(13) Touring places associated with Dostoevsky in Baden-Baden - Walking in one of Europe's most famous recreational areas, famous for its casinos

Travelogue of Germany] (13) Touring the places associated with Dostoevsky in Baden-Baden, Germany - Walking in one of Europe's most famous recreational areas, famous for its casinos.

Previous ArticleThe Madness of Dostoevsky the Gambler in Baden-Baden: Five Weeks in Hell for Mr. and Mrs. Dostoevsky."In the following section, I told you about the days of the Dostoevsky couple's desperate stay in Baden-Baden.

In this article, I would like to share with you the current state of the city of Baden-Baden.

Baden-Baden is a city in southwestern Germany.

Baden-Baden's train station is located a short distance from the city center where the casino is located. Buses leave frequently from here, and a 20-minute ride will take you to Leopoldplatz, the center of the city.

The luxurious atmosphere with boutiques lining the streets. As one would expect from one of Europe's leading recreational destinations. In the past, royalty, aristocrats, and famous people came here in droves. And just down a small street, there were restaurants and cafes where one could comfortably enter, creating a pleasant atmosphere for a normal stay.

Sneak into the casino where Dostoevsky spent most of his time gambling!

Now, it was time to sneak into the casino where Dostoevsky went crazy. I signed up for the "casino tour," which is held before the casino opens. When the casino opens, regulations do not allow photography inside the casino. So I decided to take this tour and see what it was like inside.

This is the entrance to the casino. I arrived at the casino on time for the 10:00 a.m. start time, but no one was there. I thought it was strange, and while I was looking around, a young woman came from the other side of the casino.

Hello. You are the only participant today. So this will be your private tour from now on," he said smiling at me.

Ho! Thank goodness for this! Now I can take my time and enjoy the casino!

We entered the casino with our guide. There we found a space so luxurious and sophisticated that we couldn't help but let out an "ooh" or "ahh". The shining chandeliers, the gorgeous decorations on the walls, the elegant furnishings, the red carpet, and the roulette table....

This is the one that drove Dostoevsky crazy. Of course, the platform has changed over time, so it is not from Dostoevsky's time. But the basic shape and system is still the same as it was back then. I will talk more about this roulette later.

According to the guide's explanation, this casino was built by a French businessman in the 19th century. The concept was "a little Paris here," and that is why it was built in a luxurious French style.

And when I told her that I was from Japan while talking with the guide, she was extremely happy. I love Japan. It is a country I would like to visit someday. And why did you come here? I replied, "I came to this casino to study Dostoevsky," to which she replied with a surprised look on her face, "I'm very impressed! She looked so incredibly pleased that I was surprised. Then she asked me.

What have you read of Dostoevsky? -Everything. From the letters to everything.

Oh...! You really like Dostovsky, don't you? -Yes, I love it. I read Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Hugo, Balzac, Zola, everyone to learn Dostoevsky. I love literature. So I've been looking forward to coming here and learning about Dostoevsky.

Wow! I am glad to have someone like you here! We have a lot of literary people here. We will definitely talk about that in the future!

I was more surprised at how pleased our guide was. I guess she really likes literature, too. It was a great pleasure for me to be able to connect with people from other countries through literature.

Besides, few people would come all the way to a casino for a literary tour, I suppose (laughs). It was an even more maniacal attack by a man with few visitors for a tour in the first place. That must have had a big impact.

We became fast friends through literature and continued our tour.

This clock has been in use since the 19th century. Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoy would all have seen this clock."

Oh! This is so exciting! I am looking up at this clock the same way they just looked at me!

This gorgeous room itself still has the same atmosphere as it did back then. I tried to imagine them here ... yes. After all, only Dostoevsky is strange. He is pale and bloodshot. He is different from Turgenev and Tolstoy, the great aristocrats.

It is more like a theater in a palace than a casino.

By the way, Turgenev was very fond of this chandelier. And I couldn't help saying, "That's just like Turgenev! "That's so like Turgenev! And I couldn't help but say, "That's so Turgenev!

Incidentally, there is a fashionable restaurant adjacent to the casino. I took a light lunch after the casino tour.

I ordered the roast beef, and look at how elegant it is.

It was a bit pricey, and my budget would not allow me to eat it every day, but since I had come all the way here, I was grateful to have it. It was extremely delicious. It was one of the best meals of the trip. Of course, such an elegant meal was impossible for Dostoevsky. He had spent so much money on the casino that he even pawned his wedding ring, and there was no way he could afford such a meal. I am sorry to say, but I am enjoying Baden-Baden to the fullest.

I visited the casino later in the day during opening hours and also saw the roulette site. I will tell you more about that visit later in this article.

Dostovsky's House in Baden-Baden

Thankfully, the house where Mr. and Mrs. Dostoevsky stayed is still standing in Baden-Baden. I headed there myself, eager to see the house.

The distance from Leopold Square in the center of the city is only a five-minute walk. But from the casino it would take more than 10 minutes. Dostoevsky used to walk back and forth here.

Mr. and Mrs. Dostoevsky lived on the second floor of this building. There is now a monument to commemorate this, but you cannot see inside this room.

And although my preliminary research before embarking on this trip had indicated that the first floor was a Dostoevsky café, it did not seem to have that atmosphere. I also entered the store, but it was just an ordinary cafe. When I came back to this store, I asked the clerk about it and was told that the Dostoevsky Cafe had been closed due to the Corona Disaster. The clerk told me that the Dostoevsky Cafe had closed due to the Corona disaster, and that this store was a completely different one called DerDieDasCafé, which had opened in September. If you look carefully, you can see that written on the entrance.

But, never mind, my wish to drink coffee in the building where Dostoevsky lived has been fulfilled.

The location of Dostoevsky's house should be posted on a map. If you search for "Dostoevsky's House" on the map, it will not appear. And please note, as you may have noticed, the map shows this cafe as a location.

The road to the old castle where Dostoevsky and his wife walked

Previous Article(12) The Madness of Dostoevsky the Gambler in Baden-Baden: Five Weeks in Hell for Mr. and Mrs. Dostoevsky."As we saw in the following section, Dostoevsky and his wife often went for walks to refresh themselves. As Anna noted, as long as he could distract himself from gambling, Dostoevsky was back to his usual self. Walks were an essential part of the couple's life and an important time that strengthened their bond.

I also decided to relive the path to the old castle that they had walked.

According to the navigation system, it is less than 3 km from Dostoevsky's house, and it takes about 35 minutes to get there. However, I am not familiar with the roads, and there are many hills. Unfortunately, my phone is a clunker, and it is exquisitely designed to make me lose my way. I can't tell you how many times I have suffered from this trick during this trip.... Sure enough, here too, the navigation system kept misaligning my location information and making me lose my sense of direction. I would have known that it was wrong if it had been off by a great deal, but it was so exquisitely off that it could only be described as exquisite. I was really confused as to whether it was right or wrong. In this situation, I had to abandon the navigation system and use my intuition. So, I set out for the old castle, despite my pain.

It was mid-November, but the weather was fine and I was sweating.

After passing through the city, the view opened up. Then I saw a mountain on my left. Then I saw an old building on top of the mountain. Oh, this is it! So this is it! So we are going from here to there. Yes, it is very easy to understand. I wanted to go straight from here, but according to the navigation system, we would have to go around the mountain to get there. Oh well, we still have a long way to go.

A short walk took us into a park along the hill. The weather was nice, so there were people sitting on benches and relaxing. This seemed to be a pleasant sight.

Oh, it's finally starting to look like a mountain. After passing through the park and crossing the road, the mountain road finally begins.

Both sides of the road are overgrown with trees. It is completely mountainous. The smell is different. It is the smell of a mountain.

The road gets narrower and narrower. It is completely a mountain walk. I don't think the picture conveys the feeling, but there is a surprisingly steep incline. I am not accustomed to walking, and fatigue is accumulating. Mrs. Anna, this is not a path that can easily be called a "walk!

As the mountain deepened, we came across this moss-covered fallen tree. It was so divine. I couldn't help but join my hands together. I felt a little revived, thinking, "Ah, nature is so nice.

There was a little lookout point just about halfway up.

From here we could look down on the city of Baden-Baden. I could see that this town is located in the middle of a dense forest. I felt that I had come to a very high place.

However, the road from here was also tough! A lot of fallen leaves were wet and muddy from the rain. Moreover, the ups and downs were getting steeper and steeper. I was quite groggy at this stage. To be honest, I wanted to go home. However, it was too hard to go back after coming this far. I had to walk anyway. Let's go for it.

In terms of time, we should be there by now. We are surely almost there. The last hill is steep again, and it's time to push on.

Oh..! Looks like we've arrived! It took me about 50 minutes to get there for some reason.

It was not a "walk." I had to laugh at the fact that it was definitely not a "walk. I could see that Mr. and Mrs. Dostoevsky were in good health.

According to previous information, there was a cafe in front of the old castle where we could take a rest, but unfortunately it was closed. Apparently, it is not open during the off-season. It was a painful closure for me, as I was hoping to recover my strength with a latte.

Now let's enter the old castle. There is no entrance fee and you are free to enter.

Oh, it does have the atmosphere of an old castle. It is a bit abandoned, which is also tasteful and nice.

Tour the ruins through narrow passages. I wonder if there were handrails when Mr. and Mrs. Dostoevsky were there. If not, it would have been very dangerous. The wind was strong on the mountain. I wondered if there might have been an accident.

The view from the top of the mountain is excellent. We had come a long way!

This may be a good place for those interested in Dostoevsky, but it takes a bit of courage to come here for a casual stroll. A light hike is probably the best way to feel about it.

Promenade in Baden-Baden

There is a riverside walkway called the Promenade near the Koor House where the casino is located.

This is a very picturesque and nice atmosphere on a walkway that is truly a Baden-Baden specialty.

Mr. and Mrs. Dostoevsky would certainly have walked here.

I still like rivers. I feel relieved when I walk along the river.

Yeah. This is what I mean by a walk. I don't mean hiking in the mountains.

Take a leisurely stroll, and when you get tired, take a rest in a cafe...ah, what a nice place! Baden-Baden is very comfortable. It is one of the world's leading recreational areas, after all. Perhaps it is the calm atmosphere that suits my taste, but there is almost no theme park atmosphere here.

The Dostoevsky statue in Baden-Baden - the most impressive sculpture of my trip!

And there is something I would like to share with you all. I want to say this out loud to the whole world. I want to tell the whole world that here in Baden-Baden we have a masterpiece of the highest level in the world.

I first learned of the statue's existence during my preliminary research for my trip, when I was looking for Dostoevsky's house on a map. I did not find "Dostoevsky's house," but instead I found this statue of Dostoevsky.

The statue of Dostoevsky stands in a park a short distance from the center of the city. I decided to go and see it myself. I had no idea that it would become one of the best sculptures of my lifetime.

If you follow the road straight north from Dostoevsky's house, you will come to a tree-lined street along the park. I was told that if I continued straight on this path, I would encounter a statue of Dostoevsky. I continued walking along the path for a while.

Hmm? Ah... there it is! There's something standing there! Is that it? That's Dostoevsky!

The couple in front of me must have been crushed by the Oriental who suddenly began to get excited in the middle of the road.

Statue of Dostoevsky looking toward Baden-Baden from the top of the hill. Is the casino at the end of his gaze?

Oh... what a melancholy sight...

The statue was created by Moscow sculptor Leonid Baranov and erected in 2004.

Standing by him and looking in the same direction. What a sad view. He was placed in a very bad place, in a very bad way. I wished he would at least turn his back to the casino. But it had to be this way. This is why it is so meaningful. It is a horrible sculpture.

Then I saw his face and I huffed.

Dostoevsky stands powerless and stunned with a sullen look in his eyes. There is an air of melancholy and gambling madness in the air. Is there such a sad sculpture? This is not the great writer Dostoevsky. Here is only a poor man who has lost in life. The sculptor must be very attached to Dostoevsky to have captured him so beautifully in this sleepwalking, or indeed nightmarish, life. Otherwise, he would not have been able to capture his figure so beautifully. It would be impossible if he did not know Dostoevsky inside and out.

On my way home, I turned and looked at this statue over and over again. Each time I looked back, a sad thought came to mind. I was completely taken by this statue. I visited it almost every day during my stay in Baden-Baden.

The second time he came, I finally realized that the strange sphere on which he was riding was a roulette ball. And the pedestal beneath it was, of course, a roulette board. A crushed and cracked ball on an egg, and a crumpled roulette board. Can we not read here the mind of Dostoevsky, a somnambulist sinking into madness?

You may not be able to see it in the photo, but Dostoevsky's sadness on a rainy day is ...

They stand there all the time, rain or wind, spring, summer, fall or winter. Looking out over the casino...

This is a photo from another evening visit, but let's take a closer look at the details of this statue here.

The first thing you notice is his coat. You can see the texture of the tattered coat. It is immediately apparent that he has no money to mend his jacket or afford a new one. Then there are the unusually deep "dustings" on both elbows and on his right chest. What is this? It is true that these places are prone to wrinkling and rubbing if they are bent or moved. However, I feel that it is exaggerated. Then I suddenly realized. I wondered if this might be a mark made when I clutched it tightly with my hand. If I crossed my arms as if I was hugging myself and grasped my clothes, it would be like the "dust" on my right breast.

Dostoevsky is overcome by the anxiety of not knowing what will happen tomorrow, his uncontrollable passion for gambling, remorse for having lost his money, and a sense of shame. Dostoevsky grips his body as if to suppress his trembling. In such a posture, he staggered away from the casino like a somnambulist and looked back in the direction from which he had come... This image may have captured that moment.

She looks as if she is sleepwalking, and her arms hang down weakly from her slightly hunched back. Both of his fists are slightly closed, and you can see his uncontrollable emotions.

Dostoevsky is truly a sleepwalker in a nightmare. Is Leonid Baranov the genius who created this statue?

Top of my list of sculptures is Michelangelo'sPietà."The Louvre MuseumThe Nike of Samothrace.It is.

It cannot be compared to these, but it is surely comparable in its impact. And the theatrical effect of this "Dostoevsky Statue in Baden-Baden" may rival that Bernini.

Bernini is the genius sculptor who designed the interior of St. Peter's Basilica and the piazza. Bernini transforms the space in which his sculptures are placed into a theater. He incorporates not only the sculpture itself but also the space itself into his art. For more information, please click here.The beauty of St. Peter's Basilica, designed by Michelangelo and Bernini, is explained in the Vatican, Italy (Part 6).You can get a sense of what we mean by this if you refer to the article

A theatrical effect created by the great artists of Rome. I felt something comparable here in Baden-Baden.

Is there any statue in which the drama of Dostoevsky's life is so beautifully expressed in its humanity?

The statue is a stage space for Baden-Baden itself. The city itself, beyond the statue itself, is also incorporated into the art form.

Still, it's a sad, cruel statue. What else could they have done? Why don't they just make him smile and peace out closer to the city? No, no, don't be silly. This statue has to be this way. It cannot be anything else. This is the Dostoevsky of Baden-Baden. It is really wonderful. I was captivated by this statue.

Once this happens I can no longer stand still. I wanted to see Dostoevsky at night. I walked through the dark night streets to meet Dostoevsky. I was a little anxious because I was walking at night in a foreign country, but I couldn't let that stop me. I wanted to meet Dostoevsky at night.

Oh, you are here at night ...

Dostoevsky was still there on this empty, quiet hill. He was still there, as usual, on this quiet hill.

Dostoevsky watches over the night view of Baden-Baden. He is always here alone. It's a figure that makes you want to cuddle up to him gently. I could understand a little why Mrs. Anna wanted to protect him. It's so pathetic, it invites sympathy...

With my hair pulled back, I turned back to my lodgings.

I emphasize again and again that it is rare to find such a wonderful sculpture. Even if we exclude the fact that I have an attachment to Dostoevsky, I still think this is a tremendous masterpiece.

There are tremendous masterpieces in Baden-Baden!

Hopefully this will spread more throughout the world.

The last night in Baden-Baden, the casino finally debuts. Dostoevsky ponders the magic of the crazy roulette.

My stay in Baden-Baden lasted five days. I had joined a casino tour earlier in the day, but for some reason I was very reluctant to put it into practice, and it was the last night of my stay. I was not happy about this, so I went to the casino with all my might.

I had prepared a 10,000 yen bill that I had brought from Japan as my war fund. It was a shiny new bill. I had prepared it for this day. To be honest, I do not intend to win. I would rather lose. I want to lose in a flash like Dostoevsky. I brought this 10,000 yen to pay it here.

No, no, no! I genuinely, genuinely want to lose!

Now, with a slightly nervous heart, I walked into the casino. I was surprised to learn during the guided tour that you can exchange any currency in the world for chips here. In other words, I could buy chips without exchanging Japanese yen for euros. I was able to leave my 10,000 yen bill in the casino. The casino staff was surprised at the rarity of Japanese yen. By the way, credit cards can also be used to buy chips.

Unlike the empty casino before it opened, the casino at night was crowded with many people. As one of the best casinos in the world, there is a dress code. Men are required to wear jackets, and sneakers and jeans are not allowed. So, I thought the atmosphere would be very elegant, but it was surprisingly relaxed. Of course, there were many people dressed up and others like me who were on the edge of their seat. Overall, I got the impression that everyone was enjoying the games in a relaxed and fashionable atmosphere.

And my goal is to play a single roulette game. I too will experience Dostoevsky's crazy roulette.

I positioned myself close to the roulette table so that I could concentrate on the movement of the balls.

I had studied the rules on the Internet and was ready to play. But I didn't really know what to expect.The Gambler.I continued to bet on "0" in honor of him.

The dealer solicits chips, and when some are collected, he spins the roulette wheel and throws in a ball. The sound of the ball spinning around the perimeter of the table echoes, and a red and black speck spins in front of your eyes. Watching this sound and the red and black balls spinning around the table is like being hypnotized into a daze. Gradually, the ball loses momentum and falls into the square with a clattering sound. I can't take my eyes off the rotation of red and black and the movement of the ball, wondering if it is going in or not. The green color of the "0" that sometimes appears in the game is also very strong. And it is not only the red and black that is so detestable. The outer frame of the roulette is made of beautiful, shiny wood, and the handle that turns the roulette looks like a shiny silver trophy.

The red and black spinning, the green "0", the sound of the ball rolling, the beautiful wooden frame, the silver handles, and most of all, this gorgeous space. It's a stage where you can really believe that if you win here, you're doomed. Moreover, Dostoevsky is betting down to the last franc. He knows that if he loses, he is doomed. Even I, who bet just for fun, was thrilled. What would happen if he were to bet his life on it? I can't do that. I could never do that. But Dostoevsky was a man who went to such lengths. Dostoevsky was just like that.The Gambler.He was exactly as he had been described in the

The spinning of the roulette wheel... There is a phrase "the wheel of fate," but this spinning has a dangerous magical power. Dostoevsky was driven mad by it.

As for me, I was completely wiped out in less than half an hour. But I had achieved my goal. I spent the last half hour staring at the roulette table. It was a very stimulating casino experience, thinking about Dostoevsky.

Thus ended my last night in Baden-Baden.

be unbroken

Next Article.

Click here to read the previous article.

Click here for a list of Dostoevsky's recommended books.

List of recommended Dostoevsky biographies."
List of recommended Dostoevsky commentaries.
A list of recommended commentaries on "Dostoevsky and Christianity."

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