Kurdish kids and a Roma wedding in Izmir

so today was my 2nd day in Izmir, Turkey's 3rd largest city.
Couchsurfing with an awesome host who has shown me all over the city and took me out with his friends. That and he has the most infectious, sincere laugh I have heard maybe ever.
Anyways...yes, yes. The food is dope, the city is beautiful. What else, right?
We went up to the old castle, looking out over the city from up on a hill. We walked back into downtown through an impoverished Kurdish neighborhood and got flooded with cute little Kurdish kids, playing in the streets with home-made trashbag kites. They LOVED getting their pictures taken and I seized the opportunity to get some great shots of life in Turkey.
On our way in, we stumbled upon a Gypsy (Roma) wedding on a side street and just kind of walked up and came in and watched the dancing and took a bunch more pictures of the party and OTHER cute little kids. The Kurdish and the Roma are two distinct ethnic groups that are both pretty marginalized in Turkey which maybe be indistinguishable to a (Westerner) outsider but they are very different. At any rate, stumbling upon this wedding party, it was more than getting a little lucky. The Turkish folks I was with said that they have never seen a celebration like this in the street and its pretty rare for an outsider to get to witness it. I was timid at first, but got nothing but smiles and eventually, I loosened up enough to get a few good shots and I am really thankful that I did. It was a really beautiful experience and I feel so fortunate for the way Turkiye has opened up and showed me all that it has. Its good to be here.







Kurdish men in the park playing Go and some other game...


Kurdish kids in the street


More Kurdish kids



















And then we stumbled into the Roma Wedding Celebration...











and then top it all off with the most gorgeous, peaceful and picturesque sunset I have seen in years...

oh man, oh man, you gotta get out here!

my neighbor at my cabin


trail up through the ravine to the waterfalls




the view from my cabin, down the valley to the beach






Well lets see. I spent 4 days in Cappadocia. I’m not going to bother trying to describe it because it would be a foolhardy attempt to capture something not to be captures. Suffice to say that the days were filled with long sweaty hikes through valleys, up and down dusty ravines, looking out over landscapes like nothing I have ever see. I’ve heard Cappadocia compared to the “needles” national park in Utah, which I have admittedly never seen. But its hard for me to imagine anything else on earth looking remotely like this land in the heart of Turkey. There are these huge conical formations of sandstone, called (in translation from Turkish), “fairy chimneys” and I don’t have a better name for them. Hundreds and indeed thousands of years ago (or at least one thousand) humans began digging into the bodies of them like woodpeckers into tree-trunks, hollowing out small living spaces and many of them went on occupied by man up until very recently. I saw one whole village swiss-cheesed out of a huge hillside, interconnected caves, which looked down over the present village at the base of this hill. While I was sitting in a café on the street, sipping on Turkish tea with the proprietor, looking up at this abandoned village, the owner told me that it had been occupied up until the 1950s, at which time the government made people move out. He said that his mother had lived there, up on the hill until she married his father and moved down into the lower village.
One day I climbed out of the midday-heat, off the trail and up a ravine into one of the more inviting-looking caves, climbed up to the second storey of the dwelling and took a nap on the cave floor. It was cool. Maybe 65 degrees and with a nice breeze, while out in the sun, down the hill, it felt closer to 100.
It was hard to leave Cappadocia. There is something fearful and greedy about the difficulty leaving, knowing that you may never see this magical place again. I wanted my eyes to feast for a day or two longer. But my general plan included many more sights and I decided to move on. From Cappadocia I took a bus to Konya, Turkey, which is the epicenter for Sufism in Turkey and the whirling dervishes of Mevlana. Rumi was a spiritual write, a philosopher and poet who lived in what is now Turkey, back in the 1200s. The order of Sufis came from his teachings after he died and led to the whirling dance that tourists can see in Istanbul. In Konya, there is a mausoleum/ museum for Rumi which documents how Mevlana life was in the middle ages. There is a huge sarcophagus/ tomb in the building, where Rumi lies to this day and it is one of the great pilgrimages for Muslims in this region and has the feeling of a holy site (as much as any I have ever seen). They have handwritten Korans, 800 years old, relics from the time and a snippet from the beard of the Prophet Mohammed, kept behind glass in a mother-of-pearl chest. I saw many of the devout sniffing deeply at the edge of the glass case, apparently trying to take in some scent or essence of the Prophet. I was curious but didn’t dare, for fear of trivializing their religious experience as an infidel.
Konya itself was a very religious city. No alcohol to be found anywhere (except for the high-end hotels that cater to the few-and-far between infidel Westerners that come there. It was good to go from tourist-haven Cappadocia to such a singularly Turkish city and feel the culture of the country I was in again instead of the culture of the tourist industry.
From Konya I took a bus to Antalya, 8 hours to the Mediterranean coast. I spent 2 nights in the old city, a fortified mideval city, now abandoned by the Greeks that once largely inhabited it. Many of these old Ottoman-style houses have been converted to pensions (somewhere in-between a hostel and a hotel), shops and café- restaurants. Stayed in a cute little pension called Camel Pension for about $20 a night, breakfast included. My second day in Antalya I went to the Antalya Achaeology Museum, reputed to be the best in Turkey. Over those hours I was completely overwhelmed by the volumes of history…the oldest inhabited human community yet proven was in Turkey (9000 years ago) and there were clay pots, bone tools, arrows, spear tips and stone axes among everything else. From there it went on to pottery from Greek and Roman occupation of this part of the Mediterranean, styles that I have seen in other places, the Louvre and Smithsonian, etc. But its different to see these relics in their country of origin. They seem more organic and real, not some abstract representation of a culture on the other side of the world. Its more a statement of “This is what WE were doing here 2 or 3,000 years ago” and it felt heavier.
From there, on into the next room with huge marble statues of emperors and Gods, Artemis, Zeus, Apollo, Nemesis (badass!) and many others. Again, I’ve seen similar things in other countries, but it felt different so see them in their country of origin and more immediate. I can’t explain it. Upstairs there was the coin collection. One exhibit was a literal treasure that some goat herder or farmer discovered back in the 1970s. 178 solid gold coins from the Byzantine era. Priceless. But it was strange to see them use the word “treasure” and realize that it was just that. To think that somewhere else in this country, right now, there is likely another clay pot laying in the ground, full of gold or silver coins that were minted around the time that Christ was born, if not before. Let alone the thousands of points of land around this country that hold a few feet underground just one coin, sitting there, sleeping, waiting to be found. Maybe they are better left in the earth. I don’t know. But I’d sure like to find one someday.
I left Antalya 2 days ago, took a 4 hour bus to Fethiye on the other side of the “Turquoise Coast” and took another mini-bus to a small village tucked in the mountains called Kabak, where I will stay for 4 days at a place called Full Moon Camp. Another place difficult to describe. For pop culture references I would compare it to the island of Lost. To slow development, there are building ordinances in the area forbidding the use of concrete so many of the places to stay are called “treehouses”, which are wooden cabins build onto the hillside, almost all with a view of the beach below. It’s a 20 minute hike down the hillside to the beach with whitish sand and clear water deserving of the name of the Turquoise Coast. Life is very slow here and its kind of nice to be away from all of the historical sites, ruins and other tourists. I’m perfectly alright with a few days of nothing to do but lay in a hammock and read, hike down to the beach, swim in the Mediterranean waters, hike back up to camp, nap, swim in the pool fed by a freshwater mountain spring, eat and drink cold beer. No problem with that at all. In fact, its going to be hard to leave here, too. It is also $20 a night here, but this included breakfast and a nightly sumptuous feast of vegetarian food. Eggplant, greenbeans, peas, rice, homemade-bread, mint soup, homemade cheese, peppers and tomato. Almost everything is grown in the valley and all is fresh. The growing season basically runs all year and the hike down to the water is peppered with small plots of garden. Best of all, the small beach, accessible only by boat or hiking down the mountain, at maybe 1/8 or a mile along, is all-but deserted, ringed by mountains. I could maybe make a tradition of coming out here for a week every or every other year for as long as I cam make the trek down to the water. God-willing it will not get developed beyond this. Out camp has a covered kind of veranda, roofed with grapevines and a large tree and rimmed with mats and pillows to lay out and lounge. Its hard to want to do more.

turkiye, here i come!

Well, i spent the last week and a half working my way across Georgia. too many stories to post here, but i am converted to the church of Couchsurfing, suffice to say.
i spent 4 days in Tbilisi and then left for one night in Borjomi. Borjomi is to the south and was kind of a spa/ resort town for soviets during the CCCP days. there is a mineral spring there that is bottled and is reputed to be good for your health, but alot of westerners (myself included) think it tastes like feet. but the town itself was quaint. nestled in the mountains. there is a creek that runs out of the hills and feeds into a raging river. i hiked up the creek into the forest when i was there. peaceful. good to be surrounded by trees. but that was about it.
took a marshutka (minibus- the main form of public transportation) to tkibuli to crash on a couch for two nights. my first couch surfing experience. stayed with a czech woman who is an EVS volunteer (European version of the Peace Corps), working for an NGO that a czech group started. it was a small town, way out in the sticks. there i learned that georgians actually still kinda hold up Stalin as a national symbol. they seem to not focus on WHAT he did so much as simply tout the fact that he is the most famous person in the world to hail from Georgia in the last 100 years. so yeah. there is a fucking statue of Stalin in front of the city hall. larger than life and completely surreal...like "Where am I? What year is it?"
there is another statue of the man at the entrance to a now defunct and decrepit ex-coal mine on the edge of town. i got a couple of great photos. next time i get my puter online, i'll photo dump.
from there i went to zugdidi, a town in the west, about half an hour from the border with Georgia's Russia-backed autonomous region of Abkazia, in the northwest. i stayed with a spanish guy who worked as a security monitor on the ceasefire at the border. went out with his friends and met some great internationals from the Czech republic, slovakia, sweden, spain, poland, the states, scotland. had a few pints and talked shop and asked questions. it was pretty cool. don't wanna freak you out, mom, but it was exciting to be told that yes, in fact, i was in a city that is within what is considered a 'conflict area', meaning that shit still isn't settled and you may not be as safe as it seems...but it actually did seem pretty safe. and zugdidi is a really cute town with a bbig park in the center of the city with huge fir trees. all the houses have fresh fruit trees all around. fig, plum, tangerine, pear, apple, walnut. had some good georgian wine and made dinner the second night and then i got a ride in the EU bulletproofed landrover to the bus station this morning and now i am in Batumi, down, 30 km north of the Turkish border. right on the black sea. i walked down to the water and soaked my feet for a while today. met two backpackers from Iran at the beach and helped them find the hotel (they were looking for the one i am staying at). its wild to make friends from places that you cannot go to. learn firsthand that people are people. build international relationships, one facebook add at a time. har har.
but yeah. its good to be here. back to the water. the black sea is actually pretty turquoise, at least, this time of year. tomorrow i'll take another marshutka to turkiye. it will sadly be my last, for in turkiye, the same vehicles are called dolmus. and i think they are a little more expensive.
tomorrow i go to Trabzon, on the turkish black sea coast. 1 or 2 days there and then a night in Samsun. from what i understand, samsun is a good jumping-off point for Cappadoccia, so there i will head.
its looking like i'm not going to get the internship at this point, so i am now wholeheartedly throwing myself into travelling Turkiye for 3 weeks instead of 1. with couchsurfing, it seems totally do-able and i am getting really excited.
when i found the hotel today and got settled (may i add that my room is like $12 for the night?), i met a couple that just came from Turkiye. the guy was from england and the woman was from Italy. backpacker vagabonds. he had just spent 4 months travelling turkiye. heading to georgia, azerbaijan, kazakstan and china. good luck, brother (and sister). but homey gave me his dog-eared, well worn and well-loved copy of Lonely Planets Rough Guide to turkiye. 800 pages of knowledge. and a pocket sized turkish language book. didn't need it anymore and just asked me to pass it on when i am done with it. this felt like very good mojo for embarking on the next leg of my trip.
georgia has been amazing. friendly people. rich (current) history that i knew very little of. the political situation is so fucking complex and interesting. i think back to when i first came out in january and the main goal was to spend a weekend in Tbilisi and now i have travelled clear across the country and i feel so fortunate for all of these experiences that life has afforded me. i am a little sweaty and stinky. my feet are tired and my backpack is heavy but it feels really good to be here.
i miss you all. wish you were here to share some memories with me. but i'll bring home pictures and stories.

Tbilisi, oh Tbilisi, my crumbling beauty

its raining here (as it has been for a month, it seems) but i'm feelin good. tbilisi was invogorating. i have to write an 8 page paper today, which sucks, for my final assignment for capstone, but thats alright. i'll crank it out. i'm feeling on top this morning.
well where do i start?
we got in friday afternoon and took a cab to where we THOUGHT UNHCR was but couldn't find it.
in the states, agencies and alot of non-profits etc have street-level space and a big sign out front. out here, alot of the places i have had meetings with had 3rd or fourth floor apartment space in run-down buildings and almost no signage. it gets very confusing and UNHCR Georgia was the same. but we eventually found it.
it was impressive. they have a big operation up there in comparison. something like 50 staff to our 15. so they have some big, big programs and they are getting an impressive amount done. it looks like they have some great leadership and i am jealous of any UT student next year that gets to work with them. but i suppose it would be easier to get lost in a big operation like that, so i'm sure there are some plusses to a small shop like the one i'm in (like being able to design and run with my little pet project). but they gave me a briefing on Livelihoods/ Income Generation projects out there and it was pretty awesome and now i will integrate some of their project successes into my recommendations for Armenia... which is good for me and will make my shit a lil' stronger.
got back to the hotel and went out to dinner at a good georgian restaurant with dude. the food was dope and we drank a bottle of the house red wine, which was great (especially compared to the rot-gut in Armenia). went out to some bars after and i got KEEEEE-RUNK!.. stayed up all night and spent 75% of saturday incapacitated with a hangover of epic proportions. got up in the late afternoon and tried to walk it off, exploring the city a little bit, venturing this way and that to try and get my bearings. it was kind of like yerevan at first, in that i can't read the street signs, so i will have to basically memorize the city. which worked for the most part. alot of wandering and kind of guessing which way to go. but thats cool.
yesterday we walked all over the city, which is kind of a crumbling beauty, a brokedown palace (i think thats a grateful dead song, but its still an apt description). there is an old castle on top of one of the hills that loom over the city. i can't really describe how gorgeous this was so i'll just have to post pictures. suffice to say that things like Hamlet and the Odyssey come to mind when trying to scramble up the side of castle walls to these parapets that looked out over the old city.
the old city itself is lined with winding, senseless roads, cracked and potted with broken asphalt and decaying buildings, as if the map of the city were the wrinkles of an old, old woman's face. there are grapevines everywhere, climbing across powerlines, up the sides of buildings, across the abandoned ones...there are about as many construction sites where new office buildings are going up as there are mouldering skeletons of old soviet apartments, most of which are still lived in.
the two churches that i went into were absolutely beautiful. Georgian Orthodox churchesbeing sacred, don't allow cameras inside, so i didn't get any pictures, but the insides are painted floor to ceiling in these vibrant murals of the saints and religious imagery in these strong, simple lines that are just mesmerizing. and they have an aura inside, different from Armenian churches. i don't know how to describe it, but it was amazing. both churches (Armenian and Georgian) are dimly lit, just candlelight. but Armenian churches have bare rock walls, while Georgian churches are painted. i'm not saying one is better than the other, but Armenian churches feel more ancient, like the ghosts of an old religion, which these Georgian churches feel alive with it. not better, but a stark difference.
thats about all there is to tell. it wasn't enough time, but i'm going to head back up there in a week and a half, after i tie up my loose ends here and i'm ready to go explore. alot of georgians asked "Have you been to Baku (Azerbaijan) yet? and when I told them No, they said "Oh, you've got to! Baku is nicer than Tbilisi!" so now I'm definitely curious. we'll see.

cultural windows on Baghramian Avenue

so. i went downtown yesterday just to walk around and get a positively mediocre falafel ( strong argument for going to israel). it was a gorgeous day and so after walking around the art park, where painters come to try to sell their paintings to tourists, I decided to walk home in the afternoon sun. 75 degrees. blue skies. mid afternoon. falafel in my belly and a bottle of sparkling water in my bag. sunday afternoon.
about 1/3 of my way home, I noticed a bird singing in the tree. there are supposed to be all sorts of rare birds here, so i tried to snap a picture of it, but it flittered off. kept walking. 10 minutes later, i stopped on the sidewalk, in the shadow of a statue, to send a text. this guy walked up as i was texting and said "you're not from here are you? you look maybe irish, yes?"
I looked up, unenthusiastic and said something along the lines of "Umm...yeah". In my travel experiences, little good comes from being approached and called out as a foreigner.
I went back to my text, which takes forever with this 'smart phone'.
he just kind of stood there. he said "I thought you must be from somewhere like that. are you a student here"
"umm...sort of". less enthusiastic. not looking up from the text.
so I delay with the text and start to wonder what this guy's game is. but eventually, its obvious that he is going nowhere, just standing there, trying to engage me. I finish the text, put my phone in my pocket and continue walking. of course he falls into step. why wouldn't he. this isn't the norm in armenia. people don't accost foreigners. usually, they try to ignore them. panhandling and begging in seriously tabboo, so i'm doubting that. in other countries, you might expect to hear a story about a grandmother that needs a surgery or a cousin with a greencard that expires in 2 days, who needs just this much more money for his plane ticket. but i haven't much seen it go down like that in armenia. there is a kind of collective psychology that no matter how bad shit is, it was worse during the war, right after the fall of the soviet union. after the earthquake. so what is this guy all about? whats going on? he definitely didn't seem like a threat. no menace to his slight frame, old sneakers and yankees baseball hat. he had kind of a mousy, deferential gait to him, hunched shoulders, following just a quarter of a step behind me.
he goes into smalltalk about armenia. life here. how its hard. talks about how he could tell i was a foreigner because of the beard and the t-shirt and the red hair, of course. how he knew he could walk up to me becuase i'm not armenian. (whatever that meant).
he tells me that he saw me back there, taking a picture of the red bird that i saw and he liked that i was trying to take a picture of a bird. no Armenians care to notice and take pictures of birds
(what the fuck? he's been following me? ok, now this is getting a little sketchy)
and then he says "Life here is very hard in Armenia...for people like me"
What kind of people is that? I ask, getting curious now. I should note that we were walking down one of the busiest streets in Yerevan, with lots of taxis, so I figured if it gets bad, in broad daylight, I can always hop in a taxi and go get out of here.
He says "In Armenia, people say that all Armenians are straight. I am not straight."
I kinda thought this was where it was going to go.

"I can see that. I believe you. People here think its a choice right? They think people choose to be gay and they think thats a bad choice to make, right?"

"Yes. People think its against our culture to be gay. They don't know that I do not have a choice. I cannot choose"

"Yeah. Some people still think like that in America, too. Some people think its bad to be gay in my country, too. But I think its getting better and there are definitely places in America where being gay is more accepted than it is in America. It must be very hard here."

"No body knows. My family does not know. My friends do not know. They maybe suspect, but they do not know. Its harder for me because I live with my parents and I have no job. After the University, like many Armenians, I can find no job".

"Have you ever thought about trying to leave? Go to a country that accepts their gay community more? Somewhere in Europe or somewhere?"

"If I cannot find a job here, I will have no luck anywhere else. I try for the Greencard Lottery, but it has been 5 years now. I am beginning to think it is a lie, this lottery. I used to think that I will go to the Doctor and get the surgery. To change my sex. I used to want this very much. I saw this show on the television show, do you know this? There was this Israeli woman who won, this singer. She was very inspirational to me. Because I learned that she used to be a man, in Israel, and she changed. I like this very much. This changed my thinking when I learned of her"

"I haven't heard of her. But don't you think it would be harder here for you if you did that? Maybe you should think about leaving Armenia first, to go somewhere where you could be accepted more, before you have surgery. I would think that would be safer for you."

"You can understand this as a theory and think about it. But you don't know how this feels to be me. I've thought about going to the Doctor here and just ask to do it. I still think about it."

"You're right. I don't know. I just know that in America, there are some cities that are more accepting and open-minded, so alot of people move there to be accepted and to find a supportive community. San Francisco. New York. Los Angeles...but you're right. I don't know what its like to want that. Have you ever gone down to Cocoon? [the only gay bar that i know of in Armenia]"
"I know of it, but I have never gone, because I am afraid to be associated with this place". By this point, we had gotten back to my neighborhood and I didn't really want to invite this guy over. Not because I didn't like him or didn't feel for him. But because of the desperation, pouring his soul out to a stranger. I didn't know what he could be capable of if he started to sound more desperate.

"Have you ever..."

We were standing at an intersection, waiting for traffic. "No, man. Thats not my thing. I really wish I could help you."

"Have you ever though about it? In the world of gay life, there are tops and bottoms. I am a bottom. You could close your eyes. And pretent I am a woman"

"Dude. I have gay friends. I understand. But like you said. This is theoretical for me. Its just not in me. I wish I could help you. But its just not my thing. Its like if a woman walked up to you and asked her to have sex with you. You just wouldn't be interested. Even if she was nice. Don't take it personal."

"Thats what they say. One said he was married. Another said he was too religious."

"Well. I don't know about them. And I don't envy you. I bet its really hard here in Armenia for you. People don't understand this yet, do they?"

"No they don't. Nobody knows. I've never told an Armenian before".

"Well man, I'm sorry. But I'm going to go now."

"Have you been to the bridge up the street? Its a very nice bridge and there is a beautiful view. You could take your camera. We could take some very nice pictures. It is very beautiful"

(More firmly) "No, man. I'm not going to the bridge with you. I wish you luck"
I was a little worried he was going to walk out into traffic. He was just so desperate. The gayness, thats cool. I've been hit on before. There's even a couple of things I didn't tell him. But the desperation was sickly and I hate to admit it, but repulsive.
If it had been a woman walking up to me on the street and she had been like "Just let me suck your dick. No one lets me suck their dicks" it would have been just as repellent. It was the indescriminacy and it made me feel cheap. Not like the confidant that I originally felt like.
Anyways. Thats my story. I went into the supermarket and bought two beers and some bagel chips. Took the roundabout way home because I didn't put it past him to follow me home. I really hope he didn't. I really wont be surprised if I see this guy again. Like 30% of the rest of Armenia, he is unemployed with no relief in sight, so what else does he have to do with his days but wander the streets of Yerevan with his dark secret, his hidden identity and his fear. It made me pretty depressed when I went home. I really feel for the guy. I don't want to fuck him but I wish there was something else I could do. Wish I could get him a greencard and a job in some country that wouldn't hate him for who he is. And then I depressed myself even more. I realized that in the 1,600 years of Armenian history. In the last 1,000 years of world history. 2,000 year. How many people have had to keep their identity in the shadows, had to hide their true self from friends and family. The world needs to wake the fuck up. What is the price of having to hide who you are? I have seen one really 'butchy' lesbian woman at the bar, once and she had scars from cutting all up and down her forearms. I've seen that before. So much fear and self-loathing and lack of control over life. Driving people to lash out at the only thing they have control over. Themselves. Sorry if this is depressing. I don't think it is, ultimately. Its sad, yes. But things are getting better. True, America has a hell of a long way to go, but look how far we have come. I read last week that Obama gave his Secretary of Health (?) some directive to free policy up so that same-sex domestic partners have more say over care for partners in the Hospital. Year by year, I truly belive that America is becoming a more egalitarian society and as policy becomes more accepting (throw out the antiquated don't-ask-don't-tell policy), then collective attitudes and cultural norms will slowly shift as well. I don't have an answer for that poor bastard. I can't make it all better. And I'll die if I try to fix each story. Heal each broken heart. But in the big scheme? The wheels are in motion. I'm sure of it.
I hate the cheesy epilogue. But I'm trying to stay positive. Because living out here, you can't get stuck on focusing on how far they have to go. Focus on each little step you see a society taking from where they are at. Hell. Even the fact that there is a gay-friendly bar in Armenia. Even if it is the size of a broom closet. Thats one step. I just hope there don't have to be any Matthew Shepphards for Armenians to take any of the next steps toward a healthier society.

city bikes and la musee d'orangerie

Ok, so I was going to post this a week and a half ago, but I've been sick and haven't felt like sitting in front of the computer except for my Rosetta Stone: Russian lessons and watching Entourage season 2. Sorry.



As you may know, Paris has a City-Wide Bicycle Rental program. You buy a membership card by the day week or year and then you pay to rent a bike by the hour. 0-30 min is free, and then its one or a couple of euros per hour.
This is the terminal where you take a bike out. There are bike lockup stations, just for these city bikes, every few blocks, all over the city. You rent and unlock the bike in one place, bike to wherever you are going to and just lock up wherever you are going and there you go. Its fully automated and when you check the bike back in, the terminal automatically deducts from either your account or your credit card. I don't need to tell you that this is genius and needs to happen in every city in the United States, do I? Didn't think so.


A Velo bike station in the 4ieme district. Drool.


Beautiful example of city planning. There is a bike lane in the foreground, and then a protected bus-only lane, a garder and then regular traffic. Think as many people on bikes get hit by cars this way? Oh, and bike lanes have their own smaller traffic lights, where bikes are given the right to turn right at stops a few seconds before the cars and get to go forward a few seconds early, too. Glorious.




"Where do you take your dog to get her excercise? Most Parisians have these little tiny dogs that don't need alot of space..."

"Well, it depends, but usually, I take her up to the Louvre and we run around and I throw the ball for her in the shadow of the world's most famous museum. Its nice. Yeah, thats where we usually go. Its really nice. You should come sometime."




In my last blog, I made allusion to having spent the last day of my French vacation alone, Caity having flown back to the states. I wandered around, went back to the falafel spot just to be sure...and yeah, pretty fucking good falafel.

Anyways, I can't remember if I wrote it before, but I've been quite spoiled/ lucky and have been to Paris 4 times. The first time was when I was 15, on my way to live on a farm in rural France for a chunk of the summer. Did that 3 times. I've spend a total of a few weeks in Paris all together, so I've done alot of the tourist stuff, or at least, a good chunk. Paris is like New York. I think you could live there a year and only see a bit of it. But I've done a pretty good job. But there is one thing that has eluded me each time...
I'll back up. When I was a Freshman in highschool, we went on a field trip to the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. One artist really grabbed me. Monet. I didn't know what impressionism was from Marxism at the time and I don't know much better than that now, but I knew I liked him. That and one other painting, but thats beside the point. Point was, I fell in love with Monet.

Fast forward to my first trip to Paris. There are Monets sprinkled all over the city, I suppose. Many in the Musee D'Orsay. But there is one smaller museum called the Musee D'Orangerie that I had always wanted to go to. The building started once, humbly enough as the garden shed for the royal Tuleries garden area. I had never been able to find it and 2 of the previous times I actually tried, it turned out the museum was closed for an extended period for renovation.
You see, the Musee D'Orangerie had one claim, one distinction, apart from the rest of the collection, which included Renoirs, Picassos, Matisses, many others that I don't appreciate because I'm an uncultured, uneducated American. But the Musee D'Orangerie has Monet's Waterlilies.

Towards the end, Monet was going blind. Kind of like the cruel irony of Beethoven going deaf. In his later years, Monet's paintings got more and more well, impressionistic, as he couldn't see the shit anymore. One of his last projects, he painted these murals of the waterlillies in the pond in his garden. Huge murals. They form two huge ovals in two adjoining rooms that make a kind of infinity sign (ooh...deep!). But seriously, there are 4 murals in each room. Each one takes up a quarter of the perimeter of each room and they are about 6 feet tall. Now theres no way to really capture it. I've never been so surrounded, overwhelmed in this beautiful, beautiful way. All the colors, the only way I can use words to capture it is to bring in the other senses. These murals are like the visual equivalent of tasting fresh fruit, wearing sun-dried, hand-washed clothes and smelling lilac in bloom all at the same time. All while listening to children play and birds sing. I don't know. I'm at a loss. What I can say is that I entered the room and just sat down on the bench and soaked it up a little bit. Thats after standing close to the center of the room and turning slowly on my heel twice. It was sensory-overload, trying to take it all in. The thing by very definition, by simple dimensions, eludes your filed of vision. You look in one direction and try to take it all in, and it just keeps on going, right on behind you, past the corner of your eye. I hope every one of you gets to experience this someday. And when you do, imagine how peaceful this man must have been for the months and months that it must have taken.

Go find the Musee D'Orangerie.







Ok, so this really made an impression on me. These are two Picassos. But they were HUGE! I didn't know there were any Picasso paintings this big. I'm no art student. Ask Stacy to explain the painting. But for me, there was something super earthy. Dirt floors and burlap sacks and caloused fingers. Look at the feet. I don't know if you can see it. Anyways. I really liked these two paintings.



SERIOUSLY. CLICK ON THESE TO SEE THEM LARGER.

Le Centre Pompidou and out last night in Paris...

The outside of Le Centre Pompidou, the Paris Museum of Modern Art

So, on our last full day in Paris, we went to Le Centre Pompidou for a little 'culchah' and I enjoyed it much more than I expected. I guess I've still got a bias against modern art, where some snooty douche takes a shit on a Lazy-Boy, wraps the whole thing in Saran Wrap and calls it 'modern art'. Malarky like that. And there was some lame stuff, I gotta say, but some of it was pretty dope. Erro, the collage artist, was awesome. Proceed:




You ride these escalators up like 6 flights of stairs, and then...


View of Paris from the top of Le Centre Popidou




Better recognize!


The architecture was really dope. And the lighting and the crisp white of the walls. It was refreshing to be in a museum where noone seemed to care if you took pictures, and with all that light and those white, white walls and parquet floors, all my pictures came out better than I expected with my little digital.


This was the exhibit of this crazy collage dude. 50 Years. Erro. Not sure where he was from but the imagery mixtures were excellent. Way better that the thatched ceiling and the naked lady rolling in newspaper and glue.















This room was an exhibit of a design/architect person. Ergonomic, aesthetically pleasing kitchen supplies and whatnot. It was all dark. I dubbed it "Cafeteria of the DeathStar".


Uuuuuuuummmmmm....... huh?




this was for Stacy. They had DVDs of Cremaster 3 at the gift shop.




Its hard to take a bad picture at night.


Our amazing dinner at Le Reminet. Shout-out to Lyle.


The vino...oops, I'm sorry. Le vin.


Apps: salmon ceviche and I don't remember what hers was.


Sigh. Looks like that almost make it worth payin' the tab...


Braised 'pork cheeks' in a mushroom sauce with sauteed red peppers and pineapple


Seared scallops in a cracked pepper sauce, over a bed of mushroom risotto.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing week. In the end, I was kind of pushing the museums, but we ended up only going to the Musee D'Orsay and the Centre Pompidou (I went to the Musee D'Orangerie the next day, after C left...I'll post those pictures tomorrow) . Never made it to the Louvre. But we walked all over that fucking city, saw all of the cool neighborhoods, most of the architecture, at some of the best food in my life, crossed the bridges over the Seine about a 100 times, heard the churchbells of Notre Dame from lying in bed in the morning, drank nothing but delicious wine and bubbly water (ok, maybe I squeezed in some espresso and one Stella!) I don't even want to know how much money I blew, but it was worth it. I'm graduating pretty soon and its back to the working world and although I've got a pretty good track record so far, I really don't know if I'll ever make it back to Paris. So I think we did it up right. Wouldn't have changed a thing...except for maybe that gargoyle slam ;)