Author: Fred Hoyt

A carefree day at Sans Scouci, (which means carefree)

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia (1740-1786) met the other Frederick today (me) and only one of us is still standing.  Fortunately, it’s me.

The encounter was at Sans Souci park in Potsdam, the summer home of the Hohenzollern family, which transformed Prussia from a minor principality in Northeast Europe to the feared Huns of World War I. The Hohenzollern family became king of Prussia in 1701, and lasted until the defeat of Germany in World War I.  Prominent in the transformation was Frederick the Great, under whose rule, the Prussian military waged war against much of the rest of Europe, and Frederick emerged as the equal of his contemporaries—Maria Theresa of Austria and that German princess turned Czarina, Catherine the Great.  Usually adored by the philosophes in France, Frederick cultivated a court with musicians and artists (he composed flute and other concerti; I purchased an album), and the two castles we spent some time at today have ample concert halls, theaters (he wrote a play, too), and “writing closets” that are 3X the size of my office with Schinkler cabinets and desks that probably are literally priceless, and silk-damask furniture that would cost roughly 1 million Euros to replace.  Frederick’s influence on the architecture—a florid and showy style called rococo—gave rise to Frederich rococo, since he persisted in the style long after it had gone out of fashion.  Though he cultivated the intellectuals, Frederick preferred his uniform to civilian clothes, and called his uniform his “death gown.”

The Sans Souci palace was a “pleasure palace” built early in his reign to mimic a similar toy the much wealthier Louis XIV built at Versailles (the Grand Trianon, where the treaty was signed disposing of the Austrian Empire in World War I). It is much more complete than the other palace we saw, despite Kaiser Wilhelm having taken 59 wagon loads of family loot to the Netherlands when he abdicated in 1918, and the Soviets (Potsdam having been in East Germany) having done much the same in 1945.  The palace allows only 2,000 visitors a day, and we had a guide and the place pretty much to our own—a treat after the zoo at Versailles.  Frederick built the vineyards first (I told you it was a pleasure palace), and gave prominence to his quarters and those of his guests; his loveless marriage meant his wife had her own palace elsewhere, and I think we were told she set foot in Sans Souci once. One other item the guide discussed fit in well in the theme of our European Union explorations: she discussed the cost of bringing goods into Prussia, the tariffs on them, and the eventual creation of domestic industries in Prussia to produce porcelain (replacing Messian) and silk.

The other palace,  the “New Palace”, was built after the 7 years war (as Europeans call the French and Indian War), which marked Prussia’s entrance as a great power.  As I recall, one other manifestation of that was its participation in the partition of Poland, the consequences of which reached to World War II, with the massive resettlement of Germans and Poles as the borders of the Soviet Union moved farther West.  The building is mostly stripped of its interior decorations—by Kaiser Wilhelm and the Soviets-but the sumptuous rooms and floors remain.  We had to put on kind of an overshoe to walk on the floors, and we were not permitted in several rooms which could not stand the traffic.  One room had three or four huge mythological paintings with a lot of nudes.  The guide told us that they were originally painted for the court of Austria, but Empress Maria Theresa, scandalized, ordered them sold.  The fervently anti-Austrian (part of it was Protestant Prussia and Catholic Austria) Frederick bought them and installed them in his palace.  The other item of interest was that Kaiser Wilhelm of World War I fame, moved his family permanently to the “New Palace” (it had been the summer palace, with the main quarters elsewhere in Berlin or Potsdam) and modernized it with toilets and electricity.  It was in this palace on August 1, 1914 that he signed the order to mobilize the German army, a decision that ultimately triggered the First (and the Second) World Wars.

It was fitting that we had our first pleasant weather of the trip, probably in the 70s, with no rain and little wind.  We were literally Sans Souci.

When I saw our original schedule, I saw that we were spending an hour changing trains in Cologne; I went to the German train schedules and saw almost hourly service from Cologne to Berlin, and asked our agent if it would be possible to spend a  few hours in Cologne before reembarking on the express to Berlin.  No problem. Happily.  I had been to Cologne a few years ago on a Rhine cruise, and knew the city merited a stop, not just a look at the train station.

We left Brussels at 7:29 (it’s been a loooong day) for the approximately two hour ride to Cologne (which went through Aachen, where, on Christmas Day many years ago, Charlemagne was crowned as the first head of the Holy Roman Empire–Voltaire said it was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire, but it lasted until Napoleon abolished it). We stashed our luggage in the train station and had two “business visits” as well as a look at the superb Gothic Cathedral that at one time was the largest church in the world.

I had not gone to the first business when I was in Cologne—the Chocolate Museum—partly because, as a chocoholic, I try to avoid temptation. But this is a business credit trip, and I was pleasantly pleased that the museum was more than a “pay us, see how we make candy, then go through our shop and buy some” though  was indeed that as well.  Sponsored by Lindt, one of the candy makers in Europe, it had really interesting business information—including material on the futures market for cocoa, which has attracted speculators since the 2008 crisis, sometimes making the price more than simple supply and demand; the plant (there was a hothouse that grew the cocoa tree) was given its name by von Linnea, the originator of biological classification, and means something like flavor of the gods; about a third of the cocoa is used in Europe (I enjoy my chocolat chaud for breakfast with a pan de chocolat); and that most of the cocoa comes from developing nations.  And we did get to shop.  I’m still trying to decide whether I like the Belgian chocolates better than German, but I’m still doing empirical research on the question.

The next visit was to the Farina Eau de Cologne museum, which I had visited and found fascinating.   The museum is housed in an Eau de Cologne shop (imagine that), and I had no trouble when Mrs. Hoyt and I visited it.  When the 28 of us appeared, however, the cashier said we needed advanced reservations, but she would give us an introduction to the history of eau de cologne.  The Farina family, which still owns the brand, created it in 1709 when Mr. Farina came to Cologne; being Italian, he was unable to join any of the local guilds. Entrepreneur that he was, he developed the business, which was important in a Europe that did not believe in baths (something happened after the barbarians drove out the Romans, because there were Roman baths and toilets and sewer systems here and elsewhere in the Roman world). Napoleon was apparently brand loyal, and had his boots made with a compartment to carry a bottle so he could smell good even on horseback.

The piece de resistance, however, is the Cologne Cathedral, begun in the 13^th century (the site had been a church for 500 years of so, and had such a pilgrimage following that Cologne built a larger one).  It dominates the city, but perhaps the neatest feature of it for us was that a school choir was rehearsing in the church when we were in it, and the Latin Gloria, Agnus Dei, etc. lent verisimilitude to the experience. I just sat there and drank it in.

It was also good to see the Rhine, which has been one of the main trade arteries for Europe.

When we boarded the Cologne Berlin express, I was struck by two features: first, it posted speeds of over 200 km, which is roughly 125 miles an hour.  And second, and this is quite unusual in Europe, we had to wait half an hour for another train which was being added to our train, hence we were late coming into Berlin. Being late is so un-European! I thought I was on Amtrak.

Some of us took advantage of this cool rainy afternoon to view the battlefield that marked the end of an effort to create a “European union”—the battlefield where Napoleon (if you remember the 50s song) met his Waterloo.  I did not realize it was close to Brussels, but it’s less than 10 miles outside the city; being a fan of short megalomaniacs, I had to go see it.  When Napoleon escaped from Elba, and rallied his soldiers, he thought he might have a chance at splitting the coalition reunited against him if he struck a quick blow.  At Waterloo, he tried to keep the Prussian and Anglo-Dutch armies from uniting against him.  Slowed by rain (imagine that!), in June 1815, his armies struck too late to prevent the Prussians from joining with Wellington, and, according to the movie, allowed Wellington’s armies to gather where they could not be destroyed by French artillery.  In a 10 hour battle, around 170,000 troops decided the fate of Napoleonic France.

In a sense, the battle underscores what we’ve been learning in Brussels—the difficulty of unifying Europe short of war.  That’s the message we’re taking from our visits to members of the European Union civil service staff—the people most committed to making “Europe” work.  For example, yesterday’s speaker raised a point I had not considered—a simple but complex one involving the basis of legal codes.  While the British have evolved common law (it’s common to us, too), much of Europe uses the Code Napoleon.  As I noted to the speaker, Louisiana uses the Code Napoleon in the US, which should give Europeans hope that the legal systems can actually mesh. His comment: “the EU is ahead of its time.”

Today’s speaker gave a slightly different view of the origins of the European Union that helped me understand some of its functioning.  I think he described the evolution in terms of “shared sovereignty”—in which the members have given up authority over certain areas, and created an organizational structure to oversee laws in those areas.  In other words, if the treaties have conceded pollution controls to a “High Authority” (as the European commission was once known), the legislation Parliament passes on that topic is enforceable in all countries—whether they voted for it or not. His comment was that it is an unprecedented “experiment.”  When he noted it has been going on for 60 years, my response was that after 60 years, the United States had not yet sorted out many of the issues that “We the People” wrote a constitution to settle; I hoped it doesn’t take a civil war to resolve Europe’s issues.

One other thing we’re taking from our EU visits is the focus of the European Union on social issues—and more general r&d support.  I remember from my last trip in Eastern Europe that much of the infrastructure support for roads, for example, in the Baltic countries, came from EU support. In addition, one of our speakers in Paris was a  Ph.D. (from Illinois) working on a project involving DNA, that was based on a 7 billion Euro grant. Think about an American working on pure research in Europe….

If you want a business epigram on why the EU needs to continue to exist—when I left London, I had not spent or exchanged all my British pounds.  I took a 20 pound note to the exchange, worth about 31$ and got back (after fees and commission) about 15 Euro, or about 21$. Imagine doing that every time you crossed a border!

As for Brussels itself, home to NATO as well as the EU, cold wet days are not uncommon—and they are ideal for spending time in museums, which we’ve also done.  My three favorites included two as impressive for the buildings as for the contents—the buildings were art noveaux, and the museums helped spare the wrecking ball.  One was a  comic strip museum—after all the adventurous Tintin came from the brush of a Belgian artist—who has been translated in dozens of languages around the world. The second museum of note was the Musical Instruments Museum, housed in a former Art Noveaux department store.  When I entered, I was given an audioguide; as I passed the exhibits, the instrument featured played.  If you’ve never heard a cabinet organ, you’ve missed a real treat, as I would have had I not gone to the museum. The third museum is on the grand place, a medieval square I mentioned yesterday, with Gothic and Baroque homes.  Professor Pana and I went to the “House of the King”, which was a wonderful Gothic building with period pieces, art, sculpture, and pictures of the city, some of them following Louis XIV bombardment that leveled 4000 houses.

Well, we leave Brussels for Berlin via Cologne with good memories of Brussels—the Manneken-Pis (look that one up; it’s the symbol of the city); the chocolate (world famous!), and lapin (rabbit) and moule (mussles) meals. That moule meal was facilitated by an IWU alum, George Kambouroglou, who works as a software supervisor at the EU.  We’ve been in touch with George as soon as we learned he was in Brussels, and the 93 graduate of IWU bent over backward to make sure we had as much information as he could find, and, even though he left with his family for the US this morning, joined us for dinner last night at Café Leon to reminisce about his days as an Acacia/physics major at IWU.

On to Berlin.

From what’s been called Europe’s last “artificial” country—Brussels

I don’t know why I’d not considered going to Brussels before this trip; it’s only an hour and twenty minutes by train from Paris.  It’s also considered the “center of Europe” (so the guide told us) because it’s close to the Netherlands, Berlin, etc.  That’s of course been one of its hazards historically, having been on the invasion route between France (which pummeled the city under Louis XIV) and Germany, which came through Belgium in 1914 and 1939.

Studying the European Union as we were, we had to come here, and in the next two days we will be visiting with officials of the EU.  Today, when we got here from Paris, we got an introduction to the rather lengthy history of the area, which has been “Belgium” since 1830. It’s a kingdom of 10 million people, 20% of whom work for one government or another.  There are three federations within Belgium—the French speakers in the south, the Dutch speakers in the north, and the city of Brussels, where signs are in both French and Dutch. In medieval times, the city was the center of trade—there were over 30 guilds, and for a time, the low countries were battled over by Spain and France especially. Charles V (king of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, etc.) was born here, and Charles Quinz is the name of one of the 1000 beers that are locally brewed, many of ancient duration, and many in monasteries.  The most famous come from the Trappists.

Skipping ahead to the Napoleonic wars, Brussels was awarded at the Congress of Vienna to the Dutch, but in 1830, rebelled successfully, became “Belgium”, and “hired” King Leopold, whose family still rules as King of the Belgians.  The royal family’s palace is enormous, but not really visible from the road; it was the wealth of Leopold II, gained from his personal possession of the Congo, which he ruled personally and ruthlessly, bringing much of the wealth to beautify the city.  He was so ruthless that the Parliament took the colony away from him, though the Belgian Congo continued to exist until 1960 I believe.

The guilds give the city its outstanding central area, a town square with two of my favorite architectural styles: a palace and a town hall that are gothic (the town hall has a steeple that could be mistaken for a church) and the other buildings, mostly built to house the guilds (the baker, the brewer, etc.), are from the baroque period, stylishly including the gold trimming characteristic of baroque, and resplendent tonight in the setting sun.

Until the 1960s, Belgium was one of the more industrial countries in Europe, possessed as it is of coal.  As such, it was part of the initial organizations—the Coal and Steel community—that presaged the European Union. Ironically, one of the directives of that community was to phase out the coal industry in Belgium, forcing the country to diversify.

The result has been a country that has turned to government (as I mentioned above, 20% or so of its citizens will be working for one of the government offices here), and to some specialty products like chocolate (for a chocoholic, this place could be deadly), and at least here, tourism.

I think you can see why I wanted to start with being here, because yesterday I was happy as could be in Paris.  That was a million years ago—or at least yesterday.

The day started badly for me because I was convinced I wanted to participate in the bicycle tour de France, or at least as much as I could get early in the morning. There was a bike stand nearby, but for some reason, it would not take the credit cards I had as down payment—the rentals were cheap (about 2$ a day, plus time), but required a $ 150 bike deposit against a credit card.  Annoyed, I went for a walk that resulted in the discovery of a restaurant (more later about that).

Most of the day we spent with an alum, Miranda Crispin, who graduated IWU in 2000 with a degree in musical theater, and for several years afterwards she taught musical theater at colleges in Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin.  She realized that what she needed if she wanted to continue her career in teaching was more experience in theater, which led her back to Paris.  I say back here because she came to IWU because she wanted to study abroad, and our university was one of the few which allowed her to travel to France and still graduate on time.

She came back and started a travel company that has been successful, but she has also started a musical theater group to bring off Broadway plays to the city of lights.  She gave us an unusual look at the life of an expatriate in France, and a different view of the EU (the International Herald Tribune yesterday noted that  French opinion had swung from 60% in favor of the EU a year ago to 40% this year, partly because of the 11% unemployment in France). She also introduced us to a friend of hers, a young woman from Sydney Australia, who is working for Radio France doing their English language broadcasts.  She regaled us with stories on how journalism is more opinionated in France than In the English-speaking countries.  One example was of the flight of millionaires from France because of a recently enacted tax increase.  I remember reading about a film actor who renounced his French citizenship in favor of Russian.  She said the headline in the news was roughly, “Good riddance”.  As I said, it was a very different view of life in the European Union!

Professor Pana and I went out to the restaurant I had discovered on my morning walk.  In the Place de Vosges, a square that dates to the 1620s, with a covered arcade around it, and a statue of Louis XIII within it.  We went to the Palais Royal restaurant, which was next to the house of Victor Hugo (when he wasn’t living in Brussels), where we had a quintiscentially French meal—coq au vin and leg of lamb.

We met the students later for the evening tour of the Seine, and then celebrated a birthday on the trip in French style.  I got to see “Midnight in Paris” and it wasn’t produced by Woody Allen.

One of the culinary treats in Brussels is moule (mussels), and as I told one of our students before we went out for dinner, “You can really get muscles here”.

 

There were a lot of tips today that we were in a world class museum.  Here are some that spring to mind:

–          The line for admission goes half way around the block.  That’s for those who were smart enough to reserve via the internet.  The other line goes around the block and then some.  (fortunately, our guide gave us a few tips; get there early and go to the nearby tobacco store that sells tickets. That was almost an oops, too.  Ella and I got to the tobacco store in the Louvre mall (you read that right) just as the mall opened (8:30) only to discover that we needed cash, and of course the first ATM machine was down.  Fortunately, there were several others nearby, and so we were able to get the tickets, so that when students joined us at 9:45 we were able to go right in.

–          On your way to the 24 pictures/sculptures on the list you compiled of “must sees,” you spot one or two that are not on the list and a light bulb goes off, “Oh, THIS is where THAT is.”

–          You are in to finding number 12 and three hours have already passed.  Part of it is that the map is largely useless because some corridor is closed for renovation, and like most maps, it’s most useful for people who don’t need a map.

–          You can tell where most of those 24 pictures are because the 8 million people visiting the Louvre today have chosen that time to get in front of you and dawdle while you’re trying to take the picture to prove that, yes, you did see the Mona Lisa (and realize it’s smaller than you thought, and not just because there are a hundred people between you and it)

–          One of the twenty four pictures you had to see is on loan.  If you want to see Delacroix’s Liberty, you’ll have to comeback—or go the museum which currently houses it.

–          Your feet start hurting and you realize it’s only four hours, and there are still ten pictures and sculptures left.

–          In the case of the Louvre, you’re so dazzled by the art that you fail to realize that you’re in one of the largest palaces in Europe, one that might have shamed even Versailles had it not been pillaged during the Revolution.  As you sit down and pray for strength, you look up, and by golly, there’s an enormous ceiling painting that some famous artist had painted just for the Bourbon family to see.

–          You can spend as much time as you want in the bookstore, but no book will capture what you saw; most will be expensive, and all will weigh too much to take home with you.

–          You are inevitably sidetracked by something you didn’t come to see—such as the wonderful  Greek and Egyptian exhibits you did not know the Louvre had—that all of a sudden you realize time is fleeting and you have 8 other museums, possibly today, or else you’ll have to come back to Paris (not all bad!).

I think you get the picture, which is what you should do at an art museum. The building is a treat, having been the home of one of the richest kings in Europe at a time when monarchs could spend the country’s wealth on themselves (wasn’t it Louis XIV who declared, “I am the state?” and like the Bourbons, whose former palace became an art museum, the Romanovs in St. Petersburg saw (those who survived that revolution) their winter palace turned into an art museum—the Hermitage.

Most of the traffic in the Louvre, not surprisingly, was in the European section, where it has a strong holding in pictures of and about the French Revolution (not the collection of the Bourbons!)—Ingres and David and Delacroix for example, with the famous painting of Napoleon’s coronation ala Charlamagne, where I think he took the crown from the Pope and put it on his own head.

People scattered in the afternoon, but there was at least one more museum I had to see, and while it doesn’t qualify as a “world-class” museum using the criteria I ascribed above, and I’m glad it didn’t have the tour buses in front, the Guimet museum should be on the list of every Asianist who comes to Paris. The chief attraction for me is the “largest Cambodian art display outside of Cambodia.”  Since Cambodia was part of French Indochina, and the French were into archaeology, some of the artifacts “came from Cambodia” (imagine the passive voice—came on their own?) to this wonderful museum.  A naga (snake, the protector of the Buddha) with a giant churning the sea of milk greets you; it used to be in Angkor Wat.  The museum has an outstanding collection of other Southeast Asian countries’ artifacts, including India, Indonesia, the former French Indochina, Burma, Japan, and China.  Having been to many of the places from which the art came to the Guimet, I could picture the statues in Pribanam or Borobodur in Indonesia, the Yungang caves in China (I was there last year), and so forth.  The temporary exhibit was an outstanding collection of Bronze Age Chinese treasures—all the collection of one man.  It was really worth my time.

I have to confess this is also an exciting city for foodies and for culture, and Professor Pana and I have been doing our best to savor both.  Last night we wandered into a delightful arrondisement next to ours, Marais, with narrow streets, local cafes, and nary a tourist/tour bus.  We went to a concert in an Armenian Catholic church (Armenia was the first country to embrace Christianity) that seemed in need of the increased revenue brought in by a soprano and a pianist performing before a crowd equally divided between people who saw the concert was on a donation basis, and the duos friends from the conservatory.  We stopped in a local bistro for dinner.  Tonight we went with a few students to St. Chappelle, another Gothic Church near Notre Dame for another concert, one that is probably replicated in most European cities—with Pachabel’s canon and Vivaldi’s four seasons.  It was set in a church that might have had more stained glass than any church I have ever seen.  Dinner was at a café—with Margret du canard (look that up) as the main entrée.

There is only one Paris, and tomorrow has our business visits—and our last full day, unfortunately.

I am writing after a long and satisfying day in Paris, exploring and above all experiencing.  In the morning, we went to Notre Dame to visit one of the most magnificent Gothic churches in the world.  Constructed (literally) from the 12^th through the 19^th centuries, its flying buttresses and facades are so central to Gothic—and France—that distances in the country are literally measured from a spot in front of the Cathedral.  We were there for the 10 am mass, which was performed with a Gregorian choir.  The interior is relatively spare, but the stained glass windows and the height make it a picture story—say about the Hunchback of Notre Dame!

Professor Pana and I used the time between the mass and our next departure, for Versailles, to spend a little over an hour (about two hours too few) at the nearby Museum of the Middle Ages, better known perhaps by its former location as the home of the Abbots of Cluny. The most famous possessions of the Cluny—alas—the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries—were on loan to a museum in Tokyo, but the other relics, including some from Byzantium (the 4^th crusade detoured from the Holy Land to Byzantium and ransacked the city, stripped the empire of a number of possessions –and goodies, such as the horses of St Mark, now in Venice after having been “borrowed” by Napoleon for the Arc de Triumph) that really are works of art.  In addition, the Cluny sits on what was a Roman bath in the first century BC, a testimony to the lengthy history of settlement on the banks of the Seine.

We spent the after noon at the Chateau of Versailles, begun as a modest hunting lodge for Louis XIII, but expanded by his son, the Sun King Louis XIV, to become the premier castle, and I believe the largest, certainly in Europe, and one that puts Windsor castle into the minor leagues. The world class attraction seemed to have attracted the world this Sunday, as the rooms were as crowded as could be.  46,000 workers labored to bring the finest the French monarchy could obtain to the Chateau.  It came close to bankrupting France, a process that culminated, when the spending to fight Britain and incidentally help the US gain independence, precipitated the French Revolution.  In the meantime, the Bourbon kings (XIV, XV, XVI—sounds like super bowls, don’t they) enjoyed the facilities.  They say Louis XIV built it, XV enjoyed it, and XVI paid for it. We had a lively discussion involving those who have traveled elsewhere in Europe, and the closest rivals we could come up with were St. Petersburg—and the Vatican St. Peters.

The best features inside might well have been the hall of mirrors, where in 1919, the Allies imposed the Treaty of Versailles on the Germans. Other treaties ending the war against other central powers also occurred on the property—Hungary was divided (“The Worst Treaty in History”, intoned our guide in Budapest three years ago!) at Trianon, for example.  The lavish decorations at similar palaces always make me wonder why it took over 3 centuries for the Revolutions to occur!

The best features, however, might well have been the outside gardens, which did not have the crowds, but did have landscape and solitude. The outside has been restored since I was last here, and one of the features, the Bath of Apollo, looked for all the world like something on the Canadian shield I had portaged until I saw the statuary; that wasn’t me schlepping a canoe, though come to think of it…..

I was thinking, “I’ve seen it all” when a newly-resurrected waterfall appeared as we turned a corner.  We were lucky because for two and a half hours a day , water flows and falls in the gardens and period classical music gets piped over the loudspeaker.

While Peter the Great would love to have duplicated Versailles at the Peterhof, and the Hungarians, Indochinese, and French in China would love to have been the Paris of the East, or a second Paris, when you come here, you’ll understand why I think there’s only ONE Paris!

Everyone wanted to be the Paris of the….

Many of the cities I’ve visited have sought to be compared to Paris—Saigon was thought to be the Paris of the East by many (and it still has the greatest baguettes East of Suez); and lShanghai, particularly the French concession, had similar marketing claims.  In Europe, several Eastern European cities—Budapest and Lvov come to mind–sought to mimic the leafy boulevards, the wide streets, the victory monuments, and the 6 story buildings with the mansard roofs (go to the Art Institute and see the Impressionist section and you’ll see why Paris caught the fancy of urban planners and urbanites in the 19^th century).

Being back for the first time in over a decade reminded me of the envy Paris elicited, and being here, I can understand why.  We came from London on the Eurostar, the fast track (literally) train that averages over 120 miles an hour and, we were told, hits up to 180.  We came from Saint Pancras station, whose exterior you might recognize from Harry Potter, to Gare du Nord, the train station that is the exit/entrance of railroads from the north, including the one we will be taking to Brussels later in the week.

We spent around 4 hours driving around the city rebuilt in the aftermath of the bitter commune struggle (1871) by Baron Haussmann to surround the foundation laid especially by the great warrior King, Louis XIV,  the sun king, whose 60 years or so marked in many ways the zenith of French power in and over Europe, and his martial successor a century later, Napoleon, whose arc de triumph revealed his respect for ancient Rome and an enormous ego.  I hadn’t made the connection, but the city along the Seine, and especially the palaces, the Louvre, and the Luxembourg, etc., strongly resemble the palaces Peter the Great constructed along the Neva River in St. Petersburg. Peter in fact visited France in 1717, and the efforts to duplicate Versailles (especially in  the Peterhof palace) are much greater than I remembered.  (see later)