Soon it was February, and I only had a month left in Annecy. The time had flown by and I can't believe I ended up living there for almost six months! Midway through February my classes were interrupted for a week as I had applied for and was offered a week long work experience with English Heritage, a very well thought-of organisation in charge of many of England's heritage sites.
I of course accepted, and before I knew it I was heading off to Geneve at some ridiculous hour in the morning to catch my flight to London.
It was a long walk from the bus to the airport but I enjoyed the early morning walk as my bag wasn't too heavy and I was the only one around to enjoy the early mist.
Unfortunately said mist meant that my plane was delayed due to poor visibility, however I eventually made it and headed towards King's Cross where I was spending one night. It had turned into a beautiful day and I admired the impressive St. Pancras railway station before retiring exhausted to my YHA hostel opposite.
The next day I had the morning to kill before taking my bus down to Dover, so I decided to use it well and went to the British Museum. I had been a number of times before so I knew where I wanted to spend my time. After stopping briefly to admire the Rosetta stone (it gets me every time) I headed for the Egyptian section to revel in the place that holds the largest Egyptian collection of objects in the world outside of Egypt itself. So many mummies!
Running out of time, I took a quick peak into one of my other favourite sections, the late Roman period in Britain. The center piece for me was this cup, carved in the 4th century and known as the Lycurgus cup due to the scene on it depicting the King Lycurgus who enraged the God Dionysus and, as things usually go when mortals tangle with the gods, met a sticky end. The cool thing about this cup was that it looked a green color, but when light is transmitted through it, it turns this beautiful red.
My last stop was in the Mechanical clock section mainly from Medieval Europe. This table clock (a dull name for something so shiny) caught my eye; built in 1525 and engraved for its owner King Sigismund I of Poland, it is so singular because it contains the earliest surviving fusee. Confused? So was I. Apparently a fusee is a pulley which is wound around the mainspring barrel of the clock and evens out the unequal force that would otherwise occur when the mainspring unwinds. Basically, it made the clock keep time better. Good stuff!
It also had the caption engraved in Latin 'when you count the years 1525 Jacob Zech made me in Prague - it is true'. Another interesting part of history for this clock was that it eventually came into the possession of the Koch family in Germany, who owned a jewellery firm. After the company had been 'aryanized' and its assets frozen in the 1930s, their current owner Ida Netter was able to flee Germany secretly taking the precious collection of watches with her including this one.
My head full of history, I had a quick peak into the free Alice and Wonderland expedition in the British museum (containing original manuscripts and letters of Lewis Carroll) before heading for my bus. Onwards to Dover!
No comments:
Post a Comment