Castle Aching

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

My worst 'arrive in a place and find it shut' was, unlikely as it may seem, Venice.

 

A pal and I were on a gricing trip to Austria, and decided to take a side-trip to Venice (yes, strange, I know, but we were young), and when we got there it was some sort of religious observance day, not the interesting kind with parades of statues of saints etc., but one where everything was shut, and people  were having family meals at home, and only going out to long church services. Like a small-town English Sunday in fact.

 

Venice has changed a lot since then.

[Nearholmer]

I’m wondering precisely how long ago you imagine it was when I was young.

 

I’d call it ‘recently’.

 

 

 

Edited March 12, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

Worse place I've been to is Vienna.  Dead as a door nail after 8pm.  Graveyards have more night life. At least it was in the '90s. Bürgerlich Viennese all at home being respectable, I expect. They need a touch of Harry (Lime) in the night, if you ask me!

[Tom Burnham]

Some time in the early 1970s a friend and I had arranged a tram-spotting trip to Belgium and arrived over the border at Charleroi to find there was a strike of independent businesses going on (a very Belgian idea).  Almost all the shops were shut, apart from a couple that were national chains, and the hotel only took us in because we had booked before the strike started.  The only place we could find open to eat was the cafeteria of a large department store.

 

[Nearholmer]

And, a case of the inverse in Switzerland, where a group of about fifteen of us, on a long-weekend ‘works outing’, changed trains at a junction at a small town at about lunchtime, on a Sunday. 
 

Everything in town  firmly shut, bolted, locked, barred, silent.

 

How to get lunch? 
 

A restaurant owner was walking his dog, spotted our plight, opened-up for us, whistled-up a waitress and cook from somewhere at a moments notice, fed us superbly, and would only accept basic ‘plat de jour’ tariff.

 

And, my good lady and I once got a lift back to our distant hotel from a lady restaurateur in France, when she decided it was too far for us to walk at that time of night!

[Andy Hayter]

17 hours ago, wagonman said:

Even now in many parts of Germany shops shut at 2pm on Saturday and don't open again until Monday. They do tend to stay open a bit longer on weekdays though.

 

 

I am a bit surprised by that comment.  It certainly applied when I arrived in Germany 25 years ago.   Getting slaughtered on a Friday night was a real problem because by the time you came round on Saturday, everything was shut and your weekend menu was likely to be severely limited.

 

But by the time I left less than 10 years ago, shopping on Saturday through to 1800 or 1900 was the norm.  [SW Germany]

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m wondering precisely how long ago you imagine it was when I was young.

 

Its impolite to ask anyone their age, so all we can do is have a wild imagination - unless, that is, meetings have occured IRL!

[sem34090]

2 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Unless you're here in Norfolk where everything is immediately replaced with a charity shop or a takeaway the minute it closes. 

Sadly that's not just restricted to Norfolk.

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m wondering precisely how long ago you imagine it was when I was young.

 

I’d call it ‘recently’.

Going by your profile picture, I'd estimate about 130 years old...

18 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Its impolite to ask anyone their age, so all we can do is have a wild imagination - unless, that is, meetings have occured IRL!

And I put you at 182 years old.

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Worse place I've been to is Vienna.  Dead as a door nail after 8pm.  Graveyards have more night life. At least it was in the '90s. Bürgerlich Viennese all at home being respectable, I expect. They need a touch of Harry (Lime) in the night, if you ask me!

 

!970's Brisbane for me.  The epicentre of Queenslands deep south  style  insular evangelical wowserism, run by a wanna be Papa Doc dictator called Joh Bjelke Petersen, everything was closed, everything was banned and if you met in groups of  3 or over you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were a student you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were gay you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were a punk rocker you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were  gay punk rocker uni student meeting up with 2 of your mates you had no hope.

 

I only spent 3 days there that was plenty.

Edited March 12, 2020 by monkeysarefun

[runs as required]

Bruges is generally considered to be have been permanently closed since about 1640odd.

We visited on my wife's 50th birthday.

Bruges was so closed that she hung out of the hotel window over the canal stark naked and shouted that I take a photo of her body that she would never ever see again. 

sic transit ... ? 

dh

[runs as required]

But we enjoyed Antwerp station on the way home!

[robmcg]

A quote worth repeating...

 

"

Now, in the main, these early Nineteenth Century trends were not inherently bad things, and no doubt our society benefited from the comfort and charity a religious revival brings and of the civilising effect of manners, but, like everything else, there was a negative side, too.  Our social and political assessments and commentaries are still hopelessly binary.  We still want to say that so-and-so was either good or bad, when it's generally going to be both.

 

With social meeja's race to the bottom to call out and excoriate crimes of expression, both real and imagined, and its platform for "virtue-signalling" prigs the world over, I feel increasingly like Jack Aubrey at times.

 

These days tolerance, consideration and respect for others, and courtesy still go a long way, and I prefer them to badging myself with "isms", but, alas, they are insufficient to guarantee safety.

 

What Orwell, and the rest of us, failed to predict is that, via Social Media, we would each become the other's Big Brother, constantly hunting out thought crimes and meeting out reputational death."

 

Not written by anyone in any of these high spots of decrepitude, but by some unknown genius.

 

Manners Street Wellington NZ 1969 was actually very exciting when you were about 18yrs old and there were girls about....

 

[TheQ]

Early 1990s I was doing 6 months work at Boscombe  Down,  I was staying in the  high post hotel ( now stones hotel)  half way between Amesbury and Salisbury,  needed some bits and pieces so went into Salisbury.. It was closed,  yep half day closing.  Even many of the take away or cheap and nasty eat in places were closed.. 

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

And, a case of the inverse in Switzerland, where a group of about fifteen of us, on a long-weekend ‘works outing’, changed trains at a junction at a small town at about lunchtime, on a Sunday. 
 

Everything in town  firmly shut, bolted, locked, barred, silent.

 

 

 

Again, Cardiff

[wagonman]

3 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

I am a bit surprised by that comment.  It certainly applied when I arrived in Germany 25 years ago.   Getting slaughtered on a Friday night was a real problem because by the time you came round on Saturday, everything was shut and your weekend menu was likely to be severely limited.

 

But by the time I left less than 10 years ago, shopping on Saturday through to 1800 or 1900 was the norm.  [SW Germany]

 

The big supermarkets do stay open later on Saturdays, but most small shops still close early on Saturday, and all day Sunday, that being the case in the Ruhrgebiet the last time I was there (about 2 years ago).

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

My worst 'arrive in a place and find it shut' was, unlikely as it may seem, Venice.

 

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Worse place I've been to is Vienna.  Dead as a door nail after 8pm.  

 

Some friends of mine, Interrailing on a very limited budget c. 1990, spent several days alternating between Venice and Vienna, sleeping on the overnight train. 

 

The first time my father and father-in-law met, they had a long conversation about continental holidays in which the one was talking about Venice and the other, Vienna, without either noticing that they were at cross purposes. 

 

Conclusion: not much to choose between the two cities.

[runs as required]

13 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Some friends of mine, Interrailing on a very limited budget c. 1990, spent several days alternating between Venice and Vienna, sleeping on the overnight train. 

I’d forgotten about  this long mutually beneficial phenomenon in Italy between the FS and the military.

Spending on barracks was always reckoned to be saved by half the military dossing on the overnight trains between Messina and Torino.

dh

[Andy Hayter]

54 minutes ago, wagonman said:

 

The big supermarkets do stay open later on Saturdays, but most small shops still close early on Saturday, and all day Sunday, that being the case in the Ruhrgebiet the last time I was there (about 2 years ago).

 

Interesting.  It was not like that further South near the French border before I moved to near Cologne and was not like that there either.  We are of course talking Saturday afternoon; Sundays were as you say a complete shutdown outside of the tourist areas.  All of that was 12 years ago or longer.

A few very small shops did shut (haberdashery, cobblers, milliners) on Saturday afternoons but even the model shop would be open until IIRC 18:00.

[RedGemAlchemist]

5 hours ago, sem34090 said:

And I put you at 182 years old.

Someone ready the burn ward! 

 

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Everything in town  firmly shut, bolted, locked, barred, silent.

Also my experience when I went to Bern with my family about 17 years ago. 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

5 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

!970's Brisbane for me.  The epicentre of Queenslands deep south  style  insular evangelical wowserism, run by a wanna be Papa Doc dictator called Joh Bjelke Petersen, everything was closed, everything was banned and if you met in groups of  3 or over you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were a student you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were gay you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were a punk rocker you could and would be arrested and bashed by his SS style police.

If you were  gay punk rocker uni student meeting up with 2 of your mates you had no hope.

 

I only spent 3 days there that was plenty.

 

I spent some time working in Queensland and in Brisbane - fortunately it was after that bastard had rightly been consigned to the dust bin of history.

 

Oddly I once quite literally ran into Joh in Singapore when I was executing a change of planes mad dash at Singapore airport. It was after his removal so he was probably up there pursuing his less than salubrious private business dealings. We collided as we were heading for the same queue - he gave me "oh not another one after me look" 

[Edwardian]

6 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Someone ready the burn ward! 

 

Also my experience when I went to Bern with my family about 17 years ago. 

 

That is because Switzerland is the 1970s with all the groovy bits taken out.

[sem34090]

We have an Australian guard this morning...

"...and London Victoria. First class is in operation on this service so make sure you have the right ticket if you're sat or stood down there - Don't want to be ruining your morning or mine now, do we? Other than that, sit back, relax and remember - Bums on seats not feet on seats 'coz we don't know where you've been"

[Hroth]

13 hours ago, sem34090 said:

And I put you at 182 years old.

 

7 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Someone ready the burn ward! 

 

No need!

I'm a fairly tolerant chap so I'd, in the spirit of Gilbert & Sullivan, sentence sem to be locked in a disused waiting room from Saturday to Monday with only the collected works of Barbera Cartland for company, before taking his place on the buffer of a Parliamentary train.....

 

Hehehehe..... 

[Nearholmer]

8 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Joh Bjelke Petersen

 

I'd never heard of this chap until seeing his name here, so I read-up.

 

Even when people try to write positive things about him, they really struggle, don't they?!

 

Did remind me rather of a current, well-known president of a hugely powerful country (actually, maybe two such), though. Not the puritanism, but the rock-solid belief in his own God-given right to rule, his willingness to set the members of the population that he ruled against one another in order to remain in power, contempt for democracy, and propensity to blame every challenge or difficulty on dark, external forces ("southern liberals" in his case, the geography being different). Bags of personal, one-to-one, charm/charisma, of course.

 

Probably just a another textbook despot. I've met the odd petty one in my working life; presumably n% of any population is so-disposed.

[Northroader]

On a much happier use of the surname, in this case Pedersen, you can do much worse than go to evp.dk, you won’t understand a word, but it’s all a huge cache of very interesting stuff.