94 Gordon Road, Ealing, London

Posted on December 9, 2018 by admin

December 1994 was a good month. We were lucky to have it. After being on the move since April, it was time to take a rest but not quite time to go home. Or rather, go make a new home in the United States. So we spent most of the month in London.

I can’t remember how we found Ealing Tourist Flats. There was no Internet to consult, but there was a short-term rental industry, and we rented one of its units for four weeks. The property was a half-mile or so beyond the North Ealing Underground Station, which was on the Piccadilly Line, but it was much closer to a commuter rail station, Ealing Broadway, which is where we usually went if we wanted to go into the city center.

The neighborhood is part of the sprawl of greater London, with suburbization happening in the early 20th century. It still had a pleasant suburban character in the ’90s. Ealing Tourist Flats was at 94 Gordon Road.

I didn’t notice till I looked closely, but I’m in the picture, barely visible. I’m pretty sure the sign to the right of the main entrance, with the blue stripe, said Ealing Tourist Flats. Our flat was on the second floor, behind the windows on the left. It was a large studio with a foldout bed, table, television, and small food preparation area. Simple but all we needed for a few weeks.

In our time, I can look it up in detail. The tree’s gone and so is the sign on the front, but otherwise it looks about the same. I suspect it’s an ordinary apartment building these days.

Google Maps would have been a good thing to have, but of course in those days google would have just been a misspelling of 10^100. If we’d had it, we might have noticed that Ealing Studios was actually nearby. We walked at least once to Walpole Park, which is next to the studios, though December wasn’t the best time for strolling in English parks, and I don’t think we realized it was close.

Postcard From Russia

Posted on September 23, 2018 by admin

First coolish weekend since spring. Or rather warmish days and coolish nights. The beginning of the same slide into winter as every year.

A postcard I picked up in Russia in 1994.

The Sampsonievsky Cathedral (St Sampson’s), St. Petersburg. Looks like it’s been restored since the postcard was made. If I remember right, the building wasn’t even open when we visited St. Petersburg.

Anyway, at the time I sent the card to my brother Jim with a simple message.

Address whited out for posting. 600 rubles would have been… anywhere from 20 to 30 U.S. cents, since the exchange rate bucked around from 2,000 to 3,000 rubles to the dollar during the two weeks we were in country. Not bad for an international mailing.

I probably sent a dozen cards from the main post office, an elegant structure dating back to the time of Catherine the Great, and still a post office in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Elegant, but a little dingy. If these pictures are accurate, the place has been spiffed up since the mid-90s.

Wat Phra Kaew

Posted on May 20, 2018 by admin

Today I looked up the etymology of wat, the sort of Buddhist temple you find in Thailand. Here’s the brief word origin offered by Merriam-Webster online: Siamese, from Sanskrit vāṭa, enclosed ground.

Makes sense. We visited a number of wats in Thailand, especially in Bangkok, where large ones are thick on the ground. Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha, holds the prime place of honor among the Thais. We visited the complex, which is part of the larger Grand Palace, on May 26, 1994.

Some features stood out right away. This is the Phra Si Ratana Chedi at the wat.

Bangkokforvistors says: “The chedi essentially balances the structures on the upper terrace, but it also recalls the monumental pagodas of the old capital in Ayutthaya… The chedi houses a piece of the Buddha’s breastbone.”

The Chapel of the Emerald Buddha is in the background here.
I made no image of the Emerald Buddha, since I believe that wasn’t permitted. Tourists were allowed in to see the statue, which isn’t sizable, but is definitely elegant, and with an aura of history about it.

The Phra Mondop, or the library, which is not open to casual visitors.

The Wiharn Yod, a prayer hall.

“The wiharn is unique in its Greek cross plan and its Chinese porcelain decoration,” Bangkokforvistors says.

The following are other images I can’t quite pinpoint, but which were in the enclosed ground of Wat Phra Kaew.

Thinking back on it, I have an overall impression of heat and gilding and mirror tiles and heat and intricate but unfamiliar iconography and heat. The time to have gone might have been when the wat opened first thing in the morning, but we weren’t always as energetic as necessary for early-morning tourism in the tropics. Yet sometimes we were.

Curious about more recent tourist experiences at Wat Phra Kaew, I took a look at Trip Advisor. Most visitors rate it highly, which is fitting. But the low-raters point to changes since we were there.

For one thing, it’s now 500 baht to get in. About $15.50 these days. I’m certain we didn’t pay anything close to that much, making it an example of gouging tourists at supposed must-see places.

Also, tourism within Asia has changed somewhat since the 1990s, if Guimo68 from Miami is to be believed. That is, the Chinese are showing up in force (all sic): “Filled with chinese tourists trying to cut in front of you. I had fun trying to cut in front of them, so 2 stars… The whole experience is like trying to see the mona lisa. Too many rude and loud Chinese.”

Then again, there’s no pleasing some people, such as SophieLoveOz of Ellenborough, Australia (all sic): “I was so excited about the Emerald Buddha but was really disappointed as it is teeny tiny and way up high on a high stupa so can’t see it. It is Jade not Emerald, according to our guide. So many beautiful Golden Buddhas elsewhere.”

Normandy 1994

Posted on November 12, 2017 by admin

Normandy was surprisingly green in November 1994.

Then again, that winter was, at least until December, reportedly mild. I believe the shot above was taken from the train near Bayeux, where we stayed a few days.

The coast near Omaha Beach, so busy 50 years earlier in a way that doesn’t attract tourists, was comparatively empty by late fall.

I’ll bet there were a lot of visitors, of the tourist kind, along with old soldiers, during the summer of ’94, especially in June. Pennants hanging in the town — which unfortunately I didn’t document on film — still welcomed such visitors in English for the 50th anniversary, especially the old soldiers.

Former German pillboxs, left to the elements.

All well and good, to visit Normandy. But I need to get back to France someday, to see former trenches.

Kraków in the Fall

Posted on October 15, 2017 by admin

Around this time of the year in 1994, we were in Kraków. I remember liking the city a lot. In my memory, it’s always an autumn gray there. It has also just rained, though I don’t actually remember any rainy weather.

The streets were narrow and the buildings had a prewar feel. Which war? All the modern wars. Architecturally, at least, Kraków survived the great convulsions of the 20th century.

Actually, only the Old Town felt that way. We didn’t stay there, but rather in a plainer area not far away, and spent a lot of time wandering around the better-looking historic areas. As one does, as a footloose tourist.

I’ve posted about nearby places, such as the Wieliczka Salt Mine and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, but not central Kraków. This is a view of Wawel Cathedral.

Or, as Wiki tells me, in full: The Royal Archcathedral Basilica of Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus on the Wawel Hill. We visited it, and the adjacent castle, and were duly impressed.

I don’t seem to have a picture of the Renaissance Cloth Hall in Main Market Square, but I remember both the hall and the square well. Inside was a large market, a vast array of booths offering goods by artisans, that didn’t seem to be tilted toward the tourist trade. Some of the Christmas tree decorations for sale were exquisite. The only reason we didn’t buy any was that we didn’t think they’d survive shipping home or a few more months on the road.

This building caught my attention. Enough to take a picture anyway. But I didn’t make a note of what it was, if I knew.

You’d think you’d remember at least the things you take pictures of, but it isn’t so.

Bali 1994

Posted on July 23, 2017 by admin

I hope Bali is as pleasant as it was 20-odd years ago. You go for its many charms, and so do a lot of other people. Yet somehow the island holds its crowds well.

Though serving an economic purpose, the Tegallalang Rice Terraces near Ubud, created using a longtime cooperative irrigation system, are pleasing enough to attract outsiders such as us.

Plenty of people go to Goa Gajah, “Elephant Cave.”

As well as the Ubud Monkey Forest.

I carelessly didn’t write the name of this temple on the photo, but I like it.

Not nearly as many people spend time by the ocean at Candi Dasa, with its rocky beaches. But we enjoyed the place.

Lying around near the beach wasn’t the best part of staying at a room at Candi Dasa. Much better was listening to the crash of the ocean at night just outside your room, as a cool ocean breeze blew through. It was even better when the wind and rain kicked up, as it did a few times. Some of the lesser-commented pleasures of Bali are its many aural treats, and not just the ocean.

Speakers’ Corner

Posted on December 11, 2016 by admin

There was a speaker at Speakers’ Corner in December 1994, but I don’t remember what he was speaking about. He’d drawn a crowd, though.

Considering that a pre-1991 Iraqi flag seems to be flying in the background, and probably a Palestinian flag behind that, Middle Eastern politics seems the likely subject. Lots of grist for impassioned public speaking there, at least in places, mostly outside the Middle East, where there’s little risk of official punishment.

I also remember an anti-Ba’athist, or at least anti-Saddam Hussein, parade in London, but that was in 1988 on one of the streets near Harrod’s. It was a thin line of people marching along, and a thin line of people watching, and (I think) some argument between some of the participants, but no fighting. There were some police around, probably wishing they could be anywhere else.

As for Speakers’ Corner, I’d made a point of going to see it one day we were in Hyde Park. Not sure how I’d heard of it, but heard of it I had. Maybe it was the lyrics in the peppy yet pessimistic song “Industrial Disease” (1982).

I go down to Speakers’ Corner, I’m thunderstruck

They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks

Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong

There’s a protest singer, he’s singing a protest song…

The Royal Parks web site says that “the origins of Speakers’ Corner as it is known today stem from 1866, when a meeting of the Reform League demanding the extension of the franchise, was suppressed by the Government. Marches and protests had long convened or terminated their routes in Hyde Park, often at Speakers’ Corner itself. Finding the park locked, demonstrators tore up hundreds of yards of railings to gain access, and three days of rioting followed.

“The next year, when a crowd of 150,000 defied another government ban and marched to Hyde Park, police and troops did not intervene. Spencer Walpole, the Home Secretary, resigned the next day. In the 1872 Parks Regulation Act, the right to meet and speak freely in Hyde Park was established through a series of regulations governing the conduct of meetings.”

Paris 1994

Posted on November 13, 2016 by admin

November was a good time to be in Paris. So were the 1990s, as far as I could tell, though people sometimes pine for the Jazz Age or La Belle Époque in curious cases of nostalgia for times they never experienced. I take an interest in the history of places that I go, but I’m more interested in seeing them as they are now.

Which, after some time (say, 22 years), becomes places as they were then. Here I am on the Champs-Élysées.

I spent a few minutes with Google Maps trying to figure out exactly where I was, without conclusion. But I think Yuriko took the picture with her back to the Arc de Triomphe.

Here she is in front the Louvre Pyramid, which was fairly new at the time.

Even though it was November, the museum was ridiculously crowded. I’d hate to experience it in July.

St. Petersburg 1994

Posted on October 2, 2016 by admin

After Moscow comes St. Petersburg. Of course it does. We spent the last days of our Russian visas in St. Petersburg after taking an overnight train between the cities, and after hearing stories about how thieves would pump knockout gas into our train cars and proceed to rob us naked. Somehow that didn’t happen.

If the Russians had been less prickly about extending tourist visas, we might have spent a few more days in the country, spending some of the hard currency we had that they wanted. But no.

It was a balmy October day when we boarded the Aurora. The vessel survived the Battle of Tsushima and later of course had her part to play in the October Revolution. Since the mid-Soviet period, Aurora has been a museum ship.

Also balmy outside the Hermitage. Much spectacle on the exterior, many fine works of art inside, but dank and crummy amenities, especially the bathrooms.

Scenes of Post-People’s Republic Mongolia

Posted on September 11, 2016 by admin

The part of rural Mongolia that we saw in September 1994 — in and near Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, 20 or so miles from Ulaanbaatar — looked a lot like this. Ulaanbaatar wasn’t a sprawling kind of place in those days, unless you count the large neighborhoods composed of thousands of ger (yurts).
In places the trees were fairly dense, with streams flowing through the land. Most of all, though, it felt remote. Even more remote than the arguably further-from-absolutely-everything Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia, because the infrastructure was so much more developed there, as far SW as you could go on the entire continent.

Ulaanbaatar didn’t feel so remote, though in ’94 sometimes livestock were seen wandering the streets. I wonder if that’s now a thing of the past for the Mongolian capital, as traffic inevitability increases. How do I know that traffic has increased in 20-plus years? That’s just one of those things that happens.

These prayer wheels were at the Gandantegchinlen (Gandan) Monastery in the city.
From the looks of more recent pictures, some restoration work has been done since then. At least, I’m fairly sure that the stock photo I linked to was taken at about the same place I stood; it certainly looks like it, taking into account various renovations and additions over the years.

In the city, we also visited the Mongolian Natural History Museum, known the world over for its dinosaur artifacts. “The museum is particularly well known for its dinosaur and other paleontological exhibits, among which the most notable are a nearly complete skeleton of a late Cretaceous Tarbosaurus tyrannosaurid and broadly contemporaneous nests of Protoceratops eggs,” Wiki says. I remember those eggs.

And, of course, the big skeletons. You could go up on a balcony for a look at them.

Photography involved paying an extra fee. Or so the museum staff told us at the entrance. None of us paid such a fee, and pretty much everyone in our group took pictures, though as you can see, the light was lousy. I don’t even think any staff were in the big dinosaur room with us, keeping an eye on us. Things were lax. Hope nobody over the years took advantage of that to take anything besides pictures.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Around the World 94