Nutsmuggling » Trips & Pics

Glimpses of Paris, a phototale

Davide — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:50:28 +0000

The most characteristic feature of the French capital, to untrained Italian eyes, is the magnitude of its boulevards and buildings; almost any building or street is wider or taller than you’d expect. The town looks like it’s been designed for perspectives rather than for simple “stares”; it looks magnificent in its geometry, but a closer inspection reveals an excess of white walls and uniformity, to my liking at least.
An example is the Pantheon. It can only be described as huge and tall, a perfect icon of the Empire’s grandeur. And then? Nothing special, just a colonnade, a dome and three huge, empty marble walls. Marble is nice, but in small quantities; such wastes of plain marble seems to me a symbol of superficiality: “I’ll give everything for a shiny surface, that’s enough for me”.

Huge buildings abound in the city, which is laid down as a neat grid on the map. This urban structure is the result of the radical restoration of the urban structure brought by Georges Eugène Haussmann, who was apparently obsessed by straight lines and uniformity. Of course we Italians shouldn’t be bothered by straight lines, our Romans hated bends and did their best to build cities as grids. But then something happened, called the Middle Age, and some sanity, disguised as chaos, infiltrated into the rigid pattern of Roman towns. So now most Italian art cities feature small alleys, unequal buildings and an overlapping of historical layers that few spots on the world can sport. My eyes, probably accustomed to this variety, are sort of offended by Paris’s clear-cut boulevards and building of equal style and height.
Of course it is exactly this Paris, the Paris of the boulevard, that most tourists love and admire. Still, too much white for my liking, and the pale blue of the roofs gets a bit boring after a while.

Then there are special places. The magnitude of the cities allows the existence of sub-towns within the city. Montmartre is charming, if you manage to avoid the crowds of tourist of the alleys at the top. Saint Germain and the Latin quarter are also very nice, and I like them precisely because of their smallness and for the chaos of their streets and people, which greatly contrasts with the neatness of the main boulevards. Bastille is also a nice area, whose shopping street resembles a bit British and Irish towns.

Then there are some magical spots. The Louvre’s pyramids make a nice contrast ti the massive building:

The view of the Notre Dame cathedral from the Seine is something.

I loved the Orsay, a train station restored in a modern style and turned into a museum, here grandeur is at its finest, and mingles well with history.

The Seine can be seen from behind the massive clock of the former Orsay station:

Here’s a slightly over-saturated view of the Luxembourg Garden:

And of course there are thousands of nice restaurants, where you can eat almost everything that comes to your mind.

My overall impression is that Paris is city that manages to stay beautiful despite the efforts to make it grey and white of its chief urbanists. It is no doubt a place to be seen, although I am not sure I’d like living there. Apart for the restaurants.

Davide

Adolphe Sax’s grave

Davide — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:00:05 +0000

A couple of days ago, while walking in Montmartre, doing my tourist duty, I stopped at Montmartre graveyard. Honestly, I am not into celeb’s graves, but when I saw that Adolphe Sax was buried there, I had to see the grave.
This man is one of the few who can be credited exclusively for the invention of a musical instrument, and what an instrument!

As you see the grave was filled with flowers. I liked the faded tones, and took some macro pictures.

The simple hand-written note looks somehow moving, “Thanks for the gift of the music”.

This is where I am presently staying…

Davide — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:49:49 +0000

For those of you interested in my whereabouts, welcome to Rue Joubert:

Davide

Clermont Ferrand – Verona

Davide — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:06:13 +0000

So how was Clermont Ferrand?

Well, definitely a nice city, tidy and decidedly French, quite predictably. The centre develops around Place de Jaude, a huge square presided by Vercigetorix and General Desailly, nonetheless.

Just a short walk away, there’s the town Cathedral, a colossus of black stones.

The town centre is actually Clermont; Mont Ferrand, the old rival city, has been united to the municipality of Clermont in the seveneenth century. Nowadays Mont Ferrand is reduced to a neighbourhood, but it has preserved a medieval charm that is nowhere else to be found in Clermont Ferrand.

The funny thing now is that there’s slight chance I will not be getting back to Verona soon, not as soon as I had hoped. The train I am on is presently stuck somewhere near Lyon, in a narrow railway canyon.

Which is not uncommon, not by Italian standards, except for the stone noises that scared me shitless just before the train stopped. Stones (hopefully) where bumping under the train, quite violently, one hit right under my seat. The aforementioned canyon has one of those rock nets, so I guess there’s been a light landslide just before the passage of our train. The problem is that my us is due to leave in 2hs and I have a 70 minutes window to get on it after getting off the train. More correcly, now I have got a 50 minutes window, which narrows every minutes we’re stuck here in the middle of nowhere. If I don’t get on that bus, I will be stuck in Lyon for the night, until god knows when…

The only options is to keep my fingers crossed, before starting saying my prayers…

UPDATE I
It was a bloody animal, and I mean bloody in a literal sense, for the poor guy is now departed and gone. Some train employee passed us the good news, adding he has no clue when the train is leaving again. My time window is narrowing more and more, I can hardly see any light now.

UPDATE II
The train is moving now, but at an amazingly slow speed. On a lighter note, I have found a plug, so I have hopes of working with the laptop a bit longer. There’s still a good chance I will be stuck in Lyon for the night, so I’d better amass as many resources of diversion as possible…

Three things you should know about bus trips

Davide — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:10:06 +0000

There are a number of things one should know about bus trips. I am going to mention just three of them. First of all, don’t be fooled by the apparent absence of toilets. Even though all the odds look against it, they’re there, very often. So, believe me, don’t be fooled by the apparent absence of toilets. Your bladder will thank you. As mine did. As soon as I finished the previous post, a girl from a back row, nonchalantly, started walking downstairs, towards what had previously been looking just like a closed bus door. Now it looked as if there where two doors, one of them leading to a toilet. Grand.
Second, do not suppose you’re going to find someplace to eat, somewhere. For the bus might happen to stop nowhere, or in the very middle of it. In the very specific bus trip I am referring to, this very specific Eurolines bus stopped at Lampugnano station, Milan. Massive hub. Sandwich, here I come, I thought. Except there was going to be no sandwich, and no sandwich place whatsoever. But then, how come a place filled with people travelling to the four corners of Europe is not blessed with a sandwich bar? Is it that difficult to imagine that people travelling might happen to find themselves hungry? Once upon a time these hubs where called Posta, here in Italy, and had inns and pubs attached to them. The lost wisdom of the Ancients. My piece of wisdom, or so it seemed, was to take the tube and travel to a place where a mall was supposed to be, and I was there in 15 minutes, just in time for closing time. Hey, I’ve seen it at least. And I cannot complain, for I had a lovely dinnesr at Chez vending machine: 3 bags of chips, one twix bar and two bottles of water, 4€, all inclusive.
Third, expanding second. Remember that you are marginal. That is why you’re on the bus, in the first place. The train was too expensive, not to mention a flight. You’ve chosen the cheap option, and that’s what you’re getting.¹ That is why you stop at Lampugnagno instead of Milano centrale. The station, the road the bus is taking, most of them are marginal. You’re not exactly thrown in a pool of shite, but you aren’t either dining with the king. Marginality is everywhere in the Eurolines bus. The place is decent and clean, the people seem nice, and probably are, but there’s a feeling of discomfort, because no one is comfortable. The seats are ok, but comfy’s another thing. People tries and pretend to sleep; the most skilled in sleeping, which I am not) succeed in deceiving themselves end up believing they are comfortable and fall asleep. You can’t blame them.
Yet, amidst this coughing restlessness of bodies, among the lights of cars passing and the noise of the driver’s radio, there’s poetry to be found. We are travelling. We’re thrown into the night, 70 Km/h, bound for France. Everyone will be meeting someone, or going back home, or seeing a new place. The air is vibrant, and this vibrancy compensates for all the distress and the hardship of seating in 1/2 m square. Put your earplug on, play mellow music, close your eyes and let the light and shadows project over your eyelid. You might end up asleep. And even if you don’t, you’ll be lulled by the bus vibrations and the soothing noise of the engine. There’s worst places to be.

Notes

Talking about cheap options, this is one of those times in which the Macbook Pro backlit keyboard would come in handy

Verona-Clermont Ferrand by bus

Davide — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:15:52 +0000

After seven months I am finally going to visit Michela in Clermont Ferrand, Auvergne, France, where she’s staying for a year postdoc. I am writing from a bumpy Eurolines bus. Actually, we’re stopping in Brescia this very moment, to pick up more folks. Which seems like a good policy, since the bus is almost empty. The one piece of advice I can give about Eurolines is: be sure to get things done before you jump up the bus, before you even appear in front of the driver. This bus was supposed to leave Verona at 18.15, I made the mistake of asking the conductor whether that was my bus, he forced me to embark, immediately, so good-bye to the water bottle I had been planning to buy to avoid dehydration. Hum. This very moment I was supposed to be peeing in the loo of the wonderful bus station of Brescia, but didn’t dare to get farther than one metre from the bus. The bus drivers have been skilfully sending blackmailing stares at those who dared jump off the bus for a stroll. “Look at me, if you are left here while we happily travel to France it’s none of our business.” Not the friendliest of policies, but it did the trick, and everyone’s happy now, except for my bladder. But that’s life.
So here I am.

The macbook battery indicator oscillates between 3:39 hs and 4hs, not too bad; considering we will be stopping in Milan for dinner in one hour or so, the battery life seems enough to cover the most potentially boring part of the trip. And when everything fails, there’s a Nick Hornby book, and McLiam’s Wilson’s Eureka Street on the pipeline. Everything is going smoothly so far. But don’t ask my bladder.