St Pancras Station, London, December 2015 - Transformational experience

St Pancras is the first London station I remember visiting. Until I was 5 we lived in Bedfordshire and occasionally we would catch the dirty and dingy maroon-coloured steam train into the grimy, smoke-laden and dowdy St Pancras en route to some event in London.

Over the years things never really improved.  Even when the 'Bedpan Line' (Bedford to St Pancras) terminated there before becoming Thameslink there were relatively few trains.  The hotel had closed long since, and there were never many people about except in the middle of the rush hour.  The train shed was certainly impressive, but it was poorly lit.  Occasionally mail vans would run out along a platform (about where platform 9 is today) to collect hessian bags of post.  The best feature was the wooden booking office on the western side of the platforms.  My father knew the man who worked in the enquiry office, but whenever we called to see him he never seemed to have any customers.

Some years ago I was taking my mother back by train from Sheffield to her home in west London and on arrival at St Pancras we were almost the last to turn up at the taxi rank. The taxis had all gone - the drivers knew there wouldn't be another arrival for about half an hour.  As we stood waiting the then Duke of Devonshire (father of the present Duke) joined us and, after becoming increasingly fretful at the lack of taxis (or even anyone else in sight), summed things up in the opinion "This is the Cinderella of stations."

I have just passed through St Pancras on successive days, and I never now cease to marvel at the transformation that has been accomplished.  It is now an exciting place - and not just because of the destinations and frequency of the trains.  The wonderful station roof is now fully exposed, the hotel alongside is fully frequented, and the whole ensemble is well lit.  The undercroft of the station has been opened out to create circulation space, and there is a real buzz about the whole enterprise.  And, of course, as with any modern transport interchange, there are a wide variety of shops and restaurants - although I always wonder who actually goes to a station to buy clothes or handbags.  I can understand the presence of the flower shop, and the bookstall.

Whilst the addition of Paris and Brussels (and occasionally Lyon and Marseille) to the list of destinations from St Pancras certainly represents an element of internationalism, the list of UK cities served is not actually that great.  Sheffield (and occasionally Leeds) is the most northerly and Brighton the most southerly, with Canterbury, Dover and Margate added in a different direction.  Even in the bad old days there used to be trains to and from Glasgow or Manchester, but those have long since gone.  But I get a tingle walking through and hearing announcements in French about trains to and from Paris.  (And I should point out that one disadvantage of the improvement of the station, at least for those, like me, from Sheffield, is that we do have to walk a lot further to reach our platforms.)

Many people seem to like the statue opposite the end of the Eurostar platforms of a couple embracing.  I actually prefer the one of a slightly-larger-than-lifesize John Betjeman looking up at the station roof, near the end of platform 5.  St Pancras could so easily have been pulled down if it hadn't been for him and others of a similar mind.  I'm not sure that Betjeman would have approved of everything that was done in the remodelling, but it works for me.  The team involved was a very distinguished one, including Foster and Partners, Arup, Bechtel, Halcrow and a variety of others.  Making the undercroft the main circulation space was, to me, a stroke of genius and gives St Pancras a feature that Kings Cross, next door, lacks - with its new circulation spaces at right angles to the railway tracks.

But people make places work, and there are some small touches at St Pancras that really make it fun to use.  Whoever had the idea of placing three upright pianos at various places in the concourse deserves a medal.  The variety of styles of music offered by a diversity of travellers is astonishing and often contradicts stereotypes - the hip-hop-dressed dreadlocks-sporting young man who plays a whole Chopin étude, the pin-stripe-suited City gent who plays boogie-woogie. (Actually, I have very rarely seen any women playing these pianos - I wonder why not?)

Every year there is a big Christmas tree - although I'm not sure I like this year's which has been sponsored by the Disney Store and bears nothing except stuffed Disney animals.  At least there were carol singers around it tonight, collecting for a cancer charity.   In the summer there is a small beach set up, complete with deck chairs.

I didn't think a champagne bar would catch on and make a go of it, but whatever time of day I pass there always seem to be people there.  And that is also true of the sushi bar downstairs.  And perhaps it's because there is a such a positive attitude around the whole station that the waiters in Searcy's restaurant are so helpful.  After flying in to the UK recently and dying for a meal before a late train home I told the waitress about my time constraints, gave her carte blanche  in ordering up a quick meal for me, and 40 minutes later I was on the train after an excellent two course offering served with alacrity and good sense.

So St Pancras is no longer as the Duke described it.  The Cinderella station hasn't gone anywhere, but the ball has now come to St Pancras.

Thessaloniki, Greece, November 2015 - Emerging from Denial?

I am writing this whilst flying back from Thessaloniki to Manchester – via Istanbul with flights of Turkish Airways.  When I mentioned this routing to someone a couple of weeks ago they were incredulous at the thought of direct flights between Turkey and Greece.  But times have changed – or perhaps I should say they are changing: there may be some way to go yet.

I have been to Thessaloniki many times over the last 15 years or so.  It is Greece’s second largest city – and perhaps the second largest city of Greeks in the world.  I was recently in the city that claims to have the third largest Greek population: Melbourne.

Thessaloniki is a fascinating place with an amazing history covering many epochs and empires.  Alexander the Great possibly knew the site (though I am not going to get drawn in to the Macedonian debate about who he was and who might claim him).  Aristotle was born nearby.  Cicero lived here.  St Paul wrote letters to the people of the city.  Methodius, the creator of the Cyrillic alphaber, was born here.  The founder of modern Turkey – Mustafa Kemal – was also born in Thessaloniki.  The Romans came and went as, later, did the Ottomans.  It was at one time possibly the city with the biggest Jewish population anywhere in the world.  The elimination of Thessaloniki’s Jews during the Holocaust, and reprisals against partisans, involved a young Austrian soldier who later became the General-Secretary of the United Nations, and who was then vilified when his wartime roles were exposed – Kurt Waldheim.

But some of the history and connections I have identified in that previous paragraph have been – deliberately or accidentally – omitted from the public personality of Thessaloniki over the years.  Instead Thessaloniki is today generally imagined, at least by Greeks, as a great and historic Greek city.  Yet when I first visited it there must still have been a number of residents who had been born there as subjects of the Ottoman Empire.  Thessaloniki only became Greek in 1912.  In many ways Thessaloniki has for many years denied those aspects of its history that are not Greek.

I have in front of me a leaflet for a bus tour and suggested walking routes in the city.  In total it identifies 61 places of interest.  Only three of them mention the Ottoman period, and one further site is Jewish (a museum).  The Rotonda, an amazing circular building, built in characteristic brick, larger in diameter than the Pantheon in Rome, is mentioned in relation to its Roman origins – yet one of its most distinguishing features is its minaret, and signs round the entrance demonstrate that at one time or another this has been a place of importance for all three of the monotheistic faiths: Christian, Jewish and Muslim.  The major Ottoman bath complex – the Bey Hamam - is shown on the map as ‘Ancient Baths’, suggesting a Hellenic or Roman origin: but it is not on either the bus tour or the walking routes.  Most remarkable of all is the fact that the house where Mustafa Kemal was born is not shown as a place of any interest at all on the map.  In the eastern suburbs beyond the line of the old city walls there are a remarkable series of villas built in the late nineteenth century by Ottoman landowners – these are not advertised to visitors at all.

The restitution of Thessaloniki to modern Greece was of vital importance to that state – yet arguably Thessaloniki only really became Greek during the 1920s when large numbers of Greeks expelled from the new Turkey settled here and in the rest of northern Greece.  Even before the Ottomans arrived in the middle of the fifteenth century the city had had a very diverse population drawn from all over the Balkan region – and beyond.  Perhaps it was the Greekness of the refugees of the 1920s that led to the imagined story of Thessaloniki as an eternally Greek settlement becoming embedded – more so after the loss of the Jewish population two decades later.  There is a wonderful book on the history of Thessaloniki – ‘Salonica: City of Ghosts’ by Mark Mazower.  Yet Mazower is something of a controversial figure in Thessaloniki because he sheds light on the multiple ethnic dimensions of the city’s evolution over the 500 years from 1450 onwards.  Just as the tourist maps supress many of the tangible manifestations of that evolution, so the city powers, the Orthodox church, and wider city society have in the past tended to do the same.  

Thessaloniki is, as it is, a beautiful, lively and exciting city.  Yet it could be a much greater tourist destination on the basis of a wider celebration of its diverse cultural history and the major forces and groups that have had connections with it over the centuries.  My taxi driver to the airport was of the opinion that many more Turks would visit as tourists if only they did not need a visa first.

But I have titled this blog ‘Emerging from denial.’  The very fact that I have left Thessaloniki aboard a Turkish plane represents something of a rapprochement with the city’s past.  Much of the credit for this must go to the city’s current far-sighted mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, who sought to open Thessaloniki up to the world via Istanbul and who persuaded Turkish Airlines to run a twice daily service into the city.  Given the major hub status of Atatürk Airport in Istanbul – Turkish Airlines flies to more countries around the world than any other airline – and certainly in comparison with Athens, the major international entry route to Thessaloniki now lies through Istanbul (or Constantinople as some still refer to it).  Thessaloniki could get by without Athens.  Boutaris has also put Thessaloniki on the map in many other ways, and in 2012 was given the accolade of the best city mayor in the world.  Whilst in Thessaloniki over the weekend I attended a lunch, following a graduation ceremony, attended by senior academics, politicians and business people from at least 7 countries around the Balkans. I personally spoke to attendees from Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia (or to the Greeks, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Bulgaria and Romania  - as well as (of course) Greeks.  With the removal of the Iron Curtain and, later, the end of the Yugoslav conflict (temporary though that sometimes seems to be), Thessaloniki has regained its position as the major city of the whole southern Balkans, with a hinterland for trade and education that reaches far into the other countries of that region.  Bit by bit, Thessaloniki is once again becoming a multi-ethnic metropolis.

So perhaps Thessaloniki is starting to emerge from its period of denial of the diversity of its past, a denial that was more strongly felt when I first visited nearly 15 years ago.  But I suspect that it will take a very long time for the Ottoman past to be celebrated in any meaningful way.  A couple of years ago I was in Ronda in Spain, and visited the Moorish bath complex there.  I was very struck by something said at the end of the film commentary, that indicated that the Moorish past was now being validated as part of the city’s history – ‘We should remember that the Moors were here for 500 years: this was their city and we should remember that.’  I suspect it will be a long time before there is a similar sentiment towards the 450 or so years of Ottoman presence in Thessaloniki.

Paris, France, November 2015 - Why attack those districts?

All my entries in this blog to date have been occasioned by being in the place being written about at the time.  This one is different.

I was in the departure lounge at Melbourne Airport when I first heard about the terrorist attacks in Paris on the night of Friday 13 November.  The Australian TV news channel was running with the story, and I have the app for Le Monde on my iPad so I was able to read the news reports coming through there as events unfolded.  Since then the world's media have been saturated with coverage.  A lot of it has been about the victims.

The question in my mind is different: 'Why attack those particular sites and those districts of Paris?'  You see, apart from the Stade de France (which I have seen from the train but never visited) I know the districts in which the other attacks occurred very well.  They were all within the 10th and 11th arrondissements (administrative areas) of the city.  I know the 11th particularly well, having carried out research there.  It features in one of my more referenced journal articles:

P. White and H.P.M. Winchester, 1991, 'The poor in the inner city: stability and change in two Parisian neighbourhoods', Urban Geography, Vol 12, No 1, pp. 35-54.

In this we looked at social evolution in the eastern part of the Folie-Méricourt quarter of the district.  One of the attacks was on a restaurant in rue de la Fontaine du Roi.  I used often to visit a nearby restaurant in that street - indeed I took students on field classes to eat there.  I have walked past the Bataclan on boulevard Richard-Lenoir many times.  The two sites attacked in the 10th district - the Carillon and the Petit Cambodge - lie in a tangle of streets near the Canal St Martin that is very familiar to me.  And the last time I went along the rue de Charonne, the site of the final attack, was on a bus.

I first got to know this inner eastern part of Paris in the mid 1980s - 30 years ago.  But I revisited it much more recently when I was at the Sorbonne to examine a PhD thesis on 'social mixing' in Parisian neighbourhoods and took the opportunity before the formal examination to reacquaint myself with both the 11th and the 20th arrondissements that provided much of the material for the thesis.

When Hilary Winchester and I published our article in 1991 we described the 11th as an area in transition.  It was traditionally a working-class Parisian district, largely self-contained in its operation - with printing and bookbinding important in the north, and furniture making in the south.  There were still a number of insanitary housing areas, and small enterprises and petty commerce dominated most streets.  To the west, near the grands boulevards, lay an entertainment area with the 'Cirque d'Hiver' (winter circus - a small indoor arena) and some theatres (including the doomed Bataclan).  One or two major arteries had been cut through by 'Baron' Hausmann in the 1850s. Georges Simenon had housed his great detective Jules Maigret in an apartment in boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

By the 1990s the 11th was becoming, in many parts, a blighted area of unimproved housing, declining employment, and increasing social problems.  It was rapidly changing to being an area housing poor immigrant populations, many of them of Islamic origins.  The diversity of food shops and restaurants was considerable - particularly along the rue Oberkampf and in the streets leading up to Belleville where a significant Vietnamese / Chinese presence had been established.    Why should terrorists today target sites in such an area, where ethnicity might be at its most diverse?

Well, today the 10th and 11th arrondissements have changed again.  Reading again our 1991 article I find that we were quite prescient in our predictions.  We did not foresee large scale gentrification and the creation of a completely new image. "Worn out housing will make way for the rehousing of the respectable lower middle class, involving also the displacement of the marginal poor, such as single foreign immigrants who do not qualify on the housing lists."  This has indeed happened.  Over the last 30 years the 10th and 11th arrondissements of Paris have arguably undergone a greater degree of transformation than many other areas of the city, with considerable investment in housing improvement and some new construction.  That hasn't meant that these areas have become the preserve of the wealthiest classes - they remain wedded to the western parts of the inner city.  But these districts have risen from being some of the poorest to being what could be called the most 'ordinary' in Parisian terms, with a wider cross-section of residents than might be found in other districts.

To strike at the political elite or the haute-bourgeoisie the terrorists could have chosen the 8th or 16th arrondissements, or parts of the 15th or 17th.  But these would be terra incognita to Islamic extremists.  In hitting at targets in the 10th and 11th they struck at what are today some of the most ordinary parts of the city - areas where most Parisians (probably except those haute-bourgeois) feel comfortable and at home.  But they are also, of course, areas with a history of immigrant and ethnic minority settlement providing perhaps some local knowledge and cover for the terrorists.  And maybe the fact that they are districts that are being 'lost' to immigrants as area upgrading continues played a further role in singling them out.

As I write there is a gun battle going on in St Denis to the north of Paris - an area where multiple minority groups have become increasingly predominant in recent years.  When there were riots in St Denis and other northern and eastern suburbs in 2005 I was in Hong Kong.  The Guardian newspaper, knowing that I had done research on such suburbs, contacted me for views and ran a think piece using some of my material and ideas.  Ten years later I find that my research interest over many years in Parisian neighbourhoods once again provides food for thought and some insight into current events.

Macau, Special Administrative Region of China, November 2015 - A surprising city

I’ve been studying cities for a long time now so that when I go to a new one (for me) I usually have a pretty good idea of what it is going to be like.  I’ve just been very wrong about a new place – Macau. 

I suppose I first learned something about Macau when I was a student and took an interest in the declining Portuguese colonial world, followed then by some knowledge of what happened in the aftermath of the Portuguese revolution and the return to democracy of the metropolitan country – associated with decolonisation of almost all of its overseas possessions.  But I also knew that Macau remained Portuguese until 1999, such that the Portuguese were still involved in part of the Pearl River basin even after the British handed Hong Kong over to the Chinese in 1997.  And finally I knew that Macau had in recent years become the gambling centre of Asia – and possibly of the whole world, outdoing Las Vegas.

So what did I get wrong when I visited Macau for the first time on a day visit by fast ferry from Hong Kong?

1.  I imagined that since the Portuguese had been the colonial power and they drive on the right in Lisbon they would also do so in Macau.  They don’t: they drive on the left.

2.  I imagined a much smaller and poorer city than Hong Kong.  But although the high rise buildings were less numerous, the press of people in the main streets  in the city centre was as great – and as varied.

3. I imagined that since it is only 16 years since the Portuguese left there would still be a lot of older people who would be able to speak Portuguese.  But I only encountered one – an attendant in a theatre who responded with the relevant pleasantry when I thanked him in Portuguese.

4. I imagined that because Portugal had been an impoverished colonial power they would not have produced much in the way of high quality buildings, monuments or other lasting legacies.  Yet throughout the city centre I encountered wonderful relics of the colonial past.  The Largo do Senado (Senate Square) in particular has the little granite block paving in black and white that  is so common in Portuguese cities, as well as palaces in Portuguese style.  And the Largo de Santo Agostinho contains a set of buildings that would grace any Portuguese city – the church itself, a theatre, a villa that is now a major library, and a seminary – all set on the top of a hill that could be in the Alentejo, or Tras-os-Montes or any other part of Portugal.

5.  I imagined that the new gambling industry would be confined to a zone of (possible) land reclamation.  Yet the brash gamblers’ hotels are sited on wide boulevards all around the old centre.  And they are tawdry in their commercialism in a way that went beyond anything I had envisaged.

Oh, and I was also surprised when, arriving on the ferry, one of the first sets of buildings I saw was a row of old and gabled merchant houses that would not have looked out of place in Amsterdam or Utrecht and which must have been the work of Dutch builders. 

So I got Macau quite wrong before I visited.  But it was certainly worth correcting my errors – a very interesting city. 

Heathrow Airport, London, UK, October 2015 - A lifetime's involvement

I have lived with Heathrow Airport almost all my life.  My first visit was as a young child, shortly after the tunnel into the central area was completed, but when, if you turned right shortly after coming out of the tunnel, you came to a cinder compound with a few children’s amusements from which the movements of the aircraft – Vickers Vikings, Airspeed Ambassadors, and Lockheed Constellations, could be watched from behind nothing more than a 4 foot high wire fence.

I should explain that I was brought up almost directly under one of the eastern flight paths into Heathrow – indeed my primary school was directly under that path.  Not that it mattered that much – our lessons were not disturbed by turboprop planes that came in every few minutes. It was when the early jets started that things got a bit worse – with the worst of all being the Trident, a British-built plane unfortunately. 

Instead of going off collecting train numbers I could sit in our back garden, with my father’s old wartime binoculars, and note down plane numbers. And that, of course, led into the question of where the planes had come from.  When my father retired he got hold of the airline timetables every few months and made up a schedule that enabled him to identify exactly where any plane that came over had originated: it could probably all be sorted easily by computer now, but he did it all by hand.   For my part I used to cycle to Heathrow in school holidays – starting when I was only about 11 – to watch the planes and record their numbers, returning home to underline them in the plane-spotters catalogues.  The cycle tunnels into the airport I used then have been converted to car and taxi lanes – I don’t suppose anyone cycles to Heathrow Central now.

Living near Heathrow had some interesting social geographical dimensions to it.  Protests about aircraft noise and campaigns against night flying were launched further away from the airport than where we lived – in Kew and Richmond.  The reason why no one in our street would have joined such protest movements was simple – a lot of people around us either worked at Heathrow (a father and two sons three doors from us who were all fitters for British European Airways (as it then was), or were dependent on the airport for employment (the Hertz rent-a-car man who lived next door).  Even the jobbing plasterer and the jobbing builder further along got occasional work at Heathrow or at firms connected with it.

My daughter lives in the house that I was brought up in near the flight path.  Today the planes come over at 80 second intervals, but since Concorde was taken out of service there is nothing that interrupts normal conversation.  Family life goes on irrespective of the noise of planes.  When I was a child, though, I had difficulties in getting to sleep in relations’ houses where all was quiet, without the regular thrum of a plane coming in.  (Throughout this piece I have talked about planes coming in to land.  When planes take off in an easterly direction they turn off the line before reaching the house: it is only when they fly in via central London – which they do most of the time because of the prevailing wind – that they fly over.)  

I have been at Heathrow today for a flight to Hong Kong, and I am actually writing this whilst over Russia on that flight.  I have just left Terminal 5 – a construction that would be unimaginable to anyone standing on that piece of cinder ground near the north runway in the mid 1950s.  Perhaps because I grew up with Heathrow as a constant presence in my life it seems quite natural to fly from there.  Many people from Sheffield, where I now live, would rather walk to Manchester than fly from Heathrow – saying that the airport is chaotic, crowded, unlovable and to be avoided at all costs.  But the UK’s provincial airports such as Manchester and Birmingham have few long-haul flights (Birmingham virtually none) and are rapidly becoming the preserve of budget carriers. And whilst it is certainly possible to fly from both of them to virtually anywhere in the eastern hemisphere via Dubai or Helsinki, I would much prefer a direct long-haul flight than changing planes in the middle of the night somewhere that I don’t want to be (not that I’ve got anything against Helsinki – a lovely city).  British Airways should perhaps be renamed ‘London Airways’ now since its service for cities other than London is now virtually non-existent.  At one time or another I have flown from Manchester, Birmingham (or even Sheffield) to cities as varied as New York, Berlin, Paris, and Düsseldorf: now the only BA destination from Manchester is London.

I don’t know how many flights I have made in my life – probably well over 200.  But flying still has an element of romance to it, and there is always a little bit of excitement in arriving to catch a plane at Heathrow, just as there was for me when I cycled there to collect plane numbers and watch aircraft from all over the world when I was a child.

Lisbon, Portugal, September 2015 - Favourite City?

When people find out that part of my claim to some sort of academic reputation lies in the research I have carried out on European cities, they often go on to ask which is my favourite among them.  Over the years my view has changed.  At one time my answer would be 'outside the UK I have three favourites - Berlin, Lisbon and Paris.'  I am wondering whether in fact that should be narrowed down to one - Lisbon.  Perhaps that's because I am there as I write this.

I came to Lisbon, and to Portugal, relatively late in my career.  It is less than 20 years since I first visited.  But since then I find it difficult to count the times I have disembarked at Portela airport and got a taxi into the city, or been met by a colleague with a car.  (Since my last visit the metro has at last reached the airport, but I've not used that to reach the city centre yet.)  I have been fortunate to be involved in some significant research projects with colleagues in various Portuguese universities, particularly in Lisbon, and have got to know the city and its surroundings in part through their eyes.  That also involves going to places that other visitors would not find, being taken to authentic fado evenings, visiting buildings not open to the public, and meeting a variety of interesting people.  On this visit I have caught up with a number of colleagues and we have talked over plans for possible further collaborations.

But part of the time I have been here has been just to relax for a weekend before my meetings, and later in the day after they have concluded.  So why do I like Lisbon so much?  Here's a brief list of highlights of my current visit - most not being tourist-oriented activities.  

• Travelling the buses, seeing how people get up for the elderly and infirm, despite the press of people (most buses seem to have twice or three times as many passengers as they have seats for).  There is also a wonderful iPhone app that accurately lets me know when the next bus is due at any stop in the city.
• Travelling the 12 tram up above the Baixa district.  The 28 tram appears as a 'must' in every guidebook - and is always jam-packed with tourists.  But the humble 12 which does a one-way circular route carries ordinary residents, many of them elderly, up the narrow streets to their tiny houses and apartments on the side of the castle hill and in Alfama.  This is a more authentic Lisbon experience.
• Eating at the A Travessa restaurant, with tables around the cloister of an old convent.  There is no menu for starters: instead the chef sends out small dishes prepared from whatever has been freshest or most interesting in the markets of the city that day.  And although the restaurant appears in all the international guidebooks, there are many Portuguese eating there on the evening I visit.
• Catching up with emails while sitting in a little shaded square near the back of the Open University (the Praca Flores, or Flower Square), accompanied by small children playing, old men reading newspapers, and old women knitting and talking together.
• Taking the train out to Estoril on a sunny Sunday morning, along with hundreds of other Lisbon residents, and strolling along the seawall promenade to Cascais, followed by a plate of grilled prawns in garlic at a beachside restaurant - and a glass of white wine from Setubal.
• Taking a short cut from the Santa Apolonia station back to the city centre, cutting through the Alfama district, an area of few roads but criss-crossed by a dense network of stepped alleyways lying against a steep hill.  Ever since I first arrived in Lisbon I have watched the gentrification of the Alfama neighbourhood - an old Moorish district that lay outside the walls of the medieval city and whose name, with the Arabic 'Al-', reflects its history (as do the names of other Lisbon districts).  People have lamented the loss of the old - but gentrification in Alfama is a very slow process.  Families that have lived in the tiny and inadequately provided houses here are inclined to stay on and there are still many long-standing residents.  Yet I accept that there are signs of change - some houses with new tiled roofs, painted walls and well-fitting windows; and in the lower part of the neighbourhood there is a rash of small restaurants offering a tourist menu in five languages, with a fado performance included.  But the saddest sight in Alfama today occurs where the chaos, irregularity, and hidden and secret delights and corners of the neighbourhood confront the quays of the Tagus river: there the massive monolithic cruse liners moor for their few hours in the city, creating a wall of uniformity to close Alfama in from the rest of the world.
• Being taken to a horse riding centre just a few steps from the University of Lisbon and the stadium of Sporting Lisboa football club.  I had previously not known of the existence of this green space, surrounded by stables for numerous horses, right in the middle of the built-up area.  And nor had I known of the excellent restaurant, open to everyone and not just to those coming to exercise their horses.
• Taking the metro, which is spacious, clean and efficient.
• Eating pasteis de nata de Belem (custard tarts, which should be coated with cinnamon before eating), or indeed any other Portuguese cakes and confectionary.  

I will close this paean to Lisbon with mention of one specific set of artefacts in a museum: I try to go to see them as often as I can when I am in the city.  The Portuguese were the first to reach Japan by sea, and in the Museum of Old Art (the Museu de Arte Antigua) there are a set of screens painted by Japanese artists depicting the arrival of these people from an equal but different culture.  They were produced within the lifetimes of those who could bear witness to the reactions of both groups involved.  And they are a wonderful insight into the initial contact of civilisations, as well as being beautifully designed and executed works of art.  I recommend anyone to go to seek out the 'Namban Screens' - and the districts around the museum (Lapa and Santos) are some of the most relaxing in the city as well.

Concarneau, Brittany, France, August 2015 - Summer and Smokers

In some ways it is unfair to give the title 'Summer and Smokers' to a blog started in Concarneau, but there it is.  I'd like to make it very clear at the outset that I have nothing against Concarneau - indeed, rather the reverse.  What I have got something against is smokers - or at least, some smokers. I will explain shortly.  But let me start by extolling Concarneau, and then make the relevant link.

Concarneau is a delightful town in southern Brittany - a real mix of a working place and a tourist resort.  It is at the head of a gulf festooned with myriad small islands and reefs, and has been a major fishing centre for many decades - one of France's largest ports in terms of the tonnage of fish landed.  On one side of the harbour are rows of storehouses, chandlers, boatyards and repair shops for engines.  On the other side is the old town, surrounded by ramparts built by Vauban to defend the site against invasion (which generally, in Brittany, means by the English).  Seven-eighths of the ramparts drop straight into the sea, with the eighth part opening onto land via a bridge.  This old town - the ville close or 'enclosed town' - is now little more than a tourist attraction with lines of shops selling tourist goods (which generally means stuff that one doesn't need) along with bars and restaurants, but it has a very relaxed atmosphere with no one hustling aggressively for custom.  Outside the ville close, and on the other side of the harbour from the fish quays, lies the 'normal' town with its banks, regular shops, big square holding a major market on Fridays, and car parks.  And beyond that, along the indented coast to the west and north-west there are beaches, large and small, of clean white sand, swept by the tide twice a day and allowing anyone access to either the sand or the rock pools.  There is a broad promenade with sign boards providing interesting details on the history of Concarneau and of the various localities.  One of the earliest marine research facilities in the world is still operating here, and another sign tells of a Russian ship carrying cement that capsized in the bay and permitted the extension of the promenade using the solidified and otherwise unusable cement barrels as a foundation.  So I have very much enjoyed visiting Concarneau.

But on a fine day when everyone wants to outdoors Concarneau has the same problem as many many places around the world - or certainly around Europe.  Smokers.

Sitting in bright sunshine outside a bar for a coffee on market day, with tables close together, a family of four came to sit at the next table: two children - perhaps 2 and 5 years old - with their parents.  Before they had ordered their drinks the mother lit up a cigarette, and the father followed suit a few minutes later - with the smoke blowing directly away from their table towards the one at which I was seated.

It's now later that same day.  We are on the terrace of an idyllic restaurant looking over the sea; our table is one row back from the balustrade beyond which is a 5 metre drop to the beach.  Thirty minutes after we arrive a couple of well-dressed women take the table next to the balustrade diagonally across from ours (fortunately not the one next to ours).  Over the next two-and-a-half hours (it's a good, long French meal, taking all evening) one of the women proceeds to smoke 8 cigarettes, but her companion (perhaps a bit of a  lightweight) can only manage 6.  The light breeze blowing in from the sea spreads the smoke over a good part of the restaurant - although there are one or two other smokers at these outside tables, adding to the haze.  Nevertheless, the majority of diners are non-smokers who are affected by the actions of these women.  How can a non-smoker  avoid the pall of cigarette smoke?  Only by asking for a table inside in the otherwise deserted restaurant from which the setting sun and the rising moon, wonderful sights from the outdoor tables, would both be invisible.

The pollution of outdoor eating and drinking spaces by smoke is not, of course, confined to Concarneau: it happens everywhere.  With smoking bans indoors in most European countries outdoor seating has become the refuge or preserve of the smokers.  Perhaps us non-smokers should leave them to it and stay inside, but that would deprive us of the chance of fresh air (I say 'chance' for obvious reasons) and enjoyment of the scenery.  And in even the countries with the heaviest smoking rates non-smokers are in the majority.

Years ago I remember being asked by a student why life expectancies at birth for women in some European countries were no longer increasing (the normal circumstance elsewhere).   When I looked into it, the answer was the increased smoking rate among women, leading to the familiar range of smoking-related diseases.  According to the latest data, smoking rates are generally dropping but in some cases the levels are still remarkably high - and particularly for women.  I have sometimes joked that according to my observation of what happens there, in Greece it seems to be compulsory for women to smoke - so when I looked the most recent data up I wasn't surprised to find that in 2007 Greece actually topped the world league table for the average number of cigarettes smoked each year per adult - over 2700.  (In the present circumstances it might seem nice for the Greeks to be top of something, but this surely can't be a record to be proud of.)  I remember when Greece introduced a smoking ban in restaurants, but then declared that it would not be enforced because bar-owners and restaurateurs complained that they would go out of business if their clients couldn't smoke indoors.  The awful atmosphere in some cafes, restaurants and bars is one reason for non-smokers not to go to Greece.

It's over 30 years since France required bars to identify a zone for non-smokers (general initially close to the toilets) and later that extended to a total ban on indoor smoking.  The UK has banned smoking inside pubs and restaurants for some years.  It's interesting that in Switzerland it was the Italian-speaking Ticino canton that first introduced an indoor smoking ban, rather than the German or French speaking cantons.  Switzerland still has much higher cigarette consumption than either France or the UK, where average cigarette use is around one quarter that of the Greeks.

But what I am arguing for here, albeit in a small way, is the extension of indoor bans on smoking to outdoor areas of restaurants, bars and cafes.  Let's not have the air of the majority polluted by the habits of the minority.  Everywhere: not just in Concarneau.