The last bit of what we did in London - we managed to finally, finally go see a show in the Globe Theatre. I've wanted to do this for ages now, ever since I heard about the theatre, back when I was still studying in Bamberg. However, I'm not in London that utterly often, and the times I happened to be there in the past were usually outside the Globe's season, or there was just no time at all to go there. This time, however, it did work out, and we went to see the Merry Wives of Windsor. The play was nice, there was tea, the theatre was very much an experience as well, and so overall, it was fantastic.

What I found especially impressive was the performance of one actor - Bryan Dick. The actor that was supposed to be on stage was indisposed, so they had to fill this gap with someone... obviously. The audience was duly informed of this by someone coming on stage telling us before the play started, and there was also a note outside (which I didn't see until afterwards).



What I didn't realise at first was that the role would be read... either I didn't catch this bit, or the announcer did not explicitly state this. Anyway, it took me a long while to realise that the man holding a few sheets of paper in his hand did not hold stage props, but they were actually the text in case he'd need it. If not for the paper, I wouldn't have been able to tell who the stand-in would have been. So - very, very impressive performance, and I'll happily go see more things in the Globe if I can, in future visits to London. (The only not-so-enjoyable thing was, by the way, the planes going overhead, with quite a bit of noise... but that can hardly be avoided in an open air setting close to an airport.)

We also went to see another thing that had piqued my interest, also already a good while ago: The musical "Matilda". While I didn't know a thing about the story, which was originally written by Roald Dahl, I did know that Tim Minchin wrote the music... and since I vastly enjoy his music, that was on my list of interesting things one might sort of stumble into if one could. And we did. With a dash of luck, we got the two last leftover side-by-side seats in the theatre, and it was utterly glorious - the stage setting alone, and how it was used in the different scenes, would have been worth a visit, not to mention the choreography and the music. Ah, the music. Here, have a snippet:


All the song lyrics are very, very much Minchin, and so is the music. I found it vastly enjoyable and now have lots of new earworms.

So - I told you about the study day, and how wonderful it was. So wonderful, in fact, that I could have easily spent a second and even a third day doing a study day, but alas, it was just that single day.

Which meant that, since it would be a shame to travel to London just for one single day, I obviously had to come a little earlier, and to make up for that, stay a bit longer. Bonus: the most patient of all husbands did tag along with me - so we did some exploring of the city.

On Friday, we went to join one of the Fridays-for-Future demonstrations. This was full, with a huge crowd with lots and lots of different signs. There were quite a lot of speeches (of which we didn't catch much), and rather a lot of fluctuation of people coming in and going away again. It was good to see a lot of people, with obviously different backgrounds and at many different stages in life stand there and support the movement for greater sustainability in our world, to make a future without an apocalypse possible. It was, however, also a bit sad to see the rubbish bins in the park where the event took place overflow with plastic and single-use disposable cups. When we arrived, we went to get a coffee, and in the line before us, a lady with two small children also got herself two hot beverages - in to-go cups. She then proceeded to join the demonstration.

Incongruencies like this did come up several times during our stay. Like in the V&A, which makes a lot of noise about how they use their coffee grounds to grow mushrooms that are then served in their restaurant, so that the coffee grounds are not going into a landfill. There's a whole exhibition about sustainable food... and yet, in their garden café, there's disposable cups only. That was sort of disappointing for me.

On a much more positive note: We happened to meet Ben Wilson, aka the "Chewing Gum Man", an artist who paints on chewing gum (which is not public property, and thus can be painted on without legal issues...). We had noticed the small, colourful bits on the Millenium Bridge before, so it was extra nice to meet the artist behind them.

Ben paints a lot of different things on the gums, depending on their size and shape - from turning them into little animals...



... to using roundish ones as a canvas for all sorts of pictures...



... to sort of steampunky things.



Ben has run a kickstarter to help fund a book about the chewing gum art; the campaign is over, but you can still have a look at what he does, including pictures that are much better than my snapshots on the Kickstarter page. It also includes links to interviews with him.

Time to tell you about the things I was up to while I was away - first of all: the MEDATS study day.

I was utterly delighted to be invited to the study day, with its topic "Learning through Reconstruction". It was a day full of interesting presentations, about various topics.

I finally got to meet, in person, Geeske Kruseman, who talked about the differences between hose and trousers, from the constructional point of view. Her classification included a look at body geometry and garment geometry; though I had been sort of aware of these differences, it was very nice to have it all spelled out so clearly, and made me realise things in a different way.

The second presentation that stuck really out for me was Alex Makin's paper about her embroidery project - of course, since I was involved in sourcing the silk and some of Alex' needles, and helping to get colours sorted out. It was wonderful to see pictures from the work in progress.

I also particularly enjoyed Ninya Mikhaila's stories from behind the scenes of  reconstructing the Arnolfini gown - which was done for the BBC series "A Stitch in Time", and accordingly had its very own, and very special challenges.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with everybody (and I finally got to meet some more people in person, in addition to Geeske, that I only had contact before via the Internet). We had a table to place items related to our presentations, so there was additional things to look at during the coffee breaks. All in all, the day could have been much longer for me!

Recently, I've recommended the travel mug I'm using to someone else. Again. Then I started wondering since when I've been lugging mine around... and today I've finally looked it up.

[caption id="attachment_4848" align="alignnone" width="326"] The battered trusty mug. 


I bought this mug back in fall of 2012, when it was much more shiny and only available in this one single colour, at least at the place I bought it. I wasn't too excited about the brown, but really excited about the promises that came in the description: stainless steel (so very sturdy), large capacity, completely leakproof, and holding beverages hot for a really long time. Especially the completely leakproof was something I had been looking for.

It cost me 45 Euro back then, and I did think hard about whether I wanted to spend so much money on a travel mug - but then, the plastic to-go mugs I had before hadn't been leakproof, and they had given up rather quickly, and they had a theoretical insulation (being double-walled) which was not very good.

So I did buy it. And I used it a lot - when travelling, of course, but also at home when I wanted a large coffee that would keep hot for a long time. The lid gave out in 2015; I got a replacement lid with very little hassle and for about 8 Euro from the German main distributor.

I've been totally happy with this thing ever since I got it. The lid can be a little finicky to clean if you're having milky beverages, but rinsing it out as soon as possible, using a brush or a toothbrush to get into the crevices, and occasionally taking it apart and bathing it in hot water with soda added will keep it nice and eliminate all traces of sour-milk odour, should the dire thing have happened. I'll usually fill it with coffee at home when I am travelling to have it on the road, and when I need a second one (or when I'm not starting from home), it doesn't only eliminate the need for a disposable cup, it also keeps my drink hot for long times. Since I tend to stretch out my coffee-drinking, that counts as a rather large bonus. (Downside: if you fill it with boiling hot water, it will take forever for it to cool down enough to drink. Brewing tea in there means keeping the lid off for a while, until cool enough to sip, or else you will have to wait for about 6 hours before drinking...)

When we were in London, I was even happier about the mug than usual, as there were some coffee shops that only had disposable cups, even for the people sitting down in the shop. So out came the mug... which, usually, also meant a discount on the price of the tea or coffee. And I did mention it's rather large, right? Which means that in most cases, you're getting a little more hot beverage of your choice for about the same price. Even without that bonus, though, we then did the maths... and realised that getting a pricey thermos mug, if you use it regularly, will amortise itself really quickly.

My mug has cost me 45 €. Say you're getting an average discount of 0.20 € per cup of hot beverage. That's exactly 225 hot drinks - a year has about 250 work days, so if you get a cup of something every day you are going to work, this mug has paid for itself in one year. And that's without taking the bit of extra filling into account.

Soon now, my coffee-holding travel companion could celebrate its seventh workbirthday*, and while I'm not using it every single work day, it has long since gone past the 225 hot drinks. It also has seen a lot of different countries, sat inside my car with me for hours and hours, was dropped onto hard floors (hence it can wobble a little now when it's standing), and also has seen the wrong level in a dishwasher (it's okay in the upper level, but the lower one is too hot - which is the reason a lot of the colour has peeled off). I love it, even though it looks battered and not too fancy anymore... and I'm pretty sure there are a lot of coffees and teas in its future still.

Thus, the moral of the story - if you think about getting a travel mug, go ahead and get a good one. Even if it sounds ridiculously expensive at first, it will pay for itself rather quickly!

 
*Probably by having coffee!

There was, of course, not only paddling and looking at scenery and architecture. There was also hanging out to relax. And, importantly: There was coffee, and cake, and knitting.

[caption id="attachment_4817" align="alignnone" width="640"] Cake, coffee, and knitting socks in Torgau - not my knitting, mind you.


With 2019 being the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, and the Most Patient Husband enjoying this style of architecture (I do, too, by the way), of course we had to plan enough time for our visit to Dessau. We did a little walk around the city and then went to visit the houses, which are partly turned into an info centre and partly into a museum, so you can get an impression of how they looked when they were in use originally:

[caption id="attachment_4816" align="alignnone" width="640"] Meisterhaus in Dessau


That was a very interesting part of the journey!

On the next day, we came back onto known territory: last year, we ran out of Saale before we'd run out of holiday time, so we continued down the Elbe to the outskirts of Magdeburg. This time around, though, we knew about the Pretziener Wehr before having paddled past it - and we took a little turn off the river into a flood canal to visit this very impressive weir.

We got stopped by the water levels, though - even for our canoe, it was too shallow for proper paddling. So we left our trusty Serenity and had a little walk.



Which was absolutely worth it. This weir was built in the early 1870s, and it is still in use, having been refurbished (somewhere between conserved and reconstructed) between 2003 and 2010.

[caption id="attachment_4815" align="alignnone" width="640"] Pretziener Tafelwehr


You can read more about the weir (in German only, unfortunately) on the Wikipedia page - and you can watch a video of it being opened during a flood in 2011 here.

Just like last year, we ended our trip in Magdeburg (though this time, we paddled to the other end of the city before stopping). We had a bit of a tour around, especially looking at the Otto von Guericke memorial spots:

[caption id="attachment_4813" align="alignnone" width="640"] Otto von Guericke and the Magdeburg hemispheres.


Since we were there, and it was on, we also visited a pottery market on the plaza in front of the cathedral. There may have been some buying of pottery (very restrained, though, knowing you have to carry it all home yourself makes restraint rather easy)

... and then our tour was over, and we cleaned and dried and folded and packed everything again.

[caption id="attachment_4811" align="alignnone" width="640"] Ready for the trip home... all packed up.


This time, we did a better job packing than the trips before (you learn as you go...) and getting through the train aisles was not a problem anymore. It's still a lot of luggage to handle, and you still need luck to have enough free space to put it, but that we did have and our ride back home went smoothly enough.

It's about 80 kg of stuff taken all together, by the way, with most of the weight being carried on the trolley thing - the boat, the paddles, the tent, and the kitchen equipment including some food. That makes the bulk of our stuff; the two backpacks are at about 15 kg each, and the stray blue IKEA bag contains our personal flotation devices plus some lighter-weight odds and ends, plus things that we need to have handy during the trip.

[caption id="attachment_4812" align="alignnone" width="694"] Our complete tour: a bit more than 330 km in 11.5 days of paddling.


It was a wonderful tour, and I loved being able to just pack up everything, hop onto the train and go home - no annoying fetching of a car from the start point of the trip. Which would have been another day, almost, as well: Going back by train all the way to Schmilka and then by car all the way to Magdeburg, and then home. It was definitely one of our better ideas to get a folding canoe!

Before the summer is all over, and the holiday pics get buried in the digital stack that is ever growing, here is how our paddling trip went.

We started out on the Elbe river close to the Czech border, in Schmilka, and got to enjoy the spectacular scenery there:

[caption id="attachment_4821" align="alignnone" width="640"] From Königstein to Pillnitz - Bastei near Rathen


We had very, very sunny weather, and it was really dry the weeks and months before, so just like last year on our Saale trip, water levels were very low. Which means that we had the river mostly to ourselves, no commercial vessels at all - as the water in the river was too low for them.

That made for very relaxed paddling wherever we wanted on the river, which was nice for us. The sunny weather also meant applying sunscreen generously, trying to get an early start for the longer days, and wearing sunglasses and hats as protection. So this is me, "hard" at work paddling:

[caption id="attachment_4822" align="alignnone" width="640"] Just taking out the paddle after steering...


We worked our way down the river, enjoying every bit of it. On some days, we really worked our way down - there was a headwind quite often. One time we stopped paddling for a short break and stayed completely in place... on a river that was technically flowing. (Not as fast as it would have been with higher levels, but still.) The wind was strong enough to sort of anchor us in place that day...

[caption id="attachment_4820" align="alignnone" width="640"] Wine grows here. As do beautiful buildings.


There was a lot of beautiful buildings as well - usually in scenic places on the higher places, right on the shoulder of the river valley. Wine grows in this area, and we often saw vinyards and wineries.

We made a lot of sightseeing stops along the way, of course - many interesting places with a lot of history are strung along the Elbe. One of them is Meissen (where we did not visit the porcelain manufacture, though, even though I come from a porcelain town - too far out from the river, and too many other things to see). While we had these very low water levels, we also saw marks from past high levels during floods. 2013 was a bad flood year, but in Meissen, we also found this mark from 1501, which was at about the same height:

[caption id="attachment_4819" align="alignnone" width="640"] High water mark at a building in Meißen - dating to 1501, when one of the bad floods of the Elbe occurred.


Another place where we stopped was Torgau, which was also well worth visiting, for the spectacular staircase in the castle alone - called "Großer Wendelstein":

[caption id="attachment_4818" align="alignnone" width="640"] Wendelstein in Torgau


One of the fairy tale film productions that the former GDR was famous for was filmed here: Sleeping Beauty. The actress is in one scene shown walking down these stairs...

So what else is there to tell about my Dublin adventures? There was a talk about medieval textiles and textile crafts, which was very well received according to what I heard afterwards. I had the pleasure of sharing that panel with Jeannette Ng, who later during the convention accepted her award for Best New Writer (congratulations again!).

I also enjoyed my two other panels (proper panels, not talks, this time) about archaeology in SFF, and about costume research and documentation.

I also got to meet (and hold, for a short time) this guy:



and I got to meet a real Lady Astronaut, as Dr. Jeannette Epps was at the convention. Which was a "wow" moment as well.

There also was cake (because life is better with cake, even if it is only store-bought chocolate cake from Tesco's), and weird chocolate both from Ireland (Cadbury's Mint Oreo. Delicious, if you ask me.) and from Germany (I brought some Knusperflocken for people to try) and from New Zealand (which will host next year's convention) and, if you are generous in what you count as chocolate, choc-covered malty caramel Timtams from Australia.

Finally, one of the really nice things about WorldCon is how easy it is to meet people, and chat with them, making new acquaintances and learning things about their bits of the world. I was delighted to see again quite a number of people I'd last met in London, back in 2014 (one of whom saved my voice by bringing me a pack of Fisherman's Friends). Even though there's never a load of time to catch up, it was wonderful to see them again and chat. It was also totally delightful to see so many authors, whose work I love to read, and it felt like so many of them stopped at my table in the hall and enjoyed seeing (and, in some cases, buying) something completely different. (Which were the moments when I silently went "squeee!" in the back of my head. As you do. Right?).

All this would never have happened if not for Gillian prodding me to come to London in 2014 (because apparently, London is right around the corner from Erlangen, if you ask an Aussie) and for my wonderful Irish friend helping me out at the table, making it possible for me to sneak away to my programme items, the Escape Artists Live panel, and, occasionally, even to the toilet:



Thank you! (Also, I'm still bad at taking phone selfies. Obviously.)