S Elmo

After the last session our bus crawled through traffic back to Naples.  Three of us hatched a quick plan to go to one of the city's hilltops.  We jumped off the bus, made our way to the funicular -- the cable car that runs up the hill through a tunnel--and then walked to Sain Elmo where the sun was just going down.

S Elmo (13 century)

View of city &  Vesuvius from S Elmo 

Funicular station-- last stop at the top. 

Then we went back down and had dinner at this charming restaurant, Trattoria di Fernando.  I had linguine with octopus and cuttlefish, and Neapolitan meatballs.  Pretty good but over salted.  I must say that the food I had here though quite good was not spectacular either. And, weirdly, there was nary a vegetable to be had here.  All pasta, pizza, cheese (ie carbs and fat).  One wonders whether the population suffers from scurvy...  Best food--fresh ricotta and baba au rhum.  And LOL, I spied guests in a Caserta restaurant eating pizza with knife and fork.  

Reggia di Caserta

A small group from the conference went to see the royal palace during the lunch break on Thursday. King Charles VII the first Bourbon king of Naples built it in the mid-18 century, modeling it after Versailles. (And as with many imitators he made it bigger.) Two of us rented bikes and rode from the palace to the waterfall and back. No time to see interior of palace.

P

Web photo but you can see distance to waterfall 

Napoli-- Citta in movimiento

Naples, Italy.  I was invited to deliver a keynote to a conference, People on the move--culture, rights and geopolitics--organized by Univ of Naples and sponsored by local Forum on Culture and city of Caserta.  The hotel is right on the seaside promenade;  across the bay is Vesuvius looking gorgeously purple at dusk.   Directly opposite the hotel is a 14-c fortress, an old fishing village which now has restaurants and a marina.

The conference is a weeklong affair and I've already missed several days of "dialogue", cultural performance and poetry. The proceedings are held in Caserta, a town about 40 minutes outside of Naples, where the royal palace (mid-18c) is built.  It is also

 the place where the Camorra, the Naples mafia, was born and apparently still controls much around here.  We are convening at the Belvedere di San Luecio, which the king built as a  hunting lodge and then converted to into the royal silk manufactory.  

Belvedere di S Leucio

This afternoon was a panel of writers speaking on exile-- Ahmed Farah Ali "Idaajaa" (Somali-Italy-Syria-Netherlands-Kenya); Romesh Gunesekera (Sri Lanka-London); Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia-Netherlands); Eva Hoffman (Poland-Canada-NY-London). In the evening there was a reading held in the town theater, with authors reading (in English, Somali, Croatian) with Italian subtitles, with Neapolitan musical interludes.  Idaajaa read from the poems he's been transcribing from oral interviews with Somali people (I believe he's collected 10,000).  Hoffman read from a piece on her deep burial of her native Polish when she learned and sought to master English. It was rather cerebral yet it made me weep

Palais de la Porte d'Orée

A visit to the Palais de la Porte D'Orée (Palace of the Golden Door), where the national immigration history museum is housed.  It was originally built for the 1931 Colonial Exposition, which showed the glories (sic) of the French empire.  The palace has over 250 figures sculpted on the exterior, showing all the colonies and the products they produced. Inside the walls are covered with murals.   The building houses both the immigration museum and an aquarium.  See link at left for more.

The permanent exhibit of the immigration museum documents immigration to France from the 19 century to the present. There is a special exhibit going on now, on the immigration story as told through comic books.  The artist-writers are generally immigrants themselves. There are historical examples (eg the Katzenjammer Kids) but mostly they are contemporary and French.

My grandfather's thesis, part 2

I met Patrick today to return my grandfather's thesis, which I had scanned.  We met at Cafe de Flore on Blvd. Saint Germain. (We sat upstairs where there are leather banquettes and old wood tables. This is the quiet part of the cafe, and it is actually up here where Jean Paul Sartre wrote... not downstairs where it's "see and be seen"). Anyway P. had the idea that there might be a copy of the thesis in the U.S., since the University of Paris published its doctoral theses in those days and they were therefore considered books.  Reprising an earlier moment, he took out his iPad and  checked worldcat (global library database).  Et voilá -- it's in the Columbia Law School Library!  We nearly fell out of our chairs laughing.There are actually copies in 23 libraries worldwide, but Columbia is the first to appear.  It's also been digitized and can be viewed on the Hathi-Trust website -- go to http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.35112104929205

Sciences Po

Just in case you thought I wasn't working here...

Above is Rue Jacob in the 6th, CERI (Center for Studies and International Research) is on right, in an old lithographers building.  They gave me an office on the top floor.  To the left, Hotel Danube (where JGN and I stayed for a few nights when we first arrived). Spent quite some time at corner cafe too.

Below is another one of Sciences Po's many buildings in this neighborhood, where my class is held.

The class is held on video conference -- this is the Paris conference room, with the Columbia class on the left screen (and we see ourselves on the right screen).  My counterpart from Sciences Po is in Columbia class. The technology is fantastic and there's a lot of interest in it among both our faculties.

From the public lecture I gave on immigration history and policy -- Latino electoral power!

Food miscellany, part 2

Also recommended!  Le 404 in the upper Marais, a Moroccan restaurant with amazing cous cous,  Also in the Marais, on Rue de Rosiers, the old Jewish district, Chez Marianne, one of several Israeli restaurants on the street.  I think L'as Falafel (a few doors down) is better for the falafel sandwich, but Marianne's has a nicer interior and has great combination plates (falafel, hummus, eggplant, kefka, tabouli, etc etc).  The Israeli falafel are much smaller than what we are used to in the US (the size of a Swedish meatball), which give them greater crunch to filling ratio.

Le 404

Chez Marianne

 Le Petit Zinc (Saint Germain des Pres) has art nouveau interior and great food.  I had grilled marlin fillet served on baby carrots and a delicate sauce and an arugula-warm goat cheese salad, which came with the cheese baked on a puffed pastry tart. (Like so many things here, it's all about the sauce and the pastry!)  ...   Les Botanistes is a lovely bistro. Had grilled wild dorade and an amazing mille-feuille (napoleon) pastry with mushroom and fois grois. (7th, near Le Bon Marche dept. store; speaking of which, check out the grand epicierie--international food market--there).

Le Petit Zinc

Les Botanistes