In preparation: part two of the Journey

I will shortly be starting to post my version of the journey from Venice to Bad Ragatz as an exercise in "recollection in tranquility". Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose Europe walk haunts my own, did much the same only he was in print. In the meantime I'll post a lecture I gave at the Text, Technology and Interpretation conference at Manchester's Chetham library over the weekend.


Robin

Now this is what I think of when I remember that Come Fly with Me is 50 years old

Flickr has some great vintage French tourist shots.
Thanks to Olen Steinhauer.


And here's some Calais now, thanks also to Flickr.

Amiens raises an eyebrow

One more film poster soon for the Jules Verne museum?

...director McG, who let slip that he wants Will Smith to star in his just-announced 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo at Disney.

"The character Nemo in this film is more about obsession, he is obsessed and people tend to forget that when you become so obsessed you end up being the villain," McG told the site, adding "Man I'm trying to get Will Smith to do it, been trying to get a hold of him. I've been wanting to work with him for a long time already. That guy's great."

An Exhibition of the old new media

The resemblance between early Renaissance journalism and the current state of the Internet is uncanny. But there's a chastening lesson here for the Web as well. The Web is exuberant, democratic, unruly and thrilling. But Web-based journalists haven't really pioneered a new form. They've merely rejuvenated some dusty old ways of jousting with words.

From the Washington Post.

Just like that old Thin Lizzy song...

I can't do this, but it looks like the future to me.

A nice feature of Google maps:

Take a GPS log file
Convert it into the .KML format used by Google Earth.
(You can make these with GPSbabel, amongst other utilities.)
Put it on a web server somewhere
Go to Google Maps, and search for the URL of the .KML file
You’ll get a nice map of your track. And you’ll even get information about how to link to it and how to embed it in your site. Here’s a section of the route I walked today, for example:

Here's the result.


...and here's the man who knows how.


Fantastic.

Happy christmas

I'll be speaking about Tom next year. And walking some more, and repeating some of the journeys I've already made.

Robin

Postwar Europe

Without such collective amnesia, Europe's astonishing post-war recovery would not have been possible.

Tony Judt
Postwar

Paris: city of booksellers?

Those Left Bank book stalls in Paris [Bouquinistes] filled with First Editions and rare collections of poetry and are in trouble: books aren't selling so well, and plastic Eiffel towers are doing better. What happens next?

...Paris city hall, alarmed that the garish knick-knacks are damaging Paris's "cultural landscape", has launched a battle to protect the literary soul of the banks of the Seine. Bouquinistes have been invited to crisis talks at the city hall in an attempt to promote more intellectual merchandise. But some warn that if they cannot adapt to the changing market they will "die of hunger".

Imagine this in a market near you:

The trade is strictly regulated. Each bouquiniste is allowed four boxes painted dark green: three must contain books, the fourth can sell items such as prints, collectors' postcards, stamps and souvenirs.

From Le Guardian.

Founder of Technorati launches public beta of his customised print travel guides...

...here's why:

...what I learned is that there is really something special about holding a physical printed book in your hands. Especially when you are travelling. And you know, I travel with my Blackberry and my iPhone and my Laptop and all of that and if I am in the middle of a Siok in Jerusalem or I am lying on a beach in Phuket, Thailand I don’t really want to pull out my Blackberry or end up paying those enormous data rates via my iPhone just to be able to find a piece of information that I could easily find if it was sticking in my back pocket.

Lots more here in an interview with David Sifry.


Gosh: print is back? Just as the E-book gets exciting?

Tom would have loved this

Quicker than Tom

Mr. Rossy, a Swiss pilot, leapt from the plane about 8,200 feet over Calais, France, blasted across 22 miles of water and deployed his parachute, above, over the South Foreland Lighthouse in Dover. Onlookers who dotted the famous white cliffs cheered and waved as he came into view.

Even impressed the New York Times.

The ever generous Paul Theroux

Thinking about Tom and his amazing Jacobean times is actually easier when not in his exact footsteps. But I'm never far away, even back in London. Today I'm off to a conference on renaissance spies. And especially Sir Henry Wotton, who was "bureau chief" as it were, in Venice - during the early part of the reign of James I. And who certainly met Tom in 1608. (There's much more to Wotton, and maybe I will know after my conference). That's him above.


Meanwhile, back on the circle line...Paul Theroux tries to flog a new book in a free newspaper, and sounds as charmless as ever. Wasn't he rather keen on V.S. Naipaul's tracks once upon a time?

A lot of travel writing is a stunt – “Ooh, I’ll bounce a ball around Iceland, I’ll throw a Frisbee around Namibia” – and doesn’t amount to much except someone in need of a subject. The other type is people thinking: “I’ll follow the tracks of Graham Greene, that’ll be exciting!” So I thought, some gap year punk’s going to do that about me, and I don’t want that – it’s my life, my trip, I’ll do my own return journey.

Tom and Now

Thanks Google.


Makes it all much easier. Betwixt continues, and will be back regularly soon.


For now don't forget around robin.

Today is the 400th anniversary of Tom's Departure

A picture from Padua's railway station

Thanks Tom for inspiring my walk, changed my life - a little

And in other news: the Venice bottom snapper has finally been caught.

Normal walking service will shortly resume: I'm writing an academic paper on trust
and it's taking a little time.

Coming soon: The Rhine

A piece I wrote for The Times on Italian towns.

And Shakespeare might have made it to Venice as well as Tom. Read more here.

Another way to cross the Alps?

Happy thing

To 2008, Switzerland, Germany & Turner

For Tom and Everyone Else

Friendly Fires "Paris"

Best song of the Year 2007, and even Tom would have approved

As may be clear

The view from Bad Ragatz

I am writing. Betwixt's quest begins again soon, but for now the journey in between is one of words not footwork. I'm reading in preparation for Switzerland and Germany, and I'm in search of a Grail Sword to scythe the book text that grows daily: I''ve written seventy pages and haven't got anywhere near Paris yet.

Robin

Fire in the sky-ai-ai (part one)

Over the top of the pass and not so far away Wagner and his brand of booted thunder is waiting: this morning's storm is just a reminder of things to come. What is less predictable is that Cha Cha Cha Town will be offering up its own metallica within 12 hours. But then this is Lynchian Land, and already I am wondering if they put something in the water...

I am sitting with the Moleskine around 8.30 pm writing a movie, as you do, with the ole boys talking Nesta, Carnivarro and Adriano over coffee. From downwind comes a punk thrash of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World...only a bit of it, this is a rehearsal, so there is a lot more une-due and drum rolls. I ask the elderly couple next to me what gives. Rock concert says Mrs Football-widow.

Opposite the Municipal offices four young men have set up in the parking space of the Orlandini ice cream and booze-u-like (beer)cafe. Yup: in the spa town of the Brambana valley there are Marshall amps, turquoise Stratocaster guitars, singing drummers and wi-fi connections. Rock and Roll is here to Spray.

"We're abusive," the lead singer shouts to me. "Abusivi."

The crowd is not particularly expectant, the youngest streches out in his pram, whilst his mother orders a Machiatto coffee. The band warm up by sitting down to strudel, followed by beer, and then ham and cheese plates. They don't look phased. Mrs Machiatto rather likes the pre-show music, jiving away like it is Prince on New Year's Eve 1999 to a reggae version of "Everything that I Own." After this Steve Tyler sings that apocalyptic one about saving the world and his daughter, Liv: and I don't want to miss a thing. Abusivi seem to like this one, they sway as they snuffle, until the CD jumps and we move onto Italian chick-skiffle, KT Tunstall meets Carla Bruni - but not in a good way.

Abusivi's lead singer gives punk baby a big grin, but the young lad seems more interested in the lights of the pharamacy opposite. Some late arrivals have monkish bald pates and nice pale blue cardigans.

The lead guitarist can riff, play chords, and smoke. But never all three at the same time. The first song is named Spirato.

Song two has a bit that goes: cook cook caroo, ay ay Cadaver. It ends with the half-line, "like a lonely song." Next up "Speedy Gonzalez" as a Green Day purgation. But half way through the heavens open and that's it. Bar staff rush out and help to get everything inside. Three songs: over. Suddenly reading the Corriella del Sporto is the New Rock and Roll. I head for bed, wave at the old football men, and turn on one of those terrible buddy-buddy, black-white, cop films that lose something in translation in any language.

Cha Cha Cha...changes

The hills are alive with the sound of thunder, lightning, not very frightening - but a few of the "Freddy" moustaches are. (They are Swiss or German - sure aren't Italian this year).

San Pellegrino makes a sparkling debut after the smaller towns of the Brembana valley. The local bus from Bergamo costs about £1.20 and after 35 minutes climbing and falling through winding roads and towns of no obvious glory drops off passengers (me) betwixt a three hundred metre long Grand Hotel (closed: dangerous), a casino (closed, now a conference centre) and a Thermal Spa Hotel (closed: renovation). The two complexes: the hotel and casino-thermal are divided by a gushing river which plunges off to the Pellegrino factory down the road. Not everything is branded with the drink's red star here, but it feels like the drinks corporation owns quite a lot. Say: Lombardy.

If the Hollywood product placers were looking for sponsors to finance its high-tech remake of Last Year in Marienbad (perhaps with Nick Cage and Keira Knightly) then here with the art nouveau mittel-europa fin de etc. vibe would be a greta place to start the pitch. "We see this movie as being about bringing the sparkle, and bubble, back to life..."

You can't miss the factory - refinery, distillery, whatever - and other SP buildings fleck the town, but this isn't a Woolfsburg (Volkswagen home) because it feels like the setting for a De Maupassant novel. Even a tiny touch of Proust.

After the "old city" high on a hill in Bergamo and the "learning the robes" somewhat confused cultural tourism of Brescia, San Pellegrino is both a step forward and back. It has long been known for its spa water, but only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century did it become an upmarket destination. So, whilst there are no Renaissance masterpieces, or Venetian tropes, it somehow feels easier to imagine than some of the more famous Italian towns. Even if its brief emminence was Belle Epoque this doesn't diminish the faded ravishing-ness, and makes the vauguely grouchy mood understandable. The setting is amazing.

They have afternoon tea dances for the old ladies, in the evening cha cha cha lessons for the young (women) led by a Dirty Dancer in tight red trounsers with tassels. Music via a Korg synth is riffed out by Belmondo's long lost cheeky younger brother, whilst Swayse 2 shouts "uno due trei quattorse" and limbs flail around.

I should be higher now but the weather wiped the ATMs for a while this morning, so I am thinking about a belle epoque day of baths and lunches, aperitifs and assignations and chest complaints. Faro and whist and chess for the older men and younger boys learning the arts of war and whatever. This may not be "Como" but it wouldn't take so many Clooneys to re-invent San Pellegrino (should it wish so to change). Oh yes, there's is a red double decker 159 Bus that wanders around the town, amazing vistas from the bridges, clouds, hills, blue remembered or not, impossibly high villas in the distance (there was a funicular here once), and from time to time a HGV with that water passes down, as if chased away by the falling clouds, to take a tiny part of the valley to Rio or Reading, Naples or New York.

I lost this post first time around because of the storms. Outside the library linen-sodden for the first time since Padua all thoughts of mountain passes go awol and I settle down to write a screenplay. And the echo in the valley, a growling bark of displeasure for all that summer sun on Como late last week, perhaps, is enough to persuade even a two-time believer in Dawkins and his Delusion that somewhere above the clouds the God's are waiting. Maybe it is the Swiss.

Across Italy The Venice Film festival is previewing Atonement. The novel by Ian McEwan that isn't quite as bad as Saturday, but it is a close run thing...Here the only book in English in the stationary store (closed) is a hard back copy of a book called "Blog"...Really: life is strange. Even without the divine apple. My writing bump grows: soon it will be a conker.

Re Boot - now just for walking

Up into the hill villages on the way to the Splunga pass, Switzerland and beyond. I am at last Tom, because the Apple is not booting up, and Genius Bars are few and far between. In fact the closest one is in England. So like an older generation of travellers I am now down to pen and paper: if there is an internet cafe up high I will post. There is a ton of back material too. And photographs. The lump on my writing finger grows daily. Travel 3.0 seems a way off right now.