25. Germany Day 1

Ryanair.com is a cheap airline. They sell tickets for a pence or a few pounds. The taxes and fees are in addition. Our tickets to Frankfurt were £1.60 for the two of us. After the fees and taxes the cost was £87.04. That is still a good price. How do they stay in business? They charge for everything. Want to check a bag, have a coke, get on the plane as a priority seating (open seating)? All of that and everything else has a fee. In addition if you want to buy a scratch off ticket to win a million pounds or free air travel you can do that while in the air.

So although the flight was cheap there was a catch. The Frankfurt airport they fly into is Frankfurt Hahn airport. This Frankfurt airport is 77 miles from Frankfurt. We took an hour and 45 minute bus ride from the airport to the train station in Frankfurt.

Our hotel was right across the street from the train station. The Excelsior Hotel was nice. Large room at the back of the Hotel and was very quiet. We did not spend much time there. The Excelsior Hotel is the antithesis of RyanAir. They did not charge for anything extra. The Mini bar had sodas, juice, water and beer – free of charge. There were snacks in the lobby. They had a business center with eight computers plus places to plug in your laptop for internet, all free. Breakfast was also included.

After settling in the hotel we walked around the city area. Frankfurt is on the Main River. We walked over a very nice pedestrian bridge and down a park area by the river. It was a nice first evening in Germany.

Germany Day 2 Oktoberfest

The morning train from Frankfurt to Munich left at 6:56. It was dark for the first part and rainy enough for the second part of the three hour ride that it was difficult to see through the rain streaked windows. We also had aisle seats in a compartment with six seats and a table. That meant if I was to look out one side I might be mistaken for staring at one of the other passengers or perhaps worse I may have been thought to be reading some of the top secret emails and spreadsheets being displayed on the softly lit computer screens of our three piece suited traveling companions. The fact that I do not read German would, I am certain, elude them until after they beat me senseless in a fit of Bavarian rage. (Sorry about that. I have been reading a Dean Koontz novel.)

The point is I did not see a great deal on the train ride.

The train on the return trip enjoyed idyllic weather for late September in Germany. The sun was setting in a partly cloudy sky. We glided through green pastures with the occasional small town sprinkled in to break up the monotony of the pastoral landscapes.

It took a couple of towns before I could solve the puzzle of why the towns, while beautiful, had some quality that seemed just a bit a skew from what I was used to seeing in other places. The solution to the puzzle came to me.

Each small town had a church steeple rising up from somewhere near the town center. The houses and small apartment or duplexes were all lovely. Some were big and some small, some had large lots, some were sardine-like. Then it struck me. Every house, every church, everything in every town I saw for the first hour was painted the same shade of white. Usually the tile roofs (everyone I saw was tile) were the same color of red or brown; this varied in each town but within the town there was little variation in roof color.

What to make of this? I allowed myself to hypothesize:

1) There is one very large subdivision with very strict homeowner bylaws.
2) Walmart had a huge sale on white paint.
3) Keeping up with the Schmidt family has gotten wildly out of hand.
4) Social conformity is alive and well in the Bavarian countryside.
5) What are your theories?

Oktoberfest http://www.oktoberfest.de/en/index.php

We arrived in Munich and bought a map of the city and made our way the short distance to the Weisen area. We were not alone on this trip. The Weisen is a large park area with what they call large tents. They are really like park buildings with tent roofs. The floors are wooden. They have fancy decorations and are sponsored breweries.

Some of the tents are small holding 600 to a thousand people. Others hold over 9000 people inside with a few thousand more outside.

When we arrived at 11:00 after the short walk to the Weisen from the bahnhof (not to be confused with the flughofen or the busbahnhof) the tents were just starting to come to life. We had read the description on the internet of the various tents. Some were described as having young crowds with rock and roll music. Some were said to be family friendly. Some were said to have a mature crowd. We narrowed it down to two. We found one and it was open but there were only 500 or so people there at 11:30. We asked a nice lady if we needed reservations and she said the area in the middle near the band was open seating.

We selected a seat at one of the tightly packed long picnic table with benches. We selected one at the outside rail so one side did not have a bench but a railing next to it.

We had the table to ourselves until almost noon. That was when the crowds started arriving. A group 20 something men came in and sat next to us, one of them looked very suspiciously like England's Prince William. Does anyone know if he speaks fluent German?

The Real Prince William

People sit down and wait for the staff to bring you food and drink. You pay when they serve you. We had coffee and hot chocolate to start. Fortunately they had English menus with German subtitles so we could point and grin. Our waitress did not speak English but we had little trouble. We order our lunches. Penny had roast pork with potato dumplings and cabbage salad. The potato things were rather bland and the sauce over the pork was needed. The cabbage salad was very nearly coleslaw of sorts, not the creamy kind. I ordered the farmer’s lunch. It was meat, lots of meat with sauerkraut. There was roast pork, ham, pork sausage, and a liver dumpling. There was also bacon crumbled on the sauerkraut. It was very good. The liver dumpling was like an ice cream scoop of liverwurst. I have been known to eat and enjoy liverwurst. I ate every bite. I promised not to eat the rest of the day. I shattered that promise about three hours later.

The brass band began arriving just before noon. At high noon they began to omppapa. They played two songs and then took a break (must be some union rule). The break was short and then the music continued. We listened for a while and then sat out to explore the other 14 tents. We were able to go in and walk around the outside of the central seating area, which is generally surrounded on the outside by small (25-75 seats) box seating areas which are almost always reserved. In some tents all tables are reserved.

It was interesting to see the different characters of the tents. By 2:00 the crowds were packing in. By 3:00 it was difficult to swim through the sea of humanity.

The waitresses and a very few waiters were working very hard to keep people supplied with food and beer. You may have seen pictures of waitresses carrying 10 or 12 litter mugs of beer. They really do that. They have 4 or 5 in each hand and sometimes 1 or 2 mugs balanced on top of those. I did not see or hear any dropped mugs.

The patters of food were almost as impressive. There are big food prep areas on one side of the tents where large rotisserie cookers were cooking chickens, ducks, and pork. Picture the ovens at Sam’s cub that cook 25 or so chickens. Now picture those ovens on steroids where 100 chickens in each of 3 or 4 ovens are being cooked. There is a lot of food. Oktoberfest is about beer but it also about food.

The tent temperament is salient. Some tents were filled with young folks having noisy fun in their beer hats (those tend to be the non-Germans). Many of the Germans were wearing Heidi style clothing. This was men and women. Our friend at Harlaxton from Germany said that people can pay thousands of Euros for these outfits. Think of it like the people in Dallas or Houston who only pull out and wear their cowboy boots and hats when the rodeo comes to town.

Other tents were filled with a mature clientele. These tents all were having fun but the difference was you could hear the music above the conversation in some of the tents.

There is a traditional song to spur the sale of beer. Almost every tent played this 10 second song. German national law evidently requires those drinking beer to stand up, hold the mug in the air and when the music stops you clink your mugs together with all your friends and the take a big swig of beer. Some go on and finish the beer and the bang the table to order another.

We stopped and sat outside a small tent (1000) and had apple strudel with cream. It was very good. It was quiet outside and was fun watching people.

At the far end of the Weisen was a huge area with lots of rides. These were Six Flags kinds of rides, not your traveling carnival rides. I am not sure the wisdom of folks drinking lots of beer and then paying someone to spin you in circles or drop you from 6 stories in the air.

On our walk back to the train station we went to Beethoven square which was on Goethe Strada. We had thought that we might see a statue of one of these people but found only this lady. She does not look like I thought Beethoven would look.

We were standing looking around (looking lost) when a lady stopped and said something in German (shocking). I asked if she spoke English and she said a little. She thought we were trying to find the Weisen. We said we had just come from there and I asked her if this was Beethoven plaza and she said yes. “Where is Beethoven?” She laughed and said he wasn’t there and then said and Goethe is not here either.

Contest 1: What does this German word mean?







Contest 2: What is this guy doing? (I don't know the answer to this one.)





It was a good day.

24. London Weekend Sept 14-16

Go, GO, GO, Work, Work, Work, GO, GO, GO!

“The hurrieder I go the behinder I get.” At least that is what my mother used to say. It has been very true the last couple of weeks. I have been having lots of fun, working hard, seeing lots of things and have not taken the time to write in the blog.

Penny and I are in Frankfurt, Germany as I write this. I will try to quickly catch you up on the last two weekends and then we will try to keep up with Germany.

This may be brief (no applause, no applause) because I have slept several times since the events unfolded and when I sleep some creature enters my brain and gnaws on my memories. That at least is the story to which I am sticking

Penny and I went to London on Sept 14th to the 16th. We decided that we wanted to check out a few more things. The first lesson we learned was not to believe anything you read or indeed anything you hear. We both read and had been told that you could not get tickets to see the musical Spamalot at the half price ticket booth in Leicester Square. So believing this, we went to the theatre box office on Friday and bought tickets for Friday night. We got good seats on the main floor. We did, I think, get a better price than face value of the tickets. But then we walked to Leicester Square and they were indeed selling tickets to the show. We did not check where the tickets were located or how much they cost, preferring to believe that they would have been way in the upper balcony behind a large man with a hat who has season tickets.

Spamalot was a heck-of-a-lot like the movie Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, which is what it was. I had not seen the movie in years but most of the jokes came back to me. There were the knights that say NEEE, the knight being dismembered who keeps saying “tis only a flesh wound.” They were sent on a quest to find a shrubbery. But it was still fun for the most part. They did throw in highly stereotyped references which we were uncomfortable with to Jewish people and of course there was the obligatory gay knight. I felt pretty good about the overall experience until the next night.

On Saturday we decided to go see “The Lion King.” We started out at Leicester Square half price booth but could not get tickets. We walked to the theatre and we were able to get some tickets there. Now while this show was also based on a very familiar movie, I enjoyed this one far more than Friday’s theatre experience. Lion King was a beautiful and entertaining production. It is a musical (with all of the familiar songs) but it also is an elaborate dance production and an entrancing puppet show.

The characters almost all have puppet features. The adult lions had head dress masks that moved up above their heads at times and at other times with a head flick the mask would float down in front of their face as they made a particularly lion-like move or statement. The actor that played Pumbaa, the warthog, had a puppet warthog face that was huge and the actor was sticking out of the back and working the head (mouth, tongue) with his arms and hands. The giraffes were people in costumes with stilts on legs and hands. They used birds on strings that they spun above their heads. It was amazing how they drew you into viewing the animals and not the puppeteers/actors who were clearly visible at all times. At times they marched up and down the aisles of the theatre. The show was completely engrossing and very entertaining. I had a great time.

On Friday we spent some time at the National Portrait Gallery. It is a marvelous collection of (drum roll please…..) portraits. Many of them are well known figures British history. Henry VIII was there along with most everyone else you would know. But then there were lots of other folks who were not so well known but who were just as cool in their own ways. Unfortunately I did not take notes and my memory for names is abysmal. So you will have to go to their web site to get the story. http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp

On Saturday we went to the British Museum. We did the audio tours and that was very nice to hear about the highlights of the collection. We saw the Rosetta stone which was the key to decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphics because the stone had the same text in Greek, Latin and Hieroglyphics.






We also learned about the Elgin Marbles (which has nothing to do with a school yard and little glass balls). They are the marble carvings that were surrounding the top of the Parthenon in ancient Athens. The Parthenon was used as an ammunition dump in a war between people and consequently it was largely destroyed. A man by the name of Elgin got permission from the government to salvage and remove the stone carvings. He brought them to England and subsequently gave them to the British Museum. They are a marvelous work of art and hearing the details of the carvings (which never stick out more than a few inches from the flat surface of the stone) made me appreciate the skill in carving stone that was used.




Also at the Museum we got to see the traveling exhibit of the Terracotta Warriors of China’s First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi. It was only a few of the thousands of warriors they have uncovered in China. But they gave lots of information on how and why they were made. The why was the attempt at immortality on the part of the Emperor. He thought if he were buried with all of these clay warriors that somehow he would be taken care of in the afterlife. Check out this blog from my student who went to China and saw the whole army.

Rachel Vig’s blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-173822.html .

Then we came home to Harlaxton.

The following weekend we stayed at Harlaxton because (brace yourself) we actually had classes on Friday to make up for the classes we are missing on Thursday of this week. The Harlaxton weekend was pretty relaxed. We went to Grantham to the market on Saturday. We walked around and ate at a Thai restaurant that was pretty good. We saw some interesting folk. I was walking behind a man and a woman. They were both wearing leather clothes. He was toothpick thin and had on big black leather boots with spikes and skin-tight pants and shirt. He had chains and tattoos over all the skin you could see and long hair tied with a red and white bandana. He had chains hanging down. She had on a short skirt (leather), lots of tattoos and chains. They were quite the pair. And that was from behind. When they paused to look at something in a booth we walked by and I got a peek at their faces. They were at least 60 years old. Or maybe they were 40 and looked 60. But I do believe that they were in their late 20s or early 30 when the Beatles came on the scene and they were still lost in the 60s. They were cute.

We went to Church on Sunday at St. Wolframs Anglican church. It is the very large building in the center of Grantham. There were maybe 100 people there. Everyone I have talked to has said that England is becoming more and more a secular nation. Fewer and fewer people seem to go to church, especially the young people. There are some large evangelical churches but most folks are not interested in Christianity. England is a nation of immigrants and they have brought their religion with them. There are many Muslims and some are very radical in their anti anything but Muslim stances. One of the most radical, calling for violence and what not, is an Imam who is head of Mosque in Nottingham not very far from Grantham.

Student storys:

One of our WJC students hurt her foot by kicking her boyfriend in the shin when he was tickling her. I told him it was his duty to throw some soft part of his body in front of her foot if that ever happens again.

Tuesday we had a very drunk student in the cafeteria at 5:30 during dinner. She came back from town. I don’t know what the consequences were but Student Affairs took care of the matter.

On Wednesday all the students had their first British studies exam. They were pretty stressed. Before class one of my students was talking about Sir John of Gaunt. She was trying to find information in the text and could not find it by flipping the pages. I suggested she use the index. Voila!

Later at the late night study break in the cafeteria I asked another student, who had said she had been studying hard, if she knew who John of Gaunt was? They about had a panic attack wanting to know why I asked and if I knew anything about the test. I assured them I knew nothing about the exam.

Ray

23 Cambridge September 8

After leaving the cemetery there was little talking on the short ride to Cambridge. We were dropped off at one end of town and lunches were distributed. Cambridge University is unlike most American universities in that there is no central campus. Like most universities there are a number of colleges that comprise the university. At Cambridge each college is like a separate campus. They are self contained and have a large gate to enter the campus. This is also where they stop you and charge you a fee to go inside. We walked down King’s Parade, the main street, where the front gates of the oldest colleges are located. The back side of all these colleges is the bank of the river Cam. They cleverly do not have a foot path along side of the river. This prevents people from sneaking in without paying the entrance fee. It also makes riding down the river on a “punt” so that you can see the backyards of all the colleges more attractive. More on Punting will be forthcoming.

We decided to pay the fee and go in and see King’s College. Founded by King Henry VI in 1441, and thus we know why it is named so. Although all the building are old the most prominent building in the college and perhaps in the town, is the King’s College Chapel. It has been called perhaps the best example of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in England. What this means is that everything about the building seems to point straight up to heaven. This is true on the inside and outside.





Building a building in the 1400s was a slow process. Henry VI began the sponsorship and supervision of the Chapel building but he did not live to see the project completed. Henry VI was deposed by the son of his great great uncle who became king but that started the war of the roses. It was a mess! Here is the family tree, you figure it out?








Inside the chapel is a very large empty space with all the lines going straight up and down. It is so expansive that it has been called the “noblest barn in Europe”.

That description seems a bit harsh to me. It does not have the cross shaped floor plan that most churches and cathedrals have. It felt very different. Much of the decoration and carvings commemorate people and kings (like these Tudor roses of King Henry VI) and do not particularly point people to God.

The chapel was still being built when Henry VIII was king. In fact Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn are said to have carved their initials in the chapel. One of my colleagues said they saw them but I did not. This is particularly amazing since Henry and Ann were only married a couple of years before he had her head cut off for adultery. Ironic since Ann was carrying Henry’s baby before he was divorced from his first wife Catherine. Talk about your double standard.

The most fun activity of the day was watching the punters. Punts are basically Jon Boats with a flat deck on the end where a person stands with a long pole and propels the craft down or up the slow moving waters of the Cam. It appears to be great fun and they market this adventure feverishly all the way up and down the street. We were asked at least 15 times if we were interested in a “punt on the Cam”. You can rent the whole boat and take your friends. This is funny as it evidently is not as easy as it looks to get that little water craft going in a somewhat straight line. If not for the snail like pace of these boats the bumper car punts would have been dangerous. But as it was there was a lot of good natured taunting of the nautical skills of all of the amateurs.

The smart ones (or perhaps it is the wealthy ones) bought a ride in a punt that was professionally propelled by young “Cambridgeiens.” This comes with a history lesson of Cambridge and the colleges along the Cam. Standing on one of the bridges you could catch snippets of the history as the boats passed under the bridge and if you were not careful you might get poked in the eye with a long pole as they pulled it out of the water and raised it in the air just as the punt passed under the bridge. The pole would suddenly come popping up over the bridge rail on which we were leaning. This surprised me at first.

The punters were quite the variety. There were families.

There were professional punters who evidently were a bit ashamed of their profession and wore a mask.

There were lazy male chauvinist pig punt riders or perhaps it was liberated female punter.

There was a confluence of amateur punters which resulted in a near log jam.

Then there was the walk down memory lane punters. The ties are an indication that they attended one of the colleges at Cambridge in the distant past and they were here to relive their glory days. Well done.

A bride and groom were having their pictures taken on the Mathematical Bridge. This bridge was supposedly designed by some famous mathematician in such a way that no bolts or nails were needed to hold it up. One punt guide was heard saying that one of the rumors as to why it now has bolts was that the Queen was coming to walk on it and they did not want to take any chances.

On the way home on the Coach we saw a very unusually dressed motorcyclist following what appeared to be a Mary Kay consultant.

It was a good day.

Ray

22 American Cemetery in Madingley September 8

Is the phrase “no rest for the weary” or “no rest for the wicked”? Either way probably fits me. After a long day in Lincoln we slept in our bed and after breakfast we set out again. This trip was to the university city of Cambridge.

As we drove into Cambridge we paid a visit to the American Cemetery in Madingley, England. With a bus full of 19 and 20 year old kids I was not sure what connection they would have with a war that was waged some 60 or so years ago. But it was a very moving experience. Our bus pulled in along with a slow parade of other tour buses. There was almost no talking and when people did speak it was in hushed tones. Let me share with you as we experienced it. We walked around and we read.

If you cannot read this try this link to see bigger pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/doc4wjc/MadinglyAmericanCemetary/photo#s5110909528091819138

Ray

21 Lincoln September 7, 2007

Lincoln September 7, 2007



Last evening (Thursday 9/13) the faculty gathered in the Vander Elst room (I will try to tell you about her a bit later) for a Seminar. That is code for a party. Several times a semester the visiting faculty hosts an evening of conversation, food and drink for the British faculty. It was a fun evening with conversations ranging from the virtues of vodka soaked gummy bears to the university system in Romania. At one point someone mentioned and most everyone agreed that it feels to most everyone that we have been at Harlaxton for a life time.

Time goes extraordinarily fast for something that seems to crawl at a slug’s pace at times. Somehow it did not get around to blogging about last weekend and I am writing this on Friday (9/14) at 11:39 on a train to London. This trip was a trip to begin with and I might as well fess up to that at this point in time rather than putting off the telling until it comes in the proper sequence. I might conveniently forget to confess at some point in the future.

We had train reservations for London at 10:36. There are shuttles that convey folks the 3 miles from Harlaxton to Grantham several times in the mornings. One is scheduled for 10:10. Penny had talked to the driver and learned that the traffic in Grantham was backed up and that it was iffy as to our making the train. This was about 9:15. Now we are faced with a decision. Do we risk the shuttle or do we walk. I weighed the possibilities and made the decision. It was the wrong one. Not a disastrously wrong one but a highly inconvenient wrong one none-the-less. We walked. By the time we left it was 9:30, plenty of time to make the walk if you run or least if you walk briskly.

Huffing, puffing and dripping we trudged on to the train station. We were passed by the shuttle from Harlaxton as we were very near the station. We did arrive at 10:32 for our 10:36 train. We had time to sit and catch our breath before the train arrived. Indeed we had time to write the great American novel before the train arrived because it was delayed. We are not on our train. We were advised that the next train was at 11:07 and the one after was at 11:14. The advice was to let everyone else from our train get on the 11:07 and then wait for the next train a few minutes later and get on that one. It worked and here we are. Most everything else this morning has gone well, most everything but not all things. I did manage to put the water bottle in a bag on top of our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches resulting in compacted sandwiches. The paper bag the sandwiches were in was also damp seeing as how I did not get the cap back on the water bottle in a secure fashion. I must say that the sandwich were still exquisite. Penny made the sandwiches and she actually used peanut butter. The cafeteria people either do not understand the concept of PB&J or they were raised during the rationing years of WWII. They spread the peanut butter on the bread in such a way that the thin layer of peanut butter turns the bread only the palest shade of beige. Scotland Yard detectives are required to locate the jelly.


But I digress. Let’s talk about Lincoln, England. The entire college took a school field trip to Lincoln last Friday. Lincoln is one of the oldest cities on the island. There is evidence of a settlement here long before the Romans arrived in Brittany in the centuries following the birth of Christ. Lincoln has preserved its history very well. There are Roman arches, walls and roads. There is a great Cathedral that has been built over the centuries by expanding and incorporating and expanding again the previous houses of worship that have stood on the sight.




There is also a medieval castle that has been around since the time of the Normans or earlier.




It is still in use as regional court house and there were armored vehicles ferrying prisoners from their abodes to appear in front of the magistrates while we were visiting.


We arrived in Lincoln and the students gathered around their sign holding pre-designated leaders who would show them around. Penny and I chose to tag along with Dr. Edward Bujack. Dr. Bujack is a Historian who is evangelical in his zeal for History. He was a blast.


Our first stop, however, was not with Bujack but at the Castle. We were escorted around the castle which served as a prison for many years including much of the 18th and 19th centuries. The prison philosophy at that time was to totally isolate prisoners from contact with any other person. They lived in individual cells with no way to talk with other.




The exception was for a condemned person. On the night before execution he or she was allowed to sleep on a real bed. I doubt many people slept much.



They were led out daily to an exercise yard with bags over their heads and holding on to a knot on a long rope that prevented them from touching anyone else.



Daily trips to chapel were accomplished the same way and they were escorted into small upright chambers (called coffin chambers) where they stood and listened to a preacher.


Our next venue was an escorted tour of the Lincoln cathedral.

Dr Bujack brought the past into the presence of his students and for me as well. He stopped as we entered and said to look around at the beauty and grandeur.




We were awestruck. Then the lesson begins. Dr Bujack: That is what most people see. If you want to know the history you have to look at the details. How do you think they paid for all of this? No one answered. The same way they pay for things now. Corporate sponsors. Look there on the ceiling. That is the name of the man who gave a lot of money to build this building.

He then took us to one of the columns holding up the roof and found a wooden trap door in the floor right next to it. He lifted it up and said this is the base of the column for the Norman Church that was here before the 1300s. A stone mason cut and smoothed that column with hammer and chisel. Put your hand here. 700 years ago someone else’s hand was feeling that very stone to see if he had smoothed it enough. Put your hand where his was.







Look here at this carved stone wall.





What is unusual about this? This is the old catholic screen that separated the people from the alter where the priests would have been. It should not be here. Look around at the rest of the cathedral. Do you see any icons? Are there any statues of the Virgin Mary? No, Look here where during the reformation they came in with sledge hammers and knocked all of that stuff down.



But for some reason they decided not to knock down this wall.


Who was the man who carved all of these figures from the stone? What did he look like? Well maybe we can know. Look at this one. It has a human face and by his ear are the tools of a stone mason. Perhaps he carved a self portrait.



Now look at the windows.



Then look at the beige wall. Why are the windows so bright and the wall so plain? But look closely at this beige wall. It was not always so. This wall like the windows was once alive with color.




The medieval world was a visual one. Most of the people could not read nor write so pictures in stone, wood and glass told stories.

What do you suppose they were trying to teach in this tomb carving of a great bishop who died during the apocalyptic time of the black death.





In life he was a great man with wealth and power but when he dies his body rots along with his possessions. It is best to store up for yourself treasures in heaven rather than rely on this life which can be over in a heartbeat.

Look up at the ceiling can you see where they added on to the church? It did not quite line up with the old church as well as it might have. Oh, well, close enough.




Do you suppose other tour groups have been through this building? Look what othesr have left behind as they toured the church.



When we went into the chapter room it looked like there were these great old wall painting.


But it turns out that these were not on the wall but on canvas that was hanging on the walls. It turns out that when they were filming a scene in the Divinci Code that was supposed to be in Westminister Abbey that they could not get permission to film there. They asked Lincoln and they said yes. So they hired a reformed art forger who painted these scenes to mimic what was in another location (or at least what Hollywood thought it should look like.

While Dr Bujack was talking to the students I was chatting with one of the curators. When Dr Bujack asked if there were questions I asked why they called it a Chapter room? He said he did not know. I said I did. It was because when they called a meeting in the room they always began by reading a chapter from the Bible.

Outside the cathedral, students got an object lesson on how they could have such big stain glass windows and yet not have the walls fall down. It was the invention of the flying buttress that supported the walls from outside.









We then walked around the city and found evidence that long before the cathedral was built that the Romans were here. This arch was in the North wall of the city and the road that went under this arch went straight to London and then by boat they would cross the channel. There the road continued and went across the Alps and then straight to Rome.




The directions were easy. How do you get to Rome? Take this road and when you see the Coliseum you are there. This is history. Touch the stone, be the stone. Feel history.




And now for a closing contest. Who lives on this lane?




Ray