The World's Most Unpronouncable Sentence

First night in Warszawa, and I'm spending the last part of it in a little wine bar on a very stately avenue called Marszalkowska.

I've been to Poland's capital twice before, but both times I was just passing through and had no time to look around. Now I've got a week to 10 days to acquaint myself with the city.

It's gonna be GREAT!

I don't quite know how the conversation got started, but I've been chatting on and off with a lovely, bespectacled waitress here, and the subject of the Polish language has come up.

Polish is one of the most beautiful languages I've ever heard (though you wouldn't guess it from the written form, which looks like an enormous flock of 'z's has crashed recklessly into another language and knocked all the vowels out of formation). But it's also one of the most difficult to pronounce. So we started talking about difficult words, and the angelic waitress has just handed me a Polish tongue-twister which she wrote on a little slip of paper.

Here it is:

w Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.

It means sth like "In small villages, crickets chirrup in the long grass". And if it looks completely and utterly unpronouncable to you, you're not far wrong. I've been trying for several minutes, and I'm still a couple of hundred attempts away from getting it.

However, the angel has told me that this sentence is extremely difficult for Polish people to say, and that if a foreigner can crack it, that will be "Something really unbelievable!"

Obviously, at this point, I have no choice but to try.

You can try too if you like. Just bear in mind these one or two simple rules:

- w sounds like English 'v'
- sz sounds like English 'sh'
- cz sounds like English 'ch' (as in "cheese")
- rz after another constant sounds like the 's' in pleasure
- y sounds like being hit in the chest, but not too hard
  (kind of a gentle 'ugh!' sound)
- ie sounds like "yeah"

That's the first two words dealt with! Easy, isn't it?

A lot of these sounds crop up later too (e.g. in chrząszcz you've got another sz and another cz), so you can re-use the same rules.

But chrząszcz has a few extra sounds you need to know, like ch. In Polish, it sounds like it does in Gaelic - think of the word Loch, for example. Then there's the ą with a little tail. It's a tricky beast - if the consonant after it is voiced, it sounds like 'arm' (in a British accent), but if the next consonant has no voicing, you say 'arn' instead. So here, the word should be read like 'chrzamszcz'. One assumes that's the sound of the insects.

Then to do brzmi, just remember your rz rule, and when you come to the last word, watch out for the c on its own. That sounds like 'ts' - the sound of a hi-hat cymbal on a drum kit.

Ok ... got that? If so, you're ready to crack the Polish tongue-twister. Good luck, and let me know how you go :-)

Meanwhile, I'll be sure to report back on every little thing that happens in Warszawa.

See you!
 

Old Moats

I'm on a train with wi-fi. No doubt those of you who live in developed countries are thinking "Yeah? And?". But for me this is a first, and quite fun :-)

I mean, I've seen signs before that say there's wi-fi on the train, and even on coaches that I've been on. But I figured it was one of those things that's only real in Norway, and never actually works anywhere else. Apparently I was wrong ... cool!

Anyway ... we're speeding towards a town called Ostrava, about 30kms from the Czech-Polish border. Here I'll start the next leg of my cycling journey.

The last couple of days have essentially been rest days. I pitched up in the town of Olomouc on July 30th, very curious to see it for myself; as I mentioned in the previous entry, it's garnering a reputation as a bit of an 'undiscovered jewel'.

So is it?

Well ... er, yeah, I think so. I mean, it's not likely to knock Vienna or Prague off the top of a few million tourist itineraries, but it certainly has some pretty parts.

Btw, just in case you're wondering, the town's name is pronounced roughly as o-la-MORTS. Before I came here, I found it useful to think of the phrase "old moats" to help me remember the pronunciation.

Sadly there aren't any old moats in Olomouc - that would've been great! But it is a very likeable place; one of those European 'regional capitals' where poky laneways abound, and where, if you're near the centre, you usually spy something grand and a bit monumental if you peer down the lane to the next big street or open space.

TAKE THE TINY LANE TO THE GIANT CHURCH ...

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 31.07.15

It also has this wacky thing - known as a 'plague column' - in one of its central squares. I'd never seen or even heard of plague columns before, but apparently this is the biggest one you'll find anywhere in Central Europe. Kind of an intriguing concept.

THERE'S NO PLAGUE ON US!

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 31.07.15

You can only see the bottom half of the column here, because it's enormous. A bunch of Moravia's most exciting architects designed and built it in the early 18th Century, to celebrate the end of plague in the region - but as an expression of local pride, the ordinary citizens of Olomouc helped out with its construction. Now, it just sits in the middle of the square, all baroque and massive and happy-about-the-lack-of-plague.

The town has quite a studenty, artsy vibe, with lots of street art and so on. This little piece decorates the wall of one little underpass, near the city museum.

UNDERPASS ART

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 01.08.15

But probably my favourite bit of 'public art' in Olomouc is the astronomical clock on one side of the old Town Hall.

If you live and/or have travelled in Europe, you know these things pop up fairly regularly in large European cities. And let's face it: they're incredibly kitschy. Usually they entail a bunch of Jesus' disciples, a Wise Man or three, and a crowing rooster, whirring out from behind little wooden doors on the hour, amidst a show of bells and other 'special' effects. And sadly, tourist crowds gather round these clocks well in advance, waiting for them to do their thing, as though this cheesy little spectacle is worth the price of the plane ticket.

What makes the one in Olomouc so different is that it isn't the work of some 16th Century watchmaker; it was created during the Communist era, and its design seems, as much as anything, to playfully pisstake the whole astronomical clock concept.

POCKET-SIZED SOCIALIST HEROES GREET THE HOUR

  Olomouc, Czech Republic, 01.08.15

It also seems (rather bravely for its time) to thumb its nose a little at the cliched 'socialist heroes' who were the artist's constant subject during the Socialist Realist period (whether the artist liked it or not). Here they take the place of disciples et. al., parading out of their little doorways - farmers, athletes, scientists and the whole Socialist pantheon, all looking utterly plastic and fake and caricatured. I'm actually surprised that the artist got away with it.

At the same time, there is a certain elegance to the mosaic portion of the clock - and once again, a playfulness that was very noticeably missing from most Socialist art. Rather than showing Holy Days, like your 'traditional' astronomical clock, the dials here rotate to show Lenin's and Stalin's birthdays, as well as Communist holidays like International Workers' Day. It's really funny, and kinda brilliant :-)    

But while Olomouc doesn't disappoint for either quirkiness or architectural splendour, it does lack one crucial ingredient: life. It's weird; I mean, I definitely prefer a medium-sized European city with a laid-back atmosphere to a huge, crowded capital (see my comments last year re beautiful, chilled-out Antwerp vs. ridiculously packed and slightly repugnant Brussels). But here, in Olomouc, you often find yourself wondering "Where are all the people?" 

A STRANGELY EMPTY SQUARE

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 31.07.15

I don't quite know why there are so few folks here, either locals or tourists. Maybe it's the heat - we almost reached 40 degrees this week, which would certainly encourage me to stay home if I was a local! Or maybe there's a cool part of town that I don't know about, where all the students go. Don't think so, though: I think this intense quietness actually pervades the entire city.

At times I find it quite pleasant, but at other times it's almost eerie - especially late at night, as empty trams rumble along the dimly-lit, cobbled ring road at the Old Town's edge.

JULČA'S MEAT CUP

Olomouc, Czech Republic, 01.08.15

Anyway, now I've said goodbye to Julča (a cute tabby kitten who lives outside the very Soviet-looking hotel where I stayed, and who is spoiled every morning with leftover processed meat from the breakfast hall), and I'm heading east to begin the next leg of the cycling tour.

I'll cross into Poland tomorrow, arriving in the city of Cieszyn. From there I'll head to Bielsko-Biala, at the edge of the southern Polish / northern Slovakian Tatra mountain range - a place where I've considered working more than once. Finally I'll go north to Oswięcim, better known by its Germanic name "Auschwitz", before hopping a train to Katowice and then to Warszawa (Warsaw).

As usual, I'll let you know how if anything noteworthy happens along the way.

See you!

Underneath the Republic

Hello!

Today I visited a limestone cave.

If you’ve been reading The Manor for a while, you’ll be about as surprised by that as you would be by me jumping out from behind your sofa going “Huzzaaah!”at a time we’d carefully pre-arranged. It’s a thing I tend to do from time to time (meaning the caves, not the sofa thing. Though now that’s got me thinking ...).

MMMM ... THERAPY

Blansko / Skalni Mlyn,Czech Republic, 29.07.15

The caves were about 8km from a town called Blansko, where I was staying. I decided to walk back rather than take the bus, because about half of the journey was along a quiet road that wound through an über-green and shady forest, and I was hoping for a bit of Forest Therapy.

As I was walking along, reflecting upon the nature of stuff, an odd thought occurred to me: since I left Prague six days ago, at least half of the things I’ve seen in the Czech Republic are not actually in it, so much as they're under it.

Not sure how that happened: just me and my weirdass pre-occupation with all things dark and hidden, I guess.

The first of these underground spectacles was the twisted Sedlec Ossuary near the town of Kutna Hora. I arrived there on the evening of my second cycling day, but not before I'd had a chance to do quite a lot of swearing. This resulted mainly from being stuck for about 8kms on a highway where I couldn’t ride, thanks to the lack of a shoulder and wall-to-wall enormous trucks coming at me from both directions.

Not my best day of cycling – but I s'pose it was a good chance to purge out some of the angst left over from working in Turkish universities for two years, using a stream of expletives as the cleansing medium ;-)

MERRY GARLANDS OF DEAD FOLK
Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic, 25.07.15

Btw, if you've never been to an ossuary (and I certainly hadn’t), it’s basically a place where the bones of dead folks are stored and sometimes displayed. In Kutna Hora, the earliest of the bones in question seem to date back to the 14th Century and to a thing called 'The Hussite Wars'.

These so-called Hussites are one of those groups that I'd heard of, but I had no idea who they were or what they were doing. (Well done if you spotted the Spinal Tap reference there, btw.)

Turns out their leader was a guy called Jan Hus, a cleric who started one of those religious reform movements that are all about cleansing the church of its corruption, its inappropriate opulence and so on (though mostly not using expletives). His ideas had huge uptake in this part of the world, and they became quite a threat to the church establishment – so naturally, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of Catholicness (a.k.a. the Pope) declared a 'Crusade' against the Hussites. 

Going back a few centuries earlier, we know that the Muslims who were the main (but far from the only) victims of the First Crusade had no clue what to expect when the Pope's rabble of stinky bandits arrived in their lands, led by a cadre of bloodthirsty robber barons. In the early days, there was an awful lot of “Hey guys, come on in! We’ve got Jews, we’ve got Christians, we’ve got tons of delicious flat bread ... would you like a bath with fragrant salts?” and so on.

It took quite a bit of massacring and making-the-streets-run-red-with-blood to shake some parts of the Islamic world out of Welcoming Hospitality Mode, and get them to the point of "Right, that's it: these infidels are a bunch of asshats. Let's chase 'em out, and keep our frikkin' bath salts for people who don't, y'know, try to cut our heads off all the time."

It wasn’t like that with the Hussite crusade, though. Jan Hus’s followers knew exactly what sort of bloodbath the (still-unbathed) Armies of Big Papa tended to unleash on anyone who incurred their reeky wrath, so they prepared to give as good as they got. The ensuing battles were huge by the standards of the time, and they involved quite a lot of splitting people’s heads open with swords, flails, maces and the like.

According to some accounts, the bones of as many as 10,000 soldiers who fought in the Hussite Crusade ended up at Sedlec. Looking at some of their skulls, you can see the devastating wounds they sustained in battle. Amazingly, some have two large holes, which usually meant the soldier survived his first catastrophic head wound and had to be re-killed later. On the earlier wound, you can see how the bone was healing itself, stitch-by-patient-stitch.

HEAD WOUNDS

Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic, 25.07.15

Later on, some 30,000 plague victims joined the soldiers. Their bones were put here at Sedlec because it was considered hallowed ground, after some adventurer had been to a site in the 'Holy Land', grabbed a handful of earth, brought it here and sprinkled it about the place. (Why don't you ever see that on 'Home and Garden' shows?) Eventually a church was built here to accompany the dead as they rested for eternity (or for a while, at least). 

But see, when all that stuff happened, the bones weren’t arranged into frilly chandeliers et. al., as they are today. For centuries, they were just buried here in mass graves. Then they were retrieved and transferred to a crypt – a job which must have delighted whoever was asked to carry it out.

("Sorry, you want me to dig up how many skeletons?!? Yeah, right. I think I'll just stay at home and trim my toenails with a comb.")

Then in 1870, a rich Habsburg family bought the whole site. They employed a local woodcarver, and presumably told him to "Go utterly batshit crazy" with the decoration of the church. Clearly, he followed their instructions. The result was ghoulish – and yet, somehow weirdly beautiful.

SELF-SATISFIED CHERUB

Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic, 25.07.15

Having said that – and just as I mentioned in the last entry about Prague Castle – some of the religious imagery here is a wee bit troubling.

There are candelabras in the middle of the chamber, with a skull watching over each candle. In itself, I find that quite an elegant look – but why is there a plump and smug-looking cherub sitting at the top of each candelabra? That seems to me a little twisted. So do the crucifix behind the main chamber, with places in front of it to light candles and pray for elderly relatives, missing dogs and so forth, along with the fact that a few skulls have been positioned in a way that seems to say “Throw coins at me for a better afterlife”. 

DOES THE AFTERLIFE TAKE VISA?

Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic, 25.07.15

Elsewhere, the bones are piled up in huge mounds, almost touching the beautiful ornate ceilings. And near the entrance, they’ve been artfully fashioned into lamps.

The ceilings are entirely strung with bones as well, which for me is one of the most ghoulish details of all. The way they hang is slightly festive, and almost reminiscent of the rows of little flags you might see inside a town hall at a political pep rally. 

The intention of the ossuary, of course, is to scream “Memento mori!” at every visitor. But beneath the screaming – and despite the building's age – I also detected a very modern message at Sedlec. It was kind of a low whisper;that went like this: “Look at all the banal stuff we spend our time coveting: designer lamps, chandeliers, artsy candle-holders. What are they all actually for? Is this what you call ‘life’?”   

SPRING CATALOGUE LAMPSHADE

Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic, 25.07.15

That, for me, was the spookiest part of the ossuary. In the moments I spent there, I felt like the craven human impulse to own stuff and surround ourselves with 'beauty' was almost being parodied.

Of course, that was just one person's reaction on one particular day. A thousand others could visit the ossuary and come away with a thousand other impressions – as I'm sure they have. 

A couple of days after I'd met the bones, I pitched up in the town of Jihlava, a rather pretty place that I’d read about and was quite excited to visit. Under the town there are about 25kms of catacombs, a small portion of which you can visit on a tour.

Like Sedlec, these catacombs have quite a long and varied history. Built in the 14th Century, they’ve served all kinds of purposes at various times, from storing beer and non-potable water to supply the town's fountains to hiding the local Gestapo headquarters during WWII.

SUBTERRANEAN CORRIDOR

Jihlava, Czech Republic, 27.07.15

That was all cool, but I was particularly interested in one specific part of the complex.

If you've been to any 'underground attractions', you're familiar with the moment when the guide turns the lights off and you get to experience real, total darkness. It's quite a moment, the first few times you do it. Strangely calming, and powerfully absolute, are two phrases I'd be tempted to use.

However, there's a small corridor in these catacombs where that doesn't happen, because when you turn the lights off, a strange glow appears. The glow comes from the walls, and the longer you stay down there, the brighter it appears to get.

There have been a ton of theories about this over the centuries. It used to be widely believed, for example, that the spirits of prisoners-of-war who'd been detained in the catacombs and died there had decided to haunt the place. Then there was the idea that phosphorous from the bones of Capuchin Monks buried above the corridor was seeping down through the rock and causing the weird glow (a completely disproven theory, but one that I really like for its sheer creepiness value).

There's even an Italian website which claims to this day that the corridor is a 'portal to the lost kingdom of Agarti'. It supports this idea with a whole bunch of that hokey numerological detail which you find in books on kabbalah and other forms of western mysticism; again, not remotely convincing, but kinda fun to read if you're in the mood.

Meanwhile, science has a theory too. Scientists have analysed the chemical compound in the rock, and it's one of those exotic ones that

a) has a bunch of initials and subscript numbers in its name; and
b) has the ability to 'store' light energy and emit it later in the form of luminescence.

Standing in the damp little corridor, about 5 metres under Jihlava's main square, surrounded by these sparkly luminescent particles that are illuminating the darkness, was a very cool sensation. But even cooler was what happened next: the tour guide grabbed a little boy and put him against a side wall of the corridor. She then borrowed a flash camera and took a photo of the kid.

When he stepped away from the wall, you could see luminescence all over it, except in the place where he'd been standing, which was totally black. So the effect was as if the boy's shadow had been burned into the wall. Amazing – I'd never seen anything remotely like it.

LUMINESCENT ROCK

Jihlava, Czech Republic, 27.07.15

Obviously this wasn't the ideal location in which to take photos, and most of mine were a total waste of effort. But I did snap this one of the guide holding a black light against the ceiling. It's  horrendously blurry, but you can see the luminescent compound reacting to the light source, which gives you a vague idea (I hope) of what it was like down there.

(Btw, this is Photoshopped a little to bring out more of the rock, but I haven't enhanced the green beyond its natural intensity. This is what it really looked like.)

Then finally, there was the cave in Blansko.

A bit of background here: caves are one of my absolute favourite things in the world, going right back to my childhood. Let me try to explain why in as brief a way as possible.

Basically, when I was 11 or 12 years old, my parents took me and my sister on holiday to a place called Jenolan, which is nestled at the very bottom of a deep, deep valley in south-eastern Australia's Blue Mountains.

Jenolan is at the centre of an absolutely enormous system of about 300 caves. Over several tens of millions of years, calcite-rich water has flowed and seeped through the system, and the small deposits that this water leaves behind have built up into mighty decorative formations. So what you've got there today is a series of underground galleries that are simply mind-bending to see.

I don't think my mum and dad realised what they were starting when they took me to Jenolan. For them, it was just a nice (and, since it's quite close to Sydney a fairly obvious) place to go on holiday. But for me, it was a revelation. I'd never even suspected that anything quite as beautiful as these caves existed. I just couldn't fucking believe it.

Since then, I've made an effort to visit caves as many countries as possible, from the small Danyang system of South Korea to the sacred Maori caves of Waitomo in New Zealand, and the 'fairy grottoes' of Germany.

(Btw, in case you're wondering, the Postojnska Jama in Slovenia is the best I've seen – it blew my mind several times over. Several of the caves at Jenolan would come in equal second. You can read my entry about Postojnska Jama here.)

So that's why I was here today at the 'Punkva Cave'. I just have to see them from time to time, or else I go into cave withdrawal.

To be honest, the first half of the tour was slightly disappointing. I mean, the cave was beautiful without a doubt ... but as you now know, I'm a bit of a connoisseur, and it wasn't on a par with many others I'd seen.

BOTTOM OF AN ABYSS (PEOPLE ADDED FOR SCALE)

Punkva, Czech Republic, 29.07.15

Then, as we were walking along a smallish tunnel, heading (so I thought) to another gallery, daylight suddenly happened. We emerged at the bottom of a 150-metre high 'abyss', with a tiny, lustrous blue lake at the bottom of it.

Kinda didn't expect that. Pretty impressive :-)

The third section of the tour was a boat ride through an underground lake ... and here again, if you know my fascination with caves, you know that this could hardly fail to make me a very happy Word Nerd. It was gorgeous; the crisp cold emanating from the cave walls perfectly complemented the ornate formations overhead and the deep green water below, which was 40 metres deep in places. I've seen plenty of underground lakes before – always the green ones that spring up as part of these limestone karst systems – but I never get tired of them :-)

Anyway, so that was my day. I'm in elegant Brno now, enjoying the charms of a little wine house in a street behind the main square.

I've chosen Georgian Saperavi as my medicine of choice, and it's definitely helping to numb the pain of the blisters on my feet ... which may or may not mean that this entry will need to be extensively re-edited once I see it through sober eyes ;-)

Tomorrow I'll head to Brno's Museum of Romany Culture (which has great reviews, and which I'm really looking forward to seeing). After that I'll go east to Olomouc, a student town that's billed as the 'undiscovered  gem' of Moravia. I'll let you know whether or not it lives up to the tag.

See you!

Anthony.

George The Irrelevant

Hello!

The late great author and contrarian Christopher Hitchens was fond of saying that “There are no secular gothic cathedrals”. Hitchens was a vocal atheist – one of the ‘Four Horsemen of The New Atheism’, no less – but he was happy to acknowledge the role which religious faith has played in inspiring some of the world's greatest architecture.

I’ve been thinking about that this week as I wander around beautiful Prague, looking up and going “Ooooh” at its architectural elegance. Prague is often called “the city of a hundred spires” (though I'm sure the total number is a lot higher), and the pic below demonstrates why. If you took away those spires, along with the buildings they’re attached to, there’s no doubt that you’d impoverish the cityscape –  and a good many of them were built for 'devotional' purposes. 

Still, although Hitchens definitely had a point, in my view religion isn't the only thing that spurs architects on to greatness. You can point to any number of 'secular buildings' around the world to support that idea.  

One building which definitely doesn't support it, though, is Prague Castle.

According to the Guinness Book of A Few Significant World Records and A Whole Bunch of Ridiculously Marginal Ones, Prague is home to the largest castle complex in the world.

Large it may be, but inspired, it is not. I don’t think I’ve ever been dragged through such a perfunctory ensemble of meaningless architectural puff. It was truly dull.

I think part of the problem is that the architects here basically kept the trappings of monumental Christian architecture, took their deity out of the equation, and simply replaced him with a monarch. I’m sure it doesn’t strike every visitor this way, but for me, the whole "Here's our king's house, and he's so awesome that we made it look like the house of a god" theme resulted in a crude and hollow emptiness.

Architects, please don't do that. It's tacky.

Also part of the castle complex is a church called St. Vitus Cathedral, occupying the courtyard adjacent to the main building. Like the castle, it seems a bit phoned-in, though it has all the stuff that a gothic cathedral is supposed to have – imposing height, ornate buttresses, gargoyles and so forth.

As you round the cathedral and encounter its side wall, things go from 'just ok' to 'Oh dear, that's a bit tragic!'. The wall was modified at some point and a huge door added, because one of the Czech kings had asked for a special entrance, so that he could feel like a VIP whenever he came in. (I think the king in question was Charles IV, but I can't remember and it's not interesting enough to look up.)

Here again, you've got this devotional style mixed with the veneration of an earthly person, and again it falls flat.

To make matters even worse, the painting over the entrance shows Jesus determining the fate of souls on Judgment Day. Our guide told us that the intention here is to remind us that “Only God can judge people. If another person tries to judge you, you can tell him to get lost.” 

Not a bad message on one level, in terms of discouraging people from being judgemental towards one another – except that, when St. Vitus was built, it wasn't only God passing sentence on people in Europe. It was God's 'representatives on Earth', namely the Catholic Church. And it was also any monarch who conferred Divine Right upon themselves, which was basically all of them, including (no doubt) the guy who commissioned this horrible bit of 'art'.

All of this stuff put me in kind of a sour mood, especially as the temperature was over 35C and the guide insisted on lingering outside to point out every little thing in the whole complex and beyond. So when, in the centre of the yard, I spied a statue of St. George slaying the dragon, I knew that a rant on The Manor was pretty much inevitable.

See, the whole St. George myth has always kind of annoyed me. My objection is partly intellectual / theological, but much more than that, it's visceral. And it comes down to this: I do not want to see dragons being triumphantly slain. Sorry; I just don’t. 

I mean, even if a dragon has done something particularly terrible like, say, devouring a young maiden or stealing livestock, how can anyone get off on killing it? It’s just being a dragon, ffs, as surely as the crocodile who makes supper out of a German tourist unwisely skinny-dipping in a northern Australian river is just being a crocodile. Can we really get any satisfaction from 'punishing’ or ‘getting revenge’ on either of them, when both were simply acting in accordance with their natures?

Besides, if you put yourself in the path of a hungry dragon, that pretty much defines you as an idiot, doesn't it? I mean, when it’s known that a certain area of coastal water is infested with Great Whites, what people generally do is this: they go away and swim elsewhere. In most versions of the myth, St George and/or the people in the community he was ‘rescuing’ could’ve quite easily done exactly that (or found another solution, as we'll see in a sec). The fact that they didn't just makes them all eligible for Darwin Awards.

And as for George himself ... well, dragons are beautiful, primal creatures, to be admired and respected, whereas George basically seems to have been a big strong guy with a glorified kebab skewer. He’s the Steve Irwin of his day, courting the world's attention by chasing fierce, giant-toothed beasties and deliberately trying to piss them off. Excuse me if I find it difficult to admire such a desperate bid for celebrity. 

PICK ON SOMETHING YOUR OWN SIZE, GEORGIE BOY

Prague Castle, 21.07.15

Aside from which, one might legitimately ask "What the heck is he doing in Prague anyway? Or in the Christian story at all, for that matter?"

I mean, depending on your preferred interpretation, that story is about the words and deeds of either a Palestinian Gandhi or a sort of revolutionary Jewish Martin Luther. Where does this other medieval guy fit in, sitting on his horse and poking his spear into a dragon's belly?

Short answer: he doesn't. He's a sprig of English parsley garnishing a sumptuous Middle Eastern mezze: marooned in a foreign context that leaves him utterly irrelevant, and arguably in as much need of 'rescuing' as anyone.

Sorry ... where was I? Oh yeah, Prague :-)

So the tour ended with a little river cruise and a brief wander through the Jewish quarter, both of which were quite enjoyable.

Afterwards I grabbed some dinner and then headed off to my new favourite bar just outside the centre (downmarket but friendly, working wi-fi, and a smoking section – shine on, you crazy bar!). Sitting with my bottle of Finnish cider, I kept coming back to this whole St. George thing. A certain amount of googling happened, and at the end of it, I had a bit more of an idea of where Mr. Irrelevant had come from, and how he'd insinuated himself into so much statuary and stained glass across Europe and elsewhere.  

So just for you, here's the lowdown ...

George seems to have first appeared in stories around the seventh century AD in Georgia*. He was initially conceived as just a soldier who served under the Emperor Diocletian, and some writers attribute to him noble actions like tearing up an edict from the Emperor which instructed Romans to burn down Christian churches. 

References to George's dragon-slaying habit don't come until a few hundred years later, when they appeared in both Georgia and Turkey's Cappadocia**. However, his first encounter with the dragon didn't happen in either of those places – it happened, randomly enough, in Libya.

The story goes like this: the dragon lived in a lake just outside a city called Silene, and the people there found they could placate it by feeding it sheep. But then, one black day, the sheep supply ran out. Soon after that, the townsfolk also exhausted their supply of spare children, who they'd been using as substitute dragon food while they waited for the sheep drought to be over. 

At this point – aside from a kind of general Old Testamenty bloodthirstiness – there really doesn't seem to be much connecting this tale to Christian theology, does there? Not to worry, though ... it's coming in a minute.

So with all the sheep and all the kids gone, the King of Silene was forced to send his own daughter to the lake, where the ravenous dragon awaited with a napkin tied around its neck and silver cutlery in its scaly hands. But just at the point where the young maiden was about to be eaten, George happened past on his horse.

Observing the terrible scene, he blurted out "What's all this, then?", like a London Bobby in a Monty Python sketch (or at least, that's how I picture it). A fight ensued, he wounded the dragon with his kebab skewer, and then he led it into town, where he promised to kill it for the townsfolk's entertainment. There was one condition, though: everyone in Silene has to convert to Christianity.

So you see ... there is a link! And what a logical, rational one it is, eh?

At this point, I think it's pertinent to remark on just how freakin' weird people were in those days.

To illustrate, imagine this for a second. You're coming home from work one day, taking a shortcut which leads through a sports oval. As the oval comes in sight, you notice there's a giant squid lying in the middle of it. Next to the squid is a guy dressed in protective clothing, sitting at the driver's seat of a small crane. Obviously he's somehow caught or acquired the beast, subdued it and transported it here.

The guy motions you over to him and asks you a question:

"Hey bro, have you accepted Jesus Christ into your life as your personal Lord and Saviour?"

"Er, well not in so many words. I mean, I'd probably consider myself a spiritual person, but as far as organised relig-" ... 

"Well", he interrupts, "If I murder this enormous squid, then will you accept Jesus?".

You know how we'd react to this in the 21st Century. The guy would arrested and charged, he'd enter an insanity plea in court, and he'd spend the rest of his life heavily medicated in a psychiatric facility.

In the world of early and medieval Christianity, though, his fate would've been rather different. If you could come up with a stunt like the giant squid capture back then, you had a good chance of effecting a mass conversion to whatever religion you happened to believe in, and possibly even becoming a hero whose insignia people would choose to put on their flags centuries later.

As I said: weirdos.

Amazingly, though, even this tableau of bizarreness – the original St George & Dragon story, I mean – wasn't enough for later storytellers. They had to make it even more strange and random, by inserting a magical orange tree. 

Yep, that's right. In a prominent later version of the story, the dragon is bigger and fiercer, with scales that act as armour plates and can shatter spears on contact. (In some renditions, it's actually the dragons disgusting toxic spit that shatters armour – which seems to me a bit more fun. But anyway ...).

When George fought this dragon he was wounded, but by rolling under a Magic Orange Tree that just happened to be nearby, he became completely impervious. While lying there on the ground he spotted a newly ripened orange and decided to pause for a quick snack, at which point he underwent some kind of instant healing process and was restored to full strength.

(Amazing that no orange juice company has managed to weave this into an advertising campaign yet ... don'tcha think?)

Then, feeling all re-invigorated by his mystically enhanced Vitamin C hit, Mr. George manages to get the upper hand in the fight, and he subdues the dragon.

There's a problem, though: the dragon's innards are also highly toxic, and unbelievably copious. When George finally slashes its belly, the earth around them both becomes "drenched in the moisture that exploded from the monster's venomous bowels" ***.

It seemed like the bowel goo would never stop coming ... and yet, as we know, George did eventually drag himself out of the river of dragon gore and into the popular imagination.

Historians disagree on exactly how he managed to do that. Some say that the story of the dragon chimed in well with pagan stories native to England and other European countries, and/or with the Greek myth in which Perseus slays a Sea Monster; others say that the dragon represented the Emperor Diocletian, since he had a bit of a beef against Christianity.

To me, though, none of these things cancel out the irrelevance or George, or persuade me to forgive him for slaying the dragon.

The people of Silene always had options, and a true hero would've pointed that out. They could've gone, for example, and negotiated with the dragon (who, in most accounts, can understand human language). Just explain: "Look, we've got a bit of a sheep shortage, but we're gonna sort it out by buying some sheep from neighbouring settlements. You might have to make do with chickens for a couple of weeks, though." Easy.

On the other side of the argument, not every community and not even every 'hero' can be counted upon to make the best decisions all the time. So maybe I'm being tough on George here. Arguably, it's not his solitary act of brutality that's so horrifying; rather, it's the fact that a) he became a saint partly on the strength of his dumbass dragon-slaying; b) dozens of countries saw it as sufficiently heroic to warrant having a St George feast day every year (which many still observe); and c) he still turns up in places like the Prague Castle Complex, sticking a giant fork into a dragon's belly for reasons which most people aren't even aware of.

And with that, I think I'll finish my little George and The Dragon rant. 

Tomorrow I’m leaving Prague behind and heading off into the wilds of Moravia. Well, the quasi-wilds at least. I’ve bought a bicycle, which was a whole fun process in itself, and I’m planning to ride it most of the way to Warsaw. I’ve only got 15 days to get there and start the process of applying for visas at two separate embassies, so I’ll undoubtedly do some train-hopping to help me keep to schedule. But I’ll cycle as much as possible. 

The next few entries will probably either be about Bike Love or Truck Hate; those are bound to be big themes in the coming days. Until then ... take care!

Anthony.
  

(* In an entry I wrote earlier this year, I wondered why we use the name Georgia, given that the country's actual name is Sakartvelo. Now I know – but I still think Sakartvelo is much cooler!)

(** kind of an odd coincidence for me, 'cause I've visited both of those places this year, and in each one I've had conversations about the other.) 

(*** source: http://www.blackdrago.com/slayers/stgeorge.htm)

Is Your Career Standing Still?

SUITABLY UNIMPRESSED

Stare Mesto (Old Town), Prague, 20.07.15

We are looking for enthusiastic, motivated and goal-oriented individuals to assist in the support of a new building to be constructed on Copernicus Street in the vibrant city centre. Must have experience in supporting large quantities of stone and masonry.

"AND TO MAKE THINGS WORSE, A LION HAS DECIDED TO EAT MY HEAD"
Stare Mesto (Old Town), Prague, 22.07.15

Duties: stand in your underwear and bear the load of the three storeys above you
Length of contract: permanent
Working hours: 168 per week
Holidays: none
Salary: competitive for the position offered
Other conditions: opportunity to work with other indentured load-bearers who a share common interest in standing still for the rest of eternity (apocalypse notwithstanding) and supporting structures of incalculable weight
Essential: ability to look distinctly unimpressed with the task given you
Desirable: ability to ignore rivers of bird droppings coursing over your head, shoulders and chest.

If interested, please contact:
The Architect's Guild
c/- The King
Building 1, Castle Street
(or Main Square on execution days)

Ref no: 011783920


(Sorry. This represents the culmination of my long history of feeling sorry for inanimate objects. I'll get back to the usual "Oh dear, I seem to have gone on holiday by mistake" format soon.)

Farewell Cappadocia

So ... what does one do on one's last night in Turkey?

Shall I clean? Hmmm ... nope, don't think so. When the university gave me this flat, it was utterly, staggeringly filthy. I still remember the two month-old pastries in the oven, and the rancid smell in the fridge that took several months and a prodigious amount of fresh lime to get rid of. So I'll pass on that option.

Should I have an early night? Well, yeah, I probably should ... but tomorrow I'm embarking on a two-week adventure, starting in Prague and heading eastwards. So, you know, putting your head down at 10pm is pretty much out of the question when you've got that on your mind.

I think, instead, I'll share with you some of my favourite pics from the fabulously weird giant depression in the Great Anatolian Plain known as Cappadocia.

ROAD ACROSS THE ANATOLIAN PLAIN (with bonus volcano)

Somewhere near Nevşehir, Turkey, 28.10.13

Some context first: a year ago I moved from Ankara to a city called Kayseri, which is essentially a dusty-blown collection of ugly high-rises more or less in the middle of Anatolia.

A charming, engaging city Kayseri is not. But it does have a couple of advantages, of which probably the biggest is this: jump on a bus, and and hour later you jump off in Göreme, right in the heart of the Cappadocian action.  

TOWNSHIP WTH 'FAIRY CHIMNEYS' 

Göreme, Turkey, 28.10.13

The first time I came down here, I was still living in Ankara. I found Göreme a bit touristy at first, with its über-backpackery vibe, but outside the town, the scenery was mindblowing. And I was aware that, in spending a couple of days here, I'd barely scratched the surface.

POTTERY WORKSHOP, ANYONE?

Cappadocia, Turkey, 27.10.13

Then I accepted the job offer in Kayseri, and suddenly I had this amazing spectacle virtually in my back yard. I believe that's what they call a "perk".

So once I'd settled in to Kayseri life (more or less), Cappadocia then became a kind of 'weekend getaway'. I made many trips down there, including one for New Year's Eve. It was a chilly New Year, but memorable :-)

NEW YEAR IN GÖREME

Cappadocıa, Turkey, 01.01.15

Of course, what kept drawing me back there were the incredible landscapes, including the one below at a place called Paşabağ. (You say that like "Pasha-BAAA".)

The remarkable thing about this particular part of Cappadocia was that I'd never intended to go there, but I was with a group last October and one of us (my friend Kate) decided we had to go to a place called 'Love Valley'. The valley got its name, so the story goes, from the fact that the rock formations there look like erect penises - so then 'love' was thought to be a suitable euphemism for what these formations made most visitors think of.

PENISY?

Paşabağ, Cappadocıa, 18.10.14

The thing is, Kate got it wrong, and we ended up NOT going to the Love Valley, but turning up in this place instead. We were walking around going "Do these look like penises to you?", and arguing back and forth as to the degree of resemblance, until months later we found out that we were nowhere near the place we'd meant to visit.

Still ... I think some of these are at least vaguely phallic :-)

VIEW FROM THE VALLEY'S END

Paşabağ, Cappadocıa, 28.11.14

But of course, the obvious question to ask here is "How did the landscape get that way?"

Well, the answer isn't as easy to find as you might think. Cappadocia's towns are, unsurprisingly, awash with souvenir shops, which are in turn awash with pictorial guides to the region. But all the ones I thumbed through were almost completely silent when it came to explaining the origins of these bizarre and beautiful configurations of ancient stone.

CANYON NEAR PAŞABAĞ 

 Cappadocıa, Turkey, 28.11.14

What I have managed to glean, though, is this:

Basically, there are two volcanoes either side of the region (which measures about 60kms end to end), and a smaller one in the middle. About 60 million years ago, all three of them erupted at once, spilling out loads and loads of molten material.

VIEW OVER THE 'ROSE VALLEY' 

 Göreme, Cappadocıa, 28.11.14 

By some weird accident of geology, there were two separate layers of material deposited. The first layer was what geologists call tuff stone, though this seems a bit of an odd name for it, because it's actually rather soft and girly – at least as far as rock goes. (I've hit my head on it a few times, and it's hard enough to really hurt!) On top of that, and a bit later, came a harder coating of heavy basalt.

CONE-LIKE FORMATIONS 

 Near Göreme, Cappadocıa, 27.10.13

So what happened was that the weight of the basalt pushed downwards and broke parts of the tuff stone away. You got these huge collapses which created canyons and, in some places, vertical columns of rock. But most remarkably, in a few places a little bit of basalt would remain on top. That would create the initial conditions for what are now known as Cappadocia's 'fairy chimneys'.

Since that rather dramatic event, much subtler processes like erosion have been shaping the landscape gradually. In places like the Rose Valley (above), this has resulted in the ripples or waves. In other areas like Paşabağ, the basalt has eroded less than the tuff, producing columns with 'hats' on top.

USE YOUR BASALT AS A HAT 

 Love Valley, Cappadocıa, 03.10.14

If Douglas Adams had seen this place (and he might have – I actually don't know), it would surely have confirmed his theory that the universe is largely driven by the Force of Improbability :-)

ANCIENT HOMES (AND MODERN RENOVATIONS) IN ROCK

 Ürgüp, Cappadocıa, 4.10.14

But then, some time between 9,000 and 4,000 years ago, ancient peoples began to inhabit this area. They carved their homes, sometimes inside the chimneys (accessible by rope ladder), and other times into huge rock massifs like the one above.

INSIDE A ROCK HOUSE, PERVING ON THE NEIGHBOURS 

Paşabağ, Cappadocıa, 18.10.14

This added a further twist to the Cappadocia aesthetic – especially when one considers how they got their fuel. All around the region you see these homes, with tiny little shelves carved into the outside walls. These were created so that pigeons would roost there, and their excrement would be burned for warmth and (it's thought) cooking. 

Hence the term "pigeon holes". They were invented here.

PIGEON HOLES

Ürgüp, Cappadocıa, 29.11.14

Much later came late pagan and then Christian communities, the latter of whom built a network of subterranean cities, accommodating thousands of people and allowing them to escape persecution. You can tour several of these, and more are being discovered all the time – in fact, just this year two Turkish kids fell down a hole in Kayseri and started walking along a subterranean passageway, only to emerge over 30kms closer to Cappadocia than where they started! 

ROLL AWAY THE ROCK TO REVEAL THIS WEEK'S MAJOR PRIZE!

Derinkuyu Underground city, Cappadocıa, 27.10.13

 Then finally came the Turks, bringing Islamic culture to the region, along with distinctive mud-brick architecture and, eventually, balloons. 

BALLOONS OVER THE CITY

Göreme, Cappadocıa, 06.03.15

These are ridiculously expensive to hire, and they periodically crash and kill people. But seeing them rise up over the towns and ply their way through the valleys has undeniably become part of the 'Cappadocia experience'.

BALLOONS ASCEND FROM THE TOWN OF ÇAVUŞİN 

 Love Valley, Cappadocıa, 03.10.14

So there you have it. That's been my ongoing discovery of the region which Buzzfeed ranks at no. 9 on its 27 Surreal Places to Visit Before You Die list. As a convenient 'weekender' destination, I don't think I'll ever mange to beat it. So ... Farewell, Cappadocia!