#Baedeker guide

[victusinveritas]

Baedeker Guide maps are the best.

Bordeaux 1933

[palmtreepalmtree]

My mom and I have taken two tour-group style outings for day trips outside of Amsterdam. I haven't loved either of them, but there were still things to enjoy about each. They both reminded me of that quote from A Room With a View:

We residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little - handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker, their one anxiety to get 'done' and 'through' and go somewhere else. The result is they mix up towns, rivers, palaces in one inextricable whirl.

As hard as we tried to select options with plenty of free time to explore on our own, the logistics of a group tour feel very impersonal and almost time squandering. And the tour groups by design take you to the most touristy places. Theoretically, tour guide help make the experience more interesting, but most of the information is very superficial, nothing a quick internet search wouldn't tell you.

The above photo is from our day trip to Bruges. The tourists (ourselves included) were like ants crawling all over the city. It felt like Disneyland rather than a medieval Belgian city. Hard to appreciate what a special place it is.

On both of our tours, we befriended a solo traveler. I mentioned to mom that as a person who really enjoys solo travel, I don't think I would ever go on one of these excursions alone. I was having a really hard time explaining why.

It's not like these places aren't beautiful or worthy of seeing just because you're traveling alone. And surely there is a convenience in having someone arrange all the transportation for you. But for me the joy of solo travel is the insane amount of freedom I have to do and see whatever I want. And you just don't have that kind of freedom on these tours.

I like taking in a city by wandering around on my own, stopping when I see something interesting and looking it up online. Or following a walking tour at my own pace. Stopping for coffee and just people watching for a while. Learning the neighborhoods and enjoying them. This is a particularly nice thing to do in cities with good public transit or small city centers where I can really roam safely at my own leisure. I like starting in the tourist centers and radiating out. Going to a park or a botanical garden, hitting the museums.

I'm glad I got to see Bruges and Giethoorn, but I probably would never travel this way again.

[justforbooks]

The Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley

Bella Italia! From dumplings to balsamic vinegar, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley covers Italy from top to toe.

The variety of Italian food is giddying. No other national cuisine incorporates dishes as diverse as the canederli (dumplings) of the mountainous Trentino region and the couscous of western Sicily, or the wine-infused brasato (pot roast) of Piedmont and the balsamic vinegar of Modena, or the piadina (flatbread) of Romagna and the pane carasau (something like a poppadom) of Sardinia. And despite all the talk of how traditional Italian food is, the great gastronomic mosaic that is Italy continues to shift as it has throughout history; novelties continue to appear: ciabatta was invented by a baking entrepreneur from near Rovigo in the early 1980s.

As if comprehending this cornucopia were not already a daunting enough challenge for the food lover, Italians have made the task even tougher by disseminating endless myths and misconceptions. Everywhere one goes, the people in one small town will swear blind that their salami, their cheese, their nougat is a distinct and altogether more delicious creation than the identical version available across the valley. Then of course there is the peninsula's babel of dialects. There are few uniform terms for even the simplest things. A "World Directory of Pasta Shapes and Names" recently compiled by Italian manufacturers lists 142 different labels for types of pasta - and that's just the ones beginning with C.

For all of these reasons, anyone setting out to write an encyclopedic guide to the thousand cuisines of Italy needs to be brave, brilliant, learned and almost certainly a little unhinged. To judge by her marvellous Oxford Companion to Italian Food, Gillian Riley is all of these things.

Her book is a grand buffet of curious delights. Riley writes to entertain as well as to inform, and never holds back when there is a choice anecdote to relate. We are told how to create a table-top rocket by applying a match to the rolled wrapper of an amaretto biscuit, and how the fettuccine Alfredo that appear on every Italian restaurant menu in the US were invented to charm Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford on their Roman honeymoon.

Understandably, there are also times when Riley seems to get lost in her own erudition. The notion of tipicità, literally "typicality", is fundamental to the way Italians think about their food: it means the way a dish typifies or embodies its place of origin. Riley uses it, in Italian, without explanation and without an entry of its own. She also refers constantly to the great cookery writers of earlier eras. Figures such as Platina, Scappi, Corrado and Artusi have fascinating stories of their own, and they are hugely important in the long history of Italian food. But repeated cross-referencing to these and other names will probably become tiresome for the uninitiated. The occasional entry, like the one on "Apician flavour", is plain baffling, giving the impression of the author muttering to herself. As someone who has spent years trying to get the measure of Italian cuisine, I can only sympathise.

Riley's prevailing tone echoes that of a highbrow tourist bible from an earlier era - a Baedeker or a Blue Guide. So when she writes on the Italian regions, for example, she tends to see the landscape, the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome, and the Renaissance. For my taste at least, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food cites far too many paintings by old masters - on no stronger grounds than that they portray some vegetable or other. Riley has written beautifully on food in art before, but her entry on "Artists" here amounts to an attempt to justify alluding to every artichoke and cauliflower in the Uffizi gallery. On more recent history and culture, Riley is often breezy and unconvincing. The "economic miracle", from 1958-63, is described as a "wave of easy living". Yet, for good and ill, the kind of historical forces that were at work during the miracle - mass migration, industrialism, urbanisation, modern transport, women's entry into the labour market - have shaped the way Italians eat in far more important and fascinating ways than have Virgil or Caravaggio.

The book is at its best when it distils the experience of countless cooks, and blends its learning skilfully with a mouth-watering sense of texture and flavour. Try the page on "Panzanella" for starters, followed by "Salmoriglio" and "Snail", and finished off with "Parmesan" and "Crumiri". Delicious. Riley is never reluctant to express a personal opinion, or intrusive when she does so. Her scepticism about the recent nostalgia for cucina povera ("poor cuisine") is sane and refreshing. She is also good at poking fun at how we garble the grammar of Italian eating. In Italy, nobody "drizzles" olive oil, or puts out a dish of it to dip bread in at the start of a meal.

The Oxford Companion to Italian Food may be eccentric at times, but it is essential browsing for the serious Italo-foodie.

🔴 Be warned: it will also make your copy of Jamie's Italy seem embarrassingly lightweight.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[ghw-archive]

From The Lover's Baedeker and Guide to Arcady by Carolyn Wells and illustrated by A. D. Blashfield, 1912.

[seoul-bros]

Me, Myself and V: Veautiful Days

I am probably, no, let's say definitely, overthinking things again, but I'm curious what time period Tae is going for with his photofolio.

The equestrian look seems more, early 19th century, more Bridgeton than Downton Abbey.

But the books and travel trunks are more Grand Tour with Baedeker Guide in hand which give it a Room with a View, early 1900s kind of vibe although obviously not with that watch.

And the bed, okay no idea, I'm just worried about what is going to happen when it starts raining

Post Date: 06/12/2022

[maldevlin]

"In any war, bombing monuments of heritage and culture tells your enemy you are going for their identity - by destroying the very things that make them who they were. The Germans and the Brits did this to each other in World War II, the most famous example being the Baedeker Raids carried out by the Luftwaffe. Using the popular Baedeker's Guide to Great Britain, the Germans identified 'every building in Britain with three-stars', the top sites of British heritage and culture - and then bombed [...] them. This is why the Serbs went for the Gazi Husrevbeg Mosque. Attacks of this nature, labelled 'cultural genocide' by one Harvard observer, became a Serb hallmark during the war that devastated the country between April 1992 and December 1995."

Minarets in the Mountains: A Journey into Muslim Europe, Tharik Hussain

[ilsimplicissimusblog]

I falsi storici dell'intelligenza artificiale

Poiché da molti anni vivo in uno spazio ad alta concentrazione turistica tutte le volte che esco ho davanti a me lo spettacolo di queste transumanze e anche lo spettacolo di gente che non ha la minima idea di ciò che sta vedendo, che non sa dare un senso a ciò che la circonda. Non bastano le guide che avanzano con la bandierina, né montagne di baedeker a spiegarlo, perché senza una solida cultura…

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[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

It is 5 May, the day of the Roof-Race. As the horse-race is to Siena, as the bull-running is to Pamplona, as Derby Day is to the English or even perhaps Bastille Day to the French, so the day of the Roof-Race is to the people of Hav. It is not known for sure how this fascinating institution began, though there are plenty of plausible theories. The race was certainly being run in the sixteenth century, when Nicander Nucius described it in passing as ‘a curious custom of these people’; and in 1810 Lady Hester Stanhope, the future ‘Queen of Palmyra’, was among the spectators: she vociferously demanded the right to take part herself, and was only dissuaded by her private physician, who said it would almost certainly be the end of her. ... The most familiar account of the race’s origins is this. During a rising against the Ottoman Turks, soon after their occupation of Hav, a messenger was sent clandestinely from Cyprus to make contact with the patriotic leader Gamal Abdul Hussein, who was operating from a secret headquarters in the Medina. The messenger landed safely on the waterfront at midnight, but found every entrance to the Old City blocked, and every street patrolled by Turkish soldiers. Even as he stood there wondering how to get to Gamal, at his house behind the Grand Mosque, he was spotted by Turkish sentries and a hue and cry was raised; but far from retreating to his boat, whose crew anxiously awaited him in the darkness, without a second thought he leapt up to the ramparts of the Medina, and began running helter-skelter over the rooftops towards the mosque. Up clambered the soldiers after him, scores of them, and there began a wild chase among the chimney-pots and wind-towers; but desperately leaping over alleyways, slithering down gutters, swarming over eaves and balustrades, the messenger found his way through an upper window of Gamal’s house, presented his message, and died there and then, as Hav legendary heroes must, of a cracked but indomitable heart. Such is the popular version, the one that used to get into the guide-books — Baedeker, for instance, offered it in his Mediterranean, 1911, while adding that ‘experienced travellers may prefer to view the tale with the usual reservations’. Magda has another version altogether, concerning the exploits of an Albanian prince, while Dr Borge regards the whole thing as pagan allegory, symbolic of summer’s arrival, or possibly Christian, prefiguring the miracle of Pentecost. Most Havians, though, seem to accept the story of the messenger; and in my view, if it wasn’t true in the first place, so many centuries of belief have made it true now.

Last Letters from Hav, Jan Morris

[theworstt]

https://cosmopolitanscum.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/thomas-pynchons-guide-to-the-baedeker/

Pynchon is a good guide to Baedeker guides, which are effectively a ruthlessly efficient system of cataloguing place, that deliberately stymies the individuals ability to interpret and enjoy the place autonomously. It’s like being given a library and told what to think of it by the librarian.

[l-egypte]

December 1, 2020 | Baedeker’s Egypt 

In May 2020, I read The Lady Travelers Guide to Scoundrels & Other Gentlemen, which featured a woman and a man who travel from London, England, to Paris, France, in 1889. And in the book was a mention of a Baedeker. As I had not heard of this term before, I decided to look into it.

According to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2e, a Baedeker refers to “any of various travel guidebooks published by the firm founded by the German Karl Baedeker.”

Wikipedia has a list of Baedeker guides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Baedeker_Guides. Some of the guides covered such places as Austria (e.g., Austria-Hungary, 11e); Belgium and Holland (with the 11th and subsequent editions including the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg); the Dominion of Canada, with Newfoundland and an excursion to Alaska (with four editions—to note, Newfoundland joined the confederation, i.e., the rest of Canada, in 1949); Egypt (with the 6th and subsequent editions including Sudan); and more.

Of course, of interest to me was the Egyptian guides, and I found a couple of them on archive.org, though I imagine you can find all the other editions there as well (I believe Wikipedia has the links).

Egypt, 4th Edition (1898)

Egypt and the Sudan, 7th Edition (1914)

It would be interesting to read these old travel guides so that one may compare the tourism and travelling experiences of then to now. And especially with Egypt, one can compare which monuments, temples, etc. were discovered and available to tourists as attractions and, with some figuring out, which were not. I mean, new archaeological discoveries are not uncommon for Egypt; who knows what tourists in ten years’ time will be gawking at. For example, earlier in 2020, ancient coffins were discovered (see, for example, here). Anyways, these Baedeker guides will not only be a travel to Egypt but a travel through time!

Personally, before travelling to Egypt, I read Lonely Planet’s Egypt [2018]. I like Lonely Planet’s books. Do you have a preferred travel guide?

[Screenshots of scanned pages from the 4th edition of Egypt (1898)]

[vintagerpg]

Baedeker’s Handbooks are like RPG sourcebooks before anyone knew what an RPG sourcebook was. They are travel guides, produced primarily from the 1850s through the 1930s and then trickling off through the 70s. There are tons of them covering Europe, but the occasional volume tackles other northern hemisphere locales like India, Russia, Canada and the US. This one, as you can see, handles Egypt, circa 1914.

These things are exhaustive and not like modern travel guides. Only a small portion of Egypt’s 500 pages is devoted to the business of traveling (like steamer fares and hotel recommendations). Instead, you get a deeply researched book tackling history, geography, culture, customs, language, religion and politics. Most of the information is presented in firsthand travelogues, detailing the author’s journeys. Accompanying these are gorgeous fold-out maps, floor plans and other illustrations. Baedeker maps were so detailed that the Luftwaffe used the guidebook for Great Britain to formulate targets for bombing raids in 1942 – both sides referred to these as Baedeker Raids after a German official said, “We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide."

The Baedeker guides capture something essential about travel in the early 20th century. If you read a lot of mysteries about the period (or watch BBC adaptations), you’re sure to catch a glimpse or a passing reference to the guides at some point. That makes them well suited for Call of Cthulhu games. Chaosium’s regional sourcebooks seems to grasp a bit at the Baedeker style and I have seen Baedeker floor plans in Horror on the Orient Express. This book (which, judging from the notes written in the margins, actually made the trip to Egypt) was on the table during the Cairo chapter of my Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign (and the London guide for the London chapter as well) and I think it lent the proceedings a hint of verisimilitude. If I was running Orient Express in person, I’d have made a vague effort to have Baedeker’s for each stop.

[ebonetnoir]

Southern Germany (Baden, Black Forest, Wurtemberg, and Bavaria) Handbook for Travelers by Karl Baedeker FIRST EDITION WITH MANY FOLD-OUT MAPS Publisher: Karl Baedeker, Leipzig Copyright: 1929

[loudsoftsonance]

London and its Environs - Karl Baedeker, 1908 15th Edition

[designobjectory]

A whimsical black forest book rack, adjustable, having horned owls with glass eyes, set on the folding uprights, and carved with foliates.

Provenance: Brienz, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland

Brienz, in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland was remarked upon in Baedeker’s Travel Guide as having a population of 2400, of whom 600 persons were employed as woodcarvers, to supply the tourist trade to Switzerland with mementos of the tour. 

[ursbearhug]

In the middle of writting my thing and I found it funny; that *checks my notes* Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (according to Christian Habicht in 'An Ancient Baedeker and His Critics: Pausanias' "Guide to Greece"', for Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Jun., 1985, vol. 129, No. 2) and I quote "first fired them against Pausanias in 1877 and repeated them time and again throughout his long career".

Imagine having a beef with long-long dead author and having feelings so hurt, that at the ripe old age of 27, you start scapegoating the guy for the entirety of your career. Like, what did he ever do you?

!!!This is 'Pausanias-Hate' free zone!!!

Plato can eat a dick though, I hope he choke on it.

[idanit]

Yuletide 2020 recs

I made my previous rec post just a few months ago, but this one is more timely: here are my favourite stories from the Yuletide 2020 collection (well, from those I managed to read). They’re loosely grouped by canons or themes and they lean towards mystery, drama, worldbuilding and character studies rather than fluff or comedy, with some exceptions. The longest fic is 18K but most of them are much shorter. I tried to limit myself to one-sentence recs because otherwise I’d probably put off writing this post until autumn once again.

Travel, other species, fantastical places, odd cities

Baedeker's Guide to Trollesund His Dark Materials | G A few pages taken from a guide to a fictional city; the style is just right.

The Well-Informed Traveller (chapter 26, Octavia) Invisible Cities | G I think this fic builds on Calvino’s dreamlike, poetic images very well; it’s both in-depth and brief enough to leave the spiderweb city mysterious.

The Morning of the End of the World Invisible Cities | G A world without animals, reclaimed; it was interesting to see this city in a narrative with original characters rather than in the poetic puzzle of the canon. 

Shore of moss Strandbeest | G A beautiful piece about wind, brine and a wholly unfamiliar scent that will lead a beest somewhere far from everything it knows.

Interview Transcript: Three Jokes About Sex Always Coming Home | T An antropologist versus humour; I’m sure I’d appreciate this one even more if I read the canon, but I still found it thought-provoking and interesting.

Of No Mean Endeavour, and Not a Little Altered His Dark Materials | M (F/F) Mary Malone, her friendship and romance with Atal, her research on Earth, her relationship with Will, her new life with her dæmon; a multi-faceted story of (re)discovery.

The Only Place That's Real Christmas Cottage painting | G A wistful Christmassy horror story in which a visitor from a city gets lost in a small town, told from interesting points of view.

Teeth and Bones Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Beautiful | G A very enjoyable fic about how Baba Yaga became who she is, with a lot of dry humour underneath the tale.

The snake fight portion of your thesis defense

great traditions of higher education T A pitch-perfect fictional dissertation about the tradition of snake fighting in academia.

From the Outbox of T. R. Matthews, Ph.D. T T.R. Matthews is one ruthless academic; this is a chilling story told through their correspondence with students.

Historical setting

The Sky Itself is Ringing The Emperor's Winding Sheet | G I admit I read this fic fandom-blind and I think it should not be read fandom-blind, but even so, it pulled me in with the way it sketches out the characters and their motivations, and the sensual descriptions.

Ciel D'Oro The Name of the Rose | G This is an excellently-written and researched microcosm of the novel: a gripping casefic that paints a fascinating picture of the times; there are monks, music, and murder.

The Unbroken Wheel Young Lady With Unicorn painting | G An intriguing interpretation of the painting which adds a bit of a delirious quality to it; beautifully written.

Jewish characters

The Cloud Mirror Where the Sky is Silver and the Earth is Brass | M An evocative scene set somewhere in a Polish forest during the WWII which manages to feel both real and unreal.

un mir zenen ale shvester Fiddler on the Roof (2018) | G A lovely extension of the canon centred around revisiting the past and looking into the future; I'm not familiar with this version of the play, so I was delighted to see a female fiddler. 

Characters receiving unexpected support

A World Without God Vincent & Theo (1990) | T A very human story about two imperfect brothers, art, and belief.

Perennial The Secret Garden | G An unexpected, but a very welcome AU in which Mary never makes it to England; it’s a story of her ayah in a lovely , refreshing change of perspective and background.

F/F, first experiences

Liberté, Egalité, Sororité A Little Princess | T (F/F) A sweet fic wherein Sara and Becky decide to act as friends rather than a young lady and her servant while on a trip to Paris.

Charcoal Sketches Portrait of a Lady on Fire | T (F/F) A quick look at what the first crushes and kisses of Héloïse and Marianne might have looked like—I was very hapy to finally read a pre-canon fic for the two of them.

M/M, old friendships

Knowing Without Knowing Agatha Christie's Poirot | T (M/M) A misunderstanding leading to some personal discoveries; the story takes place on a ship and is rather charming.

A Different Beat Raffles | G (M/M) Frustration, love, and a bit of a casefic, very enjoyable.