Foreign: Sofia's Palace of Culture

There doesn't seem to be much on the internet about the Bulgarian Palace of Culture. It's so large, so swollen, so beige-and-brown.  And so, no-one seems to notice it.

I can find that it was built in 1981, celebrating the foundation of the Bulgarian nation 1300 years previously. I don't really understand how a Communist-run state was allowed to celebrate its own uniqueness and history.  I'm sure it worked in the favour of politburo somehow.

The Palace is the focal point of a large set-piece park, sitting between the city centre and the Vitosha mountain in the distance (where one can ski cheaply with a gleeful disregard for health and safety / self-preservation).  The park, like the Palace, has clearly seen better days.  An irrigation (an excellent, and made-up, plural noun) of ponds and fountains is dried up and empty, and there was little greenery in the cold March sunlight.

The Monument to the Bulgarian State, also erected by the munificent Soviet overlords in '81, is either falling down or being taken down.  It remains as a fragment of something, some shattered hoarded-off thing that youths now graffiti to express their frustration at a time they didn't live through.

Unlike Socialist Realist art, this isn't the usual worker-duping interpretation-resistant propaganda (a happy Soviet soldier with a happy peasant farmer, holding a happy pudgy baby and a basket of food).  It looks to me like something horribly wounded.  I wonder how Hitler's pet architect, Albert Speer, would have valued this Socialist ruin.

Underlining the failure of the Communist regime, the northernmost edge of the park has been appropriated by gaudy advertisements in neon.  Which again make me feel like a Capitalist pigdog, personally forcing bland brands onto the homogenising Eastern European market.  Bulgaria, I am sorry for the Tuborg.

Sited elsewhere, the section of the Berlin Wall might have seen like a celebration of the human spirit over the divisiveness and horror of the Cold War.  But here, inscription daubed with more graffiti and on a dirty glass podium, it just seems to be another example of a nasty failure.  Perhaps, on balance, the perfect antithesis to Speer's self-serving assertions that his buildings would look wonderful when picturesquely weathered.

Crossing the park to the Palace (there is a old man busking opera, in the cold), there's a Costa coffee (again, I am sorry), and a security man vigilantly doing nothing.  The Palace is now just used for conferences and the like.  There is a lot of empty space.

An anatomically-improbable statue of Sofia welcomes you into the foyer.  A moulded crowd scene of interlocking waves rather counterpoints the emptiness.

Brown signs encourage you up to the empty three-and-a-half-th floor.

There's a startling geometry to the design.  Lights like chemical structures hang from a ceiling patterned like graph paper.  The treble-height windows create vanishing points with shadows.  

Science and art.  And no-one there.  At the top, facing the mountain, is a bar where trendy young things pretend to be somewhere cool, whilst drinking terrible cocktails made by a barman with absolutely no skill.

On the other side is a tremendous view of the park and the waterless water-features.

The Palace, in its current state, is a mess.  Notionally a gift to Bulgaria, it is inevitably more-so a self-aggrandising monument to the Soviet Union.  It is falling slowly into disrepair.  An overblown symbol of past failure, and the failure of the present to keep the building alive.

Foreign: (a bit of) the Sofia Metro

This entry on the Sofia metro is fairly short, for reasons that will become apparent...

Whereas the London Underground is proudly turning 150 years old, the Metro in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia is brand new, and still being built.

There're currently two lines, a red one and a blue one, which join up at the top (or bottom, depending how you read the map).  I'm not sure whether the completed configuration will form an 8 or an A.  There's going to be a third line, which will probably still form one of those wacky Cyrillic letters they use over there to confuse foreigners.

The construction is a deep cut-and-cover trench, which allows for spacious stations with plenty of headroom and platform depth.  The trains are likewise large and boxy.  I boarded at the station called European Union, which is next to the Sofia City Centre (SCC) shopping complex.  The SCC is:

1) Nowhere near the centre of Sofia
2) Utterly rubbish.  

I feel like a disgusting Capitalist pigdog when I visit a foreign country and see it, as in the SCC, splattered with McDonald's and KFC and Nike genericdom.  Even though, technically, it is not my fault.

Anyway, the EU station is brightly lit, and has a rather nice multi-layered metal sculpture which mixes together the EU 12-star symbol and the Euro sign. I imagine the edges have been smoothed off appropriately to meet an EU Regulation.

The plaque beneath the metalwork gives thanks for the financial contributions of the 'European Regional Development Fund' and the 'Cohesion Fund of the European Union'.  Such snappy names these EU committees give themselves.  Perhaps they're more stylish nomenclatures in French.

Because I have testicles, I am a man,  Or, perhaps, the other way round.  Either way, my scrotal munificence means that I [believe I have] an innate sense of bearing and polar North, and consequentially, a deep-seated fear of asking for directions, lest my magnetically-sensitive gonads be proved misaligned.  Which would obviously be a painful experience.

The upshot of which being that I misread the Metro map.  I therefore went two stops in the wrong direction, and ended up on an empty train in the sidings, being shouted at by the driver.  In Bulgarian.  Shouldn't they check the trains are empty, rather than assuming that all the passengers know which way up the Metro map goes?

Why's is everyone else getting off the train?  Oh, um.

That fundom behind me, I was relieved when shortly later the train left the sidings and returned to normal operation.  I decided to ride the train to the [other] end of the line.  I'd seen from an earlier taxi ride [they're cheap over there, I'm not suddenly rich.  Despite being a Capitalist pigdog] that the line emerged from its underground trench and was covered by a plastic chute, which looked like it might be fun to see (whereas London trains just emerge from their tunnels, blinking and startled, rudely exposed to the grey twilight and icy rains of a British summer).

So, a short ride later, I alighted at Obelya station, the top crossbar of the current A.  Here, the station is in a tunnel of blue plastic, much like a huge water slide.

At this point, there was an announcement over the station intercom in, of course, Bulgarian.  A nearby and timid member of station staff gestured that I should stand behind the yellow-tiled line.  As a seasoned Londoner, and since the next train wasn't due for 4 minutes, I thought this a little OTT (another EU Regulation?), but was content to comply whilst taking another few pictures of the distinctly-DLR-like Lego-coloured station.

I was surprised when the policeman came up the escalator and approached me.  He had clearly been summoned (by, I suspect, that fucking creep of station staff), to address some transgression.  He gestured that I should not consider boarding the train that had just pulled in.  I herefollowing recreate the conversation with startling accuracy:

POLICEMAN:  Something in Bulgarian 

ME: Oh hai, Mr Big Policeman Man! Do you speak English, officer? 

POLICEMAN: Something in Bulgarian 

ME: Um, sorry, I don't understand.  Do you speak English?  Incidentally, you're a quite a scary looking man.  You could probably crush me. Please don't.

POLICEMAN: Annoyed - something in Bulgarian. 

ME: Err, would you like to see the pictures?  Are the pictures a problem?  Do you speak English?  You would look less scary if you shaved occasionally. Or perhaps cleaned your teeth.

POLICEMAN:  Annoyed - something in Bulgarian...  Passport! 

ME: Ah, passport!  Um, no, it's in the hotel room, in the safe, along with, now I think of it, my wallet, containing, for example, my bank cards, and all sorts of other acceptable ID forms.  Do you speak English? Are the pictures the problem?  I begin to show him my photos of the Metro and other random crap like the shopping centre, and a can of beer with a funny name that I had the night before.

POLICEMAN:  Something in Bulgarian...  Passport!

ME: Ah, no, I still don't have my passport?  Do you want to see more photos?  This is like a modern version of a post-holiday slideshow.  How odd.  Aren't digital cameras amazing?  At this point I remember that my driving license is tucked into my jacket pocket, as an earlier precaution to ensure I am allowed to purchase alcohol.  My youthful good looks can be a real drag when trying to get pissed.  Aha!  My driving license!  I now cannot legally be sent off to a gulag to endure 20 years in a salt mine!  I think.  Is that right?

POLICEMAN:  Something in Bulgarian...  He looks at the driving licence.  Then at me.  He hands me back the driving license.  He points to the camera.  Ne! 

ME:  Is that No, as in 'I don't want to see any more pictures', or No, as in 'Don't take any more pictures?'  You know, I think I'll just not take any more pictures.  I don't want to be sent to Siberia.  I need to be back in work on Monday.

POLICEMAN:  Something in Bulgarian...  He walks away.

ME:  You still scare me, Mr Big Policeman Man.  I board the next train with slightly wobbly knees and sit down with utmost care not to break any laws.

I did not take any more pictures on the Sofia Metro.

Foreign: Prague

A caveat: the only camera I had with me was the poxy little thing on my phone.  Hence the largely crap quality, despite the valiant efforts of Photoshop retouching.  Some of the pics therefore have an (almost appropriate) Impressionist smudginess.

I thought I was starting to get bored of the Art Nouveau curvy bling in Prague.  It's everywhere, and amazingly well-preserved.  The Praguish take of Nouveau is less twiddly and organic than Mackintosh's Scottish version, edging towards the geometry of later Deco (which I much prefer).  Nonetheless, I found myself getting punch-drunk from the relentless loveliness.

One of approximately 100,000 Art Nouveau restaurants in Prague.
Beautiful (and authentic) mirrors, chandeliers,
mosaic-tiled walls, windows, frescos... yawn.

I had two hours to kill before the flight back to Blighty.  I'd ticked off a few of the Tourist Must Sees, despite find the whole idea irritatingly crypto-fascist (100 Things You Must Do Or We Will Hurt The Kitten), and rather at-odds with my postmodern psychogeographical 'as found' tourism (ie toddling around somewhat randomly and seeing what I find).  I decided to indulge my particularly gimpy side and have quick spin on the Soviet-built Metro system, and was pleased to find that a 90-minute metro ticket is just 32 Czech Koruna (about a bargainous quid).

I entered at Náměstí Republiky station, which is perhaps the beigest and most 80s-caravan-like station I have ever seen, full of dank browns and orangey laminate wood panels.

Apparently modelled on an MB Games' Simon Says

The camera's white balance insisted on 'correcting' this shot to 

something less brown, but Photoshop has done me proud here.

Rather lovely brown-glass bricks, 

and a yellow block to tell you which line you're on.

Thankfully less brown, the adjacent Muzeum station appears to have  been made from the shells of multicolour Daleks.

I'd asked the hotel receptionist about the main train station, thinking that I might come across the sort of collosal escalators and blast doors that you find on the Kiev metro in the Ukraine (which was designed to double as a fall-out shelter in the event of nuclear war...).  Instead, I emerged at Hlavní Nádraží into a startlingly vibrant red-plastic-and-polished-aluminium bafflement.

Somehow like being in a toaster.

This part of the station had recently been refurbished, and now sports slightly-hypnotic banded flooring.

Scalextricky.

Curtain walling and leaks.

A small sign above an escalator pointed to the 'historical building of the station'.  I was hoping for some cosmic Soviet concrete installation.  But, gosh, I found something rather different: an astounding and semi-derelict Art Nouveau half-coupla, packed with statues, stained glass and flaking frescoes.

but where teh concretes?  :(

Some sculpture porn 

(from my private collection at www.gregs_posh_grot.com)

The defunct station clock, and a hint of the 

lovely stained glass over the main entrance.

The platforms are most easily accessed via the underground walkways from the Very Red station.  But popping through the Nouveau's doors leads to a poignant collection of bronze figures, commemorating Sir Nicholas Winton's rescue of over six hundred Czechoslovakian children just before the outbreak of WWII.

This magnificent old building is apparently due for refurbishment by 2013.  Which I think gives me a lovely reason to plan to go back.

Foreign: Krakow (Nowa Huta)

As part of it's 2011 EU Presidency bumf, Poland has put together a free English-language paperback advertising the delights of Poland, its cities and its citizens ('About Polska').  It's mainly anodyne and harmless sub-propaganda ('We see ourselves as friendly, welcoming folk' etc etc), encouraging tourists to pop over and spend some dosh before the EU implodes and the Euro becomes the Deutsch Mark Mk II.

Amongst its pages on the Krakow, the book mentions a place called Nowa Huta, describing it as 50s 'social engineering experiment' that is now 'a troubled district...that fascinates with its grandiose Stalinist architecture'.  As a high-risk tourism venture goes, it's up there with London advertising 'Come to Norwood Junction - it's edgy.  There are chicken bones.  Mmm'.  But, having nearly collected the full set of English 50s New Towns, I thought I'd take the opportunity to see how the Socialists did urban planning back then.

The whole settlement of Nova Huta was inflicted on the middle-classes of Krakow, for their refusal to vote for Uncle Vladimir in a post-war referendum.  The idea was to balance out the vile Krakowiak bourgeois with some honest-to-goodness salt-of-the-earth Workers.  Hence the New Town was focused on a steel works - a vast complex, which once held the largest blast furnace in Europe.

The receptionist at the hotel was clearly somewhat dismayed that I was asking how to get to Nowa Huta, rather than the walled charms of the Old Town.  She told me I could catch a tram directly Howa Huta, but was unable to tell me how I'd know when I'd actually reached there...

So I got off the tram sort-of at random, on the basis that I had passed the picturesque kitsch of the Old Town some time ago (and a couple of really horrid PoMo shopping centres).  I could see some post-war 50s-ish buildings, so hoped I might be in the right sort of area.  These point blocks look distinctly similar to the medium-rise things we have dotted around the UK (particularly now they're adorned with satellite dishes).  So far, so not very exciting.

'...grandiose Stalinist...'?

But, fortuitously stumbling (I was well off the tourist maps of Krakow here) upon the main square of Plac Centralny, I found the huge radiating boulevards of Socialist Realist blocks - 6-storey rendered and arcaded rows of apartments and ground-floor shops.

That's my shadow in the bottom right.

I appear to be saluting.

This aerial shot shows the design of the development - with the Plac at the bottom, the main avenues fanning out, with housing blocks filling up the spaces in betweeb.

 Copyright: teh internets

I mentioned before how social and political ideas are so often manifested in the buildings of the time.  For example, English New Towns like Welwyn Garden City were built with swathes of trees and parks as a reaction to the dense slum housing of the industrial revolution, to enhance the quality of life for the residents.  As an added bonus, and quite terrifyingly, the greenery of Nova Huta was included to help soak up the radiation from the feared nuclear war; the wide streets would prevent the spread of apocalyptic fires; and the layout of the housing blocks meant that the city could be turned into a walled fortress with comparative ease.  Serious stuff.

According to a slim volume I later bought from the one-room Howa Huta Museum, these blocks were originally pretty dismal inside, with 'no central heating, no sewage system...the floors were simply lined with bare, unplaned planks'.  That said, in the setting wintery sun, the blocks looked a little like the cute pastiche of somewhere like Welwyn (although, as if the punchline to a Victoria Wood skit, rather than a whopping great steel plant, Welwyn had a Shredded Wheat factory). Presumably completing the aims of this design, the outside of the blocks looked quite attractive to a Prole like me.

Off to the east of the main housing matrix lies the eponymous steel works, its huge on-stilts signage rising up from the trams' power cables.  From a distance, it looks a bit like Croydon's Ikea.

Ampere Way, Communist style

The administrative blocks standing of either side of the sign are topped with a comb attic of renaissance details, nodding to the fluted stylings of the Old Town buildings.  The steel works - apparently still in operation - are closed off behind some gates.

Amazing bit of sans serif on dynamic stilts.

Broken ice floated on the surface of the Nowa Huta lake, as I headed back towards the warmth of the hotel.  It was cold.

Foreign: (a bit of) Warsaw Metro

I had a few minutes for a brief exploration of the post-Communist Warsaw Metro system.  Well, system is a bit keen as there's only one line.  And, from what I saw of a quick spin, it's all a bit sensible and functional, in a Heathrow-extension-of-the-Piccadilly-Line type way.

All the thrills of a double-decker Hounslow West.

The old rolling stock will give caravan-fanciers something to enjoy.  

Good thing that veneer is waterproof.

The Metro entrances I saw were uninspiring Thatcherite blue-frame canopies.  Presumably the Polish civic planners were keen to make up for having missed out on the delights of the 80s.

Yawn.  DLR-chic.

However, Plac Wilsona seems to be a pointlessly lovely (although probably accidental) homage to Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Bored-looking commuters ride a short escalator into an elliptical abduction fantasy of soft pink and blue uplighting.

[Insert Star Trek cliché here]

Thank god it's not modelled on DS9 </geek>

Plac Wilsona reminds me of the utterly random Star Trek-themed Page's Bar pub in Westminster, which had a model Starship Enterprise hanging in pride of place over the pool table, and the occasional fan in full Worf-from-season-3 gear.  Whilst surely too niche an interest to be a viable business proposition, Page's Bar was more interesting that the pub that replaced it, the expensive-and-humdrum Westminster.

Foreign: Stockholm 2

Got the opportunity to explore a bit of the Stockholm metro system, which markets itself as a huge art exhibition.  The lines in green on the metro map are vaguely New York-y, with one station jazzed up with crazy neon.

The Blue Lines are quite different, however.  They seem to be (perhaps because they are) hewn from rock.   It's like installing a metro system in Wookey Hole.

Solna Centrum in particular has been given a fetchingly vibrant paint job. 

The escalators are gorgeously glossy, and look like a Art Deco Christmas installation.  

I suspect that, at 22 quid, a three-day metro pass might be the cheapest thing you can actually buy in Stockholm.

Passive agressive: Mexico

Yes, Mexico is *still* waiting.

Foreign: Stockholm

Things I have learnt about Stockholm:

1)  Do not refer to the below as 'the Ikea flag'

2)  Kök is, apparently, not hilarious to the locals.

3)  They make proper coffee and use fresh milk.  Win.

4)  Beer / alcohol / everything is cripplingly expensive.  Fail.

5)  'Normalms polisen' does not mean 'normal police'.

6)  Ö is Alt+0214.  Obviously.