Chi bestia va a Roma...

food

2009-01-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

Today I had the first food on this trip which was diverged from something I might make in the direction of good (and it was all of 5 YTL = $3.50): cauliflower with orange and dill. I'm guessing it's fried in olive oil, with a tiny bit of carrot, let cool, salted, and tossed with orange blossom water and fresh dill. What I don't understand is how this can be a traditional dish - even in Armenia, how can oranges and cauliflower be in season together with dill? Anyway, it was really good.

Its sequel was tasty, and well-presented... and I already had the camera out.

The restaurant, "Bostana," was right next to a coffee house, which was so smoky I had trouble breathing when I mistook it for the restaurant (the sign for which was actually in front of the coffee shop). Walking back down Istiklal Cad., there were two distinct anti-Israel rallies. In one, they were singing. I couldn't help but imagine them singing the song from Borat.

In other news, which I unfortunately don't have a picture to accompany, I got scammed yesterday, and didn't even realize it until today. Yesterday, a shoe-shine guy dropped his brush, and I exclaimed until, on the third exclamation, he turned around and picked it up, thanking me profusely. I kept on walking, but slowly, and he caught up, and started talking to me, in a perfectly natural way (Most aren't natural at all - out of nowhere, people say "Where are you from, or more often in my case "Deutsch?" But "Yes. Please, hello." is my favorite faux salutation so far.). He was Kurdish, and had come to city to feed his kids, because his village had been bombed, so it was really important that he not lose the brush. So we walked and chatted halfway across the Galata bridge, at which point he looked as if he'd made a decision, and telling me that he wanted to thank me, he insisted on giving me a shoeshine (but without cleaning them first - I really didn't want him to), and I felt guilty enough to give him 3 YTL for it.

I only realized this was a scam when another guy tried the same thing; but he had jumped up four steps to make the brush fall off, turned the first time I exclaimed, and then wanted to thank me immediately. I almost wanted to tell him: listen, there's this Kurdish guy: you need to go study under him.

things in istanbul 2

2009-01-09T11:05:00.002-08:00

This fragment of a grave stele seems to show a horse ready to eat a philosopher:

An Egyptian-style sarcophagus with Greek knees. They were in Sidon, so I guess they split the difference.

An apprehensive centaur:

A coy bull:

Relatively subtle emotion on a sarcophagus relief:

things in istanbul 1

2009-01-09T10:53:00.000-08:00

This ("elephant foot") column in Sultanahmet, also known as the blue mosque, is one of four which holds up a largish dome all on its own. That's why it so grotesquely big. I like it.

I find it oddly hard to imagine the horses' noses actually intact on this column topper, but it seems like another example of awesome Byzantine innovation.

On the other hand, this sculpture really is why classical sculpture went to shit (it's 6th-century):

From the amazing Alexander Sarcophagus in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, a detail: the paint on the daisies survives!

2009-01-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

Look, it's a fancy chicken, in the middle of the street! I felt bad for her - it was so cold, and she's one of those skinny sub-tropical sorts of chicken.

You might have to enlarge this to see it - one of the jillions of stray cats had clearly hit paydirt, in the form of the open bucket of kitty food on the steps of this pet store:

I went for a walk along the shore on the sea of Marmara side of the golden horn, today, and there was quite a line of ships waiting to go through the Bosporus. Probably none of them had been able to procure cattle yet, and so were unable to pass through the cattle-bearing strait.

I mentioned earlier that almost nothing of Byzantium or Constantinople (which reminds me that today I heard, blaring from a purveyor of belogoed spandex, a Turkish cover of Istanbul to Constantinople, or whatever that song by They Might Be Giants is actually called) is incorporated into Istanbul. This, for instance, is what's left of the hippodrome:

a hike

2009-01-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

the chora church, while outside the earlier walls, was just within the later walls, which are remarkably well-preserved, as practically nothing else from Byzantium is. It's a striking contrast to Rome, where there are traces everywhere of imperial Rome.

I had walked there through some less than beautiful neighborhoods, and figured the walk back would be roughly the same. It wasn't: there are bits and pieces of shantytown here, with lots of angry looking young men who presumably would not want to discuss the finer points of international diplomacy in general, but who might be very interested in informing me of their opinion of the US and its role in helping Israel do such things as bomb schools. Did you know that only 7% of Turkish people have a positive opinion of Americans, according to our very own state department? I escaped by heading downhill whereever possible, and then hopping on the nearest water-bus back to eminonu. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the shanty town, but it hardly seemed like the thing to do at the time. Instead, I got a nice picture of a mosque on the way back on the boat:

chora

2009-01-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

So today I wandered farther afield, all the way to the old city walls of Constantinople, to go to a church with some fantastic, but occasionally puzzling, mosaics. It was hard to take pictures, because there was a gang of vigilante children which would run up, giggling, and yelling "no flash!" Now, of course, I almost never take pictures with a flash when I can avoid it, and since mosaics are very slow moving, I wouldn't even *want* to use the flash, even if it didn't contribute to their disintegration. I'm not sure whether the children thought that "no flash" meant "no pictures," since the signs had crossed out images of cameras (with very small flashes attached), or whether they were just playing a game, but it meant that to take a picture I had to walk quickly around the church to lose them, and then quickly set the camera up somewhere to take a shot. Still, I managed to get a couple.

Joseph coming to get Mary from the priest. Why is she half the height of everyone else?

Mary with Jesus in her holy womb (they even turned the word mother into a nomen sacrum - that's the MP with a line over it to her left):

You'll have to enlarge this picture of the Temptations of Christ in order to see the devil; he's the little black minx.

2009-01-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

Another nice naive fresco, totally out of place, outside a gate.

This is my favorite bit of polychrome tile work anywhere:

topkapi palace harem

2009-01-08T10:57:00.000-08:00

Another thing I've never understood the appeal of is the kind of painted texture found on this column. The tiles surrounding the column are amazing. But the column is just tacky - to really appreciate this, you may have to enlarge the photo.

All the other decorative stuff in the harem was great. I apologize for the awful photo of this dome, but the motif is great: trees growing from a garden around the base to the top. Done with conifers, it might even looks natural.

I think it's time for this kind of naive floral fresco to come back.

Also, fountains under window sills.

And incredibly intricately painted domes with skylights in the middle...

other bits of divine wisdom

2009-01-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

One thing the Byzantines did well was columns; even the monogram on the first one isn't tacky.

The green on this wasn't even visible to the naked eye (thanks, telephoto) but it's a strikingly contemporary use of color. I think I'll recreate this in my living room.

One thing that's always seemed to me completely alien, though, is the use of fancy marble: it's hideous. And the whole interior of hagia sophia is covered in it. It just seems like excess, or at least expense, for its own sake. I wonder whether that was clear to anyone at the time.

mosaics at hagia sophia

2009-01-08T10:37:00.001-08:00

Is that an arched eyebrow on Jesus? Even his mustache is arched.

A bit more feeling in this one:

The 19th century restorers of some of the frescoes painted medallions rather than faces on the angels, since hagia sophia was at that time still used as a mosque. But from the ground it really looks more like you're looking at a bird's ass.

hagia sophia

2009-01-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

What they don't tell you about divine wisdom - hafia sophia - is that up close it looks like an ancient apartment block:

They do tell you that the dome is absolutely enormous - the statue of liberty would fit under it - but pictures do a really bad job at conveying that; here's my best attempt:

For a long time I've wanted to take an album of pictures of people posing for a tourist photo; this is even better than that. The people on the right are taking a photo of the people on the left, who are taking a photo of the stray cat next to the... oh - there's an ancient marble urn.

istanbul

2009-01-06T12:20:00.001-08:00

This sign manages to be both comical and more effective at conveying dangerousness than the American versions.

The water flowing under the Golden Horn, over which runs this bridge, is absolutely disgusting, and the only fish I saw caught were anchovy-sized; but that doesn't stop an army of fishermen from fishing off it:

gaudi

2009-01-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

Before I went to Barcelona I thought Gaudi was gimmicky and unnatural, just based on the photos I had seen. And there are definitely some things which seem to me mistakes, or devices which are completely overused - the broken tile mosaics, for instance, work in one or two places but their ubiquity is unfortunate. But actually seeing some of the buildings made me realize that they're actually very comfortable and well-adapted, in ways which pictures don't reproduce very well; so these pictures are of some details which contributed to that overall feeling.

Wooden bricks in the Palau Guell: the flash unfortunately screws with the color

The gate at the Palau Guell: braided together in a way that really suits wrought iron, open to the breeze, but with very limited visibility at eye level.

The three wise men, on a facade of the Sagrada Familia, undergirded by fowl - turkeys, I think.

An angel playing the Oboe on the Sagrada Familia.

A suicidal angel (or saviour?), a la Wim Wenders, on the Sagrada Familia

barcelona

2009-01-06T11:17:00.000-08:00

A house I ran into while trying to get to Park Guell; the dog-heads made it picture-worthy:

A candy shop by another name:

The roman wall in Barcelona: not all original - and definitely not the balcony railings - but it's amazingly intact and intimidating, in this stretch:

fez

2009-01-02T01:18:00.000-08:00

Basically, all I did in Barcelona was to try to figure out lodging in Fez; I only found out that my second attempt had failed when the conductor on the bus loaned me his mobile phone in order to call and arrange for them to pick me up. That would be Said, on the right below:

Long story short: I stayed at his uncle Djinn's place

on a couch (the red and white one in the picture below) in a room lined with couches with the extended family sleeping on them.

The next morning the women and children left but the men were still sleeping after I'd been awake for an hour, so I left and note and took off to see, among other things, the shrine to the founder of the city (immediately below), and what is purported to be the oldest university. It's not clear to me what exactly the criterion is for that claim, but the library (on the left) sure is nice - and still operating, which, now that I think about it, does separate it from the Academy...

the end approaches

2007-12-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

going to a collective breakfast with the housemates (left->right, sylvia, lucille, till):

i've been wanting to take this beautiful bike home with me, but where it's supposed to come apart (see the screw halfway down the bar), some idiot welded it together:

so i took it to a car-repair place where a nice turkish guy talked to me about california, which was his home for 5 years in the 70s, ground it apart for free:

the hacksaw on the right was from a previous, ill-advised, attempt to break the weld myself.

kathryn visits in berlin

2007-12-11T02:54:00.000-08:00

When I left, I was a bit surprised that everyone wanted to visit in Berlin rather than Rome; but daily life had its way with almost everyone. But lovely Kathryn came to visit for Thanksgiving and took some great pictures...

of me on the other side of the seesaw on Potsdamer Platz

Kathryn crushing the Reichstag:

On an evening stroll through the Tiergarten:

An anonymous mad scientist made the broth for the turkey and duck, which stewed in the shower overnight and then roasted up to... well, if not perfection, a decent first try at roasting larg-ish birds. They were both under 8 lbs.

It was practically Kathryn's last day before we made it to Unter den Linden and all that...

another side of ireland

2007-12-11T02:30:00.000-08:00

namely, the eastern side. Dublin, to be precise, which can be pretty:

and which at least has good people who lend you bikes and take you to parties; unfortunately, my camera has enough juice for one flash (no joke), and so unfortunately only an extremity of Roisin's friend Kavo show up.

there would be another picture here, of Louise (also in Rome for the Summer) and Roisin singing, loudly, in a taxi on the way home from a different night, but I fear their wrath.

ireland

2007-12-11T02:08:00.001-08:00

When I have Alzheimers, I think I'll still remember these views: from the Sneem-Killarney road, from the Mullers' back yard, and from the Kerry way about half a mile down towards Sneem from the Mullers'.

Max took me and Roisin, who drove with me down to Kerry (and who, helpfully, had a mobile phone to call for the help which never came when we got a flat tire at 11pm on a pitch black two-lane highway, with me having only the foggiest of memories of how to change a tire), into Sneem for a gander at the new hotel and some tea on the patio of a pub. By the time we got back I think Max had already inducted Roisin into the family:

And then Etienne very kindly took us kayaking, and I think Roisin understood for the first time why I liked Ireland, not herself being so fond of her homeland.

naples again

2007-12-11T01:52:00.000-08:00

I had to go pick up luggage which I'd left in Rome, and hadn't wanted to travel with. So I flew to Naples, had coffee as many times a day as I had gelato, took a train up to Rome, then flew to Dublin, drove down to Kerry, and flew back to Berlin. Which rules out one explanation of my having taken a picture of this:

Across the courtyard from the budget hotel with a small dorm room in which I stayed, Soggiorno-Imperia.

You may have to look closely at this plaque to see the editing. Someone apparently wants to clarify that the church was destroyed not by the war, but by the Americans.

vehicular appendix to amsterdam

2007-12-11T01:40:00.001-08:00

First of all, the bakfiets:

An entire family on a bicycle: it's Naples without motors.

One of the perks of being a Dutch fireman:

amsterdam

2007-12-11T01:15:00.000-08:00

Dude, are those real, or just awesome?

The Australian Air Guitar Champion was staying in the hostel; he even gave a free performance. This was his brother, roadie, and eventual accompanist, spreading out the tour poster they had made up for their performance at the world championships in Helsinki... which handily flew them to Europe.

The bar at the hostel, the flying pig downtown. Just like it says on the box.

I had forgotten that Amsterdam is also very pretty:

1st week in berlin

2007-12-01T10:13:00.001-08:00

Berlin's effect on hair:

Buildings both monumental (Stabi, Deutscher Dom) and bizarre:

prague

2007-12-01T09:56:00.001-08:00

A man riding an upside-down horse, suspended from the ceiling of a shopping arcade. Huh?

Prague is pretty in this way:

Mucha did some amazing stained glass for the cathedral in the castle.

leaving italy

2007-10-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

A sad day, which involved catching the train from Venice to Munich. On the train to the mainland:

The first stop in Germany involved an absurd smoking area painted onto the platform (second photo).

Munich was pretty, but a great disappointment after Italy, perhaps because the weather turned instantly from just below broiling in Italy to just above freezing in Austria. Munich added only rain to the mix; hence the night train to Prague, waking up to a beautiful view out the window.