Monday 26 April 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 23: Camel speed




I heard an old Arab saying on the radio the other day which said that the soul travels only at the speed of a camel. It started me thinking about the experience of travelling for a living.

I've been lucky enough to travel a lot, but I'm an amateur compared to some. Ibn Battuta travelled over 75,000 miles in the mid 14th century, seeing Africa, India, the Middle and Far East, China, the Mediterranean, having vivid adventures in each place. He finally returned home to Tangier after 28 years of travel, all presumably at the speed of a camel or slower, and documented his adventures. It is a great read.

The idea of always moving onward, staying in each new location only as long as is safe or desirable is very seductive. We all know that travel is no escape from your problems – they either sit on your shoulder becoming heavier as the journey goes on, or fester dangerously back at home waiting for your return. But to give over your life totally to travel and, at Ibn's time particularly, to the utterly unknown is an incredible and seductive idea.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with travel. I NEVER want to leave home before a trip but always enjoy the experience when it's happening. Sometimes I am even reluctant to come home because the truth is that whilst you are away you lead a different life - you become in part a different person. That can be difficult to leave. It can be even more difficult to recognise your old self returning as you walk up the path to home. It takes a couple of days for your 'normal' life to feel like a welcome and comfy pair of familiar slippers.

I can understand the Arab saying. When you first arrive somewhere new it is exciting, interesting, sometimes disappointing, always a challenge. But it is a slightly hollow experience until you have adjusted to the different pace, stopped seeing the people as foreigners with confusing ways and recognised your common humanity, found your shops and routine, – until your soul has caught up with you.

I feel that my soul has caught up with me finally in Prague. It didn't make it this far when I was here last year! Don't get me wrong, I am LONGING to go home to York, but I feel relaxed here finally. I'm even finding myself naturally picking up a few odd words of Czech to add to my fluent 'Good morning. I'd like a coffee please.'

Why does that only ever seem to happen towards the end of a trip? Did Ibn Battuta and other great explorers manage to speed up this process and so enjoy the destination more? The saying would suggest not.

A very big part of me wastes far too much time dreaming of the day when we can stay at home, devote ourselves to a garden, chickens, cat and dog, and be totally fulfilled by that. The truth is though that at the moment I am still seduced by the never-ending onward road ahead and, even though much of my job frustrates me severely, travel is the one great perk.

Ibn stopped travelling at 51 and lived another 23 years in Tangier. Maybe I've got a few more years of travel ahead of me......but the whispering cluck of chickens is getting ever louder in my ear!


Sunday 25 April 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 22: Idomeneo Final Rehearsals


We're in the final stage of rehearsals here in Prague for Idomeneo.

The theatre we are performing in, the Estates Theatre, was where Mozart gave the first performances of Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito. It features in the film Amadeus. It's a perfect little theatre, with balcony stacked upon balcony, giving it a very intimate but exciting atmosphere as an audience member.



A plaque on the floor of the orchestra pit commemorates the spot where Mozart conducted from the fortepiano.

(I don't know why it's upside down!)

In the UK, a cast will rehearse for 4 or 5 weeks in a dedicated rehearsal room with a mock-up of the set before moving onto stage for an intensive week of rehearsals putting together costumes, set, lighting and action with piano, then with orchestra. The process has a good momentum leading up to a Dress Rehearsal and Opening Night. This will be repeated 3 to 5 times over a season, building up a small repertoire of pieces on offer.

Opera Companies here still operate a repertory system, putting on a different show every night drawn from a much larger repertoire. Add to this the fact that the spaces are shared between opera, ballet and drama, and the scheduling becomes a nightmare.

We have been rehearsing Idomeneo in 5 different rehearsal spaces including the stage, but with little or no suggestion of the set. The rehearsals on stage feel very much like one of those 1930's films where everyone is on stage doing different things whilst technicians bang and crash in the background. Ok, it's not quite that bad here, but it certainly isn't a focussed rehearsal space.

Last week we had two days to rehearse with set, costumes and lighting with piano. It went pretty well considering the short amount of time but we encountered a very different way of working. We are used to continue the creation process in these rehearsals, with lighting and technical cues remaining fluid as we experiment to see what works best. Often happy accidents occur which really lift the production into something living.

Here they are used to everything being decided and fixed before this stage and to it not changing. So there has been some resistance to trying alternatives.

Next week we have the orchestral rehearsals but without any set, costumes or lighting. These rehearsals strictly belong to the conductor as they are about concentrating on balance, pacing and communication between him and the singers. This leaves Yoshi and I twiddling our thumbs a little, maybe giving the odd note. Frustrating as, for us, the momentum drops.

We pick up again next Friday with everything and have 2 pre-Dress Rehearsals leading to a public Dress Rehearsal. Until then, more sight-seeing!

Yoshi taking a picture of the poster outside the Estates Theatre.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 21: Obit


The online magazine Obit is really fascinating and not simply and morbidly about death. But the article below is an interesting account of death Italian style.
http://www.obit-mag.com/articles/death-italian-style

Monday 19 April 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 20: Addendum

A few more clips of the lovely River Vltava.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 20: Roses and Bears


So, Cesky Krumlov – a 200km bus ride South towards the border with Austria, in a very smart coach with films and free drinks. All for under £5! I can heartily recommend the Student Agency who run these busses (not just for students) and arrange flights and other travel options too. Find them here.



The frugality continued – unusually for me – at Krumlov House, a hostel run by an American and Canadian who, like many others in CK, came for a week and stayed the rest of their lives. They've created a really great place with a lovely atmosphere. I had a good room for about £25 a night. Their story can be read here.



Cesky Krumlov is a arrestingly beautiful medieval town with the river Vltava snaking through it. It has survived almost intact probably because of neglect. I saw pictures of the place in the 60's and it was in a mess BUT hadn't been messed around with by town planners. Now sensitively and steadily renovated, it is a tourist Disneyland of medieval wonder. However, it has a slightly hippy air (appropriately enough for Bohemia) which makes it very relaxed and unique. I sense this influence is slowly decreasing, but for the moment many of the shops, restaurants and hotels have a gloriously home-made edge and a refreshing lack of concern for conformity or regulation.



The river, and Smetena's music describing it, are hard-wired into the Czech culture. The piece plays every time a Czech Airlines flight lands, the final chords of the piece form the jingle for Railway announcements, and the music is played at national occasions. I couldn't get it out of my head the whole time I was in CK.

The imposing Cesky Krumlov Castle and Chateau with its riotous tower looms over the city. There are real bears living in the moat! When you go into the castle you see where they end up after their guarding duties are over as their skins lie on every floor. Along with the red rose, the bear is a symbol of Krumlov Castle.


The romantic Bear enclosure in the moat
...and one of its inhabitants.
I took a tour of the lovely 16th and 17th century rooms led by the appropriately named and equipped Rosa, a completely barking-mad Czech woman who, I suspect, has a long and interesting past in amateur dramatics (we even got a song at the end of the tour) and who must have learnt her English from the 'Comparethemeerkat.com' commercials. She was wonderful. I'd happily let her show me the whole country.

The castle has an amazing Baroque Theatre inside but, sadly for me, this was closed.


The Baroque Theatre, (from the Castle's website).

I picked up an artistic thread that I first found in Vienna, visiting the Egon Schiele Museum. The artist's mother was from Krumlov, and he lived here for a number of years at the beginning of his career until the people of the town forced him to leave because of their perception of his artistic activities.


A colourful row of buildings with the castle in the background.
The rest of my time was spent walking the small but beautiful maze of streets, eating in the great Laibon Vegeterian Restaurant down by the river, the authentically medieval Two Marys next door, where I enjoyed (yes really) Buckwheat Gruel, and the Traveller's Hostel with its dungeon-like dining room complete with roaring fire.


Buckwheat gruel and local red wine - better than it looks!



I could happily have stayed in Cesky Krumlov for several days more. It's somewhere I shall be revisiting for sure.




Sunday 18 April 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 19: Cesky Krumlov

Hello from beautiful Cesky Krumlov in Southern Bohemia. I'll write in more length later, but for now here are some of my pictures and a bit of video - misspent time fiddling with my phone cameras and computer. the soundtrack is Smetena's 'Vltava' written about the river which snakes it's way through Krumlov. The sound starts off very quiet so turn up your speakers. Enjoy!

Sunday 11 April 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 18: Spring Market in Prague

Just some photos of the Spring Market in Prague Old Town Square this weekend



Saturday 10 April 2010

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 17: Budapest


Easter in Budapest

A little adventure – heading further East by sleeper train.

Airports always make you forget who you really are and encourage you to feel glamorous for a few hours. The goods on sale, the environment, everything about the experience tells you 'you're special, leading this jet-set life-style – what an exciting life you have'. Of course the truth is that you can't afford any of the shiny things on offer and will spend an hour and a half queuing to get through the x-ray machine. They do a very good job of helping you forget this but airports are essentially a sterile environment.

Coach stations always have the opposite effect – you feel the lowest of the low. Coaches always seem to leave at inhumanely early or late hours. People are vulnerable and defensive at coach stations, and the environment is somehow hostile. Certainly not glamorous.

Train stations however are to me the most alluring of places. Though major train stations are often run down, in bad parts of town, and busy, shuffling places, there is something incredibly exciting about the possibilities offered by that huge Departures board. This is especially true on the Continent where the destinations offered include far flung corners of Europe and beyond.




In England we are used to trains going as far as Scotland or Cornwall, but to stand in Paris and see in front of you the opportunity to hop on a train for Berlin, Naples, Istanbul, Moscow.........it feels like a real adventure could begin. Perhaps it's that knowledge that you could just pick your destination and run away.



Hlavni Nadrazi Station buffet

Friday night I took the sleeper train from Prague's crumbling Art Nouveau Hlavni Nadrazi station to Budapest, a journey of 9 hours. I've never taken a sleeper train before. They always seem extra glamorous – something of a James Bond film, escaping across the border about them.

Modern sleepers are a masterpiece of space and design. Three people stacked in a space just over six foot long, less than four foot wide and eight or nine feet high. Sounds like hell, but the design is so good it is pretty comfortable.


The third berth is on a shelf out of sight above

I shared my cabin with two young lads from Mexico over inter-railing on the Continent for a month. It wasn't the best night's sleep of my life – you tend to wake up every time the train stops – but I've had much worse. It was certainly an easy way to eat up the miles and arrive in Budapest in time for breakfast.

Having seen Prague and Vienna, I was very keen to take up the opportunity to visit Jeff on tour again and see the third city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I was also keen to see the Art-Nouveau architecture for which the city is so famous.

Arriving in Budapest you are aware that you have certainly travelled East and that the lingering influence of the former Communist regime is stronger even than in the grey parts of Prague. The city is quite run down in many places and redevelopment spreading only very slowly.

There were not quite the number or quality of Art Nouveau buildings that I had hoped for - though some beautiful examples certainly - but it is a city with some good buildings generally and the wide straight boulevards lined by huge classical edifices remind one of many Italian cities.



One thing is sure - whilst budding architects in the West were playing with building bricks made up of squares, rectangles and circles, the Magyars had their hands in a whole different toy box. Parallelograms abound and all sorts of strange un-classical shapes are thrown into the mix.


The Gresham Insurance Building
 
The main sight of Budapest is 'that view' looking over the Danube to the magical Parliament Building, and it certainly is wonderful.


A view from the castle over to the Parliament.

The 'Blue Danube' is actually quite green up close.

The area around the castle in Buda is older than the rest of the city and reminds me of the similar spot in Prague. It is much less tourist oriented than Prague which was refreshing.


Elderly busker playing his inventively supported zither

It was Easter weekend when I was there and there was a jolly Spring Market in the centre of town, with folk music and really lovely craft stalls. Also good fast food. I eyed up this interesting looking stew...



...then saw it's main ingredient.....



........and settled instead upon fried potatoes and onions and a huge solid sausage red with paprika. Really delicious.

On Easter Sunday I became an opera tourist and went to a morning performance of Kodaly's The Spinning Room – a piece I had never heard of. The opera, based on Transylvanian Folklore, was largely en excuse for lots of happy dancing peasants in matching costume but with a bit of dramatic misery thrown in. A very old-fashioned production, it was nonetheless rather wonderful and performed with love and conviction. I enjoyed it much more than many of the productions I have seen in Central Europe which have tried to be more contemporary.

The Opera House is beautiful inside - ok many are, but this one is perfect in scale and grand without being overwhelming. One of the nicest theatres I have ever been in.




I paid about a pound for my ticket in an Upper Circle Box, which I shared with a lovely old Hungarian couple and with whom I communicated with lots of smiles and broken German (theirs as broken as mine).

An unexpected pleasure was discovering the Tutankhamen exhibition in Budapest. I had missed it in London yet have found the images of the boy king's treasures totally absorbing since spending many hours as a small child in the early 70's pouring over the catalogue from the first London exhibition.

The exhibition in Budapest was in a set of vaulted labyrinthine cellars which added to the magic. I couldn't believe how close one could get to all the main treasures. Only small objects were behind glass, and the rest were right there in easy reach. Really stunning.


The outer and middle coffins

The solid gold inner coffin

So a brief two-day visit to an interesting city, but one which has an air of sadness.