Judith Johnson
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Bella Italia: Verona & Lake Garda

16/4/2015

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PictureFisherman, Garda
We were heading for southern Italy again! Garda seemed like a good base for exploring Verona and Lake Garda, and it turned out to be a good choice.

It was just under 7€ return on the bus to Verona, and then 20€ for a 5-day Verona Card, which included admission to main museums and churches. We set to enthusiastically! Verona is packed to the gunwhales with fabulous villas, murals, churches etc, and Roman remains, including the original Roman gates to the city, Porta Leoni and the 1st Century Porta dei Borsari. At the Dominican Church of S. Anastasia we saw Pisanello’s fresco of St George & the Princess among a number of wonderful wall paintings; at the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore, magnificent bronze doors and an Altarpiece by Mantegna.

We explored the magnificent amphitheatre,completed around AD 30 and the third largest in the world, where these days opera is staged, but where it’s easy to imagine the crowds streaming in through the various gates thousands of years ago to watch gladiators, wild animals and mock battles. Crossing the Ponte Pietra over the Adige river, we found the stunning Museo Civico de Storia Naturale. How our son would have loved this when he was a small boy, with its amazing fossils, including those of entire trees, fish, fern leaves and dragonflies, which were found when quarrying north of the city for building stone.

I find tall towers irresistible, and the Torre dei Lamberti was no exception! We toiled up its 368 steps, disdaining to use the lift, and were extremely lucky to notice the huge bell directly above our heads moments before it struck the 10 o’clock chimes, giving us just enough time to stick our fingers in our ears. Being  in Italy, we enjoyed excellent coffee breaks and delicious pizza from a little take-away place, Pizza Doge, in the Via Roma opposite the Castelvecchio Museum. The Casa di Giulietta (of Romeo and Juliet fame) is reached through an archway covered with graffiti and crowded with dozens of young women queueing for the must-have selfie on the balcony. We didn’t tarry!

Back in Garda, there were the summer concerts and exhibitions always available in this land of culture, including a tiny local museum of agricultural and fishing artefacts, and an exhibition of local art in a renovated villa, now used for community activities, where the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio used to stay with the lady of the house. For day outings we bought spinach pastries, ciabatta, ham, olives, tomatoes and peaches in the friendly local shops.

On Ferragosto, Mass was celebrated for the Assumption, and we watched a greasy pole competition and the Palio delle Contrade, the annual boat race at the lake edge, where nine teams of four muscular rowers each competed, standing as they rowed. One of the teams included two brothers, aged 64 and 72, still remarkably strong contenders. The winners strolled nonchalantly up to collect their cup, followed by admiring glances from the ladies.

The odd big thunderstorm and heavy downpour cooled the hot bright days. After early morning swims in the clear waters of the Lake, often accompanied by ducks and swans, walking back to the hotel we sometimes encountered divers, jugglers, cyclists, nuns, dog-walkers, rubbish-collectors, waiters setting up tables, and fisherman gutting their catch and throwing the waste to waiting birds.

Tim Parks’ Italian Neighbours was an enjoyable companion read. He mentions, after some years living near Verona, that he knew he was finally becoming Italianised when he realised that he no longer ground his teeth at finding things closed with no explanation or warning. We, however, felt a degree of good old British exasperation when we took the fast catamaran across the lake one day to Sirmione and, after trekking uphill to the Roman ruins of the Grotte di Catullo, found them suddenly and unexpectedly closed for the day. No matter, we said philosophically, we’ll explore the Rocca Scaligera Castle, only to be confronted with a poster from the Ministry of Culture, announcing its decree that it would also be closed on public holidays and Sundays in August! Oh, never mind! We had a wander round the town then caught the return boat, walking back to Garda via Lazise and Bardolino.

We also caught the bus along the lake to Malcesine and then the cable car up to Monte Baldo for lovely breezes and stunning views of the lake below, the Dolomites to the north, and the wooded slopes either side of the ridge, with pastured cows, bells ringing. We were excited to find  a mark-stone for the former border between the Habsburg empire and the Venetian Republic.

Another day we took the fast boat to Riva del Garda, at the north end of the lake. We bought  a picnic lunch from a great supermarket, Poli, in Viale Lutti, of tasty olive foccaccia, tomatoes, a ‘gamba’ spedione, with breadcrumbs and paprika, and watermelon. For home consumption, we bought some locally roasted coffee-beans from Omkafe, a family firm based locally in Arco. We spent several happy hours in the world-class Museum of Riva del Garda, housed in another former Scaligeri castle, looking at fascinating artefacts of the pre-historic lake community incuding amazing sculpted figures,unlike anything we'd seen before, plus Roman archaeological finds,local history, art and an exhibition of ephemera, photos and ordnance from World War One and World War Two. Many of us in Britain tend to think of World War One only in terms of the Western Front, but the Italian Front was a significant theatre of that conflict. After visiting this museum, I intend to read The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson.

It was great to see another part of Bella Italia!


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Hi ho, Hi ho, to Christmas markets we go!

21/12/2014

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PictureI didn't know the No 27 went to Rudesheim!
When we rose several hours before dawn last Friday from our comfy Premier Inn beds in Dover’s Eastern Docks and saw the waves whooshing up over the seawall we felt a little daunted, and when the ship pulled away into the choppy Channel, although reinforced by an excellent cooked breakfast, we anticipated a rough crossing. But we were fortunate - the ship was well-stabilised, and after about half an hour things settled down. It’s the first time I’ve travelled with DFDS: the staff were friendly and courteous, and the ship, including its loos, clean and comfortable. It’s also the first time I’d sailed to Dunkerque. It was quite a poignant moment, in the light of morning, seeing that coast where so many died in 1940 in the retreat from mainland Europe.

We were on our way to the German Christmas markets in Aachen, Koblenz and Rudesheim, and as usual I had a list of other things I wanted to do. It was rainy all weekend, with an exceptionally  torrential downpour in Aachen, but even this could not dampen our appreciation of this beautiful German town. We just missed the Cathedral unfortunately (I wanted Martin to see it); the determined men on the door were barring sightseers because there was a service due.  We bought some Printen from a bakery and had a peek inside the Rathaus. We ate some wonderful cooked fish from one of the market stalls. I hope to return some time with more than an hour or two to spare, visit the Couven Museum there, and take the Rathaus tour and see the Kaisersaal with its epic 19th century frescoes and statues of fifty German rulers.

So, on to Koblenz! Having researched thoroughly, I knew there was a cable car, so we made a beeline for it on Saturday morning. First though we checked out the Deutsches Eck, where the Rhine joins the Moselle, and the stonking great Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial, then we took the Seilbahn up to the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress. It was amazing looking down over the mighty Rhine  and I’m pleased to say I felt safe in the hands of German technology!  The Fortress itself (we got a combined ticket for cable car and fortress) houses  an excellent archeological and Landesmuseum, so we passed a  contented  hour or so wandering round. The highpoints for me included a footprint captured in clay of a Roman soldier in hob-nailed sandals, a  piece of  Neanderthal skull, a stone fragment etched with a frieze of stylised women dancing in a circle, and an original Roman piling from the bridge at Confluentia (original name for the settlement). We were quite awestruck by the multiple arches built into the fortress walls, which must have made them phenomenally strong.  There’s a youth hostel in the fortress, one of over 500 in Germany - one of my dearly-held wishes (okay, somewhat over-ambitious, probably!) is to backpack round Germany and stay in every one of them!

On these fleeting visits, there is always more to see than time allows. I’d like to return one day to see the Church of St Florin, and the Ludwig Museum, housed in what remains of the former headquarters of the Teutonic Knights.

We did an afternoon excursion on our coach to Rudesheim. The last time I was there was in my late teens, when I was an over-enthusiastic partaker at a German wine tasting evening. I faintly recall learning about Spatlese wines, and having to be helped out to the car after drinking all of six glasses of what seemed like a light, fruity, harmless beverage! We took our second cable-car ride here, up over the Christmas stalls and the vineyards on the hills above to the Niederwald Monument high over the Rhine, erected to commemorate Germany’s victory in the Franco-Prussian war, and another example of massive 19th century German architecture.  I heard once of a man whose mission it was to visit every Starbucks wherever he travelled - for me that would be cable-cars, as you might guess from the look of pure happiness on my face!


PictureCable-car over Rudesheim
Back at Koblenz that evening, we were planning to eat a hearty typisch German supper in the highly recommended Altes Brauhaus in the Braugasse, but it was booked out, so, seeing as the shops were open until midnight we concentrated on Christmas shopping and grabbed a bite to eat at a branch of the Nordsee chain. On the walk back to our hotel, which was near the city’s elegant Hauptbahnhof and very handy bus station, we noticed a medieval stone cross, erected in the town wall in 1667 offering  thanks to God for Koblenz’s delivery from an outbreak of plague.

This trip was  enhanced by having recently read Simon Winder’s book Germania and listening to Neil McGregor’s fantastic BBC Radio 4 series Germany: Memories of a Nation - both musts for Germanophiles like myself. 



Our last port of call on the way back to Dunkerque was Bruges, the beautiful,  historic  ‘Venice of the North’, where reportedly the world’s first ever stock exchange was founded, and whose economic importance waned over time as the discovery of sea-routes to the New World moved business away. On a Sunday afternoon so close to Christmas it was inevitably besieged by visitors, and getting about the markets our walking was at times reduced to a shuffle. So after nipping into Hema on the Steenstraat for some chocolate gifts, and scoffing a delicious broadwurst in Simon Stevenplein, we slipped into the quiet sanctuary of the Arentshuis to see its Frank Brangwyn collection. We’ve long been fans of this underrated Welsh artist, who was born and spent his early childhood in Bruges.  I’ve admired his colourful panels on the walls of  Swansea’s eponymous Brangwyn Hall., and the World War One relief in Cardiff Museum, but it was wonderful to see examples of his furniture and ceramics, posters, a carpet, and, last but not least, I was actually moved to tears by his beautiful Stations of the Cross. Brangywn’s representations, for me, move Christ and his mother, the onlookers and  followers, out of the iconic divine and into a very present, human world. Most definitely worth a visit, if you’re in Bruges and you want to see something truly extraordinary.

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Bummeln in Bavaria

17/8/2014

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Over the last few years we have met plenty of people who are drawn back, year after year, to the Austrian Tyrol, with its clean air, friendly people, peace and quiet, and beautiful lakes and mountains. We seem to have joined them, but this year we opted to stay over the border in Ruhpolding, Bavaria. We were lucky in our small hotel, half an hour’s walk from the town centre, among quiet meadows.

A hundred yards or so from where we stayed was a spring, where all comers can fill their bottles (a contribution is requested, and honesty box provided). We went most evenings, and often met locals who had driven there for their weekly supply. My German is rusty, but it’s always a pleasure to be able to exchange some friendly words, though so many Germans are keen to practise their English!

We wandered further on one evening and found a signpost for a 3¾ hour walk to the top of Hochfelln, which seemed like a good idea for the next day. We packed our rucksacks with water and a Seed Stacked Flapjack bar (top emergency snack!), rain jacket and trousers, and set off. It was an uphill hike, with no easy downhills to speak of, through meadows, woods, and at one point our very narrow track ran along the edge of a steep hillside (I avoided looking down!). The simple pleasures of looking up through green leaves, of standing below ancient rock-faces, of exerting your legs, lungs and backs to the point of breathlessness, of watching a butterfly land on your hand to taste the salt in your sweat, of standing by a mountain-stream and listening to it rushing along, are profound. There is something joyful about hiking – human beings aren’t built to sit at computer screens in stuffy rooms all day!

When we finally got to the top of the Hochfelln we were intrigued to see Alpine Choughs for the first time, patrolling the café tables like so many Trafalgar Square pigeons!


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Alpine Chough
We took a different route down, and for the last leg found ourselves on a zig-zagging road. The storm clouds seen in the far distance from the top of the Hochfelln were catching up. A car went by, stopped and reversed. A couple on their way home to Reit in Winkl, who had seen us further up the mountain (two British people in shorts, socks and sunhats, surely inconspicuous!!), asked if we would like a lift for the last couple of miles to Ruhpolding. “Oh yes please!” I said.

The majority of local folk we encountered were charming and friendly. Some of our fellow British guests at the hotel expressed surprise at how warm, amiable and humorous they found the Germans they met. Well, they say travel broadens the mind – another national stereotype happily disproved!

Wherever we venture, I always like to search out any local war memorials. We found one halfway up the hill to St Georg’s Church, which apparently had recently been renovated after some years of neglect. There was a beautiful pieta inside the chapel, and a mural on the wall showing a young soldier taking his leave of his family – a reminder, if one was needed, that in all the countries involved in the two World Wars, there were homes in places like this where sons, husbands and fathers would never again be returning home to help bring in the harvest.  In the Heimatmuseum there are two more panels remembering the war-dead, and these feature enamelled photographs, as do so many graves in mainland Europe.


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I Loves the 'Diff!

10/5/2014

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For many years, I regularly travelled to South Wales with my husband to visit his family near Swansea. We all had wonderful holidays with my in-laws, and when my son came along he quickly grew to see Gramma and Dycu’s bungalow as a second home. We nearly always included a trip to Robertstown, Aberdare to see the elderly aunties, and then there were jaunts to Aberaeron for ice-cream, Llangranog, the Gower beaches and Manorbier for swims in the glassy green waves, Carreg Cennen for a climb up to the ruined castle stronghold, and Llanelli for walks along the seafront and a bag of boiled sweets from the market. We rarely ventured as far east as Cardiff itself, except for Porthcawl for a ‘blow’ and a Fulgoni’s ice-cream, although we had many happy days out at St Fagan’s, the superb folk museum just outside Cardiff.

We’ve really missed Mam since she passed away, and our regular trips to Wales. Over the recent Easter weekend we booked a few nights in Cardiff, and met up with some of Martin’s cousins, not seen for many years, for tea and cake, a catch-up chinwag and a trawl through family photos. We also enjoyed a tramp around different parts of the city.

Cardiff is uncommonly friendly! Almost everyone we came across was kind and courteous, generally giving an impression they’d been pleased to help.

Like every city, there’s a lot to explore, whether you’re interested in history, art, music, dancing, sport, or shopping. The parking’s awfully expensive in the centre, but the public transport is brilliant – buses galore and regular, at £3.40 for a Day-to-Go ticket which you can use all day on as many buses as you like. You can of course get to a lot of places under your own steam, if, like us, you’re fond of using Shank’s pony. We had a little wander round Llandaff; red-robed choristers singing beautifully at the Good Friday service in the Cathedral, whose doors had been left wide open for all-comers; a plaque outside a Chinese takeaway, once the sweetshop where Roald Dahl bought his boyhood treats; a stroll through Pontcanna Fields (full of ball-games, picnics, dog-walkers, paperback-readers); then popped over to Canton for a cup of coffee at the Chapter Arts Centre.

We had breakfast the next day at Crumbs, a great little vegetarian café in the Morgan Arcade, from where we could see a genial crowd of youngsters (and not-so-youngsters, no ageism on this blog!) queuing outside Spillers Records, which claims to be the oldest record shop in the world, for new music releases. I love life’s enthusiasts! We caught a bus to Roath Park – which to me looked reminiscent of New York’s Central Park – another Park constructed in the 19th century for the proletariat to take the fresh air and to recreate. It has within its boundaries a botanical gardens, a stupendous playground which was full of jubilant children, a boating lake and a café where friendly girls served a boisterous queue. The houses fringing the park, built around 1910 I believe, were obviously made of the best quality materials: 100 years on, the decorative arts and crafts tiles in their porches are in astonishingly good condition.

Of course there are inevitable casualties of neglect and the march of time, of things going out of fashion, of recession etc. On the City Road is the old Gaiety cinema, opened in 1912 and latterly the home of bingo, and ‘Bar, Bowling, Food, Music’, now for sale. But some places, like the Central Market, are still going strong. Cardiff has changed a lot since Martin worked for the Welsh Drama Company in the late 70s – it’s jumping, mun! If you’ve never visited the Welsh capital, I recommend it for a weekend away and an opportunity to exercise your joie-de-vivre!


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Holland's Royal City

16/3/2014

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PictureHague skyline including the 'Lemon Press' & 'The Tits'!
Since Holland is so near and so connected with Britain historically, but an almost undiscovered country for me, I was very pleased to fly to Schiphol a few weeks back for a quick guided tour around the Royal city – The Hague.

February must be one of the least favourable times to show off most locations, but local guide Remco Dorr did a great job in communicating his affection for his home town. On the subject of guides: a qualified guide is really worth his or her hire in my opinion – you benefit from all kinds of interesting nuggets of knowledge as you sail past sights that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. I find audio-guides overwhelming, just too much information (the only exception, I’ve found so far, being the one at the Palace of Versailles, where it perfectly times your walk through the rooms). I’d much rather hear anecdotal stories from a walking talking guide.


PictureModel of the Cheese Market, Alkmaar
The Hague has a miniature city on a scale of 1:25, Madurodam, an entertaining visit for families with young children. It originated after the Second World War, when a local woman who was looking for a way to fundraise for children suffering from TB, thought of emulating the model villages popular in England as a visitor attraction. She found a sponsor, the Maduro family, whose son George, a Jewish law student from Curaçao and fighter with the Dutch resistance, had died at Dachau concentration camp in 1945. 

PictureLocal stork boards Stena Line ferry!
Since those days, Madurodam has been updated and now has lots of interactive water features that were keeping small children very happy the day we visited! Our guide pointed out that the town square of Alkmaar, where cheese has been weighed and traded for centuries, was also used for weighing suspected witches, who were then dunked in the adjacent canal. If they floated, they were deemed guilty and subsequently drowned. 

PictureModel of the Peace Palace
The Hague’s Peace Palace, opened on August 28, 1913, benefited from a donation of 1½ million dollars made by the great philanthropist Andrew Carnegie towards its construction. Its aim was to provide a symbolic home for the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a court created to end war, and today, the International Court of Justice. Even the building is a symbol of international co-operation: the architect Chardonnier was French, the bricks and gardens were donated by the Dutch, the gates by Belgium, the marble by Italy, the silk for furnishings by Japan, and the wall around it by Germany. 

Scheveningen, a fishing village originally, whose name derives from the Anglo-Saxon for “looking out over” (the water) is the seaside face of The Hague. The fisherwives were famed for their muscular arms (extra money earned lifting the middle-class visitors in and out of their bathing-wagons) and loud voices. Widows and orphans were daily thrown fish which hadn’t sold. The fishing boats were built flat and wide to hold their cargo (reminiscent of old Thames barges I’ve seen moored at Maldon, Essex) but were dangerously unstable for rough seas, and extremely heavy to pull up onto the beach.
PictureGuide at the Panorama explains perspective
The artist Mesdag and his workshop created a marvellous panorama painting of the village and long beach of Scheveningen in the 19th century, which has been renovated and can still be viewed locally. Around 1818, the village started to become fashionable as a bathing resort, particularly favoured by Russians and Germans.

If you were planning a stroll along the promenade at Scheveningen (we spotted ships on the horizon, ready to enter the container port of Rotterdam, our guide Remco pointed out that they wait out at sea until the prices for their cargoes are most favourable), you might like to follow your walk with a visit to the Kurhaus for an elegant afternoon tea under its spectacular domed ceiling. The hotel was built on the former site of the first wooden bathing house, and hosted some famous concert artists in its glory days including Bing Crosby, Vladimir Horowitz, Duke Ellington, Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Marlene Dietrich and the Rolling Stones.


PictureRemco Dorr at the Gemeente Museum
And then there’s the art. The Mauritshuis is due to re-open on 27 June after renovation, but its ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is still away on tour (Martin and I judiciously avoided the massive queue for it in New York in December!). Meanwhile the collection has been given a foster home by the Gemeente Museum of Modern Art. We toured the old masters with an excellent guide, who wisely selected just a few paintings to stop by and illuminate us on their place in art history. Among these were Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Robert Cheseman, who was Henry VIII’s Head Falconer (these and four other Holbeins are the only ones in the Netherlands, and were brought over by William and Mary from England, another example of art which might be a candidate for return to its original home!); Henrik Avercamp’s beautiful ‘On The Ice’, Johannes Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft’, which features a fantastically painted light breeze on the water, and Peter Paul Rubens’ ‘Old Woman and a Boy with Candles’. Deserving particular mention, two marvellous Rembrandts – ‘The Anatomy Lesson of Nicholaes Tulp’, one of the artist’s first big commissions when he was in his 20s, and a late ‘Self-Portrait’. Rembrandt died in 1669.He was poor, completely out of fashion, and by then had lost his wife and only surviving son.

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We went on to the Gemeente Museum itself, and again were expertly guided through a succession of paintings from the Impressionists Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet etc. through to the Expressionists, Egon Schiele and Kandinsky. We also viewed some mid and late 20th century works by Piet Mondrian, Francis Bacon and Bruce Naumann. The final rooms featured artists such as Germany’s Anselm Kiefer and the Cobra artists. The Museum itself, a striking yellow-brick geometric structure, is the work of the influential Dutch architect, HP Berlage, who designed it to make maximum use of natural light.

Lastly, we visited the Escher Museum, particularly exciting for me as I’ve been a huge fan of Escher for many years. It was fantastic to see so many of his original works in one place, and the experience was heightened by the setting in a beautiful old Royal Palace. Its enthusiastic director has taken steps to make the most of this – as you go through the museum you are also informed about the former residential use of each room, and a series of stunning chandeliers which were commissioned from Rotterdam artist Hans Van Bentem. The third floor is dedicated to the optical illusion aspects of Escher’s works and there are some fun interactive exhibits for younger visitors.

PictureChandelier at MC Escher in Het Paleis
We rounded off our trip with a visit to the Van Kleef Distillery, where we had a very amusing talk given by Fleur about the origins of the genever (gin basically) industry and its relationship with local culture, plus some tasty drinks and eats – those assembled rather more bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked and voluble by the time we left!

I certainly hope to visit The Hague again. We heard a lot about the sharp division between the ‘posh’ side of town and the other side of the tracks, and being generally more interested in dustbinmen than duchesses, I’d love to explore some its working-class history and culture, especially its Jewish heritage.



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New York - a box of delights

11/1/2014

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In my teens and early twenties, I happily read my way through the works of Bernard Malamud, Chaim Potok, Damon Runyon, Helen Hanff, Ed McBain and anyone else I could find who wrote about lives set in New York.  Cagney & Lacey and Telly Savalas’ Kojak were TV favourites, and I always wanted to see New York for myself.

I made a very brief working visit to NYC in the Spring of 2001 – among other things I broke a tooth on a Sourdough Pretzel Nugget, shuffled with beating heart round the top of the Empire State Building with my back to the wall, saw Holbein’s portrait of Thomas More at the Frick, Takashi Murakami’s installation in Grand Central Station, and Van Gogh’s Starry Night at MOMA, popped into the Marble Collegiate Church where Norman Vincent Peale had preached, and last but not least stayed a couple of nights after business was done with Sharon, an old friend living in the Bronx. We first met at a drama class at the City Lit in the mid-1970s, when I was a lonely teenager recently arrived in London.

Just after Christmas, I was fortunate enough to re-visit New York with my husband, when we stayed for a week with Sharon, who kindly invited us to stay, and whose hospitality and gift of her time was central to our enjoyment.

It was Martin’s first time in the city, and we were both excited to be there, not only for the sights, but also because of the joy of meeting up with old friends not seen for many years.  There’s nothing quite like that rush of warmth round the heart when you embrace, and stand back to scan each other’s faces for the superficial changes time has wrought.

I worked once with a girl who liked to stay in the Hilton whenever she travelled, but for us the anonymous homogenised luxury hotel is a cold dish – and staying in the Bronx was a fantastic accompaniment to Manhattan. It was great to meet neighbours, and a visit to the Riverdale Diner persuaded me that on any future trip I should ask for a child’s portion, or maybe just stick to a starter!  The size of the menu threw me into a paralysis of indecision. Apartments are heated super-efficiently throughout the winter, and Martin and I had to open the window at night in order to sleep, but it was great to spend time just sitting on the sofa after the day’s outings, chat, and catch the odd Judge Judy!

We visited The Cloisters, with its mediaeval tapestries and stained glass, and marvelled in particular at the stunning carving of a 16th-century Flemish boxwood rosary bead, the size of a walnut; we ate plantain and unlabelled exotic Dominican dishes at the 24-hour buffet on Dyckman and Broadway; we took the air in the New York Botanical Gardens, and queued for the Holiday Train show, featuring models of famous New York buildings made from seeds, stalks, and leaves, set amongst the jungle plants in the Haupt Conservatory, the pleasure enhanced watching children’s enchantment with the model trains that weaved in and out; we had coffee and macaroons at Egidio’s off Arthur Street, where a photo of the owner  meeting a visiting Cardinal during a parade day in Bronx’s Little Italy was proudly displayed; and lastly we hit another famous Bronx sight: the Garabedian family’s house, where for 40 years a Christmas tableau has been proudly displayed – truly unique!

We ticked off most of a short-list of attractions this time, though torrential rain and massive queues one day left some choices for a future trip – there’s no way you can get round this city in one eight day visit. Having stayed in Central Park West last time round, I wanted to see some of the Lower East Side, and a must was the Tenement Museum. We booked for the ‘Hard Times’ tour, and our guide Annie fitted in a fantastic amount in sixty minutes. The upper storeys of this amazing property were abandoned as rooms to let in 1924, when a new law made it mandatory for new banisters to be installed. Since it wasn’t economically viable, the owner shut up the floors above his shop and garment factory, using them only for storage, and they remained unchanged until the 1980s, when they were discovered by two women who set about founding the museum here. Annie explained the historical background to the tenements, and the particular stories of a German immigrant family from Prussia, the Gompertzes, and the Italian Baldizzis, and at the end we heard a brief recording of one of the Baldizzi daughters recalling her childhood. She remembered her mother weeping daily with homesickness for Sicily, but how eventually, when they made the money to visit Palermo, with little work and terrible poverty still the norm, her mother had knelt to kiss the pavement when they landed back in New York.

In years gone by, it was likely the case that many emigrants never saw their relatives or friends again unless they made good enough to pay for the travel home.  What a wrench it must have been to wave off your son or daughter at Cork, Liverpool, Bremen, Naples or Cherbourg.  I thought of Private Thomas Bellingham, who was killed in action on the Somme in July 1916, after sailing at the beginning of the year from Melbourne to Egypt, and from there to France. His parents had not seen him since the day in 1911 he emigrated from High Brooms, in Tunbridge Wells, to Australia.

Orchard Street today of course is somewhat changed in its population, though there are still garment stores, and we popped in to a trendy coffee house for a cup of English Breakfast tea, and then on to two places on Houston Street our Jewish friends had recommended, where their grandparents had taken them as children: Jonah Schimmel’s Bakery (we had knishes and pickles, and split pea soup) and Russ & Daughters, a deli where the New Year’s Eve queues precluded purchases!

When travelling, we’re always keen to see the local artists, and at the Metropolitan Museum we made a determined beeline for the American Wing. As well as the wonderful paintings, we also enjoyed the exhibition of Bronzes of the American West. We were tickled to spot one over-exercised 21st century man who had fallen asleep sitting on steps nearby, camera round his neck and mobile clasped in his hand.

Everyone back home asked us if we’d be celebrating the New Year in Times Square, but, having walked through it a few days earlier (an experience akin to Oxford Street at Christmas shopping time), we elected to see a film (American Hustle – excellent!) and have a meal in upstate Ridge Hill. As a Big Bang Theory fan, I was quite excited to be eating at the Cheesecake Factory, and couldn’t resist taking some photos of the American-sized cakes display, where one slice represented my calorie intake for a whole day. American service was as good as advertised: the waiting staff looked genuinely pleased to be serving us rather than spending New Year’s Eve out with their own pals!

On New Year’s Day we caught the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Although most of the museum on Ellis Island remains closed after Hurricane Sandy, it was still poignant to stand in the main Hall on the first floor and imaginine the feelings of those waiting on the threshold of their New World. Though life in America would be a huge struggle, it also offered the opportunity for one’s children to gain a better life not possible back home. A member of the National Park Service (uniform reminiscent of Yogi Bear episodes) told us that, amazingly, a century on, the number of daily emigrants to the USA is roughly the same – around 3,000 per day.

We ended the day with an Indian meal, shared with friends living on 30th Street and 3rd. New Yorkers are always pleased to show you the local delights, and in this case we went on a mini-tour of the local delis including a shop that seemed to sell every possible spice, sauce or dried fruit you could think of.

We were lucky with our flight – having exited the UK just before another wave of wind and rain coming in from the West, we got away from JFK on a snowy morning an hour or so before cancellations began.  Auf Wiedersehen & arrivederci New York !


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Battlefields of the Marne

1/12/2013

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PictureChristmas box sent to WW1 German troops
Most British people are aware of the World War One battlefields of the Ypres Salient and the Somme, which have been immortalised in literature and art as well as in our history books, but many may not have much knowledge of the Marne battlefields. I certainly didn’t, so was grateful to be included in a familiarisation trip for a small group of battlefield guides, journalists and tour operators to the Marne last week. 

As I understand the Battle of the Marne, the larger force of the French army was assisted by the remnant of the British Expeditionary Force in preventing the oncoming German army from taking Paris. The BEF had been reduced to two-thirds of its strength after Mons, and General French had intended to return with them to England, but was ordered by Kitchener to go to the aid of their French allies.

Our first stop was a visit to the wonderful Musee de la Grande Guerre, in Meaux. This stunning collection of artefacts and original vehicles is based on over 55,000 items amassed by a local collector. The museum has worked hard to give a context to its displays, but to keep it accessible – they have clearly given a lot of thought to the exhibitions. For example, the mannequins have been modelled in white and stylised, to signify that this is not an attempt to make them wholly realistic, since nothing can truly convey the horror of the soldiers’ experience. Visiting children are also encouraged to touch the exhibits, and there is a marked route for primary school children which features the role played by animals in the war. As well as some excellently restored large vehicles and reproduction trench sections, there are a number of themed rooms in the museum: displays of uniforms, colonial troops, daily life of soldiers, armaments etc.

Highlights for me included: the original double-decker carrier-pigeon transport and 1908 Bleriot airplane, the stereoscopic slide show (3D glasses provided) of photos  on various themes eg gas, the Battle of the Marne; the Body & Suffering room, a smaller, more intimate and darkened space, with deeply moving films of shell-shocked patients, pictures of “les gueules cassees (broken faces)”, amputees etc
the trench-art, including musical instruments made from tin hats, Christmas boxes sent to German troops (not much German metal trench-art – this had to be sent home, desperately needed because of the blockade on imports by the allied navies); early attempts at metal body-armour, rejected because too heavy, looking more Roman/medieval than modern; flechettes, the first airborne weapon, little metal arrows dropped by hand from the early lightweight airplanes.


The next day we were conducted round a section of the battlefields by Frank Baldwin, a superb guide, steeped in knowledge, who also trains other guides, and is Chairman of the Battlefields Trust. When you have someone like this with you, it becomes possible to look at the fields and copses, the distant ridges, which today are restored to farmland, and understand the detail of how a long-ago battle was conducted. The Battle of Ourcq was bigger than Waterloo, with around 100,000 German troops versus around 250,000 French across a 10-mile front.  We visited the memorial to Charles Peguy, an internationally renowned poet and essayist, who died here on 5 September 1914 at the age of 41, and the mass grave where his remains lie with those of 200 other war-dead.

Among our party was a French writer and military historian. I asked him if he could recommend a French book portraying the First World War. I had long intended to read Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu, but Francois suggested instead Maurice Genevoix’s  Ceux de 14, and Jean Norton Cru’s Temoins, which analyses the collective oeuvre of memoirs by French authors.

We drove on through the beginnings of champagne-growing country, and stopped in Le Petit Morin valley, where nearly 20,000 British troops crossed. The German troops here were aiming to delay their advance, and they captured thousands of exhausted, starving soldiers who, after the retreat from Mons, blowing up bridges as they went, having scant time to stop, rest, and eat, simply fell asleep so deeply they could not be woken by their companions.

We stopped at La Ferte sous Jouarre to see the British Memorial to the Missing there, which commemorates nearly 4,000 officers and men of the British Expeditionary Force who died in August, September and the early part of October 1914 and who have no known grave.

And last, but not least, I was grateful to have the opportunity to visit the graves in the Montreuil-Aux-Lions British cemetery of two Southborough men, Charles Pankhurst and Stephen Funnell, both of whom died on 10 September 1914, fighting with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment. It wasn’t until I stood in the cemetery that I saw they were among a number of Royal Sussex men who died that day.

We wondered why it was that those lost on the Marne are not as significant a part of the Great War memory in Britain, and whether it was perhaps that they were part of the professional army and reserves, not the ‘butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers’ who came after? Charles Pankhurst had enlisted in 1906, had served in India for six years, and had the honour of being the gymnastic leader of the Battalion. Stephen Funnell’s parents, who lost their son when he was only 20, had his name inscribed on their own gravestone in Southborough Cemetery.

If you are visiting Paris, or taking the family to Eurodisney, you may find it worthwhile to include a day visiting the Marne battlefield and Great War Museum.

Further information:

Musee de la Grande Guerre, Meaux
http://www.museedelagrandeguerre.eu/en

The Doings of the Fifth Brigade by Edward, Lord Gleichen – e-book available free online thanks to Project Guttenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22074/22074-h/22074-h.htm

Frank Baldwin, Battlefield Guide
http://www.frankbaldwin.co.uk

Nothing in this World by Charles Peguy


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Berlin in October

2/11/2013

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PicturePretzel seller in the Pariserplatz, Brandenburg Gate
Last week I popped over to Berlin for a quick few days which included escorting a school group for the day. This was my third trip – each of them a flying visit –
but as a history and people buff, I always strive to see as much as I can of this amazing place. Like all cities, you could spend weeks in the German capital, and not discover all there is to see, but physically being there encourages me to read more about its history. I am an avid history reader, but for me the role of fiction and memoir is equally important in learning about a place or time: Judith Kerr’s wonderful When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit illuminates what it was like to be a child in Berlin and fleeing from oppression, Paul Dowswell’s excellent Auslander is a great read for teenagers studying Nazi Berlin. I can recommend two witness accounts by non-natives about Berlin during the war years, Christabel Bielenberg’s The Past is Myself and Marie Vassiltchikov's Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945. And last but not least, there is Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, based on his father’s experience of the Holocaust.
 
I can’t speak too highly of the tour guides I’ve encountered in Berlin: at the Wannsee Villa, Topography of Terror, German History Museum etc. They are clearly dedicated to presenting 20th century German history for visiting schoolchildren with as much clarity as possible. So what did I see this time? We had a guided tour of the Olympic Stadium in Charlottenburg. The ideology behind the building of the Stadium was explained: how Hitler rejected the glass structure first suggested and brought in Speer to devise the monumental, classical final version; how the stand where Hitler stood to view the games was cut out and removed to avoid it becoming a  neo-Nazi shrine; how the 1936 Olympics were used as a massive, and mostly successful, propaganda campaign for Hitler’s regime (nothing changed there then?); how the signs saying No Dogs, No Jews were put back up as soon as the athletes and journalists had gone home. Recently a new modern roof has been built, and Berlin’s much-loved football club Hertha BSC commissioned a special blue running-track in their colours. The surrounding sports fields, once parking-place for the British Army’s tanks when this area was part of the British Occupation Sector after the War, have now been returned to Berlin residents for their recreational use.
 
On Saturday evening I went to see a German friend in an amateur production of Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest. I followed quite a lot of the play in my now less than fluent German, and just managed to work out who-dun-it in the last few minutes! The venue was a beautifully restored 19th century covered market hall – the Arminiusmarkthalle – in Moabit, and the evening was enlivened by a small diamante t-shirted miniature dog in the company of a large adoring lady, who barked at crucial moments (dog not the lady!), and a drunken man who laughed and commented very loudly throughout the first half. The man was gently persuaded to leave at the interval, the dog stayed for the denouement! 
 
On Sunday we took the school group round some of the WW2/Cold War sights, using Berlin’s superb public transport system and shanks’ pony. We paused in front of the Reichstag for a quick revision of Hitler’s take-over of power and then on to a circuit of the Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish Memorial, the old Nazi Ministry building in Wilhelmstrasse, Checkpoint Charlie, Alexanderplatz, the Dom and the German History Museum. The students had visited Bergen/Belsen en route to Berlin, and the little museum underneath the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was a good counterpoint, an excellent visit for people of all ages, but particularly for schoolchildren. With its quiet, darkened rooms, illuminated by large lit facsimiles of postcards and letters, its photographic displays taking you right into the centre of some of the personal family stories behind the terrible massive numbers and facts of the Final Solution, and the room filled  only with benches, where the short facts of lives of those murdered in the Holocaust are spoken by an aonymous recorded voice, one after the other (apparently it would take over 6 years to read them all), this is a place that goes right to the heart. I had to wipe a tear from my eye, and one of the teachers had a similar experience when he read a letter written from a young man to his father en route to Auschwitz.

There is currently a fantastic display on the street corner by Checkpoint Charlie of the background to the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall. Particularly touching was a photograph of the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich playing for passers-by following the fall of the Wall in 1989.

It would take too long to list everything seen even on this very short visit to Berlin. If you have an interest in history, in Germany, in people, in architecture, in politics, in art, in film or music – you would not be disappointed here. I met a couple on the train to Schoenefeld Airport who’d travelled to see their favourite rock band, The Editors, in Amsterdam and then
Berlin. Their train journey from Amsterdam had been interrupted for 8 hours by a WW2 unexploded German bomb under the line. Not an uncommon experience even now seventy years on apparently in an area of Holland that was severely blitzed. The two young women catching up on their sleep in the seats next to me on the flight back had gone to Berlin for the ‘clubbing’.
 
I hope to visit many more times, and with a bit of luck and a fair following wind, the Berlin Marathon would be a nice cherry on the top of my running ambitions! 
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Tea with a Wild Mountain Man

13/10/2013

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PictureOur host and the pot & pan
We returned to the beautiful Wilder Kaiser mountains region this summer for another two weeks of walking, talking and taking in the Alpine air. We generally like to go somewhere different every year but the Wilder Kaiser seems to affect people in a very particular way – this will be our third visit, and we’ve met so many people who've gone back time and time again. The local tourist board honours guests who are returners, and this year presented a gift to a couple who have been visiting Scheffau for 50 years, but our hostess at Pension Aloisia told us that one family who stays with her, and who first stayed with her late mother, have been coming for over 60!
 
The Tyrolean mountains and valleys are wonderfully fresh and green, and with this comes, naturally, a certain amount of rain. Our German friend Petra wisely suggested we might like to take rainwear the first time we went, and so we always pack waterproofs along with our walking-boots. Sunshine is most welcome, but wet weather doesn’t put us off – especially if there is a “gemutlich” Stuben at the end of the walk. This year we set off on a very rainy morning to walk the ‘11’ route, stopping en route at Ellmau to buy our ‘snap’ at Billa (excellent supermarket full of fresh food and friendly faces). We caught the chairlift at Going (we’re suckers for chairlifts!) up to the Astberg, and set off for Brandstadl – about 4 and a half hours’ walking up and down some substantial slopes. We were enjoying ourselves, but we’d missed our morning kaffee, and were on the lookout for a suitable Alm. The word Alm seems to cover various degrees of pit-stop – sometimes it’s a little hut where you can buy refreshments, but sometimes, we found, it’s not! There was one ahead on the map, and after negotiating our way through a herd of curious bullocks, we came to a charming establishment with “Komme gleich!” written on the door. Now, although my O level German grew fairly fluent in my 20s, it’s not been regularly taken out and exercised enough since then. I can get by, and I love the language, but with every passing year the holes in my vocabulary get larger. I read the sign as “Come right in!”, whereas it means, I found out later, “I’ll be right back!”

Picture
We walked boldly in and found ourselves in a storage area. On the left were some steps and another little door. I knocked and a very nice man opened it. He had silvery hair, ruddy cheeks and an enquiring smile – the very picture of a Grimm fairy-tale woodcutter! I asked if it was possible to buy something to drink and he invited us in to his kitchen/living space, where he was writing at a long wooden table. We sat around it on benches, and our host produced some herb teas. I plumped for Baerentraubenblatter (bearberry – good for urological conditions I discovered later!) and Martin had chamomile. Our host bought out a copper round-bottomed pan, opened the top of his wood-burning stove and placed it over the flame. While it came to the boil we had a look at some photo albums he showed us of farms he had worked on.
 
We enjoyed an hour or so’s welcome break from the cold and wet with this lovely man. He told us that he was a seasonal herdsman from Tegernsee in Bavaria. I just about kept up with his strong accent – Petra, who’s from northern Germany, tells me that they call Bavarians the wild mountain-folk! We had a lively chat about the Celts, and connections between this part of the world and the Celts in Wales. He would soon be taking his bovine charges down the mountain for the Alpine cattle drive day, a Saturday at the end of September, when the cows are adorned with paper flowers - as a symbol and thanks for an incident-free summer on the alpine pasture. Then he would be moving to the nearby town of Kufstein for the winter.
 
We asked him what the drinks cost, and he said that you if one wished one could offer a voluntary contribution when given hospitality at an alm. We crossed his palm with silver, thanked him, shook hands and went on our way, stomachs and hearts warmed by our
serendipitous encounter.

Picture
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The Passion Play of Oberammergau

10/8/2013

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PictureTwo of the seven ages of woman!
I first heard of the Passion Play of Oberammergau in my childhood. My Mum worked for five summers as a courier for a British tour operator in the Austrian Tyrol, and my younger brother and I went out each summer for a two week holiday. There were the usual excursions on offer, and in the late 1960s we visited the Bavarian sights of Schloss Linderhof, one of King Ludwig's palaces, and the nearby Oberammergau. If you bought an item in one of the gift shops in the village, you could get your passport stamped, and if it was a year when the Play was not being performed, you could have a tour of the theatre, the costumes, and see the local woodcarvers at work.
 
The Passion Play was first performed in the village of Oberammergau in 1634, in thanks for the villagers' lives having been spared in the bubonic plague which killed many of the surrounding population. They vowed to continue performing the play regularly.  Ever since then, the play has been performed roughly every 10 years, with the exception of 1940, when the Second World War intervened. Over half of the population of more than 5,000 men, women and children of Oberammergau take part in it, as cast members, singers, instrumentalists and technicians. 
 
Martin and I were fortunate enough to be given two places on a trip to see the Passion Play in 2010. We would be travelling with stops en route in Baden-Baden and Kaufbeuren, and we had an amazing escape, as did all of the passengers on the coach, not an hour out of Calais, when a lorry driver, whose attention was briefly not on the road, wrote off our coach by driving into the back of us.  The French emergency services were astonished that there was not one single casualty in our group, aside from a few drops of blood on my husband's face caused by the shower of safety glass that fell on him as he slept. Another coach came out from England, and we carried on with our journey, though delayed (as were thousands of other people on the motorway) for several hours. When we arrived in Kaufbeuren, staying in the Goldener Hirsch, a stunning 14th century inn, we were invited to visit the adjacent convent church, where the nuns sang the 23rd Psalm from the balcony above us, and blessed our onward journey.
 
On our arrival in Oberammergau we were met by the owner of our guest-house. She told us that she would normally greet guests in her dirndl, but that she was in the crowd scene at the opening of the play, and was dressed in jeans so that she could make the necessary quick change. The play is in two parts, with an evening meal in between. After lunch we made our way to the theatre, and en route were passed by a number of villagers pedalling along with small children on the back  of their bicycles. Every family in the village has members taking part in this enormous production, and once the cast has been decided, men are required to let their hair and beards grow during the long rehearsal and playing period. One young man told us that he was pleased to be cast as a Roman character, as these are all clean-shaven. When you visit Oberammergau during this period, you will see bakers, builders, policemen etc looking like sixties hippies - quite a sight! Carsten Luck, one of two men playing Judas in 2010, played Jesus in the 2000 production, which must surely be a strange juxtaposition of roles for any actor.
 
I knew that I was in for a treat with the Passion Play, but even so, I was not fully prepared for the impact of its beauty, the obvious sincerity and devotion of its cast, the stunning Baroque music, and the performances. I am not a practising Christian, but I have a faith in a God of my own understanding, and as a product of my times and culture, the figure and teachings of Christ are a significant part of this.
 
The Play is spectacular. When Christ drives the traders out of the Temple, there are 1,000 people on stage, sheep and goats running around and doves, released by Jesus, fly up into the sky. The Crucifixion scene is harrowing. As a mother of a much-loved son, putting myself in Mary's shoes, I wept. The actor playing Christ (one of two) carries the cross onto stage, heavy, though made of hollow pine. Bracelets with welded nails slot around his hands and feet, but give no support, as they rest on tiny ledges, and he hangs, arms outstretched, for more than 20 minutes. Both actors, though keen sportsmen, needed to train for this physical ordeal.
 
But there were two other moments in the play when I felt deeply moved and tears sprang to my eyes. The first was the opening scene, when the stage is filled with a huge crowd of men, women and children, and Jesus rides in on a donkey, dismounting to sweep a child up into his arms, smiling: the humble Christ of my childhood Bible stories come to life. The second was in the scene where Jesus is invited to give his judgement of the woman, caught in adultery, surrounded by a crowd who are ready to put her to death by stoning. He says, with such natural authority, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," that the crowd just melts away. For me personally, this is one of the most profoundly beautiful sentences in human history, and to see it enacted in this way was a powerful experience. 

There is a long social history of the Passion Play and Oberammergau, which is well-covered by James Shapiro's book Oberammergau, and there have been accusations of anti-semitism in the past, but the current director Christian Stuckl has striven to make changes. Jesus is portrayed as the Jewish Rabbi he was. He carries a scroll of the Torah into the Temple. The
villagers playing the main roles travelled with the director to Jerusalem before rehearsals started, visiting the holy sites.
 
Tickets to the play were sold in packages including accommodation, so we didn't know where we would be seated until our hotel gave us the tickets they'd been allocated. Our coach was split into two groups, and while we were delighted to find we had seats two rows back from the front, the other group found themselves so far back that they thought the living tableaux featured in the play were actually paintings. I understand that the ticketing system may be under consideration for change.
 
I was moved by the devotion of this community to their ancient promise. The rehearsals and length of the performance season are arduous, and there is no heating in the cast's dressing-rooms. Our young guide told us that the weather in 2010 had been uniformly cold since the play opened on 15 May, and it had snowed on the Monday before we saw it at the beginning of June. Most of the cast had suffered from chills, heavy colds and even flu, but had all soldiered on regardless. In days gone by, taking part in the play meant losing your job. Today, these are usually kept open, and alternating casting in the main roles makes this more possible.
 
If you have a chance to see the Passion Play in 2020, I can recommend it. For us it was the chance of a lifetime to see something truly extraordinary.

Click here for the official website

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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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