The Ishtar gate

 This is the magnificent Ishtar gate that King Nebuchadnezzar built in Babylon, present day Iraq. The German explorers took back all these from the site and rebuilt it in the Pergamon museum in Berlin. This Ishtar gate was one of the eight that graced Babylon. This was a smaller one, imagine the bigger one, it probably wouldn't fit here. I read this museum was rebuilt to make it bigger because of this gate, and the others including the Miletus market gate and the Pergamon altar.

Here are inscriptions made by King Nebuchadnezzar that says that he built it. The line to get in to the Pergamon was not that long but because they limit the number of visitors entering, the wait to get in was long. It took almost 2 hours to get in.It was well worth the wait.

Museum Island, Berlin

 This is the Berliner Dom, an 18th C cathedral. Museum island is surrounded by the Spree river. Here on the island, besides the Berliner Dom, is home to some of the major museums in Berlin, an Unesco world heritage site.

My reason for being on Museum island was the Pergamon museum, a truly magnificent place.

Berlin main train station

I flew into the old Tegel airport, small and lacking in services. I'm amazed the new airport is still not ready after all isn't Berlin the capital of Germany and a former capital of the great Prussian empire? Anyway very  little remains of its communist past, there's considerable rebuilding and the new buildings are all of glass and steel as was the case of this fantastic main train station. I stayed in a hotel just next to it. I took the Tegel bus from the airport and as we approached the train station I could see across the river, the glass dome of the Reischtag. I didn't think I'll be so close to it but there it was. Wow, it was quite exhilarating.

Victoria train station, London

 I like staying around the Victoria train station area. It makes for easy access to transportation to Europe and the rest of England. It can be very busy at times.

 Of course there is the iconic double decker buses that England is famous for.

 Not my hotel but it was close to my hotel which did look as nice as this.

I went foraging for food at the food stalls in Victoria station, scored some cut fruit, a Cornish pasty and a ham sandwich. Its all good, I miss it already.

Time to leave

 Here we are waiting for our tour to start. The tour took over an hour and we were all enthralled. Another lady and I had to leave before the end of the tour. What a pity. The piece de resistance was the beautiful studio that appeared in so many books and magazines. We saw it and ran out to a waiting bus.

 The lawn was empty of people earlier in the day but as the day progresses....

 Visitors were picnicking on the lawn. What an amazing sight!

 One last look......

Back on the shuttle and back to Lewes train station we go.....

Charleston and the Bloomsbury group

 It was Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia Woolf who found Charleston farmhouse . He and Virginia were living close by.

 Virginia wrote to her sister, 'I wish you'd leave Wisset and take Charleston. Leonard went over it and says its a most delightful house....I has a charming garden with a pond, and fruit trees and vegetables, all rather run wild but you could make it lovely.'
Vanessa Bell checked it and found that it could suit her purpose of providing a refuge, not just for her and her children but also a way for Duncan Grant and David Garnett to get away with being conscientious objectors. World war I was raging on at this time. So Vanessa Bell moved into Charleston. 'Large rooms and airy' was the description at that time. Its true, I was amazed at how large the rooms were and how light and airy the house was, when I visited.

Charleston farmhouse, the interiors

 No photography was allowed in the inside of the house. So I had to use the photos I took from this book.

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant painted the interiors, not just with plain paint, they painted on wall paper, they painted the doors, the fire places, the beds and everything that could take on paint.

 Vanessa loves to paint circles and cross hatching and her work can be seen throughout the house.

 Duncan Grant painted this door panel.

 Vanessa painted the top of this dining table. The wall is painted black with yellow stripes to resemble wall paper because they could not afford to wallpaper the room. They used leftover paint from their work.

 There was a mirror in the centre but for some reason was broken. But not to worry, Duncan painted a mural in its place.

 Vanessa's bedroom with pictures of her three kids being displayed on the wall.

 They made a new room for Vanessa on the ground floor with access to the garden.

Here one can see Vanessa's work on the window embrasure, those circles again.

Garden statutes in Charleston farmhouse

No money for Rodin, no problem, just make them yourselves. That's the way of Charleston farmhouse where a group of Bohemians lived, Vanessa Bell, her gay lover, Duncan Grant and her children. Later her estranged husband, Clive Bell moved in. They went apart even though they never divorced. John Maynard Keynes took up residence here for a while and their friends who came over to their flat in the Bloomsbury area of London also visited. These group of artists and intellectuals formed a group in the London flat in the Bloomsbury area and they were given the name 'the Bloomsbury group.' These are the work of one of Vanessa's sons, Quentin Bell. He wrote and dabbled in pottery.

Wild England

 I heard that a lot of apple trees dot the English highway from years of people in cars spitting out the seeds of apples. I've seen cherry trees laden with cherries.

 The wild meadows are a repository for all kinds of wild flowers, some are quite unusual and rare.

The shuttle took us past wild meadows, hedgerows and cultivated meadows. England, it seems export silage (grass) because there's so much of it.