This non-American Life

London keeps calling

Let’s see, where was I? From Italy I’ll skip ahead a few months to March, when I went back to London for another week of BritFun. This was the trip where a charming old chap tried to pick up my friend Em and I. Naturally, there are other trip highlights to report, too, so let me get on that.

The timing of this trip was designed to coincide with a David Sedaris* reading. Did you know he recently moved to London? Not that I’m stalking him or anything. It was fun to finally learn what Hugh looks like, though. Dapper.

That wasn’t even our only trip to the theater district; we also took in a (very affordable) matinee showing of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starring James Earl Jones. Oh, that voice. TKTS won’t tell you this, but some theaters release some half-price tickets at the box office shortly before a performance.

We visited a couple of London’s amazing museums, including the National Portrait Gallery (which I love so much I want to marry it – Judi Dench and the Tudors all under one roof); the Tate Britain (where we intended to see a special exhibit involving elephant dung but we got lost in the joys of the permanent collection instead – especially the John Singer Sargent and Francis Bacon rooms); and the Victoria & Albert (for a small but interesting exhibit on high-tech art). We also did plenty of gallery hopping. London oozes art.

And of course we ate some delicious things, including giant thalis at Masala Zone and sushi at about a dozen places. Alas, my note-taking was a little lax when it came to all the great restaurants and pubs. There was also tea at Sketch, whose waitresses were decidedly unfriendly but I am going to go back soon anyway because 1) they have a staircase covered in blood and 2) I didn’t get to use the pod toilets yet. Plus I am hoping their macaroni and cheese is good.

Besides all that, we took some wonderful walks. Em has a deck of cards, each one featuring a different fun walk through London, and they came in quite handy for coaxing us into new, different neighborhoods. One walk was through the hipster and sex shop district; another was through the judicial area, where the barristers buy their wigs. Alas, we didn’t see anyone wearing one. There’s a goal for my next trip.

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* If you are unfamiliar with David Sedaris, go get yourself one of his books right now. Preferably an audiobook. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a good one to start with. You will pee your pants.

Tags: art, David Sedaris, England, Europe, London, museums, restaurants, theater, travel, UK

Christmas in Rome, part 1

I’m a bit behind on my travel blogging. I’ll skip over a couple trips all together, but our winter adventures in Italy deserve a little more attention than they have received so far.

We arrived in Rome on Christmas Day to find the metro closed. No signs, no information, just a big metal gate closing off the entrance. Luckily our hotel was within easy walking distance of the train station.

Speaking of our accommodations, Albergo Ottocento is a nice, well-located boutique hotel within walking distance of many places of interest in Rome. And walk we did. The Christmas tree on the Spanish steps was a bit of a disappointment, but the sunset view from the top wasn’t.

The next day we headed over to the Vatican to see their tree and giant nativity scene*, and happened to catch a glimpse of the pope speaking to the crowd from a comically far-off window. I think he was discussing his new plan to get child molestation down to acceptable levels.

We saw a lovely art exhibit at the Chiostro del Bramante and then did some more wandering, including through the Christmas market at Piazza Navona. It was giant and loud and bright and tacky; nothing at all like a German Christmas market but fun anyway. A passing tourist’s remark about the “Panthanon” sent me into a giggling fit that could only be cured by a Campari-laden cocktail at the oh-so-charming Caffè della Pace.

More art at the Villa Borghese, which is a nightmare of rules (reservations required, you get kicked out after two hours, the required bag check refuses to take coats) but they get away with it since their art collection is so wonderful. Bernini statues, I will never get tired of looking at you. There was a special Carravagio Bacon exhibit going on; while I enjoyed the paintings I came out still having no clue what the justification was for putting those two artists together.

I get to the important stuff in part 2 of this post – coming soon.

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* My husband was surprised to see that one of the wise men was black. Guess it’s not like that in Montana.

Tags: art, Christmas, Europe, holidays, Italy, museums, Rome, travel, winter

Museum Brandhorst: Munich’s newest stop for contemporary art

I still live in Munich, I swear. Never mind the fact that I’ve neglected to write a single post about this city in the last two months.

This weekend we decided to check out Munich’s new museum, the Museum Brandhorst. I’ve been marveling over the building’s stripey exterior for months now. The colorful ceramic bars are certainly… different. The interior is quite lovely and houses the collection well.

Cy Twombly is the star of the Brandhorst collection. I’ve never been a particular fan of his paintings, but I really liked the Lepanto series (which ocupies the museum’s central gallery). Plus it reminded me of my favorite iphone game, Trace.

My personal favorites in the exhibit were the large figurative paintings by Eric Fischl. I’ve always had a preference for paintings, but the museum has plenty of art made out of giant cardboard boxes, neon lights, and human hair, if that’s your thing.

Museum Brandhorst is in the same area as Munich’s three Pinakotheken, and can be visited along with them on a €12 day pass. Like the Pinakotheken, Museum Branhorst only costs €1 on Sundays, but that price attracts a lot of folks. If you like to get audioguides, the total price difference (a couple euros) isn’t worth the Sunday crowd.

Tags: art, Germany, Munich, museums

Tallinn: worth a visit

As I mentioned in my first post about Estonia, we absolutely loved Tallinn. The old medieval city couldn’t have been cuter, and learning about the history of Estonia was quite fascinating. Estonia has been independent for very little of its history, which makes this particular period seem quite cherished and celebrated. Perhaps it’s this new-found pride in their country that allows the Estonians to smile politely at the herds of tourists tromping through their historical city center.

The old town is full of restaurants and bars, almost all sporting English menus to lure in tourists. There are also plenty of craft shops and galleries, most selling very nice things. We enjoyed spending a couple hours in the Linnamuuseum learning about the history of Estonia, but I preferred the personal perspective of the guide on the tour we took.

One could easily be forgiven for never leaving the old town at all, charming as it is, but we found some interesting destinations outside the city, as well. We took a combo bus/walking tour which brought us along the coast and out to the bizarre architectural structure which is the Lauluvaljak, an outdoor theater where a big folk song festival takes place every so many years. But the real excitement of the theater is the singing revolution that took place here, which helped lead Estonia to independence from the USSR in 1991.

Another favorite bit of our trip was the KUMU art museum, housed in a gorgeous new building and easy to reach by tram from the old town. Despite the museum’s oppressive rules for visitors, I was highly impressed with the quality of the collection. Lunch at the cafe was pretty good, too.

Most restaurants in Tallinn seemed a bit overpriced, but one of my favorite meals was super cheap and delicious – a garlic-and-cheese-stuffed Estonian pancake at Kompressor, which had a very student-hangout vibe (and good beer on tap).

One afternoon (or was it evening? Hard to tell when the sky gets dark at midnight.) we grabbed a beer on the terrace at Beer House, Tallinn’s only microbrewery.

I liked the juxtaposition (found on many doors) of the English “Open” with the days of the week starting with P, N, R, and L. Punday? Lorsdag?

Tallinn was a great place to spend a few days, and it inspired me to visit the other Baltic capitals someday soon. If you have less time, Tallinn can be done as a day trip from Helsinki, as the boat takes only 2 hours.

Tags: Eastern Europe, Estonia, museums, restaurants, Tallinn, travel

Things you are not allowed to do in an Estonian museum

Any questions?

Tags: Estonia, funny signs, museums, Tallinn

Kandinsky in Munich

If you haven’t already, go see the amazing Kandinsky exhibit at the Lenbachhaus. It’s only in Munich through February 22nd, after which it travels to Paris and New York (but without the Blaue Reiter show that’s here in Munich with it). Give yourself plenty of time to see both buildings.

Tags: art, Germany, Munich, museums

Late night art in Munich

So I’m back in Munich. Oktoberfest may be long over, but there’s still stuff going on in this lovely city. There’s always something going on, I tell you. Yesterday evening it was the Lange Nacht der Münchner Museen (Long Night of Munich Museums), which, as its name implies, is a evening where many of Munich’s museums stay open until late in the night. For a 15-euro ticket, one could visit them all. Many locations had special events going on such as live music or readings.

Using the same modus operandi as we did for Zurich’s museum night last year, we skipped our favorite museums and used the evening as an excuse to explore some locales we may have never made it to otherwise. We saw a fairytale reading at the Alpine Museum, some a cappella at the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde (Ethnology Museum), and some fancy roof restorations at the Galerie Handwerk. My favorite part of the evening was the introduction to lithography session we attended at the Münchner Künstlerhaus.

We didn’t make it to even half of the museums and galleries that were on my list of interesting-looking stuff, but it was a lovely evening nonetheless. Looking forward to going again next year.

Tags: art, Germany, Munich, museums

Jugendstil, Qi-Gong, and the world’s worst muffin

On Saturday night, Zurich’s museums opened their doors for the Lange Nacht der Museen, an annual affair that involves late-night openings and special events all over the city (with, of course, extremely efficient all-night public transportation connecting it all). We visited an impressive eight museums (out of 40) over the course of the evening, definitely getting our money’s worth out of the CHF 25 admission fee.

We started out at the Museum Rietberg, where we took in some Asian sculpture. Then it was across town to the Botanical Garden, which lured us in with its Slow Food exhibit. Given that we were hungry for actual food, we kind of hurried through the exhibit (stopping to sample many varieties of tomatoes at one display on the way) and headed to our next stop, the Museum Bellerive. In addition to a lovely Jugendstil exhibit inside, the courtyard of the museum was turned into a Bavarian beer garden for the evening. We filled up on pretzels, salads, sausages, and beer, took a quick spin around the inside of the museum, and then wandered towards the Chinagarten. A gift from one of Zurich’s sister cities, the Chinagarten is a lovely little oasis hidden behind a big brick wall. There we watched some martial arts demonstrations before moving on yet again.

Next up was the Johann Jacobs Museum, a tiny place where you can learn all about coffee. Well, a little about coffee. A short tram ride later and we were at the Mühlerama, a popular destination featuring a (disappointing) chocolate fountain, baked goods, and an exhibition about fat in all its incarnations. After reading about America’s contribution to the fat world (olestra, which according to the display causes one to lose control over a certain vital bodily function) and daring each other to go listen to what the beer belly had to say, we decided we’d had enough fat education for one evening.

Next it was on to the NONAM, or Native American museum (who knew Zurich had such a thing?), which I will now always remember for (1) the hideously acted old western film they were showing in the courtyard, and (2) the hideous-tasting pumpkin muffin that we made the mistake of purchasing there. The evening’s grand finale (for us, anyway) took place at the Kunsthaus, Zurich’s main art museum. We took in the current exhibit and checked out the tragically hip disco before yawning our way home to bed. Zurich’s museum night gets my full endorsement – fun stuff!

Tags: art, museums, Switzerland, Zurich

I love love love Berlin

We spent Easter weekend in Berlin with Kesha and her giant husband (who, by the way, looked quite reasonably-sized among the Germans). I lived in Berlin for the summer of 1997, and hadn’t been back to the city since 1999, so I was eager to revisit my favorite parts and see how the place had changed in the past seven years. Here are some of the highlights from the trip.

Biennial. This large-scale art show was installed in a variety of buildings along Auguststraße in Berlin-Mitte, including private apartments, a ballroom, and a former Jewish girls’ school that has been abandoned for 10 years (and was re-opened just for this exhibit). It was the kind of exhibit that gets into your brain and makes you think, but doesn’t necessarily give you anything intelligent to say. For days afterwards, I went around critiquing almost everything I saw as art.

At the very start of Auguststraße, where it intersects with Oranienburgerstraße, I had the chance to briefly re-visit Tacheles. Back in 1997 it was a mostly gutted and bombed-out shell of a building that had been turned into a couple bars and a cinema by squatters. We used to go there often to see undubbed movies in English, and to drink cheap beer while watching the crazy variety of people around. Today the building has been renovated and glassed-in, but the remnants of the bombed-out part were left there (although cleaned up a bit).

Walking, drinking, more walking. We spent the better part of Saturday wandering through the heart of East Berlin. We started with some shopping and lunch in the hip neighborhood around Hackescher Markt, and then meandered towards Museum Insel, an island in the Spree River which is home to several museums and the magnificent Berliner Dom, an imposing, gorgeous neo-renaissance cathedral.

On our way to Alexanderplatz, the center of East Berlin and the home of the Fernsehturm, we visited the Ampelmann store, which was full of kitschy souvenirs featuring the adorable little guys from the East-German walk/don’t walk signs.

Next we headed to the Nikolaiviertel, an adorable little medival-style area that was created by East-German architects in the 1980s. There we found a nice outdoor café and I forced Kesha to try Berliner Weisse, a bizarre drink that is technically beer, but thanks to the sweet syrup flavoring (you can have “red” or “green”) it tastes more like something that should contain an umbrella. She actually liked it enough to order it again that night.

Afterwards we walked back towards Museum Insel and continued on along Unter den Linden, the showcase of East Berlin. This street, which leads to the former border crossing near Brandenburger Tor, was über-maintained by the GDR to show just how wonderful things were behind the iron curtain. Along the way we stopped to see the memorial at Bebelplatz and the fancy Peugeot design showroom (this is the boys’ fault), and also wandered through a couple random souvenir shops.

Reichstag Dome. When I lived in Berlin, the Reichstag was still under construction (and the federal government had not yet moved from Bonn), so it was fun to see the finished product. We had to wait in line for about an hour to get in, go through the metal detector, and hop in the elevator that whisked us up to the roof. The dome was actually a really nice piece of architecture, and we could look down upon the eagle that dominates the German parliament, which I had last seen in Bonn when the government was still there.

Film Museum. This brand-new museum presented the surprisingly interesting history of German cinema from before Metropolis to after Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run). The stories of the many German actors and directors who fled to Hollywood to escape the Nazis were fascinating. Plus, Marlene Dietrich is a babe.

Stasi Museum. On Sunday we sent our friends off to see the museum at Checkpoint Charlie (a must-see on your first trip to Berlin) and ran off to the Stasi Museum. Situated in the former headquarters of the East German secret police, deep in the heart of East Berlin, this museum is a fascinating reminder of the not-too-distant past. The exhibit is almost exclusively in German, so if you don’t speak the language, make sure you bring along someone who does. Some parts are understandable even without translation, such as the rooms full of various objects designed to hide spy cameras and guns, such as watering cans and briefcases.

Another remarkable thing about this museum is how old the actual Stasi offices seem, even though they were in full operation through 1989. There are no computers, no electric typwriters, and only the old manual-style telephone switchboards (not to mention 60s-era décor), mainly because the last head of the Stasi was an extremely paranoid man, who was convinced that if he used an electric typewriter, someone could find out what he was typing through the power lines.

You can also pick up an application to receive your Stasi file here; all East Germans are allowed to request their Stasi file and find out which of their neighbors were spying on them back in the day.

I was delighted to find that the café in the museum served Rotkäppchen Sekt, an East-German brand of sparkling wine which I remember fondly from my days in Halle. After drinking a bottle ourselves and grabbing another to bring back to Kesha the birthday girl, we headed back out into the cinderblock sub
urbs of East Berlin and took a subway back to Potsdamer Platz.

Potsdamer Platz. The whole area was just a giant Baustelle (construction site) when I lived in Berlin in 1997, so I was excited to see what it looked like now. It looks like the cross between a newly-built city business district and a newly-built American-style mall. But for some reason I liked it.

OK, the part I liked best was the martini bar in the lobby of the Marriot hotel at Potsdamer Platz. Not only were they beautifully presented, but they were delicious, too. My girl-drink-drunk husband thoroughly enjoyed his appletini (served with little marinated apples) and his cosmo (served with dried cranberries). I was ecstatic to learn of the existence of another kind of dry martini that was almost as yummy as a dirty martini – called a ‘salt and pepper’, it was made with Absolut Peppar and served with a salted rim (and blue-cheese-stuffed olives). Yum.
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On Monday morning, Scott flew back to Zurich and I hopped on a train to Halle, a city deep in the heart of East Germany that had been my home for three years.

Tags: art, bars, Berlin, East Germany, Germany, museums, Stasi, travel

I make a hot guy

Yesterday Ali and I visited the exhibit ‘Gay Chic’ at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich. The show highlighted how gay has become mainstream in music, film, fashion, and television in European and American culture. This thesis was backed up with pictures of RuPaul, Wham album covers, video installations of Absolutely Fabulous, movie posters for Bound and TransAmerica, and rhinestone-encrusted men’s jewelry from H&M.;

We spent what seemed like hours playing with the Chic O Mat, an interactive installation that allowed you to combine the image of your face with images of other people’s heads, and vice versa. That’s how we found out what a sexy boy I’d make, and how lucky Ali is to be a girl.

Tags: art, museums, Switzerland, Zurich