My growing audacity at taking close-ups in public in Sweden---on the street and even indoors, and in the presence of people right next to me---eventually led to my being accosted by someone demanding to know what the heck I was doing.
It was awkward to be sure, but thankfully it was a gentle incident, and only good things came of it.
It happened while we were still in Gothenberg, on our third or fourth day staying downtown near the station. It was still our practice at that point in the trip to stick close to the station for our accommodation, partly for ease of movement, and also for cheapness of meals while we were still establishing the budget of the trip. In Copenhagen we had eaten shawarma near the station nearly every day until we were sick of it. Fortunately Gothenberg had an excellent cheap burger place right inside the station itself (on a side note, the hamburger truly is the perfect meal).
The richness of businesses in the city center had me occupied splendidly for the first couple days there, just by walking around the nearby neighborhoods.
But soon I wanted more, something beyond the kinds of words I was seeing there. So on a sunny afternoon when I had some time, I took a longer walk, past the train station and the adjacent central waterfront shopping mall (which I'd thoroughly explored by then) onto the big arching bridge that crosses the Göta River, from which the city gets its name. The bridge itself afforded some awesome shots of the traffic signs, as well as the advertisements on the sides of buses and trams as they passed noisily by.
The city picks up again on the other side of the bridge, but it is more industrial along the waterfront. For almost an hour in the sunny afternoon, I detoured down under the bridge onto the narrow industrial side streets of working and abandoned factories with big parking lots, as well as storage facilities of all kind. Right under the bridge itself I found the city's dumping ground for its outdated municipal trash cans, emblazoned with the old city logo from before it was rebranded.
Feeling in my element, I walked up to the gates of the factories as if I had business there, took a few shots, and moved on. But mostly the area was quiet and I had the streets there to myself. Tempted by ancient decaying stenciled writing on the side of shuttered brick building, I risked my precious iPhone more than once by thrusting it through an opening in a rusting chain to get a good angle.
I could have spent hours more just circling in the same area, but as always I felt always the need to press on, and explore new areas of the city. I've always done exactly this kind of aimless wondering when I am abroad in a foreign city, so it was very much in keeping with character, albeit now with a new mission attached it.
Away from the river, the road began to feel like a proper highway with a grassy median and a sidewalk set back on the crest of a small hill beside the road.
Across the road I spied the most wonderful target: an automobile repair shop, the kind one sees near highways even in America, that provides servicing of brakes, mufflers, and tires. It was beautiful in the sunshine, with black on yellow lettering advertising its services prominently to the motorists coming down off the bridge. Even though it was across the road, I immediately detoured towards it, crossing the median and the climbing the grass berm on the other side until I got to the crest.
Once there, I could get a shot of the entire building, but to my delight, in front of the business was also parked a Gothenberg city garbage and recycling truck, in the process of picking up its loads at the mechanic shop. For the kind of project I was doing, such vehicles can be like white whales, covered with all sorts of unique vocabulary. One wants to grab the shots whenever one can.
Still holding my phone, I descended quickly down from the crest of the berm to the truck, and got within a few feet of it, taking pictures of the signs on the side while the garbage men helped the business owner load the bins. They seemed to ignore me at first.
With the truck still idling, I circled around the front, taking pictures of writing on the truck from several angles and distances, until I was on the other side of the truck, and also alongside the building itself. I figured while I was there, I might as well get some close-ups of the words on the side of the building too, and even on the front door.
Doing this, I finally came in view of the back of the truck, and while I was in the midst of taking a shot of the door itself, I heard a voice in Swedish yelling unmistakably at me. I looked up and saw what was obviously the proprietor of the auto shop, in mechanics garb with a sewn-on name patch, and with sturdy air of seniority about him. His tussled dirty blonde hair that matched the grease stains on his shirt. He was speaking right at me, in a sharp tone, and with a scowling visage. He came right up to me and motioned at my iPhone while he was talking. He wasn't particularly happy.
I can't remember if he was speaking Swedish or English, or both. In any case, I had thankfully rehearsed for exactly this moment. I put on a big wide silly smile, and said, in my best enunciated Swedish:
"I'm learning to speak Swedish."
I paused a moment, to let the wheels start to work in his head. Then I motioned at the words on the building that I had been photographing.
"I'm taking pictures of the words," I said, again in my simple Swedish, while running my hand slowly below the letters of the words themselves.
"To learn Swedish," I said again, bringing it back full circle.
With my silly grin, I nodded my head holding up the camera and held up the camera in front of me, in the manner of classic Japanese tourist of old, as if to say, "get it?"
At that moment the wheels in his head turned. The proprietor broke out in a big smile and even started laughing. Never before had I seen tension evaporate more swiftly. He did not need to hear another word from me. He waved me off as if to say, "knock yourself out," and then turned and went back to the sanitation workers, eager to tell them the gag.
As I would learn, this turned out to be by far the most prevalent attitude that I encountered in my project across Europe. Even in Holland, where I got the most push back (people there basically live on top of each other), all I had to do was learn the equivalent phrases I had learned in Swedish, and recite them each time someone asked me what I was doing.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Saturday, May 23, 2015
The Spy Who Loved You
What started out as a project to grab some "native vocabulary" in the countries we visited soon became an obsession to explore the intricacies of the printed and written word in public.
In Malmö I had chosen to make my first foot foray down to the industrial area along the waterfront, and the loading quiet, mostly quiet even on a workday, since everyone is inside and invisible. This allowed me to get up to the signs on the doors, where I was rewarded but a rich variety of words and typography in stark, readable patterns, as one finds in that kind of environment, where the message must be communicated clearly, as a matter of life and death sometimes.
But a couple days into Sweden, I realized that I had become obsesses with what were actually very common signs and phrases. I saw the same ones in Gothenberg as well, in the course of normal wandering around the city near our hotel.
So I upped my requirements---I wanted to find the elusive, interesting written messages that are scattered throughout the world. I soon began pushing the limits of photography in public, amidst people, and at close range towards fine print and handwritten signs, up close above key holes on doors leading to private spaces.
I soon became a master at grabbing these kinds of shots with the phone. Mostly it was very easy. The smartphone lets you look like you are doing something else---say, texting or looking at a map, when all the while you are taking a snapshot of something at knee-level right in front of you. By this means I could often get the quirkiest and most interesting little signs, stickers on fire hydrants, all the while not giving away my project.
This last bit may strike some folks as funny---why did I care if people noticed me doing that? Objectively I didn't, but somehow it was easier to get lots of good shots while I stayed in the normal flow of the people around me, without turning on the bright flashing light of awareness that a photograph was being taken.
Sometimes it doesn't matter that you are photographing. People expect it certain cases---for example if you are taking a snapshot of a famous landmark that all the tourists visit. Or if you are taking any kind of selfie in a random place. People understand selfies, to be sure.
But if you are walking down a street in a normal business district and you pull out your smartphone to begin taking pictures of say, posters on the side of a building, that have been put there and are rotting away unnoticed, or of a large sign above a grocery store---in other words anything that isn't normally photographed---then people are sometimes very distracted by it. Momentarily they want to know what is going on. They stop walking in the same stride. They cluster around you. They walk into your shot and pose for you, right smack in front of the words you were trying to photograph.
All of that was a lot of grief for me, when all I wanted to be was in the flow and vibe of the normal. So I became a spy of sorts, to get what I needed without sending too may ripples in the cosmic pond.
In Malmö I had chosen to make my first foot foray down to the industrial area along the waterfront, and the loading quiet, mostly quiet even on a workday, since everyone is inside and invisible. This allowed me to get up to the signs on the doors, where I was rewarded but a rich variety of words and typography in stark, readable patterns, as one finds in that kind of environment, where the message must be communicated clearly, as a matter of life and death sometimes.
But a couple days into Sweden, I realized that I had become obsesses with what were actually very common signs and phrases. I saw the same ones in Gothenberg as well, in the course of normal wandering around the city near our hotel.
So I upped my requirements---I wanted to find the elusive, interesting written messages that are scattered throughout the world. I soon began pushing the limits of photography in public, amidst people, and at close range towards fine print and handwritten signs, up close above key holes on doors leading to private spaces.
I soon became a master at grabbing these kinds of shots with the phone. Mostly it was very easy. The smartphone lets you look like you are doing something else---say, texting or looking at a map, when all the while you are taking a snapshot of something at knee-level right in front of you. By this means I could often get the quirkiest and most interesting little signs, stickers on fire hydrants, all the while not giving away my project.
This last bit may strike some folks as funny---why did I care if people noticed me doing that? Objectively I didn't, but somehow it was easier to get lots of good shots while I stayed in the normal flow of the people around me, without turning on the bright flashing light of awareness that a photograph was being taken.
Sometimes it doesn't matter that you are photographing. People expect it certain cases---for example if you are taking a snapshot of a famous landmark that all the tourists visit. Or if you are taking any kind of selfie in a random place. People understand selfies, to be sure.
But if you are walking down a street in a normal business district and you pull out your smartphone to begin taking pictures of say, posters on the side of a building, that have been put there and are rotting away unnoticed, or of a large sign above a grocery store---in other words anything that isn't normally photographed---then people are sometimes very distracted by it. Momentarily they want to know what is going on. They stop walking in the same stride. They cluster around you. They walk into your shot and pose for you, right smack in front of the words you were trying to photograph.
All of that was a lot of grief for me, when all I wanted to be was in the flow and vibe of the normal. So I became a spy of sorts, to get what I needed without sending too may ripples in the cosmic pond.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
The Self-Assembly of a Digital Factory
I'd had my phone only six weeks, and had begun using it only when we landed in Reykjavik, since my old phone didn't work there. Knowing this in advance, I'd bought my new one principally to have connectivity work and other Internet requirements abroad, especially Skype, which thankfully worked great right off the bat.
At the time of my purchase I hadn't cared about the size of the phone memory, since I don't download media files much. I didn't imagine I would use it. But soon I began to care about the phone memory a lot.
In Sweden, I had blissfully begun to accumulate hundreds and then thousands of images of in public all the while thinking the memory on the phone was ample for my usage. Then in downtown Stockholm, after a fantastic successful pass through all the five floors of the magnificent central library, and then making my way back down the hill to subway station at the central train station, I had ducked inside another church to grab some additional ecclesiastical vocabulary in a church setting.
While taking a gratuitous snapshot of the interior from the pews, the phone informed me via an error message than the memory was full and that the photo could not be taken. I sat down in the pews next to the Swedish hymnals and clumsily deleted a bunch of recent photos I didn't need in order to fill up some emergency storage space until I could get back to the hotel.
Thus began what was to be the constant battle of keeping the photography process going during the trip. Every day was a unique experience. I wanted to take advantage of every one. There could be no downtime.
The first order of business was to keep the phone memory freed up for more photos. That meant getting photos off the phone into my laptop, something that I discovered had already been happening automatically whenever I plugged the phone into the computer to charge it, via the USB.
But that was just the beginning. My laptop hard drive soon filled up, a couple days after that. It too had to be cleared. And moreover I was not satisfied with having my photos only on my laptop. I wanted to put them up into the cloud (that too had already been happening, to a limited degree). But the hotel wifi in Sweden was often not up to the speed requirements for this, given the hundreds of photos I was generating each day, just by walking around the city.
I soon fell behind on this daily chore of uploading. Often it was the last activity of the day before retiring for the night, at times accomplished with the laptop open through the night, uploading at the painfully slow rate of the connection. The status of the upload was often the first thing I checked upon waking each morning, even before email.
At the time of my purchase I hadn't cared about the size of the phone memory, since I don't download media files much. I didn't imagine I would use it. But soon I began to care about the phone memory a lot.
In Sweden, I had blissfully begun to accumulate hundreds and then thousands of images of in public all the while thinking the memory on the phone was ample for my usage. Then in downtown Stockholm, after a fantastic successful pass through all the five floors of the magnificent central library, and then making my way back down the hill to subway station at the central train station, I had ducked inside another church to grab some additional ecclesiastical vocabulary in a church setting.
While taking a gratuitous snapshot of the interior from the pews, the phone informed me via an error message than the memory was full and that the photo could not be taken. I sat down in the pews next to the Swedish hymnals and clumsily deleted a bunch of recent photos I didn't need in order to fill up some emergency storage space until I could get back to the hotel.
Thus began what was to be the constant battle of keeping the photography process going during the trip. Every day was a unique experience. I wanted to take advantage of every one. There could be no downtime.
The first order of business was to keep the phone memory freed up for more photos. That meant getting photos off the phone into my laptop, something that I discovered had already been happening automatically whenever I plugged the phone into the computer to charge it, via the USB.
But that was just the beginning. My laptop hard drive soon filled up, a couple days after that. It too had to be cleared. And moreover I was not satisfied with having my photos only on my laptop. I wanted to put them up into the cloud (that too had already been happening, to a limited degree). But the hotel wifi in Sweden was often not up to the speed requirements for this, given the hundreds of photos I was generating each day, just by walking around the city.
I soon fell behind on this daily chore of uploading. Often it was the last activity of the day before retiring for the night, at times accomplished with the laptop open through the night, uploading at the painfully slow rate of the connection. The status of the upload was often the first thing I checked upon waking each morning, even before email.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Succumbing to the Language of the Street
By the time we had gotten to our third country---Sweden---I had realized that accumulating a library of images of "vocabulary in the wild" for the various languages we encountered was to be my primary sparetime activity during our trip. It was something that I joyfully embraced. It felt new each time I went out. I always had energy for it. Soon it became an obsession.
Even as we approached the first train station in Sweden, crossing the bridge to Malmö, I was priming myself for the task ahead, one that I knew would begin the minute we stepped out of the (Danish) train car on to the platform at our destination.
In what would be a preview of many such scenes on our trip, Red had to linger on the platform with our bags while I zipped around hastily through the crowd, gathering Swedish vocabulary and phrases from the signs on the posts and hanging above the tracks, all while the people were still there.
I already knew to take advantage of each place right then and there. It was easy to fool myself that I would "come back later." Get it while you can, became my motto.
In Denmark, I had started with the idea that by taking these images of "language on the street," I could harvest a basic set of the words and phrases of the Danish language, such as one would learn in a basic language course. I soon realized, however, that the public printed and written vocabulary was very different. There were so many "basic" words, ones that one would find in a phrasebook, for example, that were very hard to find in print in public. Likewise there were words that one would find over and over in print on signs, but which would rarely come up in spoken conversation, and which might seem exotically out of place in a basic language course. Nevertheless such words were everywhere in written form.
At first this lack of overlap dismayed me, but I soon shook it off with the idea that I would "go with whatever was there." The readable "language of the street" was its own thing worthy of documentation for its own sake, I concluded. By itself, it would make for a powerful way to learn a language.
Being an introvert as I am, I realized as well that this approach was perfectly in line with the way I learn languages. Even in a place like Sweden, where everyone seems to want to practice English with you (making it hard to carry on with even the most basic conversational interactions in Swedish sometimes), one still sees the written local language everywhere one goes, just by going out in public and walking down the street (my favorite activity while traveling abroad).
The public vocabulary available to one's eyes is a constant shifting text (to borrow a word from critical theory) that makes for the most superb and intimate feeling of immersion in the language.
Even as we approached the first train station in Sweden, crossing the bridge to Malmö, I was priming myself for the task ahead, one that I knew would begin the minute we stepped out of the (Danish) train car on to the platform at our destination.
In what would be a preview of many such scenes on our trip, Red had to linger on the platform with our bags while I zipped around hastily through the crowd, gathering Swedish vocabulary and phrases from the signs on the posts and hanging above the tracks, all while the people were still there.
I already knew to take advantage of each place right then and there. It was easy to fool myself that I would "come back later." Get it while you can, became my motto.
In Denmark, I had started with the idea that by taking these images of "language on the street," I could harvest a basic set of the words and phrases of the Danish language, such as one would learn in a basic language course. I soon realized, however, that the public printed and written vocabulary was very different. There were so many "basic" words, ones that one would find in a phrasebook, for example, that were very hard to find in print in public. Likewise there were words that one would find over and over in print on signs, but which would rarely come up in spoken conversation, and which might seem exotically out of place in a basic language course. Nevertheless such words were everywhere in written form.
At first this lack of overlap dismayed me, but I soon shook it off with the idea that I would "go with whatever was there." The readable "language of the street" was its own thing worthy of documentation for its own sake, I concluded. By itself, it would make for a powerful way to learn a language.
Being an introvert as I am, I realized as well that this approach was perfectly in line with the way I learn languages. Even in a place like Sweden, where everyone seems to want to practice English with you (making it hard to carry on with even the most basic conversational interactions in Swedish sometimes), one still sees the written local language everywhere one goes, just by going out in public and walking down the street (my favorite activity while traveling abroad).
The public vocabulary available to one's eyes is a constant shifting text (to borrow a word from critical theory) that makes for the most superb and intimate feeling of immersion in the language.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Chinese Tourists in Denmark
After Iceland, we flew to Copenhagen and stayed in the same hotel for a week, in the city near the train station. It was quite different because we didn't move hotel at all for a whole week. It was nice to catch with everything and slow down, and also have an exciting new city (and country) right all around us.
Here my photographs of native words was different than Iceland, where everything we passed, we left in our rear view mirror. I got to walk some of the same streets near our hotel at least once a day for days on end, and also to go into the nearby central train station several times to harvest as many words there as possible. It was a grand old structure with a high ceiling, and many businesses inside.
I tried to keep track of the native words I found, but only loosely. I didn't care if I repeated the same word and phrase, because sometimes I found much better examples.
We also went out to major tourist sites, like the Little Mermaid, where I took a picture of the signs near the statue, and got some with Chinese tourists climbing on top of it in the background. It soon became obvious to me that getting with cool stuff in the background like that was a premium.
But my favorite place turned out to be the little self-service laundromat near our hotel where we spent the morning before our departure from the city (yes, such places do exist in Copenhagen). We had gone there after checking out of our hotel, and before going to the train station. We both were happy to get clean clothes. And there was lots of cool vocabulary there, unique to that kind of place, in little signs on the wall explaining how to buy soap, and how to use the machines, etc. The typography of those kinds of signs, if there are printed, is typically superb. There were also great handwritten ones as well.
After a week in Copenhagen my iPhone now had about 2000 pictures. I figured I was building up a good vocabulary of the languages so far.
Here my photographs of native words was different than Iceland, where everything we passed, we left in our rear view mirror. I got to walk some of the same streets near our hotel at least once a day for days on end, and also to go into the nearby central train station several times to harvest as many words there as possible. It was a grand old structure with a high ceiling, and many businesses inside.
I tried to keep track of the native words I found, but only loosely. I didn't care if I repeated the same word and phrase, because sometimes I found much better examples.
We also went out to major tourist sites, like the Little Mermaid, where I took a picture of the signs near the statue, and got some with Chinese tourists climbing on top of it in the background. It soon became obvious to me that getting with cool stuff in the background like that was a premium.
But my favorite place turned out to be the little self-service laundromat near our hotel where we spent the morning before our departure from the city (yes, such places do exist in Copenhagen). We had gone there after checking out of our hotel, and before going to the train station. We both were happy to get clean clothes. And there was lots of cool vocabulary there, unique to that kind of place, in little signs on the wall explaining how to buy soap, and how to use the machines, etc. The typography of those kinds of signs, if there are printed, is typically superb. There were also great handwritten ones as well.
After a week in Copenhagen my iPhone now had about 2000 pictures. I figured I was building up a good vocabulary of the languages so far.
Photography in a Throwback World
After eight days in Iceland, my iPhone held over a thousand images I had taken of the Icelandic language "in the wild."
In the second morning in the little town of Akureyri on the north coast, I had arisen early in the hotel and gone for a stroll through downtown before folks had even begun arriving for work. I had the streets to myself, as one often does in Icelandic towns. I took over a hundred photos of the shop windows and other signs, and even venturing to get close to some small print on doors that looked to be apartment residences.
Most of Icelandic is rural. We passed the same types of road signs over and over. Part of me wanted to stop and take pictures at each river, which is always marked with the same type of small sign, in the same color and typeface and ending with the letter á, which means river in Icelandic. But already I knew I was going to have to limit myself somehow, and so I decided fairly early on that I would attempt to take pictures of words "only where it was natural to do so," given the flow of the trip.
Nevertheless there were times at the wheel when I decided I just had to detour back and get a photo a certain billboard, or signpost for a business.
I was super glad when we got the airport withe plenty of time to spare. I gave me a last chance to get as much vocabulary as possible, while just walking through the terminal.
One thing about Iceland that was so beautiful is that it was so relaxed. I got the sense that in Iceland no one really cared what I photographed. In America I would have felt like a criminal, to attempt this kind of thing out of the blue. Iceland feels like America used to feel, that way, when we were outwardly proud to be a "free country," as opposed to a place where police watched what you did with a camera, say, and the government encouraged people to be on the lookout for spies among ones fellow citizens.
That's what it was like to travel in the Eastern Bloc back in the 1980s. At every bridge or power transformer there were always signs that showed a camera with a slash through it. It felt like such a throwback to see it. Now it's a throwback to feel like no one is watching, or to walk through an airport without feeling like I am criminal without even knowing it.
In the second morning in the little town of Akureyri on the north coast, I had arisen early in the hotel and gone for a stroll through downtown before folks had even begun arriving for work. I had the streets to myself, as one often does in Icelandic towns. I took over a hundred photos of the shop windows and other signs, and even venturing to get close to some small print on doors that looked to be apartment residences.
Most of Icelandic is rural. We passed the same types of road signs over and over. Part of me wanted to stop and take pictures at each river, which is always marked with the same type of small sign, in the same color and typeface and ending with the letter á, which means river in Icelandic. But already I knew I was going to have to limit myself somehow, and so I decided fairly early on that I would attempt to take pictures of words "only where it was natural to do so," given the flow of the trip.
Nevertheless there were times at the wheel when I decided I just had to detour back and get a photo a certain billboard, or signpost for a business.
I was super glad when we got the airport withe plenty of time to spare. I gave me a last chance to get as much vocabulary as possible, while just walking through the terminal.
One thing about Iceland that was so beautiful is that it was so relaxed. I got the sense that in Iceland no one really cared what I photographed. In America I would have felt like a criminal, to attempt this kind of thing out of the blue. Iceland feels like America used to feel, that way, when we were outwardly proud to be a "free country," as opposed to a place where police watched what you did with a camera, say, and the government encouraged people to be on the lookout for spies among ones fellow citizens.
That's what it was like to travel in the Eastern Bloc back in the 1980s. At every bridge or power transformer there were always signs that showed a camera with a slash through it. It felt like such a throwback to see it. Now it's a throwback to feel like no one is watching, or to walk through an airport without feeling like I am criminal without even knowing it.
Monday, May 11, 2015
The Language Project
The weighty matters of history, war, and the fates of nations were not the only things that occupied my mind while I was traveling.
As I said, from a personal point of view, the trip was a smashing success, and we had the most splendid of times for most of the way, from Reykjavik down to Barcelona (where after 88 days in motion, Red went back, and I went on through Spain to North Africa).
I was able to create a pleasant work/life balance while in motion almost constantly, and was able to spend within my means for nearly the entire length of the way. The experience stays vibrant in my mind as one long diorama from the edge of the Arctic to the edge of the Sahara.
One reason for this is a particular hobby that I acquired while over there, one that came to occupy much of my free time---namely photography, specifically iPhone photography, and more specifically iPhone photography of words.
Like most people I've taken snapshots and even tried my hand at more serious stuff in the digital age
(at one time, about ten years ago, I released hundreds of my best photos to the web for free to a famous free information resource site, and many are still used there. Given the scale, I was a very widely published photographer on the web at one time! Many times I was contacted for use of my photos (and maps) outside the site, which I loved. One time I even saw one of my donated photos used as part of a bit on a famous comedy news show on cable tv. It made me happy to see that).
But all of that was barely a dent until this past autumn. I wound up really getting into photography on a scale I had never done before. It was smashing fun.
It all started in Iceland, on our second day there---our first full day after landing.
We had left ourselves only one day for sightseeing in the capital before taking to the road, and we wanted to use it to maximum advantage. Every local will tell you that you should visit the Hjallgrimskirjka, which is the unmistakable large modern church that sits on the hill over the harbor. It is named for a famous Icelandic composer of hymns.
That morning I had realized that while I was in Iceland, and since I was trying to learn some Icelandic, it might be a good idea to take pictures of actually Icelandic words, during our eight days in country.
I had gotten the idea in our hotel room---that was part of the old airport, and run by Icelandair with a Sixties period feel but with modern nordic charm. There were little signs in the hotel in Icelandic and other languages, including English of course. It occurred to me it would be good to record some of those signs in the very setting in which they occurred.
Language learning for me has always been about reading words, so it fit my personal needs quite well.
But I didn't start taking any pictures until we go to the Hjallgrimskirjka, which is where we started our foot tour of downtown Reykjavik. I realized that I would probably not be in another church like this in Iceland, so if I wanted to get any church-related vocabulary, it might be best to do it right then and there. So I did, starting with some signs in the lobby, the ones leading up to the tower, and also various church bulletins on the table in back. I mixed in some general snapshots of the interior (which is fairly plain, and nordic churches tend to be). But mostly from the beginning I focused on printed (and handwritten) words in the native language.
I kept doing this, a bit sporadically, as we walked around town. Every ten minutes or so, walking along shops, I would stop and use my iPhone to take pictures of signs in windows and above hops, and posters in the windows. Red was amused right from the start, and tried to accommodate me in new pet project.
As I said, from a personal point of view, the trip was a smashing success, and we had the most splendid of times for most of the way, from Reykjavik down to Barcelona (where after 88 days in motion, Red went back, and I went on through Spain to North Africa).
I was able to create a pleasant work/life balance while in motion almost constantly, and was able to spend within my means for nearly the entire length of the way. The experience stays vibrant in my mind as one long diorama from the edge of the Arctic to the edge of the Sahara.
One reason for this is a particular hobby that I acquired while over there, one that came to occupy much of my free time---namely photography, specifically iPhone photography, and more specifically iPhone photography of words.
Like most people I've taken snapshots and even tried my hand at more serious stuff in the digital age
(at one time, about ten years ago, I released hundreds of my best photos to the web for free to a famous free information resource site, and many are still used there. Given the scale, I was a very widely published photographer on the web at one time! Many times I was contacted for use of my photos (and maps) outside the site, which I loved. One time I even saw one of my donated photos used as part of a bit on a famous comedy news show on cable tv. It made me happy to see that).
But all of that was barely a dent until this past autumn. I wound up really getting into photography on a scale I had never done before. It was smashing fun.
It all started in Iceland, on our second day there---our first full day after landing.
We had left ourselves only one day for sightseeing in the capital before taking to the road, and we wanted to use it to maximum advantage. Every local will tell you that you should visit the Hjallgrimskirjka, which is the unmistakable large modern church that sits on the hill over the harbor. It is named for a famous Icelandic composer of hymns.
That morning I had realized that while I was in Iceland, and since I was trying to learn some Icelandic, it might be a good idea to take pictures of actually Icelandic words, during our eight days in country.
I had gotten the idea in our hotel room---that was part of the old airport, and run by Icelandair with a Sixties period feel but with modern nordic charm. There were little signs in the hotel in Icelandic and other languages, including English of course. It occurred to me it would be good to record some of those signs in the very setting in which they occurred.
Language learning for me has always been about reading words, so it fit my personal needs quite well.
But I didn't start taking any pictures until we go to the Hjallgrimskirjka, which is where we started our foot tour of downtown Reykjavik. I realized that I would probably not be in another church like this in Iceland, so if I wanted to get any church-related vocabulary, it might be best to do it right then and there. So I did, starting with some signs in the lobby, the ones leading up to the tower, and also various church bulletins on the table in back. I mixed in some general snapshots of the interior (which is fairly plain, and nordic churches tend to be). But mostly from the beginning I focused on printed (and handwritten) words in the native language.
I kept doing this, a bit sporadically, as we walked around town. Every ten minutes or so, walking along shops, I would stop and use my iPhone to take pictures of signs in windows and above hops, and posters in the windows. Red was amused right from the start, and tried to accommodate me in new pet project.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
On the Great Historical Importance of the Who
Finding out the solution to a great longstanding whodunit like who started World War I (see previous post) is greatly satisfying.
Somehow it is important to identify the individuals who involved in great historical acts. This is only way that any kind of wisdom can be gained from history, I believe---if it is told correctly, at least as far as the identity of the key actors.
Of course knowing the correct who of historical acts simply pushes the context of the questions back one level, but the questions that are asked now are of deeper meaning, because they are based on a foundation of something resembling truth.
Somehow it is important to identify the individuals who involved in great historical acts. This is only way that any kind of wisdom can be gained from history, I believe---if it is told correctly, at least as far as the identity of the key actors.
Of course knowing the correct who of historical acts simply pushes the context of the questions back one level, but the questions that are asked now are of deeper meaning, because they are based on a foundation of something resembling truth.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The Greatest Whodunit of All Time
All along our trip through the continent, we were dogged by the shadow of the war that had erupted across western Europe exactly one hundred years ago that fall. We more or less traced the entire western front, from the coast of Belgium through the Ardennes forest and the mountains into protected Luxembourg, and then down to the Rhine, and then up into Switzerland.
It felt like we were tracing the fault line of the great history rift between France and Germany, that dates back to Antiquity.
We took the Flanders Fields battlefield tour on Halloween. It included a visit to the Allied and German cemeteries, as well as the pill box ruins on the hill overlooking the town of Ieper. This is exactly where the line stalled for four years, moving only minutely. It is the hinge of entire western front, I realized. Neither side could overwhelm the other, although each got a momentary advantage, that turned out to be fleeting---until the very end of the war where the German line collapsed entirely.
There is a strawberry and potato farm, that the tour bus stops at. You can buy the wares out of vending machine by the road. Looking out over the fields one can imagine a superimposed vision of all the corpses that piled up there, and the blood that drained down into the soil, and the chlorinated gases that seeped into them. One cannot blame the Belgians for wanting to get their lives back, as did they even so long ago now.
Of course I even felt the war theme going down into Morocco, where my grandfather had been part of the invasion of North Africa in 1942. That war was also having plenty of anniversaries across Europe too. But most historians will tell you that it was in a large part a continuation of the one that started in 1914. It just found a way to revive and keep going, in an even more horrific fashion.
One of the great historical mysteries of all time has been how did the Great War start? In a strict sense, it's an easy question: it started when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and invaded it. The broader and more interesting question has always been: how did a localized war in the Balkans between two neighboring countries (something that had become almost routine at that point) become one that engulfed the entire world in flames for a couple years?
Actually that too has a fairly simple answer. The dominos that feel into place, bring one nation after another across the globe at war with each other, is very well documented. There is very little mystery into the diplomatic sequence, that even had the U.S.A. sending an "expeditionary force" to the heart of medieval European history---one that is still there to this day.
The mystery has always been in the issue of how did it come about that this domino-like boobytrapped system could arise, in which a localized Balkan War could bring the entire machinery of a global war into motion. How did this situation come about in Europe, and in the world? How did the great minds of diplomacy and statecraft seemingly construct, through public policy and diplomacy, this giant hidden Death Machine that sprung into motion seemingly out of the blue?
The standard view of history can be summed up by George Kennan, recognized as the one of the great historical thinkers of the group that was once called the Establishment. In the foreward to a book on the Great War and its origins, Kennan wrote that it was as if Europe "forgot how not to go to war." (italics added)
In other words, according to this view, it just sort of happened.
But it turns out this is not true at all. This view is completely in error.
At least this is how what I take away from having just finished a copy of The Sleepwalkers, by Christopher Clark. I picked up a copy at the British Museum when I was visiting London over Christmas.
This book was probably the most acclaimed book that came out in the recent spate of books about World War I, because of the centennial. The back cover is full of adulatory quotes from other well-known mainstream historians.
Even just one hundred pages into it, I knew it was a masterpiece of historical writing. Clark is an immaculate research, and goes back looking into primary sources in the years before the war, in a way that probably no one has ever done. This is partly because in the years after the war, the publications were dominated by the historical players from the war itself, and they wrote their impressions of what had happened, which Clark proves in many cases are very different from their thoughts and the time, as evidenced by not only their journals and private correspondence, but by the public record itself.
It's hard not the feel that Clark has completely demolished the previous Establishment view elaborated by Kennan and others. There is no going back after this book.
So what did happen? Clark never comes out and says it, but to anyone reading the book, the answer is very clear by the end. The boobytrapped set of alliances that turned a localized war (fought because Austria did not get satisfaction from Serbia in regard to the assassination of its imperial heir) into a global one in which millions of corpses were heaped in fields was not something that "just happened."
The Death Machine Boobytrap was actually the very clear design of certain individuals, as evidenced by what they themselves wrote. What happened was exactly what these individuals wanted to happen. Of course they didn't say that letter.
Clark makes it very clear with his evidence that the leaders of one nation in particular are most identifiable as the culprits. Without their clear urging for the "Balkan Inception" to become a continent wide war, it is doubtful that such a breakout would have taken place, even up to the very threshold of the war. These individuals were doing everything they could to make this Great War happen, despite so many others not wanting it to happen. Clark makes it easy to imagine that history could have taken a much different path. A hundred years later, we are living in the consequences of the path that was actually taken.
Knowing who is always fundamental is solving any mystery. After reading Clark, I felt like I had been given the solution to the greatest whodunit of modern history. It felt satisfying, even as it was sad to contemplate that it might not have even needed to happen. But that is a deep philosophical question, not one of history.
So which nation was it, whose leaders Clark proved were hell-bent on making this little Balkan war into a much bigger one, in which long-held grudges could be avenged, and new balances of power staked out across the continent and the world?
Well, I don't want to spoil it for you. But I will say that the answer is a big twist. It is not the first country most people would suspect, even for the heretics outside the mainstream. But it all makes perfect sense, after you see it.
The only hint I'd provide is this: in my opinion, the nation whose leaders were most responsible for the coming about of the continent-wide near-apocalypse is the that has sadly and ironically suffered the greatest diminution of its status and its cultural radiance from what it was a hundred years ago. It is the country that most feels like a shell of its former self, where one can only imagine what it must have been like when it was still a great nation.
It felt like we were tracing the fault line of the great history rift between France and Germany, that dates back to Antiquity.
We took the Flanders Fields battlefield tour on Halloween. It included a visit to the Allied and German cemeteries, as well as the pill box ruins on the hill overlooking the town of Ieper. This is exactly where the line stalled for four years, moving only minutely. It is the hinge of entire western front, I realized. Neither side could overwhelm the other, although each got a momentary advantage, that turned out to be fleeting---until the very end of the war where the German line collapsed entirely.
There is a strawberry and potato farm, that the tour bus stops at. You can buy the wares out of vending machine by the road. Looking out over the fields one can imagine a superimposed vision of all the corpses that piled up there, and the blood that drained down into the soil, and the chlorinated gases that seeped into them. One cannot blame the Belgians for wanting to get their lives back, as did they even so long ago now.
Of course I even felt the war theme going down into Morocco, where my grandfather had been part of the invasion of North Africa in 1942. That war was also having plenty of anniversaries across Europe too. But most historians will tell you that it was in a large part a continuation of the one that started in 1914. It just found a way to revive and keep going, in an even more horrific fashion.
One of the great historical mysteries of all time has been how did the Great War start? In a strict sense, it's an easy question: it started when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and invaded it. The broader and more interesting question has always been: how did a localized war in the Balkans between two neighboring countries (something that had become almost routine at that point) become one that engulfed the entire world in flames for a couple years?
Actually that too has a fairly simple answer. The dominos that feel into place, bring one nation after another across the globe at war with each other, is very well documented. There is very little mystery into the diplomatic sequence, that even had the U.S.A. sending an "expeditionary force" to the heart of medieval European history---one that is still there to this day.
The mystery has always been in the issue of how did it come about that this domino-like boobytrapped system could arise, in which a localized Balkan War could bring the entire machinery of a global war into motion. How did this situation come about in Europe, and in the world? How did the great minds of diplomacy and statecraft seemingly construct, through public policy and diplomacy, this giant hidden Death Machine that sprung into motion seemingly out of the blue?
The standard view of history can be summed up by George Kennan, recognized as the one of the great historical thinkers of the group that was once called the Establishment. In the foreward to a book on the Great War and its origins, Kennan wrote that it was as if Europe "forgot how not to go to war." (italics added)
In other words, according to this view, it just sort of happened.
But it turns out this is not true at all. This view is completely in error.
At least this is how what I take away from having just finished a copy of The Sleepwalkers, by Christopher Clark. I picked up a copy at the British Museum when I was visiting London over Christmas.
This book was probably the most acclaimed book that came out in the recent spate of books about World War I, because of the centennial. The back cover is full of adulatory quotes from other well-known mainstream historians.
Even just one hundred pages into it, I knew it was a masterpiece of historical writing. Clark is an immaculate research, and goes back looking into primary sources in the years before the war, in a way that probably no one has ever done. This is partly because in the years after the war, the publications were dominated by the historical players from the war itself, and they wrote their impressions of what had happened, which Clark proves in many cases are very different from their thoughts and the time, as evidenced by not only their journals and private correspondence, but by the public record itself.
It's hard not the feel that Clark has completely demolished the previous Establishment view elaborated by Kennan and others. There is no going back after this book.
So what did happen? Clark never comes out and says it, but to anyone reading the book, the answer is very clear by the end. The boobytrapped set of alliances that turned a localized war (fought because Austria did not get satisfaction from Serbia in regard to the assassination of its imperial heir) into a global one in which millions of corpses were heaped in fields was not something that "just happened."
The Death Machine Boobytrap was actually the very clear design of certain individuals, as evidenced by what they themselves wrote. What happened was exactly what these individuals wanted to happen. Of course they didn't say that letter.
Clark makes it very clear with his evidence that the leaders of one nation in particular are most identifiable as the culprits. Without their clear urging for the "Balkan Inception" to become a continent wide war, it is doubtful that such a breakout would have taken place, even up to the very threshold of the war. These individuals were doing everything they could to make this Great War happen, despite so many others not wanting it to happen. Clark makes it easy to imagine that history could have taken a much different path. A hundred years later, we are living in the consequences of the path that was actually taken.
Knowing who is always fundamental is solving any mystery. After reading Clark, I felt like I had been given the solution to the greatest whodunit of modern history. It felt satisfying, even as it was sad to contemplate that it might not have even needed to happen. But that is a deep philosophical question, not one of history.
So which nation was it, whose leaders Clark proved were hell-bent on making this little Balkan war into a much bigger one, in which long-held grudges could be avenged, and new balances of power staked out across the continent and the world?
Well, I don't want to spoil it for you. But I will say that the answer is a big twist. It is not the first country most people would suspect, even for the heretics outside the mainstream. But it all makes perfect sense, after you see it.
The only hint I'd provide is this: in my opinion, the nation whose leaders were most responsible for the coming about of the continent-wide near-apocalypse is the that has sadly and ironically suffered the greatest diminution of its status and its cultural radiance from what it was a hundred years ago. It is the country that most feels like a shell of its former self, where one can only imagine what it must have been like when it was still a great nation.
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