A Distinct Lack of Lifts

Monday morning found me once again heading to the King's Cross-St Pancras area to catch a train.  (The two are purportedly distinct, though to my perception they kind of flowed together into one huge station.)  Though the UK's rail system is not exactly inexpensive, it still seems less expensive and is certainly more convenient than rail travel in the US.

When buying my ticket I used a machine, which gave me the option of selecting one for a high-speed train.  As this cost a few pounds more, I did not go with that option.  Then, ticket in hand, I looked at the trains in front of me, all of which had the words 'high-speed' emblazoned on them.  So over I went to the railroad employees, who I hope were getting time and a half for working on the holiday and who were all just as pleasant as they could be, and asked if I'd need the high-speed ticket.  I would, but it was no problem to simply pay for the surcharge without buying entirely new tickets.

The trip was uneventful as the train made its way eastward and somewhat north.  I kept thinking of the most recent Robin Hood film, because one of the train's stops was in Gravesend, and in the film the returning Crusaders pass through that area on their way back from France.  As I was preparing to alight at Rochester, the punk who'd been sitting in the same carriage woke up and asked, very politely, if we'd already passed one of the previous stations.  I felt bad that he'd missed his stop, but was pleased by his good manners, and by being proved wrong in my assumptions based on his style.

As the train approached Rochester I could see the tower of the castle, and grew dismayed as we kept

going.  Though the station did not appear as near as I'd hoped to the attractions I was visiting, they turned out to be not very far away at all, and easy to find.  I walked up a small hill and found myself on a bunting-canopied historic, and rather empty, street.  At first I was worried that everything was going to be shut up because it was a bank holiday, but then I considered that it was not yet 10 a.m., and that things would probably open later.  As it was, the only people I saw as I strolled were a group of voluble French students.

I soon gleaned that the bunting was decoration for the Dickens Festival, which would be happening at the following weekend.  Rochester was a favourite of Dickens, and he patterned many locations in his works after real buildings in the town; these are marked with plaques noting in which novels they appear and what they are called there.  There are also lots of shops whose names contain Dickensian references, like Pip's greengrocers and Sweet Expectations.

I was about halfway up the street when suddenly to my left there was an open area, rather than the row of shops that preceded and followed it, and the cathedral appeared.  A set of steps led up from street level into a little grassy courtyard with benches and a fountain in the middle; beyond that was a wrought-iron gate into the cathedral grounds, leading to the main entrance.  Directly opposite the west doors of the cathedral is the castle.  I don't believe two places I've been to visit have ever been so conveniently located before.

 

Founded in the 7th century, Rochester is the second-oldest cathedral in England, though the present building only dates from the 11th century.  If I remember correctly, it is also the shortest in length of all England's medieval cathedrals.  One of the things I liked best about it was the bathroom, because it was hidden behind a little door in a very medieval-looking corridor.  It was also impressive how modern and comfortable the bathroom was, given its location; it must have taken some work to plumb everything in.  Like St Albans, Rochester was also a pilgrimage site, and includes a set of steps that were used by penitent visitors as they made their way to the shrine behind the altar.  The stone steps have become so worn down and concave over the years that wooden steps have been built over them to make the ascent easier (and likely safer).  The cathedral's quire screen was especially nice, carved with saints and patrons of the church, but I also enjoyed seeing memorials to military service, including a regiment in Gibraltar, and the poppies arranged by the Great War memorial.

On the side closest to the cathedral is the castle's former moat, now grass-filled, which features a small plaque noting Dickens' desire to be buried there (they stuck him in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey instead).  Beyond the moat is a wall enclosing the castle grounds, and within is a large grassy area with a few trees.  As this part is free to enter, it seemed as popular with the locals as with tourists; in the afternoon there were people picnicking and playing cricket there, and a group of teenagers had climbed onto the roof of the building that housed the toilets and were getting a talking-to from an employee as I used the facilities.  The 'castle' is really just the keep, a large rectangle rising up at one end of the grounds, and it is there that you must pay if you want to see any of what's inside.

I have told several people this story before, and by George I will tell it again because it may be one of my favourite things that I have ever read about a castle.  When I was deciding where to go on the bank holiday Monday, I read a bit about Rochester and saw that it was fairly easily reached from London.  Knowing that I delved deeper, and came across the TripAdvisor page for the castle.  TripAdvisor lets users rate and review attractions, and among the many four- and five-star ratings I saw that the castle had three one-star, or Terrible, ratings.  I had to check these out; I can't think of a castle I've been to that I would rate so poorly, but perhaps these reviewers had experiences that I ought to know about before I decided to visit.

The first of the Terrible reviews was about the Christmas market, so I felt safe ignoring that one.  The next two left me flabbergasted.  Both were from Brits, and both said that they'd visited with people who had some kind of handicap.  And both reviewers were upset that there was no lift in the castle.  (That's an elevator, for all of our Spanish-speaking friends.)  Yes: not one but two people expected that the castle that was begun in the 12th century would have a lift inside.  I must admit that I was pleased to see that these reviewers were from the UK and not the States.

As it is just a tower, there's not a lot to see inside.  One room near the bottom has a display showing a diorama of the castle at its most complete, and includes a timeline of its history, but as the majority of the building is devoid of a roof or floors that aren't in the corridors, there is no furniture or decoration.  There are informational panels describing, in English and French, what the various rooms would have been, with illustrations showing them filled with people at work.  All the same, it didn't seem like it would have been a comfortable place to live; the squareness of it must have been somewhat monotonous for its inhabitants.  I was very slightly unsettled by Rochester Castle--not actively uncomfortable, but vaguely aware that something seemed off.  Eventually I realised that it was mainly because of the arches.  With possibly one or two exceptions, most of the arches are Norman (or Romanesque, if you're on the Continent).  This means that they are the rounded kind, rather than pointed Gothic ones.  For someone used to seeing mainly Gothic arches, their marked absence in Rochester was odd.

Before I left I decided that I ought to get fish and chips.  There was a chipper on the street near the cathedral entrance, and from there I ordered cod and chips.  What I got was the biggest piece of fish I've ever eaten.  It was easily nine inches long.  Of course it was good, crisp and hot and filling, and I ate it sitting on a bench near the cathedral.  Would that there were more meals in such locations in my life.

On the way back to London someone came round to check our tickets, and I presented both my original Rochester-St Pancras ticket and the one for the upgrade.  'And you've got the other bit as well, aren't you very good, my love,' said the conductor checking tickets.  Yes, I am, I thought, well pleased with myself and with having been in a cathedral and a castle and having eaten my fill of fish and chips in a pleasant town.

Castle Run

A few weeks ago one of my former students shared a video on Facebook of a bunch of guys freerunning and parkouring around Spiš Castle.  This was done with the castle's permission, because it was a professional video with sponsors and everything.  The group, Born To Trick, has made a series of these videos called "Castle Run"; there are eight of them, each filmed in a different Slovak castle.  This morning the poor soul who has the dubious distinction of being my best Slovak friend sent me a link to this video, done at Orava Castle.  I can't imagine leaping about in that castle, where I felt so dizzy even when I looked at the pictures of it when I got home.  Though I've not seen all of the videos yet, this one might end up being my favorite; besides the parkour it also features folk dancers, and that's what Slovakia is.  It's people who are proud of their country, its culture and its natural beauty, and that celebrate that while embracing modern life.

 

Trenčín

Slovakia, as we have no doubt previously discussed, is not a big country. It is about twice the size of Wales, or four times the size of Jamaica, or, like, a twentieth the size of Canada (thank you, Across Cultures). It should take about 10 hours to drive clear across the country east-west, or about five north-south. But as I didn't have the foresight two years ago to buy a used car and learn to drive stick, I still have to rely on public transportation, and so it took Robin and me six hours and three buses to get to Trenčín on Friday afternoon.
We liked the city immediately. The center is a short walk from the bus and train stations, passing the rock outcrop the castle's built on. Trenčín has many lodging options, but we stayed in the Hotel Grand. It is by far the swankiest place I've stayed in Slovakia. Accordingly it was a bit spendy. I regret nothing.

A stage with a big screen and a sound system were set up in Mierové namestie, the main square, and a crowd had gathered to watch Slovakia play (and, unfortunately, lose to) the Czech Republic in the hockey championships. We watched most of the game in a restaurant called Mexiko. Their interpretation of enchiladas was pretty wide of the mark, but the mojitos were good.

On Saturday morning we got to see the town without a lot of people around before heading up to the castle. There's a covered stairway that goes partway up the hill and leads to Marianské namestie, a little square consisting of a church and a smaller chapel. There was a mass in progress, but even if the church had been open, it was too full of scaffolding to see anything interesting.

At the castle gate we bought our tickets for the tour starting at 9:45. (The photo fee was a very reasonable .70€.) Tours start at the gate to an inner courtyard, so we looked around some before and saw a baby trebuchet and a new phenomenon, castle goats. At the outset our guide told us she didn't speak much English and then proceeded to give us the most salient points in perfectly serviceable English.

Trenčín's recorded history dates back to the Roman Empire, when Roman soldiers defeated a local Germanic tribe and then wrote about it on the cliff that the castle would later occupy.* The oldest part of the castle is a rotunda built in the 9th or 10th century of which now only ruins remain. Much of the castle was destroyed by fire in the late 18th century and thus there's been a lot of reconstruction, but whatever. I'm giving this one a pass. The most famous master of the castle was Matúš Čak (Csak in Hungarian), who held the cool title "Lord of the Váh and the Tatras." The tallest tower is named for Matúš and dates from the 14th century.
Tower-climbing story of the day: This one is unique because there isn't one continuous staircase all the way up. You go up a floor, walk through a room to a different corner, and take a different staircase. They're all pretty narrow and have very short doorways. Only the last one is a spiral, too.

Our tour over, we went back down to the lower area and saw that there was a mini historical reenactment camp set up, including an old-school wooden merry-go-round. Then Rob spotted a guy shooting arrows, and asked him if she could try. It was a euro for four arrows and we both had a go. I SHOT ARROWS IN A CASTLE. Just clarifying that for the record. For another euro, the blacksmith at the forge let visitors strike their own commemorative coins by whacking a simple die with a hammer. Trenčianský hrad wins for activities.

Then, as so many of these stories go, we ate some ice cream and departed the town.

Trenčín is a good place. You don't really need to be there more than a day; it would be a good excursion from Bratislava.

The next post will be about a special mid-week adventure happening this Wednesday and Thursday. For the sake of my third-year history class, I'm going back...to Hungary.

*Guidebooks will tell you the inscription can be seen through a window at the back of the Hotel Tatra, which is built right up against the cliff. Said hotel is currently under massive interior reconstruction and is closed for a bit, so don't plan on being able to see the writing anytime soon. There's a replica on display at the castle.

Kremnica

We in Slovakia are on Easter break starting today. As you can tell by the fact that I'm writing a blog, I've not gone abroad anywhere. This is because I procrastinatoriously failed to buy plane tickets somewhere before they got too expensive. So while I'm not in France, as I'd hoped to be, I do have the opportunity to chip away at my list of places I still have to see before I leave.

Today I went to Kremnica. This town is most famous for having something like the oldest continuously-operated mint in the world. The town itself was granted a charter in 1328. The old part has double fortifications: one wall around the square and the mint, and another around the castle complex on a hill.

The square is grassy, rather than paved, and the weird thing about it, aside from the fact that it's currently being dug up, is that it's tilted. The highest point is the corner nearest the castle. There's also a nice big plague column in the square. The mint is on one corner, and two other museums are on the square as well.

As I said before, it's a castle complex, not one castle building. To be honest, it's not all that castley. The most important part of the complex is the cathedral...which is closed for renovation. It's supposed to be really impressive inside. In the complex you can also go in (from left to right below) the bell tower, the cathedral tower, the north tower with an exhibit on archaelogical finds and the defense of the castle, and the pink tower, which incorporates the oldest building there, a Romanesque chapel and ossuary.

When the guide was telling me about the cathedral tower, she said it was a strenuous climb of 127 steps, at which I thought that 127 wasn't too bad. The sign outside the tower itself says, among other things, "Going up the 127 winding stairs is pretentious." I laughed, and then started up, and then agreed, as long as your definition of pretentious is "terrifying as hell." Why do I keep going up these towers with the really steep, really narrow steps? I don't like being afraid; but I always go. When I was almost at the top, I heard people coming down, so I pulled over into a little alcove to let them go by, and these two workers literally ran down the stairs, as if to mock me.

The town museum is quite good. It includes exhibits on the history and guilds of the city, the mining process, medals and medallions, and, my favorite part, money in the area and Slovakia in general, from the earliest Celtic coins to the euro. I recommend visiting this museum. You might have to hang out for a while to get in, though, depending on whether the one guide is giving a tour or is available to sell you a ticket.

It was a good one-day trip (I left just after 6 this morning and got back just after 6 this evening, for the record). Maybe if I'd gone earlier in my Slovakia time I would've been more wowed by Kremnica, or maybe if I'd been able to go in the cathedral, but it was still a pleasant day and I enjoyed it.

North Wales: Harlech

The challenge of getting to Harlech was that I first had to get to a town called Pwllheli. In Welsh the w is a “oo” sound, and the double l is sort of like “hl” but not really. Needless to say, I was a bit worried about this, but Pwllheli was the bus’ final stop and the driver seemed to understand my pronunciation okay. From there I got a train down to Harlech. Now, you can see the castle from the train station easily enough, and there is a staircase/ramp deal up the hill, but it’s closed pending some safety-review nonsense. Instead, I had to walk up a street to the town. It was probably more dangerous to go that way than to go the way that had been closed for safety reasons.

Harlech is the only of the castles I visited that’s on a substantial hill. It’s not the highest point in the town, though; there’s another hill a bit behind it, and while walking around I saw that on the second hill there was some kind of walkway that I needed to investigate. At the bottom there was a sign saying that it was a wood and that the owners welcomed people to walk in it. After a few minutes I realized that I was walking in the woods in the UK. That was a happy moment.

Harlech is most famous for the song about it that supposedly dates from a siege of the castle during the Wars of the Roses. “Men of Harlech” was featured to great effect in Zulu. I thought maybe they’d play the song somewhere in the castle, in an exhibit or something, but no dice. Luckily I was prepared with my iPod, and stood at the top of the tallest tower and listened to Charlotte Church’s version and thought about armies marching toward the castle and about how beautiful this place was.

In Harlech I finally counted how many steps were in one of the towers—131. I would estimate I went up at least three towers in each of the four castles, and if 130 is the average number of steps in each tower, that equals 1,560 stairs climbed. In Caernarfon on Monday I was fairly worried about falling to my death on some of the stairs, but by the time Thursday rolled around I was slightly less concerned. In all of the castles, at least some of the steps in the spiral staircases had been replaced, and that wasn't necessarily reassuring; it just made me wonder how sound the rest of the old, unreplaced steps were.

There was something at Harlech that I've never seen in any other castle that I can think of, movie castles not included, and that's a staircase on an interior outside wall. In one corner there was this set of stairs that curved with the corner. It was rather narrow, but at least I didn't have to worry about hitting my head on anything.

One thing that struck me about all of the Welsh castles was how many birds there were in and around them. There were pigeons and gulls at all of them, and even ravens in Harlech. Beaumaris even had this "Pozor seagull" sign posted with all the other warnings ("Watch your head," "Do not slip and fall to your death," and one that looks like "Ice cream headache" but is really "Let your eyes adjust to the dark"). I think one of the reasons it was so noticeable was because there aren't a lot of birds around Tisovec for some reason.
Part of me looks at every place I go to and asks, “Is this my home?” Right now I’m preparing to leave Slovakia and go…somewhere else, and at the moment my biggest criterion is that that somewhere else will be an Anglophone place, but I don’t know much other than that. I know that I have a positive visceral response to the UK that I don’t have to Italy, for example, but I’m not sure if that’s enough to try to make a life in a place. On the other hand, I did just move to Slovakia sight unseen, and that’s worked out pretty okay. Even if I don’t ever move to Britain outright (and I shouldn't, because I'd eat cheese and drink cider until it killed me), I’ll certainly go back to visit again. Berwick-on-Tweed, Forest of Dean, Canterbury, I’m coming for you.

Every morning on spring break I woke up to hear seagulls outside, and every day I got to stand and smell the sea nearby. I spent a whole week waking up happy and being happy for the rest of the day. That's what I call a holiday.

North Wales: Beaumaris

Wednesday I learned something about buses in the UK. Even if you’re standing at a bus stop, waiting expectantly for your bus, it won’t stop unless you hail it. I failed to stick my arm out properly at the stop in Bangor, and ended up missing the bus to Beaumaris that I meant to get on. Luckily, I was across the street from a supermarket, so I was able to look around there and buy some cheese and a dandelion-burdock soda. Going to the supermarket made me want everything, especially all the different kinds of cheese, and cider, and sweets. My one regret about this trip was that I couldn’t try every kind of cider Morrisons supermarket had on its shelves. I’m also glad I got on the later bus because the driver was funny. Whenever someone pushed the button for a stop he’d call out and ask where they wanted to stop, and let one woman off right in front of her house.

Beaumaris is on an island—specifically on Anglesey (Ynys Môn in Welsh), the island just to the north of Gwynedd. There are at least two bridges, including the Menai Suspension Bridge and the Britannia Bridge, and at least one rail line that connect the island to the mainland. I was pretty excited to go to Anglesey, because it’s in our social studies book, and after pointing to it on the map for three years it was cool to go there.

Beaumaris Castle looks short and squat from the outside. It’s got a moat part of the way around it, with a couple of swans squelching through the mud…it looks like a little backyard playhouse castle. Once you get inside, though, it seems a normal size. Beaumaris is built on a concentric plan: there are outer walls, and then a set of inner walls. Although it was never finished (part of the reason it seems so short), it’s called Edward’s most technically perfect castle.

Beaumaris is the one Gwynedd castle whose chapel is intact and open to visitors. It was not a very big room, and set up as expected. I think the thing that most caught my attention was that the interior was whitewashed, although most of the castles' exteriors were completely whitewashed as well. Besides the whitewash, the only remaining decoration was the nice Gothic arches, like in the doorway at left, as well as blind arcading on the side walls. On each side of the chapel was a small room slightly higher than the chapel itself, with a window into the chapel. These, if I recall correctly, were for the use of the king and other important people.

I did break down and go in a church in Beaumaris. I didn’t mean to; it was just there, and I only meant to walk around the churchyard but the church itself was open, and the nave dated from the early 14th century, and I couldn’t stop myself. Inside there was an alabaster tomb of a nobleman and his wife, and a stained glass window made with fragments of medieval windows destroyed during the 16th or 17th century. There were also some good misericords on the stalls near the altar.

If Caernarfon was my favorite castle, Beaumaris was my favorite location. Standing atop the walls, one can see sheep pastures on one side and the Strait in the near distance. It really was charming. None of the pictures do it any sort of justice. Looking back at the mainland, it put me in mind of Middle Earth, with the snow on the mountains above the green hills and the clouds around them. I swear LotR used to be on YouTube, why can't I find it now that I want to watch it?

For lunch I had bara brith and tea. Bara brith is a Welsh specialty. It’s a kind of fruit cake. I’d really hoped to eat something featuring leeks, but I wasn’t able to find anything. Then for a snack later I bought a scone stuffed with fresh whipped cream and jam, and I ate that staring at the nature. For my final act, I charged up a little hill that I’d seen a man walking his dog on earlier that day. The hill went up to a little cliff overlooking the strait. Then I ran part of the way down, just because. Me and my well-traveled umbrella, running down a hill in Wales, dodging cow pats.

North Wales: Conwy

Conwy suffers in comparison with the others because it was the worst weather all week. I’m not complaining in the least; the weather in general was fantastic for the middle of February in north Wales. I took my big blue-plaid Roman Christmas Eve umbrella and my new rain boots all the way to the Wales; the boots stayed under my bed all week, but I toted that umbrella every place I went. Because of this, it didn't rain significantly for the entire trip. But Tuesday was the one day that the sun didn’t come out for very long.

The major difficulty with traveling by bus in a place you’ve never been is that it’s hard to know where you are and where you ought to get off. There were a few stops in Conwy, and I kept waiting for the one that would be closest to the castle until we passed it altogether. Conwy is right on the edge of the Menai Strait, and the next stop was on the other side of the bridge, so I got off there. It gave me an opportunity to see the town from a different viewpoint than I would normally have had. And I'm a fan of bridges in general, so when I realized I'd gone too far I thought, 'Oh, the horror, you'll have to walk across that bridge.' Conwy, like Caernarfon, is a walled town, but it still has most of its walls today. They go from the castle up to a high point in the town, and then back down to the water. A few stretches of the wall were closed, but I think I covered most of it. There are only three places where you can ascend to or descend from the wall, and I had to walk along it for a minute to get to one of them. The section up to the high point, where I took the picture above, was pretty steep. The town inside the wall wasn’t huge; about 300 people probably lived there. It was granted a charter, giving it certain rights that other towns wouldn't necessarily have had, by Edward I in 1284. I joke about being old, and sometimes I really do feel quite old, but Conwy has 699 and a half years (give or take, for calendar changes) on me. It's pretty amazing that not only are these places still standing after all this time, but that they let people like me, whose enthusiasm occasionally outruns their common sense, tromp around on them.

The most interesting thing about the castle for me was probably the great hall. It wasn't just a long, perfectly rectangular room. It had a bend in it. In the picture, the great hall runs along the left side, and you can see the kink. The other thing that I noticed at all of the castles was the fireplaces just hanging in the middle of the walls. Of course, when the castles were complete, these fireplaces would've been attached to floors, but nowadays they're suspended in midair, a good distance above head-height. I've mentioned before that I don't have a very good imagination for how things would have looked in the past, so it was easy for me to forget that where there is grass now used to be indoors.

On the bottom floor of one of the towers there was an exhibit about castle chapels that was moderately interesting. Unfortunately, visitors couldn't actually go into Conwy's chapel, which was the next floor up. Some of the things I read in the exhibit I remembered the next day, when I was at Beaumaris and could go in the chapel.

For lunch I had Welsh rarebit, which was basically cheese on toast, but tasty. Look, it even came with a little salad. (I find that I appreciate salads more after having lived in a place where they sort of don't exist.) And I had tea with it, of course.

And because I know this is the question you've all been asking all along, here is what a Welsh police car looks like. Okay, it's really not that shiny, but the flash went off and lit up all the reflective bits. Please note that this is indeed a bilingual car. Also, I smudged the numbers on the plate, just in case anyone had any bright ideas about making their own counterfeit Welsh police car.

North Wales: Caernarfon

Here is the précis of this whole trip: CASTLES! Castles castles castles.

Two years ago it was Northern Ireland. Last year it was England and Scotland. This year it’s Wales, and I’ve now been to all the nations of the United Kingdom. This was also my first major trip all by my lonesome, and it was quite the success in that regard, too.

So I went to Wales for two purposes: to fulfill my spring break destiny, and to visit the castles of northern Wales, the area known as Gwynedd. I didn’t go to all of the castles there, but picked what I felt were the four most outstanding of them.

(I flew into London and took a train to Wales. If you’re near Euston Station and you’ve got some time, the British Library is about two blocks away. I went to see the Treasures, which include the Lansdowne Chaucer, a Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, Beatles lyrics written by John Lennon, a Shakespeare quarto, the Luttrell Psalter, and many more fabulous literary works. And it’s free. I highly recommend it. I feel compelled to warn all readers that London is ridiculously expensive to be in even for a short time. A ride on the Tube in Zone 1, where most of the interesting stuff is, cost £4. The coach from central London to Luton Airport cost me £16 on Saturday morning, and if it hadn't been 2 AM I would've been irate. As it was I just got on and sat there thinking, 'It doesn't even cost that much to get from Tisovec to Bratislava.')

The castles all share a common background and some common characteristics. They were built during the reign of the English king Edward I (called Longshanks) in the 13th century and were designed by a Savoyard called James of St George. The castles built by Edward’s decree were known as the “Iron Ring” of defense against uprising by the native Welsh, which included the rebellion under the famous Owain Glyndŵr.

I knew that people in Wales speak Welsh—I teach kids this very fact, and in one Rick Steves video podcast he shows people on the streets speaking Welsh. (The first half of the video was filmed in Caernarfon, and I was totally all the places they showed. I think the guy from Cadw who talks inside the castle sold me my ticket.) But I assumed that the majority of people who used Welsh as their first language were some old people, and that everyone else would speak English. I was quite incorrect there. Gwynedd is the main Welsh-speaking region of the country, sort like the Gaeltacht in Ireland. Of course everyone speaks English as well, but I was surprised to hear teenagers speaking Welsh to each other. Welsh is not the easiest language, and I was nervous about having to pronounce names of towns to people.

When I first saw pictures of Caernarfon Castle I was quite amused. It looks as if it’s made of Legos, and clearly a castle such as a one that could be made of Legos is the archetypal castle. I chose to stay in Caernarfon for the week and travel to the other towns, most of which were only about an hour away by bus. The hostel I stayed at was around the corner from the castle and right inside the city wall. It couldn’t have been in a better location.

My first impression of Wales is this. I got off the train in Bangor on Sunday night and then had to take a bus to Caernarfon. I was hoping that the bus station/stop would be close to the train station, which it actually was, and readily apparent, which it wasn’t. I looked at a map outside the station, then looked around the station itself, but to no avail; so I decided to ask for help. A woman was waiting in front of the station with her two kids, so I showed her the bus schedule and asked if she knew where the bus would be. She, in turn, asked where I was going, and where particularly I was staying in Caernarfon, and then said, “We’re going to Caernarfon. Do you want a ride?” When her husband brought the car around they had room and told me about the town. They even dropped me off right at the hostel. Thus, I concluded that Wales rocks.

On holidays, my general M.O. is to get up and go out in the morning, be out all day, and then retire for the night. My first day I had a look around town to get the lie of the land before going in the castle (besides, it hadn’t opened yet). The night before, the Very Nice People had mentioned that there was a hill behind their house that had good views of the castle and town, and without trying hard at all I managed to locate the park. It was a small hill, this Twthill, but it did have the best views of the town, the Menai Strait, and Snowdonia.

Caernarfon may have been my favorite castle. Of course, this could just be because it was the first I visited, but I really liked the angles of the walls and towers. Inside the castle there are a few exhibitions: a video on Edward I’s castles and especially Caernarfon, an exhibit on the Princes of Wales with emphasis on the most recent investiture there, and the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum.

In 1284, Edward I’s son was born in Caernarfon. Soon after his birth, Edward II was presented to the people of Wales as their prince who could speak no word of English (say what you will about Edward I, he was not a stupid man by any means). With the birth of Edward III’s son, the Black Prince, the heir apparent to the English throne has always received the title Prince of Wales; but it wasn’t until the 20th century that the investiture ceremony took place in Wales again. David Lloyd George, one-time MP for Caernarfon and later Prime Minister, suggested that the future Edward VIII be created Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle, and in 1969 Charles was also given the title there. There is a large slate dais in the middle of one of the inner courts (it's the dark round spot in the photo above) that was the site of Charles’ ceremony, and will be where the next Prince of Wales will be invested as well.


Although Caernarfon was built as a walled city, and large portions of the wall still exist, they’re not open to walk. They do lend to the overall ambience of the town, though. Close to the castle is Hole in the Wall Street, lined with cafes and restaurants, and Castle Square, with the post office, a church, multicolored shops, and a statue of Lloyd George. In this photo, Hole in the Wall Street is on the opposite side of the wall; Castle Square is in the foreground; and Twthill is in the top right corner.

I had takeaway from a fish and chip shop for dinner: a steak and kidney pie, chips, and mushy peas. Was it my best Valentine's Day ever? It may well have been.

Orava

The problem with having been here for two years is that by now all of the places I’d like to go are the ones that are the least easy to get to. These are the ones that it takes a bus and three trains to get to, and four buses to get home from, and that mean leaving earlier on a Saturday than one usually gets up on a weekday. I am committed to seeing as many things as I can, though, especially my castles and World Heritage Sites.

If you’re a classic cinema fan, you might recognize Orava Castle from the old black-and-white vampire film Nosferatu. (I can’t even imagine how inexpensive it was to film in Slovakia in the 1920s.) Orava is one of the country’s most famous castles, and it was only the travel time that kept me from visiting it before. But on Saturday Tika and I went up north, taking a bus from Tisovec to Banská Bystrica, then trains from Bystrica to Vrútky, then Kraľovany, and finally Oravský Podzámok. On the way home we took buses from Oravský Podzámok to Dolný Kubín, then to Ružomberok, Bystrica, and home.

From the train station in Oravský Podzámok, you walk to the left, which takes you across the Orava River. Once you’ve crossed the river, the entrance to the castle grounds is on the right side. When we first saw the castle from the train, we expected it to be up higher, because there are higher hills in the area; but it’s a tricksy castle. It doesn’t look like much of a climb, but once you’re inside, you move upward pretty steadily. From the top of the citadel it’s a fair drop pretty much straight down.
Our tour group entered the castle (through the door with the dragon handle!) at 10:50. We passed through the first two gates, then a tunnel into the lower castle area. Like Fiľakovo, Orava has three distinct levels: the lower, middle, and upper castles. When we were entering the first room, one of the armouries, I needed to clarify with the guide where I could take pictures, so I went up and did the whole 'I don't speak much Slovak but...' thing. She spoke some English, though, so not only did I get my answer about photographs, but she also gave us some information about things she'd already said, and told us that there were explanatory texts in some of the rooms.

Like other castles, Orava had been used as a defensive position for quite a while (on the high ground), and the castle has been rebuilt and expanded several times in its history. Many of the governors of the castle were from the Austro-Hungarian nobility. Some of the furnished rooms in the castle are fairly modern--that is, from the 18th century and possibly later.

In a fairly predictable fashion, my favorite room was the "Knights' Hall," which was decorated with paintings of hunters and this Davy Crockett-type dude about to kill him a bar.

Lonely Planet says the tour is "long" without being more specific. Our tour, excluding the chapel, which was an additional two euros, ran about an hour and forty minutes. It didn't feel long, though, and it covered a lot of the castle. Besides the furnished rooms, there was also an exhibit on the geography and natural life in the Orava region, with a stuffed two-faced goat kid and more normal taxidermied subjects.

I felt a bit disoriented on the tour, because we were passing through rooms and hallways, sometimes emerging into courtyards and onto balconies, and always moving up toward the highest point. I would not recommend the tour for people with serious vertigo or inner-ear imbalances; when we climbed the last set of stairs to the citadel, I was feeling a little dizzy. The citadel is the highest part, the easiest to defend, and on the back side the drop goes right down the rock face into the river. True to the Central European spirit of "If you're dumb enough to hurt/kill yourself, don't blame us," there was a window wide open in the citadel with nary a protective barrier between a visitor and highly-probable death.

Unfortunately (for me, perhaps fortunately for readers), I feel like I'm running out of things to say about castles. I liked Orava, although even now, as I'm writing about it and remembering being there, I still feel a little off-balance. The weather, as you can see, was fantastic, and the trees around the castle hill were beautiful. The one major bummer was that we didn't see any of the historical skits that are apparently sometimes performed on the grounds, although we did see a couple who'd just gotten married in the chapel. Orava Castle is definitely a cool place, but the verticality of it and the resultant physiological reaction probably rules it out of the running for my future castle home.

How Do People Live Like This?

“That in the back yard? Oh, that’s just the castle.”

Seriously. How do you go about your everyday life with a castle ruin sitting there? I guess after a while you really would grow accustomed to it; but I know that if I moved to a place where you can see the castle from a lot of places in town, I’d spend much of my time staring at it. I was staring at this castle so much on Saturday that I might have accidentally ignored someone from the school who said hello to me in English.

This is Fiľakovo, or Fülek if you’re Hungarian (or Falafel if you're my dad). Fiľakovo is one of the southernmost cities in central Slovakia. If you went much further south, you would be in Hungary. Because of this, a large portion of the population of Fiľakovo is ethnically Hungarian, and most people seem to be bilingual. Many signs are in both languages, although Slovak has precedence. The problem is that you never know which language someone is going to start talking to you in. Furthermore, I can't be sure if someone's just using Slovak words I don't know or actually speaking Hungarian until I've been listening for a minute. This led to me just staring at at least one person until he asked, "English?" So I guess that technique worked for me.

Early Saturday morning I got on the train, and arrived in Fiľakovo right around 8:00. The castle didn't open until 10, but I figured I'd have a look around the town first. It's not a huge place, and the biggest tourist draw is certainly the castle. I had a walk around the town park, with the "mini-zoo," and wandered around the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (kostol nanebovzatia Panny Márie). It's good that I went into the latter, since last week I had a dream where I said, "I need to go to a church." When I walked in, I thought, "There you are, subconscious, and you were right; this is good." The church has a monastery connected to it, and as I was walking around, a Franciscan friar came in and said something in some language to me. I just smiled and kept looking at the side altars.

I liked walking around the park. It was pleasant overall, but it also had one really pretty maple tree. Pictures do not do justice to this tree.

Finally it was time for the castle to open. The man at the ticket office tried Hungarian first, and then Slovak, whereupon I answered something like "Yes. No! Everything," while waving my hands at the castle. (I have also identified this problem: if I don't really understand what someone is saying, I tend to say yes to whatever they ask.) This is when he tried English. He was very nice and gave me the youth ticket price, even after I'd said that I was a year over the cutoff, and told me to stop by before I left and he'd show me aerial photos of the castle site.
As I'm sure you know, Slovakia used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But a little bit of Slovakia also belonged to the Ottoman Empire, and that bit was around Fiľakovo. The town was the seat of the northernmost sanjak or administrative region of the empire. This is why the town's crest has a palm tree on it.

Most of the castle is in ruins now; the only part that is a complete building is "Bebek's Tower," which has an exhibition on the history of the castle (in Slovak and Hungarian). It's a little bit weird to see gold plates and pitchers with Arabic writing and Islamic designs on them in Slovakia. Even weirder was that the temporary exhibition on the top floor of the tower was of African masks, musical instruments, and dolls.

The castle used to be much bigger than the site is now. What is left is part of the old upper and middle portions. The lower castle is now part of the town. Like Edinburgh, Fiľakovo Castle was built on an extinct volcano. The rock that remains looks very different in the two places, though. When you're actually in Edinburgh Castle, you can't tell that the site is a former volcano, whereas in Fiľakovo, it's easy to see. The rock it's built on is flowy and even to my un-geologically-trained eye it just looks like metamorphic rock. The photo below contrasts the natural stone and the dressed stone of the semicircular tower there. The guide pointed out that this castle had an advantage over Šomoška, which you might recall is built on basalt. Fiľakovo is on something more like sandstone, which means that the builders were able to bore through the rock and dig wells. This is highly advantageous if you're constructing a stronghold.

(Maybe I should publish a pamphlet about how to build a castle. It'd be, like, "Captain Ahab's Guide to Your Fortress of Dreams" or something, and full of historical paraphrases. I have a bad habit of paraphrasing historical figures and events in class. My version of the Zimmermann Telegram from World War I went "Dear Mexico...Love, Germany.")

From what I understand, the castle's importance diminished after the Turks lost control of the area. Once Fiľakovo was just part of Austro-Hungary again, the castle wasn't really necessary. But it remains a symbol of the town and a good reminder of an exceptional period in the history of southern Slovakia.

The theme at church this week was thanks for the harvest, and this was one of the readings. Sometimes, when you're as spoiled as I am, you forget to be thankful. This was a pertinent reminder for me to give thanks, because I really do live in a good land.

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

Deuteronomy 8:7-10