1. It’s OK, little one. You don’t have to socially isolate from me. I’m your mummy!3. OK, Quokka, if you have any spare food, I got a nest of hungry chicks to feed!4. On a tour of the grounds, Munguin chats to lesser animals, almost as if they were his equals.5. Andi sent this in. A couple of busy bees on a cotoneaster. I’ve been trying to get a photograph of the bees in the garden (there are hundreds) for ages, but every time I get close, they move!!!6. Mum, I could give the birds a rhino ride too!7. I’m gonna eat this all up before my lil brother hatches!8. Hmmm, does that make me the black sheep of the family?9. Nothing like a socially isolated stroll in the woods. If you bring anyone with you, I’ll eat them, OK?10. Munguin addresses a meeting of the Snails.11. What’s this, a free-for-all with my breakfast?12. Humans on the beaches after they lift the lockdown, leave me scratching my head. Are they all quite mad?13. Me too. They are all bats… er, well no, they’re humans, but batty humans.14. So, is the diet working?15. I’m not sure you’re supposed to bite me when I punch you.16. Grrrrrr… oh, I can’t be bothered.17. I hate it when he comes out and supervises. He says nothing but I can see him silently disapproving of everything I do.18. Heaven, except at high tide!19. If you want a song, I’m a warbler…20. I’m giving my mum a goodnight kiss… so that’s your lot for the day. These tours are exhausting. I wish Munguin paid more.
Thanks to Quokka, for the quokka… and Andi for the bees.
More poetry, as you asked, Tris. One from the archive and although the year is a bit further on, I think it still applies 🐌
An Ode to a Springtime Garden
Now Winter’s frosts are gone away
and snowdrops nod their heads in play.
The crocus turns to warming sun
and daffodils join the floral fun.
But seize their beauty while you may,
soon others will come out to play –
whitefly, greenfly, countless bugs,
as well as snails and slimy slugs.
They’ll all infest your garden plot
and soon will eat the bloody lot!
I am plagued by snails. My problem is that I really can’t kill them. They may not be the most attractive of animals, but they are as entitled to their life as I am to mine.
Today I moved a flowerpot and discovered, at the back of it, at least 20 snails. So I took them to the cellars at the back of the garden and put then on top, right by the wall, with a big shady tree in the background and pointed them towards the wall… I’m sure the neighbours over the back don’t really bother much with their garden!!!
Which is good, because that is where 20 new snails now live.
I find it hard to dislike snails, Tris – I particularly remember a delicious platter of them at Los Caracoles restaurant in Barcelona and not the great fat French escargots but the little ones in the stripy shells 🐌 I know that thrushes love them too.
All that brings to mind an old rhyme about Starlings or Stickies as they’re called in these parts and their ability to mimic other things. There’s been one about here for a while that makes sounds like a buzzard. I hear it and there’s me scanning the sky for a buzzard when I finally realise it’s this Stickie doing its avian Rory Bremner thing. Anyway, here it is:
A heard the Mavis singin,
A thocht it wis a Craw,
A opened up the windae,
An a Stickie flew awa.
Btw, Mavis is a Song Thrush and as for Craw, well I’m just refusing to translate that.
Nice to see Munguin taking the air in the gardens.
In Kansas City we had penguin visitors at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I too like the Caravaggios, although some of the penguins didn’t seem to take the time necessary to appreciate a big Monet. Walked right past it! But at least one seemed to appreciate it.
PS: BTW, the Nelson recently built a 100 million dollar addition entirely of glass. It’s the new entrance to the place. They decided against a pyramid.
Monet is OK, but I prefer Van Gogh’s “Olive Orchard”, June 1889, (after the ear incident.) Lots of beautiful blue! The picture gained international attention a couple of years ago when a Nelson conservator found a dead insect submerged in the paint.
Monet’s work is, to me, more absorbing than Caravaggio’s.
Mind you, I had to do a presentation on Monet’s gardens, in French, for my post-grad degree thing. They are incredibly beautiful and I suspect that if Munguin had been with us then, he would have had me redesign the grounds along the lines of Givery!
Anyway, I really hope the penguins had a good day out. A little culture never hurts.
Tris…..I’ll go with Monet over Caravaggio too. What a beautiful place! Looks like Monet did pretty well in the art biz. 😉 Nice that they were able to restore Giverny after WWII.
At the Dubai literature festival a few years ago,we had an open-air cafe/bar sponsored by Penguin, the book people, and called Penguin Garden. We also had a hotline for people wanting to know what was going on at the festival each day.
“Hello, is that the litfest?”
“Yes, how can I help you?”
“Can I bring the children to the Penguin Garden?”
“Of course, children are very welcome. We have a special section on kids’ books.”
“Oh good! We’ll come. The kids are so excited What time to you feed the penguins? “
John……Very funny! 🙂
The Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Kansas City Zoo, (both of which have been locked down for a couple of months now,) got a lot of media mileage out of bringing in the penguins. What’s not to like about penguins waddling around among the old masters.
Munguin would like it known that his diet is very varied and most assuredly doesn’t consist just of fish…although he is partial to smoked salmon and caviar in small measures.
He also enjoys fillet steak and, strangely, porridge.
Yes Ed, I would think that Penguin droppings and fish odors are not the sort of thing that the museum staff usually has to deal with.
I was also thinking about a rogue penguin who might take to pecking the occasional Rembrandt or Van Gogh. But I guess the penguins are small and the pictures are mostly mounted out of reach. 😉
Monet had problems with his sight; he painted what “he” saw, and it was good.
Caravaggio was the master of candlelight and exquisite detail, every little thing a message for those who know how to read it.
[Here I wrote a paragraph or two that a first year art student would have been proud of. It’s Sunday, I’m sad and missing my grandbairns. Nunc est Bibendum]
Conan…..I immediately thought of the Michelin Man. Hope you are soon cheered up.
I was at the Nelson one time and was looking at a still life (probably not a Caravaggio,) and I suddenly spotted some very tiny insects crawling on the flowers. Then I realized that the insects had textured bodies and that individual hairs could be seen. Amazing!
As for Monet, one of the stars of the French impressionist gallery is Monet’s “Boulevard des Capucines.” I read that it came on the market about 50 years ago and the Nelson reached out to one if its benefactors who provided the money (probably a million or two at the time) to buy it in a private sale. It is one of two Monet paintings of the same name, one of which appeared at the first “impressionist” exhibition in 1874 at a location on that boulevard, and where Monet also exhibited “Impression Sunrise.” It’s now thought that the one of the two Boulevard paintings that was exhibited in 1874 is probably the one now at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. But the one in Kansas City is nice too.
Very life-affirming, Tris, all of them, a Leitmotif which continues in the contributions by some of our revered Munguinites. Much appreciate: as so often, I finish reading your Soppy Sunday posts thinking to myself “I needed that”.
One technical hitch: the lovely first image is not appearing in my browser, though it is present in my e-mail alert. I don’t know if I’m alone in that, but if I’m not maybe you could reload it or whatever it is you need to do to jolt WordPress into working properly.
We have one on Pest side at liberty square. If you google Budapest soviet war memorial this will come up. But that does not look over the city.
And then we have the liberty statue on Gellért hill but that is on the Buda side. But it is not ugly. We built that for the liberating russians at the end of ww2. We never thought they would stay though …
Here, back around 2016 I wrote a brief memoire about things I experienced in 1988.
(The other two were the Ramstein Disaster and Lockerbie.)
. . . but ane ploy o the baund was a success that year: a coach trip til Hungary. . . . goulash . . . bull’s bluid.
Anither thing Ah mynd, the caur that wudnae go. It belanged a Russian general . . . white reik. (He garred) the driver get oo the caur an staun til attention. . . . an aa that in front o a bus-load o western towrists. That was the Reid Airmy, anno 1988.
You get the picture: a vivid memory, on Gellért hill, in 1988.
Apart from the headgear, the driver was dressed exactly the same as the figure in the memorial.
I’ll be in Budapest pretty much as soon as it is safe for me to go there… if the Hungarian government will allow Brits in. (I note that Greece has said that when its borders open, Britain will not be one of the countries from which it will allow tourists.) I’ll get Dani to take me there.
Europe is definitely opening up right now. I just watched a youtube video of a travel vlogger taking the overnight ferry to Rotterdam and then travelling on from there so even if you can’t fly from the UK there are definitely alternatives.
Thing is, tris, wiki confirms what Dani says: the Freedom statue was put up on that site in 1947.
And no photos of it on the internet.
It has been memory-holed.
Here’s a quote from the Budapest Memento Park website: “A favourite with visitors is the Liberation Army Soldier. A hammer-and-sickle flag in its hand and a cartridge-disc machine pistol hanging in its neck make the statue complete. This 6-meter tall statue of the evil-eyed Soviet soldier once stood on the top of Gellért Hill in central Budapest, well-seen from every direction.”
Thanks, eddjasfreeman, but although the description sounds right (Gellert Hill), it is STILL not right, unfortunately.
My man struck a more dramatic pose, striding forward into the attack.
A helmet, not a fur cap.
No fur-lined greatcoat. And shiny bronze, maybe even gilded,
I’ve been offsite most of the day and come late to the updates. Know nothing of the subject matter but a fascinating read. Living in Eastern Europe and a former USSR satellite, I’m very conscious of how history gets re-written. Lots of Soviet statues and urban architectural friezes still survive in Bulgaria. Some godawful, some of genuinely artistic execution and merit. Either way, they are a window to the past and worthy of preservation for that alone. Studying them and trying to interpret the rationale is a constant source of diversion.
Much talk of visits to foreign parts in vaguely this direction. Any Munguinites making their way to the south-eastern corner of Bulgaria can be assured of a warm welcome in Srem – obscure, remote, and rural wee village that we may be.
It must be hard to have lived under people like Stalin, Brezhnev, Hoxha, Todor Zhivkov (although he was hardly the worst) and it’s pretty understandable that you want rid of the reminders once they were gone.
But whilst you wouldn’t want their statues on every street corner, maybe some should be kept. Your history is your history.
I wonder if Bulgaria will allow Brits in. I’m told Greece will not, nor will Spain.
Thank you thought, Jpohn. A nice invitaion there.
Munguin is wondering what his suite would look like, and do you have a swimming pool? 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thank you Marcia, beautiful and so relaxing.
Number 18, looking out through a door onto shore and sea, reminds me of a place on Solway. Is it the Solway?
Very pretty and very unusual! What’s striking I guess is such a high wall around a garden so close to the water. I’d expect a low sea wall at such a location I suppose, but then I know almost nothing about oceans and beaches.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Apropos the bees. Here is one I wrote earlier:
Dayshift
Bum-bees at the lavendar,
aa the lee-lang day.
Sun doun: Lowsin time
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LOL LOL Very poetic!
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Pic 14: A wonderful bird is the pelican. Its beak can hold more than its belly can.
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My dad had an extra line:
And I don’t know how the hell it can.
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🙂
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Its actually a full limerick
A wonderful bird is the pelican
Its beak can hold more than its belly can
It can hold in its beak
Enough for a week
I wonder how the hell he can
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Ah, splendid, Adam.
Thanks you for that! It’s been stuck in my head all day. Like one of these tunes you can’t get rid of…
🙂
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More poetry?
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More poetry, as you asked, Tris. One from the archive and although the year is a bit further on, I think it still applies 🐌
An Ode to a Springtime Garden
Now Winter’s frosts are gone away
and snowdrops nod their heads in play.
The crocus turns to warming sun
and daffodils join the floral fun.
But seize their beauty while you may,
soon others will come out to play –
whitefly, greenfly, countless bugs,
as well as snails and slimy slugs.
They’ll all infest your garden plot
and soon will eat the bloody lot!
LikeLiked by 2 people
LOL, Andi.
Starts off all Keats… then half way through…
I am plagued by snails. My problem is that I really can’t kill them. They may not be the most attractive of animals, but they are as entitled to their life as I am to mine.
Today I moved a flowerpot and discovered, at the back of it, at least 20 snails. So I took them to the cellars at the back of the garden and put then on top, right by the wall, with a big shady tree in the background and pointed them towards the wall… I’m sure the neighbours over the back don’t really bother much with their garden!!!
Which is good, because that is where 20 new snails now live.
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I find it hard to dislike snails, Tris – I particularly remember a delicious platter of them at Los Caracoles restaurant in Barcelona and not the great fat French escargots but the little ones in the stripy shells 🐌 I know that thrushes love them too.
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Ah yes, soaked in ail! 🙂
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All that brings to mind an old rhyme about Starlings or Stickies as they’re called in these parts and their ability to mimic other things. There’s been one about here for a while that makes sounds like a buzzard. I hear it and there’s me scanning the sky for a buzzard when I finally realise it’s this Stickie doing its avian Rory Bremner thing. Anyway, here it is:
A heard the Mavis singin,
A thocht it wis a Craw,
A opened up the windae,
An a Stickie flew awa.
Btw, Mavis is a Song Thrush and as for Craw, well I’m just refusing to translate that.
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LOL… very good. Yes, they do the most amazing sounds. We have one here that thinks he’s in the tropics.
Goodness, they have a lot of chicks.
I buy a good deal more bird food than human food.
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It can hold in it’s beak
what will last for a week;
and I wonder how the…
[P] ellican.
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LOL LOL… 🙂
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Nice to see Munguin taking the air in the gardens.
In Kansas City we had penguin visitors at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I too like the Caravaggios, although some of the penguins didn’t seem to take the time necessary to appreciate a big Monet. Walked right past it! But at least one seemed to appreciate it.
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PS: BTW, the Nelson recently built a 100 million dollar addition entirely of glass. It’s the new entrance to the place. They decided against a pyramid.
Monet is OK, but I prefer Van Gogh’s “Olive Orchard”, June 1889, (after the ear incident.) Lots of beautiful blue! The picture gained international attention a couple of years ago when a Nelson conservator found a dead insect submerged in the paint.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/nov/08/dead-grasshopper-discovered-in-vincent-van-gogh-painting
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“Monet is OK”
but it can’t buy you love
(to quote a Liverpool pop band)
I don’t think tying to bring culture to penguins is going to work though 🙂
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Panda Paws….I think I’ve heard of that Liverpool pop band.
I suppose that not all penguins have the cultural appreciation of Munguin. 😉
The Kansas City penguin visit did catch the eye of the British press. The Daily Mail had pictures of course.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/penguins-zoo-missouri-art-museum-gallery-a9516656.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8336109/Zoo-penguins-check-art-locked-museum-turns-prefer-Caravaggio-Monet.html
BTW…..Speaking of Monet, it just now occurs to me that this Parisian boulevard may have appeared previously in Soppy Sunday.
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Munguin says: Wash your mouth out, madam!
As it happens, Munguin went to an art exhibition in Hungary a few years ago … and he got in for free.
He gave the Louvre a miss… that glass pyramid…ewwww!
But he quite likes the Beatles.
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🙂
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I’m sort of not with the Penguins on this one…
Monet’s work is, to me, more absorbing than Caravaggio’s.
Mind you, I had to do a presentation on Monet’s gardens, in French, for my post-grad degree thing. They are incredibly beautiful and I suspect that if Munguin had been with us then, he would have had me redesign the grounds along the lines of Givery!
Anyway, I really hope the penguins had a good day out. A little culture never hurts.
or
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Tris…..I’ll go with Monet over Caravaggio too. What a beautiful place! Looks like Monet did pretty well in the art biz. 😉 Nice that they were able to restore Giverny after WWII.
http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/visitgb.htm
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Beautiful, Danny.
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At the Dubai literature festival a few years ago,we had an open-air cafe/bar sponsored by Penguin, the book people, and called Penguin Garden. We also had a hotline for people wanting to know what was going on at the festival each day.
“Hello, is that the litfest?”
“Yes, how can I help you?”
“Can I bring the children to the Penguin Garden?”
“Of course, children are very welcome. We have a special section on kids’ books.”
“Oh good! We’ll come. The kids are so excited What time to you feed the penguins? “
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Ah… I’m not entirely sure most Penguins would much thank you for a holiday in Dubai…
All that sand gets between your flippers…
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John……Very funny! 🙂
The Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Kansas City Zoo, (both of which have been locked down for a couple of months now,) got a lot of media mileage out of bringing in the penguins. What’s not to like about penguins waddling around among the old masters.
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Possibly little deposits of penguin guano, and an overpowering odour of fish?
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Munguin would like it known that his diet is very varied and most assuredly doesn’t consist just of fish…although he is partial to smoked salmon and caviar in small measures.
He also enjoys fillet steak and, strangely, porridge.
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Yes Ed, I would think that Penguin droppings and fish odors are not the sort of thing that the museum staff usually has to deal with.
I was also thinking about a rogue penguin who might take to pecking the occasional Rembrandt or Van Gogh. But I guess the penguins are small and the pictures are mostly mounted out of reach. 😉
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🙂
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Monet had problems with his sight; he painted what “he” saw, and it was good.
Caravaggio was the master of candlelight and exquisite detail, every little thing a message for those who know how to read it.
[Here I wrote a paragraph or two that a first year art student would have been proud of. It’s Sunday, I’m sad and missing my grandbairns. Nunc est Bibendum]
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suscita mihi speculum Munguin
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Conan…..I immediately thought of the Michelin Man. Hope you are soon cheered up.
I was at the Nelson one time and was looking at a still life (probably not a Caravaggio,) and I suddenly spotted some very tiny insects crawling on the flowers. Then I realized that the insects had textured bodies and that individual hairs could be seen. Amazing!
As for Monet, one of the stars of the French impressionist gallery is Monet’s “Boulevard des Capucines.” I read that it came on the market about 50 years ago and the Nelson reached out to one if its benefactors who provided the money (probably a million or two at the time) to buy it in a private sale. It is one of two Monet paintings of the same name, one of which appeared at the first “impressionist” exhibition in 1874 at a location on that boulevard, and where Monet also exhibited “Impression Sunrise.” It’s now thought that the one of the two Boulevard paintings that was exhibited in 1874 is probably the one now at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. But the one in Kansas City is nice too.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-first-impressionist-exhibition-183013
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#12! 🙂 🙂 🙂
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🙂
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wonderful stuff. Loved seeing the grounds – you’ve almost as many snails as I do but yours are less destructive!
I loved no 12 too but no 16 pretty much sums me up in this heat…
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Ah, you should work at the towers full time. No time for lethargy in the heat. Work work work… or don’t eat!
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Lovely pictures, nature is wonderful.
A trip to Greece this week for the relaxing video for Sunday.
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That was wonderful, Marcia.
One of the Sunday things we look forward to at the Towers.
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Lovely,
Played it twice,once with the sound muted.
Thanks
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Very life-affirming, Tris, all of them, a Leitmotif which continues in the contributions by some of our revered Munguinites. Much appreciate: as so often, I finish reading your Soppy Sunday posts thinking to myself “I needed that”.
One technical hitch: the lovely first image is not appearing in my browser, though it is present in my e-mail alert. I don’t know if I’m alone in that, but if I’m not maybe you could reload it or whatever it is you need to do to jolt WordPress into working properly.
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Ah, how utterly bizarre. However, your word is my command. I’m on it now…
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Hopefully now sorted, Mr F
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Indeed sorted, Dr. P-W.
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Quokka had the same problem.
Heaven knows with WordPress. It beats me.
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Message for DonDon from Budapest:
Unsure which one he thinks of.
We have one on Pest side at liberty square. If you google Budapest soviet war memorial this will come up. But that does not look over the city.
And then we have the liberty statue on Gellért hill but that is on the Buda side. But it is not ugly. We built that for the liberating russians at the end of ww2. We never thought they would stay though …
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Dondon. Dani sent a pic. I can’t get it loaded in the replies, so I’ll stick it in at the end of SS. It’s a view over Budapest so it fit.
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Sorry tris, and Dani, but this has me doubting not just my memory, but my very sanity.
Obviously, I mixed up Buda and Pest, but the Soviet memorial I saw was on Gellért hill, overlooking the city, from the right bank of the river.
I don’t blame the Hungarians for getting rid of it.
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Here, back around 2016 I wrote a brief memoire about things I experienced in 1988.
(The other two were the Ramstein Disaster and Lockerbie.)
. . . but ane ploy o the baund was a success that year: a coach trip til Hungary. . . . goulash . . . bull’s bluid.
Anither thing Ah mynd, the caur that wudnae go. It belanged a Russian general . . . white reik. (He garred) the driver get oo the caur an staun til attention. . . . an aa that in front o a bus-load o western towrists. That was the Reid Airmy, anno 1988.
You get the picture: a vivid memory, on Gellért hill, in 1988.
Apart from the headgear, the driver was dressed exactly the same as the figure in the memorial.
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I do, and beautifully written.
I’ll be in Budapest pretty much as soon as it is safe for me to go there… if the Hungarian government will allow Brits in. (I note that Greece has said that when its borders open, Britain will not be one of the countries from which it will allow tourists.) I’ll get Dani to take me there.
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Europe is definitely opening up right now. I just watched a youtube video of a travel vlogger taking the overnight ferry to Rotterdam and then travelling on from there so even if you can’t fly from the UK there are definitely alternatives.
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I’ll maybe walk, Terry 🙂
Although, in fairness, the overnight Ferry sounds like a plan! Walking on water is a skill that still eludes me!
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You might need Munguin to help with the water walking part.
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Munguin, as you probably know, isn’t really what one would call “helpful” by nature.
Maybe you could have a word. You might have more influence than I do.
😦
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Well, I think that that one has gone, DonDon.
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It was a huge bronze figure of a Red Army infantryman waving a flag, or a sub-machinegun, maybe both.
I did not imagine it.
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No, I’m sure you didn’t, Dondon.
Fair to say Dani isn’t 30 yet, so it may have been gone before he was old enough to be aware of it.
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Thing is, tris, wiki confirms what Dani says: the Freedom statue was put up on that site in 1947.
And no photos of it on the internet.
It has been memory-holed.
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I wonder why, DonDon.
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Is this a reference to the statues of Captain Ostapenko and/or Captain Steinmetz?
There was an article about these statues in the RioWang blog. *
For some reason I can’t access that article now.
I understand they were taken down and relocated in Momento Park
* you might have better luck!
riowang.blogspot.com/2012/06/captain-ostapenkos-statue.html
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I can get in to it, Jake.
Thanks.
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Here’s a pic of the Liberty statue on Gellért hill, with a view from the river with the Erszébet bridge in the foreground.
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Thanks guys. I can tell that you are really trying to help.
But it was a bronze (gilded?) statue of a Soviet infantryman with a sub-machinegun.
The general’s driver was dressed in an identical uniform, but wth a fore-and-aft cap instead of a helmet.
Jackboots, baggy breeks and one of those shirt-tunic things the Russians wear, with a belt.
I took a photo of it, but can’t find it.
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I’ll look for it next time I’m there, and get a photo for you.
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Here’s a quote from the Budapest Memento Park website: “A favourite with visitors is the Liberation Army Soldier. A hammer-and-sickle flag in its hand and a cartridge-disc machine pistol hanging in its neck make the statue complete. This 6-meter tall statue of the evil-eyed Soviet soldier once stood on the top of Gellért Hill in central Budapest, well-seen from every direction.”
Here’s the website: https://is.gd/5gF7S4.
Here’s a photo of the Liberation Army Soldier:
http://www.duanrevig.com/Hongrie/Budapest/Memento Park Liberation Monument.JPG
And here’s the rather depressing Red Army monument in Vienna, which I used to see more often than I liked:
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I have very little luck putting up photos on WordPress.
Here’s the Liberation Army Soldier again (shortened URL): https://is.gd/PrGNea
And the Red Army monument in Vienna: https://is.gd/jbte8A.
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Thanks, eddjasfreeman, but although the description sounds right (Gellert Hill), it is STILL not right, unfortunately.
My man struck a more dramatic pose, striding forward into the attack.
A helmet, not a fur cap.
No fur-lined greatcoat. And shiny bronze, maybe even gilded,
I wish I could find the photo.
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The text does say that the photo I put up did come from Gellért Hill. I’ll look again later.
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DonDon, this is the statue at the Red Army monument on Schwarzenbergplatz up the river in Vienna. Gilded, with a helmet, anyway.
Also of a Russian soldier in Budapest is this one; no helmet and no gilding, but definitely in motion:
http://i1.wp.com/www.changesinlongitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Budapest-Memento-Park-Monument-running-man-33-Michael.jpg?resize=900%2C717
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Let me try that second one again:
http://i1.wp.com/www.changesinlongitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Budapest-Memento-Park-Monument-running-man-33-Michael.jpg?resize=900%2C717
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OK. One more time, with feeling:
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Blimey, eddjasfreeman, we’re going all round the houses.
I’ve seen most of these statues in my own internet search, and the contradictory statements about Gellert hill.
I would love to be proved wrong, but it looks as though my statue has been well and truly memory-holed.
Why else have we not made faster progress?
Thanks for your efforts. tris and dani, too.
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Hey, it’s what we do here, DonDon… if not always totally successfully, but it can be fun looking, and you nearly alway learn something else anyway.
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I’ve been offsite most of the day and come late to the updates. Know nothing of the subject matter but a fascinating read. Living in Eastern Europe and a former USSR satellite, I’m very conscious of how history gets re-written. Lots of Soviet statues and urban architectural friezes still survive in Bulgaria. Some godawful, some of genuinely artistic execution and merit. Either way, they are a window to the past and worthy of preservation for that alone. Studying them and trying to interpret the rationale is a constant source of diversion.
Much talk of visits to foreign parts in vaguely this direction. Any Munguinites making their way to the south-eastern corner of Bulgaria can be assured of a warm welcome in Srem – obscure, remote, and rural wee village that we may be.
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I’m with you there.
It must be hard to have lived under people like Stalin, Brezhnev, Hoxha, Todor Zhivkov (although he was hardly the worst) and it’s pretty understandable that you want rid of the reminders once they were gone.
But whilst you wouldn’t want their statues on every street corner, maybe some should be kept. Your history is your history.
I wonder if Bulgaria will allow Brits in. I’m told Greece will not, nor will Spain.
Thank you thought, Jpohn. A nice invitaion there.
Munguin is wondering what his suite would look like, and do you have a swimming pool? 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It worked for me every time, Ed.
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Thank you Marcia, beautiful and so relaxing.
Number 18, looking out through a door onto shore and sea, reminds me of a place on Solway. Is it the Solway?
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I’ve no idea where it is, Alan. I came upon it by accident and though… Oh, I wish I were there!
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That picture caught my attention too. What is it a door IN, or FROM…….that opens out to a beach like that?
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Well, it’s a lovely garden, by the look of things, but one that opens onto a beach, instead of the road, like Munguin’s
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Very pretty and very unusual! What’s striking I guess is such a high wall around a garden so close to the water. I’d expect a low sea wall at such a location I suppose, but then I know almost nothing about oceans and beaches.
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LOL Danny… I guess there aren’t a lot of them in Missouri!
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None that I know of.
Several lakes, but no oceans. 😉
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Maybe you just missed them… although usually they are quite big!
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True!
Actually, the Lake of the Ozarks is pretty big. I’ll check to see if maybe it’s been declared an ocean. 😉
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🙂
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