Route of Czechia trip, 2009

 

Tinder-dry tithe maps, waxy parchment records and sodden farewells

After a couple of sun bleached days in Gent and Brugges in Belgium we boarded a ferry from Ostend to Ramsgate and, since late June, have had a wonderful month of genealogy research in the southern counties of England where most of our relatives lived, centuries ago. 

We’ve had amazing access in county records offices to stiff, waxy, crackly land leases they took out and signed hundreds of years ago. Their blotchy signatures are there aplenty. And, believe it or not, so are many ancient hand-written letters which give an amazing insight into the type of people they were. 

We found tithe maps, beautifully detailed and cross-referenced with numbered location maps allowing us to trace exactly where our relatives once lived. We were able to track down their activities on electoral registers, Bishop's Transcripts, Marriage Indexes, and ancient original Parish Registers disintegrating on the frailest of papers even as we turned the tinder-dry pages whilst wearing soft white protective gloves. So fragile. So impossible to read. 

We took photographs of the stone and cob cottages where our relatives once lived, the churches where they married, the pubs where they shared a pint, and, finally, the headstones in the cemeteries where they ended their days. 

We even resorted, in one remote location, to cleaning one headstone with toothpaste (the only non-toxic, non-damaging illuminating white substance we had with us) in the hope that it would better highlight the etched grooves in the old decaying headstone enabling a clearer photograph. Evenso, we are still at a loss to decipher some of the lettering. 

We ended up having to charge the digital camera battery every single night: it was so drained every single day. So many photos of data it will take us years to sort. 

We are now in the Midlands, where, for the first time in the entire three months we are experiencing what looks like solid, non-stop rain. The ground is so sodden we can’t even park in the campground, but are on hardstanding on the perimeter – albeit quite pleasant and surrounded by dripping greenery. With free WIFI as a bonus. 

We have, now, only a few days to catch up with old friends, clean and drop off our motorhome, then next week we’re home. Another lovely trip. Sun-scorched in the main, this year but lovely memories all.

Bec coffering in front of Bruges City Hall 

Belfry tower and Dijver canal. Brugge, the Venice of the North 

Love these facades in Ghent, Belgium

The Lion's Mound, overlooking what once was a battlefield, commemorate the Allies' victory over Napoleon's imperial trips, Waterloo in Belgium

Hymans House National Trust garden in grounds of historic ruin, near Horsham

Beautiful Cowes on the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Alum Bay, Isle of Wight

Beautiful waters of the Isle of Wight

Laycock Abbey, Chippenham

King Johns Hunting Lodge Tea Room, Chippenham

Miss Bec in Old Smity Garden in Godshill

Brick Kiln pond conservation area

Luxembourg: UNESCO sites rule!

A broken record. I’m sure I sound a lot like a broken record, saying so much is beautiful, and so very much is. But some isn’t. And, this year, every time we think we hate something, like parts of the Czech Republic, we fall in love with a little corner of it and end up hating to leave, and wishing we had another life so we had time to go back again.

Luxembourg is tiny, so it is easy for it to be beautiful everywhere. We drove into Luxembourg, the city, via the Moselle valley, which seams Luxembourg, the country. Moselle grape vines completely clothe the slopes to the river in a way I imagine tea bushes do in Sri Lanka. In perfect lines. All at a perfect height. And all perfectly green. As you are driving everything is blue water, green grape vines and blue blue skies. What a favoured European city Luxembourg is. Next to Dresden, we three have separately voted Luxembourg as our next favourite city, so far, this year. It is elegant, overtly well off– practically every car in the city is of the expensive variety and the stores are tres chic, yet it feels completely accessible and ultra friendly. And, wonderfully, not too touristy.

It is modern but with ancient roots; and it possesses the style of the European cities we remember from our trips here thirty years back but with a fine modern edge. From countries all around its borders it attracts commuter workers. You can see worker’s cars in Park and Ride bus and train stations on all sides: Belgium, Holland, Germany. Luxembourg pay is good, the work is there, the distance is viable. Next to the USA, Luxembourg is the largest investment fund centre in the world. So solid has it become it is now the head office for internet giants like Skype and eBay, and, currently, is the most important private banking zone in Europe.

And it feels strong, inviolate, solid. Enhanced by its geography, it sits high on a massive rocky promontory, where, long ago, Count Siegfred set about building a staunch impenetrable fortress. On the rocks, through the rocks, around the rocks.

This complex set of fortifications ended up stretching to twenty-three kilometers of tunnel, hewn from the rock; and 40,000m² of impenetrable bomb shelter caverns that allowed for the protection of massive numbers of armies, horses, artillery and equipment, along with supporting kitchens, bakeries, chacuteries and storage.

These fortifications are called the Casements. And just like casement windows you can see into and out of the rock caves from a pretty belvedere, above, overlooking the casements and down to the tiny suburb below them: the Grund. This corniche has been called the “most beautiful balcony of Europe” and it is hard to think of another that would come close, except perhaps, Ravello, along the Amalfi stretch.

The balcony looks down, too, onto the ruins of one of the prettiest 15th century bridges we’ve seen, which, together with the casements and the other historic quarters of Luxembourg are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Another UNESCO site. A broken record, I know. But, truly, UNESCO sites rule!

Enroute to Luxembourg

Bock Casements, Luxembourg

Adolphe Bridge, Luxembourg

 

 

 

 

 

Everywhere is lovely 

Casement view from the Belvedere

Narrow Medieval streets and angles

Pagan Mayday rituals

All along the Danube and the Romantische Straße we have noticed these very tall, stripped trees, standing forlornly now, bolted into place in the very centre of each village. These are May poles.

When I was a child we were taught to perform very complicated dances around a Maypole one May Day: crossing, winding, twirling, weaving, so that the long ribbons made intricate and extremely pretty patterns. The practise stopped as suddenly as it started at our convent. My guess is that someone told the nuns that dancing around a Maypole was either about the devil’s business or a pagan practise. Because we never did it again: tho’ it was huge fun. That kind of ribbon-dancing around a Maypole, though, is more an English tradition, with the ribbons hanging from a shorter pole.

The Germany tree pole is much taller, about a hundred feet, planed to straight perfection, hung more with decorative garlands, and in many villages, decked out with tillers bearing guild symbols and worker shields.

Erecting the Maypole on the 1st day of May each year has been a village effort and a village tradition going back five hundred years in parts of Germany, and does not appear to be stopping anytime soon.

Once erected the Maypole must be carefully guarded until the 1st May to prevent groups of lederhosen clad young men from nearby villages stealing it, and to forestall any attempt on their part to negotiate for its return over copious vats of food and barrels of drink.

On that first day of May the villagers gather together around the Maypole for the May feast and festivities that go long into the night.

That is just hours after the ladies of the village have carefully bathed the skin on their faces in the early morning Mayday dew -- to ensure their continued beauty. 

No doubt another practise the nuns would think of as pagan.

Maypole in Germany

Route to Miltenberg

Ehrenfels Castle is a ruined hillside castle above the Rhine Gorge near the town of Rüdesheim am Rhein in Hesse, Germany

Downtown Trier

Strappado baptisms and fachwerk revivals

Between the Danube and the Main we followed the Romantic Route, an old route to Rome, as its name sounded pretty, and, ahh! it was.  A terrific tourist hook, that.  

We drove interesting rural routes, quiet now except for tourists,  used since Medieval times and came across the only three remaining completely walled villages left in all of Germany: Nordlingen, Dinkelsbuhl and Rothenburg ob der Tauber. 

All are lovely.  Nordlingen is interesting as the city has grown up inside an ancient crater bed. Millions of years ago a meteor slammed into the earth here.  Its massive impact left the crater littered with coarse rock, glass, crystal and diamonds.  So the buildings and roof tiles of Nordlingen that come from the tons of local earth and clay are studded still with tiny microscopic diamonds and crystal slivers that glow in the sunlight.  

But, of all of them, Rothenburg was quite simply, astonishing.  If Germany chose to rate her 120 most beautiful villages the way the French have done, Rothenburg ob der Tauber would likely come out on top.

Any single street in the town could be used for a re-creation of any Shakespearean play you could conceive. There are gallows gates, toll gates with sentry stands, an ancient moat, a church with a capsule said to contain three drops of Christ’s blood, guard towers built for pouring hot burning tar onto enemy incursors, cages next to cold fountains in which medieval fisherman used to store their fish, and medieval torture devices like the Strappado with its ducking cage used to dunk bakers who sold their bread too light.  For each half ounce missing a baker was dunked into cold water: Baker’s baptism.

And last, but not least, street after street of the most gloriously restored half-timbered fashwerk houses in the country. 

Fifty years ago people did not want to live in these gorgeous homes: they were being pulled down by the thousands throughout Germany, making way for massive roads and bridges, and buildings of glass, brick and stainless steel. 

Nowadays, there is a move to the old.  Folk are coming to treasure these ancient old crooked wooden structures with their sharply angled roofs and exteriors coated in a mix of limestone and oak. 

Today most of the half-timbered homes framed in oak in Rothenburg are shining: newly protected in many coats of pretty coloured paintwork. The place is just gorgeous.  

Cluster of fachwerk homes

Structures as out of a Medieval fairytale

Medieval walls and towers of Dinkelsbuhl

Cage over cold fountain for storing fish in Medieval market

Doors of St George's church in Dinkelsbuhl 

Schneeball, a Rothenburg classic pastry ball you smash before eating

Beautiful facades in Dinkelsbuhl

Bienenstich (bee sting)supposedly created to celebrate a 15th century village win after successfully throwing their bee hives at a neighbouring village in a battle

Paddy wagon for criminals of yesterday

Narrow Rothenburg streets with horse and buggy

Miss Bec enjoying Rothenburg

Further along was Miltenberg

Romantic flowers along the Romantic Route

Steering the Danube

We dropped down out of Czechia from a height of a thousand metres to around five hundred metres in one short morning’s drive and our nights went from cold, and, at times, frigid in Czechia, to warm again, in Germany. We didn’t realise we’d climbed that high: the ascents and descents seemed inconspicuously gentle, or we may well have been focusing so much on avoiding the ubiquitous potholes that we didn’t get time to notice the inclines.  

Since then we’ve been traveling the river valleys: the Danube, the Main and the Rhine. Despite the wrap, the lyrics, and the music, when the Danube rolls into town it is quite often the ugly duckling of the three of them.  In Vienna it is canaled, its edges industrial, it is concrete-coloured and sullen in its movements. There it is probably at its ugliest. In Bratislava it is murky and not heaps happier. At Passau, it merges with the Inn, and frequently breaks its bank and floods. 

But, out of the cities, into the country, at little spots like Vilshofen, the Danube, can seem almost pretty. From our Stellplatz we looked across it to neat little farms perched every few hundred metres along the opposite bank and the river water between was pleasant, even peaceful.  If not blue. 

At that spot, too, we learned a little about the barges, and the barge men and barge women, who constantly ply the waters of the Danube.

A husband and wife team from the Netherlands moored just metres from our van.  They live aboard their barge, the Gitana, which is their only home, all of its 102 metres of working body, with its 3 metre draft. Their neat little home at the back of the boat, below steerage, is lined with pretty café curtains and pots of red geraniums. Above deck they store their bikes, and their car, which they are able to crane off and on at various spots along the river.  

They had, just that morning, taken on a new load of 1,000 tons of maize at Passau.  It had taken them all day just to load and move on to this mooring at Vilshofen, where they were waiting for a pilot to lead them through the next lock section of the Danube as the captain’s license did not cover that particular stretch. They were to load another 800 tons of maize in Regensburg enroute to the Netherlands, but as the Danube is running low this season that is all they were likely to carry this trip, even though their maximum capacity is around 2,450 tons.

A busy pair. They were up and gone at five the next morning. Their lives and their livelihood completely dependent on the Danube and the cultivation along its banks. 

A working barge on the Danube

 

The Danube near Vilshoven

 

Historical centre of Vilshoven an der Donau

 

Pretty facade in Vilshoven an der Donau

Another attractive facade in Vilshoven

Heaven in Czechia

We have been three nights at a Czechia campsite looking over Lake Lipno into an Austrian forest, and we do not want to leave. It is, physically, one of the most beautiful settings we have ever been lucky enough to spend the night.

It is in a place called ‘Czech Canada’and you can immediately tell why.  Tall trees rise straight to heaven, and day and night there is the delicate whiff, and slight tangy taste, of woodsmoke as always seems the case in forested parts of Canada.

The campground is just a short walk to a little village called Frymburk, which, for the last two nights has had a food and music festival a’happening.  All a go. 

A passenger ferry occasionally plies up and down the lake carrying paying passengers. Further down a car ferry drops folk off into Austria. A fisherman from our campsite threw in his line this morning as I watched and pulled out two huge fat carp. Here they are edible. 

At home, down in the lochs on the Murray they are piled up by the tonnage and sold off for cat food, or fertiliser. I forget which. Carp is often on the menu in Czechia and, because of its invasion in the Murray I have to avoid it. But still,  I envied the fisherman his excited catch this morning. I want a fishing line!

All this weekend, in the village, they have broiled giant ham hocks atop coal burning barbecues – and countless racks of caramelized smoky spare ribs.  Served only with bread. Not a vegetable within cooee. Meat eaters, the Czechs. 

But, we’re loving the purple cabbage, the potato pancakes, the fat red tomatoes bursting out of their skins which taste as rich and flavourful as when I was a child. Why don’t we have tomatoes like that anymore in Australia? 

And the cheeses. Drool. Not the pasty Gouda-like cheeses with little or no flavour: the Cambozola, which, I think is a cross between Camembert and Gorgonzola and is utterly divine. Tho’ from what I can make out I think it is more Bavarian than Czechian.  But so brilliant I may have to import it. We’re leaving. We’re sad. 

Delicious charred ham hocks at the fair

Looking across to  Frymburk

Overlooking Lake Lipno

Peaceful campsite near  Frymburk