#nmcm

remembered this one

↳ 7x01 - be my better half

The last June I saw this sculpture, the "Seated Ballerina" of Jeff Koons. It was a big installation at the Rockefeller Center in New York. . . #seatedballerina #jeffkoons #installation #art #rockefellercenter #nyc #nmcm #jj #ff #summer #trip #usa #rockefellerplaza #sculpture #square #dancer #dance #ballet #ballerina #june (presso Rockefeller Center)

-we arrived in the rain and fog and took the bus up the winding roads to Mount Parnassus -checked into the hotel Sybilla. Since it was raining we visited the Delphi museum where we saw artifacts discovered at the archaeological site. These included bronze fragments of a giant bull and the famous “Charioteer” -ate at a cliff side restaurant where we had a vegan friendly, sugar-hangover inducing walnut sugar thing - awoke to the most beautiful lush green mountain surroundings -climbed up the sacred way and passed rock of the sybil where the oracle delivered her prophesies -visited the sites of ancient delphi including the temple of apollo where the priests interpreted the oracle’s prophesies -got engaged :) -climbed up to the fourth century B.C. theatre and sport stadium, where the judge’s chairs were still in place -took so many photos -visited the Castilian spring where ancient pilgrims cleansed themselves before visiting oracle, and then the sanctuary of Athena…where a crowd of college kids arrived playing Red Hot Chilli Peppers on a boom box and climbed all over the ancient ruins -felt old for thinking the college kids were disrespectful - in the afternoon we decided to hike up mount parnassus— a three-hour journey of one of the oldest-known footpaths carved into the mountainside. -at the summit we came across herds of cows, a fresh spring that we drank from, a small farm village, some religious shrines, and hidden valleys -climbed down the mountain as the sun set -enjoyed some traditional greek stuffed tomatoes and peppers at the same restaurant from the night before. We also had a good conversation with our waitress who had moved to Delphi from Bulgaria -walked around the small town of Delphi, amazed that such a place exists

Cassidy: we have been neglecting the blog a bit!! We were in Bucharest only for a day so we could catch a flight to athens instead of taking the 19-hr bus through Bulgaria. Bucharest seemed big and busy and the communist-era buildings were not really aesthetically pleasing. We stayed in an apartment dubbed the 'pistachio studio' for its green hue though shockingly no pistachios were found within! We also checked out a substantial mall.. The top floor was full of restaurants and cigarette smoke reminding us of the lenient smoking laws in this part of the world. Nath: Ah...lenient smoking laws. Bucharest was kind of like what I imagined Eastern Europe to look like based on TV images from childhood: jagged, grey, and rainy---but we only spent one day there so I don't think we gained any real insight into the city (and I actually kind of liked that feeling). It was interesting to walk around the old town district that the post-communist city has been bringing back to life.Getting off the plane in the shining sun of Athens sure was a stark contrast, though. Cassidy: athens was so beautiful and sunny and green!! I'm glad we came in spring when all the trees were lush and purple lilacs lined the streets with smells that remind me of home. We had a great apartment near the acropolis with our own private courtyard. It was so nice to walk around in a t-shirt and feel the sun on our skin. We even had to buy sunscreen. The acropolis, agora and other ruins were in the background wherever we went which was an amazing feeling. The people were also so friendly and helpful. Athens is truly a city we need to spend more time in! My favourite were the stray dogs that wander around sniffing, running, and dozing on the cool marble. People leave out food and water for them and they look so happy and content -- a big difference from the skinny Romanian dogs. Maybe you can judge a city by its dogs!! The museums also have a real respect for greek history-- visitors are not permitted to pose or make goofy faces in front of the sculptures and will get yelled at by the guards! Nath: After seeing quite a bit of ancient Greek art in some of the other museums we have been to it was amazing to actually be in Athens.The walls of the museum are made of glass so you can actually see the acropolis as you check out the statues and stuff. We saw some of the art from the Acropolis (statues, pediments, panels) at the National Museum in London, notably the famous "Elgin marbles" that Lord Elgin "saved" from ruin by shipping them off to Britain. The Acropolis museum has taken understandably different stance on Elgin, suggesting that he outright stole them (which, I think, he did). The museum even has places reserved for the return of the statues from London. Hopefully one day the get them back! We also liked the National Archeological Museum that had the remains of the Antykithera mechanism, an Ancient Greek astronomical computer found in a shipwreck along with some amazing statues. But we didn't spend all of our time in museums---just walking around the labyrinthian streets and shops of Athens was good (though the traffic is pretty wild).

Posted by cm We are loving Brasov, a small Transylvanian city with lots of things to see. Our apartment is located in the historical centre next to town square, a cool pedestrian street with lots of shops, and the Black Church in the gothic style. It's been nice to have some down time to walk around and plan the last stage of our trip. On Saturday we walked to the town square and were surprised to find a police band playing music while men in various uniforms-- from swat teams to regular police-- lined in formation and there were speeches and applause. Couldn't make out a lot of it, but we caught some words like 'Afghanistan'-- seemed to be a ceremony honouring the troops followed by martial arts demos, and weapon displays. We watched children handling machine guns and rocket launchers-- heavier than they appear. Got a little leery when the thing was pointed right at me! Then one afternoon we hiked up the mountain with a huge Brasov sign embedded to the side of the cliff. It was t-shirt weather and we got an amazing view of the city and the hundreds of terra cotta roofs below us. Quite a beautiful sight. We also had an adorable dog follow us part way up the hill...he was really nice and I kind if wanted to bring him home! We had to make the trip to the nearby town of Bran to visit Bran castle which was the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was fun being in the country and seeing the vampire-related souvenirs everyone was selling. The castle was cool too, with lots of interesting architecture. I'd like to learn more about Vlad the Impaler as well. Today we stumbled upon an Easter bazaar by the black church where dozens of children were selling Easter treats and crafts. One little girl sold us a basket diorama with a little yellow chick and acorns inside, very adorable. We also saw the 'Rope Street'-- one of the narrowest streets in Europe! Everything here is really affordable too. Our groceries have been around ten or fifteen lei, which is only five dollars Canadian.

We were starting to get tired of spending only three nights in each city.. But Budapest was our last quick stop before Romania and it offered lots of fun despite the snowy/slushy weather that's been following us. We arrived at the train station a bit early so took the metro to our neighbourhood, right in the centre near the Danube river. The huge parliament buildings and Buda castle instantly captivated our attention, and we had americanos at a nearby cafe before meeting at our apartment. The courtyard of the building was filled with a carpet of lush green plants-- probably weeds, but it looked beautiful. While in Budapest we walked around to some of the sites and churches like the Heroes statues and a nearby old fortress. We walked across the chain bridge to the castle hill and we were lucky to catch the changing of the guards-- a theatrical performance of recitation and gun movement complete with drumming. That night we walked to a huge mall where we saw the new Harmony Korine movie, "Spring Breakers." (Nathan: this movie theatre was the coolest one I have ever been in. There were couches you could sit on outside the twenty-some screens as you waited for your movie to start in sort of cybernetic orange antechamber. The movie, "Spring Breakers," was one of the best I have seen in a while...a real experience. I also liked the eastern feel of Budapest; the uniqueness of Hungarian culture really came across in the architecture we saw and in the art gallery we visited on our last day---see below) The next day we did some more walking on the castle-side of things, and found an awesome vegan restaurant. This included a tasty pastry dessert which we will have to try to imitate! We also checked out the Hungarian art gallery. Some of the art was really amazing, especially an installation with transparent paper formed to look like falling bodies.. It was interesting to see more of an eastern and Turkish presence in historical paintings-- very unlike what we've seen so far! Then a twelve-hour train ride to Romania.. Even further east..

Posted by Cassidy (proof-read by nath!) Vienna is a city of white and green. White for the square buildings we encountered, most of which are relatively new, having been built after the later 1800s. Green for the teal domes on the palaces and churches, the green hue that bronze statues adopt after a hundred years, and the marble statues of Herculean figures that have taken on a slight green tinge. Our first day Vienna showed us trimmed green shrubs of the museum quarter, the second a flurry of white snow covering the ring of streets. In Vienna, I felt colours brought together in multiplicity, a word used to describe Brueghel's paintings in the Kunst Historisches museum. The paintings were filled with figures, buildings, activities, and landscapes. Nathan had showed me Brueghel's "Hunters in the Snow" a few years ago when it was the background on his laptop, and I was drawn to the dark figures on the white landscape surrounded by dogs while families skated on the pond below. This was my first time seeing Brueghel's other works like the painting of hundreds of children playing various games--from leapfrog to balancing brooms, or the Peasant Wedding, or Brueghel's depiction of the Tower of Babel. We noted the irony of the king instructing the workers to build the tower all the higher while the viewer is aware another floor will cause the tower to topple over onto the town below. In each painting, there were more peasants, more secrets hidden in the background, more colours and masks and faces greeting us like a map to the artist's imagination. We then wandered to the collection of Roman artifacts on a different floor of the Museum.. we should have been sick of Classical marble statues by this point but the curators had done something amazing-- they had offered us plaster recreations of the statues and reliefs, each brightly painted to suggest how the statues would have actually appeared to the Greeks. We saw bright pigments of red, blue, and yellow-- colours that seemed to resemble a circus tent or lego playset and seemed almost gaudy to our eyes used to the pristine white marble falsely presented in films and paintings. X-ray technology and systems to measure weathering had revealed the traces of natural pigments in the stone which enabled scientists to determine where an ochre bow-and-arrow might have been painted in the soldier's hands or what strange and colourful design might have been presented on his armour. To have your entire conception of classical art altered is a strange and beautiful thing, and one the mind does not accept easily. With each encounter of the brightly painted goddesses and the suddenly tanned depiction of emperors we realized how little of human history we really knew. Then the trivial glimpse of gold in an encounter with one of our own 'gods': Upon seeing a crowd gathering outside a high-end watch store, we waited outside a barrier where a black car was parked in front of a red carpet. Burly men in suits watched the crowd and communicated in a series of nods, hand signals, and whispers. "Do we know who we're waiting for?" a woman asked. "You know, I don't think anyone know. We're just waiting to see who it is." We watched assistants dressed in smart pencil skirts and men on cell phones enter and exit the store multiple times. "Do you know who is inside there?" "It's a group impulse we're following, it's our curiosity." After twenty minutes, our idol emerged from her photoshoot-- and we caught a glimpse of Nicole Kidman's impossibly shiny blonde hair. We noticed it was her in the large poster hanging in the store's interior, a gold watch on her wrist. The crowd heaved forward to capture her in camera flashes before breaking away in laughter and adrenaline at the silliness of the encounter. The Freud museum in vienna offered us a glimpse of the rooms where freud spent time carrying out psychoanalysis on his patients, and writing his enigmatic texts that influenced philosophy and literature, if not the course of the entire 20th century. We saw Freud family photographs, and some of Freud's collection of ancient Greek and Egyptian sculptures. But it was in black and white home videos of the Freud family--not colour-- that I reflected on the variety of things we have seen. Here, we heard his daughter, Anna Freud offering commentary on her father's illness as they visited Paris and London, the family dog named "Jumbo," and the swastikas hanging from banners in Vienna. Her voice, a few years before her own death, was superimposed over an image of a child watching swastika pinwheel spinning in a breeze. We heard that the Freuds were able to escape from Austria by becoming exiles and surrendering a large sum, but all four of Freud's sisters were murdered in the holocaust. What else of this lightness and darkness? Outside, we saw more of that white and green. The white buildings of congress, the national library, and museum quarters. We saw teal domes, and those tinted green statues of Hercules, a lion's hide swathed over his chest. Colours brought together like paint on a busy, moving city scape.