More Browsing at the V&A.

Feb5

Thursday, February 5, 2009
London

I had a rather slow start this morning though I did wake up at 6 am. Between responding to email (I received some letters from friends in the States that required long and thoughtful responses), looking for cheap airfares between Rome and Istanbul (a most frustrating experience as I could find none), chatting to my parents in Bombay, to Llew who is currently at a conference in Washington DC, etc. the morning flew past.

I started to watch a film called 28 Days Later which is set in London; but it was so gory a piece of science fiction that I had to give up on it less than half way through. While watching it, I began the Contrast Bathing Therapy that Jane Hampson told me about and it was not half as intolerable as I expected (but perhaps I do not have the hot water hot enough or the cold water cold enough). However it might be best to start with milder temperatures and work my way up to more intense contrasts. At any rate, it seemed right away as if it worked. But then while I was at the V&A, later in the afternoon, my right foot started to trouble much more than it has in weeks–so I started to panic and wondered if I should continue this therapy!

I ate a light lunch (salad and quiche), showered and took the bus to the V&A with the idea of seeing the rest of the Highlights on the museum’s recommended list. But alas, there was a massive traffic jam on High Holborn and after sitting in the bus for 15 minutes and not moving an inch, I asked the driver if he would allow me to alight. He did and off I went down the stairwell to take the Tube instead.

I actually began my perusal of the Highlights at 3. 30 pm but by 4. 30 pm itself, my feet started to feel very uncomfortable and I decided to leave and return home. These are the items that I saw today–they were scattered through the vast environs on four levels! No wonder my feet protested so loudly!

1. The Bhairava Mask (from Nepal, copper with studded stones)
2. A Helmet made in Greenwich for King Henry VIII
3. A Silver Basin and Ewer
4. Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s portrait of Jane Morris, William Morris’ wife, for his own poetic work–the poem and the painting are entitled, The Daydream.
5. A small crucifix meant to be worn as a pendant entitled The Real Thing by David Poston (made of crushed Coca-Cola caps).
6. An exquisite hair ornament in enamel, diamonds and rubies (looked like blown glass) in the Jewelry Galleries.
7. A medieval Tapestry entitled Falconry in the Tapestry Room.
8. A cabinet by Henri-Auguste Fourdinois
9. Negative Bowl by Ane Christensen–a totally unique item that is hard to describe.
10. The Burgess Decanter (a very ornate decanter made of multiple materials)

The search for these objects took me through some of the most amazing corners of the museum and left me gasping at the size and the quality of the collection. The Silver Galleries, for instance, are so extensive that just looking at all the works carefully would take a whole afternoon. In particular, I was seized by a sterling wine cooler (reportedly the largest in the world) on loan from Russia at the moment. This gigantic object was awarded as the prize in a lottery that was initiated to raise funds to build Westminster Bridge across the River Thames. The winner sold it to the Russian Tzarina and it has remained in the possession of the Russians ever since.

I also saw the Jewelry galleries which are so stunning that they beggar description. There were tiaras and necklaces and belts and all sorts of ornaments featuring precious gem stones that were as huge as walnuts! I was struck dumb by the many items on display–sapphires, emeralds, rubies, peridots, amethysts, all surrounded by diamonds that winked and blinked and quite dazzled the viewer. No wonder the lady viewers could not tear themselves from the glass cases!

I walked close by the Cast Courts (that Jane Hampson had taken us into yesterday) and saw a plaster copy of Michaelangelo’s David up close and personal–but, of course, it is not a patch on the real thing that is in Florence’s Academia. Still, if one hasn’t seen the oroginal, this is a good likeness and I am going to recommend that Llew take a look at it when he comes here at the end of next month. The same room had a replica of Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens. I do not recall seeing this painting though it is in the Vatican and I must have seen it when I was last in Rome 22 years ago. At any rate, I am looking forward very much to seeing it next month when Llew and I visit Rome together.

The next time I go to the V&A, I will spend more time in the paintings galleries studying the work of Turner and Constable as there are a large number of their canvasses here–as well as the Ionides Collection that was bequeathed to the museum intact (The Daydream is a part of this collection). I have a feeling it will be a really long time before I finish seeing everything I want to at the V&A. Meanwhile, my right leg was really bothering me…so perhaps it is time for me to get some foot rest again!

On my way back home, I did some grocery shopping and look forward to cooking myself some pasta tonight with prawns, cheese and basil. I am amazed to find that the basil on my kitchen counter has taken root superbly and is flourishing in a glass of water! I am simply stunned as I have never ever seen anything like this happen in the States.

Discovering the V&A

Feb4

Wednesday, February 4, 2009
London

I had a very early start this morning, awaking at 5. 30 am, working on my PC for a while, then showering, eating breakfast and getting out of my flat by 7. 45 am to take the buses to the University College Hospital for my physiotherapy session. I reached there in under a half hour which was something of a surprise to me. Traffic seems to be moving a bit faster now on High Holborn–which is such a relief.

To my disappointment, I found that Paul is no longer working with me (he has been rotated to another division) and I now have a new physiotherapist–Claire Curtin–who says that she will be in this division for at least 4 months, so is likely to work with me long-term. I find this very annoying as I think the patient loses continuity with a health practitioner. This is also what is wrong about this NHS system–the patient has no control over who he is treated by. He just has to lump it and whether the physician is good or not, he has to stick with him. Anyway, I am not that bad now that my condition needs specialist attention, so I guess I shall just stay with Claire and hope for the best.

Nothing much came out of our session. She basically told me to continue with the same exercises that Paul had recommended. She drew them out for me because their computer is still not working (what??? Even after three weeks? How do these folks function?) However, it seems that Paul has made the referral on my behalf for the podiatrist, so I should be getting something in the mail asking me to see a podiatrist who will then recommend the orthotics that Paul thought I needed. So the rigmarole continues…Claire did massage my right ankle and told me how to do it myself and suggested that I see her again in two weeks time! She could not recommend the exercises strongly enough and told me not to stop, come what may!

I then took the Number 14 bus from Euston and rode on it all the way to Kensington. Now that I have finished my study of the National Gallery, I have turned my sights on to the Victoria and Albert Museum, known affectionately as the V&A. I had visited this museum only once, a few years ago, and been completely overwhelmed by its size and scale. I had taken a Highlights Tour then, but do not remember anything that was shown to me except for the Raphael Cartoons and a Cast Room. When I arrived at the Museum, a few minutes before 10 am, there were a couple of dozen people there already but the museum was still closed. At 10 am sharp, the heavy wooden doors were thrown open and I was the first person to enter the museum today!!!

After my bag was physically examined, I went to the Cloak Room to hand in my coat and bag, then went to the Information Desk to find out about Highlights Tours for the day. There were two at 10.30 am and 11. 30 am respectively that I thought I would take. Meanwhile, I got myself a Map and a list of 20 Highlights of the Museum and started to see those for the first half hour.

In the basement, I saw an ivory inlaid wooden cabinet by Fiammingo. Then in the Fashion Gallery (which is highly reputed), I saw a beautiful dress designed by Vivienne Westwood under inspiration from French artist Watteau. It was fashioned in emerald silk and was gorgeous. In the South Asian galleries, I saw Shah Jahan’s exquisite wine cup, carved in white jade, featuring a flower on the bottom and the head of ram in its handle–truly beautiful! In the Islamic section, I saw the Ardabil Carpet, a gigantic carpet woven in Iran and containing over 4,000 knots per square inch. The Far Eastern Galleries held a really charming Bodhisatava called Guanyin and in the Japanese Armor section, I saw a suit of armor that was presented to Queen Victoria by one of the big gun shoguns of the time. These were the highlights I saw on my own.

At 10. 30 am, I went to the spot where the Highlights Tour began and met my guide, Jane Hampson. She was disappointed to find that I was the only one on the tour but she took me, first off, to one of the Museum’s biggest attractions–The Raphael Room–where we were joined by another visitor originally from Egypt but now living in Australia. For the next hour, Jane took us on a very lively and interesting tour of the museum that included the following objects:

1. The Raphael Cartoons. (These water colors were the basis for the tapestries that hang in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. They were made in Mortlake on the outskirts of London. These belong to the Royal Family having been purchased by Charles I).
2. The Gothic Altarpiece featuring St. George and the Dragon.
3. A Chinese Red Lacquer Table and Throne.
4. The Eltenburg Reliquary (made of wood, whale ivory, and superb cloisonne work).
5. The Plaster Cast Room (with special emphasis on Trajan’s Column–the original of which stands in Rome).
6. A Porcelain Pagoda and Export China in the Chinese Gallery.
7. The Thomas Grace Cup–a medieval ivory cup that is associated with Thomas a Beckett of Canterbury and was decorated during the Renaissance.
8. The Dacre Animals (saved from a stately English country estate before it burned down).
9. Sculpture of Neptune and Triton by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (one of his early works, showing similar compositional elements with his Bachannalia that I show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).
10. The Great Bed of Ware (this was made in the 1100s and there is actually a reference to it in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night–which, coincidentally enough, I saw last night!)
11. The Dale Chihuly Chandelier in the main lobby–this has always been one of my favorite pieces in the V&A and I recall taking a picture of it the last time I was there.

I thought the tour was superb and when Jane mentioned that she gives a special tour of the British Galleries at 12. 30 pm, I told her that I would join that as well. Meanwhile, I rushed off to join the 11. 30 am Highlights Tour, this one being given by a guide called Mina Renton. She took the group to the Raphael Cartoons, then moved on to “Tippoo’s Tiger” in the South Asian Galleries.

The title of the work refers to a music box that is concealed in the body of a tiger that is seen devouring a British soldier. As anyone with any knowledge of Indian History knows, “Tippoo” is Tipu Sultan, who was known as the Tiger of Mysore. He defended his territory against the British onslaught throughout the 18th century (as had his father, Hyder Ali, before him). He was finally vanquished and killed in the Battle of Seringapatnam by Lord Cornwallis (yes, the same Cornwallis who was involved with the British surrender at York during the American Revolution!). Mysore then came under British control. I was surprised how huge this object is–for some reason, I kept thinking it was a small table-top model. When I saw that it was almost life size, I was shocked. It is so fragile now and can no longer be wound up to play the sounds that emanate from the dying young British soldiers who is being mauled by the tiger. This design, incidentally, is based on a real-life incident–a Captain Munroe was out hunting in Mysore when he was attacked and killed by a tiger. Tipu was delighted and amused by this occurrence and requested that an organ be made for him in this design. It happens to be the most popular item at the V&A and one that most visitors wish to see. This tour then wound its way to the Bernini Neptune, but since I was keen on joining Jane’s British Galleries tour, I left it and returned to the lobby.

Jane’s British Galleries tour was just fantastic. In the short space of just one hour, she covered such a great deal and explained things very clearly indeed. She went from the 1500s till the late 1700s and confined herself to the ground level only. The British Galleries continued on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th levels, but those I shall see on future visits.

These are the items I covered with Jane in the British Galleries:

1. A Morstyn Salt Cellar.
2. Henry VIII’s Portable Wooden Writing ‘Desk’.
3. The Bradford Table Carpet.
4. A Funeral Pall for the Brewer’s Company.
5. A Medieval Baby wrapped in swaddling and a slipware cradle.
6. A Virginal used by Queen Elizabeth I.
7. The Drake Jewel (containing a miniature of Queen Elizabeth I and presented to Drake in recognition of his services to the country after the defeat of the Spanish Armada).
8. The Hunsdon Jewels (Presented by Queen Elizabeth I to various courtiers for services rendered to the country).
9. The marble bust of Charles I.
10. Fashionable Men’s Wear in the Court of James I and Charles I.
11. A Mortlake Tapestry.
12. A Marquetry Cabinet.
13. A Sumpter Cloth (used to be thrown across goods in a wagon).
14. A Sculpture by Cornelia Parker entitled “Breathless” featuring real crushed musical instruments and suspended from the ceiling.
15. The Melville Bed from the Melville House in Fife, Scotland.
16. The Stoke Edith Tapestry from a country estate in Herefordshire featuring the estate’s formal gardens.
17. The Badminton Chinoisserie Bed from Badminton.
18. A Marble Sculpture of Handel by Jonathan Tyers originally made for the Vauxhall Gardens.
19. A Selection of Chelsea Porcelain.
20. Four Painted Rococo Panels.
21. An 18th century Mantua or Court Dress of a Lady.
22. A Painting entitled ‘The Duet’ by Arthur Devis
23. The Norfolk Music House Room which originally stood in St. James’ Square, London–later razed to the ground after a fire destroyed it.
24. A Selection of miniature portraits by Nicholas Hilliard.

I found it hard to believe how much I covered in just two and half hours. That’s why I love these tours!

When Jane and I got talking at the end of the tour, I happened to mention my Plantar Fascittis (which had caused me to sit wherever I could find a seat or bench on the tours) and Jane informed me that she had the same thing, a few years ago. Apart from the massages and stretching exercises, she recommended what her physiotherapist called Contrast Bathing! What??? She told me this meant that I needed to sit with two big bowls of water side by side. One should be filled with water as hot as I can take it, the other filled with water as cold as I can stand it. You are supposed to place your feet for a few minutes in the hot water, then in the cold, the hot, then the cold. This apparently would expand and contract the muscles. Jane claims that ultimately this did cure her completely and, occasionally, when she still gets a twinge, she does this for a few minutes and she is right as rain, again! This sounds to me like Chinese torture but what the heck, since I have tried everything else, I am willing to give this a shot as well. She told me to do this while watching TV and I would not feel it at all!!!

I came home for lunch, caught up with email correspondence and tried to take a short nap; and then before I knew it, the time was 5. 45 pm and I left my flat for my appointment with Rosemary Massouras and Christie Cherian, her partner. We had decided to meet at the Sherlock Holmes Bar which is located in the Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes Hotel on Baker Street, just a block from the fictional 221B Baker Street where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian detective Sherlock Holmes lived.

It was a lovely evening and over cider and white wine and some nibbles (hummus and pita, feta cheese and sauteed peppers), we chatted about a vast variety of subjects from travel and India, films, our children, my trip to Berlin, etc. Rosemary and I have decided to go together to the special exhibition on Byzantium at the Royal Academy of Art where she happens to be a member and she also wants to do a weekend trip with me somewhere–but is afraid she will not have the stamina to keep up with me, she says!

I took two buses back and got home at 10 am when I had a small bite to eat and after writing this blog, fell asleep.

Culture-Vulture Me! Twelfth Night with Derek Jacobi.

Feb3

Tuesday, February 3, 2009
London

After the worst snowstorm in two decades, London limped slowly back to normal today. Red buses were plying again and the ice on the sidewalks had started to melt. There actually were signs of life on the streets as I had my breakfast and finished captioning our Scotland album. Actually, it was rather an odd sort of day because Carol, the weather forecaster on BBC’s Breakfast show, kept saying that temperatures were be below the minus mark (which is a big deal here in London) but that the sun would shine all day!

I spent a while doing some preliminary research on my proposed Spring Trip with Llew and since Easyjet has a sale that ends at midnight tonight, I figured I would look at some possibilities. We have finally decided to go to Italy and Turkey for 9 days–essentially Rome (where Llew has never been) and Istanbul which so many of my friends have raved about and which I did want to see before I returned to the States. I also wanted to go to Egypt; but I find that airfares are really high right now and it might be best to go to Egypt and Jordan at the same time that Llew and I go to the Holy Land as that trip is very definitely on the cards for us sometime.

After I found us good fares, I dashed off an email to Llew telling him to get back to me and let me know if the dates I had in mind would work. Given the time difference between New York and London, I knew it would be a few hours before I heard from him, so I showered and set off to get myself a bunch of theater and opera tickets for the next few months as some marvelous shows have opened up in London for the winter season and I did not want to miss them.

It WAS a beautiful day–it is so rare to see the sun in these parts in winter that though it was very cold indeed, I did not feel the bleakness of winter surrounding me. I took the bus first to Shaftestury Avenue to the Apollo Theater where I got myself a single ticket to see Three Days of Rain starring James McEvoy (who played Robert in Ian McEwan’s Atonement). The show is filling up fast (McEvoy’s name is a huge draw) and I only managed to get a seat in my price range in April. Next, I took a bus to Trafalgar Square to the Trafalgar Studios to book a ticket to see Imelda Staunton (who played Vera Drake in the film Vera Drake) in Entertaining Mr. Sloan. This show has a very limited four week run and since I think Staunton is one of the finest female actresses working in the UK today, I simply did not want to miss it. How thrilled I was when I found a ticket for next Monday evening. Then, I simply walked across Trafalgar Square to the Coliseum where the English National Opera has two superb shows on in the next few months. I got myself a single ticket to see Puccini’s La Boheme in March and then bought two tickets for this Saturday evening’s show to see Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Stephanie will be spending the weekend with me in my flat and we decided to go to the opera and dinner on Saturday evening. Finally, I crossed the street (St. Martin’s Lane) and entered The Duke of York Theater to buy a ticket for Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge which counts in its cast Hayley Atwell (I saw her recently in The Duchess and she also played the major role of Julia Flythe in the new version of Brideshead Revisited–which I have yet to see). She is one of the UK’s most up-and-coming actresses and I am delighted to be able to see her in person. So, with all these tickets in the bag, Culture-vulture Me then hopped next door into the National Gallery to complete the last six galleries I needed to study as part of my project to become closely acquainted with its collection.

I sat on a bench in the lobby and ate my quiche Lorraine and then began my perusal of galleries 41 to 46 which are the most popular rooms at the National since they contain works by the Impressionists. They were, therefore, far more crowded than the the other galleries I’ve studied. All the big names were here and all the most famous canvases in this genre (Monet’s Water Lilies, Van Gogh’s Armchair and Sunflowers, Degas’ Ballet Dancers, Renoir’s Umbrellas —I loved that work–Cezanne’s still lives, Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres, etc. etc.) but for me, as always, the works that caught my attention were the least known–I particularly warmed to a view of Badminton by Corot and a wintry scene in Norwood by Camille Pissarro. So many of these Impressionists ‘escaped’ to London to avoid the (Crimean?) War that they ended up painting English landscapes in styles that pre-empted the Impressionist rage that would shortly sweep over France. And it was these works that I found most intriguing. I also loved the scenes of the Siene at Argenteuille and Pointoise that Monet, Manet and even Morissot painted. Somehow, it is these rural river scapes that are most charm my eye and take me into imaginary realms that make me feel me serene and contented.

Then, I took the bus back home, glad that Llew had contacted me via cell phone while I was in the gallery and had greenlighted the dates I had picked for our travels. This meant that I could go ahead and book our Easyjet tickets online which I did immediately. So, Italy and Turkey…here we come! I now have to find us good fares from Rome to Istanbul but I do know that Swissair is doing some good offers at the moment. I organized all my theater tickets at home, changed a few plans to fit in with an invitation to drinks tomorrow that my friend Rosemary Massouras left me by email and tried to take a short nap before I left the house again.
You see, yesterday, just by chance, when we were standing outside NYU waiting for the campus doors to be opened, Ruth Smith Tucker, one of our administrative aides, had offered me a free ticket to see Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Donmar Wyndham Theater on Charing Cross Road. I had jumped at the opportunity, of course, as I was aware that the role of Malvolio is being played by none other than Derek Jacobi, veteran Shakespearean actor (also star of Cadfael and I, Claudius). So, I pulled on warm clothes, took the bus to Charing Cross at 6. 30 pm, (after a small bite of more quiche Lorraine) and arrived at the theater to find David Hillel-Reuben, Director of NYU-London, in the lobby awaiting the arrival of his family. A little later, his wife and son joined us and still later, James Weygood arrived with my ticket.

Upstairs, in the Grand Circle, in one of the most beautiful theater interiors I have been so far, we settled down to watch a show that I have seen several times before and in several versions (the very first time being at the Royal Shakespeare Theater at Stratford-on-Avon twenty-two years ago when I was at Oxford). Yet, it never ever palls, this lovely amusing confusing heartwarming comedy that Shakespeare wrote so many centuries ago. I have seen so many Malvolios over the years and each of them has brought his own brand of humor and individuality to the interpretation of the role–but I know I will never forget Jacobi, who was simply masterful.

I was also thrilled to discover that Olivia was played by an Indian actress (Indira Varma who was in Bride and Prejudice among other shows). She is tall, slim, statuesque and very elegant indeed and when I saw her olive skin, so beautifully set off in the grand black mourning outfit she wore in the first scene, I knew she was an ‘ethnic’ actress. Yet another actor whose origin is undoubtedly the Indian sub-continent was Zubin Varla who played Feste, the Fool–he is not only from South Asia but a Parsi as well, as I can tell from his name. All of the cast were just superb and at the end of the show when I ran into Mick Hattaway who teaches Shakespeare at NYU and is considered one of the UK’s finest Shakespearean scholars, he said to me, “This is as good as it can get”. Indeed, it was brilliant, and I realized as I left the theater that I can see Twelfth Night again and again and never ever tire of it.

The show ended at 10 pm, I changed three buses to reach home and yet I was in the lobby of my building at 10. 25–this is the beauty of living in the Heart of London and of London’s buses–when they do run, they are reliable and convenient and, best of all, so cheap!!!

Back on my couch, I helped myself to some Carrot and Ginger Soup and the Strawberry Compote Trifle (courtesy of Marks and Spenser) and went straight to bed. It had been a day of art museums and quality theater and I was a happy camper as I fell asleep.

London’s Worst Snow Fall in 18 years!

Feb2

Monday, February 2, 2009
London

When I fell asleep last night, snowflakes were falling steadily down on High Holborn. It probably continued all night long because when I awoke this morning there was about a six inch accumulation and the landscape outside my window was transformed. I was enchanted and, sticking my camera out of the window, took a few pictures of the beautiful medieval Staple Inn building covered with a frosting of snow and of the tree outside my neighbor Barbara’s flat.

And then, of course, because we are New Englanders, I did not think anything of it as I showered and got dressed for my day in class. While eating breakfast, I watched BBC’s Breakfast Show and discovered, to my huge astonishment, that the city had been brought to its knees. All buses were off the roads, only one Tube Line (the Victoria) was working, all commuter trains had come to a grinding halt. With six inches of snow??? How was that possible? The weather forecaster talked about the snowfall being the worst London has seen in 18 years. All schools were closed and, I guess, I should have taken my cue from that. But we aren’t a school. We are an international university and we just pull up our (snow) boots and get off to work, don’t we?

So off I went. I knew I had to walk, so I gave myself a half hour to reach campus (I usually take 15 minutes). At the door to my building, my concierge Arben asked if I really had to get to work. Can’t you just stay at home? he asked. I still couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about!

On the streets, Londoners walked as if shell shocked. It was clear they have never seen anything like this. They stepped gingerly over the sidewalks that were an icy mess–these folks do not even own shovels and not a single person had shoveled the sidewalk outside their stores! Kids were delighted and were throwing snowballs at the adult accompanying them. So many folks had cameras in their hands and were taking pictures of the buildings–and these were not tourists! It was all very amusing to me.

When I did arrive at Bedford Square, a small group of students were standing outside, as surprised as I was, to find that the main doors were firmly shut. It seems that the security staff who come in early to unlock the doors were unable to get to work. Within a few minutes, Ruth Smith, an administrative aide, arrived and she called a few people on her cell phone and announced to us that the campus would be closed for the day and all classes cancelled. Oh darn! It would probably mean that we will have to make up these classes on a Friday–an idea I am not too crazy about! Some of my students got into a snowfall fight, forming two teams, each of which stood on opposite sides of the main road (Bloomsbury Street). The snowball fight was picking up steam when a cop car arrived and they were told off as they were endangering traffic. The Bedford Square Gardens that had made a backdrop to the snowball fight were such a pretty sight and I did wish I had my camera with me.

Well, there was nothing else I could do–I couldn’t even get to the National Gallery as there was no transport available–so I just turned around and walked back home, stopping off briefly at Sainsburys to buy some groceries. I figured I would go home and make myself two steaming cauldrons of soup as I suddenly felt a great desire for a hearty bowl of soup!

At home, I got to work in the kitchen and before long, I had conjured up Broccoli Cheddar Soup and Carrot Ginger Soup. I spent the rest of the day catching up with pending chores including captioning my Scotland photograph album and sorting through the memorabilia I brought home from Berlin.

My cold is still bothering me and my legs are no better–though I have to say that I abuse them no end with all the walking I do even when I am not supposed to. My exploration of Berlin is a case in point. In fact, before I left the house this morning, the University of London Hospital had already called me to cancel my physiotherapy appointment for tomorrow! It seems that more snow is expected through the night and the situation does not look as if it will be any better tomorrow. I now need to call to reschedule this appointment and God knows when I shall be able to see someone again considering the manner in which the NHS functions.

Just before 8 pm, whilst I was in the midst of a long and lovely chinwag with Chriselle on the phone, my doorbell rang. I half expected it to be my next-door neighbor Tim, and how delighted I was when he offered an invitation to their place for supper. Tim had cooked kedgeree, a dish he had promised to serve me on two occasions earlier, but for some reason, I hadn’t been able to take him up on his offers then.

I was out of my flat like a shot taking with me a starter of Carrot Ginger Soup. Unfortunately, Tim had his dinner planned to the second as kedgeree must be served straight off the pan! He is off to Leiden in Holland tomorrow, so hopefully, Barbara will enjoy the soup on what promises to be another frigid day. When I walked into their living room, I discovered that Barbara’s niece Hannah was present (I have met her before). She was spending the night with Aunt Barbara as she was unable to find transport home. We settled down with drinks while Tim organized our dinner and before long I was tucking into his wonderfully warming kedgeree.

This Anglo-Indian dish that evolved during the British Raj had the humblest of beginnings as a melange of boiled rice and lentils. The British jazzed it up, adding fish (traditionally smoked haddock) to it and serving it Italian risotto style with the ‘sauce’ all around it, usually for breakfast. Tim’s version was studded with peas and it was simply British Comfort Food at its best. For dessert (or ‘pudding’ as they say here), there was a store-bought Strawberry Cheesecake (from Marks and Spencer–I preferred the Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake) and the mintiest after dinner mints I have ever tasted–Bendick’s Bittermints. Barbara and Tim are true gourmets and they offer their guests nothing but the finest goodies. So, it is always a pleasure to be invited to their home for a meal.

Delighted to find that a cold and snowy day had turned into such a treat for me, I went to bed, pleased to be a part of another unique London experience!

In 1066 Country–Battle and Hastings: Where England Began…

Feb1

Sunday, February 1, 2009
Battle, Sussex

For some inexplicable reason, I am still waking up at 5. 30 am. While this gives me time to stay on top of all the things I want to do, I keep wondering if I am getting enough sleep and keep checking my eyes for dark circles and unsightly bags!

I left my flat at 8 .15 am after a cereal and yogurt breakfast to meet Stephanie outside Wimbledon Tube Station. We had talked on the phone yesterday and decided that despite the forecast of a snowy afternoon we would stick with our plans to visit Battle in East Sussex. With Stephanie behind the wheel, her GPS and my Britain Atlas by our sides, we felt well-equipped to find the fastest route to get there.

But we were distracted en route by signs for Hever Castle and Penshurst and since Stephanie shares with me such a consuming interest in Tudor and Elizabethan History, we decided to make a detour to visit these sites: Hever Castle is the ancestral home of the Boleyns–the same one from which emerged Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Queen Elizabeth I. Penshurst, as I recalled vaguely, is the ancestral home of Sir Phillip Sidney, Elizabethan courtier-poet and contemporary of Edmund Spenser..

We passed the most beautiful Kentish countryside along the way. Though the fields are barren at this time of year, sheep still grazed as they have done through the centuries, oblivious to the few cars that sped past them. Oast houses (in which hops are dried) with their peculiar conical roofs punctuated the rambling country lanes. Old stone churches with squat towers and clock faces beckoned. Rambling, almost crumbling, gabbled houses that turned out to be pubs sported the quaintest names (The Shy Horse, The Little Brown Jug) and dotted the pasture land to make for some of the most appealing sights in rural Kent. I know that I will always carry images of this part of the country in winter in my heart wherever I might roam.

Unfortunately, we found the stately rambling home called Penshurst that sits in the midst of vast property, parkland and gardens to be closed until March. However, I gazed upon it and so many names rushed through my mind–Sir Phillip Sidney, of course, Elizabethan courtier-poet, who from this grand estate made such a mark upon the court. Then, of course, there is Ben Jonson’s famous poem “To Penshurst” which I had studied as an undergrad and have never forgotten. Penshurst is a compilation of honey toned walls, towers and turrets that speak of a romantic past and of royal antecedents. How marvelous it was for me to look upon what Jonson called “an ancient pile”. I took a few pictures of the exterior and hoped we would be able to return when it opens its doors again to visitors for the new season.

We met with the same fate at Hever Castle which was also closed and which will reopen in March. I realized that these stately homes are closed in the winter as it is too expensive to heat them. While we did get a glimpse of Penshurst from the outside, Hever lay concealed behind high walls–all we saw was the Tudor Gatehouse. Again, we resolved to return on another trip and made our way down south towards the Sussex coast of England to Battle.

Ironically, the town Battle derived its name from the Battle of Hastings which was fought here in 1066. It was called the Battle of Hastings because the battlefield was closest to the town of Hastings! Yet, because it became such a revered site in England, a whole new town developed around the battlefield and it seemed fitting, I suppose, to name the town Battle! It is this strange coalescing of history and geography that never fails to fascinate me, especially in ancient countries like England. Be that as it may, we arrived in Battle, starving and ready to eat an ox.

Battle is a quaint town with a very picturesque High Street. Tudor structures with black gables and exterior beams have been converted into pubs, tea rooms and gift shops. They make a very charming impression on the viewer but we resisted the impulse to explore as our hunger led us to the nearest meal. Our first port of call, therefore, was a pub called, appropriately enough, The 1066, where we decided to have a very proper British meal–Fish and Chips, of course, with thick tartar sauce and ketchup on our fries (chips). It was delicious and particularly warming on this frigid afternoon. The tall gates of the Abbey towered right by our window and after our hearty meal, we went straight to the entrance of the Abbey to find out how to access the battlefield.

Our 6. 50 pound entrance fee provided us with an audio guide that also entitled us to watch a short documentary film that was beautifully made. It described, very effectively, the origin of the enmity between Duke William of Normandy and the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson that ended in the arrival of hundreds of Norman ships and troops that vanquished the English forces on October 14, 1066. (I can never hear that date mentioned without remembering my History of Literature classes with Dr. Homai Shroff at Bombay’s Elphinstone College. It was she who had told us that if there was one date we could commit to memory from the vast annals of British History, it ought to be 1066! And I have never forgotten it!!!) Well, England came under French rule and would never be the same country again as its language, law, customs and traditions became influenced by the Normans.

At Battle, we, visitors could actually walk around the Battlefield and see where the bloody fighting took place. We visited the ruins of the church built by William, who subsequently became known as The Conqueror, in accordance with the Pope’s directives, in 1070 in reparation for the bloodshed and suffering he had caused. This church was subsequently destroyed by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1532 but the Refectory building, the cloisters and the monastic dwellings with their beautiful fan vaulted ceilings, etc. can still be inspected and it made for a stirring visit indeed.

There is a also stone marker on the site that shows the exact spot where Harold fell fighting and upon that very spot stood the altar of the church that William built. These very evocative moments in British history that go back to a time when the United States of America was not even a concept make such visits richly rewarding for me and I am so glad that Stephanie shares my enthusiasm for history and for such folk lore.

We would gladly have spent more time at Battle but large snowflakes began to come down and paint the town with a light whitewash! We decided to start our drive back to London as Stephanie wanted to avoid driving in the snow. But, to our enormous shock, when we reached the car park, our car would not open, try as we did to get the handles to turn. After a few frantic moments, Stephanie called Lexus’ Road Assistance Service and they promised to send a technician out to help us.

This unexpected wait took us into a very old Tea Room called A Taste of Battle where we settled down with large hot chocolates and a warm fruit scone which we piled with clotted cream and strawberry jam. I could certainly think of worse things to do on a snowy day than curl up in a warm rustic tea room with an English cream tea! In fact, within minutes, a large number of other people came tearing out of the snow and shook the flakes off their coats as they settled down to warming cups of tea.

It wasn’t even ten minutes before Stephanie received a call from the technician telling her to meet him at the car park. It turns out that the remote signal on our key fob was conflicting and crossing swords with other signals being emitted by other cars in the parking lot. These were making our car reject the signal from our own key! The technician set it right in minutes and we were on our way deciding to drive through the nearby town of Hastings. The clerks in the Battle Abbey had told us a joke about Hastings which went like this: Hastings is a one-horse town that would have been exciting if there were a horse in it! Still, we decided to see it for ourselves (primarily because a TV show I have enjoyed watching for a while called Foyle’s War is set in Hastings in the 1940s). Alas, Hastings on this dull and dreary winter’s afternoon with the snow coming down looked nothing like its depiction on the small screen and I was disappointed.

The flakes came down larger and faster as we found our way back to the highway and home to Wimbledon where Stephanie dropped me off to the Tube station and returned to her own flat. I caught up with a number of small chores and sat down to write my blog as well as get myself prepared for my classes tomorrow.

Goodbye to Berlin–And Back to Great Britain

Feb1

Saturday, January 31, 2009
Berlin-London

I had set my cell phone alarm to 6 am and Anja and I jumped up immediately as we had a lot of clearing and cleaning of the apartment to do before we left the house at 6. 30 am. Anja very sweetly escorted me to the station at 6. 30 and decided to return to the flat that had served me so well, to clear away the garbage and take it home with her (in her bicycle basket!). Having packed and kept my backpack ready the previous night, we were out of the house and I was on the train by 6. 40.

Though it was a Saturday, there were a few folks on the platform and as the train sped towards Treptower Park where I had to make a change, more passengers climbed on—which was comforting to me as I am rather unnerved about traveling in public transport when it is empty. Within an hour, I was in Schonefeld airport and with much time to spare before I boarded my Ryanair flight, I was able to finish my Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (known as the Sorcerer’s Stone in the American edition).

The flight was smooth and uneventful and we arrived at Stanstead aiport without any incidents. I caught my Easybus van and was dropped off at Baker Street from where I changed two buses to get home to Holborn.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur as I downloaded my pictures from my camera, edited and captioned them, had a shampoo and shower, did my laundry, unpacked my backpack and brought things back to normal. checked and responded to my email (both business and personal) and made a few calls. This has become my routine when I return from trips and I pretty much do it now in my sleep. Before I knew it, it was 8. 3o pm and I was starving and thoroughly enjoyed the Salmon Pie that I had pulled out from the freezer on entering my flat. It made a very satisfying dinner before I decided to retire early as Stephanie and I have made plans to drive to Battle and Hastings tomorrow.

A Day Devoted to Berlin’s Jews

Jan31

Friday, January 30, 2009
Berlin

A Jewish History of Berlin:
I devoted this final day in Berlin to retracing the history of the European Jew and leaving the apartment at 9 am (after a breakfast of coffee and purchased chocolate croissants), I took a bus down Ku-Damm to Checkpoint Charlie as I wanted to get some pictures there. Since it was still rather early, there were few tourists about and I was able to get the kind of angles I wanted without too much traffic tearing down the streets.

In fact, one of the things that occurred to me about Berlin was how little traffic there was—I was never caught in a jam anywhere—and how smoothly it moved. Of course, everyone seemed to be driving a spiffy German car—there were Mercedes Benz-es and Audis coming out of my ears! And the roads were smooth as silk so that even the double decker buses glided over them effortlessly. I later found out that not many Berliners own cars as their public transport is so fabulous—as indeed I discovered for myself. It is easy to feel as if you are transported to the mid-50s in the lack of cars on the roads.

At Checkpoint Charlie:
I paid one euro to the German guy who is licensed to masquerade as an American GI so I could pose with him at Checkpoint Charlie! There is also another kiosk where for another euro you can get your passport stamped with any of the visas of the pre-1989 era that were required if passengers were crossing the border from one part of divided Germany into the other. Much as I felt tempted to have my passport stamped with one of those visa stamps, I found it hard to accept that the man is ‘licensed’ to perform this operation in a real passport! I did not have the time to visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum nearby which details the stories of the many escapees who crossed the border using the most ingenious of means.

The Jewish Historic Museum:
Then began my long walk to the Jewish Historic Museum. This quite recent addition to the Berlin skyline is the design of American Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind who has designed a structure that is supposed to look like the Star of David turned inside-out. To call it sheer genius would be an understatement. It is so superbly conceived and so amazingly implemented—here again my engagement and connection with the Modernist architecture took me by surprise, but I marveled with each step I took further and further into the building which is something of a maze. It’s a good thing that a lot of young volunteer guides are around to help you find your way to a particular exhibit. In the basement, for instance, I visited the Holocaust Tower—a structure which represents various things to various people. It is a tall column that you enter underground. You will find yourself in an unlit and unheated space (and believe me, the contrast in temperatures is striking at any time of year). The only light is natural—coming from a small slit in the walls. It represented for me the entrapment of the prisoners in the various concentration camps around Europe and their inability to escape.

I then stepped into the Garden of Exile, a series of granite columns with olive trees growing at the top—olives, of course, symbolizing the Promised Land. Of course, since this was the wrong time of year to be visiting a garden, I merely took a peek at it, but again the concepts behind these creations were just staggering.

Taking the elevator to the top floor, I got off in the Medieval section which details the persecutions that Jews encountered throughout history. In this section, I was able, through a computer, to see my name written in Hebrew and to get a print out of it which really tickled me—what an unusual souvenir! If time had permitted, I would have gone minutely through every one of the mementoes on display from various epochs in history, but I had a great deal to cover and my next port of call was the underground Holocaust Memorial. By this time, I had become so familiar with the layout of the city through my maps and taking the buses, that I felt very much at ease and did not need to ask anyone for directions to get anywhere.

The Underground Holocaust Memorial:
The Holocaust Memorial is also rather ingeniously planned. You take a stair well that leads into a darkened space underground which details the losses suffered by about six European Jewish families during the insanity of the Holocaust. Of course, having been to Dachau (about 22 years ago) and more recently to Auschwitz-Birkenau on a trip to Eastern Europe, I had decided not to visit the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp which lies a few miles outside of Berlin. And I was familiar with the ruthlessness of the Nazi machinery that rounded up Jews from all over Europe and herded them off to the camps where they were forced to labor under atrocious conditions and eventually gassed to death. But to see this part of history presented so vividly through photographs and diary jottings and postcards is always so heart breaking that I was often in tears.

In Chocolate Heaven:
Taking the bus again, I went out in search of a cheering cup of hot chocolate at Fassbender and Rausch near the Gendarmenmarkt and I settled myself by a window that overlooked the imposing dome of the Cathedral and ordered myself a Black Forest Chocolate pastry (I love the name in German—Schwartzwalden Torte!) and a cup of Ecuadorian dark hot chocolate which was laced with Chilli! It was quite the most unusual and delicious hot chocolate I’ve had (the best one still remains the hot chocolate Chriselle and I had at Cukracavalimonada, a restaurant in Prague!). The pastry was amazing—the cherries, soaked in kirsche—cherry liqueur—were frozen into the pastry and they burst into my mouth in what seemed like small shots!

Coffee at KaDeWe:
Then, I was hurrying off to KaDeWe where I had made 3 pm coffee plans with my English friend and colleague Catherine Robson who is on a year long Fellowship at a university in Berlin finishing up her next book. Catherine was awaiting me when I got there and we made our way to the Food Halls again settling down with peppermint tea by the picture windows to gaze upon the rooftops of Berlin—not a very pretty sight!

Catherine and I caught up for an hour before she hurried off to do some shopping while I went back down to the entrance to await the arrival of Anja who returned from Munich that morning and had made plans to spend the evening with me. She arrived there within five minutes and we were off after she had secured her bicycle to a tree stump (that’s another thing—bicycles are ubiquitous in Berlin even in the winter!).

Exploring Berlin’s Lesser-Known Parts with Anja:
Anja got on to the bus with me and took me to the furthest point of the city, way in the East, which she told me was a bit like Greenwich Village in New York. This area was left untouched by the war and the buildings that line the street are pre-War—the entire area retains its early-20th century ambience and it was marvelous to stroll through a part of Germany that is being preserved almost like a memorial to those years before colossal personal ambition changed the world for the worse. The area is lined with cafes, restaurants, boutique shops and cultural centers, art galleries and the like. We found ourselves a cute café (Café de Paris) to have another cup of coffee and then we were on the S-Bahn making our way back to Charlottenburg as I wanted to take Anja out for dinner and she recommended a place called Engelbecken that served Bavarian food as Anja is from Munich!

A Bavarian Dinner in Charlottenberg:
Needless to say, I was exhausted by this point as finding the restaurant involved a long walk from the S-Bahnhof (railway station) and I had spent the entire day on my feet! I was grateful when the waiter found us a table and we settled down with the equivalent of a Shandy and ordered wild boar casserole with knoddel (potato casserole) and a salad of mixed greens. Anja opted for a veal roast with spaztel (a German thick pasta, somewhat similar to gnocchi). The food was absolutely delicious and since I do not go to restaurants when I am traveling alone, I always welcome the company and the opportunity to eat good local food with someone who can guide me on what to order and how to eat it. We had a fabulous evening together and were able to catch up and make plans to meet again, next in Padua in Italy where I have been invited to give a lecture in March—Anja will be in Venice at the same time!

Anja decided to spend the night with me in Anneke’s apartment—which was a huge relief to me as I had to leave the apartment really early the next morning to take the S-Bahn to Schonefeld airport and I was grateful for her company. She, poor thing, was exhausted after her own return from Munich and the hectic week she had spent there (she is an art historian doing a rather late Ph.D. on an Italian Renaissance Venetian artist) and would have rather been in her own bed, no doubt. We continued chatting late into the night and finally nodded off to sleep.

Berlin’s Cathedrals and Museums

Jan31

Thursday, January 29, 2009
Berlin

Three Churches and Two Museums:
I decided to devote the day to church visiting and museum hopping. Berlin is a sprawling city and there is a wealth of places to go to and things to do—so unless you have a definite plan of action, you could end up short changing yourself. Of the many beautiful churches that dot the city—from the Baroque to the Modernist—I chose to see, first of all the Kaiser Wilhelm Gestadtkirsche. This was primarily because its profile is so striking. It clearly has a bombed steeple—that much is evident from a distance, long before one gets into its vicinity. And yet that bombed profile was allowed to remain. It was so intriguing that it warranted investigation. Besides, it is very conveniently located–right next door to the Zoo where the main bus terminal happens to be.

Exploring the Remains of a Bombed Church:
I arrived there at 10 am and made my way first to the Memorial Hall—this used to be the main entrance to the original church that has stood on this site since 1904 when the church was inaugurated by the Kaiser. During World War II, the church was bombed to smithereens and only the tower remained (with a large part of its steeple destroyed). The church, however, boasted some unimaginably intricate mosaics in the Byzantine style and, miraculously, many of them survived the bombing. When the war ended and the reconstruction of Germany began, it was decided that the tower should be retained though the rest of the ruins were demolished. These surviving mosaics were carefully moved and relocated to the main tower together with several that had originally stood there through the decades. Today, these mosaics are the main attraction of the tower which has been converted into a Memorial Hall.

A newer, far more modern church (that some think looks like a compactor and, therefore, has so nicknamed it), was fashioned out of thousands of pieces of sapphire blue glass that glow as the sunlight streams through them. It makes a quiet place of contemplation and I would certainly recommend this unique space for a visit.

The Gemaldegalerie—An Art Lover’s Paradise:
I then took the bus and made my way to the Kulturforum, a part of Berlin in which the arts and culture are omnipresent through the Philharmonie Building, the National Library and the Gemaldegalerie—the latter being my main interest. Now everybody who has any knowledge of Art History knows that the Nazis were culture-vultures and patronized their artists enthusiastically—remember Hitler’s love for Wagner? And in the movie The Pianist, the only reason the Polish Jewish pianist is saved from the concentration camp was because the Nazi commandant who found him at the end of the movie was a passionate lover of classical music. Hence, they amassed a vast treasure trove of fine art by the Old Masters—much of which they reportedly looted from the other European collections. After the War ended, this collection was divided between East and West Germany and it is only after the Fall of the Wall that the collection has come together again.

The building chosen to house this treasure is the new Gemaldegalerie, a Modernist space that was custom designed and built for the purpose—and it is truly one of the finest museum buildings I have ever seen. I loved the light filled spaces, the interesting layout, the manner in which the paintings are hung against light-absorbing damask walls and the fact that daylight makes its subdued presence felt on the canvases so that no artificial light hits the surfaces at all.

As for the collection? Well, what can I say? I gave myself two to three hours to see the Highlights (the museum has a fine handout with about 20 Highlights outlined together with a route) and my DK Eyewitness Guide recommended that I do not miss a few more. But I have to say that I could easily have spent the entire day there—it was so astonishing. The collection of Botticellis is astounding, there is a fine array of Rembrandts, some really superb works from the Dutch and Flemish Schools, a totally wacky Pieter Breughel entitled A Hundred Proverbs and easily my favorite of all Caravaggio’s Cupid Victorius. In fact, I think I came away from there loving it even more than the Uffizi Bacchus which has always been my favorite one of Carravaggio’s works. Cupid’s playfulness, indeed his impishness—as caught by his pose and his expression—is so entrancing that I simply couldn’t tear myself away from that work. And a Vermeer entitled A Glass of Wine was also so memorable that it brought to mind the novel Girl with a Pearl Ear Ring. I was disappointed that Pieter dse Hooch’s work entitled Die Mutter was in Rome as I adore the work of this Flemish artist. I found the guards in each gallery extremely knowledgeable and much more helpful than any of the Italian ones I encountered anywhere in Florence. I had a very fine lunch at the Museum Café which gave me a chance to rest my feet as well as sample a variety of delicious German salads.

A Gothic Church—Marienkirsche and a Baroque One—Berliner Dom:
Then, I was in the bus again and on my way to Marienkirsche, a Gothic Church with an ancient fresco that wraps itself around the entrance walls. This, however, was so faint that it is was barely discernible. Inside the church, the stained glass windows on the altar were striking as were some very old sculptured effigies. The starkness of this church contrasted strongly with the Berliner Dom which was the next church I visited—this one spelt Baroque grandeur and opulence as was evident from the exterior itself. The interior was a confection of superb stained glass windows, an elaborate marble pulpit, a magnificent brass organ with an intricately carved case and the grand sarcogphagi of Freidreich I anhis wife. I was repeatedly reminded of the spectacular cathedrals we saw in Vienna and Salzburg in Austria—and indeed, in many ways, I was reminded of Vienna in general while in Berlin. It may have had to do with the German culture and language which the two cities have in common, but I think it was also the greatness of the architecture and the scale and layout of the city which is huge in its dimensions which reminded me of the Hapsburg excesses.

Finally—the Pergammonmuseum:
Having seen these three churches, I decided finally to get to the piece de resistance—the Pergammonmuseum, located on what is called Museum Island—one of the greatest museums in the world. Luckily, most major museums in Berlin stay open until 6 pm and since it was so cold, they were the best places to escape into in the winter months. I couldn’t wait to see for myself the wealth of unique treasures contained within. There was a likelihood that I would be missing the most monumental of its collection as renovations are being carried out; but since the website did not give any information to discourage a visit, I decided to see for myself.

While my Metropolitan Museum ID card had, thus far, taken me into all the museums for free, I had to pay the full fee of 10 euros to see the Pergammon—this included an audio guide in English which outlined a few highlights that would take roughly an hour to cover. I bought my ticket, obtained my audio guide and was off.

To see all the museums of Berlin one would need at least a month and to appreciate them from the outside would take another! Each building is stunning and forms a very fitting receptacle for the collection that lies concealed within. The exterior of the Pergammon is completely marred by the ugly scaffolding that is part of their renovation plan

The very first ‘room’ in the Pergammon is breathtaking because as soon as you walk in you find yourself standing right in front of the altar from the Greek Temple at Pergammon in modern-day Turkey—it is from this Temple that the Museum gets its name. Now, though the history of the museum is long and fascinating, suffice it to note that in the early part of the 19th century, German archeologists were very active in sites all over the Middle East and a great deal of their excavations and discoveries led to the uncovering of ancient civilizations whose mementoes would have been lost to the world. As a reward for their endeavors, they were permitted to bring these ‘structures’ to Germany where these specially constructed museums served to house them safe from the destruction that could be wrought by the elements.

The Pergammon Altar has sculpture that, in my humble opinion, is in a far better state of preservation that the Elgin Marbles (although those are far more famous—perhaps because they are so controversial!). Apart from the marble altar which is intact, freizes from the Pergammon Temple decorate the walls of this main first room and they are truly breathtaking. You can actually climb up the steps of the Pergammon Altar (a truly unique experience) and spend as much time as you like contemplating the wealth of ancient mythological sculpture that engulfs you wherever your eye rests. To me, this was so magical, that it is worth going to Berlin just to see this.

The next stop on my tour was the Temple to Athena in the next room which is just as dazzling. What is mind blowing is the sheer size of these works and the scale of the rooms that allows these towering temples, columns, altars and all to be accommodated indoors! And I hadn’t yet arrived at the Ishtar Gate!

Next door to the Athena Temple are the Gates of Miletus, colossal Classical columns holding a decorative gateway that once existed at the entrance to the Market in Miletus in Asia Minor. Though badly damaged and undergoing restoration, these gates are truly splendid and also breathtaking. Here, too, visitors walk right through the gates, so that you feel as if you are actually walking in their ancient worlds.

And then I arrived at what I think is the most impressive exhibit of all at the Pergammon—the Babylonian Ishtar Gates. These stunning gates composed almost entirely of sapphire ceramic glazed bricks were built during the reign of Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (604-542 BC). To arrive at them, one needed to pass through what was known as the ‘Processional Way’—originally 590 feet long. In the Pergammon, the Inner Gates and a large part of the Processional Way allow the viewer to gasp at the quality of the artistry that went into the design and construction of so exquisite a work. Although many of the upper parts of the structure have been restored (it is very easy to see where the original tiles end and the modern ones begin), the animals that adorn the walls (horses, ibex, and lions—loads of lions) are original. These are not merely embedded into the walls but jut out like bas relief—all of which makes them not just impossible to describe but impossible to stop raving over.

Other more significant parts of the Pergammon’s collection are the Façade of the Mshatta Palace which once stood in Jordan—the parts in the museum once concealed the entrance to a palace and a small mosque. The Allepo Zimmer, a spectacular paneled room that came from a merchant in the Syrian city of Aleppo was also fascinating. (I finally understood where the name of the town of Allepy in Kerala came—from the Syrian Christians, of course, who first brought Christianity into Kerala, India, through the Apostle ‘Doubting’ Thomas—of the Mar Thomite Church of South India).

Apart from its obvious treasures, for me, one of the most exquisite objects in this collection was a Roman Sarcophagus of the 2nd century AD upon which is carved the entire chilling story of Medea—truly Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! The second story of the Pergammon stocks treasures of the Islamic world (including a few fantastic Moghul works), but easily the most striking was the glazed ceramic tiled Mihrab from a mosque in Kashan (in modern-day Iran) built in 1226. The quality of the glaze is so superior that the gates glittered as if covered in gold—again, impossible to describe!

A Foodie’s Paradise:
Just when I thought I could not take another step because I had literally walked for miles, I decided to call it a day and get back home. But because one of the great joys of travel for me is peeking into the local supermarkets, I did that for about 15 minutes and enjoyed walking through the aisles of ‘foreign’ food—very sorry that I could not buy the Black Forest Wild cherry jams and jellies because hand baggage restrictions no longer permit such items to be carried and with budget airlines, one has only hand baggage! On impulse, I decided to take a bus to Kaufhaus Des Westens (known as KaDeWe), Berlin’s answer to London’s Harrods. My guide book had informed me that the Food Court on the 6th floor was a Foodies Delight and I decided to check it out for myself. Indeed, I was overwhelmed by the variety and quality of the offerings—a true paradise for any gourmand. I poked around a bit and bought myself some take out dinner.

I was brave enough to return to the apartment in Hallensee about 8 pm and spent a long while reading up the first Harry Potter paperback—most of which I had forgotten and which I found myself enjoying very much.

Berlin on Foot

Jan31

Wednesday, January 29, 2009
Berlin

Finding my Bearings in Berlin:
At Schonefeld airport, I had requested a map at the Tourist Information Counter and on perusing it during breakfast (Andrea had thoughtfully provided me with a quarter loaf of raisin bread, milk and coffee powder), I discovered that there was such a thing as a Free Walking Tour of Berlin that met at the Dunkin Donuts shop near the Zoo.

I purchased a three-day Berlin Welcome Card (about which I had heard from a magazine before leaving London) that allowed unlimited travel on all forms of public transport—the S-Bahn, the U-Bahn (Underground), Trams and Buses. Now I know from experiences in London that the bus is the best way to really see a city and Berlin has double decker buses (just like London’s but yellow, not red) with big picture windows. The lady who sold me the ticket at Hallensee S-Bahn station told me to take Bus Number X10 to the Zoo. It trundled along in about ten minutes—ten freezing minutes during which time my toes turned to ice at the bus stop despite two pairs of socks—and when I climbed upstairs and followed its route on my map, I discovered that it ran along Kurfunstendamm (known as Ku-damm), one of West Berlin’s major arteries before it arrived at the Zoo.

Joining a Walking Tour of Berlin:
I found the Dunkin Donuts easily enough and saw that a crowd had already gathered there for the tour that left at 10. 30 am. There, I met Maria, our guide, who informed me that the Walking Tour would last three and a half hours and would take us through most of the historical sights in the East. I wondered whether my recovering feet would be able to deal with such a long tour; but I realized that the best way to find out was to join it. If I felt unable to go right through to the end, I could always drop out and do the rest on my own. With that caveat, I joined the group. Maria took us by S-Bahn to the Eastern side where we emerged on Unter der Linden, one of the main arteries in the East.

And just as we emerged from the Underground to street level, I gasped, because there right in front of me, in all its magnificent glory was the famous Brandenburg Gate. This is the most distinctive landmark of Berlin that I had seen in countless pictures and movies and to find it suddenly loom up in front of me was so startling that I had a reaction similar to the kind I had when I had first seen the Taj Mahal in Agra and the Grand Canyon in Colorado. It really did take my breath away!

After a good half hour and much organization by the leaders of this Free Walking City Tour (they had gathered a couple of hundred tourists from all over the city to converge on this spot), our tour with Maria began. In Paritzer Platz, she gave us a very detailed history of the Brandenburg Gate in the open air in rather freezing temperature and I realized that this tour is certainly not for the faint of heart—indeed, there was no one older than 40 on these tours! Thank goodness I had dressed warmly and in very comfortable shoes! She also pointed out the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, one of the world’s most luxurious buildings, but one that gained notoriety when Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of the third floor balcony of that very same hotel!

Our next stop was the Reischstag—the country’s Parliament Building, a 19th century structure with a very recent crowning glass dome, the work of British architect Sir Norman Foster. We saw this building from the outside only (the walking tour does not take you inside any of the buildings) and I resolved to visit it again on my own, if only to see the handiwork of Sir Norman up close and personal.

Our route then took us over Hitler’s Bunker. I was very excited about this as I imagined that we would actually be able to visit the underground headquarters in which the Fuhrer remained holed up with his girl friend Eva Braun as the war came to an end and he committed suicide. I believe that there is a movie about this last phase in his life, but I could not remember the name of it. As it turned out, the bunker was completely destroyed by the Soviets after they seized control of the city at the war’s end. This was done deliberately as they did not want Hitler’s grave to become a place of pilgrimage for the world’s Neo-Nazis. Today, nothing but soil stands over the tunnel of rooms once occupied by the most powerful SS officers, but they are surrounded by the kind of solid, squat, institutional residential buildings that characterize all Communist countries. Residents of these building use the land under which the bunker once lay to walk their dogs who defecate all over the premises—a fitting fate, perhaps, for the former home of a man whose ideas brought so much terror to the world.

A few feet ahead is the Holocaust Memorial and I was so struck by the stark simplicity of the area that is made up of hundreds of granite blocks of varying height that form a uniform grid comprising narrow lanes that run throughout the space. In the midst of these, there are steps that lead underground to a free Holocaust Museum–which I also resolved to visit at my leisure when I had more time to ponder the unspeakable fate of the Jews and so many other minorities under the Nazi regime.

The Tour then took us past a huge grey granite building on the intersection of two of East Berlin’s busiest roads—Wilhelmstrasse and Fredreichstrasse. This building had the appearance of the kind you see in old Nazi movies—dour, forbidding, depressing. This is the only one of the old Nazi buildings that the Soviets did not destroy. It used to be the Ministry of Ministries under the SS but today is the Ministry of Finance and Taxation—just as frightful! Those who have seen the current Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie will find it familiar as the entire movie was shot in the premises of this building.

At the intersection of the street where this building ends are the remains of the Old Berlin Wall that once encircled the city and separated the GDR (German Democratic Republic, the West) from the DDR (the Communist East). Tourists pause here today to take pictures and Maria used the opportunity to describe the creation of the Wall and its impact on the people of Berlin. I found all of this rather heart breaking. The Wall today is a grey granite structure devoid of graffiti and enclosed by a fence as tourists still attempt to break pieces of it to sell on E-Bay!

Our walk then took us towards Checkpoint Charlie which was the name for the Border Crossing between East and West Germany. The name comes from the Code used in the NATO phonetic alphabet at the time—A for Alpha, the check-point at Helmstedt, B for Bravo at Dreilinden and C for Charlie, here in Berlin—and refers to a small white shed which was manned by Allied guards during the Cold War. To leave the American sector behind was to enter into the Communist Bloc in East Berlin, a place as different before the Fall of the Wall as Heaven from Hell! There is a Checkpoint Charlie Museum set up a mere block away as well as a Soviet Museum that carries the last Soviet flag that was flown on the Russian side before the wall fell in November 1989.

The tour moved on but, once again, I decided that I would return to take in the atmosphere in a more thoughtful manner. At this point, we stopped for lunch—a real hot chocolate and apfel streudel for me in Café Aroma—and then we were on our way again. On this leg of the walking tour, we left 20th century Berlin behind us and made our way into Berlin of 2 centuries previous—when it was under the Kaisers, all of whom rather confusingly were named either Wilhelm or Freidrich or when they were being more creative, Wilhelm Freidrich!

We arrived at Gendarmenmarkt (literally, in French, the Policeman’s Square) which is dominated by three stunningly beautiful buildings—the Concert Hall in the center with a marble sculpture of German playwright Schiller surrounded by the Muses; the Hugenot Memorial Museum and a Cathedral (Protestant). The grandeur of the architecture in this square makes it one of the prettiest in Europe and just before we arrived there, we passed by one of the country’s most famous chocolatiers, Fassbender and Rausch, where, in the picture windows, we saw chocolate replicas of the Brandenburg Gate, the Kaiser Wilheim Gedatschkirsch and somewhat inexplicably the Titanic! Here, too, I decided I would come and poke around as my great love for chocolate makes me a slave to these treats!

Our walk then wound on towards the Unter der Linden (an avenue named for the hundreds of linden or lime tress that are planted all along it) and on to Bebelplatz which is also dominated by the colossal dome of a church—this time the Catholic Cathedral of St. Helwig decorated with striking sculpture in bas relief on its main pediment. This space overlooks the campus of Humboldt University whose alumni list reads like a Who’s Who of German intellectuals from Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka to Sigmund Freud and Bismarck, Karl Marx and Fredreich Engels! In fact, in the early-19th century, a book burning ritual was carried out by a dictatorial regime which led alumnus Heinrich Heinne to write in the 1820s that when they start to burn books, it will not be long before they burn people. Of course, his words proved to be strangely prophetic considering what the Nazis did a century later. Because the university is supposedly ashamed of its role in the book burning scandal, today books are sold by the main gate and the proceeds go to charity. When we walked through Bebelplatz, the city was gearing up for Berlin’s Fashion Week which was supposed to draw some hot names from its contemporary couture scene.

By this point in the tour, I began to feel seriously fatigued and was contemplating dropping out when Maria informed us that it would be ending soon. We headed towards Museum Island and stopped short at the sight of the superb Berliner Dom or main Cathedral which reminds one of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral and for good reason—the Kaiser wanted a cathedral similar to St. Paul’s, only more ornate–and so the architect gave him his heart’s desire. The cathedral shares space at the Lustgarten with the Altes Museum, a splendid Neo-Classical structure that houses Greek and Roman Antiquities and is considered one of the finest such buildings in Europe.

I was dead tired by this time and decided that I needed to sit somewhere for a long time. I was grateful that Maria sat us down on the steps of the Museum and went into a very dramatic rendition of the Fall of the Wall and the manner in which the country and the city that was torn apart for decades came together under Gorbachov’s news vision of glasnost and perestroika. I had goose bumps pretty frequently as her narrative continued for who among us has not the most vivid memories of those heady days when the winds of freedom swept across Europe and took it out of the darkness and into the light? It was a fine finale to a highly enlightening day but one that took much longer than three and a half hours and had me walk countless miles!

Inside the Glass Dome of the Reischstag:
I then hopped into the Bus Number 100 which is a big tourist attraction as it loops around most of Berlin’s monumental buildings. Well, before I knew it, I was back in front of the Reichstag and I could not resist jumping right off and joining the queue to get to the top in the elevator. Luckily, I asked if there was a handicap entrance and they led me to one—talk about German precision and engineering, they think of everything! Well, then I got priority in the line to get to Sir Norman Foster’s newest creation, a rather superb mirrored dome that reflects multiple images of the people who troop inside on a ramp that gets you to the very top for some stunning views of the city. And being one who doesn’t usually engage with modernist architecture, I was half prepared not to like the concept too much; but I have to say that having walked through the dome, I was converted. It is rather ingenious, in an I.M. Pei kind of way, and I was so glad I did seek this architectural gem out to wander through on my own.

Riding the Buses at Dusk:
I spent the next hour seeing dusk fall over Berlin as the lights came on and bathed the city with fluorescence. From one modern square after the other, in the comfort of my bus, I was struck by the architectural innovations that have flourished in the past few years as the rebuilding that began after the Wall fell has continued unabated over the years.

But because I felt hesitant about getting to Charlottenburg too late, I took a bus back home and by 7 pm, I was in my flat, safe and exhausted and reading up my guide book to supplement all the information that Maria had crammed into my head that day.

When I spoke to Llew in the evening, I told him how awed I felt by Berlin, its history, its sweep, its scale—for truly to walk the streets of Berlin is to walk in the shadow of the history of the 20th century. I wish he were sharing the city with me but I decided to be his eyes and ears and convey to him all that I was seeing and hearing and feeling through my blog. As the hours passed and sleep washed over me, I felt that I could not have spent my day more productively.

Berlin…Here I Come–Finally!!!

Jan31

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
London-Berlin

When I had last been to Germany, more than two decades ago, as a back-packing grad student in England, the country had been divided in two and parts of it still lay concealed behind the Iron Curtain. Berlin was one of those parts and ever since the Reunification of the country, I have wanted to visit this place and walk in the footsteps of the history of the 20th century. When I knew that I would be posted in London for a year, my first thought was, “Ah, now I shall finally be able to make a trip to Berlin”; but then in November, when I had booked my air tickets to get there, I had to cancel my plans as Plantar Fascittis took over my life. At the next available opportunity, I booked tickets again and this time too, I almost did not board the flight—indeed, I felt pretty certain that I was not destined to see Berlin in my lifetime.

I thought I would spend the morning at the National Gallery finishing up the last 6 galleries that I still need to study. But when I awoke, I felt guilty that I hadn’t yet transcribed the two interviews I had done with my Anglo-Indians subjects Vivian and Dorothy Lawless—so I decided to get cracking on those and, boy, did they take ages! I spent hours working on getting their views and words in order and before I knew it, it was well past lunchtime. I spent an hour packing and getting organized for my departure to Berlin and at exactly 1 pm, I left my flat to take the bus to Victoria to catch the Easybus van to Stanstead airport. So…don’t even ask me where the day went. I was glued to my PC but, in the end, I did finish the interviews and did email them off to my office at NYU to be printed out on Monday. Having accomplished this great task, I felt that I could leave for Berlin without feeling guilty about devoting so much time to the sheer pleasure of travel.

Almost Missing my Flight…
The Easybus van left Victoria on schedule. My Ryanair flight was scheduled to depart from Stanstead at 6. 45 pm. I was scheduled to arrive there at 4. 45 pm. Except that from the Get Go, we were held up in awful traffic—indeed all the way out of London and on to the motorway, we dodged traffic and then just when we were 20 miles away from Stanstead, we came to a dead halt—and did not move again for another hour! You can just imagine the despair of every single passenger in the van as, one after the other, they gave up hopes of making their flights. I called Llew to tell him that I was certain to miss my flight as there was a massive pile-up on the motorway. Still, refusing to give up hope, I began praying and I knew that if I arrived at the airport even at 6 pm, there was still a chance I might make it. Well, somewhat miraculously, the roads opened out and I spied a tow van taking a black vehicle off the road—it probably was a bad accident that led to so many passengers missing their flights.

As for me, it was exactly 6 pm, when I dashed out of the van and down the ramp to the Ryanair Check-in machines, obtained my boarding card, saw the instructions that told me to Proceed to the Gate and ran through the security lines. I had learned from my mistakes of the past for I carried only a very tiny transparent plastic bag with a few travel sized toiletries which I placed separately in a tray and, miracle of miracles, I cleared security within five minutes and was racing off to my gate where Boarding had not yet begun. I called Llew to tell him that I had made the flight after all and then I was off.

Arrival in Berlin:
I arrived, just 90 minutes later, at Berlin’s Schonefeld airport at 9.15 pm local time because Berlin is one hour ahead of London. My friend Anja Brug had arranged for me to spend my days in the apartment of her close friend Anneke who lives near Hamburg and uses the Berlin apartment so rarely that she is glad to have travelers use it occasionally. Anja herself had to dash out of Berlin to travel to Munich during the time I was there and felt awful to leave me on my own in the city. However, she had left me detailed instructions on how to get to the apartment from the airport where her Italian boyfriend Andrea was scheduled to meet me.

Now, despite being a very experienced solo world traveler, I have to say that I am always nervous about arriving in a strange country after dark especially when I cannot speak the language. My German is non-existent and using the S-Bahn to get to Hallensee, where the apartment was located, involved making a change that left me rather ill-at-ease. I was pleased, therefore, to find myself sharing a seat on the aircraft with an English student named Rosy who knew Berlin well and was a very able guide as she helped me buy a ticket from the ticket machine and rode part of the journey along the S-Bahn with me. At the point where I need to make a change, I made friends with another German woman named Ingeborg, who was also able to speak English and, hallelujah, she was taking the same train I needed to get off at the same stop—Hallensee! God works His miracles in the most wonderful ways and I was grateful for these blessings!

However, by the time we arrived at Hallensee, it was well past 11 pm and I was terrified about walking alone along Sessenerstrasse to get to the apartment. For one thing, it was dreadfully cold—far colder than it had been in London—and for another, well, the streets were deserted. There was not another soul in sight and as I pulled my backpack along, it seemed to echo eerily on the silent streets. I must admit that I felt very uneasy indeed. I am very glad that I had checked Google Earth before I left the house to find my bearings and get a sense of exactly where I was required to go once I got off the train. This proved very useful in boosting my self-confidence as I passed the cross streets and finally arrived at Number 6 Halberstädter Straße.
There, to my enormous relief, Andrea was awaiting my arrival (I had been in telephonic contact with him from the time I touched down at the airport) and he showed me the ropes. I had last met Andrea in Athens when Llew and I had been traveling in Greece in November.

A Most Unusual Apartment:
Anneke’s apartment is unusual to say the very least—it is an extremely bohemian space in a very old Pre-War part of Hallensee called Charlottenberg which is at the extreme West End of Berlin. The building is in a neighborhood that is made up of very similar ones that stand on cobbled streets. You enter through an imposing old heavy door into a vast hallway with a great big marble fireplace (yes, in the hall) and an elevator that looks as if it has come out of an old Alfred Hitchcock movie like Charade with Audrey Hepburn! At close to midnight, it all appeared a bit discomforting to me, though Andrea showed me my way around very competently.

You enter a large room filled with books and bookshelves and old armoires filled with bed linen and down comforters (which he failed to show me, so that I was cold for three out of the four nights that I was there). This is a ground floor apartment (that once belonged to the concierge of the building) and to access the kitchen, you descend down a winding spiral, wrought-iron staircase. This great space contains a very functional, very well-stocked kitchen and a bathroom space that includes an old-world claw-footed bath tub and a wash basin. The trouble is that there is a window right above the bath tub and though Andrea assured me that no one could look into the apartment, I could see the building on the opposite side of the street through the basement windows and I felt odd about taking a shower in such a space. I felt glad suddenly that my friend Liz Kaplan had cancelled her plans to join me in Berlin from New York as I am sure she would never have coped with such hippie arrangements!

As if this were not adequate, Andrea told me that the WC was located right outside the apartment, on the other end of the corridor! He led the way to a small unheated cubicle where there was a commode well-concealed and locked behind two closed doors. He gave me a key to the toilet and told me that no one else was able to use it except me—but I have to say that I resolved that I would use the loo last thing at night and then pray that I had no reason to have to visit the facilities during the night because, seriously, wild horses would not drive me to get there in the middle of the night along those dark corridors that were lit by light switches that appeared at intervals and glowed red to guide you to them! It’s ironic that I mentioned that the entire space reminded me of 50’s Hollywood movies because Anneke is a Hollywood film buff and her kitchen is decorated with black and white movie posters of Sophia Loren and Shirley MacLaine, John Wayne and Cary Grant!

Andrea left in a few minutes and, dead tired, I settled down for the night, hoping that I would not awake in the middle of it.