http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Alan/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Alan en-us Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:58:33 +0000 Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:58:33 +0000 Deqr OnesWe are well and getting to this blog for the first time in two weeks and only for a moment to say that the teaching was fabulous with Eva and psychodrama opening up the deep feelings and family dynamics and current sociopolitical situation for the 2040 chinese grad students who were with us. Plus a presentation of our work for an audience in the evening of about 150.This was followed by http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Sichuan/Chengdu/blog-97475.html Paris....endless views history art...talk and more talk...Exhibit Renoir and Renoir....The side by side display of the paintings of the the father and the films of the son. What a contrast. A continuous loop of the movie Moulon Rouge next to an oil painting of the same scene the movie boring after two replays the painting something you could look at for a lifetime without the slightest fatig http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-21871.html The last night in Munich was spent at the theater just meAlan's German isn't quite up to it and it was another amazing experience. Most of you have heard me comment on the German's peculiarities in adopting everything classical thank God not the Rosenkavalier to a modernmiseascene. This time it was an 1895 Hauptman play 'Before the dawn'about very rich German capitalist's family's expl http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-21563.html Today the Franz Marc exhibit at the Kunstbau Lenbachhaus Museum. Large retrospective with his fine fine drawings in a little sketchbook during WW1 that are as powerful as any of the paintings....at the same time re reading 'Steppenwolf' by Herman Hesse...Eva read it in German early on during the trip and here in Munich I found an English translation..occasioning these thoughtsThe Marc exhibit is http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Munich/blog-21208.html Munich on Sunday with the crowds on their way to Octoberfest yes it is still september..but the weather is good and maybe October comes early here...How we got here is another story..After our incredible luck in getting from Bad Gastein to Cos in a serious of hopping from one train to another getting a flight out within two hours of the Munich airport.....we believed in the travel fairies to http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Munich/blog-21081.html Kos..has somehow solved the problem of being a huge tourist destination...miles of beaches with selfcontained resorts...including a Club Med..with retaining its cozy nature and abundant archeological sites....the ruins o f the healing center devoted to Askalepius at which Hippocrates practiced is on a series of terraces just above the city of Kos. In a wooded area with views to Asia and nearby is http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Greece/Thessaly/Meteora/blog-20724.html Sun Blue Sky Birthplace of Hippocrates...whaaa Where have these Levetons got to nowWell dear friends here is the saga of the path to the Isle of Kos....We left Vienna as the sky continued to cloud and threaten rain...and decided to seek out a small mountain retreat in the Austrian Alps favored by Freud for vacations and Eva's friend Sophie. Vienna Salzburg Bad Gastein....so easy on Eurai http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Greece/Thessaly/Meteora/blog-20227.html 'Eiskaffee' at Demel's in Viennaafter watching marching bands we attended the 'Erntedankfest' harvest festival where sugar beet farmers erected large signs protesting the globalization that caused them to lose their livelihood to the Brazilians due to their lack of child labor laws. Displays of fruits and vegetables mounded and wreathedcabbages red and white eggplant carrots onions and p http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Austria/Vienna-State/Vienna/blog-19283.html From Alan Just to the south of the great castle at Krakow..Wawel..is the forner Jewish quarter Kazimierz...with several synagogues partly restored and numbers of restaurants featuring kosher meals and klezmer music. Eva it's like going to your old aunt's house a few tables lace table cloths dark polished furniture quarreling waiters among one anotherAt lunch with a woman psychiatrist M http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Krakow/blog-19011.html Here found on the internet is the poem that most closely reflects how I felt after Birkinau Could Have by Wislawa Szymborska translated by Stanislaw Baranczak Clare It could have happened. It had to happen. It happened earlier. Later. Nearer. Farther off. It happened but not to you. You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Krakow/blog-18711.html Yesterday was very longthe conference had endings and goodbyes. Then we visited AuschwitzBirkinau with a group from the conference. One and a half hours travel from Krakow in rolling green farmland..suddenly we are there. We were in tears even when considering going being there was deeply moving exhausting overwhelming....I can only give a few impressions....It is Birkinau that crushes the http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Krakow/blog-18709.html Impressions of the Psychodrama Conference which is the reason we are here. Eva gave her workshop for 50 people on 'roles not played.' The Conference theme was 'The Garden of Roles'. In keeping with this Eva led the group in a inner meditation of two personal 'gardens'. One of reality...your present family and professional role..who you are in it. And a garden of possibility..wherein might be tr http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Krakow/blog-18552.html A note from Eva Oh to be married to a man who spells Bremen Bremman All four of the famous town musicians in an uproar What's a little German girl to do He already said that he's an American I guess I knew that before...Also a slight emendation to the JewishFreud story. It's a complicated set of feelings for me. This lady was an 85 year old bundle of Berlin energy a real ray of sunshine. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Krakow/blog-18379.html This becomes an inner travel more than I perhaps expected. In Hamburg Eva taught a group of supervisors of people giving palliative care...they are often disappointed when the meaningful neat and peaceful end of their patients is not possible. Eva roleplayed Death..not as an atagonist but as a natural ending of life...whose nature was misunderstood and resented at least this what I understood http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Krakow/blog-18317.html Sunday and sitting in the Hauptkirche St. Peter listening to the Bach Mass in G Minor with chorus and orchestra. Church filled with worshipers...sound filling the space particularly the horn seems to carry a pure feeling with the voices of choir and congregation. A sense of a cultivated religion. My thoughts go back to a Good Friday mass at at Penitente church in the mountains above Taos. We had http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/District-of-Hamburg/Hamburg/blog-17832.html The odd thing is the shift in my identity with each travel venue. In Kham and India I felt like a kind of universal human....not particularly identified as American or Western...more as 'Other'. The Tibetans and the Indians were so exotic and immersed in their traditional life that I felt as if I was in the thirteenth century...impressed with the ways in which the human family was able to adapt to http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/District-of-Hamburg/Hamburg/blog-17628.html Here is a beginning for our European trip. Details to follow. Please note that our travel email address is ltlevetonhotmail.comgt http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/District-of-Hamburg/Hamburg/blog-17179.html Hello. I am about to leave on September 1 for Chengdu China with Marty Newman for a month in that part of Eastern Tibet which is known as Kham. We traveled to the ethnic minority villages of Yunnan Province two years ago and visited with the Yi Miao Dong and Tibetan people.For this trip we have engaged a guide driver and jeep.I have always been inspired by Alexandra DavidNeel's adventures in http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/blog-1150.html One day closer. Here we are the protagonists of this journey from our last trip..with Louisa our dynamic guide for the Miao New Years celebrations. She took us through the ethnic minority villages for nine days by bus..not at all intimidated by our huge bulk and Western ways.I hear a buzz... it comes from an email from Professor Badeng Nima at the University...We will go to the foreign office http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/blog-1157.html On the threshold....Tomorrow... stepping from the mundane into the world of getting on the plane for Chengdu becoming a 'Passenger It brings to mind Asylums Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmatesby Erving Goffman. This brilliant Canadian sociologist described how total institutions prepare citizens for immersion into their social structure. A hospital transforms y http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/blog-1175.html