Serious

Yesterday I saw a blurb stuck on a tram window about how not to get swine flu (or any sort of flu, I suppose, but I guess swine flu was what inspired it), an ad on telly about how not to get (swine) flu, and a 12-step set of instructions in a museum toilet on how to wash my hands thoroughly.

Other than that I had a delightful day that was in no way blighted by the spectre of disease and death. We went to the Tinguely museum in Basel (which was sort of bad timing because it's mostly closed at the moment, preparing for new exhibitions which are opening next week. Still better that going to see the Van Gogh exhibition at the Kunstmuseum, though, because oh my goodness there was a massive ticket queue there both times we went past. Reto and I saw the exhibition on the easter weekend, which you would think would be a moronic time to go to something like that, and it was pretty crowded when we were there, but apparently the last weeks before it closes are much worse.), the high point of which was a toss up between this (the Meta-Harmonie 2, a giganto machine with all sorts of drums and keyboards and cymbals attached which, unsurprisingly, makes a bit of a racket when you press the "go" button and not in a delightfully musical way, either, in case you were getting your hopes up. More in a random banging of drums way) and lunch, which was veal with proscuitto and parmesan cheese and a red wine risotto, and although in general I completely disapprove of the mixing of meat (as in two or more types at once), this was ridiculously delicious. And the salad was great, and the coffee was great, and the restaurant itself was also charming. And then we went for a pleasant stroll along the river in the afternoon sun and watched children and dogs and the occasional adult frolicking in the water, and then we almost froze to death in our bed overnight when the temperature suddenly dropped about 45 degrees (possible exaggeration. I was forced to close the window, though, which I normally never ever do). So that was mostly delightful.

Art Brut

The other day I went to my favourite museum ever, and I bought this poster.

The museum is the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, and it's full of art made by people who I like to group collectively as "crazy" (no offense intended), but who the museum far more PC-ishly describes as

"marginalised people entrenched in the attitude of a rebellious spirit or impervious to collective norms and values, those who produce Art Brut include prisoners, inmates of psychiatric hospitals, eccentrics loners and misfits. They work in solitude, secrecy and silence, unconcerned by public criticism or the gaze of others. Their works are unaffected by influences from artistic traditions and apply singular methods of representation. These creators devise their own techniques, often with completely novel means and materials."

I first went to the museum in 2004, and at the time they were having a special exhibition of the dude featured in my new poster. I can't really remember much about him, but he made these awesome wooden sculptures, lots of horses and donkies and stuff, and they were all surprisingly life-like (and life-sized) but with big goofy smiley faces turned at funny angles. The poster is a picture of him with a horse he made (which I'm very pleased to say is still in the museum) that he bunged an ill-fitting bridle on, jumped on and pretended to ride. I really wanted to buy this poster at the time, but I was a bit of a grotty backpacker back then and I doubted that the poster would make it all the way back home unmangled so I didn't buy it. And now, years later, they still have the poster for sale. It's like fate. All over our living room wall.

Other excellent stuff at the museum includes the totally awesome faces made out of shells (some dude from the 1800s, I think, who used to buy other people's collections of huge and wacky shells and then stick them together somehow to make really excellent faces), the other shell-themed thing (these semi-religious looking and extremely detailed garden-type scenes made of squillions of little shells all stuck together, painted with garish nailpolishes and lit with unnecessarily high-watt bulbs), various animal sculptures made out of sticks, and this rather excellent and creepily sweet-looking book about a planet full of adorable little children being brutalised by mean men with dogs and rescued by mysterious trans-gender kiddies who happily usually manage to save the day that they are currently having an extended exhibition on.

It's wacky and excellent and I thoroughly recommend it.

The Best Games Ever

I was off wasting some time in Lausanne the other day (actually enrolling in my french course which I am starting on Tuesday - aagh - and which was moronically difficult to do what with me spending ages not being able to find the place and then the three people I dealt with there not really being able to speak much english, and then them giving me a form in french to fill in but I didn't know what to write where and they were telling me what to write but they were telling me in french and then there were all the spelling issues and so on..) and as I had a bit of time up my sleeve before having to pick up my husband in Fribourg and take him home I thought I would pop down to the Olympic Museum and see what they had to say for themselves.

Rather than being at all controversial or decisive, though; rather than talking about the incongruence of the juxtaposing of all the red stuff festooned everywhere with information about the history of China and its many warm and embracey qualities, and the statue celebrating the Olympic ideal of non-violence (a gun with the barrel tied in a knot, and a plaque next to it talking about how the Olympics aim towards an "increasing effort to create peace and non-violence through sport"); rather than talking about whether or not I would throw things at people taking part in the torch relay (which incidentally I would not), I am going to instead talk about the wondrous event that was the Sydney Olympics.

A few of the walls inside the museum are dedicated to a small blurb about each of the modern Olympics and what was so great about them. As anyone who remembers what little Juaney Samaranch said during the closing ceremony will not be surprised to hear, what is written in the blurb about the Sydney Olympics is that they were "the best Games in history". Huh. Apparently that wasn't just the sort of hysterical hyperbole that they say during the closing ceremonies all the time, it was actually true enough to write on a wall in a museum (although of course we all knew that anyway. Or at least, it was certainly the best Olympics that I have ever been to, not that I attended any actual sporting events of course, since, let's face it, sport is boring. All the non-sporty bits were super, though).

Interestingly, the wall also said that the reason the Sydney Games were so super was because of the many volunteers (some of whom you still occasionally see out and about in their volunteer uniforms, weirdos), because of the Australian love and knowledge of sport (fair enough), and because of our "anglo-saxon capacity for fair play". Hmm. Are anglo saxons known for their capacity for fair play? Does that mean that everyone else is cheating? I thought the reason the Sydney Olympics were so super was because it was sunny and the trains weren't atrocious and because everyone was bizarrely happy all the time. Oh, and because we all really enjoyed that show that Roy and HG did (I can't believe I have forgotten what it was called and that I can't be bothered to google it. The Dream?).

Museums Galore!

Not only do we have shiny new train tickets, as of today we also have shiny new museum passes that let us go to squillions of museums all over the country for free! Yay! Although, pathetically enough, we are off to a very bad start having visited absolutely no museums at all today.