Category Archives: road

Dresden: old masters

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

The Alte Meister art museum is apparently one of Europe’s most significant. It’s chocka with gut-busting Rubens numbers and superbly executed but entirely standard portraits of forgettable – and forgotten – 18th century wigs, along with stacks of alternately – … Continue reading →

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Dresden: the Saxon one percent

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Upstairs in the Royal Palace of the Kings of Saxony is a spectacular collection of Ottoman weaponry, from the days when the Turks had Hungary and threatened Vienna. Downstairs, the so-called Green Vault: two floors of unbelievable and unnecessary trinkature … Continue reading →

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Dresden: twice risen

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Sad though it may seem, Dresden’s greatest claim to fame these days is probably that it was bombed pretty much out of existence by the RAF on the night of February 13th 1945: There are lots of modern buildings interspersed … Continue reading →

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Leipzig

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

Sunday lunchtime, grey sky, almost no-one in the streets. a young nutter sat on the pavement, cheerfully declaiming. An entire Russian brass band busking, and all the other buskers within earshot playing along; later, a six-piece English rock band with … Continue reading →

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the Pharaoh’s fist

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

a chill Sudanese lion from the Pharaonic period, in the British Museum: but check out this Pharaoh’s fist, from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, a little over 3000 years ago: and if you didn’t much fancy being subject to that, your … Continue reading →

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home soil

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

I landed in London at 6 in the morning. People are really friendly. Everything moves slowly, and there seems so much space and time between objects. Almost nobody employed in London, apart from the guys with the green fluorescent waistcoats … Continue reading →

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Byzantium by bus

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

And so, 30 years after I first conceived the ambition while turning right at Thessaloniki, I came not sailing but on a highway bus (aware, always, of the tyre-tracks of history) to Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium. The rain had cleared and we descended … Continue reading →

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mosque heaven: Edirne

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

From Samothraki I took the ferry before dawn back to Alexandroupoli, arriving in brilliant, freezing sunshine. After 20 minutes, the bus to Orestiada turned inland into thick fog, passing through small towns among roads lined with white single-storey Thracian cottages … Continue reading →

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great gods

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

New Year’s Day: back in Thessaloniki, I opened the local bottle of red I had bought on the mountain, and drank it. Then I went out, tensing my shoulders in the sub-zero night, and found what seemed to be the … Continue reading →

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old religion, new year

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Mark Rossiter

now the rain came pouring down; it was cold, my shoe was letting in water, and I had no place to stay. Regretting that I hadn’t taken the ferry back to the world, I sheltered in the doorway of one … Continue reading →

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