Cowen's Sicily and Mine

Tyler rolls his eyes at an NYT account of prodigal misspending at the Italian Tourist Board, particularly in respect to the South and Sicily.     He's right of course, but here's a guilty secret: hang the Tourist Board, I'd list Sicily as one of my own favorite tourist destinations.  I first stumbled on it alone back in 1985, diverting myself with a long weekend away from a work assignment in Rome.    I told Mrs. Buce we had to get back there together and indeed we've traveled the island a couple of times since.  In all, I've pretty well scoured the place by car bus and train and I'll go again tonight if you are offering.  

There are tourists in Sicily and facilities sufficient to care for them--Taormina is the first place where I ever stayed in a hotel with a rack rate of 800 Euros, though happily I was not paying rack rate.   Things do seem to have gotten busier with time: in '85 I had the sere, spooky unfinished temple at Segesta all to myself; two years ago we found it equipped with full tourist array.    One thing Sicily mostly does without:  the walls of high-rises one finds blazoned along the Costa del Sol.  Too bad for Sicilians who want to make a few coins, but I say thank heavens for waste and sloth at the Tourist Board.

Bibliography:plenty of good stuff to read by Sicilians or about Sicily but I have a nostalgic soft spot for Goethe's Italian Journey, my companion on that solo first foray 29 years ago, and still the only bit of Goethe that I can say I unreservedly enjoyed.  Here's a brief appreciation of the Sicilian chapters.

You Just Can't Get Good Help Anymore

Washington Irving, already a celebrity of sorts as a literary gent, takes his ease as a guest of the Governor of Granada in the palace/fortress of the Alhambra. Probably no site on the travel itinerary better suited his taste for romantic storytelling, tinctured with unvarnished malarky. Here he considers his situation in the hands of his staff, including (among others) Antonia, the de facto proprietress, and Mateo Ximenes, his personal attendant--considers, and finds it suitable:

The good dame Autonia fulfils faithfully her contract with regard to my board and lodging; and as I am easily pleased, I find my fare excellent; while the merry-hearted little Dolores keeps my apartment in order, and officiates as handmaid at meal-times. I have also at my command a tall, stuttering, yellow-haired lad, named Pepe, who works in the gardens, and would fain have acted as valet; but in this he was forestalled by Mateo Ximenes, "the son of the Alhambra." This alert and officious wight has managed, somehow or other, to stick by me ever since I first encoun- tered him at the outer gate of the fortress, and to weave himself into all my plans, until he has fairly appointed and installed himself my valet, cicerone, guide, guard, and historiographic squire; and I have been obliged to improve the state of his wardrobe, that he may not disgrace liis various functions; so that he has cast his old brown man- tle, as a snake does his skin, and now appears about the fortress with a smart Andalusian hat and jacket, to his infinite satisfaction, and the great astonishment of his comrades. The chief fault of honest Mateo is an over- anxiety to be useful. Conscious of having foisted himself into my employ, and that my simple and quiet habits render his situation a sinecure, he is at his wit's ends to devise modes of making himself important to my welfare. I am in a manner the victim of his officiousness; I cannot put my foot over the threshold of the palace, to stroll about the fortress, but he is at my elbow, to explain everything I see; and if I venture to ramble among the surrounding hills, he insists upon attending me as a guard, though I vehemently suspect he would be more apt to trust to the length of his legs than the strength of his arms, in case of attack. After all, however, the poor fellow is at times an amusing companion; he is simple-minded and of infinite good humor, with the loquacity and gossip of a village barber, and knows all the small-talk of the place and its environs.

So Washington Irving, The Alhambra, composed around 1829, available here.  I'd say that anyone who condescends to his tour guide "simple-minded and of infinite good humor" ought not be surprised if he finds himself first in the queue for the guillotine. 

Stoneman on Greece

Ah, here's a find: my battered copy of A Literary Companion to Travel in Greece, edited by Richard Stoneman. copyright 1984.  I can't remember when I got my copy but I think maybe around 1990, the last time I traveled with a backpack and slept on the ferry's open deck.  From his web page, I gather that this was his second book.  But he's clearly a bona fide classical scholar with (by now) a long resume, not just phoning it in.  He seems to have a special enthusiasm for the reception of classical culture in later times.

Flipping through the Companion, at 87 I hit upon his entry for "Nafplion," Nauplion, "formerly known," as he says, "as Nauplia or Napoli di Romagna."  He might have added that it is one of the pleasantest little cities you could hope to find anywhere, plus being the perfect jumping-off point for some gonzo classical ruins.  "In the anarchic interregnum following the War of Independence [i.e., the Greek one, 1821-32--ed.] the mountains of the Pelopennese were the strongholds of numerous klephtic bands.  LaMartine, in Nafplion in August 1831, described the situation:"

The most complete anarchy reigns at this moment over all the Morea.  Each day one faction triumphs over the other, and we hear the musketry of the klephts, of the Colocottroni faction, who are fighting on the other side of the gulf against the troops of the government. We are informed, by every courier that descends from the mountains, of the burning of a town, the pillage of a valley, or the massacre of a population, by one of the parties that are ravaged their native country.  One cannot go beyond the gates of Nauplia without being exposed to musket shots.  Prince Karadja had the goodness to propose to me  an escort of his palikars to go and visit the tomb of Agamemnon; and General Corbet, who commands the French forces, politely offered to add to them a detachment of his soldiers.  I refused, because I did not wish, for the gratification of a vain curiosity, to expose the lives of several men, for which I should eternally reproach myself.

A. de Lamartine, Travels in the East, translated by TWR (Edinburgh, 1850).  That is:

L'anarchie la plus complète règne en ce moment dans la Morée. Chaque jour une faction triomphe de l'autre, et nous entendons les coups de fusil des Klephtes, des Colocotroni , qui se battent de l'autre côté du golfe contre les troupes du gouvernement. On apprend, à chaque courrier qui descend des montagnes, l'incendie d'une ville, le pillage d'une plaine, le massacre d'une popu lation, par un des partis qui ravagent leur propre patrie. On ne peut sortir des portes de Nauplie sans être exposé aux coups de fusil. Le prince Karadja a la bonté de me proposer une escorte de ses palikars pour aller visiter Le tombeau d'Agamemnon, et le général Corbet, qui commande les troupes françaises, veut bien y joindre un détachement de ses soldats;  je refuse;  je ne veux pas exposer, pour l'intérêt d'une vaine curiosité, la vie de quelques hommes, que je me reprocherais éternellement.

 A. de Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, archived here.

The Great Also-Ran

I'm totally in the tank for those maps of Europe as it might have been, with all the also-rans in full majesty.  Ruthenia, Provence, Pomerania, that sort of thing.

Waverly Root understands.  In his Food of France, he explains Burgundy:

Burgundy is as much basic country, elemental country, country of long-rooted traditions as is the Ile-de-France and its attendant territories to the west, and if it is the latter territory which has been described as the most French part of France rather than Burgundy it is only because its continuous history has been attached longer to the name of France than has that of Burgundy. Burgundy's contribution to what is France today goes back as far and is of comparable cultural importance to that of the Ile-de-France, and its capital, Dijon, is one of the great cities of France, a sort of eastern Rouen, whose buildings attest to its rich past; but three quarters of its history was unrolled under a name other than that of France, and in the days of its greatness it was a dukedom that was the peer of the kingdom of France, and for all any fourteenth-century prophet could have foretold, seemed quite as likely to make France part of Burgundy as the other way around.

At a time when the Ile-de-France had added to its possessions only the Orléanais, the Berry, Champagne, and Normandy, Burgundy had expanded eastward through the Franche-Comté, and possessed also, on the far side of the territories of France, Picardy, Artois, and Flanders, a great part of what today is Belgium, all of Holland (which is to say, the southern half of the modern Netherlands)except an island around Utrecht, and the Duchy of Luxembourg.  The territories of Burgundy, more extensive than those of France, had the disadvantage of not being continuous; but they had the advantage of pinching France between them, which could be decisive in area with such well-developed means of communication as our own.  Even then France and Burgundy battled as champions, equally matched.  It was the Burgundians, you will remember, not the English, who captured Joan of Arc; the English only purchased her from her captors when Charles VII, the kind whom she had crowned,proved too parsimonious to pay her ransom.

 --Waverly Root, The Food of France 174-6 (1992)

Airport Orientation Tip

In any major airport, the long line of disheveled customers queued up before a single harried employee--that's likely to be the United Airlines customer service desk.


[What?  Oh, actually no, but I was watching.]

Where Is It?

Go here. 

Vincent in Context

I'd never been to Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum until yesterday. I't say it's worth the trip, though perhaps not for reasons they tell you in the guide book.

Thing is, it is not a parade of Vincent's greatest hits. There are a few hits here, but a lot of the show-stoppers are in other places. What it does offer are two rather different inducements. One, it is an overview of an entire career. And two, it does an exemplary job of putting him in context--the context of those he was influenced by and (to a lesser extent) those he influenced.

Career: one kind of good museum show is the one that shows you the whole career arc from start to finish. You can't do that with novels (how long would it take you to read all of Dickens? Of Henry James?). I suppose you might do it in a way with music but it might be s stretch. With an artist, you can see him as he develops, makes false starts, imitates (better, "responds to") others, finally finds his way--and then, perhaps, evolves, although in the case of Van Gogh, of course, he died before he had a chance to do much evolving (apparently he thought he was burnt out but we'll never know). In the present case, I'm surprised to find out how much "Van Gogh before Van Gogh" there is. Almost everything we remember of Van Gogh comes from a year or two at the end of his life. His entire artistic life lasts only about 10 years. It turns out that during the early period, he painted a lot. You'd have to grant that not much of it is memorable in the way the famous stuff is. But it is still fascinating to watch him as he tries pointillism, tries Toulouse-Lautrec, tried (especially) Japanese print technique and suchlike. Recall Beckett's rule: fail again, fail better.

Influence: the museum offers an impressive collection of work that Van Gogh would have seen and by which he was clearly impressed. Toulouse, Seurat, Pissaro and suchlike. Again these aren't the ones that bring in the crowds but it doesn't matter. They're still better than almost anybody else and in any event, it is interesting to see how they fit. There's a smaller but still instructive display suggesting Van Gogh's own influence after his tragically short career: Fauvism, German Expressionism and suchlike. One can only wish they had more.

In short, this is a museum with a plan, well-articulated and well-executed. If there is some kind of prize for curating, I'd say these guys deserve it.

Dutch Manners

We've committed a predictable number of rookie traveller errors in Holland over the past few days. No surprise there; the interesting part is the reaction of those who encounter us. On at least four occasions, somebody has intervened with a quick fix that solved out problem. Nothing flashy. Just slam, bam, thank you ma'am and we're done.

Item, the bus driver told us out pass wouldn't work on his bus. But then he said--that's all right, it's only four stops, come ahead (the bus was only half full).  Item, we picked up the "expensive" plate in the self-service restaurant when the cheaper was all we needed.  The server insisted that we dump our food off the expensive plate and onto a cheaper. Item, the guard at the museum door signed his name to the top of the ticket so we could slip out for an otherwise unauthorized lunch break. Item, another guard trotted back to get us a map so we wouldn't have to recross out through security.

Call it kindness, hospitality, blah blah and you're right. But it's more than that: it's simple pragmatism.  In each case, our benefactor saw something that would help us at no cost to him (her)  and so they went ahead and did it.  Once again, we seem to be in a country where people just want to make things work.  I'm particularly impressed with the bus driver who obviously did not worry for a moment that he might get in trouble with a supervisor for breaking a bureaucratic rule.

There' also the matter of attitude: others have remarked that the Dutch have a strong streak of egalitarianism, in the sense of  "you're no better than I am" (stories about their universally negative response to the seeming pretensions of the Pope are part of the folklore).    So the help, when it arrives, is no-nonsense and direct. The server who told us to change planes seemed almost to be scolding us.  Of course she wasn't; she was doing us a favor.  Translated, the Dutch are not servile. What a relief.  Servile gives me the creeps.

In this respect --"you're no better than I am"--I can think of a surprising comparison.  Surprising to me anyway: that would be the Israelis.  That's another country where, in my experience, you son'r want to show too much attitude, but if you don't, then things will work out pretty well.

Another, related, Israeli/Dutch comparison: the food.  No, no, the Israelis don't do cheese, and the Dutch don't do salad for breakfast.  But in each place it seems to me that the food is (a) usually better than adequate; and (b) rarely outstanding.  Not too much show.

But I do like salad for breakfast.

Ancient History Note: The Provos

You remember the Provos?  I always liked the Provos.  They were the Dutch anarchists who anticipated the Yippies: they made protest fun.  The Provos were the guys--this would have been '64-'65--who manipulated the cops into busting them for marijuana, only to find dog food. Or to get themselves arrested for leafleting with blank paper (the ultimate anarchist protest!) .  Formally, they lasted just two or three years, and people will say they accomplished zip but I don't agree: I suspect they had a lot to do with reshuffling the deck of Netherlandish politics in ways that resonate still today.

But here's the thng: apparently some of them are still around.  Well: Robert Jasper Grootveld, who painted "K" (for cancer) on cigarette billboards?     He  died a couple of years back (of lung disease).  But his partner-in-theatre Roel van Duijn is still active: he's held public office as a green; he offers advice on macrobiotics and heartbreak; he's coming out with an autobiography.  Perhaps the most interesting is Luud Schemmelpenninck, who gets credit as the father of the "white bycicle."    You remember the white bicycle?  Evidently the provos declared they would paint their bicycles white and dedicate them to public use.  The City Council slapped on an ordinance  saying it was illegal to have a bicycle without a lock. So the provos put on locks--all of which took the same key (or maybe they put on combination looks, and painted the combintion on the side--same diff).,  Schemmelpennick evidently went on to a distinguished career as a sort of an urban designer.  He is in some sense the grandfather of the variety of car-sharing schemes that have grown up over the past few years.

There are others.  It's nice to know they are still alive, but in an odd way, the very fact that they're still around is a jarring reminder of how much Dutch politics and social life have changed over the last 45  years.  After Pym Fortuin. after Theo van Gogh, after Geert Wilders, it is hard to imagine anything as beguiling and unaffected as a white bicycle.

Followup:  Considering this and related issues, Mrs. B offers an acerb insight into why the  Dutch, whatever their second thoughts, will not give up on such 60s legacies ad dope and prostitution: there's too much money in it.  Now you've got the who complex of tourism-related business-hotels, restaurants and suchlike--so heavily invested in the vice game, you just can't expect it to just go away. Like Frank Zappa said about why there would never be atomic war: too much real estate.


There's a helpful catalog of weblinks on the Provos at the bottom of the Wiki page.  Oddly enough, the English-language version is more extensive than the Dutch.

Something Else I just Learned

I suppose you knew, but I just found it out.  Anyway, do you know what the "dam" stands for in "Amsterdam"?  Stands for "dam."  Like Clark Gable told Vivian Leigh: "Frankly my dear, I'm going to build a dam."

So, "dam on the Amstel," a dammed-up river of beer.  No wonder it is so popular with tourists.

Sarcerdotal Amsterdam

Having spent most of Saturday knocking about the neighborhood of Amsterdam's sex shops and weed joints, we thought it only fair that we give over Sunday to divine worship.  In truth, the transaction wasn't all  that sharp.  For one thing, our association with religion is about as detached as our association with the sex shops.  In each case, we're observers; in the case of the the churches, it's the music.

As if to complete the connection, if it's church music you want  Amsterdam, one of the best places to keep your eye on is the Oude Kerk which is ensconced smack dab in a semi-circle of brothels.  I don't really know whether the Kerk is Oude enough to precede the brothels  (I do know some of the girls looked like--oh, cut that out).  The point  is the music was wonderful: a choral evensong with selections from Gibbons and Poulenc and others, presented by an organist and a choir which, with a membership of about as dozen,  checked in at a bit more than half the number of the audience.  The church itself is worth a side-trip (in tourist-talk): a chronological mess, begun by the Catholics, later taken over and expanded by the Protestants, now functioning as some sort of joint entity, like the World-Telegraph and Sun (I'd love to know who put up the rood-screen).

In the morning, we betook ourselves to as rather different venue. But "betook" is too strong a word: for the moment we have fetched up in an apartment that is virtually in the side yard of the Wester Kerk, which I believe I read somewhere claims to have been the largest Protestant Church before St. Paul's in London. Compared to the Oude Kerke, this was a different sort of operation entirely.  Instead of 20-odd congregants, there were a couple of hundred, and they weren't all old and beaten-down, as you might more likely find in the tourist-destination churches of Western Europe: these folks liked like locals with jobs and lives and suchlike, who just wanted to come to church.  Only one non-white face: might have been Indonesian.

Music--the organ again--was the big draw here, and it didn't disappoint, but I have to say a word about the preacher: a sixtyish woman who (per the website) has held forth here since 1995.  The whole affair was carried off in Dutch (I assume!) but I must say, the lady's got style: she speaks with a kind of bluff, understated irony and she has the gestures and modulation that make her fun to hear even if you can't understand a word she is saying.  I bet she aced homiletics in Divinity School.  The website says she is the author of a book on Mary mother of Jesus titled, if you believe Google Translate,  A Maid in Elevated Stands.  Maybe "elevated stands" are what you need to make your way through the streets of this swampy city in rainy weather.

Ah, Problem Solved

Happily, the baggage has arrived.  And compliments to my friend Nancy who says she can't bear to believe that her underwear is having more fun than she is.

Report from Sex Central

Rambling through the old sex bazaar in Amsterdam makes me remember a doctor I knew who treated young people in those days: he it was who told me they were coming upon diseases that didn't have Greek names because they had been eradicated (we thought) before medicine had acquired a Greek vocabulary.  The whole neighborhood has a bit of that same flavor these days: something out of time, or simply behind the times, or too stuck in time while the whole world has moved to a whole new sexual vocabulary, such as to make the Amsterdam scene almost a museum curiosity.  Same with the coffee shops (heh!) that radiate blue smoke and blue music (not quite blues music) left over from a time when a marijuana brownie was something you whispered to your friends about.

The crowd, too, seems--well, not quite perfunctory, but does seem to lack the urgency and spirit of adventure that might have dominated in another time. One thinks of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls saying "I came to shoot crap; let's shoot crap."  The real novelty to me is the great proliferation of "Argentine" (really?) beef.  How many steers have died, I wonder, to keep up the morale of a city so long ruled by other forms of pink flesh?

On the Ground

I'm not here any more, did  I say?  I'm in Amsterdam, although my clean underwear is in Heathrow.   And here's a puzzle for you, or several.

One, I never did understand airport shopping. Who (in the blue blazes) would spend airport prices to buy the kind of high end merchandise that you probably wouldn't bother buying at home?  And don't start telling me about duty free--the duty free Grey Goose vodka is twice the price it would be home in Palookaville (um, so I am  told).    But then, I never did understand duty free either.

And not just stuff.  Turns out there's a caviar restaurant in Heathrow Terminal 5.   I stood on the upper deck gazing down with admiration about 9 am today.  There were five  customers, all solo guys.  I couldn't see well enough--maybe they were just knocking back scrambled chicken eggs, not the fishy kind. But I like to fancy they were digging into platters of Beluga.  How does it go with cornflakes?


Travel footnote:  Heathrow, for what it is worth, has become a trifle less awful than it was the last time I was here, a couple of years back.   It  takes you just about 90 minutes top get from your landing dock at Terminal 1 to inside-security at Terminal 5, and the walk is about like crossing Minnesota but traffic flows pretty smoothly.

Why Your Trip Need Never Be a Failure

Dan

 There's a story common among newsmen about the cub reporter sent out to cover a launching.  He came back with an apology: there was no launching:--the ship sank. Hand the mike to Michael Gilleland, channeling Laurence Sterne in Sterne's Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768): 

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis all barren;—And so it is; and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I declare, said I, clapping my hands chearily together, that were I in a desert, I would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections—if I could not do better, I would fasten them upon some sweet myrtle, or seek some melancholy cypress to connect myself to;—I would court their shade, and greet them kindly for their protection—I would cut my name upon them, and swear they were the loveliest trees throughout the desert: if their leaves wither'd, I would teach myself to mourn; and, when they rejoiced, I would rejoice along with them.

Beersheba

So it all depends on what you are looking for.   I'd be just as glad if my tour operator didn't try to fob me off with that excuse but I agree, bar one important qualification: Dan and Beersheba are not all barren, not even to the jaundiced eye.  In fact it's one of the most important things when I first visited Israel just a few years ago.  I mean, I  think of myself as a person of some imagination and I had certainly done my Sunday School homework, but I had to see for myself to grasp the first principle of Biblical geography:  Beersheba is a desert but Dan is green.  Indeed, that is the whole point: Galilee is a garden, Israel is a rock garden.  Two different things. Other than that, yes, and as Yogi Berra perhaps did not say, you can see by observing.

Nation's Most Comfortable Airport?

I travel a fair amount but not really that widely so I may not have enough of a data base, but let me ask, is it not true that the nation's most comfortable airport is in Portland, Oregon?

Consider: spacious, well-appointed central arrival hall, with a decent but not overwhelming range of shops including one of the better airport bookstores (not as good as San Francisco, though). Good highway directions and rental car dropoff almost at the gate. Oh, and seamless connection to public transport. All this and free Wifi.

Okay, I can see my list of fancy features is not all that long, and the real reason why Portland is so comfortable may lie in a more sinister observation: it's overbuilt. Or at least, at the moment it isn't nearly as overstretched and overcrowded as, say Kennedy (yuk!) or O'Hare (eech!) or Hartsfield (urgh!). I guess if you can actually move around in the place without risk of stroke or heart attack, there is a space analyst somewhere telling you that you've wasted a lot of money.