Euroangst

I watched the last Venice programme on BBC2 a couple of hours ago, the funky series hosted by Venetian Francesco Da Mosto* that explores Venice through Blood, Sex, Beauty and Death.

I’ve been thrilled over the past few weeks as Da Mosto explored the origins of Venice, the fiercely proud city that has never bowed to anyone, that suffered the ravages of Napoleon’s irrational hatred and that birthed Casanova. Tonight he explored modern Venice, the issue of the sinking city—but he pointed out that there is a far greater threat to the proud and noble city, one that nourishes it as it kills it: tourism.

Da Mosto talked of how Venice is becoming nothing more than a museum; there is only one notable company that makes gondolas now, and they’re primarily for tourist use. There has been a mass exodus of native Venetians over the last fifty years, leaving the city to the hotels and the museums, the tourists who come and leave within days. I hated that the programme ended on such a bitter note, but it crystallised a feeling that has been eating away at me for a while.

It’s a horrible feeling, one I can’t shake. It’s as if Europe—- well, Western Europe at least— is turning into some kind of cold museum. Take Paris for example: there are tourist traps all over this city that seems a graveyard by day, a sinister and exciting place by night. The Moulin Rouge is one of the tackiest, most irritating things in the known world. The dynamic club of the 1800s is now a tourist mecca. The acts are performed in English for an international audience, with an excruciating puppet show mid-act. You could spend the night in a high-class Parisian hotel for the same price, and probably experience more of la vie boheme there. But really, as much as I love Paris, the days of Toulouse-Lautrec, the sans-culottes and philosphical debates at La Bonne Auberge are well and truly gone.

Liverpool is European Capital of Culture for 2008, but it struck me going through the city yesterday that all we seem to be celebrating is the past. The beautiful Liverpool skyline is dominated by the old Cunard buildings—our shipping industry left long ago. The docks are primarily the haunt of rubbishy call centres rather than ships, and despite the plethora of great bands that have come from the city in the last decade—everyone from Space to the Zutons to The Coral to…er… Atomic Kitten, the city is only content to feed off its Beatles connections. A church in the centre of the city that was bombed in World War II still lies derelict, as if testament to the city council that won't invest any money into the boarded-up homes and fix them, but which has agreed on the absurd notion of building a canal. Mere yards from the large River Mersey that feeds into the Irish sea. Like Venice, Liverpool struggles with a population under 500,000. European Capital of Culture, and yet we’re still haemorrhaging people.

Of course, on the flipside, there are the cities that are reinventing themselves. Prime tosser Franco all but destroyed Barcelona and its Catalan spirit, but when the 1992 Olympics provided the city with a chance to rise once more, it clasped the opportunity and now is one of the most vibrant and exciting places I’ve ever seen. I’m sure that jaffacakequeen will agree that the Four Cats restaurant favoured by Picasso still has a certain air about it, a certain liveliness. Other places reinvent themselves; Latvia, Estonia, Norway. The problem is of course that the vibrancy of the Scandinavian and Baltic states doesn’t stretch to Old Europe. I don’t know whether this is a sign that everything has its time; the world is organic, after all. The Middle East was the dominant superpower once, then Europe, then America; now Asia is emerging as a leader. Maybe one day Paris and Liverpool and Venice and the rest of the old guard will rise again and prove the naysayers wrong. I hope so, but I fear that the decline may not be halted.

Compare this to America. It seems so…alive, as if it doesn’t just look to some Romantic past, but has energy and drive and a ferocity-- one I have often hated, but can’t help but be awed by-— that drives it forward. I wish I could see this in Europe. I am so proud of this continent. I’m in love with it. There is such a mix of vibrancy and culture but, above all, history. It’s our biggest selling point—but I think our obsession with the past and our unwillingness to look forward is killing us. That won’t stop me photographing the grand old palazzos in November, nor will I stop wandering the old cells of the Conciergerie and wondering at the events that have gone on there, but I hope that in centuries to come people will visit these places to see the living present as well as the interesting but dead past.

*I have a massive crush on him, oh yes