Hola Madrid!

Liberty, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts which Heaven has bestowed on man. The treasures of the earth or sea are not to be compared to it. For liberty, as for honor, man must be prepared to die.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra- Don Quixote de la Mancha

In Spain, they remember Cervantes every 23rd of April. Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same day. It is celebrated as Day of Book and/or St. Jordi. On this day ladies receive a red rose and gentlemen receive a book. So, I receive red roses from my honeybee on this day. It is celebrated as international festival of children in Turkey. 23rd of April seems like a busy day all around.

During our visit to Templo de Debod we couldn't see the antique pieces from Egypt. In stead, Cervantes welcomed us with his most famous characters of his masterpiece Don Quixote. And the sunset was very beautiful.



Next day we had a "literal walk" on Calle de las Huertas.

-He's now blind with rage.
-I shall kill you, believe me,

on that rack, villagers.

-Who killed the Commander?

-Fuenteovejuna did, Sir.

Lope de Vega

Just a reminder of the story. The town of Fuenteovejuna has a Commander sent by the king, he behaves badly, and the villagers kill him. When someone is sent to investigate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuenteovejuna says that the king himself went), the villagers resist to point to anyone in particular, claiming that Fuenteovejuna (that's, all the town) did it. They say it's based on a true story. For once, the people raised up against the nobles!

Museo Nacional del Prado (http://www.museodelprado.es/en) hosts distinguished pieces of Velázquez, Goya, El Greco and many other artisits. Las Meninas is the center of attraction of the exhibition. We had the chance to see Richard Hamilton's tribute to Picasso. Hamilton depicted Las Meninas by using Picasso's style of different periods for each figure on the painting. Of course by replacing Velázquez by Picasso...

I rediscovered Goya. He has two faces. One illustrates the usual icons of the time some nobles, some compositions in nature etc. The other is dark. Reflects starving, death, fear. My favorite of the exhibition was Aquelarre or The Witches' Sabbath. The painting was originally bigger but it is cutted. Nevertheless the woman figure on the right hand side-which was in the middle before- still atracts the attention on herself. It is still a mystery who she is, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_Aquelarre.jpg .



A culinary nirvana can be experienced at Los Gatos. Delicious tapas served with drinks for reasonable prices. I would recommend the salad with olives and sardines. This traditional tapas bar is at 15-20 minutes walking distance from Museu del Prado. Death certificate of a bull fighter, an original drawing from Picasso, very old local costumes and many interesting antique pieces are exhibited in this bar.



A hot summer night at Madrid center is never exhausting as long as you have enough water sources with you. Cheerful voices all around the streets can be heard not only in Spanish but in many languages. Bear is not the symbol of Berlin only but also the symbol of Madrid.

My honeybee found a wonderful orxata place. Horchata or orxata is a beverage originally from south of Spain. It is made from tigernuts. I cannot tell how good it is, you should try it.
Horchateria Alboraya

C./Alcala', 125 28009 Madrid

New York, New York ...

Times Square

New York City, the largest melting pot of world. When Rosa Luxemburg first arrived to Berlin, she expressed her impression : "Berlin macht auf mich im allgemeinen den widrigsten Eindruck: kalt, geschmacklos, massiv...(Berlin in general made the most adverse impression on me: cold, tasteless, massive...)" (Frederik Hetmann, Rosa L.) Well, I would not play Rosa in the heart of capitalism sure! I just recalled the lines she dropped to Leon Jogiches when I was climbing the stairs of Times Square subway station. New York in general made me the most adverse impression: cold-it was still raining in the mid June-, massive-it is a daily miracle how things work with 15 million people-, and very nice.

View from Central Park

I made my way to 5th Avenue, my destination was Metropolitan Museum of Arts. The skyscrapers rise the all way long. Trump tower, Tiffany & Co., and the others. I noticed also penthouses nicely decorated with small trees and flowers. Even the huge Central Park seems like a small oasis between the stone towers. Towers of an empire : "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.(from Ron Suskind, New York Times)"

Metropolitan Museum of Arts

After having a quick lunch I continued walking in the Central Park. And I reached Metropolitan Museum. The recommended entrence fee is 20 $. The box officer kindly informed me one can pay less or more if he or she prefers. The tariff is determined by the visitor.






I was-again(!)-lucky, I could meet Picasso in NY. The Seated Harlequin (1901) was on the publicity poster of the exhibition and it was a tribute from Picasso to the suicide of his friend Carles Casagemas. Picasso used harlequin figure in his several works in different forms to express different scenes. The Seated Harlequin was one of the most impressive to me. Jacqueline with a Ruff (1963) and Man with a Ruff (1963) were two lovely lithos of him, not only because they were made with a new lithography technique of Picasso but each were carved as a resembler of me and my honeybee, respectively!

The other temporary exhibitions on were :"An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo", "Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs 1950-1980" and "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity". Jacopo Ligozzi's illustration of an Ottoman soldier with a lion was a nice piece of An Italian Journey. The micro cosmos of NY streets cannot be expressed better than as expressed in Leon Levinstein's photos. Well, in 30 years the main change might be the walking speed of the people. A street scene from 60's, Woman in Blonde Wig and Tight Dress was my favorite. And American Woman... As shown on TV.

Guggenheim Museum at NY should be seen (http://www.guggenheim.org/). Besides the collection of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh, museum hosts exhibitions of contemporary art. From the collection Le Palais Ducal vu de Saint-Georges Majeur (Claude Monet, 1908) was a special one for me. The foggy image of the Palazzo Ducale (Venice/Italy) seems to me reflected from the 4 elements. The reflections on the bright blue water, the yellowish palace rising from the earth, the colors of sunset on the palace like flames of fire, and not only the sky but the whole image is very hollow like spread on air. The on going temporary exhibition was Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance. Self-potrait of GillianWearing at 3 years old was challenging; could we look from the eyes of a kid or do we remember the human with all adult-like insticts and feelings when we were a kid? Stillness from Tacita Dean is a video performance. One passes through the silent scenes while walking among the projected videos. Even the visitor's shaddow falls on projections, the video goes on. The visitor just passes, without being able to change anything.

I was looking for Audrey Hepburn. With her smoky eyes, a last farewell look to her lover at Grand Central Terminal. Without loosing time I made my connection to Chappaqua.

Scarsdale

I had to make a choice between a piano concert from the students of a music school and Scarsdale Fine Arts Festival. Hoping to compansate the missed concert at Musikfest Berlin (2-21 September 2010), I prefered hanging around Scarsdale. I really enjoyed the enviroment. I chose a nice pottery for myself and a litho print of two koi fish from a Japanese artist for my honeybee. She told me "koi" means love and happiness in Japanese. I couldn't find a better new-home-present for him!

Delaware River

I was encouraged to do some outdoor sports. Although Delaware River was a good place for rafting beginners, we managed to sit on a rock with an innocent rapid.

Historic Hudson Valley doesn't only offer visitors many opportunities to enjoy nature (http://www.hudsonvalley.org/). Union Church of Pocantico Hills is dedicated to the memory of Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller. This little country church has stained glass windows from Marc Chagall and a Rose window from Henri Matisse. The Rose Window is the last work of Matisse. The Rockefeller estate at Kykuit hosts a selection of art collection. Especially the tapestries of Picasso paintings are very nice pieces of the collection.


I was lucky with Miss Liberty. I did not reserve my ticket online thus I could skip the long queue of the visitors with pre-booked tickets. To keep in mind; one should do reservation extra for the crone tours. I heard from a security guard at the Liberty Island, visiting the crone is possible now. It was closed for a long time after 9/11 but the main concern is now not a terror attack. The lady is not designed for touristic tours inside her. It is the Statue of Liberty! The maintanence of the construction is not easy. So, they accept only limited number of visitors per annum. On the pedal of the new Colossus, the masterpiece of F. Bartholdi, these lines were written:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

-Emma Lazarus, 1883


A restaurant at Little Korea

I made a stop at Little Korea by the Empire State Building. Traditional rice with eggs and octupus is served with 7 different appetizer and fruit afterwards. It was yummy and costed only 9 $-quite cheap for that meal around 5th Avenue. If you want to have coffee from the coffe-automat but if your Korean is not sufficient don't worry. The shop keeper kindly helps you.

View from top of the Empire State Building

Greenwich Village is suppose to be the bohemian part of Manhattan with artist residents and alternative life styles. But I was a bit disappointed when I saw it turned out to be a very fashionable place with expensive designers shops.

Since I am in NY, I made the effort of reading a work from an American author, Paul Auster. At least he is living in Brooklyn... In the Country of Last Things (1987) is a futurist nightmare. The narrator Anna Blume tells about her arrival to the city in chaos (it is not mentioned but I imagined that city as NY) and her adventures when she was looking for her lost brother. The fiction is structured around the last things; the last hand written book, the last unborn baby, the last help of a friend, the last hope to find a brother. Every "last thing" turns into a faded memory.
By chance I found an old book In Someone's Shadow from Rod McKuen, poet from California... We know his A man alone from Frank Sinatra. Reading the poems was different to me than listenning them as songs...

New York city has many universities and scientific institutions. I had the chance to visit two of them: Columbia University is the oldest institution of higher education of New York. It was founded in 1754 and started with a church and theology institute. Now it is one of the most respectable universities of the world (http://www.columbia.edu/). The Stoony Brook University (http://www.stonybrook.edu/) was founded in 1957 on Long Island, east of Manhattan. It is very close to Brookhaven National Labs. It has many departments for undergraduate and graduate studies and the campus is very nice.

If I can make it there

I'll make it anywhere

It's up to you

New York, New York...

Frank Sinatra (lyrics:F. Ebb, J. Kander)

Potsdam

I visited my Kitty in Berlin at the end of May and we did a trip to nearby Potsdam that I fully recommend to anyone. So close to a big city, Potsdam is an oasis of calm, with wonderful "little" houses like this one


There's actually a good collection of embassies around. But the most interesting link with Potsdam's diplomatic history is probably the Russian Colonia Alexandrowska, that is a set of about twenty houses built in the early 19th century to house a group of Russian singers sent as a present (!) by Tsar Alexander I to king Friedrich Wilhelm III. Here's one of the houses, that seem to be very well mantained:


We must also give a culinary recommendation. Probably the best is to walk around Nauener Tor. We stopped in Benkerstrasse at Maison du Chocolat where, naturally, we got hot chocolate. It was thick and good, reminding us of the excellent chocolate you can get in Pretixol street in Barcelona. And they also have a nice selection of home-made cakes!


And after this ingestion of calories, go burn them with a walk around the gardens of the famous Schloss Sanssouci.

Finally, a challenge for the visitor. Find the Branderburger Tor in Potsdam, and compare it with the more famous one in Berlin.

Edinburgh

We spent Easter in Edinburgh. On Friday afternoon, we paid our first visit to Calton Hill. National monument, old observatory, and an old Spanish cannon are the highlights of the park. The National monument was dedicated to the soldiers who died during Napoleonic wars. It was intented to resemble a temple in the Acropolis, but money run out, and it was never finished, so now it looks a bit disappointing. The cannon has the crest of Phillip IV of Spain on it, and there are recordings of it in several places around, including India. After touring around the world, now it is resting on the hill, pointing to the city.

Bee buzzing over a cannon

After Calton Hill we walked through the new part of the city, and ended up for dinner at Crag and Tail (503 Lawnmaket), which offers nice and not very expensive variety of Scottish dishes. If you are used to proper dinner everyday, try not to be so late. Most of the restaurants close the kitchen after 22:00. And when you receive the change don't be surprised when you see Sir Walter Scott instead of the Queen.

Friday had been quite cold and windy, but Saturday started with a promising sunshine, so we decided to discover the mystic Inchcolm Island. The most practical way to get there for us was taking the train from Haymarket to South Queensferry (it takes around 15 minutes) and then taking the ferry to the island (it takes around an hour). One should find the tiny tiny path from the station to the harbour; the path is not long, but it has a number of steps, so bare this in mind, as the way is uphill on the way back!

There are two companies running ferries to the island, Forth belle and Maid of the Forth. Prices are similar, about 10 pounds. The ferry services are not very often (about 1 per hour) so it is better if you check the timetable before hand.

On the way to the island, the Forth Rail Bridge (Firth of Forth Bridge) salutes you on the right hand side. The Victorian construction is very impressive with up to 104 m height and over 2500 m length.

One needs to pay a fee to visit the island (about 4 pounds) as it is under protection and run by Historic Scotland. We were allowed 1.5 hours on the shore. Inchcolm was home of monks related to Irish missionary Saint Columba. The history of the well preserved monastery goes back to 12th century. It was really nice to enjoy some time in this island, far from any cars or city noises. One could only imagine how was life for the monks here before the abbey was closed. In contrast with this, the island also has memories from when it was fortified and transformed to a military base during both I. and II. World War, as it is quite a strategic position to the North Sea.

Abbey on the island from the boat

Inchcolm and the whole of the firth of Forth is also home to some wild sealife. It was very nice to see seals lying lazily on the rocks and charming puffins with their bright colors. Just to keep in mind: Seagulls are not so friendly during their nesting period, in this season watch out where you step on.

Some seals in the firth of Forth, with snowed mountain in the background

After a long and nice journey, we were back to Edinburgh. We had lunch at the café-restaurant Hub, which is the center of activity during the August festivals. At this time of the year it is not so busy, but it was nice. The food is quite uncomplicated, and not too expensive, so it is a good option if you're in the center. Funny enough, the waiter started to speak Spanish to Bee; indeed, we found that there is a lot of Spanish-speaking people up here. How do they survive without sun? This, we could not find out.

Then we wanted to see the curious Camera Obscura, which is very close to the Hub and to Edinburgh Castle. The large exhibition of optical toys is really interesting. I liked the part of pinhole photography most. A pinhole camera is very simple, though it should be prepared with much more care. The lense is replaced with a pinhole. As only a small amount of light can pass through the hole, a long time is needed to acquire image onto the film; some of the pictures exhibited had been exposed for hours! The resulting images are more softer and different. A question crossed my mind I don't know why, if the images of the universe could be stored in black holes?

Camera Obscura is a giant pinhole camera. With the help of a periscope you can see the live image of the Edinburgh Castle's parking lot, with the people walking around; because of this, it seems that during the first demonstrations (in the 19th century), some people fainted! The demostration takes 15 minutes. Then we enjoyed the beautiful view of Edinburgh from the tower.

The Royal Mile from the roof of Camera Obscura building

Out of Camera Obscura, we walked all the way down the Royal Mile, to see the new Scottish parliament. The building, by Catalan architect Enric Miralles, is a diverse architecture among the old stone buildings. It seems cute with the Scottish terrier like figures on the facades. It is different than the other parliament buildings we have seen elsewhere.

Late again but we should try Haggis-vegetarian version of course. Deacon Brodie's (435 Lawnmarket) was our stop to do it. It is a bit touristic but the service was fast and the atmosphere was warm. The pub is named after the city council member Deacon Brodie who had a life story that later inspired the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

On Sunday, our first destination was exhibition of nature photographer Steve Bloom in the frame of Edinburgh Science Festival. The swimming elephant was my favorite among the photos. It was more flying to me. Bee was impressed by the size of this shark (note that the "small" thing in front of him is a seal!)

Going up and down around the Royal Mile made us a bit tired and hungry, so we stopped by Turkish café-restaurant Truva (251-253 Royal Mile) to enjoy baklava and Turkish coffee. It is a very nicely decorated café, and the staff were very friendly with us.

Then we made our way to the famous Edinburgh Castle. Waiting in the queue and paying 13 pounds... The clerk asks "what is your purpose of being here, what is your nationality" and so on with a fake smile on her face. My Bee answered her "to enjoy the sunshine..." I simply refused to give any information. We accepted it as a Scottish way of humor.

Coming out of the Castle, we were just in time for a free organ concert at St. Giles Cathedral. It was a nice way to relax after so much walking these days!

Afterwards, we decided to walk through the small streets of the older part of the city. We arrived at the old campus of Edinburgh University, which was so abandoned in the Easter holiday. By this time, we had learnt not to wait too much to start looking for a place for dinner. We ended up in a Sudanese restaurant called Nile Valley, were we enjoyed quite good food again at a reasonable price.

By the time we came out, it was late, so this time we took the bus to our hotel. The bus went right through the city center, so we could see again all those views, with the special light that things have at night, especially the things that you've enjoyed visiting.

Altogether, we enjoyed our holidays in Edinburgh, and we would recommend anyone to visit the city. On the down side, the weather was colder than we would have liked, and we think that the City Council should consider investing some money in cleaning up the buildings in the city center. They are covered in a black layer of smoke that does not suit them at all!

Hello!

We will share our travel experiences with you soon...