between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Another night on the air mattress, another day wandering around Oxford and eating too much coffee-shop lunch.

I bought gyros from a terrible Greek takeaway and ate half of it on Magdalen Bridge before throwing the other half away. Not the worst gyros I've ever eaten - but decidedly not that good.

The sun shone. (Yay!) And it's a straight shot down High Street to St. Michael's at the North Gate and then turn right down the Cornmarket to where the Ashmolean may be found. Along the High Street I passed a delightful shop, Whittard's of Chelsea, which had both a nice man behind the counter, gorgeous flavoured hot chocolate powders and tasty instant teas. "WANT!" said I to myself. "Aeroplane weight limits," said myself to I.

So I just tasted the free hot samples. (Nom.) And regretfully ambled along. (I may have to buy another piece of luggage and check it in. Because WANT. Would this be so bad?) (Okay, I really probably can't afford that. BUT STILL.)

St. Michael's North Gate wasn't a place I knew of before setting out. But when I passed it, there were signs for the Saxon Tower (a nice bit of early medieval stonework, that), so I went inside. It's a nice little church, well-maintained, very friendly in that peculiar gently Christian-but-not-pushy Anglican way. I lucked out, in a sense, going up the Tower (two pound entry students, and the nice wee girl in the giftshop didn't even ask to see my card) - there was a guy from East London up doing something to the clock and the bells, so as I was going up past the bells they were being rung in turn. It's a sensation you feel in your bowel and your belly, the voices of great bronze bells.

The view isn't as striking as the one from the Sheldonian cupola, but there are some very interesting rooftops visible from up there. I'll have to go into Mary-the-Virgin church next.

The Ashmolean Museum is off Beaumont St., at the far end of the Cornmarket. Founded by Elias Ashmole, antiquarian and alchemist, in the late 17th century, its original premises were located on Broad St. It moved to its new premises in the last decade of the 19th century, and within the last decade it's been refurbished and its galleries expanded. And it seems to be one of the few things in Oxford that's free to enter.

It's fucking shiny. Now, mind you, collections of Greek and Roman antiquities fail to astound me these days, after Athens. But the Ashmolean was at one point directed by Sir Arthur Evans. Its prehistoric collections are sexy: it has material from Nimrud and Jericho, from Knossos and Cyprus (Hi, A.G. Leventis Gallery! The Leventis foundation gets everywhere, which is excellent for Cypriot material in collections abroad), and a goodly store of Egyptian antiquities to boot, including the mummy of Menesamun, a female musician.

And pots. I love pots. POTS POTS POTS. LET ME FONDLE YOU. (Alas, no fondling allowed. But SO MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF POTS.)

The Islamic art is also impressive, if not quite as numerous on display: I have a great fondness for medieval Persian decorative arts. There is Mongol art, and Tang dynasty camel ceramics, Mughal paintings, Tibetan Buddhas, Buddhist deities. A dancing Ganesha, who looked delightfully happy.

I didn't get up to the rest of the collections. My feet gave out, so - after drooling over this book among others in the museum shop, I hied off to Waterstones for a sandwich and a cake in the café.

This tourism lark is tiring. (And expensive.) I should have a nap, and recruit my strength...

This entry was originally posted at http://hawkwing-lb.dreamwidth.org/558188.html. There are comments there. Comment where you like.

Mostly about books. I dreamed I found a copy of Aaronovitch's Broken Homes in an Oxford bookshop. And then I dreamed that the cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre - which was open to tourists yesterday and which has the best views of rooftops - was filled with books.

Yes. Blackwell's has crept into my dreams.

Yesterday I wandered around aimlessly, because the sun was shining: down Dead Man's Walk, along Christ Church Meadow, around to Oxford Castle.

I've been spoiled by heritage sites on the continent, because I refuse to pay eight pounds to take a tour of a surviving medieval tower and part of an 18th century prison. Sorry, lads. Old prisons are cool - but I don't want to follow a chirpy guide in period costume around one. And I've seen more striking castles... English castles don't hold a candle to Venetian forts. But then, there're reasons I'm not a medievalist.

From there I wandered back up, past the handful of shopping streets lined with cheap cafés and highstreet shops, to Broad Street, and the former home of the Ashmolean (which now houses the museum of science) beside the Bodleian and the Sheldonian Theatre. The Sheldonian was open to visitors, so in I went: from its cupola one can see the statues and spires of the rooftops of the nearest bits of Oxford up close, and that's really shiny.

The theatre part of the theatre is a combination of baroque excrescences in gilt and gold leaf, moulding and wood and a GIANT FRESCO on the ceiling: the combination is overwhelming. The persons responsible for the decorative schema may possibly have heard of "restraint," but only as something to be excoriated, and avoided at all costs. A similar attitude to decoration is evident in the chapel of Trinity College, across the road, but there the paneling of dark wood, rising to baroque plaster moulding on the ceiling and behind the altar, combined with the stained glass windows, gives it a claustrophobic gravitas that the Sheldonian gilt orgy rather lacks.

The grounds of Trinity College are cheap to enter (a pound) and present an interesting patchwork of historic styles, from the Tudor to the 1950s. I walked past the dining hall, which seems very Victorian Gothic, and where the catering staff were trading complaints about the state of the floor.

Pretty. There's a limited amount of times I can repeat that word. Oxford's not like TCD, because TCD's elder buildings are hulking granite, not given to fairytale spires and a golden glow of Cotswold stone (I prefer granite, but that's just me). But the extra layer of prettiness, the green space, the fact that the university is the town centre rather than an oasis in the middle of it - those things aside, the college buildings remind me a lot of TCD. The same carefully preserved historical architecture wedded to newer bits, overlaid with the smell of sports kit and exam hall and stale food and existential angst. Oxford looks like a film set to me, because I've seen it in so many films or television programmes... but then you turn a corner and the whole present there-ness of it hits you in the face like a wet sock, and you realise that this collegiate dream of timeless buildings and playing fields is only one image of Oxford.

It's slightly weird, is what I'm saying. Makes me think thoughts about the anthropology of space and place.

I'm staying with mates, who are the Best People Ever, and who are feeding me marvelous things and showing me all the good places. Food is love.

Oxford is... bizarre. I was here when I was thirteen, staying on a campbed in the same room as my grandmother in my uncle's house near the Iffley Road, and some of it I remember. The medieval buildings, and the Victorian-does-medieval fantasias of spires, the Tudor mass of New College and redbrick Keble, Magdalene ("Maudlin") with its pointy turrets, and the solid Georgians squatting their way through the middle. Much of the stonework has been cleaned in the last few years, and instead of the blackish grey of centuries of smoke, the natural warm yellowish tones of Cotswold stone glow under the clouds.

The centre of Oxford is half medieval/early modern city, half tourist trap, layered over with institutions of learning. (Tourist trap, because hello, well maintained. Most everywhere else I've been the historic bits are slightly more crumbly.) There is so much historical fabric, it's hard to take in. Particularly when you're walking through it with people who live here now, and tend not to slow down for your rubbernecking.

J. & K. took me down to K.'s college, Keble, which is all redbrick Victorian (and apparently St. John's has a Society for the Destruction of Keble College, because it was hated when it was first built), the red bricks highlighted by yellow bricks and the occasional blue in geometric patterns, a sort of flyaway spindly Gothic in technicolour. It's fantastic. The Dining Hall is vaulted in dark wood. It's so... academic. And shiny. You sort of just want to rollllll around in it.

It's cleaner than Trinity back home. Or looks cleaner, anyway. And Oxford has these weird abbreviations. Like "Univ" for University College. Whee!

So, anyway. The Pitt Rivers Museum is across the road from Keble. EYEBALL KICK. There's a natural history section as you go in - although the dinosaurs are closed off for refurbishment - and THEN. After the birds, and the shiny pillars of different sorts of hard stone, and the fossils, and the BITS OF ROCK YOU CAN TOUCH -

You enter this giant dark room filled with cabinets. (There's about three levels? I only wandered around the first.) And the cabinets are PACKED FULL of stuff. I mean, JAMMED. The museum staff hand out tiny flashlights so you can read the labels, and off you go into this museum which has preserved its Victorian approach to presentation, this bazaar filled with cabinets of curiosities: cabinets filled to bursting with STUFF from all over the world connected by some kind of theme. No white space. Everywhere you look you are assailed with RANDOM COOL STUFF.

The famous shrunken heads are really cool. And eensy: I had no idea they'd be that small.

So much stuff. Too much to take in. And in among all this historic stuff, and STUFF WHAT WE NICKED FROM THE SAVAGES (oh, Victorians), you get this odd modern thing that's stuck in a case with stuff to which it is thematically connected.

After an hour of this... well, the Eagle and Child is nearby. Over a burger and chips (pathetic helping of chips, although tasty burger and pint of cola is about £10, not bad), we had a discussion about C.S. Lewis's theology in the Narnia books, and J. quoted the line from Tolkien's letters about Lewis's "Ulsterior motive." Wheee! Fun was had by all.

And then off to Blackwell's. SO MANY BOOKS. I mean. The science fiction and fantasy section is pathetic, it's much worse than Hodges Figgis (I don't think I spotted a single US edition of anything, whereas HF will import things, particularly if you ask nicely), but the Classics and Ancient History sections. OH HEAVEN SO MANY BOOKS. And all of them, all of them, crying out my name. All the Oxford and Penguin Classics (most of them three for the price for two). All of the Loebs. CUP and OUP. Blackwell's Companions series. EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT.

Seriously, I want to go back in there with pen and paper and take notes on the titles of all the shiny books. And J. & K. are book-enablers. So I ended up walking out of there with two, after a drink and a brownie in the café. (Plus Cameron's The Red Knight, which I saw in a charity shop on the way into town.)

I also bought two postcards, because I'm behindhand in my reviews for Tor.com and think I should write a more apologetic note than my last email. And I owe them a thank-you note for the box of freebies. So.

Now my feet hurt and I'm lying on a comfy couch. And I ought to finish this review for SH and try to read for Tor.com.

Planning to be in London to meet a mate from college at the Natural History Museum Friday. So the rest of the week is just going to be wandering Oxford. (The NHM has a café. Whee, food! Whee, dinosaurs!)

Okay, Berlin. I will give you one thing: you may be the least friendly and welcoming place I've yet visited (and I include New York in that), your drinks may be overpriced, your weather fairly cat right now - but what you lack in charm, you make up in the wealth of your museums.

And when I say wealth, I mean Vive la Révolution! levels of 18th-century excess in the fabric of the Bodes Museum, the Pergamon Museum as seen from the front, the Altes Gallery, the Altes Museum, and just possibly also the Neues Museum - wood coffering in the ceilings, bloody hell.

I did not have a chance to go to the Altes National Gallery, since I went back to bed for a nap after breakfast, due to sleeping bloody terribly last night, but at one pm I set out, determined to see the Nikolaikirche and the Knoblauchhaus before going on to Museuminsel. And I did, discovering on the way that the oldest part of Berlin is on the north end of the island that has the museums on it and across the river. There was a giant placard up (in German) about archaeologiscal excavations on the site of Peterkirche and surrounds, which made me wish I read German better. (I can identify archaeological site pictures and specific words, no more.)

Nikolaikirche is pretty, and old, and houses an exhibition on the church and early bits of Berlin. I am not made happy by the ubiquity of audioguides, and the "helpfulness" of the ticket-desk ladies who insisted on giving me one (and the guard sent me back to the ticket desk for a two-euro photograph-permission extra ticket, no impressed) since I despise the guided tour experience in general and the audioguide gives it to you in a patronising accent right in your ear.

The Knoblauchhaus, opposite the Nikolaikirche, is a museum that showcase the style of living of the upper class in Enlightenment Berlin, being the townhouse of the Knoblauch family. Unfortunately most of the explanations are in German only, but it's free to enter, and has two helpful staff. (Also very very steep wood stairs.) I was very taken by a closed glass bookshelf (topped by a bust of Caesar Augustus) that contained 19th-century volumes, including the works of Dumas fils, Herodotus, the New Testament in French, and Voltaire.

From here, I walked on to the Bodes Museum, passing many roadworks and the renovations in front of the Pergamon Museum. The Bodes Museum is a domed extravaganza housing the medieval-late Renaissance collections of the German National Museums, an 18th-century pillared and marbled and gilted impressive monstrosity with two storeys above ground, and two domes, a "Greater" and a "Lesser." The architecture of the building is itself a work of art. The doorjambs are made of marble and granite, the staircases are double-staircases sweeping up to landings, and made of particoloured marble, it has more pillars than you could shake a stick at, and more gilt, and the guards did not like it when you touched the marble doorjambs. (What was I going to do, leave a smear?) I had lunch of Kurbischsouppe, whatever that is besides tasty, in the museum restaurant, and walked through the galleries for, I believe, upwards of an hour. It is laid out as an art museum, rather than possessing a focus on context, which is a noticeable lack to me... but bloody hell, so much stuff.

Including a mosaic of SS Cosmas and Damianus, Christ, Michael and Gabriel, from Ravenna that took my bloody breath away, I swear it.

The Neues Museum has three storeys, and by the time I reached it I was limping. But damned if I was going to give up before I'd seen it (and got good value out of my museum pass, it's the only thing I am going to succeed in getting value out of, this trip, and I feel bad enough about that already) and its Egyptian, Cypriot, Roman, and Russian-German exhibit. Apparently the Russian-German temporary exhibition has unhomed the Ice Age, Stone Age, and Prehistory exhibits, which were not on view for the public that I could find (most disappointing). A shitload of Egyptian material, impressively laid-out, including Roman and Byzantine Egyptian material. A lesser shitload of late Roman/early medieval Western Europe stuff. A small but fascinating gallery dedicated to Cypriot material, which hit my geeky buttons because I recognised a bunch of the material (in type if not specific) from my final year Ancient Cyprus class. A small and not majorly fascinating gallery on the ancient Sudan, which could have done with more context/pictures/something. A lot of material on early contributors to the collections who excavated in Egypt, which it would have been nice to have English translations for. A gallery on papyrus, with two of the display cases missing their displays and no note left behind.

(As an aside: postcards in Berlin are bloody expensive.)

Limping noticeably (and defeated by another Egyptian gallery), I left, and went to Jedermann's again for dinner (meatball, mashed potato, and buttered carrots again, followed by hot chocolate with cream for dessert) and decided to route myself back to the hostel via Checkpoint Charlie, so's I could say I went. In the dark and the wet, not really good for sight-seeing. Felt rather let down by the lack of visible barbed wire. (What can I say? I'm sure the museum is wonderful, but I was walking past at 1930.)

In conclusion: Berlin has some pretty impressive museums, even if she charges too much for them, good food, and... not really much else that I'd want to come back for? Also, January is cold and wet and despite my best efforts, my trousers are not really up to this weather's speed.

Now I will pack, and look forward to going home before it snows.

Either Berlin is cursed or I am.

Breakfast in a German cheap-ass hostel/hotel is quite good, even if the bed is narrow and the pillow is a kind of weird bolster thing that I didn't think they made any more, and the coverlet is the thinnest possible duvet. Mind you, the last hotel breakfast I had was in Greece, and in Greece they don't believe in breakfast, so an array of hot and cold meats, five different cheeses, three sorts of yoghurt, bread, cereal, sweet cake-bread, and one's choice of hot drinks, apple juice, and orange juice, was quite astonishing. I ate too much, planning on skipping lunch. (The only way to be sure is to eat too much.) Hired a bike, and set out for the Museum Island.

Discovered on the way there that the brakes didn't work, the bike seat had slipped a bit too low, and I really didn't enjoy being rained on.

Arrived at the museums before they opened. Discovered that the Pergamon museum is probably better described as "Great Altar of Pergamon and a bunch of Assyrian and Islamic stuff." The Hellenistic gallery was closed while the fabric of the building is being renovated. Joy. The Assyrian/ANE stuff is fascinating and really well laid-out, but still Not What I Was Here to see. I did acquire a large book on Pergamon (in German, with pictures: sigh dictionary sigh), despite all.

The Altes-Museum had Greek and Roman stuff. I have seen so many Greek&Roman Stuff museums, I can barely muster a geeky thrill anymore. However, there was a relief of a heroised physician. So the morning was not entirely wasted, although I was museumed out and wanted to go see the Tiergarten.

Halfway down Unter den Linden, the pedal broke. The sharp bit of metal stabbed my shoe, fortunately thwarted by good Gortex and not leaving a hole in me. A bus coming up on my outside gave me the fright of my life, or at least a sodding great irritation. I could've fucking damaged meself, and that would've been the end of me.

So I went back to the hostel instead of going anywhere fun, damp and tired and deeply annoyed, and to put the cap on a fairly unpleasant morning, discovered the crotch of my trousers had ripped.

All that needs to happen next is for me to get my period and have my pocket picked, and that'll be the perfect storm of unpleasant trips.

The Lakonian plain is slightly fantastic. The sun comes up over the mountains in the east, all kinds of colours, and the light hits the tops of the Taygetus in the west. The Langada pass is a deep bowl in the Taygetus, and the light works its way down onto the plain - rapidly, all things considered.

Sparta's archaeological remains, apart from the theatre, are not very impressive. One goes for the myth, and to say that one has been: what remains is a scattering of blocks and bricks and some mosaics in the museum, closed on Mondays.

Mystra, on the other hand? Mystra is six kilometers from the modern town of Sparta, on a hill at the foot of the Taygetus. It is a medieval town, fortified by the Franks during their medieval domination of Byzantine Greece, during the 13th century. Retaken by the Byzantines, its cathedral was where the last Palaiologos Byzantine emperor was crowned in 1432. It was known for its silk trade. Later came Venetians, and Ottomans, and it was a living town until the 1950s, when the last inhabitants were relocated. Today it is home to several churches, most - save the cathedral and the church of the Orthodox convent of the Pantessa, where cats and kittens lie flat out in the shade of pink and orange blossoms - in ruins. The Palace of the Despots, where Byzantine lords - and an emperor or two - lived. A kastro, or castle keep on the peak, which I did not walk to, for the temperature broke 39C again.

Thence to the opposite side of modern Sparta, where in 39C the few, the brave, the proud, hiked twenty minutes up a hill to a Middle Helladic site, where also there is the Menelaion, the shrine where Helen and Menelaus received heroic cult in Classical Sparta.

And from there to Tolo in the Argolid, across more - lower - mountains. Where the internet is bouncy, and where I spent an hour in the sea with my students. I do not think I am quite capable of maintaining teacherly detachment in the middle of a waterfight - not that I'm good at it at all. They are close to my age, and wanting to be liked is one of my besetting sins.

There are several standout moments from this trip already. Drinking from the Castalian spring at Delphi. Running in the stadium at Olympia, the stade-long footrace, in a cloud of dust with the students and the baking heat. Staggering around Messene in 41C, and seeing the defensive walls while the wind blew in hot gusts. Eating fish in Itea, water-fighting in the sea right here in Tolo while the moon rose over the water and the light died.

I like this.

This morning, guiding students around Delphi. 38 degrees Celsius. This afternoon, I have off. I have washed my kit and hung it out to dry on the balcony, swum in the sea - a layer of water on the surface warm as bathwater - and am now lying on my hotel-room bed with a view of the Parnassian hills, not quite as wiped as wiped can get.

(Last night, fresh fish dinner. Gorgeous. Expensive, but worth it.)

If I were a good and virtuous human, I would be writing columns and book reviews right now. But instead, I am exhausted, so probably the most that will happen is napping.

No, really. Exhausted.

I napped on the bus back from Nafplio. After Mycenae, I remember seeing the back and flanks of the Akrokorinth, and then nothing from the industrial chimneys of Elefsina until Athens itself.

I am tired and have my period and am stressed about travelling home. So instead of doing anything useful after my arrival here in the institute, I've been adding books I'll probably never get to read to an Amazon.fr wishlist. Pourquoi est que Les Lames du Cardinal est indisponible? Even the omnibus seems to be out of print, so I'm disappointed.

...Now I should probably pack things. I suppose that can wait until tomorrow.

This morning I breakfasted on loukoumades, which are a kind of Greek treat that has much the same heart-attack-onna-stick composition as pierogies. Only loukoumades are fried sweet dough, rather than savoury, and mine where covered in chocolate sauce. (The traditional ones are covered in honey and cinnamon.) Dear friends, they were delicious, but they sit in the morning stomach like little sweet balls of lead.

As a consequence, I thought I'd better put off swimming for a little while. Healthy diversion presented itself in the form of the fortress of the Palamidi, with its many many steps for me to climb once more and work off some loukoumades.

It is fantastic up there. I've been up three times now. Each time I'm taken aback by how much fortress there is up there: bastions and bastions and bastions of early modern (mostly 18th century, I believe, and constructed within a relatively short span of time) fortifications, commanding the top of the rock in inimitable Venetians was here style, overlooking the sea, and the town, and the bastions of the Akronafplio. You can se the fortress of Argos from up there, too, and the ruins of Tiryns, and along the upper bastions the way is overgrown with scrub and rosemary and yellow carob and bright red poppies.

The quality of the light here is so different that at home: the sun is fiercer - brighter, sharper - and the whole attitude towards the world is different when one has that much sun and warmth. It is possible to live outside.

I walked back down the steps again soon enough, though. Still wasn't enough exercise, really, but there's a path that leads northeasterly along between the hill and the sea from Nafplio's tiny rocky beach. The sea is... well, it's the Mediterranean under a summer sky: blue like aquamarine and clear as crystal glass in the shallows. Across the bay a slight mist obscured the other mountains, but the Palamidi loomed on my left on the stroll out, occasional prickly pears and grasses clinging to high rocks. The cliff became less stark eventually, sliding gradually into less daunting hills covered in rosemary and sage and heather, chamomile and grasses, prickly scrub and stunted myrtle trees, the occasional rhododendron and other plants I can't identify without a handbook.

Fabulous scents. Birds making noises that seemed vaguely tuneful. Sunlight reflecting off the sea.

It was fantastic, and I was probably lured by "let's see what's around one more corner" into walking a bit further than I ought to have, but the last corner revealed the fact that less than an hour's walk from Nauplio is another larger beach, which I did not walk to, opting to turn around and walk back to the beach at the town while I still had both water and energy. I have been enpinkenified a bit, despite my best hopes - but since I took no precautions, this is only to be expected.

Swimming - brief, but glorious. The sea is cool by comparison with the air, but in comparison to back home (where the temperature right now is a balmy 9 degrees Celsius, or 49 of your strange American Fahrenheit), it's warm as a bath. I feel all kinds of gloaty about my short-but-fabulous holiday, really.

(Ooops. I'm pink. This may not be the best development ever.)

Nauplio is beautiful. My internet access is twitchy and intermittent, which means I should probably get some offline work done. (Oh, how do I live without it?) More news will follow. Affectionately yours!