Visiting the Red Light District in Amsterdam Monday, Apr 12 2010 

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While PJ and I were in Amsterdam last month, we walked around the Red Light District, mostly following the walking tour suggested by Rick Steves guide to Amsterdam. This walk was one of three aspects of Amsterdam that really reinforced that it is unlike any where else I’ve ever been: the legalized prostitution, the pot, and the canals definitely make this city unique!

This statue of a prostitute stands outside the Oude Kerk, which is surrounded by the Red Light District. It’s really bizarre to see bars, sex shops, and prostitutes standing in glass doorways in the buildings surrounding the church! Nothing like this exists anywhere in the U.S.

Two things impress me about this statue. First, it seems to try to capture a kind of dignity in its subject. This woman is standing tall with an almost haughty demeanor. She’s not a victim.

Second, and in contradiction to the first aspect, the dark material and the doorway framing the prostitute conveys a sense of imprisonment to me. There is a darker side to prostitution, this statue seems to say. [PJ notes the fact that she’s not bound by the frame and is emerging from it might also complicate this reading.]

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Visiting Leipzig Sunday, Mar 21 2010 

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Last week, I spent three days in Leipzig, Germany. My university has a long-standing relationship with the University of Leipzig, and I was sent by our Office of Education Abroad to learn more about the program that currently exists and to see if we can find ways to interest more of my college’s students to participate.

This is the first trip I’ve ever taken where other people made most of the arrangements, paid most of the bills, and just generally showed me around. It was great! I arrived on Sunday evening, having flown on Saturday from Columbus to Detroit and then to Paris, where I had a long layover on Sunday. From Paris, I flew to Leipzig. The university arranged for a driver to pick me up at the airport (fancy!); he took me to one of the university guesthouses, where I stayed in a studio apartment. Here’s what the guesthouse looked like from the outside:

I think my apartment was the one right above where person on the right is standing.

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Back from Europe Thursday, Mar 18 2010 

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Old City Hall in Leipzig, Germany

I’m now back from my trip to Germany and the Netherlands. While abroad I visited Leipzig, Germany, and three cities in the Netherlands: Leiden, the Hague, and Amsterdam. It was a long trip — I was away a total of 11 days, which is about my limit for traveling — but I had a great time.

The weather was a little dreary for most of the trip — cold, overcast, sometimes snowy, and a little rainy towards the end. But I learned a lot about the study abroad programs in Leipzig and Leiden, and I couldn’t have had more fun with PJ in Amsterdam. We thoroughly enjoyed our three-day weekend together.

As I mentioned before I left, the goal of the trip was to learn more about study abroad opportunities for my students in Leipzig and Leiden, the latter of which is the center of a multi-university program that matches students up with European faculty allowing them to work together on a research project. A couple of my students are currently interested in the program, so I was there to check it out.

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Leaving for Germany and the Netherlands Saturday, Mar 6 2010 

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Photograph by Jon Hicks/CORBIS, National Geographic Magazine

My university is sending me to Leipzig and Leiden for the next week. I leave this evening and won’t be back until the 16th. I’ll be in Germany for two days of meetings and then travel to the Netherlands for a day-and-a-half in Leiden before meeting up with PJ in Amsterdam for a long weekend.

The main goal of the trip is to visit some study abroad programs to learn more about them. I might be able to help get more of our students interested in these programs in the coming years. One is a new program for us, so I’m also supposed to check it out and see what it’s all about. I should learn a lot during the trip.

I’m always a nervous traveler, and I’ve been getting more and more anxious about the trip as it’s approached. It doesn’t help that I’ll be going on my own; this is the first international trip I’ve made alone since my first trip to England in the summer of 2000. Work has been busy, so the stress and the nerves have worked together to exhaust me. I’m looking forward to a few days in Amsterdam to relax and have a little fun with PJ.

Throughout the trip, I’ll get to visit some museums. I’m also scheduled to attend a concert in Leipzig. So, I’ll have lots to write about when I get back. Until then, cheers!

 

Visiting the United Nations Sunday, Dec 20 2009 

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The office space of the United Nations building

One of the things PJ and I definitely wanted to do during our trip to New York City this past week was the visit the United Nations building. We’ve walked past it before, but we’d never been inside. So this year we decided to put it at the top of our agenda.

After going through security and getting out ticket (and waiting about 45 minutes until our tour time), we followed our tour guide around to see various exhibits about the work of the United Nations. These included ones on the U.N.’s peacekeeping work, the history of the U.N., and the U.N.’s activities against landmines, hunger, and malaria.

The highlight of the tour was a brief walk through the U.N.’s General Assembly Hall, where all of the delegates meet to hear speeches and debate resolutions up for a vote. The General Assembly was in session while we were there, so we weren’t allowed to sit down or stay long. Instead, we had to quietly walk through the very back of the room up in the balcony.

The exhibits we saw were relatively simple. Most were just posters mounted on the walls of hallways. Our tour guide, who was from Algeria, and did a very good job explaining everything to us and answering questions. The most elaborate exhibits were about the U.N.’s work providing basic living supplies for refugee camps, malaria nets, and school kits.

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Back from New York Saturday, Dec 19 2009 

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The Empire State Building

PJ and I had a great time in New York City this week. This was our fourth trip to the city. I guess we’re getting used to it now, because this time everything felt so easy and simple. We could just sit back and relax, so to speak.

Our flight out of LaGuardia left this morning at about 10, which was just about the time that the airport started canceling flights due to the wintry weather on its way into the area. So even our escape from the storm was pretty easy and simple. As much as we loved visiting NYC again, we didn’t want to get stuck there, so we were glad to make it home ok.

But we did have loads of fun! We walked around Manhattan’s shopping district, including Macy’s. We wanted to buy a lot of clothes but ended up talking ourselves out of it because we didn’t want to carry it all home. (I’m hoping the Macy’s in Columbus has similar stuff!) We also visited Borders and two different Barnes & Nobles. (I finished a book while we were there, Regina Jeffers’s Vampire Darcy’s Desire, which made me want to read Jeffers’s rewriting of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy’s point of view.

In addition to walking around Manhattan, we ate incredibly well — Turkish, Indian, Mexican, Italian, Korean, and Chinese cuisine. We ate at some of the restaurants we’d eaten at before and we tried some new ones. We also ate at a couple of good diners for breakfast.

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Visiting San Antonio’s Missions Sunday, Nov 29 2009 

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PJ and I spent the first part of our Thanksgiving break with my family in San Antonio. We did the same thing two years ago. (This time we stayed with my sister, since her in-laws weren’t there.) On Wednesday, we paid a second visit to some of San Antonio’s missions, most of which date back to the eighteenth century, which is my period of study.

Last time, we visited Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna, the Alamo, and Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo. This time, we started with a return visit to Mission San Jose and then visited two new ones: Mission San Juan Capistrano and Mission San Francisco de la Espada. Again, the weather was great, and we had a wonderful time visiting the missions.

Partly, I like the history of these buildings and their compounds. I also like that these missions continue to serve as parish churches. And finally, I love the architecture of the missions. The angles, ruins, and shadows are beautiful to see and photograph. I just wish I were a better photographer.

Despite my limitations as a photographer, I figured I would mostly just sample the pictures I took and then maybe write a little about what I liked about some of their subjects.

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Another Reason to Visit Brazil: Arthur Sales Friday, Nov 13 2009 

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Reading Made in Brazil, one of my favorite blogs, gives me a new reason almost every day to want to visit Brazil. Here’s today’s reason:

Based on this video I have to say that Arthur Sales is a perfect ambassador for Brazilian tourism! (Watching his video for Butch also makes me want to workout!)

Rodrigo Calazans, one of my favorite Brazilian models, was the “face” of Butch in 2009. Here’s a making of video for his campaign:

For much of the past year, a picture from Calazans’ Butch campaign has been my desktop photo on my computer.

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Visiting Washington D.C. Sunday, Nov 1 2009 

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PJ and I spent four days last week in Washington D.C. I was attending the conference of the National Collegiate Honors Council, and PJ was doing a little work at the Library of Congress.

D.C. is one of the first cities that PJ and I visited together in the 1990s. In retrospect, it’s a great “first city” to visit: if you stay downtown, the city is fairly easy to navigate by foot, car, and/or metro. And it’s difficult now to believe how accessible all of the government buildings were before 9/11. My first memory of being at the Capitol is that we practically just walked right in — we went through a metal detector, but that was about it. Today, everything’s much more secure.

We drove over, which took about 6 hours. The mountains of West Virginia and Maryland were gorgeous. The autumnal landscape was breath-taking with its combinations of reds, browns, yellows, greens, and oranges. Just outside of D.C. it started to drizzle a bit, but overall it was a fairly easy drive.

Because of the drizzle, I didn’t take any pictures the first evening we were there. The next morning, PJ and I walked over to the Capitol before parting ways: he walked on to the Library of Congress while I visited the National Art Gallery before heading back to our hotel to attend a conference session.

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Paolo Baruffaldi’s Le Rasoir 2009 Thursday, Oct 22 2009 

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While walking to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice this summer, PJ and I were window shopping as we passed various art galleries. One in particular caught our eyes, the Galleria d’Arte Bac Art Studio.

This studio stood out to us for two reasons. First, most of the paintings in the window were etchings and watercolors, a medium that we both really like. And second, many of the works seemed to exemplify a queer aesthetic, also something we both really like.

After we visited the Guggenheim, we went back to the Bac Art Studio. This time we went inside and had a good look around. The work that PJ instantly expressed a fondness for depicts two men shaving. It’s called “The Razor”:

This painting is by Paolo Baruffaldi, a Venetian artist who has a few series of paintings displayed in the gallery. Even though “The Razor” was our favorite, we liked how a lot of his work seems to depict Venice as a homoerotic locale, something that we definitely did not pick up on while we were there. In fact, we felt that Italy as a whole was severely lacking in visible gay people, though we just might not have been looking in the right places.

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