Bucket List Item 13: Read War and Peace

I put Read War & Peace on my bucketlist when I made it a number of years ago. I can’t remember exactly why I put it on there. I think it was probably at least one of the following things:

1.       The fact that I love reading and I wanted to put something related to reading on the list.
2.       I’ve enjoyed the Russian literature that I have read.
3.       Despite now having been there and being a bit underwhelmed by it, I have had a fascination with Russia for several years.
4.       It is supposed to be a difficult book to read and I wanted to prove that I could do it.
5.       I want to be able to say pretentiously to people that I have read it.

Jo bought me a lovely hardback version of the book for my birthday last year (now almost a year
ago), which I finished reading earlier this year.  It took me several months to read. It’s a long book. But not only that, it’s a heavy book. That meant that it wasn’t too easy to transport and therefore I didn’t read it on the train which is my usual reading time. I ended up reading for a quarter of an hour every night before bed.

There are almost 600 characters and it isn’t really suited to this style of reading, especially with my concentration span. I would often forget who people were when I began reading the next day, let alone a few weeks later if they had gone out of the narrative for a while. As such, there are passages which I remember vividly – Pierre’s father’s death and the game of cards are two of them – and yet others which I barely remember happening at all.

This was brought out when we recently watched the BBC dramatisation of the novel. There were bits that I definitely don’t recall at all. Then again, there are bits which I am fairly sure Tolstoy didn’t write but were included because they were naughty bits and the BBC wanted ratings.  It was really useful to see how it was condensed down to a 6 hour series, and I think I’m quite a visual person and being able to see the actors made it easier for me to remember which character was which, rather than getting lost in all of the words in the book.

I think I will definitely attempt to read it again at another point. I don’t think I got everything that I could out of it, however it won’t be for a while as my pile of books to read is almost as tall as me.

Bucket List Item 50: Visit My Town’s Twin Town

This has always been a thing I’ve been interested in. That the place where I live is somehow mysteriously linked with an enigmatic town in another country with an exotic sounding name.

Earlier this year I won an overnight trip on the Eurotunnel. I was trying to decide what to do with it when I realised I could finally visit one of these mysterious places in a faraway land.

Hythe where we live is twinned with two towns – Berck-sur-Mer in France and Poperinge in Belgium. As we had already booked our summer holiday for Marseilles, we decided to go to Belgium for this trip which we tied in with our anniversary celebrations. We booked a slightly extravagant hotel (we were being decadent) with a bed so big I couldn’t reach the edges and a really cool bath and headed over. It also had free sherry and brandy. Winners.

It turns out that our twin towns aren’t quite as faraway as I’d previously thought. It took us less time to get to Poperinge than it takes to get to Oxford or Southampton or anywhere else that seems like it should be nearer.

Jo managed to tick something off her unrecorded bucket list by driving in Europe whilst I navigated us there. These roles definitely work to our skillsets as I’m not keen on driving but I’m great at planning and I love maps, and vice versa for her.

I’m quite glad I waited until I had moved to Hythe to complete this item. I previously lived in Folkestone (admittedly only 10 minutes drive away) which is twinned with Etaples-sur-Mer. I don’t know much about the place, but it definitely doesn’t seem as interesting as Poperinge is.

I didn’t know much about Poperinge either, really. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the name (Popper-Ing-Err, if you’re interested). However, I did know that the town had a lot of beer related connections which made me quite excited to visit.

We therefore made our first stop the Hopmuseum. It was informative and we got to smell a lot of hops but there was a lot less beer drinking involved as part of that tour than I had hoped there would be. I insisted then that we made our next stop a beer bar that they do so well in Belgium. I love anywhere that has a beer menu and the place that we found was fantastic, cheap and gave us free peanuts. We both had a local Poperinge beer which probably tasted even better due to having to wait so long for it.

I had wanted to eat at a restaurant called Markt 38 as according to Trip Advisor it is the best restaurant in the city. I didn’t think that the best restaurant in the city might be fully booked on a Saturday night so we went to a hotel nearby to try more Poperinge beer and have quite a posh meal. Not as posh (or as expensive) as the breakfast we would have in our hotel the following day but quite posh, with an amazing local desert that I have completely forgotten the name of but was an apple and cinnamon thing which I completely recommend.

The other thing that the town is largely associated with is the First World War. One of the reasons it is linked with Hythe is Talbot House, a club for soldiers established by Lord Talbot of Hythe. Unfortunately we weren’t able to visit – apparently they have lovely tea and cakes. There is a war memorial in the town and around 40 soldiers were executed in the city.

The following morning we took a visit to Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. It is a ten minute drive
from the city and, as always with this sort of experience, is very humbling. The visitor centre gives you an idea of the size of the military hospital which in itself is mind blowing (around 4,000 patients at any one time) but then going out to see the graves of over 10,000 and being unable to comprehend what you are seeing, when it is still such a small portion of the total number of dead… it’s one of those things that always hits me emotionally.

Overall, the city was a lovely place. It was great to also go somewhere that we knew next to nothing about and to learn the local history and sample the local food and drink.