Monday, August 29, 2005

Off to Prague.

It's been fun living here these last couple of weeks, but I leave early tomorrow morning for Prague via Berlin. Thanks to the efficiency of German trains, it'll only take 11 hours.

Tonight I will eat my last patats (double-fried french fries smothered in mayonnaise, *happy sigh* enough to make some former boyfriends cringe. Mmmmm...) and watch my last Dutch TV (what they show at midnight makes the Red Light District look downright tame). G. has BBC One and Three and about 20 Dutch channels with only 50% English programming (Dutch subtitles). For a small country these guys talk a lot.

I heard on Saturday that my paternal grandfather is not expected to live long. They said that the entire family is with him, as it should be. The happiest moments with Grandpa were when I was really small. He would let you climb up into his lap and put your hands onto his rough face to feel the stubble. Then he would hold you tight and rub his jaw anywhere there was exposed soft skin while you squealed laughing. He laughed too, a low rumbling, darkened by a half century of smoke. I didn't get to hear it enough.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

There's a hermit in Amsterdam

That would be me. This is the first time I've left my cousin's apartment since 3:00pm yesterday. It's refreshing to leave the curtains closed, eat all day long, not shower, (I did put on clothes, though), and sit at the computer until I really really have to pee. After hours and hours of fighting with mental ray in 3D Studio Max 7, I gave up and reverted to the slow as snot line renderer without any lighting solution, and guess what? It looks fabulous. *sigh* I don't want to only use the line renderer without a lighting solution. I want to use mental ray with fairly realistic materials and results. And if I had an internet connection that didn't cost me a euro an hour, I could look this stuff up... Such are the rantings of hermits.

Before I went into seclusion I ventured out, briefly, on Wednesday to the Rijksmuseum and to the "beach" on Thursday. E.'s museum card has been handy, if only to prevent me from feeling cheated. I've been to the Rijksmuseum three times now, with this last trip taking only half and hour, maybe. This huge museum is currently under renovation, like the rest of Amsterdam, and so only the comparatively tiny annex is open. A couple positive improvements are that The Kitchen Maid, or Milkmaid, is no longer sharing a wall with thirty other paintings and The Night Watch truly has it's own room instead of a lobby.

The beach, at Blijburg aan Zee (there are photos--"fotos"--even if it's in Dutch) had sand and was on water, but there weren't any waves and the wind was too sharp to stay long. The island it's located on, Haven Eiland, didn't exist a few years ago, according to a man at the tram stop who is looking to move there. He said that the land was pumped into place from the bottom of the sea. It's one massive subdivision about 1/4 finished, but the architecture is more contemporary and varied than anything one would see in an American equivalent. For one, besides forms that Americans would see as daring, it's all mixed use. It's a bit creepy to walk through a neighborhood devoid of people, risking the random catcall from construction workers, but soon it will be a nice place to live. Across the little stream next to the water was a tent village which may have been a carnival, but it looked closed.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

What have I been doing with myself?

Friday night G. (my cousin) and I stayed at his friend M.'s, I in the spare bedroom and he on the carpeted floor. He insists that he prefers it. Around 5:30AM, after watching Napoleon Dynamite again, this time with Y. (transexual) and M. and R. (both boys who used to work upstairs from the 7th Heaven Coffee Shop at the Blue Boy club, both now defunct) I stumbled up to bed. Y. helped get the room ready for me and pulled a wig out for me to try on while I waited. Long, fuzzy, chocolate isn't me, although she swore it brought out my eyes.

The next morning, G. took me to his apartment. It's temporarily full of boxes and bags of stuff, wood, tools, etc. His windows have faded blue sheets attached to nails for curtains, the middle one with brown stains. The bathroom is a tiled closet with a toilet. The kitchen looks over muddy rooftops and out onto a balcony housing 3 bicycles at various angles and stacks of 2x4's. In contrast, his landlords' (A. and E.) place is straight out of any home decorating/remodeling magazine: airy, bright, colorful, clean, new. It's like coming up out of the dungeon when entering their 2 story apartment. A. is a carpenter who has slowly bought out the other tenants in this building. He's fully redone his place, but hasn't quite made it down to the rest of the building, yet.

While G. was out for the day, I went by the Albert Heijn (grocery store) and bought orange cleaner, bathroom cleaner, rubber gloves, and sponges. He's been so preoccupied with more important things that maintaining his living space hasn't been high on the list. Saturday I cleaned the kitchen.

That night, G. and I went to the Chocolata, as usual so that he could help close. Ap. was there with his dogs. Ru. wasn't there, but she'd left her dog tied to the stair column while she went to a birthday party a block away. R. came in and walked Ru.'s dog for her and told us the last bits he needed to do before leaving for Canada on Sunday. M. came in imploring us to go to the before mentioned birthday party. G. and I had been over there already and most everyone was drunk at 10PM, so we didn't stick around. Y., who came and sat outside with M. and N. commanded me to sit next to her, which I did.

By the end of the night, G. and I were both exhausted. I had cleaned all day on only 4 hours of sleep and he just runs himself ragged. He stayed at M.'s again and I stayed at his place.

Sunday morning I went to buy breakfast and more cleaning supplies but grocery stores are closed on Sundays, apparently. You can buy human contact but not cereal on Sunday in Amsterdam. I made do with what I'd bought the day before and cleaned the bathroom.

We took G.'s bicycle to Chocolata this time. The Dutch live on their bicycles. As my cousin put it, "They're born on bicycles, go to school on bicycles, have sex on bicycles, have babies on bicycles, move apartments on bicycles, take the whole family out on one bicycle... They don't stop riding until they're dead." Every street in the city has a dedicated bicycle lane, that's usually it's own separate path. Anyway, there's a way of riding sideways on the back basket-holder that looks simple enough, but actually requires the passenger to run, hop, and sit while the bicycle is moving, because otherwise the driver wouldn't be able to get going. It was yet another great way to see the city at night, if the least comfortable and most precarious.

Sunday night, A. and E. graciously let me stay in their spare room so that G. could sleep at home. The makeshift bed (two chair cushions on the floor with sheets and a comforter) was cozy, if a bit short, but the mosquitoes would not leave me be. I have over 30 bites at the moment, more than I've had since living in Cottage Grove, probably. They're nearly silent, invisible, and thirsty.

Monday I slept nearly all day. My body was heavy and achy, I was exhausted and had a slight fever, too. So I slept until about 6:00PM. Then I had tea and read 1984, again. I had completely forgotten all the torture parts.

And today, feeling so much better, I went to the Stedelijk Museum. Eh. It was okay, but E. loaned me her museum card, so I'm glad I didn't pay for it. I also went to the NEMO, the only Renzo Piano building I've been to so far, or that I remember as his, anyway. Although, I did walk by the Building Workshop in Paris, by accident. The stadium roof has a stream that cascades down the steps. I was videotaping a couple of kids playing in it, when the little boy stops and pees downhill into the water and then continues running downstream, his older sister close behind. That so made me think of John. :)

I stopped by the ARCAM building because it was right there. There happened to be an exhibit about architects traveling to see buildings. That was mildly appropriate, except that the often obsessive documentation of their visits put me off. I'm not that interested in buildings alone.

Soon I'll head to the Chocolata to hang out and drink tea. There's a nice pattern to the days here, but I'm getting restless. I've been here a week: I need to start working on something or for someone or I need to go elsewhere. Hmmm...I could pick an independent study topic and research it this next week. Maybe I'll do that.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Most everything happens at night

Slowly Amsterdam works it's voodoo on me. Yesterday, I got up at 11AM, but didn't leave the hostel until 1PM because I was doing online chores. (Gotta take advantage of the free wireless when I can.)

I walked down to the Van Gogh Museum, because I'd never been during any of my previous trips. He did some nice work, but I'm not sure he warrants the most expensive admission fee so far (13.50 euros). The sunken courtyard of the building is in almost constant shade, allowing the slate tile to turn green with slime mold. They actually had a man in there trying to scrub them with an industrial floor machine, to little effect.

I walked through Vondelpark a bit. They've done well mixing English and Japonese park/garden types, better than the part of Regent's Park I walked through.

In London I decided I wanted to see The Island, but it didn't open until after I left. Then in Paris it didn't open until after I left, but finally here in Amsterdam it's open, so I went to see it last night. It was an 8 out of 10 and surprisingly good for a remake of Logan's Run.

My cousin and I walked through the Red Light District at 1:30AM last night to meet up with his friend who had gotten off of work from La Vie en Proost, a strip club where the girls can be touched. (My cousin's friend only hands out flyers on the street.) There had been a shooting in the alleyway right next to the building he works in and the police had everything cordoned off as they went building to building searching for the shooter. Shootings are extremely rare and this one was pretty stupid being literally right in front of the blockwide police station. Of course, the highlight for me was walking through at night at all. The things that people will pay for.

Today I went to the Beurs van Berlage Museum which has an exhibit on contemporary Dutch design. The main hall, the former commodities trading floor, has skylights above it, but they were covered to keep it a constant temperature, according to the guide. It was truly unfortuanate because the pictures I had seen of the space with the skylights uncovered were wonderful. Then half-way through the tour the skylights opened automatically partway, flooding the room with diffuse light. The guide stopped his spiel and said, "That hasn't happened in a month." The architecture sprite's watching out for me.

The rest of today has been spent in the hostel, sleeping mostly. I got back around 3:30AM last night and was woken up about 8:30AM, so I felt justified in taking a two hour nap. Tonight, I think I'll stay with my cousin's friend and his wife at their house on the Prinsengracht, a fashionable street. There are 20 beds in this one hostel room and while my room is female only, the boyfriend of the spanish couple in the next bed keeps seeing how far his girlfriend will let him go while I'm sitting here typing. *sigh* And the water pressure really sucks. It was like washing in a drizzle today.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Water City

Sail 2005 started yesterday with the ships coming in to Amsterdam's harbor. I had a front row seat on the grating of a pedestrian bridge at 10:45AM waiting for them to come in at 11:00AM, as I had been told. The water was full of little pleasure craft and a few 40 or 50 footers with three masts each, their sails furled. Around 1PM the dock on the opposite side of the harbor shot off a cannon and played a few seconds of what sounded like a patriotic song as three of these 40 footers went by. I thought, "Maybe this is it. What are they so excited about?", but looking around both sides of the harbor were packed with people. They were definitely waiting for something else. By 2PM my butt couldn't take the grating anymore and I had to go get something to eat, so I gave up my primo position. It turns out the ships left whatever port they were coming from at 11AM and they weren't coming into Amsterdam until around 6PM or something. Oh, well, so I missed it.

My cousin's landlords just built a Fiberglas boat, so last night they took us out through the canals to the harbor and back into the canals again. It being the first night of sail, there were quite a few drunken pilots and revelers trying to get through small bridge underpasses all at the same time. It was a bit hairy because they're all in steel boats, so they don't really care if they hit anything. One boat in particular ended up drifting sideways into a passage, hitting the walls, several other boats and blocking the way for anyone else. There were at least twenty drunken revelers on the top deck, a couple of whom almost hit their heads on the bridge.

Amsterdam at night from the water is so beautiful. The light floats on the black waves and makes the buildings glow. We passed many large sailing ships lit up with single strings of lights tracing their vertical outlines. And we went by Silodam which looked like a Chinese water lantern with it's bright colors. It was wonderful. I am so thankful they invited us along.

My cousin needs good times like that. He's had a very rough several months and the next few weeks are likely to be worse. I'm glad that I can be here with him.


Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Yeah for free wireless!

It's about time! The cafe across the street from my hostel has free unsecured wireless. Ah... Feels so nice. :) So I posted new food entries over here. Hopefully, I'll get more up before I go to stay with my cousin.

And now I'm going to go off on aggressive men who have tried to pick me up. I hate to say this, but they have all been of Middle Eastern descent. They usually call me baby and assume that I need some sort of help. The last time I was here in Amsterdam, I was 18 and didn't know how to handle a man (that I didn't know) trying to dominate me. This Moroccan guy with mummy skin, missing teeth, and Michael Bolton hair hung out at the coffee shop my cousin's friends were based out of. One day he followed me from there to a pizza place on the Damrak and insisted that I come with him in his car to "see the country." I was terrified, but I didn't know how to make him go away, other than to make lame excuses about why I couldn't go to the country. Finally, the girl behind the counter screamed at him to leave me alone and he left. I was so scared that I stayed in my hotel room for a day afterwards.

So this morning I was in the Gare du Nord in Paris and this Middle Eastern guy was talking insistently to this northern European girl (in English). I overheard only bits and pieces, but enough to figure out that she wasn't sure she wanted to leave with someone she had just met to stay at his place. I asked her if he was a problem and he immediately answered that he was her friend and that he's trying to help her and that I should mind my own business. I looked at her and said, "You're okay?" She looked at me, a little confused, but not upset and nodded. So I figured, all right that's her choice. Then the guy went and told his friend what I'd done, so this other Middle Eastern guy launches into me about how I should mind my own business and not interfere with others, etc. I said that there was nothing wrong with helping someone if they needed it and that she said she was okay so the situation was over so stop talking to me. He said, "You shut up first." Then I told him to go away several times and went back to reading my magazine.

What I should have said to guy number one is: "It doesn't matter if you're upset. I asked her." And then I should have talked to the girl more, maybe. What I should have said to guy number two is: "What business is it of yours if I asked her if she was okay? That's between me and her."

Rarrrrrr....This bothered me all the way to Amsterdam.

Anyway, Amsterdam is like I remember it, only warmer and livelier. My cousin is thinner and only a little grayer. And I am so looking forward to relaxing! I've been here before (this is time number 4) so it isn't like I have to cram everything in in a short amount of time. There's tons of time to lay in the park or watch people pass my sidewalk bench. Or write all of the food blog posts I've got backlogged. :) *sigh*

Monday, August 15, 2005

The last 3 days in Paris

My petulant mood continued until I decided to have a "lazy American tourist on the tour bus" day. About half-way through my second bus, I realized that I had been genuinely physically exhausted from walking all day every day for 8 or 9 days. (Of course, frying my card reader didn't help.) And that I needed a dy of rest where the city came to me.

One of the touristy tidbits I picked up says that the Arc de Triomphe had an impossible project deadline, so the architect had a full-scale wooden model wrapped in cloth built rather than let Napoleon see it unfinished. That's one solution.

I saw some tourists wearing helmets go through the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel on Segways.

On Sunday, I went to the Musee d'Orsay, only because everyone who had been said that it's the one thing I had to do in Paris and my god were they right. I stood in line in the rain and it was worth it. The building is incredible. The renovation left many reveals between the existing and the inserted structure with views down 6 stories in some places. It smelled vaguely of Coco Puffs, too, which was endearing.

Check out this basically lifesize painting. Okay, so it's called L'ecole de Platon, but "Platon" is dressed in blue and looking fairly Jesus to me and he's got 12 "students" or apostles. Plato could be overtly homoerotic, I guess, but this would be shocking even today if they were to call it Jesus and the 12 Apostles.

That evening I visited Sacre-Coeur. Everything kept saying it was on a hill overlooking the city, but I didn't see how it was possible. Say this outloud slowly: It's on a really high hill with an 180 degree view of Paris. Convinced? Good.

I attended my first catholic service inside. A nun in habit led the crowd in song, an altar boy in soccer shoes swung incense on the priest, and the smoke from the incense made visible the light streaming in through the west stained glass. It was an effective light, sound, and smell show, but with a sense of more. Stepping outside to the an unreal view of Paris surely reassured many pilgrims of a largerexistencee.

Last night, Christine and I went out with the Notre-Dame rollerbladers she met yesterday. We went to a bar and had ridiculously expensivecocktailss, conversing in a mixture of French and English "pour Wendy, parce qu'elle ne parle pas le francais." I drank Marc's Mojito because he didn't know what he was ordering (I switched him my Sex On the Beach) and most of Christine's Pina Colada because it was too strong for her, but even without much of a dinner I didn't get tipsy, so they weren't very strong. I'm glad I got to be out in Paris at least once at night.

And today I rode the Metro to those places I wanted to see more of, like Montparnasse Cemetary. It's aminiaturee city made up of family row houses lining little streets, all for the living to visit the dead. It's beautiful that it's inhabitable and so dense as to make a full view of thecemeteryy impossible. It is nothing like our vast wastelands with dotted markers.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

The post from Friday

Got a late start on Friday because I stayed up late talking with Christine and watching the French version of Survivor, called Koh-Lanta. (Television won't suck your soul if it's in a different language.) I was excited to go see the Tuileries Gardens in front of the Louvre, but was in for disappointment. (Actually, that sums up Paris so far, I hate to say. It simply cannot compete with London or maybe it's that I'm always tired and therefore unable to enjoy it like I should.) The Tuileries is made up of wide, dusty paths that create squares for vegetation. Visitors may only enter the squares with trees. There the arrangement is like so many overgrown seedlings in potting soil. All other vegetation, the grass, the flowers around the fountains, are in forbidden territory. Coupled with the American-style carnival running the length of one side of the garden, the effect keeps you moving, if for no other reason than there aren't any inviting places to stop.

Reluctantly, I went into the Louvre, mostly to see I.M. Pei's entrance. Too many museums in too short a time frame have drained my excitement for touring the world's masterpieces. It's awful to say, but I was bored. I left shortly after entering to get some food, (it's an all day pass) thinking that I might be in a better mood for it if I weren't so cranky. I went to the Opera district, had lunch at a sidewalk cafe (3.65 Euros for a tea! One tea!), and then rode a bus through the city to the end of the line at Pont de Levallois. Then I took the Metro to La Defense and walked around a bit. Standing inside the arch looking west, there's a lawn of perfectly spaced tree tops below. I couldn't find a bus back into the city so I went back on the Metro.

I walked from the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde, up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. I, of course, kept hearing the song Au Champs-Elysees in my head. I don't like being negative, honestly, but I don't see what the big deal about this shopping street is. All the major chains are represented, like any mall. Maybe that's it: it was the best shopping street before malls existed and now it's just another mall. That's a shame. The French are so good about passing laws related to the preservation of their language that they should pass a law dictating that every shop is the only one of it's kind.

I went back to the Louvre and made myself walk through a good portion of it, because it was expensive to get in. I didn't go see the Mona Lisa and I didn't go see the Venus de Milo mostly because I've seen them, and, well, I have this general malaise. As the sun went down, the west-facing rooms had that "magic" light I've heard some professors go on about in school.

Curses! Foiled again!

I had a brilliant idea to write my posts on my laptop and transfer them via USB to the computer in my hotel. Did it occur to me that my American USB card reader would start smelling like burning plastic in the European USB outlet? Of course not. I hope that my 1 Gig Microdrive is okay, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, meet my dormmate, Christine and when I I'm feeling up to it, maybe I'll rewrite about yesterday in Paris.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Another beautiful day in the neighborhoods

Okay, so I did Notre Dame first, because it was right there and the crowd for the interior wasn't too bad. Not only was there a charge for the towers but the line was truly ridiculous, out and around the square. It may be worth it, but I didn't care enough to wait/pay.

And Sainte-Chapelle is amazing, or I imagine it would be without the 10 million tourists and with the west doors closed (so that the light only cae from the stained glass). It's free for art history and architecture students, but they require something that says your name and program. The ticket lady took my word because my IDs don't list the progam.

Standing at the end of the Place Dauphine, square on the Ile de la Cite, I watched a group of men play water polo in the Seine using a life saver hanging off the side of a boat as the goal. This was not to be the only time I was to witness potential bowel diseases originate today. At the Musee Picasso (page is in French, but there are pictures), a father watched and took pictures as a pidgeon walked through his absent daughter's salad (she didn't want it anyway) picking out the shrimp. Then the furious mom and upset little girl came back with a tirade of (I think) Spanish. Then the mom fed the little girl the salad. Wholly unsanitary, that.

Now I'm going to go off on Picasso with the caveat that I know nothing about the man's life or philosophy, really, this is all my impression: Production does not equal thought, though it can be an aid to thought, alonJungianan lines, but I didn't see that sort of exploration in Picasso's work. Could he have reduced the multiple women in his life any further? They are nothing but tiny heads, spherical breasts, swollen bellies (if pregnant: 4 children by 3 different women; two wives, two mistresses, one of which was 17 to his 46 which I have a HUGE problem with), and gaping holes for sexual organs. I understand that he was deliberately reducing life to bits and pieces, but he would have found a way to depict the love he had for these women if it existed beyond sexual obsession, which I doubt. There's one room where it seemed you had to sleep with him to get him to paint your portrait, which, I know isn't true. Alright, I'm done.

The Musee Arts et Metiers is not what I was expecting. Arts and Crafts to me mean something different. This is a museum to the industrial revolution, not to William Morris, et al, so I was only marginally interested in the content, unfortunately.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

London to Paris in 2h 35min

So the keyboqrds here qre crqwy: For instqnce; I knoz thqt the apostrophe exists in French but IĆ¹ll be dq,ed if I cqn find it on this keyboqrd:

Okay, I will hunt and peck so that this makes sense.

I miss London and I only just left. Paris is cool but my French is awful, so this is a problem. It is dirtier, not as user friendly, but the Seine is more intimate than the Thames and more architecturally significant since it is contained within human construction. I sat on the edge of the stone embankment for a while listening to the caribbean band that was playing as part of Paris Plage. There was nothing to stop me from jumping the 8 feet or so into the water, except it's repugnance. (Found apostrophe.) I was completely shocked to see a fish hatchling and then a whole school of them and then larger ones. Life is resilient.

Walking along the Seine this beautiful evening, I saw a mooning of a tour boat ("C'est la plus belle Paris!" one guy yelled as he smacked the other guy's cheek, or something like it, my French is abysmal.) and a fashion shoot (I stumbled into it, really. The sun was in my eyes behind a mist machine. I heard, "Lift your leg up!" and saw a woman's silhouette standing in the mist raising a child. I thought, "Her husband's right, that's a good shot" so I took it, too, before I realized what was going on.).

Within an hour of being here I was hit on twice. None of this subtle stuff that I completely miss in the U.S. and the U.K., but full on, "I love you. You are so beautiful." Damn, I wish my French were better. The comebacks I would zing. *sigh*

My hotel is clean and bright and half the price of London. Now if only the rest of the prices were half the price, I mean normal.

Tomorrow, first thing, is Sainte Chapelle. I am so excited. ;)

This rocks

Lulu: free publishing.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Day two of just hanging out

The London Transport Museum is not worth the time and certainly not the money.

But Covent Garden was bustling with shoppers in the market. I bought a watch, finally, from a man wearing an American civil war hat in the Jubilee Market. (It's Antiques Monday, naturally.) It's a used pocket watch, which is exactly what I wanted, and I, of course, paid too much for what it is. Hey! I have a watch!

Also, I found a hole-in-wall selling Cornish pasties. Mmmm...

Regent's Park is wonderful. I watched the boats, laid in the grass, saw people undressing (whoops), and generally relaxed. I'm really not kidding about wanting to move here. Unfortunately, I probably need to come up with some type of professional plan or long term goals or something equally tedious to pull it off.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Lazy Sunday

My complete exhaustion evaporated overnight. Youth is nice.

But I took it easier today. The Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum were the only stops on my list.

The V&A is mostly skylit with the feeling of an old train station instead of a museum. They have a minor exhibit on this year's British architecture's 40 Under 40. Of them all, Tonkin Liu, Burd Haward Architects, Brisac Gonzalez, Paul Archer Design, pH4, and Piercy Conner are worth a second look for one reason or another. The architecture gallery had a lot of large models (a 6-foot-tall Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Building model! 1:100 scale, apparently.) and drawers of original drawings.

The Natural History Museum had specimens in jars, which I was excited about. My one complaint is that of the 22 million species they have in jars, they only have 10 or so tiny isles of jars on display. They give tours of the real collection, kept at 13 degrees Celcius (55 Farenheit), but I wasn't there in time for one. The museum is, again, a gorgeous building, but most of the displays are too infotainy to be of much interest.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Tired? Unacceptable!

S., who I met last night in the dorm's kitchen, says that not having a watch somehow removes me from the temporal plane and makes me a transcendental being. Maybe, but it's difficult interacting with the temporal plane when you aren't inhabiting it. I need to buy a watch.

Yesterday, I was up and out by 8:45 AM. Did as much of the British Museum as I could handle before visual fatigue set in (two hours, not bad). I cannot say enough how much I loved the Great Court. Build a house around or in a space like that and I would be happy, if poor from the energy bill. They let us take photos of everything and with flash, even. It was surreal to stand in front of the pages of the Book of the Dead with lights going off irregularly.

I missed the sidestreet to get to Sir John Soane's Museum, so I had lunch in a hole in the wall, which are exceedingly rare, perhaps forced out by half a million Pret A Mangers. I now know what a Jacket Potato is. I'll post about all of my food experiences on my other blog when I can use my laptop again, but for now I'm just mentioning it.

Found the Soane museum, a masterwork of daylighting, which would be nicer without the priceless crap cluttering up the place. I got them to photocopy plans, sections, and elevations, done by some researchers, of the existing building. There's independant study credit here if I build it in 3D, I can feel it. (I won't be including the priceless crap.)

There was an exhibition in the adjoining building (accessed from the house) of sketches and design drawings by several famous architects (Venturi, Gehry, Addler & Sullivan, Graves, etc.) where I overheard a British man ask an American woman, "Are you interested in American architects at all?"

"Nah, not really," she said. Isn't that like asking if you're interested in American cereal? What, besides a difference in the characters' appearances, sets them appreciably apart?

In the late afternoon, I went to the Design Museum, walking across Tower Bridge to get there, admiring the great view of City Hall. At the Design Museum, they had a full-scale wooden prototype of a car designed by Le Corbusier in, like, 1927 and one of every influencial chair made in the last 100 years.

Boy, this is long and I'm still on yesterday. :)

They only had the first three floors of City Hall open, but walking around the ramp you can see up through the spiral to the floors above. On Sundays, they open the top floor to the public, calling it London's Living Room. I am definitely going back. The building looks silly and is completely impractical, but it's so cool.

I walked from there, all the way to Waterloo Station, along the South Bank Waterfront. Here's an approximate map, except it was right on the water's edge. Back at the hotel, I met S., a good conversationalist, and took advantage of being able to go out at night with a companion. He's an intern banker, so we went to Canary Wharf. I don't know why, but London and New York completely traded building styles with their financial districts. Wall Street is stone, has tight alley ways, and is very imposing. Canary Wharf couldn't be more American with its glass and steel and massive open spaces between towers.

So now I'm finally to today.

I got up today at 11:15 AM, exhausted. My feet still hurt. I went to St. Paul's Cathedral and got some bootleg photos before I knew I wasn't supposed to. I climbed to the top, (at one point I could see quite a lot of light between two stone steps, which was more than a bit disconcerting) toured the crypt and was generally impressed, as I should be.

I walked over to Lloyd's and Lord Foster's Erotic Gherkin, as they call it here. (I had to look up its real name, because no one knows it.) Both were closed, of course. I was surprised to see that Lloyd's superstructure is concrete.

Went across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern and realized that 1) I needed food and 2) I needed a nap. I had been unable to find a fish and chips stand so I ate at a restaurant, had two pots of tea, a quick nap in the grass, and, then, an incredible time in the museum.

They have a Herzog & de Meuron exhibit in the turbine hall that is unbelievable for the shear amount of work and creative exploration. It almost seduces me into throwing away concerns about water drainage and heat gain. It would certainly make architecture more fun. If I'm not planning on practicing, maybe I should.

Right and now I've let it get too late to be out on my own. The only section of the city I need to be a bit wary about is the two blocks from the Tube to my hotel. I'll be okay, though. To bed and sleep.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Love, true love

The blogging may be a bit out of order for the next couple of days. I forgot to bring an American three prong to two prong adapter with me so I can't charge my laptop until it arrives (Thanks to the best roommate ever!). But soon I'll be able to post pictures, etc.

For now, though, I want to say that I am completely in love with London. After going to my hotel (a dorm, in Lambeth Road) I stopped at Waterloo Station to try to buy a watch (still looking) and whoa, there's the London Eye, so that's literally the first thing I did. It was a beautiful day, too, so it was a fabulous view. I spent most of the day walking all over the city and riding the tube. And for lunch I had "Pud Thai." How happy was I?

I slept briefly in the afternoon because it's difficult to truly enjoy my surroundings through the distance of exhaustion.

In the evening I walked through the Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square area. Piccadilly Circus is what Times Square should be like. Packed, pleasant, relaxed. Everywhere I went people were sitting and talking, just hanging out, eating, happy to be alive.

Trafalgar Square is having a festival at the moment with all sorts of free performances. Last night, an aerialist, tethered by a hip harness to a helium balloon controlled by two men with ground cables, flipped, twisted, floated up and down, and interacted with the crowd. It was like watching the most beautiful Macy's balloon ever. From where I was standing, she was framed by the National Gallery and the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields against dark, puffy clouds.

And the scooters! More scooters go through an intersection at one time here than I'll see in an entire day in Raleigh. This is heaven!

So now the question is: When can I move? Better yet, when can I start making pounds so that everything isn't twice as expensive?

Today I may go to the British Museum, the Design Museum, Sir John Soane's house...We'll see. Eventually, I will go to the London Transport Museum and if you watch here long enough, you might see me walk by. :)

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Here and safe. Post more later.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Blaze of glory


This is how every model should end its life. A bonfire seems a fitting conclusion to studio, too. Perhaps I won't sell my accoutrements when I leave, but burn them for my former grad-student self to use in professional heaven.

The slack line


They were putting the slack line up when I drove by Pullen Park recently, so, naturally, I stopped to take video and pictures. It's amazing to see someone run, hop onto the rope, and then walk the line with his arms behind his back. I got that on video. :) I knew from a friend's nasty black bruises that I shouldn't try too many times to do it myself. Here are my bruises from trying once. (That's my inner thigh)