Nice & The Côte d'Azur, France

Intermission

I sit on a beach of surf-smoothed pebbles, as the rhythmically crashing tide stretches further up towards me with each passing minute. There are no other sounds at all, just the gently pulsing infinity of waves following waves.



I stroll along the ruins of the ancient la Colline du Château, gazing through the remnants of the decimated stone structure at the shimmering sea far below. Faint clouds appear as long smudges across the sky, and soon vanish.



I traipse through the arid Jardin Exotique Panorama - cactus gardens that pinnacle the lofty village of Eze. A warm wind whips about me, swirling off into the deep sapphire forever of endless sky and sea.



I sip some delightfully sweet nameless apéritif at a bustling seaside restaurant. The mesmerizing beat of the Mediterranean at sunset has stolen from me the memories of what I ordered for dinner. It's arrival becomes all the more exciting.



I walk the beach well past midnight. I sleep into the day. Time slows way down.



I extend my stay another night. The water outside my window sparkles in the sunlight.

Firenze, Italy

Perfetto

At my trip's inception, Reykjavik and Florence were my two definite destinations - I set them as bookends and starting filling the spaces between.

My route would of course change, but my expectations only increased. What little I've retained from the Academy's many Art History courses (sorry mom & dad) is vividly centered on Florence. The artistic center of Italy. Home to some of the world's greatest masterpieces. The city that birthed the Italian Renaissance, probably the single most significant point in recorded human history - perhaps even the sole reason that we have a recorded history. Suffice to say I entered the city with brimming anticipation.



Florence exceeded all those expectations. This place does not simply contain art - it is art. The entire city is a work of beauty, deserving of the same attention and reverence one would devote to any praised Renaissance masterpiece.

Every building contains something worth investigating. Every detail bears something intricately beautiful. Every space sits perfectly with its surroundings, and there are countless secrets to discover amongst the crooked cobbled streets. The very city layout can be traced with golden section measurements. I've mentioned the beauty found within geometry and mathematics - this city seems to have been constructed not simply with that concept in mind, but with that rule as a foundation. An underlying subconscious notion that wasn't as much considered as it was implied without statement.

Of course, most people care more about Prada than Pythagoras, so I probably just sound like a total nerd.

(Ha, "sound like".)



I was in Cub Scouts when I was a kid, and I remember going on one of my first camping trips ever. I was awestruck by the scenes I found - sweeping views of endless trees, breathtaking panoramas, huge cerulean skies and shimmering starlit nights. I vividly recall going through a half-dozen rolls of film with my plastic 35mm camera, clicking madly at everything that made me go "wow".

I also remember when those pictures came back from being developed. I flipped through every single one and just started crying because they didn't look anything like they had when I was out there. All the enchantment of standing in those places had been left behind, somehow entirely escaping the click of my shutter.



The most beautiful parts of Florence cannot be photographed, for similar reasons. Much of the art in photography is choosing how to frame your shot - what to include, where to utilize your frame's edge to improve the scene. But some sights, like those you find while hiking a mountain's spine, or standing in the center of a chapel composed atop perfect geometric precision, are all but destroyed by the presence of a boundary. You can't put these things in a box - and when you try, all you get is a cruel representation of that amazing place you remember.

I guess it's the difference between how a place looks and how it feels.

More importantly, I guess it's reason for me to return here someday.



I also spent one day on a trip down to Rome, spending most of that time at the Vatican. That place is awesome, in the biblical sense. I try to imagine how it felt, centuries ago, as a foreign visitor to the Vatican. How could you not believe in the power of God? Just look at all the glittery *stuff* he gave these guys!

It's really quite overwhelming. Every inch of their mile-long hallways contains some artwork or ancient object. Every object bears masterfully crafted ornamentation. Every ornament is emblazoned with... something. I felt like I was wasting money just standing there.

There is a modern art section of the Vatican Museum that isn't very good, because it contains modern art. However, I was delighted that they chose to include one of Francis Bacon's papal portraits. Naturally, they selected one of the more flattering depictions. Not this one.

It's an astounding place to visit, and there are absolutely zero limitations on photography, which was a pleasant surprise. Had it not been the most tourist-packed location of my trip so far, I would have been even more awestruck by it all.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder how many millions of people might eat dinner tonight if they sold off and donated one closet worth of stuff.



Each city I visit instills in me a unique impression. Prague left me wondering if the works of Neil Gaiman are based on fact. Reykjavik impressed upon me how beautiful and unique a culture can be when it grows up in harmony with its geography. Venice made me dizzy and hungry.

Florence leaves me with a glimpse of infinite creative energy, the notion that all things are available to be discovered.

I depart Italy more than a little amazed.

Toscana, Italy

Under The Tuscan Moon

A high-soaring bird and a distant, silent airplane pass slowly through one another in the space above the city's duomo tower. Far beneath us all, the Tuscan landscape splays itself open into the distance, and everything is washed in a thin orange haze. From the lofty heights of Volterra, summer sunsets last hours.

The cute overworked waitress brings me a third glass of deep red wine, delivered with a little wink.

"Sulla casa."



Tuscany has welcomed me with nothing but warmth and sweetness, if perhaps to excess on both fronts. My time drifts slowly down fiascos of darkly floral, spicy Chianti, along tables of richly exquisite culinary delights, across vistas of sharply jagged ranges, their green tips singed to sienna in the acrid sunlight, amidst endless arrays of vineyards, all stretching their little grapevine sprouts skyward to the infinity of a cool indigo midnight.

This must be the vacation part of the trip.



A calico kitten follows me contently around a tiny graveyard outside Tavernelle, purring quietly and rubbing itself against every gravestones we pass.

A single rebellious cloud perches high in the cerulean sky, and the only sounds are of the soft breeze, when it happens to turn over in its afternoon dozing.



Everything here is startlingly angular. The landscape resembles enormous expanses of broken shards, scattered and stuck into the earth at odd angles to one another before they were draped in lush foliage. The hills never gain much elevation, so from many points you can gaze over these views until they fade forever into the dim haze of distance. A soft distance of beautifully shattered paradise.

I've never seen sunlight so orange as it is here. How on earth can light be a different temperature?



I am riding on the back of an indifferent horse named Nora (later discovered to be "in Calore"). I'm fortunate to have a guide, because Nora couldn't care less about where I want to go. Olive trees scrape the dry air around me, and the air smells of sweet jasmine, even when there is none to be seen. Little red poppies are scattered like raindrops, reminding me briefly of California.

The two of us ride high into the hills, defying the approaching thunderstorm. I give the horse a little kick to try and catch up. Nora yawns.

I swear to God, yawns.



It hasn't been all quiet though - the week's most adventurous moments involve a rented Fiat Punto, the nonsensical streets of Florence, and a total lack of experience with manual transmissions. The story beyond that warrants a more personable dictation.

Travel is sometimes about unexpected lessons.



A week in this life begs only for another week. It wouldn't be so difficult to whittle down the days amongst these bright angular hillsides, waxing poetic in entry after entry of delightful surrealist anecdotes and bribing immigration with hospitality. Alas, a great city now beckons.

Leaving civility for civilization...

Venezia, Italy

Venetian Pictureshow

It stands to be observed that there are no venetian blinds in Venice. I just wanted to get that out of the way.



Venice is ridiculous. I am utterly convinced that this is a randomly-generated town, dizzyingly dynamic in its design. It's as though someone took all possible path types, from grassy walkways to paved thoroughfares to cobblestone roads to dirt lanes, jumbled them up in a bag, and tossed them out into the lagoon. They landed arbitrarily, rolled around, settled into place, and were then connected by disjointed intersections, winding narrow passageways, and bridges ranging from ancient stone architecture to rickety metal sheets. That's Venice. That's the only way it could have come to be.



It all connects. It all seems to function. But it makes not the first steps of logical sense. You'll see something shiny a mere ten meters away, straight across a canal, and then spend the next twenty minutes attempting to reach it. You'll do your best to maintain a sense of direction. You'll even plot a little route on your "map" of Venice. You'll circumnavigate half the city just to cross the street - but you still won't reach the shiny thing. Fortunately, you'll soon be distracted by something else just as sparkly.

It's as though nothing really exists here unless it's right in front of you, and you keep watching it without blinking. Everything in the peripheral may as well be illusion.



Getting lost and finding one's way are the same thing in this place. Losing track of where you are is entirely inconsequential - you are effectively "lost" in the first steps you take off the Grand Canal. Sense of direction flies out the window, and landmarks don't even seem consistent when you double back. If you find something you like in Venice, you'd better enjoy it in that moment, because it won't be there when you turn around. It's like that final showdown scene in Labyrinth, and you're Jennifer Connelly. (I'm going to try to incorporate her into all my similes from now on.)



It's a city that caters perfectly to my wandering. Moreso, it's very easy to escape Tourist Hell in Venice (which is surprising, because the entire city seems to exist solely for tourists, to a painful degree) - just start walking and take two turns. You'll suddenly find yourself in solitude and silence.

It really doesn't seem real, most of the time. It's like walking through a pictureshow representing a city that once existed, rather than the city itself. Perhaps Venice is conjured by the visitors, existing for each of them in its own way, hanging onto ephemeral existence only because our footsteps still resound in its walkways. If everyone were to depart all at once, I suspect there would be nothing left to which they might return. The ghost of a dreaming city.



It's just an ever-shifting playground of sights and peculiarities, strange plays of light and architectural absurdities. It hardly feels like a city at all - just a swirling slideshow of somewhere that might have been. A memory whispered through a keyhole.

I leave before I wander forever through these shadowy corridors.

Budapest, Hungary

All I can think to put here are puns on "Hungary", so I put this instead.

It is 1:13pm and I am standing atop the ramparts of the St. Gellert Citadel, overlooking the darkly defined bends of the Danube winding its way south through the hazy cityscape into the distance. The air is refreshingly cool at this elevation, a soft breeze countering the harsh sunlight etched across a thousand rooftops below me. These aging, bullet-pocked walls depict a story of recent revolution, lined with fearsome statues sharing the view with a dozen snapshot-happy tourists. I head away from them all, down the mercifully shaded forest paths of Buda's lush jagged hills.



At this trip's inception, I made a habit of rolling some queries around my head, applying them to the various places where I found myself. What defines a place? How do you accurately represent a location through photography?

Though they have yet to be fully answered, in the short time I've spent stomping around Europe, I think those questions have changed. My thoughts have shifted to further to the esoteric, and my questions deeper into notions of beauty.



It is 4:39pm and I am sitting at a table half-immersed in slanted sunlight outside Café Eklektik, which is situated awkwardly on the edge of an (allegedly) two-way street just off the main drag of Pest. I've just been served my order of herby goat cheese, which has been accompanied by steaming slices of homemade bread so fresh that it has to be straight from the oven. I can't imagine how they even managed to slice it, it's so soft. Alongside this stands my freshly-squeezed orange juice, and I suddenly have everything I didn't realize i was craving.

There's a small casino next door sporting the odd moniker "Rough Luck", and currently catering to a solitary customer. She sits idly at a theme-less slot machine with a perpetually bouncing infant strapped to her chest. Staring listlessly at the traffic down the way, she idly teeters the slot lever every 20 seconds, sending the child into a brief eruption of glee as the wheels click and spin in a flurry of burnt-out marquee lights.

I sip my OJ.



What makes something beautiful? How is it that different people from different places and different backgrounds can all look at something and agree that beauty exists within it? Are we all simply capable of glimpsing that veiled harmonious element of nature, some perfect building block of the universe that resonates within us whether we consciously recognize it or not? Are we all hardcoded down to the DNA with the same fundamental aesthetic appreciations, regardless of life experience? Can something as personal, and often illogical, as art even be affixed with answers to such analytical questions?

Most of the time I've spent studying art and aesthetic has been circled around this very thought - the definition and "mathematics" of beauty, I suppose. Tomorrow I head to Italy - I think it will be an appropriate place to keep such notions in mind. And to get some good lasagna.



It is 8:18pm and I am dangling my feet over the Danube as the horizon magnificently devours the last remnants of the day in a feast of violet and deep roseate hues, all fractured and dancing across the river's restless surface below me. The left bank's spires have faded to silhouettes against the fading sunlight, and a tired stillness overtakes the city in the long hour before it is all abruptly revitalized by evening nightlife.

I sit here for a long, long while.

Praha, Czech Republic

De Stijl Life

"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."

This coming from a man who did his best to maintain a permanent state of unbearable unhappiness for his entire life. Kafka is a peculiar, albeit understandable, product of this odd place. Everything here is so rich, so intensely layered in detail and texture and atmosphere. I can photograph absolutely every thing I see here - the rain-glistened cobblestone streets, the snaking passageways that don't really lead anywhere, the crumbling detail of absolutely every wall in the entire city. Do locals look at their home in this way? Do I look at mine like this?



Prague reminds me of Disneyland with all the characters kicked out and a decade of foregone maintenance to vitiate the vibe. There are a million scrambling tourists, half of them in line for something that doesn't appear to be anything. There's a quasi-manufactured magical air about the place, and you can see the spire of a castle in any direction you choose. The streets don't make logistical sense, but they somehow get you to where you're supposed to be. Presumably, M.C. Escher was on the urban planning commission. You know, back in the day.



Between the history-oriented Kafka Museum and the appropriately-architectured Cubist Museum, Prague has lent some inspirational insights into that wonderful category of "Things Matthew Likes".

Cubism is likely my favorite defined art style. (And I assume that to be obvious... is this the kind of thing that people know about one another?) I love the distillation of the world into basic representations, and the fact that you can shift, juxtapose, intermix those elements while maintaining recognition and meaning within them. It reminds me that there are an infinite number of perspectives on the world, and that they are all beautiful and valid in their own way. Finding a way to understand an unfamiliar vantage feels like a step towards harmony. Or like fitting a worn jigsaw piece into a puzzle by accident - you were sure it went somewhere else, but it just wasn't working, and then it falls into place and it just makes sense.



Taking an abstract Cubist approach to photography is kind of weird. I tend to ignore my subjects. That is, I don't care what something actually is or even what it means. Shapes, textures, patterns, geometry within the natural world form their own strange beauty, and that's one of my very favorite things, period.



There's also the fun of "painting with light" versus "capturing a scene" - photography, as all art, does not have to be about the world as it is. Rather, it's the world filtered through the artist's vision - and why not let that vision of reality surpass depictions of the individual object altogether?

Or something like that. I dunno, I like what I like.



Folded inside my coat pocket is a ticket for a sleeper train departing in about four hours - not because I have to, but because I haven't done that yet. I've taken a final stroll through the sunscattered city of Prague, and ended up in a tiny dark Indian restaurant that caught my eye a few days ago. It's completely empty, as it's been every other time I've passed by, but I've ordered anyhow. Maybe it's an undiscovered gem. Mmm, pakoras. I read the opening lines of my new book:

"A friend of mine has a habit of going to the zoo whenever there’s a typhoon."



Turns out this is definitely not an undiscovered gem. Yummy anyhow. It's fun to see how other nations do with foreign foods. The best Chinese food I've ever had came from The Netherlands. Until I visit China, I suppose.



It is 6pm on a Friday and everything I can see is sparkling.

Berlin, Germany

Ich bin ein exhausted.

The city is a massive living machine, stretching over vast kilometers and breathing the voice of millions through its streets and corridors. It is an organism of stone and steel and steam, and it murmurs low in its brief sleepless nights.



Ventricles of the city's transit wind their way deep into the outer boroughs, thinning to wiry capillaries amongst those quiet lonely neighborhoods, and feeding back dense arteries to the ever-beating heart of the city center. Take a seat on the U-Bahn and you can feel its very pulse beneath you. Take a walk down any major road, and you'll see straight to the center of it all. Take a rest, and the city keeps going tirelessly.



The whole city works with a biological precision, seemingly effortless in its mechanical flow. Nothing exists frivolously or extraneously - superficiality and decoration are scarcely seen in this place. Facades feel wasteful here, all effort seemingly directed towards utilitarian functionality. Everything is hard and rough and edged. Everything has a purpose, else it is worn quickly and remorselessly away.



Wandering Berlin doesn't work. Not in the way that I've so far been approaching exploration. It's simply way too big. Successful wandering depends on two major elements - the nebulous promise of potential discovery, and an ability to abandon the current path if it fails to provide such discovery. Berlin has its wonders, to be sure, but they aren't really found accidentally. Moreso, if you insist on wandering as I have, you find yourself hours later with very few memorable landmarks and very sore feet.



Berlin museums were more interesting than inspiring - I guess they had to give all their good art back to the French. However, the Dali Museum was a highlight of the trip, featuring a spectacular collection of his ink and watercolor works, many of which I had never seen. It occupied much of an afternoon, and got me further excited for Barcelona.

Similarly, I had a blast exploring the tech museum - it's full of the kind of old computery things that I like to photograph, and stands as a grand testimony to German engineering. Perhaps most photogenic was the Holocaust Memorial - it's an enormously labyrinthine abstract apology, and makes for some great shots.



I am ready to depart, but glad that I came here. It is truly a city and a people like none I've ever seen. I suppose it comes from working hard, even from a very young age:



Now I have to try to learn some Czech. You know how they say "yes" in Prague? It sounds like "uh, no". This is going to get real comedic real quick.