Why We are Late Posting Blogs

Bill writes: Sometimes Grommet suggests, not so subtly, that we stop using our laptop computer and pay attention to him instead.



And if we still don't pay attention, he gives us the evil eye.



Anyone have the number of a good cat exorcist in London?

Waiting my turn...

Aline writes: I didn't realize how accustomed I had become to English ways until I went to Belgium. At the Belgium train station, I was completely horrified when someone cut in front of me in a line. Two things amazed me. First, it made me realize that virtually no one does that in England (in fact the only time I have heard an English person publicly remonstrate a stranger was when they mistakenly "jumped the queue"). The second is both how inconceivable it was to me that someone would jump the queue, and the strength of my reaction to it, when only 3 months ago this was a common occurence in my life.

As I waited in line today to get a ticket (more people in line than available tickets) I noticed that people would take their place in line, and then sit to the side (more comfortable) out of line, confident that when the line began to move they could take their rightful place in line again. How civilized!

It all reminds me of one stanza from a long poem by Alice Duer Miller, The White Cliffs, written from the point of view of an American woman living in England during the world wars:

The English love their country with a love
Steady, and simple, wordless, dignified;
I think it sets their patriotism above
All others. We Americans have pride—
We glory in our country's short romance.
We boast of it and love it. Frenchmen when
The ultimate menace comes, will die for France
Logically as they lived. But Englishmen
Will serve day after day, obey the law,
And do dull tasks that keep a nation strong.
Once I remember in London how I saw
Pale shabby people standing in a long
Line in the twilight and the misty rain
To pay their tax. I then saw England plain.

This Building Makes Me Nervous

Bill writes: I don't ever want to walk under this building. That's all I have to say.

If it's Tuesday, this must be... (Part 1)

Aline writes: On August 4 we took the Eurostar through the Chunnel to Brussels. The Eurostar train is amazing: inside it’s a typical train, but it operates at almost two hundred miles an hour and feels as smooth as – well, you supply the simile. Just over 2.5 hours from London to Brussels, and only 20 minutes of popping ears through the Chunnel. We were delayed in Brussels due to a bomb scare when the station was evacuated; it gave us a chance to practice our pathetic French by ordering lunch at a café. We heard a muffled boom as we ate across the street, probably an abandoned package/luggage being destroyed. The station was reopened, and we took our short train ride to Bruges.

Bruges is a town untouched by time (except for the hordes of tourists like us). It’s small, but packed with interesting medieval architecture and beautiful canals. For example, this is the Market square, which reminded us of Sienna.



It's even lovelier by night





There was also another square close by called the Burg, which was smaller but charming; it included the fascinating church The Basilica of the Holy Blood.



Since we were in Bruges on a Friday, we visited the church during the weekly “veneration of the blood,” where worshippers can touch a vial holding a few drops of holy blood, brought back from the first crusade. Being raised a protestant, I wasn’t comfortable participating, but it was fascinating to watch.

There was also The Church of Our Lady, which was lovely.


We heard a choir concert there, but my favorite part was the medieval tomb paintings that they uncovered in the crypt when doing some construction work. They were remarkable with paintings of Mary, Jesus, and decorative figures. Amazingly, each tomb had to be painted within one day, since they were fresco and burial in medieval times had to be quick.





I love any town with water, and Bruges has plenty of beautiful canals. We took a cruise around the canals on one of these boats


and saw the medieval buildings from a new perspective.





Here is a close-up of an ornament on one building - the detail on these buildings is amazing!



This reminded me of Venice!



The cruise took us all the way down to the lock



We were lucky enough to see a wonderful outdoor concert in the Burg square, a Portland-based band Pink Martini. I liked them so much I bought their 2 cds when I got back to London!



Bruge was a foodie’s paradise, with waffle stands where you can get hot sticky waffles plain (the way we had them), with fruit and ice cream, or with chocolate


There were multiple chocolate shops on every block, too. It was overwhelming for a chocolate lover like me. But I limited my tasting to 3 different shops… all were delicious in different ways.

But we didn’t spend all our time eating! We also found time to see two museums: The Groeningen with art by Bosch and van Eyck, and the Gruuthusee, a 15th century palace with period furnishings. Both were wonderful collections for such a small town.

OK, now a quiz. We saw this sign in several streets in Bruge. Does it mean no children? Any ideas, let me know!!

If It's Tuesday, this must be... (Part Two)

Bill writes: After Bruges we took the train to Brussels, where we arrived later that afternoon. Brussels is a much more modern, industrial city than Bruges, and unfortunately, they have torn down much of the finest, oldest parts of the city to make way for the (uglier) newer parts. This is one of the few survivors from the art nouveau.



Fortunately, some of the old remains, and that is mainly what is worth seeing in the city.

Aline had found us a great little hotel, called the Welcome Hotel. It is small, but each room is individually, uniquely, and beautifully designed. As we'd almost run into the travel writer Rick Steves in Bruges the day before, so it turned out that he was friends with the owner (who we got to know during our short stay there) and had a room in the hotel as well. Our room was the Bali room for instance, and you can get a bit of an idea of what it looked like.



Once we finished checking in, we took a long walk through the city. Across the street, a fair was going on, featuring dancers and various performers from Bolivia



And eventually had dinner at Cochon d'Or. This was a restaurant that Michael, the hotel's owner had suggested to us. He'd been a top chef before opening the hotel, and picked this restaurant for some of the best mussels in town. As they were just two doors down, eating there was an easy decision, and a good one, as their Mussels Provencal with pomme frites (french fries--mussels and fries are a national dish) was one of the best dishes I'd ever eaten. Of course, we had to walk it off afterwords, getting some coffee and then some beignets at a small stand.



The next morning, our final day in Belgium, we headed out for a long day of sightseeing. One thing I'd read about, but which was still a bit of a culture shock, was something I noticed as I walked by Saint Catherine's cathedral, across from our hotel: some men walked up along the side of the cathedral, turned to the wall, and relieved themselves there against the cathedral. The side wall of Saint Catherine's is actually an open air public urinal, with urinal dividers built into the wall. I didn't grow up catholic, but I'd sort of assumed that peeing on a cathedral had to be some kind of sin. But I guess it's not, which makes it doubly a relief I suppose.

The next morning, our final day in Belgium, we headed out for a long day of sightseeing. The first thing I noticed was as I walked by Saint Catherine's cathedral, across from our hotel. One thing I'd read about, but it was still a bit of a culture shock, was when I saw some men walk up along the side of the cathedral, turn to the wall, and relieve themselves there against the cathedral. The side wall of Saint Catherine's is actually an open air public urinal, with urinal dividers built into the wall. I didn't grow up catholic, but I'd sort of assumed that peeing on a cathedral had to be some kind of sin. But I guess it's not, which makes it doubly a relief I suppose.

I suppose that scene was emblematic of Brussels, the consequences of high culture and overcrowding. So we'd see 3- and 4-year-olds begging outside the chocolatiers, or aged drunk transexuals sitting on the sidewalks before entering the Grand Place.

The Grand' Place is the place to see in Brussels, if just to sit on the perimeter and have a cup of coffee as we did.

The Grand' Place









I've made a 2-minute silent video using my digital camera. Again, it's just for the very bored among you who have a high-speed connection, as it's not very interesting and it's 40 MB. Similarly to the other video, click here to get it:

Dull video of the Grand' Place

Afterwards, we went by the castle ruins. And then spent an hour at the antique stalls and buying chocolate at Marcolino's, the best chocolate in Belgium. Next, we went over to the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts museum. Now this is everything a world-class art museum ought to be. The initial view is intoxicating.





Yet each piece of art is set off on its own in a neutral surrounding.





There, they had one of Aline's favorite paintings, "The Fall of Icarus," by Breughel, which was the inspiration for Auden's poem, also a favorite of Aline's.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

We then walked through the main park, had tea, and stopped by the Brussels Film Museum which, along with the requisite Jerry Lewis homage, houses some great machines from the earliest days of film-making and before. From there, it was back to the hotel, off to the train station, and home to London.

Like Water for Chocolate

Bill writes: OK, we owe you all a post about Belgium, which we will get around to putting up in the next day or so. But this is one thing I just don't get in the meantime, and I'm hoping someone from Belgium will write and fill me in. Chocolate is cheap there. And I'm not talking regular candy bars, I'm talking about Belgian chocolate, gift boxed, the works. You can get a custom box filled with two dozen different, mouth-watering, mind-numbingly good truffles for about $6. I mean, how can they do this? Is it Belgium's way of eradicating (or rather shifting) the drug problem? (Heroin's expensive, but we can get you pure dark chocolate on any street corner?)

On the other hand, you can't get free water. We asked for tap water at more than one restaurant and were uniformly, albeit politely, refused each time. OK, then, we'd like to buy a bottle of water. Unfortunately, a single bottle of water wouldn't fill my nephew's juice cup. They come in these special little 300 milliliter containers that we haven't seen anywhere else. So you would need about half a dozen of them to get through a meal. Instead we ordered the large bottle, enough for two glasses apiece, which costs $10. So water goes for about $2.50 a glass in quantity or about $5 a glass if you order individually.

I assume it's set up this way to compensate for the trade imbalance caused by the chocolatiers. You've got all these people with all this chocolate stuffed in their mouths and nothing to wash it down with. Maybe the Belgian restauranteurs are using the cheap chocolate fix to get the bottled water monkey on our backs?

Children of Hercules

Bill writes: Aline and I went to The Scoop again, the outdoor "brute modern" amphitheater on the far side of the Thames. This time we took a picnic supper and saw two plays. We caught the last half of "Treasure Island."



Then, after the sun went down, the same cast put on Euripides' "Children of Hercules," written and first produced during the Peloponnesian War, around 430 BC. This was a moving and timely play, dealing with the family of the dead hero Hercules. They are pursued to Marathon, where they ask for asylum, but are pursued by Eurystheus, the leader of Argos, and his army. Eurystheus wants to kill Hercules' children and parents in a pre-emptive strike, as he believes they will someday harm him if he doesn't destroy them first.





My camera makes silent movies. For those who are really, really bored (which means you're probably reading this at work and have a high-speed connection) and want to see a 60-second clip of the play, you can download it here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=35ILWZII

Once you get to the download website, you get a message near the upper right corner of the page saying the file will be ready to download in about 45 seconds. It then changes to a button that says "Click here to download." Click the button to download the file. Note that the file is around 15MB, so it will take a while to download.

And feel free to comment on whether this works, and whether you want any more silent films.

Music, Music, Music

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach

Aline writes: London in the summer is filled with music – there are so many concerts going on that it is hard to just keep track of them. I am on multiple mailing lists, and pick up brochures wherever I go, and even after 3 months here, I continually find new listings!

Trafalgar Square with Nelson's column is a venue regularly used for performances sponsored by the Mayor of London.


You can buy a sandwich from a local shop, sit on the edge of a fountain, and listen, as we did on July 29, to a jazz band


We weren’t the only ones enjoying it, as you can see from the “dancing man” that I caught on camera (be sure and look for his dancing foot!)


And of course, we hunted up some tea in Kensington Gardens at the Orangerie


And it's not only music we stumble on - we found this beautiful little garden hidden by a hedge as we went by in Kensington Gardens


We weren’t so lucky, weather-wise, when we went back to Trafalgar Square yesterday. We got to hear Shout (an a cappella singing group) perform a commissioned piece for the occasion. Look carefully, you can see them arranged in a semicircle on the steps


The lyrics were all taken from protest speeches given in Trafalgar square by people such as suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and Nelson Mandela:

Stand
Stand up
Don’t stand for it
Rise
Rise up
Don’t fall for it

Now is the time. Act with courage and vision

Unfortunately, it was raining, so the other scheduled concerts were cancelled. But we went across the street to St. Martin’s in the Fields church and heard a chamber orchestra rehearsing Handel and Mozart for a performance that night. So we got our music fix after all.



Tea was called for, of course, especially because we were wet and cold from the rain, so we went downstairs to the Café in the Crypt (yes, it is actually in the crypt) and had a nice, warm cuppa. Music and tea, ummmm.

Poltergeist

Bill writes: During the past few weeks, we had thought we were being haunted by an unfriendly spirit. We'd hear strange sounds in the middle of the night, clatterings and bangings from down the hall in our flat. In the morning, we'd invariably find our most personal belongings strewn about the bathrooms. In its distemper, someone, or more accurately, some thing would have thrown my deodorant into the waste can, Aline's hair brush into the bathtub, or--oh perverse spirit!--our dental floss or toothpaste into the open toilet.

The most reasonable assumption was that a poltergeist had taken lodgings in our bathroom, and that our medicine cabinet had become a home to some troubled and angry soul trapped between this world and the next. Well, in the spirit of things, I determined to photograph our aetherial wanderer during one of its nightly disturbances. I made sure I kept my camera at the ready. Then, late one night, I heard the unmistakable turmoil and clattering of that ghostly marauder. Gathering my courage--and my nightshirt--tight about me, I proceeded down the hall, camera in hand, ready to capture whatever image this creature of the beyond presented. Firming myself to the dreadful task, I stretched out one arm at length, letting the camera peer into the bathroom where I dared not, and pressed the trigger.

I had captured the ghost in the medicine chest:



While we have grown to accept that we must live with this continuing evil presence, we have also learned to close the toilet lid before retiring for the night.

The Isle of Wight

Bill writes: For Aline's birthday on July 22, she asked to go to the Isle of Wight, off the Southern tip of England. So we left a few days before, on Wednesday, July 20th, departing from the Waterloo station for a train that took us to the pier at Portsmouth. From there, we took a ferry to Ryde Pier Head on the island.



From the pier, we caught a train to the small town of Shanklin, where we were staying.



From there we took a taxi to our Bed and Breakfast. The B&B is set in beautiful gardens, with a path to the ocean, its own bandstand, a top-flight chef, and a room that only has equipment for making tea--no coffee maker in sight. It was a very Aline sort of place.



Where Aline could view some nice gardens.



And where the calendar stopped somewhere around 1908.



Our first afternoon we had tea and cakes at The Old Thatched Cottage, which the B&B owner said was the best tea shop in town. We then took a walk along the ocean and then up through the Shanklin Chine, which is a sort of created and preserved garden set in a ravine that leads from the hills where our B&B is, down to the ocean.



After dinner, we strolled into the gardens where the brass band was playing.



On Thursday, we decided to take the bus across the island to see Osbourne House, which was Queen Victoria's estate on the island, and where she would spend up to eight months of the year, during perhaps the happiest period of her life.



The gardens (and if you sense a theme revolving around gardens and things Aline likes to see, you're not far off the mark) are extensive, and seemed more italianate than english to me. Definitely more formal and geometric, with the walks carefully laid out at angles. Here we are at the top, overlooking the sea. And the next photos give a sense of the formalism of the place. Even when Victoria let her hair down, she didn't let it that far down.









On Friday, Aline's birthday, we spent six hours on the beach. This is pretty much what Aline looked like all day:



Eventually, we had to pack up and head back by train. The train from Shanklin to the pier on the island was late. Because it needed to make up time in order to connect with the ferry to the mainland, it put on a full head of steam (well, diesel-generated electrical power). However, unlike the Eurostar, this railway system isn't built for fast trains. The result was that all of us passengers were literally bouncing off our seats like kids on a trampoline, and spent the greater percentage of the journey airborne.

We then retraced our steps, taking the ferry, train, and Underground back to Maida Vale and a warm welcome from Grommet.