London Bloody London

Thanks to several books, many many conversations with friends and family, news stories, history and S.O.S.E lessons, countless hours of British T.V., David Attenborough, David Mitchell, David Bowie, David Tennant and, to a huge extent, Stephen Fry I have, for a long time, had a very clear mental image of London. Realising this as I began my descent into Heathrow Airport it became clear that London could very well disappoint me. Its not that I had a particularly idyllic image of the city, I was aware of it's shortcomings as much as I was of the things that earn it its status as one of the worlds great cities. One thing you hear time and time again when traveling is how in love everybody except Londoners is with London, and how readily and exaggeratedly Londoners will whinge and roll their eyes at the mention of the word. Nevertheless I was perfectly happy with my imaginary London and didn't want to face a reality that didn't live up to it. As it turns out I actually had nothing to worry about, coming out of the airport on the tube everything was just as it was supposed to be. The sky was sodden with neutral gray clouds, the suburban back yards generally consisted of only grass and a few green leaved plants with poorly, dully painted houses, and the ticket inspectors were almost invariably black men with cockney accents. Its was... not perfect, but just sort of right.

I had once again not booked a hotel before coming to the city, and so on the train from Heathrow to Cockfosters (lol) I realised that I didn't really know where to get off... as I wasn't sure which station was the most central, or the best place to be in. I was looking at the line map and saw on it names like Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Hyde Park... all these names that were already so ingrained in my mind, it felt like I was spoiled for choice. I think I must have eventually gotten off at Knightsbridge (why I chose that station I'm not entirely sure) because I found myself right in front of Harrods. I'm sure even the most austere anti-commercialst would have to put in a lot of effort to not be impressed by that store and those on its surrounding streets, the window displays and colourful, impeccably designed clothing that was on offer for public viewing. Unfortunately as I had just come off a plane I was pretty shabbily dressed and loaded with cumbersome baggage, and so- feeling rather out of place- I only took a short look around before trying to direct myself to a tourist office, or reasonably priced hotel. One thing I had already known about London was that the street layout is almost specifically designed to not be convenient to navigate oneself around. It seems as though the architects of city had this extraordinary plan for an enormous, extravagant and beautiful city, sparing no expense. Then when it came to putting the plan into action they realised that there was actually not enough space to fit it all into, so they just sort of smushed all the plans together so that this city with all its nicely planned out system of grids and blocks buckled and twisted and turned into this mess of squiggly lines and cul de sacs. Then they chose all the best, most iconic arches, buildings and parks and placed them randomly throughout the place.

Eventually I did find a hotel where I was able to stay for one night near Victoria Station, before having to move into a 4 star hotel for a discounted price (why it was discounted I'm not sure, but I wasn't going to ask questions) in Kensington, a suburb which exemplifies the British lust for cleanliness and civility. Even between these two locations it was surprising to me how much accent really does reflect the speaker's socio-economic status. If you walk into a laundromat or a street stall you can almost guarantee that you be greeted with a cockney 'allo... I was even called 'gov' once... and the accents increased gradually but steadily in their relative poshness, stepping up to pubs, then to cafes, museum attendants, hotel receptionists, news reporters, all the way up to Jeremy Irons, whose voice was used for the audio tour of Westminster Abbey, which was the first piece of real tourist-ing I did.

Once I came to that area of the Thames it was like a heavy icon overdose. Depending on which direction you face as you walk out of Westminster station your focus is caught be either Westminster Abbey, the houses of parliament, Big Ben, the London Eye or simply the river itself, its like a sample palate of all things British... the architecture is so geometric and solid but not stern or sombre, as it is covered in joyful, playful ornamentation, you get an immediate sense of sturdiness and the physical and historical weight of the buildings. The abbey was always high on my list of things I absolutely must see in London so I made sure to head there before getting too distracted by anything else. I have to admit to being completely awe-struck as soon as I walked into the building, so much so that I was completely stopped in my tracks, and didn't really re-animate until one of the guides came to offer me a map, he seemed quite amused by my reaction. I was like that the whole way through the building, not only because of the sheer beauty and spectacle of every single aspect of the architecture and the design but also because of the meaning behind it all, and the names engraved into the tombs and walls, it was sort of like a historical Madam Toussauds, a walkway of Britain's all-time most important celebrities. The tombs and chapels built for the royals are very very beautiful, and being in the same room as Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, among others, in the Lady Chapel... a title which I'm sure could have been taken a lot more seriously before 'Little Britain', did send a few shivers down my spine. But for me, as I'm sure is the case for most visitors to the abbey, the most impressive part of the abbey was the poets corner, walking around this area dedicated to the likes of Keats, Dickens, Eliot (George and T.S.), Alexander Pope, the wall plaques naming the Bronte sisters, Oscar Wilde, Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Constant Lambert, Margot Fonteyn and the marvellous statues of Shakespeare and Handel... I love it. Its difficult to describe the feeling you get there, I wouldn't describe it as being particularly spiritual or anything wanky like that, but it was rather inspiring in a way, to see such a clear demonstration of the fact that history recognises the extraordinary importance of the artists of this empire, the people responsible for shaping it intellectually and emotionally commemorated alongside those who shaped it politically and religiously.

As it was reasonably close, from Westminster Abbey I headed across the river to the Hayward Gallery, as I had seen at the airport train station an advert for British Art Show 7- In the Days of the Comet, an exhibition which takes place every 5 years, and includes works by a selection of the most influential British artists in that period. As you would expect from such an exhibition of a large range of contemporary artists, there were some works that I thought were really beautiful and exciting, and about as many that I thought were a bit of a waste of time, but there was one artist whose work affected me much more than any others'. Charles Avery has spent the most part of his artistic career developing this imaginary world known only as 'The Island', and has produced several pieces of work exploring its peculiar inhabitants and the qualities of its landscape. Though the idea of it isn't just to construct a world that exists outside of the realms of reality, it was a metaphorical solution to the problems behind the creation of art and search for truth, these creatures like the brownbobs, incredibly beautiful cat-like creatures which are so nimble and elusive that you can never get within a few yards of them before they dart away, and which therefore have never been touched by human hands, or the grass which slithers and dances like an entranced snake and which, when the explorer asks if it is real, prompts the response from Miss Miss (the first local he encounters) that 'everything is real', which throws our normal ideas of the nature of reality and truth into question. Any attempt to bring these objects with such special qualities back to the main land is thwarted by the intense light of the 'real world'- the light of reason- which withers the living grass and renders the delicious cuisine sour and distasteful.

Also on my list of things I must see was the wondrous British Museum. I think I spent about 8 hours just walking around the ground floor of the museum, looking at the Egyptian, Greek and Mesopotamian artefacts... among the many things I learnt there was the fact that I spend far too much time on reading absolutely every caption I pass, though in this case I'm glad I did. I really believe that the British Museum is among the greatest and most important undertakings mankind has ever accomplished, it is a true wonder of the modern world. The fact that even up to 4,000 years ago the architects and artists of the age were able to create works that we still considered profoundly beautiful, among the most beautiful man-made objects in existence, is something that always surprises me, and its true even given a more modern view of beauty. The fact that body parts, arms, hands, noses, toes and fingers, are often broken off sculptures doesn't create an incomplete work, it creates a new one, a work that is edited and interrupted and creates an interesting interplay of textures between the smooth, finished curvatures of the busts and bottoms the many Greek Venus' and the rough granular spaces to which the bodily extremities were originally fixed. It adds to the element of elusiveness and mystery that you encounter anyway, in attempting to comprehend the impossibly great expanse of time that stands between you and the creation of these objects. If you ever feel the urge to go to the museum I recommend you go during the more inconvenient hours of the day, the early morning and late evening (on Fridays it doesn't close until 8.30 pm), in an attempt to avoid the tourist onslaught. The number of visitors isn't really a problem for me at all. It was sort of encouraging, in fact, to realise that this place was a real tourist destination, and something that people really wanted to see. What was unfortunate, somewhat ironically, was the apparent stupidity of the visitors. I can fully understand the appeal of wanting to stand in front of and examine the Rosetta stone... I felt it myself, but why in the name of damnation would you want to take a photo of it? ESPECIALLY a photo with you or your friend standing in front of it with goofy, awkward smiles. It ruins any purpose or aesthetic beauty that the object holds, it cheapens it for yourself or anybody, turns it into some kind of touristic whore. What is the point? Do they think it will serve as some sort of evidence to the idea that they are worldly and educated? Are they that insecure that they think that a photo of an important historical item standing next to an asshole is going to change the disgusted opinions of their friends and families? They lean one-armed on statues of Egyptian deities and lounge around on top of sphynxes... do they think they're funny? Do they believe that they have found some new and witty way of interacting with objects which are clearly marked 'DO NOT touch, the oil from your bastardly hands can irreparably damage these impossibly valuable objects, especially as you probably did not wash your hands after the last time you went to the toilet'. What is the fucking point?? It reminds me of a phrase I heard in a Fry and Laurie sketch; 'HE is a tourist, You are a holiday maker but I am a traveller'. I know it was supposed to demonstrate and deplore the smug, self-righteous way that some people will talk about the people they encounter when travelling, but in this case it really did seem true.

Having said all that, the next day I felt some responsibility to do some more of the conventional touristy activities in the city. This involved a trip to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. It was fantastically uneventful but at the same time quite strange. The guards did absolutely nothing for minutes on end, interspersed with periods of goose-stepping back and forth between the wall next to them and their original posts. Because it was so boring I decided to play a game involving the guards and my camera, it was called catch the guard off guard. I would zoom right up to the faces of the guards, close enough to see their facial expressions, and catch them every time the slipped up, when their focus was directed anywhere other than directly ahead of them or they yawned or wrinkled their noses. They were mostly pretty easy to get but one of them was particularly good at his job... it was almost impossible to find him deviating from his poker face. This meant that for long periods of time I had my camera pointed directly at him. Seeing as I was well within his line of sight I was sure that he started to notice me, and I eventually realised that what I was doing could very well be regarded as being a little creepy, not only by the guard but also by the people surrounding me. I thought this until I put down my camera, looked around me and saw that a number of other people were playing this game too, and intently focussing on this same poor guard. I did get a number of good photos of him though. because he was so composed and focussed the deviations he made from his usual stance were rather subtle and graceful, almost modelesque.

Later that day I did something rather strange and totally out of character, I attended the evening mass at St. Paul's cathedral. The immediate impact of this building's interior was, if anything, more breathtaking than that of Westminster Abbey. The walls and columns were just dripping and oozing with gorgeous, luxurious, decadent luscious loveliness, emanating from the cavernous golden dome in the centre of the building. I know that the catholic church has come under a great deal of criticism for their ostentatious cathedrals and finery, which apparently grossly deviates from the true meaning of Christianity. And I know that, given the many doctrines of this institution concerning the virtues of poverty, self-deprivation and restraint, the fact they are the owners and creators of such incredible and incredibly expensive structures and artefacts is wildly hypocritical, but its something that can only really be criticised given that consideration. As I find a lot more personal meaning in beauty and art than in religion I cant be anything but glad for the fact that this institution, one of the most powerful and influential of all time, has placed so much importance and put so much love and effort into these objects of devotional beauty, whether or not the purpose they were created for is real or not. The other side of being in buildings like this is the fact that you want to believe that they are wholly good, and can only possibly serve to the purpose of goodness and beauty. But the fact is that they have inspired and accommodated so much evil, bigotry and horror. Its a reality that is at times a little difficult to accept, the fact that buildings such as this encompass both the best and worst of humanity in one blow.

After a few days of staying at the hotel in Kensington I moved on to staying with the wonderfully hospitable and generous Kerri and Jonathan Stephens, friends of my cousin Diana, and their bizarre and instantly endearing cat, Molly, who seemed to be locked in a constant power struggle with her owners. It was just what I needed at that point to be staying with two people who, although I had never met or heard about before I began this trip, I had something in common with, and whose warmth and ease to talk to really reminded me of home. I had a couple of interesting conversations with Jonathan about his Buddhist faith which were, though I loathe the pun, very enlightening. On my second last day in London I had the very lovely experience of taking a walk with them through Hyde Park, something I almost definitely would not have done had I not been staying with two locals with such a clear and admirable appreciation for this sort of charming and simple pleasure. One of the things I found a little strange about London is the fact that, while the city appears to be completely overstuffed, they have somehow managed to find the space to fit in these large, idyllic expanses of park. Even the heart of the city is dotted with these relatively small patches of greenery, slotted into the spaces in between roads, ornamented with sculptures, benches and flower beds, and walled off from the sound and fury of the peak hour traffic. One of the features of this particular park was a number of reflective sculptures that had been erected in an otherwise relatively bare area, which provided the effect of making the landscape look almost like a collage, with geometric cutouts placed randomly throughout reflecting and distorting either other areas of the landscape or the sky, it was a beautiful effect and reminded me quite a bit of the John Stezaker exhibition. I felt like I couldn't thank Kerri and Jonathan enough for their hospitality, and this is largely to do with the fact they would quickly and casually brush off my attempts at thanks by saying that it was a pleasure to have me. I hope that in saying this they were being genuine rather than simply polite, as I'm sure that, even though I spent my time there sharing a fold out bed with a very loud and persistent cat, the pleasure was all mine.

One other thing I have to thank them for was their recommendation that I take a lot at the Albert and Victoria Museum, right next to the Natural History Museum in Kensington and only a few streets from the hotel I had been staying at. I didn't have a lot of time there as I went at the end of the day of our park outing, but the time I did spend there was well worth it. While there were a lot of really exquisitely designed and produced artifacts from various design eras from all around Europe which I could have spent much more time looking at I spent most of my time looking at the sculpture collection, which included probably my favorite collections of Rodin sculputres. It seems as though the unofficial mark of a large gallery anywhere in the world is that they have at least one piece by Rodin.

A great deal of my time in London was spent at smaller modern art galleries, through either talking to locals or exploring the city and seeing adverts I've discovered that this is a city in which the spirit of artistic interest and exploration are very much alive, which is something I hadn't really expected to find. I had always assumed that the British tendency towards cynicism and self deprecation had a lot to do with the fact that their command over most of the the world has been overtaken by the U.S, who for so long now have also been the world leaders in artistic exploration and innovation. It may well have been simply because I was easily able to read signs and converse with people who spoke the same language as me, but I saw and heard about more current and exciting art galleries in this city than I have in any other. As well as the Hayward Gallery I also went to the Whitechapel Gallery which was exhibiting a retrospective of John Stezaker's, whose minimally edited photographs and movie stills were very beautiful and which have caused a surprising amount of controversy for such simple works, and the very small Alison Jacques Gallery where the Scissor Sisters were curating an exhibition of works by Robert Mapplethorpe. Because I spent so much time looking around these smaller, less well known galleries I found that I had left myself very little time to Look around the Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Saatchi Galleries (I've promised myself to spend a proper amount of time there once I am back there in early April). I did however get to see one temporary exhibition at the Tate Modern by Gabriel Orozco, which could well have be my favorite thing I've ever seen of any currently working artist. The work was so sensitive and personal... not always obviously beautiful in the aesthetic sense, but so clearly the result of a boundless love and appreciation for the beauty of life as we experience it every day, what Kandinsky so poetically called the secret soul which exists in everything, and that is silent more often than it is heard. His work is like a response to the institutional, manufactured world that has overtaken our lives more and more, decade after decade, but instead of rejecting it as cold artificiality he exposes all of the spirit, comfort and poetry that exists in it. I loved his photography series entitled 'Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe', which he created after buying a yellow scooter in Berlin, then driving it around the city, stopping every time he saw a scooter of the same model and taking a photo every time they 'met', and his 'La D.S', a Citroën which he sliced lengthways into three parts and then reassembled without the middle part so that it became a perfectly streamlined single seated car with no engine- thereby creating a stationary object that is perfectly suited to aerodynamic activity. The exhibition guide I was given included a quote by him saying that what people saw in the actual exhibition wasn't important to him so much as what they see afterwards, how their view of the world is changed, and this is the effect it had on me. It was almost like fate that as I walked from the gallery over the millenium bridge I saw the most absurdly spectacular sunset I have ever witnessed, the sky literally looked like it was burning up. The horizon was ablaze with a dazzling golden trim while the rest of the sky shone a brilliant fucia which was reflected in the water of the Thames... the sky interrupted by billowing streaks of the soft yellow undersides of clouds and the river interrupted by deep, deep blue ripples of water. It was one of these completely unplanned and unexpected moments that you almost cant believe you could have been so lucky to have actually experienced.

Gabriel Orozco- My Hands are My Heart



Gabriel Orozco- La D.S.

Gabriel Orozco, from his photography series



John Stezaker

John Stezaker

Chris Avery, sketch from 'The Islanders, an Introduction'

Germany- a place I have been to

By the end of my week in Norway I was literally flying solo around Europe without any valid I.D, any credit /debit cards and access to money, and had been awake for two days straight, so I felt very ready to begin my time in Germany with a clear head and clean slate, but fate could not pass up one more opportunity to fuck me over. In order to get from Amsterdam to Dresden I had to transfer in Frankfurt. As it was a particularly windy day both flights were delayed, which it seems was also the case for the flight that my suitcase was on, as when I arrived in Dresden it did not, and I was told to expect them to be delivered to my hotel at 9am the next morning. This wasn’t particularly helpful, firstly because- as I hadn’t a working credit card- I had not booked a hotel, so I had to make up an address to give them (69 Wagnerplatz, Dresden) and then phone the airline when I had actually found a place to stay. Secondly, I had packed all of my dance gear in my suitcase, and had an audition the next day at 10.30 am. This might have worked out fine had my suitcase been delivered at 9, as it was supposed to have been, but of course it wasn’t delivered until midday. Considering that organisation and efficiency are the only aspect of the German people that are universally considered to be a good I can’t say I was altogether impressed with the sainted Lufthansa. In compensation for the lack of luggage I was given an overnight bag, compliments of the airline, which contained among other things a container of ‘skin whitening moisturiser’. I couldn’t possibly make a cheap joke about that… it would be too obvious. All I’ll say on the matter is that I’m glad to see that 7 decades on they’ve found a much more subtle way to go about that business.

Until I got to Germany I didn’t realise how much I know of it is due only to the second, and, to a lesser extent, the first, world war, any knowledge or impression I have of this country is polluted by the facts of this relatively minute period of its history. Whether or not I want to (and I don’t) I find that it’s almost impossible to see this place outside of that context. Every new piece of information about its history, every city tour and museum visit serves as evidence, a piece in the puzzle of how Germany came to its present state from the early 20^th century, as well as to the 20^th century from the depths of its earlier history. This condition is especially true in Dresden, a city that everybody knows at least one thing- and usually only one thing, about. The actual facts of Dresden’s decimation in world war II are almost unimportant when it comes to that event forming a preconception of the place, all you need to hear is the tone of voice that people talk about it in. ‘Ah, Dresden…’, they say in piteous tones. It is a symbol of the war as much as Auschwitz or the Nuremburg rallies are, but unlike just about any other of these symbols Dresden forces the rest of us, the countries of the allied forces, to accept our share of the responsibility and shame of the atrocities of the war, which we are otherwise not at all used to doing. Of course I know that feeling guilty for crimes against human decency which I had absolutely no part in is ridiculous, but then so often one hears Australians talk about the war being the fault of the Germans, not some Germans, in the same way that the holocaust was tolerated by the Catholic church thanks to the collective charge of deicide on the Jews. The sword has to cut both ways, and I feel this silly, inexplicable sense of guilt that’s been programmed into me in the same way that my blame of the Germans has.

It does sort of look like a bomb went off in the town, right in the centre of the city. Only the force of this bomb was not destructive, rather it was to cause everything in its range to be plunged into the renaissance. It was a time bomb. The outer city is pretty and very charming in a simple, quiet way, but is very unremarkable, and as you come into the central tram stop and pass the building to the right of it you’re all of a sudden confronted head on by the remarkable Zwinger, which stands there in front of you like a symbol of resistance to the modern culture of mass production, concrete slabs, and the colour teal. It is so intricately and thoughtfully designed, with all the extravagant joy and enthusiasm of the baroque. The restraint and timeless style of the Bauhaus movement definitely has its place but sometimes you just need to stand in front of a big, gratuitously decorated German palace that just stands there and says ‘get the fuck out of my way.’ In one of the wings there was an exhibition about Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony, for whom the palace was built. To put it mildly, he seems like he would have been a dangerously eccentric and megalomaniacal mad man plagued by the gnawing inability to accept his own mortality and therefore obsessed with immortalising himself through art and comparing his life to the myth of Hercules, which is what the exhibition was based around. It was relatively small but very interesting, as it explained a lot about the connections between classical and renaissance culture, especially the European nobility’s obsession for oranges which I had previously been puzzled by. It also helped me to realise what a huge lot of marvellous history and artistic legacy to thank the nutty Germans for.

The inside of the Zwinger

Beautiful and interesting as it was to just roam the streets of Dresden I feel like I would have gotten a lot more out of it had I stuck to some more organized plan, but one thing I’ve found particularly difficult whilst in Europe is walking in a straight line… I’m far too easily distracted, so planning my days has turned out be a rather boring waste of time. Unless I know exactly what it is I want to see I usually just end up going into any building that I find interesting and that is open. One such building I was very lucky to stumble upon, as the entrance I came to it by opened onto a rather narrow and uninteresting road which was being partially blocked by scaffolding, contained the Kunstkammer collection, one of the most stunning, extravagant and extensive collections of art treasures in Europe. It felt like I had walked into Scheherazade’s cave of wonders; the walls glittered and danced with light reflected from the dazzling gold, silver and gem encrusted artefacts, so superbly made that they seemed to emit a light of their own. Cases and cabinets displaying dramatic scenes from classical and biblical mythology, cutlery crafted from ivory with gnarled handles of coral, and the eggs, tusks, horns and shells of bizarre and exotic creatures, a panoply of colours glistening from the gems which studded and coated these objects like lichen growing over a granite boulder. Each object more absurd and decadent than the last and not a single one ever put to practical use. I know plenty of mad, sensible people who would condemn this as a terrible waste of money and resources, who suppose that such costly items should have a real point, but to me they are the point. To steal some words from Oscar Wilde; the man who calls a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for. Art treasures are really pretty, really really pretty, and it’s such a shame that the humanitarians of the more recent centuries have realised how terribly exploitative of both labourers and the natural world these undertakings are, before this modern age of consideration and restriction every possibility was open to designers and the aristocracy, and every opportunity seized- particularly in Germany, it seems.

The world's largest green diamond
belongs to the Kunstkammer

One of the real treasures of Dresden seems almost to be hidden, but craftily so, in the most obvious of all places. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister is located in the most recently built wing of the Zwinger. Built after the death of the elector Augustus it was designed by Gottfried Semper, and opens onto the stunning opera house that was also his design. The gallery is secreted underneath the archway which leads out to the street, off to the side and behind a pair of large wooden doors. Given the grand, open design of the rest of the building those dimly lit double doors are the last place one would look to find a gallery filled with the marvels of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, Cranach the Younger and Elder, Metsu and Titian, just to skim over the cream of the crop. The gallery is also very proudly the home of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, which is mounted on the wall at the very end of the long corridor of open arch ways, so that as you edge your way gradually towards it through the preceding rooms you are initially able to catch only a small glimpse of it. As you come closer and closer it begins to loom up above you, like the imposing figure of God Himself, its towering presence eventually becoming impossible to ignore. And like the image of God that so many people have tried to describe to me it seems the personification of all that is wholly and unequivocally good. There is no pain, no comment on the hardships and emotional torture of reality, no tricky subtext to weave through. It’s just an image of vulnerable, beautiful, youthful potential and maternal comfort- warm, pure and perfect. Other works that I saw there and which have not left my mind since are Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (a poster of which I bought at the gift shop, but ended up not being able to get a tube large enough to contain it in and eventually abandoning it at the central train station to be found by some other art lover on their lucky day), Poussin’s L’Empire de Flore, and Pinturicchio’s Portrait of a Boy.

Giorgione- Sleeping Venus

I almost feel like I shouldn’t have bothered to leave Dresden. There was still much of it that I hadn’t seen, and so much of the next few towns that was just not worth the train fares. Hannover looked like it was designed by the colour blind, Magdeburg by committee, and Dortmund by Microsoft. To be honest when I was in those towns I rarely felt like leaving the hotel. I was becoming terribly fed up with being alone, and found that actually I was just so much happier chatting to my friends online for hours and hours than leaving them to explore the cold and bland outside world in the hope of finding something new that would please me. I could have done this in Dresden, too, and in fact I did spend literally a whole day there speaking to Eleanor, Toma and Paddy on skype, watching them yawn and struggle to stay active and coherent until the early morning hours. That day was among my happiest in Germany. But in Dresden I really did have the will to pull myself together by midday most days because I knew there was something to look forward to out there, this was not the case in Hannover, Dortmund or Magdeburg. I don’t know what it is about Germany that got to me, but everything bad just seemed worse in that country.

After a few days of doing barely anything I decided that I really couldn’t stand to spend the rest of my time in Germany stagnating in either Magdeburg or Dessau, so I booked a ticket to Berlin where I was sure I would feel better. This strategy meant that, as well as being in a much more inspiring and exciting city than Magdeburg, I would only have to spend a few hours of my Sunday in Dessau, which I had been warned is regarded as one of the most ugly, boring and stupid cities in the country.

I have mixed feelings about Berlin; it was quite the opposite of Bergen. Bergen was all surface and no substance, Berlin’s buildings were generally very unattractive, and though I’m sure the Tiergarten is very lovely in summer, at this time of year it is nothing like the idyllic sanctuary from the industrialism and commercialism of the city that has been described to me… plus I spent quite a bit of time trying to shake a man in a big black trench who seemed to be following me. It’s not until you get inside the buildings that you realise how much there is to see. There are a couple of notable exceptions though, on my first day in Berlin I headed to the Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin’s largest palace. Sophie Charlotte really knew how to decorate the shit out of a palace, not that the whole interior was particularly to my taste.  So many of the wall decorations in particular were gaudy and way overdone, and the room where she kept her enormous porcelain collection, while very impressive, was equally absurd. On the other hand the oval rooms that overlooked her French baroque inspired garden, covered on one side by huge arched windows and on the other by mirrors, thereby bringing the splendour of the gardens indoors by means of their reflection, were really wonderful to be in. It has to be said that whether or not it’s your taste her devotion to the fine arts and her idea of beauty is rather inspirational, not to mention the legacy she left with the help of Gottfried Leibniz in the form of Berlin’s Academy of Sciences

Sometimes it's okay to go a little over the top

Across the road from the palace were a number of galleries and museums, two of which I was able to visit before closing time, one containing a collection of art nouveau and art deco artefacts and the other containing a number of paintings and sculptures from the early 20st century. Around this point I was starting to come down with a cold, which I think it’s fair to say is largely the fault of the museums. I often find myself staggering round the floors of various galleries, reading and re-reading captions that go completely over my head thanks to the several areas of my brain that have fallen asleep. When I realise this is happening I look at my watch and almost invariably find that it is approaching closing time, and I realise that I have been wandering around the same or adjoining museums since the opening time, having missed breakfast to get there in time, and so not having eaten all day. I’m sure that, had I read this of somebody else, I would have thought it a quite stylish devotion to the arts, but in actual fact it’s more like a slavish devotion to the distracting and the mildly interesting. This is proven by the fact that one of my days wandering round Dresden included a trip to the National Museum of Hygiene, which was surprisingly completely uninteresting, and I say it was surprising in all sincerity… given that my expectations were so low I expected to be fascinated by something, anything, but there was nothing. It was completely dull.

Thankfully I didn’t find any such museums in Berlin, I was very impressed by all that I visited, particularly the gallery of early 20^th century art opposite Schloss Charlottenburg, which contained a room of works by Matisse and a large collection of Picasso’s. Picasso is always interesting, but I’m pretty sure that this was the first time I’ve seen the works of Matisse in real life. Seeing them for the first time I have to say I didn’t really get it, they didn’t do anything special for me… I listened to the audio commentary and failed to recognise anything other than the technical descriptions. But I’ve found that a few of them have been constantly on my mind since leaving the gallery, my memories of them growing fonder and fonder. As Eleanor’s facebook status once read- ‘It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to change the world’, his works have not only changed the world but also my artistic sentiments… unfortunately I didn’t see it until they weren’t there.

Matisse- Blue Nude Skipping

 The next experience in my art tour of Europe was the Helmut Newton Gallery of Photography. If you don’t already know it, Helmut Newton is the shit. His photographs seem even more lifelike than reality does at times, it was difficult to walk past a single one of his photographs without staring like a Peeping Tom… which is what it felt like sometimes,  given how lively and provocative his nudes are. Upstairs was a collection of photos by his wife June, who worked under the pseudonym Alice Springs, a few of which rated highly out of the gallery’s entire collection, but whose work as a whole was not as impressive, as a few photos betrayed the fact that she was capable of error and mediocrity, which Helmut’s did not. It was impressive enough just to see the letters written between the couple and their friends and to read the captions beside the pictures, given the huge number and quality of celebrities, artists and everything in between that they socialised and worked with.  It was like intruding on a frozen conversation between a group of people so influential on modern culture that they were practically (and, in the case of Grace of Monaco, actually) royalty.

 I always had a feeling that one of the major problems I would have with Germany was the language. English speaking people generally agree that it’s not the prettiest language of all, but it wasn’t the sound of it that I disliked so much as the fact that everybody spoke it. I know that rightfully I should have been at least a little embarrassed by the fact that I was the outsider who didn’t understand what everybody else was saying… but actually, and I know how unfair it is of me, I sort of just thought of them as being quite silly and annoying for not being bilingual. This was especially problematic on my first night in Dresden. Never mind organising the delivery of my luggage, checking into a hotel in the first place and explaining that I was having luggage delivered proved impossible without the use of Pictionary. (I know it somewhat contradicts what I was saying about the language barrier being a problem, but as I was writing that sentence I just realised how much more fun life could be with an increased dependency on Pictionary). In the end I began to enjoy speaking to sales assistants and checkout chicks who didn’t understand what I was saying past my tone of voice and physical gestures, it presented a great opportunity for me to try out creative new off the cuff obscenities. A transaction would end and I would smile sweetly whilst turning to leave give the cashier a cheery ‘felch dribble’, or ‘cock frottage’. The more I did it the more confident and imaginative I became with my use of language until one time when I had just said my parting words to a cashier and a woman in the queue behind me burst out laughing.

Speaking of cock frottage; around the end of my time in Berlin I finally had a reasonably proper conversation with a brothel madam. I was on my way to dinner and had just passed by a woman standing in front of a red door when she called to me, telling me to come inside if I wanted to. Seeing a sheet of paper next to the door with a list printed on it I assumed it was a restaurant and told her that I had already decided where I was eating that night. Not quite sure whether I was joking or not she handed me her business card, which I laughed at, having finally realised that she wasn’t trying to sell me dinner. Not unnaturally she took offense to this and proceeded to insult me as I continued on my way, calling me immature and insolent, and any number of other German insults. Brothels… you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

On my last day in Berlin I looked at the list of things to do that I had compiled on my last night in Magdeburg and realised that I had achieved less than half of them, but in the end had seen about as many things that had not been on the list. This list included, among other things, the Bauhaus archives, which I would recommend to anybody with even the slightest interest in design. The Bauhaus movement was the mother of all of modern design, and it’s fascinating to observe the objects and read about the people who radically, permanently and entirely changed our everyday landscape. Its legacy is seen in some areas of Berlin, not all the buildings are drab… but all too often the marriage of form and function tipped way too far in favour of function, and completely miss the point.

This isn’t the last I’ve seen of Germany, after some time in London and France I will be staying in and around Geissen, in the South West of the country.  I hope this branch of my trip has just been very clouded by a huge come down from my Nordic drama, and that in actual fact I don’t dislike this country. I know that it has a magnificent and important history, and that the grandeur of old Germany is still well and truly alive in its culture to this day. But I know these things second hand; I’m yet to experience them myself. I flew out of Berlin in the early afternoon when it was still light, and from above what I saw were block after huge block of buildings encircling huge courtyards. It looked like a microscopic view of a plant, showing all of the cells, with water features or centrepieces usually inside, reflecting a nucleus. It was a fantastic and unique view of the city, one you would not have imagined from ground level. It’s a fairly neat summation of my feelings towards Germany- a country whose beauty has to be seen from a distance.

Homeless in Hordaland.

If you ever travel to, from, or anywhere within Norway make sure you do it when the sun is up, and that you have a window seat, as the view from above is worth at least 90% of the fare (I say not having paid for the fare). It’s just… impossibly beautiful, it’s magnificent. Literally all you can see for miles and miles outside your plane’s window is a frantic system of craggy and undulating mountains, slopes, ravines, fjords and valleys coated with what seems to be the utmost care by the most delicate white powder snow.  The concept of pure white changed for me after seeing Norway from above. It has that strange combination of the seemingly haphazard and random forging out of contours and lines, and the orderly, logical way in which it all happens to resolve itself. It’s that sort of thing you see all over nature, in the coarse bark of tree trunks and the slithering, writhing mounds of wind-swept sand, but this was nature’s orderly disorder on a much larger and more brilliant scale than I have ever seen before.

Since I decided to go to Bergen during this trip I’ve been looking forward to it more than just about any other place because my parents told me how, out of all the cities they had been to in Europe, Bergen was among the most beautiful. And it absolutely is, in a very particular way. Of course it’s wonderful to walk down the street to your hostel in the direction of an enormous snow-capped mountain looming up ahead, and all the buildings have this quaint, understated quality that contrasts brilliantly with the fact that they are spilling out over from this grand and vastly overstated mountain range, but there is something about the place that is inexplicably off-putting. It was sort of… stale, and lifeless. It was as though the entire town had gotten bored with itself a few decades ago and stopped trying, I suppose it must have been around the same time as my parents left, since they didn’t seem to pick up on it. Literally and figuratively a frozen town. There also seemed to be this slight inferiority complex that pervaded the town… far too often was the name ‘Bergen’ accompanied with the feeble qualifier ‘second largest city in Norway!’ this may be so but it is also only twice the size of Geelong, and for the most part the shops don’t open until 10 or 11, close at 4, and aren’t open at all on Sundays, so in that regard it more or less meets the standards of a small Australian country town.

We need to breathe some life into the people of Bergen

As it happens the hostel receptions (at least for the one I was staying in) also close at 4pm, which became problematic on my second night there. After having lost my passport the day before at some point during my transition between Amsterdam and Bergen (at that point I had no way of knowing where it actually was, as the police stations of both airports have a three day waiting period before any item can be registered in the lost and found) and not making it into the second day of auditions for the contemporary company Carte Blanche I decided to walk out the stress and disappointment with a photo tour, and then a dinner at a restaurant, then a bar (not that I stayed this long… but I was informed that service of alcohol from any venue in Norway is illegal between the hours of 2 and 6am. How ridiculous is that?) By the time I returned to the hostel it was long since closed, which would have been fine had I not locked my key in my room… but as it happens that is what I did. Not wanting to bring my coat out with me in case of leaving it somewhere I was only wearing two layers of clothing on top, which is widely regarded as inappropriate attire for a Norwegian winter’s night. Not having any friends or contacts of any kind in Norway (nor a working phone, for that matter) my only two options as I saw them were doing aerobics until 9.30am, when the hostel would open again, or asking for help at the police station. After attempting the former I eventually decided on the latter. The police weren’t particularly helpful, they told me that there was no way to get me in to the hostel and that they had no facilities for this kind of situation. Their advice, in the end, was ‘just wait until 9.30am’. When I asked where they shrugged and made a vague gesture towards the table in the foyer, so that’s where I spent the 11-or-so remaining hours of my night, interrupted by the comings and goings of other police officers, citizens in distress, and one woman being escorted by two officers who I’m sure was a prostitute. So that’s the story of how I spent my second night in Norway in the confines of a very uncomfortable police station.

The next day, after I had gotten back in to the hostel, I called the airport in Amsterdam and they confirmed that they did, in fact, have my passport. This meant that there was nothing I could do until I got to Oslo, which was great because it meant that I could experience Bergen (even if slightly grumpily) without any immediate concerns. I spent my day in the ‘city centre’ *lol* which contained one of the items that was on my list of things to see in Norway- a frozen lake. I spent rather a long time there photographing and laughing at the ducks waddling even less gracefully than normal as they tried to negotiate the slippery terrain. Fun that turned into embarrassment pretty abruptly once I realised that there was a young kid about 20 metres from me doing the same thing.

Thats so cool

 Flocks of birds here are quite interesting though, or at least a bit interesting, because they are noticeably larger than those in Australia, both the size of the flock and the individual birds. The gulls are the most impressive; they seem to be around twice the size of those in Australia and twice as assertive, as they don’t have any concern for keeping their distance from humans, and they have a mighty, almost prehistoric shriek. Next to the lake were the modern art gallery and a smaller one which I can’t remember the name of but which contained a number of works by Munch and Dahl. The modern gallery had some really great work by mostly Scandinavian artists, which were actually not too different from how I expected Scandinavian modern art to be like; very muted and clinical, analytical almost, but with a subtle sense of warmth and heart that was simultaneously integral to the work and almost completely obscured. The other gallery was actually terribly, terribly boring until you got to the 1^st floor, which is where all of the Munch paintings were (I’m not a huge fan of Dahl). Once you get to Munch you almost wonder why they bothered having anything else in there, why they paid attention to any other artist. The works that were displayed there were just so absorbing but in a way that if you didn’t take the time to stop and look at them properly you probably wouldn’t see it. The longer you stay looking at one the more genius it becomes and the more difficult it becomes to move yourself from it. It became frustrating, because I wanted the subjects of the paintings to somehow become tangible, and to be able to interact with them in some meaningful way and speak to them and learn about them because they looked so curious and interesting.

So that night I set my alarm for an hour before I had to leave to get to the airport. Unfortunately it seems there must be this strange magnetic field or something once you get near the Arctic Circle, some disturbance which confuses electrical time-keeping devices. That must be it, it’s the only reason I will accept for my FUCKING ALARM NOT WAKING ME UP! I overslept, and didn’t stop oversleeping until an hour before my flight departed, when I was disturbed by the whimpering, dying sounds of my battery deprived phone. After a frantic dash and an expensive taxi ride I did manage to arrive at the airport before my flights departure… though only 15 minutes before, meaning I had missed it and had to quickly pay for a rescheduled flight before it left, or else pay an even larger fare in order to get to that sodding, sodden city- Oslo.

Oslo is actually a winter wonderland… that sounds silly, but in the back of my mind I am suspicious that the ice queen might actually live there. I mean, I wouldn’t go round telling people that I actually thought she was around somewhere, dusting buildings and trees with snow and greasing the footpaths with ice… but I wouldn’t be, like, 100% surprised if she was. It was very exciting for me to come in to that environment, one that’s so completely different to Melbourne in just about every way that a major city can be. When I was in Amsterdam I knew in my mind that I was miles and miles away from where I live but it didn’t feel like the world was too different. It was just an amazing alternate version of Melbourne. Oslo is noticeably, drastically and completely the other side of the world. Any greenery that would normally take its place on the stems and branches of plant life was replaced by luscious, bulbous lumps of snow and the entire ground was shiny with an icy covering, it looked like it was coated in that horrible plastic Italian mothers use on their furniture. I really was in a completely different country, which was amazing.

Like I said, I'm not saying the Ice Queen definitely lives here.
But if she does... I'm pretty sure I know where she's hiding.

The first thing I did after checking into the Anker Hostel (the description for which was in Norwegian but I’m fairly sure it read something like ‘you get what you pay for’) was to taxi off with a very gruff driver to the Australian consulate to inquire into getting a temporary passport, or some kind of pass back to Amsterdam so I could collect my real one. Of course, there was no way I could be seen to, as they closed in an hour (it was 2pm), and the woman I needed to see was in a meeting for that time… and I needed an appointment anyway.  I was given a number, which wasn’t very helpful as it was never answered… and an email address, which was equally helpful for the same reason.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see very much of this beautiful city, I listened with raging jealousy and unconvincing grimaces to my room mates’ plans for trips to the Munch Gallery and tobogganing in the fantastical garden of statues while I emailed and researched and attempted sleep, and rejected with all the false courtesy in the western world their offers of beer and bourbon. After numerous calls to the consulate from the public phone in the hostel (which were only answered with apologies for being unavailable) I moved on to trying to organise something with KLM airlines directly, which I had to do from a public phone at the train station, as the hostel’s phone wasn’t able to make international calls. KLM wasn’t able to reach me either, and in a fit of hissiest nature I stormed from the phone booth, only to realise moments later that I had left my wallet behind, only to return moments later than that to find that somebody else had taken it. After checking at the lost and found I found it was still lost, so I reported it as such to the police. For a while they didn’t seem to have any idea how to deal with me, they had about as much of an idea how to deal with me as I did. I had, as my mother likes to say, completely fucking lost my shit. That’s the terrible thing about losing control, you just can’t stop losing it, and if you’re me you just can’t stop losing important things like your passport and wallet. In the end we ended up calling my parents, for whom it was something like 1am, cancelling my cards, calling the unhelpful Australian embassy in Denmark, calling the once again unresponsive Australian consulate in Oslo, and establishing that I couldn’t get any financial assistance from the Norwegian government because I’m not a Norwegian citizen.

After establishing that there was nothing more to be done, I left the police station- alone in a foreign country that is far too close to the North Pole with absolutely no identification and about 20 nok (which is worth approximately 6 times less than the aus $) in my pocket. I didn’t really have anything else to do, I tried again at the lost and found… where it had actually been handed in. I’m not ashamed to say that I did cry a little bit in front of the woman who handed it to me. Okay that’s a little bit of a lie, I am a bit ashamed to say it but it’s true. I went back to the police station to show them that everything had, to a degree, sorted out. One of the officers gave me a jeering look, and told me that I don’t deserve to be this lucky. Not untrue.

The next day I devoted to getting two things done- collecting the money that was transferred to me by my parents and the remaining funds from my now useless travel money cards (which I am still living off), and finding a way to get back to Amsterdam from Bergen. After repeatedly trying and failing to make an appointment with the consulate I headed to Western Money Union to sort out the transfer… what a depressing experience. It’s difficult to comprehend the degree of collective self-loathing that must go on behind that glass barrier. This glassy-eyed army of unattractive, unenthused employees, every now-and-then slurring monotonous Norwegian instructions to their visitors almost as if to show that they are, if not living, at least undead. I’m sure they reserve a special level of contempt for people like me, who are asking to withdraw what I’m sure must be several hundred nok more than they make per week. I wasn’t able to withdraw the money, as I didn’t have a form of I.D.  in hard copy. I did show them the scan I had on my computer of my passport but they needed to photocopy it. Once they I was not likely to leave until they had explored every option that I could think of, one of the drones offered me the service of his usb stick, so that it could be copied onto that and then printed. He came out from behind the barrier and looked at me very sternly, and explained that ‘this is MY usb stick. I am giving it to YOU, so that you can put the necessary files onto it and that is it. You may NOT look at any of my files, and I will be standing here to make sure you don’t.’  And I did try to respect his wishes…  I expected that, given the importance he placed in them, might have been some government related documents, which I had no special interest in as they would have been Norwegian. But it was his idea to double check that the passport had been saved onto the usb, which did mean opening the usb folder so that we could view the documents it contained… the first folder was entitled ‘Alicia Keys- Piano and I’. Scrolling down we moved passed Celene Dion, Cher, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Mariah Carey… LOTS of Mariah, Nelly Furtardo, and finally ‘P’ for ‘passport’. The poor bastard wasn’t trying to conceal important documents he was trying to conceal his sexuality… and I’m proud to say that I managed to hold back the laughter until I left the office, it softened the blow of being told that until I got some REAL identification I couldn’t collect my money.

So I went to the consulate, stormed to the consulate, and demanded to be seen to, as I was in a state of emergency. Being in a desperate situation and demanding the attention of a governmental institution is a good feeling, I don’t care who you are or what the situation is, it’s good. Generally speaking I was not all that impressed by the Norwegian people, for the most part they were as colourless and drizzly as their weather. But if there is one good person in Norway it is Mette S. Berntzen, who took a solid 3 hours- two of which were after her regular hours (though she does normally only work from 12-3pm so, you know…. not all that much sympathy for her)- to sort out how to get me back to Amsterdam. It turns out that most of that time was wasted in organising a temporary passport, which would have meant me having to cancel my existing passport, which I didn’t want to do. So instead she just signed some documents, attached them to a photocopied printed out scan of my passport, and wrote down her number- telling me that if I had any trouble getting past security that I should call them and she would ‘……. take care of it’. Once again most of my day in Oslo was wasted doing what turned out to be jack all, but as we were leaving the consulate to have a passport photo taken it started snowing. For the first time in my life I was walking in the falling snow and it was actually exactly as exciting as I thought it would be. It was way too difficult to pay attention to the process of getting back to my passport and finding money to last me until that happened, which I could tell was much to the annoyance of the lovely Ms. Bertzen. By the time the snow had stopped and the sun had set I was properly equipped with adequate documentation and a few hundred nok which I had received from Mette in an informal exchange for Australian $ (she was happy to do so as her daughter was leaving for Australia in a few days), and it was time to spend my final night in Oslo, which you can read about in my previous post-deathblog.

This is just as the snow was dying down

For most of the past few months I have been pretending both outwardly and inwardly that I can confront the important moments in my life without any sense of fear or of powerlessness, but I can’t really keep doing that anymore. I was terrified to come here in the first place- alone at 20 years old in Europe when my only previous experience of foreign ‘adventure’ was a weekend in wet and windy Wellington. I was scared then because I didn’t know how I would react and I’m scared now because I do. Apart from any troubles with money or identification (or maybe because of it) I miss home so much more than I expected I would. I miss the security of family and the comfort and emotional release of friendship, and I really, really miss my things. Whoever said that material objects are not important is simply a liar, and a rather wicked one at that, objects feel and smell and vibrate and tingle with memories, and comfort. They relate us to our past and in the present they excite and please us in a particular, unique way, different from how any person can.  Of course I’m not proposing that owning and acquiring possessions is better than love or happiness in itself but I don’t think they are too far separate from each other either. It’s the solution to the conflict between the selfish desire for power and sole ownership and the noble desire to not harm or infringe upon the rights and wishes of other people, as well as providing a much needed touch of personal aesthetic to a world that’s in a colour scheme which is not of your choosing. To live as though the effect your possessions have on you is purely negative and to berate others for their attachment to them is a strange waste of time which I’m not sure I will ever understand.

I’m now almost out of Norway, there are only a few hours in between me and my flight from Bergen to Amsterdam. I have been awake for almost two nights straight and all that I have keeping me going is the knowledge that things will be better in Amsterdam. I will be comfortable and warm with money and food and people who speak English, Amsterdam feels way too much like home right now. There was not a lot of good I could find in Norway outside of its extraordinary beauty. It’s as though the patrons of Norway made a trade-off, in exchange for this marvellous wallpaper they were cursed with shitty furniture and dull company. I do want to come back here one day and enjoy myself, I really do, it’s just extraordinary. And while I would never be able to live here, it’s a country in which I would be more than happy to die.

deathblog

While I can’t complain and pretend to be a poor victim of fate in the mess that my life has recently been thrown in (which I will detail in my next post) there are some aspects of this Scandinavian shit storm that have been needlessly difficult and genuinely not my fault, and childish and wearisome as I know it may well be I do feel the overwhelming urge to frantically blog about these things. So I have decided to post this entry separately to my official report of Norway, which, I’m sure, will be a much more pleasant read. For now I advise that if you are of the curious belief that I am a sweet and moderate person, and want to maintain this belief, you should skip this post completely and wait instead for the next one in which I will undoubtedly rhapsodise about Norway’s magnificent scenery and the simple, wholesome joy of seeing snow fall for the very first time.

Wholesome image of snow

While there are number of factors which have contributed to making my current situation only slightly less than unbearable, there are only two people under whom I would like to place a short, sharp foot-note. The first comes in the form of the charming Elizabeth from Mastercard International, with whom I had the pleasure of a 2 hour conversation, and whose rather unique brand of idiocy is actually worthy of report. I can understand that in America (where the call centre was located) the spelling ‘Jeffry’ may be more common than ‘Geoffrey’, and that for an American sounding out the word ‘Melbourne’ may well not lend itself to the correct spelling, given their curious inability to elegantly negotiate the vowel sounds. But I have never before spoken to an English speaking person who needed to ask the spelling of the word ‘Oslo’. I almost didn’t tell her the answer, and if the circumstances had been different I may well not have. If you are so blessed as to live in an educated and literate country, having free and actively encouraged school participation, and have managed to live your whole life without, at some point, either encountering the word ‘Oslo’ or acquiring the intellectual facility to figure out how to spell it for yourself, you have not earned your right to the social benefit of public interaction, and should probably be deported in exchange for a third world child who possesses the quality of critical thought and a desire to be educated.  She also had a less than helpful way of confirming the letters and numbers I was reading to her when she misheard them, things like ‘n for nor’ (or was that ‘m for more’? I’m not quite sure) and one or two other similar sounding words. At one point she asked me if I meant ‘k as in Calvin Klein’, and, my personal favourite- ‘6 as in 666?’ I once had to quash the temptation to advise her ‘O as in Oslo’. Given the pace of the conversation I would not be surprised if she was being paid overtime for problem customers, or it could be that the Mastercard headquarters serves as a sort of half-way-house for the intellectually undercooked.

This is what I imagine she looked like

As I write about the second example I do so with all the pure and visceral loathing, the unadulterated hatred of a man who is being deprived of sleep. Though my verbal faculties may well be drastically impaired by my present condition,* my reasons for writing at 1am on my last night in Oslo, which would appear to be the first of two all-nighters (as I have overnight flights from Oslo-Bergen then Bergen-Amsterdam starting tomorrow), are twofold. The first fold being the fact that, due to mattresses and pillows that are so under-padded that they barely earn those titles, I find that my back, shoulders and neck whinge and complain whenever I try to lie down. The second fold is that regardless of the mattress and pillow comfort, if I were to lie down tonight I would not be able to sleep anyway, thanks to the putrid nasal chokings coming from the bed next to mine.

One small area in which I have been lucky during my time in Oslo is the friendliness, camaraderie, and all round pleasantness of my other dorm members. They kept reasonable hours when they knew others needed a good night’s sleep, they were respectful in their use of the facilities and their general behaviour, and I was able to have fun conversations with all of them, and was even offered a joint by one Englishman when I told him about my passport/financial troubles (don’t worry relatives, I declined). This luck ran out tonight when the room was stormed by a repulsive, vulgar, loud-mouthed, fat bastard Russian man. To give you some impression of what he was like I will ask you, if you dare, to imagine the social ineptitude of Chevy Chase as Pierce Hawthorn in the T.V series ‘Community’, the vocal projection of Brian Blessed and a breath stench that is comparable to a dying coprophile who has just vomited, all squeezed into the hulking, blubberous frame of James Gandolfini. 

Chevy Chase as Pierce Hawthorne

Brian Blessed

James Gandolfini and his hulking frame

And, filling the role of the dying, spewing coprophile,
another image of former British Conservative M.P. Anne Widdecombe

When he first walked into the dorm I was alone apart from one other man who was sleeping, a point which he either didn’t notice or didn’t care to note, as he cornered me between the two wardrobes to give me a gruff handshake and an incomprehensible (but very loud) introduction… which he would not relent until he seemed satisfied with my strained and desperate attempts to make sense of his accent, which was relative in strength to his hand shake and stench. I should make it clear that I can appreciate and applaud anybody’s attempts to speak in a foreign tongue; it’s something that I have never been able to do to any useful degree and would be very pleased if I could, but what is important is that were I to attempt it I would SPEAK the language, and not SHOUT it, especially not well into the midnight hours. Right now he appears to be asleep but unfortunately that’s put me in a position where I’m forced to hate him even more, since I find it almost impossible to believe that anybody’s snores could be so obnoxiously loud without being intentional. An hour or so ago the situation which was, for some time, teetering on the completely insufferable toppled and fell right over into the bizarre, when he started speaking again (bless him). There were two phrases which I could understand, one was his proud exclamation that he had killed his ex-girlfriend, and the second he repeated several times- “you will all remember me”. I assumed at first that he was sleep talking… but if that was the case he would presumably be speaking Russian. This raised the uncomfortable question- if he was speaking consciously, for whom was it intended?

It is now the next morning, and I did end up getting a small bit of sleep. Though unsurprisingly I was woken at 6am by the fat Russian maggot’s rousing from the land of nod. I opted to lie still (much as it pained my shoulders, back and neck) pretending to be asleep, because I saw that as a lesser evil than alerting him of my presence and suffering his conversation… the maniac bastardly douche. I hate to draw comparisons of this nature but the situation did put me in mind of a Soviet prison. Lying in anticipation of his departure I had nothing much to do other than trying to piece together the dream I was having moments before. As far as I remember it was the early 90’s and I was giving a blood-thirsty speech to a large group of supporters about staging a coup against Boris Yeltsin. I wonder what it was supposed to mean…

'Aw hell no Boris!'

The very worst thing about it, the final cherry on the top of the cake which broke the camel’s back, is the fact that I have encountered people like him before and know that there is no possibility of change, of reform or redemption. It is simply his putrid, pancreas-wrenching nature, from which there isn’t an escape. I can imagine the snivelling bastard travelling from city to city, country to country, staying in hostels and dorms. Meeting so many people and being wildly and uncontrollably despised by all of them, and having no idea why, the wretched thing, as he manages to inflict most of the damage he does while he is sleeping. Sick, distorted munt-stain of a turd. You bastardly Baltic swine. If I am ever so unfortunate as to meet you again I promise I will run until my legs have fallen of, and if you chase me I will vomit on you. There is not enough room in hell for you, you’re a stale dribble of faeces defiling the very face of humanity in all its goodness and charm and decency. I abominate you. Fuck off and die belching stale urine from your wobbling arse-pit, you ungodly turd. Your mother should have been baron.

I need a god-damned coffee

*Just as I completed this sentence Microsoft Word’s arsehole grammar checker drew a squiggly green line underneath it. I may be squinting at death’s door, which is slightly ajar, but I still refuse to agree with whichever insipid wank-stain undertook the boorish task of programming the vile bane on literary expression that we call the grammar check. No, I will not consider revising this sentence, fragmented as it may be. Go back to hell.

Bikes, Boats, Dijks and Smokes.

So it is the end of my first two weeks in Europe, and so the end of my time in Holland (for the time being at least) and only now, during my flight to Bergen, have I found time to pay proper attention to this blog (somebody with a poorly developed sense of either humour or shame might say that my down time is, ironically, also my up time).  I suppose this gives an impression of how much there is to do here and how busy I’ve been in this city of bikes, boats, dijks and smokes.

My arrival into Schiphol Airport was one of the better choreographed moments of my life, the thud of the landing was met with Edith Piaf reaching the immense final climax of Mon Dieu from my ear phones, and immediately I began scouring the surrounding tarmac and anything else I could see for any minute differences in language, convention, uniform, plant or bird life,  weather conditions, behaviour, colour schemes, cars driving the wrong way… anything that might hint at the fact that I had actually made it out of Australia and into this amazing country which I had previously only heard and read and dreamt about. Annoyingly enough, there was really barely anything to see until I got into the actual airport, and even then I got used to signs saying things like ingang and gestolten with relative snelness.

There are two pieces of advice I can give to anybody experiencing Holland for the first time; 1.  the maps you will be given are utterly useless unless you want to find out which tram you need to catch, and even then its better just to ask a conductor… as the layout of the streets is paralysingly confusing but the tram lines are not, and 2. It is most definitely a good idea to spend your first night on a boat, not because the rooms or service were exceptionally good, or because its conveniently located (quite the opposite on both counts, actually), but because you’re in Amsterdam and on a goddam boat, so there’s not really anything to complain about. As it happened the aptly named Botel (an ingenious coupling of the words boat and hotel) was just across the pier from the Greenpeace boat, Sirius, and in the background were a couple of factory chimneys pouring out a great deal of pollution-y looking smoke. I took a few photos of this sight and immediately hated myself for trying to be poignant.

I would not recommend staying at Bob’s Youth Hostel, which is where I moved to after my stay at the Botel, and which I eventually discovered was right in the middle of the red light district. Red lights and dancing window girls on either side of me. The front door that is only exposed halfway from the outside, the four flights of stairs lined in hot pink painted walls that are narrow and winding enough to produce an optical illusion, the sign at the reception telling you that you can rent used towels and bed sheets for 10 euros, and the fact that one day I came back to find two small zip-lock bags, one filled with weed, the other containing a drop of some dark red liquid which I’m assuming was blood, resting on my bed. I immediately suspected that somebody had planted them there to frame me for possession, until I realized that none of it was actually illegal, which was just confusing. I mostly didn’t speak to any of my roommates, as I was out during the day and asleep during the night, and they were out during the night and asleep during the day time. I tried to stay there for the duration of my time in Amsterdam but I just couldn’t, so I moved to a hotel two doors down (once you get used to the red light district it’s not easy to leave).

See what I mean about the staircase?

This town is rather like a version of Melbourne designed with a great deal more imagination. The buildings with their absurdly high gables and treacherously narrow and winding staircases which twist and writhe around the buildings’ innards like overgrown worms, their exteriors sloping outwards onto the street as though their architect had drawn his plans in a half popped pop-out book. Occasionally poking their heads above the mostly triangular canopy are the lavishly, exquisitely, decadently designed cathedrals and palaces and museums, and in the undergrowth lie windows lighted either red or green, denoting either brothels or coffee shops (incidentally, I find it really pleasing that in this province the phrase ‘coffee shop’ is a euphemism for something quite… else). Even the language sounds as though it has come from the mind of a child who, in a fit of silliness, invents his own version of the English, shifting and altering the vowel sounds and changing ‘c’s into ‘k’s and other such things to create a sort of vaguely familiar gobbledygook, occasionally choosing to throw in the occasional subtly placed swear word, like kunt, or sluit (pronounced without the ‘i’). Being here makes me feel as though I’m in a Leuning cartoon, where all the buildings and people are essentially the same save for a little curly apex, which makes them just that bit more interesting.

"Remember who you are", a philosophical statement
or just a useful piece of advice for confused stoners?

It’s hard to know how far the reaches of human decency extend, even in a place as liberal and debauched as Amsterdam. It may be that the locals accept the culture of sexual deviance and use of drugs soft to hardcore that this city is so renowned for as a normal aspect of life, or that these are just aspects of Amsterdamnative culture that are really only fuelled by exploitative tourists. Is the distrust of indulgence and pleasurable excess which we enjoy in Australia ingrained even in the citizens of a country where such indulgence is legal? There isn’t a lot in the city’s history that lends itself specifically towards a particularly liberal and permissive cultural mindset, the fact that Calvinism was such a strong force in Amsterdam would suggest a much more conservative society. But, it was also a major centre of Catholicism, which might explain the prostitutes. I did speak to one local about the general opinion of drug users (he happened to be a user himself), and what I got was the same moderate, unremarkable response I’ve come to expect from the average Australian; ‘most things are fine in moderation, and therefore it’s better not to forbid too much, as suppression only increases temptation.’ Fair enough, I suppose. But I was hoping for some more remarkable insight, given his close relation to the subject. I suppose I shouldn’t have implied that I wanted such an honest answer.

I am yet to get write about the most impressive part of being in this city, the museums. Amsterdam contains more museums than any other city in the world, from torture to tulips, Van Gough to Vermeer, bibles to bags and purses. Too many to see all that I wanted to, so in the end I visited the Van Gough Museum, the Diamond Museum, the Museum of Torture, the Nieuwe Kerk, the Rembrandtshuis, the Amsterdam Historical Museum and, of course, the Rijksmuseum.

I, with Erinn, began with the Rembrandtshuis Museum which I had pretty mixed feelings for. There were some really remarkable works of art, some by Rembrandt and lots by his students and those artists whose work he dealt, but it felt like the main point of the museum was not to be impressed by the art but to be impressed by the fact that you were in Rembrandt’s house… which, I have to admit, actually was pretty impressive. There were no captions relating to the works so instead we were given audio tours which were presented in adorably cheesy American accents, that kind of monumentous presentation style that you hear at events like the Olympic games or the finals of American Idol. As much as I don’t want to buy in to the stereotypical view of American tourists and Americanised tourism, keeping an unprejudiced opinion was pretty difficult when I overheard one lady of the States asking a guide if this is where they kept the Mona Lisa… she was surprised to learn that arguably the most famous work of all time was not painted by Rembrandt and was therefore not kept in his old house. I had to supress the urge to grind sandpaper into her face (which, as I mentioned earlier, only increased the temptation). The two most notable rooms in the house were his studio, which was filled to the brim with lavishly coloured taxidermed tropical birds, hands and feet and heads from enormous stone statues, spices and grasses and flowers from exotic destinations, sea shells, armadillo shells, turtle and tortoise shells… an enormous and enormously diverse collection of the most interesting trinkets one could ever hope to acquire. In the room next door to the studio was hung one of the three last works of the great Caravaggio, an image of a young John the Baptist. In the words of Van Gough speaking about Rembrandt’s ‘Isaac and Rebecca’, I could have stayed looking at it for days with only a crust of bread to eat. Caravaggio’s work has a greater effect on me than just about any other artist of any genre in any field, the sober, sinister darkness, his baffling synthesis of the poetically simple and the infinitely complex in both subject matter and execution, the perfect placement and arrangement of every single detail, and his delicate handling of the pious, the profound and the profane. I could have just burst, standing in front of it. I could have exploded everywhere onto it so I could then subsume myself in the canvass and become part of the master work (alright that might be a slight exaggeration, but I thought it was pretty great)

John the Baptist Reclining, Caravaggio

In logical progression from Caravaggio and Rembrandt the next stop was the Van Gough museum. Erinn and I assumed that the best way to go about getting there was via a canal cruise… a poor choice, given that it took probably twice as long that way than if we’d taken a tram, giving us only two or three hours at the museum, which was really not enough time to get through the three floors of mouth-wateringly, mind-numbingly, loin-frothingly beautiful works by not only Van Gough, but also his influences, followers and contemporaries… Cezanne, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec… Monet… Pissarro… gahhh! Though I try I really can’t think how to adequately describe the contents of that glorious building, but for the fact that I was literally pushed out of the last room by a security guard when it came to closing time. I do have to make sure I go back there, as next month they are exhibiting the works of Picasso. Van Gough seems like the most remarkable type of person, completely consumed with love for nature, beauty, truth, art and the world as a whole, and obsessed by his need to express and share his love for these things. It’s such a dreadful tragedy that this almost messianic dedication to beauty and goodness resulted in poverty, his being despised by art lovers and critics, and his eventual madness and suicide. Recognising the extent of his greatness and influence really is a testimony to the intelligence of the modern age. The sun was setting as we left the museum and on our way back we decided that it was the perfect time to try out the ice skating rink that we had passed on our way there, which was a lot of fun. The sky line actually does look better when you’re viewing it while gliding along on a pair of skates, though it was slightly embarrassing to be fumbling by at less than half the speed of children half your age who zoom past you. It is not an experience that will leave me soon, as the results of it can be seen in the pair of pants I ripped straight down the middle from belt line to fly and the bruises on my hips.

Once Erinn had selfishly abandoned me to be back home in the warmth of Australia I filled the lonely void she had left in my heart and schedule with a visit to the Nieuwe Kerk, which was exhibiting a huge collection of Islamic art and artefacts. There was some really exquisite and beautiful work in there, ranging from Qur’anic illustrations to extremely old and surprisingly well preserved pottery from every corner of the Islamic world, gratuitously decorated weaponry, clothing, armour, tools, and a room dedicated entirely to examples of calligraphy. The meticulous detail and precision in most of the works was just staggering, and I don’t think the Moghul Empire could possibly have created designs that were any more detailed and spectacular. It was slightly frustrating, though that there was barely any insight to the works in their captions, but seeing them was really almost more than I could take in anyway.

The Rijksmuseum did not disappoint either, though entering it was a slightly daunting experience, given the size of it and the greatness and importance of its contents, it almost felt like looking into the sun. The first few rooms guided you through the history and growth of Amsterdam in its golden age (around the 17^th century) and was filled with beautiful examples of furniture, pottery and earthenware, weaponry and paintings chronicling this period (I won’t go into the details of this as if you, reader, are genuinely interested you should probably look it up yourself). Upstairs was filled entirely with paintings and sculptures by some of the worlds- and all of The Netherlands’- greatest artists. I was obviously excited about seeing the famous paintings by Vermeer and Rembrandt and Hals and the really famous masters like those, but part of me really didn’t want their works to be my favourites, I wanted to find some more obscure artist whose work I hadn’t seen before and with whom I could fall in love. But the fact is that those artists are the masters of Dutch art for a very good reason, their work is fantastically and indisputably genius. I know that art is subjective and the merit of anything that we call art should be able to be disputed, but I defy anybody with working eyes and soul to not be entranced by Vermeer’s ‘Milk Maid’, or Rembrandts ‘Isaac and Rebecca’. Thankfully there was a special exhibition of the works of Gabriel Metsu, an artist of, in my opinion, approximately equal greatness but whose work I had never seen before. For anybody else reading this I strongly suggest researching his work, because he is so amazingly good at capturing expression, subtlety and humour. At the gift shop I bought a small copy of his ‘Man Writing a Letter’ to hang on my wall at home, and also made it my profile picture on facebook.

Man Writing a Letter, Gabriel Metsu

I realise how much I have written about museums, which is not at all an ideal subject to write about and an even worse one to read, so I won’t say much about the Amsterdam Historical Museum, the Torture Museum or the Diamond Museum. Only that the Historical Museum was comprised largely of Dutch men’s fashion, which was generally very interesting but occasionally repulsive, the diamond museum was rather like reading from a text book but with spectacular and very life-like illustrations, and the torture museum was not worth the 8 euros I paid for it… all it contained was some rather dull reproductions of torture instruments and captions that really weren’t worth putting up, I felt disgustingly touristy being there.  Being a tourist in Amsterdam is a bit like being an impertinent child who wants to be treated like an adult. You want all the freedom and respect that comes from being an adult but at the same time you want the comfort of being taken care of and entertained by those who know better.

I’ve only been in Amsterdam for about two weeks but as I got on the plane to Bergen I realised that I’m actually really going to miss it. I felt comfortable being in Amsterdam and enjoyed just about every moment of it. I almost hope that I don’t find a city I like better, because if I do I think I’ll probably die. I’ll just melt into a sticky mess of adoration and gratitude on the airport floor as I’m about to leave.