BARVENNON.COM
6th August 2004
AUSTRALIAN DIARY
IN EUROPE
-
PARIS.FR -
In Paris I visited Australian architect
David Turner who emigrated circa
1990.
David has
become a converted Parisian, with the dedicated fervor of
a
Protestant who has converted to Catholicism. He calls Paris the
"City of Light
& Stone".
Like London, Paris was once a walled city, probably progressing from
two fortified
islands. Parts of the wall still exist, it's diameter was about
10 kilometers. Now Paris is a world metropolis and it's original
walled center is under
conservation orders. But not before developers had their
day. I
would have loved to have seen the
Bastille instead of the pillar that celebrates where the Bastille was.
The original islands (Ile de La Citie & Ile St. Louis) in the
Seine
are only a few hundred meters long, and about three hundred
meters wide. As David noted, Paris is a load of stonework, of
which the most
important are the cathedral Notre Dame located on the downstream
island and the royal palace or le Louvre. Within the walled
city the river Seine flows approximately west to the center, then turns
south
west. The south of the Seine
is called the
left bank (la Rive Gauche), wherein are located
bookshops (notably Shakespeare & Company), the Latin Quarter and
the Sorbonne,
France's world class
university.
There is a network of ten or twelve bridges connecting the islands and
the
mainland. About 200 meters north (on the right bank = la Rive
Droite)
of Notre Dame is the Hotel de
Ville, where many of those nobles who were executed during "the terror"
(revolutionary)
resided.
Just downstream of the islands on la Rive Droite is the royal palace
& gardens, le Louvre. The main
fashion street (the Champs Elysees, meaning fields of
Lilys) stretches westward from
the le Louvre to terminate at the Arc de
Triomph, which is an impressively massive piece of stone.
The Eiffel tower is on the south bank, a few kilometers south of the
Arc de
Triomphe.
The French number their "Arrondissements" or districts within the city,
each of which is administered by it's own local council called a Marie,
in a
clockwork
spiral
centered on the Louvre. The original walled city
contains Arrondissements one through twenty.
On Sunday night David invited me to visit his friend Jim in the south
of Paris. Jim is
a world class act. Paris is his arena, and his game is the
organization of the meeting of bodies & minds. He accepts
guests every Sunday. I noticed books on his shelves authored by
"Jim Haynes" with "Richard Neville" and "Germaine Greer" (among others)
as
collaborators. I have knowledge of that mob. They are
idealistic
dreamers who let none of the pragmatic realities intervene.
I believe
in world peace, but
unlike the ilk of Helen Caldicott & Bertrand Russell, I do not
believe
that world peace may be obtained by baring my neck to the executioner's
axe.
At that party I talked with two interesting people. The first was
an
educator (his expertise was Chemistry) from an East Coast USA
university. I think
that we agreed that the MCSE (Microsoft Certified System Engineer)
paradigm,
where the educator is totally divorced from the examining authority,
and where the exams can be attempted by anybody who pays the prescribed
examination fee was probably the best model for the egalitarian
development of education at a professional level. This method
reduces the tendency for educational qualifications to be elitist since
anybody with the
necessary ability and access to minimal educational material and a few
thousand dollars for the examination fees could obtain a degree from a
participating university. (e.g. MIT or Oxford). The second person
I met was (by his accent) a
Frenchman, and he guardedly admitted to a more than amateur interest in
economics. We discussed (quite vociferously as I recall) the
relative merits of the American and European approach to economics,
touching on the undesirability of protection. (US steel was mentioned
as
a US sin, to which I retorted that it probably did not need much
protection since the recent devaluations). The undecided issue
was that the European system delivered what Europeans wanted, and
US delivered what the US wanted. I claimed that there was an
objective measure, he challenged me to define "best" and I opted for
the greatest good, which he considered arguable, because in the new
millenia, the US had not continued expanding quite as quickly in the
nineties. I believed that he was begging the issue and we parted,
I believe, mutually unconvinced.
One of the prejudices I had before coming to France was that the French
were proud to the
point of obnoxious of
their cultural heritage, and would ignore those visitors who spoke no
French. I did find my prejudice to have some iota of truth among
some
Gauls over the age of about forty. Non-Gauls and the
younger Gauls frequently had some knowledge of English, and were
happy to practice with an English speaking
foreigner. As I found with Netherlands text in Amsterdam, so I
found it
possible to translate French
text
about half the time. This is probably because the French
(Normans) conquered Britain in about 1066
and introduced a lot of gaullic words into English.
At night Paris is (as David predicted) a sea of light. For one
night in Paris I was inadvertently homeless. It is a status I
recommend that everyone should suffer on at least one occasion, in
order to
obtain a better understanding of those who find themselves chronically
in that
position. I spent the first hour resting in the lower walkway of
the south riverbank, propped against a wall a couple of meters above
water
level. (The Seine is about five meters below the surrounding
land.) The strolling and sitting couples did not interrupt my
introverted mood. As the night deepened I found a coffee shop in
the Latin Quarter, and nursed a croissant and expresso for an
hour. About an hour after midnight I found myself again at the
waterfront, sleeping on a raised stone bench near to where a party was
in
progress. I slept there for a couple of hours to the muted mutter
of
bongos. The final hours of darkness were spent in front (to the
west) of the Hotel de Ville, where a long lasting game of handball was
in progress on a sand patch on the plaza. I found a bench and
slept reasonably
well (considering the circumstances).
On my homeless night my concern was that I might be mugged, which
is why I sought out those places where there were people. During
the night I found many homeless. There were about a
dozen people sleeping in the park in front of the Hotel de Ville that
night, and after I woke at about 6am I saw many others sleeping on the
streets. I saw one lady sleeping on the warm grill above part of
the Paris Metro. Another fellow had a shopping cart with his
possessions stacked in it parked on the footpath nearby, he had
blankets and
pillows and a groundsheet. And yet, in Paris, in summer, such a
life is livable. I say that while thinking of another fellow
(seen earlier in the evening) who had a
repast set out on the sidewalk: a half eaten toasted sandwich of some
kind, and a half finished bottle of rough red.
Our homeless are always going to be with us, some for philosophical
& personal reasons, others due to misfortune. My attitude is
that they should be given space, left alone and not persecuted.
If somebody commits a crime, then charge them and sentence them.
But it should not be a crime to be homeless. Rather, society
should set aside public areas where the homeless can safely sleep and
access clean water. After all, we have deprived people of their
birthright to hunt for food, drink from streams, & find sheltered
caves for
sleep by inventing "real estate". Shouldn't those who benefit by
owning that real estate pay
compensation to the dispossessed for that which was appropriated?
I found single room accommodation in an area near Voltaire for between
20 and 30 Euros. Accommodation is very tight in Paris. I
was extremely fortunate to find a wifi internet connection at "Style
Cafe" at 151 Boulevarde Voltaire where the
connection came free with a cup of coffee.
I am indebted to David for proofreading, and for his criticism which
caused re-evaluation of some concepts.
-
FRANKFURT.DE -
Frankfurt is about eight hours NE of Paris by bus. It is a city
of
open spaces and green and an attractive river. My accommodation
was at a youth
hostel by the river, in what could have been some sort of army barracks
left over from the cold war. Like all of Europe so far,
accommodation is
expensive at 24 Euros for a shared dormitory. (In the states I
usually paid about
US$18, ~ Euros 13.) The exchange rates are that a Euro costs
about AU1.80, a
pound costs about AU$2.50 and a US$ costs about AU$1.40. Food is
cheaper in Frankfurt than in Paris, Amsterdam or London, where a
Macdonald's salad
cost about
two pounds or 2 Euros. Here it costs about 1.60 Euros.
The city of Frankfurt is quite attractive. Wide streets,
interesting jumbled, multiple outdoor plazas filled with tables for
dining, clean
and attractive layouts with cars excluded. The architecture is a
mix of modern tall glass covered buildings and classic German churches
and stone public buildings, with carillon sounds and
cobblestones. The tall buildings in the business district have
pleasing
geometries, giving an effect not dissimilar to the downtown area of
modern US cities. There is an opera house and a few other older
buildings surviving from the medieval period.
There are lots of beggars, in the early morning on Zeil (the main
street)
can be seen many homeless. The much vaunted socialist European
states seem to have a greater problem with the homeless than does any
part of the uncaring USA. Of course that is only to be expected.
Minimum wage laws cause greater unemployment, and minimum
quality of housing laws promote homelessness.
All over the northern hemisphere there is pervasive pollution,
signaled by red sunrise, and filthy grey-yellow horizons. So far
as
language is concerned, very few Frankfurters have fluent command of
English, although most have a smattering. I have found when
reading signs that
German scans
more phonetically into English than does French. For instance the
sign on a street
stall selling bread rolls "ofenfreich" is readily translated
(phonetically) after a
few moments thought (= oven fresh). On the other hand, many words
in French
spell identically to English words, however the pronunciation is
incomprehensible.
German trains and buses operate on a similar system to that found in
Los Angeles. There are no turnstiles, passengers simply walk onto
the station or bus, and at the end of their journey, walk off.
Unlike LA, tickets are quite expensive. A daily was about seven
Euros (as opposed to about US$2.50 = 2 Euros in LA).
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