Gift of Life’s DonateLife Walk 2020
Peter and I are halfway through our Big Overseas Adventure. We have had a wonderful time and there are many highlights. On top of the list is meeting Scottish cousins and claiming a number of Scottish castles and members of Royalty as ours!
And then there is the history. We can’t believe we have been walking in the footsteps of those who have walked the same streets for hundreds of years. On arrival in Ireland we stayed in a townhouse which was originally built in 1704! We are currently cruising the Danube and each night can’t believe the next day will be any more spectacular and … it is.
I have come across some beautiful libraries while here and if you’ve been following on Facebook there have been some photos. I’ve spoken to librarians in tiny libraries in small towns and marvelled at the grandeur of the National Libraries. It was while at the British Library I felt inspiration for writing creeping back and then … we came across the Austrian National Library. The Austrian National Library is celebrating a birthday this year. It is 650, yes 650 years old! The building of course is stunning and then there is the collection which is on display. I saw excerpts of letters from the 11thcentury and a then a book from 1476 which stopped me in my tracks.
This was a beautiful book but what caught my eye was that the young lady who originally owned the book had written her name in the front. And there I was all those years later looking at it in Vienna! I looked up Bianca hoping she might be somewhere on the internet. Yes she was! She was in fact a Queen of the Romans and Holy Roman Empress due to her marriage to Maximilian l, Holy Roman Emperor.
I do have another library story. It took a 40-minute ferry ride from Oban, an hour and a bit on a bus across the Isle of Mull and another short ferry ride to reach the stunning island of Iona. After wandering around the ancient abbey I went up to the café and while enjoying the biggest scone I had ever seen, a woman approached me and asked if I was a librarian!
She looked familiar and I told her I had worked in a school and public library in Braidwood, near Canberra and other council branches. She is a regular visitor to Australia and her brother and niece live in the next suburb to ours in Canberra and she knows Braidwood from their travels to the coast. I thought maybe this is where we had met.
No, it was on the train from Glasgow to Oban the previous day where I came to her attention. She was sitting near Peter and I and noticed my socks. My socks?
I had on my ‘library due date slip’ socks.
My new friend was a retired school librarian from London and introduced me to her daughter who now lives on Iona. We had a fabulous chat about our love of libraries, books and stationery!
I’m sure I’ll come across many more libraries during the next few weeks.
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