Today I walked around the city, alone, for eight hours with scarcely a break. This solitary walking is a reflection of a deep need that goes back decades. There is a kind of opening to chance, to adventure. I feel myself in a lineage of 'flâneurs'. Edmund White writes beautifully about the 'flâneur' in his book, not coincidentally, on Paris. He describes him as someone in search of aesthetic and erotic delight.
The 'flâneur' was born in Paris in the late C19th. Baron Haussmann had torn down great swathes of Paris, to build wide boulevards (that troops could swiftly enter in case of popular insurrection) full of bourgeois apartment blocks and shopping arcades, and thus created the first recognisably modern city (I simplify!). Ancient neighbourhoods were broken up for ever.............I have decided its quite impossible to describe the 'flâneur'! If you are one, you may recognise yourself. Let me know.
I don't know if women can be 'flâneuses'. A woman in search of aesthetic and erotic delight might attract a different and less flattering epithet. A woman, besides, cannot slip as easily as a man, alone, through the interstices of city life. (Do prove me wrong, girls!) There have however been some great women photographers of the city, Berenice Abbott to mention but one, so I guess a woman behind a camera must count as a 'flâneur' - 'flâneuse' as a word is just too hideous, and perilously close to 'floozy'.
The baser elements of Eros, fortunately, play much less of a part in my life than hitherto. My interests and explorations on my solitary perambulations are largely aesthetic, but having now exhausted myself trying to explain the 'flâneur's' impulse, after a hard day's walking, I need to turn in, hit the sack. ( More idioms for you, Oiuna!)
Monday, 10 November 2008
ps re: format
If you are receiving this blog in standard email format you may like to try at serafinski.blogspot.com directly, for the full Monty!
Sunday, 9 November 2008
put in our place by erin and sam
Our companions, from Wyoming, on the train between UB and Beijing, were Erin and Sam. Charmers though they were (hi guys!) they have seriously dented our amour propre. Our hitherto heroic (-seeming) crossing of a continent has been knocked into a corner, pipped to the post, dwarfed, cut down a peg (more idioms for you Iouna!) by their enterprise.
While we have Scrabbled, potnoodled, and gazed somnolently out of the carriage window at the passing scenery, they have been toiling through it on bicycles! They left Kazakhstan in August, and by circuitous routes aim to reach Prague by the early spring of 2010! Snookered! Buggered even.
Why are they on a train? It's apparently very troublesome crossing borders on bikes (officialdom can't cope with cyclists) and besides the Gobi is an inhospitable place at the best of times and in winter unpitying. Only a shaggy camel would survive. As it is we enjoy their company, share cakes and tales, and rejoice together in Obama's victory (they had tippled at the US Embassy in UB the night before).
The Gobi was uneventful, mostly flat with distant swells in the landscape, and quite awesome; I was glad to be watching it unfurl from behind glass. Eventually we passed into China, the military who checked our papers smiled and chatted a little in English to my great surprise, we followed sections of the Great Wall as we breakfasted, went through a series of monumental gorges to debouch into the plain of Beijing.
And here I am at the Bamboo Garden Hotel (Internet in every room) about to walk through the ornamental gardens full of gingko and fruiting persimmon, for a copious breakfast. Then perhaps the Forbidden City.
While we have Scrabbled, potnoodled, and gazed somnolently out of the carriage window at the passing scenery, they have been toiling through it on bicycles! They left Kazakhstan in August, and by circuitous routes aim to reach Prague by the early spring of 2010! Snookered! Buggered even.
Why are they on a train? It's apparently very troublesome crossing borders on bikes (officialdom can't cope with cyclists) and besides the Gobi is an inhospitable place at the best of times and in winter unpitying. Only a shaggy camel would survive. As it is we enjoy their company, share cakes and tales, and rejoice together in Obama's victory (they had tippled at the US Embassy in UB the night before).
The Gobi was uneventful, mostly flat with distant swells in the landscape, and quite awesome; I was glad to be watching it unfurl from behind glass. Eventually we passed into China, the military who checked our papers smiled and chatted a little in English to my great surprise, we followed sections of the Great Wall as we breakfasted, went through a series of monumental gorges to debouch into the plain of Beijing.
And here I am at the Bamboo Garden Hotel (Internet in every room) about to walk through the ornamental gardens full of gingko and fruiting persimmon, for a copious breakfast. Then perhaps the Forbidden City.
kristallnacht
All day as I wandered around the Imperial Summer Gardens in autumn sunshine I thought about the events of 70 years ago tonight, when all over Germany hundreds of synagogues were torched and destroyed. It was a harbinger of things to come. I watched the news tonight. Plus ca change.
We delight at Obama's victory at the polls.
We are alive and well in Beijing, and are making plans to stay here longer as it is so marvellous!
We delight at Obama's victory at the polls.
We are alive and well in Beijing, and are making plans to stay here longer as it is so marvellous!
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
bye bye 4 now 2 UB
Am brain dead. Have spent the afternoon helping Oiuna with her English idioms homework. After a while I felt like throwing in the towel, at the strangeness of it all. I could not keep my eye on the ball. One could become as mad as a hatter trying to explain things like catching the waiter's eye, let alone changing the goalposts and being boxed into a corner. And how about hitting the road, and being wet behind the ears? Is this what Alice felt like in Wonderland, when the familiar suddenly seems wondrous strange?
Tomorrow we leave for Beijing by the 8am train. 30 hours later we will be there. Back to the confines of our compartment, and to pot noodle.
I part reluctantly from this Internet Cafe, as I have become familiar with it, and can operate solo without help from strangers (although I will be glad to see the back of screeching teenagers).
I part sadly from Mongolia too. Its been great here, and I don't imagine I'll be passing this way again.
Tomorrow we leave for Beijing by the 8am train. 30 hours later we will be there. Back to the confines of our compartment, and to pot noodle.
I part reluctantly from this Internet Cafe, as I have become familiar with it, and can operate solo without help from strangers (although I will be glad to see the back of screeching teenagers).
I part sadly from Mongolia too. Its been great here, and I don't imagine I'll be passing this way again.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
ps
Przewalski's horse is a charming and intriguingly named sort of proto-horse, which once trotted in great abundance all over Mongolia. It became almost extinct, but with help from zoos all over the world it has been reintroduced into the wild with some success. Przewalski was aPole!
przewalski's horse
"The Ulanbaataar is establishing of the introduce by the named." But one of many charming captions at the City Museum. "The first story of the under the jurisdiction of the retail trade tryst's in the state of Ulanbaataar."
The Museum is housed in one of the city's last remaining wooden buildings, from 1907, and is a charmer. Where else will you find a full-length portrait of Brezhnev, in embroidery? And a porcelain plate depicting Leeds Town Hall, recalling some long-ago celebration by comrades? Marvellous old photographs of a city full of temples and gers, before the First War, and of a new city being built in the 20's and 30's with wide empty avenues. Proud ministries, and model factories. Opposite the museum is another wooden house, now crumbling, once the city's first Post Office, festooned with telegraph wires.
Last night David and I went up the Irish Pub for some male bonding. Joanna stayed at home nursing the aftermath of a migraine. We hope for Guiness but there is none left! I guess it's a long way from Dublin to UB. We make do with a pint of Chingghiss, in this very popular and noisy watering hole. Recently tempers have been a little frayed. Moods have swung. Hormones have played their part. Released from the confines of a railway carriage into the vastness of Mongolia, we have had to make plans, and this has sometimes been a little fraught. On the trains one falls into a strange trance-like state (at least I do - which probably accounts for the fact that I have not won a single round of Scrabble since St.Pancras), and the only decisions to be made are when to go to the toilet, get hot water from the samovar, and which pot noodle to open. The Chinggiss soothes, and the excellent french fries sustain, and harmony is restored. We watch English football, and then retire to our guesthouse when the very loud, homegrown, Goth band makes conversation impossible.
The night before, a glance at a souvenir plate from London up on the kitchen shelf, with its depictions of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and other familiar places, induces a Proustian moment of recall, and we are soon discussing the Royal family. Tears are shed, in this corner of a foreign field, when we contemplate the Queen's demise. What a big moment that will be for the national psyche to cope with. And whither royalty after?
Prompted by this discussion I begin Alan Bennett's hilarious short story, (An Uncommon Reader) of the Queen, who after half a century of leafing through little more than Country Life, develops a passion for literature after a chance encounter with the City of Westminster's mobile library van in a backyard at the Palace. It is mercifully short (I have become hopelessly bogged down with "In Siberia", excellent as it is), and also very moving in its descriptions of love of literature. I could happily spend the rest of my life travelling and reading.
How can I wangle that one?
I go most days to the Cafe Amsterdam. It has a charming raised deck up above the pavement, and on a sunny winter's day one could be in St.Moritz. It serves Illy coffee. Illy were a Jewish family from Trieste. Ever since I read Jan Morris' account of Trieste, called something like 'Nowhere Place", I have wanted to go there - perhaps it will be my next trip. Once it was the Hapsburgs' great port on the Adriatic. Decades of confusion later, it found itself in a remote corner of a new Italy, quite irrelevant.
I once bumped into Jan Morris at the Wallace Collection. I was looking at my favourite Poussin Painting, A Dance to To The Music of Time, and heard a gentle voice beside me. A greyhaired lady in a cardigan was commenting on the same picture to her companion. Jan Morris! My hero/ine!
For those of you unfamiliar with Jan, one of our finest history and travel writers, she started life as James, fought valiantly as an officer in the Royal Navy during the war, and in the 60's went to Tangiers for a sex-change operation. In those days operations of this sort were not available on the National Health. She returned as Jan, and described her experience in "Conundrum". She continues to live with her wife Elisabeth, and writes beautifully.
With Alan Bennett, she is a national treasure.
A last caption from the City Museum: "The socialist attitude of the name's medalion".
The Museum is housed in one of the city's last remaining wooden buildings, from 1907, and is a charmer. Where else will you find a full-length portrait of Brezhnev, in embroidery? And a porcelain plate depicting Leeds Town Hall, recalling some long-ago celebration by comrades? Marvellous old photographs of a city full of temples and gers, before the First War, and of a new city being built in the 20's and 30's with wide empty avenues. Proud ministries, and model factories. Opposite the museum is another wooden house, now crumbling, once the city's first Post Office, festooned with telegraph wires.
Last night David and I went up the Irish Pub for some male bonding. Joanna stayed at home nursing the aftermath of a migraine. We hope for Guiness but there is none left! I guess it's a long way from Dublin to UB. We make do with a pint of Chingghiss, in this very popular and noisy watering hole. Recently tempers have been a little frayed. Moods have swung. Hormones have played their part. Released from the confines of a railway carriage into the vastness of Mongolia, we have had to make plans, and this has sometimes been a little fraught. On the trains one falls into a strange trance-like state (at least I do - which probably accounts for the fact that I have not won a single round of Scrabble since St.Pancras), and the only decisions to be made are when to go to the toilet, get hot water from the samovar, and which pot noodle to open. The Chinggiss soothes, and the excellent french fries sustain, and harmony is restored. We watch English football, and then retire to our guesthouse when the very loud, homegrown, Goth band makes conversation impossible.
The night before, a glance at a souvenir plate from London up on the kitchen shelf, with its depictions of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and other familiar places, induces a Proustian moment of recall, and we are soon discussing the Royal family. Tears are shed, in this corner of a foreign field, when we contemplate the Queen's demise. What a big moment that will be for the national psyche to cope with. And whither royalty after?
Prompted by this discussion I begin Alan Bennett's hilarious short story, (An Uncommon Reader) of the Queen, who after half a century of leafing through little more than Country Life, develops a passion for literature after a chance encounter with the City of Westminster's mobile library van in a backyard at the Palace. It is mercifully short (I have become hopelessly bogged down with "In Siberia", excellent as it is), and also very moving in its descriptions of love of literature. I could happily spend the rest of my life travelling and reading.
How can I wangle that one?
I go most days to the Cafe Amsterdam. It has a charming raised deck up above the pavement, and on a sunny winter's day one could be in St.Moritz. It serves Illy coffee. Illy were a Jewish family from Trieste. Ever since I read Jan Morris' account of Trieste, called something like 'Nowhere Place", I have wanted to go there - perhaps it will be my next trip. Once it was the Hapsburgs' great port on the Adriatic. Decades of confusion later, it found itself in a remote corner of a new Italy, quite irrelevant.
I once bumped into Jan Morris at the Wallace Collection. I was looking at my favourite Poussin Painting, A Dance to To The Music of Time, and heard a gentle voice beside me. A greyhaired lady in a cardigan was commenting on the same picture to her companion. Jan Morris! My hero/ine!
For those of you unfamiliar with Jan, one of our finest history and travel writers, she started life as James, fought valiantly as an officer in the Royal Navy during the war, and in the 60's went to Tangiers for a sex-change operation. In those days operations of this sort were not available on the National Health. She returned as Jan, and described her experience in "Conundrum". She continues to live with her wife Elisabeth, and writes beautifully.
With Alan Bennett, she is a national treasure.
A last caption from the City Museum: "The socialist attitude of the name's medalion".
Monday, 3 November 2008
more from UB
Testosterone departed, calm and decorum has been restored to the Internet cafe. The rowdy youngsters are back at school.
Yesterday we went skiing. My own efforts were rather feeble. While the others gambolled about on the slopes, I struggled with my unfamiliar cross-country skis that have untethered heels, and only ventured a few metres from base, uncomfortably.
The occasion was a visit with Oiuna, who has followed us to UB from Erdenet (she studies here) , to her sister's place 10 miles out of town. Sister and brother-in-law treat us to a gargantuan meal of mutton, cooked with superhot stones in an iron bucket in the garden. They used to be skating champions for Mongolia, and we looked amazed at old photographs from the 60's, of lithe streamlined bodies winning medals. Today they are more comfortably shaped, and marvellously hospitable in their dacha out of town.
UB and environs have been full of delights and surprises. We visited a mountain top Observatory where we gazed at the stars through a large telescope that is twinned with the one in Krakow! My own active interest in astronomy dates back to fifty years ago, when I wanted to be an astronaut. Since then I have not kept abreast of discoveries, and was surprised and bemused to be looking at 'black clouds' and supernovae. It was also bloody freezing in the observatory, with the roof wide open to skies. We were staying alone in the adjoining deserted hotel, which recalled 'The Shining" and the Bates' Motel in Psycho.
We travelled 50 miles out of town to see a gigantic steel statue of Genghis (pronounced Chingis, there being no hard 'g' in the language) Khan, 40 metres high on a rearing horse, and climbed to the top to survey his ancestral lands. His name is everywhere, and enshrines Mongolia's aspirations. Contrary to what I learnt at school he was a wise old bird, and was indeed voted Man of the Millenium by Time Magazine in 2000. I was intrigued to learn, from a museum caption, that his warriors wore silk underwear. "One would not normally consider underwear to be military equipment," it opined. Apparently silk has miraculous powers to resist penetration by arrows. A must therefore for your next forays to Hackney and Peckham.
We travelled by taxi through an amazing National Park that recalled the Dolomites, and seen superb dinosaur skeletons in the Museum. The Gobi desert, which we will cross in a few days, was once verdant pastureland, and is the world's prime source of preserved bones (together with California). Moving indeed to study those skeletons, not so different from our own, give or take the odd claw or 20 metre long tail. Familiar shapes from my human anatomy studies many years ago at medical school.
Stopping for lunch at a Czech restaurant we are assailed by the Pet Shop Boys, who transport me back a couple of decades to the unhappiest, and maddest, moments of my life. The Boys were the soundtrack to a doomed and crazy love affair, which opened up a Pandora's box of pain. Years of therapy, and meditation, and new friendships, shifted all that, but the tears I shed for that distant time, and for the main protagonist, now dead, are hot.
China begins to loom large in our thoughts. We travel there in a few days. We move from a friendly population of 2.8 million to one of 1.3 BILLION. How are we to cope? Are they all as unfriendly as Mongolians say?
Love to all.
Yesterday we went skiing. My own efforts were rather feeble. While the others gambolled about on the slopes, I struggled with my unfamiliar cross-country skis that have untethered heels, and only ventured a few metres from base, uncomfortably.
The occasion was a visit with Oiuna, who has followed us to UB from Erdenet (she studies here) , to her sister's place 10 miles out of town. Sister and brother-in-law treat us to a gargantuan meal of mutton, cooked with superhot stones in an iron bucket in the garden. They used to be skating champions for Mongolia, and we looked amazed at old photographs from the 60's, of lithe streamlined bodies winning medals. Today they are more comfortably shaped, and marvellously hospitable in their dacha out of town.
UB and environs have been full of delights and surprises. We visited a mountain top Observatory where we gazed at the stars through a large telescope that is twinned with the one in Krakow! My own active interest in astronomy dates back to fifty years ago, when I wanted to be an astronaut. Since then I have not kept abreast of discoveries, and was surprised and bemused to be looking at 'black clouds' and supernovae. It was also bloody freezing in the observatory, with the roof wide open to skies. We were staying alone in the adjoining deserted hotel, which recalled 'The Shining" and the Bates' Motel in Psycho.
We travelled 50 miles out of town to see a gigantic steel statue of Genghis (pronounced Chingis, there being no hard 'g' in the language) Khan, 40 metres high on a rearing horse, and climbed to the top to survey his ancestral lands. His name is everywhere, and enshrines Mongolia's aspirations. Contrary to what I learnt at school he was a wise old bird, and was indeed voted Man of the Millenium by Time Magazine in 2000. I was intrigued to learn, from a museum caption, that his warriors wore silk underwear. "One would not normally consider underwear to be military equipment," it opined. Apparently silk has miraculous powers to resist penetration by arrows. A must therefore for your next forays to Hackney and Peckham.
We travelled by taxi through an amazing National Park that recalled the Dolomites, and seen superb dinosaur skeletons in the Museum. The Gobi desert, which we will cross in a few days, was once verdant pastureland, and is the world's prime source of preserved bones (together with California). Moving indeed to study those skeletons, not so different from our own, give or take the odd claw or 20 metre long tail. Familiar shapes from my human anatomy studies many years ago at medical school.
Stopping for lunch at a Czech restaurant we are assailed by the Pet Shop Boys, who transport me back a couple of decades to the unhappiest, and maddest, moments of my life. The Boys were the soundtrack to a doomed and crazy love affair, which opened up a Pandora's box of pain. Years of therapy, and meditation, and new friendships, shifted all that, but the tears I shed for that distant time, and for the main protagonist, now dead, are hot.
China begins to loom large in our thoughts. We travel there in a few days. We move from a friendly population of 2.8 million to one of 1.3 BILLION. How are we to cope? Are they all as unfriendly as Mongolians say?
Love to all.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
teenager mayhem
I am surrounded by screaming youngsters playing noisy computer games, so not conducive to blogging.
We are all very well however, and in UB for another 5 days.
Lucy, thanks for your postcode, but what is the rest of your address ?- I want to send you a postcard!
Off to Cafe Amsterdam for a cappuccino! love to all, and thanks for your emails - they are still not arriving in floods, but are very welcome, however brief!
We are all very well however, and in UB for another 5 days.
Lucy, thanks for your postcode, but what is the rest of your address ?- I want to send you a postcard!
Off to Cafe Amsterdam for a cappuccino! love to all, and thanks for your emails - they are still not arriving in floods, but are very welcome, however brief!
Monday, 27 October 2008
aborted safari precipitates premature return to 'genghis khan' guesthouse UB or 'all's well that ends well'
At the end of the third day of our adventures the jeep failed to start, half-way up a snowy mountain. Fortunately we were on horseback at the time, having just visited a monastery high on a peak, where the renowned Zanabazar meditated in the C17th, and changed the face of Mongolian Buddhist art. The jeep abandoned, we trotted back to the 'ger' where a friendly nomad family had given us a shelter the previous night, lost travellers in the dark. A couple of hours later two Russian micro-buses full of New Zealanders hurtled us back to Karakoram, and safety.
Mongolian landscapes are awesome, and indescribable. I have taken a hundred thousand digital images, so do come and watch them some time.
Watching the constellations shift across the sky through the large hole at the top of a 'ger', as you lie on your couch under many layers of insulation is a marvel. Deciding you need to get up and have a pee in the sub-zero dark outside is equally a marvel, of denial, reluctance, acceptance and eventual fearful exit from the safety of the ger, having first to step over the sleeping bodies of our two drivers and very handsome host. The starry, starry night is dizzying. Are the overfriendly Mongolian hounds asleep, and is it safe to remove one's tackle?
The day after our rescue we return through more awesome scenery to UB, in the company of a handsome elderly couple, wearing the very beautiful traditional silken coats, done up with a cummerbund of contrasting colour, a couple of adorable tiny twins, swaddled in swathes of pink and blue, and assorted others. En route we stop at a roadside hostelry for a hearty mutton soup (we have long since given up trying to be vegetarian in these mountain wastes) which must have half a sheep in it.
Returned to UB we spend a night back at the station hotel, and then remove to our present quarters near the centre, in the most charming guesthouse. David and Joanna have bagged the double room, but I am quite content in my shared dormitory, inhabited at present by two beautiful Buryat girls from Ulan Ude, and their older protector or uncle. From the look of their huge bags they are traders, but who knows in what. 'Uncle' plies me with vodka, which is very welcome after our ordeal, which aids bonhomie and smiles, but does not help linguistically. Genghis Khan guesthouse must be the cleanest and friendliest in all of Mongolia.
Facts and figures: Mongolia's population is 2.8 million. One million live in the capital, 100,000 in Erdenet, and the rest are scattered in a landmass the size of Western Europe! Awesome indeed. The people are charming and friendly, and goodlooking.
Today we will visit a museum of political persecution - Mongolia has a shady communist past, dominated as it was by the Soviet Union. Then we go shopping. Love to all.
Mongolian landscapes are awesome, and indescribable. I have taken a hundred thousand digital images, so do come and watch them some time.
Watching the constellations shift across the sky through the large hole at the top of a 'ger', as you lie on your couch under many layers of insulation is a marvel. Deciding you need to get up and have a pee in the sub-zero dark outside is equally a marvel, of denial, reluctance, acceptance and eventual fearful exit from the safety of the ger, having first to step over the sleeping bodies of our two drivers and very handsome host. The starry, starry night is dizzying. Are the overfriendly Mongolian hounds asleep, and is it safe to remove one's tackle?
The day after our rescue we return through more awesome scenery to UB, in the company of a handsome elderly couple, wearing the very beautiful traditional silken coats, done up with a cummerbund of contrasting colour, a couple of adorable tiny twins, swaddled in swathes of pink and blue, and assorted others. En route we stop at a roadside hostelry for a hearty mutton soup (we have long since given up trying to be vegetarian in these mountain wastes) which must have half a sheep in it.
Returned to UB we spend a night back at the station hotel, and then remove to our present quarters near the centre, in the most charming guesthouse. David and Joanna have bagged the double room, but I am quite content in my shared dormitory, inhabited at present by two beautiful Buryat girls from Ulan Ude, and their older protector or uncle. From the look of their huge bags they are traders, but who knows in what. 'Uncle' plies me with vodka, which is very welcome after our ordeal, which aids bonhomie and smiles, but does not help linguistically. Genghis Khan guesthouse must be the cleanest and friendliest in all of Mongolia.
Facts and figures: Mongolia's population is 2.8 million. One million live in the capital, 100,000 in Erdenet, and the rest are scattered in a landmass the size of Western Europe! Awesome indeed. The people are charming and friendly, and goodlooking.
Today we will visit a museum of political persecution - Mongolia has a shady communist past, dominated as it was by the Soviet Union. Then we go shopping. Love to all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
