Posts filed under 'Global gossip 2007'
Before 2008 arrives I want to post this picture of Berlin because it shows one of the best moments of 2007 for me: saving the planet on a family weekend to celebrate my birthday with the boys in the most exciting city I have been to, what on earth could be better.
We coincided with a huge climate change protest, joined a lantern march urging Angela Merkel to do the right thing at the Bali summit, rocked with great bands at the Brandenburg Gate, slept in a smart apartment once inhabited by punk squatters after the wall came down, walked silently through the concrete alleys of the Holocaust Museum, and wandered the streets of East Berlin decorated with so much wild and wonderful graffiti that I came home with an adolescent urge to spray paint the posh parts of Edinburgh, starting with the Royal Scottish Academy.
After all that, despite all the Christmas glitter and the spicy German market, poor old Edinburgh does seem very staid and far too smug.
Admittedly, Berlin shows signs of succumbing to affluence. Even in the four years since our first visit, the wasteland of the cold war has been reclaimed by gleaming monuments to capitalism. Potsdammer Platz is as glitzy as any other cosmopolitan city centre. But the revolutionary spirit lives on in the east. ‘Fuck yuppyz’ says the writing on the wall in one old apartment block. Nearby, another tenement has been restored and stands like a sign of things to come in Prenzlauerberg (one of the fast gentrifying areas of the old bohemian quarters of the city). But even here some agile graffiti artist, with a head for heights and a long rope, has added a touch of genius. At the top of the tall building in bold black on the fresh new pale orange paint are the words ‘rock and roll’.
Cunning entrepreneurs are quick to copy the anarchist style. On his state of the art Nokia Dougal took a picture of a beautifully executed graffiti mural sponsored by, guess who, Nokia. But I am sure someone will reclaim it for the street. I like to think that having survived communism, this generation of free thinking, free spirited young people will continue to rebel against our Western conformism. Who needs mass produced fashion among so much individual style.
So happy new year to Berlin. I hope your revolutionary spirit lasts for ever. Now I better go pack.
December 31st, 2007
“It’s just a really special experience…I would say to any musician of any rank, to apply for it because it really teaches you a lot about other people and their cultures and music.” Ben Westbeech (definitely not Westwood!) on Trocabrahma Podcast Episode 2.
This is interesting stuff, so far the Trocabrahma series is the only download I have managed from the online Channel 4 Radio (though I intend to try their Unreported World series too). I like being a fly on the wall as Ben Westbeech sorts through his discoveries in a record store, “like a kid in a sweet shop” with sound so clear you can hear him unzipping his record bag (well, I think that’s what he was doing).
It’s very clever, understated marketing by Brahma beers; what really comes through is that everyone on the 30 minute show (including the velvety voiced Diplo and the very assured Gilles Peterson) seem to be doing it for the love of the music. It is a genuine cultural exchange. Between Brazilian and UK musicians backstage in rehearsal, out on the town and in live performances. Learning about each other through music – we can do with a lot more of that!
I subscribed to the Trocabrahma podcast via iTunes but you can do it through Feedburner too.
October 1st, 2007
Let’s go to Perth to see how a town centre can thrive without traffic. It’s Saturday, the sun is shining, the pan pipes are playing and on the seafood stall huge crabs seem to send a cheery V sign to shoppers passing by. Perth Farmer’s Market is going like a fair bang smack in the middle of a pedestrian precinct.
Hard to believe this is really Perth. I have a soft spot for the place which is full of family memories going back more than 30 years: weddings, births, deaths, funerals and reunions; Christmas shopping, bar lunches, the whiff of hospital wards and church flowers. But nostalgia is fading. While I’ve been getting older the Fair City has had a face lift, or maybe more a make-over. At any rate something very interesting is happening to the streets I used to drive round with mum and dad. For a start, these streets are now for pedestrians only.
Perth has become confidently car-free through most of the town centre and it doesn’t seem to be hurting the traders one bit. Pedestrians stroll through welcoming streets, pavement cafes fill squares which used to be parking places, live music happens not just inside but all around the brand new Concert Hall.
The monthly Farmer’s Market seems all the more bustling because it takes place right
next to the High Street shops. And (Edinburgh please note) in this relaxed environment shoppers obviously cope with being able to walk a little further to their cars.
Edinburgh Farmer’s Market rightly wins prizes but the city is still in thrall to the motor car. Perth deserves an award for an altogether more enlightened approach to urban landscaping.
No sweat: street art in Perth High Street
August 14th, 2007
This is the way to do it. Our luggage is pulled to the plane by a small tractor. Security guards make friendly small talk while they sift through our bags. In the air the pilot calls out landmarks as we race seagulls and clouds over the Sound of Barra. When we land at Glasgow a woman comes out to sweep sand off the cabin floor. If you have to fly at all this is how it should be done.
Landing on the beach after the best plane journey in the world
We have just flown to and from Barra, the best flight in the world, well the best in Britain anyway. We landed and took off from the white cockle shell beach that has been used as a runway since 1936. The main disadvantage, according to the security guard, is the weather. He always adds another week to his holiday to cover the possibility of cancelled flights on those days when wind and rain alter the BA schedules. Sometimes, he says, he could get to Australia in the time it takes to get from Barra to visit his family in England. But maybe we should stop trying to rush everywhere?
What I like best about the hour flight across to the Outer Hebrides is that it rekindles
the sense of adventure deadened by those long trails through airport shopping malls.
The only other time I enjoyed sitting in a plane so much was my first flight ever, as luck had it courtesy of the RAF from Brize Norton to Washington, back in the good old days of the Watergate scandal. I can’t even really remember why I got that perk,
except that the RAF must have felt the need of a little soft publicity. Since I had never flown before I didn’t know that we were taking off at a speed not possible over commercial airports, or that it was luxury to have leg room on a transatlantic flight, still less get the chance to stand in the cockpit as we flew home through the Northern Lights.
The plane to Barra is much smaller and slower but just as exciting, partly because you can see through to the cockpit, and partly because the roar of the engines vibrates through the seats and into every bone in your body creating a physical sensation that reminds you what a thrill it is to take to the sky. And how unnatural. Flight is an adventure, an incredible human achievement of skill and ingenuity. The Wright brothers must have felt like this. Ain’t it a shame that modern travel and our current obsession with security has destroyed the excitement of travel? At best it is mind-numbingly tedious to fly, and now we are all treated like suspected terrorists.
Perhaps the only bad thing about flying to Barra is that you have to clear security in Glasgow – especially in the week after the attempt at ramming a fourwheeled drive through the entrance. The place still reeks of fire. It strikes me that airport security is always going to be lagging behind the latest methods of mass murder. Bombs made out of shampoo and mascara? Darling, that’s so 2006! Exploding shoes (they went out – but not off – in 2005, or was it 2004?). Never mind, get those shoes off and stick them under the scanner.
My aggravation melts long before we catch sight of Loch Lomond far up to the right hand side. On a good day (and this is good enough) the pilot takes the scenic route and when he is not shouting over his shoulder you can pick out landmarks and technical info with the help of the printed sheet of A4 which he decided to produce because so many people ask questions about the de Havilland Twin Otter: a plane designed to land on sand even when there is water on the beach.
On the way back to Glasgow four days later a friendly man sitting in front of me says he always flies from Barra although Benbecula airport is nearer his home because he likes the Barra flight so much better. He likes the old plane and he likes the way business men in suits become small boys when they are about to land on the beach. But he fears that one day some suits might get their way to cut costs by building a tarmac landing strip that can take bigger planes in all weathers. I do hope they don’t, that would be a real act of vandalism.
I’m lying on the beach trying to photograph the plane with my
mobile phone but it’s like trying to catch hold of a flying bird through binoculars: I always seem to be focusing on the wrong bit of sky. Just as well Ray has better luck.
July 14th, 2007
How on earth did they get up there? On our last night in Berlin, as it happens the hottest May night on record, we take a boat up the river Spree to see just how much the city has changed since the wall came down. Perched on the ruin of one of the many bridges destroyed by Hitler – his parting gift to the city – we see an extraordinary sight which seems to sum up the spirit of the new Berlin: a sofa sits high up on top of a crumbling concrete column several metres from the bank and on it three young people wave, lifting their glasses as we glide by. We wave and lift our glasses in return and spend the next few minutes wondering how the hell they got themselves and the sofa up there.
I didn’t manage to get a picture of the young people on the sofa but M.Kuhn’s photograph of Molecule Man on the River Spree has a similar spirit (downloaded from Flickr) and we saw that on our boat trip too.
From east to west there are glittering monuments to the triumph of capitalism, glowing pleasantly red in the light of the setting sun. But even more interesting is the space between. Berlin’s derelict buildings are buzzing with creative life. Beach bars and clubs vibrate on both sides of the river; it’s amazing what you can do with a few tons of sand and assorted deck chairs.
Berlin is changing so fast the guide books can’t keep up. “Are you sure about this jazz club?” asks George leading us to an East Berlin address Ray plucked out of the guide book, “when was your guide book published? If it was more than a year ago it will be out of date.” George is a German academic who knows Berlin well. Fifteen years ago, he remembers, these streets came alive – there were no bars, no cafes, no lights, no licensed premises at all, but people brought out their tables and chairs and any booze they had in the house (’warm beer, they didn’t have fridges’) to sell to anyone who wanted to join them on the pavement. They lit hundreds of candles and they made music in a spontaneous burst of creative anarchy. A real cafe culture made by real people.
Already of course business is moving in on the act to make money from these streets but the bohemian spirit seems untamed. The great thing about a derelict building is that it can fire the imagination (in that sense Glasgow has more in common with Berlin than Edinburgh). Despite the building frenzy (attracting every star in the architectural firmament), the underpopulated Berlin still has plenty of undeveloped spaces. Although a huge Sony complex dominates the former wasteland of Potsdammer Platz, there are still lots of old warehouses in East Berlin to provide affordable studios for designers, artists, musicians and creative souls of all sorts.
By the way, the jazz club is very much there, full of young people (George, Ray and I raise the average age considerably when we slip in to a table at the side) though now the beer comes chilled.
June 5th, 2007
How do cities meet the demands of the present without losing the value of their past? John Herring joins Global Gossip with some bold answers in his ‘postcard’ from Bilbao.
In the 1980’s Bilbao was presented with an opportunity when the industry and shipping facilities blocking up the city centre moved out to the river mouth on the coast. Not many cities get the chance of a huge brownfield site bang in the centre.
The Guggenheim Museum: an affront to the past or the spirit of 21st century Bilbao?
And not many city fathers would have the vision to chose a futurist option. The Guggenheim Museum, all waving lines and shiny exterior, stands on the waters edge like an affront to the safe nineteenth century mansions of Bilbao’s past. However, this doodle of a building has been used as a catalyst to reshape the spirit of this city and, arguably, the shape of modern Basque identity.
A trip to Bilbao shows how a city can reinvent itself, given the will, the
money and, someone perhaps wielding dictatorial powers? The city still suffers the perennial problem of cars and parking but the building of a metro and the development of a tramway at least shows a willingness to take on this problem.
But this spirit of modernity isn’t being allowed to wipe away the evidence of the city’s past. A new office/residential development is being built inside the old walls of a historic building, showing how the new can grow out of the old.
The focus for Bilbao’s regeneration is the river running through and around it. This feature has been used to create a pedestrian walkway alongside the new tramway.
This trail for people was used prodigiously whilst we were there; people indulging in their regular ‘paseo’, whole families rollerblading, or those hardy, masochistic souls out jogging.
Certainly Bilbao is a city for today’s lifestyle, but perhaps this makes it unique, given that not many people, governors nor populace, would be prepared to see their little world torn down to start anew. The dilemma for the cities of the 21st century is how to drag themselves up to date with peoples current lifestyles without destroying the things that have made them what they are. Can global warming push the ‘cold’ cities of Northern Europe into a more open, outside society?
May 29th, 2007
We went looking for the covered market in Belfast ready to be impressed. Friends told us it was good, the landlady in the B&B agreed, and besides, as journalists do, I had already written a little bit about it before I had even left Edinburgh.
St George’s Market is in East Bridge Street near the Waterfront
Seeing the real thing was much better. Belfast is reinventing itself at an astonishing rate. It doesn’t seem so long since, on the way to visit my aunts, we shot off the ferry on the quickest route out of a troubled city. Those days have left their mark but a plaque in Thanksgiving Square on the shiny new waterfront sets the tone for a pretty determined renaissance built on ‘hope and aspiration, peace and reconciliation’. Above it, a statue symbolises an attempt to build a bridge across divides in the community, ‘bringing people together…with a sense of gratefulness for all that life gives us.’
Inside St George’s Market the stallholders seem to be doing just that. On a cold morning, the sun shines through the newly refurbished glass roof adding a nice warm touch to a scene that shows the remarkable entrepreneurial energy unleashed by the new peace accord (no matter how politicians try to mess it up).
A jazz band plays something with a Latin swing while a Spanish chef rustles up a giant paella near a stall where a young Ulster woman sells home made pasta and (as we discover when we eat it) a very good pesto sauce. There’s soda bread and organic meat; potatoes and home made chicken pies and glistening green and black olives. A candy stall is piled high with the luminous and rather scary ‘yellow man’ next to good healthy looking carrots. This is multiculturalism with knobs on. Or as the plaque outside says:
‘celebrating the diversity of culture that exists in our global village.’
Markets reveal the heart and soul of a culture better than most shopping centres. It is great that Edinburgh’s Farmer’s Market has won so many awards in the last year (among them best UK farmer’s market). But, spectacular as the Castle Terrace site is, the market can be very chilly. Wouldn’t it be great to get it covered?
Belfast’s beautiful old building can stand beside other great European covered markets. Just for fun I am posting in images from Belfast with Budapest and Helsinki. But if you haven’t already been, get on the ferry to Belfast and try some of that paella.
Guess which is Belfast
February 27th, 2007
I turned on the radio this morning to catch the tail end of a story about Tesco’s triumphant entry into Beijing, hot on the trail of Walmart and Carrefour. No surprise there. The interesting thing is that the Beijing store is so, well, Chinese. But that is not a surprise either. Tesco is a very wily beast, and as we have discovered on our travels across Eastern Europe, it becomes a kind of retailing chameleon when it moves out of the UK.
Definitely not Tesco, but the wily chameleon knows how to sell this stuff indoors.
Take the new store in Prague. ‘Not like any Tesco I’ve ever seen,’ said Ray as we ventured into what used to be Maj, the department store pride of Communist Czechoslovakia. Or so he gleaned from the Time Out guide book. Interestingly, the BBC reporter used almost exactly the same words in Beijing this morning astonished to see an array of produce he simply didn’t recognise. He thought he had found a bottle of HP brown sauce until the interpeter told him it was more likely Hoi Sin.
Likewise in Prague. According to Time Out, Maj was bought by K-mart who sold it to Tesco but shades of the communist department store linger especially on the ground floor which is an extraordinary hotch potch of different stalls. We scaled most of the four storey building (there are two entire floors devoted to cut price Cherokee clothing for men and women) before discovering something closer to the supermarket we know so well in the basement. But with that interesting difference: the Czech store sells mainly Czech goods. Or at least distinctly East European produce.
We found a small selection of the universal food-miles brands (the kind the clever Mr Leahy promises we can boycott if we prefer carbon-lite), but the busiest part of the store by far is the area selling fresh meat, chickens with heads and feet, fish, cheese and local fruit and veg. The kind of stuff Czech people buy in markets and local shops.
I know, our Tesco down the road also claims to be supporting Scottish produce but just imagine what the store would look like if they really supported local suppliers on the same scale as they obviously do in Beijing, Prague and (I believe) Budapest too. They would be indoor versions of the Farmers’ Market that comes once a week to Edinburgh’s Castle Terrace.
Perhaps there would even be a way of doing that without undermining the renaissance of farmers’ markets. Tesco is incredibly clever at providing what people want (and persuading us to buy what we don’t need). So clever it looks like the Competition Commission enquiry into the impact of supermarkets on local shops will probably decide that the answer lies with consumers. And consumers have already driven away from the high street to the supposed convenience of shops with big carparks on the edge of town. If we really want to shop this way it is up to us to persuade the supermarkets that we want local food at realistic prices which do not cripple local suppliers.
Even so, I hope rising energy prices will help us opt for real markets and local shops. The one thing all supermarkets have in common – whether they are in Beijing or Broughton – is the deadly stupor that hangs over the check out queue. Looking at the expressions of weary resignation as Czech shoppers lined up to pay for their mostly Czech purchases on a hot autumn afternoon I wondered how we can persuade ourselves this is ‘convenient’.
With poetic irony we combined our trip to Tesco with a visit to the Museum of Communism: a shrewd venture by a very entrepreneurial American, ‘Little Glen’, who has also brought bagels and a jazz bar to the centre of Prague. There is a telling punch line to the museum’s story of the failure of the Prague Spring revolution of 1968. When communism closed in again for the next two decades, party leaders allowed enough fruits of Western capitalism into the market to subdue revolutionary tendencies. Tesco, welcome to Beijing?
January 26th, 2007
Flying has become about as much fun as queuing at a supermarket checkout. Less: you don’t have to take off your shoes in Tesco.
Should I be doing this? I am delighted to get so many offers of posts about city life from my travelling family and friends. Some of them started to arrive in December so thanks to Kate for the topical post on Lisbon trams (I hope there will be lots more about public transport as Edinburgh city council has at last accepted the business case for a first tram line in the capital); thanks to Ray for a piece on a thriving Dundee skate park that should put Edinburgh to shame; and thanks to Kit, our man down under, for adding his comment on Melbourne’s skaters. Don’t miss it! (I also heard from Peter that he had sent a post on cities which has unfortunately gone missing in cyberspace but with luck that will make its way here soon.)
All the same, should I be encouraging a communal blog about places we are likely to reach by plane?
Of course I think I should. For one thing, it means I can learn about other cities without having to get on the plane: Carrie’s post gives a fascinating insight into Beijing life. But I am aware of being a hypocrite. I bang on about climate change and criticise the government for avoiding the big decisions we need to help us change our polluting behaviour. Then like almost everyone I know I get on the plane. In the last two years I have flown to Dublin, Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, Budapest, Prague, Helsinki and Nice and that would not have been possible without the influence of the likes of Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair impressario who has helped to force down the cost of flying.
That hasn’t necessarily made travel more democratic (the latest Civil Aviation Authority Passenger Survey found that people flying from Stansted earned an average of £57,000 per year -– it was £53,000 in Edinburgh). But the boom in weekend breaks must be boosting the economies of cities across Europe. (And I suspect it was the importance of city economies that Peter was writing about).
I don’t think cheap flights can or should continue because they are not environmentally sustainable (no matter what Tony Blair says according to today’s Guardian) but that raises a lot of questions. How can we go on exploring great places without speeding the destruction of the environment? Can cities continue to prosper without the planned growth in air traffic? Or are we confusing growth with prosperity? Besides, in the not so long term, climate change could begin to eat into some of those city profits. Edinburgh’s cancelled Hogmanay street party demonstrates how easily storms can blow away ambitious plans.
One answer is that we don’t always have to go by air. In fact flying has become about as much fun as queuing at a supermarket checkout. Less: you don’t have to take off your shoes in Tesco. In the last two years I have also visited Belfast, Bruges, Brussels and Eindhoven by ferry, Eurostar and wonderfully efficient Netherland trains. It’s a lot more fun than flying.
So my new year resolution is to find alternatives to the plane when I can. Meanwhile your thoughts on the flying dilemma are very welcome. Along with your blogs. I look forward to an Indonesian posting from Dougal and Andrea, and John’s post from Cahors.
January 8th, 2007
