Westwards

Against the wind into Luther country

For more photos from the Elbe Cycle route, click here (Czech Republic) and here (Germany)

After a stretch through the Elbe Sandstone Mountains with fantastic views, the cycle path enters the plains west of Dresden and Meißen, where the Elbe meanders lazily between old Slavonic settlements that it occasionally floods several meters deep.  Sometimes the path leads us far away from the river and we cycle for hours, once even for a whole day, without seeing the Elbe.

All the villages have names ending in –ig or –itz, like Aussig and Seydewitz, and "windmill" appears in street names with suspicious frequency. A pleasant southeasterly wind brings cold sunshine and tailwind.  But when it turns to the more typical western direction and we have a hard time cycling against the wind, we figure why all the tour groups on this stretch of the river are riding upstream and eastwards.

In Wittenberg, the birthplace of Martin Luther, an American tour group with earphones waddles through the historic Luther building. A sign in a corner pleads: "Help us sing A mighty fortress, today at 4 pm." Down the street, Luther posted his famous 95 theses on the doors of the Castle church in 1517. The door has been destroyed in a fire long ago, and today the theses are inscribed on a Bronze door. Several groups queue to have their photos taken, and then they queue at the slightly less famous public toilet of Wittenberg, which has its own facebook following and an international guest book.

From here, we ride through the fantastic park sites of Wörlitz and onto Dessau, home of the Bauhaus design school. After one week of cycling we arrive in Magdeburg and finish the first stretch of the Elbe Cycle Route. Apart from the unpredictable wind directions it was a pleasant enough tour, with many sightseeing opportunities and a variety of landscapes and cycle path styles.

Blockbusters in the ancient world – what was on show in Roman theatres across the empire?

(For more pictures of Provence, click here)

The young tourist exclaims something, raises his fist and falls dramatically to the floor. His girlfriend and a few other visitors in the ranks clap their hands; the girlfriend takes a souvenir snapshot. Today the Roman theatre in Arles is not particularly well-visited compared to the nearby amphitheatre which is occasionally being used as a bull-fight arena.

Originally, the Greek and Roman theatres were places to stage serious dramatic plays, each lasting a whole day and conveying a moral message. But by the time the theatres in Southern France were being built – like thousands of theatres all over the Roman empire – most visitors wanted block-buster excitement rather than serious thoughts. Anyway, most of the inhabitants of the provinces didn't understand Latin. The old dramatic plays were thus moved to small-scale odeons suitable for chamber music or off-theatre productions. The theatres, we learn in the very good exhibition in the Orange Roman theatre, basically just staged back-slapping entertainment and obscene plays. By around 300 AD only a potpourri of the most obscene scenes of the most obscene plays was left. And yet again, the audience moved on to the round amphitheatres where gladiators, wild animals and a lot of splattering action replaced the actors, pantomimes and dialogues.

No wonder then that there are small and large theatres and amphitheatres left all around the Mediterranean: Some have their stage and back-wall (scenae) still intact, others are almost complete reconstructions in concrete or metal; some had marble seats and columns, others were just a few rows of stone seats from the start. We were very impressed by the stunning setting of the theatre in Termessos / Turkey, and of Leptis Magna and Apollonia in Libya. The theatre in Sabratha, also in Libya, has a huge, almost intact marble scenae and well-preserved marble toilets.  The theatre in Bosra/ Syria is built from dark stones, but gives a a fairly good impression of a proper Roman theatre, as does the theatre in Aspendos/ Turkey.

Through black mud towards the Yellow Lagoon – Hiking in the Sangay National Park

For more photos from Ecuador, see: February 2012
After 3 hours of steep uphill hiking in ankle-deep mud we reach an almost mud-free meadow. There we meet two American hikers walking back down. , but they dampen our optimism: „The mud stays with you up to the Refugio, only it's going up and down from here on.“ We had read before that the path might be muddy after heavy rainfalls, and it had indeed rained a lot this year. But we suspect that the locals riding up and down to the high plain on horses are blameable for the better part of the quagmire.

At least the rain only starts after we have reached the Refugio, a simple mountain hut where we have a  quite atmospheric if moderately tasty dinner with two Czech guys in the light of the sole remaining candle (the Americans have used all the candles, and there is no electricity in the hut). The next morning, El Altar, the craggy 5319 m high mountain that we have briefly seen yesterday, is deep in clouds, but we go for the Laguna Amarilla below it anyway. This time, there is no path at all for the first hour, but once we have crossed the Collantes plain and start going up to the 4270 m high rim of the basin containing the Laguna, a clearly defined hiking path materialises. Another hour later we have a stunning view over the lake and some snowfields beyond it. The mountain itself does not show for the rest of the day while we scramble down the rocks, go cross-country over the plain and again wade in mud all the way to the start of the trail 1200 m lower near Candelaria.

 

Conclusion: Beautiful landscape, uncomfortable hut (at 12$ per person per night a bad value) and too much mud.

El Altar and the trail to the Laguna Amarilla are part of the vast Sangay National Park, designated as UNESCO World Heritage site for its extraordinary biodiversity. The complete GPS track can be downloaded here: Download ElAltar.gpx (428.3K) (Copyrighted material, only for personal use)

Shaky knees in Tierradentro's tombs

For more photos from Colombia, see  January/February 2012   January/February 2008

Small coffee and banana plantations line the steep path up the slope. Suddenly we stand on the Aguacate ridge overlooking yet another deep valley But the ridge itself appears almost perforated by dozens of curious overgrown holes. They are shaft tombs – underground caves dug out over 1000 years ago as secondary burial tombs for whole families.

The tombs of Segovia and El Duende on the other side of the valley are better preserved, with stark geometrical designs in black, red and white that look like African tribal patterns. But the steps leading down into the tombs are so high and steep that they leave us far more exhausted than the hike up to Aguacate in the morning.

Five archaeological sites and two museums in the UNESCO World Heritage Tierradentro area can be visited on a one-day hike from the village of San Andrés de Pisimbalá. Our GPS tracks for the trail can be downloaded here: Download Tierradentro.gpx (171.6K) (copyrighted data: for personal use only)

 

The mysterious stone figures of San Agustín

For more photos from Colombia, see  January/February 2012   January/February 2008

The rather short and sturdy stone figure is painted red and black. Perhaps he is wearing a mask, for his face looks extraordinarily furious as he holds a small child and a club in the other hand – the very image of a child-devouring monster out of a picture book.

But whether the statue represents a god or a shaman, a child sacrifice or that of an adult, or something different altogether, nobody knows.

Remains of fireplaces indicate that the first people have lived on these mountaintops overlooking the ravines of the Rio Magdalena more than 5000 years ago. About 1000 BC they started to settle down, build villages and make ceramics. But apart from that, little is known about these people living in a harsh landscape cut off from the world.

They wouldn't have known that the angry little stream that had carved this deep canyon would travel for another 900 km through the wilderness all the way to the Atlantic coast.

Their culture flourished until around 900 AD, and then at some point before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores, it vanished, leaving behind only the huge strange stone monuments we can still see today. When the Spanish arrived, they tried to find out about the origins of these fierce figures, but the local tribes then living in the area didn't know anything about them.

The painted figure holding the child stands in a small chamber made from stone slabs, flanked by two stone guardians. Behind it, yet another, larger stone room contains a stone sarcophagus, and the whole structure had been covered by an earthen mound for centuries before being excavated in the 1980s. It was among the last of hundreds of such figures found in the area around San Agustín. The first mounds had already become tourist destinations early in the 20^th century, and the area became a World Heritage Site in 1995.

 

Today the tombs of El Purutal are on the usual tourist circuit, accessible on a horse trip or a half-day hiking course from San Agustín. Simple maps are available from the park office or private guides in San Agustín, and the sites are well sign-posted. The GPS tracks for the hike can be downloaded here: Download SanAgustin-hike.gpx (156.1K)

 

And another coffee tour

In the Zona Cafetera, we visited several coffee plantations.

 

For more photos of Colombia, see January/February 2012   January/February 2008

From the cute little town of Salento in the Zona Cafetera we walk to the coffee plantation of Don Elias. With his white moustache and wide-brimmed hat, Don Elias looks like the cliché South American coffee farmer. He is not originally from the Zona Cafetera, but from a coffee area in the Cauca Valley near Cali. This plot of only four hectares in a deep ravine near the tourist town of Salento he bought about 7 years ago. Besides coffee plants he also has banana and plantain trees. In contrast to the large-scale and meticulously coordinated procedures on the Hacienda Venecia and other large coffee farms we have visited, Don Elias does everything by hand. For the peeling of the beans he uses a kind of hand-mill, then he dries the beans with solar power ­– on the floor of a vinyl-covered greenhouse. The dry green beans that he does not need for himself, Don Elias sells to the coffee cooperative. The roasting of the remainder is done on an open fire stove in a pan.

We pick some ripe coffee beans together with Don Elias and try out the peeling mill and the grinding mill.

And of course at the end of the tour a cup of coffee is waiting for us. No fancy electric Espresso machine this time – Don Elias brews his coffee in a cotton coffee sock, as do most people in Colombia.

Since 2011, the Zona Cafetera has UNESCO World Heritage status.

The tour is conducted in Spanish, but Don Elias speaks slowly and is used to explaining the procedures to foreigners who speak only little Spanish.

In the coffee fields of the Zona Cafetera

The coffee tour on Hacienda Venecia includes a lecture in the plantation. For more Colombia photos, click: January/February 2012   January/February 2008

„Yellow beans are not good, and these ones are too small“ advises Ruven. The Dutch girls compare their selection of coffee beans. It is not that easy to decide which coffee beans are good enough to get into the export batch. For comparison Ruven shows us a box full of beautiful green coffee beans and another one with the inferior beans: too small, too brown or too deformed.

The Export Quality Colombian coffee is the priciest regular Washed Arabica Coffee on the market – except for the superior Speciality Coffees. By contrast, the black, yellow and deformed beans in the other box is what you get if you order a 'tinto': A sweet brown liquid that tastes slightly like coffee.“They have to drink it with lots of sugar to cover the unpleasant aromas,” Ruven shrugs. Then he brings out a training box for coffee tasters. Small bottles contain the aromas one will find in coffee: vanilla, maple syrup, chocolate, lemon... The small group of coffee tourists sniff at the bottles, until someone shouts: “Yuck, this one is disgusting!” It turns out the training box also contains aromas like smoke or mould you want to avoid in your coffee.

After the “theory class” we get a guided tour around the plantation and the cleaning and drying facilities. And then a cup of coffee – export quality, of course.

Since 2011, the Zona Cafetera has UNESCO World Heritage status.

Hacienda Venecia is situated near Manizales, Colombia, and can be contacted for coffee tours and/or accommodation via: http://www.haciendavenecia.com

Sightseeing at the pyramids of Giza

After the revolution, there are only few tourists in Egypt, and we had a very pleasant camel ride on the Giza plateau with a view over the empty desert and all nine pyramids.

More photos from Egypt: June 2011 and March 2007            

Trekking in the Simien Mountains

 
Spectacular landscape between Gich and Chennek

The path is winding moderately upwards through dry grasslands. The landscape looks like a bavarian pasture after an unusually hot summer, lazy cows included. Wassi, our obligatory scout, is striding nonchalantly ahead, but we are soon out of breath. When we reach the edge of the cliff, looking down about 1000 m, we remember that we are at the height of the highest Alpine peaks. Up here the air is thin.

Far below us, the fields and villages of the Ethiopian highlands stretch out, and from an isolated rock a deer-like animal stares up, attentive but unperturbed. A rare sighting, we learn, of the shy walia ibex that is endemic to Ethiopia. The gelada baboons lousing each other near the campsite are far less nervous about visitors, and thick-billed raven (also endemic to Ethiopia) cleverly extract edibles from plastic bags just as their brethren in Berlin do.

Cooked on the rented, basic kerosene stove, our food is nothing to be envious of, we think. Even Wassi, our scout, who brought nothing but two stone-hard pan-baked breads on the six-day trek, suspiciously inspects the pasta. No meat? “We are vegetarians!,” we explain. Wassi, it turns out, is a religious man, and Ethiopian Christians observe a plethora of fasting rules and periods. For the duration of our trek, he is strictly vegan – but always thirsting for that good Ethiopian coffee, with a lot of sugar. Perhaps it is the lack of sugar that makes us so slow on the slopes...

A visit to the concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau

(For more photos from Poland, click here and here)

Trolleybus No 156 runs directly from the city centre to Majdanek on the outskirts of Lublin.  Unlike other Nazi camps, Majdanek was located near the city, not hidden away in some sparsely inhabited countryside location. Even from the distance we can see a huge modern monument: Fight and Martyrdom, designed by Victor Tolkin. It forms a depressing, heavy arch marking the point where most prisoners would have entered the concentration camp.  

It is a freezing cold day. Small ice particles swirl through the air and pierce our numb cheeks, while we stubbornly explore the site. Apart from a small group of teenagers accompanied by a guide, we are alone between rows of barracks, watch towers and barbwire fences. Everything is covered by a thick white layer of snow. Majdanek is not only the oldest memorial on the site of a concentration camp, but also unusually well-preserved. The Red Army freed the camp as early as July 1944 and there was not enough time for the Nazis to demolish the camp. At the crematorium we can even touch the muffle kiln and a tipper truck that was once used for transporting dead bodies. An estimated 250.000 were killed in this camp.

Temperatures are still well below freezing when we visit the former camps of Auschwitz a few days later. Different from Majdanek, the site is a much-visited tourist spot. Most visitors come on a day trip from Krakow. We enter the complex through the infamous iron gate with the emblazoned Slogan „Arbeit macht frei“ (Work brings freedom). The first camp commander, Rudolf Höß, imported this motto to Auschwitz from his former work place at the concentration camp in Dachau.

Several of the remaining prison blocks today house exhibitions about the general history of Auschwitz and the fate of specific prisoner groups. In blocks 4 and 5, the confiscated property of the murdered is displayed behind large windows, sorted by category: Piles of shoes, suitcases, hairbrushes and childrens’ clothes. In a dimly lit room several cubic metres of hair are piled up. In their zeal for efficiency, the Nazis planned to make socks and warm clothes for the submarine crews from it. The exhibition, which somehow has the air of modern art installations, is clearly meant to be shocking. But our uneasiness is reinforced by the way it repeats Nazi categories and the de-humanisation of the murdered victims. 

2 kilometres west of the main camp lies the satellite camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was purpose-built in 1942/43 for the mass killing of Jews. Although the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of mass-murder before they fled, the remnants of the big crematories and gas chambers are still in place. The trains arrived right next to the crematory buildings. New arrivals were immediately led into the gas chambers, and an automatic lift conveyed the bodies to the upper floor for cremation. To preserve the ruins for memorial purposes, they have to be supported by concrete bases. After all, Auschwitz-Birkenau has been listed as a “World Cultural Heritage Site” by the UNESCO in 1979.

In the Land of the Teutonic Knights

From amber to gingerbread, we discover the riches of the former crusader state around Gdansk.

(For more photos from Poland, click here and here)

“These are everybody’s favourites,“ explains the shop attendant and points to a pile of Katarzynki: A chubbily shaped gingerbread with thin sugar icing. Next to them, other varieties of gingerbread with and without chocolate fill the shelves. It is just after Christmas when we visit the city of Toruń, but the gingerbread shops are busy all year round. The small town on the banks of the Vistula is not only famous for its gothic town centre and for being the birthplace of Copernicus, but also well-known as Poland’s ginger bread capital. Reportedly, gingerbread has been produced here since the 14^th century. In the 13^th century, the crusaders’ order of the Teutonic Knights built the first fortifications in Torun. The townspeople later tore down their castle, rebelling against the arrogant German aristocrats who had turned a huge part of Poland into a theocratic state, named Prussia after a hastily proselytised local tribe.

The centre of this strange state of Christian warrior monks became the town of Malbork. The originally small fort situated in Malbork was extended in 1309 with the decision to make it the headquarters of the mighty Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Teutons in Jerusalem. With the loss of the Holy Land just before, the crusades in the Middle East were coming to an end, and the Teutonic Knights decided to shift their missionary efforts to the last heathens remaining in Europe’s east. Every year during winter time, when the frozen rivers allowed the knights to move about the swampy area, they did missionary forays into the Baltic. European knights and nobles who had missed the opportunity to take part into the real thing could even join for a small financial contribution.

Touring one of Europe’s largest castles in midwinter requires almost as much zeal as the Knights displayed against the Baltic barbarians. The guided tour of unheated hallways and courts of the Malbork castle, a World Heritage site, takes nearly 3 hours, drawn out even more when a family ponders lengthily over souvenirs at an intermediate stop in the inevitable amber shop. In the 14^th century most of the Amber trade went along the river Vistula, and the Teutonic Knights had acquired a monopoly on the amber trade, thus becoming ever richer, since amber was in high demand for rosary beads.

Today the numerous amber shops in Gdansk are most heavily visited by German tourists. And so is the huge church of St. Mary, and the picturesque streets and quays of the old town. Even if few of the buildings are original, remaining of what used to be Danzig, the Germans love the reconstructed Hanseatic city. It is on New Year’s Day that we hit the Pole’s idea of a good outing: Like them, we are spending the better half of the day in the beach resort of Sopot, parading up and down the long pier to welcome the year at sea. It was freezing cold!

Mud à la mode

From hot spa to clammy mine shafts, we rediscover a little-known country.

(For more photos from Slovakia, click here)

 “Tsään Minuten, Nikht Rrräden!,” barks the gaunt woman in a white medical coat who brought us here, and obediently, we barely dare to whisper or move for the next ten minutes. Nearly all the staff in the Slovak spa of Pieštani speak German, for the benefit of those German and Austrian patients coming for a week or more to cure their rheumatism or arthritis. They have made up the majority of visitors since the thermal springs – which had been known since the 12^th century – were turned into a fashionable spa in the 19^th century. The dark volcanic mud scooped up from the river Váh was found to have healing qualities. Even Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) came here to take healthy mud baths.

A strong young man triumphantly breaking his crutch became the emblem of the whole town.
In the 1920s the popularity of the spa reached another peak, with European entertainment stars and Indian maharajas visiting, but WWII set an end to that and turned Pieštany into just another sanatorium. With the political opening of Eastern Europe, the health resort apparently regained some of its former splendour.  The tall Balnea Palace Hotel and the Irma Spa with its rotund bathing hall, plus some lesser resorts, vie for guests from abroad. Today, the institution displays a quirky mix of Soviet and K.u.K. retro-styles.

At the end of the mud bathing session, we are administered a strict twenty-minute rest, rolled into white linen sheets in a semi-darkened hall smelling of a great history and, yes, volcanic mud.

Thus strengthened, we take on Slovakia. In the next few days, we visit medieval castles and Renaissance marketplaces. In Vlkolinec we stroll through a wooden village that the industrial revolution would seem to have bypassed, were it not for the two Japanese cars parked in front of bonbon-coloured blockhouses. A tall house in Banska Bystrica, we learn, used to house the trading office of the rich Fugger family, where double-entry accounting was used for the first time ever. In Banska Štiavnica we visit the old silver mine that once made this mountainous area in one of the backwaters of Europe rich enough to build several pompous churches and administration palaces. Not to mention a huge plague column.

Prayer roofs and honourable silkworms

In the world heritage sites of Shirakawa and Gokayama, the remoteness of the past is still tangible.

(For more Japan photos, click here:  2006,  2006 (Shikoku 88-Temple Pilgrimage), February / March 2009, April 2009,  May 2009, June 2009)

 

„When I was a boy, my older cousins used to go to Shirakawa once or twice a year. It was shortly after the war and I had been sent to live in Takayama with relatives as our family house in Osaka was bombed”, the old man wearing thick glasses and a beige cloth hat explains. “The older boys wouldn’t take me because I was a child, and they said the journey over the three mountain passes would be too arduous for my short legs.”

Before the modern road was built, the villages of Shirakawa and Gokayama could only be reached on foot. In winter icy Siberian winds bring meters of snow and frosty temperatures. Of old, the inhabitants of these villages in Japan’s mountainous interior have adapted their houses to such harsh conditions. Doors on the first floor leading outside can be used in severe winters when the ground floor is snowed up. Steep roofs pointing towards heaven let the thick snow cover slide down to the ground. Their name, Gasshô roof, recalls  the folded hands of prayer.

“The roofs are built only with reed and wooden beams, without using a single nail,” Nagase-san explains, showing us around in her family’s 250 year old house. In former times the whole village helped to renew the enormous reed cover of the roofs in turns. But today only about 20 families still have houses with the traditional roofs, not enough to keep the old system alive. “So we issued a call for volunteers and about 500 people from all over Japan offered their help. We could only accept the ones who had at least some experience, because otherwise the work on the high roofs is too dangerous.” We have reached the attic by now, and Nagase-san shows us one of the ropes that hold the beams in place. It has already become loose. The volunteers from warmer parts of Japan were apparently not so familiar with the prayer-style roofs.

Until WWII the villagers of Shirakawa and Gokayama used to grow silkworms on the upper floors to produce silk. Like everyone in the villages telling us about the silkworms, Nagase-san calls them “o-kaiko-san”: the honourable silkworms. They have disappeared now together with their favourite food, mulberry leaves, because during the war everyone had to cut off the mulberry trees in order to plant rice.

The honourable silkworms also brought a supplementary income to the inhabitants of the village of Suganuma, a part of Gokayama. Unlike the not very distant Shirakawa, the village belonged to the old Kaga prefecture. Kaga’s rulers, the Maeda clan, were keen to hold their own against the central government in Edo and did their best to keep a strong independent army. Originally, it was the Maeda clan who instructed the villagers to raise silkworms: their faeces were an important ingredient in the production of gunpowder. Thus, the locals could pay their taxes in gunpowder rather than the customary but scarce rice. Although this was an open secret to the Tokugawa Shoguns in Edo – today’s Tokyo – they were unable to intervene due to the isolation of the area.

The villages of Shirakawa and Gokayama have been listed as World Heritage sites in 1995, and since then the number of visitors has been constantly growing. Even the boy from Takayama, now 73 and living in Tokyo, has finally made it to his childhood dream destination. “Actually, I think now that my cousins took the strenuous hike over the mountains in order to drink alcohol, because these villages were after the war one of the few places that were allowed to brew sake for a traditional festival. That must have been the real reason why they would not take me!”

Klösterreich – in the monasteries of the old monarchy

(Click here for more Austria photos)

“But it’s quite reasonable,” the salesclerk defends the high entrance fees. “Just 7 Euro, including the guided tour through the monastery compounds. Melk and Klosterneuburg are even more expensive!,” he then adds a bit too pushy. We buy our tickets and have a look around the crammed monastery shop: Religious paraphernalia, herb liquor made by Brother Stefan, and white milky goat soap.

“The monastery of St Florian is one of the oldest operating monasteries in the world. Founded in 304 AD, it got its name from Florian, the early Christian saint who, according to legends, suffered his martyrdom in the nearby river Ems.” What a pity – he was one of the last victims before Christianity was legalised in 313 by the Roman emperor Constantine. Gerlinde Hofer, guiding our tour in a baggy red dress with a matching jacket wound around her waist, is nevertheless excited to have the popular saint as a local patron. His drowning made him, in a somewhat bizarre chain of reasoning, patron saint against fire damage.

We follow Gerlinde Hofer into the Crypt, where the main attraction is the grave of the composer Anton Bruckner. Bruckner started his musical career as a choirboy in the monastic choir, and later frequently returned to the church to play the huge organ later named after him. Cushioned by the thick monastery walls we hear the sonorous and orotund sound as the current organist starts his practice play. “I imagine Bruckner can hear it too” remarks Hofer, visibly moved (click here to listen to the Bruckner organ: )

“So, do you know when Melk Abbey was founded? It was in 1089, when Leopold II, Margrave of Austria, gave one of his castles to the Benedictine monks.” We follow the friendly local who has offered to show us the way to the campsite and gives us a free introduction of Melk on the way. With his square head, the accurately clipped beard and the light pink shirt he looks like a middle-aged gay television cook. Meanwhile a steady drizzle has started, and with our heavily loaded bicycles we have difficulties holding pace with the cook on his old silvery lady’s bicycle. The abbey suddenly comes into view at an unexpected angle above our heads: Originally a fortification above the stream and town of Melk, the monastery has preserved its castle-like structures, although the interior was completely revamped, Baroque-style with pink-and-light-blue frescoes and inlaid bookshelves, in the 17^th century.

In the next church, Golden putti dance in front of a light blue ceiling and dark brown wooden furnishings. The High Altar with its twisted metallic blue pillars looks like an enormous Christmas tree decoration. Goettweig Abbey is a huge old monastery visible from far and wide along the lovely hills of the Wachau region, and its church has one of the most stunning baroque interiors we have ever seen. But strolling through the church, the Imperial living quarters and the museum, we sense that something is not right. There are no more tourists except us and the place swarms with uniformed clones with yellow id cards dangling around their neck. Has something serious happened? Have we somehow escaped extinction by tourist-eating aliens? “From here, only with press accreditation,” one of the clones barks. Utterly absorbed by the sightseeing we have not realized that the compound has already been closed for the last two hours in preparation for the “Classic under Stars” event this evening: A classic concert held in the courtyard of the abbey.

Not far from Vienna, we visit the monastery of Klosterneuburg. It was founded in the 12^th century, but reached its splendid height under Emperor Charles VI (1685 - 1740), who planned a monastery-cum-palace complex after the model of the Spanish El Escorial. Money ran out and only a fraction of the plans could be realised. Instead, Klosterneuburg became seat of the Austrian Wine Research Institute in 1860 and is now famous for its quality-wines. Highbrow visitors leaf through through the booklets and artefacts in the museum shop – where the best selling Gregorian chorals CD, “Chant - Music from paradise”, sung by the monks of the Austrian abbey Heiligenkreuz, features prominently in the music corner. At the futuristic semicircle ticket counter, a sign informs us about the three tours offered: The “Sacred Path,” the Imperial Path,” and the “Wine Culture Path.” Each tour costs 9 Euro, and combination tickets are available. Luckily we have meanwhile invested in a regional All-you-can-visit card that includes the “Sacred Path,” a tour through the abbey church with its frescoes, the gigantic early baroque organ, and the Verdun Altar. Made by Nicholas of Verdun in 1181, it is one of the finest examples of medieval enamel and goldsmith work, but unfortunately it is quite difficult to see any details of the 51 panels from beyond the protecting iron gate.

As in the other monasteries we visited, the expensive guided tour in Klosterneuburg is designed to lure wine-lovers and culture connoisseurs back into the fold with modern art and video installations showing the daily life in a convent. Brother Johannes is lying flat on the floor at his ordination when we pass the large flat screen in the staircase, then smiling saintly at his bishop.

Even in his priestly robe, he looks very sophisticated and slick. All the monasteries we visited have invested in a modern and sophisticated presentation that also creates a kind of uniformity between the historically quite different convents. We also wonder whether the fancy arrangement of religion and religious art, combined with the high entrance fees, will deter many of their traditional patrons from visiting the beautiful monasteries.

Touristy Tunisia

 

“Tunisia is wonderful and very different from Libya! It has a weather,” Fatia, a young Tunisian IT student we met in Libya told us excitedly. “And the food is better. For breakfast we have gateaux or ice-cream!” So we expected bluer skies and pastry shops at every street corner.

But when we arrived in Tunisia the weather was similarly cloudy and rainy as in Libya (perhaps we just hit an unusually cloudy time in both countries). There were some nice patisseries in Djerba, but none of them sold delicious ice-cream. Further north, the vegetation was markedly different: Rolling green hills with lots of spring flowers and wheat fields. Without the olive trees, you could imagine being in Bavaria. No wonder that the Romans liked the area and settled here once they had defeated Carthage.

Beside Carthage, we went to see the ruins of four small Roman towns in the northern country side of Tunisia. Although not as impressive as the marble columns of Libya, they were charming and interesting in their own way. In all of them, well-preserved mosaics have been found, and some are still in situ. Walking around the ruins you suddenly almost step on a colourful representation of Roman gods or local animals. In the Roman town of Bulla Regia, the inhabitants developed a unique architectural style to cope with the heat. They built their bedrooms and main living quarters in the basement of their houses, with light shafts and a courtyard leading through to the basement level, while on the ground floor, they had just representative rooms. Dougga, the largest of the Tunisian Roman cities and also a World Heritage Site, had some similar houses. With small winding roads, richer villas on the outskirts, and orchards beyond, Dougga must have been a pleasant and peaceful town to live in. We also visited a well-preserved Roman Forum with three almost intact capitol temples in Sbeitla/ Sufetula and a huge free-standing amphitheatre (collosseum) in El-Jem.

Apart from its Roman heritage Tunisia is also home to some very early mosques. They were built by the first generation of Muslim warriors who set out to conquer the Maghreb and eventually Spain. The most famous one is the Great Mosque in Kairouan: It is so holy that seven pilgrimages can replace the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca.

The caretaker gravely points to Natascha. “Repeat after me,” he says in French, and continues in Arabic: “There is no God but God!” We had been the only women in the mosque wearing a headscarf, so he may have considered us prospective convertites to the Islamic faith. "Uh, hm, but we don’t know enough about Islam. And we are Christians...” we worm our way out of the conversation. Different from the other Arabic countries we visited, Tunisian mosques have special tourist-only hours. During these times, an admission fee applies, but nobody insists that you remove your shoes, or that women should wear a headscarf. “Is this a mosque, then? Is it possible to enter?” we hear a group enquiring in German at the entrance of the Great Mosque in Sousse. Apparently they find the 3 Dinar entrance fee too expensive, and we remain the only visitors for a while until a French family joins us.

Tunisia is decidedly a package tour destination. We never met any backpackers, and only very few independent travellers – all of them with their own vehicle. Around noon scores of German, French, and British beach tourists in shorts, proudly displaying their sunburnt knees and bellies, trawl along the main streets of the medina, the old town. They come by bus from their resort hotels in the zone touristique that every Tunisian town has, and stay only for a few hours. Then the desperate souvenir sellers grab them, preferably the women, by the arm to draw them into their shops. “Bon soir,” someone shouts, and another one, in German, “We are cheaper than Schlecker discount!” The latest BILD and Daily Mirror are available at the newsstands, but no other German or English newspaper (the French can buy Le Monde).

In the evenings, when all the tourists have gone back to their beach hotels, most shops and restaurants close. Those restaurants still open specialise in couscous and sandwiches, and a number of patisseries sell puffy French-style cakes and sweets. We never had ice-cream for breakfast, though.

Flashback 3300 years – a visit to the Hittites

(For more Turkey photos, click here: October 2006 - November 2006 -  December 2006.)

For nearly an hour we have plodded up the mountain, sometimes sinking into the snow up to the knees. Suddenly a gate made from huge blocks of stone appears in the heavily falling snow. Every stone is hewn in a different shape so that they fit perfectly. “This must be the Lion Gate.” And indeed two huge stone lions sit on the door-step and stare in the distance to keep evil influences and evil men at bay.

The portal figures are two of the few original sculptures left at the archaeological site of Hattusha, the ancient capital city of the Hittites. Hattusha was only rediscovered in 1906 by the German archaeologist Hugo Winckler, and the walls and their gates were among the first structures he found.

We make our way along the old city wall to the Sphinx gate, which sits 10 m high up on the rampant wall. Of the four sphinxes guarding this southernmost gate, only three have survived the ages, and just this one has remained in Hattusha. One sphinx is in the museum in Istanbul, another one in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, where it mysteriously got an inventory number after being sent there for restoration – and never found its way back to Turkey.

“In the 19^th century, Turkey was one of the first countries to introduce a law forbidding foreign archaeologists to remove their finds from the country.” The next day, we are lucky enough not only to have a blue sky but also to meet Andreas Schachner, the German excavation leader of Hattusha. He has taken a day off to take some photos of snow-covered Hattusha and offers to take us along in his 4WD. His predecessors at the German Archaeological Society have dug at Hattusha, near the village of Boğazkale, for 100 years with only brief intermissions. “Depending on our funding we can dig between two and four months each summer,” Schachner tells us.

Until Hugo Winckler came to Hattusha, almost nothing had been known about the Hittite empire. The 2500 cuneiform tablets of an ancient library he found were written in a language that nobody understood. But once they had been deciphered (by B. Hrozný), a vivid picture of a powerful empire emerged. Archaeologists believe that the Hittites spoke an Indo-Germanic language and may have immigrated to Anatolia from Europe. Building up a strong army and transforming their capital to an impregnable fortress, by the 14^th century BC they became one of the greatest powers in the Middle East, besides Egypt and Mesopotamia. They once ransacked Babylon and in 1274 BC clashed with the Egyptian troops of Pharaoh Ramses II in the Battle of Khadesh in today’s northern Syria. The battle ended with a narrow victory for the Hittites, resulting in the world’s first known peace treaty, the Treaty of Khadesh. A copy of it adorns the wall of the UN Headquarters in New York.

“Only about 20% of the area have been excavated so far” explains Schachner, while pointing out the current digging site. “Previously it was thought that there were large free areas between the temples and that the whole upper town was primarily used for cult rituals. But geophysical examinations show that there were lots of buildings everywhere. Currently we excavate some living quarters.”

Up to now, more than 30 temples have been discovered, as well as the king’s palace, several fortresses and some houses of the old town in the lower part of Hattusha. However, much is still unknown about the vast Hittite empire – especially its end. The Hittites seem to have disappeared from the historical stage quite suddenly. The unexcavated areas may hold some cues. And … there is still the top prize to be won: the royal tombs.

 

 

 

Recommendations

 

 

Hattusha Site

Deutsches Archäologisches Institut - German Archaeological Institute

BBC documentary: The dark Lords of Hattusha (2006)

 

 

The heirs of Timur

 

 

As long as we can remember, our image of Silk Road towns was blue. Blue domes, blue tiles, blue sky.
(Click here for more Uzbekistan photos)

 

 

 

 

 

The bus moves slowly through the desert, it is too hot, and everyone is slumped drowsily in their seats. Suddenly someone stirs and looks out of the window. We are coming to a town. There is a huge blue dome visible from afar in the blue sky: The Mausoleum of Khodja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkistan. Although geographically in Kazakhstan today, architecturally it belongs to the blue-domed monuments of Samarkand, Bukhara and Shakhrisabz in Uzbekistan.

A lot of them are built by the Timurid Dynasty. Its founder Timur was born in 1336 in a village south of today’s Samarkand. He became leader of Transoxania in 1370, and at the height of his rule (around 1400) his realm spanned from India to Russia. Due to a limp acquired in battle, he was also called Timur-i-Leng (Timur the Lame), a name distorted to “Tamerlane” in the West. While he slaughtered his defeated enemies with excessive cruelty, he spared the best artisans in the conquered towns and brought them to his capital Samarkand to build magnificent madrasas (theological universities), mausoleums and mosques.

In Uzbekistan, Timur’s home country, many of the most beautiful examples of Timurid architecture have been restored to their former glory. At the same time, the traditional harsh way of dealing with enemies of the state is also well-adhered to. Tanks and machine guns guard the entrance to the Ferghana valley, where civil unrest and demands for independence from Uzbekistan have spread in the past years. Groups of bored militias patrol the streets and metro stations of the capital Tashkent and control passports at random. We have often seen people being led away for no apparent reason. “I have been arrested in the metro twice, and once all the foreigners were evacuated for several weeks to be out of the way for police raids”, a cheerful American working for the UN told us. Locals complain about the arbitrariness of police controls – and have no choice but to pay bribes so often and so openly that even we foreigners notice.

This year, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan are all celebrating 15 years of independence after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. In an effort to shape a new national identity based on the glorious past, the statues of Marx and Lenin have been replaced by Timur and his grandson, the famous astronomer Ulug Beg (and by similar historical figures in the other countries). Gradually, national languages replace Russian, which still remains more than the lingua franca. Kazakh, a Turkic language, is written in a modified Cyrillic script, and even the transliteration of Uzbek, now in Latin letters, is based on the Russian alphabet. As in Russian there is no “h”. For loanwords, usually a “g” (“г”) is used instead. Thus, we read and hear (yes, they also pronounce it like “g”) words like “Golland,” “Gamburger” and “Gipermarket.” “From Berlin?,” a young football fan enquired: “Wow, Gertha!”

We are now curious (and a bit worried) to see the historical legacies in Turkmenistan: Timur or Stalin? Our five-day transit visa is valid until 18 September, well ahead of the Independence Day in October. Apparently, no visas are issued for the whole of October in order to keep all foreigners away during the celebrations. As we suppose there are no Internet connections from Turkmenistan, we will (hopefully) be in touch again from Baku (Azerbaijan).

The Silk Road

(Click here for more China photos - June - July - Sunday Market)

„Silk Road“ – that evokes images of oriental cities and caravans laden with huge bundles of silk, making their way through endless deserts and over rough mountain passes., While the term “Silk Road” was only coined by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in the 1870s, the Silk Road itself is of course much older. It was established around the middle of the first century BC, after camels had been domesticated for the first time (horses wouldn’t survive the long desert stages). Caravans then started to transport silk, which was highly in demand in ancient Rome, on the direct route from Asia to Europe.

Silk was not the only commodity on the Silk Road, however: the traders also brought spices, carved jade, and medical rhubarb (against constipation) from China to the West, while horses, glassware, gold and silver goods were transported in the opposite direction.

Apart from commodities, religions (most prominently Buddhism, but also Manichaeism and Nestorianism), fashion, music, and life style traveled on the Silk Road. This was how Polo, imported from Persia, became a popular recreational sport, and Western chairs replaced the Asian floor mats during China’s Tang Dynasty. In the opposite direction the Chinese noodle found its way to Italy.

Just as the Silk Road was not only a road for trading silk, it was also not a single road, but a whole network of roads. All of them originated from Xian. Beyond Dunhuang the vast Taklamakan desert begins: its name originally means “go and you will not come out.” Thus, the road splits into a more direct and dangerous Southern route (Loulan – Hotan – Kashgar) and a Northern route that circumnavigates the desert along the course of today’s railway line, passing the oasis towns of Hami, Turfan, and Kucha. Both routes meet in Kashgar, only to split again. Traders could move over the Pamirs towards Pakistan and India or westwards to Samarkand, Bukhara, and Merv, continuing via Persia to Turkey and Europe.

The trade along the Silk Road reached its peak during political stability of the Tang Dynasty, which was briefly resumed under Mongol rule (under Kublai Khan) in the 13^th century. But with the discovery of new sea routes (Cape of Good Hope) the Silk Road lost its importance.

Today, not that much is left of the glorious past. In the early 20^th century, Western and Japanese archeologists competed in digging out as many relics as they could, taking away the best-preserved statues, frescoes and manuscripts. The most beautiful artifacts of the Silk Road are now in London, Berlin, Tokyo and Washington. From today’s perspective it does look like theft and vandalism, and indeed official notices in some of the empty caves accuse the foreigners of imperialist arrogance.

But seeing the current state of the sights changed our point of view somewhat. The Western archeologists (who acted in a legal framework) all regretted in their expedition diaries that they could only take a small part of the beautiful artwork. But today almost none of the remaining frescoes are intact. Many of the defacements are apparently caused by Fanatic Muslims and Red Guards in the 20^th century. Ignorant Chinese tourists have left countless graffittis in the caves. As we mentioned before, the restoration work undertaken by the Chinese often seems to lack scholarly and/ or scientific backing. Thus, the “stolen” artifacts in Western museums are much better preserved and protected than those the explorers had left behind.

For further interest we recommend:

Peter Hopkirk: Foreign Devils on the Silk Road. (The story of the foreign archaeologists’ race for Silk Road artifacts)

Mildred Cable and Francisca French: The Gobi Desert. (Life in the Gobi desert as observed by three travelling missionaries in the 1910s to 1930s, unfortunately out of print)

Berlin: Museum für Indische Kunst (Some of the most famous frescoes were lost in WWII, but there is still a lot to see)

Tokyo: 東京国立博物館 (not quite as good, but they do display a number of their Silk Road items)

In the British Museum in London, almost none of Sir Aurel Stein’s finds are displayed.

Terracotta Dreams

(Click here for more China photos - June - July - Sunday Market)

Emperor Shi Huangdi wanted to be immortal. It could have been possible. He had just conquered every kingdom he knew and proclaimed himself the First Emperor of China. His alchemists had powerful recipes to prolong life. In case his body should die, Shi Huangdi prepared a huge underground palace where his soul could live on. Statues of servants, horse-carriages for outings and bronze ducks swimming in artificial rivers and lakes made from mercury should guarantee his comforts. This underground palace was guarded by the famous life-sized army of terracotta warriors.

Today, the terracotta army is touted as the 8^th wonder of the world, and large halls cover the excavation site. Although the sheer size of the exhibition area is impressive, the presentation of the artifacts themselves appeared somewhat sad. Only five of the most well-preserved warriors were shown for a close look in a corner of excavation pit number 4, without much explanation. Of the seven “Generals” found so far, only one was present. Other figures stand forlornly in the almost empty pits.

Admittedly we are spoiled: We have previously seen terracotta warriors and other items from the excavations in three excellent exhibitions in Tokyo. At that time, we appreciated China’s willingness to let the warriors travel around the world.

Xian, the old capital, is considered to be the official beginning of the silk road. The visible Muslim minority contributes to the city’s cuisine and culture. One of our Xian highlights was the visit to China’s oldest mosque. At first sight it looks like a Chinese temple, but the orientation towards Mecca as well as Arabic inscriptions above doorways and on the walls show its Islamic denomination.

Among the many other sights – a fantastic history museum, a huge old pagoda, the excavation site of a 5000 year old village, etc. – is a temple that may only be of interest to visitors from Japan. It is the place where Kōbo Daishi, the founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan (see our first blog entry: 88 pages of Shikoku) studied as a foreign exchange monk in the 9th century.

Leaving Xian proved difficult because the university holidays had just started and all trains were fully booked. Spending half a day in various ticket offices we could finally secure two tickets for a sleeper bus to Xining.

Emperor Shi Huangdi may have died, and his underground palace smashed by the following Han Dynasty just a few years after his death, but the empire he founded is still huge. We are 1000 kilometers further west in the Tibetan Highland, and still Western China lies before us.

Wutaishan: a Buddhist holiday destination

Playing badminton in the courtyard of our hostel.

(Click here for more China photos - June - July - Sunday Market)

We had spent several hours in a cramped minibus winding up the mountains. When we finally reached the pass of the mountain, the Wutaishan (五台山) valley lay before us. A group of fellow travellers got off the bus to climb to the temple at Yedou peak, one of the five holy mountains after which the area is named.

Wutaishan is one of China’s sacred Buddhist mountain ranges. More than 100 temples, most of them Lamaist, are scattered across the area. Because of the remoteness of the region, they have survived the cultural revolution nearly intact.

The temples with their strings of colourful prayer flags, their photographs of important Lamas and their prayer wheels were beautiful, but it was the atmosphere that got us. Taihua, where we stayed, is a small tourist village in the centre of the Wutaishan valley: nearly every house was a restaurant, souvenir shop, or lodging. Apart from a few Western and some more Chinese tourists, their customers included scores of monks and nuns belonging to various Buddhist sects.

During the day we saw them eagerly touring the temples, praying and chanting. Some ran clockwise around the white stupa containing Buddha’s relics or approached a mountain temple in the slow traditional pilgrim’s way of kneeling and stretching out on every third step.. In the afternoon and evening, however, they had some time off. Then they went shopping around for religious goods in their vivid robes (red, orange, yellow, grey or brown, depending on the sectl). Like the other tourists they had an ice-cream or a Coca Cola and showed off their new sunglasses and sunhats. Once we saw a nun ringing the various models of prayer bells in a shop, trying to find the ideal one for her.

A group of about 10 young Tibetan monks stayed at the same hostel as we did. All of them were very curious about foreign countries and we regretted our poor Chinese.
We went off hiking in the surrounding hills for a day. Although the mountains are not that high, there were few trees but many alpine flowers, including Enzian and some sort of Edelweiss (at least we think so). Cows were mowing on the green meadows. None of the paths was clearly marked, and some just disappeared somewhere in the pastures, but occasional stone heaps and scarlet cloths in the bushes indicated that these were also used by pilgrims.
So we were again on a Buddhist pilgrims’ route!