Sketches III

This was a sketch I started late one night in Budapest and finished tonight. My favorite mid range felt tip died the other day so I only have extremely thin and extremely thick felt tips to work with, slight limitation :(

Day 55 - What is this Blue Stuff?

After a lazy start to the day, I walked out the door and there was all this blue stuff. I believe it is called a clear sky and haven't seen one of those in weeks - not a cloud in sight. I thought it was a tad cold and turns out to be about -15 degrees so I tried to get as many photographs before my hands were frozen.

This was the cathedral that is in the Castle. It was interesting to note the domes and almost felt like they were 'pushed' into the building. Putting on my design hat, it is interesting to see all these domes and thinking about the Star Wars Ep I Palaces in Naboo. Starting to see where the conceptual designers may have taken some of their inspiration from.



This was a funky little building near one of the old gates to the city. Not very big and always weird seeing these structures all over the place - we just don't have anything like this in Australia.



This was another interesting building a stones throw from the main train station. The shape of the building / footprint is kinda strange and the dome is probably one of the flatest ones that I've seen.

In All Fairness

People may remember last week I had a post the Top 3 Americanisms Today. The next day or so I found this sign in Budapest with the English and American flags. Next to the American Flag, someone has stuck an Australian flag sticker and found it a little amusing given my previous days commentary.

Krakow At Night

Always interesting to see a place at night and the lights on the buildings - I think Budapest looked best at night. Anyhow this is the Medieval square that a couple of days ago I posted the day time version.



Occasionally just in the right place at the right time. I was taking a photo of a building 90 degrees around from this direction. I just happened to look over my shoulder, saw this couple on a bridge and back lit in an interesting way. Quickly snapped this before they moved on.

Day 54 - Auschwitz Death Camp

*Content Warning*

Today's post probably isn't suitable for the young ones, people with weak stomachs, those of Jewish decent or anyone who knew people/family/friends involved in the Holocast etc.

Even how to approach this post has required a little bit of thought. I guess it is a matter of trying to present some content not as "look at all these wonderful happy snaps I took", but a chance to think and reflect upon some incidents in our past.

One of the main factors in coming to Krakow was for the Auschwitz Death Camps 60km away from Krakow - not as a tourist but to try to get a better idea and understanding of what is out here and what occurred. I'd been thinking about the whole evolution good and bad question for months now - see previous post
Its Evolution Baby.

This is the area that the film "Schindler's List" took place. It is hard to know exactly how many people were killed in Auschwitz but your looking at millions of people. I don't feel it is appropriate to come up with some philosophical bent and/or bring out the cliches.

The place itself was pretty fucken sickening. You can't really describe it beyond that and any attempt to articulate it is going to fall way short. The photographs and films of emanicipated people were unbelievably disturbing. Reminded me of the Australian POWs of the Japenese in South Pacific during WWII and how they were treated similarly - never have been able to take that. Most of the things I saw were pretty distressing and I hope I never see things like this again.

In a nutshell people were told that they would have a better life elsewhere so they filed onto trains like cattle, from all over Europe, arrived at Auschwitz train station where those were 'selected' to go to the death chambers. After being on trains for several days, they were told to strip naked and go into the showers so they could be washed. The showers were actually the gas chambers so right until the last, they were decieved. Right next to the gas chambers were the cermortiums where the dead, gased prisoners were burnt to ashes.

Those who weren't initially 'selected', were put to hard manual labour for several months until they were no longer fit enough for hard labour (generally poorly feed and clothed during these months so it was inevitable they would become unfit for work but the SS had gotten several months of good work out of the prisoners). Then they were told to take of their clothes for the showers and were gased.

This was the main gate at Auschwitz. The motto over the gate is 'Freedom Through Hard Work'



This was a 'smaller' gas chamber and would hold about 700 people. I'm standing in the doorway taking the photograph so gives some idea how brutually efficient the whole operation became. The 'larger' chambers would hold about 2000 people. After about 15-20 minutes of Cyclone B gas being poured into the room, everyone would be dead.



This is the cremortium right next to the previous room. You can see the rail tracks and the little contraption that would be used to feed the bodies into the furnace. A body would be ash in 40 minutes.



When people first arrived at the camps, they were stripped of everything, including all personal effects. These personal effects where then recycled for use by the SS. A great deal of the camp was destroyed by the fleeing Nazis to cover their tracks. Here are some glasses that were found.



Nothing went to waste. Before people where gased, they had their heads shaved and the hair would be made into german textiles. The photo here shows some of the hair and the textile under it.



In the same room, here is 2 tonnes of shaved hair left behind by fleeing Nazis. This wall was about 10m long.

Day 53 - These Days Turned Out....

Probably just a quick entry today. I had a massively shitty day - probably not really but feels that way. In a foreign country, trying to figure stuff out, endlessly seeming nothing is going right, the frustration just easily gets magnified (not seeing a familiar face in ages is strangly enough starting to get to me - can't wait for Canada).

In the end just went back to the hostel to calm down and loose myself in a drawing - very effective.

This was it here. The hostel I'm staying at has a really cool graphic head shot logo so I just gave him a bit of a body. The paper was orange and I so am hanging out for photoshop (tilt your head slightly).Got a little carried away with the trench coat come cape but it was fun to play with.

Krakow Castle - Its Time

May have been a little vague but Krakow is in Poland. Now being a little city in Eastern Europe, it too has a castle. This one is just on the southern end of the old town. You can probably make it out on the left tower but there is a clock on it. Also in the square there were clocks and seems every building you turn around and look at has some kind of clock built into it.



You'll have to excuse the poor quality of photograph, combination of haze, snog, overcast and twilight conditions (can't wait to get near photoshop so I can make the easy, necessary colour corrections).

Day 52 - Krakow Old Town

I arrived in Krakow at 0540am but with my fumblings, got to the hostel around 11am. I was tired from my 11km and 30kg pack experience on the back of not sleeping well on the train. I just turned up and chilled for a couple of hours, playing with the blog and so forth.

Got out the door and saw blue sky for the first time in weeks. It has been a real struggle to get decent photographs when everything is dark and overcast (at night its pretty easy with lights and so forth).

The centre of town is the old town and this is apparently the largest medievil square in the world.



Here is from further down. Now the building on the left is actually in the middle of the square so behind it is another massive open space with a couple of churches bordering it.

I Am Global Warming!

A couple of little strange things keep occuring when I'm travelling. Like I will turn up to a place and it will start snowing. This started when I was younger and first went to Vancouver. Hardly ever snows but did the whole time I was there.

Get to Nice and it snows, hardly ever happens.

Standing in line at the Vatican in Rome, again a rariety for it to snow but it happens.

Get to Vienna, starts snowing when I get off the train and overnight dumps a foot of snow (odd for Vienna).

Budapest, arrive, starts snowing.

Krakow, arrive, starts snowing.

I'm convinced I am global warming and a little worried of what is going to happen when I get to Canada where it snows all the time - maybe a blizzard will ensue ... or a freak spring will arrive early ... time will tell.

Luck Runs Out

So I arrive in Krakow after a 10 hour train ride pretty much on time at 0540am. Damn it! I was hoping it would be late as most hostels usually don't like you rocking up before 11am let alone this time. So I just hang around the station for a couple of hours updating my journal and generally killing time.

Eventually decide to make a move for it. Now I've turned up in Krakow with no real map and clue apart from a hand drawn one I put together using websites. So I come along to the plaza like area, it is on my map and head down the road. Takes a while to get a street sign and it isn't the name I have.

When it comes to maps and European cities, it can be a little bit of a lottery. Seems that they either rename streets, or the name changes after a couple of blocks, don't have signs, have the 'native' tongue name on the sign post, people change signs as a 'joke' or any of a myraid of other reasons for not having the correct name. The street is generally following the dog leg layout that I have and cross streets roughly in the right place.

So I get a little worried when I keep heading towards an industrial area but sure it is 'just around the next corner'. The whole time I'm meant to be a stones throw from a medieval old town. I was told that a number 4 tram would get me there and I kept seeing number 4 trams. Get around the next corner and it is a university.

By this stage I realise something is very wrong as I can get lost at the drop of a hat. I can't find a map but at the tram stop it loosely mentions some streets. Turns out I've gone east instead of west ... 4km too far.

One of those feelings of extreme frustration that you can only laugh out. The only thing worse than realising you've just walked 4km in the wrong direction with a 30kg back pack, is that you have to go all the way back and head another 3km in the other direction with the same frickin' backpack.

Some times I'm glad I'm not travelling with someone, as I'm sure right about now they would have killed me for the amount of extra walking. On the other hand, they might be a little more organised and not get as lost as easily. It was great when in Rome with Melissa as she always had a good idea of where we were so I just relaxed and 'hooked it' at the appropriate corners.

The Inevitable Train Story

I caught the train from Budapest and always an 'event' - I just expect it. So I walk along the train and none of the 2nd class chairs looked to comfy until 3/4 of the way down the platform. So I jumped on and prayed the train was going in the right direction (wasn't really well sign posted and other people were being frantic about not knowing so naturally that rubs off a little).

The ticket conductor comes along and doesn't have a problem with the ticket so must be in the right place, or close to it. After a couple of hours I noticed the carriage was pretty cold. I just dismissed it as being an eastern european train without the trimmings - like heat.

Then we saw big burrly blokes with orange safety vests and large crowbars walking through the train. Eventually we were told to get off and move up to the next car as this one was about to be left behind. I got off the train and the 5 cars I walked past at Budapest station and considered getting on were just gone.

They must have split the train somewhere and just a major incidence of blind stupid luck - otherwise I might be half way to the Ukrane border by now. This luck must be about to run out... and possibly at the worst possible time.

So we were just about to jump onto the next car when the train starts moving. There is a work men in between the two cars trying to disconnect them and everyone starts freaking out (cause it is so dangerous for that dude to be in between the cars and ends up having to walk about 10m before the train finally stops).

The next car is 1st class and quite nice, at least warm. So the 1st ticket inspector comes along, sees our 2nd class tickets and tries to tell us to move back to the car behind. We try to explain that it no longer exists and she doesn't want a bar of it. So we literally walk her down and show her that there is no other carriage. She smiles and leaves us alone.

A couple of border checks and they weren't exactly too happy that I didn't look 100% like my passport photo with full beard (haven't shaved in about a week so at least trying to get a similarity). The border control to get into Poland was like the Spanish Inquistion with questions - wanting to know how long, where, what I was doing. Then pulled out a phone book like thing with a whole bunch of presumably different codes and was checking them. Eventually walked away but I would love to know what codes were in that book.

Budapest Summary

Having no real expectations about the place, actually until a week ago I thought Budapest was somewhere in Turkey (my geography is horrible), this was a great place to visit. The architecture, particularly at night was pretty amazing. Spent most of the time walking around the city and by the Danube so it kinda just chillin'.

Didn't really leave much time to visit too many museums but just means that there are things to come back, see and do. I guess after the cheapness of Bratislava, this place was more expensive than what I thought. Prices were comparable with Rome which was a little strange considering that there were no real tourists to speak of (always a bonus!)

Nerd Boy Strikes Again!

After my little long stroll around the island park, decided to head back to the hostel to grab my stuff to make the train. On the way I got distracted by a demolition site right in the middle of the city. So I sat down for a little bit of a watch and all I really needed was some popcorn and a heater.

Always interesting to have a look at these sorts of things to see how maluable materials are. The thing that really came out of it for mine was just how much earthquakes are destructive and operate so differently from what we know (must really vibrate materials at an atomic level breaking the chemical bonds hence weakening the structure). You had a couple of machines and generally they struggled to make any real impact, just that they keep plugging away at it and mashing it all up.

The stupidest thing was this little mate with a hose standing next to the excavator. He was trying to hose the dirt and dust down, almost in a token effort. The silliest thing was if a bit of debris goes astray, he is in a fair amount of trouble.

Anyhow this is the attachment which is like a giant pair of scissors to cut the reinforcing steel and grind up the concrete.



And here is an 'action' shot (great reference for drawing at a later date).

Day 51 - Margit Island

Today for a brief period of time there actually was some blue sky. I decided to make the most of it and wander around one of the islands connected between two bridges. It wasn't until I got to the far side of the island and actually read the guide book description. It was a 5.4km circuit all the way around.

Here is a photo of a clock I found even further around the island. The interesting thing was the track in the middle that you can see. It pretty much went for the whole 5km around and is like a really spongy surface - probably really good for the ankles.



I also came across this snowman that I thought was pretty cute.

Its Evolution Baby!

A sound bite that I heard a couple of months back and got me thinking a little. Basically it was that "evolution doesn't necessarily equal good". For some reason, never really thought of 'negative evolution', or maybe there is no 'good and bad' to it all.

Started to think about how the phrases with evolution are articulated: 'Survival of the fittest', 'the best will adapt', 'those with the best features', 'the strongest' etc. Funnily enough, everything is phrased in the positive and I haven't been able to come up with a common catch phrase that is in the negative. So it would appear that intrinstically we are wired to see evolution as always being a step forward.

I'm tending to form a view that evolution can move in either direction - good or bad. I remember the conversation with Rob a couple of years back once that German dude ate another guy that gave him permission, and had him all chopped up in his freezer. There in cames the argument that because we have a conscious, or some form of 'recognition', we are 'outside' of nature. We were able to put ourselves at the top of the food chain.

I tend to think we are just mammals wearing pants and nature always has check and balances - floods, asteriods, disease, sun blowing up in 5 billion years etc. Just because we are the first to develop in a particular way, doesn't mean we are outside the system, just different from that which has come before.

Heck we probably have the check and balance built into us. Forever in a day we have gone to 'war' and evolved in the positive articulation to have become more 'efficient' at it. Heck we developed the nuclear bomb in the 1950s and a little over 10 years later, we came close to using it (see Cuban Missle Crisis). Not a good number - a couple of million years from ape to Homo Sapien and 10 years to end it all (For all those creationists out there, this post probably wasn't your cup of tea - feel free to stop reading. For that 3rd group of people who have an each way bet, nature caused evolution but aliens put us on earth, enjoy).

It only takes one mistake and that could be the end. Given mathematical theory, the probably of one mistake occurring as opposed to it never occurring is not good for us.

Maybe we have just evolved enough to put an end to our evolution - natures own check and balance.

The Things I do

Every night while in Budapest, I went out to admire the view and also get reference photos. I hadn't yet gone the other side of the river to get the view in the other direction. This was my last night and the weather was absolutely horrible.

It started raining in the afternoon when I was near the castle and there was no shelter. So I went over to the shopping center and walked around for over an hour as it was well heated to dry out. I walked out and it was snowy and windy but I wanted those photos.

So I plugged away and was absolutely frozen by the time I go to the hostel but a couple of good ones came out. This one is parliament at night and funky how they have the center lit up but not the wings. It is a little hazy cause of the snow.



One of the 9 bridges that cross the river. There isn't actually much river trafic cause bridges have been destroyed over the centuries which makes the river quite difficult to navigate.

Fisherman's Bastion

Just outside the Matyas Gothic church is this.... this... thing. Its called the "Fisherman's Bastion" and purely a monument to commerate fisherman defending the area (or something along those lines). The guide book described it as something being designed by Escher himself (dude that does the pictures of stairs that appear to be going upwards but loop back onto themselves).

This section is immediately behind the church.



This section is from further along.

Matyas Church - Return of the Scaffolding

This is Matyas Church behind the castle and one of the first buildings in Eastern Europe that I've seen behind scaffolding. Winter must be when they do a lot of work, no tourists around and so forth. It got so bad in Florence, instead of looking for streets to find locations and churches, I just looked for scaffolding and 9 times out of 10, that was the building.



This is a gothic church but the interior is one of the more unusual ones I've seen. The whole thing is painted in fresco (same stuff that Michangelo used on the Sistine Chappel Ceiling). All the designs you see on the columns, rooves, vaults etc, all fresco

Day 50 - Buda Castle

Today was another walk back over to Buda and to the area behind the citadel. From the citadel, past the castle and churches down to the archieves is 1 mile. This all on top of a hill with wind and average whether.

This is the view of the castle. The interesting thing to note is that there are 3 major domes in Budapest - one green (Castle), one red (Parliament) and one black (St Stephens). Not sure why but if they changed the black one to white, it would be the 3 colours on the Hungarian flag.

St Stephens Cathedral

If I come out of Hungary knowing nothing else, it will be this St Stephen dude. Basically he was the king of Hungary and went around converting everyone to catholisicm. Thus he formally became 'Stephen', having originally been known by a hungarian name, on Christmas Day 1000AD. Later he would become a St and naturally time to build a church for the guy.

It is in the Romanesque style which I am beginning to loath (kinda like 'I am engineer, watch me build ... '). However from a design point of view at this angle, I did like the way the building steps down and is 'layered'.



This was an interior shot that I kinda liked



An interior shot looking up to the dome. As always, ridicilous decoration and attention to detail which kinda reads to my eye as 'overkill'

Day 49 - Buda and Pest, and the Citadel

As Judy mentioned in a comment post, Buda is the west bank and Pest is the east bank. It was funny cause when I was first reading the guide book, it mentioned Buda and I just thought that was a short pronounciation/abbreivation. But no, originally two seperate cities that were eventually joined together.

To some degree, Budapest is the 'whipping boy' of various invaders. In the last 800 years, they have been levelled to the ground something like 87 seperate times. Comes from all sides and kinda like being the meat in the sandwich. Thus the architecture is strange to take cause most of it has been rebuilt from the ground upwards in a past style.

First up today I wandered up to this citadel on top of the hill. Now there was ice on the stairs and the number of times I ended up on my back side was quite amusing (and cold in the end) as snow was falling lightly to hide the ice. The right hand side has a statute holding up something. Now depending upon which time Budapest has been invaded, will determine exactly what it is holding up - kinda recycling statutes.

Quickie

Just briefly as the hostel with supposed 'free internet' has their computers broken - how annoyment :P

Budapest has been pretty cool and will hopefully backdate a couple of days worth of info when I get to my next destination. I'm catching the overnight train to Krakow - Poland. Those who know their history will probably know what I'm up too. If not, all will be revealed soon.

Otherwise, for people who only check the blog once in a blue moon, you'll notice the entries only go as far down as about Feb 15. To get the rest of the month of February, or any past month, scroll all the way to the bottom and on the right hand side, there are links to the various months in 'Archives'.

Keep those emails coming!

Amazing, Wonderful, Fantastic, Great, Exquisite etc.

Got to wonder around Budapest tonight and the place is just unbelievable. The hostel is a block back from the river and it is just lined with Architectural gems! Everything was lit up so I was one very happy camper. The styles are so different yet all seem to work together. I can't believe that I've stumbled into this place and is quickly racing up the list of 'must see' places.

Didn't really take too many photos tonight as just admiring the structures but here is one and obviously watch this space over the coming days.

Sketches II

One thing about drawing out of your head is that you figure out what you don't know and start paying more attention to detail in things around you. Thus this first conceptual design I was aiming for a medieval town scene with a castle in the background. It was mildly successful.



After the previous sketch and starting to see castles around the place, it was only a matter of time before I really went for it. Came up with this which probably is too far towards a Lord of the Rings type castle.

Masters in 'Blind Stupid Luck'

Now I graduated from Murphy's Law University at the top of the class with my Phd (if there are two ways of doing things, without fail, I will find the wrong way first). Today I think I earned my masters at the 'Blind Stupid Luck' Academy.

I'm at Budapest train station looking at Trams and buses and really not one of them means anything to me. I just jump onto one and hope it goes somewhere near the Danube River (I know there are only 9 bridges crossing the Danube and the hostel is near one of them so eventually would come to the right place).

So the tram is going along and I'm looking down every street to see if it leads to the river. After awhile I just thought 'stuff this', I'm passing all this great architecture, yet not enjoying it cause I'm stressed out about finding the hostel. So I sit back, the tram will take me where ever and eventually I'll get it sorted.

2 minutes later the tram passes a park and out of the corner of my eye I catch the name of it. It is a park 50m away from the hostel so I jump off and quickly find the hostel. The greatest amount of Blind Stupid Luck that I've had yet. Put things into perspective, Budapest has 1.8 million people so is a massive city. The fact I jump onto a random tram that just happens to go past where I need and I notice it, how else can it be explained (religion excluded)?

Day 48 - Revenge of the Trains

The battle rages on between me and the trains. I got onto one headed for Budapest (Hungary), left on time, no problems with border crossing / passport, people on the train fine and arrived into Budapest on time. Pretty sweet I thought.

Then I got to street level of this train station. Now it was described as the 4th largest train station in Budapest in the south. First up, no one in information spoke English but tried to help out as much as possible. There were no money exchanges like at every other major train station and no ATMs either. It also wasn't linked to a metro which normally makes getting around so much easier.

This left me with a bit of a problem as I didn't have any local currency, yet needed to catch trams and buses (between ATMs and money exchangers, I shouldn't need any and trying to explain in Bratislava that I needed to change crowns into Hungarian would have been painful).

Also after you've been on a train for 3 hours and need to go to a bathroom, a little bit of a problem with no money in europe. In the end I managed to haggle the bathroom attendant (who didn't speak English) into accepting 1 euro - which was probably 10 times too much.

So I headed off into what I thought might be the suburban shopping area. A really strange place and finally found a cash machine. When you are walking around with an extra 30kg pack, the last thing you want to do is be walking blocks and blocks. Got to the cash machine and it gave me a single 5000 note - which there was no way the bus driver was going to accept (like handing a bus driver a $50 for a $1 fare), if he was going to at all - they are really big here on buying tickets from machines and drivers usually don't accept payment.

So I went to a convinence store to break the note on a drink (when I really should have gotten food) but they gave me all notes back and weren't interested in change. Wandering back to the train station, none of the machines would accept notes, only coins. So off for a chocolate bar and trying to get change in coins was not easy.

Eventually managed to get a ticket for the trams but to be honest, I had no idea where they were going. The diagram of the system didn't make any sense but in the end I jumped on a tram and would see where it would go. Worse comes to worse, spend half a day on trams and then have to walk (kinda why I try to arrive somewhere around the middle of the day so I still have some daylight hours to try to find the hostel).

The thing about deciding about going to Budapest at the last minute, I have no maps, guide books or anything. I kinda pieced things together from dodgy maps and descriptions on the internet. So not the smartest thing I've done - turn up in Eastern Europe, no currency and no idea where I am.

Bratislava Summary

Bratislava is only a small city (400,000 people) so for a quick fly through, I only needed a couple of days. Bratislava was also like sticking your toe into the water in the pool to test it out. I wanted to see if it would be possible to see Eastern Europe not knowing a great deal and what it would be like.

The architecture was great and a refreshing change from Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-classicism. After I settled into the place and got past the notion of being behind the Iron Curtain, it was quite a good place to be and enjoyed myself. The hostel was ok but always had a funny smell to it. Needless to say, food was cheap and a nice change after Florence, Venice and Vienna.

Supermarket Cheap

One of the things when traveling is just trying to figure out what the equivalent department, hardware, boutique, supermarket stores etc are. Thus I've been wandering past a 'Tesco' for the last day or so and wandering what it is. Turns out to be a supermarket and was naturally curious about prices.

It is ridicilous cheap. A 1kg tub of yoplait yoghurt - $1 AUS. Cheap bottles of wine $2.50 Aus, large Mars bar $0.50Aus.

If pastries and crepes were my undoing in Western Europe, the prices of food in Eastern Europe will be my downfall here.

Internet Phones

While at the hostel, the dude there was helping me find out information about train ticket prices (as I'm now in an area that my Eurail doesn't work - horrible thing). Anyhow after using a normal phone, he then picked up a phone that was connected into the back of the computer - an internet phone.

I'm sure by now we are aware that with some stuffing around you can make calls over the internet and save a fortune. To date it is still a little cumbersome but this perpherial was like standard issue here, the same as you get a computer with a keyboard and mouse.

Australia has usually been good with take up of technology so I was amazed we haven't caught onto this. As I started to think about it, it didn't surprise me. Unfortunately we have effectively 1 telco in the form of Telstra which the government is still trying to privatise.

If people had internet phones, a significant revenue of Telstra would effectively dry up which isn't conducive to getting a good price when the rest is put on the stock market. This 800 pound gorilla really irrates me. Broadband take up in Australia lagged about 2 years behind other OECD countries cause Telstra was dragging its feet. Why? Cause they made more money if you had dial up.

So sick of this shareholder mentallity - 'We must generate value for our shareholders' at the expense of the much larger stakeholders in the community. Ultimately seems to run against the whole microeconomic reform which is pushing Telstra to the private sector in the first place.

Sorry... rant I know.

Scared Half to Death

Tonight I was out on the town looking at buildings and so forth. I was kinda lost in my thoughts and wasn't paying 100% attention to what was going on (momentary lapse of reason). Next thing I know I've walked past a niche in a shadow and 1 foot from me is a dude with a belaclava, full army webbing and automatic riffle.

Scared the living crap outta me and instantly I thought I must be at the American embassy. I looked up and there are another 20 guards, barb wire, survailance cameras etc right in front of me. I kinda quickly exited stage left from the area.

I wasn't game to take a photo of the embassy as who knows what they might think in our current state of paranoia. So I took a photo of the Carlton right next to it with American flags all over it as a reminder.

Glass Silos

While growing up, just down the road from the Nevertire family farm was grain silos, just there as a logistical thing to obviously store grain and so forth. I've never been particularly crash hot on the 9 to 5 aspect of life and always felt that the skyscrappers in the city were nothing more than glass silos (just not very good at taking orders from morons because we've always done it this way so don't mess with the status quo).

People file in according to a schedule, are managed with effectively the 'silos' not really being all that different from one another... much like the concrete ones just down the road from the farm.

Thus when I saw this building today, it was getting really close to the 'ideal' glass silo.

Cool Buildings Around Bratislava

Eventually came out of the sanctuary of the hostel to have a look around Bratislava. What hit me was some really cool architecture (or after spending a month looking at Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical architecture, anything that wasn't it would be a great change and a log cabin would look like a masterpiece right about now).

First up was this bridge. It is only supported from one side (ie there is no pilon on the other side) and the way it leans back has a great sense of movement about it. The top is an actual restaurant and when I tried to go up it, looks like it is well and truly closed for the winter.



Today I went for a walk around town and up to Bratislava Castle where our friend George W will be staying. A security guard freaked out when I tried to ask him how to get inside. So I walked around to the other side and found an open gate and walked in (a few other joggers and things were inside so I thought I would try it). I was able to walk all around the outter castle grounds and I would imagine some time in the next couple of days the whole place with go into a lock down mode.



A lot of the time it seems like I've only really been circulating around the old parts of cities. Thus it has a tourist feel to it with everything happy and swimming along. Most of the time once I get on a train to head to the next city and pass through the outter suburbs, you begin to get a sense that it is all a sham and there is a lot of poverty about.

When I was talking with my translator friend yesterday, he mentioned that just outside of the city were these shoe box like apartment buildings. When I was up at the castle and looked across the river, I could see them. You should be able to make out the box like building structures in this photo below. Around to the left a couple of kilometres are massive industry and smoke stacks - interesting how the new and the old co-exist.

Top 3 Americanisms Today...

My apologies to my American friends reading this but some of your fellow country people come out with some of the silliest/stupidest comments known to man. Hopefully it is all in good fun, kinda like the way The Simpsons make Australia look like a country of hicks with no mode3rn technology - always funny to see this stereotype come across .... so remember, we are laughing along WITH you. These all actually just happened today too.

Number 3 - This dog came running up to me and the owner was shortly in tow and just started talking in English - a bit of a welcomed change from all the foreign languages I keep hearing. So I was chatting with her for a bit and then she askes 'Are you from around here?'

Number 2 - Room mate was an American complaining that he wasn't get his passport stamped in all the 'dodgy' countries (Eastern Europe, Morocco etc). I asked why this bothered him? "Cause I want to mess with immigration when I go home. What are they going to do about it?". Ummm... lets see, there is this thing in America called the PATRIOT act which actually lets them do whatever the hell they like. Why would you want to pull the lions tail?

Number 1 - Looking at a sign and it has countries flags for various languages and then the descriptions. French Flag for French, British Flag for English, Italian flag for Italians, Spanish etc. An American standing next to me. "Why the hell don't they have an American Flag so that we can understand it?"

Day 47 - Dollars are to Euros ....

One thing I have never commented on exactly is cost of things here. I've mentioned that in relative terms Florence, Venice and Vienna were expensive but how does this really compare? Generally what I would normally pay in Australian dollars, is what I pay in Euros (only Euros are worth twice as much - ie everything is twice as expensive).

For example, a large Macca's meal in Australia is $5.95 dollars. In Europe, it is roughly 5.95 Euros (ie about $11 dollars Australian). After awhile you try not to think about it as it is all too sad and you go crazy. Thinking something is 10 euros to get in isn't too bad but then if you start thinking, 'hey wait a minute, that is actually $18 back home and i'd never pay that', you wouldn't do anything.

I was kinda complaining about it to some others but then I started talking to some Brazilians who are paying 5-10 times more than what they would back home, puts things into perspective pretty quickly.

Another reason for heading into eastern europe was to really see if it was remarkedly cheaper. It is about half the price of western europe thus far and food is ridicilously cheap. For example, I had a hotdog and 500ml Coke for about $1.70 Australian.

Photos

Now for a couple of photos. This one was Vienna City Hall at night and was quite amazing. It also had the skating rink in front of it with a funky lay out:



This was an amazing gothic church down the road from City Hall in Vienna (and it wasn't even the main church - that was St Stephansdom):



This was Venice in the evening when I was just hopping from one water bus to another - which was also pretty amazing just cruising around the place.



This was the shop window in Venice that I was drooling over the sketch books ... look at that leather

Sketches

Managed to get some computer time to put some sketches up ... almost don't want to as they are taken with my camera so they are a little distorted and contrast/brightness is all wrong (unfortunately easy things to change if I had photoshop).

This one was a quick 5-10 minute sketch of David. It is one of my favorites as it wasn't overworked and has a loosness and energy to it (also only had one attempt at most lines and managed to 'fluke' it). It is about 4 inches tall:



This was a longer sketch where I had about 30-40 on lookers in the end. I'm not crazy about it cause I could never step back and correct problems due to location. I was trying to make it look more like a real person than a sculpture. In total, probably about 2 hours and A4 size (~8x11 inches for the Americans)

Drawing David itself was a bit of a challenge as technically, the sculpture has problems: the head and hands are too big and out of proportion with the rest of the body, the knees are hardly detailled at all and I'd love to know how the slingshot he is holding works cause it makes no sense to me.



This was a quick sketch of the Collosuem - about 10 minutes and about the size of a credit card (suffering badly due to camera distortion). I was thinking of doing a longer sketch from this location but was bad cause if I got hassled by theives/teenagers, the exit strategy was very limited.



Ok, now for something a little different. The following is a conceptual design and I've hardly done any architectural ones. But in doing this one, I felt it was really informed by what I was seeing lately. It took about 1.5 hours and I'm trying to work on speed and quality. Speed I want to get down to about an hour and there are still some problems I need to address in design (doesn't help I don't have a ruler).

Behind the Iron Curtain

Fear. I guess that is the single most thing in my mind at the moment. Fear of really having no idea of where I am and feeling that is a massive liability. At the border, our passports were checked and I suspected there would be a problem. The dude checking was in full military uniform, stern face and VERY serious.

My passport photo was taken during a time when I was in my art phase with a full beard. Now I'm clean shaven and the dude wasn't happy it was me easily (at first I was freaking out thinking that I needed a visa but I emailled the embassy to make double sure I didn't need one). The fact the train also had next to no one on it meant he had time to labour a point. All this was being translated too.

He moved on in the end but mental note to self, don't shave for the next couple of weeks - life probably would be a heck of a lot easier.

My translator then made the remark, 'now you are behind the iron curtain'. I guess growing up in the west during the 80s in the cold war, a certain stigma with an 'us and them' mentality developed at an informative age. Just seems that the west tolerates ignorance a little more where as in the east, it might get you locked up. My guide book is only Western Europe so I really am doing this by the seat of my pants. Hopefully once I get out and about a bit, I'll feel a little more settled as I certainly don't at the moment.

Trains and I

After figuring the system out a little better, most places I'm now not booking til the night before or the day I'm leaving. I kinda just rocked up to the train station and got my ticket half and hour before I left. Slovakia isn't part of the Eurail pass so I thought things would be all good after all the train strikes and problems I've had thus far (worse comes to worse, another night in Vienna in the hostel which is only at 1/3 capacity).

So the train gets a little out of Vienna and breaks down. Eventually a train conductor comes along telling us that another train is coming on the other tracks. One of the few times I've been with someone who can translate and man that made like so much easier.

So 3 carriages worth of people get off and a single train carriage comes along on the other side. Everyone manages to get on except for about 10 people, including me and my new found translator. The train looked like it was only going to the border anyhow and really standing room only. So stuck at some remote train station but I had my translator friend with me.

Eventually the conductor came back along, and the translated version was that an engine was coming to pull the train back to a yard, and another engine might be found so to get on and see what happens. So we get pulled back to a train yard and an engine eventually comes along and we are taken to Bratislava.

So a train trip that should have taken and hour took almost 3 hours - but just my luck. Didn't matter as the translator type dude was really interesting so we had a great conversation and was surprised to get to the station and see how long it took - I almost thought I must have crossed a time zone. Also a reason why I caught a morning train so if something goes a miss, still daylight hours to find stuff.

Vienna Summary

Time to move onto another city and reflect upon Vienna. First up, the major museum here was great and so cool that I stumbled across it - really felt the art jig saw puzzle started to come together. The architecture was interesting to see and a couple of buildings where really amazing (City Hall and a church down the road). As an aside, would mean I'd bump into people giving me ideas on Eastern Europe and remains to be seen what that means.

Beyond that, Vienna seems to be a city that you really need 'company' with to enjoy. It was a lot more expensive than my naive mind thought and was on the back of the other two really expensive cities in Florence and Venice. The layer of snow made it an interesting proposition and would definately be curious to see the place during warmer months.

Day 46 - Bratislava ... the Where?!

Until a couple of days ago, I didn't even know about Bratislava. Basically it is 60km east of Vienna and in Slovakia. When I was first planning my trip, I had no idea of what I was doing. I also had no idea on how things worked, how much language would be a barrier and so forth. That is kinda why I went to Paris first cause I could at least get by with my little French and if worse came to worse, head to England or Nice (try to get a better grip with my old house mate).

Eastern Europe was kinda just another step foreign and I didn't know too much about it all (apart from the fact it would be cheaper than Western Europe). So when I got to Vienna and people started talking about Budapest, Krakow, Bratislava etc, I thought I would look into it.

As of May 2004, Aussies no longer needed tourist visas so another obstacle removed. Bratislava being so close to Vienna, I thought what the heck. I'll just slip across the border, it isn't that far and if the shit hits the fan, can always get back to some familiarity with Vienna.

As a side note, I've just found out George W is going to be here next week which may mean some tourist attractions will be closed. Heck, how stupid do I feel - George W's geography might be slightly better than mine :(

Foreigners in a Country

One thing that has surprised me is in various countries the monuments and so forth to foreigners. Behind one of the main palaces near the Eiffel Tower in France, there is a large monument and statute to George Washington. I found this really bizzare (maybe because he faught and kicked the english out of America - I don´t know). Then there was another place ´Winston ChurchHill Boulevarde´ and lots of things like that.

Given Australian-US relations with our respective heads of state, I was joking thinking how long will it be before we have a street named ´George W. Avenue´ in Australia? Then it occurred to me this wouldn´t be beyond the realm of possibility so I guess the question is, which city will have the priviledge of this naming rights first?

In Vienna, they had been advertising an exhibition on JFK. A person from the hostel went to it yesterday and mentioned it had the full JFK vs Nixon presidental debate. This was something that I´ve wanted to see in its entireity as we´ve always had sound bites or someone elses summary of it.

I turned up and it was just some sound bites, which was annoying. But the exhibition itself was kinda interesting. It was more a life of JFK with the Vienna hook being that Austria was the neutral ground for talks between JFK and the soviets in the early 60s.

It was bizzare because it almost felt like a propaganda spin on JFK and I guess somewhat like Princess Diana, nobody ever wants to say a bad word about them (despite the fact Princess Diana was really nothing more than a spoilt brat but she sold magazines). It was interesting to see the video treatment of the assasination in Dallas. When it gets to the critical moment, the whole thing goes blurry (maybe so the youngsters don´t see it) which was curious.

More Architecture ...

Just wandered around this afternoon looking at more of the architecture and coming at buildings from different angles. Also jumped onto a tram that circles the old city for a couple of rides around to get a better feel for the place. Its funny to watch people chase after the tram once they´ve missed it (kinda like what people do with buses only that conditions are icy so slipping under the tram would be all too easy).

Day 45 - Climbing St. Stephansdom

Picked up this nasty habit of climbing things so today was the main cathedral in Vienna. Wasn´t really a climb but an elevator upwards. Today was cold to begin with but up there, the breeze ripped through you. Once you get out of the elevator, you are on this dodgy catwalk with the wind blowing you around (not good with heights so this wasn´t fantastic).

The view naturally was brilliant and first chance I´ve had to get a really good look at the skyline. I was a little surprised to see some high rise and other sorts of towers. Then I was looking at the pitch of the cathedral roof, which probably would have been around 60 degrees and thinking about the poor bugger who would have had to put the tiles on the roof - no way you´d catch me doing that. Couldn´t stay up there too long as it was far too cold.

Old City Architecture

Vienna use to be a walled city until a couple of hundred years ago they ripped out the walls and have now replaced them with tram tracks. Thus once you get into the city centre/circle, the architecture gets very old school style.

I´m not convinced by it however. It just seems to be combining elements of the Renaissance and the Baroque (which are contradictory to begin with). It almost appears to be trying too hard to be clever and comes across a little contrived (it would kinda be like giving Crocodile Dundee an M-16, granades and an iPod to make him tough and cool - kinda irrevelant to the character and doesn´t work).

That being said, I spied a fantastic gothic church and the City Hall was architecturally something. As opposed to Florence, Vienna really goes to some trouble to light up the buildings at night and it gives it a great mood and character. In front of the City Hall is a massive outdoor ice skating rink and that looks like a lot of fun.

Day 44 - Snowy Schonbrunn

When I arrived the other day, it started snowing and has been pretty consistent for the last couple of days. Today I wandered out to the Schonbrunn Palace and Gardens. Now being covered in a foot of snow, it was pretty amazing. It is also built on top of a hill so youd get a good view of the rest of the city from up there (also means the wind rips through you).

Naturally on the way back I got lost as this Palace was off all the maps that I had and even finding the place was a little bit of a fluke. Still always interesting to see the surrounding buildings and layouts. By this time a lot of the snow plows had come out and cleared the streets which made it easier to get around.

Day 43 - Chill Time .... yeah right

Today I slowly got around to things and thought I´d have a quick look at a museum listed in the guidebook and not given much of a description - the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I´d never heard of it before today but it has amazing collection of really important works (quite a number that I´ve studied at length).

First up where some more Titian´s and Venetian paintings. The great thing about seeing today´s works was that, in general, everything is all started to fall into place and make a great deal of sense. Having seen the various major artistic centres (Paris, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Venice) and connecting the dots, I´m really getting a good sense of the whole jig saw puzzle.

All the big guys where well represented - Titian, Raphael (a couple of his late works that I thought were good - generally not much of a Raphael fan), Caravaggio, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Holbein, Durer, Bruegel and a brilliant Ruben´s exhibition!

The Rubens exhibition had some of his really key paintings (several metres by several metres) and also the small little sketches/studies/preliminary drawings for these - which from a practicing artist point of view are always very insightful.

7 hours later I got kicked out as there were closing and I still hadn´t seen about 1/2 a floor of stuff .... there´s always next time :D

Being Australian

For those who can remember, I vaguelly skirted around the issue of being Australian back on day 23:

http://mattelder.blogspot.com/2005/01/day-23-australia-day.html

I guess I´m working on a more definable answer, at least how I percieve things. One thing that drives me totally insane in Europe is an almost seeming lack of descency shown for other humans beings. It really is a matter of every man, woman and child for himself, and a case of ´the quick and the dead´.

You line up for things and people will naturally jump in front of you (knowing that you are there), order something and people will come over the top of you to place their order, people walking in the street with no regard for others around them, no one waiting that extra split second to hold the door open ... and the list of things just goes on.

Maybe it is growing up in country towns or something, but for me two things come into play - a sense of ´mateship´ and ´a fair go´. What is so important that you can´t just be kind to another fellow human being, or what makes you so god damn special that rules don´t apply to you?

For all the culture that Europe has, there seems to be a certain basic element of ´civilisation´ that is missing. Maybe I´m the last of a dying bread in this regard. But maybe Australian´s lack of self importance, that was awoken in the Renaissance, means that we treat one another and our ´mates´ with respect, honesty and a tad of integrity thrown in. Maybe that is what being Australian is ...

Vienna - Chill Town... maybe

After 6 weeks of hitting museums, monuments and sites with some level of intensity, I just want Vienna to be more of a chance to chill and relax a bit (attempt to, I know my mind will want to try to maximise each day). My brain feels a little fried trying to connect dots, extrapoilate and postulate things both engineering and art.

The reason for Vienna months ago was to see the continuous architectural development of a city that wasn´t bombed in WWII. I headed out for a few hours today and it really is a bizzare blending (from initial impressions).

It will be interesting to see the connection with the Spanish. Around 17th century, there was lots of inbreeding happening within this royal family of Spanish and Austrian decent. Add on top of this the fact they were religious nuts (there was that little witch hunt that we´ve all heard of - the Spanish Inquisition) and should lead to interesting outcomes.

Day 42 - I´ve got a bad feelin´about this

So I caught the overnight train to Vienna and had seats. Although the compartment I was in only had another dude so we each got to lie down (the ticket inspector didn´t care either) and at least managed to get some broken sleep. I swear between the hostels and trains, I find the worst snorers known to man.

Eventually awoke to lots of snow as going further into Austria. One of the rare instances where I had a really unsettled feeling about being in a country. The only association that I know with Austria comes from negative connatations associated with WWII (my knowledge of this time is horrible at best so really was a feelin). Almost really didn´t want to be in the country, which sounds ridicilous.

I guess this will be a good opportunity to gain a better understanding of this notion and not let a sense of ignorance guide it .... still, don´t feel good about it.

Venice Summary

Venice was great to visit and had been warned that you could do most things in a couple of days. So I think I stayed for the right amount of time although wasn´t impressed with the hostel advertising it was on the island when in fact it was on the main land (live and learn).

Venice is/was the most expensive city I´ve been too thus far and while it has its charm, I´d probably be in no hurry to go back. It does have a certain romantic element to it but the haze that always seemed to linger did get to me after awhile. It would be like being in Surfers Paradise / Miami and there is a constant haze with sun and no blue sky.

Lets not get into the engineering doin´my head in.

The Grand Canal

Been in Venice for a couple of days and haven´t actuallz said anything about the Grand Canal. This is the main canal itself and wanted to go on this when there was good light (better for reference photos to try to get lighting conditions along with structural detail). Lucky for me today turned out better than the last couple in this regard.

So I spend most of the day just jumping from one water bus to the other and just going around Venice (I had a 24 hour ticket that allowed unlimited travel). It was just cool going all around the place and seeing things. Naturally when it was time to catch my train, I was stuck on one of the outter islands and the boat wasn´t making any good time. Eventually got to land and made a b-line for the train station (on the other side of Venice). Kinda funky to be going in and out of all the little back streets and managed to get there on time.

Day 41 - It Isn´t Fair!!

Couple of reasons for coming to Venice - seeing the place to get a sense for how colour informs Venetian art and also specifically to see Titian´s ´Assumption of the Virgin´. I got to see the painting today in its original context in a church and it was wonderful (the painting only went back to the church in the 1980s). It is over the alter with orange light coming infrom the left through stain glass and makes the canvas actually glow.

While I was there, I tagged onto the back of a college group who had a professor giving an interesting discussion. Most of the students had eyes glazed over and bored. The teacher noticed me being all interested like and directed most of her talk at me - strange.

But just having all these great paintings in the church and being able to talk about them insitu is so much more powerful then studying them through a book and/or slides. I´ve occassionally come across these uni students doing a ´field trip´ like this and don´t think most of them realise how lucky they are (probably the worse thing I´ve seen is a kid playing a gameboy in the Colloseum) and so not getting the most out of the opportunity.

It just so isn´t fair, I should just swap them - here you go and lie on Bondi Beach and I´ll appreciate this great stuff. Try to console myself that anything that comes too easily isn´t worth it (doesn´t work)

The lecturer was giving great information but you could tell she had to dumb down the content so they could understand - nooooo! Thank goodness I have some great art history lecturers who could make a lecture about a rock seem interesting.

Day 40 - Galleria della Academia

Today was a museum day. Venetian painting is kinda a linch pin in the history of painting in relation to the Renaissance. Basically Venice maintained a degree of independance of the years and their art was also able to do the same. Basically they dug canal and had markers for ships to navigate. If they were attacked, they'd pull up these markers so the enemy ships would run a ground not knowing the terrain and would be sitting ducks.

The light in Venice also seemed to inform there colour choices. Thus from an artistic point of view, seeing the environment enables you to see sublties of how it was informed. Basically the other side of the renaissance was all about line and this really shows through in Michangelo's work. It is kinda like drawing an out line and then filling it in with colour.

The Venetian school was basically using colour from the get go so gives the work a different quality (as you can design a composition on the fly giving huge flexibility). The various schools would cross pollinate one another so we don't think too much about it today (at the time there was huge argument about it as the colourists would be criticed for not knowing how to draw).

A couple of years ago I started reading a book on Venetian painting and this museum had most of the important paintings in the book so it was fantastic to see! When you walk into the 2nd room, the sense of colour really does hit you in a way that I haven't come across in other musuems. There were also some other artists that I had vaguelly had heard of who had good representations and added to the list of things to explore when I get a chance.

Shopping Weaknesses

We all have those shops that we walk past and must go into. For me it is either the book shop or art store (hmm.... wonder why). Otherwise I just can't stand shopping. Anyhow the first day in Venice I walked past a shop that hand made sketch books and paper. I fogged up the window and knew it was time to move on.

I went back and thought I would just see some prices as they stuff was pretty exquisite. I was eyeing off a leather bound little sketch book and lets just say that it would be cheaper to stay in a hostel for 3 nights. I had to exit the store before my credit card went to the dark side of the force. Still got an address as they seem to ship internationally.

All Apologies

My apologies to everyone reading recently as the quality of posts is probably a little ordinary. Mainly cause internet has been so expensive so don't have much of a chance to do an edit and what comes out is a first edit per say.

Getting Lost - Inevitable

The rest of the first day in Venice just involved having a look around the place. The first great thing is that there are no cars in Venice - all just pedestrain ways and boats. Thus there are just little streets going in each and every direction and no point even trying to follow street names.

In the end there seemed to be a line of overpriced stores that provided a rough direction in places. Venice it self just seems ridicilous expensive. I suppose when you have to move everything by boat and lay claim to one of the most beautiful cities in the world, you can afford to.

Just seeing the colours of the places was quite interesting from an artistic point of view (more about this tomorrowish). The day was overcast.... or at least that is what I'm hoping it is. Right on the mainland across the way from Venice is an industrial area. So there has been a thick haze the whole time I've been in Venice. I was thinking it was low cloud or something but have a feeling that it is smog, and really bad.

The main square in Venice is St Marks (San Marco) which is quite an amazing space and the buildings there are quite spectacular. The down side is that they are absolutely filthy and if something needs to be put behind scaffolding for cleaning, this square needs to take priority (although I think the current priority is to stop it from sinking - suppose that makes sense).

So it took me about an hour to get to the main square, after getting lost. It took the better part of 3 hours to find my way back but it didn't matter - meant I spent time exploring all the little hidden pockets of the place and the city is quite lively at night.

Engineering Mind Overload

Eventually I manage to get back to Venice by train after dumping my stuff in the hostel (walked up to the platform and happened to be the only train for the next 3 hours due to strike). So I come out of the train station, take 2 and let my mind loose.

One of the major areas of study in my engineering was 'Geotechnical Engineering', or as we commonly referred to it, 'dirt engineering'. Primary studying the earth, formation, history, stresss, bearing pressures etc so when you build a structure, it ground doesn't give way under it. Sydney is relatively boring as it is sandstone which is pretty strong so long as you don't hit a fault line, underground dyke etc.

Venice, being built on water (effectively), means the soil is saturated and a whole different kettle of fish come into play. It was amazing to walk around the place and have the mind racing with logistics. Even just the train station and yard ... just can't comprehend it. Each carriage is about 20-40 tonnes, locomotives 100-200 tonnes each, plus ballust, sleepers and so forth.

So the combination of piles, islands and so on is just mind blowing to think about. I started thinking more in terms of numbers and equations ... and I'll end the nerd part there. By the time I walked to the main square, a lot of hypothesis' 'd formulated were partially answered by a sign indicating the main square was infact settling and a couple of strategies being undertaken to combat this.

*end nerd transmission*

Day 39 - Problems to Venice

Train strike aside, today was one of those days I just shouldn't have gotten out of bed. I get to the Train Station in Venice to find out that the hostel I'm staying in was back on the main land. I was under the impression that it was on the island of Venice itself. I only had instructions from the train station but trains were on strike so I couldn't get to the correct train station.

I went looking for an internet cafe to get a better idea on how to get there. Do you think I could find an internet cafe? In the end I vaguelly remember some directions about a number 6 bus so I jumped on one that looked to have the suburb name on it.

Now the bus itself had the suburb name on it as the first stop, not the last stop as I'm accustomed to so I go several suburbs too far. Have to get off the bus and head back the other way. So I get off the bus in the correct suburb with no map and no idea. I wonder around for a bit and find a local community map with has a street that I have for directions. Apparently there is a church right in front of me but it wasn't and with a tangle of streets, most un named, I well an truly got lost.

By some miracle I walk around a corner after going around in circles for half an hour and there the hostel is. I get lost even with maps so this was just another instance of blind stupid luck.

Florence Summary

Ah ... the time in Florence was short but really enjoyable. I kinda walked away from the place feeling that I never really got a feel for the place (that or just gotten use to spending a week in places rather than 3 days). It was pretty pricey and seemed any time I did anything, another 10 euros was being handed over. Thus what I did was a little limited and still a lot to go back, see and do.

Uffizi was great, the day spent drawing David was cool and relaxing - wish I had more time just to do things like this. The hostel itself was good in the end as a bit of a break. I was in a 3 bedroom room but no one else was in the room the whole time that I was there. It was good so I didn't have to worry about waking people up with early starts. It was a little bad in terms of just not having people to talk with about things and chat the hours away.

More Transport Fun - sssssstrike!!!!

I swear the Eurail read my blog the other day and is now out to spite me. OK, a couple of weeks ago the French had train strikes (4 in 8 days) and now it is the Italians turn. So I'm trying to get to Venice tomorrow and all the trains are cancelled except for one - which means I have to pay more for a booking fee - or forfeit my accomodation that has already been booked in Venice. Ah Melissa, so jealous.

Michangelo ... purging of the narrative

I must admit there was an interesting video setup with an academic, Robert Morris, giving a critique of Michangelo's David (seeing that his 500th birthday was last year). I found it particularly interesting and I think as Rob coined the phrase, an episode in 'intellectual masterbation'.

It was a multi dimensional argument but one aspect was that Michangelo was continuing a trend of purging of narrative that ultimately has lead us to abstract art in the 20th century where there is no narrative. Just quickly, art has generally always been used to tell stories - greek myths, religious ideas as until the industrial revolution, very few people were educated so few could read. However, like the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words and could be universally understood by the masses.

Before, David was usually always shown with a Goliath's head so you could recognise it. A comment that came out was that Michangelo's David could be a 'Barbie Doll with balls' or alternatively just waiting to be handed a guitar with the whole 'don't mess with me attitude'.

Another argument was how it could only be a large, white, male in this heroic position much the same as an Arnold Schwarzenegger today. There was also a thread of age. Michangelo's David is a kid with an adult physique and that notion of fighting Goliath of the older generation. With the statutue also having recently being restored, another idea of youth not being able to age like everything else but preserved.

A little side tracked but one day I will do philosophy to really understand how to think *hint, hint, nudge, nudge Chris*.

Day 38 - Michangelo's David

Today was off to the Gallery of the Academy to see Michangelo's David. Being Florence, it was ridicilous expensive to get in to see very little. So I'll be damned if I'm not going to get some really cool sketches in. The space was actually set up really well to get some sketching done. My goal was to try to get sketches done so that they looked like living, breathing people, rather than statutues and blocks of marble (a la Rubens - as getting something to look like a statutue is relatively easy).

Biggest problem was not being able to step away from the drawing (as I'd lose my seat or have stuff stolen). So to my eye the drawings turned out a little average. While doing a 2nd drawing, after about 2 hours I was getting near to being finished and a crowd had a massed and was watching me - half the people. males dressed up in some fancy uniform so I have no idea who they were

Let me say this is one of the most surreal experiences I've ever had. I don't mind people watching me draw in public (I know most other artists get very nervous when people are looking over their shoulder). Normally they have a quick look and wonder off, maybe offer some compliment and that is it.

I had about 30-40 people standing around me watching what I was doing. I would have loved to have spoken Italian as I didn't have a clue what they were saying. On the up side, if anyone got infront of me and blocked my view, the crowd around me would scold them and get them to move on - bonus really.

Rembrandt and Me

Forgot to mention that the Uffizi also had 3 Rembrandt paintings - wonderful. Much like when I've seen his self portrait paintings, I always want to go and paint some portraits (going to have to rope in some readers of this blog one day - when I can draw faces properly and don't have to worry about running for my life for not hitting the likeness).

His stuff always his this effect and almost makes me want to do some self portraits (which is saying a lot as the thing I hate most is to draw self portraits - closely followed by having to do anything twice - including symmetrical architecture).

Day 37 - Uffizi Museum

One of the main reasons for coming to Florence was for this Museum. It ranks up there with the best of them and quite well known. It was best to book before hand so I did that yesterday so I rocked up a bit before 9am, got my ticket and walked straight in. This post is probably a little heavy on the art side of things so hopefully I won't bore too many non art people.

The other day I mentioned that Florence got wealthy through banking during the 12-1400s so was very encouraging to the arts (and could afford to be). Thus one day, they decided to start a museum of the best works and the Uffizi is what has resulted.

Generally the collection goes in chronological order from the 1300s to beginning of 1700s. The collection had 3 Leonardo da Vinci's (remember there are only about 15 paintings attributed to him with a significant number in the Lourve) which were great to see. Loved the couple of works by Bottichelli - such as Primavera and the Birth of Venus.

It also had an early Michangelo painting of the Holy Family. The brightness of the colours radiating from this work was quite something, considering at the time he was more known as a sculptor and not a painter. The Raphael's were interesting to see but apart from the couple in the Vatican, Raphael hasn't really appealled much to me.

Next up was Titian and again seeing his paintings in the flesh have turned me into an even bigger fan of his. Today I saw a couple of his really important works and he just has a wonderful touch of the female form. Correggio is another artist whose name I only knew but not his body of work. Every time I turn around, I find I'm taken by his work and something I will look into further when back home.

There was the famous ancient Roman Medici Venus and the thing that really struck me about this marble carving was just how far forward she is leaning, it seems much greater than the dodgy copy in one of the art schools in Australia.

Last up were the Caravaggio's which are always great to see, and more of his important pieces. Still, in the same room was one of his 'followers' in Artemesia Gentileschi with her other version of Judith Slaying Holofernes (the version that was in the Sydney Caravaggio show was the one were the sword was only roughed in, this one has the full detail). I only know a couple of her works but I like the edge she has and think her 'caravaggio' style is probably better than his.

So 6 hours later the brain was hurting and time to leave. Definately one of the great art collections and cool to see so many pieces that I knew in some detail. The other great thing, and not many museums I say it about was that you weren't allowed to take pictures. Thus you didn't have tourists being pains in the butts to get their horrible looking snapshots.

Florence - The City That Sleeps at Night

After a quick break back at the hostel, decided to head out and see some of the sights at night in Florence. At 8pm, the place was dead, like everyone had gone to bed or something. Even the police seemed to be patrolling to make sure all the street vendors selling knock of watches, sunglasses, handbags were packing up and moving on. Even the main tourist buildings were bearly lite up and in pretty unimaginative ways. I guess the only up side is that a lot of the museums and things seem to open early in the morning - around 8:15-8:45.

A Little Longer in Europe

Good news for me is that I haven't been spending the casholo as quickly as what I thought. Just trying to juggle some flights around but looks like I'll be able to stay in Europe an extra couple of weeks than what I thought (bonus - ah the trusty budget and Prague looks very cheap).

Joy / Melissa - if you are reading this, drop me an email as I'm having a hard time getting in contact. Cheers.

Duomo - If it ain't Fireworks, it is 'climb-a-bility'

A friend Dane once made the comment that a building is only as good as the fireworks that you can launch off them - think New Years Eve and things like the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I guess the 2nd consideration would be weather or not you can climb them - (ok I'm being traggic with my tourist hat on now).

So I've climbed the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomph, St Peters, Leaning Tower of Pisa and today it was Florence's Duomo. It is another massive cathedral, 4th largest in the world, with a massive hexagonal done on it - won't get into the engineering feat with this one (that you walk inside to get to the top).

Again a wonderful view from the top and that is one of the great thing about European cities that I've seen thus far. Their sky line isn't screwed up by skyscrappers everywhere. Most buildings don't get past 6 stories and if they do, they are church spires and cool things.

As an aside, those who know me from engineering days know I have a fascination about tower cranes. Today I saw a really cool one. European cities have no space so they put up electric tower cranes everywhere (they have the flat, non movable boom. The ones with the boom that moves in a vertical arc is deseil and I haven't seen one of these yet in Europe - probably because the smoke coming out of these things would stain the buildings worse). Today, this one was mounted on rails high above the street. So the whole crane could move from one street to the next.... ok, enough engineering geek factor.

The Random Things

Today was just a matter of going around into the various churches to find pieces of art that I knew of/studied and were of interest. Boring detail to others so I won't linger on details.

I was in one area and a facade caught my eye as being very familiar. It would turn out to be a copy of another famous building on the other side of town. Everything here seems to be behind scaffolding with repair and renovation of some description happening. I walk down a street trying to find an important building, I just look for scaffolding and most of the time that is the correct building.

Day 36 - Florence .... so much

Ah Florence. From what I've seen thus far, it is a wonderful city with so many hidden pockets. This time I had to get a local guide book and first up was a famous Masaccio Fresco, Holy Trinity (1427), in a church. It is on a side wall, quite unassuming like but this is where things start to get going.

Should take a step back and explain how Florence fits into the larger scene of things. Basically in the 12-1400's it developed banking and allowed the city to become quite wealthy and break away from the middle ages feudal system. During the 1400s, the birth of the Renaissance would occur here. Around the middle of the century, perspective was finally codified and worked out (thus if you look at any images pre 1440s, perspective is never 100% right). Here was Leonardo da Vinci's master and Leonardo (who is about a generation older than Michangelo and Raphael) who got the ball rolling in terms of Renaissance and the 'universal man'.

Having been to Paris, with predominately Gothic Churches (light weight looking structures, very charming and surreal qualities), and Rome with Romaneque Churches (massive structures we build because we are engineers and everything needs to be bigger and out of concrete), Florence is a hybrid with a checker board marble colour. Still trying to see if I like this.

Day 35 - Leaning Tower of Pisa

Caught the train to Florence, found the 'hostel', dumped my stuff and headed out to Pisa to try to extract some value out of my dodgy Eurail pass (have I mentioned to never get one of these, they are not worth it - live and learn).

My first memory of the Leaning Tower of Pisa comes from the classic movie Superman III where the evil Superman straights it out and later the good one fixes it - much to the dismay of the kitch souviener maker. Thus it was kinda cool to finally see it.

Naturally on comes the engineering hat. The first thing is the extent of the lean. I'd read it was 4.1m off center in the guide book months ago. It isn't until you are there you realise just how much 4.1m actually is - a huge amount. Now the one good thing about engineering 'disasters' (bridges falling down, planes flying into buildings, massive clay slides etc) is that you learn so much.

First up with this one, because the building is on a slope, it radically changes wind and water flow around it. Thus it erodes in a funny way and even how it gets dirty is so much different.

I also went for a climb up the tower which is limited to 30 people at a time. As soon as you step in, you realise that this thing isn't hollow and it is a massive amount of weight that is off the vertical alignment. Walking up the spiral stairs is funny. Every half rotation it is more difficult to walk up the stairs, then every other half rotation it is easier to walk up the stairs due to it being off the horizontal. The view from the top was naturally wonderful but only allowed 30 minutes per group of 30 (that includes going up and down).

Rome Summary

Alas it was time to leave Rome. Originally I had intended to stay for 5 days but was able to stretch the budget to 10 days. I only began to scratch the surface of the place as mostly just going to churches and public places. There were heaps of museums that I didn't go to but they are more on ancient Rome and my history is a little too weak to appreciate that fully. Have to 'bone up' and come back.

Rome was fantastic with most things in walking distance (well for me that means anywhere that I can walk to within an hour). So much to see and do and the first couple of days I was in Rome where the best!

Cimitero dei Cappucini

This was one of the weirder churches that I went to. Basically in 1798 they dug up the bones of 4000 dead monks and decided to use them as decoration. Thus you have arches and layouts made up compeletly of bones - skulls, shoulder blades, femurs, the whole lot. It was pretty creepy even for me (I'm use to having real skeletons around for drawing classes but not like this). Actually, 4000 bones of people fits into a relatively small space.

The other claim to fame for this place was where the word 'cappacini', as in the drink comes from.

Day 34 - St Peters for the Last Time

Got up early so I could head out to St Peters and finish off this drawing. What originally started out as a quick sketch kept taking up more and more time but its pretty much done and I like the result. It was interesting just being in St Peters square at the time as the Pope is sick so they had massive screens in St Peters with a video link up to his hospital. There were a lot of people in the square and they all started cheering when he appeared - quite a popular dude. Various TV crews were amongst the crowd trying to get a story on peoples pilgramage to St Peters to support the pope rather than the hospital.

An old lady came up to me and initially I thought she was a begger. So I just act dumb, pretend I understand a little English and it people really push the point, I'm from a small island in the south pacific (I can't wait to try the no speak English on telemarketers back in Australia - man I hate those guys).

She was trying to convince me that she was from Australia but had never heard of the Solomon islands (I was pretending to be from here) so I was getting really suspicious. I'm drawing and then shes askes if I'm studying to be a priest - one of the more unusual connections. Eventually she went away but I'm still wondering what her scam would have been.

That is the thing about travelling, particularly in Rome - if you suspect everyone is a thief, you generally see it happening. Also working security in shopping centers in Sydney has meant I can usually pick the shifty characters anyhow. Between the gypsys, packs of little kids, people accidently 'bumping' into you etc, you are kinda always on guard.

Moses and an Aquaduct

Next up was a sculpture of Moses by Michangelo. Again another church which is only open kinda business hours. The statutue was cool but frickn' tourists going flash happy every other 2nd. Bad enough but across the other side of the room, a church service was taking place so just downright disrespectful. The church Moses was in also houses the chains that *supposedly* St Peter wore before he was put to death. They actually built a church specially to hold these items.

Afterwards it was a quick walk out to an ancient aquaduct that use to bring water into Rome. It was good to see but nothing special (or having walked from one end of Rome to the other, my legs didn't care anymore). The area it was in wasn't looking too safe so I didn't hang around to see if my hypothesis was correct in the matter.

Ecstacy of St Theresa

Now that I had these buses parking in front of me, I couldn't continue drawing so decided to pull some of Sunday's plans forward a day. When I'd been out to the Borghese Museum, it occurred to me that I hadn't yet seen Bernini's famous Ecstacy of St Theresa. I knew it was built into a church as it has a hidden window to let outside light in to illuminate the work. Bernini was working in Rome so it must have been here somewhere.

I went looking for it the yesterday and found it - but it was closed. So I made a point to go and see it today. It really is an amazing sculpture and was in a building I'd walked past a dozen times over the course of the last week. The building looks stately rather than churchly and there are 3 other churches on the same street in a block (this one makes 4).

Day 33 - Back to the Vatican

Last week I quickly went through the Vatican and knew that I wanted to come back. I felt like I'd missed a couple of important things and had. I got to see the Apollo Belvedere and Augustus of Prima Porta Statutues which I missed the first time. Knowing how the layout worked and closing at 1230, I went around once and got to the front of the building around 1200 and then went around again as they were trying to push all the people out. It meant that there were relatively few people.

Going back through things this time around with an audio guide also helped with my understanding and just added a few more tid bits to my knowledge. Afterwards I went back into St Peters church but they still had areas roped off and kinda annoying. So I went back outside to continue a drawing.

Just as I was getting going, tour buses started parking right infront of me in St Peters square. I really wasn't impressed with this as I wanted to get this drawing done so I didn't have to come back to St Peters again (been out here about 4 days now or so).

Randomness of Rome

After the Borghese Museum, I was wondering through the park and came across these random statutes in the park. The expressions in the faces and gestures were great so snapped a couple of photos. If these were in Australia, you could probably build a museum around them but in Rome, they just don't cut it with the great masters.

Later on I would randomly pop into another church that I happened to be walking past. It just happened to have a Caravaggio piece in it that I wasn't aware of. (The irony was that originally in its place was a 'pieta' that Cardinal Borghese forcably acquired for his collection. Thus this was a 'substitute', another masterpiece). So yep Judy, another Caravaggio in context.

Day 32 - Borghese Museum

The Borghese Museum is a little bit of a diamond in the rough type deal. I knew you had to book in advance to get in and was able to do this eventually. Staff at the hostel hadn't really heard of it, let alone been in it and didn't really know too much about the whole booking side of it. This would mean that it would 'weed out' a lot of the tourists as you can't just rock up on the day.

Basically Cardinal Borghese during the 17th century was the uncle of the pope. Thus if he liked art pieces and you didn't give it to him, he'd threaten you with prison or death and just take the art pieces anyway.

Thus he was able to build up a great collection of artworks and he was the main patron for Bernini when he was starting out (main sculpturor of the Baroque period - 100 years after Michangelo). The downside was that they only let you into the museum for 2 hours before asking you to leave - hence why you have to book in advance, high demand, low supply of places.

That being said, it was absolutely amazing! The sculptures by Bernini were fantastic as he really does have a way of making marble have the texture of flesh or whatever is appropriate. There were numerous works by Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael, Correggio and an early Rubens painting (thus was fascinationg to see how 'immature' his work started off and developed over the course of his life).

So after quickly skimming the surface of each work for about an hour and a half, I went and made a couple of sketches of the statutues in the remaining time - how I'd love to have more time! The place was just unbelieveable as I knew a significant number of the pieces in detail but even if you didn't, the sculptures would be brilliant to view.

More Blind Stupid Luck

While with my American mates, I walked past a building that vaguely looked familar. I commented at the time about this but didn't think anything of it. A few days later I passed it again at night and checked it out. Couldn't tell what it was as it was unlabelled apart from the sign saying its daylight opening hours. I walked passed it again by chance during the day and popped in for a look.

It was the building that I thought it was as I recognised the interior instantly from the oval dome (unusual as normally spherical domes as it applies equal stresses all over the dome surface - sorry, engineer nerd kicking in). It was dome by Borromini, the same dude who did the building opposite the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona.

It was just so per chance I came across the building. The building exterior I have a single image of it in one of my 5000 artwork images I have collected and I set for my laptop screensaver. That has happened several time while in Rome, just some random bit of grey matter information in the back of the brain making me pay more attention to something obscure. The flip side of this is me wondering how many great things I walk past without even knowing it.

Catacombs

In the afternoon, I thought I'd head out to the Catacombs outside of Rome as I'd never seen any (my only reference point being the catacombs in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade). The guidebook had about a paragraph on it so I was amazed at the scope of things in this area! Bit disappointed that I found this area towards the end of my time in Rome, guess now I have something to come back for.

The catacombs were somewhere christians could practice their faith as up until 417AD, if you were a christian you could be cruxified. Around this time two popes were competeting for power. One pope decided to make christainity the official religion of the empire as this would get all these 'sleeper cell' christians on his side. The pope was Constantine and I'm sure you've heard the name, as he successfully vied for power.

It was a really interesting space to be in and I went to the Saint Sebastian one (guy was shot with arrows from being a christain but didn't die 'because of his faith', thus he was whipped to death).

Day 31 - Churches

Looked at the map and spied an area I hadn't been to with a big church so I went for a looksy. There was actually a smaller one on the way and walking in was a little strange. There were steps that you could only ascend on your knees. At first it is a little bit comfronting seeing the 'faithful' doing this but I spied some other stairs to the side so took these instead.

Across the road was another giant church and they were also setting up for a mass. Something about some of these Roman churches that just comes across so sterile. It is like the Greeks knew how to make things artistic and Romans were just good builders - just make it bigger and better with stone and concrete.

In the afternoon I went to this other church that had an interesting blend of history. It was built in the 1st century as a pagan church, demolished in the 4th century and replaced with another church before being demolished and rebuilt again in the 12th century.

What was interesting, after tagging onto the back of a tour group, was the fresco (painting with plaster). It was actually the first one in Roman. In the 14th century, fresco was discovered as before this artworks on walls and rooves were all mosaics. Basically the pope at the time wanted Rome to have fresco. Local artists weren't interested in the new technique so he bought a couple of Artists from Florence (who were versed).

These artists were Massaccio and his master. His master had done this particular piece (which I'd never seen his work before) and you can really see the influence the style of the master had on the student. The student would outshine the master but was an interesting 'missing link' in the development of art in Rome that I hadn't come across before.

Day 30 - David Briggs...George Bridgman of Our Time

Over the last couple of years I've been really fortunate to have fantastic teachers. When it comes to life drawing, I've always had a high opinion of David Briggs (teahcer of mine). When I was in the Louvre in Paris, students were in the Rubens room drawing but didn't appear to have a method. They were doing these piecemeal, painstaking drawings that were taking forever. It occurred to me that one may have underestimated this teacher of mine.

Today I went to actually do some drawing as I haven't done any in the last month and just itching to do some. When I'm not drawing, usually always thinking about it. So when I came to do draw today, felt like I'd gone up a level in terms of understanding which is always satisfying and leads to better drawings.

The challenge with drawing today was the cold. Sitting in one spot any longer than a few minutes, if your butt hasn't gone cold from the stone you are sitting on, the wind rips through you - certainly an interesting challenge. Hopefully I can post up the images some time soon.

Day 29 - Colosseum and Palatine Hill

The other day I quickly eyed the colosseum to get a sense of it but today I came back and actually went inside. My engineering mind was going nuts thinking logistics and all sorts of things. I tagged onto the back of a couple tour groups and got some great info.

For mine, the Areana floor in the movie Gladiator seemed to big. The interior doesn't seem that size. I didn't plan to do much today so that I could actually have some sketching time. Generally there has been so much to see and do, I haven't had time to sketch. Finally got a bit of time today and really strange to sketch such iconic buildings - have to kick myself that I am here some times.

My digital camera got a work out today. Unfortunately it was overcast so photos weren't optimal - blasted online weather forecasts being wrong - so much for today being sunny.

Afterwards I wandered up to Palatine Hill behind the Colosseum which is filled with ancient ruins and wealthy Renaissance homes. Always hard to get your head around people living and existing in this space for thousands of years when you come from a country no older than 200 years.

Arc's in Context

For mine, things like the Arc de Triomphe, Arch of Titus etc have always seemed like a typical male ego thing - 'lets build something pointless to honour me'. While in the Trastevere area I saw an arch actually set into the 'wall' that use to protect the ancient Roman city.

All of a sudden arches make sense. Grand entrances to cities where 'traffic' could be controlled, visitors could marvel and actually have some sort of ultility value. William Morris (dead dude - writer) once commented that things need to be 'off their time' and in context. It would be like building a model T ford to compete with todays car - it was great for the time but not so much today.

At least that is my theory but gives me something to investigate further.

Trastevere Area

So more walking and I end up in the Trastevere area, a couple of really cool churches here. These had some 12th century mosaics and were very impressive! On the one hand I am feeling a little 'churched' out (think I went into about 10 churches today) but interesting to make comparisons.

Most roman churches are massive structures, big thick peirs/columns and have a 'I am roman and aren't I wonderful for being big' attitude to them (kinda like Civil Engineers let loose on churches - 'lets make it bigger and full of concrete'). I think I prefer the gothic style churches with a lightness feel to them, structurally running your eye upwards and being a more 'intimate' space (example - Notre Dame Paris, St Mary's Sydney etc).

Castel Sant 'Angelo

After a quick pop up the hill for some panoramic views of Rome, onward down the Tiber river. Last year there was a 17th century Plein Air (aka outdoor painting) exhibition in Sydney of places around Rome. One painting grabbed my attention cause it had this circular building on a river with St Peters in the background.

Putting my design hat on, this building had a wonderful design. I had no idea what it was but made a little study of the painting. I'd planned my walk so I would hopefully come across this building in Rome from the same vantage point as the original artist.

I managed to do that, but in the 400 years since the painting, some clown has grown a tree there ... argh ... so I couldn't get the view. I did end up wandering all the way around and basically it is a castle with fortifications. It is seriously one of the funky-est buildings I've come across.

Add to that where there use to be a 'moat', it is now a park for walking dogs (Scott - the kids would had gone nuts in this space). Hopefully I'll get some photos up of this building soon.