• Art - Articles - Featured - Travel

    Traveling with Vigée Le Brun

    April 15, 2024 - By 

    As the world moves closer to WWIII for reasons no sane man can understand, I prefer for the moment to write about travel.

    I am still reading Vigée Le Brun’s memories about her travels in Italy, and finding them pretty interesting. But then again, I usually like to read diaries or travel journals, even by relatively unknown or obscure people, and especially if they are from a different period. They provide a window into a different time.

    You can find here a version in English translated by Lionel Strachey, who was the brother of the more famous Lytton Strachey from the Bloomsbury circle. (I tried to find more info about Lionel, but all I could find was that he was tragically killed by a train). Be aware however that this translation seems to be a reduced version as it does not contain all the chapters that the one in French does.

    This being the 18th century, all the traveling was done in coaches pulled by horses, when not by mules or simply walking, but we don’t hear any lamentations from Mme Le Brun. At least she didn’t have to worry about TSA patting or faulty Boeing planes.

    In fact, what is particularly nice about Le Brun’s souvenirs is that she is usually very cheerful. She can’t stop raving about Italian landscapes and Italian music and Italian artists, and she meets and talks to lots of interesting people on the way. She can be a bit snobbish but not as much as you’d expect. Her major complaint is about how hard it is to find an apartment in Rome that is not noisy.

    I guess some people like traveling, and some don’t. I remember reading years ago a book by V. S. Naipaul about Argentina. The guy was always complaining, and couldn’t find a single nice thing to say about the country. Not even dulce de leche! Next time, buddy, maybe stay home?

    It’s like that classic cartoon of two people riding the same bus, but the one on one side sees a gloomy rock wall, and the one on the other side sees a beautiful sunny landscape.

    In fact, Vigée Le Brun has exactly this experience as she rides in a coach from Rome to Napoli. She sees a beautiful pastoral landscape filled with sheep and exclaims that it would make a wonderful painting. His traveling companion (a Frenchman married to Voltaire’s niece) replies: “They’re all dirty with dung. The English sheep, those are the ones you should see”.

    Then she points to a group low clouds in the horizon coloured by the setting sun and leaning against the Appenines, exclaiming how beautiful it all is. Her companion replies: “The only thing those clouds tell us is that it’s going to rain tomorrow”. From then on, she just ignores her companion, whom she nicknames “éteignoir” (killjoy).

    Of course, one advantage that Le Brun has is that she is very sociable and extremely well-connected. Wherever she goes, she meets all the local ambassadors, counts and duchesses, as well as several French emigré (understandably, there were many abroad at that time, as heads were rolling in France).

    Sometimes I wish people more would read my travel articles, but being an introvert and not particularly well-connected with the upper classes, I rarely meet other people except tourists, proles or local bums at cafes. But, instead of someone like, say, Linh Dinh, who manages to extract from them wonderful or bizarre stories, I usually prefer to leave them on their own.

    And yet, descriptions of places or events only take us so far. It is meeting and talking to people who provides most of the interest in travel writing.

    Lady Hamilton

    One of the interesting people Le Brun meets in Napoli is Lady Hamilton. There are different versions of her life, some of them contradicting others, but let us follow Vigée Le Brun’s account.

    Born to a hairdresser and a sailor, she started to work as a maid but soon lost her job and would soon have become some sort of lower class prostitute if she had not discovered a very particular talent: she was neither actress nor painter, but she could be a very expressive model. After being discovered by the celebrated painter George Romney, she became a sort of celebrity herself.

    Apt as well at social climbing, soon she became the lover of a succession of rich men who, however, didn’t keep her for long. She was supposed to marry Charles Greville, a rich antiquarian, but ended up marrying her older uncle instead, Lord William Hamilton, who was even richer and lived in Napoli as an ambassador. This is where Le Brun meets her and paints several portraits of her.

    Lady Hamilton remained nominally married to Lord Hamilton until he died, but the real love of her life was Lord Nelson, the famous English admiral who defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Trafalgar. Everyone, even Lord Hamilton, knew that Nelson was her lover. (Vigée Le Brun’s meets her again later in London and doesn’t buy her sadness at having recently becoming a widow).

    I haven’t seen Le Brun’s several portraits of Lady Hamilton, but I managed to see Vigée Le Brun self-portrait which is still hanging on the Ufizzi Gallery in Florence. It is very nice. While not reaching the heights of her beloved Raphael and Correggio (bur who has?) she was a talented painter alright.

    Russia

    Interestingly, after leaving Italy Vigée Le Brun ended up in Russia, where she lived for several years, mostly in Saint Petersburg. She has a surprisingly positive view of Russia and the Russian people. (I say surprisingly because it doesn’t seem the usual Western European view, either back then or now.)

    She even says at one point that Russians rarely drink and that she never saw a drunk Russian, which makes me doubt of her powers of observation. Then again, I suppose she lived mostly among the upper classes and exiles in Czarist Russia, so who knows.

    She leaves Russia shortly after her daughter marries Gaëtan Bertrand Nigris, a Frenchman who works in Saint Petersburg, a marriage she doesn’t approve. She might have been right: the couple divorce just a few years later after and the daughter returns to France, but she never fully reconciles with her mother. She dies in poverty at only 39 years of age.

    After further periods of exile in England, Switzerland and the Netherlands, Vigée Le Brun returned to France definitely in 1809. She died in 1842 at 86 years of age. Her Souvenirs were written and published in 1835. Besides her self-portrait hanging in the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence, she has many works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in the Louvre. During her life, she painted more than 600 paintings, mostly portraits.

    “Self-portrait with a straw hat” (1782)
    “Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante” (Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1792)
  • Germany - Travel

    Snapshots from life in modern Germany

    March 4, 2024 - By 

    I haven’t written so much about Germany, even though I have been living here for the past three years, for several reasons. The main one is that I never expected this country to be my permanent home, but just a place in which I accidentally and temporarily ended up for a while before moving to other pastures. But now after three years, I’m starting to question whether I will ever leave…

    Germany is changing. Once known as the land of efficiency, now it has been plagued by several economic and social problems. The economy is in recession, and inflation has been steadily growing. The energy crisis that started with the sanctions against Russian gas is ongoing, and damaged Germany more than Russia.

    Farmers have been protesting, as they have in other European countries, against proposed changes in legislation that single them out as “un-green” and cut their subsidies for fuel, among other things.

    Deutsche Bahn, its national rail service, has been having more and more train delays due to construction or strikes. Believe it or not, I experienced less train delays in a recent trip to Italy than in my recent weeks in Germany (but, to be fair, that was a period of heavy strikes).

    Population changes

    German population is changing, too. Migration levels remain high, while the fertility rate has stationed at around 1.46 per woman. For a few years, Germany held the title of the European country with the lowest fertility rate, but now in 2024 that distinction is going to Spain, with 1.19. The caliente Spanish are having less babies (and, presumably, less sex, or perhaps just more abortions) than the kalt Germans.

    (Parenthesis: part of the reason could be that Spain went from übercatholic to überfeminist in basically just one generation. It is interesting that the countries that experienced the most drastic reduction in birth rates where former Catholic ones: Ireland, Italy, France and Canada’s Quebec.)

    Demographic changes bring cultural changes.

    Advenstkalender are traditional German calendars containing chocolates or gifts inside that are marketed to children (and, sometimes, adults) in the period of Advent ending in Christmas. But, some time ago, in a supermarket, I noticed a curious thing: an “Adventskalender” for Ramadan! I doubt this is traditional in Muslim countries. It’s probably Germany trying to square the high number of immigrants with its own traditions.

    However, despite the large number of Arabs and Turks, the most recent migrants are all Ukrainian. In some neighbourhoods, you hear more Russian than German in the streets. And yes, it’s Russian, not Ukrainian — until very recently, most Ukrainians spoke only Russian, although that is probably changing now. Germany took in over a million Ukrainian refugees, perhaps even two or three million. They will probably never return to the Ukraine. Germany is going to become more slavic. (There was already a relatively high number of Poles).

    A world without people

    Preparing us for a world without people, or at least much fewer people, automation is more and more present in Germany. I think I already mentioned that many supermarkets and shops are moving to automatic checkout, and also that many commerces including bars are starting to refuse cash — you can only pay with your credit card, phone or similar digital appliance — and soon, I suppose, also with a microchip inserted under your skin or in your brain.

    But a recent episode in a visit to Nuremberg illustrates de dangers of living in a world where everything is automatic and you have to deal with machines instead of humans.

    Now, first of all I must say that Nuremberg is a very charming city. Not too big and not too small, plus it also has at least two wonderful medieval churches. Saint Sebald in particular is very interesting. A volunteer working as guide at the church, a retired architect, explained to us that Nuremberg was a very important town in medieval times and the stopping point for many pilgrims going south. (Too bad both churches have become protestant since the Reform). Also, the Albrecht Dürer house and museum is worth a visit, as Dürer is the most famous artist from Nuremberg.

    But anyway, what happened was that I made a reservation online for a night at a hotel. The hotel, called “Hotel Continental”, promised old-world charm, elegant rooms and a convenient central location. Only that, except for the central location, it all was a lie.

    The hotel didn’t have a reception. You had to type in a code in the door outside, then, once inside, there was another machine where you typed in your reservation code. Once verified, this printed out a new code that you could use to open the door of your room.

    We had reserved and paid for two rooms — I was in Nuremberg with a friend — but the machine, for some reason, only printed out one door code. As I said, there was no reception and, at a phone number listed “for emergencies”, no one answered. My friend was able to get into her room — no old-world charm, but a small single bed, dirty carpets and no other furniture but a small bedside table. The bathroom was located outside, in the corridor. Not that great.

    As the original reservation was no longer recognized by the system, in the end I had to purchase a new room from the machine. So far, so good? Wrong. As I went to the door of my newly purchased room, the code didn’t work! No matter how many times I tried, the door would not open. I checked and double-checked, tried it in different ways (and even in different doors) but there was no way to get in. Later, reading reviews of the hotel, I found out it was a not uncommon problem, and some guests had to sleep in the corridor.

    Since there was no one to call and by that time it was too late to find another hotel, I ended up just walking along the empty corridors and up and down the stairs for hours, like a ghost in the “Shining” movie, in search of a living soul. I didn’t see anyone, employee or guest.

    The hotel had four floors and what was interesting was that each floor was different — the lower, and, I suppose, cheaper one, had corridors wish stained carpets, ugly paintings on the walls, some room doors missing their numbers, and just a single small armchair on each end. But as you went up, the decoration improved.

    The second floor already looked a bit better: only one door had a missing number and the carpets seemed less dirty. The third floor had an even cleaner carpet and more comfortable-looking armchairs, and the fourth and last floor had much more elegant colours, wider doors with no missing numbers and not just armchairs on each end of the corridor but even a vase with flowers sitting on an elegant table. I assume it was not just the corridors, but the quality (and the price) of the rooms also increased as you went up.

    It reminded me of a short story by Dino Buzatti called “Seven Floors”, about a hospital with a similar configuration.

    Eventually I found an unlocked deposit room downstairs where they had a small foldable bed, and there’s where I ended up sleeping. And undisturbed, too, for eight straight hours. I suppose someone must clean the hotel at some point, but, even during the next morning, I didn’t see a single employee at that ghostly and ghastly hotel — not at the reception, not cleaning the rooms, not guarding the doors. Later I tried to call asking for a refund, but no one answered. No one answered the dozens of emails I sent either.

    If you ever visit Nürnberg, don’t stay at the “Hotel Continental”.

    A call from above

    German children can be enchanting and friendly (older German people, a bit less).

    Just a few days ago, I was walking down the street when I heard the voice of a little girl calling from above. “Hallo, hallo!” She was standing in an elevated courtyard at the school next to the church, looking down. She and other children were playing in the recess from school. I thought they would ask me about a ball or something else that had fallen down, but no. She said, “Hallo, wie heißt du?” (What’s your name). I answered, “Thomas”. “Schöne name”, (nice name) she said. The boy next to her mentioned “Thomas Müller”, a football player. Then she waved goodbye and so did I.

    And that would be it, but a little later I was returning and crossed the corner of the same street, and I wondered if the girl was still there and if she would still see me from so far away. And indeed I heard her calling, and I turned and saw her waving. “Hallo, Thomas!” she called.

    What was that? A vision? An angel? Or a real child?

    Somehow it reminded me of the end of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”, where Marcelo Mastroianni is on the beach and the young girl representing innocence waves at him, but he can’t hear what she says, and eventually turns away, in shame.

    Or perhaps I’ve been too long in Germany and I’m just seeing things.

  • Art - Featured - Italy - Travel

    Let them eat bugs

    March 3, 2024 - By 

    I am currently reading the souvenirs of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, or, rather, a part of it focusing on her travels in Italy after having escaped the French Revolution. Madame Le Brun was no Raphael or Rembrandt, but she was a talented painter, mostly famous for her portraits, in particular for the several portraits she made of Queen Marie Antoinette.

    Marie Antoinette, as everyone knows, was the Queen dethroned and guillotined by the revolutionaries and famous for supposedly saying “let them eat brioche” (in fact, it is very unlikely that she really said that, and she had no small number of detractors who invented all kinds of rumours about her).

    Madame Le Brun herself, at least according to Wikipedia, was not an aristocrat by birth and had humble origins, showing that even in pre-Revolutionary France there was a certain social mobility. Her mother was a hairdresser and his father an unknown painter. He taught her painting, but died when she was only 12. Her mother remarried and the new husband, who became Élisabeth’s stepfather, was a rich jeweller, but also not an aristocrat by birth. Yet Élisabeth became a requested painter quite early in her career, painting the portraits of several nobles, and eventually married an important art dealer, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun.

    Le Brun’s souvenirs, or at least the part I am reading, begin just as the royal family is removed from the palace and Le Brun flees France in disguise with her daughter (her husband remains in France and eventually joins the Revolutionary cause, but she remains a monarchist to the end of her life).

    Le Brun’s book depicts both her horror at the events taking place in France as well as her fascination with Italy, in particular Italian art (she’s a big fan of Raphael, Domenichino, Michelangelo and Corregio). It is a very interesting read, and I look forward to the volume about Russia, where she lived afterwards.

    But anyway — what I wanted to talk about was the French Revolution. To my mind, it was a senseless bloodbath and really the foundation of our modern world, based on idealistic but equivocated ideas of “equality”, “democracy” and “secularism” — in other words, the beginning of what we now call “globalism”.

    It is symptomatic that France, together with America, which was inspired by similar (Freemason’s) ideas, are the first countries poised to fall in the New World Order. France’s population is today composed of at least 40% non-European foreigners (they don’t keep statistics about ethnicity or religion, but a map of “sickle-cell anemia” gives the game away) and has so many social and economic problems that it is hard to see how it can survive as a “French” nation a hundred years from now — or even twenty.

    The funny thing about modern democracy — which started with the French and American Revolutions — is that it is supposed to be a system based on the will of the people instead of that of unaccountable elites, but, as we see more and more, the will of the people counts for very little. Just look at the farmers’ protests going on in France and other countries, which, despite their massive support by the public, have not moved the government’s position one inch. And why is the government set up against its own farmers, anyway?

    But, in fact, you can argue that everything that happens in modern democracy is done against the will of the population, or, at least, done without consulting them at all. Just look at massive immigration, gay marriage, the transgender stuff — all those are unpopular measures that no one voted or asked for, and yet keep being implemented.

    The problem of modern democracy is that the supposed leaders are no leaders at all, but puppets of a hidden cabal. So you have no one to protest against. Even if Macron or Biden became so unpopular that they were forced to resign, nothing much would happen — some other puppet would take their place and things would just go on as usual.

    Now the unaccountable elites are saying, not “let them eat brioche”, but, “let them eat bugs”. For some reason they really are pushing for insects on the menu, as well as all kinds of genetically modified veggies and artificial meat made in a lab. But the rich at Davos will still eat Kobe steak and caviar, thank you very much.

    I really don’t know what is the answer to our present quandaries, and as you can see I am not a great fan of violent revolutions — which are usually not the popular movements they are portrayed to be, but just the removal of one “elite” by another — but what can be done at this point? Except perhaps waiting and preparing for whatever may come?

    But let us finish with a short quotation from Le Brun’s book, while she visits a church in Bologna, and muses on the fate of her country. We are all Le Brun now.

    I went immediately to the church of Sant’Agnese, where this saint’s martyrdom is represented in a painting by Domenichino. The youth and innocence of Saint Agnes is so well captured on her beautiful face and the features of the torturer striking her with his sword form such a cruel contrast to her divine nature, that I was overwhelmed with pious admiration. As I knelt before the masterpiece, someone played the overture to Iphigenia on the organ. The involuntary link that I made between the young pagan victim of that story and the young Christian victim, the memory of the peaceful, happy time when I had last listened to that piece of music, and the sad thought of all the evils pressing upon my unhappy country, weighed down my heart to the point where I began to cry bitterly and to pray to God on behalf of France. Fortunately I was alone in the church and I was able to remain there for some time, giving vent to those painful emotions which took control of my soul.

    Whatever you think of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, at least brioche — in the English translation of the phrase they usually say “cake”, but it is just a sweet bread — is delicious, nutritive and not difficult to make. While bugs are disgusting, dangerous and, when you make all the calculations, the economics for their production is not really that green. I know, Asians eat bugs, but I’d rather keep them out of my diet. I prefer the Italian/Mediterranean food.

    “Self-portrait”, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1790)
  • Articles - Travel

    Are European cities getting better and U.S. cities getting worse?

    September 5, 2023 - By 

    Last year, I visited New York and Seattle and was surprised to see so many homeless and drug addicts roaming around the streets. Public transportation seemed more chaotic than usual and the cities still were reeling with disorder and a highest cost of living. I haven’t visited other cities there recently, but many visitors tell horror stories of Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, not to mention Philadelphia, where the “walking dead” filled with meth and “tranq” take over many sidewalks and live permanently in tents.

    In Europe, however, I’ve been recently to Berlin, Barcelona and Palermo, and all of them seemed to be doing pretty well. The cities were swarming with tourists, with many streets converted into pedestrian zones and full of restaurants, shops and cafes. The sidewalks looked cleaner than just a few years before, and they didn’t give a feeling of danger or decay as some American streets do these days. Sure, there were also a few beggars here and there, but not as many as in major American cities. While in the U.S. violent crime and shoplifting have lead to many store closures, in Europe this is rarely an issue, although you may need to be careful of pickpockets and gypsy pretend-beggars.

    Paris, on the other hand, seemed a bit seedier than usual, at least if you got lost in the less central neighbourhoods, although the touristic zones seem still fine. There’s a clear connection between migrant/poorer neighbourhoods and seediness, of course. Even costly Stockholm seems to have this problem as well. I don’t know if this is an issue in Helsinki. It seemed fine when I was there.

    But, in general, my impression is that in recent years, at least after the Covid psyop catastrophe ended, European cities have improved or recovered, while American cities have continued to go downhill. I don’t know why that is. I think that Americans traditionally tend to prefer living away from big cities, and during Covid many people have moved to the countryside, suburbs or small towns, which seem to be flourishing.

    Now, there is also a political division in the U.S. — Big Cities are mostly Blue or Democratic, while small towns and the countryside are Red or Republican — Trump Country. Strangely enough, during Biden’s supposed reign, Blue cities are doing worse, and Red suburbs and small towns, better.

    But, in Europe, this is not a big phenomenon — people still flock to big capital cities as small villages are abandoned. So the money and resources and jobs are concentrated there.

    Of course, many cities in Europe live off tourism, so I don’t know what would happen if that faucet was closed. They did suffer awfully during Covid, and there are some indications that some people want to bring that nightmare back.

    Another aspect that you notice is that, with globalization, all cities are becoming more or less similar. For instance, in recent years, rental scooters have become a fixture of all cities everywhere, and, with that, the risk of being hit by some fast-moving rando. Most people wear tattoos and T-shirts with vulgar messages in English (“Fuck Off” seems to be a recent favourite, I’ve seen at least two with such cheerful message just in the last two weeks), and the fast food joints are all the same. KFC seems to be having a big success in Italy, of all places, while more traditional restaurants go down.

    So perhaps, in some ways, both are getting worse, although in Europe they still maintain a higher livability, while in the U.S. the more affluent and the middle-class have fled to the suburbs and to small towns, leaving the towns to rioters and drug addicts.

  • Articles - Travel

    Finland, Sicily and something in between

    August 12, 2023 - By 

    There probably couldn’t be two more dissimilar places than Sicily and Finland and, yet, somehow, I love them both.

    If Finland is calm and order, then Sicily is noise and chaos.

    In Finland, people would wait for the pedestrian’s green light to appear before they crossed the street — any street, even if it was a remote street that was so completely deserted that there was more chances that a moose would appear than a car.

    In Sicily, you have to carefully look both ways and be prepared to dodge oncoming vehicles, even if the light is green for you and you’re walking on the zebra line.

    In Finland, people are usually quiet, disliking small talk or loud conversations, and the only sounds you hear at night are those of nature: birds, wind, rain.

    In Sicily, the streets are filled with people, both tourists and locals, who seem to do nothing all day except walk, talk, argue, shout, laugh, eat and drink from morning to night. The noise goes on until very late and you better get used to it, or buy earplugs. Even the sounds of nature seems louder in Sicily — seagulls, pigeons and sea waves compete for your attention when not drowned by the traffic noise.

    My more autistic side loves Finland and its silence and its people, but my more bon vivant side loves Sicily and its sun, its food, its beach, its markets, its chaos.

    In Finland, you can go to sauna almost anywhere. In Sicily, walking outside under 40 degrees Celsius already feels like a sauna, so there’s no need to go to a special place for that. It’s free, too. But there’s no frozen lake where you can cool down. Even the ocean water is warm.

    Finland has a great education and health system. Everything just works.

    In Sicily… Well, let’s say that I accompanied a friend to a hospital to request a medical visit for a relative — turns out that, after waiting one hour on the line, she had the wrong formulary, so she needed to fill a new one in order request a new doctor which would take two or three months to finally assist her relative. On the other hand, the hospital had an amazing view of the ocean. If you die while waiting for your appointment, as you probably will, at least you’ll have a great view.

    Finland is expensive. A beer at a pub costed 6 or 7 euros; dinner could set you back on 25 or 40 euros without even being that great. Sicily is cheap. A beer can cost as little as 1.50 and you can eat delicious food almost anywhere for not much more.

    You’d expect that Germany, being approximately in the midpoint between Helsinki and Palermo, would be a good middle ground with the best of both worlds, but this is not exactly the case. In terms of efficiency, Germany is closer to Finland, but its slow bureaucracy is, in some ways, worse than the Italian one.

    Germans are not as extroverted and noisy as Sicilians, but they are also not as quiet and polite as the Finns. Honestly, they are perceived more as cold or rude, even if in many cases it’s just an impression caused by what Mark Twain called “the awful German language.” (It’s not really that awful, but it’s certainly not as soft on the ears as Italian).

    Perhaps I am someone who prefers extremes, I don’t know. But I love both the calm of the Scandinavian countries and the confusion of Southern Europe.

    I leave you with a few pictures of my recent visit to Palermo. Enjoy.

     

  • Travel

    Altenburg

    August 25, 2020 - By 

    This is Altenburg, which I visited some time ago. It means “old fort” in German. A strange city. In demographic decline since the 1980s, it lost 40% of its population since then, and people still seem to be leaving. Currently it has 33,000 people, down from 56,000 in 1988 (data from Wiki). And it shows.

    There are lots of empty, abandoned buildings, some almost falling apart. Even the castle, which is actually quite nice, is in bad disrepair, which is strange for Germany, as they usually take good care of their touristic sites. Then again, I didn’t see many people visiting it when I was there — though that could be because of “corona”.

    The main square downtown, with the curch at the end of the street, is quite pretty, very “German”, and while not crowded it had quite a few people in its bars and cafes, despite “corona” still going on. But turn a corner and you will already see a lot of abandoned and decaying buildings.

    This seems to be a problem in many regions of the former Eastern Germany, which emptied out after the end of Communism (although, to be honest, some towns started to decay even before the fall of the Wall).

    On the other hand, bigger towns in the region, such as Leipzig and Dresden, seem to be in renewal mode and have currently a growing young population, some of whom are escaping from “dead” towns such as Altenburg, or from the growingly more expensive rents in Berlin.

    Still, its a pity, as Altenburg seems a quiet nice little place. Aesthetically, it looks much more pleasant than several other more bustling cities around, such as Chemnitz, Zwickau, etc., which look more industrial and are in general less visually interesting.

    A building needing renovation in Altenburg.
    The town square.
    Castle grounds. Some buildings here are also in disrepair.
    Castle tower – it’s pretty high. Looks like Rapunzel’s tower.