Thankfully, the long, long entries are now about to get much shorter, since the days I have to commit to memory in as much detail as I can are about to end. We left our hotel before 6 am and walked to the shuttle stop, getting a bit nervous because it ran a few minutes late, and I felt I had cut it a bit close to book the shuttle at 6:30 am and not at 6, for a 9 am flight. But we arrived by 7:15, got through the ticket and security line ok (although my attempt to book the luggage ahead of time had failed, and so we had to shell out another 45 euro for our suitcase, rather than the 28 I had tried so hard to get it down to on an impossible-to-maneuver website. That was a minor blip, though, and the plane took off on time, the TXL bus from Tegel airport to the main train station was not impossibly overcrowded like before, and our simple train station lunch (from one of those super cheap and practical noodle-box shops) was wonderful. We then abandoned our attempt to find a short-term locker after wandering around the gigantic Berlin station for about half an hour, and instead just sat at a cafe with German coffee and a pastry to share (the coffee is a far cry from Italy, by the way, and twice as expensive—even at the airport in Rome, I had only paid 1,70 for a latte macchiato, and now we are back to 3,50 for a large cafe au lait of much less impressive quality!). The train for Osnabrück also left on time, ran about 15 minutes late, and so we were back at my mom‘s shortly after 6 pm. We had German-style dinner with her and went for a little walk (lovely and cool here!), and that was about it for the day!
AH-TLDR
It‘s been a hectic but incredibly wonderful and productive 2 weeks, with so much to see and learn. For me, it was of course always both research and vacation, but, as Mark pointed out somewhere along the way, I‘m enjoying myself most when I am learning new things. That was definitely true for this trip, but unlike in other years, the learning-by-traveling was just that much more focused on art. At times, that was probably too much of a muchness for Mark, who had to endure a lot of lectures, or, if I didn’t already know things about whatever we were exploring, a lot of searching for information on plaques and signs (which he duly photographed for me) and, if all else failed, on my phone. But it was such a blast, with so many awesome discoveries for me, and thankfully, Mark does not mind that for him, it all blurs into one large blob of impressions—which of course is what it would do for me as well, except that I have been using this blog and the endless photos he’s graciously been taking for me to keep things separate from each other and remember the details beyond the couple of hours, or maximum days that they would otherwise stick. I should “test” myself in a few weeks and just write down what actually stuck in my mind without going back to the blog first, just to see more clearly how well such a densely packed “Grand Tour” program, of up to 14 hours of seeing “things” every day, even works. What really sticks remains to be seen. I know that it’s been too intense in many ways from my dreams, which for a few days were the equivalent of “driving dreams” but with art and architecture instead—columns and vaults piling up on top of each other like in an Escher painting, in strange landscapes pieced together from too many paintings and “views.” But there was so little time for so much I wanted to see and experience! As we said several times, I had a serious case of FOMO-AH—fear of missing out on art history—in terms of any church, museum, or architecturally significant building that I could possibly visit.
But of course, I HAVE missed out on many things, and have to make my peace with that. With Rome, that’s easier (my very own Pax Romana?) because there is just too much Rome. Even the Grand Tourists and the 19th century visitors didn’t try to do all of Rome but were selective (except possibly the ones that got stuck in Rome and stayed for months and years), and they knew it couldn’t all be done or even all be sorted out, given the higgledy-piggledy layers of ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and later Rome, all the way to the newest buildings, renovations, and restorations. It is so vast and so full of historical strata that it’s just not possible. But in more contained and more historically homogeneous Florence, it’s tempting to try and do it all, and I think we investigated a large portion of the downtown sights, even though it was not possible to do ALL of them. Even with the omission of several palazzos and museums / art collections, I think we got a very good sense of the geographical layout and the layout of “tourist Florence” as a whole, which was part of the goal. Even as the constant reference to both map apps on the phone and paper maps may have not always saved us time, it helped a lot with getting a sense of a space (in both cities) that has been traversed by so many tourist travelers. Except that in Rome, even the Renaissance in a way was a time of “tourism” (simultaneously specialized and naive as it was) of travelers in search of Ancient Rome, whereas Florence really only became that kind of place in the 18th century, when the Renaissance in itself slowly became worth “looking at” rather than “contemporary” or near-contemporary art that was valued less than ancient art.
Overall, I did think I was able to recreate a bit of a sense of what a 19th century tourist would have seen in Florence (it is that much harder in Rome, which has changed more and is not as much of a curated city today, although certain parts of the Vatican Museums and the via Appia might not have been that different). Certainly, many churches would have been spatially similar, and even though the Uffizi and the Accademia have changed a lot, the Pitti gave me a sense of what “the tour” of the painting galleries of the 19th century would have been like, because it has retained its “old” museal approach. And the overall space in Florence’s Old Town is so remarkably unchanged that I know I walked the same streets as George Eliot et al did 150 years ago, even though they wouldn’t have had the selfie-stick vendors and the fancy boutiques to contend with, or the hordes of people crossing the Ponte Vecchio or lining up to see the Cathedral (I assume the beggars at the church door were a thing both then and now).
I am wondering what these earlier tourists would have said to the mass tourism of today, especially when it involves the same sights, but so many more people. They would have known and shared the notion of things one “must see” (even when one isn’t particularly interested in either the art or the history involved) and of tourism in some form, but the enormous number of people going today! They probably would have a hard time conceptualizing so many people, and so many people having the money to do this kind of traveling—from as far away as China or Japan to boot. I’ve been trying to think about the phenomenon of mass tourism on this scale as I was joining the crowds to admire the David or stand by the Colosseum, but almost alone in admiring the Seated Boxer or the Ludovisi throne. I wasn’t necessarily trying to find the desirable space “off the beaten track” or the “undiscovered nooks and crannies” (nonexistent in a place like Florence) but sometimes the crowds were so thick I couldn‘t stand it, for no reason except that a site was a famous top-ten destination; sometimes, only a few determined specialists were our fellow travelers: but who makes the decision of which is which? Why still Michelangelo but not, I don‘t know, Bronzino—not exactly an unknown artist, but not in the top ten? Why the Laocoon, but not the Todi Mars? Why the Leonardo worship, but only specialized interest in Galileo Galilei? Is there something that actually arrests people‘s imagination about these VIP artists and figures, or is it just about the „top ten“ designation? The Trevi Fountain is simply ugly, as far as I am concerned (and I know I cannot be all alone in disliking the baroque overkill or the gleaming whiteness), but it has taken on a life of its own as a tourist magnet. You have to have been. Why? There is something so circular about how traveling to see things works. You go see things because you read/hear/learn about other people have seen those things. Sometimes they have elaborate reasons buttressed by history and art history and whatnot. Sometimes they seem to just come out of some other drive—going high up, deep down, somewhere impossible to reach (Eiffel Tower, Catacombs, Mount Everest), offering a perspective you wouldn‘t otherwise get. Sometimes it seems to be all about going where other people go (Spanish steps, Trevi Fountain). And sometimes it is that which is completely alien to me, going to be entertained where lots of people are being entertained (Disney, Las Vegas). And I don‘t find that at all interesting. Not rides, not gambling, only the shows, because they are like theater, and I do understand theater—being told a story from a stage, as a performance. But how much of a snob am I that some of these forms of tourism do not appeal to me at all? How much of a difference does it make that I am a self-aware snob who tries to stay conscious of the fact that the mysterious path „off the beaten track“ actually doesn‘t exist? I am happiest when I only run into a few people, not huge packs of them, because that makes me think we are a group of the truly interested and dedicated—be it to art or architecture or history or even just hiking in beautiful surroundings. But why is that important to me? I can‘t even answer the question, or explain why some of the most famous things I‘ve seen are a let-down partly because of the insane crowds around them, while being alone with them does feel really awesome, even as I know that making this difference is a part of being a snob about what kind of travel I want to engage in.
This is very much about me; as usual, this blog represents Mark in the photography, but not much in the written portions; I think he‘s perfectly happy both in the most crowded and in the most isolated and sublime spots, and watches my horror of the crowds and tourist-trap gimmicks of a given season with amusement. He loves to people-watch more than I do, and while I groan inwardly when I see people elaborately posing and arranging themselves for their selfies, he finds it fascinating and counts how many people from all over the world have i-phones, and watches the people with real cameras to figure out whether Canon, Nikon, or Olympus is most popular. And he loves drifting through the crowds in Vegas. And yet, we are the absolutely best travel team I‘ve ever been part of, both for practical logistics and for seeing and discovering new things. Because even with all the snobbery, I am above all just curious to see new stuff (even if it involves tour groups getting in my way), and that curiosity is something we fully share. And at this point we are also on the same page for the rest of the trip: we need to slow down a little. The past 2 weeks have been super intense. Now for the relaxing part and hanging out with friends! And some time to reflect and absorb what we‘ve seen so it actually has a chance to settle in our brains.