triptoukandnorway-august-2007

Trip to UK and Norway-August-2007

DMR notes and thoughts along the way...

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

No trip to London would be complete without a stop at Harrods at Knightsbridge, if only to see what a trans-cultural experience that has become. It’s just a high end department store, but to say that is a bit like calling the pyramids just a pile of rocks. It’s a VERY high-end department store, with “food halls” that are legendary for opulence and cachet. The cheeses are extraordinary, the meat section is essentially carnivore porn, and the perfumerie goes on for what seems to be multiple city blocks. Each perfume maker has at least one person standing there (neatly dressed in either a white lab coat or black suit) to give a sample squirt as you pass. It’s really a Parthenon of hyperextravagance.

Harrods, Knightsbridge, London.

But amidst the expensive tschotschkes are women (primarily women) from the wealthiest 0.01% of the planet. Many Arabic-speaking women are dressed in floor length dark dresses with head coverings, often traveling in clutches of three or four. I’m not enough of an Arabic scholar to know where they’re all from, but it’s remarkable to see the way fashion peeks out from around the chador, the burqa, the abaya or niqāb. Technically, these are all ways of achieving hijab, the separation of female body from public view and a way to be modest in all senses. Nevertheless, fashion will out and the expression of self can’t be denied.

Eyeglasses, purses, perfume and bejeweled wrist cuffs are all expressive.. and a place to indicate your wealth and status.

What a fascinating place to see the richest of the rich and the ways they choose to spend their wealth.

When visiting Harrods be sure to not skip the over-the-top Egyptian escalator (with incredibly elaborate hieroglyphs and decoration up and down for 5 full floors), or the Dodi and Di memorial (talk about taking advantage of a tragedy!), or (the most interesting bit) the lower ground floor with its army of staff ready to help you finance your most extravagant purchase and circumvent the VAT tax you needn’t pay.

We only bought a few things—a particular kind of lotion, a Krispy Kreme donut for the kids (!) and a few of the very special La Duree macaroons. Each time you go to the cashier, they ask if you’d like to pay in pounds Sterling or US dollars! I’ve never seen this service before, anywhere. They clearly are set up for a special clientele.

Just for a complete contrast, we spent part of the day walking through Winchester Cathedral, that enormous pile of intricacy by Parliament. Although it’s busy because it’s such an icon, it’s still a majestic, soaring piece of religious space. Begun in 1079 with stone brought from the Isle of Wight, the cathedral is resonant with English history. Elizabeth I is buried here, as are Mary Queen of Scots and few hundred other movers and shakers, finally all together peacefully in death. Requiescat in pace.

On the other hand, the kids weren’t quite so taken with the 13^th century ceiling fanwork and the crypts or stained glass ten stories overhead.

I was here last many years ago for Ash Wednesday service when I walked past just moments before the service was to begin. I couldn’t help but attend as I saw that the service was to be sung to William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices, one of my very favorite pieces of music. Since I was one of the last people admitted to the very full sanctuary, I was shown to my seat by a warden… who put me into the choir! I didn’t have the music of course, but I was seated in one of the spare seats in the tenor section next to a young man who was in full regalia and did have the music.

Not only did I get into the choir (normally roped off), but I was in the center of the musical performance. That kind of chance just doesn’t come around everyday. So I figure my walk past the church was ordained. It’s enough to make you question your rational basis for a world view, which is why people believe, I suppose.

In any case, I now can’t be there without remembering that marvelous couple of hours.

But the kids weren’t there with me, so they didn’t think so much of it. Sigh.

Westminster Cathedral, London.

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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Since Chris is the same age as Ask (which is how our families met, after all—kids in the same classroom in Palo Alto), and Frigg is near Katie’s age, it was decided that it would be fun to let our kids attend one day of Norwegian school. Today’s the day.

I remember the first day of school when I was a kid as being a day of intense excitement. What would I do? How would the school year work out? It was now lying before me as a nine-month unwritten scroll of days, what would be written?

I can’t imagine what it must be like to have your first day be in Norway, with kids you don’t know in a language you can’t understand at all except as a stream of generally Scandinavian liquid sounds.

But they got up, had some breakfast and with only a little coaxing to wake up, headed out the door with lunch boxes (real metal boxes inside of their backpacks).

Katie was with Frigg in her second grade class. As luck would have it, their plan for the day was to have lunch in the park by the lake, Sognsvann. Yesterday we’d gotten a note from school asking the parents to please “send a vegetable for cutting up (something other than carrots, please) and 2 pieces of firewood.” They’re making what we would call “stone soup” (after the fairy tale of the same name), albeit they’re going to use a heavy iron skillet, just as we did on Saturday when we all trooped up to Lille Åklungen. It’s a wonderful idea—a social event for the kids to start off their school year, something that’s going to be much harder to do when the snow is deep.

I’m trying to imagine the Palo Alto school district having an equivalent event… and I could imagine it. But I can’t imagine them sending a note home asking for firewood!

Chris went to school with Ask, his first day of 5^th grade. They had recess, they had lunch. Chris actually raised his hand to answer a couple of questions in their English class (but was never called upon). But it meant he was participating, he was there and paying attention.

We picked up both kids around 1PM… that’s the end of the day for the second graders, but about an hour before the end of 5^th grade.

As we all walked back to the Sommervoll’s house we chatted a bit about the day… alas, we didn’t learn much more than I’ve related here. Kids…. School is sometimes part of their private life, even when you really want to know much more.

Walking to school in Oslo via pathways from home. Katie is last in line,

Chris is the tall one near the front.

The school is in a good place for the neighborhood. It’s close to the local college student housing (for a good supply for after-school part-time help), well-connected into the neighborhood by informal pathways, and much more open than equivalent schools in the US. That is, there’s no chain link fence around the perimeter, and as it’s in the pathway network, people are constantly walking through the middle of the school during the day. There aren’t any signs prohibiting non-school adults from just passing through. Several did during the time we were there. It’s not a walled city, but an integral part of the community. Is the US that worried about external visitors? Our schools typically have tall fences all around AND signage saying that visitors must register. I presume all this is to prevent kids from wandering off-campus during breaks and to prevent scoundrels from coming on campus to prey on the kids. But I wonder, how much of that is a response to a perception of danger, versus actual threat?

Architects often talk about the emotional impact of their buildings on inhabitants, and it would certainly seem that surrounding your campus with a high institutional fence would send a message both subliminal and overt to the students. When I try to imagine my kids school without the surrounding fence, with the schoolyard blending smoothly into the wide expanses of Mitchell Park, it feels much, much different.

But Norway really has a radically more social (and socialized) sense of community. Mothers are given 1 year maternity leave, federally mandated. Broadband connections have been pushed preferentially into rural areas before urban centers to try and stem the tide of countryside depopulation. (I wonder if that policy is working?)

And, it seems to me, the schoolyard is part of the community. Granted, this school is way out in the suburbs, neatly located in a kind of dell between housing and the college, so it has natural boundaries in a way that a Palo Alto school doesn’t. Still… I wonder.

The rest of the day was just traveling. Although I noticed once again that the Oslo airport seems… I don’t know… just more quiet and serene. (I said the same thing about the Helsinki airport when I visited there a couple of years ago.)

But this time I figured out why: better sound control. The airport doesn’t have CNN murmuring constantly about famine, wars, murder and pestilence in the background. There’s no Muzak. The acoustics are better. The net result is an important and striking difference—the airport experience is MUCH less stressful than an equivalent time in a US airport. Ahhh… back to the theme of architecture and its effects on people.

I wonder: Does information architecture have a similar kind of emotional drain (or restorative) effect on its inhabitants? Probably…

Fly to Stanstead, then take the express train to the underground. Take Underground to Kings Cross, walk around the corner to the hotel and voila, we’re here. (Although it was quite a travel experience: Oslo tram to city center; express train to Oslo airport; fly to Stanstead; express train to Underground; Underground to King’s Cross; walk remaining bit.)

BTW, this is our third Premier Travel Inn, and probably the nicest one yet. It’s a chain, but a very well done chain. From the quality of the painting on the wall to the friendly hosts, this is one chain worth keeping on your travel plans. It’s very reasonably priced, always near transportation hubs and just very, very high quality. (Plus, they’re almost everywhere in England, and expanding throughout the UK.)

I can't help but include this image of the kids having fyllda remmar (sp?) by the Oslo cathedral. It's just like licorice ropes, but comes in a variety of very colorful flavors. Our favorites? Sour rhubarb and sour blueberry.

Fyllda remmar (I think that's what it's called) at an open air market near the Oslo cathedral.

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Monday, August 20, 2007

Oslo is a statuary kind of town. As you walk through the city center, you can’t help but be struck by the number of bronze and granite statues everywhere. Much more than almost any American city I can think of, Oslo has invested in a huge amount of public statues.

By contrast, Palo Alto has also placed a large number of “public art pieces” on permanent display, but they’re all of a wild variety without any rhyme or reason other than some strange notion that this piece would fit into this particular spot.

I hadn’t thought about it before, but urban landscape design is almost an oxymoron—one rarely gets the chance to design the urban part of the landscape—it is what it is, buildings, shapes, spaces, warts, good choices and bad choices all. Somehow, remarkably, the placement of public bronzes throughout Oslo gives it all a kind of unified feel.

I enjoy downtown Oslo in any case. The central parkway with large trees, walkways and gardens always seems full of people. There are a few outdoor restaurants, there always seem to be political parties advocating (quietly) for their perspective, and a general sense of well-being. The Parliament building anchors one end of the parkway, the National Theatre is about 2/3rds of the way to the other end, the palace of the royal family. Unlike the British monarchy, the Norwegian royals all seem beloved by the people (even though one princess has apparently just started a school to teach people how to talk with angels…).

The Norwegian Folk Museum of Cultural History (Norsk Folkemuseum, Museumsveien 10, Bygdøy, N-0287 Oslo) http://www.norskfolke.museum.no/ is one of those remarkable institutions, the open air museum. I suspect they’re more popular in Europe than in America, but I could be wrong. (Think of Williamsburg, VA, Mystic Seaport, CN, Gensee Country Village, NY, or even Ardenwood Farms just over the bridge in Fremont, CA.)

The prototype seems to be Skansen, in Stockholm—a collection of historic buildings collected together into a roughly historically correct (albeit highly compressed) village or town setting. Usually they’re farmhouses, cow sheds, butcher shops, whatever time and history has made available.

I have to admit a certain bias about these open-air museums: I like them, even though they’re strange beasts.

The Norsk Folkemuseum was started in 1881 with the building collection of King Oscar II, which makes it the first open-air museum anywhere. This led to the development of Skansen ten years later when Artur Hazelius visited Oslo and liked what he saw.

But what I like about open-air museums is how much they reveal about earlier times and local culture. Of course, the Norwegian buildings are distinctively Norsk, a quality I’m not sure I could have recognized before. And, in retrospect, all the other open-air museums I’ve visited (especially when considered side-by-side) are equally revealing.

At the Folkemuseum, many of the buildings are dairy farm buildings, and many of those are “drying sheds”—a place where a barley or oats where spread out on a wooden floor while a fire on the level below kept the air dry and warm (and presumably pretty smoky as well). Of course, such drying of sprouted barley is a critical step in making beer (malted barley). And given how damp Norway is, a drying space is a requirement, not an option, if you’re going to keep your grain dry during the winter.

The kids were pretty good for the first hour or so, but then the attraction of seeing yet another 14^th century farmhouse began to wane. The regional differences between counties isn’t quite as important to them as to Norwegian schoolkids.

But still, the chance to see a stave church that was built ~1200 (with original staves and interior!) is a remarkable thing.

I note with some disappointment that they regularly hold 13^th century services in the stave church. Not, alas, while we are here. I assume they would have been in Latin, but that was also a time when graffiti was written in runes (such as the famous runic “Thor was here” written on the lintel of one stave church door), so everything might have been really, really different. I would have enjoyed being in such a service. Next time.

The stave church at Norwegian Folk Museum. It's originally from Gol and brought to the museum in 1989. Although 2/3rds of it is new, the centeral staves (giant wooden columns running from bottom to very top) and interior is all original. It dates from ca. 1200.

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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Although the weatherman said it would be sunny all day, Oslo provided an overcast, lightly showery day instead. This is the pattern in summer, I’m told. There are days of sunshine, but just about as many days of full-day gray. It felt a bit like Ireland, with a constant light rain that you can pretty much ignore (although things will start to mildew after a few days of this).

So we just paid the weather no mind and went about our business. The kids played card games in the morning, and I baked a blueberry pie with the gleanings from yesterday’s trip. Without a measuring cup (all baking here is done by weight, not by volume—but all my cooking instincts are in volume, not weights), I had to guess a bit. I slightly overdid it on the amount of flour in the pie filling, so the blueberries were a bit dry, but still very tasty. The crust wasn’t the best I’d ever made… but wild blueberry pie! Whee! And, I have to admit, it had been a while since I’d done any baking, so the simple act of sifting, rolling out, assembling and baking was very relaxing.

Åslaug then made waffles for lunch. And, this being Norway, filled the table with about 30 different kinds of things to put on the top—syrup, butter, jam, sugar… but also 5 kinds of sliced sausages, 6 different kinds of cheese, 3 different shrimp concoctions, sour cream and whatever else one might plausibly (or implausibly as well) have atop a waffle.

We drove over to the Ski Museum at Holemkollen, the site of the high jump for the Oslo winter Olympics of 1952. Surprisingly, the museum was really pretty interesting, if a little esoteric. But it was well-made, and delightfully Norwegian. There was a long history of the evolution of skiing, with skis from archaeological sites as far back as 700AD. There were an amazing number of old skis and amazing variety of solutions to the technical problems of skiing (such as how to bind your foot to the ski, how to get both grip and glide in the same ski, what kind of poles to use, etc.). The museum also has lots of Arctic exploration gear, featuring the tent, sleds and stuffed dog of Roald Amundsen, who beat Scott in the race to the South Pole.

Holmenkollen ski jump (with ski museum in the base)

Just as it’s marvelously high tech, it’s distinctively Norwegian. There’s a large section of the museum devoted to Olav V, the previous, clearly popular, populist and skiing-mad king. And much of the signage is done in a beautiful hand-drawn calligraphic italic, augmented with small, quiet flourishes. That kind of hand was popular once, but is relatively rare today.

The boys (plus dads) climbed the tower. I’m not sure how many floors it is, but my quads were pretty tired at the end (I’m guessing 14 or 15 floors). I haven’t done serious stairs in quite a while, so I was a bit surprised at what a good workout I got. I used to be able to run 14 flights of stairs without any problem. Thought I was in better shape than that. Hmm. Time to get back to running in the hills.

The view from the top is worth it. All of Oslo is arrayed before you; all the islands, fjords and peninsulas mistly heading off to sea, ridges and hills of forest surrounding the entire city.

Although it’s the capital of Norway and the country’s largest city, Oslo is around 800,000 people, which makes it about the same size as San Jose.

Unlike San Jose, it has a fairly sharp edge and doesn’t just spread into the hills all around (or if it does, I can’t see it).

I was surprised to learn that Norway has two official languages--Bokmål Norwegian, and Nynorsk Norwegian. Nynorsk is a bit of a manufactured language though, and only about 10% of everyone speaks it, so it’s a bit of a lost cause. Nynorsk was invented/created/defined in the late 1800s as a kind of expression of Norwegian romanticism and sense of self-identity. Oddly, standard modern Norwegian is called “Standard Eastern Norwegian,” which makes one wonder what happened to the “Western Norwegian” language.

(Wikipedia tells me that “In Southern and Western Norwegian more guttural realizations of the /r/-phoneme, known in Norwegian as skarring have become more commonplace in the last century. Depending on phonetic context voiceless ([χ]) or voiced uvular fricatives ([ʁ]) are used. The unvoiced stops are regularly aspirated.”)

Okay then!

Norway Population (2006 est.): 4,610,820 (growth rate: 0.4%);

birth rate: 11.5/1000;

infant mortality rate: 3.7/1000;

life expectancy: 79.5;

density per sq mi: 39;

literacy: 100%

For contrast, look at the US: Population (2006 est.): 300,000,000 (growth rate: 0.9% );

birth rate: 14.1/1000;

infant mortality rate: 6.4/1000;

life expectancy: 77.8;

density per sq mi: 79.6;

literacy: 97% (1979 est.)

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Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Sommervolls don’t just travel, they “travel heavy” as Dag Einar describes it. Truer words were never spoken. Technically, all we did today was to have a picnic up by one of the lakes in the forest about 2 miles north of their house (Lille Åklungen). But we brought along about 200 pounds (really!) of gear and food.

Dag pushed a canoe on rollers into which we loaded all the gear—2 axes, a broad saw, a windsurfer (with mast and sail), life jackets, towels, neoprene pads, tarps for cover in case of rain, fire starting kit, along with buckets and balls for the kids. In addition, Åslaug wheeled along a bike trailer full of food—all the lunch fixings for a stir fry for 4 adults, plus hamburgers, hot dogs (3 kinds), cookies, drinks, cups, plates, silverware, paper towels, towels and extra clothes.

But for all that effort, lunch was truly memorable. We camped (rather than merely “picnicked”) at a small promontory of rock going out into the lake. There was a steep dropoff at the rock so the kids could dive into the water. The canyon walls rose up steeply just 20 meters away, heavily covered in forest, so it all felt intimate and close and beautiful.

Dag dragged a couple of minor trees back to the camp, cutting the firewood we needed from forest itself. Obviously, not so many people do this as to require prohibition—there’s plenty of dead wood all over the place. The challenge was to find dry enough dead wood to burn. It really does rain here an awful lot.

We prepared lunch on a large circular metal flat griddle with legs. Although it weighed about 5 pounds, it neatly solved the cooking problem by giving us a stable, evenly heated cook surface. Not for backpacking, but a good solution when car camping (and cooking over wood without any kind of supplied grillwork).

Katie and Ask rafting on Lille Åklungen

Lunch was surprisingly good—just chicken, bacon, onions, broccoli, carrots, red peppers all stir-fried together—but it was really quite good. Not quite sure why, but it all worked. (I would have put in garlic and some kind of sauce, but that would have been gilding the lily.)

All five kids (Chris, Katie, Åvold, Ask & Frigg) are all hanging out together in one giant puppy-like pack. Surprisingly, the standard here is to give kids a lot more roaming-room in going places by themselves. At the risk of sounding nostalgic, they have the freedoms I remember as a kid growing up in the early ‘60s. While Dag and I were filling up the canoe, the kids all rode their bikes away ahead of us to get to the campsite and reserve it. They just went off, all six of them and hung out there for a couple of hours while the parents did preparation. Of course, Åvold has a cell phone, so it’s not quite the same as in the ‘60s, but I’m not sure I’d send kids to a park 2 miles away to be by themselves in Palo Alto home. (Still, here, it seems to be the way things work. I see lots of kids playing by themselves and having a good time in the neighborhood parks, sans parents.)

But when we caught up with the kids, they’d been having a great time. The girls had been picking blueberries in the clearing while the boys were running around playing a variation on tag, fort and soldiers.

I also spent a good hour or so picking blueberries while the kids were canoeing around. I was trying to get enough for a pie, but ended up with only around 4 cups. As Åslaug said, it seemed that all of Oslo had already been through there picking berries as well. But we’ll see… maybe it’ll be enough for a thin pie.

While picking blueberries, I noticed that ant hills in Norway are huge! They’re about 5 feet across and maybe 3 – 4 feet high..on average! They’re made primarily of pine needles, and constructed with entrance holes every few inches all over the surface. Ants follow major highways leading away from the hill. I’d heard about such large ant hills (and their technique of opening / closing holes to manage the hill’s internal temperature), but suddenly learning to see them was amazing. On the walk back out of the woods, we saw an ant hill about every 30 seconds. How had I managed to miss so many of them before?

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Friday, August 17, 2007

Our friends, the Sommervolls, live north of the Oslo city center, near the end of train line #3., the train to Sognsvann. That means they live near the edge of the woods, the green belt that defines the limits to growth for Oslo, and the beginning of the forest and lakes that extends way up north. The effect is that much of the city is very close to very large open space preserves.

In Oslo’s case, it’s the legacy of former large companies and families that kept large tracts of land for logging, but ended up being converted to a public space. We borrowed a pair of bicycles and headed up into the woods near the lake called Sognsvann. The trails are well-traveled—the main ones are smooth gravel roads nearly 9 feet wide—and wind between the lakes.

Amazingly, there are a fair number of people out walking, running, mountain biking… pushing baby carriages (all with robust wheels). As we rode along, we noticed after a while that the main trails have city lights strung along them. I wondered why, but then realized that these are also popular cross-country skiing routes in the winter.. when it gets dark early and light late. The lights make a lot of sense when you’re at 60 degrees north.

Many of the people running or riding past seem to be young, blonde and extraordinarily healthy. A pack of 4 mountain bikers flashes past us going uphill at a speed that was hard to believe. Once in a while runners go past with beautiful strides and style. (Only later did we realize that the Norwegian National Olympic training center is very nearby, and many of those athletes might well have come from the training center. We certainly saw some folks who looked like speed skaters…)

We stopped a couple of times to pick blueberries and raspberries. Here and there, large patches of very low blueberry bushes (~6” high) extended way into the woods. Intermixed with the blueberries we also saw lingonberries (red berries).

As usually happens when I visit a foreign land, it was an odd sensation for me to not recognize much of the plant life. At home, I automatically recognize about 90% of what’s growing. The thing that grabs my attention is when there’s something that does NOT fit into the landscape—say, myrtle growing on the ground in the depths of an open space preserve where you wouldn’t expect it. It doesn’t fit into the picture because I recognize everything else around it and know what goes with what. Myrtle in the woods at home is like a single blue flower in a field of all red—it really stands out.

Here, though, it’s the opposite: I recognize the occasional flower or tree when it’s familiar, and don’t know the great mass of everything else. I can spot blueberries because the leaves are familiar, but don’t recognize the beautiful blue, bell-shaped flowers growing on stalks; I know the Douglas fir, but not the other 80% of the trees. Here, I really do see the forest as a mass of undifferentiated trees. At home, I see the forest as patchworks of different kinds of trees—bay laurels and tan oaks, madrones and Douglas fir; redwoods and blue oaks….

Perhaps this is one of the more subtle reasons for traveling. It’s not just about learning another culture and seeing the great art, architecture and sights of another land, but by being immersed in another place, it throws your own landscape and culture into sharp contrast.

I now know that when I look at the forest at home, I see that arboreal landscape differently than I see this forest. When we were in Scotland, the people on the street looked different, then I realized that the ethnic diversity I’d come to expect just wasn’t there. On and on, being in another place makes one realize the expectations you live with day-to-day, but don’t recognize. Being here, you do see yourself differently. You begin to understand not just what you don’t know, but also what you do know.

Norway is incredibly proud of its heritage, and perhaps especially proud of its distinction from Sweden. Norwegian and Swedish history have always been woven together; Norway separated from Sweden only in 1905, before then, they were always just one country on the Swedish peninsula.

While I knew that, I hadn’t known how deeply the feelings ran. Dag Einar is always ribbing me about my Swedish ancestry, which is funny, not annoying. But then in today’s Dagbladet newspaper was a small article about Karl Rove, assistant to President Bush. It pointed out that Rove is proud of his Norwegian forbears, and suggested that this is the reason he didn’t get along well with Hans Blix, the Swedish UN inspector for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. That seems like overreaching for an explanation. Perhaps the real question is do people see that comment as satirical, or as a serious account of why the two men didn’t get along?

Homemade pizza by Aslaug tonight… really good. What did she do to make it so tasty? (Sliced ham and a few veggies…) What kind of tomato sauce?? (Answer: Ketchup!)

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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Discover that the exchange rate is around 6Nkr = $1USD. That’s not great, especially considering that everything is pretty expensive here. (It doesn’t help that the ATMs I’ve tried don’t take my card.)

We’re going to stay at the Sommervoll’s house, which will be a bit packed. Lynne and I are in Frigg’s room, while the kids all stay in the boy’s room. Katie gets the lower bunk while Frigg sleeps on the floor.

We fit in here on the margins. Lynne and I just about fill Frigg’s room—I’m sleeping on a mattress on the floor, Lynne gets Frigg’s somewhat small bed. I’m not bothering to unpack, but just leaving my suitcase on the first floor and living out of that. It’s tight, but it’ll work.

Even in the short time we’ve been here, it’s clear that Norway is much more ethnically diverse that Scotland. I’d be curious to find out the reasons why. I know Norway has been very accepting of Middle East / North African refugees, even though I’m sure this is a costly policy for them.

Dinner was a huge salmon and a half that was roasted in the oven with chopped onions, boiled potatoes (with a killer cream + butter sauce). Ice cream dessert.

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

After finally getting the kids up and out the door, we hiked up out of the Water of Leith vale and over to the bus stop on Craiglockhart Road. We wanted the number 4 bus to Haymarket Train Station. (One of the mysteries of Edinburgh is that they seem to have 3 or 4 different, competing bus services. We wanted the Lothian Line. Five other buses passed us, maybe equally good—but we didn’t have the right information to know!)

Haymarket is the smaller of the train stations in Edinburgh, on the northwest, and the obvious point of departure for points north (like Inverness) or west (like Glasgow). Most trains originate in Waverly (the big, main station), so it’s a bit like joining the party late, but the station is convenient and close by.

It’s a beautiful ride out to Stirling. The countryside is wide open, and today, the landforms are dappled with broken light and shade from the clouds passing overhead. It’s beautiful. We’re passing through a wide valley, with mountain ranges in the middle distance, dark and beautiful.

We pass through a lovely village—Linlithgow—that seems unchanged since it was built in Victorian (or earlier!) times. It immediately makes me think that it would be marvelous to do a long bike trip here, going from quaint village to quaint village. You’d really just need a great set of waterproof panniers and an ordnance map (with good advice about traffic conditions). Put that in the back of my mind.

We arrived in Stirling, one of the key strategic castle sites in all Scotland. From atop this extinct volcano (like Edinburgh!), one has a key command of the Ouse River valley.

Unfortunately, due to a missed turn on my part, our little party spent most of an hour wandering the footpaths of the Stirling suburbs (very nice, but not castle-like in the slightest). The kids were hungry and tired of walking, but we made it up to the castle… just in time to turn around and walk back to train station. Sigh.

At least we saw the view from the castle mount. We walked the ramparts. We saw heroic statues of Robert the Bruce and had a great view of the Wallace Monument across the valley.

Stirling Castle up close. We were there only for a moment...

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Monday, August 13, 2007

We took the bus into downtown, walking past Knobbyknowe (“noby-no”) Street, down Craiglockhart Street, (what wonderful names they have in Scotland!) through the occasional great sheet of rain followed just moments later by complete quietly serene air.

The center of Edinburgh is, as the NYTimes describes, a “heavily conflicted area” with tourist-shops-department-stores on one side of Prince’s Street, and a verdant, beautiful park on the other. It’s clearly the dead center of the city, and all the traffic, tourists, buses and trains all filter through there.

Hanging over it all is the dark and brooding monumental crag of the castle, with the Royal Mile hill trailing off eastward. That’s the epicenter (such as there is one) of the Fringe Festival. The Mile is full of street performers, some with talent, some without.

We explored the castle for some time, wandering through some very nice exhibits about the Scottish Royal Treasure (the sword and scepter of Scotland), but mostly enjoyed the spectacular views from the ramparts.

Of course, one of those great bursts of rain fell on us just as we were about to enter St. Margaret’s chapel (the oldest building still standing in Edinburgh—a small stone chapel about 10 feet by 20 feet). We ducked inside, followed closely by another 20 folks trying to stay a bit dry. Three minutes later, we all went back outside. Scottish sunshine at its best.

Lunch in the Redcoat Café overlooking the city. I mentioned to Austin that we were always taught that the Redcoat soldiers were the enemy and how odd was that? He replied that “this is Scotland.. the redcoats were the enemy here too..” I hadn’t thought of that. Of course, by the War of Independence, Scotland was united with England and half the army in America was Scottish (by conscription).

As we wandered a bit more down the way, we entered a “Edinburgh Castle as Prison” exhibit. I wasn’t expecting much, so I was surprised when the first exhibit was about American POWs kept in Edinburgh Castle jails! Even more surprising—they were from the American War of Independence (which, the exhibit kept telling us was in 1774-1776, a fact that doesn’t need telling in the US)!

The castle was great fun, especially if you’re ten, and never been in a castle before.

We walked a bit more, watching more buskers and jugglers. Past St Giles’ cathedral, past the Heart of Mid-Lothia, walking with the crowd, trying not to lose kids on the way.

Also stopped at one of the world’s most wonderful cheese shops. It’s beneath the Royal Mile, wedged into a narrow space in the wall of Haymarket. Only British cheeses, thank you, and mostly local. As you’d expect, they’re mostly amazingly good.. and tastes that you just can’t get from anywhere else.

We bought 1/3^rd pound of a local cheese, made by two brothers who name their cows after ex-girlfriends. This is the kind of detail you just can’t get with industrialized cheese. (And it was very, very good—like a creamy cheddar, if you can imagine that.)

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Sunday, August 12, 2007

Once again a late start at 11AM. The kids will come around to local time, although it might take another few days. Just about the time we’re ready to leave…

Clouds are in the sky, but the rain has washed the atmosphere to pure clarity, letting us see the entire sweep of the city and the Firth of Forth. It’s an odd skyline with Arthur’s Seat jutting up at the southern edge of the city, crags standing besides that, and odd, conical piles of rocks here and there on the horizon. For a city with so much sandstone and limestone, this is a peculiarly igneous landscape. Arthur’s Seat is a dark, old volcanic plug—the crags (or craigs in Scots) are old sills and lava flows. They’ve all been run over by glaciers, so they all have a distinctive “crag and tail” shape. (That is, with rocky cliffs and crests on the west side where the glacier hit, and a tail of detritus sloping off to the east.) That’s exactly the shape of the Edinburgh Castle Rock (castle on the high cliffs), with its tail of businesses on the Royal Mile tailing eastward, as though on a ramp leading up to the castle.

The crag-and-tail is nicely shown in this old print You can see the tailing ridge heading

eastward (to the right). It's much harder to see in current photos as the

buildings on the ridge obscure the view of the geology.

Lunch at a Japanese restaurant that happened to have opened for the first time an hour before we arrived. So we must have been the first group they ever served. A very pleasant place, Koi, would be judged good in Palo Alto, which makes it an extraordinary and incredibly exotic place in Edinburgh, where gastronomy runs much more conservatively.

We wandered the Meadows of Edinburgh on a perfect Scottish mid-summer’s afternoon. Light rain and heavy mist alternated with patches of sunshine and cool breezes. Chris ran around in his t-shirt, but no adult emits the amount of heat he does, so we all stayed with our light jackets.

We were there to watch the massed performances of the Fringe Festival artists. In truth, it’s a giant mélange (that’s a better word than chaotic) of performers trying to sell their shows.

The Fringe is, I realize now, just enormous! I tried looking through the catalog of events, but it just goes on and on. Several hundred, maybe close to a couple thousand shows (mostly small bands of performers, but each with a graphic and a tagline to pitch the show) compete for attention. As you’d expect, to break through the attentional clutter, they often resort to overtly sexy bits, even if not especially relevant to the performance. Bold graphics are everywhere… but when clustered together like this, it makes the whole a bit much, leaving me with the impression of a whirlwind of imagery, type and ideas. Examples: The Runaway Lovers, “cracking, slick, and sharply focused stuff” Binge Thinking, “Williams is a natural storyteller,” Stuoopud Fucken Animals: A Suffolk Western, “the wild east of England is unearthed when a dark family secret is shared…”

We wander from tent to tent, standing in the rain to watch a half-talented American (who stands way, way out of the crowd by his startling accent) do a practiced routine of not-so-great juggling. Still, it’s interesting to see how someone with so little talent can still hold a crowd of 300 people at attention with flowing patter and an occasional wisecrack. No long pauses, no sense of uncertainty about what he’s doing, a feeling that what he IS doing is exactly what you’re there to see…

His performance certainly makes me reflect on what it means to give an engaging talk. I could easily do any of the physical things he was doing—but I’m not sure I could easily do his smooth and engaging patter. It wasn’t so much clever as moving along from item-to-item inexorably. He should have had a better finish, but the kids loved it—and he must have made 100 pounds from that one 20 minute performance.

We played in the playground after the end of the performances. Kids swinging in the large basket-shaped swing, or flying back and forth on the zip-line for at least an hour. The mist came, the sun peeked out. We were surrounded by tall trees on one side and the open meadow with castle-topped crags on the other. It was a great Scottish summer’s day.

Dinner at Austin’s… Nothing special—just pizza from Tesco’s (the Whole Food / Costco equivalent) and a bottle of red wine. But we’re having a great time just sitting around having “tea” (as they call dinner). The conversation runs smoothly and happily, from watching polo in Perthshire (just north of Edinburg), to the way kids are these days (what’s an “emo”? for instance), and the special rigors of the scientific life, balancing reading and writing with family time. It feels for all the world as though Austin and Mary are part of our regular life, almost like visiting your brother’s house, where you’re very comfortable and all the kids play together well. Chris, Katie and Claire are thick as thieves, inventing games and secrets, having a rough-and-tumble kind of play up and down the stairwells of this old 19^th century millhouse.

Around 11PM we give up and go to bed. I read the next-to-last chapters of Harry Potter 6 (“The Half-Blood Prince”). Dumbledore dies. Kids fall asleep. It’s been a good day, despite Dumbledore.

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Saturday, August 11, 2007

I awoke early (7AM) and got up and out to take a walk around most of the York city walls. Unfortunately, they were closed, so I just walked the inner perimeter until I got to the York Minster, when I cut across town.

It was lovely in the cool, with early morning light slanting inside the walls. Little traffic, just me, the ancient city walls and a few pedestrians and bicyclists getting to their bakery jobs.

Walking down the narrow streets of York you could easily imagine that it was a couple hundred years ago—half-timbered buildings looming over higgley-piggley streets. A sense of stillness waiting for the beginning of the new day.

As I walked over the River Ouse, I stopped for a while to watch the swans glide past and watch the morning boatmen starting their day. Large trees line the parks alongside the river, giving lovely shade and a sense of calm.

It’s hard to reconcile the current York with the historical York, a battleground between the Royalists and the Parlimentarians, with sieges, battles and severed heads on staffs over the main gate into town.

8-22-07 7:04AM London, UK