Museum of History and Art

Friday was a big day, in terms of walking anyway. We were going to be meeting our host and hostess and their daughter for an evening meal and to catch up with a free jazz concert, but during the day we’d planned to go the Museum of History and Art, which we’d tried to get into on Monday, but it was closed.
This is an amazing building, quite apart from the exhibits. When you go in on the ground level, you think the building will just go upwards from there. In fact there are four lower levels going deep into the ground, and the new foundations are mixed with the old walls of much earlier buildings - and you can actually touch these wall, which date back to who knows when. (Someone will; I don’t.)
On level -2 or thereabouts is the recreation of an actual Roman mosaic floor - almost complete. And on the walls down there are the pieces that have been found of some murals from Roman times. Down in this area are items from thousands of years ago, long before Christ, little items that probably were of no great significance in their day but which take on great significance because of their age and the fact that they’ve survived.
As you work your way up the building you progressively come closer to your own times, although there’s a sudden lurch from the mediaeval period to the 19th century. And what’s there from the 19th century is mostly military material: guns, portraits of famous soldiers and battles.
And then another leap forward into the 20th century, which is where most of the art is. One painter, Joseph Kutter is very well-represented; he’s a Luxembourg painter who uses colours somewhat akin to Chagall but his subject matter and style is different. I liked his paintings, especially his portraits (including two or three autoportraits, as they’re known.
Of course there’s plenty of other art, but more in the area of sculpted works from the Romans and from churches - huge lumps of stone sometimes with carvings intact, sometimes not. Or metalwork and the like from all eras. It’s a great place, though its focus is a little diffuse…!

Joseph Kutter is considered one of Luxembourg's most important painters. He lived from 1894 to 1941 and was greatly influenced by the Impressionists.

Echternacht

On Thursday our hostess drove us to Echternacht, a smallish town north-east of Luxembourg city. It’s famous for a couple of things, particularly, the Catholic Abbey and its surrounding university, and the Roman remains. The latter is particularly special: for instance out near the local lake are the foundations of an old Roman villa, still intact (with some restoration as well) and showing the extent of the building as well as the pool in the front of the house. This is almost as long as the main building. I presume it was decorative rather than for swimming purposes (!)
The Romans populated this area pretty thoroughly in the past, and, as I’ll mention in the next post, their ‘leftovers’ are everywhere.
In the town of Echternacht itself we went and visited the Abbey which is primarily known for its association with Willebrod, [sometimes Willebrord] a British bloke who decided that the people of the area needed evangelising - some 1300 years ago. He was so popular that people have been making pilgrimages along the routes he took in his evangelising ever since. The church he built in Echternacht at first, was soon too small, and one of the wealthy Christians of the area donated funds to build a much bigger one. (Willebrod was dead by this time.) This second church was destroyed by fire around the year 1000, if I remember rightly, and so a third (and bigger) church was built. The French Revolution damaged this one to a great extent, and with the ensuing secularisation of the area, the shell of the church was used as a place for tradesmen to work in.
In due course, Christianity (particularly Catholicism) came into its own again, and in the 19th century the church was restored to such an extent that it was virtually a new church. Unfortunately, this church was thoroughly bombed in the Second World War, and so a fifth reincarnation of Willebrod’s church came into existence. This is virtually a new building, with absolutely superb modern stained glass (wonderfully colourful) but little else in the way of decoration. The old crypts are still there and Willebrod’s tomb is in one part of them. A sketch of his effigy on one of the tombs (the one we saw has a kind of stone boxing over the top) shows the effigy not in the usual state of repose, hands folded across the chest and eyes closed, looking as though the work is done. Nope, Willebrod is on his back, but is up on his elbows, eyes open, looking for all the world as though he’s had a rest and ready to go again.
Echternacht is full of cafes and gift shops - in the area we were in - but has lots of charm. We stayed and had lunch - onion soup with soggy croutons in it for mine hostess and me, and some sort of sausage dish for Celia. She’s been very keen to try out the sausages, but hasn’t quite made it generally. There’s such a choice of sausages, it’s hard to know where to start. And of course, they don’t exactly fit into the Weight Watchers’ scheme of things.

Sorting Out

Yesterday, probably because I was tired when I wrote, I got tangled up completely as to where we’d been. Most of the interesting stuff was in Cley, such as the marshes and the lock, and the windmill. The tide was out in Morsten, and the boats there were all becalmed as well as at Blakeney.
And then I forgot that in the morning that we’d spent quite a while on Beeston Common, which is across the road from one of the houses Celia lived in as a child. Beeston Common is now more ‘grown-up’ than it was fifty years ago: the trees are much taller, making some parts of it more like a wood than a common. And the grasses and stinging nettles and various other plants are profuse on the ground. But there are still tracks, and a local group has signposted some of them as a way of not getting lost in the area.
Celia found the pill box that had been there when she was a child. It was built as a kind of lookout for when the Germans were coming. Health and Safety have had a go at it, and repaired it, and filled in the holes, so you can no longer get inside and play. Spoil sports. A woman passing us at that point said it was because there had been snakes and such inside it. Snakes - you tend to forget that England still has snakes, though I can’t say I’ve seen one, this time or the last time. But another woman we met in Sheringham Wood the other day said her dog had been bitten by a young adder a couple of years ago. Dogs can suffer badly from adder bites and can sometimes die, but for humans it’s more of a nasty irritation. The dog in question, one of two the woman had with her, seemed to have recovered. Along with its companion it was hiving into the pond the woman was sitting beside, and getting itself thoroughly soaked and then coming out and sharing the water with you.
I keep meaning to mention as well that we’ve frequently passed a village called Roman Camp - in fact, it was the first place we bought petrol in England. It’s rather mind-boggling to think that the Romans made such an impression on this particular area that people still call it by such a name. And I also keep forgetting to name drop and say that Bill Bryson, the travel writer and humorist, lives not far from where we’re staying now, in one of the many tiny villages around here.
After our Beeston Common excursion, we went down to the beach where the CSSM (Children’s Special Service Mission - and not Come Single Soon Married, as Celia insists it ought to be) were holding one of their beach missions. These are annual events and go on for two weeks (used to be three). There were puppets and a girl talking about Abraham, and quite a lot of kids (considering it wasn’t warm at that stage) and adults, and they were mostly pretty involved, even the teenagers sitting up in the shelter above the mission.