I WISH I HAD LISTENED

I vaguely remember a time, more years ago than I care to admit to, sitting in class at high school listening to the drone of the history teacher. I hated it, in fact I think everyone in their right mind hated it. The only date that I remembered was 1066 and the Battle of Hastings, but what happened there and by whom, I always struggled to recall. There was a famous painting recording the fact though, or was it a tapestry. Somehow all theses facts, dates, and events just seemed like a random set of data that had no meaning. That is until now.

While we were in Graz we came across the fresco on the outside of the cathedral. The fresco is constructed in several rows with the top two giving a predominantly religious flavour, but it was the bottom row that interested me the most. On the left hand side it depicts a plague of locusts, on the center panel it depicts an invasion of Turks, and on the right the Plague as in ‘The Black Death’. These were three events that struck the city within the same year. Pretty sobering when you think about it. And it put the upper layers into perspective. One of the elements depicts St John the Baptist holding a shroud to protect the city from the judgment of God. These were real events and an expression of how the people at the time felt about it.

Then in Vienna when we visited the Schonbrunn Palace, this was a hunting lodge that Maria Therese of the Hofburg dynasty converted into their ‘Summer Palace’. She ruled the Habsburg for many years after her husband Franz Stephan. Whilst doing all this she managed to fit in eleven daughters and seven sons. One of her methods of creating allegiances with the neighboring countries without bloodshed (such a novel concept in those days) was by marrying off her daughters at fifteen years of age for political reasons. But what caught my attention was the fact that she named all of her daughter Maria (after herself), one of whom was Maria Antoinette of the ‘Let them eat cake’ fame, at least I think it was her wasn’t it? She was the one who lost her head to the French in a revolution they had over that way.

Now … speaking of the French, we have had a few issues of our own. We are traveling around in a lease car with French plates. This in itself isn’t an issue except that people keep coming up to us and trying to converse in French, and when we go through toll booths or information points they hand us leaflets in French, which are very pretty but no use at all. On the plus side, when we do some erratic driving or tourist-like last minute maneuvers, you can almost hear them saying ‘bloody Frenchman’. So my theory is that I am being the true kiwi ambassador and getting my own back for the Rainbow Warrior.

As an aside to all of this, we decided the other day that no one likes the French, and we thought it was just an English thing, it isn’t. But then can you blame them? Over the years the French have invaded everyone (right up to the present day when they do their best to make off with the Rugby World Cup). But the Turks have invaded just about everyone as well (re: the fresco I was talking about), and so have the Romans. So why have the Turks and the Romans been forgiven, and yet still no one likes the French? You get the impression over here that everyone has had a go at everyone else. No wonder there are so many ruins. All the major buildings have been destroyed and rebuilt so many times by the different inhabitants that it is only the foundations that have remained. It puts a new spin on the sign in the real estate window ‘A doer uper’ ‘a handyman’s delight’. You can imagine moving into a new house that has been vacated by another retreating army and telling your mates, “Yeah … it needs a bit of work. Let’s have a working bee.”

Somehow being here and seeing these places just helps to put all the pieces together, and they make sense. If only we could have brought those history lessons to life back when I was at school.