Podgorica, Montenegro: The Smell Of Freedom

 

Cue Hotel, Podgorica (from the hotel website)

It was unmistakable. As I stepped into the stylishly modern lobby of the Cue Hotel in Podgorica, my nose twitched at the sophisticated fragrance of cigar smoke.

I turned to see a cigar lounge complete with leather Chesterfields, ashtrays and a splendid humidor displaying true Havana cigars, some the size of torpedoes, right down to delicate cheroots. It was right there open to the lobby and evidently well used. The smell was of quiet enjoyment, hedonism and but more than that, the smell of freedom.

Look, I know, smoking is a filthy malodorous habit. It is bad for smokers and all those around them. There are a million reasons not just to ban it but to abolish it altogether. Yet it is another freedom lost — its odour to be replaced by the sweet, cloying, artificial pong of vapes – until they ban those to be superseded by who knows what new horror?

I do not know what the laws are in Montenegro. People seemed not to smoke in public indoor spaces except for the Cue Hotel cigar lounge, but they certainly smoke at outside tables. That evening, I watched four men at an outside table of the Cue. A bottle of wine rested in an ice bucket. All four men sat back in the evening light smoking fragrant cigars. I could see that the conversation was calm and sporadic. Just four men enjoying a proper smoke and companionship.

Montenegro is applying to join the European Union. It will adopt new values that will extinguish such blatant hedonism. It is their choice and they will have much to gain but something will be lost.

I was travelling with the excellent PTG Tours

Seeing the World for the First Time

 

Geocarta Nautica Universale (Color) Public Domain

In 1523, in Spain, two men set about making a map of the world. They were well equipped for the task. One was Giovanni Vespucci, cartographer to the King of Spain and nephew of the great Amerigo. The other, Captain Juan Elcano, had returned the previous year after completing the first ever circumnavigation of the world. He had been second-in-command of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition. Magellan himself lost his life in the Spice Islands. The expedition had taken nearly three years and was a feat of navigation no less intrepid than the Apollo 8 mission that first rounded the far side of the moon.

I am in the dimly lit basement of the Royal Library at Turin, looking at the very map. It is exquisitely drawn and coloured on 12 sheets of cotton canvas. It is nearly twice as wide as my arm span. It looks a bit like a modern Mercator projection, but it is not. Mercator was only eleven years old. Navigators in the 16^th century knew that the Earth was round and had a fair idea of its circumference.   They knew of the Americas but not what lay beyond or whether they could get through or round them to Asia. They found the way and what did lie beyond was the Pacific Ocean taking up a third of the map, and demonstrated for the first time in history.

But what of the world that the map reveals? Europe, the Mediterranean and Black seas were well known and accurately drawn. North Cape and the Arctic Ocean had yet to be properly explored. The Caribbean and Central America, already discovered by Columbus, appear in detail. The rest of the eastern seaboard of North America is still unknown, except for a ghostly, detached sketch of Florida.

The east coast of South America for is shown in detail, right down to the first ever representation of Cape Horn. Magellan rounded the Horn, through what we now call the Magellan Strait. He did not know how close he had passed to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The great continent of Antarctica does not feature on the map. It was not the only continent that he would miss.

From Cape Horn, Magellan set off west to find Asia. The west coast of South America and almost the whole of North America are missing. But then, the map shows the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretching to the West. The idea of longitude had yet to be conceived. It was easy enough in those days to know how far north or south a ship was but east and west could not be accurately measured. Day after day, they had travelled westwards hoping they were on the right latitude to make landfall on the Spice Islands (the Moluccas). They were. The Moluccas are shown, as are the great islands of Java and Sumatra. China and eastern Asia are only roughly sketched in. India is shown in detail as is the Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar. They missed the continent of Australia. Africa is about right as the expedition, now under the command of Elcano rounded the continent. The mountains of the moon, legendary source of the Nile, and the Atlas Mountains appear as coloured sketches.

500 years on, this map is a gorgeous and spellbinding work of art. There is much missing but our minds fill in the gaps. I am looking at the world we know drawn for the first time.

I travelled with the excellent PTG Tours

The Armoury at the Musei Reali Torino

 Armoury Picture

A visit to the Royal Palace Museum in Turin. I am unmoved by Baroque palaces. Every grand room leads into another. The rooms are over-decorated stage sets of rooms. We pass through quickly. 

But oh, the Armoury. We step over a threshold from the magnificent but dull on to a chequered floor. We are pawns in a giant fantasy chessboard. This is not a functioning armoury but the best display of armour I have seen anywhere. A great Baroque painted ceiling flies over a long, broad gallery lit by tall windows. The eyes are taken down between lines of armoured and caparisoned, fully spurred and armoured knights on realistic-looking and armoured horses. Between the mounted knights are displays of more weapons and armour. Many are marvellously engraved, carved or covered with intricate marquetry. Never mind the history, spectacle itself is thing.

I was travelling with the excellent PTG Tours

The Enkhuizer Almanak

 

Photo Kevin Hoggett

A fat, dense, little book sits in my hand.  It has a scarlet bookmark ribbon.  The cover shows a simple woodblock picture in red on a pale background.  The picture is of old man in traditional Dutch fisherman’s clothes, smoking a pipe. There is a Dutch barge and a windmill in the background.  The fisherman is, himself, holding a copy of the little book and so the picture is an infinite regression. Later, I learn that this is called the Droste effect after a 1904 advertisement for a brand of Dutch cocoa. There is something very pleasing about the look and heft of this book.

I am in the railway station at Hoorn in the Netherlands.  I shall shortly depart by steam train to Medemblik, from where I shall travel by the vintage motor ship Friesland to the small town of Enkhuizen.

In the station souvenir shop, the book is on sale for just one Euro.  I can see why; the book’s title is Enkhuizer Almanak 2019 and it is three years out of date but it has something to do with Enkhuizen. I happily part with a Euro.  On the train, I settle down to explore my new purchase.  It has 288 pages all in Dutch so it is going to take some enjoyable effort to work it all out.

I quickly recognise tide tables for Harlingen, Den Helder, Tershchelling, Rotterdam and Hook of Holland; names that take my mind to shipping forecasts, ferry timetables and small craft warfare in World War 2. 

There is a heavy-handed joke about Facebook on page 200 which is not improved by Google translate and on page 150, a sketch of rather a cheeky mermaid.

There is something else on the cover: “424^ste Jaargang” which must mean 424th annual edition; this book has history.  It may have first been published in 1595 when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne of England and Sir Francis Drake set off on his final voyage. In Holland, the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies set off.  I later learn that the oldest surviving copy of the Enkhuizer Almanak was printed in the town in 1680.  What a splendid and remarkable achievement it is to keep this small book in publication for so long. I continue to explore and find the dates for the sheep market in Oldebrook and the Pentecost market in Brummen Easte, events I didn’t know I had missed.  One of many household hints tells me that candles last longer if they have been put in the freezer before use.  I can even check on the regulations for the flying of flags. What a store of esoteric knowledge.

I have arrived in Enkhuizen, a charming small port with canals.  My wife Adrienne is lost in a haze of fantasy house buying.  She tells me she wants to retire to Enkhuizen.  I fear that I am not included and that she plans to retire from being my wife. 

Photo by Adrienne Higham

The Almanak has its own museum.  It is the old cold store for the fish market.  It is small like the Almanak and closed on the day of my visit but I discover that there is a website, which I shall explore later.  In the meantime, we enjoy dinner in Schipperscafe ‘t Ankertje (Skippers’ Pub at the Little Anchor).

When I get home, I open up the website.  The Almanak has its own weather forecasting system, supported by its own corps of weather observers.  It works on the principal of reversal days that divide weather into decades of 10 days about which weather changes.  I would tell you more but the full explanation is in Dutch.

I still keep the Enkhuizer Almanak on my desk more as a paperweight than a reference resource.  I just like it.

 Notes:

1. Hoorn Medemblik Stoomtram
   
2. The Enkhuizer Almnak and its Museum
   
3. Schipperscafe t'ankertje
   
4. I travelled with the excellent PTG Tours
   

The Best Little Hat Shop in Utrecht

 

  Unusually, I had not planned our visit to Utrecht so I did not know what I might find.  I certainly did not expect to find a very fine hatter or, in Dutch, Hoedenzaak.  It was the establishment of Mr Jos van Dijck and Mr van Dijck knows the business of hatting.  Above his shop, at number 12 Bakkerstraat, was an elegant, metal, cutout sign showing the name of his business and three classic hats. His brightly lit window displayed a cascade of fine hats for both men and women.

Of course I did not need to buy a hat so we went in just for a look. Mr van Dijck was busy with a customer, a young man of fastidious fashion sense who was taking a long time to decide between two Panama hats.  One was a classic Panama and the other had a chequered pattern.  The latter was the sort of hat at which, had Bertie Wooster tried it on, Jeeves would have raised an eyebrow.  I thought better of stepping in to give advice even though I feel I know a bit about Panama hats. See my article: The Panama Hat Story

Still determined not to buy, I now had time to look around.  There were a lot of hats.  There was not much in the way of millinery.  The women's’ hats were classic and unfussy.  The Queen could find a hat here.  It was, thanks be, no place to buy a fascinator,  For both men and women there were Panamas, trilbies, fedoras, boaters and bowlers, caps and cloches, in all fabrics and colours.  However you walked into that shop, you could walk out in style. 

My eye fell upon a natty paperboy cap in woven sea grass. Its open weave would be cool in summer.  I tried it on — too small.  Noticing my interest, Mr van Dijck left the young man still with a hat in each hand to attend to me.  He agreed it was too small.

‘Too much hair,’ I said.

‘Too much brain,’ he said, recycling a joke as old and threadbare as a well-loved flat cap.

He was not sure if he had it in a bigger size.  He went downstairs to look but came back shaking his head.  He checked that the young man had not yet made a decision and sat down at his computer and tapped at the keys for about a minute, his face glum.

‘Sorry, I don’t have a bigger one in stock.  It seems I do not even have that one.’

Notes:

I was travelling with the excellent PTG Tours

 

Riding a Renegade Tram in Rotterdam

Judy Garland’s Trolley Song has been an earworm since my tram ride round Rotterdam. 

Rotterdam’s Tram Museum is just by the Kootskade tram stop on the No. 4 or 8 lines. As I walked into this old tram shed, I smelled the warm aroma of lubricating oil.  It was good and I inhaled.  Enthusiastic volunteers run the Museum and care for its many trams.  There are plenty of trams of all ages to climb in and out of.  Two volunteers looked after our small group.  They disappeared for a few minutes and returned splendidly dressed in proper tram driver and conductor uniforms. 

We boarded a 90-year-old tramcar.  'Ding, ding, ding,' went the bell.  The tram clanged and, with a screech of steel wheel on steel rail, we sped out of the shed onto a side street.  In a hundred yards we stopped, with a bump of the brakes, at a junction with Rotterdam’s main tram system.  Having checked, the way was clear we accelerated onto the main track and headed towards the centre of Rotterdam.

Our driver had told us that he had had a year of training to qualify.  He and we now had the run of the city’s tramlines; he took us wherever he wanted.  All he had to do was to avoid disturbing the routine trams.  We stopped for a photo shoot but, suddenly, he hurried us back aboard, “There’s a No. 24 coming up behind us!”

Indeed there was. We sped away. 

On some of the outer reaches of the system, we did U-turns on loops at the end of lines, where our conductor had to get out and change points.

For about 90 minutes, we enjoyed a swaying, squealing, clanging tour of the fine city of Rotterdam. 'Zing,' went my heartstrings.

 

 

Information

 The Trolley Museum has limited opening hours.  Vintage tram rides are by charter or a hop-on-off from May to October Thursday to Sunday only.

Rotterdam Tram Museum

Tram Line 10

I travelled with the excellent PTG Tours

Photo credits: Kevin Hogget

Trolley Song written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane

Slavic Ice Cream

Sladoled is a better word than gelato. It is a very much better word than ice cream, a prosaic, workmanlike but unambitious phrase. Gelato is Italian, Mediterranean, a Neapolitan a sort of word.

Sladoled is a brave Slavic word, a word that works from the cool Croatian Adriatic to the mountains of Slovenia.Sladoled is slippery and lickable. Sladoled, is onomatopoeic and, rather wonderfully, also feels like it sounds. Sladoled ranges from jet-black Croatian chocolate to Slovenian sour cherry. Sladoled melts in the mouth and slides coolly down the throat. Sladoled is both the action and the sound that you make when you use your tongue to catch melting ice cream running down your cone and onto your hand.

In Ljubljana, some of the signs over the sladoled stalls now say “Gelato”.  Stop, dear Slovenes, you have a better word; don’t let it die for the sake of us tourists.

I travelled to Slovenia with the excellent PTG Tours https://www.ptg.co.uk/

To Be An Engine Driver

                      

The weekly steam-hauled train that runs from Jesenice to Nova Gorica on Slovenia’s border with Italy is headed by the sort of steam locomotive that any child will draw for you.

It is huge and black and powerful with lights, a steam whistle and moving parts that snort and sigh. She is an old lady — a century old. She sets off confidently with a long whistle, the hiss of steam and the breathy wheeze of an elderly runner. Thick black smoke and white steam are forced from her funnel sending out the wet coal smell of a proper steam engine. The squeal of steel on steel as all this effort converts into motion tells us we are on our way

It is a long journey and on the way back the ancient locomotive shows her age. We stop for half an hour at Bohinjska Bistrica. She will go no further until properly cared for. The drivers sit on the rail smoking and mopping sooty brows with oily rags while serious engineers with spanners and tapping hammers perform esoteric rituals on the wheels and cranks.

                              

A man has brought three small boys — his grandsons perhaps – to the station to see the steam train. Silently, at eye level with the great steel driving wheels, they gaze and point at the hissing pistons and connecting rods, transfixed by this breathing beast. They are too young to understand how it works but they cannot tear their eyes away.

This fascination with glorious machines is universal. It was a privilege to be there at the very moment in their lives that the idea formed in their minds, “When I grow up, I’m going to be an engine driver.”

I travelled to Slovenia with the excellent PTG Tours https://www.ptg.co.uk/