Slightly surreal Sunday
by prudence on 13-Dec-2010
It began with one of our favourite little strolls -- along Port Phillip Bay to St Kilda. Gloomy day. Trying to rain.
Some kind of triathlon event meant the seaside road was closed to traffic. But there was no sign of the event either -- just regularly posted marshals making sure cars did not breach the barriers.
So we had a totally traffic-free walk -- taking in views of the bay and the shipping, passing judgement on the qualities of the seafront properties, and enjoying the QUIET.
Way back in the 90s, we once enjoyed a wonderful Sunday-morning walk in Paris, with the big motorways that gird the Seine blissfully shut to traffic, and the centre of the city temporarily gifted to the pedestrian. Cities should do this regularly.
We had coffee and plum cake at Monarch Cakes, our favourite Acland Street baked goods emporium. It's always a wonderfully quirky environment, with old photos of its incarnation as the "Monaco" cafe, copies of Homes and Gardens back to the 70s, a "Wet Concrete" sign behind the shelving, and an entire phalanx of large tins of plums. But today we also had a Chinese camera crew in attendance, blocking up the small premises as they tenaciously sniffed out the best angles on all the cakes. You wonder what line they'll be taking on the reportage.
Then we went to the Jewish Museum. The security is discreet but distinctly observable. The exhibitions (on the history and religious observance of the Jews, and on their community in Australia) are attractively set out.
But most poignant was their exhibition on Theresienstadt. This Nazi institition was a cross between a ghetto, a labour camp and a transit area for the floods of humanity en route to the "real" concentration camps. Theresienstadt also fulfilled a propaganda function, its horrific conditions hidden behind its spa-like reputation. Incredibly, it was a home of the arts. And its surreal qualities reached their apogy with the elaborate hoax set up for the Red Cross visit in June 1944.
An unusual Sunday, where nothing was quite its normal self.
Some kind of triathlon event meant the seaside road was closed to traffic. But there was no sign of the event either -- just regularly posted marshals making sure cars did not breach the barriers.
So we had a totally traffic-free walk -- taking in views of the bay and the shipping, passing judgement on the qualities of the seafront properties, and enjoying the QUIET.
Way back in the 90s, we once enjoyed a wonderful Sunday-morning walk in Paris, with the big motorways that gird the Seine blissfully shut to traffic, and the centre of the city temporarily gifted to the pedestrian. Cities should do this regularly.
We had coffee and plum cake at Monarch Cakes, our favourite Acland Street baked goods emporium. It's always a wonderfully quirky environment, with old photos of its incarnation as the "Monaco" cafe, copies of Homes and Gardens back to the 70s, a "Wet Concrete" sign behind the shelving, and an entire phalanx of large tins of plums. But today we also had a Chinese camera crew in attendance, blocking up the small premises as they tenaciously sniffed out the best angles on all the cakes. You wonder what line they'll be taking on the reportage.
Then we went to the Jewish Museum. The security is discreet but distinctly observable. The exhibitions (on the history and religious observance of the Jews, and on their community in Australia) are attractively set out.
But most poignant was their exhibition on Theresienstadt. This Nazi institition was a cross between a ghetto, a labour camp and a transit area for the floods of humanity en route to the "real" concentration camps. Theresienstadt also fulfilled a propaganda function, its horrific conditions hidden behind its spa-like reputation. Incredibly, it was a home of the arts. And its surreal qualities reached their apogy with the elaborate hoax set up for the Red Cross visit in June 1944.
An unusual Sunday, where nothing was quite its normal self.