1: Introductions, 2. Going places, 3. Wayfinding, 4. Communicating, 5. Quotidian life, 6. Books (1), 7. Authenticity, 8. The "art" of travel

 As much as I feel like I am an extranjero here (an outsider) I don’t know how I feel about the word ‘tourist’.  Over my time here I have encountered a lot of viajeros, real travellers. My cousin and his friends, who are from Israel and have been travelling in South America for about four months, passed by Buenos Aires and I went to their hostel a few times to say hi. In their common room I started talking to about twenty different young travelers, all making their way either up north or down south. They all asked me questions like, “Where did you come from and where are you going? We are heading to Ushuaia do you want to come?” and that’s when I got the gripping realization…I am stuck here in Buenos Aires..after all I am still a student, not a traveler.
            When I got my week of liberty during Spring Break I encountered even more of these viajeros and for a short week I got to feel like one of them, lugging my large backpack around, buying groceries and cooking at the hostel to save money, travelling by bus, being in the sun for hours, re-wearing the same clothes, and changing places by the day in order to be able to see as many colorful mountains, waterfalls, and small pueblos as I can. I remember talking to the 25 year old owner of the hostel I was staying at in Tilcara, a small village in the province of Jujuy. He had invited his guests in the hostel to take a night walk with him to his friend’s small house in the mountains in celebration of the full moon. On the walk back to the village, I asked him about the type of people he receives at his hostel in general and if older people ever came to stay there. He contested that when older people come, they are usually older people with younger spirits, and that sometimes when older people come that he can tell would not fit the vibe he tells them there is nor more room. “All I do is give people soap, a bed, and breakfast, that’s all. And sometimes I can tell that some people who come expect a certain service that I do not provide, and I would rather not host them, because I know that they would only have complaints.” Additionally he told me, “I prefer to host travelers (viajeros) rather than tourists. Travelers never complain. I have travelled to Bolivia, Peru, Guatamala, Venezuela, Brazil, and I have stayed in some hostels where there is not even hot water. I know the place that I have here is very nice,” he told me. I have to agree that it was one of the nicest hostels I had stayed in during that trip.
It made me think about what he was trying to tell me. As I met more people, I realized he was right. The traveler needs a place to sleep and shower that is just another one of his transitory homes. The tourist is looking for a ‘hotel experience’, the tourist wants to feel like a guest.
            There is something very interesting in this distinction between the viajero, the tourist, and then…the student? The temporary resident? The extranjero like me? I don’t know how I would really be classified in Buenos Aires.
            What is it that the viajero is in search for and how does it differ from the others? What is it that he wants to see or accomplish in his travelers? For the traveler, travelling becomes his occupation, not a vacation. He knows that he is now a vagabond. He is travelling in order to feel homeless, and to fully enter a state of constant unfamiliarity that is as far as you can get from the cotidiano. 
McCannel says that that “sightseers are motivated by a desire to see life as it is really lived, even to get in with the natives, and, at the same time, they are deprecated for always failing to achieve these goals. The term “tourist is increasingly used as a derisive label for someone who seems content with his obviously inauthentic experiences” (592). In my opinion, it really all depends on what kind of ‘sightseer’ you are.  We students came here to speak and befriend Portenos, study their history and language, and live amongst them in their city, with intentions to really seek the “authentic experience”. Travelers however, viajeros like my cousin know all too well that as tourists who migrate by the day they will not gain any sense of real life in the places they travel. They are happy with obviously inauthentic experiences because they know that is all they can get as outsiders. They are not in search of knowing the “real Buenos Aires” or the real Argentine, but rather they want see beautiful landscapes, and walk through foreign villages in which everything is different. I think that McCannel’s “back-front ditchonomy” holds true in life in general as well as in tourism, however not every type of tourist is in search of seeking a view from the back. It is true that all tourists want to see things that are foreign to them, however the way that they look at these things and what they think of them completely varies from one type of tourist to another.  
 

Concentrating on art history and Italian, going to museums in Florence was one of the aspects of this city I was most looking forward to. I had visited the Uffizi, Bargello (with Donatello's David), and the Accademia (with Michelangelo's David) on a previous trip here, but I had not visited any smaller museums. In Florence, most if not all the smaller museums are in old Florentine palaces, antique shops, and houses of art collectors. Since I am in the class "Art Collecting and Museology," I was given the opportunity to be a tour guide for the "Stanze dei Tesori" exhibition at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. This exhibition is very much tied into the history of Florentine art collecting and the smaller house museums scattered around Florence and its outskirts. It focuses on key art collectors, both during the 19th century and early 20th century, when the biggest art collectors were flourishing. Working at this exhibition on Monday mornings has not only given me a chance to look at all of the items and photographs many times, but also I have learned a great deal about Florentine history through its art collectors. It amazes me that there was a time in history when Renaissance works were being taken out of the churches and put in stores and sold to private owners. Also, from visiting house museums like Stefano Bardini's antique shop turned house museum, this dream that they had of the medieval home existing during the 1900's, makes this idea of Florence being stuck in a medieval-Renaissance time period much more clear.
 
While the "Stanze dei Tesori" exhibition gave me a sense of Florence's sense of time warp, the "Americans in Florence" exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, the former Strozzi family's palace, applies much more to me directly. This exhibition displays scenes from the time when Americans, with a new wealth, started to come to Florence for a step into the past, for a step into a place that hasn't changed all that much since the Renaissance, quite similar to what I am doing here, except they weren't doing it with thousands of other college students. On the banner for the exhibition and on all of the advertisements, there is one painting, the name of which has escaped my memory but is by John Singer Sargent (and is attached) that shows a few women in long white dresses laying, sitting, and standing in a beautiful Tuscan garden. One of my favorite things to do here in Florence is to visit the gardens, particularly the gardens on campus. On nice days, I will go alone or with a few friends, find a nice spot and lay and relax. Some days I bring my sketchbook and draw statues that are sprinkled about and make you feel like you are in some sort of vacuum of time, art, relaxation, and sunshine. I make it sound like heaven because on a warm spring day, it is complete bliss, and this is what this painting brings to my mind, the "tempo libero" spent amongst cured nature.

Bruce Chatwin in The Songlines breaks the travel narrative trend of appearing as a really awesome guy. He does not feel like the hero of his own stories and he certainly doesn't feel like the hero of anyone elses. The only picture of him we have of his character is through how annoyed all these rugged and isolated Russian and Austrailian men find him.  Which is completely opposite of the other travel narratives we have read - which make the traveler the hero of their own story. Instead most of the book hints at how inadequately prepared Chatwin is for his surroundings, and how much he longs to have a place in them - which won't happen because on first sight almost everyone hates him - and I really want to know why. He seems like one of those perfectly nice - if not a little particular - guys that you just want to beat up, but in the end are really endeared by. Is this intentional? Does everyone hates Chatwin for his special notebooks? Or always wanting to take a break? Does he just look like a nerd? Or is it for not really having a purpose beyond observing?

Almost everyone he meets is weary of him - mistrusting his interest in the aboriginals even more than the first degree tourists - whose fascination is loathed but makes sense. Whereas the old man living in the desert definately hates him for not having suffered - and for lack of manliness. Perhaps these two things are the combine to create Chatwin's offputting prescense. For him their lives are games - which is why Chatwin's Russian friend gets so upset when Chatwin wants to stay in the house and take a break instead of continuing to travel. Because Chatwin wants to understand - but through other people not actually going the distance himself. And it feels like he is aware of this - because he does mention everytime people get used to him ,or give him privledged information. And he is proud of not being afraid of snakes in the desert (probably because he doesn't have a concrete danger/experience of what snakes in the desert can do) and of cooking and of making his little snake proof bed. Which makes Chatwin endearing in a way entirely opposite than Flaubert. Chatwin is a sort of anthropological Douglas Adam's Arthur Dent.  - for even as he gets better in the desert he remains entirely unequipped for his situations and is sitll overwhelemed by basic conditions.

"For lunch we had beer and a salami sandwich. The beer made me sleepy, so I slept until four."

So cute in contrast to his lone gunman - Russian samaurai/cowboy traveling companion.

And at the end of it all his ideas are very sweet, if not fated. I love the idea that animals won't kill eachother to protect their domain, the defeated will submit and show their wounds and the hurt will recognize the victory and spare the defeated. And it is very Machiavelian to kill your competition out right - which is interesting. I wonder how often those hurt wolves come back and kill their victors in their sleep.

Yesterday I watched "My Way" - a new Korean World War movie that spans 3 or 4 different wars during WWI as a travel narrative focusing on the relationship between a Japanese and Korean man who grew up together as competitors. The story is insane - and based on one small fact of reality. While being an impossibly intense movie - one of the two most intense war movies i've ever seen. But one scene - between the two competitors stands out.

The two are told to fight to the death, and - to ruin the scene one of them wins but does not stab the other. This moment of mercy between lifetime enemies - in light of Chatwin's theory of animal mercy presents humans as more humanes when they are animalistic - abandoning their countrie's ideals, and protecting themselves and their brothers instead of their nation.


Also - my friend told me to check out Bangarra - which is the dance company.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YLJOyjhBTM&feature=related

Reading The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, I understood a completely different sense of Aborigines culture. The beautiful weaving in-and-out of the story, between the author’s personal encounters and coming-to-terms with the idea of songlines, Chatwin ultimately pains Australia as a country and continent of secrets, customs, and values—in the most spiritual sense.  With this concept of “trodding on the earth lightly,” the Aborigine people, surprisingly to Chatwin, do not believe in using the earth for its resources as heavily as others do, for the less one uses the earth, the less one needs to give back to the earth, striking an example that stated that the Aborigine people would cut themselves so that they could sacrifice a small amount of blood to the earth as “payment” rather than them sacrificing their own lives. Furthermore, their ideologies on consumerism and production should be put into question.
 
Firstly, the idea of painting other person’s Dreamings somewhat confused me. With such a personal connection and sacrilegious potentiality, it seems as though the paintings solely meant, at least by the passage given in the story, a transaction for the rich, upper-crust society in Australia—people with no connection to the culture whatsoever. In the story, the woman wants Stan to paint his own Dreaming, to which he cannot, for that she yearns to not only by his painting of the Honey-Ant Dreaming, but furthermore, trek to the man who can paint Stan’s Emu Dreaming. She wants the collection, not the experience. Overall, I find the people of Australia who are referenced in the story hold more footing than people from other countries. When looking at Mrs. Lacey or Hanlon, the two characters seem to keep their character throughout their parts of the story. Having the audacity to read Marx’s vision on the alienation of labor before a meal, Hanlon exemplifies this renegade attitude towards monotonous production and contrived labor. The people of Australia mean business, in the most personal means. Connecting the Australian people to the Aborigines, I see the connection in work ethic and personality towards work. Whether they are making pictures of their Dreamings, or more primitively, simply carrying-out the roles that each sex is decided in terms of survival, either hunting or gathering, the work relations among the Aborigines appear more matter-of-fact than having this veiled vision of “making a choice,” to which Marx would state that, as a worker in the corporate system, would take on all practices of labor alien to one’s own self, eventually losing touch with nature and community. 

Living in Florence, especially in the historic center where my apartment is situated, is like living in this “staged authenticity” MacCannell discusses in his essay. Florence is a small modern city that is closely and painstakingly preserved in its main centers and piazzas. Sometimes you feel like you are in a place that has not changed since the Renaissance. Obviously it has changed, but they want you to feel like it hasn't, so they preserve this Renaissance state all the time. For example, when we arrived in Florence, the San Zanobi column in front of the Duomo was being restored. A few weeks ago, it was unveiled, and was followed by restoration of the Column of Abundance in the piazza closest to my apartment, Piazza della Repubblica. Additionally, they started construction of the sidewalks of the main street I take to get to the bus station every day, Via Camillo Cavour. The sidewalks looked completely fine beforehand, but it is a main street for tourists, who crave this idealized, preserved image of Florence.

Walking down the streets of Florence is getting more and more difficult by the day. As soon as the weather turned for the better, walking to class is accompanied by a constant avoidance of being a part of someone's photo of something quintessentially Florentine. The Old Stove, the American bar outside my window has gotten rowdier and rowdier making even sleeping more difficult. Visiting Rome made me realize that Florence is so concentrated with tourists due to its small center. Rome is much more spread out, giving tourists room to disperse and explore, while Florence is too small for such dispersal.

From my time here, I learned quickly that buying anything near to the Duomo is not a good idea. They all have this fake authenticity, that if you are in Florence you'd obviously like to have a 5 euro gelato accompanied by a 3 euro cappuccino. Within the first weekend, we found a bar that sometimes has live music across the Arno River which we have since frequented on many occasions. It is filled with books and has the appearance of being a library during the day, though I have never seen it for myself, and is one of the most real Florentine spots I have frequented. I have not run across many other American students there, and it makes me feel more like I am in a local environment. I have a theory that if you listen hard enough anywhere in Florence, you can hear Rihanna playing. Here, I can't hear Rihanna playing and for me, that is what authenticity means to me here.

Still, in Florence it is difficult to completely get out of an American-centered environment. I found it incredibly refreshing when two friends and I decided we did not want to follow the pilgrimage to Barcelona for spring break and instead opted for our first stop to be Budapest. When we talked to some locals there on the second night, they asked us, surprised and shocked, “Why did you come here?!” The truth was, we wanted a more authentic experience other than clubs on the beach and more American tourism. We got a real sense of a different culture than ours, we sat in an incredibly smoky bar scattered with Hungarians drinking the cheapest beer I have ever purchased, didn't hear anyone speak English on the street, and actually ran across people who didn't speak it, a rare feat, I feel, these days. While we still saw the “front” tourist sites in Budapest, we did travel into the “back” areas, relying on our hazy knowledge of street names with far too many consonants in them to pronounce and met locals, a truly diverse experience from mine here in Florence.

 

    Although Paul Bowles is noted as a traveler of all places, I found his comments concerning Euro-American travel most pertinent to a class like this, although his descriptions of other places, like the Sahara, are still beautiful expositions of his life and travel aesthetic.

    Bowles comments that Europe has a particular pull for Americans that other places do not. It has, as he calls it, a "tribal past" for Americans that other places simply cannot have. I'm a bit ambivalent towards this claim, but it's a nice foil to the ordinary contention (especially among Europeans) that American tourists are particularly noisy, "uncultured," or generally disrespectful.

    His remark makes me think about general travel trends. Americans tend to go touring to Europe. The average American tourist dreams of going to Paris or Madrid, not Zambia or Mongolia or Nauru, and it really seems like you have to go out of your way mentally to go to most non-Western places (although I've found that, practicalities considered, it is not always that much harder to go elsewhere). I'm sure a big part of Americans only touring the western world boils down to comfort, reliability and so forth. But I've always wondered: if Europe was as "underdeveloped" as Zambia or even, say, Egypt, to what extent would Americans still be driven to go to Europe? Put another way: How much does being part of the same cultural tradition play into the choice to travel, as opposed to notions of ease?

    I ponder such things because the attitudes of Americans, in my experience, tend to be both accepting and rejecting of European tradition at the same time. America likes to see itself as a very independent country, but at the same time many Americans really respect, often naively, what they perceive as European cultural magnificence, whether it's in architecture, food, language, or manners. (How many of us have had Little Italy became a huge part of a friend's New York trip?) In my experience, rarely have Americans told me that any notion of cultural connectedness plays into this respect. In other words, I've never heard anyone bemoan not being able to see England because it was what spawned American culture in the first place; rather, it's because England is simply older, or more cultured, or what have you. My speculations are in contrast to Bowles, when he says,

"I believe that what we Americans are seaching for, and thus the most important thing we canbring back with us, is something more all-embracing. I should call it a childhood--a personal childhood that has some relationship to the childhood of our culture."

If this is true, it must be happening on an imperceptible level. Maybe that's what he means.

    Anyway, I'd like to extract one more notion from Bowles' comments on American travel to Europe. The stereotypical European resident-American traveler relationship involves a "cultured" OR snotty European (depending on who you're talking to) constantly putting up with American boisterousness. Sometimes this relationship is spoken of by Americans in a way that is self-deprecating. On some level I think it speaks of a real cultural tension, however passive: that of Europe the old, orderly and wise, the receptacle of all things old and important; and America the unhistoric, the untamed, and yet disturbingly powerful.

    I remember reading recently that the British school system talks about the American Revolution only in the most passing manner, as just another colony lost throughout the ages, details unimportant in the greater scheme of things. American history, on the other hand, cannot but speak of European cultural forces if it wants to give any degree of accuracy to its own origin; it is dependent on Europe for its own definition in history. Whether this is a legitimate way to define who is more or less cultured, it seems to be the source from which events like the Europeans discounting Bowles as "just" a jazz composer stem from.

    OK. This is getting a lot longer than I thought, and I wanted to mention a few other things but I'll let them linger. I will mention one thing, though. Bowles' descriptions of the Sahara as a totally alien, self-referential space strike me as very similar to those of Brion Gysin's in the novel The Process...which is, to an extent, based on Gysin's own travels and is from about the same time period. In both cases do the writers refer to the Sahara as a place that will completely turn the traveler inside out...At any rate, it's worth a look for anyone who's drawn to that kind of culture.

After reading Bowles “The World of Tangier,” I just think about the entire group of “international,” apparently wealthy students at NYU who talk about their favorite places to travel. I’m not a “hater,” or anything like that, but he talks about places and describes the settings in similar fashions to the group of people previously mentioned. Taking a referral from Gertude Stein, who is part of this social “hipster” elite none-the-less, Bowles immediately embarks on a trip to Tangiers, where he finds, and potentially brags, about inherent beauty and un-touch-ability of the place, and more importantly, how no one else seems to know about it (except Stein). Although I wouldn’t mind a trip to the Riviera, for Stein, and seemingly also for Bowles, “anyone” can go there, but not Tangier. Settled in a perfect “center” of the world to the world-class travelers, Bowles expresses his love for the hidden gem. Using his pretentious writings, one seems to connote how although he shows his love for Tangier, and with that, eventually grows to understand the place as a home, not a travel destination, he still distances himself from the “common people.”
 
Noting how the city has changed from once it had been, a city of antiquity, otherness, and a more-defined “culture,” Bowles (similar to an NYU city “hipsta”), grows weary over the fact that it no longer stands as such. Instead, in the face of modernity, the city slowly looses its foreign roots and becomes just like any other city that uses tourism to its advantage—a commodity. I believe that Bowles over-generalizes the idea of the Muslim culture and uses it to simplify the culture of the people in Tangier. Commenting on how the people once wore extravagantly colored clothing and how inexpensive the living costs in the city would be for an American or “Western” traveler, he suggests that in this change towards the modern, the alterations in wardrobe or living costs seem to belittle the true culture at-hand. However, as we have seen previously, people such as Bowles, who I think fall into the category of a middle-ground between third-order and fourth-order tourist, try to “conserve” the culture in their writings, but at the same time, try to go “native,” like Orwell. But, because of the preconditioning in Bowles’s upbringing, we see a culture clash with the Tangierian people and the tourists, and as Iyer proposed, traveling goes two ways, for although the anthropologist might try to preserve a defined culture, he or she inevitably changes it simply by creating a presence. 

    What is most striking about the narratives of Orwell is that they don't fit squarely into any of Redfoot's four classes of tourist. Unlike Flaubert, who might easily be pegged as a first-class tourist, Orwell acts with several goals and performs many behaviors that are unclassifiable. If you've read my previous blog, you might remember that I didn't care much for Redfoot's ideas. Although his classes of tourist are useful as general guidelines for categorizing motives and behaviors within modern patterns of voluntary movement, they cannot be hard and fast rules. Orwell, for one, does not fit hard and fast into what Redfoot has to say, and I find that refreshing.

    This is how. Orwell "tours" the cities of London and Paris by visiting the dirtiest, grimiest sectors of those cities, by taking "breaks" from normal life and donning the clothes and manners of the lower classes, and even taking lower class jobs. Some element of this is inevitably voyeuristic, and for that he shares something with the first order tourist. His drive to see the impoverished sectors of European city life puts him more in line with second order tourists who want to see the "authentic." I am hesitant to use that term, though--I only mean that he is searching for the way that most city-dwellers in these places live most of the time. And yet Orwell's experience in these places is more academic and--despite the criticisms to the contrary--quite immersive, making him also akin to the third and fourth order categories respectively.

    What's the point of de-classifying Orwell? Most criticisms of Orwell's travels seem to point at him being inconsistent in some kind of way. If he is voyeuristic, why is he legitimizing it with muckraking motives? If he is anthropological, how does he dare experience pleasure at suffering in the way that the poor do? I find all of these criticisms quite flat, because they attempt to, whether they realize it or not, box him into one category more than another. Why can't Orwell experience a sort of masochistic or intellectual pleasure at being (albeit artificially) poor? Do we want our muckrakers and "anthropologists" to be uninspired in what they do? Or more generally, what's wrong with his muckraking or "anthropological" motives? I have one friend who tried to do something similar--he spent a lot of time simply talking to homeless people in New York to figure out how they lived day by day. If I remember correctly, he even slept on the street once to see what it was actually like to live that way. Of course he didn't understand their lives completely, because he only did that sort of stuff for a few days, but I think his attempt to at least break the social barrier was quite commendable. It's going to be hard to find middle or upper class people who are willing to live as the lower classes do, completely and totally, for a long time.

    I'm sure you can gather from all this that I support what Orwell is doing here. Why? He finds a way to wed what he likes--travel and writing--with something that has a higher purpose. As long as he stays relatively humble about his motives--meaning, he doesn't profess to understand everything about these people--I think what he's doing is nicely rounded out. Even if most of us aren't brave enough to actually mingle with people far outside of our social group (let's be honest--how many of us are planning on going to a factory or a slum and just talking to people?), it shows us that one way to really enrich our understanding and experience of other cultures is to simply talk to people outside the tourist industry. And I think that doesn't have to include assumptions about whether you've finding the authentic or should be looking for the "authentic"--as in Orwell's case, that's too much of a generalization.

On reading Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, I almost questioned whether or not the piece was a dystopia fiction, similar to 1984. Throughout the piece, he seems to focus on the destitute, and how the people on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy in both Paris and London manage to live day-by-day. I liked Orwell’s critique of the restaurant business in Paris, partially because my dad, who was also a chef, became a waiter for not the prestige, but the money. As Orwell tells us, there exist explicit rules as to who governs what in the restaurant, from the manager, to the maître d’hotel, the chef, the waiters, and then the plongeurs, which I assumed were bellboys. Although the customs of position seemed slightly different, one can imagine a similar social caste system in America, which made Orwell’s travels appear most resonant with Iyer’s idea of the fourth-order tourist, one in which a man or woman sets-out into a land to live as the people.

Without much money, Orwell talks of a pretty grim life, when perceived to the affluent traveler, as he and his crew of tramps live “in the moment” throughout the streets of England. Consistently on their lack buck, I thought the idea that Bozo proposes added a reassuring tone to the idea of the screever. Unlike a person with a “respectable job,” the begger—in all cultures—seems to be looked down upon, simply for the fact that their occupation, which stands as work all the same, will never hold the potential for prosperity. With that said, I inferred that we, as others, cannot fathom, or do not want to fathom, the idea of living day-by-day. Without future ideals of prospects, the mindset of the screever fails to match the one of the person who “plays the game.”  However, if we try to look from the screever’s shoes, one could assume that by living for the moment, our consciousness no longer worries of the future prospect, bringing us more in the present than before. As odd as it may seem, I always thought that the notion of a future was partially, if not wholly, cultured, and that it can—and usually does—elicit unnecessary stress to the “game-player.” This stress while traveling could, in the end, obstruct the person from seeing the trueness of the area. Although the screever’s life, to our standards, does not hold too much promise, could we argue that they are gaining a more authentic experience?

The very real mental schism that forms upon arrival in another country manifests itself in many different ways given the personal endeavors of the individual.  In some, the shift brings one back to childhood. For others, the shift has no real manifestation aside from small difficulties in adjusting to the new environment. Having had the privilege of being a primarily artistic personality, I realized that this schism broke apart many preconceptions and reservations concerning my own work. Suddenly it was as if the proverbial mental cork stoppering my most personal issues and feelings exploded outward, and everything I wished to express artistically detonated fantastically in all its moving glory. And what was most odd was that the things that I wished so ardently to convey in the past suddenly found themselves at my fingertips: both in skillful execution and in personal resonance. 

As for the types of art that Berlin is usually highlighted for, I would say a large part of the graffiti here is essentially well done street art. The murals and individual styles of each of the larger murals tend to be really well done in comparison to the graffiti typically on the walls of New York. As a general rule, the graffiti is never really cleaned off either, so there are layers upon layers of old and new tags. However, for the most part, it lends to the beauty of the city, splashes of color on decaying infrastructure. 

In my personal experience, I have had the privilege of working with a local Berlin artist, Sophie Erlund. She works primarily in the primordial psychology of space and installation. Currently working on an exhibition that will be showing in Colonge, and is working on some higher installations with sound and hair highlighting a personal journey through the ancient self on through the more modern self. The hands on experience as an intern has given me a lot of insight to how the business works, and am excited to learn more about Berlin culture. 

I could not tell you why Berlin was such an important part of my artistic expression. I do know this: Berlin is much more open to the art world than any other place I have experienced. Not only is it accepted here to be a professional artist, but it is easier for younger artists to get started in their careers. Galleries are a large part of the social fabric of the city, dotting the neighborhoods as competitive hubs for entertainment alongside bars. Federal funding is higher for the arts as cultural devices for improvement. Overall, the arts are a large part of Berlin's social fabric, and it shows in the quality of life in the individual. 

I partake of my sacrament in darkness, smoke, and strobe lights. The pressing sweat-dampened bodies of fellow devotees surround me, moving in time to thrumming basslines like rhythmic voodoo rituals designed to send the worshipper into communion with their respective gods. At times the venue is the same: one night, I am crammed shoulder to shoulder in a cathedral like space, beer in hand, stone arches and domes meeting in shadowy billows above the heads of the dancers, collecting the incense of cigarette smoke and party balloons. Another night I walk through an unassuming door and suddenly am in a decrepit mansion, DJ's spinning in their own special asps built into what would seem to be a window seat and fenced behind wrought iron gates, above a dingy floral wallpapered living room, next to a master bedroom furnished with a king sized bed and cabinets, worshippers sprawled across it, standing in corners, and dancing in every dimly lit space. Every space bleeds into the other, each bar blends into the next, but the same holds true: these spaces full of secret solidarity speak of the back regions of Berlin that most tourist do not have the privilege of seeing if they do not know of them. 

It is really important to realize that I, being essentially a tourist in coming to this country to begin with, never realized the full extent of the beauty the underbelly Berlin features. In my previous experience, the only real reason I would visit Berlin was for its historical importance, along with some superficial considerations: the affordability (with regards to my status as a student), the opportunity to learn another language than English and Spanish, the architectural and artistic movements that Berlin is known for. In addition, Berlin is not necessarily known for its beauty or its accessibility. A sprawling city, one's travel back from a long night of exploring Berlin's back regions will most often be devoid of other travelers save for the occasional prostitute (legal in Berlin). Pictures of the same city will most likely focus on the derelict beauty of peeling music posters, graffiti, street art, and abandoned buildings left by war and desolation. The expectation is that I will bring back beautiful picturesque visions of a faraway country that resemble a travel pamphlet. However, I find that these back regions of Berlin, the graffiti, the peeling posters, the cigarette smoke, the dingy, decrepit corners of this grimy city, are beautiful and the true reason Berlin is one of the best cities in the world. 

MacCannel mentions that the "motive behind a pilgrimage is similar to that behind a tour: both are quests for authentic experiences" (593). He also goes on to say "that not all tourist have regarded back regions as socially important places" (593). I trust that MacCannel is specifically mentioning this with relation to traveling, but I'd like to touch on the authenticity being a personal endeavor as well. I know that though I am simply a tourist for the time I am here, and will never know what it is like to be a German living in Berlin and speaking fluent German with all its intrinsic linguistic connotations due to my fundamental nature of being American. It is for this reason, therefore, that the authenticity that I am looking for comes from the development of certain mental capacities that I would have never considered or ever really thought possible when I was still in the States. I find it repulsive to know that there are tourists who have no real interest in exploring these back regions, because it is my firm belief that in order to fully understand one facet of a culture, you must understand the less than popular and grimy side of the city. Though typically one does not have enough time to explore both ends of the spectrum, there must at least be a certain desire to explore this side of the city you are perusing, if not simply out of respect. 

The back regions and pilgrimages to the distant cities of the world exemplify the internal battle of the pilgrim in his search for the value of authenticity.  Though the agreed upon superficial component is obvious, these quests can extend deeper than what can be seen from the brief brush with the foreign, the untouched, and the unknown. Whatever the quest may entail, the back regions of every place are important in ones pursuit, whatever it may be. 

                When I first visited the neighborhood La Boca, which I wrote about in my last post, I instantaneously fell in love. Not because it is “the birthplace of the tango” but because it was the hub of the artists. The subject of all the art in this tourist-attraction of a neighborhood was of course, the cultural icons of Buenos Aires such as the colorful tenements of “el caminito” and couples embraced in a fiery Tango. Of course there is an economical explanation for this reoccurring subject—in a way, artists need to “sell Buenos Aires” to tourists, to provide them with souvenirs, to create for them a way of imagining Argentinia . However as my studies here are focused on the history of Argentinean culture, the origins of the Tango, and the ways in which it has been adopted as a national icon pertaining to Argentinean identity, the visual representations of this in the art in La Boca is extremely fascinating to me. I have a certain perception of the culture here from the literary texts that I have read and the people I confront here on a daily basis, but in the street art of La Boca I get to see the perceptions that these artists have of their own culture. Collectively, I see all that I have studied manifesting itself in these artists works.

Personally, this chapter of Art of Travel was my favorite. It put into words so eloquently the power of artwork. What I liked the most was the ways in which it explained the relationship between the style of a piece of art and what it conveys. “The world is complex enough for two realistic pictures of the same place, at the same moment, to look very different, as a consequence of differences in artistic styles and temperaments” says de Button. A piece of art is not meant to be a reflection of the real world, it is supposed to be an expression of it. The artist chooses what to include in a piece, and how to portray his subject based off of us his own personal perception. I saw many interesting pieces of art and styles in La Boca, but there was one artist, Roberto Jofre, who particularly stood out to me. The picture for this post is one of his pieces but really does not do it justice. I was instantaneously captivated by his work for two reasons: his stupendous use of colors, and his very distinct brush strokes that lend his subjects a special type of character and movement. His paintings of tango dancers and the Buenos Aires nightlife embodies everything I have learned about the history of the immigrant culture of Buenos Aires, the “bordelos”, or neighborhoods, where the Tango became popular in prostitution houses and cabarets, and the “compadritos” which were very macho men of the lower classes who dressed in suites and top hats and were central to the culture and attitude of the Tango.  His painting style creates a very specific “mood” descriptive of this Argentine culture.  Just like Van Gogh’s paintings from Provence helped de Button appreciate specific characteristics of provence, Jofre’s painting expressed to me a certain beauty, mood, and life that to the artist defined Argentina.

After reading excerpts from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour, I think that, although Flaubert experienced the “expected” in Egypt, with harems, markets, and “simplicity,” the author truly got a sense of a part of Egypt—as “idealized it had been.” Reviewing Orientalism by Edward Said, the author—further stated in a video review of the text—states that Flaubert experienced an idealized understanding Egypt, as in his mind, the “Orient” took a meaning in relation to his Westernized values. In my argument, I feel as though Flaubert, even though commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture with “the task of collecting, in the various ports and caravan centers, any information that he though might interest Chambers of Commerce,” he lives a life of amusement, debauchery, and amazement (23).  Although I can understand his point, I do not agree with Behdad’s understanding that Flaubert’s travels were a failure in that "He went to Egypt in search of a visionary alternative, an Other discourse, and a “new” mode of representation that would have liberated him from the  banalities of the mid-nineteenth-century discourses of power. Instead he encountered the absence of an ‘outside’ view and realized the unattainability of a break with the dominant discourses and the impossibility of an alternative mode of representation," because although he looks for an outsider experience, I cannot find where he wants to challenge the “discourses of power” that take place while he is in Egypt.
 
While in Egypt, he writes a lot about the people and their customs, has fun with many whores, and is awed by the splendor of the statues and the sphinx. Rather than an acknowleging an outsider’s view on the discourses of power, which may have been overlooked, I believe that Flaubert’s inability to separate race from culture made the reading hard to examine. When he talks about the Sphinx’s lack of having a nose, portraying its “blackness,” I did not know what to think. Granted, I usually took his comments on color with the historical context of the time, but I felt as if he connected each and every black person, potentially in the whole world, with terms such as “negresses.” In a physical denouncement of color, I see a very “Otherized” view of the middle-east, in that he undermines the people by generalizing them from perceptions of their skin tone. Although I agree with Said’s comment that “In all of his novels, Flaubert associates the Orient with the escapism from sexual fantasy,” I think that one could argue that Flaubert’s experience was individualized for himself, in which his travels are “authenticated” in a specific fashion. 

A Room with a View truly encapsulates the true beauty of Florence. Forster's novel focuses on a British traveling group within a certainly less civilized Italian culture, and end up traveling with people like the Emersons, who are far more liberal than they are. I found it quite hilarious when the Brits are so horridly offended by what they think are the uncivilized Italians, who, for example, show a bit of public affection in the front seat of their car to Fiesole. The protagonist, Lucy, however, wants to stay in the room overlooking the Arno (a room with a view) enjoys playing Beethoven and Mozart (the key to her emotions), and she figures that the Italians in the front seat are the only ones actually having a good time on the trip, while the Brits sit in the back, scoffing at the incredulity of the situation. She has a love for beauty and people as well as a longing for love, while her companions want to stick to their British customs and not adapt to the Italian way of life. In some ways I have certainly remained in my American ways, such as the occasional trip to a Subway or taking my coffee to go (just because I'm in a rush, okay?!), but in many ways I have adapted to the Italian way of life. There are definitely times where I notice myself strolling along the streets slowly, admiring the beauty of the Italian spring rather than getting my New York walk on. At one point in the novel, Miss Lavish and Lucy are wandering around Florence, and Miss Lavish says, “Lost! Lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we have taken a wrong turning. How these horrid Conservatives would jeer at us! What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is what I call an adventure!” (21). This passage actually made me laugh out loud imagining myself and my friends saying that in the many times we have gotten turned around in Florence.

Lucy is also enamored with the beauty of Florence, wanting her room to have a view of the Arno, which I can definitely understand. My apartment, as I have said before, is up six flights of stairs, but the view from my room never ceases to amaze me. The view I have attached is the one from my living room. When I am doing my homework or eating dinner at the table, the Duomo comforts me and also reminds me of the intensely beautiful city I live in. Lucy longs for beauty in her life, and she finds it in the form of her room with a view and the romance that blossoms with George Emerson, which comes about through disowning her previous suppressive British lifestyle, and becoming more appreciative of the beauty in life.  

When reviewing Twain’s Innocents Abroad, I related to his accounts in Italy in terms of physicality, but questioned where I “fit” in terms of heritage, identification, and overall being. When Twain visits Venice, he seems to establish the city as once a city of power, but although no longer one of central commerce exchange, still as a city that upholds its integrity in uniqueness.
 
When I traveled to Europe in high school, I most identified with my surroundings in Italy, mostly because I am—as you might have guessed from my name—Italian. Granted, my Italian side of the family has lived in the states for generations, we eat American-Italian food like breaded cauliflower, few family members speak the actual language, but at the same time, we pride ourselves with key “Italian values.” The family stays close together. My mother, of Polish-German descent, always jokes that my father used to utter the clichéd line of “Blood is thicker than water” when referring to the Giambra family. Our Italian side, whether through phonetic misunderstandings or social discourse, now pronounce our last name Gee-ahm-bra, but in Italy, it would most likely be pronounce Jahm-bra. Basically, I’m really American, and I guess I identify with my state (New Jersey) more than any other place, but in relation to the places I visited (Austria, France, and Italy), I found familiarity with Italy—probably because, somewhere down the road, one of my family members had been to or knew of one of the places I visited.
 
In Venice, I got the vibe of this “lost city.” As touristy as it seemed, I never experienced anything of the sort. To think that the gondola served as an actual use during Twain’s time still confuses me, but I loved it. Because of all of this tourism and lack of apparent modernization, I felt as though the city I experienced and the one Twain experienced were one in the same. I perceived a different take on Rome, for which he heavily gravitated on the grandness of religious influence and the passion for sacrifice and overall death by the people (hundreds of years before his visit). Although I did not connect to the accounts of death and dungeons in Venice, either, I could understand it more for some reason. From the lack of modernization (or appearance of it), the city specifically represents a capsule in time in which the past and present feel closer than in a giant, now more modernized city such as Rome, because of the refusal to break the “ambiance” that Venice seems to set, for instance, the beauty perceived from the moonlight (possibly also due to the lack of sky scrapers, modern-day families, etc.)? 
 
Mind you, I’ve never been to Rome, but on my excursions to Venice and Florence, I felt perfectly at ease with the people. At the time, I think I believed that I associated with the people because of the food, culture, and language, all of which I had been somewhat familiar with beforehand, but I think—because of my constructed identity—I allowed myself to look past the Italian people’s differences more so than the people from Austria or France. In that acceptance, I think I used Twain’s travel writing as a means of deciding which parts of the Italian culture I felt “one with” (gondola-riding) and other parts from which I distanced myself as simply being the “mere modern-day tourist from New Jersey” (the public killings).