A Riot Of Color On The Welsh Shore

Traeth Mawr means "Big Sands" in Welsh; it's the name given to the wide estuary between Portmadog and a blank hillside of trees and rock.  Or, a mostly blank hillside.
Portmeirion is a fabricated, storybook "village" that is unlike anything else we've seen.  It is literally a patch of Italian baroque set down in Wales, like a spill of paint on a concrete slab.  Nobody knew how to explain it to us, and I'm not sure I can explain it here.  Imagine two postcards set side by side; the first is of wintry Britain, the second is of summery Portofino.  Portmeirion is like two distant vacations, remembered in a dream, thrown together and piled atop itself on the rocks.  Some people actually live here.  The rest of us pay an entrance fee and walk around, bemused and surprised.

The emblem of Portmeirion is a naked woman, calf-deep in waves, a hint of mermaid tail rising behind her.  When we walked those rocky shores, it was hard to imagine swimming or sunbathing.  The beaches of North Wales are empty expanses of sand and rock; the sounds of gulls and waves only made the loneliness more vast.  November there is a time of frosted fields and rattling, leaf-bare forests.  The fish and chip shops are closed for the season, the ice-cream stands boarded up.  This isn't a season when the rough coast - barnacled rock, concrete wharf, frozen sand - could seem hospitable to bare flesh.
But the pale citizens of this grassy land do emerge in the summers to venture into cold waves and lie in tepid sunshine.  North Wales, like the whole of North Europe, is home to hardy people who tire of winter. People are always drawn to the sea, aren't they?

A man named Sir Clough Williams-Ellis built this place in the half century between 1925 and 1975, using Italian seaside villages as a model, and bits of other buildings as his material.  Many of the architectural pieces already existed, and were moved and reassembled at Portmeirion.  Ornate clock towers jostle against wrought-iron porticos. Hard angles take surprising turns, statues peer from unexpected windows. The whole thing has a postmodern, collage-like air of disorder and order.  It feels a little like a town made from children's toys, where disparate parts are thrown together in a pile and expected to play out a fantasy.
Though some of the buildings are semi-inhabited (there are "private" signs everywhere, so that we tramping tourists don't stumble into an actual Welsh living room), the majority of the structures really serve their own purpose.  William-Ellis was building a piece of art, not planned-housing in the mold of Le Corbusier.  Room is needed for a cafeteria, of course, and for souvenir shops and ice cream, a hotel and restaurant.  Tens of thousands of people visit Portmeirion every year.  It might as well be a called a museum.

The small touches are some of the most poignant.  Little copper fixtures, wooden statues of sea-captains, painted rocks, a sermonizing Jesus on a balcony.  The town isn't actually town-sized, but the few acres of buildings are so intricate that they feel like a much bigger place.
While William-Ellis used Italy as a rough template, the buildings and architectural features are from every corner of the globe. A colonnade from Bristol, England, is set against statues from Myanmar and Greek gods.  It's meant to be surprising and confusing, and some of it isn't even real - one whole facade is done completely in trompe-l'œil.  If there is one commonality, it's the influence of the sea on all these surfaces.  Everything is salt-touched and vaguely nautical.

I remember wondering, in the November darkness of two years ago, how the cold Lithuanian coast could ever attract hollidaymakers and sun seekers.  Cold light, beach-walkers in parkas, the threat of overnight snow.  We turn towards the sea for half the year, and away from it the rest of the time.
Something that remains is the smell of the ocean, especially in the still waters of the Big Sands.  That odor of kelp, salt and something indescribable emanating from the deep - it's the same all year.
Portmeirion was originally called "Aber Iâ," which Williams-Ellis took to mean "frozen mouth."  He changed the name to make it seem more pleasant, but he couldn't erase the actual image of a cold estuary.  As colorful and tropical as the village is, it will always look out over a big slick of Welsh, northern sand.  It's beautiful, but it could never be confused with Le Marche.

Near the estuary, on a rocky hillock, the Portmeirion "lighthouse" stands duty over nothingness.  The tiny, metal figure in the scrub is something like a playhouse feature - we ducked inside and peered out through the empty porthole. It's only about ten or twelve feet tall, and doesn't have a light (as far as we could tell).  The design suggests moorish rocketship more than naval signal.  The view from inside is empty except for glistening sand, reeds, wheeling birds.  Maybe it's the sea that projects to this lighthouse, not the other way around.

If I haven't really explained this place, forgive me.  Portmeirion isn't so much a defined space as it is a funny concept.  It isn't the right season, or the right texture, or the right temperature, color or height - not just for Wales, but for anywhere. In a children's book, the zaniness might make better sense.  In a architectural textbook, the ideas might be better ordered.  On a rock beside the water, it's just a pile of buildings.  Which is to say, it's fun.  It made us laugh, which is something a town usually doesn't.  It made us want to open every door we could find.

The Mecca of Irish Trad

The eaves are arched, the windows stained-glass, the music spills out over the congregation from a balconied stage.  The allusions to church architecture inside The Quays in Galway are obvious.  Like a cathedral, there are aisles and corridors, rooms off to the sides, doorways that lead to spaces for quieter reflection.  The main altar was a long, two bartender bar.  The shorter bar near the doorway, presided over by an older man in less of a rush, was the confessional.  We sat at a table for a meal and two pints.   Boiled bacon, cold cod mash, a beer and a cider.  "Is there live music tonight?"  A tall young American asked the front room bartender who gave a look that read 'of course' and simply said, "you'd better go back there if you want a good place for it."  We followed the overheard advice and resettled ourselves in the main space which proceeded to fill up around us.  It was heaving by the time Prospect Hill began their set.

Every night of the week, you can count on live traditional music at at least a handful of Galway's pubs. The Crane, on the West bank of the river, away from the concentration of central pubs, promises nightly live music in their upstairs bar. We sat at stools downstairs, across from an inebriated old man who was passionately schooling a young stranger about politics. We figured, when we saw people walk in with instruments, we'd know to follow them upstairs. One after another, customers came in.  Cold hands deep in their pockets, they would approach the bar and ask for a Guinness before the door had closed completely behind them. We drank and waited and then suddenly, a lively reel broke through the room. The corner booth's coffee drinkers had gone into superman's phone booth and transformed into a superband without even standing up.  The crowd continued to talk, but were sure to clap and hoot at the end of each set of reels.  A round of applause, the next round of drinks.

During the day, music fills the streets.  Buskers are planted around each corner with open guitar cases sparsely covered in a confetti of coins.  They close up and move under an awning during the bouts of rain, having a coffee, staying dry. Then, they're right back out again in their spot. Or a new one.  Their routines were anything but monotonous. The day after we saw the "MacNamaras Band" (above), Santa had ditched his accordion, Elvis and the O'Bamas, and picked up an electric banjo and amp in another spot. You'd see a guitarist alone one day and with a group of guys another, like the streets were filled with a single band that disassembled and reassembled at their whim. One big jam session.

"Trad," as traditional music is colloquially called, is the pervading sound of Galway.  Street musicians may blend it with acoustic pop or soft rock, but the roots are unmistakable.  The young members of Prospect Hill's set gave us an hour long primer in Irish trad, and hooked us in to searching out more. The vocalist put down her banjo for a sean-nós ('in the old style') song, sung in a high Irish-language chant style. When they threw in a more contemporary sounding folk tune, the lyrics were a lamentation in the tradition of caoineadh songs of sorrow. Of course, traditional Irish music has always been made for dancing and the reels were the main focus of the night. Reels are fast-paced tunes in the vein of a jig or polka or waltz, a repetition of measures with a set meter.   In tow were the Reel Masters, a step-dancing duo who brought down the house, jumping over brooms, stomping and twirling along to the banjo, accordion, mandolin, guitar and bodhrán (a traditional Irish drum).

Live music in Galway has a specific feel to it, a dynamic between musician and audience that doesn't really match up with anything I've experienced before.   It's more fluid, like out from any crowd can emerge a musician who, after his or her set, blends right back in with a Guinness in hand. Sometimes, a scheduled set would start without us knowing immediately where the string-plucking was coming from.  Then, in the corner we'd spot a duo whose hands worked feverishly across strings.  Sometimes the crowd would quiet down, stand at attention, clap afterwards.   Other times, the din would only get louder as voices struggled to be heard over the tunes.  We could never really tell which way things would go, but everyone else knew whatever the local code was.

If the musicians indoors competed with conversation, the ones outdoors had a tougher opponent. Rain. The street musicians are as much a part of the outdoor atmosphere as the infamous Galway rain and the two forces often jostled for attention, taking turns silencing each other. Or maybe just giving each other a rest. A short, heavy rainfall acted as a curtain and the performers would pack up and hurry offstage (and into a pub or under or awning). Then, the curtain would rise again and the sun would cast its spotlight on the performance once more.  Showtime.

In Galway, live music is a centerpiece and a soundtrack. In the forefront or in the background, it is always around. No one complains when a soccer match is turned off because a set is about to begin. Guitar cases are strung across backs at the rate of messenger bags. That woman sitting next to you with a tea or that man whose had a few too many Smithwicks may be the headliner. On Halloween night, two bouncers stood outside The King's Head and college kids piled through the door in droves. Inside, a man in a turtleneck played pop/rock under neon lights. It was far from traditional folk music, but it also wasn't the DJ set I'd expected by looking at the crowd. Maybe if it had been trad, the act would have had an easier time getting people's attentions. Maybe not.

A compilation video of some of the trad sessions we enjoyed in Galway - with a conclusion that would make Michael Flatley sweat.

A Collection of Collections

Pieces of the only surviving gown belonging to Marie Antoinette.  A u-boat reconnaissance helicopter. Four hedgerow mazes. A museum dedicated to old groceries.  Another museum of Falck rescue vehicles, another of dolls, a barn of old farm equipment, more than a hundred motorcycles, planes, Parisian dresses, American cars, African shields, scent gardens, comic strips, folding campers, novelty bicycles, rare stamps, Japanese lanterns, chicken coops, treetop walkways, license plates, hotdog stands, cursed figures, impala heads... even Dracula's crypt!  It's all at Egeskov Slot, one of the most interesting and strange places we've ever walked around.  Containing no less than eight on-site museums, this is a castle experience that only just begins with bricks and arrow slits.

Egeskov castle lies at the end of a long, treelined allé in the flat countryside of Funen Island.  It's an interesting structure (billed as "Europe's best preserved renaissance water castle") that we'd come to for a castle-hunting post.  The sky was grey, though, and the light was too flat for good pictures. Funen - sometime's called "Denmark's larder" - is a low, central isle covered in beet fields and dotted with beef cows.  We passed thatched roofs and half-timbered houses on our way to the castle, all cloaked with fog and buffeted by the damp sea-wind.
If the weather was disappointing, what we found wasn't.  Let's put it this way: we arrived at Egeskov a few minutes before the gates opened at 10:00.  We left at three-thirty, half an hour before closing.  And there was still more to see.  Here, a remote-controlled, steam-powered toy boat splashes and puffs its way around the castle lake.  It let out intermittent whistles and made a delightfully self-important gurgling, chugging sound.

The name Egeskov means "oak forest," which refers to the one thousand oak pilings that the castle is built on.  Originally constructed in 1554, the fortifications are actually on the surface of the water - surprisingly, it hasn't sunk much in the centuries since.  The sight is staggering even in dim conditions - it's the kind of place one assumes couldn't really exist.*
The castle's biggest enthusiast, probably, is the current owner and inhabitant, Count Michael Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille.  He appears on the castle website, in the brochures and in several on-site videos.  His exploits are told and retold on different info-boards: he rescued an ancient Harley Davidson from a recluse's garage, he built the world's biggest maze, he "thoroughly explored" the castle moat (Michael's a "keen diver") and dredged up old plates and canons.  We laughed when we read this bit of pomp on the official website: "Legend has it that, in the mid 1960s, a boy was born to the name Michael Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille. Today he is the Count at Egeskov and lives in Egeskov itself."

*Not only does it exist - there are TWO Egeskov's.  A one-to-one replica was built as part of the Hokkaido Aquarium, in Japan, which is truly bizarre.  

We laughed again when we read about the count's very own suit of armor (the same one he wears on the website).  An information board tells how having the armor made fulfilled "a childhood dream" for the count.  Supposedly, it's an exact replica of the suit worn by a distant ancestor, Frands Brockenhuus - we're betting that old Frands also had a taste for the dramatic, because the piece was absolutely festooned with weaponry and covered in gold details.
Egeskov - the building - is packed to the rafters with bits and pieces from several lifetimes of collecting. The bottom floor is given over, in large part, to hunting trophies from the current count's grandfather.  Under the eaves is a strange array of windup toys and an impressive model train.  There's victorian cookware, furniture from the court of Louis XVI, old paintings, several pianos, aspic molds, rare books, metal chests, family trees and louche knick-knacks. The staff does an admirable job of dusting, but the place still feels a bit like an overcrowded antiques shop.

Fittingly, the prize attraction at Egeskov is another overstuffed house... this time in miniature.  Titania's palace is advertised as "probably the most fairytale dolls' house in the world," which is actually a bit of an understatement.  Dreamed up and built by the Englishman Sir Nevile Wilkinson for his daughter, Gwendolyn, the palace is crammed with minuscule artifacts collected over fifteen years.  The world's smallest working church organ, for example, and several dozen rare, coin-sized books.  In all, there are over three thousand pieces in the doll house.  Tiny photographs, little snowshoes, mahogany furniture, bathtubs, teddybears the size of ladybugs, porcelain figurines and potted plants fill the 18 rooms.  The decorative style is pure victorian overstuff.  It draws a crowd.

Count Michael's parents had already opened up the family home to paying visitors in the 1980's, and one has to assume that the 200,000 annual visitors are let in to pay for upkeep - it's not a cheap ticket, castles (especially ones built on the water) are expensive to maintain.  We couldn't help but wonder, though, if our host didn't relish the attention.
For all his boasting, Michael has made his home really fun.  A birdsong walk snakes through the treetops (like a small-scale baumkronenpfad), there are stilts to use, a maze to explore and, of course, Dracula's crypt... which could never be adequately explained.  The exhibits are so diverse that it would be impossible to visit and not find something of interest.  If motorcycles aren't your thing, you might like the French fashion magazine illustrations or the old harvesting machines.

The end of October is a slow time in Denmark.  The country's tourist attractions are winding up their summer hours, the days are getting dark and short, the country roads are nearly deserted.  We toured Egeskov on the last day of autumn break, before all the schoolchildren headed back to their desks and their parents went back to work.  It was Egeskov's last day open until spring.  A few special exhibitions were going on - in the Falck museum, some remote-controlled truck devotees were driving and talking about their semis.  In the main barn, where the bulk of the airplanes and cars are kept, a model steam and gas engine show was happening.  Stacks of Popular Mechanic lay on the tables next to working airplane miniatures and chuffing steam cranks.
The cars were an eclectic mix of Detroit (lots of Cadillacs and Fords), Germany (especially Mercedes) and some more exotic brands (Ferrari, Morgan, a schoolbus-sized Rolls Royce, electric one-seaters, Danish bubble cars).  Overhead hung an ultralight and a few small airplanes, a float helicopter sat on the mezzanine, rickshaws and camper vans crowded into the corners.

Such is the breadth of Egeskov's collections that some pretty serious contrasts happen in the spaces where two museums collide.  Troll dolls rub up against bicycles, kitchen pots are hung next to spring-powered monkeys, hunting trophies bristle on the same wall as collectable postage.  There are even little mini-collections that seemingly have no real place, and so are stashed away in some incongruous spot.  In the middle of the motorcycles, for example, we found a display of wooden farm animals.  Here, plastic dolls surround one of half a dozen campers.

What do you do when you inherit a family castle, your parents collections, your grandparents cars, ancestral hedgerows and formal gardens?  It must, in some ways, be tempting to sell the whole thing and walk away from the junk and the cobwebs, the headache of keeping everything dry and upright.  Or, as many European castle owners do, rent the pile out to vacationing oligarchs and live somewhere else. Count Michael seems like a different sort, though. He's not only embraced the chaos, he's added to it - particularly in the motorcycle department.
When we caught the bus back to our seaside rooming house, we wondered what the place is like in the offseason.  Egeskov is technically closed from now until April, but it's still a home.  We pictured the count (and countess, Michael is married) roaming the hallways, dreaming up new exhibits and scarier touches for his crypt, starting up his motorcycles and sitting in the old cars.  We wondered if he skated on the frozen moat or ate dinner in the big feasting hall.  It must feel very empty once all the tourists have left and the staff's gone home.  When you live in a museum, do you prefer to have it full of people or all to yourself?

Muumibuumi!

Somewhere around the end of the second world war, as Finland was finishing up years of fighting against both Russia and Germany (which is another story), a strange little family of trolls emerged from the literary wilderness.  These weren't evil trolls - the kind that might be frightening if you found them in the woods - but something a little softer.  Big nosed, round-bodied, with a striking resemblance to white hippopotamuses, Moomintrolls (Muumi, In Finnish) were cozy creatures that had adventures.  Sixty years later, they've become a national symbol.  On Finnair jets, bottles of soda, tourist office signs, souvenir tchotchkes, dvd covers, school backpacks - anything you could imagine, really - their eyes stare out with that famous blend of balefulness and excitability.  Moomintroll, Sniff, Snufkin, the Snork Maiden, Little My and even the Hemulen are the faces of Finland.  They're also born travelers, and rediscovering them these past weeks has been a thrilling pleasure…

Tove Jansson was an eccentric Helsinki youth in the pre-war years.  Born to a Swedish-speaking family of artists (who had a pet monkey, because monkeys make for exciting beginnings), Jansson studied art and design and gradually gravitated towards cartoons.  The Moomin characters were born from that work - though they weren't recognizable as themselves early on, and didn't really grow up until they were written into book form.  Because, though the images have made them iconic, the prose is what grabs hold of people.  It's hard to imagine writing more bizarre, personable and fun than Jansson's - it's not kid's literature, it's literature that strikes at the heart of adventure.
In the books, Moomintroll and his family float down multiple rivers (once in a theater adrift in a flood), discover caves, ride clouds, live in a lighthouse, go skiing, dive for pearls, walk on stilts, escape from the Groke and generally cavort through a surprising world.  It's fast paced, but somehow mournful too - the inhabitants of these stories are touchingly thoughtful creatures.

The first time we spotted a Moomin (it was Moomintroll himself, on a blanket in an apartment in Norway) I felt a sudden,* nostalgic wave of excitement.  "What's a Moomin?" Rebecca asked, a little non-plussed.  I wasn't quite sure what to tell her.
It's been years since I first read Jansson's books, and - to tell the truth - I'd pretty much forgotten about them.  Actually, more than forgetting them, I'd stashed them away in the peculiar cupboards of memory reserved for strange books.  Moomins (like E. Nesbit's It) don't coincide well with humdrum, everyday life.  It's hard to think of them as something other than a feeling, and that feeling isn't easily categorized.  I'd remembered the word "Moomin," what they looked like, something of their strange aura, but very little of the specifics.
Later, I saw an english language version of "Comet in Moominland" in a bookstore in Helsinki and bought it.  Re-reading it was more fun than I could have expected.  The words were familiar too - turns out, they hadn't been forgotten at all.
*"Sudden" and "suddenly" are Jansson's favorite words, as in "suddenly, he tripped over the silk monkey's tail and opened his eyes."

Shampoo bottles?  Cough drops?  Icky, strawberry-flavored soda? Bandaids?  Why are the poor Muumi shilling for this kind of stuff?  In the past few decades (unbeknownst to me) the Moomins have become so big, so international, that they're the mascot figures for Dalei, one of Japan's largest retailers (apparently, they're really big in Japan) and a thriving product franchise in Finland.  There's even a theme park, in south-west Finland, where visitors can stroll around a kind of recreated Moominvalley.  The characters have just turned 65, and have now sold over one billion dollars of merchandise.
Thankfully, a lot of this craze (known in Finland as the "Muumibuumi," or Moominboom) skipped America.  While a syndicated television show ran in dozens of countries and feature-length films were made, we American readers were spared the schmaltz.

If someone came to Finland right now with no prior knowledge of Jansson's work, they would probably guess that the white creatures were some kind of advertising gimmick - like a Finnish Hello Kitty or Tony the Tiger.  Sadly, Moomins have become so entrenched in the country's psyche that they can seem like nothing more than a collection of images - they remind me (and it's not just the big noses) of Snoopy, who has become a de-voiced, instant-recognition blob on greeting cards.  Maybe if I were Finnish...
Finland is a funny place, stuck in between proper Scandinavia and Russia, with a language all its own and a sense of humor that matches its dark winters.  Something about the Moomintrolls gets at that identity in a way that must resonate with them.  Venturing a guess: the books are about freewheeling, boundaryless escapades - the characters are endearingly wary of the outside world, but also throw themselves into the adventures head and tail.  For hemmed-in, cold-weary Finns, the sense of freedom these books gives must be appealing. So anti-depressive. Really, just so fun!

In Abandoned Factories and Red Barns, a Capital of Culture

Vestfossen Cellulose Paper Factory declared bankruptcy in 1967 and was closed for good by 1973.  The town of Vestfossen was hit hard by the industrial crisis around this time, when petroleum had just been discovered off Norway's coast and was pumped straight into the economy - washing out almost all other industry in its gush.  Vestfossen lost its identity when this and other factories closed... but found a new one when they reopened.  In 2003, Vestfossen Cellulose was rebirthed as Vestfossen Kunstlaboritorium.  Other art spaces soon followed and the small town is now an unlikely art lover's mecca, a cultural capital in the middle of nowhere.

The town's industrial space being turned into art space isn't what's so surprising.  Artists have been drawn to the high ceilings, huge windows and low-to-no rental cost of abandoned factories for decades, all around the world.  It's just so wonderfully random that it happened here.  Approaching Vestfossen, you'd be shocked that it was ever an industrial town.  Idyllic farmland stretches in every direction.  We were surprised to find a real center at all, a main street with two grocery chains, a pub, a restaurant, a caffe and bakery - and posters publicizing the newest exhibitions around town.  Above is an installation piece called "Hay Harvesting Contraption." That's not true.  It's just a rake, but once art is on the mind, it's hard to not see everything as a work of it.

Vestfossen Kunstlaboritorium (Art Laboratory) is currently showing pieces from Jack Helgesen's collection.  A number of his other pieces made up the very first show at the Laboratory in 2003, two years after artist Morten Viskum (best known for replacing olives with newborn rats in jars on grocery store shelves across Norway - the Rat/Olive Project) bought the old factory.  It was a big get for the new museum, as Helgesen's collection brought internationally renowned artists' work to the little village of Vestfossen. Around Norway, the Laboratory is now considered one of the very best spaces for showing contemporary art in the country.  It's really hard to beat a four floor space like this.

When we asked a local how many visitors they get and if they'd ever thought about having a hotel here so that more people would maybe come, she looked at us a little blankly.  Then, she realized what we meant. "It is really more for locals.  To raise the quality of life."  We'd just assumed they'd want more tourism.  Who doesn't?  Well, this is Norway, home of the 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world.  It is one of the world's most expensive countries, but Norwegians earn such high wages that their actual cost of living translates to one of the world's lowest.  They're doing that well.  So, while farming communities in, say, America may bring in a traveling theater group or show some local artist's work on the walls of the post office to bring a sense of culture to their village, Vestfossen's borrows a Roy Lichtenstein. 

In a lot of ways, collector Helgesen's story is very much like Vestfossen's itself.  He was an elevator repair man by trade, who collected art as a passion-driven hobby.  When Norway's petroleum boom began, he found himself with more disposable income than he knew what to do with. "A lot of Norwegians did," the woman at the Art Laboratory told us.  "Villages that were more... the poorer jobs, when we were a colony... all of a sudden, people's quality of life was great."  'Quality of life' is a phrase we've heard used a lot here in Vestfossen.  The fact that they consider art such a vital part of that is what makes the place so special.

Fredfoss Kulturpark opened around the same time as the Kunstlaboritorium.  Formerly Fredfoss Uldvarefabrik - a textile factory - it boomed in the early 20th century, recessed, had a World War II spike in business and then shuttered when all the rest of the factories did.  Its closing left nearly 200 workers unemployed.  It has more than made it up to the community ever since.  The Cultural Center has an art therapy workshop open to anyone who would like to work through mental troubles through art.  It also rents out studio space to nearly a dozen artists in residence.   We visited a woodworker named Lars, who crafts beautiful guitars and custom frames from local wood.  "I prefer Norwegian wood," Lars said.  "It is important to use what you have."

One can only imagine that when these big factories were built they were seen as blights on the scenery.  Sure, job creating piles of brick, but piles of brick blocking out views of the beautiful Vestfosselva river and surrounding countryside nonetheless.  Reusing them, revitalizing the space that they take up, makes the buildings themselves kind of like found art.  "Did the Laboratory start a trend? Did it attract artists to the area and then that's why more sprung up?" Again, the answer we received was humble and matter of fact.  "We just saw that we had these buildings - and we had to do something with them."  Use what you have.

What Joran Tone Gjerde had was a family farm, inherited from her father who housed his animals in this red barn.  "I am not in farming, so I did this,"  she told us, while crouching barefoot next to a television with a live goldfish inside.  We crawled over the knitwear covered floor to meet her.  You see, what Joran has done is turn the big red barn into "Sanselåven," Sense Barn, an interactive art exhibition space that allows children (little ones and big, awkward ones) to explore all their senses.  The current installation was brought over from Denmark - a four room world of whimsy that involves such textural wonders as a ceiling completely covered in open umbrellas and a freezer filled with books.   It was as magical as everything else in Vestfossen. Ripe with imagination, fanciful purpose and the notion that everyone deserves art.

The Art of Filigree

Prizren has been a craft center for centuries, since it stood right at the junction of Ottoman trade routes spanning from East to West and North to South.  Filigree, the art of bending and twisting threads of silver or gold into intricate designs, is one of Prizren's most time-honored traditions.  It's sort of like metallic lace-making.  You look at a piece and think, where does it start and end? How does it stay together?  What the heck is actually going on here?  The flower on the right was purchased at a shop down the street from Hotel Tharanda (it says "Filigran" like all the rest, but look out for the magnificent silver traditional house displayed in the window) from a warm, welcoming man named Faik.  He told me that Madeleine Albright once purchased a brooch there and I pinned it on with a bit of swagger.  "Would you like to see the workshop?" he asked.  Of course! The flower on the left was a gift - made right before our eyes.

There's something so coy about jewelry stores.  How their displays disappear from view after closing, how you have to bend your body in half to look at the pieces down far below your nose, the sterility of it all.  But the work that goes into making all of those delicate little pieces involves flames, chemical reactions, soldering, tools.  It's metal work - an art and a science. To Faik, it is something even more.  "For young men, it is like flying!"  After 30 years, he has since touched down, but still gets giddy talking about it.  On the walk over to the workshop from the store, he explained that his own sons are not interested in filigree "but there is no pressure."  Many other young people are, he assured, but lack of work space allows them to have only one apprentice at a time.  "This is a problem."  It's amazing to think that this traditional artform is in danger of dying out not because of a lack of interest, but a lack of financial support.  That just seems like the easier thing to remedy.. but, of course, funding is never easy.

There are shops all around Prizren selling "filigran," as it is called in Albanian - but not all of it is made in town.  "A lot of it is from Malaysia," Faik explained with no trace of bitterness or sign that this appalled him.  There was a bit of face scrunching and shaking of his head when he said that they do not use the 95% percent silver 5% copper mix that should be required, but then he quickly added, "but it is very, very beautiful."  Part of me thinks that he recognized the existence of the other shops (even if they are inauthentic) as a continued presence of filigree in Prizren. Which is important. Also, that these are far from the greatest changes (or indignities) he's seen over the course of his life in filigree, in Prizren, in Kosovo.   

When Faik first began to work here it was a big filigree factory in the former Yugoslavia.  Silver and gold came in from Serbia and was fashioned into jewelry, cigarette boxes, chalices, model ships, etc by over 100 artisans.  They had the whole building, then, a combined workshop and school dedicated to filigree.  Since privatization, they can only afford to rent a few rooms.   Faik pointed around the room and described what a usual day in the workshop is like, 10 workers (men and women) sitting around the table.  "Music, coffee," he pointed at a stereo and some saucers and smiled broadly.  He could clearly picture the scene in his mind as he was describing it, the family of workers immersed in this unique world of meditative toiling, of blowtorches and paintbrushes doused in borax.  Scorching and bending and pounding and sand-papering the preciousness right out of precious metal... only to make it more so.

Bashkim is the head designer and was working after-hours when we arrived.  They have a deadline on Monday, complex and beautiful candle holders for the Orthodox church in town.  The silver cage like pieces will be cupped around marble candle holders.  Even the chains that it will all hang from are being fitted with small filigree balls and crosses - everything with a specific meaning, the number of crosses, the order of patterns and such.  Bashkim flipped through a folder thick with papers on which he'd drawn the designs for every individual piece.  Lined paper, photographs, typed instructions, carbon paper, it all made sense to this creative mad scientist.  Faik, an engineer, works more exclusively with the chemical processes, elemental mixtures, readying of materials. He's also the manager of the shop and the head salesman.  These two had clearly been working together for decades, exhibiting the funny camaraderie of unlikely lifemates.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, and I'm sorry that I'm not going more into specifics here, filigree entails working with threads of silver.  It is absolutely incredible to watch this being done.  Faik assured us that the workers usually wear protective coveralls and gloves, but looking at Bashkim's fingers and the way he ran his shirt under a faucet after a drop of chemical splashed on (he only noticed at all because Faik gasped and pointed), I would assume he's a little more casual about all that.  We watched as he took a coffee stirrer like piece of metal and a pair of tweezers and began to fold it into 11 equal parts.  Somehow, that became an outline of a flower whose petals were then filled with spiraled clusters of even thinner silver thread.  To make it all stick together, fairy dust (made of silver and copper) was sprinkled on and then the whole thing was soldered together with this incredible torch contraption.

Check this out (Faik can be heard explaining the basic idea in the background). Gas was turned on, he clicked a lighter to ignite the end and then used a tube attached to regulate the power and direction of the flame with his breath.  This happened over and over as a new element was added to the design.  After each soldering, before the piece had yet lost its bright red heat, Bashkim would start working away on it again.  His fingers completely heat insensitive (though he may have tried to prove this point a little too confidently, wincing a little at a few touches).  Faik joked that Bashkim's father is a baker - so it's a family of burn calloused hands.

Just a week ago, before we left Prizren, we'd gone over to the great Ethnographic Museum, which was staging a week long Crafts Festival.  We had arrived on silverworking day and this woman was clearly excited to be interviewed by the evening news.  I wonder if Faik had watched the coverage over dinner and thought, "Why aren't we on the news?"  But probably not - that's not his style. He was probably just happy to see filigree on tv.   Plus, he's busyreadying himself for a trip to Ankara, Turkey to participate in a big craft convention, selling pieces in the store and educating visitors with visits to his workshop.  He wants to preserve this tradition and continue to make his art - along with Bashkim and the rest of his tight-knit group.  He told Merlin and I that if we were to come live in Kosovo for two years, we could get pretty good at it.  They'd just need a bigger table to fit us in.  Here's hoping that happens soon. I can only be optimistic, wearing a brooch made out of silver linings.

The Merry Cemetery

Not this man, but another buried nearby in Săpânţa's cemetery loved his horses.  "One more thing I loved very much, To sit at a table in a bar, Next to someone else's wife,"  his gravestone continues.  The words were not exactly his and who knows if he'd be too happy about them being his epitaph.  They were written by Stan Ioan Pătraş, the artist who created 700 of the unique tombstones that fill what is now dubbed "The Merry Cemetery." Each epitaph is written in first person and is a tribute to the villager it represents. Sure, this might mean betraying a person's taste for O.P.P. or strong liquor, but mostly the words simply convey what that villager did day in and day out.  Every so often, it also describes the circumstances of the person's death.

The art is simplistic, folky and bright.  People mostly look the same, which makes their action in the scene even more of a characterization.  We couldn't read any of the words while we were there, but were completely immersed in looking at the portraits.  Women were most often weaving, farming or cooking - but what instruments they were using alluded to that special dish that they may have been known for. Dough rolled out, carrots chopped or mixing bowl in hand.  Men were represented as the butchers, bartenders, shepherds, policemen and soldiers that they were. Their roles in the community.

A noteworthy number of men are depicted alongside their tractor, truck or car.  This doesn't necessarily mean they were mechanics.  Driving around the village of Săpânţa, even today, the houses don't have driveways.  Vehicles are not simply something everyone has.  What those paintings of the red pick-up or blue two-door are really showing is the pride that their owner had felt.  The accomplishment, the ownership.  As the years on the tombstones move on through the 40s, 60s, 80s, automobiles pop up more and more.  They begin to be depicted not just as part of a legacy or portrait, but also in the 'scene of death' illustrations.  Many of the gravestone have art on both sides.  Life on the front, death on the flipside.

One epitaph, written for a 3-year old, curses that "damn" taxi that "couldn't find somewhere else to stop" and struck her.  The verse is angry and heartbreaking.  Such is the case with accidental deaths caused by reckless driving or alcoholism. You can hear the blame being cast. But what else is an artist to do? Especially when you know these people personally.  When people had a chance to offer input for their own grave, I'm sure they did.  In cases where the deceased had been sick for a long time, there are declarations of gratitude to the caretakers and supporters. 

I feel like each decorated cross turns the person beneath it into a sort of folk legend.  Some are tragic figures, others are comic, most are archetypes, some are heroes. "They're lives were the same, but they want their epitaphs to be different, " Dumitru Pop remarked to the New York Times in 2002.  The Merry Cemetery has become somewhat of an unlikely tourist attraction in a tiny town just miles from the Ukrainian border.  Pop, who has been making the gravestones for almost 40 years at this point, confessed to carrying around a notebook to record juicy Sunday morning gossip.  His mentor, Pătraş, was right about there being no secrets in Săpânţa.

Stan Ioan Pătraş created the tombstones from 1935 until his death in 1977.  Before he passed, of course, he created his own.  It is in the same style most of the rest, double-sided with a portrait on the front and a scene from his life on the back.  The tableau he chose shows him at a work table, creating a tomb marker while a young man plays a violin.  His autobiographical epitaph talks about the "cross he bore," in supporting his family.  It lacks the humor or irony of many of his other verses.  His home, now a small museum, paints a different picture.  His life's work pops off the wall like a celebration.  It hardly feels like a chore, a burden - then again, these were also the instances in which his art didn't need to be consumed by death. 

Newspaper clippings, portraits and - fittingly - post-mortem degrees cover some walls, but really, what you notice is all of the art!  And all of the religious iconography that the Merry Cemetery is noticeably lacking.  Above the bed are portraits he created for Communist Party members.  He had been embraced by them, a local artist who was tied more to folk traditions than Western influence. Nicolae Ceauşescu himself, along with his equally notorious wife, stopped by to have their portraits done.  

Pătraş left his house and workshop to Dumitru Pop, his best apprentice, who continues the tradition to this day.  When we arrived at the small cottage, Pop was working away outside.  The familiarly shaped cross lay on his workbench, painted "Săpânţa blue."  He simply nodded and let us into the home and then sat in the corner as we looked around.  I wondered whose cross we'd taken him away from his work on.  Was he close with them?  Were they already dead?  Will he create his own marker like his teacher had - and, if so, what will it say?

Calling it "Merry Cemetery" may be a little misleading.  A signpost that translates it to "Happy Cemetery" in town is even more so.  Some paintings show obviously dejected people, some tributes are downright morose.  That's what makes the place so incredibly captivating - it is 'merry' only in its lack of soberness.  "Lively" would be a better word, I think.  Just like each person's life, these wooden crosses are unique and personalized, but also undeniably connected.  Dripping with local color, in many ways they are indistinguishable from one another.   The Merry Cemetery feels like its own little village within a village, with secret or mundane or too-short lives under each peaked roof.