franceses

Tourists like us - may I correct this to say tourists like the prolific English louts/bucks party arseholes who I want to murder in cold blood. Viva la imperialism?

*Sigh*. Sorry, make that a *violent projectile vomit*. I had no idea it had gotten this bad.

Meanwhile, we saw the Czech movie Tajnosti today which stars a Czech singer I like named Iva Bittova, whose music is very wonderful and I recommend, although she didn't actually sing in the movie. She was kind of a pent up mother character who finds many parts of her life unsatisfying, and tries to return to something simple and true through music (which is why it is remarkable/important that she isn't really able to sing, in spite of the actress being a singer, an easy temptation for a director would be to have her finally come out of her shell and sing wildly at the end, but in fact that doesn't happen), and it was very beautiful story which made K and I feel happy to be in Prague. We have been a bit homesick since getting here, and I think this because we will be here for such a long time and that's a bit scary.

Something else good that happened today is that we found a really good supermarket reasonably close to our house. By really good I mean it has a variety of fresh and seasonal ingredients as well as more than two kinds of cheese, which is something that has been obviously lacking in the smaller supermarkets round these parts. It is definitely a start. I can't wait to start cooking for myself again! I am rubbing my hands in anticipation. We move out of our hostel and into our flat tomorrow.

Hello friends and family.

I realise I have a lot to catch up on. I have been a bit less inclined to update than Kristian recently, and everything is a bit scrambled in my head. So I think I will work backwards, and probably not all in one go.

We're in Prague, and this is lovely but also a bit strange for me, because of my strong feelings for it and the fact that the city has changed a lot in the last five years, and is quite different in spring/summer as compared to winter (as I expected) and although I will always love the city's history and its culture which is known to me, I would this time around forgive other people for thinking the city brusque, messy and sleazy (not only in the sex way, but also the commercialism). There are some changes I'm a bit sad about, so it's bittersweet (but definitely sweet) to be back. The knowledge that it is tourists like me/us that have brought about these changes makes me sad as well.

Of course the city is just as beautiful as ever, and I still know it like the back of my hand. Last night after we arrived there was a lightning storm, so we turned off the lights and just enjoyed it. It felt like we were back in Marrickville/Sydney again sort of. I danced around to daggy Prague radio in the hallway. I do believe I heard Midnight Oil as well as a lot of late 90s sounding house music. ICQ uh-ohs mixed in, that kind of thing.

It was a hot day today, the weather's been strange in general, and I got my worst sunburn thus far today, even though I put sunscreen on. The only result of that was that now I have pretty patterns on my back, haha. There seems to be cool changes in the evenings to break the horribleness, but all day we saw people pouring water over each other and even having watergun fights

Cesky Krumlov was so gorgeous, we really enjoyed our time there and had some awesome vegetarian food, even at a place we expected to only serve meat. Our crazy bus to Prague only cost AU$10 (for a 3+ hour journey) so we will definitely be back, even to have that meal again!

Ljubljana is very cute as well. In one of my categorising moods (probably on the bus from work going through newtown), I divided sydney hipsters into the "cotton" variety and the "polyester" variety, and Ljubljana seems to be entirely composed of the cotton variety, you know, the kind of hip young person who rides bikes and reads books and is unafraid of colours other than red, white and black. Nice. Got to go. Love!

We're in Croatia now, and it's pure joy, but first I have to talk about Italy, since we haven't really had a chance to use the internet since we arrived there, except for bursts in Florence when we had American teenagers breathing down our necks.

We arrived in Venice last Saturday and took a taxi to our camping ground, where we had probably the most satisfying meal of our trip thus far (a margarita pizza probably almost as good if not as good as the pizza at our favourite pizza place in Sydney (La Disfida in Haberfield) and twice as big and half the price. So perfect. Our camping place was called Camping Jolly and pretty much lived up to the name.

We spent one full day in Venice proper (Sunday, which meant we were never tempted to enter churches which is a great relief to me). I loved it there, although it seems fairly unliveable. The thing I loved about it most was its quiet sounds, and the care and lovingness that goes into the presentation of everything from notebooks to gloves in the windows of the shops. It just seems like such a lovingly maintained little city. We explored pretty much the entire city. My favourite thing about that day was sitting down beside the canal eating blood oranges. I think they were the best oranges I've ever had, and the oranges we had in Spain were also spectacular.

On Monday we took a train to Alano di Piave which is the village my paternal grandfather was born in. It is north of Venice about an hour past Padua. The trip was for the most part not spectacularly beautiful, lots of green fields and the occasional grape vine garden. There is something pretty familiar about most of the Italian landscape. I can see why the Italians had such a big influence on the development of more recent Australian agriculture, or maybe I have that topsy turvy! Anyway, just before we got to our train station the landscape changed, we had reached the foothills of the Dolomites, and they are very beautiful, covered in a soft haze with towns nestled between them. Alano di Piave is one of those towns, and the most beautiful of the three that we passed and saw, with a tall terracotta coloured clock tower and other beautiful buildings. It took us about an hour to walk there and is mostly uphill. I actually stacked in on the street as we walked out of the town (Fener) that the train station is inside, and somehow landed on the right side of my face and my left knee. But I walked three more kilometres after that and was fine.

When we got to Alano we were tired and hungry so we stopped at a pizza place where we ordered lunch. There was only one other customer in the restaurant, and he turned and openly stared at us (although not unfriendlylike) when we asked if the waitress spoke English. Everbody who encountered us was puzzled by us being there. They don't have a tourist industry, clearly. But it was really great to see it, it was a thriving town with an immigration program and an industrial area a very respectable distance from the town itself, and I thought to myself many times that my Italian family might have been a lot better off had they in fact stayed in Italy through the depression rather than moving to Australia, where my grandfather in particular was far from happy. Although that might have just been his nature.

The next day we took the train to Florence. I don't know about Florence, I felt while I was there that this kind of travel does not suit me, this kind of moving quickly and seeing sights that guide books dictate to me because you don't have time to just find things. I am frustrated by the fact that I have been in Italy for a week and am still reading the books I purchased to help me better understand (wonderful, wonderful) Andalusia, Spain. I prefer to have time to understand and absorb things, preferably for a long time, and my last overseas trip (where I spent two and a half weeks in one city) was much less strained. But then, now I am in Dubrovnik I feel very much settled again. Perhaps that is because I have an interest in this part of the world and its history anyway, and I felt very much detached in much of Italy, an observer, holding the cities at arms length. Which is I think is in some ways necessary when you're travelling quickly, because it takes you several days to even become comfortable in most places (especially big cities) let alone to understand them.

We were in Rome for a day, but it was only to break our journey to Bari and the ferry. Kristian was sick either with a cold or very bad hayfever or an infection caused by same. There were drifts of pollen coming down in Venice and Rome, sometimes in piles on the ground. Poor thing. Mum went to Rome and saw some things in the morning, as she likes to see as much as possible of the sites. Which is fair enough, but as Marlaina says, old things have been around a long time and will be around for a long time more. So K and I spent our time in Rome in the Camping Village swimming pool and trying to relax and recover from Florence.

Then there was a train trip to Bari (5 and a half hours) and an overnight ferry to Dubrovnik. There was some kind of kerfuffle/delay in the customs queue before we could board the boat, and there was almost a fight between a group of Italians and a group of (I think) Albanians. Kristian meantime had a raging fever and was lying on the ground on the side of the queue for most of the two hours we were waiting there. Not much fun. We finally got on the boat and went straight to sleep. I had strange dreams about the boat having arrived over and over again. It's only natural.

As soon as we got to Dubrovnik I felt somehow like our holiday, our trip, had finally begun. A lot of Italy we visited a) because mum wanted to see it and b) because I wanted to see Alano di Piave, not because I have a deep and enduring interest in the country. The same was (but is no longer) true of Spain. As soon as I arrived in Dubrovnik we met our hostel owner, Milo, by chance at the ferry station. He was waiting for someone else who didn't turn up but drove us up to Villa Klaic instead. Our rooms weren't ready so we sat on the patio enjoying the amazing view of the Adriatic.

Oh, wow.

You know that feeling when your entire body breathes a sigh of happiness and relief, when you know everything's going to be alright somehow = that was what it was like. Even though I was crusty fromt he boat trip in an air conditioned and poky cabin, I dipped my aching feet in the little tiled swimming pool and felt perfect. Milo made us Turkish coffee and Mum and I went for a walk (actually two) down the steps towards Dubrovnik/the old town. Dubrovnik is a town full of little girls whispering and playing on the steps of little churches, and cats who rub against your legs, and big coloured lizards that run between the cracks in the rocks, and little spiders, and gardens full of every kind of fruit and vegetables, and more little girls whispering and playing, and a maze of steps and streets that have no cars. I love it here, I do.

Hi, Jana, if you're reading, your country is even more beautiful than I could have expected despite all your assurances. You must miss it painfully.

Also this country has the best coffee we've had anywhere, including (by far and away) Italy.

Last night the villa owner Milo put on a barbeque for everyone staying there and we talked all night with everyone and met new people. Milo is just one of those wonderfully generous people, and I would recommend Villa Klaic (which is also extremely affordable and comfortable) to anyone.

I am made uneasy by Gaudi and it´s mostly not an aesthetic uneasiness, although the times when I am aesthetically impressed by Gaudi are also kind of few, with the exception of La Sagrada Familia. People always tell me how great Gaudi is, but how great can he be, as an ARCHITECT, if none of his creations (that I have seen) are actually in use, or even POTENTIALLY USEFUL for the people of Barcelona. People seem to like him, and other people seem to think his buildings, although not quite beautiful, are artistic, maybe, or important, perhaps, because part of the modernist movement-style. To me they mostly just seem badly designed and impractical, and why should I care about a guy who made buildings for rich people and organised religion? Park Guell, which we visited today, was okay aesthetically, in a sort of adventure playground kind of way, but Gaudi had designed all of these spectacular pathways that didn´t at all follow people´s desirelines, and hence nobody was actually using AS PATHWAYS. Tourists obviously find a use for Park Guell, but it´s not the kind of park (like the ones all over Paris for instance) that people actually go to sit and be. There are too many tourists to start with, but also it is not located anywhere most people (I would reckon) would want to go, and all the places to potentially sit and be are a good walk from the entrance. e.g. we ate our lunch soon after arriving and had it sitting on v. uncomfortable ¨mosaiced rocks¨. Some picnic. Overall, the place was kitsch.

Which brings me to La Sagrada Familia, which, well beyond kitsch, is like a farcical joke played on Spain by modernism via the old church. It's beautiful in its execution, but the whole concept of building a cathedral of this scale, a physical monument to religious worship, NOW, I find quite repellent. I can go to the Cathedral of Notre Dame and appreciate it physically with an awareness of feudalism and societies that were structured in ways that allowed buildings like these to be created in spite of widespread poverty, possibly over centuries. But then I am supposed to go and see a building being made now, and I am supposed to admire the ambitiousness of the project and its religious symbolism and its inspiration by natural forms, and I can take some nice photos and go away and not think about where it is coming from.

But I want to know, what were his politics, what are the politics? Has Gaudi become a symbol of nationalist pride or just a historical symbol of international art nouveau style? WAS HE SERIOUS? Will La Sagrada Familia ever be used as a cathedral? Should it be? All things the tri lingual museums don´t bother to explain. Art/architecture is never without politics here (if not everywhere) and I feel it should be discussed. In the civil war La Sagrada Familia was vandalised - by who and why?

I may be being unfair, I do recognise Gaudi´s approach to architecture is more artistic, more creative, and less functional than most architects, but I still think even if architecture is beautiful it should also be functional, and by that I do mean as more than just a tourist attraction. And I do think there are other architects, such as Hundertwasser, who achieve this with greater success than Gaudi.

Some pretty photographs, augmented by construction dust, are soon to follow.

Paris chimneys, on the way to Hotel Tolbiac from Denfert Rochereau metro station, our first day in Paris.

The street markets near our hotel, first day in Paris.

Cathedral of Notre Dame

So detailed you can see the veins on the belly of the horse - and more!

Man in conversation with sculpture

Taken from the window of our hotel room - a wonderful sky to wake up to.