The Dom

Another blast from the trip: I went to Cologne after the seminar in Dortmund, and the most famous tourist attraction (justly) is Cologne's huge cathedral, the Dom. It was damaged in the WWII bombing, but the Allies supposedly avoided targeting it directly (the bridge leading to it was broken, however).

The Dom is immense, and with all its heavy carving and decoration around the base, as well as the tapered spires and the blackened surfaces, looks heavy and imposing. A totally different effect from Chartres, say, or Notre Dame, which is also because the Dom is not that easy to see except right from the plaza surrounding it. You just can't stand back and get a good look at it. Not that easy to get a good picture, either.

Of course, we climbed the 500+ steps to the top, or rather I did while my friend succumbed to vertigo when the tiny spiral staircase inside the tower widens out and changes to an openwork metal staircase for the last 100 steps. However, the view from the top, while good, isn't that enjoyable. You walk around inside the tower, peering out through narrow window after narrow window. Beautiful, but not like walking around a more or less open balcony, even if it's covered with a wire cage.

We also stopped to see the huge set of bells on the way down, which are suitably imposing. The descent was quick but you have to squeeze past other tourists on their panting way up the tower, which makes for some rather hazardous navigation.

Inside, the cathedral is rather plain, with very diverse stained glass and very ornate chapels all around. One woman was vacuuming a carved wooden triptych with a little paintbrush and the hose attachment. When I went back the next day, she was there again and had barely moved.
The cathedral also houses the golden reliquary of the Three Wise Men. What exactly is supposed to be in there, I don't know. Nothing I read specified (bones, clothing, possessions?
Probably bones). Down in the treasury are huge quantities of other treasures, medieval croziers and the like. All in all, you can spend a lot of time around the Dom, fueled by the nearest Doner Kebap.

The greatest two weeks in sport

I won't write about it separately, but you can read about my trip to Wimbledon as a mere groundling on the TennisWorld blog here and here. TennisWorld is Peter Bodo's blog on tennis.com, the website of Tennis Magazine (the USA's main tennis mag, I think it's safe to say). I read Pete's blog for a while before I started commenting, gradually commented some more, and then took on this once-a-week "social" post about a year ago. Quite a few of the posts have to do with art that features tennis in some way; I might link to some of those good old posts here on days when I don't have time to post.

Les quartiers bruxellois

I started my two-day conquest of Brussels from the outskirts and worked my way in. The house of Rene Magritte is set up as a museum in the northern neighborhood of Jette, which I had outdated directions for. The helpful Metro official actually looked up the address on the computer, printed me a map, figured out my itinerary, wrote it out for me, and sent me on my merry way. What service.

The house is completely unassuming, and so is the museum, which is marked only by a tiny board out front. Inside, there's a tremendous collection of ephemera, photographs, and Magritte's works, all well explained in the cards they give you to carry around. You have to wear booties over your shoes upstairs, uniting you and the other two people in the museum in idiocy. Downstairs, as you see, the rooms are set up more or less as Magritte had them. He lived in this house with his wife for many productive years, though eventually they moved at her behest.

Magritte, by the way, is the surrealist painter famous for working against the meanings of words. In my first year of graduate school, if I had never had to hear the name Magritte again, I would have been delighted. His "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," written beneath a drawing of a pipe, was cited over and over and over again by people who like theory. Drove me insane.

From surrealism to humanism: I next headed out to the western neighborhood of Anderlecht, home of a famous football/soccer team. It's a traditionally working-class suburb, and you quickly get this idea from the disaffected-looking kids kicking a ball around and the pubs with Kriek (cherry beer) umbrellas that all have signs telling you to come cheer on the team. It has a beautiful church, though, and the Erasmushuis/Maison d'Erasme. Oh, did I mention that Brussels legally requires that everything be posted in Flemish and French? I don't know what the percentages are within Brussels itself, but let me just say that I didn't find anyone in two days who didn't speak French.

The Erasmushuis. Right. Erasmus, Renaissance man (literally), lived here for only a few months, but they've built up a wonderful museum around that theme, with some great paintings (including a really fine Quentin Metsys painting of St... Jerome, I think). Of course, they don't have the Holbein portrait of Erasmus, but they have copies, prints, first editions... also several prints/engravings of Thomas More, Erasmus's contemporary. The house itself is worth a look, being wonderfully preserved. I love those enormous ancient beams that look more like they're weighing down the roof than holding up the whole structure.

The garden is beautiful and peaceful, with leaf-shaped pools holding little metal letters spelling out Latin sayings like Festina Lente, trellises and structures designed by famous artists, and a Renaissance herbiary. I would have been glad to rest here, but it was onwards and upwards to see more of Brussels. Incidentally, Anderlecht is a fabulous place to get frites, real Brussels frites that are harder to come by in the shopping districts or even around the Grande Place. I saw shop after shop.

Chaucer who?

Head to Victoria Station in London, buy yourself a round-trip ticket on train or National Express bus, and you'll be in Canterbury in less than two hours. Canterbury is a cute little university and cathedral town, bustling with locals and tourists roaming the downtown shopping/eating district that abuts the huge cathedral.

In my England-is-a-theme-park mind, Canterbury has been good for one thing and one thing only: Thomas Becket, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury. This mostly has to do with the blithely erroneous movie that I've written about before. Aside from that amazing drama, I have a thing for Becket. He's one of the most opaque figures in English history, I think. Why, after all, the sudden switch in loyalties from Crown to Church? What deep-seated problems of conscience was he wrestling with? It's fascinated countless authors, including of course T. S. Eliot.

So you can well imagine how insanely excited I was to see the very spot where Becket was murdered, a place marked by the Chapel of Our Lady Martyrdom or some such slightly odd name, as well as this piece of jarringly modern art above the word THOMAS cut into the floor in red letters. Nothing remains of Becket's shrine, which held place of honor in the cathedral for generations until Henry VIII had it taken out and the bones pulverized. An archbishop who rebelled against his king? It's a wonder Henry didn't raze the cathedral to the ground.

The cathedral itself is huge and imposing from the slightly battered-looking outside, which is undergoing considerable restoration (you can sponsor a stone for five pounds a month). On the inside, its scale is mind-boggling but somewhat cut down by the choir screen and other edifices that rise within the cathedral itself; unlike, say, Chartres, you can't stand at the nave and get a sense of the entire cathedral. Instead, you end up processing it in parts. But they're great parts, which include the tomb of Edward the Black Prince and a colorful chapel devoted to the local regiment, which was decimated in a battle in India. A monument to the price of imperialism.

I skipped out on the cheesy Canterbury Tales museum in favor of hitting some of the outliers, including Saint Augustine's Abbey, where the saint is buried. Let me tell you, this was not the greatest. It's a field of grass with a few scattered ruins, so we didn't splash out the few pounds to go in. However, getting lost in residential Canterbury, we found a much better ruin: the Roman-built pumping station that used to pump water towards the Abbey. How many tourists find this, huh?


After a refreshing and abundant cream tea at a Tudor-era tea shop, the day ended with William the Conqueror's castle. I kid you not. Also ruined, as you might expect after 1000 years, but in much better shape than my guidebook had led me to believe; the walls still stand, and you can see the herringbone stone pattern of the fireplace niches and the zig-zag holes where the stairways were. Poking around, I discovered one reconstructed stairway that you can climb for a bit of a view. I don't know what was a bigger trip: walking in the cloisters that Becket once walked, or looking out the same window William once looked out over his newly conquered lands.

Unexpected treasures

Back from another little jaunt to Europe, this time including two new countries for me, Germany and Belgium. Greatly enjoyed both, but I'll start with ye olde England and the wonderful museuming I did there.

A little off the beaten path, the Wallace Collection near Bond and Oxford Streets was a real treasure trove. Collected by four generations of the Marquises of Hereford (hope I've got that right), the collection, which now belongs to the nation, is still housed in the family's house. It's like the Frick or Morgan in the US, so it's a mix of furniture and walls just covered in paintings. Also many cabinets housing Sevres porcelain and various objets d'art. I thought that my guidebook was being ridiculous when it said not to miss the snuffboxes, but actually, those were the most elaborate and unbelievably crafted snuffboxes you could imagine.

Paintings include a lot of old masters, some giant Rubenses and nine Rembrandts, only one of which has an attribution which has withstood all challenges. But even if you're picky and would only want to look at that one, it would reward your patience; it's of his only son who lived to adulthood, and who died not long after his marriage. The melancholy-looking Titus stares out from a typically dark and smoky Rembrandt background, and it's quite unforgettable. I actually don't know why it isn't the centerpiece of their collection, rather than Franz Hals' Laughing Cavalier (which is great too, of course). For that matter, you can't miss the famous Sully portrait of Queen Victoria looking over her shoulder as she approaches her throne in her crown and robe. I can't believe it's there and not in the National Gallery or, for that matter, one of the palaces.

No British museum would be complete without arms and armor, including a lot of fine Eastern arms and armor like the sword of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore who caused the British so much trouble. I love Mughal stonework and inlay; it's the best there is.

You can also visit some fine examples of it in the Victoria and Albert Museum, including Shah Jehan's cup. Tipu Sultan's 'music box' is also there, which shows a full-size tiger atop a British soldier. The music box plays the tiger's growls, and the soldier's arm flaps up and down.

This time, I actually ventured out of the Indian room at the V&A to their other amazing Asian rooms, and even trotted up the stairs to find the Great Bed of Ware, just an enormous Elizabethan bed from an inn in Ware that was so famous that Shakespeare alluded to it in Twelfth Night. The Tudor collection was fantastic, and included the Drake Jewel, a famous jeweled cameo that Elizabeth gave Drake at some point, and a patent of nobility signed by Henry VIII. I get such a kick out of seeing these things. I mean, something that Elizabeth I actually held. Commissioned. Handed to Francis Drake. Can't beat it.

Oh, and the museums are both free, which to an American is a real kick.

Too much Ivanhoe as a child

When one of my professors told me about a church in London that had effigies of Knights Templar on the floor, I had to find it the next time I was there. So on my first day in London, I grabbed my friend and headed off to find the appropriately named Temple Church, in the midst of the Inns of Court that feature in so many of the novels I love. These are the law societies in London, and you can still get a kick out of their very formal name plaques.

Temple Church is a relatively unassuming building, stone with a low round crenellated tower. Inside, it's a beautifully restored building with tons of new stained glass (to replace the WWII losses) and a ferociously loud organ for its small size--and, of course, the effigies, which date from the 12th-13th centuries, I think. Oddly enough, right next to the effigies are beautifully made casts loaned from the V&A, which is all very well, but I kind of don't see the point. The originals are still in great shape.

Around the nave are famous little grotesque heads. I was particularly taken by this one with the monkey chewing on his ear. They reminded me a lot of the grotesque wooden heads on the coffered ceiling of the royal throne room in Wawel Castle, Krakow, and that's a connection you don't get to draw every day.

Oh, and yes, it was in the Da Vinci Code, though I prefer to think more of the Knights Templar in Ivanhoe (though that was a bit earlier than this church) or of Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Unexpected castle

Still writing on the recent visit to Poland. My brother's girlfriend drove us around her village and the neighboring towns, including the Radziwill Castle where Chopin played, but I have to say that the most surprising thing was in her town, Sosnie, about an hour away from Wroclaw. As she drove to the church, she started to tell me an incredible story about the abandoned castle near the church, which belonged to a couple of nobles. They built this beautiful castle/mansion/hunting lodge, whatever you want to call it, covered with cork bark imported from Africa. And there they lived happily until the husband got in a duel because of a dispute over cards, killed his opponent, and had to flee to Africa, where he spent the rest of his life. (Belle Epoque era.)

I listened to this story with growing amazement, and it wasn't that I didn't believe her, but it didn't sink in until we looked at their tombstones behind the church. Sure enough, his indicated that he died at Aswan, Egypt. I suppose his body was shipped home.

The castle is all boarded up and in disrepair. It was used for a while as part of a school for foresters, but now it's empty. But you can see how amazing it is; we peered through one window to see this fresco on a wall, and you can see the beautiful wooden ceiling above it. Even the porches have custom tiling; I was amazed that it hadn't been pried up and carried off by now. It's for sale very cheap, but I can't imagine how much it would cost to fix up. With the story behind it, it would be worth it!

A quiet side trip

A detour from lovely town squares and church towers: my brother and I took the train out to Auschwitz-Birkenau for a day. Well over a million people were killed here during WWII: Jews, Poles, Roma/Sinti, and POWs. It's kind of surprising to see any grass and trees there; you'd think nothing would ever want to grow there again.

A tourism note first: if you go to Auschwitz, you MUST go to both I and II, or Auschwitz and Birkenau, as they are sometimes called. I'd actually suggest going straight out to Birkenau first and winding up at Auschwitz, in the museums, except that it might perhaps be emotionally exhausting. But Birkenau is huge, and it takes serious time to walk around. Budget accordingly.

My first thought upon seeing Auschwitz was one of genuine surprise. It looked so permanent; I couldn't believe that anybody would put that much work into planning a concentration camp. Then we found out that it used to be a Polish military barracks, which explains the brick buildings and windows. Some original signs are left, including of course the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work will make you free) over the gateway. Other small edifices have probably been rebuilt over the years, like the little hut where the SS officer could sit in the rain to take the interminable roll calls. Heaven forbid he should have to get wet.

Because the buildings are so solid, as you can see, most of the buildings are now set up as museums, one devoted to each nationality or ethnicity. We learned a lot from the Roma building, how even the assimilated bourgeois Roma were hunted down and taken off to the camps. One had fought in Rommel's army in Africa; the poor man died in Dachau, I think. The Jewish museum interestingly focused half on the devastation, going more for affect than education, but then half on resistance, which is an aspect I was not as familiar with. At Birkenau (often referred to as Auschwitz II), the prisoners managed to explode one of the crematoria. Letters were smuggled out, photos were secretly taken and buried in cans to provide some kind of future evidence, coded plans were circulated. The Yugoslav museum was like a paean to Tito and his partisans, who certainly played a key role in defeating the Nazis.

Birkenau is 3 km away, so if you didn't come with a tour bus, you can take the free shuttle between the two. Birkenau is more like I expected. The barracks were constructed out of wood, so only a row of them have been reconstructed on the one side; the women's side seem to have held up better or been reconstructed more fully. Acres and acres of chimneys, punctuated by the occasional watchtower, remain. This is where the bulk of the Auschwitz deaths took place. There were four crematoria, and I can assure you that it was a long march of death for the prisoners.

Another photo: the infamous watchtower, which you can now climb, though it's a little odd, I think, to get the SS-eye view of the camp. From there, you can see a lot of the grounds, though it's so vast that you can't see all the way out to Crematorium IV, for example, the one that was blown up by the prisoners (the others were blown up by the retreating SS). On the other side is farmland, and houses, though none too near. On the opposite side of the camp is the international memorial. Right outside the Birkenau gates are some tourist-friendly restaurants, of course.

My friend asked me whether people visiting were really emotional. Some were in quiet kind of way. Some were surprisingly smiley. And some were extremely inappropriately dressed, women stumbling around the rocky dirt paths of Birkenau in high heels and miniskirts. We met tourists from all over Europe and some Americans, though not many Asian tourists (not many in Poland yet).

Another day, another church tower

Going out of order here, but this is the last church tower I climbed in Poland, the morning of the day I left. This is St Mary Magdalen in Wroclaw, a slightly less visited church because it is not right on the Rynek. An imposing brick Gothic edifice on the outside, on the inside it exhibits the same stark splendor as most of the churches I visited in Poland. Very plain white walls with some brick detail on the vaulting, little or no stained glass. The altars were incredibly ornate, and so was the carving in the choir stalls, but I couldn't get close enough to really look closely. Nor would I really have the vocabulary to tell you about it if I had.

But I can climb. 5 zloty to climb the tower, less than U.S. $2.50. Do you see that little bridge connecting the two towers near the top? It's called the Penances Bridge, and you get to go out on it.

Of course, once you've climbed the last several flights of stairs that turn into those open metal grilles with no backs, and you can just look down at the cement stairs below that will kill you, and you start wondering when the last time is that that old priest walked up these stairs... Well, let's just say that it took me a bit of inching along till I really started walking out on the bridge (to right).

Was it worth it? Here's one of my photos from the top.

Krakow!

Hey all, I'm back from Poland and England! Poland was fantastic, or at least the various parts that I saw. They should provide blogging fodder for quite a while.

Let me start with Krakow, the first city I hit and the main tourist attraction of Poland. I quickly figured out why as I rolled my suitcase across the huge town square (Rynek) at 10:30pm, with the Cloth Hall, church, and other structures looming in the lights of the pubs and restaurants. At right is St. Mary's, which dwarfs the houses surrounding it.

My brother and other discerning travelers may turn their noses up at Krakow and its plethora of tourists, but it's nothing compared to NYC or Paris. Granted that RyanAir and other budget flights have brought in many fine young gentlemen from Britain looking for a cheap drunken weekend, it's still a gorgeous historical city with a fine museum, the Czartoryski (a noble family's private collection, kind of like the Frick or Morgan in NYC), that holds Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine. It also used to have a famous Raphael portrait of a young man, but it vanished during WWII and has never been seen since.

As you run around the streets of the old quarter, you find pubs, restaurants, clubs, hotels, shops... I don't know where the Krakovians live, but probably not many live in the old city. Still, I saw many elderly Krakovians enjoying a leisurely ice cream topped with mounds of whipped cream when I stopped into the Naber Cafe one afternoon. I had a luscious kremowka, which was pretty much a thick layer of puff pastry, an inch and a half of delicious light vanilla pastry cream, and another pastry layer on top. The old ladies covertly watched this strange Asian tourist girl hack away at it and decide that there was really no neat way to eat it; as an Edna Ferber character says in Dawn O'Hara, by all rights you ought to get in a bathtub to eat it, because as soon as you take a bite (or forkful, in this case), the cream all shoots out the other end.

Every street in the old quarter is charming. Here's a view of Ulica Florianska leading to the Florianska gate, the tower at the end. The kings used to enter this way on coronation day.