Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Gearing up for Europe

I'm heading to Europe this summer for paleo research, but I'll have downtime during evenings and weekends. I'd like to do some sightseeing. My interests are in pre-modern historical sites and the outdoors. For the outdoors, I'm specifically interested in places that are good for birding. For the historic sites, I'd be interested in a variety of things, but what I would most like to see is anything relating to Sarmato-Alan history. So far, I've found four of the latter type of places I'm interested in:

I'm going to visit the Louvre while in Paris and heading straight to their steppe nomad art. I'll just avoid the crowds around the Mona Lisa; she doesn't appeal to me anyways.

I'll also be going to the British Museum in London. They have items in their collection, but it doesn't look like anything's on display. Maybe they'll have something tangentially related, though. Even if they don't, they'll have other interesting exhibits.

I'm planning on taking a side trip to Ribchester in England to visit their Roman museum. Ribchester is one of the places Sarmatian auxiliary units were stationed. My trip lines up perfectly with a big celebration they're having with Roman re-enactors and a 3D recreation of what Ribchester looked like when it was a Roman fort.

I'd like to visit a museum or historic site on the Vandal-Alan coalition that invaded Gaul before heading into the Iberian peninsula. Anyone know of a place like that? Or a museum on a broader subject that displays their artifacts? I know there's the Gallo-Roman Museum in Lyon and I could stopover there for a few hours. But I can't tell from their website if they talk about the Vandals and Alans at all in the exhibits.

The places I'm going to are: Paris and Marseille in France; London, Isle of Wight, and Ribchester in Englad; Brussels, Belgium; Basel, Switzerland. I may also stopover in Luxembourg just to cross off another country.
In the fall, I'll be heading back and going to several places in Germany.