Clarko Polos

7 days in post-revolutionary Egypt - December 2011

2012-01-22T16:34:00.000Z

Day 1: Evolution of a revolution

We’ve been coming to Egypt since 1989, but this is our firsttrip to Egypt after the ‘25 January Revolution’ (what the Egyptians call it) orsimply ‘the revolution’. So what’s different? Well, visually, we’ve spottedtanks, passed lots of military, armoured personnel carriers on the road on ourround trip to Aswan, over 200 sleeping policemen (in Egypt that can mean anumber of things) at every junction, a local roadblock and election posterseverywhere.

Speaking to people, it’s also clear that some wrongs havebeen righted. In Luxor, the Mubarak Mayor and some of his cronies have beenarrested and sentenced. These are the people who bribed their way to success. Agood example is the guy who owns the Al Khabi restaurants on the lower walkwayalong the Nile. It turns out he had no alcohol licence, nor permission to buildhis restaurant on the banks of the Nile, so he was sentenced to 15 days in jailand is now keeping a low profile. Land has also been colonised by poor peoplewho see an opportunity to better themselves. On the whole, people seem lessafraid of the police and willing to stand up to them when they perceive thattheir approach is wrong. We saw this during the night at a checkpoint, whereour driver challenged the need for us to be ‘escorted’.

In general, people are positive but nervous; nervous aboutthe results of the election. They know that the Muslim Brotherhood will gain alarge share of the vote but also say that this may be no bad thing. If theyfail or push too far in the direction of religious strictures, they will beseen as failures and voted out. Many simply crave the sort of social andsecurity stability that the Brotherhood promise. Luxor, Aswan and upper Egypt ingeneral, is a long way from Cairo, and Egypt is not Cairo. Nevertheless, eventhose who are critical of the continuing chaos seem glad that Mubarak and hiskleptomaniacs have gone.

Each evening we saw TV and web images from Cairo with womenand men being beaten savagely, some dying from gunshot wounds. Al Jazeera were,once again at the forefront of the news, the BBC a miserable failure. AlJazeera were so active that their journalists were sought out by the regime,their cameras smashed and personnel beaten. This, of course, is massivelycounterproductive.

But the big difference is the absence of tourists. They’rethin on the ground and we often found ourselves alone in sites or on the road.The Nile boats have only a handful of people on deck as they pass. This is a realshame as many rely on tourism to feed their families and many have lost theirjobs. In an admirable gesture the European managers at our hotel havesacrificed their salaries for two months to keep their staff in employment. AsTim says, “We have to visit their past ruins to support them in the present,and stop their future from being ruined”.

Day 2: Luxor Temple

Luxor Temple in the morning with Tim and Sarah, who arevisiting Egypt for the first time. I’ve been to this temple many times and itnever fails to impress. Still standing after three thousand years, it’s a greatplace to witness the huge sweep of Egyptian history. Built on earlierstructures (to be seen in the open air museum at the back), what you see todayis the result of two of the greatest Pharaohs (Amenhotep III and Rameses II),as well as the man who played a huge role in changing Egyptian history,Alexander the Great. There’s also extensive 4^th century Roman work,the remains of Byzantine churches and a mosque reflecting the great 7^thcentury shift towards Islam. And today we saw election posters on its walls, aSyrian market on the east side and the citizens of Luxor out with theirchildren in the new park on the east side. The Temple is still a focal point.

You may wonder why it lies on a N-S axis, when most Egyptiantemples lie E-W? This is in response to its religious function as a destinationfrom Karnac to the north, via the avenue of the Sphinxes, which is now almostcompletely uncovered. The earliest part of the Temple is at the back, a blockof rooms, renovated by Alexander, who depicted himself as a Pharaoh. You cansee his cartouche on the walls here. Amenhotep III originally built this blockas well as the huge, adjoining, peristyle court. His work was interrupted whenAkhenaten decided to abolish polytheism for sun-god monotheism, moved hiscapital north to Amarna (now that WAS a revolution) and sparked a radical shiftin Egyptian art. But the 15 tear experiment was short lived and Tutankhamencontinued what Amenhotep had planned, with the pillared colonnade. Half acentury later the shy and retiring Rameses, not to be outdone, added anotherhuge court, a pylon, four statues of himself and two obelisks. After severalhours, we emerged ready for some beers in Sinbad’s Café (the cheapest Stella intown 10 LE - but watch out for the sales tax!).

Obelisks

The remaining obelisk at the entrance to Luxor Temple wasone of a pair, the other is now in the Place de Concorde in Paris. Rome, Paris,London and many other cities have been enhanced with these fine monuments, butfew know much about their purpose. How many war monuments mimic this form inthe UK? Of course, everything in Egypt starts with the sun. As a nation it islargely a river that runs through a desert, so it hardly ever rains. The sun isa dominant presence. Obelisks pointed to the sun and were designed withelectrum and gold tips to reflect the sun. Their pyramidal tips are part of thesame iconography as the great pyramids of the old Kingdom. They are, in manyways, the great emblem of Egyptian art; simple, monolithic, soaring monumentsto the sun.

Day 3: West Bank

Medinet habu

Medinet Habu by taxi with the redoubtable Tim and Sarah.This is Rameses III, who wanted to emulate his father, so we have huge battlescenes against the Sea Peoples and Libyans. Row upon row of captives, withtheir hands bound behind their backs and their place names in cartouches. Thebattle scenes are a mixture of the abstract and naturalism, Rameses shown as agiant figure but the battlefield a mass of thriving and dead bodies. But it’sthe post battle scenes that shock, with piles of chopped off tongues, hands andpenises. Rameses III was well aware of the possibility of erasure, so chiselledhis name often four or five inches deep to prevent them from being wiped andovercut. You have to imagine the canal that came up from the Nile almosttouching the walls. Again, every temple tells a story through reuse, and thisone was used by the workers who built the tombs and was a full blown town aswell as containing a Byzantine church. Two bee-eaters were zipping around theNilometer, which is well worth a visit on the north side.

Deir el Bahri

This huge temple complex is ramped with famous scenes fromHatshetsup’s expeditions to Punt. I don’t particularly like this temple as Ithink it fails to provide the reveals and sense of place of other sites. Thecliffs, however form a superb backdrop, the cream rock sharp against the deepblue sky.

Egyptian art

David Hockney, in his new book, claims that Egyptian art isthe high point of human art and he did spend three weeks here. That’s a challengingstatement so can it be defended? There’s several features of Egyptian art thathave to be recognised as important.

First, its ubiquity.Barely a surface is free from painted or carved art. Entire walls, pedimentsand columns are covered in hieroglyphics and relief carving. Even their tombsare saturated with high quality images.

Second, its permanence.Blessed with an abundance of limestone, sandstone, granite and other rock typessuch as alabaster and basalt, close to a navigable river, it had the resources.The Nile has continuous northerly winds and flooded once a year, so navigable accessto huge amounts of building stone was an advantage. But they built foreternity, their temples and tombs designed for the infinity of time. There isnothing half-hearted about Egyptian art. It’s produced to be part of anever-ending future.

Third is the exquisite use of colour. Mineral colours were used giving a permanence that organiccolour does not. So the ruins that were uncovered in the 19^th C hadmuch of their original colour intact. Unfortunately, much has been, or is stillbeing rubbed or eroded away. It’s still hard to imagine the riot of colour thatthe temples would have shown in their time. The use of foreground andbackground effects, along with transparency in clothing is still there to be seen.

Fourth is the idea of textas art. No written language I know of is as beautiful as Egyptianhieroglyphics, their columns of pictures and symbols, so representational thatthey fooled linguists for hundreds of years into thinking they were just that –pictures representing words. It took the genius of Champollion to realise thatthey were a mixture of representational symbols and sounds. At time, especiallyin Seti’s Abydos, the hieroglyphics are executed in relief with astoundingprecision and artistry.

Fifth is intent.There is no ‘artist’ as such, only art, with a purpose, that purpose, beingmostly life and death. In this sense there is little art for art’s sake or artas a thing in itself.

As to the charge that’s it’s formulaic, repetitive and thereforea little tedious, you need only visit the tomb paintings in the British Museumor the battle scenes at Medinet Habu to see otherwise.

Day 4: West bankferry and cycling

Across on the local ferry (10p) and up to Mohammed’s BikeShop for our usual bike hire (£1 for the day!). You get accosted by taxidrivers here, but it’s all a bit of a laugh and they soon leave you alone. Wehave two cards with the words ‘Taxi Drivel’ and ‘Taxi Diver’ which prompted thelater reflection that these were a deliberate ploy to catch the eye and get alaugh. In Luxor, where the rich and poor collide, everyone has an agenda.

Then off to see the new excavations at Amenhotep IIIs temple(the one fronted by the statues of Memnon). We weren’t allowed on the site soused binoculars to see the stele and newly excavated statues, This was a hugecomplex, and reckoned to inspire the greatest production of statuary in our history. The guardian asked to try ourbinoculars and was delighted, clearly his first time as he was clearly startled.‘Everything big’ he shouted.

Temple of Ay and Horemheb (almost completely ruined),Tutmose III (recently excavated), then down into an excavated section of theprocessional way from Deir el Bahri, where the guardian sneaked us in for somebaksheesh. There’s the finely finished walls of the processional way and thesite is littered with hieroglyphic covered blocks.

Haggling on the move

We also visited three tombs in the almost deserted Valley ofthe Queens, where I bargained for a set of canopic jars on the way out. We camedown from 180LE to 70LE but my final offer was 50LE, so I walked off, sure inthe knowledge that it was not over. Sure enough, as we cycled way down theroad, after a couple of hundred yards, we heard the motorbike. It was the guy chasingafter us, so we negotiated on the move. I got them for 50.

Back alleys and fields

We cycled back through the sugar cane fields and villages,along dirt roads and immaculately and incongruously dressed locals in what looklike squalid houses. I really recommend this mode of transport on the WestBank. You get a real feel for the landscape, smells, people and sites, andnothing but smiles and waves.

Caleche crash

Sitting in a bus waiting to go back to the Jolie Ville, weheard a crash, turned and saw a caliche crash into the back, the horse rearingup onto the pavement. The caliche driver carried on as if nothing had happened.This meant we had to act as witnesses and gave a written statement to theTourist Police. As you can gather, driving is a skill that is in short supplyin Egypt. As it turns out this was not the only crash we’d see this week.

Day 5: Chill, shopsand tennis

Morning inLuxor at Gaddis (great bookshop) where I bought ‘The Complete Temples’ byRichard Wilkinson. I’ve read its companion piece ‘The Complete Pyramids’ andthis is just as well written and Illustrated. We added a couple of alabastercandle bowls.

Pizza Roma

It may seem odd eating pizza in Egypt but this smallrestaurant’s a real find. Besides, we managed to fix up a drive to Aswan withthe waiter (another Mohammed) who showed us his car and gave us a good price.Deal done. I hate using foreign tour companies here. The locals deserve oursupport.

Caleche

You can’t come to Luxor and not take a caliche. It’s ablack, horse-drawn buggy driven by Luxor’s famous hasslers – the calichedrivers. They will pester you, follow you and cheat you if they can (no change,money for the horse etc.) But to be fair, some of them are fine, and greatcharacters. In this case we got one all the way back to the hotel. I made themistake of climbing on board first, and while picking up the reins for aphotograph, it took off! The driver was none too pleased but after an apologywe were off, clipping along under the stars, Sarah driving. On previous tripswe’ve has chariot type races, a wheel fall off and an overshoot past the hotelentrance that had our horse slam on the hoof brakes. This was just a pleasantsaunter in the cool night air – wonderful end to the day.

Day 6: Aswan

Up at around 6, in our friend’s grey Hyunda, It was around£12 for each of the four of us for the entire day and I mean the entire day aswe had him and the car at our disposal for over 15 hours and over 400 Km.

Esna

When we first visited this temple, 22 years ago, theinterior was still full of unexcavated dirt. It sits right in the centre oftown underneath the houses. In fact, what you see is only a fraction of thetemple complex. It’s Ptolmeic and has a number of cartouches representing RomanEmperors. Inside the forest of pillars is impressive and some colour remains.Tim bought a rather fine cane. I recommend the caravanserai just back from theTemple entrance. It has some finely carved woodwork.

Sugar cane

A pit-stop for some sugar cane juice. The guy pushes a fewstalks of sugar cane into a grinder, where water is added and out pours a lightgreen liquid that is cool and sweet. The vendor wanted our photos and up poppedan old woman with bottle-bottom glasses who insisted on being in the photo. Shewas great, so we snapped her on Tim’s iPhone and showed her the photo – shehowled with laughter.

Roadblock

Beyond Esna, we came across a local roadblock. Men inJalabas and big white turbans had put barriers across the road but they sawthat we were tourists and waved us through. These disputes are common, we hear,as people express their newly found freedoms. This one, apparently, was aboutthe lack of gas canister deliveries and rising gas prices. I suppose I wassurprised at this, as the Aswan Dam must supply plentiful electricity. Cooking,I suppose.

Crash

How would you describe the driving in Egypt? Erratic,chaotic, downright dangerous? All of these and more. Rather worryingly, ourdriver explained that many, including himself, had never sat a test - you get alicence by paying for it. He also explained how he liked the occasional spliff!On roads where you have to contend with boys and men on donkeys (up to three ata time) donkey carts, bicycles, motorbikes, tut-tut taxis, dolmushes that stopand start along the entire road, buses and articulated lorries, and pedestriansjumping on and off these vehicles as well as walking and crossing, is itsurprising that accidents are common? There’s a sort of ‘inshallah’ attitude todriving. In any case, while crossing yet another sleeping policeman, so highthey often scraped the bottom of car, a crazy guy in a pickup got impatient andtried to overtake on the speed bump. Unfortunately, there was not enough spacefor him to squeeze through so he smashed along the entire side of a new carcoming in the opposite direction. The last we saw was the car driver headingtowards the pickup – we scarpered, as it’s unwise to be involved as witnesses.By the way no one has insurance.

Kom Ombo

We were the only people here, at this famous double-entrancedtemple, famous for its medical instrument carvings, which we found (again withgreat difficulty). The huge sugar acne factory was not operating today, so theusual fumes were absent.

High Dam

This is a huge construction and the view back over LakeNasser stretches off towards the Sudan. A product of the now forgotten coldwar, built by the Russians to stymy American foreign policy, it transformedEgypt providing much needed electrical energy and control over its agriculture,through irrigation, rather than inundation. A vast temple to a Godless world?

Past tanks to Kalabsha

Having beento Philae several times, we decided to try the Temple of Kalabsha, also on anisland. The problem was getting past the tanks! We stopped staring right downthe barrel of of a camouflaged tank and asked the guy with the Kalashnikovwhether we could pass to hire a boat to the island. I heard him say ‘La’ (no)but our intrepid driver persevered and he let us go on to the next obstacle,some soldiers manning a gate. Again some sweet talk and we were through. Vivela revolution! We negotiated with boatman and he sailed us across a calm andflat Lake Nasser to the island in the evening sun. This temple, like Philae,was moved here when the dam was built. It is Ptolemaic, dedicated to Augustusbut has some interesting Greek inscriptions from the 5^th C AD andChristian crosses from the time it was used as a church. It’s unfinished andyou can therefore see exactly how they dressed the walls and carved the outerreliefs. There’s also a Nilometer within the Temple, almost identical to theone at Kom Ombo.

There’s asmaller temple on the back of the island which Ken and I walked round to, Beitel-Wali, with Rameses battles and carvings of an ostrich, elephant, giraffe,baboons and antelope. This is a Nubian monument and you get a real feeling forthe proximity to central Africa. Other early pre-dynastic rock carvings and twoother temples are on the island. This was well worth the effort. On the sailback as the sun set, we were all in that Twilight zone, when the light is warm,the water calm and no need to speak. Then back past several tanks, which wesurreptitiously photographed, and back down into Aswan.

Meeting mum

Our driver had a surprise in store. He drove us into a poor,residential area full of honking cars and donkey carts. The cacophony fromtheir horns and general traffic chaos, was quite dirfferent from the clam ofthe lake and temple. We stopped and started past little shops, hanging meat andeventually through the back streets to mum’s house. This was a flat enteredthrough a dark close and she was great, feeding us fruit and tea. It was a realprivilege to meet her. We did the usual showing each other pictures of sons,daughters and grandchildren. Mohammed went of to pray at sundown.

Mosques

Aswan has two fine mosques, one cream coloured in the centreof town, that sits atop a hill, a beautiful and graceful building that crownsthe hill with two minarets and a domed hall. An even larger one, similar indesign, in pure white marble, sits on the north side of the town. We saw thisat night with its pure white interior and gold trimmings. It was spectacular.

German motorcycles

On the driveback (nearly three and a half hours without stopping) we saw Egypt at night.Men with shishas in cafes, groups watching TV as in a mini-cinema. It rarelyrains here so life is lived outdoors. There’s blokes everywhere but few womento be seen. Blokes tend to sit in small groups or watch in groups as one blokedoes some digging There also appeared to be a shortage of blokes in some areasas they were being transported in batches up the road hanging onto the back oftrucks. We reckoned on a ‘bloke’ apprenticeship of around two to three years,perfecting that middle-distance stare and relaxed demeanour.

As we nearedLuxor we were stopped by the police and told to wait. Apparently, a localvillage head had got a bit agitated and threatened to have a go at us tourists.Our driven was non-plussed and argued with the two policemen – how things havechanged. He argued that it was fooling to have all of your eggs in one basket,an argument of which I wasn’t entirely convinced. After 15 minutes a sirendriven police truck arrived and off we went, the BMW motorbikes roared off toofast for the police escort and we were left behind as the police escort triedto catch the Germans.

Day 7: Dark clouds

Over the last few days we’ve seen women almost beaten todeath by clubs, a girl in a black burka stripped to her underwear and attackson women unheard of in Egypt, but not, unfortunately Bahrain. Soldiers firedinto unarmed protestors. Military leaders appeared on television sounding justlike Mubarak. The revolution is far from over. I spoke to two young women whowere full of hope but also full of apprehension. There may be few tourists inEgypt but it is history and not holidays that matter. The tourists will return.It remains to be seen what sort of country they return to.

Scotland Angus New Year 2011

2012-01-04T15:26:00.002Z

A gathering arranged at the Hotel Rosely, nearArbroath, for New Year, and we came from far and wide, Brighton, Glasgow,Edinburgh and Skye. Twenty eight people in a wonderful, small hotel that defiesdescription: part Adams Family (ghosts), part Faulty Towers (eccentric owner),a throwback to an age before star ratings. This is the original, unique, boutiquehotel http://www.theroselyhotel.co.uk/

Let me try to describe the Hotel. From the outside it’s ared sandstone, mock-fortified 19^th house built by a Jute Baron. Inthe entrance hall there’s the heads of a Lion, Water Buffalo, Oryx and numerousantelope, as well as the full skins of a Leopard and Tiger, heads at the bottom– they look as though they’re plunging to the earth with startled looks ontheir faces. The bedrooms are old-school with springy beds and electricblankets.

Spooky dolls

Right at the top of the stairs we found a cot with tworather spooky dolls tucked in under a quilt. Two days later we were to discoverwhat lay beneath that quilt – a fire report from the Local Authority statingthat fire safety was unsatisfactory! The owner, Corolla, is fantastic, shesmokes cigarillos in the bar and is disarmingly and refreshingly honest in anage of crappy PR. Alison, who serves the food and works in the bar is also anextraordinarily nice person, and as forthright as the owner. Don’t expectplatitudes, just good, old-fashioned ‘tell it as it is’ responses.

Ghosts

Now we all felt that the place had a spooky atmosphere.Don’t get me wrong it was warm and inviting. However, on the last day, Corolla,asked if we had seen the ghosts. She said, matter of factly, “Aye, there’sfive”. Now that morning Francis had said to us at breakfast that she had heardbreathing and whistling in her room at the same time as creaking floorboards.We mentioned this to Corolla and she said, “that would have been room 7”. Guesswhat room Francis had?

Brechin, Lunan Bay and Arbroath

On entering the county of Angus we were greeted by a signannouncing ‘Angus – the birthplace of Scotland!”. It would appear that it isgoing through a prolonged period of post-natal depression.

We arrived at midday, dumped our bags and set off forBrechin to see the famous Irish, round tower, built in the 10thC to protectpeople from the Vikings. The door is set a good six foot up the side andtapered into the thick walls for extra protection. Inside the Cathedral are afew Pictish stones, a cross and a fine black hogback. Having sought advice froma local we had lunch (fish and wine), at The Brown Horse, then drove to LunanBay via Montrose, a beautiful, half-mile, deserted beach with a red sandstonecastle and a flock of Oyster Catchers. Then back to the Hotel for a doze.

That first night we were the only three guests at the hotelso we headed off to Arborath to eat – well that’s what we thought. This is atown that doesn’t appear to eat out. It was deserted and the three places wedid find had all closed their kitchens by 8.30pm. After a pint of 80 shillings,a hideously cold, gassy, chemical concoction, in the The Pageant Pub, we endedup going way out of town to a Chinese, the Jasmine.

Day 2 – ArbroathAbbey, Glen Clova and St Vigeons

Declaration of Arbroath

Up early for a fine, cooked breakfast then off to seeArbroath Abbey, famous for its Declaration of Arbroath. Although ruined byfires, the reformation and quarrying, it’s still an impressive size and design- a transverse, three-isled Gothic basilica with a cloister, Abbey House andSacristy. This was built by William the Lion after his defeat by Edward inNorthumbria. He built it far enough north to escape easy access from theEnglish and in a defiant gesture dedicated it to Thomas Becket. William isburied here but it’s another King, Robert the Bruce, who enters the frame.Having murdered Balliol in a church and refusing to answer communications fromthe Pope, he was excommunicated and not recognised as King of Scotland, despitehis success at Bannockburn. This led to the Abbot writing to the Pope, makingthe case for Bruce to be King of Scotland. In an excellent exposition at theAbbey you can see that the document is less a cry for freedom by the people ofScotland, than a highly sophisticated piece of political propaganda toestablish the legitimacy of Bruce as king.

The Declaration of Arbroath is, even now, being used to propup political nationalism. We Scots, as ever, are always willing to over-egg thepast when it suits us. As the guide told us, they often get visitors who haveseen Braveheart once too often. The graveyard was interesting containing lotsof obelisk gravestones. These were fashionable in the mid-19^thcentury after Egypt had been opened up. We left, having arranged to see thecurator at St Vigeons Museum at 1.30pm, to see the famous collection of Pictishstones.

Glen Clova

Meanwhile, we drove off to Glen Clova, a lovely drive into aGlen on the southern flank of the Cairngorms. As we climbed, the snow laythicker on the ground and pheasants, partridges and birds of prey crossed ourpath. At the head of the glen, the sun came out and the snow looked even whiter.Magnificent.

Picts

Back to St Vigeons, where we met our friends Tony, Ruth andFrancis, and stepped into a tiny cottage crammed full of Pictish stones. Thestones are a mixture of pre-Christian and post-Christian, after the Picts wereconverted by Irish evangelists from the west. The symbols are intriguing,especially the Z-rod and V-rod. They appear on the stones in pairs and have yetto be fully interpreted, as there’s no Rosetta Stone. A fascinating example isthe image of St Antony, the founder of monasticism, that matches an early imagefound in Egypt.

The Picts (painted people) were first mentioned by Romanwriters in the 3^rd C AD then by their neighbours well into the DarkAges. This site was a Pictish settlement and there’s more stones to be foundembedded in the church walls atop the conical hill.

Party time…

Scotland’spagan past is best reflected in the importance they attach to New Year, asopposed to Christmas. This was New Year’s night and we brought in the bellswith a party, copious amounts of alcohol, and Tony giving is Auld Lang Syne onhis guitar.

Then the funstarted, Corolla was smoking a cigarilloand in the bar a party of around fifteen locals were kicking up a storm. Beforelong there was dancing on the table, then higher still on the mantelpiece, thenhigher still on top of the bar, and I don’t mean the bar top, I mean on the topof the wooden structure above the bar! Not to be outdone, Mark, one of ourparty, decided to have a go. As he began his striptease, the locals wanted himdown, as he wasn’t on top of the pillars and was in danger of plunging throughthe structure. At one point, a man in a kilt threated to get his shotgun to gethim down, while another pointed a fire extinguisher. After a solid standoff,Mark was brought down by Malcolm, a mountaineer from Skye (the island not TVcompany).

Day 3 – Lunan Bay, mystery dookers, moviesand dinner

A good nightwas had by all and we woke for bacon and egg rolls at around 10 am. It’straditional to have a bit of a New Year’s walk, so off we all went to Lunan’sbay, where the wind blew but sun shone. Then to Arbroath Harbour to see theLoony-dook, where locals swim in the North Sea. Unfortunately, they choseanother slipway; leaving a disappointed crowd. Organisation is clearly not astrong point in Arbroath.

Ron hadrigged up a cinema room where some of us watched Some Like It Hot, predictingthe lines ‘That’s the bridge where we get from one side of the ship to theother’ and singing along with Marylyn Monroe. After a dinner of lentil soup,steak pie and trifle, we retired for games – dirty scrabble (triple points forfilthy words) and poker. This is the sort of New Year’s day I like. Notelevision, just a walk and some social entertainment.

Day 4 – Departure and some thoughts on Scotland

Hugh Trevor-Roperwrote a book called The Invention of Scotland, where he researched and uncoveredthe relatively, recent invention of Scottish literature, kings and costume. TheScots are Celts and, like the Irish, have a love of myth that trips over into alove of myth making. Since I left Scotland, many years ago, there’s been ‘TheReinvention of Scotland’, that is literally a resurrection of these old myths.The Declaration of Arbroath, the Gaelic road signs, the Gaelic TV channel,kilts a plenty and the rise of crude nationalism.

One of mysons was punched on two separate nights for simply being English, and thoseawful trappings of Nationalism, flags and national dress are everywhere. In thepaper today I read that Alex Salmond has chosen the 700^thanniversary of Bannockburn for a referendum on the separation of Scotland fromEngland. He may well win, and by that time, many in the UK will not be sad tosee Scotland go its own way. I’m not in the nationalist camp.

TheDeclaration of Arbroath did little other than strengthen the power of a Kingand Scotland’s subsequent history from 1320 to 1707 was one of poverty andattrition. The Reformation was European movementthat gave Scotland much of its present character – predominantly Calvinist. TheScottish Enlightenment was part of a UK and European exchange of ideas, givingus the genius of Hume, Hutton and Smith. Scottish inventiveness, rooted in a thewider push towards science and engineering, gave us the fathers of the telephone,television and numerous other innovations, that thrived on trade across theBritish Empire.

What’s leftis just populist Nationalism, that always flourishes on the back of foreignenemies, real or imagined, given extra impetus by the downturn in the economy. Wheneverwe start to look inwards, things go to pot. Our Calvinist dispositions towardsfrugality helped build competence in finance, but nationalist megalomania (RBSsupported the SNP) shifted this to overoptimistic acquisitions. We gambled itaway and lost, Scottiah finance is now a busted flush. Would Scotland have beenbetter off if RBS and HBOS had collapsed in an independent Scotland? It wasScottish Boards, and CEOs, of limited competence, who started to believe inthis crude ‘wha’s like us’ approach to banking.

Scotland’sproblems; deep-seated poverty, poor diet, high alcohol consumption,unacceptable levels of violence, high reliance on public sector employment,weak economy, sectarianism, and inward looking disposition, will not be bestserved by separation. Take just one example, the high incidence of MS inScotland. What’s needed is some large medical trial work, but as Scotland’s NHSis separate from the NHS as a whole this is difficult, if not impossible, tofund and implement. By replicating many of the institutions that already existin England, the cost base is too high.

Scotland’ssmall-mindedness is also visible in its highly fragmented health, police, fireservices and an absurdly small local authorities. This has led to a land ofexpensive chiefs and poorly paid Indians. At the very time Scotland should bethinking big, it’s thinking small.

It’s anon-communal culture that is grasping at nationalism as a uniting force. Youwon’t find a Scottish ghetto in New York or London or anywhere else for thatmatter, unlike the Irish and other ethnic minorities. We don’t work welltogether and tend to flourish when we’re lone wolves, managing others. Compare thenumber of successful Scottish football managers in England, compared to thenumber of footballers.

Most of whatcounts as popular nationalism is 19^th century Victorian invention,once confined to a few tacky gift shops, now seen everywhere. The kilt(invented by an Englishman) and all its accompanying paraphernalia, invented byWalter Scott for the visit of George IV, has become the swaggering uniform of theaccountant and lawyer, complete, for some reason, with Timberland boots. Flagsfly in gardens and politicians blame England for all its woes. Yet much of thisis funded by an advantageous Barnett Formula that sees Scottish people benefithugely from a British subsidy.

What areferendum must make clear, is what the economic consequences of separation willmean. Does Scotland join the Eurozone (not looking so good for small nationsnow)? Will it have a separate defence force and drop Trident (advantages anddisadvantages here)? Will social services and state benefits be separate (thebill will be enormous)? When you cut off the Barnett Formula grant and rely ontaxable income, can you fund what you spend? Tricky questions.

7 days in Egypt December 2011 - revolution, tanks, crashes and caleches

2012-01-04T14:16:00.000Z

Day 1: Evolution of a revolution

Our first trip to Egypt after the Egyptians call the ‘25January Revolution’ or simply the ‘Revolution’.So what’s different? Well, visually, we’ve spotted tanks, passed lots of armouredpersonnel carriers on the road on our round trip to Aswan, over 200 new sleepingpolicemen (in Egypt that can mean a number of things) at every junction, alocal roadblock and election posters everywhere. Troible – not a sign.

Speaking to people, it’s also clear that some wrongs havebeen righted. In Luxor, the Mubarak Mayor and some of his cronies have beenarrested and sentenced. These are the people who bribed their way to success. Agood example is the guy who owns the restaurants on the lower walkway along theNile. It turns out he had no alcohol licence, nor permission to build hisrestaurant on the banks of the Nile, so he was sentenced to 15 days in jail andis now keeping a low profile. Land has also been colonised by poor people whosee an opportunity to better themselves. On the whole, people seem less afraidof the police and willing to stand up to them when they perceive that theirapproach is wrong. We saw this during the night at a checkpoint, where ourdriver challenged the need for us to be ‘escorted’.

In general, people are positive but nervous; nervous aboutthe results of the election. They know that the Muslim Brotherhood will gain alarge share of the vote but also say that this may be no bad thing. If theBrotherhood fail or push too far in the direction of religious strictures, theywill be seen as failures and voted out. Many simply crave the sort of socialand security stability that the Brotherhood promise. Luxor, Aswan and UpperEgypt in general, is a long way from Cairo, and Egypt is not Cairo.Nevertheless, even those who are critical of the continuing chaos seem gladthat Mubarak and his kleptomaniacs have gone.

On the other hand, each evening we saw TV and web imagesfrom Cairo with women and men being beaten savagely, some dying from gunshotwounds. Al Jazeera were, once again at the forefront of the news, the BBC andCNN miserable failures. Al Jazeera was so active that their journalists weresought out by the regime, their cameras smashed and personnel beaten. This, ofcourse, is massively counterproductive, as the military are now losing groundas a force for good.

But the big difference is the absence of tourists. They’rethin on the ground and we often found ourselves alone in sites or on the road.The Nile boats have a handful of people as they pass. This is a real shame asmany Egyptians rely on tourism to feed their families and many have lost theirjobs. In an admirable gesture, the European managers at our hotel havesacrificed their salaries for two months to keep their staff in employment. AsTim says, “We have to visit their past ruins to support them in the present,and stop their future from being ruined”.

Day 2: Luxor Temple

Luxor Temple in the morning with Tim and Sarah, who arevisiting Egypt for the first time. I’ve been to this temple many times and itnever fails to impress. Still standing after more than three thousand years,it’s a great place to witness the huge sweep of Egyptian history. Built onearlier structures (to be seen in the open air museum at the back), what yousee today is the result of two of the greatest Pharaohs (Amenhotep III andRameses II), as well as the man who played a huge role in changing Egyptianhistory, Alexander the Great. There’s also extensive 4^th centuryRoman work as the Temple was a Roman fortress, the remains of Byzantinechurches and a mosque reflecting the great 7^th century shift towardsIslam. And today we saw election posters on its walls, a Syrian market on theeast side and the citizens of Luxor out with their children in the new park onthe east side. The Temple is still the focal point of the town.

You may wonder why it lies on a N-S axis, when most Egyptiantemples lie E-W? This is in response to its religious function as a destinationfrom Karnac to the north, via the avenue of the Sphinxes, which is now almostcompletely uncovered. The earliest part of the Temple is at the back, a blockof rooms, renovated by Alexander, who depicted himself as a Pharaoh. You cansee his cartouche on the walls here. Amenhotep III originally built this blockas well as the huge, adjoining, peristyle court. His work was interrupted whenAkhenaten decided to abolish polytheism for sun-god monotheism, and moved hiscapital north to Amarna (now that WAS a revolution). But the experiment wasshort lived and Tutankhamen continued what Amenhotep had planned, with thepillared colonnade. Half a century later the shy and retiring Rameses II, notto be outdone, added another huge court, a pylon, four statues of himself andtwo obelisks. After several hours, we emerged ready for some beers in Sinbad’sCafé (the cheapest Stella in town 10 LE - but watch out for the 2.5LE salestax!).

Thoughts on obelisks

It’s a shape we’re all familiar with, graceful needles ofstone covered in hieroglyphics. The remaining obelisk at the entrance to LuxorTemple was one of a pair, the other is now in the Place de Concorde in Paris.Rome, Paris, London and many other cities have been graced with these finemonuments, often outshining modern, public sculpture. But few know much abouttheir purpose. How many graves and war monuments mimic this form in the UK?

Of course, everything in Egypt starts with the sun and thisis sun inspired art, lightning rods for the sun. As a nation it is largely ariver that runs through a desert, so it hardly ever rains. The sun is adominant presence. Obelisks pointed to the sun and were designed with electrumand gold tips to reflect the sun. Their pyramidal tips are part of the sameiconography as the great pyramids of the old Kingdom. They are, in many ways,the great emblem of Egyptian art; simple, monolithic, soaring pinnacles to thesun.

Day 3: West Bank

Medinet habu

Deir el Bahri

Thoughts on Egyptian art

David Hockney, in his new book, claims that Egyptian art isthe high point of human art. That’s a challenging statement so can it bedefended? There’s several features of Egyptian art that have to be recognisedas important.

Second, its permanence.Blessed with an abundance of limestone, sandstone, granite and other rock typessuch as alabaster and basalt, close to a navigable river that has continuousnortherlies ND floods once a year, access to huge amounts of building stone wasan advantage. But they built for eternity, their temples and tombs designed forthe infinity of time. There is nothing half-hearted about Egyptian art. It’sproduced to be part of a never-ending future.

Fifth is intent.There is no ‘artist’ as such, only art with a purpose, that purpose beingmostly life and death. In this sense, there is little art for art’s sake or artas a thing in itself but it is this freedom from fashion that is so compelling.They were not interested in temporary, temporal art only art that was eternal.

Day 4: West bankferry and cycling

Haggling on the move

Back alleys and fields

Caleche crash

Day 5: Caleche

Pizza Roma

Caleche

Day 6: Aswan

Esna

Sugar cane

Roadblock

Crash

Kom Ombo

High Dam

Past tanks to Kalabsha

Meeting mum

Mosques

German motorcycles

Day 7: Dark clouds

Munich: trinken und essen, Caffe und Kuchen, Kunst und Wurst, Bier und Fleisch

2011-11-16T10:41:00.001Z

Munich Day 1 – Trinken und essen

Much hilarity when we arrived at the hotel to find that Kenand I had enormous penthouse rooms with a bedroom at the top of a spiralstaircase and a lounge with an extra TV. Ronnie’s room, on the other hand, wasclearly designed for a Hobbit. This was to be the running gag for the entireweekend.

A couple of glasses of wine in the Hotel then hunger kickedin, so it was essen und trinken in a Bierkeller for our first night, which wasfun, as we avoided the more famous Hofbrauhaus and Englisher Garten. Knuckle ofpork, pork and half a chicken washed down with half litres of dunkel bier,brewed on the premises. This half-pub, half-restaurant work’s well, as it’s communaland gets strangers talking to each other, which is why it will never catch onin England. Thankfully, however, no oompah band.

Several incidents have already put paid to the myth ofGerman efficiency. The train from the airport was late, registration at thehotel was a mix up and breakfast was a shambles of uncleaned tables. Even onthe U-bahn our train door was broken and the up-escalator not moving.

Munich Day 2 - Kaffee und Kuchen

A stroll past the Basilica St Boniface to the Glyptothek, asuperb collection of Greek and Roman sculpture. Two Kouri in the first roomthen the Barberini Faun, one of the finest pieces of antique sculpture in theworld. He’s caught just as he’s either waking or falling sleep, in the twilightzone, drowsy but every bit alive. By having his arm and leg bent there’smovement which brings life to his sleeping body but there’s no mistaking thesexual pose. Then room after room of top quality, mostly Roman works. The groupsfrom the pediments of the Aegina Temple are here, as are heads of the Greekphilosophers and Roman emperors. It’s always fun testing Ken on his skill atrecognising Roman Emperors from their busts alone. This is the man who spottedthe fact that the Museum of Scotland had the date wrong on their Antonius Piusbust and received a letter of thanks when they rectified the mistake. We did apretty good job of identifying them from sight only – the tapering lower faceof Augustus, small mouthed Tiberius, chubby Nero, big-faced Titus, finger-fringed Trajan, bearded Hadrian, hislover - boyish Antinous, then the permed Antonius Pius, Marcus Aurelius, LuciusVerus and Commodus.

Alte Pinatotek

Before embarking on our second round of art it was Kaffee undKuchen in the gallery café. Then, Durer’s famous ‘self or Christ’self-portrait, Rubens, a Leonardo (a poor Madonna and child), superb Raphaelwith its pyramid of crossed glances and poses and dozens of Rubens. Four solidhours.

Munich Day 3 – Kunstund Wurst

Assam Church

Jewel box of a church with a golden skeleton inside the doorand as full a baroque interior as can be imagined. I’m not sure what abundanceof decoration does to a spiritual person, but this is surely one massivedistraction. There’s no respite in terms of colour or form – it’s an assaultwith battery on the senses.

Residenz

These Baroque palaces with their room after room seemunliveable, comfort and layout sacrificed for pomposity. No question of payingattention to a bottom line but questionable in terms of architecture. Theexception is the grand room with the classical sculpture. At one point, when Ilooked out behind a curtain down into a courtyard, a group of what looked likeNazi soldiers were hanging about in a group. It looked like some sort ofre-enactment. Perhaps a rehearsal for invading Greece? Very strange. What wasbeautiful was the Cuvier Theatre a Rococo masterpiece in red and gold. It’ssmall but burns with colour.

Englishen Garten – Wurst und Wein

After the predictable stuffiness of the Residenz, it wastime for some fresh air, so we hoofed it off to the Englisher Garten for some Weisswurstund Gluwein– it was just a few degrees above freezing and tasted great. Insummer, we were told, people can’t wait to get their wieners und wursts out, inthe push for ‘health and efficiency’ of course.

Neue Pinatotek

Twenty two rooms of art from around 1800, andunderstandably, lots of German artists we had never heard of. A David, Canovaand Goya in the first couple of rooms whet your appetite but the followingrooms of relentless German realism were a chore. One respite was the Britishroom with a stunning Turner, some excellent Gainsboroughs and a David Wilkie.The French impressionists, were, eh, impressive, as was the painting ofWittgenstein’s sister (a surprise) by Klimt.

Zum Franziskaner - Bier und Fleisch

After a pit stop in a lovely old bar for some dunkel bier itwas off to the Zum Franziskamer for Bavarian cuisine on our last night; theFranziskaner Special, a mountain of meat – huge chunks of pork, chicken, beefand sausages with dumplings, red cabbage and sauerkraut. Ronnie went for thelight option – an ox steak! Strudel and apple rings for dessert and threebottles of wine. Absolutely stuffed.

Munich Day 4 – Suppeund Brot

Markt

Morning stroll round the Victualmarket with its Christmasdecorations. A giant tree was being hoisted up by three cherry pickers inMarienplatz and the Christmas market was being built. The famous Rathaus clocksprung into action with its knight and dancing figures to the strains of WoodenHeart - Elvis lives. Ridiculously overpriced, pyramid-shaped chocolates werebought for the Fraulein and Ronnie was seriously thinking about returning withhis family for Christmas. By this time we were frozen and opted for bowls ofsoup in the Munchensuppe stall, as we had gorged ourselves last night, and veryfine soup it was.

Deutsche Museum

Auf wiedersehn to Ronnie, then off to the huge DeutscheMuseum, a down to earth museum stiffed with machines. The aircraft hall wasimpressive with Mescherschmitts, Junkers, Hunkels V1 and V2 bombs. It wasbasically a huge hall dedicated to things used to bomb your granny. Being ladsat heart we liked fiddling around with the basic physics stuff – pendulums,hydraulics, centrifugal forces. Gutenberg and printing get big billing.Interesting that his innovation was a cluster of technological improvements –moveable type, screw press and oil-based ink. Books are not often seen astechnology but technology they are. Pity the clock on top of the building hadstopped. Final church the Hiellig Kirche, a white Gothic interior with frescoeson the ceiling. The plain white columns and colourful ceiling accentuated theheight.

Munich’s a sober place, hard-working, conservatively dressedand obviously wealthy. The city centre’s like a combined Mercedes, BMW and Audishowroom and the shops are rammed. What it lacks is the charm of a Prague orBudapest.

Bratislava & Budapest

2011-10-24T16:57:00.003Z

Budapest Day 1 –Memories

It’s been over 20 years since we were last in Budapest, in the days when it lay behind the Iron Curtain. My most vivid memory is a swim in the Gellert baths, warm spa water, pool surrounded by pillars and stern, women guardians insisting on us wearing a shower caps. It’s now a classy hotel and although I can afford to stay there, I wouldn’t want to. We’re in the Bohem Art Hotel, ‘boutique’ as they say, much better than those big chains with their dumbed-down, corporate décor. It’s colourful and quirky – free coffee in the afternoons, free WIFI. Any hotel that does not offer free WIFI in this day and age is clearly run by cretins.

Last time there were no bill boards, no adverts, few modern cars and lots of grand but crumbling buildings. We bussed it out to Eger, the home of Bulls’ Blood, the wine that supposedly fortified the locals in their fight against the Turks. We can remember eating gloriously as the exchange rate was so favourable and the gypsy musicians in the restaurants. This was BC – before children.

Dinner the first evening at the Trattoria Tuscano (I know Italian in Hungary). Off the beaten track but cosy and excellent food and wine. Tuscan bread soup, truffle pasta, butterfish and wild boar stew, with a Levinto red.

Budapest Day 2 – History of Hungary

Next morning a short walk to the huge fresh produce market. They had an excellent set of cabinets showing dozens of species of mushrooms and an office where you could get them identified. Poisoning is clearly a worry! I’m a bit of a schroom freak, sow as in my element. Then round to the Museum of Applied Arts, not to see the applied arts but the Secessionist building in which they’re housed. It’s a truly strange mixture of almost Rococo panels, green/orange roof and Gaudi like features. To be frank, it doesn’t work but you’ve got to admire their sense of adventure – this was before turn of the century i.e. 19^th century.

Then to the Hungarian National Museum, which is a huge neo-Classical affair. Hungary lies landlocked between the East and Western Europe and has been subjected to control from both sides. The Romans occupied west of the Danube but the Huns came from the East. After the schism in the Catholic church in 1054 between East and West, Hungary aligned itself with the west. The Mongols invaded in 1241/42 killing an estimated 50% of the population, after which castles were built by the dozen and when they came back in 1286, Hungary could successfully defend itself. The Ottomans took complete control of the country in 1526 but by 1718 the whole of Hungary was finally freed from Ottoman rule. In 1825 reforms were put in place but the country was under Hapsburg control, eventually siding with the Germans in the First World War. Siding again with the Germans in the Second World War, they became a Soviet satellite post war. The 1956 uprising put Nagy in power, but the soviets responded in 1958 by invading and executing Nagy. Then, in 1989, the wall fell, and that era came to an end with Soviet troops leaving in 1990-91. Hungary joined the EU in 2004.

So it has see-sawed between east and west, being subjected to sometimes savage control by outside powers. All of this is told well in the Museum and you come away with this sense of struggle against outside forces that has at last resulted in stability within the European Union. It’s easy to scoff at the EU but the history of Hungary is a testament to its necessary existence.

Over the bridge for lunch at Marcello’s where I had cold Blackberry soup, much better than the cold, milky Cherry soup I had in the Gay Hussars in London. Then up to the Castle in the late afternoon sun, where a fine trio were playing jazz and classical music in the lookout café, and back down to the river, over the Chain Bridge, built by Adam Clark, who was also a Scot, from Edinburgh. There’s some fine architecture here, from Secessionist surprises to more predictable neo-Classical and Baroque beauties.

Excellent evening meal at Sercli on Veres Palne. Gulash soup, duck salad, lamb in Hungarian ratatouille and cherry and poppy seed strudel.

Budapest Day 3 – House of Terror

Left our luggage in the Nugyati station then walked to the Parliament building, which was closed. It was October 23^rd, the day of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 (the year I was born) so closed. The Soviets invaded on 4 November. It’s this 20^th century history I wanted to explore.

The House of terror is no entertainment venue but the actual name given to the building which housed both the Nazi and Soviet secret police. It had been highly recommended. In the atrium there’s a soviet tank and on the walls pictures of the hundreds of people who dies at the hands of the Nazis and Communists. It’s dark, foreboding and tells the story of oppression without pulling any punches. Both the Nazi and Soviet invasions are shown in short film clips then room by room you get the apparatus of suppression. The Nazi rooms are black and grey, showing how the Arrowcross became the Hungarian Gestapo and SS. The Jews were ghettoised and murdered, most being sent to Auschwitz. Both excelled in propaganda through uniforms, badges and symbols. Both had their concentration camps and gulags. Both selected racial groups for selective punishment and extermination. Both used this one building to try, imprison, torture and execute their enemies. The Soviet rooms are red and show the car with the red sofa in the back. But it’s the soviet expulsion of thousands to the Gulags that is the most harrowing, with interviews of the few that survived and the widows of those who never returned. In another room some women who had been imprisoned in Budapest were shown meeting their woman guard. It was harrowing.

This, like the Kafka Museum in Prague is exemplary in its use of light and sound to convey atmosphere and context. It gives you more than facts and knowledge taking you into the realm of understanding and feeling. It’s hard not to be moved by the suffering.

Just a few facts, however, are telling:

300,000 Hungarian citizens were captured, deported and lost their lives in the Gulags

There’s a cell like an upright coffin which had lights at eye level to keep you blinded

A cell where you couldn’t stand-up

A water cell where you had to sit in cold water

A torture cell with pliars, electric shock equipment

A gallows

The last Soviet soldier left in 1991

The last Hungarian prisoner of war was returned in 2000

Back in Bratislava

The railway station is a bit run down but we took a tram into town and had a good wander before heading off to Budapest. We’ll be here in a couple of days. Feels like more of a large than a city, but the centre has a relaxed feel.

Back in Bratislava to another Art Hotel (Art Hotel William) – huge room in centre of town. Walk round to the wonderful Blue Church. Decorates with what looks like blue icing and little mosaics. Then up to the Castle, which was a little austere – and closed! The museum was not worth visiting. As Gil said – I’ve got better stuff on my mantelpiece.

We flew here to see Callum fight in the England Tae Kwon Do team at the European Championships. It was odd seeing him in his England track suit with the word England emblazoned across his back. We’re both Scottish and the only remnant of nationalism I have is sports nationalism. But he’s done himself proud after training and competing solidly for 9 years. He got to the quarter finals, which as great for his first outing in the England team. Julia Cross coached him (she’s the most successful competitor ever in ITF TaeKwonDo). She also happens to be Scottish!

Pizza Mizza’s a find. Excellent thin crust pizza and good pastas. Tram back to town past some pretty grim housing. And this is a country that’s helping to bail out Greece!

Final dinner in Mestiansky Pivovar, who brew their own (tasty) beer and serve a fine gulash. A brace of beers each and home to the excellent Art Hotel Willem. Post-Soviet, stag parties have arrived here - sex clubs, shooting Kalashnikovs in the forest, cheap bars.

Final word of praise for eastern European, actually European, public transport. We took trains, buses, trams, trolleybuses and metro trains – all were cheap, comfortable and on time. Only 16 Euros return from Bratislava to Budapest.

Prague through Kafka's eyes

2011-10-03T11:13:00.000Z

Prague meansKafka to me so when I got an invitation to speak there I couldn’t wait for itto come around. Kafka was, indeed, the subject of my talk, characterising contemporaryeducation as a Kafkaesque experience, turning our children into little Josef Ksthrough a relentless, irrelevant, bureaucratic and accusatory process, thatturns the great majority into seeing themselves as failures. I based my talk onThe Trial where Josef K finds himselfarrested for a crime that the authorities refuse to reveal. He is thensubjected to a process (German title is Der Prozess) of accusation and trialswithout ever knowing what he has done wrong.

Last time I washere was over 25 years ago, and although grand, it was tawdry, run down andpoor. This was well before the wall came down, the Velvet Revolution and Havel,when it was still a communist state. Above all, I remember the terrible food.

What adifference. The entire city has been restored to its late 19^th andearly 20^th century glory, exactly the time Kafka grew up here. I’vealways been ill at ease with 20^th century English literature (Iexclude Irish & American literature from that definition), disappointed by Forster,Maugham, Waugh, and more recently Amis, Barnes and MacEwan. I agree with ourlocal Brighton academic, Gabriel Josipovici, who sees this modern crop as“prep-school show offs” who have an abundance of cynicism but lack depth. Ithink this comes from my preference for German over English philosophy. Give meKant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Popper and Wittgenstein over Russell, Ayer andany number of second-rate Oxbridge commentators.

Through Kafka’s eyes

So we set off tosee the city through Kafka’s eyes, starting with the Kafka Museum. I know thissounds a little trite but it was a revelation and helped me get my bearings.Designed as an ‘experience’ it dispensed with dry exposition and objects, toimmerse you in his world, the world of late 19^th C, early 20^thC Prague. Kafka was born, educated, worked, wrote and was buried in Prague,that “dear little mother with claws”. Born a German speaking Jew, but fluent inCzech, into a German dominated city where the majority was Czech, he was in amaelstrom of political and cultural tensions. The museum creates an atmosphereof angst with fractured sounds and images. Rooms reflect the theme, such as theoffice with its filing cabinets, containing his thoughts on the tyranny of the ‘office’.It was a story well told and set me up for my walking tour of Kafka’s Prague. Kafkawas a walker and his diaries are full of long walks in the city. You can seehis entire world in a day’s walk.

Franz Kafka Square

On the north eastcorner of the main square stands the house in which he was born in 1883. Well,actually, only the portal of the original two-storey house, on the edge of theJewish ghetto, remains. It’s now the Café Kafka, a Neo-Baroque block with aplaque on the wall put up in 1965, when Czechoslovakia was still in a communiststate. The tanks rolled in in 1968 after the failed Czech Spring.

Kafka was born intoa strange cultural mix, speaking German and Czech, educated in German, broughtup as Jew, right in the centre of a city right in the centre of Europe, aEurope that was to live up to his dystopian visions. It is difficult to readhis work without thinking of its prophetic qualities in terms of thetotalitarian nightmares of fascism and communism. The fact that he steers clearof ideology makes it all the more human and powerful.

The Sixt House

His next houselies on the south-west corner. The young Kafka was always on the move, rentingone house after another, as his father Hermann was an upwardly mobileshopkeeper. Modern literary critics,textual purists, who dismiss biographical influences and detail, would ridiculethis, but the famous letter Kafka wrote to his father, but never read by him,is something every father and son shouldread. Kafka felt oppressed by his father, a crushing influence that merelyintensified the young Kafka’s need to escape through his imagination. Thesquare is much as Kafka would have seen it, minus the visitors and stag partylouts (all English). There’s an Irish and English pub at the north east corner,where they all congregate, too scared to sample the really wonderful Czech pubsthat Prague has to offer.

Minute House

The, just off thesouth east corner of the square, along from the famous clock, is the house hemoved to when he was six, where all three of his sisters were born. They livedon the first floor and he’d walk across the square every day to his school inMasna Street. The current sgraffiti was painted over at this time and theground floor not open as it is today.

Primary School Masna Street

This is still aschool, but Kafka hated school, seeing the educational process as a “daggerready to stab you front, side and back”. This was another major tension in hislife, as German schools competed against Czech schools.

Secondary School Kinski Palace

His final fouryears were spent on the second floor of the front wing of the Kinski Palace.His father’s store was on the ground floor of the same building, now the Kafkabookshop. Although we walked this entire route, Prague’s a city of trams andit’s still by far the best way to get around. We got our bearings on the 22which slices diagonally across the city then swings round the back of thecastle and out to the suburbs past the Brahe and Kepler statue. This came as asurprise, as I had no idea that Tycho Brahe’s was based in Prague, and thatKepler came here to work with him in the early 17^th century.Einstein was a later academic star in this city.

House of the Three Magi

In 1892 theKafkas moved to the second floor of another house, again on the south east sideof the square. His father’s shop moved to the premises below their flat. There’sa picture of Kafka with a mongrel dog at this time, one ear down, the other upstaring into the camera, taken in 1907. I love this image as the staid face ofthe young Kafka is in stark contrast to the dog, which seems to show more innerlife. I mention this, as after Metamorphosis, My Life as a Dog is my favouriteKafka short story, written from the viewpoint of a dog. The dogs only see otherdogs, not humans, and at one point he sees the famous flying dogs who hoverabout four feet off the ground and fly slowly and horizontally, occasionallycoming back to the ground. These are, of course, dogs carried around by theirowners under their arms. If that’s not the imagination of a genius, what is!

Café Savoy, Café Louvre, Café Arco

Kafka was adiligent student and bureaucrat, but it was his social life that fed hisintellect. University, where he studied law, was a trial, as he felt they fedhis “intellect with sawdust”. However, one of his favourite watering holes wasthe Café Louvre. Not for the first time did a coffee house fuel the growth ofan intellect. I’ve written about this before.
Kafka was indifferent to Judaism when young but became curious as he got older. But it was Yiddish Theatre rather than Jewish theology that attracted his admiration, especially in the Café Savoy. Kafka academics have written extensively on this influence in his work.

Long established in the Muslim world, they becamethe focus for debate and business. Late 17^th century coffee shopscharged a penny a cup and were called ‘penny universities’, as they were suchpowerful places of cross-disciplinary debate. By 1739, 551 coffee shops wereopen in London, many hives of intellectual and business activity. EdwardLloyd’s coffee shop became Lloyds of London. Jonathon’s Coffee House in 1698listed stock prices, which eventually became the London Stock Exchange.Similarly in New York, a coffee house became the New York Stock Exchange. Morerecently Starbucks, and there are plenty in Prague, picked up on the laptoptypes offering free wifi.

Prague is still a city of bars and cafes. Onecurious phenomenon is the absinthe bars. The Czech Republic is the only countrystill producing absinthe. But it’s the beer that’s the star. We had a dark beerin U Feluku that had none of that hoppy heaviness of stout. It was delicious. Thenthere’s the Pilsners. The draft beer is top class and cheap. In fact we felt noneed to drink wine, as the beer was so good.

German Business Academy

Kafka studiedinsurance here, which kick started his career. He was bound for a career he despised, but even this was to provide thedark backdrop for some of the most remarkable pieces of literature everwritten, The Trial, The Castle, Amerika and The Judgement. “The office is not a stupid institution, itis rooted more in the fantastic than the stupid” he claimed, but work becamehis demon. Arguably it was the bureaucracy of the state and workplace thatdrove him to write his best work.

Workers’ Accident Insurance Company

Now a hotel,serving Kafka Cocktails, this was Kafka’s workplace until his retirement. As heprogressed over the years, he moved from the top to first floor. Perhaps havinga job was a necessary condition for his art. Would we really have works such asIn the Penal Colony and The Castle, without his career in the office? It’s another very attractive Neo-Baroquebuilding. One of the joys of walking around Prague is the architecture, entirestreets of grand baroque churches, Neo-Baroque, Art Deco and Classicalbuildings. Look up, above the cars, at any time and you’re back a hundredyears. But it’s not just the form. The buildings are covered in statuary,frescoes and signs which all adds style. Oddly, Peter Drucker, the managementguru, attributes the invention of the hard hat to Kafka.

Civilian Swimming Pool

Kafka loved toswim and this pool by the river, now a restaurant and nightclub, was afavourite. The Moldau river bends like the Tiber in Rome, and just like Rome,the Cathedral St Vitus, like St Peter’s, stand on the west side, with the maincity tucked into the East bend. But Prague has its own unique masterpiece, theCharles Bridge. We walked over this early in the morning before the crowds,past the brass religious plaques and darkened statues. Then up to the castleand gothic Cathedral.

Franz Kafka Monument

In this area,this eccentric bronze statue was erected in 2003 on the anniversary of Kafka’s120^th birthday. Kafka has been cast as a Marxist, Anarchist,Modernist, Existentialist, Freudian, even Magic Realist writer. In truth he isnone of these. Totally unique. I always think that a sign of his worth is thefact that no English book group would ever recommend any of his texts. He dealswith ideas that are beyond the social commentary of English writers, to muchbigger political and philosophical themes.

The Oppelt House

Back to the northeast side of the main square and the house the Kafka family lived in, on thetop floor (no longer exists due to damage in 1945).

Bilkova Street

It was here Kafkastarted to work on his masterpiece The Trial. Not far from here is theRudolfinum. We booked tickets for an evening concert here, as Prague is thehome of Dvorak. What a way to start an evening. We took the 18 tram from theHotel in the early evening sun, walked across the river, had a drink in theconcert hall bar then listened to a superb Quintet who played Vivaldi andDvorak. Then out into the dark for dinner at a restaurant we had picked outearlier in the day. Completely magical, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

House of the Golden Pike

Although lateSeptember, the sun shone intensely on the apartment Kafka inhabited (the onewith the balcony). The light and view was to his liking but the noise of thelift and other inhabitants annoyed him. Today this is a beautiful area, and myfavourite part of the city. There’s some great restaurants, including Al Dentewith its seats in the sun, freshly baked bread in a brown paper bag and lots oflittle touches, like stamping the dolci menu on the tablecloth. Al this showshow much the proprietor cares. The food and service were flawless.

One curiousseries of incidents was the man in the white Roller. While eating in Al Dente,a white Rolls Royce floated by with a tiny bald man at the wheel. He sloweddown to peer at us. About an hour later, when we left the restaurant we cameacross the car again, this time parked on a zebra crossing with a policemantaking pictures of it using a tiny camera. We saw him emerge and the usualargy-bargy started with the policeman. Later that night we came back to thesame area to eat at the Kolkovna restaurant and he was there again, touching upwomen at the bar in the restaurant. Every city, I suppose, has its asshole(s).In fact, anyone driving Rolls Royce is,I suppose, by definition an asshole.

As we’re at theKolkovna, a word of praise for its excellent Moldavian food. The Goulash soupand Moldavian Sparrows with white and red cabbage were superb. This is fillingfood. In fact the table next to us, with four portly, smoking Germans had aspecial dish, where huge lumps of meat were hung from skewers then covered inflaming liquid. Beer cellar food is pretty good but a challenge of you have alight appetite. What is great is the atmosphere. People drink in these restaurantsso they’re loud and chatty.

Little Cottage in Golden Lane

This takes youacross the river and up to a lane near St Vitus, a gothic church with delicateflying buttresses, which nevertheless, lacks grace from the outside. This is agreat area to walk around early evening after the crowds have gone. It was herehe wrote A Country Doctor and found this little hovel, where he stayed with hissister and wrote in comparative isolation
.

Schonborn Palace

It was here Kafkabecame ill with tuberculosis. He died in 1924, aged 40 and was buried in the NewJewish Cemetery. Most of his writing had yet to be published,something he didnot want to happen. We have Max Brod to thank for denying him his final wishesand giving us some of the greatest ever works of literature. His sisters diedat the hands of the Nazis, Ottla in Auschwitz. Brod left with a suitcase ofKafka’s writing on the last train out of Prague before the Nazis entered thecity. But this was not the end of the story.

Only last yearmore writings were found but the case is embroiled in a Kafkaesque legal casereminiscent of The Trial. Brod’s secretary got hold of some of his manuscriptsand the whole thing has descended into a nasty, selfish, legal war in Israel.It’s a disgrace and great disservice to Kafka.

New Forest

2011-09-15T21:14:00.005Z

New Forest Day 1 Sep 2011

I’ve never driven a car in my life and have always equatedHarleys with people who have regrets. What I have enjoyed in my 50s is good,old-fashioned cycling. Not the head down, drop handlebars, lycra-clad grind ofroad cycling (though that looks great) but through woods or on back roadsenjoying the landscape, flora and fauna. In fact, I like to go slow, stopping,looking, maybe a bite to eat in a field then off again.

So, with a keynote to the UKs General Practitionerconference in Torquay (never been there), we decided to stop in the New Forest(never been there either) for some cycle rides. The Burley Manor Hotel, isindeed a Manor House, with zigzag Tudor Brickwork, tall chimneys and a longdrive but it’s really a mid-19^th century copy of a Manor House, bysome local who was desperate to be a Lord of the Manor. It also has theexpected, hideous hotel carpets, chintzy chairs and rack of leaflets.Location-wise: perfect.

Three Tuns

Started with lunch at the Three Tuns Pub (recommended bylocal cycle shop)with spicy crab soup and a roast beef sandwich withhorseradish sauce. Very tasty but am I being too picky to expect a spoon withsoup? I had to go to the bar and wait to get one! Then there was the bore atthe next table who, after gobbling down his sausage and mash, asked thewaitress if they were beef or pork. “Toulouse” she replied. “Ah, French”, hesnorted, “that says it all”. He then went on and on about the sausages, evencomplaining at the bar. This guy doesn’t come out for a meal, he comes out tomake a meal of things.

Forest ride

After buying an excellent pack of cycling routes from theBurley cycle shop, off we went. The New Forest is anything but new. It’s beenaround for thousands of years, more recently as a hunting forest for theNormans (it was ‘new’ to William I) and subsequent kings. Stocked with deer forthe hunt, it eventually became the source of oak for the British Fleet. Thegreat curved boughs of the oak suited the bulwarks of big boats. What makes itsuch an enjoyable ride is the fact that it’s mixed woodland. You’re in oldforest here, then fir trees, silver birches then a whole stretch of holly trees(winter fodder for deer). We went for miles hardly seeing a soul.

Deer. horses andshrooms

Once stocked by deer for the hunt, they were discouraged andculled when the forest became a source of wood for the Navy, as they ate thetree saplings, but although down they were never wiped out and have recoveredto around 3000 today. Our first glimpse was a group of Fallow Deer in thedappled sunlight, spotted with horseshoe black framed backsides, through thetrees - two stags and their family. Then in a field near the hotel an enormous RedDeer, a Landseer-like stag, who just stared back in defiance. A herd of RoeDeer added to the day.

Then there’s the horses, New Forest Ponies, perfectly tame,grazing and walking along the roads and paths. We were joined by one old nagwhen we sat under a tree in a village for a coffee and chocolate bar. I swearhe spotted the fact that we had a Bounty Bar from 300 yards.

Another astonishing sight was the giant mushrooms. Always likedthis poem….

Mushrooms

Silent aliens in the woods

Tiny white atomic bombs

Push up leaves in the night

Sentries to tall trees

Spreading spores

But they don’t belong

There’s nothing in nature quite like them. There were FlyAgarics nine inches across, puffballs galore and every species I know, and acouple I had never seen. We could have collected dustbin loads from the side ofthe path alone. There’s nothing quite like sunlight through the trees. Greatfirst day, 20 odd miles covered.

New Forest Day 2

Second loop on the bikes, this time, however, it rained. Noit crashed down. We took shelter in the forest and when we emerged the bonuswas that peaty, earthy forest smell you get after a heavy rain shower and theincreased intensity of colour. Back to the hotel for lunch and then off toTorquay. Now the hotel did a fine dinner, really good food and wine, but the“sorry it’s just gone 2pm, we don’t do food after that time” attitude in UKhotels is annoying.

Torquay Day 3

Never been here, but coming from Brighton I expected it tobe similar. It wasn’t. It’s more like anup-market Blackpool, as the pensioners down here are loaded. The two townsclearly use different drugs. It has that mix of fine villas and cheaparchitecture, typical of south coast towns.

The Palace Hotel is old-school; a panel next to the bed withknobs on, cheap aluminium fire doors andpink décor. The huge grounds however, were fantastic, with a swimming pool,indoor tennis courts and nine hole golf course. Gil shopped while I talked.This time it was to the people who train GPs. Fascinating bunch and as we havea demographic time bomb with an increasing, ageing population, who live longerand live longer while sick (costs £370 for an 18-44 year old on NHS, £2700 fora retiree) they’re in the front line. However, their training budgets are beingcut.

Vienna and Wachau Valley August 2011

2011-09-05T09:56:00.001Z

Vienna – Day 1

Midge Ure aside, Vienna is all music, architecture and Hapsburg opulence and as I’m working here for a day, five of us have decided to have some fun in Wein, then plan to move on to the Washau Valley for seven days, hence the rendezvous at the Beletage Hotel and off to Café Englander for our first Melange and Pils.

Keynote, Kunst, Mozart and Schnitzel– Day 2

Keynote

Up early for my keynote speech to a Medical Education conference, which was quite daunting, as there were 3000 people and eight giant video screens. At one point I had all 3000 hold up their left hand (don’t ask why – it’s complicated). It went well with lots of people lining up behind the fixed microphones to ask questions – couldn’t see any of them. One very odd questioner defended the ‘lecture’ on the grounds that he and his fellow academics made lots of money from them, another asked why all key internet entrepreneurs were men. On the other hand there were lots of questions about the application of technology to medical education. It’s all good. The excellent chair, Professor Ron Harden, had to bring it to a premature end with queues still lined up to ask questions. Then off by taxi to meet Gil, Ken, Ronnie and Kim at the Kunsthistoriche Museum.

Kunsthistoriche

Surely one of the world’s greatest, and most overlooked, art galleries. The building alone is worth the fee with an entrance hall that looks up through a first storey oculus to a giant dome and a staircase with a huge Theseus and Centaur by Canova. With five Caravaggios, a roomful of Velasquezes, Rembrants, Rubens and Vermeer’s ‘The Artist’, you can spend hours in the galleries. Breugel’s ‘The Hunting Party’ is also here. Indeed, we broke for lunch (beer, roast pork and wurst sandwiches in the gardens) then returned for a second session in the afternoon.

Mozart

In the evening it was time for some music. The Staatoper opera house is huge with five levels (stalls and four rows of balconies). It was a mixed, summer crowd with lots of visitors, some well-dressed folk and an astonishing couple who marched down the aisle to the second front row. He was a suited 60, she 30 at most, with supermodel looks and heels as high as champagne flutes. We watched this from our box and were transfixed as he clambered up on to the stage to take her photograph, knocking one of the orchestra’s music stands sending the sheet music flying. She was obviously mortified but he persevered, snapping away. The impatient oaf also started to clap loudly before the performance, as it was a few minutes late. She simply stared ahead. Before the interval, he started to look at his watch and hauled her off before the musicians had finished the piece. It was as fascinating as the performance itself. Despite this, the music was great, Mozart and Strauss, with a showman conductor. We had a great box off to the left of the stage and the building is a star in itself. Gil wore a full-length, black dress, putting us all to shame, and looked pretty stunning. The concert finished at 10pm and we were ravenous on exit – so having savoured Viennese music it was time to continue in the Viennese vein with food.

Figmuller

When in Wein, a Weiner Schnitzer’s a must, so off to Figmuller’s where they serve one foot diameter Schnizels with superb potato salad and excellent house wine (from their own vineyard). It’s just right, crispy on the outside and moist meat inside. I was the only one in our party of five brave enough to tackle the beast but got through it all, lubricated with a steiner of beer and a few glasses of wine.

Klimt, Sheile– Day 3

Beletage

Sleepless night – must have been the Schnitzel! Stayed in the Beletage Hotel for our third night in Vienna, as we’ve stayed here before. What makes it special is not the First Aid box in the rooms, containing condoms, double ended lollipops, handcuffs etc. but the five course gourmet breakfast ( I must be getting old) undoubtedly the finest breakfast I’ve eaten in any hotel, all made on the spot by the in-house chef. They also have a small, eight seat cinema that shows movies all day and an excellent restaurant, the Salon. The beds lie like an island in the centre of the room as the Hapsburgs liked to be serenaded of an evening by minstrels behind the bed. One of life’s mysteries is why our friend ran five circuits round his bed (he’s a tad eccentric) – it was suggested that from the outside, through his window, it may have looked like he was chasing a dwarf. Ready for the Krankenwagen to the Krankenhaus that lad.

Belvedere

U-bahn to the Hapsburg Palace in south Vienna, the home of some of the finest Klimt and Schiele, and a lovely walk in the morning sunshine through the Botanic gardens, stopping off in the bamboo grove, where you can walk into the middle of the bamboo stalks. The great basin on front of the building is impressive but the building is fairly uniform and nondescript. Inside, however, there’s Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’, ‘Judith’ and several landscapes along with a wealth of Austrian art. The secessionist Klimt is all Byzantine gold and icon-like erotic faces and figures.

In one small room there’s a circle of Messerschmidt faces, carved and cast in the late 18^th century. These grotesques look remarkable today but must have been really avant garde 250 years ago. Fine meal in the Salon, the Beletage’s restaurant – al fresco in a courtyard.

Arty Hotel in Krems – Day 4

By train to Krems, a small town on the banks of the Danube. There’s a steady stream of cyclists here, as the 385 Km cycleway along the Danube goes through here. They come in all shapes and sizes and good on them. We’re already discussing a bike trip here next spring.

Interesting discussion with my mate from Scotland comparing Austria with Scotland. Both are small countries hanging off larger economies with which they are culturally and linguistically aligned. Both are small countries that have mountains and fertile/industrial lowlands. Both have produced a clutch of great philosophers and economists (Smith, Hume - Hayek, Wittgenstein, Popper) – OK I’m pushing it here. Heads are turned by the Scandinavian model (economic), but Scotland has, perhaps, more in common with the Teutonic model. When we arrived we saw political posters for politicians claiming ‘Our money for our people – not failed EU states’ – so maybe not!

We’re in the Krems Arte Hotel, a modernist, Bauhaus design. Modernism is not a ‘statement’ here, it’s part of the normal, aesthetic fabric of the place and sits comfortably alongside neo-classical and even baroque buildings. This has never been the case in the UK, where it is too often a deliberate provocation. Oddly, it’s full of choreographers for a conference on choreography called ‘Movement, deceleration and inertia’, although I’ve never seen a more sedentary bunch. They spend all their time sitting, beautifully poised I admit, in the bar.

Booked our boat tickets for the next day’s trip to Melke, walked along the Danube for some lunch in Krems then up the hill to the Piaristkirche, a Gothic building with a Baroque interior. It has tall windows which flood the interior with light and make the golden, gilded statues and ornamentation glisten in the sunlight. This is Italy in Austria. The Baroque church further down the hill has none of this light and the dark interior is laden by comparison. A beer garden meal in the evening, all goulash, beef, chicken and, guess what - beer.

Melke – Day 4

Surfing the Danube

The Wachau Valley by boat up stream past the precipitous Schloss Durnstein, where Richard the Lionheart was captured and ransomed. The fool, having survived the crusades, managed to get himself captured on the way back home by the man he had insulted in Palestine. The valley is covered with vine terraces on the north side and orchards on the south and is famous for its apricots (Marillen) so you get Apricot spirit, liqueur, jam, chutney, chocolate – the lot. It took three hours up past Spitz and Willendorf, where the Venus of Willendorf was found. Two lads surfed our stern wave on one bend.

Baroque gone bonkers

Melke is dominated by its huge Benedictine Abbey, Italianate, orange, yellow and white, high above the town. In the heart of the complex is the church. Now you have the sedate early Baroque of Rome, with its quaint little white plaster churches but here you have Barmy Baroque, marble clad and gold encrustation everywhere. It’s Baroque gone bonkers. Benedict Monks with too much money and not enough humility. They’ve recently sold a Gutenberg Bible to an Ivy League in the US to pay for renovations. The abbey has 500 rooms, the most famous being the Marble Room, again a Baroque dining room in which you would feel uncomfortable doing anything, never mind eating. It has a tromp d’oeile ceiling, marble pilasters with Herculean gilded, gold capitals. The library is more sedate with its 100,000 volumes and windows to let in natural light, as candles were not allowed. Dinner in a nearby Heuliger where we stuffed ourselves with lots of cold meat, cheese and wine. The apricot chutney with chilli was so good we bought a couple of jars.

Up the Danube – Day 5

Hired five bikes by calling the number advertised on their frames, then cycled north to Schloss Durnstein, where we walked up to the precipitous ruin to the pinnacle where Richard I was held for a King’s ransom. I can only imagine he made some Pythonesque mistake and asked for Crème Caramel in a local restaurant. Then off through vineyards and orchards to Spitz for lunch, picking up plums and grapes en route. After lunch we crossed the Danube on a local ferry that used nothing but the force of the current to get across. They simply angled the boat to take advantage of the current which pushed it sideways while anchored to a wire strung across the river. Dinner in the Yell restaurant where I had a dish I’d never tasted before - mushroom goulash with dumplings filled with crispy bacon.

Down the Danube - Day 6

Cycled south along Danube, 50k in the blazing heat. The hired bikes are like iron horses, at 5 euros a day they’re designed, I think, for town use only, two gears and you have to pedal downhill. The slightest hill brings out a serious sweat. The beer and goulash lunch didn’t help. Gil managed to fall off by pedalling backwards, which acts like an emergency brake –quite funny as she literally stopped and fell sideways, still in the pedalling position. Unfortunately, on getting up she managed to twist the handlebars 360 degrees putting so much tension on the brake cable that it was permanently on – made the next mile a bit of an effort until she realised what had happened. Final act back at the hotel, was some cream to ease the saddle sore and the forward flop on to the bed for a doze before dinner, another meat-fest in a Gasthaus courtyard just inside the west wall.

Goodbye Vienna – Day 7

Another three Weiner Schnitzels with a bottle of Resiling in Figmullers before heading off to the airport. One last word in praise of the Aperolspritzer, a soda water, wine and Aperol, early evening drink. I had one of these nearly every evening, and they’re the business. And of course the wine – the Wachau Valley is one of the world’s great wine growing areas and every bottle we drunk was from local vineyards – all of it way above expectations.

Hadrian’s Wall – July 2011

2011-07-25T14:28:00.004Z

Roman holiday

The largest monument in the Roman World, so a bit of a challenge for five middle aged men on bikes, with nothing but padded shorts, good humour and talc to see them through from coast to coast. First casualty on left!

Off to an auspicious start, as Ken and I met our old mate Tony at the Hotel in Carlisle. Needless to say, one thing led to another. To be precise, an excursion to a wine bar, followed by two bottles of wine with an Italian meal. Suitably refreshed, we walked back to the hotel, past our first ‘wall’ inspired sign, a billboard advertising the ‘Sale of the centurian’ and polished off the evening with a further pint back at the hotel. Bacchus would have been proud of us.

Ronnie and Jim arrived the next morning from Scotland, and so we were five. Bikes ranged from my cheap but solid Halfords (only two thirds of gears working), Ken’s 30 year-old classic racer (whose frame has snapped twice in that period) to Tony’s snappier Trek (hybrid mountain/road), Jim’s sleek silver machine (only man to get a puncture) and Ronnie’s top of the range £750 something or another. Luggage ranged from my tiny handlebar bag to the full double panniers (a decision some regretted).

There was little or nothing to see of the wall for the first half day but the Cumbrian countryside was reward enough. The entire route is on small, country roads and cycle tracks, so you encounter very few cars. One of the great pleasures of a cycling trip with your mates, is the time spent chatting on the wheel. These back roads often allowed us to cycle two abreast and have a chat. There’s something about the stimulation of the landscape and air on one’s face that freshens up the mind. You can talk to one person then fall back to talk to another, trek ahead to have time on your own or fall back to appreciate the sights on your own at a slower pace. It’s all good.

Brampton – hole in the wall

First stop, after 15 miles, at Brampton, and the ‘Hole in the Wall’ café, a fine establishment where tea, coffee and cakes were downed. I often wondered what these Northern country counties were like, and who lived here. The answer is obvious when you cycle through – conservative voting farmers who live off EU subsidies, while decrying all other forms of state intervention. There’s money here, judging by the cars and house prices. Their MP Rory Stewart caused a stir when he described parts of Cumbria as follows ‘… some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine and that sort of thing.”

Lanercost Priory – walls from the wall

Then off to Lanercost Priory, a beautiful 12^th century (1166 by Henry II), red sandstone abbey that was built from stones from the wall (you can see two with inscriptions built into the fabric of the building). It has participated in various Scotland v England matches across the centuries, with thieving Border rievers, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Edward I (hammer of the Scots) who fell ill here and died not far off in Burgh by Sands. But it met its final match in Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1538.

The current church was built within the old church and makes good use of the existing building but the real interest is in the larger structure with its cloister, medieval tower with burnt gates and thick walls, where people and animals could take refuge from attackers. We had a chat with the newly appointed vicar, from Worthing, who had clearly found an idyllic location to end his career. PS Excellent café here for lunch, with top class, sweet potato soup and homemade bread sandwiches.

Hit the wall

After the first really steep climb of the day, we hit the wall and our first turret. These were two storey buildings, two between every milecastle. Signals could be sent from one to the other in the event of an attack. A further signal tower, offset at an angle to the wall shows how important signalling was on the wall. It’s only when you see the wall laid bare that the scale of the enterprise becomes apparent. At 15 foot high and 8 foot thick, (ten for the first stretch) you get a real sense of the ambition of Rome. Hadrian was fond of monument building and I’ve seen his buildings in Spain (where he was born), North Africa, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Italy and France. He spent ten years travelling his empire, consolidating its borders and lived out his final years in a Villa (just outside Rome) full of architectural follies.

Birdoswald

This four mile stretch of road has some lengths of walls, visible signs of the front ditch and rear vallum, a few turrets and ends at Birdoswald. Sited, like almost all the forts, on or above a river, it’s on the wall and the site is on a steep plateau above the river. Internal structures show gates, granaries, barracks and the usual planned rectangular streets. Post Roman occupation has also been proven at this site, from 12AD to 500AD. A Time Team excavation uncovered a Roman cemetery to the west and a vicus to both the east and west. It seems as though the escarpment had been eroded so much that the locals had to move to the east side of the fort.

The vallum is a puzzle. Why build such an enormous earthwork, essentially a very wide continuous road with a ditch down the middle and mounds on either verge? It was built as long, straight stretches, following the flat topography rather than the wall itself. The accepted theory is that it is a no-mans land between the people on the south and the wall itself, giving southern protection. But why go to such lengths south of the wall? I have a completely different, and off-the-wall theory that I’ve never seen posited or published.

I think it was built to transport ships and supplies from East to West across Britain, possibly to support an invasion of Ireland. Ships could have been transported, hanging, suspended, with their keel in the ditch, from two horse/ox carts on either side.

2. The ditch follows flat contours, easier for heavy transport.

3. It lies south, not north of the wall.

4. Roman ships could not get past Land’s End due to westerly prevailing winds.

5. Needed ships to invade Ireland, as they did Britain.

6. Shortest coast to coast route near to Ireland.

7. Protected by Wall.

Objections welcome!

The milecastle down from Gilsland is well worth visiting, as it’s sited precariously on a high bank of a river cutting through the wall, which literally passes under the railway line. It was here that the height of the wall could be calculated by extrapolating the steps on stairs leading to the top of the wall.

It was also here we hit our steepest climb as the wall rises over Walltown to Great Chesters. The wall follows a north facing cliff which slopes off to the south. We cycled off route along a farm road and climbed to the highest point in the area, where there's magnificent views over the desolate moorland to the north, returning to the road and rapid descent into Haltwhistle, our overnight stop.

Haltwhistle

Slept in the Grey Bull but ate in the Black bull in Haltwhistle. The food was pretty good, two of us opting for the ‘stack’ starter (haggis, black pudding, stilton and apple with whisky sauce!), then fulsome steak and ale pies, apple crumble, cheese cake and so on. The most expensive wine on the wine list was £10.95!

Hadrian’s Wall - Day 2

Vindolanda – writing’s on the wall

Quick repair to our one and only puncture on the trip, then off, via some steep climbs, to Vindolanda. We were actually applauded by some students as we hit the top of one particularly vertiginous stretch.

The Romans picked some idyllic spots for their settlements, which makes visits that more interesting, and here the presence of the river, springs to the north of the site and the surrounding hills make it one of the prettiest of the wall's sights. The walled fort and its vicus are well-preserved, with cysterns, wells, temples and workshops to the north and the fort, with its network of water channels, baths, granaries, baths and houses, well preserved. It’s water that makes the site special as the site is famous for the letters found preserved in the waterlogged mud. Letters that throw a great deal of light on military and civilian matters. There’s the only recorded actual written words by a woman in the whole of the Empire, showing a civilised social life of parties and polite invitations, as well as troop numbers, food requirements and the need for beer and socks. The museum is down in the valley, well worth the walk.

Chesters

Again some steep ascents but we were soon swooping downhill through wider moorland to Chesters. Chesters is another pretty site by the banks of the river, guarding the River Tyne crossing. The site museum is full of altars and inscriptions and the site, especially the baths, a pleasure to visit on a sunny day. (A reconstruction of these baths awaits us in Newcastle at Wallsend.) The baths were important in social terms but also for military health. In many armies illness, more than battle, saps the strength of a standing army. The Romans understood the need for good hygiene and medical care. We cycled down to Hexam then onto Corbridge.

The three main theories as to why the wall was built are a) defence from northern attacks, b) control of movement, taxation and smuggling, c) monument to megalomania. I’m in the camp that sees the wall as a Handrianic excess. This part of Britain was thinly populated and it did not need a wall to control the territory. Taxes were perfectly well collected throughout the Roman Empire, without the need for barriers of this kind. On the other hand Hadrian was known as an architectural meddler, who was ridiculed by the Roman architect who designed Trajan’s Forum in Rome.

I’ve been to many Hardianic sites including; Italica in southern Spain, where he was born, the Triumphal Arch, Library and Temple of Zeus in Athens, Pantheon in Rome, the statues of Memnon in Luxor with a poem inscribed by his retinue, Hadrian’s Gate in Antalya Turkey, Hadrian’s gate in Palmyra in Syria, Tivoli Villa near Rome and his tomb in Rome.

My own view is that this wall was based on the walls he had seen in Greece, in both Athens and at Messene in the Peloponnese, where the walls are 7-9 metres high with two-storied turrets and at 9 kilometers enclosed a huge amount of land, not just the town.

Corbridge – off the wall

This is an altogether different site, with higher quality stonework, fountains and a sense of wealth missing from the other military sites. It lies south of the wall on the intersection of the Stanegate and Deer street. We saw in Vindolanda tablets references to Corbridge as a popular R&R destination, a prosperous town. It has a strategic rather than defensive position. PS Lunch in the Larder, in the modern Corbridge town was, again, of high quality. It serves homemade pies and cakes.

Tyne

The rest of the trip followed the Tyne through wheat fields, tree lined paths, across iron bridges and past Stephenson’s Cottage, he of 'rocket' fame. The ruins here witness a different era, the industrial revolution. Indeed, the final ten miles follow an old railway track that carried coal and other goods to and from the coast. As we approached Newcastle, all the signs of urban poverty began to appear, portly specimens, an ice-cream van (we stopped for celebratory cones), aggressive accessory dogs and rows of red-brick council houses. Then the industrial detritus of a lost age – deserted docks, scrap yards, new ‘riverside’ developments, some now frozen in financial time.

As we hit the Quayside in central Newcastle, the legendary crowds of N’castle drinkers started to appear, literally blocking the cycle route. Men in tight tee-shirts drinking lager and women with all-over, bottled and sprayed tans in low-cut dresses and heels as high as wine glasses.

Arrived at the Hotel du Vin at 7pm and had a glorious bath in one of those deep, stand-alone baths on curly legs with taps on the side, that sat in the room with the beds. Foam was produced and I felt like one of those cowboys in a saloon room. Dinner in the Hotel du Vin was superb, as was the wine.

Day 3 Wallsend

Segendunum

Full English breakfast, which in my opinion has to include black pudding, was eaten and two of us (Ken and I) finished our Roman Holiday with a final cycle to Wallsend and the Roman fort of Segendunum. The remains at the site are no more than a few foundations and a section of wall relocated further back from the Swan Hunter shipyard. There’s also a hideous viewing tower that is completely out of scale with the site. However, the Museum is an interesting affair, especially for children and the reconstructed baths (based on those at Chesters) are the highlight of the site. They were built to be used, but the caretaker told us that the cold bath leaks, the hot bath has a problem and the locals keep stealing the copper and lead from the roof and supply piping, "that's Wallsend for you" he sighed. Two things can be concluded from this a) that the problems with the locals north of the fort continue to this day, b) we are less capable of building a bath complex than the Romans 2000 years ago.

Our last visit was to the excellent Museum in the city centre, with its large model of the entire wall, Mithras Temple and collection of artefacts. Then the train to London, where I slept like a baby.

But all was not over, our final challenge was a cycle from Euston to Victoria, via the British Museum, Trafalgar Square and the Mall, which we competed in the evening sun. Carpe diem.

Switzerland, Zurich, Chateaux d'Oex

2011-06-19T14:06:00.001Z

Day 1 – Switzerland, Zurich

A talk to some senior Directors of major European companies, in Zurich, is just the excuse we need to stay with my brother-in-law, who works here, with a very swish apartment right in the centre, as well as visit friends who live in Chateaux d’Oex, at the other end of the country. So here I am on a gloriously sunny day, sitting on a grassy bank beneath a willow tree with a violet butterfly perched on my big toe, having a picnic on the banks of the crystal clear lake, watching the suits and secretaries, go by. Lunch is a serious business here. In fact everything’s pretty serious here.

The lake feeds some equally clean and pristine canals that make the centre feel very calm, so walking the city centre is no chore. Post-reformation churches are white and grey inside, but a touch of pre-reformation colour and exuberance is seen in most of them. They have stained glass windows that are literally works of art, from Chagall and Polke, but even the smaller churches feel the need to capture some sunshine and raise the spirit. Calvinism, a creed I’m all too familiar with being raised in Scotland, has always needed its touches of splendour and hidden pleasures. In just one afternoon walk we saw the chocolate shops with their pyramids of Springli Luxemburgerli (tiny one inch cakes with cream), stupidly expensive watches (all that money for a device with one function) and sex shops.

Chagall windows

Anyway, back to the Chagall windows in the Fraumunster Cathedral, which are five tall, narrow arches, each in a dominant colours; blue, yellow, orange, green and secondary complementary colours for figures, animals and objects. You can sit down in a separate chapel and take them in, in our case, fully illuminated by the sun. The joy of stained glass is the way it transforms the white glare of the sun into intense separate colours. Science meets art in that light is refracted out into its constituent components, as discovered by Newton. The work is full of Christian humility, with tall and narrow figures which flow in the glass, reaching up to heaven.

Just a few streets away is the Grossmunster, where the Polke stained glass pieces bring brilliance to an altogether bigger church. Once again the plain ground of the church interior makes the windows stand out in flashes of colour. There’s a green figure in one, slices of agate in two others, bottle bottoms and so on, made between 2006-09 (Polke died in 2010). This is by far the best way to see Zurich on a hot day. Just drift from church to church, then sit, rest in the cool interiors and take in these windows to another world.

Time was short but I was determined to see Cabaret Voltaire, the café where Dadaism originated, and pleased to see that it was still a lively café with regular oddball events. Perhaps Dadaism was, like the stained glass, a reaction against the strictures of Calvinism. One of the reasons I like living in Brighton is the fact that it has been such a healthy attitudinal antidote to Scotland. There is in Zurich, also an underbelly, and drunks and addicts are not hard to find around the station. Stopping for a ridiculously expensive coffee in the old town gave us the odd experience of watching a series of men go in and out of a sex emporium. They weren’t furtive, it was just a mid-afternoon pastime.

Day 2 - Attitude sickness

The other side of the coin, is Zurich and its banks. This was part of my talk, on ‘social media’, where I was presenting the idea that social media has been a necessary condition for the Arab Spring, and that if Facebook can get over 640 million people talking to each other, along with hundreds of millions on Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, Wikipedia and so on, then business has to take note and respond to this global cultural phenomenon. As I was in Zurich, I used the banks as my example. Citibank, Wells Fargo, HSBC, Lloyds, and may others, are using these media to speak to customers and recover some of their lost reputations.

During the Brighton Festival, where I’m a Board member, I was lucky enough to speak to Julian Assange, by Skype, as part of an official appearance. I asked him about the banks, the super-injunctions by Fred Goodwin, and leaked the name of the HR person (who was also involved in his pension awards). Julian, through Wikileaks, released the details of over 2000 bank accounts from Julius Bar, a Swiss private bank. That bank closed down his ISP, then tried to close down Wikileaks (unsuccessfully). Since then Wikileaks has had a profound effect on the banking system, as private Swiss accounts will have to be released under FATCA legislation in January 2013, brought in by Obama, and supported by other nations such as the UK and France. Many of those banks are headquartered in Zurich. This is a major step in reforming the banking system, and one I agree with.

So the Swiss private banks may look calm on the surface but beneath the water they are paddling away furiously, to avoid losing both money and reputation. They will end up paying huge sums over in illegally withheld taxes, as well as fines, and be forced to put their investment arms outside of Switzerland, to increase transparency. On top of this is the estimated $50 billion plus squirrelled away by African and other dictators, often siphoned off from aid budgets provided from other nations. Another speaker at the conference, from an African bank, talked to this issue. It was a fascinating day.

It ended at around 4.30, so off we went in a hired car (tip – ordered a cheap Citroen C1 at rock bottom prices and get an Audi 3 for same price) to the other side of Switzerland. It was a fun drive, through some spectacular scenery.

Day 3 – Chateau d’Oex

There can be few people, on the entire planet, who have a better view than my friends who live on this exact spot in this Swiss valley. We sat on their balcony looking across the alpine valley, with perfectly manicured meadows sloping almost vertically up to trees and then to grey rock shooting straight to the sky. The weather and colours seemed to change every hour and red kites soared just a few hundred yards away on the thermals. Below them lay the village with its ancient church on a motte-like mound and all the houses and shops were in alpine wooden architecture. They live here regularly shooting off to London, elsewhere in Europe, the US or S Africa. They have good internet connectivity (I often skype Ray) and this heaven on earth is their true home.

In the afternoon we walked down to the river, a glacially, silted grey-blue colour and crossed the rickety bridge, before heading off for lunch in yet another spectacular location, halfway up the side of the valley. We had rosti, veal and wild mushrooms, a typical Swiss dish, with a good rose and a plate of Swiss cheeses with fruit bread.

Then down to Gstaad, one of the world’s poshest ski resorts. To give you some idea of its cache, famous residents have included David Niven, Roger Moore, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Andrews, Roman Polanski, George Soros, Yehudi Menhuin and the not so classy, Bernie Ecclestone, who owns a hotel in the town. We thought Zurich reeked of money, but this was on another plane. There was a cauliflower on sale for £30! Then a walk up to the Grand Hotel – no idea what the room rate is, but arms and legs come to mind.

Iceland: Days 1 & 2 - Bjork, Banks & Boyle

2011-04-05T12:22:00.002Z

Surreal start to the trip as I noticed that the music, as we boarded the plane to Reykavik, was an obscure Bjork track. I then sat down next to film director Danny Boyle, so watch out for some weird locations in his next movie.

As for us, why Iceland? First, one son’s yomping across the Peak District, the other’s in France on a school exchange; 4-2=2 free adults. Second, anyone who comes to stay with us will notice that I have a house full of rocks. Since a child I’ve loved geology, so it’s been a lifelong ambition to visit Iceland, as it's full of rocks. I can still remember Surtsey rising from the ocean to form a new island and was trapped for a week Miami (a blessing really) when the recent volcano blew its top.

Iceland is the half-caste child of two violent parents who have been drifting apart for some time; half American, half Eurasian. It sits astride the North Atlantic Ridge and as the two plates separate, lava floods up to form, layer upon layer. This has its advantages as you can sit in tropically blue geothermal waters even in Winter, watch scalding hot geysers spurt 60 odd feet into the air (original geyser is in Geysir) and the water that gushes from all taps in Iceland is pure spring water. This is hard rock geology – then again there’s lazing about in the Blue Lagoon.

Then there are the banks. I was curious to find out what happened here.

Iceland: Day 2 Geysirs, volcanoes and plate tectonics

Iceland’s bigger than I thought, about the size of England – there’s a surprise. But only 320,000 people live here, that’s not much bigger than Brighton & Hove. And they run an entire country. David, an Englishman who has lived here for 15 years, has an interesting take on the island. When he first came here it was like living in an East European country, with little in the way of luxuries. Iceland hadn’t moved much in the Industrial Revolution and was still largely a fishing island, so everything was smuggled in on Russian trawlers. There were only a couple of makes of TV, both Eastern European, and luxuries were few and far between. He remembers when brussell sprouts hit the island and everyone rushed out to buy them – bit of a disappointment that one. But fish became a valuable commodity and the island prospered.

When banks go bonkers

Then something odd happened, the fishermen found banking. It’s a small country, lightly regulated, so the bankers, in cahoots with the politicians and regulators, went mad with greed. It’s an Icelandic Saga that will go down in history. In fact it’s already been well documented in their 2000 page Special Investigative Report (a bestseller in Iceland).

Everyone at the top was in on the greed game; the former Prime Minister Haarde, Finance Minister Mathieson, Business minister Sigurdsson were all deemed to have been negligent, ignoring advice and warnings. Their Central bank Governors, along with the head of the so-called Regulatory Authority were also judged to be negligent.

It gets worse. Many member of parliament (ten in total, seven from the right-wing Independence Party) had personal loans of over half a million sterling from the banks. The Education Minister had loans of $13.4 million (she has since resigned). The President, Grimmson was also in on the act and was pushing all the time for more and more risk.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the majority owners of the largest banks were also their largest debtors. Glitnor, Kaupthing and Landsbanki were overextended to their own owners and up to their necks in corruption. It would seem that the banks were run like a fishing fleet, with owners trawling out massive amounts of cash, plundering the banks and depleting the reserves. Unfortunately, the fish stocks ran out.

This Saturday, Iceland goes to the polls to decide whether to go on with a £2.35 billion agreement to pay back UK Icesave depositors (Landsbanki), that was bailed out by the IMF. It’s neck and neck, and if it’s a NO, and I saw plenty of NO stickers on the backs of cars, it goes to court and the whole international finance system will be under pressure. What a mess.

Hot water and heavy metal

OK, back to the land itself. We set off early in falling snow, but were soon in sunnier climes (the weather changes every five minutes here) driving through rugged, crumbly lava fields to the large geothermal power station that supplies the whole of Reykjavik with hot water. The steam is used to drive turbines which pump the water at 85 degrees to the top of a mountain and it flows down to the city under pressure to taps in every house. They’re world leaders in this type of technology. There’s even a hydrogen fuel station going into Rekjavik where you get the fuel for free.

Then to a volcano with a water filled crater, well frozen water, filled crater. These things blow their top then collapse back in on themselves when the magma chamber empties. After this we drove on to the Gullfoss Waterfall. Now we’ve all seen lots of waterfalls, but if you stood on the edge of this one, it is gut wrenching, as the glacial water boomed into a dark chamber. One curious sight was a heavy metal band (getting on in years) who were posing, legs akimbo, for some photographs and a video on the edge of the waterfall. Boys will always be boys.

Then off to the geysers, which hissed into action every four minutes or so. The mantle’s very close to the surface here and as you see the water dome up and explode into the air, you can feel it breath.

But the next site was what I was looking forward to, a zone where you can see the two plates tear the earth apart. The whole process is laid bare here, with the American plate visible as a cliff on the West side, and stepped cracks and cliffs all the way across a 7 kilometre valley to the Eurasian plate. It’s moving apart at an average of 2.5 cm a year. This was the site of the ancient Icelandic parliament, where disputes were settled and punishments meted out. A few bankers and politicians could be bagged up and drowned here methinks.

David had another take on the Icelanders, They never give way,” he said, “at road junctions, on the pavement, in shop doorways…even in business. They rarely back down”. I thought again of the bankers and politicians.

Iceland: Day 3 Whale watching

2011-04-05T12:21:00.001Z

Sunday today and all is quiet in Reykjavik. They like a good skinful, and drinking in the street, despite ridiculous prices, seemed common. The good times may be over but they still like a good time. Our whale trip took us right out to sea and boy was it freezing. You could barely look into the wind without feeling that your nose, or worse, would drop off. For light relief we had a couple of drunks on board, likeable drunks. They were drinking cans of 14% Polar Bear lager when we left dock and were hitting the spirits (looked like rum) when we spotted our first Minky whale at the other side of the boat. This sent the hat wearing drunk clattering flat onto to the deck in the rush, but he did what only a drunk can do in these circumstances, kept his hat on and spilt not a drop from his drink. They whooped every time we saw a whale and were singing all the way back to harbour. Boys will be boys. Great fun.

Coloured houses

Our afternoon was spent walking the streets among the red, yellow, blue, green and cream coloured houses. I assume it’s an attempt to stave off the long, dark, grey winters with a splash of colour.

Northern Lights

Our hotel was right on the waterfront, looking North, so we sauntered out at around 10.30 pm to see if we could spot the famed Northern Lights, and we did. Not spectacular, but we saw them glow, appear, disappear and change shape behind the mountains on the far shore.

Iceland: Day 4 Blue Lagoon

2011-04-05T12:20:00.003Z

Last day and off for a soak in the Blue Lagoon. Yes, it’s both blue and a lagoon, set bang in the middle of a huge, moss-covered lava field. I’ve swum in tropical, atoll lagoons in the Maldives and Belize, and also thermal springs in Turkey, but this was different. Above the water a brisk, arctic wind blew, and snow lay on the mountains behind, while below the water was wonderfully hot. For three hours we lay and swam, slapped white mud on our faces; a satisfying end to a strange but wonderful trip. Flew home with a weird, warm internal glow.

Porto Day 4 (23 March) Suffering

2011-03-24T10:28:00.002Z

Last day, and a walk up to the Sacred Art Museum, actually a church, with a dozen or so wooden statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The ‘suffering’ of Christ is central to Spanish and Portuguese art, and these statues, worked by both sculptors and painters, strove for realism. The statue was an object of devotion and the wounds, with their trickles of blood drove home the sacrificial nature of the crucifixion. Christ is seen being flayed with horrific skin wounds, on the cross with streams of blood flowing from open wounds and in his tomb. No one can doubt the artistry, but it’s a horror show designed to induce fear and subjugation. It’s the art of the Inquisition, where the torture of Christ became a model for the torture of one’s theological enemies.

The Sao Bento station was a surprise, with its vestibule covered in blue and coloured tiles. It really is worth a visit, along with what must be the nicest Macdonalds in the world, inside an Art Deco building with original stained glass and relief structures on the walls. It doesn’t seem like a Macdonald’s at all.

On leaving Porto news came in of the impending collapse of the Portuguese government, as the opposition had refused to ratify Jose Socrates’ minority government budget. This most likely means an election and a bailout by the EU, namely forced austerity measures as in Greece and Ireland. Our departure was perhaps a sign of the problem. A spanking new metro system to the airport at very cheap, obviously subsidised fares, and a huge airport with very few passengers and flights, empty shops, but lots of staff. We went to Egypt three months ago (revolution), Gulf two months ago (mayhem), Syria three weeks ago (crackdown) and now Portugal (economic collapse) – off to Iceland in 10 days, now surely that can’t fall further than it already has.

The Pestano Hotel was a real find. Big rooms on two levels, friendly staff, and a breakfast restaurant overlooking the river. I like Lisbon, but honestly, I like Porto more. It has a more relaxed ambience, fine river, is less touristy, quirky, cheaper, has better wine and food, and port! Obrigado.

Porto Day 3 (22 March): Baroque, peasant food and Foz

2011-03-24T10:23:00.002Z

First up, St Francisco church, a Gothic structure with a riotous Baroque interior. Almost the entire interior is caked in wild, gold wood carving, chapels, pillars and roof. Each chapel tries to outdo the other with encrusted ornamentation. Gold leaf covered wood may be the result of the Spanish/Protuguese gold-rich S American colonies, and in this case the entire church interior seems gold lined. Baroque tips easily into Rococo here. In fact, the only respite, is the best piece, on the right hand side of the apse, as it’s more constrained. The bloody and lifelike statues of Christ and beheaded monks, takes northern sensibilities by surprise, but the death of Christ is important in these parts and realism is all. The crypt contains wall space for burials and an ossuary lies below the floor, which you glimpse through windows beneath your feet. Cemeteries were only legislated for use in the second half of the 19^th century. Before that everyone was buried within or under churches. This naturally led to storage and health problems. This is one of the real sights of Porto.

The centre’s a lively residential area and not too slick (which I like), with lots of tiny cafes and an inordinate number of Pastilerias – how many cakes and biscuits can the people of Porto eat? But the streets are walkable with lots of interesting shops (I say that even although my interest in shopping is marginal.)

Lunch at a Chouzziro (the ‘Central’) at the top of Rua de Fabrica, a peasant, fast food joint with authentic home-made soup, sardines, whiting, chicken, pork and so on, with good wine and beer at rock bottom prices. (There’s the ‘Moura’ round the corner with more delicacies such as pig’s ear.) A gravy boat of chilli oil and a brush is available if you like your food picante. You get your fill of food, wine and expresso for under a tenner a head. Everyone seemed to be drinking the Adego de Molerna (half bottle four euros). And you’ve got to be impressed by a proprietor who’s a little bit grumpy then jokey, and a chef that drinks lots of red wine while cooking your lunch!

Off to Foz, at the mouth of the Douro, a couple of kilometres to the west, for the afternoon and it was gloriously sunny. Promenaded along the promenade, out to the lighthouse past the fishermen (never ever see fisherman catch fish), whereas the skuas were dive bombing the fish and catching them with ease, attracted by the boundary between the river water and sea. A walk around the fort that guards the Duoro river mouth and back on the No 1 tram. As you can see, I’ve become a tram addict.

We knew our final meal would be a long one as the restaurant was filled with one large party of Potuguese, who were clearly up for a party (on a Tuesday), as there was live music. We settled down for the long haul with some wine and finished the bottle before the main courses arrived. The singer/guitarist was excellent and one man did a guest spot, to full applause from the entire restaurant. Our second bottle saw us through the marathon meal. Huge fun.

Porto Day 2 (21st March): Tripe, lamb and a seven course meal

2011-03-24T10:21:00.001Z

A sunny morning and up the steps to the Cathedral, which is a uneasy mix of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque. The doorway alone is an architectural crime and looks as though it’s been put together from an architectural salvage yard and the towers are topped by flattened meringue domes that do them no favour. The exterior is saved, however, by a tiled cloister on the south and tiled outside wall on the north. This blue tile technique on the outside of churches seems common in Porto and quite striking, especially against the grey granite. The cloister is firmly gothic and worth a stroll. It’s a great city for a stroll, and stroll we did, past several of these blue tiled churches, mostly closed, and into the huge fresh produce market.

Then up to Lelo’s the world’s loveliest bookshop. It has this grand double curved staircase that turns back on itself all inside in the tiny hall of a shop, as well as rails for a book train trolley. We then caught the 22 tram back down the hill and a funicular that literally falls off a cliff down to the river.

Lunch was a huge pan of tripe with haricot beans, chorizo and ham for Gil and six lamb chops for my good self, washed down with a mug of well-deserved Segres beer. Then off to Gaia for a Port wine tour at Taylors. A sweet smelling walk through cool warehouses of giant barrels of the fortified wine, followed by a couple of free glasses of port, (one white and one red) before staggering down the hill. Walked out, so we took a three-tram looped ride through the city and watched the world go by. I love these old trams, and became a real fan of them in Lisbon. It’s the sounds (bells, grinding, and rattling), jerky movements and slow speed that I like. Cooled through an open window you just sit back and literally watch the world go by.

Back to the hotel to watch Tripoli being bombed. Although we shouldn’t be so high and mighty about democracy, as it wasn’t that long ago that southern Europe was ruled by dictators in Spain, Portugal and Greece. No accident, perhaps that they remain fiscally unstable, despite huge subsidies from the EU. Portugal’s in some trouble with debt and there’s obvious signs of homelessness and unemployment. I had some insight into this phenomenon four years ago on a trip to Spain to monitor the ‘entrepreneurial’ progress in Seville. It was clear what was happening. The large infrastructure projects had led to a boom in construction, but not in sustainable business. A hangover from the days of dictatorship was the funnelling of educated graduates into public institutions, through degrees in ‘Public Administration’. Almost everyone we met over a period of constant meetings over a week, had such a degree and the young people we met socially all wanted this degree, as it meant a great salary, pension and holidays. We struggled to find and ‘entrepreneur’. Without reforming the educational system and government incentives, these countries, I fear, may continue to struggle.

After giving our digestive systems a rest, we were off to O Commercial, a rather posh restaurant in a Palace, no less. Decided to go for broke with the six course taster menu, here goes; veal carpaccio (see through) with parmesan and rocket, mushroom soup with mushrooms on toast, boar, black-pudding and apple dumpling with sausage roll topped with a quail’s egg, basil ice-cream with port, pear and vodka (refresher), confit of duck with spinach mash and lemon ice cream with chestnuts. A meat-heavy meal, so a rich red was recommended, which turned out to be the black pudding of wines, as black as night, aromatic and almost chewable. Felt like royalty as we were the last to leave through the Palace corridors and out through the main entrance. A traveller marches on his and her stomach!

Porto Day 1 (20 March): Bridges, rabbits and vinho verde

2011-03-24T10:13:00.002Z

We left our front door at 10 am and were drinking white port and in Porto by 2 pm. Not often you get a welcome port and tonic as a welcome drink in a hotel (see left)! This is a place that feels more like a town than a city, and the Pestano Hotel is in exactly the right place, in a UNESCO protected site, on the river looking across to the port wine district at the foot of the huge arch of the Eiffel built bridge.

Ventured out to walk along the river, which flows at a fair speed as it’s an eroded a gorge through the rock, so that Porto is a warren of very steep streets and alleyways. A walk across the lower level of the Eiffel bridge takes you into the Gaia area, which is packed with port warehouses, then up through the alleyways to the monastery (now barracks) at the top of the hill to watch the sunset. As darkness fell we walked back to the north side across the upper level of the bridge and through the Cathedral grounds to zig-zag down lots of steep steps back to the Pestano. Lots of high single arch bridges traverse the gorge –it’s like a Newcastle but with a café culture and sun. Looking back across the river at night you see the Port house signs lit up; Kopke, Calem, Sandeman’s, Offley, Croft, Ferriara, Ramos and Cockburns.

Our first meal was in Chez Lapin. Gil was far from disturbed by the real caged rabbits at the door, and ordered, you’ve guessed it – rabbit. She ordered Porto’s famous ‘tripos’ (tripe) dish for lunch the next day, (liver’s her favourite dish) so is clearly a fearless diner. She only flinched once in Porto, at fried gizzard. Chez Lapin was a cosy place by the riverside and the Vino Verde was badly needed after our marathon walk. My fish soup, beef in a Porto sauce and triple dessert were all superb. First impressions of Porto – impressed.

Syria - February 2011

2011-02-27T22:24:00.001Z

At this point, we’re right in the middle of the so-called Jasmine Revolution. Tunisia and Egypt have flipped and every Syrian television is showing riots in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen, so there’s certainly a degree of danger and worry in the air. As Saad, our guide, said, “It’s like a dream. It came from nowhere and still doesn’t seem real. And we can’t quite see where it’s going.” But he knew how ‘real’ it was and was fearful for his job and his family. Even to experienced travellers Syria remains a mystery. It’s seen as extreme and slightly dangerous but most in the west, me included, know little about the country and its past. Travel to these countries is fragile at best, and can dry up in an instant. That would be a great shame.

Castigated by Bush Junior as a member of the ‘axis of evil’, with a resolutely anti-Israeli stance under the Assad dynasty, it’s always been an ‘axis’ for some power or another. Syria is a modern construct, the result of a 20^th century carve up by European powers, so what you see is a part of the much larger Levant, which has been fought over by the Hittites, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Sea peoples, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mongols, Mamelukes, Ottomans, Germans, British, French and Israelis (and a few more). From north, south, east and west, they’ve come to trade, conquer and meddle. Is it any wonder that the Syrian people are wary of outside interference?

You can visit a country for many reasons, but my aim was twofold, first to experience another Middle Eastern country and sample its culture and people, as I like this part of the world; second, to see the places I’ve read about for years in history books, especially Ugarit, Roman sites such as Palmyra, Crusader and Islamic castles, also Damascus with its Great Umayyad Mosque and Aleppo with its citadel. Syria gives you a massive, intensive dose of history. Its sites are complex as wave after wave of conquests have led to materials and buildings being reused many times. So it’s best to recall them in chronological order, rather than the order in which came across them on our travels.

Ugarit – first alphabet and musical notation

In Damascus Museum you peer through a small glass window to see the its most valuable piece, a small clay tablet about six by two centimetres with the world’s earliest alphabet. Only discovered in 1928, Ugarit sits on a coastal hill. Fortunate for us but unfortunate for the Ugarits, it was razed and burnt by the Sea Peoples in 1200 BC, and as clay is unharmed by heat, we have preserved tablets that show us detailed records in a writing system that was so superior to the previous syllabic systems, that it became the Phoenician, Greek then Latin alphabets. The fact that so many tablets were written in two languages, is testament to the trading relationships they had in many directions. The collection in Damascus Museum is worth looking at in detail, as they have large volcano-shaped seals on the front (fraud was obviously a danger). As usual, most were mundane lists, also contracts and treaties, and a few dealt with religion, art, astronomy, arithmetic, politics and administration. Administration gave birth to writing, not story telling. They also discovered the oldest musical composition on a clay tablet with the lyrics of a song followed by its musical notation. You can hear it here.

As for the site, if you’ve ever been to Mycenae or Tiryns in Greece, you’ll immediately recognise the corbelled arched corridor and defensive stonework. Beyond this is a palace, again reminiscent of Mycenaean culture, with flagged floor and underground tombs. These tombs are beneath homes and were used for feasts with the dead. You can clamber down into several of them and they are beautifully constructed.

Syria is largely limestone, a rock that is soft enough to quarry, cut and carve, light enough to use in building but hardens on exposure to air giving it longevity. The buildings at Ugarit already show sophistication that you see time and time again in this country, which is a huge architectural museum. We had glasses of blood orange juice at the site then headed to Latakia, the modern Ugarit.

Latakia

The Hotel Xenobia was a half hour walk from central Latakia so we walked to find a recommended restaurant, the Old House, which was closed. However, a shopkeeper recommended The Last Station and we drank Lebanese wine, lentil soup, stuffed vine leaves, Kebbeh and Shish Tawook. The town’s a sort of Middle Eastern Brighton by the sea. We got lost walking back so hailed down the smallest taxi in the world, and all five of us (not one under 5’ 10”) piled in. The back scraped the road several times but the fare was around 30p. We gave him a 200% tip!

Palmyra – crossroads of the world

The clue’s in the name – a city of palms, an oasis which became the crossroads of the world. It’s halfway between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean and when the trade route to the north became too dangerous this shortcut across the desert turned Palmyra into a boom town. It is an ancient Las Vegas with a strip, theatre, shops, temples and big and lavish buildings.

We arrived an hour or so before sunset so set off to the north of the site past the temple of Baalshamin (the God of rain and storms and therefore fecundity). It’s almost Baroque in style with internal structures as fanciful as the outside. Flanked by large courtyards it’s clearly an overstated sign of patrician wealth. As the sun set we walked across to Diocletian’s camp past the funerary temple. Palmyra is self-assured and confident but got over-confident when it challenged Rome. They punished the city and the Diocletian ‘castra’ sits on the hill above it all making their usual point. The later Arab castle sits even higher, as threating a site as you’ll ever see, and as the sun fell it lit up. We walked back down the main street under the starlight, colonnaded along its entire length with huge pillars (and I mean huge). It had statues on each and every pillar, of local worthies and we stopped at points to look up at the stars, always at their best in the middle of the desert. Travelling doesn’t get any better than this.

After some Lebanese beers (Almaza) we had a sort of Bedouin meal (lentil soup, lamb/chicken on rice). Someone stopped me on the street and asked if I wanted to buy Iraqi notes with Saddam Hussein on the front. I wonder how long it will be before he’s selling the present currency with Assad’s picture on the front as souvenirs?

Up early and started at the southern end of the famous colonnaded street. It’s a kilometre long with over 300 pillars and the monumental arch is as delicate and finely decorated as anything you’ll see in Rome. The street was lined with shops and isn’t the usual bouldered Roman surface, but soft sand, as camels not carts were the trucks of the day. Every pillar has a statue of a senator, merchant, camel train owner or military figure. They clearly saw themselves as a power in themselves. But at one point the Greek and Palmyran inscription beneath the statue base has been defaced. This was Xenobia, who dared to defy Rome. The agora was similarly lined with pillars with statues perched halfway up on little stone platforms and in the hermitage Museum you can see the Tariff stele with the tax rates. It’s taxes that make cities rich and Palmyra was a crossroads, taxing traffic from everyone. The tetarpylon is the epicentre of this trade, and oval crossroads with four sets of four columns marking Palmyra as the centre of the eastern world at that time. The public baths fed by huge stone pipes gurgling with hot oasis water. The earlier Temple of Nabu, showing that this site had been around for a long time before it became rich. The perfectly formed theatre perfectly preserved beneath the desert sand. The stone benches for the senate still comfortable.

The Temple of Bel is the huge temple that lies at the end of the main street. It’s monumental. We walked round the perimeter before going in to get some idea of the scale. Even with much of the material reused by later Islamic defenders, the site is colossal. Surrounded still by palm trees, it’s the most important early Roman building in the Middle East. When you enter, the cella, looks dwarfed in the middle but as you pass the huge altar, it gets bigger and bigger. The steps, the surrounding colonnade of tall thin pillars, once capped with huge metal capitals (yes metal!), surround a cella with two niches and ceilings of fine astronomical and flowered designs. The entrance has reliefs, now on the ground, of camels and merchants in eastern dress. This is the east, they say, not Rome. The double colonnade round the temenus is enormous. So large that a double row of columns had to be used. Anyone visiting this site in the first or second century AD would have been blown away by the statement.

This monumental building in the Middle East is as strong today as it was then. The Gulf States, with their oil revenues (replacing tax revenues of the past) are being pumped into structures as tall and ornate as anywhere in the world. Huge hotels, museums, mosques, corniches are springing up from the desert. Revolts are not new; the crushing of those revolts by tyrannical power is not new, religious fanaticism is not new, martyrdom is not new. The Middle East is as fiery and productive a crucible as it’s always been.

The museum is well worth visiting, full of Palmyran limestone sculptures. The style is far from the grace and power of Greek and Roman sculpture, as it doesn’t have the chiselled sharpness, perfect curves and polished surfaces of bronze and marble. Most of the statues are funerary and formulaic; a sitting position on cushions, clutching olives, the dress not Roman but Persian. They have a peaceful and domestic charm. On the way out to Damascus, we went up to the Arab Castle. It’s all vertical lines on a conical rock.

Apamea

The cardus maximus is a pillared street that stretches as far as the eye can see. This rich city was famous for its horses and was for centuries an important Roman garrison. Here we were, all the way from Britain in Syria, but I was reminded of the Syrian Archers who found themselves garrisoned on Hadrian’s Wall. There’s a grave stone of just such an archer in Newcastle’s Museum.

Rasafa

In the middle of the desert lies this square rectangular Byzantine fort, with rows of towers along its still intact walls. Remarkably, when you get up close, you see that it’s made of crystalline gypsum, which would have shone bright white in the sun, with shards of light glancing off the angled crystal surfaces.

It grew around an original Roman garrison aided by the cult of Sergius, a Roman officer who was martyred for his Christian beliefs. As his cult grew, the town grew to handle the crowds. Justinian fortified the town against the Persians in 527-65, the walls we see today. Not for the first time, would a major centre arise in Syria around a cult figure. Martyrdom is still a feature of the Middle East. We were witnessing a revolution that started with a young man in Tunisia who burned himself to death, followed by young people in Egypt and now Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. I suspect, we’ll see many more as the weeks progress.

We entered through the main northern gate, a fantastic Byzantine arched triple gate with a courtyard in front. The stonework is outstanding, vine leaf capitals, pilasters and rose patterns. Again it’s a Syrian take, with eastern flourishes on classical forms. As you enter the whole site seems like a series of craters, actually dug by Bedu searching for artefacts, but here and there stand churches, arches and other structures. As you walk up the main N-S street you hit an odd circle-within-a-square church, a Syrian form, built in the early 6^th century. We climbed up a spiral staircase on the apse to get a better view of the site.

Further on is a dilapidated Byzantine caravanserai (Hotel and market) then the amazing cisterns. Water is what keept these towns alive and Rasafa has four colossal cisterns. You can view them from above, but we (me and the two lads) found a hole with some stairs and descended into complete darkness. It swung right and then, by crawling through a small hole, one could climb into the most southerly cistern. It’s literally the size of a small cathedral, tall arches soar above the flat bottom with openings at the far end, like windows where the water flowed inform the oasis springs outside of the town. It was wonderfully cool and even in summer, so the water must have been cold and refreshing.

Walk west and you hit the Church of St Sergius, the place that the pilgrims yearned for. Pilgrimage has long been a feature of religious life in this part of the world. The Christians came here in numbers to see site of the martyr Sergius and the actual, then site of, St Simeon. Today the Hadj is one of the pillars of Islam, but we saw pilgrims from India in the Grand Mosque of Damascus along with Shia Pilgrims in the same building. Christians, Jews and Muslims still visit this part of the world on pilgrimages, every bit a serious, and probably in far greater numbers.

It’s a standard basilica, with arched isles but the large arches have been filled in by smaller arches, probably due to earthquakes. Indeed the whole building seems to have been adapted over time, in response to needs and stresses. Earthquakes account for more damage to buildings than any raiders, apart from the Mongols. Yet the stone built buildings of Syria remain standing and in relatively good shape as they’re of simple but solid design. Block stone walls can flex, move and crack, taking the forces. Its roofs and arches that are at risk. A large Bema sits in the middle of the nave.

To the side of the church is a mosque. Churches adapted to become mosques are the norm in Syria, as Islam was, in most periods, respectful of Christianity. For a good account of this see William Dalrymple’s ‘Down From the Holy Mountain’. Mihrabs were often simply added to a wall within a church. There is little sign of desecration. Still today, it remains a country of some tolerance as Syria is a secular state with a large Christian population.

We had a picnic on a wonderful spot on the south west tower looking over the site in brilliant sunshine then a walk back across the site and around the walls via the small Ghassanid palace outside the walls, to get a sense of the scale of the place.

Rasafa is built as a fort, with its walls and fifty towers. As we drove round Syria we could see innumerable military sites, with tanks, gun emplacements and trenches. MIG fighters are propped up at the sides of major highways. This is a country in a semi-state of emergency at all times. These military establishments are the modern equivalents of the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic garrisons we’re seeing everywhere in Syria. Not for the first time have the people in this part of the world had to defend themselves from foreign-funded incursions and peoples from abroad. Whenever we passed a guard post I waved and in every single instance the guard waved back – who likes guard duty.

St Simeon’s Monastery

As we approached this site the yellow spring flowers had started to bloom on the grey limestone and as we climbed we saw the deserted towns that characterise northern Syria. This site, perched on a levelled hill was well chosen. There were lots of monastic aesthetes in Syria, at this time, who saw this life, and the body in particular, as something to be discarded and denied. The soul alone was the focus and suffering was willed and endured as a path to salvation. He buried himself up to his neck in summer, wore fur clothes, walled himself up then stood on a pillar for 37 years, a pillar that had to be raised as more and more people were drawn to him for advice. He wouldn’t speak to women, and even banned his own mother from visiting the pillar.

We have seen this form of sacrifice reverse over the ages to our modern obsession with the body as a form of earthly salvation. Keeping the body young, fit, tanned and even botoxed and reconstructed through surgery, is the modern equivalent. Our modern saints are the forever-young movie stars and celebrities. The Greeks has this right, I’m sure, with their healthy body and healthy mind; a matter of balance. Religion is always a distortion, an extreme imbalance in outlook, caused by the promise of something better, whether it’s reincarnation, the next life, paradise or heaven.

The basilica, built later to reinforce the Byzantine theological view, is stunning. Built on a levelled platform that looks out high across the valley, the site is stunning. A cruciform church with four arms, each with a nave and isles, all lead to the pillar, under a roofed octagon, now a single boulder denuded by souvenir hunting pilgrims. You have to keep reminding yourself that this is a fifth century church. It is in a remarkable state of preservation, a classical masterpiece. It’s really four basilicas all joined at their apses into a common point. The entrance is classical with lovely decorative features, and four arched windows framed in a meandering design.

The octagonal baptistery, which we walked down into, is stepped into a pool with steps on the other side to lead you out. It had to be designed to deal with numbers, a sort of drive through baptism service. We had a glass of pomegranate juice at the gate before departing. It’s good for thebody, apparently.

Damascus

The oldest inhabited city in the world, they say, but what you see now is largely Islamic and therefore post-8^th century. But let’s start with Straight Street, mentioned in the Bible; it follows the line of the original Roman decumanus. We walked its entire length and it ain’t straight but it is a thriving one way, car dominated shopping street. Beyond the Roman arch, in the Christian quarter, it feels different, with more women free from headdresses and shops selling alcohol (weird that we got this word from Arabic).

The highlight of the city is the Great Umayyad Mosque. Before wentering e popped into Saladin’s tomb, with its two graves, one the original, the other a diplomatic gift by the Kaiser Wilheim II who came to this part of the world in 1898. His legacy is this second grave and the railway. Once inside the mosque you can see one of the finest Islamic buildings in the world and remember that this was built in the 8^th century. It’s built on a pagan site that was used for the Roman Temple of Jupiter, which in turn was used to build a Byzantine Basilica inside the current walls. This in turn was carefully demolished and used to build the mosque on the south side. There’s no way that the Basilica was simply converted into a mosque as some guidebooks claim. First, the nave and isles are all the same width, not a feature of basilica design, where the nave is wider. Second, no basilica is this long and narrow. Third, the northern wall is not a wall but built as piered arches on pillars, not a feature of a basilica. Fourth, the southern entrance is blocked by a pillar. The congregational space is designed to be wide and shallow, as this points south. Islam is not like Christianity with its separate areas for its hierarchy of priests, aristocrats then peasants. Everyone is equal and the mosque is the great leveller. In the main area a large crowd of Indian pilgrims were standing and sitting at the side of John the Baptists shrine, while a young man read the Koran. They were brightly coloured in whites and flowered dresses and headdresses, very different from the women mostly dressed in black.

The courtyard is a sheet of cream coloured, polished marble, with a treasury atop eight roman pillars, an ablution fountain and the Dome of the Clocks. The west side shows what the whole colonnade must have looked like before earthquakes and fire caused so much damage; delicate pillars and a second arcade of pairs of pillars. The architect has taken all of the structural features from the Byzantine basilica and cleverly reused them to form a mosque and colonnaded courtyard. The green and gold mosaics are clearly Byzantine in inspiration and present Damascus, paradise or both. In the north east corner all the women were dressed in black as this site is holy to the Shia, as it was where Hussein’s head was placed after being sent from Kerbala.

Aleppo

We stayed in the Armenian area of the city, a labyrinth of medieval alleyways, locked iron doors with huge locks, hiding houses with courtyards, basements that can;’;t be seen from the outside. It’s a fortress mentality, born of centuries of political strife. Aleppo and Damascus have seen pogroms and religious attacks within living memory, so everyone has a B-plan.

Our Hotel was a merchant’s house with a two storey, open courtyard and rooms off this. It had been decorated in some style with wooden painted roofs full of cultural references. Our room had the Ugaric alphabet on the ceiling. The area had a multitude of churches, Syrian, Armenian, Greek etc., all reflecting schism that took place centuries earlier in this part of the world.

Christianity is particularly adept at dendritic drift. If there’s the last theological disagreement, it splits, and every split produces more splits. Of course, Islam is not without its own schisms. In Syria you have Sunni/Shia/Druze, Amarite, Sufi…. And these are not politically trivial. The Assad dynasty is Alawite a split from the Shia. They ruthlessly put down a rebellion by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in 1982 killing 25,000 people in the town of Hama.

Aleppo’s crown is its Citadel, a towering structure with a moat, shiny glacis and walled castle enclosing a huge area that protected the city from its many invaders. The entrance is a castle in itself, and inside, the Byzantine basilica was converted to a cistern. The Sultan’s palace is a room of cool marble and wood that looks out and down into the entrance.

The Grand mosque is similar to Damascan Grand Mosque with a large marbled courtyard and pillared gallery, though simpler and the present structure built later. At a much smaller mosque, Ken and I wandered in and asked if we could see inside, as the door was locked. Once inside, the mullah allowed us to look around. He was quite surly, until football was mentioned and he high fived us in front of the minibar on hearing the word ‘Celtic’. Weird!

The souks here are the real deal and unlike Istanbul or North Africa, no one hassles you to buy. They’ve been calmly selling here for centuries and are in no hurry. You really can see the metal worker hammer out his calligraphy onto brass plates and see the spice merchant pile his spices into shaped pyramids with coloured patterns down one side. We bought some Aleppo soap, olive oil and Laurel oil, matured for four years, brownish green on the outside, dark green on the inside.

As I was clambering over the internal walls, a complete class of Syrian schoolkids, around 9 or 10 years old cornered me and started to ask me where I came from and my name. They were delightful and full of questions, especially about football. For half an hour after meeting them I could still hear them call ‘How are you?’ across the site. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who visits Syria, comments on the friendliness of the people.

The Middle East has a huge demographic bulge with millions of young people that need jobs in the future. The pressure is already on, as the current crop have been behind the revolution we’re seeing grow day by day. But the challenge is enormous. Education is important, but an education based on rote learning and conformity to fixed texts has not served the Middle East well. A tradition of Koranic recitation and memorisation has led to pedagogic models that erode the individuality and critical thought necessary for entrepreneurship and innovation. Syria is now embarking on a new five year plan in education altering the curriculum to introduce more critical thinking and autonomy in learners. The task is enormous.

Krac des Chevaliers

You rise and rise and rise, until you catch a glimpse of the grey battlements. It doesn’t look that impressive and even when you get up close, it seems like just another castle. But just wait, for that’s what the Mamelukes thought when they tried to siege it. After three months they managed to break through the curtain wall, and what they faced next made them give up; a moat, huge thick walls and towers, machicolations, and a smooth glacis that is impossible to scale. What’s more, it’s built on solid basalt, so impossible to undermine. With a year’s supply of food, it took only 200 people to hold. They gave up and resorted to trickery, sending in a false note promising safe passage to the coast.

The entrance is all murder holes, switchbacks and traps. Inside it’s a small town, with stables for dozens of horses, a refectory for hundreds, the biggest oven you’ve ever seen, the great hall, barracks, olive oil storage jars, huge latrines and a chapel. A young lad sang beautifully in the Chapel facing the mihrab. It was a recitation of the Koran. It was a joy to walk around this pristine castle and feel the strength of the place. When there a storm came and blew rain against the walls. They shrugged off the weather and inside you would hardly have known it was raining, such is the secure nature of the place. The view over the Homs gap was great. What would it have been like to have been from France or Britain, having come this far and to hold this place? Never taken by force, this is, without doubt, the biggest, baddest and meanest castle ever.

The modern Crusaders, the Zionists, continue with an expansionist policy of settlement, driven by the same level of religious zeal. Like the crusaders they have come with military weaponry, funded and produced by the USA. Modern knights are Black Hawks and F16s. Successive crusades, are mirrored by waves of Jewish immigration from Europe, USA, Russia, Yemen, Ethiopia and so on. Their target has been Jerusalem. Israeli Wars in 48, 56, 67, 73 made the second half of the 20^th century as warlike as the crusader’s in the 12th century. The Golan Heights are more fortified now than they’ve ever been. The weapons have changed, some players are different, but the story is the same. From the castles and catapult sieges to cannons that made castles redundant, to rifles and now tanks, artillery and the ultimate nuclear arsenals. All does not bode well for this part of the world.

Saladin’s Castle

Originally a Byzantine castle, it was taken over and largely built by the Crusaders but taken by Saladin. Set on a spur between two wooded ravines it is in a wonderful site. You climb to the entrance and what faces you is more than astonishing. The spur has been cut straight through to isolate the rock upon which the castle sits. In fact, the removed rock was used to build the castle.

These crusader castles remind me of the Israeli settlements that sit atop rocky hills in Palestine. Walled up and heavily defended, they dominate the land for miles around. The Israelis, like the Crusaders used carefully selected sites, within line of sight of each other that could act as lines of defence in holding large areas of land. Hold the high ground and you own the valleys and plains.

Euphrates

The Euphrates dam was built with Russian help in 1968, at around the same time that Egypt’s Aswan Dam. Soviet style housing remains in the area but the blue water of the Lake looks great, apart free from even a single boat, fishing or leisure. I suspect they’re banned, for security reasons. The Euphrates is one of the great rivers of the world and when I flew over Iraq just two weeks ago, saw its meandering influence water and irrigate, through canals huge areas of the desert in Iraq. Similarly in Syria, although this time, we drove through the fields of wheat, maize, orchards, cotton and other crops.

War and trade are joined at the hip in the Middle East. As the trade crossroads of the world, countries could rely on levying taxes, still a huge revenue earner for Egypt on the Suez Canal. Now it is resources, namely oil. Another resource war is looming over water. The Euphrates Dam provides the electric heartbeat for Syria but the Euphrates supply has fallen by 30% making irrigation more costly. Jordan is in a perilous state as the Rive Jordan has all but dried up. The paradox is that future GDP must rely less on oil and more on tourism, industry and agriculture, which in turn need more water.

Modern Syria

To visit Syria is to learn a great deal about the Middle East and its problems. History has a great deal to teach us about how things are likely to evolve in this part of the world. Unfortunately, history tells us that we should not be too optimistic. The Middle East reveres Saladin but has been let down by its modern leaders, largely rapacious dictators who aggrandize their family and friends. This is what makes the current revolution, which is, uniquely, across almost the entire Islamic world, united by a common language and common grievances, such an interesting opportunity. If the next generation can provide leadership and unity, the future could be very different from the past. And what to say at the end of my journey? Good luck to Syria and its people - they deserve a break.

Day 7 (Top 10 tombs in Valley of the Kings)

2010-12-23T14:02:00.003Z

Final morning walk in gardens, birdwatching, a lounge by the pool, huge lunch and taxi to airport, one of those old Peugeots that pipe exhaust fumes straight into the car. The stood in queue next to a family who used to live on a street next to ours in Brighton.

Top 10 tombs in Valley of the Kings

Seti 1

Amenhotep II

Rameses IX

Mernpatah

Rameses VI

Thutmose

Rameses VII

Rameses I

Tausert/Setnakht

Tutankhamen

Day 6 (Top 10 Aswan sights)

2010-12-23T14:00:00.002Z

Day in the sun! Tennis at sunset. Then all 15 Brightonians went into town for a meal. Roll call: John, Ann, Jed, Phoebe, Ruby, Sean, Alan, Sarah, Rachael, Chloe, Dave, Mags, Ken, Gil and I. At one point the power failed and we all sang, rather sweetly, in the dark. Two sets of four took a calesh for the three kilometre ride back to the hotel. Great way to end a great holiday.

Top 10 Aswan sights

Abu Simbel

Philae

Aswan Dam

Elephantine Island

Nilometer

Nubian Museum

Granite Quarry

Aga Khan Mausoleum

Fellucca on Nile

Corniche

All achievable in a very long day from Luxor by taxi or train.

Day 5 Luxor (Top 10 tired jokes told to tourists)

2010-12-23T13:58:00.002Z

Walked the four kilometres into Luxor, and popped into Gaddis for a Book on Egyptian birds. I’m tired of failing to recognise the raptors and Nile birds I’m seeing through my bins. By chance we bumped into Judith and Colin, old friends from Brighton, who had just disembarked from a Nile Cruise. Then an afternoon birdwatching; seven kites picked off either fish or floating material from the Nile, bee-eaters nip on and off their perches for insects, swifts are on the wing all day long and a beautiful, brown buzzard flew in for a look around. Huge flocks of glossy ibis, with their curved beaks out front and long legs trailing behind fly up and down the Nile in V formation, especially at sunset.

What would Egypt have looked like in Pharonic times? Same birds, crocodiles along eth entire length of the Nile and hippos, even Lions and other cats in the desert, but no camels. No cotton, no tomatoes but more beer. A Nile with inundations, but a narrower arable strip, as the modern canals would not have existed, nor machine pumped water. Lots of scantily dressed people but fewer and fewer still of any real age. No electricity, therefore real darkness.

Into town for an excellent Pizza at Pizza Roma, owned by an Italian woman, and serving excellent wine (Sherezade) garlic bread, pizzas, pastas and home-made cake. The off for a drink with Judith and Colin, complete with chat to Sammy, the gay waiter, who arranged a cheap balloon trip for us all a couple of years back. Colin had a serious case of the flu on board and spent two days staring out of his window, sometimes almost hallucinating, as the Nile bank swept by.

Top 10tired jokes told to tourists

You like my Ferrarri?

Asda Price

Welcome to Alaska

How many camels for your daughter?

A tip for the horse?

I sell rubbish, but it’s very good rubbish

Enjoy the snow

Bloody Egyptians

I do you good price

No hassle, no hassle, really no hassle

Day 4 Lazy day (Top 10 obscure sites)

2010-12-23T13:55:00.003Z

Day of reading while lying in the sun. Loot by Sharon Waxman is the story of the European appropriation of objects from ancient civilisations, a much more complex affair than one would imagine, loaded with political nuance. The Great Belzoni by Stanley Mayes is a more detailed account of a major player, whose ‘loot’ can be found in the statue hall of the British Museum. Egyptian Pharaohs by Martin Howard is a straight chronological account Pharaoh by Pharaoh.

This story is matched by the modern clash of East and West, as Egypt’s monuments succumb to a tsunami of tourism. The numbers and pace of development are frightening but not matched by the care of the monuments by the government. The monuments and tombs, an irreplaceable resource, is being worked to death and falling apart due to breath, sweat and the physical wear and tear. The guardians earn only 400 E£ per month and supplement their income by allowing illegal photography and access to places beyond the barriers. The Russians, we were told, were the worst, regularly ignoring the prohibition on photography, touching the walls and even climbing over the railings (we witnessed this in the Valley of the Kings). Then there’s the modern day looting and smuggling.

Modern Egypt is in many ways disconnected with Ancient Egypt. Islamic education tends to dismiss everything before the 7^th century AD and the polytheistic beliefs of Ancient Egypt are an anathema to modern Islamic thought. The contrast is stark when one sees women in burkas or headdresses visit tombs where nakedness among ancient men and women is commonplace. If anything, this position may be getting more common, as young people adopt a more hard-line Islamic identity.

Hawass spends a great deal of his time fruitfully educating Egyptians about the heritage but perhaps too much time fighting for the repatriation of 18^th and 19^th century objects, rather than preserving what Egypt already has.

Top 10 obscure sites

Moalla

El Kab

Tod temple

Tiy’s Harbour

Mons Claudianus

Mons Porphyrus

Darian Temple at Kharga

Necropolis at Kharga

Desert rock paintings

Not for the feint hearted as many require long trips across and into deserts, but all wonderful and worthwhile.

Day 3 Cycling on West Bank (Top 10 temples from Luxor)

2010-12-23T13:50:00.001Z

Taxi to the Winter palace, then local ferry (10p) to the West Bank where we hired spanking new bicycles for the day (£2.50). Off past the statues of Memnon, where some of the party swanned past us in two taxis, then bought tickets for Roy and Shroy tombs. These are quite far north and not often visited. In fact we were the only people there. The colour in Roy’s tomb was that fresh vibrant look you only get in the tombs of the Nobles, as if it had been painted yesterday (due to the fact that the paint is mineral based and not organic). The tomb itself, with its door and rock face behind were depicted, along with the stela that would have stood in front of the entrance, now in the niche at the back. She was buried with her baby, both hearts being weighed on the scales against two feathers, which suggests she died in childbirth.

Our first visit to the newly opened Carter’s House, which was a real treat. They really have done a good job here, with lots of original furniture in his study, meeting room, kitchen, dark room, bedroom (separate one for Lord Canarvon) and a lovely domed vestibule with arabesque corners, all set in a manicured green garden. There’s lots of old photographs, but it’s that 1920s feel and sense of place that matters.

The off up the road to the Valley of the Kings, the only cyclists on the hot road round into the valley. This is the way to enter the valley, as you get a real sense of how secluded the site was and the grandeur of the surrounding limestone mountains. First, Merneptah, 13^th son of Rameses II, who came to the throne after outliving twelve of his brothers. Most notable were the scenes of decapitations and captives, as he had to deal with internal and external threats after the death of his warring father. At the far end of the valley is the tomb of Twosret and Setnakhte, Twosret was queen and ruled for only a year but her tomb was later used by Setnakhte. Then the tomb of Rameses IX, a typical Ramsean tomb with captives and decapitations. Cycled back to the ferry and caught the bus back to the Jolie Ville.

Dinner at La Fleur, a French restaurant in the grounds of the hotel. Our exertions eased by two bottles of Chateau de Reve, an OK bottle of Egyptian Cabernet Sauvignon, and sated by a full three courses of really fine food.

Top 10 temples from Luxor

Dendera

Abydos

Ramasseum at Abydos

Esna

Kom-ombo

Edfu

Tod

El Kab

Kharga Oasis (2)

All of these are achieveable on day trips from Luxor. Simply hire a taxi and off you go. Abydos and Dendera takes a full day. Esna, Kom-ombo and Edfu another very full day. Tod, Edfu and El Kab a day. Kharga Pasis, a very full day.

Day 2 Birdwatching, tennis & West Bank party (Top 10 free things to do in Luxor)

2010-12-23T13:40:00.003Z

Two fried eggs, made by the egg chef, sunny side up and eaten in the sun by the Nile (along with muesli, fresh fruit, pancakes, tomatoes and polished off with a chocolate croissant. Then off for some birdwatching, simply a walk around the island. It’s a birder’s dream with resident river birds (purple galungules, ibis, herons, kingfishers, plovers) and plenty of cover for green bee-eaters, doves, hoopoes and wagtails. Then the raptors, black-shouldered kites, two chasing off a much larger buzzard. Huge numbers of V-shaped migrant birds fly up and down the Nile, especially glossy ibis.

The hotel was quiet as lots of the rooms were out of action, due to renovations, so lunch by the pool and later, a game of tennis with Big Alan (chipped from a block of ice), his lovely daughter Rachael and the tennis coach. We were hampered by the mosquito spraying, so much that we could hardly see each other serve but once it cleared and the floodlights came on, we got into the zone i.e. Rachael and I playing second fiddle to the pros.

It was Jed’s 22^nd birthday so his dad, John, had arranged a river boat to pick us all up at 7.30 to go downstream to one of our old haunts Tutankhamen’s Restaurant on the West Bank (a fiver a head with soft drink thrown in – no alcohol). We walked the plank on to the Horus II, and set off down the black Nile, with Jed on the rudder. They serve superb spicy vegetable dishes such as spinach, green beans/potatoes, aubergines/courgettes, as well as a chicken/coconut/banana curry and roast chicken on rice. Dessert was the fantastically sweet om-aly. The whole lot was polished off by an ravenous set of travellers. The boat trip back was a hoot– Happy Birthday had to be sung, Phoebe (thesbian through and through) danced on the deck to Usher (to the amazement of our two boatmen) and Egyptian jokes were told. The winner, by Rachael, was, “Why do Egyptians not succumb to psychotherapy? Because they’re in denial!”

Top 10 free things to do in Luxor

Deir el-Medina - superb site

Mummification Museum Lectures - academic and free

Avenue of Sphinxes walk from Luxor Temple to Karnac

Monastery in desert on West Bank - unusual

Birdwatching on King’s Island - twitcher's paradise

Souk - hassle but fun

Television Street walk - real Egypt

Walk through West Bank villages - real rural Egypt

Coptic Church - calm and under siege

Mosques - cool, quiet and often beautiful interiors

It really is very safe to walk in and around Luxor and tehre's lots to see of you go off the beaten track.

Day 1 Luxor (Top 10 Luxor)

2010-12-23T13:26:00.003Z

First haggle of the holiday at Luxor Airport, for a taxi;

40 - no 100

50 and that’s it - no my friend is very far

walk away and look for another driver

OK 70 - no 50

I have to pay the police 10 – 60

60 -done!

Suitcase unsecured on the roof and off we go to the Jolie Ville round the back of Luxor, along the canal at dusk, through the village with its donkeys, huge haunches of meat hanging on hooks, dimply lit alleys and pipe smokers in cafes.

Dinner on the terrace overlooking the Nile under a starry sky as the fifteen people from Brighton trickle in. There’s three of us and another dozen from Brighton. We’ve all been here before, some of us many times in the fantastic Jolie Ville, a hotel set on a garden island in the middle of the Nile. It's peaceful, beautiful well-run and a fantastic base for seeing Egypt.

Top 10 things to do in Luxor

Karnak - huge temple, mindblowing

Luxor Temple - New Kingdom to Roman in centre of town

Valley of the Kings - descend into huge magnificent tombs

Medinet habu - superb Rameses III temple

Workers’ Village - insight into people who built the tombs

Tombs of the Nobles - intimate and stunning

Luxor Museum - truly exquisite collection

Valley of the Queens - more beautiful tombs

Mummification Museum - gruesome but fascinating

Ramesseum - magnificent ruin

Best way to see all of these? Start at Luxor temple then walk along the Avenue of the Sphinxes all the way to Karnac through the backstreets of Luxor, following the original processional way. Everything else, apart from the two Museums, is on the West Bank, and by far the best way of seeing theses is to cross by local ferry (10p), hire a bike (£1-£2.50 per day) and cycle round. It's safe and fun.

Qatar Doha: WISE Summit

2010-12-23T12:50:00.003Z

My second trip to Doha, this time for a summit on Education. This picture sums up my feelings about these gulf states. It's an uneasy clash between the modern and medieval worlds. A seventh century theological mindset in a 20th century oil-created state. No matter how sophisticated the image, the photographer is not free to be seen. To be fair there seems to be a genuine attempt at modernity, with Al Jazeera, a well-planned capital and successful World Cup bid. Qatar does seem to be trying to create an outward looking state, participating in the wider world. In this case, with the WISE summit, they are generous, sophisticated and participative.

Limousine from the airport to the 'W' hotel, which tries hard to be a celebrity come boutique sort of place, but falls between tacky and wacky. Rooms were nice though, and I was told I had Zinadine Zidane's suite on the 15th floor.

I've blogged at length on the summit itself on PlanB, needless to say, it was sunny, but as I was in largely in hotels, cars, restaurants and bars, not much to report on the travel front.

Lisbon Day 4 – Museums and Goan gaff

2010-09-24T12:10:00.002Z

Museo de Arqueologia

Breakfast with Ronnie, beneath the trees on the Avenue Liberdade, before he flew back to Scotland, then off on the 15 tram to Belem and the Museo de Arqueologia. Before taking the tram, we popped into San Domingo church, which retains its 1755 earthquake damaged interior. The tram stopped short as there was a military parade, so we walked the rest. Rather scrappy set of disparate rooms showing Egyptian, Bronze age and Roman artefacts. But good on Roman religion, really political accommodation of local Gods and cults. Rome seems healthily ambivalent towards religion, which served the purposes of the individual, family or state. It wasn’t really a force in itself, unlike the cant of the current Roman Catholic Church, which was all over the news. A good time to be out of the UK.

Museo Marinha

For a chronological history of Portugal’s maritime history, this is an ‘old-school’ museum that’s low on exposition but big on objects. It starts with Henry the Navigator, Cabral, Diaz, Vasco de Gama and Magellan – the great 15^th and 16^th century age of exploration. It conveniently ignores the murder and mayhem, but is strong on the ships, maps, navigation and trade. There was an interesting exposition on Somalian pirates, showing actual confiscated boats, guns and footage of the boats being intercepted.

Goan adventure

Lunch at the Restaurant Goa, where, after a long walk, we finally found the door of the restaurant in a quiet backstreet. Ken walked in, looked at the 20 or so Indian diners and asked for a table for two. Turns out he had walked into an Indian family’s home. They very kindly pointed us towards the restaurant’s entrance! Goan food is more ‘spice’ based, than ‘curry’ based. Lots of cinnamon, paprika, pepper and so on. After our lunch, we got a little lost but happened upon the Museo de Art Antigua.

Museo de Arte Antigua

Having come across this gallery by accident, we popped in out of the afternoon sun (hitting 30 degrees). The ground floor has a modest collection of European paintings with a room of Zubarin’s, a Bosch, Holbein and so on. On the first floor there’s ceramics and furniture, while the top floor has the huge, but quite wonderful tapestries, showing the Portuguese conquests in North Africa.

From here we ascended the steep hill to Estrela, where we caught the 28 tram which swept us back down into town , round the back of the castle and back to the centre. A last coffee was drunk sitting outside the tiled Pasteleria Aninciada.

All in all one of finest weekend the boys have ever had, and we’ve had a few. Looking forward to next year already!

Lisbon Day 3 - Gulbenkian, Castle, Cathedral

2010-09-24T12:10:00.001Z

Gulbenkian Museum

We walked up the Avenue Liberdade and through the Edward VII park to the Gulbenkian (Mr 5%). Worth the walk, as the collection is mighty impressive. The Egyptian room has a small but world class collection. The Greek coins were fascinating, really sculptural with big, bold, bossed heads. The Persian collection is held in a huge cool room in the centre, all low key geometrical design and ceramics. The French furniture was OK, but not to my taste, big, bulky and baroque. It reminded us all of the Burrell collection in Glasgow, which is housed in a similar low rise building set in a park. The modern art gallery in the same park had some horrific exhibition by a Portuguese artist.

Café de Versailles

A longish walk to one of Lisbon’s older chandeliered Cafes, where we had lunch and some cakes. Then back into town on the metro and tram 12 up to the lookout, where we had a beer, and a further hike up to the castle.

Castle and cathedral

This was one of the highlights of the trip. It was cool, the views were great and in the keep, a classical guitarist was playing some exquisite pieces, in his natural studio. We sat and listened for ages, then bough his CD, before catching the 12 down the hill to the Cathedral, a rather dull building.

Quayside meal

Tram 15 to a row of restaurants on the shorefront just beneath the huge suspension bridge. Ate at the Duca, and although the food was good, service was slow and the noise of the bridge traffic and nearby clubs was annoying. Old style tram 15 back into town.

Lisbon Day 2 - Trams, Belem

2010-09-24T12:09:00.002Z

For three days we used the old trams to get to the higher and more distant spots, or to simply sit back and get a cheap tour of the city. Recommend the 12 and 25 (as opposed to the busier 28). They’re single carriage, wooden structures with a driver cranking a big handle while it clanks and wheezes its way up almost 45% gradients, while hurling round corners and hammering down hills and along the straights. It’s alike being in a big, slow waltzer. Word of warning though, the 15 to Belem and 28 are infested with pickpockets. We had an iTouch picked from inside a zipped pocket inside a bag (these guys are good) and witnessed one successful and a second unsuccessful attempts. They work in pairs. Keep wallet in tight pocket or beneath clothes or in bum bag worn on front.

Monastiro Jeronimos

The church itself is a classic Gothic mini-cathedral, with Manueline decoration, which shines like icing sugar on the outside, but is more muted inside. The apse is a later addition and its marble structure is at odds with the rest of the building. It looks like a solid, marble conservatory, bolted on to the end of the nave. The more interesting part of the monastic complex is the cloister, a Manuelian confection, of soft creamy limestone that looked wonderful in the bright sunlight. It was a quiet and beautiful place to wander.

Torre de Belem

From there we walked down to the newish, brutalist monument and along to the altogether more interesting Torre de Belem. This was more than an effective defensive fort, it was a statement of power. Don’t mess with us, as we have the resources to blow you out of the water.

Tram 28

We took the famous Tram 28 which winds its way up and round the back of the castle, then back down to town, up to Estrella, where we disembarked and walked through the park to a small café beneath some cedar trees on one of Lisbon’s many hills, nest to the Museo de Agua. Lisbon has a museum for everything. Later, dinner of spicy chicken, sangria, followed by drinks in the bar near the hotel beneath the trees.

Lisbon Day 1 – Eat & drink

2010-09-24T12:09:00.001Z

Balmy first night with the ‘boys’ in Lisbon and straight off to the Casa O Alentejo, to eat pork & clams washed down with bottles of modestly priced, but quality, wine in a magnificent tiled room. It’s a no-nonsense, unfussy sort of place that serves great Portuguese food. Then walked up to the livelier Barrio Alto for some beers and chat til early hours. Lisbon’s a laid-back, low-key city and perfect for wandering around or taking a rickety old tram up its vertiginous streets. Sofitel proved to be good value at around £100 a night for five star luxury in centre of town. Taxi drivers rip you off from airport so take the Aerobus for 3.50 euros. It’s quick and easy.

Day 19 – Miami boating

2010-04-28T11:01:00.003Z

News – we’re on a flight this afternoon to Dallas, then London later that night but first our planned boat trip around Miami. What a glorious day – sunshine, calm water and our own boat to see the sights around Miami Beach and Key Biscayne. The homes were astounding – Matt Damon, Will Smith, Al Pacino, Gloria Estafan etc. But the sea itself was sparkling. We were out for a couple of hours before we had, sadly, to return to the airport.

Day 18 – Miami South Beach

2010-04-28T11:01:00.001Z

Driven to Stevie’s Crossfire Gym then down to South beach, all Art Deco hotels and that huge, white beach and calm, clear water. Walking along I noticed something familiar – a beautiful Italianate house with a stone entrance and black gate. I know that house. Sure enough, Alan said it was the Versace house, the very spot where he had been shot by his jealous lover.

Day 15 – Miami Mall

2010-04-28T11:00:00.005Z

Decided to make the best of it and headed off to eth Dolphin mall for a serious shop. Clothes galore. The place was huge with quite a few British refugees, showing the Dunkirk spirit by getting deeper into debt. No sign of an earlier flight.

I've been coming to the US since my teens and never really got the 'Mall' think until I was much older. I think it's the US version of the 'promenade'. Go to southern Europe and you'll see people walk (slowly) on set routes, along the seafront, up certain streets, chatting, stopping for an ice cream. As nobody walks anywhere in the US, the car has displaced the promenade to malls. The street has been recreated inside buildings. The mall promenade takes you past huge, glass shopfronts, the walk punctuated with little stalls and food halls. The outside has been created inside, you drive to take a walk. Note that I don't mean any of this pejoratively. I rather like the Mall promenade. What it does however, is squeeze out independent operators for a homogenised series of big names, so that every Mall in the US has become like every other Mall from Anchorage to Miami. Capitalism at its extreme end become commoditisation.

Day 17 – Miami Beach

2010-04-28T11:00:00.004Z

Picked up by Alan, Gil’s cousin’s driver, who drove us to their home and we settled into sitting by the pool, playing basketball (in the full size court) and sleeping in a four poster bed, one in which Michael Jackson had slept! Linda, Gil’s cousin was a fantastic host and couldn’t do enough for us.

We heard that Chris had got two Bot Flies, and were suddenly searching for pupae shapes under the skin on all parts of our bodies. These flies lay eggs and the grub grows to the size and shape of a straightened out prawn. You have to cut them out surgically, or entice them out by strips of streaky bacon, then grab their heads with tweezers and pull them out.

Day 16 – Miami Marriot

2010-04-28T11:00:00.003Z

There were no rooms at the Inn, so we headed to the airport and got vouchers for the Marriot. A bit of a disappointment so we decided to contact Gils relatives who live in a $35 million mansion on Miami Beach. This volcano was coming up trumps – every cloud has a silver lining!

Day 14 – Miami Inn

2010-04-28T10:59:00.000Z

We set off by boat for Belize City, then to the airport, where we were told that our flights to Miami were OK but once there we had to hole up in a hotel until further notice. On landing in Miami, we headed for the transfer desk and were faced with the truth, that we had no chance of leaving soon. Iceland had lost its cash and was now blowing out ash. This country was stating to annoy me!

American Airlines were pretty good and found us a hotel (one I requested) for $70 per night, including breakfast but no flights until Friday, via Raleigh! So we found the hotel, after waiting for two hours as an airport employee had phoned the wrong hotel requesting the wrong bus three times (Hampton Inn and settled in for our stay (2 nights)). Nice Italian meal in a quiet part of town and some welcome sleep.

Day 13 – Caye Caulker – sharks, rays & turtles

2010-04-28T10:58:00.004Z

Today was the big snorkel trip, again at three sites. But the main attraction was Hol Chan Marine Reserve – a fantastic coral site with rays and fish galore. Then Shark Alley, a gap in the reef where we swam with sharks, turtles, rays and huge groupers. The currents were quite strong but with fins, you could get around quite easily. The density of fish here is astonishing, and they’re not shy, as they’ve been fed. The feeding ahd to stop at one point as they were becoming too aggressive. As I was swimming I wondered what ‘too aggressive’ meant? We returned via round the back of the island and stopped at the entrance of an underwater cave, where about a dozen huge Tarpon swam, then back to the dock.

At night, after our final dinner at Marins, we wandered down to a bar that had Garafuni drummers. On walking home a tremendous tropical storm struck. The lightening lit up the entire seascape as if it were day and forks came crashing down onto the island the sea and between clouds. This was a great send-off show. We sat on the balcony and just watched. Unfortunately, thousands of miles tomthe north another natural phenomenon was kicking off – a volcano.

Day 12 – Belizzimo: Caye Caulker

2010-04-28T10:58:00.003Z

Snorkelling trip to the reef, at three different sites. At the first we saw a ray, moray eel and lobster but the coral was the star. At the second we had huge numbers of rays swimming right below us. There were so many that it seemed a little unreal. Finally, a snorkel along the reef.

Dinner at the rainbow on a dock over the sea, where we bumped into Tim, an American we had seen at San Ignatio, ATM and Tikal.

Day 11 – Belize City

2010-04-28T10:58:00.001Z

Driving into Belize City was like driving into a third world country. Crack cocaine is rife and unemployment stands at 25%. It looks like a bad episode of The Wire, positively menacing. Jeremy Paxman describes it as a place”where all the painters and decorators left on independence”. He has a point. The buildings are ramshackle, apart from the colonial mansions in one small area.

Our hotel was an old colonial hospital, with a great view of the sea, creaky floors and old worn carpets. It was badly in need of renovation. Compared to the beautiful buildings in the streets surrounding it, and a hotel called The Old House, it was pretty run down. Nevertheless the food was fine.

The next morning we caught a packed water taxi to Caye Caulker. It’s three huge outboard engines were deafening. On arrival we walked down to our hotel at the south end of the island – quiet, with its own beach, hammocks and dock. Straight in for a swim off the dock in the warm water. Gil spotted a rare Batfish, with it’s long snout, wings and fins for feet – weird looking thing. Lunch at Marins and a slow day with beach volleyball at around five. Caye Caulker’s a chilled, quiet place. No rush. Dinner in a reggae bar with pizzas, pina coladas (fresh coconut juice and pineapple).

Day 10 – Tikal

2010-04-28T10:57:00.002Z

Woken at sunrise by the howlers roaring ate each other, then off for a dawn walk to see the early morning wildlife. Saw a troop of XXXXs, YYYYs, a crocodile and so many birds, especially the ZZZ. Racine got a shot of a Bat Falcon taking a Parakeet on the wing, She just raised the camera and got it, right above our heads. I came back to wake Gil but the monkeys were raining fruit down on the metal roof of our room. It sounded like grenades going off.

Monkey puzzle

New world monkeys such as Howlers, Spiders and Capuchins (named after the friars), are a bit of a puzzle. How did they get here? Turns out their genetic markers suggest a fork in the evolutionary tree after S America had drifted away from Africa. The current theory is the ‘raft’ theory, where a 13 day journey allowed the first primates to cross the then smaller Atlantic Ocean.

Museo Tikal

Just enough time to visit the one room museum, and what a find. The stelae are in pristine condition, the glyphs clear and there’s a tomb wit a complete skeleton and tons of jade and obsidian surrounding the bones. Then there’s a fine collection of chocolate cups, enema pipes, bone skewers for blood letting and pots. If you’re thinking of buying a book on the Maya, I highly recommend The Maya by Michael Coe, a detailed and scholarly chronological treatment from the Yale Professor that has plenty of detail. I was also recommended A Forest of Kings by Linda Schele and David Freidel, but found it s a bit too speculative.

Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Centre (http://www.belizezoo.org/)

Even if you’re no fan of zoos, this place is a revelation. It rescues animals and has a real conservation ethos. We spoke to the owner, Sharon Metola, while she was feeding a huge endangered Harpie Eagle with raw meat from her hands. With no government funding she relies on tickets, donations and her shop. She’s done lots of work for BBC Radio4 and is a DJ on a weekly rock show. It was all about getting an emotional bond between the kids and the animals so that they don’t throw stones or kill them. She was, apparently. A lion tamer in a previous life. We also had the privilege of speaking to a fascinating German, who had sat in front of the Jaguar compound for two whole days taking pictures of this graceful cat. He gives presentations on endangered species, especially the Jaguar, and was on a mission to stop the habitat loss and monoculture of Palm Oil – the greatest immediate threat to the natural world, in his opinion (http://www.wildlifephoto.de/). He also laid into Chinese medicine, claiming that many endangered species are hunted and sold to Chinese dealers and tourists, who have crazy ideas about analogous shapes (rhino horns and erections).

The zoos enclosures back right onto the jungle, giving it a real habitat feel, although in the real rainforest, it would take you years to see these rare animals. The cats (Jaguar, Ocelot, Cougar)

Day 9 – Guatamala Mayan site: Tikal

2010-04-28T10:57:00.001Z

Into Guatemala via a border post that demands a couple of sly dollars in each passport then a road that passed an endless number of Mayan mounds. At one point the road cut straight through a Mayan Temple revealing the steps like a cutaway drawing. The ancient population count has been upped recently as they’ve discovered dwellings between the mounds (previous estimates relied on mound counts). This is a poor part of Guatemala, and we see loads of guys on horseback and houses with separate thatched kitchens.

We dumped our stuff in the hotel and headed off for the Tikal site, stopping for lunch in a residential Mayan building on the east side of the site. Tikal’s sense of place comes from its position in the centre of a rainforest. The surrounding trees crowd in on the grey limestone buildings and when you climb one, you see the tips of others poke above the canopy of trees. The sheer size of the place makes it difficult to get a clear picture of the entire site. All around, parrots squawk, coloured birds roost and wild turkeys strut across ancient plazas. Then there’s the monkeys, howlers sitting feeding then roaring like lions. Spider monkeys swinging with tails, legs and arms. Causing the branches to swish. A very special sight was the beautiful Indigo Buntings in the evening sun against the limestone.

We stopped in complex Q & R with its seven sets of ‘twin’ pyramids to mark the end of a period of 20x360 day years. The replica of the stelae shows the last king of Tikal in full headdress.

We climbed the huge temple (IV) at 64m bult in 741 AD. The views of the surrounding jungle are astounding and only the tips of the other tall temples are visible. Then down to the Great Plaza, where the magnificent Temples II and I face each other , stepped 44m pyramid with nine levels, and a room with a comb on top. It is perfectly proportioned, tall and graceful. We climbed Temple I, a mere 38 m, and enjoyed watching the evening light in the plaza. Tn off to the huge acropolis complex at the back of which were four wild turkeys and a lone Howler, enjoying some fruit.

After this we headed back to the Plaza of the Seven Temples, where we saw parrots, a spider monkey and climbed the 32m Great Pyramid. We sat here until sunset, then asset off for a night walk in the jungle. Walking down the trail, fireflies spun across our path, Callum spotted a frog and a pair of cat’s eyes shone from behind the trees.

Cultural archaeology

Our guide in Tikal was a sophisticated and knowledgeable man, who saw in archaeology a series of imported cultural perspectives. In the post-war period it was all internecine warfare and sacrifices, in the sixties, hallucinogenic drugs and communing with gods, and in these days, climate change and environmental catastrophes. You can’t get into these sites on 23^rd December 20112, as all places are booked by whacko, apocalyptic groups gathering for the end of days. He was in favour of a more complex and pluralistic explanations, with a focus on Mayan beliefs and cosmology.

Mayan dualism

Now here’s a thing. I had read the Hero Twins myth, and having twins with me (my sons) started seeing twin phenomena in many of these sites. There were twin temples with twin masks, twin ballcourts in which twin teams enacted (perhaps) the Hero twins’ myth. Mayan glyphs are read in pairs and their metaphysics was dualistic with a real world and other word, accessed through drugs, taken orally or anally (enema tubes are commonly found in tombs and pictured on pots). This was never mentioned by any of the many guides we had on this tour or in any museum.

Them stones and stones….

What’s strange about these Mayan buildings, even in cleared sites, is that you can wander right up to one without noticing until you’re almost climbing the slope. They’re sort of cloaked in vegetation and leaves making them invisible. Then you see a dressed stone, look up and see the symmetry in the hill and a shouldered level.

It’s easy to forget that this was a stone-age culture. They built these skyscrapers using stone tools from the only stone available, the ubiquitous limestone. Their ornamentation was green jade, valuable items glassy, black obsidian and asymmetric flints. Metals, such as gold, were rare, but not valued. There were no readily available ores or alluvial metals.

Day 8 - Mayan cave: Actun Tunichil Muknai

2010-04-28T10:55:00.002Z

After a drive up a river vakkey, apst tree plantations, corn and many Mayan mounds, we started our hike to Actun Tunichil Muknai, or the ‘cave of the stone sepulchre’. After three river crossings, our feet were thoroughly soaked but this mattered nought, as we were about to get as soaked as I’ve ever been. The entrance to the cave is a tall triangle withg a turquoise pool of deep water that fades into the darkness. We swam into the cave, and boy it was cold, then clambered up the rocks on the other side of the pool inside the cave, where a huge spider sat on the rock, as of guarding its entrance. We then plunged waist deep back into the water and for the next hour clung to the sides, waded, squeezed through cracks, avoided sharp rocks, climbed, clambered and slid over up and down rocks. The cave was only discovered in 1986 and deep inside after a climb you enter the final cathedral size chamber that contains, not only stunning formations but dozens of deliberately, broken pots, skulls and skeletons. The final site, after squeezing up a further crevice and ladder, is the skeleton of young women, who may have been slain/sacrificed here, as a stone weapon lies nearby. It’s an eerie sight as she lies lit by our head torches. It was wondrous just to enter this place and wonderful to have been allowed into such a fascinating site that is more than archaeological – it was a pilgrimage into the beliefs of an ancient culture.

Day 7 – San Ignacio

2010-04-28T10:55:00.001Z

Mayan site: Cahal Pech

Up at 5,30am to visit Cahal pech; on my own. It’s not often you get an entire Mayan site to yourself swathed in an early morning mist. Entering rooms, lying on ancient Mayan beds and just sitting on the steps of an empty plaza surrounded by great architecture, then walking trough an empty ballcourt, where who knows what games were played, with what consequences, is what I came here for. Sometimes, being alone gives you more time to look carefully and reflect on what you’re seeing. In tis case it was some of the detail of Mayan architecture; the intimacy of the plaza enclosed entirely by buildings or the simplicity of the small ballcourts, that suggest something other than the drama of a murderous game. You enter the place through the woods then enter a packed set of buildings full of corbelled rooms and passages that lead from one complex to another. There’s even a stepped corbelled staircase and stucco drainage pipes from the high temple into the plaza. The site guardian arrived just as I was leaving which gave me the opportunity to pay and walk round the small museum.

Mayan site: Xuantunich

We crossed on an old wooden ferry that was hand cranked using fixed cables across the Mopan River then up a steep road past a three doored residential building with beds, one with a stone pillow, a room with a view, to an artificial platform and the Xuantunich site dominated by El Castillo. We climbed the 40 metres up the huge temple and had a great view across the entire site and the jungle beyond. Parts of a complex frieze were visible. These are vertiginous places, with acutely steep steps and narrow unprotected tops. One mistaken step backwards for a photo and you’re off and dead. This was happening with disturbing regularity at Chichen Itza, so most of the high temples are closed off, but half the fun of these more remote sites is the dangerous climb. Other side and across to an unexcavated mound, stopping to chat with the two soldiers on duty to protect tourists. They were bored and left their guns lazily on the bench. We then passed through the ball court and climbed the palace temple. I took a route across the three buildings on the right hand side of El Castillo. This was a quiet and beautiful place.

Mayan Wheel debate

Bruce, our knowledgeable guide at Xuantunich, started by showing us some pottery that he claimed was wheel turned, his opening gambit in an attempt to prove that the Mayans had the wheel. His arguments were as follows; the evidence for pottery wheels, toys found with wheels and circular nature of Mayan calendar. However, against this is; the lack of images on pots and paintings, no wheel ruts or compaction on roads, o pack animals therefore less need, no actual examples of wheels in graves or elsewhere. On balance it seems unlikely.

Mayan Ballcourt debate

Why are the ballcourts so small? Why is there no room for spectators? Why do they often come in pairs? Why are the markers of such religious significance? I concur with Bruce who sees these sites as ritual rehearsal areas for symbolic ballgames, mimicking the trial of the hero Twins , who defeated the gods of the underworld in a ballgame. It’s a sort of moral trial, like the Egyptian weighing of the heart. The ritual use is confirmed by the discovery of a pot of mercury under the central marker at Lamina. You can see how archaeologists are tempted into sensational hypotheses such as fights to the death, with the winners being sacrificed through decapitation or the games being used to settle inter-territorial disputes, but it’s all a bit fanciful.

Mennonites

After lunch we travelled through a rough road valley occupied by Mennonites. Their plain wooden farms were like Little House on the Prairie structures and we passed , first an ox-pulled cart driven by a typical bearded man with rolled up shirt sleeves and the usual black trousers held up by braces (or ‘suspenders’ as our US cousins would say). Later, in Miami, I’d be caught cold by a description of Larry King in his ‘suspenders’ (which in England attack black nylons to panties). Another from of transport is a single horse buggy, like a car, that takes a family of four and some goods in the back. We passed a couple of these, with the Walton-like kids smiling and waving and mother looking severe. Finally, there’s a smaller buggy for tow or three people on a single seat. It was like coming across a lost valley or huge film set.

These pacifists, hounded from country to country, were invited into Belize in 1958 to provide agricultural expertise. They now supply 70% of Belize’s food on land leased from the government. Founded by a Dutch Priest in the 16^th century it moved to Switzerland, Prussia the US then south to Mexico and Belize. They’ve now moved further into S America into Bolivia. They’ve split into modernists and old timers, depending on their attitude towards technology such as tractors and cars. It’s a strange, anachronistic sight to see these men dressed like cowboys and women right out of a 19 century costume drama, ride around in little horse drawn carriages. I saw them everywhere, in supermarkets, on the water taxi to Caye Caulker, in restaurants, on the rivers, climbing temples, on the roads and on their farms, and it was always odd seeing them juxtaposed with the multitude of black and brown Belizeans.

Mayan cave: Barton Creek Cave

We climbed into canoes and entered the darkness of Barton Cave across a pool of deep, jade-greenwater. Within seconds we were the darkness of the cave, finding bats in roof cavities – their urine dissolves the limestone and creates holes in which they roost. But ut was the stalagmite and stalactite formations that rose, dropped and billowed from the caves sides, roof and floor. At one point we had to lie back flat in the canoe and paddle under a curtain of stalactite to make progress. Carl actually got his canoe stuck on a stalactite which was inside of back of the boat anchoring him to the spot. At the back of the cave, 1600m in, we switched our headlamps off and couldn’t see a centimetre in front of our faces. A skull and pots were visible on the ledges as this was a ‘place of fright’ for the Mayans, where they came to sacrifice and perform ceremonies for rain. These were the entrances to the underworld for the Maya, and not places of fun. The journey back was just as interesting our headlamps showing the bottom in crystal clear blue water, then the tiny glimpse of daylight that gradually turns into a greenish then bluish light at the entrance. On the way back we could see the Mennonites hard at work, as the good book decrees.

Day 6 – Cockscoomb Basin & Blue Hole

2010-04-28T10:54:00.000Z

Day 6 – Cockscoomb Basin & Blue Hole

Breakfast at a Mayan village at the entrance to the Cockscoomb Basin Park, a refuge for wildlife, especially the endangered Jaguar. The little shrine round the back showed that the modern Mayan’s have fused their old beliefs with Catholicism. After breakfast we headed off up the mountain in the humidity and heat. Within a few minutes we had spotted an anteater up a tree on the trail, a rare sight. The walk then ascended up a trail past a waterfall to the top of the hill, and although it was draining (we dubbed it they Death March) it was a fantastic view across the entire basin. We stopped at the pool and waterfall, halfway down for a refreshing wade. Gil was to suffer the next day from mild heatstroke!

Blue Hole

Next stop, the Blue Hole, on the Hummigbird Highway, a cenote where an underground river bubbles to the surface and re-enters a cave just 50 yards round the bend. The water was deliciously deep, blue and cool. We also stopped for lunch at Chris’s local restaurant (guess what rice beans and chicken). By this time we were rather enjoying this staple, even ordering it when there were other things available. When Paul joked that he thought he was allergic to something, Carl quipped that “it would be savage if it were rice and beans!”

Day 5 – Placentia

2010-04-28T10:53:00.003Z

Laughing Bird Key

A boat ride out to Laughing Bird Key for two snorkel trips round east then west sides of the island. This is a tiny desert island with pristine white sand, coral, rays and fish. We stayed until almost sunset. Here we saw our first rays, lobster, green moral eels and lots of fish. Lunch was – you’ve guessed it; rice, beans and chicken.

Languages

Although English is Belize’s first language, and widely understood, I rarely heard it spoken. The language I heard the most was the wonderful Creole. Chris would drop into this when dealing with the locals, or Spanish which eh also spoke fluently,, but it was the Creole that caught my ear with words and bits of words that were familiar, rooted as it is in English. The local newspapers had Creole articles and signs were sometimes written in comic Creole. 70% of Belizeans speak Creole, which has its roots in native American language, languages from the West coast of Africa, and English. Lots of the words drop the consonant so end in vowels ‘R’s are often deleted and the grammar is different, making the language sound clipped but familiar. Spanish is also widely spoken along with Mayan languages.

Day 4 – Mayan site: Altun Ha

2010-04-28T10:53:00.001Z

Central America and corruption

On the way to our next Mayan site at Altun Ha, near the coast, Chris explained that this stretch of road had seen a jet land, full of cocaine. The government impounded and sold the jet but the drugs and the people disappeared. It showed the level of corruption in these countries. The current Prime Minister has literally monopolised the telecommunications industry and appointed relatives to the board. Drug trafficking is causing real problems with crack cocaine a menace on the streets of Belize City, where the murder rate is rocketing. While on Caye Caulker, the news reported a plane that had ditched off an island with a tourist resort closed for the season. There was no real explanation for the identity of the pilot, where the drugs had gone and do on. While in San Ignatio, a bus had been hijacked by two Guatemalans, one with a handgun, another with a live grenade. They had robbed the passengers, then the gun jammed and the passengers stabbed one assailant to death, the other escaped across the river to Guatemala. This took place on the same road we used on the same day.

Guatemala itself has a history of brutal repression and genocide, especially of the native population. This was bravely revealed by a Maya woman called Rigoberta Menchu who won the Nobel Prize for Peace. The whole country is run by only six families and has a terrible human rights record, as has the US in branding every attempt by the poor to fight back as ‘terrorism’ by ‘guerrillas’. At a local level, we all had to pay an illegal $2 tax when entering the country, which goes into the pockets of the local police! You simply tuck it into your passport.

On the subject of corruption, Belize is best known in the UK for the infamous Lord Ashcroft, largely known as a crook in these parts. He has a past in dodgy business dealings and a 30 year tax exemption in Belize as well as lying about his non-dom status in the UK. Spending his tax savings on swinging an election in the UK and lying about his intentions make him a criminal in my eyes. He also imposes ridiculous charges on banking services in Belize – for example, 17% commission on exchanging Euros to Belize Dollars.

Altun Ha

Our guide at ALTUN Ha was a hoot, deadlocks and a huge amount of enthusiasm unfortunately not matched by his knowledge of the site. He saw the Mayans as having died out through over-sacraficing themselves – novel but wrong! He then got the dates of most of the temples wrong and had never noticed the marks indicating a structure in the middle of the plaza. However, he was great fun, especially when comparing Copal to cannabis!

This is an interesting site in that it lacked stelae and seemed to be a trading town, acting as a distribution point from the coast to the interior. Unlike most other sites it may not have relied so much on agriculture and was occupied for around 1200 years. It has about 500 buildings, We did a clockwise loop of the site climbing the Temple of the Green Tomb (550 AD), ending on the largest temple in the complex, where the famous Jade Head was found.

Shaking your booty in Belmopan

We then drove to the capital Belmopan, where we visited the Parliament building, which looked like an Eastern European slum. We did, however, have a very nice lunch; rice, beans, chicken and fish, in a local restaurant, and bought a Punta CD and some coconut cakes. If you have never heard of Punta, it’s dance music that needs the independent control of each buttock muscle, otherwise known as ‘shaking your booty’.

Hummingbird Highway

Then off to one of the most beautiful drives in Central America, the Hummingbird Highway, famous for its citrus industry. Indeed, there were two Tropicana factories alongside the road. But it was the birds and forest that made the drive so beautiful. Dense forest, occasional Cortes Trees, blooming for only four days in an intense yellow bloom. We stopped at Chris’s house, surrounded by trees he had planted, his dogs, chickens and river at the foot of the garden. His little blue house was a gem, and after a beer in the local restaurant, we were on our way to Placencia.

Placencia

This long peninsula was being redeveloped and at one stage the Macmansions were a hideous reminder of what tasteless drug money brings. A casino was half built and looked like hell. However, the original peninsula communities, such as the Garifuna village of Seine Bight, was dirt poor and with an African looking population, very different from other villages. We then passed Scorcese’s hotel as we were bound for the less luxurious Seaspray Hotel, where I was offered cannabis within five minutes of arriving! We ate Tacos and fish at a fish restaurant the first night then prawn curry at the De Tatch restaurant the second.

Day 3 – Mayan site: Lamanai

2010-04-28T10:52:00.000Z

We drove to pick up a boat to Lamanai, the beautiful Mayan site on a lake. On the trip up a river with jungle on either side, we stopped to see humming birds (nest on very tip of a branch over the river), Boat Billed Herons and a small croc. We passed a couple of Mennonites fishing, who nodded, but weren’t keen on attention.

First thing we did was trek up to the old sugar mill behind the site, a British effort with a huge iron steam engine, still in place, being strangled by vines. The bricks came as ballast in ships from London and the iron parts from New Orleans. The enterprise was a failure but you’ve got to admire the reach and bravado of these hardy entrepreneurs. ‘Abroad’ is strictly for holidays these days and there’s something to be said about Britain’s loss of ambition. Chris, our English guide, originally from the Midlands, has set up home with his wife and child in Belize and is making a go of replanting part of the rainforest. In addition to be good humoured, he was brimming with knowledge and devoted to conservation.

And so to Lamaiai. This was what I was most looking forward to, the archaeology. This site was occupied for 3000 years until the 16^th century and has more than 700 mapped structures. Archaeologists moved from foot to plane and now to infra-red from satellites to plot these sites. The limestone buildings leech limestone into the surrounding vegetation which creates different intensities from the leaves. These allow you to use satellite images to find new sites.

Climbing that first Mayan pyramid was thrilling –the Mask temple, a 6^th century structure with stucco masks on both sides, representing the ruler/sun God Kinich Ahua. The structure has several smaller temples entombed in the structure going back to around 100 BC – so it has a 600 year provenance!

Three Mennonnite girls were climbing the second pyramid with us and were shy and dressed in 50s looking dresses below the knee, hats, hair nets and nylon pop socks with sensible shoes. We also saw a family, who looked for all the world like the Waltons, stroll through the ruins. They are a constant presence in Belize – but more of them later.

Then round past the ancient dock to the High Temple or El Castillo, 115 feet high, dating back to 100 BC. The view from the top across the forest and lake is stunning and we could hear the howler monkeys roar. Then through the ballcourt and residential buildings and down to the museum, with some fine pots, stelae and eccentric flints. This site lasted longer than most for the Maya due to its remote location and supply of water from the lake.

Mayan Collapse

A good account of the Mayan decline is in ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond. Diamond uses the collapse of the Maya as a primary example of his multiple-cause theory and devotes an entire chapter in his book to this case. Unlike the other cases in his book, he feels that the evidence is very strong and the society that collapsed was large. Four of his five causes were at work; 1) Environmental damage (deforestation and erosion), 2) Climate change (droughts), 3) Hostilities (internecine warfare), 4) Political/cultural fixity (Rulers short-termism). His fifth criterion is ceasing to trade but he puts less emphasis on this with the Maya.

1) Environmental damage (deforestation and erosion), This is a seasonal tropical forest with a dry season and unpredictability on rainfall, along with regular hurricanes. As maize was the staple food, swidden agriculture (slash and burn) meant rapid deforestation and erosion from hillsides. David Webster showed that in the 8^th century the sediment on valley floors indicated severe erosion from deforestation, which in turn was used as fuel and for burning limestone to create lime for plaster. The creation of the cities themselves seemed to an act of self-destruction. They had no pack animals for transporting food or ploughing fields, no metal, couldn’t store food for more than a year in their humid climate. Maize, moreover, has considerably less protein than wheat or barley.

2) Climate change (droughts). The lowland Maya in the Yucatan had cenotes and access to water but in the karst country in the highlands they had to build plaster-lined reservoirs. At Tikal, this could only support 10.000 for 18 months, making them vulnerable to drought. Recorded droughts, as measured by sediment analysis of oxygen isotopes, show droughts in 600 AD, 760 AD (2 yrs), 810-820 AD (10 years) and 910 AD (6 yrs).

3) Hostilities (internecine warfare). Warfare was endemic and brutal, with religious and ruling class motives behind some truly brutal practices, such as pulling out fingernails and teeth, cutting off lips, cutting off the lower jaw and trussing captives up in a ball and throwing them down the stairs of temples. This was limited to city state like disputes as they couldn’t transport food far enough for distant campaigns.

4) Political/cultural fixity (Rulers short-termism). With leaders who promised rain and the continuation of prosperity through blood letting, droughts took away their legitimacy. The last monument at Tikal was dated 869 AD. Their short-termism meant not building relevant infrastructure or sustainable agriculture or sustainable agriculture or innovation.

When Cortez arrived in 1524/25 there were only 30,000 and he could barely find enough villages to obtain food. Diamond sees parallels in the US where the rich elite are doing all they can to preserve their own lifestyles at the possible expense of a sustainable future.

Day 2 – Belize City and Crooked Tree

2010-04-28T10:51:00.000Z

Few could accurately identify Belize on a map and fewer still say much about the country but it’s a hidden gem. With two teenage boys in tow, we were looking forward to a holiday where we were on the move with lots to do.

The flight from Miami flew down the east side of the keys, a huge, long splatter of islands and turquoise sea. After flying right over Key West we skirted the west side of Cuba and hugged the Yucatan coast eventually spotting the enormous barrier reef, a thin white line of breaking waves.

Belize City airport was delightfully old-fashioned with customs officials behind old wooded desks and a bit run down. It still had the air of an old British colony, which Belize was until 1981. Its population, at 300,000, is just a little more than my home town of Brighton and Hove.

Within seconds of leaving the airport we had spotted a Vermillion Flycatcher a bright red and black bird on the airport security fence and at our first stop for lunch were treated to howler monkeys at Bermuda Landings, a river crossing where we also saw a ton of birds. Chris, our guide explained that there were lots of Scots’ names in the area as it had been colonised by Scottish loggers, who were after the wood that provided indigo dye. A troop of howlers had been befriended by a local man and these normally shy primates, who keep very much to the canopy, came down to feed from our hands.

We then headed off for Crooked Tree Lodge, a clapperboard hotel bang in the middle of a huge wildlife reserve. The lake out front was packed with birds, including the famous Jaburu Stork standing at five foot tall. Wood storks, egrets, ibis, herons, cormorants, vultures, sandpipers, ospreys, snail hawks – there were thousands of birds here, especially as this was late in the dry season and the waters had shrunk, concentrating the fish. We went for a long walk in at sunset, along the lake edge and spotted some recent cat tracks in the mud. Belize has Jaguars, Ocelots and other cats in the wild and a couple had clearly come to the water’s edge for a drink. That night we went out for a night watch and spotted Nightjars, hawks, bats, spiders and a porcupine up a tree.

Then a big meal of rice, beans and chicken washed down with the local Belikin Beer and some Cashew Nut wine. But the highlight for me were the humming birds in the garden the next morning, hovering stock still while they drew up their nectar, in iridescent green and red. They have to feed every twenty minutes and have a heartbeat of 1200 per minute. Truly astonishing creatures.

Birds of Belize

One of the great joys of this country is the birdlife. We saw humming birds, parrots, macaws, hawks, vultures, egrets, cormorants, frigate birds and the endangered Jabiru Stork. Everywhere we went we saw new species, helped by our brilliant driver and guide (Sylvino and Chris). It also helped to have two expert birders in the group (Stan and Racine). This lot could spot a sparrow at half a mile.

To give you some idea of their prowess, Sylvino spotted a rare Pootoo while driving, which was almost impossible to spot when you were standing a couple of feet in front of it, as it seems to grow out from the tree with its white bark camouflage. It’s a type of Nightjar, nocturnal, static and sleepy during the day http://videosift.com/video/The-Amazing-Camouflage-of-the-Pootoo-Bird.

Crooked Tree has the largest population of Jabiru storks in the world, and boy are they big. They tower over even the largest of other birds such as Wood Storks. I also liked the Roseate Spoonbills, fashionably pink against all those white and black waders. In the woods we saw the Kiskadees, lots of vultures (still trying to distinguish Turkey Vultures from Yellow Heads and Savannahs). The Snail Hawks are superb with their hooked beaks for prising out snails and there’s Ospreys and Kingfishers galore. On the morning walk we saw a punkish red Northern Cardinal. Grackles are everywhere.

Day 1 – Miami

2010-04-28T10:50:00.000Z

A funny thing happened on the way to the US today. About four hours into our London-Miami haul, a member of the cabin crew leant down beside me and said, “Are you the parents of the two teenage boys at the back of the plane?”Having received similar questions in the past from teachers on the telephone, police and even paramedics, I visibly shrunk into my seat. “Well, we’d like to give you this bottle of champagne, as they’ve been so well behaved, really delightful children.” This was about as probable as winning the lottery without buying a ticket, and, as it turns out, not the first surprising event on this trip. So it was Bucks Fizz all round on our stop-over in Miami.

In 1986 we travelled around Mexico and went to the Yucatan and Chichen Itza, the huge Mayan site with its pyramids and sacred cenote. I was pleased, therefore, to be going to Guatamala and Belize to visit the Mayan heartland, to sites such as Xuantunich, Altun Ha, Lamanai and Tikal. We also planned to canoe and swim into two deep caves containing Mayan sacrificial relics and skeletons. In addition, we had the prospect of the rain forest, something I’ve always wanted to hike in, especially to see the bird life. You see, I’ve developed an amateurish ‘birding’ habit, regarded as a the onset of dementia by my children. Finally, we’re to chill out on an island off the Belize barrier reef to snorkel with sharks, rays and turtles. This form of wildlife, unlike birds, is regarded as pretty cool by my children.

Vienna - Day 2

2010-03-16T13:09:00.002Z

The Kunsthistoriche museum is a real surprise. First the building itself, a Hapsburg Palace, is worth seeing in itself. Secondly the superb Egyptian Galleries. The entrance is guarded by two Sekmet statues from the temple of Mut in Luxor - we sneaked into this temple last year after dark, as it's closed to the public. Then a collection of statuary that is absolutely stunning. I particularly like the Book of the Dead papyrus with an audio guide that took you through the entire story. The Greek and Roman Galleries are also well stocked, with an emphasis on Ephesus, where the Austrians have been excavating for years.

The range and quality of the paintings is fantastic, funded as it was by the Hapsburgs. There's Breugel's Hunters, several Velasquezes,

Vienna - Day 1

2010-03-16T13:02:00.002Z

Vienna brings to mind two very different images in my mind - Midge Ure in that damn video looking upwards, master of the dagger shaped sideburns (favoured by men past their sell by date) and the Vienna Circle (Carnap, Popper etc). Pop and philosophy.

It was actually neither, more of a grand central European city, with a lively cafe culture (coffee and cake), lots of chocolate shops and some fine dining. Our 'boutique hotel had a bed in the centre of the room, which you could walk round. Someone, in the pub when I got home, claimed that this is a Viennese phenomenon, as aristocrats liked to have a quintet playing while they were in bed. Another interesting feature in the Beletage Hotel is the five-course gourmet breakfast, which was delicious.

First day we walked to the Stephensdom - cathedral then lunch and a bit of a recce. That night a goulash meal in the Guashmuseum (actually a restaurant). I rather like these spicy meat stews.

Egypt Day 7 Fishing on the Nile

2009-12-31T17:27:00.002Z

Four of us went fishing by taking a boat a kilometre upstream, morning on an island and fishing off the side and back of the boat. After a slow start, we finally got the hand of pulling on the bites and In an hour or so we each caught over 20 Nile perch, and that is not a fishy tale – absolutely true. It was slaughter out there – although we returned all the fish. It was a beautiful calm day, the Nile as flat as a mirror.

Then our last game of tennis, a final lunch and back to an icy and frozen England. Will be back next year, Inshallah.

Egypt Day 6 Hieroglyphics

2009-12-31T17:27:00.001Z

Tennis, then getting to grips with hieroglyphics. Trips to temples and tombs are always more interesting when you can read the cartouches and spot some simple word and features. Hieroglypics means ‘writing of the gods’ and was written on papyrus and stone for four thousand years, finally coming to and end with a late Roman inscription on the temple at Philae. The Rosetta stone, discovered in 1799, then deciphered by Champillon in 1827, has unleashed a wealth of knowledge about ancient Egypt.

Start with identifying the direction of writing, usually right to left into the faces of the animal signs. then cartouches, with the names of the Pharaohs. You soon get to spot the Rameses and Amenhoteps, even Cleopatra and Alexander. The numbers are straightforward, and easy to spot at Karnac and Medinet Habu. Then the determinatives next as they unlock the general meaning of the words, such as those for Gods, officials, town, land, writing etc.. Plurals with their three vertical lines and so on. How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphics by Mark Collier, is a pretty good introduction. It’s a fantastic feeling to understand just a name or number as even in ancient times less than one percent could read this language and you’ll know more than anyone did for almost twomthousand years before 1827!

Our last night so we went into town by boat, had a beer by the side of the Nile, saw Sammy, the gay waiter, then off into town for some shopping. There are several good book shops and plenty of scarfs, spices and te usual stuff in the souks. Viagra seems to be on sale in every pharmacy – that’s new. The over on the local ferry for another excellent meal at Tutankamuns.

Egypt Day 5 Mons Cluadianus

2009-12-31T17:25:00.003Z

Arranged our trip into the Eatern Desert with our local fixer Ahmed Balal, who arranged a taxi for all seven of us to a meeting point on the Qena Safaga road, where we had a 4X4 waiting with a Beduoin driver to take us to Mons Claudianus, source of the famous Granito del Foro.

We followed the wadi that the Romans used as the transport road from the quarry to the Nile, some 200 kilometres away to the west. The Roman road can still be seen in places, simply marked by the row of cleared stones on either side. Cart ruts have given useful information about the way the pillars and stones were transported.

First stop was a Roman way station with rectangular walls, a watch tower and a 45m deep well.These roads have stations and watchtowers along their entire route. On the other side of the road were the graves of the people who manned the outpost.

Several kilometres later, through some lovely desert scenery, we came to Mons Claudianus, stopping in front of a huge broken pillar. To the left was the rectangular garrison and to the right a ramp, which we climbed to the first quarry, where we saw the wedge marks in the rock (dampened to expand and split the rock).

Looking down one can see the garrison or town, a walled rectangular structure, half fort, half town. You could see the classic rectangular Roman street structure and some of the houses were still intact. Beyond it was another rectangular structure, which were stables.

Following the roman road round the hill we came across a huge quarry and walked down to a loading ramp, with square holes for timber pulley frames. An enormous 200-250 ton pillar, 60 feet long, lay parallel to the loading ramp, perhaps it had slipped or rolled out of control. At either end are bossed wheels for rolling the pillar and bosses on its side for lifting. All around were faces of the back/white diorite, where unfinished pillars, blocks and wedge holes were visible. It was as if the quarry had been abandoned yesterday. Our guide told us that only two or three people a year come here a year, and we didn’t see any footprints. It was only discovered in the 19^thcentury and was a restricted military zone for decades.

All around were stone towers, usually in pairs, either watchtowers, fire pyres (form working at night) or to support lifting gear. My guess is the last of these three hypotheses, as the workers were not slaves, but reasonably well paid labour. Josephus and others suggest that Roman quarries were worked with convict and slave labour but evidence has come from ostrica showing that they were paid a reasonable 47 drachmas a month, about half a soldiers pay but far more than workers in the Nile valley. There were about 1000 people working here. I also doubt that they would have had enough wood to fuel fires for hours of night work. Their position on ramps and around the areas where worked rocks lay, suggest supports for lifting gear. Every time we climbed up the side of a quarry another appeared on the other side. There are a total of 130 quarries at this site.

We descended and went up to the house complex that lay above the garrison, where a four columned portico structure (four bases and a capital lying around), an altar, with small courtyard and chapel off to the right. The chapel has an apse and two side apses, with some original plaster in place.

We then climbed down to the garrison stopping first at the bath complex, with its hypocaust and small bath rooms. Then into the main street, exploring the side alleys and one house that had its original roof in place (granite slabs). Then off to the stables and gymnasium. To the south of the garrison is a large Roman rubbish dump with thousands of amphora and pot shards. I presume this was where the ostrica evidence came from.

This quarry was in operation for over two centuries and is a testament to Imperial power and ambition. To scour the empire for just one stone, then transport 250 ton pillars across hundreds of kilometers of desert to the Nile on four and twelve wheeled carts, then down the Nile hundreds of more kilometres on boats, then loaded onto sea faring vessels for the trip to Rome, is truly mind boggling. It would appear that donkeys and oxen were used to pull huge wooden carts across the desert, but the logistics of the entire journey are almost beyond the imagination.

What this shows is the importance Roman Emperors attached to the pillars that adorned their temples. It was a statement of power and taste, that the resources of the entire empire were at their disposal. It would appear that the quarries were Imperial property and run by the Roman Army. Pillars fronted all temples, supported their buildings and even round structures like the Colliseum had pilasters.

A truly astonishing site and to visit the place where the pillars that adorn the Pantheon, Temple of Venus, Trajan’s Basilaica Ulpia, Hadrian’s Villa and other Roman temples, was a long standing ambition. The burnt pillar and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul also have pillars from this site. We had tea on the site before setting off further into the desert.

Mons Porphyrites lies 50 kilometers north of here, the source of the empire’s purple porphyry. There was lots of porphyry lying around the Mons Claudianus site.

Bedouin dinner

Another long desert drive took us up a long and wide wadi towards the largest mountain in the Eastern desert. There’s around 100,000 Bedouin in Egypt in the Eastern, Western and Sinai deserts. Those in the Eastern Desert stay put, while the others remain nomadic. The kids were feisty wearing bright clothes, whule the one woman we saw, was baking flat bread (just flour, water and salt) by rolling into a foot and a half diameter then baking it on an concave iron sheet of metal, heated by burning camel dung. She was dressed from head to toe in black. A few of us went off on a camel ride, while we walked to the mosque, the only stone structure in the village and the well, some three hundred meters from the village (as they attract snakes and scorpions).

We ate shish kebabs, potatoes and salad with the flat bread, then sat about watching the sun fall behind the mountains. Then off again to the Red Sea coast in the longest drive across sand and rocky desert to rendevous with our taxi and back to Luxor.

About an hour into our trip on the road to Qena was topped to look at the stars, a sight you never see at home, a sky teeming with thousands of stars and the occasional shooting star. Through binoculars, the milky way was a dense mass of white dots.

Egypt Day 4 Lazy day

2009-12-31T17:25:00.001Z

Lazy day after a game of tennis ,with Gil, in the heat. Just chatting, practising my French with Jackie and idling away the hours, as we have a very long day, up at five, tomorrow.

Egypt Day 3 Tombs of the Nobles

2009-12-31T17:24:00.001Z

Up early to get bus into town, then local ferry to West Bank, where we hired bikes (£1 per day) and headed off to the tombs –ten in all, including Userhat, Khaemhet, Ramose, Userhet, Nakht,Bennia, and Menna.

Ramose

The premier tomb, without doubt, was Ramose, where a chamber with a dozen columns held unfinished work on the far right hand side of the tomb. This was because Akenaten had come to power and moved everyone to Armara, leaving the tomb, almost finished. There are literally hieroglyphics that are fully carved, then painted templates then nothing. This huge funerary effort had simply been abandoned, forever unfinished. It has proved useful as a guide techniques in painting and wall relief. You can see (Amenhotep IV - Akenaten and Nefrititi images chipped out by later pharaohs. The work on the wall to one’s immediate left is immaculate. The room is testament to a revolution.

In general these tombs were for high ranking civil servants, the people who ran the show. In this sense they were free from the imperatives that Royal tombs had, concerning ceremony and images of the afterlife. They had a more naturalistic approach with scenes from everyday life – farming, fishing, fowling with bent sticks, music, dancing, waiting on a haircut.

Menna, the scribe of the granary, has scenes from his work, ploughing, sowing, measuring fields of corn, cutting, threshing, storing, even girls fighting in the fields. It’s all about measurement and writing. Nakht was a vintner and his tomb is full of images of grapes and wine – picking, pressing, poring into amphora.

We had a picnic in the shade of a Tomb’s entrance alongside 20 or so Egyptian students who were keen to practice their English. They were absolutely delightful.

We hired a boat for the three mile journey south on the Nile to the Jolie Ville just before sunset then had a snooze before heading off to a lecture on Tomb 33 in Luxor

Evening lecture

All seven of us attended the evening lecture on Tomb TT33, which turned out to be in French. Some of us got the gist of it, others had to rely on the fact that one of our group is French, so he filled out the details in El Hussein’s restaurant, down past Karnac.

On the Englishman, Pococke in 1737, the French in 1798, then the German Deumichen in 1881. It would appear that the tomb was sealed as it had been full of bats and ammonia gas, then the front rooms used for storage. So when he took on the job, the first task was to catalogue the stored contents, including Carter’s boxes from the Tutankhamen tomb.

What makes this tomb so fascinating, is the fact that it’s bigger than most royal tombs, with 22 rooms, on three levels. It’s an enigma. His theory was that Padiamenope was doing something quite extraordinary in terms of architecture and writing. He saw this man as someone who deliberately designed a tomb to include a history of Egyptian Royal architecture, as well as a full library of texts, and a message to future visitors to see and respect the tomb. He amasses a wealth of evidence to support this theory, architectural as well as literary. He was, in effect, an ancient Egyptologist. On this reading, this could be the most interesting tomb in Egypt.

Later we sealed the deal to take us all on a huge trip to the Roman Quarry, Mons Claudianus, in the Eastern Desert. It involves a long road trip, then 4x4s into the desert. Our fixer, had never heard of the place and I had to show him on Google Earth (he had never seen Google Earth either!). We’re on our way on Monday.

Egypt Day 2 Birdwatching

2009-12-31T17:23:00.001Z

Even warmer today, so we took a long walk around the island, one of Egypt’s best birdwatching sites. Within minutes we had seen several kingfishers hovering then diving into the Nile and egrets galore. Round the north end to the east side we saw Squacco Herons and a Black Kite fight off a Kestrel. There are lots of kites on this side of the island. Every 200 yards we’d spot a pair of green bee-eaters. They are a magnificent emerald green with a black horizontal stripe across their eyes. A wagtail was eating ants as they crossed the dirt road in a line,also Grey Herons, Spur-winged Plovers, more Black-shouldered Kites, Swifts, Swallows, Doves, Hoopes, Moorhens, Cootes and Purple gallinules. Now that's a list! Later, while watching the sunset we saw hundreds of geese fly north, following the migratory route that is the Nile.

Egypt Day 1 Temple of Mut

2009-12-31T17:22:00.001Z

Just got news that it’s snowing in England, but it’s heading towards 25 degrees here in the Jolie Ville in Luxor. After breakfast on the Nile terrace in the warm sunshine, we played two sets of tennis then lounged by the pool for lunch. The boys pulled me into the pool (as they do).

Temple of Mut

Then some of us (Jackie and Jaqui) take the boat up river, while the rest took a taxi into town. The two Jackies decided to explore the Temple of Luxor while we headed off by foot to the Temple of Mut, which lies between the Luxor Temple and Karnac. We had tried to get access last time we were here but the archaeologists insisted that there was no public access allowed. This time we thought we’d try a visit after they had gone home for the evening. We walked past the three churches (Catholic, Evangelical and Coptic) alongside the newly excavated avenue of the sphinxes to the right had turn and to the gate at dusk. We timed this, as it’s being excavated and is therefore closed to the public. Our guess was right, the policeman and two watchmen let us in through the huge locked gates for some backsheesh.

It was a superb sight; first a courtyard lined with black basalt statues of Sekmet. There must have been over sixty all looking inwards into the rectangular courtyard. Then through a gate with two relief carvings of Bes and to the real prize, the large10 foot statue of Sekmet holding an Ank in her left hand. This was in the Temple itself, then off to the right to see the sacred lake, which surrounds the site on three sides. It was a magical sight, being completely alone in the semi-dark with bats and birds feeding off insects on the surface of the lake. We were hurried out, as the boss was coming.

Eating out on West Bank

We walked back, through the backstreets to meet our companions at the local ferry gate and headed off on one of the three new ferries, to the West Bank and Tutankamun’s Restaurant. Once again we feasted on real Egyptian food – spicy Courgette soup with Egyptian bread, spiced spinach, spicy green beans, meatballs, chicken and banana curry, cauliflour, rice, mint tea and fruit, all for £5 per head. Our table was on a balcony overlooking the Nile and while we were waiting a red lantern flew over our heads towards the East bank.

Crazy Taxi

We bought some water (25p per litre) and took the ferry back, hailed an old Peugot taxi that takes seven, and headed back with a lively driver who had a MP3 palyer stuck into the cigar lighter, with a remote control! The fumes were unbearable but he honked his horn all the way back, where we sat on the edge of the Nile in the darkness for a final chat.

Trieste Day 3

2009-10-18T11:47:00.002Z

Up early for a short walk to Maximillian’s Castle on the coast, Miramare. Built in the late 19^th century by Maxmillian, it sits on a promontory the views from inside are of the sea on all three sides. Inside there’s a suite of rooms built like a ship’s cabin to make Maximillian, the mariner, feel at home. Other than this it’s the standard royal palace with a heavy dose of Northern, Austrian restraint. The gardens are wonderful, with a mix of natural woodland and formal vistas that sweep down to the Adriatic sea. It’s full of exotic botanical plants and trees.

There’s also a bird sanctuary which specialises in humming birds. Destruction of the tropical forest is putting many species at risk, so they’re studying and breeding them here in Italy. There’s around 350 species up and down the Americas from Canada in the North to the southern tip of South America. You get to walk inside a greenhouse and see them fly around your head. They fly differently from other species in that they can hover, even fly backwards, like tiny helicopters. They have to feed on nectar every 20 minutes or they die, as their heart beats at over 1200 beats per minute. Other species included sun birds, Royal Starlings, a Pelican, Flamingo, Cranes, Parrots and so on.

Bus back to Trieste Airport, which has about one flight per hour. I was the only person in the business lounge Got to hand it to Ryanair – cheap, on time and, if you sit in the emergency seats (easy to get – just board at back of plane, plenty of leg room.

Trieste Day 2

2009-10-18T11:37:00.004Z

Plenty of time before my second lecture in the afternoon, so I listened to some interesting stuff about Creative Commons, recording lectures for re-use by students etc.

Late afternoon I got a lift into Trieste by another speaker. The road into town down the coast follows a lovely promenade that goes on for miles. The city is orderly with a grid of pedestrianised shopping streets and a single canal that cuts into the heart of the city centre. The church at the far end is a sort of Palladian Villa/Pantheon affair and quite ill-proportioned.

We all met in the main square (biggest in Europe apparently) which is open on one side to the sea. Everyone and everything on this coast looks to the sea. The canal, main square, Miramare Castle, the promenades and the boats - they're everywhere. It's the light that gives the place its

character.

Sunny but chilly so went for a Cappuccino in one of those Viennese-like Cafes. Then for dinner next to the short canal followed by a gelato from the best gelato place in town!

Trieste Day 1

2009-10-18T11:35:00.000Z

Stansted to Trieste, passing over the snow-covered Alps, the Dolomites and the plain in North Eastern Italy. Then a bus down the beautiful Adriatic coast to Gregnano, with the sea on my right hand side. Like the Amalfi coast it’s a green and white, wooded limestone landscape with the sun reflecting off the surface of the sea all afternoon.
Arrived just in time to set up, test my video, listen to William (from Glasgow curiously) give his lecture, before I started. The audience was largely people from developing countries, Zambia, Zimbabwe, S Africa, Egypt, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and so on, whereas the lecturers were all Anglo-Saxon European or North American bods. In any case both sets of people were delightful. You learn a lot about the state of the world on a short lecture visit like this.
Ate in a restaurant on the shore overlooking the harbour. Marco had promised me a top-class pizza, and was true to his word.

Rome Day 4 - Palatine and Forum

2009-10-08T12:15:00.004Z

The Palatine was the Beverly Hills of Rome, with Imperial palaces, swimming pools and luxury beyond imagination. The stumps of the huge palaces survive as do the foundations of the pools and gardens. Only in The House of Augustus and Livia do we see real interiors and wall painting. Then to the Forum, wit h its Sacred Way, Arch of Titius (with Menera from Jerusalem), Arch of Septus Severus (with Parthian prisoners), curia (house of the senate and the basilicas and temples that made this the centre of the world for hundreds of years. Even now the sheer scale and expense are obvious. The forum was, from Caesar onwards, a place not only to do commercial and legal business, but to show to the world that Rome was its supreme master. It was designed to impress. The colonnades, statues, temples and scale of the buildings were impressive.

We dropped into see the Ecstasy of St Therese on the way to Termini station, although better known than Bernini’s other work, it seems to have a certain orgasmic notoriety, which overwhelms its aesthetic merit. What it does, is point towards the recognition of the role of sexuality in art. This work is crudely executed and an odd composition, but here expression says it all.

Again on the sexual origin of art, Miller credits Nietzsche as the first post-Darwinian evolutionary aesthetic theorist. The Birth of Tragedy was published in 172 a year after Darwin’s Descent of Man and explicitly states the sexual ‘Dionysian’ origins of art. A cultural courtship model based on sexual selection is developed by Miller who sees art as having a strong inherited genetic capacity. This is nothing short of the evolution of culture and an agenda that is now uncovering cognitive adaptations, their reproductive costs/benefits, variability and heritability. Nietzsche failed to understand Darwin’s basic theory of natural selection and had no sophisticated theory of sexual selection. He was prescient, however, in that he was the first, after Darwin, to advance and elaborate a theory of aesthetics rooted in human sex drives.

OK, enough of the philosophy. Rome is a truly wonderful city with layer upon layer of art, whether it be architecture, painting or sculpture. Only Istanbul comes close as a city with such historical depth. A lot pricier this time and although the food was great, the service was pretty shaky.

Rome Day 3 - Palazzo Pamphilj

2009-10-08T12:07:00.005Z

Palazzo Pamphilj

Right in the centre of Rome this palace is an ugly selection of dark rooms crammed with paintings, furniture and sculpture. Worse still, the owner ahs decided to explain it all in an audio guide that sounds like Bertie Wooster on acid. The first room has wall to wall paintings, literally commissioned by the square yard to fit the walls. It’s a hideous room, used, as the master of the house says, by bankers – what a surprise. It’s a symbol of complete, tasteless greed.

The one saving grace is Velasquez's Pope Innocent X painting, set in a small room on its own. He sits in his blood-red cloak against blood-red walls and a blood-red hat, the white lower garment just exaggerating the contrast. It is simply one of the greatest portraits ever painted.

Among the hundreds and hundreds of badly hung paintings are several gems, including a Titian, two Carvaggios and several Claude Lorraine's.

Trajan's Forum

This whole complex is now open to the public and contains fragments of marble that show how monumentally impressive the original structure would have been with its libraries, basilica and market. The market, on three levels is not dissimilar to a modern shopping mall with dozens of shops.

Tempieta

Up the hill behind Tavestere to the progenitor for St Pauls, Capitol Hill and thousands of other domed structures around the world. This was Bramante’s invention, a dome raised up on a column, surrounded by columns on a 3:4 ration (diameter to height). It’s a small and delicate structure.

Continuing on the aesthetics theme, art, in particular, poses a problem for evolutionary theory as it doesn’t seem to have a explicable survival function as it seems, on appearance, to be a costly, time consuming activity that should have been selected out. Art, for Miller, is part of the ‘extended phenotype’ with its origins in ochre pigments, cave paintings and figurines. Art provides possible sensory biases and/or fitness indicators.

Rome Day 2 – Palazzo Barberini

2009-10-08T12:07:00.001Z

Palazzo Barberini

Rome’s Palazzios are huge defensive buildings designed to exude power from the outside and show off your spending power on the inside. Barberini has a Borromino spiral staircase and a huge Salon with a Cortona frieze on the ceiling (curiously the walls are scraped clean and grey). You can lie back on the couches to explore the huge scene. The other rooms have a great collection of paintings, hung so that there’s at least one masterpiece per room. It starts with Raphael’s La Fornarina, her naked torso, ring and arm band revealing his infatuation. There are several Mary Magdalene’s with her flowing hair., a Henry Viii by Holbein, and others.

Good to see that the gypsies are still trying to rob people using the young child in arms, cardboard and pickpocket technique. I’ve never been to Rome without getting accosted like this. I know that I should be upholding liberal values and trying to understand the plight of the Gypsies, but I still don’t understand why they resort to simple theft, when it so obviously backfires. Any sympathy you have for their predicament or poverty fades when you’re robbed by a mother flashing a baby to distract you while her sister dips your pockets.

Interesting chat at evening meal in Tavestere on aesthetics. The sexual selection theory, first developed by Darwin but, it has been argued, largely ignored by prudish Victorians, then revived and recently elaborated I terms of the costs of survival. Perceptual biases may also play a role here, leading to preferences for high contrast stimuli in terms of colour, brightness, loudness and so on. Self expression and variability in art forms can be explained by the advantages afforded by amplifying aesthetic differences. This has interesting consequences for art as, for example, the worth of a work of fiction may not have much to do with its correspondence to truth, but it’s ability to impress potential mates with one’s intelligence and productivity. The sexual selection hypothesis also explains the difference in productive output between males and females as males are competing more intensely than females.

Geoffry Miller is a contemporary proponent of sexual selection as the key driver in aesthetics, part of a general theory that sees reproductive success is the key driver in evolution and not, principally, natural selection. It is sexual selection, he claims, that shapes many of the apparently bizarre ornamental, physical phenomena in species. He also claims that aspects of human cognition have been shaped as sexual ornamentation. The brain has all sorts of aesthetic biases, as our goal is often to be sexually attractive, rather than rational and truthful. This does explain the extraordinary effort that Renaissance art puts into ‘sin’ with acres of naked flesh and fabulous collections as expressions of power.

Rome Day 1 - Villa Borgese

2009-10-08T12:06:00.001Z

Early arrival at Leonardo da Vinci airport then train to Termini and walk down past Maggiore to Hotel Palatino. Met with the rest of the lads and off for lunch before taking Metro to Villa Borgese, which we’d booked in advance.

Villa Borgese

Bernini’s greatest sculptures are here; David, Aeneus, Rape of Proseprine, Apollo and Daphne, each in the centre of a spectacular room. David Is frozen in that exact moment just before the release of the stone from his sling, so that all of the tension is in his twisted torso. Fantastic facial expression is one of extreme effort – way different from classical contemplative expressions.. Aeneus carries his father with the flame of the hearth in his hand and is a study of loss, not gain. Apollo embraces Daphne just as she escapes by being turned into a laurel. It is a surreal image but the metamorphosis is superb as the uniform colour and texture of the marble turns the transformation into a single blended form. The two Bernini busts of Pope Borgese are side side by side and you can see the crack in the head that led to the copy being made. Bernini gets his fat face in the round and the buttons strain in their button holes. Canova’s Pauline Borgese is sumptuous. She’s half naked holding the apple (Aphrodite’s prize) on cushions that sink with her weight. This is my second visit and it’s great to have the space to walk around these pieces, as the rooms are large and visitor numbers limited. One oddity is the sleeping hermaphrodite, a copy of a Greek original by Polycles.

The whole villa was given over to a major exhibition showing Carravagio’s paintings next to Bacons. Why? I have no idea. There is not real link, historical, aesthetic or otherwise. It’s one of those ‘sound like a good idea’ exhibitions that simply don’t work in practice. Nevertheless, gathering most of Rome’s Carravagios up into one place was too good an opportunity to miss.

Rome is a great place to put aesthetic theories to the test, as there’s a surfeit of art and experiences to savour. If, as I think, Geoffrey Miller and others, as evolutionary psychologists, have got a workable theory that has wide explanatory power as well as a causal explanation, then where better to reflect on it’s worth. They claim, like Hume, that the aesthetic response is embedded in human nature, a universal response to create, exhibit and enjoy beautiful things. This is die to it’s role in sexual selection, in attracting a mate and reproducing. Just as birds of paradise display their ornate wares, so do men and women. I like this as other philosophical explanations tend to focus on necessary,and sufficient, criteria for the definition of rat, or depend upon some notion of a community of practice that simple begs the question as to how that community defines art.

Walked back via a couple of Baroque churches then out to dinner at La Matriciana. This is roman food ‘old style’ with a waiter who looked as though he had been there for 50years. But good solid simple dishes that were perfectly prepared. Pasta is always perfectly al dente. Only flaw were the desserts, but Italian desserts are always a tad predictable.

Love's Labour Lost - Globe

2009-09-30T23:14:00.002Z

Second play in two days but this is a difficult play, full of tortuous wordplays and difficult to follow, which is why, I presume, it is rarely performed.

It does something quite brave - takes the piss out of schooling and teachers. they're portrayed as boors, full of themselves, producing knowledge filled students through rote learning. Nothing changes then. It's probably the best argument against the teaching of Latin in schools I've ever seen.

The Spaniard is the play's saviour, with his accent and sense of naive fun.

As You Like It - Globe

2009-09-30T23:06:00.002Z

Spur of the moment decision but well worth it. Touchstone was hilarious with Eddie Izzard inspired facials and asides. Jaques was just as good. His seven ages of man soliloquy was really moving and got spontaneous applause. Just read this......

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

A bit of a rom-com, as are most of his comedies, and the gender switch is very, very odd to modern eyes.

It was great to just sit back in the sun and let the language do its work. The Globe's often criticised for being too 'heritage' in outlook, but I find the performances thrilling. In fact I'd like them to be even more authentic with drinking and audience heckles. The stewards are like puritan police. I even saw them ask some girls to put their notebooks away!

The groundlings are not what they used to be - as two collapsed because of the heat and had to be carried out!

Day 10 - Perachora

2009-08-08T14:23:00.001Z

Drove via Corinth, stopping at the Doilkos (ancient track for hauling boats across the isthmus before the canal was dug) then drove to the lake for lunch before jumping off the rocks at Perachora for a swim. This little cove was a Greek port, and has the remains of a Temple of Hera, a stoa, cisterns and underground fountains. Finally, back to Athens for flight.

Day 9 – Nemea

2009-08-08T14:21:00.002Z

Morning jaunt to Nemea, one of the four sites (Olympia, Isthmian, Delphic and Nemean) for the pan-Hellenic games. The Temple of Zeus, has a few columns restored and re-erected, the baths were worth visiting with their spring-fed basins and pools for the athletes, but it is the running track that is special. Used by the athletes to get from the changing area to the track, it runs for about 100 metres trough the hill and has some interesting homo-

erotic graffiti (X is handsome) and ‘I win’. We staged a mock race then returned for lu

nch to Napflion for a great lunch (chicken in lemon sauce)

and a swim.

Day 8 –Napflion Museum

2009-08-08T14:20:00.002Z

It’s open at last! For the last four or five years I’ve walked up to the door of this museum only to see a ‘closed’ sign. It’s taken them years to open what is actually a small museum, despite a hefty European grant. It has a credible slide show and some interesting exhibits, including the famous helmet and cuirass, but nothing special. Swim at north beach.

Climbed tto the Venetian fortress, up hundreds of steps, but the cool breeze and views weer worth the effort. I could see the group down below as specs in the water and on the rocks by the town beach. Callum keeps cool!

Day 7 - Swimming

2009-08-08T14:19:00.002Z

Entire day swimming at sea lake beyond Tolo. Ate far too much calamaris and couldn’t eat anything for rest of the day. Can't say enough about swimming in the sea, especially in greece. I ahte swimming pools but love floating and swimming as the sun goes down.

Day 6 – Epidaurus

2009-08-08T14:18:00.001Z

Drive to Epidaurus in the morning, one of my favourite Greek sites, as it is set among the pine trees, and the theatre, being the best preserved in Greece, has real presence. Ronnie sang from the orchestra and we visited the stadium, hotel and temples. Back in the afternoon for a swim at the North beach.

Day 5 - Mycenae

2009-08-08T14:17:00.002Z

Sticking to our chronological schedule, off to Mycenae, through the Lion gate and round the north side to the eastern bastion and down into the dark cistern. I had forgotten how big this site was, and was glad that I had topped up in Athens in the National Archaeology Museum, where much of the Schlieman and later finds are displayed, including the inlaid daggers and gold masks. The beehive tombs are impressive, the largest unsupported arches in the world until the Pantehon. Swim at the huge bay beyond the fortress, but noise of beach party was a little off-putting.

Day 4 – Tiryns

2009-08-08T14:17:00.001Z

They’ve changed the entrance to the site to the north and access is much restricted, so that it’s impossible to walk in, or even view the site’s impressive arched chambers. Even the guy guarding the site thought it was odd. For example, it is impossible to walk around the outside of the walls (mentioned in Homer), perhaps its most important feature.

Had lunch in the fish restaurant round the bay before swimming from the pebbly north beach, only frequented by Greeks. Tried one of the ghastly fish restaurants on the seafront in town for evening meal, but they’re awful.

Day 3 – Peloponnese

2009-08-08T14:16:00.000Z

Next morning I got up early, on my own, to walk to the National Museum of Archaeology and was the first in, having many of the rooms to myself. The famous geometric pot with the funeral scene, the giant Kore, then my favourite Zeus/Poseidon? Bronze, showing the absolute confidence of Greece at this time. Apollo with the apple and the astounding Delphic charioteer.

We then headed back to the airport to pick up hire cars, with the usual rip-off by the taxi drivers. Then off to Nafplion in the Peloponnese. Lunch at the seafront Napflion Taverna,opposite the permanently docked grey ship in the harbour, my favourite lunchtime restaurant in this town. It’s the traditional metal trays of slow cooked Greek food. Once ensconced in our villa, just up behind the main square, we walked round the peninsula to the town beach. Ate evening meal in our favourite beef stefado restaurant in street behind main square.

Day 2 Athens, Agora, Acropolis, Acopolis Museum

2009-08-08T14:15:00.002Z

We woke early and headed off for the Agora, always a good route to take if you plan to visit the Acropolis, as you can walk the Panathenaic Processional way to the entrance. The reconstructed Stoa is as cool as it was originally designed to be, with its Doric ground floor and Ionic first floor, a feature first seen at Perachora, which we plan to visit later. Where the ori

ginal shops would have been there’s the excellent Stoa Museum. The pottery collection hers is top class with some unusual pieces such as a child’

s commode. But it’s the objects that reflect Athenian democracy that amaze; the collection of ostrica (pot bases) inscribed with Themostocles name and the slot machine used to select

jurors. The law courts were here and various forms of Athenian democracy practised within its precincts. The other main building is the Temple of Hephaestus, a Doric structure, built after the completion of the Parthenon.

We then walked up to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon, at various times a Temple, Christian Church, Mosque, explosives store and now museum piece. Despite being, robbed of its sculptures, defaced by Christians, eroded by acid rain and blown up by the Venetians, it’s still a beautiful structure. The famous curvature of the stylobate, columns and cella walls make it seem light in structure but it would have been its external sculptures that would have made it seem like no other temple. After a walk over to the Erechtheum, a more delicate Ionic structure, set on the north side of the Acropolis, we headed off to the new Acropolis Museum.

We walked over the glass floor above the new excavations and paid the token 1 Euro entrance fee in the huge entrance hall containing little more than a cafe. The sloped entrance has a superb collection of pottery and sculpture, and the first floor, the kore and korai lead you past the famous Critian Boy. My friend David has a full size replica of this in his hallway. It was found as rubble in the walls after the destruction of the Acropolis by the Persians and has the slight gait, twist and asymmetry that pre-figures the golden age of Geek Sculpture. Then round to the caryatids a the frieze from the Temple of Nike with the woman leaning down to fix her sandle, her dress falling off her shoulder.

The top floor is less of a museum than a political statement. Like a shop window dummy without a dress, it’s largely a series of plaster casts from the British Museum, the remaining blocks being of poorer artistic merit and badly eroded. I happen to agree with those who argue for the return of the Elgin Marbles as they were robbed during an occupation, split an artwork in two and are remote from the building which they originally adorned. However, the propaganda in the film, with its Americanised narration and mispronunciation of Elgin (as El Gin) will do the Greeks no favours.

We walked back to the hotel from the museum and saw the other side of Athens. through an area North of the Acropolis that was full of young male immigrants, of all nationalities. The police were everywhere, and even although we were in Athens for only two days, we heard of the problems this was causing. They had recently flooded in from all parts of Greece, and the heavy police presence, coded operation Hoover, was attempting to contain and control the problem. The original residents have fled central Athens leaving a sort of immigrant ghetto. The abandoned Apollon Hotel has become an illegal shelter for many. Around Omonia Square, where there are many tourist hotels, you can see junkies and threatening packs of young men. This is a complicated issue, as Greece lies on the frontline of Europe when it comes to immigration from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and so on. Most arrive via Turkey as the Turks do not respect the bilateral agreement to repatriate, so the islands are being swamped by asylum seekers. Even though it only grants asylum to 1% of applicants, and has been reasonably generous in the case of Albanians in the past (500,000), it is experiencing a flood of illegal immigrants. The detention centre in Samos has 580 on hunger strike and the police are rounding up immigrants in Athens, expelling many. All of this in a country experiencing high unemployment, political unrest and the rise of extremist right-wing parties.

Day 1 Athens

2009-08-08T14:14:00.000Z

Arrived late and took taxi straight to hotel. Taxi drivers tend to be a good barometer for the ‘business ethos’ of a country and I’ve always been ripped off by taxis drivers to and from Athens airport. In a country that depends on tourism for income, you’d think this would be sorted out. However, Athens was pleasantly warm and we had dinner on the hotel roof, with a view of the Acropolis.

Qatar Day 5 - Business, Museums, Souk

2009-06-13T09:36:00.003Z

Limousine downtown to the business meeting, where we met Charlie Watt, an old acquaintance of mine and some friendly Qataris. We arrived early so took a walk to the Corniche that swept round the bay, in the absolutely blistering sun, where a family of Qataris were sitting quietly underneath a palm tree watching a western woman jog in the 45 degree heat. I’m not sure which they were more shocked by, her skimpy black leotard sportswear or the fact that she was running in this heat.

The two meetings went well so we decided, on Charlie’s advice, to take a taxi to the Museum of Islamic Art. This was well worth it. Designed by Pei, it a pile of cubic structures, on several levels, like a pile of well ordered blocks,, punctured by motifs from Islamic architecture, including a feature reflecting the eyes of a veiled woman. It sits on an island with a long ramp, with fountains, leading to the front door. Inspired by a mosque he saw in Cairo, it has an open square hall with a marble, geometric floor in cream, black and orange and a huge hanging lamp, as one sees in the large mosques. The roof is suspended on two sets metal points, at different heights to give the sense of a front and a back, with a stalactite dome and oculus. Two of the floors have a superb collection of calligraphy, poetry, tiles, glass, metalwork, doors, mosque lamps and so on. These are all quality pieces. On either side there are areas with fountains and pools of still water, reflecting the Islamic love of gardens and water. The temperature on the Limousine dash board read 47 degrees! Back to the hotel where we ate some lunch, had a sleep, then were picked up by Charlie at 7 pm. He took us to the Souk Waif where we walked, talked and had an excellent Indian meal. The Souk was a fine place, with the usual alleyways, ceramics, honey, dates and so on.

Charlie explained the political situation and attempts by Qatar to diversify by creating a knowledge economy (very different from Kuwait where the focus is on banking and communications). What both (indeed all GCC states) have in common is a bloated public sector and a malaise among a population who have grown used to living on the fat of oil production. Again , the roads were full of crazy drivers in powerful vehicles and Charlie had already (in seven months) known of one person he worked with die at the hands of boy racers. There’s almost no crime but plenty of corruption, as kin is the primary social unit. Layering commercial structures and public institutions on top of family groups causes problems, but that’s the way it is. I have to say that Doha seemed much more planned and cleaner than Kuwait City. The architecture also seemed better. Qatar Airways back to Heathrow from a trip that was successful on the business front and fascinating culturally.

Qatar Day 4 - swim, sauna and saunter

2009-06-13T09:34:00.000Z

Down to business with offers and counter-offers, again over countless cups of coffee and tea. We came to an agreement then had lots of photographs, presentations and chat. Our drivers took us to the airport at around 4.30 for Qatar Airways flights to Doha. The Business Lounge was superb with full meals available. Arrived in Qatar late evening and took a taxi to the Millenium Hotel. Where we had a swim (pool on 7th floor), sauna (odd as it was steaming hot outside) and Jacuzzi. Took a walk in not so fresh air, at 36 degrees to the Chopsticks restaurant in the Grand regency, where we supped fizzy date juice and demolished a huge Chinese banquet. Nice to walk in the comfortably hot evening air (36 degrees!).

Kuwait Day 3 - down to business then chat

2009-06-13T09:33:00.000Z

Cars whisked us off to the second round of meetings. This time the next level of detail. We went back to the hotel for a sleep before being taken out for a grand meal in the evening. This was interesting, as all of our Kuwaiti counterparts were women. So there were four men and one woman on our side, and 10 women on theirs. This gave both sides an opportunity to chill out and chat. All but one of our hosts covered their heads but they were as liberal and chatty as any group of women I’ve met. We discussed gay men in Kuwait, family, shopping, travel, mobiles, Facebook, cultural differences, women in politics......Their English was excellent and it is clear that English has become the second language in this part of the world.