travelling + international events

bonjour cheries! i haven't written in a while due to school, travel, and sitting in too many cafés. here's what's been going on lately:

- french university vacation was april 8-22, possibly the best two weeks of my short life. i went to istanbul, turkey, and barcelona, spain. amazing! there is so much to recount that i don't feel i can really do justice to these trips; instead i'll share some nice photographs and encourage you to visit for yourselves.

ISTANBUL



inside the aya sofia, built as a christian basilica in 530 AD, then transformed into a mosque, now simply an amazing museum.



whirling dervishes!



emily, julia, and myself: we are standing in europe, but across the bosphorus behind us is asia.

BARCEOLNA



the sagrada familia, antonin gaudí's unfinished masterpiece.



me high in the towers of the sagrada familia. my beautiful scarf is from turkey (although apparently the design is uzbek).



standing in the cold, cold mediterranean sea!

- the first round of the french presidential election was on sunday. (in france, the election has two rounds, possibly because there are so many candidates. the second round is in a few weeks.) nicolas sarkozy (of the current governing party, the UMP; center-right) and ségolène royal (of the socialist party, which i guess is sort of center-left in france) will advance to the next round. i'm sort of disappointed; i don't really think royal can win and i would have preferred françois bayrou to advance, but hey, it's not my country. sarkozy is liberal by american standards, but some of his rhetoric is slightly disturbing (in terms of immigration and "cracking down" on crime especially, i feel he's especially harsh) - and he's friendly with bush. sarkozy wants to liberalize the french economy (which is good! thirty-five hour work weeks are not the way to increase productivity); royal's program is sort of ambiguous. since politics is sort of deathly boring to me, i will direct you to wikipedia for a better explanation of the election than i can provide: French Presidential Election 2007

- across the pond, my home state of new hampshire has taken a step towards extending equal rights to homosexuals by approving civil unions in the senate. from the new york times:

"To me this legislation is a credit to our state. We're making this move not because some court some place is telling us that we must," said Democratic Sen. Joe Foster of Nashua. "We do so today because it is the right thing to do."

- in washington, both the house and the senate have approved a bill that sets a deadline for troop withdrawls from iraq. bush is set to veto it, of course; still, the bill shows that congress has regained some sense and is trying to fix what we've screwed up beyond belief. also from the times:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the measure is “the only way to make Iraqis take responsibility” for their own destiny. Mr. Kennedy said the president has been wrong all along on Iraq. “Now, he is wrong to threaten to veto this bill,” the senator said. “We cannot repeat the mistake of Vietnam.”
Another Democratic supporter, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said the conflict is “a war that never should have started, and on this president’s watch may never end” without a timetable for American withdrawal.

- and in my adopted home of new york, new york, our mayor bloomberg is working to green up the city by charging vehicules for driving below 86th street. i really believe nyc is a walking city and a subway city. and as the greatest city in the world, it is wonderful that new york is among the first places in the US to actually deal with its transportation problems. i love love love new york, but i don't love that it has the worst air quality in the country. the only part of the plan that makes me worry (and this is something the city will address) is the effect on people in the outer boroughs who have to drive into manhattan. perhaps the tax will be lower for registered new york workers? even better, the subway system and the eco-friendly bus fleet will be expanded to give those people better, easier, cheaper commutes? (there is progress on the second avenue subway, but that's in manhattan. another interesting article: this guy is working on his own easier-to-read version of the subway map; i had to have the system explained to me multiple times before i finally got in. now i mostly have it memorized.)

i'm sorry for the length of this post! but sometimes recounting my travels becomes a bit tiresome... plus, assuming anyone actually reads this anymore, hopefully some of you will check out those stories and think about what's going on.

à bientot!

une visite à Chartres

on friday, we went to chartres for my medieval art class. chartres is the best-preserved gothic cathedral in france, about an hour south of paris by train. unfortunately, the day was rainy and dreary, so the cathedral was extra-dark and the stained-glass windows didn't have the effect they were intended too. (this also means most of my pictures turned out poorly.) but that just means i'll be returning during the summer!!



so here is the front of the church. at first it looks symmetrical, but if you look closer, you'll see that the north and south towers are uneven - the north tower was built first and the current cathedral was rebuilt after a fire in the 12th century.



we spent a long time examining the west portals, the details of which i will spare you... but this photo is from a depiction of the nativity: there are two (and a half) shepards and some little sheep!



the west windows above the portals. the shade of blue is only found in 12th-century glass; the technique has been lost and no one has been able to recreate it.



the labyrinth is in the center of the central nave and is closed most of the year. we were lucky enough to come when it was open, so of course we walked the maze. it's a meditative, spiritual experience: many of the people visiting chartres that day were not tourists but pilgrims.



one of the rose windows, on the north side of the transept. it depicts the "good kings" and "evil kings" of the old testament.



after lunch we walked around to the north side of the church and found some posters advertising playmobile models. clearly we got pretty excited.



these are statues on the columns of the north facade. it's crazy how detailed everything is; i love how the saints stand on top of these amusing little figures.



the shrine of the black madonna. the cathedral also houses a relic of mary, a blue cloth that was supposedly her tunic or robe... didn't get a photo of that though.



then we went down into the crypt, which dates from carolingian times. although most of the walls were re-painted in the nineteenth century, this fresco is about a thousand years old. awesome.



there's also a well in the crypt (which indicates that the site was in use long before the christian era). apparently i almost fell in...


in other news, spring has sort of arrived in paris - when it's not raining, that is. my two-week spring break is coming up in a week. i'm going to istanbul, turkey and barcelona, spain. i'm super excited because while i've been lucky to travel around france and parts of northern europe, i'm definitely ready for something different. i've never been inside a mosque, i haven't been to the beach in years, and i miss trying to speak spanish with my latin friends in nyc. plus, before i leave, i'll have a few days to bum around paris, hopefully in beautiful weather, reading and drinking coffee and generally living la vie en rose.

keep in touch!

en bourgogne

i'm taking a class on medieval art and architecture, with one of the greatest professors on earth, in a country replete with examples in situ. last weekend, we took a field trip to bourgogne, a rural region a few hours south of paris, to visit some beautiful romanesque churches (and eat some beautiful food)...

first we stopped at the abbey of fontenay, an 11th-century cistercian monastery. the cistercians rejected all graven images, so there is no sculptural decor on the site. but it's gorgeous in its architecture: the stones change color with the sunlight, and the simplicity of the design is very peaceful. this is inside the church:



you see how there are no sculptures on the capitals of the columns? and how the arches line up perfectly... the entire abbey is constructed along right angles and rectangles to show the order of god's creation.



my class and my professor in the cloisters - yes, it's only four students!

next we visited vezelay, a church which holds the relics of mary magdelene. we stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in the charming little village that night. here is the mist rolling over the hills in the morning:



and a cat in a flower box!



and, of course, the portal to the church, showing christ in majesty.



(i took lots of pictures inside but they didn't turn out so well...)

saturday afternoon we headed to autun, which holds the remains of saint lazarus. i think this church was my favorite.



these arches were built later; they are probably from the fifteenth century (the church itself is twelfth-century).



our trip back to paris was far too long and we got stuck in traffic, but i have to say the sunset was worth it... this photograph doesn't capture its beauty.



i have so many more pictures that it was hard to decide what to post here! visiting the provinces makes me love france even more. this country is basically one giant farm, which is easy to forget when you're living in a city as cosmopolitan as paris. we ate amazing food and drank incredible wine as well, all straight from the nearby farms. to finish, i'll leave you with a picture of a soufflé - amazing amazing amazing!!

dublin, eire

two weeks ago, i spent a weekend in dublin by myself. ireland is amazing: i have never seen so many shades of green as i did while flying over the island. irish history is fascinating and i wonder why more people don't study it... i don't think columbia has a single course on ireland. and it was nice to be in an english-speaking country for a couple days! (still, i think i prefer the francophone world...)



st stephen's green is REALLY GREEN.



in the national history museum they have an exhibit on bog bodies. these are mummified
prehistorical remains found in peat bogs. amazing! also sort of disgusting. when i was in the museum, a group of schoolboys was visiting and, as little boys are apt to be, they were simultaneously fascinated and repulsed...



"shop while the dollar drops," ie, come visit new york while you can afford it, europe!! these ads were everywhere.

the national gallery has my two favorite paintings ever:



The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio



and Woman Writing A Letter by Vermeer.

both have incredible histories: check out The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr and The Irish Game by Matthew Hart to read about them.




this is the interior of christ church cathedral. as my guidebook said, it's sort of strange that such a catholic country would have two protestant cathedrals in its capital city. unfortunately the church is now more of a tourist attraction than a functioning place of worship; it cost me 2E to enter and it didn't seem like there's a real congregation. (in contrast, notre-dame de paris, despite its touristic attractions, is a functioning cathedral with a devoted congregation. i went to mass there a few weeks ago, took communion, heard some archbishop give a sermon... it felt much more authentic.)



then i headed over to st patrick's cathedral, which is near the spring where the said saint baptized many irish pagans. jonathan swift is buried here. this church was even more touristy; 4E to enter and it's basically set up like a museum...



but it's still beautiful!!



fish and chips for lunch: delicious but so heavy, i could not finish it.



the natural history museum smells like old books. a lot of the animals are from the early 20th century (or late 19th century), so it's like walking into the minds of the early naturalists.



a skeleton of a dodo bird!



so why don't we have sex education like this in the states? you tell me. this billboard is brilliant (bonus points to anyone who knows which artist's work it's based on).



the liffey at night: it looks like a river of guinness.



the irish coast from my airplane...



and then back to paris.

les catacombes de paris

last week we went to the paris catacombs. running for 186 miles underneath the city, the catacombs are the final resting place for thousands and thousands of french citizens. in the late seventeenth century, several parisian cemeteries had become dangerously overcrowded - coffins would emerge from the ground, leading to epidemics in several quartiers. what to do? in 1786, authorities decided to move the bodies into the former roman quarries which run beneath the streets of paris. the result?



the bodies are obviously not intact. it's strange to think about the workers who disassembled thousands of corpses to create the bone-lined hallways under the city. perhaps to amuse themselves during their labor, some of the remains have been creatively arranged.



throughout the caves, one finds poetic carvings, graffiti, and somewhat disconcerting memorials. for instance, this is one of the entrances to the grave (today the only legal entrance, part of the musée des catacombes):



("stop! here is the empire of death.")


what i wonder is why the city chose to dispose of the bodies in this way. wouldn't it have been more economical (and sanitary) to cremate them? it's not like the corpses were respectfully kept intact; for the most part, it seems like only arm and leg bones and skulls compose the walls.



the tunnels were originally limestone mines built and used by the romans, but people have long been going underground for other purposes - many of the walls are covered in graffiti. aristocrats would hold parties in the crypts before the revolution. during world war two, the germans set up a secret bunker, while the french resistance used the catacombes as their headquarters.



today, one can legally reach the catacombes only through the museum, but the crypts available for viewing are a tiny part of the system. of course, there are lots of illegal tours you can risk, but they can be dangerous...