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Arty silliness at Meet Factory, Prague |
As a
rule I don't really like travelling. It makes me nervous and irritable. In
a world of interconnections, which it's your perilous job to hop
between, there's far too much scope for accident, error, breakdown,
and general chaos. If anyone has ever been on holiday without a) getting lost and giving in to drink or b) getting lost and having an argument then let me know. But please don't insist that it's all 'part of the experience' because, basically, I'm scared of experiences. If you want to learn about a place you're far better
off plucking something from the torrent of publishing that
undoubtedly already exists on the subject and actually reading about
it. However, there are places which - stumbled upon usually by
accident - press themselves upon you in ways books alone can't. Were
that not the case, this blog (and countless others like it) wouldn't
exist. Here, then, is my grudging tribute to those.
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Ghetto Memorial, Krakow, Poland |
11. The
Jewish Museum, Krakow
Going
to Auschwitz is basically a decent thing to do, though there are
respectful and less respectful ways of going about it. Pulling
v-signs and posing for snaps in front of the firing wall is not one
of them. I walked around growing increasingly gloomy as tourists
snapped endlessly at exhibits of piled human hair and emptied Zyklon
B canisters. Like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty,
Auschwitz has become part of a tourist rat run, inevitably emptied of
meaning by the commodification that comes with it. What needed
reiterating was the fact of its being the actual
place
where well over a million lives were violently ended. Sadder, and
more sobering, is the Galician Jewish Museum in Krakow. It stands on
a little side street on the edge of Kazimierz, the old Jewish
quarter. Inside Krakow's tiny remaining Jewish community puts on
talks promoting Jewish-Central European relations and exhibits
artists with a Jewish connection. The permanent exhibition contains
photos of relics of Galician Jewish life: hand-carved animal
engravings unique to the region, many still to be found nestling in
the Polish countryside. It is a reminder of the specificity of the
lives lost, and a refutation of the effect of the endless recycling
of statistics, which, appalling though they are, tend themselves to
dehumanize. Visit while reading Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands
for
a particularly brutal juxtaposition.
Read: Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder
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Belgrade-Sarajevo in the snow |
10. Take
a Train from Belgrade to Sarajevo and back again
Not
an experience I actually relished. On the way there we forgot to buy
water for this nine hour journey, winding up with a block of
jelly-like cheese, some bread and two beers. On the way back my only
company was a pair of quiet Bosnian students on their way from
Sarajevo to their home in Doboj. Needless to say, they were a little
confused by the purpose of my journey to Belgrade. 'From there I'm
flying back to Warsaw,' I explained. It must have seemed terribly
convoluted, and indeed it was. The train barrels through largely
unremarkable landscape, leaving Bosnia and entering western Serbia
via the empty Krajina plains of eastern Croatia. Yet travelling by
train gives you the opportunity to see into people's lives, the
tracks cutting behind the backs of villages, their gardens and homes
laid out for the eyes of curious observers. The still pertinent
landmine warnings that dot hilly and wooded areas are made all the
more shocking by the fact kids on bikes play freely around them.
Abandoned houses sit alone in the snow. Occasionally, in the north,
Serbian flags can be seen hanging down over the tops of garden
fences. The terrifying experience of stern Croatian border-guards
disappearing with my passport aside, it was at least an eye-opener.
Closed until 2010, they still only run one train a day on the line
between Belgrade and Sarajevo, and given the status of Balkan
diplomacy it might not last long. A monument to Yugoslav
nation-building and the terrible ethnic breakdown that ensued in the
1990s, its renewed existence is in itself a marvel. See the New
York Times'
photos of the journey here.
While you're at it you could do worse than reading Trotsky's
collected Balkan War journalism, especially his accounts of the
chaos and exuberance of train travel in the Balkans. For an account
of what exactly continues to divide the region, the anarchist
activist for Balkan federation, Andre Grubacic, writes journalism that is fiery, informative, and necessary.
Read: Trotsky's Balkan War journalism; Andre Grubacic's Don't Mourn, Balkanize!
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Some serious wall, Berlin |
9. Hohenschoenhausen
Stasi Prison, Berlin
Once
the DDR security police's biggest prison, the fleeing former
occupants had no time to ditch its shocking contents. What was
discovered was as alarming to outside observers as it was already
suspected by DDR citizens. Torture, standing-cells, interrogations
rooms, and cosy, well-equipped offices helped sustain what was - at
the time - the most high-tech surveillance state that ever existed.
Eric Hobsbawm once said that the DDR had to be considered, even by
the western Left, a "going concern" - i.e. a real
possibility for change in the capitalist world, one worthy of
supporting - despite it being a "nasty little place". That
ambiguity can be debated, and the presentation of the museum today
laudably encourages it. Members of the public are shown around either
by students of the regime or former inmates. Ideological arguments
over the state's legacy are encouraged. As our party was told,
former Stasi men keep showing up in the tour groups, stepping forward
to have a pop at those they once interred there. All of which adds an
air of the surreal to proceedings. This is actually what prevents the
complex from turning into a mere museum piece: its importance is
still contested. Anna Applebaum's book Iron
Curtain ably
demonstrates how, throughout postwar eastern Europe, it was the
security forces which the communists took hold of first, whilst still
ruling in relatively democratic government coalitions. Without the
Soviet-backed security police, communist power could not have been
consolidated. That those secret services later became so pervasive
and so powerful should come as no surprise.
Read: Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, Anne Applebaum; Stasiland, Anna Funder
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Advertisement for Wade Goddard's collection Enclave |
8. War
Photo Ltd. Gallery, Dubrovnik, Croatia
I visited while this anomalously
reflective gallery was displaying Wade Goddard's series of photos
taken in Mostar during the Croat siege of the Herzegovinan capital.
The permanent exhibition is equally striking, though perhaps overly
broad, and suffers from an attempt to exclude Serbs from the halo of
victimhood. As a demonstration of the politicisation of mass killing
and ethnic crime that still goes on in the former Yugoslavia it is
chilling, cutting straight through Croatia's EU-backed,
tourism-driven success. The peace that holds in the Balkans is pegged
largely to the project of EU integration, yet no broader inter-ethnic
settlement has been reached outside of the narrow focus of all
parties on cooperation with the west. What this means for the people
of the former Yugoslavia is a whole series of unanswered, though
highly contested, political questions. The gallery preserves and
re-presents those questions for international holiday-makers who
appear otherwise uninterested. Visit it while reading Susan
Woodward's excellent study of the collapse of Yugoslavia, which asks
important questions about the role of apparently diplomatic,
peace-brokering international institutions in the country's breakdown
and, by no means a necessary result of that collapse, the outbreak of
inter-ethnic war.
Read: Balkan Tragedy, Susan Woodward
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Arty silliness at Prague's Meet Factory |
7. Meet Factory, gallery and club, Smichov, Prague
This monument to artistic silliness is barmy in all the right ways. Established by Czech 'bad boy' artist David Cerny (he of the massive floating middle finger), it's got just the right mix of pretentious exclusivity and rough-edged grottiness to make it by turns hilarious and provocative A very good exhibition of the art of dissent - focusing on Pussy Riot, but including all sorts of witty and vulgar outrage - combined with a man in an excellent onesie cutting people's hair as others thoughtfully looked on. As it got later, the club got going, a suitably eccentric indie-jazz outfit complete with yelping vocalist keeping everyone happy. There was even some pretty awesome burlesque. How's that for civil society? Prague how it's meant to be then: full of wanky would-be poets doing odd things in shuttered factories. Rarely does a place live up to its own myth; this is one of those times.
Read: A play by Vaclav Havel while sporting a neckerchief and goatee
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Spot the accordionist: Kino Bosna |
6. Kino
Bosna, Sarajevo, Bosnia
Kino
Bosna is, as its name suggests, a former cinema in the heart of
Sarajevo. The stage and plush seating are all still there, along with
at least some of the fancy drapery, now grubby and threadbare from
beer and revelry. Even in
the middle of February, when we went, it was stiflingly crowded, people spilling out onto the street. It has just enough old
worldiness about it to feel grand, though it's rough-edged enough to
be exciting. Despite its obvious 'coolness' it felt peculiarly
representative of Sarajevo itself: a clash of Habsburg
administrative, moderninsing grandeur with more raucous Balkan folk
culture (somewhat inevitably the house band patrols the aisles,
provoking singalongs and collecting change). Don't take the book with
you, but you could do worse than read Misha Glenny's panoramic
historical survey The
Balkans:1804-2012 for
a sense of the clash and collaboration of cultures both local and
foreign which produced Sarajevo's sense of colour and excitement.
Read: The Balkans: 1804-2012, Misha Glenny
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Memorial to the Gdansk Shipworkers, Gdansk, Poland |
5. The
Roads to Freedom exhibition, Gdansk, Poland
Your ticket comes in the form of a
meat ration coupon! There are dummies in ill fitting grey uniforms
and bad wigs! There's a mock up of a state-run corner shop, its
shelves characteristically stripped! After this opening triple salvo
things trail off a bit, with fairly familiar anti-communist tropes
cropping up. The emotional and practical alliance forged between the
battle-ready new Pope (an unquestionable hero in Poland, despite his
deep conservatism) and the hardy, no-nonsense Gdansk shipworkers has
been well-told. Norman Davies' second volume of Polish history really
comes to life at this point. I read Victor Sebestyen's Revolution 1989 but I'm sure there are plenty of good accounts out there. The photo exhibitions and arrayed tools
of police repression are pretty standard fare in this part of the
world. Yet as a memorial to the first mass workers' opposition to
emerge in the eastern bloc in thirty years, the exhibition has an
irresistible story of moral purpose, and eventual victory, to tell.
Read: God's Playground: A History of Poland Vol.II, Norman Davies; Revolution 1989, Victor Sebestyen
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After sunset, Prague gets creepy |
4. Prague's
Hidden Old Town
Prague's
Old Town is deservedly famous, all the more so for escaping the 20th
century relatively unscathed (save a bit of Nazi arson during the
Prague Uprising). But owing to its major sights lying on a single
route (the so-called Golden Mile) it gets horribly congested, and is
overwhelmed by cheap souvenir shops and terrible pubs. Though quieter
and less ornate than the rat run between Na Prikope and Charles
Bridge, the route down to the river from Betlemske
Namesti
offers relief from crowds and an experience of what Prague might have
been like in the 1960s, if not the 1860s. Starting at Betlemske
kaple
(Bethlehem chapel) - the first in the Bohemian Crown Lands to conduct
services in Czech - wander its largely deserted residential back
streets, where shop fronts retain an air of care-worn dilapidation
and the staff are no more welcoming. At night its deep shadows, the
dim glow of street lamps, and only occasional pedestrians, give it a
real air of creepiness. This is the Prague of which Angelo Maria
Ripellino wrote in the 1960s - a Prague whose seedy, narcotic energy
was buried in underground taverns, only occasionally spilling out
into the foggy night air. This Prague has been largely vanquished
from the Prada shops of Josefov. Once home to brothels and radical
religious reform movements alike, this historically poor quarter of
the Old Town can still evoke the piled up history of Prague's
nefarious underworld.
Read: Magic Prague, Angelo Maria Ripellino
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Ready for action: Cesky Krumlov |
3. Go
Rafting in Cesky Krumlov
If
a mode of transport doesn't involve the sole use of my legs, it'll
probably get me a bit worried. As with my near-death
kayaking experience in Dubrovnik,
rafting on a drizzly day in Cesky Krumlov was not a prospect that
filled me with joy. As it turned out the whole thing unfolded quite
calmly, the Baroque and Gothic spires of the town rising up over the
tops of tousled, ramshackle houses as we bobbed leisurely past. The
gentle pace left ample time to peak into the holiday homes stacked up
on the river bank. Egon Schiele's studies of the town give it a
romantic, tumble-down quality, though the poetic effect is muddied by
heavy, tea-bag-stain browns. This dubious compliment was not
appreciated and, like some dodgy medieval necromancer, the locals
eventually ran him out. On this soggy spring day, dirty water
trickling down off everything, he's vindicated. A deep sense of
weariness weighed down on the clouded town, a thin mist rolling off
the river and clogging up the narrow streets. The only change of pace
came as we slid down weirs, which are basically man-made rapids used
to trouble novice rafters. After each one we collided with the river
bank and ended up drifting, backwards, upstream. Not an entirely
graceful affair after all, then. Bideleux and Jeffries' A
History of Eastern Europe paints
a vast picture of precisely the sort of dynasty - Habsburg,
Eggenburg, Shcwarzneburg - who governed towns like Krumlov throughout
the region. Its splendour is largely down to those vanished masters.
Read: A History of Eastern Europe, Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries
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Exhibits at the Outdoor Museum, Tallinn |
2. The Outdoor Museum, Tallinn, Estonia
Perfectly preserved and restored, a vast collection of housing is tucked away in this mega-compound. All in various states of decay when they were brought in from the wild, all have been nursed back to health. What makes it special is the Estonian commitment to historical reenactment. The act never drops. I stumbled upon a remarkably well-acted domestic bust up between a couple in the midst of making lunch. The argument continued long after I awkwardly excused myself. Keep a store of enthusiasm for the staple folk dances that kick off in the courtyards of village meeting-halls. The boundary between reality and fiction collapses, as Estonians revel in a disjointed historical mash up, the epitome of Fredric Jameson's concept of the postmodern pastiche of historical forms.
Read: Anything by Fredric Jameson
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Budapest courtyard |
1. Stay in an apartment in Budapest
Hostels are overpriced and usually full of awful people you'd otherwise go to great lengths to avoid meeting. The solution is to stay in a nice apartment that some arty couple have renovated before giving it to the world. It's comfortable, warm, and generally cheaper than other options. Plus, at the end you leave feeling like a real person, rather than a beer-soaked gap-year cartoon enthusing about how much you love traveling and 'experiencing new things'.
Read: Something cosy and familiar
And
one place you definitely shouldn't go:
Olomouc
Diocesan Museum
Museums
in the Czech Republic are generally not much cop, but this is a sort
of shit-museum-concentrate, a veritable puree of everything that's
dull, overly precious and frankly intimidating about collecting and
exhibiting old stuff. Firstly, the collection is made up of the cast
offs of local bishops, so it's about as fun as a visit to a priest's
living room. The staff are all over sixty and greet visitors with
feeble smiles, hiding their deep suspicion and dislike behind an air
of pushy enthusiasm. Whether it's boredom or distrust, they all feel
compelled to tiptoe, silent and phantom-like, a few paces behind you.
At one point the floor is deemed so remarkable that you're forced to
wear slippers to walk on it. All this while being forced to inspect
centuries of hoarded religious paraphernalia under their watchful
eyes. 'What's this?' Siobhan asked, pointing at a display. 'Don't
know, don't care,' I replied, which sounds petty, but by that point,
exhausted from being shepherded from one boring assemblage of pottery
to another, it was true. Joyless from start to finish.
