Countries Archives - Jim Murty’s TravelTravelTravel

A Beltane time on May Day

1st May 20241st May 2024 funtime65

For Jim it would be an everyday jape, when he’d ignite some part of Wee Jon, so I dare say he’ll be having a Beltane time with some other victim on May Day.

Each of my old Aberdeen University buddies has gone their separate ways.

Poacher-turned-gamekeeper Jim joined the fire service and Wee Jon the civil service.

These days he teases me with tales of his travels as he enjoys a much-deserved retirement.

Hippies on the hill

The boys: Wee Jon front and Jim (behind, left)

They’re still lighting fires for Jim to monitor up in the north-east of Scotland.

With scenic Stonehaven, near Aberdeen, a riot of annual colour with revellers twirling fireballs in the streets.

The scene is played out across Scotland and other Celtic nations today for the pagan Beltane Festival.

Now had you been in Scotland’s capital Edinburgh last night on the last day of April then you’d have seen hippies on the hill.

Athens of the North

Calton Hill off the bottom of Princes Street in the shadow of Scotland’s Folly aka The National Monument of Scotland.

It was originally modelled on Athens’ Parthenon as a tribute to those Scots who died in the Napoleonic Wars.

The burghers of Edinburgh, known at the time and since as The Athens of the North, set about its Parthenon edifice in 1826.

But funds ran out it in 1829 and it has been left unfinished to this day giving city wits the licence to christen it Scotland’s Folly.

The revellers proceeded anti-clockwise around the path meeting various groups along the way.

All the time driven by the beat of drums which urge it on towards summer.

Of course with such a ritualised celebration there are all manner of conventions.

With the one we enjoy the most involving the foods and drinks to warm us on a Northern European open-air evening.

A fiery race

Now wherever you have been enjoying your fire festival we trust it’s warmed your heart.

As it has ours as captured in these photographs by Gordon Veitch for Beltane Fire Society.

And you’re having a Beltane Day on the first of this month.

Yes, May Day is noted as a flower festival and when workers rise up and loosen their chains.

And each have their merits and Scots have been known to indulge in both, though English Morris Dancers is a step too far.

But we are at heart a fiery race although you don’t have to worry if you see hippies on a hill in Edinburgh city centre.

Just join in.

Caribbean, Countries, Sport

Scots bowled ’em over in Barbados

30th April 202430th April 2024 funtime65

As the countdown begins for a cricket clash of the Auld Enemies a cry of freedom from when us Scots bowled ’em over in Barbados.

My old Aberdeen buddy Jevan is a proud Trini-Scot.

So he doubly delights in any victories over the Engerlush.

West-Indian born with a birthright to love cricket he is something of a fixture in around the Oval.

With his dapper dandy schtick while he is also wont to take on a fancy dress mask.

On the occasion he took me along to the Oval it was India who were in opposition on the first day of a Test match.

Howzat for a day out?

When if memory serves me well only three wickets fell all day.

The rum though tumbled all day from the moment we got into our box.

And the host looked quizzically at me when I said I would start slowly with a coffee.

And they turned to Jevan and asked ‘who’s this joker, get him a Mount Gay’.

Watching cricket with West Indians is an education,

Winning a maiden over

Everybody on Barbados has an opinion and an expertise.

And the charming, beautiful woman in our company opined.

On the selectors, the tactics and Bajan, American and British politics without missing a beat.

All the time remaining sharp of mind and style.

While my senses dulled through good rum and my body swelled from the fishes of the Caribbean and the staple Mac’n’cheese.

Holding out for a hero

By the time they called stumps I had had a lesson in life and cricket which to West Indians is much the same.

My charming West Indies cricket fan colleague had relayed to me the joy of a particular roasting an England legend had endured on this ground.

When Michael Holding had Geoffrey Boycott jumping around in his crease before getting done all ends up.

For yesterday’s Boycott, read today’s Joe Root, and a fast-bowling Scot.

And a fast-living, sharp-dressing Trini-Scot cheering on his mother’sland.

Remember too that this is an island with Scotland at its heart, the region named after the Scots who went out there.

And maybe thinking on when me and him, two proud Scots bowled ’em over in Barbados.

Twenty Twenty vision

The World T20 Cup runs through June in the West Indies and the US.

With my own Scotland playing England at the Kensington Oval, Barbados on June 20.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic both fly nine hours to Bridgetown.

And, of course, you can go high-end at Sandals or Turtle Beach.

Or even take your significant other to a couples hotel at Club Barbados.

America, Countries

Let’s go crazy for Aer Lingus’s return to Twin Cities

29th April 202429th April 2024 funtime65

That year they partied like it was 2-0–1-9 but after a Covid hiatus let’s go crazy for Aer Lingus’s return to the Twin Cities again.

Prince’s home cities of Minneapolis and St Paul’s is laying out the purple carpet to its Irish and Hibernophile pals.

You know, those like us who fly through Ireland with pre-clearance to the States.

All across America

Ireland’s national airline carrier is resuming its service between Dublin and Minneapolis-St. Paul today, April 29, with four weekly round trip.

Which marks the full restoration of the airline’s pre-pandemic North American network of 18.

When the Dublin-Denver flights, which will also operate four times a week, come on tap from May 17.

I will endeavour to fit in a trip again to LAX, on Friday for the American Travel Fair, IPW.

Music is the flute of life

Now, of course, we know Minnesota for its links to the Purple One.

And you can lap it all up at Prince’s palatial Paisley Park.

But it has also been home to among others…

The Andrews Sisters, Judy Garland, Bob Dylan and Lizzo and her magic flute.

Of course, it will not have gone unnoticed on Irish visitors that the Twin Cities are a shopping hub.

With the Mall of America bringing shoppers from all around the world.

Deal us in

And so if you want to see why Minneapolis-St Paul is where the doves fly.

You can too with Ireland’s national airline carrier.

So let’s go crazy for Aer Lingus’s return to Twin Cities.

Dublin to Minneapolis from €209.97.

Countries, Europe

The principal player and hero of World War I

28th April 202428th April 2024 funtime65

It will go little noticed but today marks 106 years since the death of the principal player and hero of World War I, Gavrilo Princip.

Gavrilo’s lasting historical claim to fame, of course, came four years earlier in Sarajevo.

When he shot dead the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia.

And sparked a series of reactions and responses which led to a World War in which 20 million died.

Including two proud brothers of Donegal in the north-west who I was the first of my family to pay tribute to, in Flanders.

Czech out for Princip

Money shot: Where Princip killed Franz Ferdinand

Few around the world acknowledged or would have commemorated Princip’s passing today in 1918.

Busy as they would have been in trench, sea or air.

Nineteen at the time, Princip’s age was to save him from the death penalty.

But not the Small Fortress in Terezin in modern-day Czechia where he was sent to serve a 20-year prison sentence.

A long stretch it was all right with the Slav nationalist chained to a wall in his cell.

Royally stuffed

It may have come as a blessed relief to Princip then that he escaped this life seven months before all fighting finished.

In a war he always claimed would have happened anyway without his intervention.

Which, of course, may have been right with Queen Victoria’s descendants, on the thrones of Britain, Germany and Russia hell-bent on empire building.

It is worth remembering too that while the First World War began with the death of two royals more were to be lost across its duration.

The whole Romanov line in Russia and 30 odd others (and they’re all odd).

Back from the dead

Two years after his death, Princip and the other conspirators were exhumed and brought to Sarajevo.

And buried together beneath the Vidovan Heroes Chapel.

The house where Princip lived in Sarajevo became something of a political plaything.

Destroyed an rebuilt three times over the next near 100 years.

While his pistol and Franz Ferdinand’s undershirt reside in the last place Princip would have wanted.

In the Museum of Military History in Vienna.

For everything else Franz Ferdinand related then the Sarajevo Museum is a time capsule.

Princip on a pedestal

Wall of fame: In the FF Museum in Bosnia

But if it’s Princip you want to celebrate then you can visit his bust in Tovarisevo or a statue erected in East Sarajevo on the centenary.

While a 2m-high bronze statue was put up in Serbia capital Belgrade amid much fanfare a year later.

All to the principal player and hero of World War I.

Countries, Europe

Ampel time for East German signs

27th April 202427th April 2024 funtime65

Ja, they literally stop traffic and as we reflect on 35 years since the Fall of the Wall we do still have Ampel time for East German signs.

And other quirky stop-go ways of keeping motorists and pedestrians in sync around the world.

Berlin, East German and all Deutschland life today moves to the beat of the spritely little figure in the straw hat.

Which is for all its austerity the most resounding legacy of the GDR.

Along with the statues and wall reliefs of Communist icons in the German capital, Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz (Karl Marx Stadt) to remind the citizens of their history.

Put a straw hat on it

The Ampelmannchen, like much despite the interference of politicians, survived because of its popularity with the public.

He had been astride the East since traffic psychologist Karl Peglau came up with the idea in 1961.

With Ampelmannchen’s distinctive straw hat a nod to a summer photo leader Erich Honecker.

A small victory one would think for the oppressed East Germans to immortalise their Communist leader in bourgeoisie couture.

Capitalising on GDR icons

Come reunification there was clearly much to organise.

And despite the famous Teuton efficiency it was overlooked that there was a difficulty with differing signs and fonts between the two Germanys.

With the Western figure oddly more pencil-straight, regimental than the quirkier East German fave.

So while Westernisation swept over the East, the East hung on to their traffic signs and the West absorbed them.

The Ampelmannchen clearly would not be moved.

And as the ultimate signal of capital’s hold the Ampelmannchen has become synonymous with modern German life.

With shops proliferating around Berlin and around Germany, selling the little man with the straw hat.

Anything from ironically stationery to stickers to mugs to fridge magnets to mouse mats.

With mine taking pride of place at home now.

Signs of the times

Now I’ll clearly always have Ampel time for East German signs.. and their people.

And make instant judgements on a people by which quirky signs they choose to guide us on our way around their towns and villages.

Now it’s green lights to Berlin with EasyJet with a sample return ticket for £82.99.

Countries, Europe

The €5 merchants of Venice and the Ghetto

26th April 202426th April 2024 funtime65

If had a fiver for every time I’ve been asked since yesterday about the new charge… well anyway here are my thoughts about the €5 merchants of Venice and the Ghetto.

Venice, as everyone knows, faces an ever-growing battle to survive climate change.

And has now taken the dramatic move to charge day tourists €5 for entering the inner city on its busiest days this summer.

Opinions differ about the wisdom and the possibilities for the initiative.

With today’s doges, or councillors, arguing that it will reduce congestion and the money can be put into conservation.

While opponents say the small fee will not deter overtourism and that the problem lies elsewhere in housing.

With the explosion in AirBnBs deterring locals from getting on the housing ladder.

And the City on the Lagoon uniquely is where you need a ladder more than most.

In the Ghetto

Now as backers and sackers bicker it is instructive to reflect that exclusion zones are nothing new in Venice.

For entirely different reasons the Venetians operated the world’s first Ghetto, from the word ‘foundry’ from 1516 to 1797.

To keep the Jews out of the city at night-time gates were built with fines imposed.

Today’s Ghetto is still the hub of Jewish life with shops, restaurants, a synagogue and events and a Holocaust memorial.

All of which I would have enjoyed witnessing first hand had we not arrived there in our first visit there, on the Sabbath!

And yes despite Herself’s famous organisational skills, we have form for this.

Having cycled to cheesetown Edam from Amsterdam on the town’s half day.

The Venice waterland

Back to Venice and for all the charms of inner Venice, the Rialto, Bridge of Sighs, the Campanile and St Mark’s Square.

There is much to enjoy in the hinterland, or hinterwater as it should probably be called.

The Arsenale, the ancient gunnery area of Venice and the aforementioned Ghetto.

While there are 118 islands in the archipelago although most of us only visit two from Rialto… Murano and Burano.

Murano being where the artisan glassmakers will blow out a bespoke vase for you.

While if its lace you’re looking for and colourful fishermen canal houses then Burano is your stop-off.

Now it’s worth remembering that the charge is factored in for your sleepovers in Venice so you’ll see all the faves without the surplus.

However you do it we would always say do it.

And while you we trust you will give some thought to the €5 merchants of Venice and the Ghetto.

Countries, Europe

In Chemnitz we find a history carved in stone

25th April 202425th April 2024 funtime65

Changing cities (and their names) bring changing figures on podiums… and in Chemnitz we find a history carved in stone.

We started this journey this week as all Chemnitzers and adopted Saxons do at Der Nischel ‘The Head’.

The Head being Karl Marx after the Father of Communism who the GDR renamed Chemnitz after the war.

We are set a flash quiz to give the size of the politico’s cranium… 23ft if you want to win the bookmark our guide was offering.

He’s a big head all right but Lev Kerbil’s bust of Karl is not the biggest Socialist.

His disciple Lenin craning higher at 25ft in Siberia.

While the undoubted face of the city, Karl, of course is no Chemnitzer, hailing from Trier in southern Germany.

Pppenguin pppodiums

Nor indeed are the penguins which at the other end of the scale have become synonymous with the Saxon city.

The genesis of the small island at the entrance to Innere Klosterstrsse, on the corner of Theaterstrasse is that Antarctica resembles the outline of Chemnitz.

The Peter Kalfells inscription points out that 15,000kms east are one of the largest colonies of emperor penguins in the world.

Strolling through today’s Chemnitz you’ll be struck by how the modern and historic cities fuse.

Ja Liegend

The Skulptur Liegender is a Johannes Schulze concrete-sculpture recliner from the early 80s GDR heyday.

To mark the inauguration of the boulevard so beloved by communists of the era.

While you’ll find a nod to German literary great Bertolt Brecht and his four poems of praise, Lob des Revolutionärs.

Karl Marx Stadt commissioned Martin Wetzel to erect the work ‘in praise of the party’ as part of the redevelopment of downtown.

Happy Kampfer

While further down the road, on the corner of Bahnhofstrasse is Johann Belz’s 1976 relief Kampf und Sieg der revolutionären deutschen Arbeiterklasse.

Which is, of course, a celebration of the German working class.

Der Baths time

The importance of the German Swimming Baths shouldn’t be underestimated either, nor do the Chemnitzers play that down.

With the Stadbadt the oldest and most-eyecatching of a chain of pools which includes outdoor areas for the summer.

Supported by Chemnitz architect Fritz Weber, city building director Fred Otto designed the functional building in 1925.

Initially opposed by the Nazis they jumped on board and in when they saw the Chemnitzers had taken to it.

You will, of course, be taken by the statues carved into the walls next to reception.

Of the full nude bodies beautiful of a young woman and man.

And that as an older lady she wanted it taken down but didn’t get her way.

So through the ages we see our story every day through what we put on podiums.

And here in Chemnitz we find a history carved in stone.

Countries, Culture, Europe

With ein little help from der Freunde

24th April 202424th April 2024 funtime65

So how do I feel by the end of the day? Well, I get by with ein little help from der Freunde in Berlin.

I am on the last leg (and my last legs) of my whistlestop tour of Deutschland for the annual travel convention, the German Travel Mart.

And as is my wont when left on my own I have gone off piste.

Despite the best efforts and planning of Nicole, my planner extraordinaire and Deutsche Mark as I’ll now know him.

My globetrotting English buddy and human sat-nav who I rely on every year at this convention.

Which last year took us to Essen in the Ruhrland and this year Chemnitz (or Karl Marx Stadt) in Saxony.

Strassed out

And so, pulled along by the German history in front of me and my wheelie rucksack, I over-reach when I see the sign for Charlottenburg.

And rather than double-back to go to the central station, the Haubtbanhof on Europaplatz.

For my simple eight-minute ride to Charlottenburg, my billet for the night I decide to march in.

I have done the de rigueur Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and Potsdam and got my picture in front of a block of the Berlin Wall.

Which this year has been down 35 years, longer than it was up, but worthy of commemorating and celebrating.

Which I have also done in Leipzig outside the church where the protests which triggered the revolution began.

A day in the strife

Emboldened by that spirit of freedom blowing through an icy April eve in the German capital I feel like taking on the world.

Literally… springing past the embassies of the world and always keeping the signs for Charlottenburg in my sights.

No going back now even when the guard at the booth at the Japan embassy alerts me to the fact that I am 5 miles from my destination.

Having my now trudged that distance in my excitement.

Ich bus ein Berliner

I am though blessed to see a part of Berlin few do.

And with a little help from der Freunde at a hotel and a bus stop I am pointed towards a stop where I can take another bus.

To Adenhauerstrasse where hopefully I will be able to find my hotel, the Yggotel Ravn, on Albrecht-Achilles Strasse.

Of course with low battery on my phone and no internet I cannot turn to Google Maps so I go old-fashioned.

And ask at the Apothekary where a helpful assistant (the first couldn’t speak English never mind Glaswegian) got me on track.

Berlin haul

Weary of bone I slumped on the desk of my hotel half an hour later.

And after booking in asked how best to get to the airport in the morning.

Only to be told it would be €70 by taxi.

Now working on the proposition that four heads are better than one I asked her colleague for help.

And the two travellers who had just arrived through the swing doors and I recognised from our Chemnitz party.

All of which would save me €65 and take just a 15-minute walk to the Charlottenburg S, or train station.

Of course I did a recce that night which took me around an hour and introduced me to the backstreets of the district and a Russian supermarket.

One way or another I did get my train to the airport the next day with ein little help from der Freunde.

Countries, Europe, Music

Der top brass of Chemnitz

22nd April 202422nd April 2024 funtime65

He’d rather be back home on his Gameboy but the little boy will look back on it all in future years when he becomes one of Der top brass of Chemnitz.

Well what child wants to dress like their dad?

Or worse still when he is in ceremonial dress.

But then we’ve all been there and where once I hated being decked in a kilt…

Now I don’t skirt any opportunity to flash a leg.

The Chemnitz miners share with our own Britons, who worked in the bowels of the earth, a love for brass music.

And costume and a drape to tell us of their mine’s proud tradition.

Blowing our own trumpets

As well as the birthright of Germans, a natural affinity with oompah music.

Which I have loved from the moment I first heard it.

As a 19-year-old at the Oktoberfest in Munich.

And decided to climb up on the bandstand, take the mic and belt out ‘My bonnie lies over the ocean’.

Before my body lay outside the Lowenbrauhaus, ejected by two bucksome Berthas.

Modern kraftverk

It’s taken a while to learn my lesson but here I am willing to let others take their deserved spotlight.

And so I let the miners’ brass band, the young orchestra, the street ballet dancers, Peace Ride cyclists and a mine host from Haddington take centre stage.

It’s kraftverk for the modern Saxony.

And it is all on show this week, a showcase for next year’s European Capital of Culture experience.

The miners’ story can be explored in the communes in the Oral Mountains above Chemnitz, 162 miles north of the Czechia border.

And here at the Kraftverkehr Chemnitz.

Captains of Industrie

Chemnitz, or Karl Marx Stadt as you might have known it back in Communist days, has reinvented itself as a post-industrial travel destination.

By putting the art into artisan as evidenced by the Industriemuseum which chronicles Chemnitz’s relationship with tools, motors and automobiles.

And to think that the burghers had drilled holes in the walls for dynamite to blow it up before it was salvaged.

The Industriemuseum boasts an array of artefacts automobiles.

And explores Chemnitz’s relationship with the Enigma code, Bauhaus and even a mummified body preserved appropriately by tar.

My own shell is similarly pickled these past three days by Marx and Gluck Auf beer.

And threatens to be further bolstered at the German Travel Mart closing event.

At the August Horch Museum Zwickau where we’ll tinker around classic Audis and East German Brabants.

All in the company of Der top brass of Chemnitz.

Countries, Europe

Shake off your Karl Marx Stadt Chemnitz

21st April 202422nd April 2024 funtime65

Shake off your Karl-Marx-Stadt Chemnitz you have only your given city name to lose.

Which is exactly what the good burghers of Saxony’s third biggest city did in the days around German unification.

The haste was understandable given they had waited 37 years to win their name back.

The original which defined them on account of it being the name of the river which runs through it.

It’s not as if the Father of Communism, Karl Marx, had ever been to Chemnitz, which is 162kms north of the Czech border.

But industrial Chemnitz was deemed the perfect stand-in to glorify Karl in 1953.

What’s in a name?

The year was a biggie behind the Iron Curtain as Stalin curled up his tache and his toes that year.

The GDR, the old communist East Germany, had been taken by surprise.

As they had just built a spanking new socialist city, Eisenhuttenstadt, which they had planned to rename after Marx.

Only to get the name Stalinstadt instead and industrial Chemnitz bequeathed with the Marx mantle.

Forward fast 57 years and the good people of Karl Marx Stadt struck a blow for freedom to call themselves exactly what they wanted.

And renamed themselves Chemnitz.

Also agreeing to keep the huge statue of the old dogmatist which is where we meet today to explore the city and region.

Lessons of history

It might seem strange that the Saxons should hold onto such a symbol of Communist oppression.

But, of course, I am reminded of the words of my guide from a previous German convention trip in nearby Dresden.

When I asked why the Dresdeners had not painted over a giant mural of Communist heroes on one of the walls.

And she informed me that as a child she had been taught that Saxon history only began with Communism.

And that to ignore it now would be to continue their lie and risk history repeating itself.

Today’s Chemnitz

Today’s Chemnitz is a vibrant city and the Chemnitzers a creative and forward-thinking people.

Rightly true to their past and proud of their future as a European Capital of Culture for 2025 along with its neighbouring town and countryside.

Through which I have been travelling today, the Purple Path, its mining heritage and the Ore Mountains.

As they say in these parts, and something they share with the Ruhr heartland, another former coal capital Gluck Auf.

Which means Luck Up which miners would say to each other in gratitude for getting back to the surface.

Now I’ve shaken off my own hangover after last night in the smoky rock bar The Hangover in Chemnitz I’m back.

Being a mine of information again and sharing with all how it came to be.

How you got to shake off your Karl Marx Stadt Chemnitz.