Krakow trip.

Well, that seemed to come around really quickly, one minute it was Christmas, then my birthday -a landmark 60th if you must know the numbers- and then suddenly it was off to Kraków in Poland for the weekend with my daughter. She had wanted to do something special for the occasion and this was it.
   Now there are two things about Kraków (pronounced Krakuf), one I knew and one I didn't; I knew it was going to be perishing cold in January -it reached -6 C with snow- so that was no real surprise but I didn't know how nice both the city and the people are. Some of them who were trying to sell you tickets for a horse and carriage ride would quite happily direct you anywhere you wanted to go...and smile while they were doing it! My daughter had worked there in the summer so she made a pretty good guide -for pubs, zapiekanki (street food) sites and vodka bars...but she didn't know much about the museums. Luckily, Google came to the rescue and I found a few on there including Wawel (pronounced Vavel) Castle. I had previously made a list of interesting places -to me anyway- that I wanted to visit so we worked out a plan of action. We flew out of Gatwick at 0815 on Friday and arrived at 1215 (Kraków is an hour ahead). Friday afternoon -a walk around the old town on the way to Wawel Castle while checking out some of the local restaurants for an evening meal. Some of the buildings date back to the 18th Century and some churches are from the early medieval times. One, St Andrews, along with Wawel Castle, were the only stone edifices left standing after the ten day siege by the Mongols in early March 1241!

   

(I have other pics but for some reason it wants to display them as landscape rather than portrait).

About Wawel Castle. Hulking great place, quite a good museum with lots of armour and bits from the husaria period (Renaissance Winged Hussars to the non Polish speakers). Looks the mutts thinks I, got to give that one a look over. Walks in goes up to the ticket counter and sees a sign saying that the Castle Armoury section is closed until Jan 25th. If we had turned up the bl**dy day before it would have been open but... Not happy but nothing you can do; so I bought a guide instead. It was almost like a Bullseye moment when Jim Bowen used to say "Lets see what you would have won". Gutted, especially after looking through the guide. So this is as close as I got to husaria material in Poland -a model display in the shop!

But you have to be the bigger person and move on so we went to the Aircraft Museum (Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego) and boy did that come good!

Here is a link to all the planes they have there:

http://www.muzeumlotnictwa.pl/zbiory.php?w=a&zb=aeroplanes

These are just a few of the pics I took.

 No idea what this is but took it for the colour scheme.

 Spitfire Mk 26

 Me 109 G

 Junkers JU52 (Tante Ju)

Mig 29 (Fulcrum)

At one of the art museums (the Krzysztofory) -a converted palace, I found this which I was quite chuffed about.

Jósef Brandt (1841-1915) and entitled Fight for a Turkish standard, (Walka o sztander tureckie). Quite the action pic. There was also a famous painting by Piotr Michałowski depicting the uphill charge of a squadron of Polish Lancers at the Somosierra  Pass during the Napoleonic Wars in Spain but that only loads sideways as well. 

I found these in the courtyard of the Palace of Bishop Erasmus Ciolek (Palac Biskupa Erazma Ciolka). This place was full of religious paintings and statuary but in the central courtyard were these. Bit random.

The size of the mortar bore is anybody's guess but the size of the stone cannon balls are intriguing.

I took over 300 pictures of various buildings, churches, aircraft and all other sorts of whatnot, picked up a number of museum guidebooks with useful bits and pieces in but the prize was a book called 'Digital Reconstructions of the Historic Built up areas of Kraków'. 170 pages of larger than A4 size with fold out full colour pictures of the evolution of the city. Early timber frames, stone, the lot. Cost me 60 złoty (about £10) and was an absolute steal if you are interested in making your own, reasonably accurate terrain like wot I is. 
     Monday morning came around too quick. We had to leave the hotel at 1000 because our flight was at 1215. The temperature had dropped significantly overnight which is where the -6 comes into it but as well as that, while at the airport the snow started to come down in large flakes and we had to have the wings de-iced before we could take off! 
     Luckily we made it safely back to good old Blighty. It was a fantastic experience and I would definitely go again if the opportunity presented itself...especially to the displays at Wawel Castle!

Fortuitous recovery and a brief summary of 2015.

More than a month has passed since my last post so I thought I had better put fingers to keyboard. 

Firstly, a fortuitous update. A few months ago my tower pc decided that it didn't want to play any more and gave me the 'Blue Screen of Death'. This was quite unfortunate as you can well imagine. Never mind, thinks I, once I get another I can just reload everything from my Google drive. All well and good until I actually opened up my Google drive and found that all of my most recent stuff wasn't there. Not impressed. Thinking that I would have to shell out cartloads of cash for someone to try and recover the info I put the old hard drive to one side and soldiered on. Now included in this loss was a manuscript for a non-fiction campaign book that I was writing and until the crash had written more than 50,000 words. Gutted!

   Now skip forward until the day before yesterday when I was looking for a memory stick to put a file on for my mate to print as my printer is not working at the moment. Opened the files on the stick and lo and behold...a folder marked Books...with my book there in all its monochrome gloriousness with words and chapters and everything. As you can imagine, I was as happy as a pig in breakfast as they say in the Midlands. So now I'm writing again. I have concluded that the problem was that I had a Google drive icon on my desktop and everything came from and went back to there so it probably didn't actually get uploaded. Problem solved. I now upload after every session, have a copy on my main drive, another on my backup drive and yet another back on the stick. My MO recommends sending myself a copy as an e-mail attachment. Ma Subs and I didn't raise daft kids...luckily.

   This leads me nicely into a quick summary of 2015.

   Managed two games -both solo- and duly reported here; painted lots of 6mm -unfortunately my tracker was on the old drive- but from memory; Samurai, WW II Late War British, Goblins, Halflings, Centaurs, Ancient Macedonians, some Flemish and Sassanid Persians as well as some 10mm Mongols, more Song Chinese and Medieval Polish. Plus made lots of 6mm terrain for my WW II project -pictures below- and written various articles for MWBG all about the Mongols. Went to the obligatory two shows of Cavalier in February and Broadside in June.

   Unfortunately, the big Lottery win eluded me once again. Oh, well never mind, here's to an even more productive 2106. 

Happy New Year to all my avid readers.

History revisited

For all you Ancient wargamers out there I thought I'd give you some views of the 'Ribat' at Sousse in Tunisia -taken by myself in 2009- for colour, texture and construction details. The actual construction of the main building dates back to the late 8th Century AD with the watchtower being added in 821 AD. There was some more work done in 1722 and it is possible that the doors in pictures 3, 7 and 8 were added at this time. the only reasoning I have for this is that the lintels look newer than the rest. The whole Ribat was heavily restored after some serious bombing in 1942-43.

Originally a religious institution, in exchange for special privileges, the occupants were the watchers of the coastline to give warning of any approaching Byzantine fleet. Fires at night and smoke during the day from the watchtower could pass the information on to other coastline forts.

All pics are of course clickable for in-yer-face detail.

1. The Entrance Porch on the south face.


2. A closer shot of the Porch.


3. Detail of a small door on the eastern face.


4. Looking north-north-east, another shot of the Porch.


5. Looking at the north face.


6. Square Watchtower with circular tower above in the south-east corner.


7. Another small door either on the north or west faces.


8. Same door as in '3' but additionally, showing the battlements.



The next five shots are of the interior.

9. On the north wall looking south towards the entrance.


10. Circular corner tower battlement detail.



11. North-eastern corner looking south towards the Sqaure Watchtower. Nothe the crenelations on both sides of the walkway.


12. More tower battlement detail.



13. Showing courtyard. Taken from south-eastern corner looking to the north-west.



If anyone wants some more details just let me know, I have a copy of the Guide book from this ribat as well as the one from Monastir. Also have a copy of the official guide book from Carthage (whats left of it).

Period Building Post

The other weekend the good lady and myself  went off for a break in Stratford upon Avon. Now the last time I went there was in 1978? when I was working in Redditch and staying in Halesowen (a few miles across the other side of south Brum for those geographically challenged amongst you. No great shakes if one drives but I didn't then and still don't). So anyway a few friends and I went to Stratford for an evening out. In the darkening light we strolled along the riverside, found a pub, had a few, ate a curry and came back, end of non-eventual trip.  

This time it was a whole different experience. For starters we got there in daylight and I was armed with my trusty 7 million pixies camera -still can't work out how they all fit- and, over the two days I took sh*tloads of piccys...of buildings; over a hundred at last count. I have never seen so many period buildings in any one place. Amazing, absolutely amazing. So I am putting a few random shots on the blog as a taster. 

If anyone is interested in the look of 16th and 17th Century buildings for Renaissance generally and ECW in particular then let me know and I can post some more. 

Damp is good,

Mick

P. S.  The first is of someones house, the second is a line of someones houses. Third is of a local hostelry. Fourth piccy down is of the house of a 17th Century rather well known local playwright, Mai Will Rapesheake; the author of such oft plagiarized classics such as Thamel; and gave us such unforgettable lines like A Shroe, a shroe, my dingkum for a shroe and Beot or Botneot, tath is the nestquie (homage to the M. Python team for that one). The fifth is of a Tudor period building which is now a museum.