UK National Fish and Chips Day

In the UK June 1st  (for this year anyway because it is always on a Friday) is celebrated as National Fish and Chips Day.

Which brings me back rather neatly to England and especially my home town, the fishing port of Grimsby. They know a thing or two about chips in Grimsby let me tell you and there is a chip shop in every street – sometimes two and people there know best how to cook them and to eat them.

Never mind the fancy restaurant trend for twice or even thrice fried potatoes they just cut them up and sling them in a vat of boiling fat or preferably beef dripping and then serve them piping hot and crispy on the outside with delicate fluffy middles with the only two accompaniments that chips really need – a generous sprinkle of salt and lashings of good vinegar.

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National Beer Days

National Beer Day is celebrated in the United States every year on 7^th April, marking the day that the Cullen–Harrison Act which repealed prohibition became law.  After being signed off by President Franklin D. Roosevelt it is alleged that he said “I think this would be a good time for a beer.” 

Everyone seemed to agree with him because it is said that on the day that the Act was passed into law people across the country consumed one and a half million barrels of beer to celebrate.  This raises a question mark for me – during prohibition who brewed one and a half million barrels of beer and why?

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Age of Innocence, 1958, The Munich Air Disaster

The most distressing piece of news in our house in 1958 was most undoubtedly the Munich air disaster of 6^th February when an air crash at Munich Airport in Germany caused the deaths of eight Manchester United players and several club officials and sports journalists.

In 1958 the Manchester United team was one of the most talented in the World and was known as the Busby Babes, which was a reference to their manager Matt Busby and to the average age of the players, which at twenty-four was unusually young.

Manchester United had been to Yugoslavia to play the second leg of a European cup match against Red Star Belgrade.  The match had ended in a 3-3 draw and United had won the tie 5-3 on aggregate.  In the 1950s domestic league matches were played on Saturdays and European matches were played midweek and there wasn’t the same amount of flexibility around fixtures that there is today and having played the match there was no alternative but to return home to England immediately despite poor weather conditions.

The club had chartered an aeroplane to fly them home but the takeoff from Belgrade was delayed for an hour as one of the players had lost his passport, and then the aircraft made a scheduled stop in Munich to refuel.  The plane was a British European Airways Airspeed Ambassador, which was an aircraft that had carried nearly two and a half million passengers on eighty-six thousand flights since it began service in 1952 and had an immaculate safety record.

After refueling the pilot tried to take off twice, but both attempts were aborted.  When a third take off was attempted the plane failed to gain adequate height and crashed into the fence surrounding the airport, then into a house, and caught fire.  Although the crash was originally blamed on pilot error, it was subsequently found to have been caused by the build-up of slush towards the end of the runway, causing deceleration of the aircraft and preventing safe take off speed from being achieved.

Seven players died immediately in the crash, Roger Byrne, the captain, Mark Jones, Eddie Colman, Tommy Taylor, Liam Whelan, David Pegg and Geoff Bent.  Probably the most famous Busby Babe of all was Duncan Edwards who was tipped at the time to become one of the World’s greatest footballers but although he survived the crash he died from his injuries a few days later in hospital.

In 1953 he had become the youngest footballer to play in the Football League First Division and at the age of 18 years and one hundred and eighty-three days, he had made his international debut for England in April 1955, and became England’s youngest post-war debutant. This record was not broken for forty-three years, when Michael Owen made his England debut in 1998.

Matt Busby who was himself very seriously injured in the crash resumed managerial duties the following season and eventually built a second generation of Busby Babes, including George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton (who also happened to be one of the original Busby Babes) that went on to win the European Cup ten years after the disaster in 1968.

As a football fan this was devastating news for my dad who for many years afterwards always remembered the tragedy and spoke fondly of the lost Manchester United team.   In a scrap book that he kept at the time he kept the front page of the Daily Mail which covered the story on the next day.  The only other two newspaper front pages that he kept were those that reported the assassination of Kennedy and the death of Winston Churchill.  That’s how much it meant to him.  And he never bought me an Airfix model of the BEA Airspeed Ambassador either.

More from the Daily Mail…

We remember Manchester United but we should also remember:

• The Zambian national football team was flying on a military plane on its way to Senegal for a 1994 World Cup qualification match, when the plane crashed in the late evening of April 27, 1993. All 30 passengers and crew, including 18 players, as well as the national team coach and support staff, were lost in the accident.
• The Superga air disaster took place on Wednesday, 4 May, 1949, when a plane carrying almost the entire Torino A.C. football squad, popularly known as Il Grande Torino, crashed into the hill of Superga, near Turin, killing all 31 aboard, including 18 players, club officials, journalists accompanying the team and the plane’s crew.
• The 1987 Alianza Lima air disaster took place on December 8, 1987, when a Peruvian Navy Fokker F27-400M, chartered by Peruvian football club Alianza Lima, plunged into the Pacific Ocean six miles short of its destination. On board the flight were a total of 44 players, managers, staff, cheerleaders and crew members, of which only the pilot survived the accident.

Manchester United,The Busby Babes and the Munich Air Disaster

The most distressing piece of news in our house in 1958 was undoubtedly the Munich air disaster of 6^th February when an air crash at Munich Airport in Germany caused the deaths of eight Manchester United players and several club officials and sports journalists.

As a football fan this was devastating news for my dad who for many years afterwards always remembered the tragedy and spoke fondly of the lost Manchester United team.   In the scrap book that he kept at the time he kept the front page of the Daily Mail which covered the story on the next day.  The only other two newspaper front pages that he kept were those that reported the assassination of Kennedy and the death of Winston Churchill.  That’s how much it meant to him.

  

  

  

We remember Manchester United but we should also remember:

• The Zambian national football team was flying on a military plane on its way to Senegal for a 1994 World Cup qualification match, when the plane crashed in the late evening of April 27, 1993. All 30 passengers and crew, including 18 players, as well as the national team coach and support staff, were lost in the accident.
• The Superga air disaster took place on Wednesday, 4 May, 1949, when a plane carrying almost the entire Torino A.C. football squad, popularly known as Il Grande Torino, crashed into the hill of Superga, near Turin, killing all 31 aboard, including 18 players, club officials, journalists accompanying the team and the plane’s crew.
• The 1987 Alianza Lima air disaster took place on December 8, 1987, when a Peruvian Navy Fokker F27-400M, chartered by Peruvian football club Alianza Lima, plunged into the Pacific Ocean six miles short of its destination. On board the flight were a total of 44 players, managers, staff, cheerleaders and crewmembers, of which only the pilot survived the accident.

Read the full story…

Scrap Book Project – Bank Notes

Foreign travel and different bank notes remind me of my dad’s insistence on always returning home from foreign holidays with currency for his personal memory box.  The note above is from the former state of Yugoslavia which dad visited several times in the 198os.

Even if it was 90˚ in the shade and everyone was desperate for a last drink at the airport dad was determined to bring a souvenir note or coin home and would hang on with a steadfast determination that would deny last minute refreshment to everyone so long as he could get his monetary mementos back home safely.  How glad I am of that because now they belong to me and now my own left over bank notes from my travel adventures have been added to the collection.

The euro is useful because it has simplified travel to Europe but I miss the old pre-euro currencies. To have a wallet full of romantic and exciting sounding notes made you feel like a true international traveller. I liked the French franc and the Spanish peseta and the Greek drachma of course but my absolute favourite was the Italian lira simply because you just got so many.

When going on holiday to Italy you were, for just a short time anyway, a real millionaire. The first time I went to Italy, to Sorrento in 1976, the notes were so worthless that it was normal practice for shops to give change in the form of a postcard of a handful of sweets.

My most favourite bank notes are probably from Switzerland.  Everyone knows that the Swiss are fond of money and they leave no one in any doubt of this with the quality of their notes.  Not only are they brilliantly colourful but they are printed on high quality paper as well and one is thing for certain – these notes are not going to fall apart easily.  Another interesting thing about the Swiss Franc is that there is something about it which prevents it being scanned and half way through the process the scanner stops and produces a message on screen that it cannot copy a bank note.

 

Scrap Book Project – Good Losers

There is something about coming second or even outright failure and disaster that is important about being British because, unique amongst nations, we have a talent for turning disappointment into success and accepting failure equally as we embrace victory and triumph.  This ability to absorb failure and turn it into a triumph is an exclusive characteristic that contributes to the British Bulldog spirit.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott was a Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions, the Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13.  During this second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17^th January 1912, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition.  They Failed!  Let’s not misintepret this, they Failed!  On their return journey, Scott and his four comrades all perished from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold.   And here is the point because even though he failed in his quest Scott became an iconic British hero, a status maintained ever since.

History is in fact littered with failed military battles and disasters that we have perversely turned into iconic moments of British history.  1066 and the Norman invasion – we were invaded and conquered!  Dunkirk was a defeat and a miltary withdrawal,the Charge of the Light Brigade was a disaster but my favourite example is the Battle of Isandlwana on 22^nd  January 1879, which was the first major encounter in the Zulu War between the all conquering British Empire machine and the  Zulu Kingdom of South Africa.

Eleven days after the British commenced their invasion a Zulu army attacked a portion of the British main column consisting of nearly two thousand mixed British and colonial forces.  The Zulus were armed with the traditional assegai iron spears and protected by cow hide shields and the British were armed with the then state of the art Martini-Henry breech loading rifle. Despite a vast disadvantage in weapons technology, the Zulus ultimately overwhelmed the poorly led and badly deployed British, killing over one thousand, three hundred troops, whilst suffering only around a thousand casualties of their own.

The battle was a decisive victory for the Zulus and caused the defeat of the first British invasion. The British army had received its worst ever defeat fighting against a technologically inferior indigenous force. However, the defeat of the British forces at Isandlwana was turned into a victory just a few days later with the successful defence of Rorke’s Drift which simply erased the memory of the ignominious defeat!

Other disasters have also been turned into iconic successes.  The RMS Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world and pronounced unsinkable when she set off on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on 10^thApril 1912.  Four days into the crossing, at twenty to midnight on 14^th April, she struck an iceberg and sank just over two hours later the following morning, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

In sport, the boxer Henry Cooper became a national hero for failing to beat Cassius Clay in a 1966 World heavyweight championship fight, Tim Henman is revered for only ever reaching the Wimbledon tennis semi-finals which is another example of the British stoic acceptance of failure.  Sir Stirling Moss never won the world drivers’ championship, but became a hero to millions through his chivalrous conduct on the racetrack. He famously did himself out of the title in 1958 by leaping to the defence of a rival who was in danger of being docked points.  John Francome would have won the National Hunt jockeys’ championship in 1982, but chose to share it with a rival who had been injured. Judy Guinness would have won fencing gold for Great Britain at the 1932 Olympics if she hadn’t pointed out errors which the judges had made.

And let’s not forget that in the world of entertainment we actually seem to enjoy the annual ritual humiliation of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Freiburg im Breisgau and Allied War Bombing

To give it its full title, Freiburg im Breisgau is one of the famous old German university towns, was incorporated in the early twelfth century and developed into a major commercial, intellectual, and ecclesiastical centre of the upper Rhine region.  Statistically it is the sunniest and warmest city in all of Germany but that certainly wasn’t the case today.  As we parked the car and walked towards the city centre there was a steel grey sky, the pavements were wet and the colour was bleached out of the buildings and streets and after just a couple of minutes we knew that it was unlikely that we would be seeing the best of Freiburg today.

In the centre of the city in the cobbled Münsterplatz or Cathedral Square there was a small unhappy looking market where people were rushing past the stalls because it was too cold to stop (except for the fast food van that was doing brisk business and had a queue of people lining up for fasnacht doughnuts) and we did our best to find the cheerful bits of Freiburg’s largest square.  The square is the site of Freiburg’s Münster, a gothic minster cathedral constructed of red sandstone, built between 1200 and 1530 and which is memorable for its towering needle like spire.  We went inside and it was cheerful and warm with large stained glass windows and friezes on the walls that commemorated the various traditional trades of the city.

It didn’t take long to do a full internal circuit of the Münster and fairly soon we were back on the streets complete with the city’s unusual system of gutters, called Bächle, that run throughout the centre. These Bächle that were once used to provide water to fight fires and feed livestock are constantly flowing with water diverted from the River Dreisam.  During the summer, the running water provides natural cooling of the air and offers a pleasant gurgling sound but we didn’t need cooling down today. There is a saying that if you fall or step accidentally into a Bächle, you will marry a Freiburger but I imagine there is a much greater chance of just breaking a leg.

From a an aerial photograph inside the Cathedral we had seen that Freiburg was heavily bombed during World War II and a raid by more than three hundred bombers of the RAF Bomber Command on 27^th November 1944 destroyed most of the city center, with the notable and thankful exception of the Münster, which was only lightly damaged.   After the war, the city was rebuilt on its original medieval plan and in the streets that ran off of the Münsterplatz we entered a world of colourful buildings that completely surrounded the modern new main shopping street running through the centre.  We walked through streets of half timbered medieval buildings and but for the fact we knew that they had been rebuilt from the ruins of the war we could easily have been in the mid sixteen-hundreds.

We liked Freiburg and after our walking tour stayed long enough to finish the visit with a snack and a drink in a busy city centre café and then with the afternoon slipping away and with plans to see a Fasnacht carnival later on we left the city and walked back to the car.  On the way out of the car park the ticket machine flashed the message ‘goot fahrt’, I thought ‘thanks very much and after that glass of gassy German Pils I just might.’

 

World Heritage Sites

In 1954, the government of Egypt announced that it was to build the Aswan Dam, a project that proposed to flood a valley containing priceless treasures of ancient civilizations.  Despite opposition from Eygpt and Sudan, UNESCO launched a worldwide safeguarding campaign, over fifty countries contributed and the Abu Simbel and Philae temples were taken apart, moved to a higher location, and put back together piece by piece.  At last the World was collectively protecting its treasures and hopefully never again will something magnificent like the Colosseum of Rome or the Parthenon of Athens be torn down and destroyed by following generations of rebuilders.

Building on this international success the United States then came up with the idea of combining cultural conservation with nature conservation and a White House conference in 1965 called for a World Heritage Trust to preserve ‘the world’s superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world citizenry.’ The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968 and they were presented in 1972 to the United Nations conference on Human Environment in Stockholm.  A single text was agreed and the ‘Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage’ was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16^th November 1972.

Today there are eight hundred and seventy-eight listed sites and it isn’t easy to get on the list and to do so a nomination must satisfy impressively difficult criteria which in summary consist of cultral criteria:

to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius; to exhibit an important interchange of human values; to bear a unique or exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition; to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or landscape; to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement; to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance,

and natural criteria:

to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance; to be outstanding examples representing major stages of Earth’s history, to be outstanding examples representing significant ecological and biological processes; to contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-site conservation of biological diversity.

It is hardly surprising that with forty-seven listed sites Italy has the most but for those who think of Spain as nothing more than a country of over developed costas with concrete condominiums, marinas and golf courses it might be a shock to learn that Spain has forty-three sites and is second highest in the exclusive list.

On every visit to Spain I seem to be visiting a World Heritage Site so when I counted them up I was interested to discover that I have been to twenty and that is nearly half of them.  In 2005 I visited Barcelona in Catalonia and saw the works of Antoni Gaudi and Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau. Then in 2008 I saw the Historic Centre of Córdoba,  the  Caves of Altamira in Cantabria, the Old Town of Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville.  In 2009 in the motoring holiday around Castilian cities I visited the Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct,  the Historic Walled Town of Cuenca, the Historic City of Toledo and the Old Town of Ávila.

Even before I knew anything about World Heritage Sites it turns out that I have visited two more in the days of my beach type holidays, although when I went to these places neither of them were yet on the list.  In 1988 I holidayed on the island of Ibiza which was accepted onto the list in 1999 in recognition of its biodiversity and culture.  The following year I went to Tenerife and took a cable car ride to the top of Mount Tiede, a national park that was accepted to the list in 2007.  I have also visited Benidorm but for some reason that doesn’t yet seem to have made the list.

Even though they weren’t World Heritage Sites at the time I visited them I am still going to count them but the final two might be a bit dubious but anyway here goes.  In 1984 while driving back through Spain from Portugal I drove with friends through the city of Burgos which was accepted in that year because of its Cathedral and in Galicia in 2008 while visiting Santiago de Compostella I managed to drive over parts of the Pilgrim Route, which exists on the list separately from the old city itself.

Next time I go to Spain I am going to pay more attention and see how many more I can visit.

Turning for a moment to Greece it will surprise no one that the Acropolis and the island of Delos are both on the list but due to mistakes made in submitting the application form by the Greek Ministry of Culture in 2005 then for the time being Knossos is not there.    Everyone is accusing everyone else for this mistake and the Prefect of Iraklion blamed both the Ministry and UNESCO for leaving Knossos off the updated list of World Heritage Sites in 2006.  I am surprised that a site that important even has to bother with an application.

Black Forest Railway (Badische Schwarzwaldbahn)

Over breakfast we agreed that this was probably not a good day to be driving around the Black Forest on snow bound roads even with winter tyres so we decided to take a train journey instead.   This being Sunday there wasn’t a lot of traffic about and the snow that had fallen remained mostly undisturbed and lay like a thick carpet across the road and the pavements.  We negotiated our way safely to the station, left the car in a car park and because it was still snowing left it hoping that it wouldn’t get completely snowed in while we were away.

We had missed the train by just a couple of minutes so this provided an opportunity for an early morning beer in a bar opposite the station while we waited before going back to purchase our €30 day return ticket for a journey into the forest on the Badische Schwarzwaldbahn.  The Black Forest Railway (as we know it) was completed on 10^th November 1873 and today is a twin-track, electrified railway line running in a north-west to south-east direction and links Offenburg on the Rhine Valley Railway with Singen on the Upper Rhine Railway. It passes directly across the Black Forest, through spectacular scenery on a route that is one hundred and fifty kilometres long, ascends six hundred and fifty metres from lowest to highest elevation, and passes through thirty-nine tunnels and over two viaducts. It is the only true mountain railway in Germany to be built with two tracks, and is the most important railway line in the Black Forest. 

Being Germany the scarlet DBAG Class 146 locomotive and modern double-decker passenger cars arrived and left completely on schedule and we selected good seats on the top deck with excellent views on both sides.  The first part of the journey was quite flat as we passed through Gengenbach on our way to Hausach as the train lines followed the route of the Kinzig valley through sleeping vineyards and lifeless orchards and then as the valley narrowed the train began to climb effortlessly towards the most dramatic and scenic part of the route through the Gutach valley to Hornberg and then to Triberg and on to Sankt Georgan.

In this middle section the train has to ascend six-hundred metres through a series of helical tunnels and this part of the line was the most complicated to construct and was completed last.  The route passes through thirty-seven tunnels in this section and across one large viaduct at Hornberg.  On its way from north to south, the line passes under the main European watershed (which divides the drainage basins of the major rivers of Germany north and south) twice, once via the Sommerau tunnel between Triberg and Sankt Georgen, which is one thousand seven hundred meters long, and then via the Hatting tunnel, between Engen and Immendingen, which is nine hundred meters long.

This was a brilliant journey through magnificent scenery, thick snow and blizzards and as I was not driving today I was able to enjoy the fabulous views.  After Sankt Georgan the line began to descend again until it reached our first destination of Villingen-Schwenningen where we left the train after a journey of an hour and ten minutes.  It had stopped snowing now but not before it had deposited several centimetres on top of the town and everywhere looked pristine and clean under a dazzling white mantle.

Perhaps Villingen is always quiet on a Sunday or perhaps the snow had kept people indoors because the place was curiously quiet today and everywhere was closed and it was obvious that this was not the place to drive out to for Sunday lunch on a snowy day.  The town was much like Freiburg only smaller with a main street with too many shops but pretty enough with pastel coloured facades and colourful window displays but as there wasn’t a great deal to do we only stayed for forty minutes and then took the next available train back to Triberg.

From the eastern edge of the forest we went back through the cork screw loops into the high mountains covered in pine trees all bearing a heavy burden of snow and standing in rows like an army regiment ready to march.  Before we reached Triberg there was another blizzard and the train passed through the long dark tunnels each ending with the explosive contrast of the brilliant white cresta run channels of trackside snow as we passed out of them.

The station at Triberg was a little way out of town so we caught a bus with lots of other people into a busy main street full of activity but whatever was going on must have just finished because within just a few minutes Triberg was just as quiet as Villingen.

Florence and the Ponte Vecchio

The Ponte Vecchio that crosses the river Arno in Florence is the oldest bridge in Tuscany and by happy chance the only one in the city that, allegedly due to a direct order from Adolph Hitler himself, wasn’t blown up by the retreating Germans as they cleared out from Florence in their withdrawal from Italy during the Second-World-War.  Knowing how the Germans were fond of blowing things up that must have been a one-in-a-million fluke!

The first bridge on this site was built a long time ago by the Romans and was constructed of wood on piers of stone.  It was ruined in 1117, reconstructed soon after but destroyed again in 1333 by flooding and then rebuilt once more in 1345, but this time more sensibly in stone.  Due to the high volume of traffic using the bridge, a number of shopkeepers set up shop to catch the passing trade.

The first merchants here consisted primarily of blacksmiths, butchers, and tanners catering mostly to travelling soldiers who were passing through but when the Medici family moved into Florence bringing with them vast wealth and an appreciation for the finer things in life they promptly cleared the bridge of all the dirty trades, that were probably a bit of an eyesore anyway, and certainly responsible for polluting the river below.

They replaced them with goldsmiths and more similar upmarket shops and today it remains lined with medieval workshops on both sides with some of them precariously overhanging the river below supported only by slender timber brackets.  A number of these shops had to be replaced in 1966 when there was a major flood on November 3rd that consumed the city and damaged some of them but this time was unable to destroy the bridge itself.  The flood story is an interesting one and a good account can be found at

www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/c-d/cities06.html

Running along the top of the bridge is a corridor that the Medici had built so that they could cross the river without having to mix with the riff-raff below and is now an art gallery.  When we visited the bridge it was busy with street traders and shoppers and the ever-present scrounging beggars of course.  Along the bridge there were many padlocks locked to the railings and especially in the middle around the statue of the Florentine sculptor, Cellini.

This, I found out later, is a lover’s tradition where by locking the padlock and throwing the key into the river they become eternally bonded.  This is an action where I would recommend extreme caution because it sounds dangerously impulsive to me; I think I would further recommend taking the precaution of keeping a spare somewhere in case I needed it later.  Apparently all of these love tokens do lots of damage to the bridge and thousands of padlocks need to be removed every year.  To deter people there is a €50 penalty for those caught doing it and that is a much higher price than I would be prepared to pay for eternal bondage!

Actually, it may be that there is some truth in this tale because according to ‘Eurostat’ even though the divorce rate has doubled in the last five years Italy has one of the lowest rates in the European Union.  Sweden has the highest and although I don’t know this for a fact I’m willing to bet that across all of Europe the Vatican State probably has the absolute lowest!

A day trip to Florence

Venice three visits three hotels