My whole life I've dreamed of going to Europe. This year I'm going to make it happen. Join me for my inspiration, my planning, my language study, and eventually my trip.
Every day I study languages. Yes, every day. I've found that the best way to keep studying is just to keep studying. When you let languages lie for even a few days, the start-up process can be rusty. So I made a rule with myself to study just a little each day. A little can be as little as 10 minutes - 5 minutes per language - or as long as 2-3 hours on days when I have a lot of time or I'm enjoying myself. But as long as I get that 10 minutes in, things keep moving along. Here is a bit about my daily study routine:
1. DUOLINGO Every day I go to https://www.duolingo.com/ and put in at least 10 minutes. I will never stop raving about Duolingo, because it's just that good and it's free. The system is simple. The lessons are bite-sized, so they're very good for people who are "too busy" to study a language; yet they are also thorough - covering reading, writing, speaking and listening, as well as grammar, vocabulary and expressions. I study French, German and Spanish, but there are also courses in Italian, Portuguese and Dutch, as well as courses to learn English and a number of courses currently in development. Here are some pictures from the site:
The Duolingo progress bar gives you your level, your experience points, the words you've learned and a chart showing the amount of progress you've made on a day-to-day basis. At the top of the screen (not shown) it also gives your "streak" - the number of days you've studied in a row, and in another part of the screen the number of experience points you have compared to your friends on the site.
Another screen reveals the lessons you've already learned as well as those you still need to learn or strengthen. Along the left side of each lesson are strength bars. When the left side begins to turn white, it's time to practice that lesson again.In this section I have no strength bars yet for Verbs Present Tense 2, but I'm as strong as possible in the other lessons.
The first time you learn a word, especially a noun, it's often accompanied by an easy, multiple-choice visual aid. It's also spoken. You always have the option to hear the pronunciation for any of the words.
"Type what you hear" is one of my favorite practices. The turtle on the bottom slows the sentence way down when needed. In addition to these practices, there are also: Translate from German to English and English to German, multiple-choice questions, and, if you have a microphone, pronunciation exercises. I make up for my lack of a microphone by always speaking every phrase/word as I go. Duolingo also has an "immersion" section where you can earn experience points through translating text which I believe comes from real websites that need translating. This can be useful sometimes, but I find it's more useful with languages I'm already pretty proficient in. I have learned interesting tidbits about history and art through translating from French to English, however.
2. READING The second part of my language study is reading. I don't do this every day, but some days I read in French or Spanish. I always read out loud. I think it's important to read out loud because it builds on speaking skills and calls attention to words which I need to look up pronunciations for later on. I also go to my dictionary every single time I'm not sure about a word's meaning. Now this is something I specifically tell my students not to do in their English classes. I encourage them to read for the gist, so they don't spend weeks trying to read one book or even one chapter. The thing is, though, I'm not on a time schedule. I actually do have weeks to spend reading one chapter, and the point of my reading is to learn new words and phrases. So I look up every single word or expression, and then I either write them down in my notebook or I write the definition into the book. Then, time permitting, I go back at the end of my reading session and re-read that section out loud, but this time I understand all the words and can cement them into my brain in context. I've learned and/or solidified a lot of vocabulary in this way, and my reading rate is improving. I recently finished reading a graded reader version of "Cyrano de Bergerac" and am currently working on "Harry Potter a l'Ecole Des Sorciers" as well as an article in French Marie Claire.Eventually I hope to add some German reading into my daily routine.
I just finished this French graded reader, remarkably nabbed at a Kyobo Books in Busan. I'm currently working on "Harry Potter" in French. I confess that it's a friend's book which I forgot to return, and he already left Korea.
I was excited to find this French "Marie Claire" at the Kyobo Books in the Seomyeon neighborhood of Busan. Actually, I see French magazines there quite frequently, although they can be a bit pricy. Still, it's worthwhile, because the language in magazines tends to be more conversational and includes a lot of colloquialisms.
My trusty dictionary (also bought at a bookstore in Seomyeon) and my vocab notebook. I prefer to use a paper dictionary because I like to study in bed and because they tend to offer more varied/subtle definitions than on-line translation.
When I finish all the lessons on Duolingo, I'm going to attack this big book of grammar I found at Fully Booked (sadly closing) in Busan. Pictured on the right is my dream read in French. I've always wanted to read "Madame Bovary" (one of my favorite novels of all time) in the original French. Now that I'm studying every day, I think my dream is achievable.
I was also lucky enough to find these Spanish and German readers at Fully Booked. The Spanish reader I've nearly finished. The German I haven't even begun yet, but I bought it because I was all excited that I could understand the title. ;)
3. FOREIGN FILMS Watching foreign films is another way I work on language learning. It tunes my ear much more than using online lessons, since the speakers have different accents and often talk more quickly. There's also a lot more use of colloquialisms. I didn't learn the German expression "Genau" on Duolingo, but I sure heard it a lot in "Generation War" and "Die Welle." Similarly, the use of "genial" as "cool" in French didn't really register for me until I heard Julie Delpy use it three times in one conversaton in "2 Days in Paris." There's no way I'm ready to understand without subtitles yet, but I still feel there's value in this input. There's also value in getting a window into the cultures of other countries, although it's important to beware of reading too much into what we see through that window. Imagine if someone randomly selected 10 American movies and tried to understand our whole culture based on those!
One of these days I'm going to get around to re-watching this German classic "Run Lola Run"/"Lola Rennt." I'll be reviewing a lot of movies in the blog, too. I hope to get into the French New Wave films one day soon, for example.
4. OTHER METHODS There are a lot of other language-learning methods I'm eager to try in the near future. I came across these French podcasts recently, for example: https://nativefrenchspeech.com/en/articles_kind/Episode%20of%20podcast.They're a bit fast for me, but they offer transcripts as well, and when I have a little bit of time or when I'm going to do some house-cleaning I think I'll give them a try. Memrise can also be useful, though the lessons are user-created and therefore vary in quality. I'm also considering putting together a French club, or perhaps a foreign language club, in the fall. It'd be nice to gather some people together to speak in French, German or Spanish. Fortunately, my husband is also studying German through Duolingo, so I am able to exchange some conversation with him. For a variety of language resources for quite a few languages please see also this page: http://www.openculture.com/freelanguagelessons I haven't had time yet to mine its riches, but there seems to be a lot of worthwhile stuff on the site.
In the end, no matter what tools you use, I think studying a language successfully simply comes down to a combination of desire and going slow and steady. If you study a language you truly enjoy and permit yourself to study just a little every day, I think you'll find success. But what if you hit a roadblock? It's important not to concentrate on how much you don't know. As a language learner you will hit points where you grow frustrated (endings of words in German make me a little nuts, let me tell you), but it's important to remind yourself how much more you know than you did before. Instead of thinking: "I can't say X in German" think "I can say Y." Yeah, I can't use the past tense yet, but I can order dinner, and I can tell someone I'm going to Austria. Could I do that one year ago? No. Hence, success.
Are you studying a language? What is your study routine? What are some web-sites and methods you'd recommend? Please share in the comments!
I'm finally getting around to seeing some classic films which I probably should have watched in high school instead of watching "Heathers" or "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" for the fiftieth time. Not to say "The Blue Angel" is fundamentally better than these movies, just to say that it is a piece of film history - a reference point. It may be the first Marlene Dietrich movie I have seen. As someone who considers herself a bit of film geek, I have some catching up to do.
The film is heartbreaking and pathetic, but I'm not going to tell you why, because there's no way to do so without spoiling it. What I can say is that the story involves a professor, played very realistically by Emil Jannings, and a nightclub performer, Lola Lola, played by Marlene Dietrich in her breakout role. Professor Emmanuel Rath is so terribly earnest that it makes him helpless both against the sparkling facade of the nightclub and against the guise of morality of the bourgeois world he belongs to. This is a man who believes in doing what's right - to drive the point home in one scene we see a motto about doing right hanging above his bed. Unfortunately, those who do what's right and take responsibility for their actions are often wronged by the people around them.
This is also a "femme fatale" film - a cautionary tale about the dangers of beautiful women. It's not too hard to take this moral from the film, since Dietrich sings two songs which distinctly warn the audience about getting involved with a woman like her. "Falling in Love Again", Dietrich's signature song goes: "Men cluster to me/Like moths around a flame/And if their wings burn/I know I'm not to blame." Another song, "Blonde Women" warns: " Beware the amazing blond women/Be careful when you meet a sweet blond stranger. You may not know it, but you're reaching danger." Just to drive the point home, there are a series of shots that cut from Dietrich on the stage, to linger for a moment on a statue of a siren (those evil temptresses of the sea who caused men to crash against the rocks), to the Professor gazing at Dietrich.
The arresting presence of Marlene Dietrich shines on stage.
In this sense, I find the film tiresome. Though it wasn't such a warmed-over cliche in 1930, today I've had it with decades of films which warn men against sexy women yet entice men towards them simultaneously. For all the fuss that's made about such women in film, I've rarely if ever met such women in real life, and when audiences are made to sympathize with the poor, duped man over and over again, it sort of takes the heat off the male role in the objectification of beautiful women. It's far more common in real life to see women taken advantage of by men - human trafficking and rape immediately come to mind. However, in films, women and their sexuality are constant, deadly snares, as if Angelina Jolie or a young Kathleen Turner were waiting around every street corner.
Dietrich does manage to make the role of the femme fatale more than a stereotype, however. First, her charisma is intense. Her screen presence travels across the decades to make this 1930, beginning-of-the-sound-era film seem, if not contemporary, at least not a fossil. She is one of those actors with an extra spark in her eye and the ability to arrest attention. The black and white, somewhat expressionist filming accentuates this allure, and it's not hard to believe that she could hold sway over this club or over human lives. She is more than her charm, however. She also has some fine scenes with Jannings (also terrific), and it is clear that there is some complexity of feeling in her character - some inner conflict.
Emil Jannings as the earnest and upright schoolteacher of "Der Blaue Engel."
At the end of the day, though, I'm not sure if this is a movie I'd recommend strongly. It was interesting to me as a part of film history and as an introduction to Dietrich, whose other films I think I will seek out eventually. It is interesting to see a film made in the Weimar era which possibly reflects some of the tensions of the time. Overall, though, the film suffers from its age and tropes which have been exhausted in the subsequent years.
I did watch the film in German, however, and, as usual that was good practice. I didn't pick up any new expressions this time, but Lee was happy to hear his favorite word: "Entschuldigung" (Excuse me/I'm sorry) from the other room.
One more thing, slightly unrelated, but I couldn't get this song out of my head while watching the movie. It's a pretty great song, for my money the best one on the album. Enjoy:
The most popular woman in the world. A crowd viewing the Mona Lisa. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Lee pointed me to an article today about overcrowding at the Louvre and other European museums. According to the article, museums across Europe are feeling the strain from too many visitors, and in some cases they are worried that artworks will be damaged.
Images of visitors clamoring to get their selfie with (or even just their shot of) "The Mona Lisa" seem ridiculous from a distance. Why would you subject yourself to such a crush simply to get a bad photo of a painting that is endlessly reproduced? I mean, here it is again:
"The Mona Lisa" isn't a painting; it's the painting.
It's a great picture, no doubt. I am not one of those, like my husband, who feels it is overrated. While I do prefer much of Da Vinci's other work, I am not immune to the mysterious smile and knowing eyes, the hazy sfumato effect, and the cultural weight which comes with being a classic. In a way, "The Mona Lisa" is so classic, that it has become a sort of cultural template for "painting" from which all other paintings depart.
Therefore, while at first glance the museum crowds seemed ridiculous, I decided to ask myself a few questions:
1. When I go to Paris, will I want to see "The Mona Lisa"? - Yes.
The answer came to me, even as I tried to be cooler than that, the way I wish I was too cool to want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
2. If I find myself in front of "The Mona Lisa" will I then want to take a picture of it? - Probably.
Even though I realize that it will be a bad picture which will probably end up being deleted, and I'd do better to take pictures of the straining crowds, since they will be more representative of my actual experience, I have a feeling that a weird groupthink may take over in the moment and I will feel compelled to do what it is that you do when you're at the Louvre.
This instinct to "collect" experiences is strong in most people. People add the seven wonders of the world to their bucket lists even if they have no idea why they became wonders. People who couldn't care less about Egyptian history nevertheless take a photo by the Great Pyramid. People crowd into the White House, Congress, and Jefferson's home at Monticello who couldn't tell you accurately what the Bill of Rights consists of. (For this last, perhaps, they are blameless, since I doubt some of our Congressional representatives could do any better.) At any rate, people collect, and I wonder how many of the people in these "Mona Lisa" queues would disappear if only the art lovers, the Da Vinci lovers, and the people who know what "sfumato" means remained. It's hard to say, however, even though I care about Da Vinci and art, whether I will visit "The Mona Lisa" for the right reasons either. I can see perfectly well that I won't be able to get any kind of decent view of the painting at the Louvre. I can see that there's no chance of quietly contemplating the work. For that, I'd do better to buy a poster and hang it on my wall. So even though I care about art, are my motives for visiting any better? I will be there just to share the same air as the famous painted lady. I'll be there to say that I was there.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with collecting experiences, either. In a sense these collections of experiences add up to a collective sense of belonging to the human race. By appreciating "The Mona Lisa", taking a picture at the Great Pyramid, visiting the White House or Monticello, we reconfirm with each other our values - what we consider beautiful, worth protecting, significant. The crowds to see "The Mona Lisa" also, doubtless, help to fund the preservation of countless lesser-known art masterpieces which may then be protected for years to come. Moreover, it is possible to take things too far the other direction and refuse to see even places which might be very enjoyable for fear of being too conventional. I had an ex-boyfriend, for example, who would purposely travel to the most obscure places possible, simply for the pleasure of being original.
Still it is funny how we have settled upon this one great portrait and these few great museums as the pilgrimages to make. Perhaps if we could spread out more - give our love to more diverse works of art, and take part of our time to explore some lesser-known locations - these European museums wouldn't be in such a jam.
I will, then, see "The Mona Lisa," though I will try to resist the urge to take a picture. I will also ascend to the top of the Eiffel Tower - possibly even while wearing some sort of scarf and fancying myself very Parisian. But I will also make a point to visit some lesser-known art treasures.
One I have my eye on is the Gustave Moreau Museum. http://www.musee-moreau.fr/ Moreau is a Symbolist painter I have long admired, and a visit to his house/museum is included with the Paris Museum Pass. Below is a video, featuring, strangely enough, of one of my favorite screenwriters, Julie Delpy, http://jensroadtoeurope.blogspot.kr/2014/07/movies-about-or-around-europe-2-days-in.html, giving a little tour of the museum. The light in the video is not so great, so I'll also include an image below the video.
Oedipus and the Sphinx, Gustave Moreau
Finally, I'd like to include one more from Da Vinci, also in the Louvre. I hope that the crowd around this painting is not so intense, and that I might, after all, get a chance to gaze deep into a work by Da Vinci in person.
The Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo Da Vinci
How about you? Would you want to see "The Mona Lisa"? Does an attraction's popularity increase or decrease your desire to see it? Share in the comments.
In this first art-themed blog entry, I think of an artwork I want to see, hunt down the place where it is kept, and then (despite reading in several blogs and travel articles that I can see it there) find out that it is no longer on public view and has been replaced by a facsimile version. Nonetheless, the whole process turns out to have been worthwhile.
The artwork is "Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry", an illuminated manuscript and book of hours created in the early 1400's, most famous for its calendar pages. A book of hours is essentially a prayer book, but the calendar pages of this particular illuminated manuscript are famous for their vivid depiction of daily life at the time, including both the nobility and the peasants. Most of the work was created by the Limbourg Brothers, but it was later added to by other artists. Here is the image for February:
February from "Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry," depicting winter in a peasant village.
I learned about this artwork through my one and only art history course at Smith College when I was about 21 years old. It's hard to articulate exactly what strikes me about the images - but I think it has to do with how rich in narrative possibility they are. You can really enter into these people's lives through the manuscript, and it's a picture of a whole community rather than portraits of individuals. Unlike historical or biblical paintings, you can fill out the story with your own imaginings about the people and situations. It is the type of art I would have loved to have had in a storybook when I was a child. In a weird way, it's like a fine art version of those Richard Scarry books I used to spend hours poring over in my grandparents' TV room. The Scarry books helped me to understand my own world, while this manuscript gives me insight into another age.
It was, then, with great excitement that I learned that "Les Très Riches Heures" might be found on display at the Chateau de Chantilly, a mere 45 minute day-trip from Paris, and that, moreover, entrance to the Chateau was covered under the Paris Museum Pass, which I already intend to purchase. I began researching the chateau and all its other attractions.
Overhead view of the Chateau de Chantilly and some of its grounds.
What I found was exciting. First, the gardens are reportedly quite beautiful. They are divided into an English garden, a Chinese-English garden which includes the Hameau (hamlet, said by some to have inspired Marie Antoinette's own rustic hideaway), the small park (a wooded area with statues), and the Grand Parterre (the grand landscaping in front of the castle, visible in the picture above.)
The "Isle of Love" or "L'ile d'Amour" in the English garden.
Second, the chateau's museum contains a great collection of older French and Italian art, including works by Raphael, Titian, Delacroix, Fra Angelico and Antoine Watteau. Its collection cannot be loaned out to other museums, so the only opportunity to see them is either in reproduction or in the chateau. While none of these artists, other than Delacroix, are among my favorites, I'm always looking to educate my eye and explore the works of famous (and obscure) artists. Here are some of the images on display, as selected by the official Chateau de Chantilly website:
"The Oyster Lunch", Jean Francois de Troy, one of the many works on display at Chateau de Chantilly, and the kind of fun, slice of life painting I am inclined to appreciate the most.
"The Three Graces" by Raphaël, probably one of the most well-known works in the collection.
"Self-Portrait at Twenty-Four" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Apparently the artist worked on this over his lifetime, only feeling it was completely finished in his sixties.
"Stained Glass Window of Psyche and Love Story", French School of the sixteenth century.
In addition to the gardens and the works of art on display, there are a number of other attractions which don't necessarily hold much interest for me, but may interest others. The stables are said to be palace-like, and equestrian shows are presented at the chateau. For you non-vegans out there, apparently they have really amazing locally made whipped cream which you can sample at the restaurant at the chateau or in town. The chateau and its grounds apparently featured in the James Bond movie "A View to a Kill." Additionally, Chantilly is apparently one of the places where "Chantilly lace" originates from, and there is a lace museum in the town.
The seventh prince of Condé, Louis-Henri Bourbon, believed he would be reincarnated as a horse, so he had these grand stables designed for his future life.
Due to all these attractions, there's a strong possibility that I will visit this chateau, despite having found out through more careful research that the original impetus for the visit - "Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry" was taken out of public view for preservation purposes in the 1980s and replaced with a facsimile. Many travel bloggers and even book authors seem unaware
of the switch, however, which makes one wonder how important authenticity is. There are many facsimiles of artworks and architecture throughout Europe and the world, and often, due to wars, the original of something doesn't even exist. The entire town of Munich, for example, was rebuilt after World War II, based on photographs taken by the Nazis in anticipation of the city's destruction. If the facsimile of a great work can bring aesthetic pleasure and intellectual interest, isn't it still worth seeing?
However, the most famous images from "Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry" are widely available on-line, and full facsimile versions are available in book form. It certainly wouldn't be worth a journey across the seas just to see a copy you might buy from Amazon. In the end, though, a 45-minute day trip from Paris and the promise of leisurely walks in gardens said to be much less crowded than those of Versailles are a good draw. That and the possibility of falling in love with another of the Chateau's famous artworks, perhaps one that is currently unknown to me, have put the Chateau de Chantilly on my travel plans map. To explore the Chateau de Chantilly for yourself, please see their official website: http://www.domainedechantilly.com/en
It was a funny thing. After a lifetime of not even considering learning German, in the summer of 2012 I fell in love with German at first speaking. You have to know how to pronounce German to love it, I think. It has what I would call a great "mouthfeel." Every language leaves its own impression on me, and when I speak German I feel deep, emotional and powerful simultaneously. I also feel smarter, oddly.* My vocabulary in German is still pretty limited. I can have some quite basic conversations - mainly involving what I would and would not like to eat, describing certain things and briefly introducing my job, country, etc. I can also say some pretty random things like "Ich habe sieben Enten" which will certainly come in handy if I ever have a farm. But here are some of my absolute favorite words in German, so far:
Der Vogel - the bird. When I say this word, I feel like it catches the spirit of a bird, somehow. Pronounce it here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/369803
Wichtiger - more important. "Wichtig" means important and is itself a great word. But "wichtiger" is awesome. It sounds like a great indie band or a cool animal that is half-witch/half-tiger. https://www.duolingo.com/comment/354592
Das Schlafzimmer - bedroom. Not only is this word sensible "schlafen" = to sleep, "zimmer" = room, but it sounds AMAZING when you say it. Every time this word comes up on duolingo I feel compelled to shout it out loud. It's true. Just ask Lee. http://www.forvo.com/word/schlafzimmer/
Die Mannschaft - the team. Yes. I know. This is a giggler in English. It's also a fabulous word, and it came in handy during the World Cup season! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0cuK6zb79E
Das Krankenhaus - Hospital - sick "krank" + house "haus". Let's leave aside, for a moment, the fact that it sort of sounds like "crackhouse" in English which makes it sort of funny. "Kranken" is a gorgeous sound. Say it. Feel it in your mouth. Pure heaven. Watch the sort of creepy video:
*As to other languages: French makes me feel romantic but occasionally quite moody; Spanish makes me feel like singing always - I think it's the most melodic language; Korean, sadly, doesn't do it for me. I feel less powerful when I speak it, usually, though its alphabet is very cleverly designed - a fact which cannot be denied. Italian, though my exposure has been limited - is fun, but I don't have time for it at present. Japanese - when I've tried it - has made me feel light and precise. This is all purely subjective of course.
So I ask you - how do various languages make you feel? What are your favorite words in foreign languages (or in English)?
I remember watching the movie "Drive" at the movie theater in Busan, South Korea, not so much because of anything having to do with the quality of the movie (I seem to recall it being cool, yet forgettable) but because of one scene where Ryan Gosling enters a grocery store. I audibly gasped, and I think my husband Lee may have, too, at the huge selection of canned beans and other Western food items which can be difficult and/or impossible to find over here. I also once loudly cried out "Oh my god!" in the foreign food section of the Shinsegae Department Store, due to my first-ever pinto bean sighting in Korea. The woman shopping next to me looked over to see what I was gaping at, then, realizing that I was freaking out over canned goods, quickly backed away in fear.
Sorry, Ryan, I'm salivating over the food, not you...
In my one trip home to America since coming here in September of 2009, I was similarly obsessed with the grocery stores both in my home state of Wisconsin, and especially in my adopted hometown and vegan mecca, Portland, Oregon. I love food, and as a (these days 95%) vegan, I love vegan, organic, fresh, healthy and environmentally sound food, whenever I can get it, which these days isn't as often as I'd like. European cities, however, are promising to be just as full of majestic grocery stores as they are of majestic art museums and cathedrals, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to visiting them almost as much. Put "The Mona Lisa" side by side with a good vegan cheese or some fresh asparagus and it'll be a steep competition. That said, here are just a few of the reasons I'm looking forward to visiting Europe's supermarkets.
1. Veganz - My husband Lee http://www.leegumienny.com/ was doing some research about eating in Germany when he came across an article describing Veganz, billed as the first vegan supermarket chain in Europe. Though vegan supermarkets are not new to me - Long Live Food Fight! - http://www.foodfightgrocery.com/, Veganz seems to be catching on in bigger cities across Europe, and has stores in Berlin, Munich and Vienna - all cities on the potential agenda. Here is a link to Veganz' web-site (in German) http://www.veganz.de/, and here is a pretty exciting article about the chain's founding and planned expansion in English. http://www.thelocal.de/20140605/jan-bredeck-boss-of-worlds-first-vegan-supermarket-veganz
2. Un Monde Vegan - France has its own vegan grocery, Un Monde Vegan, in Paris. http://www.unmondevegan.com/index.cfm Though it looks to be on less grand of a scale than its German cousin, I'm very excited to know that I'll be able to amp up my Parisian picnics with some vegan meats. I hope to stay in an airbnb apartment while in Paris, so going to this store early will probably also help Lee and I save on food costs during our trip. Here's a link to a video showing you around the store (albeit in French) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GeP4wrb2D4
3. Original Unverpackt - Another grocery store I'm eager to visit is Original Unverpackt - a packaging-free store which is opening this summer in Berlin. I've often shopped at food co-ops in the Pacific Northwest which encouraged patrons to use the bulk bins, but this store is all package-free, all the time. As much as I like my packaged tofu meats and vegan cheeses, I also love this eco-friendly concept (and fresh produce).
The founders of the store also look like pretty groovy girls.
4. Intermarche - Inglourious Fruits and Vegetables - Et finalement, a great initiative at a French supermarket chain, to reduce food waste by selling so-called "ugly" fruits and vegetables at a lower cost. Perfectly good produce for less money? Sign me up!
I doubt this will be the last post I make about the food goodness and eco-friendliness I'm looking forward to in Europe, but here concludes my first report. Thankfully, Ryan Gosling seems to have gotten over my lack of proper appreciation for his movie.
For those of you already in Europe, Bon Appetit! And please leave comments if you've been to these stores yourself, or if there are any other European food wonders you think I should check out!
Ever since I was about 8 or 9 years old I've been reading about the Holocaust and Hitler's Germany. I don't know why. I started with your standard children's books on the topic - "The Hiding Place", maybe "The Diary of Anne Frank", but soon I was reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel and other, darker books documenting Nazi atrocities. I watched a lot of movies on the topic too. Some of the first foreign films I watched were things like "Europa, Europa" that dealt with Nazi Germany. I've always felt a bit uncomfortable with my fascination with the Holocaust and the Third Reich, because it is a sort of fascination, and to be fascinated by something seems to imply a lack of disgust, or a lack of reverence for those who suffered. It seems lurid to me, a species of people craning their necks to get a look at a car accident only worse. Yet it is part of me. I deplore the Holocaust, and I deplore fascism and any signs of fascism in the world around me (believe me, I see the potential more often than I would like in my own country). But I also can't look away. I'm not the kid in "Apt Pupil", certainly, but I think Stephen King was onto something. (Isn't he always...)
I watched "Downfall" ("Der Untergang") believing that it was a documentary about Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge. There was a documentary made about the movie's fly-on-the-wall character - "Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary." I'll probably watch that as well at some point. "Downfall", from what I can read on the net, however, appears to be a mainly historically accurate film about Hitler and his inner circle in their last days in the Berlin bunker. And though I have read a lot about the Third Reich before, it was mainly from a distance. From a distance this machine seemed somehow grandiose and terrible, unstoppable like the Party in "1984." It at least seemed to be run by competent, if evil, people. But as portrayed in "Der Untergang", the Third Reich is a cult that is falling apart, its members losing faith or spiraling into suicidal insanity.
Hitler's former secretary, Traudl Junge, as she appears in the beginning and end of the film.
Hitler himself is portrayed as, by turns, delusional, cordial, paranoid, confident, self-pitying, and enraged. At times he resembles somebody's weird old crank of a grandpa who everyone has to listen to even if no one agrees with him. (This is the movie that brought you those "Hitler reacts to..." videos where Hitler's subtitles are changed and he appears to be enraged by everything from teachers desk-warming in Korea to Twitter not working.) http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/downfall-hitler-reacts Despite this unstable personality, he is obeyed nearly without question and executions are being carried out at his behest even as it becomes clear that no one's getting out of this alive or uncaptured anyway. In this movie, Hitler is repeatedly portrayed as saying that if the Third Reich won't survive, the people don't deserve to survive either.
Hitler's bunker, in the film, resembles nothing so much as a cult - a Heaven's Gate or Jim Jones situation. Indeed, many of the inner circle are portrayed committing suicide and taking their families with them - willingly or unwillingly. Even a dog is subjected to this ritual suicide. These are a people who have come so much to believe in their own myth-making, their own prejudice, their own skewed vision of the world - that they can't imagine a life worth living after the Third Reich - even people who must know they would not be found culpable of the Third Reich's crimes. Meanwhile Hitler and his commanders' refusal to surrender is shown to be needlessly wasting the lives of civilians in the world above the bunker. Children and teenagers fight fanatically and senselessly on Hitler's behalf, old men are shot for refusing to do the same, wounded and sick people are abandoned in hospitals. None of it matters to Hitler, who vacillates between looking at his architectural model for a new Berlin with Albert Speer and believing himself betrayed by each and every person under his command.
It is hard to believe, watching this movie, that Hitler was able to rise to power, to win so many followers and this type of devotion. Perhaps the unreason in him, the madness in him, called to a madness in many other people. Perhaps his delusions were delusions that many others wanted to believe. It's been a long time since I read it, but "Hitler's Willing Executioners", by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, made the case that the anti-Jewish sentiment was already there in the German people. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/bsp/hitler.html
That would make the power of a man who was so delusional much more comprehensible. That he did suffer from delusions does seem backed up by historical references, especially from Albert Speer's book "Inside the Third Reich." This movie does not seem to be attempting to fictionalize Hitler but to demystify him.
Today, Hitler's bunker is under a parking lot, marked by a historical plaque, itself only recently erected. It is not somewhere I want to visit, but I have always been fascinated by this historical period. Part of it is maybe lurid, but in writing this entry, I begin to think that a bigger part of me just wants to understand how such unreason, racism, and lack of compassion - probably sociopathy - can come to be followed by so many people and can come to nearly dominate the world. It's important to remember that the world isn't inevitably good. I think a lot of people who grew up white and middle-class in the United States, like me, assume freedom, assume a world of progress. Maybe this is less true these days, post 9-11, post-Guantanamo. I don't know. But I think the assumption is faulty. Though Hitler meets his pitiful downfall in this film, I think Roger Ebert said it best in his review of the film: "It is useful to reflect that racism, xenophobia, grandiosity and fear are still with us, and the defeat of one of their manifestations does not inoculate us against others." http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/downfall-2005
I had previously watched "Marie Antoinette" around the time it first came out, but decided to watch it again when I remembered that it was shot on the grounds of Versailles, one of the places I plan to visit on my trip. I had lukewarm feelings about the film the first time I saw it, and those feelings remained the same on a second viewing.
The movie has a beautiful, decadent surface. It seems to revel in that decadence, with montages of endless pastries and shoes, grand displays of meals, endless expanses of lawn, ever-changing gowns and hairstyles. Of course, this is appropriate for a movie about Versailles and its excesses, yet the attention to characterization does not match the set design or the costume design, and this mismatch is felt. As much as I admire Kirsten Dunst in general, I felt like she was out of her depth here. Either that or the script or the direction didn't make use of her talents. It's possible that Sofia Coppola wanted to portray her as such an ordinary girl that she became too ordinary. The placement of a pair of Converse shoes in an otherwise period shot, for example, seems aimed at convincing the audience that she was just an average girl.
However, it seems to me that only someone like Coppola - the product of a less-than-average childhood, daughter of a celebrated film director, with access to more wealth and privilege than her average audience member - could perceive Marie Antoinette as quite as ordinary as the movie wants us to believe.
Marie Antoinette meets Axel Von Fersen, played by Jamie Dornan.
It is certainly good to view Marie Antoinette not as a villain, but as a human in a particular set of circumstances which may have blinded her to the misery around her, which possibly were even designed to shelter and protect her from the world of ordinary people. It's never a good idea to see people as "all good" or "all bad", and this movie does its bit to emphasize that every time there's a beheading, there's a human being inside that head.
That said, the movie also seems to celebrate that decadence in a way that reminds me of the more-recent, but also more critical "The Wolf of Wall Street" which similarly drenched the audience in depictions of excess. Unlike "The Wolf of Wall Street," however, which hints at the complicity that the audience has in propping up the lifestyle of the super-wealthy, "Marie Antoinette" merely displays the wealth without exploring why/how such inequity comes to exist. "The Wolf of Wall Street" seems to posit that inequity is maintained, at least in part, by a public which themselves longs to possess such wealth and celebrates displays of excess. Though political and economic subjugation likely play a greater role in inequity, the public's admiration of wealth and luxury on a grand scale certainly enables it. "Marie Antoinette" has no interest in thinking about why, however. Coppola's film also fails to meaningfully question the value of wealth and material things, as "The Wolf of Wall Street" arguably does, through its shots of miserable drug abuse, extreme anxiety, marital disaster and the betrayal of friends.
Though it's played for comedy, no sensible person wants to end up like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill in this scene from "The Wolf of Wall Street."
After a short period of unease with palace protocol, Marie seems to glide easily into her luxurious lifestyle and take refuge in material things when her marriage proves less than thrilling. The endless leisure that money can buy seems to suit her just fine. There is no moment where the decadence seems to sour on her, not even as she is taken away from Versailles to her imprisonment. There is no moment where the audience is shown a downside to such luxury. Marie Antoinette is a material girl, through and through, and the movie finds no problem with this. The only downside to enormous (and one might say, obscene) wealth portrayed in the movie is the possibility of its destruction by an angry mob. The movie's angry mob, is never shown in any kind of sympathetic light. Their hunger and poverty is merely theoretical hearsay in the film. They only appear in person once, at the end of the film, as a chorus of angry voices and darkened, seemingly senseless, torch-carrying faces. The final shot is of a beautiful Versailles bedroom in disarray after the mob's attack. It is almost as if to say - "how thoughtless of the mob to destroy such beauty."
The last shot in the movie - not a bustling Versailles of today, open to the public, the beauty available to all, but rather a scene of beauty thoughtlessly destroyed by a mob we never come to know as real people.
It is not an original thought, but for some people to live in such luxury and decadence, many others must live in suffering and poverty. This movie shows us the height of the luxury and the enjoyment of it, as if to advertise to us how great it must be, without showing the cost in others' lives or criticizing its value. It is meant to be, perhaps, just a sympathetic coming-of-age story of a misunderstood historical figure, but because Marie Antoinette was such a political figure, failing to deal with the politics in any real way weakens the film in my view, or makes it at least difficult to enjoy. Adding the modern music - especially the 80s anthem "I Want Candy" - adds an extra layer of superficiality to the proceedings. Whether or not Marie Antoinette herself ever uttered the words, the film is giving us cake, heavy on the icing, where bread might be more suitable or interesting.
Perhaps the only political message that the film delivers is that the rich, by their very remove, can become oblivious to the people they rule. This may indeed be true, but it doesn't hold the king and queen very responsible for the roles they played in their own ignorance, nor does it question the value of concentrated wealth. Politically this movie seems nearly as oblivious as its title character.
In terms of European inspiration, however, I am at least glad that it has inspired me to look up further historical information on its central characters.
I've been sick the last few days which means that I've spent a lot of time on my couch watching movies. One of the things I watched was the popular German mini-series from 2013, "Generation War", or in German,"Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter" (Our Mothers, Our Fathers). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1883092/ The show chronicles the journey of five friends through World War II, starting as two of them are about to go of to war, and ending after the surrender. Three of the friends are men - two brothers, Wilhelm, the golden boy and Friedhelm, more of a reader than a fighter; and Viktor, the Jewish son of a tailor. The women are Greta, who is in a romantic relationship with Viktor and wants to be singer; and Charly, who is setting off to be a nurse on the Eastern front and is in love with Wilhelm, but doesn't say anything.
Improbably celebrating the young men going off to fight Hitler's war.
I had read a fair amount of criticism of the show before watching, but even without that reading, my knowledge of history, especially Holocaust history made the show seem a bit fantastical at best and revisionist at worst. Mainly the show tries to simplify a friendship among five people that, if it existed at all, would surely have been more complicated. The idea that there would be no real discussion of what's happening to the Jewish people among these friends seems rather absurd, as the movie begins in 1941, well after Kristallnacht http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/kristallnacht (the only allusion to Nazi atrocities given in the first part of the movie), and in the same year as the first deportations from Berlin. "The Eternal Jew" - the notorious propaganda film that compared Jewish people to rats, among other things - was released in 1940 alongside other films which had been laced with anti-Jewish messages. Hitler had already announced his intention for the annihilation of Jews in Europe. It seems like the five friends would have to be enormously naive and/or insensitive to talk as they do in the beginning of the film about hoping for Germany's early victory and serving a country which was so openly hostile and threatening to one of their friend's very existence. I kept thinking about the much more interesting, complex film that might have been made had it followed five friends from say 1933-1941 and seen the changes they must have inevitably undergone as the culture changed under Nazism. This film was not made to that end, however. A very interesting documentary which interviewed people from the time can be found on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zocAaqp4AG4and gives a more realistic account of the youth of that period. As the mini-series develops, the main complaint I had was that the characters really don't have enough time to earn the changes they undergo. Certainly the motives of Charly (and Greta towards the beginning) are barely fleshed out, and you have to sort of fill them in yourself. Same goes for Friedhelm, who completely flips personality at some point in the mini-series, leaving me feeling as if I'd missed something.
Friedhelm becomes a hard-ass soldier, but I must have blinked and missed the moment where they told us why.
There are exciting battle scenes, which I'm sure does it for some people, but it was hard to care about characters who seemed like little more than archetypes. Viktor was really the only character who seemed fully fleshed out, but even in his case I had to do some filling in from what I knew about the Holocaust, since some of the greatest horrors he must have undergone are never shown. This is a man who had probably seen a fair amount of people die, (as it's mentioned that he's traveling from one camp to another), but the daily horrors of a concentration camp (not just gas chambers but starvation, sickness, punishments and shootings) are never shown. Instead we see Viktor hanging out with the Polish resistance fighters, but undercover, since the Polish resistance are themselves portrayed as anti-Semitic. The Polish government was angered by this portrayal, although in that much I can't necessarily fault the filmmakers, as there is evidence to show that many partisan groups would not accept Jewish people in their ranks. That said, it creates quite an imbalance in the film when the sympathetic leads' own anti-semitic tendencies, or if not tendencies, then at least their participation in an anti-semitic war, are rarely if ever taken to task
The portrayal of the Polish resistance fighters as anti-semitic and complex is a realistic element inserted into the film. The more favorable portrayal of the German main characters would seem to justify the Polish criticism of the mini-series.
SPOILER- In fact Charly at one point betrays a Jewish person to the Nazis. In terms of the rest of the story, however, she faces no real consequence for this. She looks a bit upset about it for a moment and then goes back to the more important business of pining for her unrequited love. Then, she finds out that the person she betrayed, who, let's face it, would probably have been taken out back and shot in real life, is still alive and somehow improbably in a commanding position in the Russian army. So, no harm done, after all. What a relief. This seemed like an enormous cop-out to me, denying the character any real, sustained damage from the war, allowing her Nazi moment to be just a little "oops", a blip in her life. -SPOILER-
At any event, the story suffers from oversimplification, weak characterization, and a tendency to elide the worst of the atrocities - oftentimes there is a moment where we're almost going to see something horrible happen, but then it either happens off-screen or it is miraculously prevented from happening at the last moment. In World War II there wasn't a lot of deus-ex-machina to go around to keep up such a pleasant facade.The moment that struck me most deeply, in fact, was a single shot of Greta watching Jewish people being evicted from their house after she's realized that she's neglected to save Viktor's parents. In her look you can tell she suspects or knows the worst that's in store for them. Then as she averts her gaze and asks to be taken home, you understand the fear and paralysis that's prevented her from acting and is in the process of hardening her heart. Though Greta shows considerably more understanding for the fate befalling her country and especially the Jewish population, she is treated in the narrative as aloof from the war, as almost comically clueless compared to Charly, as someone afraid to get her hands dirty, as perhaps vain and selfish.
Greta, averting her eyes from atrocities, seems like one of the more realistic moments in the mini-series.
Is this to say I didn't enjoy the film? No, it was interesting enough. It is an antidote, perhaps, to the other idea in Western popular culture that all Germans were evil caricatures, a la "Inglourious Basterds." However, viewed by the wrong eyes, the eyes of someone who hasn't fully confronted the horrors of the Holocaust or come to terms with the way anti-semitism and fascism had infected the population so thoroughly, this film could be a dangerous revisionist history in which the Nazi war was fought primarily by some hapless kids who didn't really mean any harm and just wanted to get back to Berlin to hang out with their Jewish best friends. I think that that proposition is as false as the "Basterds" premise, however. The truth lies in the middle somewhere. Reading books such as "Hitler's Willing Executioners", watching documentaries such as that linked above, reveals that the German population was not so naive, that Hitler was not simply a dictator who inspired fear but a loved figure who made no secret of his hatred for the Jews. I hope that the popularity of this film does not indicate a new desire to gloss over their history on the part of the Germans, who, heretofore, have seemed more than willing to accept responsibility for their past.
At any rate, this is not a terrible film, but it's a film that should be taken with several grains of salt, and I would recommend that people read up on their history and watch some documentaries before digesting any of it at all.
That said, it was a great way to practice my German listening skills. I'm still a beginner at German, (Ich bin eine Anfänger), so I didn't pick up much. However, it's good to immerse yourself in the second language when you can. I figured that catching up on what's popular on German TV at the same time would be a good two-for-one language and cultural lesson.
