Another gorgeous day in Bavaria

Today we spent another day at the Kelheim Museum, Pete reviewing the pottery from the Late Iron Age (about 100 BC), and me looking at selected pottery sherds and trying to identify colors as best I could from a series of color cards (Munsell color). Although I have a pretty good eye for color, it's amazingly difficult to match colors on paper to color on pottery. It was really interesting - there were times when I could easily make the connection, and other times when there was just nothing EXACTLY right! But, I hope that what I could do was useful. The pottery is so interesting - and very beautiful in many ways. During this time there were no glazes, but some (very little) of it was "painted." I'm not sure what the "paint" was - it may have been a slip of another kind of clay or it might have been some kind of plant pigment made into a "paint." In addition to color from paint, there are also color changes from firing - firing at the time of manufacture, or possibly when the vessel was put into the fire later for cooking, or something. This is all MY conjecture - I haven't asked Peter, because I know he wouldn't want me to present something that is his professional view (like I can't post any pictures of the sherds with the color cards I used.....sorry....or any pictures of The Professor!!) Anyway, in addition to the color variations, the pot sherds have incised lines of various kinds - really quite delightful and charming.

So, anyway, we've been getting up about 6 in the morning, breakfasting about 6:45, and then about 7:45 driving off to Kelheim for our day's "work." Mostly, I've been reading a novel on my Kindle (Sharon Penfield's "The Sunne in Splendor" - a terrific historical novel about the War of the Roses), then looking at pottery sherds and recording color variations, while Peter does whatever he does with the pottery. Haven't a CLUE what that is!!! About noon we break for lunch, walk over to a little bakery and get buns and salad to eat (at stand-up tables, which I'm sure Nat and Kitty will remember from their visits to Germany), go for a walk for about half and hour (Nick and Chris will recall this), then get coffee (for P) and tea (for me), and go back to the museum office for a few more hours of "work." Then, about 3:30 or so, we break for the day, straighten up our work area, and drive back to Regenburg (where we are now), and Peter takes a nap while I write this blog. Now we are going to go out and get some dinner. Like Nat's grandparents, we buy our beer and wine in the grocery store, and don't buy it at the restaurant, so we actually don't have very big dinner bills.

The Befreiungshalle seen from the excavation site

Kelheim today 2

The 2 previous pictures are of the site of the 1987-1994 excavations, and the hillside overlooking the excavation. One of the 2 little peaked houses in the midst of the many larger dwellings is the little cottage that Pete, Chris, Nick and I lived the first year of the excavation. That was the year that Nat and Lev lived with the team in the "Turkenheim" down near the Hochst chemical plant. Now the Hochst is Kelheim Fibres, and the Turkenheim has disappeared! It's very nostalgic being back here in Kelheim - I was remembering how Nat's friend (was it Howard?) stayed at the nearby Gasthaus, but everyone thought he snuck back and stayed at the Turkenheim (I'm wondering why ANYONE would think that given the abysmal conditions there); I washed our clothes by hand in a bucket up at the little house, and got blisters on my knuckles trying to scrub the loess out of blue jeans. How Nick's ended up standing up stiffly in the back of the van because they had got so muddy and been left there with the finds! Also, that was the year that the little "siebenschlafer" got into our bathroom, and we had no clue what that little mouse with the huge ears was! We stuffed towels along the door to Nick and Chris's bedroom, and left the house door open opposite the bathroom. Thank goodness, the little creature must have scurried out before dawn, because he was gone when we got up in the morning.

Kelheim today

Nearly 15 years!

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly 15 years since my last visit to Germany, and that it was nearly 22 years ago that we first came to Kelheim! The summer of 1987 was the first excavation here, the year we returned to Germany after Chris was so sick in 1983, and the year that Nat and Lev joined the excavation team as part of their highschool graduation adventure! And, back in 1995 was the year we spent most of the summer in Europe, when Chris was almost 15, Nick was 12, and the first year we went to Finland.

On this visit I find it curious that I feel so comfortable being here. Landing Munich yesterday was actually like coming home. Even the drive up here to Regensburg from Munich on the Autobahn was pleasant, despite the snow.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Snow on the fields near Munich, as seen from the Autobahn.

Saturday morning, January 9, 2010

Me by the Thames across the street from the Tate Britain. Cold and windy weather.

Church of St. Martin in the Fields

This is me in Trafalger Square, the building behind me is the beautiful church St. Martin's in the Fields, where wonderful concerts are held. Sorry about the horizontal format, I forgot to change it before uploading! I had hoped to go to a concert there tonight (Friday), but it looks like that's not going to happen. Once again, it's been a long day of walking and standing on marble floors.

We began our day at the British Museum, which is just around the corner from our hotel. Peter's colleague J.D. Hill had given us tickets for the current special exhibit at the BM - Moctezuma - Aztec Ruler. So, right after finishing breakfast we hopped over, getting to the exhibit just as it opened. Once again, this was a bittersweet exhibit, as it showed some amazing objects in the context of a tragic conquest of a highly developed society, that was deemed 'primitive' by the conquerors - in this case the Spanish under Cortes. This exhibit certainly didn't portray the Aztec (properly known as the Mexica) as peace-loving, gentle people, but in the context of their society the bloodly human sacrifices to which they were prone, were understandable. In some ways the saddest thing was the fact that a big part of the Spanish success was that they introduced diseases (particularly influenza and smallpox) against which the Mexica had no defense. Some of the artifacts were totally amazing - especially the masks made primarily of turquoise, with shells, silver, and various kinds of stones for accents. And, to think that this was a society that had no metal tools for working the turquoise, which is fairly hard.

The oddest thing, however, was that the exhibit was in an enclosed space, and the light was fairly dim. I began to feel more and more sleepy, and eventually was obliged to sit down on a wooden bench and close my eyes for a time. Even then, when I stood up, I felt odd and lightheaded - one of the annoying results of jet lag when you have gotten up and going at almost the exact time your body thinks it's time to fall into the deepest sleep of the night!! We walked the 2.5 blocks back to our hotel and I lay down and promptly feel into a deep sleep. When Peter woke me up 40 minutes later, asking if I wanted to go meet J.D. for lunch, my strongest desire was to say no and to go back to sleep. But, I am very fond of J.D., and as he is very, very, very busy putting together an amazing BBC radio program about objects in the BM, I knew this was the only chance I would have to see him on this trip, so I dragged myself out of bed, and back to the museum we went.

Joan at the Victoria and Albert

We left the V&A after having lunch, and headed back across the City to the National Gallery. We took a bus again this time, as it was still cold and icy, and my dogs were beginning to whine and complain. We saw a fabulous exhibit at the NG - The Sacred Made Real - which was based on the idea that sacred sculpture in 17th century Spain had a major influence on the paintings of the time. There were some amazing works in the collection - many, many paintings by Velaszuez and Zurbaran that I had never seen, even in reproduction, and life-sized sculptures of similar topics, sculpted by artists whose names are definitely not household words (so I won't tell you what they are). A very interesting point to me was the fact that the sculptors were not allowed, by law, to paint their sculptures, they had to turn them over to painters to do. The painters themselves, including Velasquez and Zurbaran, apparently were influenced in creating their paintings by the experience of working on the sculptures. It was a pretty amazing show - very surprising to me, as even having studied art of the period and place, I was quite unfamiliar with the religious sculpture. There is so much to see in the National Gallery, but we were a bit tired, and Peter still had one exhibit to see for his work, so we decided to go back to the hotel, and take a little rest before going on.

On our way back we walked along Bloomsbury Square, which is just at the end of our little street, and I was amazed that the sidewalks were totally covered in ice. It was so odd - in some areas there would be lots of ice, in other areas the sidewalks would be clear, and in other areas it seemed like the homeowners or business proprietors had thrown just plain dirt out onto the sidewalk. It was hard walking, and not a lot of fun, because I had to watch the sidewalk most of the time and not enjoy the buildings, the passersby, or the shop windows, but just watch the sidewalks for ice!! And, continually swivel my neck at streetcorners to be sure I was looking in the correct direction for oncoming traffic. I do get used to the traffic patterns pretty quickly, probably from having lived in New Zealand, but the first day it was tiring!

London Deep Freeze

For those of you who have visited London, this photo of a street running by Trafalger Square will probably look very odd - there is very little traffic! Because of the storm, almost no one came into the city on Thursday (we heard on the news there was greater than 17% absentee-ism in London). Thursday morning we set out by foot to walk to Piccadilly, where we caught a bus to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Usually Peter would make this 50 minute walk by foot, but, since the sidewalks were rather ice-covered, due to the winter storm that hit on Wednesday, and, probably because he knew that walking with me would take at lease another half hour to 45 minutes, he decided we should take a big red bus. What was surprising to us was the paucity of traffic in the inner city. Well, we shouldn't have been surprised, because the news media have been going quite gaga about the storm, the airport closings, the trains not running, the roads completely messed up. Of course, England doesn't usually get much snow, so it's rather like Washington, D.C. and other southern places in the US - they just don't have the equipment to deal with this kind of weather. The young man at the desk in our hotel was quite surprised at the weather, and the temperatures, we described for Minnesota. But, as I told him, we have tons of rock salt, sand, and many, many snow plows - and, even so, from what I've read online about the current weather in Minnesota, there have still been a lot of problems. Here and in Germany (where we're going on Sunday), the main problem we've heard about seems to be a lack of grit! No, not the sisu type of grit, but the sand type of grit. I have no idea why there seem be shortages of this substance, but it is a major issue. I can tell you that several home owners have apparently decided to use kitty litter on the sidewalks in front of their homes, which makes a dreadfully slippery mess, and our hotel owner apparently used table salt to melt the ice on the tiles in front of our hotel. That wasn't exactly slippery, but it wasn't very effective, either!

Well, we did go to the V&A, which I'd never been to before. It was quite fun riding on the bus - though we decided not to ride upstairs, as the windows up there were totally fogged over. We saw a fascinating exhibit about India - before and after the British East India Company took over. The exhibit materials were wonderful and extremely varied - including a great paladin in which the Maharaji's women would have ridden, a thrown type object that was mounted on top of a full-size stylized replica of an elephant, in which the Maharaji himself would have ridden, amazing jeweled harnesses for horses and other animal members of the retinue. And, of course, there were maps an a detailed timeline. After spending a lot of time in this exhibit, I decided to take my coat, hat, and gloves to the coat room, as I was feeling way, way too hot!

Peter wanted to check out their newly reopened ceramics exhibit, but that turned out to be very disappointing. It was organized in a somewhat random fashion, and the labels were almost totally lacking. And, there was very little early pottery at all. However, I didn't mind, because my feet were tired from standing on marble floors, and I was hungry. So, we went to the museum cafeteria and had lunch!

London at last!

Departed MSP just about on-time and had a smooth and peaceful hop across the pond. The plane was just about totally full, but as we had the first seats in the ordinary class section, that didn't bother us much. Neither Pete nor I watched the movies, Pete fell asleep almost before we took off, woke up to drink a beer and eat his spicy asian vegetarian dinner, and then fell asleep again, not to wake up until we were nearly landing in Amsterdam. I had more trouble sleeping, I knitted a bit, ate my spicy asian vegetarian dinner (it was yummy, Chris, it included sag paneer, which I think you would have loved), read a book on my new Kindle, dozed, twitched, drank water, got up and went to the loo, read, dozed....

We flew over Greenland during the night, and it was clear, with a bright crescent moon, and I could see the moonshine glinting off the icefields, and every once in a while, a small group of city lights shining into the darkness. About 3 hours before we got to Amsterdam I watched an amazing sunrise over the European continent - the sky was cloudy by then, but the color that spread across the entire curve of the earth to the east of us was glorious - deep rosy red at the bottom, rosy orange in the middle, and brilliant yellow orange reaching into the inkblue sky. It was breathtaking.

We flew over the northern edge of Scotland and were surprised to see the fields and hills covered with snow. Surprised, even though we had read in the paper that it had been cold and snowy in northern England, Scotland, and Wales. There was even snow in Holland - as we descended into Schipol, we saw farm fields, houses, and trees that were covered in snow. No problem landing at Schipol, but leaving was something else.

We were supposed to have a bit more than 2 hour layover there, but because of a snowstorm in England our departure was delayed about 90 minutes. It wasn't exactly reassuring when the lead flight attendant said as we taxied out to take off, "...We hope to be landing at London's Heathrow Airport in about 45 minutes." I wasn't sure if she was saying we might have to turn around and return to Amsterdam, or what!! The flight was fine, but we descended forever - it's one of those supershort flights in which you just get up to cruising altitude and you start to descend again. And the descent was totally in clouds. I fell asleep at some point and nearly jumped out of my skin when we first touched down.

Our plane was met by a bunch of security guards, who checked our passports cursorily and let us get off the plane. I haven't any idea who they might have been looking for. We got our tickets for the Heathrow Express, but when we got to the corridor near the platform we joined a big group of people being held in the tunnel while they checked something on the train - that something included blowing the horn a couple of times!!

The train ride into London was uneventful - it was really interesting looking out into the heavily falling snow and the snow all over everything. Fortunately for Peter I was along, so we took a bus from Paddington Station to the British Museum. Our hotel is just a couple of blocks from the BM, and, boy were the sidewalks slippery! It was great to get here and be warmly greeted by Ryan, the new day manager with whom Peter had made our reservation. Nick, we're in the room that you and Dad shared on the side of the hotel away from the street - it has a double bed and a twin bed, and a HUGE mirror over the fireplace. It's very nice - not fancy, but clean and comfortable, and, for Peter it's really his little piece of home in London.

After freshening up a bit, we walked over to Wagamama's for supper and then to the Tesco's just past Covent Garden to buy some supplies (mainly a bottle of wine and some beer). Now we're back. I fixed Peter's computer so he can access the internet through the Thanet's WIFI connection, and now I'm going to wash and turn in.

No pictures yet. I'm annoyed that I didn't have my camera available to catch the sunrise or the snowy landing at Heathrow, but I'll get some good photos tomorrow!

The night before...

Tomorrow evening we take off for a few days in London, then hop over the channel to Munich and up to Regensburg.