Smell the flowers

Tags

Dick Van Duijn, flower, Photo, squirrel, Vienna

The Dutch photographer Dick Van Duijn took this photo in Vienna, Austria of a ground squirrel stopping to smell the flower. This was a photo shoot project in a park in Vienna. Taking an entire day to observe the behaviour of ground squirrel. Van Duijn says that this photo was taken at sunset.

This is truly adorable in its simplicity. Stop and smell the flowers.

Some favourites

Tags

Charlottetown, Rome, Sights, Vienna

Just a few photos of favourites of mine.

The marina at Peake’s Quay about to re-open with the wood landing docks re-installed in the water. Our house is just in the background.

Rome aerial view, the centre of the city and beyond.

Piazza Venezia and the Monument to Italian Unity, 17 March 1870, occupying the area of the ancient ARX and part of the capitoline hill which was removed.

At lunch in the former Green House of the Hofburg Palace, Vienna

The steeples of Saint Dunstan Basilica on Great George Street, Charlottetown. We will hear the bells peal for the first time on 1 July after many decades of silence.

Nicky and Nora in the morning taking the sun on the balcony facing South.

 

 

 

great conductors

Tags

Conductors, France, Francis Poulenc, George Pretre, Maria Callas, Vienna, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Last night at home we were talking about George Prêtre, the great French conductor and how he was a favourite with the Vienna Philarmonic Orchestra. This morning I discovered he had died last night at the age of 92 at his chateau de Vaudricourt à Naves near Castres in France. The XXth Century gave us some very great conductors, to me they are people who do not beat time but feel the music and try to get the orchestra to share in that feeling and show the melodic nuance in a composition. This is not easily achieved and few can do it, he certainly could.

He will conduct the premier of Francis Poulenc, La Voix Humaine in 1959. He will also work with Maria Callas for many years. He will conduct during his long career all the great orchestras of the world. He became a favourite conductor in Vienna. He had style and pleased the public, a man of great intelligence and an athlete who practiced judo and karate. He once said, with a sly smile, that as Conductor he never had to use it on any of his musicians.

Maestro George Prêtre 1924-2017

Here we are 2017

Tags

2017, Charlottetown, New Year, party, PEI, Prosit NeuJahr, Tracadie, Vienna, Wien

We were at this great party to usher in the New Year with two Fireworks display on Grafton Street in front of the Legislature, on a beautiful if slightly cold evening, drinking champagne in our tuxedos. Had the most wonderful food all prepared in great variety by our friend Pico.  We will remember fondly this party for years to come as it was our first New Year’s Eve on PEI.

This will be a lazy morning since it is raining and we have high winds. So let’s listen as tradition dictates to the New Year Day Concert from the Musikverein with the Vienna Philarmonic this year under the baton of Maestro Gustavo Dudamel in Vienna. Prosit NeuJahr!

PEI Islanders of the decadence. Oil on canvas by Thomas Couture of Tracadie.

Christmas trees

Tags

2011, 2016, Berlin, Charlottetown, Christmas, Milan, Munich, Ottawa, PEI, Rome, Strasbourg, Tree, Vienna, Vilnius, Warsaw

Some example of favourite City and their Christmas tree, 2016.

Milan in front of the Duomo (cathedral) of Milan 2016.

Rome, Piazza Venezia in front of the Altar to the Italian Nation.

Berlin, Brandenburg gate, Pariser Platz

Munich in front of City Hall, Christmas market.

Athens, Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament.

Shönbrunn Palace, suburbs of Vienna

Vilnius, Lithuania

Warsaw, Poland in front of the old Royal Palace.

Strasbourg, Alsace

Ottawa, Canada, behind the Parliament Buildings

Our tree at home in Charlottetown, PEI.

Christmas in Rome 2011, at the top of the stairs of the Church of Santa Maria Ara Coeli in Capitolinum. One of my favourite photos of us on that last Christmas in Rome, I remember it was a crisp but sunny day.

More reading

Tags

Austria, Empire, Europe, Guapa, Middle East, Saleem Haddad, Stefan Zweig, Vienna

I have this old habit, in the evening before going to sleep I like to read a little. Most of my reading is done in bed at night, I find this soothing and it helps me to fall asleep. In the last few weeks I have read two books by Stefan Zweig, (1881-1942), born in Vienna in a wealthy privilege family and died in Petropolis, Brazil in a suicide pact with his second wife Lotte Altmann. He was a famous writer, journalist, biographer of the first part of the 20th century and his books remain to this day great to read and give the reader wonderful insight. He also knew and was friends with all the great intellectuals of that time and do not be surprise to see him associated with so many famous people it is head spinning, Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland, Richard Strauss, Rainer Maria Rilke and many others.

The first book was the celebrated biography of Marie-Antoinette the ill-fated Queen of France. I have already written on it in a previous post and I recommend it if you want to go beyond the fiction and the Hollywood version of her life.

The other book is the last one ever written by Zweig, The World of Yesterday. He mailed the manuscript to his editor the day he and his second wife committed suicide in Brazil.

Zweig describes himself as a European in the old world sense and at the same time a European of what we know today as the European Union. He is also an enigma for us who live at the end of the 20th and now in the 21 century. He was married for many years to Frederike Maria Von Winternitz but never mentions her in this book which covers the period from his birth in 1881 to 1925. The reader could be excused for thinking that Zweig was single, he divorced her in 1938 and she lived on until 1971.  Was he a very private man? I do not know, in The World of Yesterday he certainly speaks volume about himself and his famous friends, his work, the people he knew and frequented, his travels, about being an assimilated and integrated Jew in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and he describes and analyses in minute detail the society of the time, a society which has totally disappeared now and lives on in print. You have to imagine a world, Europe, the old Empires ruled for hundreds of years by Princes and Sovereigns and then the total collapse in 1919, everything changing forever in a radical  manner with the rise in Europe of Fascism and Bolchevism in Russia.

Zweig misses the old world, what he calls the Age of Golden Security assured by an aged Emperor (Franz-Joseph) over a vast Empire comprising dozen nationalities, languages and various religions. He explains the commercial reasons for the First World War, a war promoted by French and German Armament dealers and British and German competing merchant marine. Decades of Peace in Europe, the last war was in 1870 and lasted just over 3 weeks had lulled people into believing that not much would happen in 1914. No one could imagine that by November 1918 their world would no longer exist.

Zweig did spend part of the war in Zurich in neutral Switzerland, a land of plenty in a sea of wont. He describes a scene at the end of the war in 1918, the Kaiser in Germany has already gone into exile in Holland. Zweig stands on the platform of the Train Station at the Border with Switzerland on the Austrian side, everything around him is tattered and the people look tired and sad, the defeat and fall of the Austrian Empire is dawning on them. Zweig notices how the Station is becoming crowded with people, officials and Austrian soldiers though no trains is expected, he notices a beautiful black train of highly polished cars pulling slowly into the station, it’s the Imperial train, at the window stands Emperor Karl and his wife Empress Zita who are leaving Austria and going into exile, He refused to abdicate and simply left quietly, ending the 900 year rule of the Hapsburg dynasty, Zweig notices how everyone is silent and looks embarrassed, Zweig felt at that moment that this was truly the end. The end of it for him, for the world he had known, yes and how he then maybe went into a state of deep melancholy. The years that followed will see the rise of economic difficulties, Fascism in many European countries, the great depression, anti-semitism, nazism, the rise of Communism and then the Second World War. Of course for Zweig life goes on but on a different track, having the financial means he then travels abroad fleeing the chaos of the new and territorially small Republic of Austria, he will go to England as Freud did, to North America and finally to Brazil. Despite having a new young wife Lotte Altmann, he feels he cannot re-invent himself and fears aging, the past of Old Europe haunt him.

Zweig’s Villa in Salzburg on Kapuzinerberg 5, it is a private house today.

I find Zweig to be a complex person, a highly educated, refined person, he seems to be several people at once, the great writer, the friend of the cognoscenti, living in a world at the top of the social pyramid but then the other person appears emotional, overly sentimental, detached, revealing little of his personal life, this may be simply his 19th century sensibilities, gentile upbringing of not burdening people with personal details, something unknown to us in our world of the selfie.

The other book I read was just published by a first time author Saleem Haddad, a young thirty something man. Saleem Haddad is a writer and aid worker. He was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father, and has lived in Jordan, Cyprus, Canada and the U.K. He has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and other international organizations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt. He and his partner have a greyhound, Jack and live in London.

His book published in March is entitled Guapa, the name of a Gay underground bar. I found this novel after a friend of mine who owns a bookstore café in Jordan recommended it to me. I liked the book instantly, the story is fast moving and happens in an unnamed Arab country, I was convinced it was Damascus the Capital of Syria but the author Haddad based the city where the protagonist lives on several cities, Amman, Beirut, Cairo. He does this on purpose and it works very well, though the President Dictator reminded me of Bashar Al-Assad and his wife Asma in their description in this book, this is why I thought it might be Syria.

Guapa gives a very accurate portrait of Arab life, family and society, I recognized it instantly, I came to care about Rasa and the people around him.  Haddad says; Not naming the country also allows the story to take on a metaphorical nature: I really didn’t want to write a book that would be sold as an anthropological or political ‘study’ of one country. Instead I wanted to draw on common themes young Arabs across the region could relate to, regardless of their background. The book also shows in the narrative of the story that Arabs are not a monolithic group and the region is populated by many other people who are not Arabs.

The story of the book is about Rasa, a twenty-something-year-old gay man living in an unnamed Arab country, as he negotiates family, societal expectations, queerness, love, police brutality, authoritarianism, decorum, revolution, imperialist narratives, and Islamist extremism—all in the space of twenty-four hours. Throughout Rasa’s journey, the reader is thrown back into the losses, definitions, redefinitions, and rebellions that orbit his life. I would recommend reading this book for anyone who wishes to understand this part of the World and the people living in it. As they say, We are not in Kansas anymore.

 

 

 

Images of 2016

Tags

2016, Berlin, Budapest, Canada., Copenhagen, Dresden, Europe, New Year, Niagara, Rome, Vienna

Some beautiful photos of New Year in Europe

Dresden reborn on the Elba river in Saxony.

Copenhagen, the Tivoli Gardens

Berlin, GendarmenPlatz

Berlin, Brandenburg Gate New Year’s Eve party

Budapest seen from the Danube river

Vienna, St-Stephen Cathedral

Rome

Amsterdam

Athens, the Parthenon, Greece

Canada, Niagara Falls, the horse shoe

New Year’s Eve and Day

Tags

2016, Austria, Concert, Musikverein, New Year, Vienna

So as tradition says it is time to start planning New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day.

Now on the Eve or St-Sylvester we will be at home a quiet dinner, we have not been anywhere in decades on New Year’s Eve, cannot be bothered with going out, champagne can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own living room.

On New Year’s Day one event we always look forward to is the beautiful concert from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna.  http://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/new-years-concert/the-new-years-concert

There are in fact 3 concerts at the Musikverein in Vienna for the New Year. If you wish to go and attend in person, you have to register online to buy tickets one year in advance between 2 Jan and 19 Feb. 2016 for the 2017 concert and then there is a draw and if your name is selected you are invited to purchase tickets for one of the 3 concerts. The worldwide demand for tickets is tremendous. The preview performance on the 30th Dec, the New Year’s Eve Concert and the big one the New Year’s Day concert broadcasted live. The price of the tickets is, well let’s just say it is not for all pocket books. Dress code is formal for this prestigious event. In Vienna the concert is at 11:00am so you can then proceed to your New Year’s Day luncheon afterwards.

This year the Conductor is Mariss Jansons with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The program includes music by the following composers, Robert Stolz, Johann Strauss, Jr., Carl Michael Ziehrer, Eduard Strauss, Josef Strauss, Èmile Waldteufel, Josef Hellmesberger sen., Johann Strauss, sen.

It is broadcasted around the world through the magic of the internet. Please look at the site for the time of broadcast, it is re-broadcasted on Public Radio in the USA and in Canada. You can watch and listen as it is re-broadcasted around 02:30pm and 07:30pm.

 

I will be shopping tomorrow for croissants and something nice to eat on January 1, what else is there to do on that day. For breakfast Shirred Eggs, bacon, some nice cheese, croissants, something sweet and champagne.

For lunch a nice quiche and salad, for dinner got to think of something festive to remind us of all the goods things in life.

I just noticed that my miniature purple coloured Orchids have started to open just in time fo the New Year.

Whatever you do for the New Year, I hope you enjoy yourself.

Prosit Neu Jahr!

 

Kronos,(time) from a temple in the gardens of the Villa Torlonia, Via Nomentana, Rome