The next big plan for Mike and me was a trip to Marrakesh, Morocco, to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary. To watch the girls we had hired Dolores Sainz de la Peña, the school’s gym teacher—quite a character, with a Brooklyn accent to give the lie to her long Spanish name. “We’ll have a great time,” she assured us. “I’ll show them my collection of Esther Williams videos.”
The Moroccan trip was a standard travel package that was widely available—Morocco is directly south of Spain, not far at all—but we had a hard time deciding which class of hotel to choose. “How much time do we ever spend in the hotel?” Mike asked. “As long as you’ve got a decent room, you’re set. I hate to spend the money for something fancy.”
“Yeah, but this is for our anniversary,” I said. “Everyone says that La Mamounia is really worth the extra expense.” La Mamounia was a famous old hotel from French colonial days, well known for having been a favorite of Winston Churchill. It had been completely remodeled in 1986, and it had the added advantage of being the closest hotel to most of the tourist sites in Marrakesh.
“Okay, okay, let’s do it,” Mike said. We were buying the travel package for another puente weekend—it was a special charter scheduled for the five days that started on a Wednesday with the holiday La Inmaculada and continued with Friday’s Día de la Constitución. Most people took off the Thursday in between, making for an extra-long weekend. The result was that the tourist parts of town, otherwise empty at this season, were occupied by us and about 500 Spaniards.
The hotel was stunning, with a lobby full of marble, mirrors, gorgeous carpets and a huge chandelier. Vases full of roses were everywhere. The staff was unfailingly helpful, and our room was large and comfortable and beautifully furnished. We unpacked and took a quick stroll around the hotel’s famously lush gardens, then headed out to the Medina, the old, walled central city. It was a ten-minute walk to Djemaa el Fna, the central plaza famous for its snake charmers and water sellers.
The atmosphere was as exotic as I could have hoped for. Many people were dressed in djellabas (robes) and caftans and pointed slippers, and not to impress tourists. Donkey and horse carts were everywhere. There were smells—spices wafting out of restaurants, horse dung on the streets, warm bodies close by. People touched us and asked us to look at what they had to sell.
I was full of fear, having read about the Moroccan men who hang on tourists and try to get hired as guides, but I didn’t want to sit in the hotel for five days. We began picking up would-be guides right away. A half-dozen or more waited outside of every hotel, looking to catch whoever emerged. We walked to Djemaa el Fna, feeling really hassled, then tried to walk into the souks, the covered market that radiated from the square. Eventually the most persistent hanger-on—a young guy named Mustafa—got us to hire him as a guide, and it turned out to be a good idea, as he kept other people away from us. Also, we never would have found our way through the souks alone. We walked through a few souks, and I was still feeling nervous, but when we got to the spice souk I started to feel better. Big baskets of colorful spices filled every booth, and I understood what I was looking at. I bought some spices I hadn’t been able to find in Spain—ground coriander, turmeric and ginger—and had fun doing it, bargaining a little over the few pennies I was spending.
Mike asked Mustafa to take us to the rug souk. It was clear that Mustafa had connections with certain merchants who undoubtedly paid him a commission on anything his clients bought. Mustafa took us to a friendly rug merchant who escorted us into his attic shop and showed us all the different kinds of rugs and carpets and explained about their provenance and served us mint tea.
Then came the big sell. I had been a salesperson, but I had never seen anything like this. There was no way to resist this guy, no way to say no.
We stumbled out onto the street, the light of day nearly blinding us. “What happened in there?” I asked Mike. He was holding our purchase, a silk and cotton Berber rug.
“I don’t know,” he said, bewildered. “I didn’t go in there to buy a rug. I don’t think I even bought this one, but somehow it was sold to me!”
“I thought I knew something about sales techniques, but that guy invented them,” I said, amazed.
We didn’t even quit after that incident. Mustafa took us through many more souks—leather, wood, brass, slippers, djellabas. The merchants were doing some business, mostly with local people engaged in their daily shopping. Then we asked Mustafa to take us to a restaurant. He dropped us off at the Grand Hotel Tazi, and we paid him a few dirham (the Moroccan currency), about $5 worth. The restaurant was good, but we found out later that they must pay a great commission, because every other guide we had in the next few days tried to take us there, too. The first bite was like the first bite had been in Paris the year before—“Wow! Spices!” Spanish food, though we loved it, was very plain.
We chatted with a Spaniard at another table and compared notes on guides. “These people are so poor,” he said, “you just make up your mind to give out about $10 a day in tips to guides. They aren’t official guides, but they can lead you to the main attractions. One’s as good as another. It’s not unreasonable, and it makes your day a lot more comfortable.”
So for the next couple of days we didn’t hesitate to hire a guide the minute we left the hotel. We saw the Koutoubia, a minaret and the Saadian Tombs, the 16th-century mausoleum of a sultan and his family. It reminded us of the Alhambra in Granada, the greatest Moorish architecture in Spain.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Old Hands, part 5
Though my dad’s initial prognosis after his lung surgery had been good, he didn’t seem to be making a full recovery. He was tired all the time and generally didn’t feel well. It was easy to attribute this to chemotherapy, which made him feel sick and exhausted, but he never really bounced back. After several weeks the doctor found that he was anemic, but it took still longer to determine why.
The reason was that he was bleeding internally. He had another tumor, this one in the colon, so the lung cancer had metastasized after all.
By October it was clear that we were out of hope. “I’m a dead guy,” he told me matter-of-factly one day on the phone. He had always had a no-nonsense attitude about death. I took in his news—I felt shock, but not really surprise—and when I got off the phone I had a good cry. The girls and Mike were there with me, which I appreciated. But the thought of losing my dad—“I’ve had a great life, I have no regrets,” he said—well, it would be a tremendous loss.
Madeline and Sol Field, friends from Stamford, were visiting us that week, and I was horrified when I learned that Madeline had taken it upon herself to call someone she knew back home and have her tell my friends that my dad was dying. I jumped into my car and drove in to my 12-Step meeting that evening in a fury. I talked to some people at the meeting, and by the time I drove home I knew I had to be frank with Madeline.
“I’m very angry that you told Shelly about my father,” I said. “That was my information to give, not yours. And I’m especially unhappy that you told her to tell Amy. Amy is my close friend, and this is something I wanted to tell her myself.”
Madeline apologized and began asking if I was still her friend. I just felt more irritated that she was going in that direction. I had something serious going on in my family, and this was a distraction.
Fortunately, Madeline and Sol moved on to Barcelona, I got to speak to Amy myself, and Mike’s brother Brian and his friend Carrie came to visit next. Brian was a pleasure to have around—the kids adored him—and Carrie, whom we didn’t know well, turned out to be as much fun as he was. On the car ride to Segovia she taught us how to avoid carsickness by sticking just your fingertips out the window, and in Ávila she ran up and down the steps of the city wall with Julie and Lisa. We took them to all the best eating places and taught them to appreciate jamón and tortilla española.
We kept them so busy that they didn’t get a chance to do much shopping. On their last day I agreed to take them into Madrid and show them some of the stores before I went to my Spanish class. We made it through four or five key places in an hour, and they were dizzy. “This is so great!” Brian said. “If we were here without you, we’d still be on that corner over there, turning the map around, trying to figure out where we were!”
The reason was that he was bleeding internally. He had another tumor, this one in the colon, so the lung cancer had metastasized after all.
By October it was clear that we were out of hope. “I’m a dead guy,” he told me matter-of-factly one day on the phone. He had always had a no-nonsense attitude about death. I took in his news—I felt shock, but not really surprise—and when I got off the phone I had a good cry. The girls and Mike were there with me, which I appreciated. But the thought of losing my dad—“I’ve had a great life, I have no regrets,” he said—well, it would be a tremendous loss.
Madeline and Sol Field, friends from Stamford, were visiting us that week, and I was horrified when I learned that Madeline had taken it upon herself to call someone she knew back home and have her tell my friends that my dad was dying. I jumped into my car and drove in to my 12-Step meeting that evening in a fury. I talked to some people at the meeting, and by the time I drove home I knew I had to be frank with Madeline.
“I’m very angry that you told Shelly about my father,” I said. “That was my information to give, not yours. And I’m especially unhappy that you told her to tell Amy. Amy is my close friend, and this is something I wanted to tell her myself.”
Madeline apologized and began asking if I was still her friend. I just felt more irritated that she was going in that direction. I had something serious going on in my family, and this was a distraction.
Fortunately, Madeline and Sol moved on to Barcelona, I got to speak to Amy myself, and Mike’s brother Brian and his friend Carrie came to visit next. Brian was a pleasure to have around—the kids adored him—and Carrie, whom we didn’t know well, turned out to be as much fun as he was. On the car ride to Segovia she taught us how to avoid carsickness by sticking just your fingertips out the window, and in Ávila she ran up and down the steps of the city wall with Julie and Lisa. We took them to all the best eating places and taught them to appreciate jamón and tortilla española.
We kept them so busy that they didn’t get a chance to do much shopping. On their last day I agreed to take them into Madrid and show them some of the stores before I went to my Spanish class. We made it through four or five key places in an hour, and they were dizzy. “This is so great!” Brian said. “If we were here without you, we’d still be on that corner over there, turning the map around, trying to figure out where we were!”
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Old Hands, part 4
The Kruger family, our South African friends, had some new arrivals of a sort. Both Piet and Huibrecht were great patriots of their country and had worked for many years to bring about the end of apartheid. They had been in the foreign service a long time, and they had lived through the period in which South Africa was shunned by much of the world for its racist practices. “The best we could do was to be as gracious as possible wherever we were, and to entertain anyone in the diplomatic community who would have anything to do with us,” Huibrecht said. “But it was an uphill battle.”
They had long known that the positive changes in South Africa meant the end of their diplomatic life. “White people won’t be getting any more foreign postings,” Piet explained. “We can probably stay with the foreign service in Johannesburg, but we won’t be going abroad again. All new postings will go to blacks.” He was sorry to see the end of that part of his life, but he warmly supported the change.
The Krugers’ close friends and embassy colleagues, Karin and Ben, returned to South Africa and were replaced by Mfundisi Mtimunye, a black man who had never been out of the country before. I stood in awe as Huibrecht and Piet spent a great deal of time helping him to get a place to live and set up housekeeping in Madrid. The Krugers were serious about their Christian faith, and I thought this was an example of true Christian love at work. When Mfundisi sent for his wife and daughter, Huibrecht showed the family how to shop, and even how to cook using the unfamiliar appliances—the wife had lived in primitive circumstances. The Krugers got the family’s five-year-old daughter, Refilwe, admitted to the American School, and she became a favorite our sixth graders, Julie and Rosanne. “Oh, Mom, she’s so cute! You wouldn’t believe it,” Julie crooned.
“You know,” I said, “I wouldn’t want you to underestimate how much I enjoy being with you. I feel really lucky to have you as my friend.”
I remembered that we had a one-day school holiday in a week or so. “We’re going to take a day trip on October 12,” I said. “Do you guys want to come with us?”
“John has to work that day, but the girls and I would love to come,” she said. We decided to go to the canyons of the Río Duratón, north of Segovia.
The drive through the mountains and the high plains was beautiful on that cool, sunny day. The canyons were part of a big nature preserve. We drove from the dry, gray plain down to a lovely green gully where a small but clear river flowed. The four Haubenstocks and the three Scarritts hiked along the river, ducking between the slender trunks of countless yellow-leafed trees. Natalie and Julie ran on ahead, out of sight, which made Clarice and me nervous, but we found them again. Large birds soared above us, and the breeze and the quiet made for a perfect day.
For lunch we drove into the town of Sepúlveda, which had a small but lovely Plaza Mayor, and we stopped in the pretty town of Riaza on the way home. It seemed there was hardly a town in Spain that did not have something beautiful to see.
They had long known that the positive changes in South Africa meant the end of their diplomatic life. “White people won’t be getting any more foreign postings,” Piet explained. “We can probably stay with the foreign service in Johannesburg, but we won’t be going abroad again. All new postings will go to blacks.” He was sorry to see the end of that part of his life, but he warmly supported the change.
The Krugers’ close friends and embassy colleagues, Karin and Ben, returned to South Africa and were replaced by Mfundisi Mtimunye, a black man who had never been out of the country before. I stood in awe as Huibrecht and Piet spent a great deal of time helping him to get a place to live and set up housekeeping in Madrid. The Krugers were serious about their Christian faith, and I thought this was an example of true Christian love at work. When Mfundisi sent for his wife and daughter, Huibrecht showed the family how to shop, and even how to cook using the unfamiliar appliances—the wife had lived in primitive circumstances. The Krugers got the family’s five-year-old daughter, Refilwe, admitted to the American School, and she became a favorite our sixth graders, Julie and Rosanne. “Oh, Mom, she’s so cute! You wouldn’t believe it,” Julie crooned.
* * *
There was a school event late in September, Family Day, when the parent association set up carnival booths and some of the student clubs ran fundraising activities. It was a lovely early fall day, and I chatted with Clarice Scarritt, who was running a bake sale. I was feeling so much at home, so happy with my friends and my surroundings.“You know,” I said, “I wouldn’t want you to underestimate how much I enjoy being with you. I feel really lucky to have you as my friend.”
I remembered that we had a one-day school holiday in a week or so. “We’re going to take a day trip on October 12,” I said. “Do you guys want to come with us?”
“John has to work that day, but the girls and I would love to come,” she said. We decided to go to the canyons of the Río Duratón, north of Segovia.
The drive through the mountains and the high plains was beautiful on that cool, sunny day. The canyons were part of a big nature preserve. We drove from the dry, gray plain down to a lovely green gully where a small but clear river flowed. The four Haubenstocks and the three Scarritts hiked along the river, ducking between the slender trunks of countless yellow-leafed trees. Natalie and Julie ran on ahead, out of sight, which made Clarice and me nervous, but we found them again. Large birds soared above us, and the breeze and the quiet made for a perfect day.
For lunch we drove into the town of Sepúlveda, which had a small but lovely Plaza Mayor, and we stopped in the pretty town of Riaza on the way home. It seemed there was hardly a town in Spain that did not have something beautiful to see.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Old Hands, part 3
Another entertainment we saw early in the fall was Circo Internacional, a little traveling circus that came to set up shop in Aravaca for a few days. We had seen the posters around town, and we decided to go on a Sunday afternoon.
This circus was way, way beyond the concept of small-time. They had set up a tent in a plaza, and inside were about 200 bleacher seats and a single ring. The first act was some tigers who—get ready—sat on pedestals! We were less than thrilled.
It took about ten minutes for a half-dozen slow-moving roustabouts to dismantle the tiger cage for the next act, which was—hula hoops! We were surprised to see one of the ushers transformed into a hula hoop artist, but she was actually pretty good, twirling about 35 hula hoops at a time.
Next was a dog act, starring chihuahuas. They jumped over things, they pushed strollers, and then they began to appear in costumes—for instance, bride and groom dogs, a Napoleon dog firing a cannon, a bullfighter dog, and a bull dog with horns tied on his head. By this time we were screaming with laughter.
Then we had the Elastic Woman, a decent contortionist act performed by the other usher. After this came the big finish for the first half of the show: a man and a lady in costume, the man doing a preliminary bit of fire eating, followed by the meat of the act: taking reptiles out of boxes and putting them back in.
There were a bunch of large wooden boxes onstage, and they would open one and lift out, for instance, a very large crocodile, and put it on the ground, and leave it there. Then they would open another box and take out an even larger crocodile, and put it on the ground, and leave it there. There were several huge crocs, some big gators, and some gigantic snakes. After everything came out, everything had to go back in—and there was one big croc that did not want to go back in his box! So the guy hit him on the snout a few times, and kind of shoved him with his foot, and eventually the croc let himself be picked up and put away. Man, I thought, that’s entertainment!
Then we had intermission, during which the tiger guy came back with his two sons and a camel and took Polaroids of kids from the audience sitting on the camel.
For the second act opener the tiger guy and his sons brought out several camels and made them trot around the ring for a while. Then they brought out what looked like African cattle and made them run around the ring, and then they brought out a llama and made it jump over some hurdles.
The final, interminable bit was a clown act featuring the lady from the dog act and some guys who played saxophones. Though the Spaniards loved this, I could find no discernible humor in it, and it seemed to go on forever.
We stumbled out of the dark tent into the sunshine, laughing at what an experience it had been. “And only 900 pesetas!” Mike added. “That’s like seven bucks!”
On the way out of the circus Lisa spotted someone she knew. “Hey,” she said, “I think that’s Laura.”
“Who’s Laura?” I asked.
“She’s a new girl in my class,” Lisa said. “She’s nice.”
Just a couple days later Lisa was invited to Laura’s house, a townhouse not far from us in Pozuelo. I met her mom, Christiane, who was pregnant.
“We’re just coming from Tokyo,” she said. “My husband Ramón is Spanish, but he’s worked most of his life overseas.”
“What kind of work does he do?” I asked.
“He’s a journalist with EFE, the official Spanish news agency,” she said. “We met when he was working in Austria—that’s where I’m from. But we spent the last six years in Japan.”
“How’d you like it?” I asked, feeling comfortable in her warm kitchen.
“Oh, we loved it. You don’t get very integrated into the local population, but the international community was a lot of fun. And myself, I did make some good Japanese friends. I got started taking classes in ikebana—do you know what that is?”
I knew that ikebana was a Japanese form of flower arranging—there was a well-known Japanese florist in Stamford who did it. It turned out that Christiane had become so accomplished at ikebana that one of the major Tokyo hotels had commissioned her to do a weekly arrangement for their lobby.
The Santaularias quickly became part of our group of friends. Ramón, a Catalan, was a most unusual Spaniard from those we knew—he was jovial and outgoing, he spoke numerous languages, and he loved traveling and experiencing other cultures. Most Spaniards, we agreed, turned up their noses at everything not Spanish. One of Mike’s business acquaintances had spoken truthfully about this once. “What do Spanish people really think of Americans?” Mike asked.
“We think they have no sense of history, they dress badly, they’re fat, and they’re loud,” he said.
And I remembered Ana’s sister Maricarmen, who had taken a tour to Thailand. Her verdict upon her return was that the shopping was good, the beaches were nice, but the food wasn’t as good as Spanish food.
Laura Santaularia got along well with Lisa, Gaby Scarritt and Claire Liepmann, and we all began to look forward to the arrival of the new baby in May.
This circus was way, way beyond the concept of small-time. They had set up a tent in a plaza, and inside were about 200 bleacher seats and a single ring. The first act was some tigers who—get ready—sat on pedestals! We were less than thrilled.
It took about ten minutes for a half-dozen slow-moving roustabouts to dismantle the tiger cage for the next act, which was—hula hoops! We were surprised to see one of the ushers transformed into a hula hoop artist, but she was actually pretty good, twirling about 35 hula hoops at a time.
Next was a dog act, starring chihuahuas. They jumped over things, they pushed strollers, and then they began to appear in costumes—for instance, bride and groom dogs, a Napoleon dog firing a cannon, a bullfighter dog, and a bull dog with horns tied on his head. By this time we were screaming with laughter.
Then we had the Elastic Woman, a decent contortionist act performed by the other usher. After this came the big finish for the first half of the show: a man and a lady in costume, the man doing a preliminary bit of fire eating, followed by the meat of the act: taking reptiles out of boxes and putting them back in.
There were a bunch of large wooden boxes onstage, and they would open one and lift out, for instance, a very large crocodile, and put it on the ground, and leave it there. Then they would open another box and take out an even larger crocodile, and put it on the ground, and leave it there. There were several huge crocs, some big gators, and some gigantic snakes. After everything came out, everything had to go back in—and there was one big croc that did not want to go back in his box! So the guy hit him on the snout a few times, and kind of shoved him with his foot, and eventually the croc let himself be picked up and put away. Man, I thought, that’s entertainment!
Then we had intermission, during which the tiger guy came back with his two sons and a camel and took Polaroids of kids from the audience sitting on the camel.
For the second act opener the tiger guy and his sons brought out several camels and made them trot around the ring for a while. Then they brought out what looked like African cattle and made them run around the ring, and then they brought out a llama and made it jump over some hurdles.
The final, interminable bit was a clown act featuring the lady from the dog act and some guys who played saxophones. Though the Spaniards loved this, I could find no discernible humor in it, and it seemed to go on forever.
We stumbled out of the dark tent into the sunshine, laughing at what an experience it had been. “And only 900 pesetas!” Mike added. “That’s like seven bucks!”
On the way out of the circus Lisa spotted someone she knew. “Hey,” she said, “I think that’s Laura.”
“Who’s Laura?” I asked.
“She’s a new girl in my class,” Lisa said. “She’s nice.”
Just a couple days later Lisa was invited to Laura’s house, a townhouse not far from us in Pozuelo. I met her mom, Christiane, who was pregnant.
“We’re just coming from Tokyo,” she said. “My husband Ramón is Spanish, but he’s worked most of his life overseas.”
“What kind of work does he do?” I asked.
“He’s a journalist with EFE, the official Spanish news agency,” she said. “We met when he was working in Austria—that’s where I’m from. But we spent the last six years in Japan.”
“How’d you like it?” I asked, feeling comfortable in her warm kitchen.
“Oh, we loved it. You don’t get very integrated into the local population, but the international community was a lot of fun. And myself, I did make some good Japanese friends. I got started taking classes in ikebana—do you know what that is?”
I knew that ikebana was a Japanese form of flower arranging—there was a well-known Japanese florist in Stamford who did it. It turned out that Christiane had become so accomplished at ikebana that one of the major Tokyo hotels had commissioned her to do a weekly arrangement for their lobby.
The Santaularias quickly became part of our group of friends. Ramón, a Catalan, was a most unusual Spaniard from those we knew—he was jovial and outgoing, he spoke numerous languages, and he loved traveling and experiencing other cultures. Most Spaniards, we agreed, turned up their noses at everything not Spanish. One of Mike’s business acquaintances had spoken truthfully about this once. “What do Spanish people really think of Americans?” Mike asked.
“We think they have no sense of history, they dress badly, they’re fat, and they’re loud,” he said.
And I remembered Ana’s sister Maricarmen, who had taken a tour to Thailand. Her verdict upon her return was that the shopping was good, the beaches were nice, but the food wasn’t as good as Spanish food.
Laura Santaularia got along well with Lisa, Gaby Scarritt and Claire Liepmann, and we all began to look forward to the arrival of the new baby in May.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Old Hands, part 2
The kids had new teachers, too. Lisa’s third grade teacher was Tica Echols, a kind and loving American woman married to a Spaniard. The girls in the class adored her and took turns styling her hair and massaging her feet during story time every day. And for sixth grade Julie had Sibley Labandeira, another American who had lived in Spain for many years. She and the other sixth-grade teacher, Lin Peterson, actually team-taught their two classes, and Julie came to like them both, despite Ms. Labandeira’s tough geography quizzes.
Besides that, there were some special fall events to look forward to. Up first was the local week-long fiesta in Pozuelo, which included a daily running of the bulls followed by bullfights in a temporary ring set up in a plaza.
This was the only bullfight I saw in person while I was in Spain. I never made it to the major league—Las Ventas, the famous bullring in Madrid, where the finest bulls and toreros fight. Unlike Ana, who hated bullfighting, I had no moral objection to it. When I was a kid in Chicago, the advent of UHF television broadcasting brought with it Chicago’s channel 26, which showed Mexican bullfighting nearly all day long, every day. My dad got interested and studied the spectacle, and he got me into it a little, too. I learned to regard it as an art form, though I understood why some people saw it as inexcusable cruelty to animals.
Mike had been to Las Ventas once or twice with business acquaintances, but tickets were hard to get. I had watched the fights once in a while on television in Madrid—the season ran from April to November, with broadcasts in the late afternoon. It was similar to the Mexican bullfighting I had seen decades before, but a couple things were new to me. First, ticket choices were based on whether your seats were in sol (sun) or sombra (shade). And second, though the majority of matadors worked on foot, there were also occasional fights conducted entirely with the matadors on horseback.
This was the style used for all six fights we saw the night we went to the ring in Pozuelo. Mike and Julie had been to the running of the bulls twice already—each day the animals were let loose from a paddock up the hill from the bullring, and they ran uneventfully down to the ring, with adventurous people running alongside. These were not the full-sized bulls that would appear at a place like Las Ventas, but rather ¾-size bulls whose horns had been shaved to make them less dangerous. This was analogous to a minor league ballgame.
We went to the fight around 6 p.m.—Spanish afternoon. The temporary bullring was about 100 feet in diameter, with seven rows of bleachers around it. We found some seats and listened to the two bands stationed in the half-full stands as they took turns playing. After a few minutes two ladies entered on horseback and did some dressage moves, controlling their horses elegantly as they side-stepped, turned and backed up. Then a dozen men on horses joined them for more display.
These riders left the ring, and the first fight’s human combatants entered. I was feeling excited—for all the bullfighting I’d watched on TV, first in Chicago, then in Spain, I’d never seen one in person. Being part of the crowd increased my anticipation, and the color and pageantry added to the atmosphere. There was a matador dressed in long leather chaps, a short wool jacket and a flat-brimmed hat. He was accompanied by four toreros with capes who were dressed in the traditional gaudy brocade bullfighter’s costume.
The bull was let out of his chute, full of energy, charging around like mad. Not a huge animal, but clearly powerful anyway. The four toreros attracted him with their capes and kept him running for a while. They slipped behind shelters at the perimeter of the ring whenever he got too close. The matador, now mounted on his horse, called to the bull, urging him to give chase. The majestic horse was beautifully groomed, with a ribboned mane and a fancy saddle. It was extremely agile in its moves and showed no fear at all, though it wore no padding.
We gasped with fear as the bull frequently got close enough to have its horns literally under the horse’s tail, but the horse was never gored. Between passes the matador would make his horse prance or do a little dressage just to show how much control he had.
Then the matador went to the edge of the ring and picked up a 3-foot-long stick with a dart at its end. He stuck this into the bull’s back, and when the dart came off the stick a small flag unfurled, so the matador was left holding a little flag that he used like a miniature cape to attract the bull. He repeated this move a few times, and once or twice he was quite stylish in his motion, leaning way over the bull’s horns to place the dart.
Then the matador left the ring to change horses, and the toreros came out to do a few passes meanwhile. When the matador returned the toreros retired to the edges again, and he went to the side to pick up another stick, this one frilled with colored paper. When it was placed in the bull’s back the entire stick remained hanging off the bull. Each dart had the effect of both enraging and weakening the bull. With two of these sticks placed, the matador again left to change horses.
By the time the matador was on his fourth horse, the sticks he received at the edge of the ring were just a foot long, meaning he had to get much closer to the bull in order to place them. This ratcheted up the excitement. One more change of horse and he came back to pick up a really tiny dart with a 4-inch spike. Once the spike was placed in the bull’s back, the paper frills left showing looked like a small flower.
The killing instrument, to my surprise, was not very swordlike. It looked like an umbrella, with about two feet of stick above a two-foot dart with a three-inch spike. When the dart was placed, the matador was left holding the two-foot stick. The bull fell to the ground, and a torero came out and severed the bull’s spinal cord with a dagger.
I loved the drama and the risk involved, and the color and tradition were things I could appreciate, but I also felt the death of the bull was brutal and sad. A team of two horses came to drag the carcass away, and the matador took a victory lap around the ring, having been awarded two ears. I couldn’t help but admire him for his skill and courage.
Besides that, there were some special fall events to look forward to. Up first was the local week-long fiesta in Pozuelo, which included a daily running of the bulls followed by bullfights in a temporary ring set up in a plaza.
This was the only bullfight I saw in person while I was in Spain. I never made it to the major league—Las Ventas, the famous bullring in Madrid, where the finest bulls and toreros fight. Unlike Ana, who hated bullfighting, I had no moral objection to it. When I was a kid in Chicago, the advent of UHF television broadcasting brought with it Chicago’s channel 26, which showed Mexican bullfighting nearly all day long, every day. My dad got interested and studied the spectacle, and he got me into it a little, too. I learned to regard it as an art form, though I understood why some people saw it as inexcusable cruelty to animals.
Mike had been to Las Ventas once or twice with business acquaintances, but tickets were hard to get. I had watched the fights once in a while on television in Madrid—the season ran from April to November, with broadcasts in the late afternoon. It was similar to the Mexican bullfighting I had seen decades before, but a couple things were new to me. First, ticket choices were based on whether your seats were in sol (sun) or sombra (shade). And second, though the majority of matadors worked on foot, there were also occasional fights conducted entirely with the matadors on horseback.
This was the style used for all six fights we saw the night we went to the ring in Pozuelo. Mike and Julie had been to the running of the bulls twice already—each day the animals were let loose from a paddock up the hill from the bullring, and they ran uneventfully down to the ring, with adventurous people running alongside. These were not the full-sized bulls that would appear at a place like Las Ventas, but rather ¾-size bulls whose horns had been shaved to make them less dangerous. This was analogous to a minor league ballgame.
We went to the fight around 6 p.m.—Spanish afternoon. The temporary bullring was about 100 feet in diameter, with seven rows of bleachers around it. We found some seats and listened to the two bands stationed in the half-full stands as they took turns playing. After a few minutes two ladies entered on horseback and did some dressage moves, controlling their horses elegantly as they side-stepped, turned and backed up. Then a dozen men on horses joined them for more display.
These riders left the ring, and the first fight’s human combatants entered. I was feeling excited—for all the bullfighting I’d watched on TV, first in Chicago, then in Spain, I’d never seen one in person. Being part of the crowd increased my anticipation, and the color and pageantry added to the atmosphere. There was a matador dressed in long leather chaps, a short wool jacket and a flat-brimmed hat. He was accompanied by four toreros with capes who were dressed in the traditional gaudy brocade bullfighter’s costume.
The bull was let out of his chute, full of energy, charging around like mad. Not a huge animal, but clearly powerful anyway. The four toreros attracted him with their capes and kept him running for a while. They slipped behind shelters at the perimeter of the ring whenever he got too close. The matador, now mounted on his horse, called to the bull, urging him to give chase. The majestic horse was beautifully groomed, with a ribboned mane and a fancy saddle. It was extremely agile in its moves and showed no fear at all, though it wore no padding.
We gasped with fear as the bull frequently got close enough to have its horns literally under the horse’s tail, but the horse was never gored. Between passes the matador would make his horse prance or do a little dressage just to show how much control he had.
Then the matador went to the edge of the ring and picked up a 3-foot-long stick with a dart at its end. He stuck this into the bull’s back, and when the dart came off the stick a small flag unfurled, so the matador was left holding a little flag that he used like a miniature cape to attract the bull. He repeated this move a few times, and once or twice he was quite stylish in his motion, leaning way over the bull’s horns to place the dart.
Then the matador left the ring to change horses, and the toreros came out to do a few passes meanwhile. When the matador returned the toreros retired to the edges again, and he went to the side to pick up another stick, this one frilled with colored paper. When it was placed in the bull’s back the entire stick remained hanging off the bull. Each dart had the effect of both enraging and weakening the bull. With two of these sticks placed, the matador again left to change horses.
By the time the matador was on his fourth horse, the sticks he received at the edge of the ring were just a foot long, meaning he had to get much closer to the bull in order to place them. This ratcheted up the excitement. One more change of horse and he came back to pick up a really tiny dart with a 4-inch spike. Once the spike was placed in the bull’s back, the paper frills left showing looked like a small flower.
The killing instrument, to my surprise, was not very swordlike. It looked like an umbrella, with about two feet of stick above a two-foot dart with a three-inch spike. When the dart was placed, the matador was left holding the two-foot stick. The bull fell to the ground, and a torero came out and severed the bull’s spinal cord with a dagger.
I loved the drama and the risk involved, and the color and tradition were things I could appreciate, but I also felt the death of the bull was brutal and sad. A team of two horses came to drag the carcass away, and the matador took a victory lap around the ring, having been awarded two ears. I couldn’t help but admire him for his skill and courage.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Old Hands
However, when we returned to Madrid a month later and took the visa to the proper office, we faced the depressingly predictable bad result. There was a line, the wait was forever, the kids and I finally presented ourselves to the stern government official—and it turned out that our temporary visa had expired. I was furious, but I also felt like an idiot. The Spanish bureaucracy was complex and hard to navigate, all right, but I had failed to notice the expiration date written right there on my visa. It wasn’t even Spain’s fault—it was mine!
It was the beginning of a new school year, and by now we felt like old hands. There were new families arriving, new teachers for the kids, and a new language school for me. I did enroll at International House, first in a five-day intensive course to get me into the swing of speaking Spanish again, and then in a regular twice-a-week class. I loved the teaching method they used—each lesson was prepared by the teacher to address a point of grammar or usage, with lots of speaking practice for the students and a good deal of fun built in as well. To teach the subjunctive, for example, we pretended we were nosy parents advising our college-student children how to prepare for exams. “I suggest you study for four hours,” “I insist you stay home tonight and work,” etc. Virgilio, who was my teacher for most of the year, gave a great lesson on ethnic stereotypes within Spain—Catalans were considered sneaky, for example, and Galicians were thought to be cheapskates. My classmates were fun, too—there were always a few Brits who made their living teaching English, and we had exchange students from Japan, wives of Volkswagen executives from Germany, and an American woman married to a Spaniard who spoke to her husband only in English.
I also arranged an intercambio, an exchange, for myself. This was common in the language schools—they always recommended that you find a Spanish speaker who wanted to learn English and agree to a regular time to get together, speaking Spanish half the time and English half the time, so you could help each other. I put a notice in the American School’s newsletter saying that I was looking for someone who would like to do an intercambio with me.
The result of that little ad was that I met Tatiana Vásquez, a pretty blond from Mexico, whose older son was in first grade at the school. Tatiana had come to Madrid when her husband, Javier, finished dental school in Mexico and decided to do an internship in Spain. She had two little boys, Javi and Estéfano, who were six and three.
When we met in the school’s cafeteria, I noticed that Tatiana’s English was much better than my Spanish. “I went to the American School in Guadalajara, and my English used to be really good,” she said, “but I haven’t used it for years, and I don’t remember very much.”
“Oh, I think you remember plenty,” I said, admiring her fluency. “I don’t think you need this practice as much as I do.” We agreed to spend an hour together each week, speaking first in English, then in Spanish. Once we started talking, though, matters went quickly beyond language skills to personal exchanges. Tati was warm and caring—she was a psychologist—and she listened to my concerns about my dad’s health with great sympathy. And she told me how she worried about Javi—his teacher said he had some learning delays, and she didn’t know what she should be doing about that.
Her English really was wonderful—all I ever had to correct was a word choice here or there—and she gave me good advice on my Spanish. “Da su tiempo a cada vocal,” she insisted over and over—give each vowel its time. She complained that I spoke too fast and ran my words together. “Spanish speakers don’t do that,” she said. And we laughed together when she told me how amazed she was to notice that she was using the word vale to mean “okay,” just as the Spaniards did. “I never thought I’d end up saying that!” she said. “It sounded so bad to me when I first came here! In Mexico we just say okei, like you gringos.” We became good friends.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
At Home, part 32
We called Mom and Dad daily and learned that Dad was progressing well—the doctor thought he had gotten out all the tumor, and that a course of chemotherapy would serve as extra insurance—so we packed up both cars and headed east to the beach. It was a long drive, but the kids stayed in good spirits, and we found Playa Montroig using Ana’s directions. It was a pretty but unassuming place, with green lawns and a pool, a café for evening entertainment and a grocery store. Most of the place was made up of campsites, and we saw many foreign license plates there—Belgian, Dutch, British, French. There were areas with trailers and cabins, as Ana had said, and there were bathhouses and a TV room and an arts and crafts shop.
We found our little bungalow, which was cute—just a wooden shack, but it had its own toilet and shower, a private room for me, a sleeping loft above it for the kids, and a little kitchen. Julie and Lisa and Danny and Scott ran between the two cabins, making comparisons. We bought a few provisions so we could make breakfast and lunch in the cabins, and we had a look at the beach. It was rocky, not sandy, and the weather was cooler than we’d hoped, but the water was beautiful, and that great Spanish relaxation started to set in.
The days at Playa Montroig were filled with that good lazy feeling. There wasn’t much to do, and we didn’t do much. It was fun to sit in the sun when it was warm enough, and we enjoyed visiting Ana and her family when they arrived. We had had some ambition to drive into Barcelona, or to see the Roman ruins in nearby Tarragona, but that never got done. We saw the flamenco show at the café one night, and we took a lot of naps.
For dinner the first night we walked down the beach to a restaurant and took a look at the menu. Sally’s kids were no more adventurous as eaters than mine were, so I was a little worried about finding acceptable food for everyone. But the friendly waiter at this place recommended the roast chicken with french fries, which turned out to be a big hit—such a hit, in fact, that we walked down to the same restaurant every night, and the kids wolfed down many chickens and loads of fries. For dessert, as always, they got to take the thrilling stroll to the restaurant’s Camy frozen dessert locker—orange sherbet in an orange rind, lemon sherbet in a lemon peel, or coconut ice cream in a coconut shell.
We did take one excursion from Playa Montroig. We learned that a huge theme park, Port Aventura, had just opened nearby. The story went that Spain had lobbied hard to become the location for Eurodisney, but they lost out to France. There was no question, however, that the weather in Spain was better, so a group had formed to build a competitor on the eastern coast, and Port Aventura was born.
It was pretty much the usual theme park experience, except that all the signs were in Spanish. As we’d found at most museums and historical sites, the Spaniards had no idea that it might be good to put up some signs in other languages to make things easy for visitors. But other than that, there was the normal kind of junk food, the big roller coasters, and the (to us) unfamiliar cartoon characters. It was heaven for the kids, who ate and played and crabbed when they didn’t meet a ride’s height requirement.
“Let me buy you a T-shirt,” I said to Danny and Scott. “You’ll be the first kids on your block in Indiana with a Port Aventura T-shirt!”
There were some shows, too, and the Chinese Magic Show was the most memorable of those. We waited in line outside for a long time, we entered a brand-new auditorium, and we sat down to wait some more. After a good while the lights went down and an unseen announcer warned—in Spanish, Catalán, and English—that the show would soon start. “No flash photography, no recording devices. Now get ready—the Chinese Magic Show is about to begin!” But nothing happened.
We waited a few more minutes, and the lights came up, and then the lights went back down, and the same announcements came on in all three languages. We were ready—but nothing happened.
The lights came up, the lights went down, the announcements came on yet again. After a while some Chinese people peeked out from under the curtain onstage. The kids got a good laugh out of that, and Sally, Doug and I were by now having our own good laugh at the black magic that was preventing us from seeing the Chinese Magic Show.
The lights went up and down and the announcements came on four more times before they finally gave up and asked the audience to leave due to technical difficulties. We staggered back out into the sun, laughing hysterically about the great show we never saw.
We found our little bungalow, which was cute—just a wooden shack, but it had its own toilet and shower, a private room for me, a sleeping loft above it for the kids, and a little kitchen. Julie and Lisa and Danny and Scott ran between the two cabins, making comparisons. We bought a few provisions so we could make breakfast and lunch in the cabins, and we had a look at the beach. It was rocky, not sandy, and the weather was cooler than we’d hoped, but the water was beautiful, and that great Spanish relaxation started to set in.
The days at Playa Montroig were filled with that good lazy feeling. There wasn’t much to do, and we didn’t do much. It was fun to sit in the sun when it was warm enough, and we enjoyed visiting Ana and her family when they arrived. We had had some ambition to drive into Barcelona, or to see the Roman ruins in nearby Tarragona, but that never got done. We saw the flamenco show at the café one night, and we took a lot of naps.
For dinner the first night we walked down the beach to a restaurant and took a look at the menu. Sally’s kids were no more adventurous as eaters than mine were, so I was a little worried about finding acceptable food for everyone. But the friendly waiter at this place recommended the roast chicken with french fries, which turned out to be a big hit—such a hit, in fact, that we walked down to the same restaurant every night, and the kids wolfed down many chickens and loads of fries. For dessert, as always, they got to take the thrilling stroll to the restaurant’s Camy frozen dessert locker—orange sherbet in an orange rind, lemon sherbet in a lemon peel, or coconut ice cream in a coconut shell.
We did take one excursion from Playa Montroig. We learned that a huge theme park, Port Aventura, had just opened nearby. The story went that Spain had lobbied hard to become the location for Eurodisney, but they lost out to France. There was no question, however, that the weather in Spain was better, so a group had formed to build a competitor on the eastern coast, and Port Aventura was born.
It was pretty much the usual theme park experience, except that all the signs were in Spanish. As we’d found at most museums and historical sites, the Spaniards had no idea that it might be good to put up some signs in other languages to make things easy for visitors. But other than that, there was the normal kind of junk food, the big roller coasters, and the (to us) unfamiliar cartoon characters. It was heaven for the kids, who ate and played and crabbed when they didn’t meet a ride’s height requirement.
“Let me buy you a T-shirt,” I said to Danny and Scott. “You’ll be the first kids on your block in Indiana with a Port Aventura T-shirt!”
There were some shows, too, and the Chinese Magic Show was the most memorable of those. We waited in line outside for a long time, we entered a brand-new auditorium, and we sat down to wait some more. After a good while the lights went down and an unseen announcer warned—in Spanish, Catalán, and English—that the show would soon start. “No flash photography, no recording devices. Now get ready—the Chinese Magic Show is about to begin!” But nothing happened.
We waited a few more minutes, and the lights came up, and then the lights went back down, and the same announcements came on in all three languages. We were ready—but nothing happened.
The lights came up, the lights went down, the announcements came on yet again. After a while some Chinese people peeked out from under the curtain onstage. The kids got a good laugh out of that, and Sally, Doug and I were by now having our own good laugh at the black magic that was preventing us from seeing the Chinese Magic Show.
The lights went up and down and the announcements came on four more times before they finally gave up and asked the audience to leave due to technical difficulties. We staggered back out into the sun, laughing hysterically about the great show we never saw.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
At Home, part 31
Just before Sally arrived we got word that my dad was ill. “I had a chest X ray, and they found a spot on my lung, about the size of a dime,” he told me by phone. He was scheduled for surgery.
It was scary news, but Dad didn’t seem too worried, so I didn’t worry too much either. I made a quick trip home to be there for the surgery, which went well. Sally was concerned about coming to Spain while he was recovering from the operation, but he was doing well enough, and there didn’t seem to be much she could do to help, so she and her family came ahead.
We spent a few days together at the house before going to Playa Montroig. We took everyone around Madrid, and Julie and Lisa gave their cousins what they called the Kids’ Tour of the Prado: We sat in the car outside the museum, and Julie pointed to it and said, “There’s the Prado.”
One night we hired a babysitter for the kids and took a walking tour with Everett Rice, my Spanish art history teacher. He customarily led several of these during the summer, usually followed by a group dinner at a restaurant in the part of town he was covering. For us, it was the old part of Madrid just outside the Plaza Mayor, an area I didn’t know well. It was lovely to walk the cobblestone streets at dusk, feeling the air grow cooler, seeing the warm lights bathe the old buildings. Everett rambled on pleasantly about the history of the area, the architecture of the buildings, and the changes he’d seen in the neighborhood during his 35 years in Madrid.
We stopped at a typical restaurant, with a canopy over numerous tables on the sidewalk, and had a leisurely dinner with the group. Doug and Sally enjoyed the classic Spanish meal, and we relaxed over good Rioja wine. After a couple of hours it was time to settle up, and Everett got the check.
In his best absentminded professor manner, he studied it for a moment, then said, “Mike, you work for an accounting firm. Perhaps you could divide this for us.”
Mike scanned the table briefly and said, “Everett, there are ten people here. I think even you could divide the check.”
It was scary news, but Dad didn’t seem too worried, so I didn’t worry too much either. I made a quick trip home to be there for the surgery, which went well. Sally was concerned about coming to Spain while he was recovering from the operation, but he was doing well enough, and there didn’t seem to be much she could do to help, so she and her family came ahead.
We spent a few days together at the house before going to Playa Montroig. We took everyone around Madrid, and Julie and Lisa gave their cousins what they called the Kids’ Tour of the Prado: We sat in the car outside the museum, and Julie pointed to it and said, “There’s the Prado.”
One night we hired a babysitter for the kids and took a walking tour with Everett Rice, my Spanish art history teacher. He customarily led several of these during the summer, usually followed by a group dinner at a restaurant in the part of town he was covering. For us, it was the old part of Madrid just outside the Plaza Mayor, an area I didn’t know well. It was lovely to walk the cobblestone streets at dusk, feeling the air grow cooler, seeing the warm lights bathe the old buildings. Everett rambled on pleasantly about the history of the area, the architecture of the buildings, and the changes he’d seen in the neighborhood during his 35 years in Madrid.
We stopped at a typical restaurant, with a canopy over numerous tables on the sidewalk, and had a leisurely dinner with the group. Doug and Sally enjoyed the classic Spanish meal, and we relaxed over good Rioja wine. After a couple of hours it was time to settle up, and Everett got the check.
In his best absentminded professor manner, he studied it for a moment, then said, “Mike, you work for an accounting firm. Perhaps you could divide this for us.”
Mike scanned the table briefly and said, “Everett, there are ten people here. I think even you could divide the check.”
Monday, April 20, 2009
At Home, part 30
Clarice Scarritt and Huibrecht Kruger and I had made an offer to the school principal. “We’d like to be a committee to welcome any new families to the school in the fall,” Clarice told her. “It can be a little hard coming in, and we’d like to help them.” The principal had agreed, and we gave her our phone numbers so she could refer newcomers to us.
The first call we got, early in July, was from Lorraine Liepmann. “Ms. Franco told me to get in touch with you,” she said. “We’re just coming in from Puerto Rico. My husband works for Abbott Labs.”
“That’s great!” I said. “I’m going to have to put you off for a week—my sister and her family are just coming to visit. Her husband works for a drug company, too.”
Lorraine was understanding, and we made plans to get together when I got back. Six months later, when we were all close friends, we laughed about what a great welcoming committee we had been. “We invited you over with your kids,” I told Lorraine, “and you came, and we had fun, and then we said, ‘What time should we be at your house tomorrow?’” That was how easily the Liepmanns fit into the group. Lorraine was a Chinese-American from California, an elementary school teacher. Her husband, Holger, was German, and they had three kids—Erik, who was going into 9th grade; Kirsten, who was Julie’s age; and Claire, who was Lisa’s age. Though we were sorry we didn’t have a match for Erik, we were ecstatic at how well all the girls got along.
This started me off on another dimension of bliss. I had always wanted to be in a group composed of a few families that were compatible and could help each other—the kind of thing where all the kids would be happy to be at any of the houses, so you could stand in for one of the other mothers anytime, and she could stand in for you. I had that for the next year, with the Scarritts and the Krugers and the Liepmanns, and with other families that we came to know. I felt I was part of something wonderful.
The first call we got, early in July, was from Lorraine Liepmann. “Ms. Franco told me to get in touch with you,” she said. “We’re just coming in from Puerto Rico. My husband works for Abbott Labs.”
“That’s great!” I said. “I’m going to have to put you off for a week—my sister and her family are just coming to visit. Her husband works for a drug company, too.”
Lorraine was understanding, and we made plans to get together when I got back. Six months later, when we were all close friends, we laughed about what a great welcoming committee we had been. “We invited you over with your kids,” I told Lorraine, “and you came, and we had fun, and then we said, ‘What time should we be at your house tomorrow?’” That was how easily the Liepmanns fit into the group. Lorraine was a Chinese-American from California, an elementary school teacher. Her husband, Holger, was German, and they had three kids—Erik, who was going into 9th grade; Kirsten, who was Julie’s age; and Claire, who was Lisa’s age. Though we were sorry we didn’t have a match for Erik, we were ecstatic at how well all the girls got along.
This started me off on another dimension of bliss. I had always wanted to be in a group composed of a few families that were compatible and could help each other—the kind of thing where all the kids would be happy to be at any of the houses, so you could stand in for one of the other mothers anytime, and she could stand in for you. I had that for the next year, with the Scarritts and the Krugers and the Liepmanns, and with other families that we came to know. I felt I was part of something wonderful.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
At Home, part 29
As the school year neared its end, there were some things for me to work on. Dolo, my Spanish teacher, wanted me to take the DELE—the Diploma de español como lengua extranjera (Diploma in Spanish as a Foreign Language). It was an examination given at three levels, and she wanted me to take the middle level, the Básico. I’d have to go into the city to take it, but I was willing, because I was proud of my progress in Spanish and ready to have it recognized. It would be good for the language school, too, to show that they could prepare students to pass the test.
I went to International House in Madrid, which was a different language school, and took the test there. That was good for me but not so good for Dolo. I passed, but I also took the opportunity to look around the school and see what they offered, and it was obvious that they outclassed my little suburban school by a mile. There were intensive courses, advanced courses, and executive courses. There were students from all over the world, of all ages. There were schedules to fit every need. And the location was great—near the center of Madrid, a block away from a Metro stop, not far from my gym. I resolved to sign up in the fall.
I had to do some summer planning, too. My sister, Sally, was going to visit in July, with her husband Doug and her two sons—Danny, 8, and Scott, 5. “I think the kids would hate a sightseeing vacation,” I said. “Is there anything else you’d like to do?”
“Can we go to a beach?” Sally asked. “I think that would be fun.”
I thought for a minute. “Let me ask Ana where to go,” I said. “She’ll know.”
She had just the place for us. “I keep my trailer over near Tarragona, just south of Barcelona,” she said. “The place is Playa Montroig. We’ve been going there for years. The kids loved it when they were little, and they still love it. It’s not the most beautiful beach in the world, it’s nothing fancy, but people come from all over Europe and camp there.”
“I don’t know if we’re up for camping,” I said.
“Oh, you don’t have to camp. They rent out trailers like mine, and they also have little cabins you can rent. It’s not expensive, it’s really relaxing, and they have their own entertainment and shops and so on.”
This sounded fine to me, so I called the place and booked our week at the beach. Mike would have to work, so he wouldn’t be with us, but the rest of us were set.
Ana also instructed me on how to live through Madrid’s beastly summer heat. Though it was not humid, it was incredibly hot—a real desert heat—and the houses were not air-conditioned. “You have to keep your blinds closed until it’s dark,” she said. “Then open everything. Keep it open until about ten in the morning, and then close everything up tight again. You have to keep the sun out.” The other part of the routine I learned was to stay in a bathing suit during the day and jump into the pool to cool off whenever necessary.
The summer was starting to fall into place. School ended in mid-June, and Sally would come in mid-July. In August I would take the kids to the States so Julie could go to camp in New Hampshire for two weeks, and Lisa and I would do some traveling—“Camp Mom,” we called it. Mike would stay in Spain most of the summer, but his friend Jon Powell would visit him for a week, and they planned to travel north to Galicia and the Picos de Europa mountains together.
That left a gap of about a month when the girls would have nothing to do. I knew they would get bored hanging around all day, even with the pool, so I asked at the American School if there were any summer classes.
“We always have a soccer clinic and a Spanish class,” the principal told me. Perfect, I thought—my non-athletes could work on their language skills. Both girls seemed amenable to the idea, especially after we roped the Scarritt girls and Rosanne Kruger into taking Spanish with them.
It was just a few hours each morning, a small class, very relaxed. “I love taking Spanish with Fernando in the summer!” Lisa chirped after the first week. “He’s not as strict as he is during the school year. He’s a lot of fun!” They played games, learned songs, and generally took it easy.
Then came the afternoons of that late June and early July, when I had the most satisfying experiences of all my time in Spain. The girls and I would get together with the Scarritts and the Krugers each afternoon at one house or the other, along with other friends or neighbors, whoever was around. The kids would play in the pool and the women would sit and talk, and relax, and relax some more. The weather was always beautiful, and life slowed down to a pace I had not experienced in the United States. There never seemed any need to get up and do anything. Even if a father returned from work there was no pressure to get dinner together, because we had entered Spanish time, and dinner was hours and hours away. The fathers were smart and changed out of their suits and came and sat with us as we watched the shadows move across the yard, felt the warm breeze, listened to the happy children.
I went to International House in Madrid, which was a different language school, and took the test there. That was good for me but not so good for Dolo. I passed, but I also took the opportunity to look around the school and see what they offered, and it was obvious that they outclassed my little suburban school by a mile. There were intensive courses, advanced courses, and executive courses. There were students from all over the world, of all ages. There were schedules to fit every need. And the location was great—near the center of Madrid, a block away from a Metro stop, not far from my gym. I resolved to sign up in the fall.
I had to do some summer planning, too. My sister, Sally, was going to visit in July, with her husband Doug and her two sons—Danny, 8, and Scott, 5. “I think the kids would hate a sightseeing vacation,” I said. “Is there anything else you’d like to do?”
“Can we go to a beach?” Sally asked. “I think that would be fun.”
I thought for a minute. “Let me ask Ana where to go,” I said. “She’ll know.”
She had just the place for us. “I keep my trailer over near Tarragona, just south of Barcelona,” she said. “The place is Playa Montroig. We’ve been going there for years. The kids loved it when they were little, and they still love it. It’s not the most beautiful beach in the world, it’s nothing fancy, but people come from all over Europe and camp there.”
“I don’t know if we’re up for camping,” I said.
“Oh, you don’t have to camp. They rent out trailers like mine, and they also have little cabins you can rent. It’s not expensive, it’s really relaxing, and they have their own entertainment and shops and so on.”
This sounded fine to me, so I called the place and booked our week at the beach. Mike would have to work, so he wouldn’t be with us, but the rest of us were set.
Ana also instructed me on how to live through Madrid’s beastly summer heat. Though it was not humid, it was incredibly hot—a real desert heat—and the houses were not air-conditioned. “You have to keep your blinds closed until it’s dark,” she said. “Then open everything. Keep it open until about ten in the morning, and then close everything up tight again. You have to keep the sun out.” The other part of the routine I learned was to stay in a bathing suit during the day and jump into the pool to cool off whenever necessary.
The summer was starting to fall into place. School ended in mid-June, and Sally would come in mid-July. In August I would take the kids to the States so Julie could go to camp in New Hampshire for two weeks, and Lisa and I would do some traveling—“Camp Mom,” we called it. Mike would stay in Spain most of the summer, but his friend Jon Powell would visit him for a week, and they planned to travel north to Galicia and the Picos de Europa mountains together.
That left a gap of about a month when the girls would have nothing to do. I knew they would get bored hanging around all day, even with the pool, so I asked at the American School if there were any summer classes.
“We always have a soccer clinic and a Spanish class,” the principal told me. Perfect, I thought—my non-athletes could work on their language skills. Both girls seemed amenable to the idea, especially after we roped the Scarritt girls and Rosanne Kruger into taking Spanish with them.
It was just a few hours each morning, a small class, very relaxed. “I love taking Spanish with Fernando in the summer!” Lisa chirped after the first week. “He’s not as strict as he is during the school year. He’s a lot of fun!” They played games, learned songs, and generally took it easy.
Then came the afternoons of that late June and early July, when I had the most satisfying experiences of all my time in Spain. The girls and I would get together with the Scarritts and the Krugers each afternoon at one house or the other, along with other friends or neighbors, whoever was around. The kids would play in the pool and the women would sit and talk, and relax, and relax some more. The weather was always beautiful, and life slowed down to a pace I had not experienced in the United States. There never seemed any need to get up and do anything. Even if a father returned from work there was no pressure to get dinner together, because we had entered Spanish time, and dinner was hours and hours away. The fathers were smart and changed out of their suits and came and sat with us as we watched the shadows move across the yard, felt the warm breeze, listened to the happy children.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
At Home, part 28
There were a couple of standard tours we kept ready for our guests. When seeing Segovia we had a regular side trip to Pedraza, a real tourist-pleaser. This tiny mountain town was made up of small rustic houses arranged around narrow streets that led up to a small castle, which had become the private residence of a painter. There were good restaurants for a Sunday lamb lunch, and there were a few shops with attractive crafts, including locally made pewter items like lamps and candlesticks.
Nearly all our guests took a trip to Toledo, with or without us as guides. I had developed a protocol for visiting the town. I always went first to the tiny church of Santo Tomé, which housed my favorite El Greco painting, The Burial of Count Orgaz. The church had just a few benches, so it filled up quickly as the day went on, and it really paid to go early—that way you could sit on the front bench, a yard or two from the painting, for as long as you wanted. I skipped the Alcázar (fortress), because I didn’t think it was that interesting, and I allowed plenty of time for the cathedral and the two synagogues.
When the Greenbergs visited, I offered to watch their kids for them for a day if they would like to go off alone, and we decided we would give them the Alfa and direct them to Toledo. “Rich can drive the stick, and I’ll navigate,” Amy said. Off they went with their maps and instructions.
After about seven hours I started to wonder where they were. It took an hour to get to Toledo, and it was hard to spend more than four hours there, I thought. “Do you think they’re lost?” I asked Mike.
He didn’t even look up from his newspaper. “They’ll be fine,” he said.
More time went by. “I’m getting worried now,” I said.
“If they need help, they’ll call,” Mike said.
The phone rang about an hour later. “We had a great time in Toledo,” Rich said, “but now we’re lost, and we can’t get there from here.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
There was silence on the other end of the line. “I don’t know how to tell you where we are,” Rich said at last.
I got Mike to pick up the phone. “Tell me what you did to get where you are,” he told Rich, “and then tell me what it looks like where you are. Street signs or whatever.”
Rich did his best to describe his surroundings, and we began to get the idea that they were in La Vaguada, north of Madrid. It wasn’t far away, but it was well out of the way for a Toledo-Pozuelo trip. And it wasn’t too easy to explain how to get to us.
Mike issued some instructions, told Rich to call again if he got into trouble, and sent him on his way. There was one more phone call, and a good hour of elapsed time, but Amy and Rich finally pulled into the driveway, to our relief.
It was that incident that made us unwilling to lend our car again. Rich, Charlotte and Natalie Schroeder came to see us, and we were having a great time. Charlotte had been my roommate in college, and her daughter Natalie was a good friend of Julie’s, so we were happy to be together. Within an hour after they got to our house we had them on the bus into Madrid, and we were at the main subway station, Sol, minutes later.
That was when someone dropped a set of keys in front of Rich. Rich bent down to pick them up, but—being a good New Yorker—he reached toward his back pocket, where he kept his wallet, at the same time. He was surprised to find another hand there. That was a classic pickpocket’s trick, the key drop, but Rich was too street-smart to fall for it.
The Schroeders spent some time with us and then went down to Sevilla and Jerez by train, which they enjoyed for a few days. When they came back we all went down to Aranjuez together, with both Mike and me driving (each of our cars fit five people at most).
The problem started when Charlotte wanted to take Natalie on the tour of the palace at Aranjuez. “It’s only given in Spanish,” I complained. “My kids will never go for it. We’ll just take a walk in the gardens while you go.”
“No, I hate to do that,” Charlotte said. “I don’t want to make you stay around here, but I really want Natalie to have the educational experience. Why don’t you leave one of your cars with us? You can give us directions, and we’ll go back to your place when we’re done.”
I blanched. “It’s not so easy to find your way around here,” I said, thinking of Rich and Amy. “We had some friends who were here, and we lent them a car, and they got totally lost.”
“We’ll be okay,” Charlotte said. “Rich can get by in Spanish, so if we get lost, we’ll just ask someone for directions.”
“Honestly, I don’t think you should try it,” I said, sure I knew better. “We almost had to go out and retrieve the Greenbergs. They were way off course.”
We argued the point for a while, but I was adamant. I marched my grumpy kids around the gardens for a while, and Char marched her grumpy daughter around the palace for a while, and we all went home together, equally crabby.
Another visitor was my friend Robin, who got me to agree to spend a weekend in Barcelona with her. We went back to the Hotel Colón, where we had stayed in November. We set ourselves the goal of buying leather backpacks, which were newly fashionable then, and while I showed her what I knew of the city, we did some shopping until we each got a backpack.
We were wearing our new purchases on Saturday night as we walked through the dark streets toward the Plaça Reial, where we were going to have dinner. We were just a few dozen yards from the brightly lit square, but I had the sense that someone was following us. I steeled myself and turned around—and found myself looking at two Moroccan teenagers close behind us, reaching toward our backpacks.
I screamed at Robin to run, and she pulled herself right out of the hands of the guy who was grabbing for her. We ran and hollered all the way to the plaza as the Moroccans cursed at us. We sat down immediately at a café and spent the next half-hour trying to calm down.
Much as I loved Barcelona, that was not the end of my unpleasant experiences there, because the next day I had a memorable one in Parc Güell. I knew Robin would appreciate the playful Gaudí designs there, so I showed her the colorful tiled terrace and the famous lizard I’d seen before. We stepped into a gift shop to buy some postcards, and when I stepped out—plop!—I felt something wet land right on the top of my head. It took me only a few queasy seconds to realize I’d been pooped on by a bird.
I ran in a panic to the nearby bathroom—Robin did her best to be helpful and not laugh—and I stuck my head under the faucet for a while, till I realized there wasn’t much hope of my feeling clean before I got back to the hotel and showered. This seemed worse to me than the foiled robbery.
Nearly all our guests took a trip to Toledo, with or without us as guides. I had developed a protocol for visiting the town. I always went first to the tiny church of Santo Tomé, which housed my favorite El Greco painting, The Burial of Count Orgaz. The church had just a few benches, so it filled up quickly as the day went on, and it really paid to go early—that way you could sit on the front bench, a yard or two from the painting, for as long as you wanted. I skipped the Alcázar (fortress), because I didn’t think it was that interesting, and I allowed plenty of time for the cathedral and the two synagogues.
When the Greenbergs visited, I offered to watch their kids for them for a day if they would like to go off alone, and we decided we would give them the Alfa and direct them to Toledo. “Rich can drive the stick, and I’ll navigate,” Amy said. Off they went with their maps and instructions.
After about seven hours I started to wonder where they were. It took an hour to get to Toledo, and it was hard to spend more than four hours there, I thought. “Do you think they’re lost?” I asked Mike.
He didn’t even look up from his newspaper. “They’ll be fine,” he said.
More time went by. “I’m getting worried now,” I said.
“If they need help, they’ll call,” Mike said.
The phone rang about an hour later. “We had a great time in Toledo,” Rich said, “but now we’re lost, and we can’t get there from here.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
There was silence on the other end of the line. “I don’t know how to tell you where we are,” Rich said at last.
I got Mike to pick up the phone. “Tell me what you did to get where you are,” he told Rich, “and then tell me what it looks like where you are. Street signs or whatever.”
Rich did his best to describe his surroundings, and we began to get the idea that they were in La Vaguada, north of Madrid. It wasn’t far away, but it was well out of the way for a Toledo-Pozuelo trip. And it wasn’t too easy to explain how to get to us.
Mike issued some instructions, told Rich to call again if he got into trouble, and sent him on his way. There was one more phone call, and a good hour of elapsed time, but Amy and Rich finally pulled into the driveway, to our relief.
It was that incident that made us unwilling to lend our car again. Rich, Charlotte and Natalie Schroeder came to see us, and we were having a great time. Charlotte had been my roommate in college, and her daughter Natalie was a good friend of Julie’s, so we were happy to be together. Within an hour after they got to our house we had them on the bus into Madrid, and we were at the main subway station, Sol, minutes later.
That was when someone dropped a set of keys in front of Rich. Rich bent down to pick them up, but—being a good New Yorker—he reached toward his back pocket, where he kept his wallet, at the same time. He was surprised to find another hand there. That was a classic pickpocket’s trick, the key drop, but Rich was too street-smart to fall for it.
The Schroeders spent some time with us and then went down to Sevilla and Jerez by train, which they enjoyed for a few days. When they came back we all went down to Aranjuez together, with both Mike and me driving (each of our cars fit five people at most).
The problem started when Charlotte wanted to take Natalie on the tour of the palace at Aranjuez. “It’s only given in Spanish,” I complained. “My kids will never go for it. We’ll just take a walk in the gardens while you go.”
“No, I hate to do that,” Charlotte said. “I don’t want to make you stay around here, but I really want Natalie to have the educational experience. Why don’t you leave one of your cars with us? You can give us directions, and we’ll go back to your place when we’re done.”
I blanched. “It’s not so easy to find your way around here,” I said, thinking of Rich and Amy. “We had some friends who were here, and we lent them a car, and they got totally lost.”
“We’ll be okay,” Charlotte said. “Rich can get by in Spanish, so if we get lost, we’ll just ask someone for directions.”
“Honestly, I don’t think you should try it,” I said, sure I knew better. “We almost had to go out and retrieve the Greenbergs. They were way off course.”
We argued the point for a while, but I was adamant. I marched my grumpy kids around the gardens for a while, and Char marched her grumpy daughter around the palace for a while, and we all went home together, equally crabby.
Another visitor was my friend Robin, who got me to agree to spend a weekend in Barcelona with her. We went back to the Hotel Colón, where we had stayed in November. We set ourselves the goal of buying leather backpacks, which were newly fashionable then, and while I showed her what I knew of the city, we did some shopping until we each got a backpack.
We were wearing our new purchases on Saturday night as we walked through the dark streets toward the Plaça Reial, where we were going to have dinner. We were just a few dozen yards from the brightly lit square, but I had the sense that someone was following us. I steeled myself and turned around—and found myself looking at two Moroccan teenagers close behind us, reaching toward our backpacks.
I screamed at Robin to run, and she pulled herself right out of the hands of the guy who was grabbing for her. We ran and hollered all the way to the plaza as the Moroccans cursed at us. We sat down immediately at a café and spent the next half-hour trying to calm down.
Much as I loved Barcelona, that was not the end of my unpleasant experiences there, because the next day I had a memorable one in Parc Güell. I knew Robin would appreciate the playful Gaudí designs there, so I showed her the colorful tiled terrace and the famous lizard I’d seen before. We stepped into a gift shop to buy some postcards, and when I stepped out—plop!—I felt something wet land right on the top of my head. It took me only a few queasy seconds to realize I’d been pooped on by a bird.
I ran in a panic to the nearby bathroom—Robin did her best to be helpful and not laugh—and I stuck my head under the faucet for a while, till I realized there wasn’t much hope of my feeling clean before I got back to the hotel and showered. This seemed worse to me than the foiled robbery.
Friday, April 17, 2009
At Home, part 27
We began to have a steady stream of visitors ourselves. Stamford friends Gina Pitchon and Hank Udow had moved to London when we moved to Madrid, and they came for a brief stay. We were outside the Prado when Gina began reciting travel information to me. “Wait, I know what you’re quoting,” I said. “That’s from the Fodor guide.”
“I have all the Madrid guidebooks,” Gina said. “I have a long-standing travel philosophy: I’m allowed to buy guidebooks until they total right up to the cost of the plane ticket!”
Our close Stamford friends Amy and Rich Greenberg came, too, with their kids, 11-year-old Rebecca and 4-year-old Lenny. By then, in May, the weather was perfect and mild, and we spent many lazy hours on the patio, watching the kids in the pool, polishing off a plate of chorizo and one of olives.
On the Sunday of their visit we took a drive to find a park where there was supposed to be a calzada romana—the remains of a Roman road, with ancient paving stones still in place. We found the town near the park and took a table at a sunny café. All eight of us sat there in happy relaxation for an hour or so, enjoying our surroundings and the food. As we paid the waiter, we asked him for directions to the calzada, and he obliged.
We found the turnoff he had indicated, and we knew we were in the right place when we saw a double row of parked cars. People were unpacking coolers and folding chairs and heading down the path toward a shady forest.
We piled out of the car and immediately found ourselves surrounded by a thick cloud of huge, buzzing mosquitoes. “Oh, my God!” cried Rebecca. “I’m going to get eaten alive!”
“This is awful!” I yelled at Mike, swatting mosquitoes. “Let’s get out of here!”
But then we paused. “Wait a minute,” Rich said. “Is anyone getting bitten?”
We all checked ourselves. “No, I’m okay,” Julie said.
“Me, too,” said Amy. The mosquitoes were not biting! We shrugged and started down the path.
Only fifty yards along we started to see a few heavy paving stones, each about a foot square. “This is it,” Mike said. “This was a Roman road. People walked on this in ancient times. Chariots drove on this road!” Julie and Rebecca were old enough to be able to appreciate this, and we walked along in amazement as we saw the road become more complete and well-preserved, about 8 feet wide, stretching into the distance between the evergreens.
“I have all the Madrid guidebooks,” Gina said. “I have a long-standing travel philosophy: I’m allowed to buy guidebooks until they total right up to the cost of the plane ticket!”
Our close Stamford friends Amy and Rich Greenberg came, too, with their kids, 11-year-old Rebecca and 4-year-old Lenny. By then, in May, the weather was perfect and mild, and we spent many lazy hours on the patio, watching the kids in the pool, polishing off a plate of chorizo and one of olives.
On the Sunday of their visit we took a drive to find a park where there was supposed to be a calzada romana—the remains of a Roman road, with ancient paving stones still in place. We found the town near the park and took a table at a sunny café. All eight of us sat there in happy relaxation for an hour or so, enjoying our surroundings and the food. As we paid the waiter, we asked him for directions to the calzada, and he obliged.
We found the turnoff he had indicated, and we knew we were in the right place when we saw a double row of parked cars. People were unpacking coolers and folding chairs and heading down the path toward a shady forest.
We piled out of the car and immediately found ourselves surrounded by a thick cloud of huge, buzzing mosquitoes. “Oh, my God!” cried Rebecca. “I’m going to get eaten alive!”
“This is awful!” I yelled at Mike, swatting mosquitoes. “Let’s get out of here!”
But then we paused. “Wait a minute,” Rich said. “Is anyone getting bitten?”
We all checked ourselves. “No, I’m okay,” Julie said.
“Me, too,” said Amy. The mosquitoes were not biting! We shrugged and started down the path.
Only fifty yards along we started to see a few heavy paving stones, each about a foot square. “This is it,” Mike said. “This was a Roman road. People walked on this in ancient times. Chariots drove on this road!” Julie and Rebecca were old enough to be able to appreciate this, and we walked along in amazement as we saw the road become more complete and well-preserved, about 8 feet wide, stretching into the distance between the evergreens.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
At Home, part 26
Along with spring in Spain came the smell of manure. Manure was spread liberally on lawns and fields as a yearly fertilizer, and it just stank to high heaven for a few weeks. This was noticeable everywhere, but nowhere more so than on the road to La Cañada.
La Cañada was a little town west of Madrid where the Mazzilli kids took riding lessons. I had asked Julie and Lisa during vacation if they might like to ride—Lisa Mazzilli had told me the lessons were really cheap, in English, from a Swedish girl—and they seemed mildly interested. This was in contrast to my own childhood experience. I was the sister of a Horse Girl—one of those girls who was just crazy for horses. If you had asked Sally, even as a little kid, what she wanted for a birthday or Christmas present, the answer was always the same: a horse. In our family that was never going to happen, but when I was ten (and she was just six) she agitated so hard for riding lessons that Mom and Dad started sending us up to the fancy Onwentsia stables in Lake Forest, Illinois, for weekly lessons. A little red bus came along Green Bay Road and picked up girls all along the way. I was never any good as a rider, but I did love it—though I was nowhere near Sally’s level of devotion.
Lisa Mazzilli had idly complained to me that her allergies made her nuts when she took her kids out to the stables, so I offered to do all the driving for the kids if she’d once lead me out there, and she agreed to do so. From Pozuelo we went south and west, through Boadilla del Monte and past many farmers’ fields—all layered with manure, all incredibly stinky.
“Ugh! Close the windows! I can’t stand it!” the kids chorused week after week as we sped down the empty road between farms.
“The smell is already in here,” I said. “If we close the windows, we’ll just seal it in!” So the kids would hold their noses and moan till we got to the stables.
The little riding club was a dump. An unpaved road near an asphalt plant led to it. There was a stable, an abandoned bar (everything in Spain had a bar), a cracked fountain, and a couple of paddocks for horses. There was a dusty outdoor ring, and there were empty (manure-covered) fields all around where, if the teacher let you, you could ride.
Elena, the Swedish riding mistress, assigned the horses and handed out the helmets. Grooms were sent to catch the horses that were out in the paddock, but you had to learn to groom your horse and put on the saddle and bridle by yourself. This was something I was happy to do—at Onwentsia the grooms brought your horse to you all tacked up; the little princesses never did any work. My girls had no horse sense, so I was happy to run between them, throwing a saddle on here, tightening a bridle there, helping a Mazzilli in between. Most of the horses were wily and ill-tempered, and they’d escape or step on your foot if you gave them half a chance—which Julie and Lisa did from time to time.
Elena gave a good, tough hour-long lesson for about $12 a person—an incredible bargain. There were usually only five or six kids in the class. Elena put a lot of emphasis on balance, and she often had the kids ride without reins or without stirrups, or backwards. She’d have them ride on their knees in the saddle, or make them go “around the world”—turn 360 degrees in the saddle while riding. Julie and Lisa hated these exercises, and their interest in riding waned.
One time, before they stopped riding altogether, Julie asked if she could bring her friend Andrea to ride someday. Andrea was from the U.K. and had taken riding lessons before moving to Spain. “Sure,” I said, “we can take her next week.”
When I picked Andrea up she was wearing nice leather riding boots and her own helmet. “I should warn you that this stable is not very fancy,” I said.
“Oh, I hate those posh stables,” she said agreeably in her lovely English accent.
Another time the Mazzillis had relatives visiting, so Frank Mazzilli, Lisa’s husband, took his kids and the visitors to the stable in a separate car. One of the relatives was a twelve-year-old cousin who, when watching the horses get hosed off after the ride, noticed one horse’s huge penis hanging down. It looked like another hose.
The kid went pale. “What’s that?!” he asked his Uncle Frank. Frank and I looked where he was pointing, went speechless for a second, and then dissolved in laughter.
Of course, though the kids quit riding, I was re-hooked, and I started to drive to La Cañada on Tuesday mornings, when Elena gave a class to some other ladies. I met a German woman, Elsa, and a couple of Spanish ladies. They helped me learn to do the major grooming chores, like pick dirt out of the horse’s hooves and get the tack on efficiently. We’d have a great class—always physically challenging, always working toward more delicate guidance of the horse and better balance in the saddle—then cool down the horses, clean them up, and put them away. The time with the horses before and after riding was as much fun for me as the lesson was.
La Cañada was a little town west of Madrid where the Mazzilli kids took riding lessons. I had asked Julie and Lisa during vacation if they might like to ride—Lisa Mazzilli had told me the lessons were really cheap, in English, from a Swedish girl—and they seemed mildly interested. This was in contrast to my own childhood experience. I was the sister of a Horse Girl—one of those girls who was just crazy for horses. If you had asked Sally, even as a little kid, what she wanted for a birthday or Christmas present, the answer was always the same: a horse. In our family that was never going to happen, but when I was ten (and she was just six) she agitated so hard for riding lessons that Mom and Dad started sending us up to the fancy Onwentsia stables in Lake Forest, Illinois, for weekly lessons. A little red bus came along Green Bay Road and picked up girls all along the way. I was never any good as a rider, but I did love it—though I was nowhere near Sally’s level of devotion.
Lisa Mazzilli had idly complained to me that her allergies made her nuts when she took her kids out to the stables, so I offered to do all the driving for the kids if she’d once lead me out there, and she agreed to do so. From Pozuelo we went south and west, through Boadilla del Monte and past many farmers’ fields—all layered with manure, all incredibly stinky.
“Ugh! Close the windows! I can’t stand it!” the kids chorused week after week as we sped down the empty road between farms.
“The smell is already in here,” I said. “If we close the windows, we’ll just seal it in!” So the kids would hold their noses and moan till we got to the stables.
The little riding club was a dump. An unpaved road near an asphalt plant led to it. There was a stable, an abandoned bar (everything in Spain had a bar), a cracked fountain, and a couple of paddocks for horses. There was a dusty outdoor ring, and there were empty (manure-covered) fields all around where, if the teacher let you, you could ride.
Elena, the Swedish riding mistress, assigned the horses and handed out the helmets. Grooms were sent to catch the horses that were out in the paddock, but you had to learn to groom your horse and put on the saddle and bridle by yourself. This was something I was happy to do—at Onwentsia the grooms brought your horse to you all tacked up; the little princesses never did any work. My girls had no horse sense, so I was happy to run between them, throwing a saddle on here, tightening a bridle there, helping a Mazzilli in between. Most of the horses were wily and ill-tempered, and they’d escape or step on your foot if you gave them half a chance—which Julie and Lisa did from time to time.
Elena gave a good, tough hour-long lesson for about $12 a person—an incredible bargain. There were usually only five or six kids in the class. Elena put a lot of emphasis on balance, and she often had the kids ride without reins or without stirrups, or backwards. She’d have them ride on their knees in the saddle, or make them go “around the world”—turn 360 degrees in the saddle while riding. Julie and Lisa hated these exercises, and their interest in riding waned.
One time, before they stopped riding altogether, Julie asked if she could bring her friend Andrea to ride someday. Andrea was from the U.K. and had taken riding lessons before moving to Spain. “Sure,” I said, “we can take her next week.”
When I picked Andrea up she was wearing nice leather riding boots and her own helmet. “I should warn you that this stable is not very fancy,” I said.
“Oh, I hate those posh stables,” she said agreeably in her lovely English accent.
Another time the Mazzillis had relatives visiting, so Frank Mazzilli, Lisa’s husband, took his kids and the visitors to the stable in a separate car. One of the relatives was a twelve-year-old cousin who, when watching the horses get hosed off after the ride, noticed one horse’s huge penis hanging down. It looked like another hose.
The kid went pale. “What’s that?!” he asked his Uncle Frank. Frank and I looked where he was pointing, went speechless for a second, and then dissolved in laughter.
Of course, though the kids quit riding, I was re-hooked, and I started to drive to La Cañada on Tuesday mornings, when Elena gave a class to some other ladies. I met a German woman, Elsa, and a couple of Spanish ladies. They helped me learn to do the major grooming chores, like pick dirt out of the horse’s hooves and get the tack on efficiently. We’d have a great class—always physically challenging, always working toward more delicate guidance of the horse and better balance in the saddle—then cool down the horses, clean them up, and put them away. The time with the horses before and after riding was as much fun for me as the lesson was.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
At Home, part 25
After our day and a half in Bruges we left for Amsterdam, stopping in Ghent on the way. There we saw what would have happened if Bruges had continued to develop instead of “dying”—Ghent’s merchants became much richer and built much grander guild houses, homes and churches. But it was dirtier and more modern and urban, too.
The rest of the ride to Amsterdam was noticeably flatter than any terrain we’d been through on the trip. It was rainy, and we passed through much green farmland.
When we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s, we all did a double-take. “Mom, look at those girls,” Lisa whispered to me, indicating the servers behind the counter. There were three pretty, blond, six-foot-plus teenagers there—only the first of many tall Dutch girls we were to see.
We wound our way around and over the canals that webbed Amsterdam, making our way to our tall canal house hotel. We were three flights up a dark, narrow staircase, but the rooms were comfortable and the location was great—close to the center of the city. We marveled at the packs of cyclists we saw as we hustled to the Rijksmuseum before it closed—we wanted to see the Rembrandt paintings, and there were dollhouses for the kids to view.
Mike and I spent a few minutes perusing the guidebook for a likely restaurant. “Ooh, let’s get a rijstaffel,” I said. Indonesia, the former Dutch colony, was represented by several great-sounding restaurants that specialized in rijstaffel, which means “rice table” and consists of many fish, meat and vegetable dishes.
“I’d love to do that,” Mike said, “but what about the kids?”
“I think there’ll be so many choices for them, they’re bound to find something they like,” I said, and I was right. The restaurant had a great Asian atmosphere, with bamboo and cane accents everywhere.
“I’m gonna taste everything,” Lisa vowed.
“Not me,” said Julie. “But I will have some rice.”
Later, leaving the restaurant, we stopped at a pay phone to call our Dutch friends, Geertje and Peter Roorde. They had lived near us in Stamford, and their daughter Sietske had been in kindergarten with Lisa, but they’d returned to Holland when Sietske turned six.
“I promised you you could see Sietske if we moved to Spain, and I’m going to keep that promise now,” I told Lisa. We made plans to see the Roordes the next day. I turned and left the phone booth, tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, and went sprawling onto the pavement, breath knocked out of me, searing pain in my knee.
Mike and the kids rushed to help me up. “I think I have to stay down here a while,” I said, barely able to speak. I saw that the knee of my jeans was shredded, as was my knee itself, scraped and bleeding. After a few minutes I got up, but I was really in pain and had to hobble back to the hotel. I felt like an idiot, but mostly I just hurt.
I cleaned myself up as best I could and pitched the jeans into the trash. The knee kept oozing, and it throbbed all night, keeping me awake. By morning I had a gory scab that covered my whole knee and hurt with every movement.
But we went out early anyway, to see the Anne Frank house before the crowds built up. Julie had read Diary of a Young Girl the previous spring, and by the end of the visit Lisa wanted to read it, too. Seeing the house was a moving experience for all of us.
“It’s so small,” Lisa said when she saw the hidden apartment. “I wouldn’t want to live here.” We wound our way up the stairs of the narrow house, and on the top floor was an exhibit detailing the fate of the Jews of Amsterdam. Lisa was disturbed by this, as she had been by Struthof, but she seemed to know that it was important to see and absorb what had happened to the Frank family.
From there we drove to the Roordes’ home in the suburb of Bloemendaal. They showed us around their beautiful house, built in 1903 by a judge, filled with splendid woodwork. Sietske looked much taller—like Lisa, she was tall for her age—and though she seemed to have lost some of her English, the two girls played happily together.
Peter and Geertje took us all to nearby Keukenhof, a famous garden that is used as a spring showplace for all the bulb-growing companies of Holland. “I’m embarrassed to say it,” Geertje confessed, “but I’ve lived here almost all my life, and I’ve never been to the Keukenhof before.”
Mike laughed. “It’s like being a New Yorker and never going to the Statue of Liberty till you have guests from out of town,” he said.
The Keukenhof was spectacular—acres and acres of tulips of every color, thousands of crocuses and irises and daffodils, and buildings full of more exotic flowers. The kids were astounded, but we were all like kids there—that riot of color just filled us with joy. It was great outdoor running space for the youngsters—Sietske’s little brother Haye was with us, too—and there was even a playground amid the blooms. We took a full roll of photos, trying to preserve some of that beauty.
Then Peter drove us out to the dunes by the North Sea. There was nothing to see, as the coastline was blanketed by fog, but he hopped out of the van and returned a minute later with several cardboard containers similar to the ones french fries came in at home.
“What’s this?” we asked.
“This is fresh herring, just caught, cleaned, and salted,” he said. Lisa and Julie turned their noses up at this, but Mike and I took a taste. It was briny and tasty, so we helped the Roordes finish all four containers.
“Now we’re going for a real traditional Dutch family dinner,” Peter said. “Pancakes!” We drove through the dusk to a nice barnlike old building, a cozy neighborhood pancake restaurant. The place was casual and relaxed.
“Everything is good here,” Geertje said. “You might want to try a savory pancake for dinner and a sweet one for dessert.” We ordered some specialties like curried chicken wrapped in a pancake and stewed beef wrapped in a pancake. Everything was delicious and satisfying, a really warming dinner after the chill of the coast.
The next day we got up early and ran out to see the Jewish History Museum. The museum’s designers had done the incredible job of joining together four adjacent synagogues, creating a single building with angled passages from room to room and floor to floor. The original synagogues had been of different periods and styles, and the museum made the most of the similarities and contrasts between them. There were exhibits of ornate and beautiful religious objects that had been used in the synagogues, and there were historical exhibits with artifacts and photographs of the Amsterdam Jewish community.
We went from there to meet the Roordes at the Van Gogh Museum (we could only approximate the correct pronunciation using a guttural German-like sound—van Chuch). We were a little early, so the four of us sat in the museum’s cafeteria to have a Coke. There was a big picture window overlooking a park, and we noticed some activity out there. There was a huge, colorful striped tent—it looked like a circus tent—and slowly we realized that it was the Cirque du Soleil tent, and that it was coming down.
The circus had been in town, we knew, and we were fascinated by how small a crew was needed to dismantle the tent. Only eight or ten men were doing the job. It seemed well orchestrated—everyone knew who did what and when. They pulled ropes, dismantled scaffolds, and folded canvas. The Roordes joined us in the cafeteria, and they sat down, too, to watch the free show. The job wasn’t finished in the half-hour we watched, but tremendous progress had been made by the time we got up and turned our attention to Van Gogh’s haystacks and sunflowers.
The next day, Sunday, we drove to Brussels. Our hotel there was pretty dumpy, and it was raining, so we started to feel ready to end the vacation and get home. We went to the city’s art museum, and then we went to see the movie Outbreak, about a killer virus. It turned out to be far too scary for Lisa, who spent most of the time on the floor between my knees so she wouldn’t have to see the screen.
After the movie we walked to the Grand Place, the town’s main square, which was ringed with beautiful guild houses. We walked through the surrounding arcades to stay out of the drizzle, looking at the colorful displays of fresh seafood on crushed ice outside every restaurant. Moules frites (steamed mussels and french fries) were the specialty everywhere. We found a pretty good restaurant, had a filling dinner, and went back to the hotel.
The next morning it was still raining, so we left town and drove along the Meuse River through the Ardennes Forest. I knew these were World War I battle areas, but I didn’t know the stories. “Only Doug could really appreciate this,” I told Mike, thinking of my brother-in-law, who was a real history buff. If he had been there, he could have told us about the places we were passing—Verdun, Waterloo, the Saar. We passed many lovely houses along the Meuse, and then we stopped to explore La Merveilleuse, a cave in Dinant that had been carved out by an underground river.
We made it to Luxembourg, returned the car, got on the plane, and were in Madrid by 7 p.m. It was 70 degrees and sunny outside, and our taxi driver said it had been clear and warm all week. When we got home our front yard was abloom with huge, beautiful, fragrant roses.
The rest of the ride to Amsterdam was noticeably flatter than any terrain we’d been through on the trip. It was rainy, and we passed through much green farmland.
When we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s, we all did a double-take. “Mom, look at those girls,” Lisa whispered to me, indicating the servers behind the counter. There were three pretty, blond, six-foot-plus teenagers there—only the first of many tall Dutch girls we were to see.
We wound our way around and over the canals that webbed Amsterdam, making our way to our tall canal house hotel. We were three flights up a dark, narrow staircase, but the rooms were comfortable and the location was great—close to the center of the city. We marveled at the packs of cyclists we saw as we hustled to the Rijksmuseum before it closed—we wanted to see the Rembrandt paintings, and there were dollhouses for the kids to view.
Mike and I spent a few minutes perusing the guidebook for a likely restaurant. “Ooh, let’s get a rijstaffel,” I said. Indonesia, the former Dutch colony, was represented by several great-sounding restaurants that specialized in rijstaffel, which means “rice table” and consists of many fish, meat and vegetable dishes.
“I’d love to do that,” Mike said, “but what about the kids?”
“I think there’ll be so many choices for them, they’re bound to find something they like,” I said, and I was right. The restaurant had a great Asian atmosphere, with bamboo and cane accents everywhere.
“I’m gonna taste everything,” Lisa vowed.
“Not me,” said Julie. “But I will have some rice.”
Later, leaving the restaurant, we stopped at a pay phone to call our Dutch friends, Geertje and Peter Roorde. They had lived near us in Stamford, and their daughter Sietske had been in kindergarten with Lisa, but they’d returned to Holland when Sietske turned six.
“I promised you you could see Sietske if we moved to Spain, and I’m going to keep that promise now,” I told Lisa. We made plans to see the Roordes the next day. I turned and left the phone booth, tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, and went sprawling onto the pavement, breath knocked out of me, searing pain in my knee.
Mike and the kids rushed to help me up. “I think I have to stay down here a while,” I said, barely able to speak. I saw that the knee of my jeans was shredded, as was my knee itself, scraped and bleeding. After a few minutes I got up, but I was really in pain and had to hobble back to the hotel. I felt like an idiot, but mostly I just hurt.
I cleaned myself up as best I could and pitched the jeans into the trash. The knee kept oozing, and it throbbed all night, keeping me awake. By morning I had a gory scab that covered my whole knee and hurt with every movement.
But we went out early anyway, to see the Anne Frank house before the crowds built up. Julie had read Diary of a Young Girl the previous spring, and by the end of the visit Lisa wanted to read it, too. Seeing the house was a moving experience for all of us.
“It’s so small,” Lisa said when she saw the hidden apartment. “I wouldn’t want to live here.” We wound our way up the stairs of the narrow house, and on the top floor was an exhibit detailing the fate of the Jews of Amsterdam. Lisa was disturbed by this, as she had been by Struthof, but she seemed to know that it was important to see and absorb what had happened to the Frank family.
From there we drove to the Roordes’ home in the suburb of Bloemendaal. They showed us around their beautiful house, built in 1903 by a judge, filled with splendid woodwork. Sietske looked much taller—like Lisa, she was tall for her age—and though she seemed to have lost some of her English, the two girls played happily together.
Peter and Geertje took us all to nearby Keukenhof, a famous garden that is used as a spring showplace for all the bulb-growing companies of Holland. “I’m embarrassed to say it,” Geertje confessed, “but I’ve lived here almost all my life, and I’ve never been to the Keukenhof before.”
Mike laughed. “It’s like being a New Yorker and never going to the Statue of Liberty till you have guests from out of town,” he said.
The Keukenhof was spectacular—acres and acres of tulips of every color, thousands of crocuses and irises and daffodils, and buildings full of more exotic flowers. The kids were astounded, but we were all like kids there—that riot of color just filled us with joy. It was great outdoor running space for the youngsters—Sietske’s little brother Haye was with us, too—and there was even a playground amid the blooms. We took a full roll of photos, trying to preserve some of that beauty.
Then Peter drove us out to the dunes by the North Sea. There was nothing to see, as the coastline was blanketed by fog, but he hopped out of the van and returned a minute later with several cardboard containers similar to the ones french fries came in at home.
“What’s this?” we asked.
“This is fresh herring, just caught, cleaned, and salted,” he said. Lisa and Julie turned their noses up at this, but Mike and I took a taste. It was briny and tasty, so we helped the Roordes finish all four containers.
“Now we’re going for a real traditional Dutch family dinner,” Peter said. “Pancakes!” We drove through the dusk to a nice barnlike old building, a cozy neighborhood pancake restaurant. The place was casual and relaxed.
“Everything is good here,” Geertje said. “You might want to try a savory pancake for dinner and a sweet one for dessert.” We ordered some specialties like curried chicken wrapped in a pancake and stewed beef wrapped in a pancake. Everything was delicious and satisfying, a really warming dinner after the chill of the coast.
The next day we got up early and ran out to see the Jewish History Museum. The museum’s designers had done the incredible job of joining together four adjacent synagogues, creating a single building with angled passages from room to room and floor to floor. The original synagogues had been of different periods and styles, and the museum made the most of the similarities and contrasts between them. There were exhibits of ornate and beautiful religious objects that had been used in the synagogues, and there were historical exhibits with artifacts and photographs of the Amsterdam Jewish community.
We went from there to meet the Roordes at the Van Gogh Museum (we could only approximate the correct pronunciation using a guttural German-like sound—van Chuch). We were a little early, so the four of us sat in the museum’s cafeteria to have a Coke. There was a big picture window overlooking a park, and we noticed some activity out there. There was a huge, colorful striped tent—it looked like a circus tent—and slowly we realized that it was the Cirque du Soleil tent, and that it was coming down.
The circus had been in town, we knew, and we were fascinated by how small a crew was needed to dismantle the tent. Only eight or ten men were doing the job. It seemed well orchestrated—everyone knew who did what and when. They pulled ropes, dismantled scaffolds, and folded canvas. The Roordes joined us in the cafeteria, and they sat down, too, to watch the free show. The job wasn’t finished in the half-hour we watched, but tremendous progress had been made by the time we got up and turned our attention to Van Gogh’s haystacks and sunflowers.
The next day, Sunday, we drove to Brussels. Our hotel there was pretty dumpy, and it was raining, so we started to feel ready to end the vacation and get home. We went to the city’s art museum, and then we went to see the movie Outbreak, about a killer virus. It turned out to be far too scary for Lisa, who spent most of the time on the floor between my knees so she wouldn’t have to see the screen.
After the movie we walked to the Grand Place, the town’s main square, which was ringed with beautiful guild houses. We walked through the surrounding arcades to stay out of the drizzle, looking at the colorful displays of fresh seafood on crushed ice outside every restaurant. Moules frites (steamed mussels and french fries) were the specialty everywhere. We found a pretty good restaurant, had a filling dinner, and went back to the hotel.
The next morning it was still raining, so we left town and drove along the Meuse River through the Ardennes Forest. I knew these were World War I battle areas, but I didn’t know the stories. “Only Doug could really appreciate this,” I told Mike, thinking of my brother-in-law, who was a real history buff. If he had been there, he could have told us about the places we were passing—Verdun, Waterloo, the Saar. We passed many lovely houses along the Meuse, and then we stopped to explore La Merveilleuse, a cave in Dinant that had been carved out by an underground river.
We made it to Luxembourg, returned the car, got on the plane, and were in Madrid by 7 p.m. It was 70 degrees and sunny outside, and our taxi driver said it had been clear and warm all week. When we got home our front yard was abloom with huge, beautiful, fragrant roses.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
At Home, part 24
The next day we had a long drive to Bruges, with a stop in Reims, France to see the cathedral there, with its spectacular stained glass. Ana had told me about an officers’ wives trip she’d taken to Bruges when she lived in Germany. “It’s my favorite place in the world,” she said. “I’ve never been anyplace so beautiful.” Good enough for me, I thought, and I soon saw she was right. It was a nearly perfectly preserved old town. It virtually shut down after its moment of glory in the 17th century—its river silted up, and the local merchants foolishly wouldn’t pay to have it dredged, so business moved on to the nearby town of Ghent. Its nickname is “Bruges le mort,” or Bruges the dead. But the result was that there was virtually no modern invasion, no urban renewal. Canals ran around and through the town, and horse-drawn carriages roamed its streets. It was a place where you could walk and walk, just looking at the beautiful little houses.
“You know this is my favorite thing to do,” I said to Mike. “House-peeking. I just love to see how people live! It’s easy to peek in the lace curtains here, and the houses aren’t raised much from the street, so you can see a lot.”
He laughed. “The thing I like about it is that it’s so real—not plastic and Disney-fied, just clean and pretty.”
We stopped in a little storefront with a sign that said “Lace Museum.” Inside were displays of intricate antique lace, including many samples that were works in progress—all the pins and bobbins involved in handmade lace were still attached to the half-finished pieces. There were local ladies demonstrating the craft, and we stood and watched for ten minutes or so, marveling at the cushions loaded with pins surrounded by growing webs of lace. As many as twenty or thirty bobbins of white thread hung from a single piece of work, and it was amazing to see the skill with which the ladies manipulated the bobbins in a complex pattern of movement.
“I think I want to learn to do this when I get home,” Julie said, mesmerized by the quick, skillful work of the demonstrators.
“I think it would take a long time to learn this,” I said. “But we can get a book if you want. They have them for sale here.”
She pondered this for a minute. “No, I don’t think I have the patience,” she admitted.
We went to a nearby shop, and I told the girls I would buy them each a handkerchief with Belgian lace on it, each with their initial. “You need to keep these safe and never lose them,” I said. “Then you can carry them on your wedding day, and you’ll remember this trip.” They both vowed to safeguard their handkerchiefs.
“You know this is my favorite thing to do,” I said to Mike. “House-peeking. I just love to see how people live! It’s easy to peek in the lace curtains here, and the houses aren’t raised much from the street, so you can see a lot.”
He laughed. “The thing I like about it is that it’s so real—not plastic and Disney-fied, just clean and pretty.”
We stopped in a little storefront with a sign that said “Lace Museum.” Inside were displays of intricate antique lace, including many samples that were works in progress—all the pins and bobbins involved in handmade lace were still attached to the half-finished pieces. There were local ladies demonstrating the craft, and we stood and watched for ten minutes or so, marveling at the cushions loaded with pins surrounded by growing webs of lace. As many as twenty or thirty bobbins of white thread hung from a single piece of work, and it was amazing to see the skill with which the ladies manipulated the bobbins in a complex pattern of movement.
“I think I want to learn to do this when I get home,” Julie said, mesmerized by the quick, skillful work of the demonstrators.
“I think it would take a long time to learn this,” I said. “But we can get a book if you want. They have them for sale here.”
She pondered this for a minute. “No, I don’t think I have the patience,” she admitted.
We went to a nearby shop, and I told the girls I would buy them each a handkerchief with Belgian lace on it, each with their initial. “You need to keep these safe and never lose them,” I said. “Then you can carry them on your wedding day, and you’ll remember this trip.” They both vowed to safeguard their handkerchiefs.
Monday, April 13, 2009
At Home, part 23
The next day, Sunday, we drove across the border to Freiburg, Germany, a postcard-pretty town with a beautifully preserved medieval center that was barred to cars. We had a good walk there from one lovely square to another. Then, since we’d never been in Germany before, we pressed on a little further, through the Black Forest to the resort town of Titisee. The scenery along the way was almost Sound of Music beautiful, with wooded hills, green meadows, and a snowy mountain in the background. The village was set at the edge of a lake, and since it was way before the high season, the place was relatively peaceful and tourist-free.
On Monday we drove along the Alsatian Route du vin (Wine Road), which was also a big summer attraction but very quiet and relaxing at this time of year. The Route took us through a string of small grape-growing towns south of Strasbourg, and after stopping at a couple of those we followed our guidebook’s suggestion and drove up a hill toward Struthof, the only World War II concentration camp in France.
As we ascended the hill toward our destination, the early-spring weather began to fade back toward a wintry cold. Patches of green disappeared and patches of snow took their place. The sky became gray and forbidding, and the ground that was visible looked dark and muddy. We went up through clouds and even a snow squall.
Then Struthof came into view, with a stark black gate and jagged fences. It was a bleak and sterile landscape. A few low buildings stood on flat ground that was partly covered with dirty snow. The air was silent.
When we got out of the car the weather was raw and miserable, fitting for the place. The camp had been restored as a museum, a way to make people aware of what had happened there, and we were surprised and gratified to see busloads of quiet French and German teenagers there on a school trip.
We entered a restored barracks, now a small exhibit displaying photos of the camp in operation and the prisoners’ uniforms and bunks. Items were labeled with typewritten index cards—not sophisticated, just sincere. Julie studied these with interest, but Lisa was visibly upset from the moment we entered. At that age she was very sensitive to violence and suffering, and she definitely understood what had gone on there.
I took her outside the museum, where we saw the foundations of numerous other barracks, which gave us an idea of the layout of the camp. Both the gas chamber and the crematorium were there, restored; the ominous chimney of the crematorium made me feel sick.
“It’s an awful place,” I said, “but I think it’s great that they have preserved it so they can show it to people. Maybe that will ensure that this will never happen again.” Lisa didn’t answer; she was silent and pale.
We left the camp and drove back down into the milder spring weather, relieved to be out of Struthof but deeply affected by it.
We continued on the Route, stopping at Haut Konigsburg castle. Again we drove up through fog and clouds, this time to reach the huge brown stone building, but instead of the menacing air of Struthof we felt we were entering a mysterious part of the past. We toured its many restored rooms; according to the guidebook, the furnishings were inauthentic, but they looked to me as if they belonged there, with colorfully painted fireplaces and huge beds.
After Konigsburg we happened on another castle that saved the day for us. This was just a pile of ruins, but when we parked and walked toward the entrance we found that it had been converted into a sanctuary for birds of prey. There were rows of large cages among the rubble, and we saw falcons, eagles, vultures and hawks as we approached what looked like an amphitheater.
“Demonstration at 2 p.m.” was on a small hand-lettered sign, and I checked my watch: 1:50. “I guess we hit this one right,” I said to Mike. We found some seats among the sparse crowd.
Within minutes a personable fellow came out and started the show. He spoke in English as well as French, so we were able to follow as he talked about the birds, their habitats, their level of endangerment as species. He made eagles and falcons fly and return at his command, to the delight of the audience. “That eagle doesn’t even look so big,” Lisa leaned over and whispered, “but when he opens his wings he’s gigantic!” The show went on for about 20 minutes, and we walked past more giant birdcages on the way out. “I’m sorry they have to be in cages,” Julie said, “but I’m so glad we got to see them.”
On Monday we drove along the Alsatian Route du vin (Wine Road), which was also a big summer attraction but very quiet and relaxing at this time of year. The Route took us through a string of small grape-growing towns south of Strasbourg, and after stopping at a couple of those we followed our guidebook’s suggestion and drove up a hill toward Struthof, the only World War II concentration camp in France.
As we ascended the hill toward our destination, the early-spring weather began to fade back toward a wintry cold. Patches of green disappeared and patches of snow took their place. The sky became gray and forbidding, and the ground that was visible looked dark and muddy. We went up through clouds and even a snow squall.
Then Struthof came into view, with a stark black gate and jagged fences. It was a bleak and sterile landscape. A few low buildings stood on flat ground that was partly covered with dirty snow. The air was silent.
When we got out of the car the weather was raw and miserable, fitting for the place. The camp had been restored as a museum, a way to make people aware of what had happened there, and we were surprised and gratified to see busloads of quiet French and German teenagers there on a school trip.
We entered a restored barracks, now a small exhibit displaying photos of the camp in operation and the prisoners’ uniforms and bunks. Items were labeled with typewritten index cards—not sophisticated, just sincere. Julie studied these with interest, but Lisa was visibly upset from the moment we entered. At that age she was very sensitive to violence and suffering, and she definitely understood what had gone on there.
I took her outside the museum, where we saw the foundations of numerous other barracks, which gave us an idea of the layout of the camp. Both the gas chamber and the crematorium were there, restored; the ominous chimney of the crematorium made me feel sick.
“It’s an awful place,” I said, “but I think it’s great that they have preserved it so they can show it to people. Maybe that will ensure that this will never happen again.” Lisa didn’t answer; she was silent and pale.
We left the camp and drove back down into the milder spring weather, relieved to be out of Struthof but deeply affected by it.
We continued on the Route, stopping at Haut Konigsburg castle. Again we drove up through fog and clouds, this time to reach the huge brown stone building, but instead of the menacing air of Struthof we felt we were entering a mysterious part of the past. We toured its many restored rooms; according to the guidebook, the furnishings were inauthentic, but they looked to me as if they belonged there, with colorfully painted fireplaces and huge beds.
After Konigsburg we happened on another castle that saved the day for us. This was just a pile of ruins, but when we parked and walked toward the entrance we found that it had been converted into a sanctuary for birds of prey. There were rows of large cages among the rubble, and we saw falcons, eagles, vultures and hawks as we approached what looked like an amphitheater.
“Demonstration at 2 p.m.” was on a small hand-lettered sign, and I checked my watch: 1:50. “I guess we hit this one right,” I said to Mike. We found some seats among the sparse crowd.
Within minutes a personable fellow came out and started the show. He spoke in English as well as French, so we were able to follow as he talked about the birds, their habitats, their level of endangerment as species. He made eagles and falcons fly and return at his command, to the delight of the audience. “That eagle doesn’t even look so big,” Lisa leaned over and whispered, “but when he opens his wings he’s gigantic!” The show went on for about 20 minutes, and we walked past more giant birdcages on the way out. “I’m sorry they have to be in cages,” Julie said, “but I’m so glad we got to see them.”
Sunday, April 12, 2009
At Home, part 22
At last it was time for us to take our big Semana Santa (Holy Week) vacation. This was spring vacation time for most European schools, Easter week, and we had done lots of planning to put the trip together. My English-speaking travel agent had not been quick to find inexpensive hotels for us—he was really happier dealing with luxury itineraries, though he wouldn’t come out and say so—so I had followed Amy Levine’s cheap hotel advice.
“I just use Fodor’s Europe on $50 a Day,” she said. “They have plenty of good, inexpensive places.”
I got the book and made lists of my top choices in each of the cities we’d be going to. The trip would start with a flight to Luxembourg. We’d rent a car and drive to Strasbourg, France, then to Bruges, in Belgium, and on to Holland, where Lisa had a kindergarten friend to visit. Then we’d go to Brussels and back to Luxembourg to catch our return flight. We thought it might be a good idea to spend Easter week in predominantly Protestant areas, since the Catholic Easter celebrations often drew huge numbers, and I was not a fan of crowds.
I made a reservation at a very cheap place in Luxembourg, where we’d spend only one night. I found a canal house for us to stay in in Amsterdam. But when it came time to book the French and Belgian hotels I couldn’t remember how to speak French. I had been reasonably fluent just a year before, during our vacation in Martinique, but it was all gone now. If I tried to think of words like “room” or “double bed,” the words that came out were habitación and cama grande—Spanish words, not French.
I called Amy, whose French was still terrific. “Can you sort of prime the pump for me?” I asked. “I need to be reminded how to ask for a room in French.”
“Je voudrais une chambre . . .” she began.
“That’s fine,” I said, feeling more cheerful as the language came back to me. “I can take it from here.” I got the other hotels nailed down easily.
Our Luxair flight left Madrid on a Friday night and stopped in Barcelona on the way to Luxembourg City. We didn’t arrive at our hotel till 12:30 a.m., and we were tired when we got there. I had reserved one room with four single beds for us—we didn’t normally share a room, but I knew we’d be coming in late and staying just one night, so it seemed like a reasonable economy.
We all jumped into our pajamas quickly in the chilly room, and the four of us got into bed. Mike turned off the light. “Good night! Sleep well!” he said.
It was quiet for about two minutes. Then Lisa’s voice: “Mom? My foot’s sticking out.”
There was a momentary silence. “Well, stick it back in!” I answered, and suddenly all four of us were laughing hysterically, a little tired and punchy.
In the morning we set out to see the city, which was basically a huge fortress. Many rings of fortifications had been built around the town over the centuries, and we explored some of them. There were lovely stone buildings and picturesque squares, and it was market day, so we did a little shopping for souvenirs. We had to buy scarves and gloves, too, since it was colder than we had expected.
We went back to the airport in the afternoon to pick up our rental car, a little blue Opel, and drove to Strasbourg through forests and hills. We found our hotel without trouble, because we knew it was near the huge train station, and that was easy to locate. We walked over to Petite France, the old (and touristy) part of town, situated on a group of small islands in the Ill river. The half-timbered houses were pretty and lent the area a medieval atmosphere, even though there were restaurants and shops everywhere. We chose a restaurant based on kid food needs—“Pizza!” Julie had shouted when she saw it on the menu in the window—no French cooking that night.
But when the main course was over, I started to wax enthusiastic about the grandeur of French desserts. “You should definitely order something here,” I told the girls. “The French are the best at this kind of thing. Get a pastry or something.”
“I really only want some ice cream,” Julie said.
“Well, that’s okay!” I said, smiling. “French ice creams are wonderful, too.” I peered at the menu. “Ooh, they have regular vanilla and chocolate, but they have coconut, too, and lemon sorbet. And these won’t be like those pre-made frozen things that come in the coconut shell or the lemon rind! These will be really elegant!”
Excited now, Julie ordered the coconut, which was her favorite, and Lisa asked for a lemon sorbet. And when they arrived looking just like the mass-produced ones we always got in Spain, I got another good ribbing from the kids.
“Ooh, Mom, really elegant,” Julie said, laughing.
“Yeah,” said Lisa, “this is so much better than what we get in Madrid!”
“I just use Fodor’s Europe on $50 a Day,” she said. “They have plenty of good, inexpensive places.”
I got the book and made lists of my top choices in each of the cities we’d be going to. The trip would start with a flight to Luxembourg. We’d rent a car and drive to Strasbourg, France, then to Bruges, in Belgium, and on to Holland, where Lisa had a kindergarten friend to visit. Then we’d go to Brussels and back to Luxembourg to catch our return flight. We thought it might be a good idea to spend Easter week in predominantly Protestant areas, since the Catholic Easter celebrations often drew huge numbers, and I was not a fan of crowds.
I made a reservation at a very cheap place in Luxembourg, where we’d spend only one night. I found a canal house for us to stay in in Amsterdam. But when it came time to book the French and Belgian hotels I couldn’t remember how to speak French. I had been reasonably fluent just a year before, during our vacation in Martinique, but it was all gone now. If I tried to think of words like “room” or “double bed,” the words that came out were habitación and cama grande—Spanish words, not French.
I called Amy, whose French was still terrific. “Can you sort of prime the pump for me?” I asked. “I need to be reminded how to ask for a room in French.”
“Je voudrais une chambre . . .” she began.
“That’s fine,” I said, feeling more cheerful as the language came back to me. “I can take it from here.” I got the other hotels nailed down easily.
Our Luxair flight left Madrid on a Friday night and stopped in Barcelona on the way to Luxembourg City. We didn’t arrive at our hotel till 12:30 a.m., and we were tired when we got there. I had reserved one room with four single beds for us—we didn’t normally share a room, but I knew we’d be coming in late and staying just one night, so it seemed like a reasonable economy.
We all jumped into our pajamas quickly in the chilly room, and the four of us got into bed. Mike turned off the light. “Good night! Sleep well!” he said.
It was quiet for about two minutes. Then Lisa’s voice: “Mom? My foot’s sticking out.”
There was a momentary silence. “Well, stick it back in!” I answered, and suddenly all four of us were laughing hysterically, a little tired and punchy.
In the morning we set out to see the city, which was basically a huge fortress. Many rings of fortifications had been built around the town over the centuries, and we explored some of them. There were lovely stone buildings and picturesque squares, and it was market day, so we did a little shopping for souvenirs. We had to buy scarves and gloves, too, since it was colder than we had expected.
We went back to the airport in the afternoon to pick up our rental car, a little blue Opel, and drove to Strasbourg through forests and hills. We found our hotel without trouble, because we knew it was near the huge train station, and that was easy to locate. We walked over to Petite France, the old (and touristy) part of town, situated on a group of small islands in the Ill river. The half-timbered houses were pretty and lent the area a medieval atmosphere, even though there were restaurants and shops everywhere. We chose a restaurant based on kid food needs—“Pizza!” Julie had shouted when she saw it on the menu in the window—no French cooking that night.
But when the main course was over, I started to wax enthusiastic about the grandeur of French desserts. “You should definitely order something here,” I told the girls. “The French are the best at this kind of thing. Get a pastry or something.”
“I really only want some ice cream,” Julie said.
“Well, that’s okay!” I said, smiling. “French ice creams are wonderful, too.” I peered at the menu. “Ooh, they have regular vanilla and chocolate, but they have coconut, too, and lemon sorbet. And these won’t be like those pre-made frozen things that come in the coconut shell or the lemon rind! These will be really elegant!”
Excited now, Julie ordered the coconut, which was her favorite, and Lisa asked for a lemon sorbet. And when they arrived looking just like the mass-produced ones we always got in Spain, I got another good ribbing from the kids.
“Ooh, Mom, really elegant,” Julie said, laughing.
“Yeah,” said Lisa, “this is so much better than what we get in Madrid!”
Friday, April 10, 2009
At Home, part 21
A couple weeks later we had a Monday holiday, so we decided to take a long-awaited trip to Granada. The Alhambra, the beautiful 14th-century Moorish palace, was one of the most important sites in Spain, and we had been looking for the right moment to go there. Ana, whose family came from the nearby Alpujarras region, had good advice for us.
“Be sure to go to the Alhambra first thing in the morning,” she said. “The crowds get very bad later in the day, and at a certain point they just cut off the line and tell people to come back tomorrow. If you go right when it opens, you will have plenty of time and space to see everything.” So we decided to drive down on Saturday, visit other parts of the city, and then get to the Alhambra first thing Sunday morning.
The drive down to Granada, on the southern coast, took only four hours, but we rushed all the way, because that Saturday was the wedding of the Infanta Elena. Daughter of the king and queen of Spain, the princess was considered a bit homely and a little old, so the country had been delighted to learn of her engagement a few months earlier to a capable young man from an aristocratic family. Elena would be the first of her siblings to marry, so the wedding was much anticipated throughout Spain.
We checked into our glitzy hotel just as the wedding was beginning, and the first thing we tried in our hotel room was the television, to make sure we would have a good picture of the ceremony. “Ooh, she looks nervous!” Julie said when the TV showed Elena in close-up. We sat immobile on the bed, watching the solemn Mass, the proud parents, and the uneasy bridal couple.
“I think I saw the king yawning!” Lisa said, rapt. We stayed glued to the TV right to the end, and we were as proud as, say, cousins when the event was over.
Now we were free to walk around Granada a bit. The guidebook mentioned a hilltop plaza with fine views of the city, so we started there. We passed walled white villas and houses. “That says ‘Hakuna Matata’! From The Lion King!” Julie said, pointing to a handpainted sign above the gate of one of the houses.
In the cobblestone plaza we found friendly Gypsy women selling castanets, which were irresistible to the kids. We bought Julie and Lisa a pair each, and the Gypsies showed them how to make the rapid clicking sounds. It took some practice, but Julie started to get the idea pretty quickly. “Look, I can do it!” she said, beaming while Lisa struggled with her castanets. Unlike other Gypsies we’d encountered, these women were pleasant and helpful, apparently enjoying the kids.
We walked down through the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter with typically tiny, winding streets, and on to the Capilla Real, where Ferdinand and Isabella were buried, and the neighboring cathedral. After our long day of driving, wedding attendance and sightseeing, we were too tired to wait till the Spanish dinner hour, so we had an early Chinese dinner down the street from our hotel.
The next morning we were near the head of the line when the Alhambra opened at 9. More than a palace, the Alhambra was a large compound that covered an entire plateau. It included a fortress, a palace, a summer palace (the Generalife), and expansive gardens. We took our time and walked through all the buildings, but we were disappointed that the Baños Árabes (Arab Baths) were closed for restoration.
The royal palace alone, though, was worth the entire trip. In my Spanish art history class, Everett Rice had showed us slides of the gorgeous rooms of the palace—the Court of the Myrtles, with its long pool surrounded by shrubs; the Court of the Lions, with a fountain and twelve lion statues; and the Hall of the Two Sisters, dripping with intricate plaster ceiling designs. But it was so much more dramatic to see them in person. The harmonies of the architecture, the extravagance of the decoration, the effects of light and shadow—it was a breathtaking experience. Even the kids were impressed.
I reminded the girls of one of Mike’s early Spanish-language gaffes. “Remember when Dad told Marino he was looking forward to going to Granada?” I asked. “He said he wanted to see the famous alfombra (rug) instead of Alhambra!” By now they knew enough Spanish to get the joke, and we had a good laugh over Mike’s mistake. “But what about you, Mom—iron the cheese!” Julie teased. “Pig’s ear! Pig’s ear!” Lisa shouted, recalling my eating error in Badajoz. It was enough to keep us giggling for half an hour.
On Monday we drove home through a couple of villages mentioned in the guidebook—the unremarkable Baeza and the lovely Úbeda. I could imagine myself living in Úbeda, with its quiet streets and plazas and its sunny, whitewashed little houses. Then we went on to Cazorla, gateway to a wild national park that ran along a river. We entered the park, drove in for a while, came upon a fish hatchery, and then moved deeper into the hilly country. The rolling land was covered with pine trees, and the road switched back and forth as the land rose and fell. It was beautiful scenery, and we watched peacefully for a long while, but then I began to have an uneasy feeling. Clouds had rolled in, and the sunny day was gone. There didn’t seem to be any side roads or exits to take us out of the park and back to a main highway. Though the book said the park was 50 miles long and 19 miles wide, we had been in it for an awfully long time. Those 50 miles were not an hour’s driving, clearly, with the winding roads and the slow speeds they required.
“I’d like to get out of here,” I said to Mike, feeling lost and far from home.
“Me, too,” he said, “but I haven’t seen any road signs. We’ll leave as soon as we find a way.” But the road went on and on. We didn’t say anything to the kids, but we were feeling plenty nervous.
It was after 4 when we finally saw a sign that read Salida—exit. Feeling relieved, we followed it and left the park.
Though we had made some northward progress, there was still a long way to go to reach Madrid. By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the city, we were right in the middle of the end-of-holiday traffic.
“My nose is stuffy,” Julie said as we crawled along the highway that ringed Madrid.
“Are you getting a cold?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think so.”
We inched around Madrid and finally made it up to our own highway, the A-6. “We’re almost home now,” I told the kids.
“Good,” said Lisa. “I want to tell Kelly I saw the princess’s wedding.”
“Be sure to go to the Alhambra first thing in the morning,” she said. “The crowds get very bad later in the day, and at a certain point they just cut off the line and tell people to come back tomorrow. If you go right when it opens, you will have plenty of time and space to see everything.” So we decided to drive down on Saturday, visit other parts of the city, and then get to the Alhambra first thing Sunday morning.
The drive down to Granada, on the southern coast, took only four hours, but we rushed all the way, because that Saturday was the wedding of the Infanta Elena. Daughter of the king and queen of Spain, the princess was considered a bit homely and a little old, so the country had been delighted to learn of her engagement a few months earlier to a capable young man from an aristocratic family. Elena would be the first of her siblings to marry, so the wedding was much anticipated throughout Spain.
We checked into our glitzy hotel just as the wedding was beginning, and the first thing we tried in our hotel room was the television, to make sure we would have a good picture of the ceremony. “Ooh, she looks nervous!” Julie said when the TV showed Elena in close-up. We sat immobile on the bed, watching the solemn Mass, the proud parents, and the uneasy bridal couple.
“I think I saw the king yawning!” Lisa said, rapt. We stayed glued to the TV right to the end, and we were as proud as, say, cousins when the event was over.
Now we were free to walk around Granada a bit. The guidebook mentioned a hilltop plaza with fine views of the city, so we started there. We passed walled white villas and houses. “That says ‘Hakuna Matata’! From The Lion King!” Julie said, pointing to a handpainted sign above the gate of one of the houses.
In the cobblestone plaza we found friendly Gypsy women selling castanets, which were irresistible to the kids. We bought Julie and Lisa a pair each, and the Gypsies showed them how to make the rapid clicking sounds. It took some practice, but Julie started to get the idea pretty quickly. “Look, I can do it!” she said, beaming while Lisa struggled with her castanets. Unlike other Gypsies we’d encountered, these women were pleasant and helpful, apparently enjoying the kids.
We walked down through the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter with typically tiny, winding streets, and on to the Capilla Real, where Ferdinand and Isabella were buried, and the neighboring cathedral. After our long day of driving, wedding attendance and sightseeing, we were too tired to wait till the Spanish dinner hour, so we had an early Chinese dinner down the street from our hotel.
The next morning we were near the head of the line when the Alhambra opened at 9. More than a palace, the Alhambra was a large compound that covered an entire plateau. It included a fortress, a palace, a summer palace (the Generalife), and expansive gardens. We took our time and walked through all the buildings, but we were disappointed that the Baños Árabes (Arab Baths) were closed for restoration.
The royal palace alone, though, was worth the entire trip. In my Spanish art history class, Everett Rice had showed us slides of the gorgeous rooms of the palace—the Court of the Myrtles, with its long pool surrounded by shrubs; the Court of the Lions, with a fountain and twelve lion statues; and the Hall of the Two Sisters, dripping with intricate plaster ceiling designs. But it was so much more dramatic to see them in person. The harmonies of the architecture, the extravagance of the decoration, the effects of light and shadow—it was a breathtaking experience. Even the kids were impressed.
I reminded the girls of one of Mike’s early Spanish-language gaffes. “Remember when Dad told Marino he was looking forward to going to Granada?” I asked. “He said he wanted to see the famous alfombra (rug) instead of Alhambra!” By now they knew enough Spanish to get the joke, and we had a good laugh over Mike’s mistake. “But what about you, Mom—iron the cheese!” Julie teased. “Pig’s ear! Pig’s ear!” Lisa shouted, recalling my eating error in Badajoz. It was enough to keep us giggling for half an hour.
On Monday we drove home through a couple of villages mentioned in the guidebook—the unremarkable Baeza and the lovely Úbeda. I could imagine myself living in Úbeda, with its quiet streets and plazas and its sunny, whitewashed little houses. Then we went on to Cazorla, gateway to a wild national park that ran along a river. We entered the park, drove in for a while, came upon a fish hatchery, and then moved deeper into the hilly country. The rolling land was covered with pine trees, and the road switched back and forth as the land rose and fell. It was beautiful scenery, and we watched peacefully for a long while, but then I began to have an uneasy feeling. Clouds had rolled in, and the sunny day was gone. There didn’t seem to be any side roads or exits to take us out of the park and back to a main highway. Though the book said the park was 50 miles long and 19 miles wide, we had been in it for an awfully long time. Those 50 miles were not an hour’s driving, clearly, with the winding roads and the slow speeds they required.
“I’d like to get out of here,” I said to Mike, feeling lost and far from home.
“Me, too,” he said, “but I haven’t seen any road signs. We’ll leave as soon as we find a way.” But the road went on and on. We didn’t say anything to the kids, but we were feeling plenty nervous.
It was after 4 when we finally saw a sign that read Salida—exit. Feeling relieved, we followed it and left the park.
Though we had made some northward progress, there was still a long way to go to reach Madrid. By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the city, we were right in the middle of the end-of-holiday traffic.
“My nose is stuffy,” Julie said as we crawled along the highway that ringed Madrid.
“Are you getting a cold?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think so.”
We inched around Madrid and finally made it up to our own highway, the A-6. “We’re almost home now,” I told the kids.
“Good,” said Lisa. “I want to tell Kelly I saw the princess’s wedding.”
Thursday, April 9, 2009
At Home, part 20
On the third day we finally got some sunny weather, so we took the car and started for our coastal destinations. There were three towns to see—Sintra, in the hills, where there were palaces and castles to visit; Cascais, a beach town; and Estoril, a famous resort. The route to Sintra took us onto some poorly marked roads, and we were worried about getting lost till we saw a huge bus ahead of us, slowly navigating the narrow way. “Follow the tourist bus,” said Mike, laughing. “They have to be going where we’re going!”
Sintra, when we found it, had a lovely central plaza, but our main destination was the royal palace. It had a massive gate, a multicolored paint job, and a somewhat shabby look. Portuguese royalty had fallen on hard times, and the palace was not well kept up. The rooms were scantily furnished. But the views were spectacular over the hills below, and the palace had a warm and cozy feel that was very different from the grandiose Bourbon palaces of Spain.
Then we were off to the Moor’s Castle, which, our guidebook told us, was an inspiration for the poets Byron and Shelley. Not so much a castle now as the ruin of one, it was worth seeing, according to the book.
We found a turnoff for the castle on a small, winding road, and we crunched into a gravel parking lot. The trees and bushes at its perimeter were already green—though it was early March, the west coast weather was temperate, and the breezes were warm. As we got out of the car we heard a haunting melody being played on a recorder, and the music drew us down the path toward the castle.
Before we knew it, we were in a chapel of green, with dappled sunlight reaching us through the new leaves. There were two or three other people coming our way along the path, but everyone was quiet because of the lovely music. We walked silently till we passed the musician, a white-haired man who had certainly found the perfect accompaniment for the magical place. Dark gray ruined walls started to appear before us, covered with green vines. Not a bad inspiration for a romantic poet, I thought.
The music was always with us as we circled the ruined castle, now nearly reclaimed by the greenery all around it. Set atop a hill, it had a lovely view of the hilly forest below; people and cities seemed like distant memories. Here’s the serendipity of travel, I thought.
We thanked and paid the piper as we left, filled with gratitude for the unforgettable experience.
We went downhill to the coast to find Cascais, a little fishing village that had become a summer resort. It was warm enough for the girls to take off their shoes and play on the sandy beach, where an upturned boat made an acceptable jungle gym. “It’s not this warm in Madrid!” Julie said, dancing back and forth where the surf met the beach, daring to stick a toe in the water.
Most of the shops in Cascais were closed, but we found a pizza place for lunch and an ice cream shop for dessert. Then we went south to Estoril, a more elegant resort with a casino. This part of Portugal was a longtime tax haven for European nobility, who could stretch their financial reserves by enjoying the relatively low cost of living. And Estoril, though somewhat down at the heel, still looked beautiful, with wide green lawns and masses of colorful tulips surrounding the big houses near the water.
“Can we go to a shopping center now?” Julie asked. Two of her friends, Rosanne Kruger and Natalie Scarritt, had begged her to bring them some guarana soda from Portugal. Both had lived in Brazil, where the stuff was as popular as Coke, and they knew it could be bought in Portugal.
“Why not?” I said. We hit the highway and found a big concrete superstore, and we initiated our practice of visiting grocery stores wherever we went. Just as I had been amazed by the aisles of olive oil and canned fish in my local Hipercor, I saw that the types of products carried and the amount of space they commanded told a lot about the local lifestyle. Though the Portuguese store wasn’t very different from a Spanish one, it certainly did carry a lot of patés, as well as many tropical products that must have come from Brazil. There were more American items than I usually saw in Spain, such as Kellogg’s cereals and Nabisco cookies. “I see the guarana!” Lisa said, pointing to some orange-colored soda in two-liter bottles. We bought a dozen and tossed them into the trunk for Rosanne and Natalie.
We got on the road back toward the Spanish border the next day, and as noon approached I started to scan the roadside for an appropriate place for lunch. Suddenly, up ahead on the right, I saw a sign—Casa dos Frangos (House of Chickens). Kid-friendly food! I thought. “Who would like roast chicken for lunch?” I asked, swiveling toward the backseat. “Me! Me!” came the reply. So I directed Mike to turn off the highway at the restaurant.
Julie emerged from the car glowering. “Do you think they have anything else besides . . . chicken?” she asked gloomily.
My face got hot. “What’s wrong with chicken?” I asked. “You love chicken! Who was that in the backseat saying ‘Me! Me!’?”
“That,” Julie huffed, “was Lisa.”
My big triumph now negated, we slumped into the Casa dos Frangos. “You can have bread and french fries, I guess, if you won’t eat chicken,” I told Julie. So she ate that while we tucked into our nice roast frangos.
I was going to make another attempt at getting the kids’ passports stamped on the way into Spain. Friends had told me there was a little office at the border crossing; even if the booths were unmanned, as they had been on our last return from Portugal, someone should be in that office who could do the stamping. So as we neared the border I pulled out the passports again and opened them up.
“Oh, my God!” I said to Mike, looking at the passports. “Don’t stop!”
“Huh?” he said, slowing down.
“We can’t show these passports to anyone! They expired last week!” Mike’s eyes widened, and he hit the gas and changed lanes to the left.
We sped on through the empty booths. “I’ll have to take the kids down to the Embassy and get them renewed,” I grumbled, starting to breathe a little easier.
“I did mine there last month,” Mike said. “It was much simpler than trying to get it done at home.”
“Well, that will be a first,” I said.
Sintra, when we found it, had a lovely central plaza, but our main destination was the royal palace. It had a massive gate, a multicolored paint job, and a somewhat shabby look. Portuguese royalty had fallen on hard times, and the palace was not well kept up. The rooms were scantily furnished. But the views were spectacular over the hills below, and the palace had a warm and cozy feel that was very different from the grandiose Bourbon palaces of Spain.
Then we were off to the Moor’s Castle, which, our guidebook told us, was an inspiration for the poets Byron and Shelley. Not so much a castle now as the ruin of one, it was worth seeing, according to the book.
We found a turnoff for the castle on a small, winding road, and we crunched into a gravel parking lot. The trees and bushes at its perimeter were already green—though it was early March, the west coast weather was temperate, and the breezes were warm. As we got out of the car we heard a haunting melody being played on a recorder, and the music drew us down the path toward the castle.
Before we knew it, we were in a chapel of green, with dappled sunlight reaching us through the new leaves. There were two or three other people coming our way along the path, but everyone was quiet because of the lovely music. We walked silently till we passed the musician, a white-haired man who had certainly found the perfect accompaniment for the magical place. Dark gray ruined walls started to appear before us, covered with green vines. Not a bad inspiration for a romantic poet, I thought.
The music was always with us as we circled the ruined castle, now nearly reclaimed by the greenery all around it. Set atop a hill, it had a lovely view of the hilly forest below; people and cities seemed like distant memories. Here’s the serendipity of travel, I thought.
We thanked and paid the piper as we left, filled with gratitude for the unforgettable experience.
We went downhill to the coast to find Cascais, a little fishing village that had become a summer resort. It was warm enough for the girls to take off their shoes and play on the sandy beach, where an upturned boat made an acceptable jungle gym. “It’s not this warm in Madrid!” Julie said, dancing back and forth where the surf met the beach, daring to stick a toe in the water.
Most of the shops in Cascais were closed, but we found a pizza place for lunch and an ice cream shop for dessert. Then we went south to Estoril, a more elegant resort with a casino. This part of Portugal was a longtime tax haven for European nobility, who could stretch their financial reserves by enjoying the relatively low cost of living. And Estoril, though somewhat down at the heel, still looked beautiful, with wide green lawns and masses of colorful tulips surrounding the big houses near the water.
“Can we go to a shopping center now?” Julie asked. Two of her friends, Rosanne Kruger and Natalie Scarritt, had begged her to bring them some guarana soda from Portugal. Both had lived in Brazil, where the stuff was as popular as Coke, and they knew it could be bought in Portugal.
“Why not?” I said. We hit the highway and found a big concrete superstore, and we initiated our practice of visiting grocery stores wherever we went. Just as I had been amazed by the aisles of olive oil and canned fish in my local Hipercor, I saw that the types of products carried and the amount of space they commanded told a lot about the local lifestyle. Though the Portuguese store wasn’t very different from a Spanish one, it certainly did carry a lot of patés, as well as many tropical products that must have come from Brazil. There were more American items than I usually saw in Spain, such as Kellogg’s cereals and Nabisco cookies. “I see the guarana!” Lisa said, pointing to some orange-colored soda in two-liter bottles. We bought a dozen and tossed them into the trunk for Rosanne and Natalie.
We got on the road back toward the Spanish border the next day, and as noon approached I started to scan the roadside for an appropriate place for lunch. Suddenly, up ahead on the right, I saw a sign—Casa dos Frangos (House of Chickens). Kid-friendly food! I thought. “Who would like roast chicken for lunch?” I asked, swiveling toward the backseat. “Me! Me!” came the reply. So I directed Mike to turn off the highway at the restaurant.
Julie emerged from the car glowering. “Do you think they have anything else besides . . . chicken?” she asked gloomily.
My face got hot. “What’s wrong with chicken?” I asked. “You love chicken! Who was that in the backseat saying ‘Me! Me!’?”
“That,” Julie huffed, “was Lisa.”
My big triumph now negated, we slumped into the Casa dos Frangos. “You can have bread and french fries, I guess, if you won’t eat chicken,” I told Julie. So she ate that while we tucked into our nice roast frangos.
I was going to make another attempt at getting the kids’ passports stamped on the way into Spain. Friends had told me there was a little office at the border crossing; even if the booths were unmanned, as they had been on our last return from Portugal, someone should be in that office who could do the stamping. So as we neared the border I pulled out the passports again and opened them up.
“Oh, my God!” I said to Mike, looking at the passports. “Don’t stop!”
“Huh?” he said, slowing down.
“We can’t show these passports to anyone! They expired last week!” Mike’s eyes widened, and he hit the gas and changed lanes to the left.
We sped on through the empty booths. “I’ll have to take the kids down to the Embassy and get them renewed,” I grumbled, starting to breathe a little easier.
“I did mine there last month,” Mike said. “It was much simpler than trying to get it done at home.”
“Well, that will be a first,” I said.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
At Home, part 19
There was an acueducto vacation—one of those that bridged two holidays—early in March, and we decided to use it to drive southwest to Lisbon. “Watch out for the roads in Portugal,” Rich Irwin told us. “They’re not nearly as good as the Spanish ones. It’ll take you twice as long to drive 100 kilometers in Portugal as it does in Spain.”
That proved true. The big highways in Spain were multilane roads like interstate highways in the U.S., but the main highways in Portugal were still two-lane affairs. I had a lot of trouble on those roads, because I rarely felt secure enough to pass another car. I couldn’t tell how far away the oncoming traffic was, or how fast it was coming, so I would enlist Mike to judge the traffic for me. “Go! Go! You can pass now!” he would say. “Are you sure?” I’d quibble, missing my chance to go in the meantime. But I was usually the daytime driver, because I liked to drive. Also, Mike liked to read in the car, and I couldn’t read without getting carsick.
We used the drive down to Lisbon to make our return trip to Mérida, where we had missed seeing the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano (National Museum of Roman Art) on our trip to Extremadura in the fall. It was worth the detour. The building was new, made of brick, an excellent showcase for the pottery shards, glass vessels, statuary, coins, and other antiquities collected from archaeological sites in the area. By this time Julie had learned a bit about ancient Rome in her social studies class, so she was impressed by the collection. “This coin is over two thousand years old,” she informed us excitedly. “Can you believe that? They used this for money right here.” Mike and I smiled at each other, pleased that she had begun to tap into the richness of the history around us.
We drove on into Lisbon, where we found the Holiday Inn at which we’d be using our Bancotel coupons—$50 per room per night, an excellent deal. We found a restaurant in our guidebook that was supposed to have good roasted chicken, and we took a taxi to the plaza where it was located. There were shops still open in the dusk, which made for a nice walk before dinner, and the restaurant was just right for the kids—informal, friendly, with homey menu items that wouldn’t be served in a Spanish restaurant.
“Mom, they have those paté things like we had in Portugal before,” Lisa said. She liked opening the little tins and spreading paté on bread, whether it was pork liver or smoked sardines. And Mike and I liked the incredibly spicy pilpil sauce that was available on all the tables, for mixing with whatever dish you ordered.
The first two days in Lisbon were drizzly, so we decided to postpone the beach part of our itinerary and see the sights in the city. We used taxis to get around, visiting first a monastery in the Belem section of town. The girls had their usual fun by running up and down the open arcades surrounding a cloister in the monastery, and Mike and I noticed the differences between Portuguese architecture and Spanish building styles of the same period. “There’s so much more ornamentation here,” Mike said. The gray stone walls were dripping with carving and frills, looking much more Moorish than the austere Spanish church buildings of the 1500s.
We took a taxi to the Gulbenkian Museum, a beautiful modern building that showcased the huge collection of art and furnishings belonging to an Armenian oil magnate. I was impressed by his Asian pieces, which included fine Chinese porcelains and sumptuous Persian rugs. There were special shows of Lalique glass and Japanese prints taking place—the prints were a longtime favorite of Mike’s, so he was especially happy, and the girls loved the colorful, graceful crystal pieces.
We spent the next morning at St. George’s castle, right in the center of Lisbon. It provided the usual running and climbing opportunities for the kids, and its hilltop position set us up for a nice, easy walk through the Alfama district, which was the old fisherman’s part of town. The tiny streets were lined with modest shops and bars leading down to the waterfront.
Both afternoons we went to the movies. Portugal was a good place for that, as most English-language movies there were subtitled rather than dubbed into Portuguese. The kids were delighted to see The Mask and Only You, two films that would never be available in subtitled versions in Spain—only serious or “artsy” movies had a non-dubbed version there.
That proved true. The big highways in Spain were multilane roads like interstate highways in the U.S., but the main highways in Portugal were still two-lane affairs. I had a lot of trouble on those roads, because I rarely felt secure enough to pass another car. I couldn’t tell how far away the oncoming traffic was, or how fast it was coming, so I would enlist Mike to judge the traffic for me. “Go! Go! You can pass now!” he would say. “Are you sure?” I’d quibble, missing my chance to go in the meantime. But I was usually the daytime driver, because I liked to drive. Also, Mike liked to read in the car, and I couldn’t read without getting carsick.
We used the drive down to Lisbon to make our return trip to Mérida, where we had missed seeing the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano (National Museum of Roman Art) on our trip to Extremadura in the fall. It was worth the detour. The building was new, made of brick, an excellent showcase for the pottery shards, glass vessels, statuary, coins, and other antiquities collected from archaeological sites in the area. By this time Julie had learned a bit about ancient Rome in her social studies class, so she was impressed by the collection. “This coin is over two thousand years old,” she informed us excitedly. “Can you believe that? They used this for money right here.” Mike and I smiled at each other, pleased that she had begun to tap into the richness of the history around us.
We drove on into Lisbon, where we found the Holiday Inn at which we’d be using our Bancotel coupons—$50 per room per night, an excellent deal. We found a restaurant in our guidebook that was supposed to have good roasted chicken, and we took a taxi to the plaza where it was located. There were shops still open in the dusk, which made for a nice walk before dinner, and the restaurant was just right for the kids—informal, friendly, with homey menu items that wouldn’t be served in a Spanish restaurant.
“Mom, they have those paté things like we had in Portugal before,” Lisa said. She liked opening the little tins and spreading paté on bread, whether it was pork liver or smoked sardines. And Mike and I liked the incredibly spicy pilpil sauce that was available on all the tables, for mixing with whatever dish you ordered.
The first two days in Lisbon were drizzly, so we decided to postpone the beach part of our itinerary and see the sights in the city. We used taxis to get around, visiting first a monastery in the Belem section of town. The girls had their usual fun by running up and down the open arcades surrounding a cloister in the monastery, and Mike and I noticed the differences between Portuguese architecture and Spanish building styles of the same period. “There’s so much more ornamentation here,” Mike said. The gray stone walls were dripping with carving and frills, looking much more Moorish than the austere Spanish church buildings of the 1500s.
We took a taxi to the Gulbenkian Museum, a beautiful modern building that showcased the huge collection of art and furnishings belonging to an Armenian oil magnate. I was impressed by his Asian pieces, which included fine Chinese porcelains and sumptuous Persian rugs. There were special shows of Lalique glass and Japanese prints taking place—the prints were a longtime favorite of Mike’s, so he was especially happy, and the girls loved the colorful, graceful crystal pieces.
We spent the next morning at St. George’s castle, right in the center of Lisbon. It provided the usual running and climbing opportunities for the kids, and its hilltop position set us up for a nice, easy walk through the Alfama district, which was the old fisherman’s part of town. The tiny streets were lined with modest shops and bars leading down to the waterfront.
Both afternoons we went to the movies. Portugal was a good place for that, as most English-language movies there were subtitled rather than dubbed into Portuguese. The kids were delighted to see The Mask and Only You, two films that would never be available in subtitled versions in Spain—only serious or “artsy” movies had a non-dubbed version there.
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