Switzerland is not a small country

It's a small town. At least if you live there. On a glorious excursion conducted entirely via public transit with my relatives Gottfried and Rosemarie, we encountered someone they knew everywhere we went. The bus, the train. A town an hour away. Hands were shaken, greetings exchanged. I was introduced as the Californian. This elicited smiles. Everyone inquired after everyone else's relatives. On our roughly 12-hour journey, through Lucerne, Interlaken, into the foothills of the Alps, this continued with astounding regularity. I suppose it's practically a pun to talk about anything occurring like clockwork in Switzerland. Nonetheless. What would it be like, I wonder, to live in a place that is so small. The tops of the mountains are regularly obscured by the clouds. The lanscape dips and soars, as does the dialect.

Having spent only about four days there, I still feel certain that it's almost impossible that Switzerland will ever join the EU. Not, as is widely supposed, because their are loath to give up their independence, their isolation, their neutrality. Nor out of snobbishness. No, I think it is partly due to a strong sense of tradition - 700 years of continuous civilization and general prosperity are enough to make anyone wary of something as newfangled as the EU. But perhaps even more than that, I think they wouldn't want to give up their close-knitness. They've seen Paree, and they'd like to stay down on the farm. It's not provincial. But it's at times pastoral, and decidedly cosy.

A Supposedly Romantic Thing Which I Did All By Myself

Neuschwanstein castle (New Swan Stone, for the curious) is perhaps the most popular tourist destination in Germany, and easily the most famous castle in the world. So I suppose I was asking for it, in a way, but it seemed ridiculous to live in Munich so long and not go.

So, there I was, sitting on the train Monday morning, horrified by the hordes of noisy, nasal USAmerican tourists, and bemused by my horror. Who do I think I am, repulsed by my fellow countrywomen and -men? But there I was, as I sometimes find myself when confronted with Americans abroad, hiding my book so they wouldn't see it was English. Because then they would talk to me. Somehow, they always want to talk. The novelty of meeting a fellow American abroad seems to astound them as much as it appals me.

When I arrived, there was a three and a half hour wait for the next English tour, a four hour wait for the next German tour, and a two hour wait for the next audio guide tour. Was it available in English? No? German? No? Italian? Rusty, but it'll have to do.

I spent an hour rowing myself around the nearby Alpsee in a small wooden boat. I got some gorgeous blisters, and it was very, very quiet, and wonderfully solitary out in the middle. A large chunk of the freshly-developed antipathy and misanthropy melted away.

I walked up the hill (c. 20 minutes?) to the castle, catching up to and passing one of the horse-drawn carriages on the way (walking = faster and free!).

The tour lasted, I believe, just under half an hour. We were herded about like exceptionally dumb cattle, and chastised if we attempted to take pictures. The major advantage of being on the Italian tour is that everyone tried to take pictures anyway. Italian lackadaisicality battled German hideboundness for about 25 minutes. In general, the Germans won.

What interested me the most was the competitiveness of it all - the pushing and shoving to get on trains, buses. We all wanted our share of beauty, glamour, romance, and we were bound and determined to get it. The cut-throat pursuit of pleasure.

I feel I am being misrepresented.

re: density and vacuousness

"...margaret was saying that the unique value of paintings is in their ability to do what photographs cannot do, in the same way that the unique value of the novel lies in its ability to do what films cannot do."

I think the fault lies with the plural. I did not mean to argue that paintings or novels were better than films or photos, respectively. Nor that some ideas or topics belong to or are even best expressed by any particular form. Rather, I was musing whether the modern value of these seemingly out-dated and old-fashioned art forms, having been surpassed in the pursuit of "realism" (in the popular imagination if not in point of fact), is that through a sort of non-literal interpretation of something (mood, moment, manatee), a different way of seeing things is made manifest. Is this what all good art does? Probably, yes. But the point, the point being that a great novel is essentially a novel, and not a film. That a film adaptation of a great novel will never be able to express the same essence as that novel. (I tip my hat to Milan Kundera's Immortality for addressing this exact question.) And, though it is less often attempted, vice versa. Of course there are excellent photos and mediocre novels. Taken as read. However, a great work seems to me to have something in it that links it, I would suggest inextricably, to its form.

quote of the day*

"I assure you, only the world's least-interesting men read Maxim."
- Seth Stevenson, "The Most Interesting Man in the World," for Slate.com



*I promise not to keep this up indefinitely. I promise I may or may not keep this promise.

anti-quote of the day*

" 'Feminism' had come to seem, well...just the teeniest bit tiresome."
- Terry Castle, quote of the day on DoubleX

Why is everyone so damned intent on taking the joy out of feminism? I know it's trendy, but don't they know how much fun feminism is? Certainly Terry Castle seems aware of the pressing necessity for it still, the deep injustices that it tries to address, draw attention to, remedy. But the light, the also-necessary brightness, the ability to highlight the absurdities of patriarchy, masculinity, femininity, heteronormativity, the invaluable license to laugh at the strictures that terrified and straight-jacketed generations before us. It's invigorating! It's exciting! It's so wholly necessary! Like a telescope looking both into and out at society, history, culture, feminism allows us to focus on things that before had at best been vague blurs. It is equally relevant to micro- and macrocosmic ideas, issues, plans, designs. It makes me use these cheesy metaphors!

I agree with the point that certain strains of academic feminism can become staid, crippling, insular, largely irrelevant. But why does Castle avoid the liberating and embracing notion that feminism is for everybody?


*also not a daily feature

you can't say that about my Freundsprache

"The German tongue. Fleshy, warped, spit-spraying, purplish and cruel...I sensed a deathly power in the language. I wanted to speak it well, use it as a charm, a protective device. The more I shrank from learning actual words, rules and pronunciation, the more important it seemed that I go forward. What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation. But the basic sounds defeated me, the harsh spurting northerness of the words and syllables, the command delivery. Something happened between the back of my tongue and the roof of my mouth that made a mockery of my attempts to sound German words."
- Don DeLillo, White Noise

I know this is the popular opinion in the U.S., easily found among people who have never heard German, except by American actors in Hollywood movies. But I don't find it to be a harsh language. I think there is far more of an emotional/historical memory at work than anything else.

dream, dream, dream

really? she could be a supreme court justice? Wow. We should be so lucky. But we probably won't.