In effect, The Beatles are the benchmark for pop music. They are a veritable icon, essential to any understanding of 20th-century culture. But, we won’t labour the point, as all the details can be found in Wikipedia and music history books. What we are going to reveal in this post, however, is a list of the places associated with the history of the group’s members during their Liverpool years or where they drew inspiration for some of their songs. The quartet made up of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are still a magnet for the new generations and in Liverpool the story repeats itself ad infinitum.

The 10 “Beatles Points”

1. The Beatles Story

A good way of immersing yourself in the Beatlesque universe is to visit The Beatles Story Museum, in the Albert Docks industrial buildings. We went there and were stunned by all the memorabilia we came across relating to the Fab Four. The museum even hosts workshops for children. It is also the starting point for The Magical Mystery Tour, a two-hour bus tour around places associated with the group.

2. The Cavern

Rebuilt brick by brick after its demolition in 1973 is the famous basement on Mathew Street known as The Cavern. It was here that they played for the first time and where they were discovered by the music manager, Brian Epstein. This venue is a must-visit, whether you’re a fan of The Beatles or not. We urge you to go on a Thursday when countless Beatles imitation bands play. Mathew Street is currently abuzz with pubs and clubs where you can listen to live music, notably The Grapes, the pub where they used to meet before their performances.

3. Penny Lane

Lennon and McCartney lived very near this alley in the suburbs and they would walk down Penny Lane daily on their way to school. The barber shop, fish & chips shop and bank that feature in the song are still there. Some years ago, there was a move to change the name of the street, as Penny Lane was a character who had made his money from slavery. However, in the end, the power of Beatlesque support led the proponents to abandon their initiative.

4. Strawberry Fields

Strawberry Fields was one of the most groundbreaking singles in the Beatles’ career. The song is dedicated to the Strawberry Field orphanage which the Salvation Army ran in Beaconsfield Road, near Lennon’s home in Menlove Avenue. Only the metal gate and the gardens they used to play in still survive. The brick walls surrounding the gardens are painted with graffiti in memory of John.

5. St. Peter’s Parish Church

The Quarrymen was John Lennon’s first band and they used to rehearse in St. Peter’s Parish Church, in the Woolton district. It was there that in 1957 Lennon and McCartney first met. The church graveyard has a headstone with an inscription mentioning Eleanor Rigby, the protagonist of one of the Beatles’ songs. John lived very near there, in an avenue lined with semi-detached houses.

6. Oxford Street Maternity Hospital

Still standing here is the building which once housed the maternity hospital where John Lennon was born on 9 October 1940. He is said to have been born in the middle of an air raid during the Second World War. His mother was attended by his aunt, Mimi, who was appointed John’s guardian.

7. Liverpool College of Art

In 1957, Lennon took up studies at the Liverpool College of Art on Hope Street where he met Stu Sutcliffe, who became one of the Beatles soon afterwards. Some years later in Hamburg he left the group to pursue his career as a painter and lived with the German photographer, Astrid Kirchherr. Stuart died in 1962. Paul and George studied at the neighbouring Liverpool Institute.

8. Jacaranda

The walls of this pub on Slater Street are decorated with paintings by Lennon and Sutcliffe. Its owner at the time, Allan Williams, offered them the opportunity to travel to Hamburg and play on a daily basis in the Kaiserkeller Club. This was the period of the Beat Brothers, with Pete Best, who became The Beatles’ original drummer, to be subsequently replaced by Ringo Starr.

9. The Casbah Club

This venue is where it all started. Before their success at The Cavern with The Beatles, John Lennon had performed live at the Casbah with his first group, The Quarrymen, in 1959. This club, located some 6 kilometres from downtown Liverpool, was originally a cellar owned by Mona Best, the mother of Pete Best. This was also where Ringo Starr’s first band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, played. The Beatles were the last group to set foot on its stage, in 1962.

10. Quarry Bank Grammar School

John Lennon first entered this school on Harthill Road at the age of seven. Here, together with his childhood friend, Pete Shotton, he founded The Quarrymen, a group grounded in the teddy boy look which played rock’n’roll, the music that had stirred up a revolution among youths across the globe.

No one questions the fact that The Beatles were one of the greatest bands in the history of rock, and their association with Liverpool is irrefutable. Don’t wait to give yourself over to Beatlemania – check out our flights to Liverpool here.

Text by Los Viajes de ISABELYLUIS

Images by The Beatles Story, The Cavern, Wikipedia Commons

John Waters shot to fame by directing outlandish, low-budget movies such as Pink Flamingos (1972) which glorify violence, sexual perversion and bad taste. He uses provocation as a weapon targeting the good-mannered hypocrisy, iron-fisted morals and religious values of the American way of life. However, few realise that the American dandy with a pencil moustache has also designed large-format collages and photomontages. He has chosen 40 of these pieces – including storyboards from his movies – for the exhibition, How Much Can You Take?, which runs until 1 November at the acclaimed Kunsthaus Zürich, coinciding with the murals by Joan Miró on display there until the end of January.

Paradoxically, the multifaceted filmmaker has other traits in common with Zürich, such as class, a sense of order and extreme cleanliness. Deep down, Waters also has a tenderness and fetishism that suggests he would delight in the bric-a-brac on sale in downtown Teddy’s Souvenir Shop, offering the music boxes, Swiss army knives, cowbells and cuckoo clocks so typical of Switzerland’s bucolic image. That same cliché embodied by Heidi, the children’s character created by the writer, Johanna Spyri who, like the poet, Gottfried Keller, is buried in the leafy park of Sihlfeld Cemetery, the first in Europe to incorporate a crematory. Waters would surely relish a visit there, both for his fascination for the macabre and his professed love of literature, which of late he is more engaged in than cinema. Hence, we might also recommend he visit Fluntern Cemetery, site of the beautiful tomb of James Joyce, who in Zürich gave himself over to a licentious alcoholism while writing much of Ulysses, a diatribe against Church and State. Another writer who also passed away in this city was the German author of The Magic Mountain, immortalised in the Thomas Mann Archives, a small museum housed in the ETH Zürich. This State university has also been graced by no fewer than twenty Nobel prizewinners, notably the scientist Albert Einstein, as much a rebel against conventional mores as Waters. Located in the same university is the spectacular Law Faculty Library, designed by the architect, Santiago Calatrava. However, the maker of morbid films would probably prefer to read in the old abbey housing the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, the city’s main library.

The filmmaker’s more iconoclastic side would relish the recollection that Zürich was the cradle of Dadaism, the anarchic “anti-art” so critical of middle-class society in World War I. That was when the artistic couple, Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball, founded the celebrated Cabaret Voltaire in Niederdorf’s Old Town. Together with Tristan Tzara, the locale broke with all established canons. The building gradually became derelict until it was occupied in 2001 by a group of artivists and used to stage neo-Dadaist-style performances before vast crowds of Zurichers. After their eviction, the City Council overturned its original plan to demolish the building, which was then refurbished as an alternative cultural centre. Also located in the Old Town is the unusual Musée Visionnaire, where visitors choose what they want to see – and are encouraged to critique it – from a catalogue of Art Brut, a movement also known as Outsider Art – the work of amateurs, the mentally disabled and any creator alien to institutions and the boundaries set by official culture. In short, characters who would not be out of place among the Dreamlanders, counter-culture misfits and such regular collaborators of Waters as Mink Stole or Divine.

The young Waters who was so enthralled by gruesome accidents and bloodthirsty tales would also take a fancy to the Moulangenmuseum, a museum featuring wax representations of body parts twisted by disfiguring diseases, including exhibits in the University Hospital’s medical teaching collection dating from 1917. And, lured by the repulsive, he might also look up the dark oeuvre, biomechanical aesthetic and highly charged erotic sense of another illustrious native of Zürich who designed the visual effects for the movie, Alien – the recently deceased H.R. Giger. Although fans of the illustrator and sculptor have to choose between a visit to his comprehensive museum in the walled town of Gruyères (nearly two hours south of Zürich), and the stunning Giger Bar in his native Chur (about an hour’s drive from Zürich), situated, strangely enough, in the same land that inspired the pastoral Heidi.

To wind up this walk on the dark side, nothing better than supper at Blindekuh Zurich, the world’s first restaurant where diners eat in the pitch black. Fortunately, Waters is not the chef, so you needn’t worry about being served what Divine ate in Pink Flamingos. I assume you get my drift but, just to make sure, before you take the plunge you should go to a quality chocolaterie like Sprüngli.

In any event, remember that the Waters exhibition only lasts for a few more weeks, so get your tickets here!

Text by Carlos G. Vela para ISABELYLUIS Comunicación

Images by David Shankbone, Roland zh, Juerg Peter Hug, Absinthe, Edsel Little

By Tensi Sánchez from actitudesmgz.com

If Grimm brothers continue writing fairy tales, they might dedicate a special mention for the moors which hosts the enchanted city of Hanover , the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony; a city that has been rebuilt with the passing of time, but today it still retains that magical air so typical of small German towns.

The eclectic style of the city is present at every step, the center of the city called Stadtmitte has the peculiarCentral Station – Haupbtbahnhof , a key point for connecting for surrounding area trains and focal point of the life of the Germans, because in its interior there is a large underground shopping area full of exotic restaurants and many shops that extend to Kröpcke station , an amazing shopping gallery beneath the streets of Hanover. It is definitely the perfect place to eat very economically, do not hesitate to try the gastronomic variety Back Factory : the famous pretzel, the wide variety of snacks or sweets Sedans, plus in this shopping area you can visit its unusual shops and store underground for boys and girls One Green Elephant .

In the center of the city, we can find several commercial galleries such as Ernst-August- Galeri or Galeria Kaufhof leading the most exclusive streets of the German city, full of shops and fancy restaurants. Among downtown streets, you can find an exquisite women fashion store known as Zöe where you’ll discover the womenswear collections not suitable for all pockets!. You should not miss the stock shop T•k•maxx where you will access to large firms for men, women and children at unbelievable prices.

Around Kröpcke, we discover Hussel Chocolates, a real chocolate heaven, where we can choose from a wide variety of chocolates in all flavors: pralines, truffles, chocolate with orange … Ideal for gourmands!. Very close to Hussel, we find Butlers, a design shop, full of these curious objects that make our lives more fun: mugs, magnets, posters and postcards …

Not only can you enjoy the wonders that Hanover offers during the day, but at night the city dresses in fashion for a few drinks in the best pubs. To begin the evening, a move to to taste Loretta’s Biergarten’sdishes, as, for instance, their delicious goat cheese wrapped in bacon or tagliatelle with venison, together with an authentic German beer in their spectacular garden terrace. After dinner and if you feel like a night out, the best option is to go to the trendiest nightclub in Hanover, Osho Disco, three floors where you can dance to the latest music.

A few blocks southwest lies the old city, Altstadt, undoubtedly the favorite place to find small boutiques, antique shops and enticing restaurants. In the surroundings of the Market Church, we may find made-in-Hannover small boutiques as the women’s clothing store Spitzl Anette, Marie Jo’s boutique or BBP Prêt à Porter’s designs .

Continuing along Knochenhauerstraße, we discover a piece of Mallorca in Hanover. Here it is Ein Stück Mallorca, a jeweler with pieces made of gold and silver with inlaid minerals, authentic artwork. Not only we have a “little piece” of Mallorca but also very close to this street you can find a small bakery in true French style, we talk about Glücksmoment, a very intimate and welcoming place to find endless varieties of muffins, cupcakes, chocolates, French macaroons … Exquisite!

On Kramerstraße street, there is a wide variety of small shops and antiquarians as Antiquitäten or Jordan, where you may find used books, pieces of glassware, pottery jars, vintage posters and the most diverse objects from the past, certainly the most charming part of the city immersed in Old Germany’s classic buildings.

Continuing through old town streets we find Balhofplatz, a wide and centenary square, the idyllic place to relax and have a nice cup of tea on the terrace of Tee Flubehen or enjoy a lovely German meal in the very authentic Restaurant Silver & Gold, both adjacent and near Leine river, on whose banks are held old Town trail on Saturdays.

One of the most beautiful landscapes you will see in Hanover is Maschsee Lake, a huge artificial lake. Take a sunset stroll along the bank of the lake to Yachtschule Hanover landing, where you can rent boats to sail or dinner amidst one of the best and most incredible views of the city.

To round off this German experience, do not miss the opportunity to visit the Gardens Herrenhausen, just minutes from the city center by public transport. You’ll come to one of the greatest and beautiful Baroque gardens in Germany. Next to them is located the English-style botanical garden Berggarten.

To see the video click this link.

Do not wait to book Vueling

¡We love Hanover!

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