Yes, safely back in Melbourne now - thanks to Gerd for his superhuman efforts in getting up at 3:30am (or was it 11:30am?) to get me to the airport on time! It was sad to say goodbye after just a week but I hope to return next year with Marie.
I should wrap up the last few days in Berlin ... as mentioned it was a nice wind-down from the frenetic pace in Rome. (Even though I disciplined myself to keep to only two tourist things a day there, the heat coupled with the Metro strike made it exhausting.)
We had another dinner party, this time with gulasch and dumpings - a specialty of Gerd's - washed down with the appropriate Czech beer (from Pilz) and mousse au chocolat. Got to meet some friends of Gerd's from last time and a couple of new ones. It was a great night and I had some good conversations (auf Englisch, natuerlich).
On Friday we went to see some of the new developments in Berlin. This city is just throwing up buildings like mushrooms after a shower! Apparently they are slowing down now and there are not as many new developments underway. Gerd and I checked out the Chancellor's offices and new Parliamentary library in the government quarter. (Very savvy of the Government to hold out until the end of the ten year program for its own massive buildings.) We also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - a field of granite stones in the former death strip, about 50m from the site of the new US embassy. While the work is still underway, I must say it doesn't really grab me. Still, I haven't seen the competiting designs.
Friday evening we caught up with Katinka, Marie's friend from Amsterdam, for a beer. It was good to see her again too after a year and find out about her new place and her studies. Later, Gerd, his housemate Josef and I went to the cool bit in Kreuzberg around Oranienstrasse for some beers and middle-eastern influenced cuisine. It was very tasty and I particularly enjoyed the lentil soup. As mentioned, we got home at midnight and slept from about 1am to 3:30am!
I flew from Berlin to Rome and saw two very impressive things that I'd not seen before: the Alps at dawn with giant golden snow fields, razor backed peaks and green valleys with little villages nestled in amongst them; and an oncoming passenger jet passing us a few hundred metres off the port wing at a relative airpseed of 2000 km/h. Easy to see how accidents happen; 747s are fairly big and this thing just materialised out of nowhere and disappeared within a few seconds.
The wait at Rome airport was made tolerable by cappucini, the Finanical Times and using up the last of the phonecard credits. Then it was boarding, waiting for an hour on the tarmac (that's twice now, I swear it's worse than Charles de Gaul - except for the structural integrity), a couple of alcholic beverages (white spirits only), earplugs and I woke up in Hong Kong. Sadly, I then transferred to Qantas which sucks compared with Cathay Pacific: worse food, no individual headrest telly and the cabin crew are not personally apologetic about cramming me into their tiny aeroplane. Transferred at Sydney and found a happy-looking certain someone waiting for me in the arrivals hall at Melbourne :-)
Jet lag hasn't been too bad, though I did put a downpayment on the sleep debt last night. Also, checked the credit card and the holiday hasn't been financially crippling either: I'd been doubling prices in Euro to get to Aussies, but the rate varied from 1.76 to 1.69 over the trip, so that was pleasant suprise too.
So while this year's trip was far too short, I would rate it as very successful: conference and doctoral consortium in Prato was productive and got good feedback, the high-intensity tourism of Rome and Hamburg was stimulating and the more relaxed social catchup in Bremen and Berlin was rewarding and satisfying. I'm feeling motivated to finish my PhD and get over again for another visit next year!
-Greg.
post script: got in at 11pm Sunday and made my 10am Monday tute. No students showed up. Still, I thought that was pretty good, but my supervisor Graeme got in at 4:30am Monday and was at Uni by 9am, proving why he's the professor and I'm the lowly PhD student!
Well, I found out how the genteel city of Hamburg got so refined for a harbour town: it concentrated its seamy side into a strip called the Reeperbahn, in St. Pauli. Named after the ropemakers who furnished the great shipping fleets with the ropes for their sailing vessels it is now the city's nightlife center and red light district. When John Lennon was asked about growing up in Liverpool he replied that he didn't grow up in Liverpool – he grew up in Hamburg. Not hard to see why. This is a strip maybe half a kilometre long with bars, sex shops, dirty cinemas, hip clubs, kebab shops, strip joints, cafes, brothels and restaurants all co-existing quite happily. It looks like Kings Cross but feels like St. Kilda. So, while it is a red light district – complete with girls in windows off the side streets hawking their wares and dozens of streetwalkers grabbing at tourists – it has a very strong family atmosphere at the same time. After dark, it's like any other going-out district with throngs of young people hitting their favourite cafes, bars and clubs. So it's not at all seedy, like the red light district in Amsterdam. I think the very strong licensing rules about prostitution and the extremely visible police presence contributes to this feeling.
Of particular interest is Grosser Freier Strasse (Greater Freedom Street), a little street off the Reeperbahn that hosts the live sex shows. This street is not named for the current trade, but because the city's Protestant leadership decreed that this is the one street where the dirty Catholics could practise their rituals! The church still stands, amongst the girly bars and rent-by-the-hour hotels. Since the selling of indulgences was more or less phased out, it's probably not been doing too well. But maybe some lapsed Catholics are rediscovering their faith there.
So, of course I went out on Saturday to the Herzblut bar (conventional, almost suburban), had a few beers and danced away to the usual hits from the 80s and 90s. I've always had respect for people who could go out to a nightclub by themselves without knowing anyone there, and now I'm one of them!
Sunday I went to Bremen and was met by Anna and Gerd. Haven't seen them in one year but fell back into place like it was last month. I stayed with them at Anna's flat and met her housemates Stone, Michel, Nina and Sabine. I also got to sit in on some house interviews since they were looking for a temporary replacement. They were all very accommodating and made me feel at home. We did some sightseeing in Bremen and saw some old churches and an impressive Rathaus (Town Hall). We also went to the interactive science museum in Bremen, where we learnt about humans, earth and the cosmos through some neat displays and demonstrations. I also got to practise riding a bike on the right hand side sans helmet – the extensive bike lanes made it less dangerous than it sounds and Bremen has more bikes than cars.
On Monday night we went to hear some jazz on a moored boat and have some beers which was very pleasant. When I found out they were students from the hochschule (college) I was worried that it might be whacky avant-garde experimental stuff (a pet peeve of mine) but it was good trad jazz with some beepop and scat thrown in.
Tuesday Gerd and I visited one of Bremen's great industries: the Beck's brewery! Here we toured the brewhouse, watched corporate videos, learnt about the history, ate raw barley, hops and malt and, of course, sampled the finished product. We tried a number of Beck's varieties and certainly got three euro's worth.
Yesterday Gerd and I travelled to Berlin by train (top speed 250km/h) and met his housemate Josef, who is Anna's brother. This morning Gerd went to his job at a company making architectural analysis software and needing English translation work: given Gerd's Aussified English, I reckon there will be some poor Croatian architect wondering about a computer warning message that says „Crikey! You've buggered it“.
Josef and I headed to the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) exhibition that has travelled to Berlin. Sadly, the queue was 5-6 hours so we bailed and went to see a retrospective of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who has holiday snaps from six decades and three continents.
I did a whirlwind tour re-orienting myself with the city: Potsdamer Platz, Under den Linden, Brandenburger Tor, Friedrichstrasse, Lustgarten, Berlin Dom, TV Tower and Alexaderplatz in around one hour. Public transport here is fantastic!
Enjoying the city and hanging out with Gerd and his friends, and would love to stay for longer, but sadly I'll be back to dreary old Melbourne and work next week. Still, the weather has been unusually shitty here (overcast, 20 degrees, occasional rain – hardly summertime!) so a wintery Melbourne won't be too much of a shock.
I am now in Hamburg, but will finish up Rome first ...
First, I think I may have jumped the gun re: public transport. They had their monthly strike on Tuesday which meant I had to traipse around the city in the boiling heat. Still, what a city to have to traipse around in!
Went to St. Peter´s Square and Basillica in the Vatican. So very big. So much money. Went up into the Dome and the Cupola. Amazing design and art. No point trying to describe or photograph it - just frickin´ incredible.
I had to come back the next day to see the Vatican Museum - even a quick whiz through by myself and then a guided tour only scratched the surface and I reached art appreciation fatigue after only five hours. Fortunately, I had a enough left to be wowed by Michelangelo´s efforts in the Sistine Chapel. I´m just staggered that he took up painting at the age of 41 after dismissing it as a minor art form suitable only for women (he was a notorious misogynist) and this was his first effort! That was four years well spent. He then came back after a couple of decades and did The Last Judgement on the back wall. In all, he spent about 10 years out of his 70 working in there, mostly alone, with a candle.
What else? Had a tour of the Roman Forum, Circus Maximus and Palatine Hill from a Glaswegian called Ian. Fortunately, my upclose exposure to the accent meant I was able to translate for the benefit of Americans in the group. These are mostly ruins now, but you can get a great sense of Roman geography and history from up there. Ian was particularly excited about Emperor Hadrian and proud that his ancestors were so generally disagreeable to civilised people that they required their own wall.
Also spent a few hours just riding around on buses (when they deigned to operate). This is a sort of "pot-luck" form of tourism as you don´t know where you´ll end up. While this works fine in Rome, I wouldn´t recommend it in Melbourne: Box Hill has it´s own significance and sites of interest but it lacks the impact of, say, the Villa Borghese. One of the more interesting things I saw on one bus trip was The Free Park. This is not an actual park; rather it is the only free car parking spot in Rome. It moves around throughout the day like the Chinese Tile Puzzle while 73,000 cars and Vespas seek it out. I was lucky enough to glimpse it briefly.
Speaking of the traffic, they have zebra crossings here which means that pedestrians just step out into four lanes of heavy traffic hoping that they´ll stop. Not trusting Roman drivers that much, I use nuns as trailblazers, figuring that most Romans have probably had fear and respect for clergy beaten into them as children. Nuns are quite prevalent, especially across the Tiber near the Vatican. Being usually small and old (and hence quite slow) you can´t just follow the same one around but instead go from nun to nun. I call this "nun surfing" and recommend it as a means of getting around town.
As I mentioned, I´m now in Hamburg. Flew up to Berlin and took the train across as it worked out cheaper. It´s a relief to be in a cooler climate - mid 20s and sunny. Yesterday and today I´ve just been wandering around, eating, drinking beer and noticing the differences between southern and northern Europe. Like breakfast: German frühstück is a way better proposition than the Italian colazione. Also, the beer is very interesting here. Each variety has its own little ritual of preparation, particular glass, serving method etc.
Hamburg seems very pleasant. For Melburnians, I´d describe it as what would happen if Collins St became a whole city: trendy (but not Rome trendy) shopping up one end, leafy- green stately up the other. But with more canals (or "fleets") and a big lake. About the size of Adelaide but with less churches and a fair bit more cash. Several hundred millionaires and six billionaires! Something to do with intergenerational ownership of international shipping I guess.
One particular church I visited was St. Nicolai which was largely destroyed during the feuersturm (firestorm) during the summer of 1943 when, over four days and nights, the Allied airforces blew 60% of Hamburg to smithereens, killing over 40,000 citizens. The church has been left as a memorial and I found it very moving to walk around in the remains. While this is not a unique idea, there´s something about the fragility of Gothic architecture - supporting ribs busted apart, blackened stone, smashed vaults - that gives it a big impact.
I´ll be catching up with Gerd and Anna in Bremen on Sunday, and from there the last week will be in Berlin. My efforts at speaking German got off to a good start with the nice middle-aged couple in my train cabin yesterday who were very patient. It´s a bit harder with the locals since my only contact to date is with hospitality staff. I start picking my way slowly through a sentence, get a bit panicky about the dative case and revert to survival German. They of course speak quite good English and, let´s face it, are not paid to provide tutelage to Ausländer. The sensible ones go straight to English once I say "Hallo". The polite ones reply auf Deutsch and let me have one or two "noch einmal" (once again) or "bitte langsam" (slowly please) before giving up. Fair enough. They´re probably dreading the "buchstabieren Sie bitte" (can you spell it please). I know I would.
Still, I enjoyed the bus tour this morning since we got a spiel in German and then English and I was pretty much getting the gist of it. I think the fact that they speak very good German here (as my first German teacher Uli - from Hamburg natürlich - liked to say) is helpful. I´ll have to save my breaking-the-ice phrase for Berlin: Ich verstehe nicht Ihren ländlichen Dialekt. Sprechen Sie richtig. (I do not understand your peasant dialect. Speak correctly.)
I am now in Hamburg, but will finish up Rome first ...
First, I think I may have jumped the gun re: public transport. They had their monthly strike on Tuesday which meant I had to traipse around the city in the boiling heat. Still, what a city to have to traipse around in!
Went to St. Peter´s Square and Basillica in the Vatican. So very big. So much money. Went up into the Dome and the Cupola. Amazing design and art. No point trying to describe or photograph it - just frickin´ incredible.
I had to come back the next day to see the Vatican Museum - even a quick whiz through by myself and then a guided tour only scratched the surface and I reached art appreciation fatigue after only five hours. Fortunately, I had a enough left to be wowed by Michelangelo´s efforts in the Sistine Chapel. I´m just staggered that he took up painting at the age of 41 after dismissing it as a minor art form suitable only for women (he was a notorious misogynist) and this was his first effort! That was four years well spent. He then came back after a couple of decades and did The Last Judgement on the back wall. In all, he spent about 10 years out of his 70 working in there, mostly alone, with a candle.
What else? Had a tour of the Roman Forum, Circus Maximus and Palatine Hill from a Glaswegian called Ian. Fortunately, my upclose exposure to the accent meant I was able to translate for the benefit of Americans in the group. These are mostly ruins now, but you can get a great sense of Roman geography and history from up there. Ian was particularly excited about Emperor Hadrian and proud that his ancestors were so generally disagreeable to civilised people that they required their own wall.
Also spent a few hours just riding around on buses (when they deigned to operate). This is a sort of "pot-luck" form of tourism as you don´t know where you´ll end up. While this works fine in Rome, I wouldn´t recommend it in Melbourne: Box Hill has it´s own significance and sites of interest but it lacks the impact of, say, the Villa Borghese. One of the more interesting things I saw on one bus trip was The Free Park. This is not an actual park; rather it is the only free car parking spot in Rome. It moves around throughout the day like the Chinese Tile Puzzle while 73,000 cars and Vespas seek it out. I was lucky enough to glimpse it briefly.
Speaking of the traffic, they have zebra crossings here which means that pedestrians just step out into four lanes of heavy traffic hoping that they´ll stop. Not trusting Roman drivers that much, I use nuns as trailblazers, figuring that most Romans have probably had fear and respect for clergy beaten into them as children. Nuns are quite prevalent, especially across the Tiber near the Vatican. Being usually small and old (and hence quite slow) you can´t just follow the same one around but instead go from nun to nun. I call this "nun surfing" and recommend it as a means of getting around town.
As I mentioned, I´m now in Hamburg. Flew up to Berlin and took the train across as it worked out cheaper. It´s a relief to be in a cooler climate - mid 20s and sunny. Yesterday and today I´ve just been wandering around, eating, drinking beer and noticing the differences between southern and northern Europe. Like breakfast: German frühstück is a way better proposition than the Italian colazione. Also, the beer is very interesting here. Each variety has its own little ritual of preparation, particular glass, serving method etc.
Hamburg seems very pleasant. For Melburnians, I´d describe it as what would happen if Collins St became a whole city: trendy (but not Rome trendy) shopping up one end, leafy- green stately up the other. But with more canals (or "fleets") and a big lake. About the size of Adelaide but with less churches and a fair bit more cash. Several hundred millionaires and six billionaires! Something to do with intergenerational ownership of international shipping I guess.
One particular church I visited was St. Nicolai which was largely destroyed during the feuersturm (firestorm) during the summer of 1943 when, over four days and nights, the Allied airforces blew 60% of Hamburg to smithereens, killing over 40,000 citizens. The church has been left as a memorial and I found it very moving to walk around in the remains. While this is not a unique idea, there´s something about the fragility of Gothic architecture - supporting ribs busted apart, blackened stone, smashed vaults - that gives it a big impact.
I´ll be catching up with Gerd and Anna in Bremen on Sunday, and from there the last week will be in Berlin. My efforts at speaking German got off to a good start with the nice middle-aged couple in my train cabin yesterday who were very patient. It´s a bit harder with the locals since my only contact to date is with hospitality staff. I start picking my way slowly through a sentence, get a bit panicky about the dative case and revert to survival German. They of course speak quite good English and, let´s face it, are not paid to provide tutelage to Ausländer. The sensible ones go straight to English once I say "Hallo". The polite ones reply auf Deutsch and let me have one or two "noch einmal" (once again) or "bitte langsam" (slowly please) before giving up. Fair enough. They´re probably dreading the "buchstabieren Sie bitte" (can you spell it please). I know I would.
Still, I enjoyed the bus tour this morning since we got a spiel in German and then English and I was pretty much getting the gist of it. I think the fact that they speak very good German here (as my first German teacher Uli - from Hamburg natürlich - liked to say) is helpful. I´ll have to save my breaking-the-ice phrase for Berlin: Ich verstehe nicht Ihren ländlichen Dialekt. Sprechen Sie richtig. (I do not understand your peasant dialect. Speak correctly.)
Well I'm back on the net ... just doing some laundry and they've conveniently put in a net connection, so I figured I might as well catch up on the world.
Today I went to the Colloseum, or amphitheatre. It's good enough I guess, but living next door to the MCG has taken the gloss off it a bit
:-)
OK, so it's not as big, but it's about 1900 years older - or about as long as it takes to get membership to the G. Also, it was built in a phenomenal eight years. Apparently, the Romans picked up best-practice labour management techniques from the Egyptians ie beating, whipping and working slaves, prisoners and criminals to death. I wonder if Fed Square would have been completed in time with these methods. Bloody unions.
The tour was very instructional and I'm going back for more in the arvo tomorrow, especially the Roman forum and related sites. I'm also still keen to see the Vatican to see the rest of the Colloseum (they pinched all the marble to make St. Peters) but the word is there's going to be a transport strike tomorrow. On that note, the public transport here is good, really good. Better than it should be, actually.
Another nice suprise about Rome is the smell. Let's face it: we come to Europe for the sights, not the smells. Many fine European cities are plagued with a slight sewer pong and cigarette stench. It's a reflection of the fact that some of these drains and sewers have been operating for hundreds of years, and the locals are willfuly insisting on personal pollution rights. So, in Roman summer I was expecting all of that plus smog. But it's great - dunno if it's to do with the wind (just a breeze in the evenings) or what. Roman engineering? In fact, the various flower-bearing trees - sorry, no chance of making an ID - waft a lovely smell around the place, particularly in the parks and monuments.
I've been eating very well in Italy. Sort of grazing is the way to go. My strategy is to find the nearest piazza, monument or tourist attraction. This is important to get your bearings. Then, walk immediately away from it - but not too far lest you hit another one. About 100m is about right. Then, buy pizza by weight or panini. In the evening, I try and find a nice-looking trattoria or pizzeria. Wine is ridiculously expensive so I get vino bianco della casa (or close to that) but I can't pick the variety. Yellow like a chardy, but fruitier. I'm enjoying the dolci here too. You definitely need your insulin handy when sampling and size is no indicator of amount of sugar. Dinner is late (after 9pm) so a gelati about 6pm is about right.
This public computer terminal is extremely dodgy - riddled with spyware, toolbars, popups all over the place and it won't let me send mail. Certainly I won't be logging into the bank - hell, I think even Alison would be wary of this one! So, Gerd, if you're reading I would love to catch up with you and Anna in Bremen on the weekend! As you say, it is only one hour on the train from Hamburg. It's always much better to be shown around by the locals. And yes, the offer of some floorspace at your place is kindly appreciated.
OK - washing is done so I will hunt out some pasta. Ciao!
I'm in Rome now, so I will try to cram in the last few days:
On Thursday night we had the conference dinner on a hilltop villa some 30 minutes out of Prato. The journey up the hill on the bus through Tuscan villages, vineyards and farmhouses was just breathtaking. In every direction was a postcard picture perfect view. Amazing! The villa itself was lavish, almost grandiose (the Medici touch). We enjoyed a huge amount of fine food and wine and things got animated towards the end.
Friday was another day of conference. I presented my paper to a small but discerning group of researchers where it seemed to go down pretty well: no difficult questions, lots of nodding heads during the important bits. No gushing enthusiasm and offers to publish in journals though. But, overall, I was happy with its reception.
Saturday was more papers, panel sessions, keynote speeches and the like. The committee met and decided on the next conference venue (London, organised by the LSE, Jim Hacker's alma mater!). We had a fantasic if brief tour of Prato by the Monash Center's director (see below). I had arranged to catch up with some other attendees for drinks and dinner on the last night, but sadly missed the rendezvous point due to a bus problem. I combed the restaurants and bars looking for them but without success. So I consolled myself in one of Prato's many (!!) Scottish pubs. There, I dined on panini, seated on tartan watching crazy Italian television and drinking Tenants. A word of warning: Tenants Scotch Ale is about twice the strength of regular beer!
Re: Telly. I've had opportunity to watch about four hours in total (some cafes have it on during the day) and it seems that the Golden Age of Television has never left. Think variety shows consisting of lecherous middle-aged men in dinner suits, a multitude of pretty young things, a bit of song and dance, skits with lame props, slightly bawdy humour. Night and day, on all channels. Strange.
Sunday I took the train to Firenze, and then to Rome. The Tuscan leg was just fantastic - rolling hills, vineyards, rundown farm houses, tiny old churches on hilltops, quaint villages. There was also a lot of new developments too, but they are retaining the architecture and colours of the existing buildings.
I spent yesterday afternoon and evening just wandering around. My hotel is near the Stazione Terminale so I walked in the sort of north east bit, ending up that zoo and the Villa Borghese. The view from the hill at sunset is just awesome. I saw an enormous domed church through the trees and thought "oh, St. Peter's", and then another one appeared - bigger, more opulent - and I thought "no, that's it there". This happened about four times and it was only once I'd got to a viewing point at Pincio that I saw the city laid out and realised, without any doubt, which was St. Peter's Basillica. It's just jaw-dropping. I will go to the Vatican tomorrow and check it out up close. (The Pope does some sort of publicity thing on Wednesdays so it might be maxed out. Whatever he does, I don't imagine it's too vigorous.) Today, I'm going to check out the Colloseum and Roman Forum as most musuems are shut.
Had the doctoral consortium yesterday. It was good to discuss in some detail my research to date and future plans, and the feedback was quite positive. We also had some presentations about publishing that, while informative, were also a bit disheartening. It is apparently so time-consuming, ego-wracking, drawn-out, arbitrary and prone to failure - yet absolutely crucial to career development - that I wonder why people persist. I would like to hear a talk also about how fantastic it is to be published to counter this negativity.
Afterwards, there was drinks on the terrace with about 100 academics. The "professors per square metre" was extraordinarily high and I was pleased to see such a big Monash turn-out. It's funny to think that I've had to travel to the other side of the world to get this much contact with people from the campus 10 km away! Anyway, we had local vino and cheeses (including buffalo and parmesan) to accompany the schmoozing, which was a very civilised way to spend an evening under the Tuscan sun(set).
I was very impressed with the introductory talk by Monash's man in Tuscany, Professor Bill Kent. He is the Director of the Prato Centre and a renowned scholar of the Italian Renaissance. We got an off-the-cuff, rambling, eclectic and wonderfully fascinating lecture of the variety that only an old-school academic can provide after many decades of study, reflection and immersion. He was able to draw together political, architectural, religious, artistic and economic threads about the history of Prato, Tuscany and, more broadly, the humanistic traditions. While the depth and breadth of his knowledge was plain to see, it was his passion and enthusiasm for the subject that I found most inspiring. I am especially looking forward to his walking tour of the old city on Saturday.
Shortly we will be having dinner at the Medici summer palace. From what little I know about that family, I am expecting something quite opulent. Tomorrow afternoon is my own presentation, and I have been shamelessly spruiking it this last two days.
