a suisse
ok so basically i havn’t posted in a while but this is what has been going on…
outline- lock myself out of my apartment, go to switzerland, return, go to rome…
the following are e-mails that i sent to whoever about what i was doing, basically telling what went on in the last few weeks… they may not make complete sense… yeah
19.11.2005 anyways, i had a terrible day... locked myself out of the apartment and vanessa is in switzerland. i cant get back in until they send me the keys and they couldnt send them today because basically they suck so maybe i will miss the best parts of the swiss trip... a locksmith costs a thousand euros on the weekend and the only other option is to have a fireman come; use a ladder and break the window!!! otherwise if it doesnt get sent till monday i guess a locksmith then is like eighty euros. anyways, i locked myself out taking the trash down so i had only the clothes on my back, no wallet, no jacket, no keys, no nothing basically. my neighbors helped me and we called all around tryiing to get a key (leasing agent, super, etc etc) and then they lent me a sweater and a jacket five euros and a handful of metro tickets and sent me off to search for anne gaelle, whom i couldnt call becausde i dont know her number by memeory... today really sucked, and i left all the lights on and the tv and there is a new leak in the bathroom that who knows, may flood the house by the time i get back in!!! and yesterday was terrible too, end of the project;.
21.11.2005 update... my amazing neighbor called her mom and a locksmith is going to come tonight at 530 to try and open the door. i really hope he can becuause otherwise i am in the shit some more. also, i had been planning on going to suisse tonight or very early in the morning tonight but apparantly tomorrow there is some kind of social demonstration and only like one in four trains will be running!!! pretty awesome, i cant believe my increasingly bad timing. you know you say it all happens for a reason but it seems me trying to do something nice is resulting into huge problems for me, hmmm- i stay for the weekend to help in projet long when all but one other american left and i get left with a huge mess in the apartment that was hardly mine so after doing all the dishes i decide to take out the trash and what luck, the only time i have been alone in this city (without my roommate i mean) i lock my keys in my apt and am stuck outside my door with jeans a t-shirt and very luckily shoes, no wallet, phone, phone numbers, money, metro passes, watch etc etc etc. so i knocked on my neighbors door whom until then i had never spoken to and their little daughter opens the door and her mom gets all scared because she sees me at the door with her young daughter and she hadnt heard the knock. so i explained my situation and they gave me a sweater and jacket, five euros and a handful of metro passes and sent me out to find anne gaelle, whom i couldnt call becausde i dont know her number by memeory. so i spent saturday night at anne gaelles and last night with sylvain, the project leader, and he made me dinner and we watched some bad bruce willis movie in french and then i slept on the floor and now i am in studio and i have talked to my neighbnor and she called her mom who knows a locksmith who will come at 530 in the afternoon to open my door, i cannot wait, i hope it works out well because you never know with these crazy french keys. oh weell, i will find out then i guess.
23.11.2005 so i got to switzerland finally. spent the day alone exploring and lookign for architecture in basel yesterday and today we were in luzern and bern then back to luzern for a concert. should be very cool in some modern concert hall. i am writing you from the zentrum paul klee in bern which is an amazing building that seems to grow out of the ground accepting light from huge windows facing west. the façade’s profile basically looks like two and a half sss connected. pretty amazing and the details are so well done it just seems perfect…
25.11.2005 we spent thanksgiving day ln an austrian town close the border of switzerland looking at some of the most beautiful architecture (modern) i have ever seen. we had thanksgiving dinner in an italian restaurant in saint gallens. we drank red wine and gave thanksgiving analogs (what we are thankful for) and then walked around in the first snow of the season. the snow here is amazingly powdery and you can catch snowflakes that look like the ones we used to make in kindergarten. tonight we are at the vals thermal baths and i think i have found my favorite place on earth. high in a swiss valley in a stone building, all kinds of pools in different rooms with steam rooms and cold plunges and a warm bath that is part inside part outside. i cant believe i get to be here. now i am pondering whether i should pay for an expensive dinner everyone is having in a design restaurant here. i really want to ut it is very very expensive. worth it, hmmm. well see i guess…
26.11.2005 so yeah, remeber that life changing architecture thing... or maybe i hadnt told you about that but we spent friday night at the vals thermal baths and it was pretty much the most amazing architctural encounter of my life. basically changed the way i look at the world, while softening my skin. haha. it was so incredible, the entire place is made from stone quarried from the mountains less than a mile away and there all these different soaking pools. there are two saunas, nude and clothed, you can use your imagination for that one, and then there is a hot bath and an ice plunge. the center of the room is a tepid bath (with blue square skylights) and then all the volumes around it contain some kind of experiental room. a contemporary music chanmber where you lie down on a stone pallent and listen to music and then a rose water pool and then a shower chamber with all these didfferent heads so it is like water downpor on your body and then to the left the cold plunge. then there was this room that you enter the water then follow a half submerged tunnel into this small perfectly square chamber with a two or three story ceiling designed to echo the sound inside. we would go in there and sing or make creepy chanting sounds and it would echo like a choir of a thousand people, and make your voice sound a amazing. so incredible. if you made the note right with a few other people you could actually hear the waves in the sound. and then, the highlight (as if those werent enough) you enter this one pool and follow it outside and immediately you get an immense view of the sky and craggy snow-covered peaks. the snow is falling down and the steam is rising up and you just feel at peace with all this rugged beauty around you. the place is so strange, it is one of the few architecture works that seem to connect with your soul, others including peter zumthor's kunsthaus in bregenz austria... it is so simple and elegant, sophistacated while at the same time primal. i cannot believe we got to go there.
friday night too was an amazing dinner. i basically tested my credit limit on this trip because the hotel at the baths for the one night and the dinner were very expensive, but worth it. dinner was four, five or six courses and each meal looked like a complete work of art. we started with a "gift from the chef" and then they brought the cold starter. after that the warm starter then the main dish then the pre dessert and then the dessert. there actually was one more but i cant remember. we had some amazing almond cream soup and frozen baileys with incredible chocolate and geez, i dont even know. everything so beautiful you wanted to photograph it and the waitresses come with the plates in coordinated timing. they pour the wine for you and you had new silverware for every course. just imagine all this in a fashion modern setting restaurant. incredible.
26.11.2005 after vals I returned to zurich and decided to spend the rest of the day there while angela and vanessa went on to basel. I would meet them later to catch the train back to paris. i went on a search for the chagall stained glass in one of the cathedrals there but instead just got a pretty thourough tour of zurich. the city was all lit up for christmas with all the main streets strung up with different patterns of hanging white light. very nice. I stumbled upon some random small cathedral with music coming from it and when I went inside at there altar was a complete symphony orchestra playing the nicest classical music i have ever heard. i had stumbled on a chirstmas concert of tchaikovsky and really listening to such a big orchestra in such a small church was incredible. they finished and people clapped and then they all paraded out down the middle to a standing ovation. after that i wandered the city some more and walked through some parks and other stuff. so christmasy you wouldn’t believe it. i found some place where they had bonfires going in the courtyard of this eighteenth century museum and the building was all lit up in projected blue with white stars and then red in the passageways. in the middle of the courtyard they were playing some game where they take metal boxes and slide them on ice to try to get them through a hole at the other end of the court. think bowling but on ice and with bonfires, metal boxes instead of bowling balls and austrians, all under snow. pretty cool. sadly after that i had to leave austria and caught the late train to basel to meet up with vanessa and angela. I met a cool girl on the train who is going to be studying in spain in the spring so I may have someone to visit if and when I go there.
but yeah, the train ride back to paris was surreal. i met the girls at the train station in basel in this room straight from the shining with like two other people in it. one a bum and the other some lady who was handing out random candy. We got on the train early and there was absolutely nobody on it and angela was sick and hallucinating. they added a whole second train to ours with a huge bang and then we set off in the middle of the night. Right away we knew we were in france because the ticketman was no longer friendly and the people looked grey. well, i guess that was the grey seats because nobody else was in the car. we walked down the train to see if anyone else was there and right when i looked into one of the private rooms I see these people doing something strange and the lights went out. wierd. pitch black. vanessa screams. the lights come back on and the curtains are closed and she starts running back to our seats, I follow here. the train stops. a group of gypsies came on and they were carrying this baby like it was a two month onld but it was really long and lanky. they seemed to revere it like something from rosemary’s baby or something. then the light went off again because it was night and night trains let people sleep. Now the baby is creepily wimpering and some guy starts making strange half guttural half chanting sounds in his sleep (or not). we were so happy to arrive in paris however tired and get off that stinking train.
after three days and a doctor’s appointment in paris…. rome!
that’s next, exciting right, riiight.
outline- lock myself out of my apartment, go to switzerland, return, go to rome…
the following are e-mails that i sent to whoever about what i was doing, basically telling what went on in the last few weeks… they may not make complete sense… yeah
19.11.2005 anyways, i had a terrible day... locked myself out of the apartment and vanessa is in switzerland. i cant get back in until they send me the keys and they couldnt send them today because basically they suck so maybe i will miss the best parts of the swiss trip... a locksmith costs a thousand euros on the weekend and the only other option is to have a fireman come; use a ladder and break the window!!! otherwise if it doesnt get sent till monday i guess a locksmith then is like eighty euros. anyways, i locked myself out taking the trash down so i had only the clothes on my back, no wallet, no jacket, no keys, no nothing basically. my neighbors helped me and we called all around tryiing to get a key (leasing agent, super, etc etc) and then they lent me a sweater and a jacket five euros and a handful of metro tickets and sent me off to search for anne gaelle, whom i couldnt call becausde i dont know her number by memeory... today really sucked, and i left all the lights on and the tv and there is a new leak in the bathroom that who knows, may flood the house by the time i get back in!!! and yesterday was terrible too, end of the project;.
21.11.2005 update... my amazing neighbor called her mom and a locksmith is going to come tonight at 530 to try and open the door. i really hope he can becuause otherwise i am in the shit some more. also, i had been planning on going to suisse tonight or very early in the morning tonight but apparantly tomorrow there is some kind of social demonstration and only like one in four trains will be running!!! pretty awesome, i cant believe my increasingly bad timing. you know you say it all happens for a reason but it seems me trying to do something nice is resulting into huge problems for me, hmmm- i stay for the weekend to help in projet long when all but one other american left and i get left with a huge mess in the apartment that was hardly mine so after doing all the dishes i decide to take out the trash and what luck, the only time i have been alone in this city (without my roommate i mean) i lock my keys in my apt and am stuck outside my door with jeans a t-shirt and very luckily shoes, no wallet, phone, phone numbers, money, metro passes, watch etc etc etc. so i knocked on my neighbors door whom until then i had never spoken to and their little daughter opens the door and her mom gets all scared because she sees me at the door with her young daughter and she hadnt heard the knock. so i explained my situation and they gave me a sweater and jacket, five euros and a handful of metro passes and sent me out to find anne gaelle, whom i couldnt call becausde i dont know her number by memeory. so i spent saturday night at anne gaelles and last night with sylvain, the project leader, and he made me dinner and we watched some bad bruce willis movie in french and then i slept on the floor and now i am in studio and i have talked to my neighbnor and she called her mom who knows a locksmith who will come at 530 in the afternoon to open my door, i cannot wait, i hope it works out well because you never know with these crazy french keys. oh weell, i will find out then i guess.
23.11.2005 so i got to switzerland finally. spent the day alone exploring and lookign for architecture in basel yesterday and today we were in luzern and bern then back to luzern for a concert. should be very cool in some modern concert hall. i am writing you from the zentrum paul klee in bern which is an amazing building that seems to grow out of the ground accepting light from huge windows facing west. the façade’s profile basically looks like two and a half sss connected. pretty amazing and the details are so well done it just seems perfect…
25.11.2005 we spent thanksgiving day ln an austrian town close the border of switzerland looking at some of the most beautiful architecture (modern) i have ever seen. we had thanksgiving dinner in an italian restaurant in saint gallens. we drank red wine and gave thanksgiving analogs (what we are thankful for) and then walked around in the first snow of the season. the snow here is amazingly powdery and you can catch snowflakes that look like the ones we used to make in kindergarten. tonight we are at the vals thermal baths and i think i have found my favorite place on earth. high in a swiss valley in a stone building, all kinds of pools in different rooms with steam rooms and cold plunges and a warm bath that is part inside part outside. i cant believe i get to be here. now i am pondering whether i should pay for an expensive dinner everyone is having in a design restaurant here. i really want to ut it is very very expensive. worth it, hmmm. well see i guess…
26.11.2005 so yeah, remeber that life changing architecture thing... or maybe i hadnt told you about that but we spent friday night at the vals thermal baths and it was pretty much the most amazing architctural encounter of my life. basically changed the way i look at the world, while softening my skin. haha. it was so incredible, the entire place is made from stone quarried from the mountains less than a mile away and there all these different soaking pools. there are two saunas, nude and clothed, you can use your imagination for that one, and then there is a hot bath and an ice plunge. the center of the room is a tepid bath (with blue square skylights) and then all the volumes around it contain some kind of experiental room. a contemporary music chanmber where you lie down on a stone pallent and listen to music and then a rose water pool and then a shower chamber with all these didfferent heads so it is like water downpor on your body and then to the left the cold plunge. then there was this room that you enter the water then follow a half submerged tunnel into this small perfectly square chamber with a two or three story ceiling designed to echo the sound inside. we would go in there and sing or make creepy chanting sounds and it would echo like a choir of a thousand people, and make your voice sound a amazing. so incredible. if you made the note right with a few other people you could actually hear the waves in the sound. and then, the highlight (as if those werent enough) you enter this one pool and follow it outside and immediately you get an immense view of the sky and craggy snow-covered peaks. the snow is falling down and the steam is rising up and you just feel at peace with all this rugged beauty around you. the place is so strange, it is one of the few architecture works that seem to connect with your soul, others including peter zumthor's kunsthaus in bregenz austria... it is so simple and elegant, sophistacated while at the same time primal. i cannot believe we got to go there.
friday night too was an amazing dinner. i basically tested my credit limit on this trip because the hotel at the baths for the one night and the dinner were very expensive, but worth it. dinner was four, five or six courses and each meal looked like a complete work of art. we started with a "gift from the chef" and then they brought the cold starter. after that the warm starter then the main dish then the pre dessert and then the dessert. there actually was one more but i cant remember. we had some amazing almond cream soup and frozen baileys with incredible chocolate and geez, i dont even know. everything so beautiful you wanted to photograph it and the waitresses come with the plates in coordinated timing. they pour the wine for you and you had new silverware for every course. just imagine all this in a fashion modern setting restaurant. incredible.
26.11.2005 after vals I returned to zurich and decided to spend the rest of the day there while angela and vanessa went on to basel. I would meet them later to catch the train back to paris. i went on a search for the chagall stained glass in one of the cathedrals there but instead just got a pretty thourough tour of zurich. the city was all lit up for christmas with all the main streets strung up with different patterns of hanging white light. very nice. I stumbled upon some random small cathedral with music coming from it and when I went inside at there altar was a complete symphony orchestra playing the nicest classical music i have ever heard. i had stumbled on a chirstmas concert of tchaikovsky and really listening to such a big orchestra in such a small church was incredible. they finished and people clapped and then they all paraded out down the middle to a standing ovation. after that i wandered the city some more and walked through some parks and other stuff. so christmasy you wouldn’t believe it. i found some place where they had bonfires going in the courtyard of this eighteenth century museum and the building was all lit up in projected blue with white stars and then red in the passageways. in the middle of the courtyard they were playing some game where they take metal boxes and slide them on ice to try to get them through a hole at the other end of the court. think bowling but on ice and with bonfires, metal boxes instead of bowling balls and austrians, all under snow. pretty cool. sadly after that i had to leave austria and caught the late train to basel to meet up with vanessa and angela. I met a cool girl on the train who is going to be studying in spain in the spring so I may have someone to visit if and when I go there.
but yeah, the train ride back to paris was surreal. i met the girls at the train station in basel in this room straight from the shining with like two other people in it. one a bum and the other some lady who was handing out random candy. We got on the train early and there was absolutely nobody on it and angela was sick and hallucinating. they added a whole second train to ours with a huge bang and then we set off in the middle of the night. Right away we knew we were in france because the ticketman was no longer friendly and the people looked grey. well, i guess that was the grey seats because nobody else was in the car. we walked down the train to see if anyone else was there and right when i looked into one of the private rooms I see these people doing something strange and the lights went out. wierd. pitch black. vanessa screams. the lights come back on and the curtains are closed and she starts running back to our seats, I follow here. the train stops. a group of gypsies came on and they were carrying this baby like it was a two month onld but it was really long and lanky. they seemed to revere it like something from rosemary’s baby or something. then the light went off again because it was night and night trains let people sleep. Now the baby is creepily wimpering and some guy starts making strange half guttural half chanting sounds in his sleep (or not). we were so happy to arrive in paris however tired and get off that stinking train.
after three days and a doctor’s appointment in paris…. rome!
that’s next, exciting right, riiight.
posted by Andrew at 3:54:00 PM
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