Way before 9/11 I used to spontaneously pick out a city, hop a plane and some hours later basically get lost somewhere in the world. If I didn’t speak the local language, all the better. Now it’s not so simple to travel. The consequence of 9/11 is the knowledge of how the impossible can manifest itself. That has changed how we all travel and view each other. Airports are tiresome; the security gates feel like hell’s gates, albeit a necessary evil. Even so, I am just as driven now to see as much of this planet as I possibly can. There’s just too much heaven behind hell’s gates.
Maastricht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. I spend half a day here visiting the cobblestoned town center in pouring rain. Luckily the rain does let up for my photos. With a drenched walking tour map in hand (note to self, keep a clear plastic folder or bag handy so that you can keep maps and such from getting wet), I meander around the narrow streets filled with upscale shops…
small squares for al fresco dining…
and just wonderful nooks and crannies with homes and stores built on/around/under fortress ruins from days of long ago…
In the middle of the old center there is a large university which explains the vibrant vibe. Maastricht is a stunning town. It’s just a stone’s throw across the border from Belgium but immediately the architecture looks different. The people are friendly (one local woman approached me to help me with my map and spoke nearly perfect English) but not overly affectionate as their French speaking neighbors in Belgium. There’s no lovey dovey chitchat with total strangers, just very curt but polite assistance. I immediately pick up on how to-the-point they all seem. Where there’s drama and flowery dialog with the French, there’s bottom line efficiency with the Dutch. At least that’s my take on it.
From this old quarter you cross a bridge to the new part of the city. Here’s a picture of the old quarter taken from the bridge on the new quarter side.
Check out this cool groove they’ve put on the bridge so that you can walk your bike across. Necessity is the mother of all inventions!
As I cross the large square to get back to the underground parking lot, I spy this mobile food-to-go place–the name is Vietnamese! When my friend and I first get to Maastricht that morning we have no idea where the public parking is. Oddly the first local person I run into is Vietnamese. She doesn’t speak English or French. So it’s either Vietnamese or Dutch. Lucky for my friend I speak VN because he doesn’t speak Dutch besides stuff like “ik houd van jij” which would definitely not get us very far in figuring out where to park. And she doesn’t look like she’s open to dating him. Anyway, at the end of the tour when I run into this little Vietnamese kiosk, I just crack up.
When my sisters and I were very young and traveled with my parents to new towns, we would open up the phone book in the hotel room to see if we could find anyone with a Vietnamese last name. No, we did not make crank calls for fun! I think it’s just not rare that immigrants have this curiosity and I’m certain we were not the only people who did this. I did it in Venezuela many years later and sure enough, I found Nguyens in Caracas.
So right in the middle of this square in rain soaked Maastricht I want to call my parents and tell them we no longer need the phone book. The Vietnamese are already everywhere.
Tags: Maastricht, the Netherlands
Earlier this year I spent a few weeks in Europe. Because the dollar was tanking against the euro at that time I spent more down time sightseeing than shopping. Plus the summer sales were raging at home so there was no point to lug more things across the continent. I had a train ride at the end of the trip from Brussels to Paris anyway and did not want to have to deal with heavy luggage. We’ll see about that later.
I fly into Brussels, Belgium but my photo journal now starts with Namur, a medium sized town not too far from Brussels. In Namur we speak French. This fact does not go noticed on me until I visit the Dutch speaking cities in Belgium later. Besides the language, the culture feels like night and day. More on that later as well. La Meuse, a winding river, flows through Namur, as does the other river, La Sambre. When you drive along the Meuse, you almost think you are driving right through a postcard:
These gorgeous bird’s eye shots are from the top of the huge citadel that looms over Namur:
At the base of the citadel is a neighborhood that reminds me of Bel Air in California. Romantic estates on lush grounds behind stately gates. Isn’t this a wonderful street name just for that kind of neighborhood?
All around Namur and other Belgian cities I saw these wonderful sculptures by Jean-Michel Folon (1934-2005):
Namur proper is a great place to navigate on foot. All the walking gives you the excuse to indulge in the twice-fried frites (we really should refer to them as Belgian fries instead of French fries). There are friteries everywhere, like Starbucks. After all, Belgium is land of the frites. At truck stops along the freeway there are friteries. There are friteries near schools, offices, other friteries. But what amazes me still was running into jackfruit at this corner grocery:
The world is shrinking.
LA is basically a sprawling parking lot that we Angelenos love to complain about. Traffic, earthquakes, smog, and a million other reasons. But every time my plane hovers over LAX, no matter how great the trip had just been, I feel revived. Of course as soon as I’m in my car trying to get out of the airport, the love hate relationship I have with LA rears its sunkissed head. I love LA, but I hate to live in it. But doesn’t everyone have those days where the grass couldn’t be any greener anywhere else? Where you just want to get the heck out of Dodge? Well, I have lots of those days. Just not today though. I was cleaning my cat’s litter box this evening when I had a momentary mental recap of the week that had just been. And I think I don’t give LA enough credit. Take a look at this week I had:
Monday: have a wonderful dinner at Beso (a sultry, dark restaurant lit by the sexiest chandeliers I’ve seen in a long time) in Hollywood. This is a joint owned by Todd English and Eva Longoria. The food is quite good but the people watching is better. Kevin Bacon’s star is on the sidewalk right outside of the restaurant.
Wednesday: we have a new president! I look through my stack of mail at work and don’t see an invitation to the inauguration but sneak out for a long lunch to look at the new RTW deliveries for Cruise at NM and Saks anyway, just in case. In my fantasy, I turn down the offer to become Secretary of State and accept instead the new position of Secretary of Couture.
Thursday: work related stress gives way to traffic related stress as my friends and I endure 2 hours of going a few miles from downtown LA to Dodgers Stadium for the Madonna concert. We’re finally in our seats a few minutes after 9pm and wait another hour for Madge to make her appearance. All’s forgiven though because she rocks (!), plus she delivers Justin Timberlake (and Britney, too, but let’s just talk about JT). I see stars on stage, in the mosh pit, and in the sky. It’s a perfect Southern Cal night.
Friday: A meeting gets cancelled on me so I swing by the Chanel boutique in BH to peruse their “exotics corner”. I’m shown ten of the most fantastic alligator bags and I happily oblige by trying them all on for size. Quelle surprise, every single bag fits me perfectly! I walk out of the store emptyhanded even though I’d love to adopt a sibling for my own dusty pink gator flap:
Sunday: We go see the Dallas Mavericks play the LA Clippers at Staple Center. Clippers actually won. I always cheer for the LA teams except when they play the Spurs, then all bets are off. This is a really fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
OK, so you ask, what’s the big deal? You could have done all of these things back in your home town. You could have done way better things in much more beautiful settings in fact. I can’t argue with that, but every time i see a palm tree outside my living room window or in my rearview window as I drive through LA, I think I heart LA.
Tags: Beso, Justin Timberlake, LA Clippers, Los Angeles, Madonna, Mavericks
The last thing I heard last night before drifting off to sleep was about Obama becoming the first African American president. The first thing I heard this morning upon waking up was a discussion on the probability of McCain pulling an upset in an election of historic proportions. Either way, someone is about to have a life some of us never dare to have, and the other person is about to feel a loss so great I could not even fathom recovery. For me, after many months of indecision and voter angst, I am relieved it is finally November 4. I love the smell of change in the morning.
I’m a naturalized citizen so perhaps the right to vote is a bigger deal to me than some people I know. Voting from California also sometimes feels anticlimactic, but I still want to cast my vote. If I have the luxury of freely criticizing my government, the least I can do is go out and vote. If anything, I enjoy watching the human process at polling places. There’s always an undercurrent of excitement (especially in presidential elections) and people speak in hushed tones, almost out of reverence for their decisions. After the heated mudslinging during the campaign–especially among friends and families who feel so strongly about their positions and can’t understand why their own families don’t share the same views–election day is a wonderful respite…for having arrived at our very own, personal choices.
But enough about politics. You won’t hear me on my soapbox here. I’ll show you where I went to vote, though…it was at the Church of the Angels, a beautiful, small church where they always film movies around here:
I thought this sign was great because I saw Vietnamese on it!!
So anyway, this morning I did wake up with a clear head and knew which way I would finally vote. But when I turned the page and looked at the names of the presidential candidates, my hands actually trembled. Inhale, exhale. Punch the ballot. I am an undecided voter no more.
I’ve been keeping this blog under wraps until I could find an event that would combine my two favorite pastimes (travel and fashion) and could be worthy of a mention. For those of you who have supported and followed me from my thread at tpf, I also want it to be all about Chanel. So welcome to my first attempt at blogging and let’s see how long you all want to be witness to my madcap adventures…
It is an ordinary autumn day punctuated by extraordinary sights and sounds. I’ve already had a few busy days of running around NYC but today is the day. The air seems crisper, my steps feel quicker, and my heart beats a little faster as my sister and I head for Rumsey Playfield in Central Park. We turn the corner to 69th Street and I almost expect to see a giant mother ship floating above us, having already seen so many preview pics of the Mobile Art Container by Zaha Hadid. Instead there are just clean white signs pointing to the structure inside the park.
As we make our way inside the lush park, I see the celebrated white structure snake around in front of me.
In my head I do a cartwheel from sheer excitement. I know the time has finally come to suspend reality and surrender myself to the disturbing fantasy that is Karl Lagerfeld’s interpretation of Chanel. But then I see the queue. And worse, signs forbidding photography inside the exhibit. Ugh.
So here I am, with some exterior shots.
Is that a mirage behind me? A wormhole, perhaps? No, it is a cool boxy structure constructed with reflective glass…are you looking in or out?
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t yet gone but will be going, don’t read the rest of this stuff. The first time you experience the exhibit should preferably be with your own eyes and ears and not mine. But if you can’t attend, I’ll try to recall as much as I can here. Apologies if I may have some stuff out of sequence but the mind plays tricks on you when you OD on Chanel…
When they call you in small groups to the front door, they take all of your belongings and then one staffer (btw all the staffers outside are dressed in black nylon Chanel jackets, and the ones inside have on black sweaters with a Chanel logo on the front) very politely goes over the instructions with you and sets the headset to the language of your choice. French actress Jeanne Moreau’s bourbon-and-cigarettes voice comes on (at least with the English headset) and suddenly on n’est plus a NY. Chanel, j’arrive!
The first thing you see is what I’d call an insect velodome. Well, maybe a funnel. You’re commanded to look over into a barrel about one floor deep. On the circular walls are flickering b/w pictures of insects in various stages of metamorphosis. I forget what the narrative is at this point because my mind drifts off to my teenage years in San Antonio where there were a lot of cicadas. I don’t know where we are going with this, Karl.
I think after this bit you’re directed to go inside a narrow dark room. Your eyes adjust to the dark and you realize that you are now standing on a sidewalk in Paris. And what you’re doing is looking inside the windows of apartments; rows of them. Train your eyes and you will catch life fluttering behind the windows. People are talking inside the apartments. Birds are flying by. There are sounds of footsteps. Lights are turned on and shut off. I could have stood there all day. In my heart I long for my one year in Paris so that I could be that life inside the window. But Jeanne tells me I must move on.
Out of the dark you come up to the main floor and there they are, two pretty Asian girls on separate flat screen monitors, in black and white. Like still photography. They look like they are frozen in time. But look closer and they are actually moving without moving. Every once in a while you might see them exhale or swallow. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I wonder how I can get my skin to glow like theirs. Maybe turn back the clock 20 years and stay out of the sun? Or maybe this is just a subliminal message for me to keep using Chanel’s beauty products?
Next up are 5 carton boxes. Look inside and there are various videos of naked women beating each other over the head with a Chanel flap bag, holding their hands out to catch a bag as it falls like manna from the heavens, or using a giant flap bag as a floating device in a pool. The woman on the float is quite chubby, and it is hysterical to see her paddle her way through the water on top of this giant purse. To be fair, I believe there is also a naked man in the video where they are trying to catch the falling bags. I am both amused and horrified by the sight of Chanel bags touching naked body parts. Ok, 65% amused and 35% horrified. Just what exactly did they do with these bags after the videos were shot? Can I find that giant purse-float on eBay?
Past the videos there is a green corrugated shed with the doors slightly ajar. Bright light beams from between the cracks in the structure. I step up to look inside the doors and it happens. Those 20 years I asked for earlier fall at my feet. In fact, what I see now makes me feel like a 9 year old. Inside the shed is a Chanel wonderland. A secret garden with swings fashioned out of quilted leather in pastel colors. The chains of the swings are the classic chains interwoven with the leather in matching colors! My mind swirls in trying to guess which season begat which swing color. And in spectacular fashion, behind the series of swings, stands a giant black leather quilted teddy bear. Around his neck is the classic chain in silver…if only I could have taken him home. The visit to this room is much too short. I want to have a tea party in my secret garden.
The next room is blindingly bright and white, especially because it is a very nice sunny day during my visit and I’m baking in this glass sunroom. In the middle of the room is a huge black 2.55 bag set up as a sofa. And of course no self-respecting, giant purse sofa can be complete without a giant compact that serves as a TV. Something violent is on the compact-TV but I can’t pay attention to it because I am distracted by the fuzzy bordeaux colored fur lining the purse. I wonder how you can clean it–with a giant hairbrush? I walk around the entire purse sofa and think about my own black 2.55 flap waiting for me at home in LA. I want to tell Karl Lagerfeld I love him.
Then it’s the end of the tour. You get to a table to pick up some postcards and then reflect on the pictures on the wall. There’s a huge wall art of the quilted leather. And then there are the fabulous photos from the factory showing purses in various stages of production. It’s always wonderful to see these bags in a different context than on stores’ display shelves.
After lingering on the photography you come to the wishing tree. It’s up to you to fill out a card with your own wish and then hang the card on a branch. I scribble something but notice that my sister does not; she’s busy reading other people’s wishes. We collect our bags and are given complimentary catalogs.
As we leave Central Park, my sister wonders out loud if anyone writes down that they wish for a Chanel bag. With my “Leo” flap bag already perched on my shoulder and a gentle breeze rustling through the gorgeous leaves in the park, I realize that that wish has already been granted for me. And then some. I want to tell Karl we should marry.
But my wish at the wishing tree? Let the fantasy continue!
Tags: Chanel, Mobile Art, New York
