cities didn’t follow us through Italy. The evening weather was agreeable. The streets got emptier as night fell. Lights were turned on here and there. Noise of steps turning the corner of tiny, dark and dirty-looking streets could be hear. Students from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura were chatting around. People going back home. And I was discovering another side of this city to where I had never felt like going back.
I’ve been in Venice four years ago. I was expecting to find Woody Allen’s Venice. Instead, I saw myself sweating, surrounded by millions of tourists. The hotel was out of town, so I hadn’t seen the city of love than under sunlight. This evening, though, things were different. My feet recognized the ground; they knew where to go to as if they had lived there. It’s easy to get lost in Venice, but it’s also easy to find yourself. Actually, to get lost is part of the “game”, of its magic. Venice is a labyrinth, but an easy one. Everywhere you see the “exit signs”: PER RIALTO and PER S. MARCO (the famous Piazza San Marco) and ALLA FERROVIA and PIAZZALE ROMA. In my case: follow Per S. Marco to go, Alla Ferrovia or Piazzale Roma to get back.
As you approach la Piazza San Marco, the voices get louder and the air gets different. The old and known Venice starts to show up. I liked that the last bus was about to leave, preventing us to reach la piazza that night. After eating a delicious risotto in a trattoria and had felt the city as I had never before, I wanted to keep that feeling that I knew it was unique, that I knew it wouldn’t resit the daylight of next morning. I explain myself: while we were waiting for the food, we saw some people arriving home after work. Their building’s door was just next to us. Their window was over our heads. They didn’t seem upset, but I can’t say they were comfortable. Four years ago, in a sunny sunday, I suddenly looked around (in the Piazza San Marco) and felt a terrible melancholia. I just “understood” the high rates of suicide, even though I can’t link it to beauty and romance. I loved Venice this evening, but as expected, I hated it next day. Mid-autum and that terrible heating. People and people and more people, no matter where you go or look at. It’s like Venice’s beauty get lost, forgotten behind and under slogans, tourist guides and old fashioned romantic concepts.
It is a city of ghosts and fantasies, outside time and space. That is why people of exceptional sensibility such as artists can become overwhelmed, passing without pause from life to death. For them, sensitive to the appeal of aesthetics, it is deadly beautiful and beautiful to die in.*
Is it sensibility the anguish I felt for the second time in Venice? But is the “Venice syndrome” applicable even to those who doesn’t fall in love with it? Or maybe this “not falling in love” is, actually, a denial, a fear of getting trapped in the labyrinth?
* Death in Venice is big tourist attraction, by Philip Willan.
December 12, 2011 at 7:44pm
sunday, lunch time.
Drizzle and cold. We reach Vienna. My first impressions: a stunning city, a richer Paris or le plus cher arrondissement de Paris (le 6ème, je crois).
Lunch at Rosenberger Marktrestaurant. Be careful or you will end up paying much more than you expect. Rosenberger works like that: you pay for the side of the plate (small, medium, large), but you can’t just fill it with whatever you want. If you want salad and meat, for example, you will have to pay a plate for each what is not cheap at all. The small one is around EU8, I guess, and the food is very regular.
After lunch, check in and unpack. Sightseeing tour.
Vienna has 23 Bezirke (distritcs), each one having a name and a number just like in Paris. Innenstadt or Innere Stadt, the 1st district, is the most central and most elegant of them. The 2nd, Leopoldstadt, situated on an island and apart of the centre of Vienna by the Danube Canal, is very uninteristing with its modern and mirrored buildings. The only exception is the Wiener Riesenrad, the famous Ferris wheel designed and built by two English engineers in 1896.
We stayed in the 5th district, Margareten, that has a working/middle-class suburb look. It has a great population of immugrants, especially coming from Turkey and former Yuogoslavia. There’s not much to see, although it is very close to the main points. For me it was fine. I liked to walk around, at night, and in the next day under the rain.
monday.
Subway. Station Pilgramgasse, Vienna U-Bahn line U4, just in front of the hotel. A nice Austrian woman helped us to buy the ticket. “Yes, it is ok to put a simple note inside the machine. You won’t lost it”.
- Where do you want to go?
- Close to Albertina.
- So you can get off at Karlplatz. It’s the second stop. Two simple tickets?
Raining. Umbrella and the left hand trying to get the camera off of the bag when something called the attention . Maybe something unnoticed by others, some small something that to you makes all the difference for some explicable or inexplicable reason. Who knows why, who understand the eyes, heart and mind of the other?
the sacher torte.
After a lot of indecision, we ended up eating at Rosenberger a simple sandwich and finally tired the famous Sacher-Torte that is not all that delicious. Ok, I didn´t try the original one, but I am pretty sure it wouldn´t taste that different. Hotel Sacher was close by, what I came to know only now. My distraction made me think that the Hotel Astoria (I think) was actually the Hotel Sacher, where you find the original torte. We waited in a long line to get a table at the café of the Hotel Astoria (if the hotel has also a coffee shop, it is the one) and once we were in, we gave up. The café is one of those perfect places to take a coffee and read or write for an hour, but all those people waiting to get in and all the calm bustle of the waiters discouraged me.
meeting Johann Strauss.
In the evening we listened to a wonderful concert by the Salonorchester Alt Wien at the Kursalon. Just like in the times of Johann Strauss that directed his orchestra from the position of first violin and played regularly at Kursalon, who leads the Salonorchester Alt Wien is the principal violinist Professor Udo Zwölfer who is also the founder of the orchestra along with Josip Susnjara. Compositions mostly of Strauss and Mozart , polkas, operetta and ballet soloists. Definitely a must see.
the residents of the 4th floor.
I like to watch the buildings when it’s dark. If during the day the city lives and pulses through/because/for the people, at night it’s like they’re themselves. I like to look up and around and see the lights of the storefronts, of the windows. I like that (usually) squared luminosity surrounded by shadows. Because of that, during my two nights in Vienna, I observed the residents of the 4th floor. She: blonde hair in a bun, red blouse. He: dark hair. Are they a couple? Was she holding a baby in the second evening? How is their life?
no kangaroos in Austria.
The only thing I bought in Vienna was a postcard where you read: No Kangaroos in Austria. I loved it. I got imagening the poor ones who goes to Austria to see kangaroos and finds Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss. However, a kangaroo was seen in Austrian lands a few years ago, so maybe these guys can get lucky someday.
I hope I do. Not the luck to see kangaroos, but to go back to Vienna someday. I asked to an old couple from Colombia who were travelling with us which town they prefer: Paris or Vienna? Vienna, the wife said, without any hesitation. “But I lived in Paris when I was student, so…” I have to go back to Paris and see if I would feel the same I did when I had been there four years ago. Lot of things changed. I have changed a lot. Vienna is extremily beautiful, but I don’t have a liaison with it - writers, movies, film directors, the language - as I do with France. But I also didn’t have the time and the town for myself. In a next time, maybe. In a next time, visiting all the museums, going to more concerts, calling home from that same cheap internet house run by Turkey guys, getting the subway, walking around and taking a coffee and reading for hours in a coffee house just like the vienneses do. Because the coffee culture is a strong tradition just as it is the English 5´o clock tea. I would get a table in some café at 4 ´o clock and tobserve the stammgäste (habitué’s).
So what is the function of the Viennese coffee house, other than the drinking of coffee? Nothing less than the extension of civilisation. These are places designed for reflection, where people come to read (and write) books, trade gossip, think, dream and indulge in the glorious pastime of watching the world go by.*
*The coffee houses of Vienna have a unique charm, by Michael Henderson.
November 25, 2011 at 7:16pm
friday, more traffic than São Paulo.
We, as tourists, sometimes forget that the cities exist by themselves or despite ourselves. Sometimes we tend to expect of them the passivity of paintings hanging in a museum. It was 6pm and we got stuck in a terrible traffic while trying to reach the Pest side.
Budapest is divided into two sides by the river Danube: Buda and Pest, that were once two different towns. If the beauty of Prague is unquestionable, Budapest suffers with the “love it or hate it” impressions. It must be seen beyond the aged and worn buildings, you have to give it a chance, said our guide. It´s not that I am trying to go against the grain, but if we are talking about unquestionable beauty, we are talking about Budapest. Not even the trash and furniture left on the streets (not that organized as we see in American movies), turned me off. Budapest under the rain is even more beautiful than I could imagine. It was an almost immediately love. Well, in that case, the “love it or hate it” theory is not only applicable as it is true.
Later that night, we attended a folk evening at Vasapark Étterem, a restaurant located in the outskirt of Budapest in a reservation surrounding, where you really feel the traditional “csárda” atmosphere - far from the noise of the modern world, but still close to the city. We had a wonderful time listenting to Farkas József and his gipsy bandand enjoying the traditional Hungarian cuisine: Hungarian cold mixed appetizer, Goulásh soup served in cauldron, mixed meat plate and Somló-style Sponge Cake that seems to be very sweet, till you take a piece in your mouth and feel its bitterness. All that was deliciously accompanied by red and white wine, soda water and coffee to finish. When you arrive, you are welcomed with pogácsa and the Miguelito, a strong ice-cold homemade grappa that you are supposed to chug, but that I doubt you can unless you´re a Russian. After Miguelito, people say, anyone can see (the Danube) blue.
freezing saturday morning and the guy who likes bossa nova.
Hősök tere (Heroes’ Square) and Szent István-bazilika (St. Stephen’s Basilica). After getting warmer and taking the most delicious kavé ever (maybe the Rétesház coffee. or the coffee with caramel?) at Első Pesti Rétesház Kávéház, I talked to this nice Hungarian vendor.
- Where are you from?
- Brazil.
- Oh, I love Tom Jobim, João Gilberto.
He told me it was not difficult to find bossa nova albums in Budapest. He also likes Jorge Ben Jor, but unfortunately, he doesn´t know much of the contemporary Brazilian music scene. It was such a great conversation that if I had more time, I would get back there and write down some names for him.
deciphering the language as savoring the dessert.
Lunch at Coffe House. Despite the cold, a Jegeskávé Vaníliafagylalttal. I am completely in love with languages, not only with the sonority, but mainly with the alphabet. In a first moment, I will definitely chose a food or a drink by their names. If I am not that brave in trying exotique dishes, I have no problems trying coffees. However, it is not the case here. No guts required to taste the Jegeskávé Vaníliafagylalttalo. It has a quaint look but it´s safe enough to be asked: espresso, milk, chocolate, ice cube and icecream.
Walks, photos. Beautiful buildings, very nice people. A woman helped me to find the post office. Once inside of it, everything was written in Hungarian and almost none of the employees spoke English. Thanks to another nice Hungarian woman who did speak English, I understood that my card, for some reason, was no acceptable and that they didn´t accept Euro; luckily, there was a money exchange office across the street.
More walks, more photos. The Nyugatirailway station, that was built by Gustave Eiffel’s company, is quite a beautiful architecture from the outside, but inside it is somehow unkempt and rough with cheap looking stores. Outside, some homeless and drunk people hanging around. We can notice some still visible communist traces coexisting with the globalization´s ills (i.e. immigration, perhaps). Are the many decadent peepshows and alikes a legacy of old and harder times or glimpses of a delayed modernity?
at night. nem beszélek angolul.
What I most love to do when travelling and being in a different place is to try to catch the daily life. I don´t travel to get rest, I definitelly don´t follow the concept of taking a vacation. I will organize the hotel room and I will go shopping as if I lived there.
Trying to buy a coffee, a simple coffe, in a small supermarket close to the hotel was quite a battle; in a good and challenging sense, of course. “Sorry, I don´t speak English” or something like that said in Hungarian. Without any other option, I had to try to understand that combination of letters, their accents and words. The thing is that with the exception of the known brand SPAR and the name Coffe 2 in 1, everything in the package was written in German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and Croatian (the initials HR, as I just came to read, are due to Hrvatska, the name of Croatia in their own language). This absence of the English language makes me wonder if it has some relation to the fact that Budapest is not unspoiled by tourism what, by the way, is one of the good points about this town. Having a camera in hands in Prague is something that will not even be noticed; in Budapest, I felt a little bit ackward in doing so. Budapest seems more real in a way, still untouchable.
the wise homeless man.
After getting back from the supermarket, during the long walk back to the hotel - maybe 6 long blocks - an old homeless man looked to the bread I was carrying and made a hand sign meanning he was hungry. I didn´t stop. Two blocks forward, I thought about coming back. I didn´t. I arrived in the hotel, I ate, but I couldn´t stop thinking about it. I had to get back and find him. There was a group of boys singing around an old man, but I wasn´t sure he was the one. I walked a little bit more, I waited. When I saw him alone, I approached and offered him a bag with crackers and chocolate. He was simply amazing!
He asked me if I was a student in Budapest. “No, just a tourist”. He spoke in a very good English and I know there are many others languages he knows. If I couldn´t understand him better, I guess it was my fault. Once he started talking in Hungarian, when he asked “English?”, I said “yes”.
- LA?
- No.
- (you come from) NY?
- Yeah.
I thought it was better like that. It was more than 9pm and even if he did not smell bad or drunk, he was a homeless guy that spoke “the only tongue in the world the the devil respects”.*
*Budapest, novel by Chico Buarque. Aqui, texto interessante sobre o idioma húngaro, sobre o artigo Retrato Íntimo de um Idioma do tradutor Paulo Rónai.
*** The sound of the video was taken from Raymond Depardon´s film Paris.
November 16, 2011 at 9:34am
friday, it rains.
In a very lovely and welcome pizza house. Arriving here, even before going out of the bus, I had already liked it. It has a nice atmosphere. The opposite feeling I had in Prague. The city is beautiful, not crowd, sort of quiet. People are friendly, at least the few ones we “talked to”. Too bad we didn’t have more time to walk around.
In January 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The dissolution was “negotiated peacefully without the need for external mediation”, as said Václav Klaus, President of Czech Republic. A curious fact is that like we Portuguese speakers can easily understand Spanish while Spanish speakers can have a very hard time understanding us, the Slovaks can more easily understand the Czech language, when Czechs have more difficulty to understand Slovak. There’s an interesting correspondence between a Slovak student and a Czech student where they talk about the relationship between the two nations, especially towards the language/communication. “I have heard a story from a Czech friend of mine who told me that her 11 year old cousin came to Slovakia for a visit and had to speak English, because he had serious difficulties understanding Slovak. Why is this so? Why don’t Czech people read Slovak books just as Slovaks read Czech ones? Why don’t people listen to Slovak as much in the Czech Republic?”. Here is the answer: Dear Neighbour.
We didn’t stay more than two hours in Bratislava. A miscommunication about our luggage in Prague and we left 40 minutes late. About three hours later, we reached Bratislava. It rained. We lost more than half hour trying to buy an umbrella. Around forty minutes eating (choose a place + wait for the food + coffee + asking for the check + trying to convert Slovenská koruna to Euros - I think we ended up paying more, but it was ok; the waiter, the place and the food were quite nice). We had only a little time left and no camera in hands. A quick look around (Slovenské národné divadlo, Slovak National Theater; Slovenské národné múzeum, Slovak National Museum) and we hit the road again.
All I have from Bratislava is a city map, a postcard and a credit card receipt. I have a few memories, but they are less visual than sensorial: blurry images wrapped by a warm empathy.
Arriving in Prague, after a brief history presentantion, the tour guide says that it is so beautiful that it was able to melt Hitler´s cold heart; he liked Prague so much that he spared it. Add to that Franz Kakfa and Milan Kundera´s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and you can have an idea of my excitement.
The guide also warns us that we were entering the city by a ugly part; its beauty was stored in the old town.
A quick stop at the hotel and we headed to the historical center. There must be some principle of chemistry between people and places that can explain why some immediately get us and others just don´t. Before taking these notes, I came across an old article where I read: I am now inPrague.According to reckless observers, the most beautiful city inthe world. Debatable opinionfor those who livedin Paris.* Twenty and one years later, and one month before reading it, I thought the same (just changing lived for have been).
Prague´s historical center is more than ten centuries old and is part of the UnescoWorld Heritage. Its picturesque, charming, unique (and etc adjectives) mix of architecture styles amazes the vast majority of travellers. Call me a republican (i.e., conservative), but I felt dizzy. Frank Gehry & Vlado Miluni´s Fred and Ginger**, that I didn´t see but in pictures, can be a hyperbole expression of my feelings towards Prague. It is a very beautiful town, of course it is, but there was a but in my heart, brain or whenever cognition happens.
thursday, traces of communism.
Randomly reading around to find out the exact time that Prague had been under the communism (41 years) and write about its nowadays still visible traces, I found this article from 2008: Forty Years After Prague Spring, All That’s Left of Communism is a Babushka with an Overbite. What first called my attention in Prague were the terrible outdoors, tacky in all its conception: layout, fonts and colors in old-fashioned style (not to be confused with old-fashioned stylish). There is also a communist something in the air that reached its highest cume in the breakfast. Clarion Congres Hotel is quite nice (4 stars with very good transport accessibility; 15 minutes from the historical center), but its business atmosphere is kind of depressing. Even more depressing is the breakfast room. It´s a surreal experience, like to be in a shopping center food court: lots of people, terrible smell of food*** and a really, but really bad electro dance music. As I came to know later that day, it´s been everywhere. In lot of stores where I came in, I could hear that kitschy beat that we used to hear in our radio stations years ago. Unless this trend came back and I am not aware of that, they are really delayed. Speaking of stores, in general I found people in Prague hostile. I thought it was due to the huge mass of tourists that, I can imagine, come to be really annoying, but in this article I mentioned a few lines above, we have the answer:
Remnants of Communism can be seen in attitudes, he added. “People still behave with innate cultural oddities. Arrogance in restaurants and bad customer service, for example – that all stems from Communist background.”
Kratochvil agrees that traces of that time “are present in our hearts, the way people think, how shop assistants present their goods to their customer — mostly unwillingly, reluctantly, knowing their wages are under average.”
afternoon & jazz.
And not everything is that bad. Crossing the Charles Bridge, suddenly I listen “the best street jazz ever”. If you ever go to Prague, you have to check these guys out. They are the J.K. Novák & Bridge Band. I could listen to them the whole day. The song up there, “Street Car Blues”, is from their cd.
We also listened to a concert. To get lost in a town is the best way to discover it. After having finally found a post office, we reached Pařížská Street - Paris Street, the most expensive shopping street in Prague - and from there the beautiful St. Nicholas Church where a concert was about to begin. For 350 Kč, around EU14, we listened to Vratislav Vlna (oboe) and František Št’astný (organ and harpsichord) playing Marais, Händel, Carl Bach, Vivaldi, J.S. Bach, Telemann, Albinoni, Mozart and A. Marcello. I read in the program koncertu I have in hands, short annotations about some of the songs and a small comentary that took me back to that church, making me precisely remember the facial expressions of some people sitting next to me: almost a general immobility. are people feeling the music? or in what are they thinking?
friday.
Taking the road again. I leave Praha with half a dozen photos and a feeling of disappointment. Being in Prague - remember the dizzy feeling? - was like being on Twitter: high traffic of people, too much information, limited space - literally and figuratively speaking (maybe if I could stay a week or more) - and lack of substance as a direct or indirect result. But perhaps the discomfort was mutual. Perhaps Prague didn´t show me its best because I wasn´t fully opened to it. I wonder if things would turn out differently if I was with my camera. In Berlin, the hotel staff lent us an adapter plug. In Prague, they said they dind´t have any, but we could buy some next day. Yeah, but our schedule didn´t match with the commerce opening hours, thus I stood empty-handed. My camera was an extension of myself. Without it, I felt incomplete. Something was missing and there were thousands of things that worth to be framed. The puppets stores, for example. As soon as my eyes caught some of them, my hands searched for the camera inside my bag. Marionette/puppet shows for children and adults are a tradition in Prague. Unfortunately, I haven´t seen any, but I bet that The Black Light Theatre, Lanterna Magika and the National Marionette Theatre worth a view.
* “These buildings, I truly like. It looks so much like Paris”, it was me thinking, looking to a specific street, when the local guide said that that street, with “mainly Art Noveau buildings”, was inspired in the boulevards parisiens, especially the Champs-Elysées. Its name: Pařížská, Paris Street. There´s also another version of the story: “In 1926 Pařížská was given its present name, which is best translated as Boulevard de Paris, to pay tribute to France for helping to free the Czechs from Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I”.
**Playfully Postmodern or Seriously Post-Apocalyptic?, interesting article by Josef Pesch.
***For me there´s a big difference between breakfast and lunch. I don´t like having lunch before 8 am, 9 am or any other am. Of course there was also cereal, bread, cheese and cakes, but seeing people carrying plates with mountains of lentil, tomato, egg stuffs, sausage and alikes early in the morning was not the best ingredient to keep up the appetite.
October 30, 2011 at 5:27pm
wednesday morning.
direction: Prague. stop: Dresden
Dresden, a city in eastern Germany, near the Czech border, was almost entirely destroyed for four air raids led by the Allies between 13 and 15 Feburary, 1945. Although it´s difficult to think in terms of war crime with all the atrocities comitted by the Nazis, the action was one of the most controversial ones of the Second World War: Dresden was a center of art and culture, withoutsignificant military or industrial installations; thus, by a “war point of view”, the attacks happened for no reason. However, in 1942, the newspaper Dresden Jahrbuch had declared: Anyone who knows Dresden only as a cultural city, with its immortal architectural monuments and unique landscape environment, would rightly be very surprised to be made aware of the extensive and versatile industrial activity, with all its varied ramifications, that make Dresden one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich.
Where does the truth remain?
In fact, can we use the word truth or everything is a matter of perspective? Like John Hope Franklin said, the writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation. Or, in other words, Schopenhauer would say: Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.
If it was because of the history plus the bad weather, I don´t know, but as soon as we arrived in Dresden, I didn´t like it. This wednesday morning was cloudy and gloomy. Not the type of cloudy days that I like so much, but a certain tone of gray that could be described as (feeling) blue. Something between a #999 and a #777. Probably a #888.
We walked by. We shopped. We ate. The grayscale* took me in a way that I didn´t feel like photographing. Actually, I think it was the whole context. There´s something really odd about the tourist crowd. It´s a sort of unmerited invasion. The camera doesn’t rape - says Susan Sontag in On Photography - or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate-all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.
That´s this detachment that disturbes me. It´s, mostly, just another city, another building, another something. Some people seem to not even notice that it´s another language. “What´s the name of this place again?”
It might sound a cliché, but don´t you wonder how it is daily life there? Aren´t you curious to take a look in the local newspapers or magazines even if just to realize that the main topics are pretty much the same everywhere, that people are pretty much the same? Where are these people, by the way?
If I had to describe Dresden in a single expression, it would be: ghost town. Outside of the main commerce and with the exception of a few tramways, I didn´t see more than two or three people who I could assure to be dwellers. A sort of strange emptiness surrounded by a constant coming and going. But that is just from where I stand.
A photograph is not an opinion. Or is it?**
Back home, seeing some internet pictures and the ones my aunt took, I got a bit surprised: Dresden looked more beautiful and more interesting than the view I had of it. Besides, my own photos, when worked on, got a different feeling. I won´t enter into the subject of manipulating reality, but isn´t everything really a matter of perspective?
If the observer influences the experiment, not only the story but the truth itself must have three sides.
*Don´t be misled by the photos. As previously said, they were worked on in PhotoScape.
** Essay by Susan Sontag which appears in “Women” (Random House, 1999) by Annie Leibovitz.
Cela ne m’étonne pas que tu aies aimé Berlin, c’est une ville tout à fait à ton image. Ombres et lumières.
So, it happened. As if I was not lucky enough, a flight connection that would keep us for seven hours at the Charles de Gaulle airport was changed almost last minute. Our flight left Paris at 10:20 am and at noon we were reaching Berlin. To my pleasure, silence and organization as I had twice and previously seen in German aiports.
Lack of traffic, a strange emptiness in the streets. Later that day, I understood: it was October 3, the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, Day of German Unity, national holiday. Checking my travel notes, I read:
Presque Berlin. Et je sens rien. Je suis toujours moi et ça ne change jamais. C´est ça le problème. 17h45: Crêpes au fromage et crêpes au Nutella. À table avec des gens inconnus. Grenoble, mais plus grande. Il y a qualque chose que ne va pas. Le monsieur et son chien.
What was not fine? I can´t tell anymore. Hotels bring memories, but when we were (my aunt and I) in this sort of fair with folkloric music, walking around, buying crepes, sharing a table with German nice couples, I was feeling really fine. It was like an unique experience. Simple, thus unique. The old monsieur et son chien were in a park pench, in front of a church close to the hotel. He seemed happy, he smiled at me, but I didn´t dare to take a photo of him and his dog. My first impressions of Berlin: gentle people, maybe closed up, but not cold at all.
tuesday, a fraternal kiss.
Bradenburger Tor, Reichstag, Alexanderplatz, Holocaust Mahnmal, Siegessäule, East Side Gallery/Berlin Wall, the Jewish quarter, Museumsinsel or Museum Island, St. Nicholas - a small historical district near the Spree River. Large avenues, bus, tramway, subway and lots, lots of bikes. East Berlin. West Berlin. History versus modernity. I like more the east side, even the prefabricated Soviet buildings that, for me, look more beautiful than our modern ones. It was strange to face the Berliner Mauer, a symbol of such a painful and difficult time transformed, today, into a stage for tourists. I mean, I wish I could´ve felt something else, I wish I could sit there and feel how hard it was the life specially in the eastern side instead of just taking a bunch of photos. But, maybe, I was expecting a heavy atmosphere when things can be light and fun just like Goodbye Lenin!
A brief look and souvernirs at the Deutsches Historisches Museum. Almost 3 pm. Lunch at Opernpalais Restaurant. My gastronomic principles, let´s say, didn´t let me to try a Würstle, the famous German sausages, but I couldn´t leave without trying the Berliner Pilsener - even not liking beer. When eating the dessert, a guy started to play jazz. Just the perfect closing for such an enjoyable time.
Walks. Photos. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, not the best choice, but when you are with someone to whom visit Europe is basically taking photos and shopping - and definitely not walking - you have to choose quickly and not wisely. 5 pm or something. I put my aunt in a cab and got back to the Altes Museum where I could sit down and enjoy the view; at my left, the Berliner Dom.
Around 6pm. I take notes on newspapers I won´t be able to read unless I manage to study German when I get back home. That´s weird to want to communicate when incommunicable: no cell phone, no desire to check internet, no extra money to buy a telephone card. Alone in Berlin. I really love this feeling. It´s always the same: in the beginning, the city scares the hell out of me, till I feel it. Once the connection is set, my body asks for more “living in” days to really experience it.
Not that much but still a long walk way back to the hotel, crossing the Alexanderplatz. I could´ve taken a cab, but I can´t really feel a city if I don´t walk by, if I don´t have the impression of mingling with the locals. I searched for a bakery, but I couldn´t find any. In that same fair where I had been the day before, a friendly girl carried a basket full of Brezels. I bought two and felt a little bit like living there, carrying them with me in my way back home.
wednesday, the epilogue.
Berlin impressed me a lot. I needed much more days to really know it, but for what I ´ve seen, I can say it´s a very beautiful and welcome city. It´s amazing how almost everyone respects the traffic. If the traffic ligth is green, even if there´s any car coming, people won´t cross the street until it´s open to them. They´re organized and correct, but not in a bad way like sheeps, if you know what I mean. I´ve seen the same in the other countries we visited; they just know what´s right and respect it.
If you go to Berlin and stay more days than I did, be sure to rent a bike. It costs around 10/12 € a day. Next time, I will definitely do it as well to check the Bode-Museum and the Berlinische Galerie that is showing till february 2012 photographies by Friedrich Seidenstücker. Too bad I lost it. I specially like the one called Tochter und Papa.
Berlin & I is a bi-monthly city guide quite interesting. The hotel offered it for free, so I don´t know if you can buy it somewhere. If so, it´s not expensive: 3,60 €. Speaking of hotels, we stayed at Leonardo Royal that is really, really good and well located, with easy acess to the most important points of the city. The room is big, nice and clean and there´s a eletric kettle if you want to take a tea or a coffee during the night or don´t feel like going out to eat.
Speaking of eating, I haven´t seen any bakery in any part I have been. Just a curious thing, I haven´t seen any pharmacy either. If it means that the Berliners don´t get sick that often, it´s one more reason to say that I think I´d like to live there.
* The same friend quoted in the beginning of this post told me about Lou Reed´s album entitled Berlin. Reading about its story (It tells the story of two loved-up junkies in the divided city of the same name. The songs variously concern domestic abuse, drug addiction, adultery, prostitution, and suicide.) I got why it reminded me of Bowie and Christiane F. Unfortunately, I missed Kurfürstendamm and Bahnhof Zoo.
