Signora Fiori va a Firenze

Cough drop

2008-11-19T20:54:00.001-08:00

Time spent in airports and train stations has begun to seem a lot like visiting an additional country called 'Terminus' (French pronunciation please). There are the unintelligible but important announcements, the general sense of resignation amongst the populace, the mystifying signage and machines which do the opposite of what they say they do. Or perhaps I've just been reading too much Walser.

One experience I'm not eager to repeat is catching the Eurostar underneath the Channel. It was very claustrophobic and reminded me horribly of being inside the Great Pyramid where you wonder whether all the re-breathed oxygen is ever going to be enough to go round.

The Beauvoir Hotel in Paris, which of course I selected on the basis of its name, didn't turn out to be at all bad, in spite of its situation at the bleaker end of the Boulevard St Michel. It sits right above Port Royal on the RER, which took me everywhere I wanted to go, including directly from the Gare du Nord and much more easily than if I'd used the Metro.

It's also very close to the Catacombes, a place I've considered visiting for years but never quite wanted to enough. This might be as close as I ever get.

The Beauvoir didn't seem to have any definable connection with Simone de, although I did wonder if the peculiar sausage roll pillow might be a leftover from some pre-war sleeping arrangement. Other than that the Beavoir also had CNN so I gulped down a bit more of the credit crunch.

Being in Paris is always the same for me, whichever boulevard or avenue I happen to be on. The trees are the only thing that make it different. At the moment the trees are Autumnal, although the day temperature was not particularly cold, especially encased in the splendid Milanese fur.

On Sunday I had lunch with various people I've got to know over the years at St George's (rue August Vacquerie, handily close to Charles de Gaulle Etoille and the Arc de Triomphe). Turning up intermittently has made me into a regular in some way and generally triggers off the same 'Australian' jokes I've now been hearing from our English cousins since the 70s. These jokes generally turn upon our collective single-figure IQ and frightful vowels. It's tempting to go along with all this in deference to the great Sir Les and Dame Edna, but I did refuse to repeat a joke about bison, pointing out that I personally do know how to pronounce the word 'basin'.

It was good to return to the Tuscan sun but not to my Florentine cough. The choice has been stark - being cold and damp, or coughing non-stop. On consideration coughing has my vote. And I'm hoping to shed it back into the pollution it came from. But it didn't stop me from eating lots more extremely good food, listening to a gypsy band, or walking up the steps to San Mineato, the monastery which overlooks Florence and from which I was able to take some parting shots:

And the walk back into the Centre, which took surprisingly little time, brought us along the banks of the Arno. I finally crossed the Ponte Vecchio, and visited Santa Croce, the two things I didn't want not to have done.

So now it's back to 'Terminus' for an extended visit and then to my own large warm house where I hope finally to vanquish my cough.

Temps perdu

2008-11-15T09:48:00.000-08:00

Getting to London on Monday was like a fiendish board game where every throw of the dice raises yet another awful setback. A general public transport strike removed the normal trains to Pisa Airport. The buses from Rifredi to the main station ceased after 9:00 am. The 12:30 shuttle bus to Pisa I booked myself onto the day before was overbooked and with one seat left to distribute among at least 20 other equally entitled passengers the game seemed to be over. But Jeanette surged into the human sea, arguing my case like an Italian Mama and miraculously the crowd parted and I was ushered aboard. When I reached Gatwick the difficulties began anew. It was pouring with rain. My Gatwick Express ticket refused to emerge from the station machine, but a third attempt produced three separate tickets. It was about then that I realized my English money was still in Florence along with the camera cable and power converter for my laptop. But Catherine had a delicious dinner ready, we talked heaps, drank the far too tiny bottle of Chianti from Pisa Airport and the full horror of the day subsided into a long, warm and untroubled sleep.

Catherine's family, connected both past and present to a who's who of people at the centre of European history, threw up the astonishing Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, author of a memoir I was able to read while staying with her: Those who trespass against us : one woman's war against the Nazis. This book, written in the mid-1940s, tended to put my own tribulations in perspective. She witnessed Poland's dismemberment at the hands of the Russians and Germans, survived the murder of hundreds of friends and colleagues, worked for the Polish resistance while organising food for the many political prisoners undergoing a long death by starvation, and finally emerged from Ravensbruck and the death sentence she had been under since 1942. The photographs taken at that time show a formidable figure who managed to intimidate even some of the German Commandants she encountered. To me she was the shadowy aunt Catherine stayed with intermittently in Rome when I worked with her long ago. In fact she died only recently at the age of 104.

Being in London again after 30 years has been something of a trek back into lost time for me.

I spent a morning in Hampstead, revisiting the Past on a No 24 bus, which thankfully returned me to SW1 and 2008 at the end of the day.

The cold winds blasting across the Heath and up Willow Road didn't revive any fond memories, except perhaps of serving Judy Dench a croissant at Louie's during an unsuccessful interlude as a wait person. Instead the nearest suitable restaurant beckoned and we ate a good lunch, a remedy I might have turned to more rewardingly long ago. I looked in vain for the different houses I once lived in, and in the end couldn't even find the place across the way where Kingsley Amis sat writing in the upper window while Elizabeth Jane Howard, as she later complained, spent her time cooking for him downstairs, her own novels left unwritten (perhaps a good thing). As ever, looking at buildings and streets from the perspective of time, it all seems diminished as though glimpsed in a rear vision mirror.

Having the English language all around again has been disturbing, as though I've suddenly developed some ability to read thoughts. The thoughts themselves are often of limited interest, and delivered in Catherine Tate cadences. I'm sure I almost heard a teenage girl utter the words "Am I bovvered?". And I know I heard someone use the word "betterer", glottal stops and all.

I had a couple of modest ambitions for my time in London, one of which was to go and look at the Turners again in the Tate Gallery and another of which was to buy JM Coetzee's Stranger shores as I'm almost finished reading its successor volume, a book pitch perfect for a visit to contemporary Europe as so many of the essays have their attention turned upon mid-century German writers. In fact I was able to buy a copy of Robert Walser's Institute Benjamenta off the shelf at the same time in Foyles, a book I decided to get as a result of reading Coetzee. It opens with this wonderfully Kafkaesque sentence:

One learns very little here [at the Institute], there is a shortage of teachers, and none of us boys of the Benjamenta Institute will come to anything, that is to say, we shall be something very small and subordinate later in life.

But I also got to the Queen's Gallery and "Masters of Flemish painting : Bruegel to Rubens". I'm not a big Rubens fan, but I love the Flemish landscapes. The Queen's Gallery also has lots of gorgeous furniture, porcelain, armoury and jewellery on display, but as photographs are not permitted in the gallery itself I made do with the fabulous shop, laden with tat.

The loos alone are worth a visit, being very superior as one would expect.

In between our sorties out into the world we've mostly gossiped and eaten. There was a very enjoyable lunch with people I once worked with at SOAS (erstwhile province of the now UQ Librarian Keith Webster), and a delicious afternoon tea at Peter Jones. I think I may briefly have turned into one of my aunts, especially in this borrowed Milanese coat. Jeanette did offer me a fur but I wasn't quite brave enough to parade around in full seal-skin.

It's been lovely seeing Catherine again, and interesting to explore her neck of the woods, Pimlico, Belgravia etc where one sees little boys roaming about in the beige knickerbockers Prince Charles once wore when a pupil at Hill House. I reported a sighting of one in Sainsburys, clearly blown off-course from Harrods.

So now it's the Eurostar to Paris, and then back to Florence for J's birthday on Monday. And very soon I'll be sitting at my desk thinking about commencements and databases and other matters not involving food, wine and gossip. Trés triste!

Waiting for the valporetto

2008-11-08T02:04:00.000-08:00

the first requirement of a happy life is to be born in a famous city

Although the Queensland country town of my own origins was not as lowly a birth-place as that of our new Governor-General I can't help thinking that Gympie might have failed me in some important way. By contrast Venice must be one of the most famous cities ever. Wherever I went either on the canals or the ponte, or through the campo or piazza I felt as if I had just walked into or out of a famous painting or through the ether of some historical moment. And wherever I walked thousands of other strangers to the city were right there beside me. Last night crossing the Piazza san Marco to reach my hotel a perfect row of cameras and mobile-phones had lined up to seize the one moment, when the figures of the two Moors on top of the Torre dell'Orologio struck the hour. They were lit against the night sky, with a cloudy half moon poised above and it made for a beautiful shot. If my pocket camera had been up to the job then I'd have added my own flash to the line up. Instead I'll share a few other cliché images as those are what emerge no matter what picture I have in mind.

The alternating Vivaldi concerts were a bit of a surprise, I didn't expect to see The Four Seasons exploited in quite such an unvarnished way, especially considering the number of other concerti available.

While sharing the Eurovision choices of these girls on the back of a vaporetto I began ruminating about the young ladies of Vivaldi's orchestra. Perhaps these are two of Vivaldi's inheritors, Vivaldi girls so to speak. But if they were also, like, Valley girls, I couldn't say. Although there are many Valley girls and boys around, and even some with Estuarine English as well, like, I don't know the Italian for 'like'?

I spent an afternoon in Treviso (a little town west of Venice) at the Casa dei Carraresi at a huge exhibition of the Venetian 'view' painters (Canaletto. Venezia ei suoi splendori) and it made a wonderful preparation for Venice itself. There were rooms filled with immense Canalettos, as well as some lovely works by Francesco Guardi and Luca Calrevarisj and many paintings and engravings by other lesser known vedutista (the collective noun for the Venetian view painters I think).

To have a break from the ambulanza and caribinieri of Florence I stayed outside Treviso in a country B & B, La Vigna. It was blissfully quiet, the only sound at 7 a.m. being the birds as they began to stir and a few bicycles going by on the gravel.

Of course there was also the hopeful mewing of cat waiting outside for my breakfast.

In Treviso even quite elderly men and women peddle gravely to and fro, although the very old stuck to the foot-path, not like the daring fellow below. Now that I'm reaching geezer-hood myself the urge to strike out on two wheels again is probably only minutes away. The cottage gardens and Italian signage made me feel quite at home after half a lifetime in Nuovo Farme.

Venice was nothing like my morbid teenage memory of a malodorous place that smelt of floating cats although some buildings are so decayed they look as though anything could go on inside them.

I mostly mooched around on the valporetti, even venturing by accident to the Island of San Giorgio (where Stravinsky is buried), and even further, to the Lido, in the dark. This involved a bit of a Manly Ferry kind of ride out into the open sea . But I also got to the Peggy Guggenheim palazzo the following morning after eating a monumental breakfast of fruit, boiled eggs, different cheeses, croissants, juice, tea and espresso. Peggy Guggenheim lived in Venice for many years and was a great patron of contemporary artists, her collection now open as a Museum in what was once her very charming house on the Grand Canal.

Venice can speak perfectly well for itself I think, and I'm going to let it:

Brother Frank and Sister Clare

2008-11-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

Assisi was as unforgettable as I remember it, except that in 1964 we were there during a very cold Winter and in November 2008 I couldn't have chosen a better time to go. The tourist level was minimal and the weather divine.

Taking the train also took me through the Umbrian landscape and alongside Lake Trassimeno, a leisurely journey involving a number of unexplained pauses. At times I found myself inspecting whole life cycles of different insects as they lived and died alongside the track we waited patiently upon. There was also the unusual experience of traveling through so many hillside tunnels in an unlit carriage. All around in the pitch black mobile phone screens glowed but one could only sense, not see the presence of their users. Last week at the Conference a few of the Africans complained of the 'third-world' issues which inhibit their uptake of technology. I didn't like to say so but Italy doesn't seem terribly distant from a lot of these problems either, although the ongoing presence of the Roman and Medieval past makes up in charm for a lot of the frustrations.

I caught this pic on the hop, amongst all the real live nuns and monks:

In Assisi the Bollywood level cult of St Francis and St Clare was fascinating. There are representations of one or both of them either in the body, or as relics, or sculptures in all of the many churches. In the Upper Church of the Basilica di San Francesco is an amazing three-sided sequence of Giotto frescoes of the life of St Francis (and St Clare in her place) which completely surrounds you as you walk in. I sneaked a few illicit pictures where I could by turning off my camera flash and shooting from the hip.

There's even a musical:

This week I've been taking in the cultural ambiance and gallerying gaily. J organised a reserved ticket for me at the Uffizi so I needn't join the snaking queue of people outside and down the street. The Uffizi is of course the grandmother of all Florentine art museums and has its Botticelli and Caravaggio collection to prove it. But it also has some lovely Rembrandts, and lots of pictures from the Flemish school. I always like them the most. The other place that I loved is the Gozzoli Chapel, and the Magi's journey painted by Gozzoli onto the enormous walls of the Chapel. For those who don't know of it this fresco is actually a political pilgrimage through the Tuscan landscape and a portrait of its times. All of the prominent Medici men and their friends and allies are painted into it.

I've also developed quite an interest in the African street sellers who I'm told are employed by the mafiosi. They wait outside the Bars and Newsagents flogging off weird plastic stuff or Chinese tea towels, or some other cheap rubbish one couldn't imagine a market for although lately they're usefully laden with umbrellas because there's been so much rain. When I caught the train to Assisi there were at least a dozen of these men bearing identical knotted plastic bundles, who all got out at Perugia. Because of their constant presence in the streets and aggression towards passersby they've turned themselves into a racial issue. I understand Berlusconi got back into power this time because of his promise to do something about all the illegal Africans. Their female counterparts are old gypsy women begging in the streets. I see the same women in the same places all the time. Today there was one poor old thing apparently glad-wrapped on the cathedral steps.

The main Florence hospital is near here and all day there's a soundscape of ambulanza going by the apartment, sometimes accompanied by wailing polizia and caribinieri if the traffic is very heavy. On one occasion I saw uniformed men sitting up on the window ledges of their cars, waving their little paddles at the traffic. This apparently stops cars from colliding with one another although it's unclear how.

And now by popular request:

Tomorrow I'm off to Venice. I'm dreading it.. more water everywhere.

Blame it on the Panorama

2008-10-31T09:08:00.001-07:00

Hotel names can be very beguiling. Having left it too late to book one of the conference hotels I selected the Hotel Panorama on this basis, and the view from my window bears out the promise of its name as you can see, being especially seductive when the church bell across the way begins to toll. Above on the Terrace where breakfast is served the view is amazing.

The hotel is also close to the Piazza San Marco, and to the ancient colonnades of the Piazza della Independenza where A room with a view was set. One morning at breakfast there was a VERY earnest (and competitive) discussion amongst some English guests tabling their encounters with different pieces of Art, but the Hotel Panorama is a little more Barton Fink than EM Forster. I did have a fleeting Separate Tables moment when pursued from the breakfast room by a handsome man :
"Madam Madam you have left something."

The hotel begins on the second floor of an undistinguished brown building in the lawyer and court district, and was meant to be accessible via a lift although I couldn't get the lift doors to open on the night I arrived. The staircase leading more or less off the street is open to the world, and probably accounted for the enormous fight broadcast from the stairwell on my first night there. It was the kind of din you'd expect if you were arresting a cat. After a lot of contrapuntal yelling between a woman and several men calm was eventually restored to the Panorama except for me, coughing myself back to sleep again.

The atmosphere here weighs on my lungs like a broth of pollens, car pollution, damp air, old buildings and cold and I've been struggling to breathe ever since I arrived. There is the off-setting 'high' of the various drugs I take, but fresh air would be preferable. On the afternoon we went to the Tenuta di Capezzana I was looking forward to the clean Tuscan hillside breezes. Instead we went straight to the cellars where an industrial strength mould has been colonising since the middle ages.

But it was lovely to get out amongst the vineyards and the crumbly buildings. I especially liked 'Luna' who was pleasingly disobedient and went in through the cellar door although told strictly that she mustn't.

The Conference venue is a beautiful Renaissance cloistre.

It's been a bit scrappy with some papers highly focused on the technicalities of specific legislation processes, by the Austrians for example (who all looked like Sigmund Freud), or on specific XML approaches to making legislation available with different schema (difficult to convey in a spoken paper being simultaneously translated). In any event I prefer the more legal discussion and loved the Constitutional academic from Rome University who delivered his view of the new citizen's rights, including full and free access to both the law online, and to an understanding of it, something he appeared to think achievable. This sort of paper inevitably includes the historical processes of that particular society, which is probably my reason for enjoying them. Of course underneath any discussion of this kind in Europe is the understanding of what happens when basic rights are no longer honoured.

On Thursday night Alex and I drifted towards the exquisite 17th century Teatro della Pergola with our maps aloft (I pretended I could read mine), paused for a stand up coffee in the Piazza san Marco, and generally meandered around the tiny winding laneways until we were in the right place. I liked the graffiti below, although its meaning eluded me. The Conference had the theatre to itself for the night : Mendlessohn's Italian symphony, conductor Christopher Franklin, Orchestra della Toscana.

Florentine days

2008-10-28T03:26:00.000-07:00

Although I've spent the last few days hanging out with R, and eating and gossiping with J we've also done a surprising amount of sight-seeing. Staying in J's apartment is a pleasure in itself.

But I'm slowly getting to grips with central Florence and its complex medieval Piazza and Via, and in particular the location of the site of my Conference which begins on Thursday. Oddly the medieval cloistre where it will be held is a military headquarters. We were unable to go further than the outer door and peek into the moorish gardens visible through a gate.

After tracking the elusive cloistre to its source (street numbering isn't entirely logical), we ate lunch in a tiny ancient place mostly underground and accessible via a series of concealed staircases and rat tunnels. I ate a local Tuscan soup of artichokes and other vegetables, with bread cooked into it, drank a glass of local red wine and it was all simple and delicious.

In this photograph you can just see the narrow doorway (between the shelves of wine bottles). The owners won't open at night. It was once a crypt and spooks them too much.
In passing, at the Conservatorium, we found a cello recital to go to tonight (Brahms and Debussy). I was also to hear the Kronos Quartet on Sunday night but developed a food sickness from eating blueberry ice-cream by the Arno and ended up staying home, ostensibly as the baby-sitter but I think the baby actually sat me.

R is six and attends school across the street. Both J and I went over to meet her at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. The school day is 8:30 to 4:30 for even quite young children, so it's a long day for them. The afternoon ritual is very different from the herd of 4WDs milling daily around Queensland schools. At R's school the children gather in the downstairs exit room and emerge, under supervision, onto a raised platform. The parents wait gossiping in a court-yard below. As a child spots its parent with a cry of 'Mama' or 'Papa' the parent responds to the call and waves a hand in return. It felt like weirdly like an auction, putting in a bid for the preferred child (ones own of course).

It's a lot of fun being around a child again but I'm under R's instructions not to tease, especially about Bababella who has no legs or ears. Here is a picture of Radha in her butterfly dream.

And here some other pix some of which are famous for being post-cards, some of which are famous for being paintings and some of which are .. well, interesting to me.

Tomorrow the LIIs (the Legal Information Institutes) are meeting from all around the world and I am able to go as an observer which I'm very pleased about. Once the meeting finishes (at about 3:30) we will travel into the country side and have dinner at the Tenuta di Capezzana and then be delivered back to central Florence by about 8:00 pm. I decided to stay at a central Hotel for a few nights as there's a possible bus strike at the end of the week. Even though I THINK I've mastered bus routes 14 and 20 sufficiently to get myself home again there may not be a bus to climb onto.

In transit

2008-10-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

I amused myself in the very last seconds before landing in Frankfort by photographing the landing information (anyone who has sat in a long distance plane for more 12 hours will understand why).

My companion for this part of the journey was Jorge, returning from the reconstruction program in Aceh. He made me a detailed map of central Frankfurt fanning out from the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (Railway Station) and showing all the best walks to get a good understanding of the city. As it was 2' in Frankfurt when we landed, and about 5' by the time we reached the empty City center (8:00 a.m) I could only dream of the casual stroll across the Main River he had envisaged. My Laplander's woolly hat , cast aside at the last minute, beckoned like a mirage from the top of a cupboard in Wilson Street. Every visible part of my body went bright red with cold.

In the end the best option was to get into the Underground and stay there for an hour or so, which I did. But in passing I did observe some interesting street-theatre in the freezing morning air of the Red Light district, a group of 'slow movement' players creating some bit of impromptu theatre around a brazier. Perhaps they were just a gang of menacing young drunks; I didn't take any pix as I didn't want to find out. But I did capture this poor creature:

The Stadel museum on the banks of the Main is one of the great German art museums and once boasted a huge collection of early 20th century German Expressionists. The Hitler regime purged much of this work; I think I read somewhere that the Stadel lost over 700 paintings during the Nazi era. It still has some impressive Max Beckmann, George Grosz and Ernst Kirchner works. Reminders of the Nazi past arose even in quite small ways. This year's fashion for young men in the shop windows had echoes of storm trooper chic and was strangely sexy (rather like the late Jorge Heider).

At 4:00 p.m. the train to Zurich pulled out and I fell asleep with minutes. By the time I woke up it was dark enough to photograph myself travelling through Switzerland but not the scenery outside and my reason for making the journey by train.

We had a 90 minute wait at Zurich station during which I learned then promptly forgot the German word for pumpkin.

On the other side of the glass waiting room a man in a face mask made out of a magazine cover strummed a single string banjo and pretended to sing. We made a captive audience for him and his group of local Clockwork Orange boys. The whole station teemed with weird Swiss sub-cultures, and the beggars were as podgy as the pigeons.

The first-class sleeping compartment of my imaginings was a bit of a shock in reality. Even Queensland Rail in the 50s offered a more elegant experience. And I was apparently to share the tiny cramped cabin with another 'lady' who would arrive to join me through the night. I pointed out that my luggage was pretty much sharing the available cubic metres of space already and after a bit of negotiation it seemed that E25 might go towards changing the bedroom arrangements. This was a good investment. I had an excellent sleep in spite of the train pulling up all night and collecting ever more passengers. By 6:40 we were in Campo de Marte in Florence and a whole new set of train timetabling to consider.

Anyone for tiffin?

2008-10-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

Being met at KL International by 'coach transfer' in the form of a personal Mercedes felt like a good sign. Especially after my passport had been taken away by an official and I was asked to step out of the queue please. The Border Security music began pounding through my head – da da da da da dum! I tried not to sweat and look like a shifty drugs granny but suddenly I became aware of the 10kg boogie board cover strapped to my suitcase… Of course it was all about bureaucracy (and not even corruption). My passport expires in December, something you'd think might be a problem in East Europe, but hardly amongst our ASEAN friends. For Malaysia the seroconversion date is 6 months before expiry, for anyone wanting to know; after that your passport becomes an infected document. Getting into a Mercedes after that to speed along a dark and empty highway felt strangely good.

Before leaving Australia I had an idea of catching one of the local ferries that cart people to Singapore or Borneo or Penang. But it's all a bit time-consuming given the few days I have in Malaysia. I did make an exploratory journey to Port Klang, taking an extremely slow commuter train from KL Sentral which was so like being on my home away from home, the Ipswich train, that I even amused myself by identifying bogans. One particularly good 'toddler mullet' caught my eye. The urge to take a picture overcame any thwarting hesitation that I might be channeling Bill Henson.

KL has a distinctly 50s Queensland look about it when viewed as the panorama of backyards you get from gazing out of a grimy train window. Buildings are often mouldy and decrepit, and banana bushes practically thrust between the train tracks. There's that general air of heat exhaustion that stifles everything except the foliage. But I like all of that given my North Queensland childhood, even being caught in a tropical downpour and stepping into a not so shallow puddle in the middle of the footpath.

(this wasn't it – but nonetheless a surprisingly large space where one might expect a footpath to be)

Port Klang itself, with its 'International' water-front terminal filled with smoking poker-players and men offering to help me do whatever I was there to do, was straight out of Surabaya Johnny. There were no chickens in coops but plenty of guarded strangers. I was told that as a foreigner I could not go on the Indonesia ferry. The heart of darkness was rejecting my call.

So I did the next best thing and went to Malacca for the day. Malacca is one of those interesting pockets of the planet that almost every major colonial power has at one time wrestled from another, sometimes with guns and cannon, sometimes by poison. Only the French seemed to be missing from the brew. The Portuguese have left a Canton, and a fabulous moorish looking Church; Dutch traders brought protestantism and intolerance; the Indians and Chinese went right on worshipping in their splendid temples, standing side by side in Harmony Street. And very close by there's a mosque which has such varied influences in its construction that I photographed its history. This picture is bigger than the others for anyone wanting to click on it and read the text.

The British in the form of Sir Stamford Raffles managed to prevent one or two major buildings being blown up and the Arabs left what is now the official Malay religion. Frankly I became utterly confused by all this historical sediment, especially after our guide changed it between one recounting and the next, re-assigning 1641 to such a variety of important occurrences that it's now the only date which has stuck in my head, although cut adrift from any fact. But the real reason to go to the Malacca Straits is its 'other' history which continues to this day. I took some hopeful photographs but whether there are pirates in them I'm unable to say .

Today I'm meeting up with a Tour Chum from yesterday and going to the Islamic Museum. Last night we were forced by the hideous traffic to get back to our respective hotels on the monorail, the tiny driver-less carriages so dense with people it was impossible not to think of all those capsizing Philippines ferries as we lurched gaily above the trees and bus tops. So I didn't make it onto any of the Straits, and given my history on both the low and high seas that might have been a good thing. Neither did I find where the Jungle Railway began or I might still be on it, stuck indefinitely in a siding as the Bangkok trains go by. I did observe a few Australian medical tourists, heroically getting about in their bandages like the dance partners in Peter Weir's fabulous film The cars that ate Paris. And I fled the bedraggled monks who surrounded me like seagull the minute I gave a few ringgit to one of them. One of them forced this unnerving 'document' into my hand:

I don't want it but I'm too superstitious to throw it away. Help Janice what does it mean?

Hunting for Caravaggio

2008-09-22T15:10:00.001-07:00

FLORENCE :
Bacchus, Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa - Uffizi Gallery

MILAN:
Basket of fruit - Ambrosiana Picture Gallery

NAPLES :
The seven works of mercy ; Saint Catherine of Alexandria - Capodimonte Museum

PARIS :
The Death of the Virgin - Musee de Louvre

ROME :
Crucifixion of St. Peter , Saint Paul - Santa Maria del Popolo ;
The Calling of Saint Matthew - San Luigi dei Francesi ;
Madonna dei Palafrenieri ; Sick Bacchus; Boy with a Basket of Fruit ; - Borghese Gallery ;
Entombment - The Vatican ;
Narcissus, Judith and Holofernes - Palazzo Barberini

VIENNA :
Madonna of the Rosary - Kunsthistorisches Museum