Midnight on the Charles Bridge. The hawkers, pickpockets, and beggars of Prague have all retired for the night. Only lovers and street cleaners remain. All of us caught under the dead gaze of a menagerie of saints. A soft presence of snowfall is caught in the columns of street lights. The Turkish gentleman at the pizzeria on Karlova Street told me it snowed last winter for only thirty minutes. "It was boring", he said. I stand around on the bridge for a few more minutes, readying myself for something to happen. But nothing does. “Because I had to fast. I can’t do anything else,” said the hunger artist. “Just look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can’t you do anything else?” “Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and, with his lips pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor’s ear so that he wouldn’t miss anything, “because I couldn’t find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.” — A Hunger Artist I once posted a review of Milan Kundera's “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on social media that pissed off a few people. The review simply said this: "As far as I can tell, the whole point of the novel is that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was great since it gave the intelligentsia of Prague lots of time to have sex with each other." I think I still stand by that review. “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” — Before the Law Shown above: the infamous window where the defenestration of Prague occurred. It was here in 1618 that two Catholic Imperial governors were tossed out a window by Bohemian Protestants (supposedly landing in a pile of horse manure, which broke their fall), triggering the start of the Thirty Year War, a brutal European conflict that led to the death of a third of the population of the Holy Roman Empire. While they amused themselves in this way, it struck Mr. and Mrs. Samsa almost at the same moment how their daughter, who was getting more animated all the time, had blossomed recently, in spite of all the troubles which had made her cheeks pale, into a beautiful and voluptuous young woman. Growing more silent and almost unconsciously understanding each other in their glances, they thought that the time was now at hand to seek out a good honest man for her. — The Metamorphosis But how? But how what? But how what why? But how what why who? But how what why who when? But how what why who when where? It was the waiter at Charles Bridge with a digital camera at 2 o'clock because there was a turgid, nippy love triangle under a nearby lamppost. Turgid (adj.): 1610s, from Latin turgidus meaning "swollen, inflated, distended", and from turgere "meaning to swell", of forgotten origin. Earliest use in prose appears to date back to 1725. “Giddy up,” he says and claps his hands. The carriage is torn away, like a piece of wood in a current. I still hear how the door of my house is breaking down and splitting apart under the groom’s onslaught, and then my eyes and ears are filled with a roaring sound which overwhelms all my senses at once. But only for a moment. — A Country Doctor "Oi Prague, Czech it out!" said the tired old lark. What all the others had found in the machine, the Officer had not. His lips were pressed firmly together, his eyes were open and looked as they had when he was alive, his gaze was calm and convinced. The tip of a large iron needle had gone through his forehead. — In the Penal Colony Oh dear, and here creaks the Prague Metronome, overlooking the Vltava River and the city herself. This grand pendulum, an artistic piece about the temporality of all things, has very aptly seen better days... And if he finally burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes. — An Imperial Message (Strč prst skrz krk.) But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.’s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. “Like a dog!” he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him. — The Trial
0 Comments
1. Standing behind the yellow line at Alexanderplatz, I wait for the next scheduled arrival of German efficiency. A drunkard in a khaki jacket staggers around on the platform, holding a plastic bag full of empty beer bottles. A couple of the bottles roll onto the tracks. He jumps down onto the tracks and starts casually picking them up. There are shouts and screams and two people rush to pull him out of there just as the next train pulls into the station. I swear the S-Bahn almost hits him. He curses at them and then strolls away, laughing. 'Jesus Christ', I say. The man standing next to me agrees. 'Crazy', he says. 2. Lachlan joined us at the hostel with a grizzled Cat Stevens beard, looking broken, out-of-sorts, a dark lank sulk. From the moment I re-laid eyes on him, I knew that agreeing to accompany him was an error. Before long we were bickering like an old married couple as we walked the East Berlin streets. We snapped at each other at the Christmas markets and had unproductive exchanges at Checkpoint Charlie. He berated me in my cups at a bar and I avoided him like a bad cough when we trudged around Potsdam. Nothing seemed to be able to make him happy and all he could talk about was his miserable Canberra gossip, his miserable ANU politics, his overwhelming retentive misery. Did I mention I regretted being in Berlin with him? The glummiest grumpster holidaying Germany in December of 2013... 3. It became night so quickly at that time of year. And even though I expected it and tried my best to prepare for it, I was still stunned by how sun-robbed and day-poverished my hours were. It was an effort to push and enjoy what I could of this grimy, captivating capital in the little natural light that there was. No amount of glühwein or bratwurst or cheap suspect kebab meat could nourish my body's hunger for more sunlight. The priceless art and archaeology of Museum Island felt diminished in the stale, cement-like air while that strip of energetic street art on the remnants of the Berlin Wall seemed a doleful afterthought. The Brandenburg Gate was a weakness of stalks. A dark wetness sucked at every surface. The only thing that became unlost was the Holocaust Memorial: its normally baffling, oft-critiqued blocks finally rendered appropriately brutal. 4. The Christmas dinner came from a dumpster, according to my friend from Oxford. He was living in a share house (a commune?) with a large group of international students, some of whom evidently had a passion for zero supply chain waste. A plate of meatballs, some bread and potatoes, and a drop of wine. Not bad at all. Though the salad didn’t look that good and had to be re-discarded. It was good to be in his company again, after studying with him many, many months ago in Tokyo. I didn’t take him for the lefty sort, but I guess that's what happens to you when you’re trying to save money doing a museum internship in Berlin that you’re not enjoying (or being paid much for). The next evening, I had a hearty plate of Bavarian food at a restaurant for dinner. 5. — Mr Liu, these impressions of Berlin are a decade old! Why write these at all?
— You're right, terribly right. Blinking at these photos it's almost like the pixels have faded, degraded as if on print. Trying to come up with these anecdotes, it's like remembering a past life. Maybe the Hindus and the Buddhists are right after all... — Why not just go back? Replace the sad and cold with the warm and sparkly, do a reboot, a redux, etcetera, etcetera, that sort of stuff? — Ah, here's the rub: I don't think I will go back, and even if I did, this version of myself and the city no longer exists. Delicious and broody... sweet and resentful... it's all a former incarnation, now untouchable, now impossible to interrogate. — Agreed, Mr Liu. But then I must ask, why go off at all? — Verily, I could not tell you. Budapest. Capital of Hungary. Lady of the Danube. In the miserly sun of a winter's day, it is cold, beautiful, and stony. A city of baroque and neoclassical houses, churches, monuments. A thrumming heart of hills and bridges in the land of Magyars. A quick stroll along the riverfront reveals the Hungarian Parliament Building. A demonic doom fortress, more like. The neo-gothic architecture is undoubtedly incredible – it is just that in a certain light it looks like a monstrous redback spider stalking the banks of the Danube... Strolling across the bridge, from the flat eastern half of inner Budapest to its hillier western portion, you reach the Fisherman's Bastion with its Neo-Romanesque, fairy tale towers located in the Buda Castle area. Here, I will always remember my conversation with an old Hungarian man who was surprised by the colour of my skin when I was a New Zealander, going as far as to rub my cheek briefly in curiosity. Located next door is Matthias Church, also known as the Church of the Assumption of the Buda Castle, a Roman Catholic church whose long-lost foundations date back to the 11th century. Whatever had originally stood there was destroyed during the Mongol invasions, its predecessor was severely damaged by the Ottoman invasions of Hungary, as well as bombarded by Allied forces near the end of World War II. But the peaceful decades that followed has been kind to this location, allowing it to heal back to glory. Speaking of the region's history, the name 'Budapest' came about from the 1873 unification of three separate towns in the area called Buda, Óbuda, and Pest. Today, Budapest is a youthful, culturally zestful city but this was a hard-won status. It suffered under not only Nazi Germany, but also under Soviet military occupation during the Cold War era, all the way to 1991. Political change has been largely kind to Budapest. Another highlight: Buda Castle, a historical castle and palace complex that once belonged to the Hungarian kings of yore. It is pleasant to visit, but if the architecture seems a little dry then you should know that you're instincts are correct. The palace was gutted in the 1950s since the communist government of Hungary considered it a symbol of the former regime. What visitors now see is a largely a 'modernist' creation, reconstructed in the vision of a new post-war order. And behold: St. Stephen's Basilica, a neoclassical Roman Catholic basilica named in honour of the first King of Hungary and undoubtedly the most important church structure in Hungary. When I visited it, the sunlight struck its interior in such a delicate way, I felt as though I was walking around in a meditative, dreamlike state. I gazed at its finely painted cupola, at its sanctuary and altar, at its statues and stained glass windows. I floated. I was washed in wordless wool-gathering.
Dresden. So it goes. Dresden, the capital of Saxony, a city of over half-a-million, a major historic and industrial centre along the Elbe River. I came here, during my winter tour of Europe in 2014, to visit a friend who was on exchange at university here. Once a city of cultural and artistic wonder, Dresden suffered calamitous damage as a result of the deeply controversial bombing of Dresden. From the 13th to the 15th of February 1945, the city was almost completely flattened by high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices dropped by British and American air forces. One needs to only briefly stroll around Dresden's Altstadt, or Old Town, to see the consequences of these events. Where there should be tightly packed historical buildings, there are instead yawning gaps in the cityscape. Huge, empty spaces in the city centre are like eerie deletions, like solemn omissions, like gouges out of time and space. And the reconstruction of Dresden's monuments continues to this day. What there is to see (and has been mostly reconstructed) is lovely, however... The Albertinum, a modern art museum. Dresden's iconic Frauenkirche, a Lutheran church. The Schlossplatz, or the Palace Square. The Procession of Princes, an enormous mural of Saxony's royalty and noblemen. The Semper Opera House, which once premiered the works of Wagner and Strauss. A monument to Martin Luther, that titan of the Protestant Reformation, stands stoically for all to witness. Even the communist propaganda mural on the wall of the Kulturpalast, a modernist hall from the era of the German Democratic Republic, speaks of the enduring history of Dresden. The was once a city called the 'Florence on the Elbe' before it was reduced to rubble. Historians have debated endlessly as to the legitimacy of the Allied bombing campaign in terms of morality and strategy and tactical reasoning. All I can say is that it was an unequivocal tragedy for the civilian population. The American writer Kurt Vonnegut, who himself was a survivor of the bombings when he was a prisoner of war, speaks powerfully from his experience of its aftermath in his novel 'Slaughterhouse-Five': There was a fire-storm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn. It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead. So it goes. One of the must-visit places in Dresden, I feel, is its Military History Museum. The museum's façade is striking - the architect added a caged arrowhead structure to it, with the idea that it represents the openness and transparency of Germany's modern democratic society, in contrast to the rigidness of the existing building, which represents the severe, authoritarian past. This museum showcases Germany's complicated relationship with warfare. The permanent exhibition guides visitors through German military history, from the Middle Ages, through to the devastating World Wars, to contemporary times. It is intended to be unbiased and explore human violence as a historical, cultural and anthropological phenomenon – one which shapes our shared understanding of the past, present, and future. I also had the opportunity to experience some of Dresden's high culture with a night at the opera. I went along with my exchange friend and one of her German friends to see The Marriage of Figaro, a comic opera composed by Mozart. To be honest, I had zero idea what was going on, but the German friend assured me that it was 'very, very funny'. And I had the chance to enjoy some low, or perhaps 'alternative', culture. For instance, I found Dresden's Neustadt to be a very hip, very lively neighbourhood. My friend also took me to the Elbeflohmarkt, one of the oldest flea markets in the city. Here, I was able to admire piles upon piles of retro junk, East German communist paraphernalia, and potential trash-turned-treasure for sale. I think I would like to visit this city again in ten, no, twenty years time... Perhaps by then the gaps of Dresden's Altstadt will have blossomed out, back into its former stony glory. Perhaps with time the Frauenkirche will no longer resemble the inside of a Hungarian bathhouse. Anything is possible with time enough to heal. Ah! Imagine that, Elbflorenz reborn! How I would love to waltz down Dresden’s wide streets again. I would trace my fingers along the street art and ride the rumbling trams. I would kick through the dead leaves of Alaunpark and wander through the riverside flea market, before sailing down the Elbe itself to find out where all the pretty Saxony girls are.
A pitstop in Switzerland on the journey between Berlin to TurinA train ride through the alps... Snaps of Grossmünster, Fraumünster, and Church of St. Peter... Admiring the art collection of the Kunsthaus... The Grossmünster in the background with its lovely red spire... Hiking up Üetliberg, a hill which overlooks Zürich... A glimpse of the city, Lake Zürich, and the Swiss Alps... Grand mountains, a blue and feathered sky, the vast winter air...
|
AuthorMing is an economist, traveller, and creative writer from Melbourne, Australia. He’s a nebulous collection of particles on the lookout for a good corner to sit with a book and a cup of coffee. Archives
September 2023
Categories
All
|