An Afternoon in Marienplatz

Munich: What a city! Beautiful, clean and orderly, and friendly. We both readily chose it over London. The good weather in April definitely worked in its favor as well as ours. On our way here, in a train trip with two long delays and more train changes than we had planned, time passed quite pleasantly…

Aprés Duchamp, Jasper Johns’ Legacy to Pop Art

It was inevitable—the leap from Duchamp’s readymades (like the infamous urinal) to paintings of readymades. This was exactly what Jasper Johns did in the 1950s. But his interest was in iconographic objects, things that were symbols, that stood for something within a culture. And what icon in American culture could be more famous than the…

Budapest—Grunge and Grandeur

Budapest has drama. It’s monumental—in a grungy sort of way. But maybe we felt that way when we visited it because the summer weather was so hot and humid that the requisite sightseeing became a miserable chore. Budapest, the confluence of royal and proletarian legacies in a country of only ten million inhabitants, seems to…

Strasbourg, French-German Fusion Alsatian City

Fusion of French and German cultures has been at the core of being a Strasbourgeois. That is what a Strasbourgeois would tell you―the cab drivers, merchants, and museum ‘gardiens,’ for instance. They embrace the idea as the way things naturally are. This blended identity of the Strasbourgeois may defy attempts to resolve the question of…

Obecni Dum, Prague’s Unheralded Treasure

Prague has a real treasure “hidden” from most tourist groups herded into the city for a day or three. The current entry on Prague in Wikipedia doesn’t mention it. And, though it’s listed as a top attraction, Lonely Planet does not showcase it as a highlight to a Prague visit. Regrettable, I’d say. Especially if…

A True Artisan Crafts A Shoji Room

My house has a shoji room. A room that’s special because dedicated artisans from an old country crafted it. To me, its walls are an homage to traditional craftsmanship rarely practiced now, replaced by machines which, I admit, can spew out very good products. I find this shoji room a thing of beauty but much…

Gothic Churches: All The Celestial Light We Can See

A fire nearly destroyed the iconic Cathédrale Notre Dame in Paris—arguably the most famous cathedral in the world. Current efforts to restore it have been hampered, like most of life nowadays, by a deadly virus. Now that we all have to stop and take many deep—hopefully cleansing—breaths, we have the luxury to wonder about its…

Bodega Bay Days

The light in Bodega Bay amazes. While it can display its full intense spectrum, casting a rainbow of shadows on everything it floods, it’s never harsh. It caresses the ocean with shimmering silver or imbues it with dark impenetrable blue. In the brilliant days of fall and the elongating days of spring, the sun shines…