Tadeusz598

A friend of mine once said that if you could create a European city that was entirely average, then the result would be Madrid.

I think he meant that there was nothing very distinctive about it, and when I try to think about Madrid the only think that comes to mind is the very serious expression on the (strangely square)faces of the people. They did not seem very jolly or friendly, and my sister, who lived there for a year or so said that she did not manage to make any friends at all.

If only he had been interested in Painting! There are several excellent collections here! But I tend not to think of art collections as having much to do with the real life of a place…

This city became very trendy just about the time I visited it and architecture students were always travelling there from the UK in their black polo necks and heavy “Corbu” spectacles. I was a student of painting so I got to hang out with them sometimes if I promised not to be too spontaneous.

Anyway, architects and designers would sometimes maintain that the success of this city is due to their interventions. Perhaps they are right…

But there is something that happens to a place when it is over-run by designers. It becomes self-conscious; it loses something…people stop behaving normally, they’re always posing. Even the food they eat is eaten not because it is tasty but because it is the food that you are supposed to be seen to be eating by other architecture students and designers.

While narcissism is enjoyable when you are pretty and in your twenties, as you get older it’s pleasures become less easy to access…

It is for this reason that I prefer broken down almost places like those in Turkey, to cities like this.

It just seemed as if every element in my experience of Moscow was there to show how brutish and nasty a place it all was.

It’s hideously expensive, the people, drunk and slovenly. It is filthy. Officials, service staff, and the general public are offensively rude and avaricious. Foreigners are charged more for tickets.

The weather is atrocious, the architecture hideous. The Kremlin is brutal, and designed to intimidate. The traffic is vile, polluting. The food is a disgrace unless you are willing to pay a fortune.

I shall make an exception of the area about Patriarch’s Pond, which is lovely, and exceptional. I wonder why they didn’t bulldoze it?

Avoid this place.

The buildings don’t bear any real resenblance to Alte Germany. They’re kitsch. The “wooden” half-timbering is made of metal.

The beer isn’t made in little brewaries: it’s the same flavouress fizz tou get everywhere else in Brazil (Skol, Brahma etc). They do some passsable imitations of German food: we ate in a posh place up on the hill, which cost a fortune, and it was okay, but nothing special.

Everything shuts at about noon on saturday. Including the City museum. There are no bookshops, record shops …there is a Chinese restaurant…there’s no one about…it’s just a rubbish place unless your dead drunk… which is probably why they produced that beerfestival…

The average German now inhabits twice the space he did before the war.

This is because Germany had become increasingly suburbanised, because of the rapid expansion of car ownership, because of better roads and because of a decentralising policy.

For the traveller, though, this leads to the suspicion that Germany pre-war was probably considerably more interesting than it is now, offering a more concentrated cultural experience.

I am not strying to say that Germany is uninteresting, but there is rarely much of a buzz anywhere. So a city like Leipzig, which is glorious, seems strangely quiet, likewise Bonn, Koln, Hannover, even Munich…

The only exception to this is Berlin, which is still quite exciting (despite their declining population).

I must add that I have always enjoyed visiting Germany. I have found the people to be courteous, witty and kind. I like the fact that everything works properly, I like their wonderful food and beer and I like their beautiful art collections.

I went to France some times, usually to look at buildings and impose my abyssmal French on the unfortunates around me.

Gernerally I’ve found this a pleasant enough way to waste time.

I have such a strong suspicion of the place (nation of collaborators, onion sellers, fundamentally unsound etc) that invariably I am pleasantly surprised. And if you love art and architecture you can’t really go wrong here.

The thing that surprises me most is that I don’t find the people really take themselves seriously at all: they just don’t want to pretend a hospitality that they don’t genuinely feel.

Here are some things to think abou the UK:

1. Weather.
2. Reserved people.
3. Alchohol. Lots of it. Beer, wine, then more beer. Whisky is quite dear, alas.
4. Bulidings; many. Terraced houses in rows, then wonderful churches, or splendid cathedrals, mostly emprty except for some lonely old people on a sunday.
5. London: very big and hard to make friends. Expensive. Great museums and bookshops.
6. Counstryside, diminishing.
7. Too many people.
8. Social class. Public schools and state schools, and choosing the right school.
9. House prices.
10. Will the Conservatives ever recover?
11. Races; many, sense of consfusion and dsisplacement. Noone really knows what they think of the UK being mixed race. I suspect many people secretly don’t like it.
12. The sea.
13. Country houses.
14. Indian food.
15. Sport. Lots of sport and drunken sports fans and boring conversations about sport.
16. The pub. Reading newspapers in the pub. Very pleasant way of wasting time.
17. The British sense of humour: Charming. Another British characteristic: stoicism. Admirable. Likewise, patience and understanding of embarassment.

Thats enough for now!

The UK is a fascinating country. But I can’t help thinking that it’s just far too crowded.

For some reason the idiot British media had been going on about how Manchester was the place to be etc (because they produced some rock bands and redeveloped some areas).

So being at a lose end and generally a curious sort of chap I duly made my way up to Manchester Picadilly…and what do i find?

There’s nothing much going on here!

The Victorian area is quite small, thought it has grand buildings. The Art gallery is good-ish, but not worth a specific visit. The Lowry collection in Salford is interesting, but the area around it is extremely despiriting. Their Imperial War Museum is ok, but really designed for children.

I went over to Canal Street to hang out with the homosexuals (though I am not even gay: I was so bored) but it was so quiet there (Manchester’s answer to Soho, my foot!) thatt I traipsed accross town to one of the few cinemas to get a ticket for The Passion of the Christ (forced by boredeoom to watch a film I knew I would dislike just to kill time before I could respectably go to bed). I hung out in Watersone’s bookstore for a while, waiting for the film to start.

Waterstone’s seemed like the liveliest place in Manchester.

The trams are also good.

At first I thought that I shouldn’t write about Bucharest, because it was over ten years ago that I went there, and so much could have changed since then

But then I thought, what the hell…

Bucharest was what I expect Paraguay to be.

1. filthy.
2. lovely Parisian style building of white stucco ruined by those idiot communists/fascists
3. that strange feeling of “this is a bit like somewhere else”...that goes for the language, the food, the buildings…you are constantly made to think of Paris, or Italy, or Hungary or, or…

The place stank. There were beggars all over. The roads were full of holes. Ceaucesceau had built a huge palace; utterly hideous and pointless and half-finished. They had an art gallery but it was full of kitsch. The only places to eat were iimitation pizza huts. A few noveau riche types drove about showing off, with bad hairstyles and designer clothes.

I felt pity for everyone including myself. I hid in the Sheraton Hotel. The girl I had come to see had given me the brush off. her friend wasn’t interested either.

I became extremely depressed and drank a lot of awful wine. Then I flew to Istanbul…

Aberdonians sometimes say, Fur coats and nae knickers” when describing Edinburgh, meaning that the place is superficially elegant, but that under the surface it is pretty lower class.

There’s a fair degree of truth to this: Edinburgh manages ot be both seedy and refined at the same time. The locals drink like billy ho, pools of vomit everywhere on Sunday morning, and they can be quite aggressive, or snobbish (which is a form of aggression in itself).

But what do you get as a visitor?

You get the Old Town (medaeval,a castle, the Royal Mile, Holyrood Palace and funny little closes and back lanes) and you get the New Town (Georgian, geometric street plan, vistas). This is the finest 18th century city in the UK and something of a must-see, if you are keen on architecture. At times the organisation of buildings is indescribably beautiful, like a dream

There is a goodish art collection, with Poussin’s 7 Sacraments, and a famous Gauguin, not to mention some excellent Scottish painting. There’s a Moderna Art gallery (not too bad, with a decent Magritte). There are good cinemas and bookshops.

Eating is generally a misrable experience in Scotland and Edinburgh is no exception. But I have found that, for lunch, St Giles Cathdral Cafe is really a good deal.

There’s a very badly designed modern pariament building, and a good zoo. There’s the Royal Scottish Museum (very worhtwhile) and Greyfriars Bobby.

It’s all very good and impressive, but somehow I just find it all very oppressive. A friend of me described Edinburgh as a “gilded prison” and I think if you spend more than 3 days here you’ll understand what he meant.