Berlin

Today is my last day in the UK, and I'm packing and hoping that this all somehow fits into my suitcases and is still under the weight limit... How did the quarter fly by so fast? I'm dismayed, but also so excited to be home!

But before that, a final update on my travels in Europe beckons. Early on Tuesday morning, three friends and I headed to Berlin for thirty-six whirlwind, snow-filled hours of walking, sightseeing, shivering, and shopping. It was amazing how much we were able to pack into one trip, although a lot of that came at the expense of sleep. (At least, as my sister said, being sleep-deprived might help me catch some shuteye on the long flight home tomorrow!) Because both sides of my family hail from Germany way back, I was especially interested in experiencing what this unfamiliar country had to offer.

I found a Berlin that was magically covered in snow, brimming with Christmas markets on seemingly every block, where vendors sold everything from Christmas trinkets to fine artwork and clothes to amazing German meats, breads, and sweets. I realized that much of the homecooked food I grew up enjoying (besides green chile) is at least vaguely German: hearty stews, sausages, mixed vegetables, cobblers and candied sweets. We visited at least four or five Christmas markets over the two days, and I admittedly ate my way through most of them, from trying the different foods on sale to taking the many free samples. With the lights, snow, and cozy little huts, they cut a perfect Christmas picture.

In between market-browsing, the four of us toured some of the historic parts of the city, including the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag. We also visited the recently completed Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a sweeping field full of cement blocks of various heights, arranged in straight rows over undulating hills. This is a monument that must be physically experienced, and walking through it left me choked up. Our escapades on the first day also included Checkpoint Charlie, the former security gate through which officials passed from West to East Germany, and the western portion of the Berlin Wall itself. On the second day, we came face-to-face with the wall in a different way, as we visited the East Wall Gallery on the outskirts of central Berlin. This preserved sweep of the wall, which is now covered with modern murals and memorials advocating peace and understanding, was a testament to how such a hated symbol can turn into a sign of hope, at the same time as it warns us against similar atrocities in the future.

And, really, I felt like much of Berlin was like that. Parts of the city still felt grim and graffiti-covered, and I kept having chilling visualizations of what it must have felt like in the WWII and Cold War days. But it's also a city that's succeeding in rebuilding itself, and many of the stretches of modern street felt brisk and charming. Much of the architecture that remains from the 18th and 19th centuries (or has been restored) is quite impressive, from towers to cathdrals to museums and universities. The Pergamon Museum in particular was stunning, with real Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Islamic building ruins reconstructed inside huge halls and chambers. After a quarter of thinking about architecture in more technical terms, I was in awe.

With the cold weather, snow, and ice, I was happy to get back to England (which feels warm by comparison!), but also wished I could have stayed in Germany longer. That's for the next trip, I suppose...

Soane Museum and Christ Church Regatta

Some days in Oxford feel like I'm overscheduling myself to the brink. Today was one of those.

This morning I was off to London for an architecture class field trip to the Soane Museum, the rather eccentric home of preeminent 19th century British architect John Soane. In describing this building, let me emphatically repeat myself: eccentric beyond belief. Photography wasn't allowed inside, so I only have this lone shot of the exterior, but in any case I don't think pictures could capture the quirky feel of the entire building. John Soane was a man who lived for architectural whimsy, it seems, and who was also captivated by the ideals of his own designs, especially in terms of the romantic and the sublime. His house (actually, three connected London townhouses) is a rabbit warren and mirror-gallery and exhibit-hall of antiques and unique architectural inventions. The ceilings vault and curve, there are unexpected nooks in the corners, walls give way to hidden painting displays, and the entire back portion is devoted to a gallery containing ancient stone fragments, contemporary paintings, and a chamber where Soane liked to imagine that a solitary monk lived. Light plays throughout the building in odd ways, shining through colored glass here before creating an intentional sense of gloom there, all striving toward a strangely dramatic and melancholy mood. The oddest part is that the house was this way when Soane lived there over 150 years ago, and has only been preserved for the museum! Probably the strangest house I've been to, by far.

After a whirlwind tour of the Soane Museum, during which I got to see some fun London streets and squares I hadn't encountered before, I headed right back to Oxford. The reason? This week is the annual Christ Church novice regatta, in which my Corpus Christi boat was participating. I say was because, unfortunately, we lost this afternoon after winning yesterday's second-round race by a whopping six lengths. No quarterfinals for us tomorrow. But no regrets: we rowed as well as we ever have, and I (for once) got to experience a competitive sport that doesn't involve horses. Rowing all-out for the duration of a race is hard! I go back to the saddle with a fresh appreciation for other sports, as well as a newfound sense of gratitude that my normal life doesn't involve horribly early mornings turning into an icicle out on a pitch-black river. Rowing is quintessentially Oxford, though, and I'm happy I embraced that.

Photo by Celine Zeng. I'm the one in the stroke seat. How strange that I'm leaving so soon, yet these Oxford people will continue to go about their lives...

Bath

I'll begin this post this way: I love Bath. Maybe more than any other English town I've seen so far. Before coming to England, it was one of the destinations high up on my must-see list (in addition to Stonehenge and Cambridge), and today I had the opportunity to go there on a class field trip. I was not disappointed!

Take a natural hot spring that provided the roots for a Roman town, then later a flourishing resort escape and artists' abode for the wealthy, all situated against a gently-rolling-hills landscape, and you've got Bath. The

current architecture there is mainly of an eighteenth-century neoclassical style (see how much architecture class is teaching me?), whose clean-cut, elegant buildings I found wonderfully attractive. These buildings had just the right mix of the historic/classical, and enough of a taste of the modern, to make them really beautiful. Adding to the appeal of the city was its interesting layout, straight sloping streets combined with curving roads and sprawling open space. It turned out bigger than I expected, much more spread-out than medieval towns like Winchester, and when our class toured the city, up into the hills past the resort apartments the gentry built for themselves to stay in during "the season," we passed such grand curving landmarks as the Circus and the Crescent. And got a pretty magnificent view besides - now if only it hadn't been rainy!

Now, Bath (being Bath) also has, well, baths, long regarded to have healing and even mystical properties. The oldest among these is the excavated ruin of the ancient Roman bathhouse and city center, which I got to see with two friends after our class tour had dissembled for a few hours of free time. The foundations are all that remain, along with many artifacts, but the hot spring still fills the basins of the large stone baths themselves, which are remarkably intact. Having taken Latin in high school and having learned about the Roman bathhouse tradition, I found it fascinating to see this location for myself. (Random highlight: I unexpectedly ended up getting free admission once the audio-tour-desk clerks found out I was deaf. Hey, awesome.) The other eighteenth and nineteenth century baths, I didn't get to see except from the outside, but we did discuss the old genteel traditions of spending the winters here to socialize and relax and cure gout and other maladies - basically what you'd expect from reading Jane Austen. Bath's famed hot spring water was available for tasting, but I ran out of time to try it! (Although, from what I've heard, I wouldn't especially fancy gulping down a mineralized, sulfur-y, questionably beneficial liquid anyway.)

Final highlight of Bath: having delicious afternoon tea and scones and goodies in the Pump Room right beside the Roman baths! The Pump Room is one of the grand assembly rooms once used for British high society, and is a major setting in such novels as Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. I felt very surreal, sitting in that beautiful moulded room like Catherine Morland or some other character who's walked through my imagination. Add to that the wonderfully nerdy conversation my friends and I had about literature on the bus ride back, and it was an amazing day!

Doors Galore

One of my newly discovered obsessions in the UK: doors. No, seriously. Some buildings, flats, and gateways in Oxford have the cutest doors. How'd you like to come home to one of these every day?:

Not to mention the entrance gates to the colleges (many of which have doors within doors) - they're teeny, people were so much shorter back in the medieval days!

Blenheim Palace

After a week chock-full of reading and studying, this morning I headed out with a group of other Stanford students for a well-deserved break - Blenheim Palace! This famous manor house (where Winston Churchill was born, among other things) is only half an hour's drive from Oxford, and is probably one of the most stunning estates I've seen so far in England.

The inventiveness of some of the exterior architecture, combined with the unique Baroque elements inside, all made Blenheim enthralling. The state rooms were very lavish, almost French. In particular, the grand library (thousands of bookshelves on two levels across a sprawling room with sofas and a piano) had me wringing my hands in longing. I only regret that Blenheim is one of those places that prohibits photography inside.

And - wow - the grounds were spectacular. Over three thousand acres in all, I think, all of it immaculately planned and groomed and manicured. The fall colors have gotten more and more gorgeous here, brilliant reds and oranges and yellows springing out from amidst the green. Our walk through the gardens and beside the lake was picturesque.

So am I tired of these English manors and estates yet? Nope!

Greenwich

View from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich - wow!

I feel like I've been to a cornerstone of the modern world: Greenwich, England. I still remember sitting in science class (in eighth grade, I think it was) learning about the prime meridian and being told that Greenwich was pronounced "Grenich," not "Green-witch." How fantastically strange, then, to see it with my own eyes, and to stand on the spot of the prime meridian itself.

 I ended up in Greenwich for an architecture class field trip, during which we saw several famous examples of 17th-century buildings designed by such architects as Inigo Jones,

One of the stargazing rooms and old telescopes

Christopher Wren, and John Webb, including the Queen's House and the former palace and sailors' quarters (now a naval school). But the highlight of the trip by far was the Royal Observatory. After class was adjourned, I went with a group of people up a hill to see the building, which was pivotal in the development of accurate star charts used for navigation - and which is also the site of the prime meridian, or 0 degrees longitude. It has since been turned into a museum, which in its displays of telescopes, maps, and intricate old clocks (designed with the aim of keeping accurate time with Greenwich Mean Time, which would assist in mapping one's exact coordinates while at sea) had me fascinated. Granted, I love old clocks already, but here I really got the feel of a challenging but exciting time in history, in which shipping, travel, and exploration all exploded and changed the world. (Some big names here too - Richard Halley and Sir Isaac Newton among them.)

After visiting the Royal Observatory, we did some window shopping and eating in Greenwich and then London before heading to see a play in the evening. It was called The Woman in Black and was very well done, with innovative uses of the stage and light and sound effects, but also rather scary. (Suffice it to say, I did not scream like some others in the audience did!)

York Part III: Castle Howard

On Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast at the hotel (in which I thoroughly pigged out on sausages and ham), we set off a little northeast of York for Castle Howard. This magnificent palace, built for the prominent Howard family in the 18th century, is set between two lakes, both of them man-made, but still beautiful. As we entered the extensive grounds, gazing across the lake to the grand house on a hillside, I think we all had a feeling of "wow." The weather was overcast and a bit misty and cool - typical English weather - but that didn't stop the lawns from sparkling, stretching out all around us.

After a stroll around the house, during which we assessed its architecture and imposing exterior, we set off along the lake at its rear, strolling on a beautiful manicured path flanked by Greek statues. The water was still and dotted with ducks, and soon we reached a little hill capped by an Ionic temple, in which the estate occupants used to have a spot of tea after a brisk walk over the grounds - talk about lavish! The temple, stoic and beautifully proportioned, was surrounded by a field of grazing cows, beyond which was another hill on which stood the family mausoleum. Our professor explained that the 18th-century Europeans were captivated by the scenic picturesque, and indeed this was an idyllic scene: classical architecture, with pastoral cows nearby, a bridge arching across a winding river, the mausoleum lingering behind trees and towering against the sky. Basically, this was a form of living, breathing, outdoor artwork, intended to inspire certain feelings in anyone who witnessed it. There's a reason the estate was designed and laid out as it was: to promote a picturesque aesthetic. And indeed, it was stunning.

After tramping through wet grass, passing right by some cute woolly black cows, including a massive bull who paid us no mind, we found ourselves at the mausoleum, beyond which we could gaze and see, for the first time, the full stretch of the walk we'd just taken, from the cows and Greek temple, then across the lake and back to Castle Howard itself. The pictures don't do the impact of this place justice. It was a view I could have contemplated for a while, probably one of the most grand I've seen so far in England, but soon enough we took the walk back to explore the interior of the house.

Now, this house was the complete opposite of Hardwick Hall. Open, airy, and filled with classical marble busts and colorful portraits and fresher landscape artwork, it reminded several of us of Mr. Darcy's Pemberley estate in Pride and Prejudice. Indeed, this was my first impression upon entering the house (I know, total English-lit nerd), and I wandered its halls dwelling on the descriptions and incidents from that novel. The house was lavish, sure, but in a transfixing and well-considered way. Most stunning of all was the dome in its center, flanked with dozens of Corinthian columns and lined with windows through which we could look out at the lake, garden, and distant hills. I can't say how much I loved this house and its spacious interior, which made me want to sit and read a novel or perhaps sit down at the grand piano, or just gaze outside for hours. Much different than the stuffy claustrophobia I felt at Hardwick!

One last detail: inside the house we found a painting of the grounds almost as we'd seen them from the mausoleum, framed after the fashion of a neo-classical picturesque painting. Talk about being idealistic in designing your estate! (These old-time British lords had too much time and too much money.)

York Part I: Hardwick Hall

Well, our Bing Grant trip took place this past Friday and Saturday, to York in northern England. For those non-Stanford people reading this, the Stanford Overseas Program is sponsored by Peter and Helen Bing, a generous couple who have endowed money for students from each overseas campus to participate in spectacular sightseeing, cultural trips, dinners, and other events - most notably the once-a-quarter Bing trip, an overnight foray to a place of interest within the host country.

There's no other word for it: our time in York was spectacular. I'm too tired to try and consolidate the jam-packed two days into a single post, so I'll break it down into a series of smaller entries. That way I'll also do the weekend a bit more justice!

After setting out early Friday morning from Oxford (I'm a morning person so the 8am departure time wasn't bad, but nearly everyone else was staggering), our first stop was Hardwick Hall, a great Elizabethan house in Derbyshire. In short, it was built by Robert Smythson for Bess of Hardwick, an obscenely wealthy lady who expected her granddaughter to ascend to the throne once Queen Elizabeth died - something which never happened, but which nevertheless drove Bess to build a house suitable for royalty and general swaggering. (The uses that rich people come up with for their money: this is a theme I'll return to.)

The house is huge, with towers at its forefront intended to invoke memories of a castle, each of them ornately worked with Bess's initials. Inside, it is filled with old paintings and tapestries that, I thought, gave it a dark and slightly medieval feel, even though the style is in accordance with the 16th century. The staircases are made of heavy, rounding stone slabs, and the walls (where not covered with musty, faded tapestries) are worked with family crests and crudely classical plaster scenes. Some of the pieces of furniture are beautiful, ornately carved wooden tables and chairs, and the great gallery on the second floor seems a breath away from guests and dancing. But, although the windows grant a pleasing view down onto the estate (including Bess's second manor house, now a ruin, nearby), the gardens, and the rolling green hills beyond, I found its interior oppressive - even though Bess Hardwick meant to impress. Overwhelm is more like it. Apparently the house was last inhabited by a solitary female heir in the 1930s, and I shuddered to think of how she must have felt, wandering those great empty halls and dark chambers alone. Intended royalty aside, this house was too dense, too much for me, and I left it relieved to breathe the fresh air outside.

But still, what an interesting insight into the lifestyle and pretensions of the time. The Elizabethan era was known for its frills and its grandeur - something which shows through even in the language and extended metaphors of Shakespeare. Hmm, this is something I'll have to contemplate...

An Afternoon in the Library

How surreal, sitting in the Bodelian library's reading rooms, reading from an architecture book that discusses the design and style of the Radcliffe Camera - and then looking through the window to see that very spectacular building towering outside. (Even if the library's policies are strict and its hours limited. Hey, with a copy of every book published in the UK, it has a right to be stingy.)


Many other buildings in Oxford are classic and oft-cited examples of British architecture. I realize how lucky I am to see them every day.


That said, some of the architectural details around here make me laugh. Besides quirky gargoyles, the library has carvings of literary characters. The architects of old must have had a sense of humor - or, at least, a flair for whimsy.