NAVIGATE EUROPE
The Passions of
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Love at First Bite 36 Hours in Pargue Forever Florence
Editor’s Letter As a kid, most of my family vacations consisted of everyone piling into the car and exploring some new location. It was always something to look forward to. I’m so blessed that I was able to explore so many new things as a kid, from Niagra Falls, to the Grand Canyon, to the cliffs of Hawaii. Going on these trips instilled a passion for travel in me at a young age, something that I still carry with me today. When I see something that catches my eye, whether it be in a travel magazine or on the internet, I can’t help but have the urge to grab my passport, buy a plane ticket, and head right on over. I was lucky to be able to go to Europe in high school with my Latin Club. My mom chaperoned and it really was the experience of a lifetime. My mom’s side of the family is from Italy, always making it someplace I was dying to visit. It was a few years after my grandmother had passed away and, while on this trip, we were able to visit the town where she came from (Bonefro). It was such a cool experi-
ence. I met cousins that I never knew I had and had to bridge a language gap all day long. They taught me so many things about myself and about the world that I was now able to enjoy. It is because of experiences like this that I wanted to dedicate this magazine solely on Europe. It is such a special place full of endless cultural experiences. I really hope that you all take the time, if possible, to visit at least once in your life. I am sure that you will fully enjoy yourself and create memories that you will cherish forever.
Shanleigh Sanford Editor in Chief
NAVIGATE EUROPE EDITOR IN CHIEF Shanleigh Sanford CREATIVE DIRECTOR Meg Mateo Ilasco MARKET EDITOR Joy Deangdeelert Cho COPY EDITOR Kate Woodrow ONLINE EDITOR Kate Pruitt EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Alexis Birkmeyer CONTRIBUTORS Aya Brackett, Claire Curt, Susie Cushner, Amy Dickerson, Anne Stark, Thayer Allyson Gowdy, Jenny Hallengren, Brianna Harden, Sarah Hogan. SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES subscriptions@compassmag.com EDITORIAL INQUIRIES editorial@compassmag.com GENERAL INQUIRIES info@compassmag.com
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Left: Row of bikes stationed along a canal in Amsterdam Right: Young girl exploring the streets of Prague.
Spring 2012 Volume 4, Number 2 Compass is devoted to experiential travel, which connects you with the authentic essence of a place and its people, deepening your understanding of the world, its cultures, and yourself.
FEATURES
04 LOVE AT FIRST BITE Julia Reed finds her match in Madrid’s elegant conservatism.
18 36 HOURS IN PRAGUE A guide for how to spend your short stay in this timeless city.
24 FOREVER FLORENCE Florence: where luxury was perfected five hundred years ago by the merchant princes of the Renaissance, and where daily life still embraces attainable artisanal beauty.
36 THE PASSIONS OF AMSTERDAM Sex, drugs, and Vincent van Gogh—all on view and just part of a voyeur’s paradise. But Gully Wells goes deeper into the layered mysteries of a rapidly evolving city.
IN EVERY ISSUE EDITOR’S LETTER MARKET REPORT 08 SNAPSHOT 48 RESOURCES 49
Love At First Bite The Magical Meals of Madrid by Julia Reed
DESTINATION: Madrid, Spain DISTANCE (from Boston): 3,407 miles SOUVENIR: Spanish guitar FOOD: Tortilla Espanola
It may not have the drop-dead beauty of Paris or Prague, or the antiquit of Rome or Athens. No matter, Julia Reed finds her match in Madrid’s elegant conservatism (not to mention its endless nights accented with jamón Ibérico and a bruiser of a sherry).
I
JAMON IBERICO Until recently, our pesky Department of Agriculture prohibited the importation of all hams from Spain. But now, a few Spanish companies are producing versions acceptable to the usda, although with some loss of flavor — and romance. Indulge freely while in Madrid, and when you’re redy to head home, visit Mantquerias Brave, which can vacuum-pack some jamon.
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first visited Madrid as an entirely accidental tourist. It was the summer of 1997, Madeleine Albright had been sworn in as America’s first female secretary of state six months earlier, and I’d been assigned to write a profile. Among her initial major undertakings was a nato summit in Madrid. My only job was to be on call for the sit-down I’d been promised; meanwhile, I was free to roam. During the first twenty-four hours, all I could do was ask myself why I’d never even thought about visiting this singularly seductive city. I checked into the Ritz, where my father had stayed as a young man and remembered only the excellent Franco-era martinis that had cost him the equivalent of a dime. I threw open the French windows in my room for a view of the Plaza de la Lealtad and spent the rest of my first afternoon in the Prado’s Velázquez rooms, where I couldn’t bear to turn away from the Head of a Stag and was transfixed by the magnificent Las
Meninas (the depiction of Philip IV’s daughter and her attendants that the Neapolitan Baroque painter Luca Giordano called “the theology of paint”). Best of all was the fact that I was not in a hurry—nobody is. From a Madrileño viewpoint, my dinner date was on the early side: I wasn’t expected at Botín until 9:30. At the restaurant, which opened its doors in 1725 (and doesn’t appear to have changed much since), we ate baby artichokes cooked with Spain’s unparalleled jamón Ibérico, dug into a caramelized haunch of milk-fed baby lamb, and made the happy discovery of angulas, tiny eels that had swum three thousand miles in order to be placed before us, sizzling in garlic-tinged oil, accompanied by wooden forks appropriate to such a fragile delicacy. Above: Couple enjoying a quiet break. Right (clockwise): Colorful downtown street, Cafe interior, Bakery shelf, local delicacy.
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CHOCOLATE Cacao first arrived in Europe when Columbus brought some back for Queen Isabella in 1502, yet Spainis far less famous for its chocolate traditions than most of its sister countries in the eu. Spread the word by toting home treasures from La Duquesita, one of the city’s oldest sweet shops and bakeries.
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After dinner, in the still-teeming Plaza Mayor, the heart of the old city, I tasted my first glass of Pedro Ximenez 1827, a divinely sweet and viscous bruiser of a sherry, and made it back to the Ritz by a civilized 2 a.m. (Hemingway said of Madrid, “Nobody goes to bed until they have killed the night.”) Once again, I admired the hotel’s discreet, tree-shaded entrance, so infinitely more elegant than that of its imposing Parisian cousin. In my room, I stepped onto the pristine damask towel laid out by the bed, slid between the perfectly starched monogrammed linen sheets, and slept the sated sleep of a woman who has finally found her soulmate. Thus began a love affair that has continued unabated. On my most recent trip last fall, I was again reminded of how much I thrive on the rhythm (the perfect balance between work and play), the people
(whose infectious love of life puts the much-vaunted French joie de vivre to shame), the food (which, even in this post-Adrià age, stresses superlative ingredients above technique), and above all the utter civilization of the place. If my dictionary, which defines civilized as “marked by refinement in taste and manners,” is correct, then Madrid is the most civilized city I’ve ever visited. Much is made of the great beauty of Paris and Prague, the ancient history of Rome and Athens. Even Barcelona had the Summer Olympics to market itself to the world. But part of Madrid’s enchantment, even now, is its almost hidden allure—its entirely unexpected elegance and complete sense of otherness. Of course, much of that otherness stems from the fact that from 1936 Above (left): Sidewalk cafe. (right): Walk down a city side street, guard in front of government building.
If my dictionary, which defines civilized as marked by refinement in taste and manners, is correct, then Madrid is the most civilized city I’ve ever visited. to 1975, Spain itself was virtually preserved in amber. Led by Generalísimo Francisco Franco, who gave himself the over-the-top title of Leader of Spain, by the Grace of God, it existed in a repressive limbo state—a kingdom without a king, a republic with a dissolved parliament. Franco, the leader of the right-wing Nationalist military rebellion in the Spanish Civil War, was a dictator whom people somehow sort of understood, or at least put up with. The Spanish soul may be dark, but Madrileños, especially, have always had a handy capacity to live in the moment, even during the height of
Franco’s regime. The great English travel writer H. V. Morton, who first visited the city in the early 1950s, was much struck by the local penchant for inhabiting the streets: “It is extraordinary to see a large proportion of a modern city circulate in this way,” he wrote, referring to the promenade that takes place in the evenings between work and the dinner hour, when people walk and ceaselessly talk, popping into a bar or café for a sherry or a tapas, into another for a beer. Today, when you look at the stillconstant bustle of the city’s street life and packed restaurants and tapas bars, you have to remind yourself that the Spanish economy is in crisis. Nothing
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seems to dissuade the citizenry from going out.
THE PROGRESSIVE MEAL For Madrilenos, it would be inconveivable for an evening out to consist of an American-style trip to a single restaurant and home again. Option 1? Make a whole meal of tapas, like the ones mentioned in “Tapas 101,”. Option 2? Craft a meal like the one below, which graduates from small bits to a main course — before finishing with a sweet bite or two. 7 p.m. Start off on a civilized note by easing into a chair at the clubby Westin Palace hotel bar and ordering a dry martini or an equally dry fino sherry, accompanied by bowls of almonds and bright-green Spanish olives. 7:45 p.m. Make the short trek to the always-hopping Cerveceria Cervantes, where you might have another sherry or a glass of wine and canapes — especially good are the garlic shrimp or sauteed mushrooms on toast that’s slathered with aioli. 8:45 p.m. Pop into Casa Alberto, which opened in 1827 in a building where Cervantes once wrote. You have to love a place that has vermouth on tap (and beer too, of course), which you can order at the onyx bar, along with albondigas (saucy meatballs) or a place of ham. 10 p.m. For dinner, tuck into a memorable steak at Casa Lucio, Casa Paco, or Julian de Tolosa, all of which have considerable charms. Linger over a good Ribera or a chateau-style Rioja like the 2006 Remelleri Reserva before coffe to fortify you for the next chapter. 12 a.m. Head straight for La Venencia, where the drink is sherry and sherry only — all five kinds in unmarked bottles, served by knowledgable bartenders. The decor is sherry casks and tobaccoyellowed posters, the floors are sawdust-covered, and the lights are extremely low. 2 a.m. or later It’s close enough to breakfast to make your “dessert” an order of churros, circles or strips of batter fried in olive oil and dipped in thick chocolate. The Chocolateria San Gines has made the best in town since 1894. Not only will the churros soak up a bit of the excess booze, but the chocolateria’s lacquered green walls and velvet banquettes make it a lovely last stop to send you off, well sated, to very sweet dreams indeed.
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After Franco’s death, the current king, the enormously popular Juan Carlos I, became head of state and oversaw the country’s transition to a parliamentary monarchy. The culture of this “new” Spain, barely forty years in the making (the constitution was ratified in 1978), manifests itself in subtle ways, but its essential character remains largely unchanged. When the Prado added a new wing designed by Rafael Moneo four years ago, for example, it brought the museum, which had been practically untouched since the nineteenth century, into the twenty-first by dealing with such modern necessities as lecture halls, temporary exhibition space, a centralized entrance, and a better café. But Moneo, who also designed Madrid’s stunning train station, did not, thankfully, gift the city with a glass pyramid, say, or a white modernist box. His design is respectful (much of it is underground) and allows the Prado more room to do what it is supposed to do in the first place, which is to showcase its dazzling collection. Michael Kimmelman, reviewing Moneo’s work for the New York Times, summed up the addition—and its purpose—in a line that could apply to much of what I love about the city itself: “The plan is so conservative that it’s radical.” Another recent, and slightly less low-key, redo involved the Reina Victoria, a hotel once known as the headquarters for visiting matadors that has been reborn as the me Madrid and bills itself as “a showcase of forward thinking.” The hotel may have provided the Plaza de Santa Ana with a jolt of neon-lit cool, but tradition still survives just across the square at the Cervecería Alemana, a turn-ofthe-century bar that was also a favorite of the matadors (and one of Hemingway’s beloved haunts). The Alemana’s menu of classic tapas (communal plates of jamón and chorizo, anchovy
toasts, and wedges of tortilla española) remains as popular as ever with young and old alike, who mob the place from late morning to early morning. Also, just because the bullfighters have been forced to find another spot to bunk doesn’t mean the bullring they fight in is no longer busy. In October, just after the Catalonian government banned bullfighting in the northeastern region that includes Barcelona, I attended Madrid’s autumn feria—a mini-festival that signals the end of the season, which begins in May—and found the ring, the biggest in all of Spain, as crowded as ever with spectators. Madrid is not so much entrenched in the past as enlightened by its traditions, and nowhere is this more evident than in the character of the people themselves—a combination of infectious sociability and almost extreme correctness. Franco’s regime meant that the sixties pretty much bypassed his country—there were no summers of love; nobody ever let it all hang out. Morton wrote of “the extraordinary neatness and precision” of the city’s inhabitants in regard to “their dress, their manners, their
famous courtesy.” New visitors are almost blindsided by the exquisite manners and a profound sense of decorum that is lacking pretty much everywhere else on the globe. They are also sure to be equally impressed by “a sophisticated people who live in an alternate universe where the greatest joy imaginable is to eat, drink, and talk.” That last line comes from Ann and Larry Walker, who wrote a book called To the Heart of Spain, which is essentially about its food. It was this alternate universe that so bewitched me on that accidental trip, although I didn’t come across the book until later. If I fell in love with Madrid during my first fateful twenty-four hours, the relationship was cemented on my last night, spent in the company of my friends Jenny and Juan Luis Hernández Mirón. Jenny, whom I’d known growing up in the Mississippi Delta, had met Juan Luis, a tall, elegant Spaniard, during a college semester abroad. By the time of my visit, she’d lived in Madrid nearly twenty years and had two teenage children who spoke flawless English with a Southern accent.
WINE Most Americans are still clueless about the wonders of Spanish wine. Give yourself a crash course at Lavinia, a gorgeous modern space where you can buy a card at the register and help yourself to tasting pours of Spain’s best wines from Enomatic dispensers. Once you make your choice, they’re happy to ship it for you — or you can bring lots of cushy sweaters in an extra bag.
Above: Outdoor cafe on a side street of Madrid. Love At First Bite
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Madrid is not so much entrenched in the past as enlightened by its traditions, and nowhere is this more evident than in the character of the people themselves.
12 Compass // Spring 2012
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TORTILLA ESPANOLA Not to be confused with the heinous “Spanish omelets” on offer in American dinners, tortilla espanola is an omelet without peer. Made of sauteed potatoes and onions in olive oil (and eggs and salt, of course), it has a simplicity that belies its perfect tetures and taste. I tasted my first at Cerveceria Alemana and have ordered it there ever since.
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Juan Luis, a teacher who spent more than two decades working on a Spanish/Ancient Greek dictionary, is fond of giving perfect little gifts, so when he and Jenny picked me up on my last night in Madrid, he presented me with a quintessentially Spanish leather and silver key chain, wrapped by the shopkeeper with typical precision. After a cava (the Spanish sparkling wine) in the Ritz lobby bar, we went off to Cervecería Alemana for sherry and tapas. By the time we arrived at El Landó for dinner, we’d been out on the town for nearly two hours. The maître d’ at El Landó, Angel Gonzalez, is a gregarious soul who embraces regulars upon arrival, and his smiling face can be found in countless photos of the restaurant’s celebrity visitors. We were all duly hugged and kissed, and before anyone could even think about ordering, plates appeared with the restaurant’s signature welcomes: pan con tomate (toast rubbed with the pulp of tomatoes), more tomatoes dressed with garlic and a superlative olive oil (Spain produces more olive oil than
either Italy or Greece), and of course a plate of ham. The first bite of the ham is like experiencing a mind-blowing drug—nothing prepares you for it. I am an aficionado of the country hams of the American South; I’d eaten plenty of prosciutto in my life. But the finest Spanish ham, jamón Ibérico de bellota, comes from black-footed pigs that spend their final months on earth feasting on a continuous diet of acorns (bellotas). During its acorn-eating period, the pig will double in weight, acquiring a thick layer of fat that permeates the meat in distinctive veins. The texture is succulent and velvety at the same time, the taste lush and nutty. A plate of it begins almost every meal I’ve had in Madrid. The rest of the dinner passed in a blur of conversation and endless platters of food (some containing tiny sautéed clams or thick slices of fried blood sausage called morcilla, others sizzling asparagus or crispy baby lamb chops). Finally, sometime well past midnight, after chocolates and coffee and what I thought must surely be the end of the meal, Angel appeared with a tray of
The rest of the dinner passed in a blur of conversation and endless platters of food. whiskey, a bucket of ice, and a carafe of water. The next thing I knew, I was pouring myself a Scotch on the rocks and settling into yet another conversation.The following morning I was on Albright’s plane, but I knew I would come back and back—if for no other reason than to dine at El Landó. On each return trip, it is always the food— and the experience of dining in a most civilized way—that impressed me most. In 2000, I came with John, my husband-to-be, on our first trip abroad together, and we discovered La Trainera, one of Madrid’s oldest seafood restaurants. We were astonished by the array of shellfish we didn’t even know existed—gambas, carabineros, cigalas—each more delicious than the last and all simply cooked a la plancha, on a grill, flavored only by their own fat and a judicious sprinkling of sea salt. Though Madrid is located smack in the center of the country, the capital gets first dibs on each day’s catch, and caravans of trucks and fleets of private planes rush seafood in daily Previous: Local meal on an outdoor table. Left: Platos bacalo, local cuisine. Right: Crowd in a Madrid street around sunset.
from Spain’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Morton wrote that “the nightly race of icy lorries from the coast is almost like a public service.” Before the lorries there were mules— a traditional Christmas Eve dish of baked porgy is still referred to as Mata Mulo (or “Mule-Killer”), because of the speed with which the fish was ferried to the capital. This bounty is exhibited with such care in markets and restaurant windows like the ones at La Trainera that the displays are called joyerías, or “jeweler’s showcases.” In 2001, I made my next trip, with Condoleezza Rice (by this time there had been an administration change), and discovered pisto, a sort of refined ratatouille that is a specialty at Casa Paco. I came back with John that year, and we discovered the enormous rib steaks, called chuletones, that arrive on theirown mini-grill at Alkalde, and the sweet spider crab that adorns the “jeweler’s showcase” at O’Pazo. Before I visited Madrid, I had spent a fair amount of my adult life dining at Paris’s temples of haute cuisine and Rome’s best trattorias. Certainly I’d heard of the molecular gastronomy of now-retired Catalan chef Ferran Adrià Love At First Bite
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CROQUETAS You can’t go wrong with croquetas de jamon, but I am partial to croquetas de corcido. Cordico is a rich stew of chickpeas, vegetables, and meat. Cocido is served at Taberna de la Daneiala in three courses: first the broth, with thin nooodles added; then the vegetables and chickpeas; and last the meats.
and tasted the food of many of his disciples. Adrià has said that his liquid olive and his Kellogg’s Paella—composed of Rice Krispies, shrimp heads, and vanilla-flavored mashed potatoes— were designed “to provoke, surprise, and delight the diner.” I get that, but nothing could have surprised and delighted me more than the original ingredients and down-to-earth (and sea) intensity and simplicity of the food of Madrid. In the end, nothing would do but to dive in for more than the occasional weeklong trip. John asked me to marry him in 2002 and I knew I would, but I had never taken off before, so before I said yes I headed to Spain, to an apartment off the Plaza Mayor, and got season tickets to the bullfights next to Juan Luis. In the daytime I attempted to learn Spanish from a very patient Irish vegetarian named Declan (who was clearly in the wrong country), and every evening I met Juan Luis outside the bullring, in front of the statue of Alexander Fleming. Kenneth Tynan called bullfighting “the pursuit of honour through risk,” and before the good Dr. Fleming invented penicillin, the risk of death was significantly greater—a matador could die from even a minor gore that got infected. I loved the fact that the savior of the matadors merited the most prominent statue outside of Las Ventas; I loved our seats just below the royal box, often filled by the king and his retinue but most often by Princess Elena, the family’s most devoted fan. While I did not always love the fights themselves, I marveled at the near-religious spectacle of it all, learning a peculiar kind of Spanish (which would have repulsed the well-meaning Declan) as Juan Luis explained every ornate aspect of the proceedings. Most of all, I loved watching the crowd. The polar opposite of European soccer hooligans, the spectators are always dressed to the nines and erupt only in an organized ¡Olé! or a respectful show
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of white handkerchiefs (a signal to the president of the bullfights that the matador has done such a fine job that he deserves the ear of the bull). I rose to the occasion and bought a monogrammed handkerchief and a hand-painted fan—though in opening mine, I could never match the graceful movement of the women around me. When it was over, we’d meet Jenny down the street at El Paseillo, where Manuela Nuñez, the wife of owner Jesús de Prada Gutierrez, runs the tiny kitchen, turning out yet another discovery: shrimp tortillitas—lacy pancakes made of chickpea flour and the tiniest shrimp—a dish typically found on the coast south of Seville, where she is from. More perfection was on offer at our next stop, El Landó, where by this time I felt a bit like Dolly Levi on a triumphant return. We began with a cava, I think, to toast Alexander’s first trip, moved on to a white with the cockles and the gambas and the razor clams, and had a red or two with the lamb. God knows what else we ordered, but at the very end of the meal, when we all finally got up to go, I took a picture of the table with my iPhone. The very next day, at the Reina Sofia, standing in front of a large oil called La Tertulia del Café Pombo, I felt like I was seeing its double. On the table are highball glasses and wine glasses, sherry glasses and champagne flutes, seltzer siphons and wine bottles and a bottle that clearly bears the Pedro Ximenez label. It’s a depiction not just of the people but of the elegant detritus of a long, talkative, clearly enjoyed evening, and if I’d seen it hanging in any other place in the world, I could have told you immediately where it was set. Like so much of what I love about Madrid, it absolutely could not have been anywhere else.
Right: Busy, bright, and colorful street of bustling downtown Madrid.
In the end, nothing would do but to dive in for more than the occasional weeklong trip.
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DESTINATION: Prague, Czech Republic DISTANCE (from Boston): 3,903 miles SOUVENIR: Marionettes FOOD: Wiener Schnitzel
36 HOURS IN PRAGUE by Evan Rail
The cosmopolitan Czech capital is home to better restaurants than you might find in many American cities, and a new generation of designers and style-conscious shoppers are helping shake off the drabness — and the misconceptions — of the past. Fortunately, the Gothic spires, cobblestone lanes, bridges and the supermodel-prone locals are all still gorgeous.
FRIDAY 5 P.M. HIDE AWAY Sometimes Prague seems like nothing more than a collection of overlooked details, like the lone Green Man lurking in the plasterwork of Tyn Church (inside the portico facing Old Town Square, at the top of the second arch from the left). If you walk along the building’s north side, you’ll soon face a small square with a narrow passageway at eleven o’clock. Pass through it and you’ll enter tiny Tynska street, where the entrance to one of Old Town’s best hideaways resembles a locked barn door. Tynska literarni kavarna (Tynska 6, 420-224-827-807; www.tynska.cz) is a “literary cafe” and bookstore where local writers and students meet in a series of arched rooms and on a quiet patio. Though it’s right in the heart of Old Town, it feels miles away from the throngs. Above: Wires of a streetcar in downtown Prague.
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8 P.M. ITALIANS IN BOHEMIA You may not expect a Slavic capital to be a font of Italian culture, but Prague has been the home to notable Italians ever since the 16th-century court of Rudolph II employed the painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the gem-cutter Ottavio Miseroni and the sculptor Alessandro Abondio. Today the art is culinary. Check out Vino di Vino (Vezenska 3, 420-222-312-999; www.vinodivino.cz), a wine bar in Old Town that recently added a small selection of recipes from the Piedmont region. Entrees cost 360 to 580 koruny, or about $16.50 to $27 at 21.8 koruny to the dollar. For truly outstanding Italian cooking in Prague — and many would say anywhere this side of the Alps — head to Allegro inside the Four Seasons Hotel (Veleslavinova 2a, 420-221427-000, www.fourseasons.com/prague). The chef Vito Mollica serves seasonal dishes like slow-roasted veal with Alba truffles and aged Modena balsamic vinegar, with entrees costing 640 to 1,700 koruny. You can see why some Italians think twice before leaving Prague for home.
SATURDAY 1O A.M. COFFEE, CUBED Prague is filled with cafes, but none is quite like the Grand Café Orient (Ovocny trh 19, 420-224224-240; www.grandcafeorient.cz), a recently restored coffeehouse located inside the multi-level Museum of Czech Cubism. After your visit, check out the displays of Cubist paintings, furniture and architecture. Though the Gothic is far more obvious, Cubism remains one of the city’s fundamental styles. Sometimes the two collide spectacularly, as in the Jungmannovo namesti, a square in New Town where the 1912 Cubist streetlamp by Emil Kralicek and Matej Blecha stands next to the Church of Our Lady of the Snows from 1347. In fact, some of the city’s most important buildings have a Cubist touch: a later variant, Rondo-Cubism, was adopted as the so-called “National Style” in Prague’s interbellum golden age between 1918 and 1938, during the stillrevered First Republic of Czechoslovakia.
NOON WEIRD BEERS Noon might seem a little early, but Czech men often have several beers by breakfast. Reward yourself for your patience with a beery lunch. Guidebooks have rightly hailed Pivovarsky dum, a microbrewery with a beautifully hoppy Pilsner. Unfortunately, all that praise means it’s often impossible to get a table. What your guidebook doesn’t know about is the sister Pivovarsky klub (Krizikova 17, 420-222-315-777; www.gastroinfo.cz/pivoklub), a beer boutique and pub that opened in late 2005. Some of the hearty
meat dishes are sold by weight: a large portion of roast pork runs about 200 koruny. Six regional microbrews are available on draft, as well as around 200 kinds of bottled beers, most of which you’ll not see anywhere else.
4 P.M. DESIGN GHETTO Eastern Europe may not be known for its sense of style, but a small group of Czech designers are working to change that. Head to the old Jewish ghetto, where the three to four blocks around the Spanish Synagogue are home to a half-dozen cutting-edge boutiques. Start at Navarila (Elisky Krasnohorske 4/11, 420-271-742-091; www.navarila.cz), which sells vibrant, coarse-knit skirts and cropped sweaters, and pick up the free Czech Fashion Center map (www.czechfashion.cz) for other designers in the area.
7:30 P.M. EVERYTHING’S DUCKY Eastern European wine used to be a joke, but the heartiest laughs are now coming from the French and Spanish wine companies making major investments in the region. Similarly, Eastern European cuisine has gotten a big boost from the West, with traditional Czech fare reaching a Frenchinflected high at Perpetuum (Na hutich 9, 420233-323-429; www.cervenatabulka.cz), a modest, neighborhood restaurant that specializes in duck and goose. The juicy duck fricassé and rich goose leg confit are both excellent. Entrees costs 130 to 310 koruny and a selection of Czech wines is available.
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10 P.M. ROMPING ZIZKOV When tourists glut the center, Praguers head east. To get a glimpse of how locals party, take a 20-koruny metro ride to Jiriho z Podebrad, a square that splits two neighborhoods, Vinohrady and Zizkov. With its linden trees and fin-de-siècle architecture, Vinohrady makes a great place to live. But for a great night out, nothing beats the dives of Zizkov. Start at the area’s chief romper room, Hapu (Orlicka 8, 420-222-720-158), for fresh-fruit cocktails like the Accident (strawberries, banana and vodka, 120 koruny). Then walk past the soaring television tower to the multi-level Palac Akropolis (Kubelikova 27, 420-296-330-911; www.palacakropolis.cz), an ever-popular club where everyone from the Pixies to Algerian funk bands have played, and also a spot for serious beer consumption.
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MIDNIGHT NIGHTCAP Finish off the night at the grungy Blind Eye (Vlkova 26), a former speakeasy that finally went legit in September, though customers still have to ring a buzzer to get in. The name of its best drink is unprintable but fitting, containing 20 ounces of vodka, gin, tequila and white rum (195 koruny). If you’re still restless when the bar closes at 5 a.m., go to Charles Bridge and watch the sunrise. It’s probably the only time you’ll ever see the statues without the crowds. Below: Colorful houses lining a side street.
SUNDAY 10 A.M. CONBAT ROCK Burn off last night’s excess with a hike up Petrin Hill, which overlooks the tile rooftops of Old Town and has been a romantic spot since before Casanova was cruising there. If you’re feeling more adventurous, climb to the top of the hill, go through the Hunger Wall at the south end and continue upward to the massive sandstone boulder that has enough overhangs, handholds, cracks and footholds to give even seasoned climbers a workout. Don’t worry if you forgot your climbing shoes. Prague climbers have been spotted on this rock wearing everything from combat boots to dress oxfords.
NOON AN EARLIER ERA Old-timers threw a fit when their beloved Café Savoy (Vitezna 5, 420-257-311-562; www.ambi.cz) was cleaned up in 2001, wiping away the tobacco stains, spilled beer and dusty Stalinist décor of the earlier incarnation. Imagine their reaction when this faded Art Nouveau cafe was renovated again in 2005, emerging even brighter, with a restored plasterwork ceiling, sparkling crystal chandeliers and even (gasp!) a nonsmoking section. Is this the new Prague or the old one? With hearty, meal-size soups for 81 to 114 koruny, the prices almost recall the dirty post-commie era. But the efficient, waistcoated staff brings to mind an entirely different time: the glorious First Republic, when Prague boasted one of the highest standards of living on the Continent. Perhaps some things never change.
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DESTINATION: Florence, Italy DISTANCE (from Boston): 3,969 miles SOUVENIR: Leather FOOD: Crostini
Forever Florence artisinal beauty by Sandy Ford
Conspicuous consumption is so yesterday, right? Not in Florence, where the Western concept of luxury was perfected five hundred years ago by the merchant princes of the Renaissance, and where daily life still embraces attainable artisanal beauty. Gully Wells shops like a Medici.
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CROSTINI Typically, the Florentine people never start a meal from the main course but always have a starter first. Whether eating in a restaurant or at home with friends you will always find the liver crostini (thin sliced toasted bread with liver patè) on the table.What are they? A sauce made with chicken livers, butter, capers, anchovies, onion and broth, which is spread on warm bread and literally devoured.
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ooner or later, every visitor to Florence wanders down the Via Tornabuoni, the swankest shopping street in town. If you happen to find yourself there around noon, as I did, and you pass by Procacci, at number 64, chances are you will feel compelled to walk into this tiny cafĂŠ (virtually unchanged since it opened in 1885) and order yourself, as I did, a panini al tartufo. These small truffle sandwiches the aroma is enough to make you drool and swoon are best experienced with a glass of prosecco and are guaranteed to elevate your mood and bridge that dispiriting gap between cappuccino and lunch. Revived and elevated, I continued on down the street in search of Loretta Caponi, who, I had been told by an old Florentine friend, makes the most beautiful linens, lingerie, and baby clothes in the entire city. Crowned by an elaborate bridal veil arrangement, a froth of hand-embroidered white ruffles cascading down its sides, the crib in the window looked as though it had decided to dress up in a 1950s skirt with God knows how many petticoats underneath. This had to be the place. I opened the door and stepped
into a feminine bower of more ruffles, bows, lace, and broderie anglaise, all displayed in an immense room that had once been part of the Palazzo Aldobrandini. Swags of sugar almondcolored roses and pink-nippled beauties gazed down from the ceiling, and in a workshop at the back, visible through a window, a gaggle of grannies were seated at a table, needles in hand, busily sewing away. Heavy linen tablecloths and matching napkins, just waiting to be embroidered with your family crest, were piled on side tables, while gossamer negligees and peignoirs, clearly designed to inspire the creation of new inhabitants for that crib, floated about in open armoires, kitten-heeled kidskin slippers waiting patiently on the floor in front of them. An ode to the joys of the boudoir as imagined by Fragonard the ethereal contents of Signora Caponi’s bottega felt a very long way from the Moses baskets my babies had slept in, and even further from the sadly utilitarian nighties in my own less than bowerlike Brooklyn boudoir. I consoled myself for my lack of Italian finesse and bella figura by buying a single, infinitely lovely handkerchief on my way out.
The merchant princes of the Florentine Renaissance not just the Medicis but families like the Stroz-zis, the Tornabuonis, and the Rucellais inhabited a world informed by sublime beauty. When they wanted an altarpiece they called on Giotto, when they needed a library they got Michelangelo to design it, and when they felt like building a palazzo who would do but the great architect Leon Battista Alberti? Through their patronage, iconic works of art were created, and when it came to the decoration of their houses, their children, their gardens, and of course themselves, not so surprisingly they demanded, and got, the same degree of perfection. Nothing but the absolute best would do. And so was born this city’s long tradition of producing objects of extravagant opulence for the lucky few, a tradition that has endured and flourished for five hundred years and shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon. Should you be in need of a handmade pair of shoes, Stefano Bemer is your man; or maybe the books in your library are crying out to be bound in leather, in which case head straight for Paolo Bruscoli. The Antico Setificio
Fiorentino is the place for handloomed iridescent silk; the best bronze door handles and frames come from Duccio Banchi; all manner of exquisite paper is found at Giulio Giannini, solid silver bowls and place settings at Paolo Pagliai, gloves at Madova; and the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella still uses formulas dating back to the sixteenth century for its perfumes. With these thoughts in mind, I walked down toward the Arno to meet a gentleman with the splendidly mellifluous name of Raffaello Napoleone (it sounds even better with an Italian accent), who was to be my guide to the treasures of Florence. “I think one should always start with a Bellini, don’t you?” Of course I did, especially when the tablecloth was the exact same shade of pink as the peach and champagne elixir that was placed before me a moment later. Armed with
Previous: Crowded piazza in Florence. Left: People shopping on lamplit street. Bottom: Band playing in local pizza; Car driving along side street.
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an iPhone, a list of master craftsmen drawn up with the help of his wife, Silvia, and Raffaello’s passion for preserving this great Florentine tradition, we set to work on a battle plan. “We have been famous for our silks ever since the fourteenth century and for the quality of our leather and our silver you have only to think of Benvenuto Cellini but we have so much else. Wigs! Did you know that Filistrucchi they only use the very best human hair has been at the same address, owned by the same family, since 1720?” I did not. Raffaello had scarcely touched his chicken curry (it didn’t seem very Florentine must have been posh Italian comfort food, maybe something to do with having an English nanny?) and was back on his phone arranging for me to visit the Antico Setificio Fiorentino at three o’clock that afternoon.
TUSCAN ANTIPASTO
Tuscan antipasto offers different types of sliced salamis and hams. Both “national” (ham, salami) which are the specialties of Florence: finocchiona. A salami sausage similar to salamis (but larger in diameter), which takes its name from the fennel and is served thickly cut.
One wall of the sun-dappled courtyard was covered in a tangle of flowering jasmine where corpulent bumblebees feasted on sugary snacks, two banana trees occupied its center, and I could hear the gentle clackety hum of the looms through the open doors of the workshop. Sabine Pretsch, who has been the director of the Antico Setificio for the better part of a quarter century, was about to give me my first tutorial on the ancient art of silk weaving. “We are very lucky here because we have always had the privilege of being slow.” Sabine’s eyes light up with love as she explains the slow, painstaking process, essentially unchanged for hundreds of years, by which the raw silk fiber is transformed into the lustrous, jewel-toned fabrics that illuminate the walls, and furniture of palaces and homes from Denmark and Paris to California.
We are very lucky here because we have always had the privilege of being slow.
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“In 1780, the grand duke of Tuscany was kind enough to give us these looms, which we still use today with a few repairs over the years.” Sabine smiled at the memory of the duke’s generosity as if the looms had arrived only yesterday, then turned to introduce me to a lady whose foot was moving a wooden treadle while she kept her eyes trained on an almost invisible silk thread, making sure the tension was maintained at just the right level. By the end of the day, she would produce just twenty-four inches of fabric. The twelve women who work here each spent at least five years learning the craft, and since there is no other place in the world that would know what to do with their extraordinary skills, why would they ever leave? “And this,” said Sabine, pointing to a circular wooden warping machine in the corner, “was designed by Leonardo da Vinci although of course this is a copy made in the early nineteenth century and it works better than any modern one.” When the czar’s interior designers came calling in 1848 in search of crimson silk printed with the golden star of Saint Alexander to hang on the walls of the Kremlin, the Antico Setificio was happy to oblige, and when it was time for a bit of refurbishment in 1999, Boris Yeltsin’s decorators returned, knowing that the pattern still existed in the archives. And that little disruption in 1917? Of absolutely no consequence to a business that has occupied the same premises since 1786, three years before that other revolution in France. Raffaello had told me about the box man at lunch. In Florence, where the highest quality is almost always associated with ultra-traditional design, Paolo Carandini had taken off in a
Left: Old bridge across one of Florence’s main rivers.
more adventurous direction. After a fourteen-year apprenticeship with Paolo Bruscoli, universally recognized as Florence’s king of leather, he had recently set up his own bottega, where he applied the techniques he had learned to objects with a distinctly contemporary aspect in particular, all manner of boxes. And so the next morning I set off, map in hand, his address on the Borgo Allegri scribbled in my notebook, in search of this modern master. Naturally I could do nothing without cappuccino, and since I happened to be crossing the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, I settled down at an outdoor café to gorge myself on far more delicious than any croissant the facade of that outrageously beautiful church. It is probably impossible for the modern mind to understand the profound shock that Florentines in the mid-fifteenth century must have felt when they first saw what Leon Battista Alberti had done to the exterior of their ancient Gothic church. Imagine the chutzpah of imposing a dramatic new wardrobe designed in the classical style, composed of ice cream-colored marble pistachio, raspberry, mint on this dowdy old lady. But chutzpah is what nouveau riche merchant princes were, and still are, all about. In what splashier way could Giovanni Rucellai, who commissioned it, have advertised his devotion to God, his fashionable taste, and his immense wealth than with this spectacular work of art? During the Renaissance, the leather that bound the books in Michelangelo’s library and that was transformed into shoes and saddles for the princely families was all made in the stinking, fetid tanneries that occupied a network of narrow streets in the area around the Church of Santa Croce. Tanneries are long gone, but Paolo felt atavistically drawn to the neighborhood when he opened his sparkling-white lightfilled shop here ten years ago.
Right: Barren street of Florence. Forever Florence
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30 Compass // Spring 2012
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The strange thing is that when you become an artisan you understand that your hands have a memory and knowledge that your brain never realized they possessed. Paolo became an apprentice at twenty-two, which is incredibly old when you consider that in the past the tradition was for boys to start to learn their trade at fifteen, usually working alongside their fathers in the family laboratorio (workshop). It is a system that continued unchanged for centuries but is harder to maintain in an era when kids are understandably unwilling to leave school so young and spend five years being paid a pittance, and might prefer to escape from home rather than devote themselves to a lifetime of what must seem like filial bondage. “Luckily, I am obsessed!” Paolo cheerfully admitted as he showed me the exquisite frames, wallets, bags, and boxes covered in parchment that fill the steel and glass vitrines lining the walls of his store. “The strange thing is that when you become an artisan, you understand that your hands have a memory and knowledge that your brain never realized they possessed. It is almost as if they have a life of their own.” Imagine an ordinary brown paper shopping bag, not too big and not too small, and then picture it made of butter-soft blue leather, one skinny
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handle grass green and the other tomato red. Paolo and his partner, Anita, designed it; his hands told him to make it, and I’m afraid mine picked it up and refused to let go. It was impossible to resist its beguiling simplicity, its bright colors, its delicious smell. It just attached itself to my arm and swung happily alongside me as we headed out to Paolo’s favorite enoteca on the Piazza dei Rossi in Oltrarno, on the other side of the Arno. In a city where silk is woven on eighteenth-century wooden looms where it takes a man like Paolo fourteen years to perfect his craft, where a shoemaker like Stefano Bemer will spend three months making a single pair of shoes entirely by hand (shoes that cost about two thousand dollars) is it any wonder that the best food and wine is produced by farmers following similarly archaic methods? Slow silk, slow bags, slow shoes, slow wigs, slow Rosso di Montalcino, slow Asiago, and slow prosciutto with the merest whisper of slow, translucent fat fluttering around its edges. Ciro Beligni, the boyish owner of the enoteca Le Volpi e l’Uva, was standing behind the marble-topped counter, slicing some
slow bread as Paolo and I sat down for lunch. Why bother looking at a menu when Ciro was already busily preparing a selection of salumi and cherry tomatoes no bigger than olives in a radicchio-leaf cup, crostone con lardo, and a creamy goat cheese he had discovered earlier in the week in a tiny village just outside Siena? And how, I asked Ciro, did he manage to find all these celestial ingredients? “Ecco, it’s really not very complicated. I get into my car, then I drive around the countryside near Florence and get to know the farmers. I taste their food. I drink their wine. And I buy what pleases me the most.” The goat cheese clearly pleased Paolo the most, and as he tore off a hunk of bread, placing a slice of cheese on top, he told me about his supremely Florentine business plan. After he had set up on his own, word spread about the dazzling leather objects he was making, and quite soon the discriminating buyers from those great American emporiums Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus came calling. A dream come true! The orders flowed in, he had to employ five people to cope with the volume of work, he was forced to negotiate the nightmare maze of Italian bureaucracy. He had turned into
Previous (left): Gelato at local cafeteria (right): Loretta Caponi store. Above: Main bridge of Florence.
a boss. His hands were not pleased. Bored, frustrated, and sometimes quite angry, they rebelled and, as always, he listened to them. And so one fine day he said basta, bid arrivederci to America, and happy and relieved went back to working on his own once again. Should you be suffering from “weary and lazy spirits,” as we all tend to do with increasing frequency in these troubled times, you might think about forgoing the (expensive) shrink and his chemical cure-alls in favor of something whipped up 250 years ago and still on sale today in the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. Liquore Alkermes, according to an old advertisement, is guaranteed to revive your depressed spirits and will “divert, consume, and dispel the causes of many illnesses” of mind and body. When I entered this palace of nostrums, I instinctively lowered my voice to a whisper, and if I were a Catholic, I swear I would have genuflected and made the sign of the cross. Which isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds given that the Officina’s main room was once the chapel of the infirmary at the Santa Maria Novella monastery. Its vaulted ceiling is decorated with gilded frescoes, there are Gothic cabinets full of glass bottles and vials flanking an alcove where the altar once stood, and instead of incense, the air is suffused with the scent of the potpourri and the Acqua Regina that Caterina de’Medici
PAPPARDELLE Pasta lovers can try the pappardelle (similar to spaghetti, it is a thicker pasta made with egg) with boar sauce (a wild animal that is still in the woods of Tuscany) or hare. It can be seasoned with other classic ingredients: porcini mushrooms, meat sauces, artichokes, sausages, etc.
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took with her to France in 1533 to ward off the less salubrious smell of her husband’s uncivilized (at least by Florentine standards) courtiers. Shortly after the Dominicans set up business in Florence in 1221, like all medieval monks they busied themselves with the care of both the bodies and the souls of their new flock. Herbal medicines led to the distillation of flowers, and by 1381 the friars were selling rosewater in the infirmary that they recommended, rather optimistically, as an antiseptic for disinfecting houses during the deadly plagues that ravaged the city in the fourteenth century. Gathering herbs and plants from the surrounding hills and from their medicinal garden, they produced potions, liqueurs, ointments, and poultices in the monastery for the care of the sick, although it wasn’t until the sixteenth century that they hit upon the idea of opening a shop the pharmacy’s first ledger dates back to 1542 in which to sell their products. The poor were cared for gratis, but when Dardano Acciaiuoli, a wealthy merchant, fell ill and was miraculously cured by grapes supplied by the friars (so the story goes), the grateful patient quite naturally wanted to give thanks for his deliverance in the only way he knew how with gobs of money. Which is how the perfumed chapel I found myself standing in came to be built.
And trusting her impeccable taste and judgment, that is just what I did. 34 Compass // Spring 2012
Tuberose, orange blossom, magnolia, mimosa, broom, honeysuckle, pomegranate, gardenia, lilac, verbena, vetiver, frangipani the bottles of perfume lined up behind glass in the Gothic cabinets encompass everything from flower essences and more adventurous concoctions like Acqua di Cuba (I wonder if Fidel wears this?) to Eau de Hay (for that special farmer in your life) and their newest soap, Tabacco Toscano, which I had to buy for my husband, an unreconstructed smoker. And speaking of my home life, how could I possibly leave without stocking up on Acqua di Santa Maria Novella,
produced from a local herb known for its calming properties, which “controls hysterics,” and Aceto dei Sette Ladri (smelling salts)? I had been told that if I wanted to understand the essence of the luxe, volupté, and sheer extravagance of Florence during the Renaissance, I would find it not in any establishment that wanted my money but by seeking out a very special series of paintings. No, they were not in the Uffizi; in fact, most visitors to the city didn’t even know they existed. The same friend who had led me to Loretta Caponi told me to go to the palazzo that Cosimo de’Medici had built for himself in the mid-fifteenth century, not far from the Via Tornabuoni, and head straight for his private chapel. And trusting her impeccable taste and judgment, that is just what I did. A handsome teenage Lorenzo il Magnifico, dressed in scarlet silk, his golden curls escaping from a jeweled hat that might as well be a crown, leads the stately procession through the Tuscan hills on a white charger that is weighed down with ornamental regalia every bit as magnifico as his master’s. If you look carefully, you may be able to spot a smiling cheetah lurking behind a cypress tree, as well as a few lumbering camels, and there, with his long beard and gilded turban, is the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus. The gentleman in fur-trimmed green and gold brocade may be Piero de’Medici; his brother, Giovanni, walks by his side; and the three nubile young ladies, wearing Medici feathers in their elaborately dressed hair, are clearly relatives as well. The subject of this magical fresco painted by Benozzo Gozzoli, and commissioned by Cosimo de’Medici as wallpaper for the chapel in his newly built palazzo, is ostensibly the procession of the Magi to Bethlehem, but in reality it is a family portrait. Intended to prove that the Medicis were the
equals of popes, princes, and emperors, the procession that winds its way across the chapel walls also turns out to be a not so subtle paean to the joys of conspicuous consumption. Embossed leather, shimmering silks, chased silver, heavy brocades, gold chains, and sparkling jewels the exquisitely rendered emblems of wealth are every bit as important as the adoration of the Christ Child, who awaits the arrival of this majestic group in his manger in the Tuscan countryside. The artisans who had woven the silk for their clothes, the men who had hand-stitched their shoes and gloves, the jewelers who had created their gold chains, all lived in a world where their eyes were attuned to the aesthetic perfection that they saw around them every day. Enveloped by great art, absorbing its lessons almost by osmosis, how could they have failed to fall under its influence when it came to their own work? We take it for granted that the genius of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Giotto, Donatello, and Botticelli burns as brightly as ever, but what is far more remarkable is that the artistic descendants of those anonymous craftsmen are still producing objects every bit as lovely as the Medicis’ clothing and jewelry. But maybe it isn’t quite so astonishing. They too were born here, they too are used to living with the artistic glory of the Renaissance, so is it any wonder that they too have fallen under the city’s spell, which can transform the act of shopping from a guilt trip to the feeling that you are, in fact, collaborating in works of the highest art.
FLORENTINE STEAK
The most famous dish is surely the Florentine steak. Thick. cooked undone, this steak is a real institution.There are butchers that love it so much to the extent that they have written poems, like the famous Dario Cecchini of Panzano in Chianti.
Left: Scooters parked outside local shop. Forever Florence
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DESTINATION: Amsterdam, Netherlands DISTANCE (from Boston): 3,452 miles SOUVENIR: Tulips FOOD: Stroopwafels
by Gully Weels
Sex, drugs, and Vincent van Gogh—all on view and just part of a voyeur’s paradise. But Gully Wells goes deeper into the layered mysteries of a rapidly evolving city.
KIBBELING
This is the ‘fish fry’ snack that the Dutch are addicted to (or so I was told). It’s called Kibbeling. Its a combination of fish batter fried and spices with a sauce that tastes just like tartar sauce. This was in the Fish Market of Amsterdam.
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Anne Frank. Vincent van Gogh. Rembrandt van Rijn. In Amsterdam there is no escaping this eternal trio. And so, I decided, who better to take along as my part-time guides to the layered mysteries of their shared city? Of course, I met plenty of other people along the way—real live people whose stories illuminated different aspects of modern-day Amsterdam: Ed van Thijn, the former mayor whose childhood had been spent hiding from the Nazis; Emily Parker, a young black American who works for Heineken, that urbastion of conservative white male Dutch commerce; Jacob Dekker, whose business empire stretches from Japan to New York, Key West, Curacao, Amsterdam, and East Africa; and Tracy Metz, an American journalist who married a Dutchman and cheerfully resigned herself to never truly understanding the place where she now lives. And then there were the people I met in chance encounters: the elderly couple who stopped me on the street to ask the way to the Torture Museum (why me? why them?); the applecheeked English nurse who took me to a coffee shop and offered me a
joint so strong that I had to abandon it and her, retreating ignominiously to the sidewalk outside for gulps of fresh air; and the cabdriver Hussein, whose name alone confined him to an invisible ghetto. They all contributed to the collage forming in my mind, but still I found myself returning again and again, almost involuntarily, to my three ghostly lodestars. The morning I arrived in Amsterdam, a note was delivered by messenger to my hotel, inviting me to celebrate Vincent van Gogh’s one hundred fiftieth birthday by attending a show, previewing that night at his eponymous museum. Ingeniously, the idea was to get Vincent himself, from beyond the grave, to curate the exhibition. “Vincent’s Choice” consisted of paintings he had mentioned in his letters, as well as works by artists whom he had admired, ranging from a sublime Rembrandt at one end of the scale to a treacly pre-Raphaelite portrait of a swooning Christ at the other, with plenty of his own genius scattered throughout. Before the event, I had a day to explore the heart of Amsterdam, around three
supremely beautiful tree-lined canals: the Prinsengracht, the Keizersgracht, and the Herengracht. They were constructed early in the seventeenth century to provide a setting for the houses of the aristocracy and the nouveaux riches of the Golden Age— the age of Rembrandt—in the grandeur that they so richly deserved. Calvin may have warned that “God seasons the sweetness of wealth with vinegar,” but you have to assume, as you walk along the canals today, that God must have decided to skip the vinegar when it came to the city’s architecture, and to sprinkle it on some other aspect of those good people’s lives. I suppose it was the Venetians, if not the Arabs before them, who figured out the irresistible allure of water flowing through a collection of buildings. The gentle reflections, the coolness on a hot summer day, and, on a more practical level, the navigational possibilities for barges and boats: in other words, a perfectly designed foundation for living that satisfies all the senses. Amsterdam’s assets continue to be seized by new waves of architects. Some of the most innovative buildings in Europe are here in the Oostelijk Havengebied (“Eastern Harbor Area”), where Renzo Above: Snapshots of the many canals. Right: Tourist on her bicycle
Piano’s Nemo, the new national science museum, soars above the water like an oxidized ship’s bow; Frits van Dongen’s De Walvis (“The Whale”), a residential-office complex, seems to flip its tail in the air; and on Javaeiland, nineteen different young Dutch architects have reinterpreted the classic canal houses of the city’s old center. In Amsterdam, the connecting tissue is always water: Canals thread through the eastern islands, and to get to de eilanden you catch the ferry from the Central Station and head out across the estuary, with seagulls screeching overhead. My day’s inchoate wandering led me from one canal to another, zigzagging across footbridges and along narrow streets lined with Dickensian shops specializing in everything from cheese, buttons, and herbal remedies to more material consolations such as antique jewelry, until I began to lose myself in this watery world and no longer knew, or cared, which canal I was on. And what did it matter? There ahead was one of the most beautiful houses I had seen so far, with a sweeping stone double staircase—unusual in a city where, as in Manhattan, space is at a premium and most old buildings have staircases resembling crooked ladders and called, appropriately enough, traps. It was open to the public—a museum of some kind, perhaps? Only The Passions of Amsterdam
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after I’d paid my money and fallen into the clutches of the obviously underemployed guide did I realize that I’d entered the kitsch netherworld of the Kattenkabinet. I dutifully admired the furnishings—marble-topped tables and gilded sofas in the Louis-who-knows-which style—and then noticed the paintings: cats. Japanese cats peeking coyly out from bamboo stands, sleek Siamese cats curled up on satin pillows, playful kittens with balls of yarn, and not a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh in sight. About to make my escape, I almost tripped over one of the inhabitants of the house: an ancient, blind lump of Angora sprawled inelegantly at the top of the stairs. What had looked like an Edwardian mansion was an old cats” home, bequeathed in perpetuity to Amsterdam’s indigent felines by some kindly, addled Dutch millionaire. Curiously enough, it wasn’t until 1973 that the city of Amsterdam chose to build the Van Gogh Museum, a concrete bunker whose transcendent contents more than redeem its exterior. Then again, Van Gogh chose to abandon his native land and its gloomy palette at the age of thirty-two, never to return. Amsterdam failed to appreciate him in his lifetime, but now it can’t do enough for him. In death, he has never stopped working for the city, attracting hordes of tourists to his museum and, no doubt, indirectly paying for his own party. Still, a birthday is a birthday, and 150 is a pretty good excuse for a celebration. I set off
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to meet my blind date, Claes, a Dutch architect and the friend of a friend, stumbling a little unsteadily across the cobblestones because, in honor of Vincent, I was wearing new snakeskin stilettos. I wondered about the glittering guest list because, after all, an opening night where I come from is as much about people-watching as it is about appraising art. The architect had no trouble spotting me: The illadvised shoes, and an equally inappropriate black leather skirt, must have been a neon sign flashing foreigner. No matter—we were soon mingling freely with what was surely le tout Amsterdam. I was introduced to the director of the museum, the minister of culture, and a tall, dark-haired lady whose works had just been installed in a gallery on one of the newly chic, windswept islands near the old docklands. I was offered a glass of white wine, and the buffet table was piled high with “hors d’oeuvres”: gigantic wooden bowls of cubed Dutch cheese, sans toothpicks. A distinguished-looking gentleman was playing the cello inaudibly in the hallway, beside the coat-check room. The crowd was an ocean of unisex jeans, sneakers, and backpacks, with
What had looked like an Edwardian mansion was, in fact, an old cats home. the narcissistic arts of hairdressing, perfume, and makeup refreshingly absent, as were the vagaries of fashion, flirtation, and any hint of untoward behavior. I was struck dumb with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, until it came to me in a flash: I was back at parent-teacher night. Starving, I decided to postpone the exhibition until the next day and instead went out to dinner with the architect. Claes was there not only to feed me but also to try to answer some of my questions. Where to begin? How about with food—always an interesting way into a nation’s culture, except that we happened to be sitting in a sultry, dimly lit Moroccan restaurant named Mamouche, ordering tagine de pigeon in French. “My favorite Indonesian place was booked,” explained Claes, “so I thought you’d enjoy this.” I understood the historical connection between Holland and the Dutch East Indies, and was aware that Indonesian restaurants in Amsterdam are almost as commonplace as Chinese food in Chinatown, but I felt that it might be tactless, so early in our friendship, to ask why we had bypassed Holland and ended up in Morocco. (Could those Above: Downtown Amsterdam; touring the city on bikes and unicycles.
cheese cubes and warm wine have been a clue?) So I skipped the soft food opener and went straight for the jugular: politics and religion. “For us,” explained Claes, “politics is all about the art of compromise and accommodation, which leads to an endless series of coalitions. This desire not to rock the boat extends into the private sphere, too. There’s a Dutch expression, Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg, which translates as, “Just behave normally and that is crazy enough.” Claes smiled and went on, “And then, of course, there’s the issue of Calvinism and money. We are famous for being “economical” and for loathing waste. Can you think of any other country that would bother to invent a special instrument, a flessenlikker, for getting that last drop of mayonnaise out of the jar? God was good to us, and, conveniently, Calvin taught us to believe that we deserved every guilder of our prosperity but that it was sinful to flaunt it. If you have it, you don’t show it. And if you show it, you don’t have it.”
ADVOCAAT
Advocaat (or advokat) is a rich and creamy liqueur made from eggs, sugar and brandy. It has a smooth, custard-like flavor and is similar to eggnog. The typical alcohol content is generally somewhere between 14% and 20% abv. Its contents may be a blend of egg yolks, aromatic spirits, sugar or honey, brandy, vanilla and sometimes cream (or evaporated milk).
It was my turn to smile. I saw what a social and sartorial faux pas the snakeskin shoes had been: I’d dressed crazily and, worst of all, way beyond my means. Which led me to the Elton The Passions of Amsterdam
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The windows are enormous, squeaky clean, and naked. How this curtainless state of affairs came about, nobody knows for sure.
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The Passions of Amsterdam
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John-like figure of Pim Fortuyn, the late Dutch politician who must surely have had a pair of snakeskin boots lurking at the back of that closet he had exited so many years before. If politics was all about conforming, I wondered, how did the flamboyant, right-wing Fortuyn, who had tapped into a deeply anti-immigrant vein in the supposedly tolerant Dutch psyche, fit into the picture?
BOERENKOOL Curly kale mixed with potatoes, served with gravy, mustard, and rookworst sausage. Boerenkool was mentioned in cookbooks from the year 1661. The dish became popular after a few bad corn-seasons when potatoes became popular as food.
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Claes ordered some coffee, lit a cigar, and tried to explain. “Fortuyn was a charismatic egomaniac,” he said, “a man who dared to say out loud what so many people felt but were too frightened, or ashamed, to articulate.” Holland has, of course, long been a haven for religious and political dissidents: Sephardic Jews from Spain in the sixteenth century, freethinkers from pre-Revolutionary France, and Puritans from England, who finally ended up in Massachusetts—all were welcomed. In more recent years, however, the limits of Dutch tolerance have been severely tested by successive waves of immigrants from Surinam, the Dutch colony that gained its independence in 1975, and by “guest workers,” mainly from Morocco and Turkey. It is estimated that in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Islam will become the predominant religion by 2020. Before Fortuyn came along, politicians tended to tiptoe around the subject of immigration. One of the first things that every visitor to Amsterdam notices is the windows. The city is a voyeur’s (and, presumably, an exhibitionist’s) paradise. The windows are enormous, squeaky clean, and naked. How this curtainless state of affairs came about, nobody knows for sure. One theory has it that in a city with no bedrock the big windows reduced the weight of the tall, thin houses, since fewer bricks were used in their construction. The more philosophical explanation goes back to the Calvinists, who wanted the world to see just how transparently
blameless their private lives were. But since only the front rooms are visible from the street, that leaves plenty of space at the back for all manner of unspeakable (and invisible) dirty business. Then again, maybe the Dutch are just fond of the light. Conveniently, the oldest church in Amsterdam, the Oude Kerk, dating to 1306, is in the middle of the oldest neighborhood in the city, where the oldest profession in the world flourishes much as it has done since . . . when? Who knows. The sacred and the profane, the sublime and the ridiculous, body and soul—they all come together in a maze of squiggly little Previous: Canal at night. Above: Windows of canal townhomes, bikers touring the city.
One of the first things that every visitor to Amsterdam notices is the windows. streets, where seagulls shriek overhead and you swear you can smell the ocean in the distance.That left drugs and the Dutch version of coffee shops—I even saw one called De Oude Kerk, for pity’s sake—where hash and marijuana are legally available. No alcohol can be served, and I’m not sure anyone goes there for cappuccino and a bagel, either, but the real mystery is how the coffee shops get their “produce.” When it comes to hard drugs, the attitude is not so much indulgent as it is understanding. The Dutch believe addicts need all the help they can get, not harsh punishment, so there are endless government schemes and programs, such as the distribution of free needles and so-called methadone buses that cruise the city in an attempt to get people to withdraw from heroin. And how about the club owners” policy on ecstasy, an illegal drug: no problem, just check it at the door with your cell phone and coat. The result, according to Tracy Metz, an American journalist who writes for the Dutch newspaper nrc Handelsblad, is that the country has “the oldest, healthiest junkies in the world.”
Ed van Thijn, the former mayor of Amsterdam, who was eight years old when the Germans invaded Holland; he was forced to move to eighteen different hiding places until liberation in 1945. The tragic parallel with Anne Frank’s life was impossible to ignore. Van Thijn not only survived but went on to have a distinguished political career. The whole history of the Jews during the Nazi occupation is such a deeply painful one that you have to admire how the city of Amsterdam has chosen to approach it.
A couple of weeks before I went to Amsterdam, I saw an extraordinary documentary called Secret Lives, about Jewish children who, during the war, had been hidden from the Nazis and had survived. One of the children was The Passions of Amsterdam
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City Guide SEE + DO
SHOP
1 Anne Frank House Prinsengracht 236-267; annefrank.org For more than two years, eight members of three Jewish families resided in this canal house, which was eventually raided and its occupants sent to concentration camps. Anne Frank wrote and kept her famous diary here.
&K Two locations; www.klevering.nl The inventory includes everything from trinkets to designer objects.
Dam Square Known as the Dam, the town square is the site of notable buildings (Royal Palace, National Monument, New Church) and special events. EYE Film Institute Netherlands Vondelpark 3; eyefilm.nl Devoted to all things cinematography, the museum’s collection includes Dutch and international films. Visit the website for screenings and events. Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Keizersgracht 609; foam.org Exhibits from well-known talents are newcomers in a range of genres are featured. Check the museum’s calendar for tours, lectures, and events. 2 Rijksmuseum Jan Lujkenstraat 1; rijksmuseum.nl Although the museum is currently undergoing a massive renovation, a selection of 17th-century masterpieces are still on display in one wing. The rest of the space is scheduled to reopen in 2013. 3 Stedelijk Museum Museumplien 10; stedelijk.nl Dating back to the late 1800s, this modern art museum housed in a red-brick Neo-Renaissance building is slated to reopen this year. Van Gogh Museum Paulus Potterstraat 7; vangoghmuseum.nl View more of Vinvent van Gogh’s paintings here than any other place in the world.
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4 Bloemenmarkt On Singel between Muntplein and Koningsplein. The floating flower market, located on one of the city’s oldest canals, opened in 1862. In addition to blooms and plants, you’ll find plenty of souvenirs. Denham Prinsengracht; denhamthejeanmaker.com At this well-designed shop specializing in demin, you can see how the jeans are made and sense the staff’s passion for their product. 5 Frozen Fountain Prinsengracht 645; frozenfountain.nl Housed in two large buildings, this home goods and furniture emporium specializes in contemporary works by established as well as emerging designers.
EAT + DRINK De Bakkerswinkel Numerous locations;debakkerswinkel.nl Whether you’re in the mood for a casual sit-down, high tea, or takeaway, De Bakkerswinkel is a good go-to spot. Gartine Taksteeg 7; gartine.nl Gartine provides a respite in the busy city; many dishes are derived from the eatery’s own garden. 6 IJ-kantine Enjoy a coffee in the morning, or have lunch or dinner on the terrace of this modern brasserie. Stout! Haarlemmerstraat; restaurantstout.nl The focus of the simple menu is high-quality inredients, and the vibe is relaxing and cozy.
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7 1
5 4 2 3
STAY
GETTING THERE
Artemis John M. Keyensplein 2; www.artemisamsterdam.com Located about halfway between the city center and the airport, Artemis offers deluze and modern accommodations -- plus a well-regarded restaurant, De Stijl.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (ams) is the city’s airport, as well as the main international airport for the entire country of the Netherlands. Once past the arrivals area, you’ll find Schiphol Plaza, which offers easy access to the trains. A 20-minute Netherlands Railways ride will take you to the Amsterdam Centraal Station. There are also other rail options, and tazis are readily available.
7 Lloyd Hotel Oostelijke Handelskade 34; lloydhotel.com Situated in a 1921 building, nearly all of the Lloyd’s 117 rooms are different -- the result of collaborations with Dutch artists and designers.
For more information about Amsterdam, visit iamsterdam.com/en.
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Snapshot Reader photo contest Europe Trip: A Puddle Iron Lattice Tower Name: Mohammad Fahmi Mohd Shah Hometown: Taman Man Jaya Fasa 3 Currently: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Occupation: Blogger, Hobbyist Photographer Website: Signifikan Kehidupan Equipment: Canon EOS 50D
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Resources
// What to Know
what + where ...
fill + fly bottle set flight001.com $22.00
crumped city map flight001.com $22.00
scratch map fredflare.com $24.00
metallic earphones flight001.com $22.00
conversion chart:
what is it going to cost me ...
(dollar x .76 = euro)
(to give you a general feel for prices)
USD
EURO
$1.00
€ 0.75
$5.00
€ 3.79
$8.00
$10.00
€ 7.58
a 12 minute cab ride
$25.00
€ 18.95
$20.00
$50.00
€ 37.89
$100.00
€ 75.79
$500.00
€ 378.93
a night in a hotel
$1,000.00
€ 757.77
$197 – $526
a cup of coffee OR
OR
€ 6.08
€ 15.00
a sandwich and a drink $10.50
OR
OR
€ 7.00
€ 150 – € 400
Resources
49
www.westelm.com