SCOTTISH TRIVIA

                                          Interesting Trivia

• The thistle has been the symbol of the country for 500 years. Legend has it that sleeping Scots were awakened by invading Vikings when they cried out after stepping on thistles in their bare feet. The Scots won the battle and the guardian thistle made it into history.
• Language originally was Celtic based with some Gaelic and a smattering of Norse dialects. By 1980 less than two percent of the population understood Gaelic. Gaelic is most popular on the Isle of Sky where 60% of the population speak the language. Accents and dialects have not developed in Scotland as they have in England.
• The Highland games started more than 1000 years ago. Bagpipe playing and dancing are always part of the games.
• After a wet harvest centuries ago, finding a way to use rain soaked barley resulted in the national whisky known as scotch. Scotch is the whisky, not the name of the people who inhabit the country. They are Scots, and the adjective is Scottish.
• All the museums in Glasgow are free.

      Big Bertha, a huge crane is now a monument to the vast and prosperous ship-building industry that the city of Glasgow was famous for. The last ship built on the Clyde was the Q E 2 in 1962. During W W II a warship a day rolled off the rails into the River Clyde. The 24-hour a day operation was incredible when 2000 ships hit the seas in a six year period. Before the war most of the ships built were passenger ships including all of the Cunard line ships. At one point the shipbuilding industry employed over 200,000 people. The ships were not only built here, but fully outfitted here as well. To say something is Clyde built means that it is quality and built to last. The River Clyde is but 78 miles long and has as much as a 20-foot tide here in the city.

      In Dornoch. We visited the 1239 Presbyterian Church where a couple of elderly docents told us this where Madonna had her son christened and that Prince Charles also had visited the church. The ladies proudly told us that the hotel across the street was once the home of Andrew Carnegie,

     They forgot to tell us that Dornoch is the area where the last witch burning in Scotland took place in 1722. An old woman was accused of turning her daughter into a pony and riding it around town. She was sentenced to be burned alive in a pot of boiling tar.

SOME SCOTTISH TRIVIA

                                                Fun Tid Bits

v  The thistle has been the symbol of the country for 500 years. Legend has it that sleeping Scots were awakened by invading Vikings when they cried out after stepping on thistles in their bare feet. The Scots won the battle and the guardian thistle made it into history.

v  Language originally was Celtic based with some Gaelic and a smattering of Norse dialects.  By 1980 less than two percent of the population understood Gaelic. Gaelic is most popular on the Isle of Sky where 60% of the population speak the language. Accents and dialects have not developed in Scotland as they have in England.

v  The Highland games started more than 1000 years ago. Bagpipe playing and dancing are always part of the games.

v  After a wet harvest centuries ago, finding a way to use rain soaked barley resulted in the national whisky known as scotch. Scotch is the whisky, not the name of the people who inhabit the country. They are Scots, and the adjective is Scottish.

v  Big Bertha, a huge shipbuilding crane, is now a monument to the vast and prosperous ship-building industry that made the city of Glasgow famous. The last ship built on the Clyde was the Q E 2 in 1962. During W W II a warship a day rolled off the rails into the River Clyde. The 24-hour a day operation was incredible when 2000 ships hit the seas in a six year period. Before the war most of the ships built were passenger ships including all of the Cunard line ships. At one point the shipbuilding industry employed over 200,000 people. The ships were not only built here, but fully outfitted here as well. To say something is Clyde built means that it is quality and built to last. The River Clyde is but 78 miles long and has as much as a 20-foot tide here in the city.

v  In Dornoch. we visited the 1239 Presbyterian Church where a couple of elderly docents told us this was where Madonna had her son christened and that Prince Charles also had visited the church. The ladies proudly told us that the hotel across the street was once the home of Andrew Carnegie,

        They forgot to tell us that Dornoch is the area where the last witch burning in Scotland took    place in 1722. An old woman was accused of turning her daughter into a pony and riding it around town. She was sentenced to be burned alive in a pot of boiling tar.

v  All the museums in Glasgow are free.

AMSTERDAM NOTES

                                      Some Fun  Trivia

 Nether means low land and since so much of the country is reclaimed land, the topography is very flat.

Amsterdam is full of bicycles. It is estimated there are 12 million bikes in the country. Bikes are just a means of transportation to go shopping, to work or to school. There about 11,000 miles of biking paths or special lanes.

Years ago taxes were paid on the width of a house so the houses are very narrow. Most houses are two or

House hoist

three stories high. By necessity, stairways are also narrow making getting furniture to the upper levels difficult, if not impossible. Hoists, used to lift furniture to the upper floors, are seen at the top of many buildings.

Old canals were filled in and made into roads and new canals dug. The shallow canals contain only about seven feet of water. The water level is fixed and stable. There are 2500 house boats on the canals.

The first church service was held in 1631 in Westerkert. At that time it was the largest Protestant Church. The 85-meter tall tower is topped with the Imperial Crown and the city’s coat of arms of Maximilian. Rembrandt is buried at Westerkert, and it was this church’s bells that Anne Frank could hear while in hiding

The Royal Palace is on  Dam Square

The Rijkmuseum, built in 1885 houses  important Dutch and Flemish paintings, and the building itself is extraordinary. Rembrandt’s Night Watch is a huge painting and has many details, some obvious, and many hidden.

Since the 16^th century Amsterdam has been an important center for the world’s diamond trade. Both the world’s largest and smallest diamonds were cut here and are part of the English crown jewels in the Tower of London.

By 1274 there were many watermills driven by rivers and streams. In 1414 the earliest drainage mills were invented and by 1450 many could be found in South Holland. The invention of the camshaft and crankshaft in the 17^th century made it possible to use the wind to power the mills. Although the mills did not originate in Holland, the Dutch developed the mills and made maximum use of them.

 Wooden shoes are traditional and have been found to be warmer and dryer than rubber boots. Clogs are mostly worn in the countryside and in fishing villages.  Three million pairs of clogs are manufactured every year. At one time leather shoes were a luxury only the wealthy could afford.

THE HERMITAGE

                             Russia's Great Museum

The Hermitage is a St. Petersburg land mark, and its façade is known the world over. I’m sure most people know the Hermitage was Catherine, the Great’s palace and now is a huge wonderful art museum. The contents you just have to see to believe and understand---and they rotate and change on a regular basis. Describing the Hermitage is like trying to describe the Smithsonian. So let me tell you a few things that perhaps you don’t know.

The Winter Palace was built between 1754 and 1762 for Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died before the palace completion and Catherine the Great, her successor, lived in and enjoyed the lovely palace of the czars. It is painted turquoise which was Elizabeth’s favorite color.

Today the Hermitage Museum occupies five buildings on the banks of the Neva River. The largest and best known of the city’s 50 museums, it occupies 1057 rooms that house three million artifacts from the Stone Age to the 20^th century. It houses the largest collection of art and antiquities in the world including 12,000 sculptures, 15,000 paintings, 225,000 works of applied art, and 600,000 drawings and prints. The Hermitage Museum is among the largest and most respected art museums in the world.

It is said that if one spent only a few moments at each display it would take nine years to see it all! Only 3-4 percent of the collection is on display at any one time. Peter the Great started the collection, Catherine the Great added tremendously to it with the purchase of her European collections, and Alexander I relieved Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, of her entire art collection after the French defeat in 1814. The great collection that includes masterpieces by Leonardo de Vinci, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Picasso is housed in 400 of its rooms.

Many of the palace’s impressive interiors have been remodeled, particularly after 1837 when a huge fire destroyed most of the building. The Hermitage is so big it seems overwhelming.

A P.S. to our Hermitage experience

As we entered the museum we checked our day packs as instructed. I removed my small camera and put it in my pocket where it stayed for the entire visit. Remember this.

Then we headed up one of 120 palace staircases. The red-carpeted wide marble staircase reminded us of the one at Wurtzburg Palace. Perfect for my friend and me to practice walking up it the way we learned in Germany. Grasping our pant leg (no skirt) with our left hand, we extended our right elbow at 90 degrees and extended the pinkie finger in the air and with head held high enough to look down our nose we started our ascent. We made it to the top of the long winding staircase before bursting out in giggles, not giving a hoot what anyone watching us thought. Silly, yes but fun!

          As we were about to return to the checkout counter we stopped to       watch 14 men decide how to get a large carriage up the stairs we had originally ascended. It was an interesting exercise as most of them apparently had no idea what they were doing. They used 6-8-inch wide wooden strips for the wheels to ride up on, but they used press-board and every time the carriage got on the strips they broke in half. When this happened the men stood and scratched their heads. It was like watching a comedy skit.We watched in amazement for some time and then finally had to leave.

            Returning to the checkroom we observed the lady behind the counter going through a big black purse that had been checked. She looked up, saw us, closed the bag and returned it to its slot. Unabashed she slowly came to the counter for our tags and  collected our bags. It did not appear that either of our bags had been tampered with, but as we walked away, I said, “I’m sure glad I didn’t leave my camera in my bag!”

YORK TRIVIA

MORE INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT YORK

York, England city’s medieval wall was built on top of the old Roman wall using it as a foundation, a fairly common practice, in those days throughout Europe. Every-thing remained inside the walled city—garbage, bodies, everything. Eventually the ground and the city level became elevated.

Although the wall was level we could see areas where its height was shorter on the inside due to the inside ground level.

            Years ago the ancient wall was naturally in need of repair, and the city wanted to simply tear it down. Some wise and concerned conservationists said NO, and the end result was that the wall was saved and repaired. In some areas a couple rows of stones were removed and a concrete cap added, but the wall remains. We walked part of it—just because.

The Shambles, now a tourist section of the city, was once a market area. Shambles referred to a meat shelf, later it came to mean a meat store or butchery. As time went on the non-edible parts of the meat trade were thrown into the street (alley) to rot and thus shambles now means a mess.

            A red devil sits on the corner of a building on the corner of Stonegate (street).  He’s a pretty cute little devil, all red and grinning.  It seems years ago a printer set his type and when absent or  his back  was turned youngsters would rearrange some of the letters. (Boys will be boys) The printer would scold the boys and call them little devils.

Now Stonegate, the ancient through-way alley, is a pedestrian mall where visitors can shop and enjoy a rich medley of medieval and Georgian architecture.

The Castle Museum occupies three huge multi-story buildings. One can view and walk in recreations of British life over the past 300 years; many of the displays extensive.  Victorian Kirkgate is the oldest recreated street in any museum in the world and offered  great  19^th century window-shopping.  The Half Moon Court offered insights into Edwardian life. Prison life 200 years ago? It was there. I’ve walked many a cobbled street, but never one in a museum.

            We found the chocolate exhibit fascinating. We even lifted up all the answer panels meant for kids. The UK spends a staggering 360,000 pounds (dollar equivalent) an hour on chocolate! It has the largest chocolate consumption in the world.  I’ve heard other such claims but the above is a huge expenditure