Amster-DAYUM!
Part I
I haven’t even gotten on the plane yet, and the stories have already begun. My dear friend Catherine collected me this morning and we had a pleasant drive to St. Louis, chitter-chattering as we are wont to do. My first encounter was with the nice old man who checked me and my luggage in at the airline counter. He was a short, round, white-haired fellow with thick black glasses and a sweet smile, which he aimed full-tilt at me as he asked, “Where to today?”
“Amsterdam!” I answered happily.
“You’ll love it,” he assured me, and proceeded to tell me about how my experience at the Schiphol airport will be a bit different than I’m used to in American airports. When I mentioned that I would be making a stop in Belgium, he told me I had to try the pomme frites there, which is definitely on the agenda already. Then, seemingly at random, he showed me a ring he was wearing—a huge chunk of gold shaped with odd nugget-type carvings on the top and set with on tiny diamond. He told me about how he was given the ring for his years of playing Santa (I could totally see that), and how when he was in Antwerp he went to a diamond broker to get a diamond to set in it. He described with relish how they helped him choose a diamond and then set it for him right then and there (emphasizing twice that they gave him free coffee while he waited—this seemed to impress him a lot). I politely admired the ring and thought it was funny how even total strangers recognize my attraction to sparkly stones. The dragon in me must speak to those who share the love of the sparkle.
Then I took my bag over to the baggage loading area, which was manned by a single fellow who looked tired. I smiled at him and offered him my checked back, and he smiled back. “Go have some fun,” he told me. “Or go take a nap. Either one.”
“A nap sounds great, actually,” I said. I had forced myself to stay up extra late last night so that I’d be able to sleep on the plane to avoid jet lag.
“Nice locks,” the baggage handler said to me.
I blinked, and looked down at my bag. It didn’t have any locks on it. I looked back at him.
“Locks,” he said, pointing at my head. “Nice locks.”
Ooooooooooh. I think I blushed a little. “Thank you,” I told him and smiled again. For some reason, I’m utterly tickled by both his admiration and that he called my hair “locks”. I felt very Belinda-y and thought my students would have enjoyed the story, having read “The Rape of the Lock” in my class this past term.
Going through security was uneventful, and here I wait to board the plane that will take me to Chicago to meet up with my mother. So far, so good!
Part II
It’s the end of a very, very long day…I’m exhausted, swollen, achy and sore—and very happy. The flight was uneventful, though I didn’t really sleep. Roberta met us at the airport and buzzed us all over town today—she took us to her house for coffee, to a café for brunch, to the apartment she’d arranged for us, to the grocery store for sustenance and, more importantly, wine. To a canal cruise through the city. It was wonderful. So here I am, struggling to stay awake for a few more hours, flaked out on the couch in the beautiful living room that will be mine for five days. (For the first time, I have an elevator that will let me off directly into my apartment, which I think is SO cool!) Pictures to come—I’m a bit too tired to fuss with the camera tonight.
Tomorrow it’s off sightseeing with Roberta. Woohoo! I’ll post some pics and descriptions anon.
Dusting off the Blog
It’s that time again! Time to shake the dust from my traveling shoes, break out the luggage, update the wardrobe and hop on a plane to destinations unknown.
…Well, okay, that last part is a bit of poetic license; I do know where I’m going. On Sunday, I’ll be heading to Amsterdam, which constitutes yet another New Road for me since I have never been there. Well, apparently my mother took me there about forty-two years ago, but I don’t think it counts when I hadn’t been born yet. I’ll also breeze through Belgium and loll about in London for a while before winding my way up to Windermere in the Lake District. So brace yourself for more rousing adventures, stories, pictures of random beautiful, silly, or significant places, descriptions of amazing meals and encounters with new friends and old.
I think I’m ready to go–prescriptions have been filled, clothes have been bought, credit card companies have been informed of travel plans…ta-daaaa! Now I just need to throw it all in a suitcase and go. And to remember my passport.
(Shaddup, Mum. I swear I won’t forget it this time.)
I hope you will enjoy reading about my adventures as much as I will enjoy chronicling them. The Traveling Dragon is back on the road.
Shakespeare Interrupted
Well, my time here in England is nearing an end, so this will most likely be my last “Letter from England” email. Thanks to all of you who endured my interminable messages–I enjoyed writing them for you!
Today we went to Baddesley Clinton, a medieval manor house with quite a history. It is most famous for its “priest hides,” tiny passages and rooms tucked away between floors and beneath the house where Jesuit priests were hidden during the
“it’s against the law to be a Catholic” reign of Elizabeth I. I was able to see two of the hides, and my stomach clenched as I looked at them. People would hide for days–weeks–in these tiny, tiny little spaces, no bigger than a crawlspace. They were so cramped, you couldn’t even sit up in them. I could just imagine being in there…no air, no light, a smelly bucket for company, and knowing that the alternative was a grisly and painful death. Many of the priests who hid in
such places surrendered to death rather than stay in the hides. Looking at them, it was not difficult to understand why.
The rest of the house was beautiful, though (it has a moat, Mom, and it reminded me of Ightam Mote). In a parlor upstairs, there is a bloodstained floorboard with quite a story. One day, the owner of the manor came home to find a priest “chucking his wife ‘neath her chin.” So he stabbed the priest and killed him (this is BEFORE the “it’s illegal to be a Catholic” period). He was pardoned (the official pardon is framed in the great hall) for the crime, but his “punishment” was to be buried beneath the church porch, so that people would constantly walk over his body and he would never rest. And indeed, some years ago, the church porch was excavated and a human skeleton was found. Unfortunately, the bloodied floorboard was also tested, and it turned out to be about sixty years too young for the story–the priest had never stood and bled on that board. But it’s thought that the crime happened in part of the house that had fallen down and was remodeled in the 16th century.
Then it was on to Stratford-upon-Avon, where I had the most DIVINE dinner at the Garrick restaurant (named for the famed actor David Garrick)–I had an apple and stilton salad to start, and followed with a brie-spinach-cranberry-mushroom-pine nut mixture in pastry with a tarragon cream sauce. Accompanied by, of course, lots of Strongbow. Then we went to The Swan theater where we watched Patrick Stewart play Antony in the RSC’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” It was so good it made me want to weep.
Unfortunately, at the beginning of the fourth act, the ushers came up (I had a FANTASTIC seat in the upper gallery right in front of the stage) and ushed our butts right out of the theater–very, very quickly. We had NO idea what was going on, but the entire building was evacuated with alarming alacrity. It was kind of funny…the actors were still playing on the stage as we were herded towards the door, but they froze when they saw something was going on. As I passed where Patrick Stewart was kneeling on the stage, I heard him say, “I’m waiting for further instructions.”
So, I actually got to witness Patrick Stewart break character onstage.
Apparently a fire alarm was tripped by something or other. But, fortunately, the building wasn’t actually burning down, so they let us back in and we were able to see the rest of the play. It was shatteringly wonderful–utterly extraordinary.
York
I’m tempted to describe my trip to York yesterday thusly:
Went to York.
It was great.
I didn’t get lost.
But since you guys are accustomed to a little more detail from me, I’ll resist the temptation towards reductivism.
I did have to get up absurdly early to catch a bus to Birmingham, so I could catch the train to York. My mood at six a.m. is not exactly conducive to flights of fancy and appreciative metaphors. I cursed those fucking noisy mourning doves
and my eyes passed right over the beautiful baskets of flowers that adorn every building on campus and fill the air with honey-sweet scent as I clambered into the taxi that would take me to the bus station.
The trip took 3 ½ hours, all told, and by the time I pulled into York, my mood had improved. The day was perfect…sunny and hot with clear skies and a warm breeze that seemed to follow me throughout the day like a gentle guardian spirit, keeping me from getting too warm. My first view of York robbed me of breath…an ancient stone wall surrounding a tiny city of extreme grace and history, and as always when in the presence of really, really old stuff, my imagination filled in the blanks. Guards at the towers, wagons and coaches moving steadily through the gates, foul odors in the streets, the noise of a busy city…I could just envision it all through every one of my senses.
The town itself is absurdly charming–many very narrow medieval streets lined with half-timbered buildings and faded painted placards swaying above the doors. I made a beeline for Yorkminster, and was intensely relived to find it as grand,
imposing, and impressive as I could wish. It’s a gorgeous structure…honey-colored stone reaching high over the city with two towers flanking the front–it reminded me a bit of Notre Dame in its architecture. I took tons of pictures, wandered around inside, and decided it was lunchtime. I visited a lovely little bake shop and bought a hot pasty–a fantastic beef and onion filling wrapped in flaky pastry, and wandered the streets for a while, happily munching.
At one o’clock, I parked myself at St. Sampson’s Square, sitting on the pavestones to one side. York was putting on ten plays from the medieval York mystery play cycle, and they were doing it as it was done in the middle ages…with a series of wagons and troupes of players who would move from place to place around the city performing the short plays for varied audiences. And I sat there for all ten of them, as they came one after the other. It was a hell of an experience! (you’ll see why that’s funny in a minute!)
They started with Lucifer’s fall from Heaven and ended with Judgment Day–not a bad feat for five hours of performance! I was fascinated by how the troupes used the wagons and the space in the square, and some of the performances were
absolutely stunning. The best was the play of the Pentecost, put on by a local high-school theater troupe. It was magnificent, and the students were absolutely ingenious in their use of space–they moved both outwards and upwards,
having characters on stilts, up high ladders, moving amongst the audience…I thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle. And I LOVED seeing how the plays had been performed in medieval times as well…it was a new performative experience
for me (albeit a loooooong one!) and really was worth hearing those fucking mourning doves at six that morning.
I’ll end this with a funny little anecdote (yes, I know…funny little anecdotes seem to happen to me a lot–but at least THIS time I wasn’t stuck on a plinth clutching the hind leg of a stone horse in the middle of a parade!). I was, as I said, sitting to one side of the square, and during one of the plays, the “Devil,” a man with red-painted face and hands, long stringy hair, and tattered clothing was moving through the audience being “evil”. He passed in front of me and sort of lunged at me, flicking his tongue in and out of his mouth like a snake tasting the air. I didn’t shriek or shy away like others had done…instead, I laughed. Apparently it was rather an evil laugh, because the “Devil” raised his eyebrows at me, glanced significantly down to the ground as if he could see all the way to hell, and then leaned in close.
“I’ll see YOU later,” he murmured to me, and went on his merry, evil way.
I thought it was hilarious.
Pub-hopping
I hope you will forgive me if this email is less than usually coherent, but I think the description of my day will explain any strange hiccups or inarticulate moments.
In a nutshell, today the Mellon foundation shelled out a LOT of money so that I could go to Burford and get drunk.
Let me start at the beginning.
It was a beautiful morning. I stepped outside to a choir of mourning doves and the air was so thick with the heady perfume flowers that my head swam a little. My favorite kind of morning–cool, crisp, bright, and full of possibility. I
made my way to breakfast (toast, egg, mushrooms, coffee) and afterwards headed to the first session of the day.
Our lecture this morning was on early modern alehouses and inns and their social, political, and religious ties to English Renaissance village–VERY interesting. We broke for coffee, and then piled into a bus that took us to the town of Burford in Oxfordshire, where there are a surprising number of alehouses still in existence from that period (they are not all still alehouses or pubs, but the buildings are still there). We drove through the Cotswolds to get there–gentle, rolling hills; little villages nestled in shallow valleys with their tiny church spires reaching gallantly to the heavens; amber fields and
rich green copses of trees. Breathtaking.
Burford itself consists of a High Street and a not-so-high street, and several intersecting roads. The High Street is lined with 16th century timbered buildings, and I nearly swooned with delight (yes, swooned!) as I snapped pictures of the rickety, sagging structures. And then…we pub crawled, starting at the south end of High Street and making our way steadily north.
We talked about interesting stuff…I think. It’s a bit fuzzy now, really. I remember discussing how the alehouse courtyards were used as performative space, and how social status was construed by the use of “front” and “back” rooms…but
the many, many pints of Strongbow (courtesy of the Mellon foundation!) took the forefront of my concentration.
We had a lot of fun.
Then it was back to Coventry and a fantastic dinner (corn soup, venison steak with some rich and decadent sauce with onions, roasted potatoes, roasted squash, fresh strawberries for dessert, and, of course, lots of wine!).
*hic!*
*thud*
Ghosts of Travels Past–Breaking and Entering
I spent most of today walking on dead people. And the director of the workshop asked me to break into a 13th century church.
It’s been a kinda strange day, actually.
As I’m sure most of you already know, the “walking on dead people” part merely comes from visiting old parish churches, which is what our field trip today was all about. We went to Ashby St. Ledgers and Watford, because both tiny little
towns have beautifully preserved 13th century churches that were later restored in the 15th or 16th century. The church at Ashby St. Ledgers was fantastic, but I always to feel a tiny twinge of…something…when I walk on the tombs of
the men and women who had enough money to be buried right under the church floor (I dunno what it is…distaste? A feeling that I’m being disrespectful? I just don’t know). But this place was amazing! There were LOTS of paintings left
from the 14th and 15th centuries–untouched and unrestored–as well as the original pews and woodwork.
As for the second church…well, when we got to Watford, we discovered that there was a gate across the church porch, and it was padlocked. We didn’t have a key. We milled around for a while, wondering what to do, when the program
directors, Steve and Beat (pronounced “BAY-aht”) raised the possibility of jumping the gate and seeing if the church door itself was locked.
“You want us to break into a CHURCH??” someone asked jokingly, and we all laughed.
“Why not?” Steve said reasonably. “People in the medieval and early modern eras did it all the time!”
There was a long pause. Then, a guy in the back said, “I’ll bet Sharon could do it.”
I have NO idea how people get these ideas about me.
Long story short…I climbed the fence, jumped the gate, and searched the entryway for a spare key. I figured that a small parish church, even a really really old one, might keep one nearby.
It was in the flowerpot.
Ghosts of Travel Past–Still in Warwick
Today was an intriguing mix of absolute delight and gut-wrenching poignancy–not necessarily a comfortable set of emotions for one rather susceptible and feeling heart, but it was certainly a worthy experience nonetheless.
Our weekend is completely free–no lectures, no scheduled trips…we are free to do whatever we choose. So today, I chose to explore the town of Coventry, which was having a celebration to commemorate Lady Godiva’s infamous 11th century ride through that city in order to amend the town charter to ameliorate the exorbitant taxes that put such a heavy burden on the city’s inhabitants. As the legend goes, when the lady made her way through the city, all the
inhabitants looked away out of respect…all but one. A man known as Peeping Tom (the origin of the title) was said to have looked…and was supposedly subsequently struck blind. Whether we believe the “riding naked through the city” story or not, Lady Godiva did exist…she was the very first woman to be mentioned in the Domesday book.
So I took a bus into the heart of Coventry’s city center this morning. I had some time before the parade, so I decided to visit the cathedral. I LOVE cathedrals, and have seen many fine ones here in England. I made my way through the market center, turned a corner, and saw it. I felt as if an icy hand grabbed my heart and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. It was one of the most heartbreaking things I’d ever seen.
I hadn’t known, you see, that the Coventry Cathedral, which was the largest in the area, had been bombed in 1940. The town had not rebuilt it. It stood there, a hollow shell, the walls blackened and shattered, the interior completely empty. One tower and spire by what had been the nave remained standing, and several outer walls remained intact, but the rest was gone. They had picked up the rubble, but that was it. They hadn’t cleaned it. They hadn’t restored it. They’d left it as a memorial–a reminder.
And it broke my heart. I stood there with tears running down my face as I looked at it. It had been so beautiful…so large and graceful. You could see where the windows–now devoid of any stained or painted glass–had been, could envision
the spires and the vaulted roof. The townspeople had salvaged two rafters–two blackened pieces of timber–and had cobbled them together to make a cross. They erected it where the altar had been, and put a little plaque by it. Now,
most of you know that I am NOT a religious person…but that made me cry.
They did build a NEW cathedral–a horrendously modern construction right next door, built to be, it seemed, as different and opposite of the original as possible. I didn’t go in. I’ll remember the original one as I saw it.
But the parade was AMAZING! It was like Carnivale, with bright colors, huge
floats, and women in animal costumes built to incredible heights–I saw a
peacock, a swan, a dragon, a butterfly, a lobster, a spider, and many
others.
There were lots of children, music, LOTS of drumming, both martial and ethnic, and fantasy characters. Lady Godiva herself led the parade. No, she wasn’t naked, though she wore a flesh-colored dress. She also wasn’t on a horse–she
rode in a Jaguar convertible (Jaguar sponsored the parade), and had a papier-mâché horse head in front of her.
Afterwards, I’d LOVE to be able to say that I wandered leisurely around the town a bit, taking in the sights and having a good time, but those of you who know me well have probably already guessed what really happened.
I got lost.
I got SO lost that I looked for my bus stop for over an hour. It turned out that what I thought was north was actually something like southeast, so I kept going in the completely wrong directions. But I finally found my way back, got on
the bus, and managed to find my way back to the university.
Ghosts of Travels Past–More Warwick
I woke up today and walked out into a morning that could have been pulled from the pages of a gothic novel.
The air is bright, clear, and crisp, the sun so sharp you could cut yourself on its rays, but far in the distance are hunched dark, lowering clouds that carry the promise of gloom and doom later in the day. It did rain a bit yesterday…that lovely, gentle rain with big, fat drops that seem to fall from the sky in slow motion. I love that sort of rain, so I actually stood out in it for a while before dinner. But I do hope that the clear weather holds for our trip to Kenilworth castle today.
Yesterday was our first full day of scheduled meetings. We had an “introduction” session, where all the participants of the workshop introduced themselves (well, duh!) and talked about our projects…that was fun, because we all got so interested in each other’s work that we kept offering suggestions and asking questions. Then we heard two papers by faculty members here at the university. That was fun, too, because we ended up getting into a rather loud and brassy
argument on a few points. Lots of disagreement and differing points of view.
And the director was worried that we would be too nervous or shy to participate in discussions! HA!
This morning we have two more papers to hear, and then we’re off to our first field trip in the afternoon. I’m taking my camera, so hopefully I’ll have lots of lovely pictures later.
The university itself is quite small, and looks very new…the buildings are very modern and in extremely good condition. The workshop people are NOT skimping with the Mellon foundation’s money, either…! We are being offered the
royal treatment, and they seem to feel the need to feed us every few hours. Our schedule looks something like this:
8:00–Breakfast (it’s a full English breakfast buffet)
9:30–first session
11:00–Coffee
11:30–second session
1:00–lunch
2:00–afternoon session
3:30–tea
4:00–second afternoon session
7:30–dinner
EVERY day…except for the days we have field trips in the afternoon, at which point we are treated to lunch out at an inn or restaurant. And I have to say, the food is extremely good. I had roast duck with satay sauce for dinner last
night…yummy!
Oh…and I just heard some news that actually made me a little giddy. As most of you already know, our last night here they are taking us to Stratford to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform “Antony and Cleopatra”. And it’s
starring….Patrick Stewart. I’m VERY excited.
Ghosts of Travels Past–Warwick Cont.
Wow. Show me a pile of mouldy stones, walls broken and roof missing, tell me, “Queen Elizabeth I slept here,” and I’m all of a sudden “Intrepid Girl”, clambering up stairs worn to an angle by centuries of busy feet, leaning out over precipices to see an “interesting” stone that years ago caught some scholar’s eye, trekking across the countryside to see where a pool “used to be”, beside which Elizabeth loved to sit and chat with her favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
And I just drool through all of it.
Kenilworth is rather beyond my inadequate powers of description. My first view of it came from a cow pasture, actually. Our guide, a brilliant scholar named Matthew Johnson, led us down a cow path to give us the best view of the castle. The day was bright, and the sun had a crystalline quality that touched every stone, every tree, every blade of grass with color. The castle, a ruined structure pulled down by Cromwell during the English civil war, was constructed of red stone beginning in the 12th century (1120, to be exact), and was later renovated by Elizabeth in the 1570s. I took one look at it…and gasped out loud.
It was glorious. The gatehouse has been completely restored, but the keep is still in its ruined state. The ceilings and roof are gone, but the incredible, gracefully-arched windows, reaching high above the landscape, remain (sans glass, of course), as does the intricate stonework of the walls that made up the great hall. Two enormous fireplaces flank the hall, and my imagination immediately filled in the blanks…tables and tapestries, silver dishes and rich food, heavy oak carvings, smells and noise and dogs and smoke. The glitter of sunlight on the glass windows.
As we left, the late afternoon sun cast a ruddy light on the red stones, and Kenilworth glowed like a carnelian held up to the sun. And it is, indeed, a jewel. There’s a wonderful story about Elizabeth’s visit to the castle in 1575. It’s said that as she traveled over the causeway and the tiltyard, which separated two large separate bodies of water (now extinct), the Lady of the Lake arose from the water to greet her. The Lady welcomed the queen, and said, “I am the mistress of this lake, and I welcome you.” To which Elizabeth replied, “I am the queen of England, and thereby the rightful owner of this lake. You remain here at MY concession.”
Just the thought of two powerful women (one, albeit, apochryphal) bickering over ownership of the landscape tickles me to pieces.
Okay…enough for now. Time to go and listen to more papers.
Ghosts of Travels Past–Flashbacks to Warick, England.
In 2006, I was awarded a Mellon Fellowship from the Newberry Library to spend part of the summer at the University of Warwick in England. Here are some of the emails I sent from that trip.
A look back at some emails from previous trips!
Day 1:
I have arrived in England safe and sound, and have found my way to the University of Warwick where I was…thank goodness…expected and warmly greeted. The trip was a bit harrowing–long layovers, rough flights, no sleep–but eventually I ended up in Gatwick airport around noon on a gloriously cloudy, bleak, foggy, and quintiscentially English day.
Surprisingly, the breeze was quite cool as I waited for the bus that would take me to Coventry, and the clouds blew past with remarkable speed. I was quite well acquainted with those clouds…they’d tried to kill us as we made our approach into London. Or so it seemed. The landing was rougher than most, though we made it to the ground safely.
After nearly three more hours and too many cups of decaf coffee to count, I boarded the bus that would take me to the midlands. The trip took nearly four hours, and it was fascinating to watch the landscape change (and I’m ALL about the landscape, as most of you know! It’s why I’m here!). Southern England is all green and abounding with trees and thick hedges, but as we moved north everything turned tawny and gold. The grass was allowed to grow wild and it waved and thrashed in the wind, the trees thinned out a lot, and great swathes of land stretched out in fields and meadows that looked like sunlight on still water. There was very little green to be seen, just a bit of scrub here and there, which is NOT my England at all!
But it was beautiful.
I finally arrived in Coventry and caught a cab to take me to the university. After trying five cash machines before I found one that would actually give me cash, the driver agreed to finally drive me there. I was, as I said, met warmly, given a name tag, a thick folder of stuff, and a room key, and directed to my room. It’s a nice little room, and I have my own bathroom, so I’m happy. Then, I attended a very lovely drinks reception (Strongbow!!) and they gave us a WONDERFUL dinner (lamb stew, new potatoes, veggies, red and white wine). And now, I’m sitting at my little desk, almost prepared for bed–but I wanted to let you all know that I’m here, I’m safe, and everything is thus far going as planned.
I’ll keep you updated as things progress…tomorrow is the “official” meet-n-greet, and the first of many interesting talks, and Tuesday we take our first field trip–Kenilworth Castle.
