27 Germany Day 3

Saturday Rhine River Crusie

Generally if Penny and I gamble with the weather we lose. This time we won the bet. (This was a thrill, but not so thrilling as to make it tempting to duck in to the “mini-casino” we saw. I am not sure if there were fewer crap tables or the ones they had were itty bitty.)

We looked at the weather for Friday and Saturday. Both days were rainy but Saturday had less of a chance and we opted to cruise the Rhine on Saturday. The weather was gray with occasional spots of sunlight.

The day was trains, boats and more boat. Our first transportation task was to figure out the Frankfurt subway. We were to travel to our first train change by subway. The subway (S-Bahn) turned out mostly to be a supraway. It was underground for only a few minutes and then it became a regional train as we emerged from the tunnel into the suburbs. Most subways we have been on around the world require a ticket to get through the turnstiles to gain access to the trains. The ones in Frankfurt are like the trains, you just walk on. We were told by the nice man at the ticket counter in the main train station that a conductor would check our tickets, but no one did. People got on and off with no one checking. The same thing happened on all our trips on Saturday, including a bus. We got on a city bus and paid the fare to the driver for the trip to the train station. But as we rode people got on and off without paying. I think Germany has a law that only people carrying a camera have to pay.

We had decided to catch the boat in Bingen because the man at the info place said that in the city we were thinking about starting our cruise (Mainz) the train station was a long way from the pier. In Bingen the peer was right across from the station.

Right across is only a description that is helpful if you remember to ask “right across what?” The lady at the Bingen train station directed us to cross the Rhine River and then turn left.

We started out and were soon joined by a young oriental couple who were clearly as confused about what left to take on the other side of the bridge as were we. The river bank was not easily seen from our street position. By this point in our travels I am growing less and less likely to just wonder around trying to figure it out without stopping to ask directions. The problem is that the route we were on had few people to ask. I spotted three men near a building and showed them my brochure and looked lost. (I did not start looking lost at that point. I merely continued looking lost.) It was pretty clear that the one I was closest to did not know.

When I said boat another in recognition said "boat!, that way and left." As I walked away he laughed and said to his companions "I speak English, Yah?" and then they all laughed.

The oriental couple and I saw a large boat and headed to it - wrong boat. Down the river some more we went. We made it to the correct peer a full 5 minutes before the boat arrived.

The boat is very large and very crowded. There are two inside restaurant sections with table clothed tables. There were almost no empty seats and those that were empty had reserved signs on them. We found a table that did not have a sign and sat for a few minutes before someone informed us that it was reserved despite the lack of a sign. We moved to the top opened deck.

There were white plastic chairs stacked in the middle and tables around the edge. The weather was chilly but not at all miserable with the breeze blowing. The boat cruised fairly quickly downstream but not fast enough to blow people and chairs over the side (never saw this actually happening). We unstacked some chairs and placed them in a strategic location so that we could see both sides of the river and where I could pop up and down like a jack-in-the-box and take photos.

The river was magnificent. The towns and villages were lovely. One particular town had a row of houses that looked as if they had been transported from Bergen, Norway (see the previous blog). That is not terrible surprising since the houses in Bergen were built by the German Hanseatic League who settle in Norway back in the 14th century.

Around every other bend in the river was a castle or a castle ruin. The castles were built at a time when Germany was not one nation but rather some 300 independent nations (all rather small). They built these castles along the Rhine and would put chains across the river. When boats would come by they would have to pay a toll or tax before the chains were dropped and they could sail on down to the next castle and pay again.

Penny went down to order us some lunch as I remained up top and did my photographic duty. She ordered me the special dinner and a diet coke. When they brought the food there was a diet coke and a beer. She said she did not order a beer and they said it is comes with the special dinner. (More on Penny the alcoholic later.)

The food was very good. Penny had spicey pork and french fries while I had sausage and potato salad. I think I like German food.

A young lady from Texas joined us at our table and we chatted with her. She is an accountant and her company sent her to Germany for 4 months. She was about at the end of the time. She said she really enjoyed her time in Germany. I only spent a few days here but have found that it is a delightful people and a lovely country.

While we were sitting there chatting we passed the Loreley. This is a big rock (450 feet high). It is in a part of the river just downstream from some reefs. Many medieval ships never made it past the reefs and they blamed it on a blond woman who lured them to their deaths. We did not see a blond woman (in the water) but it is a large rock. You have never seen so many people taking so many pictures of a rock. (I was one of them.)

At St. Goar (more on that below) the boat stopped and 85% of the people got off. The next hour and a half or more we had plenty of room. We went down and sat inside. I still ran out to take pictures. In one of my photo excursions I noticed that the other end of the boat was the nonsmoking section. We moved.

The German people are all going to die of cancer from smoking or second hand smoke. It has been so pleasant in England. England passed a national law that bans smoking in every public building. German has just passed a no smoking law for the trains but not for anywhere else. The restaurants do not have no smoking sections. Our boat was the only place I saw that had a no smoking section while in Germany.

We sat inside and ordered ice cream and I took pictures. It was very pleasant. There was a door to the deck right by our table.

We arrived at our departure point, the city of Koblenz. We exited the boat and took a city bus (the one we paid for and no one else did) to the train station. We caught a train that followed the river, back tracking the path we had taken in the boat. It was interesting to see the back yards of the houses along the river.

In St. Goar we stopped to see Burg Rhienfels. (A Burg is a defensive castle while a Schloss is a showplace castle.) We took the Tschu-Tschu (tram) up the very steep hill to the castle ruin. They charge you to get in and give you a map. We took our Rick Steve guide and followed the directions and read the information.

It was interesting to learn about the toilet that hung over the outside wall. This may have discouraged people from trying to scale the wall at that point.

At other places in the wall they had installed large trough like openings. The inside was wide and the outside opening was kind of narrow. If people were attacking they would pour boiling pitch down these troughs. Ouch.

We did not see the mine tunnels that are only a few feet high and muddy. They built the tunnels under some fields that are just outside the walls. That side of the castle is the only real approach to the walls as the other sides are very steep or on the river side. What the plan was (and used once) was to pack the tunnels with gun powder and if the enemy gathers in the field you blow them up. It evidently worked against some Spanish invaders in 1626.

The other interesting event at the castle was a wedding. As we were on top of the castle we looked down at a hotel near the foot of the castle and saw a wedding party getting into a convertible. A bit later they were going into the castle when we were leaving. There was a large interior room that had used candles and heaters and lights. We are not sure if they had their wedding somewhere else and were just taking photos or if they were married earlier in the castle.

Here is a little German Medeival Bathroom humor.

We went back and took the train back into Frankfurt where we had decided to go for Chinese food. We had planned to go to a restaurant that we had seen on our first night in Frankfurt but as we crossed the street from the station we saw a nice Chinese restaurant on the corner. It was on the first floor which in Europe is really the second floor. We found a very lovely wood paneled restaurant. We sat down and soon discovered that we had stumbled on the Chinese Cheers. Several large family groups arrived and were having a great time. Almost everyone in the place was oriental but us.

Penny suggested that we order the dinner for two which included 4 different main dishes, eggrolls, fried bananas and “espresso." The eggrolls were the size and shape of a hot pocket from the freezer section and very good. The main courses were duck, pork, chicken and beef. Then they brought the fried bananas and the “espresso.” The bananas were what we expected but the “espresso” was a confusion of some kind. They brought us plumb wine. My wife, the teetotaler, managed to order booze for us twice in the same day.

On Sunday we took the bus back to the “Frankfurt” airport (the one that is almost two hours away). We were in line checking in and saw 4 of our students who were on the same flight.

We got to visit with them for awhile and heard their adventures. They had been in Fussen in southern Germany where Mad King Ludwig’s castle is located. Neuschwanstein Schloss is the castle that Walt Disney used as a model for Cinderella’s castle. They had a good time there. But when they went to find their hostel it was not as convenient to the train as they had thought. They got off at the train stop and it was about 10:00 in the evening. The small town was closed. They did get directions from a local saying it was close and started to walk down the road. They stopped a bit down the road to confirm that they were headed in the right direction and a woman told them it was too far to walk and that her husband would drive them. He pulled around in a van and they said they had visions of never being seen again. But he was a very nice man and took them to their hostel. At the hostel they could not find a manager to let them in to the room. When they final got someone they did not have a reservation. They showed them the receipt where they had paid and they found that they had paid for the next day because that had put 1:00 AM on Saturday when they were arriving Friday. It worked out and they did have a place to sleep. The next day they went to the train station and one of the girls found she had left her purse (not passport) in the van the previous day and she was very upset. But fortunately the nice little old man noticed the purse and drove back to the hostel but the girls were already gone. They had left their contact information at the hostel and they called her to let her know it had been turned in. And then the lady at the hostel even drove back to the train station to return it to the girl when she took the train back to retrieve it. It is nice when you have it confirmed that there are nice people everywhere you go. Normally you only hear about the other kind.

Our train back to Grantham from Stansted was really two buses. They frequently work on the tracks on weekends and use buses instead. Our timing was pretty good and we got back pretty quickly.

We had a very good experience in Germany and I highly recommend you all go there.

Ray

26 Germany Day 2

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Ray and Penny Owens are Extreme Tourists! After the day at Oktoberfest we spent a couple of hours in the hotel business center where we can plug our computer in or use their computers. They have no free wireless. Then off to bed.

We were up at 6:00. But only because I miss set my alarm. Penny sat hers for 6:30. You need every minute of sleep when your mission for the day is to conquer 15th century Germany.

On the train we sat in a compartment with a very nice man who is a history PhD. He said he works at a museum. I got most of what he was saying about the museum but am not certain if it a mining museum or whether it is just located in an abandoned mine. He did talk about other mines in other places.

He was on holiday to Eastern Europe. He was traveling by bus, train, and bicycle. He had his bicycle with him, folded up to a hanging bag sized bag that tripped all the suitcase rolling tourists getting on the train. His bike was sitting in the hall outside our compartment.

Our trip to Rothenburg required two train changes. Each change was to a smaller regional train. Do not think that more local people were riding these smaller trains. They were filled with tourists. This small town of 3000 or so has 2.5 million tourists each year. Not all of them were there on Friday.

Rothenburg is a medieval walled city, well mostly walled. One side presently does not have a wall but it does have a very steep drop on that side of the city. That should discourage any marauding bands of Japanese tourists from storming the city from that side of town.

Most of the buildings in the old part of town were built by 1400. It was a lovely town. It was fairly quiet on Friday. This was possible due to the end of the summer season but also because of the rainy, cloudy day.

We had a hard time finding the tourist information center. The large blue “I” in Rothenburg is a small brown “I”. We were told that there was an English tour of the town at 2:00 but at that time it was raining so we opted to let Rick Steves be our tour guide.

The market square was square-ish but the one stand with wet vegetables and souvenirs hardly qualified it as a market.

We went to St. Jakob’s Church which was built in the 14th century and has been a Lutheran Church since 1544. The stained glass windows behind the altar are the originals from 1330’s.

The altar at the front of the church is from 1546. The paintings on the altar are unusual. Peter is depicted reading a Bible (a book) and using spectacles.

Also at the front is a second alter that is even older and has a statue representing the trinity. The Holy Spirit is represented by a dove bridging God and Jesus. Jesus is standing on a skull, showing that Jesus has overcome death.

In the back of the church is a glorious 35 foot high wood carving by Tilman Riemenschneider carved from 1499 to 1504. It takes time to do great art. It was originally built to hold a rock-crystal capsule that held a scrap of table cloth that was miraculously stained in the shape of a cross by a drop of communion wine. The attention to detail in the carving is impressive.

Outside the church was an apple tree with fruit laying on the ground most of which had been smashed. A father and his 2 year old son walked by and the kid seeing the fallen apples turns to his Dad and asks "Das ist kaputt?

We ate lunch in a Rick Steves recommended restaurant. He was dead on. Burgerkeller is a small cellar one flight down from the main street. Harry Terian is the owner and was a delight. We arrived and there was one other couple was eating lunch. While we were there two men came in and had a coke and a beer. Business was slow today. According to Harry, the weather was to blame. He was hoping for good weather next week which is a holiday weekend and perhaps there will be big crowds.

The dining area is a half barrel shaped room with dim lights and wonderfully decorated tables. The walls had medieval paintings on them.

Harry spent most of the time talking with the German couple or to us. He had “oldies” music playing. I told him I liked his music and he stopped for a second to listen and said, “Ah, The Mammas and Pappas, jah?”

I ordered a beef and noodle soup and sausage, mushrooms, boiled potatoes all in a cream sauce. It was delicious. The mushrooms were wonderful and a variety that I had not seen before. The sauce was sinfully rich. Penny had fried pork with homemade noodles in a sauce with a green salad.

The meals were the best we had in Germany. But the pièce de résistance were the WCs (restrooms) which were upstairs in the back. They were immaculate and looked like something from a current magazine layout. When traveling you learn to appreciate good restrooms.

Our next stop was the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum. Housed in two large buildings, it contains all kinds of items dealing with the legal system. Torture was evidently not thought of as a human rights issue. It was part of the court system. They had books that described the proper use of thumb screws for example. Rather than trying to describe this let me show you a few pictures.

This is a witch catcher. This is on a long pole and you shove this around the neck of a witch and you can keep her away from you while you haul her in.

This giant rosary was hung around the neck of people just inside the church if they skipped church (everyone had an assigned pew to sit in so they could tell if you were not there) or worse if you were there but fell asleep.

These are shame masks. If you violated a law, the court could assign you to wear these around town. One of them had a whistle in it so that when you breathed it made a noise so people would notice you. Slightly more intusive than a dunce hat.

This is a Medieval chair designed for torture but could be used as a recliner to discourage too much TV watching.

This is a book describing the proper use of thumb screws. All of these things were used by the courts.

This is a mouth pear. Evidently you stuck it in someones mouth and when you tightened the end the bottom spead out and stretched the mouth. To what purpose? You obviously are not going to get a confession from someone with that in their mouth.

After the Crime and Punishment Museum we went into a Christmas store. We were trying to find a Christmas museum but failed. The store was huge and crowded with merchandise. They were very proud of their Christmas items. Small China made wooden tree decorations (the kind you would see at Michaels or Walmart for 99 cents) were selling (but not to me) for 4 and 5 Euros ($5.50 to $7.00). Some of the fancier wooden candle twirlly spinny things were marked at 500 Euros. We did not buy anything.

After the Christmas Stores we climbed up and took a walk on the top of the city wall which is covered and thus a good thing to do in the rain. There were just a few people also walking in the opposite direction that required our squeezing by each other.

The inside of the covered walk is open to the city center and allowed peering down on everyone’s back yards. The outside rock wall has viewing holes periodically that allow photography by the people living in 1540 (okay, maybe it was for shooting arrows). Today they have stone plaques all along the wall with the names of people that provided money for the restoration and upkeep of the wall. They gave a €1000 per meter of wall. Some had 1 meter some had 5 or 10 meters. The names were from all over the world including the US but most were from Germany.

After the wall it was still raining and we decided to catch an earlier train to start back to Frankfurt. That would allow us to get off in Wurzburg and have about 2 hours to see some of the city immediately around the train station and find something to eat. The street across from the station looked promising but it was full of nice shops but not many places to eat. A trip down a side street brought us to a pub kind of place. The menu on the door looked like good prices and the sign saying “we speak English” sealed the deal.

We walked in to a small room with a dozen tables and room for maybe 50 people if every chair was filled. In the corner was a long table with a family of 8 or so adults and kids who were laughing and playing “Rook.” We sat down at a table, the English speaking waitress came and offered us English menus. Penny asked for hot chocolate and she grabbed a table card and began to describe the 15 different kinds of hot chocolate they served. She brought us our chocolate and we sat and sipped after ordering our food. As we sat there the place began to fill up. The family reunion added another 5 or 6 people and as they came in there were hugs all around (including the waitress). Other couples came in and everyone seemed to know everyone. We had stumbled into the German Cheers! It was fun.

Part of the fun was watching the kitchen staff of 3 preparing the meals through a slide up window where they passed orders and meals. It was like watching a cooking show on TV with pots flying, flip-stirring the content and pouring in some flammable liquid and then sloshing a bit over the side to flame the sauce and watching the flames leap high in the air nearly setting fire to the chef’s hat.

As they began to serve the meals to the family (one at a time) timing became a worry. We had reservations on a train and had a 15 minute walk or a 10 minute dash back to the station.

The food arrived and we paid at that point. We ate rather quickly. That was a bit of a shame because the meal was again very good. We dashed the 4 or six blocks to the train station and had six minutes to spare.

It was a good day and food, restaurants and people were a highlight.

Ray

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