The straight line is godless

 

The Upper Palatinate is dull, nothing but dull….

Tucked away in the North of Bavaria, yet devoid of any mountains or other geographical features worth mentioning, resting its quiet and sedate existence somewhere between Munich and Southern Saxony, this area has always been overlooked, just been travelled through and generally been sidelined, if not avoided.

The strong regional dialect, even by Bavarian standards, as well as its proximity to the iron curtain during the time of the Cold War, didn’t help either.

Here, the straight line and the right-angle rule.

The house walls are straight, the windows are square, the doorbells feature the names of the residents in printed capitals. The lawns are straight, the gardens are well maintained and yet unimaginative. In this part of the world, no one wants to stand out.

Adventurous souls who live here, and happen to work in one of the local factories producing bathroom tiles, might decorate the outside of their houses with them, but only if they find enough tiles, to cover all surfaces in the same, monotonous shades of brown or green….

It was here, where I saw my first few days in practice as a qualified vet, taking care of the predominantly large animal patients of a colleague who had previously provided me with an internship at his small countryside clinic. Just a few days after my final exams, he had suffered a near fatal cardiac arrhythmia, so that without any prior warning, I had found myself on the yards and in the stables of the small local farms, where I required the help of the local trouble maker (who’s father had just been jailed for trying and failing to rob the village bank with a plastic gun….) riding shotgun, to translate for me and to make sure that I wasn’t chased off the premises as a foreign intruder….

These days were long gone and there was now little reason for me to stop here on my way to the more appealing countryside of nearby Bohemia. But just then, a sign next to the nearly empty motorway caught my attention…..

Like the bud of a single, yet hardy flower, rearing its head through brittle tarmac, something appeared to have changed since my last visit to the region.

In Abensberg, just a few miles away from the motorway, a golden sphere with a ring of portholes was dominating the skyline. Despite a weight of not less than 12 metric tons, balancing at a height of 35 meters on top of a colourful, yet fragile looking tower, this impossible looking structure, in a single instance, dashed all my preconceptions of the area.

This tower, part of the local brewery, was accompanied by a nearby building, that was anything, but neither straight nor plain or dull. Nearly devoid of right angles or any uniform areas of paint, with uneven walls and oval windows, it was featuring a spire, that was covered in a patchwork of dark and golden tiles while leaning in a precarious angle.

All corners and pointed elements were adorned with small globes in various colours and the whole structure was seemingly held together by a dendritic network of red and blue ceramic shards, that covered the whole building like a mesh of blood vessels or tropical ivy.

Unmistakably this building, as well as the brewery tower, showed the hand writing of the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The gallery inside the art house provided a retrospective of the life of this colourful exponent of Central European art of the outgoing 20th century.

A tireless painter and beautifier of mostly urban buildings, Hundertwasser did not hesitate to apply his craft to power plants, to motorway service stations, to stamps, to kindergartens and even to public conveniences. Building one of the most unusual towers you will ever see, next to a traditional Bavarian brewery was not really an exception.

Producing most of his colourful paintings and construction plans in complete solitude in very basic, remote locations, that frequently lacked even the luxury of electricity or running water, it seemed natural, that by placing his works in areas where they were least expected , they generated the largest impact and transformation.

This neglected part of Germany not only provided the perfect canvas for his work, in return it presented the region and the local community with a steady stream of visitors for many years to come, and the imagination of one man is likely to inspire generations of future regional artists.

While Hundertwasser had the idea and had provided the initial drawings for the Kuchlbauer Tower, he sadly never saw the structure or the remarkable art house with his own eyes.

With the artist expiring in emblematic fashion on board of the QE 2 in the South Pacific at the turn of the century, it was left to his co-worker and friend Peter Pelikan to construct and to build this island of colour, curves and light in a Sea of straight lines….

 

Across the Tyrolean Plateau

 

It was during the night, that winter had returned to the Northern Alps.

What had started with icy rain, had turned into slush and then into thick, heavy flakes of snow, that started to cover the fields with a thin white blanket and burying the fragile buds of the first spring flowers with its cold embrace.

Then it just continued to snow, transforming once again the landscape in the valley, the trees in the forest and the rocky outcrops of the mountains into a canvas, fit for Gauguin’s ‘Winter Landscape’ or Monet’s ‘Magpie’.

With warmer weather and rain already forecasted, it was clear that this was to be just a short-lived interlude, yet it had replenished the downhill slopes on the mountain sides and the skiing tracks on the plains, as if quenching the thirst of a dying man and for a last time this winter, the opportunity had arisen, once again to enjoy the sensation of travelling on snow.

Following some time spent with friends in Seefeld, just a stone throw away from Innsbruck, I decided to travel North not through the Inn valley, but along the less busy roads across the Tyrolean plateau that connects Austria with Germany.

In the small town of Leutasch, comfortably 3000 ft above sea level, the temperature had remained below freezing and a well-prepared skiing track, that connected the small villages nestling at the foothills of the surrounding mountains, invited to another session of cross-country skiing.

With the back of the car stuffed with a wide selection of different skis, I picked my lightest and fastest pair of Norwegian skating skis. The moment was just right for it – wearing only a thin jacket, a cap, some light gloves and choosing a set of skis that didn’t need much more preparation than a thin layer of glide wax. Off I went, heading towards the border at the end of the plateau.

It felt so much lighter, than the alpine skiing equipment I had to wear the previous day. There was no need to queue at the lifts and today, with less speed and only a few other skiers on the track, less caution was required, when descending the few downhill sections.

While admittedly I had to make a continuous effort, I was gliding along in peace, enjoying a steady rhythm of breathing and pushing, just focusing on balancing on the skis and on the countryside around me. Occasionally I passed another skier or had to push just a little bit harder to climb a small hill, but then again I was rewarded with a gentle descend, that allowed me to let the skis just go.

Right in time, just when it was starting to snow again, I had reached the end of the plateau and the little ‘Café on the Bridge’, that offered not only shelter, but also a decent cappuccino as a just reward.

With heavy rain replacing the snowfall just a couple of hours later and continuing throughout the night, most of the tracks I had travelled on, had disappeared the following morning.

Extinct

 

‘As he watches the female [seal] swim, he notices something further out to sea, a cluster of large dark shadows beneath the waves, and he stands up to get a better look. Could it be driftwood?…..Steller tells the men to row silently, but his instructions are unnecessary. Only once they are out at sea do they fathom quite how enormous these creatures are.’

London, end of January, the District Line, just after the morning rush hour.

Armed with an obligatory hazelnut latte and a free newspaper, I had found a seat in the last carriage and while a fine mist of rain was blurring the view on to the backyards and the gardens of the posher parts of Richmond and Kew, I started to immerse myself into the news of the day, while the train was hurling towards the center of the city.

Winter is a time for reading, a time for good books, a time for reflection and to set the sight on new, and possibly also on old things and ideas.

Because – what could be the value of history, other than giving us a blueprint to predict the future….

The reason for me sitting in the train that morning, was a book. One that had been written three years ago in Finland and that had just a few months ago been translated into English. This morning, I was about to meet the main protagonist of the story or better – what was left of him….

 

Exiting the tube at South Kensington, it felt a bit like walking through a street in Paris or any other larger French city. The restaurants offered Mediterranean fare and people were sitting at small bistro tables enjoying croissants, pain au chocolats or filled baguettes, accessorised with whatever varieties of brew one could conjure out of a coffee bean. School children on their way to the nearby Lycée were walking past small flower stalls and book shops, that would not have looked out of place in Montmartre.

While appreciating the winter weather as the only feature that had remained quintessentially British, with a grey sky and a constant drizzle of light rain, I headed down Exhibition Road and passing the Tricolour in-front of the French Embassy on my left, I found the gate to my destination – London’s National History Museum – closed.

Recognising though the steady stream of visitors on the other side of the gate, I realised that the access to the museum must have been re-arranged since my last visit and now I had to track all the way back along Cromwell Road, to enter the building through the East Lawn.

To get to the huge front door, I had to walk through millions of years of evolution, passing a life sized diplodocus to my left, a huge petrified tree stump on my right and a small forest of tree ferns.

Finally I was able to enter the cathedral like central hall of the museum. Also known as Hintze Hall, this busy place, which lately had become a popular destination for early morning yoga classes, for silent disco events and for cool sleepovers for kids of wealthy Londoners, was quietly guarded by the skeleton of a blue whale, suspended in mid air.

After taking in this always impressive sight, I turned to the left, and headed towards the ‘Mammal’ section. In another giant hall at the rear of the building, another whale was parked, this time a life-sized model of the entire animal.

I was getting close….

Climbing now a flight of stairs, somewhat hidden away in a small corner of the gallery, I finally found an animal that I will never see alive.

 

What 18th century naturalist and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller, while being stranded on Bering Island in 1741, described above, must have been one of the most extraordinary experiences a human being might have had with a wild animal of this size, without coming to any serious physical harm.

Until then, sirenians were only known to live in tropical waters, and they had never been recorded as so huge. The animals Steller saw, were up to 10 meters long and had a weight of 5 to 10 tons. Slow moving, gentle and harmless herbivores. An encounter with these giants of the sea must have been unforgettable and one couldn’t even imagine how it would have felt diving among a herd of them.

Sadly though, Steller’s sea cow does no longer exist, and it only took mankind 27 years to completely wipe out these remarkable animals. Like the woolly mammoth, which appears to have survived in a small population on Wrangel Island, even further North in the Chukchi Sea, until the time of the building of the pyramids, the arctic sea cow population was, by the time of its discovery, already confined to the kelp forests of just the uninhabited Commander Islands in the Bering Sea.   

London, this city of thousands of untold stories and of many hidden and often forgotten treasures, is one of the few places on Earth, where it is possible to see a genuine skeleton of one of these huge beasts.

Made up of bones, that were retrieved from the mostly frozen soil of these remote islands, after resting there for well over a hundred years, after one of these maritime giants had been killed for its up to 10 inches thick layer of blubber and its reportedly extremely delicious meat, the skeleton itself was in a bit of a sorry state.

While some of the ribs, solid without a marrow cavity, were patched together with rusty steel wire, at least its caudal vertebral column appeared patched together with bones from different animals and while the animal was lagging its rudimentary pelvic bones and lower front limbs, it still was an impressive display, especially when standing right next to it.

Its skull, devoid of any teeth and rather small for an animal of this size, left no doubt about its entirely plant-based diet and equal to a horse, the sea cow’s scapulas featured no acromions to protect its suprascapular nerves.   

In her remarkable book and my favourite read this winter, Ilda Turpeinen, not only brought back to life – if just for a few precious pages – these unique animals and summarised the little we know about the sheltered existence they must have enjoyed until the fateful day of their discovery.

While Steller’s sea cow might be the leading actor in this Shakespearean drama, other equally impressive animals like the spectacled cormorant or the flightless great auk find a mention as well and although far more numerous than the sirenians of the Northern Pacific, they too vanished because of different forms of human intervention and exploitation.

Some animals like the blue whale, the alpine ibex or the sea otter escaped a similar fate by virtually a hair’s breadth – at least for now….. – but I was wondering what other animals might feature with the label ‘extinct’ in the National History Museum in another 200 years…..

The cutting edge

 

The blade was cutting through the tomato, leaving just a wafer-thin slice on the cutting board, through which you could easily have read the small print of a dodgy loan agreement….

I was in the middle of the rolling landscape of West Sussex, at the house of Julian Hoad, the previous and the current president of BSAVA, the British Small Animal Veterinary Association.

Serving two tenures as the head of this prestigious organisation was as unusual as the man himself. Julian, of course veterinarian by trade, was the embodiment of a real Renaissance men, if there ever was one. Not only an excellent clinician, but also a seasoned climber and mountaineer, a sought-after lecturer and narrator, an expert in identifying wild mushrooms as well as a deft hand in the kitchen, to name just a few of his many talents.

And true to his calling, a delicately seasoned, large pot of lamb curry, in preparation for the next board meeting at the BSAVA head quarter in Gloucester the next day, was simmering on the hob when I entered the house.

Admittedly, my business that day wasn’t strictly seen a professional one, but more a domestic problem: I had brought with me an odd selection of all the blunt knives I could find in all the drawers, cup boards and storage boxes at home. There was our trusted and much used bread knife, a Finnish hunting knife that I had bought during my first stay in the tundra nearly 40 years ago, a full set of filleting knives, an Asian chopping knife (very much underused) and various other longer and shorter blades, that could easily have landed me in jail, if carried without a valid cause.

Thankfully I had one…

The reason for my call dated back a month when I was hiking along the frozen shores of the Gulf of Bothnia in Northern Sweden. To entertain myself, I had been listening to the latest episodes of Julian’s and Mike Brampton’s podcast “Veterinary Ramblings”. Veering a bit off course from the main subject of the programme, something that wasn’t particularly unusual for this dynamic duo, Julian confessed to one of his other so far not publicly known passions : the sharpening and maintaining of knives and other tools. Clearly a subject that is of equal importance both in a kitchen as well as in a veterinary consulting room or an operating theatre.

When speaking about the delight he got from returning a blunt blade to its initial raiser sharp condition, I thought to myself, what a great reason for paying the man a long overdue visit….

After all, we had been friends and local colleagues for many years, and while we shared a common passion for a cutting edge, I had never mastered the art of sharpening a blade.

As a more surgically leaning member of the profession, I very much value extremely sharp needles, scalpel blades and scissors for my veterinary work.

Not only cause sharp instruments – when used correctly – less pain, but they also allow for less traumatic work, resulting in less post-procedural swelling and much better wound healing. A recent study had shown that a needle used to draw up medicine from a bottle and then used directly on a patient, resulted in a higher pain response than the use of two individual needles. After reading the article, my consumption of hypodermic needles had increased considerably…..

Today most surgical blades are single use items, but the same does not apply to kitchen utensils. And this was, where Julian’s expertise was required.

When my selection of knives was covering half of the work surface of Julian’s kitchen and a selection of sanding stones were removed from their nocturnal water bath, we discussed the findings of the study and to my surprise we not only agreed on the need to change needles immediately after a single use, but it also turned out that we both were very particular about a certain brand of needles, which we both favoured above all others.

Following the levelling of the sanding stones, we started working on the not too affected blades, by applying them in an angle of 27-degrees first to the stone with the courser grain, before moving to a finer grain. Any impurities of the blades were straightened with a steel.

Working the knives forwards and backwards over the stones, lubricated by a thin water film, had a strangely calming effect, very much like the kneading of bread dough – one of Julian’s other passions – and our conversation went from needles to dental hand tools.

Here good material and regular maintenance was equally important. Following my recent work with expensive, well-maintained equipment in the North, I had just decided to purchase my own set of dental luxators and elevators a few days ago. While acquiring them through a German company, it had turned out that the set had not only been designed and manufactured in the UK, but to my utter astonishment, I had learned that the company was even based in Surrey, just a few miles away from my house.

Again we agreed that the world could sometimes feel like a small place, and while I was continuing to work the blades along the sanding stones, Julian gave the finishing touch to the curry, while the delicious flavour of the meat and the spices filled the room.

The set of filleting knives was in a particularly sorry state, and it was decided that these blades were beyond out-ironing and sanding. Venturing over the yard through the customary January rain, we entered Julian’s work shop. Here, with the help of an industrial grinder, the badly worn metal received a new surface. As the steel of these knives was of poor quality, this  procedure would have to be repeated from time to time, giving the blades a very limited life expectancy.

Again, we saw a parallel between the humble kitchen utensils and the tools of our trade – with time and experience, you are no longer prepared to budget on quality. To enjoy the work you do and to provide your patients with the best possible outcome, you eventually should come to the conclusion, that only the best will do.

Sadly though, as this unavoidably is a question of expense, this might not always be the world you will find yourself in, especially if veterinarians no longer own their place of work, and profit orientated accountants are in charge to make the final purchase decision.

As a result, veterinary life might play out like a blade of inferior steel – requiring consistently arduous work and still resulting in only limited enjoyment.   

Imagination, improvisation and as far as that might be possible, adaptation can help to still deliver an acceptable outcome, but not everyone might have both the skills and the tools like Julian, to maintain the cutting edge.

Elk filet, bearded dragons and state of the art dentistry

 

I was sitting in Gunnar’s cottage in the middle of the Swedish countryside. A white layer of snow had covered the landscape outside and there were only a few days left until Christmas.

Thick chunks of elk filet were frying in a pan, next to green beans from last summer’s harvest, while a potato gratin started to show the beginnings of a brown crust in the oven.

With a large glass of Zweigelt in my hand, I was relaxing at the dinner table a few feet away from the kitchen. In the chair next to me, one of the three Norbotn Spitzes that considered this comfortable place their home, just like the two Golden Retrievers that were lower on the pecking order.

Gunnar once again had allowed me to partake for an evening in the Nordic idyll he had created for himself and for his family of canines. While my host was putting the finishing touch on our festive meal, I had time to reflect on the events of the preceding weeks.

I was nearing the end of a month of clinical work at the Njurunda Veterinary Clinic, which was based near the estuary of a small river, 400 km North of Stockholm.

While Viktoria and Carsten, the owners, were enjoying their first holidays since opening their own clinic two years ago, I was left in sole charge of the place, albeit with the support of a very experienced team of veterinary technicians, some of whom I had worked together with some three years ago, when I had first locumed in this part of the country.

At times, the veterinary world can be a small place…..

As so often when starting to work in a different geographic location, with clients that speak a different language and that have a different cultural background, when working with a new team and with a different spectrum of patients, it had been a revelation.  

In this part of the world, hunting, fishing, and the great outdoors played a far bigger role than in the urban environment of the outskirts of London or Munich, or in the manicured agricultural settings of Appenzell or on the shores of Lake Constance.

Here Buhund, Lapp Spitz, Drever and the wolflike Jämthund were a common encounter and one of the most usual complaints for these dogs were, next to activity related trauma, an unexplainable loss of general condition, in the majority of cases caused by nothing more than the unfeasible expectations of the owners, yet in occasional cases caused by a range of respiratory conditions, some of which were unknown to me.

 

One of these was my first encounter with Pneumonyssoides caninum, the canine nasal mite, which despite having been diagnosed all over the Globe, appears to cause any serious clinical issues only in this group of dogs in the Scandinavian countries.

You never stop learning…..

While not that easy to diagnose, the treatment with a common anti-parasitic is thankfully pretty straight forward, but it showed, that in a world without fleas and with long and cold winters, this group of drugs was far less routinely used as in the UK.

Another revelation was the level of dental care for both dogs and cats at this clinic – it was probably the best I have ever seen.

Not only was there a dedicated room for just dental procedures, but all patients had, following their induction, whole mouth X-Rays taken before any procedures even started. Complete dental charting was obligatory in the same way as regional nerve blocks, if extractions were considered.

All of this was usually done by one of the extremely well-trained nurses, so that my work was often reduced to the preparation of gingival flaps and surgical extractions. If I wouldn’t have insisted on performing the descaling and polishing myself, the team would probably have done it as well (and possibly have done a much better job….).

Part of the set up was a brand new direct digital X-Ray unit, that most human dentists could only dream of working with, as well as a great selection of dental equipment and hand tools that were for once perfectly maintained and sharp, as if just been shipped by the manufacturer. None of the above is ever guaranteed when working as a veterinary locum.

As a result, the dental workload at the clinic was considerable, but extremely rewarding, both for the veterinarian as well as for the patients.  

Normally when working in the Nordic countries, it is rare to see any other species than dogs and cats in a small animal practice. This has partially to do with the legal restrictions to keep these animals, but also with the very limited training that veterinary students receive at the vet schools of these countries. As soon as a not carnivorous patient or a patient without a diaphragm is entering a Scandinavian veterinary clinic, the value of a UK or Continental European trained vet increases ten-fold.

Not so at the clinic in Njurunda – a large, well-maintained aquarium in the staff room, as well as medication and dedicated equipment for less common patients, indicated right from the outset, that these smaller patients played a big role here.

No surprise then, that my patient list right from the beginning featured quite a few rabbits that had runny eyes, guinea pigs that were losing weight, rats that were struggling to breeze and reptiles that had stopped to feed.

While this might sound like a nightmare scenario to some of my more feline or canine focused colleagues, I have always embraced these less common patients and with the help of an equally enthusiastic nursing team, a well stocked library of text books, as well as with the remote support of veterinary specialist friends from around the world, I found the treatment of these patients always both enriching and in many cases very rewarding.    

However, working in the North was not always plain sailing…

While the team helped me with my constant struggle with unfamiliar Swedish words that also Google Translate failed to understand or with the different trade names of commonly used medication, my by far biggest headache was the reduced availability of frequently used drugs and being barred from dispensing all medication that required a prescription.

While small quantities could be handed out from the stock the clinic held, any larger quantities had by law to be obtained through the local pharmacies, who – understandably – only kept the most common drugs in very limited amounts.

While this system made absolutely sense to reduce any profit driven, but unnecessary use of antibiotics, it caused unnecessary inconvenience to many pet owners and a reduced level of care to many patients that often had to wait several days for painkillers or for any other medication to address their specific ailments.

Well, ‘You can’t have it all!…’ I thought, when I realised that our festive dinner had now been placed on the table in front of me, demanding all my attention.

The clever little Spitz on the chair next to me couldn’t have agreed more…..

Insomnia

 

6 AM, pitch dark outside, the first alarm on my phone goes off and I am switching it to snooze…..

6.05 AM, the second alarm goes off – with the same result….

6.08 AM, the first repeat alarm goes off….

OK, I give up…., I have to get up….

 

Getting up early has never been my thing.

I am in Juniskär, in the Swedish Norrland, looking after the clinic of some German friends.

It is the middle of December, and work is starting every morning at 7.30 AM.

At this time of the year, we will have 5 hours of daylight, if we are lucky and if the sky is clear…..which it is not on most days….

Daily Vitamin D supplementation is vital here.

I am driving to work in the dark, I am returning home in the dark.

Matters are not improved by the fact that we had some unseasonably warm weather, that melted away the little snow we had, just leaving a frozen landscape and roads covered with black ice.

Luckily, my SUV has spike tyres.

With so many hours of darkness, one would assume that at least there should be enough opportunity to get enough sleep.

But somehow, this is not happening and I find, that I have to get by with not more than four of five hours per night.

 

Insomnia – the scourge of my profession, paradoxically often caused by long working hours, by self doubt, by the constant mental reviewing of clinical decisions, by the worry about individual patients, unhappy clients, stressed work colleagues.

Insomnia – the restless travel companion of depression, of unhappiness and of an unhealthy lifestyle fuelled by caffeine and too many sweets (especially at this time of the year).

Insomnia – also the title of undoubtedly one of the greatest dance tunes and one of the most motivating soundtracks of all times…

Exactly 30 years ago Maxi Jazz rapped for the first time : “I can’t get no sleep!”,

and what apparently took only 20 minutes to write and another 25 minutes to compose, turned out to be an everlasting stroke of genius, enjoyed on the dance floors, in the gyms or on the running tracks around the world.

Faithless most iconic soundtrack, remastered numerous times and already in the first year of its release available as a Monster, a Moody and a Tuff Mix, this song has never lost its ultra-modern feel.

Both lyrics and vocals are basic, the composition is engaging, and the message is clear: “Anything – just no sleep !”

While this is exactly what you need in the early hours on the dance floor, this song gets your also over the line during a fast run or a hard work out in the gym and while the inventory of the fridge of the protagonist might not reflect the one in your own kitchen, the song communicates a frequent state of mind of myself and of many of my veterinary colleagues.

Living in a permanent state of exhaustion and lack of sleep, we are struggling to grab the opportunities for decent rest when they arise. The clinical decisions we had made, but were not sure about, are difficult to shake off, the conversations we have had with unsatisfied clients are reviewed again and again in our mind, the financial concerns caused by an uncertain income stream that is met by constant and steadily increasing overheads, as well as the perennial demands of leading or of aiming to be a valuable member of a team – these are all issues that can keep you awake at night and that might deny you the remaining few hours you might get.

Thankfully, it is something I have learned to handle well. Following a regular circadian rhythm is for me not a basic requirement and I can function without much sleep – a god sent especially if working night shifts – and my mantra is, that if I can’t sleep one night, I will have a better chance the following one. And somehow, I will get through the day.

It is also a question of lowering your expectations – if you constantly aim for 8 – 10 hours of deep sleep, don’t be surprised if you will be disappointed.

On a few occasions, I wrap up well and go for a nocturnal run along the abandoned, icy road in-front of my house. The tarmac is reflecting the cold, yet gentle light of the moon. There is no other sound than that of my breath and that of my trainers on the frozen ground.

When returning home, frozen despite my track suit, I take a shower and go to bed and…. you bet that “I can get some sleep !”

Biblical Beasts

 

We were at the end of our visit of the veterinary faculty of Perugia, a town with a long Roman and Etruscan heritage.

Three months of preparations, five days of inspections, interviews, and team meetings plus a final presentation in the main building of this prestiges veterinary school lay behind us, to find out if the course in Perugia was good enough to keep the university’s accreditation as a certified education establishment that met European standards.

Eventually, there was some time to spare for me and my fellow visitors, before we had to head back to Rome, to catch our flights back to our own faculties or places of work.

“Just follow me” said Professora Silvana Diverio, who had looked after us during our stay. “Our agricultural faculty is just a short walk up the hill and I think that you will like it”.

So, with nothing better to do, we followed our host and within a few minutes we found ourselves on the other side of Porta San Costanza and in the middle of Giardini del Frontone, a large public park, which to these days has been a meeting place for poets and novelists.

On the other side of Borgo XX Giugno, the agricultural faculty was housed inside the walls of a former Benedictine monastery. Approaching these buildings that looked back on a history of well over a thousand years, each of our steps were keenly followed by the watchful eyes of a resident alchemist who, in a small unheated room on the top of the tower next to the Arco di Braccio, was said to have pursued here his futile ambition to creat gold out of less valuable materials.

We then entered the Abbey of San Pietro, the striking center piece of the whole monastery and for me – while so unexpected – an absolute revelation.

Richly decorated with depictions of biblical scenes on every part of its walls and ceiling, its sides covered with large paintings, the first impression was overwhelming. And yet, this house of God started to grow on me, not because of its opulence, but because of all the subtile, at times playful, but mostly frightening details.

One of these, on the right side of the nave near the altar, was a smaller painting, showing the destruction of the temple of Dagon by the blinded Samson.

Its vivid colours, the bodies of Philistines hurling through the air (how did they get there ?…) and the panic in the face of a young man fleeing the scene, looked so surreal that it would have gone unnoticed in a Dali retrospective. Considering that the temple of this fishtailed god had been located in Gaza, the theme of this painting could not have been more contemporary.

Crossing the nave and standing in front of the wooden choir seats, I then found myself among an assembly of the weirdest creatures one could imagine, as if conjured straight out of a psilocybin-fuelled Hieronymus Bosch painting.

A winged cow reading a book, an elephant with both wings and fins, a sphinx, harpies, sirens and echidnas, as well as a number of evil looking snakes and lizards.

 

Each of these creatures were more than 500 years old and one could just imagine, how generations of bored parishioners must have admired, touched, and distracted themselves with these delicately carved sculptures during endless church services.

Apparently, these figures as well as the intarsia of the choir were some of the finest of their kind in Italy and they were on par with the equally exquisite carvings of the wooden choir in the cathedral of Ulm, which I had visited a couple of years earlier. There the heads of saints and of famous classical thinkers had been the inspiration for Jörg Syrlin the Elder, a medieval sculptor, and they had served there the same decorative and entertaining purpose.

I sat down among the biblical beasts and closed my eyes. I took in the silence and the peace of this enormous room, I smelled the ancient wood, while my fingers were running over the figure of a bearded man holding a plate with a flame.

Getting up again, I felt lightheaded and walking slowly back towards the entrance of the abbey, was it just me, or was I walking straight into the face of a giant skull?….

As a Roman proverb would say: “Memento mori!….”

Ana and the Mercury Mine

 

Ana wasn’t on time – she was five minutes early ….

This usually is fine by me, but not after a party with one of Belgrade’s finest rock music bands and a subsequent tour with the die-hards through Ljubljana’s limited, but still surprisingly wild nightclubs, resulting in hardly more than a couple of hours comatose sleep.

With a constant ringing from the traumatised tympanic membranes in both ears, I dragged myself down the stairs and in front of the hotel where her car was already waiting.

I knew that it hadn’t been wise to schedule our trip on the last day of the conference I was attending, but this one was special and I had been looking forward to it for as long time.

Ana Nemec, no ordinary colleague, but one of Europe’s finest veterinary dentists, was in addition to this also an ambassador of the great outdoors of her native Slovenia. If her posts did not feature the oral cavities of smaller or larger domestic carnivores, Ana was taking her large number of devoted followers to the most scenic and pristine and unspoiled locations of her Alpine home, either on her mountain bike or while hiking, usually in the company of her black Labrador.

With other words – I couldn’t have asked for a better mountain guide, and I wouldn’t let a hang over get in the way of joining her for a day.

Thankfully Ana was driving, so that I could just lay back and enjoy the scenery, while we were heading West towards the border of neighbouring Italy.

“We are driving to a slightly unusual location” said my guide “It’s a mercury mine. I have never been there, but I think that you will like it….”

“Lovely” I said and raised an eyebrow while Ana was watching the traffic ahead of us.

‘Had I misheard or had I done something wrong ?’ I thought. ‘Is she serious ?’

Mercury – one of the most lethal environmental toxins. The stuff of nightmares – stories about chronic renal failure, mad hatters, birth defects…immediately crossed my still dazed mind.

‘Where is she taking me ?…..’ I thought, and my expectation of seeing a pristine alpine autumn landscape was replaced by a sense of foreboding that we would spend the day hiking through an industrial wasteland. Had Ana, the nature lover, gone to the dark side and developed a secret passion for post apocalyptic factory ruins?

And just then it was that I noticed that her Labrador was missing too…..

After half an hour we exited the motorway and the roads became noticeably smaller as the landscape around us became more mountainous. We drove through villages that had the characteristic mix of Austrian, Italian and Yugoslav features, that is to typical for this part of Europe and that told the story of periods of variable occupations.

Eventually, we arrived in a narrow valley, in a small town that was dominated by a white church and a calvary of fourteen stations on a steep hill.  The surrounding mountain sides were a beautiful patchwork of green fields and dense forest covered in yellow, amber, red and brown leaves. From time to time the cloud cover broke and rays of the still warm October sun enhanced the display of colours and patterns.

“Here we are !” said Ana while parking the car near a bridge.

“This is Idrija, where we will start our hike!”

And sure enough, after walking just a few hundred meters, passing pedestrian crossings that were decorated with white lace ornamentations, we were standing in-front of an old factory building that once housed the World’s second largest mercury mine. This harmless looking 19th century structure produced up to a ton of the liquid metal every year, feeding the world wide demand of gold prospectors in the Americas, thermometer manufacturers in the Rhine Valley, hat makers in Saville Row and even that of 19th century confectioners in Europe’s capitals.

While mercury’s unique ability to contract and expand considerably depending on its ambient temperature, had helped to advance science and in particular medicine, it had left its trail of chronic illness and death not only in the work shops and the gold mines all over the world, but also in the local community of Idrija, who’s inhabitants still had some of the lowest life expectancies in Slovenia and who were still discouraged from growing vegetable in their own gardens.

A yet, once mining had stopped, nature had reclaimed the valley and the surrounding mountains and the slopes on both sides of the local Idrijca river provided some of the most striking hiking opportunities in the country.

With winter having made an early appearance with very low temperatures and snowfall on the mountain tops, Ana had wisely decided to go easy on her charge by sticking to the valley.

Setting off alongside the Rake Water Channel, a four-hundred year old aqueduct that once supplied water to the sawmills, pumps and crushing devices of the mining company and that now drove a small hydroelectric power plant, we were walking right into the rays of the low lying morning sun. This was easy hiking and with only very small packs to carry, it was no effort to have a conversation at the same time.

After a few kilometers, a suspension bridge leading to the other side of the Idrijca, had to be crossed. While walking high above the alpine stream, I became progressively concerned about the severely deteriorated state of quite a few planks and I started to take great care to only step on the points that had an additional steel support directly underneath them, so that I couldn’t break right through one of the planks. While Ana had walked ahead of me, it was of little reassurance, as she was so much lighter than me.

Reaching the end of the bridge, the final three planks were missing so that a large step was required to reach the concrete abutment. Just then we noticed a flimsy line of tape and a warning sign that was informing us, that under no circumstances one should try to use the bridge, as it was extremely dangerous….for some strange reason, a similar warning and barrier had been missing on the other side.

Hiking with Ana continued to be an adventure…..

Joining a small road for a short while and then climbing up the hillside next to the road, we reached the ‘Feldban’, a comfortable, wide hiking trail that been cut out of the rock to support a narrow gauge railway line to transport vital supplies to the nearby frontline during the 1st World War. While the rails and the sleepers had been removed a long time ago, a small tunnel had remained to add character to this hiking route.

Our next opportunity to get killed or at least severely injured, was a ten meter steel ladder that without any additional safety features went up a straight, but at least not overhanging concrete wall.    

Before now returning to the trailhead, it was time for a picnic while taking in the peaceful autumn scenery around us. Needless to say that my mountain guide had prepared for this in form of bread rolls and Kiwi slices.

From here, the trail went mostly downhill right next to a small, meandering mountain road and then alongside the river, back to Idrija with its lace patterned pedestrian crossings.

What better way to finish then off our hike with a plate of ‘Idrija žlikrofi’, the traditional small dumplings that as Ana told me were so typical for this place as the lace making and the mercury mining.

I am already looking forward to the next hike with Ana – that time hopefully together with her black Labrador, which with hindsight for this hike of many surprises, ,wisely had stayed at home.

Botos-cor-de-rosa

 

It was when the waters of the Rio Negro tried and failed to mix with that of the Solimões, to form the mighty Amazon, that we saw them for the first time – hunting dolphins, a whole pod of them.

These clever mammals were taking advantage of a phenomenon that was once described as “the greatest hydrologic spectacle on the planet”.

Image courtesy of Bülent and of Anna Trett

The very fittingly named “Meeting of Waters” was a bit like an attempt to mix a Café au lait with Yorkshire tea…. something only done with hesitation. And in the case of these two large watercourses, the matter was far more complex….

The milk coffee coloured water of the Solimões, the upper Amazon, originates from the Andes, has a temperature of about 22 degrees, carries far more sediment and flowes at a speed of up to 6 km/h, when it meets the water of the Rio Negro. As this river has its source not in the mountains above the tree-line, but in the rainforest of Colombia, it is considerably warmer with 28 degrees and has a much darker tea-like colour, due to the degrading plant material it is carrying. This also results in a much lower ph of between 2.9 – 4.2, which has the not inconsiderable advantage, that it is not particularly conducive for the development of mosquito larvae. In addition to this, the speed of the Rio Negro is much more sedate with not more than 2 km/h, so that when these two large water masses meet, they first run just alongside each other for about 6 kilometers before they are starting to mix and it takes them another 50 kilometres, before they get used to each other and blend completely to form a uniform water mass.

Video courtesy of Bülent and of Anna Trett

The difference in nutrients and water temperature was attracting a lot of small fish and the dolphins were taking full advantage of it. While their prey was struggling with the reduced visibility in the tannin stained water of the Rio Negro, the dolphins benefited from their echolocation that made hunting so much easier.

These were grey river dolphins, easily identifiable by their prominent dorsal fin and their more predictable direction of movement.

For my first encounter with their more elusive, much larger, pink cousins, the Botos-cor- de-rosa, I had to wait for a couple more days.

While looking for a sloths in the canopy of the rainforest on the Paraná do Mamori South of Manaus, I noticed a familiar sound that transported me immediately a few thousand kilometers to the other side of the Andes, to the Pacific coast of Northern Peru, where I had heard for the first time the blowhole of a whale.

While not as large as its Cetaceaen cousin, the exhaling sound was the same and sure enough, looking to the other side of the river two distinctive pink backs, nearly devoid of a dorsal fin, were breaking the surface of the water.

Unfortunately this remained my only encounter with these strange animals while staying on the Amazon.

Returning to Manaus, with a few more days to spare, I did some research and found out, that there was a small place in the North, right next to the Anavilhanas National Park, a Labyrinth of half submerged islands in the middle of the Rio Negro, where it would be virtually impossible to miss them.

While the adventurous way to get to the park would have been to hitch a ride on a seaplane that would cover the 160 km from Manaus in less than ½ hour, the 3000 $ price tag was just too eye watering, so that I chose for the second best option – a three hour lasting joint taxi ride along the partially tarmaced road to the village of Novo Airão for less than 20 $.

As it turned out, this ride was no bit less audacious, with the driver, glued to his mobile phone, frequently exceeded 120 km/h on a road with numerous, often unexpectedly appearing, large potholes, while his wife, riding shotgun, was balancing their unsecured small child on her lap….

I didn’t dare to check if at least her airbag was disabled…..

When entering the village, it was not difficult to tell, that I had arrived at the right place:

images of botos and of manatees could be seen everywhere. Several house fronts and property walls provided the necessary canvas, the local karate club displayed them as their mascots and even the village’s carnival float had the shape of a manatee.

Once I had checked into my hotel, which alongside an excellent internet connection and a Bavarian flag on its roof (which no one could explain why it was there….) featured a massive, very inquisitive iguana and his hareem.

It didn’t take me long to find out, that the best chance to see a boto was to head down to the beach in the morning and to look out for the bicycle of a young girl that was working on a small floating house that contained a simple information centre about the national park.

Helped by occasional treats, the girl had befriended a pair of river dolphins, that were usually visiting her both in the morning when she opened the place as well as in the evening before closing it.   

       

But this time it wasn’t that straight forward….. the bicycle was there, so was the girl and the floating house, but what was missing were the dolphins….

“Probably somewhere down the river”, said the girl and shrugged “They are free and you never know…..”

And sure enough, despite turning up twice daily for the next two days, I always left empty handed….

At least I had found out that staying at the hotel included the free use of a kayak, which eventually would give me a front row seat when the botos finally returned….

With underwater visibility less than 30 cm, not seeing one of these river dwellers did not mean that they were not there….The river dolphin has the ability to stand motionless in the water and especially while swimming – which I did every morning – you might pass one just a few centimeters away from you, which is a bit unsettling, considering that these creatures that resemble somewhat the embryo of an Ichthyosaur, can easily be larger than 3 meters. Thankfully – like their grey cousins – they are completely harmless piscivores.

When paddling towards the floating house at the end of the third day, starting to get frustrated about my poor luck, a pink, an indeed primeval looking shape jumped out of the water right ahead of me, but disappeared below the surface before I had a chance to reach for my camera. Well – not everything could or should be kept on film I thought….

But this time my lucky run endured, and shortly after this brief encounter, the girl appeared and sat down at the edge of the float to give the botos their evening treats.

“Surely some of the most unusual creatures I have ever set my eyes on”, I thought. Certainly not particularly pretty, actually slightly spooky, and yet an alluring sight in this remote corner of the Globe.

Cashless, yet not penniless in the jungle

 

Senhora Silva might not have been much taller than five feet, but she was running a “tight ship” in her little supermarket on a small Balsa wood float, on the Parana do Mamori, one of the many contributories to the Amazon just South of Manaus.

Together with Josef and João, my companions, we had spent the previous night sleeping in hammocks in the middle of the rainforest.

Helped by a surprisingly good campfire meal and a few cans of cold Brahma beer, I had – against my expectation – managed to find a few moments of sleep, despite the unusual sleeping position, the occasional mosquito that had still managed to get inside the mosquito net and despite the sounds of the jungle, caused by cicadas, tree frogs, tropical birds, howler monkeys and by occasional movements on the forest floor, which were ideally not further investigated.

Falling out of the hammock once in the middle of the night, very much to the amusement of my fellow travellers, had not added to the recovery a good night’s sleep should normally provide.

Shortly after sun rise we had broken camp and had continued to explore the nearby Ipanema lake and the shores of the adjacent river.

Senhora Silva’s little store was usually passed during these outings and especially when the heat in the middle of the day started to become unbearable, a brief stop for a cold drink was a must.

Most of the local riverside residents, who lived far apart from one another, made once a day their appearance here as well, both to have a chat and to stock up on Camelinho, a headache invoking, cheap Cachaça variety, that for many seemed to make the life in the jungle just about bearable.

At the Supermarket they were all welcome, but there was one single, all important rule: under no circumstances was credit given, especially when it involved the sale of alcohol.

This posed a problem for me, as I had not taken any cash with me into the jungle.

“No problem ” said Josef, “just pay by card !”

And sure enough, deep in the amazon, due to a Starlink connection, even in Senhora Silva’s simple shop, I could make a contactless credit card transaction for an ice cold beer at less than a pound including the 5% added, as it was a credit and not a debit card.

As it turned out, the Senhora in fact preferred card payments, as it reduced the risk of her getting robbed.

A further tried and tested crime prevention measure was her male Rottweiler, that while locked away during the day, had the free run of the landing at night. The dog was renowned in the area for just tolerating the Senhora and her teenage son. Taking into consideration her small size, the fact that I had no equipment with me and that I didn’t speak any Portuguese, I kindly declined her offer to take a closer look at the animal….

Back at the lodge I caught up with Milos and Hobo, some fellow travellers from Poland, and I mentioned to them my amazement about the cashless payment option in a remote place like this and how much this was contrasting with my native Germany where still a surprisingly large number of businesses, including many veterinary practices, do not offer this service, insisting on cash payments or direct bank transfers following the issuing of a written invoice.

My Polish friends agreed, but said, that they could go even one better….

On the Copacabana, they had been able to purchase drugs from a dealer with a credit card terminal, that was also used to sell Caipirinhas. The slight downside was, that when they checked later, they found that instead of the 15 RS/2 £ they were supposed to pay, they had been charged 5000 RS/800 £.

Explain that to your credit card company……..