museum tagged posts

Berlin

The arrival in Berlin was great. The first day I met a friend, Pepe, and we went to the park. It was a Sunday picnic in the Tierganden park with his English, Australian, American, Bolivian friends… There was no Germans though.

Then we waked to the Reichstag to have a general view of the city. It impressed me the amount of cranes, sometimes I would count 5 or 8 cranes together. Yes, we can see that Berlin is a city on construction. I pointed to my friend all the cranes and construction sites, he wasn’t so impressed. I think when people live there they get so used to see construction that they get indifferent to the amount of it.

We walked on the Unter den Linben avenue to the Berliner Dom and the museums island. The city was quiet. It was Sunday and there wasn’t many people on the streets. A strange feeling, wide streets with large buildings: an emptiness.

Next day I walked around Mitte, a neighborhood in East Berlin...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

Warsaw


In Moscow I met a Spanish couple who told me they haven’t liked Warsaw. They said the city was too modern and the buildings weren’t attractive. I, on the contrary, liked the city. I think the reason for one to like or not depends a lot on his/her experience on the place. Even though the days were cloudy and I couldn’t photograph that much I had a good time in Warsaw. I thought people were very educated, many could speak English, I didn’t have communication problems and I found the old town really beautiful. For me there it was not modern, since I came from a city that it is a little more than one hundred years old. It was like a small town.

My first day I went to see the symphony from the Mozart Festival in the Royal Castle. It was worth it not only for the music but specially for the place, a room all decorated with golden motifs. It was like going back in time a few centuries. Another of my cultural programs was going to the movies...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

Klin – Museum of Tchaykovsky

Sorry, this entry is only available in Portuguese.

Leia Mais... / Read More...

Moscow

Here I also liked the subway. The stations are well decorated with marble, statues and huge lamps. The escalators are not so big and deep as the ones in St. Petersburg.

My first day I went straight to see the Red Square. It shouldn’t be called red square, its name comes from a word from old Russian that means beautiful. Nowadays this word also means red, it is why the square started to be called red.

I stopped I few subway stations away and I went walking. As much as I walked more I was surprised by the amount of shops. I can’t think of a clothing or sport brand that there is no a shop in Moscow. Streets, trains, underground passages are loaded with advertising. I really didn’t expect that much. I believe they are a lot more capitalists than we are. The scary part is that they stared not so long ago. It is sad to see it…

Next day I visited the Kremlin. I had problems to get in with photographic equipment. They didn’t let me go in with my equipment backpack...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

São Petesburgo

A chegada já foi uma atração. Pela primeira vez vi sol às onze e meia da noite. Infelizmente, não cheguei a ver o sol da meia noite (meu sonho de adolescente, desde o filme com Barishnikov). É difícil de ter uma boa noção de tempo por aqui, pois o dia não termina nunca. Escurece sempre depois da meia noite.

Construída em 1703, por Pedro, O Grande, a cidade é banhada pelo rio Neva e rodeada por canais. A idéia era ser a Veneza do norte, no entanto, se parece mais com Paris. Acho que pelo tamanho e amplitude dos edifícios e monumentos. No próximo ano, será festejado o aniversário de 300 anos da cidade. Por essa razão quase todos os monumentos, teatros, museus e igrejas estão em reformas. Com certeza não é uma ótima época para fotografar as atrações turísticas. Pelo que dizem, as comemorações serão grandes. Talvez uma boa idéia seja visitar a cidade em maio de 2003.

Quanto ao idioma, esqueça o inglês...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

St. Petersburg and Peterhof

One of the most incredible places here is the subway “metro”. There is the largest and deepest escalator I’ve ever seen. I looks like we are going down into a big hole. The decoration is all from the 50s. There are some stations that are totally closed, dark. You don’t see when the train is coming, there are iron doors that open only when you can board in. It gives a claustrophobia feeling, the walls are thick and the iron doors always closed. It reminded me the film “The Cube”. Some people told me that the doors and thick walls are due to the pressure from the river and canals above.

I decided to visit Peterhof, a palace with nice gardens and lots of water fountains. If before I compared St. Petersburg to Paris, Peterhof is their version of Versalles. After an hour squeezed in a bus I got to the palace. The line to get in the museum was huge, it reminded me what it is to travel in Europe during the summer. I spend a few hours waking around the gardens...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

Quebrada de Humahuaca

I decided to do a tour to the Quebrada de Humahuaca. We left early in the morning. It was cold and foggy. After a 2 hour trip, we got at Pucamamarca – streets with colonial style houses and handcraft fair. The best is the view of the colorful mountain around the city. From there we headed to Tilcara where we visit the ruins, Pucara, and the ¨Museo Arqueológico¨. Pucara was constructed by the excavations done in the area. Among the stone walls grows lots of cactus.

Our next stop was Humahuaca. The city has a great monument in the honor of the aboriginal hero of independence, Diego. There are some handcraft shops and restaurants. Here one can see great indigenous traces on peolple and, for being near by the Bolivian border, the influence of its culture.

The way back, we stop in Uquia to visit a small church with paintings and golden objects. We also stop to see the famous ¨Cerro de las siete colores¨, a mountain with different color stripes.

We wanted to visit the center of Jujuy...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

Potosí

I liked the city of Potosi, even tough some people told me it was not so good. The colonial architecture is remarkable in the center of the city. The first day I went to visit the “Casa de la Moneda”, one of the most organized guided tour from the whole trip. They showed a little of the colonial and religious painting from the time. Later we found out how money was done. We started seeing the first shapes, when all the work was manual, made for slaves. Then the mechanical work, with enormous machines pulled by mules, and also the electric process with machines that run by engines. There is also in the museum a room displaying objects of anthropologists and archaeologists studies. It can be seen mummies, ceramics and tapestry.

In the second day I decided to visit one of the mines in the famous Cerro Rico mountain...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

Copacabana and Lake Titicaca

After some weeks blocking the roads to Copacabana, farmers decided to open the roads for 10 days, as a negotiation period. I arrived in the city late afternoon; I left my backpack in the hotel and went to see the sunset in the Titicaca lake. Beutiful, relaxing…

Next day, I made a boat tour to the islands. First we visit the north part of Isla del Sol, it was two and a half hours by boat. We had only two hours to visit the place, it was not much time. One option would be  to walk quickly to the ruins or second, to enjoy the landscape photographing but not seeing everything. I opted for the second.

From there we went by boat to the central part of the island, where there is an etymologic museum. A complete waste of time. The museum had almost nothing and it took 45min to get there by boat. Then took us one more hour by boat to go to Isla la Luna. There we walked quickly to the ruins, we took photos and it was already time to go back...

Leia Mais... / Read More...

La Paz – Culture

When I am traveling and photographing I always avoid going to big cities. I think they all look alike, it does not matter in which part of the world they are. In this trip I’m using the days in big cities to work on the website. It is where there are the best Internet Cafes. It is also the best place to do cultural programs.

I decided to visit some museums, the first was the Museo de Etnografia y Folklore. It is downtown in an old building, it shows some indigenous cultures with mockups, maps, objects and videos. It also has a video library where people can watch and buy videos. I bought a well interesting book on legends and popular myths from Bolivia.

The next museum was the Museo Nacional del Art, also located downtown, it is not very large. The best part of the visit was exhibition of the work of a Bolivian fine artist called Ines Cordoba. There were many rooms with her work. For me the best was the work done in with metal...

Leia Mais... / Read More...