French (Re)Connection

Jacky overlooking the wake of the ferry on the way to Victoria.  We saw orcas!

And just like that, Jacky is gone.  One week went by fast.  I had such a good time playing host to her.

Despite not having seen each other for almost a year,we immediately reconnected.  By the end of the week, Jacky was so well-oriented to Vancouver that she fit right in.  I'm sad that she's had to go back to her real life in D.C., but I guess I'll just have to return the visit!

It Really Is a Small World After All

I am not the type to ask for people to take photos of me. As a result, there is relatively little photographic evidence of my existence. Usually I am the one taking the photo. In fact, there are more photos of Peter from trips we've taken together than there are of me. I noticed this as I reviewed the photos of our road trip to San Francisco after we'd returned. As a result, I have made a conscious effort to ask for photos to be taken of me. (If you're a facebook friend of mine, you'll notice how the majority of the photos of me were taken in Europe--when I apparently surrounded myself with more picture-taking-inclined friends.)

All of this is to say that the above two photos of Jacky and I, are two of the few that I have of us during our travels together in Europe.  There are actually no photos of us in the same frame.  Here we are sitting across from each other at Café Kadijk in Amsterdam enjoying rijsttafel, a Dutch take on Indonesian food.  Jacky as you may remember, if you have been reading this blog, was my travel partner to Amsterdam, Berlin, and Prague.

The last time I saw Jacky was almost a year ago.  It was a sunny, warm day in mid-May and we had decided to meet at la Grande Poste in Saint Étienne so that we could ship the books we had accumulated back home.  My friend Paloma, whom I visited in Toulouse where she lives with her husband, had told me about how there is a special rate in France to post books.  My box of books came just under the weight limit, but Jacky's did not.  She had the unfortunate task of having to choose what to ship and what would stay behind.  I stayed to help her, but then when we weighed her box a second time it was still too heavy to get the special rate.  Having committed to meeting a collègue of mine for coffee, I couldn't stay to help her cull a second time.  We casually said goodbye and parted ways.

And that was the last thing we said to each other.  We hadn't realised that that was goodbye.  That afternoon, Jacky was going to Lyon, before going on to Paris (to fly to Montréal and then bus to the USA).  At some point, Jacky realised that was goodbye and sent me a touching text.  I responded, but I don't know if she got it as by the time I did, she would likely have been on her transatlantic flight (I later discovered upon arriving in Montréal that Orange pay-as-you-go phones don't work in North America). 


But tomorrow, we'll be reunited as Jacky is coming to visit!

A Dam in the River Amstel

Yesterday evening, Peter and I bought our flights for Barcelona-Amsterdam, two months before our travel date.

Amsterdam was named very literally for the fact that a dam was built on the river Amstel circa the year 1200.  The city is criss-crossed by 165 canals, which total over 75km of waterway.  The majority of these canals are lined by railings to which hundreds of bikes are locked.  Bicycles, which can be seen all across the city, are inextricably linked to Amsterdam; in 2006 there were approximately 465 000 bicycles in Amsterdam.

Peter has been to the Netherlands before while touring with Siskiou, but he has not ever really had the time to visit. As I have already been to Amsterdam, I would like to give priority to the things Peter wants to do and see.  Peter would like to wander about the city, eat friets, and go to a particular bar he liked that he had stopped in while on tour.

One of the things I would like to do in Amsterdam is go on a bike tour.  Neither Peter nor I are very experienced cyclists--in fact, Peter had forgotten how to ride a bike until he re-learned this last summer!  Another thing that makes me nervous is that Europeans tend to not wear helmets when they ride.  I would be interested in going on some practice rides so that we can get more comfortable riding.  This city bike tour (offered by the same company with which I have taken free walking tours of Amsterdam, Berlin, and Prague) looks good, if only we were in Amsterdam on a Saturday or Sunday.  I would be especially interested in riding by the De Gooyer Windmill, as I have never seen one and they seem very Dutch.

Sitting next to this painting in a bar in Amsterdam is the closest I have been to a Dutch windmill.

The other thing I would like to do while in Amsterdam is to have a picnic in either Oosterpark or Vondelpark--something that it was much too cold to do when I visited last year in March--and go on a canal boat ride either the first night we are there or the next morning.

Other than that, we are considering whether to visit the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, both of which I have visited but wouldn't mind going to again as they were both so amazing.  We have also tossed around the idea of taking a day trip to Utrecht--a town Peter found very pretty.

Have you been to the Netherlands before? Do you have any recommendations on how we should spend our two-and-a-half days in Amsterdam?  Have you been to any other museums in Amsterdam?  I'm particularly curious about the Anne Frank House and Rembrandthuis.

Lights Out!

Canadian Painting from the 1960s

I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon at the Vancouver Art Gallery with my friend and mentor, Jacqui.  Ever since we went and saw The Modern Woman at the VAG a couple of years ago, fine art has been a dimension to our friendship and we try to go to exhibits a few times a year.

We went to see Lights Out!, deciding to come back another time for the other exhibits.  Lights Out! opened a week before Beat Nation but does not seem to have received the same amount of praise as the latter.  I think this may be because something billed as "Canadian painting" does not have the same cachet or sense of excitement.  Canadians are guilty of being self-deprecating and thinking we are boring.

I thought Lights Out! did a good job of situating Canadian art of the 1960s within its socio-political and art historical contexts.  My history nerd self loved the timeline at the beginning of the exhibit, which traced the themes of rising Canadian nationalism and optimism, among other currents of the decade.  It was great to be visiting the exhibit with Jacqui, as she recalled arriving in Canada from England in October 1966 just at the apogee of the decade.  Also, she being a painter, it is always enriching to discuss the technical aspects of a work as well. 

I was excited to see a Riopelle in the exhibit--I guess it could not have been omitted as it would have been incomplete without one--as I was introduced to him when I visited the National Gallery of Canada with my aunt last June.  This survey of Canadian painting was also well balanced, giving attention to art from the Maritimes, Prairies, and British Columbia, instead of focusing solely on Ontario and Québec as is sometimes the case in treatments of Canada.

Lights Out! succeeds in dispelling the notion that Canadian art is dull or that this country's only painters of note are Tom Thompson, the Group of Seven and Emily Carr.  If you have not seen it already, it is well worth a visit. 

(Image: Greg Curnoe, "Myself Walking North in the Tweed Coat," 1963 via Vancouver Art Gallery)

The Golden Ticket Purchase Time?

Is there a right or opportune time to buy a plane ticket?  Is this something you have ever even given any thought to?  Apparently there is, according to The Economist.





(Photo: My own, of my flight over the Alps on the way back to France from Rome in December 2010.)





"One of the iron laws of travel," The Economist notes, "is that fuel prices rise in the summer."  Yet, the article also notes that these price have so far not deterred (North) American travellers from peak-season travel.  Nevertheless, The Economists suggests that "...an individual can still try to mitigate the impact of higher summer fuel prices . . . [by] buy[ing] airline tickets early. Generally, the best time to buy an airline ticket is eight weeks before your flight, preferably at 3pm on a Tuesday."

Knowing that plane ticket prices are generally cheaper the earlier you buy them, I have tended to purchase them as soon as my travel plans become concrete.  When I think back to my transatlantic ticket purchases, they haven't really adhered to the tip for the apparent eight-week rule:

• 2006 trip to England -- As I recall, I bought the ticket in mid-to-late February as soon as the schedule for my final exams was published.  I travelled April 22nd.  This more-or-less adhered to the eight-week rule.
• 2010 one-way ticket to France -- I bought this ticket August 17 and travelled September 23, just under six weeks later.
• 2011 tickets from France to Montréal, and Montréal home to Vancouver -- I bought these tickets on April 20th and flew to Montréal on May 22nd--a little over a month later--and to Vancouver on June 8th, seven weeks after I bought my tickets.
• 2012 trip to Spain -- I purchased my round-trip tickets to Amsterdam (from where I will connect to Madrid) on January 30th and I fly on June 9th, WAY more than eight weeks ahead.

Peter and I still need to decide our mode of transportation from Madrid to Barcelona and buy our plane tickets to Amsterdam from Barcelona; we'll be close to the eight-week sweet spot, but this is purely coincidence. I have another trip in the budding stages of planning for early autumn that involves flying and I am already checking airfares periodically for a good deal; it will be interesting to note when I actually buy my tickets.

How do you decide when to buy your plane tickets?  Would knowing these eight-week/mid-week/afternoon tips to try and score a better deal affect your purchase timelines?  Have any of your plane ticket purchases coincided with any of these timelines recommended in The Economist?  Do you have any tips for scoring a good deal on airfare?  And most importantly, are you looking forward to travel (by plane, train or otherwise) this summer?  I'd love to hear!

Ballet

On Thursdays since January, I have been taking a ballet barre class.  I never took any formal dance classes growing up, although I did do gymnastics.  I have had an interest in getting into dance for a while, and when I saw a listing for this class, I registered.

I absolutely love it!  The class focuses primarily on leg work and the core muscles.  After my first class, I ached for a couple of days.  I noticed my legs becoming more toned after only three classes!  I now am used to working those muscles out more so I don't hurt for days afterward anymore.  I enjoy the class and the instructor so much.

This session I have registered for the ballet yoga class the instructor also teaches as I like her so much.  The first class was this week.  I have been doing yoga intermittently for six years.  My practice has focused mostly hatha yoga, though I have tried vinyasa yoga.  In this class, the instructor focuses on flowing movements and incorporates some ballet leg work.  It's actually quite a work out; I have never broken a sweat in a hatha yoga class, but I did in this one.

These ballet classes have made me think back to an exhibit I saw at the Vancouver Art Gallery just before I left for France in 2010 for which Degas' "End of the Arabesque" was used in its promotion.  "The Modern Woman: Drawings by Degas Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Other Masterpieces from the Musée D'Orsay" was a fascinating survey of the female form in the art of the nineteenth-century Impressionists.  Having just taken an art history class my last term of school, I was so glad to have visited this exhibit and shared it with my mentor and fellow art-loving friend, Jacqui.  

In the 1850s, some artists turned away from the traditional themes of painting . . . to take their inspiration from "modern" life . . . . They began to take a different view of the female form, abandoning representations of saints and goddesses in favour of real women, portraying them in a fading continuity or in modern life at its harshest.

As I recall, the "fading continuity" was especially evident in the traditional poses many of the artists still employed, even if the settings were contemporary.  There were some repeating themes in the depiction of modern women, though it has been so long I do not remember if they were all by the same artist(s): women bathing, (ballet) dancers, and working women.  

I really enjoyed this exhibit and I remember how excited I was about being able to visit the Musée d'Orsay for the first time just a few weeks later. 

(image: "End of the Arabesque" by Edgar Degas via Musée d'Orsay)

The Plane or Train in Spain?

Exactly two months from today, I will board a plane for Europe.  I'm crossing the pond much sooner than I had anticipated.  An opportunity presented itself and I am taking it; the band Peter plays in is going back on tour this spring and I am meeting him in Spain once it ends.  We are taking the trip we would have taken had he been able to return to Europe at the end of my teaching contract. 

I am flying from Vancouver to Amsterdam.  I have a few-hours-long layover in Schiphol before boarding a plane to Madrid.  Now that we are two months away from our trip, it's getting near time to solidify how long we want to be in each Madrid, Barcelona, and Amsterdam.  We both fly back to North America from Amsterdam, and Peter really liked the Netherlands when he's been on tour there, so we would like to spend time there too.  Our trip is 10 days, so I'm inclined to allot three days to each city.  If you've been to any or all of these cities, what do you think?

My next planning dilemma is how we will get from Madrid to Barcelona.  It seems we have three options:

1. Easy Jet does not fly from Madrid to Barcelona, yet Ryan Air does.  I have never flown with Ryan Air, but the reviews I've read and heard have not been great.  Ryan Air also typically tends to fly to airports on the outskirts.  Ryan Air flies to Barcelona-Girona which is 98km away from Barcelona; the city can be reached by either bus or train.  The flight takes 1 hour 30, and airfare starts at €20,51 each.
2. There is a high speed train from Madrid to Barcelona that takes 2 hours 30.  From what I've been able to discern on the Renfe website, fares start at €118,50 each.  There is also an overnight option for €44,60 that departs just before 11:00pm and arrives just after 7:30am.  Despite the savings, I'd be less inclined to opt for this as I am not sure of how restful the train would be.  I have also been told that the Spanish countryside, and especially the coast, are worth seeing, which we wouldn't get a view of at night.
3. Driving.  This option is very expensive and likely out of our budget.  According to Google Maps (which has failed me before when planning road trips), the drive from Madrid to Barcelona via Valencia takes 7 hours 21.  The benefit is that we could take a day to do the trip at our own cost and stop in Valencia for lunch.  

Have you been to Spain?  How would you recommend we divide our time between each city?  What mode of transportation would you recommend we take?  Any other tips?  I'd love to hear!

(Map photograph: My own of Atlas Général Bordas, publication year unknown)

Happy Springtime!

I hope you had a good long weekend! I, for one, have certainly been in need of a break from the usual 9-to-5 grind, and I have had simply the loveliest weekend--in no small part due to the wonderful weather we have had this weekend.  I feel like this is the first time I have been able to truly enjoy Vancouver in the springtime as, being graduated, I don't have to worry about this being the last weekend of term and racing to finish any school work.

Saturday morning Peter and I woke up after having seen our friend Hannah Georgas play with Kathleen Edwards the night before at the Commodore.  The show was one of the best I had seen in a long time.  I really liked Hannah's new material, and even though I wasn't super familiar with Kathleen Edwards' discography (other than Failer), she is such a good musician and performer that it didn't matter.

For breakfast (or by the time we sat down to eat, brunch) Saturday, we made Eggs Benedict following a recipe in the new cookbook my sister gave me.  What to Cook and How to Cook It is a beautifully designed cookbook.  While targeted at beginners, as an intermediate, I haven't found the books instructions to be pedantic.  In fact, having never formerly learned to cook, I find the step-by-step photos that accompany the directions really helpful. 

I thought the Hollandaise sauce would be the trickiest part, given all the recommendations on how to fix it if it goes wrong.  The sauce was the easiest part.  As directed, I cracked an egg into a teacup and created a whirlpool in a pot of water into which I slipped the egg.  The first one swirled around and solidified into an oblong shape.  The second one separated.  In all it took us 6 eggs to get 4 right.  I felt a bit like Julie Powell in that one scene from Julie & Julia.  It was well worth it, and something I would like to master, as our homemade Eggs Benny were so much lighter tasting than their restaurant equivalent.  We ate them on our sunny balcony with fresh cut fruit.  Divine!

Off-Season Tourism

Or, Winter Wonderland in Amsterdam

This photo of people ice skating on Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam recently captured my imagination and aroused my wanderlust.  It also got me thinking about off-season travel.  Wouldn't it be amazing to skate down Amsterdam's canals and admire the charmingly crooked canal homes?

I visited Amsterdam a year ago, in March.  The weather was dry and bright, if a bit cold.  I had hoped to see tulips in bloom, but I think I was a bit early for them still.

(Photo by Margaret Faber, AP via Huffington Post.  Link found via Cup of Jo.)

Off-Season Tourism

Or, Paris in the Spring

Paris in the spring. What a romantic notion. Or is it?

My year abroad coincided with the so-called shoulder and off-season tourism periods. Nevertheless, I made the most of my generous French holidays to travel the country and continent. I was immediately won over to off-season travel by the breathtaking beauty of autumn in Belgium.  No clearer were the benefits of dodging peak-season travel as when I visited Paris in the spring.

Last April I accompanied my friend Emily on a trip to Paris the weekend of April 8-10.  She had courageously and determinedly enrolled to run the Marathon de Paris, and I was tagging along as moral support and to undertake my own marathon of Paris' museums.  (Read about Emily's marathon here.)

There was a stark contrast in the crowds at the museums between the weekend of the marathon and when I returned to Paris  with my mum just three weeks later.  Emily and I visited l'Orangerie on Friday and I visited the Musée Marmottan Monet on the Sunday; the time spent waiting in line to enter was so short as to be negligible.  Three weeks later, in early May, my mum and I arrived at the Louvre first thing to discover a line already hours-long.  Instead we decided to visit Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle (which I had never seen); we spent a good hour waiting in line to visit the latter.  The next morning, my mum and I arrived at the Musée d'Orsay first thing and spent 45 minutes in line.  It was worth the wait, especially as it was my mum's first time in Paris, but it was interesting to note the dramatic increase in the number of tourists only three weeks later.

Have you ever travelled during the off-season? What was your experience? How have you coped with mass crowds of tourists during peak seasons? Do you have any tips to share?

Dark Tourism

A Matisse postcard from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon that
my friend Cynthia sent me in 2007 that I still use as a bookmark.

I just finished reading Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich by Kristin Semmens. A little over a month ago I had wondered to myself if there was tourism in Nazi Germany. A simple google search revealed that someone had written a book on the topic, so I got it from my alma mater's library. In the preface Semmens thanks both Dr. Christopher Friedrichs and cites Dr. Anne Gorsuch, both professors of history at my alma mater, which tipped me off that Semmens graduated from the same undergraduate honours programme as me. Semmens obtained her doctorate at the University of Cambridge; Seeing Hitler's Germany is her doctoral thesis.

Seeing Hitler's Germany was intriguing. It examined the Gleischschaltung of commercial tourism but also demonstrated that to a large extent German tourism organizations willingly fell into line with Nazi policies. Semmen's investigation was comprehensive in terms of the geographical regions studied, and she compared and contrasted tourism in different regions (e.g. the Black Forest vs. Berlin). One of the most interesting things I learned reading this book was the Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) programme, designed to enable Germans of lower economic classes to enjoy leisure travel. Tourism, as Semmens herself argues in her introduction, is not a trivial topic of study. Rather, the study of tourism under Hitler reveals much about the Nazis' politics, use of propaganda, and mobilization leading up to the Second World War. Tourism and travel was used to build a sense of community among Germans. International tourism, of Germans abroad and foreigners in Germany, was further used to legitimize the Nazi regime leading up to the outbreak of the war. Tourism in Germany did not cease with the outbreak of the war, but (strangely) persisted nearly to the very end; I could not imagine being a tourist in a war-torn country.

Semmens raises some interesting points in her conclusion. She writes:

After the Second World War, a kind of 'dark tourism' emerged in Germany, as the former sites of death and terror in the Third Reich became 'must see' sights on the tourist trail. Today, Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and other 'fatal attractions' linked to the Hitler dictatorship draw thousands of visitors each year. The . . . [2004] Lonely Planet guide to Germany, for example, lists the former concentration camp at Dachau as one of the key attractions around Munich . . . . Foreign and German travellers climb the trails to see Hitler's Tea House on the Obersalzberg in southern Bavaria; they take part in guided tours to view the location of his underground bunker in Berlin. Of course, not all German cities are equally keen to promote this dark past, as a recent trip to Nuremberg revealed. At the tourist information centre, brochures about the Reich Party Rally grounds were available only on request and at a cost.

The image of a crowd of holidaymakers -- guidebooks in hands, cameras at the ready -- descending on a site like Dachau is admittedly disturbing. Yet tourism plays a role in Germany's ongoing attempt to come to terms with its Nazi past. Today, leisure travel has become an important vehicle for understanding and working through a nation's history, not only in Germany, but also in many other countries struggling to confront their own horrific legacies. . . .

The latter paragraph resonated with me. Having studied German history, I was somewhat anxious prior to departing for Europe on my year abroad. Would I go to Poland and visit Auschwitz? What would that visit be like and how would I feel? I imagine it would be profoundly upsetting.

I haven't yet visited Poland or a concentration camp. I did, however, visit Berlin. Jacky and I went on a free walking tour that took us to many memorials, including one to the Nazi book burnings, the Neue Wache, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

I found the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (pictured above) really powerful. A few interpretations our group discussed included: how the columns and slopes created an uneasy, isolating atmosphere; the columns, which become taller towards the middle of the monument, as a metaphor for the rise of tyranny and totalitarianism in Germany under Hitler. For me, it was a solemn moment. After our visit, I was left considering the city and the country's complex, multifaceted history.

Have you ever visited a concentration camp or similarly somber place? What was it like for you? If you have not, would you visit such places? How do you feel about "dark tourism"? I am curious to know.

(Postcard depicts Henri Matisse's Jeune femme en blanc, fond rouge, 1946)