After Norway I choo-chooed down to Berlin (a long way - if you're watching from space you can see the red perforated trail I leave across the big pastel-coloured map of Europe). Amy took me into her fabulous nest and we hooted and hollered and flitted about town for a week, overdoing the cheap cocktails - you can get a very decent Long Island Iced Tea from any number of Indian restaurants for about 3 euro 80 - and dancing our hearts out to trashy pop at SO36, with fellow Australasian trashbag Jimmy. The Turkish markets were amazing and I came THIS close to buying a sack of fresh lychees. And Berlin has this lovely open feeling to it - all the civic spaces are welcoming and nuanced and it seems like such a personable sort of place. I will be returning at the end of October - perhaps I'll do a better job of describing it then.
About seven years ago, I finished high school. Until then, I'd been learning high school French, and since then, I haven't spoken a word except (pardon) in jest. After leaving Berlin I found myself on the mean streets of Paris, struggling to buy stamps and make train reservations in my paltry parlez-vous. Lucky for me - and for Adrian, my still-favourite and ever-stimulating travelling sisduh - I was couchsurfing with Yann. Yann is one of this trip's best new experiences. I saw some of the most beautiful sights in Paris all lit up blue and golden as
we flew through the streets on his Vespa. I drank two enormous cups of black coffee for breakfast when I woke up, and blew pungent cigarette smoke through the window of his troisieme-etage apartment before going to sleep. I even learned a few more nouns. Une assiette, anyone?One delightful pasttime was wandering through the glamorous cemeteries. In Pere-Lachaise, Adrian purchased a map of the famous tombs, and we paused near the entrance to mark out the ones we wanted to see - Maria Callas, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Stephane Grappelli, someone called 'SexToy'... We found that all of these graves were on the opposite side of the cemetery from where we were, so Adrian said, in all innocence, 'Well, should we head over that way then? It's a bit dead over here.'
Now, Itlay! Florence was like the savoury, and Venice is dessert. In Florence the buildings have egg-yolky, spicey tones. I stayed with Simone and Gavin in an apartment they rented (they're travelling Italy, celebrating the anniversary of their wedding - six years ago in Florence. For those Melburnians who aren't familiar with my familial situation, Simone was married to my dad and hence has the odd title of 'ex-step-mother', but we alternately refer to me as her daughter or niece. What does this make Gav? Who knows. We all dismissed biology as a grounds for family long ago.) Simone and Gavin's apartment was right next to the Uffizi, which I spent a couple of hours wandering through, as usual getting a little teary over Giotto. I even bought a book about him as I left. Very rare. As much as I idolise favourite artists etc, I seldom commit to them financially. Of course the ultimate fourteenth-century art high was in Padua, when I waited for 15 minutes in an air-stabilising room to spend 15 minutes admiring the wondrous Scrovegni Chapel. To say I've been looking forward to this experience since high school is only a slight exaggeration. How amazing to see it all up close! (After this, I sat in a sweet Padova park and finished reading 'American Psycho.')
I sort of pass by a lot of the later stuff. Caravaggio is wicked, and it's good to see works like the Doni Tondo and th
e Madonna of the Rocks in the flesh, but it's not the same. I realised that the reason I love Giotto and entourage is that they represent the beginning of humanism. They're like Hamlet, or the printing press, or penicillin - they represent a totally new way of relating to the world. But at the same time you can still see the remnants of the past, the Byzantine stuff - the gold, the holiness, the fact of the artworks' being religious. I like that they sit on the cusp. I lose interest as we move towards the perfection of Michelangelo (I'm sure I remember reading that a contemporary said Michelangelo's people looked like they were full of rocks). I like all the weirdness and imperfections that preceded the naturalism we know. People emote and are painted in proportion - but buildings are shrunk to fit into the frame of the picture, and the scenes still exist in these strange celestial vacuums. I loves eet. I eats eet all up.Venice is a gigantic pasticceria. All the plastered walls are cake-coloured and the Moorishness of the architecture makes all the white window frames look as if they've been squeezed from an icing tube. I passed from coffee shop to church to gelati shop with Simone and Gav. We stumbled across some architectural Biennale exhibits. In San Stae, a beautiful old church (yes, very rare in Europe) there was a house made of cardboard boxes, each with a little individual artwork inside and holes punched in the walls so you could peer in. Some of the sculptures inside were simple - a stack of egg trays - and some more complex - a bunch of silver springs, mechanised and rotating in different directions, like a plant. This reminded me of an exhibition I went to at ACCA a few years ago, where one of the works was a maze constructed of cardboard, very dimly lit and claustrophobic. I automatically love both these pieces, just because they are both made of tough brown cardboard, and this reminds me of a house Dad once made for me and Alex when we were tiny - one huge box which once held a refrigerator, and a smaller one, maybe dishwasher-sized - both boxes attached to each other and cut up and drawn all over, to resemble a house. Cardboard is fun! Cardboard art is fun! Also, I think there's something really awesome about being able to walk inside a work of art.
Another Biennale exhibit we stumbled across was one about Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House. I have to confess I've never really been very knowledgeable or excited about architecture, except for the obvious - Brunelleschi, the Skytower - but this exhibition was very interesting, with lots of little snippets about how much Utzon is inspired by shapes within nature and by ancient forms of architecture like the use of platforms in Chinese designs, and by visual effects specific to a particular place, like the hazy lighting peeping in through the roof of a bazaar in Iran. (Kidding about the Skytower bit, clearly.)
And one more odd artistic experience: one afternoon we were walking through one segment of the Venice labyrinth when we passed a small contemporary gallery emanating New Orleans guitar. We poked our heads in and found that one of the two guitarists was the painter of the oil impressions of Venice that decorated the walls, and that he was a visiting artist from New Orleans. Simone got into an Italian conversation with him which culminated in the two guitarists urging Simone and Gav, who teach Ceroc in Auckland, to demonstrate their moves. So as the two guitarists strummed away, Simone and Gav danced around the tiny gallery and Venetians and tourists stopped to watch and applaud from the street.
Disastrously hungover, I now get on the train to Bologna, where I will obviously try the pasta, and enjoy a slightly slower pace before heading to Rome on Tuesday. Ouch, my head.
