Today's Place to Dream about: Lake Tamblingan, Bali

Today my thoughts wander to Indonesia, to an old volcano on Bali that contains three caldera lakes: Lake Tamblingan, Lake Buyan and Lake Bratan. Lake Tamblingan is the smallest but it seems to be the one most visited by tourists. The elevation is just over 1000 meters, or 3300 feet, so it is pleasantly cool.

Lots of amazing photos.

But the real draw of the place is the temples, the oldest of which dates to around 900 AD.

All are still active, except when they are flooded, which happens when the water in the lake is high.

Details.

We have the first signs of spring here, the first green leaves and the first robins, but it is stillmostly winter and Lake Tamblingan seems like it would be a great place to be.

Orkney

I've just finished a long, moderately interesting book about Orkney, and now my thoughts take me to those islands where Britain ends and the North Sea meets the Atlantic.

Kirkwall, with the Cathedral of St. Magnus.

I almost went there, when I was in Britain, but my now wife and I decided on Paris instead. Glad I've seen Paris but hope I get to Orkney some day.

This 1654 map is good enough to show you the basic layout: Mainland is the big island in the middle, with the North Islands to the north and the South Islands to the south. The harbor of Scapa Flow is between Mainland and the South Islands.

For reasons I have never understood, Orkney has an amazing collection of Neolithic monuments. This is the famous buried village of Skara Brae.

Stone Circle known as the Ring of Brodgar.

Maeshowe. The medieval Saga of the Earls of Orkney tells how Vikings broke into the mound but found that it had already been looted long before. They left graffiti inside.

Medieval church of St. Magnus, Eglisay.

Amazing photograph showing the local farmhouse type, which is of Norse origin.

Some of the local sheep, which have adapted to eat a lot of seaweed.

Windfarm. Orkney is thriving right now, partly because electricity is cheaper there than anywhere else in Britain. There are lots of windfarms, there is tidal power, and there are not enough powerlines to get that energy to places that need it. Bad planning but nice for Orcadians.

Below, two lovely photographs by Ben Pentreath.

Today's Place to Daydream About: Antigua Guatemala

Antigua Guatemala was the capital of the Spanish colony of Guatemala from 1543 to 1773. 

Views of Acatenango, the nearest active volcano

Alas it had been built in the volcanic highlands, and in the 1700s it was struck by three destructive earthquakes. After the third and most terrifying, in 1773, the capital was moved and the city largely abandoned. 

Even after great population growth in the 20th century the city still has only about half the population it had in 1773, which was 65,000. The city therefore boasts a famous array of ruins, most notably the old cathedral (above) and a Capuchin monastery, and has been declared a UNESCO heritage site.

The monastery.

An abandoned church.

People who visit now are delighted by the gardens.

One reason for the spectacular gardens is the remarkable fertility of the volcanic soil. The biggest local business these days is growing high-end vegetables that are mainly flown to North America. Some of the farms where this is done are set up for tourist visits, with onsite farm to table restaurants.

Mermaid fountain built in 1737, although I imagine it must have been rebuilt multiple times after earthquakes.

Two delightful imagesof local shops by Geoffrey Bale.

Seems like a delightful place to visit.

Marburg: In the Footsteps of the Brothers Grimm

Today's place to daydream about is Marburg, Germany, a place that remains wonderful because nothing dramatic or violent has ever happened there.

Marburg is a medieval town, first mentioned in 822. It sits on a hill overlooking the ford where two ancient trade routes shared a crossing of the Lahn River. 

Its first famous resident was St. Elizabeth, who was born a princess of Hungary. As a girl Elizabeth was captivated by stories of St. Francis and wanted to become his follower, but her family wasn't about to discard the valuable diplomatic card of her marriage and wed her to the Landgrave of Thuringia, a top German noble. Who died after only eight years, leaving Elizabeth a young widow. After a legal struggle Elizabeth got her dowry back from her late husband's family and used it to set up a hospital in Marburg where she cared for the poor and sick, taking particular delight in bathing lepers. Miracles were attributed to her in her lifetime, and after her death in 1231 stories flooded into the Vatican, which canonized her in very short order.

The two images above show St. Elizabeth's Church in Marburg, which was built by the Teutonic Knights starting immediately after her canonization in 1235. It was consecrated in 1283 and essentially complete by 1340. Pilgrimage to this church helped the town to grow and prosper.

In 1264, St Elizabeth's daughter Sophie of Brabant, who inherited her mother's legal skill but not her piety, somehow wrangled the Landgraviate (=Duchy, more or less) of Hesse for her son Henry. Marburg became the capital of the new state, a status it held off and on until 1605. The famous castle that looms over the town was built by the landgraves over a fortress of the early 1200s.

Closer view of the castle.

View of the town in 1572.

Despite the importance of St. Elizabeth's shrine, Marburg was an early convert to Protestantism. Its new leaders decided that Germany needed a new, entirely Protestant university, so they founded one in 1527. Marburg has been a university town ever since.

During the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) this region was fought over bitterly and changed hands several times. Marburg was never sacked but the economy was so depressed by war and the decline of trade that it lost two-thirds of its inhabitants.

But it came back, and then it had a sort of blossoming in the Romantic period of the late 1700s. Gloomy poets loved the gothic atmosphere, narrow streets, etc., and quite a few of them flocked to the university. Including two famous brothers and heroes of mine, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. Not only did the Grimms hang around the university from 1802-1806, they did their first folklore collecting in nearby villages. The Grimms came from a genteel family that had fallen into poverty and they had to keep taking jobs as research assistants and the like, so they never finished their degrees and were not able to work full time on their own researchers until decades later.

But now they are so famous in this part of Germany you can take a guided tour of "Enchanting Marburg", walking the "Grimm path", which the same ad from the state tourism authority also calls "on the tracks of the Brothers Grimm," which sounds like something I would get a big kick out of. I promise I wouldn't correct the guides when they got stuff wrong.

Marburg was also home to Otto Ubbelohde, who did the illustrations for a famous edition of the Fairy Tales.

In 1866, Marburg became part of Prussia, which made it an administrative center and enlarged the university, and the town prospered. Among the landmarks of this period is the Kaiser Wilhelm tower, which you can climb to get a good view of the old town.

During World War II the Nazis made Marburg into a hospital town, with beds for 20,000 patients. Not having any industry to speak of, the town escaped allied bombing and emerged from the war unscathed. Physically, anyway.

Now it looks like a delightful place to explore, poking into shops and alleys and imaging the Grimm brothers and other doom-besotted poetic souls spending their student days in its cafes.