Haunted Venice Part III: Parte the laste

And so our imaginary journey through the streets of Venice comes to an end. The last two itineraries have blurred into one another, so I'll go just ahead and heartily recommend to one and all to buy the book, whether you're going to Venice or just plan to sit in your own backyard and imagine you're somewhere lofty and far away. I'll leave you with one last story, this one about beauty, for beauty has been on my mind of late (did you know your skin stops regenerating new cells or some shit after you turn 30? According to L'Oreal it does).

So, voila: The Fairy who Bestowed the Gift of Beauty


A young girl, just freshly turned sixteen, was walking home from Vespers one evening when she spied a beautiful woman all dressed in white. The beautiful woman watched her silently as she passed. This happened every day for three days and the young girl became curious. Who was this strange creature? On the fourth day the woman said, "Girl, wouldn't you love to become as lovely as I am?" And of course the girl replied, "Yes."

The woman told her to go home and cover all the mirrors in the house with white cloth and wait until midnight, when she would be visited by three beautiful ladies who would bestow their beauty upon her. "Do not be afraid, do not call upon the Virgin Mary," the woman said.

The young girl went home and did exactly as she was told, but in her excitement, she forgot to cover one mirror. The three women showed up at the stroke of midnight, dazzlingly radiant. But in the one small mirror she forgot to cover, the young girl saw the reflection of their backs: hideous, hairy and malformed, like "those of an animal."

The girl screamed and ran out of the house. On the street, she smacked right into the beautiful temptress who had conned her into this in the first place.

"Fool!" cried the woman, for she knew exactly what the girl had done.

She advanced toward the girl, who backed away. As she cowered she saw that the beautiful woman had the hairy cloven hooves of a goat peeking out from beneath her robe.

"Mother Mary, save me!" screamed the girl.

A bright white flashed from the sky, and when it had vanished, the evil fairy was gone.

The moral of this one? Don't trust a beautiful woman with ugly feet.

****

I'd love to do an imaginary ghostly travelogue again some time. If you're reading this, you must have a ghost story or two from your home town. Why don't you share it with me? Or, maybe you can suggest another town I can do a series on. Haunted Cincinnati? Haunted Krakow? Haunted Panama City? Do tell, won't you?

Haunted Venice, Part Two

Our second appointment with death begins in the sestiere of Castello, near the salizada de Pignater, where there is featured the sotoportego dei Preti. I think salizada means street and sotoportego means arch. No translation of these words is provided in the book, so hey, you'll learn by immersion! Over the arch you'll find a brick heart, which you can touch for a good luck charm if you're looking for that special humanoid to mate with. Here's the romantic story that goes with it:

Once upon a time, when "magic and reality peacefully shared the same dimension," a fisherman named Orio (yum) caught a mermaid in his net. Naturalment, they fell in love, and she agreed to give up the life aquatic to marry him. There was only one problem: because of a witch's curse, every Saturday she would turn into a snake. She warned him not to try to see her on Saturdays but of course he disobeyed. No biggie, though, because once they were married the curse would be lifted anyway (maybe it was contingent on her not having legs or something). Are you still following? Good. So now the mermaid has legs and she's a regular human wife and she keeps house and squeezes out some kids and everything is going fine until one day she grew ill and died, poor thing. The fisherman misses her but, hey, life goes on. Plus, an interesting thing is happening: no matter how sloppy the fisherman and his kids are, the house always stays clean. It's like some kind of ghost-maid is taking care of them or something. But Orio doesn't put two and two together and one day when he returns home from fishing unexpectedly early only to find a snake -- a snake! -- in the kitchen, he chops it in half! Orio, nooooo! Sure enough, the house thereafter grows messy and cold, as his dead mermaid snake-wife was to visit nevermore.

I think the moral of this story is fairly clear: don't do housework.

Moving right along, we get to another deliciously irreverent tale, that of "The Magician who Joked with the Devil." I quite like this one: in the late 15th century there lived a man who practiced black magic. He was cruel and mean and despised by all, and he was comfortable with that. One night he was out walking when the moon went behind a cloud and it was too dark for him to find his way home. So he summoned his old pal Lucifer and asked for a torch, which was summarily provided. After he got home, he snuffed it out and put it in the woodbox to use again later. In the morning the maid opened the woodbox and screamed -- inside was not a torch at all but a charred arm! Now, this is my favorite part of the story: the magician's reaction. Apparently, he just laughed. Oh Old Scratch, you are a funny guy! You sure got me!

Zing! I love that he isn't disturbed in the slightest that he just used a flaming human arm as a torch.

As long as we're on the subject of wizards, here's another story I liked in this itinerary: "The Wizard with the Heart of Stone." It takes place near the Arsenal, in front of which stands a frightening-looking stone lion.

In November 1719, the mangled bodies of two sailors appear floating in the city's canals. The corpses look as though they've been torn apart by wild beasts. Six days later, another body surfaces, that of Jacopo Zanchi, a Venetian who apparently "lived hand to mouth" with his wife Giovanna. Now, Giovanna had a bad rep and occasionally turned tricks for money, so nobody was surprised when she stood outside the house of a merchant named Fosco and started screaming, "Murderer! Bastard -- you'll pay for what you've done!" I mean, bitches be crazy, right? Now, Fosco leans out the window and hisses, "We'll see, woman, where your boldness will take you, on the next stormy night!" Slightly suspicious, no? Ten days later, said storm blows up but nothing happens, not for hours and hours. Giovanna walks the wet streets; business is slow. Then, at one o'clock in the morning, an "arch of fire" sizzles out of Fosco's house and "literally materializes the old man" in front of the statue of the stone lion. He walked around the lion, running his fingertip along its body, until a huge bolt of lightning appeared and struck it with a blinding flash of brilliance. Slowly the stone crumbled and a huge flesh and blood lion emerged, roaring, from its casing. The lion bounded down the alley and pounced on the helpless Giovanna. The wizard then began to cast a spell on a second lion, but a guard witnessing the scene rushed toward the wizard and plunged his sword into his chest. Now, according to the book, "with a tremendous roar and a blinding flash of lightning, everything suddenly fell silent under the driving rain: the mangled body of the woman on the paving stones, the guard's blackened sword on the ground. There was no trace of Fosco, except for a heart of stone near the razor-sharp sword: it was the stone heart in his chest that could change stone into flesh." Then the guard picked up his sword and cut off the lion's head. Instead of falling to the ground, "the head rose several meters up into the air, and with a final roar exploded into a black substance which covered everything below."

Awesome!

The guard then cut off the head of the second lion, whose body still stands before the Arsenal today. If you look closely, you can see the line around its new where a new stone head replaced it.

(Now this is a slightly amended version of the tale. In the book, there are three lions, and two women, Giovanna and her friend, also a hooker. But this abridged tale retains the essential awesomeness of the original.)

There are a number of bad-weather stories in this itinerary, as it turns out. (I suppose humans need something to do while waiting out the rain and snow.) The next one takes place on a cold, snowy night in November 1917, and is called "The Death Shawl." It's a classic tale of a waifish little girl who flags down a passing gondola with a call of, "Doctor, doctor, come help my mother, she's sick!" and the doctor therein agreeing to help the poor little thing (although he is somewhat puzzled -- "How did she know I was a doctor?") and he helps the sick woman just in the nick of time because she totally would have died of pneumonia if he'd gotten there even a minute later and when he says, "Good thing your daughter flagged me down," the mother replies, "But doctor, she's been dead for a month...."

I just like the classic simplicity of this tale. It's the kind of ghostly tale you could really believe might have happened in the dreary aftermath of the War when death was present everywhere and half of Europe consorted with the ghosts...

But what a downer to leave you with. Our final tale shall also deal with stormy weather, but in a lighter way:

Saint Peter was a stand up kind of guy but, unfortunately for him, his mother was a total scrod. She was such a mean, jealous, selfish woman that she inevitably ended up in hell when she died, despite St. Peter's pleas with god to extricate her from the underworld. Finally, though, god relented and allowed Peter's mother to visit him on earth once a year for fifteen days, seven days before and seven days after the feast of the apostle. Peter was delighted, but the old hag was "so full of envy and spite that every year she brings with her storm, winds and hurricanes, so that no one feels sorry for her anymore, and can't wait for her to go back where she came from."

Haunted Venice, Part One

I've been working my way through the four itineraries described in Venetian Legends and Ghost Stories; here are the highlights from the first walking tour:

The tour begins at the gothic church Santi Giovanni e Paolo and wends its way over to the campo de Gheto Novo. At the Gothic church, author Alberto Toso Fei entertains us with the story of the Bell Ringer's Skeleton. In this 19th century tale, a curiously tall bellringer is approached by a medical doctor who, marveling over his strange proportions and giant hands, convinces him to sell his body to science. The bellringer accepts, as the doctor pays up front. Now I bet you think you know where this is going, right? But no, no body-snatchers here. The bellringer merely assumes he'll outlive the aged doctor, and happily takes the money to the tavern every night thereafter, where he drinks and drinks to his heart's content. Unfortunately, the bellringer, who's never had so much money all at once before, goes a tad overboard and ends up drinking himself to death. Whoops! Guess who's body's on display at the Museum of Natural History right now? Sucker! Watch the booze kids: that's the moral of this story. Ghost quotient: medium. The spectral skeleton apparently climbs up the tower to ring the bell at midnight, then stumbles down to the street to beg the passersby for enough money to buy himself back. Might've been scarier if the premise wasn't so wryly amusing. [Disclaimer: "ghost quotient" is an entirely meaningless criterion I just invented now to make this sound more fancy.]


Along we walk, and, strangely the author skirts the tour past the Island of the Dead, possibly because he disdains the obvious... although he does tell the perfect story to imagine whilst staring out over the water: The Cosmographer who stole Lucifer's Dreams. Fra Mauro, a monk living on San Michele in the mid-1400s, was an amazing cartographer who left a treasure trove of maps when he died. The only strange thing about him: he never once left Venice to visit any of the places he drew. This is how he did it: he saw the images in dream -- not his own, mind you, but the dreams of the devil, which he (get this) projected onto the cloudy skies above Venice. Art! Hubris! Proto-cinema! I love it. But, as all things the devil wrought, these dreams sometimes slipped out of his grasp and moved through the skies freely, terrifying townspeople and directing witches on their way to the sabbath. Some say they can still be seen up there on cloudy nights, when a storm rages... Weird quotient: high. This story is pure awesome.

We keep toddling along on our imagination tour just until the fondamenta dei Mori, where we stop at number 3399. There, we learn the story of Tintoretto -- yes, the painter -- and how his daughter was nearly tricked by a witch. Apparently a beautiful, mysterious woman told the little girl that she could become a nun if she hid her communion wafers instead of eating them in church, and instead took them home and hid them. Once she had ten, she'd become a nun. The girl obeyed the woman but halfway through the plan, freaked out and spilled it to her pops. Tintoretto was wise in the ways of the witch and knew the old crone would recruit the girl to the craft once she got the ten wafers. He told his daughter wait five more days, then invite the woman into the house to get the wafers. Of course, once the witch crossed the threshold, the artist "rushed her with a knobby stick" until she screeched, changed herself into a cat and flew out the window. Witch factor: medium to high. I like the idea of the witch recruiting a youngster through deceit, like a drug pusher.

Finally, at the Gheto Novo, we learn of the Plague of the Children, a twist on the Pied Piper tale, where the sins of parents are thrust upon their sons and daughters. In the summer of 1576 there was a Plague in Venice and many people died. But in the Jewish Ghetto, a strange thing happened: only children died. One after the other all the children perished, but not a single parent died. They begged the rabbi to find a solution and he pored over esoteric books like Buffy the Vampire Slayer for days and days to no avail. Finally one night he had a dream: in his dream he saw little children playing and dancing in the graveyard. He tore the shroud off one of the children, whose ghost returned the next night to beg for it back. "I cannot return without my shroud," the ghost child said. The rabbi refused unless the child could tell him the cause of the Plague of the Children, and the child told him it happened because a woman had killed her newborn. Well, they brought that crazy bitch to justice and, sure enough, no child died in the Ghetto again... for the rest of the summer. Little lamb* quotient: High. I love the idea of a ghost child wailing, "Give me my shrouuuuud!"

There are far, far many more stories than these; I've merely selected my favorites. No doubt any ghost aficionado will find their own favorites if the buy the book, and no doubt the tour will be even more impressive if walked while glimpsing the macabre floating island of death and such things. But for now, I am content with my virtual tour, and happy to let myself imagine what the ghosts themselves might look like something even someone present at the scene might be forced to do (ghosts have a strange habit of being uncooperative with tour groups and often failing to appear on demand).

One last little bit of business: nowhere in the book does the author mention how long it would take to walk this route, though I doubt it very much matters since time has no meaning in the land of the dead....

Join me next week for part two, where for wizards and mermaids and sainted mothers.

* Little lambs mark the graves of dead children in Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Man In The Picture and other Venice Ghosts

Just got through finishing Susan Hill's The Man in the Picture, a capably executed novella of the M.R. James school. I generally agree with the criticism out there -- it's classic, restrained, elegant, a wee tad disappointing at the end -- but am intrigued enough by her style to go out and get a copy of The Woman in Black. It's not easy being a writer of classical ghost stories these days, and I'm happy to have found someone with a similarly old-fashioned sensibility. Look for a review of that soon.

There's not much more to discuss about The Man in the Picture, other than I very much liked its use of an inanimate haunted object (I love me a good inanimate haunted object!) but the book is a handy springboard for introducing my newest adventure, the first in what will hopefully be a recurring series: virtual tours through haunted cities. The first, of course, will be Venice (I've already alluded to it here) and draws heavily upon this book, since I've never actually visited the place. (The book is the magic lantern show to my 19th century country rube.)

Before we actually wander the haunted streets of our imaginations, a little background on Venice, specifically on Venice as a trope in the horror canon. According to TVtropes.org, cities with canals instead of streets are a perennially popular setting for works of fantasy, though they're not sure why -- perhaps it's an aesthetic thing, or perhaps it's simply because watery bi-ways are so unusual. My theory hews somewhat closely to the latter; the unreal, shape-shifting quality of water opposes all that is solid -- earth, asphalt -- and thus lends itself to fevered imaginings, to the dreaming of dreams. And in dreams, of course, we all know the symbolic qualities of water include birth, death, sex, the deepest parts of the psyche: the perfect setting for our darkest tales.

Perhaps the most famous suspense story set in Venice is Daphne du Maurier's "Don't Look Now," though a significant portion of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is set in Venice as well. (The is also a ghost story called "The Haunted Hotel" by Wilkie Collins, which I shall clearly have to read.) "The Man in the Picture" joins this illustrious crowd as its narrative moves between the Most Serene Republic and sedate Cambridge. Hill's descriptions of the city are marred with dread: "It seemed to me to be a city of corruption and excess, an artificial place, full of darkness and foul odors... [of] dark and sinister water." In the course of the book, two young couples visit Venice on their honeymoon; the first couple visits quite innocently, the second seem drawn to it even though they know it brought death and tragedy in the past. In Hill's world, the city and the eponymous painting depicting it exert a dark power over anyone who beholds them.

Though I'm sure it's a perfectly delightful city, thanks to speculative fiction I can now only think of Venice in terms of gloom and darkness. Why not profit from my fear and misery, gentle reader? Come with me on a journey that starts dark and will only get darker. Headless monks, drowning witches, the sighing ghosts of dead children... all these things await you as you shiver through the summer months in various dank and moldy catacombs, taking the Deathly Grand Tour with your beloved Spinster Aunt...

Venetian Cemetery Photo courtesy of Lisa Manetti

Boats n Hos (Part 3)

I also had a chance to pop over to The Hague (because when are you ever going to go to a city with "The" in its name ... other than The Bronx?) and was appropriately dazzled by the Royal Picture Gallery. I went specifically for Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring (1665), which is really quite arresting:

It's a small canvas, but astonishing for its luminous, intimate, pretty, innocent, doe eyed ... ness. Sorry for the torrent of adjectives, but I was really struck by it. I know it's a cliche to say this, but there's an otherworldly aura to the original painting. I'm going here to learn more about the painting right after I finish this post (updating may occur).

Again, I was reminded of how awesome it is touring Europe in January, as I had Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaes Tulp (1632) all to myself in an empty room. The composition is typically lively, with all subjects looking in different places at once. The light source appears to be the body, emanating a glowing white (but looking at the painting you can see that it's actually a shaft of light from a high window).


The light source reminds me of a scene from Hitchcock's Suspicion, in which a glowing white glass of milk seems to illuminate the space around it:

The backgrounds in "Girl" and "Anatomy Lesson" are relatively unimportant -- plain black -- which directs the viewer's focus and highlights the paintings' subjects. Here's a random observation on Vermeer and Rembrandt: their use of black backgrounds reminds me of Disney's Alice in Wonderland.

See how dark all these backgrounds are? The Disney Alice is one of my favorite animated versions of the story, and part of the reason I'm so fond of it is the strange sort of black field it seems to take place in front of. It lends an eerie effect to the whole thing that I find quite delightful. Apparently it turns out Alice was considered a quick cheapie, which may be why Walt didn't put any time or effort into the backgrounds -- little did he know that his luminous blonde heroine would emulate the effects of the masters (or did he? he was an evil genius after all).

Other personal favorites within the collection were Jan Breughel 1 and Peter Paul Rubens' collaboration Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man (1617), Rubens' Old Woman and Boy With Candles (1616-17), Gerrit Dou's Old Woman Reading Lectionary (1631) and Hendrich Avercamp's On The Ice (1610). We saw Avercamp in the Rijksmuseum, too -- like Jaques Tati, he's very playful and full of activity in the frame and uses deep focus:

One The Ice

Playtime

See? The old masters aren't a bunch of boring pictures of black-clad dudes wearing frilly collars! These are fresh, lively, almost animated pictures that (I think) have a proto-cinematic (if you will) sense of depth and movement. So there!

Finally, I also really liked Judith Leyster's Man Offering Money to a Young Woman (1631):

Seeing Leyster's work made me want to learn more about her, as I don't know of many women painting at that time. It also made me aware of what women were doing in these paintings: reading, playing music, laughing, drinking, fondling dudes (or protecting their virtue), working lace, caring for children, pouring milk, sewing. I always thought the idea of women as naked passive objects in art was a bit overblown. These 17th century Dutchwomen had very busy lives, it seems. I wonder if it's just emblematic of the region, though -- I mean, the Netherlands was one of Europe's first Republics after all, and has always had that whole equality and tolerance thing going on. Of course, I'm sure they weren't allowed in the Draper's Guild but ... well, anyway, I'm going to look up Judith Leyster now and read more about her. I'm sure I'll be obsessed with the Northern Renaissance school for a long time.

Finally, I just want to add a little aside on the food, and then I promise I'll stop rambling about the Netherlands. Dutch food has a pretty bad reputation, and I'm sure their raw herring totally sucks, but nevertheless I managed to eat fairly well. For one, the grand Cafe Dudok in Rotterdam is very good, as is the Bagel Bakery, which serves Israeli cuisine as well as the eponymous bagels, and you can get decent Chinese-style fast food at Wok to Go. The Witte de Wittengstraat is a street packed full of galleries and tons of restaurants, which all seem to be pretty good, except for Bazaar, which I can tell you is totally overhyped.

At Bazaar, I put my name on the list for a table, waited for an hour, then asked when I'd be seated after seeing other, newer arrivals seated before me. They couldn't find my name on the list. I volunteered (pleasantly) to go somewhere else but they begged me to please sit, right away. The service was average, but the couscous was a shade below average, and way overpriced. My server disappeared after my meal and I totally could have walked out without paying, because, when I got up to use the restroom, he'd already cleared my table and put a "Reserved" sign up for the next customer. I went up to the maitre d' and paid him directly. This must be a mob joint or something, because I can't fathom how it stays in business. Other than Bazaar, the food in Holland is definitely Not That Bad, and hey, in Europe you can never go wrong with supermarket staples like bread, cheese, and fruit. And yes, the Gouda is very yummy.

Boats n Hos (Part 2)

Delfshaven, one of Rotterdam's few original neighborhoods still intact, was eerily quiet when I went, but pretty nonetheless. It's definitely where I'd want to live if were a Rotterdamer. There were artists painting in their ateliers, a woman cleaning her boat and a very sweet cafe called Soif overlooking the Maas River, where I'd totally hang out after I finished painting my boat and collaging in my studio.

Cute, no?

The Boijmans Museum is the largest art museum in Rotterdam, but it's still comparatively tiny, with a wee little collection. It more than makes up for it, though, by being extremely well-curated. Their permanent collection is organized chronologically and also by subject, so for example you'll be in the 16th and 17th century rooms, and each room within that section is subdivided by style: landscape, interiors, genre, etc. This imparts a wonderful sense of context and perspective, and for a gal like I (really a rank amateur) it's very informative.

Highlights included Cornelius Saftlever's Who Sues for a Cow (1629), Hendrik Martensz Gogh's The Grote Market in Rotterdam (1654) (which gives a good idea of what Rotterdam's medieval center might have looked like), Emanuel de Witte Interior with a Woman at the Virginal (1665), with beautifully rendered light and sophisticated deep focus:


There was also a delightful little aside, a room of modern installations stuck right in the middle of their 17th century exhibits, which they call"Interventions." The interventions are designed by various artists to interact with the permanent collection by mixing the old paintings with their new, original installations (the artist when I visited was Victor Man). The idea is to prevent the old masters from becoming too ossified by their own history, making them relevant, playful and new.

The Dutch seem to live with art and design in a way that is very real and immediate -- from the Urban Screens and installations at IFFR to the Interventions at the Boijmans, they seem to interact with art effortlessly, perhaps the result of their great legacy of Renaissance painting? In any case, it's no wonder they're at the forefront of international design since they seem to take it for granted as a vital part of life; what's more, they're not afraid of the new, as Rotterdam's architecture amply illustrates. I have great respect for the way they seem to refuse to compartmentalize, and for all their work ethic and business savvy they embrace art enthusiastically; that is, they don't seem to view these things as mutually exclusive. Americans, who tend to separate art and commerce, could learn.

Boats n Hos (Part 1)

And now, the long overdue Spinster Travelogue Netherlands Edition. Since this was a very museum-heavy trip (I mean, holy cats! This place is stuffed so full of Rembrandts it's like a freaking masterpiece jamboroo around here) it'll read more like a gallery round-up than a travelogue, but that's the way it was I tell ya. Listen, between the insane cultural treasure-trove, the gale-force winds, driving rain, and my inside-out umbrella, I was more than happy to spend a lot of time indoors. Here's the best of what I saw, where I supped, and things I learned. Also, a thrilling account of almost falling into a canal.

Let's start with Amsterdam: The Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.
Admittedly, I found the VGM underwhelming, and wondered if all his best work is scattered around the globe at various other museums, or if I was just spoiled by the very good MoMA exhibit earlier this year.(MoMA owns Starry Night, I think, so probably my scatter-theory has some merit). The Rijksmuseum was partially closed for renovation, but they thoughtfully had a "greatest hits" section open which included Rembrandt's Night Watch and Syndics of the Draper's Guild, and Vermeer's Milkmaid, and View of Houses in Delft (1658), below.

The only streetscape he ever painted, for which he applied paint in varying layers of thickness to depict glass versus paint, bricks, etc.

The Milkmaid is very still, calm, and peaceful, milk being the only movement in the picture.

Rembrandt loved a single light source and was interested in directing the viewer's eye.

Nightwatch isn't a nocturnal scene at all but rather a dark indoor scene illuminated by a single shaft of sunlight -- the misnomer is the result of dirt on the painting.

At this point I am beginning to become utterly spoiled by all the visual goodness around me, and Rotterdam has yet more in store.

Rotterdam was bombed to pieces during WWII, so it lacks the medieval center most European cities have (see what I learned at the Maritime Museum!). But it rebuilt astonishingly quickly embracing new and daring architectural forms, like Piet Blom's Cubic Houses:


Apparently the houses are meant to represent abstract trees that, when taken together, become a forest. But I think the cube houses provide a parallax view from certain angles, evoking the columns in an ancient structure, or the naves in a Gothic cathedral:

Perhaps I'm imagining things

While I was walking from the Maritime Museum to the Cube Houses the rain picked up and evening began to fall, so that by the time I left the Cubes to head back to my hotel, the whipping wind and the darkness so disoriented me that I lost my way. Stumbling around a city while lost is one thing; stumbling around a city whose streets end abruptly in waterways is another. I kept turning my umbrella this way and that to shelter myself from the rain, sometimes having to place it directly in front of me, looking only at the ground to see where I was going. I crossed a footbridge. I could see only very dimly. I looked up to try and orient myself and skirted left a little too sharply. Narrowly, by about a foot or so, I missed stumbling into the water. "Wouldn't that be just like me," I thought, "To fall into a canal in January?"

Prague on Ice

While this Spinster Travelogue is long overdue, it's cold enough in NYC today to bring back sharp memories of Prague two weeks ago, during the coldest of the cold snaps. (During which, I might add, people in Slovakia had NO HEAT, thanks to a natural gas dispute between Russia and the Ukraine. Something like fourteen people died, so I tried to keep my complaining to a minimum.)

With its embarrassment of architectural riches and compact historical center, Prague is ideally suited for long outdoor walks, but kind of miserable on frigid January days. During any other winter, I'd happily stroll the city's snow-dusted cobblestone lanes for hours at a stretch, but on this trip our flaneur time maxed out at two hours or less.

A complicated timepiece

From Kampa we caught Tram No. 22 up the hill toward Strahov Monastery, a medieval marvel founded in the twelfth century. The tram ride is a tour in itself, winding up Petrin hill over pretty Mala Strana and offering breathtaking views. Strahov's stunning medieval library is open to the public, and I was completely captivated when I saw CALL NUMBERS on the books' spines. From there it's a healthy walk to Prague Castle, but a charming one, on a street called Nerudova, which is also known as the Royal Way.

Rooftops in Mala Strana

Prague Castle's enormous complex of museums and galleries is familiar to both my mother and I -- she absolutely refuses to go to Golden Lane, because she thinks it's too commercial -- but we did stop by the recently restored Lobowitz Palace. The Palace is owned by Czech-Americans who were granted restitution of their land after the curtain fell, and their audio tour is hilarious. They take turns talking about all their priceless treasure and what a bitch the upkeep of all *that* is, and at one point when the matriarch of the family hands off the mic to her son, he actually says, "Thank you, mummy!" It's kind of sickening, but then there are original Beethoven scores in glass display cases, which are guaranteed to awe (if you're not awed by the original score of Beethoven's Fifth, you have no soul).

Strahov Monastery is in the background

The Museum of the City of Prague was next on our tour, and I completely loved it. It's my favorite museum in the city right now, and it has a fabulous scale model of the town in the early 19th century where you can actually see streets you walked down, like Nerudova (and you'll be forgiven for saying things like, "Look, there's our hotel!") Architecture students should love this place, and they get a student discount on admission (your MA in Cinema Studies will get you nowhere with the ticket lady, unfortunately). This was a far, far better museum than the cheap-o Mucha Museum in Old Town Square, which consisted of a few slapped-together posters, and totally sucked.

Finally, what wintertime jaunt would be complete without cozy places to eat and drink? For my money, you can't beat Café Slavia, a grand old-world café where Vaclav Havel used to dine. Located across the street from the National Theatre, you can soak up some history while your hearty dumplings soak up some beer, and you can do it all under a gaudy oil painting of a man drinking absinthe with the Green Fairy. You can probably get absinthe, too, if that's your thing.

Or you could go to the Kinomat

Later in the week we went to a small town called Trinec to pack up my grandmother's things and prepare her apartment for sale (she passed away in November). I couldn't help but notice a few things, notably:

Czech peasantry (note the poppies):

Me:
My grandma's town:


= I am a peasant

... which explains a lot of things about me, like why I really want that country house, and why I think potatoes are "neat."

Na zdravi!

Rotterdam, Rain, Movies

Any married Spinster worth her salt knows better than to let her husband gallivant around Europe unchaperoned, which is how I come to find myself in Rotterdam. While Rob makes with the art talk over the next four days, I plan to amuse myself with a haunted house, a maritime museum, walks in the rain, and, of course, movies. The most delightful so far is Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair, Guy Maddin and Isabella Rosselini's tribute to Thomas Edison, electricity, the movie camera and all their attendant thrills.

Update: I saw an old Chantal Ackerman film, Saute Ma Ville (more on that later), and part of a Russian teen-angst movie called Everybody Dies But Me, which was average. I walked to the Boijmans van Beuningen museum in the driving wind and rain, only to realize I'd left my student card in my hotel room -- and I'll be dammed if I'm paying 12 Euros -- so I trudged over to the Maritime Museum where I shivered in my soaking socks and learned a lot about the Dutch East and West Indian Companies (fact check: the museum claims the Dutch West Indian Company ran the colony of New Amsterdam for a time ... and they're right! Bonus points awarded to any reader who can tell me the name of the company man they put in charge of the operation). Why am I obsessed with maritme museums? I can't tell you that. But it's the same part of me that simply *had* to wander along the canals in the January drizzle and look at the boats. That folly was richly rewarded, though, since I wandered my way to the cube houses, which are strange and delightful enough to merit the hike.

Finally, I visited one of the Festival's more whimsical installations, the Haunted House featuring rooms by Wisit Sasanatieng (“Tears of the Black Tiger”, “The Unseeable”), Amir Muhammad (“Susuk”), Lav Diaz (“Death in the Land of the Encantos”) , Nguyen Vihn Son (“The Moon at the Bottom of the Well”), Garin Nugroho (“Opera Jawa”) and Riri Riza (“Eliana, Eliana”). Wisit's room, "Close Encounter With The Ghost" made me jump, Lav Diaz's "Manila's Dark Room" made me really not want to be alone with my thoughts, and Garin Nugroho's "Transformation: Ghosts in Garin's House" was strangely inviting. My apologies to Riri Riza for stepping on the flowers in his "Purificaion Pod."

Between the raininess, the wateriness, the ghostiness and the viewing of some vintage Ackerman, I'd have to say it's been a pretty dreamy day so far ...

What, You've Never Been?

Prauge in winter is generally unassuming, drab and gray ... until it snows. When it snows, "Prague at once becomes a little old-world town all countrified and old-fashioned, quaintly baroque," in the words of Karel Capek. "Even the Vltava does not move; the tram tinkles like a sledge ... Then when the moon shines on it all, what happens cannot even be expressed: Prague crouches down and makes herself quite little; she holds her breath; the snow rings like glass under-foot, the roofs press themselves down to the ground, everything huddles together icily, and it is so light, so strangely light ..." Sorry for the stock photo and quote-heavy post, but I'm far too agog to write anything at the moment. Personal photos and coherent descriptions of Prague Castle, the Mucha "museum" and other delights to follow.