Family Summer Travels Part III: Amsterdam and Belgium

So, our traipse through Germany (just about) over, we drove out from Bacharach and to Cologne, where we had to take some time to figure out exactly where to drop off the car and get train tickets to Amsterdam. That done, we had a short time to visit Cologne Cathedral and play tourist with a few photos before continuing on our way. The cathedral is immense and imposing, and strikes the eye immediately as one walks out of the train station. The entire city was bombed during the war, except the cathedral was left standing. The black residue on the stones likely isn't all from bombing and ash, but my fantasies led me to think that it was.

With two steeples, it cuts quite the immense silhouette from afar, as we found when driving into Cologne and when taking pictures at a short distance.

Farewell, Germany! On to the Netherlands. Our train was delayed en route, and when we arrived in Amsterdam it was cool and raining, rather like the UK weather I've gotten to know. We trekked through the Red Light District to our hotel (and smelled the smell of Amsterdam "green" for the first time there, if you get my drift) and settled in, then grabbed dinner. Afterwards we were all tired, so we turned in and got up early the next morning to head to the Anne Frank House, which we'd all been wanting to see. It opened at 9am, and we got there a few minutes early since we'd heard about crowds, and holy cats at that point the line wrapped around the block. We waited for right around two hours -- I kid you not -- before we managed to get inside! So our first morning in Amsterdam was spent standing and trying not to breathe too deeply as a city maintenance crew pumped fresh sewage out of a septic tank close by. Welcome to the Netherlands. The silver lining in all this is that I'd managed to get in touch with a deaf friend of mine, Kate, who lives near Amsterdam, and she came out to hang out with us for the day. Two hours standing in line gave us a great opportunity to chat and catch up!

Once we did make it into the Anne Frank House, however, we found it had been worth the wait. I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank when I was younger (though I can't recall when exactly, and would like to go back and reread it now), and seeing the place where her family hid from the Nazis was an unreal and deeply sobering experience. The house has been turned into a museum, and many excellent informative videos greeted us as we walked inside, first through the warehouse part that was a public front for the place where the Franks hid, upstairs in the secret annex. We gradually made our way up to the secret annex, through a bookcase that hid the entrance in the wall (still there and still original), then had the chance to peruse the very small and very closed-in rooms where the Franks and one other family spent two years in hiding. Words fail me here. I cannot imagine spending so long, with five other people, in such a small place, sitting in tense silence the entire day as we struggled not to make noise, not even to go to the bathroom during working hours when people might hear us downstairs. It brought the reality of the Holocaust home in a very painful way. And the fact that the Franks, and the people who helped them, courageously hid for that long, and then were captured and sent to concentration camps anyway, is too awful for words. I left feeling horrified by the reality of those dark days, but at the same time oddly cheered by the fortitude of the human spirit, as we can see in Anne's diary. It was a strange mixed feeling that I have a difficult time describing, but I'm very happy we made the visit while we were in Amsterdam.

Next up: we had traditional Dutch pancakes for lunch (which were delicious), then walked the streets and canals of Amsterdam throughout the afternoon. The clouds and gloom had lifted by that point, and we had a truly beautiful afternoon to explore this unique city.

Kate explained interesting things about the Netherlands to me, from Dutch architecture (and why the buildings on the canals were built the way they were) to Dutch bicycles -- there were so many! Amsterdam is a tricky place to be a tourist, I tell you, because every time you step out into the street you need to look for bikes zipping by. The city is a biking mecca; there are hardly any cars compared to other places.

We made it out to the "I Amsterdam" sign, by one of the main art museums, the Rijksmuseum, and then proceeded to the Van Gogh Museum, which we'd been considering visiting that afternoon. But a huge line in front of that museum as well made my family decide to return with advance tickets the following day (which was thoroughly worth it), and we backtracked through the city to explore more of its streets and shops.

And wrapped up the day with a beer, of course. I so enjoyed catching up with Kate in Amsterdam, and must make it back out to the Netherlands during my time overseas.

We parted ways after the evening happy hour had passed, and my family wandered the canals a bit more (always so enchanting, these waterways) before grabbing a delicious Dutch dinner. Then we wandered the canals for a while longer in the gathering twilight.

Again, I could have used another day or two in Amsterdam, but isn't that true for just about every place I've visited? The next morning we were off to Brussels. We got to visit the Van Gogh museum in the morning, and then grabbed lunch at the train station, and made it to Brussels by early evening. After dropping our things off at the hotel, we set out to explore a bit of the city before dinner. We saw the Grand Plaza, supposed to be one of the most beautiful squares in Europe:

And most importantly, we started our journeys through Belgian food with some waffles! This was every bit as delicious as it looks, I assure you.

The chocolate (and chocolate displays) were pretty amazing, too.

We went to a fun Belgian restaurant (with some French influence and French dishes) for dinner, and were all very excited to try the local beer. I've mentioned that I'm not usually a huge fan of beer, since I prefer wine and other drinks, but this beer was absolutely excellent.

Take me back!! Anyhow, the next day we got up and got on a train to go up to Bruges for the day, since we'd heard wonderful things about it, especially in comparison to Brussels. (Overall, I thought Brussels was all right, a pretty standard European city, not all that many remarkable things about it compared to other cities.) Bruges, on the other hand, was beautiful and quaint and a perfect place for our last day out on the European continent.

We walked around the main city squares, took in the unique Belgian architecture, and of course visited a few beer and chocolate shops along the way. (So many varieties of Belgian beer, it's astonishing.)

Then we passed out of the heart of the city (and more charming architecture abounded), and then took a boat tour on the canals. This was an admittedly touristy thing to do, but a friend of mine had advised that we just do it, and I was glad to see Bruges from this angle.

There were so many charming architectural details to marvel at and take photos of, and after getting the overall lay of the land (or water) through our boat tour, we walked out to the other end of the city to see some windmills.

We returned into the middle of the city for a late lunch (with more beer, of course), then walked along the water and took photos of some of the beautiful towers and buildings rising over the canals. It was a lovely day, even if a bit blustery and cold and fall-like.

Another highlight of Bruges: all the horse-drawn carriages that clip-clop through the city. Hearing the sound of hoofbeats and horseshoes so often is something I miss. I kept turning to watch as the horses trotted by.

For our last activity of the day, we toured a local brewery that has made beer in Bruges for several generations, complete with another glass of beer for each of us afterwards. The view from the top of the brewery was beautiful:

Also beautiful: more waffles. Again delicious. I think Belgian delicacies need to make it into my daily diet (though it's probably best for me that they don't).

We then walked back to the train station, amidst swans milling in the water (and chasing each other hilariously out of the way when people tossed bread down to them), then caught our train back to Brussels. The next morning, early, we were off again, on the Eurostar back to London. Our time in Belgium was short, but I loved it there -- even if returning to the UK felt like coming home, a bit, as it has come to feel over the last few months. The Kolb family adventures did get a few more days in London and thereabouts, and that'll be the subject of my next post. Until we meet again, European continent!

Family Summer Travels Part II: German Roadtrip

After our fast two days in Berlin, on Thursday morning of the first week of our travels we made our way back out to the Berlin airport to pick up a rental car for the next leg of our journey: a roadtrip through Germany. Now, I don't have any photos of my dad driving on the famed Autobahn, but suffice it to say he had fun weaving in and out of traffic and putting the pedal to the metal on that superb and well-maintained highway. (The highest speed we reached: 180 km/hr, and he would surely have gone faster if we'd been driving something fancier like a BMW. I think it was one of the highlights of his trip.)

Our first stop, after getting out of Berlin and admiring the rolling hills and fields and iconic towns of the German countryside, was in Wittenberg, the location of one of the world's oldest universities and also of the church where Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the door on All Hallow's Eve, 1517, launching the Protestant Reformation. Wittenberg was along our way out of Berlin, and (being the nerd I am) I'd had spinning visions of not only Luther but "For your intent / In going back to school in Wittenberg, / It is most retrograde to our desire," etc., etc., and thought it would be a fun place to make a quick stop. The cathedral was closed for restorations when we passed through, in preparation for the apparent upcoming celebrations in Wittenberg in 2017 (for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation), but it was still a charming medieval town with a bustling market square and some beautiful streets.

We grabbed lunch and proceeded onward to our first destination, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a truly stunning original medieval town that "time forgot" for many centuries, which has been restored with its original city walls still intact. Rothenburg, we'd learned before, is very touristy these days, an icon of romanticized medieval Germany, but is still real -- it remains much as it was several centuries ago, when it was one of the most prosperous cities in Germany, especially along some major trade routes that used to crisscross the area en route to other areas in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. History notwithstanding, it was a thoroughly charming place, even if packed with more American tourists than I think we saw anywhere else in Germany. We spent two nights in Rothenburg and loved exploring the colorful facades of the shops and hotels and restaurants along the streets, as well as architectural details like the fountains, and of course the medieval city walls and view down to the agricultural valley and river below.

The majority of our wall-scampering took place on the full day we spent there, when we walked along the roofs and ramparts of the old medieval city, some of which are original and other parts of which have been restored/reconstructed since part of Rothenburg was bombed by the Allies toward the end of the Second World War in 1945. (Destroying the entire city, as once seemed likely, would have been such a shame if not for the intervention of some level-headed American officials.)

The entire city seemed to allude back to a very different medieval past, a past that is now easy to simplify and romanticize (we forget the squalor of medieval cities, and the uncertainty of those times, and so on and so forth), and I was conscious of my own elicited response to this tourist restoration of history. But, hey, it was still fun and still romantic and a great family destination. As my mom said several times, visiting Rothenburg was like stepping back into a storybook or a fairy tale. Except for the medieval criminal torture museum (which I found fascinating), a good reminder of the very different conceptions of justice in another time.

But, I mean, look -- how beautiful! Having a picnic dinner in the park and watching the evening glow shine over the medieval walls and towers and roofs of Rothenburg was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

On Saturday of that first week of traveling (I know, I'm losing track of the dates too) we left Rothenburg in the morning, then drove an hour and a half through more charming countryside to reach Heidelberg. Our time in Heidelberg was short, just an afternoon and a portion of the next morning, but I'd heard about the city from other friends who had visited and was keen to explore it for myself. Plus I was very glad to have the opportunity to catch up with an old high school friend of mine from New Mexico who now lives in Germany, not far from Heidelberg. We've talked a lot, when catching up in person in Albuquerque over the last few years, about our experiences living abroad, so it was such a treat to get to see her at last in her new home, and to hear about German culture and the local foods and drinks and pastimes through her eyes. Now, Martha, just come visit me in the UK!

Sunday morning, we had a few hours left in Heidelberg before moving on to our next stop in Germany -- the Rhine Valley -- so we packed up at the hotel, drove the car up the hill overlooking the city, and visited Heidelberg Castle for a few hours. Much of the castle is now a ruin, although some halls are still intact and it has an apothecary museum and an impossibly large, 52,000-gallon wine barrel in a storage cellar, and the place provided some nice view over the city and the river.

Next up: several more hours of driving. My dad was in fine form on the Autobahn, I finished reading another book, and in the evening on Sunday we arrived in the breathtaking Rhine Valley, where we'd arranged to stay in an apartment in the cute medieval town of Bacharach. The Rhine is lined with many small towns that, like Rothenburg, are impossibly charming. It is also lined with miles of vineyards, all of which cover the steep hills by the water with row after row of grapevines and wineries. We took a respite from our German beer-drinking habit while visiting the Rhine and started sampling the local wines, mainly the Rieslings. So good!

And, as we found out in our first full day of exploring the area, the Rhine Valley is also home to many, many castles. So many, in fact, that we'd see them more or less every mile while driving down the highway. There's a stretch of 40-ish kilometers along the Rhine that has -- if I remember correctly -- something like 43 castles. A ridiculous number, but so romantic and reminiscent of, yes, 19th century romanticism and fascination with castles and ruins and landscapes and everything medieval.

We visited the Burg Rheinstein (above), considered to be one of the most iconic and romantic castles of the entire Rhine Valley, one morning. It was originally built in medieval times atop a huge hill overlooking the valley, then refurbished several centuries later by Prussian royalty as a private residence. Casual, and I could really go for some of the private bedrooms and studies/libraries inside -- what a view. Later that afternoon, we found we couldn't get enough of looking at the river, so took a chairlift to the top of a hill to see a huge loop in the Rhine and some of the towns down below.

Driving up and down the river, this was a pretty ordinary sight:

Our second day in the Rhine Valley, we decided to take a boat cruise down the river from Bacharach, which gave us many more views of (you guessed it) vineyards and castles. We got off the boat two or three towns down, stopped for lunch (and a radler for me, or a typical German summer drink that mixes beer and lemonade and is very refreshing), and then made our way up the hill to visit, yes, another castle.

This castle, Rheinfels, was built as a medieval fortress, then later destroyed and left atop its original hill as a ruin. (The entire journey, I couldn't help but think of all these medieval fiefdoms jealously defending their territory and their castles.) Part of it has been restored into a hotel, but tourists can visit the other remaining ruins. I've always loved visiting the ruins of centuries-old buildings, and Rheinfels was no exception. There was even a network of underground mining tunnels used for battles and defense that really roused the little-kid explorer in me.

We climbed the crumbled walls, tried to evoke images of what this place might once have looked like, tramped through the underground tunnels (thank you, trusty iPhone, for giving me light in the dank pitch-blackness), and I got placed in the stocks for one of many times on this trip. Those photo ops are always irresistible.

Our time as castle explorers finished, we got back on the boat to venture upriver to Bacharach and were treated to some lovely views of castles in the evening light along the way. From old stone castles up among the vineyards, to castle fortresses built right in the middle of the fast-flowing river, the Rhine Valley has it all.

And this one from above Bacharach. Castle country, I'm telling you.

Castles and wine and cute towns composed a nice escape from reality, and again I wish I could have stayed longer, but after our two full days in the Rhine Valley we got back in the car and wrapped up our time in Germany by proceeding to Cologne, where we caught a train up to Amsterdam. More on that soon -- but, at long last, the Kolb family succeeded in retracing its German roots, something we'd been wanting to do for a while. Score!

Family Summer Travels Part I: Berlin

When I last left you, dear readers, my family was leaving Oxford to begin our travels through the continent with a foray to Berlin and then to larger Germany. I have little to report from the first day of our travels, since a freak storm swept through the UK that day and stranded our flight at London Luton for over four hours. (Good times.) After waiting for hours and then waiting for even longer on the plane, and with my proclivity toward hanger (for those who don't know, hungry people do not make good company) kicking in by the time we landed in the evening, we arrived at our hotel in central Berlin late that night. I was still hangry when I woke up, but a nice German breakfast and some coffee helped fix that, and then we were off to start our first day in Berlin with a walking tour of the heart of the city. True to form, my mom had called up our old buddy Rick Steves and his iPhone app, and we started the day by the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, or German Parliament building:

The Reichstag is notable for being a grand public parliament building that was later set on fire during the early days of the Nazi regime (many people think as a political maneuver for Hitler to blame the Communists for unrest in Germany), then heavily bombed but not destroyed during the Second World War. Today, it's a parliament building once again, with the German Chancellor's office close by, as well as a few memorials to German political leaders who resisted the Nazis, at the cost of their own lives, during those dark days in Berlin. The Reichstag attracts huge crowds of tourists, especially in the summer, due to its beautiful new glass dome, through which visitors can look down on the Parliament chamber, but we opted not to enter, admiring it from the outside instead.

The Brandenburg Gate, as well, is fraught with German political history. It began as the grandest of the gates to the old city of Berlin, was rebuilt in the eighteenth century as a triumphal arch, and then remained a symbol of Berlin during the Second World War, when it was heavily bombed and badly damaged. (The photos we saw of the rubble of Berlin in 1945, with the maimed Brandenburg Gate rising out of the destruction, were chilling.) It later became a spot well-known for its placement right next to the Berlin Wall (a la "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!") and has since been restored after the reunification of Germany. Pariser Platz, the square in front of the Brandenburg Gate, is a bustling plaza bordered by various foreign embassies, which have been rebuilt in their original positions from before WWII, as well as some posh hotels and other shops and attractions. We took it all in (and snuck a peek over at the Tiergarten, Berlin's largest public park/garden, which we would visit later) before continuing onward with our trusty Rick Steves tour.

The next stop was Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a plot of land marked by rows and rows of coffin-sized concrete pillars. These pillars grow taller as one walks farther into the forest, so to speak, of cement, and soon I felt overwhelmed by the rows and shadows and feelings of receding light. The memorial doesn't make any overt statements, but it evokes images of labyrinths, or darkness, or grim stark nameless burials, or any number of things I can't put a name to. It is deeply somber and powerful, and I felt that way even without visiting the Holocaust museum close by. (I would have liked to, but my family has visited the excellent Holocaust museum in DC and I went to a similar exhibit in London earlier this summer -- and, anyway, if only we'd had more time.)

Whew, that was heavy. It was a feeling I would often have in Berlin -- that of feeling deeply troubled that such atrocities as the Nazi regime could have happened here, never mind the Cold War division of Germany, yet fascinated by the challenge of understanding the political currents that shaped those parts of history, and also cheered by the dynamic and buzzing new vibe of the city. There was SO much construction in Berlin, so many cranes and crews and new projects in development. The German penchant for efficiency was in action here, and I'd love to come back to see what the heart of the city looks like in a few years. After lunch we stopped by the spot where Hitler's bunker once stood, contemplated more of this history, and then walked down Unter den Linden (one of Berlin's main streets, which once led to a Prussian palace that has since been destroyed, but that now stretches out from the Brandenburg Gate to the square of Alexanderplatz) and saw various buildings from different periods, many of them reconstructed since the war, along this route. It was horribly hot and humid by the time we crossed over to Museum Island (no time to visit the museums, alas! though I saw a few of them during my last time in Berlin, in December 2010, and remember them being excellent). We took in the bombastic Berlin Cathedral, then kept walking past some more museums and memorials to Marx and Engels and so forth, and culminated our walking tour in Alexanderplatz, where we amused ourselves for a few minutes with the dynamic shops and markets and some fun public games in the square.

At this point it was still mid-afternoon, and my family wanted to see the Berlin wall, so I remembered my earlier visit in 2010 and led us all out to the East Side Gallery, a segment of the wall that still stands but that has become transformed into an art-filled memorial to peace, and freedom of expression, and diversity, and a unified Germany, and other such things. Even spots along the wall that used to be formidable monuments, like a guard's surveillance tower, have now turned into tourist attractions.

And all of this has happened in twenty-five years since the wall fell. Incredible. I can't say how much I marveled at what it took, to recreate Germany out of that kind of history. (Another instance of my constant desire to learn about places when I visit them: hey, now let's go read dozens of books about that!) We walked along the wall for the entire mile-long East Side Gallery, saw No Man's Land in the middle, and admired the many pieces of art that now mark this once-grim and formidable obstacle.

The weather had turned, and it was pouring rain for a while, so we wrapped up our first day in Berlin with a return to the Alexanderplatz area and a nice German dinner of currywurst and other meat-themed dishes. Now, I don't eat as much meat as I used to, but I was a regular little carnivore when I was growing up, especially where sausage was concerned (call it my German roots surfacing in me), and I loved trying those kinds of dishes in Berlin. As well as the beer, which there was also plenty of. (Because we had to pay for bottled water in Germany and some other places, pretty early on in our travels we decided to stop doing that and just drink beer instead. Yes, for every meal except breakfast.)

I wish we'd had three days in Berlin, or preferably more, but we only had two before we moved on to explore other parts of Germany, so we got up on day #2 and went straight to Checkpoint Charlie, the former crossing between East and West Germany at the American sector. This has now become a tourist attraction, too, with the old "U.S. Army Checkpoint" hut still standing in the middle of the road (by McDonald's and other symbols of capitalistic glory) and photo ops abounding. We took our own photos, visited a disorganized and information-laden and quirky museum close by, meditated even more on the import of the Cold War and what it must have been like to try to sneak across the border into freedom in West Berlin, and then moved on to explore the Tiergarten.

On the way to the Tiergarten, we passed more segments of the wall that have been left standing, plus some ruins of Nazi and Gestapo headquarters, as well as the buzzing Potsdamer Platz with its huge Sony Center. Once we got to the tranquil and lush Tiergarten, Berlin's main park, I was glad to have a few minutes to walk through the trees and unwind. It was gorgeously green and uncrowded, with joggers and small ponds and streams.

In the middle of the Tiergarten stands the Victory Column, gold-gilded and tall against the sky, but still ridded by bullet holes and shrapnel chunks at its base. Still, straight out from the Brandenburg Gate, it was something to behold.

Also, "Tiergarten" literally means "the garden of beasts," since the park started as a monarch's private hunting ground, and statues that commemorate that history later dotted the entire park. Many of them were destroyed in the war, but several still survive and grace one segment of the park with their depictions of hunting savagery (even if still visibly damaged by bomb shrapnel from long ago). A friend of mine recommended that I read Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, about the early Nazi regime in Berlin, before visiting the city, so seeing the actual beasts in the actual garden in the city of Berlin, after learning a bit about its history, was a treat. By the way, I also recommend the book...

Last up for the day before we walked out of the Tiergarten past the Berlin Zoo, and then explored some nearby shopping districts before grabbing dinner? Why, of course, we had to visit a biergarten in the Tiergarten, complete with German pretzels. Now, I'm not usually a huge fan of beer, since I prefer wine and cocktails and other types of drinks, but German beer is just so good, and sitting by the water watching the ducks made for a perfect place to enjoy it. We'd taken a whirlwind tour of Berlin, seen many things and missed many others that I wish we could have visited if we'd had more time, but at the end of Wednesday it was off to bed, then on to the next adventure. Add Berlin to the list of world's most dynamic and fascinating cities, though, and call it a place I very much hope to visit again.

Oxford Graduation Recap

Well, I'm three weeks late on this one, but hello again from the UK, where I am now in possession of my degree of Master of Studies in English literature. In other words, three weekends ago, I graduated from Oxford! And then headed off with family on a few weeks of whirlwind travel -- but before I get to that part, let's rewind and go over graduation day at this quirky old institution, which is worth discussing in itself.

Based on all of my exposure to Oxford thus far, I knew that graduation would be a venerable tradition, likely full of Latin, and likely involving lots of ridiculous robes and "smart" dress and other finery. Correct on all of those counts -- and how different it was compared to Stanford, where I graduated not once but twice over the last two years, with its irreverent attitude and casual vibe and wacky walk and packed stadiums and full commencement week events. (I sometimes think the two places could not be MORE different.) We had a wave of California-like weather the week of graduation, and the UK heated up to around 80-85F, which doesn't sound too hot until you consider that 1) I have become weak and my heat tolerance has plummeted, meaning that anything above 75F feels scorching, and 2) there is no air conditioning here in all these old buildings. The Sheldonian theater, the nice old theater used for graduation and matriculation and other events of general university pomp and circumstance, quickly heated up, especially near the ramped seats up top where all the spectators had to sit to watch the degree candidates and Oxford administrators down below. My own family was able to watch and share in the graduation festivities with me, since they'd arrived the day before from the States and begun to get over jetlag. (Jetlag remedy day #1 included a visit to Blenheim Palace, complete with picnic, and the first of many pub nights with fish and chips and cider, since none of us like the British beer.)

Anyway, on to graduation itself. After a nice lunch at St. John's, I parted ways with my family and went with the other degree candidates to the Sheldonian, where we took seats inside on the ground level of the theater. Then the vice chancellor of Oxford came in and started the ceremony -- yes, I'd been primed on this beforehand and told what to do, for reasons you'll understand in a bit. He said a few general congratulatory remarks in English, nothing like the long commencement addresses you'll find at American universities and also nothing as specific as the remarks my own department head gave at the degree ceremony the last times I graduated, and then proceeded to explain that the rest of the graduation ceremony would be in Latin. Why, you ask? Because tradition. Because the solemnity that is due to recipients of this lofty academic honor. Because Oxford. So, we began.

My interpreter had just about the best job after the English remarks ended -- for the remaining hour or so, the vice chancellor and other deans said some things in Latin, meaning she just had to sign to me, Latin. More Latin. Still speaking Latin. Etc. They called up each group of graduating students (based on degree category: DPhil, MPhil, MSc, MSt, B.A.) and had the deans of each college present the students formally to the heads of the university. This meant we had to stand up, hold hands with our college deans, and bow deeply to the vice chancellor in the middle, then bow again to a dean on the left, then again to another dean on the right. After all this bowing, we were called up closer -- without our college deans this time -- and then we did yet more bowing. After this, we all filed out of the theater to the Divinity Schools, a wing of the Bodleian Library behind the Sheldonian, to put on our formal graduation robes and hoods. (During the first part of the ceremony we'd just worn college gowns and sub fusc, meaning the white shirt/black skirt or trousers dress code that is required to accompany gowns for formal occasions like this one.) Then we filed back into the theater, in tidy rows of four, and had the vice chancellor speak more Latin to us, then we all bowed again as the vice chancellor and deans took off their mortarboard hats to us. As each row of four moved up to face the vice chancellor before filing out of the theater for the second and final time, we paused while the vice chancellor looked us each firmly and unblinkingly in the face for several seconds. I'd been warned about keeping eye contact through this "icy stare," or solemn recognition of my achievements (or whatever it was intended to mean), but the experience felt unnerving. Here are some photos my sister got of the entire ritual:

(This "icy stare" wasn't the status quo for everyone, though. The DPhils got to shake hands. And the students getting a Master of Arts had to genuflect before the vice chancellor while he touched a bible to their heads.)

Whew, now all done! I stood outside the theater until the entire ceremony had finished with the undergraduates, then had to engage in a little more hat-tipping as the admins and deans came out, then it was time for photos. As well as a little good-natured chuckling about how strange and, well, Oxford the entire thing had been. I found it all rather amusing -- as you can probably tell, since I've gone into such exhaustive detail in this post. This place is truly absurd and strange and befuddling and wonderful, and ceremonies like graduation do a good job of showcasing just how. Post-graduation celebrations included high tea, then dinner and a pub night with family and a few friends who were still in Ox, followed by a day of punting and sightseeing in the vicinity on Sunday. Then, Monday morning, we were off to Berlin to start the first leg of our family travels -- but that will need to wait until my next post!

P.S. All photos in this post are courtesy of the lovely Leigh Kolb and her wonderful new camera, which I was thoroughly jealous of the entire time we were traveling. With my next post we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming (aka my six-year-old camera) and the pictures won't be nearly as nice, I promise.