Gravensteen's Weapons

 I love to travel. The Wanderlust is a core part of who I am. I was born "overseas," as a child, I moved every three years or so, and when "overseas" my family travelled for vacation as often as possible. 

One natural consequence of travel is to come home with photos to remind us of the good times we had and the interesting places we saw. Technology makes it easy to take as many pictures as we want. However, I've found that looking through a screen at the things that are immediately around me forces a one-step remove from the actual experience. I intentionally try to limit my screen time while on vacation; after all, why would I travel halfway across the planet just to be online? But, despite my best efforts to analogize, I'm often sucked into the camera eye and miss the saturation of experience that can occur while I am immersed in a new place. So, I've made efforts to limit how many pictures I take while travelling. Of course, I'll take some photos, but whereas I might have taken a hundred photos a day in the past, I've tried to limit myself to something more like half of that. Even then, I have a lot of photos to "dump".

This last April, I was able to travel to Germany for work. After this, my wife and I took a week-long stay in Belgium. We were "stationed" in Antwerp - our Air BnB was literally 100 feet from the train station - and travelled out to Ghent, Bruges, and up to The Hague, Netherlands. I took a lot of pictures that week, as Belgium has some of the most beautiful architecture I've ever seen. When I look at the photos on my phone, I'm overwhelmed. So, I am trying to parse out these photographs into batches that are a little more digestible in order to blog a bit more clearly about my trips.

We'll start with Castle Gravensteen, AKA Castle of the Counts in Ghent. I'll include pictures of the castle itself in another post (or posts). 

Being a dutiful D&D nerd, of course I toured the castle! And, of course, I took photos of some of the weapons displayed there. This shows maybe half of the weapons there (again, I tried to limit pictures so I could actually enjoy the experience in the moment). For you other D&D nerds, hopefully this will provide some inspiration for your own games. Or, perhaps you might just enjoy the beauty of these killing tools. 

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Terror Train to Köln Dom

 The last time I travelled to Europe, I was fairly convinced that it would be the last time I set foot on the continent of my birth. Of course, this saddened me a great deal, as half of my childhood was spent there (Germany, Italy, and England). But the travel gods have smiled on me and I was able to go to Germany, where my work sent me for some training and to establish some connections between our US facility (here in Janesville) and our division's "mothership" in Oelde, Germany. It was work, but it was excellent. I have a much greater appreciation for the breadth of the work we do now, so, mission accomplished. Of course, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to pay for my wife's flight over. So, while I was working, she did a number of day trips to surrounding cities in the region. And, of course, we took a weeks vacation afterwards, most of it spent in Belgium, but those are reminisces for later blog posts. 

On Friday, I packed up a little early and went to the train station in Oelde to catch a train to Köln. The intent was to meet my wife there (she was visiting a different city that Friday - Hamm or Essen, I can't remember which), and we were then to meet a co-worker who I got to know when she worked in the States for several months, along with her fiancée. 

What I didn't know, is that the German train system has degraded markedly since I was a kid. The trains most decidedly do NOT arrive on time (unlike Austria) and, as I found on this little "adventure" (it's not an adventure until you're lost), they are sometimes altogether cancelled for reasons that remain a mystery to me. I blame the de-socialization and privatization of the train lines. Yeah, the country has probably saved some money and cut some waste by privatizing, but have they really? The old adage "you get what you pay for" has never been more true.

I got to the train station with plenty of time before arrival, had my ticket and passport ready, and was very excited to get on a European train for the first time in six years. Then, as I was waiting, the announcer said something about my train that I mostly understood (I can understand a little over half of what I hear in German, but I still speak like a three-year-old. Maybe four on a good day.), but wasn't completely clear on, so I looked at the board and saw this:

That's my train on the highlighted column. Notice the lack of a platform number in the last column? Yep, my train was cancelled. So, I did what any person using public transit in a foreign country who only understands half of the langue does: I panicked. First thing, I called my wife, who had dealt with the train system for the past week while I walked to and from work. She was also having train issues. As we were talking, I remembered a local traffic office downstairs, in the "station" (that is far too grandiose of a word to describe the wide hallway with a glass-windowed office and bathrooms that I am confident people have been murdered in), so I went downstairs and, thankfully, they were still open. And the host there spoke excellent English. I'm sure he had dealt with dumb Americans who were in Oelde for work before, so he was well-equipped to recommend another train where I could switch trains in Hamm and catch a connector to Köln, no problem!

Slightly comforted, but still a little wary, I went on my way. Caught the train from Oelde to Hamm, which was standing-room-only because of the cancellations back down the line, but I had no idea which platform to catch my connector on. This occasioned another trip to the help desk, but this time, the English of the person who was trying to help me was about as good as my German, and she was most decidedly NOT used to dumb Americans. Eventually, as I was growing in worry about catching the train, she was able to direct me to platform 10. I sprinted and made it there in time. .

This time the train was even worse. It was a double-decker, which was cool, except I had to stand halfway up a semi-spiral staircase, which, while I'm sure it was very aesthetically pleasing, was not practical to stand on. Thankfully, I had been walking about six or seven miles a day for the first six days we were there, so my legs weren't too bad and my back held up. Above me and to my left was a young couple who were "working out their relationship" the entire ride. She was crying and he was muttering and trying to placate her and she just kept repeating the phrase "Wie schön für dich" ("How nice for you") again and again. I thought maybe this was just a German train culture thing, but when I looked at all the other passengers around me, they looked at them baffled, then looked at me like "Please! Help meeeee!" This was not normal, apparently. But it carried on the entire time of that train ride.

So, when word came over the speakers (and I understood this message clearly) that this train would not be continuing to Köln, but would instead stop in Dusseldorf and then skip Köln to go straight to Bonn, I'm not sure if I was pissed off or relieved. A bit of both, honestly. By this time, I had a three-way texting conversation going on between me, my wife, and my co-worker. Natalie's train to Köln had also been cancelled! Argh! Thankfully, my co-worker, who had just left Dusseldorf to head to Köln with her fiancée by car, told us to stay put at Dusseldorf station and they would come by and pick us up and we would drive to Köln. Oh, did I mention that we were an hour and a half late by that point and had an early train to catch back from Köln to Oelde?

Now, why would we suffer such torture at the hands of the German train system? I had been told by people whose opinions I respect that I must not leave the area without visiting Köln Dom (Cologne cathedral). This was the point of that tortuous pilgrimage. Being in the back seat of our friends' car travelling at 200 Kilometers Per Hour, as the frustration and fear of that awful train trip subsided, I was getting rather excited. Some of that anxious energy had to do with the fact that we would have about an hour to see the cathedral and get dinner before we had to catch our train back to Oelde, but as we rounded a corner and the Köln Dom came into view, I was completely awestruck.

I've seen a lot of cool things in my day because I was blessed to travel the world from birth. I've seen many of the "have you seen?" monuments in Europe and the US (though definitely not all), and some have been more impressive than others. But this was at a whole 'nother level, as they say. This monumental piece of architecture took 600 years to build. Yes, 600 YEARS! Nearly two and a half times as long as the United States has been a nation . . . to build one building! I asked my co-worker's fiancée if he knew how many people had died building that, at which point his face grew grave (he is a very cheerful person) and he just said "Many". I'm certain of that. 

And what did they get for all this sacrifice? Only one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring structures on the planet. We had seen <a href="https://forrestaguirre.blogspot.com/2021/06/vienna-part-i.html">Stefansdom in Vienna</a> on our previous trip, and while that was very impressive, it really paled in comparison to Köln Dom. I took some photos (below), but honestly spent most of the time in reverence just trying to take it all in with my natural eyes. The phrase "pictures don't do it justice" seems trite and over-used, even abused, but in this case, it was clearly correct. I simply could not absorb the magnitude of it all through that stupid little piece of electronically-charged glass in my little phone. I'll include some pictures, but if you have any chance to see this magnificent structure, TAKE IT! 

As you can guess, because of the time in the evening, the cathedral was closed, so we didn't get a chance to see the inside. I'm guessing it's gorgeous, yet overwhelming, just like the outside. I'd love to get inside someday.

What we had planned to be a great dinner turned out to be ordering Döners at a shop on the square. They were good (but not nearly as great as the ones we had in The Hague the next week), but we had to eat them on the train back to Oelde. Which, incidentally, had to make an emergency stop in Hamm with policemen running around all over the place - I still don't know what the heck they were doing, and they looked like they didn't know what they were doing, either - which took about a half hour before we finally, finally arrived back in Oelde. Thus began the first of that vacation. More later. 

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Aurorae

 I've seen the Northern Lights a few times in my life, all of them since I moved to Wisconsin in 1996. The most spectacular displays I saw were back in the early-2000s. Unfortunately, phones didn't have cameras back then and digital cameras were expensive and finicky, so we never got pictures of those. But they were visible enough in the middle of Madison that we woke our kids up to come out and see them. I think we were home-schooling them at the time, so we could let them sleep in the next day. There were vivid blues, bright greens, and the occasional pink, and they fluctuated wildly across the sky. We could see all of this with the naked eye, they were so intense.

A few weeks ago, we caught a display, this time with our phones. Unlike the flashing display we saw back in the early aughts, these were difficult to see with the naked eye, but looking through our phone cameras, we were able to catch them. I'm including a couple of the better pictures below, along with a short video, for your viewing pleasure. It's worth staying up late and going out and seeing these displays (though we caught these right in our back yard). Enjoy.

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RAF Chicksands and The Devil's Quoits

As many of you will already know, I spent a very formative time of my life, from March of 1985 to October of 1987, living in England. I was 15 when we arrived and 18 when I left. So, when my wife and I went to visit Europe in 2019, I had to take a day, at least, to visit my old stomping grounds at RAF Chicksands in Bedfordshire. We took our first Sunday there to travel by car in a terrifying ride (terrifying because I never really did get used to driving on the left side of the road) from Moreton-in-Marsh, past Milton Keynes, and on to Bedford. We went to church at the congregation my parents used to take me at and I got to visit with a couple of old friends, one of whom just about dropped dead when he recognized me (he didn't know I was coming). We had a good time visiting and chatting, the one friend continually telling my wife about how much of a rebel I was back then (he was telling the truth), then we took off for RAF Chicksands, where I spent some of the more meaningful years of my life.

It was a bittersweet reunion. You see, when I left England, I did so because I was forced to do so. I had gotten myself in trouble with the authorities (drugs) and in order to avoid a prison sentence (not jail: federal prison), I was banished from the base and told that if I ever set foot on it again, I would be arrested and the charges would come back to haunt me. 

But time changes things. In 1997, ten years after my banishment, the US Air Force pulled out of Chicksands. Instead of and American spy base, it became a British spy base. And no one there had my records anymore. So, we arranged a tour of the one part of the base we could visit (as the rest of the base was restricted to British military personnel and their families), the Chicksands Priory. Granted, I couldn't visit my old house and much of the area I used to wander for hours, but I could visit that old priory. 

I will spare you most of the history of the place except to say that it was originally built in the 1100s - yes, the 1100s, that's not a typo - and that there is a ghost by the name of Rosatta that I am certain haunts the place. But that is a ghost story for a different time. 

Here's a decent shot of it from the front. Keep in mind throughout this post that we were not allowed to take any pictures of the inside nor were we permitted to take any pictures with humans other than ourselves in them. This was for security reasons. And I didn't want to get arrested again on Chicksands. Third time was a charm. After that day, I've never been arrested (though I had been twice before that, but again, a different story). As you get a little closer to the priory, this is what it looks like:

From here, we went inside and

Remember, I can't show pictures of the inside!!! 

This is a shame. Because I would have loved to have shown you pictures of the room where we had dances, I should have liked to show you the secret tunnels in the attic above the second floor (which our guide confirmed to me exist, though I already knew that), the wine cellar in the basement where we drank like medieval lushes, and the underground tunnel that used to lead to the now-abandoned church at the village of Clophill but was walled up by the police back in the '60s because of the number of satanists who would try to sneak into the haunted priory by way of the tunnel. All of this is 100% true. I talked quite freely with our excellent guide about all of these things, all of which she confirmed. "You did get around, didn't you!" she said. I was expecting to get some lecture about maintaining history, not touching artifacts, breaking and entering, etc. But, no, she was downright enthusiastic when I told her what I knew and how I knew it. 

Alas, you are stuck with pictures of the outside. But what a beautiful outside!

This is a view of the side-yard. The road you saw would be to the right of the building. Notice the depression in the yard there - we always noted, as kids, that this is where water tended to pool up to a ridiculous amount. Well, it turns out that archaeologist say that these may have been holding ponds for fish that were farmed here. Makes sense. What you can't see right behind me as I'm taking this photo is the River Flit, a not-very-raging river that splits in two and forms what we knew as "sports island" because the football field, track, and softball diamond are there. 

Oh, look, there's the river right there. And beyond those trees: sports island. It's where I accidentally saw a harrier jump jet land, up close and personal, while walking to the 4th of July fete, which was held on the priory grounds. My timing was perfect. It was one of the loudest things I've ever experienced. Even louder than a Motorhead concert. I was so close that I saw the pilot, who waved at me, probably in an effort to say "get the hell away from my plane, you idiot! You'll be killed!" Anyway, back to the river (no pun intended) - it would make sense to have the fish ponds right here. Divert a little water, set up a one-way wicker seine and, voila! Fish farm!

This is where geography gets a little tricky. See that road beyond the gate there? That's the road we came in on. The main building of the priory is off to the right. If you turned right here and somehow walked through the buildings in ethereal form, you would end up in the fish ponds. We knew this courtyard very, very well. The door to the right of the courtyard (the open one) leads into a room that is nothing but an iron-girded skeleton of its former self. There is a vast circle in the ceiling that was once a mill for grinding grain. If you wanted to, you could literally fall from the peak of the roof inside down to the floor. I know, because I almost did that a few times (even though I didn't want to). Alcohol does not mix well with walking on a 1" wide iron beam straddling other 1" beams. I was braver in those days, and dumber. 

To the right there, you will see a little stairway going down. That area has been filled with cement. Why? Because that's where the wine cellar I mentioned earlier is/was. Why did they fill it in? I'm sure it had nothing to do with groups of teenagers going down there to party and make out, all nestled in giant medieval stone cavities meant to hold gigantic barrels. Nothing at all like that. I can attest that the barrels weren't there in the mid-'80s, but we supplied our own alcohol. When I think back on it, that was a slasher movie In.The.Making!

There was one area we almost never went into. In fact, I don't ever remember going there. And that is the gardens. I don't know how well they were maintained back then, but now they are incredibly well-maintained. There is a certified medieval gardener on staff (no kidding!) so they can grow things there that normally wouldn't be legal to grow because . . . well, because it's a medieval garden, and you know how things were in the Dark Ages, right? If you didn't like what they were growing, they might go all . . . medieval . . . on you.

Now the second to last picture above here is a fig tree. But does anyone know what that last tree is? I'm not sure, and the person giving the tour wasn't sure either. The medieval gardener was off for the day, or she could have told us. But that thing is beautiful! The picture doesn't do it justice (my photos rarely do - ironic that I worked at the base photo lab when I lived at Chicksands), so if anyone can tell me what that tree is, do tell!

The next two pictures I am intentionally calling out:

This one is . . . a brick wall? Yes. Yes, it is. This brick wall is significant to me, however, and I'm being serious. In September of 1987, I was arrested, tried, sentenced to banishment, essentially. On October 15th, what is known as "The Great Storm" raked across southern and eastern England, bringing hurricane-force winds and killing 18 people. I like to think of it as the island expressing grief that I was leaving. The wind was strong enough that it toppled this brick wall. The WIND did that! You can tell right where it happened, too. See the lower section with the pockmarked bricks? That was the part of the wall that survived the storm. All the "new" looking brick above it was put in, reconstructed, after the storm. The trick, I am told, is that the old brick was basically crap. So they built the new bricks out of basically crap. In not many years, the bricks on the top will also wear down and become pockmarked to match the original brick. See? Shoddy construction is quaint and good. Just ask the entire decade of the 1970s, The Golden Age of Poor Workmanship.

Before you ask, yes, that is exactly what you think it is. Opium poppy. Remember where I said I got in trouble for drugs and that caused my banishment? Well, welcome to Exhibit A. Yep, it was hashish mixed with opium that got me (and a few friends) in trouble. The irony of seeing this is not lost on me. I laughed hysterically when I saw this. I think the tour guide thought I must be either crazy, a junky, or both. Truth be told, I am only crazy.

After the garden, we walked by the back of the priory and saw this and THIS is the most important photo I took the whole time. When I saw this, I screamed out "That's it! That's it!" - again, I am not a junky, only crazy:

This, my friends, was our portal, our gateway to another world. The lower left pane of that right window was perpetually broken. You can see the window handle hanging tantalizingly above it. THAT is how we got in, the point of egress that led to so many incredible memories that are a part of me and that I'll never be able to completely recollect. A good part of my teenage thrill-to-be-alive lay beyond that window. I had to go up and touch it, and I did. Thankfully none of the military guys saw me do it because I might have been shot. 

And it might have been worth it.

And here are my wife and I, departing Chicksands once again (well, "again" for me, anyway). I honestly can't wait to get back. Maybe British Intelligence will bugger off and I can see the whole base without fear of being killed. Doubtful, but you never know. I never thought I'd be able to come back . . .

Oh, and if you think I'm joking about the place being haunted, I'm not. They have found many, many bodies buried under the grounds, including this lady:

This isn't the celebrity dead-person, the nun Rosatta. I have a story about here. For a different time.

After this, we went to see something even older and with lots more dead people. Well, yes and no. I wanted to see *something* megalithic while we were in England because structures that old just don't exist in America. If they do, they're under tons of mud along the Mississippi river and I'm not keen on digging through tons of mud to get there. So, we got in the car (terrified of driving yet again) and took off for Devil's Quoits (yes, it's spelled correctly, I just checked), in Oxfordshire. 

Finding the place was a bugger. It's off a little path next to a garbage dump, essentially. We got ourselves good and lost a couple of times, but it's not an adventure until you get lost, right? We had an adventure!

In short, the site is thought to be 4,000 to 5,000 years old (yes, "patriots," that's older than America, you dunces - get over yourself) and was reconstructed so that toppled stones were put upright and mounds that might have decayed were restored. There's a good chance that human sacrifice took place here, and animal sacrifice almost definitely happened here. But it could have just been some strange misfortune that burnt human bones ended up among burnt animal bones, right? Yeah, right.

This is the reconstructed ring mound (to the right) and pit (to the left). If I remember right, the mound is about 3' high.

Following is a series of photos I took of the stones. There was a lot of high vegetation there. Not enough burnt sacrifices taking place, I think. They should fix that.

And some interesting individual stones:

For some reason, the next one makes me think of the outstanding Lamentations of the Flame Princess module The Monolith from beyond Space and Time (which you should play - wow).

Or maybe I was just hallucinating by this point. I did get a big whiff of those poppy flowers at the priory.

I swear, I'm not a junky!

And here is an individual by a stone:

"And I quoit". You knew that was coming, right? Does this stone make me look fat? I think so. Thankfully, I've lost some weight since then. About . . . a stone . . . 

Kill me now.

My wife isn't too keen on me taking pictures of her to post online, especially when we're travelling because, well, let's face it, we all look like junk when we're travelling. That's part of the mystique, right? "Is that a tourist, or is that guy just homeless?" people say behind our backs. In any case, I did sneak some pictures of her from a distance, so as to be discrete:

I felt pretty sly about this second one. That's me taking a picture of her while she was taking a picture. So meta. These should give you some idea of scale, as well. It was a pretty big field we were in. Again, though, needed more (dead) bodies.

There is a convenient plaque that explains everything you need to know, here shown in two parts:

And, lastly, here is a closeup shot of the aerial representation:

And, what does this remind me of? YES! That's right . . . 

And if you don't know what this is, you're not allowed to be my friend any more until you've watched "Children of the Stones".

And, with that, we were off back to our awesome Airbnb residence.

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No Man's Land: View from a Surveillance State

No Man's Land: Views from a Surveillance State by DeSieno Marcus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Outside of an introduction by Ariel Shanberg outlining the aesthetic purposes behind DeSieno Marcus' photographs and an outro by Martha A. Sandweiss delving into the technologically transgressive nature of the project, this book is all about the photographs. The simple design lets the photos breathe in a startling way.

Once one understands (through reading Sandweiss' essay) the subversive nature of Marcus' methods, the landscapes take on a decidedly hauntological tone, but in a twisted way. Rather than fostering a vision of a past that never was hoping for a future that never will be (as in the Ghost Box Records oeuvre, for a musical example), Marcus' photographs subvert our inner version of the "wilderness" by tricking us about our assumptions. Without context, one looks at these photos and thinks that they are beautiful vintage photos of the world's great wildernesses. The astute observer will see that there are sometimes elements - a line of power poles, for example, or a graded road - that indicate that these are not necessarily old photographs and that the photographer might have used old techniques to emulate antique photographs. This is true . . . partially.

The true hauntological element comes in when one realizes that the way Marcus produced these photos was by hacking into trailside and wilderness security cameras. He then sets up a wooden camera (complete with bellows and brass fittings) and shoots a picture of his computer screen. Then, using "a waxed paper negative process", he creates images that look as if they were shot in the very early days of daguerreotypes.

Genius. Pure, subversive genius.

Of course, this opens up a whole Pandora's box of questions: Since he is hacking into security cameras, who is watching who? And if you happened to be on the trail or in the landscape at the time Marcus "took" his photographs (I use the word intentionally) and you are now viewing those photographs, are the observer and the observed the same? Or, through Marcus' manipulation, has the observed changed in some way because of the nature of the transformation? Furthermore, what about the purposes of the trailside cameras? Are they "secure"? Do they reach the objective of their "security" if they can be hacked by an outsider, then viewed by the world, at least in a frames'-worth snapshot in time?

The hauntological implications are really quite staggering. How often do we fool ourselves into accepting a certain vision of "the past," when, in fact, that vision has been manufactured in the present? I was a child of the '80s - graduated high school in 1987, if you must know - and it is easy for me to listen to music, for example, that was created recently, but that I swear could have been present at that time, but absolutely was not. The retrowave synth movement is the classic example of this. Listening to it, I can say that, yes, it evokes the way it felt to be a teenager in the '80s (I realize I am generalizing my nostalgic feelings and applying them to millions of people, which I have no right to do, since each individual experience of that decade was different), but if asked to provide examples of where and when I heard such music, I am hard-pressed to come up with good examples. I suppose the movies Tron, Escape from New York, and Blade Runner and their soundtracks provide the best readily-accessible example, but not every movie in the '80s was Tron, Escape from New York, or Blade Runner. In any case, none of these soundtracks are identical to the retrowave music being produced today (and vice-versa), so, really, even the nostalgia I feel when listening to new-retrowave music is not truly memory, it is a reflection of my present views of the past, not a mirror of the past itself, an imposition of my present mind laid on top of my muddle memories of the past. My memories of the past are haunted by the phantoms of the present and my present impressions are haunted by the underlying memories of the past.

Which begs the question: Am I even myself? The question . . . haunts me.

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