Oddities of Uzbekistan
You arrive; you expect new sights; you will get lots, unfamiliar and beautiful .
Imagine a multi-story car park . You have forgotten on which floor you left your vehicle. You enter a nightmare: all the dozens and dozens of parked cars are of the same make, model and colour. What to do? In the UK the solution would be to wake up . In Uzbekistan, however this could be a reality.
Impressions of Uzbekistan
Read all the guidebooks you like, but when you travel to a new land, nothing prepares you for the feelings and impressions that spring up on arrival. So I find.
Landing at Tashkent airport in Uzbekistan at 2 or 3 am, I was expecting empty corridors and baggage areas. Passport control was admittedly swift: nothing more than a brusque stamp. Then we went through to the carousels: the place was crowded. Welcome to the Uzbek habit of all night travel. Baggage collected , I expected a customs interrogation (we had been warned about complicated forms to complete). But we walked right out, past nonchalant officials.
The Melian Dialogues: Might Disposes of the Right
Some 2,500 years ago war raged in Greece between the powerful states of Athens and Sparta. The many cities and islands of the mainland and the Aegean either took sides or remained neutral.
One such neutral island was Melos, south east of Athens, and very near to a string of its island allies, or subjects- the Delian League. The Athenians decided that it would be good strategic policy to tidy up this anomaly of a neutral among the aligned. Therefore they dispatched a military expedition with the remit: either bring Melos into our orbit, or destroy it.
Sevilla
Two of the most elegant structures in Sevilla are the Torre del Oro, on the bank of the river Guadalquivir, and of course La Giralda, now serving as the bell tower of the Cathedral.
What they have in common historically is that they belong to the time of Moorish supremacy in Spain, and to one of the many eras in which Sevilla prospered as an important city undiminished by changing political fortunes.
Cezanne, Aix and Carcassonne
I first visited the medieval Cite of Carcassonne many years ago, aged 29 or 30. I was driving through France with a friend, on the way to visit other friends who were holidaying close to Perpignan near the eastern Spanish border. Our route took us past Carcassonne and, on catching sight of the Cite’s amazing profile, we diverted for a short visit.
ClubMed on the actual Med
My first visit to a ClubMed resort was at the end of winter in 2019, to one in the French Alps. I wrote about it (April 2019), speculating tongue in cheek about certain possibilities of a Ballardian nature (after the novelist of dystopian middle class violence, JG Ballard).
Having returned from my second ClubMed, in Greece, on the seaside, a resort of beaches and pine groves, I realise that the slightly cultish claustrophobia of the winter ClubMed was mainly due to, well, the winter.
Tristan and Isolde
Everyone agrees that Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde is very intense, whether sublimely or gruesomely so. Having had the fortune (good or bad) of seeing productions in consecutive years, I can add that the level of intensity experienced depends to a great degree on the venue and surrounding circumstances .
