10/01/2013

At the Going Down of the Sun

At the Going Down of the Sun

The one thing you don’t expect, that takes you completely by surprise, is the beauty. As your heart pounds and your vision is distorted by misty eyes, you find yourself just standing and staring, silently, at gravestone after gravestone; white monuments against a brilliant white ground. And it’s stunning.

Encased in snow during winter, the battlefields of Belgium and France need to be experienced. Almost every family has a story from the Great War – a relative, a memory – and coming here gives those stories meaning, gives history some context. The Menin Gate, Hill 60, Polygon Wood, each memorial has its own significance and whether you travel by car, bike or foot, being here really helps you comprehend the enormity of it all.



From Tyne Cot Cemetery you can see where the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele began and ended. Once a mess of quicksand, the sloped ground now holds thousands of immaculate graves, each engraved with an epitaph that’s simultaneously poetic, incensed and tender. “Would some thoughtful hand in this distant land please scatter some flowers for me”. “He is not dead for such as my noble husband lives for ever”. “Another life lost, hearts broken, for what”. Beyond the graves is a wall covered in 33,000 names belonging to soldiers missing in action. Never found, never buried, but remembered.

Even the smallest sites prove meaningful. At Fromelles Australian troops had their first and most disastrous encounter on the Western Front. Understandably, the memorial here is simple. 410 Australian soldiers sharing two gravesites, marked by a large paved cross. Each soldier has a rose bush growing around the outside of the plot. On a larger scare there’s Newfoundland Memorial Park, a Canadian memorial filled with grass-covered trenches. Wandering through these you come across a small cemetery where many graves are shared, Private and Corporal buried together. Reading the stones certain things strike you – the ages of those fallen and the fact that so many simply state “A soldier of the Great War Known Unto God”.


At Lochnager Crater, the site of an explosive-packed mine that was detonated on July 1st 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, a lone bench overlooks the surrounding snow-covered fields. Flat, seemingly barren and freezing, looking at this land, it’s almost possible to imagine the bleakness of a wartime winter. Beside this bench stands a poppy-covered cross, made with wood from Tynesdie in the UK, symbolically honouring the British who fought here.

Among these battlefields, history is very much alive. But it’s not necessarily just the cemeteries or memorials that remind you of this. Instead you realise when you walk past a freshly plowed field and inevitably spot the smallest piece of aged shrapnel. As locals are quick to point out, you don’t need to dig very far to find something.


Liz Schaffer – Photos Liz Schaffer & Angela Terrell

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04/01/2013

Varigotti, A Slice Of Morocco In Italy

Varigotti, A Slice Of Morocco In Italy

In some places time passes more slowly than others. In these places the people who were grannies and grandpas already when you were a kid haven’t changed a lot even after twenty years, they just have few wrinkles more. Crumbling houses are still there and cars that are not produced since long keep on frolicking in the town alleys. People who love big cities and their chaos, or just can’t stand living away from them, won’t resist more than two days in such small, lonely places. But it can happen that the sight of the fresh fish in a wicker basket and the old lady sitting with a cat on his lap, together, make some usually silent inner chords resonate even in a metropolis-addicted person. Have you ever heard about Varigotti?


Italy has hundreds, thousands of small villages unchanged after the second world war, when the so-called economic miracle began that transformed Italy from rural to an industrialized country. Varigotti is one of them: a niche seafaring venue, part of the small commune of Finale Ligure with a beautiful, enigmatic seafront. The colored little cottages on the shore, so near to the sea that water almost touches the stair-steps, call to mind the bright Moroccan casbahs. Nevermind if the hot nights in Tangeri here are just lukewarm and anonymous. You are here for rest, aren’t you?


A November weekend in Varigotti didn’t cost a lot: 70 euros per head a day. Forgetting thai massages and spicy mud baths, to relax we chose the Inn and Restaurant Muraglia-Conchiglia D’oro (Via Aurelia 133), one of the best in the area. The restaurant shows an ingenuous and retro look, but the real treasure lies in the details: fresh fish lay on wicker baskets, waiting for being cooked on embers. You can choose between a variety of sea recipes such as mullet sauce or a whitebait fritter. Let’s not forget the Inn. Rooms overlook on a garden of trees full of oranges ripe and ready to be picked by anyone. On the shore, especially during winter, you probably won’t be finding many tourists. Small and colored, overturned boats just wait to be photographed. Not far away, on a curved alley, an Ape-car takes supplies to the restaurant.


Antonio Leggieri

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14/12/2012

For Lovers of Art and Frost

For Lovers of Art and Frost

Glasgow is a city of contradictions. Once synonymous with crime and industrial abandonment, its somewhat tough exterior now harbours artistic and architectural treasures and green spaces that thrive, regardless of the season.

Ranging from the very big – there’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery, a red sandstone landmark packed with the works of Botticelli, Rembrandt, Dalí and the Glasgow Boys – to the slightly smaller, there are galleries aplenty in this town. Architecture fans should stop by the Hunterian Art Gallery, which includes a complete reconstruction of No. 6 Florentine Terrace; the home of space and colour loving architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his artist wife Margaret Macdonald.

For something a little different you’ll find that few museums pull off video and lighting instillations like the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. Known as much for the cone-wearing horse rider that guards its entrance as well as the art it contains, this family friendly space proves that 5-year-olds are an awesome source of insightful artistic commentary. Those with a penchant for sartorial daring should also perch out the front for a while; it’s the stomping ground of the truly modish.

But the truest gallery-esque pièce de résistance is the Glasgow School of Art. Considered to be Mackintosh’s greatest architectural creation, it plays with the contrast between height, light and shade, and will bring out your appreciation of all things abstract. Combining dark and dramatic halls, a top floor dungeon, Glasgow marble (i.e. polished concrete), forest-like library, Art Nouveau furnishings, ceramic tiles devoid of a definite meaning and a puzzling assortment of nature inspired Mackintosh motifs – which act as rewards for visitors captivated enough to really notice the details – this space is a visual treat.

There’s a story behind every element. On a student-led tour my guide explained that the wooden alcoves framing various doorways were created to hold fresh roses grown in a dedicated rooftop greenhouse, and to inspire the students. Although there’s no record of a caretaker ever taking the time to arrange these said flowers, students over the past 100 years have occasionally left bouquets as homage to Mackintosh.


Art aside, Glasgow is a city keen to entertain, and around the West End you’ll benefit from simply wandering. Along the Woodlands Road you’ll pass packed antique furniture stores hidden within Victorian houses, and school buildings that have transformed into pubs. You can acquire the perfect vintage wardrobe on Great Western Road and stumble upon the city’s best coffee in Gibson Street’s Artisan Roast. If tables made from old doors and fairy light filled fireplaces are your thing, you’ll find loitering here a pleasure.

Finally there’s Kelvingrove Park. A jumble of paths, hills, ponds, skate parks and monuments, watched over by the Glasgow University and packed with acrobats, excitable children and aimless amblers. A wintery stroll here will no doubt result in a newfound appreciation of frost.

Clearly a champion of the arts, nature and character, this thoroughly Scottish and rather complex metropolis shows that you really can’t judge a city by its cover.


Liz Schaffer

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06/12/2012

The Barrow Boys And Buskers of Columbia Road

The Barrow Boys And Buskers of Columbia Road

No East London weekend can be considered complete without a wide-eyed amble along Columbia Road Flower Market. Teeming with thriving foliage, bundles of bulbs, blossoms in every imaginable hue and a string of independent stores and galleries, hidden within Victorian shop fronts, this street seems to hibernate midweek but blooms with life on Sundays.


Here the chants of barrow boys mix with the tunes of harmonica toting buskers and the scent of perfectly brewed coffee, something that’s harder to find in London than you may imagine. For less than a fiver you can leave with anything from an exotic 10-foot banana tree to snow white, locally grown roses. Drawing in serious horticulturalists and those after house brightening blooms, space is hard to come by on this road, especially when the sun makes a fleeting appearance.

Flowers aside, Columbia Road is a mecca for alternative art lovers. For quirky and fanciful printed artworks head to Elphick’s, a print shop run by textile designer Sharon Elphick, that feels more like an intimate art show than a gallery. Further along you’ll stumble upon Three Letter Man, a space that can only be reached by braving a characteristically rickety flight of stairs. Brimming with vintage linen and embroidered artwork, this small, secret-feeling gallery is owned by Nathan Hanford, who spends his days sitting by his first floor window, adorned with a fox head mask, happily creating his art.


Then there’s Ryantown, a gallery dedicated entirely to Rob Ryan’s exquisite cut out designs. His works are adored by the V&A Museum, have taken the UK by storm and lift the spirits of all who stumble upon them. This Columbia Road store, with creaky wooden floors and stencil covered walls, is just around the corner from Ryan’s London studio, and is every bit as whimsical, dreamy and utterly romantic as his art, which reminds you – in an almost child-like manner – to ‘let your heart have a say’.

Also worth a visit is Laird of Glencairn, a traditional gentleman’s hatter that exudes old school charm and will ensure that your head departs well-dressed. Alternatively, you can let your inner child rejoice at Suck and Chew; a confectionary shop where jars full of sugary treats decorate the walls, sweets are measured by hand, retro toffee tins are everywhere, and thoroughly British bunting reminds you that you’re in England and all is well. No doubt a more delightful, more varied, more capricious Sunday London haunt is yet to be unearthed.


Liz Schaffer

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29/11/2012

Of Mountains and Mules - Tour du Mt Blanc

Of Mountains and Mules - Tour du Mt Blanc

Europe is a labyrinth of walking routes, drawing in an international assortment of hikers keen to sample Alpine culture, cuisine and adventure. But there’s one particular route, measuring 170 kilometers and winding its way through Italy, Switzerland and France, that seems to win the hearts and minds of all who brave it – and that’s the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB).

Circumnavigating western Europe’s highest peak (Mt Blanc measures in at 4810 meters) and crossing eight mountain passes, the TMB is an eight day feast for the senses, showing off the linguistic, culinary and scenic beauty that makes this region truly hypnotic.


The walk classically begins in Chamonix, famed for both its skiing and fondue, and sees you venture across the Grand Col Ferret, wander through Trient, one of the sleepier hamlets of Switzerland, and head onto Issert and its gnome-filled gardens. From here you travel to Champex, which turns into a Swiss ski resort in winter, hike through the alpine meadows of La Fouly, hit Courmayeur, one of the biggest, food-filled towns on the route and spend your final night at Les Champieux; a boarder town that was the site of early fighting during World War II and has since been taken over by vegetable patches and stone buildings.

This walk is tough. But it’s worth it. In moments of weakness, when yet another mountain pass looms ahead and your knees start to rebel you simply have to stop and take stock of where you are; surrounded by complete wilderness and, in my case, guided by a French rock climber who has had one fall too many, and his trusty mule, who only responds to singing and is afraid of its own shadow. Basically, you’re in a pretty great place.


You should know however that at some point during your trek, delirium will set in. Weather you’re traveling alone (promise me you’ll only do this if you’ve gathered up a hefty amount of hiking experience) or as a part of a guided tour (infinitely safer), you’ll loose it. Completely overwhelmed, utterly exhausted and on a scenery induced high, you’ll begin to laugh, sing or talk to yourself. But this isn’t a sign of insanity. It’s all part of the TMB experience. On this walk, littered with tiny towns that would be more at home within the dust-filled pages of a fairytale and views that go on forever, your worries just slip away. You focus only on the epic scenery, the fleeting snow storms that seem to arrive from nowhere, picnic lunches in long abandoned shepherd’s huts, rock climbing by moonlight, forests filled with carved tree stumps, lone ibexs, glacial lakes that are an impossible shade of turquoise and skies filled with more stars than you thought possible. You’re entirely alone with the nature, and the feeling is incomparable. And that makes the TMB worth singing about.

Liz Schaffer

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23/11/2012

The City Of Iridescent Lights

The City Of Iridescent Lights

If Stephen King would have been born in Italy, maybe he would have chosen Genova (Genoa) as the city of his novels. Like Derry, the literary transposition of King’s hometown Bangor, Genova gives the impression of hiding mysterious features, as if under its modern and renovated city dress, it hides an ancient and haunted body. You don’t need a pair of writer’s eyes for taking notice of this contradiction. It’s enough to walk the historical streets in the centre, looking around. Wide and bright streets are crossed with narrow and lopsided alleys, where high and decadent palaces are built so close to each other that not a single ray of light filters through, and you could jump from one’s window and find yourself in the opposite building. In a few hundred meters from Galleries and Foundations, on Via della Maddalena and on the side streets of Via del Campo, stocky prostitutes sit on the stair landings of ancient houses waiting for clients.


A legend narrates that Genova derives from Janus, the two-faced god, for its overlooking the sea while being encircled by mountains. From the docks of the seaport you can see that city literally climbs up the sides of the mountains Val Bisagno and Val Polcevera, giving life to an extraordinary union between the nature and man’s work. But Genova has more than these two faces, since it possesses within itself other, smaller cities. The seaport zone looks like Amsterdam, the shabby alleys like Naples. Together with Bologna this is one of the most communist cities in Italy, but if in the Emilian capital the collectivism is a synonym for power and money, here that ideology leads to rage and rebellion. These multiple identities make Genova perfectly fit for a set of a noir or a thriller. Maybe a horror flick too. What happened in the G8 in 2001 doesn’t go too far from that.

And then comes the Genovese. In the common Italian opinion they are indomitably stingy, for some people they’re just thrifty. For sure they are introvert and rebellious, the mirror of their city. Dante Alighieri put them in Hell (“Men at variance / of every virtue, full of every vice” – Inferno, Canto XXXIII), the famous architect Renzo Piano brings them in an antechamber of Heaven, changing the city in a destination for the lovers of modern architecture. Heaven and Hell. In the end, Genova belongs to both of them.


Antonio Leggieri – Images from him, Simon Falvo and Emilio Pereira

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15/11/2012

Give it a New York Minute

Give it a New York Minute

Those with a passion for theatre, art, architecture, food and urban adventure find it impossible to ignore the allure of New
 York. But be warned: while tourists arrive in their droves expecting big
 things from the city, they’re occasionally left, after their first day or 
two, feelingly heartbreakingly overwhelmed.

New York is like nowhere else. Easily romanticized, largely thanks to the
 dizzying glitter of Sex and the City, this is a place where the whole “give
 me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” 
still rings true. It draws in travellers, wide-eyed creatives, those 
desperate to change the world, and it gives them the opportunity to do 
exactly what they love. But this is why it becomes so busy. It’s a city
 that never sleeps precisely because it’s always on, always inspiring, 
always driving forward and easily intimidating. Basically, it will welcome 
you with open arms, but in return you really have to want to be there.


So, from one traveller to another: persevere. Look past the speed, noise 
and the bizarre feeling that you’re hopelessly lost somewhere in an untamed 
concrete jungle, and you’ll find the true New York beauty.

Spend an entire day in the MET, dazed in room after room filled with Degas
and his impressionist friends, be awed by the visible storage space and 
encounter one of the most brilliantly curated collections of American art 
around. Snake your way through the Guggenheim and quickly discover that it 
is every bit the architectural feat it’s made out to be. Visit MOMA and
 gaze at the Kandinskys that spent years forgotten in a post war attic. Climb to
 the peak of the Empire State Building at midnight and see the geometric
 city roar in an illuminated haze below you, or simply watch as the leaves fall 
and the children chase bubbles in Central Park. Reconnect with your inner five
-year-old by searching for Eloise at the Plaza, or just enjoy a drink Truman
 Capote style before having at least one Audrey moment in Tiffany’s. Chat with 
the artists in Williamsburg cafes, stare at the constellations in Grand 
Central, hunt down every Magnolia bakery and have what she’s having at
 Katz’s – that’s one for the Meg Ryan fans.


You’ll find New York’s magic by engaging with the city, accepting its pace
 as your own and understanding that a solid night’s sleep probably isn’t an 
option. Don’t be afraid to feel intimidated. As with all good 
relationships, if you want something truly delightful, you have to go out
 on a limb and give it everything you’ve got.

Liz Schaffer

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09/11/2012

Dubrovnik – Sun, Stars And Silence

Dubrovnik – Sun, Stars And Silence

Falling in love with Dubrovnik is inevitable. It’s a soul-lifting jumble of red rooftops, steep passageways, hidden monasteries, piazzas, rocky coves and Italian-feeling cafes. Steeped in European history, it’s perfectly contained within ancient city walls, which span almost two kilometers, and hugged by the salty Adriatic Sea.

Less than an hour here – spent devouring gelato while celebrity spotting along the Strada, overwhelmed in the Modern Art Museum or passed out on the peacock covered beaches of Lokrum – and the worries of the modern world simply slip away.


But therein lies the irony. Dubrovnik’s modern history is anything but peaceful. Despite joining the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites and demilitarizing itself in the 70’s, the city was besieged by Serb-Montenegrin forces, for seven months, during the Croatian War of Independence. Damaging 56% of Dubrovnik’s buildings the war left the city and its residents utterly transformed.

Every guidebook will warn you against discussing the war with locals. And this is completely understandable; the history is so recent. It only took me one slip up to realize this. During a friendly morning chat with a waiter I asked about an abandoned hotel overlooking the water just outside the city that I’d spied en route to Lokrum. He admitted that it had closed during the war, sustained structural damage and was never reopened. He then politely shut down the conversation.

What’s odd however, is the minute you turn your head away from the ‘stars’ (the marks shells have left on the massive stones lining the street that you might at first attribute to age), and face the water, you’re right back in paradise. And it’s a paradise loved by those who call it home. Most of the post-war repairs were made possible through the private donations of Croatians living overseas. Their motivation: merely seeing the city returned to its former glory. History, beauty and passionate nationals – this is a destination like no other.


Liz Schaffer – Photos Liz Schaffer & Angela Terrell

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02/11/2012

Rosarito Beach: A One Night Stand

Rosarito Beach: A One Night Stand

You have to visit San Diego at least once in your life. A lot of people who visit California can’t resist the charm of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco, maybe thinking that down there – between the south-western projections of the rocky views of the States, where huge pick-ups zip along highways almost as large as soccer fields – the American Dream is less visible. Surely, San Diego doesn’t possess the arrogance of Los Angeles and the hip style of San Francisco, but to the eager tourists hunting the Californian landscapes this city will offer beaches crowded with surfers, lovely shops on the seaside and a perfect climate all year long. And it is exactly in this American portrait, shining like a line of fire, that you will discover also another feature: The border of Mexico.

Within a few miles you can pass from the glitzy luxury of La Jolla, the seaside resort in the North of San Diego, 40 miles away from Orange County, to the provocateur transgression of Tijuana. Landscape changes like by a curse: big colonial houses turn into hovels and Cadillacs into wrecked cars. Big supermarkets, little by little, become family owned businesses. Beyond border – the most crossed one in the whole world – groups of young people looking for fun make a rush for old taxicabs, anxious to get to the party. Tijuana, described by Manu Chao as the city of tequila, sexo y marihuana is not the only destination for the tourists and Californians. Rosarito Beach, one hour drive from San Diego, is commonly less known, but competes with Tijuana for the wand of Mexican Mecca of transgression.


In summertime, nights in Rosarito Beach are long and sweltering. Groups move from one disco to another, while on the streets some people seem like coming out from a Tarantino movie, offering discount entries to clubs. Liquor stores are filled up with young boys and girls. Music gets louder on the dancefloor and the night starts burning to the sound of commercial rap and the screams of the party people. When the dawn glisters in the horizon, walking between boxes in which some homeless and foundlings live, the people of the night come back, moving towards the customs. Under the rising sun, between turnstiles and gates, caravans of dazed young boys and girls are heading for home, leaving Mexico after the one night stand of fun.


Antonio Leggieri – Photos from Javier Velazquez, Miles Gehm, Kris Robinson, Nick Hall, Nick Chill.

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18/10/2012

Autumn in Middle-Earth

Autumn in Middle-Earth

If you see its red roofs, Bologna seems like a burning city. If you want, you can imagine it as Middle-Earth: caught between the North and the South of Italy, eternally hung in the balance between rebellion and stillness, crossroads of diversities that menace its genetic indolence: but it’s exactly these diversities that create an everlasting equilibrium. Here you’ll find the oldest academic institution of the western world and beautiful arcaded streets. Near the secret gardens of middle class houses you’ll find crumbling hovels inhabited by several generations of students, as well as abandoned buildings chosen as a residence by gutter punks; the metropolitan vagabonds.

In Via Zamboni, where the students spend almost more time than in their apartments, you see pinned up posters that sing hymns to urban rebellion. The smell of mariijuana is a constant, as the smog in Rome and tacos in Mexico City. Students argue about last revolutions and tomorrow’s exams. In these days, many of them walk around with reflex cameras in their hands: in autumn, Bologna shows the turists and inhabitants its best dress.

If you decide to visit this beautiful city, keep a simple tour plan and move around by foot; it’s the only true way to enjoy the smells and colours of the town. After a must visit in the old town centre, move from Piazza Maggiore to Via del Pratello, “the street of slaves and prostitutes, terrified by change” as the Italian musician Emidio Clementi sings. Go back and take Strada Maggiore or Santo Stefano street, they will lead you to the Margherita Gardens, the main urban park of the city. Here you can taste a real peace of what autumn in Bologna is. For those who love to walk, we recommend wearing the comfortable shoes for an outdoor trip to the hills of Bologna to search inspiration from the lovely hillside villages, and to have a look over the whole city. Another must-see destination especially for those who have a car is the Madonna del Faggio Sanctuary in Castelluccio, 40 miles far from Bologna: here you will find sceneries worthy of a William Turner painting.


Antonio Leggieri – Photos Marina Posillipo, Marco Albertini

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