Segovia and the Roman Aqueducts

There is no possible way that I could top Steve´s post about the cathedral but here´s what I understood about Segovia, Spain from the spanish tour that I took. Segovia is really old; old enough for there to still be gothic architecture kind of like the church to the left. This is one of the last gothic cathedrals left in Spain which is very cool, according to the tour guide. What interested me almost more were the gypsy women trying to sell all of the Americans scarves and shawls to take our mothers back home. We didn´t actually attempt to go into the church because the gypsies were standing right outside of the entrance. Apparently, there is actually a witchcraft and magic museum in Segovia. We tried to go there but like everything else in Spain, it, too, was closed for siesta. I´ll have to save that trip for another day.

This is one of the last remaining aqueducts in all of Europe. It was built some 2,500 years ago during the time of Roman Imperialism. There´s a nifty legend tied with this particular aqueduct. It has been said that it was a demon, not the Romans who built the aqueduct. There was a woman from the city who had to carry water up and down the hills of Segovia every day. Tired of the steep walk, the woman made a pact with the devil. She would give him her soul if she no longer had to carry water from the hills to her home. The devil said he would have the job done before the rooster crowed. A storm ensued and the devil worked to keep up their bargain. The woman, fearful and regretful of what she had done, prayed the entire night that the devil would not take her soul. By some miracle, the rooster crowed before the devil completed his work and their bargain was lifted.
The woman confessed what she had done to her fellow villagers. After dousing the aqueduct in holy water, they decided that it was devil free and welcomed the easy transport of water.

We went to the top of the aqueduct to show you how massive it really is. This was my favorite part of Segovia. Very much worth it. The view was great.


This is the castle of Segovia. I didn´t think that it was nearly as impressive as they boast when they talk about it. We had a very, very long tour of it. The cool thing about the castle is that there are still paintings and many of the original furnishings inside. I don´t know a whole lot about it but I think it was built in the 15th century.

This is just and interesting photo. Everywhere I´ve been in Europe, I see performers. In Madrid there was the lady with the karaoke machine in the middle of the street singing christmas songs. In Freiburg, there was the hippie man who played the guitar, accompanied by small wind up bears; one played the cymbols and the other played the accordian. This man in the picture had a very strange talent. He and his dog had formed a band. He played a song on the saxaphone and his dog barked to the toon. This is by far the coolest pair that I have seen thus far. Koodos to them.

Becket's Cathedral

I should mention before I start that the Canterbury Cathedral is massive. I mean, it's really, very big. None of the pictures capture just how large this thing really is. To really understand the size of it, you'd have to see it for yourself. And to make it more impressive, its original foundations were commissioned by St. Augustine - the same one who arrived in 597 AD, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.


Since it's founding, it's been added onto fairly regularly ever few hundred years, as each succeeding archbishop thought the one who came before him was a slacker with no taste at all whose dire mistakes in church construction needed to be corrected (in Thy mercy).


Someone made it longer, someone built a tower, the next guy knocked the tower down, another guy put it back up two hundred years later, some idiot burned the whole mess down and had to start more or less from scratch with a different style, and another one tacked on an extra 75 feet of tower. He'd just been promoted and wanted to celebrate - that's not a joke.

The cathedral is also undergoing a modern-era restoration project to the tune of 50 Million GBP. In some places this has already started, and scaffolding is blocking some of the older portions of it. Here especially, the conflict of design over the last thousand years or more becomes a matter of observation.


As impressive and diverse as the cathedral is from the outside, every scrap of the inside was very carefully built to inspire solemnity as well as to be flat-out jawdropping for visiting religious pilgrims.

And it does a very good job. At least it would if the pictures could be posted full-size.


I can't talk about the cathedral though without telling the story of Thomas Becket, a man whose sainthood was achieved due in no small part to his being martyred in the cathedral, purportedly at the spot marked by this modern sculpture - apparently someone stole the old one.


The story of the actual assassination is every bit as horrifying as this pointy bit of post-modernism suggests, so I'll tell the story and occasionally break it with some more cheery photos of the cathedral grounds to distract from the mind-bending terror.

First off, Becket was at the time the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most powerful church seat in England. He and King Henry II are said to have actually been good friends - not just peers, but honest comrades.


However, Becket constantly opposed Henry II's bids to expand the power of the English monarchy over the church, something that deeply frustrated the King, and one particularly bad day, as the Pope was considering damning the entirety of England to hell over Henry's grabs (seriously), Henry vented by wondering aloud why his men allowed Becket to keep living when it frustrated him so.


Nobody in their right minds would have thought that Henry II was serious about
killing his old friend. Unfortunately for Becket and Henry II, sound minds did not prevail in this instance. Four of Henry's knights - all eyepoppingly crazy - heard this rant and actually set off to go kill Becket to win Henry's favor.


The knights arrived in Canterbury, tracked Becket to the cathedral, where they slapped him around, tried to drag him out, and eventually just started hacking at him. The Victorians, bless their naive hearts, didn't think it looked any worse than this (left window):


Sadly, they were extremely mistaken. Becket was hacked repeatedly, and once he was dead, one of the knights delivered a sideways chop to the head that both cut the top of Becket's head off and broke his sword. Cripes.


But that's not it. A monk's first-hand account of this event also goes on to state that one of those knights put their foot into Becket's head and smeared his brains around the floor before they ran off and went back to France to tell Henry the good news.


Henry did not find this to be good news. He was completely horrified that his knights had even for a second thought that he wanted them to kill Becket, and probably wondered if the knights had ever heard of the phrase "I was just ranting to myself, you barbarous crazies!" History is silent on the matter, so we can only assume that he said this.


Anyway, while it couldn't have turned out any worse for Henry or Becket, it was Becket's murder and later canonization that turned Canterbury into a pilgrimage site; at one time there was a massive, awe-inspiring shrine to the fallen saint in the cathedral. But that was before Henry VIII showed up, and he is widely regarded by history as a complete butthead.


Next Post: Dover, and various attractions thereof.

History Schmistory

There's not a whole lot of space for things in England, and that goes double for Canterbury. If people didn't constantly build on top of things that were hundreds of years older, they'd have to cordon off the whole town and charge admission to walk through and see buildings partitioned off with Plexiglas dividers and all that other fun stuff one might see at Old World Wisconsin.

Stephen King wrote an entire book about what can go wrong when one builds on top of a grave site. That turned into a very popular movie. But in Canterbury, you're lucky to kick a stone and not have it ricochet off the graves of eight saints, none of whom would be very amused with the incident, and three of whom would be Thomas Becket. You can't help but build on someone's grave here. So, in the interest of saving space, they restore what they can, cordon off just a little bit, and keep the rest in motion in whatever way seems appropriate, ghosts and homicidal psychosis be damned.


Saint Martin's Priory is perhaps one of the few exceptions to this rule - it is the oldest standing church in England, having been converted into a church just as the Christians started turning up; history actually says that King Aethelbert and Queen Bertha of Kent met up with St. Augustine at this church, or at least near it - call it about 597 AD, at which point the building was already in used for other purposes, but was converted into a church. You'd like proof of this, and the British are happy to oblige.


Clears that right up. A lot of time is spent on plaques embedded in walls around here, as it's one of the few ways they can make a note of the historic and ancient past without forbidding the construction of a new coffee shop or requiring admission fees. The tour guide made the argument that the building has some very strong Roman influence in it's architecture, and suggested that the building's foundation could have been present as early as 300 AD or before.

At any rate, this church is a bare minimum of 1,400 years old. Sunday masses at 8am, 10am, Noon, and 6:30pm. No, seriously. There's no space for a new one, this one is still standing, what's the problem?

It's a hard place to get a shot at from the outside because it's crowded in among pine trees and very, very old graves like these.


The guide didn't give us a date for these stones, but they know these are the oldest. The priory is surrounded by a fairly large, fairly old graveyard on the side of a hill with an amazing view. "If," said our tour guide, "those bloody hippies would let us tear down those damn pine trees."


The smaller size of this photo doesn't really do the scale much justice, but I'm finding that this is a typical problem; its hard to relay just how big some of this stuff is with only two dimensions.

While we're on the subject of hard things to explain, most of the graves are of a simple, classic headstone shape or a cross...


But apparently, some folks used to be much more cavalier about this whole "death" business.


Moving on from St. Martin's Priory, we went to see St. Augustin's Abbey, which served as the burial site of several different saints as well as the second burial site of St. Thomas Becket (buried once in the Cathedral crypt, another time at St. Augustin's, and finally in a major hall of the Cathedral, before Henry VIII ordered him to be disinterred yet again, so his bones could be scattered to the four winds - nice guy).

While St. Augustin's Abbey is now a ruin, it would have been massive in its day. It wouldn't have rivaled the Cathedral, but it would have easily been the second biggest religious structure in Canterbury.
The most that is left of this "Norman monstrosity" - our tour guide was an entertaining figure - is a chunk of the abbey wall, and the now-excavated grave sites of all sorts of bishops, abbots, and even two or three saints.

What's most surprising is that the entire area hasn't been populated or capitalized on in some way; this is easily the largest patch of green grass inside the Ring Road.

And by "largest", I mean a pack of people can walk on it without colliding with one another by default. But there's an admission fee.

We also visited the Cathedral today, but it's so expansive, and there's so much to talk about there that it's going to need its own post to do it any justice. But for the record, I will say that the cathedral is not strictly preserved as historic; it's a living cathedral. It bears the marks of new additions and modifications since it was first burned down and rebuilt all the way up until last year.

But it needs its own posting; there's so much history involved that It'd be really cruel of me to tack it on to this one.

And I need to write it, and that's just not happening today.

Update

Hi. It´s me again.

My host family is an older couple and they don´t speak any English. They don´t have any kids and although they have two empty rooms from they`re grown children, the other girl from point and I share a room. It´s not too bad of a deal, really. My room mate and I get along pretty well for the most part.

I walk to school everyday and we do have an opportunity for intercambios to sign up to talk to foreign students but I forgot to sign up. Some of my friends and I are going to try to get involved in the theater program on campus.

Someone from my group today actually got a local bar to reserve a room for us to watch the Packer game in on satellite. So I got to see the whole game. It was pretty great. There were about 40 of us there. Most of us were watching the snow very enviously. I´m really glad they won that game. Our moral is way up.

Pictures From A Walk

I went out for coffee around 11 am today just before a walk on the north side of Canterbury, just along the Ring Road - the circular road surrounding what used to be the walled city. In some places the wall is still intact, in other places it's long gone; but the road is just around the outside of where the wall was or is.

It's worth noting here that I wasn't the only person on High Street with this "coffee" idea, which ended up reinforcing a nasty stereotype about England and queues. Most coffee shops were full up, with my personal favorite (Caffe Nero) having a line that extended outside. Needless to say I went somewhere else, but I wanted to point out that I had coffee this morning as it will put some of the shaky photography into perspective, and give me an excuse for some poorly focused shots taken with a vastly overpowered zoom lens.

Moving on. After coffee, I went for a walk, as stated, along the Great Stour river that runs through the north side of Canterbury. It's roughly as wide across as the Yahara river in Madison, but in most places just a tick narrower.

The buildings come right to the edge of the river, and in some places it looks as though the foundation of the buildings themselves is creating the riverbank. To me, this makes the architecture that much more impressive from a durability standpoint, as most of these buildings have been there for at the very least a hundred years, and the river flows very fast in some places.


Like there.

The river is controlled by a baffling system of arcane lochs that divert the river away from things that could be washed away, and directing it at a greatly accelerated rate towards something much more fragile - the fast side of the river doesn't even have brick laid at the shore. It makes one wonder how long the river can run before it starts creeping onto the path that one follows along it. The answer is precisely 225 yards.

From the loch at the top of Abbot's Mill garden (really a yard surrounded by a walkway), this overflow is literally less than 250 yards downstream. Finally, a little swampy patch that reminds me of home enough to take my picture by. Call it proof of life if you want. Next time I'll pick something more historic.

The marshiness just made me feel comfortable. And there weren't any yobs around to wonder what the hell I was doing; who wants to hang around a big puddle, anyway.

Sometimes the concentration of churches here gets almost out of hand. Then again, you've only got so many square miles to mash the protestants, Anglicans and Catholics into in such a fashion that they can always see the cathedral from their own church, just to remind them how small it is.

This is actually an abbey, but you get the idea. The cathedral can be seen from almost everywhere, that's how big it is - all the major streets, and some of the minor ones too. There's nothing accidental about that.

I can see it quite clearly from my street too; I took this picture last night.

The one sure thing about this place is that it's an eyeful. There's so much to look at that if you don't exercise some discretion, you'll be snapping pictures constantly and drive the point home that you're not from around here. I haven't taken any pictures on High Street yet for basically that reason; if I'm going to suddenly make myself very conspicuous, I had better get a good shot out of it. That, and I like both cameras that I use very much and would like them to stay mine in the near future, which frankly means not displaying them on a busy day on High Street. So those will be forthcoming, but I'll have to wait for a relative lull, which Saturday isn't.

The sun never gets very high in the sky here; noon looks about like a summer day at 5pm, which gives everything a kind of dusky feel to it. And with buildings crowding around most places, it never really looks like morning. Hard to explain, but true. In some of the pictures, this is obvious.

But for now, I have a little more rambling to do.

Meet The New Boss

After classes yesterday a small fleet of us Americans were invited out for drinks at the Thomas Ingoldsby, a freehouse across the street from King's School. One of the many things I hadn't realized about England was that college courses would actually allow one to major in American Studies, which is exactly what it sounds like - some kids over here actually study us, and get a college degree in it.

As to what they can do with it, even they don't seem to actually know. But there it is.

In talking with the American Studies students, I get the impression that England is worried about a lot of the same issues that the United States is. The English have a fairly heated immigration debate that revolves around cultural values and citizenship, a moderate amount of discussion on what many believe to be an overgenerous social welfare system, and of course their involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are something of a touchy issue.

Everyone, both in the States and in the UK, spend a fair amount of time thinking (fairly or unfairly) that politicians are stupid, but the consensus in the States is that the debate here is more civilized than it is back home. to counter that notion, I'd probably submit a video of the House of Commons, and the ensuing text-in show that allowed viewers to bash their pols from the convenience of their cell phones. No more civilized at the ground level, anyway.

I will say to their credit though that they follow American politics quite closely. Two nights ago, Sky News carried a live feed of President Bush's press conference, and the top story all week has been the New Hampshire primary. I was even asked, basically on arrival with my host family, who I'd be supporting in 2008. Since then, I've been asked literally every day, usually with a follow-up question as to why I was supporting that candidate. American Politics are a big deal here, and while I certainly haven't seen anything to suggest that they approach the debate any more intelligently (last night, a bar patron found out we were American and suggested we combine the US and UK armed forces to "fong" China), they definitely demonstrate a heavy interest.

Expect some pictures tomorrow or, given the time, later today in your time.

Spoilers

Orientation took place today, so now we have operable information on where we'll be and when. Field trips are on Fridays (six are scheduled), and I don't have any classes on Thursdays.

For the first time in the last six years, Canterbury Christ Church is going to have a field trip to Stonehenge and the Bath City center. That will be our last trip, on March 14th. First is a guided tour of Canterbury, as well as the Cathedral. Later, we'll also be going to the war tunnels at Dover, Dover Castle, Windsor Castle, the Globe Theatre, and the Cabinet war rooms.

Coming in, we had a fair amount of inaccurate info from the Heartland staff, but that was all easily countered by the eight-hour-long orientation that took place today. We went out for Chinese food afterward, so I guess I'll let it slide.

There's plenty to talk about, but I'll have to wait until I'm not so overwhelmed to do it artfully. Don't worry, I won't leave anything out. In the mean time, here's a picture I took from a second-floor window on our building from the hallway.

The street is narrow enough that it could be blocked by two men lying down end-to-end across it; fourteen feet, maybe less. And it's not a pedestrian zone. I'll have more interesting pictures (some with me in them) fairly soon. The trouble is getting far enough away from something to get a decent shot at it.

Classes and registration start tomorrow, and actual lectures are few and far between with Thursdays being completely unoccupied, and Fridays are free unless there's a field trip - and generally there will be. There will be lots of time for independent study, which is great.

I'll have something more soon.

And I'm Here

I didn't actually manage to get any sleep on the flights or the drive, and I've been stalled from reporting in because I had to get a hold of a different power adapter, which took between 45 minutes and an hour. Our host family is very nice and has made us pretty comfortable in a tiny house that was built in 1737. Basically everything is within easy walking distance.

But for now, I'm extremely tired, and just wanted to let everyone know I made it here safely and undamaged.

More later.

This is me and my friend Stephany with our first European cup of coffee. We spent the day in Toledo yesterday. It was great. We saw the Cathedral of Toledo and toured the town. The view from the top of the hill there was spectacular, I would have loved to have everyone with me to see it.

Right now I'm staying in a hostel in Madrid. We have free wireless internet here which is great since I can finally update the blog now. I talked to Steve today and he should be getting on the plane to England in about twenty minutes. Wish him luck! Hopefully he will be able to post something in a couple of days.

Today we went to the Palacio Real de Madrid for about five minutes today. I snapped a picture of it. Then we traveled around downtown Madrid for a while and had tapas.

I have to pack to go to Valladolid tomorrow so I must go.

Adios.

First Post

Hello all,

I can´t type for long but I just wanted to let everyone know that I made it to Spain safely. Today we are going to the Prado Museum and then to a Flamenco show later tonight. I am having a great time and I have only been here for a day.

Hasta Luego,
Joy