Ah, Paris! (By way of Amsterdam)

“Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography… Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.” John Berger

Ah Paris! Dad took the family there in 1988. We spent 4-5 days in Paris, it rained the entire time, but I still loved it.

I remember the Louvre, and Sacre-Coeur and Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter. The cafes and the boutiques. At fifteen I felt like an interloper in such a city of style.

This letter really is more about Amsterdam though, I’ll see if I can find more letters from Paris…

Reading Dad’s letters, I am marvelling at how much mileage Dad got from the contacts he made at the New Education Fellowship conference in Delhi in 1959. He spent ten days there, and then travelled for six months on the contacts he made!

Dad always was a natural networker, before that term even came into being. He’s a people person. He will chat with anyone who spends more than ten seconds in his presence, particularly if they are female and attractive!

More on the introvert end of the personality scale, my mum and I would cringe at times when Dad would use a rather nebulous connection with someone to justify contacting them, and somehow being invited for lunch or to stay. No matter where in the world we would go, Dad would know someone.

Older now, I appreciate this skill, the world needs more connectors like Dad, to ease us out of our little protective shells and reclaim that pleasure in sharing life stories. Reaching out to connect with disconnected people, as dad does with Boros. Storytelling is a two way street, and Dad always knew how to listen to stories, as well as to tell them.

Paris, April 1960

Dear Mum and Dad,

By now you should be well and truly back from your cruise which must have been terrific.

Since I have written to Ronald in Geneva, I have been about 10 days each in Germany and Holland, and now Paris – I arrived last night. I have been using the youth hostels in these places which has cut my expenses considerably, and has proved a goldmine for meeting young travellers.

In Germany, it was bitterly cold – down close to zero degrees which contrasts with humid weather in Paris today. The Germans I met were very friendly and they proved very willing guides. Of course we keep away from the discussions of the war which prove very embarrassing.

While in Frankfurt I brought a second-hand camera (35mm) with the help of a German girl who was well informed on the subject. It is a Braun Paxette IIBL and has a built-in light meter and a good detachable lens, case etc. It cost 240 marks (DM) which is about £24 Australian. I can use colour film of course, but I have been practising in black and white. I will send you some of the results when I get them.

There is no doubt about the drinking conditions on the continent, they leave ours for dead. The way the whole family comes down and drinks together in the Inn or Tavern, gives a great spirit to the place.

When I reached Amsterdam I contacted the NEF (New Education Fellowship) branch there and was invited out to lunch twice, to the house of a Mr Kess Becke, who lives in a beautiful village, Abcoude, halfway between Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Mr Becke, who was in his seventies, told me much of his drama-packed life and his efforts to start a revolutionary school. He made arrangements for me to go and see it. It was somewhat like Preshil, with a secondary department, and it was very well supplied with land and equipment.

Later I went to another NEF members house in Utrecht, for afternoon tea. Holland is certainly a beautiful place with its canals, and there is much to see, but the weather didn’t impress until the last days of my stay.

During my stay in Holland, I visited The Hague and the Peace Palace in the International Court of Justice, and I saw in Amsterdam, wonderful collections of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. I also took a boat trip around the canals, which was very good value.

The thing which was very noticeable in Holland was the fact that everyone spoke English as a second language. This is in contrast with Paris where very few spoke English.

I have met a boy in the hostel here called Boros. He is a refugee from Hungary, his parents were killed there. He is working in Paris until next month when he migrates to Melbourne. I gave him your address, in the hope that if he needs any social contact, you would help him. He seems a nice, intelligent, person. His age is 19.

I went to American Express in Paris but there was no mail. I think it may have been there more than two months and was returned. I will have to leave seeing Dad’s girlfriend until next time.

A German girl I met in Frankfurt gave me the address of a friend in Montparnasse and we saw an exhibition of Van Gogh works there today.

I am settling down quite quickly in Paris and now use the Metro as well as I can in Melbourne. It is lovely now in Paris, with the sun and the avenues of trees.

Love Chris

Dad, I remember now, was always the family photographer. He took this role very seriously. He always had sophisticated cameras, and his difficulties with manual dexterity, meant it took him a (long) while to get ready.

My brother and I now have many photos of us grimacing as children, not because we were particularly bad-tempered, but because our jaws had got so sore from smiling for ten minutes straight, that by the time dad actually took the photo, we were grumpy, bored and in pain.

My particular favourite is one of me, aged around five, both scowling and squinting – the sun had to be behind the camera-man of course. As such I had been staring into the sun for a good ten minutes, my eyes were watering and I wasn’t happy. I look at that photo and I can still remember how I felt, but my love for the man in the paisley shirt, brown flares, with glasses and a bushy beard, kept me still, albeit whingey, long enough to capture that moment.

“The more I travelled the more I realised that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.” Shirley MacLaine

 

Title image:

Eiffel Tower edge.lovingapartments.com

Amsterdam Canal blog.utrip.com

Abcoude wilmabosma.smugmug.com

La Rotund Montparnasse bonjourparis.com

I am from Barcelona…

Dad somehow went on a student trip to Barcelona, studying Spanish at the university and living cheap in university accommodation. Despite never having studied Spanish before, he had classes in the morning at the College and then the rest of the day was free to experience Barcelona. He was doing somewhat of an ‘Eat Pray Love’ before Elizabeth Gilbert was in nappies.

Barcelona, archives of courtesy, shelter of the foreigners, hospital of the poor, father-land of the brave , vengeance of the offended and pleasant correspondence of firm friendship, and in site, and in beauty, unique. Don Miguel de Cervantes

One of his favourite places, Sitges‘ has an arty reputation dating back to the late 19th century, when Spanish painter Santiago Rusiñol took up residence there during the summer. The town when Dad was there, became a centre for the 1960s counterculture in Spain, then still under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and became known as “Ibiza in miniature”.

9/8/60 American Express, Barcelona

Dear Mum and Dad,

I hope all is well at home. This Barcelona trip has certainly been good value so far and great fun. We arrived in Barcelona on Tuesday after a 30 hour train ride, which was pretty tiring.

We were placed for accommodation in one of the university colleges in the fashionable part of the city. We are very comfortably placed in double rooms (I have a superior room to most with a balcony!) and the meals are quite substantial and good.

We usually start with a salad, followed by a typical Spanish concoction, then steak and ships and finally fruit of some kind, usually watermelon. Drinks (local) are extremely cheap 7 ½ D will buy a glass of superior sherry, port type, or ‘crème de menthe’ or similar liqueur.

 

We spend two hours in the morning at lectures and then the rest of the day is free. I have been on a number of excursions to see a bullfight, Spanish music and dancing, and to visit the towns of Sitges and Tarragona (once a famous Roman settlement); and two original El Greco paintings of St Peter and Madeline at Sitges.

Barcelona is a beautiful city on the same idea as Paris but substituting the parks and gardens of Paris for beaches. It is very warm here and I am doing a lot of swimming and I also succeeded in getting a bit brown.

The people here are gay and friendly and show this in their clothes. They have some excellent shops here which compete favourably with Paris or London.

I lost my glasses last Thursday at the beach so I went to the local firm and had my eyes tested with the help of an interpreter and the new pair were ready with 24 hours. They look very smart and function all right, but I am a bit concerned that the doctor, as far as I could gather, didn’t test each eye separately. I enclose the prescription for you to see and comment on. The new pair of glasses cost the equivalent of 3/7/6. Which is much better than getting it on National Health in the U.K. So the English people tell me.

Before I forget I would be very grateful if you would find my Russian books (3) and papers and post them over to me at my school in Kent. I intend to keep at it during the Winter months and they should arrive, if posted as soon as possible, in time for when I will need them at the end of October. It should be cheaper having them sent over than buying new ones. If you’re writing to Spain bear in mind it probably takes 10 days to arrive (by airmail) as postal services are not very reliable in Spain. You’d best address future mail to AMERICAN EXPRESS ROME or c/o Coursehorn, Cranbrook, KENT.

The night before I left for Spain, I had a meal at the Boykett’s flat and saw David and Peter as well as Nancy. Nan said that Ken was much better and in a private nursing home. They will not be able to go to the Games and they gave me a ticket for the rowing, which I could use.

The bullfight I attended was very interesting but I was still very disgusted by it. Six bulls were eventually killed between 6-8pm. One bull trying to escape leapt over the first of two fences separating the ring from the public seats, another tossed the matador, who recovered quickly to go on. The most fantastic and disgusting sight however, was to see the last bull being cut and skinned for some butcher shop, under the stands, as we came out to go to the College.

The most interesting part was the ritual of the sport but I will tell of this in my next letter.

Love Chris

My first exposure to Barcelona was through one of Dad and my earliest shared pleasures, ‘Fawlty Towers’ – God how we’d laugh at the antics of Basil and Sybil, Polly and Manuel…

It’s even funnier because one of Dad’s best friend’s bears an uncanny resemblance, in looks and temperament to Basil Fawlty, which just made us laugh all the harder. Ah, who says television can’t bring people together.

I did not decide to go to sleep, even though I wished to, so I could rise early and contemplate, in daylight, this city, unknown to me: Barcelona, capital of Catalonia. Hans Christian Andersen

Source:

Wikipedia

Photos:

Sitges barcelonaholidayapartments.co.uk/blog

Sitges beaches media.ticmate.com

Sitges apartment Apartmentbarcelona.com

Roman Aquaduct Tarragona wikimedia

Beach 1960 blogspot.com

Barcelona city Spanishwalkingtrails.com

Bullfight ryancore310.wordpress.com

The (Swiss) hills are alive with… cars and girls

Switzerland would be a mighty big place if it were ironed flat. Mark Twain

Switzerland is renowned for being neutral, despite neighbouring the occupied territories and their invaders in two World Wars – awkward!

A country whose army is famous, not for actually fighting, but for it’s super-handy camping knife.

A country that is landlocked by three of Europe’s most distinct cultures: the clean-cut, super-efficient, clock-making types in the German border region of the Northeast; the laconic, wine-drinking denizens of the French-Swiss border region to the southwest; south of the Alps, the coffee-drinking sun worshippers in the Italian border region; and in the centre, the classic Swiss mountain landscapes with their yodelling lonely goat herder types.

Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture. Ernest Hemingway  

Judging by Dad’s letter to his younger brother Ron, the main attractions were the cars, and the girls.

Geneva, 14/3/1960

Dear Ronald,

I hope you are getting over your operation. A knee operation is a bloody painful business, apart from the frustrating part of getting back to normal.

Being the only one at home at the moment, I suppose you have wishes of acquiring wings to fly to the land of your dreams, I don’t doubt for one moment that dreamland would be Switzerland.

Although it is not he season for tourists, many skiers may be seen making their way to the mountains, the beautiful snow-capped Alps, by way of car or train.

In addition in Geneva, they are holding The European Motor Show, which I attended today, and as well as the female chassis, there is many a four-wheeled one that would set your heart a flutter.

Apart from the latest model cars there is a magnificent display of boats and outboard engines (the Johnson dominating), camping equipment, caravans, farm machinery, and accessories. It fair took your breath away!

The only drawback was that many of the staff on the stands had a very poor knowledge of English and it was very difficult to get information. The folders were usually printed in French and German.

Of the sports cars the following made my hair curl: Alfa Romeo 2000 CVII ‘Spider’ (price in Australia £2490); Mercedes Benz 300L Sports; Fiat Abarth 850 (£2200); Maserati 5000; Bristol, Aston Martin; Ferrari Sports; Healey 3000 Deluxe Special (it had unusual back seats); Healey ‘Sprite’ Special; and the Valiant V200 14PS.

I hope these bits of information mean more to you than they do to me!

Of the sedans, the Rolls Royce dominated but the engine that can run on many types of fuel including peanut-butter was not yet available for inspection.

The others that pleased were: Panhard Citroen ‘Tigre’; Rambler, Vespa 400, Rover (it had its gearstick going under the dashboard to the engine, instead of in the flooring between the two front seats); Plymouth Fury; Studebaker Lark; Dodge Polara (it had a second back seat which was reversed to enable people to look out the back windscreen); Ghia Torina (looked like a space-ship and also had a second backseat reversed as an observation seat.)

The latest model Wolseley 6-99; Oldsmobile and Mercedes Benz were beautiful looking cars. Apart from the cars there were all kinds of aircraft, camping equipment – including portable transistor radios, TV sets and rotary grillers – they use to grill chicken these days – which all run off a battery. There was a fantastic caravan which consisted of 3 bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and a lounge which included a 21-inch TV set!

Comparing Geneva with Zurich is rather difficult. They are so completely different. I think for the atmosphere and friendliness I prefer Zurich. In Zurich amongst other things I saw a very interesting exhibition which was being held on the theme of the ‘History of the Cinema.’ And today (now 15th March) in Geneva I visited the United Nations Building and listened in on a debate on Human Rights.

I have had beautiful weather in Switzerland and the food has been very good, they certainly know how to eat, the Swiss.

I have posted today by surface mail some of those felt badges to you. Badges from Athens, Rome, Pisa, Capri, and Switzerland, of varying quality, but they were about 4/- each and the best I could get at the time, so I hope you like them.

Tell Mum and Dad when they return that I collected their letters at Zurich and they were most welcome.

They were the first contact since I left India on January 31st.

Tell Dad that my Olympic Games tickets include the swimming.

Best wishes to you and Mary, Chris.

Ah, brothers, no matter how old they are, they can always talk in the universal language of cars.

I felt like shouting, enough cars, but what about SWITZERLAND? Then I saw the images of the cars, pretty impressive.

I guess we are still waiting for the peanut-butter fuelled one.

When I read this letter to Dad, not yet typed up – which didn’t please him as apparently there are people WAITING on the next post. I had the original folder of letters with me, and I noticed there was a gap of about four months in 1960.

No letters and no recollection from Dad where he was.

There was Paris In April, and the beautiful model (of the two-legged variety) he romanced in Germany, whose mother refused to entertain him because he wasn’t German, wasn’t Catholic, and lived in Australia. More on that later.

But where in the world was Dad in May-August 1960? He was at the Rome Olympic Games on August 25, but between Paris in April and then? Somewhere in Europe.

Dad told me to check his vast collection of slides, so I may soon be lost in Europe too.

I love a good travel mystery as much as the next person – did someone say Carmen Sandiego?

Stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted.

 

Source:

http://wikitravel.org/en/Switzerland

 

Images:

Title: goat-in-the-swiss-alps

Swiss Army Knife

Goat herder DONALD MCLEISH/National Geographic Creative

train-to-a-tunnel-in-the-alps

Alfa-Romeo_1100

catherine-deneuve-style-evolution-1960s-rolls-royce

amc_armitron_experiment_car

Marine car

Postcard_of_The_Swiss_Alps

Zurich

 Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

La dolce vita a Italia – Roma, Napoli, Pompei, Firenze, Milano

 

Please don’t be concerned that I’m going to be dropping in and out of Italian in this post. The title pretty much exhausts my knowledge of the language. Oh, and ‘attraversiamo’, from Eat Pray Love. Okay, that’s it now, done.

I have to say reading Dad’s letters is no easy feat. He was a master of squeezing about four pages of writing into a single aerogram – remember them? Which makes reading them akin to code-breaking. I think he missed his calling at Bletchley Park.

Ah, Italy. I have only been there in E M Forster novels and Merchant Ivory films, and of course, Eat Pray Love. As such I have an impossibly romantic notion of the place. Having met plenty of Italians overseas though, I imagine it is less like travelling demurely with a maiden aunt and more like getting pinched on the bum, a lot.

If every city has a word, I imagine Rome’s is romance, La Dolce Vita.

Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning. Giotto di Bondone

Florence 29/2/60

Dear Mum and Dad,

I hope all is well at home I am having quite a swift tour of Italy which has been quite interesting but rather tiring. The food varies but is mostly starch, and for the money, not very nourishing, you would get a very miserable meal 10/- in a cafe.

Since I wrote last I have visited the Sistine Chapel and seen Michelangelo’s famous painting on the ceiling and also work by Raphael. I also visited the usual tourist spots. Roman Forum, Colosseum, Piazza di Spagna, Keats, and Shelley’s memorial and the old Appian Way.

 On Feb 20th my friend Pat and I took a train to Naples, to which we both took an instant dislike. It is a dirty place with many pestering beggars so we took a ferry to Sorrento, which is a really charming place. We booked into a lovely hotel with a superb view of the bay and most inexpensive. It is quite the nicest place I have stayed at.

The Sunday saw us on a Ferry to Capri. It i certainly a very romantic spot – a great tourist centre and of course very expensive. There are ways of avoiding the expensive aspect of this and I have written a letter to David (Dad’s cousin, an olympic rower) outlining the economies he might like to use if he comes to Rome for the Olympic Games.

We spent the day walking round the island past Mussolini’s castle, old ruins, beautiful houses and gardens, and along the steep winding road, which you look down from quite a height onto this beautiful blue sea. We did not go to the Blue Grotto because the tide was not right.

We then caught the ferry back to Sorrento. On Monday we went in a local bus to Amalfi on what must be one of the most scenic driveways of the world. It is a fantastic drive along a steep, narrow, mountainous road with a sheer drop to the sea on one side and mountain peaks soaring up on the other with orange and olive plantations and vineyards on the side of the mountains. We were accompanied by a new Australian couple from Brisbane.

On the next two days we visited the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to go up the Mount Vesuvius but the ruins were very interesting. Many of the houses were still standing and were very well preserved. Some of bodies were visible and distorted with the agony of their fate.

You could see the charcoal remains of loaves of bread and other food stuffs, the tools they used, and cooking implements, keys, cut-throat razors etc. all indicating a very high standard of living. Many two and three story houses were still standing. The excavations at Pompeii were commenced in the 18th century and are still continuing. They cover an area of about a square mile! It is an extraordinary place.

Our next port of call was Naples and there we stayed overnight and visited their local museum which house quite a lot of the artwork and relics from Pompeii and the Herculaneum. We then hurried back to Rome.

For extra cost we were able to fly to Pisa on the 28th. We took a bus to Florence, with the idea of returning to Pisa on the 3rd to fly to Milan. We passed the leaning tower on the way, it is quite impressive.

The bus took nearly four hours to get to Florence we though that it never would. It went on and on stopping everywhere and we were very fortunate in getting a seat.

Florence is a beautiful city with beautiful shops, particularly for leather goods. One is always reminded her, and all over Italy, how courteous and pleasant their policemen are. They are very pleased to help and in Florence most of them seem to be able to speak English very well. Today we visited Loggia della Signoria which is famous for its architecture and statues including the famous ‘Rape of the Sabines’.

Next door is the Palazzo Vecchio which dates back to 1298. It’s chief interests are the big, rambling, ornate rooms with paintings on the walls and ceilings, and many fine sculptures. The chief drawback to these kinds of places is that there are so many of these sorts of buildings and museums about and usually the lighting is so bad that it is very difficult to see anything. I get so sick now of heavy Roman statues and gaudy art that I probably miss a lot. I don’t know how I will see a fraction of what there is to see.

Love from Chris

Oh, how magnificent a problem, to be concerned not to see all the treasures of Italy. It strikes me that these travels are very much in the style I recall from childhood. Dad is a great believer in building Rome in a day, well, if not building it, at least touring it!

Our travels were always fly-by-night tours, we would spend a day, or at the most two in a place, madly scrambling around trying to see everything, then boom! Time to move on. Decades before the Race Around the World reality TV shows, Dad had that style of travel down.

As such, he has seen so much of the world, he is a tireless traveller who will walk from sunrise to sunset to experience a place in its entirety, to soak it up and be spat out into the next place to start over again. It’s a hell of a way to travel.

Dad told me another Italian story last night at dinner. His American friend, who turned up again in Rome, I think Dad missed a major romance right there, insisted Dad have a haircut to tame his wild, colonial locks. They found a hairdresser in Sorrento, who Dad claims, worked by picking up single strands of hair and cutting them one at a time – he was there all day. Probably the only time Dad sat still on the whole trip! It does speak volumes of the Italian way of savouring every moment, every sensation in life.

I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this city, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.  Elizabeth Gilbert

 

Images:

Title Image: Trevi fountain walksofitaly.com

Michangelo’s Creation of Adam Sistene Chapel wikimedia.org

Appian Way romanhomes.com

Capri torresaracenacapri.com

Amalfi Coast Drive shedexpedition.com

Herculaneum blogspot.com

Pompeii wikimedia.org

Leaning tower Pisa blogspot.com

Loggia della Signoria esploriamo.com

Among the ruins of Athens

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown. Paul Theroux

Athens is one of the world’s oldest cities, continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years, with a recorded history dating back for 3,400 years. That’s old.

Known as the both the ‘cradle of civilisation’ and the ‘birthplace of democracy’; legacies of the golden age leadership by the great statesman, Pericles in 5th Century BC.

Pericles was a leader of vision, who promoted the arts, embarked on a building program that included the Acropolis and the Parthenon, and founded democracy.

Let there be light! Said Liberty, and like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose! Percy Bysshe Shelley

The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens during Pericles’ time, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the philosopher Socrates. Just the founders of modern literature, history, philosophy, and medicine, is all!

The Greek playwrights wrote extensively about Hubris, the overweening pride – of the “pride that comes before the fall” variety – that was the tragic flaw in every Greek hero or heroine.

While my Dad is a proud man, fortunately he has more of the Australian-variety pride. The laconic, laid-back pride that enjoys lazing on a deck chair with a beer, and a terry-towelling hat, with the cricket blaring on the radio, watching the pretty girls walk by on the beach.

“Bird-watching” dad used to call it – you could get away with that kind of political incorrectness in the 1970’s.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence, native to famous wits. John Milton

Hotel New Angleterre

Constitution Square
Athens 13/2/1960

Dear Mum and Dad,

This letter will not be as long as I would like as I am leaving Athens tomorrow.

I arrived in Athens, one week ago last Sunday. Being my first taste of a European Winter, it could have been worse, but it was an unpleasant change from Cairo. My health is much improved and I am standing up to it quite well, but I am sure I am losing weight.

I hope everything is alright at home.

I have had my plane ticket rerouted to include stop-offs at Milan, Zurich, Geneva, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, Paris, London. I thought I might make the most of my plane fare.

I am frankly disappointed with Athens, it has not the atmosphere of Cairo and its treasures are not anything like as well preserved.

Whether the lack of contacts here made any difference – perhaps it did.

 

Fortunately I have this American girl I met in Delhi to blunder around with. We visited the museums, the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Theseum, the Temple of Zeus – to these we usually walked and ended up taking hours longer than we should have!

On Wednesday we went on an organised tour to Delphi (home of Oedipus Rex and other heroes).

Here the mountain scenery was breathtakingly beautiful and we passed through many quaint little villages.

The condition of the exhibits in most of the museums was generally poor, badly arranged and labelled and most of the labels in English were spelt incorrectly.

Usually the famous pieces war scattered among many different museums and you had to hunt around a lot of smashed up statues to find them. There was one exception – the museum attached to the Theseum. It was beautifully arranged and labelled. Most of the material was recovered from people’s graves – generally jewellery, pottery, and other personal belongings.

On display was an opened grave of a baby and a small girl exactly as they were found, skeletons, toys etc. Other things of interest were an ancient toilet-training device for children, a ballot machine, water clock, stoves and cooking utensils. There was also a fantastic little statue of Apollo restored from hundreds of tiny pieces of bronze.

This is a mess, I am sorry. I am tired from a late night and rushing to finish this at the airport before I leave for Rome.

Love Chris

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. Paul Theroux

Athens sounds amazing, rubble and all, but I was much more interested in who this American girl was.

So I quizzed Dad. He said she ‘dropped into his line of sight’ in India several times. Then they caught up in Athens and Italy.

“They are pretty big cities to randomly run into someone Dad, I think she was following you.”

“Well, that would have been very flattering to think so,” he replied.

Absolutely convinced of my hypothesis, I tell him of a dear male friend who I met after we kept ‘bumping into’ each other at Uni.

After we had been friends a while, he confessed he had followed me around that day, so the constant running into each over was less serendipitous, more artifice.

Dad just smiled.

Perhaps I’ll defer to the wisdom of the Greeks on this one…

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is just opinion. Democritus

Stories like this one, that emerge as Dad opens up about this time of his life are absolutely priceless. Mythology is the study of stories, as I dig further I gain insights into Dad’s personal mythology, an archaeologist piecing together fragments of treasured memories, for generations to come.

One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom. Socrates

Source: wikipedia.org

Title image: Map wiki.totalwar.com

Athens postcard flickr.com

Athens Greece postcard rlv.zcache.com

Acropolis excursion.gr

Amphitheatre telegraph.co.uk

Athens trio trinitytheatre.net

Pericles wikimedia.org

Theseum wikimedia.org

Delphi postcard blogspot.com

Acropolis porch of the Caryatids blogspot.com

The choreographed chaos of Cairo

Egypt is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust. Gustave Flaubert

When you meet or greet locals in Cairo, you say “Es-Salāmu-`Alēku” which literally means “Peace be upon you”. This is local variation of the Islamic greeting and instantly creates a friendliness between strangers.

Described by Lonely Planet as “choreographed chaos” the city known as Um ad-Dunya (Mother of the World) drew Dad straight into her protective embrace.

Situated along the Nile, Cairo has ancient origins, located in the vicinity of the Pharaonic city of Memphis, and is home to some of the best Pharaonic, Coptic, and Islamic sights in Egypt.

The city started to take its present form in 641 AD, when Arab general, Amr Ibn Al-Ase, took Egypt for Islam and founded a new capital called Misr Al-Fustat, “the City of the Tents”.

Legend has it, on the day Amr left to Alexandria, two doves were nesting in his tent, and instead of disturbing them, he left the tent behind, which became the site of the new city in what is now Old Cairo.

The Tunisian Fatimid dynasty captured the city in 969 A.D and renamed it, Al-Qahira (“The Victorious”), which became ‘Cairo’.

The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame. Gustave Flaubert

Dad had a wonderful time after the conference in Delhi touring the various places of the delegates he met – Tehran, Cairo, Athens and Rome.

Having always had that ability to become on friendly terms with everyone – with his candour, wit, and engaging curiously about everything – dad has had friends all over the world, who he faithfully wrote to, graciously accepted the hospitality of, and enthusiastically returned said hospitality when they visited Melbourne. Dad was insistent that everyone he met should visit Melbourne and stay with him.

His Christmas Card list would rival the Queen of England’s.

Egypt is somewhere I have always longed to visit, ever since I poured over books about the pyramids and the exotic stories of Nefertiti, Cleopatra and Tutankhamen.

Gresham House

20, Sharia Soliman Pasha,

CAIRO

Friday 5/2/60

Dear Mum and Dad,

I hope all is well at home.

I have been in Cairo since Wednesday afternoon and have been very spoilt by Dr. El Koussy who is technical advisor to the U.A.R government. He was my group leader at the conference and he has arranged with his assistants to act as guide-companions during my stay.

I don’t know how I could have got on without them. Cairo is a fascinating place, but the easiest place to get lost in. The hotel I am staying in is very nice but inexpensive and the people running it are very nice!

I have been to the Sphinx and the Pyramids and the Egyptian museum, which were fantastic.

The quantity, the age, and the condition of the pieces in the museum were extraordinary. Bits of costumes, dating many thousands of years, were seen and you could see the red hair on the heads and the eyelashes on the mummies.

The Egyptians as a people are very happy and friendly – very pro-Nasser, very anti-communist and very anti-Forouk. They seem to be pleased with the country’s progress.

I have been very tempted to buy many lovely things for you and if they were not wanted you could pass them on to others and repay me, but not knowing what you would like I have been very strict with myself.

If you have any wants from Europe let me know. I leave Cairo for Athens on Sunday morning, expecting to be there about three days and I shall then go to Rome, Geneva, Paris and London.

Could dad let me have the address of his girl pen-friend in France? I may not be able to look her up. I may not be in Paris until about 10 days, so a letter addressed to ‘Air France’ Office Paris may reach me in time.

I enjoyed my stay in Tehran very much and my new friends were very kind to me. I attended to rich Iranian’s wedding. The unusual thing about this wedding was that bride was away in Germany and the groom was in the USA!

I visited an American school in Tehran and the University and the Museum. I also saw a supermarket and some TV, which was quite good.

Unfortunately the plane was late into Beirut and I was unable to do any shopping and spent the time watching the Sultan Of Morocco arrive in pouring rain.

In spite of the weather Beirut is very pretty with the mountains on one side and the sea on the other.

Love Chris

Is it just me, or is this Iranian wedding something you want to know more about? A wedding where neither the bride nor groom were present, and actually on different sides of the globe from each other at the time – fascinating!

There’s something very endearing about dad, I can imagine how these near-strangers felt compelled to take such special care of him.

He is an open and fearless traveller, who in all his many travels has never attracted any negativity or disaster.

I think because he approaches the world with such open-eyed awe, no one ever received him as anything other than a friend. Es-Salāmu-`Alēku indeed.

It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling. Gustave Flaubert

 

Sources

lonelyplanet.com/egypt/cairo

wikitravel.org/en/Cairo

Images

Title image blogspot.com

Camel Driver at Pyramids travel.usnews.com

Black and white mosque jameelcentre.ashmolean.org

Belly-dancer at Giza 1960 blogspot.com

Cairo 1960 Postcard popscreencdn.com

Sphinx and pyramid www.rigasturisti.lv

Square in Cairo www.flickr.com

Tutankhamen cartage cdn.enjoyourholiday.com

Iranian Wedding blog.internations.org

King Tut’s Tomb nationalgeographic.com

Cairo at dusk greenwichmeantime.com

An unexpected sojourn in Tehran

Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don’t know and trusting them with your life. Paul Theroux

Last week when I was visiting dad, I read out the blog post about Delhi for him.

His eyes get a faraway look and a broad smile stretches across his face as he reminisces about his adventures through listening to his own words.

Each week, the blog post triggers a memory of another travel story, last time was his boat trip around Japan, which I must include in a future post, and this time was Tehran.

“Tehran?” I exclaimed, I hadn’t heard of this trip before.

While in Delhi for the teachers’ conference, dad met many people from all parts of the world. A delegate from tehran wrote him a glowing letter of introduction, as you did in 1959, so after the conference off dad set.

Dad was always rather taken with animal hide coats, at this time he was wearing a large sheepskin coat, with his artist looks and black rimmed glasses, he must have looked like a cross between Allan Ginsberg and the wild colonial man.

When he arrived at the airport, the local authorities were very suspicious of him – in fact, everyone seemed to be surveying him up and down left and right. He produced the aforementioned letter and suddenly everyone was falling all over themselves to be of assistance.

“Who wrote the letter?” I asked

“I don’t remember” he said “But they must have been very important”

I’ll say! So typical of dad to be completely without trepidation and always land on his feet, in wonderful surrounds, he has the true spirit of the adventurer.

 

Tehran, 1/2/60

Dear Mum and Dad,

I arrived in Tehran yesterday at 12.30midday. It is a very modern orderly city and the American influence is very marked. It is very cold here, like our winter days with more sun and no winds and rain as yet. The unit of currency is the rial, which is worth about a penny. Taxis are about the cheapest in the world charging a flat rate of 15 rials per trip within he city limits and 50 rials to the airport which is about 28 miles away.

I am staying as a paying-guest with a family who have a two story apartment in the city. Mr Mostofian works in some legal capacity in the Prime Ministers’ Office. He is 36 and has an attractive wife and two adorable little girls 3 and 6. They are very nice people.

In spite of the modern trends, sewerage is still very primitive except in the very wealthy homes, and this isn’t one of them! Another tendency I can’t adjust to is to serve – even in homes – food which is meant to be hot, stone cold. They don’t heat the plate, for one thing, and particularly in cold Tehran, I find this very trying. This seems to be common in Asian countries. For lunch yesterday I had sheep’s tongue soup, sheep’s tongue and a fried egg and weak black tea – all stone cold, and very nice stewed quinces.

Later I met an Englishman who was working as an engineer in Tehran and he took us to an Iranian cafe for dinner and later to an Italian film. I slept well that night being up for 21 hours. At the cafe I had rice, a raw egg, specially cooked mutton chopped up, butter, and some vinegar preparation all mixed together. I also tried what tasted like sweetened condensed milk made sour and watered down. they said it was like yogurt – it was terrible. The next course was simply a ring of pineapple.

My last days in Delhi were spent attending the Republic Day Celebrations, attending to visas, visiting a sikh home and ‘The Modern School‘ which is virtually an English Public School. During the Republic Day I saw a procession of decorated camels, elephants and State floats. Later I saw a demonstration of folk dancing which was very good.

Those parcels have not been sent home yet. The postal regulations are very strict, and they have to be sewn into a cloth bag. I have entrusted them to an Indian friend who will send them as a soon as possible. They should take by ship at least two months.

Love Chris

Dad’s focus on food and people is unwavering, and it really does epitomise his personality so!

Surrounded by the towering Alborz Mountains to its north, and the central desert to its south, Tehran seems in both in geography and history, a city of extremes.

My only experience of Tehran – having never been there – is the book Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. It sounds like a very different place that he experienced.

Which is by the by, except to say that yet again I am reminded how much of this vast planet my dad has walked upon, and what an intrepid traveller he truly is.

I feel so blessed to have this time with him, to share stories and connect with him on a deep, heartfelt level.

You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back. Paul Theroux

 

Photo sources:

Title photo dearcoffeeiloveyou.com

Tohid Tunnel cristimoise.files.wordpress.com

Camel migration fouman.com

Tehran bus 1960 shahrefarang.s3.amazonaws.com

Rug washers 1960 media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com

Architecture farm2.static.flickr.com

Men on balcony in Tehran shahrefarang.s3.amazonaws.com

Persian food thelemursarehungry.files.wordpress.com

Painted elephant online.wsj.com

City with mountains static0.therichestimages.com

Iranian women 1960’s viola.bz

 

Delhi – a city of contrasts

The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creator’s hand. George Bernard Shaw

The indian capital, Delhi  is known as the City of cities. Delhi is really a cluster of many cities from different eras that, over time, have connected up as one. Throughout its inhabited history – since 6^th century BC – it has been captured, ransacked, and rebuilt many times, especially during the medieval period.

As part of its rich and colourful history, Delhi is believed to be the site of ancient Indraprastha, the mythical capital of the ancient Sanskrit epic poem, the Mahabharata, compiled over a period of 800 years from around 400BCE. Just to give you a sense of how epic it really is, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.

Due to its central position, Delhi emerged as a major political, cultural and commercial city along the trade routes between other parts of India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

Mughal emperor Shah Jahan constructed his namesake walled city, Shahjahanabad, in AD 1639. Shahjahanabad is known today as Old Delhi. The greater part of Old Delhi is still confined within the space of its original walls. In 1911 the British decided to shift the capital of India from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Delhi. A new capital city, New Delhi, was built to the south of the old city during the 1920s.When the British left India in 1947; New Delhi became its national capital and seat of the new government.

So from the end of dad’s solo travels on the Trans-Siberian Railway, let us back up to the beginning of his travels, his trip to India in 1959, on his way to take up a teaching post in England.

He went to India to attend a teachers’ conference in Delhi, The Tenth World Education Conference run by the New education Fellowship.

Dad was so taken by India that he brought us back as  family in 1988. While my very young brother and mother found India overwhelming and frightening, I inherited my father’s love of its intensity.

As he writes to his parents in the following letter, India is a place of contrasts, one minute sipping a cool drink on the balcony of an old Raj hotel, the next being thrown in the throng of people and traffic, of dust and dirt, of hands outstretched to sell, beg, and tussle. It’s not a place for the faint of heart, or the vacant-minded tourist, in India you are truly awake and alive.

Institute of Education, 33 Probyn Road, Delhi 8

28th December 1959

Dear Mum and Dad,

At last I have found time to write to you. I am now staying at St Stephens College on the campus, where I have been allotted a room. I arrived in Bombay, after a 3/4 hour stop at Madras at 10pm, when an hour’s ride in an airline bus took me to the Taj Mahal Hotel, the most expensive in Bombay, fortunately all I paid was 6/- Australian, in tips to the porter, the receptionist, and the man who turned down the blankets. You are quite right about Bombay, it has an odour of its own. It really is a fantastic and depressing sight. I was called at 4am the new day (25th) in time to get to the airport by 6.30 to go to Delhi. On reaching Delhi, I was placed with another Australian whom I knew in a wonderful old Hotel, called the Cecil Runby, Catholics now used as a school. We shared a two room suite with hot and cold water, and a shower, quite posh. We had to move into the College Hostels yesterday, unfortunately there things are not on such a grand scale. Hot water comes up in a bucket every morning, and lavatory basins are in the floor and you have to squat. The room (bed-sitting) is my own and the servants are very pleasant. It is very cold in Delhi at night and I consider the luggage to be very well chosen, particularly the rugs. I didn’t have to buy blankets, they were supplied eventually.

The conference is going to be a big show. There is going to be about 600 people attending from all over the world, including Fiji. I have not yet sighted Margaret. I have met many friendly people and am enjoying myself immensely.

Among these are two Indian students who have shown  me around Delhi and helped me purchase some bangles, sari, and sari blouse for Mary. I will post them on. Another friend is an Englishman who has lived in India for 50 years and is planning a cheap but wonderful trip around India. When I leave India I plan to stop at Athens and Cairo for a few days en route to London.

During the last few days, I have been to the World Agricultural Fair in Delhi which is fantastic. No expense has been spared. Our shows in Melbourne can’t compare to this. Every country except Australia was on display, which made me very ashamed. We attended two very impressive functions today. First was the Official Conference Opening by Nehru which was held in an enormous tent, very colourfully decorated. In the afternoon we were invited to a State Reception given by the mayor of Delhi. We were given the full treatment. Red carpet, fanfares from pipes, official scrolls of welcome, guards of honour etc. Not forgetting that the water fountains had been turned on for us – a great honour from a dry area.

We sat at small tables in colourfully decorated enclosure to eat Indian food while listening to speeches. You will be pleased to hear so far had no worries about money, or my knee which is standing up very well. My Indian friends have taken me to some bazaars and to cafes to taste Indian food. In particular they took me to a cafe called Motimahal where they are nationally famous for their treatment of chicken dishes. It was most unusual, the chicken having the appearance of being smoked. The streets of Delhi are fascinating, the pedestrian reigns supreme, with the traffic zig-zagging like dodgem-cars to avoid them. How there are not more accidents I wouldn’t know. The set up is quite an ordered chaos. I have ridden in buses, horse and cart, scooter-taxis etc. Delhi is a city of contrasts, extreme poverty and wealth, beggars, bodies and cows asleep on footpaths.

With love, Chris

As a shy 15 year old, I remember Delhi as a city of layers, layers of culture, religion, history and modernity: Old Delhi, New Delhi, sacred cows lying in the middle of the road, men in suits, women in saris, the grand opulence of Raj hotels and elaborate temples, contrasted with limbless beggars, hands outstretched in the dirt. Layers of houses, stacked ramshackle on top of each other – looking a little like a house of cards that threatened to collapse at any minute. As if the bustle and perpetual motion of the place keeps it together in a delicate dynamic balance.

It’s a city of exuberant life, colour and joy, intermingled with poverty, disease, suffering. All right there in the streets. India is never dull.

Dad and I will forever share our love of India. In a sense, a city of contrasts describes his personality too. One minute studious and serious, the next cracking a crude joke with a cheeky grin. And if you’ve ever seen his many bookshelves, they’d give Delhi a run for her money, ramshackle stacks, ready to topple at any moment.

Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Gregory David Roberts

Source:

Delhi information wikipedia.org

Photos:

Title photo 3.bp.blogspot.com

Page from the Mahabharata wikipedia.org

Jama Masjid tnstravel.com

Riverside travelaroundindia.com

Rickshaws aroundtheworldl.com

Taj Maha Hotel prints.encore-editions.com

Hotel Cecil Delhi maryevans.com

World  Agricultural Trade Fair stamp 3.bp.blogspot.com

World Agricultural Trade Fair US Pavilion 1.bp.blogspot.com

Choosing a fabric blog.hostelbookers.com

Street food therewillbeasia.files.wordpress.com

Akshardham Temple dreamdiscoverytreks.com

Contrasts of Delhi cookingintongues.files.wordpress.com

Eating ice-cream in Siberia

Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. Angela Carter

Siberia conjures images of extreme cold, harsh, and wintery conditions. Gulags and slave trains. Dad was there in Autumn of 1966 and he says it was lovely – warm, sunny blue skies. Mile after mile of forests of bleached-trunk silver birch trees adorned in golden leaves. The majesty of Lake Baikal, as expansive as an ocean.

I had to search google images to get the Dr Zhivago scenes out of my mind.

Siberia has a rough wrap as being the playground of Stalin where forced labour camps drove the industrial machine and all the scientists and thinkers of the time, who weren’t forced into the Gulags for all kinds of minor sedition, were dropped off into its vastness, into the prefab communities of the 1950’s, along with their families, and left in Siberia for their entire lives, to work and breed more thinkers and scientists.

Siberia is so big, it’s almost more an idea than a place. Ian Frazier

Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, is a city built on the Second World War where Stalin moved all armaments and industry production literally out of reach of Europe, so the planes would run out of petrol before they ever reached it.

A country of unfathomable vastness and isolation.

More concrete, yes, and more getting on and off buses, and more pickled soup, and more trees. But more nights, too, to think, and talk, and drink, and to know at least, of this long, strange journey, that they can say they have done it, and have done it together. Euan Ferguson

Apparently after six hours of silver birch forests going past your train window, the initial awe at their beauty wears off somewhat. As does the cuisine. However the camaraderie endures, and that’s what dad remembers most fondly too.

Across Siberia: Concluding a journey behind in the Iron Curtain by Christopher Davidson of Ballarat – Part 3 – First published in The Courier (Ballarat) April 1967

I walked freely around Moscow taking many photographs. Moscow buildings were large, very, very solid and ugly on the whole. I was amazed by the width of the streets, Tchaikovsky street, for example, easily can hold 20 automobiles abreast.

To cater for the pedestrians there was a vast network of underground passages. The underground railway stations were quite fantastic. Each station was different in character looking like a royal palace with marble pillars, mosaics on the walls and ceilings crystal chandeliers.

Everywhere in Moscow was spotlessly clean. There are no litter problems in Moscow or Russia for that matter.

I met a university student who turned out to be interested in Australian poetry! He took me to a cafe to have some wine, ice cream and a chat! He then took me to the Russian film version of “War and Peace”.

The film is to be made in five parts, each part to run for three hours. I understand there are two more parts to be made. I saw part two and it was magnificent.

On my last day in Moscow I had an excellent guide to take me round the Kremlin and the Museum of the Czars. Her English and knowledge of history were excellent and she was pretty into the bargain!

Were you aware of the fact that the Kremlin houses the world’s finest collection of English silver of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods?

Later that afternoon I boarded the Trans-Siberian railway for Irkutsk and to my relief found that the “hard class” (there is no first or second class on Russian trains – only hard and soft class) was very comfortable and one of my companions was a young American architect.

No English

Our other two companions were Russians who spoke no English. They were, as ever, very friendly.

The restaurant car provided a good selection of food which included caviar and borsch. The menu was in five different languages.

The waitresses were large, warm, motherly types who looked after us very well. They worked very hard for long hours on the train and never lost patience.

On our way back from our first meal we had on the train, the American and I were seized enthusiastically by a Russian lumberjack and were taken into his compartment to meet his family. We talked for hours with the help of a dictionary, maps and photographs. When Russians embark on these long journeys they bring the minimum in personal luggage but made up for it by bringing provisions by the bag load.

The lumberjack’s family plied us with chicken, slated fish and schnapps while the wife repaired a tear in my coat.

This delightful family were returning to their home in Sakhalin. We exchanged addresses and cigarette lighters and later I took some pictures of them when we had to stop at Eshen.

Being on the train was like being on a long, gay pyjama party. The majority of travellers remained in their pyjamas the whole time and roamed around the stations in them. There were lots of children and towards evening you find many of them on a knee having a story before bed.

The train stopped about every three hours at a station for 15 minutes to enable people to leap off to buy fresh provisions, ice cream and to stretch one’s legs.

Yes, ice creams! Does it amaze you to hear that crossing Siberia I had the hottest weather of the trip. The temperature was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

The flat country-side with vast cedar, silver birch, larch and pine forests provided a beautiful sight for hundreds of miles, in their autumnal colours.

We passed a number of big industrial plants on the way and I was struck by the fact that they were working 24 hours a day. The workers’ houses looked very crude and primitive, and the roads were terrible dirt tracks.

On September 21, the train pulled in at Irkutsk and there was out Intourist guide waiting to take us to our hotel.

When we had settled in she took the American and me on a tour of the city. There were over 300,000 people living in Irkutsk and we were amazed how European it was. It was more European than Moscow.

Distressed

We were distressed too that the old wooden houses that had so much character were being happily pulled down and prefab concrete flats were taking their place. The guide thought that we were quite balmy trying to photograph them.

The next day, the guide took me by myself to see Lake Baikal by taxi and I visited the museum and took pictures of the lake and the village houses which were quite picturesque.

Unfortunately the guide became rather offensive when I refused to co-operate over an earlier return than originally outlined, which rather took the edge off admiring the beauty of the place.

This was really the only occasion of any unpleasantness in my whole visit to Russia.

I returned to Irkutsk across the lake by hydrofoil. On 23 September I rejoined the train for Kharbarovsk. No other tourists were on this train so they made quite a fuss of me. One waitress in the restaurant car devoted her time to giving me lessons in Russian and seeing that I was properly fed. Food was available throughout the day and night. One could order meals in any particular order with voucher so you could eat from a breakfast menu for an evening meal if you so desired.

It took the train six hours to go past Lake Baikal and it was a wonderful sight. The weather is still warm. Industrial towns were more frequent and neater but tarred roads were rare.

Two hours from Chita the landscape became hilly, bushy and a dark brown colour. The few trees were spidery and there were many more rivers.

I arrived at Khabarovsk on September 26, and was put into a room with a bath by mistake! I was taken by a guide to a Pioneer Club (the Russian substitute for Scouts and Guides) where boys and girls are taught ballet, gym, sports, English conversation, making remote controlled model boats and aircraft, music, drama etc.

Were thrilled

I returned next day to the Pioneer Club and joined the senior English speaking group and spent two hours talking to them. They were so thrilled that some spent the rest of the morning showing me around.

A group came to the station to see me off with flowers and a small gift. After a rather emotional farewell I boarded the plush tourist boat train for Nakhodka, a port a few miles north-east of the forbidden Vladivostok.

It was a very comfortable journey in a four-berth sleeper shared with the American architect, a geologist from Zambia and a very attractive Japanese girl, an art student who spoke English well.

On our last night in Russia we were treated to an unforgettable sunset.

We arrived in Nakhodka 15 hours later and were immediately taken on a short bus ride to the harbour, where after courteous but thorough formalities we boarded the SS Baikal.

After a very comfortable two day voyage I shook of the earnest atmosphere of Russia for the vivacious vitality of Japan.

As you get older, you realise the best way to truly connect with another person is to discover what they are passionate about and talk to them about that.

It’s funny how we often forget to make this same effort with people we have known all our lives, saving it for the forced intimacy of parties and social functions.

Dad and I have been having the most wonderful and engaging conversations about his travels, and indeed our travels as he took us all over the world as a family.

We have decided to go to India next – via this blog I mean. How wonderful that as dad’s physical travels draw to a close, his virtual travels have only just begun.

Even in Siberia there is happiness. Anton Chekhov

 

Information on Siberia:

Trans-Siberian for softies by Euan Ferguson, The Observer, Sunday 20 May 2007

 

Photos:

Title image f.fwallpapers.com

Map irkutsk.org

Moscow in 1960’s media.englishrussia.com

Moscow Underground telegraph.co.uk

Kremlin dailymail.co.uk

Dining car Trans-Siberian Railway pompei-hotels.com

Siberian Village bugbog.com

Birch Trees wikimedia.org

Irkutsk slavic.osu.edu

Lake Baikal billpfeiffer.org

Siberian Tundra arcticphoto.co.uk

Sunset Nahodhka en.wikipedia.org

Sea of Japan images.forwallpaper.com

From Poland with Love

The world is a book, and those who don’t travel read only one page.  St. Augustine

It is somewhat of a cliche that women of a certain age become fascinated with family history – in my family read ‘fascinated’ as obsessed to the point of mania.

As a public librarian I can testify that this mania exhibits no such gender bias, and besides, I am far from the median age of onset – FAR!

That said, as I get older, and as my parents age and demonstrate visibly that they won’t be around in a physical form forever, my interest in the intricacies of their lives has increased.

Yesterday, we moved Dad to his new permanent home, a lovely, caring centre only five minutes drive from his house. It was a strange day, there was relief at finding him somewhere nice to live, tinged with a great sadness of the finality of this situation.

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves. We travel, next, to find ourselves. Pico Iyer

It seemed a good time to show him this blog. After a hilarious ‘Who’s on First’ type conversation about what a blog was – he kept asking who got the subscription money, a fair question from the once editor of an education journal.

Once he understood the free access concept of the blogging world, he was so excited at the possibilities of sharing this with his friends and family. As the veteran of many years of travels, and a wonderful and generous host, dad has friends in every corner of the globe.

Dad and I talked about how marvellous it was for me to read his writing – the pleasure of reading through his travel scrapbooks, and how glad I was that he had kept everything.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. Oscar Wilde

Our next project is to go through the hundreds of his slides with a lightbox and convert the good ones to digital format. Stay tuned for that visual extravaganza!

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen. Benjamin Disraeli

In addition to being able to share this blog with his friends, my hope is that one day my son and my brother’s children (the first of which is currently in utero) will be able to read about dad’s exploits and experience the same joy in discovering what a global explorer he was.

Traveling to countries that were so different to his home town of Ballarat – at a time before global social media had blurred the borders of cultural difference.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. Gustave Flaubert

I don’t know if it was the era, or my dad’s complete lack of worrying about what people think of him, but his political incorrectness is sometimes startling to the modern reader.

Although his social graces are endearing, his lack of tact for what can and can’t be said in public has often resulted in a swift under-the-table kick to the ankle from my mum.

A Journey behind the Iron Curtain by Christopher Davidson of Ballarat (cont…)– First published in The Courier Ballarat Saturday 13 April 1967

To make these trips from West Berlin into Eastern Europe it was necessary to go through a long and tiresome customs declaration which added two hours onto an every day trip, and to have two guides, one for the Western side and one for the Eastern side. On no account were they allowed to cross sectors.

Fortunately our Eastern guide was pleasant, obviously indoctrinated, but not easily drawn into political discussions by the pin-pricking American tourists.

East Germany’s justification for “The Wall” was, I was told by the East German guide “to keep the Nazi element from coming in and gaining control as it is doing in the Western Sector”.

The West Berliners, on the other hand, say that it was built to prevent East Berlin from losing its labourforce.

As I travelled through East Germany on my way to Warsaw I felt certain that the best remedy for our communistic trade unionists would be a fortnight’s holiday in Berlin where they could make striking comparisons with the opposing ideologies side by side.

With some relief I set off in the train to Poland.

My first impressions of Poland were the complete lack of farm machinery, or of any fences or hedges on the farms separating the crops from the grazing fields, and the women doing heavy pick and shovel work along the railway tracks or in the fields.

My first real taste of bureaucracy came when I arrived in Warsaw and it depressed me terribly. I had coupons for this and coupons for that and I had to go to three different offices to enable me to get a bus ticket for a tour of Warsaw.

This particular performance took two and a half hours at least, with the girl in the last office closing for lunch break of half an hour.

In the meantime the queue increased to such an extent that one didn’t dare leave to come back later. It was at this point I met a friend from Ballarat! By the time I got my ticket I had missed my bus and had to return to square one again to have it changed for the next day! This time I made some rude remarks and had it rushed through.

I was housed in the Bristol Hotel, one of the few buildings left standing after the German occupation this gracious Victorian type hotel had been the Nazi headquarters during the war.

It took two hours to have a meal but it was worth it. I had to forego breakfast otherwise I would have seen nothing of Warsaw.

I was very lucky to meet an Australian, who was working for Radio Poland early in my stay and he was able to show me round a good deal. He showed me his flat which came with the job.

It was pleasantly furnished, had central heating which worked and the familiar electric stove. It would put most London flats to shame.

The more I saw of Warsaw, the more I liked it. The people were very relaxed and friendly and at times quite freely criticised their government.

They felt no particular allegiance to the Russians and there was no sense of suppression as there was in East Germany. There was, as I discovered later, more available in the shops than in either East Berlin or Moscow. One can only admire the Poles and their determination to overcome the terrible losses incurred during the German occupation. During this period 850,000 lives were lost to the city. The total dead of Great Britain and the USA together in World War II was about 835,000. 71% of all buildings, 90% of all industrial plants, 85% of all transport facilities and 90% of all historical buildings were destroyed.

While many of the buildings destroyed are being replaced with some very pleasing modern buildings, all structures of historical interest have been faithfully restored. They have done a remarkable job of reconstructing their old city.

I don’t know about you, but I love reading first-hand accounts of these bygone eras. For a child of a relatively prosperous nation and time, it’s hard to conceptualise the hardship and almost insurmountable bureaucracy experienced by the nations most affected by the carnage of WWII. And realising that this hardship continued for decades after the end of the war.

For dad, reliving these adventures and engaging with his friends and family has a wonderfully rejuvenating effect. Yesterday he seemed happier and more vibrant than I had seen him in ages.

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey. Pat Conroy

The beauty is, he’s happy and everyone who reads this blog shares his joy in reminiscing. What a beautiful place the human memory is.

Not all who wander are lost. J. R. R. Tolkien

Title image courtesy of Wanderlust UK at: http://cdn.wanderlust.co.uk/contentimages/wanderlust/Articles-trans-siberian-from-russia-with-love.jpg?width=460&height=276