Published on
June 18, 2009 in
General.
A Day in Vienna – from Angie Wednesday 17 June
Coming from Madrid, we are still on Madrileno time, so rose late, as did Kathy, our host here in the Judenplatz. She is very welcoming, and she makes rooms in her large flat available to visitors to Vienna. Her father Emanuel Fiscus was a Holocaust survivor, and led a remarkable life. On the Judenplatz is a large memorial to the 65,000 Austrian Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. I can see it from our window.
It’s a big concrete rectangle shaped as a mausoleum, and the 4 walls are a relief of rows of books with their spines inverted, so you can’t see what they are. Stories which won’t be told.
Nearby is the Art Forum am Judenplatz, which is showing the Holocaust survivor Adolf Frankl’s permanent exhibition Art Against Oblivion. These are telling and heart-wrenching images in expressionist style. These things must be confronted and never forgotten, although it has taken the Viennese long enough.
Arrival of a transport on the ramp in Birkenau, October 1944
After the morning muesli and rounds of emails, it was down to our local coffee shop and Bäckerei:
Continue reading ‘A Day in Vienna’
Published on
June 15, 2009 in
General.
Monastery Valley and Gertrude Bell album
Monastery Valley is best described by Gertrude Bell – below. But we had a delightful ramble along this very quiet and lonely spot. 
It was evidently a place where monks could isolate themselves from the secular, and find the penance they sought, and maybe visions into the bargain. (Visited by A & R Sunday 26 April.)
Monk's cell carved into cliff
Red Church Album
Kizil Kilisi is the Red Church, half an hour’s drive up and over the hills behind Guzelyurt. Rather fragile, it stands strikingly alone in cultivated fields surrounded by hills.
It is the only byzantine church still standing in this part of the world, many have been destroyed or allowed to crumble by previous Turkish governments as probably a deliberate policy of erasing the Christian past – see Alexander Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain.
The Friends of Cappadocia are raising money to restore it before it collapses, but it is a race against time as you can see here…
Continue reading ‘Kizil Kilisi is the Red Church’
Album: NEMRUT DAGI: a colossal folly
We hiked the few hundred (vertical) metres to view the tumulus at Nemrut Dagi summit at sunrise in freezing winds.
East Terrace
But there was no sunrise, and actually some snow, through which we traipsed at some points.
Some of the giant heads of gods and kings were still surrounded by snow, which gave them an unexpectedly comical appearance.
Somehow the bleak overcast made a fitting setting to contemplate the enormous hubris of King Antioch who had constructed for himself the biggest tomb monument since the Pharoahs.
Continue reading ‘NEMRUT DAGI’
Published on
May 4, 2009 in
General.
Nafplion is ridiculously historic – link to album
Nafplion was the first capital of Greece after the Independence War 1821-1828, and is only a stone’s throw from Mykinis where Agamemnon and others planned the Trojan War, in his Palace past the Lion Gate. The whole Argos peninsula reeks of history.
Ruins of Agamemnon's palace
We made extensive use of Greece’s terrific bus system to get to Epidavros etc from our base in the cosy Pension Dafni.
Pension Dafni: women gather in the gathering dusk
The Dafni is only metres from where the first president of liberated Greece,
Ioannis Kapodistrias, was assassinated outside Saint Spyridon church.
Continue reading ‘Nafplion is ridiculously historic and also beautiful.’
A day and a half’s travel to Ankara from Istanbul and on into Cappadocia is enough to make you realise that Turkey’s public transport infrastructure is greatly superior to that of much of Australia, despite Turkey being a relatively poorer country. We left the Hotel Ersu and walked to a conveniently close fast tram stop. Cost for any length of trip: a flat YTL1.40, roughly 1 Aussie dollar.
Continue reading ‘22 hours in Ankara’
Published on
April 20, 2009 in
General.
link to Hydra is impossibly beautiful album
Hydra has historically been a fishing and maritime island port, and was an important naval base for the Greeks during the Revolution after 1821. Today it is a holiday getaway for wealthy Athenian Continue reading ‘Hydra is impossibly beautiful’
The Grand Prix Maria Callas 2009: Koreans show the world how it’s done! Grand Prix Maria Callas
We attended several sessions of this big international singing competition, held in Athens every two years: one Heat was at the Athenaeum, just below the Acropolis in the Plaka, on Tuesday March 10. Continue reading ‘AN INTERNATIONAL SINGING COMPETITION IN GREECE’
Published on
April 19, 2009 in
Greece.
Mount Olympus
link to Enipeas Gorge walk album on Facebook
Litohoro is a little town underneath Mt Olympos,
Mt Olympos from our terrace
frequented by walkers, climbers and some wealthy people who do neither. We were very comfortable in the Pension Papanikolau, run by Martina who came here 20 years ago from Germany on a holiday, and married a local. It’s the kind of place you never want to leave, but we had to journey on to Istanbul via Thessaloniki. Continue reading ‘Mount Olympus’
In front of the Blue Mosque
Since arriving from Thessaloniki on the Monday night train, we have been very busy, working hard at sightseeing etc, Friday we went ferrying up and down the Bosphorus, and climbed an ancient Byzantine (Genovese, they were allied against the Venetians) fortress. Saturday (today) we are rushing out to the Topkapi Palace. Why? because we are leaving on Monday for 3 weeks in the wilds of Anatolia, leavened by a few days on a gulet. This is our own homemade “Turkey encompassed” with a little help from our friends at Kirkit travel, a company run by a very nice friend of Kim Sanders. Continue reading ‘In Istanbul’
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