Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

My main focus - just now - is to keep my lips sealed, while I lie, floating on my back, in the middle of the Canal St Martin in Paris. The place I just duck into is absolutely no azure swimming pool, but rather an industrial canal cut through the city center, where swimming for the last hundred years has been strictly forbidden And for good reasons! The river flowing through Paris has been severely polluted, making it possible to contract skin infections, or develop gastroenteritis if you ingest the water. Not speaking of leptospirosis, or rat disease, which is transmitted via rat corpses or urine! In lieu of all this - why am I this Sunday splashing around in the canal with a happy group of Parisians?   One thing is the heat, but the main reason is:  Because we actually can! For the last hundred years wild swimming in Paris waters has been strictly forbidden under pain of a fine (or pain of sickness!), but this Sunday and in ...

The sun beat down as I waited with growing irritation among a restless crowd in Paris. We shuffled and jostled for position, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Tour de France peloton in its final moments. I was soaked in sweat, my feet ached, and my head throbbed. But I persevered.  As a Dane, being in Paris on this particular day, I felt almost obliged to witness the moment when Jonas Vingegaard for the second year in a row made his victory lap in the fabled maillot jaune. Fans waved Danish flags with the name “VINGEGAARD” scrawled in shaky letters, barely dry from last-minute DIY banner making. Suddenly, the helicopter hovered overhead, while the TV cameras appeared on motorbikes, triggering an eruption of noise from the crowd.  The endless wait was nearly over. We craned our necks, desperate for the first signs of the riders. "Here they come!" The crowd roared when the peloton arrived in a whir of colors and churning legs.  ...

Yesterday, we were going to the Fondation Le Corbusier. On our way to this museum, which lies in the posh Paris neighborhood of Auteuil, we passed row upon row of centuries-old homes with bisque stone facades and quiet courtyards - until we stumbled upon a small street, which stopped us in our tracks. A short, private cul-de-sac with five giant cubist townhouses - the Rue  Mallet-Stevens. We gazed up at whitewashed facades, sinuous curves, and floor-to-ceiling windows, and we felt like we had stepped into a living architectural exhibit from the interwar period, where - even by today's standards - each house seems as modern as the next.  When  we googled the street, it turned out that it is named after a now almost forgotten architect,  Robert Mallet-Stevens, who back in the 1920ties designed all five houses  for a group of wealthy bohemians, who embraced the clean lines and geometric forms of the newly developed...

The stench is the first thing that I notice as I enter into the dark underworld of the Petite Ceinture, the long-abandoned more than 150-year-old railway line which traces the 32-kilometer perimeter of Paris. Some parts of the Petite Ceinture are now open to the public, but the kilometer-long tunnels are barred and you have to be sneaky if you want to explore them.  I found a way in (see below), where the dank air smelled of urine, rot, and abandonment. It was the smell of a place forgotten.   Moving  further on, the beam of the torch on my mobile creates a bubble of light in the almost impenetrable darkness.  It flashes at the stone walls on either side, and the circle of light picks out tags, scribblings, and crude drawings, as this abandoned place has probably for almost a century been witness to furtive meetings, drug use, rough sleeping, and teenage gatherings. I walk slowly, wary of deep holes in the floor and ob...

After our weeks in London, we're now back in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, and our experience of the last couple of days has been - strange! Montmartre is as gloriously romantic as always with its quaint alleys and steep staircases, its small hidden squares, and busy sidewalk cafes. We enjoy it all, but at the same time, living in an apartment in a gated community next to the Abbesses, we feel almost like we were courtiers at the  Versailles in the late 1780ties. Eating cake, while the horizons are in flames! We read about the riots in the banlieues, and like the rest of the world, we see shocking TV footage of burning cars, burning buildings, protestors, looters, and attacking police forces. It all happens just a few kilometers away, but here, in the center of Paris, we experience not one single disturbance. All is tranquil The journalist in me feels the pull to witness firsthand what is unfolding out there beyond the Paris beltway Not long ago, I probably would have...

On the far outskirts of Eastern London, a weathered sign in front of a ramshackle warehouse reads "God's Own Junkyard" in flickering neon letters. Here Dick Bracy, known as 'Neon Man', more than 40 years ago began shaping - and collecting - neon signs in all forms and colors. Many of them for the sex shops and strip bars on the seedier side of London Soho.  He even got so famous, that some of his signs appeared in movies like 'Eyes wide shut' and 'Blade Runner'.  Today his son is running the warehouse, which occasionally is opened up to the public, and when you enter it, you become immersed inside an almost impenetrable jungle of humming tubes of light.  Vintage advertisements share space with avant-garde sculptures crafted from discarded neon pieces, and the fluorescent glow gives the impression of a futuristic wonderland, even though the signs themselves harken back to bygone eras. The neon relics in the ...

Last night we happened to find a new favorite hangout in East London. The Bohemia Night Market is a vibrant set of microbreweries, bars, DJ sets, and street food vendors, which has recently settled into some old, gloriously grungy, abandoned garages below the highline at Hackney Central train station.   In the coming weekends, this black-owned market will be filled with mostly young people spinning around to Afrobeats, Dancehall, Amapiano, Funk, Soul,  and more.  And - as was our main focus last night: Having some lovely street food and a few pints of brews. The party probably lasted way into the early morning hours. At that time, though, we were well into our beds.

While Michael is out roaming around Greater London, I spend a lot of time at the locks on Regents Canal, which runs just a block from the flat in Islington, where we are staying.  I often walk along the canal but mostly, I just sit, doing some reading or some knitting. There is always something to look at, ponder about, or be entertained by. Yesterday when I was sitting on my bench, a man set up his fishing gear, threw the line, and shortly after caught what turned out to be a perch.  It was a fight for him to get it ashore, but he put it immediately back into the canal.  When I asked him why, he told me he had been fishing at this bank since he was 12. In his younger days, he needed meals. Now he was just doing it for sport, and he showed me how and where to place oneself while fishing according to the stream, the noise, and the wind. The story of his life came after this information. He was a builder and told me he was quite relaxed. The only people he didn’t like...

Yesterday we embarked on a pilgrimage to London's White Cube Gallery to view the 'Finnegan's wake' - the new exhibition of work by German artist Anselm Kiefer.  Passing through the pristine antechamber of the White Cube, all glowing white plaster and polished concrete, felt like approaching some great cathedral.  Entering the first gallery space, we were plunged suddenly into an ashen underworld.  Kiefer's large-scale paintings hung on the walls like ancient tomb paintings, muted greys and blackened earth tones layered in his signature impasto style.  Moving through the exhibition, we wandered as if lost in a labyrinth made of fire and rubble. Images of scorched earth evoked the horrors of Europe's 20th-century history. Other canvases featured more vertiginous and vaulting imagery, but even these more aspirational paintings were rendered in ashen, elegiac tones as if any dream of transcendence was foreclosed.  Throughout, Kiefer's use...