Return to La Belle Epoque

By David Gourley

Over my dozen or so years of contributing to Visa I have written about a number of countries spanning all seven continents.  But I have yet to write about one of our favourite, and most visited countries, Italy.  It’s time to remedy this omission.

Our first proper holiday in Italy, as distinct from just passing through, was a quarter of a century ago (that sure makes me feel old).  We had a fortnight in a resort on Lake Como and fell in love with the area and its harmonious bringing together of natural and manmade beauty.  As a fellow traveller put it, the beauty “seeps into the soul”.  Since then we have had city breaks in Venice (twice), Florence and Rome, and longer stays on Lake Garda (taking in three visits to the Verona Opera) and in Tuscany.

Not so long ago we finally made it to the South, staying a week in the lovely town of Sorrento, in a hotel that gave us a room with fine views over the Bay of Naples.   Tours included the Amalfi Coast, Capri and Pompeii.  And also Naples.  This city doesn’t always get a good press and some in our party preferred to stay in Sorrento.  But what we saw of it, including the excellent Archaeological Museum, was fine.  At any rate we saw Naples and didn’t die. 

Our most recent stay, and the subject of this article, was in Stresa, on Lake Maggiore.  With Como and Garda, this is one of the trio of big lakes in Northern Italy and, as noted, we had stayed on the other two.  We had in fact done a day trip to Stresa, travelling down by rail from Interlaken in Switzerland, where we were staying.   Rather indignantly we had enquired, when purchasing our ticket, why we weren’t getting the half fare to which our Swiss Pass entitled us.  Because, said the young lady without missing a beat, Stresa is in Italy.  We had on the whole enjoyed good weather in Interlaken but today it was raining.  Having walked around Stresa in bright sunshine, we arrived back to find that it had been raining all day in Interlaken. 

The bad news was that our flight was with a ‘no-frills’ airline.  The good news was that it wasn’t Ryanair.  We landed at Malpensa Airport, a rather odd name since it translates as ‘bad thought’.  But at least Silvio Berlusconi, the egotistical former Prime Minister whose power base is nearby Milan, didn’t get round to renaming it after himself!  We stayed in one of the ‘grand’ hotels, right by the Lake, and enjoyed our after dinner strolls alongside it. 

Our week’s stay included several excursions.  On day one it was a fairly short trip: to two of the Borromean islands, which are the proverbial stone’s throw from Stresa.  The visitor to Stresa is likely to hear a fair bit about the aristocratic Borromeo family who have over the centuries been important in this area and are still going strong.  They give their name not just to the islands, of which there are four, three of which are open to the public, but to the bay on which Stresa is located.  On one of the islands, Isola Bella, they own a magnificent palace.  They also give their name to the grandest of the grand hotels, the Hotel Borromeo, which is a short distance from our own. 

Isola Bella

We first visited Isola Bella, which aptly translates as ‘beautiful island’ though ‘Bella’ is actually named from a lady called Isabella who married, no prizes for guessing, into the Borromeo family.  The Palace has many fine rooms and we were expertly taken round by a local guide with a great sense of humour.  He decided to get his Berlusconi joke in first: “this is the room where we hold our bunga bunga parties”.   At time of our visit the ‘technocrat’ Mario Monti was the Prime Minister and he was endeavouring to clear up the economic mess left by Berlusconi.  No headache as far as I’m concerned if  Berlusconi is prone to make a laughing stock of himself.  But I didn’t like the fact that there was a danger that his antics would make Italy itself a laughing stock.  The observer might be surprised that he nevertheless attempted to stage a comeback in the recent elections and that millions still voted for him.

The room was pointed out to us where the Stresa Conference had taken place in 1935.  This was a last throw of the dice to maintain harmony in Europe and followed on from the successful conference held a few years earlier in Locarno, which is also on Lake Maggiore.  The scene had very much changed for the worse.  Hitler had by now seized power and Germany was absent from the Conference.  Mussolini had not yet thrown in his lot with Hitler  and France was represented by Pierre Laval, seemingly a good democrat though he later headed the collaborationist Vichy regime and was executed after WW2. 

Adjoining the Palace, and also owned by the Borromeo family, are some fine multi-tiered gardens.  They had not long before been a bit battered, but not seriously damaged, by a hurricane.   At night the tiers are brightly lit, giving, when viewed from Stresa, an almost Las Vegasish appearance.  We then proceeded to Isola Pescatori (or Fisherman’s Island).  This is very picturesque but also tiny so there’s not a lot to do once one has wandered along the main street.  We indulged in a somewhat pricey lunch at the Verbano Hotel, restricting ourselves to just one course.  It was pleasant indeed to sit in idyllic surrounds, looking across to Isola Bella, enjoying exquisitely cooked lamb cutlets and a glass or two of vino rosso.

Next day we had  a boat trip up to the northern tip of Lake Maggiore, taking us to the city of Locarno and thus into Switzerland.  Most of the Lake is in Italy where it forms the boundary between the provinces of Piedmont and Lombardy; Stresa is on the western shore and thus in the former.  Yet it is much easier to get from there by public transport to Milan than to Turin,  the main cities in, respectively, Lombardy and Piedmont.

Italy has such a wealth of historic art and architecture that one is liable to forget that it is still a relatively new country, unified only in 1860, before which ‘Italy’ was just a geographic expression.  Much of Italy was part of, or otherwise associated with, the Habsburg Empire but Piedmont was a genuinely independent kingdom and, under its astute prime minister, Count Cavour, played the lead role in unifying Italy, rather as Prussia under Bismarck was around the same time doing in Germany.  To start with, Turin was the capital of the new country and what had been the royal family just of Piedmont was to rein over Italy until the monarchy was abolished after WW2. 

Our tour guide was an English lady who had lived in Stresa for twenty years.  She volunteered that, though it’s close to Switzerland, she never went there other than when leading a tour.  It was, she said, too expensive.  She also thought, correctly, that, on the whole,  the buildings on the Italian part of Lake Maggiore were beautiful whereas those on the Swiss were functional and box-like.  This was not the first time a guide on the Italian side of the border had spoken disparagingly of Switzerland.  The chap who had accompanied us on a day trip to Milan way back in 1988 had, as we approached Lake Como from the south and thus looked into Switzerland, told us, almost believably, that the Swiss want to charge the Italians for their view into their country!  And “they say it’s such a clean country  but that’s because they send all their rubbish down the rivers to us”. 

I hasten to add that Switzerland too is one of our favourite and most visited countries.   Indeed our daughter lived in Geneva for about eighteen months.  I would count that city, and also Zurich, as among the finest in the world.  But Locarno, it has to be said, is not a city of any great interest, despite its fine location.   Our return to Italy was via the scenic Centovalli (‘hundred valleys’) Railway.  This  terminates in Domodossola,  a town that gets a lot of visitors passing through, located as it is on the southern side of the Simplon Pass, though  it is not otherwise a place that one would go out of one’s way to see. 

We returned to Switzerland on day three, travelling this time by bus, a three hour drive over the Simplon Pass to Zermatt.  We were blessed with good weather throughout our stay so it was blue skies every day.  The party who had stayed the previous week had been a good deal less fortunate and rain and mist meant that they had seen scarcely anything on this trip, which affords fine scenery the whole way.  Truly frustrating.

We paused on the Swiss side of the Pass where some of us ascended the memorial to the WW2 Mountain Brigade.  Aspersions are sometimes cast on how neutral Switzerland really was in WW2.  I believe these to be unfair: it’s easy to sit in the comfort of one’s armchair and criticize a small country that found itself entirely surrounded by Axis powers.  The local Nazis always got derisory support and it provided a safe haven for Jews who managed to escape across the border.  I had not realized, until I went to a moving exhibition about Anne Frank, that, when it fled Nazi Germany, her family split and went in two directions, both equally safe at the time: west to Holland and South to Switzerland.  The Swiss branch of the family lived safely in Basle, just a mile or two from the German border, throughout WW2.  Apparently the Swiss plan, if ever the Nazis had invaded, was to have strategically withdrawn from the northern cities and then fought to the death in the Mountains.   Hitler must have decided that he would have been biting off more than he could have chewed and that conquering Switzerland was business that could be left until he’d won the War. 

Switzerland is a country that doesn’t much like joining things.  It has never joined NATO for example.  Nor is membership of the EU, let alone the Eurozone, likely to happen any time soon; indeed a proposal to join the European Economic Area, which links the EU to Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein, was defeated  in a referendum.   Switzerland even stayed outside the United Nations for many years, despite the fact that the Organization’s European HQ, formerly the HQ of the League of Nations, is located in Geneva.  When I visited it, guides had a trick question: name the three countries that don’t belong to the UN.  Few would have guessed that it was the very country that they were standing in (Vatican City was one of the others and I can’t remember the third).  But realism does kick in and Swiss shops and restaurants will accept the Euro, though change will be given in Swiss francs.

We by-passed Brig, an attractive town which I had previously visited.  A lot of  Italians commute over the border to work in Brig and its environs – there is a bus service to and from Domodossola.  They do rather well since they get paid at Swiss rates but benefit from Italian prices.  

We had been to Zermatt before, staying there with our daughter when she lived in Switzerland.  As it is traffic-free we had to get off at the previous station, Täsch, and complete our journey by train.  Being without cars does not mean that Zermatt is all that pedestrian friendly for there are plenty of small electric vehicles plying  their way around town.   Last time we had done a trip on the Gornergrat Railway which affords splendid views of the Matterhorn.   Such a trip could just about have been fitted in to our visit this time but we’d have had no time to look round the town.  We went instead for the alternative, and significantly less expensive, option of taking the Sunegga Funicular.  Nothing to see on the way up since it’s in a tunnel but at the top there was, on this clear day, a beautiful panorama that took in the Matterhorn.  There is a café which at first sight didn’t look promising but the pork schnitzel with chips turned out to be rather good.  All the more so as we ate al fresco looking at the Matterhorn. 

Back in the town we wandered though the historic area with its quaint wooden houses.  There is a statue here of a local mountaineer who continued to lead expeditions into his nineties.  Then we strolled along the handsome main street before starting our return journey to Stresa. 

The next day was free.  Our guide put forward various suggestions for spending it, one of these being a trip to Milan.   We had visited that city twice when staying on Lake Como, once as part of a tour and once under our own steam using boat, train and metro.  We did not feel in need of a third visit.  It is worth a visit, if only for the magnificent Duomo.  But in my view it lacks the charm that one associates with most Italian cities.  It almost feels unItalian, like a bit of northern Europe that somehow found itself south of the Alps.  It is a businesslike sort of place, Italy’s financial centre and renowned as a centre of the fashion industry, something in which I have about zero interest.

In any case we much preferred to spend a day enjoying Stresa and its beautiful surrounds.  We went up in a cable car which, higher up, turns into a chairlift.   On a clear day one can apparently see seven lakes but, though we continued to enjoy fine weather, there was a lot of haze meaning we could see only Lake Maggiore.  The location around the top of the chairlift looked a bit uncared for though there were all manner of walks which would doubtless have taken one into some beautiful areas.  We headed back to Stresa and a leisurely lunch. 

In the afternoon we took a boat across to the third, and largest, of the Borromean Islands that can be visited by the public, namely Isola Madre.  We rather miscalculated our timings for we thought that little time would be needed, since there is no settlement of any sort.  We got the last boat, only to find there are some magnificent gardens.  We had to hurry round them in the limited time before the last boat back to the mainland.  A good couple of hours or so would have been needed to do them justice.  There is also a small palace which we didn’t much take to.  The art exhibits that were scattered around rather jarred: pictures of such dismal sights as Chernobyl and the notorious slums that adjoined Hong Kong’s former international airport.  It was as if, in our Italian idyll, we had to be reminded that there is a big bad world out there. 

We had especially looked forward to the next day since we were returning, after all too long an interlude, to Lake Como.  We were driven to Como city and from there proceeded on a slow stopping boat to Bellagio.  Lake Como has the shape of an inverted ‘Y’ with Bellagio at the apex.  There was plenty of time in which to relax and enjoy the stunning scenery.   Lakes Maggiore and Como are not at all alike.  The scenery around the former might be said to be mellower and more tranquil whereas that around the latter is by comparison dramatic with much steeper sides.  One is hard put to say which is the more beautiful. 

One of our last stops was at Cadenabbia, directly across from Bellagio.  It was here that we’d stayed in 1988, lodged in a grand hotel where Queen Victoria had once stayed.  Sounds impressive but we had the feel that it had known better days (though it has apparently since had a massive refurb).  Dinner was included but portions were miserly.  So, there was nothing for it: no option but afterwards to walk the short distance to Giorgio’s and there enjoy ice cream of the type only the Italians know how to make.  Giorgio had an English wife, Marion.  She told us how English visitors might say to her, very slowly, “you – speak – very  – good – English”.  Bellagio is considered by some to be the most beautiful town in Italy.  Can’t offer an opinion myself since I haven’t been to every town in Italy.  But it could be true.  Alas, timings meant  we had to take the fast boat back to Como, so had less time in which to soak up the scenery. 

The trip on our last day was to what is billed as a hidden gem, Lake Orta.  It is, as the Guardian has put it, the Italian lake that tourists haven’t discovered.  It’s not far from Stresa so this was a shorter trip giving some free time back at our hotel.  The town of Omagna, at the northern end of the Lake, is industrial and cannot really be described as beautiful.  But the blurb was certainly not misleading.  Further down the small town of Orta San Giulio is beautiful and located in idyllic lakeside scenery.   It is traffic-free so we had to walk in from the coach park (arrangements are made though for those not mobile enough to do so). 

We enjoyed a good lunch in a restaurant overlooking the Lake.  The journalist and wine critic Simon Hoggart has observed that whereas in France, which boasts rather  more loudly about its national cuisine, one can often end up disappointed with a restaurant meal, in Italy one seldom does.  That has been our experience too in Italy.   If I had to single out one meal for mention it would be in Florence.  We had left things late for lunch as it was mid-afternoon and we kept going into places that had stopped serving it.  Then, a bit to the south of Ponte Vecchio,  in an unprepossessing small shopping precinct, we found a ‘Mama and Papa’ establishment.  Papa told us they had closed but Mama wasn’t having that.  The food was plain but exquisite, so much so that we went back there for dinner on our last evening.   There was a wonderful dish that simply comprised grilled vegetables: courgettes, aubergines, mushroom, peppers Then there was Florentine steak -  no sauce, just the right sort of olive oil - with the steak shown to one before cooking, in the customary manner.

On the way back from Lake Orta we paused at a huge statue of Carlo Borromeo, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan for twenty years in the late sixteenth century, who is honoured as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.  Unfortunately the huge ears had been added on as an afterthought and looked decidedly wrong.  One can ascend from inside but that would not have been a good idea since it is made of copper and the temperature was in the eighties. 

We had time on our final day for a last look round Stresa since we were not leaving for the airport until after lunch.  On our previous visit we had noticed, alongside the Lake, a memorial to the victims of 9/11.  Today was the eleventh anniversary and there was a short and moving ceremony of remembrance featuring local firefighters, in honour of their New York colleagues who had played such a vital role on that terrible day. 

We finished off with a stroll along the lake.  A last chance to enjoy the view from a town that is sometimes associated with La Belle Époque.  This term was originally applied just to France but later become associated with the era, around the turn of the last century, in Europe more generally.  This was a time when Europe was peaceful and growing more prosperous.   After all, most of the reigning families were somehow related to Queen Victoria so there couldn’t be a war, could there.  As we know all too well, the history of the first half of the twentieth century was to be tragically different. 

We had, the year before, become first time grandparents.  Twins Alexander and Phoebe were now a year old.  I reflected, as we enjoyed for the last time the wonderful scenery, that I’d been born a  couple of years after WW2 and that Europe (parts of former Yugoslavia excepted) had been at peace throughout that period.  Democracy had initially been confined to the western half of the continent but, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, had spread east.  Yet now democratic Europe was facing perhaps the greatest of its postwar challenges, with an economic crisis that had plunged many into joblessness, poverty and despair and which was stubbornly persisting.  As in thirties Germany, extremists can thrive in times of  economic hardship, exploiting grievances in the hope of seizing power.  In Greece right now an unashamedly neo-Nazi party was flexing its muscles.

I prayed that Europe would get through its crisis and that better times lay ahead.  And that, sometime in the 2070s, sixtysomethings Phoebe and Alexander would stroll alongside the Lake in Stresa and be able to reflect on a Europe that had been peaceful and democratic throughout their lifetime.  A belle époque that had endured for a century and a quarter, and would go on enduring. 

 First published in VISA 109-110 (June-August 2013)

Journey Through the Baltic States

By David Gourley

Cathy and I commenced serious travel in 1987.  The Cold War was by now drawing to a close but we didn’t know that then.  So I never dreamt that one day we’d be strolling back and forth through the Brandenburg Gate, where the Berlin Wall had once stood, or that we’d visit a Prague that was once more the capital of a free country - or that we’d visit the independent states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  Not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union we were in New York and visited the United Nations.  In the General Assembly Hall we observed the name plates for the three Baltic States.   In my travel diary I wrote “who would have thought? ......”

Tallinn

The three countries are often bracketed together.  They are after all smallish entities, located side by side along the eastern littoral of the Baltic Sea.  But it’s not just that: their histories over the last century have been very similar, and for all too much of that time tragic.

Formerly part of the Tsarist Empire, the Baltic States, along with Finland to the north, managed to break away after the Bolshevik Revolution.   Alas they were to find themselves sandwiched between two voracious neighbours who would not leave other countries alone: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.  Under the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the two dictators carved the region up between them, with the Soviet Union thus awarded the Baltic States and Finland as well as a slice of Poland.  The Finns gave Stalin a bloody nose but the Baltic States were invaded and incorporated into the Soviet Union.  But it was not long before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa and thus seized vast swathes of the Soviet Union, including the three Baltics.  The Soviets returned in 1944 – and stayed for the next 47 years.

Riina, our lovely Estonian guide who accompanied us on tour through the Baltics, told us that there was some superstition surrounding the period of 22 years, the duration of independence first time round.  This was 2011 and the countries had been independent for 20 years.  Now it is 2014 – phew!  At the time of our visit there was in fact no reason to think that the Russians posed any threat.  It is true that the Estonians blamed the Russians – without having any hard evidence – for the cyber-attack in 2007 that played havoc with the country’s IT (the country is sometimes known as e-Estonia as it has embraced IT so enthusiastically that it is in this respect one of the most advanced in the world).  But a land invasion was surely unthinkable. 

But now, with Russia having just helped itself to a chunk of Ukraine, the Baltics are feeling somewhat jittery.   A result of the Soviet occupation is that at time of independence, around 40% of the population of Estonia, and an even greater percentage in Latvia, were of Russian origin and, as in Ukraine,  Putin appears to see it as his mission to  “protect” Russian speaking people in former Soviet states. The Baltics have though joined both the EU and NATO, the latter founded on the principle of an attack on one member being an attack on all, so have their own powerful protectors.  Estonia, and more recently Latvia, have also joined the Eurozone; apparently Lithuania is thinking about it. 

Whilst in the geopolitical sense the Baltics are very similar, one should remember that these are separate, and very different, countries.  For example the Latvians and Lithuanians combine to form a unique ethnic and linguistic group whereas the Estonians are close kinsfolk of the Finns and are more distantly related to the Hungarians.  On the other hand Estonia and Latvia are Lutheran whereas Lithuania is staunchly Catholic.  Pre-1918, Lithuania had had a previous existence as an independent state, latterly in union with Poland, whereas the other two had never been nation states. 

Our tour started in Tallinn (Estonia), continuing through Riga (Latvia) to Vilnius (Lithuania).  We were thus more or less following the route of the human chain that, in the perestroika era, when people in the Baltics dared to start hoping that freedom could be regained, had linked the three capitals.  We had been to Estonia before, a weekend break ten years previously.   This was in the middle of winter and normal people might have headed south.  But what’s so great about being normal?  The beauty of Tallinn was enhanced by the light covering of snow. We had not been to Latvia or Lithuania.  We had three nights in Tallinn and two nights each in the other capitals.

Our hotel in Tallinn was the Meriton Grand, located just outside the historic centre.   It was only when we went out for a post-dinner stroll and thought the surroundings looked rather familiar that the penny dropped: this was the same hotel where we’d stayed in 2001.  Strange as it might seem, we hadn’t realized.  In those days it was known simply as the Grand.  Estonia of all the former Soviet countries was the most westernized, even so there was still something of a Soviet-era feel about the hotel.  It was practically empty yet we were assigned a room with a view of the car park.  We managed to get ourselves moved to a room which gave a magical view of the floodlit Toompea Castle, which houses the country’s parliament.  The catering left much to be desired.  For breakfast I tried some porridge.  I have never eaten Dickensian gruel but would hazard a guess that this is what it tasted like.  Now, some ten years on, the hotel was transformed.  There was a good, if somewhat quirky, Russian restaurant, Balalaika – and they served decent porridge.

We had a full day in Tallinn, divided between a walking tour in the morning and free time in the afternoon.  We had a local guide for the tour, another lovely lady who was maybe a few years older us.  Like Riina and our guide in Riga (but not the one in Vilnius) she spoke movingly of her country’s history and the experience of Soviet occupation.  She wanted to disabuse us of the widespread notion that people in the Baltics ‘preferred’ the Nazis to the Communists: “how does one choose between smallpox and bubonic plague?”

I was amazed, when I read through the feedback section of our tour company’s website, that some old bloke was moaning about how “wearing” it was to hear the local guides talking about the history of their countries which, he dismissively added, was “pretty much the same”.  I have a masters in Slavonic and Eastern European History so I would be interested, wouldn’t I, but surely any intelligent layman would be?  This chap should count himself lucky that he grew up under the benign rule of the Harolds, Macmillan and Wilson, rather than under the rule of the heirs of Stalin. 

We headed past Toompea Castle, not alas open to the public, and the huge Orthodox Cathedral, the Alexander Nevsky church.  We’d spent a bit of time there last time, attending for part of a service – it’s fine in an Orthodox church to go in and out for services tend to be very long and one stands up throughout.  I thought it was all a bit ritualistic and preferred the exuberance of the Lutheran service we attended, which veered towards ‘happy clappy’.  Cathy took the opposite view.  A former client had mischievously sent our guide an Observer travel piece which informed the reader that “all Estonians love the Alexander Nevsky church”.  Not true: its worshippers come from the Russian speaking population and it is thus, for native Estonians, a symbol of rule from Moscow.

Tallinn is a lovely city, one of the finest in Europe, full of nooks and crannies and wonderful old buildings, its centre being the beautiful Old Town Square.  Something that had surprised me about Tallinn, during our previous visit, is it doesn’t have the look or feel of a maritime city.  The only time we saw the sea was when we went to a viewing point.  In this respect is quite different from its neighbour across the Gulf of Finland, Helsinki, where the sea is very much a presence. 

In the afternoon we took a tram, as we had done the previous time, to Kadriorg Park, a mile or so east of the centre.  Here one finds the Presidential Palace and a number of museums.  We were this time able to visit Peter the Great’s House, which had been closed last time as we were out of season.  It is small so there’s not a lot to see but its historic significance of course makes a visit well worthwhile.  Peter evidently had a great liking for Reval, as Tallinn was then known, and even toyed with the idea of making it his capital.  Estonians are no doubt grateful that he instead decided to create a new city, St Petersburg, on the marshes of Ingria, which like Estonia was land he’d conquered from the Swedes. 

We got the tram back and stepped out into torrential rain which persisted as we made our way through the historic centre to our hotel on the other side.  I was not thrilled.   But Cathy thoroughly enjoyed the walk, her dictum being that there’s no such thing as wrong weather, just wrong clothes.  But the rain did force a rethink about where we would dine that evening.  We’d planned to return to Balthazar’s, a restaurant in Old Town Square that specializes in garlic dishes, as we’d had good meals there previously.  We postponed this to the next evening and settled for another evening meal in Balalaika.

We had a full day excursion to the Lahemaa National Park, a chance at last to see something of Estonia beyond its capital.  The Park lies about halfway to the Russian border.  We passed through Lasnamae, which is on the eastern edge of the city, beyond the reach of the trams and trolleybuses and not much visited by tourists.  Yet approx. a third of Tallinn’s residents live there.  Its functional architecture is a product of the Soviet era, dating back more specifically to the Moscow Olympics when Tallinn hosted the maritime events, rather as Weymouth did during the London Olympics.

Tallinn was in a way the Soviet Union’s “Window on the West” rather as St Petersburg was during the time of Peter the Great and his successors.  But whereas Peter wanted to embrace western ideas the Soviet leaders wanted to keep them out.  However they could not totally succeed.  Tallinn was after all geographically close to the West, with Finland lying just fifty miles or so across the Gulf.  There was little the authorities could do to stop people listening to Finnish radio: “we would listen to Soviet radio”, our local guide told us, “and then tune to Helsinki so we could learn the truth”.  Estonia, like the other Baltic States, had a shorter period under Soviet   rule than most of the other Soviet Socialist Republics and the standard of living was relatively high, though far lower than in Finland albeit before WW2 it had been roughly the same level in the two countries.  After independence, Estonia straight away formed strong ties with Finland and Sweden; indeed Tallinn has been described as the sixth Scandinavian capital though that is rather pushing the bounds of geography. 

Our tour of the National Park took in a small waterfall.  We had just a few months previously been to Niagara so maybe weren’t as impressed as we were expected to be!  We spent some time in the Palmse Manor, whose various exhibits include a fascinating music machine.  A tasty lunch was enjoyed in the agreeably rustic surrounds of its restaurant.  Our return journey took us through a number of coastal villages.  We dined as planned in Balthazar’s.  Nothing really to complain about: good food in lovely surroundings and friendly staff.  Yet I wondered if, having now been successfully established for a number of years, it was resting on its laurels a bit.  Most of the main dishes seemed to have garlic bulbs just as an accompaniment whereas we love garlic and wanted it to be an integral part of the cooking.  They were still though serving the garlic ice cream that I’d enjoyed last time.  The ice cream is not actually made with garlic, rather it is served with a garlic and honey sauce.  Trust me on this: it works.

We headed the next day to Riga.  Looking at the map I had assumed we would be alongside the sea for much of the way but, a bit disappointingly, we were for nearly all the time slightly inland.  Even in Parnu, which is known as Estonia’s Summer Capital, there was not a sight of the sea.  We had about an hour in this rather dull town.  We tried to find the main attraction, the Red Tower, an initiative test which we failed.   We recommenced our journey and then discovered that Parnu does after all have a beach, but it’s about a ten minute drive from the main centre. 

Crossing the Latvian border, Riina recalled that, in the early days of independence, the Baltics erected checkpoints on their borders whereas “in our friendly Soviet Union” there were no such barriers.  Subsequently, all three countries have adhered to the Schengen Agreement so the checkpoints have come down. 

As we drove into Riga through somewhat unprepossessing suburbs we wondered, rather as we had done in Prague and in Seville, why this city is considered to one of Europe’s most beautiful.   We were to be convinced the following day that it is indeed beautiful.  Riina gave us a short taster after we’d checked in to our hotel, taking us past the striking Freedom Monument.  This depicts a lady who symbolizes Liberty and who holds three stars.  It was erected by the newly independent state to honour its war dead.   Amazingly, it might be thought, it survived the Soviet era.  The authorities’ spin on it, though obviously not that of the Latvian people, was that it depicted Mother Russia protecting the three Baltic republics.   It is customary for locals to lay flowers by the monument.  We spoke to a young couple who had just done so; they told us that that the lady is known to locals as Milda.

As in Tallinn, our full day in Riga was divided between a walking tour in the morning, again in the hands of an excellent local guide, and free time in the afternoon.  After a comprehensive tour, we had a good al fresco lunch near St Peter’s Church, which we afterwards ascended, getting a wonderful panoramic view of the city.  We used some of our free time to visit the Occupation Museum, which:

“shows what happened to Latvia, its land and its people, under two occupying totalitarian regimes from 1940 to 1991”

“reminds the world of the crimes committed by foreign powers against the state and people of Latvia”

“remembers the victims of the occupation: those who perished, were persecuted, forcefully deported or fled the terror of the occupation regimes”.

This was a moving experience.  I bought a book, There was such a Time, by Ilmar Knagis, who was born in 1926 and whom the Soviets exiled to Siberia, luckier than some since he wasn’t sent to a Gulag so could move around reasonably freely.  He founded the “Children of Siberia” foundation and organizes expeditions to places to which Latvians were deported.  It was not an easy read, perhaps because of the poor translation, but certainly worth persevering with.

Someone in our group had discovered that there was a garlic restaurant quite close to our hotel.  So that was our dinner for tonight sorted.   It was smaller and in less impressive surroundings than Balthazar’s but I thought it was more true to its purpose and we had a good meal.   Here dessert, a parfait, really was made with garlic rather than just accompanied by a garlic sauce.

We were back on the road the next day, heading for our third and last capital, Vilnius.  Still in Latvia we spent time at the Rundale Palace, impressive inside and out, and surrounded by gardens that are also impressive.  Another stop, just over the border, was at the Hill of Crosses.  This is as described, a remarkable and rather moving collection of crosses, covering a small hill and numbering 100,000 or more.  One traverses this via a pathway.  It’s a place of pilgrimage going back centuries.  Not surprisingly, the Communist authorities had no love for this place and tried more than once too dismantle it.  They didn’t succeed.  In 1993, soon after independence, Pope John Paul II visited the site, declaring it to be a place for hope, peace, love and sacrifice. 

Hill of Crosses

We carried on to the nearby city of Siauliai, Lithuania’s fourth largest and surely a rare example of a place name with eight letters but only two consonants.  We passed through the centre but our lunch stop was in a shopping mall on the outskirts.  We continued to Vilnius via the fast motor road.  The capital is located close to the border with another but very different former Soviet republic, Belarus.  This is the “last dictatorship in Europe”, pro-Russia and anti-West.  It is the only European country not to have signed the European Convention on Human Rights and the onetime KGB is now called – the KGB.

Lithuania does not actually have a border with the main part of Russia.  It does though border to the west that curious geopolitical entity, the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (whose capital was until the end of WW2 part of Germany and known as  Königsberg), which is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland.  These two fellow members of the EU and NATO were not always on friendly terms.  In the aftermath of WW1 the Poles captured Vilnius and incorporated it into their country.  Kaunas, now Lithuania’s second city, served as its capital.  The Soviets redrew the boundary after WW2.

Our tour company’s website had indicated that our hotel in Vilnius, the Amberton, was not of the same standard as those in the other two cities.  But we had no complaint: it enjoys an excellent location in Cathedral Square, right in the heart of the city; our unusually large room was pleasant; and the restaurant is sufficiently well thought of to attract locals as well as hotel residents.   As in Riga, Riina gave us a brief taster, taking us up the hill through the Old Town to the Town Hall.  She recommended a nearby restaurant, the historic Lokys.  We had dinner there.  Always interested in trying out exotic meats, I ordered, and enjoyed, beaver stew. 

Our walking tour the next morning was led by a local guide who dutifully delivered his spiel but made no real attempt to engage and did not talk about his country’s history.  From time to time he was on his mobile: it might be that there was some domestic issue for him to sort out but courtesy would have dictated an apology.  But this did not of course detract from our enjoyment of the Old Town, one of the largest surviving medieval towns in Europe.  Again we finished at the Town Hall.  We had an al fresco lunch in a restaurant halfway down the hill leading back to our hotel: Chicken Kiev accompanied by chips and what were described with commendable honesty as “tinned peas”. 

In the afternoon there was an included tour to Trakei Castle, a few miles west of the city and scenically located on an island in a lake.   According to our original itinerary our final morning was to have been free in Vilnius, with a flight home in the afternoon.  Unfortunately, direct flights between London and Vilnius were subsequently discontinued so we instead had to spend the morning flying to Riga, where we transferred to a direct flight.

 

 First Published in VISA 115 (June 2014)

Robbie and Other Animals

By Anne Rothwell

The biggest, fattest fur seal I’ve ever seen weighed down the small boat as he lolloped up the open steps at the back and plonked down along the narrow table in the middle of the boat, shaking us alarmingly. We were in Walvis Bay, Namibia and had gone out looking for seals, dolphins, pelicans and other seabirds. The seal, Robbie, was clearly a friend of the boatman as he opened his mouth in readiness for the fish which was waiting in a bucket.

Spotty, A Cape Fur Seal

Though alarmingly large, Robbie was not threatening, so we approached to stroke him. Instead of the wet, shiny feel we expected, he had lovely thick fur to protect him from the worst of the Atlantic weather. When he decided he’d had enough of the petting he left, not out of the back where he’d arrived, but over the side, almost overturning the boat in the process.

We were staying in Swakopmund on the coast. This is an attractive German-style town, due to its colonisation by Germany between 1884 and 1915. We had hired a car and were touring around this very varied country with its coastline, enormous, fabulously sculpted sand dunes and Etosha National Park filled with all the usual African wildlife.

We’d seen the 2,000 year old welwitschia plant, the beetles which do handstands to let the dew run down their backs into their mouths in the very hot desert and the prehistoric cave paintings. There were also the Herrero women who wore the crinoline-type dresses brought over by the missionaries and the more natural and beautiful Himba women with their skin and hair plastered with the rich, reddish-brown mud.

We drove up along the coast to Cape Cross where the seals gather in their hundreds upon hundreds and where jackals prowl amongst them, looking for pups they can snatch.  The smell was indescribable, but worth it for the view.  We’d hoped to drive further up the ‘skeleton coast’ where the wrecks of so many ships dashed onto the rocks, still stand, but without a 4-wheel drive, it was impossible to get so far.

It’s amazing the number of people, who know little about the country, who said, ‘You didn’t drive over there, did you?’, fearing that we would be pounced on by bandits or wild animals. In fact, although we went long distances, the roads are straight, quiet and well-surfaced and the animals in the main are limited to the National Park. Due to the size of the country, there aren’t large numbers of roads, just what are necessary to get from A to B, so we couldn’t get lost. It was so easy and fuel was not expensive.

On the last night of our trip, we stayed in a guesthouse off the beaten track. We had a comfy little cabin, but were some distance from the reception and dining room. We were the only people there and there was very little in the kitchen, but they managed to rustle up some supper, which was fine.

Unfortunately, there were no lights whatsoever outside, so we had to stumble along with our torch.

Before dinner, Marven sat down on one of the rickety chairs on the verandah in the dark in an area very open to wildlife. Suddenly he was aware that there was something very close as he heard the breathing before it leapt on him. I dashed out with the torch to see two large dogs wagging their tails and frantically licking his face.

First published in VISA 112 (December 2013)

Around the Isles (part 1)

By David Gourley

This was a rather unusual holiday for us, a driving holiday that took us to all the component countries of the British Isles. 

This was also in fact our first visit to Ireland, North or South. We had been fortunate enough to travel to many far-flung places but hitherto had not been to this country on our very doorstep.

Alnwick Castle

We first headed to the North-East of England, or more specifically Hexham in Northumberland, a long drive as we live in Surrey. We detoured into Durham, something of a nostalgia trip as our daughter had gone to university there. We'd gone up there quite frequently, especially during her first two years when she'd lived on campus and had to remove all her belongings during vacations as rooms were needed for people attending conferences or whatever. 

We'd grown rather attached to what is one of the nicest of British cities, a place that changes very little over the years. We briefly stepped into the cathedral. A service to commemorate the Queen's Golden Jubilee was about to start and we had a quick chat with one of the ushers - who had once been our daughter's year tutor! Having so far driven along motorways or fast roads, we took a scenic route via the Derwent Reservoir. Our hotel was Slaley Hall, not in Hexham itself but out in the countryside. This is part of the De Vere chain which is fairly upmarket (albeit owned, a tad incongruously it might be thought, by a Warrington brewery) though one does not necessarily pay upmarket prices since they do some very good offers. We were well pleased with our stay here and indeed have been back for a return visit. 

Northumberland is maybe one of England's least well-known counties, at least if one is a Southerner, but it is one of the most beautiful. It is also a good county if one likes old-fashioned castles. On both our days here we headed for the coast. 

On Day One we first visited Alnwick Castle, which has since gained a high profile as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films. Its pride and joy at the time of our visit was the newly opened water garden, designed by the Castle's very own Duchess, with a bit of help from Charlie Dimmock. However, Chatsworth had had the idea about three hundred years earlier! Alnwick Castle is still owned by the Percy family, who have an ancient pedigree. In lawless days of old, during the Wars of the Roses and so on, they vied with another great family, the Nevilles, to be top dog in the Northeast. I don't know what happened to the Nevilles, though their name lives on in Nevilles Cross, on the outskirts of Durham. 

The real highlight of the day was our visit to Holy Island, also known, no less romantically, as Lindisfarne. We had not long, at this time, been on the internet and had been pleased that we could simply look up the times when the causeway to the mainland is open. At other times it is submerged by the tide. The times vary from day to day. We had lunch in the delightful Crown and Anchor Inn, including an interesting and rather tasty dessert made with dandelions. We spent some time at the marvellous old castle, which is still privately owned. The next day we had another look at Holy Island, just to see how it looked when still surrounded by the sea. Unbelievably a car was nevertheless driving along the still submerged causeway. I don't know whether the driver, whose passengers included young children, thought he was being bold; we and others thought him a chump. 

We carried on to Berwick-upon- Tweed, England's northernmost town. As is well known, it changed hands between England and Scotland many times. There is a Scottish feel still: its football team plays in the Scottish league and it gives its name to a Scottish county. We then drove back down the coast to explore another fine Northumbrian Castle, Bamburgh. 

During our second stay at Slaley Hall, we returned to Alnwick Castle (which had become a bit too commercialized, I rather thought) and Holy Island, and also did a trip into Newcastle, going by train from Hexham's impressively preserved station. Newcastle gets my vote as the most attractive of England's large provincial cities. My first visit many years previously had dispelled any view that this is a grim industrial city, for it has a fine Georgian centre. Now the riverside, here and over the Millennium Bridge in Gateshead, has been impressively redeveloped. We crossed the Bridge and had an excellent lunch at the Baltic Centre, based in a former flour mill, with fine views back across Newcastle. 

We returned to the city centre by one of the city's novel electric buses. Actually until the mid sixties Newcastle had plenty of electric buses: they were called trolleybuses. 

Reverting to our British Isles round trip, we headed the next day into Scotland, hurrying past Gretna Green which looked anything but romantic with its main road and meandered along the Solway coast, with its fine views back into England. 

I was struck, as we left the small town of Annan, by the road sign exhorting us “haste ye back”. Annan, along with nearby Carlisle, was for many years remarkable in that the pubs were state owned, the result of a decision in World War 1 when there were lots of munitions workers in the area. They were privatized in the early seventies. We spent some time at the picturesque Caerlaverock Castle, which has an unusual triangular shape. 

Our next stop was in not- Dumfries. This is one of those smallish towns which can punch a weight greater than its population because it is the centre of a fairly large region, in this instance Dumfries and Galloway. It is nothing very special - we only stopped because we needed to make one or two purchases. The riverside might be attractive, were it not given over to a sprawling car park. 

Our abode for the next two nights was a B&B in the Galloway region, a few miles south of Stranraer. We had again used the internet to find this and the lady of the house, clearly something of a technophobe, seemed rather impressed. It is a fine Robert Adam building and we had good accommodation, though the breakfast was somewhat stingy for what was supposed to be a fourstar guesthouse. 

Our hosts had, at time of booking, recommended a restaurant in nearby Portpatrick, which turned out to be fully booked when we rang them. But we headed to Portpatrick anyway and found that they could give us a table after all. We had a first-class meal there. Portpatrick is about as close as mainland Britain gets to Northern Ireland, which can be seen very clearly on a fine day. 

We debated what to do with our one full day here. One possibility was to explore the eastern part of Galloway - the old county of Kirkcudbrightshire - which is said to resemble the Highlands in miniature. The countervailing attraction of Culzean Castle, involving a scenic drive along the Ayrshire Coast, won. 

First we diverted to a lighthouse, right at the tip of the more northerly of Galloway's two peninsulas, or Rhinns. This has been transformed into a rather classy hotel, which we had considered staying at, but was rather pricey. We did book dinner there. This drive took us through Stranraer, which presents two faces to the world: an attractive resort in the west, a rather port in the east. We spent several hours at Culzean and could have done with more time still, as there is plenty to see, not just in the castle itself but in its extensive grounds. President Eisenhower was given a flat here in appreciation of his services to Britain as a general in World War II and apparently found time actually to stay there. 

Whilst walking around, an American couple asked us to take a photo of them. We thought nothing of this until, the next day, they appeared at the breakfast table in our guesthouse! Dinner at the lighthouse did not disappoint. We were continuing the next day by ferry to Northern Ireland, departing from Cairnryan, a little to the north of Stranraer. There was still the morning in which to explore locally and we headed for the tip of the southern Rhinn. One is supposed to be able to see into England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, but it was misty and we saw none of them. We then visited the Dunskey Gardens, the description of which led us to expect a mini-version of the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They weren't, however, of much interest. 

In Stranraer we had a sandwich lunch and attempted to visit the main attraction, the small Castle of St John. I was indignant to find it closed as it was supposed to stay open for another twenty minutes or so. But the chap heard us try the door, presented himself and let us look round for free.  

First Published in VISA 74 (August 2007)

Read about the second part of the trip here.

Traveller's Tales: Uzbekistan

By Anne Rothwell

 

We stood in a line along the hilltop, cameras poised, waiting for the sun to set  -  like a row of jagged teeth in a giant’s mouth.  This was the best time of day, not only for photography, but for relief from the wearing heat of the day.  A large dragonfly flew by  -  an unexpected sight in this dry area.

Mission accomplished, we slithered down the sandy slope to our yurts below  -  home for tonight.  Entering through the carved wooden doors, looking incongruous set into the camel hair walls, the four of us flopped onto our mattresses and gazed round in the dim light at the wooden skeleton of the structure.

After a meal in the dining yurt, we went outside to find a large campfire surrounded by a circle of chairs.  In one, a local musician began to sing and play his stringed instrument.  This was an experience I’d never forget, but even so, exhausted, I went into the yurt, crawled into my sleeping bag and listened from there.

During the night, I had to get up twice and make my way to the toilets some distance away.  Grabbing  my torch and checking my shoes for scorpions or other unwelcome creatures, I made my way across, being careful not to step on the large shiny black beetles which were everywhere.  On the way back, looking up, what a glorious sight!  My little patch of earth seemed to be completely enveloped by the soft black night and a myriad of brilliant stars and constellations  -  not twinkling, but shining proudly forth.  No light, no sound, just nature in all her pristine glory.

he next morning, after a good Uzbek breakfast of bread, cheese, meat, boiled eggs, fruit and green tea, we set off with camels to walk to Aidarkul Lake 7 or 8 kilometers away.  Our group of 14 only had half that number of camels, so we walked halfway and rode halfway.  These were the 2-humped Bactrian camels, so very comfortable to sit on between the humps.  We loped along in the heat, my camel stopping at every thorny bush to snatch a mouthful, which he then crunched noisily, like me with a bag of crisps.

Then the lake came into view, a beautiful deep blue, mirroring the cloudless sky.  The water was clear and clean, not as warm as I’d expected as it wasn’t very deep, but cool and refreshing.  When we came out, invigorated, our ever resourceful guide, Dilshod, had a picnic lunch ready for us on a large table by the shore.  This was not a sandwich, crisps, kitkat kind of picnic, but a banquet of (safe) salads, rice, meat, vegetables, bread, nuts, raisins and more, accompanied by bottled water, sodas, beer or green tea.

The bus had arrived down a rough track to pick us up  -  so this is where the picnic had come from.  We walked to the bus, desert marmots scuttering out of our way, and set off for Samarkand and more lovely people and fabulous turquoise mosaic-faced buildings of the fabled Silk Road.

 

First published in VISA 117 (October 2014)

 

Chalk Flew Up! A Day out at Wimbledon

By Elizabeth Johnstone

Getting tickets for Wimbledon is not a simple matter of buying them online. They are so sought-after that you have to go into a ballot.  There is a public ballot, and the LTA also allocates a number of tickets to tennis clubs. We were lucky enough to obtain tickets through my husband’s tennis club.  I hasten to add that you still have to pay (handsomely) for them – they are not a prize!

We struck gold in getting tickets for Centre Court on the Monday of the second week.  Even if it rained, we would be guaranteed play because of the roof.  In fact, we had been at the very first full match played under the roof in 2009.  Andy Murray (whatever happened to him?) beat Stanislav Wawrinka, finishing after 10.30pm. Chaos ensued when no-one could find their cars in the open-air car parks in the dark, and the local transport was overwhelmed when everyone left at once.  But I digress.  Back to our day out.

We took the train into London then the Underground to Southfields, where the London cabs have a fixed-price shuttle service to the tennis, with a marshal organising travellers into taxis in fives.  Henman Hill was crammed with spectators, most of whom were enjoying upmarket picnics featuring products from Waitrose or Marks and Spencer.  You get the picture.  As did the spectators, literally, from the giant screen facing the hill.  A modest amount of alcohol may be brought into the grounds and from all sides you could hear the gentle popping of champagne corks. I bought a few postcards to feed my habit (I am a Postcrossing devotee) then it was time for some serious tennis.

Maria Sharapova played Angelique Kerber in the first match.  These women are goddesses! Tall, lithe, athletic.  Sharapova, the favourite, was defeated by the German after a mighty tussle. Next, Rafael Nadal faced the latest wunderkind from Australia, 19 year-old Nick Kyrgios.  The youngster pulled off a stunning victory, blasting his opponent with fast and heavy serves before the Spaniard could get into his game. I don’t know if he was helped or hindered by the fanatical Australian support, half a dozen Aussies who stood up, cheered and chanted for their man between each point.

I used my binoculars for celeb spotting – Sir Cliff Richard sat in the debenture section for the whole afternoon, and Rory Bremner was a few rows down from us.  Veteran lady champions Billy Jean King and Maria Bueno were in the Royal Box, as was Michel Roux Jnr.

Before I saw live play at Wimbledon, I didn’t realise how flat and hard the shots are. The players skim the net trying for ever tighter angles.  Sooner or later one of them makes a mistake.  Hawkeye is great entertainment and prevents McEnroe-esque protests. 

So many tennis puns to choose from – OK, our day out was ace!

 First Published in VISA 2014