Traveling Abroad

Today I am going to look at traveling abroad and how different people from around the world view it differently.  To narrow this very broad topic down a bit, I am going to concentrate on Europe and the US and the differences between the two.

To start with, I will discuss how Americans perceive Europe by looking at what we would like to see when we visit.  While browsing a few websites for this assignment, I have noticed that we Americans seem to like England a whole lot.  This may be because of the lack of a language barrier that many other country's have.   A large number of tours that I saw included London, in some form or another, whether it was just a day or two or a longer stay.  Included in these few days, was an almost mandatory trip to St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, not one mention of any of Gordon Ramsey's restaurants.  Other major stops include Paris, Rome and Amsterdam for major Western Europe and Prague and Vienna for a more Eastern European tour.  Although I have not been to these cities, upon thinking of this question, I did think I would see most of these cities high on the list for tour cities.

It seems to me that most of these locations have a lot of history both in the city itself as well as art work and other historically significant objects.  London has Big Ben and Parliament, Paris has the Louvre and  Notre Dame, Rome the Colosseum and the Vatican, Prague has more art work as well as buildings and architecture and Vienna also has the art work and architecture.  This leads me to believe that Americans want to see art work, architecture and religious artifacts.  There were other types of tours as well, for example, more of destination packages like to the Alps for skiing, however I felt these were not the tours to be looking at for this assignment.

As for the other side of the pond, what are the Europeans looking for when they visit the US?  When googling tours of USA, I found something a bit interesting that I hadn't noticed looking at the European tours.  A lot of the tours for europeans around the US are much longer than I expected, three weeks and longer.  This was not expected.  Unfortunately it is true that Europeans do get more vacation time than Americans in similar places in their careers.  How I would love to travel Europe on a 65 day tour like I saw going through the US!!!  Anyway, other differences included that when tourists are coming to the US, they seem to be interested in very different things than Americans going to Europe.  Many tours included the National Parks System: Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon to name the major parks, as well as Las Vegas, LA and of course NYC.  Other tours were "coast to coast" tours spanning the entire country, these were mainly the longer tours two weeks and up.

In a nut shell, it seems that visitors from both sides of the pond like to see what they don't have when visiting the other continents.  Europeans who have at home an amazing amount of art work and history are looking for the open road and natural wonders while Americans are looking for history and art work that is not available at home.  As I have been to the MET the MoMa and the Guggenheim in NYC as well as Albright-Knox, I have also been to the Reina Sofia and Prado in Madrid.  There are very many differences between museums from either side of the Atlantic where there is just so much more to see over there.  I'm not trying to knock our system of museums here in the States, it's more just a matter of history and Europe has more of it.

Thought I would close with a picture of Picasso's Guernica.  This is his depiction of the axes bombing Madrid during WWII.  I saw this for myself when I visited Spain some years back and thought it very poignant.  Also, you will notice the large number of people looking at it, how come this doesn't happen in the States?

Here's another little side note.  Back in my blog of the tour of downtown that Carl and I took, I mentioned a building designed by Yamasaki that was a prototype building.  You guys from NYC should have gotten this one, it's the prototype for the World Trade Center.

Black Rock

Last week Carl and I went on a tour of Black Rock.  A lot of unexpected beautiful architecture.  Black Rock originally started as its own city that was vying for the terminus of the Erie Canal.  It was a growing area with a heavily Germanic population.  Now, unfortunately, it seems like it has seen better days.  Some of the houses seem to be falling into neglect while others are doing quite well.  Near the start of the tour, we saw a house, one of the oldest in the area, as well as another house that, over the last ten years, I believe, has been totally rehabbed.  The little house in front of the church to the left has been rehabbed wonderfully while the grey house below is one of the oldest.  At least the left half.  It is a federalist style house which you can tell by the stone blocks used to top the windows instead of the same type of stone used for the rest of the house.  The right half can easily been seen as an addition.

From the beginning, Black Rock has been a working man's town and it still is.  I remember growing up thinking that this wasn't a great neighborhood to wander around in.  Definitely not an area to been seen in a non American car and I grew up driving Nissans and Hondas.  I think I was way off growing up, you know, you're never too old to learn a lesson!

OK, so, working man's town.  You can tell by the architecture that the people building these home and businesses knew what they were doing. From the churches to the fire hall, all had some beautiful art attached to the buildings.  I really liked the eaves of the fire hall as well as the red light on the building.  Not sure the light was original, but I still thought it was cool.  More reasons you could tell it's a working man's town was the fact the most street corners in the area originally had three things on them:   a grocery store, a church and a tavern.  Sounds like a good part of town to me...

The tour also included a tour of one of the former churches of the area that is now a religious center.  Inside were many different styles of the stations of the cross as well as beautiful frescos that have been restored.  Also present there were a few artifacts of a Jewish temple that had closed a couple of years ago.  I thought it interesting that the religious "border" had been crossed and the view of religious artifacts as art had been taken. I'd have to say, my favorite pieces at the center were the art deco stations of the cross with matching crucifix and candle holders.

The tour was a good eye opener for me with respect to the area.  A lot of interesting architecture as well as cool history.  Not  just a good neighborhood for the beer (Flying Bison Brewery calls Black Rock its home) or a way to get to great BBQ (Suzy Q's BBQ shack in Riverside).  Not to mention the largest collection of garden gnomes I have ever seen!!

Skylines

So, for this week's post I'm looking at skylines of cities and comparing them.  The two cities I would like to compare are New York City and Tokyo.  I chose these two cities because I have been lucky enough to have been to both of them as well as I have a few pictures of my own that are readily available instead of searching for pics of other cities that I have been to.

The top picture was taken from the roof top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC this past June and the lower was taken from the patio of my family's apartment when they were living in Tokyo.  Two very different cities!!!

To start with, NYC was considered a city by the late 1600's and has only grown since then.  It is also the most populous city in the US.  Tokyo, on the other hand, has been an inhabited area since the late 12th century (as a small fishing village to start) but not considered a city until the early 1600's.  Tokyo is now, like NYC, the most populous city in Japan.

Although both cities have been around for a very long time, their skylines are both very different.  One of the first things I noticed while traveling to both places was the architecture.  In NYC, it is very easy to spot a large number of buildings that are at least one hundred years old mixed in with newer buildings as well.  If you look closely at the skyline of Tokyo, the buildings are very different.  Most look somewhat drab and are not much to look at while some are pretty cool, like the zig-zag building in the upper left corner of the pic.  There are two reasons for this.  First, Tokyo had been almost completely leveled by the end of World War Two.  This forced the city to rebuild with fresh new structures to replace everything that had been ruined.  The second reason is that real estate in Japan, and especially in Tokyo, is extremely expensive, so the land is worth a lot more than the building on it.  This leads to landowners building cheap buildings that they plan on using for maybe twenty years, after which they will knock them down and build new ones.

Another major difference I saw between the skylines was the use of signs.  While there are advertisements all over both cities, the use of lighted signs is pretty much kept to Times Square.  In Tokyo, that same type of signs are plastered all over the city!

While both cities are huge, I think that NYC is taller.  There are many skyscrapers in both cities but NYC has so many more that are also taller.  Tokyo does have a large number of skyscrapers, but not like the original home of skyscrapers.

I feel there are many different things that can affect how a city grows, no matter where the city is located.  Some of these things are necessary for the city to grow and others just kind of happen.  Both types make any city unique.

The Imposing Richardson Complex

Last weekend I was able to tour the H.H. Richardson Complex on Forest Ave.  This complex was formerly known as the Buffalo Psych Center.  I learned a lot about it that was really interesting.  For example, the way the building was designed was, from the front, it was a bit imposing with the tall towers right in the front and center.  However, from the back, the building took the look of open arms to cradle and nurture the patients that resided there.  I also found it interesting on how the building was made and added onto over the years.  As you can see from the above picture, the building was made from one kind of stone, Medina Sandstone.  Many buildings from the time period  around the area are also made of the same stone.  However, as you move further away from the Administration Building, you see less sandstone and more brick.  Here's a good example below of the sandstone meeting up with brick at one end of the complex:

Another fact that I found quite interesting was that the original campus for the complex covered all the land that it's on now as well as all of the Buffalo State campus and more.  All of this land allowed the complex to be a self sustaining.  They not only housed patients there, but they also taught the patients trades to rehabilitate and give them a focus of returning to public life away from the complex.  They also had farmed land on the grounds to grow their own food.  Again, the patients (some) were not just allowed, but were expected to take care of field work for the good of the whole complex.  There was also a large green house and other workshops on the grounds.

Something that really caught my attention on the tour was the fact that, in some rooms, you can still see where the chains were attached to the wall that were used to restrain some of the patients.  Yet others were expected to function and take care of gardening or farming or other jobs to help the complex run smoothly throughout the days and months.  From the tainted perception I have made of psych centers in my mind, you know, based on all of those crapy movies over the years, I find it quite forward and humane that these patients were expected to help and not just be chained to walls or be stuck in a padded room wearing the iconic straight jacket for the duration of the day.

Now I do understand that there was a certain percentage of patients that were deemed incurable and what not.  But that also went into the design of the building.  From an aerial view, yo can easily see that the complex is quite long, with the Administration building in the center of it.  To one side, was the female ward while on the other was the male ward.  Also, as you got further away from the center, the building got smaller, as if to house a smaller number of patients.  This was true, as you got further away from the Administration building, the patients housed there were more "incurable".  That is, as your stay at the Center progressed, the doctors would expect you to move more towards the Administration Building until you were healthy enough to walk out the front doors and return to society.

So here's the sad part.  This building and complex served the Buffalo area since it was built in 1872 until about the 1980's.  Since then, not much has been done to the building.  Not even the water lines were shut off.  This proved to be one hell of a downfall for the building.  Because nobody thought to turn the water off before they vacated the building, all sorts of water damage has occurred.  It had gotten so bad that, not only did pipes freeze and break all over the building, but the walls are now falling apart.

In the picture above, you can see not just a big whole in the wall, but also a lot of brickwork missing from above the second story windows.  Both the whole and missing brickwork is due to extensive water damage.  The water would get into the mortar and brick and just rot it away to nothing, literally taking the building apart.

The good news is that there is a lot of talk about rehabbing the complex for some sort of other use.  Either a museum, hotel or offices have been mentioned.  I truly hope something happens soon.  It really is a wonderful building with a great deal of function potential.  Could you imagine staying here if it were made into a hotel??  Talk about nightmares......

Coal Chutes

Carl and I did our presentation on coal chutes this past week.  It turned out to be an interesting project.  While Carl focused on the future of coal chutes, I focused on the past history of them.  Although somewhat difficult to find a lot of written material on the subject, we were lucky enough to find someone who had some insight for us.  Mike was his name, he is the head engineer at the Electric Tower downtown.  He was nice enough to take into the basement of the building as well as outside to show us where the coal entered the building and how it was moved to the furnaces.  With his help we were then able to distinguish between manhole covers and old coal chute covers to many downtown buildings.

Once armed with this new knowledge, Carl and I were able to scout around the city where we found many coal chutes.  Some of these we were able to open and see into the coal bins where they would store the coal.  No coal though.  Most of these underground chutes and bins were devoid of coal, but some did have plenty of debris and even walls that blocked in the bins from the rest of the basement.

All in all, I thought this was a cool project.  To look into the history and future of all of these objects that we see and use daily without really thinking about them.  Since, I have definitely been noticing more coal chute covers as well as manholes and other things like stretcher bonds and flemmish bonds.

Ethnic Landscapes

So this blog is kind of cool.  Ethnic landscapes.  So much of the world we live in is centered around some sort of ethnic landscape.  Here in Buffalo, for about ten years, I lived in North Buffalo.  This is an area that, over the years has been predominately both Italian and Jewish.  Now, I have a bit of a biased opinion of this type of portrayal.  First and foremost, in my mind, saying that an area is "Jewish" does not really say anything in my mind.  Judaism is a religion and not an ethnic background in my mind.  This is because there are so many different backgrounds that Jews come from.  For example, a Jewish neighborhood in New York City will look, act and be very different than a Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw, Poland.

Keeping this in mind, as well as my understanding of the assignment, I will not talk further about this.

I do feel that different backgrounds of people can greatly affect the landscape around these people.  Back to North Buffalo.  I will admit that I do know a large number of Jews that either grew up in North Buffalo or have many different stories of North Buffalo, my parents, aunts and uncles included.  There are many different synagogues, both past and present, that do/have resided there.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three within about a four block radius.  One on Tacoma just west of Colvin, one on Saranac just north of Hertel and one right on Hertel by the corner of Traymore.  Without using Mapquest, I can say that all three of these locations are probably within a 3/4 mile radius.  This is one piece of evidence that, formerly, there were a very large number of Jews living in this area.  Another piece of evidence that I found are mezuzahs.   A mezuzah is a little scroll that Jews would place, historically on every door frame of their house.  It was also a prayer to bless everybody that came through the doors of the house.  While I lived in North Buffalo For almost twelve years, only two of those years was in a house without a mezuzah.  For ten years (all in one apartment) I did notice that someone had taken the time to place mezuzahs on all the door frames of the  apartment.  Although they had been painted over, I knew for sure what they were.  I also have many stories within my family of my aunts and uncles going to the local high school, Bennett High.  This is where my mom's older brother met his soon-to-be wife, my aunt.

Another characteristic of this being a Jewish neighborhood was Mastman's Kosher Deli.  On the corner of Colvin and Hertel stands a builing that still has the Mastman's sign hanging right on the corner.  It looks somewhat older, however I have many fond memories of this deli of m own.  I grew up eating what Mastman's was known for, their kosher corned beef.  What a wonderful stereotype, Jews and their corned beef!!!!  I remember going there as a child with my parents.  It was not a beautiful looking place and I probably didn't think much of it.  It was where we went for corned beef as well as a few other things, usually at least once a year for some sort of holiday.  I think, as I have grown up, maybe it was for the corned beef, but may be it wasn't.  My father grew up with the owner, Jack, they were in Boy Scouts together growing up, and both of them were modest about it.  My father never implied that we would be going there because he know the owner, it was always about the food.  When we would go there they would say hi to each other and take a few minutes to catch up, and then it was down to the food.  I do remember this as the only place that I knew of where they would serve a cup a soup in styrofoam with a plastic spoon where, if you left the spoon in the soup too long, it would melt.  Now that's a HOT cup of soup!!!!  My other very fond memories of the joint revolve around my grandfather.  As he was getting up in years, my mom's father still liked to go to "the old haunts" for a sandwich for lunch.  By now, he was in his eighties,  couldn't see anymore due to macular degeneration and didn't drive.  His best friend from when he was growing up, who couldn't walk and had an assistant, would take my grandfather to Mastman's.  Unfortunately, I didn't meet them there enough.  The servers new them by name and order and were always happy to see the two of them, no matter what.

Often times I can recall driving down Hertel with either my grandparents or my own parents and having them show me where everything used to be, the kosher butcher, the movie theatre, the newsstand, the bowling alley, everything.  It really made me feel very comfortable when I moved into the area, first with my brother who I shared a flat with, and then my soon-to-be wife who I also shared a different flat with.

As for why such a large number of Jews moved into this area over the years, I don't know.  But the evidence is still there.  Like so many ethnicities, the religion of Judaism is and will always be a close knit community.  I'm sure some still think "strength in numbers" or "to be with others in a similar situation as ourselves" is the reason.  Maybe so, I'm not sure, but I do know that, if you look around any city, you can find a number of different neighborhoods with different ethnic backgrounds, offering all sorts of "tastes of home" that others may feel are very weird or different or even gross.  I must say, I welcome the "weirdness"  of others.  I feel I have a lot to learn from others with different backgrounds and welcome the differences with open arms.  Without open arms I feel we can only hurt and alienate ourselves from the rest of the world.  Think about it, we weren't called the melting pot for nothing......