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:
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.
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/
Get ready for another fun-filled cultural trip around the world in 72 days, about to begin in one month!
This year’s travels will be a combination of my two world trips in 2014 and 2015 (see summaries above). I will be headingeastward 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!!!
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!
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!
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!!
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:
Vermeer, Woman with a Love Letter
Peter de Hooch, Woman with Child in a Pantry, c. 1656-1660
Rembrandt, Selfie
Rembrandt, the Night Watch
Van Everdingen, Young Woman Warming her Hands, c. 1644-1648
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.
Note: we’re heading to Berlin tomorrow, see you there!
As part of our Thelma and Louise descent on N. Europe in the dead of winter, Melissa and I drove through wind, sleet and snow (no hail) to reach Amsterdam. To an art history major like Melissa, this city is the museum capital of the world. The thought of tackling the Van Gogh, Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk, and Hermitage museums in one visit is daunting enough to send you to dreamland or the loo. (More about that later)
In any event, I had plenty on my mind. Our first major stop today was the Van Gogh Museum.
We were lucky enough to descend on a major exhibition between Edvard Munch and Van Gogh. The curators had a field day placing each major Van Gogh next to a relevant Munch and comparing them. The artists’ styles vary greatly but their humanism and emotionally charged social commentary were consistently similar.
Borrowed from the Museum in Oslo, the Munch collection was vast. It saved a trip to Oslo in this exhibit alone, but the two artists’ work side by side was overwhelming.
The painting itself was described as a sudden turning of the sky to blood orange. The subject was reacting to the scream caused by the sky and by putting his hands to his face. He was not the creator of the scream, as most of us would think, but it also has that effect.
Van Gogh had a completely different version of a similar setting. (See below, an example of the comparisons and contrasts between these two famous painters’ work).
Van Gogh scene adjacent to Munch’s Scream
Aside from following intricate comparisons, I was having my own wonderings. Did Klimt borrow the Kiss from Munch? Munch’s piece, also entitled the Kiss, comes from 1902, followed by Klimt’s piece around 1908. What’s your guess?
The Kiss by Munch
The Kiss by Klimt
The deep dark leaves depicted by Van Gogh reminded me of one of Melissa’s paintings. Similar in color and cool density, the leaves seemed to reflect the mood and style of Van Gogh’s masterpiece!
Another jog in my now cluttered memory bank was the recent Asian Art Museum exhibition of Western art influenced by Japanese artists. The Van Gogh Museum version contained a room with a Van Gogh painting juxtaposed next to Hiroshige’s bridge. Very similar to the recent Asian Art Museum exhibition. Hmm, not bad for making connections…one of my favorite pastimes.
The takeaway from this museum is the vastness of Van Gogh’s efforts to learn and do art. His strokes convey his internal struggle to communicate and reach the viewer. His subjects command awareness and commitment. His peasant families, landscapes and simplicity in living demonstrate his earnestness and conversion from living a bourgeois life (his father was a pastor and his brother a successful art dealer) to becoming an active conveyor of life and living. Here’s one guy who made his avocation his profession!
You can read more about the exhibition here:
And now about the loo. Grubby hubby Gee Kin gets museum sickness whenever we spend too much time browsing and pausing in museums. Initially, he made a dive into the men’s room after about twenty minutes of forking over his hefty share of the entrance fee. Slowly, he is overcoming his immun-deficiency and increasing his brain mass (not tolerance) for visual institutions and the intellectual challenges they offer. After a successful visit to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg last summer, he can proudly claim that he is in remission.
Sadly, I discovered a device at the Van Gogh today that might have saved Gee Kin his misery. It’s known as a Stendhal box.
Developed for museum goers in ecstasy, this chair with a shroud around it (there’s a wooden door to cover your view after you sit inside) can help you to decompress at the end of a raptured experience at the museum! While some may believe this to be comic relief, the confessional certainly could have treated Gee Kin with a refuge from torture and spared him another trip to the loo.
Our fruitful day ended with dinner at De Kas, located on a lake in town. The greenhouse and lab environment was an unusual setting to showcase its hydroponic food production that short-circuits farm to table in an entertaining and palatable way. The single menu included vegetable forward and crunchy appetizers, mushroom consommé, field fowl, and cheese plate or tarte tatin for dessert.
OK, this was an unplanned visit to my favorite adopted country. My daughter Melissa is between jobs and after contemplating Morocco or Mexico City, we agreed that Berlin was not a bad option for interesting food, art and culture.
Our first of two weeks revolved around a number of upcoming new restaurants, galleries that are open over the holiday break, and special performances.
After stalking many of Europe’s best venues, I learned that there are impresarios who descend on famous sites such as the Berlin Philharmonic. When the orchestra is off, they lease the facilities. Many of the promotions cater to local tourists from France, Italy and Eastern Europe.
The usual Swan Lake, Mozart masterpieces, and Strauss waltzes are offered, but are not part of the regular program. While we did partake in a Russian ballet company performance, it takes a bit of close navigation to understand who is producing what and when.
Nevertheless, we enjoyed seeing a bit of traditional ballet contrasted with a modern version by Duarto/Kylian, two contemporary choreographers. The latter audience was much younger and local, while the former was stocked with a mostly tourist audience.
There are museums and galleries galore here, probably too numerous to count. For that, Berlin beats Mexico City hands down. We tackled the Pergamon earlier over the weekend with friend Vladimir from Meissen with some difficulty, as the Museum Island is still being renovated and access to each museum is limited.
Yesterday we covered art galleries in the Prenzlauer and Kreuzberg areas that included the Institute for Contemporary Art and the Kunstraum Kreuzberg. Old schoolhouses have been repurposed for gallery use as well as after school music and arts programs. A decent cafe in each allows visitors to enjoy the environment while warming up to the cold chill (and now snow) outside.
The Kennedy clan are well known to Berliners, almost more than to Americans. Aside from JFK’s famous quote, he was known to protect West Berlin from succumbing to the Communists in East Berlin. A small but significant historical detail.
The Xmas Markets were fun to explore and finally experience. The “gluhwein” tastes better than it sounds, and is merely what we call mulled wine. And the stollen or Xmas cake leaves a bit to be desired, particularly when traveling with a pastry chef.
The hip new food fare here, however, has been delightfully innovative, inexpensive, and thoughtful. While not always successful (veggies a bit on the raw side), the intent on making food healthy, delicious and beautifully pleasing to the eye is very evident. While not a foodie myself, I am swept up by the company I am keeping. Traveling with one can cause you to get into the picture pretty fast. Take a look at some of the plates: my favorite was the avocado and red beets on toast. Easy enough to make me want to make it as soon as I return home..
For the wannaknows, we hit Lokal, Industry Standard, and Horvath.
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