3-5-10
Announcing that business Uganda could be summed up in those three numbers, a member of the State Department spent about two hours with us at the formidable US embassy in Kampala.
The 3% referred to the population growth in Uganda. I said it’s about 40 million; that would make it 80 million in 24 years. Furthermore, it’s a young population; the median age is 15.7; only 2% of the population is 65 or over.
The 5% alluded to the urban growth. Though the country is still 80% involved in agriculture, urbanization is growing quickly. (take it from me, the sprawling distance from Entebbe, where the airport is located, to Kampala certainly indicates urbanization in this area; it’s almost solid construction. It took us about 1 1//2 hours from the airport, though the Chinese are building a highway that will cut it to half an hour)
The 10% was the number of new cars purchased each year, which is both a strength (an indicator that despite the average income of $700 a year, there is an emerging middle class) and a weakness (sketchy infrastructure and traffic jams). I was struck as we came in at night by the number of trucks alongside the highway, waiting to carry goods during the day.
He then dissected the economy’s opportunities and weaknesses.
On the plus side, he singled out a good climate, and fertile soil. This is an important agricultural area, and, in fact, the main export crop is coffee. 4.5 million bags were shipped last year, making Uganda the largest exporter of coffee in Africa; Ethiopia and Kenya grow more, but also drink more. The crop here is sold to Starbucks (arabica) and to the European Union (robusta). He emphasized, however, that coffee is also something of a minus. It’s shipped out as a commodity, without any value added (e.g., roasting?). I saw somewhere that the difference in cost between the raw beans and the roasted beans was over 50%. If you sell commodities, you’re at the mercy of lowest cost providers, and what money can be made, goes to the folks who add value.
Another agricultural product with potential is milk, but not as milk. Milk is cheap here (20 cents a liter), but turned into casein, it commands premium prices. Another way to add value.
The same scenario holds for oil. Ugandans recently discovered oil, and an American consortium recently landed a $3 billion contract to build a refinery. That’s the first refinery in the country (I believe), and another opportunity for value added activities, and a chance to earn more on the supply chain.
The other big opportunity is to participate more in the world’s biggest business—tourism. Uganda has a
He touched, too, on many of the same drawbacks we’d heard about earlier: infrastructure (or lack thereof); corruption (a relatively stable government, but an underpaid civil service). He said the goal of the US government is to insist on a level playing field, but some bids are rigged, and while there are laws and regulations, sometimes the laws are contradictory—allowing the official to make his choice of which one to follow—and sometimes ignored, for a price.
He, too, emphasized the need to be “on the ground” for a while to learn the rules of the game and how it’s played. He thought that was one difference between the Americans and Chinese. While the Chinese presence in Uganda is not as prominent as it is in Ethiopia (where there were 1 million Chinese reportedly when I was there two years ago), there are 15,000 working on infrastructure projects. The Chinese, he pointed out, come in prepared with the whole package, we’ll have someone on site to make sure it happens, with financing, and as he noted with not a sign of irony, the Chinese are used to dealing with authoritarian governments.
American strengths were in “good will” established by previous presidents from Bush through Obama. There’s a Young African leaders program that sends 1000 Africans to the States for 6 weeks, spent mostly at universities that’s been a real positive; assistance in fighting AIDS and other health epidemics was also a plus. And the US government does assist businesses who want to come to Uganda, or do business with companies in Uganda.
In fact, we just had a reception hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce where the Ambassador spoke, just having returned from a trip to the States which included 20 coffee producers shepherded to a conference. She noted that only 3% of Ugandan coffee is exported to the United States.
Among the other members of the chamber, I chatted with the vice president, a woman who came here (via Silicon Valley) to work in agriculture, at the time pioneering organically grown fruits and vegetables. She told me that over 40% of the crop rotted because it could not get to market. She’s developed a supply chain of farmers, working with a certifying organization, to buy and dehydrate the crops, which she sells to distributors in the United States. When asked about changes in five years, she gave me two: the exchange rate has gone up (her dollars buy more shillings), and the business has gotten more competitive. Not only has “organic” become more mainstream, but neighboring countries have developed processing and are able to buy here and process across the border. I talked her into some treats for the long ride to the source of the Nile tomorrow—and I’m eager to taste dried Jackfruit! Another tidbit—she said she was invited to come here by one of the queens (yes, the five kingdoms still live!)
I’m about to pack for our early departure, and I’ve realized the title is 3/5/10, and there’s some nice symmetry that today is 5/10. Heading to the area north of the Nile. Soon we’ll be in de Nile.
Almost in De Nile
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (but not in Kampala)
May 9, 2018
This was Lion country (but not today)
00 19 says my GPS, referring to Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It’s 7824 miles from home—or about 27 hours by plane (via Atlanta and Amsterdam), just north of the Equator.
Three street names near the hotel help me put the history of Uganda into perspective. The first is “Entebbe”, a word in the Luganda language that means “seal’, supposedly in reference to the court that for 500 years administered judgments on behalf of the well-organized Bugunda tribe. The centralized government created a strong state in what is now southern Uganda that the British used to rule, as the British were wont to do, indirectly. No such unity existed in the north and the northern and southern parts of the country still maintain differences, the south being better developed economically.
The second street is George VI, king of England, whose country claimed Uganda in the 19th century as part of the Congress of Berlin. Britain’s main area of interest was the Suez Canal (opened in 1869 accompanied by Verdi’s Aida). As 19th century explorers sought the source of the Nile (we’ll see it next week), the Germans got a treaty to parts of the area; Britain swapped Heligoland to the Germans for the Uganda Protcectorate, a kind of federation of 56 tribes, 5 kingdoms under British “supervision”.
Unlike most other British colonies, Africans could own land; like other British colonies, the British played one ethnic group against another. 40000 Indians arrived at the turn of the century to help build a railroad from land-locked Kampala to the coast. 2000 died from fever—and lion attacks (hence, the title today); the lions are gone, at least from this city of nearly 2 million people. So, mostly is the rail traffic. The station remains, serving mostly domestic traffic because the tracks were stolen for steel (steel was stolen?) and the gauge was non-standard. However, English is spoken widely (one legacy), and the currency is the shilling (another), .plus there is a Parliament.
The third street is named for Nasser, the Egyptian ruler, who helped topple King Farouk and the British indirect rule in Egypt. That (and the success of the Chinese revolution and the spread of the Cold War around the world) helped convince African nationalists to push for independence. That happened here in October 1962, which ushered in a turbulence that has left its mark to this day.
For one thing, the British used mostly Northerners in the military; and if you’re old enough to remember Idi Amin, he was a northerner who “moved to the Left”, resulting in 300,000 dead (if you criticized, you were done); the enforced departure of all Asians, crippled the economy since Asians dominated businesses, paying up to 90% of the taxes.
Several civil wars later (today), Uganda has a population of 43 million, with an average formal income of around $700. Much of the income is “informal”, partly because of the difficulty of doing business here. We got to see the local market, a fascinating open air “Saturday market” type, with farmers bringing produce to the city—bananas, mangos, potatoes, garlic, and some not so Western additions: I liked the fried grasshoppers, as well as the usual pigs, cattle, etc. With so much of the economy informal, it’s not surprising that there were government sponsored posters “Thanks for paying your taxes so we could pay for schools, etc.
We had a few speakers from the American Chamber of Commerce talk about doing here business here, -one a Quad Cities UIowa grad, who has been here 5 years , and sounds like he runs about 10 businesses. He talked about the great opportunities for entrepreneurs, despite the fact that the corruption ranks 150 of 179 countries; the lack of infrastructure; the bureaucracy in starting and maintaining a business; and the fact that employees get paid by you while working to start and run their own businesses.
I think his point was that you need to be on the ground to understand how to do business in any country, especially here. “That’s just the way it is here,” he repeated several times.
More inspirational was a fund manager from Impact Africa, whose goal is to put money into organizations that result in economic, political, or social improvements. I took lots of notes on her presentation to share with my classes—IWU president Myers used to say, “Go forth and make good—and do good” and her talk insisted it was possible to do both—and make money. One of the faculty and I were discussing how mission statements have changed from “make money for shareholders” to “feed the world.”
I’m taking the notes to my stockbroker too. Both the lion and I will sleep tonight.
East Side, West Side, all around Berlin
March 15, 2018
While “East Side, West Side, all around the town” was written about New York City, probably no city in the world would have a better claim to East and West than Berlin, which was actually both really and symbolically severed into Eastern and Western zones from the end of World War II until the end of 1989.
Shades of the cold war, two world wars, the Weimar Republic, the First, Second, and Third Reichs still mark the history of the city, which is both reasonably far north (52 degrees) and East in Europe.
We’re at the Adlon Hotel, a rebuilt five-star attraction in sight of the Brandenburg Gate, one of the former gates to the city of Berlin—and perhaps the most important, since the political development of Berlin originated in the Elector of Brandenburg, a member of the House of Hohenzollern. The “mother church” of the Hohenzollerns was in East Prussia, and the Kings in Prussia (beginning in 1701 and ending with Wilhelm II in 1888) were crowned in Konigsburg, now the Russian Kaliningrad.
Berlin has been settled a long time, but it’s importance has grown under one of my favorite kings, Frederick the Great (of course), who made major strides in integrating Prussia into Europe (wars expanded the kingdom westward) and got his title changed to King of Prussia.
We spent about half of yesterday touring Berlin proper, and about half of the rest of the day in Potsdam, where the Hohenzollerns built most of their 40 local castles. The city proper still has remnants of the bitter fighting in April 1945, when Hitler, in a last gasp of megalomania ordered his soldiers to fight to the death. There are bullet holes remaining in some of the buildings in Berlin. Some of the “highlights” were destroyed in World War II, (including the city palace, now being rebuilt) or were left (particularly by the Soviet-East Germans) to fall into disrepair, so that they could build East Germany into a “Worker’s Paradise”. That was the fate of the Spandau prison, for example.
Ironically, the palaces in Potsdam escaped major damage, which was one reason why the last of the “wartime conferences” –with the revamped Big Three (Stalin, Truman, and Churchill—replaced midway by Clement Atlee, the Labor leader whose party won an election)—met for the “Big Three” conference that has come to be called Potsdam. The palace built in the early 20th century for the Crown Prince (looking for all the world like the Ewing Manor, but about 20X the size) is English Tudor, reflecting the love-hate relationship the Hohenzollerns had with their Windsor cousins, who sat on the throne in England. There’s a large table in a room with, happily, three equal sized doors, so each country could have an equal entrance (but the flags rotated from day to day so that no single flag stayed in the center) where the participants met, and decided, among other things, on the partition of Germany and Poland, and the denazification of Germany. I hadn’t been to that palace before, and was a little surprised to learn that the Crown Prince came back to Germany after 1918, and flirted with Hitler (who toyed with restoring the monarchy), and lived in the palace until the threat from Soviet troops led him to flee. One of the royal relatives, too, died in Windhoeck, (now Namibia), where there’s still a German presence.
The most complete of the palaces is the summer palace of Frederick the Great, the well-named San Souci (carefree), where he would retire for the summer, and play his flute (he composed concerti), converse with Voltaire in French (he spoke German, he said, only to his horses), and discuss philosophy with the philosophes—when not making war, particularly on Maria Theresa of Austria (he coveted Silesia, with its industrial potential!). His father had bequeathed him a military establishment that was the envy of Europe, and enough money to build a rococo palace that is still one of the major attractions of Berlin. Tours are costly (about $25), and limited to a certain number of guests a day. It really is a stunning look at paintings and décor of the period.
The other palace open during the winter in Potsdam is being renovated. It was where Wilhelm II, the last Kaiser, lived. When he left it in 1918 (he abdicated and moved to the Netherlands), he apparently took all the furniture with him. I remember the rooms as sumptuous, but relatively empty.
On the road to Potsdam, we drove over another reminder of the Cold War—the bridge of spies, which was the border between East and West. There were at least three exchanges of spies there—subsequently made into a movie—including, if I remember it correctly, Gary Powers, who was shot down in a spy plane over the Soviet Union (my fraternity for a time created a position for a spy plane pilot).
The Cold War in the city is captured best in the remnants of the Berlin Wall. Our guide, who had grown up in East Berlin, talked about the effort of the Russians to showcase East Berlin. The East sector, ironically, got many of the traditional tourist sights (the Museums, State Opera, etc.) Unfortunately for the East German communists (the party incidentally still exists and is headquartered in a posh building in Potsdam, not fit for a proletariat!), life in the West was so much more attractive that in 1961, the East German government erected a wall to keep East Germans from fleeing. In the next almost 30 years, over 1000 East Germans died trying to escape. Parts of the wall still exist, covered with approved artistic graffiti.
The other remnant of the Cold War was Checkpoint Charlie, one of three crossing points between East and the US Zone. The others were Able and Baker. (ABC) The Checkpoint is manned by “soldiers” in US uniform (East Europeans snickered our guide), who for a 3 Euro “gift” will let you take pictures with them. Though the wall is down, some things in Berlin never change.
Museums and Palaces in Berlin
March 18, 2018
If you’re thinking our trip was mostly museums and palaces, it’s even less diversified than it sounds; most of the palaces, no longer occupied by Hohenzollerns, ARE museums. And that was even true of our last night’s visit to Charlottenburg, the palace built in what was then the outskirts of the city (the far side of the hunting park -today the Tiergarten-that extends west from the Brandenburg Gate. The palace, the largest in what is now Berlin, was built originally in the late 17th century by one of the Fredericks (or Williams; or Frederick Williams—the Hohenzollerns tended to one of other, or both names) for his wife, Sophie Charlotte. The dome of the palace can be seen for miles, and the gate to the city (now district) of Charlottenburg rivals the Brandenburg Gate. The palace grounds are also well worth a visit, though, as is typical of much of Berlin, major parts of the palace were rebuilt after being bombed in World War II.
Anyway, we had dinner in the palace, followed by a concert in the Orangerie, a room that was probably where the Frederick/Williams of the world held their chamber music concerts for guests. The sound (and setting) made it clear that this is how one should listen to chamber music, such as the Vivaldi/Handel concert we heard. The musicians were in period costume, though the white wigs clashed (for me) with their black beards. The room was cold, and I suspect many of the palaces were heated by fireplace, a room at a time. Even the royals had to figure out how to stay warm in the cold here (it was 20 last night, and windy, a fact brought home as we sought a cab to get back to the hotel).
And the museums proper are well worth the visits. A new one for me was the German History Museum; the original building was the Prussian Arsenal, and given the size of Prussia’s armies, large enough to encompass a collection that starts in the late 700s, when Karl die Grosse, who you probably know better as Charlemagne, unified France and Germany, inaugurating the Holy Roman Empire with his coronation by the pope in Aux-la-Chapelle Christmas Day 800. The highlights of the collection for me were an extensive look at the man who brought reform to the church (Luther), and what is still the predominant religion (Lutheranism) to Germany; the hat and sword Napoleon left at Waterloo, fleeing when General Blucher, commanding the Prussian army, joined Wellington to turn the tide of battle; and—stunningly, a tent captured from the Ottomans at the siege of Vienna in 1683. The last-named item somehow found its way to Kaiser Wilhelm and thence into the collection at the Museum.
The Kaiser’s well-known end of the century flirtation with Sultan Abdul-Hamid, of Turkey, was a fatal dance politically, leading to the Ottoman’s joining (not entirely voluntarily) with the Central Powers, extending World War I to the Middle East and creating the chaos that endures till this day. I think this is around Anzac Day, an Australian-New Zeeland holiday that commemorates the bloody battles at Gallipoli.
The flirtation had a more salutary effect (if you don’t mind that many of the artifacts wound up in Berlin) on archaeology; the Pergamon museum, even in its state of being rehabilitated, is stunning. When you go thru the gates of Ishtar, you’re transported to Scheherezade, with lions and other mosaics stretching for a block in the museum; a stunning partial fortress of some long-lost and otherwise forgotten caliph in the deserts; and a whole floor of Islamic Art that rivals anything in the world, with items from Istanbul, and Konya, and Agra, and Moorish Spain, and….The Neues Museum (mostly Egyptian) houses the famous Nefertiti bust, the Mona Lisa equivalent of the ancient world as the standard of beauty. No wonder we spent four and a half hours on the Museum Island at these two museums—and there were three more!
The archaeologists played an interesting part in the dance the Kaiser made that drew the Ottomans into the Central Powers. His goal during the war was to incite a jihad, especially against the British and French (can you say India? The Suez Canal? Lawrence of Arabia), which would have been quite a trick to make it national rather than religious. There’s an interesting book on the Berlin-Baghdad railroad, which was pivotal to the German war aims—and vital in bringing the artifacts back to Berlin.
We’re awaiting our flight home right now, which is to say, our plans are almost up in the air. Back home in “only” 18 hours-flight connections willing.
Ants and Virgins
Big bottomed ants, a virgin, and tropical dry forest add up to “the most beautiful city in Colombia”
January 6, 2018.
If you look at the CIA World Fact book, as I did, you’ll get an idea of the expanse of Colombia. Superimposing a Colombian map on the United States stretches the country the length of the Mississippi River, from Minneapolis to New Orleans. While we’ve sampled only a small part of it (we’re only 150 air miles from Bogota), but that includes a wide variety of habitats and a lot more than the 150 miles through the mountains. We’ve left the savanna behind in favor of high desert and canyons (and a 30 minute plane ride or 8 hour automobile ride back to Bogota, which says something about the transportation system. There are only a few “third generation” roads—six lane highways, and the road here, probably second generation, is a two-lane toll road that goes through every town, roughly following the ridges). As we’ve lost elevation, though still at around 4500 feet, we’ve passed through banana, orange, and coffee farms. The big product here, though, was tobacco.
Two things about that crop: first, it required sunshine, which mean most of the existing trees were cut down. The brochure on Barichara, where we’re staying in a charming boutique hotel, Moorish/Spanish style, says the tropical dry forest is the most endangered ecosystem of all, with only 2% remaining pristine. Tobacco and other agricultural pursuits have had a hand in that environmental change.
Second, the tobacco industry has declined, with the purchase of the local manufacturer by the British American Tobacco conglomerate. One result was a rather imaginative conversion of the old tobacco plant to a mall, with the foreman’s house converted to a museum. The exhausted tobacco lands need banned fertilizers to be productive again. The second-rate tobacco still produced here is for local consumption.
The current “cash crop,” however, is tourism, based around the 8000 population in Barichara. Legend has it that a peasant here around 1700 found a rock with the image of the Virgin, and convinced his friends to build a church, around which the town grew. The local clergy, however, condemned this as idolatry, destroyed the church, and built a “purified one” on the site in the mid 18th century. That church still stands, anchoring the square (which unlike Villa de Leyva has trees) that was and is the center of life in Spanish colonies.
The town is full of colonial and republican period homes, white adobe, housing the usual knick-knacks—like indigenous themed jewelry and textiles, specialty coffees and chocolates, restaurants and hotels. Eight thousand inhabitants live here, too. Surprisingly, you don’t see any modern construction in the city proper; the red tiles of the roofs and the hilly nature of the town provide part of the charm.
When we went for a walk to explore what there was, two visits stood out. One was a culture house, which local people created with a variety of gifts—art, cultural artifacts—and the docent who took us around shared a lot of information about the town.
The other visit was to the Paper Museum. It’s an NGO operation designed to provide gainful employment to women. The museum grows a variety of plants that can be turned into paper (did you know pineapple can be made into paper?), gives tours, and creates a variety of paper products for sale. I really liked the lampshades, but I’m certain I’d have shreds if I tried to bring one back.
The town overlooks a deep valley, and the upper part of the town is where one finds the inevitable Liberator statue. What I learned there is that the Boyaca battle ended the war for Colombian independence. There were battles fought to liberate the other countries (the five were Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela; I had listed Panama, but that country did not exist until Theodore Roosevelt helped convince revolutionaries there to separate it from Colombia around 1905 so the US could build the Panama Canal).
It was on that walk we purchased the fried big-bottomed ants that are considered a local delicacy. The “princesses” are captured as they attempt to fly out of the nest to start new colonies, deprived of wings, and roasted.
Supposedly, the ants date back to the indigenous Guane people who inhabited this area from about 1000 a.d. until they were assimilated (or annihilated) by the Spanish. Relatives of the Muisca, they were reputedly taller and lighter-skinned than their neighbors.
We learned more about the Guane today at a museum at what purported to be a National Park, which turned out to be a private park. Located at a breathtaking canyon that drops over 3000 feet (“Gran Canon” in local advertisements), the park had a water park, bungee jumping, a zip line, and the second longest cable car ride in the world. We took the last named, which dropped 2500 feet or so to the floor, then went up about 3500 feet to the other side, where we spent an hour wandering among the live traditional entertainers, local foods, and tchotchkes.
So if you want to eat ants (another local delicacy I tried was a mixture of goat intestines) and stay in what was voted the most beautiful old Spanish village in Colombia, you have to come to Barichara. Like we did.
The next day—the ride to Bucaramanga duplicated part of the previous day’s ride through the mountains on a two-lane toll road, but detoured to visit a coffee farm The company, Hacienda de Roble, has been in business for over 150 years. Coffee grown for export has to meet strict standards. Like tobacco, certain soils and weather are important for growing the crop. A lesser brand, apparently not meeting global tastes, is sold locally. We got to taste four main varieties (there are over 300 different varieties of coffee), and I thought it was easier to tell the difference between the $5 Port and the $50 Port than to distinguish varieties of coffee, which can be even more costly than expensive Port. The farm has a garden with supposedly 72 varieties of coffee, mostly variants of Arabica (you can tell by the name it’s not native to Colombia), fertilized by chicken manure…..Ask for HR-61 if you want to try a coffee developed at the farm.
What impressed Carolyn was the Hacienda. Built by a woman artist in the 1860s, and now a boutique hotel, it’s in the Spanish colonial style. Set on the Mesa de los Santos, at roughly a mile high, the house would make for a comfortable stay. No wonder Carolyn said our next trip should be to visit other haciendas.
Time to go home to our own villa, though. No more mesas, mountains, or colonial villages. Sigh.
Villa de Leyva 2 January 4, 2018
January 4, 2018
Villa de Leyva (continued)
When we got to explore the city and the region, I found Villa all that I hoped it would be. The Plaza Mayor, the largest public square in Colombia (perhaps outside of Bogota), surrounded by cobblestone streets, and lovely old colonial architecture—the stucco with balconies or overhangs with arched walkways—looked like something out of a movie set (as indeed it has been featured in a number of movies and TV programs); we were lucky we got there early, when the square was relatively empty, and the tourists still recovering. We pretty much had the square to ourselves, and headed for the old colonial church that marks it; the church dates from the 16th century.
The area around Villa has been settled for a long time. The combination of salubrious weather, and enough water from the mountain run off, has made it a desirable location even before the wealthy from Bogota scouted it out for summer homes (some of which are truly palatial).
We set out to visit four tourist spots, ranging from several hundred million years ago to the present. Working from the ancient—this area was part of a sea as the great continent broke apart. That accounts for the minerals here (salt among others), and fossils. Hence, one of the places we went to was a fossil museum. The centerpiece was a complete fossilized skeleton of a 36 foot “baby” seagoing dinosaur, a Kronosaurus. I’m glad I met him in this state; his teeth showed no signs of decay (no sugar in his diet), and his crocodile head made it clear who would win that battle. Interestingly (to me anyway), our guide said there were no restrictions on taking fossils from the country; human artifacts, however, can get you in a world of trouble. Not enough room for any of the sauras in my suitcase, except maybe a theo.
Closer to the present (maybe 1300-1500), I’ve mentioned the Muisca before, and they were here too. There are two sites locally—another lake (where humanity began)—but we went to an astronomical observatory. It’s fascinating how various peoples who depended on agriculture figured out how to take advantage of weather or predict it. From Cahokia to Stonehenge to the Temple of Heaven in China, they found a way to determine the solstices and the equinox. Here, there were lines of stones running east to west, and when the sun cast shadows in the right places, people knew it was time to plant or to harvest. That information kept emperors in power in China (if nature cooperated). The grounds also contained a tomb of a prominent woman (Muisca were matrilineal) with four men. Unfortunately for posterity, the tomb was looted, so only bones were left—and the buried tomb was on a north-south axis).
Third tour spot was a former Dominican monastery. It had been overrun by armies since Independence, and fell into disuse, but is now a museum, and well preserved. What I appreciated most about it was the information was in three languages—Spanish, English, and French (French?), and was pretty basic about what had been the purpose of the rooms.
Taking us to the present was a visit to a vineyard. Chile is the South American standard for wines, and when I saw the empty bottles had all come on pallets from Chile, I knew that this was primarily for tourists. The wine is distributed locally, but I had no desire to bring the first (and probably only) bottle of it back to Bloomington-Normal.
When we came back to the Bell Tower Inn where we are staying, I went back to the square. One of the museums I wanted to see was dedicated to religious art, and another museum was residence and collection of Luis Acuna, a prominent 20th century artist. I liked both the artist’s house and his paintings, which were part of the Bachue movement. He incorporated a lot of local themes in his art, including a mural depicting the origin of the human race a la Muisca. The explanation takes about half the brochure for the museum, which is to say it’s a large and complex story, and a large and complex mural.
Withal, an interesting day in Villa de Leyva.
Villa De Leyva (1)
Villa de Leyva January 3, 2018
The trip to this city took root over a year ago when, in Cartagena, I read in the Lonely Planet guidebook that Villa de Leyva was one of the best preserved colonial cities in South America. That and about $5 leftover Colombian pesos closed the deal for me.
It’s day three of our trip to inland Colombia, but we just arrived here in Villa de Leyva a few hours ago, having flown to Bogota and spent two nights there. A few observations on that capital city—of 7-10 million people on the savannah de Bacata, a plateau in the Andes that stretches several hundred miles (Bogota is at 4 degrees, 37 minutes north of the equator, at 8600 feet). The climate in Bogota is almost always the same, we were told; 66 during the day, 45 at night—only about a 75 degree difference from this week in Bloomington. That difference (the 10 degrees below in Bloomington) nearly cut short our trip by a day, since when we got to the airport Monday afternoon, I saw the dreaded “flight delayed” on the board, and a “We’ll do our best to reschedule your affected flights” email message. Fortunately for us, that delay coincided with a delay in Atlanta, which got us into Bogota on time.
We spent a full day in Bogota, and a full day getting to Villa, and here’s a few thoughts to share:
1) The pre-Colombian past lives not just in museums, but in some of the ways Colombia has addressed its indigenous population—rather like the Canadians have (recently) discussed and treated the first nation. The biggest local tribe, the Muisca, has recently been reorganized, and one of the visits (a 2 mile hike to a sacred lake—at 10000 feet) was on tribal land. Our guide told us that the history of the country has been rewritten to separate the arrival of the Europeans from the arrival of the first nations. The Muisca in particular had a reverence for the outdoors, especially the sun, earth, moon, and water. In Bogota, one of the first things we did was take a funicular ride up to almost 9000 feet for an overlook of the city. This mountain was sacred, and represented the sun. Of course, because it was sacred to the Muisca, the Spanish, who killed the last king of the tribe in the 16th century, built a church on it, and did the same on a neighboring hill, representing the moon.
The Muisca “coronated” kings in few area lakes (depending on the branch of the tribe). As I said, we went to one, which had a ceremonial house where the new king prepared for his “anointment” in the lake. On the specific day, he would go out on the water, and to give thanks for his people, deposit gold and emeralds (still two objects mined or found in Colombia) into the lake. Archeologists count 48 kings who went through the ceremony.
Being into shiny was one of the reasons for the Spanish conquest; the lake gave rise to the myth of an El Dorado of riches, but subsequent generations also sought the wealth supposedly beneath the waters. The Spanish tried in vain to drain the lake, as did more contemporary engineers. The government finally stepped in to preserve the lake, and entrance is now monitored and restricted.
The most impressive museum in Bogota (a city of contrasts; from the peak the guide showed us the old city, the centro, and the north—the economically well off; and then the south, which even from 9200 feet looked like favelas I’ve seen in Brazil and Chile, and townships in South Africa).
2) One of the consequences of Spanish rule is that Colombia is predominantly Catholic, and that’s reflected in a number of the churches we saw in Bogota, and on the way to Villa. The older churches in the capital reflect the wealth of the Church (the independence movement was not anti-clerical; that came much later), including several whose baroque interiors were by products of the wealth the new world gave to the old. Perhaps the most striking, however, was the “Cathedral of Salt.” Its origins were in the shrine at which miners prayed before going into the salt mines, or returned from them, thankful of surviving. When the original flooded in the 1990s, miners built a bigger one that was voted the “Number 1 Marvel in Colombia.” All underground, the entrance to the cathedral is via the Stations of the Cross, which ushers into a huge vaulted room that Pope Francis visited last year.
3) Colombian history has been politically troubled for hundreds of years. Bogota owes its settlement partly to the fertile savannah, but partly to the fact that it wasn’t on the ocean; the wealth of Cartagena of the Indies attracted pirates and the Dutch, French, and English who saw looting as a short cut to riches.
The turbulence in 20th century Colombia has contributed to the paucity of colonial-era buildings in Bogota. In 1948, a left-leaning presidential candidate was assassinated (think CIA?), which led to riots resulting in hundreds of homes being burned, and thousands of people killed. More recently, in the 1990s, one of the militant parties (the recent truce lured the FARC into running for government in return for turning in their arms; FARC was the last major anti-government force) seized the Judiciary building, along with hostages. The army besieged the building, with over 100 dead, including most judges, and the building had to be replaced.
Not all the violence has been counterproductive, and it has been interesting to follow the career of “The Liberator,” Simon Bolivar. I saw where he died, in Santa Marta, last year. This time, we visited the Quinta de Bolivar, a house given to him, which contained a replica of his sword (the M-19, one of the anti-government groups stole it in the 90s, and the recovered original is in the archives; a copy is in the Quinta).
While the center of Bogota is the Plaza de Bolivar, perhaps the most moving place for me was on our way here—the site of the Battle of Boyaca. Fought on August 7, 1819, it marked the end of the war for independence. On the hill above the bridge where the battle was fought, Colombians erected a statue to Bolivar with angels representing the five countries he liberated: Colombia-(which included Panama), Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Panama. The hillside was still decorated for Christmas with a lot of topiary, including bicycles (honoring a local cyclist who is setting world records and triggering interest in cycling).
Independence in Colombia was the result of an almost a 10 year war, one that began in Bogota supposedly when a pure blood Spaniard refused to give a vase to a Colombian-born Spaniard (such were the distinctions made in 1810 when the government in exile—Napoleon’s brother was elevated to the throne–tried to rule the new world). The broken vase supposedly ignited the revolution; it’s in the museum of independence which I also visited.
The political structure that Bolivar sought to build—rather like the European union of the five countries—collapsed in the politics and past history and personalities of his generals and the countries concerned. Colombia itself has had trouble balancing centralization and federalism. Villa de Leyva faces the geographical diversity that is Colombia—forest, jungle, desert, etc. I look forward to seeing it in daylight. That’s for tomorrow.
How to Spend One Day in Florence, but Don’t Try This At Home
August 22, 2017
With only one day, I had to plan carefully to get my ration of churches, forts, palaces—and here, Renaissance art museums.
I’m happy to say that, despite the challenges of being one among 22 million, I was reasonably successful.
The morning began with a local guide taking us past the highlights: the Duomo, the Medici palaces (two of them), the ancient bridge (14th century) still used today. When the Medicis moved across the river, they changed the use of the bridge; previously it housed all kinds of vendors. The family objected to the smells of rotting meat, and so ordered the bridge to be used only by jewelers. “Gold smells good,” someone quipped.
The tour took us past the religious center (the Duomo is larger than the one in Siena, which it resembles in the white and green striped marble). The Duomo can accommodate 30,000 worshippers, but had a hard time accommodating the 30,000 tourists, who wanted to take advantage of one of the few free attractioIt’s also the burial place of Michelangelo, who put Florence (and later the Vatican) on the art map. He’s standing in front of the town hall, or at least a copy of his famous statue of David is.
She explained that the history of the Renaissance is largely tied up with the Medici family, which ruled Florence until the last family member died in the 1740s, and the area became part of the Duchy of Tuscany. The Medicis were sponsors of the arts, and Michelangelo lived in their palace and was schooled with their sons from the age of 9 until 17. Thereafter, he completed many projects (i.e., was paid) until the Medicis got too powerful and were overthrown briefly. He never made peace with the family, and went to Rome, where he spent 30 years painting the Sistine Chapel. The Medicis brought his body back, though, for a funeral in Florence.
With that background, I decided that with only one day, I would try to concentrate on the Medicis (who could resist Lorenzo the Magnificent) and Michelangelo. I fear I scratched the surface, given the surfeit of palaces and works associated with two of Florence’s major citizens.
I went to the first (of three) Medici palaces, and realized that the family had good taste and funds. They were not nobles, but traded money for favors from royalty. One such trade brought them the right to use the fleur de lis (the Bourbon sign) which is now part of the logo for Florence (along with the iris, which is a legacy of the Roman founders; Florence comes from flora). The other directly Medici buildings I saw came from their piety. They wanted to build a chapel and literally built a chapel and a church, both stunning works of art. The chapel has the family tombs. The church, named for St. Lawrence, was designed by Michelangelo, but when he broke with the family, he refused to finish the façade. The unfinished outside hides another stunning interior, with paintings from the Renaissance masters, and pulpits by the well-known sculptor, Donatello, who is buried in the crypt.
Carolyn insisted on seeing the real statue of David, not the copy that is in the square. That took us to the Academy, a building erected especially to house the statue (it’s about 20 feet tall), and is the most famous item in the building.
That left the Uffizi, once the offices of the Medici government, now turned into one of the great art museums, based at least originally on the holdings of the family. Well known paintings mostly from the Renaissance abound; there’s four rooms of Botticelli, for example. Two hours was almost enough to see just the highlights.
Not a bad day’s sightseeing—for the last day of our Malta/Italy trip.
The First Italian Meal in America–Verrazzano tartare
August 21, 2017
Twenty-two million tourists visit Florence every year, and while they aren’t all here now, the presence of 22 million in a city of around half a million certainly is obvious. It’s Florence’s biggest business (public restrooms are 1 euro—x million); the other is fashion. The Ferragamo family owns one of the biggest old palaces along the Arno, a no-longer navigable stream that cuts through the city. Gucci owns another.
The tourists have flocked here for centuries. Some have stayed. There’s an old English cemetery that contains the remains of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for example. Famous guests at our 1903 hotel include two infamous 20th century leaders—il Duce and Hitler met here in 1938, plotting the Axis around which Europe would revolve. So, too, the Allied high command in World War II headquartered at the Baglioni
There’s good reason for the tourist influx. Florence is a beautiful and historic city. The beauty came partly from Florence’s being the temporary capital of the united Italy in the 1860s, before the capture of Rome and the transfer there. In the meantime, Florence was “modernized,” which meant it had to look like Paris, with broad boulevards (mostly) sacrificed, and new buildings—neo-classical, primarily, erected to house the embassies of foreign countries.
The significant attractiveness of Florence came from the reemergence of Roman and Greek ideas that led to the Renaissance. The reemergence of Europe from the dark ages—can you say Gallileo and Michelangelo?—began here. We’ll be seeing as much as we can of that today.
On the way here (it’s 30 direct miles from Siena, where Gothic prevailed until its 16th century submission to Florence), we passed through the beautiful vineyards of Chianti, a province with a brand of wine (since 1924) that used to be in bottles with a straw base. With candles in the empty ones, they were a staple in the dorm rooms at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. Today the straw bases are so expensive, those bottles are mostly for tourists.
Chianti, though, is alive and well as a brand, the black rooster in the red seal, whose quality is enforced by inspectors at the variety of farms in the district.
We stopped at a small town, Greve in Chianti, for an introduction to the region, then went to one of the vineyards for a business visit. We learned that the good wines come from higher on the hill, table wines from lower down. Sugar is added to “priests’ wines”, a dessert wine that tastes rather like port.
The castle/vineyard was the birthplace of Verrazzano, who left to explore the coast of North America (for the French. Florentine bankers financed his trip, and wanted it led by someone they knew). Verrazzano “discovered” New York’s harbor, and sailed from Nova Scotia to South America.
When the Verrazano Narrows bridge was built (he lost a z crossing the Atlantic), some stones from the castle were part of the bridge, while the castle acquired red, white and blue stones in return that are now prominently displayed.
Verrazzano, according to our guide, was part of the first Italian meal served in America. Stopping in the Bahamas, a hungry tribe had him for supper.
We were luckier. We had wild boar salami, one of the delicacies of the district.
Now to be one of the 22 million.
Two surprising days in Siena
August 20, 2017
When people ask me, “What’s your favorite place,” I usually respond, “Where I am.”
While that’s unusually diplomatic for me, it may well be true about where I am now; Siena would definitely earn a place in my top ten. It certainly has many attractions that have kept me busy the last two days, to my surprise and pleasure.
Our introduction to Tuscany (the part of Italy we’re in) was a series of fortified towns we whisked by, atop hills, an indication of the warlike period that dominated Italy after the fall of the Roman empire.
We stopped at Pienza, one of them, which gave us a taste of what we’d see in Siena—a walled city, dominated by a church and town hall that reflected the wealth of the Piccolomini family. The family crest intrigued me, since it included 5 crescent moons, which our guide explained represented the five crusades that the family sponsored. We were soon to learn that the family contributed at least two popes, and were partly responsible for creating, in Siena, one of the best medieval cities, still preserved as such, today. It “helped” that the plague in 1348 killed 2/3 of the population and reduced the ability of the survivors to update the city’s architecture.
In the middle ages, say 1100-1500, Siena vied with Florence for domination of central Italy, a rivalry that continues today. In 1555, the Florentines defeated the Senese, destroyed the Sienese fort, and replaced it with a Florentine fort that exists today. You know I love forts, and the Fortezza is a block from here. Our guide said I was the first person on his trips to actually seek it out, and I took Carolyn there for dinner in what had once been the dungeon and arsenal. The Florentine conquest inaugurated Medici rule. The new rulers ordered the leveling of towers on the palazzos. Towers had been necessary because the rivalries were not just between the cities, but frequently between families as well (see West Side story).
Senese still celebrate a 1260 or so victory, and any football victories, with gusto. The city, which was larger in the middle ages than it is today, had three major centers.
The first was the religious. Atop one of the hills sits the Duomo, a 13th century masterpiece in white and alternating black (they say it’s dark green) that is visible miles away, with a massive presence and glistening with medieval art. It’s part Romanesque and part Gothic. One of the most stunning chapels is the Piccolomini library, built to house the collection of manuscript-books of that famous Pienza family. I visited the church museum (where many of the real sculptures are kept; so is the rose window. Copies are in the church), the baptistry, and the crypt. The last named was rediscovered in 1999; it had been filled with debris on which the church rested. Opening it required using steel to support the church.
Across from the church is what had been a hospital since the 12th century. Our local guide said it was a hospital until 1996, and she’d been born in it. It’s now a museum, with some relics that date back to 1359, when they “came from the East.” I’d read that the Byzantines literally sold off the family jewels to repay debts, and these relics were purchased, and included what purports to be a nail from the true cross and a vial with blood from Jesus. That the Senese could purchase these items reflects the wealth of the town.
There are lots of other churches here, too. We visited one last night that houses the head of St. Catherine of Siena (15th century). Our guide said that before the Council of Trent, relics from martyrs were sold as money-makers for the church (the Duomo has an arm of St. John the Baptist, given by one of the Paleologous, the Byzantine royal family, to the city).
The second center of the city is civil. The city was a republic in its glory years, with Nove (9) elected counselors who held forth in a city hall. I toured the museum there, which had some frescos celebrating the results of good government (people dancing), and lamenting the results of bad government (watch the news today). There were 9 districts—today there are 42, and we visited one of the “community centers.” Their rivalry culminates in two horse races a year, one in July, and one August 15, which we just missed, run in the “Campo”, a field in front of the city hall. The districts draw horses by lot and jockeys by lot, and bless the horses in the district and in the fountain in front of the city hall. It sounds like the world series, but there’s obviously a lot of chance in it. The Romanesque tower, 500 steps high (I resisted the temptation to climb it), next to the hall, is iconic.
The third center is economic, and that was the key to Siena’s success. Siena was on one of the major pilgrimage routes, from Canterbury to Rome. Hence, the hospital, which started as a bed and breakfast, hence the churches, and hence the development of services for the pilgrims. Essentially, that meant the evolution of banks. People would set out boards (banko or something like that in Italian), and offer to change money, the ATMs of the day. Thus emerged the bank of Siena in 1472, still in existence today, although a recent 8 million euro bailout has damaged its credibility. And, when a banker died, his “board” was broken and left in front of his former place of business (hence, in Italian, bankrupt!)
In other words, Siena’s wealth came from tourism, and, from what I’ve seen on the streets in the old city, that may still be true today! Some things never change.