So far...

Okay guys, jet lag is real. Especially when you start a trip with only a couple hours of sleep, take an overnight flight, and take 3 hours to get back to your place on New Years a couple days later. Yesterday was the first day I didn't feel like falling over all day long.

Inspiring ceiling mosaics in forgotten church name in Spain

We were in Madrid for a few days, Bilbao for a couple, and have been in Paris for a few. Moving around so much when we were so sleepy was probably a mistake, but I really enjoyed the few moments I was awake for in Spain. Simple things like finding food, water, bathrooms, etc can be adventures and take lots of time in each new place, so I have not written nearly as much as has been on my mind. To be honest, the site-seeing and the museums are cool, but I am really itching to get working on the farms.

Me in Richard Serra's "The Matter of Time"

Besides being horridly exhausted, our first (ever) couch surfing experience was possibly the most awkward situation I have ever been in. Our host agreed to let us stay 4 nights and when we arrived she said that she was very sad about something personal, but it was not us. She left town for part of the time, but hardly talked to us while we were there, and we felt like we were intruding despite her repeated welcomings (my home is your home) and it was so close to New Year's that everything was booked so we couldn't leave. We were going to make dinner with her one evening and when we arrived, the paramedics were there and she was going to the hospital because she was so sad. At that point her boyfriend explained, This is not your problem, but it would be clever for you to stay somewhere else.

Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain

Yes, it would have been better to leave earlier. The situation was nobody's fault and I felt really bad for her being so sad, but the awkwardness was so tangible, that no amount of cultural no-how or understanding could have relieved the awkwardness. Still, we hope to give couch surfing another try in Munich.
The Guggenheim in Bilbao was pretty awesome. There was a Richard Serra/ Brancusi exhibition, and our favorite was the huge Serra piece (I forget the name, but the room was built around it so it is permanent). As I walked through the pieces, I found myself anticipating the end, only to find I enjoyed the journey among each piece over the end. The Pompadou Center in Paris was pretty awesome too. I realized though, that I greatly prefer looking at exhibitions from a single artist, as opposed to a perminent collection. Although perminent collections have a unified vision of the curator and the institution, I don't respond to that as much as I do to a retrospective, or an exhibition of one artist (or collective) in order to clearly see the thread of thought communicated in a group of works.

Me and Eiffel Tower

Infinity Nets by Yayoi Kusama

We saw the work of Yayoi Kusama, who makes these infinity nets. She paints dots by painting the outside; so instead of painting dots, she paints the space around them, hence the nets. She would paint this all over huge canvases. I thought this is an interesting gesture to try to understand infinity. She talks about how her life is just one dot among many dots. Why did she paint the space around the dots intsead of the dots themselves, which seems more obvious? The infinity net paintings were done in calming colors, muted, grayed, which I thought was interesting, considering how overwhelming infinity can be.

Us in Munich Modern Art Museum

Soooooo, change of planz... Our workaway in Italy fell through, as did our couch surfing in London, so we are going to Greece for farming. In order to afford going to Greece, which is not covered by our rail pass (neither was London), we are skipping London, and spending that time in Berlin. Unfortunately, in my hurry to get out of Paris, we came to Munich instead of Berlin (which has the more contemporary art scene). All is well though, I have been sitting in cafes and churches drawing and water coloring. So for now, chilling in Munich for about 5 days, then I think we will be in Berlin for about a week, maybe more. We report to Greece beginning of February.