Tag: holiday

Holiday in France: the reporters memorial

A friend suggested I blog about this after it was almost all I talked about when summarising our holiday! It certainly made a big impression on me.

A Robert Capa Memorial des Reporters

It started with a small memorial outside a museum in Bayeux to Robert Capa, a photographer whose work Tim and I are familiar with and admire, so we were interested to see something about him but also curious what claim Bayeux had to him. We continued along the path in grounds opposite the Commonwealth war cemetery and next we came to two marble slabs that said they were the entrance to a memorial to “journalists killed all over the world since 1944”, a joint project between Bayeux and Reporters Without Borders. Which seemed like a very good idea, and I walked on expecting just a peaceful garden of some kind. I hadn’t read the text properly (I think I’d tried to understand the French rather than looking at the English) so I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

Too many names

A long, tree-sheltered footpath flanked on both sides by marble slabs listing the name of every journalist killed under the year of their death (the photo above shows only a small section). It’s simple and powerful and heartbreaking, because there are so many names, and the numbers seem to be increasing. So much so that a second path has been started.

I’m not sure why this moved me more than the thousands of graves of soldiers just over the road (which was also pretty disquieting), but somehow it did. I could argue that soldiers sign up for the possibility of death, but of course in World War Two most of them didn’t get a choice. In fact, reporters have more choice about whether or not to go to a war zone, but then not all of these deaths were in a war zone. For those who want more than a list of names, there is an online archive.

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I suppose I can relate to the reporters, to their decision to tell the truth about the world. Not that I in any way consider myself worthy to stand alongside the men and women who risk their lives to make corruption, injustice and other important news known to the world, but I admire them in a way I just can’t admire a soldier. I can be (and indeed am) sad about the massive loss of life during war, but it’s not the same thing.

I don’t understand war, how anyone could take a fight to the level of massive loss of human life, and it is only through writing, both journalism and fiction, that I can at least try to comprehend. For anyone interested in what it’s like to be a reporter on war zones and other dangerous regions, I highly recommend the work of Joe Sacco, who is honest about the draw and the thrill, as well as the need to tell the stories of the real people affected.

(Back to more cheerful things, and maybe another book review, soon I promise!)

August reading round-up

Girl Reading by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
Girl Reading by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

I’m posting this a few days late as I’m on holiday, which unusually has so far decreased my reading, not increased it. I think I may be discouraged as I’ve been reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing for book club for about three weeks and it’s a huge book so I’m still barely a third of the way through. I wonder how many of us will have made it to the end when book club meets next week? Also, Tim recommended one of his books for me to read on holiday so I’m about a third of the way through that as well. Between them I’m sure I read at least as much as one normal-length book last week!

Still, this week is a quiet one with the in-laws, so I’m hoping to get plenty of uninterrupted reading time. As long as I don’t get too distracted by photographing wildlife! More on that next week once we’re home again.

 
Books read

Sun Alley by Cecilia Ştefanescu (review here)

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (re-read for book club)

Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: the Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science by Zoe Cormier (review over at For Books’ Sake)

Faces of Love and the Poets of Shiraz by Hafez, Jahan Malek Khatun and Obayd-e Zakani (review here)

Fighting on the Home Front by Kate Adie (review here)

 
Short stories read

“Yesterday” by Haruki Murakami (New Yorker, available online here)

“Picasso” by César Aria (New Yorker, available online here)

“Last meal at Whole Foods” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (New Yorker, available online here)

“Apple cake” by Allegra Goodman (New Yorker, available online here)

“You can find love now” by Ramona Ausubel (New Yorker, available online here)

“The waitress” by Robert Coover (New Yorker, available online here)

“The fugitive” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya (New Yorker, available online here)

“The man in the woods” by Shirley Jackson (New Yorker, available online here)

“Box sets” by Roddy Doyle (New Yorker, available online here)

“Pending vegan” by Jonathan Lethem (New Yorker, available online here)

 
Happy September!

Sunday Salon: En vacances

The Sunday Salon

This week we’ve been on holiday in Normandy with friends. Weather’s been, er, iffy but we managed to grab a couple of afternoons in the pool/on the trampoline (I love that the gîte has a trampoline!) in-between road trips. I have somehow read only half a book, despite plenty of suitable reading weather, but with 13 other people providing distractions I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised.

We figured we couldn’t come to Normandy without taking in some of the World War Two sites. We stopped by Omaha Beach and the war cemetery at Bayeux, which was on reflection a bit sad and serious for the hottest day of the week and I was near tears many times during the day, but I’m glad I went.

We also visited Fougères, which boasts the largest medieval castle in Europe and also has links to many famous writers. I really enjoyed the Circuit Litteraire. I’m not sure I enjoyed the climb to the top of the bell tower – the staircase was tall, steep and open so you could see how far there was to fall!

There have been plenty of other visits, plus barbecues, drinking, playing pool, playing in the pool and just generally having fun with friends we don’t get to see nearly enough of the rest of the year.

Also, yesterday Tim and I celebrated 12 years together. In many ways it felt appropriate to celebrate while on holiday with friends who have known us since the start of our relationship. I wonder where we’ll celebrate 24 years?

Amsterdam: Anne Frank books

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Anne Frank books
(Click to enlarge)

I now own a small collection of books written by or about Anne Frank.

Yes, that’s two copies of The Diary of a Young Girl. The big hardback was a new translation from 1995 and this is the copy I read when I was 18 (I think I had previously borrowed the earlier translation from the library when I was 13 or so). It deeply affected me, as I think it affects everyone who reads it, so the one thing I was sure of when we planned our holiday to Amsterdam was that I was going to Anne Frank House and I was going to stand in the Secret Annexe.

The second of these books that came into my possession is The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, which my dear friend H bought for me at (where else?) Anne Frank House when she holidayed there last year. Because she knows me well, she knew I’d already own the diary.

But that didn’t stop me from wanting the newer version of the diary, released in 2001, with previously unpublished material. And of course when I saw that they have now separately published Anne Frank’s short stories in the collection Tales From the Secret Annexe I had to buy that.

It was a really strange experience going to that museum at 263 Prinsengracht, Amsterdam. You walk into a modern building added to the side of Otto Frank’s business premises, and are fed through some background info before the warehouse, then the offices, then the secret annexe, then back down to further info about the terrible fates of the annexe occupants and finally the diary itself.

Despite being crowded and hustled through it all, despite the historical rooms being empty but for photos and other documents on the walls, I found it profoundly moving. For one thing, though I had read about the exact dimensions of the annexe, it was still shocking to experience its smallness for myself. It was strange seeing the pencil marks still on the wall recording the heights of Anne and her sister Margot. And that bookcase-covered secret door, which I’d read about and even seen photos of, but to see the original was the oddest thing.

But most of all, it was the pictures still on the wall in what had been Anne’s bedroom – postcards and magazine pages showing historical figures, famous paintings, film stars, the English royal family. Most of her pictures had been removed but there are still a few dozen there, preserved behind perspex. And though it’s been years since I last read the diary, I could remember Anne writing about those pictures on her wall and how much they meant to her.

So in the next few months, with that experience fresh in my mind, I’m going to read my three new books by or about Anne Frank. It will have its depressing moments but I remember the great thing about the diary being that it’s not (for the most part) a depressing read of itself. The sadness comes when you turn the page from her last written words and read the publisher’s note about her tragic death. It’s powerful, even when you know the facts already.

Amsterdam; or holiday awesome

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So you already know that I love love loved Amsterdam and had a great time there, but what did I do that was so great? Here are some photos and notes to elaborate.

We walked around soaking in the beauty, by which I mean the friendliness, the architecture and canals, the attitude, the love for design and all those bikes! (I overheard an American tourist claiming that he’d seen loads of parked bikes but hardly anyone cycling. He had clearly not ventured beyond the central street because pretty much everywhere else in the city was solid with cyclists, even when it was raining.)

Riding

We went to some world-class museums – the Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum, FOAM and Anne Frank House – to absorb art and history. You know that photo of Obama speechifying in front of The Night Watch last Monday? Yeah, we were right there in that spot two days before him.

Charity the Educator

We ate tasty food, both typically Dutch and international fare, including my first ever oysters. (Conclusion: I like them but don’t love them, though I did feel classy tipping that shell!)

The very first oysters of Kate

Also, Tim surprised me at the start of the holiday with tickets to see Cirque du Soleil, which is something I have always wanted to do and it totally lived up to expectations. There were bendy ladies! And terrifying stunts! And fancy clever acrobatics! In a tent in a car park! They rock and so does Tim.

Les tentes du cirque

Back to that love for design, there is clearly a real respect in Amsterdam for design in all quarters and this means there are lots of shops selling the most gorgeous stuff. I mean, I’m not much of a shopper and I would never go somewhere on holiday just for the shops but this was a rare case where they added something for me.

Purty things

But mostly, let’s face it, it was all about the canals and bicycles, the near lack of cars in the older areas, and the chilled atmosphere.

Amsterdam: effortlessly stylish

I’m back and Amsterdam was pretty great

Locked

I have neglected the blog this month and my excuses are slim. But in my defence this past week I was having too much fun in the land of canals and bicycles. From our first hour in Amsterdam, the city had won my heart (it helps that we arrived in glorious sunshine, which was sadly not continually present for our whole trip). It has a great atmosphere, good food, very few cars and, in the parts we saw at least, feels very well looked after.

I’ve barely started the process of going through my photos so more will follow, but for now I will leave you with this note I made during our first afternoon in the city.

Amsterdam: guy clutching an Orhan Pamuk paperback while cycling ahead of a Spliff smoking accessories van.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I’ve wrapped the presents, picked out my Christmas Day outfit and had too many Christmas drinks already. I thought I’d share a favourite Christmas tune with you to keep the blog ticking over while I’m busy with family. I do love a good Christmas song.

I have no idea if I’ll find time for reading (I have a new niece to play with and there’s a lot of enthusiasm for board games this year…) but I do (of course) have a stack of books lined up that I’m hoping to snatch a few hours with at some point in the next week and a half off work.

Happy holidays!

Holiday catch-up

I have finally finished my first sweep through the holiday photos, so I thought I’d write a few tidbits about our trip to Sicily while the memories are fresh and the remnants of having thoroughly chilled out for a week are just about detectable.

We picked Sicily for two reasons: we like Italy (great food, great wine, great art, lovely people) and one of the ways to get there is via a train that goes on a boat! Guess how we travelled! Sadly we only had a week off work so we couldn’t sensibly do the whole journey by train (we did that four years ago to Florence and I can highly recommend it) but we were able to fly from our local airport to Rome and then catch the sleeper train to Sicily. It’s pretty basic as sleepers go – no dining car (we felt like royalty when we dined on the sleeper train from Paris to Florence, it was seriously classy) – but I still love the experience of falling asleep to the chug of the train, peeking behind the window blind at the lights of the towns and cities as you rumble past. The service arrives at the ferry port at a slightly unsociable 6am, which may be why Tim and I were almost alone up on the decks of the ferry (you can choose to stay on the train or get out for the half-hour crossing) but I feel my overexcited inability to stay asleep paid off as watching the sun rise as we pulled in to Messina harbour was pretty special.

Welcome to Sicily

The rest of the train journey was pretty beautiful: the sea on one side of us and Mount Etna on the other. Sicily really is gorgeous. Thankfully that includes Siracusa, where we stayed for a week of relaxing, eating good food and ogling fancy millionaires’ yachts, enjoying the warm sunshine and sea air.

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We stayed on the island of Ortigia, which is the historic district of Siracusa and it’s exactly what that suggests: old narrow streets, lots of churches and pavement cafes, largely pedestrianised, well looked after. The rest of the city doesn’t have so much to recommend it, but we did venture out to the Archaeological Park to look at the remains of the Greek ampitheatre and other ancient ruins.

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I swam in the Med for the first time in my life. And we spent a couple of evenings sat in a bar on the harbourside just watching the sun set. Man, I’m jealous of two-weeks-ago-me right now.

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On the way home, we had a half-day in Rome so we had a walk around the Roman Forums and Colosseum. Frankly the former were more impressive, but that might be the combination of crowds of people around the Colosseum, our camera battery dying just before we reached the Colosseum and the skies getting distinctly grey at that point.

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One thing Rome does have going for it is an absolutely giant bookshop in the Termini train station. In fact Italy in general seems to have a lot of bookshops still, which was nice to see.

Okay, that’s enough reminiscing. I miss holiday. If you want to see more of my holiday snaps, I am gradually adding to them to a set on Flickr.

Now the question is, do I carry on learning Italian using the Duolinguo app (which to be honest I think increased my confidence much more than my ability!) or pick a new language to learn a smattering of? (This question is also known as the Now That Holiday Is Over Where Shall I Plan To Go Next Syndrome.)

Holiday in pictures

I have been meaning to blog about our very lovely holiday in Cornwall for a week now, but getting back to real life has been super busy. So here are a few nuggets and some photos. Hope you’re all enjoying lovely weather wherever you are.

The colours of sea and sky were impressive. The British seaside rarely looks this…tropical.
Holiday seas

Typically, I had black and white film in my camera, but I got some nice shots with it.
Throwing shapes

We finally made it to the Eden Project, which is brilliant.
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And we generally chilled out with good friends and a great location.
Oh yeah

Astonishingly I didn’t entirely melt in the heat and I managed to read four books in a week! Which totally justifies my packing five books, even if one of the books I read was borrowed from the holiday home, right?

If you want to see more of my holiday photos, they are in a set on Flickr.

Happy July, folks.