Bonetree Blog

Took the event of my cousin going to Munich for an interview last Thursday to catch a ride and see the Bavarian city.  While she went to her interview, her boyfriend and I went to the mall and had delicious gourmet pizza.  I hate when people talk about the vibe of cities, as though a city can give off a frequency of energy or as though the people are all vibrating with the same frequency.  But people in this mall were noticeably happier than what I remember mall people in Toronto being.  Maybe it’s because I hate shopping in general so I’m never in an overly positive mood when in a mall, but it seems to me like Torontonians–especially in the burbs–shop with their heads shoved in their purses: frantically, rudely rushing from one store to the next, no mood for idle chit chat, probably fearing the possibility of seeing an acquaintance they’d rather not bump into, and nervous about the fact that they didn’t shower or do their hair or makeup or look in the mirror before coming to the mall.  People were making eye contact with me for uncomfortable periods of time!  And when I’d look away shyly/nervously, and look back, they’d still be looking at me, smiling!  Nadine’s boyfriend, a German, said that Munich is one of two German cities that he’s noticed a real positive vibe from–whether it’s because of the higher standard of living or higher degree of wealth, he didn’t know–but it made an impression on both of us.

After Nadine’s interview, we drove around downtown looking for a parking spot near the old part of town.  We walked around the old part where I snapped a few pictures.  We only walked around for an hour , but I did get a very different impression, superficially, from Munich than I still get from Vienna.  In Vienna, everything is so old and grandiose and frozen in a nauseatingly quaint and simplified historical sense to preserve the experience for tourists who only want to come, visit, leave and perpetuate the image that is found in history text books.  Munich, in comparison, seemed to display the old but not try to crystallize it, freeze it, but continued to build life around history instead of making a living off history.  Maybe the fact that Munich was severely damaged and had to be largely rebuilt after the two world wars can explain this in part.

An evolution in my innate repulsion for the glorified, edified decadence of European yore.

Last weekend in the Art History Museum,  when overwhelmed with the decadence, the sheer beauty, the unimaginable time and energy given to detail and precision in sculpting and realism, the mammoth scale on which these projects were carried out, the even bigger ego and vanity that must have been behind those that commissioned these works (Emperor Franz Josef, Napolean, as a few), I thought: this is perfection!  This is the highest attainment of beauty!  And it’s obvious why it was sought after: it inevitably, immediately evokes awe; I stand dumbfounded, speechless, tingling all over, conscious that I am in front of something truly universal and timeless.  And yet…. it’s sterile.  This beauty, it’s too perfect, it’s too grandiose, it’s too precise, to the point that it lacks human frailty.  And with that omission, it lacks the most important human quality:  love.

And I realized that this degree of perfection in beauty has to be created in an environment that is unjust and lacking in love, because to attain beauty to this degree is neurotic, fanatic, obsessive.  If the world had been a socially just place at the time of these egomaniacs, we wouldutn’t have these relics attesting to man’s obsession with beauty and perfection.  Underlying the awe and presence of the supernatural that these relics of art inevitably evoke, is a subtle but significant and equally as powerful sense of the evil: the egos behind those that commissioned the work, for the sake of having their names live in infamy; the squalor and poverty and filth that must have existed at the time to enable these artifacts to be created in a vacuum impermeable to time and money and rationale.

This is abundantly obvious at the Stift Melk, a monastery nearly half a kilometer long, built 300 years ago and used by those following St. Benedict.  So ornate and decadent, it boggles the mind to consider how the monks, who gave up material comforts, didn’t find it contradictory to worship in a church bedecked with gold, gold, gold everywhere.  It sure makes for good pictures though.

A friendly pot-smoker I met outside of my hostel in my first week here, a local, alerted me to the fact that a pot demonstration was taking place at the Vienna International Conference Center on May 8th.  Decided to check it out.  It was interesting :P

After finally getting all of my luggage back, I set out to spend the next few days in Innsbruck and the valley that extends south from it,  Stubaital.  I stayed with my cousin, Sylvia, who showed me all around Fulpmes and Innsbruck.  Both her and her husband are chefs so I ate like a king the whole time I was there!  Good thing we were so active: climbing mountains, going for runs and hikes.  I’ll let the pictures speak for the rest of the four nights, five days I spent there.