A Sane-making Walk in Rome

Yesterday was intense in the world of bad news. I had been feeling mildly guilty that I was away in Naples on October 22 when the Polish Constitutional Tribunal made its historic decision, and I felt even worse when I read a plaintive, disappointed  email on the worldwide Catholic media's lame reportage on the subject. To make up for Catholic journalism's insufficient coverage, I contacted a bunch of Poles and produced two articles on Poland's culture war--without an s key and therefore the cut and paste function having to do double-duty. Trying to remember what I was about to paste was hell. There were tears.

This morning I went on a sane-making walk around Rome. First I went with Benedict Ambrose to the caffe-bar closest to his language school with him and checked his homework while he stood at the bar drinking his breakfast cappuccino. Then I wandered off in the direction of Piazza Navona, which was all but empty. Next I cut through the streets to the Pantheon, went down the Via del Seminario, strode up the Via del Corso, got myself on the Via Condottti, and climbed up the Spanish Steps where I had a small rest. When I descended, I went on a semi-serious search for the Anglo-American Book shop, getting comfortably lost in the process, and wandered hither and thither on interesting streets back towards the Tiber, fetching up at the Ponte del'Angelo. At that point I was no longer lost, and dutifully went back to our rental flat.  

How do we feel about this hat?

It was a relatively quiet walk, either because most shops don't open before 10 or because tourism is all but dead, or both. It was sunny and warm and odiferous with the mingled scent of rotting vegetation, fresh bread and fresh flowers. I was sorry to see that Dolce & Gabbana had taken the petit-point rose dresses and accessories out of their windows, for I really liked them. 

But I enjoyed discovering a Sardinian bakery, contemplating the saint Maria di Novella parfumerie, listening to workmen shout their breakfast needs, and reading a poem by in the Piazza di Spagna. I even saw two Italian children, a big sister and her bespectacled little brother, running along the street, late for something. (It is sad how rarely I see children in the Roman streets; where are they?) 

It's a Gucci hat, though.

I heard a snatch of music coming from the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia on the Via dei Greci, where the Anglo American Book shop is not. (That's on the Via delle Vite, the internet now tells me.) There were green vines embracing walls here and there. There were green plants in big pots. There were small purebred dogs--often French bulldogs--on leads held by well-dressed men in doorways. 

Rome is a very good place to be. Not necessarily to DO, but certainly to BE. 

 

Rain in Rome

It's raining. My newly discovered cafe Barnum--in which you can sit comfortably for a long time and the pastries are a revelation--was still closed when we went there at 8:15. (It opens at 8:30, it turns out). We went to another place nearby, and I am certain I was sold a day-old croissant.  My "s" key no longer works, so all these "s"es are cut-and-paste, and I don't know where I can get a repair. Rome is not an unsullied paradise. 

However, Benedict Ambrose and I have great fun when we can. For Thanksgiving we went to Cul-de-sac, which is near the Piazza Navona, and had a whole bottle of wine as well as hare pate, duck ravioli (B.A.) and spinach-ricotta ravioli (me). Normally I hate ordering a whole bottle of wine for two, but on this occasion I made the most of my tipsiness by conjugating "Essere" and "Avere" in pen upside down and backwards on the paper tablecloth for B.A. to read aloud.  

This morning we reviewed the mysteries of the definite article over our cappuccini and then, to be out of the rain before class, B.A. went to the Chiesa Nuova.

I am on Chapter 9 of Dieci Piccoli Indiani, but I have not progressed in by vocabulary workbook. Instead yesterday I finished reading John Le Carre's A Murder of Quality, which is so much better than Antonia Fraser's A splash of Red, I almost sat up straighter as I read it.  

Eventually I will write a list of oddities pertaining to living in Rome, but the only one that immediately comes to mind is the sudden "bzzt!" of the door buzzer. It happens several times a day, and I wonder if it I one buzzer for all the flats. Is it a resident who can't be bothered to dig out his or her keys, or is it a visitor trying his luck by pushing all the buttons? 

Update: It stopped raining, so I went for a walk in the morning sun. I didn't get as far as Testaccio, but at least it was a little exercise along the multicoloured streets. A nice thing: elderly men still read printed newspapers outside cafes. 

I review the headlines online during the day. First thing this morning I saw more stories about more coronavirus cases, more deaths, more lockdown measures, Cardinal Becciù's "lady" and the Duchess of Cambridge opening a new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in London wearing a very chic black outfit from Alexander McQueen.  Of these things, I am most likely to write about la signora Marogna if no-one else at work has yet--cutting and pasting in the letter "s" as I go along.

Fifteen minutes for Rome

One of my favourite aspects of Rome is the palette: sienna, burnt sienna, lemon yellow, yellow ochre, orange ochre, red ochre, pistachio, dirty pale blue. The old buildings, or palazzi, are painted these colours. Walking along the narrow cobbled streets looking up at these colours fosters tranquility.

The shop windows inspire excitement and, I'm afraid, incite desire: for pastries, for scented candles, for a table set for a dinner party just like that, to be a woman who dresses in clothes like those.

Pastries are reasonable. This morning Benedict Ambrose and I went out with our umbrella, which we didn't need to unfurl, despite the dripping rooves, to the Sicilian pasticceria nearest "our" church, the Traditional Latin Mass church. Stammering a little (ordering things is not part of my daily Italian study) at the counter, I caused two cappuccini and two cannoli, orange and pistachio, to appear. 

Cannoli for breakfast? Yes, I know. 

The cannoli at this pasticceria are perfectly crunchy; we will not need to go elsewhere, ever. After we had finished eating, I bought two more, filled with ricotta instead of cream, for tonight's dessert. It is the Feast of the Holy Rosary, and thus we will have a real treat. A choir will sing at tonight's Mass; it will be a solemnity, which means we will be happy. 

We wear masks, of course: everyone is wearing masks, for nobody wants to pay a €400 fine. If we forget to put them on, people stare until we remember. Happily I have a nice cloth one, the gift of a friend, which I can breathe through relatively easily. B.A. uses and reuses the ugly Chinese-made plastic face nappies. By the time I finish climbing the stairs back to our third floor flat, I am very much out of breath, though. 

All shops, churches and pasticcerie have bottles of antiseptic at their doors: they have a distinctive smell and feel gooshy. B.A. thinks our church has the best-smelling antiseptic, and he should know as he spends his days going from church to church. 

This morning I watched a news report about an 85 year old shopkeeper near the Colosseum who was knocked to the ground by a migrant who then ripped off the chain around his neck. The news report showed beer bottles, discarded wine boxes, and thin black men sitting on grass and kerbsides, and I thought that Pope Francis would not like the editorial slant of this news story, were he to see it. I also wondered if the man has children, and if they beg him to close his shop and take up gardening, and if they are in office jobs abroad. 

This morning I also read a news story about a 50 year old prostitute who is putting her sons through an expensive private school. They hate what she does, but she says she likes it and would do it for free if she could. She first came to her town when Romanian pimps drove her off her old patch; she arrived on a bicycle (if I understand correctly), and it is, in fact, the bicycle that sparked the interest of the interviewer. To keep fit, the prostitute bicycles everywhere and brags that she looks 35. 

These stories were cheerful compared to one I read when we first arrived, which was about the funeral of an 11 year old who threw himself out a high window in Naples and died. Police think people online encouraged him to do it. His classmates were apparently saying that they wanted to do the same thing. How awful. 

But that is not  about Rome. As I am indoors working most of the time, the sounds of Rome are mostly distant (and not so distant) cars and vans, beeps, and occasional shouts. I would really love to sit somewhere for a long time and eavesdrop discreetly on Roman conversations. Today my spoken interactions have been with the lovely, kindly ladies in the pastry shop and the elevator repairman, who asked if I wanted to go up, and I said "Salgo a piedi." 

I gave myself an inner gold star for remember the first person singular of salire, to go up, to climb, has a G in it. 

What I would really love to do is sign myself up for intensive Italian classes, for I have not lost the habit of believing in classes, but I am not on holiday so I encouraged B.A. to do it instead. My theory is that if B.A. can learn Italian (and he is much better at replicating accents than I am), I can improve by speaking to B.A. in Italian as much as possible. It's not the vocabulary--I know the vocabulary--it's that I lose my nerve. 

A Sort of Rome Schedule

7:30 AM:  Wake up and see that I am too late for the morning TLM.

7:50 AM:  Make coffee in French press brought from home because I prefer London coffee to Italian.

8:00 AM:  Read Italian or study Italian vocabulary.

9:00 AM: Go for walk in beautiful Rome. 

10:00 AM: Start work. 

2:00 PM: Eat lunch. Go for another walk in beautiful Rome.

3:00 PM: Back to work.

6:00 PM: Go to Mass. 

7:00ish PM: Think about going for walk but go home to write some more.

8:00ish PM: Eat dinner.

9:00ish PM: Go for third walk in beautiful Rome. It might or might not involve gelato. 

10:00 PM: Completely exhausted and do not know why,

10:30 PM: Go to bed. 

I have a very clear memory of myself in 1998 thinking that the best thing ever would be to be a writer in Rome. Well, this month I am a writer in Rome, and I don't think I considered how much writing writing can involve. Still, the walks are lovely, and this morning's was highly amusing as a truck driver, perhaps mistaking my braids as evidence of youth, tried to convince me to remove my face mask.  

Joy of Childhood Things

We are home from Cambridge, having had a splendid time. 

On Sunday B.A. and I went to the TLM at Blackfriars, walked down as far as St Mary and the English Martyrs, and then met our Cambridge Uni pal for a Sunday roast at the Architect. After that we ambled down to the river,  agreed to take a river tour and were punted down and up the river by a genial guide with a good line of patter for 45 minutes.  

We saw many beautiful buildings and bridges and heard a number of interesting stories, some of which might even be true. 

Then we all took a long walk towards the railway station and, after some delay and looking at maps, found the place where my parents, my brother Nulli and I all lived when I was 3 and 4. To my delight, the woods looked the same, although the field (now screened with hedges) seemed a lot smaller. The raised "duckpond" has been drained, which is sad, but at least it is still there. The next time I visit, I will remember to crouch down and to look at everything from a four-year-old's point of view. 

Our house-complex (Grade II listed) was in a pretty neighbourhood, and B.A. and our friend enjoyed looking at the older houses as we made our way back to Hill Street. (I was on Cloud 9.) 

St. Mary's was open, so we all went in. I thought I recognised the pews, but I hadn't remembered how beautiful the church itself was. Naturally when I was four, my parents didn't think it was necessary to tell me of the lives and sufferings of St. Thomas More and Bishop St. John Fisher, depicted in stained glass. In some ways, St. Mary's is a monument to 19th century English Catholic triumphalism, but it has a Polish Mass on Sundays, which sweetens that. 

The challenge of the weekend was staying warm. Thanks to the Covid lockdown, our friend couldn't invite us into college rooms, and our AirBnB was tiny, so our days consisted of walking around between one reservation to the next. To kill time and rest our feet on the way to supper at the Mitre, we all ducked into one of the more Evangelical Anglican churches shortly after a service had ended. Rather soon we were approached by an Evangelical couple who welcomed us to Cambridge and asked who we were, etc. They asked my friend if she had come to Cambridge for a new job, and I was unpleasantly reminded of how, when I began a doctoral program, 15 years ago, people would assume I was too old to be a student.  

Life tip: when meeting someone older than you at a university or in a university town, never assume he or she is not a student just because they are over 30. It's intensely aggravating. Thank you. 

Eventually we were chased out of the church, which probably would not have happened pre-Covid, so no hard feelings, and we turned up early at the Mitre, which let us in. One or the other of us did all the frightening police-state routine with a smartphone. In short, if you want entry in a pub or restaurant in Cambridge (and presumably elsewhere in England), you must register yourself there with your smartphone. This, alarmingly, is called "Track and Trace." You are encouraged to order by smartphone, too, although at the Mitre we didn't. Instead we ordered pies and a trio of puddings from the waiter. The trio of puddings, which were classic British ones like bread pudding and jam sponge, were simply heavenly. 

Then it was only 8 PM or so, but we said good-bye as we were all terribly sleepy from a day out of doors and pub grub. 

On Monday, I studied Italian for 45 minutes and then wrote an article for work. B.A. brought me a pain au chocolat from the Castle St. Fitzbillies, which was very kind of him. Then, at lunchtime, I departed the AirBnB with my computer and the luggage, and met B.A. and our friend in the same Fitzbillies for a good-bye lunch. Then we all walked down to the railway station (which took exactly 32 minutes), and B.A. and I got on the 13:27 to London. We alighted at Hitchin, and took the 14:19 to Peterborough, whence we caught the train to Edinburgh. (The ladies' loo in Peterborough gave me a very bad impression of Peterborough.) 

During this complicated train journey, I managed to write another article, so I didn't feel guilty about travelling on a work day. The thing is, there was no return journey on Sunday. Meanwhile, my heart gave a bounce when I saw Berwick Law, for it meant we were back in lovely Scotland. 

My overall impressions are that Cambridge is a lovely town and students there are greatly to be envied. Covid has reduced much, but not all, foreign tourism, and most tourists are from other parts of Britain.  The "track and trace" system is shocking, annoying, and even frightening. If you or a companion does not have a mobile phone, you will not be permitted entry into pubs and some restaurants. 

The New Blogger is pretty terrible, so I have given up inserting photos and will just put them below.

Joy of a Sunbeam

We are in Cambridge which, as I expected, is a little cold and damp. When the sun came out, I felt a thrill of joy. B.A and I were with our friend, who is a student here, outside a cafe on the new (1989) Quayside by the river,  and a sunbeam lit up the wall of the Las Iguanas restaurant across from us. 

So that is my moment of joy for the day, standing out amongst the general contentment from eating brunch,  visiting a college, going to a super bookshop, wandering through the Fitzwilliam Museum, having tea and cake on the Quayside, and later having a splendiferous Indian super near Jesus Green.  

 

Carrots and Cats

Today I planted carrots, reasonably confident that the carrot fly season is over.  The broad bean season is over too, and I must say that there was no point letting them get big enough to shell. The actual broad beans turned out to be tiny whereas the young pods were quite delicious.

I had hopes of convincing Polish Pretend Son to build a walled garden, but after a day in the August heat, I realised that, as cold as it gets in winter, Poland has no need of walled gardens. It's cold and rainy Britain that needs the walled gardens. No wonder ours are famous--if only among ourselves.

One of the most cheerful sights in the Polish countryside was a brightly coloured village garden with lots of flowers and neat rows of vegetables. We didn't see any horses--just the two ponies outside the living country museum (one looking suspiciously like a Welsh Mountain Pony)--but we saw a few slim cats slinking around.  Naturally many of the village houses had dogs, and some even had signs warning "Bad dog." I don't think Scottish dog owners are so honest about their pets.

Naturally the dogs barked up a story as we walked by on our epic walk to Polish Pretend Daughter's rehearsal two villages over.

"Another burek (mutt)," Polish Pretend Son observed.

 There were also many chickens and ducks, but now I must eat supper.

Pierogi, Naturally

I can tell that I am on a diet because it is not Lent and yet here I am thinking about food. Reading cookbooks will surely follow. If Rose Petal Jam can ever be ordered for less than £20, I might finally buy it.

Polish food is quite delicious. Should anyone feel tired of life, let them start eating Polish food. It will perk them up right away. Polish customer service is, however, famously hit and miss. Benedict Ambrose and I have (or had) a favourite teashop in Kraków ruled by pair of rude and cranky old ladies. This year they outdid themselves in rudeness by locking up the shop and going away for months without mentioning this on their website.

Service at the country hotel was quite nice, though, and naturally the first thing we ate when we got there was pierogi with confit of duck. Yum, yum, yum.  Well, for me that was the second thing. The first thing was chłodnik, a cold beetroot soup of incomparable tastiness.

Another evening I chowed down on a kotlet schabowy, which you and I knew latterly as a pork schnitzel, with potatoes and fermented cabbage erroneously called sauerkraut. Germans have sauerkraut and the sauer comes from vinegar. Poles have kapusta and they salt it and put it in jars. I apologise to my ancestors, but kapusta is better.

There were some experimental foods, too. Polish Pretend Son ate fish burgers so often that I tried the fish burger. The fish was a New Zealand whiptail (aka hoki, aka Blue Grenadier), fried and scrumptious on top of veggies with sauce. There was also gazpacho, which I did not like as much as glorious chłodnik.

Back in the super-traditional realm, there was a black blood sausage so ontologically bloody I couldn't actually eat it. Benedict Ambrose could. This was at the big cookout in the field put aside for parties, and B.A. also ate a flat chop called karkówka because it comes from the pig's neck (kark). I stuck to kiełbasa and salad for the duration. Well, I did have a light and fluffy piece of sernik (cheesecake).

Breakfasts were intensely good because traditional Polish breakfasts consist of sliced meats, soft white cheese, yellow hard cheese, eggs, sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, sprouts, sliced bread, boiled wieners known as parówki and a host of other good things. There was also natural yogurt made in the hotel and homemade jam to go with it.

For our last meal we all went to a pizzeria and ate cheesy crispy pizzas which were incredibly inexpensive and also quite good. In Kraków B.A.  had had a pizza in an "Italian restaurant" and I had had a hamburger, which was alright, but really in Poland you should eat Polish food. We were driven to the "Italian restaurant" because it was so late,  B.A. drew the line at kabobs, and the window that used to sell placki (potato pancakes) was selling ice-cream instead.

Speaking of ice-cream, the hotel had lovely sundaes, but amusingly even more memorable were the chocolate-covered Magnum Almond Ice-cream bars B.A. and I found in the freezer of the village shop. It was like meeting friends from home unexpectedly. Meanwhile, it was boiling hot, so we got one each. Just as we began to eat them in the street, the heavens opened. We rushed to a nearby bus shelter and we watched the violent storm in safety while munching away.  It was marvellous.

Godfather and Great-Uncle E

Uncanny.

I am reading an interesting book called Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits says change comes not from stating your goals but by professing your identity. Every morning I am going to identify as a slim, healthy, even-tempered, pious, polyglot writer. We'll see how that works.  So far today I have studied Italian, studied Polish, exercised vigorously, and written two articles. Not bad.

But my theme today is language-learning, and the satisfaction that comes when you can understand things you didn't understand before and you can speak to people you couldn't speak to before. For example, while Benedict Ambrose and I were in Poland last week, I finally had a conversation with my Goddaughter's Godfather.

I should probably explain that the country hotel B.A. and I were staying in is very dear to the hearts of Polish Pretend Son and his extended family. PPS and Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law had their wedding reception there. Then their baby had her christening party there. As Benedict Ambrose and I ate our breakfast there last week, he remarked that it was full of happy memories.

One happy memory was meeting various friends and relations of PPS in the minute hotel restaurant before PPS headed the male ones away to his bachelor party. One of the relations was the future Godling's future Godpapa, and I don't think we exchanged any words other than Polish "Hi" and Polish "Nice to meet you." However, this was not surprising, for there was quite a crowd.

The crowd was smaller at Godling's christening, and being Godling's Godmama, I was thrown together quite a lot with her Godpapa, but we still didn't have much to say to each other. This was largely my fault, for uppermost on my mind was the Skład Apostolski and how I was going to repeat it at the speed of people who have all been saying it in Polish their whole lives. But that said, the Godfather is a man of few words, I was later informed.

Therefore, it was a communications revolution last Monday night when, after taking a break from a noisy outdoor barbecue featuring young people, I left B.A. snug in bed with his book and returned to our table. There I had an actual conversation with the newly appeared Godfather.

"By then it was very dark," I wrote in my trusty journal, "and there were amused screams and still loud music and quite a lot of merriment for the scant dozen or so young men and women."

They were mostly young women, all dancing around as far from our table as they could and yet still be near the food and drink. I sat down at the head of this table, and to my surprise the Godfather engaged me in a Polish conversation about B.A.'s and my day trip to Kraków. We discovered that we have an acquaintance in common there, and PPS laughed uproariously when I said "świat to mały" ("It's a small world"). Apparently this is the most Polish response to such a revelation.  I also learned what Godpapa does for a living and where he lives and where exactly he is on the PPS family tree.

PPS was slightly amazed by this conversation and put it down to Godpapa having got himself a fiancee and therefore a newfound ability to talk to women. However, I think it was because B.A. was absent, and I no longer had an excuse to speak English instead of Polish. Godpapa, like other laconic people forced to learn it as a foreign language, believes he speaks English poorly.

It was my third proper Polish conversation of the day. My first Polish conversation had been with PPS's Great-Uncle E that afternoon. B.A. and I had had a very hot and sweaty noon hour walk around a harvested wheat field. We were heading back into the hotel for money and masks, so that we could go to the village shop, when B.A. was hailed by Great-Uncle E. Great-Uncle E, who is over 80, I believe, was sitting at one of the tables between the mansion and the palace gardens. He was clearly laying in wait for people to talk to, and he recognised B.A.

"Dzień dobry! Dzień dobry!" shouted B.A. while frantically waving me over, and I had a short and friendly chat with Great-Uncle E before I decisively ended it so we could get our things and sneak off to the shop.

But my second Polish conversation was also with Great-Uncle E because I could see the poor man still sitting at that table from our hotel room when we got back. My conscience besmote me, and after an hour of reading or so, I got up and went out to talk to Great-Uncle E again.

It was marvellous. Great-Uncle E has only a limited number of topics, and not only did I have a preview of some of them in our first conversation, I had had another preview of them after breakfast back in March. This means that I understood them beautifully the third time.

Another great thing about Great-Uncle E is that he just likes chatting and is therefore perfectly happy answering my questions and doesn't mind getting only "Acha!" and "Rozumiem" ("I understand") in response. Thus, I learned exactly where Great-Uncle E is on the family tree and also how many children and grandchildren he has and which one has a job in America. I also established that PPS's cousin-the-priest is Great-Uncle E's son, so that was exciting. And eventually the priest-son drove up in a car and took Great-Uncle E away.

"Well done!" shouted Benedict Ambrose, leaning out the window.

The trick, really, is to study Polish almost every day for years and years and then relax when actually called upon to speak the language. Relaxing is hard.

This morning I played the former Father Jacek Międlar's fiery "Narodowa duma" speech while I was on my exercise bike in the kitchen and was delighted when, as expected, cries of "Narodowa duma" came seeping in from the sitting-room. I was also delighted that I understood the speech so much better than I did when I heard it the first 20 times, five years ago. Like Great-Uncle E, Międlar's range of topics, though decidedly different, was narrow.

Eating in Berlin

More Monday news

I am pleased to report that Benedict Ambrose has had a bratwurst mit pommes und sauerkraut although he left most of his sauerkraut on the plate because--sauer.

Meanwhile I am toying with founding a small scholarship for deserving Edinburgh Uni Classics students to go to Berlin for three days to tour the Museum Insel in Berlin because, like money and travel, it is wasted on the old. B.A. and I queued up for 45 minutes outside the Pergamon before we were allowed indoors where, while waiting in another queue, we realised we were too hungry and tired to see the Gates of Miletus, etc., etc., and went to the cafe in the Zeughaus (German History Museum) instead.

I had a "Veggie Bowl" so as to have room for a big supper, but then we came back to the beautiful flat in Tempelhof where I ate a bowl and a half of Erdnuss flips. It's so sad that of all the things that have stuck with me for the 13 years since my summer in Frankfurt, it's my fondness for cheezies made not with cheese but with peanut-butter. Yes.

What else? We began the day with Milchkaffee and pastries (a croissant for me, some apple pastry for B.A.) at a local bakery and openly read our tour guides. Then we went to the U-Bahn and bought 2 7-day-tickets at 30€ each, which is undoubtedly a good deal. Next we went to the Friedrichstrasse U-Bahn, supposedly to start our touring with Unter Den Linden, but really so B.A. could go pray at St. Hedwig's, which is right near where all the Jewish books got burnt by the university students from across Unter Den Linden.

St. Hedwig's was, however, closed for a new wreckovation, so we walked to the Brandenburg Gates, stopping on the way at the Hotel Adlon because I was freezing. We have friends who go every July and come back mahogany brown, so I am very disappointed--although not with the Adlon. I saw the bar where my character Catriona caroused with other journalists, so that was great, as was the hot chocolate with whipped cream.

I also liked the Russian Embassy, by the way. There were Russians outside trying to get in, which was moderately entertaining. Meanwhile the Russian Embassy looks fantastic compared to the British (which looks like a po-mo library), the French (which looks like a post office), and the American (which looks intensely dull).

We went through the Brandenburg Gate, thinking our Children of the 1980s thoughts, and then we went back through to former East Germany (we think) to find Museum Island.

There is a "Silent Room" right inside the Brandenburg Gate, which sounded interesting, and so we went in and found ourselves chatting with a doorkeeper, a German lady who loves Scotland and was mildly disappointed we weren't from Bridge of Allan. Then we found ourselves in the actual Silent Room, which is a chapel for all religions and none to sit in silence and pray for peace in the world. It has a lovely wall-hanging in wool.

Then we went to Museum Island, stopping in the Zeughaus, which was once the armoury, to look at its foyer and covered courtyard for free. After a great delay taken up in wandering about the renovation works, we found the queue for the Pergamon.

Meanwhile it was cold and occasionally it rained. I sneezed and B.A. sang to himself. After our late lunch, I thought about Polish words and how amused my tutor was when she discovered I thought "Niemiec" was Polish for "enemy" because it actually just means "German."  It took me a long time before I remembered it was "wróg", which I said aloud very suddenly as we waited for the bill.

It isn't Poland. It isn't Rome. However, it is itself and my brother and his family will be here in less than an hour.

We are in Berlin

Benedict Ambrose and I have managed to get from the airport to this leafy neighbourhood in south-west Berlin and, even more impressive, obtain the keys from the non-English-speaking neighbour of this apartment. Next time we're going to Spain, and B.A. is doing all the talking.

The apartment is, so far, the best part of Berlin. We watch travel videos about the city and marvel at the almost unrelieved ugliness. The "almost" are the stretches of green grass and the occasional building that was repaired or rebuilt after the Allies dropped bombs near or on it. That said, there is what promises to be a beautiful park right near us. 

Last night we also watched an eating video about the city and gleaned from the Turkish Berliner that the food of Berlin is Turkish, Vietnamese and Korean-Arab fusion. We had just demolished halal chicken and chips from a corner shop packed with Turkish-Germans, so we were inclined to believe the Turkish-Berliner youtube host, whose video was sponsored by the German government. 

I didn't completely believe him, however, as a large number of people on our plane-to-terminal shutter bus were speaking Polish, and so I suspect there must be a Polish-Turkish-Arab fusion pierogi joint somewhere. 

"Pork knuckle?" says B.A. wistfully. "Pork knuckle?" 

Anyway, the first thing we were warned by our youtube travel videos was that Berlin is short on things tourists think are "German", and for those one goes to Bavaria.  Berlin is, however, the techno capital of the world, and if I were 10 years younger,  I would be pondering how to convince B.A. to come with me for a 36 hour dance club binge. 

Meanwhile, the number one reason we are here is Nulli Secondus, Ma Belle Soeur, Peanut and Popcorn, which is to say, my older brother (of the two, I am the oldest of all) and his family. They have swapped their sprawling bungalow in the Quebec countryside with this lovely apartment deluxe in Tempelhof for two weeks, and I can't wait to see them. (They broke their journey in Paris, as they do.)

In the meantime, it is just possible that there are graduates of German pastry schools in the neighbourhood, so we will be going out shortly to find them and taste their wares alongside some Milchkaffee.  

More Cheerful about Chartres

A doctor has poked my tick bite and made a cheerful prognosis, so I will not worry for now and meanwhile just put her prescribed cream on my rashy ankles. This means I am mentally free to write my LSN article about the actual Chartres Pilgrimage, not about the tick.

However, I will leave some extra baggage here because one of the best things I did for myself three years ago was write a blogpost of advice for people going on future Chartres Pilgrimages.

My caveat is that les Etrangers (foreigners) are NOT supposed to bring personal tents anymore. There is simply not enough space in the foreigners' section for those who rebel against sleeping in the communal tents, packed like pickled onions. If you cannot steel yourself to sleeping 2 inches away from people you've just met (women with women, men with men), then the Chartres Pilgrimage is not currently for you. (Perhaps in future there will be more space in the communal tents.)

Three Years On: Additional Advice 

1. There are ticks. Bring and apply insect repellant as soon as you reach the first park on the outskirts of Paris. Pack a super-light groundsheet as well as your sit-upon and shake it before putting it back on your bag. Every night take 5 minutes before you go to sleep every night of the pilgrimage to examine your body thoroughly with a flashlight. Bring tweezers as well as antiseptic wipes.

2. You have no time in the morning for coffee, so prepare.  Happily, I knew this and so made instant coffee-laced breakfast bars on Friday morning. Yes, I planned to literally rub coffee into my gums. I ate these coffee bars during the beginning of each day's march (6 AM) and at about coffee time (4 PM). No caffeine withdrawal: it was awesome.

3. There is bottled water at every campsite. I mention this because on Saturday, I carried a litre of water all afternoon so I was assured of cooling my feet in the evening. This was stupid, but for some reason I could not let go of that heavy bottle. When you are walking 20+ miles, every ounce of weight drags you down. On Sunday I did not make this mistake.

4. You can buy collapsible washtubs. Because large suitcases are really horrible to drag through Paris, Chartres and the campsites, I took a backpack this time. My ordinary washtub didn't fit, so I found a collapsible one online. It is totally worth the money and any trouble.

5. Assume that anything that can leak will leak. When I arrived at my Paris hotel room shortly before 11 PM (flight delayed 1.5 hours, couchemar), I discovered that my little bottle of liquid soap had emptied over everything in my first aid kit bag. I also discovered that my talcum powder had similarly opened itself in the side pocket of my backpack. After rinsing and drying everything of soap (I didn't mind the talcum powder that leaked onto my tent bag), I took the two flat packets of liquid soap conveniently offered by the hotel. I used these to wash my feet on Saturday and Sunday. I dealt with the rest of me with biodegradable wipes from the privacy of my clandestine tent. (I didn't discover it was banned until Saturday.)  Therefore:

6. Save and bring 2 hotel liquid soap sachets for your collapsible washtub.

7. Really, really ponder if you should bring a computer. I meant to write about the Pilgrimage on Tuesday morning, which was overly optimistic. You will be too tired on Tuesday to use your brain for anything much. You get max 6 hours of sleep a night every night of the Pilgrimage, and even if you get 8 or 9 on Monday night, you still will not be fully functioning. Therefore, it is best not to bring the computer, and to inform your workplace that you will not be checking in until Wednesday.

(My computer, by the way, was kindly driven to Chartres by a very busy French official, whom I wasted a great deal of time trying to find in Chartres, and who finally left it at my hotel.)

8. Never assume anyone French, even a young person, speaks English. As a matter of fact, I did not do so badly with my French, even though really it is appalling for a Canadian and someone who has five family members who are completely fluent in la belle langue. Were I to go on the Chartres Pentecost Pilgrimage again (which is not certain, as there is the 'communal tents only' issue), I would not only start practising walking long distances sometime during Lent, I would start doing some French review.  

9. If you decide to go last minute to the Chartres Pilgrimage, you will suffer more than if you decide in advance. "Only Christians would deliberately make themselves suffer," I thought in a somewhat exasperated fashion. "This is not a yoga retreat." If you'd rather suffer less than more, you need to prepare well in advance: practice walking long distances well in advance so you do less damage to yourself. The Knights of Malta first aiders (bless them!) refuse to treat blisters because EVERYBODY gets blisters. Another problem with signing up at the last minute is that there might not be enough room for your foreign self in the communal tent assigned to your chapter. The president of the Pilgrimage said, I think on Sunday before Mass, that the Pilgrimage was more and more difficult to plan every year, in part because of the huge increase in foreign pilgrims. Your humble correspondent won smiles from other women in our Chapter when I gave up my space in the communal tent, erected my illegal 2-man shelter, and said, "Good news, girls, you're getting a tent mate who is a lot thinner than me!"

This was a beautifully elegant Australian who decided to come almost at the last minute and walked for two days in flat leather sandals, a straight knee-length skirt and a very French-looking scarf around her head. On the third day I noticed she had trainers (runners) instead, and no wonder. At any rate, I admired her ability to look so amazing for two days of the Chartres Pilgrimage and I was proud to give her my place in the communal tent. That said, on Sunday night there was no longer any room in the communal tent, and she had to go and sleep in one of the North American tents.

10. When your feet are wet, contemplate the feet of the others around you. My interior life was not fabulous for the first two days of the Pilgrimage, but I made a breakthrough on Whitmonday. Part of this was meditating on the feet of those around me. Because I thought about how wet and painful their feet were, my feet bore me more easily. Also pain, like hunger, comes in waves when you are on a forced march. You just walk through it.

11. Always carry dry socks in your day bag. Not doing so is quite the rookie error.

12. Do not put your cute Chartres dinner outfit in your computer bag, if you bring your computer and a French official drives it to Chartres for you. Because my computer bag and I were not reunited until after 11 PM,  I went to dinner in the black long-sleeved T-shirt I used as my inner pyjamas and my now very dirty Indestructible Blue Denim Maxi-skirt of Feminine Traddery. I wished very much that I had just squished it into my main backpack, which was driven to campsite to campsite and then to Chartres by truck and left in a specific place.

13. 60€-70€ is about right for carrying-around money. I brought 50€. I left a 10€ tip at each hotel (Paris and Chartres) and spent 30€ on Monday supper. However, I did need a little extra for Tuesday, and so had to walk a bit to find a bank machine. A simple breakfast at Le Serpente (coffee, juice, croissant, bread, butter, jam) costs 9 €.

14. Don't let your sunglasses fall out of your pocket and pile your baggage/sleep on top of them or they will break.

15. The Pilgrimage now provides hand sanitiser, but either make sure you use one that does not dry out your cuticles, or put balm on them at night. My fingers are still sore, alas, and it seemed like an age before I could get home to my friendly bathroom jar of coconut oil. 

16. If you have a clandestine tent, make sure you dry it ASAP, which might be overnight in your Chartres hotel room (if you remember), but will probably be the night of your return home.

Now to write my piece for LSN.

A Highland Walk

On Friday I wrote four articles and then ran around collecting items for a 2-day hike in the Highlands. My friend is going on the Chartres Pilgrimage, and I promised to help her train. Besides, there is nothing like spending the weekend in the countryside after a week at my desk.

The weather forecast in Braemar was for rain, though, and after getting my beloved 2-man tent out of the closet, I wondered how I was going to feel carrying it for 20 miles. Since my principal New Year's Resolution was "Our Health First", I left it behind and trusted to either 1. my friend bringing a tent or 2. a mutual decision not to camp in pouring rain but to return to my friend's house instead.

B.A., by the way, had already left for a retreat in Pluscarden Abbey.

Soon after I got on the train, I felt all stress and frustration slip away because trains are magic. I read an entertaining self-help book (Positively Primal) and crunched corn nuts all the way to Cupar, where my friend picked me up and took me to her farmhouse, where we had herbal tea before going to bed.

Then my phone buzzed and a text told me, in British, that a hospitalised friend wasn't going to recover and was going home to die. And then I discovered that although I could get texts in the countryside, I couldn't send them.

There passed a terrible hour in which I roamed the house trying to find a signal and then finally called both B.A. and my sick friend's spouse on the landline, leaving messages and waking poor B.A., who phoned the landline back. Then there was nothing to do but cry, pray the rosary, and try to get some sleep.

The next morning my healthy friend and I discussed whether or not we should give up the whole plan and go to Edinburgh or go on a day's walk, the camping plan now being abandoned because of the forecast. My sick friend's spouse called, and as a result of that conversation, my healthy friend and I determined we could, at least, go on a day's walk and then go to Edinburgh on Sunday morning.

And I was very glad we did go on our walk, for there are few places on earth (I gather after a childhood of reading National Geographic magazine) more beautiful yet still comfortable to walk in than the Scottish Highlands, and few better ways to unwind. The fresh damp air smells of pine trees, and the trails wind past low green mountains wreathed with mist. The nasty urban world of decadence and decay no longer exists; the only people around are also walkers or, astonishingly, doughty cyclists. The forecast had exaggerated the rain, too, so instead of the downpour we were expecting, we had dry periods, Scotch mist and mild drizzle. Even better, the biting midges had not yet arrived.

We walked for three hours and then sat down off the trail in a flat green place partly protected by trees to have tea and coffee. Two middle-aged Dutch hikers came along to ask us about a nearby both, and I invited them to have a cup of tea. So we all sat around and drank tea (or coffee), and my friend asked them about pilgrimages in the Netherland and eventually gave them Miraculous Medals as the younger one tried to remember the English for "spiritual but not religious."

The Dutch hikers were terribly moral about the environment, having come the the UK by ferry instead of plane. They always spend their entire two week annual holiday walking in the Highlands before going to Edinburgh to eat at delicious restaurants. While they were clearly not religious and probably ordinary contemporary PC Western Europeans, I could at least comfort myself that we probably seemed wonderfully exotic and had provided them not only with tea, biscuits and Miraculous Medals, but also an amusing anecdote. They had also broken bread with a real-life Scot (my friend) which, let me tell you, is not a daily matter for foreigners in Scotland.

We had an elderly black lab with us, too, who, although a bit arthritic, frisked about and brought us sticks he hoped we would throw. Although I imagine two women are safe enough walking in the Highlands, having a big dog made me feel even more confident, and if we had camped, I would have felt perfectly secure under his protection.

Anyway, it was marvellous. We prayed all fifteen decades of the rosary for my sick friend, the mysteries spaced out--Joyful and Sorrowful on our way through the hills and Glorious on the way back. My French Scout hat, which makes me painfully self-conscious in the city, kept off the rain beautifully and my old hiking boots, with new gel insoles from the Boots in Blairgowrie, were still up to the task. At one point on the way back we walked along the River Dee and admired a black sheep among the white on the other side, hills in the background, and I marvelled at the beauty of the scene. I sincerely wondered why I don't go walking in the Highlands more often.

The answer, of course, is that when the weather is really good and calls Scots out-of-doors, the midges are waiting to bite them. They start biting in early June and don't stop until the end of September, and really they are horrible. I prefer to cower in the south and walk in the Borders, where midges are few and far between.

Eventually, when we were very tired and sore, but not yet exhausted or blistered, we reached the car again. We did some preventative stretches and drove away in high good humour back to Braemar. There we went to the Flying Stag pub, which was packed, and after being refused by a regretful waitress, my friend charmed a waiter into finding us a table and keeping the kitchen open a little later.  To our delight we were seated in leather armchairs by a window and were soon tucking into fish-and-chips and a Highland-beef-with-marrow hamburger, which we washed down with a half-pint of IPA (my driving friend) and TWO half-pints of bitter (your correspondent) while the dog charmed the other patrons.

We had reached the Flying Stag before sunset, which in Braemar was about 9:30 PM, and thus it was still light when we ate, but it was dark when we got on the road. The highway south was rather exciting for, although there were few cars, there were many deer and rabbits scampering across it. But despite these alarms, I fell asleep after Coupar Angus and woke up only at the farm. It was midnight.

The next morning we walked through the countryside for another two hours, saying 15 more decades for my sick friend, and then we drove to Edinburgh for Mass. After communion I popped into the Church hall to turn off the lights and the hot water machine and affix a "No Tea Today" sign, as the only trained tea person around was me*. When Mass was over, my kind friend drove me to Waitrose where I bought roses for my sick friend and a moussaka for my friend's spouse, and then I took the bus and found my sick friend entertaining friends and, despite late-onset diabetes, eating sweets.

"At this point, you should do what you want," I said, meaning "eat what you want."

"Yes, that's what I think," said my sick friend.

*There is the most awful row if there is as much as a crumb left behind after the Trad Mass has its Cup of Tea of Peace, so I felt that this decision, though it would disappoint at least a dozen people, including cookie-loving children, was the right one.

Won't Be Home for Christmas but...

"Normally the patient sits in that seat," said the doctor, or words to that effect, to me.

Yes, Benedict Ambrose and I were back at the hospital. This time we were there to hear the results of his most recent scan, the one that followed six weeks of radiotherapy to stop the resurgent tumour which, to add insult to injury, had brought along two friends. 

Fortunately it was my "retreat day" from work, so I simply brought along Peter Kwasniewski's Tradition & Sanity with me to the waiting room. I was at Mass dark and early at 8 AM, and afterwards our priest loaned me Michael Davies' Liturgical Revolution Volume II, so B.A. read that. 

I always go the hospital with B.A. to hear medical pronouncements because too often he doesn't come home afterwards: it's back to the ward with him. The news is usually bad although, come to think of it, this is better than whichever doctor saying B.A. is fine when I know he is NOT fine.

When B.A.'s name was called, we gathered our coats and books and sped off to the consulting room, where I chose the seat closest to the oncologist's desk as it was pushed farther back. However, it turned out to be the wrong choice, and I had a sense that the doctor was faintly surprised that I was in the office at all, which shows that she does not appreciate the implications of the Catholic marriage bond--or she is unaware that B.A. spent months of his cancer adventure delirious, increasingly blind and unable to remember much or ask important questions.

The news was good. The "tumour buds", which had rapidly doubled in size after being detected, have stopped growing. This is a great mercy, for apparently the radiotherapy was so aggressive, the doctor would not have done it a second time.  One of the tumour buds looks like it is "necrotising," too--a word doctors use instead of dying. Die, tumour buds, die--but without taking my husband with you, thanks. 

We looked at the latest interesting high-tech x-rays of the inside of B.A.'s head, which are almost amusing because some show his tongue, teeth and jaw, too. B.A. says he doesn't identify with these images; they seem completely apart from him. On one x-ray/computer image was a dark horseshoe shape representing where the oncologists had radiated B.A.'s brain, as close to his brain stem as possible without actually touching it. 

B.A.'s tumours, by the way, are technically "benign" even though, left untreated, they would kill him. The problem is that they are basically on the worst, trickiest and most sensitive part of his brain. Normally this kind of brain tumour doesn't appear there. And normally this kind of brain tumour appears in five-year-olds. The probability of B.A. ever being in this situation was low, but here he is. 

Slightly off-setting this misfortune is the fact that his neurosurgeon is a paediatrics neurosurgeon and so was probably one of the few people in the world who could have done the operation he did without leaving B.A. badly damaged---although famously I think the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima had something to do with that, too. And although the subsequent radiotherapy robbed B.A. of the ability to hear music properly, that turned out to be only temporary. Thank God for that. 

After making an appointment for B.A. to come in for another scan in a few months, the doctor asked if we had any more questions. B.A. politely said "No," thus proving the importance of my being there. 

"Can he go to Canada in [four] weeks?" I asked. "For Christmas? It's an eight hour flight." 

Actually, it's more of a seven hour flight, but I was thinking of snowstorms and airplanes circling around Lester B. Pearson airport for ages, waiting for their turn to land.

The doctor looked perturbed.

"Have you booked your flights already?" she asked. 

"No," we said. "We were waiting until we spoke to you."

That had been a good thing to do. To make a long consultation short, she thought it a very bad idea for B.A. to be on a long flight although if we had insisted she would have given him some sort of steroid to help him through it.

"No, no, no," I said, thinking of a disastrous flight to Pisa last year, so we don't know what this steroid would do, or why exactly it is a bad idea for B.A. to fly---quite apart from the cost of medical insurance for a cancer patient travelling to Canada, which is apparently astronomical. 

Then B.A. remembered that we have already bought and paid for tickets to Poland in late January, but then the oncologist perked up and said that it was a good idea to start with a short flight.  Therefore, we are still going to Poland although I am a bit frightened about it. If anything like what happened after we flew to Pisa happens in Poland, we are taking the train to Berlin in July. And now the Berlin trip is now even more about seeing family than it was about museums. 

The oncologist advised us to go to the cancer patients' clubhouse for travelling insurance information for our European travels, so off we went to find it. We were met at the door by a kindly lady who showed us seats and offered tea and coffee and brought us cookies, a list of companies that insure cancer patients, and a schedule of cancer clubhouse activities. B.A. observed that it's my clubhouse, too, because I'm a Caregiver, to which I thought, "Dear God. I'm a Caregiver again." 

A Caregiver (or "Carer") is the United Kingdom expression for a person--sometimes paid by the state--who does most of the in-home caring for a sick or disabled person. I think the expression is meant to encompass the vast variety of people who may fill this role. As a concept, it has positive and negative implications. 

The positive aspect is that Caregivers are seen as a group of their own, and have their own clubs and advisers, who recognise how difficult being a Caregiver can be and that Caregivers need help and support. The negative aspect is that this reflects a breakdown in marriage and family. Once upon a time it was assumed that a wife took care of her sick husband, and vice versa, and parents took care of their disabled children, or children took care of their sick or disabled parents, and now it isn't. 

But the implications regarding Broken Britain aside, I am grateful for the identity label and the  resources available to Caregivers because, although obviously being the one with brain tumours is much worse, caring for a cancer patient can be frightfully annoying and difficult.  

The most annoying part is being treated by hospital staff as if you don't belong beside your sick person. Believe me, just offering the sick person's spouse/'partner'/Caregiver a glass of water is an unusual act of kindness. Possibly the nurses don't do it very often because they're embarrassed when the spouse/'partner'/Caregiver bursts into tears of gratitude. 

The most difficult parts are 1. second-guessing doctors and nurses--and I will never forget how starving  B.A. was fasted a day longer than necessary because a nurse made a mistake, and I thought she had made a mistake, but she didn't--and 2. not knowing what to do when something goes wrong. 

So although I am sad that we are not going to Canada for Christmas, I am glad that we are not going on a seven-hour flight. When we went to Italy in May 2017, we expected a relaxing holiday in which both of us would recover from the horrors of B.A.'s March diagnosis. The doctors had assured us that post-operative B.A. was fine. Fine to travel. Good to go. All was well. Nightmare over. Cheap flight to Pisa. Cheap train to Florence ... 

And then when B.A. got off the train, he fell and could not get up. Somehow I carried him and all our luggage to a seat, but after that, I did not know what to do or what was going on and, God love us, we both preferred to believe the doctors couldn't possibly have been wrong and he just had "low blood sugar". Neither of us knew, then, what delirium looked like. Hint: not just someone raving on their pillow about a lost love. Most of the time B.A. was delirious, he spoke with complete conviction in an ordinary tone of voice. He passed basic cognitive damage tests with flying colours. He wandered off to central Edinburgh because he fancied a doughnut.   

Well, anyway. No Toronto Christmas, but just remembering what happened in Florence (and then everything afterwards) has cheered me up a little. Better safe than that kind of sorry.

Update: I will say this again and again, but it is very shortsighted of the National Health Service not to recognise appropriately the role the sick person's primary caregiver plays in the healing of the patient. First of all, the caregiver has only ONE sick person in her care and so is an incredible resource. Second, the caregiver may be under so much stress, she is in danger of herself falling ill. If the caregiver falls ill, that can have a deleterious effect on the original patient. It will also add to the work of the NHS. Therefore, it is in everyone's interest to spend a half-minute a day acknowledging the primary caregiver, smiling at her or even offering her a glass of water.

Update 2: Given my readership, should acknowledge that our financial situation would be terrible if we were Americans or we lived in the United States without adequate health insurance. Speaking as a Canadian who lives in the UK and travels often to the Continent, I firmly believe in so-called "socialised medicine." There are a lot of things taxes shouldn't support, but cancer treatment is high on the list of things it should. 

The Berlin Project

My brother has invited Benedict Ambrose and me to stay with his family when they do a two-week house swap with a family in Berlin. There may also be a weekend across the border and south to Zakopane, to which I said, "Yes, please."

But as we will be spending most of the holiday in Berlin, I am going to brush up my German, which was never that advanced to begin with. I went to Germany in 2006 to learn enough German to read Karl Rahner's theology, but instead I took conversational German courses, watched a dozen 2006 World Cup games, partied with seminarians, and wrote down much descriptive detail that ended up in Ceremony of Innocence. The nun-professor who graded my subsequent Theological German exam back in Boston was underwhelmed. Also, women are no longer allowed to live in that seminary. Fact.

Anyway, I am now collecting useful German-learning websites like The German Project although first I will start with Pimsleur's German, as Pimsleur's Polish was so good.

Because I need both Polish and Italian for work, I am not going to spend too much time on German: just half an hour a day. Also I am not going to spend a penny on German lessons because I am already spending many pennies on Polish. Besides, one of my brothers and both my parents are German-speakers. To practise speaking, all I'll have to do is call up my parents on Skype.

Of course, I may never be in a situation in Berlin where I'll actually HAVE to speak German, for I imagine we'll all be in either museums or restaurants during our waking hours. (I will, however, have to go to  club one night for as a child I was possessed by a great desire to go to a punk rock club in Berlin, and this will be my first opportunity to do so. The closest I have come was a Goth bar in Frankfurt-am-Main; I went there with a Mexican classmate whose flat I awarded to my fictional Catriona, and it was an awesome adventure. On the other hand, I can imagine neither B.A. nor my brother nor my sister-in-law in any kind of nightclub in Berlin. Hmm....)

That said, it is polite to know at least a little of the language of any country one inflicts one's touristy self on, and it will be fun to speak to my parents and brother in German. My father is a keen advanced German learner and recommends "Rocket German", so I have signed up for the free sample lessons.

So far I have done Pimsleur Units 1-4, and I am curious to see how much I can learn after seven months of only half an hour of German study a day. That's almost 200 hours, about a third of the time (allegedly) one needs to become fluent. Hopefully that is enough to recall what I learned in 2006 ("Tor!!!"), plus "Six tickets to Kraków, bitte."

The Berlin Project Resources

1. All the Pimsleur.
2. Free online stuff.
3. Self-made cards for everything in my Berlitz German Phrase Book and Dictionary.
4.  "Teach Yourself German" kit from Edinburgh library system.
5. School of Mum & Dad

Update: Current tally of family languages: Anglo-Saxon; English; French; German; Italian; Latin (reading and/or Church); Classical Greek (reading); Japanese (beginner); Polish; Spanish; Romanian; Russian (basic 1960s). Both my parents, both my sisters and one of my brothers is much better at language-learning than I am although I am catching up.

Lake Awe and other sights

We are back from a weekend in the Highlands, grateful that there was no rain yesterday.  Three people in a tin-roofed shack for three rainy days would not have been much of a getaway.

We were my brother Quadrophonic (so-called because he is a fourth child), my husband Benedict Ambrose and myself. B.A. and I had reserved all train tickets and a minute bothy we found on the AirB&B website. The bothy (hut) is the village of Taynuilt, which actually has a village Catholic church and a weekly Sunday Mass. This is never a guarantee in Scotland, so B.A. and I were stoked.

On Friday morning, carrying backpacks of descending sizes (mine was biggest), we walked to our local railway station, changed trains at Edinburgh, got to Glasgow ten minutes late for the Oban train, and so went to one of the Starbuckses on Glasgow's Buchanan Street and then to M&S to get some sandwiches. We caught the next Oban train and alighted two hours or so later in Taynuilt.

Taynuilt has a village hall, a post office, a grocery story (open until 10 PM!), a butcher's shop, a hairdresser, a teashop that is closed until November 22, a primary school, a Church of Scotland church and cemetery, the preserved remains of an 18th century ironworks, and a Catholic Church. That's about it---besides Loch Etive and some amazing views of mist-wreathed orange-and-green hills.

Once we had some biscuits and coffee in our new-to-us two room bothy (no shower), we went for a walk towards the surprisingly pretty Catholic Church and were amazed to discover there would be All Souls Mass at 7 PM. One forgets that Catholicism hung on in the Highlands even after the Lowlands went thoroughly Calvinist. Naturally we turned up again at 7PM, doubling the congregation. The priest had a lovely Scottish voice and a solid grasp of the doctrine of Purgatory, upon which he preached.

After that there was nothing whatsoever to do in Taynuilt except buy groceries, eat supper (made by B.A. on the two-burner hotplate), drink wine, warm ourselves by the wood stove and read our books or the internet. (B.A., who brought his computer, is officially addicted to Twitter.) My book was A Long Way Down by Nick Hornsby. I found it amongst the bothy's collection of paperbacks.

On Saturday we awoke to rain. The orange and green hills were sodden and the sky was the colour of putty. I put on my wellies and went for a scenic walk before turning towards the village, where I bought eggs, pork sausages and eggs from the butcher shop. Then I continued to read Nick Hornsby until we set off in the drizzle to the train station. A perusal of a guide to local restaurants revealed that  there was nothing within walking distance. Thus we traversed 11 miles by train to Oban and ate in a highly overrated pub--thanks for nothing, Trip Advisor--before trudging through the tireless rain to Oban Cathedral. We had ten minutes of Oban Cathedral with the lights on, but then a sacristan or priest turned the lights off, so then we sat in the dark and gloomy Cathedral, feeling rather too full of overrated pub grub--thanks for nothing, Trip Advisor.

Alas, that was it for Oban. Had it been sunny, I am sure we would have seen and done a lot more, but as the shops on the high street looked suspiciously like the shops in other Scottish towns, and as it was pouring, and as our bellies were none so happy, we got right back on the next train to Glasgow, alighting (naturally) at Taynuilt.

We had another evening by the wood stove with books and Twitter, and having finished A Long Way Down, I started Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. We had markedly less to eat for supper.

On Sunday we awoke to sun, which was nice. We had bacon and eggs and crumpets for breakfast and got it together soon enough to walk around the remains of the ironworks (mostly stone sheds) until the church bell summoned us to Mass. There were 30 or so people at Mass, which was rather heartening, and everyone but us sang the post-V2 hymns with edifying joy and devotion. The priest gave another solid homily, I thought, although upon what I cannot remember.

Then we bought some more groceries--the grocer is most definitely one of the world's workers--and got on a Glasgow-bound train to Loch Awe, where we were going to spend 2 hours looking at an amusing church built in all mediaeval periods, from Saxon to High Gothic, by an aristocratic Edwardian enthusiast. We ended up staying by Loch Awe until the 8:45 PM train, so beautiful was the loch, and so charming its hotels. As soon as B.A. and Quadrophonic laid eyes, not on the Victorian hotel right on the loch, but the modern glass-fronted inn down the road, they decided we would stay for supper.

Our Loch Awe visit can be divided into various sections: walking to the amusing St. Conan's Kirk; viewing the amusing St. Conan's Kirk (which is really great fun, and which of us would not build his or her own faux-mediaeval church if he or she could?); walking along the road looking for an off-road path; walking along an off-road path admiring the stupendous view of Loch Awe and its sublime hills and its ruined castle; clambering adventurously down the hill into a boggy back garden in which we inadvertently left   boot holes; continuing down the road to the Victorian hotel for drinks by the fire; and then supper in the modern glass-fronted inn. The food was very good and kept us happy until 8:30 PM when we crossed the dark and empty road to await the Oban-bound train back to Taynuilt.

It was a splendid day. Needless to say, I enjoyed best sitting in a Victorian hotel  (spacious oak panelled lounge, high ceilings, thick wall-to-wall tartan carpet) near the roaring fire reading Scottish Field while drinking coffee (and later Drambuie) after our hours in the open air and the inglorious squelch near the end. Benedict Ambrose and I were both in tweeds, so we matched the decor.

This morning we got up reluctantly between 7:40 (me, to make coffee) and 8 AM to pack, tidy up and catch the 9:20 AM train to Glasgow. We were home at about 2 PM, so the journey was shorter than the family trip from Montreal to Toronto, and less onerous, too, as it was enlivened by changes of train. Also, the view out the windows from Montreal to Toronto are very dull, and the view from Taynuilt to Glasgow involves some of the most glorious mountainsides and lakes in Britain. Between Glasgow and Edinburgh there are also some very pretty stretches of green hills and white sheep lolling about, and my father once said it was the most beautiful airport commute (there being few direct flights from Toronto to Edinburgh) he had ever seen.