Culture Zohn: Roman Holiday Meets La Dolce Vita — American Academy Style

“We all have a fantasy about taking off for six months or a year, getting away from the grind in order to have the time to muse and contemplate. We know we would be the better for it, our ideas sharper, our vision about our work clearer. We might even finish the thing we had started and put away in the drawer or begin the thing we had made notes on or sketches for and put away in the drawer, the famous drawer that like the Bocca della verita threatens to suck up whatever lies are put inside its cold, imposing mouth.

Most of us, alas, have not had the chance to do that.

Some very lucky, very talented people do, however. Though there are writers and artists colonies of all stripes, there could be none more achingly beautiful or more intellectually dynamic than the American Academy in Rome. Long a secret of architects and designers who were annointed early on in their careers with fellowships and who come back to occasionally to refuel, the Academy is gradually widening its net, this year including an engineer and a dancer and those of us who can only afford a month or a few months, yet want somehow to stop the world so we can get off.

As far back as 1666 when the French established their Academy in Rome, the city has been serving as a tutorial in all things classical, when the Grand Tour stop in Italy was the Alpha and the Omega of culture; if you walk near the Mussolini-style Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna or the Villa Giulia designed by Vignola, you can see the enormous Academy buildings from many nations in all their faded splendor.

None come close to the splendor of the American Academy, founded in the early twentieth century and its magnificently restored Villa Aurelia.

The fellowships given each year are hotly contested and with good reason; you only have to spend an afternoon or a lunch at the long refectory tables dining on Alice Waters inflected cuisine or spend a hushed moment in one of the multi-storied windowed studios or take a walk in the sublime gardens or grab a Campari or espresso at the Bar to know that you have achieved paradise.”

Read the rest of this story here

A leading British law firm has warned that travel companies will face a significant rise in compensation claims if the financial crisis continues.Britons made more than 400,000 claims for lost luggage last year

Stephen Mason, managing partner of Travlaw, which specialises in travel litigation, said that the company had witnessed a record increase in claims over the winter. He warned that operators can expect an ever bigger rise in new claims this summer, as holidaymakers ensure they get value for money from their breaks during the economic downturn.

These claims can vary from travellers seeking compensation for holidays that fail to live up to brochure descriptions to illnesses or injuries sustained while abroad.

“On the one hand travel companies are facing more claims and on the other they have fewer staff to deal with them,” said managing partner Stephen Mason. “It’s been a pattern in the last few downturns. When times are hard and affording a holiday is pushing the budget, claims are much more likely.”

Insurance claims are also rising. Last year, Britons made more than 560,000 medical claims totalling £383 million – up 58 per cent on 2007. Claims for lost luggage were the second most popular, with nearly 400,000 British travellers seeking around £8 million from their travel insurer – up eight per cent on 2007. Claims for flight cancellations were also up, rising 24 per cent to 240,000 claims.

“Medical claims are still the most costly for the travel insurance industry,” said Perry Wilson, founder of InsureandGo. “Unfortunately the average claim value seems to be rocketing, which highlights just how important it is for people to have adequate travel insurance, particularly when times are tough.”

Source:  The Daily Telegraph, article by Charles Starmer-Smith

A nighttime scene at the Diesel Pub.

It was not exactly what a first-time visitor expected to find in a Central European town of steel factories and Soviet-era apartment blocs. But as the beat of African samba filled the cramped cafe, an arty crowd of young Slovaks in metal-rock T-shirts and bookish glasses sat in rapt attention, slow-sipping their Mojitos and ignoring the techno music downstairs.

For decades, Kosice, a city of 250,000 in eastern Slovakia, was considered an industrial backwater — if it was considered at all. (Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital, got the attention.) But in the past several years, a beautifully refurbished center has emerged from behind Kosice’s ugly veneer of gray concrete and steel, drawing artists, entrepreneurs and a growing number of tourists.

Hlavni Namesti, the city’s newly renovated Main Square, now gleams with intimate art galleries, white-tablecloth restaurants and upscale hotels equipped with wine cellars. Dormant mines and military barracks have been refashioned into studios for underground artists. And a hilltop collection of unused warehouses is being converted into a site for open-air festivals, electronica parties and laser shows.

“It’s really booming,” said Michael Hladky, 27, a local architect who specializes in new urbanism. “It’s no longer the case where public art gets decided by old guys from Communist times. A younger generation is coming in.”

The transformation was no accident. With its steel factories slowing down, Kosice, a former Soviet Bloc city, decided in the late 1990s to restore the town’s cobblestone center. The idea was to stimulate culture and the arts.

“We want to be an incubator for young artists,” said Marek Kolarcik, project manager of Kosice 2013, a public task force lobbying to have the city named a European Capital of Culture. “We’re lagging behind Bratislava, but in two years’ time, the boom will come.”

Its historic diversity may help. Thanks to its location along the border of the Hapsburg Empire, Kosice has Slavic as well as Magyar roots. The region’s only Roma theater can be found there, and bookstores carry both Slovak and Hungarian magazines. Locals also like to point out that in 1968, when Moscow sent tanks into the country to suppress the reform movement known as the Prague Spring, some of the Czechoslovak intelligentsia were hauled off to work in Kosice’s steel mills, laying the foundation for the city’s renaissance in culture.

On an intermittently soggy afternoon last fall, the beer gardens along the main square were emptied of their regulars — a mix of university students and steel workers — but the sidewalks swelled with the rush of passersby. A pair of elderly women fed pigeons in the park as faint elevator music could be heard from a nearby singing fountain.

A fog lifted over the towering spires of St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral. Begun in the late 14th century, it is Slovakia’s largest church, and its gargoyle-studded exterior leaves one wondering if Quasimodo is hunched over its Gothic entranceway. The top of the cathedral’s clock tower offers panoramic views, and the crypt below lets you mingle among the tombs.

Next to the church stands the medieval bell tower of St. Urban. Its vaulted interior has been turned into a tacky wax museum devoted to hometown heroes like Andrej Varchola — otherwise known as Andy Warhol — who has familial roots in the region. His wax likeness, complete with the signature shock of white hair, stands next to a general and other heroes from Slovak history.

Indeed, Kosice seems to have embraced its quirkier side. Filmmakers and media types descend on the town each June to hand out a documentary film award called the Golden Beggar, which depicts a vagrant tipping his hat.

Nor are locals above showing off their pro-Americanism. Slovak-style spaghetti is served at the Bill Restaurant, named after — who else? — Bill Clinton, but a waitress said he never stepped foot in the place. The entrance features a cartoon cutout of the former president sporting a wide grin, and the cavernous interior features kitschy American memorabilia splashed across its orange walls, including, of course, a saxophone.

But Kosice’s hammer-and-sickle past is never far away. Lurking around the corner is Krcma Nositel Radu Prace, a dive bar straight out of the cold war. A group of blue-collar men cluster around tables, singing what sounds like Soviet songs and washing down cheap Topvar beer, while portraits of Lenin and Marx peer from the peeling walls and an angry-looking babushka tends bar. “This is a place for the unemployed, not tourists,” said Milan Seliga, a truck driver, before downing a shot of vodka.

Attempts to shed Kosice’s provincial image have not come easily. Part of the problem may be Slovakia’s reputation — not entirely unfounded — for poor service and lack of foreign language skills, a holdover from its Communist days. “They go to hotel school for four years but learn to smile on the fifth,” said Richard Gibbs, a retired teacher from England, who was visiting the High Tatras, the mountains dividing Slovakia and Poland.

But walk past the Piano Cafe down an unmarked alleyway known as club row, and you might encounter a gregarious man with a mullet haircut tending bar at Diesel, a kitschy bar, and teenagers in hoodies eager to chat up out-of-towners between puffs of Marlboros.

That bonhomie is perhaps most clearly felt by the city’s artists. “This place is what I imagine New York was like back in the 30s,” said James Austin Murray, 38, a painter from New York City who visits Kosice occasionally. “There is this sincerity that comes with the lack of ambition toward money.”

NEXT CAPITAL OF CULTURE

HOW TO GET THERE

Flights from the United States require a stopover, in Vienna or Prague. A recent online search found a Czech Airlines flight from Kennedy Airport, with a plane change in Prague, starting at $1,176 for travel this month. Kosice is about five hours by bus or train from Bratislava or Budapest.

WHERE TO STAY

The 32-unit Hotel Bristol (Orlia 3; 421-55-729-0077; www.hotelbristol.sk) offers cathedral views and a Roman spa, with singles starting at 3,300 Slovak korunas, $171 at 19.65 korunas to the dollar.

The Hotel Bankov (Dolny Bankov; 421-55-632-45-22; www.hotelbankov.sk) has some of the most lavish quarters in town, with park views on its summer terrace and a Finnish sauna. Rooms start at 2,950 korunas.

WHERE TO EAT

For traditional Slovak fare, head to Twelve Apostles (Kovacska 51; 421-55-729-5105), where diners sit around wooden pews in a tabernacle-like room.The menu includes chicken breast with cherry (385 korunas) and steamed salmon with grilled vegetables (450 korunas).

Bill Restaurant (Hlavna 117; 421-9-07-970-863) serves American-inspired fare.

Another popular hangout is Diesel Pub (Hlavna 92; 421-55-622-2186), which offers greasy but good food.

News Source: Tamas Dezso for The New York Times