Joern Utzon (Jørn Utzon), the architect who designed the UNESCO heritage-listed Sydney Opera House (see photos in lights) with its unique sail-design died last night. One of the most iconic and identifiable travel wonders of the twentieth century, and along with many superb buildings crafted in his own country of Denmark, the Sydney Opera House will remain as a legacy to Utzon's creative genius for many centuries to come. Sadly, in dispute with the local government (since settled), he never returned to Australia to see the final result of his prize-winning design. Utzon was awarded the Pritzker Prize (the "Nobel Prize of architecture") and the keys to the city of Sydney in his distinguished career.

The lights will be dimmed this evening to honour the memory of this visionary man.

For many millions of years, the Old Man of the Mountain stared unflinchingly across Franconia Notch (a few miles north of the superb Flume Gorge) perched precariously on an upper granite wall, almost 400 metres from the base of the gorge. The Old Man had the enigmatic look of a craggy Mona Lisa, neither smiling nor frowning. His fixed gaze oversaw a park full of great walking trails, fine forests, narrow niches and crevices and thunderous cascades from the heavy winter snows. His sturdy reliable form was appropriately adopted as the state symbol for New Hampshire, colloquially described as the Granite State.

His image was popularised on stamps, licence plates, highway markers, souvenirs and a US quarter coin. Indeed, it seemed difficult to move more than a few metres anywhere in the state without sighting his familiar fatherly image.

Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire statesman ensured the Old Man's fame when he grandly said "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

Sadly despite every effort to stabilise and support the aged figure with cables and concrete, he sadly toppled from his stately perch some five years ago, in May, 2003.

It seems appropriate to remember this fine New England gentleman on Thanksgiving Day.

In a small hamlet only twenty kilometres south from the capital, Ljubljana and twenty kilometres north of the remarkable Škocjan Caves, lays the dramatically sited medieval travel wonder of Predjama Castle. Seemingly growing from a yawning cavern, it was cleverly built in the twelfth century to take advantage of the natural high walls of the rock face.

In the late 1400s, renown thief and baron, Erasmus owned the castle. Murdering one of the close relatives of the ruling Austrian emperor of the day, he was ordered to be captured. For over a year, the emperor’s men lay siege at the castle and its one drawbridge-managed entrance, effectively starving Erasmus out of his castle.

Little did the captors know that the castle was built on a natural limestone cave which Erasmus used to secrete food and water into his fortress. So brazen was Erasmus that he used to throw food at his besiegers to tease and frustrate them. He was finally betrayed by a double-crossing servant who marked the baron’s restroom with a flag. Answering nature’s call, the baron was splattered by a cannonball while perched on the “royal throne” – a truly ignominious way to die.

Today the castle continues to peer out across the delightful small village of the same name. The rooms are lightly furnished with reproductions of what the castle would have been at the time including wax models. You can almost imagine a riotous feast in the Knight’s Hall and feel the pain wrought in the torture chamber. Most intriguing is the ingenious adaption of the castle with the natural rock. A tour of the lightly decorated cave under the castle is conducted by helmeted torchlight (no electric lighting in this cave) and includes graffiti from the 1700s in the form of the owner’s inscribing their names in blood.

To add to the medieval feel, a jousting tournament takes place in the middle of every summer but the highlight is undoubtedly the majestically but improbably sited castle over the inky depths of the surrounding cave.

“What do you call the curly symbol in the middle of an email address?” asked a slightly dishevelled Italian girl over breakfast in surprisingly crisp English.

It was a strange, almost nerdish opening query in the breakfast room of a cheap hotel and caught me a bit by surprise. Most breakfast conversation in these places tend to be about where you are from, where you have been or are travelling and questions to compare notes about what is worth visiting in the current town.

I responded that we call it “at”.

“I know that, everyone says that, but what is it really called”, she fired back disappointed at my meagre suggestion. She proudly stated “We call it chiocciola which is a snail in English."

I was simply lost for words. Chiocciola did seem a much more appealing choice. In a language as rich in words as English, which seems to have a word for every possible circumstance, why is there no real word for the “@” symbol, or am I simply to ignorant to be aware of it. At a nearby table, a Frenchman indicated that they sometimes use escargot in the same manner (though they also have a duller more typical term).

It started me into an embarrassing sequence of shameless nerdish breakfast queries over the following days to discover that most languages have far more flamboyant words for the innocent “@” symbol, which has become so prevalent in our life. After all, I wasn’t likely to meet any of these people again so the odd nerdy inquiry seemed pretty safe.

The answers provide a rich variety of visual descriptors. The Danes and Swedes favour snabela which translates as elephant trunk, while the Finns call it kissanhäntä or cat’s tail. Some Finns utilise the melodic miukumauku which is their description for the sound a cat makes. The neighbouring Russians use man’s best friend (sobaka) in their email addresses.

In the Netherlands, people use apestaartje or little monkey’s tail while the Germans (klammeraffe), the Serbs (majmun), the Bulgarians (majmunsko) and the Slovenes (afna) prefer the entire monkey.

In Hungary, the slightly less pleasant kukac (maggot) is favoured. Similarly, the Thais use their word for wiggling worm. In the Czech Republic (zavináč or rollmop herring) and Israel (shtrudel or strudel) food is the target of their description. Finally, the Filipinos go for utong or nipple.

I certainly don’t lose sleep over it but I do wonder why English didn’t manage a more elegant word for this modest but ubiquitous symbol of the electronic age.

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Generosity and Gemütlichkeit

Roads in central Africa are amongst the worst in the world. With a total lack of maintenance and the pressure of heavy summer rains every year, the road conditions greatly restrict the passage of trucks between the major cities and countries of this mesmerising continent. Giant potholes litter the road adding to the bone-jarring journeys. Saying that, the natural jungle roadside scenery is simply stunning.

The worst element on these narrow roads is meeting a truck coming in the opposite direction. Even with precision driving, at times there appears no way that two trucks will be able to proceed on their way, but somehow they always seem to manage. This is the way in this challenging continent.

Other Africa Posts
Top Ten Wildlife Travel Wonders
Gorillas in the Mist (DR Congo)
Photo of the Week - Mountain Gorillas
The Great Congo River Journey (DR Congo)
The Pink Pageant (Kenya)

In the heart of the virtual capital city of the technology-rich Silicon Valley, San Jose, with its miles and miles of functional characterless modern IT buildings sits a bizarre anachronistic house built over 100 years ago. Belonging to Sarah Winchester, wife of the famous rifle maker William Winchester, this haunting (and haunted) mansion, set in superb gardens, took over 38 years to construct (working 24 hours per day on every day of the year) and features around four stories, 160 rooms, over 1200 windows and three elevators. It has never been completed, work stopping the day she died.

Apparently Mrs. Winchester was a deeply spiritual woman and remained deeply aggrieved at the loss of her husband. She sought out and was told by a medium that the rifle created by her husband had caused much death and misery and that the spirits were extremely upset. To gain peace and appease the spirits, she would need to build a new home for herself and never stop building (maybe the spirits were carpenters!).

Though apparently lucid, Mrs Winchester must have been seriously disturbed as her mansion proceeded haphazardly and she directed the builders to construct a number of strange oddities designed to confuse the spirits. Some doorways are hidden in cupboards while one opens onto a steep drop to the lawns below. Most chimneys are false including one which doesn’t even extend to the roof. One doorway is blocked by a brick wall and one staircase leads nowhere at all. An unusual staircase simply travels in a circle.

Her unsettled mind demanded that she slept in a different bedroom each night – mind you, she had 40 from which to select. Standing less than five foot tall, the scant furnishings suit her diminutive stature.

With an inexhaustible supply of money from her husband’s estate, the house also includes magnificent gilded lights, wooden-inlaid floors, Tiffany glass windows and many modern conveniences for the time. These include push-button gas lights, state-of-the-art indoor toilets and plumbing, cooling and steam heating systems, hot showers, and special elevators to help the aged owner up stairs.

To add to the mansion’s obsession with luck, many decorations are centred around the number “thirteen”. Most windows have thirteen panes of glass, most staircases contain thirteen steps and the walls are constructed with thirteen panels. A kitchen sink contains thirteen drainage holes. One story tells of an expensive European chandelier being altered to add a thirteenth candle and many common fittings have thirteen elements.

This strange travel wonder sits incongruously in this ultra-modern area of the United States, yet provides a novel afternoon touring the chaotic, rambling mansion of an eccentric, obsessive woman with more money than sense.


Note
Aerial and staircase photo are courtesy of Winchester Mystery House, San Jose.