Italics are mine

Prague 4

 Slow start on my 4th day in Prague. I was feeling really tired, maybe because of the jetlag and the excitement of the previous day. A good thing I had the phenomenal breakfast of Hotel Josef to keep me going. Contrary to the forecast (again), it did not rain.

The highlights of my day were:

(1) the Alfons Mucha Museum,

(2) Cafe Slavia (the view of Prague Castle from my table is pictured left), and

(3) the Lehka Hlava (Clear Head) restaurant for dinner. 

 

Let's start with the Alfons Mucha Museum. I have admit I had never heard about Alfons Mucha (1860-1939) before I went to Prague, but when I saw his art I understood why this Art Nouveau and decorative painter is a Czech icon. His drawings reminded me of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

I loved the clean, precise lines and the sense of emotion Mucha infused all his work with, including his most commercial pieces. I got the book on the left at the gift shop, you can also buy it on Amazon.com. While I enjoyed the examples of Mucha's art on display at the museum, I absolutely loved the movie that is shown on a loop about Mucha's life and work. That movie alone makes the price of admission a bargain.

Mucha's journey begins in Moravia and Vienna before he moves to Munich and Paris (in those days every self-respecting artist wanted to move to Paris) thanks to local Austrian landlords who were impressed with his work and became his patrons. In Paris, he did commercial work to advertise plays by theater superstar Sarah Bernhardt, starting with a new poster for Gismonda in 1894, which revolutionized poster design and launched his career. Mucha also hoped to serve his homeland with his art, and was drawn to Freemasonry. The Exposition Universelle of 1900 further established his reputation. In 1904, he travelled to the United States, where he was welcomed as a celebrity. He returned to America several times until 1910, at which point he went back to his homeland after an almost continuous absence of 25 years. He then concluded his career with a work of great artistic depth, The Slav Epic, which he envisioned as a monument for Slavic unity. The entire cycle of The Slav Epic was donated to the City of Prague in September 1928. Mucha was arrested not long after the annexation of Czechoslovakia by Germany due to him being a prominent Czech patriot. Although he was released after a few days, his spirit was broken and he died in July 1939. 

I walked through the city afterwards and ended up at Cafe Slavia across the street from the National Theatre (Narodni divadlo), which I expected to be a kitschy tourist trap (it was a favorite hangout of Vaclav Havel's) but it was actually quite nice and seemed rather authentic, both in terms of atmosphere and food. Also, it had a piano, and if you know me you know I have a weakness for cafes with a piano. (Not only did it have a piano, but a pianist actually started playing, and he was quite good. How could I possibly not be thrilled) One possibly annoying thing is that people can smoke inside the cafe (or maybe they're not supposed to but did it anyway... Europeans can have a puzzling attitude toward indoors smoking), but I felt so close to history I didn't even let that bother me. I can't even put in words why I liked Cafe Slavia so much. I think in some ways it reminded me of those days many years ago when I went to visit relatives in West Berlin (yes it was still West Berlin at the time, which gives you an idea of how many years ago it was). There was the same sense of cavernous architecture and history in march. Also, I was thrilled to find a table with a view of the Prague Castle and the Nicosia salad was delicious. If I lived in Prague I would be at Cafe Slavia all the time, writing my novels at a table by the window, looking up once in a while to admire the castle.

After Cafe Slavia I strolled along the Vltava river and went to Hemingway Bar (it was recommended in my guide) and Lehka Hlava.  The Bohemian Puzzle at Hemingway's was delicious, in case you're looking for recommendations. The bar itself was a dark, candle-lit place with black-and-white pictures on the wall. Nothing groundbreaking (how many bars in the worlds are dark, candle-lit place with black-and-white pictures on the wall?) but enough of a unique vibe and excellent cocktails to gain a lot of loyal customers. More strolling through the side streets of Prague afterwards, escaping the tourists, and then I arrived at Lehka Hlava, which was touted as the best vegetarian restaurant in Prague. 

Eating healthy is important to me, and if you've ever been to Eastern Europe, you know their culinary tastes might include borscht, lots of sauces, and not enough organic food as I'd like. Places like Lehka Hlava are changing the food landscape, though. I tried a homemade green juice, which tasted ok (with green juices it is always a gamble whether I'm going to like the taste or not), and a salad with avocado and spicy zucchini falafel, which was on the small side but tasty. It turned out Lehka Hlava has a sister restaurant, Maitrea, much closer to my hotel. I ended up going to Maitrea several times on subsequent days. It has a Buddhist/New-Age-y vibe with excellent food and drinks. I liked Lehka Hlava and was glad I tried it but really loved Maitrea.  

All in all, a great day, full of culture and excellent food! 

Music Accompaniment: Dvorak's String Quartets in G Major Op. 106 and F Major Op. 96 by Pavel Haas Quartet, a Czech string quartet founded in 2002. This recording, which includes Dvorak's "American" Quartet, won the Gramophone Awards' "Recording of the Year" prize in 2011.

Prague 3

 On my 3rd day in Prague, I finally made it inside the Prague Castle compound (with only a 2-min wait at the checkpoint this time), after walking around Old Town Square with the famous astronomical clock - pictured left - where I enjoyed the tourist-less side streets and strolled along the river before crossing the bridge. The day was sunny and warm, although the weather forecast had initially called for clouds and rain. Inside the Prague Castle compound, I spent some time in the South Gardens before buying a ticket to get inside the monuments. At 250 crowns, I can't say it was expensive.

St Vitus Cathedral was simply stunning, and as crowded as it was stunning. I particularly liked the lion painted high on a wall with the motto "Pravda vítězí" (meaning: truth prevails in Czech), and the story of Cardinal Josef Beran (1888-1969), which was recounted in an exhibit. He was arrested by the Gestapo in June 1942 and kept imprisoned at Pankrac, Terezin and later the Dachau concentration camp. In December 1946, he was made the 33rd Archbishop of Prague and enthroned in the St Vinus cathedral. After celebrations on June 1949, he was interned by the state secret intelligence service and was interned continually from 1951 to 1965. He was made Cardinal by Pope Paul IV in January 1965, left for Rome in February 1965 to receive the cardinal's insignia with no possibility of return. He died in Rome in May 1969 and was buried in the Vatican. His beatification process was initiated in April 1998 by the Archdiocese of Prague. His life sounds trite when I sum it up like this, but there is no doubt that someone interned for 14 years for his religious beliefs and subsequently made Cardinal by the Vatican is someone of great resilience and moral fiber.

I also saw the Old Royal Palace, St George's Basilica and the Golden Lane. 

As a side note, I noticed a lot of tourists with selfie sticks... I don't remember seeing so many in New York. Maybe it is more a European/Asian thing. The number of tour groups was also staggering. It made hard to walk around at times, and I can't imagine what it's like at the height of tourism season. But it's a good problem for Prague to have. 

Afterwards I walked to Globe Bookstore and Cafe (I like to walk, what can I say), which I found to be overrated as a bookstore - Shakespeare and Sons is much better - but the Greek salad was excellent. The cafe part of the bookstore seemed to be the local hangout of U.S. college students on study-abroad programs. On my left, two co-eds were having a one-way conversation where one kept talking and eating and the other one was apparently just there to prevent the other one from talking to herself. On my right, some man was talking about his legal trouble and discussing with his friend whether it was better to have a Czech lawyer. There was something about roommates and painting the apartment too.

I walked through Wenceslas Square, where so many demonstrations took place during the Velvet Revolution, and which is now hopelessly commercial. I also walked past the Municipal House, where a young woman talking in French to her friends almost walked straight into me because she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. This reminded me that French tourists have an unusual ability to get noticed for all the wrong reasons. (I'm French too, but I always speak English on trips and people can't place my accent, so I don't count as a French tourist!) 

In the evening I went to the Municipal House for a concert. Its marketing reminded me of the concerts organized in the Latin Quarter to attract tourists during the summer, and the program was made of excerpts of famous symphonies (rather than entire pieces of music), but the players were first-rate, all members of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. The concert hall's lobby was gorgeous, as was the area outside the hall, with its pink marble. The splendor of the hall itself seemed a bit faded. Hordes of tourists in groups were taking photos, especially Asian, but it was great that they had come for the music too. In the end there were many empty seats for an outstanding concert, and I wish more people had been there to enjoy the music. 

Musical background: Jiri Belohlavek conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra with Emil Leichner as soloist in Bohuslav Martinu's piano concertos.

Prague 2

And here comes the account of my second day (first full day) in Prague, for what will remain one of my best trips for years to come. First, the breakfast at Hotel Josef was a true feast. It was included in my room rate, although I don't know if it's included in all room rates at the hotel, but really, even if you have to pay an add-on, if you stay at Hotel Josef you have to eat the wonderful breakfast, which served as my lunch too.

The hotel has a bakery on the premises with the most delicious, perfect, fluffy, warm croissants and pains au chocolat (chocolate croissants) that I've ever eaten outside Paris - they were even better than most croissants in Paris, as a matter of fact - as well as excellent grilled veggies, scrambled eggs, fruit, muesli, granola, yogurt and everything else you might possibly want for breakfast. The coffee was served in French presses, and was just as great as the food. That breakfast just was the perfect way to start the day.

Once I made it out of the hotel, I picked up my tickets for that night's performance of Zauberflöte at the Estates Theatre and Saturday's performance of Madama Butterfly at the National Theatre, at one of the ticket offices of the National Theatre (Narodni divadlo), which handles both venues. I bought the tickets online but I couldn't print them at home before leaving since they are only valid when printed on A4 paper. I had printed my receipt but it didn't include my order number (the theater's fault, not mine) and the employee became a bit rude, as if she thought I was trying to steal tickets. I couldn't help but think of the employees in Paris, who bark at customers. Thankfully I found the order number on my phone - which stayed on airplane mode throughout the trip, except when I was at the hotel and used the free wi-fi, but I could still scroll through my emails on the street and follow Google Maps after I pre-loaded my itinerary from my hotel room - and the employee got much nicer once she realized my order was legit. She even smiled at me, in the end. 

I pocketed my tickets and made my way to the other side of the river to visit Prague Castle on what was supposed to be one of the last nice days of my week in Prague. (In the end the weather was good all week, I never had to use my umbrella, it only rained twice and always during the night. Thank you, lucky star.) The picture at the top of this post shows the castle from the bridge by the Rudolfinum or Manesuv most. I reached the entrance to the castle around 11am, but the lines to go through security control were so long I changed my plans and walked around through Mala Strana instead and ended up at the other compound entrance - the one where guards in picturesque uniforms stand in front of the President's residence for hours on end - which had even longer lines. The reason for the security is that the compound houses the official residence of the President of the Czech Republic. So I walked around some more, admired the narrow, cobbled streets of Prague, and enjoyed discovering this part of town instead of visiting the castle today. Then I walked back across the river and tried to go to the Museum of Decorative Arts but it looked closed, perhaps permanently.

So I walked north across yet another bridge - most people would have taken the tram, but I am a walker, what can I say - to the Modern/Contemporary Art collection of the Narodni Gallery, which is housed in the Trade Fair building (Veletržní Palác). The building looks unassuming from outside, but the inside is much better, as you can judge from the picture on the side, and the collections were simply breathtaking.

It has many non-Czech artists, but I hadn't come for those, so below is a list of the 20th century Czech artists (mostly painters) I particularly loved. Given my interest both in the Czech Republic and modern art, it seems incredible that I'd never heard of those artists before, but I'm glad I'm aware of their work now. Such talent!

František Kupka (1871-1957): Vireni I (Whirling), Babylon, Round and straight

František Drtikol (photographer, 1883-1961): Melancholie (1925)

Otakar Nejedly (1883-1957): Hotel

Jindřich Prucha (1886-1914): Inside the beech forest

Alfons Mucha (1860-1939): Portrait of Josephine Crane-Bradley as Slavia

Emil Filla (1882-1953): Still Life 1913, Amorous Night

Otakar Kubin (1883-1969): Composition 1914, Abstract composition 1912

Jan Zrzavý (1890-1977): Biblical landscape, Cleopatra

Václav Špála (1885-1946): A path on Lopud, The Vltava River near Cervena, Bouquet with figures in the background 1930

I had a snack afterward at Cafe Jedna next to the museum: mezze (tabouleh, hummus, israeli salad, olives, sundried tomatoes and warm, soft pita) and a small bottle of sparkling water for 180 crowns or less than 9 dollars. It is easy to forget how expensive food can be in the U.S., and not necessarily with quality to match. Cafe Jedna had a wonderful artsy vibe. I loved that real Prague residents sat around me, rather than tourists. This is because the museum is not in the touristic part of town. 

When I walked back to the hotel, I felt that I was back in Brussels, with the tram rumbling along the street, the small shop windows and plenty of normal-looking people in jeans and windbreakers, a refreshing sight after the extremes of life in the U.S. It felt more like my kind of crowd.

In the evening I went to the Estates Theatre - a 7-minute walk from my hotel - to see Die Zauberflöte. The Estates Theatre is known as the theater where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni in 1787, but I found the inside a bit rundown, and the production frankly mediocre. (For instance, the director created a character of Mozart who hovered on stage throughout the performance, mouthing words and looking at the protagonists - his creations. Sometimes the music stopped and the Mozart character spoke in Czech. I kid you not. We agree that Mozart did not write that... Directors really shouldn't add characters to an opera. It is just gimmicky. That's also the reason why the recent Rusalka at the Met, directed by Mary Zimmerman and composed, of course, by Antonin Dvořák, left me quite indifferent, although the voices were marvelous.)

The Estates orchestra was small, most voices were small, with the exception of the excellent Queen of the Night. But I was still glad to attend a performance in this famous theater, and impressed that I had no jet lag at all. The Nespresso coffee machine in my hotel room, in addition to the breakfast's French press, surely helped... What a joy to be in Prague at last, after years of hoping I'd some day make the trip.

Musical background: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek in Dvořák's Symphonies 6 & 7 of the Complete Symphonies set. 

 

Prague 1

Earlier this spring, I fulfilled a long-time wish by taking a one-week vacation to Prague. I've always had a strong interest in Eastern Europe and I had wanted to go to Prague since I had learned about the Prague Spring in history class back in high school, twenty-five years ago. Then life happened and moving to the United States happened and I kept the idea of going to Prague on the back-burner, until a conversation back in December after which I decided, I'm either going to Prague this coming year or I'm shutting up about wanting to go to Prague. Not being the kind to shut up, I walked my talk instead. So this post is the first in a series of seven, one for each day I spent in Prague. I took a lot of notes while I was there and it is a way to immortalize what was, for me, the trip of a lifetime.

I arrived to Prague in the early afternoon after flying from Dallas to Frankfurt and then from Frankfurt to Prague, both on Lufthansa. (For the Dallas to Frankfurt flight I got upgraded to Premium Economy and I've got to say this was a really great experience, reminiscent of business class on other airlines, except that the seats don't fully recline when you want to sleep. We had paper menus about the food that would be served during the trip, and refreshing towelettes before the meal, and free amenities like a bottle of water, an eye-mask and a mini tube of toothpaste.

I watched Jackie, The Bourne Legacy and Lion on the transatlantic flight, and Lion was phenomenal. It taught me a lesson or two in storytelling - not a bad side product of the trip. The other two movies were highly forgettable, but at least they helped pass the time. I hadn't flown Lufthansa in a long time and it seemed to me that non-U.S. airlines may still believe in customer service in ways that U.S. airlines just don't bother with, maybe because flying is more routine in the U.S. I'll certainly consider Lufthansa for my next trip, at least if they fix my frequent flier status.)

At the Vaclav Havel International Airport, someone had smoked in the women's bathroom - welcome to Europe, where people smoke a lot. (And Europeans tend to look down on Americans and their obesity problem, but which one is worse - be overweight or have lung cancer?) There was a long line at the ATMs, which gave the choice between withdrawing euros and Czech crowns. The driver sent by the hotel was waiting for me by the elevator, as in the email sent by the hotel. In Prague this is called hotel transfers. Some hotels do it for their guests, while other companies specialize in bringing travelers to any hotel of their choice. This is because cabs are rumored to be a rip-off. Someone I know who lived in Prague for many years had warned me about it, and there were even signs in Prague's Old Town advertising what the proper fare for a ride to the airport should be - the sign that the problem is real.

My driver was a young man in a black business suit, maybe twenty-three years old, recently arrived in Prague from elsewhere in the Czech Republic. He spoke good English, which I found to be a relief, because I hadn't had time to learn any Czech before the trip. We drove past yellow buildings that reminded me of Bavaria, and grey buildings that reminded me of East Berlin. As we got closer to the historic part of town, we started seeing more and more tourists in the streets. One thing I noticed even before reaching the hotel was the prevalence of graffiti on the ground floors of buildings. I guess in the United States there is a much stronger effort to prevent or erase graffiti on walls, at least in touristy areas. The transfer ("limo" ride) included a free newsstand-worthy magazine printed by the hotel (about things going on in Prague and hotel-related stuff) and bottles of water. It wasn't much more expensive than a cab ride and especially after a long transatlantic flight, it was definitely worth the price. 

I stayed at the Hotel Josef, where I got a premium room on the top floor (arguably the best room in the hotel, with a great view of Prague rooftops and the Prague Castle, thanks to the advice of one of my travel guides.) I wanted a nice hotel with breakfast included in the historic part of town, from where I could walk to most of the places I wanted to visit, and preferably a hotel with a modern flavor rather than something looking old, stuffy and past its prime, as some of the hotels in that part of Prague. Hotel Josef's sleek design with a glass floor-to-ceiling front did not disappoint. It is part of the Design Hotels brand and it looked classy and stylish without being pretentious. It was actually better than the Kimpton Hotels in the U.S., although I love Kimpton, because some of the Kimpton Hotels can look a little tacky. (U.S. hotels also don't tend to include breakfast in their rate by default. But since my first breakfast was on day 2, you'll have to wait for my next post to learn how awesome the breakfast at Hotel Josef was.)

My room had floor-to-ceiling windows and was very big. I had a Nespresso coffee machine that produced excellent espresso and long coffees - so good in fact that I haven't been able to drink American-sized tasteless coffee ever since I've been back. The room rate also included a free "raid" of the no-alcohol minibar: two bottles of still water, two bottles of sparkling water, one bottle of Coca-Cola, one bottle of Coke Zero, two cans of orange juice and a candy bar. (If you wanted a refill during your stay then you had to pay for it.) It was more than enough for me since I only cared about drinking water anyway. Also, since I had booked directly through the hotel website I got a free bottle of prosecco and a bag of peanuts as arrival gift - not a bad way to celebrate the beginning of a trip that means so much to me.   

That first afternoon I decided to take advantage of the nice, sunny weather - since the weather forecast for the rest of the week was not as good, although in the end I got blessed with dry weather and warm temperatures throughout most of the trip - to walk to the Shakespeare & Sons bookstore on the other side of the Vltava river and come back over the famous Charles Bridge with its statues of saints. It's a tradition I have to check out bookstores, especially independent ones, in any city I visit, at least when they are close-by. While I also went to the Globe bookstore later in the trip, I have to say Shakespeare & Sons has by far the best choice of English-speaking books. (What the Globe has going for it is an excellent cafe.)

 Of course I could not miss that opportunity to buy a book in English related to the Czech Republic, and in the end I chose the novel The Cowards by Josef Skvorecky (1924-2012) for 419 crowns or about $17. Skvorecky wrote the book, about a young Czech man who plays in a jazz band and bears witness to the end of World War II in his town (and to Czech hopes for independence), in 1948-49 but, unsurprisingly given the political situation of the time, it was immediately banned and not published until 1958. Skvorecky is an outstanding storyteller and I feel my own craft has improved just from reading his book. I like that his prose, in first-person POV, is narrative rather than introspective. Skvorecky fled to Canada with his wife after the Prague Spring was crushed, where he founded the now-defunct 68 Publishers publishing house. Its purpose was to publish the works of Czech and Slovak writers whose books were banned in communist Czechoslovakia. He died in Toronto in January 2012.

I walked across the Charles Bridge on my way back and (after a year living in a pretentious part of Dallas where twenty-somethings with an entry-level job sport designer clothes and Louboutin stilettos courtesy of their parents) was struck by how low-key all the tourists were, wearing jeans and windbreakers. No sorority girl uniform here (the long top with the yoga leggings). People weren't so obsessed with showing off their hipster-ism or their social status, perhaps because the income disparities are smaller in Europe, or perhaps because people in Europe are less interested in finding others to look down upon. The Charles Bridge was full not only of tourists, but also homeless people begging on their knees, forehead on the ground, cap outstretched (another sight that is rare in the U.S. but not so much in Europe) and peddlers pretending to be able to draw portraits. This reminded me of Montmartre in Paris... only tourists would ever fall for that. The peddlers showed off portraits of Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Johnny Depp to make their case, although Brad Pitt looked about twenty years younger than what he is now. The river banks reminded me of the Seine in Paris. It was a good afternoon.

For dinner I wanted to stop by what one of my guidebooks described as the best vegetarian restaurants in Prague but since I had only jotted a few words about it instead of taking the guidebook with me, I wasn't even sure of the street and couldn't find it that evening (I found it later in the trip), so I stopped by a random restaurant instead, Stoleti, which turned out to have an excellent avocado & salmon salad. The delicious meal, including sparkling water and (free) bread, came at about 300 crowns or $12. I liked wandering through that part of town, slightly north of the National Theatre, because it had fewer tourists and gave me more of a sense of the real Prague.  

As I strolled through the small streets around the Old Square, I noticed some restaurants had menus in Russian, and a car-for-hire also had a message in Russian in its window - perhaps a remnant of the Soviet occupation or simply an acknowledgement of the many Russian tourists in Prague. I kept thinking about the Soviet occupation because beautiful Baroque buildings (with graffiti at ground level) coexisted with plain, drab, gray buildings that must date from the days of Communism. No architect would have such poor taste otherwise. 

On the Old Square, I noticed signs for the Gerhard Richter exhibition at the National Galerie. I saw the Richter retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2012 but made a note of going to see this one too on a cold and rainy day during the trip. Then I returned to my hotel in time to see the sun set. 

Soundtrack: of course, I'm listening to Ma Vlast (Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik) while I type this first post about my Prague adventures, specifically, the recording of the May 12, 1990 concert that opened the first Prague Music Festival after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Eastern Block. How could I listen to anything else? The emotion is palpable and the music inspirational. If this doesn't make you want to fight for freedom, nothing ever will. 

"Pink, White and Blue (Akhmatova 3)"

 I finally finished another of my "brick poem" paintings. As you might remember, I take poems I like by Anna Akhmatova (in their English translation), and the space on the right - in blue here - represents the white spaces at the end of the poem's lines, and each rectangle is for a word of the poem. I used the same canvas size (24x30) and poem as for Akhmatova 2 (To the Muse), which saved me some prep time in drawing the rectangles, although not much.

I started Akhmatova 3 shortly after I moved to Dallas, painted the blue and the dark red/pinks, and then left it half finished for many months. When I went back to it I went a little fast so it doesn't look as polished as it could be, but at least I finished it, which is more than I can say of my novel in progress.

#BeDifferent The Flower Way

Those 2 red flowers at SMU didn't get the memo they were supposed to be white, and I love them for it.

Trip down memory lane

So I returned to the Lehigh Valley this past weekend to attend the performance of Evita and the specialty dinner at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival. I'm on their board. It made sense I would go. This was the first time I've been back since leaving last year, and I was wondering what I would feel. I did spend 11 years of my life there, not counting the year I was on sabbatical. I might very well never stay in one place so long ever again. And I stepped out of the plane into the airport and I didn't feel anything. I can cry when I read feel-good stories, I can laugh to tears when I watch puppy videos, but I stepped inside the airport terminal and I just thought it looked like just any small-town airport, of dubious architecture, looking a little drab. I walked toward the exit and thought about all the times I had walked past that checkpoint and still didn't feel a thing. As a matter of fact, I had felt more when I had booked the tickets and imagined returning than when I was actually there. I felt like a business visitor landing in a small town for a conference - just something I had to do, and I hoped I'd have a pleasant trip, but that wasn't home anymore and I wasn't even thinking about the fact that it'd ever been home.

What struck me was how rundown everything looked. I didn't remember it like that. Of course there had been many rundown places in the area when I lived there, but I hadn't planning on driving past them. I stayed at the Hyatt Place (the place to stay if you're in that area, in my opinion - great large and modern guestrooms, great breakfast included in the price, great location) so my Uber driver picked me up at the airport and drove the familiar route along Route 378 to the Historic District. I was shocked when we got off the exit at how shabby the houses looked like, and the sidewalks were all uneven with grass growing in-between. This was right behind the historic block with the supposedly tourist attractions. Even the Historic District itself looked drab and dowdy. Not awful - the way the boarded-up furnaces of Bethlehem Steel looked when I first moved to the area and only knew how to go to work using Route 412 - but nothing to go out of your way to see. Some empty stores, some stores with moss on top of their signs, hite walls that had turned to gray, that sort of thing.

I checked in at Hyatt Place and I walked to Moravian Bookstore, which has a lot of home-decoration items on sale and a room full of books. Back in those days I was very proud to live in a city with an independent bookstore. And I still felt like a professional on a business trip - I had no emotion about being in the bookstore - but I also was impressed by the exceptional quality of the books on display. Since the bookstore has little space, the staff has to be very selective in what they put on their shelves, but they have a very strong selection in a wide range of categories, from fiction to history to poetry. They seem to stock a lot of the Indie Best books, so it is no surprise I like their selection so much. I did buy two books from them, although I had brought plenty of reading on the trip, including When the world stopped to listen by Stuart Isacoff (about Van Cliburn winning the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in April 1958 - Van Cliburn was from Texas and the famous International Cliburn Piano Competition is organized every four years in Fort Worth, TX near where I live now, of course given my love of piano I watched this year's competition and it was amazing, hence, my decision to buy the book. But I digress. Except for that fact that there are many more cultural things to do for me in Dallas.)

Anyway, I like to support independent bookstores, so I'm now the proud owner of LaRose by Louise Erdrich (I still remember picking up The Round House at the Seattle Airport and reading it cover to cover) and Elizabeth: The Later Years by John Guy, about Queen Elizabeth I. Then I went to Apollo Grill and had a kale salad with tuna, like in the old days. It was delicious. In fact it probably remains the best kale salad I've ever eaten, with strawberries, blueberries, gorgonzola cheese, cucumbers, almonds and balsamic dressing. Their bread is very good. I recognized a lot of the staff. 

Two things that struck me when I was walking through Historic Bethlehem were that (i) many people seemed much more overweight and/or seemed to have more health problems than in the area where I live in Dallas, which is admittedly a rather posh and pretentious area, and (ii) many people also seemed to have a far healthier attitude toward clothes and appearances (even the two young women who looked like the absolute sorority girl types - long straight flowing hair, designer's purses, fancy jeans - walked into Apollo Grill in flip flops). In a way, it was as if the health was in the inside. The economy in the LV isn't as good as it should be (it lacks large companies that would provide lots of middle-class jobs for local residents) and a lot of people eat cheap because they can't afford to shop at the more expensive organic stores. I believe that in the long run there are health consequences for, say, eating beef that has been treated with hormones or maybe chicken treated with antibiotics, but some people don't have the luxury of selecting other options. I did find all of them vastly more interesting-looking than the cookie-cutter pseudo-yuppies types. I wish some good companies would finally move to the LV and provide solid employment to a lot of those people, who deserve it. That's what they had when Bethlehem Steel was still around. But perhaps it is unrealistic to hope that companies still behave like that anymore.

My second day I went to Promenade Shops. (I also worked on my novel and a research paper, discovered a new lunch place in the Historic Bethlehem, Cachette, which has a great kale salad with chicken and got a massage at Healing Hands. The reason I arrived a day early is that there was no good weekend flight itinerary on the airline I wanted to fly and I figured I could use some time to work.) I used to go to Promenade Shops almost every week to shop at the organic grocery store (Fresh Market) or get a salad at Cosi - I liked to sit at a high table along the bay window and work on my laptop. I also liked to go to Barnes & Noble. On the way there I had a nice chat with my Uber driver who was telling me she had to go from full time to part time (by doctor's orders) at her job as a packer at a local warehouse because her employer was making her lift 50-100 pounds and that was causing her severe health issues. She said that when another coworker had tried to ask for an improvement they fired her as soon as they could find a reason. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote beautifully about what it is like to be poor in America in Nickel and Dimed many years ago but I still don't think we fully get it, or perhaps things have simply gotten worse for everybody now. I want to read Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city when I get the chance.

At Promenade Shops I went to Barnes & Noble, which was, well, similar to any Barnes & Noble in the nation, except that this one was even more focused on toys and I found its selection not as good as the B&N near Northpark in Dallas. But that bookstore carried me through for many years and I can't criticize it too much. Promenade Shops only opened in December 2006 and my first 2 1/2 years in the LV were, shall I say, a completely different experience, and not in a good way. I was really glad to have it for about 10 years. Then I went to Melt, and the lump crab cake salad with avocado was excellent, although I'm not sure why things are called salads when they don't have greens. And on the way back I looked around me at the road I had taken so many times to go home from Promenade Shops, and the foliage along the road could have used some cutting, and the cars parked in the grass looked beaten up, and I didn't remember there was a Dollar Tree store in the small shopping center along the road. Yet, one thing that appealed to me when I moved there (because I'm full of contradictions) is precisely that it reminded me of my maternal grandmother's small town. 

The third day I went to the Evita-inspired specialty dinner at the Shakespeare Festival, followed by a performance of Evita, and that deserves its own post. The DeSales campus was absolutely gorgeous, and the performance phenomenal. In a way, DeSales was my home during my time in the LV much more than Lehigh was.

When people in Texas talk about Bethlehem as a small town I tend to correct them - it's bigger than a small town - but when I saw what it was, with the distance that the year away has given me, I had to admit it very much looked like a small town. While I lived there perhaps I convinced myself that it was way better than it was. Just about everybody wants to find something positive about where they live, even if they end up spending most of their time in New York City. The contrast with my neighborhood in Dallas has been quite eye-opening. Or perhaps the lack of good jobs has taken its toll. Sometimes you don't notice things change around you when you live somewhere because you see the place every day. I still wonder how the blue-collar hard-working people of the LV are going to have the opportunities they deserve and send their kids off to college, even community college. (The area has become a distribution hub, but a lot of the warehouse jobs are minimum wage.) I so wish I had witnessed a renaissance of the area while I was there, and some pockets have done well, such as the Center Valley area, but I don't think the LV has done as well as it should have.

I do love the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, incidentally located in Center Valley - one thing Dallas doesn't do as well as the LV is Shakespeare, and the LV has the extremely talented folks at DeSales and PSF to thank for that. I plan on coming back. There is, after all, still one key advantage to Bethlehem compared to Dallas, even keeping in mind that Bethlehem has humid heat rather than the much-preferred Dallas dry heat: the temperatures weren't hitting 100 this weekend. 

Zadie Smith at the Dallas Museum of Art

On Saturday I attended a reading and talk by Zadie Smith at the Dallas Museum of Art, where she promoted her latest book, Swing Time. The ticket included a copy of the book, and I also picked up her first novel, White Teeth, and her collection of essays Changing My Mind from the DMA bookstore since - dare I admit it? - I'd never read a book by Zadie Smith before. As a matter of fact, the only piece I'd read by her before was the phenomenal On Optimism and Despair, published in December in the New York Review of Books. 

Smith began by reading from the middle of her book for about 15 minutes (the 2nd trip of the narrator to Africa) and then spent about 45 minutes to 1 hour in conversation with Kris Boyd, host(ess) of the Think! program on the KERA TV/radio station, before opening to Q&A. Throughout, she proved herself to be an articulate speaker who thinks on her feet. I didn't take down any notes, so I bear all responsibility if I remember something incorrectly. 

Overall I was struck by how down-to-earth yet well-spoken Smith was. For instance, when asked about blackface (the book starts with the narrator watching on TV Fred Astaire in the 1936 movie Swing Time, Astaire who imitates Bill "Bojangles" Robinson tap dancing while he wears blackface), she was careful to speak against general statements and preferred looking at the details of each appropriation instead. In this case, Astaire doesn't have his lips painted white and doesn't make wild, grotesque gestures, as would be expected in blackface. Instead, according to Smith, he does his best to imitate Bojangles as well as possible to provide a record of the way the man danced. Bojangles was a tap dancing icon and nothing would remain of his performances if it hadn't been for Astaire trying to record himself as Bojangles for posterity. 

A powerful moment in the evening was when she talked about the obscenity of people being denied the opportunity of realizing their potential because of how they're being written off due to their poverty. She also talked a bit about her mother, the first trip to Jamaica (where her mother's family is from) where the two of them stayed in a hotel instead of with relatives and the dichotomy between those two worlds, the Jamaican world of her family and the Jamaican world of the tourism business, especially given that the hotels tend to be owned not by locals but by German or Swiss companies,  the small hut, now half-destroyed, where her mother had grown up, and the current political situation, especially the possibility of the incoming president reducing aid to Africa, where Smith brought up the fact that developed countries have had a long tradition of exploiting African resources through some of their companies established there and that the African situation can't be resolved without a hard look at what those companies are doing to the African ecosystem. She mentioned Liberia but stopped short of referring to a specific company by name.

She also remarked that some reviewers had believed the unnamed African country that provides the backdrop for a part of the book was Senegal, when in fact it was its neighbor Gambia. I haven't read that part of the book yet but apparently she uses city names from Gambia, and compared the mistake to setting a novel in Paris without saying it's France and having a reviewer says it's set in Spain, but was also the first one to forgive the reviewers, having been a book reviewer herself and gotten boxes with one hundred books inside to read in a matter of weeks.  

To read the rest of my account of the evening and my comments on the book, please click here. 

Paris, Chereau, Isolde

I've been thinking about the late French director Patrice Chereau (1944-2013) a lot since this summer, when I saw the Ring at the Bayreuth Festival in the production by Frank Castorf (more on that some other day, but my summary is that the first two operas in the cycle are superb and the last two underwhelming). I primarily knew Chereau as a French movie director and stage director, but it turns out he was made famous, at least in certain circles, by his centenary production of the Ring Cycle at Bayreuth in 1976. By a stroke of luck, I managed to buy the very last new copy of Chereau's Ring Cycle on Amazon (back when it was offered at a reasonable price; it's now being reissued with a hefty price tag) so I've watched it from beginning to end and was very impressed by Chereau's creativity and ingenuity, although the production is sometimes a bit dark (visually) for my taste. And he was only 32 at the time! Imagine that. He also directed a landmark stage production of Phedre in 2003 with one of his favorite actresses, Dominique Blanc, in the title role.

But Chereau for me remains first the director of many movies that have marked my youth. He tended to work again and again with actors he liked and he happened to like many of the foremost French actors of that generation. I feel American movie-goers don't know what the trend toward blockbusters is depriving them of, with either ad-hoc casts put together for each movie or franchises using cardboard characters in the same lifeless roles. In France when I was in college I remember the movies by Chereau the most and also by Arnaud Desplechin, who also tended to hire repeatedly the actors he liked to work with (Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, etc).

Last week I watched Queen Margot again starring the superstar Isabelle Adjani, as well as Vincent Perez, who disappeared from the screens when he got tired of the heartthrob roles (or didn't negotiate the transition successfully, or didn't find roles he liked and decided to do something else with his time), Pascal Greggory, who was Chereau's long-term partner, Dominique Blanc, Jean-Hughes Anglade, and so many actors such as Emmanuel Salinger who make a cameo at the beginning of the movie as wedding guests that you just know from the cast list how much of a privilege it was to take part in a Chereau movie. I remember that movie, at the end of my high school years, before I moved to Paris. How my girl friends and I all chatted about the movie (Isabelle Adjani! Vincent Perez!) instead of studying for the baccalaureat.

I also remember Those who love me can take the train. The movie isn't particularly action-driven and so wouldn't be to most Americans' liking (you can tell this is the case from the fact that the movie isn't offered on Amazon Instant Video, contrary to Queen Margot). In some French movies and French novels, nothing much happens - people argue, people reconcile, and so on. We French people like to talk. I remember watching the movie when I was in Paris - I was in engineering school back then, I think it was the end of my second year.

The movie is about people who are on a train to go to the funeral of someone they knew, who wants to be buried in Limoges. I went to see the movie because Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was in a leading role (sister to Carla, but a very different personality), as well as Charles Berling, and Jean-Louis Trintignant (names that may mean nothing to my American readers), and Vincent Perez cast as a transsexual who is transitioning to being a woman (how many young, handsome male actors who had half the teenage population in love with them would dare do that? and this was 1998, let me remind you). Chereau wasn't afraid of being ahead of his time on certain topics - the sign of a true, uncompromising artist.

There is a final twist to this post. I've been researching Wagner's Tristan und Isolde because of a novel I'm writing (I saw that at Bayreuth too this summer, in addition to the Ring), and the very best production I've ever been able to watch, whether live or in DVD, is the one with Waltraud Meier and Ian Storey at La Scala in 2007. I love the use of light and shadow, the spare sets that avoid being too abstract, the choice of costumes - I love absolutely everything to the DVD, except that in the third act, the person who was making the DVD decided to use a lot of "fading to black" between scenes, which is distracting and sometimes downright aggravating. But besides that, I worship that production like few others (Luc Bondy's Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera comes second). And guess who directed the Scala production of Tristan? Sure enough, Patrice Chereau. 

People who are not particularly creative are quick to dismiss creative people. What is it, they wonder, that those creative folks do that is supposedly so important? And it is true that a lot of "art" produced by pseudo-creatives is drivel. But when you see the work of someone like Chereau, or Yael Farber today, you really understand what makes exceptional artists so needed in today's society. They make us see the world in ways we hadn't imagined before - they offer new perspectives, fresh insights, shed a new light on a well-known play or opera, bring an aspect of human relations to the forefront by making a movie about it. Chereau died at 68 from lung cancer two years ago (read his obituary in the New York Times and in The Guardian). That was much too soon.

Next on my viewing list:  his very last production, opera Elektra by Richard Strauss at the 2013 Aix-en-Provence festival. I have no doubt it's going to be spectacular.

#BlogOctober Don McCullin and Sebastian Junger in conversation at the 92nd Y

Yesterday I attended a conversation at the 92nd Y between celebrated war photojournalist Don McCullin, now 80 years old, and Sebastian Junger (of Restrepo fame), at the occasion of the re-issue of the book of photographs Don McCullin by Aperture. McCullin is truly an inspirational figure who spoke movingly and powerfully of his childhood during the Blitz, his lack of formal education, the stroke of good luck that led to his career in photojournalism, the shame he felt when covering conflicts at not being able to do more for the people he photographed, especially since the war photographs that receive the most attention in the press are generally the ones that show people getting killed.

Some of the particularly arresting stories he shared included one about his interaction with the Christian Phalange in Lebanon and one about photographing a woman beating her chest when she saw her building had been completely bombed out - woman who died in another bomb explosion only moments after McCullin left the scene. He was very lucid about the experience war has on young soldiers and the difficulty in separating, within the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a profoundly traumatic experience that happened during the war from the inability of young men who lived such an "exciting" tour of duty to face the return into ordinary, civilian life back home. Both he and Junger made the point that some of those men who led flamboyant lives during military duty may have led very obscure and uneventful lives without the war. In a way the war allowed them to realize themselves. The effect war has on soldiers is a complicated topic.

Here is the story behind McCullin becoming a photographer and selling his first picture, which I show at the left (photo credit: National Media Museum website): he had purchased a camera when he was in the mandatory service at someone's recommendation, although he had failed the test to become a photographer because he could not remember the theory due to his dyslexia, and when he went home this gang, the Guv'nors/Governors, wanted him to take a picture of them. There was a bombed out house in the neighborhood whose entire front was missing so one could see the interior on each floor, and he had each position himself at the edge of each of the rooms. In those days even gangsters wore suits, as you can see. The picture is available in bigger format here. McCullin said at the talk that he only took one negative, which seemed to amaze Junger. He also told the story of how he got (when he was photographing) picked up by the police who claimed there was a stolen camera in the neighborhood and required that he show them the receipt and escorted him home to that end. And he showed them the receipt and they suddenly became very nice but he did not have much respect for the police after that.

He also told stories about his time in war conflicts such as Vietnam, a photograph he didn't take when a bomber got murdered by a crowd in a very theatrical execution (if I understood correctly), his relationship to God (he lost his father young and so lost faith after that, but still when he came under heavy fire while he covered a conflict he could not help praying God for a second chance), his feeling of powerlessness when he went to an orphanage in Africa and 800 malnourished, dying children stared at him with hopeful eyes while there was nothing he could do for them besides taking photographs. 

The event was a conversation between McCullin and Sebastian Junger, who spoke eloquently, asked excellent questions and truly listened to their answers to build upon them in follow-ups. I was familiar with Junger's work as a nonfiction writer but he truly impressed me as a speaker and interviewer. He absolutely was the right person to involve so that McCullin could share his life story in the most impactful manner. The event was accompanied by a slideshow of some of McCullin's pictures (most of war scenes and all in black-and-white dark/"dusky" printing, his signature style). Many of those were jaw-dropping in their sheer beauty and intensity. The man deserves to be a legend.

You can purchase the book here.