Behind an eighteenth-century facade in downtown Oxford, just above a clothing shop, is a bedroom that was once used by William Shakespeare.
It was part of the Crown Tavern, owned by Shakespeare’s friend John Davenant. The Bard frequently stopped in Oxford on his trips between Stratford-upon-Avon and London. A nearby courtyard may have hosted his troupe’s performances.
Known as the Painted Room, it’s been remarkably preserved since Elizabethan times and still has hand-painted wall decoration from the late 16th century. This rare artwork survived thanks to oak paneling installed in the following century, and was only rediscovered in 1927.
Part of the decoration includes a religious text:
“And last of thi rest be thou
Gods servante for that hold I best / In the mornynge earlye
Serve god devoutlye
Feare god above allthynge. . .”
This week the Oxford Preservation Trust is offering guided tours of the Painted Room. If you can’t make it, BBC has posted a video tour of the room, led by some silly guy in an anachronistic tricorne hat. The Trust is also working on making the rooms permanently available to the public.
George Orwell’s birthplace in Motihari, Bihar, India, is being turned into a monument and park, but not to the famous English writer. Instead, Art Daily reports, the new park will be dedicated to independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.
The ramshackle bungalow where Orwell was born in 1903 has long been the subject of discussion as to what to do with it. The local government said it would fix up the place in 2009 but nothing was done. A statue of George Orwell on the grounds has been damaged.
The move has drawn criticism from many Indians. The Hindustan Times reports that locals want the park dedicated to Orwell, saying it will draw foreign tourists to the area. Bihar is the poorest or second poorest state in India depending on what statistics you focus on.
Orwell, an outspoken socialist, frequently criticized the colonial system of which he was a part. His father was serving in the Indian Civil Service when he was born and Orwell himself served as a policeman in Burma. He later expressed his ambivalence towards British rule in Asia in essays such as “Shooting an Elephant” and the novel “Burmese Days.”
He also had mixed feelings towards Gandhi. He opens his essay “Reflections on Gandhi” with the line, “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent. . .” and went on to say Gandhi was ascetic to a fault and that “his medievalist program was obviously not viable in a backward, starving, over-populated country.” On the other hand, Orwell praises his integrity and courage. For a deep thinker like Orwell, there were no easy answers, no quick labels.
What do you think should be done with Orwell’s birthplace? Take the poll!
Where was your photo taken: In a hospital about an hour after I crashed on my mountain bike and broke my collarbone. Luckily the bike was fine.
Where do you live now: Indianapolis, Indiana.
I grew up in Indiana, then moved to New York, after I graduated college, intent on becoming the new, drunker Charles Bukowski. Fortunately for my liver, I took a job as an editor for an aviation publication I wasn’t remotely qualified for. Fast-forward two years later, my ex-girlfriend is stalking me and I need a cheap place for me and my dog to live. I ended up moving in with a buddy in Indy, thinking I’d save some cash and move to Arizona or Colorado after a year or two. I met my wife instead. For years, I tried to convince her to move west, but after a while, I realized Indianapolis had everything I needed – friendly people, lots of trees and an often overlooked cultural scene. Best of all, the cheap cost of living means we get to spend our disposable income on travel.
Scariest airline flown: I’ve had some scary flights – a Frontier flight to Bozeman, Montana, nearly put me off flying forever after we hit so much turbulence – but I can’t single out one particularly dangerous airline. Delta wins hands-down as the most frustrating airline I’ve ever flown on because of its constant delays and sometimes-surly flight attendants.
Favorite city/country/place: Acadia and Yosemite are my two favorite national parks that I would love to return to year after year – unfortunately, there are too many places I’ve yet to see and experience.
Most remote corner of the globe visited: About 60 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean near Jamaica. Instead of a traditional wedding, my wife and I decided on a quickie ceremony and spent the money we saved on scuba diving.
Favorite guidebook series: I copy edited Frommer’s guidebooks for a couple of years, so those books dredge up too many bad memories. I’ve had some good experiences with the Lonely Planet series, but I prefer to use local message boards and Twitter to find out what I want to know and not what a guidebook author thinks I should know. Striking up a conversation with folks at a trailhead has never failed to bring a great recommendation for a local place to eat, drink or crash.
Dream travel destination: I’m visiting one of my dream spots this summer when I travel to Europe and climb some of the big mountains of the Tour de France. I’m likely going to hate it while I’m starved for oxygen at 6,000 feet with another 1,000 feet to go until the summit, but I’m confident I’ll be able to look back on it later and wonder, “Why did I do that to myself?”
I’d also love to pedal through Cuba before the embargo ends. I’ve heard so much about the country over the years; I’d like to catch a last glimpse of how it is now before there’s a McDonald’s and a Starbucks on every corner.
Solo traveler or group traveler? Mostly small groups, but I try to take an afternoon on most trips to spend on my own. The last time I was in Nashville, I ended up in a bar a bit before noon on a Monday. It was just me, the bartender and a gray-haired musician singing Hank Williams and Merle Haggard songs. For about an hour, it was an audience of two, but he belted out the tunes like he was in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the Grand Ole Opry. I’ll remember that moment of cheap beer and classic country until I die.
Hotel, hostel or other? Tent in the backwoods after you’ve spent all day hiking, pedaling or paddling to get there. Bonus points if someone brought along a cooler full of Three Floyds beer.
Favorite music to listen to while traveling: I’ve got a road trip playlist – mostly Americana songs that evoke a strong sense of a particular destination. One of the highlights of a trip my wife and I took last year was driving along Nevada’s Winnemucca Road, which you might remember from Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere.” If I’m behind the wheel late at night and need to keep my eyes open, I cue up Whiskeytown’s “Strangers Almanac” on my iPod and sing along.
For a country with only 1.3 million people, Estonia has a hell of an art scene. There are several good museums and galleries and a lively round of readings and exhibition openings.
One of the biggest names in the Estonian art scene is Raoul Kurvitz. He’s been big for a few decades now, producing a steady output of installation pieces, experimental films and paintings. Right now KUMU, the Art Museum of Estonia, has dedicated an entire floor to his work.
While I’m a hard sell with contemporary art (see my ambivalent response to Damien Hirst) I found Kurvitz’s work consistently challenging and innovative. He ranges from accessible videos like this cover of Jesse Colin Young’s “Darkness Darkness“ to weird art happenings that leave the viewers scratching their heads and feeling slightly disturbed.
This is an artist that takes risks for his art. In the 1989 experimental film “When Lord Zarathustra was Young and Polite,” he gets flogged by two female assistants and then washed into a Finnish river by an opening sluice gate. In another video he’s surrounded by fire. And I have to wonder what that blue paint tasted like when it came out of the fish’s belly.
KUMU is an ultramodern building chock full of Estonian art of all periods. What’s interesting is how they followed all the great Western traditions such as Impressionism, Cubism and the rest but put their own twist on it. And then there are the mavericks like Edvard Wiiralt who veered off into their own high strangeness.
The literature scene is doing well too. I was lucky enough to meet Piret Raud and Kätlin Kaldmaa, two Estonian authors who gave me the lowdown on writing in a language that only a little more than 900,000 of their countrymen speak. The rest of Estonia’s population are native Russian speakers and tend to look eastward for their reading material.
%Gallery-179740%Given such a small readership, you’d think publishing would be all but dead in Estonia, but nothing could be further from the truth. The fall of Communism led to an explosion of publishing houses. Where once there had only been a couple of official state-run publishers, now there’s more than a hundred indies. Many are micropresses with only one or two titles, while others are major houses with long lists.
That breath of freedom must have been a relief after decades of Soviet occupation. During those times many Western books and magazines were banned and sailors made a good side income smuggling them in. One of their best sellers, I’m told, was Playboy magazine. Pornography was banned in the Soviet Union. They saw it as Western decadence, I suppose. So admiring the Playmate of the Month became an act of political defiance. The world is a weird place.
Besides reading illegal imports, some Estonian writers bucked the system by participating in the Samizdat movement, writing subversive books and distributing them through a postal network to like-minded individuals. Since the Soviets didn’t exactly dole out printing presses with the ration cards, most of these books weren’t bound. They’d be typed out with a couple of carbon copies or simply handwritten. Kaldmaa told me some books were even photographed page by page and you’d get a stack of photos in the mail.
I would have loved to meet one of these writers. I write what I feel and all I have to risk is some anonymous coward giving me shit in the comments section. Say what you felt in the Soviet Union and you could end up in a KGB torture chamber. Writers back then had balls.
On my last night in the capital Tallinn I was invited to a poetry reading at Kinokohvik Sinilind, a rambling cafe/bar/arthouse cinema in Old Town. Several poets and a band took turns on the weirdly lit stage doing their stuff while a large crowd listened and chatted. The poetry was all in Estonian, of course, so I listened to the cadence of the words rather than their meaning. An odd experience but a rewarding one.
There were a lot of prominent writers there. Kaldmaa introduced me to a poet who specialized in translating poems from Japanese, Chinese and Korean into Estonian. He spoke French and English too. Scary. I met a whirlwind of others too, at the table or at the bar. Everyone seemed to have their latest book tucked under their arm, all cleverly designed by local talent.
I’m jealous of poets; they always get nicer covers.
Are you a student who is aspiring to be a travel writer? Now’s your chance to strut your stuff and perhaps win $500.
Transitions Abroad has announced their 2013 Travel Writing Contest. It’s billed as “the only student travel writing contest to cover studying, working, interning, volunteering and living abroad.”
The contest is open to all “currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students, students who have graduated within the past year, and students currently on leave from school.” The judges want to see essays of 1,000-2,000 words that offer solid advice for adjusting to student life overseas. Check out their guidelines carefully before putting pen to paper.
First prize is $500; second prize is $150; third prize is $100; and runners-up get $50. All get published in “Transitions Abroad” print and webzine. Deadline is April 15.
Thanks to the excellent online writing newsletter Writing World for bringing this to my attention. Check out their site for tons of free advice of value to aspiring and experienced writers.
