Amsterdam 1 - Sat 11 Mar 2006

Set off for amsterdam friday afternoon/evening. beautiful train ride across absolutely flat plains in bright sun and fog. better/worse then the plains around fargo - i like flat more then i should admit. was dark already when we got to amsterdam, a quickish walk got us to our hostel, a few bars - one cool one with old men playing canasta and chess for everyone - and bed.

Saturday was bright and sunny and OMG cold! but we shiveringly set off for the docklands.... brand new architecture on brand new land reclaimed from the ocean - interesting to see new stuff work, and work well. Saw the well-published MVRDV building on the ocean first, the off to acres and acres of new stuff right by the ocean - felt like the edge of the world. 

holy shit i'm in istanbul!

haha yeah.... many impressions.... spent a day in amsterdam and one in utrect already, got into ataturk airport at 4... it's pretty amazingly different. hmm thought i'd post, i'm really excited to be here!

End of week...

Wednesday: What another fun day! during the 4 hours of unwritten about studio on tuesday i'd found that the opera Rigoletto was going to take place on wednesday, student tix on sale 15 minutes before the performance. So day took it's shape from that. Tony and I wanted to dress up a little bit, and sigh no dress clothes meant having to go shopping in Paris... horrors... and check out the new spring clothes. Back to the Galleries Lafayette in the morning, an hour of wandering the beautifully laid-out designers, wonderful tailored or flowing clothes in wonderful fabrics... mostly quite a very lot more then i'd be willing to pay, could be a lot of fun to be a rich girl here though.... ha. Ended up buying a suitish jacket I had drooled over in Rome... fit attractively in a lovely fabric, and blah blah blah I can use it for work and it goes with all my pants... very glad I bought it. Lunch in the department store cafe/cafeteria on the top floor, delicious salmon. A goal for when I return is to find or manufacture a green been and lemon juice recipe that is nothing short of wonderful.... they didn't serve one, but some lemon from the fish went splashing around, and mmmmm.......

5 minutes of studio with the internet out was enough, we went back home to wear our new glad rags and be honestly studious in a french library at the Centre Pompidou. it was not American. PACKED with people being scholarly, an acre of tables and a line to sit down... was fun to stuff brain with architectural images and philosophy (plenty of english books) in such an earnest atmosphere, got quite a bit of material and validation for my project, most successful.

Wandered through the Marais towards the Bastille, satisfied 'vegetable' craving with french fries eaten, foiled again at the Place de Vosages, still a neat square park to look on. The mist falling in front of the streetlights at dusk mmm. The scale of the roustabout around the Bastille column (there is no longer the prison, knocked down long ago) is always suprising. Our opera attmepts were foiled, though, due to a strike. Bastards. So French.

Enormous pot of garlic mashed potatoes, bread and cheese for supper, topped off by strawberries dipped in melted nuetella.... that is a desert exportable, i recommend it even more then chocolate.... oh man... animated conversation before sleep. Despite the lack of anticipated opera, it was still a very good day.

Thursday: quite relaxed... all day in studio, wasting time on the interwebs, a period of pretty intense productivity and project revision, called mom, pasta/pesto supper, tried my own hand at simple crepe filling, worked well enough, writing until bed. Earl Grey an unfortunate addition to evening, a cup'o'tea is lovely, sleeplessness is not. I shouldn't complain though, my fault and I normally sleep enviably well. Cool dreams.

Friday: is today! I'm caught up! Took washed clothes to the laundromat to dry, tried out the greek baker on our corner, horribly pain au chocolate from him, very disappointed. i needed the change though, so shrugs to that. In studio posting much to much text for too little activity - i might try to get some switzerland written up before i leave to to make this really up to date, it'll be back in the right dates though, I'll link it. Train leaves at 2:22 for Amsterdam!

Picture is of Zaha Hadid's Fire Station at the Vitra complex in Germany, from the unwritten Swiss adventure... that i am writing about, finally: installation one

Quick Summary (liar!)

Monday: Went into studio early to finish mapping assignment, rather tounge in cheek I made a fairy-tale type map, overlay on a 1700s lithograph map of paris, "Here be foreigners," "Gulf of Shifting Sands" ha i'm such a nerd, and Kober totally caught it. compared it to John Heyjduk though, haha.... i'll take what i can get i guess... that was all day, some of it wasted time - way to ready to laugh at webcomics, just about crying at some points... hehe... click on the 'funny' links on that del.icio.us tagroll to see which ones i read. No guarentee of quality, sometimes I have unrefined tastes... but no, they're all awesome ;). Boasas and Dinosaur Comics if you're only going to read a few. Made a good supper on Monday, but all our suppers this week were pretty good and homemade, so i don't remember what it was. More reading/writing, makes for damn pleasant evenings.

Tuesday: Weirdly full yet empty day.... I went back to the states on tuesday! Ha.... had to go to the embassy, technically US soil. back story was that on night trains the conductor takes your passport and ticket so they don't have to wake you up in the middle of the night to see your passport as you cross boarders. I was zonked after venice, so i was bleary giving my passport to him, and bleary getting it back in the morning... and didn't double check that it was mine. so i got another american passport, claiming me to be a male born in '66 from philly... hmm so not me!
didn't realize it until Saturday though, didn't get to the embassy until tuesday. had to get an emergency passport, the id'ot that got my passport turned it into the French police... wtf? like they'd be able to do anything, it was pretty obvious what had happened. the embassy said it was pretty unlikely they'd get the passport from the police (they knew it had happened because mr. id'ot came in for his emergency passport too earlier) so i had to buy another one. grr, but the workers there were prompt with immaculate grammar and beautiful demeanor... it was a pleasure to talk to them. amazing, we should have that in the real States.... and my passport now has a picture of a human strongly resembling Beth in it, rather then an inhuman glazed-stare freak. ha :)

Went to the Madeline (and went inside this time!) on the way home. Greek temple exterior, triple-dome in a line interior with mini-greek facades lining the hall, wierd and gold-gaudy. Pastelly art nuevo mosaics in a band under the apse dome were neet, solid stone feathers on the unusual altar-piece fun.

Shopping was an experience today... goal was to BUY SOCKS! and i did, wandered through much of the teen section of the huge Galleries Lafayette department store though... realized a wierd distinction in shopping, clothes more as decoration and fun then burdensome necessity... a bit more subtle then that, but i think i will look forward to shopping more in the future, and be better at it.

My socks are beautiful! Ha.... kind of expensive, but so much fun to wear.

I had a commission for a painting from eli for when i return, he has a wall 8' x 4' ish he wants filled with art... really looking forward to it, and the challenge of figuring out something worth filling up that much space with...

Orbitz fubaredness, i booked plane tix for the wrong week!?! for spring break... idiot beth... but brandon was able to help me fix it sans the $200 switch fee, yay friends! ha... will be more careful? that was outrageously dumb though.

Palais du Tokyo... graphics and contemporary art overload. many fun exhibits, thoughts on contemporary art and permanence and quality, maybe post another time, this is, despite promise, still long. Full days are amazing.

Quick overview - er, just sunday 5 mar....

So, having been a bit of a slacker since Saturday - at least as far as updating, here's a quick (hopefully) summary of my week:

Sunday: Fun! Beautiful sun in the morning, climbed up to sacre-coure (again) but this time paid to climb up to the top of the tower, highest point in Paris... fun. the hill it's on is high enough that it didn't make THAT much difference over standing at the bottom, but it was fun. Not too many tourists, I was by myself on the top of the world :). Home, made omlettes for myself and kind of for Tony hehe, off to the Pompidou Centre to take advantage of free admission first sunday of the month to finish off the exhibit we were rushed through last time. Seeing an exhibit twice is neat, memories strong but you've always missed something... waited out the rain inside the center, walked down to the river.... Paris rocks - on Sundays they close off the major road that runs by the Seine so that pedestrians, bikers, and skaters have free rein... I skated uphill against the wind from the Bibleotheque Nationale to Trocadero (all the way across paris)... didn't skate back though, took off my skates to check out the Challiot and the Palais du Tokyo... I'd forgotten my student ID though and didn't want to pay full admission, and i rather bonked... blood sugar drop... so i happily took the Metro home, devoured a nuetella crepe and slept a wonderful couple hours sleep. Supper of some sort with tony, probably sat and read and wrote for the rest of the evening. Wonderful, wonderful day/weekend.

Er, that's enough... quick summary? new post time

Just in case...

I've been pretty bad about updating lately, i have most of what i'd post written out in my notebook, transferring it to the web hasn't been a priority so much this week - overdosed on the posts from Rome. Just in case I decide not to post anything tomorrow: my spring break plans have me leaving for Amsterdam tomorrow, hopefully renting bikes and checking it all out, then on Monday a flight to Istanbul. Should be back on the following Monday. REALLY excited, for both locations.

haha picture from the Palais du Tokyo....

AutoCAD

Just opened CAD for the first time since early January... mindblowing. The commands are a little more sluggish then I remember, but it's recovering quickly. Like sitting back down at a piano, or more stereotypically jumping back on a bike, once you KNOW how to do something it'll stick around and admit you back into the flow. I KNOW AutoCAD... nice to realize.

Statuary Evolution

The exterior was pretty satisfyingly solid and covoluted... 3 sets of 3 archways, north, south, and west. I much prefer Notre Dame where the arches look like they're carved back into the mass of the walls - the entrance of Chartres was like that, but the side entrances were oviously just overhangs. much less mysterious and awe-inducing i thought.

It's pretty easy to glaze over all the statuary and carvings after you get used to it... just more frills - but it's been pretty interesting to pay real attention to the styles and expressions when possible. Especially after seeing Michelangelo's sculptures, the David and the Pieta (i have to go back and write that into St. Peter's, i think i forgot somehow), that were even bigger then life with there emotions, seeing sculptures and paintings of the earlier centuries with Byzantine abstractions is creepy. They are abstracted and mild and so much less human - the idea behind saints and apostles I guess, harder to relate to them though.

Sat 04 Mar 06 - Heavy Chartres

so... I got my weekend day to go check out Chartres... was looking forward to it being absolutely beautiful, 'best Gothic church in the world' and all that... it was cool, not quite up to the hype though.

The main elevation was fun - very obviously built in three different sections, one big massy Romanesque tower, and the taller frilly High Gothic tower on the other side.... think I kind of captured them both in the sketch pretty well. This wasn't a hyper-restored brilliant white church like many of the major ones in Paris and Rome were, it had blackness on the stones, and a generally grey hue... not how it was meant to be seen, but more real somehow then blindingness.

The weather was quite bleak grey, so my pictures aren't as fascinating as they could be... it was dark, really dark out and so the interior was almost scary. There was a good deal of glass, but it was mostly very dark blue, and very detailed so a good percentage of the pane was lead... exactly flush with the interior wall, it did nothing to lighten up the walls on the first level - a little better up in the clerestory, but still obviously a massive amount of stone. Felt more like being underground then almost any church I've been too. Obviously Baroque statue at the end of the nave felt very out of place - stonework around the choir stalls was breathtaking delicate... and had consequences, it was in pretty bad shape. sigh.... i didn't leave with a terribly high opinion of the interior.

Skate Rally!

I changed my mind - skating stuff needs to be in here too - a different distillation can go in my other blog. This is pretty much directly from my notebook, written Saturday morning (wasn't feeling up to re-interpreting it again, and typing fast is soothing)

SO much to write about and remember - skating is such a different pace, such a different engagement of the senses. This mob skate was very different even then solitary skating - it was very like a concert in the shared experience paired with the extreme isolation and introversion - maybe like a mosh pit, overly aware of everyone else while lost doing your own thing.
Much milling about before the rally, awkward and comfortable groups forming, many more individually standing on the edges, more easily accepted here then in other group situations. The group had a ton of energy - and motion- due to the wheels on every pair of feet. For most I'm sure it was unconscious, but standing on skates in not necessarily a still process. The moment of take off was magical, only one verbal shout and being called to motion by other moving backs - a compression of the pack, then space opened up in front of you and off! and immediate stop seven pumps after freedom, but that taste was enough for giddy excitement. I quickly lost all track of where I was, consumed instead with wind and feet and trajectories and speed adjustment and the glories of smooth movement, muscles, and acceleration.

200 people - what a strange pack. Constantly being passed by and passing people. I started out in the rear, but after the first few straightaways - definitely after the first hill - I found myself comfortably in the rear of the first cadre of riders. Always at stops people would wiggle their way through (quite skillfully, given the skates), and always they would be passed again. I much prefer to not be pushy at the stop and overtake people like that on the move. Strange repetition, then, of backs and sides - really only a few stand out as memorable, maybe the supply was neverending. I was nearly always the first girl (may that NOT be my epitaph...) There were probably less the 10 females that I saw total, still was nice to be first in some regard. The eventual feeling was that of being surrounded by friends, playfully jousting on who goes ahead or swerves - I'd win on the uphill, I'd let others win downhill and on cobblestones, and stopped.
Skating really is a terribly introspective thing to do, and it was enhanced by the social context. Competition, ambition, gender, work ethic, grace, endurance, past and present mini-victories; all these concepts, always present in action, are enhanced and play themselves out for reflection. Not too humbling - I'm proud of my work ethic, I don't let competition spur me to nastiness - grace I do need to work on - endurance I have down pat. I wonder at my uptightness on hills, especially since I ski, I wish I could fling myself down heedless, but it takes some mental effort to let that happen. Something to work on I guess. And - I hate having an innate advantage. I was cursing my abec 7s for making the skating too easy....

Perfect Parisian Day - Friday 03 Mar 06

It will be hard to go back to the States and have a full schedule again - just being a student and living in Paris sets a wonderfully relaxed pace, nicely broken up by these travelling weeks and weekends. Today was simply lovely.

Woke up with the brightness of morning, 8:30 or so. feels kind of early here, although it's been ages since I would let myself wake up that late at home. Our apartment feels like its all windows, it's very nice. could always adjust the blinds, but it's so nice to wake up naturally. Spent a good amount of time thinking in bed about various things, some of it even about homework; was amused with my idea for an installation of objects instead of little flippy models as an assignment. The basis of 'objecthood' and implications of the words were some of the thinking as well - shrug.

Tony woke up later wtih a craving for crepes, so off on a crepe expedition we went. We had eaten in a little creperie one of our first days here in a vaguely remembered location, although after quite a bit of wandering (expedition title was warrented) we hadn't found it, the charmingly french country hole-in-the wall we did find was quite satisfactory. Proprietor's friend came in an complained in French; it's amazing how wonderfully local even whining can be in another language. Nutella crepes are unbeatable.... might have to try nutella lefsa sometime though, i bet the result would be similarly spectacular, if not as ethnically pure. beth, the fusion chef, ha.... the world might just thank me for this one though.


Setting up real-sized objects in a space for the installation in studio was amazingly fun. Nothing too fancy, just junk thrown together, but with a definate symbolic content, and neat to think of them existing in relation to each other, and to get to move to put together an assignment. I had to keep walking from the supply closet to the tables, the repetition of calm movement towards the production of an idea enigmatic to everyone was very pleasing. i was in a strange giddy mood actually.... i have been lately, it's a good thing i would like to hold onto.

Got an unexpectedly HUGE charge on my bank account for calling with a credit card from Bern (more Bern hatred ha). I should have known better, still upset me a good deal. Class was over at that point, only Tony and I left, so I felt ok making something to dissapate the stress. Hehe went a little overboard, 2' square pastel rendition of that Venice sketch I just posted. Turned out pretty unexpectedly well, happy, since all I was going for was the soothingness of putting color on paper, but the project kind of took over. Exactly what I needed. Any takers for an amaturish Venice canal scene? No fixative here, I really don't know what I'll do with it.

Somewhat startled to find it 7 pm, Tony and I took off for the free Louvre Friday night. We finished it! We've seen everything there. The whole Louvre. Only took 4 trips... and actually there's a gallery of Islamic art we just breezed past without looking... justification for going again. Neat to realize though. My opinion of sculpture has changed quite a bit while here, and I think that would be my main reason for going back. Nice to have a museum with both paintings and a substantial sculpture garden - plus it's the LOUVRE whoa. It was a refreshing change from the Vatican museum as well - better curated, the sculptures were intentionally paced, not crowded together like a antiquities thrift store.

Ran into Tom and Guillermo unexpectedly, declined movie invitation in favor of the mass skate I'd promised myself I'd do (and brought my skates with for...) I actually almost chickened out, scary to think about 15000 people skating. REALLY glad I went though. I wrote a million pages about the skate, I'll post it in my new exciting other blog. In brief though: there was actually 'only' 200 other skaters, mostly male, gathered and started in front of the Tour Montparnasse for a 3-hour skate through southern Paris, a huge figure eight from one side to the other. A million highlights and sensations, it was a blast. A lot less social then you might imagine - it can be alienating to be just one in a crowd. But still - an amazing time. Missed the last Metro train home, so add another hour for navigation home onto the skate time, frustrating - but skating in Paris is lovely at night, I'll have to go more often. Shower and crash when I got home.... very very satisfying day.

This is quite wordy for such a mundane day.... but still... it was wonderful....

edit: holy crap i'm sorry if you've read all this! laughed out loud, got strange stares, when i popped up the page to see how long it was... i hid most of it though.... muhahaha

superlative day fin

running in and out of the chapel several times, down through the village to admire it from different vantages - and the surroundings, laying in the snow on our backs to get the best shot of it... soaking our legs tromping to a ruined chapel, the predecessor of that of our admiration, sunset on the mountaintop. eventually we tired of playing, collected our packs from the chapel, paused for chilly mountain water coming out of the public fountain, wiped our faces and set our faces down. quite the winding path down, distracted by the last bit of pink vanishing off a mountain peak and the ascendancy of the brilliant moon. church bells pealing with echoes, 'what switzerland sounds like' finished up in delighted frustration running headlong down the last bit to the just-missed train.

beer is served large in switzerland as we passed the time to the next, and no food to be found: we sketched in the wood-paneled cafe to the amusement of the locals, trains to one place and then another and a late lost arrival in luzern. priceless, superlative day.

another sacred space by Zumthor

people in small towns are genuinely proud of monuments - when we stepped off the train looking lost a family piled into a large van kindly flagged us down and offered us a ride up the hill to the chapel. eager to get to it before the sunset we accepted and were dropped off just far enough down get a full approach around a blind curve, through half the village (four houses) and up to be alone with the simple organic chapel. it's beautiful - not pretentious, a skeleton removed from the walls holding up a leaf-braced roof, a crafted raised floorplate with a miniscule lip separated from the walls as well - sunset light falling in slits on the walls from the clerestory windows. balanced on a point, poised above the mountains.... it fits in with the village somehow, despite it's completely different language, and deserves its overlook into several valleys.

Playground!

inside the baths: wonderful playground, architecturally and experientially. the walls invited you to touch them as the light poured down and in and through the complex, baffled or direct. sound of water pervasive, and low laughs and murmurs. windows onto blinding white mountainsides appreciated by winter sunbathers, steaming underwater entrance to outdoor pool, playing in views and substance of mountains and sunlight. cold pools and snow baths added bite to the experience, hot tubs, meditation rooms, a rough musical grotto and scented flower petal baths soothed it away. steam rooms from mild to intense, invisible bench nooks fading to black away from the one artificial light.

mmmm. excellent time.

timed the bus wrong getting out, leaving us with an hour and a half until the next ride down the mountain. after debate over the craziness of walking along a narrow mountain road we happily took off. rock-flavored snow and icicles, random turnings off the road, ice climbers, mountains veiling and opening up the road ahead... a sheep barn at the arbitrary bus stop, laying head-down a sloping road and looking at the sky, watching shadows stretch across a lonely field up the hill... bus ride down and food (best yogurt around) on the next train to the chapel - sticking our heads out the window into the blowing snow.

Sat 11 Feb 2006 - Zumthor baths

skipping back a week or two...

hmm.... unforgivably i accidentally deleted all my pictures of this weekend - yes, i screamed. so these are a kind donation from tony. the day was certainly wonderful enough that i think several of my mental snapshots will survive for a long time: i hope so anyway. in the meantime i messed with the pictures some to make them a little closer to mine.

Launching our two-week expedition with an excursion to tiny unknown places in switzerland, a chaotic night train from Paris allowed us to wake up saturday morning and become immediately plastered to the windows as the alps shot up around us. train transfer was a delightfully hectic glance at the schedule and sprint around the railyard to hop aboard the running train.

stalled in the small village we sampled swiss pastery (heavier then french, but the apple filling was perfect) and purchased notable swiss-designed bus tickets. transport time all day was spent taking in the scenery - on the bus ride up to vals brown and white terraced valleys were watched over by pure-white mountains beyond, into ever-steeper and more wooded terrain. Vals stop in a small basin, a spot of drab walk up stairs of a generic-bad seventies hotel into the gaudy blue entrance to the baths. using our hour until opening, we snuck around on the snow-covered hill surrounding the cut-stone satin-smooth bath house, then down into the village under avalanche fences and crows, and back for opening.