The Rise and Fall of the Green Fairy

Swiss-y Stuff, part 1


On the spur of the moment we decided to go to Switzerland for a couple of days. True, it's four hours from Bourgogne, where we are staying, to the Jura, the Swiss mountains on the edge of France, but we had recently heard about an option for sleeping in the straw at farms around the Swiss countryside, so what had been unaffordable before was suddenly within our grasp.

So what do you think of when you think Switzerland? I had all sorts of programmed preconceptions which had gone completely unquestioned: I saw Switzerland as this country full of ultra-clean people who were money-minded and held themselves apart from the world. There was also, of course, Heidi and the sort of "Hills Are Alive" views (yes, I know that movie's about Austria); the low wooden houses and the Swiss chalets; ski resorts, cuckoo clocks, cheese and snow. Oh, yeah, and the Matterhorn. And yodelling.

However, when we got there I think my daughters summed it up: "I thought it would be all cold and..." said the elder, and the younger finished her sentence "...Swiss-y." Instead we found this place with a wild variety of - well, attractive - attractions: a nationwide system of excellent bike trails; old underground mills full of wooden gear-work; a cliff-walk, where you hang on ropes and creep along above a hundred foot drop; two separate luge ("la ligne fée") and toboggan runs; a strange entertainment where they take your bike up to the top of a mountain and then let you ride down real fast (1000 foot descent in 4 minutes); and the farm we stayed at had not only animals and so on but a zip line, a trampoline and wine with the (relatively) inexpensive swiss-french farm dinner.

All right, this is sounding like a travelogue. But when we left for this trip the thing that I had forgotten was that this was the canton of Neuchatel, and the town we accidentally chose to stay near was called Travers. As in, the Val-de-Travers. As in, absinthe country. And two valleys away? Le Locle and Chaux-du-Fond: the center of clock-making country.

So here we had two days in Switzerland, with nary a yodel nor cuckoo clock nor Matterhorn in sight. Instead, we had the farmer pouring out glasses of absinthe as an aperitif (and using the fresh spring water pouring into the horse trough to water it down). A local bakery had at least eight different labels of the stuff from local micro-distillers.


According to the label of La Motisanne, an artisan absinthe made by Roger Etienne (which by the way has the lot number written on the label by hand), "This home made elaboration is an authentic Absinth from the original region of this drink, the Val-de-Travers. Distilled to a recepy [sic] of the time of prohibition it develops a remarkable balance and an exceptional harmony of plants, which is the essence of its reputation. Ingredients: Alcohol, water, big and small Wormwood, aromatic plants."

Absinthe has, in the past twenty years or so, acquired a reputation as a fascinating drink, given its spotty history and the extreme rituality associated with its drinking. The traditional French way of drinking is to pour it into the bottom of a special fat, conical stemmed glass. Then a slotted spoon is suspended across the rim of the glass with a lump of sugar on it, and icy water is poured through sugar and spoon to sweeten the drink. Proper absinthe will louche, or go cloudy, when water is added.


The myth of absinthe's mind-altering properties is based on the idea that a chemical in wormwood called thujone causes hallucinations and other mental instability, and even addiction. Thujone works on the GABA receptors in mammals: "Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)... the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system.... disrupted GABAergic signaling has been implicated in numerous and varied neurological and psychiatric pathologies including movement and anxiety disorders, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and addiction."


Nowadays, it is held that thujone taken in large doses doesn't do much other than cause muscle spasms - and in mouse overdose it has caused convulsions. But it seems it doesn't actually make you hallucinate. There is some speculation that much of the bad rep that absinthe had came from the fact that there were many inferior types of absinthe out there being drunk, especially, by bohemians that couldn't afford the good stuff and, like bathtub gin, it did rot their brains - but not because of the wormwood. It was more likely due the poisonous additives and colorants used, or the fact that the old stuff tended to contain 70 to 80 percent alcohol, as opposed to 40% for more standard brandies and whiskeys.

There is some evidence, however, that the herbal elements in absinthe actually have a mild speedball effect: some of them are stimulants and some are sedatives, and the resulting effect is one of heightened alertness and calmness. Wormwood is an antiparasitic, and some of the herbs also contain painkillers. So you can see why the drink was so popular in the 19th century, when the advent of the Industrial Revolution was filling the cities with soot and stink, and the average worker, without laws governing how long their work-days were, hardly had time to sleep at night.


"According to legend, absinthe began as an all-purpose patent remedy created by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor living in Couvet, Switzerland, around 1792... [but] a certain Major Dubied acquired the formula from the Henriod sisters and in 1797, with his son Marcellin and son-in-law Henry-Louis Pernod, opened the first absinthe distillery, Dubied Père et Fils, in Couvet. In 1805 they built a second distillery in Pontarlier, France, under the new company name Maison Pernod Fils. Pernod Fils remained one of the most popular brand of absinthe up until the ban of the drink in France in 1915."

"Absinthe’s popularity grew steadily through the 1840s, when absinthe was given to French troops as a malaria treatment. When the troops returned home, they brought their taste for absinthe with them. It became so popular in bars, bistros, cafés, and cabarets that, by the 1860s, the hour of 5 p.m. was called l’heure verte (“the green hour”). Absinthe was favored by all social classes, from the wealthy bourgeoisie to poor artists and ordinary working-class people.


"By the 1880s, mass production had caused the price of absinthe to drop sharply. This, combined with a wine shortage [due to vine death from grape phylloxera] in France during the 1880s and 1890s, caused absinthe to become France’s drink of choice. By 1910, the French were drinking 36 million litres of absinthe per year, a quantity that was greater than their consumption of wine."[wiki]

In a curious twist, the winemaker's association, looking to the horrors of Prohibition in America, decided to take control and steer the temperance movement in France. Accordingly, they got together with the teetotalers and made the green fairy into the fall guy, working hard to publicly associate absinthe with crime, poor health and degeneracy. Various anti-absinthe people, thick in the movement, were inspired to produce scientific studies "proving" absinthe's evil properties:

"One of the first vilifications of absinthe was an 1864 experiment in which a certain Dr. Magnan exposed a guinea pig to large doses of pure wormwood vapor and another to alcohol vapors. The guinea pig exposed to wormwood experienced convulsive seizures, while the animal exposed to alcohol did not. Dr. Magnan would later blame the chemical thujone, contained in wormwood, for these effects." [wiki]


The campaign was so successful in changing the popular conception of the drink that by 1915, when the French finally banned it, it was illegal in most of Europe - and the lingering cultural effects were relatively far-reaching. The word "louche", for example, now means "Of questionable taste or morality; decadent." The roots are "French, from Old French losche, squint-eyed... from Latin luscus, blind in one eye.)" It looks from the outside like the term louche, as applied to absinthe, comes from a reference to the whitening eye of cataract, but the French dictionary carries all three meanings: squinty, dissolute, and cloudy. It would be interesting to see if one of the meanings evolved according to the media frenzy of a lost era.

Being careful and conscientious people, the Swiss make of absinthe was considered to be of the finest quality. Their product is clear, being the product of distillation, and therefore referred to as la Bleue, a term originally used for bootleg absinthe but now applied liberally to most Swiss product. The green absinthes come from a process wherein some of the herbs are then soaked in the distilled absinthe. This adds color (chlorophyll) and some additional subtleties of flavor.

I once tried to make my own absinthe by distilling it in vodka with an old still my father gave me, following a recipe I found God knows where, but it tasted awful. The exact ratio of herbs is important, and some of the herbs aren't available in the US. So now I stick to the occasional attempt at perfume manufactury, and hope it doesn't taint the still.

Absinthe has had a resurgence in legality now. Some places, such as Spain and the Czech Republic, never banned it, but also didn't seem to have the knack of making the proper distilled stuff, producing instead something called "Bohemian-Style Absinth", or just "Absinth" (without the "e"), which is inferior in flavor and apparently not too good for you. But most of the places which once produced it - and then banned it - have now repealed their laws, except for the French, who curiously don't allow liquor labeled "absinthe" to be sold in France, but do allow the same thing to be sold as long as the label says "liqueur à base de plantes d’absinth" or some such. But they do label it as absinthe when exporting it. Go figure.


As of 2005 the people in the Val-de-Travers are able, once again, to legally produce their traditional drink. Little mountain villages like Côte-aux-Fées (in English, Fairyside), which were nothing but a collection of Swiss-style farmhouses (uh, and a small and discreet building housing the company headquarters/factory of Piaget) are now proud to show everyone they are "the Cradle of Absinthe." And my, how the Green Fairy has changed.




Part 2: And Clocks on the Side - coming soon.


Links:

The Virtual Absinthe Museum has lots of interesting stuff, including a good selection of period posters and drawings about absinthe which you can buy.

One of the best books I've seen on the subject - Absinthe: History in a Bottle. Great stuff:

Moving Again: Back Soon

It seems that the time to leave Croatia has come (wow), so we are packing and doing all the expensive and difficult things to do with that so that we may fly off tomorrow. I'll be back in a few days when we settle at the house in France for a bit before heading back to the US. See you soon!

Next: A few thoughts on miniatures.

San Marco Clock Tower, Venice

Ed. note: I have been meaning to post about this. Pardon my clockwork geeking below; if you are uninterested in technical details it is still worth checking out the photos!

While in Venice, I found out accidentally about the little-known tour of the beautiful clock tower on the Piazza San Marco. Everyone is so busy going into the Basilica or up the Campanile they don't look much at the clock tower; but it's a beautiful thing, marking not only the hours but the date, moon phase and astrological time.

The clock is remarkable: aside from the mechanism, there is a ball painted half gold and half blue, which by its orientation in the clock face will describe the face of the moon. A track circling the outside allows a group of four figures (the three Magi and a trumpeting angel) to pass in front of the figure of the Virgin (this only happens on two festivals a year now, see below). As they do so, the Angel raises its trumpet and its wings, and the Magi bow and move one arm in salute.


At the top of the tower, two larger-than-life shepherds (known as the Moors because of their patina) swing their hammers hourly at the great bell. They are beautifully put together (and vastly anatomically correct), their fleeces hiding the fact that they are segmented at the waist.



The clock was created by clockmaker Gian Carlo Rainieri in 1499. Rainieri then moved into the tower and was paid to keep the clock running and accurate. When he died a number of people of varying skill levels succeeded him, and after two hundred and fifty years the clock was in bad shape. So in 1752 Bartolomeo Ferracina, a reknown clockmaker, was hired to refurbish the clock.

"He actually made a completely new movement. The old mechanism and the original astronomical dial were given to him in part payment. The new movement, although modified, remains until the present day. It has four trains, in a peculiar cruciform pattern, one for the time, two for the hour strike by the Moors and one for the special 132-blow strike mechanism which will be described later. On the upper floor of the tower, above the main movement, there is a separate mechanism for the Magi's carousel." (from Antica Orologeria Famberlan, and excellent page with everything you might want to know about the mechanism's history).

Curiously, the pendulum was lengthened twice, and became long enough that it necessarily hung down into the next floor. This meant that the temperatori, living in the tower below the clock mechanism, had the pendulum moving across his living room at all times. Here is a picture from the 1950s:



The climb through the tower is "not recommended for pregnant women or people suffering from claustrophobia" as the stairs are narrow and get narrower as you go up. Personally, I was impressed with their very Enlightenment look:



In 1857 more repairs were required, and Giovanni Doria, the temperatore of the time, made a careful survey of the necessary repairs to both building and mechanism. While they were at it, the Venetians decided they wanted a luminous display on it so that the time could be read at night. So Luigi De Lucia (appropriately named) designed the two wheels that displayed lamp-lit numerals in the windows that the Magi had once come through. The light shone out through glass-covered cutouts in the metal wheels.

When I was there, I noticed a strange whirring clunk that happened every five minutes; this was the minute wheel regulator going off, and the wheel doing its turn to the next display panel. It was quite extraordinary to be privy to this mechanism, as it's very beautiful from the inside:


Note the triangular frames hanging from the ceiling. These have small, strong metal hooks on them which are hooked onto the number-wheels, allowing them to be easily disengaged and drawn backwards into the room for those days during Ascension when the Magi are once again attached to their wheel (on the floor) and allowed to parade past Mary.

There are two faces to the clock, both driven by the same movement: one of them, elaborate and decorative, faces the Doge's Palace and the Piazza San Marco, for the Doge to look at (and presumably all the Senators and so on who ran the government from the Palace). The other one was for the regular people, who lived outside the square; this one was very simple, though still elegant.



Nowadays, the clock is driven by "weights" which are actually wheels on bicycle-type chains, pulled or lifted daily by electric motors. This was based on a decision not to rely on a temperatore to pull the weights down each day and wind the movement. It is the only part of the 1750's mechanism which has been completely modernized.



I was intrigued and impressed as I followed our guide, not only because it's the kind of thing most of us dream of - living in a tower with a bunch of clockwork - but because so much of the place was designed with beauty and functionality hand-in-hand. I do love the Enlightenment and Victorian eras' penchant for lovely design! Here, for example, is the top floor, before you climb to the rooftop where the bell-ringers stand:


Or this rooftop structure which tops the spiral stairs and keeps them watertight:


I mean, really! Captain Nemo, where are you??

One of the best parts of this tour was being taken out onto the roof to see the high-Rennaissance Moors, who look about double life-size. It was so great to get up close and see the difference in their faces and poses, and understand, finally, not only how the pivot at their waists were so beautifully disguised, but to have the mechanism explained: inside their legs is a rod which turns each of them; if you look at the main clock mechanism (above) you will see a large wheel with notches in it. If you look closely, you may see that there is one notch, followed by two notches, followed by three, and so on: the wheel is actually a great cam, which moves the bell-ringers to ring the appropriate number of times.



There are two of these cams, one on each side of the clock mechanism, to drive the two Moors.

Also, if you notice there is a double cable going up to a small hammer on the edge of the bell. This was put there as part of the 1752 mechanism; at midnight every night, every blow to the bell by the Moors is relived via this little hammer: 132 blows. Whether this is a sort of "rewind" feature, or a "design feature" (or some combination of the two), I have not yet discovered.

I feel so lucky to have found this tour, which I found through an idle inquiry at the Tourist Information office at Piazza San Marco. Since then, I have tried to find the name of the place we bought our tickets, but every online source seems to try to sell them to you at great expense. It was (somewhat) cheaper in person - just enquire, as I did, and they will direct you to the nearby gallery where you can book a spot on a tour (and where there is a wonderful miniature of the tower and its mechanism). You must book it ahead of time, and show up early, as you are taken in a group over to the tower and let in the little door at the bottom (a curiously thrilling moment). When we went, it was a tour of two - my daughter and I had the place to ourselves.

I am hoping to get permission to go up in the clock in the cathedral at Strasbourg on our way through in ten days. Wish me luck!


Links:

Wikipedia, of course, has a bunch of information about the various restorations and attendant controversies.

I read the book Daughter of Venice with my daughter before going to Venice (heh), and it really put us in the mood - and filled in some details about Venetian history. It's about a girl living in 16th century Venice and is full of interesting details about what life was like for women and how families worked to keep their wealth. It describes some aspects of the governmental system of Venice and the kind of wrangling that was always going on. Great book! ...In the Young Adult section, like many good books, but readable by all ages, I think. Unfortunately, though, it doesn't discuss the clock tower in any detail.

The Art of Gesture in Tourist Italy

(Warning: silly pictures ahead)

Okay - back from my week in Italy, visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum (more about them later, perhaps) and in an accidental sort of way, Pisa - from which there was a convenient flight. We managed to arrive in time for the yearly Luminaria celebration (more about that later too). In Pisa my elder daughter became fascinated by all the people taking pictures of their friends holding up the leaning tower, or pushing it over - it is never easy to tell from the wrong angle. At times there were four or five people in a row all holding their hands up - which, when taken out of context, looked like some kind of mass-hallucination tai chi class.

She asked me for her camera and disappeared for a half hour, and then came back with these, which I think vie with many of the conceptual art pieces in the Whitney Museum. I found them hilarious and strangely compelling.

Gone until June 25th

I'm heading off to Napoli to check out Pompeii and some of the weird museums they have there, and then to the UK for a short visit (strangely, it was easier and cheaper to go by air via the UK than to take the train/ferry connection back to Croatia). I'll also be in Pisa for the Luminaria. Hopefully I'll bring some Cabinet-like things back with me to share. See you then!

Decrepit But Not Abandoned

Walking on Marjan, the high hill-park here in Split, I have walked past this fascinating spot a number of times.



It's rare, in the States, to see glass greenhouses anymore - and rarer still to see one in such a wonderful state of organic funk. I wondered what this was for ages before I went to investigate.


I found that it was the Botanički Vrt, or the Botanical Gardens, a largely futile exercise in signage, as it is crumbling and seems to have very little in the way of exotic plants. There are several greenhouses, of which this is the largest (the others seeming to be a poor storage area for a motorcycle and a bunch of cast-off window-frames). The gardens are tiny and pretty, but this greenhouse held my imagination. Walking around it was an exercise in mysterious snooping.





After I'd been there for awhile a guy came out of one of the buildings to smoke a cigarette. He looked at me curiously, then asked me a question in Croatian. After awhile I realized he had unlocked it for me, so I went inside, to a scene of curiously domestic disintegration and decay.




Proof positive that it's always worth investigating...

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

I just found the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab site, which is silly because they apparently have me on their link list. But then, I am usually the last to hear when someone puts me on their blogroll.

However the scents and other products that Black Phoenix creates actually smell (which I suspect would be excellent), the site's presentation and concept are marvelous. Imagine my joy when I find a section called "Steamworks" which houses scents based on things I've talked about here, such as Aelopile, Antikythera Mechanism, Robotic Scarab, and Violet Ray.

They also have whole sections of oils named after Neil Gaiman characters, Shakespearean oils, oils based on Alice in Wonderland characters. And so much more. And the site is really fun to look at, very well-done.