First report

What an incredible trip!

I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the week, but we really packed a LOT into it. We didn’t stay any one place long, but I got a feel for southern Spain and a nice overview of France.

Let’s see, maybe just a few highlights of the trip:

-the food—of course! Seafood in the seaside cities of Cádiz (southern Spain) and La Rochelle (southern France), crepes in Paris, and so much more, most often eaten at outside cafés/restaurants in city squares or little side streets.

-pasos in Córdoba and Sevilla—amazing (These are the Catholic processions of robed penitents and statues on huge, heavy floats.)

-the Prado—I haven’t managed to make it all the way through yet

-the Mezquita in Córdoba—I’ve seen photos of it for years, but they don’t begin to do it justice

-sitting in a sidewalk café and simultaneously hearing: the chatter of other patrons primarily in French, but also Spanish and British English; the piano player whistling softly to himself while playing a variety of tunes; the distinctive wail of European emergency vehicles; and the bells of Notre Dame across the street.

-driving through the rolling green hills of French countryside with fields of bright yellow mustard flowers, vineyards, and wooded tracts on either side of the toll road—beautiful

-thousand-year-old cathedrals and even older Roman ruins (e.g., sections of an amphitheater and an aqueduct) alongside electric tram tracks and modern businesses

-a French military decoration ceremony in a town square, complete with singing/marching army units and a band that included French bagpipes

Oh, it’s hard to stop—there was SOOO much! Some of you lucky ones will get to see a few of the approximately 3 million photos I took.

Most of all, though, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to spend so much time with G. He’s every bit as much the charming, thoughtful, generous host and I’m really glad I got to meet Carina; she’s a lovely young woman. Both of them worked hard to make this a wonderful trip for me.

Being a busy tourist is hard work, though, and last night’s all-night bus trip messed with my sleep, so I’m off to bed.

Offline for a road trip

We leave Saturday morning for our whirlwind tour of southern Spain and France. G and Carina have been busy working out the particulars and, I must say, G (aka “Mr.Spontaneous”) seems to have met his match: Carina has prepared an Excel spreadsheet setting out the schedule for each day, including transportation details, hotels, costs,restaurants, etc.!

We’re going to be doing something like 7 cities in 7 days, so I’ll get a chance to get an overview of different regions and places. We’ll travel by bus, plane, train, and rental car.

I haven’t ever been to a country where I didn't have at least rudimentary language skills, so this is going to be an adventure. Guess I'd better finish making those flashcards to study during the bus and train trips. I at least need to be able to say "please", "thank you", and "where's a bathroom?" in French.

G and I start out going down to Córdoba, where Carina lives. We’ll all spend Palm Sunday in Sevilla and I think they planned it so we can see one of the processions. Then we head to Cádiz on Monday, where G and I will explore while Carina has a job interview.

Tuesday morning we take the train to Paris and try to pack in as many tourist activities as possible before picking up a car Thursday afternoon and heading down to Bordeaux, stopping at a few towns en route. Then it’s a bus ride back to Madrid on Easter.

Whew!

A demanding schedule? Oh, yeah. A challenge trying to keep up with the youngsters? Definitely. But I can hardly wait—it’s going to be quite an experience! :D

P. S. As you may have already guessed, I won’t be online during the trip, so it’ll be after Easter before I can post anything about it.

Intercambios

People are just generally interesting anyway, but meeting people in another country who speak another language is fun, educational, and a great way to start making connections…if, of course, I were going to be here longer.

In Spanish the word is “intercambio”. “Cambio” is “change” in English, so it means “interchange” or “exchange”.

Remember the old “pen pal” system? This is the updated version. You connect online and can choose to email each other, chat via Messenger-type formats, talk via Skype (I suspect currently the most common), meet for a face-to-face (generally considered the best, if you're able to manage it), or any combination of the above. The idea is that you write or speak half the time in your native language and half the time in the other person’s language, sharing both teaching and learning.

I began this round of intercambios by email with Mari Carmen, starting about a month ago. She’s in her early-30’s, works as an IT tech, and enjoys hiking with her dog. Antonio is a 66-year-old retired schoolteacher who is learning to play the guitar, and Carmina and Alfredo are a married couple in their late 40’s. She’s a high school sewing teacher who clearly enjoys working with teenagers (now that’s a gift!) and he’s a government accountant.

There are a lot of people here who want to practice their English with a native speaker, which makes for a target-rich environment for me and also, I realized, turns me into a relatively rare and sought-after commodity—an odd position to be in, let me tell you. In fact, a couple of hours after I put up a notice on a local site, I had to cancel it and turn away several other people who responded because I simply don’t have enough time to meet with everyone.

Anyway, the appointments have gotten me to different places around the city and given me the opportunity to meet some interesting people (mmm, some more interesting than others) as well as get in some practice in Castellano (that’s Spanish for what we call Spanish). Not bad, huh?

Trip to Basque country

G and I took a weekend trip up to San Sebastián, called Donostia in Basque. It’s in northern Spain situated around the Bay of La Concha on the southern edge of the much larger Bay of Biscay. It was a 6-hour bus ride (including 2 or 3 stops at towns en route) to get there and the weather was gorgeous: sunny and 70 with a light breeze. We stayed in a hotel on the side of one of the hills on the outskirts of town and G tried to walk my feet off both days.

Bicycles and motos abound
One of the first things I noticed about Donostia was the bicycle lanes. The city is 23 sq miles and a good part of it is flat. The majority of the streets are narrow and one-way with well-marked (sometimes including with waist-high pillars) and frequently used bicycle lanes. Along some of the main thoroughfares there are separate wide, paved bicycle and walking paths. We saw a few hardy souls struggling up the steep, winding roads that snake around the hills surrounding the bay, but most cyclists stuck to the level areas with their groceries, purses, etc. in baskets on the handlebars. And small motorcycles and scooters? They were everywhere! There were block after block of them parked side by side.

The bay(s) are “cute”
The bay (or bays, depending on how you look at them) were much smaller than I had anticipated, but they have great sandy beaches and a fabulous, wide, 2-mile long promenade bordering them. Everybody and his cousin saunters along the promenade, anchored at one end by a small park-like area with the “Comb of the Winds” sculptures placed on rocky outcroppings and at the other end with “Old Town”.

Apparently some of the hardy Basque men swim across the bay every day of the year, including during the cold, snowy winters. OK, I’m impressed.

Strolling pairs of older women are ubiquitous
An unusually high percentage of the population must be older (60’s, 70’s, and above?) women because they were everywhere, dressed in hose, skirt/jacket suits, jewelry, etc. and strolling two-by-two. (I think we saw a lone woman once; never a set of three.) I began to wish I had one of those little counters you carry in your hand (like the door person at Costco has) to keep track of their numbers.

Pintxos are great!
Whoever came up with the idea of pintxos was a genius! (Pronounced peen chose) I don’t know how many little bars there are, but in the older part of town, there are several per block, with patrons spilling out into the street. Each one has a long counter jammed with plates piled high with different types of beautifully presented pintxos, which can be just about anything—slices of baguette with mounds of creamy combinations of seafood and/or vegetables; slices of asparagus paté topped with dots of sour cream (?) and stuffed, sliced olives; pickled peppers; octopus; tuna-stuffed red peppers on a slice of baguette; white asparagus wrapped in a paper-thin slice of jamon and drizzled with mustard sauce; and much, much more. Each one is sized for perhaps 2-4 mouthfuls.

We’d take a dinner-sized plate, select 3 or 4 to share (Believe me, it’s really hard to chose!) and order our drinks (usually a naturally-brewed hard cider, beer, or wine), then find a place to sit or stand. A couple of times he ordered hot pintxos, such as a flaky pastry stuffed with wild mushrooms or foie gras on a baguette slice, each topped with a savory wine sauce. (I’d never had foie until then. G didn’t tell me what it was before I took a bite, either, so I wouldn’t have any preconceptions.)

Apparently the way it works is that after leisurely savoring one bar’s offerings, you wander along to another bar and repeat the process. Nice. Very, very nice.

And “home” again
It was time to return to Madrid before we were ready to leave, of course. However, G got a lot of work done on his laptop en route back (nice to have WiFi on the bus) while I alternately read a book and dozed. We were both a little pink from the sun, but what an excellent weekend!

Wow, that was quick!

Well, I finally got my napolitana de chocolate from La Mallorquina (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mallorquina). I had actually been a little afraid I’d be disappointed, but it was every bit as decadently rich and flaky and gooey-chocolately as I remembered…mmmmmm.

As much as I enjoy my goodies, I can’t eat a whole napolitana all at once. G can do it, but it’s just too much for me, so I savor part of it, put it away, take a few more bites maybe a half hour later, and then finish it off an hour or more after that. This method does effectively prolong the pleasure, as well.

I’m sure glad we don’t have anything like that at home; if we did, it wouldn’t take long before I’d be as wide as I am tall!

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon enjoying La Plaza Mayor and Sol, listening to various street musicians—ranging in style from a harpist playing classical music to a mariachi band to a bass/drum/clarinet jazz combo—and wandering around the narrow, winding streets and alleys with their myriad of little cafes/restaurants and shops stuffed impossibly full of items for sale: souvenirs, clothing, whatever.

As I was leaving La Mallorquina, I noticed about a half dozen young men (early 20s?) in the process of laying out merchandise for display on the ground. Each one had a piece of canvas about a meter square (notice I didn’t say “yard”) and they laid them out in a neat line, perhaps a foot from the edge of the next one. One was arranging sunglasses in precise rows on his piece of cloth, the next was doing the same with women’s wallets and small purses (and already starting to dicker with a young woman over the price of one), a third with what appeared to be DVDs/movies, and so on.

What caught my attention, though, was that criss-crossing each canvas square were two pieces of cord, each one attached to diagonal corners of the cloth, forming an X, and knotted in the middle where they crossed. It was clear the design would allow the owner to easily scoop up all the items at once, in which case the canvas would then function as a sort of bag or satchel and, thus, equally obvious the merchandise itself was suspect and the young men weren’t supposed to be there.

Sometime later, I happened to pass by the same place and saw them doing exactly the same thing—again just setting out their merchandise in neat rows. Amused, I decided to wait and see how long the process took. People were leaning against a wall a few yards away and I headed towards an open space against the wall, turning myself around to back into it. As I got close, I half turned my head to gauge how far away I still was and that’s when it happened.

You know how a flock of birds will suddenly take to the air in a flutter of wings and warning squawks? Or you’ve seen movies of gazelles or whatever grazing on the savannah and the next thing you know the entire herd is thundering off into the distance? Well, this was essentially the same thing.

As I started to turn my head and shift my weight to lean back against the wall, I heard a sort of muffled yelp, but even as I spun my head back around I was too late to catch the action. All that I saw was the last one disappearing around the corner, canvas bag not quite yet completely slung over his shoulder. It couldn’t have taken much more than a second—literally!

G says the majority of them are probably here illegally, but the real issue is that if they’re caught, their goods are confiscated.

Wow, were they ever quick, though! An amazing display of coordination, agility, and speed. It really should be considered for an Olympic event or something.

And, as frequently happens with the birds in my backyard, I never did figure out what spooked them.

Jet lag strikes again

I can’t believe I did it! Poor G.

I woke up this morning about 7:30 after a good 5 hours of sleep. That was only a few hours after a 2-hour nap, so I was pretty wide awake. G got up shortly thereafter and headed off to work. He was going to be back a little after 2:00 pm and I told him I’d make sure I was back from wherever I went to open the door for him, since I was going to have the keys.

I went back to the bed to turn off the computer and lay down for a minute to organize my morning. Grocery shopping first or breakfast, then the bank, La Mallorquina, and grocery shopping? One minute I was mentally going over my shopping list and the next thing I knew I was waking up. “Wow,” I thought. “I actually fell asleep! I wonder how long I was sleeping. Maybe an hour?” When I looked at the clock, though, it was 2:45—SIX hours later!

Horrified, I leapt out of bed and called G’s phone, leaving a stuttering message of apology on his voice mail. A minute or 2 later he rang the intercom for me to buzz him up; apparently he'd been sitting on a nearby bench with the groceries he’d bought for lunch, waiting for me to return, since he figured I’d gone somewhere and wasn’t back yet. Sweetheart that he is, he came up and fixed us lunch—completely unperturbed—before returning to work.

I can’t believe I did that! I'm not sure I've ever slept that much in a 24-hour period. Well, I’m certainly well rested now.

This evening we spent some time debating the pros and cons of possible weekend travel destinations. We were initially thinking Ávila (with its complete medieval walls and Romanesque and Gothic churches), but eventually decided on San Sebastián. He wanted to try to fit in Santander, too, where a friend of his lives, but decided we just can’t reasonably do it. So, Northern Spain, beaches, and pintxos*, it is. [*pronounced peen’ choz; basically Basque for small plates/snacks/tapas]

Weather was sunny today with a few wispy clouds and 60 degrees. Quite nice. Supposed to be low 70’s tomorrow and the same up in San Sebastián this weekend. Big improvement over the day of my arrival, but the locals were still bundled up in winter coats. Of course, these same people will be functional in August, perhaps mildly complaining about the heat, while I would be useless...melting...eventually simply a greasespot on some sidewalk.

So, tomorrow I’m going to try again to get to La Mallorquina for that napolitana de chocolate.

Perfect!

Everything is just perfect! Well, almost. The weather was sunny and in the low 70’s last week; when I arrived today, it was 33 and snowing (actually rain/snow mixed). However, it wasn’t windy like at home, so it wasn’t so bad, and it’s supposed to be back up to 70 by early next week.

I was accused of bringing the bad weather and had to admit we'd had the same thing (but with lots of wind) the day before at home.

The plane arrived safely—perfect! (OK, I can hear your “I-told-you-so’s” from here!) Customs was a breeze, as was getting to G’s on the Metro. No problem picking up the keys from the bar (that was SO cool!). In fact, after trying to get the apartment door unlocked approximately 50 times (literally—there are 3 deadbolts and I couldn’t remember the trick I learned about how to do it when I was here 2 years ago), the guy from the bar even came up and wrestled them for me, eventually managing to figure it out. Perfect.

G came home and fixed me a great lunch. He really looks like a teacher/professor—casual, but European, conservative, elegantly stylish. He wasn’t sure if I’d be awake to open the door for him, so he left a note giving me various options for preparing my own lunch, including having the ingredients for a nice salad all cut up and stored next to each other with a fresh vinaigrette alongside. Such a thoughtful young man. Perfect. His mother must have trained him well. ;) We’re discussing where we might go this weekend—maybe Ávila?

Had a great time reaquainting myself with the neighborhood shopping area—el Museo de Jamon (The Ham Museum); Corte Inglés; Correo; and all the little shops and businesses. Tomorrow the priorities are to get down to La Mallorquina for a napolitana de chocolate (mmmm!) and spend some time at the Prado. And, of course, continue the boot-watching. Saw some interesting ones today. Spanish women and their footwear!

Overall, a perfect first day. :D