Sorry that is very unfare, we all know the Dalek is the stylish one in black and silver. Dr B is the intelligent one with unknown powers of conjuring up trains from the Thomas Cook railway timetable even without an electronic screwdriver (this is partly because noone else is allowed access!) - and sorry that was a very British cultural reference!
No of course not. However, I do live with a man who thinks Daleks are cuddly toys just look at how this one makes him smile. I think this is probably the reason that he keeps on saying that we've had a really great holiday, well one of the reasons anyway.
I am going to get him to do some guest blogs about our brilliant and crazy journey. We have both returned home to work and life with smiles on our faces and looking relaxed despite carrying ridiculously large suitcases around Europe for over two weeks. Now if Daleks ever did decide to become benevolent perhaps they could reinvent the sent on ahead luggage system that almost all European railways now seem to think should be confined to the dustbin of history.
Anyway this Dalek was spotted in Waterstones in Norwich and I was instructed to take these photos. Dr B was overjoyed to uncover this as part of our holiday! (Yes he is a very big Dr Who fan ...)
Departure
"What about the language problem?" asked the princess when we were sitting in the train to Helsingör. "You've been there before. Is your Swedish good?"
"I get by like this," I said, "First I speak German, and if they don't understand that, English, and if they don't understand that, Platt, and if that doesn't work either, then I stick an "as" ending onto German words, and I find they understand that quite well." This was all we needed. She thought it absolutely wonderful, and immediately incorporated it into her lingusitic paraphenalia.
"So it's Sweden next. What do you think will happenas to us now in Sweden?"
Whatever happens on a holiday ... You, I hope."
...
"What shall we do now?" I asked, when we'd washed. All we could see of Stockholm from our hotel window was four chimneys agaisnt a blue sky.
"I think," the Princess said "we should first get an interpreter - your Swedish is excellent, quite excellent ... but it must be ancient Swedish, and the people here are so uneducated. So we should take an itnerpreter out into the countryside and find a very cheap little cottage, and we'll stay there very quietly."
From Michael Hofmann's translation of Schloss Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky
Any book, any writing, is always about language to some extent, and Gripsholm is full of linguistic play - Tucholsky was after all a satirist. There are some wonderful bits where Lydia, the princess, speaks in her native Platt as they set off on holiday from Berlin. Friends who speak this northern German dialect assure me that they can get by with it quite well in Denmark. Well these days in Scandanavia things are rather different to in the early 1930s and people take one look at us and start speaking English. I have to admit to struggling rather - it seems wrong to rely on English and I find myself suddenly quite fluently speaking the 5 and a half phrases of Dutch I have internalised over the years.
What I am enjoying though is the sliding spelling and pronunciation of words on street signs, in written form I understand more than I expected to. Of course it's also quite fun making up completely wrong translations, just to pass the time of day. Swedes, Danes and Norwegians seem to be able to speak to one another and understand each other fine - perhaps it's just like different dialects of English.
So as discussions today seem to be moving towards a (let's hope) more stable future for the Euro we are actually on a crazy tour around four European countries that don't have the Euro. Quaint as all of these currencies are it is certainly not all that much fun for the traveller. To make it even more confusing Denmark, Sweden and Norway all call their currency the Krone (the crown) but there are different monarchs on each of these currencies. And of course a different monarch again on the British pound which is the fourth non eurozone country we'll be getting to.
This morning we got on a bus to go to the railway station, we had a 50 Danish Kroner note. The bus driver would not take us because we didn't have the change for the machine ... so we then get change and the next bus comes and eats the first 10 kroner piece. This much more laid back bus driver says "free trip". This is even more exasperating when you know that the Danish Krone is actually tied to the euro and we had plenty of those coins in my purse! However, the Danish Krone with holes through some of the smaller coins is very pretty, so I suppose I must simply celebrate this currency diversity and cope with the fact that we shall just have even more change in the little pots in the kitchen. Anyway, despite being thrown off the first bus we still made it for our train in plenty of time.
Now we're in Stockholm, beautiful city, amazing journey across stunning countryside and a fabulous bridge to get to Malmo from Copenhagen. Train journeys are wonderful, except I kept on wanting to get out and look at the waterlilies.
Meanwhile I wonder about these so called rating agencies valuing currencies - who are they? are they fit for purpose? how much money are they making in the dramatic fluctuations their "ratings" cause on the currency markets? Enough, rant over, off to find some supper!
We discovered Copenhagen by boat and on foot yesterday. Lots of impressions and fun realising that in its written form I understand the language better than I had thought. It's been brilliant staying in the harbour area rather than in the centre, the short boat trip into town is great fun.
We have a glorious final evening in Copenhagen for our wedding anniversary - it was perfect sitting next to the water, eating a delicious meal, listening to a free concert outside the opera opposite. It was great.
Now though we have moved on from Denmark but we hope very much to return for a longer visit than just this taster visit. However, as we leave the Universal Congress of the Esperanto Society will be holding its meeting in the city. No work for me at a meeting like that, I imagine they don't need interpreters.
We began our Tucholsky journey some time ago. Perhaps even over a decade ago when our friend Karin gave Stephen a wonderful audio book of Schloss Gripsholm. To our shame, although both of us knew of Tucholsky's political satire, neither of us had read his fiction. On a subsequent visit to Berlin we travelled to Rheinsberg - delightful, well worth a visit and of course with a strong Voltaire connection too, I think we had coffee in the café Voltaire. We also visited the Tucholsky museum which is moving but also amusing. He knew how to make people laugh. Rheinsberg is the name and setting for another and much earlier love story by Tucholsky.
Last night in Berlin we sat and ate in Tucholsky's the Kneipe at the end of the Tucholsky strasse. we sat outside and I looked down the street to the now gleaming dome of the Synagogue in Oranienburgerstrasse. According to the papers I've seen at the Jewish cemetry in Weissensee this is the place where at least one set of my great grandparents celebrated their wedding, despite already being fairly secular Jews.
Kurt Tucholsky was born in the same year as my grandfather, 1890. Four days before Christmas in 1935 he took his life. Three years younger than I am now, he had achieved a great deal, yet he was facing middle age, finitude and also the terrible scourge of national socialism in his home country. He also suffered from chronic and desperately painful sinus problems. I can understand the desperation. In Berlin I picked up the writings on childhood of another brilliant Jewish author of the same generation, Walter Benjamin, who in 1940 also took his own life rather than fall into the hands of the German authorities. These fragments didn't even come to light until they were unearthed in the French national library in 1981 ... If I have the husband I have it is in some way thanks to Walter Benjamin, so this too seems like the right thing to be reading on our 20th Wedding anniversary journey.
Perhaps it seems a little strange to be going to Mariefred to visit Tucholsky's grave but I suppsoe what we are doing is viisting the place of the story and giving gentle thanks for all the joy and pleasure it has given to us over the years. Even tonight we read bits out to one another over supper - just a few lines about Copenhagen and they made us smile. It is beautifully paced and observed.
We only decided a few weeks ago that this was what we were going to do for this anniversary journey. I could sense we were heading rather helplessly to a proposal neither of us wanted but neither of us could say no to either, then one evening Stephen said but what if we took the train to Gripsholm ... and everything fell into place and into smiles.
Quite funny really, Tucholsky's novella is certainly not bourgeois, yet it will help us over the bourgeois hurdle of "what to do for our 20th".
So here we are simply enjoying the journey those two in the book made and adding on some bits of our own as well. It's been a really fun thing to do. The trains, the ferry, the light in the wide open northern landscapes and the beauty tonight of Copenhagen. Wonderful.
"Expect nothing. Today: that is your life."
Rather unexpectedly we came across this postcard yesterday morning in the theological bookshop. This morning on the train to Rostock Dr B has been reading other choice bits of Tucholsky out loud to me. Food for the mind is also food for the soul.. More as we move towards one of the goals of our interrail journey.
For now we enjoy today, the glorious northern sky, the flat pond of the water, the wonderful black pepper in the gratin and the fast approaching horizon. Very soon I shall be in Denmark for the first time in my life.
So we visited four bookshops and four cafes, the Spree, Friedrischstrasse and much else besides ... and yes particularly as a result of the book shops the suitcases are heavier this morning!
One of the great thing about travelling on Swiss trains is that an ignoramous like me gets to learn a little more about Swiss culture each time. Yesterday I was in the Denis de Rougemont train from Geneva to Basel. You can find the full list of the political, philosophical and literary folk who are celebrated on Swiss trains here, spot how few women are on the list.
The carriages have different quotations from the person the train is named for and these serve to provoke thoughts, perhaps calm folk down or irritate them as they let the train take the strain.
Anyway I hope that on the way back I'll be on the Albert Einstein. I've promised myself that I shall walk through the carriages and note down the different quotations.
Next I think I want Geneva's buses to start carrying quotes or poems. These are simple things but they add to the travelling experience, for someone who knows almost nothing about Switzerland they also help widen my rather narrow cultural horizons.
On Thursday and Friday we were in Paris and also in St Denis, where we may end up living. It's a fascinating and very lively city in its own right and is home to the Basilica where the kings of France were crowned and buried. I had a chance to meet up with some of my future colleagues and we had a meal with my brother.
Anyway, the collage gives you a bit of a taste of where we've been.
Yesterday morning's sunrise in Berlin seen from the Hauptbahnhof as I arrived from my overnight sleep from Basel. Such a surprise and blessing to have had glorious weather for these few stolen hours in my favourite city. Now as we listen to church bells ringing across Friedrichshain we get ready to return to Geneva, but it has been wonderful to be here, to be with frineds and to think about the past and the future.
Yes of course it was delicious - these two pictures just about sum up one part of the holiday for me.
Bon appétit and here's to the next holiday ...
As we got to the amazing Millau bridge I just started snapping with one of the mobile phones. The photos aren't graet but it gives you an idea of the energy of the contruction.
Last Sunday I admit I was fast asleep despite having intended to attend mass in the Roman Catholic Church here in St Chinian. But this week I managed to get out of bed in time. I should add that there are of course Protestant parishes in this area but none any closer than a 30 minute drive, so that would have take alot more planning - and required my driver to also be willing to get out of bed early during the holiday. So I went to mass. I wanted to be what I am whic is an ordinary every day Christian and see what it is like to worship with others in this small town.
I claim to come from an ecumenical background, yet the first time I ever attended a Roman Catholic mass was during the week of prayer for Christian Unity in Dunkerque about four months after my ordination. I am still rather shocked about this when I think about it - I had been to prayer services in mosques, synagogues, gudwaras, Hindu temples, yet not once had I attended a Catholic mass. To be fair I had been to many Roman Catholic services of prayer and I was taught Old Testament by a Dominican. Thinking about this now certainly makes me realise just how enclosed our different confessional communities can be, how ignorant we are of one another's life and how desperately or perhaps blissfully self-sufficient we can be. It isn't right and it isn't good for us either.
In Dunkerque on a January Saturday evening I was invited to preach at mass, the next day the Roman Catholic priest preached at the Protestant temple. What shocked me terribly as I took part in the mass for the first time was how terribly familiar it all was. Although I knew none of the responses in French I still somehow "knew" them and instinctively knew where the liturgy was going. At that stage I still did not have this instinctive feel about the liturgy of the Eglise Réformée de France, I was not as at home in it as I suddenly felt on that Saturday evening in the Roman Catholic Church. After I had preached, no doubt far too cerebrally, Jacques Duquesne, the wonderful priest in charge, invited me and all other Protestants present to stand with him behind the altar at the point in the eucharistic liturgy where the Lord's Prayer is said. I returned to my preacher's place and the liturgy proceeded and tears just poured down my cheeks. People were filing past me to receive communion and I knew that although I felt so "at home" in the liturgy I could not "communicate", not in that public role in that public place. In that moment I suppose the division of the church became real for me in the bread and wine I did not receive, I understood the brokenness of things. My hands and lips remained empty, my tears were uncontrollable.
Anyway this morning in St Chinian I had no public role I could just be there, take communion according to my own conscience, arrive and leave without saying much to anyone - apart from "la paix du Christ". This morning I felt part of things but also in some ways less at home - perhaps because the music was so unfamiliar. St Augustine said "to sing is to pray twice" so I suspect that this morning I did not pray twice. Nor was I edified by the homily but in itself it is always good for a preacher to listen to someone else and realise quite how soon my attention begins to wander!
The priest was I would guess younger than me (this certainly surprised me, the Catholic Church in France has a crisis of candidates for the priesthood) and attendance was really quite good, the large church was over a third full, the organ was good. It was lovely to hear the words of the liturgy and the gospel in the accents of the south. But I realised that I was one of maybe half a dozen folk of working age there. Apart from the two altar boys the only other child present was a baby being carried by his grandmother. The reality of much of the traditional church throughout Europe is that it is white haired.
I felt very moved as people walked forwards to receive communion, so many with sticks, having problems walking, with a friend or partner helping them. The people of God, work weary, bone tired yet walking forwards in praise, in expectation. And I too went forwards.
I'm glad I got out of bed. It was a useful reality check about who the church is in a community like this. I was glad to see a reflection by the bishop on the deportation of the Roms in the monthly bulletin, invitations to a Christian Mulim dialogue group and a poster to take part in the local Cercle de Silence. I left feeling a little sad, thinking surely these people too might have been offered a little more of a sense of joy. Perhaps I am as ever too judgemental.
Of course I am - like a good Protestant - still pondering and meditating two of the Bible readings: "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." 2 Tim. 1.7
And the end of the Lukan parable "So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"
The tiny "circulade" village of Aigne is just so lovely - more than a thousand years old. The church in part dates back to before the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity.
Meanwhile the lo cagorol restaurant gave us an amazing lunch and my translation skills were useful for the visitors from the USA at the next table. It was really great to be part of school children, builders from the nearby construction site and tourists all eating the same wonderful food. Fine, honest, fresh and creative, but also straightforward and not in the slightest bit snobby.
Then afterwards we wandered out to see a local vigneron hosing down his press after harvesting and pressing the grapes and admired the play of light in the tiny village streets.
On Saturday, we set off from Nyons to get to St Chinian for a journey that seemed at times as though instead of following a map, we were working our way down the wine list of a restaurant. Leaving Nyons we first went past the road to Vinsobres, which became a Cotes du Rhone Villages in 1967, and then, in 2006, got promoted to being a stand alone appellation. We then skirted the southern edge of the Enclave des Papes, a territory once part of the Papal States that became part of France only in 1814, close by Visan, where our wine imbibed the previous night came from, and whose label bore the papal arms. On the road to Bollene, we passed by the industrial complex of the Celliers des Dauphins, known for its massive production of Cotes du Rhones wine for supermarkets and other outlets. Crossing the Rhone we continued through the Cotes du Rhone and Cotes du Rhone Villages appellations before crossing into the Department du Gard, moving into the Coteaux du Longedoc territory, first through Sommieres, then the various sub-appellations such as Gres de Montpellier, Pic St Loup (where we passed by the Domaine de l'Hortus, whose wines feature on the wine list of the Chanteclair restaurant opposite our home in Ferney), then on past the signs to Montpeyroux, which also boasts a wonderful cafe des vins called l'Horloge at the centre of the village.
Throughout the journey we would get stuck behind the narrow tractors that are used to harvest the grapes in the vineyard while the smell of pressed grapes would waft into the car as we drove past the village cooperatives. Then, as we got into the home straight towards St Chinian, we entered the Faugeres region, and drove past the signs to the Domaine Moulin de Lene, whose hat obtained on a previous visit Dr B still wears as protection from the sun, and whose wine we drank for the first evening of our stay in St Chinian. Finally, after going past the Domaine de la Liquier, we turned off the D909 to St Genies de Fontédit, and saw our first sign from a producer of AOC St Chinian ... but that will be another story ... one you're all going to get bored by by the end of this holiday!
(This post was written for the stranzblog by guestblogger Dr B)
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