Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in London

June 8, 2022

Lille is in northwest France, not far from the English Channel. My original thought had been to travel to London old-school by ferry from Calais to Dover. I soon discovered that since the channel tunnel opened, this is no longer a realistic option for a foot passenger (1). Perhaps kayak across (2)? Not allowed due to heavy freighter traffic, fog, and strong tides in the channel. So, a train through the tunnel to London it would be (3).

After eating some bangers and mash at a pub, I headed to the Charles Dickens House Museum (4), poked about the museum, and had tea and scones.

Like Lille, London has a simple bike share system (5). Wending through Wednesday rush hour traffic (6) in a general southwesterly direction, I came to the Thames, and cycled around Westminster.  Buckingham Palace was not reachable due to street closures associated with the  Queen's Platinum Jubilee Celebration this month.

The Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank was the venue for the Philharmonia Orchestra's performance of Mahler's Second "Resurrection" Symphony. The performance was sublime and chills ran down spine toward the end when the combined musical forces sang the text with power but restraint:

Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du,

Mein Herz, in einem Nu!

English translation:

Yes, you shall rise again 

My heart, in an instant

The Orchestra's new 33 year old (!) conductor made the familiar piece sound fresh (7). I walked, rather than cycled, the few miles back to the hotel to slowly savor the performace.

(1) Back in the day, the trains connected with the ferries directly (a). Since the tunnel opened, the ferry ports have moved outside of town to more readily accommodate cars and trucks. Foot passengers now are not even allowed on most of the crossings.

(a) Many were even labelled "boat trains."

(2) Twenty miles of paddling would be a stretch for me, but doable with a good boat and a local guide (b).

(b) While comfortable setting out on my own on a bike or a hike, local knowledge of the sea conditions is necessary for kayaking.

(3) The Eurostar train was cheaper and much faster than the few cumbersome train/bus/shuttle/boat options available, which would have taken all day anyway.

(4) I read my first Dickens novel (Bleak House) as an undergraduate to vary my reading while taking an intensive economics course. It was so good, I proceeded to read all of Dickens' novels.

(5) Pop your credit card in, get a code, take a bike. Some cities (e.g. Brussels) require emails, app downloads, passwords, authentication, etc. Not worth the hassle for a visitor.

(6) I generally stuck close to other cyclists when I could. Many of the bike lanes double as bus lanes. While the bus drivers respect the process, the double decker buses are much bigger than the bikes. Very different riding style than in the Belgian countryside yesterday.

(7) One of the percussion players performed on the xylophone and tubular bells. She walked over at one point to play one of the two timpani drum sets (c) with one of the timpanists. So, two sets of timpani drum and three performers, simultaneously (d).

(c) That's serious cross-training.

(d) There was a third timpani set offstage (with some more horns also).

Typocal Belle Epoque architecture in Lille

The Dickens House Museum

Italian illustrator's depiction of a  chair come to life from Dicken's first novel The Pickwick Papers:

"The chair was an ugly old gentleman; and what was more, he was winking at Tom Smart."

Inspiration for window Oliver Twist was pushed through to rob a house:

"Sikes ... put Oliver gently through the window with his feet first; and, without leaving hold of his collar, planted him safely on the floor inside."

The gate from the Marshalsea Debtors Prison, which features prominently in Little Dorrit

"It is gone now; and the world is none the worse without it”

Bust of Dicken's father who was held in the Marshalsea when Charles was a boy

Dickens welcomes you upstairs

The servants quarters downstairs

Riding through Lobdon

Sunset on the Thames

Cycling to the Christmas Truce Memorial

June 7, 2022

On Christmas Day 1914, the first year of World War 1, there was an informal truce among the British and German troops who sang carols to each other and eventually emerged from their trenches to play soccer. My favorite Swedish Metal band: Sabaton released a video last year of their new song Christmas Truce, with a rather elaborate reënactment of the event: https://youtu.be/HPdHkHslFIU 

One of the locations of the truce is about 11 miles (as the crow flies) west of Lille, France (1). Getting there by bus would require three buses and more than an hour and a half of time. A bicycle would be quicker, so I grabbed a bike from the Lille bike share system (2) and headed west amid rain showers. Lille is a small city (3), and I soon left the city behind and was cycling in rural Flanders.

While the road had a bike lane for portions of the way, both the rain and the traffic became heavier. I pondered turning around, but glimpses of brighter skies ahead were encouraging. Crossing the Leie River at Frelinghien, France, there was not even a sign on the bridge welcoming you to Belgium. After a few false starts where the map was inaccurate, I crossed under a motorway and took a series of paths and narrow country lanes, sometimes shared with horse riders, to the northwest and the site of the Christmas Truce. There is a small memorial here where people leave soccer balls as momentos. 

I returned to Lille via a different route, where I found quieter roads, but larger towns with shops. I got some chocolate in Belgium, then stopped at a French Patisserie in the pleasant little French town of Houplines. The sun came out, and I was now heading downwind (4), so the ride back through Flemish villages was very pleasant. I guesstimate about 25 to 30 miles in the saddle today.

(1) Why go to Lille? There was a really cheap flight from Varna in Bulgaria to Lille today.

(2) The heavy bikes are designed for last-mile rides in the city, not for sojourns to another country. But, any port on a storm; the bikes were readily at hand.

(3) On the plane this morning, the crew proudly announced that the airline specialized in "connecting Europe's medium-sized cities." (a)

(a) Varna is also not a large city either. 

(4) Both of which helped my wet clothes dry off on the ride back.

WWI Memorial at Frelinghien, France near the Belgian border

Crossing into Belgium

No "Welcome to Belgium" sign, but Dutch on Police cars

The narrow roads of Belgian Flanders

Soccer balls at the memorial site

Pluigstreet Cemetery

Last stop in Belgium

Crossing back to France

Back in France

The patisserie on the corner had a tasty concoction of puff pastry filled with coffee-flavored cream

Good cycling roads

Hippodrome, Western Lille

Lille at dusk

Hiking to the Madara Rider

June 6, 2022

The front/obverse of Bulgarian Stolinki coins (1) depicts the Madara (2) Rider, a cliff-face carving above the village of Madara, southwest of Varna on the rail line to Shumen.

After walking through Varna's sea-side Primorski Park (3), I caught the train heading inland and was the only passenger who alighted at Madara. Finding my way in the village was easy: there is basically only one road and I needed to go uphill.

A stone staircase leads to the cliff face, carved in the 800s C.E., during Bulgaria's first empire period. The carving depicts a man on horseback having just vanquished a lion, followed by his faithful dog (4). Pictures do not do justice to the artistry of the 1,200 year-old bas-relief carving.

A trail leads further up the cliff face through an irregular series of stone steps to the top of the escarpment (5). Here an old fort guarded the approaches to the First Empire capital at Pliska and the broad, rich agricultural land north of the Balkans.

The sweeping views from the escarpment to the villages and farmland below, and across to the Shumen escarpment, explain the military significance of the site. The vistas were enhanced when the sun poked through the clouds.

I walked along the ridge top to a viewpoint facing southwest (6). I heard voices across a cleft in the cliff and a woman appeared on the cliff face opposite me. I noted a somewhat overgrown path that appeared to go the right way (and stayed away from the cliff edge) and proceeded with caution.

After a few minutes down the narrow path, I encountered a woman hiking (the only other person I had encountered on the ridge so far). I mustered my best "zdravete/hello" (7) and she raised one finger in the universal sign for "wait a minute." There was a group of four woman hiking and their leader emerged, asking in English if there were another way down besides the irregular stairs we had come up (8). She showed me a map on her phone indicating the presence of cave monasteries in the area that she was looking for. Judging by the topography, they would be close, but a hundred feet or more down the cliff face. 

Their leader indicated that there was a viewpoint just past where we were chatting (the same one where I had seen her earlier). The views there invited lingering. I had a snack and enjoyed the scenery while watching swallows of some kind dining on the wing, and bees gathering pollen from small purple flowers.

Later, back down by The Rider, I saw the guide and her four friends; we exchanged mutual thumbs up. A class field trip was also there with the teachers taking action shots of the kids jumping in front of the cliff carving, which the emerging sunshine now had revealed in richer detail.

I stopped at a souvenir booth for some postcards, but the shopkeeper did not sell stamps. "Post office in Madara?" (Поща мадара?) I asked in my pidgin Bulgarian. She laughed incredulously as if to say Madara is way too small for a post office. "Varna, Shumen, Sofia" have post offices, go there (9).

Back down to the station for the afternoon local train to Varna. I always feel better when other passengers show up when I'm waiting for a train, suggesting that I had not misread the train schedule. While I waited alone, I was comforted when the road crossing gates descended at the right time, signalling an approaching train. I hopped on, opened a few windows using all of my (limited) upper body strength to budge the windows on the ancient train and enjoyed the ride back to Varna.

Overall, the hike was 4 or 5 miles long, with a 900 foot vertical rise. History, culture, nature, hiking, train rides and a quick dip in the warm waters of the Black Sea at the end; a good day.

(1) For context, the 50 Stolinki coin is currently worth about 28 US cents. The main unit of currency in Bulgaria is the Leva, divided into 100 Stolinki. There are also 1, 5, 10, and 20 Stolinki coins, all depicting the rider on the obverse.

(2) Pronounced with the stress on the first syllable: MAH-da-ra.

(3) Established in 1878 during Bulgaria's national revival period and roughly akin to Boston Public Gardens (established around the same time), although Varna's Promorski park is much larger, stretching about five miles along the sea.

(4) Looking closer at the coins, I noticed they omitted the dog from the image on the coins.

(5) While the stone steps were not slippery from the overnight rain, the air was heavily saturated with moisture, making me huff and puff more than usual in the humid air.

(6) My mild fear of heights and general clumsiness kept me a respectful distance from the cliff edge.

(7) "Zdravete" to be polite and greet people in their own language. "Hello" to indicate that I do not speak Bulgarian.

(8) Their guide was hoping for an alternative path back down (and spoke English well and with some subtlety): "I'm trying to keep the ladies alive with hope of an easier way down" (a).

(a) Ironically, if I had not heard their voices across the chasm, I probably would not have ventured this far myself.

(9) The post office in Varna is right near the train station. After making my way through the many packages on the floor waiting to be picked up, I pointed to where the stamp would go on the postcard, said "America" in my best Bulgarian accent and indicated how many cards I had. The clerk demonstrated the requisite combination of three stamps necessary for each card by pasting them to one of my postcards. Curious, I said "Engliski: 'stamp'; Bulgarski?" "Марки" (MAR-key) she replied with a smile, giving the plural form.

The morning train to Kaspichan, connecting to Madara

The Madara Rider

Climbing the escarpment

At the top

The fortress

There's an old saying:

"He who would keep a secret must keep it a secret that he hath a secret to keep."

Not so much here

View across the cleft from first viewpoint

Venturing down the overgrown path

Looking back to the first viewpoint

The village of Madara

Views from second viewpoint, worth lingering for.

Bee gathering pollen at second viewpoint

Flower on escarpment

Climbing down

A Martenitsa (10) on the trail

The Rider in the sun

The vanquished lion, somewhat eroded

Detail of the dog

They left the dog off the coins

At the Madara station road crossing

View back to the cliffs ftom the train station

The train arrives on time at Madara

I managed to manhandle a few windows open

Вечна Слава (Eternal glory) to the Bulgarian Communist Party.

Relic of former days in Promiski Park (11)

A refreshing dip in the Black Sea at dusk

(10) In March 1, Bulgarians greet their friends with "Честита баба марта" ("Chestita Baba Marta," Happy Grandmother March) and exchange Martenitsi (red and white yarn bracelets) which they wear until they see a flowering tree, on which they hang the Martenitsa. I presume the one on the path fell from a nearby tree.

(11) In Sofia, the former Communist monuments, statues, etc have been moved to a museum. The monument here in Varna was probably too big to move