← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Dec 27,2014: I Hate New York!
00:28:13
Seasonal stories and festive fables: Mike Wendling strongly disagrees with the thought...
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You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the programme, one for the BBC World Service and this one's a download of the latest edition from BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, one down, two to go. The celebrations continue in the little town with three Christmases and in the city that never sleeps. Why is our correspondent saying I hate New York? The tickets might be going for £1,000 a time, but there are dark secrets lurking behind the glittering New Year's Day concert in Vienna and the day a Paris confection has exploded, sending chocolate bars high into the sky over Montmartre. Now, Christmas, as the old saying goes, comes but once a year. But that's certainly not the case in Bethlehem, the Palestinian city in the west bank, famous for being the birthplace of Jesus. For here, the festivities are continuing today and go on well beyond the time when most of us are turning our thoughts to taking down the tinsel or maybe even giving up the gin for January. Yolande Nell has lived in this city just a few miles south of Jerusalem for four years now, and tells us why she's looking forward to two more Christmas days in the coming weeks.
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There are no calls of legs 11 or two fat ladies at the Arab Women's Union bingo in Bethlehem. And there's another big difference from your standard British game. Instead of cash, the prizes are household items washing powder, toilet rolls or if you're lucky, an electric blanket. Bingo is always popular with housewives here, but the idea of the Union's weekly gathering is to raise funds for charity. In the run up to Christmas, it organises a party for needy children. Dozens of local kids are entertained with clowns, fed lunch and given goodies to take home. Christian members of the Women's Union feel a special responsibility for keeping alive the Christmas message of compassion and hope. This is our national feast and the feast of our city, says president and great grandmother Virginie Kanuati. It's not Christmas if you're happy at home with your family and you have a neighbour with nothing, adds the bingo caller, Suzie Nasser. There's a lot of poverty in Bethlehem. We have the highest unemployment in the west bank and. And people have to think about every penny they spend. After a game of bingo earlier this month, I proudly displayed my winnings a large bottle of fabric conditioner and a packet of wet wipes. Then, as we polished off some tasty thyme and cheese pastries, the women told me about the delicious meals they had planned for Christmas dinner. There's not really a market for turkey and all the trimmings here. Although one year I did surprise my visiting parents more used to oven ready products by returning from the butchers with a warm, freshly killed bird in a plastic bag. The preference of Christians in the Holy Land tends to be Arabic salads followed by a main course, perhaps lamb stuffed with rice or mahshi stuffed vine leaves, aubergines and courgettes. While there's an emphasis on having new clothes for the feast, gift giving is far less excessive than you typically see in Western countries. And the celebrations go on for longer than we're used to. Indeed, rather than having one Christmas Day, three are marked In Bethlehem. The Catholics led processions along the traditional pilgrimage route from Jerusalem to the Nativity Church ahead of their Christmas on the 25th of December. But now attention switches to the Greek Orthodox, who make up the majority of Palestinian Christians. Their Christmas day falls on the 7th of January. The 13 days difference is explained by calendars. While the Latin Church switched to the Gregorian calendar devised by Pope Gregory in the 16th century, the Eastern Orthodox churches still use the older Julian calendar created during the reign of Julius Caesar in 45 BC. What makes the situation in the Holy Land really unusual is that the Armenian congregation here waits even longer for Christmas. Their parade isn't until the 18th of January. On each Christmas Eve, Bethlehem gives a warm welcome to church, patriarchs and priests when they enter Manger Square. And as waiting crowds of the faithful munch chocolate Santas and sip at Sakhlab, a hot Ottoman era drink made from orchids, it's the marching bands that keep them entertained in Bedjala, the town next to Bethlehem where I live. For weeks now, there's been the constant din of drums and bagpipes as the scout troops practice their festive routines. Scouting was introduced to Palestine in British mandate times from 1920 to 1948, and it remains hugely popular with boys and girls. The head of the Arab Orthodox scout group, Khalid Kestis, looks more than a little stressed as he organises a Christmas bazaar and street cleanups while the pipers play on. But he can't disguise his pride at his scout's place in the Christmas line ups. As scouts, the last thing we're interested in is showing off, he tells me. But we are very famous for playing well. Many Palestinian Christians see themselves as custodians of Christmas and its colourful traditions. Their dwindling numbers in the Holy Land add a sense of urgency to their celebrations. Nowadays, many young people in the west bank choose to emigrate, complaining of difficult economic and social conditions created by Israel's occupation. In the quiet of Beit Jeller's Virgin Mary Church, where the air's thick with incense, Father George reflects that this time of year carries spiritual and political significance. When we celebrate, we show the world that Bethlehem's a peaceful, safe city, he says. This is the birthplace of Christ, and we're the oldest congregation in the world. If we don't light our trees and hang decorations here, then we'll die.
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Out Yoland Nell in Bethlehem set to enjoy Christmas well into January now, Europe's leading human rights organization says that in Hungary, discrimination against the Roma people and other minorities is getting worse. The Council of Europe is urging the authorities to fight racist violence and to protect the vulnerable. Hungary is home to around 800,000 Roma, or gypsies, as they sometimes prefer to be called. There many live in deep poverty. But not in the village of Cerdi, where the mayor himself of Roma origin, has galvanised the locals into producing vegetables. As Nick Thorpe's been finding out, these are not just for the villagers consumption. They're being used to help those in need elsewhere in the country.
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The red Lada Ziguli car drives uphill and down dale through the wintry southern Hungarian landscape towards a hilltop village where a small cluster of Roma was wait in silence for its arrival. It's like a scene from a 1960s Eastern European road movie with a very 21st century twist. The red larder, the mayor of Czerti, Laszlo Bogdan, tells me, was the archetypal gypsy vehicle in the poor Hungarian villages where he grew up, into which any number of children could be crammed. And now he's chosen it for his mercy missions, the boot and back seat crammed with vegetables grown by his own community to be distributed free to the poor. Laszlo Bogdan is Hungary's latest and least likely philanthropist. A Roma himself, he distributes food to the largely Roma poor of rural and urban Hungary, though he prefers the word gypsy himself. He even wears a badge with the word Roma crossed out. Since 2006, when he became mayor of Cherdi, a village of 410 inhabitants, he has transformed it into a proud and industrious community with a nationwide reputation. When I visited in the spring, I hoed young garlic plants alongside Laszlo Bogdan as we talked about the miracle the people have wrought here under his stern guidance and about the fate of his people as a whole. We've got a lot from this country, and what have we given in return? He asks rhetorically. We've queued in line for social handouts, for 20 years we're at the top of the League for usury, lending one another sums of money at exorbitant interest rates, and we are the majority inhabitants of the prisons. All I'm doing here is giving something back because I love this country. A Gypsy who works in today's Hungary, he adds, is regarded as something exotic. He accepts that better education for young Roma is part of the solution, but by no means the whole story. This is the real solution, he says, holding out his two hands, calloused from digging and the soil, the good soil. Most Roma in Eastern Europe still live in villages in conditions closer to the rural poverty of the south than to the urban poverty of Northern Europe. Each year, in the village greenhouses and their common ground, Gypsy and non Gypsy work side by side, growing tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes and a host of other vegetables. Some are distributed among the workers, others are packed in sacks to feed the poor in the inner city slums of Budapest's 8th district or further afield. In 2013, the village of Cherdi distributed 20 tons of vegetables. There were more than 200 burglaries in the village in 2005, the year before he became mayor. Now there are barely two or three a year, he says, and if we find out that a Gypsy is responsible, I take him into the police station myself. On the morning I visited, one group of villagers was just setting out for the nearby city of Page to sell Rhombourgers either chicken and mushroom or vegetarian. In the main square, each is wrapped individually in flowery paper. We chose a Kashmiri style, says Laszlo Bogdan, as a reminder that we Gypsies came originally from India. The Hungarian media, torn between allegiance to the present right wing Fidesz government, to a host of leftist groups led by the Socialist Party, or to Jobbik, a far right party which rose to fame by identifying what it calls Gypsy crime, don't know quite what to make of Laszlo Bogdan. Racists don't like him because he's undermining their narrative of the lazy, thieving Gypsy with his vision of the Gypsy philanthropist, he was easily re elected in the autumn municipal elections in his village by standing against himself. No one else bothered. He came both first and second with 51.4% to 48.6%, with a 76% turnout. Andrash Biro, a widely respected social activist who lives in Budapest, is one of Laszlo Bogdan's many admirers. There's a great need, he says, for a new generation of Roma leaders willing to confront not just negative stereotypes about them, but the negative behavior, which sometimes provokes those stereotypes. Could his village, I ask the mayor and his own leadership be a model for other communities? He pauses from his work and leans on his hoe, his hallmark purple shirt pockmarked with mud. Everything will be fine in this country, he replies quietly, when the Hungarians feel safe and the Gypsies no longer feel excluded.
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And that was Nick Thorpe with a Roma Father Christmas in southern Hungary. One of the musical highlights at this festive season is the annual New Year's Day concert in Vienna. This feast of waltzes and polkas, much of it composed by the Strauss family, is now shown on television in more than 70 countries around the world. Just as well it's on TV as getting hold of an actual ticket for the event in its lavish concert hall decked in gold, is no easy task. Now you might think this is a musical ritual which dates back to Vienna's glittering 19th century, when the grand ball first became a part of the city's social life. But as Petroch Trelawny now explains, the New Year's Day concert has its roots in an altogether darker era of Austrian history.
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Twinkling chandeliers hang over the graben, the avenue that's been Vienna's main shopping street since the 12th century. Halfway down, an ornate baroque marble and gold column stands in memorial to those who died in the virulent plagues of the 17th century. Temporary stalls have been set up around the monument, selling mulled wine and sweet cakes. They're staffed by volunteers from local Lions Clubs, that international organization dedicated to community work by day, presumably lawyers, accountants, thoroughly modern business people. But while the men wear warm quilted jackets, the women are in red and white dirndls, the national dress of old Austria. History is all around here, much more so than in the other capitals of old Europe. The civic architecture speaks of a city running a vast empire. The grand palaces that are now hotels and shopping arcades were once the townhouses of a noble and rich aristocracy. The power may have gone, but the past is ever present in cafes that have been serving coffee since Mozart lived here, at the Spanish Riding School, where once young army officers practiced dressage at the dancing academies, preparing the city's youth for the annual ball season. You could be forgiven for assuming that the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Day concert is also part of this roll call of tradition. The annual performance of waltzes, polkers and marches by Father Strauss, his three sons and their contemporaries seems timeless. His everything about the event from its formality, its charmingly contrived humor, its home in the almost overpoweringly rich golden hall of the Musikverein suggests something that dates back to the heady days of the 19th century. In fact, the history of the New Year's concert is rather more recent. It was a Nazi invention. The first ever performance took place on New Year's Eve 1939, raising money for the Winterhilfswerk, an annual fundraising drive masterminded by the National Socialist Party to buy fuel for the needy in. In the coldest months of the year when the Strausses were alive, the Vienna Philharmonic was a little sniffy about their music. Why would such an advanced and adventurous orchestra want to play popular tunes? They started taking it more seriously in the late 1920s. But the idea of a seasonal Strauss gale really gained traction when the Nazi party's cultural commissars hit upon the idea of a unifying event that could be broadcast live across the Third Reich. The concert moved to New Year's Day in 1941 as it became obvious that the war was not going to be over quickly. The Blue Danube Waltz and Fledermauss Overture were seen as a helpful way of shoring up flagging morale. When it emerged that Johann Strauss had some Jewish ancestry, the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels himself ensured that the news was hushed up. When the war ended, not a beat was missed. The concert simply continued their awkward history, quietly forgotten. As recently as the 1960s, the Vienna Philharmonic saluted a wartime supporter, Baldorf von Schirach, Nazi Gauleiter of Vienna, who deported tens of thousands of Jews. He was awarded the orchestra's prestigious Ring of honour in 1942. Staggeringly, the medal was then officially reissued to him when he was released from Spandau prison more than 20 years later. That fact emerged after independent historians were allowed access to the Vienna Philharmonic's vast archive. Their often shocking reports on its attitude during and after the war have now been published on the orchestra's own website. Today, demand for tickets means there are three New Year concerts, each one with the same programme. January 1st is the grandest. Seats cost up to €1100. Without doubt, many in the very international audience will have paid agents and brokers far more. On New Year's Eve, it's a more Viennese crowd, reflected by the foyer crush of men in thick green Loden coats and women in heavy furs. And at this year's first performance on Tuesday, the guests of honor will once again be the Austrian military who fill the balcony. Last year, some of the young soldiers, with their olive drab uniforms and brutally short haircuts, looked a little confused as to why they were there, their officers appearing more comfortable, perhaps contemplating a morning of popular music followed by a decent lunch in the mess. They're members of a modern European army, which plays a major role in international peacekeeping operations. Yet looking up at the martial sea of green and grey set against the rich gilt of the golden hall, it's hard to completely forget the dark history of this now global event.
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Petroch Trelawny in Vienna now who would argue that the most magical city in the world at this time of year is New York? Thousands wouldn't. They flock to the Big Apple to shop and to gawp at the elaborate window displays in stores like Tiffany's, Macy's and Bloomingdale's. There's still an 80 foot high Christmas tree, complete with 45,000 lights in Rockefeller Plaza, and it's house full at the Radio City Music hall, where the Rockettes continue to strut their stuff. Some say the bond between the city and the festive season has become even stronger thanks to the constant playing of that song, which goes the boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay and the bells were ringing out on Christmas Day. But I'm afraid all this magic is lost on my colleague Mike Wendling. He's more than a little sceptical about the fairy tale of New York.
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Somewhere near Lexington Avenue, I snapped. I'd spent three days with a BBC colleague given to uttering sweeping generalizations as breathtaking as a cold winter gust bursting down Broadway. The food here is better than anywhere on earth. New York bars totally outclass British pubs. Grand Central is the most beautiful train station in the whole world. Enough. I cried. Up ahead, I spotted a rack of T shirts sporting that ubiquitous logo. You know, the one black typewriter font with an insipid little red heart. I love New York. I hate New York is more like it. Now, to be fair, the truth is more complex. And later I want to tell you more about that I Heart New York logo. But my reaction to my British colleague's enthusiasm for the Big Apple set me wondering why this city has always rubbed me up the wrong way. Strolling along the admittedly stunning High Line, a newish, multi level park created out of the remnants of the city's industrial past, I set out the reasons. First, a minor irritation. When you fly seven hours from London, you should be able to count on the place where you land seeming definitively foreign. But New York is now lousy with British graphic designers and bankers, all the music blaring out in Brooklyn bars these days is either actually British or made by young Americans ripping off Mumford and Sons. Tea shops are everywhere. Some people even say Zed rather than Z. They may find this anglicizing sophisticated and outward looking. I call it recolonization. The next thing I find annoying about New York is that there you can have anything you want as long as you pay for it. Things have gotten so out of hand that you can actually pay to bypass normal security lines at the airport. $85 in a background check will give you the right to keep your laptop in your bag and your shoes on your feet. One mustn't be delayed by those huddled masses, I suppose. Then there's the aggression and annoyance to be found on every New York street an hour after landing at the airport. Having gone through normal people's security, I'd been barked at by a pizza chef, a taxi driver, a guy selling bus tickets and a woman crossing the street. The city's rudeness is, of course, legendary. But what really sets it apart is its completely unapologetic nature. New Yorkers are proud of being brash, loud and offensive. They like it. But those reasons, compelling as they are, are not entirely damning or unique. After all, in London there's no shortage of razor sharp elbows, class conflict, or indeed, outright rudeness. No, something else was getting under my skin. Then, in one of those early morning cocktail induced visions, the kind that only really happen in the city that never sleeps, it came to me. New Yorkers have no room in their minds for the possibility of failure. You see, Londoners are all too aware of their city's shortcomings. They would tell you all about the horror of transport, of house prices, of winter, if they ever deign to speak to you. But New Yorkers cannot even countenance the possibility that their city is not the center of. Well, the world is too small. The universe is more like it. They are special, and they will win. Theirs is a perverse version of the doctrine of American exceptionalism, both writ as large as the Empire State Building and shrunk from a whole continent down to five boroughs. Now, I promised to tell you about that logo. It's actually part of a tourism campaign dating from the late 1970s. As a child growing up in the western part of the state, as far from New York City as London is from Edinburgh. I saw that goofy red heart pop up all the time on television, splashed across pictures of Niagara Falls, lakes so placid that one is actually called Lake Placid and the soaring Adirondack Mountains. But those statewide meanings are now lost. When you see I heart NY, you now only think of skyscrapers and 5th Avenue, Central park and the Statue of Liberty. That logo has been shamelessly stolen by the city. Now I know that writing this piece is futile because of all the world's unfeeling cities, New York is the most unfeeling. It doesn't give a damn what you or I think of it. For every person slinking away from Gotham having failed to find their street paved with gold, two more will turn up from Albany or Accra or St. Albans to replace them. The city will continue to fuel the world's biggest dreams. And that, I must concede, is the fatal flaw in my argument. New York, love it or loathe it, will still be convinced it's a number one king of the hill.
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Top of the heap Mike Wendling in New York, New York. For the French, the end of year festivities center around two big meals. The one on the night of Christmas Eve, accompanied by presents and wildly excited children, is known as the Feast of Saint Silvestre, the or Le Reveillon. But the one coming up on New Year's Eve is the real gastronomic extravaganza. You can eat out, often at eye wateringly high cost. But many choose to prepare this meal at home and share it with family and friends in Paris. Of course, the huge range of specialist food shops and street markets can satisfy most tastes. But this year, as Joanna Robertson's been finding out, there's one particular delicacy which may carry the distinctive whiff of of gunpowder.
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If Mr. Willy Wonka was real and a Frenchman, his name would be Philippe Bernacon. Monsieur Bernachon is a master chocolate maker. His Lyon kitchen creates the most mouth watering delicacies, not least, his chocolate bars roll over Wonka's Whipple. Scrumptious fudgemallow delight, smooth very dark or creamy milk. Bernichon bars are oozing with rich salted caramel or stuffed with marvellous delights. Pistachio or roasted almonds or marzipan, bitter orange and candied fruits soaked in Grand Marnier. They're found in only two places in the world. In Lyon, or 400 kilometres north, at a small sweet shop near Montmartre, at Les Toile d', or, at the Golden Star. But last February, the Golden Star blew up, sending the exquisite 19th century decor, the trays and jars of divine sweetmeats and Mr. Bernichon's incredible chocolate bars sky high. A gas explosion smashed it all to smithereens. The proprietor shocked but Unscathed, has been without her shop for months and Paris is bereft of Bernacon. It's dusk, a late December half past four, and I'm searching for a refugee. I glimpse her working away at a borrowed table through the window of number 71, a shop selling rare honey. I open the door and step in. Madame Denise Akerbot, legendary Parisian sweet shop owner of the ruined Golden Star, has a scent all her own. Chanel mingled with bitter chocolate and wild honey. Dressed in her signature schoolgirl style kilt, neatly pressed blue cotton shirt, tie and jersey, her long silver white hair jauntily parted into two plaits, the vital 79 year old is deftly wrapping handmade chocolates. First shiny fringed paper in silver or gold, then a waxed paper of riddles and jokes. And popped into the centre, the chocolate itself with a small paper fuse, a twist to each end and voila, une papillotte, the French festive bonbon of choice for well over 200 years. Out of all the delicious things to eat at New Year, Madame Macabo says papillotte are my favourite. They make us laugh. And that's important because after the parties, well, who knows what's next? She sings as she works, preparing order upon order. A kilo of only milk chocolates, a kilo of light creamy praline with just a hint of crunch and dark truffles sweetened with lavender. A kilo of delicate pink pistachio and cream coloured Charbonne, a speciality filled with strong liqueur, Mirabelle pear cassis. All are transformed into frivolous fun with joke, snap and sparkle. Try this, says Madame Acabo matter of factly, as in between songs, she hands me a small knobberly confection, not much bigger than a hazelnut. It will give you an orgasm and it does gastronomically. A fine sheer coating of sweet chocolate that needs a firm bite. Then, almost simultaneously, the chocolate yields to a shattering of crisp sugar shell and a burst of intense fish fresh raspberry liqueur floods my mouth. It's shockingly delicious. Madame Acabo politely asks if I would like to hear the story of Papillotte. Yes, I rather breathlessly reply, my mouth still tingling with alcoholic raspberry and chocolatey crystallised sugar. She lays down her work, folds her hands and begins in true fairy tale telling style. There was in Lyon, at the end of the 18th century, long before our Monsieur Bernacon, a certain patissier, Monsieur Papillot, who had a certain young apprentice who in turn had an eye for a certain beautiful maiden who lived just across the street. So near and yet so far. To him, she was the young lad contrived to woo her by stealing the choicest of his master's chocolates one by one and disguising them in paper, plain on the outside, but covered with illicit messages of love and promised passion on the inside, to smuggle them out of the kitchen. Now, Mr. Papillo was an attentive businessman and soon noticed the missing chocolates. He set watch over his apprentice. But when he discovered the ruse, instead of sacking the boy, he congratulated him. The lad and the maiden were wed, and Monsieur Papillot invented the papillotte and thereby made his fortune. Rising from her table, Madame Macabeau completes my education by demonstrating the correct way of pulling that paper fuse arm stretched out straight before her to give them the strength they need, she explains. A sharp pull, then bang. With a spark and a tiny puff of acro blue smoke. It's all over. Madame Acabo takes her seat and resumes her work, singing softly. Scented with Chanel bitter chocolate, wild honey and just a hint of gunpowder.
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Chocolate With a bang. And that's it. Joanna Robertson in Paris, bringing this edition to a close. We're back next Saturday morning to begin a brand new year of stories from reporters around the world. I hope you'll join us. Goodbye.