Waylaid by a Volcano

I had hoped, nay, expected to be wrapping up my Sunday evening recounting stories of the world’s longest and second largest fjord, Sognefjord, of one of the planet’s most scenic train rides traveling across Sweden from the capital to the fjord town of Bergen, perhaps of even catching some northern lights as they’d been out lately. I’d rather tell you about Frogner Park and the Vigeland sculpture garden therein. Perhaps I might even report back to you about my opinion on Norwegian cuisine. Sadly, with impeccable timing, Eyjafjallajokull, an Icelandic volcano which had been inactive since 1823 (excepting some minor activity last month) covered northern Europe with enough volcanic ash to render air travel unsafe, so no flights were taking off from Paris this weekend. My trip to Oslo will have to be rescheduled.

At the least, being stranded in Paris isn’t a terrible place to find oneself. Esteban and I spent two invigorating days of my four-day vacation weekend trying to board a plane before ultimately accepting our fate. We embraced my hometown at last on Saturday, first making it to an Ethiopian restaurant before we planned to visit the special Munch exposition. Our dose of Norwegian culture for the weekend-- Edvard Munch was Norway’s most prolific and world-renowned artist, known most especially for his work The Scream-- when I discovered, post-meal, that I’d forgotten my wallet. Valentin, touring Montmartre nearby, managed to save Esteban an afternoon of sitting alone in a restaurant while I attempted a cross-city sprint through a completely jammed Paris metro system. We did, fortunately, manage to sweeten our afternoon with a stop at a remarkably delicious boulangerie in the Ninth Arrondissement before concluding the day with Valentin and his younger brother Rafael. We shared drinks at the Bistrot Chat Noir, which apparently serves a delicious Irish Coffee-- good call, Valentin-- and then returned to the Fourteenth, where I live, for couscous and an American initiation of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with rootbeer for Rafael. I’m proud to report I’ve found my first continental European who actually enjoyed the beverage.

On Sunday, Esteban and I did successfully make it to the Munch Exposition, albeit late after an evening of my own American rite of passage: my first viewing of Indiana Jones. The Munch exposition in Paris featured exclusively private works on loan. By contrast, half of Munch’s works are public as he bequeathed them to the city of Oslo upon his death. Munch lived a long an productive life as an artist. During the years, he experimented with various forms of impressionism, lithography, and sketch. (In theory he also worked with photography, according to the exhibit, though he seemed to have done little in this field.) Unlike many artists, Munch lived to see his work succeed. In fact, though his personal life was less satisfying, he was considered fairly scandalous and thus, amongst the art community, successful from early in his life. He spent fair amounts of time in Paris and Berlin as well as some time studying in Italy, though he never lost touch with his roots and ultimately returned to Norway to settle. Having seen much suffering in his family between the untimely deaths to illness of his mother, sister, and brother, and then the subsequent severe depression and ultimate violent death of his father, he decided that he had no wish to pass on such misfortune to a family of his own. There was one significant woman in his life, Tulla Larsen, with whom marriage became a serious possibility around the turn of the 1900s. In an ultimate dramatic break-up involving a revolver, he actually lost a finger on his left hand, serving as a constant reminder of the traumatic ending of this relationship. Throughout his life, love, suffering, and the constant nearness of death were regular themes. Even as he ultimately became a recluse in his later years, he never lost his interest in the illustration and exploration of romantic relations. He was particularly interested by human emotion and, at times when he was not focused as much on lithography, the power of color to not only illustrate but to carry a life of their own, an idea shared with his contemporaries Matisse and Derain. At the end of his life, Munch was more regularly commissioned to paint public buildings and portraits. He was known, and rightfully so, for his skill in capturing with beautiful simplicity of style the personality and individuality of his models. The exposition was very nicely laid out in chronological order, breaking rooms up into different periods of Munch’s life. What I found most interesting was the chance to follow Munch evolution in style, and to note how he newly approached certain recurring themes at different stages in his evolution as an artist. The exposition’s name was l’Anti-Cri, the Anti-Scream, with an aim of illustrating Munch as more than just a one-hit-wonder of an artist who produced The Scream. It was quite remarkable to see his breadth of style and skill sets honed over a lifetime.

In a grand tour of Paris, we then managed to visit le Marais, where we ate falafel from l’As du Falafel and braved the Sunday afternoon crowds. (The neighborhood is famously busy on Sunday as the Jewish store owners observe a Saturday sabbath.) From here we passed through the Ile Saint-Louis to get some ice cream from the famous Berthillon store itself. I at long last had my much anticipated pamplemousse rose, pink grapefruit, with a scoop of coconut as well, and found myself satisfied, even after having had the great fortune of seven months of Italian gelato. We swung past Notre Dame and then headed south, braving the outer reaches of Paris and beyond to tour my little town of Malakoff just beyond the Fifteenth where I’ll be moving at the end of May. It was a real pleasure to get to show off my new house and neighborhood, even if it wasn’t a tour of Oslo nor the fjords.