Fahrt ins Blaue

Out of Order

Armed border guards stare down the incoming Eurostar passengers at Brussels Zuid, as no one declares anything and we funnel through the green channel. Will they haul me aside and discover the half empty bottle of Harrogate water in my bag…..

Two hours later I board the European Sleeper to Prague, a long, old, tired train almost entirely composed of empty couchette compartments.

The stewards are teenagers - I just hope the driver has a licence. Ash trays in the corridors tell of the train’s tobacco stained history:

Supper, as advertised below, in the cramped, twenty-four seat dining car, is noisy and reminiscent of the ground floor of the Tower of Babel - conversations take place in several tongues at the same time. I drink a red beer from Dresden and am given a bowl of bright yellow pumpkin soup…

To follow, I am served ‘Schnitzel’ though, disregarding the bright yellow lumpy mashed potato, it is less schnitzel and more deep fried rissole…. But I am not going to write to the management. One of the values (?) of international travel is that, through changes in routine, and variety of custom, it may induce a little homesickness…..

It is time for bed, and, having been downgraded from Sleeper to Couchette (due to a technical fault, you understand? The stewardess suggests I make the best of it…..) Slightly uncomfortably, I climb the metal ladder to slide into my sheet sleeping bag on the middle level, as per the instructions on the wall.  ‘Snuggle,’ and ‘cozy,’ are not the words that are foremost in my attempt to sleep.

It is now very dark, and we stop for ages at Roosendaal, though nothing at all happens.  Nothing.  Then, without warning, we judder off again into the night, towards Amsterdam.

Despite another set of ‘rules’ in five languages) (We kindly ask you to be considerate of other travellers and not cause any noise nuisance….. We also ask you to not have loud conversations between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. in order to respect the night’s sleep.) I couldn’t tell you how well the night slept, but at midnight the corridor is loud with Slavic tongues, possibly fuelled by red beer and schnitzel. I think about it, but I don’t actually say Shush!  Call me what you want, but I am not in the mood for fighting.

At 3.30 a.m. we stand silently, for maybe half an hour, in the utterly deserted Hannover Hauptbahnhof.  Nothing happens.  Nothing. Then, clanking, we lurch on. It is, I dream, like being in a bathyscape, with strange pinging sounds, and a swaying, waving, plunging series of movements, as though a giant squid is caressing the carriage.  As though implosion is a possibility.

At precisely 6.36 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, a disembodied voice comes over a crackling tannoy, saying, with no detectable emotion, Guten Morgen, before relapsing into disembodied silence. Perhaps this is obligatory, the Muezzin of the Lutheran Church, one of the 95 precepts nailed to a door in Wittenberg. Or perhaps it is a recording activated by the decreasing balance of darkness over light - like the electronic dawn in ‘Metropolis?’

Aurora rises up like wet newspaper in a muddy stream. The teenage stewardess brings a box of breakfast at 8.15 (despite my request for earlier).  I haven’t had margarine since we used to anoint diced beetroot with it for school lunch.  Meanwhile drizzle falls on passing allotments. 

We pass through Dresden in rain, the Elbe in flood, the landscape just on the turning edge of autumn.  Wet-roofed houses shuttered down.  Nobody about.

Not far now to the Czech border, then the last trundle down towards Prague. The sky is breaking up a bit and daylight doesn’t seem quite so depressing, but I’m a long way from home, and my thoughts stray to my quiet village, my house, my family - my late cat….. I am a little confused, just a bit on the homesick side of happiness, perhaps.  I stare out the wet window, wondering why I am here.

Then, the train arrives and a plaque on the wall welcomes me in the underpass with a picture of Woodrow Wilson and his words, delivered to Congress in 1917 when seeking a declaration of war against Germany, The world must be made safe for democracy, (though it was President of the USA George Bushe (sic) who quoted this on a visit in 1990 when he was drumming up European support for bellicose intentions in the Middle East….) 

Within the original Entrance Hall of the historic art nouveau Prague Hlavni Nadrazi (Praha hl or Prague main station) there is the Fantova Kavarna, where time passes easily with a goat’s cheese and beetroot bagety (but no margarine) and a Pilsner Urquell to drown the hour.  Then it is time for the Railjet to Brno, a busy train that is heading for Vienna and Graz.

They say that travel broadens the mind.  Well, partly due to the two men behind me who prattle loudly for the entire two and a half hours of the trip, my cortex has been so broadened that it is flatter than gold leaf - broad, maybe, but not deep.  

Once in Brno (pronounced, I think, Burn-oh), a short walk up a slippery cobbled lane takes me to a boutique hotel, whose lobby sports a photo of Vaclav Havel that he signed in November 2009.

It is grey, and damp, but I climb the tower of the old town hall, from the balcony of which Queen Elizabeth II addressed the crowds, with Havel by her side, in 1996.  (And, incidentally, where author Simon Mawer was photographed some twenty  years later.  Simon tells me that the last celebrity photographed here before Queen Elizabeth was Adolf Hitler). The vegetable market square lies before me, then there is the cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, its twin neo-gothic spires scratching at the clouds.  

On the hill behind me squats the solid Spielberk Castle, with a ghastly history of successive regimes of torture and imprisonment, going back through the Red Army, the Nazis, the Austrians, Napoleon and the rest.  

And then across the city, part hidden among some mature trees, a bright white slab is all I can see of Mies van Der Rohe’s 1929/30 Villa Tugendhat, the inspiration for Simon Mawer’s 2009 Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel, The Glass Room, and the reason for my visit…..

But that is for tomorrow.  Now is the time for goulasch and unfiltered pivo.  And perhaps a shot of  Becherovka……

Until tomorrow…..

And in the meantime: 

Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred. 

Vaclav Havel

https://www.visitczechia.com/en-us/news/2021/12/n-vaclav-havel

Flowers for my Queen

My Lady of the Camellias  

(or, rather, Azaleas)

It's a grey, damp morning as we enter the formal gardens at Sandringham, but then many of our days are grey and damp. I don't want to confuse Mental Health Awareness Week with Amanda's dementia, but who now knows how anxious she may feel?

So I have brought her, with her wheel chair, to see the gardens that the late Queen Elizabeth II loved. And my love may love.... In the cloudy light the colours are soft:

And the air is fragrant:

Ramsons vie with Hostas:

And the ground cover, like the light, is green and pleasant. It is, or it can be, a green and pleasant land.....

Amanda has a slight cold, but I have wrapped her up warmly, and she seems to appreciate the calm and the colour:

The flaming flowers (Azaleas, I believe, though I am not an expert - Rhododendrons, and not actually Camellias) being particularly attractive:

In  all their shades:

Though it is difficult to know what is going on in the remnants of her mind. Would she rather I didn't take her picture? Is she more interested in the passers by?

A great Horse Chestnut tree is alight with flowers:

And goslings, feeding on the luscious grass, demur to the house and lake:

I want to think that she appreciates these colours and the delicate scents around us. I want her to be happy in the closure of her mind. I don't want her to be anxious.... and, though I am not trying to diminish the significance of Mental Awareness Week, with its theme of Anxiety, I cannot entirely separate this need for awareness from the depth of Amanda's suffering. We are surrounded by beautiful flowers:

Wisteria is often associated with love and romance, due to its fragrant, showy flowers and lush green foliage. In Japanese culture, Wisteria is known as fuji, which means lady of the wind, so perhaps it is apt that I take these pictures with my FujiFilm camera. The association with grace and beauty has made Wisteria a popular symbol of love and affection.

 

And Camellia flowers symbolise love, affection, and admiration (you have to forgive me here; I wrote this thinking these flowers were Camellias, but have since been put straight - thank you Sarah!):

White Camellias (even if they are Azaleas....) symbolise adoration and are given to someone who is well-liked:

Pink Camellias (as above) symbolise a longing for someone and are given to someone who is missed:

Red Camellias (whatever!) symbolise love, passion, and deep desire:

These are flowers fit for a Queen.  They are fit for my Queen.

*     *     *     *     *

Dedicated to our dear friend Irene Boogerman, who passed away peacefully early this morning:

Amor è palpito dell´universo intero,

misterioso, altero,

croce e delizia al cor.

[Love is a heartbeat throughout the universe,

mysterious, altering,

the torment and delight of my heart.]

La Traviata

Giuseppe Verdi

London 14 - The Thames & its Bridges

Liquid ‘istory

The river Thames is the aorta of England. It has played an essential part in our culture and history for more than two thousand years. As a division between kingdoms and counties, as a haven for seafarers and a thoroughfare for traders, and as a watermark on the fragile seals of parliaments, its importance is unrivalled.

While its currents are ever-changing, and its banks are never-the-same, the river has an entity that transcends ephemera.  From one end of London to another, the streaming tides are constantly washing the face of history, and as we walk along its length we stumble on shards of stories that shore up the life of this fragment of the world.

And as the centuries pass, despite its wilful energy, the Thames has been to a certain extent tamed, and leashed, and crossed and tied. Basins have been dug to shelter ships from excess; tributaries have been sheathed and tapped and dried; tunnels have been bored underneath, and bridges have been stepped across its mighty flow.

For two thousand years we have endeavoured to span the dangerous flow, and from the time when the river was practically impassable, to the 200 bridges, 27 tunnels, six public ferries, one cable car link, and one ford that today allow passage to humankind, the story has followed in the wake of man’s technological development, and has tallied the history of transport, politics and the language of this land.  Without Chaucer, Shakespeare might not have achieved such fame; without Spenser, poetry might not have flowed so free; without Dickens, our fondness for story and character might not have grown so florid.  And all of these, besides their imitators, have been shaped by the dark coursing waters of the Thames as it scours its way through London…..

Though other rivers far outstrip this stream in magnitude, from the Tagus to the Nile, and from the Mississippi to the Amazon, few may challenge the tales these waters can tell, and to this day, to my mind at least, there is little so pleasantly intriguing, so imaginatively distracting, as a walk beside our father, the Thames.

And now, as Janus looks back and forth, and it is the season of the quiz, I offer you a little game to play.  I realised just recently how often I have spent time beside the river, and then realised that over the years I have followed its course from Surrey into Kent, crossing and re-crossing both above and below the waves, so it seemed fair to create a game. 

And what better than a game of Bridge?

A Game of Bridge

1)     Who built the first London Bridge?  (a) Alfred the Great (b) The Romans (c) Boadicea? 

2)     Why did Old London Bridge fall down?  (a) Fire in 1212  (b) Neglect by Eleanor of Provence in the 1270s (c) Ice in 1281? 

3)     Until when was the Medieval London Bridge the only bridge across the Thames in London?  (a) mid sixteenth century (b) mid seventeenth century (c) mid eighteenth century? 

4)     Where is the 1831 London Bridge (which replaced the medieval one) now?  (a) at the bottom of the river (b) in Japan (c) in Arizona? 

5)     Which bridge carries the following notice:  All Troops Must Break Step When Marching Over This Bridge?  (a) Chelsea, (b) Hammersmith, (c) Albert? 

6)     Under which bridge was Italian banker Roberto Calvi found hanging on June 18^th, 1982?  (a) Blackfriars Road Bridge, (b) Blackfriars Railway Bridge, (c) Waterloo? 

7)     Which is the only bridge across the Thames east of Tower Bridge?  (a) Dartford, (b) Emirates Air Line, (c) Queen Elizabeth II? 

8)     Why is Westminster Bridge green and Lambeth bridge red?

9)     Between which two bridges does Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend begin? In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between ***** Bridge, which is of iron, and ***** Bridge, which is of stone….. 

10)  Earth has not anything to show more fair: Why could William Wordsworth not have composed any lines on the current Westminster Bridge? 

11)  Whose view might this be, and from which bridge?

12)  What is the name of this bridge?

13)  What’s the story here?

14)  Which is the oldest bridge across the Thames in the Greater London area?

15)  Which bridge was reopened in 2002?

And for a bonus point:

16) Between which two bridges are Joanna Lumley and Boris Johnson intending to get into a flower bed together?

Answers: 
1) b; 

2) All three; 

3) c; 

4) c; 

5) c; 

6) a; 

7) c; 

8) Because Westminster bridge is painted the same colour as the seats in the House of Commons and Lambeth bridge is the same as the seats in the House of Lords. 

9) Southwark, and London; 

10) The sonnet was composed in 1802; Wordsworth died in 1850; the current Westminster Bridge was built in 1862; 

11) James McNeill Whistler, from Battersea Bridge; 

12) Barnes Railway Bridge; 

13) The bridge on the left is Blackfriars Road Bridge; the one on the right is the new Blackfriars Railway Bridge; the pillars in the middle are what remains of the 1864 Blackfriars Railway Bridge which carried the London, Chatham and Dover Railway; the eastern line of supporting columns have been incorporated into the new railway structure; 

14) Richmond Bridge, 1777; 

15) London Millennium Bridge, originally opened in 2000, but closed for two years following significant wobbles!

16) The Garden Bridge will be a 366 metre long, 30 metre wide, copper-nickel structure across the Thames between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges.  Joanna Lumley and Mayor Boris Johnson are prominent supporters.  It is expected to cost at least £175 million.

How did you do?

For a tie breaker, can you identify from which bridge this photo was taken?  

For the answer, contact me.....


Cheers!