"Awkward Abroad"

Excessively early

jess — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:45:15 +0000

Half an hour to boarding, which is excessive for most people, but I muchly prefer waiting around closeby the train, over waiting around away with the risk of having to run to catch it. There’s a really pretty Turkish(?)-speaking family waiting nearby with brightly-coloured luggage. I have a ticket for the train but no seat reservation… I hope that it isn’t awkward or anything like a standing room ticket because that would be hella annoying… I don’t think they really do standing room in the West anyways. Although I know they offer it between downtown Montreal and Dorval on ViaRail, but it’s less than half an hour, for a free airport transfer in case you’re travelling from somewhere else on the Windsor-Quebec corridor.

I hope it’s not too difficult to get to the airport. S1 if I can remember correctly (probably should’ve written it down), and only the first three train cars go to the airport. I hope I have a place to sit. I’ll be happy if I can get in by 8, but happier still if I can be there earlier…. why would you reschedule a flight to depart earlier? Lame-o.

So Verena and I hung out a bit and complained about all the yuppy hipsters in Prenzlauer Berg before Sibylle and I went to have a “La Paryse-flavoured” pizza at Due Forni… locals refer to the three Italian restos as the Communist Italians. It must be one of the few Western countries where legit communists remain. I remember reading that Bologna remains quite red. Negri is from there I think. Prof. Button made us read all these post-Marxist things… the Communist Manifesto for the 21st century, or something.

I hope the train comes in soon so I can doze a little bit. I can never sleep before an early departure, so I must look like a wreck. Sibylle got out of bed to say goodbye but I think the thing about long stays and solid friends is that the goodbyes are always anticlimactic (used this word too often with Kat in Beijing) because I know I’ll see them again. I’m almost certain I’ll see both Kat and Sibylle this summer in Toronto/Montreal or even NYC anyways.

A Birthday!

jess — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:56:34 +0000

29 June 2011 is the birthday of baby Josefine. We’re back at Sibylle’s flat after having dinner with the baby’s grandmother who’s just arrived. She is a Lutheran pastor, but surprisingly chill. I was only catching bits of the conversation because only bits were translated and also I was tired, but when the conversation turned to the christening, my ears perked. She said that the significance of the christening was about raising your child as a social being (rather than in the contemporary way of narcissism). This morning she spent with Sibylle’s mum in Lingen because she was worried. But everyone says the baby is okay now. Apparently the new mother was back to her straightforward self by midday. Josefine spent the day in intensive care but no one seems to be too concerned so I assume everything is all right.

Chimneys

jess — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:39:50 +0000

I wanted to write about how André Kertész visited Toronto in 1979 and how it made me feel to see a photograph of a chimney from MY city, so unexpectedly, in his exhibit, but there was no break before Samarkand, so I’ve already forgotten my words.

It was a short but worthwhile visit. Now I’m having a cappuccino at Restaurant Gropius in Martin-Gropius-Bau. The brochure says:

The photographs of the Swiss artist lead to Central Asia and confront the viewer with its explosive present-day reality.

I guess so. The title Snow in Samarkand has much more romantic undertones. I expected it to be a little bit Orientalist, but in an old school way. I don’t know about the photographs of development and war. There was not nearly as much Uzbekistan (where I remember and believe Samarkand to be) as there was Afghanistan and Kashgar. In the series, “War – As Far As As We Know,” I was naturally drawn to the Qing Dynasty, East Turkestan, and the PRC, but I don’t know what it weighs out to, proportionally.

I don’t like foam or coffee that requires sugar but I love the sound of sugar dissolving on collapsing milk foam. Reading the quotes by and introductions to Kertész, I felt like I could relate… though not necessarily through photography. If ever I were an artist I think could only/best express myself in writing. I like to write what I feel (on the off chance that I have feelings, haha). When I saw all his chimneys, even before they were properly introduced, I wonder if they did for him what scaffolding does for me. He’s famous and important but I’d never heard his name.

It’s very possible I’ve seen his swimmer or dancer before, but the chimneys made me feel like I could relate. Maybe it’s silly but it makes me feel art-ful… or confirms my strong feelings for scaffolding. I think the romance started upon/as early as a rereading of the Golden Compass. Roger comes from a family of scaffolders. But I think it really started when they were working on Bon Pasteur in the summer ’08.

I came here for Samarkand but New Jersey is okay too

jess — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:56:01 +0000

I’m sitting in America now. In Hungary, he was still an amateur, and then he had to go to war. He went to Paris as an artist and in his limited means printed many of his mid-20s photographs as postcards. The more I think about it, the more I like the small format. I’m not often in the homes of people with old possessions but I remember, at Hullaryd, photos of Karl’s family, and in Chloe’s apartment in Oslo, her mother’s photographs from her days in colonial Algeria. Like I said, we’re in America now. The photographer and his wife obtained visas in the latter half of the 30s and I thought maybe it was because of the impending war, but perhaps it was simply economics. I haven’t taken a closer look yet, but the photos → prints in this room and the next are larger. I came to check out Samarkand but New Jersey is okay too. He likes chimneys. I like scaffholding. I guess everything else was commercial photography owned by Condé Nast.

Still today I regard myself as an amateur, and I hope that’s what I will stay until the end of my life: I’m forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.

- André Kertész~~, after his 1961 retirement~~

We didn’t make it to Prague, but

jess — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 03:45:55 +0000

We didn’t get to go to Prague but Jan’s invited me to hang out with him in Brno this weekend and to see his hometown. I’m really intrigued, but still fence-sitting. There were practical considerations, but most of them can be mitigated by getting off my ass and actually doing stuff in Berlin. The only real problem, perhaps, is the supposed low blood pressure I was diagnosed with in Italy at the spa with Giuseppe. It explains why I’ve been hitting my head all over the place (twice yesterday: once because I’m careless but the other time because I randomly collapsed). I guess I’ll see how I feel today (although it’s barely noon and it’s already hard for me) and maybe talk to Sibylle-sober about it later to see her thoughts. She was really silly last night but also very sweet about checking in, to make sure I wasn’t dead and even while she was partying it up with the Chancellor Angela Merkel.

I did get to hang out with Verena yesterday. We met up at the (Prater) beer garden on Kastienallee and it was really nice, although she is pretty stressed out about the job hunt. It was must more like seeing her at McGill when we had more things in common, I think. I’d complained in my Beijing journal about how everything felt different when I saw her and Ben. I learned some things about friends still in China. Asia is hard.

Sunday, awaiting my train to Palombara Sabina

jess — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 03:00:15 +0000

My ticket should probably look a lot different but I was scared of the machine when I didn’t immediately see the one that goes to Orte. The regional trains are priced according to zones and I was pleasantly surprised when the ticket vendor (cutie) asked me for one euro only. In Canada, a regional half hour train out of the city would have been much more expensive. Yay, subsidies for public transportation.

When I left the Hotel Etrusca around eight o’clock this morning, reception was all locked up so I just left my super old school keys in my door. It’s nice how absolutely every building in Florence had a courtyard. It will be a little while longer before this train gets in. They even look like my hometown’s regional transport equivalent. I haven’t been on a GO train in a million years… it was whenever we last went to see the Nutcracker, I’m not certain why we didn’t take the subway. It would’ve been just as easy.

I hope I’m not going to be a sweaty mess. I don’t know what went wrong with my previous night’s sleep. I haven’t had the crazy itchy bites that Kristen has been affected by but I woke up(?) in the middle of the night, skin inflamed and itchy like mad, and then quickly returned to sleep. Apparently I also turned the lights on in my sleep… When I woke up, my face and especially my eyes were swollen as if I’d been crying all night, as if I’d been crying really badly. It was so swollen I don’t think I had seen my face like that in my “adult” or even teenaged life. I must have been allergic to something, my upper respiratory tract wasn’t too happy either. Josephine suggested that I had been crying for her.

I was given a much nicer room last night, almost worth my 82 euros… 80 actually. The host pushed back my 2-euro coin and told me to buy myself an ice cream. My private bathroom was awkwardly not en suite but it was much cleaner and much more comfortable to use.

This morning I woke up all freckles.

Final thoughts on Florence

jess — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:55:47 +0000

Really, I should sleep but I thought it was important to write something down upon my last sleep in Florence. Everything here, including the city’s fleur-de-lis was at some point claimed by the Medici family. Cosimo (Cosmo? the universe? for real) even has/allows himself to be painted among the saints, which I feel is way over the top.

It was nice, therefore, to visit the Palazzo Strozzi and have a taste of the humanist opposition. Usually the room in a given museum devoted tot he museum itself is rather boring (as it was in the Uffizi), but the Strozzi, especially in light and in hindsight of how I felt about Virtual Identities, was special, and inviting, like a place of refuge from the Medici extravagance.

It’s too bad we’ve all split up now, but I’m glad I had some time to go sightseeing alone. That said, I hope the Province of Rome is okay on my own. I will have hosts but I don’t wish to burden them.

Chinese face, encore

jess — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:36:07 +0000

I took a № 13 back to SMN and there were a bunch of Chinese people who’d just met talking about different kinds of Chinese people, and at one point, I think, speculating about my origins because I turned around to look a couple times.

Florence has been nice

jess — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:35:01 +0000

My feet don’t hurt nearly as much, now, as they did in previous days. Perhaps it’s because, finally, my shoes actually fit. The “official” David this morning was impressive, as it should have been, and I appreciated the sculptor Bartolini and the no-cameras rule. Everything else just paled in comparison. I was tired of all the renditions of Madonna+child. In only one that I saw did baby Jesus actually look child-like. He died relatively young, the story goes, but it is as if he was born an old man. Beyond that, the Uffizi visit was worth it, but it was the Palazzio Strozzi that was really satisfying for me, as if it was answering what my soul had been missing in all the exhibitions of modern and contemporary art I had visited recently. Picasso/Miró/Dalí was curated in an incredibly inviting and accessible manner, and Virtual Identities made me feel like a member and active participant of modern society. I think I was just happy to recognise everyone dancing out both Single Ladies and Gee, as well.

I also wanted to mention the Chapel of the Princes inside the Medici Chapel. Omigoodness, even the scaffolding looked regal.

***

Now that sunset is approaching, it’s much more crowded up here. I fear I am in the way of other photographers, but hey, I was here first. The bus quarter after nine back to SMN will be very crowded I expect.

Piazzale Michelangelo, Firenze

jess — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:05:26 +0000

The bus took me past la Porta Romana – at which there was a statue of a woman holding a boulder atop her head (unfinished?) – past the Boboli Gardens and along the Galilei until we arrived at the Piazzale Michelangelo. From Oltrarno (beyond the River Arno, explained by the young woman with the Mao bag to a Sean Penn-looking grandpa-gentleman), one of Florence’s three Davids looks over me and the city north of the river. I think, if I can stay where I am, I will have an unobstructed view of the city at sunset.

***

In Srishti’s words, “A carefully-selected Asian couple,” to take my picture. We only bothered with one shot. I’m kind of a sweaty mess anyways. Is it rude that I always decline to speak Chinese? O well. I just get tired of ni hao. It’s not as bad coming from the vendors, though, who are just looking for customers. When it comes from the randoms, it’s like Peter Hessler was describing, the abuse hallos he’d receive in China. I hope it wasn’t rude when I ignored/started blankly at the Russian dude whose name I didn’t bother to remember at the barbecue with Sibylle’s friends a few days ago.

The sky’s getting to be a pretty colour. There is a Spanish couple next to me trying to post the perfect self-portrait, “like the young people do,” in Dalia’s words. Maybe I should try one too.