Vive La Revolution!

Image: Part of the massive main building that is the Palace of Versailles

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If you ever needed to be convinced that revolutions – even violent revolutions – are necessary, just visit the Palace of Versailles, in France. Here amongst the opulence and splendor that marked the reign of King Louis XIV (14th), and successive French rulers, the reason for revolution is writ large. Larger than large, in fact. Here is grandeur, extravagance, wealth, and sumptuousness of the highest order. No wonder then, that on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, it was at Versailles that the citizens of Paris came to demand that Louis XVI (16th) return to Paris to face the wrath of the people.

The Palace of Versailles is a royal château in Versailles, the Île-de-France region of France. The court of Versailles was the centre of political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime. [Source: Wikipedia…]

The Palace of Versailles consists of 700 rooms providing around 67,000 square meters of floor space. The Palace’s collections include over 6,000 paintings, 1,500 drawings, and more than 15,000 engravings. Add to these 2,100 sculptures and around 5,200 pieces of furniture and objets d’art, and you get some idea of the size and scope of this amazing historical site.

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Image: The massive Hall of Battles at Versailles

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In room after room, luxury and indulgence seemed to be trying to outdo each other. Just when you think the fittings and decorations, the massive paintings adorning walls and ceilings couldn’t get bigger or better, they do. When you think nothing could top the massive Hall Of Battles (see photo above) and the 33 huge paintings located there depicting scenes from some of France’s greatest victories, and which also includes 82 busts of various military leaders who died in action in many of the battles depicted in the paintings; just when you think nothing can top that you walk into the equally massive Great Hall of Mirrors.

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The Great Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles. Image courtesy of Arnaud 25

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Ceiling view of the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles

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The French painter Charles Le Brun, is responsible for decorating the ceilings in the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces), with a series of stunning paintings only equaled by his other works at Versailles in the Halls of War and Peace (Salons de la Guerreand de la Paix), and the Ambassadors' Staircase. It was not for nothing that Louis XIV declared Le Brun "the greatest French artist of all time".

The dimensions of the Hall of Mirrors' are 73.0m × 10.5m × 12.3m (239.5ft × 34.4ft × 40.4ft). The ceiling decoration is dedicated to the political policies and military victories of Louis XIV. The central panel of the ceiling, Le roi governe par lui-même (The king governs alone) alludes to the establishment of the personal reign of Louis XIV in 1661. Other panels represent the military victories of the king beginning with the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), through to the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678.

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Image: Part of just one of the many wonderful ceiling paintings at Versailles

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Images of King Louis XIV swanning his way down long passageways and through vast rooms, flash through my head. Look! Here he comes now, closely followed by a retinue of handlers, hangers-on, and assorted family members, while courtiers, foreign visitors and gawkers wait and watch to catch a glimpse of his supreme eminence.

Does he pause to admire the monumental work of Veronese called, The Feast in The House of Simon – a gift of the Viennese court? As he enters the cavernous Chapel to attend Mass (where years later, Marie-Antoinette married Louis XVI), does he stop to chat with one or two of the lesser leaders of the day, who are here to curry favor and bask in his attention – no matter how brief or cursory?

I suspect he barely gives them more than a passing glance. It is enough to know they are there, and that he has created a building large enough to house monumental works of art, as well as draw sycophants and other toady’s to his palatial home far from the Paris mob. A palace big enough to satisfy even his overblown ego. For surely that is the point of Versailles. To show that this one person has the power to call upon the greatest builders of his era to carve stone, bend and shape timber, weave giant tapestries, plant and landscape hundreds of acres of land, and to do this all at his behest with little or no regard to cost in terms of either monetary value or the human cost of this monumental construction project.

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Ceiling decorations in the Royal Chapel at Versailles. Image courtesy of Diliff

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I am not sure if we will ever see buildings like Versailles being created again. Not because we don’t have the money, but because there are so few people of vision around who could design, let alone build palaces like Versailles. And if there were? Would people allow such wanton excess? Such extravagance and splendor? It’s not just the scale of the building, but the detailed extras that have been incorporated into the design that impress and shock.

Statues and friezes, fountains and gilded furnishings, landscaped gardens, manicured lawns, broad mile-long pathways and secluded alcoves. Was there anything not included in the scope and design of Versailles? I suspect that pretty much every skill in design and artistry extant at the time the Palace was being built, was used in some way in the extensive building process that went on even after Louis XIV was long dead and gone.

Sadly, I can’t think of any modern political leaders who wouldn’t love to be able to bask in the glory and opulence of a Palace of Versailles. How it would feed their egos and pander to their vanities! How they would delight in being surrounded by fawning acolytes and supplicants seeking to curry favour and win even the briefest of passing attention.

It is exactly for this reason that places like that Palace of Versailles need to be maintained and kept open – as a reminder and proof that absolute power, corrupts absolutely. That if the people are not vigilant, if they are satisfied with bread and circuses, the power elite will happily create their own versions of Versailles, and continue to run the game exactly as they wish to.

Having toured through the Palace, you can either leave Versailles and head back to central Paris, or you can go for a walk in the grounds and gardens that surround the main building. It is here that the grandeur of Versailles really overpowers you, and it was while I was walking around the grounds that the full impact of Versailles hit home. But that’s a story for another day.

The Eiffel Tower – A Promise Kept

Image: Gustave Eiffel’s gift to the people of France and tourists the world over

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On my recent trip to Paris I finally kept a promise I have been holding myself to for over 30 years: namely that the next time I visited Paris I would go to the Eiffel Tower and make the journey to the top. The story behind that promise may be a good example of how the arrogance of youth can change as one gets older and – hopefully – wiser.

Way back in the early 1970s, when I was in my mid-20s I passed through Paris on my way back to London from Greece. I’d met a couple of other travelers on the train ride from Athens, and during our stay in Paris we went to see the Eiffel Tower.

My memory is hazy now about the exact details, but I do remember that I considered myself to be too ‘cool’ to do the standard tourist thing and actually go up the Tower. After all, it seemed such a clichéd thing to do, and even back then I was not interested in following the crowd. Of course, I was happy enough doing that other clichéd tourist activity – posing inanely before Gustave Eiffel’s Tower and getting my, “This is me in front of …” picture (a practice by the way, that I try to steer clear of now).

But then, over the years, somewhere along the way, I began to regret my decision. After all, on that 1970s trip I remember my travel companions and I did visit the Louvre, and we did go and see the Mona Lisa, and wasn’t that as much a cliché as visiting the Eiffel Tower? And just for the record, I did make another visit to Mona during my trip to Paris.

Why do we travel anyway, if not to see and experience as fully as possible the cities and locations we have chosen to visit? Going to the Louvre just to see the Mona Lisa would be a complete waste of time and money, given the effort one has to go through to actually see the painting. There are thousands of other reasons to visit the Louvre (namely the other paintings, sculptures, displays, etc), and personally I think most of them are more interesting and exciting to examine than the Mona Lisa’s whimsical smile.

The same reasoning can be used regarding the Eiffel Tower. If you are visiting just so you can cross it off your highlights list, you are missing some of the real magic of the experience. For me, that magic and wonder involves the groundbreaking feat of engineering that went into building this amazing structure, even more than the view over Paris.

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Image: The bird’s-eye view from the top of the Eiffel Tower

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Image: The Eiffel Tower would be hard enough to build today, let alone over 100 years ago!

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Gustave Eiffel was writing the book when his company designed and built the tower that honours his name, not working out of someone else’s book of instructions.

Eiffel was born in Dijon on December 15, 1832. Graduating as an engineer in 1855, he was soon hired as associate by Charles Neveu, a manufacturer of steam engines and railway equipment. It wasn’t long before Eiffel had started his own company, and for the next 20 years or so he specialized in designing and constructing a range of projects including numerous bridges, viaducts, and other major buildings. From 1881-84 Gustave Eiffel also designed and built the framework of Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty, which now stands at the entrance of New York harbour.

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Image: Gustave Eiffel ‘s metallic structure for the Statue of Liberty

Image courtesy of the Official Eiffel Tower website…

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In 1884, answering a bid to mark the centenary of the 1889 French Revolution, Gustave Eiffel, together with his associates Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin, pitch their idea for the construction of the Tower.

Construction involved over 5,300 drawings, and a team of 120 workers to fit together more than 18,000 parts, weighing over 10,000 tons, using 2.5 million rivets, over a period of two years. Despite the fact that the men were working hundreds of metres above the ground, only one man died during the construction of the Tower, and that accident occurred outside of regular working hours.

As you might imagine, almost immediately after its completion, the 324 metre (1,063 ft) Tower began to attract a motley collection of adventurers and thrill seekers intent on trying to be the first to set a range of records associated with the structure. These include Santos-Dumont who, in 1901, won a prize for flying higher than the Tower in an airship, and the Count de Lambert who flew over Paris in an airplane in 1909, and around the Tower for the first time.

Sadly, in 1912, a tailor nicknamed “the bird man”, died when he jumped from the first floor using a parachute of his own design and construction, and in 1926, Léon Collot, also died when he tried to fly under the Eiffel Tower. Happily, the two paratroopers who jumped from the third floor in 1984 without permission lived to tell the tale, while in 1987, a New-Zealander performed a bungee jump – again without permission – from the second floor.

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Image: Some of the intricate steel lacing and support work at the first level

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And so it continues. A veritable circus of stair climbers and runners, motocross and mountain bike riders, wheelchair users, and yes, Ripley, believe it or not, even a circus elephant (which climbed the stairs to the first floor) have used the Eiffel Tower to add their names to the record books.

For my money, none of those noted above are a patch on Victor Lustig who in 1925 ‘sold’ the Eiffel Tower to a scrap metal merchant after convincing him that the Tower was going to be demolished. And why not? Originally, the Tower was meant to stand for just 20 years, after which it would be pulled down. The fact that it is still around 120 years later is a testament to the design and construction skills of Gustave Eiffel and his team of workers.

Today, the Eiffel Tower is the most visited fee-paying monument in the world, attracting over 7 million visitors each year. Some twenty replicas large and small can be found around the world in countries as far afield as the Poland, Denmark, Belgium, the United States, China, Japan and Dubai. Even in France itself, a 10 metre high tower weighing 3.2 tons was built for the France in Miniature Park. One can’t help but wonder whether Gustave Eiffel, who died in 1923 at the age of 91, ever in his wildest dreams thought his tower would become such an icon, not just for Paris and France, but also for the rest of the world. One that continues to reach well into the 21st century.

For all these and more reasons, I wanted finally, to visit the Eiffel Tower after more than 30 years. If I had made that journey in the early 1970s, it would have only been for the photo opportunities it would have given me. Now that I am much older, and at least a little bit wiser, I have finally honoured that promise to return, and have done so at a time when I have been able to appreciate the engineering skills that built it – as well as to take the photographs and enjoy the great views.

More information

The Official Eiffel Tower website…

The Eiffel Tower page at Wikipedia…

Turbulence

Image: Illustration of turbulence, courtesy of Webskite…

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Turbulence [-noun]

1. A state or condition of confusion, movement, or agitation; violent disorder or commotion.

Well you can’t expect things to go right all the time, can you? If you travel often and far enough, some things are bound to go wrong from time to time, and this past week, following my return to Athens after nine delightful days in Paris, things began to go wrong.

The above definition of the word, turbulence, is a good summation of the current political situation in Greece. Since the massive 110 billion euro bail out by the European Union that may or may not save Greece from financial bankruptcy, the country has been in turmoil as the PASOK government, under the leadership of George Papandreou has turned the screws on wage earners, public servants, and the agricultural community.

For months the people of Greece have been under pressure to bear the burden of pay and pension cuts, loss of workers entitlements, government sector cutbacks, and more. Their response has been a series of strikes and stoppages that have played havoc with the country’s transport systems including road, rail, air and ferry services.

What all this turbulence is doing to the country’s tourist industry is anyone’s guess.

Like I said, after nine very pleasant days in Paris, I flew into this “…state or condition of confusion,” etc, on Monday afternoon, and within thirty minutes of checking into my hotel I received the news that the flight I had booked to take me from Athens to Ikaria the next day (Tuesday) had been cancelled due to planned industrial action by airport workers. Taking the news in my stride, I arranged with Olympic Air to fly to the island on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, while airport workers were back on the job on Wednesday, the train and bus drivers were not. So early Wednesday morning I caught a cab for the fifty minute drive from Piraeus to the airport – at a cost of 35 euros. So far, so good. I had plenty of time to check in, have a coffee, pass through security, and wait for the flight to Ikaria.

It didn’t take long for the thirty or so passengers to settle into their seats for the 40 minute flight to the island, and within an hour or so of my arrival at the airport, we took off into an overcast sky. It was at this point that we ran into another kind of turbulence:

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Image: A De Havilland Canada DHC-8-400. Photo: Vangelis Antonakis. Online: www.airpics.net

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Turbulence [-noun]

1. Irregular motion of the atmosphere, as that indicated by gusts and lulls in the wind.

“…Gusts and lulls in the wind,” my eye! Within minutes of take off, the small, twin prop Olympic Air DHC-8-400 (see image) hit enough turbulence to keep the cabin crew on their toes, and the passengers strapped to their seats. After a quick snack we prepared to land at Ikaria, but if it was there, I for one couldn’t see it. There was thick cloud over the island and the plane was bucking and dancing through severe turbulence constantly. Ten minutes after we were supposed to have landed, we were told we were heading back to Athens due to severe weather conditions and an unspecified mechanical problem.

We were met at Athens airport by a fleet of fire engines and a mass of ground crew and engineers who quickly surrounded the plane and examined it closely. The pilot explained that the presence of fire engines and ground crew was standard operating procedure when a plane returns to the airport with suspected mechanical issues, and that we had nothing to be concerned about.

Yeah, right.

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Image: Ground crew and engineers rush to examine our plane on landing

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Image: Airport fire trucks after our unspecified mechanical problem

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We disembarked and went back to the terminal to wait for a second plane which would take us back to Ikaria. An hour later, dancing and weaving once again through severe turbulence so bad that even the cabin crew had to stay strapped to their seats, we again approached Ikaria through thick clouds, high winds, and more aerial acrobatics. The island was still nowhere to be seen, and for the second time we turned back to Athens and thoroughly disheartened, gave up on any plans of reaching the island.

Apart from the inconvenience, and the stress of all the travel and bouncing around in the air, I was certainly happy to be back on the ground. I’m even happier after reading one online report while researching information about air turbulence which stated that, "Of all weather-related commercial aircraft incidents, 65% can be attributed to turbulence."

Which brings to mind the old adage: It’s better to be safe than sorry. To which I can only add, Amen to that! Sadly, it didn’t take long before the turbulence in the air was again swapped for turbulence on the ground.

There was chaos at the taxi rank as hundreds of passengers lined up for cabs into Athens and elsewhere. I decided that since I had already spent 35 euros getting to the airport, I would try and save some money by sharing a cab with someone travelling back to Piraeus. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and when some guy agreed to share the cost of a cab with me we both got into a taxi and headed for the port.

Nearly an hour and 50 euros later we reach Piraeus and I get ready to leave the cab. I gave the driver a fifty euro note, and asked for 25 back, thinking the other guy would pay his share of the fee. The cabbie took my fifty euro and said that since the other guy was going a little further, he could pay his share of the fare when he got out, and that since the fare up to that point was 50 euros, he would keep all my money. I tried to explain that we had an agreement to share the cost of the ride. The other guy kept quiet throughout this, and offered no money by way of upholding his part of the deal I thought we’d agreed to.

It was then I realised that I had been scammed by the Greek guy who had offered to share the cost of the taxi with me. With the cabbie refusing to give me any part of my fifty euros back, since as he said, that was the fare anyway, and the other passenger ignoring my request for even ten euros as part of his contribution to the fare, I had no choice but to walk away, chastened by the experience but a lot wiser than when I got into the cab.

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Image: [Hell] This just about sums up my day!

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It isn’t the fifty euros that bothers me. Money comes in through one hand and goes out via the other one all the time. It was the fact that both driver and passenger took advantage of me. It is also a sad reflection on how far the Greeks and Greece have fallen as a people and as a country. That the other passenger could sit there and knowingly screw me over like that is the thing that hurts the most. I was quite happy to share the cost of the cab, and even would have paid more than half my share, but I would never consider screwing someone else over like this man did.

For all I know he got out a hundred yards further down the road, and paid nothing for his ride. If I had been quick enough to think of that, I could have refused to get out of the cab and said, drop this man off first, and me after. That way the tables would have been turned against the other passenger, and he would have had to pay the bulk of the fare. But it was too late for that, and I had no choice but to suck it up and go on my way.

However, every cloud has a silver lining, as the saying goes. Since I was walking past a travel outlet, I went in and bought a ticket for the Nissos Mykonos, the regular ferry that services Ikaria. As it happens the ticket only cost 19 euros, a thirty euro reduction off the normal price of a full fare, which helped improve my mood somewhat.

My mood improved even more after I rang Olympic Air and cancelled my rescheduled, rescheduled flight and was told I would receive a full refund on the plane ticket.

So there I was, at the end of a long, tiring and stressful day, back at the Delfini Hotel in Piraeus from whence my day had begun. I had spent 85 euros on taxi fares; had flown to Ikaria twice and still ended up back in Athens; had been conned and scammed, and had seen an ugly side of Greeks I hope never to see again.

It had indeed been a turbulent day.

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