Spectator Life

I decided to walk from Athens to Byzantium — Constantinople, the medieval Queen of Cities, lately Istanbul. I had a little red tent and a vision of noble penury that evoked the ghosts of Cyriaco of Ancona (d. 1452) and Paddy Leigh Fermor (d. 2011). My girlfriend said she'd join me later. The lines that now smudge my map look more like the flight of a woozy bluebottle than the traces of a man with a plan. My earliest memories of the trek are melancholy.

Where I live on Long Island Sound, something noteworthy is scheduled to happen today at about 12:30 post meridian. The sun will reach its northernmost point of the year, pause briefly, and then begin the (at first) slow movement to the south, bringing with it shorter days and (eventually) colder temperatures. Today, for the summer solstice (‘solstitium’, Latin for ‘sun-stopping’) in these parts, we’ll have 15 hours and five minutes of daylight. By the time the winter solstice rolls around near Christmas, we’ll be down to nine hours and eight or nine minutes. Brrr! And, turn on the light! We celebrated the solstice last night by attending a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream out of doors on the banks of Five Mile River right off the Sound.

Tourists take the cable car to the Top of the Rock to pester the monkeys that live at the summit, but the best thing about this clifftop arena is the view. Standing on the cliff edge, gazing down at the big ships traversing the busy strait below, you realize what makes Gibraltar so important. Spain lies behind you, Morocco lies ahead. To your left is the Mediterranean and, on your right, the wild Atlantic. This is the bridgehead between Africa and Europe, the gateway between the Old World and the New. No wonder Britain has always been so determined to hold onto it. Whoever controls the Rock controls this narrow strait and all the traffic that passes through it, about a quarter of the world’s shipping.

One afternoon towards the end of my first year of high school, as I filed through the crowded halls to my locker, I saw the news ripple as visibly as a breeze through a cornfield in August. A Sheetz was opening that very day, at the summit of Queen Street, off I-83. My little Pennsylvania city was on the map. We’d finally chosen a side in the great gas station wars. Now that the hit HBO show Mare of Easttown has brought the world’s attention to one of America’s greatest shames — Pennsylvania accents — it’s also reminded us of the fierce loyalty residents of the emptier parts of the mid-Atlantic have toward our convenience stores. Mare and her fellows refer to their Wawa hoagies and coffees with a curious, pointed frequency, satirized in a recent SNL skit.

Stroll around Florence and you’ll notice little ornate openings embedded in the walls of Renaissance palazzos. They look like doorways for tiny people, though they would have to be quite athletic tiny people, as the openings are three feet off the ground. But they’re not entrances for Tuscan pixies — they’re for selling wine. There are more than 150 buchette del vino dotted around the city and they date back to the 17th century. You’d knock on the door, hand over some money and a bottle, and the mysterious person behind the wall would fill it full of wine. It wouldn’t have been just any old plonk either; the great merchant houses of the city like Frescobaldi, Ricasoli and Antinori, who still make some of Tuscany’s best wines, would sell in this way.

It’s a nail-biting cliff-edge ride down switchback, stomach-churning, hairpin bends. When you finally reach sea level, the Atlantic wind may be so strong and the rain so sharp that you can barely stand on the crescent of sandy shore. The distant islands of Clew Bay — 365 of them to match the days in the year — are nothing more than blistery shapes in the sea mist and wave spray. Yet this nerve-wracking mountainous route is a journey worth making. Despite — or maybe because of — being far from the madding crowd on Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, Mayo’s Keem Bay has been voted one of the top 12 beaches in the world, beating contenders in Fiji, Hawaii and Bermuda.

In the center of Bath a giant obelisk sits in the middle of a little park called Queen’s Square. Standing in the park on a cool but sunny February morning, I realize that despite passing it on countless occasions in the 22 years I lived in the city — from playing bowls on the grass as a child to sheltering behind it to smoke cigarettes as a teenager — I have no idea what it is doing there. A black metal sign informs me that it was erected in 1738 by the Bathonian dandy Beau Nash in honor of Frederick, Prince of Wales. I wonder what Frederick thought about being presented with an obelisk. The sky is darkening. In the 10 minutes I have been sitting there, waiting for a friend with parking troubles, the place has been almost empty. Bath is a tourist town — or at least it was.

It was night when I arrived in Seville. A taxi took me through a maze of winding backstreets then came to an abrupt halt at the head of a pedestrian-only lane. ‘You’ll have to walk from here,’ said the driver. Uncertainly I dragged my suitcase down one dark alley after another, then suddenly came out onto a plaza lined with orange trees. Soaring above me, spotlit against the black sky, was the cathedral steeple. It was a breathtaking sight with its delicately latticed walls of golden stone, so tall I had to tip my head back to see the spire at the top. The cathedral stretched beside it, filling an entire block. Four hundred years have passed since Seville was the greatest and most glamorous city on earth, as glittering and alluring as New York City is today.

You’ll find them all over the boroughs of New York City. Multiple-dwelling buildings, usually large apartment blocks, slapped with a faux-Tudor façade defined by fake gables hiding a flat roof. They aren’t particularly attractive buildings. Even 100 years after most were built, they come off as self-conscious, a bit tacky, imparting to the viewer a dreaded feeling of secret working-class shame — a befuddling reproduction of a reproduction. They say New Yorkers never look up. But even during short journeys through Queens or parts of Brooklyn, New Yorkers are bound to have noticed examples, even if they don’t give it much thought.

When I first set eyes on Lake Geneva, 30 years ago, I was traveling across Europe with the woman who would become my wife. We’d traveled by train through Germany. We were now on our way to France, to a chalet in the Alps. That meant a change of trains in Lausanne, in Switzerland. We’d never been to Switzerland. We decided to stop off for the night. I can still recall my first view of the lake, from the window of our cheap hotel. I had no idea it was so vast. France was a faint blur across the water, framed by snowcapped peaks. We walked up to the cathedral to get a better look. There was a wedding party outside, showering two newlyweds with confetti.

I miss my shvitz. At least once a week before the shutdown, I went to the Russian & Turkish Baths on 10th Street in Manhattan’s East Village. I saw it as my connection to the ancients. Here was a tiny remnant of classical bath culture surviving in the modern city. Or so I liked to believe. Like much else in New York, I now sweat for its return. Back when I was studying classical archaeology, I spent a week or so crawling through the ruins of the public bath house of Ostia, Italy. Even in that Roman port town, something like the Brooklyn of the empire, bath design exceeded anything in the post classical world. Each room had its own distinct shape and purpose.

If this were a normal January, free from the specter of COVID-19, Davos would be bracing itself for an invasion by several thousand of the world’s most self-important people: pompous politicians, slick CEOs and — worst of all — freeloading journalists. Normally this pretty Alpine town is the venue for the World Economic Forum in the last week in January, but this year that annual schmoozefest is safely confined to the internet. ‘Key global leaders will share their views on the state of the world in 2021,’ forewarns the WEF website but, for the first time in the WEF’s 50-year history, they’ll be doing it remotely. Due to the pandemic, Davos rests in peace.

Portage, MichiganThe short notice taped to the door is addressed ‘to all government officials’. It gives them a warning: ‘You are in violation of your oath of office by trespassing unlawfully on the property of this business establishment and committing an act of terrorism under Section 802 of the Patriot Act.’ Taped up next to it, a longer warning in black and set-off red type, with Title 18 from the United States Code copied out underneath. I pull out my phone for a snapshot, then walk back to wait in line. [caption id="attachment_10429477" align="alignnone" width="1200"] (Esther O’Reilly)[/caption] On this particular crisp December morning, a small group has gathered outside the D&R Daily Grind Café in Portage, Michigan.

Traveling in Myanmar, it’s hard not to think of Rudyard Kipling’s immortal lines: ‘On the road to Mandalay,/ Where the flying fishes play.’ These days both Kipling and Myanmar (or Burma, as we still think of it) are out of favor. The mere mention of a visit elicits raised eyebrows and hisses of disbelief, though it seems that travelers can visit China, which is just as repressive, with impunity. But despite the disapproval, Myanmar retains its allure. Even the names are magical. Who wouldn’t want to take the road to Mandalay or sail the Irrawaddy? There were no flying fishes the day I arrived in Mandalay.

The moment lockdown restrictions eased, my wife Anna booked up trips to Europe, to visit houses and villages I thought I’d never see again, such were the initial predictions about the zombie apocalypse. I’d not been to Barenton, Normandy, for example, since last autumn, but that hadn’t stopped the plumber and the builder from sending me regular bills. It is in this decaying granite villa, stretching over four floors, that the accumulated junk from the Herefordshire Balkans has been shoved — thousands of books, crates of manuscripts and letters, the children’s toys, even the children. Oscar, the middle son, spent time here, depleting the cellar after he broke up with a girlfriend. He ran back to England terrified when a mouse leapt out of an oven glove.

My grandfather Werner von Biel was born in a huge white house on the Baltic coast of eastern Germany, a few years before World War One. I never met him. He died when I was a child. My grandmother didn’t like to talk about him. She’d left him for an English soldier at the end of World War Two. Growing up in England during the Cold War, I often wondered what had become of his Junker family, the Schloss (castle) they lived in and the land they farmed. When the Berlin Wall came down I went east, in search of the fatherland my grandmother had forsaken. Thirty years later, I’m still searching. I’ve found a few curios along the way. The Schloss is still there, though my grandfather’s family no longer owns it (the Communists turned it into a school).

Thailand is famous for many things, some of which are unmentionable in these pages. It has long been considered the perfect location for ‘winter sun’, if you are the type of person to whom a piña colada on a white sandy beach appeals. In recent years, it has become a hotspot for hypochondriacs requiring non-essential medical care and hysterics after a nip-and-tuck (pre-COVID, the health-tourism industry was thought to be growing at 14 percent a year). Home to the orchid, pad thai, the Monkey Buffet festival (what it says on the tin), the Siamese cat and the bumblebee bat, Thailand’s gentle and healing culture has earned it a reputation as a cleaner, greener land.

The 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Salamis — the decisive naval battle of 480 BC in which the Greek fleet, vastly outnumbered, devastated the invading Persian armada in the straits near Athens — fell on September 29. So we went to take another look at the nautical objects in the Piraeus Archaeological Museum. It is not exactly a small museum — it is housed in a high-ceilinged, two-story building in the port of Piraeus, next to the remains of a Hellenistic theater — but it receives few visitors. Even Piraeus taxi drivers don’t always know where to find it. Tourists usually give Piraeus a miss; they tend to be ‘museumed-out’ from the big museums up the road in Athens.

As ruins go, Royaumont is as good as any. French roads also being what they are, Royaumont is about 45 minutes from Saint-Denis, the cathedral in Paris where the kings of France are buried, and perhaps 20 minutes from Chantilly, where as much English as French is spoken on the racecourse. Beginning his reign in the 13th century, King Louis IX chose Royaumont as the site of one of the Cistercian abbeys he was building. Dying while on crusade in North Africa, he probably never saw what was reputed to be the most magnificent of all Cistercian abbeys in the whole country, the rival of Mont Saint-Michel or Fontevrault. Royalty notwithstanding, the Vatican singled him out for canonization.

We had lost the habit of checking the national statistics of infections and deaths from COVID-19. They didn’t mean much in Budapest as the summer wound down and the city visibly revived, with heavier traffic and more restaurants open. But then there was a spike in cases in next-door Croatia, and the Hungarian government pondered closing the borders. That threatened our hope — desperation, really — for a beach vacation. We were the most locked-down couple in town. My wife had broken her heel and been confined to our apartment for four months, and I’d been stricken with sciatica and moved like a glacier. To our relief, the Croatian statistics were not too alarming and the Hungarians postponed restrictions. We still had to work out how to get to Hvar, though.

A family of peacocks is sunning itself in our villa garden. They all look extraordinarily happy and composed, especially the baby one for whom (like us, come to think of it) this is a whole new experience. But then, the 150 hens wandering in and out of their coops painted like beach huts don’t look exactly overburdened themselves. Nor do the sheep, pigs and cows in their 220 acres of lush Tuscan terrain near the Merse river.

She stands in the smoky morning air, her copper lamp held elegantly aloft across the waters from Manhattan. Oh, say can you see America’s most instantly recognizable monument — and, perhaps more to the immediate point, for how much longer?The Statue of Liberty has been in front of the world now for nearly 134 years, the rousingly famous sonnet engraved on the bronze plaque on her pedestal for almost the same length of time. Long may both continue. We have in recent weeks lost God knows how many statues, and I really wouldn’t want to see this one go the way of the recently toppled.

Earlier this year, before we went into lockdown, my wife and I set off on our final, farewell trip to Rye. I may go again, one day, but I know she never will. This quaint, archaic seaside town where we’d spent so many happy holidays had become a painful place for her. She was glad to say goodbye. I wanted to make a weekend of it, like we always used to, but she didn’t want to stick around. Her dad had died and her mom was in a nursing home. We’d come to clear out their house before the new owners moved in. It was her parents who had introduced me to Rye, 24 years ago. They’d just retired and needed a new adventure. The National Trust needed some new tenants for Lamb House, a grand old house in Rye where Henry James used to live.

The Voortrekker Monument sits on a hill on the outskirts of Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. During apartheid (‘apartness’) this brooding tower symbolized the Afrikaners’ belief in their manifest destiny and journey to self-empowerment. The place, whose name means ‘Great Trekker’, was popular with school groups, politicians and the armed services. Today it is well maintained but feels forlorn. It is an embarrassing reminder of the past. To get there is a short drive along the highway from Sandton, the northern suburban city which has largely replaced Johannesburg’s decaying central business district.

You realize western tourists are a rarity when the locals ask to take selfies with you. I was standing under the mammoth ramparts of the Ark, Bukhara’s great palace fortress, when two women came up and asked if they could have their picture taken with me. One was dressed Uzbek-style in a colorful dress with matching trousers and knotted headscarf, the other in a western blouse and trousers. We lined up, beaming, in front of a haughty two-humped camel. Visiting Uzbekistan is a huge adventure. It’s the heart of Central Asia and the old Silk Road, a land of deserts and oases where you can still feel as if you’re stepping back in time. But it’s also unexpectedly safe, easy, inexpensive and welcoming. At the airport, even the immigration officials were smiling.

On the morning of November 1755, Lisbon was struck by one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. It measured between 8.5 and 9.0 on the Richter scale, split the city center with fissures 16 feet wide, and killed perhaps 40,000 people (out of a population of 200,000). Shocked survivors gathered by the docks on the River Tagus, which had turned to a giant mudflat, littered with wreckage, as the sea mysteriously retreated. Many of them were killed by the tsunami that engulfed the city center 40 minutes later. Still, every cloud has a silver lining.

In late March I left New York, fleeing the mayor more than the virus. Sunlight being the best disinfectant and I having parents to see, I grabbed a tube of disinfecting wipes and flew to Palm Beach, Florida. After seven weeks of sunny inanition, I prepared to leave and return home. Among my objectives was the fulfillment of a request by a New York friend to pick up a carton of cigarettes for him at Florida prices. Though not a smoker, I sympathize with the tax-burdened as a rule. Entering the Palm Beach Publix supermarket, surely the only Publix with valet parking, I made straight for the tobacco counter, having been advised by my nicotine-addict friend that the store was known to carry his off-piste brand, Carlton 100s.