Art and Culture, Travel

Banksy’s Dismaland

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We visited Banksy’s Dismaland in September 2015. We left London with the first outgoing Saturday train one weekend and spent the morning and most of the afternoon in Bath, then took the train from there to Weston-super-Mare. Dismaland is located next to the Seaquarium in the former Tropicana Park. Apparently Banksy got the idea of using the area for an exhibition when he peeked into the abandoned and derelict park through a broken fence in January 2015 and started preparations for the exhibition shortly thereafter.      We thought the exhibition was great. Very political, not necessarily in line with our political views, but angry art is always good art, and angry this art was. The queues were very long and once we finally got to the front, we realised that the admission procedure was already part of the show. The doormen and women were incredibly rude and aggressive, pushing people […]

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Food, Germany, Travel

Nuremberg, The Emperor’s Favourite City

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Having grown up in Bavaria (of which Nuremberg is a part), I had been to Nuremberg more than once, but I only really got to know this Frankonian gem some ten years after I had relocated to London. Through work I took over a 2.5-months assignment there from June to August 2015 and I had a great time.           It was the hottest summer in decades with temperatures north of 40 Celsius over weeks in a row, bit too hot for my taste, but still, overall I loved the sunny, hot weather.           I stayed at a hotel that was equidistant to the central station (from where the subway only takes 12 minutes to the international airport), the office, and old town: 5 minutes each. In London my wife and I are usually feeling lucky if the commute is less than 45 minutes.           I hadn’t realised […]

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England, Hiking

Hiking and Relaxing at the Jurassic Coast

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We went to the Jurassic Coast in August 2015. We took the train from London to Weymouth (direct trains, 2h40m) where a rental car was waiting for us. We started our tour with a ten minute car ride to nearby Isle of Portland, a tied island that is connected to the mainland by a road. The road sits on Chesil Beach, a barrier beach, separated from the coast by a lagoon, which stretches much further West and which we’d have on our left for a good while longer on our way to Lyme Regis later that day.      The famous Portland stone that originates from the local quarries has been used worldwide for landmark buildings such as St. Paul’s Cathedral in London or the U.N. Headquarters in New York. Portland Harbour, between Weymouth and Portland, is one of the largest man-made harbours in the world. Until 1995 it was used […]

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