We walked up and down Monaco after morning practice, through narrow walkways, hilly streets. You could take elevators from sidewalk to sidewalk, as though the city were a giant building with no roof. We drank white beer; its slightly sickly taste is the taste of summer.

It's a pretty city, but forlorn, inert, insulated in space and time; dominated by the dreary, functional architecture of the sixties and seventies. A city with the means to change but no desire.