Barry in Europe

As I write, it is my very last night in the UK, the end of the second phase of my trip, which has gone far too quickly for comfort.

When I left Birmingham at the beginning of May, I was a little torn about what I would do: in theory I was supposed to go to Galway, but there were places I wanted to see again and the cost of living in Ireland is a little frightening, even by comparison with the cost of living in England. So I put that aspect of the jaunt off for a little, and headed back to Whitby. It took me all day, but that was mainly because I had a three hour wait between trains in York – I might have made the earlier train which left about five minutes after I arrived, had I known about it or not had to struggle through the station with all my gear and take the time to stable my bike in York railway station. So, I found a quiet spot in the pub in the station, there was no way I was going to carry my bags about, and did some ale-powered work. Then it was up through Middlesburgh and across to Whitby.

Just seeing the place

again confirmed that it is my kind of place. Although the trudge up the 199 steps to the hostel

is not my kind of thing, by the time I had spent a long weekend there, I was really reluctant to leave. The hostel felt like home, helped by the really quite wonderful views from my room

Last time I was here, I found a good cafe but this time round, I found Beckett’s and once I did, the other place didn’t get a look in. I was in every day once I found it. Beckett’s is a cosy and very welcoming place which not only does good coffee, but has great cakes and has two walls devoted to books for sale. Breaking my rules about buying more stuff to carry, I bought two. One, I was reading the back cover and thought, hmmm that sounds a lot like Men Behaving Badly, who is copying whom? Then I saw it was actually David Nye’s Men Behaving Badly. Turned out to be pretty lame, as it happens, so I left it in the hostel book exchange.

On what was Bank Holiday Monday over here, I had a horrible attack of indecision: their cakes were good, their teacakes were good, how the hell was I to decide? I didn’t – I went for both. Somehow this same state of indecision found me paralysed outside another cafe on the way back to the hostel and in much the same state of mind, had to go in and indulge in more teacakes. My extensive research has revealed that the baker in Whitby makes a particularly yeasty and very addictive and fine form of teacake.

Another great find in Whitby was the Board Inn. I’d been for a really good meal of fish and chips and wasn’t quite ready to climb the 199 steps so thought a pint was in order. This led to me going back for another every night I was in Whitby. Watching the sun go down had a peculiar fascination

Captain Cook is on the horizon – here he is a bit closer

On the way through to Whitby, I’d noticed a wee town that looked kind of cool, Grosmont, then I found out that a steam train


was running from Whitby to a festival of steam at Grosmont. It was something I had to do.

Now, when you travel on the 17:55 to Lichfield Trent Valley, or even the 14:02 Virgin Pendolino to Euston, people tend not to be out waving, but put yourself in a steam hauled train and everyone wants to wave at you. A LOT of people seem to be interested in just seeing a steam train arrive

Mind you, some were quite spectacular

I wonder if people can work out what the special story is about this train

The Tornado is the first steam engine made in the UK in something like 50 years, and was commissioned in 2009, just a couple of months ago. Grosmont is not the biggest of towns,


and trains seem to be a big part of its life – I think there were three shops selling railway souvenirs. Going back, I decided to travel first class

Back at the station in Whitby, there was sword dancing

I've managed to knock off the second volume of the Forsyte Saga over the past couple of weeks, which I found to be quite strange because the Forsytes are decidedly thin on the ground. Yes, Soames Forsyte is there as a central figure, and his daughter is to the fore, but the rest drop into the background. Instead, the Mont family, into which Fleur married come in for a lot of attention. So, I came to like Soames in this volume, and was sad when he took the ferry in quite a dramatic way. Fleur is horrible, completely spoilt - her only saving grace is that she knows it. One of the more interesting features of the novel is that it sets up oppositions between the old ways and the new, including the modern use of language. Some of the phrases have stuck, but a lot were just a fad and long gone, to the point I hardly knew what was being said at times.

London had one final gesture for me. I was not arrested. Instead, I was “detained”. Under the anti Terrorism legislation. Seriously. I was moseying along near Kings Cross station, hoping I might find a decent coffee when a wee constable who had been lurking in an alley came out and “requested” that I join him. I expressed my displeasure but really, what can you do but submit. I even managed to make a joke, wondering why he could not arrest the folk running the nearby Starbucks as a crime against coffee. So he carefully searched me, we had a bit of a chat but by the time he got to my bag decided he could let me go. Funnily enough, when I read the copy of the report he had to give me, he had stopped me for walking in a “vulnerable area” i.e. near two major railway stations, carrying a “large bag” i.e. my laptop bag.

That reminds me of a wee story I read in Tartu about a large cupboard. Apparently the library was pretty keen to maintain discipline, so when people talked in the library or were late returning their books, they’d be locked in the cupboard. One person spent three days in such fashion. Go into a modern library, you’d soon need a HUGE cupboard to apply these measures to the users!

Back in Lichfield, it was my last couple of weeks. They were pretty full on, as I was making as much use of the library as I could during the day then spending my evenings in a pub, as it offered free internet and mine was cut off at work. I did take time out for a few photos of the University campus:
Great Hall



Law library:

Law Faculty:

Main Library:

Random statue outside my window (the source was named, but not the statue)

and my favourite, Michael Faraday

He’s an impressive man and an unusual one for an educational institute to feature at its front entrance as not only did he have no formal education, but according to the theorists of the time, his most famous invention, the electric motor, simply could not work. Yet it did – he was the great experimenter, possibly the greatest ever. He later went on to become a Professor but not at Birmingham University, I have no idea what connection he might have with Birmingham – certainly not a strong enough one to feature in his Wikipedia entry.

I spent my last weekend in the area holed up in a hotel in Lichfield,

since my house wasn’t really conducive to hanging about in and decided to go walkabout with the camera.

Lichfield Cathedral is quite remarkably hard to get a good photo of, because it is so big and the Close is rather, well, close.

Walking around it at night was a pretty special experience, because it tended to be a ghostly looming presence when it was really dark. I tried taking a photo – you’d get the experience of seeing it!

Lichfield library:

Scooter convention:

One of the reasons to stay in town was to go visiting. First up, it was the house of Erasmus Darwin,

grandfather of Charles.

He was a doctor, and quite a guy. Mary Shelley credits his experiments in which he tried to re-animate corpses in the basement (visitors can only go down there under very special arrangements) with inspiring her to write Frankenstein, and he influenced Coleridge and Wordsworth with his own poetical works. Patients would tell of his travels to see them, his carriage laden with a pile of books to one side and food to the other. He invented all sorts of things, including a talking machine, a horizontal windmill

and a system for independent turning of front carriage wheels (to stop carriages falling over) which still informs motor engineering today.

He also had a few thoughts along the lines of a theory of evolution, but ran into a little opposition from the neighbours

His house was an important focal point for 18th century Lichfield intellectual life, which made Dr Johnson

a frequent visitor. Johnson’s house is right in the centre of Lichfield,


where his father was a not very successful bookseller

I have no photos at all of Birmingham. I was initially reaonably impressed with it as a city, but after spending four months there, I actually had trouble picking out any specific thing that I had warmed to, unless you count my Asian greasy spoon under the railway station. I think I managed three visits there in my last couple of weeks. One regret I have is that I didn't get to go back and say a finale farewell to Wolverhampton, as it had provided me with a variety of homes for a month or so and there's a very nice curry shop I wanted to dine at.

But time run out. At around 7:00 on 1 May, I slung my bags over my shoulder, reunited myself with my bike at Lichfield station and I was off.

After coming back from Latvia, the feeling of everything being about to end was strong, so I thought I’d have a final weekend in London, staying at the newly re-opened (“last Wednesday, Sir”) St Pancras YHA. Also newly re-opened is St Pancras station, which is a star among railway stations (sorry about the fogging on the photos).

I planned to get a photo of its impressive front, but somehow forgot. There are several storeys facing the road in a kind of red brick gothic style, I don’t know what all the space was used for, but had the impression that it was barely used at all so am glad to see that it is getting new life as a hotel and apartments. Inside, there has been a massive redevelopment. Trains are on the upper level

along with a statue of John Betjeman

and a couple, obviously just re-uinited or about to separate for a journey

Downstairs there was enough to amuse me for my entire visit to London, a branch of Foyles, lots of cafes and various interesting shops.

I didn’t actually stay in a railway station for two days, however, I had films to see. First was the Swedish Let the Right One In, about a 12 year old boy who is a bit of a loner, picked on by the other boys, but then he makes this friend, when a new girl moves in next door. So, at one level it is a sweet movie about two outsiders finding each other and forming a bond, but the wrinkle is that she’s a vampire. Such is the sacrifice that her dad will make that he goes out and kills for her. The oddity of this as a vampire movie is that the audience is left empathising with the vampire.

On the Sunday, I had a fairly hefty walk as I planned to see Camden Market. On the way, I found St Pancras Old Church

which has been here since the 11th century, although it has had a bit of refurbishment along the way. There’s a cute story about burying all of the Church’s treasures so that Cromwell’s men wouldn’t steal them, but then not being able to find them again. It was only when the church was being rebuilt in the 19th century that they were found. Mary Wollenscroft is apparently buried in the graveyard, but I never found her grave. This


is a sundial which one Baroness Burdett-Coutts saw fit to give to the public (she was heavily involved in slum clearance in London (which has curious links to my reading in The Forsyte Saga), the first woman peer).

I’d heard that Camden Market had burnt down, but that was a bit of an exaggeration: much of it was still going strong,



completely crowded and still selling much the same sort of stuff it has always sold,

even though they have become mainstream in the meantime, such as Doc Martens. Even the street outside was chocker

It was nice to see that there were still some freaks among the civilians, young and not so young.

Down in Camden Lock, someone was actually using the canal

It was then a fairly long walk along to the top of Upper Street in Islington, and an unfortunately rushed walk down that street – so many interesting looking cafes, but I had no time to longer, as I was headed for the brutalist splendour of the Barbican


to see another film, 400 Blows, one of Truffaut’s early movies and said to be one of the defining moments of the French New Wave. I’ve seen a few movies from that movement that have left me completely bewildered, not as to what was going on but why they made it into a movie, but this one I enjoyed. Antoine is a troubled school boy, where he has a hard time behaving and is given progressively worse punishments. He kind of brings things upon himself: when asked why he was not at school and has no note, his answer is that his parents both died. Not sure how long he thought he’d get way with it but it wasn’t long. Home life isn’t much better – he has to sleep in a cot in the kitchen, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a relationship either with or between his parents. There is an almost farcical scene when, to get some money, he and his mate steal a typewriter (of all things) from his father’s work but are caught when trying to return it. This is the final straw, the cops get called in and it is off to borstal, on his mum’s recommendation. This suits him, in that he’d always wanted to be by the sea.

As I post this, I have reached that point in my journey when it is time to quit England. I am currently in Carlisle, so the easiest way to quit England would be to go the few miles north to Sotland, but that is not the way I go. No, tomorrow, I will be back in Wales.

My first night in the hostel in Riga, my room mate, a musician from France, suggested I go round the corner to a restaurant called the Lido - a place I had seen advertised and thought would be awful, but I let myself be persuaded. It was kind of awful, a buffet set in an extremely fake medievally themed room, with an old lady comatose in the window (I happened to walk past three times during my stay and she was always there, although not always comatose, otherwise I might have thought her a mannequin). Worst of all was the drink I bought, thinking kwass might be a local brew of beer. Apparently it is a very popular Russian drink, essentially a fermented malt drink - the recipe I saw online would have me add (to about two gallons of water) a single large raisin for flavour. I guess making it a large one makes all the difference.

In my wanders over the three days, I saw a lot to appeal. Oddly enough, the Old City was OK, but it was the newer part, the hundred year old Art Nouveau areas that really appealed. Here are some more or less random buildings that caught my eye:

These are known as the Three Brothers, some of the oldest standing buildings in twon, from the days of the Hanseatic League. I was sure that this building was some sort of church, but it turned out to be an academy.

Some I really did not like, mainly because they were out of place. This is a museum, in the Old City

and this is a bar

But it was the Art Nouveau style that really got to me: some streets were entirely given over to it, and the thing that impressed me was that no matter how impressive the individual detail one building might have, the next would be entirely different. I did go to the Riga Museum or Architecture to find out more about it, a place which claims to have 7000 exhbits. All I know, I went in and all they had to show me was a big banner, leant not a damn thing. But I was in the hostel talking with a couple of the guys, and we decided that the aesthetics of the buildings have so much in establishing the tone of Riga as a very relaxing place to be, and contribute to one's own sense of well being. So it is little wonder I spent most of my non-working time just wandering slowly around.

This is the fellow creditted with doing so much to get Art Nouveau going in Riga

As for reading, I decided to take a break between volumes of The Forsyte Saga, and went for last year's Man Booker Prize winner, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. It started off well enough - a fairly presumptuous letter to the Chinese Premier to clue him in to the current state of India. After a while, the narrative dropped back to simply telling the life story of the White Tiger, Balram. He had humble origins but somehow got the determnation to get ahead, and with India the outsourcing capital of the world, there are opportunities for those willing to do what is ncessary to grab them (in Balram's case, it is revealed very early in the novel that what it takes is to kill someone). A couple of people on the bus out to Riga airport noticed me carrying it and did a bit of a rave about it, but I wasn't left overwhelmed - it is a bit slight, a bit Slumdog Millionaire, a bit Nabokov lite.

The Baltic Air flight to London was straightforward. I have to confess to a minor error on my part in making the booking - I had found a decent enough price on a flight discounting site, but thought I'd check out the airline's own site. The price there was expressed in Ltvian Lats which, when I looked up the exchange rate was something like three to a pound. That made the flight a bargain, so I was happy to add extras, spending up large on the website to get myself a pork steak lunch wine, etc. I felt a bit sick, however, when I realised I was using the conversion rate for the Lithuanian currency - 1 Latvian Lat is actually about 1.3 pound, making everything just a tad expensive.

Arrival back in London was a bit of a slap in the face. Eastern Europe is so peaceful and quiet, and the people for the most part seemed pretty cool. But getting on to the train to London soon dispelled the sense of peace acquired. Someone was wrenching the table on the back of my seat, up and downm up and down... and it was making a horrible screeching sound. I thought it might be a young kid doing it, and that the parent might ask whoever it was to stop but no, this went on for a long time. But when I finally lost it and asked that she stop, the perpetrator was a teenager. All my request that she stop produced was her smiling at me, redoubling her efforts and she and her mates mimicing my accent among themselves. Luckily for my sanity they all got off at the next stop.

I didn’t quite say all I wanted to about Tartu. My first night there, the fellows running my hostel recommended I dine at an establishment called Crepp, just down the main street. After walking the length of the street to conduct an exhaustive comparative study of all the menus on offer, and popping into a pub for a pint to process all my research, I had to agree: I found myself salivating over the idea of some fancy steak dish the menu attached to the outside promised. So it was a little disconcerting to go into Crepp and find that the menu I’d seen was for their upstairs restaurant, which was not open. I was instead in their salad restaurant. I decided I would make the best of a bad situation by ordering the meatiest looking salad on offer, a meatball salad. I have to say that the salad itself was quite delicious, but the meatballs were little larger than peas. Feeling cheated, I slunk home.

I did far better the next night, at a place called Truffe, one of these buildings (apparently they lost some in the War and had them replaced by Stalinist neoclassical buildings, but I can’t tell which are the old and which the new):

Quite apart from a lovely dinner, I found myself mesmerised by some of the music playing. I have no idea what language the particular songs I really liked were being sung in, it may have been Estonian but they were also playing English and French sons so I can’t be sure. Nonetheless I told myself it was Estonian triphop.

I have a couple of other buildings that caught my eye. These wooden ones stood out as being a bit of a contrast to the prevailing mode

and then there was the Art Gallery (behind which was the Tartu Public Library, in which I ensconced myself for several hours work)

In my quest to find the Tartu Barge, I had quite a wander along the river

it was very peaceful


and I almost forgot that I was within a half hour’s walk of the city (although the three playground were a reminder). The river itself was not behaving very well

One other joy of Tartu is that they had a brand new bookshop, a branch of the one I liked in Tallinn, so I was in and out a few times for coffee and to enjoy

I stayed in a hostel which was basically just an apartment in a typical apartment building, the thing that made it special was the three guys running it. They seemed to be having a great time, kind of like college room-mates (they were American, Australian and English) and running the hostel as an extension of their home, which made for a very comfortable space. One fellow visitor had arrived a couple of weeks earlier for a two day stay, and was extending it day by day.

My hostel in Riga was a far more hostel like place, although a very very good one (except for the six flights of stairs) – a ten room communal apartment converted a year ago with a clear sense of style, (when I got back to England, I read a bit of a rave about it in the Guardian), lots of black, white and red

The building itself is an example of Art Nouveau, a movement which started around 1897 – apparently Riga has the greatest collection in the world

Something quite a long way from being Art Nouveau is the Riga Central Market

During the war they were used as Zeppelin hangars, but have been returned to use as a market



with a few flowers for sale outside

Here is where I sequestered myself to do a couple of days work, in the Riga Graduate School of Law library, two glorious examples of Art Nouveau


(sorry about the infection my photos seem to have caught).

As I hit Riga, I finally finished the first volume (of three) of The Forsyte Saga. Soames Forsyte started out as rather a horrible man, but he found his humanity when he had a daughter, and really does lover her unconditionally. There is this whole feud going on because Soames and Irene split, and she married Jolyon and had a son. So these is hell to pay when her son (another Jolyon) and his daughter (Fleur) meet and fall in love - they have no idea of the old history. Soames is able to get over it, though: if Felur really wants to marry Jon (as he's known) he will accept it. This, combined with his outstanding probity as a lawyer makes him end the book as its hero, rather than the villain.