Family Reunion

Certain members of my family have a tendency to show up in the oddest places. Jennie and I once met my parents in the Vienna airport, the beginning of a trip to a wedding in Eastern Hungary. Along with Josh, we met my parents in Kathmandu last August after spending some time together in Dhaka and Darjeeling, and last week we appeared on their Durham-bound train at Newcastle where we had to stand with all the long-faced rugby fans returning from the Scotland-England match.

Some families.

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My sister's trip to England overlapped by a day and a half with my parents', giving us the opportunity to enjoy a nice Sunday together. We had a cooked English breakfast, went to St Nic's church (photo below), and then headed to Durham's castle for a tour.


Josh and I had briefly wandered in the castle, but it's technically reserved for the students who live there (!!) during term. The castle was built around the same time as the cathedral in the 11th century, and it has some amazing Romanesque/Norman features, including a lovely little chapel, a few fantastically carved arches, and a great hall where students still dine. It doesn't look as impressive from the outside as it did a thousand years ago, though, due to the removal of a few stories of castle tower and the addition of a city and a few hundred trees.
The castle housed the Prince Bishops of Durham, an appointment begun in the late 11th century giving the ruler of Durham the right to exercise authority on the king's behalf in the remote and unruly North of England. A Prince Bishop was head of both municipal and ecclesiastic bodies (both the church and the state) and had the right to tax people, mint coins, raise an army, behead wives (not true, that last one, just checking to see if you were still reading), etc. When he wasn't busy finding new wives and starting a new church, Henry VIII greatly reduced the authority of the Prince Bishops in the 1500's, although it wasn't until the 19th century that the position was officially abolished and remnants of the system even remained in English law until the 1970's! The university was founded in the 19th century, and the castle became the home of its first college.
Aside from the funhouse-esque Black Stairway (settling has made each stair slant its own direction), our favorite part of the castle was this room down a back stairway. It was actually sealed up and rediscovered fairly recently. They aren't sure if it's a Norman chapel or an emergency castle exit, but the carvings are fantastic. The depictions of monsters and hunt scenes on the column capitals look animalist and pagan, not at all what you'd expect of a Norman chapel. While the cathedral is simply impressive in its mass and the castle has its moments, this little chapel felt like the oldest thing I've seen in Durham.
We ended the day by seeing Jennie off on a train to London. My parents spent the rest of their week taking us out for pub food and Thai, visiting York, and driving up the Northumbrian coast, including Berwick-upon-Tweed, Alnwick and Bamburgh Castle, before heading off by train themselves, this time to a few days in Edinburgh before flying back the States. Yup, I like family reunions.