Return to Vienna

The train was boarding in Budapest’s Keleti station. An elderly Hungarian woman, speaking broken German, asked me to help her with her bags. I did so, and then took a seat on the train. We were bound for Vienna.

The ride was not quite as uneventful as I had hoped. For one, I soon discovered that the ticket I purchased online (for a very reasonable price) did not come with a seat number. Thus, anytime the train made a stop, there was a chance that I would be booted by someone who did have a reserved seat. This made the trip considerably less relaxing than it could have been. Then, the train stopped at the Austro-Hungarian border, and—surprising in Europe, where borders are so permeable—a troop of armed border agents got in and started systematically checking people’s passports. We were also instructed to put on our special N95 masks, mandated at that time by Austrian law for indoor spaces. Everybody complied, though it did seem rather silly to be putting on a mask after breathing in the air for well over an hour.

(I think somebody should examine the relative COVID rates between Hungary, which had no restrictions at all, and Austria, which not only had a mask mandate, but required the heavy-duty N95 masks. It is a natural experiment.)

A little after noon, the train pulled into the Vienna Hauptbahnhof. I took a metro into the city center, deposited my luggage in one of the many storage lockers, and then set out to re-discover Vienna. My first priority was lunch. For this, I headed to a Viennese staple, Buffet Trzesniewski (the name is Polish, I believe) for some of their tiny little open-faced sandwiches. I got five—with various combinations of egg, fish, mayonnaise, and bacon—and every one was delightful. Indeed, I admit that the description of the food did not sound at all appetizing to me, but each sandwich was scrumptious. I particularly liked the small glass of beer, called a “pfiff,” to wash it down.

*I later returned and had a glass of wine.*

Reinforced, I was ready for Vienna’s cathedral. The last time I had visited, which was in 2018, I had balked at the entry fee for the grand church, and contented myself with a peak inside. This time, I resolved not to be so cheap. The ticket comes with the option of an audio guide. But at the time of my visit, I was in the throes of an obsession with Rick Steves, and instead elected to use his free audio guide. I’m sure it comes to the same thing, although my choice allowed me to enjoy the nasal strains of his high-pitched voice.

The roots of St. Stephen’s Cathedral go back to the Romanesque period, though the church, as it stands today, is mostly gothic in design. The visitor will likely notice two things immediately: first, the majestic south tower—a classic gothic skyscraper—and second, the colorful roof tile mosaic. Perhaps the colors are so vibrant because it was installed after a great fire gutted the cathedral and destroyed its roof in 1945. The retreating German commander actually disobeyed orders to destroy the building, but a fire caused by looting nearly did the job, anyway.

This fire also destroyed many of the bells in the cathedral, including the famous Pummerin, which had been cast from the canons of defeated Turkish invaders in 1705. Thankfully, a replacement was cast and installed in the shorter, but stabler, north tower. This new Pummerin clocks in at over 20,000 kg, the third largest bell in Europe. (For context, the Liberty Bell weighs just 940 kg, not even half of a tenth as much.) It can only be heard on special holidays and other festive occasions, so I was not lucky enough to be the person for whom the bell tolls.

(On the topic of big bells, even though it has nothing to do with Vienna, I cannot help mentioning the story of the largest bell ever made, the Great Bell of Dhammazedi. It was cast in present-day Myanmar and weighed an unbelievable 300,000 kg—or, if you’re American, over 300 Liberty Bells! The great bell was stolen in 1608 by the Portuguese “adventurer” Filipe de Brito, who hauled it by elephant to a raft, hoping—of all things—to melt it down to make cannons. His scheme unwound when his raft sank, taking his flagship with it, as the incredibly heavy bell proved to be too… well, incredibly heavy. De Brito was captured and executed by being impaled on a stick. There have been many attempts to find the bell under the river, but so far it has eluded detection. In any case, I have no idea how it could be lifted.

Anyway, back to the cathedral.)

There are several highlights on the tour around the cathedral. In one corner of the cathedral is the stately tomb of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor. Like so many kingly sarcophagi in Europe, this one contains the bones of a Hapsburg. Another is the beautiful Neustädter altar, a massive, folding wooden piece that is a pentaptych rather than the traditional triptych. When it is fully opened, it reveals a marvelous series of reliefs; but when folded up—and it often is—the altar reveals only an uninspiring series of paintings.

*Unluckily, I was there on a day when the altar was closed.*

The pulpit, thankfully, is always on display, and it is marvelous. It is a perfect example of the Gothic style—gorgeous, meticulous, intricate, and heavily symbolic. As in so much Catholic art, the entire worldview seems to be represented using a panoply of saints and signs (many of them animals).

The architect of this stony florescence must have known that he had created a masterpiece, as he included a self-portrait below. You can see him peering from an open window, his compass in hand. This is known in German as the Fenstergucker (window-looker), and it is one of the most winsome self-portraits I can think of. Nearby, on a wall, is a similar figure. This time he is holding a compass and a framing square. And, like the builder himself, he symbolically holds up the cathedral at the base of an arch. By the way, it is not known who exactly this master builder was. The two prime candidates are Anton Pilgram and Niclaes Gerheart van Leyden.

It was getting late now, so I decided to visit the Weltmuseum Wien, which was open until 7pm on the day I visited. This is a large and rather miscellaneous museum located in one wing of the Hofburg Palace. The collection includes a great deal of medieval arms and armory—some of it quite beautiful, though the signs were only in German so I couldn’t learn much—as well as a smattering of objects of “anthropological” interest (meaning, from cultures outside of Europe). But I spent virtually all of my time in the collection of musical instruments.

This must be one of the greatest collections of this sort in the world. For one, there is an assortment of famous instruments—either because of who made them, or who played them. There is an Amati violin, for example, and a piano that was played by both Robert and Clara Schumann, as well as Johannes Brahms. But there are also many instruments special for their particular beauty or unusual design. After all, there is nothing inherently special about the design of a flute or a violin; anything that makes noise can be an instrument. Thus, there are bizarrely twisting horns and oddly shaped stringed contraptions. The collection goes even beyond instruments. There is a table specially designed to hold music for a string quartet; and another table, belonging to the bishop of Passau, is decorated with musical notation.

This visit put me in the ideal mood for my next destination: the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera). Now, it is possible to buy standing-room only tickets a few hours before a performance. But I doubted that I could stand through an entire performance, and so opted to buy a cheap seat (for about $15). This price would have been worth it just to be given the privilege of exploring this fine building—a beautiful neoclassical construction fit for the Austro-Hungarian Emperor himself. Lucky for me, Carmen was playing during my visit, and I was able to see (or, rather, hear, since my seat had limited visibility) that marvelous opera performed with great panache.

In short, though I had arrived around midday, I managed to have quite a wonderful day in the Austrian capital.

As my Airbnb was nearby, I decided to start off my next day by visiting the great Schönbrunn Palace. According to Rick Steves—who would know—this is the one palace in Europe that can rival Versailles. But you would not think it from the outside. Whereas Versailles’s exterior is vast and resplendent, the Schönbrunn is, by palatial standards, relatively modest—painted plain yellow, with few frills. But if you pay the (somewhat steep) entry, you will see that the interior is indeed as sumptuous as could be desired. Even so, if you ask me, the best part of the visit is a (free) stroll through the palace gardens, which are vast and lush

Two figures loom over the Schönbrunn: Franz Joseph I and his wife, Elisabeth. Franz Joseph, the longest-reigning emperor of Austria, was born in this palace; and it is also here that he died, in 1916, at the age of 86. His wife, Elisabeth—affectionately known as “Sisi”—was quite a colorful figure. Highly neurotic and hugely dissatisfied with court life, she spent much of her time traveling around, unaccompanied by her husband. But when she was in Austria, she often retreated to this palace. Like so many public figures during this time, she was assassinated by an anarchist in 1898, making her the longest-reigning Austrian empress.

(Though it is not directly related to the palace, I cannot help inserting a little story. The marriage of Franz Joseph and Sisi produced only one son, Rudolph. This made him heir apparent to the throne; but in 1889, he died in gruesome murder-suicide pact with his lover, the 17-year old Mary Vetsera. Rudolph’s motivations are still unclear, but his marriage was very unhappy. This led to his cousin, Franz Ferdinand, becoming the new heir apparent. And, of course, his murder at the hands of Serbian nationalists kicked off the First World War, which eventually brought down the whole Empire.)

Palaces, even beautiful ones, tend to put me in a foul mood. (I suppose they bring together too many things I detest—obscene luxury, arbitrary power, and huge crowds of tourists.) To recover my spirits, I went to another of Vienna’s world class museums, the Albertina.

Located in another erstwhile palace (Vienna is full of them), the museum is named after Duke Albert, a Hapsburg Prince and art collector who used to live here. A visit to the Albertina is a complete experience. You begin by walking into an ornate foyer and exploring some of the palace rooms. Then, you get to the core of the museum: the collection of prints and drawings. Few, if any, museums in the world can rival the quality of these works. There is Dürer’s exquisite watercolor of a rabbit, Da Vinci’s study of the last supper, and a monstrous fish disgorging its insides by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A study for Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is on display, as is a muscular male nude from Michelangelo.

This riot of brilliant draftsmanship would be more than enough for any art lover. But the museum also has a substantial collection of Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings. Indeed, with works by Picasso, Monet, Cézanne, and Magritte, this collection alone would also make a fine museum. I was particularly interested in the Munch exhibit that was on display during my visit. Aside from his famous Scream, I had known close to nothing about the Norwegian painter, and it was a pleasure to witness his artistic development.

*I like to take closeup shots of paintings.*

Right next to this museum is another classic Viennese attraction: the Wurst stand. It is recognizable from the large green rabbit on top (modeled after the Dürer painting). There, you can order from a range of delicious sausages for a quick and filling meal. Vienna is, of course, full of sausage vendors, though this one is the most famous.

My next destination was far outside the city center. To get there, I took the metro to the Wien-Heiligenstadt station, in the north.

Though Vienna is a beautiful city, it was a relief to be in a more humble, ordinary neighborhood, with no crowds to speak of. Vienna is so grand, so stately, and so full of tourists that it can feel like one big, outdoor palace. Now, at least, it felt like I was in a place where ordinary people lived. I wandered around a little, stumbling upon a little park named for Beethoven, and eventually decided to have lunch in a place called Mayer am Pfarrplatz. Though the place had seats for upwards of 100, it was mostly empty, and I was put at a table in the patio. I ordered the cordon bleu with the Austrian potato salad (that means vinegar and no mayo), and found it to be delicious beyond belief. The white wine was also stupendous.

While I ate, the waitress informed me that Beethoven used to live in the adjoining house. I later learned, however, that Beethoven lived in dozens of different apartments throughout his life, so this might not be such a claim to fame. Still, thinking of Beethoven did improve my dining experience.

I left in a satisfied stupor and continued to climb up the hill into the vineyards beyond the city. In no time, I was completely surrounded by fields of grape vines, and soon I came upon one of the famous wine stands. It was an Edenic vision: picnic tables full of happy people, all holding glasses of crisp white wine. I bought myself a glass and sat down. The view of the Danube and the city beyond was nearly as intoxicating as the drink; and the wine was scrumptious—light, dry, and refreshing. Indeed, I think I enjoyed those couple hours just sipping wine outside an order of magnitude more than I enjoyed visiting the palaces and museums. I highly recommend it.

This pretty much did it for my day, as far as sightseeing was concerned. After drinking so much wine, I went back to my Airbnb and had a short nap. Then, as a form of repentance, I put on my running shoes and went to the Donauinsel.

Much like Budapest, you see, Vienna has its own island park. Unlike Budapest’s Margaret Island, however, Vienna’s island is artificial. It was originally created as a form of flood control, but accidentally became the most popular recreational area in the city. The island is narrow and long. If you ran from the southern to the northern tip, and then back again, you would complete a full marathon. Yet it only takes a few minutes to go from one side to the other. When I went, the park was full of cyclists, joggers, and people out for a stroll. And for my part, I quite enjoyed running along the gravelly paths with the cool breeze coming off the water.

I woke up in a melancholy mood, as it was the last day of my trip. Lucky for me, however, my flight back was quite late in the day, so I had time to do some sightseeing. In cases like these, luggage lockers are an essential resource. I checked out of my Airbnb, stowed my bag, and was first in line at the Café Demel to get breakfast.

Now, Vienna is famous for its cafés, and justly so. They maintain the old musty smell of the Austrian Empire—with ritzy decorations, bow-tied servers, and a rack of newspapers. Demel is particularly attractive, filled as it is with sweets wrapped up in gift boxes. For breakfast, I ordered the obligatory Viennese classic: Sachertorte. This is a kind of dense chocolate cake with a bit of apricot jam in the center. To drink I ordered a “melange,” which is what the Viennese call a cappuccino for some reason. It was quite good—though, I must say, rather pricey.

From there, I got on a tram. My destination: Vienna Central Cemetery. This is an enormous cemetery which, its name notwithstanding, is on the outskirts of the city. With three million buried, it is one of the most populous cemeteries in the world. Though not as beautiful as Père Lachaise, this burying ground is an essential place of pilgrimage for music lovers. For it is here that the esteemed bodies of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Strauss, and Salieri are interred.

Now, at first glance it may seem strange that Beethoven, who died in 1827, or Schubert, who died the following year, should be buried in Vienna Central—which, after all, opened in 1863. Their presence is due to a kind of marketing ploy. The cemetery was originally unpopular because of its distance from the city center, so they decided to relocate some revered corpses to make it more of a “destination.” Clearly, it worked.

Luckily for the visitor, all of these famous composers are right next to one another. For me, it is a subtly powerful experience to stand before the graves of such legendary figures. Their reputation is so enormous that they hardly seem real. But when you are standing above their bones, their humanity is palpable; and their achievements become all the more impressive for being made by somebody no different, in essence, from myself.

Aside from the musical greats, this cemetery is also interesting because of its interdenominational nature—not so common in Europe. There are sections for Catholics, Protestants, Greek Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and even Buddhists. I was interested to find a large section devoted to Soviet soldiers who died during the Second World War.

After taking the tram back to the center, I only had a short time before I had to head to the airport. Since I was then in the throes of a Rick Steves addiction, I decided to follow his walking tour of the city. This proved to be a good choice, as it led me past a few interesting things I had missed. For example, I took some time to admire the enormous and bulbous Plague Column, which was erected in 1679 after a terrible epidemic. Strangely, the Baroque monument does capture (though perhaps unintentionally) something of the horror of a deadly pestilence.

I also was shown something I had overlooked before: the Memorial against war and fascism. This is in the Albertinaplatz, right near the museum. Designed by Alfred Hrdlicka, it consists of several free-standing sculptures made using rock quarried in the Mauthhausen mine. The monument commemorates victims of the Holocaust, as well as the innocent victims of all wars. In this spot used to stand a residential building that was struck by an Allied bomb in 1945, killing many hundreds of people—many of whom are still buried under the ground.

The “tour” ended at the Hofburg palace, the main residence of the Habsburgs. (The Schönbrunn was a summer palace.) It was strange to contemplate such a vast and monumental building which now serves no purpose except tourism. Like Vienna itself, the palace is a kind of head without a body—the wreck of foregone imperial grandeur.

But you cannot feel bad for the Viennese. After all, their city is consistently rated the most livable in the world. After just a few days, I could see why.

Review: American Colonies

American Colonies: The Settling of North America by Alan Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an exceptional volume of popular history. Few periods, I reckon, are as mythologized and misunderstood as the European colonization of the United States. In my public school, for example, I learned that the heroic Columbus proved the earth wasn’t flat, and that the Pilgrims lived in joyful harmony with the Wampanoag. To be fair, in high school, this ridiculously rosy picture was brought back to earth somewhat. Still, I think that many Americans (and I may still fall into this category) hold onto many misconceptions about our early history.

Taylor begins with Columbus and ends with the Russian and Spanish colonization of North America’s west coast. On the way, he discusses the Spanish conquistadores, the French fur traders, the main islands of the Caribbean, the slave trade, and of course the English colonies along the east coast. Even Captain James Cook and his fateful exploration of Hawaii gets a section. Taylor shows what dynamics in Europe motivated expansion—both the large-scale political and economic considerations, and the push and pull factors that made people want to leave. And, of course, Taylor mentions the many Native American groups who cooperated with and resisted, fought for and against, exploited and were exploited by the incoming Europeans.

This history begins with a calamity on a scale difficult for us even to imagine. European diseases ravaged the indigenous population of the United States, causing a population collapse so dramatic that it makes the bubonic plague seem mild by comparison. There is no way to exaggerate the loss this represents, both in terms of people and their lifeways. However, while Taylor does not minimize this tragedy, he also avoids falling into the opposite error of portraying the natives as innocent nature people. To the contrary, he shows how different groups adapted to European presence, often becoming essential allies and trading partners to the new colonists.

Taylor also gives ample space to that other original sin of America: slavery. It is not pleasant reading. His relatively brief coverage of the conditions aboard a slave ship, for example, is deeply disturbing. But even in this case, he does not ignore the agency of his subjects. He describes, for example, how slaves would subtly resist their overseers by feigning misunderstanding or working inefficiently. I also appreciated his explanations of how slavery operated differently in the Caribbean and on the continental United States, according to climate and economic pressures.

In sum, what emerges from these pages is a vivid portrait of a rapidly changing continent—a complicated story to which innumerable groups contributed. While Taylor does demolish the patriotic myth of heroic and benevolent European colonizers, this book is not simply a hit job. Rather, it is a rich, well-written, and dispassionate account of a one of history’s most consequential periods.

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Review: The Corner

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Some authors have the power to make you feel that you are just understanding the world for the first time. This is, for example, Roberto Caro’s gift. In every one of his books, he seems to expose the world of politics, revealing its inner workings like an ant colony on display in a transparent container. And this is also the consummate gift of this writing team, Simon and Burns. Here, as in Simon’s Homicide, and as in their masterpiece The Wire, these authors show you something you think you already know about: urban poverty. But you really see it for the first time.

In many ways, this book is the ideal companion to William Julius Wilson’s book, When Work Disappears, which was published just one year earlier. Wilson, a sociologist, explains urban poverty using historical trends, statistics, and surveys, whereas Simon and Burns worked like anthropologists: following around their subjects for an entire year and more, trying to understand their world through their eyes.

These different methodologies converge on the same story. When decent working-class jobs disappear from an area, it sets off a chain reaction that erodes the fabric of the society. Those with means move out; those that remain behind are left with few and stark choices. The teenagers in this story, for example, are faced with the options of attending a struggling school system, working for a minimum-wage job, or selling drugs. And while there are significant risks to this last option—risks that, sooner or later, become terrible consequences for all of them—it is undeniable that the reward is immediate and great.

Another theme of both books is how strategies and mindsets that are adaptive on “the corner” are maladaptive anywhere else. The tendency to think in the short-term, to backstab, to lie and cheat, to never show vulnerability—all of these are essential for both the addicts and dealers, though of course they become self-defeating when any of them try to leave this world. And of course many do try to leave it, earnestly and repeatedly. But with so few economic opportunities and so many barriers to government aid (the struggle to just get into a rehab center is Sisyphean), these efforts meet with scant success.

When writing of people in such difficult circumstances, it is tempting to treat them as pure victims. Yet the authors manage to convey the full humanity of their subjects—their many shortcomings and also their strivings—while never minimizing what they are up against. Indeed, this is perhaps the most impressive aspect of this book, and what makes these stories so compelling simply as stories, and not just illustrations of American decadence.

If there is any moral to this book, it is the absolute failure of the war on drugs. Simon and Burns tell of an unending, unceasing drug market—an entire ecosystem of sellers and buyers, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, right in the open. Yes, the police do come and make arrests and confiscate a few vials. But the risk of incarceration is nothing compared to the force of full-fledged addiction or the endless, easy money that dealing provides. At one point, the authors aptly compare the drug war to the debacle of the Vietnam War: all the money, manpower, and machinery in the world is not enough when a war is ill-conceived to begin with.

But what is the solution? What would help? The authors—wisely, I think—refrain from any policy suggestions. Instead, we are left with a kind of mirror-image of the America that Robert Caro describes. Whereas Caro focuses on extraordinary individuals who fundamentally change their worlds, Simon and Burns show how political inertia, economic forces, and human folly conspire to trap everyone—inner-city teachers, beat cops, social workers, rehab nurses, and everyone selling and using—in an endless cycle that chews people up and spits them out, generation after generation. As in Homicide, this is a remarkable work of journalism.

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Review: Homicide

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What led me here (as I suspect is true of many readers) was my love of The Wire. Of all of the television I have seen, I found Simon’s masterpiece to be uniquely engrossing and thought-provoking. And despite the obvious creative license taken with the plot, what makes the show so compelling is the bedrock foundation of fact upon which the story is based. Thus, I wanted to get to know some of Simon’s source material directly.

I am glad I did. This book is a triumph in its own right—worth reading even if Simon had never gone on to be a famous television writer. This is just an excellent work of journalism. Simon was given unique access to a squad of murder detectives and their work. He hung around the office on late nights, he listened to interrogations, he read case files, he visited murder scenes, he sat through trials, he went to hospitals and morgues—in short, he did it all. And by simply organizing his observations and writing them down, he has produced a wonderfully insightful look into crime and police work.

Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with detective stories—that is, all of us—has internalized quite a few myths and preconceptions, which are battered to pieces in these pages. For one, most murders do not have a motive beyond rage, greed, or simple recklessness. They are purely impulsive, so detectives rarely bother asking “Who would want this person dead?” Indeed, the Sherlock Holmes image of the cold, rational detective motivated by his love of the common good has virtually no shred of truth to it. The detectives in this book, while decent men (and they are all men), are not on a personal mission against crime. They are motivated by professional pride, by departmental statistics, by overtime pay—and occasionally, yes, by strong feelings of justice.

While we often hear stories of cold cases being solved through innovative scientific techniques, the basic tools of the detective are quite simple: evidence, witnesses, and confessions. And the first two are usually necessary to obtain the third, since most people don’t confess unless they’re backed into a corner. The interrogation techniques Simon describes are somewhat disturbing. Though the detectives do make their suspects aware of their Miranda rights, they do so in such a way that suspects are too intimidated or confused to really stop and consider their next move. The majority don’t use their right to call a lawyer, and instead endure hours of intense interrogation, while detectives browbeat and sometimes scream at them. A surprising number of suspects break and sign confessions.

It is hard not to feel uneasy about this. Indeed, studies have found that some innocent people will even confess to crimes they didn’t commit, just to escape from the intense psychological pressure of the situation. But Simon makes the point that, if detectives were prevented from using manipulative interrogation techniques, they would hardly convict anyone. And when he details the difficulties of actually convicting murderers in court (far fewer than 50% of those arrested for murder end up convicted by a jury of their peers), it is difficult to resist his logic. And when the top brass demand a high clearance rate for the department (that is, the rate of solved to unsolved murders), it is no wonder that detectives will resort to anything to put a case from red to black.

As is usual with Simon’s work, this is the story of ordinary, fallible people who are doing their best (mostly) in a failing, dysfunctional system. The reasons that there are so many murders in Baltimore in the first place go very far beyond the walls of the police department or even the city government. So even though the detectives often do admirable work and lock up obviously dangerous individuals, there is an overwhelming sense of futility in the book. After all, the detectives only arrive after a murder has taken place. They may find the man responsible (and it is usually a man), but even with him behind bars, the next murder is just a block, or a day, or a phone call away.

Yet the book is not wholly bleak. What prevents it from being so are the personalities of the detectives. For the most part, they are smart and, often, surprisingly funny—with a dark gallows humor imposed by the job. And they are surprisingly sympathetic. Indeed, although I share very little life experience with any of these men, somehow I often found myself identifying with them. This is, in essence, the charm of the book: rather than making you fantasize about being an investigative genius, it allows you to see what it would be like if you—the real you, but in another life, perhaps—became an actual, overworked, underpaid homicide detective.

It is a rare book that dramatizes police work while neither elevating the detectives into superheroes nor demonizing them as thugs. Like a good candid photograph, Simon’s portrait is both unflattering and endearing. It is both an uncommonly good work of journalism and a work of art.

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Budapest or Bust

I have never met a person who has traveled to Budapest and didn’t like it. Though the city was not even on my travel radar when I arrived in Europe—not featuring prominently in any of the history I was familiar with—one glowing review after another was enough to convince me to pay the city a visit. “Not every city has a vibe,” one of my friends told me one day. “Budapest definitely has a vibe.”

I arrived in Budapest one day in early April, fully ready to be vibed (or whatever the verb might be). A variety of things immediately pleased me: the plentiful restaurants (I ate Chinese noodle soup), the convenient trams and buses, and the well-designed transport app that allowed me to buy every ticket I needed on my phone. And all of it was cheap! Perhaps I am overly attached to lucre, but when I am in a reasonably-priced place I feel immediately better than when I am somewhere expensive. Rather than having to guard my wallet with my life—which means continually fighting my impulses to do pleasurable things—I can relax and simply enjoy the experience. I was, in short, already vibing.

After my bags were dropped off, I first headed to the Hungarian National Museum. This actually wasn’t in my original plans, but by chance it was very close to my Airbnb, so I figured: why not? It was a good choice. The Hungarian National Museum covers the history of the country from prehistory to the present. It is a story that I was hardly acquainted with. To simplify matters greatly, one theme in Hungarian history is the preservation of their very distinct identity in the face of foreign domination and in spite of being at a natural crossroads between Europe and Asia. Hungary was a part of the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Third Reich, and the Soviet Union; and yet their culture remains highly distinct.

*Apparently this is a real skull, deliberately compressed like this.*

For example, the Hungarian language is, as you may know, unrelated to its Slavic or Germanic neighbors. Indeed, it is not even in the same Indo-European language tree that includes everything from English to Sanskrit—meaning that the Hungarians resisted even prehistoric invasions and expansions. Hungarian is, rather, a Uralic language, which means that it is more closely related to Finnish than it is to Russian. This is why it looks so strange to foreign visitors. I did not manage to pick up a single Hungarian word.

(I should also mention that the name for Hungary has nothing to do with appetite, but rather is a latinized form of an old Byzantine Greek name for the area. The Hungarians, for their part, call their country Magyarorszag, or “Land of the Magyars.” Their language is called “Uralic” because it is believed that the Magyars originated in the Urals, in present-day Russia.)

In any case, it was a wonderful museum, with Roman ruins in the basement, archaeological treasures on the ground floor (including an elongated skull), and beautiful medieval artwork on the top floor. One of the gems of the museum is a piano that once belonged to Beethoven and Hungarian virtuoso, Franz Liszt. And I was particularly gratified to learn the story of the American general, Harry Hill Bandholtz, who personally prevented Romanian forces from looting the museum in the aftermath of the First World War. The exhibit ends with the Soviet period; you walk out saying goodbye to Stalin.

After this, I was rather hungry (pun unintended but unavoidable), so I made my way to the Great Market Hall. This is exactly what it sounds like: an enormous food market in the center of the city. Opened in 1897, it was the brainchild of the first mayor of Budapest, Károly Kammermayer, and it was designed with flair. An enormous steel structure, it is big enough to be an airport hanger, and almost attractive enough to be a church. The roof is covered in colorful tiles, much like the Cathedral of Vienna, and the inside is full of all sorts of decorative touches in its steelwork. Like the Eiffel Tower, completed just ten years earlier, this is a monument of the industrial age.

It is also just a fun place to be. The basement is stinky: full of pickled products and fishmongers. The ground floor has fruit and vegetable stands, wine for sale, butchers (with delicious Hungarian sausages), and lots of vendors selling Hungarian paprika. This spice is, of course, the culinary signature of the country, though you may be surprised to learn that it became popular in the country as recently as the 1800s. (The Spanish, by contrast, have been using it since the 1600s.) Hungarian paprika may not have the deepest historical roots, then, but its fame is justified by its deep flavor. You can trust me on this, since I bought some at the market, took it home, and cooked with it.

The best part of the market is the upper floor, which is full of lots of tourist junk and, much more importantly, restaurants. I stopped at one food stand selling Hungarian staples and got a plate of chicken paprikash with a side of nokedli (Hungarian dumplings). It was phenomenal—so phenomenal that I didn’t mind sitting on the floor (the seats were occupied) and eating it from a flimsy paper plate. I ought to mention that, the following day, I returned to this market and got a Hungarian sausage with potatoes, which was also scrumptious.

Now, a few paragraphs ago, perceptive readers may have noticed the oddity that Budapest had its first mayor in the late 19th century. Isn’t it a much older city? The explanation for this is simple. Budapest was officially created in 1873, when the cities of Buda and Pest (and Óbuda) were joined. There remain significant differences between the two formerly separate cities, however: Pest is older, more touristy, and very flat, whereas Buda—which sits across the Danube—is hillier, quieter, and more residential.

My next destination was right in the center of Budapest: St. Stephen’s Basilica. Compared to many of the grand churches of Europe, this one is rather young, having been completed in 1905. Yet even if it lacks the historical interest of some other buildings, it is still worth visiting for the beautifully decorated interior, which is illuminated with golden light. The basilica is named for the first king of Hungary, who was a pious Christian at a time when many of his fellow Hungarians were pagans. His mummified hand is preserved in an ornate reliquary; and the royal appendage has had, in the words of the placard, an “adventurous fate”—having been kept in Transylvania, Dubrovnik, Vienna, and “carried west” during the Second World War. Despite all this, the best part of visiting the basilica may be the view from the top.

The rest of my first day was uneventful. I walked around the city, ate some goulash and lángos (Hungarian fried bread), and tried some Hungarian wine (very nice). I needed to build up some strength for the morrow.

I woke up early the next day and got ready in a rush. I had booked a tour in the city’s most famous and iconic landmark: the Hungarian Parliament Building. Thankfully, with the help of the excellent trams, I arrived with time to spare, and so could take a moment to enjoy the small exhibit on the building’s architecture located on its northern side. This was a kind of tunnel filled with gargoyles and spires and other stone fragments used in the building. Seeing it all up close did help me realize just how much work went into the design of this monument.

Soon it was time for the tour, and I approached the building. Of course, I had seen it in photos, but its scale is only appreciable from up close. Indeed, it is so big that I almost missed my tour by simply not being able to find the entrance. (One of the guards helped me.) I had to run, but I made it.

I should mention that tours to the Parliament Building fill up fast, so it is worth booking them well in advance. In my case, I had to sign up for a Spanish tour since there weren’t any English ones available when I looked. Occasionally it pays to be bilingual.

The tour lasted about an hour and took us through just a fraction of the building (it is, after all, the biggest building in the country). But it was a beautiful fraction. Built in 1902, the Hungarian Parliament Building is the soaring, majestic symbol of the country’s sovereignty and democracy. Every inch of it is ornately furnished, with gilded arches, stained-glass windows, and more statues than a cathedral. One highlight is the Assembly Hall, which must be among the most ostentatious settings for a legislative body in the world. The views are stunning, but I can imagine that it gets a little cramped with 199 Members of Parliament and their aides. Another showpiece of the building is the main staircase, which makes the entrances of royal palaces seem tiny by comparison. Right below the central dome is a glass case containing the Holy Crown of Hungary, which tradition states was first worn by St. Stephen himself. It may not be quite that old, but it is a beautiful example of Byzantine craftsmanship. Four liveried soldiers guard the crown, performing an elaborate changing of the guards ceremony every hour.

*You cannot take a picture of the actual crown jewels, but a replica is on display in St. Mattias (see below)*

It is a great shame, to say the least, that a country with such a glorious temple of democracy should be experiencing a backsliding into autocracy under the presidency of Viktor Orbán. Indeed, the danger of dictatorship was starkly obvious during my visit, as it happened just a few months into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (which shares a border with Hungary). In addition to myself, a Ukrainian mother and child were staying in the Airbnb, refugees of the war. On a lamppost I noticed a satirical sticker linking Orbán to Putin, and I wondered if Hungarians would heed the warning of this war.

Hungary certainly has had its fair share of tyranny. Examples are not far to seek. Right in front of the Hungarian Parliament is the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial. This is a sculpture depicting just that: empty shoes, right on the edge of the river. This memorializes the Jews and other victims who were executed by the Arrow Cross party—the Hungarian equivalent of the Nazis, who took control of the country late in the war. Victims were first told to remove their shoes (potentially valuable) and then shot into the Danube.

Quite nearby is a less depressing monument, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge. This was the first bridge to permanently unite the Buda and Pest sides of the river. When it opened, in 1849 (for context, 34 years before the Brooklyn Bridge), it was considered a kind of marvel of engineering. More importantly for the tourist, the bridge has a lovely, classical design that forms an iconic part of the Danube panorama. Unfortunately for me, however, the bridge was completely closed when I visited. It had been closed since March of 2021, and is supposed to reopen sometime this year. The bridge is named, by the way, for a politician and reformer—revered by his fellow Hungarians for his progressive ideals—István Széchenyi.

But I am afraid I must return to the topic of tyranny, for my next visit was to the House of Terror. This is a building that was used by both the aforementioned Arrow Cross as well as the ÁVH (Államvédelmi Hatóság), the secret police of the communist regime. No photos are allowed inside, so memory will have to do. The entry came with an audio guide, which gave historical context to the photos and images on display. The story was familiar, if depressing: secret police “disappearing” political dissidents and enforcing the most stringent political orthodoxy. The visit culminated in a long, slow elevator ride to the lower level, which had been used as a prison where suspects were detained, tortured, and executed.

*The wall is covered with the faces of the victims.*

I next paid a visit to the Dohány Street Synagogue, more commonly called the Great Synagogue. Its name is due to its size as much as its beauty—it is the largest synagogue in Europe, with seating for about 3,000 worshipers. To visit, you take a guided tour; these are available in many languages and at frequent intervals. The architecture is rather peculiar, combining elements of European churches and Islamic decoration. Yet the synagogue’s history is more compelling than its design. During the Holocaust, the Jewish ghetto was right next to the synagogue; and as a result there is a cemetery for those who died in the brutal conditions. There is also an adjoined museum of Jewish culture, in the former house of Theodor Herzl, a famous activist and journalist, considered to be one of the fathers of Zionism.

The most moving part of the visit is to Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, which is on the site of the aforementioned cemetery. Wallenberg, I should mention, was a Swedish diplomat who managed to save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis (though ironically, he seems to have been killed by the Soviets). His name, and those of others who helped to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, are inscribed on leaves of a statue of a weeping willow designed by Imre Varga. Yet the vast majority of these leaves bear the names of the many thousands of victims of the Nazi terror. In total, over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during the Holocaust, many of them at Auschwitz. Today, there are only about 10,000 Jewish people residing in the country.

(Though I did not manage to visit it myself, I wish I had gone to the Holocaust Memorial Museum while I was there. It was the first state-sponsored Holocaust museum in Europe, and is located in a former synagogue.)

This was a lot of heavy history for one day. So after a quick dinner, I was glad to have a triumphal finale in the Hungarian State Opera House. The building was opened in 1884, just a few years after the slightly more famous Wiener Staatsoper; and from the outside the two look almost identical. The inside is marvelous, as I discovered when I arrived for an evening performance of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau Ohne Schatten. I walked up the marble staircase, below the frescoed ceilings and gilded arches, to sit in my nose-bleed seat high above the stage. The view may not have been great, but I had only paid about $10 for my ticket and felt that it was an amazing deal, all things considered.

That particular opera is known as an extremely difficult work for its many soloists, complex music, and other pyrotechnics demanded by the mythological plot. Its performance was thus a testament to the skill of everyone involved. The particular opera is also quite long, so long that it had to be broken up by three intermissions. I highly recommend any visitors to Budapest to give opera a try, even if you don’t think you like the music. The combination of the fine architecture, elegant dresses, champagne during intermission, and of course the elaborate music, make for an oddly intense experience. Nevertheless, I should admit that I left during the third break, as I didn’t want to be there until midnight.

So far, everything I have described is more or less in the center of old Pest. But Budapest is a far-flung city, with things to see and do in many of its remote corners. This may sound like a negative, but with the city’s excellent public transportation system it is easy to get anywhere. This is why, I think, Budapest does not get as claustrophobically crowded as places like Prague or Munich, which have very focused centers of activity.

Now, to explain the next group of landmarks, you need to know a date: 1896. This is the year of the great Millennium Exhibition, a celebration of the 1000-year anniversary of Hungary. That is, in the year 896, a man named Árpád, leader of the Magyars, was made prince of the newly-created Principality of Hungary. Obviously, the Hungarians of the late 19th century had to celebrate their longevity, and to do so they staged an event similar to a World’s Fair.

Especially created for this event was the first metro on the European continent, and the third in the world (after London and Liverpool). This metro line is still in operation, known simply as Metro Line M1. It was made to ferry Hungarians to and from the fairgrounds. Unlike more modern metros, this one is extremely shallow, just a few feet below Andrássy Avenue, one of Budapest’s principal thoroughfares. The journey from street to metro is almost instantaneous. The metro is also a joy to ride, with attractive cars and stations along the way.

The line ends near Heroes’ Square, the centerpiece of the Millennium Exhibition celebrations. This is a big, open plaza with a sweeping assemblage of statues in two colonnades depicting (as you might expect) heroes from Hungary’s past. The square was obviously built to accommodate masses of people, though for the solo traveler it is almost annoyingly vast. Right in the center is the Memorial Stone of Heroes (often mistaken for a tomb of the unknown soldier), which is a monument to those fallen in war defending the country. Flanking this glorious stone poem to the country’s greatness are two art museums: the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hall of Art. (Unfortunately I didn’t give myself time to visit either.)

Beyond Heroes’ Square is City Park (not very creative names, these), one of the finest parks in Budapest. As you might have guessed, this park was also created for the Millennium Exhibition, and signs of that epochal celebration are not far to seek. The most obvious is Vajdahunyad Castle, a full-scale replica of Corvin Castle, which is now in Romania. This castle was originally built of wood and cardboard and meant to be temporary, but the Budapestians liked it so much that it was rebuilt in stone. Yet aside from these architectural fantasies, the park is also simply a nice place to be. I bought a glass of steaming mulled wine from a street vendor and walked around, enjoying the sight of Hungarians at play.

One thing I did not do, but probably should have, was to visit the Széchenyi Baths. This is a massive thermal bath complex where you can go and soak in water that ranges from warm to scalding. It is one of the most distinctive and famous attractions in the city, but I felt uncomfortable going by myself. To make up for my own cowardice, I recommend you, dear reader, to give it a try.

The other park I visited in Budapest was neither on the Pest nor the Buda side, but right in the middle of the Danube. This is Margaret Island, the green oasis in the center of the city. It is named for a Hungarian Saint, and in the past was covered with churches and monasteries. But the nuns and monks fled during the Turkish invasion. Now there are only a few ruins left to remind visitors of this history. Mostly, it is just a nice place to take a walk. But I was training for a half-marathon, so I decided that I would visit at a faster pace. I soon discovered that Margaret Island is a wonderful place to run. A track—made of special, bouncy material—runs along the edge of the island, allowing you to run with a view of the Danube and the city beyond. Perhaps it was the cool breeze coming off the water, or the thrill of running in a new city, or the competition from the other runners, but I was significantly faster than usual.

So far I have covered a great many monuments on the Pest side. But there remains the other half of the city to explore—the hilly, more sedate Buda.

Perhaps the most famous attraction on the Buda side is Fisherman’s Bastion. It is a place made for Instagram. Constructed around the turn of the 20th century, it is a kind of neo-medieval fantasy castle, whose ornate walls provide an iconic view over Budapest. Its name is due to the fact that the fish market used to be nearby.

Right next door is Mattias Church, perhaps the most beautiful house of worship in the city. Though a church has been here for over 1,000 years, the building as it stands now is gothic in style. It has been through a lot. Among other tribulations, during the Ottoman period, the church was converted into a mosque; then, it was extensively remodeled for the Millennium Exhibition of 1896; and finally it was severely damaged during the Second World War. In any case, the church is absolutely lovely, both inside and out. The imposing gothic exterior—softened by the colorful tilework—yields to a playful explosion of polychrome patterns inside.

Right next door to these two monuments is Buda Castle, an enormous palace that sits on top of castle hill. The original Baroque palace was probably quite remarkable. Unfortunately, however, it was almost completely destroyed during World War II, and the rebuilt castle is not nearly as charming. Or so I hear, since I decided not to visit for myself.

*A photo showing the destruction wrought by the Second World War. In the foreground is the Széchenyi* *Bridge, and Buda Castle is in the background.*

My next stop was Gellért Hill, which is one of the highest points in Budapest. I was unlucky, however, as I discovered that the top was closed off for some sort of construction work. I had to content myself with a visit to the Garden of Philosophers. This is a bizarre park a little ways down the hill, which features an assemblage of statues of major religious leaders: Jesus, Abraham, Buddha, Laozi, and Akhenaten (the Egyptian Pharaoh who created a monotheistic cult). Also present are Gandhi, the Bodhidarma, and Saint Francis of Assissi. (Notably absent is a representative of Islam; but of course depicting Muhammad would be, to put it mildly, controversial.) All of them are gathered around a small metallic ball, which represents their common goal. This was the work of a Hungarian sculptor, Nándor Wagner, who wanted to symbolize the commonalities between different faiths. While the idea that the various religions are striving after the same thing is certainly appealing, I think the sculptures are quite compelling in themselves as human figures.

*I don’t know why Akhenaten looks like an alien.*

Another popular attraction on the Buda side is the Hospital in the Rock. This is exactly what it sounds like: a hospital built into the side of a hill, using a previously existing network of tunnels. These tunnels had been used for centuries by locals as food cellars. In the leadup to the Second World War, the tunnels were equipped with medical equipment and staffed with doctors. But the casualties overran the hospital’s capacity by over 600%. The guide (and you have to visit with a guide) explained that doctors had so few materials that they had to reuse bandages, with predictably grizzly results. After the war, the hospital was repurposed as a kind of nuclear shelter, though it was never used in any emergency situation again. (The guide also said that it couldn’t have withstood a nuclear attack, anyway, as it is not deep enough.) Now the tunnels are filled with hundreds of wax dummies and old equipment, providing a graphic (if silly) illustration of the hospital’s history.

All of this was wonderful enough. But my favorite thing on the Buda side—maybe in the entire city—was Memento Park.

Getting there is not easy. Located on the city limits, it is only accessible by bus. I complicated matters by taking the right bus in the wrong direction; but I realized soon enough, got out, crossed the street, and was soon on my way.

Memento Park is the dustbin of history, a place where all of the Soviet statues were put after Hungary became independent. It is located in a suburban neighborhood, but you can’t miss it: there is an enormous brick platform topped with the boots of Joseph Stalin. The complete statue was actually destroyed during the Soviet Union. In 1956, the Hungarians attempted to throw off the Soviets. The Red Army crushed the uprising in a matter of days, but not before the Hungarians had a chance to destroy this hated symbol of Soviet Rule. I went inside the base of this statue, and discovered a room full of busts of Stalin and Lenin.

Next to the entrance is one of the best statues in the park: a cubist rendition of Marx and Engels, made from granite taken from the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The little kiosk where you buy your tickets is an attraction in itself—full of old Soviet knicknacks. You can, for example, buy a real Soviet passport or postcard, or even a CD with old Soviet anthems. With my ticket, I also purchased a little booklet that explained each of the statues on display. I was glad I had it, since otherwise there was little signage.

Walking around the park is a surreal experience. Dramatic and triumphant statues sit decaying in a field, almost as Washington D.C. would appear after a disease wiped away humanity. The bulk of these statues are in the recognizable Soviet social-realist mode—heroic soldiers, stolid workers, and the occasional full-bodied woman. As works of art, they rarely rise above propaganda, though they are wonderfully evocative of that era. And some are indeed memorable.

One favorite of mine (for obvious reasons) was a monument to the Hungarians who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Three rather frighteningly abstract soldiers stand saluting next to a pile of rocks, on which are inscribed the names of battles during that war. Another highlight is the Martyrs’ Monument, created by Kalló Viktor, which shows a barefoot man reaching out towards the sky as he collapses (presumably from being shot). Just as dramatic is the Republic of Councils monument, which shows a victorious worker rushing forward.

But my absolute favorite is the Béla Kun Monument. Kun’s life illustrates the ups and downs of the communist movement. He fought in the First World War for the Austro-Hungarian empire, was taken prisoner by the Russians, became a communist, returned to Hungary, and led a revolution in his native country. Then, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic collapsed, he escaped to Soviet Russia and participated in political purges. But he reaped what he sowed, as he was himself eventually accused of Trotskyism and executed. It was only after Stalin died that he was rehabilitated and made into an official hero, as depicted in this posthumous monument. This is unlike any statue I have ever seen. Kun stands on a platform, pointing with his hat, while a mass of soldiers march to war beneath him. The chrome plating on the soldiers and their odd, compressed dimensions made them look like toys. It is so silly that it parodies itself.

Everything I had seen and read—not least the Béla Kun Monument—indicated that communism was not a happy time for Hungary (or the Soviet Union, for that matter). Nevertheless, I admit I found it touching that ordinary workers were held in such high esteem. It may have just been propaganda, but even paying lip service to workers is better, in my opinion, than our worship of the super-rich.

All philosophizing aside, the final exhibit made it very clear what the Soviet Union was actually about. Showing in the adjacent exhibition center was a film by Gábor Zsigmond Papp, in which he had edited together films used to train the secret police. Consisting of four parts—hiding bugs, searching houses, recruiting, and networking—the film was a shocking illustration of the strategies that secret police would use to search out political dissidents. I remember scenes of agents sneaking into a gym locker room to plant a listening device, or picking a lock in an apartment when somebody wasn’t home, in order to search it. (The agents were careful to put everything back where it was, so the suspect wouldn’t know they were there. Apparently, some people would leave small objects, like a hair, stuck in a closed door, so that they would know if the house had been entered.) Clearly, privacy was not a priority during this time. If ordinary people were celebrated openly, they were persecuted secretly.

This was my final stop in Budapest. I wandered back into the bright spring day, walked into the suburbs, and caught a bus back to the city center. It had been a wonderful visit. Budapest is convenient, comfortable, cheap, and full of art and history. And it certainly does have a vibe.

Review: The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I do not consider myself a superstitious person—not even remotely—but somehow I felt a deep reluctance to pick up this book. It may have taken us a long time to figure out the germ theory of diseases, yet the psychology of contagion runs deep. I had the irrational fear that even learning about cancer would somehow unleash it into my life.

But turning away from frightful things is not a good way to live. And, anyway, even though there is a lot of sadness in this book, and a lot to stoke your fears (perhaps it is best to avoid if you have a tendency toward hypochondria), but this is basically a story of innovation.

Mukherjee moves through surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, cancer prevention, and modern targeted drugs, showing how each arose and developed in response to different sorts of cancer and out of the science and technology of the moment. It is a vast story, which includes the development of anasthesia and antibiotics, the discovery of genes and chromosomes, the first research into radioactivity, and the campaign against smoking. To use the obvious metaphor, it is a war waged on multiple fronts.

The challenges are manifold. I had naively thought that all cancer was basically the same disease, with its subtypes just minor variations. But it turns out that there is enormous genetic and chemical variety among cancers, so that a treatment effective for one may do little for another. Indeed, even for a single type—breast cancer, say—treatment can be unpredictable. This is what makes the story of doctor’s attempt to treat the disease so riveting, as it feels like a battle between two equally wily antagonists. At several points in this history, doctors attempt extreme cures—radical surgeries, or nearly fatal doses of chemotherapy—only to be defeated. Meanwhile, the victories can be as modest as a remission of just a few months.

It is probably best not to philosophize about a fatal disease, but there does seem to be a lot of irony in our quest to defeat cancer. For one, it has only become so prevalent in the modern period, because we have started living so long. Its appearance as the great killer, then, is a kind of perverse mark of progress. Further, there is the irony of trying to fight what is, in essence, a corrupted version of ourselves—a group of renegade cells which have figured out how to replicate and survive even better than our own body. There is great scope for metaphor here, but if there is a moral to cancer then I don’t think it is a simple one.

Mukherjee does an admirable job weaving a potentially chaotic and depressing story into something coherent and even hopeful. Though the book is composed of history, science, and his own experience as a doctor, these different threads reinforce one another rather than clash. The clinical anecdotes are sparing—just enough to connect the past to the present—and his thumbnail explanations of science are lucid and illuminating. But, most important, despite the many tragic deaths which litter these pages, the final impression is of how much can be accomplished when a researcher’s diligence, a doctor’s pledge to save life, and a patient’s will to live work together, generation after generation.

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Chicago: Sewage and Synchronicity

For years, one of my closest childhood friends, Greg, was living in Chicago as he completed his Ph.D. in history. In the summer of 2021, he was at work on his dissertation, which meant the window to visit him was narrowing. So my brother and I made the journey from New York for a long weekend in the windy city.

As the plane broke through the high, wispy clouds, the city came into view. What was revealed was an astonishingly flat landscape divided into grids as far as the eye could see. We touched down in O’Hare Airport, where we caught the blue line train to the city center. It was a long ride with quite a lot of racket; but complaining about functional public transport in the United States is in bad taste. Slow and loud as it may have been, the “El” trains got us out to Hyde Park (where Greg lives) for a very affordable price. I am grateful.

Since we spent half our time just hanging out, I will not attempt any sort of chronological account of our trip, and will instead simply focus on the major sights we saw while there.

The most logical place to begin is right in the center of the city. Compared with New York, Chicago is a fairly dispersed city, having no natural boundaries to its expansion besides Lake Michigan. Thus, much of Chicago is not particularly dense—indeed, can seem almost suburban in its layout. However, the heart of the city is rivaled in America only by Manhattan in the height and splendor of its skyscrapers.

These buildings are gathered on either side of the Chicago River, which flows through the city center and into Lake Michigan. (It is this river that the Chicagoans dye green every St. Patrick’s Day, to the delight of the fish.)

Or, well, the river is supposed to flow into the lake; but in 1900, the flow of the river was reversed by city engineers. This was a highly controversial move, as it was done because all of the sewage and garbage deposited into the river was flowing into Lake Michigan, the city’s main water source—an obviously unsanitary situation that provoked outbreaks of typhoid and cholera. Through the use of canal locks, the river was made to flow backwards, thus bringing the tainted water via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (an enormous engineering feat in itself) to the Des Plaines River, which eventually reaches all the way to the Mississippi River.

But you can imagine that, however popular this reversal may have been in the city of Chicago, it was decidedly unpopular for those further downstream. Indeed, in 1906 the state of Missouri eventually took the issue all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Illinois (though it does not seem especially fair to me).

While we are on the topic of sewage and the Chicago River, there is another story that I must relate. This is the infamous Dave Matthews Band Chicago River incident of 2004, in which a tour bus belonging to the band dumped the bus’s “blackwater tank” (in other words, the sewage) while crossing a bridge over the Chicago River. The driver apparently thought that he could get away with such a maneuver. But unfortunately, the bridge had a grated metal bottom which let the vile liquid through. At just that moment, a boat was passing underneath giving an architecture tour, and the passengers were doused in “blackwater.”

Having said all this, I suppose the fish have more to worry about than green dye.

But to return to my original point, the Chicago River—if not the most appealing body of water—is surrounded by some magnificent architecture. Surely neither you nor I have the patience to go through every single building in the city of Chicago, so I will only mention a few that caught my eye.

One I particularly liked is the Wrigley Building, which features a tower styled after the Giralda in Seville. Built at almost the same time (the 1920s) was the Tribune Tower, which has an elaborate neo-gothic style, with fake flying buttresses adorning the top. Somewhat similar is the neo-gothic Mather Tower, which is so tall and slender that it is sometimes likened by Chicagoans to an upside-town telescope. And completing the rounds of neo-gothic skyscrapers, we have the First United Methodist Church, which looks like a beautiful church spire had been cut off and attached to a bland office building. Of course, the entire thing is not used as a church—but if it were, it would be the tallest church building in the world.

I must begrudgingly mention the Trump Tower, which is one of the most notable buildings in the Chicago skyline. As one might expect of the former president, he wanted to have the tallest building in the world. The plans were considerably scaled back, however, after the September 11 attacks, though Trump’s ego may have been assuaged by the enormous TRUMP sign on the side of the building. (The same architect who designed this building, Adrian Smith, went on to design the Burj Khalifa, which indeed is the tallest building in the world.) On the subject of tall buildings, I must of course mention the big momma of Chicago skyscrapers, the Willis Tower (though you may know it by its former name, the Sears Tower.) This 110-story mammoth is the dominant feature of the Chicago skyline. After it was completed in 1973, it became the world’s tallest building, and held that title for nearly a quarter of a century. It is still among the very tallest of American skyscrapers. The view from the top must be incredible, but the price is pretty steep.

I have left my absolute favorite for last: Marina City. These are two twin residential towers like no other I have ever seen. The aptest description I can think of for these knobby, gnarly, bulging edifices is of two corn cobs. They were built in groovier times—the 1960s—and very much retain a sense of playful fun. That is to say, unlike virtually every “serious” building, there is nothing at all pretentious in this design, and I found myself wondering what it must be like to live in such a whimsical place.

*I think they look especially cool in black and white.*

Even with such a brief description, I think several facts about Chicago are immediately evident. Most obviously, if you have any appreciation for fine architecture, then Chicago is a wonderful place to visit. Furthermore, since enormous skyscrapers bearing the names of famous companies do not just spring up from the ground, it is evident that Chicago is an economic powerhouse.

Or at least it was. After hitting a peak of population in the 1950s, Chicago has been steadily losing residents, and it seems possible that the city’s days as a center of finance and industry are behind it. But, as I have learned from my travels in Europe, often the best places to visit are the cities that are past their economic prime. Nobody visits Florence and wishes that it were still a power-hungry city-state. Perhaps it is insensitive to say so, but the diminution of economic development helps to preserve valuable heritage. And, ultimately, such places can be far more pleasant than the crawling ant hills which generate capital.

All prognostications of hope and doom aside, another worthy place to visit is Millennium Park. This park opened as recently as 2004, on what used to be the site of the city’s rail yards. As urban centers in the United States deindustrialize, uses must be found for the old factories and railways which have fallen into disuses. Millennium Park is a wonderful model for how this can be done, for it has transformed a large swath of dead real estate into one of the most popular places to visit in the entire country.

One thing that makes the park so attractive are the works of public art. Most famous is Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, perhaps better known as “the Bean.” Compared to, say, Michelangelo’s David it may seem extremely simplistic: steel welded together into a bean shape and then highly polished. However, any fair judge of the work must admit, I think, that it is a brilliantly successful work of public art. Walking around this huge, misshapen fun-house mirror brings out a sense of childish delight in many visitors. And residents of Chicago do have a sense of ownership with the Bean, as evidenced by the hilarious series of 2017 fake Facebook events which began with “Windex the Bean.” A great deal of public art—especially abstract, “modern” public art—falls flat, in the sense that residents hardly care about it. But the Bean has come to symbolize all of Chicago, and therefore must be considered exemplary.

Just as delightful, in my opinion, is Jaume Plensa’s work Crown Fountain, which features two large towers of video screens over which water can flow. These towers can show any image. But when I visited, these featured faces of ordinary people “blowing,” with a stream of water emanating from their mouths. Judging from the children who were happily gathered underneath these streams, playing in the water, I think that Crown Fountain must also be considered an exemplary success of public art—art which is fully embraced by the community.

Right next to Millennium Park is one of the greatest attractions in the entire city: the Art Institute of Chicago. Now, before visiting I knew that this was a great museum. But I was frankly unprepared for the quality and size of the museum’s collection. Very few museums in the world are comparable; and in the United States, I believe that only New York’s Met stands on the same level.

The Art Institute has an encyclopedic collection, not only of European paintings, but ranging from Ancient Egypt to the Far East to indigenous American art. More importantly, this collection is of the very highest quality. At every turn I was faced with an intriguing work—sometimes striking or bizarre, sometimes shockingly beautiful, but always interesting and worthy of contemplation. If I had known that the museum would be so excellent, I would have tried to spend more than a few hours there. As it was, I was only able to enjoy the highlights.

Greg first guided us to his favorite work, a series of stained glass windows by Marc Chagall, which have a soothing, ethereal midnight blue glow. (And I was reminded of how fortunate I am to have comparably beautiful Chagall windows near my house in Sleepy Hollow, at the Union Church of Pocantico Hills.) For my part, I was especially excited to see Georges Seurat’s masterpiece of modernist alienation, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jaffe; and I was surprised and delighted to encounter the American equivalent, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. The Art Institute has a strong collection dealing with everyday despair.

But the Art Institute is certainly not limited to negative emotion. From Monet, to Georgia O’Keeffe, to the amazing woodblock prints of Hokusai, the lush beauty of nature is present in abundance. From El Greco’s religious ecstasy, to a statue of the Buddha in meditation, to a ritual knife used by rulers in the Chimú culture, we can see evidence of our preoccupation with the supernatural. There are portraits of rural life (like American Gothic or Monet’s painting of haystacks) as well as urban life (like Caillebotte’s rendering of a Paris street or Delauney’s distorted Eiffel Tower). Compare the locomotive in Monet’s Arrival of the Normandy Train with the one in Magritte’s Time Transfixed to see how the same object can be examined, first, as a sensory impression and, second, as a symbol for the unconscious.

But all of these comments and categories are ultimately just a superficial attempt to come to grips with something whose power lies in its very ambiguity—as is true of all great art. My point is simply that you can hardly come away from the museum without a sense of wonder.

(The Art Institute is featured in my favorite Chicago movie: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Cameron experiences a kind of existential dread—or awakening, perhaps?—in front of Suerat’s masterpiece, while Ferris and Sloane kiss in front of the Chagall windows.)

I was particularly gratified to learn that the famous 2018 portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. I had actually missed my opportunity to see them during my 2019 visit to Washington D.C., so it was one of life’s rare second chances. For me, both Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Barack and Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle are well done. They achieve the traditional aim of a portrait, in that they present a likeness of the subject that reveals something of their personality, while also providing a novel twist on the old and tired tradition of oil portraiture. I particularly like Wiley’s take on Barack, in that it emphasizes his thoughtfulness, which I think is his defining quality.

The Obamas are, of course, hometown heroes in Chicago. Michelle has deep roots in the city, having been born and raised on the South Side. And Barack (despite having spent much of his childhood in Hawaii) is identified with the city as well, for it was here that he began his political career. The cult of the Obamas is epitomized in the so-called Kissing Rock. Located in the Hyde Park neighborhood, this is a plaque affixed to a rock, celebrating the spot (approximate, I suppose) where they shared their first kiss. Not far is the site of the future Barack Obama Presidential Library, not yet opened as of this writing.

On the subject of museums, I ought to mention the other major museum we visited on our trip: the Museum of Science and Industry.

This museum is quite far from the center of Chicago, being located on the South Side, near the Hyde Park neighborhood where we were staying. As with many museums around the world, this one is housed in a magnificent building that was constructed for another purpose—in this case, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (basically a world’s fair).

I insisted on going for the simple reason that I had recently watched the classic German war film Das Boot and I felt that I had to see the German U-boat on display. My first impression of the U-Boat was of its size: somehow I had imagined the U-boats would be relatively compact affairs. But U-505 was enormous: 250 feet (76 meters) long, and had a crew of about 50 people. She had an eventful history. After sinking several boats in 1942, she suffered a string of bad luck as she was repeatedly sabotaged by members of the French resistance working at the docks. Finally, on her 10th patrol, she was attacked with depth charges—an experience that proved so traumatic that the captain actually shot himself in front of his crew during the attack. Eventually the U-boat was disabled by the US Navy, who captured the vessel in order to study her.

At the time, I found the experience of seeing an actual German U-boat to be almost awe-inspiring—the chance to see with my own eyes something I had heard about since I was a kid. But in retrospect I am disappointed that we could not take a tour of the interior. Normally the museum offers these tours (for an additional price), but when we visited it was unavailable because of the blasted pandemic. Another casualty of the pandemic was the coal mine. Amazingly, the museum has a large replica coal mine filled with machinery from different time periods, which visitors can tour. But unfortunately for us, as with the U-Boat, the small enclosed spaces make it unfriendly to social distancing rules, and it was closed.

(On the plus side, we did save money this way, since both the U-boat and the coal mining tours cost extra.)

The Museum of Science and Industry is enormous—with exhibits about agriculture and aviation, about weather and math—but only a few things stick out in my memory. One is the beautiful Pioneer Zephyr, the first diesel-powered train in the United States. It has an extremely sleek design made out of glimmering stainless steel, which at the time probably looked futuristic but which nowadays looks retro. Aside from being an attractive vehicle, the Pioneer Zephyr is important in American history, as it helped to repopularize train travel after the Great Depression. It was so streamlined and so fast (it set a speed record between Denver and Colorado) that it was even nicknamed “The Silver Streak” and made the subject of a movie. But my favorite touch was the “observation lounge” in the rear car, which was designed to provide panoramic views as the passengers flew across the countryside.

Another wonderful exhibit was the Great Train Story. This is an enormous model train set, which is a scale model of the journey between Chicago and Seattle. It was obviously made with obsessive attention to detail: at every point in the trip there is something of interest. Though I have no interest in model trains whatsoever, I found myself fully absorbed as I walked around the periphery, following the train as it traversed the “country.” At its best, train travel can be charming and romantic (not to mention efficient), allowing you to glide through landscapes the way a ship sails up a river. And, strangely, the Great Train Story captured that sensation.

That does it for my visit to the Museum of Science and Industry. But I feel I ought to mention the other great museum of Chicago, the Field Museum of Natural History. This is located close to the Art Institute and is one of the great natural history museums of the world. One of my few regrets from the trip is not having visited this institution, as it has an excellent collection of dinosaur fossils.

The most famous of these fossils is the T-rex nicknamed Sue, who is special for many reasons. For one, Sue is the most complete T-rex fossil ever found, with more than 90% of the skeleton (by weight, not by number of bones) accounted for. Sue is also special for having had a tough life. She had broken ribs and a damaged shoulder blade (which healed), holes in her skull from some kind of parasite, and she also probably suffered from arthritis and gout. Sue was one sick puppy. But the story of Sue’s discovery is a drama in itself. Somehow, it involved an FBI raid and the leader of the fossil expedition being sent to prison. To top it all off, when she was sold to the Field Museum, Sue fetched the highest price of any dinosaur fossils ever found up to that time ($8.3 million in 1997, which would be about double that today). She is worth every penny.

This pretty well does it for my time in the center of Chicago. But during our visit we spent most of our time, not visiting the main sites, but in Hyde Park with my friend Greg.

A student of the University of Chicago, Greg naturally lived quite close to its campus. One day he gave us a little tour as we made our way to a farmer’s market. As we walked through it, I found the manicured, neo-gothic campus to be both beautiful and strangely familiar. This deja vu was due, I think, to the college’s architecture being influenced by the taste of its founder: John D. Rockefeller. I grew up in the shadow of Rockefeller’s estate, so by now I can recognize his preferred aesthetic: neo-gothic, molded out of gray granite. This is especially evident in the monumental Rockefeller Chapel, the dominant structure of the campus, big enough to seat 1700 people. Compare it to another great Rockefeller church, the Riverside Church in Manhattan, and the similarities are unmistakable.

As we walked, a question popped into my mind, seemingly out of nowhere:

“Greg, what do you think is the most beautiful college campus in America?”

He thought about it and answered: “Pepperdine,” mainly because of its prime location on a hill overlooking the Californian coast.

We arrived at the farmer’s market and I proceeded to stuff myself with artisanal meat pies. But I had a shock when we went up to a fruit stand and the vendor said to Greg:

“You get a free banana if you answer this question.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s the most beautiful campus in the United States?”

“Pepperdine.”

And he got his free banana.

This is one of the most striking examples of synchronicity—uncanny coincidence—that I can remember. The chance that the fruit vendor would ask the exact same question that had popped into my head five minutes prior seems remarkably low. If this was an act of God, I suppose He really wanted Greg to have that banana.

I should also mention our trips to the lake. After just a short walk, we found ourselves on a lovely sand beach on the shore of Lake Michigan. The water was cool, calm, and—best of all—free of salt. (Not that I would drink it, but at least it doesn’t hurt if it gets in your eyes.) And unlike many urban beaches I have visited, it also wasn’t overcrowded. It made me realize how unfortunate residents of Madrid are not to have a water feature nearby. Swimming was wonderfully refreshing after a day of trekking around in the heat. We went on three separate occasions during our four-day trip, and I can easily imagine becoming a regular during the summer months.

This part of the city does have a major attraction: the Frederick C. Robie House. Completed in 1910, the house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and commissioned by an assistant manager who was just 28 years old (this is when the real estate market was kinder, it seems). Poor Fred Robie did not, however, get to enjoy the fruit of his wealth and taste for long. After just fourteen months, a combination of his dissolving marriage and inheriting his father’s gambling debts made him have to sell the house. The next owner, David Lee Taylor, wasn’t any luckier, as he died less than a year after moving in. Eventually the house ended up in the hands of the Chicago Theological Seminary, who used it (rather sacrilegiously) as a dormitory. The clergymen even planned several times to demolish the building in order to construct a bigger building for their students, and the nonagenarian Wright had to get involved in the protests to stop it.

Nowadays, the Robie House is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so it is well out of danger. It has also been largely restored to its original condition. To visit, you need to sign up for a tour, which required no previous reservation when we visited.

This was the first (and so far the only) Wright house I visited, so I did not know what to expect. My only experience of an architecturally notable home is the Casa Batlló, in Barcelona, which was designed by Antoni Gaudí. Compared to the Catalan architect’s intricate and exuberant style, Wright’s design seemed extremely restrained. However, as the tour progressed, I began to appreciate the cohesive vision that tied together everything from the brickwork, to the light fixtures, to the furniture. Everything was of a piece. The horizontal is consistently emphasized over the vertical, making the house seem short, flat, and stretched out. Unlike in Gaudí’s work, right angles abound, which gives the space a kind of crisp mathematical precision. The palette of earth tones that characterize every surface in the house almost make it seem as if the house sprung out of the ground. I especially liked the designs on the stained-glass windows, which are ornamental without being ostentatious.

The guide, who was excellent, recited several of Wright’s more pugnacious quotes about architecture, such as “Modernistic houses are more boxes than houses.” Wright clearly had his own ideas about how a building should be put together. But I must say that, however beautiful the house may have been, I did not find myself wishing I could live in it. The Wright furniture was stylish but did not seem comfortable, and the balanced rooms did not have enough available space for my liking. Also, I imagine that the many large windows make it quite difficult to heat in Chicago’s brutal winters. Maybe this is why the priests wanted to replace it. I wouldn’t want to live in a work of art.

This pretty much rounds out my experience of Chicago’s main sights. To conclude, besides our visit to the city’s gay neighborhood (Northalsted) to spend time in a fun bar with arcade games, I should mention the food. Naturally, we had to try Chicago’s most iconic dish, deep dish pizza. My mom actually went to school in the city and cooks deep dish at least once a year, so I do not have the typical New Yorker’s scorn for this style of pizza. Deep dish really isn’t very comparable to a “normal” pizza, anyway; it is more like a casserole. But if you accept it for what it is, I think that it is extremely delicious.

The other iconic Chicago food we had were the hot dogs. These are traditionally made of beef and topped with pickles, pickled peppers, onions, tomatoes, mustard, and celery salt. I was a bit skeptical of having so many toppings, but it may have been the best hot dog I have ever had. The many sour and acidic ingredients help to balance the greasy, meaty flavor of the frank, making for one perfect gustatory experience.

My biggest regret from the trip is that we didn’t visit one of the city’s many blues bars. The only other time I have been in Chicago was when I was 17 years old, visiting colleges with my aunt and uncle. They were kind enough to take me to a blues bar and I remember loving it. Indeed, I bought the band’s CD and listened to it for weeks afterwards. But this was 2021, COVID times, and we deemed it too risky to go into a crowded bar. I suppose I will just have to return to the windy city.

After a final swim in the lake, my brother and I got on the El and made our way to the airport, where we wolfed down some Chinese food and awaited our flight back to New York. It had been a great trip.

Review: The Path to Power

The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Last winter, I went to the Film Forum in Manhattan with some friends to see the new documentary about Robert Caro and his famous editor, Robert Gottlieb. It was a wonderful experience on many levels. The documentary was fascinating and inspiring—the story of two people who, in quite different ways, have lived fully dedicated to literature—and it was the perfect place to see it, in the heart of Caro’s and Gottlieb’s city, surrounded by other New Yorkers.

Gottlieb comes across as a lovable and brilliant person (he has, sadly, since passed away at the age of 92), but Caro comes across as something superhuman, an embodied intellectual force. The name of the documentary, Turn Every Page, aptly summarizes what makes Caro so special: the meticulous, obsessive, even demented attention to detail—the determination to get to the heart of every aspect of every story, to never be satisfied with half-truths or empty explanations. And then, once he has gathered together his facts, this relentless attention is focused on the writing. For Caro is not satisfied with merely presenting us with his (always impressive) research. He is determined—again, maniacally so—to make us understand on a deep emotional level what each of these facts mean.

All of these qualities are fully on display in this, the first book of Caro’s monumental biography of the 36th president of the United States. As a political biography—a record of the accumulation and use of power—the book is peerless. Caro traces how Johnson, by sheer force of his personality, went from a rural boy with little education and less money to a member of Congress in just a few years. His chapters on Johnson’s elections alone—his campaign strategies, his fundraising, his advertising—are a goldmine for any political historian, and eye-opening for even the most cynical of readers.

Yet everybody knows that Caro is a master of political biography. What surprised me most was how brilliant this book was in other respects. His descriptions of the Texas Hill Country, for example—its climate, its soil, its weather—often rise to such a level of poetry that I was reminded of John Steinbeck. And his chapter on life in the Hill Country before electrification—the difficulty of even simple chores like washing and ironing—is so empathetic that it brings this experience to life as powerfully as even the most gifted novelist could manage.

Aside from this wonderful scene-setting, and aside from the incisive history, this book is of course the study of a personality. And it is a peculiar one. Indeed, underneath all of the historical detail, I think there is a very basic moral conundrum at the heart of this book. It is, in short, that Johnson is successful and effective—indeed, often a force for good—while being personally unlikeable and morally vacuous.

Caro goes to great lengths to illustrate the uglier sides of Johnson’s character. His urge for power is so great that it trumps every other consideration in his life: love, loyalty, ideals, friendship, ethics. When he is stealing elections, betraying friends and allies, and cheating on his wife, not once does he give evidence that he even possesses a conscience. And yet, in his quest for power, he educates children, helps the unemployed find jobs, secures money for veterans, and electrifies his district, among much else.

This paradox is illustrated in Johnson’s treatment of his secretaries. While he worked as a congressional assistant, Johnson went to great lengths to help the constituents of his district—far more than any ordinary assistant could or would. But this unusual effectiveness was achieved by working his own secretaries to such a degree that they could not have any life outside of work, and one had a nervous breakdown and fell into alcoholism. This is a consistent pattern: the specific people close to Johnson are used as tools for his own advancement, while the abstract people out in the world benefit from his obsessive work ethic.

To put the matter another way, Johnson seems to violate every ethical precept I know regarding the treatment of others, and lives in total contradiction of every piece of advice I know regarding wise and good living. Johnson comes across as a miserable person destined to share his misery with the world. But it becomes clear that Johnson’s personality type is perfectly suited for politics, and he achieves almost instant success when he enters that field. Indeed, one gets the impression that everyone else in Washington D.C. is just a toned-down version of Johnson—equally as power-hungry, but not as effective.

Somehow, we seem to have a system designed to elevate people whom most of us would find repulsive. Maybe this is inevitable, as the people who most desire power are the ones most likely to get hold of it. Perhaps the best thing to do, then, is to hope that the institutions are set up in such a way that, as in the case of Johnson, these driven individuals end up having beneficent effect on society. And yet, this does seem like an awfully risky strategy.

In any case, as I hope you can see, this is a superlative book, excellent on many levels. It is, in fact, among the select class of books that can forever change your outlook.

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Review: Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity

Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity: Guide to a first reading by Michael Faraday

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the first volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, there is a fantastic chapter about what life in the Texas Hill Country was like before electricity arrived. Every basic task was substantially more difficult: water had to be carried in buckets, clothes had to be washed by hand, water had to be boiled over an open fire, milk and eggs had to be refrigerated in ice cellars, and on and on. When power finally did arrive to this rural area—thanks in large part to Johnson’s work—it transformed daily life in a matter of years. Johnson was considered a hero, and rightly so.

But if Lyndon Johnson deserves ample praise for having helped bring electricity to his district, what does Michael Faraday deserve? For it was Faraday who first discovered the principles of the electric motor and the electric generator. If not for him, the harsh conditions described by Caro—a life of ceaseless toil, barely eking out a living—might be not just confined to a rural area in Texas, but the general condition of our species. Faraday was, in short, a historical figure of supreme importance, and his work represents a turning point in human history.

Knowing this, it is shocking to see just how humble and, in many ways, how simple his work actually was. The tools at his disposal seem, to the modern reader, almost laughably primitive. Whereas modern physicists are using a city’s worth of power to accelerate particles down a track kilometers long, Faraday was fiddling with wires and bar magnets and compasses. And yet, with such simple tools at his disposal, and with scarcely any formal education—indeed, hardly knowing any math beyond basic algebra—Faraday made contributions to physics comparable to Newton or Einstein.

The format of this book is simple. It is not, like the Principia, a unified work conceived as a final theory. Rather, Faraday reached his conclusions slowly, over years of experimental work; and this book is a reflection of his process. Starting in 1821, Faraday began publishing accounts of his experiments in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. These papers were eventually collected and published in three separate volumes, in 1839, 1844, and 1855, consisting of 29 “series” of experiments in total.

Before I go any further, I should note that I did not make my way through all three of these volumes. Rather, I bought a condensed and annotated version published by Green Lion Press and edited by Howard Fisher. Frankly, I do not have the patience or interest to fight my way through 1,500 of the original, and I doubt many others do either. I also very much appreciated Fisher’s introductory essays, without which I think I would have been quite lost (and I often was, anyway).

Remarkably, Faraday maintains a numbering system for his paragraphs throughout, so that he can refer to earlier paragraphs of previous series as easily as one might cite the Bible. This is a simple device, but it does help to reveal the unity that underpins the apparently disorganized quality of this work, as it shows how Faraday was continually returning to the same questions and refining his answers.

I have already mentioned that Faraday was unversed in mathematics. And this makes him fairly unique in the field of physics, in which equations are sometimes elevated to a level that equates math with reality. However, the more one reads of his work, the more one comes to see that, even if he eschewed quantitative reasoning, Faraday was an extremely precise thinker. Part of this is his use of diagrams, which for Faraday almost take on the role of equations in summarizing complex relationships. He is also very sensitive to language, and is constantly trying to choose words that do not carry any inappropriate theoretical baggage.

Just because this book is written in good old-fashioned English, however, does not make it easy. Often, Faraday is responding to dead controversies and in general is using both language and theories that seem strange to the modern reader. To pick a simple example, static electricity is referred to as “ordinary” electricity, since this was the most commonly encountered electricity in Faraday’s day. What is more, Faraday very often must describe a detailed experimental apparatus or procedure, and I very often found myself totally unable to picture what was going on.

Here is a fairly typical example:

A ray of light issuing from an Argand lamp, was polarized in a horizontal plane by reflexion from a surface of glass, and the polarized ray passed through a Nichol’s eye-piece revolving on a horizontal axis, so as to be easily examined by the latter. Between the polarizing mirror and the eye-piece two powerful electro-magnetic poles were arranged, being either the poles of a horse-shoe magnet, or the contrary poles of two cylinder magnets; they were separated from each other about 2 inches in the direction of the line of the ray, and so placed, that, if on the same side of the polarized ray, it might pass near them; or if on contrary sides, it might go between them, its direction being always parallel, or nearly so, to the magnetic lines of force.

I don’t know about you, but I find this to be extremely exhausting.

Not all of the book was so dense, however. I particularly enjoyed the fifteenth series, which basically consisted of Faraday and his assistants putting their hands in a tank and getting an electric eel to shock them. Science was indeed simpler back then.

But the final impression is of Faraday’s remarkable theoretical vision. Although he is an extremely concrete thinker—couching even his most speculative remarks in terms of experiments—he nevertheless succeeded in probing some highly abstract questions. Beginning with the relationship between electricity and magnetism, he goes on to consider the relationship of force to matter, to light, and even to empty space.

His work is, in short, a model for science, showing how careful observation and the judicious use of imagination can revolutionize our understanding of the natural world. Compared to the baroque mathematical models of string theorists—whose theories have yet to receive any confirmation from experiment—Faraday’s approach is refreshing indeed.

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(Cover image is Faraday’s labs in the Royal Institution; photo taken from Wikimedia Commons; uploaded by AnaConvTrans.)

Gauchos: A Lifelong Bar

One of the best parts of living in Spain is the restaurant scene. The country is exceptional simply for the number of dining establishments. If I had to guess, I would say that there must be more bars and cafés per capita here than in any other country in the world. And though you may not think so, this alone is quite a wonderful thing, since you really never have to worry about where you are going to eat or drink. Chances are, there will be something close.

But in this post I want to focus, not on the quantity, but on the special quality of Spanish restaurants. And to do this, I think it will be better to discuss one exemplary bar rather than to speak in abstractions. For this, I went across the street to one of my favorite local bars, Los Gauchos, and interviewed them. These are my discoveries.

Gauchos is located in the Pacífico neighborhood, which is fairly central but which doesn’t attract much tourism. It is in many respects a typical Spanish bar—or, as the Spanish say, “un bar de toda la vida” (a lifelong bar). That is, it is the sort of establishment you might find in the north or the south, the east or the west, and which retirees and children would both recognize.

*An example of a vitrina, one of the most characteristic features of a Spanish bar.*

According to Javier—the son of the owner—Gauchos has been open for about thirty years. It was purchased from previous owners, who had run the bar for fifteen years before that. A lifelong bar indeed. (It was the previous owners who named the bar after the famous “gauchos,” who were something like South American cowboys.)

The bar has been around so long that the neighborhood has changed around it. According to Javier (who has worked here since he was 16) and the jovial bartender Melchor (who has worked here since it opened 30 years ago), Pacífico has become more residential in recent years. In past decades, the area was full of offices and industry, and consequently was a ghost town on the weekends when nobody had to work. Lately, they’ve noticed that rising rents are pushing younger people out of the neighborhood, further into the peripheries of the city.

Now, my country has dive bars and local restaurants aplenty. But I think the closest thing the United States has to this sort of restaurant is, perhaps, a diner—a privately-owned restaurant which nevertheless has a recognizable aesthetic and a fairly standard menu. However, the Spanish “bar de toda la vida” is quite different in being, well, a bar. There is simply no place in my country where you can get a coffee and toast in the morning, eat a multiple-course meal at lunch, and have a gin tonic with your friends until late at night. The typical Spanish bar is an all-in-one experience.

This makes Gauchos, and other bars like it, a kind of de facto neighborhood gathering place. In the morning it attends to the mad rush of commuters on their way to work. Around lunchtime, besuited office workers might sit down for a leisurely lunch. And at night, the sidewalk is full of neighbors having a drink. Partly because apartments in Madrid are often small, friends tend to meet in bars rather than in one another’s houses. The neighborhood bar thus plays an important role as the communal living room.

Many times I have witnessed a grandpa or a grandma come after picking up their nieto from the nearby school. The other night, three generations of a family came in to hang out. Meanwhile, a man with a guitar sat down to drink peppermint tea and read a comic book. The most raucous nights are when there is an important football match, and the bar and even the pavement fill up with people watching the game on the large TVs, screaming in triumph or agony at every development. In short, the clientele is a cross-section of the neighborhood itself.

As I mentioned, the typical Spanish bar is similar to the American diner in having a standard menu. Just as the latter will have pancakes, hamburgers, and milkshakes, so the former will have bocadillos, tostadas, and tortilla de patata. If Gauchos’s menu is exemplary, it is in having even more reasonable prices than usual. You can order a full plate of food for about 5 euros. The lunch menu—which includes two courses, a drink, and dessert—costs ten euros and fifty cents.

The low prices are not incidental, but essential to any neighborhood Spanish bar. It is a place for anyone and everyone to come. This is a major contrast with most bars and restaurants in the United States, which are seldom cheap (especially after tipping), and which normally try to distinguish themselves with ornate decorations or unusual food options. By contrast, you can buy a cup of coffee in Gauchos and sit there for hours without anyone bothering you.

The contrast goes deeper. Neighborhood bars in Spain are essentially public, open spaces, where anyone can come in and feel at home, whereas bars in the United States are very different. Gauchos, for example, is bright inside and there is never any music playing. (Hemingway would call it a “clean well-lighted place.”) You don’t have to shout to have a conversation and you don’t have to squint to read. By contrast, I often find the darkness and loudness of American bars to be sort of oppressive. You can seldom forget that the bar is private property and that you are not the owner.

The aesthetic of Gauchos is extremely simple. The walls are white, and the chairs and tables are completely plain. As is common in Spain, the bar itself has a large glass display cabinet that is even refrigerated, where the customer can see the various options for tapas,* or even raw meat and pickled fish to be used later. The sign outside consists of simple plastic lettering against a white background. Below this is the iconic toldo verde (green canopy), where the patrons gather to escape either the sun or the (rare) rain.

(*There seems to be some confusion among Americans as to what tapas are. In Madrid, a tapa is just a small bit of food included with your drink. This is normally just a few olives or some mixed nuts. But in a good place like Gauchos, you might get a mini sandwich, some fried chorizo, or a plate of patatas bravas.)

*Some tapas waiting to be deployed. The fish on the right are boquerones, anchovies pickled in vinegar. (They’re good!)*

There is, in short, hardly any decoration to speak of, which is why British journalist Leah Pattem, in her popular blog, has coined the term “no-frills” for this sort of establishment. It is an apt description, and I think she deserves much credit for bringing this sort of bar—so common as to be taken for granted by many—into the spotlight.

Indeed, for my money the neighborhood bars of Spain are a cultural resource as precious, in their own way, as the Alhambra or the Sagrada Familia. And I think that the people who run them deserve a great deal of credit. It is very hard work—long hours, few days off, both physically and emotionally taxing. So I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the people who form the backbone of the neighborhood’s social life.

In Spain, as elsewhere, the existence of local restaurants is threatened by ongoing gentrification and the spread of corporate restaurant chains. These trends, if they continue, threaten to turn every city corner into the soulless copy of every other—where identical freeze-dried food can be purchased at identical prices from identically uniformed workers. But if the large crowds that gather around Gauchos every evening are any indication, the Spanish have not lost their taste for their bares de toda la vida—and I hope they never do.

Lotz in Translation

Saving the world—one long, pretentious blog post at a time.

Author: Roy Lotz