elbphilharmonie rising...

if architecture is frozen music, then the Elbphilharmonie conceived by the Swiss architectural firm of Herzog and de Meuron is almost thawed and will soon be flowing from its peaking glass waves atop a former warehouse base on the ever industrious river Elbe...

the Grand Hall is cradled on enormous steel springs and terraced with seating for over 2,000 undulating around the centrally placed orchestral stage - all acoustically tweaked to perfection by Yasuhisa Toyota...

as the colossal ship's prow or iceberg landmark for Hamburg's gleaming HafenCity, the Elbphilharmonie also includes smaller concert halls, a museum, a 250-room hotel and 45 private residences...

[when we were here, there were guided tours to the construction zone within but we missed making a reservation and had to settle for a visit to the Elbphilharmonie Pavilion instead]

hamburg quirky

Hamburg was a brief but intense interlude between cool Scandinavia and familial Amsterdam...
and the Hamburg that we had to so quickly experienced was unexpectedly warm and welcoming, from our stylish guesthouse aptly named Schlaflounge ["sleeping lounge"] in a residential neighbourhood full of quirky boutiques and a secret restaurant with no signage - only recommended by word of mouth and where our hour long wait for a table was worth every mouthful...
to the Sunday morning walk down to the lengthy harbourfront on the Elbe river full of robust strollers out enjoying the fall sunshine and the determined revellers chomping along to an elderly rock band in the fish market cum concert hall that is the ever rollicking Fischmarkt...
to casing artist and anarchist-occupied buildings that ranged from be-happy-boho orderly to jungle-rule come one/come all flop-palaces...
to the idiosyncratic semiotics of a particular nordic-germanic culture that can be both gruff-gritty and coolly elegant, oh-so-dated and yet hyper-progressive, overtly sleazy in one area and understatedly opulent in another, ultra affluent but only sedately flaunting it, all in service for and by rough and ready partiers as well as hardcore work ethic meisters...
and all the more inviting to the curious explorer of this eccentrically enlightened "Free and Hanseatic City"...

***

***

***

***

en promenad i stockholm...

Empty the street in morning twilight

slithers, pushes into the distance,

gropes its way along city blocks,

cuts and crosses house lots and alleys...

*****

Rows of houses, grey-brown walls,

mouldings, drainpipes, balconies, railings,

baker's pretzels and grocery bushes;

level sidewalk stones as margins...

*****

Now, far off on the brow of the hill 

rises up a head that is moving,

and two hands wrapped around a cane -

like a mirage it rises up...

*****

 

But over there, and even higher

hovers the smoke-blue city skyline

there is the sun, the cottages gleam,

there is the breeze, flapping the flags...

*****

*selected verses from "Street Pictures" by August STRINDBERG (1849-1912), translated from the swedish by Lotta M. Lofgren, 2002.

 

stockholm standards

 ...Sweden is a hauled-up, unrigged ship. Her masts stand stark in the twilight. And twilight lasts longer than day. The way here is stony: daylight waits until noon to reveal winter's coliseum, lit by unreal clouds.*

[*selected lines from 'Epilogue' by Tomas TRANSTROMER, as translated from the swedish by May Swenson]

...and so Stockholm stands tall even on land - the slender verticals of the thousands of masts around her many islands are replicated in the lamp posts, the soaring columns, the flag standards...and certainly no less than in the statuesque bearing of her fair citizens!

around skeppsholmen...

The STF Vandrarhem AF Chapman & Skeppsholmen is a highly rated hostel on board and on land in a prominent location on the island of Skeppsholmen with a view of the charming medieval town of Gamla Stan...

[there was no room available on board when we were there, so we stayed at the lovely Hotel Skeppsholmen instead] 

some of the many romantic and eccentric vintage boats [each with its own information plaque of its provenance and seafaring history] moored along the shores of the island...

The towboat is freckled with rust...

It is a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.

But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore.

As if people wanted to be fetched. 

[selected lines from the first verse of 'Sketch in October' by Tomas TRANSTROMER, from Paths, 1973 - this poem translated from the swedish by Robin Fulton]

[on the flight over (in October!), I read of Tomas Transtromer being finally awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 80 - he was born (and still lives) in Stockholm, publishing his first book of poems in 1954 and has since published many more volumes. I am liking what I am reading in translation but wish that I could read his poetry as he wrote them in swedish!]

 working boatyards on the more rustic side of Skeppsholmen...

Dejeuner sur l'herbe by Pablo PICASSO, 1962

[sculptural installation in the shady back garden of the Moderna Museet]

 The Royal Institute of Art [Kungliga Konsthogskolan]

[with the very cool Hotel Skeppsholmen in the background]

[this is one institute where I would love to be an art student again - while staying at that hotel!]

the absolute skeppsholmen

 Skeppsholmen dangles preciously, a bejewelled drop earring from the epilobe of central Stockholm...
the lustrous breath of an autumnal sun stirs the air, sparks the waters, flecks the trees - their leaves shimmering a thousand shades of gold...

the light-dappled writhe-morphous sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely guide the way to the lovely and idyllic Hotel Skeppsholmen...
where the dashing naval officers no longer stride down the long hallways or gaze out the wide windows, lost in reveries of exotic shores and maritime feats and clear calm seas...

we survey the gilded foliage from the serenity of room 245 [dedicated to the first president of the Swedish Royal Naval Society who had lived here with his wife from 1773 to 1776]
across the park, the Museum of Modern Art [Moderna Museet] beckons with a luminously absorbing exhibit of the later paintings of Turner, Monet and Twombly...
the darkening atmospheric sublimity of Turner's Peace - Burial at Sea drifts emotively into my painter's eye, while Monet's Matinée sur la Seine, Giverny effuses my visual field with sensually nostalgic intimations...
and Twombly's Quattro Stagioni looms grandly over my effects with the vigoroso impact of a multi-hued bloodbath...
...I eventually escape to the rational materiality of the rigidly solid structural formations in the Swedish Museum of Architecture [Arkitektur Museet] next door!

the artful light installations within the hotel's hallways lead me back to my room - without running into any of the pensive ghosts of landlocked swedish sailors, regrettably...

 Skeppsholmen, the morning after...

shading off...

"Le voyageur marchant sur son ombre écrit

sans attendre que le ciel marque minuit

sous le bataille de plumes la pierre sonne."

[last verse from "Sonnet" by Alfred JARRY (1873-1907)]

[translation from the french by Francis Scarfe:: 

"The striding traveller writes his shadow down;

not waiting for the sky to strike midnight

the feathers hammer on the chiming stone."]

 

along a swedish river...

the Gota flows through Gothenburg, Sweden's largest port city, and where we were staying near the mouth of the widening river, we could observe much maritime traffic to and from the harbour...
on an overcast Sunday afternoon we walked along the southern riverfront going under the Alvsborgsbron bridge, with views of the massive industrial sites across the river...

the enormous ferries sailed in from Norway and Germany...

past the lone red rock - the namesake of the Roda Sten Art Centre below, exhibiting international contemporary art...

a regatta of old sailing vessels floated by in the late afternoon, contrasting leisure with industry...

left behind - the ubiquitous IKEA rug as beach blanket...

a carefully embedded mosaic eye looks out onto the river and out towards the ice blue sea...