Friday, January 4, 2008

Days 8-10: Calcutta (27-29 December 2007)

Calcutta! Calcutta! I am, I am, I am, I am Calcutta!
-from cheesy, 1980s theme song at nightly Victoria Memorial sound-and-light show

Calcutta says to the nations of the world: give me your people, rich and poor, and I will give them . . . life!
-
same

On this trip of unexpected finds and misplaced expectations, Calcutta was perhaps my biggest misconception, and my most pleasant surprise. (I'll use the old spelling "Calcutta" in lieu of the new "Kolkata" for stylistic purposes.) What I thought I'd find: a city of slums, like one of the lower circles of hell; waifish, wasted bodies floating toward me, surrounding me, begging for a morsel. What I did find: no shortage of beggars, to be sure (and perhaps more of them, and more appalling slums in areas to which I did not venture), but a sophisticated, cultured city with - that rarity on the subcontinent - a rather well-formed infrastructure. In the center and north, a grand, colonial city (crumbling, yes, but grand all the same). In the south, a punchy and thoroughly middle class district. Probably some veritably posh areas too I could have seen, if I had the time or the contacts.

I'll blame this discrepancy between expectation and reality on a combination of my ignorance (really, how little did I know about India! A few Bollywood titles, names of spices, and token Hindi phrases, yes, but really nothing!) and the media's misleading. It was nothing short of ignorant for me not to have been readily of aware of the fact that Calcutta was Britain's colonial capital for so many years, the jewel of the empire. But it is the global media that has given Calcutta its reputation as a slum-ridden, devastatingly poor city, an image beneath which there is some truth but no much as to overshadow the grandeur and sophistication of the colonial and Bengali capital. The accident of television's rise and the culture of celebrity may provide the best explanations. When televised images of Calcutta were broadcast across the world after World War II, Calcutta was in a period of extreme devastation - yes, the poor indeed were dying in the streets at that time. And the person who has come to be Calcutta's biggest global celebrity, Mother Teresa, was linked indelibly with the city's poverty, a fact that appears to be not wholly enjoyed by many Calcuttans (in the above cited sound-and-light show, this Roman Catholic shepherdess of the poor merited only a brief photographic mention among a postscript montage of eminent residents of this educated, Hindu city).

So, you see, it was something of a relief for me to be delivered from the clutter, filth, and dilapidation of Agra, Varanasi, and Bodhgaya (and the particularly assaulting touristic harassment of the former two) to the relative urbanity of Calcutta. And so I set about for three days on that particularly stimulating mode of urban-focused travel: consuming the city.

My first impression: Howrah train station, on the west bank of the Hooghly River (the heart unfolds along the east bank), is busy, busy, busy, but quite functional and easy to navigate. My second impression: they have proper taxis here! And what delightful cabs they are: bulbous yellow machines, shaped like those iconic London taxis, only rather more outdated. They have meters, too. And the drivers will actually use them. Third impression: thank you, thank you, thank you, no cows in the streets and (yes, oh yes!) sidewalks. The separation of pedestrian and vehicle, which I so regularly take for granted, is now restored. (Walking in the road is just too ambiguous in terms of traffic norms and safety - kind of like being a cyclist in the States when the bike lane ends.)

Always logistics first for me: I checked into my accommodation, the Sunflower Guest House on Royd Street in the Chowringhee district, a few blocks comfortably removed, as usual, from the main backpacker drag on Sudder Street. The Sunflower is graced in the Lonely Planet guide by that most lucrative of marks: the "our pick" label, which makes it stand out from every other accommodation listing. It's a transformative thing for a small business to get such treatment from the Lonely Planet: it has turned the Sunflower from an anonymous, hard-to-find place to one of the most-booked budget hotels. ("You're staying at the Sunflower?" my travel guide for tomorrow confirms on the phone. "Everyone is asking us to book us at that place now.") The Lonely Planet has become ubiquitous, the bible of independent travelers of all stripes, and its near-monopoly status isn't entirely a good thing. There is the Lonely Planet circuit: the miscellaneous assortment of otherwise unspectacular guest houses and restaurants at which you see so many other western faces toting the fat blue book. I am almost tempted to switch, for moral reasons, to the Rough Guide or some other book (I'm still debating to whether consider my old employer, Let's Go, among the viable alternatives) but the Lonely Planet is just too damn good. Lonely Planet fame sometimes comes too soon: the Sunflower was as clean as advertised but they had lost my booking, charged me a little more than they said they would and, god bless them, the staff just couldn't speak English to save them.

I then set out on a rather leisurely walk that took my up and around the Chowringhee district, concentrating on the main shopping boulevard of Park Street. At the top of Park Street, I had my first brush with Calcutta's famous street food. I had decided to relax my till-then strict policy against street food because Calcutta was so well known for it and, I gathered, it was such a part of the culture that the vendors would be tidy enough and would doing sufficient business that the food would be fresh and clean(ish). I stood in the growing line outside Hot Kati Rolls, a Calcutta institution, and ordered my roll: double chicken, single egg. I fashioned myself a kati roll veteran of sorts, since this form of street food (not really street food properly understood, but more side-of-the-road food shack) had become famous among the young, the hip, and the South Asian in New York City through the ever-crowded and intensely delicious Kati Roll Company. Many a 3am I spent waiting in its long lines, and many intoxicated hungers were sated by its product. Oh yeah, I should tell you what a kati roll is: take fresh roti; fry it with egg; fill it with meat or potato or cheese, add onion, chilis, hot sauce; roll it up; devour it. And here I was at the source, and no disappointment (though a little oilier than I like it). I noted the jealous raised eyebrow of the proprietor as I told him that there are not katis in New York and that they charge 200 rupees (mine at the Park Street corner was just 40 rupees).

I then proceeded to get lost. Not too lost, but I soon realized I had wandered well beyond my anticipated right turn, and was entering a rather grittier area (no more sidewalks, more public urination). It was tough walking at times, having to tiptoe around the various other walkers, shoppers, shopkeepers, bicyclists, and loiterers, but just as I was breaking a sweat the order of the city saved me: Park Street returned, my boulevard, my Calcutta ground zero. I realized I had made my way so far east that I was near the Park Street Cemetery, a spot seemingly too distant because it was off the Lonely Planet's center-city blow-up map. It turned out to be a fortuitous wandering because the Park Street Cemetery was a terrific find. The gatekeepers were marvelously welcoming ("All we ask, sir, is that you leave your comments when you go") and strolled through the calm, grassy square, separated from the bustle of the surrounding city, and pondered the enormous monuments to the departed English residents of Calcutta. There we tombs that dated back to the 18th century and all too many were of infants. What struck me most were just how large these monuments were: towering white and brown stone obelisks and big rectangular tombs, marking graves of by and large ordinary (albeit upper class) British Calcuttans? Why such a display? Perhaps it only showed how cheap these materials were in the abundance of India, such that merchants and military men could build tombs that only the nobility could afford back home. Or perhaps it was that, in this distant, steamy Bengal, they wanted to build something so vast and last that, in case their colonial enterprise failed, someone from home might someday stumble across a remnant of their existence.

The first day in Calcutta was running out, and I spent the remainder of it visiting the Indian Museum (a place where modern museum theory has yet to penetrate - too-broad exhibitions ranging from zoology to geology to art history with 1950s era placards. The ancient Buddhist art is, however, worth the admission price), strolling the Maidan (a vast parkland created when the British razed a riverside district to build Fort William, a stronger base from which to run the city after it was recaptured in 1757, after the infamous "Black Hole of Calcutta" incident. The Maidan now is the city's grassy heart, its Central Park, and site many pick-up and organized cricket matches. More street food was here consumed), walking by the Victoria Memorial (a colonial folly, built to rival the Taj Mahal (and failing), but intended more as a sign of colonial strength). I would return a few hours later at nightfall to the Victoria Memorial to attend the campy sound-and-light show of aforementioned catchy theme song. No need to go out of your way to see it, but an OK way to start the evening.

That night, I utilized the first in-room television I had had during my stay to immerse myself in the national obsession that is the Indian cricket team - they were right then playing the Australian's in the first in a series of test matches, and the Indians were having they asses handed to them by the best-in-the-world Aussies. I won't take the space here, but I have quickly become rather well versed in Indian and Australian cricket, and their current big names: for the Indians, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman; for the Australians, Ricky Ponting, and the most strangely alluring of them all, Andrew Symonds, and West Indian-Australian who takes the cosmetic step, unimaginable in America, of painting his lips bright white with sunblock, so that he looks almost like a black-face minstrel show performer. Perhaps Australia doesn't have this same unfortunate performance genre and so doesn't register the shock we Americans would. My cricket watching was rudely interrupted by a chance channel change that revealed the breaking news that Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated. Goodness. It feels even more immediate because I am here in the subcontinent, but at least on the other side of it.

For the second day I put myself into the hands of the folks at Kali Travel Home, who would guide me on a late-morning city walk and then escort me to an early-evening Bengali cooking class. I must admit that I had been looking forward to this day, when I could abandon the responsibilities of day planning and map consulting and instead turn myself over to more capable city experts. Kali Travel is quite the little operation: it is just two men, David and Martin, middle-aged Australians with an uncanny love for Calcutta. They make the city their home for half the year, or more, and have been here for two decades, or longer. The tour company business, in their words, is more of a way to have something to do and a reason to stay than it is a proper for-profit business, and their latest project is buying up an old, decaying townhouse in the north of the city and fixing it up into a western-standard travelers' guest-house/medium-term accommodation for working expats on assignment in Calcutta.

Morning was with David, and we wandered the northern part of the city, called BBD Bagh, which houses the biggest concentration of crumbling colonial buildings. BBD Bagh was originally called Dalhousie Square after the early 20th-century British Lieutenant-Governor, but was reamed after the three nationalists who tried to assassinate him (Binoy, Badal, and Dinesh) in 1930. Calcutta has a taste for such ironies: they've renamed many of their streets post independence, and the Communist state government had the wherewithal to rename the street on which the American consulate sits "Ho Chi Minh Sarani." Some streets are still popularly referred to by their old colonial (e.g., Park Street), others by their post-independence name (there is even a Dr Martin Luther King Sarani, nee Wood Street). David led me an a nice jaunt that took us past numerous landmarks I might otherwise have missed, or at least not fully processed, on my own. The Bengal High Court: closed for the coming new year's holiday - a shame because apparently the market outside bustles during business hours with outdoor typewriters hammering out briefs and affidavits. The Raj Bahavan: built in 1799 as the seat of British government, now the residence of the Bengal state governor. The BBD Bagh itself and the abutting Writer's Building : BBD Bagh is a palm-lined pond, er, swamp, formerly a source of the city's water supply; the Writer's Building housed a more mundane function than its name might indicate: it housed clerks for the East India Company, and later for British trained Bengali bureaucrats. What abiding gifts the British gave! Then an extended through the cramped street and pulsating activity of the old market - wonderful just to wander, and I must say I enjoyed doing it accompanied: made me feel a tad less vulnerable and unconcerned with finding my way out. From there we meandered to the river bank, where bathers washed in the dirty waters of the Hooghly at Mullik Ghat, and then we tiptoed through the colorful (metaphorical and literal) flower market along the shore leading to the cantilevered steel Howrah Bridge. Howrah Bridge is something of a city icon, but the government (local? state? federal?) has short-sightedly banned photography of it, presumably out of some pervasive fear of security breach. I slipped a few surreptitious shots all the same - who can ever enforce these ridiculous provisions? Howrah bridge is, perhaps apocryphally, the busiest bridge in India, and we walked across it, getting good, if hazy, views of the river bank and of burnt red Howrah Station (where I had arrived the prior morning). We then caught a ferry further north to the Kamatuli District, well worth the trip to see the crumbling (really in bad shape, worse than elsewhere) colonial-style buildings built not by the British but by the Bengalis who had enriched themselves under British rule. Now these pretty, historic buildings are all but falling apart, subdivided into rooms occupied by squatters and rent-controlled tenants. Through David, who is trying to acquire a property, I learn that Begal's socialist/Communist predilections have created something of a housing crisis: tenants pay pittance rent and have a right not only to continued occupancy but also to transfer their occupancy rights to others: as a result, building owners do nothing to keep up the properties and are virtually unable to sell them. Deeper into the district are numerous shops, all selling painted clay representations of Hindu gods and goddesses, of varying sizes. This is where Calcuttans come to purchase their god statues for their festivals, and it's a good ongoing business because there are plenty of festivals and the statues or disposable: they're burned and/or tossed in the river at the end. David also tells me that Bengalis are keener on the goddesses than they are on the gods: the image I see most around the shops is of the goddess Kali standing on her husband Shiva, and sticking out her tongue in embarrassment. I can't do the story full justice, but apparently Kali got a bit headstrong and was going to destroy the world, and Shiva stopped her by lying down in her path, knowing that when she would accidentally step on him, she'd come to her senses and realize she'd gotten a little out of control. Or something like that.

In the two-hour break between my programmed activity, I purchased my only domestic flights of this trip: Visakhapatnam to Delhi, via Hyderabad, on Jet Lite Airways (formerly Air Sahara, but recently purchased by Jet Airways). India has seen an influx lately of low-cost carriers, which has made travel through the country relatively easier and certainly cheaper (I still prefer trains on a trip like this, for philosophical reasons I think I may have touched on before). Unfortunately, none of the low-cost players serviced my route, so I was left with a full-fare ticket, but still not terribly expensive (~Rs 8500).

Now the evening fun: a Bengali cooking class. I viewed this, in a way, as the next step in an extended Bengali cooking class I had been taking since 2001. Well, not really: back then, when I was a junior in college, one of my Bengali classmates had let me watch as he made a Bengali meal in the Randolph Court kitchen in Adams House. Back then, and really up until this trip, I didn't exactly know what Bengali meant and certainly not what distinguished Bengali food from that mass we Americans have lumped together as "Indian food." Hint: what we get in the States at "Indian restaurants" is mostly Punjabi and Mughal food. India's a vast regional conglomeration, with local identities certainly older and still rather stronger than the national one (this is a point I am certain to come back to, as it's one of my key learnings from the trip), and it extends to cuisine as well.

OK, you're going to have to indulge me here as I devolve into something of a food blog for a bit (don't forget that my plans for a food blog are older than my plans for this travel blog, and I still maintain that it will someday come to life). Logistics out of the way first: Martin, the other half of Kali Travel Home, escorted me through the pleasant and better-kempt middle class district off the Kalighat metro station in the southern section of the city. We entered the apartment of one of their friends: a vivacious, free-thinking women, mother of two, who in addition to possessing cooking prowess, was before marriage a champion table tennis player. We started with some basic principles of Bengali cooking (I *love* learning about cooking through principals, though I'd probably benefit from some more practice in hands-on technique): there is the typical Hindu distinction between veg and non-veg, though I learn from her that the more orthodox Hindus extent the non-veg characterization to onions and garlic as well; Bengalis use different oil for veg and non-veg: sunflower oil for veg, and mustard oil for non-veg; fish is a key non-veg ingredient, though unlike the coastal regions, they mostly eat river fish; rice is the principal grain (true for most of the south; in the north, it's more often wheat, turned into chapatis, rotis, and parathas); they use whole spices, instead of ground, in their garam masala blend; and their taste mix is spicy with sweet, with green chilis providing the kick and an extra spoonful or two of sugar giving the sweet; and, as we've started to enter the southern zones of India, coconut makes an appearance.

We cook (or, really, she cooks, and I watch, which is basically my choice since I'm rather tired at this point and the rounded Indian pot ("karai") doesn't have handles and I'm none too keen to burn myself. We make a aloo gobhi (potatoes and cauliflower, with no onions and garlic - this is veg), fried aloo pakoras (using refined wheat flower instead of gram, using the moisture from the potatoes to bind), sweet and thick yellow dal with coconut, and, the piece de resistance, river fish curried with onions, garlic, and ginger (fully non-veg here, so we cook in mustard oil, imparting a rich, pungent flavor). I must say that I really like the use of mustard oil, especially with fish. The night before, I had eaten another Bengali fish-mustard dish, behkti paturi, at a Bengali restaurant called Rupasi Bengali. Behkti puri is river fish covered in mustard, wrapped in a banana leaf, and steamed, imparting the full pungency of mustard to the fish. All of the dishes we cook come with a health serving of rice, which she boils and then drains at the very end, while we nosh on pakoras: the rice should be served steaming. A delightful evening and a delightful woman: so nice to be in someone's home, eating home-cooked food, having "modern," intelligent conversations. Highly recommended (and only Rs 700).

And the street food: after the Kati Rolls, I had many other bites here and there. Without a local expert to guide me through, I wasn't able to pick up the Bengali names, so English descriptions will have to suffice: fried cornflower fritters (a little bland and dry - in need of spice and sauce); puffed rice and sprouted beans, mixed with onions and spices and served with a few slices of boiled potatoes (and, best of all, presented in a small pouch made from old newspapers); the ubiquitous puffed fried dough, "puris," filled with vegetable curries (didn't have the chance to try these); countless delicious sweets of various milky, sugary, and coconutty varieties (Bengal is famous for its sweets). Next visit perhaps I'll ask my cooking instructor to take me out of her kitchen and onto the streets for our class.

The last day in Calcutta I took in more of the sights further north: again, sights are central and north, residential is south. Kind of like Delhi. I went first to Mother Teresa's mission, which is still operational after her death 10 years ago. From what I can tell, the poor to whom they administer aid (and minister religion) aren't at that site, but there are prayers going on as well as Mother Teresa's tomb, her old bedroom, and an exhibit about her life to visit. From there, I took a long taxi ride north (on the meter!) to Dakshineswar Temple on the banks of the Hooghly, aptly described by the Lonely Planet as something of a Calcuttan version of Paris's Sacre Couer. It was mobbed with Indian visitors, I think because of the school holidays that were currently taking place, but I managed to make my way in and have a lookabout. Photos again were prohibited, but your correspondent again surreptitiously flouted that requirement. I did comply with the understandable but annoying rule that shoes must be removed: by the end of my day of temple visits, my feet were black, my back was getting sore, and I had handed out more money in shoe-minding "tips" that I ever had before.

The next temple, Bebur Math, was on the other side of the river, and is best arrived at via uncovered ferry boat. I crowded in with the other Bengali holidaymakers and visitors, where we sat cross-legged on the deck for the ride. I was something of a phenomenon to the other riders, and I was shortly thereafter befriended by a chubby (Indians seem to love talking about others' physical appearance) teenage Bengali girl who insisted I walk through the temple with her and her cousins. This is an important caveat to my rule about always turning down advances by Indians who come up to you and seem too eager to help: if they are tourists themselves, then they're probably genuinely interested and not touting you. Or maybe you can just tell from the look in their eyes. Or maybe the rule only applies in Agra and Varanasi. No matter; use your own judgment, but be on guard, pretty much all the time. Anyway, I quickly determined that she was friend. Her English was functional but far from proficient, and she dutifully instructed me to sit in silence on the floor inside the temple as we waited for the opening of the ark that would reveal the shrine to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a 19th Indian spiritual man who preached the unity of all faiths. The temple itself is, according to the sages at Lonely Planet, an attempted admixture of the Hagia Sophia, a Catholic cathedral, and an Indian palace, which was apparently intended to be in keeping with Ramakrishna's unifying message. It was an oddly serene moment, sitting there silently on the temple floor, and I felt a wave that ever-elusive sense of "authenticity," which made me glad I had put myself in the hands of my young Bengali benefactress. When the ark finally did open, there was the usual shoving and clamor to get near the shrine; here my height and my lack of an overwhelming desire to see Ramakrishna up close helped me avoid much unpleasantness.

Outside the temple my relationship with my newfound Bengali friends simultaneously intensified and deteriorated. First, they tried to teach me a few Bengali phrases - an activity I usually prioritize when I travel but have yet to do so hear because of the prevalence of English and also my tendency toward exasperation with regional dialects (I spent 6 weeks in Hong Kong leaning no Cantonese and being ticked off that few people understood Mandarin, a language I had been working all to hard to learn). But, I managed a few giggles with "Aman nam Jonathan" (spelling not verified): My name is Jonathan. The sound of my Bengali utterances must have caught the ear of some of those around me, because I was quickly swarmed by another family (families? Who can tell - families are big and people travel in packs) rife with glad-handing youngsters and at least over-aggressive mother. I was transformed into an object of attention - something I was hoping to avoid - and it almost got out of hand after one of the youngsters asked if I had a candy from my country I could share. My first reaction was no - who travels with American candy? - but then I remembered I had an emergency Cliff Bar in my backpack and I took it out to share with the assembled masses. Whoops: bread line mentality set in and the Cliff Bar was torn to pieces in my hands as everyone scrambled for a bite. You're welcome (that and "thank you" don't think figure quite as prominently in day-to-day discourse here, or so I've been told - I wonder if my constant "please"s and "thank you"s make me come off seeming wonderfully polite or cluelessly naive).

After a couple of photos, which my admirers were more interested in than I was, I separated from the pack and was walking again with just my friend and her family. I thanked her for her hospitality and told her I'd be heading back to the center city for a bit before departing town that night. She seemed crushed and asked me to come with them to her house, then asked me when I'd visit again, then begged me not to forget her, a mantra which her cousin then took up as well. They seemed unwilling to believe me when I said I wouldn't, and, you see, Priyanka, you see, Debarati, I didn't! Our afternoon together is now immortalized on the World Wide Web! Since they told me they didn't have email IDs (er, email addresses), they unfortunately may not be able to discover they have not, in fact, been forgotten.

A boat ride, a stroll, and a taxi ride took me back to the heart of northern Calcutta, where I had two more sights on my itinerary: the Marble Palace and Tagore's House. The Marble Palace was a vast, overindulgent European-style palace built in the mid 19th century by an Indian who had grown wealthy through contacts with the British. It is clearly designed to impress: huge halls adorned with huge mirrors; classical sculpture and painting (including a Rubens and a Murillo, no less) adorning the walls. The whole place has fallen into a state of disrepair, both physically and administratively. The paintings are fading and the paint is peeling, and, stranger still, one had to obtain a "permission letter" before entering from India Tourism or West Bengal Tourism (the two government companies) and then satisfy the demands for baksheesh (tips) coming form just about everyone involved in the operation, from the gatekeeper to the (mandatory - and moderately helpful, though scarcely educated) tour guide. These are your far-too-typical baksheesh seekers who 1) are overly insistent in their demand for money after providing a wholly unneeded service and 2) are never satisfied with what you give them. Me to tour guide: 20, that's all I'm going to give! Me to gatekeeper: I'll give you 50 but only if you let me take a photo (otherwise prohibited). Nope! Only 50!

The situation at Tagore's House was rather more professional, if less spectacular: this collection of rooms in a family mansion was home to Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian poet of the late 19th/early 20th century, and India's first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Worth the visit if only to read some selections from his poetry posted on the walls. Once again, no shoes. Should have worn slip-ons today.

Back in center of town, with a five hours to kill before my train, I was hoping to find some downtime, but to no avail. First, I had a going-away Kati Roll, well worth the wait. Second, I thought I'd stop in at Barista, one of the ubiquitous Starbucks-style coffee shops in Calcutta and in other big Indian cities, for a cup and a spot of relaxation. No luck: I did get a decent latte and was tempted into ordering a brownie sundae (called "dark temptation") but that was in the midst of an overcrowded shop replete with the requisite crammed line and extensive waiting. After that I made my way to the boisterous New Market, no paragon of hassle free shopping ("Hey Mister, you want shawl?). It was closing down for the day, which meant the meat market was less spectacular, but I did get to see an array of skinned animal heads and hanging internal organs -ah, just like being back in Uzbekistan, with its unending stores of sheep heads and lamb entrails! I finally found the spice and tea vendors and bought 300 grams of Darjeeling tea that was cheaper than even I expected - probably means I didn't get very high quality stuff but who can complain when all I paid was Rs 100 (~$2.5o). Good to be in a place where getting ripped off doesn't really hurt the pocketbook - only the pride. And, quality wasn't so much of an issue: I bought the tea mostly so at some future dinner party, after I had boiled it up with some milk and Indian spices, I could pompously declare: "This is masala chai, made from Darjeeling tea that I purchased in Calcutta." Kind of like when I serve the honey my friend brought me from her lakeside summer house in Kyrgyzstan, only that honey is wickedly good.

And so, my Calcutta escapade drew to a close with an Internet session (blog writing as well as surreptitious over-the-shoulder reading of an email being composed by a 20-something Brit seated next to me, in which she confessed to a friend a recent tryst with a Buddhist monk) and a cab ride back to crowded but functional Howrah Station. In all, an urbane and sophisticated three days - a welcome return to the pleasures of city life. I can't tell if I'm overstating how sophisticated and well-to-do Calcutta is - I didn't get to explore the middle class and the posher areas too much - but it was a nice surprise for me to discover this historically rich city to which I'd be delighted, one day, to return.