Paranoid Parisian Police

September 11th must have spooked the French (amongst others). All throughout Paris there is a strong police presence. Freshly scrubbed youths wearing a uniform and carrying fire-arms. France, being a country with a big goverment sector, with somewhere close to 1 in 4 people being employed by the government, employs a lot of police.

However, what is a tad more disconcerting is the presence of soldiers roaming the tunnels of the metro. It's not so much that they are soldiers and not police. Not that soldiers are meant to kill and not to maintain public order. It's just that it's the closest I've come to the presence of a fully automatic machine gun. They're ugly things yet I find them strangely fascinating. Bits of metal flying at high speed and high freauency.

But perhaps the greatest sign of paranoia is that EVERY garbage bin in the Paris metro has been boarded up. This was very confusing for me at first. I would walk up to something that looked like a garbage bin. That smelt like a garbage bin and was placed roughly where one would expect to find a garbage bin. But there would be no actual receptable. A slim line black piece of plastic would cover the opening. I found out later that all garbage bins had been enclosed to stop terrorists from planting bombs in the metro.

However; if the French really want to keep the tourists coming, they'd be better off taking care of their disgruntled workers. Why, a friend told me that there had a month long strike by all the museums of Paris for better pay conditions just a few months ago. That would have sucked big time.

Gaudi Gaudi Gaudi

Barcelona could conceivably be called the city of Antonio, the turn of the century architect, the pre-eminent modernist. His touch adds the little magic something to the city. I only managed to visit two Gaudi sites: the half completed cathedral La Sagrada Familia and an urban mansion, the Palace Guel.

La Sagrada Familia is so unfinished that it isn't funny. Begun at the turn of the century, it's not expected to be finished until 2086. Some say it should be left unfinished to give testament to the fact that Gaudi was cut down by a tram before he finished the project. Not that he would have lived until 2086. Gaudi spent the last 40 years of his life devoted to this structure and he worked in a workshop underneath the structure.

At the moment only the north and south facade are finished where 4 of the 12 (future) humungus spires poke out of the Barcelona sky-line dominating all in its wake. Apart from the scale (which is massive even for a high-rise and the Sagrada was designed before high-rises were common-place), it is the decorative style that marks its intellectual stature. It follows the rough plan of a gothic cathedral even down to the ribbing outside one the facades. However, the decoration, is distinctly gaudi. Ornate to the point of ridiculousness, the front facade is glittered with figures bursting out of the stonework. However, there's none of the ordered ornation arranged like clean military lines of Gothic cathedrals, instead the Gaudi forces the clean geometric lines in the columns and balustrades. Ornation on the interior is through the use of complex geometric contours. For instance, the main pillars start off 4 sided at the moment but devolves gradually into various polyhedra until the pillar is circular at the very top. Suprisingly undulating stone blocks break up otherwise stark contours.

In other places, Gaudi let's the full clash of crass decorations give their effect. The top of the spire are painted in ghastly contrasting colours with bright coloured balls and words in big floral letters encircle the ramparts.

In contrast, the Palace Guel is almost a study in restrained eclectism. Based on a typical roman house, the site, usually, was situated right in the heart of downtown Barcelona. The design is a superb example of inter-locking rooms where each room intersects with every other room creating a larger sense of space than the physical space might suggest. In this house? Gaudi elevated the function of windows and lights, trying to give the structure the illusion of lots of natural light. Each room has a definite theme, from the hyper-geometry of the Andulan inspired moslem latticeworks of the welcome room to the orientalist dragon theme of the dining room. Nevertheless, the Palace Guel is remarkable restrained and represents the work of the early Gaudi. It is only on the roof where he allowed himself to experiment with the crazy colours and shpaes that marks his later work.

The Pantheon

I visited the Pantheon, the tomb of Napolean. It's big and statesman-like. A huge dome caps the structure and it's laid out in a cross. Apparently during the construction, in between one of the many French Republics, they were going to turn it into a church. The French built a huge crypt below that you tourists can visit. The crypt was designed to house many dead bodies and being entombed at the Pantheon is a very high honour as only those who have contributed significantly to the liberty of la France receive that honour.

There are at least four physicists there: Perrin, Langevin and the two Curies. There's a Sadi Carnot, but not the Sadi Carnot of the thermodynamic cycle. Some big dude general I think.

Foucault's Foucault's pendulum is there. Foucault's pendulum is basically a very long pendulum. So long that the rotation of the earth causes the swinging of the pendulum to do tiny figure of eights. Apparently when Foucault first dreamed up the experiment, the highest structure Foucault could find was under the dome of the Pantheon.

Inside the crypt, Voltaire and Rouseau are buried facing each other. Apparently they detested each other in life. They have been forced to face each other in death. Although Voltaire got a funky sculpture in front of his tomb.

Gothic Cathedrals

Dem medieval Europeans sure know how to build big impressive adobes of worship. Never ever having seen a gothic cathedral in my life I have now seen 2 in the space of a week: the Cathedral Basilica in Barcelona and Notre Dame. These babies were meant to intimidate the average peon and they sure do. Huge spacious caverns inside, the gothic style explodes with a profusion of ornation. Stone dogs stick their heads out of the sides, gargoyles of hellish beasts gaze covetously on the congregation. Phallic studded spires bridge in the firmanent to the divine heavens above.

In Notre Dame, there is a massive round stained glass window arrangement that is larger than the floor space of an average appartment block. These Cathedrals are so large that the sections flanking the main sections are sub-divided into little chappels, each with its own particular function. In the Barcelona Basilica, each chapel has been decorated, often with sheets of gold, in a different period for a different saint. In Notre Dame, on the other hand, some of the chapels were prepared with a confession box. I can just imagine the priests stationed at the Cathedral to compete for the coveted confession booths in the different Chapels. Maybe there's a confession box of the month competition.

Zhat to me was particularly striking was the use of domes supported by spandrels and arches, there is something rather soothing and somewhat womblike about the structures.

Barcelona

Barcelona is an old Roman city that´s built in between some mountains and sits on the beach. The heart of the old city is a ravenous boulevard called La Rambla. La Rambla snakes its way from La Plaça de Catalunya to the sea. Facing the ocean at the end of La Rambla is a monument to Christopher Columbus, his arms raised in victory of Spain over the American Indians.

La Rambla is something that every city should have, a wide tree-laden avenue that both binds and divides the city. A broad pedestrian walkway takes up the centre of the road and two tiny lanes for cars pass each side. Trees, desiduously denuded as it is winter, cower over the road from beginning to end. Buskers and performers rove La Rambla but perhaps the most significant feature of La Rambla is the throngs of people that promenade through La Rambla. From early morning to late evening, a never-ending stream of Spaniards and tourists flow through La Rambla like blood through a vein.

Being an old city, Barcelona is built for walking. Stunning medieval buildings crowd each other leaving enough room for pedestrians to squeeze through the gaps. But these are graceful buildings - balustrades, busts, ornations decorate the buildings. Castles and churches, in high gothic style, are interspersed throughout the city. And being an international tourist destination, shops are found in the base of the buildings.

Flying tips

Tip number 1: don´t ever book a flight with 2 stop overs. It sucks. I decided to get on the plane whilst being blissfully unaware of what it would involve. It ended up something like this:

- 2 hours at Kingsford Smith waiting for the plane to take off at 10:22pm : reasonably tolerable

- a 10 hour flight to Tokyo on a Qantas flight to connect up with a British Airways flight: was asleep mostly

- which arrives at Tokyo at 6 in the morning and consequently, I wait 4 hours for the Tokyo-London connection. Narata airport is a strange place at 6 in the morning when there´s nobody there and all the shops are closed. I wandered around this husk of a travel nexus, some kind of bland 60´s sci-fi set, waiting for everything to open at 8. Trust the Japanese to provide a free children´s room with Playstation and Nintendo games for you to play. It was mildly amusing. Had a coffee, ate some rice and raw tuna, as you do and then got back on the plane.

- an 11 hour flight from Tokyo to London that went over Russia and Scandanavia. Saw lots of snow covered tundras. Couldn´t sleep much so I read and took naps and listened to music. It´s true though, British Airways are way cool. They got a little l.c.d. screen on the back of every seat and you can choose from 12 different channels looped over and over again. It gives you a wonderful sense of illusionary control. Nevertheless, I started getting the heebie-jeebies. Fortunately, the nice people at British Airways fed me before I bolted to the door and tried to open it.

- got into Heathrow airport at 2 in the afternoon, London time. I am now in a zombie state. 25 hours I´ve been in transit. I now understand what cosmopolitan means. It means there are many different people speaking different languages at once and all of them dressed well. I wait another four hours for a connection to Barcelona. The time passed reasonably quickly. Heathrow Terminal 1 is quite fun to walk around, quite a nice collection of shops. I´ve decided that English accents are very attractive. It´s that oxbridge thing.

- another 2 hours to Barcelona, by now I feel like a seasoned air passenger. I have heard the safety demonstration twice in one day already. No matter, repitition makes the heart grow fonder.

- Barcelona airport I get there, with a mild anxiety about my luggage, which I haven´t seen since Kingsford Smith. I feel a genuine sense of relief at seeing old trusty. Barcelona airport is quite beautiful. Marble floor, a latticework of glass stretching around both sides and tasteful shops all decorated with a sense of diverse coherency lacking in any other airport I´ve seen.

- takes me another 1/2 hour to get into the city. fortunately there´s an ozzie couple halfway down the train to reassure me that I get off at the right stop. Subsequently, I get lost trying to find the main street, the famous La Rambla. Find a hostel recommended in Lonely Planet. It´s full. Try another one. It too is full. Get mild anxiety. Not so bad as I am wide awake and reckon I can slum it on the street. However, third time lucky and it´s beautiful.

From beginning to end 2 + 9 + 4 + 11 + 4 + 2 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 30 hours.

Kids. Don´t do it. Just get off in Heathrow and settle for London.

Although from what I´ve seen of Barcelona, it is stunning and people are out at night, just walking. Just walking.