Berlin, Warsaw and Kracow - part 1, Berlin

Our holiday was a quite spontaneous choice. Suddenly, we wanted to go to Berlin, and then catch trains to Poland, because you can. The novelty of catching trains to other countries hasn't worn off, in spite of having done this a few years ago in Germany, Austria, CzechRep, Slovakia and Hungary.

We stayed in the dreariest hotel in Berlin. It was in a good area, but Oh, there was no attempt at decor, there was no personality in evidence as the receptionists spoke no English and had nothing to say. The breakfast was served in a small room and seemed to be the least the hotel could get away with - you could have scrambled egg and frankfurter, or cheese and ham and tomato and cucumber. I became used to the cheese salad breakfast. I chose the hotel because it was in an old building with very high ceilings in the commercial district. The stair case was impressive (there was no lift) and the doors were very tall and solid.

The place next door had the distinction of being a Jewish hotel with signs in Hebrew. (The Jewish history was to become the theme of our holiday and this wasn't a conscious choice; it's just inevitable) The ground floor of our hotel housed a restaurant - quite a nice one.

We bought 3 days of metro tickets, which turned out to be a really good idea, as we used the metro (and the S-bahn) a lot. From the airport we went to the Hauptbahnhof which was quite exciting in itself as it is on 5 levels.

On our first day we walked to town through the Tiergarten, which A kept calling the tea gardens although it actually means animal garden, and was a hunting park. It is the loveliest inner city park I have experienced, as it is very shady and quiet. Good for cycling and jogging. Mainly trees, and guess what? They are all quite new. The Berliners tore up the Tiergarten for firewood after WWII. All the decorative features which had been spoilt are being restored and replaced, with no expense spared. Good to see.

On the other side of the Tiergarten is an important monument - The Siegessaule - a gilded angel of Victory on a column. You can cross over the road and head to the Bundestag. My guide book calls it the Reichstag and perhaps the Germans do too? The Reichstag was hardly used from 1933 to 1999. It was the scene of the Nazi's last battle - 1,500 Nazi soldiers made their last stand here against the Soviet troops - extending WWII by 2 days. In 1995 rebuilding by British architect Sir Norman Foster commenced. In 1999 the German parliament convened here for the first time in 66 years. It must have been such a happy day. We made an appointment via the internet before we left England so we could go up to the dome and see the view. There are two ramps - one to go up and one to go down. Inside the dome a come of 360 mirrors reflects natural light into the chamber below. There is also a ventilation hole which allows the hot air from the chamber below to escape but the rain can't get in. Very clever - the commentary through the audio guide is very congratulatory of Sir Norman Foster which makes one wonder if he wrote it himself. Most of all we admired the view of the city.

Ventilation

Light reflector



Revolving sunshade

The Brandenburg gate was the grandest of 14 gates in Berlin's old city wall. It is a monumental size but was designed as an arch of peace, crowned by the Goddess of Peace and showing Mars sheathing his sword. Knowing that it used to be walled up, knowing its history, is incredibly important and there are information boards all around it with photographs showing how it used to look at different times. The line of the wall is also incised into the pavement - one looks at it and marvels at how profoundly it ruined the city of Berlin. The Gate represents struggles for freedom, past and present. There is a room built into the gate called the Room of Silence, where you may contemplate the idea of peace on the planet.

Through the wall is the Pariser Platz. After Napoleon this square was full of important government buildings all bombed to smithereens in WWII. For decades, it was an unrecognisable, deserted no-man's land. But now it has been rebuilt with prestigious embassies, fountains and flower gardens. Unfortunately these come with a large branch of Starbucks and the scary face of Colonel Sanders. There is also a reconstruction of the Hotel Adlon, which was famous between the wars, and more recently it was here on the second floor that Michael Jackson dangled his baby from the balcony.

Across the square is a historic street called Unter den Linden. Sadly, the trees are rather small - perhaps a small variety of lime, but in the good old days, this was one of Europe's grand boulevards. It stretches towards Alexanderplatz with its TV tower. Down here we realised we wanted a refresher in German history and went into the Deutsches Historical Museum. This is a large, well-planned and well-stocked narrative of German history. I particularly loved some of the paintings. A family portrait showed the rise of the educated middle class in 19th century Germany - and this in spite of the fact that Germany was late to industrialise and yet! the education system seems to have been good. Then I was also most impressed by a picture of King Wilhelm 1 on his horse, looking down at the potatoes some peasants are digging up. He is very interested in the size of their potatoes. No wonder they loved him. The history of Germany mirrors our own - Germany seems to be our annoying younger brother in Europe up until, and during, WWI. After the first World War their history, of a country broken up between the victors and heavily in debt, becomes very black, and Germans were clearly looking for ways out of the mess and the humiliation. Looking for a new beginning - Someone who will stand up for them. Someone who doesn't believe they lost a war. Step forward, A Hitler. This part was very well-explained.

Further on up the road there is a group of museums long-established, on an island, and a cathedral. It is pleasant to lie on the grass outside the cathedral and have a rest. Eventually we dragged ourselves around the buildings but none of the museums appealed very much - full of antiquities. Another time, perhaps, because I would like to go back to Berlin.

Outside the Cathedral

The next day we went on the S-bahn to the Berlin Wall Museum. We got off at Nordbahnhof, which was one of the "ghost stations" of  Cold War Berlin. It was built in 1926, closed in 1961, and open again in 1989. As it was a dogleg of the East mostly surrounded by the West, Western subway trains had permission to go through this station without stopping. The station steps were bricked up with two walls but at street level they were still visible. Guards surveyed the tunnels to make sure no-one got on or off,  - but in case they were tempted to abscond they were locked into a little room and watched the tracks through small windows. Down there the original wall tiles and the old German script survive, which is rather wonderful to see. We rose to the street rather stunned that the station stairs had been bricked up for so long. Almost immediately you come across the Wall park - the museum is outside where the wall used to be - a wide strip of grass with metal posts and pictures of the wall. Here the Berlin Wall, which was erected virtually overnight in 1961, ran right along Bernauer Strasse. People were suddenly separated from their neighbours across the street. I bought a postcard of bricklayers making the wall under armed guard. At gunpoint. It is the oddest thing.



Section of wall at the wall museum

There is a section of wall to look at from above, exactly where it used to be. Two walls, with no-man's land in between, and a watchtower. Apparently the watchtower was brought from elsewhere. The gravel in between meant that anyone trying to escape would leave footprints. A church, which had been in use since the late 19th century, ended up between the walls, and was torn down in 1985.

We didn't visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (something for next time) as we were a bit fed up with the wall after this, and we were disappointed with Checkpoint Charlie as it is only a reconstruction for tourists, a photo opportunity with flags and signs.



This is all very silly

We did stumble upon the Topography of Terror. This is an exhibit called Berlin 1933-45: Between Propaganda and Terror displayed outside behind a surviving stretch of wall - here are the ruins of the Gestapo headquarters and of the Nazi government. It's a museum of sorts - there are few artefacts; it's mostly written explanations and photos, like reading a good textbook standing up. You read about how the SS, the Gestapo (the secret police), and the SD (the Nazi intelligence agency) became a state within and state, with talons in every corner of German society. Here the Nazi machine planned the "racial purification" and the concentration camp system. The building was also equipped with dungeons, where the Gestapo detained and tortured thousands of prisoners. I thought about the characters in "Alone in Berlin". Poor old man, who ended up here, beaten up and playing chess while waiting for the death sentence to be carried out.

You have to hand it to the Germans, they aren't hiding anything. What happened is out there in the open, not hidden in a museum. There are photographs and documents.

The memorial to the murdered Jews is also outside in a prime position - it is an extraordinary maze of blocks which you walk up and down amongst without really understanding what it means. But this is lazy of me! What can I find out?

Rows of plain blocks, path goes up and down.

 Here is more information from Wikipedia:

According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.^[11] The Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe official English website^[2] states that the design represents a radical approach to the traditional concept of a memorial, partly because Eisenman said the number and design of the monument had no symbolic significance.^[12][13] However, observers have noted the memorial's resemblance to a cemetery.^[14][15][16] The abstract installation leaves room for interpretation. The most common being that of a graveyard. “The memorial evokes a graveyard for those who were unburied or thrown into unmarked pits, and several uneasily tilting stelae suggest an old, untended, or even desecrated cemetery^[17]”. The memorial's grid can be read as both an extension of the streets that surround the site and an unnerving evocation of the rigid discipline and bureaucratic order that kept the killing machine grinding along^[3]”. Wolfgang Thierse, the president of Germany's parliament described the piece as a place where people can grasp "what loneliness, powerlessness and despair mean".^[18] Mr. Thierse talked about the memorial as creating a type of mortal fear in the visitor. Visitors have described the monument as isolating, triggered by the massive blocks of concrete, barricading the visitor from street noise and sights of Berlin.^[18]

Ariel view of the memorial which was built on area previously occupied by the Wall.

Here is a review of the memorial from a recent visitor:

“Powerful Museum Underground ”

Reviewed 2 days ago

NEW

 via mobile

We initially went to just the above ground area only, which I did not find terribly compelling. However, we returned and went to the underground museum. I think the only way horrific events like the Holocaust don't get repeated is by making sure they are never forgotten. The museum begins with the broad strokes of how the concentration camps started and how widespread the crisis was. But the real impact of the exhibits is when they become personal. Pictures, diaries and personal accounts give a deeper meaning to the sheer numbers of people murdered. I can't say it's a pleasant museum, but I am very glad we went. Also, when you exit, the above ground area is more relatable.

Visited August 2017

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d617423-r520342475-The_Holocaust_Memorial_Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe-Berlin.html#

Potsdamer Platz used to be partly in East Berlin and now it is a dazzling commercial square with busy roads, and some exciting cinemas and new buildings for Sony and Daimler - it celebrates the triumph of capitalism, if you like. We went there a few times as we were looking for an English film to see - but alas, English films are badly dubbed and unpleasant to watch.



Inside the Sony Centre - the dome

Inside the Sony Centre - whopping great mall

You have to walk a bit from Potsdamer Platz to get to the Kulturforum, where some major NEW art galleries and the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall is sited. This is the strangest part, because it isn't a popular place in spite of having those attractions. The spaces outside the galleries are desolate areas of concrete and the verges are full of weeds. The Gemaldegalerie houses great painting by Durer, Holbein, Brueghel, van Dyck, Vermeer, Giotto, Botticelli and a good number of Rembrandts. The collection is chronologically arranged in a purpose-built gallery, and is it popular? Really, no. So strange. It even has a good café with nice food and a good vibe. I took a photo of the basement because it is so extraordinarily empty.

I had the feeling that the Berliners themselves had somehow rejected this area, and I'd be interested to know why. I felt that it must have been very difficult, if you were about my age and had got used to the city the way it was with the wall in it, to have all the building work and the transformations of spaces into new spaces which reflect a mode of thought which you don't feel comfortable with. I mean, the dominance of the globalised corporations. I sympathised.

One space that hasn't been transformed, but which will be soon, is Alexanderplatz. This is a place that Berliners do enjoy. It is very concrete and East German, the buildings are very sixties and seventies, but the people go there in droves to hear buskers and buy crafts from stalls and see street entertainers and play with games and toys. It's great fun. But I think there are plans to improve it and perhaps this is something the Berliners don't really want. I think they might like more affordable rents and less glamourous rebuilding.


Alexanderplatz with communist buildings probably to be demolished - but should they be??

Famous 1960s clock



TV tower built by the communists - next time
we will go up!

Fountain outside the Rathaus - building works going on in front of the Rathaus.

Mr Britling Sees it Through by H. G. Wells

I couldn't read the last Book Group choice. It was Dr Thorne by Trollope and I struggled through about three chapters and gave it up. So I missed the meeting.

Instead I took up a book which has been on my shelf for ages. In fact, I think it was on the grandparents' bookshelves in Walton-on-Thames. (Do you remember we grew up in my grandparents house? They had gone, but when we moved in their books were still on the bookshelves and their old coats and hats were in the cupboards, old tennis rackets and hockey sticks in the hall. They were proper people with a history. But maybe I haven't written about this here.)

The book is Mr Britling Sees it Through and it is a novel, but one with no real plot; it is more like a thinly fictionalised record of how it felt to live through the first two years of the First World War. The main character, Mr Britling, is a writer like H. G. Wells, and he has a certain fame and a certain degree of comfort, and he fools around with women who are not his wife and tells himself some good reasons for this philandering - only, of course, he never calls it philandering; but he admits these serial relationships are a kind of game. A game of ego on two sides.

As well as a wife and another woman a motor-ride away, he has a young secretary, who has a young wife and sister-in-law; Mr B also has a teenage son and two younger sons, and a live-in German tutor for his son. And at the outset, he has a visiting American who is keen to gain understanding of the British way of life. All these people are caught unawares by the war and the drama comes in the way the war treats them all. The book was published in the deepest days of the war before the United States came into it. I shall type up some extracts but I believe it is all worth reading. There is a freshness and vividness about Wells, an honesty that's fresh air in a fuggy room; a shot of hard stuff.

I love the picture of the Georgians before the war - the world of rose gardens and no central heating, when women were struggling for the vote and exhilarating in a degree of independence. It's the moment that Mrs Dalloway's daughter (Mrs Dalloway: Virginia Woolf) catches a bus on her own and goes riding up the Strand just because she can; and suddenly freedom is just possible for her... she starts to envision possible careers, possible professions...

Anyway, to set the scene there's a terrific description of a hockey match involving both sexes, very like one of those old school stories, and you imagine what fun they had in the days before we all got scared of being outside.

After the war breaks out, the people of the village start a run on the village shop (Hickson's), amongst them the well-to-do neighbour Mrs Faber.

" And would you believe me," she went on, going back to Mrs Britling, "that man Hickson stood behind his counter - where I've dealt with him for years, and refused absolutely to let me have more than a dozen tins of sardines. Refused! Point-blank!

"I was there before nine, and even then Hickson's shop was crowded - crowded, my dear!"

Mr Britling is just disgusted with women who just want to be dramatic, like this. But then he starts to worry that there will be "a tremendous change in values"; he worries that all his investments will be worthless and there will be bankruptcy. He tells his wife that they may have to leave home and go somewhere safer. But he, too, is as excited as the neighbour.

"Now I am afraid - and at the same time I feel that the spell is broken. The magic prison is suddenly all doors. You may call this ruin, bankruptcy, invasion, flight; they are doors out of habit and routine ... I have been doing nothing for so long, except idle things and discursive things."

"... Writing is recording, not living. But now I feel suddenly that we are living intensely. ...There are times when the spirit of life changes altogether..."

"They speculated about the possible intervention of United States. Mr Britling thought that the attack on Belgium demanded the intervention of every civilised power, that all the best instincts of America would be for intervention. ...

"It would be strange if the last power left out to mediate were to be China," said Mr. Carmine. "The one people in the world who really believe in peace .... I wish I had your confidence, Britling."

For a time they contemplated a sort of Grand Inquest on Germany and militarism, presided over by the Wisdom of the East. Militarism was, as it were, to be buried as a suicide at four crossroads, with a stake through its body to prevent any untimely resuscitation."

Then there are reports of the atrocities in Belgium. Mr Britling's American visitor, Mr Direck, has been on the continent to see for himself, and has returned, shocked.

 "They have started in to be deliberately frightful. You do not begin to understand ... Well....Outrages. The sort of outrages Americans have never heard of. That one doesn't speak of.... Well... Rape. ....They have been raping women for disciplinary purposes on tables in the market-place of Liege. Yes, sir. It's a fact. I was told it by a man who had just come out of Belgium.

 Meanwhile, the British are unprepared and unarmed. Germany expects to win the war in weeks. Direck says:

"Germany today is one big armed camp. It's all crawling with soldiers. And every soldier has his uniform and his boots and his arms and his kit."

"And they're as sure of winning as if they had got London now. They mean to get London. ... They say it's England they are after, in this invasion of Belgium. They'll just down France by the way. ... They know for certain you can't arm your troops. They know you can't turn out ten thousand rifles a  week."

So Mr Britling's thoughts take a different turn. He stops being excited at the new world order he dreams of. The English start retreating in disorder. There are rumours of corruption in high places. And Mr Britling decides his country needs him and takes the train to London where he has contacts; he tries hard to find a role in the war machine. He wants to be of service to his threatened country, and finds that he is not alone; other men men of thirty-eight and fifty-four proclaim themselves fit enough to serve and lobby to learn to shoot and use a bayonet. But they are not wanted: the war machine can't cope with them. They have nothing to do. They feel "left out."

"The great "Business as Usual" phase was already passing away, and London was in the full tide of recruiting enthusiasm. That tide was breaking against the most miserable arrangements for enlistment it is possible to imagine. Overtaxed and not very competent officers, whose one idea of being efficient was to refuse civilian help and be very, very slow and circumspect and very dignified and overbearing, sat in dirty little rooms and snarled at this unheard-of England that pressed at door and window for enrolment. Outside every recruiting office crowds of men and youths waited, leaning against walls, sitting upon the pavements, waiting for long hours, waiting to the end of the day and returning next morning, without shelter, without food, many sick with hunger; men who had hurried up from the country, men who had thrown up jobs of every kind, clerks and shopmen, anxious only to serve England and "teach those damned Germans a lesson."

"Everywhere there were the flags of the Allies; [in London] in shop-windows, over doors, on the bonnets of automobiles, on people's breasts, and there was a great quantity of recruiting posters on the hoarding and in windows.. There were also placards calling for men on nearly all the taxicabs. "

Later on the German population in London come under suspicion and some are badly treated, but not so badly, it seems, as the English population in Germany. Mr Britling is really shocked when he reads a bale of German comic papers in the study of a friend in London. They were filled with caricatures of the Allies and more particularly of the English...

"One incredible craving was manifest in every one of them. The German caricaturist seemed unable to represent his enemies except in extremely tight trousers or in none; he was equally unable to present them without thrusting a sword or bayonet, spluttering blood, into the more indelicate parts of their persons. "... "But it's blind fury - at the dirt-throwing stage."

His friend points out: "They want to foam at the mouth. They do their utmost to foam more." and Wells incudes the lyrics of a "Hymn of Hate" which the Germans sing about England. It is extraordinary - but Britling's friend points out that this is war. "We pretend war does not hurt. They know better..."

The important character at this point is the German tutor who had taught Britling's son Hugh before the war, and had been an earnest and loveable character in the household - whenever Britling is inclined to hate the Germans he remembers Heinrich (who has gone back to his country), who "became a sort of advocate for his people before the tribunal of Mr. Britling's mind." He also remembered happy holidays in the hospitable village of the Odenwald. And then he is told of young German soldiers who have shot women and babies. In short, Mr Britling tries hard to be reasonable and understand the Germans, but at the same time the war becomes more and more savage; there is the torture of "gas", the use of flame jets...

I think I won't write more - all this is prelude to the moment that Britling's son Hugh goes to fight at the age of seventeen, and the forthright letters he sends home about the experience of fighting in the trenches form a large part of the middle of the book.

But this book has been written to record the truth as Wells saw it and felt it and experienced it; he meant it to be representative, and he meant it for posterity. It was published a hundred years ago and it still has interesting things to say. I recommend it. I shall be pressing it one everyone. It's not a great story or a great book - but there is a boldness to it that makes it remarkable. Good old Wells! what a long time he lived and how hard he worked.

TTIP is still on the table, though German Magistrates say no

This is from a site called Techdirt:

Top German Judges Tear To Shreds EU's Proposed TAFTA/TTIP Investment Court System

from the wrong-way-forward dept

As Techdirt has repeatedly pointed out, one of the most problematic aspects of the TAFTA/TTIP deal being negotiated between the US and the EU is the inclusion of a corporate sovereignty chapter -- officially known as "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS). Techdirt isn't the only one worried about it: no less a person than the EU's Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, said last year that she "shares" the concerns here. Her response was to draw up the new "ICS" -- "Investor Court System -- as an alternative. US interest in ICS is conspicuous by its absence, but Malmström keeps plugging away at the idea, evidently hoping to defuse European opposition to TTIP by getting rid of old-style corporate sovereignty.

That plan has just received a huge setback in the form of an "Opinion on the establishment of an investment tribunal in TTIP". It comes from the German Magistrates Association, which Wikipedia describes as "the largest professional organization of judges and public prosecutors in Germany." So these are not a bunch of know-nothing hippie activists, but serious establishment figures with a deep knowledge of the law. Here's their basic position on Malmström's ICS, translated from the original German by TNI:

The German Magistrates Association [DRB] rejects the proposal of the European Commission to establish an investment court within the framework of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The DRB sees neither a legal basis nor a need for such a court. 

Please read more here

Would you like to sign a petition against this Trade Deal? It basically makes Europe a part of the American marketplace, and gives corporations a free hand in Europe so that the public has no recourse to open courts against them. It takes away our freedoms.

Here is the petition site: sign while you still have the freedom to do so.

The end of the Great War, recorded by Virginia Woolf

Before I go on to "To the Lighthouse" I want to write about this. This is where Virginia W, in her diary, starts to write for posterity, because she knew she was living in Interesting Times. It's also rather sickening, because the troops were fighting right to the very end, even though the war had been won -   they had to carry on killing and being killed. This should NEVER happen. Surely a ceasefire could have been called?

Sat 12th October
Whatever we have done this week has this extraordinary background of hope; a tremendously enlarged version of the feeling I can remember as a child as Christmas approached. the Northcliffe papers do all they can to insist upon the indispensability and delight of war. They magnify our victories to make our mouths water for more; they shout with joy when the Germans sink the Irish mail; but they do also show some signs of apprehension that Wilson's terms may be accepted. L. has just come in from Staines with a paper which says, with obvious gloom, that the rumour is that Germany agrees to evacuation. She is not, of course, they add, to be allowed to make any sort of terms.

Tuesday 15th October
I did not think I should so soon have to describe a meeting with a cabinet minister ... Herbert Fisher's visit... was very obviously due to old family affection.  ... Was I nervous or proud, or anything but interested & anxious to pick his brains for news? I don't think I felt a moment's agitation. ... he has lost his lean intellectual look; his hollow cheeks are filled; ... the number of deaths in his house caused this perhaps; but I can't help thinking that London life has rid him of his desire to say clever things to undergraduates all the time.

"We've won the war today" he said at once. " I saw Milner this morning, & he says we shall have peace by Christmas. The Germans have made up their minds they can't fight a retreat...Of course we can't accept their present terms. Why, that would leave them still the greatest military power in Europe. they could begin again in ten years time. But it rests with the French. Lloyd George is going to Paris on Monday; but they are holding out for the evacuation of Alsace Lorraine as a guarantee. We shall probably demand the disarmament of certain regiments too. But we've won the war."

There is now a good prospect of a complete defeat of the German army; Foch says "I have not yet had my battle". Despite the extreme vindictiveness of our press and the French press, Herbert believed that we are going to baulk Foch of his battle, partly because the Germans will accept any terms to avoid it. "Lloyd George has told me again and again that he means to be generous to the Germans. "We want a strong Germany" he says. the Kaiser will probably go.... they've been taught to be brutal. But it hasn't paid. Each one of their crimes has turned out badly. ... it cost us £1,000 to kill a German at the battle of the Somme [1916]; now it costs £3,000. "

... in a little room in Downing Street, where, as he said, the wireless messages are racing in from all over the world, ... where you have to settle off hand questions of enormous difficulty and importance - where the fate of armies does more or less hang upon what two or three elderly gentlemen decide. Herbert thinks there are 2 or 3 geniuses in the cabinet (L. George, Balfour, & possibly Winston Churchill - his definition being that they make everything appear different) & a number of mediocrities.

Friday 18th October

... Wilson's second note came out on Tuesday, in which he used the word 'peradventure'; so far the Germans have not answered. But their Retreat goes on, & last night, beautiful, cloudless, still & moonlit, was to my thinking he first of peace, since one went to bed fairly positive that never again in all our lives need we dread the moonlight. [the irony could break your heart.]

24th October
We took tram to Kingston & there heard the paper boys shouting out about the President's message, which we bought & devoured in the train. The main points are that he is keeping negotiations going, though the Times came out with a great headline "No parley" this morning. He discriminates too, between the German people & the Kaiser; he will consider an armistice with the one but only complete surrender with the other.

...avoiding London, because of the influenza - (we are, by the way, in the midst of a plague unmatched since the Black Death, according to the Times, who seem to tremble lest it may seize upon Lord Northcliffe, & thus precipitate us into peace).

Saturday 9th November
Lord Mayor's day among other things, & one of the two last of war, I suppose. It's just possible that Lottie may bring us news that the armistice is signed within an hour. People buy papers at a great rate; but except for an occasional buzz round a newspaper boy & a number of shop girls provided with the Evening News in the train one feels nothing different in the atmosphere.. the general state perhaps is one of dazed surfeit; here we've had one great relief after another; you hear the paper boys calling out that Turkey has surrendered, or Austria given up, ..

but apparently Katherine Murry had heard someone say "we're giving them everything and getting nothing". Since then it is difficult to see how the most bloodthirsty citizens can squeeze anything more out of Germany.

Monday 11 November
Twenty five minutes ago the guns went off, announcing peace. A siren hooted on the river, They are hooting still. A few people ran to look out of windows. ...so far neither bells nor flags, but the wailing of sirens & intermittent guns.

Tuesday 12 November
...we were both conscious of a restlessness which made it seem natural to be going up to London. Disillusionment began after 10 minutes in the train. A fat slovenly woman in black velvet and feathers with the bad teeth of the poor insisted upon shaking hands with two soldiers ... she was half drunk already, & soon produced a large bottle of beer which she made them drink of; & then she kissed them ...but she and her like possessed London, & alone celebrated peace in their sordid way, staggering up the muddy pavements in the rain, decked with flags themselves, & voluble at sight of other people's flags. The Heavens disapproved and did their utmost to extinguish, but only succeeded in making feathers flop & flags languish. Taxicabs were crowded with whole families, grandmothers and babies, showing off; & yet there was no centre, no form for all this wandering emotion to take. The crowds had nowhere to go, nothing to do; they were in the state of children with too long a holiday. ..there seemed to be no mean between tipsy ribaldry & rather sour disapproval. Besides the discomfort tried every one's temper. it took us from 4 to 6 to get home; standing in queues, every one wet, many shops shut...

Friday 15 November
You can go to London without meeting more than two drunk soldiers; only an occasional crowd blocks the street. In a day or two it will be impossible for a private to threaten to knock out the brains of an officer, as I saw done the other day in Shaftesbury Avenue.

My ridiculous New Year Resolutions

Recently I made some of the above. Well, it was New Year. I had forgotten my previous coming-to-terms-with-resolutions wisdom and I made the WRONG kind of resolution.

I decided that I must concentrate more on my work and less on the things that I love. The result would be that I would not feel anxious about being behind with my work, which is how I feel pretty much all the time. When I had got into a position of being ahead with my work I could do other things like: read books and newspapers. One of my resolutions was not to get into reading any kind of narrative, because that sort of thing takes over one's tiny mind. OK, my tiny mind. Everyone else's mind holds more equipment and can do many more things. So I thought I would read art books instead e.g. The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman by Grayson Perry, and The History of the German People by Mr MacGregor of the British Museum. I could pick them up, muse awhile, and put them down, muse finished.

Mobile Shrine to Alan Measles

The significance of this image is explained here: review of Unknown Craftsman

And I decided I would stop "buying" the Guardian when I popped into Waitrose just because it is free if you spend £5 and I always spend £5 because things in Waitrose are somehow slightly nicer than the average foodstuffs and more expensive (what a strange coincidence) without being ridiculously gussied up for the wannabees as they are in Marks. Because I get into the Guardian and find its columnists worth reading as long as you take a bit of time over them. Therefore, the Guardian is wasting my time and my brain when I should be working. (To start with, I found the Guardian impenetrable.  But you get used to it, and the effort it takes to read. You get to like it. Just like the crossword, which is REALLY hard.)

Anyway, I have failed to stick to these resolutions (apart from reading narratives, I have not read a novel or story since the Christmas hols) and I am rather glad, because life shouldn't be all horrid. There should be some changes and developments, and although my idea of narrowing was only temporary (the next 6 months), I can't bear it because my work is OK but not my passion.

My original resolution was: eat mainly soup. This is not a bad idea either because I am very overweight and I never have been overweight before. I have lost the knack of losing weight. Also, I really like soup, so it's do -able. The trouble is, I also have a husband and son for whom I cater and they are not satisfied with soup.

So far this year I have cooked dishes I haven't cooked before (duck with cherry sauce, last night, and something with meatballs (very good idea, meatballs, quick and tasty)) and that's a much better  resolution: cook some new dishes!

And although I really wanted to get involved with the Green Party this turns out to be not do-able either, as my local branch meets on Wednesday evenings, when I teach until 9 pm. I could do without teaching until 9 p.m. Basically, I want to do something worth doing with other people whom I might like, but this longing is being stymied at every turn.

Sad: I never saw the Germany exhibition at the BM (all over now) and I never saw the Rembrandts. Just never took the time out of my busy but meaningless schedule of working and hoovering, etc.

Nuremberg: Germanisches National Museum: Amazing

Before I put my holiday away entirely I recommend this museum. It is a fabulous glass and steel building which shows off all the exhibits - some priceless - in good light, and inside there is a Carthusian church and cloister, and a cloister courtyard, all part of the museum and a fantastic setting to show off the Christian art and statutory.

One of the amazing exhibits is a tall gold "hat" dating from 10th-9th century BCE.

To me, this is clearly part of sun worship - it indicates a very sophisticated level of craftmanship.

You are allowed to take photos in the museum without a flash. This is one of the statues in the church that I particularly liked for its grace.

St Christopher with the weight of the world on his shoulders

There are many beautiful carvings, statues and paintings, also toys, musical instruments, scientific instruments, household goods and even whole rooms. We went to see all the starred items as a quick way of going around the museum.

One of our fellow tourists, from the far East, conscientiously took photos of absolutely everything. He focused, he shot, he moved on to the next item. He took photos of everything and he looked at nothing.

The National Gallery has now allowed photography so I suppose this sort of experience will be commonplace soon. Sarah Crompton in the Telegraph of Aug. 16th deplored this.

By allowing photography, galleries are betraying those who want to reflect rather than glance. Surrounded by the snappers, they may come to think that this is the acceptable way to consume art: constantly grazing, without any real meal.

For centuries art has been a way of making us slow down and take a moment to examine something in detail. This is not a plea for silent of empty galleries, but for more thoughtful ones. 

I do agree - it's so sad that people don't give themselves time to look and consider - even imagine the lives of those who made or used the object.

Germany: Nuremberg

We went to Nuremberg on an impulse but I immediately loved it. It is all pedestrianised, and if you arrived by car you would be looking for a car park first of all, so we had the best first impression because we came out of the station and immediately saw the towers of the city wall and walked along the main strasse and took in the fine traditional but tall and elegant buildings, each with its statue of a saint or angel, the interesting mixture of old and new architecture and the buzz of the city life. Our hotel was right in the centre of town. Guide book Steve gave the castle a good write-up and after a very steep climb we found the views were well worthwhile, I enjoyed the gardens - flowers of any colours all together in a tapestry - and the romantic towers and courtyards were exactly like illustrations in the story books.  Somewhere along the way we had seen that Nuremberg had been destroyed in the war so we were looking at a reconstruction and again, I felt that bombing the place to rubble had been such a terrible act of violence, seeking to eradicate people's history and identity as well as the people themselves.

I have to say here that I used to live in Plymouth and that City too was completely destroyed by German bombs; I cried over the old film of rubble stretching as far as you could see, and the young people still going out to dance to a band on the Hoe (the promenade) quite cheerfully because they were still alive - not that many people died because they fled to the hills. So I know perfectly well the bombing was all reciprocated but at this point it hardly makes any difference to anyone but the petty-minded who did what to whom.

Nuremberg is the birthplace of Albrecht Durer whose work is miraculous; sheer time travel. I love his studies of wildflowers, irises, squirrels, - the hare. And so we went around his house guided by a recording purporting to be of his wife who told us about the activity in the house, which was more than a home, it was a workshop of different craftsmen - engravers, painters and printers - and Durer was the boss. His self-portrait shows him with very pretty long hair. How did he wear it when he was working, I wonder? Push it under his hat?

Part of the city wall showing wooden walkway

That day was very hot; it rained in the night and hasn't been quite so hot since. That evening we went to a restaurant-cum-cocktail bar that was very popular and we couldn't get served so we went and had the local sausages and pretzels instead. There were buskers all along the street, some of them very good; like the standing up sitar player.

The next day we caught a tram to the outskirts of town to see the Nazi Documentation Centre (museum) and we felt quite bad about wanting to go; as though the Germans would think we weren't willing to let bygones be bygones, but we wanted to see the Nazi parade grounds and the museum is there too. The museum is sited in one of the Nazi monuments: a giant coliseum made of brick fronted by stone. The new steel entrance pierces the building at an angle like a knife stabbing at its heart. The atmosphere is thoroughly serious and unhappy. The story of the rise of the Nazi party, the cult of Hitler, the militarisation and the war is told in by pictures and audio commentary relieved by the occasional film. It seemed to take a very long time to get through it all. I found most memorable the first person accounts by two old boys who had worked as slave labourers in the quarry where the stone came for building the great stadium at Nuremberg. They were questioned about the work they had done and they both focused on the feeling that the stones were beautiful,  rather than the suffering but one went back to that place where they had worked like brutalised slaves day after day, and talked about starving on thin soup; their young lives were blighted by violence and imprisonment and that none of them had done nothing to deserve that.

Then there are a few pictures of terrible atrocities - like the pile of starved skeletons looking like so much old junk, or young naked girls lying dead after having dug their graves, and you look at the uniformed figure in the photo curiously and wonder why he thought, and continued to think, that all this cruelty was justified. But this is old news and you already know why; explaining it is the function of  the museum and it does this well.

There are films of Hitler's processions through Nuremberg City where the buildings behind the shouting, singing crowds are clearly in poor repair; a dirty remnant of its medieval heyday; and that fact is eloquent too. The old women who were young girls at the time just remembered all the excitement of having parades in their city and loving being involved and hanging out flags and best of all, seeing Hitler.

The specially-built parade grounds are being allowed to crumble away and can we be sorry about that? The seating provides a home for a yellow and pink flowering of wildflowers and butterflies, and there's a football pitch and a race track on the grounds. The columns became unsafe and were blown up. Really, I think it should all be blown up, but I suppose it serves as proof that it really happened, just here. We walked around the lakes and I picked up some fat green acorns. It was good to catch the bus back to lovely Nuremberg and roam around the streets once more.

OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing else remains. Round the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

Germany: Rothenburg: We didn't go by the romantic road

The guide book we used on our last trip, in Eastern Europe, is called Frommer's Europe by rail. I looked at it before we came away and it was very enthusiastic about the Romantic Road, so I decided we would take the romantic road from Wurzburg to Augsburg. But we left the book at home because very little of it deals specifically with Germany and we thought we would get another. Part 1 of my plan went well and so we caught the train from Heidelberg to Wurzburg enjoying beautiful views all the way.

View through train window - lots of this

 Also, I loved Wurzburg. It is nicely proportioned and seems like a homely market town, cheerful and comfortable, like Stamford, only bigger. The first day we just walked about with our new guide book, which had been so unhelpful on the subject of Heidelberg, and enjoyed the churches and the squares. At the town hall we went to see the WWII display, and were horrified to find that poor Wurzburg had been bombed with thousands of incendiary bombs only 6 weeks before the end of the war. It was completely destroyed. And that was not the whole story, for when the Americans came to liberate the town the townspeople fought them over nearly every house and you could imagine the confusion and rage over the place. So it was a rebuild. Nevertheless, the old town retained its charm and there was a great Rathaus, cobbled streets and interesting statues. I especially love the Madonnas on the street corners.

The second day we went to see the residenz (spectacularly baroque) and learned more about German history, and then caught the train to Rothenberg. The plan had been to catch the Romantic road bus, which Frommer's had considered one of the most beautiful routes in Europe, but our new guide, Stevie Nicks, (for we changed his name for being so opinionated) was less enthusiastic about it and so we caught the slow train to Rothenberg, instead of the bus, the town which Stevie considered the highlight of the trip. Stevie assured us we would have no difficulty in finding somewhere to stay the night because the many tourists that came by day were usually day trippers. However, Stevie was wrong; because we happened to arrive on a day when R'berg was hosting some kind of rock concert and every bed in town was booked up.

Rothenberg - medieval story book town

So we went around R'berg for a few hours just looking at the lovely well-maintained old buildings and pretty squares and soaking up the idea that this had once been a functioning town as one might find in old stories about rich merchants' daughters and wicked step-mothers- I spent longer than I meant to do seeing round a church guided by a local elderly lady, and admiring a splendid wood carving that had held a reliquary of the Holy Blood. We had beer and fries in a pub garden and managed to get away without buying anything in the long streets of tourist shops for here was the ultimate in tourist traps and a crowd of people taking photographs in all directions everywhere we walked; but our mate Stevie positively recommended it as being of more interest than Heidelberg. So we returned to the tiny village where we had changed trains and stayed in a proper German guesthouse for a change, eating German meat and dumplings and enjoying the peace of the scenic countryside. After looking at the map we decided to change our minds about the Romantic Road and go to Nuremberg instead.

I'm afraid my photos are never quite focussed but I hope you can see that this is a masterpiece. St James (or John) has his head on Jesus' lap.

Germany: Lack of memory: Heidelberg: 2 sensible methods

We started in Cologne and apart from the amazing size of the Cathedral building and the love padlocks on the bridge I have forgotten everything about it. This is because we walk everywhere with a map and then catch a train somewhere else and this is probably not a good way to have a holiday. You need to stop and think sometimes.

We knew that Cologne had been destroyed in the war so we were glad to see how well the town had been rebuilt. The next day we took the train to Heidelberg. The train journey was rather wonderful as it took us along the great Rhine valley and there are vineyards on the slopes. Heidelberg itself is sited on one side of the river Neckar,although there is a famous bridge going across, the town hasn't strayed over much. This was where I rebelled and demanded we get a guide book as we had no idea what was what in town; although you can guess that all the buildings are very historical and probably owned by the university. There is a brilliant travel bookshop in town but they had only one guidebook to Germany in English, and this was where Rick Steve, author of Germany 2014, came into our lives. This is is his incredibly helpful entry on Heidelberg:

Lowlights
Heidelberg
This famous old university town attracts hordes of Americans. Any surviving charm is stained almost beyond recognition by commercialism. It doesn't make it into Germany's top three weeks. 

 So this was very disappointing and also very untrue, because there we were in early August and we didn't hear any American voices, and we saw plenty of Japanese, Chinese and Korean people (maybe students at summer school?) and as the day turned to evening we had many of the cobbled squares to ourselves. Yes, there were many tourists on the hill seeing the castle and the castle gardens, but by no means so many that we couldn't enjoy the place! The views are lovely and the river is peaceful. We had dinner in the student canteen which is where I enjoyed the second example of brilliant German practicality. There is a buffet for all the dishes on offer. You take a plate and help yourself. I thought (wrongly) it would be an all-you-can-eat buffet and this encouraged me to be a bit of a pig, which isn't sensible. I probably took too many curried chick peas and a surfeit of spicy quorn glop. So how is it priced? By weighing the plate. This is so sensible I can't understand why I haven't come across it before.

The student canteen is in the old armoury. The town is full of make-do like this. We ate under the trees outside at trestle tables with students and sundry others. Apart from this, we were pleased to make the acquaintance of Robert Bunsen (in statue form only of course), as we had never realised he was German.

I should add that the first sensible German method was that for queuing for a train ticket - you take numbered ticket and then sit down on a comfy red bench until your number comes up. Queuing is never fun but this way takes some of the pain away.

British comics at the British Library

On Sunday I went to see the exhibition of comics at the BL. It wasn't as popular as I had expected. It was reasonably busy - I must have missed some of the exhibitions as I jumped the queues around the most popular showcases, and surely somewhere they had some issues of Bunty in its heyday. That was a terrific comic, still quite stuck in the 1950's in its styling. I guess those comics trained the readers' eyes to understand the huge range of compositions that go to make the comics interesting visually. I think they are a terrific medium for a story. They get into our heads.

The oldest book on display was a religious book from Germany that was more pictures than words but showed how old some graphic ideas are: four flying angels holding a rectangle for a written message. The maddening thing is that all the exhibits are in glass boxes and you can't turn the pages. You just get to look at 2 pages of each publication, when the whole thing looks so interesting, but is out of bounds for the likes of me.

The curator, Paul Gravett, points out that comics can be a powerful tool for education and propaganda, used for example, by the Young National Front, and the anti-Nazi League. They are also used for military training manuals.There was a good political section.

At times comics have been regarded as harmful to the young - they do seem mostly to be very sensationalist in content.  Judge Dredd and Tank Girl are both British creations, while they both look very American. But I was rather sad that the exhibition's parameters meant that there were no Marvel comics, with their garish colouring and perfect line drawings.

Neither was there any mention of Maus by Art Spiegelman, which is the brilliant graphic telling of his Polish Jewish family during the Nazi years and something of their later years in the USA, and that is the only adult graphic novel I have bought myself.

There are comics with graphic sexual content, which I had never seen before. Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie have done some fearless work there, the only trouble being their fantasies involve very young girls and at this more healthy time when women are at last able to talk about the shame of being groped or sexually abused as children, publishing these fantasies is wrong. Why don't sexually mature women appeal to the imagination? Why must it prey on children?

I decided to buy V for Vendetta, because it is so famous. I noted that Alan Moore, "in Marvelman, 1982, investigated the psychological impact that superpowers would have on an ordinary person, and generally subverted superhero cliches." Well done him! Because he started a new crop of stories and films for all the old superheroes (the Spidy films with Toby McGuire) even including James Bond, not a superhero but finally discovering his vulnerability, starting from Casino Royale.

In short I made a long list of titles that look interesting, which I also did when I went to the sci-fi exhibition at the same place, and I came away with "Days of the Bagnold Summer" and "V for Vendetta", which I am reading at the moment.