James Lockhart Perry's Blog, page 6

St. Anton am Arlberg

In 1931, the future Nazi director Leni Riefenstahl found film work as a seriously terrible actress in a seriously goofy comedy, Der Weisse Rausch (The White Thrill). The movie featured Hannes Schneider, a ski instructor in St. Anton am Arlberg, as a daredevil racing and jumping down one pristine trail after another in the Arlberg massif of western Austria. To everyone’s surprise, the film took off internationally and put Schneider, alpine skiing, and St. Anton on the worldwide sporting map.


 


By 1936, alpine skiing would be added to the Olympic schedule (although Schneider and his band of professional ski instructors were barred from the Games). By the start of World War II, the entire world would be learning to ski using Schneider’s Arlberg technique—a gradual evolution from snowplowing into stemming and carving.


 


So the tiny village of St. Anton might be accurate in its rather grand claim to have invented the modern sport of downhill skiing—not that it helped Schneider. In 1938, he got in trouble with the Nazis, primarily for resisting the race laws. Snubbed in the village, hounded by Party thugs, and briefly jailed by the new regime, he eventually found a wealthy American sponsor to spring him all the way to North Conway, New Hampshire. After the war, St. Anton changed its mind and begged him to return, but by then he was thoroughly Americanized.


 


Nowadays, St. Anton supports hundreds of miles of trails, from bunny slopes to black pistes to helicopter skiing in the high Arlberg. You can even reach the place by highway and, since 1978, by one of the longest and highest tunnels in Europe. But the equipment has revolutionized the sport. It’s doubtful that many of the young skiers you see today know why the borrowed Schneider name appears on every other business in the village.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Austria

The Sound of Music

 

There’s no pergola where Rolf promised to protect Joanna and the Baron declared his love for Maria. The modest main staircase is a creaky Austrian walnut without a hint of a grand spiral. The main sitting room would never accommodate more than a few dozen of Hollywood’s most glamorous bit players.

A train runs along the back of the property to Aiglen station, from which the von Trapps left on a well-publicized Italian-American tour—with no nun subterfuge and no night time flight over the alps. And the wall around the house comes courtesy of Nazi Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, who turned the villa into a private resort after the family declined to return.

And yet… The minute you enter, you hear The Sound of Music, even if it echoes from inside your head. The family wasn’t particularly fond of the movie with its light-hearted American twist on personalities and events. But the movie runs throughout the place, alongside and intermingled with the brave and bold Austrian reality. It’s all rather spooky in a way—not one, but two lost worlds here, precarious1930s Austria and fresh-faced 1960s America.

The last of the von Trapps passed away in 2016. We stayed in the room of the younger Maria, the second daughter who inevitably grew up and died too soon in childbirth. In the breakfast room, the children sang madrigals from an ancient player in an old recording. It was all rather nice and sad at the same time.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Austria, Featured

Braunau am Inn

In the 19th century, the tiny village of Braunau am Inn on the Austrian-German border gave the world the classic Christmas carol Stille Nacht (Silent Night), written by Franz Xaver Gruber for the guitar and sung by mournful German troops in the World War I trenches.


 


In the 20th century, the village gave us the Schneider brothers. Willi and Rudi enthralled audiences worldwide with their astonishing psychic powers until, in the 1920s, Rudy was caught cheating and quit for the auto mechanic business.


 


But Braunau made its name at 6:30PM on a balmy 20 April, 1889, when a fussy child was born in an apartment above the Gasthof zum Pommer at Salzburger Vorstadt 15.


 


By his 29th birthday, Adolf Hitler would rise from vagrant flophouse painter to heavily decorated war hero. By his 44th birthday, he would be appointed the youngest Chancellor in German history at the head of a youth movement that promised to revolutionize the moribund nation. Ten days after his 56th birthday, he would be dead, a failure and a suicide, well on his way to being reviled as the most evil political leader in modern history.


 


So everything has to start somewhere, and 72 years later, the Branau authorities have finally had enough of Hitler starting here. After endless political haggling and obfuscation—after years of even paying the building owner 4,800 Euros per month to keep the place empty—they now plan to renovate his birthplace out of recognition. No more furtive neo-Nazi pilgrimages for these timid folk.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Austria

Remagen am Rhein

In 2000 years, the only invaders to cross the middle Rhein River were Caesar’s Romans and Napoleon’s French. Then on the afternoon of 7 March,1945, Sgt. Alex Drabik, a Polish-American from Toledo, Ohio, led his squad in a lunatic sprint across the creaking Ludendorff Bridge under withering German fire.





Adolf Hitler called it a catastrophe, and Dwight Eisenhower named it the Miracle of Remagen. The German defenders had blown every one of the other 27 bridges across the river, but by a convoluted set of circumstances that came down to pure, horrible luck, this one still stood.







The German High Command threw everything they had at the structure—from modern jets and rockets to antiquated suicide bombers, from tanks and artillery to frogmen and floating mines. For 10 days the Americans held them off with the greatest concentration of defensive fire in history. By the time the bridge collapsed of its own accord, 25,000 men of the American III Army Corps were on the East bank. The war in the West was effectively decided.





The Americans handed out medals like popcorn to the troops who took the bridge, and with good reason. Both sides cashiered (and in the German case, executed) officers in a desperate attempt to win the battle. Yet the structure they contested had almost no transport value and was never rebuilt. Today, in a village where bodies once piled up by the thousands, a young German peacefully accepts your three Euros for a tiny ferry that handles less than 20 modest German cars in a crossing.



Filed under: Europe Tagged: Germany

Doel

The first thing you notice in this village on the Scheldt Estuary east of the port city of Antwerpen is the shops, restaurant, and hotel–there aren’t any. Anything that resembles a civic structure is boarded-up and ready for demolition. Then you notice that the only other human beings are outsiders like you, running around and snapping photos of the ghost town. Then you turn a corner and come upon this nuclear plant cooling tower spewing steam over an ancient windmill on the polder. Immediately you get that Chernobyl feeling–how the hell did the Belgian government let you wander in here?

But it turns out that this isn’t a nuclear catastrophe, but the next worst thing–a European bureaucracy run amok. The port authorities, the Flemish Executive, and the money men behind them decided in 2008 that the Port of Antwerpen needed to expand. If this 800-year-old village got in the way, too bad. If the authorities couldn’t pay the citizens to leave, they would send in demolition teams backed by riot police and simply destroy the village right under their feet.

Fortunately, the 200 Doelers have been able to fight back with that quintessential 21st-century weapon, publicity, and bring the port and its thugs to their knees. As they rightly point out, the current harbor isn’t even close to capacity. But in a script straight out of the pages of Kafka, all that matters to the port at this point is the exercise of power without reference to the human beings it affects.

The Scheldt Estuary does in fact make this area one of the great natural harbors of the world, and the vast Flemish Plain behind it makes a perfect staging point for reaching the entire northern European market. So much so, that the Austrian, Spanish, and Dutch lords who ruled Flanders through most of its history spent considerable energy suppressing the trade here in favor of the city of Rotterdam upriver in the Netherlands. The price of Belgian Independence in 1830 was a virtual shutdown that lasted until the British Army arrived here in World War II. So it’s no wonder that the Port of Antwerpen authorities come unhinged when anyone stands in the way of their expansion. But in the modern era, nothing is ever that simple.

If you read Dutch, the citizens of Doel will gladly chew off your ear at their website.

 

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Belgium

Areopagus

For most of its existence, the Athenian law court that met on top of this outcropping, known as the Areopagus, was dedicated to trying cases of justifiable homicide. But around 400BCE, a famous prostitute named Phryne spent several hours here defending herself against the capital crime of impiety—the same crime that would later cost Socrates his life. When all arguments failed, the gorgeous woman stripped off her clothes and shocked the judges into acquitting her.

The marker on the site commemorates a speech delivered here by St. Paul and recorded in the Acts of the Apostles (17:24). “Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.” An interesting comment, in that the road in the photo rises behind us to the Acropolis–where Paul’s followers were busy destroying every pagan statue they could dislodge.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Greece

Greek Gods

Somewhere in the first millennium, God seems to have lost his sense of humor. Most of what we call Christian theology consists of the teachings of Saint Paul filtered through the lens of the North African Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the most humorless and fun-free ex-hedonists to ever take up a pen. Allah was never going to be a barrel of laughs, considering the violent struggle Mohammed was forced to undertake in establishing Islam. And the Jewish Yahweh was too much of a desert phenomenon to leave much room for trivialities like humor in the day-to-day struggle for his people’s survival.

All of which seems odd when you consider how thoroughly the ancient Greeks infiltrated and influenced every other facet of our western cultural heritage. Because the Greek gods were nothing if not fun. And irrational. And capricious. And sometimes downright nasty. But at least they vaguely resembled the complete and complex human beings who prayed to them.

Zeus with his Trumpian approach to sex and female sensibilities; Hera with her Clintonian outrage; Dionysus lolling around in a chronic drunken stupor; Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena lining up for a beauty pageant to be judged by the airhead Paris; Neptune and Athena bribing the citizens of Athens to secure their devotion; Narcissus drowning in his own beauty; and Ares the God of War bedding down Aphrodite the Goddess of Love to produce Eros (love), Harmonia (peace), Adrestia (revenge), Phobos (fear), and Deimos (terror). Not exactly the Brady Bunch.

In 1974, I was invited to an ashram of the Guru Maharaj Ji, a wealthy boy wonder of the Eastern mystic trade then so fashionable in American college circles. Dozens of acolytes frolicking, playing, and giggling their unfettered joy as they explained away the guru’s five residences, two private jets, and overflowing bank accounts. It was then I realized that there is no more excruciating torture than the sight of religious people having fun. And yet the ancient Greeks seem to have hoisted their Gods on their own petards at the same time that they venerated them. Not a hint of pretension about it.

And this should come as no surprise, because Greece is a Mediterranean paradise lying on a major earthquake zone with weather that only comes in two flavors—perfect and dreadful—and a people who have literally been at each others’ throats for the last two thousand years. But if chaos is the natural order of things, at least the Greeks—and their Gods—have embraced it. No wonder the dour, desert-bred Christians were so determined to destroy every religious Greek statue they could get their hands on. No wonder the straight-laced modern Germans have despaired of regularizing Greek politics and finance. These people are having far too much unlicensed and uninhibited fun for their own good.

Let’s just hope it stays that way.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Featured, Greece

Cats

The islands of Rhodes and Malta have two things in common—their history with the medieval Knights Hospitallers and their huge feral and domestic cat populations. You’ll find hundreds of cats wandering all over the towns, religious monuments, and ancient fortresses of both communities.

Naturally, we wondered if there might be a connection. Animals like mice, rats, and the cats needed to catch them have been hitching rides on ships since ancient times (the British Royal Navy only ended the position of Official Ship’s Cat in 1975). Meanwhile, the Knights sent their ships all over the Mediterranean to fight Turks and pirates. But no amount of research has turned up any real evidence that one migration had anything to do with the other.

The cats themselves are different—the Tabbies of Rhodes tend to run away from humans, while the chummier Blues of Malta could double as tour guides if they spoke better English. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Greeks have a terrible reputation for handling strays. Even with their Greek Cat Welfare Society and their Cat Sanctuary at Kalithea Springs, Rhodes and Greece were referred in 2007 to the European Court of Justice for substandard animal welfare. Meanwhile, no one seems to have filed any complaints against the Maltese.

Felids have been around much longer than humans—up to 6 million years—with far less evolution in their physical and mental characteristics. Their domesticated and feral versions, Felis catus and Felis silvestris catus, have been cuddling up to us, crossing our paths, and chasing our mice and rats for somewhere around 90 centuries. They’ve been revered in Egypt, feared in Massachusetts, admired in Mecca, poisoned in Greece, and defenestrated in Belgium. Today, in America, they even beat out dogs as the second-most popular pet (behind freshwater fish!).

Garrison Keillor once wrote the fascinating contradiction that “Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.” Yet it’s hard sometimes to stare into the eyes of a cat and not wonder exactly which of us is in charge. The cat in the photo was racing down a ruin in Rhodes when I took out my camera to photograph a nearby mosque. It immediately stopped and launched into human-friendly cat-posing mode. So whose idea was this shot? It’s an interesting question.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Featured, Greece, Malta

Bastille Day

The mother of all Bastille Day parades stretches on the morning of July 14 from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Élysées and up Rue Royale to the Place de la Madeleine on the Right Bank of Paris. For one day each year, the ultra-civilized French put down their forks and wine glasses and pretend they’re still a revolutionary and militaristic empire. All manner of fly-overs and land-based vehicles and marchers turn out in smart, singing formations.

The French parade is an outlier in that it celebrates a mob action and not an independence movement. On July 14, 1789, the Paris mob stormed the Bastille fortress in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, lynched and decapitated the Governor Bernard-René de Launay, and freed a grand total of seven prisoners—four forgers, two lunatics, and a sexual deviant (they also would have freed the pornographer the Marquis de Sade if he hadn’t been transferred elsewhere a few days earlier).

But revolutions thrive on symbols, and within days, the storming had become the defining event in a descent into utter political and social chaos. For a century afterwards, the incident and the day remained key focal points in the struggle between the Imperial/Monarchist and Republican/Socialist forces that repeatedly tore apart both France and its unruly capital city. Only in the late 20th Century did Bastille Day morph into the entertaining public holiday and excuse for celebration we know today.

That celebration is also remarkable for not having been swamped, like so many other European fetes, by the tourist trade. Around 9AM, as the largely French crowds start to thicken, movement and access gets restricted. But if you’re a tourist like us, all you have to do is forget your French and remember the name of a nearby hotel, and the police will let you wander anywhere. We shamelessly take full advantage.

Go here for more photos from glindarayepix.

Filed under: Europe Tagged: Featured, France

Indian Summer

Most people wouldn’t associate the term “Indian Summer” with southern California, but that’s what we came back to this time. None of the natural splendor of a New England Autumn, but an unusual elevation of temperatures along with a lazy breeze that reminded us of Tanglewood in the Fall.

It turns out that a lot of places experience the phenomenon and have given it one odd name or another—Old Lady Summer from Germany to Lithuania, Gypsy Summer in Bulgaria, Brigitta’s Summer in Sweden. But nothing stirs the feeling for the American legend in us quite like the memory of an Indian Summer in New England with Thanksgiving approaching. The Pilgrims might have been a bunch of religiously intolerant stiffs fighting off hostile natives and spreading smallpox everywhere they intruded, but they did know how to name a beautiful spell of weather.

Filed under: America Tagged: Massachusetts