Where cathedrals can be angels with Romanesque wings, where the sky is sometimes vibrant with the sunshiny tremolo of a Vivaldi sonata, and where sunlight reflects on the flavor of ever more delicious cake - for lack of a better word, a travel blog.
We were late for the birth of the new world – the bloodied head of the sun was already peeking out of the waters as we ran towards the beach. A half disk with a horizontal line of light hair floating on the sea, it entered the sky with nearly visible speed.
When we got to the edge of the beach, the world was saturated with meaning. We took off our socks in awe and respectfully dipped our toes in the edge of the vast, all-engulfing plane of pink purpled by gently thundering waves.
The other edge was occupied by a sailboat, the sky was full of dancing birds, and I believed that generations of ears sophisticated by postmodernism and sacrilegious ringtones will never make Für Elise ugly.
Ferrara that day was a disappointment – tired after our morning walk, we were falling asleep.
And so it's happened. My blog has been degenerating into poetry for months now - possibly from the very beginning. I can't be bothered to write a proper introduction or glue my paragraphs together anymore, I've been writing "sketches" instead, but even those are starting to bore me - why put a verb in a sentence if you can just throw in a noun with an epithet?
Like the previous text, this one was written in Scotland. Since then I've spent three internetless weeks in Norway, so I'm putting it - an article about Scotland and the Scots - up now; something on (beautiful, amazing, unique) Norway is bound to appear in the not-too-distant future.
“Twenty thrrree pounds, please” – the accent of the man in the toll booth in front of the entrance to Traquair House is undoubtedly Scottish. My brother and I exchange gleeful glances – yes, I think Scottish is one of the most terrific accents there are (“terrific” with a very Scottish “rr”, of course), and I suppose my view of the Scots as an incredibly kind people is bound to be a biased one on this account; but it’s grounded in some evidence nonetheless, evidence which I shall present in what follows. And if it seems that this evidence comprises too small a sample to judge from, then the esteemed reader ought to acknowledge that at least the stereotyped view presented here is a positive one, and perhaps unfounded praise is more excusable than unfounded blame.
Twenty three, then, is the price of a family ticket, sold to us despite Dad’s “but our daughter’s a bit older than sixteen!” – a mark of the Scottish generosity we were to encounter so many times that week (however paradoxical that may seem to those who take stereotypes too seriously).
Traquair House, allegedly the oldest inhabited house in Scotland, is positively charming. With its tiny windows and whitewashed walls, it’s an overgrown cottage which sprouted towers in an effort to simulate castleness but managed only to acquire a “Moomins’ house” quality. We’re welcomed by a lovely lady whose reaction to our nationality seems genuinely warm, in contrast with the accusation I sometimes hear into museum welcomes in England. Interestingly, when we ask her how the name of the house is pronounced (at that point we didn’t know yet), she answers “Traqueer”, and when Dad faithfully repeats, “Traqueer”, she says “That’s right”, instead of “No, you should say ‘Traquare’, you’re not Scottish, silly”, like she surely should.
We’re shown around one of the rooms by an equally lovely man. “Feel free to ask any questions,” he encourages us, but when none are forthcoming, he proceeds to answer the ones we don’t think of. He shows us some fascinating things, including a cigarette lighter which always stayed upright, no matter how drunk its users were, and though he did indulge in some folk linguistics (“drawing room” was originally short for “withdrawing room” and did not, as he suggested, originate from ladies drawing their dresses across the floor), his enthusiasm was so boundless that he could easily be forgiven. He was so nice that I even managed to overcome my shyness and ask him about an intriguing snuffbox the shape of an elephant’s foot – it turned out to have actually belonged to the elephant’s smaller cousin, the hippo, and the news got me so childishly excited that I feel obliged to end this sentence with an exclamation mark!
***
The man in Jedburgh abbey had a wonderful habit of putting “-like” in most every sentence he said – this linguistic device is quite distinct from the “, like,” of American teenage girls; while they would claim “It was, like, cool”, his expression of choice would be of the form “It was cool-like”. The habit was one that was likely found, like, likable-like. He spoke of the merits of a five day pass encompassing various Scottish tourist attractions: “It’ll save you seventeen pound-like just on Edinburgh castle”; when we worried that five days would not be enough he replied “How about I just sell you the pass and won’t write today’s date in? That way you’ll get in here for free-like, and you can start your five days tomorrow-like”. Scottish generosity-like. I like it. Like, a lot.
***
To our disappointment, the caretaker of “our” first Scottish cottage – and our neighbour for a week – had no trace of a Scottish accent. She had lived in Scotland for forty years, though, and so perhaps her incredible niceness shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.
When we first arrived and she noted with approval Chris’s Beatles t-shirt, commenting that she had just been watching a documentary on John Lennon, we knew she was a wonderful person. Then one evening we found a whole pile of rhubarb under our doorstep, with a note explaining that it was from her neighbour, an avid gardener, who thought we might like it. From a complete stranger! – not for the first time I wondered how Scotland could have such beautiful mountains and such wonderful people. The rhubarb tart Mom made with the gift was obviously excellent.
Our neighbour was a great gardener too – there was a fantastic garden right outside our window, and she said we could take some of the herbs there if we wanted. Chris and I ate a few wild strawberries as well...
We had the pleasure to spend a lovely evening with her, and when the topic of conversation strayed to Scottish food, she exclaimed “You know what, I’ll make you some Scottish shortbread, if you want. Yes, I will,” she finished with a smile. Real, homemade Scottish shortbread!
***
“I can show you around some of the exhibits here, if you want. It may be of some help, but it may be a hindrance as well – sometimes it’s more of a hindrance than a help,” the volunteer guide at Melrose Roman history museum, an older woman who, despite her crutches, strides from one end of the room to the other with all the vigour one could ever wish for at any stage of life, smiles apologetically. She’s being unduly dismissive of her abilities to paint Roman universes with her words, to transport visitors to strange new places and to pour her never-ending enthusiasm into them by the gallon; but luckily for us, she is unable to take her worries about being a hindrance seriously for long.
We find out that this was the site of the only Roman settlement north of Hadrian’s Wall. “They had an amphitheatre here, and they found pins from the shoes of soldiers which fell out when they stomped their feet when they saw something they liked – or didn’t like. When I saw them, scattered by the dozen, the hair on the back of my neck literally – and I’m not exaggerating – stood on end. I felt the Romans were just so near, like they were watching me.” The relentless stream of words flowing out her mouth is gloriously multileveled – she interweaves archaeological facts, her own experiences and feelings, and even metacomments about how quickly she is speaking or how she just dropped her crutches and how she does this a good few times a day. She’s a real master of rhetoric, I feel – her words are real, close to heart.
“We’ve just visited Rome this Easter, so this is a nice connection for us,” Dad remarks casually on our way out of the museum. “Oh, have you?” she replies, genuinely interested, but with a hint of sadness in her voice. “It must have been wonderful. I never have myself, actually. I’ve always wanted to, and my son promised to take me, but then I had the heart attack, and I don’t want to go when I almost can’t walk. It would be torture, seeing all these places from a distance and not being able to really see them...” She trails away, then with an eyeblink-long shake of her head composes herself. “Ah, it doesn’t really matter. Not everyone can do everything. Besides, the other volunteers here regularly visit Rome, and they bring back many stories and photographs. Perhaps it’s best that way.”
Real heroes know how to smile.
***
In the words of a guide in Edinburgh castle: “For those of you who aren’t Scottish – don’t worry, nobody’s perfect”.
I've been wanting to start a series about Oxford for a long time, and now, I think, enough memories have piled up to begin. So I've written this piece - about some of the green places in my city, the college parks and meadows - and more will probably be coming.
People ought to raise their heads more when standing under tall trees. It’s a dizzying experience, sparkles of leaves extending on and on, a whole world but in the other direction. Everyone looks up without hesitation in mountains and in gothic cathedrals – are trees different because they aren’t meant to be beautiful?
Chestnut trees surely are beautiful, whether the common man acknowledges this or not. There’s a picture of me, six years old, in sunglasses and a flowery dress, standing under one of them and smiling. That’s what they’ve been for me through the years – the trees of childhood, givers of shiny brown nuts for making the toy animals that seem so easy to build in books but always fall apart in real life.
But in Oxford I noticed a different side to chestnut trees. Gosh, they’re just beautiful! There’s one right outside my window, rainbowy in the autumn, happily green in the spring and summer. There’s one on a path I take to lectures, greenening my world. And there’s the ones in the various colleges, the ones under which I like to read philosophy.
The ringed bench goes all the way round the trunk of the chestnut tree in Saint John’s College, and you sit with back against rough bark. The monumental umbrella of leaves stretches out above, encircling your whole world from afar, like an enemy battalion or like someone leaning out to touch, hand always a few tantalizing inches away. I hold an almost equally monumental volume of Frege scholarship in my lap – with gargoyles nesting in corners of nearby walls and a sense of the wisdom of ages pushing itself against your back and in through your eyes, this place seems made for learning. But let’s not kid ourselves – the best study places are not necessarily the most beautiful. “Not today, Frege,” I think and lose myself in the blanket of green above my head.
Still, I come back to chestnuts to study again and again. There’s a wonderful one in Worcester College – you first see it through a gate, a bizarre barrier with no purpose save being a pretty, romantic frame. If you so wished, you could go round the gate, getting to the path under the chestnut tree without going through the doorway. But it is the pointlessness that makes the gate so lovely, of course.
You go through the gate, then, and encounter the chestnut tree. It washes its myriad branches in a glistening lake; on clear days the leaves double in number and I lean right over the edge of the water to see the highest ones.
The branches not busy with gazing at their reflection shade a lovely stone bench, crumbly and greened by moss, just like the pointless gate, with armrests the shape of sphinx heads. I make myself comfortable and sit down to some nice group theory – some days studying under chestnuts does work. On days right before exams mostly.
***
A mist-laden desert of greying yellow – Narnian lampposts sprout out of nowhere with surreal regularity. I walk past them, “Forty Walks in Oxfordshire” in hand, heading towards some uninteresting fields.
It’s one of those walks which require a certain degree of willpower for their worthwhileness – the latent beauty of the surroundings has to be unearthed from under the wintry mist. Little dewdrops and delicate greys can be soft rewards for the effort, but as it starts to rain and I splash my way further and further through the mud, I voice the thought that had been with me on this walk all along – what’s so special about this place? I had been blindly following the instructions in my book, but, I had to admit, nowhere along the way was there anything particularly interesting, and any other route would have been just as good – or bad.
It came as an utmost shock to me, then, when I revisited this place – the meadows behind the University Parks – with Dominika in June, and saw possibly the most beautiful place in all of Oxford.
The Constable-esque view has “idyllic” written on every single blade of grass; the soft greys and yellows have given way to much softer greens, which melt away into the setting sunlight. To the right two starkly red tree trunks curtain a stage for a troupe of clumsy crimson cows. To the left the grass sooths endlessly, pinks filter through thin perpendiculars of trees and jump into little ponds. I see in my mind’s eye the days when I shall enjoy this newfound treasure more thoroughly. It is the sunset daybreak – the time of day when everything seems in front, though it is in fact mostly behind.
***
Head tilted slightly sideways, I dip my vision into the Cherwell. Inverted irises dot the bank, ingrowing trees are blown to and fro by the current. I lose my balance a bit, like someone who’d just seen something new, someone acknowledging beauty in upside-downness. The water overbrims with sparkling blueness. How can reflections be more beautiful, realer than the real thing? A duck glides by like a torpedo, a triangular trail of air behind it, slicing the wet world in half. Green and blue watercolour mixes and blurs into soft abstraction.
