Category Archive: TRAVEL
Bayreuth Was Closed
"We're here...who's singing at us?"
22 MAY: Happy Birthday, Richard! In May 2013, we drove into Bayreuth, figuring we would get our fill of tributes to the Master. However, the famed Festspielhaus was closed till bicentenary performances scheduled for June. No one seemed particularly keen on giving us information…surely they aren’t ‘over’ the Master? There appeared to be no direct road connecting to Richard Wagner Strasse. We drove the wrong way down a one way street* and at the corner of RW Strasse and Wannfried Strasse, an information booth attendant told us the Wagner Museum was closed. For a town that owes much to Wagner,…
Continue Reading →Mad King Ludwig
The Moon King
June 13, 1886: what happened? Ludwig II King of Bavaria, son of Crown Prince Maximilian and grandson of Ludwig I, died mysteriously that summer day in Lake Starnberg, Bavaria. If he was mad, he was our kind of mad. But he was also a threat, and this is why his ‘death by drowning’ has serious questions hanging over it – he was found floating, with his asylum doctor (also dead) near the shore, in shallow water, no water in the lungs, and he was a strong swimmer. As accidental drownings go, it has as much cogency as the water commissioner’s in…
Continue Reading →Hampton Court
A pile costing many coins and heads...
(TVC’s visit: 2 June 2013) Finding ourselves at a motel near Heathrow with a few hours to kill before take-off, we thought, ‘why not have a look at Hampton Court?’ So we sensibly took a shuttle to terminal 4 of the airport to look for the tube. This chewed up about half an hour with nil result. Then we meandered to Henry VIII’s place on 3 buses, wondering at the complexities of our little visit and the varied responses of the bus drivers, their advice ranging from cheery and correct, to non-committal, to the outright hostile. Got there in the…
Continue Reading →Sydney Bookshops
CAT PATHWAY No Books Here Please
Lesley McKay’s at Woollhara looks like any other, small, new-book shop. Yet it has unexpected gems crammed into the teeny tiny spaces. Gleebooks (x 2, both on Glebe Point Road) is duller and more mainstream than in its heyday. Sappho (also on GPR) is well worth a visit – 4 floors of carefully chosen second-hand books rub shoulders in tea-table nooks. Notably there is a particularly impressive room of works on music and scores. Gould’s massive, industrial, mezzanined cavern at Newtown has no discernible order but is still terrific, with a cats’ crawlspace set aside especially. L got some very good Attic Greek language books at…
Continue Reading →Bitings on a Complimentary Basis.
Get your bitings here
In 2004, while staying in a converted monastery in wild, windy, Avignon, we read an invitation to “bitings on a complimentary basis” at 7pm . In some trepidation we donned evening garb, strung garlic around our necks and descended to the ancient hall for what turned out to be “free nibbles” and not of the flattering, cannibal sort. The European grip on English translation had not improved by 2013, when, in the train station at Sorrento we read a sign which frightened and confused us.
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