Brontides

I dealt with Aachen pretty harshly here. It was a nice place.

Me again!

I’m still in Germany. So far I am somewhat disappointed, for a variety of reasons. Chiefly, though, it is that the cities largely lack character. I cannot complain too loudly about this; the cities lack character because they had to be rebuilt after 1945 because we bombed roughly 80% of them into itty bity fragments of dust, so moaning about it now would be like me burning your house down then complaining that you don’t have any sandwiches.. The 20% that remains is spectacular, however; Kölner Dom, the main cathedral of Cologne, is one of the most imposing structures I have ever seen, grand on a simply breathtaking scale, and there are several similar examples elsewhere.

So, three days spent in Frankfurt, of which at leats two were a waste. Germany shuts entirely on a Sunday and, bizarrely, a Monday (“economic problems? What economic problems?”), meaning that those two days were spent mostly meanding about trying to stay warm, as Autumn is most definately proceeding in Central Europe right now. Tuesday was fun though – I got to see the Museum de Moderne Kunst – kunst is German for ‘art’, a fact that gives my peurile mind no small amount of pleasure. The main thrust of the exhibit in aforementioned gallery is a continuous exhibit of objects brought through related keywords on eBay, and was interesting as a meme, if not especially worthwhile as an art desplay.

I also met a trio of Australian guys and two Danish girls, with whom I ended up spending the evening; the six of us wondered around looking for a restaurant, then wondered around looking for a bar, before finally wondering around looking for a nightclub. We did find an amazing bar on top of a tower in the city centre, but the prices were as high as the altitude, so we didn’t stay for long. Frankfurt is a very pretty city, but very sterile.

It’s the banking capital of Germany, which I’m sure is no co-incidence.

Yesterday I up’d sticks again for Cologne, which is a nicer city, if barely more interesting, although I did manage to fill a day for once. Thus far my days have been largely solnambulent; my routine is to wake around 8, eat, shower and ablute before heading out around 9.30ish, do something until 1, eat lunch and read in a park for an hour or two before heaidng back to the hostel around 4 or 5, then out again at 7 to eat. Yesterday kept me on my feet for the better part of 8 hours, though, which was far more impressive.

First port of call was the aforementioned Kölner Dom, which just looms over the city, less like a church to the glory of God and more like a giant punk cockroach. Climbing the spire took about half an vertiginous hour, but yielded some impressive sights, and I did get some good photos from across the river.

After that I headed into the Museum Ludwig, which is massive and deeply interesting. The bottom floor delt many with modern art – Andy Warhol and his ilk predominated, and while parts were interesting I generally find conceptual art to be quite frustrating. The upper floors were better value, however. The top floor contained a massive collection of Picasso originals, which occupied a happy hour or two, but the real treasure was a heterospective (he’s not dead yet) of George Brecht.

How to describe George Brecht? As a conceptual artist, he was heavily involved in the Fluxus group, a group which was known for playing the the established form of art, and specifically with causing the audience to ingest its art in new ways. Certainly, that sounds very much like a broad-brush definition of conceptual art, or even modern art, as a discipline, but it’s hard to peg down what made this so interesting. George Brecht’s approach was almost one of gamesmanship; he would arrange musical scores for car controls, which were ‘conducted’ by a randomly thrown deck of cards, and which would be ‘played’ using car lights, windscreen wipers and the like. The nature of events were also of interest to him. He would create decks of cards describing events (“Near to an insect”, “On a white chair with a scarf and a walking cane”); his art returned to the themes of adding arbitrary meaning to common events and objects, often with a touch of playfulness – indeed, the format of the game as a social activity, the formalism of created rulesets, and the release of the audience from the ‘rules’ of art (one piece was a medicine cabinet from which items could be removed, or added, by any member of the public at any time) were his chosen method of communicating his art. The ideas he pioneered can still be seen in modern theoretical sociology (such as the work of Peter Suber – much of Brecht’s work can be seen in the intellectual make-up of Nomic).

All of which may hold limited interest to many (most?) of you, but it interested me, so there’s a paragraph on it. Nyer.

Back to travelling, today I took a day trip to Aachen, which is a pretty nice old University town, but generally lacked enthusiasm. This area is failing to inspire me, unfortunately; I’m here tomorrow, but may move on to Münster sooner than expected.

Anyhoo. Hope you folks are all well and looking forward as usual to hearing your news.

Hello all.

It’s been an interesting few. You may recall that my last email was from Luxembourg; I spent a few more days there and remain impressed. The city itself is like something out of a fairytale, especially at night or in the early morning fog, and the youth hostel itself was pretty good form as well. Outside of the city, the towns are pretty basic, but for such a small country it had one unexpected treasure – possibly the best collection of photographs ever assembled, the Family of Man collection (http://www.moma.org/research/archives/highlights/06_1955.html), which has made its permanent home in the castle of a small Luxembourg town called Clervaux. The collection itself was both stunningly well-presented and very moving, so, uh, if ever you find yourself at a loose end in Luxembourg, it comes recommended.

I then moved into Germany, with the intention of spending a night in Trier before wending my way up the Mosel. Trier, however, was unexpectedly full; despite having no major festivals, all three of its hostels were pasked out, and even the owners of cowsheds were unsympathetic to my claims of incipient immaculate conception (apparently, these days, the policy is No Guiding Star, No Manger, and a lot of them are athiests anyway). This forced my hand somewhat, so I instead made tracks for Koblenz.

Koblenz is a decent-sized city, notable for the fact that it stands at the meeting point of the Mosel and the Rhine, two of Europe’s most important rivers. Alas, like many German cities, it was totally destroyed by the Allies during the war, and never really recovered. The youth hostel, however, is in the privileged position of occupying the citadel overlooking the city, and consequentially has stunning views. I stayed there for a few nights; it may not be much of a city but it is very nice to look at.

I spend the days roaming the area. The Rhine Valley is a ridiculous, although admittedly gorgeous, kind of place. The river has dug a pretty deep trench into the dense forests of the region, but the slopes on either side play host to another castle literally every half-mile; it’s fair to say that at any time you have at least three of them within easy walking distance. The town of St Goar has probably the most spectacular – a labyrinthine beast that demonstrates just how lucrative taxation and piracy on the Rhine really was. It was spectacular, but all I could think of was how awesome it would be to play Hide and Seek in. When I’m rich, I’m paying for us all to go to St Goar and play Hide and Seek in the castle. This is a promise, guys. Don’t let me out of it.

I met some cool people there too – a pair old old American dudes called Dan and Bill, who apparently come to Europe every two years, and a couple, also American, called Jimmy and Katrina; Jimmy showed me the ring he was going to propose to Katrina with, which was cute, although to be honest they were a pretty weird match, he an ex-dopehead second hand car salesman, she a finance graduate with a decent brain. Hey, perhaps there’s a shortage of guys like me in America. A niche to be filled! Haha, let’s finish dealing with Germany first.

So after a few days of that, today I made for Frankfurt. Again, no crib for a bed – apparently it’s the famous international car show, which means that the youth hostels are jammed out. Wait a second! International car show? International! Car! show. You guys should be in hotels, not taking hostel space so that backpackers like me have to trek from city to city just looking for a sodding bed. If you can’t afford a hotel then you’re definately too poor to be at something describing itself as an international car show, right? Gah.

Yeah, sour grapes, I know.

Anyway. I’m now in Mainz, which is nonedescript (although it does contain two of the last remaining Gutenberg bibles, which I will probably seek out), and tomorrow I’m heading back to Frankfurt for another try. After a few days, from thence to Köln (Cologne), probably for the best part of a week, as I really want to explore that region – the Reformation is probably my favorite period of European history, and a lot of it happened there, particularly the short-lived Anabaptist theocratic proto-socialist revolution in Münster. None of the Germans I meet believe me when I tell them that I’m avoiding Munich until much, much later. I look forward to deserted youth hostels in Dusseldörf, at least.

That’s all to report; as usual, feel free to hit me back with any news or gos.

Re-reading these is a blast. I’d completely forgotten about the 14 year olds.

It’s been an eventful few days. I ended up spending three days in a town called Namur, which is more or less the political capital of the Walloon region of Belgium. It’s basically set in a clearing in a forest at the junction of two rivers, and is a very beautiful city. Another University town, it boasts a very modern, cosmopolitan atmosphere, but still has many of the features one would expect of an ancient medieval city; it’s citadel, for example, which is perched on a deeply forested promantory overlooking the town.

I was very fortunate, however, to arrive in the town on the weekend of the Walloon Festival, completely by chance. The annual festival is a four-day street-party celebrating the history and culture of French Belgium, complete with live music, a massive boat that pumped out music from the middle of the river, and seemingly stupid amounts of booze. The Youth Hostel was overrun, but I was lucky enough to be sharing a room with an English guy called Matt and an Australian called Brad, so the three of us mainly stuck together for the weekend. We took a half-day out to explore some of the outlying towns – Rochefort in particular, which has caves – but spend most of the rest of the time enjoying the carnival.

It was a shame that we could only be there for two of the nights, but Matt had to get home, I had to move on to Luxembourg, and Brad was running out of time to see Brussels; and besides, the Hostel couldn’t squeeze us in for another night. On the first night, I had to duck out early, but Brad and Matt apparently had a good time – they came back with stories of how lying about their ages had secured them the attentions of two French 17 year olds – but I did manage to make it out for the second night, and I’m pretty glad I did.

For the first hour or two I struggled to get into the proceedings. The event seemed mainly designed to allow 14-year-olds to get wasted and-slash-or pregnant, which seemed to amuse them but didn’t do much for me. I did meet Matt and Brad’s 17-year-olds, who I swear were no older than 15 – I had to remind them that teenage girls ALWAYS lie about their ages, especially to drunken foreigners, but fortunately they hadn’t done anything stupid so we moved on. On one of the main stages, a woman vocalist was looking increasingly distressed as a group of gay guys ground against each other and gradually undressed in front of her; she brought her set to a close early and the gays presumably got a room, clearly uninspired by the act that followed, a middle-of-the-road guitar rock band with a bassist who must have been eighty.

Getting into the back alleys of the city, we soon found was where it was all happening. The main stages were simply there to draw away the kids, but the back streets thronged with entertainment, and were mercifully clear of both the stalls selling five random shots for 5€, and the teenagers they attracted. We saw an awesome percussion collective, specialising in Cuban and African drums; the three of us must have stood there for an hour listening to these guys, along with many others, they were simply that good.

At about 11 I headed back to the hostel; Matt and Brad, both pretty juiced, wanted to get laid so I (fearing the 14 year olds) decided to leave them to it. I was pretty lucky; on my way back, I found the river-road to the hostel closed for the centrepeice of the evening, the firework display. I pretty much had a front row seat: The music boat had been turned into a gun-boat, firing off pyrotechnics no more than 100 meters from me; more fireworks came from the citadel in an utterly spectacular hour-long display, one which I had come across completely by chance in a festival I didn’t know about in a city I’d never heard of. I guess I was pretty lucky.

Brad and Matt didn’t get laid, although they did almost get into a fight with a French Goth.

So yesterday I moved on to Luxembourg, which is an amazing city. The town centre is tiny – a ten-minute walk across, if that – but is surrounded on all sides by deep gorges, forested ravines, and fast rivers; meaning that the rest of the sizeable city is seperated from “historic” Luxembourg by a series of bridges. The city began life as the fortress of Seigfried, a German robber-baron, and, after being re-fortified by the Germans, Bulgarians and Spaniards who occupied it over the centuries, it came to be known as the Gibraltar of the North, an impregniable city-state protected by 4 walls, 18 kilometers of caves and a 50 foot drop on three sides. The city and surrounding land was declared neutral in the 19th Century and many of its armaments were raized, but there’s still a lot to be seen here; Luxembourg is one of the richest countries in the world, the birthplace of the EU, and has some dramatic – almost dangerous – geography in the heart of it’s city centre.

The rest of today will be spend in Luxembourg City, as – probably – will much of tomorrow. Wednesday I plan to see some of the other towns in the country, which is tiny enough that I can probably see most of it in a day; then on Thursday I’m heading into Germany. Until then, dearies, I hope you’re all happy and well.

Hello folks.

It must have been cliche day in Ghent on Sunday. I ended up sharing a room with a large, blonge Norwegian called Magnus, a hairy Spaniard called Carlos and a German biker called Hans. And then there was me, a bookish, polite Englishman; had I been forewarned, I would have changed my name to Henry or Dicky, just to avoid spoiling the picture.

Since we last spoke, I have left Ghent and moved on to Bruges. First, let me say that I love Ghent. It is possibly the most beautiful city I have ever seen. It’s a university town, probably not much bigger than Norwich, and almost completely overlooked by tourists. It is also absurdly well-stocked with architecture; the square-mile city centre has no less than six cathedral-scale buildings, any one of which a city like, say, Leeds (I don’t know why I picked on Leeds) would be proud to lay claim to. It is delightfully modern, for an old city – it has all the amenieties necessary for a University town (decent public transport, a decent shopping strip, suchlike) which avoiding betraying its medieval roots. Furthermore, it’s intergrated – the ancient, beautiful Dutch architecture is clearly and proudly on show, and while the cobbled streets have been smoothed to allow easy traversing while not having been outright removed. The residents, frankly unused to tourists, were universally wonderful, and – joy of joys! – there wasn’t a Starbucks. What there was, though, was a number of cheap and excellent restaurants – one of the main worries on the trip so far has been eating properly, which is very hard to do in any city on a budget, but not in Ghent, where even the supermarkets are reasonable. In short, I left a small part of my heart in Ghent, and could quite happily live there.

I stayed in Ghent a few days, trying to put off leaving; I found myself unable to get bored of the place. But yesterday I decided that the time was right to move on to Bruge. I was a little apprehensive of Bruge, simply because it’s the tourist capital of Belgium, and it turns out I was right to be; it’s a hideous city, truth be told – every other building is a chocolate shop, the pubs serve 300 types of beer and pedestrians are menaced by horse-and-traps carrying obese Germans. In the 13th Century it was a large port, a trading capital of the Low Countries, but when its serving river dried up it was more or less abandonned; thus fossilised, it survived as a relic of a working medieval city. Which would have been fine, but it was also largely destroyed in the various wars that Belgium endured at the start of the 20th Century, and was rebuilt ‘in the style’ of how it must once have looked; as a result, the city feels fake, like the Hollywood version of how a medieval Belgian city should look, and the Belgians seem to agree, as virtually every soul within the city walls is a tourist – and by God are there a lot of them, mainly Australians and Americans, and it’s a shame, as the ingredients are there for a beautiful town – it’s built on a series of circling canals, and has some lovely suriving townhouses – but alas, market forces seem to have claimed to place. Sometimes the raized should not be raised. Yes, I know, I also crack myself up.

So today I escaped Bruge and headed to Antwerp. Antwerp is a grower. It is a city with a very bad attitude; it is the fashion capital of the Low Countries, famous for its design school and the series of wold-famous fashionistas is has produced, and the culture of snobbery has permeated the populace, making it feel very Parisian. Of course, the way of dealing with this is the same as it is with Paris; you can’t join them, so beat them. It has the oldest cathedral in the Low Countries, home to four Rubens’ and some nice stained glass, but don’t let the locals clock you there – they’re unfailingly rude to tourists, even the barmen and waiters. Instead, the best place to head towards is MoMu, possibly the coolest museum in Europe – so cool, in fact, that it changes its permanent exhibits once every six months, let alone its exhibitions. In other words, enjoy Antwerp, but only if you’re either Belgian or beautiful, or if, like me, you genuinely don’t care what people think of you and are capable of conveying that fact in the universal langauage of distain.

So! Tomorrow I leave Flanders for Leige. Like most countries with a French-speaking minority, Belgium is a schitzophrenic country – Flanders, to the north, in flat, Flemish-speaking and steeped in history, which Wallonia to the south is culturally and economically stangant, forested and mostly French. So for the next few days I’ll be frollicing in the trees, and if all goes to plan then the next communique should be coming to you from Luxembourg.

Much love to all.

Oh! Before I forget. Firstly, Spoon are playing in Bruge on 1st October, which I may cut back for, as Spoon are awesome. Second, I found an English bookstore, which although extortionately expensive has yielded unto me The Famished Road by Ben Okri, which has simultaniously both restored and broken my sanity. Thirdly and finally, a script submitted to the BBC before I left got a no, but a very encouraging one, so I’m working hard on a few new script projects for when I get back. There you go, the email kids didn’t get this paragraph. Betcha feel special, huh?

Not much commentary to add here, except to say that Ghent remains one of my favourite cities in Europe. I always tell people off for trying to go to Bruges. I just don’t understand why they would.

Tut, the longer I stay offline, the harder these things become to write.

So, I’m now in Belgium. Since last we communed, I have regained control of most of my essential bodily functions, which is a bonus. I have also spent a few days in Belleville, which is a pretty scuddy part of Paris, three days in Brussels and am now in Ghent, a small-ish Belgian city between Antwerp and Bruges.

To wrap up Paris: I kinda get it, now. To get the most from Paris you have to basically not be a tourist – avoid the gaudier sights, look down your nose at the Americans and just sit outside the cafes or in the parks watching the world go by. Yeah, it’s nice for a day or too. I don’t think I’ll bother going back, though.

The main reason for that is Brussels, which totally won me over. The pace of life in Brussels is insane – tiny, cramped streets all hella teeming with people – but the city is undeniably stunningly beautiful. The one thing it lacks (oddly, for a European city) is a central river. This may seem like an odd thing to notice, but a river does a lot for the psychology of a city – it tends to give the throngs a place to sit and repose, and Brussels really lacks that. It doesn’t have much by the way of parks, either. All in all, not a terribly relaxing place, but a much younger city than Paris, and – in my opinion – a city with far more personality and energy.

I’ve been in Ghent for a few hours and so far I love it. It’s a lot quieter than Brussels, and equally well endowed in the cobbled-street-and-gothic-cathedral department. It also has possibly the best youth hostel in Belgium (the three main ones in Brussels all suck), and a lot of cheap eateries. The one major problem with travelling on a budget is that foodies, such as myself, can rarely indulge; happily Ghent accomodates us, with a number of very hip, very cheap and very good cafe-bar-restaurant-dives.

Belgium is my kind of place, it must be said. Its cities are stunning, its food phenomenal and its people friendly. As I’m still in the Flemish north, and my Dutch is slightly rusty, the locals have been largely patient with me, which I’m certainly grateful for.

So, I’ve got another day in Ghent, then I’m taking a day trip to Antwerp before heading south to Leige French Belgium. I’ll spend a couple of days exploring the Andennes before crossing into Luxembourg for a day or two, and thence into Germany.

Hope you’re all well; as usual, feel free to drop me an email with any news!

Much love to all.

PS, On a different note, I have already finished Q by Luther Blissett, The Accidental by Ali Smith and The Rebel by Camus. I’ve only been gone just over a week! I only have two books left! Help!

Some commentary:

1. I was younger and, apparently, crasser. Not much crasser, though.
2. I still don’t like Paris, but I would be less scathing about it in retrospect. It lacks a certain ambience that I look for in cities; a sense that it would continue to exist even if all the tourists went away. I’ve described it as a museum of a city and I stand by that.
3. I have lost my fear of mass transit.

I am not a well boy.

Its the end if my first calendar week abroad. I’m writing this from what is probably my favorite spot in Paris so far. It’s a little ledge on the river that runs around the Ile de Saint-Louis, and the reason why I like it is because the sun virtually never hits it. The sun and I are not friends at the moment; it wants to be some thirty-degree-centegrade sillyness and I want it to be raining.

Unfortunately, I also seem to have every disease ever invented ever; a cold that I brought with me, a fever (complete with delerious nightmares) and diarrhea c/o Mr Sun and a nasty stomach bug thanks to Paris’ dirty tap water.

Paris is very old-fashioned compared to London. From a distance, I didn’t realise that it’s roughly one-third of the size of London, and that even France as a whole – despite occupying twice the landmass – has a smaller nose-count overall than the island I call home. This does give Paris a kind of personality which I suppose London lacks, particularly to an outsider, but does make the city feel rather hollow. While it is certainly both beautiful and eccentric, it’s clear that it is, for example, ill-equipped for commerce; the driving system is a glorious chaotic mess and there doesn’t appear to be a sizeable commercial district at all. Which shouldn’t bother me, as a tourist, but for some reason it does.

Also, for an allegedly first-world country it can be quite backward. I mean, honestly Paris – I at least expected clean tap water.

It’s also expensive. Budget-bustingly so, in fact. I’ll just have to try and make it up once I hit the Low Countries.

So. I spent the first couple of days in Monmartre, which was nice – that hostel I stayed at was literally in the shadow of the Basilica de Sacre-Coeur, and the view out of my window was amazing. Thurday evening was sensible – bearings then food then bed. Simple.

On Friday, however, I seem to have decided to be silly. In my wisdom, despite having had no sleep and being unable to retain solids, I decided to walk to length of the city twice. From my base in Monmartre, I headed towards the Moulin Rouge in Pigalle, and was amazed – minge in the windows! I then headed south towards Opera, which is the absolutely jaw-droppingly stunning French national Opera house, then onto – and around – Le Louve, which was probably also spectacular but I was flagging a little by this point. For some reason, I then decided that it would be a good idea to walk to Bastile – it wasn’t, as obviously there’s nothing there but a big roundabout, although the walk alongside the Seinne was nice – after which I was more or less obligated to slog along the Rue Magenta towards Gare du Nord and Monmartre.

I could, of course, have spared myself all that at any time by simply jumping onto the Metro. UNFORTUNATELY I have a mild (yet bizarre) fear of unfamiliar public transport systems – it took me the better part of a week to get onto Tokyo’s metro, and here as there I found that the more tired I am the less inclined I am to face my peculiar issues.

Thus, Saturday was pretty horrible. I’d barely slept, I couldn’t eat and my body was still giving me hell for Friday’s stupidity. I moved hostels to one near Pont Marie, although with the larger pack on my back I bit the bullet and lost my Metro cherry while my brain was still functioning. My new hostel is pretty grim – swelteringly hot, badly built and no air conditioning, or even fans, which only goes to reinforce my opinion that Paris is a 15th Century city pretending to be a 17th Century city. I tried to get some compensatiory sleep, but couldn’t because of the heat; tried to eat but threw up; was generally useless. I ended up not doing much apart from feeling sorry for myself, which is something I’m quite good at.

Today has been better. I got some sleep this morning, and even ate a bit for breakfast and kept it down. The wind in my sails, I headed toward the Eiffel Tower to see if it was worth the fuss, and, yeah, it’s big and it’s go views and stuff. I almost carried on for the Pantheon, but I was feeling a bit rough after Eiffel’s stairs (1665, fact fans!), so I took Friday’s lesson to heart and mooched back to the hostel. So here I am, writing this with a baguette, so camembert and cherry tomatoes and orange juice, in what is, now, no longer my favourite spot in Paris – as a French man has just reached into my bag, pulled out my swiss army knife and mimed stabbing me. I think I’m going to move on now – tonight I’ll probably head towards the Arc de Triomphe, which I hear is also well-endowed in the views department.

If I seem slightly negative about Paris, then that’s because thus far I’m genuinely underwhelmed. Perhaps it’s the fugue state talking, and perhaps I’ll be more receptive when I shake my various maladies, but it seems like a very superficial city – more like an installation or sculpture than a real, living city. Which isn’t to say it isn’t beautiful – which it is – or that it is somehow lacking in life or energy – which it certainly isn’t. More to say that, between the stunningly pretty girls, the glorious Gothic architecture and the bohemian chic lies only filler, and not a real city at all.

That said, the one thing that has impressed is the Metro. Not only is it cleaner, fatser, quieter and cheaper than the tube, it has also provided the definitive Moment of the Trip So Far. London Underground, as many of you will be aware, has designated, Carling-sponsored busking spots for hairy men to sit in and play bad pop-rock, accousticly, so that we can all ignore them. At first I thought they were a kind of containment, stopping these people from roaming the streets, but no – apparently they’re still allowed to do that. I tend to just ignore them.

I digress. The Moment occured when I rounded a corner in Concorde station and encountered nothing less that a twelve-piece brass and accordian band, who were actually (and surprisingly) really good. They even got some change out of me, which is a rarety; I would have bought the CD but frankly I didn’t want to lug it around Europe only to discover it it was actually pap when I got home. So I guess I passed on that; nevertheless, it was the first time Paris had actually delighted me.

Right, I have to go now. Sorry this was so long, they’ll probably get shorter as I get bored-er of keeping a journal, but for now the novely’s fresh, so enjoy it while it lasts. Much love to all.