This Just In

I just stumbled across this article in Buzzfeed which told me that not only can I visit the Churchill War Rooms, I can taste them too. I've been to the Churchill bunker twice now, and coincidentally I always wanted to lick the walls. Apparently now that dream can come true.
 

You Can Order A Martini With Moisture From Churchill’s Bunker’s Walls In It

So gross slash cool

Tabatha Leggett    BuzzFeed Staff posted about 10 hours ago

 

Science boffins have invented a new kind of martini - and it has moisture from the Cabinet War Rooms’ walls in it.

View this image ›

Shutterstock / Igor Normann
 

During WW2 the Cabinet War Rooms - which are buried 10ft beneath Whitehall - were used as a military command centre.

Churchill made four broadcasts to the nation from them, and he often slept there during bombing raids when it was too dangerous to get to Downing Street.

 

“Nearly everybody smoked,” stenographer Joy Hunter told the Telegraph “so it was a very smoky atmosphere.”

 

The bitters, which have been created by the Experimental Food Society and the Robin Collective, also include cigar tobacco, British orchard fruits, berries, nuts and rosehip, to represent the roses that Churchill’s wife sent to him daily.

 

The war rooms martini will be available from 1st November at the Churchill Bar & Terrace at Hyatt Regency London. It will cost £15.

 

EW SLASH YUM.

Shoes on the Danube

I went to Budapest in March for a long weekend and we made a stop on the Danube riverside to gaze at one of the simplest, yet most poignant Holocaust memorials I've ever seen in Europe. Empty cast iron shoes. Just shoes. Lined up on the banks of the river. From a tourist point of view, there is not much to see here, and I think that is the point.

 

 

 

 

Visit Budapest

The Shoes on the Danube is a memorial to the Budapest Jews who were shot by Arrow Cross militiamen between 1944 and 1945. The victims were lined up and shot into the Danube River. They had to take their shoes off, since shoes were valuable belongings at the time.The memorial was created by Gyula Pauer, Hungarian sculptor, and his friend Can Togay in 2005. It contains 60 pairs of iron shoes, forming a row along the Danube. Each pair of shoes was modeled after an original 1940's pair. For more of an insight read 'One of Budapest's Most Moving Memorials: Shoes on The Danube'.

 

 

The Ugly Side of Oxford

Oxford is one of the most beautiful cities in England. Historic. Inspiring.

I'd imagine if you haven't been here you're thinking all of the buildings are majestic and the aura is like I said before, "Academic Disneyland". Well they are... and it is.... sometimes.

I literally cringe everytime I drive down Banbury Rd and see this eyesore - the Denys Wilkinson Building. 

Or drive along this beauty...

A few blocks from my home you find Oxford's Administrative building - University Offices in Wellington Square - home of the University Chancelor, Vice Chancelor, University Admissions Department, Development Office etc... one long block of beautiful 2 story cement facade. Quaint, isn't it?

I've been reading Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island", which is snort out loud funny and chock full of spot on observations. As an American writer that lived in England for more than 2 decades, Bill has an uncanny ability to unravel his surroundings and put them into words that make you think - Wow, I've definitely noticed that but have never put my finger on it quite like he does.

In Notes from a Small Island, Bryson sums up Oxford's architecture....

What sort of mad seizure was it that gripped the city’s planners, architects, and college authorities in the 1960s and 1970s? [...] Just look at the Merton College Warden’s Quarters – which is not by any means the worst building in the city. What a remarkable series of improbabilities were necessary to its construction. First, some architect had to design it, had to wander through a city steeped in eight hundred years of architectural tradition, and with great care conceive of a structure that looked like a toaster with windows. Then a committee of finely educated minds at Merton had to show the most extraordinary indifference to their responsibilities to posterity and say to themselves, ‘You know, we’ve been putting up handsome buildings since 1264; let’s have an ugly one for a change.’ Then the planning authorities had to say, ‘Well, why not? Plenty worse elsewhere.’ Then the whole of the city—students, dons, shopkeepers, office workers, members of the Oxford Preservation Trust—had to acquiesce and not kick up a fuss. Multiply this by, say, two hundred or three hundred or four hundred and you have modern Oxford.  - Bill Bryson

Seems the post war era led to many monstrosities dotted around the city with some of these buildings looking like they could be prisons.

I have to say, that my university town, Oxford, Ohio, home of Miami University and founded to model after the real deal - Oxford University - has done a better job of preserving the consistency of the architecture with those red brick buildings.

I never appreciated it much while I was there, but its clear what 1000 years of history and nouveau building ideas will do to an institution!