The Sights of Tours

May 25, 2024May 19, 2024 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Although I only spent 5 weeks in the city of Tours, France, I feel like I managed to squeeze in quite a lot of sightseeing around my French classes and cheese eating. In an attempt to organize my adventures there, this is the 2nd of 4 posts about Tours and it features attractions which are close to the city center, such as museums, gardens and interesting tourist attractions.

Musée Compagnonnage (The Companion Museum)

This was the first museum I visited in Tours because it was right next to my tram stop. I don’t know what I expected from a place called the Companion Museum, but this was not it. The Companionship (Compagnonnage) were any and all artisans and craftsmen who made things with their hands and then passed the knowledge of their crafts through apprenticeships. As you may imagine, that’s most of professions. It’s something between a secret society and a very strong union. In fact, given the amount of masonic imagery, I’m surprised to find that the museum denies any connection beyond the coincidence of the compass and square.

According to their own legends, the Compagnonnage dates back to the construction of the temple in Jerusalem, known as the “Temple of Solomon”, in the 10th century BC. The colossal project, under the direction of the architect Hiram, would have been led by Soubise and Jacques. Different legends also make these last two monastic and chivalrous characters. Salomon, Father Soubise and Maître Jacques are the 3 legendary founders of the Compagnonnage. However, there’s no archaeological evidence of the Compagnonnage until the 13th century. Incidentally, the Free Masons are not found until the 18th century so if they are linked, the French did it first.

The Compagnonnage includes any industry in which people work with their hands directly to produce things. I was going to try to list them, but the museum website takes a whole page to do so. It’s… a lot. Excluded careers were things like merchants, academics, doctors, architects and engineers (presumably the later because they design things rather than build them. Carpenters and stonemasons, people who implemented architectural and engineering designs, were absolutely included in the Compagnonnage.)

You can read more about the historical ups and downs on the museum website (thanks Google Chrome for auto-translate), but it went fairly strong until WW1 dealt it a near fatal blow. It didn’t really recover until after WW2, and it’s worth mentioning that although they claimed to welcome anyone wishing to improve in their profession, they didn’t agree to admit women until 2004(!) and didn’t actually accept one until 2006. Even though many of the trades historically included into the Compagnonnage were industries which had many women workers including sewing, weaving, laundry, and baking, it seems the society was about more than just teaching skills and protecting workers. Quelle surprise! (by the way, all of the art pieces below are sugar and pastry!)

Despite the overwhelming presence of misogyny throughout the history of Western civilization, I still enjoyed seeing the craftworks and tools of the various trades included in the Compagnonnes. I also believe that the centuries-long tradition of protecting the rights and wages of these workers has likely influenced the French cultural value of workers’ rights and collective bargaining. Did you know that striking is protected under their constitution? That not only can they not lose their jobs for striking, their employers must continue to pay them during the strike? That’s a big accomplishment for the same culture that produced Versailles.

The Hôtel Goüin

This is what happens when you don’t plan in advance and just wing it. You get weird stuff. This hotel is on my walk from the tram stop to my school and I got curious about it, and noticed it’s opening hours were only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I looked at it very very briefly online and saw that inside was an art gallery with rotating exhibitions. I thought, well I like art galleries, and it’s free, so why not?

First, let me say, I do think it’s worth it to poke your nose into any free museum in your vicinity. Heck, even any museum under 10$ is likely to be worth a stop to me. I have gone into unexpected museums before, things I ran across that were adjacent to another stop on my journey, and it’s roulette. Also, since I had totally failed in the planning phase of my stay in Tours, I was eventually bound to suffer the slings of ‘wing it”, and only not mind too much because a) it’s 5 weeks, and b) my goal in Tours was not sightseeing – it was French Living.

If you or someone you know is headed to Tours and you happen to be in Old Tours on a Wednesday or Saturday, sure, drop in. However, there’s no need to put it on your bucket list. This summer, the Olympics are being held in Paris, so all of France is in Olympic fever. The Hôtel Goüin being no exception, they decided to offer an exhibition on the Paralympics. In large part, the exhibition was mostly very beautiful and inspiring photographs of paralympic athletes, but the upstairs (no elevator, btw, way to accommodate the athletes being celebrated!) contained not only documentaries, but interactive displays where visitors could “try on” a disability and attempt a sport. … I don’t even know what to write about that, other than, yes, I’m sure that’s what they were for because a museum employee told me about it and smilingly encouraged me to try.

If you are not cringing with me, or are wondering why I am, please check out some videos on YouTube by following this link.

The Musée des Beaux Arts

The third and easily most impressive museum I visited was the Tours Museum of Fine Arts. You can go to France and not visit an art museum, but why would you? I spent about 2.5 hours inside the museum of fine arts. I only took photos of things that struck me in particular, but it was room after room of beautiful stuff. I love looking at oil paintings up close. There’s some things that no photograph can ever capture, the quality of light, the ability for a part of a painting to seem like it’s glowing, the way the brush strokes move the eye, the size (both the enormous paintings and the tiny details). Seriously, even gallery-pro photos rarely do them justice, but if you want to see the museum’s own photographic collection, click here.

Nonetheless, I cannot paint a picture of a gallery with only words, so I hope you enjoy the pictures I took and that maybe it can inspire you to visit an art gallery in or near your own town. Galleries often have wide collections, and even trade around highly desirable artists so that everyone can get a chance. The Tours museum is not anything so grand as is found in Paris, Lyon, London, or New York, but it still had a Rubens, a Rodin, a Rembrandt, and a Monet alongside many lesser known but still very talented artists from the 14th to 21st centuries.

Garland of flowers and trompe l’oeil, Jan-Philips van THIELEN, mid 1600s
Anonymous copy of the Mona Lisa painted mid 1500s
Mary Magdalene, Matthieu FREDEAU 1642
The Virgin, the Child Jesus and Saint John the Baptist, Eustache LE SUEUR, early 1600s
Portrait of a woman in spring, Workshop of Nicolas de LARGILLIERRE, early 1700s
Diana and her companions resting after hunting, Louis of BOULOGNE 1707
Allegory of the Times, Wealth, Power and Love; Claude VIGNON, mid 1600s
Nude study, Léon BELLY, 1857
Sarah Bernhardt in her Belle-Ilea garden, Georges CLAIRIN, late 1800s
Leaving mass on Easter Day in Labastide-du-Vert, Henri MARTIN, 1915

I recently had to try and explain Queer Coding to some folks and I found myself returning to YouTube to shore up my own understanding and references. One of the videos I watched pointed out that a lot of artists who painted under the totalitarian glare of the capital “C” Church used secret signs in their paintings of religious icons, and imagery out of Greco-Roman mythology to be able to portray scenes of queer love, romance, and eroticism that they could otherwise have been turned over to the Inquisition for. It was a perspective that made looking at many of these paintings from the 14-17th centuries much more entertaining.

I had to put this painting on its own. This is “Panoramic view of Tours in 1787” by Pierre-Antoine Demachy. When I turned a corner and saw this view, I was absolutely stunned because that’s the bridge I ride the tram over every day too and from school and my apartment. It’s actually fairly easy to regognize the major landmarks like the Cathedral on the left, the large white buildings with black roofs along side the road which is the Rue National (those are still holding shops today), and the Tower of Charlemagne as the tallest structure on the right. The artist was able to make the buildings in the distance look larger than they really are, and there are too many trees and new buildings for me to exactly replicate this view with my camera, but I gave it a go.

The lower floor of the museum is where the rotating and seasonal exhibits live. When I visited, it was an exhibit about the history of women called “THE SCEPTER & THE DISTAFF. BEING A WOMAN BETWEEN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE“. Although it did have some generalizations, it mainly focused on France and it’s neighboring European countries and offered examples of illuminated manuscripts and artistic renditions of women as visual aids to the historical records. Anyone who has studied the history of women in the West will be well aware of the issues, but for those who are not, may I recommend the recent re-translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s eminent work, The Second Sex. If you’re on this website, I assume you like to read and so recommend the book, but there are plenty of YouTube videos reviewing and analyzing it. I don’t claim it’s the authoritative book of feminism (it’s got issues), but she does a very good job of assessing the historical condition of women in Western culture.

After I finished inside the museum, I headed outside to look for the pickup spot of the hippomobile. I didn’t make up that word. “Hippo” isn’t just a big African water mammal, it’s actually the ancient Greek word for “horse”. “Potamus” is Greek for “river”, which is how the hippopotamus got it’s name – river horse. Thus, the hippomobile is simply an ancient Greek way of saying horse-car, or horse drawn carriage. I don’t know why the one in Tours uses this name instead of the wildly more common French word “calèche“, but the first time I saw it on the website, I fell in love with the word and I refuse to relinquish it.

The internet further told me that I should catch this wonderful ride in front of “Fritz the Elephant” outside the Musée des Beaux Arts. When I arrived at the museum, a sign outside advertised the ride as picking people up at Fritz the Elephant as well, yet by the time I finished my museum tour, I still had no idea where (or really what) Fritz the Elephant was.

The Story of Fritz the Elephant

In my mind, Fritz would be a statue, or maybe a mural, adjacent to and clearly visible from the museum. Upon exiting the museum, I took a quick walk around the gardens (lord do I love the way the French put gardens everywhere). I found a little food stall, and a playground, and a trombone quartet (very unexpected), but still no elephant. Finally, I went over to a building off to one side that looked like it had been (or might still be) a stable. Lo and behold, there was Fritz in all his taxidermized glory, sheltered from the elements by a roof and plexiglass.

TW animal cruelty: because western civilization didn’t figure out animals had feelings until really recently and this is a story out of history. But also, there’s a silver lining at the end? If you want to avoid it, skip to the Hippomobile section where the animals are treated with kindness and respect.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Barnum and Baily’s Circus was at its height. You may have been exposed to a glorified version of this with a singing Hugh Jackman, but the real circuses relied heavily on exotic animal shows, and the treatment and training for those animals, including elephants, was cruel and violent. Fritz was in captivity for 35 years, which would have been most of his life considering Asian elephants only live into their late 40s. He was purchased by Barnum in Germany in 1873 and shipped by sea to the US. Sea voyages were especially hard on animals then, since they took a long time, had terrible conditions, and there was no medication available to help the animals with anxiety or seasickness. Many elephants died on such voyages, including several of Fritz’s companions.

In 1901, the B&B circus headed over to Europe for a continental tour. While in Bordeaux in May of 1902, Fritz began to show signs of agitation and aggression, and so was chained to two other elephants to keep him in check. When the circus reached Tours in June of the same year, the circus offered a parade through town as a way of attracting visitors to the shows. Though the parades were difficult, they were also often the only time the animals had any real freedom of movement.

For reasons unknown to history, Fritz became enraged during this parade. 35 years of captivity and violent treatment cannot have been without consequences, and whatever the reason, Fritz freaked out and terrified all the local parade attendees. The handler was able to get Fritz under control and on the ground (laying down), but director on site still ordered the elephant put down. As horrible as that is, the method of execution was worse, and yet it’s inhumanity may have been the reason why Fritz became such an important historical symbol. The method used was strangulation with chains and rope. It took more than three hours for Fritz to pass.

The remains of Fritz were sent off to a naturalist for preservation, and within 8 months the skeleton was installed at the natural history museum, and the taxidermized hide was placed in the former stables at the Musée des Beaux Arts. The press latched on to the story, framing Fritz as a gentle giant and a victim. Wild speculation abounded as to the cause of his rage. Some posited it must have been a lit cigarette burning him, but there is no evidence to support this claim. Regardless, Fritz became a beloved mascot of the city of Tours, and the tragic incident became a pivotal talking point for a growing movement acknowledging animal suffering and animal rights.

As of my visit, more than 100 French cities ban the use of wild animals in circus shows, and the French government at the federal level has decided to completely ban all use of wild animals in travelling circuses by 2028. If that sounds like a small and late change, you aren’t wrong, but France isn’t behind the times. Most developed (rich) nations are still in the process of passing similar laws, often in patchwork and piecemeal ways, and of course developing nations are struggling enough with human rights, that it is difficult to get them onboard with eliminating animal exploitation which can mean the difference between feeding their own children or not.

I have talked about ethical animal tourism before and how important it is to patronize businesses that prioritize animal welfare because that needs to be seen as a viable economic model in order for more people to follow suit. 122 years have passed since Fritz was strangled to death on the streets of Tours for simply being a wild animal, and that seems like a long time, but we were still going to circuses with mistreated elephants when I was a kid. As short a time ago as 2008 I watched a tiger jump through a ring of fire in China (I didn’t know that would happen when I sat down for the show). Kids on the streets in Africa and SE Asia use baby monkeys they took from the mothers in order to lure tourists into taking and paying for cute selfies. There are still plentiful places that offer swims with captive dolphins or rides on captive elephants as tourist attractions. We love looking at and interacting with animals, but all too often that love is toxic.

Horse-drawn carriages are another great example. I’ve been to developing countries where the horses are near starved, dehydrated, and forced to work without a break in the scorching sun. I recall at one point in Egypt seeing a sign near an area with shade and water troughs that an animal welfare organization had fought to have installed for the horses which carried tourists around the ruins. It’s hard to convince a person who lives in a state of desperate poverty that they need to prioritize an animal when their own children may not have enough. A shorter work-day means less money, and is a big barrier to enforcing any kind of animal rights. Thus it’s up to tourists who take the rides to express a firm requirement that the animals be treated well. Stop paying for rides with badly treated animals and the drivers will change.

Please check your sources. Look for the zoos that have habitats of comfort and preservation (lots of zoos these days are changing their habitats to protect and serve the animals, and they rely more on rescuing animals that wouldn’t have survived in the wild or breeding programs rather than capturing healthy wild animals). Look for animal interactions that protect the animal ambassadors. They exist. Animals that for one reason or another don’t mind interacting with humans on their own terms can be great species ambassadors and inspire humans to better protect the environment, but we have to respect their boundaries and needs. Even the pet cafes can have better treatment of their animals, such as creating spaces where the animals can retreat when they want to, and having highly trained staff around to make sure the animals are safe and comfortable at all times, even if that means disappointing a customer.

We may be past the era of such tragedies as happened to Fritz, but we still have a long way to go to restore the balance between our love for interacting with animals and our ability to respect them.

The Hippomobile

Thankfully, in France, the labor rights are strong, even for horses, and these chevaux have restricted work hours, mandated breaks, days off for extreme weather, and nice digs.

“Our equine friends are given a day off every Monday. The horses that draw carriages in the morning are replaced by another set in the afternoon. The animals take breaks in the shade of the magnificent cedar tree outside the Museum of Fine Arts. The carriage driver decides which route to take depending on the time of day, weather conditions and/or the horses’ energy levels. When the weather is unfavorable to horses, the timetable may be modified or suspended.” — quote from the Filbleu website regarding this service

I joined the first afternoon tour (3:30pm) and although I was a bit disappointed that the weather plastic remained down (it had rained heavily a few days before), I was seated right at the back and could look out the open rear for clear views. I didn’t see a lot of new things because by this time, I’d lived in Tours for over 3 weeks and had done a lot of exploring on my own. However, Old Tours is endlessly charming and the weather that day was simply stunning, so for the price of transit ticket, I happily enjoyed the clip clop of horses hooves while I admired the scenery.

The Cathedral of Saint-Gatien

This stunning cathedral is right next door to the museum and makes an easy side trip. I may have a love affair with gothic architecture and stained glass. I can’t seem to stop going into cathedrals which are all generally of a similar blueprint, and staring in wonder at the scale and scope of human achievement in terms of really big, really complex, and emotionally moving buildings. I took far too many photos of the different types of stained glass, but I admit that I’m more interested in the colors and shapes than I am in the catechism represented therein, so I can’t tell you what they are supposed to be depicting (though there were dozens of signs explaining each window inside the church).

When I was in the Fine Arts Museum, I found a painting of the cathedral, and did my best to replicate the angle in modern photo form. It may be a silly American thing, but we simply aren’t used to buildings which have stood for centuries, and despite knowing how old the building is (800 years), seeing a 200+ year old painting of the cathedral made it’s age somehow more real.

While I was in the church, the trombone quartet that I had found in the gardens outside the museum showed up to practice with the organist. I love listening to the giant pipe organs! It started out quiet enough so you could hear the trombones, then the organist pulled the stops out (that’s where that phrase comes from, right?) and wham!

The Botanical Gardens

Another thing to love about France is the ubiquitous nature of nature. I mean the public gardens. Although what the French call a garden may be anything from a highly cultivated botanical display to an asthetically designed artistic movement, to a grassy place with a water feature, they are all clean, safe, and well maintained, and above all free to the public.

I wrote about my three gardens in Paris earlier this spring, so while experiencing the long weekend and excellent weather in Tours, I decided to pop in to the Botanical Gardens. I was not disappointed. The bus lets passengers off right at the main entrance to the gardens (although there are multiple entrances because it is such a huge area of land). I started by walking to my right into a maze of botanical specimens. The plants are arranged in pleasing beds and trellises and I suspect at least part of it is in bloom in every season except winter. There were three paths with three different points of view and experiences, and at the far end sat a grand glass greenhouse. Unfortunately, that was closed during my visit, but it was a fairly small part of the overall parc.

As I turned around and headed back towards my entry point along a different pathway, I was treated to entirely different scenery and the sounds of very vocal frogs. I managed to sneak up on one in the water feature and snap a photo before he plonked into the depths. I walked for a while simply admiring the plants and small streams, watching families and couples enjoying picnics in the grass, and then suddenly I came upon the menagerie. Here in the middle of this garden were a small number of animal habitats. I recall seeing the same thing in the Jardin des Plants in Paris and being generally surprised that any free-to-all style park could afford the staff and upkeep for that.

It is by no means a full zoo, but I feel like it added a layer of beauty but also entertainment and diversion (especially for children). There were some wallabies, peacocks, flamingos, turtles, tortoises, and a lot of farm type critters (chickens, geese, ducks goats, rabbits, and even a pig). Most of the animals were fenced away, but there was a mini-farm where people could go in and get a bit closer.

At the opposite end, there were two playgrounds with equipment for children to climb and play on, and still more beautiful lawns of grass for people to picnic and nap on underneath the enormous sprawling trees. I left the park feeling tranquil and refreshed with the satisfied feeling that my last weekend in Tours was extremely well-spent.

Art, Food, and Parks in Paris

October 25, 2019October 15, 2019 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

The majority of the August 2019 was spent in the Irelands, but I decided that I wanted to spend a few days in Paris on the way. You can’t really fly direct from the US to Dublin (without forking over a fortune). Connecting flights go through Heathrow or CDG. Any excuse to visit Paris. I know it’s very stereo-typical, but apparently I’m more basic than I want to admit: I love Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Paris is one of my favorite cities on Earth.

Where All Good Food Goes When It Dies

Pardon my mangling of Oscar Wilde’s famous quote, but this was the thought I had the first time I had a meal in France (not actually Paris yet, since I was on a road trip from Prague and my first stop was in Metz: photo album). I have not had any disappointing food experiences in France at all. I have been trying to figure out how to afford to live and work in France doing nearly anything just so I could have daily access to the food. Since I haven’t yet figured that out, I am having to make do with an annual pilgrimage to see my favorite art and food stops.

I was only able to spend a few days in Paris this time around, so it was mostly a food oriented excursion. I wanted to get a full range of food experiences from fine dining to street food. The first dinner was at a beautiful souffle-centric restaurant called Le Souffle which serves a three course menu of entirely souffles. I was a bit apprehensive that it might be textually monotonous, but they serve each course with some sides like salad or croquette, and the main course was a mild cheese souffle with the beef bourguignon in a side dish so you could pour the meat and sauce into the souffle, breaking up the taste and texture. For dessert, I was torn between chocolate and creme brulee… I love both, but the idea of a creme brulee souffle was too intriguing to pass up. My only regret was an inability to finish everything.

I got to have just “regular” (amazing) French food in a nice neighborhood bistro. I got to have breakfast at my favorite chocolaterie: Angelina’s. This place has arguably the best hot chocolate, and the breakfast pastries were exquisite. I got some “fast food” at Paul’s, and a picnic lunch from the Marche d’Aligre which included this fantastic “blue” cheese. It’s actually a Tomme duBerry a la lavande. It’s a mild, uncooked, pressed cow’s milk cheese that’s colored blue and flavored with lavender and rosemary. With some lemon olives, fresh bread, ripe apricots, and a lemon tart for dessert it was a magical meal in the park.

I could go on and on about the food in Paris. Many people have. I was going to say I have, but it turns out that for some reason I never actually wrote about my first time in Paris, and when I wrote about the second trip, I wasn’t very food focused because of the extreme heat wave going on at the time ruining my appetite. Perhaps the next time I go, I’ll actually dedicate myself to taking good food photos and notes so I can do a proper foodie write up of all my favorite places.

Let’s Go For a Walk

Since I never actually wrote about my trip in 2015, all the main Paris attractions that I did on the first trip never actually made it into the blog: Eiffel Tower, Père Lachaise cemetery, Sacré-Cœur, the Champs-Élysées with Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde and the beautiful Tuileries Garden.

If you happen to be in Paris when the weather is nice, these are all wonderful places to go. In 2018, I went on a cycling tour and I have almost no photos and less memory about what we saw because it was 37°C and I didn’t bring enough water. The moral here is, don’t force yourself to see the beautiful outdoor attractions if you aren’t going to be able to enjoy them. There’s plenty of museums and indoor / covered activities like street markets. I made it to the March d’Aligre on this last visit which not only had plenty of wonderful fresh food on offer, but also had a rambling rummage sale of old and lost things.

I personally think that places like the Eiffel Tower (photo album), the Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe (photo album), and the Place de la Concorde are all things you could go and see one time for a few minutes and check that off the Paris bucket list. They just aren’t that exciting… Although, it was fun to realize that I’ve now seen the matched set of obelisks that reside in Paris and Luxor respectively. The one in Paris was given to France by Muhammad Ali Pasha, Ruler of Ottoman Egypt in exchange for a French mechanical clock in 1832. It’s twin still stands outside the temple of Luxor.

Notre Dame (photo album) is a place that I would have recommended as a one and done, however, since the fire, I’m not sure this stands true any more. I personally will be interested to see how it looks in a few years. Regardless, unless gothic architecture is your jam, it’s not worth more than a couple hours one time. It is totally worth that, because it’s a very beautiful structure, but it can be very crowded and I think it’s a little overhyped since there are a few hundred (thousand?) churches around Europe that are very very similar. But you’re in Paris, so you might as well.

The Père Lachaise (photo album) could easily be several days of wandering through a stunning gothic mausoleum laden park taking endless photos of the natural and the macabre. Plus, lots of famous graves like Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. If you’re really into the dead, I think the Catacombs are a great indoor option, although I highly recommend a skip the line ticket because when we went, people were waiting 3+ hours for a tour. Also, while the above ground cemetery is definitely good for repeat meandering visits, I think that the catacombs are a single visit attraction unless you REALLY love bones.

The Sacré-Cœur (photo album) as a church is on my “one and done” list, but as a beautiful part of Paris is on the repeat visit list. The views from the top of the hill are absolutely stunning, and the culture around Sacré-Cœur is fascinating: from the roving “vendors” selling anything and everything on the steps to the famous Place du Tertre where local artist are painting and selling beautiful original works of art direct to the public.

Last but not least, the Tuileries Garden is a large green space between the Louvre and the Musée de l’Orangerie. It’s a beautiful place to have a stroll any time of year. There’s wide open green spaces, chairs placed freely around the fountains, shady tree lined pathways, little bistros and of course a bit of a fun park at one end with a giant ferris wheel. I love to come here when I need a break between sights to enjoy the day and people watch.

Paris Art & Feminism

I wrote a broader piece about my experiences in these two museums (d’Orsay & l’Orangerie) from my visit in 2017. In this essay, I’m going to focus on a temporary exhibition in the l’Orangerie about cubism and the unexpected feminist moment I found there.

In case it was never obvious before, I do consider myself a feminist (no I don’t hate men, no I won’t use the term “equalist”, yes I have lots of reasons. This Bustle article sums them up nicely if you want to read more). I’m constantly frustrated by the way in which all the historical artists, musicians, scientists, writers, politicians, philosophers… everything … of any note or record are almost always men. White men. Old. White. Men.

It’s not because old white men are better at these things. It is because the women who did them were suppressed. They were put down in their own lifetimes. Their work was stolen by men who took the credit. Their work was copied by men who took the credit. They were just written out of history. By the men who write history books.

Women are supposed to cook for the family, but only men can be great chefs? Women have historically been expected to spin, weave and sew yet fashion is a man’s business? Art forms that men can’t steal are just demeaned, like embroidery or textile crafting. It’s nice this is finally starting to break down in the 21st century, but we still don’t have enough of a balance in the way we teach and promote artists in mainstream culture. Adding women artists to the public consciousness doesn’t mean removing male artists, and it’s high time we start.

Many of the artists and composers and even authors on my “love it” list are dudes. I’m not going to stop enjoying their work just because I’m adding female artists to my worldview. I don’t know if I would have identified with any female artist growing up simply because I wasn’t ever exposed to any. I don’t think we have room for a limited number of artists in our lives. I think the more art the better. While we’re at it, maybe start adding non-eurocentric art and POC artists too, like Robert S. Duncanson (1821–1872) who was an African-American man who escaped to Canada during the Civil War and taught himself to paint.

The museums in Paris, in particular the l’Orangerie, have been trying to have more women artists on display. Last time I was there in 2018 it was Helen Frankenthaler. I wasn’t that into her art because I am not a fan of abstract impressionism, but I was really happy to see her in an installation that included Rothko and Pollock. The museum talked a lot about her life and the challenges she faced being a woman in the highly sexist art scene. She was talented, dedicated and prolific yet she’s not discussed when most people talk about this period of art history.

This time, the featured woman artist was much more personally to my liking and I became much more invested in her art and identity. I am only human, and tend to spend more time and energy on the things that personally interest / impact me. If you’ve never seen her work before, then it is my distinct pleasure to introduce you to the art of Marie Laurencin.

“Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) initially studied porcelain painting, before going on to study drawing at a school in Paris and at the Academie Humbert. She was part of the circle of friends at the Bateau-Lavoir known as the “Picasso gang”, and it was here that she met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire with whom she had a passionate and stormy affair.

Attracted to Fauvism for a time, Marie Laurencin, the “Cubist Muse”, simplified and idealized her forms under their influence. From 1910, she preferred a palette of pastel tones, particularly grays and pinks. She went on to discover the painting of Goya in Spain.

In 1920, she began to paint the willowy, ethereal female figures that she would return to later in paintings with pastel tones, evoking a magical world. She painted portraits of famous Parisian figures, and designed stage sets, for the Ballet Russes in particular. Through this, she became interested in metamorphosis, bringing together two of her favorite themes: young women and animals.”

— Informative sign at l’Orangerie

It’s not that Laurencin or Frankenthaler have been erased. They have (short) Wikipedia pages and it’s not hard to find their paintings online. Before the internet, however, they were virtually invisible to anyone who was not an art history student. Artists like Pollok and Picasso have had hundreds of books, movies, and t-shirts made about their lives and art. They’re referenced frequently in pop culture and have been made to stand as the premier examples of their art eras.

Picasso was a womanizer, an abuser, a narcissist and highly misogynistic. This isn’t just my opinion. It’s well documented. Yet we treat him and his work as sacrosanct as though it is the ONLY example of cubism in all of history. I’m not suggesting we bury the male artists just because they’re jerks, however I think it’s time we start taking a look around and who else might be worthy of historical preservation and artistic praise.

Honestly looking around the museum that day, there was plenty of Picasso on display. It isn’t that impressive.. OK cubism did all this great stuff for “art” and the advancement of creativity, but he wasn’t the only one. I found his works that day to be coarse and overly focused on women as sexual objects. I’ve had a chance to go back through a photo collection of his body of work and I think that whoever curated that particular display may have been selecting for contrast, and I acknowledge that wasn’t a universal trait. However, that day, it was jumping out at me that he was painting women as breasts with a body and maybe a face attached.

Even though Picasso insisted on referring to her as a Cubist Muse or “Our Lady of Cubism” Laurencin didn’t think of her art as cubist, but rather more impressionist. She’s still classed as a cubist artist to this day because art historians would rather listen to how the men defined her rather than how she defined herself.

Despite all this feminism, Laurencin didn’t paint women for empowerment. She also thought they were beautiful. “Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier,” she once said.

To me it seemed that she focused on their beauty rather than their ability to please a male gaze/touch. Her paintings reached out and grabbed me despite their pastel colors and watery images. The idea that a women could paint women because they are pretty the way flowers or rainbows are pretty rather than because they stir the passions of men. There have been a few queer male artists in the well documented side of history that painted beautiful women in an absence of sexual desire, but mostly you get people like Raphael who literally made up non-existent sex goddesses to paint out of the most attractive parts of the hundreds of ladies he seduced. Really early photo-shopping of models, I guess?

It isn’t to say that Laurencin didn’t sexualize women at all. Apparently she was known for attending sapphic parties “comprised of lesbian and bisexual women socialized and discussed links between female desire and creative production”. If anything she was likely bi- or asexual since her long term relationship with Guillaume Apollinaire is well documented. However, if she did sexualize women in her paintings, it serves to highlight the extreme difference in what a male and female sexual gaze focuses on.

Regardless of Laurencin’s sexual orientation, the sapphic parties weren’t lesbian orgies. The hostess and participants of those parties were early first wave feminists seeking to own their desire and creative power at a time that most women were expected to stay home and raise a family. For context, the suffragette movement in France was happening at the same time (1909-1945).

It doesn’t surprise me to learn in retrospect that she was a feminist and (probably) queer. I didn’t really know any of this while I was standing agape in the museum wondering how it was that Picasso had been shoved down my throat my whole life while I had never once seen these ethereal and graceful monuments of feminine self-celebration. All I knew was that they were beautiful and yet strong. They were made by a woman for women (Coco Channel, above, was one of her more famous clients) and that they showed beauty within a wholly feminine framework.

For a longer and more comprehensive story of her life, I recommend this website:

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/laurencin-marie/life-and-legacy/

Viking Country 3: Road Trip Treasures

May 2, 2019 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

One of the more endearing things about the road trip in Sweden was the sheer volume of cool stuff to see that is really close to the main highway. I feel a deep cultural attraction to “the road trip” which I’ve always sort of assumed was part of my American heritage. After all, as a child, my father took me on summer road trips in the RV to all the beautiful national parks of the West. My mom took us on weekend road trips up and down the coast or the town next door. When I got a car, I took repeated road trips with my friends. Loading up on road snacks, blasting your road music and pulling over when some random sign says “world’s largest ketchup bottle” is a basic part of Americana that thrives in my soul no matter how long I’m away.

Sweden is the only other country I’ve been to that I feel really gets it as far as road trip culture goes. Don’t get me wrong, I loved driving across Germany. Those people have amazing gas stations. The New Zealand drive was great and I loved having my own wheels in Bohol. The main difference is that, however beautiful the roadside scenery was in all those places, the road was just a way to get to places that public transit didn’t go. In Sweden, they not only have great gas stations, but also STUNNING rest stops that are basically parks and attractions on their own, AND they have the most wonderful series of roadside attractions.

On the day I fled the not-a-murder-house-we-promise, I found a cool viking church, another old-timey village replica, the most beautiful rest stop I’ve ever seen, and a giant statue by Pablo Picasso.

Viking Church

The Swedish people were late to the Christianity conversion party. After all, the religion’s spread originated in Rome, and the Roman Empire never quite managed to get a foothold in the land of the ice and snow. Vikings were worshiping Odin and co. right up to the 12th century, and even when they finally did “convert” it was… very halfhearted. A lot of the viking cultural and artistic trappings stayed almost entirely the same but with a little “for Jesus” footnote.

I stopped in at Glanshammar Church in Örebro to see a little bit of how the Viking and the Christian met in the middle. I have to say, I wasn’t much impressed by the exterior of the building. There was an interesting watchtower construction, but the church was remarkably plain for something supposedly Catholic. I mean, think of all those Romanesque arches and Gothic cathedrals in Europe. What was this little white nub of a building?

Fortunately, I stuck it out and found the door. The interior of the very plain white building is filled end to end and top to bottom with highly intricate artwork that uniquely combines the traditional Christian art and architecture from the continent with the Swedish styles seen in earlier Viking tradition.

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Outdoor Museum of Provincial Life

Next, still in Örebro, I stopped by the 18th century village reproduction called Wadköping. According to the sign, many of the buildings were actually transplanted from their original home to create the open air museum. I began to wander the town, noticing once more the extreme prevalence of red buildings. I saw some ladies doing needlework with laundry drying, and I went into buildings for kids that had plaster animals and pretend food.

I found the home of Hjalmar Bergman (Ingred Bergman’s father), a famous if often misunderstood writer who wrote about a mythical town of Wadköping as a kind of Anytown, Sweden representing a middle class provincial life. The recreational is named after his literary invention as there was no such village in reality.

There was a replica school house which showed a typical education plan for students including Christianity, native language, arithmetic, “knowledge of nature” (the natural sciences), gymnastics, gender segregated crafts, and drawing.

There were a startling number of little artisan shops inside the buildings. Some were simply souvenir and ice cream shops, but others included traditional arts like woodcarving and a silversmith. The Historiska Butiken was particularly filled with the kind of beautiful Norse styled witchcrafty goodies that I know at least 30 people in my immediate friend group would have loved to fill their homes with. Even I had a hard time resisting. Tiny luggage space saves me money again!

A Fully Functioning Castle?

My last stop in Örebro was the Örebro Castle. This was the only place I ever really had trouble finding parking since the castle is quite central and Örebro is not a tiny village. After a few drives around the block, I found some street parking and headed over. It was mainly an exterior photo-op because the castle is not decorated in antique royal furniture the way so many of the castles on the continent were. A small part of the castle was set up as a kind of tiny museum, and much larger parts of the castle are actually used as government and business offices. The governor even lives there. Functional castle!

While exploring, I also found a hiking trail sign that indicated a “walking with death” level of trail difficulty, and a dramatically oversized park bench, just for fun.

Roadside Picasso

Waving good by to Örebro, I hit the highway for another longer stretch in search of the Picasso. That’s right, there’s an original Picasso standing out in the Swedish countryside… or… lakeside anyway. I’m not actually a big Picasso fan, for complicated reasons involving art history and feminism, but this seemed like the Swedish equivalent of “the world’s largest bottle of ketchup” and I could not drive so near it without stopping by. It was a long slow drive down a thin, low speed limit road, but it was such a beautiful day, and the road ran along the waterfront. A worthy side-trip.

On my way, I paused at one of Sweden’s many beautiful and amazing roadside rest stops. This one was a small lake surrounded by beautiful evergreen trees. The water was so still that the perfect blue and fluffy white of the sky were reflected like a mirror. I ate my sandwich and watched the beauty, just feeling overwhelmed by Sweden.

When I finally arrived at the Picasso, I was not disappointed. It’s clearly his work, and it’s GIANT. I wandered all around taking photos from various angles before I realized that the absolute best angle for the late afternoon sun also contained a couple having a nice fika (cup of coffee & snack) on a bench below the statue. I tried my best to shoot around them, hoping they might finish and move, but in the end I had to go in for politely asking if they would mind stepping away from the bench for just a moment so I could get the best picture. I do hate asking people to move their picnic, but it’s not like I’m going to be back again any time soon. They were quite gracious about the request, and I got my “shot”.

Fine Dining

I had reserved a cabin in a campground for the night, but was slowly learning to plan dinner before checking into the more remote accommodations. With no desire for another grocery store dinner, I decided to stop in Karlstad for a nice restaurant meal. Thanks to Google, I found a place called Elektriska. It’s built in the remains of an old electro-technical plant and focuses on high quality, sustainable, local, ethically sourced food cooked with an eye for haute cuisine. It is not cheap, but it was just inside my price range, and sounded right up my alley. Not to mention, it was in an adorable neighborhood.

Their cocktail menu alone could have kept me happy. In the end I chose a lingonberry Gin and Tonic made with Stockholms Branneri Pink Gin, lingonberry, grapefruit, and Mediterranean Tonic. ($15)

The appetizer menu also looked like something I could just happily graze my way through, but the waitress advised that even the larger sampler was unlikely to be quite enough for a dinner. I settled on the “16 Ampere” appetizer platter which included rainbow trout with dill and vinegar, truffle salami with ricotta and sunflower, and wild boar with plum and tellicherry. ($17) The menu is seasonal and based on what’s available, so don’t go expecting to get exactly the same.

The wild boar sausage and the wild trout sashimi were entirely delicious, but the star of this dish was absolutely the salami. I would never in 10 million years have thought to combine salami, ricotta cheese, AND sunflower butter. I love all three of these, and I have probably had salami and ricotta together, and might have tried ricotta with sunflower seeds in a salad or something, but… wow. I can’t even explain how amazing this flavor combo is. Get u sum.

My main course was more rainbow trout, and if you like fish you know you just can’t go wrong with fresh caught local rainbow trout in season. This was skin fried rainbow trout with root vegetables, sundried tomatoes, and crayfish tails in a buttered crayfish broth. (28$)

I included the prices because this was the MOST expensive meal I ate on holiday, and I kind of wanted to put in perspective what that means for me. A high quality meal and cocktail at a fancy restaurant is not something I do often, but I’d been saving by eating in grocery stores and local delis, and this was a splurge that was 100% worth it. Amazing food isn’t cheap, but it sure does make the pleasure centers in my brain light up like Christmas and New Year’s all at once.

Cabin In the Woods

I got to my “campsite” in Värmland after dark and had a little trouble finding the bathrooms, but fortunately I was the only one there, and I’m not afraid to pretend to be a bear. The cabin itself was very plush with wall to wall carpet and a sort of beach house all white linen decor, as well as excellent WiFi. Despite being an actual cabin in the woods, the whole vibe of the campsite was homey and friendly which was a nice change after the farmhouse fright night.

The next morning I was able to easily find the bathroom and kitchen, make myself a cup of coffee and prepare a bit of breakfast from my grocery supplies. Traveling in a car means I can stock up on food for most meals and snacks more easily than when I’m traveling by bus and train. I was in no particular hurry to hit the road, and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the little table and chairs out front of my cabin while watching the sheep across the road.

Once I felt full and rested, and put all my bedding in the laundry room, I hit the road once more. The cabin rules had included a rather extensive list of guests cleaning responsibilities and it wasn’t the first time I encountered such. The Langholm hostel had similar rules instructing guests not only to strip the sheets for the laundry staff, but also to take out the trash and sweep the floor before checking out! I try to be a good guest and never leave a big mess behind, but for me that usually means putting all my waste IN the garbage and cleaning up any big spills. I know pretty much all US hotels/hostels have housekeeping that have to clean the rooms between guests, but I’ve never seen the need to make extra work for them. Still it was a stretch even for me to be told that I had to go to the main building and get the vacuum cleaner, haul it over to the cabin and vacuum, then take it back, and also fold all the bedding after removing the duvet covers. I guess I’m just saying if you go to Sweden, expect to be your own housekeeping.

Winging It and Winning

I was getting used to following the roadsigns to roadside attractions by this point in my road trip and I happily turned off to explore Borgvik and Hyttruin without really knowing what I’d find. Hytta means “foundry”. Hyttruin is therefore the ruins of a foundry. I’m not a person who is typically interested in ironwork, and I think if the sign had said “iron foundry” I might have kept driving, but then I would have missed these wonderful ruins, and you know how much I love ruins.

Looking at the size of the defunct forge, I could imagine mythical dwarves making Thor’s hammer there. It was enormous, but it’s not from the days of antiquity, it’s just from the 1800s. Alongside the ruins ran the waterfall that was created to supply the foundry with hyrdropower. There were signs around the place explaining the history of pig iron, and the ins and outs of manufacture, but it turns out I’m still not interested in iron production. Very cool ruins, though.

Art & Lunch

Next I popped into a little art gallery nearby (still in Borgvik) called Sliperiet. It turned out to be a restaurant/art gallery and I opted to do both. Being hungry, I started with the restaurant and once again indulged my salmon habit. It was another highly artisan place with only a few chef chosen dishes on the menu each day. The salmon and veg were perfectly lovely, but what made the dish sing was the lemon cream. I don’t know how he made this stuff, but it was absolutely lemon and cream in the best possible way. Both are great with salmon but together it was heaven. I could eat that lemon cream every day on everything.

While I was eating, the staff brought me a booklet with little biographies of all the artists on display in the gallery which gave me a chance to think about what I was going to see. I decided to do the museum as a break between lunch and dessert, and I was pleasantly surprised by the variety and quality of art on display in what was really the “middle of nowhere”. I took photos of absolutely everything, but I’m only going to share some of my favorites here.

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In case you want to follow up on any of these fine creators, I’ve tried to include relevant links: Albin Liljestrand, Kjell Engman, Stephan Westling, Ann Lillqvist, Rodney Smith, Christian Coigny, Nino Ramsby, Ylva Ceder, Tim Flach, Sara Nilsson, Jonas Rooth, Eka Acosta

After a lovely dessert of crème brûlée, I asked the very kind and helpful staff people where to go next. I had planned a day “in Varmland” but had no idea what was there, and had been going off of roadside stands and Google Maps markers with some success so far, but it never hurts to ask a local. They told me about an artist commune called NotQuite and I resolved to include it as my last stop in Varmland for the day.

An Artist Commune

NotQuite is an artist community built in an old paper factory in the middle of nothing. The art on display is far more experimental and boundary pushing than anything else I’d seen that summer, and not all of it was good, but all of it was sure trying to BE something. I wandered into the abandoned factory floor where art installations were scattered around almost as though they had been abandoned along with the paper. Small bright displays stood alone in large concrete rooms, and almost all of the signage was only in Swedish.

I found a mattress with some cobbled together VR goggles and a vague sort of “play me” note. It was an odd distorted and block color reality with a voice over in English of a person of indeterminate gender exploring the concept of sexuality. Very much everything you might stereo-typically think of when you think of experimental art commune.

It was mostly empty, but I’m not sure if that was because of the time of day or time of year. After spending a while wandering through the factory buildings and trying out the art, I headed back to the main gates. I stopped in at the gift shop on the way out where some of the more polished and “ready for home consumption” kind of art was on sale. I had a chance to ask a few questions about the place to the lady behind the counter. She explained that while a few people did choose to live on site, that most simply came there to work, and that they were funded by a grant from the government to support the arts. You can learn more on their website.

Sweden still makes me sigh with longing when I think of these days. Staring now down the barrel of planning another summer holiday, I’m deeply tempted to return and explore a new part of the country. While I’ve enjoyed my time in Korea these past few years, it lacks the freedom, the nature, and the stunning variety of culture and food that I yearn for. Still, until I have a stable landing pad for my next “home base” I guess I’ll take what I can get in the holidays.

Nazi History from Inside Germany

February 21, 2019January 25, 2019 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Everywhere I went last summer had been impacted by WWII, but I mostly avoided war memorials so my encounters were more side-notes like, “people hid in these caves”, or “the Allies / Nazis used this tower / bombed this building”, or “here’s where we smuggled Jews out”, but everyone else had the by-line “we were invaded, it’s not like we wanted the Nazis here”. Since the Nazis originated in Germany, you can imagine the story isn’t quite the same, and yet Germany is (rightfully) not proud of it’s role in the war. I always take photos of the signs in museums to help me write later, but in this case, I’ll be quoting those signs rather than summarizing them because I feel like the way that the Germans handled the history is much more significant to this post than the history itself. You can read about the events of WWII on Wikipedia, but you can’t hear the voice of Hamburg unless you go there.

Church Days
It started out like many other historical museums of ruins, the various buildings and rebuildings of the church over 900 years. There was some information about the reformation and the change from Catholicism to Lutheranism… normal church history stuff accompanied by some statues, stained glass, and other relics from the history of the building.

The history of St. Nikolai began in 1195 when Count Adolf donated to the cathedral a plot of land on which a chapel was to be built. This chapel was dedicated to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of seamen and merchants.

Over the following centuries St. Nikolai gradually grew to become one of Hamburg’s largest parishes. Growth of the parish as well as natural disasters called for the constant enlargement of the building. In 1527 the change brought about by the Reformation movement made itself felt as well. Johann Zegenhagen became the first Lutheran Senior Minister.

St Nikolai was destroyed in the Great Fire of Hamburg on 5 May 1842. It was only four years later that the cornerstone was laid for the new neo-Gothic church designed by British architect George Gilbert Scott. The spire, finished in 1874, is still the fifth highest sacred building in the world.

Propaganda Machine!

Since the days of the Hanseatic League, Hamburg has played a major role in German politics and economy. Because of its importance for trade and industry, the Hanseatic city was given the title of a Führerstadt (Fuhrer City) in the 1930s. Adolf Hitler personally was strongly involved in Hamburg’s urban development plans. A large part of the population sympathized with Hamburg’s role as the new Reich’s ‘gateway to the world’.
Hamburg’s population had been prepared for a possible air war at an early stage. The construction of air-raid shelters and ARP training were meant to boost confidence in the system. A wide range of propaganda measures aimed at strengthening the Volksgemeinschaft (national community).

Hamburg’s citizens were meant to cope with the challenges of aerial warfare in a ‘soldierly’ manner. Propaganda Minister Goebbels even hoped for a positive effect on the coherence of the community. The air war, he said, could tear down class barriers and create the true Germany.

*ARP stands for “Air Raid Protection”

Air War: Entertainment for Young and Old

Right from the beginning, the Nazi regime had pretended that civil air defense was perfectly normal. A board game called Luftschutz tut not! (Air raid precautions are essential!) introduced entire families to the everyday life of air war. Entertainment and war was not a contradiction in terms.

The Fascination of Bomb Craters

Given the initially ‘successful’ German campaigns, war seemed to be a long way off. Early air raids on Hamburg were considered a rarity. Bomb craters and destroyed houses became popular sites for outings that people could then talk about.

Increased Air Bombings Used by Nazis to Further De-Humanize Jews/Minorities

The history preceding the events of summer 1943 began no later than on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The decision of the Allies to area-bomb the city of Hamburg was also a response to earlier German air raids. The massive destruction of Warsaw, Rotterdam, and Coventry by German bombers fleets was paid back to the German “home front” in the shape of a firestorm.

The Nazi regime had begun long before 1943 to prepare the population for bombing. The systematic exclusion from the air-raid shelters of specific categories of people again demonstrated the regime’s contempt for humanity.

The relatively successful operations of German forces represented a massive challenge to the Allies. Political and military developments led to a fundamental change in strategy. After targeted raids had been made against Hamburg’s industry, Operation Gomorrah was intended to break down support for the Nazi regime from the German population. In the city on the Elbe the Allies’ area-wide airstrikes exacted the highest toll of casualties so far in the bombing war.

As the bombing increased leading up to 1943, it only fueled the Nazi desire to punish the Jews and other “unwanteds” living in Hamburg.

As in all parts of Nazi society, Jews and other marginalized minorities were excluded from official ARP. At most, they were permitted to seek refuge in self-made makeshift shelters.

As the war advanced, discrimination and exclusion intensified. In the wake of the first major air raids on Hamburg the Gauleiter, Karl Kaufmann, turned to Hitler asking for help. He intended to deport Jews to benefit those who had been bombed out.

With Hitler’s approval, thousands of Jews were deported. Their homes and part of their possessions were distributed among bombed-out ‘Aryans’.

Some citizens applied specifically for such homes and quite knowingly benefited from the deportation of the Jews without showing the slightest trace of a sense of guilt or wrongdoing.

On display were the actual records of items that had been taken from imprisoned and deported Jews and auctioned off to loyal ‘Aryan’ citizens.

The Story of the Ledermann Family

The preserved letters of Anita Ledermann, a Jewess, shed light on her life and that of her family during the air war. All in all, 72 letters to her friend Gunnar Schweer, and his family were preserved. She reported about the increasing oppression by the Gestapo, her experiences during and after the bombing, her futile attempts to leave the country, and finally her farewell before being deported to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt.

Anita and her parents were later killed in Auschwitz. Only her sister survived as a forced labourer in Saxony. Auction files document that Hamburg citizens acquired the abandoned possessions of the Ledermanns at a bargain price.

Operation Gomorrah

Operation Gomorrah began on the night of 24/24 July 1943. Over the next ten days, British and US bomber fleets destroyed a large part of Hamburg. About 34,000 people lost their lives.
This catastrophic event made a deep impression on the population. Nevertheless, each individual experience offered a unique and very different perspective. Both the pilots carrying out orders and the population seeking refuge in – sometimes only makeshift – air-raid shelters were scared to death.

During those days and nights Hamburg was permanently on alert. With their suitcases packed, citizens waited for the next air-raid warning. Only a few of them found places in the shelters that were thought to be safe. Jews and foreigners and forced labourers were automatically refused entry. Many of them searched in vain for shelter in the burning city.

Those persecuted by the regime feared for their lives, but at the same time hoped for liberation.

The City of Hamburg also used prisoners of the Nuengamme concentration camp for clearance work. In constant mortal danger and under dreadful conditions, they were forced to clear rubble, retrieve bodies and look for unexploded ordnance. The people of Hamburg could see them and occasionally came into contact with them.

Recovering bodies not only caused extreme psychological stress, but was also highly dangerous because parts of buildings came crashing down. Some boroughs in the east of the city had to be declared restricted zones because the danger of an epidemic loomed.

Stories of what was going on in Hamburg, oppression and exploitation, evidence of such things which actually made me cry because the stories are so personal. This person was taken away and their home and goods were redistributed to “good party members” whose homes were lost to air raids.

The propaganda. The division of classes. The way that those not deemed worthy were denied safety. I was struggling. This was the reason I didn’t want to go to an actual war memorial. If this little underground museum is so full of pain, what is it like at the ruins of Dachau?

And then I watched a film about the Firestorm in 1943 that destroyed 90% of the city including the church I came to see. It was insanely graphic and personal. Nonetheless, I had trouble feeling sad for the people who suffered and died as these were the people who had been complicit in the cruelty and deaths of those featured in the first section of the museum.

True they were mostly civilians, but they happily benefited from the system of oppression and tyranny. This isn’t the same video I watched. The one in the museum had a narration telling us of the horrible suffering of those caught in the fire who burned or suffocated while trapped in collapsing buildings; however it was the most similar visually, if you feel the need to look.

There was a section that was more or less neutral with photos of places around Hamburg before, during, and after the war and reconstruction. Normally I cringe to see the aftermath of bombing yet when the photos showed Nazi structures being destroyed and rebuilt it didn’t feel like destruction so much as it felt like the surgical removal of a cancer.

In War, Everyone Suffers
Finally the last section was about Germans who escaped the Firestorm and fled the city. They were almost all children at the time of the war, and they again told deeply personal stories.

A Ticket to Get Away

“My husband had given me those Atikah cigarettes and so I said to my sister, ‘You know, we’ll take these; who knows, they might come in handy.’ Barmbek was still intact at the time, so we got through all right. Everywhere there were treks that also wanted to get out of Hamburg. We walked through this bombed city, by no means could we ride our bicycles, because the streets were so utterly destroyed, and sometimes the houses were still burning. Above all this there hovered a terribly undefinable stench. It was the smell of corpses. I don’t know what dead bodies smell like, but that was how I had imagined it.

Then at some point we were on an outward road near the Berliner Tor. Everywhere there were crowds of people with all sorts of wheels to which everything was attached that they wanted to save and take along. We also waved at people. But nobody wanted to take the bikes as well. But after all, they were worth a fortune. How could one have got hold of a new bike later on? All of a sudden we had this idea about the cigarettes: We’ll hold up the cigarettes and everybody prepared to take us on board will get cigarettes. It didn’t take long and someone stopped and we said first of all, ‘But you’ll also have to take the bikes.’ ‘Yes. That’s all right. Where are you heading for?’ ‘Lüneburg.’ ‘Okay, get up then.’ They got their cigarettes and we were permitted on to teh vehicle. At eleven at night we arrived at the market square in Lüneburg. We were tired to death and absolutely knackered.”

–Inga Bonn, born 1920

Inga would have been 19 when Germany invaded Poland, and 23 when this story took place.

The First Step into a New Life

“There we were, left with nothing. We had absolutely nothing. The first saucepan that my father bought after we had been bombed out, well, I still take great care of it even today. It is a small old iron saucepan, and every year on Christmas I use it to render goose drippings. My daughter has told me ten times already, ‘I would have chucked it out long since.’ ‘Nah’, I say, ‘it means a lot to me.’ This was the first new item than my father got. That was in 1943. My father died in January 1944. He was gone.”

–Eva Kralle, born 1931

Eva would have been only 8 when Germany invaded Poland, and only 12 when the city of Hamburg was destroyed.

Barefooted Through the Phosphorus

“We walked through cellars. Until then we didn’t know what the world outside looked like. Then we climbed out somewhere. Whether it was a window or a door, I don’t remember. In the morning at eight, a storm, a firestorm. And the sky was red and black, no daylight. And the storm. We put blankets over our heads so nothing was peeking out. Us girls one after the other and the lieutenant always in front. Then the houses crashed down, those to the left and right. There were only ruins left. Well, we had to scramble over rubble, over tram rails that had already bent. Then I lost my shoes and I walked on in my bare feet.

For hours we walked on to the Dammtor. I had been burnt by phosphorus, because I was barefoot, you know. On arrival I was immediately seen to. There was a paramedic there and she said, ‘You have phosphorus burns.’ Do you think I could remember that it was painful? I can’t remember at all. Then she bandaged my feet and asked me if I had any shoes. ‘I have straw shoes’, she said. ‘I can give you those, then you have at least something for your feet.’

—Esther Angel, born 1925

Esther was 14 when Germany invaded Poland, and 18 when Operation Gomorrah destroyed her home.

My Brother

“My brother died on this path near Frankenstaβe. He had a briefcase and was allowed to take it to grammar school. I was the little brother, going to primary school with a satchel. Satchels were something terrible. I had always envied my brother that briefcase. And as luck would have it, the briefcase needed to be repaired. Something had to be sewn. And our cobbler, well, he lived at Raboisen and was not bombed out.

One day he came and brought us my brother’s briefcase which I got then. For years I used that briefcase to go to school. It was one of the few keepsakes of my brother’s which were of incredible value to me.”

—Andreas Hachingen, born 1930

Andreas was 9 at the invasion of Poland and only 13 when he lost his brother in the bombing of Hamburg.
I realized that however much I might hold the adults complicit, children can’t be held to the same standard. It makes you ask where is the line, when does someone become old enough to own the fact that part of their culture is hatred and murder?

What is the Right Way to Remember?
The language used for the displays is deeply personal and vivid but also very matter of fact. “This is what we did. This is what was done to us. Draw your own conclusions.” It’s very emotional. It’s also very different from every other country even Japan who tend to want to forget their own role in bringing the air raids to their shores. Or America’s memorials about slavery which tend to be “oh, yes we did horrible things but we figured it out and got better” (not 100% true).

At the museum of St. Nikolai, it feels like, “this horrible thing happened here and we want to remember it happened because we did horrible things first”. There is controversy on how to honor those who died.

The Hamburg firestorm literally burned its way into people’s memory. Only a few days after the bombings, the Nazi Gauleiter denounced the ‘Anglo-American bombing terror’.
After the end of the war this crude propaganda was replaced by complex and divergent memories. Each decade chose its own way of remembering. Often specific interests governed the format and contents of commemoration.

After the end of the war the anniversaries were observed on a highly regular basis. Many different memorial sites were created, ranging from a modest clay tablet on a new building to artist-designed monuments. At Ohlsdorf cemetery there is a mass grave of bomb victims. This is where in 1952 Gerhard Marcks’ memorial was inaugurated.

On the 60th anniversary of the Hamburg firestorm Jörg Friedrich’s book “Der Brand” (the Fire) triggered a heated debate on the air war. Many people were wrestling to find a proper way to navigate through the culture of remembrance. Some even declared the bombing war a ‘taboo’ topic.

In fact, the bombing in general and the Hamburg firestorm in particular have never been a taboo issue. Furthermore, the debate on the right form of commemoration is as old as the bombings themselves.

The commemorations are not only for the victims of the Nazis, but the ordinary citizens of Hamburg who likely felt themselves “not involved in politics”. If only the children, at least some who died here were innocent, and all who died here had loved ones. Yet the firebomb was not a random act of aggression. There were not “very fine people on both sides”. German invasion and aggression had to be stopped. However horrific the Firestorm was, we still see it as justified because it was used to stop the spread of Nazis.

I can’t tell you what to think any more than the museum seeks to. I can only encourage you to explore history, to seek truth and perspective, and to never grow so complacent that you think it can’t happen again if we forget.

The Ordeal was created by the Hamburg artist Edith Breckwoldt for the memorial site of Sandbostel, Lower Saxony. Sandbostel is the place where until 1945 one of the Nazi’s biggest prisoner camps was located. More than 50,000 people from many countries met their death here. The sculpture’s pedestal is built from the original stones of the prisoners’ barracks which were collected by pupils of Sandbostel on the ground of the camp. Sandbostel was also the final station for about 10,000 prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg.

Stories Around Hamburg

February 7, 2019January 25, 2019 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

My week in Hamburg was cut a little short because of the insane heat wave going on last summer. I spent an unfortunate amount of time simply being too hot and trying to recover from that. 37 C with no AirCon or even fans is treacherous. Plus, my Airbnb was up 5 flights of stairs, no elevator. I still had some interesting and unique experiences while I was there, most notably the ruins of the Cathedral of St. Nikolai, the Hamburg Harbor, the Miniature Wonderland, a wonderful ferry down the Elbe to see some old shipwrecks on the shore, a live music fountain light show in the park, and an interactive haunted history adventure!

Monday Madness

Monday was the single busiest day I had in Hamburg. I started the day with a trip to the ruins of the church of St. Nikolai because I love ruins. The spire stands as the highest point in the city of Hamburg and is quite distinctive sticking up above the surrounding trees and buildings.

bove ground, you can explore the ruins of what remain after the Firestorm of 1943, see some beautiful artwork, and take the elevator all the way to the tippy top of the tower for 360 degree views of the city.

It’s really quite delightful, and included in the elevator ticket price, is entrance to the museum located in the former cellar of the church. I’ve never been one to turn down a museum, but the experience was vastly more than I bargained for, and is getting its very own blog post. Let me just preface by saying, wow, the German’s don’t pull punches when it comes to discussing their role in the Nazi disaster.

After the memorial museum, I continued on toward the warehouse district where I had scheduled a combo harbor tour and Miniature Wonderland experience which I previously shared. I really have no idea what the tour guide said as it was 100% in German, but the harbor is really pretty, and I did get to see sunset from on the river Elbe which was a real treat.

Tuesday Too Hot
Tuesday was the hottest day. I went out for food and the restaurant was lovely but sweltering without Air-con or fans. I decided beer is hydrating. It’s certainly more available than water. I had the most tender pork and wonderful sauerkraut.

I thought I could find a cafe like Starbucks to enjoy AC and iced latte until it was time to go to the park in the evening but if they had AC it couldn’t compete the weather. One cafe that actually had a visible ac was out of ice for drinks.

In the end, I had to give up on everything and head back to my room where at least I could get ice and a cold shower. I’m genuinely worried for the people in Europe if climate change continues to serve up these super hot summers in towns without the infrastructure or social awareness to handle them. Even something as simple as putting a 3/4 full water bottle in the freezer in preparation of a hot day out was a complete novelty to my German hostess. In future, I’m not planning to return to the mainland of Europe during the summer months ever again.

Shipwrecks on the Beach, Cruises on the Elbe, it’s Wednesday!

Way down the river at Blankenese there are some slightly famous shipwrecks. Old craft that were simply not ever cleaned up, yet are so close to the shore that they are completely exposed at low tide. It sounded cool… or… at least interesting, even if the weather was still too hot. Sadly, I had the only day of difficulties with the Hamburg transit that day. The 50 minute journey took 2 hours and I got to the wrecks 45 minutes after low tide instead of 15 minutes before. Despite this setback, I did get to see them mostly out of the water and in the shade with the wind it was a nice place to sit and rest and watch the tide come in.

I don’t much like swimming alone at larger beaches. I seem to be good with smaller places, I was fine in the Philippines in the rivers, but not the beaches. I like swimming in the ocean if I’m snorkeling, but not just wandering into the water from the shore unless I’m with a group. Whatever the reason, I didn’t go swimming in the Elbe that day, but once I cooled in the shade, I was content to sit and watch the river and enjoy the breeze.

On my way to the ferry terminal, I saw a marker on Google Maps called “magic tree” so of course I had to stop and look. I have no idea what it was or how it got labeled on the map, but it was pretty?

This ferry ride was everything I wanted. Very few humans, a seat in the shade with a breeze and a nice view. They even got close to a few points of interest since it’s a tour ferry. Much better than the overfilled boat tour I’d taken as a combo with the Miniature Wonderland ticket.

The ferry dropped me off downtown at St. Pauli’s, a famous bustling cultural hub in Hamburg. I had a delicious salmon sandwich at Pier 10 then went to the night market. It was a little less “market” and more “outdoor bar” with some food trucks but still cool. I drank a beer and got some specialty cheese.

Thursday: Fountains and Flowers and Music oh my!
Another extremely hot day. I stayed in all day, drenching myself in cold water and holding a frozen water bottle to my neck. When the sun got lower and the temperatures dropped back below 30C, I went out to the botanical gardens. I decided to go out before sunset despite the heat because I wanted a chance to see the actual gardens, but my main goal was to see the fountain and light show with live music accompaniment that is a nightly feature at the gardens in summer. I walked slowly, taking my time to enjoy the flowers and take lots of pictures.

The gardens were stunning, if slightly wilted from heat. More locals came out to enjoy the relief of the relatively cooler evening air and to eat some ice cream by the lake. I even ran into a swing dancing group cutting a rug in an open pavilion in the park.

Then, when I was ready for a rest, I sidled up to the in-park restaurant for dinner. I decided to finally try currywurst. I’d seen it all over the place but hadn’t eaten any yet because I was trying to enjoy what I thought of as “traditional German” food. In the end, I gave in because currywurst was so ubiquitous I had to accept it as a local specialty. I’m not really sure it’s related to curry. It’s a wurst (sausage) with sauce that may be tamarind since it tasted a bit fruity and tart, I think it was sprinkled with turmeric powder. It was nice but somehow nether Indian nor German. I don’t know the fascination but at least I can say I’ve tried it.

For the concert, I found a spot by the water early on as the lawns around the lake began to fill up with families on picnic blankets. I watched ducks and geese be unbelievably blase about humans even as toddlers chased then around the grass.

I’ve been to a lot of fountain shows, I love them all, but what makes the Hamburg show so unique is that it’s all live. The music is performed live, and the person controlling the fountains and lights is activating all of it live. It’s not a pre-programmed computer controlled performance, so it’s not as perfect or technically marvelous as some, but it has the tremendous advantage of being totally unique every time, and of involving live performance artists. I was sitting so close to the edge I got sprayed by the fountains from time to time which was a welcome respite from the day’s heat. One day, I’ll buy a better night time camera, but here’s a little snippet to give you an idea of the show.

Hamburg was an up and down experience going from extreme heat and misery to wonderful, captivating experiences when the heat eased off. I wish I could have experienced the city more fully in better weather because I really loved everything I was able to experience while there.

It’s basically impossible for me to fit a whole city into one post, and Hamburg is no exception. I’ve already published the story of Miniature Wonderland, and following this post will be the deeply emotional ride through the St. Nikolai WWII memorial museum, and finally the thrilling conclusion of my last adventure in Hamburg: The Dungeon!!!!!!

Utrecht: History & Music

December 26, 2018March 13, 2019 / Gallivantrix / 1 Comment

July 26th, about halfway through the vacation. I was suffering through an unbelievable heat wave in The Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands. I was not enjoying myself. The heat was oppressive and causing me physical illness, and the transit in the Netherlands was without question the most obnoxious of the transit systems I have experienced in my life. However, Utrecht was a happy place that I truly enjoyed and may even brave the Netherlands again to visit. Not only was the city itself cute and bohemian in a “university town” kind of way, the exhibits I went to that day made me take several steps back and re-examine some of my perceptions of human history and development.

The Underground Tour

As an American, I didn’t grow up around places like this. I am sure that there are places in the US that have 2000 years of human occupation, but sadly the original colonizers did a very good job of erasing any traces of it. Perhaps as a result, I am eagerly curious about places on earth where the stories of humans can be traced back and retold over such vast stretches of time. I also love all things underground. The DomUnder was practically begging me to come and visit.

Dom Square in Utrecht boasts 2000 years of human occupation and I decided to go on a little tour of the archaeological dig site. The first stop on the tour was below the main office (where it was blissfully cool) to get some history lessons and watch a film.

They divided us into “English” and “Dutch” language groups. The English group was less than half native speakers, and was comprised mainly of people from other EU countries with a few Asians as well, all of whom were able to follow along in English, but not in Dutch. One more example of why ELF is so important!

The English guide gave us a good timeline overview of the square, walking us through the various stages of construction from Roman frontier fortress to modern day with a series of maps, drawings and photos to help us see the evolution. Then we all huddled together and watched a very dramatic short film about the square with actors in period dress and CG reconstructions of the architecture and the dramatic and destructive storm that reshaped the town.

2000 Years of History

Starting around 50 CE (that’s AD if you’re old), the site began it’s civilized life as a Roman fortress on the outskirts of the Empire. The Rhine river was, at the time, flowing through the area and just here it became shallow enough to cross. To defend the crossing point, a fortress, or castrum, was built.

Traiectum, the name of this castellum, was built mainly of wood with a stone wall surrounding it. It was burned down during the Revolt of the Batavi in 69-70 CE. The film we watched speculated that there may have been a romance and betrayal involved in the sacking of the fort, and that it was the wife of an officer who buried the gold later found by archaeologists below the lowest layer of burned wood.

Within 20 years, the Romans reclaimed it, and maintained power until about 270 CE when the Franks invaded. There isn’t any substantial change to the site for another 400 years, although evidence suggests that it was not abandoned, simply that the castellum was never rebuilt and any structures were temporary. You can still see the outline of where the old walls were built in the modern streets of Utrecht by looking down for some distinctive metal plates.

Around 630, the last of the Merovingians established a small abbey using the stone walls left by the Romans to enclose the grounds.

In 720, a chap named Willibrod who is intensely famous in the Netherlands and unknown everywhere else, established the church of St. Martin which more or less still stands today. He really loved preaching out in the frontier and was not always warmly received, having been driven out violently on at least one well known occasion by pagans who were not at all interested in this new-fangled religion he was peddling. He was canonized after his death.

The Vikings came through Europe between 857-920 in a rash of Church raiding. A lot of wealth was concentrated in churches and they were often poorly defended. St. Martin did not escape. Interestingly, there’s a viking rock on display in the square today, although I’m not sure if it’s from the time of these invasions or from a later time after the Nordic countries had converted to Christianity.

Around the turn of the millennium, the church was once more destroyed, but this time by a fire. The rebuild was inspired by the Roman round arch style. Shortly after the Emperor built a palace within the walls of the old Roman castellum (yes, where the cathedral is) and there was a bit of state vs church argy-bargy over who had ultimate authority. It seems the Emperor and the Bishop wouldn’t share an entrance from their residences into the cathedral and so two separate entrance halls were built.

In 1253 there was, shock and surprise, another huge fire that destroyed nearly everything (that’s at least 3 by now). During the subsequent reconstruction, the church transformed into a proper French Gothic cathedral completed in 1267 and the famous church tower (see below for more on that) was built in the mid 1300’s.

Things go along fairly peacefully until 1647 when an enormous and devastating storm swept through the town. My subsequent research says a tornado, but the reconstructions and explanations I experienced that day in Utrecht made it seem much more like a thunder and lightning with extremely high winds kind of storm. Either way, it was so bad that the townsfolk seriously questioned what they had done to incur the wrath of God, because nothing outside the Bible even compared.

The wind (tornado or otherwise) completely destroyed the nave of the cathedral that connected the tower to the rest of the structure. The nave was not small. You can see from drawings how much of the space it took up, and in heavy stone with Gothic arches, gargoyles and other bits of stone crenelation all over the place. It was flattened. Rubble. The people of Utrecht were devastated and although the city continued to function, no one cleaned up after the storm for 150 years.

Even when cleanup began, it was little more than clearing the rubble and a few halfhearted attempts at restoration. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that there were serious efforts to return the cathedral and tower to their former glory. The nave was never rebuilt and it is that space that is now the main square of Utrecht between the church and tower.

The Dig Site

Armed with this historical perspective, we trooped back upstairs and headed into the main square where a hole opened up to lead us down into the dig site.

Here we were given “interactive flashlights” that we could use not only to see, but also to trigger the audio tour in our headsets. I like headset audio tours much better than trying to listen to a single guide, so I admire the choice, however, this was maybe a little too interactive. We had to find these tiny little RF chips tucked in amid the displays and aim the light at them to trigger the audio file to play. The chips weren’t labeled and there was no way to know if I got them all or missed any since a single display could have 1-3 chips in it. It was a little like playing hidden picture in real life. Here you can see one nestled among some old Roman artillery.

Despite the hunt and peck games, the displays were absolutely fun. There were two more mini movies underground, including one meant to replicate the storm itself, and the rest were pieces of the actual dig sites that had been left for display. There were walls from the original fortress. There were tools and pottery and jewelry from the Romans. There were pieces of clay tiles with cat prints in them, proving cats have been walking on wet paint, wet cement, and wet clay forever.

There were the support pillars of the cathedral, and remnants of the rubble of the catastrophe of the storm. There were even earlier dig crew’s archaeological tools that got left for a few decades. Plus the immortal remains of at least one Bishop (probably).

I could have stayed much longer mulling over the details, but as always, I was the last person trailing behind the tour group and the guides politely reminded me that the tour was over as I was taking photos of the last few displays. Returning to the surface, I had a whole new perspective of the square in which I stood, seeing now in my minds eye the layers and layers of construction and destruction that shaped it for over 2000 years. Will someone stand in Washington DC or New York city in 2000 years and marvel at the capacity for human growth, change and tenacity? I hope so.

Church, Gardens, Tower

Although I had accidentally meandered through the gardens at St. Martin’s between the bus stop and my tour start, once I finished the tour I was eager to have a closer look at both the cathedral and the tower. The tower is the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, and I think the tallest building in Utrecht. It stands 112m tall and if you want to see the view from the top it’s 465 stairs (no lift). I admired it greatly… from the ground.

The cathedral is undeniably French Gothic. It could have been picked up and moved over from France. Beautiful stained glass windows, impossibly high arches, and a great deal of overly grotesque carving including gargoyles, skeletons and dead dudes.

It’s not that I’m tired of looking at cathedrals, but I did reach a point in Europe where one French Gothic cathedral began to look rather like all the rest. It’s interesting because in modern architectural design, international companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks want their stores to all look the same on the inside because they want to establish a brand and also that their customers would feel comfortable with the familiar, even in an unfamiliar city. Now, I’m not suggesting that the Catholic Church is the McDonald’s of the middle ages… no, wait, I am… And since the average human didn’t travel more than 20 miles from home their whole lives back then, the only people this was meant to appeal to would be the ruling and priestly classes, so they can go to church anywhere and it’s always the same.

The Speelklok Museum

This is a museum dedicated to self playing instruments and music machines that pre-date the gramophone and other recording devices invention and rise to musical dominance. The museum roughly covers the time from 1750-1950, but focuses mainly on the Victorian and Edwardian periods (1840-1910). It opened my eyes to the history of music and music technology in a whole new way and made me completely re-evaluate my ideas of change and progress in the modern world. I couldn’t fit it all into a single post with the rest of Utrecht. If you haven’t already read the whole story, you can follow this link.

Is That a Theremin or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

My final moments in Utrecht, I stopped into a cafe for a sandwich and a nice iced latte. The Netherlands is not so snooty as France when it comes to putting ice in coffee, and I was grateful for their lack of coffee-purity during the unrelenting heat wave. I was sitting upstairs, trying to imagine a breeze through the open window and taking notes on my phone about the thoughts swirling in my head after my visits to the Underground and the Speelkloks when suddenly I realized that the music I was hearing in the background was a Theremin.

Not everyone would know this strange instrument either by sight or by sound, but due to an odd quirk of my proclivity for learning peculiar information and my ability to involuntarily remember completely useless trivia, I recognized the sound before I even realized I was hearing it. It was as though some part of my brain whispered “theremin”, and my conscious train of thought stopped and said “what?” before registering what my ears were hearing.

I had only ever heard recordings of the theremin, but I was sure that was what I was hearing and as soon as I realized the sound came from the street, I peered out the window. Lo and behold, on the street below was a middle aged man in a bright blue Hawaiian shirt busking for change with a theremin.

A few minutes later, he was joined by another gentleman who sat down on the ground and pulled a sitar from it’s case and began to tune it. Another instrument not readily recognizable, at least not to those who are not from South Asia. I first learned about it from the Beatles of course, since they became entranced by it’s sound after visiting India. It is also a unique and (outside India) fairly obscure instrument.

So there I am, staring down at two middle aged hipsters with the most unlikely instrumental duet I have ever heard of, and they’re good. Not like philharmonic good, but the theremin is a HARD instrument and I don’t really think the sitar is a piece of cake, so “good” is a major accomplishment and thousands of hours of practice. And there they are, on the street, playing for coins. Of course I contributed to the growing pile of money in the sitar case (pay your artists!), and if you like what you hear, I even made sure to get the band name so you can support them yourself. They are called Guau! (pronounced “wow”) and they are from Spain. You can get the album here.

For those of you playing the home game, I’m finally finished with final exams and the complex grading math that is the end of semester excel spreadsheet. I’m stuck in Korea until January 9th, when I’ll be embarking on another long trek. I’ve been so busy with work (and art) that the blog has been very slow, so I’m going to do my best to churn out a double handful of posts to leave you with before the next big adventure begins. Hope you enjoyed Utrecht, and as always, thanks for reading. Happy Holidays and Merry New Year!

The Ruins in Ghent

December 6, 2018March 13, 2019 / Gallivantrix / 1 Comment

Although I only stayed overnight in a handful of cities last summer, I often made day trips to nearby smaller, quainter European towns along the way. While travelling in Belgium, everyone says “go to Bruges, go to Bruges” and I thought about it, but that damn heat wave… Instead, I went to a similar quaint, canal-ridden, castle-bearing, sleepy little sidewalk-cafe-having town called Ghent. There I had one of the most stunning photographic opportunities and most memorable experiences of the whole trip.

I prioritized Ghent over Bruges for my small town detour for one main reason: the ruins of the Abbey of Sint Bavo. As I learn more about the history and development of churches and cathedrals in Europe, I’ve come to realize that there are not that many styles. About 7 (I’m not counting Revival and Modern, fite me). And of those 7, I’d say that 3 are the most common and distinct in the places I visited: Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque. They’re stunning! High arches and flying buttresses, lots of fiddly bits on the architecture and beautiful decorations. However, churches within the same style are not overly unique unless you are an architectural scholar. I have now seen nearly a dozen Gothic style cathedrals, and I would be hard pressed to tell them apart without other landmarks.

Am I jaded? I don’t think so, because I do still think they’re stunning, I just don’t feel the need to prioritize another Gothic or Romanesque cathedral. I’ll go and admire one if I’m going to be in the neighborhood, but I don’t put it on my “to-do” list anymore. I might still go see a few more Baroque ones before I’m tired of that style, and I’m quite looking forward to seeing more Byzantine. What I do love is finding the cathedrals (or other historical landmarks) that are unique in some way, that bear the mark of history, of a life lived.

The Abbey of St. Bavo promised to be just that. Ruins left unrestored yet maintained, and only open to the public a few hours a week to prevent them from being damaged further. I was fascinated and determined to go. I found the opening hours and even emailed the caretakers to be sure I didn’t need a reservation, and then set about making sure I would be in Ghent on a day I could go inside.

This turned out to be a Sunday, which meant Ghent was even sleepier than normal. I’ve been living in Asia so long that I forgot about Sunday as an off day in the West. Although, to be perfectly honest, I think that western Europe closes down even more than America on Sundays. Live and learn.

I looked into transit options (oh how I gnash my teeth at the transit of EU countries, but that’s another post) and found a “hop on hop off” boat! I’ve done hop on hop off buses before, but this would combine my desire to take a canal tour with my need to get around town. For the moment, lets just skip the challenges involved with getting from my Airbnb in Brussels to the main boat jetty in Ghent. Wave your magic wand, and there we are. The last bus of the series let me off directly in front of Gravensteen Castle where my day of “quaint European town” began.

Gravensteen Castle

I studied the boat tour schedule. It only had 6 stops and it was an hour between boats so I wanted to be sure I knew where to go and when to be back to get on for the next leg of my journey. I wanted to start at the castle, hoping to explore it before the boat even started running that morning. For those of you who imagine European castles as these lonely stone fortresses in the middle of rolling green hills and woodland, let me disillusion you. The Lord’s Castle was the center of town. Back in the feudal days, serfs worked the land around a castle, but the markets would be held within the castle’s courtyard. Also during times of war or bad weather, people would move in bringing families and livestock with them to be safe behind the walls while Vikings or whoever attacked.

In some cases, those castles and farms were left empty for long enough that you get the Disney picturesque castle in the middle of nature. For many places, the castle continued to function as the center of town as the town got bigger and bigger around it, eventually turning into a modern city. In Ghent, it’s a giant fuck off castle in the middle of everything. You can’t actually get far enough away for even a proper photo because it’s so surrounded by traffic and other buildings. It dramatically changes the atmosphere of the public square to have a giant castle overseeing the open air restaurants and sidewalk cafes, though.

Canal Boat Bus

I checked into the boat bus and grabbed some coffee. I also topped up my water bottle at a decorative public drinking fountain. I saw these in several places during the summer. They look like a small artistic fountain, similar to what you might put in your back garden at home if you’re feeling fancy, but they dispense potable water (they have signs, don’t drink out of fountains without signs). Additionally, there is usually a little bowl at the bottom so dogs out for a walk can get a drink, too. It’s a wonderful way to provide a public service of free drinking water (not common enough in Europe if you ask me) while still beautifying the park or public street.

The canals in Ghent are truly beautiful and the hop on/off tour goes father through the canal infrastructure than than most of the other boat tours on offer. Our driver was young and friendly and spoke English well. Perhaps because it was Sunday there were not many other tourists, so we chatted about Game of Thrones and Harry Potter as well as the city itself.

I skipped several of the stops because I was still worn out from Paris and the heat wave, but I chose 3 to get off and have a look around. My sightseeing was somewhat hindered by the massive stages being constructed all along the main street and public squares. My guide informed me that the following week would host a huge festival in town. I’m not actually sad I missed it, since I never had enough energy that trip for crowds, so it worked out for the best.

Saints, Dragons and Devils!

I visited St. Peter’s cathedral, which was very predictable and yet still pretty. There was a woman with two children sitting just inside the door and begging. She was not the first begging immigrant/refugee I saw during my travels by any means. I tried to give when I could, although I still struggle with giving money. I’ve read a number of ethics debates about this topic and still can’t decide, so I gave them the food I had in my bag that I’d been planning to eat for lunch.

Having given away my picnic, I went in search of another snack, but nearly everything in Ghent was closed on Sunday afternoon. I was attracted by a nearby sign advertising waffles, waffles I never found. Instead, I ran into an art installation of dragon skeletons which was far more interesting. While I was taking photos, someone came by and asked me if they were real and almost didn’t believe me when I said “no, they’re dragons”, until he read the small informative sign. They were part of a display for a children’s museum.

Continuing through the inner courtyard, I emerged behind the cathedral at the abbey where I found the orchards and vineyards and a less obscured view of the buildings.

From the boat I got a good view of the castle of Gerald the Devil. I was initially disappointed that I didn’t get to go inside, but it turns out that nowadays the building is not actually interesting on the inside. Gerald himself was nicknamed “the devil” (Duivelsteen in Belgian) because of his dark complexion and hair color. He didn’t do anything remotely devilish to earn the moniker. Additionally, while the building has an interesting history ranging from a meeting place for knights to an insane asylum, it was most recently used to house the national archives. According to Wikipedia, it’s not even good at doing that, and has been on the market since 2010. Cool name, though.

Lunch Stop, the Soda that Yodels

I got off the boat again at the stop nearest St Bavo’s and immediately set about finding lunch. This was a bit extra challenging since I was also suffering from mobile data issues that day (another post is forthcoming). I can usually get Google Maps to work just on GPS, you can’t plan a route, but you can usually see where you are but suddenly I had no map at all! No where in my plan did I account for this. You can say what you like about guidebooks or paper maps, but suddenly having my GPS not work is no different than loosing your map or guide book unexpectedly.

I had given away my picnic lunch already, and I should have just gone into a Carrefour to replace it for a similarly low cost meal, but I was freaking out about my map, since I needed it to find St. Bavo’s, and I really wanted to sit somewhere cool and comfortable after so much walking in the hot sun.

I found a burger place called Jack’s. I splurged on the set and got fries and a drink and tried a drink I’ve never heard of before. It was described as “an herbal drink” and the best way I can describe it is as an herbal infused sparkling lemonade. I have since researched the drink Almdudler and learned that it is the national soft drink of Austria, that it is named after yodeling in the alpine pasture, and that it no more has a description of it’s flavor than Dr. Pepper. Seriously, try and explain what that tastes like to someone who’s never had it. Anyway, I liked it more than Dr. Pepper.

The burger and fries were huge and the cashier gave me some extra sauce because I couldn’t make up my mind about the flavor. I did start learning to love mayo on fries while in Belgium, but I think that’s because their mayo was so much better than Hellman’s. It took me a long time to finish eating, and I wrapped half the fries up for later.

I drastically overspent on lunch, since a good deli sandwich and a drink can be had from any grocery store around for close to 5€. It’s another lesson in planning. I did get to use the WiFi and the restroom, which are otherwise pay-to-use in most public places in Europe. (oh how I missed the free public restrooms in every subway station in Korea)

Sint Bavo’s Abbey

My map came back to life in the restaurant’s WiFi and I was able to plot the route from Jack’s to St. Bavo’s before leaving. When I crossed the last bridge (canal towns have a lot of bridges), I could see what I was pretty sure was the right place but no visible way in. It looked to be completely surrounded by a fence. I walked clear around the perimeter in search of the entrance. Tragically, I went the wrong way and went nearly all the way around before finding it. On the way out later, it was obvious that if I’d headed straight to the square white building, I would have found the gap in the fence right away. You know, in case you end up going some day.

At first I was surrounded by a maze of tall rectangular trees. Completely befuddled I took a few pictures in hope of solving the mystery later (spoilers, I did). In many of my travels, I don’t worry too much if I don’t know what something is at the moment I encounter it. I just try to take enough reference pictures amid my artistic ones to do more research later. Research is how I make the holiday last longer. I visited this abbey in July, and here it is the end of November while I do the last of my research about it.

The ruins themselves were everything I hoped and more. Inside the walls of the Abbey was a rambling network of crumbling walls and once-rooms bring reclaimed by nature. I forgot my physical discomfort almost at once and began to take photo after photo, pausing between sets to admire the details of centuries old carvings and stonework.

I walked through courtyards and down hallways and found spiders and snails and bumble bees in the flowers, and the wild berries. I found where stone carvings had fallen from walls or been pried from floors and were laid side by side on display. There were beautiful corridors with arched ceilings, rooms that had lost their ceilings and now we’re indistinguishable from courtyards.

There was a Roman style bath area with a secret winding staircase up the short tower where the remains of an art installation collected dust. Someone had done a project through social media about communication online and all the responses were published in newspaper form. Perhaps once they were there for visitors to take away, but the layers of dust and cobwebs told me it had been a while since anyone had looked at them.

About halfway around the space, I met up with a table of volunteers who had informative booklets in many languages. One helpful lady explained a little about the places I’d seen and then showed on the map where I would go from there. I thanked her very much and took the booklet off to a bench in the shade to look through it and to take pictures of the articles for reference.

I didn’t read the whole thing at the time but I did discover the purpose of the tree maze out front was to outline walls of the original church, now long gone. While reading the history of the abbey, I was approached by a black cat who very desperately wanted to be friends. Sadly I’m allergic and had to decline the offer for pets, but I took pictures instead.

When I finished skimming and recording the brochure information, I headed up a far less secret stairwell and went inside a space that had retained all its walls and ceiling. I was greeted by a huge and looming partial crucifix. The cross and arms were gone, leaving only the faded wooden head and body of the suffering Jesus gazing down the stairs at those who entered.

Monastic chanting was piped through a hidden sound system, giving an appropriately medieval and gloomy air to the dark and gutted room. The walls were lined with rescued stone carvings of saints and martyrs, but rather than being the main display, they served as the walls upon which a modern photography exhibit was mounted. It was a strange contrast to see the brightly colored photos against the dark and crumbling remains of the abbey’s old artwork, all topped off with the eerie and Gothic music.

Moving back into the sunlight I continued to be awed by the variety of spaces. Wild grapes growing along one wall, pieces of statues littering the grass or reassembled in part and mounted wherever space allowed. I wandered until my feet couldn’t take it, then I sat until I could walk again. Even with many other visitors it was overwhelmingly peaceful and stunningly beautiful. Only when I felt like I’d explored every possible inch did I out to catch the last boat back to the town center and my train back to Brussels.

I took so many beautiful pictures that afternoon, please enjoy the video slideshow.

A Short History Even Shorter

The binder I was given had a map of the grounds, and 8 typed pages of information. About half of that was a detailed description of the rooms, including architectural style, building materials, and original use. I am not an architect, I couldn’t actually follow most of this part without my eyes glazing over. The second part was more interesting to me, since it encompassed a brief history of the abbey. I am not going to try to replicate the same level of detail here. If you REALLY need to know, comment, and I’ll post the photos of the pages I took, but for everyone else, here’s the very short ‘short history’.

7th century: Missionaries showed up to convert people. They built an abbey with the backing of the Merovingians. A rich nobleman became a monk and went off to live as a hermit, taking the name Bavo. After his death, his remains were transferred to the abbey which subsequently bears his name.

9th century: Vikings! Not yet converted Nordic types were still raiding the land, and loved to raid churches cause people donated like mad, and also decorated with lots of silver, gold and other valuable things. Way to put your money far away from the soldiers, guys. Vikings burned it all down. Twice.

10-12th century: The Roman Empire finds Ghent is on it’s side of the river and offers Imperial protection at last (meanwhile poor St. Peters which I visited earlier that day was left on the French side!) Under the shining eye of Rome, the abbey was not only safe, but experienced a period of growth, getting lots of beautiful Romanesque architecture which makes up the majority of the stone ruins seen today.

16th century: Charles V is rude. He pulled off a bunch of shenanigans to embarrass and shame the locals of Ghent, culminating in the ordered destruction of the abbey, and the use of it’s building materials to create a military citadel. The citadel was completed in 1545, but was destroyed in 1577 by the Calvinists, then rebuilt again in 1584 by the Spanish. It underwent nearly constant de- and re-construction until it was finally abolished in the mid 19th century.

19th-20th century: Conservationists had to fight against industrialists for the space. There’s a whole sordid affair over the meat merchants’ iron grip on Ghent during the 19th century and they managed to claim the abbey land for an abattoir at the height of their power. After much cajoling by conservationists, the abbey ruins were given to the city of Ghent on the condition a museum was established on the site in 1887. In 1936 the ruins were made a historical monument by Royal Decree; however, the abattoir remained in operation until 1989.

Now: The Neighbors of the Abbey formed in 2007 as a volunteer group to upkeep the museum and to organize visits for tour groups and solo travelers like myself.

Back in the USSR? This time with a visa!

October 23, 2018March 13, 2019 / Gallivantrix / 1 Comment

I am falling right behind on my goal of 1 blog post a week. In a desperate effort to get moving, I went and found the most complete draft on file, also the only one I wrote AFTER vacation instead of quick notes on a bus this summer. Maybe there’s a reason Dostoevsky and Tolstoy wrote such long novels. I was also inspired toward verbosity by my brief visit to mother Russia and I have had to split up the story into 2 parts. In part one: explore the bureaucracy of communism, the truth behind the soviet stereotypes, and an encounter at the Metropol Hotel.

Airports Are Ugly

I have flown through the Moscow SVO airport before. It’s not especially exciting, but their primary state run airline is dirt cheap so I find myself having layovers lasting on average 3-4 hours there. This time I had a 20 hour layover on the return flight. I can’t imagine many airports I would willingly spend 20 hours inside. As Douglas Adams once famously wrote, “There is a reason why no language on earth has ever produced the phrase ‘as pretty as an airport’.” Since the first time I read this I have had the singular experience to be in some of the best and worst airports in the world, and I can say with certainty that the Moscow International Airport is not a place to linger.

There are few places you can sleep inside the airport, like hourly rental sleeping pods, or even the airport’s very own hotel (the one Snowden hid out in). I looked into these and discovered that the prices are almost as much as the plane tickets. Even if you’re willing to camp out on the crowded and uncomfortable airport seats, there is no way to get WiFi unless you have a Russian phone number, so be prepared to be both uncomfortable and bored. In order to take advantage of any less expensive hotel (or WiFi) option, you have leave the airport, but unless you are from a very narrow list of close Russian allied countries, you can’t leave the airport without a visa. And you can’t get a visa at the door, you have to apply for and pay for that visa well in advance of your arrival.

You Need a Visa To Get In

Tourist visas to Russia require a letter of invitation. These are usually arranged by tour guides which seems like a giant scam, but that’s a whole other rant. Transit visas can bypass the letter requirement if you have proof of your ongoing flight. The transit visa can be used for up to 3 days if you’re flying and 10 if you are travelling by train.

Thus, my trip to Moscow actually started in June with the Russian Consulate in Busan, South Korea. Since they weren’t open on my day off, I got up very early in the morning on a Friday and bused into Busan to file my paperwork. I was able to fill out and download the application online and print it at my office, however the application took several hours to fill out because in addition to all the normal information, they wanted the exact dates of all my international travel for the last 10 years. They also wanted complete information on all my secondary education, and on my parents, and to know if I had any education whatsoever about nuclear weapons (I do!). I felt like I was filling out a background check for the CIA.

I nervously handed over the painstakingly researched application form and paid the 100$ fee, hoping that nothing would disqualify me from going and returned to my home to wait a week for the results. I shouldn’t have been worried. Communism loves bureaucracy and to make people jump the hoops and I have become an expert form filler. A week later I made the trek back to the consulate and my passport was returned to me with a shiny new 1 day visa inside. I booked a hostel and an airport shuttle and more or less forgot about it for 2 months.

Midnight Arrival

When I landed in Moscow, it was just after midnight and amid a flood of Chinese tourists, but it didn’t actually take all that long to go through customs and immigration. Since I was technically on a layover with a connecting flight, I had checked one bag through and was only carrying my day pack and a basic change of clothes with me. My visa was scrutinized intensely. This guy busted out a jeweler’s lens to stare at it in minute detail. Eventually, finding nothing wrong, they allowed me to pass out of the international terminal and onto Russian soil.

There is an oddity about the Moscow airport in that the WiFi requires you to give a phone number where they will send you a code to log on. It’s “free WiFi” but you can’t access it if you don’t have a Russian phone number. It’s frustrated me every time I’ve flown through, and I’ve never been able to get it to work. Really, it’s free if you’re Russian, but it’s a taunting WiFi dream to international travelers. Knowing this, while still in Norway, I had downloaded the offline version of the Moscow map in Google maps (which is a lie), and the Russian language on Google translate (which I never actually used) as well as information about my hostel, just in case.

I got some money changed to Rubles, and I found my driver. If my flight had landed during the day, I might have tried out the public transit, but at midnight thirty I was happy to see a man holding a sign with my name on it and ready to take me directly to the hostel, even if the ride did cost more than the room. It was a long and empty ride through Moscow. I’m not sure if it was just the late hour but the roads were empty. And they were huge! City roads, with business and sidewalks, not like highways, just roads that were 10 lanes across, 5 lanes in each direction. I stared at them wondering how people crossed the roads on foot and even more if these behemoths aided in the flow of traffic. Do enough people in Moscow own cars for this to be actually useful or is it just for show?

Hostile Hostel?

Checking into the hostel was another long rigmarole of paperwork: fill this out, sign this, make a copy of my passport and visa, etc. I chose a cheapish hostel thinking since I only was going to get maybe 6 hours of sleep, I didn’t need much but I also carefully selected one that was highly rated with plenty of good reviews and a location that would make it easy to get to Red Square in the morning.

One day… the lesson is going to stick. When travelling in less affluent countries: spend the money on a private room! The hostel bed was around 10$ and a private room would have been about 30$. It’s a big difference and at the time I was thinking about every little penny because I wanted to keep my budget down and Moscow was already costing me 100$ just for stepping out of the airport. I had spent a single night in Paris in a dorm and slept pretty well, but that was Paris.

The hostel itself did not live up to my expectations based on ratings and photos. Looking back I can see those are real photos, but they were clearly taken when the interiors were brand new or at least recently deep cleaned. In reality the place was much more dark, dank, cramped and dirty than the photos represent. Even by the light of day. Now, I’m not saying it was a shithole… it did meet my minimum standards of clean and the staff were very polite in a cold sort of way, but I did not rest well.

Like many hostels in Europe, I was expected to make my own bed. The staff do not consider it their responsibility to put sheets on the bed, nor to remove them. I struggled with this as it was almost 1am and I had a top bunk and everyone else was asleep, so I couldn’t turn on the light. Also, the bedroom door seemed to have no lock at all. The bathrooms were very tiny and when you’re sharing a single bathroom with all the other women in a large hostel, that’s a challenge. One of my roomies snored so loudly that it made my bed actually vibrate. I could feel her snores. I put in earplugs, headphones, and squashed pillows, blankets and towels around my ears to no avail. When I got up to get dressed, there was no place private to do so.

The hostel included WiFi, which did work well, yay, and a free “breakfast”. In the morning I discovered this meant a choice of two sugar cereals, luke-warm milk, watery coffee, and packets of what I really think were yogurt powder. I couldn’t read the Russian labels and I didn’t try to eat it, but they were packets filled with what felt like a powder with pictures of bowls of yogurt and fruit on the front. And somehow this breakfast is rated 7.7 on Booking.com. In fairness, that is the lowest internal rating and every other criteria is rated 8.4 or higher. I don’t know what your life has to be like for this to be a 7.7/10 breakfast, but I never want to live it.

Just, please, if you see me talking about booking a hostel dorm in a developing country or a current/previous communist country STOP ME. I’m not trying to be a snob, but sleeping properly is so important to my well-being and my ability to enjoy waking activities and I just can’t sleep properly in those conditions. I envy the people who can.

Metro Mishaps

Despite these setbacks and the severe lack of sleep, I was still determined to make the most of my day in Moscow. I had a detailed and timed itinerary that I hoped would allow me to see everything I wanted to before it was time to go back to the airport. The first thing I discovered is that the Google Map of Moscow isn’t great, and the offline function doesn’t really do anything. Here’s a pretty building I found while searching for the metro.

It took me ages to find the Metro station that was meant to be a 5 minute walk from my hostel in part because Google, and in other part because the Metro stations in Moscow don’t have any helpful signs with pictures or symbols to identify them. Maybe they say the name of the station on the outside, but I was looking for a big “M” or an icon of a subway train which has been a constant in every other metro system I’ve used. This is actually the logo for the Moscow metro and it was not on any of the buildings or any signs nearby.

When I finally realized that the big square beige building was the metro station, I had walked past it at least 7 times because I thought it was a government building like a post office or police station. It was much easier every other time because at least they all look the same. Of course I didn’t take a picture at the time, and now looking at stock photos of the building I see that it clearly has a big red M on top and a sign out front, so I can’t explain why it eluded me so. I blame sleep deprivation.

Once I found the entrance, I was happy to learn that the metro system itself is actually very easy to use, and cheap too. Rather than go through the hassle of buying a ticket for every trip, I just bought a 24hr pass for about 3$ US. That’s a whole day pass for less than the cost of a single trip in most EU countries, by the way, and goes a long way to explaining the powdered yogurt situation.

On top of its ease of use and affordability, the Moscow metro is famous for it’s unique and beautiful (on the inside) metro stations . At some point in the soviet era, it was a gift to the people to make each public transit station a work of public art. No one could visit them all in one day, but I tried to get some pictures inside the ones I did use. They are very very Soviet, but amazing works of art nonetheless.

Red Square Obscured

When I emerged from the station at Red Square I was instantly lost. I had expected the world’s largest public square to be visible from the metro station that shared it’s name, silly me. I adopted the time honored method of picking a direction and watching where my GPS dot went on the map. The first landmarks I ran across were actually the Metropol Hotel and the Statue of Marx. I recognized them from my plans as places I had intended to go later in the day, but it did help orient me to find Red Square and St. Basil’s Cathedral which was the top of my list for the day.

Sadly, I still don’t know what Red Square looks like, since there were about a million white tents set up and a large area blocked off and converted into a stadium for an upcoming festival. I walked slowly and perused the kiosks selling a narrow but colorful array of Russian souvenirs. I didn’t stop to buy, however because it looked mostly mass produced.

I also walked past the line to Lenin’s tomb, where he is preserved and laid out in a rather grotesque honorarium. Entrance to the monument is free, but there is no way to reserve an entry time, so people queue for hours for a chance to gawk at the dead body. I told myself it would be interesting if the line was short enough, but by the time I arrived around 10am, it was already all the way down the block and didn’t seem to be moving very fast.

Tourist Stuff

St. Basil’s did not disappoint. It was crowded as heck, but it is a fun building. Everyone has seen at least one picture of the iconic colorful onion turrets and it was definitely a treat to see it in person. I wandered around trying to find the best angle for a photo, but since large swaths of the surrounding area were blocked off for the upcoming festival, it was a little challenging.

It’s possible to go inside for a fee, but online reviews all agreed that the cool part is on the outside. Bonus, there was a marching band practicing in the temporary stadium field nearby, so I got to watch a little bit of counter-marching through the fence and experience some serious cognitive dissonance as they played the 1812 Overture (for non-Americans, that’s because it’s a staple of our own Independence Day celebrations).

Checking the clock, I realized it was time to head over to the gardens and try to find the entrance to the Kremlin. Only, because the entire breadth of Red Square was fenced off with a giant temporary stadium and lots of souvenir booths, I couldn’t follow my pre-planned route and Google maps was turning out to be f*ing useless. Once more I adopted the “pick a direction and walk” method, which resulted in me walking nearly all the way around the Kremlin, which is not a small building. In the middle of my walk, the sky went from a bit overcast to “wrath of Neptune”.

I always have my travel umbrella but it would not have withstood the torrential downpour that issued forth from the skies. Lucky me, at that precise moment, I happened to be passing under the only cover for several blocks in either direction, a bit of scaffolding along one corner of the Kremlin’s outer wall. Even standing under the scaffold with my back to the wall, I could feel the spray from the force of the rain around me. I sat there as other pedestrians scurried to the shelter and wondered if my plans to explore outdoors would be totally rained out, and what I could possibly do instead with no working internet. But before I could even really start to work it out, the rain slowed to a drizzle and I felt confident in resuming my walk armed with my little umbrella.

When I did reach the entrance, I found another huge line for the people who already had tickets, and I continued on through the gardens in search of the ticket office.

What’s With All These Lines?

I know there is a stereotype about lines in Russia. Or at least there was when I grew up in the cold war in America. We were told about how people had to just stand in long lines for hours to get bread, or sometimes not even knowing what was being passed out at the head of the line or if there would still be any by the time you got to the front of the line. They were communism horror stories told to show us how terrible the USSR was and how great America and capitalism were by contrast. I know it was propaganda, but I’m not sure it was untrue. I had already seen the huge line for Lenin’s tomb, but I knew that was a free event, and no way to buy tickets in advance.

Looking at the line to buy tickets to stand in the line to get in at the Kremiln was just insane. I freely admit that I ignored my note to myself in my calendar to book those tickets online in advance. Everything else in Europe I booked before I even left Korea, but Russia only takes reservations for the Kremlin 2 weeks in advance. While I was in Sweden. I made a note to do it, and I saw the note, and I ignored the note. My own fault. However, looking at the lines, I am not sure I would have made it through the “advance ticket line” even with enough time to really see anything.

I am a bit sad I didn’t get to see the Kremlin and especially the museum with the historical art and artifacts of pre-communist Russia. However, if I do make it back to Moscow, I will dedicate a whole day to the Kremiln alone, knowing what I know now.

Fun With Costumes

Instead of sulking about it, I decided to move on and see what other fun things I could find. I was not disappointed. Shortly past the ticket office, the scenery livens up and I found some more public gardens, statues, fountains, and a quite charming pair of street entertainers dressed up in “historical” costumes and posing with tourists for tips. They made me smile and so I probably gave them more money than I should have, even though it was less than they asked for.

Continuing on I managed to find a slightly more accurate historical costume depiction where it seemed like a professional group was showing off the history of Russia and perhaps it’s trade partners with booths showing different herbs and spices, old astronomical tools and charts, paints and dyes, and other medieval type crafts and pursuits. It was all in Russian, though, so I wasn’t able to glean much from the informative talks the costumed historians were giving to the other folks in the park.

Thwarted at Every Turn

After a quick gander at the statue of Karl Marx and the Bolshoi ballet because I was standing right there,

I headed up to the Metropol Hotel to see what I could find in the way of a fancy lunch. I had found a few places on line that seemed to indicate there was a high tea available, and while the website of the hotel still had it displayed in some places, the actual “high tea” page was not working. Still, I had seen the restaurant menu and knew it would be ok even if I just had lunch.

The very first thing I saw was a bunch of construction and a sign saying the restaurant was CLOSED for repairs and upgrades. My optimism and adventurousness was wearing thin at the edges around now. So far, all of the things I’d set out to do with my very limited time in Moscow had either been harder than expected or totally impossible. I was also VERY hungry since the last meal I ate was a deli sandwich I got in Oslo the night before. I am not counting the bowl of sugar coated flakes at the hostel as a “meal”.

Clinging to the very last shreds of my “lets have a good time anyway” thoughts, I found the main entrance to the hotel to see if they were serving anything anywhere because I really didn’t know what else to do or where else I could go for a much needed lunch.

Although the staff at the hotel bar had no idea what tea ceremony I was talking about, (even though it’s on their website!) they were happy to seat me at a comfy chair in the lobby and bring me a menu. I ordered a “Stranger in Moscow” to drink, and salmon blinis for lunch.

The WiFi Is a Lie

When I went to explore the WiFi options, I discovered that the special nature of the Moscow airport WiFi was actually the rule of thumb for all Russian WiFi. I asked the staff if there was any way to log on, but without a room number or Russian phone number it was impossible. They didn’t even have a guest account available for customers of the bar or restaurant.

The more places I went, the more I realized this is just the way it works. Even Starbucks, a place famous for it’s free WiFi was inaccessible to anyone without a Russian phone number. So, if someone tells you not to bother with a SIM card because there’s plenty of free WiFi, well, they are both right and wrong. The WiFi is free, but you can’t use it without that SIM + Russian phone number. If I had known, I would have made the SIM a higher priority since it seems they are not too hard to find, but by the time I realized that WiFi was going to be impossible, I was more than halfway through my day and had no way to look up where to buy a SIM!

This obstacle was suddenly one straw too many in a morning full of them and I slowly began to leak from the eyes. I try really hard not to sink into despair or self pity when things don’t go my way on a trip, but everyone has a wall, and it gets closer with things like lack of sleep and low blood sugar, both of which I was suffering from at the time. It’s likely that I would have recovered after a some food and a rest, but that day I didn’t have to do it alone. A very kind fellow solo-female traveler sitting one chair over asked if I was ok and invited me to join her. She let me vent a little about my morning and then we quickly moved on to talking about our travels and experiences.

Lunch is Saved!

It did so much to lift my spirits and we chatted all through a leisurely lunch. The blinis were nice, a little sweeter than I was expecting for a seafood pairing, but not really much different from crepes.. maybe a little more oily? but not unpleasantly so. Out of curiosity I looked up the difference, and it’s yeast. Blinis have it, crepes don’t. The smoked salmon was delicious, and even though I had eaten lots of it in Sweden, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. Plus it was served with sour cream and salmon caviar so there was a nice blend of textures and flavors.

The Stranger in Moscow was a vodka drink made with Campari, ginger, and blackberry syrup. The presentation was stunning. The drink was quite different from the cocktails I have had before. It was more bitter than sweet which is usually a good thing for me and I attribute that to a healthy portion of the Campari, but there was a slight “cough syrup” aftertaste that I associate with Jagermeister or almost any cherry liquor. My best guess is that the type of blackberry syrup they used carried that flavor, which many people find appealing in drinks. It was also served with a tiny bowl of dark chocolate chips which made an excellent compliment to the drink. Quite a unique cocktail experience overall.

My lunch companion told me about the book “Gentleman in Moscow” which is set in the Metropol Hotel and I am now on the wait list to check that out of the library. In case you’re curious, a standard room at the Metropol runs close to 150$ US/night, but my drink and lunch were a much more reasonable yet still high for Russia $27 US together. I still wish I could have found that tea ceremony, but I am happy with the experience I had, especially with company to make it better.

Here’s a little slideshow with more photos from the first half of my day in Moscow. Please pardon the lack of music. I’ve been using YouTube Editor, and recently it’s decided to delete everything good and useful from it’s online service and I haven’t found a replacement yet. Stay tuned for part 2 where I go “off the beaten path”.

Speelklok Museum: Fads in Music Tech?

September 7, 2018March 26, 2019 / Gallivantrix / 2 Comments

They say travel should expand your horizons and change your way of thinking about the world and while I had other experiences like that this summer, for some reason, the Speelklok Museum stands out among them. Do you ever think about how recent changes in technology are impacting your generation differently than people in the past? Well, it may not be as different as you think. Turns out we’ve been having a music technology revolution for at least 150 years, maybe longer.

When I arrived to buy my tickets, I was told about all three different options for exploring the museum that were included in my entry fee: the music tour, solo exploration, and the “Expedition”. I didn’t really know what to expect out of the museum and I could only see a few exhibits in the waiting area. One was this blatantly-racist-but-normal-at-the-time automaton duet. Insert a coin in the slot and the show begins as the robots play a little jazz tune. It’s not a recording with puppets, the machine actually creates the music.

The Music Tour: Hearing History

The music tour is unique not only because you get a guide to explain things, but because that guide will also activate several of the devices that are otherwise stationary and silent in the museum. Since it’s all about the music, hearing is believing. Music may be a universal language, but Dutch is not. Thankfully our guide was gracious enough to give the relevant information in both Dutch and English.

Speelklock means “musical clock” and that is where the tour began. Although the earliest example of a musical clock is from 1598, the ones we looked at were very advanced members of the species popular in the 1750s. We visited first a white room with many such elaborate clocks on display.

The guide explained a bit about the history of early self playing music starting with bells and pipes. Bells were the first and “easiest”, if that can be applied to such complex machinery. A metal cylinder like that in a music box was used to orchestrate a series of springs and levers to tap small bells of different tones. There was only one length of note and it resulted in some very un-nuanced music, but the Victorians loved gadgets sooo much that owning such a marvel in one’s home was a real status symbol. They were incredibly expensive and very fine. The only way to change the song was to change the cylinder inside.

Pipes were close behind bells, although they were even more expensive and complicated, since they relied on a vacuum seal and bellows system to pump air through the pipes. It did allow for a slightly nicer sound since the length of individual notes could be shortened and lengthened in the program.

I’m going to keep calling these “programs” because that is the word the museum used to describe the different types of devices used to impart the directions to the machines. Over the decades they changed form, but always used a series of bumps and holes rather like early computer punch-cards.. The first use of such a cylinder used to program music was in the church carillons in the mid 1500’s. I sure as heck didn’t know that the idea of programming music was that old, did you?

Many of these early musical clocks also included some simple form of animation. The one we watched had a progression of figures parading through the fields showing the phases of life and inevitability of death… there’s a reason it’s called “Victorian Gothic”.

Kids and Their Newfangled Gadgets

My first real clue that I have spent my life seeing time and history all wrong came a few steps to the left as our guide began to explain the rapid change in music technology. The cylinder, which had been used consistently since 1550 to create musical programs was suddenly replaced by the disc in 1885. Cylinders were heavy, difficult to make, and expensive. Plus, most people had to have them professionally changed out in order to listen to new songs. With a disc, much less material was needed and production could be streamlined by simply stamping each flat disc with it’s musical program. Much cheaper, more efficient, and easier to use.

But what do you do with your cylinder collection? No worries! The modern wonder of technology created a crossover player with a space for both! What about that new gramophone recording? No problem! Your technological crossover music machine comes equipped with a clockwork organ and a gramophone speaker! Maybe you had a similar device? I know we had a record player with a tape deck… and later a boom box with a tape deck and CD player… and later a CD walk-man that played both .wav and Mp3 discs. And now, a Bluetooth Gramophone? Turns out that fad is more than 100 years older than I realized.

Much like the record to tape to CD to MP3 transition, the musical programme revolution of the 1800’s wasn’t over. The next step? PAPER! The lightest, cheapest and above all longest musical program yet. With paper, you could have a much larger music collection and you could play longer pieces of music, or multiple pieces on a single program. Plus you could print words on paper, giving rise not only to the player piano, but to the world’s first “karaoke”. Friends and family could gather round the player piano and modern favorites would play from the paper program which would display the lyrics in a moving scroll as the music played, allowing those with imperfect memories to sing along. Yes, that’s really how they used it back in 1925. Although it started in early 1900, the paper roll player piano was the height of home entertainment from about 1920-1930 when the stock market crash combined with the rise of other musical technology wiped it out. Talk about a fast fad.

During this time, our old friend the cylinder program achieved some continued use in miniature. Not only in the form of teeny tiny pocket sized music boxes, but most especially inside automata cleverly shaped like people or animals that would come to life and perform to some piece of music. These automata captivated the people of the Edwardian era and were almost as short lived as Edward himself. We got to see a nightingale in a cage (yes, made of real nightingale), an acrobat atop a ladder, a rabbit emerging from a paper cabbage, and a rather singularly Dutch representation of the painter Van Gogh painting his famous “Sunflowers”.

The guide kindly led me back after the tour so that I could see it in action and as Vincent’s arm moves the brush across the canvas to the music, the sunflowers begin to spin as his eyes go wide in representation of the hallucinations he was thought to have.

Clockwork Organs & Orchestrions

The music tour continued into pipe organs and dance hall organs. Starting in the late 1800s, the pipe organs used the cylinder method, though often wooden instead of metal. Organ grinders were so called because they had to turn a crank to operate a kind of bellows to keep the cylinder turning and the air passing through the pipes. Earlier pipe organs were displayed on the street and at festivals and often involved theatrical stories and sing-a-long musical numbers to keep the audience engaged with the limited cylinder length.

By 1892, the pipe organs too had converted to paper, although instead of a paper roll, they used a “book” made of cardboard and folded in a zig-zag fashion so that it unfolded into one long piece with all the convenience of a paper roll, but made of a far sturdier material that would withstand the abuse of outdoor performances and travel better than flimsy paper.

Street organs remained popular in the Netherlands until the street organ ban in WWII. They have never really made a comeback, but are still enjoyed as a novelty from time to time. Many of the most fantastic designs were made between 1910 and 1925 including the “Gouden Limonarie” and “The Arab”.

The final segment of the music tour was the orchestrions. These were not merely seeking to produce music from a single instrument, but rather to imitate an entire orchestra. The earliest of these machines was created in 1805. They were fairly limited to the number and type of instruments at first, but quickly expanded to encompass brass, woodwind, and percussion, delighting and astonishing audiences everywhere.

The final and most challenging orchestral section to make self-playing was the strings. In 1910 at the world’s Fair, the first self-player with a string section had it’s debut and was hailed as the 8th wonder of the world. It included three sets of violin strings which could be set to different pitches with different levers acting as mechanical fingers of the left hand and used a “bow” made of continuously circling horsehair that could be lowered and raised to play notes as the “right hand”. It was so inconceivable an achievement that some believed it to be magic until they could see the inner workings for themselves.

While the musical clock and player piano might find their way into any reasonably affluent household, the larger organs and orchestral players were reserved for the ultra wealthy and of course, the dance halls. During their height (again an incredibly brief time ending abruptly in 1930) these orchestrions were the darling of the day, drawing large crowds to dance halls to cut a rug to the mechanical orchestras and marvel at the wonders of modern technology. Because of the limited amount of musical numbers available to each machine, and because of the stunning but stationary artwork on the outside, audiences became bored with a single orchestrion quite quickly. (no, our attention spans weren’t any better a century ago no matter what your grandmother says) To keep the crowds coming, these huge machines were often built to be easily disassembled and moved to play a new dance hall every week. Early 20th century DJs played the precursor to EDM– MDM: Mechanical Dance Music.

The Whitewashing of Buurkirk

When the music tour ended, I was left in a very thoughtful state as I set off to find the rest of the museum’s displays. After returning to some of the machines for a longer look, I found a staircase and went up. It was immediately clear that the museum was actually built into a disused cathedral. Post-travel research tells me this is the Buurkirk and is the largest and wealthiest of the parish cathedrals in Utrecht, having been built in the mid 10th century and suffering from 4 fires and rebuilds in less than 300 years.

It’s only a couple blocks away from St. Martin’s Cathedral, and you may wonder why any town needs so many churches so close together, but I believe St. Martin’s was at the time mainly operating as a monastic center (and a royal palace). Perhaps folks in town could come for masses, but parish churches would have been a bit less formal and also often offered the church space for use in the community during non-church times. I suspect that Buurkirk and the other nearby parish churches were a bit more like community centers and St. Martin’s was a bit more like a place you go for Easter and Christmas but otherwise leave to the clergy and nobility.

The walls, columns, arches, and decorative carvings are painted a crisp clean white except a few places where the original church artwork has been preserved and painted around. The whitewashing isn’t a result of secularism, however, but rather the work of the Protestant reformation which took over the church in 1586 and just hated all that ostentatious Catholic art. Buurkirk was actively used as a church until 1975 and it became the Speelklok Museum in 1984. Wandering among the displays and whitewashed arches, my mind was occupied with the impending massive shift in my perception of humans, time, and technology.

The Expedition

At last, I found the “expedition” part I had been so curious from the moment I bought my ticket. I had been given a card and told it would be used for this segment of the museum. It was not the first time I encountered the idea and I’m still not sure why it exists since it would be just as easy for visitors to press a button to activate whatever the card does. It’s just one more thing to hold in my hands, or more accurately, fish out of my pocket every time I found one of the small silver slots in the wall with a little speaker on cord.

Holding the palm sized speaker up to my ear, I could use the card to activate audio recordings (sadly, not the music machines themselves). The recordings included samples of the music as well as narration about the pieces on display. While some were a bit dry, there was a fun section where I seemed to be visiting a wealthy Victorian gentleman who had the very latest in musical clocks and self playing instruments he eagerly wanted to show off to me. Maybe I liked it so much because it reminded me of a friend who would talk about historical clocks and clockwork with almost the same level of enthusiasm.

Several of the expedition displays included information that the guide on the music tour had given, but I didn’t mind since often it was able to go into greater detail. For example, the fad of “player” instruments stretched well past the piano. The urge to amaze your friends with your musical talents extended to a number of other instruments like this “player trumpet”. Just blow?

Composing for Machines

Room after room of intricate, detailed clocks and devices ended in a small theater. While the card-activated recordings were played for me in English (the choice of language determined by the placement of holes in your card, haha, how clever, just like a music program) the theater had only one soundtrack and it was Dutch. Thankfully, a film of the English words played on a display that I could easily read.

The stage was occupied by a large number and variety of self playing instruments which were highlighted as the story moved to cover them. While some of the information was familiar from my guided tour, I was rather astonished to learn that composers like Mozart, Hadyn, Handel, and even Beethoven had composed music expressly for these wonderful self playing machines.

Wait wait, I hear the music history majors cry, they were alive in the 18th century, late 1700’s composers. I thought you said these machines were popular in the 19th and 20th century! Yes, I did and the museum did mainly focus on these later inventions, but remember the original carillon use of the cylinder program is from 1550. The human operated pipe organ was a popular instrument for composition during the Baroque era. Although Classical era composers like those mentioned above rarely wrote for the traditional pipe organ, some were interested in the abilities of the clockwork organ which was becoming more and more available by the mid 1700’s. Available at least to the reasonably affluent, and that’s who paid composers after all.

The film at the museum said that because the clockwork organ could play combinations of notes not possible by human hands, the composers of the day felt drawn to compose unique and challenging works. Other sources I have since found seem to think that some of the composers disdained the tinny sounding miniature organs and only accepted the commissions for composition out of economic necessity. Either way, I was captivated by the notion because not only were these unique works designed exclusively for a machine to do what a human could not, the composers were actually present during the creation of the cylinder programs and could make adjustments to the timing and length of notes (the most nuance possible for the machines at the time) giving us the most accurate representation of the musical result they themselves envisioned for each piece.

Below is one of the pieces by Hadyn composed for the mechanical organ. Although it was recorded at the Speelklock Museum, it’s not my recording, I found it on Youtube by a Swedish Instrumental Band called Wintergaten. I especially like this video because you can see the organ working as it plays. You can find recordings of other compositions for clockwork organs on Youtube as well: here are a few for Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven. Although most of the videos are not as visually captivating as Wintergaten’s, it’s still interesting to hear these unique mechanical compositions

What Is New Under the Sun?

What started out as a mildly amusing side trip turned into one of the most eye-opening experiences of my summer. Before the invention of self-playing instruments there was no way to hear music without a musician, just as before the invention of the motion picture, there was no way to see a play without actors. It was a revolution in human culture and it happened a lot earlier than I realized.

In a very short amount of time from roughly 1750 to 1930 the culture is constantly demanding and creating new and improved technology. From about 1850-1920, the changes were happening so fast that your home music player would become obsolete almost as soon as you bought it. Meanwhile, in my head, I always pictured the fast transition of music playback to be the one from LP to MP3 that took place between 1965 (the release of the 8-track cassette deck) and 2001 (the release of the iPod).And just like our parents (maybe grandparents), people living in the 1860-1930 range complained that each new development was destroying music, culture, and maybe even the very fabric of society. However will we maintain social standards when people can just listen to music in their home instead of getting dressed up and attending a performance in polite society!?

I admit, I am a little flummoxed trying to imagine a world where music isn’t just there when I want it (and when I don’t, elevators everywhere). We are hardly ever without music. In our earbuds, in our cars, in every shop and most restaurants there is music. I’m listening to music while I write this. I struggle to imagine a world where the only music is that you can make yourself or pay a large number of people with expensive instruments to make for you. The invention of musicianless music is, I believe, an actual moment of deep cultural change on par with the printing press or the assembly line. However, past that huge conceptual change in our relationship with music, the trappings, the delivery systems, those are only small changes, and not as significant or original as we like to believe.

The mechanics might be different, but none of it is new: karaoke, the drum machine, samplers, auto-tuning. It was all there 100-400 years ago in a different form. The more I learn about history, the more it looks like we’ve been reliving the same cycles over and over with smaller and faster machines each time. I don’t find this thought depressing. It makes me look at the progression of time as more of a gradually progressing spiral than a straight line. Yes, it’s a repetitive cycle, but each cycle changes slightly. We’re still moving forward just not at the breakneck speed that the “get off my lawn” crowd would have us believe. Every so often we get a really big “ah-ha” change that sweeps us on to the next series of small change cycles.

So the next time someone says something like “kids these days” or heaven forfend “Millenials are killing everything”, just remember that Mozart programmed music in binary code for a machine to play over 200 years ago. Change is the only constant.

The Speelklok Museum in Utrecht was not the only place this summer that made me reach inside my brain and rearrange the way I look at things, but it was undoubtedly one of the biggest and most compact of such experiences. As I stated my intention is that these stories have no order or thematic relationship to my experiences this summer. Non-linear felt intuitively like a good way to go and after reconstructing these memories and thoughts I start to see why. Sometimes we have to step away from the linear narrative to see the bigger picture. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll return for more stories as they come.

Hello Bohol: Historical Sites & History

February 19, 2018February 6, 2018 / Gallivantrix / 1 Comment

When I was in high school I thought history was the most boring subject ever. Now I know it was just that history had the most boring teachers… and textbooks. Seriously, I don’t know how hard they have to work to make something so interesting seem so boring. However, since I know the secret these days, I love using my travels as an excuse to learn about the history of each place I visit. Bohol is far richer in history than I can fully explore here, but I enjoyed learning more about it, and I hope you will too.

Mostly Catholic Churches

I visited many of the large cathedrals left over from Spanish occupation that had distinctive stone architecture and European influenced art, but driving around I saw a great many smaller centers of worship. Most of the small churches around the island are a single “room”, wall-less or lattice walled affairs where the neighborhood can gather to worship. I took that picture on the right from the street. It’s not under construction, it just doesn’t have a wall there.

They are very devout Catholics over there. One evening on the way to dinner from the hotel, I drove past a procession of some kind, a mixture of genders and ages, but 4 men were carrying a liter with a statue of (probably) the Virgin Mary and a mountain of colorful flowers. They walked down our small street singing Ave Maria as they trailed after the statue. I didn’t take any pictures in part because I was driving, but also I felt it would have been a bit rude. These people weren’t worshiping in a place that was heavy with tourists and I felt as though I’d been allowed to witness something very personal.

The large historical cathedrals are well marked tourist spots however, so I have plenty of photos of those.

Panglao Watchtower & St. Augustine Parish

Before visiting, I didn’t know much about the history of the island other than a little bit about the Spanish colonization. However, the watchtowers are listed on a great many “to do” collections, so when I noticed one nearby on Google Maps, I decided to stop and check it out. As I pulled in, several young men asked if I was there for an island hopping tour. This was one major tourist attraction I decided against before arriving simply because the descriptions I read online made it sound like a horrible hassle for little reward. I politely declined and found a shady tree to park under near the church of San Augustine. Some nearby cows who wandered over to see if I had anything interesting, but soon realized there were no treats.

The Panglao Watchtower is located on the south end of the island. It is 5 stories high, making it the tallest structure on the island. It was built in 1851 by the Spanish, and is in serious disrepair. I know almost nothing else about it, because it’s not a popular enough historical site to have much published about it online. I did find that around that time the Spanish and Filipinos were having a bit of a tiff over things like government control and secularization, so I suppose the watchtower built next to the church may have been out of a concern that the church could be attacked by secularists?

I wandered around taking photos of the tower and the mangroves nearby before moving to the church. There were people inside, it was a Sunday after all, but it seemed to be a small meeting and not a full congregation and they were confined to one section of the church, so I quietly stepped in to an empty area to look around and take a few more pictures inside. As I stood looking at the art and architecture, I was struck by the very Spanish style before remembering that colonization of the Philippines was Spanish and not British.

Finally, I walked out along the end of the pier all those island hoppers were using to see the ocean view. I didn’t know it at the time, I only found out days later when a restaurant owner told me, but apparently a local church runs a free ferry to the nearby Virgin Island (a stop on the island hopping tour), and if you want to know more, you’ll have to go to Nikita’s Coffee Shop and ask the old British guy who runs the joint, as I never had the chance to find that particular boat.

Dauis Watchtower, Our Lady of the Assumption Parish, & The Miracle Well

My next goal was to find the Miracle Well, which is located at the Our Lady of the Assumption church on the north end of the island. There is a little matching cathedral and watchtower at both north and south, although the northern watchtower was so much shorter that I almost didn’t see it at all.

The church is just next to the bridge that leads over to Bohol. It’s easy to find parking, and the grounds are lovely. I wandered slowly around taking photos of the exterior of the church, some of the statues and grottoes around, the sea nearby, and a little brood of baby chicks because they were insanely cute. The watchtower is so low that I have no idea what one would be watching from it’s second story window, but it seemed to be a part of the set. Unfortunately, by the time I finished exploring the exterior, they were just closing up for lunch and I didn’t get inside (don’t worry, I came back another day).

Our Lady of Assumption is so close to the bridge to Bohol that I was able to pause there again on my way elsewhere for another shot at getting inside the church and finding the Miracle Well, but it wasn’t until my third stop at the church that I finally succeeded. At long last, the church was both open and unoccupied, so I was able to get inside without interrupting services.

It is an open and intricately decorated church. Either it had been untouched by the earthquake or had been lucky enough to earn a full restoration because the inside was in excellent repair. The large sanctuary had stone walls, but also large windows to let in light and air. It was an interesting combination of the European style and island style. I wandered around taking pictures and looking for the well, which is supposed to be near the altar.

According to myth, the town was under attack by pirates (a thing which did happen regularly), and all the townsfolk locked themselves in the church (big stone building, makes sense). However, the pirates were determined and began a siege, trapping the townsfolk inside with no water! Then, miraculously, a fresh water well sprang forth at the foot of the altar and saved the people inside, allowing them to wait out the pirates who I suppose either got bored or were driven off by the Spanish navy. The well remains a source of fresh water to this day, despite the fact that it is a stone’s throw from the sea. The church offers bottles of this miraculous water for a donation of your choice.

I searched everywhere. I saw no well. I looked online for images that might give me a clue where the well was, but the interior seemed to have undergone a remodel, and the few photos of the well I found were such close ups that I could not tell where in the church they were. Was I even in the right church? There were no signs, no informative plaques to tell visitors about this amazing miracle. Had I really come to the wrong church three times looking for a well that either didn’t exist or had been destroyed in the earthquake?

Finally, on my way out, I saw a small office with some people who looked at least a little bit like they were affiliated with the church and asked. A very kind lady not only assured me that this was the correct church, but led me over to the well, which was hiding unobtrusively amid a low wooden railing that separated the parishioner’s pews from the priest’s area.

I had seen the railing and the signs on it that said “no entry”, and had looked no further, but in one little section, the railing goes from being a single line, to being a square and there is enclosed the well, covered with Plexiglas to keep anything or anyone from falling in. She took up a nearby lamp and shone it into the depths so that I could see the water below.

Once I’d taken a few photos, she walked me back over to the office and fetched a bottle of the “miracle water” for me to try. Of course I left a donation, don’t be silly. And since tourists are advised against drinking the tap water here, you’ll be happy to hear that I suffered no ill health from the miracle well water. Maybe that’s the miracle?

More photos of the St. Augustine & Lady of Assumption Churches.

St. Peter the Apostle Parish Ruins

After the river cruise, I headed across the street to see the Loboc Church, aka Saint Peter the Apostle Parish Church. The full history of the Spanish colonization here is for a later time. For now, suffice it to note that this church was the second built on Bohol by the Jesuits. The Parish was done in 1602, but the coral-stone building that (mostly) stands today was finished in 1734. Then in 1768 the Jesuits were tossed out and another Catholic group called the Order of the Augustinian Recollects took over. I’m not going to try to explain Catholic orders here, feel free to wiki that if you have a burning desire to know. It’s also been declared a National Treasure by the Philippine government, and is under consideration for UNESCO heritage sites. It was absofrickinloutly beautiful (judging from photos) before the 2013 earthquake and now it is a stunning ruin.

I had spotted the ruins when driving to and from the Chocolate Hills earlier in the week, but at the time I was hurrying to get there or exhausted and ready for bed, so I was pleased to have carved out some time just to go and ogle the ruins. I know it’s tragic that the earthquake destroyed so much, and I’m sure I would have enjoyed seeing the church in it’s glory, because photos really do look lovely, but there is something about ruins being reclaimed by nature that just draws me right in. Even though it’s only been 4 years since the earthquake, the locals have just not been able to raise enough money to complete repairs and other than some scaffolding and a few gates to keep people out, the structure has been left to the onrush of jungle foliage.

Trees have sprouted in the walls. Ferns and mosses creep across the stone carvings. I peeked in barred windows to see the remains of a baptismal font, and peered through gated doorways to see the interior filled only with more layers of scaffolding. It’s clear that they do not wish to simply leave the church to decay, but very little has been done in the 4 years following the destruction. To me it was the perfect combination of man-made beauty and natural power.

At one point, I moved up close to get a good photo of some carving and I noticed the odd texture of some of the stones in the wall. They seemed to be organic. I know there are some crystalline structures that can appear organic, but these struck me as being especially sea-like and I wondered at the time if the stones may have come from a once-upon-a-time sea floor limestone quarry. I saw more of the same stones in other ruins once I knew what I was looking for, and vowed to find out when I got back. It turns out the answer is fairly simple, and I wasn’t far wrong. It’s not so much an ancient sea bed quarry, as a coral quarry. I had no idea coral could be quarried for building materials, but this happens in several islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific. Sometimes the coral is sliced into roof tiles, sometimes it’s mixed in with other ingredients to make a kind of concrete, and sometimes it’s big enough to hew whole building stones from, leaving some of the churches of Bohol with fascinating fossil structures in their walls.

I spent close to an hour circling around the crumbling church. The detail in the stones, the tiny plants and the hidden carvings and grottoes were entrancing, but eventually the heat and sunshine drove me back to my bike and back on the road where a welcome travel breeze cooled me off once more.

Baclayon Church

I will admit that my itineraries were largely informed by picking a single destination based on interest or reviews, and then examining the map to see what else was labeled on the roads I would be driving. I mean, if you’re in control of your own transportation, there’s no reason not to pull off to at least have a look when passing by landmarks, right? I don’t think I would have gone on a church tour in the Philippines for it’s own sake (although I did go to several in Europe because architecture!), but I’m glad I had the chance to see the buildings.

I had a suspicion by this time that I’d actually seen the Baclayon Church before, but not stopped at it. Looking at the map that day, I was sure it was the church that was visible from the market I’d stopped at for snacks on that first drive up to Bohol while going to the Chocolate Hills. And lo, I was correct. It was a little tricky to find the entrance, but fortunately Bohol is not a heavy traffic place, so if you get lost its easy enough to pull over or turn around.

The Baclayon Church (also The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary Parish Church) is the oldest Christian settlement in Bohol, established by the same Jesuit group that had set up the Loboc Church. It was first colonized in 1596, and the finished coral stone building that stands now was completed in 1727. It was also taken over by the Augustinians. It was also declared a national treasure. And it was also a short-lister for UNESCO world heritage sites before the earthquake hit. However, unlike the Loboc church which is nearly untouched, the Baclayon Church is well under way with repairs. I ran into a construction crew on the far side actively working.There is very little sign of damage on the exterior. This is not because the damage was minimal, but because the effort has been great. There was a before and after photo out front as well, showing what the damage looked like just after the quake and it’s much closer to what Loboc Church still looks like. I wandered around the exterior taking more photos and found several more blocks with that organic sea-life look that I now know to be coral stone. It seemed that the sanctuary proper was still under construction, but it is scheduled to re-open this year.

The museum, reliquary and gift shop are all open to the public. I have never seen so many rosary based trinkets in one place as that gift shop, I think some may have been several meters in length while others appeared to be made of glow in the dark materials. The reliquary is at this point in time simply a loose collection of the relics and art that adorned the church and (mostly) survived the damage: statues, a few rather terrifying mannequins and a version of the Pieta with some loose wigs. Still, it’s clear that these were all valuable historical displays and they were gathered together with care. I’m afraid I declined to enter the museum proper that day.

More photos of the Loboc and Baclayon Churches.

The Blood Compact Memorial

One of my favorite travel techniques is to look at a map or a tour to-do list, see a thing with an interesting name, visit it, realize I have no idea what it is about, take a ton of pictures, and look it up when I get home. The Blood Compact is a perfect example of this formula.

When I programmed my map app to take me there, the destination was a place I had driven past at least 3 times during the last week, yet unlike the Baclayon Church which I was confident of having seen while driving past, I could not recall anything at all where the map was pointing me. Confused, I pulled up the street view, hoping to get a better idea of what that stretch of road looked like, and Google insisted on pointing me to a patch of grass on the side of the road with nothing around it. This is not the first time that happened on this trip since some things are set back off the road, either down a slope or behind trees where the cameras missed it. Since I had to drive that way to get back to the hotel anyway, I decided to give it a whirl.

I only realized I’d driven past when my app dinged in my earbuds. When I pulled over to look around, I spotted a tiny little monument set back from the road back the way I’d come. I turned around to get a better vantage point and took my “I was here photos”, but there didn’t seem to be anything other than this small wall, explanatory plaque, and a trio of wayward goats.

“About the middle of March, 1565, Captain General Miguel Lopez de Legaspi’s fleet anchored along this shore. Shortly thereafter, Legaspi, manifesting trust and confidence in the islanders, entered into a blood compact with Datu Sikatuna, for the purpose of insuring friendly relations between the Spaniards and the natives. A few drops of blood drawn from a small incision in the arm of each of the two chiefs were placed in separate cups containing wine, and in the presence of the followers of both, each chief drank the potion containing the blood of the other. Thus, during this period of colonization, a bond was sealed in accordance with native practice, the first treaty of friendship and alliance between Spaniards and Filipinos. –1941”

Later, while doing my “now what did I just see” research, I found all these cool pictures of a bronze statue of the ceremony! Where even was that? There are two places on that road labeled “Blood Compact” on Google, and I’m willing to bet that a lot of the people posting photos of the statue were part of a tour group with a guide who knew where to go. Looking at Google Street View in retrospect, I found both the plaque and the bronze statue in different places. The plaque is next to a convenience store and somewhat down a slope from the roadside. The statue is next to “Ocean Suites”, on a raised dais, behind a white metal fence. I may have driven past it and thought it was part of the hotel. *sigh.

How About That History?

I am not going to write a comprehensive history of the Philippines, or even come close. This is a highlights reel to put the current socio-political and economical issues the Philippines is facing into context for those of you who, like me, found your history books mysteriously silent on the fate of small island nations.

Colonialism

A whole bunch of countries were scrambling to get to the East and get the precious SPICES! The Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, British, Ottoman, and even the Chinese and Japanese were all out to expaaaaaaand. That’s how I got a country, and how lots and lots of indigenous people lost theirs. The Portuguese and the Ottomans were being a bit rude in the Philippine Islands, so when the Spaniards showed up on Bohol and were like, “oh no we are not like those silly Portuguese!” The natives were happy to make this treaty with them, and the Boholano people are still quite proud that their ancestors made the first friendship treaty with their eventual oppressors… Yeah, I don’t like colonialism.

Image – Front National SA

Which makes this next part extra sad.

A few hundred years of all those empires competing over SE Asia and South Pacific islands of military strategic value meant that even though the Spanish held the Philippines officially until 1898, there were plenty of battles, skirmishes and invasions where someone else took control of Manila or other islands. Basically all the rich kids fighting over the land and the native people getting boned. Sometimes the natives did rebel, I think the longest single rebellion lasted almost a hundred years in one part of the country, but none succeeded at driving their European overlords out. The part that came as a complete and total shock to me is that Spanish rule of the Philippines did NOT end with independence in 1898, but rather with the sale of the island nation to …(dun, dun, dun) THE USA! …at the end of the Spanish American war.

The Philippine American War

Mere days after the transfer of ownership, the Filipinos tried to declare their independence once more. While we (Americans) were busy fighting the Spanish American War, the native Filipinos were simultaneously fighting Spain for their independence. Was the democracy loving US *helping* little Philippines? No, because we were still pretty darn isolationist in 1898 and hadn’t gotten into the habit of having the giant standing army we like to send around on “peacekeeping missions”. We were actually fighting Spain for control of their islands like Cuba. By the end of the war, they signed over Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands, although apparently the US paid 20$ million for the last one to cover infrastructure costs.

By the way, we still own Guam and Puerto Rico, but won’t let them be states (have representation) or apparently get decent federal aid after a devastating hurricane.

Having been engaged with the Spanish for their freedom, the Filipinos were not actually on board with the sale, and declared themselves independent and published a lovely constitution. The US, on the other hand felt it had paid some hard earned money for the territory and so began the Philippine American War, which I had actually never heard of until now. The Filipinos lost, and America continued to OWN the country until after WWII when we were generally making everyone (mostly Britain) give back all their colonies and decided to use the Philippines as our “set a good example” colony.

Military Dictatorship

Shortly after WWII, we get to Ferdinand Marcos who started his career in the House in 1949 (just a few years after officially free Philippines happened) and eventually became the President who implemented strict martial law from 1972-1981. It was a military dictatorship, and a seriously brutal time, and why am I telling you about it here? Because although the was finally ousted by a revolution in 1986, his rule was a major threat to democracy there and rife with cronyism, favoritism, extortion, and flat out ignoring the constitution. And the guy in power now is making a lot of people draw comparisons.

10 interesting facts about president ferdinand marcos | tenminutes.ph on Ferdinand Marcos Background

image tenminutes.ph

Like many countries, the Philippines was not proud of that time in it’s history and as a new generation grew up in the light of the revolution and the restoration of democracy, they weren’t always well educated on the dark side of Marcos’ reign. Too soon, people began to think that stricter measures and even martial law could be good tools to help the country.

Democracy and Death Squads

Enter Duterte. Another lifelong politician, he has risen to popularity and power with the aid of DEATH SQUADS. I’m not kidding. In order to “clean up” the country, he has repeatedly and publicly declared that it’s ok to kill criminals without trial. This includes drug dealers, drug users, petty criminals, and “street children”. If you aren’t gagging in horror, you may need to get checked for your humanity.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte inspects firearms together with Eduardo Ano, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, during his visit at the military camp in Marawi city

image Reuters

He’s also said unbelievably horrible things about wanting to rape women, wanting to kill people who cause problems with extreme violence, and pardoning everyone under his command who committed human rights abuses while carrying out his orders… if this sounds like any other world leader you may have seen on tv in the last year, you are not alone in thinking this.

Responsible Tourism

This left me in a tricky position vis a vis being a tourist. I did not feel in danger in Duterte’s bloody cleanup because they are in no way targeting foreign nationals in this death squad round up. But economically, it was a tough choice. I know that my tiny vacation budget is not going to have an impact on the national economy of the Philippines, but it just might have an impact on the lives of the small business owners, guides, and environmental preservation programs that I do want to support and that I desperately hope survive until the next era of democratic sanity is restored. So, yes, I went and I feel ok about that.

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