We were already tired of the word camino before we started this camino-- a residual psychic pain from the 800 km we walked on the Camino de Santiago two years ago. A medieval pilgrimage route across northern Spain that arose in the 11th century in honor of the apostle St. James and helped fund the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela is a now popular hiking route for "pilgrims" of all denominations. We had already hiked the major route, the Camino Frances, in its entirety from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela out of a heathen piety for frugal and challenging adventure.
On the whole, it was a wonderful experience, and we had been seduced by the act of traveling on foot. Not only did it prevent the ennui that is endemic to other forms of tourism, it was also cheap! Of course, you have to be willing to get up obscenely early to walk 15 miles before noon in hopes of getting one of the last remaining bunk beds only then to wait in line for the shower behind smelly old people with horrifying foot lesions; and some nights, instead of sleeping, you may lie in bed listening to a chorus of lumberjacks slowly suffocating themselves on their own soul-destroying snores. And after a few days on the camino, even though you found it charming at first, you may start to cringe at the 300th utterance of the phrase, "buen camino, peregrino." But the camino gives one both an immediate sense of purpose and accomplishment, not easy things to come by these days, especially in the height of summer vacation idleness. So it was decided that while we were in Spain this summer, ostensibly working on projects but feeling ever dissolute, we would walk the auxiliary route of the Camino de Santiago across the Pyrenees, the Camino Aragones.
We started from Oleron St. Marie, in the green foothills of the Alps, about 70km from the Spanish border. We hiked in France for two days, seeing only one pilgrim, a toothy Barcelonan named Paco, with whom we shared drinks and conversation in the tiny gray medieval hamlets that broke up the long stretches of green hill pastures and shady forest paths. The first day was wonderful and memorable, mostly because that morning, upon crossing the medieval bridge into the village of Eysus, we were welcomed by a giant white Pyrennean mountain dog, Le Patou.
I have never seen a dog like this in my life--like a snow white Newfoundland, but with the majestic bearing of a lion and the expressive eyes of a chimpanzee. Le Patou, whom we alternatingly named Excelsior, Seltzer, and Dunder, became our guide for the next two hours, even stopping to wait for us when we fell into conversation on the side of the road with a man from Zaragossa. This man was ecstatic to meet us upon learning we were from San Francisco because he was planning a trip to there in the fall but he had heard so many stories about the hills of our fair city (and had, like every other Spaniard I´ve met, seen the movie Bullitt, apparently the SF equivalent of The Wizard of Oz for Kansas) and had a wife who was not keen on walking up hills. After we assured him there were taxis and his wife would survive, he shook my hand, kissed Marissa, said it was settled, he was going to San Francisco, and hoped to see us in October at the Hotel Donatelo. We continued on the road only to find our shepherd waiting for us around the bend.
After about 10k and two towns later, Dunder finally deserted us for a romp in the creek. We were relieved, thinking we had marched off with a Eysusian villager's prized chien. But when we arrived at the Auberge in Bedous that afternoon, we found a brochure with a picture of our dog, titled 'Le Petou'. It read: 'Important Notice to Walkers and Hikers: In the course of your walk, you may encounter the local guarding dogs. These are large white dogs whose task is to guard the flocks.... Keep yor distance: beware of acting in ways that may seem harmless to you-- trying to feed, pet or photograph a 'pastous' (all of which we did). The guarding dogs may interpret this as an attack.' Clearly we had met a pastou in search of a flock, and perhaps one constitutionally unfit to maintain one, given that he responded to our 'threats' with panting affection.
Day two was perhaps the worst hiking day of our lives, though fairly vivid, and in retrospect, pleasant. We ascended the French side of the Pyrenees, a supposedly 35 km hike, all up hill. This would have not been a problem if that is what had happened. But unfortunately, the signs were terribly marked on the French side of the camino, especially in this section what with the dense forest and ever imposing mountains. We ended up getting off-trail at least 5 times that day, once which took us on a route through a militant-looking flock of mountain goats and back to the same town we had departed an hour before.
The day got hotter. The camino kept dumping us onto the highway, which was often shoulderless and, needless to say, curvy. There were signs for long stretches assuring us that the camino in fact followed the highway at this point, so on the highway we stayed. Then somehow we missed the turn-off (as we were later told in Spain, like everyone does) and stayed on the highway until we reached the car tunnel through to Spain not open to pedestrians. A border guard filled our water (which had just run out) and pointed us in the direction of the road to take us to the mountain top border town of Somport just on the Spanish side, our destination. What he didn't tell us was that it was another 8-9 km up a steep mountain. But I suppose we were to learn that anyway. Just as we were nearing the peak, with only a few km left to go, thunder began to rumble and, only minutes afer Marissa had speculated that the trip could have been worse, it started to pour. We arrived in Somport soaked, nearly incoherent, and full of black bile for the French and their "c'est la vie" signage.
Things got much better the next day as we were back on Spanish soil, where the yellow arrows were abundant, even gratuitous, as though Spain were drunk on its own superior sign-making abilities and did not want to forego any sign-placing opportunities-- rock, tree, or idle pilgrim-- to shame France. We hiked down the mountains into the rocky foothills and arrived in Jaca, a handsome ski resort town with a huge pentagonal star-shaped fortress. We ate well in Jaca that night, probing such Aragonese novelties as deep fried hard boiled egg with bechamel, and caviar-coated sheep's milk cheese.
Day four was grueling, hardly any towns, very hot, with a stunning arid landscape reminiscient of northern Arizona. Giant rippled gray sand dunes called 'margas'- the remnants of a shallow sea that had covered Aragon some 25 million years ago. I hadn't gotten much sleep, thanks to a pack of Spanish ladies who snored like wild pigs. Instead I spent the night lying in bed, sharpening my walking stick and dreaming of pilgrim murder. My mood that day seemed to match the environment. We were in a land of ghost towns. Literally. They had been abandoned since the 60s, and had been repopulated with boar and elks. We ended the day in Artieda, which technically was a town, but it hardly seems fair to other towns to call it that. A set of brown medeival buildings clustered high up on a tiny meseta, overlooking a milky turquoise lake in the distance, Artieda could have been charming if only it had life. Aside from the Albergue--the only source for bed or food in town-- the only thing that showed a sign of life was the ancient widow in the abandoned street whose 'buenas tardes' sounded more like a death rattle than a greeting.
It was at this point in the hike that my accumulated blisters had rendered my left foot virtually unusable. The ball of my foot had become an open wound. No bandages would stay on. A strange stroke of bad luck, considering my right foot was more or less intact, as were Marissa's two feet. She had been plagued by debilitating blister on the first Camino and now it was my turn. But Marissa is tough, and we were dead set on Santiago then. I am not tough and this time we didn't really care if we arrived in a town (Puente la Reina) that we had already hiked to a mere two years ago. So we decided the next morning, as I was limping some distance behind Marissa, that the camino would be better if it ended for us that day, in Sanguesa. We hiked/hobbled the last 30km into the rather unimpressive town of Sanguesa, which struck us as a paradise because it had a restaurant, a bar, and a pharmacy. And the next morning we caught a bus to Pamplona and a train from there to San Sebastian, the pearl of the Spanish North, where we healed ourselves beachside by day and by night found redemption in heaping plates of pintxos and a steady stream of rosado.
In 5 days, we had logged about 180 km or 110 miles, a little over 20 miles a day. No Catholic absolution or fancy latin certificates for us this time, but enough exercise to feel like excorcism. Surely we're better people now, right?
July 30, 2009
July 17, 2009
Letter from Madrid, July 17
Dear F.,
We have just come from drinking jars of beer and watching the whores on Calle de la Montera. Say what you will about the world´s oldest institution (one desperately in need of renovation), it's hard to find a more piquant blend of sensations than the taste of cold beer on the palate, the pathos of the downtrodden, and the sight of corroded butt cheeks hanging out of a pair of jean shorts. Grotesque, you say? Well, grant us this one last indulgence, for tonight is our last night in Madrid. And where we´re headed, there won't be such urban spectator sports.
Tomorrow, while Madrid is only beginning to register its hangover, we will be headed for the frontier--first by train to Jaca, Aragonese mountain town at the foot of the Pyrenees. Then hopefully by bus, of whose existence the internet only gives vague and conflicting reports, to the French town of Oleron St. Marie, about 60km across the border. From there the following day, we will begin the Camino Aragones, a 120 mile connector road to the main route of the Camino Frances we hiked two years ago. We aim to do it in 7 days, across mountains, ruins, dense forest, purple sand dunes, and cave churches, arriving in Puente la Reina in the afternoon of the 25th to catch a short bus to Pamplona, where we will eat Navarran pintxos (tapas) from one end of the bar to the other.
But first, before we don our pilgrim's cloak and fill the old calabash with walking brandy, a final reflection on this dissolute city is in order. Consider the question posed, rather melodramatically, by Jose Ortega y Gasset, the fellow whose papers I have been rifling through for the last four weeks, in his first breakthrough work Meditations on Don Quixote: "Good god, what is Spain?!" The same should be asked of Madrid. Why are all these people in the streets at all hours of the day and night, except for those magical hours of nightly stillness during the brightness of day from 2-5, when you could hear a cat yawn? What are they doing in the streets? Ostensibly nothing. There is one street in La Latina that is legendary among M. and me because every night of the week one can see people--families, bachelors, rentiers-- literally standing in the middle of the street-- not drinking, not even leaning, just talking.
Wherever one goes, one is sure to hear talking. A Spanish teacher years ago told me that more than three seconds of silence for Spaniards is unbearably awkward. I don´t believe I've ever heard such a long pause as that in Madrid. And I read this week in a newspaper article in a Fascist organ, Arriba España, from 1944, that Spaniards regard the food and drink at a table really as a garnish for the true feast--conversation. So there you have it-- Spanish sociability--yet another legacy from Francoism.
The national pastime of loitering, which is consummately executed, calls to mind a conversation I had over lunch (in fact, as I recall, it was difficult to eat my meal, given the constant nature of the conversation) with a philologist named Filipe. Filipe, whose professional obligation is to be fascinated with language and its cultural significance, told me one of his favorite idiomatic phrases in Spanish was "Me voy en la calle" (which too literally translates into "I'm going into the street") because only the Spanish people could express such a sentiment as leaving, but to no particular destination, which was equivalent to going out in the street. When I told him that the phrase 'I'm going out' exists an English, he was crestfallen.
But Filipe had all sorts of ideas that expounded to me over lunch. Latin America is a stupid name that comes from 19th century French and Italian cultural imperializing aims adopted by pretentious Venezuelans, which is why it should still be called Hispano-America. Bulgarians are terrible students. And Polish people 'se ahoga en un vaso de agua' ('would drown in a glass of water') brilliantly referring to their life-as-a-constant-crisis mentality. Filipe had things to tell me. But then again almost all Spaniards do.
The flair for pedagogy abounds, as it must in order to give people fodder for constant conversation. Which is why Filipe and his colleague Jorge engaged in a passionate polemic about Spanish ham after I broached the topic, hoping to give myself time to slurp up my heretofore neglected gazpacho. Salamanca vs. Badajoz. Clearly, but what about Granada? Oh, that´s the white pig, totally different breed, stick to the subject. From there, we surveyed fruits and the ideal seasons for eating them. Figs were a subject of much controversy. Finally, after August was settled as the ideal month for fig-eating (despite my revelries during June consumption), we finished the meal with a discussion on the legacy of Stalin in Russian letters. The Russian woman at our table hardly got a word in, as Filipe and Jorge weighed in as adamantly on Uncle Joe as they had on legs of pork. I would have been curious to hear what our Russian friend I. would have said, given that she had told me earlier that day that I bore a striking resemblance to Holden Caufield and/or Tom Sawyer.
If pedagogy fails, there's always gossip. In the library where I spent my days reading old letters and newspaper clippings, a stream of constant gossip spoken in low murmur and occasionally climaxing in a passionate shout could be heard among the library employees, chiefly by a woman who reminded me of a painted candle of the virgin Mary that is slowly melting. If her coworkers ever had to go to the bathroom or take a lunch break, she would quickly fill the silence with a phone call. Sometimes I think the same conversation begun with a coworker would continue on the phone with an entirely different party.
I realize now that I haven´t really told you much about Madrid. But since there is an Indian man in the computer stall next to me laughing like a madman, and I can't be sure he's watching something funny and is not just, in fact, a madman, I'll have to let a single trait speak for the city and its millions in entirety: most bars and cafes in Madrid have dark vermouth-- on tap! They drink it at midday and it is one of the greatest things, aside from my wife, to come into my acquaintance in the last few years.
I´ll drop you a line either on the camino or when we arrive next Saturday in Pamplona.
Yours,
P.
We have just come from drinking jars of beer and watching the whores on Calle de la Montera. Say what you will about the world´s oldest institution (one desperately in need of renovation), it's hard to find a more piquant blend of sensations than the taste of cold beer on the palate, the pathos of the downtrodden, and the sight of corroded butt cheeks hanging out of a pair of jean shorts. Grotesque, you say? Well, grant us this one last indulgence, for tonight is our last night in Madrid. And where we´re headed, there won't be such urban spectator sports.
Tomorrow, while Madrid is only beginning to register its hangover, we will be headed for the frontier--first by train to Jaca, Aragonese mountain town at the foot of the Pyrenees. Then hopefully by bus, of whose existence the internet only gives vague and conflicting reports, to the French town of Oleron St. Marie, about 60km across the border. From there the following day, we will begin the Camino Aragones, a 120 mile connector road to the main route of the Camino Frances we hiked two years ago. We aim to do it in 7 days, across mountains, ruins, dense forest, purple sand dunes, and cave churches, arriving in Puente la Reina in the afternoon of the 25th to catch a short bus to Pamplona, where we will eat Navarran pintxos (tapas) from one end of the bar to the other.
But first, before we don our pilgrim's cloak and fill the old calabash with walking brandy, a final reflection on this dissolute city is in order. Consider the question posed, rather melodramatically, by Jose Ortega y Gasset, the fellow whose papers I have been rifling through for the last four weeks, in his first breakthrough work Meditations on Don Quixote: "Good god, what is Spain?!" The same should be asked of Madrid. Why are all these people in the streets at all hours of the day and night, except for those magical hours of nightly stillness during the brightness of day from 2-5, when you could hear a cat yawn? What are they doing in the streets? Ostensibly nothing. There is one street in La Latina that is legendary among M. and me because every night of the week one can see people--families, bachelors, rentiers-- literally standing in the middle of the street-- not drinking, not even leaning, just talking.
Wherever one goes, one is sure to hear talking. A Spanish teacher years ago told me that more than three seconds of silence for Spaniards is unbearably awkward. I don´t believe I've ever heard such a long pause as that in Madrid. And I read this week in a newspaper article in a Fascist organ, Arriba España, from 1944, that Spaniards regard the food and drink at a table really as a garnish for the true feast--conversation. So there you have it-- Spanish sociability--yet another legacy from Francoism.
The national pastime of loitering, which is consummately executed, calls to mind a conversation I had over lunch (in fact, as I recall, it was difficult to eat my meal, given the constant nature of the conversation) with a philologist named Filipe. Filipe, whose professional obligation is to be fascinated with language and its cultural significance, told me one of his favorite idiomatic phrases in Spanish was "Me voy en la calle" (which too literally translates into "I'm going into the street") because only the Spanish people could express such a sentiment as leaving, but to no particular destination, which was equivalent to going out in the street. When I told him that the phrase 'I'm going out' exists an English, he was crestfallen.
But Filipe had all sorts of ideas that expounded to me over lunch. Latin America is a stupid name that comes from 19th century French and Italian cultural imperializing aims adopted by pretentious Venezuelans, which is why it should still be called Hispano-America. Bulgarians are terrible students. And Polish people 'se ahoga en un vaso de agua' ('would drown in a glass of water') brilliantly referring to their life-as-a-constant-crisis mentality. Filipe had things to tell me. But then again almost all Spaniards do.
The flair for pedagogy abounds, as it must in order to give people fodder for constant conversation. Which is why Filipe and his colleague Jorge engaged in a passionate polemic about Spanish ham after I broached the topic, hoping to give myself time to slurp up my heretofore neglected gazpacho. Salamanca vs. Badajoz. Clearly, but what about Granada? Oh, that´s the white pig, totally different breed, stick to the subject. From there, we surveyed fruits and the ideal seasons for eating them. Figs were a subject of much controversy. Finally, after August was settled as the ideal month for fig-eating (despite my revelries during June consumption), we finished the meal with a discussion on the legacy of Stalin in Russian letters. The Russian woman at our table hardly got a word in, as Filipe and Jorge weighed in as adamantly on Uncle Joe as they had on legs of pork. I would have been curious to hear what our Russian friend I. would have said, given that she had told me earlier that day that I bore a striking resemblance to Holden Caufield and/or Tom Sawyer.
If pedagogy fails, there's always gossip. In the library where I spent my days reading old letters and newspaper clippings, a stream of constant gossip spoken in low murmur and occasionally climaxing in a passionate shout could be heard among the library employees, chiefly by a woman who reminded me of a painted candle of the virgin Mary that is slowly melting. If her coworkers ever had to go to the bathroom or take a lunch break, she would quickly fill the silence with a phone call. Sometimes I think the same conversation begun with a coworker would continue on the phone with an entirely different party.
I realize now that I haven´t really told you much about Madrid. But since there is an Indian man in the computer stall next to me laughing like a madman, and I can't be sure he's watching something funny and is not just, in fact, a madman, I'll have to let a single trait speak for the city and its millions in entirety: most bars and cafes in Madrid have dark vermouth-- on tap! They drink it at midday and it is one of the greatest things, aside from my wife, to come into my acquaintance in the last few years.
I´ll drop you a line either on the camino or when we arrive next Saturday in Pamplona.
Yours,
P.
Letter from Portugal, July 10
Dear F.,
Madrid has been reborn for us, thanks to our well-timed escape to Portugal. Before we left, this city was slowly boiling us alive, like frogs put in a pot of tepid water, unable to perceive the gradual increase in heat until before long their muscles have become lumps of dessicated flesh fit only for forks. Fortunately, our strict regimen of jumping jacks and knee bends had kept our legs primed for just such a death-defying leap-- out of our shit-box room looking out onto a window well of despair, out of our air mattress that was like sleeping on tied logs while floating down the Mississip, out of our borrowed befilthed apartment filled with the ghostlike presence of its tenants, out of a Madrid sizzling with too many bodies, too much dust, and too many words. These are the feverish dream-thoughts that flit across our eyelids as the burnt black landscape of Castile flit across the window of our train.
We awoke in a green land, wet with opportunity, silent before the dawn. We were in Portugal, where Mediterannean meets Atlantic, where Ulysses crashes into Moby Dick, where the sharp blades of Castillian Spanish are swallowed by the Slavic-sounding throats of Portuguese, where the Visigothic garulousness of Spain turns inward upon itself into the melancholic sweetness of the Lusitanians.
From the sation in Lisbon, we proceeded straight to Sintra, a mere 40 minutes away by train, though it feels like a distant land. A Canadian woman of middle age, Yukon-raised, and employee of the Vancouver police department, talked to us on the ride up. She was spending five months traveling all over Europe, two days here, two days there. She was determined to see the Europe that had been denied to her up until now. Reclaiming a lost youth. It became clear talking to her that backpacking loses its charm with age, though she didn´t seem to think so.
Sintra charmed us instantly. First, because on a windy stone road just outside of town we found our hotel-- an 18th century manor house situated amid lush gardens and overlooking the valley. Marissa again deserves credit for her sound online booking skills. She never lets me forget the one time I booked us a room in a pension in Munich with no floor. But what she fails to acknowledge is that what it lacked in flooring it more than made up for in bleary-eyed vagrants and easy access to the strip clubs.
In this tiny town, there is a veritable variety pack of palaces, a flavor for each member of the family: cool ranch moorish fortress, nacho cheezy 19th century Romantic palace, or spicy barbecue 15th century Manueline castle. First on our menu was the latter, King Manuel´s place, who gave his name to the peculiar portuguese 15th century achitectural style 'Manueline'- a Christian appropriation of Muslim design with earthy colors, tiled walls with geometric designs, painted wood ceilings, expansive patios and fountains, and the like. The real highlight was the kitchen--a massive double room with over a dozen stoves and instead of a ceiling, a pair of fifty foot cones with openings at the top to serve as chimneys, which makes the palace look like there are two giant boobs on one end of it. I suppose I´ll have to show you the picture. Later in the afternoon, we visited the Moorish fortress atop the hill. It was in a splendid state of disrepair, thanks mostly to the efforts of a 19th century British architect who modified the ruins to induce the perfect aesthetic experience of the historical sublime.
We recovered at a patio cafe in town, where we doodled on the paper table cloth and discovered the wonders of vinho verde, a young dry white wine from northern Portugal with a hint of carbonation--something you should consider adding to your sparkling drink arsenal. As we drained the last of our bottle and capped our pens, an Austrian woman at an adjacent table who had been peering over our shoulders time to time asked if she could take a picture of our table cloth. When I told her she could have it if she wanted, she became ecstatic, showed all her friends her new acquisition, and assured us our work would have a prominent place in her home. So if you ever find yourself in Salzburg, look up Frau Anita and you can see the grease stains and ink marks of yours truly.
Dinner that night in Sintra was, as I have lately become fond of saying, a revelation. A small bistro called Tulhus, which apparently referred to either the medieval granary upon which the current foundations of the restaurant rest, or the hole in the middle of the floor that lets you peer down into the remains of the medieval granary. Before we even ordered, we were brought a plate of thinly cured ham (like Spanish jamon serrano or Italian prosciutto), two small wheels of soft sheep's cheese, a bowl of olives, a basket of bread, and some packets of garlic butter and tuna paté. This surely would have sated us, but since we felt obliged to order, we asked for fish. We were given a heaping silver platter of whole grilled dorada, trout, and sardines, garnished with enormous green beans and bright yellow potatoes. And of course more vinho verde to wash everything down.
In the name of digestion, we inquired about the famed digestif of Portugal, ginja, a brandy made from a black cherry-like fruit native to Iberia. The fruits are actually still in the bottle and with each little shot, you are treated to a few brandy-soaked cherries waiting thoughtfully at the bottom of your glass. The owner offered us the remainder of his bottle and sent us into the night radiant from within.
On the way home we stumbled across a fashion show in front of King Manuel´s Palace, exhibited by tall horse-like women in absurd garments surrounded by even more absurd-looking people in more banal garments. Marissa took photos of the models and the musical interludes of opera arias and fado ballads, until we were asked to leave because my bobbing yellow melon kept blocking the television cameras.
After enjoying another day and night in Sintra in much the same fashion, we returned to Lisbon, a city beautiful in all its salt-washed decrepitude. It is the antidote capital to Madrid. If Madrid is an fried pig innard dropped in a double shot of espresso, Lisbon is a dose of laudunum stirred into a pot of honey. It seems every building is decaying, their colorful tiles being eaten away in even more sublime fashion than 19th century British architects could have contrived.
The old Arab quarter has small and twisty alleys that rival if not outdo even the Albacyin quarter of Granada, providing barely enough room to squeeze by the grannies sitting on footstools in their doorways, having conversations with their neigbhors five feet across the cobblestones. Even the graffiti in Lisbon is deteriorating. Some alleys harbor random pieces of trash-- a diaper, a broken record, an puddle of pasta and tomato sauce-- as though the inhabitants still flung their chamber pots out the window onto the street.
This sense of disorder, somehow charming (save the diaper), together with the smell of sea air and sun-bleached plazas makes Lisbon feel like a colonial city. And indeed, in post-colonial Portugal, the empire has colonized the metropole. There is a strong African presence, Brasilian music floods the streets, Goan restaurants (which also strangely offer Italian food) abound, even the occasional Macaoan. Lisbon, which had sought its imperial destiny out at sea, the very sea that comes right up to the main 3-walled Plaza do Comercio, now seems to be shaped by the returning tide. It seems like an interesting place to be.
Now, if you´ll excuse me, I have a belly full of callos a la madrileña (tripe in the Madrid style) that apparently wants out. It bids I write not one more word.
-P.
Madrid has been reborn for us, thanks to our well-timed escape to Portugal. Before we left, this city was slowly boiling us alive, like frogs put in a pot of tepid water, unable to perceive the gradual increase in heat until before long their muscles have become lumps of dessicated flesh fit only for forks. Fortunately, our strict regimen of jumping jacks and knee bends had kept our legs primed for just such a death-defying leap-- out of our shit-box room looking out onto a window well of despair, out of our air mattress that was like sleeping on tied logs while floating down the Mississip, out of our borrowed befilthed apartment filled with the ghostlike presence of its tenants, out of a Madrid sizzling with too many bodies, too much dust, and too many words. These are the feverish dream-thoughts that flit across our eyelids as the burnt black landscape of Castile flit across the window of our train.
We awoke in a green land, wet with opportunity, silent before the dawn. We were in Portugal, where Mediterannean meets Atlantic, where Ulysses crashes into Moby Dick, where the sharp blades of Castillian Spanish are swallowed by the Slavic-sounding throats of Portuguese, where the Visigothic garulousness of Spain turns inward upon itself into the melancholic sweetness of the Lusitanians.
From the sation in Lisbon, we proceeded straight to Sintra, a mere 40 minutes away by train, though it feels like a distant land. A Canadian woman of middle age, Yukon-raised, and employee of the Vancouver police department, talked to us on the ride up. She was spending five months traveling all over Europe, two days here, two days there. She was determined to see the Europe that had been denied to her up until now. Reclaiming a lost youth. It became clear talking to her that backpacking loses its charm with age, though she didn´t seem to think so.
Sintra charmed us instantly. First, because on a windy stone road just outside of town we found our hotel-- an 18th century manor house situated amid lush gardens and overlooking the valley. Marissa again deserves credit for her sound online booking skills. She never lets me forget the one time I booked us a room in a pension in Munich with no floor. But what she fails to acknowledge is that what it lacked in flooring it more than made up for in bleary-eyed vagrants and easy access to the strip clubs.
In this tiny town, there is a veritable variety pack of palaces, a flavor for each member of the family: cool ranch moorish fortress, nacho cheezy 19th century Romantic palace, or spicy barbecue 15th century Manueline castle. First on our menu was the latter, King Manuel´s place, who gave his name to the peculiar portuguese 15th century achitectural style 'Manueline'- a Christian appropriation of Muslim design with earthy colors, tiled walls with geometric designs, painted wood ceilings, expansive patios and fountains, and the like. The real highlight was the kitchen--a massive double room with over a dozen stoves and instead of a ceiling, a pair of fifty foot cones with openings at the top to serve as chimneys, which makes the palace look like there are two giant boobs on one end of it. I suppose I´ll have to show you the picture. Later in the afternoon, we visited the Moorish fortress atop the hill. It was in a splendid state of disrepair, thanks mostly to the efforts of a 19th century British architect who modified the ruins to induce the perfect aesthetic experience of the historical sublime.
We recovered at a patio cafe in town, where we doodled on the paper table cloth and discovered the wonders of vinho verde, a young dry white wine from northern Portugal with a hint of carbonation--something you should consider adding to your sparkling drink arsenal. As we drained the last of our bottle and capped our pens, an Austrian woman at an adjacent table who had been peering over our shoulders time to time asked if she could take a picture of our table cloth. When I told her she could have it if she wanted, she became ecstatic, showed all her friends her new acquisition, and assured us our work would have a prominent place in her home. So if you ever find yourself in Salzburg, look up Frau Anita and you can see the grease stains and ink marks of yours truly.
Dinner that night in Sintra was, as I have lately become fond of saying, a revelation. A small bistro called Tulhus, which apparently referred to either the medieval granary upon which the current foundations of the restaurant rest, or the hole in the middle of the floor that lets you peer down into the remains of the medieval granary. Before we even ordered, we were brought a plate of thinly cured ham (like Spanish jamon serrano or Italian prosciutto), two small wheels of soft sheep's cheese, a bowl of olives, a basket of bread, and some packets of garlic butter and tuna paté. This surely would have sated us, but since we felt obliged to order, we asked for fish. We were given a heaping silver platter of whole grilled dorada, trout, and sardines, garnished with enormous green beans and bright yellow potatoes. And of course more vinho verde to wash everything down.
In the name of digestion, we inquired about the famed digestif of Portugal, ginja, a brandy made from a black cherry-like fruit native to Iberia. The fruits are actually still in the bottle and with each little shot, you are treated to a few brandy-soaked cherries waiting thoughtfully at the bottom of your glass. The owner offered us the remainder of his bottle and sent us into the night radiant from within.
On the way home we stumbled across a fashion show in front of King Manuel´s Palace, exhibited by tall horse-like women in absurd garments surrounded by even more absurd-looking people in more banal garments. Marissa took photos of the models and the musical interludes of opera arias and fado ballads, until we were asked to leave because my bobbing yellow melon kept blocking the television cameras.
After enjoying another day and night in Sintra in much the same fashion, we returned to Lisbon, a city beautiful in all its salt-washed decrepitude. It is the antidote capital to Madrid. If Madrid is an fried pig innard dropped in a double shot of espresso, Lisbon is a dose of laudunum stirred into a pot of honey. It seems every building is decaying, their colorful tiles being eaten away in even more sublime fashion than 19th century British architects could have contrived.
The old Arab quarter has small and twisty alleys that rival if not outdo even the Albacyin quarter of Granada, providing barely enough room to squeeze by the grannies sitting on footstools in their doorways, having conversations with their neigbhors five feet across the cobblestones. Even the graffiti in Lisbon is deteriorating. Some alleys harbor random pieces of trash-- a diaper, a broken record, an puddle of pasta and tomato sauce-- as though the inhabitants still flung their chamber pots out the window onto the street.
This sense of disorder, somehow charming (save the diaper), together with the smell of sea air and sun-bleached plazas makes Lisbon feel like a colonial city. And indeed, in post-colonial Portugal, the empire has colonized the metropole. There is a strong African presence, Brasilian music floods the streets, Goan restaurants (which also strangely offer Italian food) abound, even the occasional Macaoan. Lisbon, which had sought its imperial destiny out at sea, the very sea that comes right up to the main 3-walled Plaza do Comercio, now seems to be shaped by the returning tide. It seems like an interesting place to be.
Now, if you´ll excuse me, I have a belly full of callos a la madrileña (tripe in the Madrid style) that apparently wants out. It bids I write not one more word.
-P.
Letter from Madrid, July 1
Dear F.,
Samiluisa and I have colonized Madrid. These madrileños believe we are gods, given our uncanny resemblance to the twin beasts of heaven whose coming was foretold in their book of myths. But I think all the reverence is going to Samiluisa´s head. She´s falling under ever greater delusions of grandeur and yesterday she coerced a Spanish hidalgo to lick the ´tween parts of her toes. Today at breakfast she refused to sit on anything less than 33 velvet cushions stolen from Phillip II´s palace at El Escorial and she stirred her cafe con leche with the finger bone relic of Saint Jeronimo.
I´m not sure how much longer the natives will acquiesce to her wishes. Fortunately, there are many riches in Madrid-- the fruits of a similar historical encounter some centuries ago, I´m told-- so our fall from divinity is not yet imminent.
But, as for me, well, my disillusionment has come swiftly. It happened yesterday, when Samiluisa, in a fit of vanity, mistook my own godly countenance for one of the brutish native folk´s and shouted at me in a most appalling manner to attend to her. To which I replied, perhaps rashly, `No, I will not carry your golden chalice filled with this morning´s evacuations to dump out the window upon these simple life-loving people!´
Since then, I´ve have fled her narccistic tirades for the solace of Spanish letters. I have been granted asylum at the Fundacion Jose Ortega y Gasset, a most congenial institution housed in private home with ample gardens in the haute bourgeois Madrid neighborhood of Salamanca.
My keeper, one Sra. Uña, is a helpful grandmotherly sort, reassuringly dowdy yet no stranger to the afternoon beer. Not only does she track down documents, she has insisted that we researchers crash multiple receptions at the Fundacion to partake in free food and drink. The archives of Don Pepe Ortega are rich, but I hope not too rich, with sources for me to scrutinize. Yesterday I spent the day reading through Ortega´s correspondence with his German friend and philologue Ernst Robert Curtius. I find reading the letters of dead people a most rewarding endeavor, even with someone as lame as Curtius.
When Samiluisa does not bid me carry her feces, we remain on the best of terms and have spent the better part of the week strolling the gnarled and pulsating streets of Madrid, day and night. Madrid is a fine walking city, small in geographical size, packed with food, people, and the visible architectural strata of many centuries of trying to look powerful. Yet there are a few caveats to this claim, which seem to increase with the temperature. There are construction projects all over the city, trying to stimulate the economy, and at the very least, grinding up filth into the atmosphere. You would think the city is recovering from a recent carpet bombing attack.
We are staying in a room in R.´s old apartment on the plaza Tirso de Molina, in the Lavapies neighborhood, formerly the district of late 19th century urban misery, now with 21st century poor Chinese, Arabic, and African immigrants but not much misery. The location is ideal, with two outdoor cafe-bars on the plaza, one for our morning coffee and baguette with tomato, the other for our 1 am nightcap cerveza. The universe is in order.
We´ve settled more or less into a routine that is built around the archives for me and itinerant doodling for S. during the day, segueing into running, drinking, eating, eating, and more drinking at night, concluded with a nice sweaty read before bed in our shitbox room on a comically awful air mattress.
This morning we went on a long run in the parque de buen retiro (good rest park)- the much need lungs of Madrid, which, unfortunately, are filled with dust. Which means you can enjoy the post-run ritual of blowing black snot out your nose. We did.
Tomorrow we´re visiting the flee market called el Rastro (the trail), thus named for the trail of blood that the slaughtered animals used to leave on their cartride back from the abbatoir. Now I fear the the slaughtered animals have been replaced by pig-faced tourists, whose bulging fanny packs perhaps give off the same scent of fresh blood that once stained the cobblestones.
Yours,
P.
Samiluisa and I have colonized Madrid. These madrileños believe we are gods, given our uncanny resemblance to the twin beasts of heaven whose coming was foretold in their book of myths. But I think all the reverence is going to Samiluisa´s head. She´s falling under ever greater delusions of grandeur and yesterday she coerced a Spanish hidalgo to lick the ´tween parts of her toes. Today at breakfast she refused to sit on anything less than 33 velvet cushions stolen from Phillip II´s palace at El Escorial and she stirred her cafe con leche with the finger bone relic of Saint Jeronimo.
I´m not sure how much longer the natives will acquiesce to her wishes. Fortunately, there are many riches in Madrid-- the fruits of a similar historical encounter some centuries ago, I´m told-- so our fall from divinity is not yet imminent.
But, as for me, well, my disillusionment has come swiftly. It happened yesterday, when Samiluisa, in a fit of vanity, mistook my own godly countenance for one of the brutish native folk´s and shouted at me in a most appalling manner to attend to her. To which I replied, perhaps rashly, `No, I will not carry your golden chalice filled with this morning´s evacuations to dump out the window upon these simple life-loving people!´
Since then, I´ve have fled her narccistic tirades for the solace of Spanish letters. I have been granted asylum at the Fundacion Jose Ortega y Gasset, a most congenial institution housed in private home with ample gardens in the haute bourgeois Madrid neighborhood of Salamanca.
My keeper, one Sra. Uña, is a helpful grandmotherly sort, reassuringly dowdy yet no stranger to the afternoon beer. Not only does she track down documents, she has insisted that we researchers crash multiple receptions at the Fundacion to partake in free food and drink. The archives of Don Pepe Ortega are rich, but I hope not too rich, with sources for me to scrutinize. Yesterday I spent the day reading through Ortega´s correspondence with his German friend and philologue Ernst Robert Curtius. I find reading the letters of dead people a most rewarding endeavor, even with someone as lame as Curtius.
When Samiluisa does not bid me carry her feces, we remain on the best of terms and have spent the better part of the week strolling the gnarled and pulsating streets of Madrid, day and night. Madrid is a fine walking city, small in geographical size, packed with food, people, and the visible architectural strata of many centuries of trying to look powerful. Yet there are a few caveats to this claim, which seem to increase with the temperature. There are construction projects all over the city, trying to stimulate the economy, and at the very least, grinding up filth into the atmosphere. You would think the city is recovering from a recent carpet bombing attack.
We are staying in a room in R.´s old apartment on the plaza Tirso de Molina, in the Lavapies neighborhood, formerly the district of late 19th century urban misery, now with 21st century poor Chinese, Arabic, and African immigrants but not much misery. The location is ideal, with two outdoor cafe-bars on the plaza, one for our morning coffee and baguette with tomato, the other for our 1 am nightcap cerveza. The universe is in order.
We´ve settled more or less into a routine that is built around the archives for me and itinerant doodling for S. during the day, segueing into running, drinking, eating, eating, and more drinking at night, concluded with a nice sweaty read before bed in our shitbox room on a comically awful air mattress.
This morning we went on a long run in the parque de buen retiro (good rest park)- the much need lungs of Madrid, which, unfortunately, are filled with dust. Which means you can enjoy the post-run ritual of blowing black snot out your nose. We did.
Tomorrow we´re visiting the flee market called el Rastro (the trail), thus named for the trail of blood that the slaughtered animals used to leave on their cartride back from the abbatoir. Now I fear the the slaughtered animals have been replaced by pig-faced tourists, whose bulging fanny packs perhaps give off the same scent of fresh blood that once stained the cobblestones.
Yours,
P.
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