Angels

While LA is "the city of angels" according to its name, but Prague is really a city of angels. They are everywhere:

under bridges...



high overhead on pedestals...



holding up the drapes over tombs in great cathedrals...



or just hanging out in the corners of altars.



On the other hand, penguins, not so much. But some.


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Location:But it is not LA

Things and Words: An Exhibit

With so much to see in Prague with its museums and its buildings which in other cities would be just buildings but which, here, are museums in and of themselves, it can be good to just focus on one or two small exhibits.

Wandered into one called "Things and Words" at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. Its point was, in part, was that design of things have two functions: to beautify or elevate the status of its users and to serve a function in their lifestyle.




I quote: "Useless and kitschy things belong here since even objects of bad taste and were - and are - an integral part of human culture...these objects shape the environment in which we have and continue to live...even when we throw these things out as being no longer of use."




The point being, I guess, that we do not live in museums and yet we populate our environment with objects that intrinsically represent our own "collections" that have value in reflecting our lives and times.


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Location:Prague/Praha

Holy Christ!!!!!

Well given Prague's deep religious roots, one sees the form of the crucifixion in many public spaces and museums. In the churches of course. (personal note: I see myself as part of the western Christian tradition but the older I get, the more I think it is a really strange religion.




But the icon is everywhere...still I was surprised to see it at the DOX museum of contemporary art on the outskirts of the historic city. A huge crucifixion on an outside wall by the 2nd story patio.


At first I noticed just the figure. And, then, of what it was composed. Old, used shoes.






I don't know if this version was meant to be ironic, reverential, funny, humbling or a way of elevating the mundane into the sacred.

Still it did what art, at times, is supposed to do. Give one pause.

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Location:Prague

Baroque

I have never had much appreciation of baroque style...always seemed so "overdone" though, of course, that was the point. A reaction to the ascetic, self-denial, and plain strain of the Protestant Reformation. In short, letting it all hang out.

I wandered (the correct term because if you just wander and poke around, you open yourself to being surprised and surprise is a sometimes rare experience) into the Church of Our Lady of the Snows on a back street. The church was originally just to be the entrance into a huge cathedral but the rest never got built. An altar was added in the 16th century as were the side chapels.






What I had not experienced before, though, was the drama and emotionalism
of the figures which form these baroque assemblages. It took me a while to realize the scene below was the angel preventing Abraham from using his sword against his son, Isaac, who blindfolded clings to his leg. The angel is intent on grabbing the sword; Abraham is surprised; Isaac is crying.



And Moses seems as astonished at the serpent transformed from his staff as the Pharaoh must have been.




And the look on the saint's face...a sense of wise, sad prescience perhaps.





Even the smaller figures provide a range of attitude, emotion, and personality.






So I left the church with a new appreciation for this style...a willingness to explore now what I had dismissed before. And who knows what other wandering may bring as we move around this city.



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Location:Prague/Praha

Trains and subways

On the road, well the railroad again. We are getting the drill down. Charlotte did a great job of advanced reservations but then you gotta figure it out. So you know the train number...wait for it to be posted on a huge billboard listing, at times, maybe 40 trains coming and going in the next hour. Then you know the platform. But where on the platform?



The visual display of information is so well done. Each train has all of its cars listed horizontally. The red line represents the middle of the platform. Numbers/letters represent (like E and F above) positions away from the middle. So you find your car, then figure the area where it will stop, and wait at that point on the platform. And on the car, you find the seat number. And sit down. And, in most cases, begin to review the menu.


Not quite that organized on the subways...let's say in Prague...but still it is easy, regardless of language, to figure out the right direction...especially when you get a couple of words "mest" (town), "stare" (old) down and know how to get to "old town." But watch out for vertigo on some of the deeper stations.



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Location:Czech Republic

Kirke/Church

The landscape of Falster is dotted with churches...all built in the same architectural style that has been used over the centuries...a tall bell tower which still rings on occassion, a small nave, and an apse. Three distinct but related parts.




The Stadager church is a few fields over from Erik's farm. It was originally built in 1270 as a parish church an aristocratic landowner who had bought a fifth of the island from the king. Its yellow color is unusual but the same color is used on nearby houses to denote they were part of the same property.

The church building has an abstract form when viewed from various perspectives. I do not know if the white patterns on the tower were originally open...letting the sound of the bell peal out more openly to the countryside...or what they may have symbolized. But they do embellish the otherwise simple form of these buildings.







When I biked by the church one morning, the tower door was open. The minister was inside...meeting with another woman from the parish...and she let me in to see the interior. Which was, of course, very simple.





My favorite part of the interior were the candle holders.


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Location:On the train to Prague

Scandinavian design

The houses of our cousins in Falster and Copenhagen reflect a style of clean lines, simplicity, quality objects, and modesty. The farm house is several hundred years old but the interior contains furnishings and art that reflect a personal sense of taste and comfort.














In Copenhagen, Bodil's apartment has that same sense of spare, clean lines and well chosen objects.




And the afternoon coffee is served in that same manner.





This kind of Scandinavian design has its roots in two traditions. One is the more recent movement, influenced by the Bauhaus school which emphasized function and practicality...the kind of objects that IKEA now mass markets on a global level. But the other has, I think, deeper roots in cultural values that emphasize modesty (not being ostentacious), quality (having few but very good objects), cleanliness (not having clutter) and democracy (everyone should have access to this kind of space, these kinds of objects).

This is reflected also in public space...no billboards are allowed on roads or highways (everyone should be able to enjoy a view), large, well designed buses travel rural and urban routes with on-time schedules, public schools utilize open space, light, good architecture, etc.

Not that this represents any kind of perfection in "how to live and organize society"...all countries have plenty of problems...but it is good to recognize the different decisions that societies and cultures make and the different values that they hold. Because these do represent choices that can be made and unmade.

Location:On the train to Prague

Cousins

We spent some days in Falster with Eric and Helga, having dinner one night with some of their 13 grandchildren. We went to Copenhagen to visit Bodil, Eric's sister, and then another set of children and grandchildren. All cousins of one degree or another.








Besides catching up on the lives of family members, both in the US and Denmark, we had passed a post box in the little town of Nybor, an artist community on Mon, a neighboring island. On the post box appeared to my great surprise, my surname. Not all that common in either of our countries.


That evening Helga found that Werge's email address and we wrote and now are in contact. He represents part of our family who migrated to Denmark around the same time that my great grandfather was leaving for America. So we are, though somewhat removed, also cousins.

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Location:On the train from Hamburg to Prague

Falster

Falster is the most southern of the Danish islands...just a ferry ride from Germany. It is joined to Jutland and to the other islands which make up Denmark by bridges and tunnels and other ferries.



In the early middle ages, it was the most wealthy part of the country...heavy taxes paid for the construction of churches and palaces in Copenhagen. It
was part of the king's personal property...as did the serfs who farmed it. But, to raise more money, the king (was either Cristian II, III, IV, V, VI, or VII), sold it in five pieces and, over the centuries, it has become divided into today's farms and small towns.

Winter wheat, sugar beets, and grass seed are the main crops, along with some livestock (mainly sheep), and electricity.










We are, after all, in Danmark which receives 40% of its energy from wind turbines. Most of the island's homes are heated and lit by energy which comes from a central recycling plant which converts garbage and agricultural waste. Local transport is provided by buses and trains which run on time...bike trails line all of the major roads.

Yet no place is very far from the sea and fish supply a good deal of the local food sources.

Location:Train from Falster to Hamburg

Trains and stations

The vast concourse of the train stations in Koeln and Hamburg are dynamic examples of the pulse of Germany. They are performance platforms for coming and going, arriving and departing, saying "hello" and "goodbye" in a multitude of languages.




These are fast paced platforms...tracks for arriving and departing trains are posted as little as 10 minutes prior to arrival...meaning a rush for escaltors, stairways and, for folks like us, elevators. Charlotte is particularly good at spotting elevators.



We are learning to give ourselves plenty of time, of popping in long lines for "information" to find out, for example, that the train to Hamburg is listed as going to Kiel.

And, then, the train slows down to board the ferry...providing a chance to do some shopping in its stores (love the licorice)...and watch the German coastline receding in the dusk as we approach the flat landscape of Falster, the most southern of the Danish islands where our cousin has his farm. And where the pace slows way down.




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Location:On the way from Falster to Hamburg

Churches and Mosques

Istanbul is a city of mosques. Brussels is a city of churches (though they seem less serious about them than Istanbul does its mosques). Hagia Sophia was a church for a thousand years before being converted to a mosque. Now it is a "museum"...lending it a kind of neutrality that suits the tourist trade.

It strikes me that the architecture of mosques is quite democratic. A open space exists for all (well really just men). During worship, everyone faces toward Mecca but otherwise there is no real focal ploint...the worship area is filled (if it is a good design) with light. A pulpit, usually modest, provides a place for the imam to lecture at the principle times of worship. But the design is circular...everyone can see everyone at the same time.












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Cathedrals, though, are designed for everyone to face the same way. Long vaulted space leads the worshiper to face the front (where all the action is going on). The focus is on what the guys (mostly always guys in really neat robes) in front are doing...seats are set up so that all worshipers face front during the whole time of the service. And while the design, in part, is to draw the worshipers eyes upard, the placement of the seats mainly ensures the eyes stay focused on the altar.












I think this traditional basilica architecture reinforces hierarchy in part, the separation of worshipers from those who conduct or carry out the formal worship. It also reinforces a sense of hierarchy, those who watch or "participate" from those who actually carry it out. On the other hand, men and women can participate equally...Even as priests in some of these cathedrals...converted from Catholic to Protestant. Still In the mosque the architecture seems to reinforce the concept of all occupying the same space, being in the worship and not necessarily having anyone in charge to "conduct" the sacred actions. And who knows but someday men and women may worship there together.

I am not sure of this...it is probably just the result of moving between "islamic" and "christian" cultures...but, then, that is why we travel, no?

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Location:On the train to Hamburg

Wandering about

After the morning when Charlotte arrived (and my luggage and her cell phone were found), we got a taxi to our apartment in Cranheim, a neighborhood of Brussels. Well, actually, in Flanders just outside the border of Brussels. It is a Flemish commune, but one that has become mainly French speaking over the last 20 years and is, if not officially, bilingual with all signs in French and Nederlandish (Dutch/Flemish).

Which speeds along language learning if you know one or the other. And, having some French, it means I was picking up some limited Flemish.

On our first morning, I got up early, headed for the metro to learn the subway system and, then, wander about the city. Lots of laws, I found out, against photographing people in public without their permission...a whole different approach to the boundaries between public and private.



But in rounding some corners I caught sight of a mammoth building on a high level of the city...and, then, and public elevator which brings people up and down between these levels.






So I took the elevator up. Lots of police around the building...and no name plate outside...looked fairly forbidding...immense and forbidding, but I went up to one of the policemen and asked, in somewhat halting French, what this was. He said "le palais de justice"...the Palace of Justice. He pointed to an entryway for the public, saying that I had to go through security. Security looked a lot better than the airport kind, so I went in.

I was totally blown away. I had never been in such a colossal interior space (well, maybe, the old Pennsylvania Station in New York that was patterned on the Baths of Caracalla before it was torn down to build Madison Square Garden...but that was decades ago). Designed, I guess, to make us feel so small amid the huge columns and dome that seemed miles away above our heads.









I guess I had always thought of justice as being more small scale. Then I saw it had been built by King Leopold II, the master of the Congo which was his "private" land. The funds to build this must have come from his enslavement and rape of that African country (it was finally "taken away" from him by the Belgian government owing to the tremendous abuse of the Congolese people).
So justice? Seemed such an irony.

The Palais is ranked as the largest building constructed in the world during the 19th century. The style is classified as "Assyrian-Babylonian", that is, ancient Iraq. The exterior is surrounded by scaffolding...it has been being renovated for the past 15 years and a current controversy is that the scaffolding has deteriorated and needs to be renovated. And it is unclear who is going to pay for that.




At any rate, it is interesting how when you are not seeing all the "official tourist sites," you can come across places without anticipation...allowing you to experience the surprise and sometimes astonishment of discovery.

Location:On the train to Hamburg