Roaming Tales

Bordeaux, France; Easter 2007

This pigeon perched on a gargoyle high above Bordeaux looks like it is standing sentry over the city. This was taken from the top of the Tour Pey-Berland, the freestanding bell tower by the cathedral.

This is posted for Photo Friday, organised by Debbie at DeliciousBaby.

4 Comments »

A modern art project links the Thames river front near Tower Bridge and the East River embankment under the Brooklyn Bridge via a video link.

Back in May I was walking from London Bridge to Tower Bridge with a group of friends.

We were off to see the the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London - but that’s a story for another day.

We got as far as City Hall, which is this weird, squashed building here.

Then we saw a giant telescope on the public path beside the Thames. A sign identified it as the “Telectroscope“.

It cost £1 for a ticket from a dinky little machine and then we joined the small group gathering round at what would be the wrong end of the telescope were it actually a telescope. People were smiling and waving and writing messages on a small whiteboard - that’s me with the camera reflected in the glass and the girl in green is my friend Jess.

We peered closer and discovered that, as well as our own reflections, we could see another set of people in Brooklyn. We had tremendous fun writing messages to each other across the Atlantic.

I’m not sure how they did this. The Telectroscope website claims that a secret tunnel was dug across the Atlantic, but I suspect video technology was involved somehow.

I must admit I hoped it would become a permanent installation - much like the London Eye was erected for the Millennium but was so popular it stayed. Sadly, it was dismantled on June 15. I never did get a chance to email my friends in Brooklyn and arrange a virtual meetup via the Telectroscope.

It was an exceptionally cool project. What can’t more modern art be like this?

1 Comment »

Jewish Cemetery, Krakow, Poland. August 2008.

As we walked from the train station in Krakow, the old royal capital of Poland, to our rented apartment, a lady handed us a tourist leaflet offering air-conditioned coach tours of various ‘attractions’ around the city. Along with the guided tours of the salt mines, one of the options was a tour of Auschwitz.

I don’t know how I feel about this. I think it’s important that we remember our history and I support the fact that the place of so much suffering has been turned into a museum. But it doesn’t feel right for it to be packaged up as just another commercial product, however sensitively it’s handled.

We didn’t end up going - perhaps another time, but almost certainly under our own steam rather than on a bus tour. However, we did take a walk through the Jewish Cemetery in Krakow. It was free to enter but the boys had to don skull caps, which reminded me of how I wore the hijab for my recent visits to mosques in Syria.

The far side of the cemetery was very overgrown with weeds and vines and many of the gravestones were framed by ferns and moss. On the near side, we saw freshly tended graves with flowers with death dates in the past 10 years - it’s amazing to think of how even a depleted Jewish population of Krakow survived through first the Nazi and then the Soviet occupation. One plaque on the wall had an English inscription, which may have been dedicated by the American descendants of a Polish Jew.

This particular gravestone struck me as interesting. The small coloured lanterns were quite common on many of the graves, but what I found interesting was the fact that the man’s name was given in both Polish and German. He died in 1946. There’s a story there, though I don’t know what it is.

PS There are some interesting clues and possibilities in the comments field.

8 Comments »

The reason I went to Syria in July was to write an article about Iraqis crossing the border to have weddings in Syria, due to the unstable situation at home.

I was invited to the wedding of Sami and Hind (pictured) through a personal connection and I ended up staying with Hind’s family in an apartment in an Iraqi part of Damascus. It was quite an intense cultural experience!

They were happy for me to tell their story and the article was published in the Guardian last week, with a three-page spread in G2 (the features lift-out).

No Comments »

Damascus, Syria; July 2008.

Where the Great Umayyed Mosque is about peace and sanctuary, the Sayyida Zainab Mosque is about pilgrimage and intense religious fervour. In a Shia part of town, about 10 kilometres from the centre of Damascus, this beautiful mosque is patronised by many Iranians and Iraqi Shiites.

I had to cover myself from head to toe to enter, removing my shoes as you do in every mosque. There is a separate entrance for men and women and inside the mosque is divided. The women’s half was completely packed at 10 o’clock in the morning with women clamouring to touch the tomb of Lady Zainab, the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammed.

Outside, the gold dome glinted in the sunlight, offset by the minarets decorated with geometric designs in white and aqua blue. Inside, the walls shimmered with silver and chandeliers hung from the ceilings. All around people were praying, prostrating themselves with a small stone tablet for their forehead.

I was accompanied by a Muslim friend who encouraged me to take photographs. It was only on the way out that I noticed the ‘no photography’ sign.

This post is part of Photo Friday, hosted at DeliciousBaby.

3 Comments »

This is a guest post from Stephen from Manzanilloblog. Stephen describes himself and his wife Tiffani as “chronic travellers”, who’ve recently made the leap and left the US to live in beautiful Manzanillo, Mexico. They are loving the experience so far and started the blog to share their discoveries, adventures, and hard earned lessons with the world. In this post he shares some of the bloody history behind the beautiful beaches.

I’m sitting on the beach watching the waves peel and crash; the ocean looks glassy. The sea-scented air feels refreshing, and the sun radiates a warmth that is more than skin deep. Children and their parents are playing in the white wash, giggling as each crashing wave seems to catch them by surprise. Grandparents look on from under umbrellas, shouting warnings, laughing and complaining to one another. “We didn’t have waves in my day… these kids don’t know how good they have it…” It’s peaceful and beautiful; almost paradise.

It’s hard to believe this lovely place has such a bloody past. History in Mexico is a record of one ferocious conquest after another. In the 16th century, not far from where I’m sitting now, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés built a port in Santiago, retired here, cut down all the old growth Manzanillo trees, for which the area was named, and built an armada to bring his greedy conquest to the the Philippines. He and his kind destroyed an ancient culture in search of gold and in the name of God. Cortes and his conquistadors crucified thousands of Indians, watching them slowly roast at the stake after oiling their feet so they would burn better.

Yet the Spanish were not the first to commit horrible crimes here. For hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Aztecs slaughtered thousands every year to appease their gods and ward off catastrophe. In one week they offered 20,000 hearts of murdered slaves to their gods. Entire towns and cities were wiped out. They painted their famous pyramids yearly in the fresh blood of their victims. You don’t hear about that on the tourist tours.

In Cortés’ wake came a regime of cruel dictators who enslaved and oppressed on a mass scale. These dictators created a caste system, rating the worth of the natives; they ground the people down under their well-polished heels. Failed attempts at uprising led to revolution in 1910. Even now there is a brutal war going on against the drug lords of Mexico; decapitations, assassinations, and mass executions are in the news every day.

We are told never to forget the holocaust, so that it may never be repeated. But it seems the holocaust was one instance in a long line of heart-wrenching atrocities that man has committed against each other. Mexico’s story is not unique; nearly every nation in the world has a bloodstained past. It seems to be the human way.  What will it take to rouse our collective consciences?

The atrocities of history are dulled and forgotten with time like so many sand castles and footprints in the surf. It’s the crimson sunset that tells humanity’s true history. Can the tides of time wash all of that away?

No Comments »

Damascus, Syria; July 2008.

The Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was originally built as a Byzantine church, with a long oblong sanctuary where John the Baptist has his tomb and the adjoining high-walled courtyard. To enter, you must remove your shoes and anyone who is not dressed from head to toe must don robes that are given as part of the entry ticket. The courtyard is a lovely refuge away from the bustle of the market and many locals use it as a place for rest and relaxation, propping themselves up against the walls and columns. Meanwhile children run up and down the vast expanse of marble, laughing and shouting - it would be heaven for heelies if shoes were allowed.

This was submitted to Photo Friday, a new feature fellow blogger Debbie has introduced at DeliciousBaby. Head over to see this week’s submissions.

3 Comments »

Here are a couple of handy tools that I stumbled upon today:

• The Universal Packing List: Select your dates and answer some basic questions and the Universal Packing List will generate a packing list for you. It’s a good idea but it could be more customised - I put in the details for my upcoming trip to Krakow and it told me to bring beach gear. It would be great if it could generate a specific packing list for different types of holiday - city breaks, beach holidays etc. Or even better, if you could just tell it where exactly you are going and it figured it out for you. Obviously it’s just a tool and you will need to customise the list further but it’s handy for reminding you to pack things you might otherwise forget, such as camera chargers.

• Daylight Map: This map of the world visualises day and night in different countries. It’s handy for travellers but probably even more handy for expats wanting to call home at an appropriate hour. Of course, if a country is in darkness it doesn’t tell you if it’s 7pm or 3am. You’ll just have to figure it for yourself. I like the way it looks though.

• Travel Guide Map: Darren at Travel Rants has created a cool map with visual links to destination guides around the web. My guide to Bruges is there, though it’s a little hard to click on because it’s so close to another guide to nearby Ghent.

2 Comments »