19 October 2015
A Great Mystery Solved
Hotel toasters have always been problematic, tending to vast hulking boxes with conveyor-belt delivery permanently blazing away like continuously operating steel mills even when no one's even thought of singed bread for over half an hour. Not only an environmental disaster in miniature, they entirely fail to produce proper toast, typically just warming the bread on the first pass, and then cremating it on the second.
I thought the toaster at a rather marvellous Hotel Bellevue Palace in Bern earlier this year was a big improvement: a fire-engine-red Kitchenaid device of the standard domestic slot arrangement, but which drew in and expelled the toast of its own accord (which a pleasant elevator-like chime) and had subtle controls. Only a little experimentation was needed to get it right.
But finally, here, at the Crown Metropol in Melbourne, someone's found the obvious answer to producing toast just as you like it: Let you see it cooking, and provide a big friendly STOP button to punch if it looks as though things are going too far.
So far perfect toast every morning, which makes for a good start to the day.
Trivial, I know. But that's travel writing for you.
21 June 2015
Cuckoo Clocks
Blogs, it seems, have had their day already (they never really had it at all, with me). It's all about social media and 140 characters or a quick pic and a caption these days.
But I just wanted to remark on the importance of charm in getting through airports. In some countries it's what you say (especially if you're trying a local language), in some it's how you dress, and in others it's what you've bought. At Frankfurt it seems to be the latter.
I was worried at check-in that my carry-on luggage was now too much, as it included two cuckoo clocks. But mentioning that they were cuckoo clocks (Kuckucksuhr) produced smiles. 'Take them on board--the crew will find somewhere to stow them.' Thank you Lufthansa.
While undressing and dismantling for the x-ray I was asked, 'What's in those boxes?' 'Kuckucksuhren.' All smiles.
At the other side I waited some time for the boxes to come through, but I could hear the staff joking about it with each other and see them looking at the screens. 'Don't they have cuckoo clocks in Canada?'
But I was selected for a random test and marched off with one of my boxes while they checked for any trace of explosives. 'Kuckucksuhren,' I said. Everyone smiled, and the test was over in moments.
25 June 2012
Old China Hands
It occurred to me that this is the ultimate in Old China Handism—a state of mind in which a short residence in the country is thought sufficient to pose as an authority on any aspect of life there to anyone who hasn't been in the country quite as long, who is just visiting, or who sits at home ready to be impressed that a foreigner can manage life somewhere believed to be quite so alien, and who will believe anything they're told. Little do they know how much of this knowledge is entirely hearsay, concocted by people who have little contact with the culture and who know nothing of the language, but repeated in expat bar and club until it gains the force of truth. All too many conversations are one-upmanship beginning with a cautious 'How long have you been here?' and ending with a claim to victory based on sly implication that the opponent simply doesn't understand China as profoundly as the speaker.
Once such people often published books, but these days they strut about on-line providing wildly inaccurate information about shopping and the 'right' price for a taxi to the Great Wall, attempting to suppress dissent by sheer weight of numbers, and by mentioning just how long they've lived (their heavily air-conditioned, 'hardship' posting, car-and-driver, secure-compound) lives in the country. They claim expertise on the latest pizza restaurant but can say almost nothing about local restaurants save a few which are in sudden vogue due to their supposed accessibility only to those in the know, and mainly used to show off Old China Hand credentials to visitors.
These days, though, the Internet replaces propping up the bar exchanging gossip with other wiseacres. Google search can turn anyone into an Old China Hand, and since there are now more journalists with excellent Mandarin skills, supported by carefully selected intelligent and honest local assistants, and who have a long-term commitment to China journalism and original first-hand research, the quality of Old China Hand pronouncements on Chinese topics beyond prices for fake pearls ought to be improving. But there are, of course, still numbers of journalists who are parachuted in for short periods, who have to rely far too much on assistants who are in the pockets of the authorities, and whose reports only amount to the most flatulent generalisations, often quoting Chinese sources entirely uncritically. And then, of course, there are those English-language Chinese sources whose every figure must be assumed to be false until cross-referenced and triple-checked. The ersatz Old China Hand frequently fails to make these distinctions, although that won't stop him writing puffery in a book review for Amazon, seeking reflected glory, or in this case writing an entire book based on other people's work.
After I'd written the review I allowed myself to look at what else has been said about the title, and was not surprised to find that the former Observer and South China Morning Post editor had been able to wangle lavish praise in print from former colleagues and contacts, including some who really should have known better, and who in some cases have now dropped significantly in my estimation (not that I expect that to lose them any sleep).
But it's not as if any knowledge of China is necessary to see that this book is tosh. It merely throws every argument and tidbit of information that can be found at one side of an argument (only providing sources for a very few), and then similarly throws every argument and distantly related fact it can find at the other. It entirely fails to assess the quality of the figures it (mostly unattributably) quotes, fails to plump for one side or the other, or to provide any meaningful interpretation. No one needs to be a Sinophile to observe this, nor to see frequent glaring errors of logic.
Luckily I'm not entirely alone in a critical response. Paul Mooney's (heavily cut, I'm told) review in the South China Morning Post came to the same conclusions ( Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How it Got There and Where it is Heading):
One does not get the feeling that Fenby ever visited China while researching the book. While he occasionally mentions being in China, it's usually just an aside, with few details. He mentions visiting the Labrang Monastery in Gansu province, but fails to describe the rich colour of the monastery town crowded with crimson-robed lamas. Likewise with his visit to Kashgar, the centre of Uygur culture in Xinjiang. As a result, much of the book reads asif it's come out of newspapers or web pages.
A bit of a shock, then, to read Julia Lovell saying in The Guardian:
There is a risk that a book summarising such a monumental story might get bogged down in dry, statistical detail. Fenby avoids this through lively, first-person reportage and vivid vignettes.
She must have been reading a different book.
I ended up with 15 pages of notes, many grouped under the headings Non Sequiturs, Padding, Blindingly Obvious, Debatable, and Occasional Important Points. An 800-word review couldn't begin to do this justice.
I mentioned a non-sequitur about Chinese take-aways in the UK, but my favourite example was in a paragraph that was cut:
A
discussion of lack of trust in Chinese society citing examples of counterfeit
goods and the theft of brand names fails to notice that the copies of châteaux
and indeed of whole European villages it goes on to discuss are fakes in an
entirely different sense—neither developers nor buyers represent these as the
real thing.
Examples of padding included a discussion of Taiwanese pre-history hardly relevant to a discussion of contemporary mainland China, and extensive material on Chiang Kai-shek obviously too tempting to someone who had already written a biography of the man, but considerably more than needed.
A further example of the blindingly obvious also cut from the review:
It’s
no surprise that those behind attempts to hack commercial information
subsequently traced to China are “likely not to be run-of-the mill hackers who
prefer to go for bank accounts and credit cards.”
I also enjoyed: The economy and politcs, both domestic and external, are inextricably linked. When things go well, that benefits both. When there are problems both suffer (p.3), and an observation that planes fly over mountains (p.364).
It's amusing to find much in the same vein in a piece in China Daily (Heads or Tails?) Indeed it's hard not to cackle:
Making predictions is indeed so difficult that he certainly tends to avoid making any in his book.
Luckily China Daily is free, or you might resent having paid good money for this sort of observation. But it gets better:
"I had a conference call with a Latin American client recently who said my outlook for China in 2012 was bearish," he recalls.
"I gave the same analysis to someone later in the day, and he said it was the most bullish analysis he had heard in a long time."
And if you read this entire book you'll still remain just as confused. This is precisely its problem.
But you may be clear that the opinion of a man who even gets the size of China wrong; who invents an entirely new meaning for the phrase 虎头蛇尾 he purloins for his title; who appears unaware that the Yangzi was dammed decades before the Three Gorges was built (hundreds of thousands of cruise passengers could have told him that); and who appears equally unaware that Sun Yat-sen was only Provisional President of China and never President (it was Yuan Shikai who first held that post) would not be worth having anyway.
But why go on about this? Over the centuries of Western contact with China the majority of books on the place have been ill-informed and generally dreadful. But the struggle is to get reporting on China from people who commit themselves to the place, become intimate with the language (which is a necessary condition for having a clue what it going on), read and interview original sources, and who believe nothing they haven't seen for themselves. There's been some progress on this front—progress which a book like this, already itself being quoted as a source despite being largely sourceless, dramatically sets back.
05 June 2012
PR tip 4
Several of you, to my knowledge, are making a classic mistake. You're hiring a big-name agency because it's a big name, and perhaps you think both that prestige will rebound upon you and that you'll be getting top-end advice and assistance from a company with a global track record of success.
But you should begin by asking yourself for whom these agencies have been successful. And whether the clients for whom they've been successful are relevantly similar to yourselves.
The answer will usually be 'no', and the major dissimilarity between yourselves and the clients that so impress you, and amongst whose powerful and illustrious names you think it would be good to be listed, is that they have lots of money, and you don't. So long as they remain amongst the agency's clients, these big-spending corporate giants are going to claim most of its attention. You're a minnow in a pool of sharks, and it's the junior staff for you.
What you want to be is the largest goldfish in a far smaller pool. You don't want a global name with high overheads and high hourly rates. You're getting a great deal less for your money than if you hire a small operation for whom you are the largest client, and for whom you are providing a significant proportion of the its total revenue: preferably the majority of it. You'll pay less for its services. You'll have the full attention of the company's principals, and they will do everything they possibly can to keep you happy.
They'll keep me happy, too. I'll get prompt and helpful replies to email queries. I'll get to talk with people who have actually taken the time to get to know your destination and its tourism products well. They'll help me develop story ideas, and what they don't know, they'll research.
With the big boys I'm often lucky if I get a reply within a week. Sometimes I'm lucky if I get one at all. You might have thought that replying to journalists' queries, especially on such innocuous and non-controversial subjects as the communication of positive messages about a holiday destination, would have had absolute priority. If it does, I'd love to know what comes second.
There's one destination I've been to on several occasions, originally represented in my part of the world by a one-person company who could not conceivably have been more efficient and helpful. Once she'd thoroughly sounded out my bona fides, determined I wrote for outlets she wanted to reach on that destination's behalf, she researched every story idea I had and filled it out with worked examples, suggested several stories to me related to angles the destination wanted to push, but was responsive to what I thought I could run and what didn't interest me.
After a few years of successful cooperation, the country decided to take things in-house, and sent out a civil servant instead, who quite possibly had far too much on her plate in terms of dealing with the industry as a whole, but certainly had no time for the press, and was completely disorganised. Getting things arranged became something of a struggle.
But matters became worse still when after a while it was decided to hire a PR agency again, but a very big-name one.
The person I deal with there cannot systematically read an email and reply to the questions it contains. She seems to think that I have an hour to spend chatting on the phone on a 'get to know you' basis—she wants to know what television shows I like, and so on. I neither know nor care about such matters, and all I want to talk about is business, not make friends. I'm not short of friends: I am short of time.
She is profoundly ignorant about the destination, not even knowing in which parts of the country major cities lie. She cannot answer any question about the destination without having to go and ask someone else first. She has no story ideas to offer, and does not pay attention to what sorts of stories I say I'm looking for, nor to where I say I might want to go. On my last trip the itinerary came in so late there was little time to do anything about it, and it contained several profoundly irritating made-for-tourists day trips of precisely the kind I don't usually cover. Luckily there was much other good material because this is a fine destination full of colour and interest. But what I found of that was more in spite of the agency's assistance than because of it. I couldn't see that it added any value at all. Indeed it bordered on being a hindrance.
Unfortunately in recent years my experiences with three of the big name companies tell me it is very often like that with them. The value all goes the other way, with the agency feeling that having the travel PR/destination marketing accounts of sovereign nations looks good on the portfolio when they're chasing the accounts of the Motorolas, Microsofts, and McVitie's of this world who have spending power orders of magnitude greater than most government tourism bureaux.
Often, when I arrive, you'll sit down with me for a general chat and in passing ask if I got everything I wanted from your representative back home. I'd love to tell you the truth, but the fact is I cannot. Suppose I quote chapter and verse of lacklustre, embarrassingly ill-informed responses, and cocked-up and aborted arrangements, and suppose you then take this to a higher level and sit down for discussions with the agency on my version of its shortcomings.
Do you think it will take that well? Or do you think that perhaps instead I'll be blocked from all future trips and that word will be put around the industry that I'm difficult and unproductive (really nothing's further from the truth), so that instead of fending off invitations I'll have to go begging for them? Some PR companies that make a complete hash of things have no scruples about stabbing journalists to save their accounts.
So instead, without naming names, let me ask you to re-assess your strategy. Never mind impressing the tourism minister with a glittery name, think instead of value for money. Talk to the journalists who arrive and ask them in complete confidence to tell you frankly of their experiences. To be sure not all the junior members of the big name companies are entirely lacking in gumption, and some of the journalists certainly are lacking in that commodity themselves (there's no point in asking bloggers anything) so the results may vary, although the big fish in a small pool argument still applies. Become the most important client at an agency that will care desperately about keeping you, and at which the people you deal with are the same people who deal with me.
I think we'll both benefit.
Back to Japan
Earlier this year I repeated in part an organised trek along sections of the Nakasendo (中山道), taking a shortened winter version of the walk organised by Walk Japan. While it's fashionable to decry organised travel in any form (see comments others have left on some earlier posts), there are times when an immense amount of value can be added, and this is what Walk Japan does, providing native-level Japanese speakers, immense amounts of academically sourced background information, and access to parts of Japan (especially traditional inns and bathhouses) that in some cases might be loathe to accept foreigners if they were not confident they'd been schooled in the niceties of Japanese etiquette (sleeping, bathing, and eating in particular). Despite a great deal of travel in Japanese backwaters over the last 20 years, and despite remembering my first Nakasendo trip with a pleasure that could only lead to the second being disappointing, the winter version, with long tramps through 30cm-deep snow drifts over multiple passes, and through silent, whitened countryside, was memorable in its own right.
This is the text of a short piece, linked above, that subsequently appeared in the Wall Street Journal until the title 'Walk Me Through Japan,' just one of a number published in several locations partly intended to help revive tourism to Japan in the wake of the tsunami. Shame on me, in fact, for taking so long to publish anything on that topic here.
Walk Me Through Japan
In the suburbs of Nakatsugawa, about 300 kilometers west of Tokyo, a wooden signboard carries notices of the kind common in travelers' haunts across Asia, such as the right prices to pay for porters and transport. But in famously orderly Japan, where crime against visitors is almost unknown, it's a surprise also to see warnings against muggers and drug dealers.
But these notices are merely reproductions of edicts from the Tokugawa shoguns once in control of traffic on Japan's ancient Nakasendo, a footpath-highway between Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo). Their relevance expired 150 years ago along with the shogunate itself, but some sections of the old route have remained unchanged since its creation in the 17th century.
Just across a footbridge over a busy highway, orderly suburbs with their gardens of tiny topiary peter out and the asphalt turns to earth with a soft coating of leaf litter and pine needles. Then as the path leaves tidy farmland and winds gently up through ever wilder landscape to an 1,100 meter pass, sections are paved with centuries-old irregular stone blocks, whose rounded edges once provided purchase for straw porter sandals. A light dusting of snow decorates path-side statues of red-bibbed Jizo, the Buddhist protector of unborn children and travelers, and Kannon, protector of pack animals and porters.
Originally only the feudal lords of Japan and their retinues were allowed to use this mountain highway, but for 20 years now specialist operator Walk Japan (www.walkjapan.com) has led small groups on an increasingly popular trek through well-preserved historic post towns and over remote mountain passes, whose beauty inspired woodblock prints by Hiroshige and others.
Nights are spent at creaking wooden traditional inns, many of which have been run by the same family for hundreds of years. They have changed little since their founding, except for the handy addition of wi-fi and heated lavatory seats.
The first day of the shorter winter version of the walk, recently revived as the first anniversary of the tsunami approaches and foreign visitors return to Japan. The walkers reach the hamlet of Shinchaya at mid-afternoon on the first day. There, the multi-course evening meal, taken seated on the tatami-matted floor while wearing a cotton yukata gown and haori jacket—as travelers have for centuries—is fit for a king, let alone a lord. It includes wild boar from the surrounding forest shot by the still spry 70-year-old host himself, whose family has run an inn here for eight generations.
His ancestors would have seen feudal lords and their retinues pass by on their way to and from Edo. The Tokugawa shoguns created their highway network partly in order to keep restive aristocrats busy by compelling them to make extended visits, and to leave family members behind as hostages. The expense of travel and of maintaining twin establishments drained resources that might otherwise have funded insurrection. More than 30 different lords were instructed to use the Nakasendo, with their travel carefully scheduled so that the post towns would not be over-stretched.
In summer tour buses drop groups at the top of the steep hill at Magome, the next post town. But in winter there's almost no one about, although buns stuffed with piping hot meat or vegetables are still on sale. Once broken open they steam in the wintry sunshine, and fuel the walk over Magome Pass.
Halfway to the next post town, a 250-year-old tea house offers tea, pickled radish and sour plums, along with mochi rice cakes in its smoky, earthen-floored interior.
The path snakes down prettily through giant stands of bamboo to Tsumago, perhaps the best-preserved post town of all, completely free of any sign of modernity. A magnificent inn used by feudal lords has been turned into a museum with explanations of the highway's history.
After Tsumago there's a downhill walk through farmland and forests to Nagiso to pick up a local train to Kiso-Fukushima, where an ancient barrier station has been recreated. Here samurai bristling with the fearsome weaponry now on display examined travel documents, searched for unlicensed guns and illegal Christian paraphernalia and checked the sex of more androgynous males to make sure that no hostage wives were being smuggled out of Edo.
In winter the guards dealt with only a dozen or so travelers a day, and they are as few now. At other seasons a lord's retinue might number 3000—in 1862, 17-year-old Princess Kazunomiya's party of 15,000 plus porters took a full three days to pass.
Two days later the trip ends in Matsumoto atop the tower of a magnificent wooden castle built in the 1580s, the oldest surviving in Japan and named Black Raven for its layers of darkly lacquered wood.
Many modern-day visitors merely ricochet between Tokyo and Kyoto by bullet train, but Japan seems almost purpose-built for taking things slowly. Its volcanic countryside offers gentle climbs to passes with fine views that always compensate for the effort made, as well as mineral-rich geothermally-heated spring waters cleverly piped straight to baths at each night's accommodation, and which provide the perfect balm for any aches at the end of a day on foot.
The brash and glittery modern Japan of tune-playing crosswalks and talking vending machines seems not just of a different time, but of a different country altogether.
23 May 2012
Blogging for freebies
Since the last posting I've been in Japan, Hong Kong, China, and the USA twice each; and in Australia, Macau, the UK, Poland, France, and The Maldives. The lack of even a single word on any of these trips is an indication that I prefer to write for a living, and with travel, administration, not to mention family responsibilities there's little time to waste on financially unproductive activities.
Apparently, however, there's a whole world out there of people who blog in order to be noticed, and whose principal activity when not blogging is doing anything that will drive traffic to their blogs; notably tweeting. In many cases the purpose of the blog is to attract sufficient attention so as to bring free gifts and some advertising revenue. Many of them (I find from looking at the links given in various tweets) are absolutely appalling: unpublishable in any other form. But if enough traffic is generated, from the point of view of destinations, outfitters, and properties hoping for increased sales, it's a case of 'never mind the quality, feel the width.'
Now one website is offering a service which claims to provide a measure of influence, and with coverage in Wire and elsewhere its name is about to join Twitter, Google, Facebook, as part of everyday speech, or so it seems to think. If the boosters are to be believed our Klout score (www.klout.com) is already being taken into account by employers and by those looking to get persuasive coverage on-line for their products and services: get high enough Klout and couriers will be arriving at your front door laden with desirable kit for you to write about.
However, we're entering a world in which influence is only measured by interaction with others, and only on-line, essentially through Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In. It's about being mentioned in other's tweets, about being re-tweeted, and about getting responses to posts on other social media.
I joined Twitter early, and left it again almost straight away. It is probably already obvious from looking at this blog that 140 characters is not my preferred medium of expression, and I'm not interested in communicating the trivia of my day. I've discovered, though, that a significant number of my friends and colleagues do most of their communicating via Twitter. Some are now required by their employers to keep the profile of their organisations up by constantly tweeting together with links to the organisation's site.
But just as so much blogging is about discussing what others have written, so most tweeting is about drawing attention to such comment or its subject, and re-tweeting links posted by others. A small amount of original content mostly goes round in circles with very little added value. In the Klout world, however, the persuasiveness of the content has nothing to do with its inherent value. Well-informed and well-expressed criticism has less value than vapid gossip if it is re-tweeted fewer times.
I find this world picture one of fascinating horror: a little like being unable to look away from a car crash. The Klout score above which the couriers start ringing the doorbell is 50, we're told. The average Klout score is 20, but every successive increase in value becomes harder to obtain. Given that the average person in the world isn't even on-line, I was surprised to find I had an initial score of 12, well below the average. This was despite having published several articles across North America this year, as well as in the Asia edition of the Wall Street Journal, reaching audiences of millions and beyond the wildest dreams of more than a handful of bloggers. But off-line influence apparently doesn't matter, even when the articles also appear on-line. And there's apparently no account taken of the relative persuasiveness of items appearing under the auspices of organisations with large, long-standing reputations in the real world, compared to items under the banner of Joe Bloggs' Blog.
This may be the world wished for, and the world predicted to come to pass, but it isn't here yet, and it will be a worse world if it ever arrives. However, and playing the game by its own rules, I re-joined Twitter, and within two days my Klout score had rocketed to 42.
Life isn't really like this, but since I heard a story from a colleague that he'd been turned down for a press trip because he didn't blog, I've been asking various PR people I've come across (rather a lot, unsurprisingly) about the emphasis they place on bloggers versus those being published in print media, and I've yet to find anyone who puts any weight at all on blogs.
Last year I visited Scottsdale for the third time, and about two weeks ago two resulting stories happened to appear in Canadian media at the same time. As the people at Scottsdale are always well-organised and helpful (and likeable), and as I'd been thinking that they'd gone a long time without seeing a return on their investment (not that any is ever guaranteed) I took the time to send a note with links to the two stories.
I received a delighted reply. I then received an equally delighted email from one property mentioned in one story. I received another from a property that got a passing mention in the second story, rather disproportionately small given the amount of effort it had put in, I felt (but that's just how it goes sometimes). Finally today I received a letter personally signed by Managing Director of one of the properties. I imagine this was written for him by the PR person, but nonetheless the effort had been made.
I'll perhaps discuss in another post why all this is unnecessary but the point is that these people are in no doubt where clout's important. And it's with four million newspaper readers across Canada. The on-line presence is just a bonus.
06 January 2011
Picasso vs. Potter
At the Seattle Art Museum, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée Picasso, Paris is a generous display of 150 works from the artist’s own collection representing an astonishing eight decades of output. But visitors can optionally wave the audio wand supplied and shrink the experience to 25 sample works, listening to recorded introductions to them through its earpiece.
Meanwhile, at the Pacific Science Center’s Harry Potter: The Exhibition, audio tour headsets are also offered (for an extra fee), but the wands are in glass cases: those of Potter and his arch-enemy Lord Voldemort as well many waved by supporting cast-members.
For those with little interest in art, and whose knowledge of Picasso may amount to no more than familiarity with his name and its connection to cubism, the great variety of the works on show and the very approachable and even charming nature of many of them will come as a surprise. From a moving “blue period” portrait, via paintings with strong African influences, to a simple sculpture of a bull’s head made from the saddle and handlebars of a bicycle, Picasso proves to be the art world’s answer to the Potter stories’ shape-shifting boggart: his work comes in almost any style you care to imagine.
And when the works are more demanding the audio wand offers explanations. Cubism, for example, is the attempt to show a subject from multiple points of view at the same time, and later the fusion of multiple subjects and media in one work. Once that’s understood the relevant canvases become visual puzzles it is a pleasure to solve.
For those lacking previous experience of the Harry Potter books or movies, it’s the Pacific Science Center show that must prove harder to understand, beginning perhaps with the question as to what an exhibition starring the improbable suspension of the laws of physics is doing in a museum devoted to science.
It opens with a live section the Picasso show certainly cannot match, when volunteer children are invited to wear the Sorting Hat, a sentient and loquacious piece of headgear that decides and then announces which house each new arrival at Hogwarts School should join. Here it is recreated in 3D with a clever bit of animatronics under the control of an actor playing the part of one of the school’s professors.
But from then on it’s the Potter show that seems the more static of the two, despite the presence of screens on almost every wall showing clips from the films. From Hogwarts robes to broomsticks, and from centaurs to house elves, shorn of both their context in the stories and the CGI magic that animates them on-screen, every item seems more dead than any still life. Unlike Picasso’s canvasses, there’s no puzzle to solve and no imagination is needed.
Past a steaming but stationary replica of the Hogwart’s Express, and along a meandering route through various prop-filled hints at Hogwarts classrooms and a partial recreation of half-giant Hagrid’s house, there’s a chance to uproot a mandrake plant and make it squeal, and to throw a quaffle ball through a hoop.
But like the Potter narrative itself, the exhibition becomes more sinister and glum as it proceeds, with a Dementor (fiend), an Acromantula (giant talking spider), and a visit to the Forbidden Forest, although the really scary part of the whole show is the gift shop. This is a trap to which the whole experience, like some cunning Voldemort plan, has really been leading.
Here groaning shelves of merchandise, much of it at higher prices than those of ordinary toy stores, conjure up visions of financial doom in the minds of parents.
Visit both shows. But you may find that even younger members of the family, when armed with audio wands, find more magic in Picasso than in Potter.
ACCESS
Move fast: Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée Picasso, Paris closes on January 17, and Harry Potter: The Exhibition on January 30. Both are sufficiently popular to require timed entry, and both should be booked on-line well in advance where possible.
The Seattle Art Museum is right in the compact city centre and can be reached on foot from many hotels. Full details of the Picasso show, opening hours, supporting activities, downloadable audio files, and on-line booking information can be found at picassoinseattle.org.
Similar details for the Harry Potter show can be www.pacsci.org/harrypotter. The Pacific Science Center can be reached directly by monorail from downtown Seattle, the train having been temporarily redecorated as the Hogwarts Express, complete with steam whistle. The very comfortable Hotel Monaco (www.monaco-seattle.com) is offering packages that include discounted tickets for both the show and the monorail.
13 November 2010
Seattle
The Friday appointment was to see the Picasso show at the Seattle Art Museum, on loan from the Musée Picasso in Paris, and very substantial. The Sunday one will be (sublime to ridiculous) at the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Pacific Science Center.
One of the best ways to like somewhere. Don't see too much of it. And when I don't have to go somewhere, the best thing is staying still and not doing very much at all. That's a holiday.
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