All posts by VickieVictoria

Intrepid traveler. Architect and appreciator of design, art, language, opera, history, and anthropology.
2016

Day 6-7: From Bauhaus to Your House

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If there ever were a sacred place of pilgrimage for me, it would be the Bauhaus in Weimar. Created by Walter Gropius around 1921, this school combined the best of internationally recognized artists with master craftsmen in Germany. The school was intended to teach design and architecture rather than fine art. The artists taught form, shape, and color, and the craftsmen trained students to technically perfect their designs and products.

In the following photographs and explanations from the exhibit, you will get a sense of the development of graphic design and architecture that still feels applicable and relevant today. These photos are just a small sampling of the my favorite exhibits. A new museum is planned in the future.

Free Play created by Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, 1899-1944
Precepts of Bauhaus
Color Wheel
Prototype for Single Family House, 1923
Designs for Industrial Production
Free Line Compositio
Balance, Shape and Form
Material Components
My Next Hairstyle
New European Graphic
Oskar Schlemmer, 1888-1943
“Child Death”, 1921
Bauhaus Master Graphics, 1920-23
Graphic Art, Left Half
Graphic Art, Right Half
2016

Day 5: A Musical Scavenger Hunt

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Sunday was a Dresden Music Festival Day, with three very different musical events scheduled in one day. This may seem like a bit of overkill, but the main objective was to maximize our time in Dresden while visiting and searching for different venues spread throughout the city.

Our first treasure took place at the Semperoper. The Andrej Hermlin Swing Dance Orchestra played many popular Glenn Miller big band tunes, including “In the Mood” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”.  The music immediately got everyone tapping their feet, and the German fondness for American music was clearly evident in a rare standing ovation. Viola Manigk and a local group known as the Skylarks provided vocal backups.

in the afternoon, we took a ferry ride across the Elbe River to the Pillnitz Palace about a half hour away to hear the Dresden Boys’ Kreuzchoir. Due to rain, it was moved from a serenade on the green to indoors at the Weinbergkirche. We managed to find this hidden spot, but only after a long search.

imageAlong the way back to Pillnitz, I discovered a collection of my favorite rooftop “eyes” on a single building alluringly blinking back at me. There were too many to count, but they reminded of the “one-, two-, and third-eye blind” roof windows recorded in the neighborhood of Loschwitz when I was studying in Dresden in 2014. It was definitely the bonus find for the day.(You can see the two-eyed version in the collection of photos for Day 75+5 in 2014 noted below).

A 230-year-old Camellia tree is a magnificent feature of Pillnitz Palace.  The tree, in all its splendor, is kept in a huge moveable glass and steel-framed atrium in the winter. The cover is carefully transferred on rails to protect the tree from the cold and frost, and then removed again in the Spring. We managed to zip past this grand dame and hoped that its longevity would continue. (You can read more about Pillnitz and the tree here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillnitz_Castle

On our final musical “find” for the day, we captured an evening piano recital at the Grosse Garten. The modern interpretation of birds was difficult to appreciate, especially when real birds were chirping at twilight just outside. Similar to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the Grosse Garten is much loved and appreciated by the locavores for its accessibility and refreshing green expanse. We were both lost and confounded on this exhaustive day, but it wasn’t anything that a good Vietnamese dinner afterwards couldn’t soothe.

2016

Day 4: More Moritzburg and Carmen

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A couple of years ago my friend Hanne and Jens introduced me to Moritzburg. I had been wanting to go to King Augustus’s “Hunting Lodge” again. I got my chance when a group of us planned a half-day excursion. We mixed and matched a combination of public bus and private carriage to get there. By doing so, we had an interesting variation of conversations in German and English. International and local friends from Germany, Bulgaria, the U.S. and Switzerland got in our Sunday gear and convened in Dresden for this delightful day of history sharing, friendship, and even tail-gating.

Our Group Just off the Carriage
Our Formal Family Portarit

Most of the historical significance for this private country estate centered around 1730. Similar to King Friedrich’s Sans Souci outside Berlin or the Summer Residence of Peter the Great outside St. Petersburg, Moritzburg is another opulent getaway villa. This one, however, did seem more tastefully decorated (if that can be compared). My favorite room is the dining room, where all the deer antlers are displayed. The tips of the antlers are duly recorded and ordered in the dining room from the smallest to the largest sizes (mostly 26, 28, 30 and 32). You can read more about the castle here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritzburg_Castle.

Exterior of Moritzburg Castle
Deer Antlers at Building Entrance

Curtain Calls for an evening performance of Carmen  at Semperoper below:

Torreadors
Entire Cast and Principals
2016

Day 2-3: Dresden Neumarkt

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view of Frauenkirche from hotel room
Kitch
Bathroom
Second Bedroom
Master Bedroom
Living Room

One of the reasons I return to Dresden annually is to stay at one of my favorite hotels in the world. Located on the Neumarkt square around the corner from the famous domed Frauenkirche, this hotel  can be identified in the header above. Look for the yellow building and the  fourth one in the series of reconstructed Baroque buildings in the center of the header photo. This gem beats any Air BNB hands down for price, location, and amenities. The unit is at the very top, where two small dormer windows peak out at the roof level.

The hotel is also centrally located within a stone’s throw of the famous Semperoper, where we attend many of the concerts and opera performances, as well as numerous museums and attractions.

After a quick outing to Bad Schandau located in “Saxon Switzerland”, we headed over to the Semperoper for a delightful performance of Tsaichovsky and Rachmaninoff, performed by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. Kristine Opelais, an accomplished and upcoming star, sang from Eugene Onegin and Puccini.

Curtain call
The crowd
2016

Day 1: Ready…Set…

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Hi Everyone,

Are you ready for the travelwithmyselfandothers.com third world trip?!? It’s about to begin in less than 24 hours! Follow along my path of travel through Germany for a month and a half. I’ll be joining friends for the Dresden Music Festival first, revisit Weimar and Leipzig, then spend a month in Berlin studying German at the Goethe Institute.

After that, I meet up with hubby Gee Kin in Beijing to revisit Mongolia, Russia, and Japan to complete my 80 days around the world. It’s a follow-up tour from last year, where we took three-fourths of the Trans-Siberian Express (the Mongolian portion) from Beijing to Moscow.

This year, we are completing the full TSE route from Irkutsk, Russia to the east coast border town of Vladivostok. We are curious to see if it is a boom town full of economic activity. In case you’re not sure, just ask Sarah Palin! She can see what’s going on from her living room window!!

After that, we’ll fly to Japan to decompress on an ancient highway that connected Kyoto to Edo. It’s in the middle of Honshu, where we’ll also visit Matsumoto Castle, Nagano, and hot springs in the area.

Not much visuals to share yet, except for a weather report that I keep on my phone of all the upcoming cities (not necessarily in that order). See below.

Hang on, and hope you enjoy the ride with me. Write if you get a chance, I love hearing from you! (If you find the email notifications annoying, you can always opt out and follow manually by visiting the website directly at https://travelswithmyselfandothers.com/

Auf Wiedersehen, Viele Gruße, and Tschuss!!

VickieVictoria

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2016

COMING SOON! Third Annual Trip Around the World 2016

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Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

Get ready for another fun-filled cultural trip around the world in 72 days, about to begin in one month!

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This year’s travels will be a combination of my two world trips in 2014 and 2015 (see summaries above).  I will be heading  eastward from San Francisco to Germany for the annual Dresden Music Festival in May (my fourth year in a row!). The photo above is the completely rebuilt center of the city in Dresden, known as the “Florence of the Elbe”.  After that, it’s back to Berlin to attend a  one month, intermediate level language course at the Goethe Institute.

The second leg of the trip will be another long-distance train ride. I will meet my husband Gee Kin in Beijing to take the Trans-Mongolian train to Ulan Bator, where we launch a one-week visit to Mongolia. After a stop in Irkutsk along Lake Baikal, we plan to continue last year’s trail of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the eastward direction to the final coastal destination at Vladivostok.

The last segment of the trip will take place in Japan. From Tokyo, we will head west to visit Kusatsu Hot Springs, Nagano, Matsumoto Castle, and a walking trail known as the Nakasendo Highway, an ancient route built more than 400 years ago that connected Edo to Kyoto.

This might be considered a consolidation trip, to revisit and capture some of the highlights that were missed or overlooked from the past two years. I will have more time to reflect and explore German and Russian cultures, and to compare them with the Mongolian and Japanese. I hope you will enjoy traveling along with me to cities like Dresden, Berlin, Beijing, Ulan Bator, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Nagano, and Tokyo, as much as I will enjoy sharing them with you! BONSAI!!!

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2016

SF Victoriana v.2

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Local friends and family know I like taking cross-town walks, so a planned lunch downtown was another excuse to make a quick 5 mile, zero-carbon footprint (except on my soles) hoof from home to table. My usual 100-minute exercise was interrupted by several scenes along the way, extending the time another 30 minutes!

Interior of Custom Sewing Shop
Custom Tailor Storefront

My first distraction was a tiny, delicious little custom sewing shop. Laden with love and care, this local shop presented itself with a cute storefront and encourages you to peek inside. The treasure trove of lovely ingredients sparks the imagination and reminds you to think about art and what you wear.

Further along McAllister Street, between Masonic Avenue and the Civic Center, are a potpourri of beautiful Victorian homes. These are well known in San Francisco as “Painted Ladies”. They continue to mature into beautiful streetscapes that can only be fully appreciated by foot.

McAllister Street Victorians
More Beautiful Victorians

The heavy timber buildings were built at the turn of the century, when San Francisco was flush with wealth from the “Rush” of the Gold Rush. Local craftsmen, who must have been trained as carpenters in Europe, and artisans detailed and built custom one-of a kind residences for the nouveau riche. The gentle weather in the Bay Area allows these incredible structures to survive beyond a natural lifespan, along with the healthy, inherently bug-resistent redwood bones.

Steep Steps, no garage
Painted Lady Splendor
More Steep Steps, no garage

The beautiful entryways, frontages and detailing are definitely “look at me” attractions. I have driven along this route many times, but have only just come to notice and appreciate these buildings recently by walking through the neighborhood.

If you remember from last month’s February posting, I showed pictures of a house with a giant Valentine dangling outside (shown to the left below). Intrigued with the artwork at the time, I didn’t make a mental note of where it was. This time, as I walked on the same street and the block before the house, I wondered where the Valentine house had been located. No sooner had I pondered this question, when it appeared!  A new outdoor greeting for Easter was proudly displayed.

February Valentine
Easter Egg Love
Mini Mailbox for Messages

The re-discovery of the hanging artwork brought a sheer feeling of glee to me. In addition, a tiny toy mailbox was perched on the garden wall just outside the house. There were colorful sheaves of paper hanging next to it, with a dog-chewed pencil attached. A sign invited comments to the artwork! I was so inspired and delighted by this opportunity. I showered the artist with kudos for caring and sharing and stuffed my note into the pumpkin-colored mailbox.

I was late to lunch, but  glowed all day.

PS. Plans for this summer’s travels are being finalized, so stay tuned!

2015

Bay Area Travelswithmyselfandothers

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Being back in San Francisco encourages me to continue my frequent walks throughout the city. Being situated in the southwest quadrant of the city, we can easily go in any direction–the city is merely 7 miles wide in any direction as the crow flies–and hit a water’s edge. The 7×7=49 square miles makes it easy to conquer the city by car, bus, bicycle, or walking. Whenever I can, my choice of transportation is on foot. I can accomplish a 3-5 mile walk in less than 2 hours.

Admittedly, it takes a bit of clever navigation to avoid the daunting hills of San Francisco! Tourists have been often thwarted by the steep elevations and unforgiving fog banks in California summers. Clad in bermuda shorts, tourists shiver as they study their maps. Plan views show short stretches between Fisherman’s Wharf and Downtown. In reality, going through Nob Hill requires a hefty hike in elevation of 400 feet! And that’s with a few bumps and bruises along the way, as the elevation rises and falls. It’s no wonder that tourists are stunned not only by the beauty of San Francisco, but its harsh climate and terrain as well.

For local city dwellers, I learned that there are more than the seven traditional hills in San Francisco. Here is a link to a description of the 53 reported hills if you are curious: http://sfgazetteer.com/how-many-hills-in-san-francisco.html

As a locavore, I enjoy exploring the streets of San Francisco and comparing them to the many scenes of cities I have visited throughout the world (for some reason, Prague comes to mind first). Since last October’s Halloween festivities (see Hallo Halloween from October 30, 2015 posting), I am realizing that San Franciscans LOVE decorating their Victorians and sweet homes. There is definitely pride in a little city that CAN. The more I walk, the more I notice the sweet, sensitive little details that make this city sparkle. Here are two random samples from this month’s holidays:

February Valentine
Chinese New Year Celebrated

In addition to Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year’s (Feb. 8 this year), San Francisco hosted the 50th Superbowl. Not being an avid sports fan, I failed to capture any photos of the carnival-like atmosphere downtown. It did preoccupy the city and drive it crazy for three weeks, so there was alot going on this month. Americans love celebrating holidays, and now it seems to extend beyond Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Aside from local city walks, husband Gee Kin and I continue to take urban walks throughout the Bay Area. After accomplishing various routes from San Francisco to Napa, Oakland to San Jose, and San Jose to San Francisco, we are now finding extensions beyond. We mapped out a route in the past couple of weeks from Petaluma to Santa Rosa. You can see the route screen shots here:

Petaluma to Rohnert Park
Rohnert Park to Santa Rosa

I originally planned to stay overnight at the Hampton Inn. In the past, I linked each day’s 8-12 mile walk between hotel rest points. I discovered that you can do the same with public transit points. As long as you are linked to connections back to home base, you can string transit points to each other, and easily pick up where you last left off and by paying attention to transit schedules.

Each leg was accomplished on a separate weekend day. We took Golden Gate Transit to each point of departure to link the route, so each walk was an easy day trip. The beginning and/or end of each walk was capped by a visit to a local, perhaps newly discovered restaurant as a reward! We discovered the Naked Pig in Santa Rosa, a roadside diner with all naturally produced ingredients.

Diners on Weekend in Santa Rosa
Naked Pig Service Counter

The featured photo shows another weekend walk out the door and across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. We topped our trip with a visit to Scoma’s for mussels, fries, and pink sparkling.

Next time you get good weather, think about walking out your door to a restaurant you’ve been dying to try. And don’t forget to smell the roses along the way. Let me know what you do!!

PS. Plans are underway for this summer’s travelswithmyselfandothers. Hint: Oh No! The TSE and GI AGAIN??!!

We are now able to link our Bay Area walks physically from Santa Rosa to Los Gatos. If you are interested in doing it too, see http://www.crazyladywalks.com.

2016

Bye-Bye to Berlin

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Dear Followers,

On our last day in Berlin, we started the morning with breakfast at the Coffee House for Literature. Located in a pre-war building on Fasanstrasse just south of the Zoological Garden stop and near the Uhlanstrasses Metro Station, this famous coffee house rivalled that of the Cafe Einstein in Kurfürstendam, where writers, poets and intellectuals gathered over addictive coffee. We ventured into one of the Berlin galleries listed in Art Forum, but the exhibition was very tiny and not as fruitful as our visit to another recommendation at Kunstraum Kreuzberg on Marienplatz earlier in the week.

We made it just in time to Potsdamer Platz to attend a free noontime concert at the Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall. The symphony was not performing due to the holiday schedule. Instead, we were able to listen to a short Mozart chamber music performance. On the program, parents are reminded that lunchtime concerts are not aimed explicitly at children, and therefore should only bring children who are able to remain “quietly seated for approximately 45 minutes”. That seemed very reasonable and successful as a message.

Lucas Cranach, Der Jungbrunnen, 1546
Brueghel, Die Kreuztragung, 1606
Hals, Malle Babbe, 1633/35
Vermeer, Young Lady with a Pearl Hairband
Vermeer, the Wine Glass, c. 1661/62

We battled the elements during most of our short visit to Germany and Holland, and this day was no exception. We decided to take a short walk to the Culture Forum, where the Gemälde Gallery of the Staatliche Museum of Berlin is located. It is a huge repository of art and it held major exhibitions on the Botticelli Renaissance and Albrecht Durer. Surprisingly, we found more Vermeers, Bosches, Brueghels, and Rembrandts here than those in the Rijksmuseum. We realized that the Dutch Masters were scattered throughout Europe and that the paintings by native sons were not necessarily displayed in their host countries.

John Ruskin, after Botticelli
Ingres, after Botticelli
Degas, after Botticelli
Willam Morris, after Botticelli

The Botticelli exhibition compared many other artists’ work that emulated the classical Botticelli Venus. She served as a model and inspiration for many other artists, from Neo-Classicists such as Ingres to Elsa Schiaparelli, a dress designer. For me, I found the latter day 19th Century renditions by John Ruskin and William Morris, early leaders of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England, the most interesting. You can see the rich textures of the Morris tapestry already creating the signature pattern that later became so famous in the Liberty of London wall coverings.

I found myself particularly attracted to exhibitions that compare and contrast two different artists’ work. They seem to provide a lesson in comparative world history and painting that I otherwise wouldn’t discover. I am also becoming more comfortable with and more whetted to art museums as a cultural and intellectual experience. I have an opportunity to learn history in a visual way that is easy and interesting for me. The excellent curating and wealth of material certainly enhance these comparisons in the few museums we visited on this trip.

By the end of the day, we were pretty wiped. Nevertheless, my professional food guide was relentless and targeted a German restaurant as gesture to my insatiable appetite for things German for the finale. Sadly, it was closed for the holiday cleaning! We went to the next best, an Austrian restaurant famed for its Wiener Schnitzel. If you look closely at the photo above, you will notice that the regular fork looks out of scale with the schnitzel on the plate. That’s because the schnitzel was super-sized!

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The day before, we beat it back from Amsterdam to hit a local Kreuzberg Turkish restaurant.

Apologies for the delay in this final Berlin post. I will be upgrading my site to continue posting the next trip, but have most likely reached the cap for free webhosting after two years with this posting! Stay tuned for the 2016 upgraded version…

…for now, we are sad to leave this vibrant and exciting city on the move. Until next time…Tschuss!! VV.

PS: Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday from Bodega Bay!!

2016

More Amsterdam and Gent, Belgium

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Today’s major events included a performance at the Concertgebouw of Handel’s Water Music by the Berlin Alte Musik Orchestre. The instruments included a harpsichord, lute, and old horns and wooden flutes from the time when the music was created.

Fortunately we sat in the front row for 20 Euros and could hear the delicate instruments while observing the performers on the podium six feet above us and from the feet up! It was very enjoyable and worthwhile to share some of my musical interest with my daughter at a precious point in time.

Our main activity was tackling the Rijksmuseum. Despite our assumption that many Bosch, Breughels and other Dutch masters would be there, there were only a few Rembrandts, Vermeers, and a smattering of landscape painters.

See above, from top left to right:

  1. Vermeer, Woman with a Love Letter
  2. Peter de Hooch, Woman with Child in a Pantry, c. 1656-1660
  3. Rembrandt, Selfie
  4. Rembrandt, the Night Watch
  5. Van Everdingen, Young Woman Warming her Hands, c. 1644-1648
  6. Chinese Porcelains

The day before we drove through Antwerp, a city that was occupied by the Spanish in the 17th Century, to Gent. Melissa worked at De Superette last year doing a stage  and learned how to bake bread. The photos show the head baker putting the bread in the molds that Melissa also used to learn bread making.

See below:
1. De Superette Exteriors
2, 3, 4. De Superette Interiors


Below,
5. Bakery Entrance
6,7. Foam Potatoes, pulled pork, and poached egg with marinated shaved mushroom
8. Daughter Melissa, with head chef Rose and Head Baker Biggie

At the end of the day today, we enjoyed signature Dutch hot chocolate and cerise torte at the Rijksmuseum Cafe after a long and productive venture.

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Note: we’re heading to Berlin tomorrow, see you there!