Bookpacking’s Blog

AKA Leffe-Lovers’ Left Bank Lunacy

Bookpacking had the good fortune to find ourselves at a loose end in Paris this Monday evening with a partner in crime; having serendipitously bumped into a fellow vagabond, from the same part of the globe as ourselves, that we see every year or so in France through work. After a suitably literary event at Shakespeare & Co, we hit the bars of Rue Descartes where the lure of Leffe at only €4 per pint was to prove our undoing. We made our way unceremoniously up Rue Mouffetard to savour the Kwak in The Mayflower, as the full force of Belgian brewing was unleashed on our unsuspecting British bodies.

We were following in the footsteps of some of the biggest names in western literature; such as Papa Hemingway himself. The big man was scathing of F Scott Fitzgerald’s lack of drinking prowess, shamelessly shaming him in his famous Lost Generation memoirs A Moveable Feast. Despite writing the classic ‘Gatsby’, for anyone who’s done a bit of digging, Fitzgerald is publicly pilloried for eternity – thanks to the jugular-targeting judgments found in his competitive ‘friend’s’ diary. We can only be glad that the sole epistolary witness to Monday’s over-hydration is a little more discreet.

Germany; Weimar; ACC gallery/cafe; “Kangaroos Run Wild in Weimar” exhibition

Another little Weimar bonus tonight. Stopping off at the gallery/café ACC we saw a sign for an event that evening discussing Australia’s image, as portrayed to Germans in mainstream film. Dipping into overdubbed films ranging from Walkabout to Priscilla to Rabbit Proof Fence, local academic/artist Olaf Nenninger presented a compilation of clips to show how manufactured and manipulated this portrayal is.

All countries self-mythologise. America focuses on the Wild West and the Revolution; in Britain we have WW2 when ‘we were all in it together’. But living in Europe and having worked in Australia, Bookpacking is aware that it exists today as a brand; something for foreign tourists like ourselves to buy into.

Thus the recent film with Nicole Kidman can be seen (and visiting Aussie artist and war correspondent George Gittoes confirmed it was) as a huge advertising vehicle, leading a tourist board charge. Fellow Aussie and artist/activist Deborah Kelly pointed out that it is one of the most urbanised countries in the world, yet the images associated with it are of landscapes not cities.

The celebrated Gittoes – who has worked with Michael Moore and has his own Iraq-related release “Soundtrack to War” – has some experience of working with Aborigines in the Northern Territory, and so was qualified to give us a list of what we ought to see to get a more realistic picture of the country and its Aboriginal people.

Gittoes’ list:
They’re a Weird Mob
The Last Wave
Romper Stomper
10 Canoes (highly recommended)

Deborah Kelly also recommends:
The Boys
Head On

An aside from Bookpacking:

One of the curators asked George and Deborah if they could relate to these desert/outback landscapes. A valid question, and they answered in the affirmative.

But if you are a European who has never been to either Australia or America, it can be difficult to fully grasp the scale of the individual countries. An office worker may live in the suburbs of Melbourne, taking a tram to his office job in the cold rain, suited and booted. In the centre, another guy in jeans and bush hat might be working on a cattle station the size of Belgium which is running out of water. Even further north, a Park Ranger in stereotypical Blundstone boots and short-shorts might be dodging crocodiles on the rounds of his tropical reserve.

Of course there’s a certain homogeneity to the culture, but the environments are very different. Cultural/language differences aside, it’d be like asking someone who farms in Morocco if they can relate their surroundings to an office worker in Switzerland. Some things really do have to be seen to be appreciated.

Germany; Weimar; concert hall

Happenstance is one of Bookpacking’s favourite phenomena. Within 20 minutes of arriving at Weimar’s quirky student-run Hababusch hostel, we found ourselves in a Klezmer concert. Receptionist Kai checks me in and mentions there’s a Klezmer workshop happening in town; do I fancy coming to a concert? In no time at all we’re walking through the quaint snow-filled streets of Weimar, past statues of Goethe and Schiller. We’re only at  a concert given by the cream of the world’s Klezmer and Romany musicians. I hadn’t even heard of Klezmer until a few weeks ago in Krakow’s Kazimierz, and now I’m listening to feted musicians from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the US, UK, Ukraine and Germany. Kai chats to musos who’ve returned to the former DDR town for this winter spin-off from the larger Yiddish Summer festival.

Some of the music is terribly plaintive. The imagination wanders: how many places must this song have been played in? From happy family gatherings to remote farms under threat of Pogrom or even in the nearby Buchenwald death camp. I think about my own recently departed grandmother again. And again I think about the mother given an overdose in the Krakow ghetto flat; administered by her son to avoid an even worse death at the hands of the Nazis. A familiar feeling comes; a sense of loss, of something ripped from the world. The religious or the poetic might describe it as the sound of thousands (millions?) of voices screaming out from a hellish past.

But the coin has two sides, and we finish with a grand finale and uplifting danceable numbers. 10 or so get up from the mostly muso audience and, linking hands, dance around the room in a Hora. I think back to the wild dancing I saw once at an orthodox Jewish wedding in London, an impressive sight indeed. Then girls present flowers to the band and a standing ovation ensues. The whole event is being filmed, and I feel privileged to be here. Timing, eh?