Friday, March 30, 2012
Pomerania

The opportunity to go to Straalsund for the day comes up, so I take it. Stralsund is a medieval town on the Baltic, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. To do so, I have to board the train at Bad Doberan and take it to Rostock, then wait an hour for the train going towards Sassnitz, the northernmost point in Germany. Having to change at Rostock and wait gives me the chance to make a flying tour of the town, whose only place of interest when I was here last (and then not much) was the Bernstein Museum, devoted to amber, which is plentiful in the Eastern Baltic. (Bernstein is the German word for amber.)

Nothing much has changed. The streets have high-flown names --Konrad Adenauer Platz, Leibniz, Georg Bucher, Thomas Mann, and Schiller -Strasses --but the reality is pedestrian. I walk along Rosa Luxemburg Strasse, named after the fiery German Communist leader of the 1920s, passing Pension Stadtperle ("Pearl of the City"). It is anything but, this large fraying building that has seen better days: at 18 Euros a night its clientele cannot be too choosy.

Near the Stadtperle I spy several political stickers plastered onto a light post. The day before in Bad Doberan I saw a young skinhead wearing a black leather jacket with the message Gegen Nazis ("Against Nazis") on the back. One of the stickers takes the same line, depicting a fist smashing a swastika. Another is a variation on the theme, featuring a photograph of an attractive young woman at a demonstration wearing a hooded sweatshirt, fist in the air, presumably shouting the words below the photo "... endlich pragmatische Politik machen! ("an end to pragmatic politics!") -- Antifaschistische Aktion ("Antifascist Action").

Across the street from the train station I see a young man dressed in Goth style, black razored hair, long black coat over black t-shirt and pants, tucked into black leather lace-up boots. Identifying oneself as Goth or antifascist is a way to to stand out from the dreary reality of Rostock, to express with the few means available, a quarrel with the majority's conformity. I wonder whether I would not do likewise if I were young and lived here.

Fortunately, I have to leave Rostock to catch my 12:30 p.m. train to Stralsund, which soon arrives, trains in East Germany being just as efficient as in the West. After finding a seat, I settle down for a a ride through the green countryside. Copses of trees break up the landscape, providing interest, and the ride of almost an hour passes pleasantly. At Ribnitz-Darmstadt, I cross the old border between Mecklenburg in the west and Pomerania to its east. A short time later, I leave the train at Stralsund and enter a world so different from Rostock, I have might have arrived in Sweden. With its well-kept streets, attractive facades and cobblestoned streets, Stralsund is stunning.

The town is a way station on the way to the islands of Rugen and Hiddensee, summer resorts. Like them, Stralsund has a long history, and benefited by the establishment of monasteries and convents, which feature the same red brick Gothic architecture I saw in Bad Doberan. Stralsund's monastic buildings and its churches have been well restored however, and current archaeological excavations are unearthing artifacts from the period of monastic activity as well, in anticipation of the building of a museum. Investment has led to commercial development --Stralsund has many pleasant shops and restaurants-- but for the present, the town has the right balance of culture and commerce. I walk to the harbor, and can see Rugen Island with its chalk cliffs, national park and seashore across the water, as well as the new suspension bridge connecting it to the mainland. Hiddensee Island, where dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann made his home, is close by.

It is a broad vista. And when the sun shines, as it does today, it casts a gentle light, the kind of light Vermeer loved to paint into his pictures, a pearly northern light. As was the case when I traveled here by train earlier in the day, the sky is no longer part of the landscape, it is the center of attention. Whether on the train, passing green field after green field under a fortress of clouds, or looking up from Stralsund's streets, or out to Rugen across the harbor, the sky cannot be denied.

March 29, 2012
Bad Doberan and Kropelin

"When we first came to Gross Siemen", Edda tells me as we drive to Berlin, "everyone was very friendly. This was after unification. But after a while, people began to change their attitude towards people from the West. They thought we were all coming to rob them. They don't have the same values we do."

We spend the day in Berlin: Edda is part of a local organization that wants to preserve Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's manor houses --there are two thousand of them-- and to create a "Garden route" that will attract visitors with an interest in those near the Baltic. The Minister for the Mecklenburg state has arranged for the Federal Minister into whose mandate parks and gardens fall to join the meeting, which is in the Mecklenburg State offices in Berlin, near the Tiergarten. This is a long drive for those eighty people who attend, driving two or more hours for the audience.

Which is what the meeting turns out to be. The meeting starts at seven thirty in the evening: The Minister, a Bavarian, talks about building roads and pats himself on the back for all he has done to automate Mecklenburg's Baltic coast further. It is basically a one-man show, and there is little time for questions. Anyway, the Federal Minister has left by then, further frustrating the attendees.

I have, meanwhile, gone to a concert in the Kammersaal of the Berlin Philharmonic's new hall, a chamber orchestra performance of seven songs by Schoenberg, and Mahler's Sixth Symphony. The cuts in arts funding have led to concert ensembles performing the works of orchestral composers in small-group versions, in a nod to the changed concept, tonight's event is called "Mini Mahler". The "Orchestra Mini" is led by a talented British conductor in his twenties, Jooz Gale. In contrast to Vienna's Musikverein, the new Berlin Philharmonic hall is of spare, modern construction, with the Kammersaal designed for performance in the round. This brings the performers into closer contact with the audience, which sits in the hall with none of the formality of Vienna's faithful. It might be a movie audience in Manhattan: gay and straight couples hold hands, and everyone sits informally. The twenty or so microphones hanging over the performers' heads are clearly visible --as is the G-string worn by the soprano during the Schoenberg song recital. During the Mahler, watching the young percussionist handle the many instruments which he must quickly take up and put down quickly, is fascinating . All the players are young adults, another concession to the budgetary realities: they cannot command the fees of Berliner Philharmonic members. Nevertheless it is a great concert, and speaks well of the cadre of young instrumentalists in Berlin.

I rush to meet Edda in the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel across the street, and we set out. We start our drive back at eleven p.m. and the roads are empty, but it is still a long drive. When we approach Rostock, we are waylaid by two trucks and their escort vehicles, carrying wind turbines, moving slowly and deliberately through the night. There is a low crescent moon hanging over the sky, but clouds are moving in, and the weather is windy. We make it back to Gross Siemen by two a.m.

The next day I drive with Edda and Lisi to Bad Doberan,. Edda's husband Dieter has his office in Bad Doberan, on Goethestrasse, and Lisi goes to school at the other end of the town. I have four hours on my own in this town, which was originally only a Cistercian monastery, founded in 1171. The town became a spa when in 1793, the Duke of Mecklenburg created a resort to take the waters. Bad Doberan at one time had the dubious claim of being the first town in Germany to grant Adolf Hitler, an Austrian, honorary German citizenship, although in 2011 evidence proving another town Rosenkopf, did so somewhat earlier, took that distinction away.

The central meeting place in the town, the Kamp, is a pleasant green in front of which a neoclassic building that once belonged to the Mayor, the Burgemeister. The town's narrow streets radiate from the Kamp, with Goethestrasse, where Dieter works, on one side, and the ruins of the Cistercian abbey on the other. The red brick Gothic church, the Munster, is the town church, and fully renovated. It is a characterized by straight, soaring high arches, also in red brick, with only contrasting white stone with a bit of brown border to break up the brick. The red brick church style is unique to the Christian churches built across the Baltic from Denmark to Estonia, These churches were built to withstand onslaught, and seeing them, I cannot help remembering the ancient prayer:

A furore normanorum libera nos Domine
("From the fury of the Norsemen, deliver us, Lord).

The more recent onslaught on the people of the North German Plain was that of the totalitarian system put in place by the Soviet Union's agents after World War II, which lasted until 1992, when West and East Germany were unified. However, the people I observe in Bad Doberan and nearby Kropelin still have something of the stamp of the era, when neighbors spied on neighbors and lived in fear of being spied on themselves, or sought to avoid being caught up in politics altogether. In Berlin it is possible to visit the museum of the East German Secret Police (the "Stasi"), where files were kept on every East German citizen, and many East Germans visit to find out what was put in their individual file. In Bad Doberan the people have a determined, but untrusting look. Everyone is business-like, but not overly friendly.

In the afternoon Dieter picks me up and we go to Kropelin with Lisi, who needs to get a health insurance card from her doctor. Her doctor, a man in his early forties, is the son of a West German diplomat and grew up all over the world. However, the family were aristocrats from Mecklenburg (his ancestor was knighted for saving the life of King Charles XII in the battle of Poltrava in 1709, which marks the decline of Swedish power and the rise of Russian). He returned to Kropelin to live, preferring a more sedate life, closer to his family's roots.

After unification, a number of these families returned outright, or began negotiations with the unified German government's representatives in Mecklenburg to recover their properties. The two thousand extant manor houses in Mecklenburg are mainly the patrimony of the aristocratic families that once dominated the region, which remained agricultural and continues to be so. People to work the large estates were available throughout much of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's history, serfdom being abolished only in 1820. Vorpommern is Germany for Pomerania, and where the little dogs come from. This part of the province was actually under Swedish control from 1645-1815 following the Peace of Westphalia, which created the nation-state system we are familiar with today. With all these changes in control, it is not at all unusual for people here to bear Russian, Swedish or Polish names, along with German, given Mecklenburg's history.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012
From Frankfurt to Plattland

This morning I leave Frankfurt behind and head for Rostock, in the former German Democratic Republic ("GDR"), as East Germany was known during the days of Communist rule. My train started in Stuttgart at 5:45 a.m., passing Karlsruhe, Heidelberg and Darmstadt in Germany's West, and going on to Frankfurt, Marburg, Kassel, Gottingen, Hanover and Hamburg on the Baltic sea. From Hamburg, the train's route turns West, passing Schwerin and Butzow before arriving in Rostock at 3:32 p.m.. From Rostock it continues East to Stralsund, not far from Rugen Island and its principal town, Sassnitz. South from Stralsund there is a train to Szczecin in Poland, which used to be known as Stettin, when it was German.

I share a compartment with a middle-aged woman from Schwerin, returning there after visiting her son in Frankfurt for four days. She speaks about as much English as I do German, so we cannot have an extended conversation, but she is friendly. After Hamburg, when we are in the vicinity of Schwerin she volunteers that we are now in the former East Germany, which prompts me to ask her what she thinks of Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor from there.

"I like her," she says definitely. She goes on to tell me that she thinks that "the Greeks took advantage of the Germans", but that she wants Germany to remain in the European Union. Her name is Kirsten and she works for as an administrator in an office in Schwerin. When I offer her my Financial Times to take home, she accepts it, saying she will give it to her husband. She pulls out a magazine about homeopathic medicine to give me in return, which I accept. It is a free exchange across the barrier of words.

Edda Schutte, the chatelaine of Grosse Siemen, an estate about thirty minutes from Rostock in Western Pomerania, recognizes me when I get off the train. I was there with my husband and a friend from Switzerland the year after Edda and her husband Dieter bought the property and decided to turn it into a family house cum guest accommodation. That was about nine years ago.

When I get out of the car I am greeted by the family dogs, a wire-haired dachshund and a wire-haired setter, both friendly and lively. Walking through the large front door, I see how beautiful the house has become again. Edda and Dieter are Hamburg natives, but the possibility of buying a large property in the East after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 tempted them. They have raised their four children here, taking on the burden of restoring what had been a derelict property and making it into a modern family home, preserving all the original features. The three eldest are either preparing for the entrance exams for university, or already enrolled. Their youngest, Lise, is at home, one year away from her entrance exams.

The property of Grosse Siemen was so large when Edda and Dieter bought it that they were able to sell parts off to farmers in the area who wanted to extend their acreage. Indeed, as we drive on the local road, farmers can be seen attending to horses in paddocks. Farmers also use the land for growing produce. Edda maintains the rose garden for which Grosse Siemen is famous, with several hundred rose varieties on almost 30 hectares. The trees on Grosse Siemen are ancient, being mentioned in an inventory done in 1768. The website advertises several organized events held on the property during the summer: a "Rose Day" when the grounds are open to the public; and two evenings of "Son et Lumiere" --not technologically-driven spectacles of light and sound, but evening walks by torchlight with classical music.

Idyllic as it may appear, being in the East is less comfortable than life in the West of Germany in important ways: the better teachers in local schools leave for jobs in Hamburg, leaving the less talented behind. WiFi was available in the village only recently: the Schuttes have only had service for two months: mobile broadband is some time away. The world of Eastern Europe Patrick Leigh Fermor described so vividly in "A Time Of Gifts" still has its traces here. When you are this far away from everything, even if you are prosperous relative to others in the area, as the Schuttes are, you must entertain yourself. Accordingly, the library at Grosse Siemen is enormous, as befits the manor house of a highly-educated family. The voice of Cesaria Evora, the late Cape Verdean singer, wafts over the first floor, borne by a modern sound system, but otherwise, the house is a fly in amber.

Rostock, Wismar and Stralsund are all in the vicinity of Grosse Siemen, Hanseatic trading cities. The Hanseatic League was a flexible alliance of trading cities lying near the Baltic Sea whose origins began with the founding in 1159 of Lubeck, the shipbuilding town where Nobel laureate in literature Thomas Mann was born. Beleaguered by pirates, Lubeck, whose shipbuilding industry made it wealthy, banded together with other cities to maximize trading opportunities with Russia when Kiev was its capital; and to protect goods from Swedish marauders. The origins of the German names of many Poles and Russians lie in this trading alliance, as traders established bases in Russian territory and remained there.

The city called Danzig before the Second World War was also a Hanseatic city. It became part of Poland at the war's end and is now called Gdansk. This shipbuilding city was where Lech Walesa joined with Pope John Paul II to bring down the government of General Jaruzelski, the Soviet-era leader of Communist Poland. However it had been part of Germany until the end of the First World War, when as part of the Versailles treaty, Germany was forced to acquiesce in Polish demands for an outlet to the sea. Seventy percent of Germany's province of West Prussia, in which Danzig lay, was absorbed into Poland.

More significantly for history, by giving Poland a port on the Baltic, Germany's remaining territory in West Prussia was cut off from East Prussia. After the Second World War, East Prussia was divided between the Poland and Lithuania, although the Soviet Union annexed then-Koenigsberg and renamed it Kaliningrad. Thereby present-day Russia established for itself a port on the Baltic that never freezes over and that it uses to maintain its Baltic Navy. This Hanseatic city was heavily bombed by Allied planes in 1945 before the annexation, leading to an estimated 300,000 civilian deaths, compounded by the Soviet annexation, whose goal was the expulsion of the majority ethnic German population. At the end of the war mainly only women and children were left. Horst, of whom I spoke when writing of Frankfurt, was one of those children. These ghosts have not all gone away.

March 26, 2012
New Families

H.G. returned to Frankfurt to look after his parents in their old age. When he returned, he was reunited with an old friend, a man twenty years older, a successful textile designer, Horst. Horst was born in Koenigsberg, East Prussia, an ancient outpost of the German empire (it was founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1255), until the Second World War, when it became Russian. It is geographically isolated from the mainland of Russia, lying between Poland and Russia. It was heavily bombed during the Second World War and in 1945 it was invaded by the then Soviet Union, which forced out the remaining German population. The philosopher Emmanuel Kant was born there.

Horst was an orphan of the war, who was raised by a German woman who left Koenigsberg and brought him to West Germany. Despite his lack of advantages, Horst succeeded in becoming a highly paid luxury textile designer, living a splendid life. Generous, he was surrounded by friends whom he loved to entertain, laying on silver, crystal and porcelain on a groaning table set for merry holiday parties.

In his sixties he faced retirement without having saved for it, and his fortunes slipped, although his friends stood by him. He had no family save his friends. He was a mentor to the son of one of them, a woman who had lost her husband. In all things he was a loyal gentleman, and the change in his financial situation did not alter that fact.

In his seventieth year he lost his voice: he was a smoker, and so it was not surprising that he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which was in the fourth stage. He had ceased to contribute to the health insurance system some years before, as Germany's health system did not adjust for the fall in his income. So when he became ill, he could not be accepted as a patient by any doctor accepting health insurance. H.G. took him to a doctor and paid him cash for the visit and arranged for Horst to be re-entered in the health insurance rolls. This required payment of all the moneys not paid into the system during the years Horst did not contribute. Horst was admitted back into the system just when he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

H.G. was simultaneously working for the electrical company and acting as Horst's care manager, filling out forms, making the phone calls, going with Horst to his appointments for chemotherapy. Horst wanted every possible treatment that might help him live longer, but at one point the doctors told him that there were no more options for treatment that would significantly prolong his life. He could continue to receive chemotherapy in the hospital, although it would be of limited duration: he could go home and come to the hospital for chemotherapy, or he could go into hospice. Ultimately, he decided to go to hospice, where he died peacefully at the end of February 2012.

In the German system everyone has health insurance, but there is a public and a private health care system. Government health care involves the primary care doctor acting as gatekeeper for specialist care: the wait for an appointment takes several weeks. Patients paying privately for care are seen immediately. Those on government health care have paid as little as ten Euros every month as their contribution, although at one point the government required that individuals pay a ten Euro co-payment per visit, a measure that provoked street protests. The measure was eventually revoked.

Nevertheless, the model of universal health care is sagging under the weight of its structure. Despite public outrage, the social safety net will be stretched, and health care will cost more. While in Italy and Austria I saw many smokers; there were fewer in Germany, except among non-ethnic German groups, like immigrants from Turkey, "where smoking is a national duty", as a Turkish man said to me once. The terrible fact is that in the modern era individuals must contemplate the likely probability that they will meet with a terminal illness the treatment for which is necessarily tiered by economic factors. While better treatments may be available for many cancers, they will be too expensive to be made widely available by government-sponsored health plans.

The paradox is that before the Second World War there was little that could be done about cancer, except to accept its death sentence. Family members had responsibility for palliating the suffering of the sick individual with more or less help from a local physician. Today, with extended family life attenuated by geographic factors, and even the nuclear family less viable, more and more people will not have family members to count on in their last days. The problem of giving compassionate care to the dying is one the social safety net provided by the government does not contemplate. It therefore becomes more incumbent on individuals unrelated by consanguinity to develop the networks to care for each other, one by one, even as the old structure perdure.

H.G. has been changed by his experience of caring for Horst. He worked previously in the "gift industry", which as the European economy slows, is no longer as lucrative. However he could return to it, or find work at a large financial services firm, which abound in Frankfurt. He considers his future, (he will be fifty in August 2012), and his feeling of obligation to his parents and their need for a caregiver nearby. Ultimately, he wonders whether it would not be best for him to take his administrative skills and utilize them providing care for people, including his parents, who are overwhelmed by the tasks involved in making the health care system work for them, replicating what he did for Horst voluntarily as a means of making some money, but also doing good.

The middle-man between the health care system and the individual is emerging as a necessary factor in the provision of health care. The loving care of one individual for another will never be replaced by a middle-man, but without a middle-man, the sick individual risks being victimized not just by his illness, but by a modern health care system whose crucial details only those who work regularly in it grasp.

New families are created by these networks of patients, caregivers, care managers and caretakers. The individual extended family will be a rare survivor of the traditional social grouping. Simultaneously, even the nuclear family is being replaced by the re-constituted family, as individuals dissolve their marriages and enter into other relationships, with or without new children, and with or without marriage licenses or civil partnership certificates. As individuals age, more and more individuals will create "ad hoc" structures that are constructively families, although the actual connection is one of sympathy, not bloodline.

Which leads to the question: "How are individuals to pursue their destinies most happily under such circumstances?" The answer can only be through the strong social relationships that are legally informal but that replace the traditional extended or nuclear family most of us grew up with. Europe and the United States face the same problem, although "Old Europe" (as George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld once referred to the continent) is talking about it openly, unencumbered by the "focus on the family" that is a lightning rod for our own political debates, characterized as they are by a high degree of intolerance of differing views.

March 26, 2012
Bad English

When I visited, I asked Imre, my friend in Vienna, whether he thought that English was still the lingua franca in Europe. He travels frequently, lecturing on psychotherapy, and training future therapists who come to Vienna from all over the world.

"No," he said, "English is not the universal language. Bad English is."

Asked to explain what he meant, he told of a training session he did with a group of students learning how to use hypnosis to help patients.

The protocol of the session was that one of the students would volunteer or be chosen as a subject and hypnotized. Once it was clear the subject was under hypnosis, students should "throw something in", following up Imre's initial suggestions with theirs. Accordingly, a female student offered herself as a hypnotic subject and was put under.

A few moments after the subject entered hypnotic trance, Imre asked her to raise her arm and hold it up until he told her to lower it. A few seconds later, a ball point pen was tossed at the arm of the subject. --One of the students had understood Imre's instruction to "throw something in" literally.

The anecdote reminds me that Western Europe is a polyglot. While Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, English, German are officially spoken, immigrants from the East bring their muttersprach ("mother tongue") with them and add to the mix. Saturday night, walking across one of Frankfort's bridges, I am trying to find where the bus stop to Sudfriedhof, where H.G. lives, is. There is a lot of new construction in Frankfurt: by the bridge, where there is supposed to be a bus stop, as well. I see an older woman walking quickly in my direction and ask her, in German, for directions to the halt fur Autobus. She replies with difficulty in German, and I am surprised, although from her reaction she has understood my question: She is asking me to follow her. As we walk, I ask her what her native language is: she is Croatian. I imagine that she came to Germany as a result of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Balkan Wars that followed.

Yesterday, a sunny Sunday, I meet more Balkan exiles: I join friends of H.G.s to drive to Rheingau, where Riesling and Sylvaner white wine grapes are grown and pressed into wine. The driver of the car is a Romanian, who works in hotel management; His wife, who works in a medical office, is Croatian. They are pleasant enough, although his comment over lunch that he does not like people of African descent, obliges me to tell him not to generalize. In response he tells me that in his experience, people of African descent never tip, unlike those of European descent.

He also adds that he does not like the Roma, the nomadic people whose origins lie in the expulsion, during the Monghol conquest, of peoples native to the Indian sub-Continent. He dislikes the fact that many people assume, when they see his Romanian passport, that he is Roma. He also dislikes that measures to force Roma to register with the police in the district where they camp are denounced as "human rights violations" by their advocates. (In Europe, anyone resident in a neighborhood must register their address with the local precinct, and whenever he moves out of the precinct, with the new police station.) He is a man of strong dislikes.

Returning from the drive to the Rheingau, walking in Frankfort along the Main River the first day of daylight savings time in Europe, the park along the water is jammed with revelers drinking beer from plastic mugs. Some of them are presumably Muslim because they are smoking hookahs. Alcohol is forbidden to Muslims by the Koran, but these young, olive-skinned men lying on the grass with their buddies (no women present) are not devout. Turkish probably (Germany's largest Muslim population is from Turkey), they represent yet another Balkan language taking root in Western Europe.

Earlier in the day, when driving back to Frankfurt, we listened to AFN Eagle Radio at 98.7 on the FM dial. This is the radio station of the American military base at Wiesbaden. The music playing on the Eagle is country-western, in a language the soldiers on base understand. Wiesbaden and Heidelberg are the last two American bases remaining in Germany, although Heidelberg is being closed and merged with Wiesbaden. The United States, which has maintained bases in Germany since the end of the Second World War, will not have a military presence in Germany when Wiesbaden closes.

In Frankfurt, the mayoral race has been decided. Social Democrat Peter Feldman has defeated Christian Democrat Boris Rhein, by fifteen percentage points, ending the hold of Angela Merkel's party on the city. Only thirty-five percent of those eligible to vote did so.

Change is in the air.

March 24, 2012
Frankfurt-Am-Main

I get to the Vienna train station an hour early to be sure that carrying my load I encounter no difficulties. I easily walk from the Konig von Ungarn to the Stephansdomplatz and take line U-3 on the U-Bahn to Westbahnhof, from where my train to Frankfurt will depart at 10:40 a.m. A few minutes after I arrive, the track, Number 6, is announced. I walk to the platform and sit next to a young woman with her three year old son. There is a red Vienna city commuter train waiting, and only until it leaves can another train come in. I ask the woman whether this is the platform for the train to Frankfurt, she says "Yes", and I sit down and wait.

The Vienna city train leaves and at about 10:00 a.m. a train comes into the station: I see a car marked First Class, Car Number 26 for seat Number 12 by the window. The young woman next to me says "This is the train", and I go towards Car Number 26 where I have a reservation. (All my travel on trains as far as the Spanish border is booked first class, as if you are over twenty-five, it is Eurail policy to sell only First Class tickets.)

I get on the train and quickly look for the section in the middle of the car where I can put my knapsack. I see a couple with lots of luggage has already commandeered a spot for a large suitcase, and has several more to place. I put my knapsack next to theirs then look around for my seat. Curiously, I can find no seat number twelve. I ask a conductor, who tells me to go into the next half of the car.

I waste a few minutes this way until someone asks to look at my ticket. It turns out that I am on the train to Budapest, which is two minutes from departing. With a cry, I hurtle back to where my backpack is, carrying my two smaller backpacks with me. In one motion, I am able to drag the knapsack off its shelf and throw it onto one of my shoulders, pushing myself down the aisle of the train car wailing like a banshee. Passengers bound for Budapest train get out of my way, and I make it to the door, but am so encumbered I cannot reach the green button that will open it. A kind Japanese passenger, seeing my distress, jumps up from his seat and goes to the door, presing the "Door open" button for me. I stagger out of the car, which leaves right after, and wonder what happened to the mother and son, who are no where to be seen.

Magdalena, an elfin woman in her fifties with closely-cropped white hair and piercing blue eyes, lives in Nuremberg. Over twenty years she ran a bathroom design business with her husband and raised two children, now at University. Two years ago she divorced her husband, but they remain friends. The burden of working together with her husband became too much, and she wanted to break free. She trained as a psychotherapist over the last two years and now offers therapy at her home in the countryside outside Nuremberg. She also offers the first floor of her house as a place where clients may, if they choose, spend time to get away from the cares that brought them for therapy in the first place.

I ask her what she thinks of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and she makes a face. She has no interest in politics, thinks it all dirty, while perceiving that the future for the next generation of Germans will be difficult. She blames some of this on an inner selfishness that creates a desire for things that cannot be afforded except by credit. Fundamentally, this is about the inability of most people to live with themselves, something she helps her clients do, by getting them to see how they are at least partly responsible for their unhappiness. Once this responsibility is accepted, she believes, the clients can also make the changes that will make them happier.

I ask her about whether German families are as emotionally close at they seem to me to be, in comparison with those in the United States, whose members are often separated by considerable physical distance, if not psychological. She says that her parents' generation was indeed one of closely-knit families, but that the post-War Generation and their children are not. She sees the computer-driven artifacts of modernity --for example, the ubiquitous hand-held device, which is called a "handy" in the German-speaking world-- as contributing to the alienation.

We have this conversation on the train from Vienna to Nuremberg, where she leaves the train. The train is a robust confirmation of Germany's modernity. The train is swift, silent, well-equipped with every amenity, including the car I am sitting in, a perfect oasis for those who do not want to hear others talking to others in the car or on cell phones. It is not too different from traveling on AMTRAK in the United States, except everything has a contemporary sheen, which makes for a very comfortable traveling experience, as the countryside floats by, the flat green fields not too different from parts of the United States. The small houses and low-rise apartment buildings in the towns are not too different either, although the houses are white-walled and roofs are tiled with slate.

Frankfort is a modern city, with high rises befitting Germany's financial center. The subway is like New York's: crowded with a variety of passengers from a range of ethnic groups, and not especially clean. It gets me to my friend H.G.'s apartment, in a well-appointed high-rise district again, ethnically diverse. The white structures all feature large terraces and large picture windows. This is not a particularly affluent area, but it is near Frankfort center and well-served by public transportation.

The city is in the middle of a mayoral race runoff, with baby-faced Boris Rhein, the conservative Christian Democratic candidate, opposing Peter Feldman, the Social Democrat candidate. Rhein has the support of the popular outgoing Mayor, Petra Roth, who has been Mayor since 1995. Roth is credited with modernizing the airport, making the city bicycle-friendly, and supporting the growth of the Frankourt Stock Exchange, which last year made a bid to buy the New York Stock Exchange. (It was rebuffed.) Rhein is young --he turned forty in January-- and held the paradoxical title of "Minister of the Interior and Sport" in the state of Hesse-Darmstadt. Peter Feldman is a city councilman who has served Frankfurt for twenty-three years. Turnout was low during the first round, with only thirty-seven percent of eligible voters casting a ballot. If Rhein loses, it will also be viewed as a setback for Angela Merkel, like Rhein, a Christian Democrat. Notwithstanding the Chancellor's prestige, when she came to campaign for Rhein, she was greeted by a hail of boos.

***

When I told someone that I was going to Frankfurt in between Vienna and Rostock, the reaction was unenthusiastic: if anyone knows anything about Frankfurt, it is that it has one of the biggest airports in Europe, and the largest in Germany. No one speaks of the city as a cultural capital: it does not have an underground art scene like Berlin, and it does not have the beautiful buildings Munich does: its historic Gothic buildings were heavily bombed during the Second World War. It developed on one bank of the Main River, with Sachsenhausen, its sister-city, on the other.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the author of the poem "Faust" on which all later works are based, was born in Frankfurt-am-Main. He also wrote a famous novel in letters --"The Sorrows of Young Werther"-- which ends with the eponymous hero's suicide. It created a sensation across Europe, heralding the ascendancy of German Romanticism. On the strength of the fame of "Werther", Goethe was invited to Weimar by its ruler, Grand Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, whose chief adviser he became, having trained as a lawyer before he took up literature. He is one of the giants of world literature and his productive life a repudiation of the idea that genius always has elements of pathology. One of the largest squares in Frankfurt center is Goetheplatz, where a large statue of the city's favorite son harkens back to when Frankfurt was the duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.

However, to sum up Frankfurt this way would be to miss the larger perspective: Frankfurt is the financial capital of Germany, and as such, in the midst of the crisis over the European Union's future and the fate of the Euro, it may be the most powerful city in Europe. It is home to the Germany's Federal Reserve, the Bundesbank, and of the European Central Bank ("ECB"). Formerly a Frenchman, Jean-Claude Trichet ran it, and now an Italian, Mario Draghi does. Its headquarters, in Theaterplatz, next to the Willy Brandt underground subway stop (named after a Cold War Chancellor of Germany), are at present in an elegant brownstone on the square: it will soon move to a new building on the east side of the city.

For the moment, though, the ECB stands on Theaterplatz, with a giant curved "E" --meant to represent the Euro currency that was ushered in by the Treaty of Maastricht--dominating the space. Until recently, that is, when an encampment of "Occupy Frankfurt" (kindred with "Occupy Wall Street" and other expressions of anti-globalization and capitalism), took up residence. Walking over to the "Schauspiel" --a hall used for public debate on topics of the day, a young protester approaches me, speaking German too rapidly for me to understand, and handing me a leaflet protesting the "noise pollution" created by the expansion of the airport Mayor Roth supported. I explain that I am an American, I speak little German, but thank him for his speech. I notice that he has shaved off his eyebrows and replaced them with finely drawn, rather attractive, tiny tatoos of stars, a bit of personal adornment that makes an individual statement, although what it is, I cannot say.

The announcement for an upcoming meeting at the Schauspiel advertises that a discussion will take place on the topic of the present state of the German-French relationship. Daniel Cohn-Bendit --a French-born German politician once known as "Danny the Red" for his leftist political views, now a member of the Green Party-- will speak; along with Pascale Hugues, a French journalist who lives in Berlin; and, not least, Volker Schlondorff, the filmmaker of "The Tin Drum", and part of the New German Cinema of the 1960s, with Werner Maria Fassbender, Wim Wenders and Warner Herzog.

From its origins as the European Coal and Steel Community, then the European Union dreamed of by its architect, Jean Monnet, France and Germany were the linchpins of the European Union, and its most powerful members. France and Germany worked together on projects: Airbus, the aeronautics giant, and American Boeing's greatest rival, is a French-German consortium. Germany and France made financial policy for the Union's other members, while not stricly following the rules themselves. For example, when, in the nineties, the percentage of France's debt relative to its gross national product grew larger than the Union's stated rules permitted, Germany looked the other way, while insisting that other member states trim their budgets to comply with the spending limits.

That there is discord between the two countries is not merely a matter of the lack of chemistry between France's president Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Faced with Greece's near default on its sovereign debt obligations in early March, it was only ECB chariman Mario Draghi's creation of a borrowing facility that would give European banks the funds to maintain liquidity for three years at a one percent interest rate that staved off a Greek bankruptcy and perhaps that of the Euro.

France's banks are the largest holders of Greek debt, and France's economy in this election year (the first round is a few weeks away, on April 22) is not rebounding. Germany, meanwhile, continues to produce goods and services the world wants to buy, although its economy, too, is slower. With twenty-seven countries now part of the Euro, and one of them, Poland, attempting to position itself as a new partner of Germany, France thinks it is no longer the factor it was in German policy considerations. The title of the Schauspiel public meeting, taken from a scandalous French song written by, Serge Gainsbourg, sums up the change in what was once the essential relationship between what were the two most powerful countries in the European Union: "Je t'Aime ...Moi Non Plus"

Which means, "I Love You...Me Neither".

Thursday, March 22, 2012
Last Things

Yesterday I thought I was going to Bratislava, Slovakia for the day, but more tasks than I could fit into one afternoon required me to cancel the plan and work in the morning. I felt at loose ends, thinking that I had "mastered" Vienna, and it was only left for me to go to the Leopold Museum for the "Klimt: Up Close and Personal" show. This is the 150th anniversary of Klimt's birth, so it is "all Klimt, all the time" in Vienna this year.. --I certainly enjoy his masterworks, but I would have preferred to see the Durer drawing of a hare at the Albertinga. That was impossible because the museum does not show a permanent colleciton and was exhibiting 19th and 20th century works. What to do instead?

I had an article from a book, "The Gentle Art Of Walking", an assortment of articles from The New York Times, compiled thirty years ago. I had made a photocopy of one, "Walking Tour In Old Vienna", by George W. Oakes, who began writing for the Travel Section of the Times in 1961, and continued to do so until his death in 1965

The article, only two and a half pages, including a small map highlighting the stops, proved me wrong in my pride. I spent the entire day walking, completing both walks. Having done so, perhaps now I can say I know Vienna a little.

I began with the hall of the Teutonic Knights, formed in the Crusades, and after, soldiers in the service of princes of German-speaking lands. The Maltese Cross is emblazoned on one of the dorrways, although I don't know whether I use the name correctly, strictly speaking. From there I entered Saint Stephen's Cathedral, the Stefansdom, and took the elevator to the top of the dome. Here are the most spectacular view of Vienna, but of particular interest to me was the "Pummerin", the cathedral bell, cast from the cannonballs of the defeated Turks. It is possible to bend a 50 cent Euro piece into a souvenir of the Pummerin, which I did for luck on my journey.

From there I walked through many small passageways, as Viennese did centuries ago. Not far away was the University quarter and the Jesuit Church, which rivals Il Gesu in Rome, which I saw last week. Further on I passed Rotenturmstrasse, where Johannes Brahms would take his meals. it ought to be said here that the great composer was popular with the Viennese, unlike Mozart and Schubert, who were not, in the view of music-lovers and historians of music, given the recognition they deserved by the Viennese.

The reasons for Vienna's aversion to Mozart and Schubert were revealed to me by my friend Imre a few days ago. As to Mozart, he explained, the composer was a heavy gambler and debt-ridden, as well as an impulsive, unpleasant fellow to be around. Schubert had another defect: he was a great sexual athlete. This led to the syphillis from which he died --but not before he infected some thirty women. Situations alter cases, as the counsel for the prosecution --or defense--might say.

I went on to visit the Greek Orthodox Church and the Danube canal. This is after all, the city where Strauss wrote "The Beautiful Blue Danube" --although "Danube" is "Donau" in German. Lastly, I went off the map to try to find the Palais Ephrussi, the home of the Jewish Viennese bankers who lost everything to the Nazis during the Second World War, haven risen to spectacular heights in Paris and Rome through the Ephrussi Banks located in each.

The original palace was badly destroyed during the war, and was sold to the Austrian government by the family, which was paid $55,000 for it in the 1950s. Today it is the headquarters of an Austrian bank. After stumbling around two other impressive looking buildings on the Doctor Karl Luger section of the Ringstrasse, I stand in front of a building that houses an Italian cafe and a MacDonalds on each side of a heavy wooden double door. I push open one of them and enter an imposing narrow entrance way, high-ceilinged, the walls lined in red and black marble. I proceed through the foyer into an atrium around which i see the floors of an elegant 19th century palace. There is a young woman, dressed casually with a colorful scarf around her head, sitting at a bare reception desk, and no one else visible. When I ask here whether I am standing inside the Palais Ephrussi, she nods her head, "Yes". She knows about the book, and "Yes", many people come to see.

Around the corner, up to the middle of the block --to which the Palais extends-- there is a modern, glass-windowed bookstore featuring, in German --"The Hare With Amber Eyes", ceramicist Edmund de Waal's book about his family, the Ephrussis. There is an old photograph of the original Palais Ephrussi that forms part of the poster for the book on sale within, but the decoration on the topmost part of the building features classical Greek statues of women --perhaps meant to be metaphorical guardians of the Ephrussi interests-- and I am wondering whether I have really found the Palais. The bookseller confirms that the building is the Palais Ephrussi, and when, as I leave I say that if my German were better, I would buy the book, like a good "buchhandlung" --bookseller-- he points to English copies on the table..

A personal note: when I was first in Vienna --for only a night and a day twenty years ago, I came upon a rare book and print shop near the Augustinerkirche and the Albertina. I bought a print of a "durchhaus" --one of those narrow little roofed streets that are extensions of attached houses, and common to medieval Vienna.. It was possible, through a "durchhaus", to avoid Turkish cannon during the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Battle of Vienna in 1683, I bought the print to remind me of Vienna's winding streets, and their mystery. Wandering around the city, I could not find it, and wondered how I got the idea the city was smaller than it actually is. Yesterday, I stumbled on the shop, "Wolfrum Buchhandlung", near the Augustinerkirche and the Albertina. I had been circling around it all week.

The Muses Reign: the Staatsoper

It was so nice to go to an opera tonight where the singers were fat In the new world of international opera, being slender is important so the singer attracts physically, not just vocally. However, a singer who slims down can lose some of the warm tone that makes a voice spectacular. "I'll take a singer with a few pounds around the diaphragm over a thin singer any day", a conductor once told me.

The audience at tonight's performance at the Staatsoper of the Dresden version of Wagner's "Tannhauser" had the opportunity to evaluate the truth of that in minute detail during the four hour performance, which began at six p.m. Bertrand de Billy, the French conductor, led an ensemble of Peter Seiffert in the title role, irene Theorin making her Statsoper debut as Venus, Petra Maria Schnitzer as Elizabeth, and French baritone Ludovic Tezier as Wolfram. There was a real Tannhauser, a poet-courtier at the court of Frederick II of Austria from 1230-1246. He may have been a Teutonic knight who fought in the Fifth Crusade from 1223-1231. His legend became part of Western European culture in 1430, and by 1450 ballads were being written about his trip to the Venusberg, the subterranean home of the goddess Venus, with whom he lived a year.

Wagner's opera begins with Tannhauser begging Venus to release him from the Venusberg, where he has come to tire of venereal pleasures and long for Eisenach, his homeland . Venus lets him go and Tannhauser returns to Eisenach and the fellowship of his fellow "minnesingers" --minstrel-poets-- where he is reunited with Elizabeth, a pure and good young woman who loved him. Upon his return to Eisenach and meeting with Elizabeth Tannhauser realizes he must atone for the sins he committed in the Venusberg. He makes a pilgrimage to Rome, but his effort at atonement is rebuffed by Pope Urban IV, who says Tannhauser could no more atone than his pilgrim's staff could sprout green leaves. Despairing, returning to Eisenach again, he tells Wolfram, another "minnesinger" that he will return to the Venusberg. He then learns that Elizabeth, who never condemned him and who prayed for his redemption, has died. As he cries out "Holy Elizabeth, pray for me!"--green leaves sprout on his pilgrim's staff, a confirmation of his redemption.

The opera was originally staged in medieval dress. The opera's plot is all very oblique unless you are interested in the folklore and mythology of the German-speaking peoples, which few of us are. Thus, it would seem that Tannhauser could not be a compelling evening of opera excepting for the presence of a star singer. I have sat through performances of Tannhauser at the Metropolitan Opera and fought to keep my eyes open. Tonight's performance gave the lie to all that, for several reasons, in addition to the casting

First, the Staatsoper is a small theatre, about one thousand seats. (The Metropolitan Opera has four thousand.) It is a beautiful opera house, destroyed by Allied bombs during the Second World War, but rebuilt immediately after. The stage is small enough not to dwarf singers, and conversely, when you have a singer the size of Peter Seiffert, with a voice accompanied by singers his vocal equals, it makes for an extraordinary evening.

Peter Seiffert must be six feet six and two hundred and fifty pounds. I have seen him before, and at this date he weighs more than he ever has. A handsome man with a mane of dark brown hair who smiles easily when taking his bows and meeting fans at the stage door he is a friendly, expansive man. His voice is that of a "heldentenor" --the biggest voice in the tenor range. It is clear and bright, still youthful although Seiffert is fifty-seven. In contrast, the beautiful and melancholy voice of Ben Heppner, the Canadian "heldentenor" a year younger than Seiffert, has begun to show signs of wear, leading to sudden withdrawal from performance commitments made years in advance. Seiffert, in contrast, is blessed to have such a healthy instrument.

Heppner and Seiffert are both big men, as "heldentenors" and Wagnerian sopranos usually are. --Seeing Heppner sing Tristan to Deborah Voigt as Isolde before she lost weight was like seeing two hippotamuses stand up on their hind legs and touch paws-- but Seiffert is even taller than Heppner. He would dominate any stage, but at the Staatsoper, he bestrides the boards like a Colossus. The production, in nineteenth century dress, is spare, featuring members of the chorus dressed as "Blackfriars" --Augustinian monks processing in pilgrimage---- beating themselves on the back with cords of rope in atonement for their sins. The medieval Augustinian monastery in Vienna is not far from the Staatsoper, so the reference would not be lost on much of the audience.

Another reason the Staatsoper is so enjoyable to attend is the way the audience conducts itself: Viennese go to the opera in their best clothes, which are nicer than most. The theatre sounds no chimes to tell operagoers there are only a ten minutes, then seven minutes, then four, as at the Metropolitan Opera, and there seem to be enough bathrooms not to make for anxious moments on the line. Seats in the highest tiers are not terribly expensive, and just as comfortable as in the parterre. Those behind the front row in the balconies have arm rests, and it is not considered bad manners to rest one's arms on the red velvet rest, which is a comfortable perch from which to see the stage. Opera glasses that actually work are rentable for two euros, and while the programs cost a few euros, it is also possible to buy just the brochure with production and cast credits --a nice souvenir.

There does not seem to be a bad seat in the house, which is white and gold, with the house lights conisting of an enormous lamp made of thousands of crystals affixed to the ceiling, and pairs of tulip-shaped lamps affixed to the front of every box at every tier of the house.

Despite the formality of their dress, the Viennese are enthusiastic in their appreciation of great singing. An individual tenor, baritone or bass particularly beloved by the Staatsoper public can be designated a "Kammersanger", while sopranos, mezzos. can be "Kammersangerin". A title originally conferred by kings and princes in German-speaking Europe, it is an honorific given a distinguished singer.

What really proves how devoted the Viennese are to the opera is the length of time of the applause at the end of "Tannhauser". The audience stayed and applauded the cast for twenty minutes. Several bouquets of flowers were thrown Peter Seiffert's way, as well as when Petra Maria Schnitzer came out. The crowd of opera fans politely waiting at the stage door were all dressed soberly and no one seemed to have a screw loose, which has not been my experience at opera stage doors past, although tonight I did meet a woman who told me that she had lobbied successfully to have hunting declared part of Austria's cultural heritage by UNESCO.

March 20, 2012
Rhinestones

Vienna is Swarovski rhinestones on pencils and pens and computers, a fondness for sparkle being "echt" Viennese, as is a discriminating personal turnout. Vienna also home to some of the finest art in the Western world. More darkly, Vienna has also been a home for displaced persons and stateless refugees thrown there by the wars of the twentieth century.

It was from the end of World War II until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the border between what was called "the Iron Curtain", on the other side of which was "the Free World". When a combined alliance of American, Soviet and English troops defeated Hitler and the Nazis, the leaders of the troops divided up Vienna into zones they controlled. The then Soviet Union was determined to maintain control over all those territories to the west of Russia it had wrested from the Nazis, which became Soviet satellites. The West drew the line of Soviet control at the Austrian border. As a result, until the borders were closed by Soviet military action, refugees from the East flooded into Austria, hoping to find asylum.

Individuals who were Czech, Slovenian, Slovakian, Rumanian, Hungarian --all formerly provinces of the Austro-Hungarian empire-- sought refuge in Vienna, seeking to pass as Austrians using forged passports. Carol Reed's film, "The Third Man" explores the murky world of Vienna under the post-war Allied Occupation and deals directly with the issue of these stateless persons. Orson Welles plays Harry Lime, a trader in tainted vaccines wanted by the police for his crimes against humanity, Alida Valli the Czech mistress for whom he has obtained a forged Austrian passport. Trevor Howard is Major Calloway, the English head of sector who keeps warning to no good effect Holly Martins, a writer of pulp westerns and a fraternity brother of Lime's played by Joseph Cotten, who to gets mixed up investigating Lime's death. The film, shot in black and white, was shot in Vienna and features a number of famous Vienna landmarks: Lime's apartment in the Palais Pallavicini at Josephplatz 5, the ferris wheel in the Prater amusement park where Lime's evil is finally fully revealed to Martins. The Stefansdom, a ruin which was bombed by Allied planes (who also destroyed Vienna's opera house) is also seen in the film. The film was released in 1949.

To give a sense of how close the Soviet border was, It is 35 miles to Bratislava in Slovakia, 38 miles to Sopron in Hungary and 68 miles to Brno in then Czechoslovakia. At the time, all were under Soviet control. This close proximity to the Soviet sphere of influence gave Austrians an uneasy feeling, forcing them into an ambiguous relationship with West and East that has never entirely been shaken off. During the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, the Austrians refused American military planes overflight rights, although Austria was a member of NATO. The Austrians, who twice in their history fought off another invading empire, the Turkish, have perhaps a greater appreciation of the delicate balance between a friendly relationship with your natural alles and a too-close relationship that threatens their enemies. Vienna mocked the Islamic religion of the Turks it defeated by eating "croissants", breakfast breads made in the shape of Islam's crescent icon, even as they incorporated Ottoman luxury into the decor of their homes. At the time the trend began, however, the Ottomans posed no threat, their empire declining steadily to collapse at the end of the First World War. Nonetheless, theroughout the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Viennese were well aware again, of the border between the safety of the world they knew, and the threat beyond.

Even as the Ottoman Empire's might was fading, it remained a powerful influence in the Balkans: Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Romania, Slovenia and Turkey all had large Muslim populations and had been under Ottoman administration for centuries. The awareness of the Viennese of the potential threat from these regions --which they took over from the Ottomans gradually during the ninteenth century-- was pithily expressed in the common Viennese saying "The Balkans begin at the Rennweg", at Vienna's city limits. Indeed, the death blow was given to the Austro-Hungarian empire in one of the provinces inherited from the Ottomans by the Treaty of Vienna in 1878, Bosnia-Herzogovina, which was formally annexed to the empire in 1908. On June 28, 1914, the heir to Emperor Franz Joseph I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by the bullet of Laszlo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, and World War I began.

Interestingly, there was one more Austro-Hungarian emperor until the dynasty ended. Charles of Austria, great nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph I became Emperor of Austria on the 21st of November 1916. On the 30th of December 1916 he was crowned Apostolic King of Hungary, continuing the tradition of vesting the head of the Austrian state with the title emperor ("Kaiser"), while making the same person King of Hungary ("Konig"), or "K und K", as it was abbreviated at the time, an acommodation to Hungarian nationalism after the failed revolution of 1848.

Armistice Day, November 11, 1918 Charles, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia and Croatia,, of Galicia and Lodomeria, and the last monarch of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine, renounced political activity, but did not abdicate. He was ultimately forced into exile in Madeira, where he died on the first of April 1922, aged thirty four. He was beatified October 3, 2004 by Pope John Paul II in recognition of his firm commitment to ending the First World War and his fidelity to Catholic teaching. His wife, Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma remained in exile, unable to return to Austria on account of a ban on the return of Habsburgs born before april 10, 1919, a measure to prevent her becoming a rallying point for monarchists. She died on March 14, 1989, aged ninety-seven. Her funeral was held in Vienna, her heart buried next to Charles' in their family plot in Madeira.

March 19, 2012

Vienna

All is well at the hotel, my room has pale wood paneling,high ceilings and opens onto the inner courtyard of the hotel, which has been renovated since I was here twenty years ago, but lost none of its charm: After signing in, a staff member is deputized to show me both a room with a bath and a room with a shower from which I may choose. I notice that he is a Sri Lankan Tamil. He speaks his native language, German and English, which is fortunate for me, because without his assistance, I could not have started up the WiFi.

Tafelspitz is on the menu at the hotel restaurant, served by a young and personable Turkish waiter named Emre. While I do not recognize him as such, in another part of the restaurant a young woman dressed as an affluent Turkish Muslim woman would be in Turkey --headscarf in brightly flowered challis print, blouse and skirt to the floor to match--helps herself to the condiments tray.

The subject of immigration is controversial in Austria, as in much of Europe, and the United States. Austria has two right wing parties opposed to foreign immigration, even as immigrants take jobs as taxi drivers, cleaners, waiters --jobs Austrians prefer not to have. The country's present coalition government is a reflection of the indecision on immigration and other issues.

Austrians are often said by Germans to be less hard working, to be afflicted with "schlumperei", which makes them less dynamic. What I find is that "schlumperei" has its points: This morning I leave the Konig von Ungarn at 9:00 a.m. to get to the Musikverein, Vienna's premier concert hall, to buy tickets for concerts this week. Before leaving, I have asked for a peppermint tea to be served to me in the lounge adjoining the restaurant. A hot pot of tea, a cup and saucer, sweetners, napkin and spoon are brought to me on a silver tray.

On account of my rush to make it to and from the Musikverein before Imre, my Hungarian contact in Vienna, arrives, I drink only one cup and leave. I make it to the Musikverein, buy the tickets and return to the hotel at 10:15 a.m. My tea is still waiting for me. As the Tamil waiter, snappily dressed in a crisp white jacket with gold buttons, passes by, he smiles warmly at me, I almost persuade myself that the staff knew I was coming back, which is why they did not take it away. I certainly enjoy having it, and give thanks for "schlumperei".

Despite my travel from Italy to Austria, one more sign of European integration beyond agreement on measures of language proficiency reveals itself: both Italy and Austria observe the same convention about paying for coffee or a meal in a cafe or restaurant. When in Bologna, Manuel, seeing that I always handed money to servers and then stated how much I turned over to them, told me that I should say nothing. The reason being that the custom is that when you hand over money and mention the amount you hand over, it is taken to mean that you are paying the stated amount over and above the required sum as an additional appreciation for the service.

At the Hofburg I decide to have a chocolate and an apfel strudel before starting the tour. My bill is E8.40 and I hand over E10. As soon as I have done so, the waiter says "Danke schon", and I realize that he has assumed I intended to tip him E1.60. I could ask for the change, but it is too difficult for me to say what I would need to in German, and his English is not good. I resolve to be more careful in the future --what if I handed over a E50? --and take a sip of the hot milk chocolate, which has been topped with a swirl of fresh whipped heavy cream. It is perfect. I bite into the apple strudel: it is exactly the ticket. It is a small thing to be generous in return for such rewards.

I go to the Sisi Museum, devoted to the cult of Franz Josef's consort, Elilzabeth, the daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, known as "Sisi". She was married to Franz Josef at sixteen, when he was twenty-one. Ravishingly beautiful, with fine white skin, delicate features and build, she had an extraordinary mane of hair, which she grew to maximum length and dressed elaborately. She was a great leader of fashion in her youth, but grew more reclusive in her late thirties. After issuing the "Bad Ischl" ultimatum to Franz Josef (the reasons for which are undisclosed in the exhibit), she began a life of peregrination that continued until she was assassinated in Geneva by an Italian anarchist, originally intending to murder the Duke d'Orleans. Sisi was about to board the steamer back to Montreux when her killer stabbed her with a thin file that made a small hole in her clothing. The Empress refused to be deterred by her violent encounter and boarded the steamer, only to collapse shortly after. She died the next day. She was sixty-eight.

When she no longer thought herself beautfiul, Sisi refused to allow herself to be formally photographed. She was an energetic hiker, horsewoman and huntress, as well as an early proponent of using weights to build strength. She fasted on fruit to keep her figure, and wrote self-regarding poetry bewailing her tragic existence. It is difficult to evaluate her personality. Surely narcisstic, she endured great tragedies: the death of her eldest daughter whom she took on a trip in disregard of the dowager empress' advice, the suicide at Mayerling of Rudolf, her syphylltic son and Crown Prince. Yet, unlike the Princess de Castiglione, the other great 19th century beauty whose obsession with her looks devolved into paranoia and madness, there is something deeply willful about Sisi that inspires our sympathy. She found the environment of the court stifling, which is easy to understand. She was crowned empress at the age of sixteen, and as she matured she perceived the folly of her existence at court. Visiting the royal apartments and then the silver rooms after the museum, it is easy to get a sense of the "bird in a gilded cage" existence that was her lot.

The Hofburg is vast, as each Hapsburg emperor built his own apartments next to those of the previous. The imperial family and their relatives and retainers were housed within and each clan had its interests to defend, making intrigues rife. As each new imperial residence adjoined, but was not attached to the previous, there was no way of moving between the different camps without being seen, an obstacle to behind-the-scenes machinations. However, each of the palaces could be breached via the roofs, with the result that each camp's messengers frequently ascended secret staircases that led to the roofs to deliver messages without being observed by those who were not supposed to know of them.

"Once you have seen one palace, you have seen them all" is my general rule, and regrettably, it applies to the Hofburg. Room after room paneled with red brocatde, the doors white and decorated with gold, nothing on display hints at whatever inspired loyalty to the Austro-Hungarian dynasty. To understand, perhaps it is necessary to read Austrian writers, particularly Robert Musil, whose multi-volume "The Man Without Qualities" vividly characterizes the personality of a servant of the empire, the protagonist's father, a lawyer and counselor of the Emperor, whose complete acceptance of the status quo is sharply contrasted with his son's utter disillusionment.

Walking through the Silver Rooms, past vitrine after vitrine lined with white and gold imperial porcelain, passing in front of a room entirely devoted to gold plate, another chock-a-block with gold candelabra, there is little to inspire delight. Silent deference seems to be more of what the Hapsburg dynasty in its last days hoped for. As we know, it was not to be Perhaps this is what comes of having too many houses.

March 18, 2011
Bologna to Vienna

Arising early in anticipation of a 10:05 a.m. train to Mestre Station in Venice, there is time to go for a quick walk through the Piazza Maggiore and have a coffee. I pass Gelateria Neptuno, where the black cherry ice cream and the zuppa inglese flavors are even better than the whisky-flavored gelato I had in Rome or the pistachio in Florence.

Bologna abounds in cafes, each one boasting its unique way of making coffee drinks, some like "Caffe Terza" serving their product in elegant cups with special syrups available to create variations on a theme, others, providing simpler, cheaper, classic coffees: austere espressos, cappuccinos or macchiatos capped with perfect blasts of milky foam.

Bologna is known for its food, and deservedly. The pizza is crusted thinly and pizza makers might be artisans: I have a slice of pizza with potatoes and cheese, and one with zucchini the first night I arrive. On subsequent nights I dine at "Mariposa", an inexpensive restaurant whose one waitress wears a t-shirt that says "Make Food Not War". The tortellini stuffed with pumpkin and flavored with salvia in a pork and beef ragu is my last meal there my last night.

The train to Mestre is an express, modern, well-appointed, immaculate. Unfortunately, although I went to the Bologna station on Friday with Manuel, whose Italian at the highest grade of the uniform system with which Europe now measures fluency (one sign of successful European intergration); the clerk at the station fails to stamp the Eurail pass I presented to purchase my trip reservations. When the pleasant, blue-eyed conductor who looks at my ticket for Mestre spies the omission, he mumbles negatively, and I have the impression that I am going to be charged a separate first class ticket from Bologna to Mestre. I protest at the unfairness of being charged for the omission of the clerk to whom I presented the ticket in accordance with the instructions, and he lets me keep my reserved seat, although he advises that I have the ticket stamped at Mestre.

With only twenty-one minutes to get to the bus to Villach in Austria, my next stop, I spy the line at the ticket counter in Mestre with alarm. The line moves more quickly than I anticipated, and the clerk at the counter stamps my ticket, telling me that the Villach bus leaves across the street in front of the Hotel Plaza. The bus soon arrives, a double decker. The driver looks at my Eurail pass and my reservation and indicates that I ought to go upstairs. We stop in Udine and Vicenza: we are in Friuli, heading for the Austrian border.

The bus carries numerous Austrian passengers, as well as Slovakian, and even a large African man, who takes his seat next to me. Behind me are a mother and her two thee-year old boys, who scream, cry and kick the back of my chair. The smell is not the most pleasant. At Udine, a middle-aged Austrian woman, smiling ingratiatingly as Austrians often do, tells me to move from my seat. My ticket said seating was random, so I refuse to budge and reply that I have a first class ticket. The woman smiles again and says "First class is downstairs", but I am not moving. Perhaps the downstairs is full, so nothing doing. At this, there is lots of chatter in German around me, and eventually Udo, the driver, comes upstairs. He speaks some English, so I tell him that he told me to come upstairs, and that I have a first class Eurail pass. He tells me "No", that I have a second class reservation for the bus, and that I have an assigned seat in the back. I tell him that if it is open, I will move there. He says "No, forget about it." He goes back down the stairs and shortly, we are under way again, next stop Villach, Before that, passports will be checked at the border.

***

We are due to arrive in Villach at 2:50 p.m. An hour before the mountains surge up and we pass several dry river beds and a large stream whose teal green waters flow clearly and cold. The area is industrialized, with a gravel factories and other industrial buildings lined up alongside the dry river beds and near railroad bridges for transport of the stones. The temperature has dropped five degrees centigrade according to the digital thermometer inside the bus, and mist covers the top of the mountains, although forsythia and cherry blossoms are in bloom everywhere. Tall-spired village churches are visible in the near distance. We are near Resia, wherever that is.

The trees on the mountains are not like those in Tuscany, or Bologna. There farmers grow their crops on flatland, the monotonous landscape broken up by copses of slender birches. Here evergreens are the predominant treecover and skies are moody. A one-street town semi-circles an especially large cement factory, and smaller hamlets stand side-by-side with highways. We pass no farms, except abandoned ones. We go through several tunnels not especially wide for two lane passageways. Near Vilano there is another industrial complex, another almost dried-up river bed, and a village with a church and a bridge over the stream, nestled in the side of the mountain. We are passing La Foresta and the mountains rise higher. Power lines surround the train tracks: we are in Fella Est, where the sight of the "Autogrill" convenience store next to the gas station is strangely comforting because I stopped in one with Manuel on the road from Rome to Florence. There is no tourism here, although there are a few elementary slopes created for sledding starting not far from the bottom of the rises.

A few minutes later the sun, glinting off a series of higher slopes directly in front of us, emerges. We are an altitude of eight hundred meters. There is snow in the gutters: we are in the viciinity of Camporosso. The mountain passes are snowbound: we are approaching the Austrian border at Vilach. The temperature is now ten degrees Centigrade.

We arrive at the Austrian border, but the police are uninterested in checking the passports of bus riders, busying themselves instead with cars. We are waved through and enter Austria. It seems unkind to state it, but at once the roads look more well-maintained. As we approach Vilach, it is obvious that it is a good-sized town firmly in the stream of global commerce: there is an H&M, an Agip, an Interspar along with other "big box" stores. As we approach the center, it is clear that Vilach is well-organized, prettily circled by mountains. Near the Faaker See and the Ossien See, two lakes, it is not without points of interest.

The bus stops across the street from the railway station and Udo, hauls one piece of luggage after another into the hands of all those departing. (The bus will continue to Klagenfurt.) I tip him a Euro for handing me my bag --it's hard work, and I want to show my appreciation for his not making me move to my assigned seat. I hoist my backpack on and grab my two hand parcels -the smaller knapsack and a disposable bag with food for the journey, and make my way into the Hauptbahnhof. The train is already at the station and I find my first class compartment easily.

I enter the car only to catch sight of a sunburned man perhaps in his sixties who waves me in loudly. I bet he is drunk: I am correct. He is sitting in the single seat immediately in front of me. Once I sit down, he turns around and tries to engage me in conversation. "Ich sprache kein Deutsch. Lassen mich allein." I reply. It does not matter that I am not speaking correctly, it would make no difference. "Franzosich? Englisch?" he enquires craftily. He gets up and moves towards me, at which point I say "Polizei --jetzt". He holds his hands out towards me and mumbles "Want ppp-puss-y", but he walks away.

A few minutes later, a young woman wearing a raincoat over a dress, but also carrying a backpack, enters the car. The man walks over to her and again, tries to make conversation. She speaks to him sharply as she places her knapsack next to mine. Our eyes meet in agreement about the situation, she gestures to me to keep an eye on her knapsack and goes out to smoke a cigarette. Mr. Excitement is still mumbling out loud, now from another seat in the car. I leave the car and knock on the plexiglas door of the conductor's office. He speaks English, so I explain the situation fully. He and another conductor return to the car with me. The man does not have a ticket for the first class car, so they order him to leave, which he does, muttering under his breath all the while. The train sets out, and one of the conductors, amiably greets his passengers with "Gruss Gott" --"God Bless"-- the traditional Austrian hello, as he punches their tickets.

The train is well-appointed, but showing its age. Still, it is a good change after the bus with its smell and compressed seating. The train has picture windows, and I have plenty of room to spread out. The landscapes passing by outside the windows are agricultural, with plenty of whitewashed barns with slate roofs, as in Switzerland and Germany. "Impress" and "Fundermax" warehouses are part of the landscape, but their facades are graffiti-free and clean. Standing next to more traditional houses using various roof materials - tin, slate, industrial terra cotta-- are small apartment complexes of seven stories and two apartments each with terraces, whitewashed spanking white. We are near St. Veit an der Glan. In another valley, a tall, onion-domed church dominates a large cluster of farmhouses. In a more industrial area further on, Treibach-Althofen, freshly-cut lumber, unstripped of the bark, is neatly stacked in several large piles for placing in nearby boxcars later.

Three hours from Vienna, the journey east is going smoothly. Upon arrival I must go to the ticket window to buy a reservation for the 10:22 a.m. train to Frankfurt to avoid having to return there later in the week. After that, I can take a taxi to the Konig von Ungarn, the hotel I stayed in for a night in 1992, when I cut short my visit to Budapest with a group from the Council on Foreign Relations to play hooky with a presidential speechwriter who had already booked there and encouraged me to join him.

Der Konig von Ungarn (The King Of Hungary) is at 10 Schulerstrasse in the Innere Stadt, the city center. On its site Mozart wrote "The Magic Flute". Not that Vienna ever thanked him for it at the time: "The Magic Flute" had its premiere not in Vienna, but in Prague. Vienna has a reputation for being unkind to composers nurtured there: Mozart, Schubert, Mahler --it was only after their deaths that Vienna embraced them. Yet in despite of Vienna's neglect of its most famous and beloved genius, images of Mozart can be found everywhere in the center city --in the form of children's toys, marzipan, chocolates and trinkets, in all manner of shops catering to the tourist trade.

Der Konig von Ungarn is near the Stefansdom, the church dedicated to Saint Stephen that is the city's most famous. It is also near the Albertina, which houses the drawings collection of Grand Duke Albert, a nineteenth century relative of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz Josef II. The collection is centered around drawings by Dutch artists of the sixteenth century: Rembrandt, Ruysdael, Cuyp, and others. It was not open the day I visited Vienna in 1992, Museums close on Mondays, but even during the week I am here the Albertina might still be closed: it does not have a permanent collection on display, and I have been told it opens only when there is an exhibition.

I would also like to go to the Dorotheum, Vienna's best-known auction house. As a veteran of Galeries Drouot in Paris, an experience more like a livestock auction than what the large British auction houses put on, I am keen to see what a Viennese fine art auction would be like: blue-eyed dowagers elegantly dressed bidding on KPM porcelain from Berlin made in the 1920s; or on the rarest red Bottger porcelain from the 18th century (when the Chinese methods of production were first successfully imitated in Dresden)? Or edgy, thin men in all in black, bidding on Kokoschkas? To know, I will have to go.

Other than that, my only other commitments are to watch the Lippanzaners put through their paces at the Spanish Riding School Tuesday morning at ten a.m., and Wednesday night, to hear Tannhauser with Peter Seiffert in the title role. Also on Wednesday, a friend has arranged for me to have breakfast with his friends, Doris and Imre. Doris is Austrian, Imre is Hungarian. They know my Swiss friend Max through RAIDAG, the skating group for ice dancing established at the end of the Second World War to promote the new sport of ballroom dancing on skates among enthusiasts from countries who had been bitter enemies only a few years before.

And I would like to try tafelspitz, an Austrian speciality made of boiled beef. On my train journey I was given a copy of "Kurier" a newspaper which happened to publish listings of Vienna's top restaurants, taken from the Viennese equivalent of the Zagat Guide that started in the United States. Surely I can find decent tafelspitz in one of the restaurants on the lists.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Mafia

Friday afternoon, after visiting the Apple Store to figure out how to delete unnecessary e-mails and regain the capacity to receive new e-mails, Manuel and I go to the central train station in Bologna to make a reservation for my trip to Vienna on Sunday. I have a first class Eurail pass (first class is obligatory for those over twenty-five), but many European trains require a reservation in addition to a ticket, for which there is a charge.

I have two choices of travel: I can take an overnight train to Vienna leaving at eleven in the evening, arriving at Vienna at 8:30 a.m. If I want this I have to buy a sleeping accommodation, in addition to the twenty-one Euro reservation charge. For one hundred and five Euros I can have a private compartment, for about forty I can share a compartment with two other women. This is a direct train to Vienna.

In the alternative, I can take the train leaving at 10:05 a.m. on Sunday. This is not a direct train. I choose this train, because I want to see the countryside, and the connections intrigue me: I arrive in Mestre, the Venice train station at 11:21 a.m.; at 11:40 a.m. I take Bus #832 to the Hauptbahnhof of Villach in Austria, a three-hour journey that leaves me there at ten minutes of three p.m.. From Villach at 3:14 p.m. I take a train to Vienna that arrives at the Meidling station at 7:28 p.m. in the evening.

The mere idea of being in Venice works on me like a charm. I know I will not see Venice, that Mestre is a rather ugly station at the northernmost end of the lagoon, but I am susceptible. The "Corriere della Sera" says the weather will be a mixture of sun and clouds Sunday, but on a train it will be immaterial. My greater concern is whether WiFi will be available. I would do best to assume not, but that means that the e-books I downloaded will be unavailable. Which in turn means that I will need a book to read on the trip, which in turn means that I have to carry a book, which I had pledged not to do to keep the weight of my pack down. Having purchased a pair of driving shoes at the Prada outlet outside Florence, I have already started on the road to hell. I hope I can make it a bearable experience.

I write this outside of the Colazione da Bianca, a lovely tea room under a colonnade on one of Bologna's central shopping streets. Manuel has gone back to the Apple Store: the downloading of updates and adjustment of the core settings of his Macbook has not restored connectivity. Monday at two p.m. Manuel has a class for which the professor has required that students bring their laptops, so he is bound to get the computer working again.

We have tickets for the symphony at 8:30 p.m., a program of Bernstein and Dvorak given by Bologna's Symphony in the Teatro Massimo, not far from Manuel's apartment. There seems nothing to worry about, sitting here under the colonnade. I watch neatly dressed Bolognese take their evening stroll, "la passegiata": numerous middle-aged men walk by eating an ice cream cone, young men walking together, one arm over the other's shoulder, likewise pairs of young women. As in Rome, many, many people are on their cellphones, chatting busily away.

However, three men have stationed themselves in front of the tea parlor: they are undercover police. Five more are in and around two cars that brought three men having tea at a table with five female companions inside: Italian Senators. The force projected outside is to ward off would-be assassins from one of Italy's four crime syndicates.

The Mafia, which began as "The Black Hand", an association to protect peasants from marauders in the turbulent years when Italy was going from a collection of principalities to a unified nation, is best known because of its international reach, but the Camorra operates separately in Naples province, N'Dragheta in Calabria, and Sacra Corona Unita, in Apulia province in the heel of the boot.

Anyone who thinks these are minor players in Italian political life is out of touch with the reality of how far the organizations reach: last week, one of the news briefs in "The Italian Insider", a savvy broadsheet in English, reported matter-of-factly that a priest waging war against corruption in Sicily received a package containing the head of a dead dog, meant as a warning of the fate he could expect if he continued his efforts.

The Vatican is not immune from the threat of organized crime either. Unscrupulous, if not criminally active contractors have bilked the Holy See, overcharging for jobs billed at considerably lower prices outside the sovereign state. The Vatican's own bank, the Institute for Works of Religion, has, it is alleged, been used for money laundering by agents of crime syndicates posing as donors. Cardinal Bertone, the day-today administrator of the Vatican, and a favorite of Pope Benedict's, has been criticized for being insufficiently vigorous in weeding out malfeasance and fraud, a fact which may affect his chances in the apostolic succession race, now that Pope Benedict is showing signs of nearing the end of his reign. The Pope himself is more concerned with his forthcoming trip to Cuba and other Caribbean countries, leaving administration to Bertone, who seems disinclined to institute reforms that would make the Vatican impermeable to the bilge that is seeping the rest of Italy.

There was a Vatican bank scandal in 1978, when Banco Ambrosiano collapsed to the detriment of the Vatican, the bank's largest shareholder, which paid out 250 million dollars to defrauded depositors. The Vatican's status as a sovereign state means Italian authorities must try to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction against it when pursuing cases against organized crime in Italy linked to the Vatican.

And the fact is, organized crime's use of the Vatican for nefarious purposes is only one layer of the anti-corruption puzzle: Italy is a country where family associations trump associations of a civic or fraternal or professional or charitable nature. Francis Fukuyama described Italy as a "low social capital country", in contrast with, say Japan, or the United States. Rooting out organized crime is always going to be harder in a country where it is worse to turn in your murderous relatives than it is to shelter them. That, in a nutshell, is Italy's problem.

Florence and Bologna

North from the Meridionale While northern Italians will use the word Mezzogiorno ("Mid-day") to describe those living in the south, it is a derogatory term. it is more respectful to speak of people from the Meridionale, Rome and south. Indeed, driving to Florence for the day, through Umbria and then Tuscany, the rolling hills of the landscape announce the change of style, everything looks a bit more ordered. Arriving in Florence, the buildings lack the monumentality of Rome, but evince a greater sobriety. Florence, though is a tourist mecca, while Bologna is a largely untouristed provincial capital. In that lies its great appeal. the least of which is based on the seven entirely interconnected Renaissance churches, the tourist guidebooks write about. In fact, the whole city is one living expression of the early and middle Renaissance in architecture, its large public plazas pedestrianized, but even the outskirts well-kept. The pace of the city is comfortable: bicyclists move at a leisurely pace alongside cars and motorcycles that do the same. Bologna is home to the oldest university in Europe, a fact brought home by the sight of a young man and a young woman, both of whom wear the laurel crown honors graduates of one of the university's schools are given on graduation day. The city is grey and foggy in the winter, but with the advent of spring, the skies are clear and sunny. Manuel will complete his studies in ninety days. His apartment on one of Bologna's main shopping streets, a tiny two-and-a-half room garret has windows to Bologna's terracottaed roof in all directions. A lovely terrace provides a vision of rooftops and a comfortable place to eat in the warm months. The rent is six hundred fifty euros a month plus all utilities, making the total expense about eight hundred euros monthly. The rental is done on a four month basis, although Manuel could stay as long as eight years under the lease. He has put in a new bathroom and a new kitchen, doing all the work himself. He will either sell the kitchen to the landlord or take it with him and put it in storage, with the Italian Art Deco furniture he hopes to put in a house in the not too distant future. The question is, "What will the next ninety days bring?" His dream job would be as a brand manager or visual merchansier with an Itlian luxury jeweller or watchmarker or designer of fashion or housewares. His next best option would be the same, however, located elsewhere in Europe. His "safety" --the job he will have to take, if he cannot receive an offer from a luxury brand, is to work for a high-end designer of home furnishings, like "Arteimide", or "Poltrona Frau". This is related to the work he did before, interior design consulting. While pursuing his university degree, Manuel worked in the Czech Republic, assisting developers of old buldings converting them to apartments. He would design the layout and consult on the furnishings. It was interesting, but he wants to learn luxury brand management, with a view to creating his own luxury brand enterprise. The difficulty is that in Italy, getting a job often has more to do with who you know and who you are, than your talents. Every day Manuel has to do one thing to pursue a job in each of the three sectors open to him, in the hope that by June, he will have an offer. Personable, handsome and hard-working is not enough. Fancy people like him, but more as an adornment to a dinner party, than a potential employee for one of their companies. Turning the conversatio from social chatter to a networking opportunity is not for the faint-hearted. Aristocrats are well-versed in giving the brush-off to acquaintances they perceive to have overstepped the boundaries. Often they want gifts brought to them when Manuel accepts an invitation for drinks. This was made ridiculously clear when the mother of one of his friends, eyeing the beautiful Prada bag someone had on an earlier occasion brought their young hostess said, "Invite him again, so he can bring a bag for me!" The social cleavage is deep and difficult to surmount. Nothing seems to have changed much insofar as the old ways of doing business are concerned, and in not just the sphere of public corporations. The Vatican's public face, Cardinal Bertone, has been accused of being insufficiently vigilant against opportunistic "donors" using the Vatican bank to launder money; or against unscrupulous contractors who milk the Holy See when they do projects. Pope Benedict XVI has named the majority of the Cardinals eligible to vote at the next Papal Conclave; he is said to be in failing health, although a strenuous trip to the Caribbean is being planned. Meanwhile, the political class, breathing easier now that Italy's banks have been given three years of easy credut by the European Central Bank, are balking at Bank president Mario Monti's determination to see structural reorganization through. In Italy, just as the aristocratic class guards its prerogatives, so does the working: no one gives in. Will enough change happen in the next three years to avoid another, worse period of economic hardship? Magari, the Italians say. Roughly translated it is a word that means "May it be so.", and which often implies that it is wishful thinking to believe that it might.

La Dolce Vita

Our image of Rome --where Italians drive around in little cars, or on motorcycles, at all hours of the day and night-- was born with Fellini's La Dolce Vita, in which Marcello Mastroianni plays a jaded journalist pursuing his latest subject, Anita Ekberg, through Rome, ending at the Fontana di Trevi in the wee small hours. There they enter the fountain and the stately Miss Ekberg strides through the waters like a goddess, in a black and white off-the shoulder evening gown.

Today's Rome is still a place where cars are the dominant mode of transport. Parked everywhere and anywhere, violations rarely bring fines, as the size of Rome's police force makes ticketing illegal parking a low priority. There is public transportation: the Metropolitana --the underground-- is clean and swift. The train cars, orange and white inside, are pleasant enough. The problem is that the underground is not extensive enough to persuade Romans to give up their cars. Whenever an extension of the lines begins, it is often halted, due to the discovery of ruins. What is an archaeologist's dream is a commuter's nightmare. Romans without cars have to take buses to the Metropolitana: the buses are serviceable, if not exceptional. The transportation burden the average man bears daily explains why at night the town is silent, sheer exhaustion having overtaken the inhabitants after a full day spent fighting in traffic, whether as a driver, a rider or pedestrian. In contrast to the day, when Rome closes down, it depopulates: there are no twenty-four hour convenience stores, no "7-11s", no all-night newstands, only an all-night pharmacy, I am told. That explains why films shot here at night depict Rome's streets as desolate, as they indeed, are.

La Dolce Vita was shot at Cinecitta, the film studio on the outskirts of the city created in the 1920s and 30s. Mussolini recognized the propaganda value of the industry, which was, for a time, government owned. Today Cinecitta is a studio which can shoot a film, edit it, , enhance its sound effects and color. It is a privately-owned company now, which permits visitors to glimpse a bit of the process, through a series of exhibits that come under the heading Cinecitta Si Mostra

You take the Metropolitana in the direction of Anagnina to the Cinecitta station, which is fourteen stops from Termini. As you mount the stairs you are greeted by the one word, Cinecitta spelled out in aluminum letters in Art Deco type, the sign overhanging the entrance to the studio, exactly as it did in the glory days of Fellini, Visconti, de Sica and many others.

You pay your 10 Euros admission and are encouraged to "Follow The Red Carpet" --a strip of red paint about a yard wide. On display are the evening gown Anita Ekberg wore in La Dolce Vita, a dress Audrey Hepburn wore in "Roman Holiday", and a pair or costumes Elizabeth Taylor wore for "Cleopatra". A film called "Post", made by students at the film academy illustrates how technicians at Cinecitta enhance the visceral pleasures of a director's concept, taking the raw footage to be edited, sound mixed, color-balanced.

The highlight of the tour is a visit to the backlot. Martin Scorsese's "Gangs Of New York" was filmed at Cincecitta, the television serial "Rome" as well. The backlot contains the set of "Broadway" in New York as Scorses envisioned it. A bit further on is part of the set for "Rome", which evokes the brightly painted public buildings at the city's center, and the warren of alleys behind. The shops of sellers of wine and other foods are reconstructed faithfully, doorless, merchandise displayed on wooden shelves outside. Ostia, the port of Rome was represented by a lake conveniently found on the Cinecitta property, extends for more than one thousand acres. The same lake served as New York harbor during the shooting of "Gangs Of New York".

Exiting the backlot, on a lawn in front of one of the exhibit buildings a giant black head with a crown appears to emerge from the earth. This is "Venustia" one of the characters in Fellini's "Satyricon", his effort to convey the decadence of the empire that inspired Petronius' work.

In an exhibit called I Protagonisti footage of producers --from Dino di Laurentis ("The Bible"), to Carlo Ponti (Sophia Loren's husband); and film makers from Fellini to Sergio Leone speak of Cinecitta and the atmosphere of the studio. In one clip, two elderly filmmakers who came to Cincecittafrom Tuscany recollect the dreams of their youth: "We'll make films, or we'll kill ourselves!" Sergio Leone, the father of the "spaghetti western", who is seen driving along the Cinecitta backlot in his Silver Cloud Rolls Royce, describes the difference between the Italian and the American approach to filmmaking: The Americans are very logical, very methodical. If everyone is not in position, if one extra is missing, they won't hand you a sword. This wastes a lot of time. I prefer the Italian method."

Of course, the Italians consider themselves masters of improvisation, so the attitude is understandable. I can only smile to think of the pleasures Cincecitta has given the world, and wish it well.