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Images from Turkey
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Middle East
Turkey - Images from Turkey
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- Written by: Richard_McKie
- Parent Category: Travel
- Category: Middle East
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In July and August 2022 Wendy and I travelled to Europe and to the United Kingdom (no longer in Europe - at least politically).
This, our first European trip since the Covid-19 pandemic, began in Berlin to visit my daughter Emily, her Partner Guido, and their children, Leander and Tilda, our grandchildren there.
Part 1 of this report touches on places in Germany then on a Baltic Cruise, landing in: Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Sweden and the Netherlands. Part 2 takes place in northern France; and Part 3, to come later, in England and Scotland.
When I first saw this colourized image of Christmas Shopping in Pitt St in Sydney in December 1935, on Facebook (source: History of Australia Resources).
I was surprised. Conventional history has it that this was in the middle of the Great Depression. Yet the people look well-dressed (perhaps over-dressed - it is mid-summer) and prosperous. Mad dogs and Englishmen?
So, I did a bit of research.
It turns out that they spent a lot more of their income on clothes than we do (see below).
The recent Australia Day verses Invasion Day dispute made me recall yet again the late, sometimes lamented, British Empire.
Because, after all, the Empire was the genesis of Australia Day.
For a brief history of that institution I can recommend Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Scottish historian Niall Campbell Ferguson.
My choice of this book was serendipitous, unless I was subconsciously aware that Australia Day was approaching. I was cutting through our local bookshop on my way to catch a bus and wanted something to read. I noticed this thick tomb, a new addition to the $10 Penguin Books (actually $13).
On the bus I began to read and very soon I was hooked when I discovered references to places I'd been and written of myself. Several of these 'potted histories' can be found in my various travel writings on this website (follow the links): India and the Raj; Malaya; Burma (Myanmar); Hong Kong; China; Taiwan; Egypt and the Middle East; Israel; and Europe (a number).
Over the next ten days I made time to read the remainder of the book, finishing it on the morning of Australia Day, January the 26th, with a sense that Ferguson's Empire had been more about the sub-continent than the Empire I remembered.