the Grand Tour blog

Crowded and Clouded in Paris

Sunday: The night train arrived in Paris from Berlin on time at 09:23, at Gare de L’Est. It had been a good journey: two of us started from Berlin, two others joined the compartment at Hannover. Two of my German companions spoke excellent English, making up for my lack of German, and we shared beer and coffee and talked until late. I slept pretty well.

At Gare de L’Est we were greeted by many soldiers patrolling the platform with automatic weapons, and my German friend and I agreed it felt decidedly threatening. Under what circumstances would they open fire on passengers? Would they shoot to kill? We said our goodbyes and left the station quickly. I walked the 300m to Gare du Nord to leave my suitcase, ready for my Eurostar at the end of the afternoon.

My original intention had been to catch the 13:04 Eurostar to London, which would have been ideal for the onward journey home, and would have given me a couple of hours of modest sightseeing in Paris – in particular I wanted to visit the church of St Eustache, near Les Halles. But when I came to book (over three months ago) I found the price would be rather over budget at £103.00. Later trains were £103.00, then an incredible £223.00, £223.00 again, then £103.00. Only at 16:43 and 17:13 did the price come down to a more manageable £69.50. These are Seniors’ fares: for normal people that £103.00 becomes £166.50. On the £223.00 trains it’s actually a few pounds cheaper to travel in Premier class; go figure. In the end I’d chosen the 17:13.

Breakfast looked incredibly expensive, even in the station: the €2.00 cappuccino in Berlin is €4.00 in Paris. I walked further north-west for 15 minutes towards Montmartre, stopping at the steps up to the Sacre Coeur. I had hoped to repeat some of the black-and-white photos I'd taken when I was last here 35 years ago, but the place was heaving with people, in particular with the rather dodgy-looking guys hassling people to buy bags and miniature Eiffel Towers, and other dodgy-looking people trying to get you to sign something: your life away, probably. 

So I plotted the straightest course I could to St Eustache and set off on the 2.5km walk, seeing quite a range of Sunday morning Parisian life on the way. The weather was grey and it rained for a while. My interest in the church stems from a CD I bought a few years ago which was recorded here on the 1989 Van den Heuval organ, which combines the characteristics of both Baroque and symphonic instruments, and is particularly suited to modern works. I heard it briefly at the end of Mass. Outside the interesting architecture was difficult to photograph due to massive building works, which I think will hide the distant view of the church; and the miserable weather.

But the sun did come out as I approached the Louvre, via the Cour Carrée. The Pyramide hadn't even been thought of last time I was here, and it was good to see it at last. Naturally I appreciated a fellow photographer stepping in front of me just as I'd lined up my shot:

I sat for half an hour in the Tuileries gardens, slightly away from the maelstrom of Parisian crowds, but the sun went and it felt quite cold, and in any case I was suffering a lack-of-food crisis (and an only-got-a-50-euro-note crisis). So after a lot of searching I found a pleasant and affordable snack bar, then travelled by the RER back to Gare du Nord. The Eurostar check-in was unbelievably slow and tedious and chaotic, but eventually I could sit back and relax for two and a half hours. Back in the UK and travelling through Kent, Orange dropped my phone call eight times; and that's without the tunnels. And now, back home.

[If you've been following this trip you will have noticed that blogging has been running a day or two late recently, for which I apologise; sometimes there just isn't time, sometimes my brain has shut down. Now the trip has ended, but I hope to continue blogging about various aspects of it from time to time, so do please check back.]

Winding Down in Berlin

Saturday: departure day, although not until the evening. But it did mean I had to pack everything properly and bear in mind what I might need easy access to on the night train. Paid the hotel bill – only the second time I'd seen my hosts as I'd been out very early on both of the previous mornings – and to the nearby stop for the 142 bus to the Hauptbahnhof to leave my suitcase; the bus a new discovery for me, saving the 1.5km slog along Inviladenstraße which is currently in the middle of road works. The luggage lockers at the station are open again now – last time I was here everyone had to use the manual check-in system.

Then S-bahn to Friedrichstraße Bahnhof, U6 to Stadt Mitte with its confusing multiple exits, and eventually to Gendarmenmarkt. The sun is shining, for the first time since Leipzig! Which is just as well as I have no inside visits planned for my final day. I hung around Gendarmenmarkt for quite a while, enjoying the sun and taking a few pix of the Konzerthaus and the tall, narrow, matching Deutscher Dom and Französischer Dom:

The tower of the Französischer Dom had been closed as there was a wedding taking place in the church, but it reopened around 13:30 and inevitably I climbed to the top for views over the city. Then to Bebelplatz, where the outside of the opera house, the Deutscher Staatoper, is undergoing building work. But the point of interest for me was the glass panel, perhaps 4-feet or so square, let into the cobbles and providing a view into the Empty Library, whose blank shelves commemorate the book burning by the Nazis in 1933. 

Across Unter den Linden to Neue Wache, designed as a guard house by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1818 and used as such for a hundred years. It is now the National Memorial to Victims of War and Tyranny. At its centre an enlarged replica – by Harald Haacke – of the sculpture "Mother with her dead son" by Käthe Kollwitz:

Farther east along Unter den Linden to the river the crowds were heavier and the music louder, so I did the tourist thing as far as Alexanderplatz and the base of the Fernsehturm, before admitting defeat and heading west by S-bahn back to the Hauptbahnhof. At which point I dropped my sunglasses and someone must have seen them fall and made off with them. Basta! 

Before grabbing some junk food in the station and making for my 19:08 night train to Paris, I called in to the nearby Hamburger Bahnhof, an old station that is now the Museum für Gegenwart (Museum for Contemporary Art). But the only ticket they could offer was a €12.00 combi-ticket to the entire museum, which certainly wasn't worth it for the less than an hour I had available.

So that's it. Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin.

Recalling the 20th Century

Friday was grey. Again. And felt cold: I wore an extra layer for the first time, and was glad of it. I got up slowly, after all that art on Thursday, but was out by 7:30. Walked to Oranienburger Tor station and took the S-bahn down to Unter den Linden.

Pariser Platz had been cleared of its rubbish and was almost empty, so a chance for a couple of pix of the Brandenberg Gate, although an almost white sky was not what I wanted. I'd picked up a coffee on the way and found it fits neatly in the camera bag – with a lid on of course – in the space where the camera normally sits.

To the nearby Holocaust Memorial, the huge field of marble-like concrete blocks; evenly spaced, yet uneven, the outer blocks like graves. Walking among the tall ones in the centre feels oppressive and disorientating, though the way out is clear. Thought provoking. I spent 45 minutes or so taking abstract photos, with the thought of some sort of photo essay in the back of my mind:

Then a disrupted U-bahn journey (due to engineering work) towards the Kurfurstendamm 'shopping street'; specifically to the Käthe Kollwitz Museum. I've only recently become aware of her: active from around 1890 to World War II, her work in sculpture, charcoal, ink, lithograph and woodcut – always monochrome – often follows a mother and child theme, and particularly the suffering and sacrifice of war. It was heavily influenced by the death of her son Peter as an underage volunteer in 1914.

Her original pictures, beautifully displayed here, are incredibly moving, yet not depressing: her mothers are always protective, cradling. Often she seems to convey grief through the hands. She made a large number of self portraits, and has a striking profile. Predictably she was outlawed by the National Socialists in the 1930s.

To Berlin Zoo station, then, and ran for an M45 bus just leaving for Schloss Charlottenberg. In fact I was heading for the Berggreun Museum opposite the palace, but found that the ticket is now a joint one with the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection opposite (new to me), a modest but super display of Surrealist art by Max Klinger, Manet, Paul Klee, Hans Bellmer, Dali, Magritte and others; an unexpected bonus. Also in the same museum an exhibition of photos by the photographer Brassaï: 'On the Street: Graffiti', interspersed with paintings by Jean Debuffet; another bonus.

After an hour and a quarter there, across the road to Museum Berggreun, an outstanding collection of 20th century art, originally put together as a personal selection, and often with the collaboration of the artists themselves. Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Giacometti, among others. And photos by Brassaï of the artists. Well, it kept me entertained for another 75 minutes.

By which time it was 5:00pm, and I'd missed a couple of highlights from the day's itinerary: one was the Funkturm, the old TV tower with a 126m high observation platform. It was open late, but the weather was too dull for any good daytime photos, and it's not properly dark – to capture city lights – until after 10:30pm, so I was happy to give it a miss.

Big Art in Berlin

Yesterday was my day to visit the big art galleries in the Kulturforum, the gaggle of museums plus the Philharmonie on the south-west edge of the city centre (Mitte): but the art to be preceded by some photo opportunities. So I was up early and out by 6:40 for the simple journey to the Brandenburg Gate to try to get the photos I failed to get last time because of a concert there. It rained heavily in the night and the weather was grey and very dull, not the bright July sunshine I'd expected.

And when I got there I found people cleaning up after another event the night before. I did my best with the camera and moved onto the Reichstag, where I wanted to get to the Norman Foster dome. It opens at 8:00 and I was there at 7:50, but noted that you now have to book online in advance. Luckily I had my passport with me and the nice lady on the gate let me in anyway. But they're working inside the dome so it's not possible to go up the spiral path inside at present; I made do with photos of the outside. The wind up there was very cold.

A couple of short bus journeys, to save my aching feet, to the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (Memorial to German Resistance), which is a huge and absorbing collection of photos and documents covering resistance to the Nazis. Visited the office of Stauffenberg, the officer who attempted to blow up Hitler. Stayed an hour, following the audio guide.

Walked to the Kunstgewerbemiseum (Museum of Applied Arts) to see a superb collection of European glass, ceramics, silver and furniture from the Renaissance to the 1960s. In an hour and a half it had to be a flying visit, but well worth it

Another short bus trip away from the Kulturforum to the Martin-Gropius-Bau, a building designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius's uncle, to see a major 300 print exhibition of work by the Hungarian photographer André Kertész, one of my photo heroes. Another hour and a half...

After some domestic work – i.e. finding a bank, a surprisingly difficult thing to do in Berlin – I bussed back to the Kulturforum and the Neue Nationalgerie, the wonderfully simple building designed in 1965 by Mies van der Rohe, which houses a huge collection of 20th century paintings. The current exhibition, the first of two showing the collection, is called Modern Times (Moderne Zeiten) and covers 1900-1945. There was a lot that I liked, and I took many notes in the two hours I was there.

Finally, at 6:00pm, to the Gemäldegalerie (literally ‘Picture House’) – there's method in my madness as the last two galleries are open late on Thursdays – for a fabulous collection of early European paintings, with all the big names, and many others, from the 15th to the 18th centuries. But by 7:30 I'd run out of energy, despite stocking up on Sachertorte during the afternoon, so had to call it a day. Luckily I managed to get a table at my favourite Berlin restaurant.

Been Busy in Berlin

Here I am in Berlin towards the end of a rather hectic schedule, hence the lack of blog posts for a few days. I'm going to have to do a quick summary of the last three days: Wednesday morning I packed everything away after six nights in Leipzig - was it really that long? - said my goodbyes, paid a last quick visit to the Grassi Museum, and caught my pre-booked midday InterCity Express to Berlin.

By 2:30pm I was installed in my hotel north of the centre, close to where I stayed on the Grand Tour, and walked the short distance to the Berlin Wall Memorial, near Nordbahnhof station. Not just a section of the well known wall, it also has the inner wall, the very wide 'Death Strip' between the two, and a representation of the electrified barbed wire fence that ran along the middle. Particularly moving is the memorial, with photos, to the many who died trying to escape to the West; I noted among them two children of five and six.

Then to Hackeschen Höfe, 'restored early 20th century courtyards' says my guide book, actually now mainly expensive boutique fashion shops - and their customers - of the type I have trouble coming to terms with. But especially poignant (when I managed to find it) the museum about Otto Weidt, who saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis by employing them in his workshop for the blind, in this building, making brushes 'for the war effort', as well as hiding them, giving them false papers, bribing officials, and more.

Finally, after ten days, I have an Internet connection via WiFi rather than over the roaming phone network.

A Long Day at the Bauhaus

Another day out yesterday, to visit the Bauhaus building and the Bauhaus Masters' Houses in Dessau. I caught the 08:00 train from Leipzig for the 45 minute journey, and walked slowly through the apparently deserted city to arrive at the main building at 09:00, an hour ahead of visitors' opening time. I knew in advance that I wanted blue sky, green grass and bright sun; and that's the way it was.

I walked around the outside trying to make some arty pics using the 12-24mm lens on the Nikon D300, and naturally working hard to properly record that iconic end view of the building, with 'BAUHAUS' running down it. The building is not as tall as I'd imagined. Then a 600m stroll to the Masters' Houses for a few photos from the road.

Back at the main building I sat outside in the sun with a cappuccino from the Bauhaus cafe, until going in at opening time to buy my day ticket, and a photo pass, giving me guided tours of the main building and the Masters' Houses, and entry to the temporary exhibition. This is currently a large and well laid out display of the commercial design work, mainly in glass and ceramic, of Wilhelm Wagenfeld, one of the founding Bauhaus designers.

The two tours lasted more than an hour each and were most interesting, even though I couldn't follow very much of the German! Plenty of photos to aid my memory. Spent some time and not too much money in the shop, which must stock every Bauhaus book ever, before a fairly brief visit to the permanent exhibition. I had my eye on the clock as the trains back to Leipzig run only every two hours: I arrived just before 5:00pm, nearly nine hours after leaving.

After some final brief visits in the city – today I move on to Berlin – I sat outside Kandler, the tea specialists, sheltering from the warmth of the late afternoon sun in the shadow of the Thomaskirche, with a pot of properly made tea (Darjeeling, since you ask) with the leaves held in a fabric bag.

Too Long on the Slow Train

Today the day for Lutherstadt-Wittenberg, not to see Martin Luther but his friend, painter and printer Lucas Cranach. I had a choice of two trains: the Regional 08:11, which takes an hour and four minutes, or the later Intercity Express (ICE), taking half the time but at almost twice the price.

I chose the slow train, not just to save €8.00 but also as a dry run for my 08:00 train to Dessau tomorrow. But I thought I would treat myself to the ICE for the return journey.

When I'd finished in Wittenberg I walked the kilometre or so back to the station and was pleased to find that there would be a 14:35 ICE as expected (I knew there was a 15:35). But when I went to buy the ticket I was told that the 14:35 would go now via Halle not Leipzig, so that my only option is another slow train, arriving 45 minutes later than I'd anticipated.

So here I am, chugging along, stopping at every little station in Saxony.

Felix, Robert and Applied Art

As today is Sunday - and the half-way point of the trip - I didn't set the alarm last night and had a lie-in until 07:00. But there's work to be done, so after breakfast I spent time writing the last blog post before heading off on foot in my posher togs for the nearby Mendelssohn-Haus.

The apartment where Felix Mendelssohn lived for the last few years of his short life was an unexpected highlight of my last visit to Leipzig, but I wasn't here on a Sunday when there is an 11:00 a.m. concert. This time I'd booked in advance, for a programme of piano music by Carl Maria von Weber and others, accompanied by readings from Weber's letters home to his wife when he was travelling to London and Vienna during his last thee years.

Sadly I didn't understand much of the German, but the music was superb and sounded wonderful on a modern copy of Mendelssohn's piano, in the salon where so many of his contemporaries joined him to make music. The 46 of us were arranged in a semicircle around the piano and the husband and wife letter-readers, and the whole performance was excellent.

After chatting for a while to some fellow travellers, I went home to change into my touring clothes, then walked the shorter distance to the Schumann-Haus (at last!) where Robert and Clara lived very happily for the first four years of their married life. It's smaller than the Mendelssohn-Haus, and some of the rooms are now used for other purposes, but a lot of interesting information is squeezed into the space.

I should have been at the Schumann-Haus on Friday but was delayed by interesting things in the printing museum, so today I was running late for my next visit: the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Art) and the Museum of Musical Instruments, both part of the Grassi Museum complex.

The Museum of Applied Art covers 2,500 years of art history, from ancient China, Iran, Turkey and Japan, and I've heard it described as one of the richest collections of it's type in Europe. Currently it finishes around the end of the 19th century; the section 'Art Nouveau to the Present Day' is due to open by the end of this year.

It is beautifully and perfectly arranged and displayed, the best museum I've ever seen, I'm sure, and there is a real 'Wow!' moment round every corner. I paid extra for a photo pass and took plenty of pictures; they will not be good due to reflections in the glass cases and other technical difficulties, but will be a good memory. I was aware of the time and moving fast, but stayed for two hours.

The to the Musical Instrument Museum for another hour. It starts with clavichords in the Renaissance, and goes on from there. The display not as dramatic as the applied art museum, but many familiar and not-so-familiar instruments. And some that didn't make it: I was attracted by the travelling harpsichord in three hinged sections, and the triple clavichord with two manuals and a footboard.

Fine Art, Fine Music

I started yesterday at the Museum der bildenden Kunste, the Museum of Fine Arts, in its huge 36 metre high glass cube at the north edge of the old Leipzig city centre. Inside the space is vast and simple, with exposed concrete walls and floor, and massive oak stairs and doors. Originally, the museum was founded in 1858 by merchants, bankers and publishers, and I think that all or most of the collection has been assembled by gifts and foundations.

Spread over four exhibition floors, contemporary galleries sit alongside 19th century and Romantic art. Occasionally they encroach on each other's space; it works. The Bühler-Brockhaus Donation, in its own gallery, has the feel of a personally assembled collection of 19th century paintings. There are galleries for 15th/16th century, 16th-18th century and Dutch / Flemish paintings.

And I ran out of time to visit the dedicated galleries for Leipziger Max Klinger as I had to get to the temporary exhibitions in the basement: Matthias Weischer 'Arbeiten auf Papier' and Ben Willikens 'Der Raum als Bild', both of which I really liked. Willikens 2010-2011 paintings especially: huge almost monochrome graphic canvases.

After two and a quarter hours I retired to the enormous cafe for an expensive €4.00 pot of tea; but properly made with the tea leaves held in the pot in a removable mesh. Then a 5 minute walk to the station to buy my ticket for the half hour train journey to Halle.

Walked the 1km into Halle city centre along the pedestrianised streets – been here before so no problem knowing where to go – and went straight to the Tourist Office to collect my pre-booked ticket for a 3:00pm tour of the Haussmansturm, one of the towers of the super Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen (see the Grand Tour website for details!). Sat outside to eat my lunchtime bun, then into the church where I was shown Martin Luther's gruesome death mask by the nice man on duty.

The tour of the tower was in German, but the guide kindly gave me a potted version in English. Interesting information about Halle's history, and good views with plenty of photos from the top. By the time I came down the Saturday market had cleared and I could get some photos of the church with a clear foreground.

Then round the corner to Handel's birthplace in the much refurbished Händelhaus. The exhibition was larger than I'd expected and gave a good account of Handel's professional life - his private life being notoriously secret - though since he left Halle as a young man there's not a lot of material to display, and much of it is contemporary pictures of relevant people and places. But interesting information none the less.

Finally a trudge back to the station for the journey home, a later-than-normal dinner and a well-earned beer.

From Bach to Print in Leipzig

Yesterday was the day to visit the rebuilt Bach Museum, opposite the Thomaskirche, which was closed for the building work last time I was here in 2008. Thursday's sunshine and humidity had given way to rain over breakfast, but the sky was merely dark grey as I arrived at the 10:00 opening time.

The museum is very spacious and elegant, if tending slightly towards being clinical, but many of the visitors are school parties so it has to be robust. A good overview of Bach's life, very well presented, with the final large room naturally being about his life and work here in Leipzig. Much additional and fascinating information behind the main story is available on pull-out panels. Touch screen listening stations with headphones provide access to recordings of all of Bach's works.

Outside the Bach timeline a small display describes some of the recent scientific techniques used by researchers to analyse paper and inks to work out when a manuscript was created, and which of Bach's copyists, or Bach himself, produced it.

After an hour and three-quarters of Bach I rested over a coffee in the nice Gloria cafe attached to the museum before taking a couple of trams out of the city centre to the Museum für Druckkunst (Museum for the Printing Arts). This is in a very pleasant area to the south west of the centre where I've not been before, close to the huge Clara-Zetkin-Park. The sky was now blue and the sun was shining.

The museum has a huge collection of working printing presses - more than 90 apparently - plus hot-metal typesetting machines and hand setting stations, all housed in a listed industrial building that has been in use as a print works since the late 19th century. I was free to wander among them, taking in the smell of printing ink and oil. Well, this is a print junkie's dream!

But the highlight came when I and the two other visitors yesterday afternoon were given an impromptu and incredibly informative tour of an area not normally open, where top class facsimiles are produced of historically important documents that are too fragile to be handled or displayed, using the traditional collotype method - sometimes printing just one sheet from a huge and painstakingly prepared glass plate. Our guide speaking in German and my two colleagues kindly translating for me.

The three of us emerged nearly two and a half hours after I arrived, better informed and in need of coffee. Later I went back for another 30 minutes to see the temporary 'Typography in Contemporary Art' exhibition on the top floor, which was excellent; contemporary art I can understand! Much of it very clever and inventive.

It was too late, again, to visit the Schumann-Haus as planned, so I spent half an hour and €3.00 going up to the 27th floor of the Panorama Tower, near the Gewandhaus, for some views over the city in the late afternoon sun.