And now, in England

My latest installation of archives-rat work has brought me to London, where I have Kolz's lovely family friends to call home and a much more intelligible archive to work with. I miss the smallness of Berlin and the corresponding smoothness of its public transit, but I do love speaking my own language. And being where they have good salad dressing, normal grocery stores.

Radio silence in the weeks past has largely been a factor of papers and talks, visits and travel. I gave my first talk on the 12th to good results, and then my reward was family time for the next 5 days (turning around to get my subletters in within two days was not so fun, but it got done).

Brother B and my little M were here, and we did more opera than you would imagine a 5.5-year-old boy who makes zippy swooshing fighter-plane noises to accompany putting on his coat would enjoy, but it was awesome. We went back to one of the neatest concert venues ever, the Berlin Philharmonie, for the first time since Brother B took me there when he lived in Berlin in 1993 or so. It is like a two flowers facing one another, and how much the ceiling looks like a lily really struck me this time:



We also saw a Babar puppet show with classical music, ate lots of döner kebap, and went up in both the Siegesäule (Prussian victory tower with golden victory angel on top) and the Fernsehturm (Socialist-era TV tower which I have an unnatural affection for) and the tower at a castle in Spandau. The boys like towers!

When I got to England, I actually went straight to Brighton to see my dear Nell, and since it was a rather cloudy day, I kind of liked the neato Regency-era tiles the best...according to all stories, King George IV was a yucky dude, but he did have a talent for the decorative arts, apparently. Or for hiring good designers.



But I also went to a soul food restaurant that Kolz read about, walked on the pier, and caught up on the little things you don't manage unless you can have a sleepover. It's promising spring here, making me a little homesick for the spring of home, but England's reputation for lovely spring is so true. The Archives are actually at Kew, by the botanical gardens, so you smell the damp sweet spring in the morning and evening. Any archive with its own duck pond is all right with me.

And now London, for three weeks - the National Archives here are a dream, except that they're far away (and the Tube is SLOW!), and I'm trying the Royal Society on for size tomorrow. Finding good things, and plugging along. Exhausted, though. I should've given bullet points.