Barcelona

Barcelona, Saturday
(The Internet in our apartment is slow and spotty but I will try to post photos on flickr which seems a bit faster than putting them in here.)

We used the Metro to get to the airport without problems yesterday. It took an hour or so using three trains but it was so early that it worked for us. We picked up our boarding passes or we thought we did but luckily Rick looked at them before security screening because they were for Emilie and Josh. Back at the check-in counter the woman realized she had passed our bag onto a plane that we weren’t flying on but thought that if we were related to someone on the plane that she could just report that and it would be okay.

We found Em and Josh, both hungry because their plane meals were cheese based (Will airlines ever understand vegan?) and tired because of the dueling/crying babies on board. (They always seem to travel with crying babies.)

The plane ride was short and we found each other and Rick’s oddly checked bag in Barcelona. While picking up our Barcelona passes a family came to the counter to report that one of their bags had been stolen from their cart and it held all their money and credit cards and their passports. The guide books were clear about the thievery here but that is a often-published warning. Actually seeing it happen made us grab our bags and keep a keen eye out. So far we've been okay and hopefully that family had some insurance or found some kind of immediate help.

The experience with the pay phone to call about our apartment was out of the keystone cops. Put the coin in. Don’t put the coin in. The number dialed. The number didn’t dial. Connect with the person. Fail to hear the person. Go to the apartment and call again. Someone might come. When someone actually did arrive it was a thrill.

The apartment is roomy with 4 bedrooms and a living room and kitchen and tiny balcony but it has no internet, only one wine glass and no salad spinner. The washing machine did make the clothes wet if not clean but it refuses to spin dry so our socks from last week are dripping still and will probably dry tomorrow.

We went out for food and exploration finding wonderful buildings, punks and Goths smoking and laughing, costumed people posing for money on Las Ramblas, a wine store experience with a cheerful and knowledgeable proprietor whose hand signs and smile extended Josh and Em’s Spanish into a conversation and some kind of fire and drum parade that brought out police, ambulances and lots of excited spectators.

Back at the apartment we dunked some tiny bread sticks in chocolate and I started battle with the washing machine. The opening act was washing Rick’s shirt with the Barcelona cards in the pocket. Pressed flat and dried overnight, it still works.

Segovia, Spain

Segovia's photos are on flickr.
Click on the flickr cloud and it should take you there.

We had more trouble finding Segovia's old town once we left the main bus station than we had finding the Sepulvedenna Bus Company that took us there. The guide book said that the aqueduct was near the bus station and the train station but it didn't say which direction from either. The map in the book was only of "old" Segovia and did not show either station so we walked an extra 2 kilometers in the wrong direction before asking for help.

Our source of information was a gray-haired, balding man in a Mr. Rogers sweater. We showed him the guide book photo of the aquaduct and he gave extensive directions(in Spanish) but we knew precious few words: walk, police, roundabout, right. It was enough.

We hiked back to the bus station/police station at the roundabout and turned right and there it was exactly where the Romans had placed it nearly 2,000 years ago and where we had passed without looking back over our shoulders nearly an hour earlier.


We walked top the top of the tallest end of the aqueduct bridge and looked out over the new and the old city while chilly winds whipped down from the mountains. The guide book, often wrong and inconvenient, was correct in stressing the need to see these ruins - "one of the most significant and best-preserved Roman aqueducts (or aqueduct bridge) on the Iberian Peninsula."


The date of construction is guessed at near the end of the 1st Century AD. That's impressively old because it doesn't look ancient. Not like the ancient ruins at Ankor Wat or the ruins in Thailand's old city. It looks just great, only a little worn.


The aqueduct transports waters from Spring Fuenfría (17 kilometers from the city), gathers it in a tank and lets the sand settles out and sends it onward. The tallest part is 93 feet and there are 167 arches.

It was rebuilt in the 15th Century to restore a portion destroyed by Moors in 1072 but most of it is 2,000 years old. At the taller end there are two lines of arches and the water channel is about 6 by 5 feet.

Rick was impressed that it is built of un-mortared granite blocks and that it was used until the 1990s. Actually it is still used as a back up source of water for the castle on the hill (Segovia Alcázar.

After looking at this end of the Aqueduct we walked to cathedral but were side-tracked by a market in the main square. There was a brisk business in fruit, cheese, pig ears, fish, and lots of warm scarves and sweaters. Several tourists came to Segovia in the shorts and sleeveless shirts that worked well in Madrid. They were covered in goose bumps. Most of the men stayed that way and the women opted for shawls. Some seemed not to notice the biting wind.

Outside the cathedral an old woman, dressed in black from scarf to shoes offered head scarves and table cloths all the color and detail she lacked.


The cathedral had more altars than a passel of priests could use. There were 2 - count 'em - 2 pipe organs. I'm not talking about little things that would fit in your average church. These towered above the choir's chairs reaching near the top of the cathedral ceiling.

The chairs were nifty also. The backs were carved and the seats could fold half way leaving a little butt rest or they could unfold all the way and be an actual chair. None of them functioned that way anymore because now the choir sits is flimsy, modern, wooden, folding chairs and the 400 year old carved seats are roped off. The cathedral in Budapest and I think the one in Prague is the same.

The cathedral's ceiling was high but the high stained glass windows brought in enough light to clearly see the flying buttresses. The ceiling in the courtyard square was much like that in the building itself.


The main altar, when we were there, was being dressed in vases with hundreds of white flowers and in the cathedral's museum were priests' vestments and altar items ranging from finely crafted silver and gold to nailed together white metals.

Most of the cathedral was open floor space with only a small section of pews for seating. This particular building was rebuilt in the 1500's after the original was destroyed.

The cathedral was nice but my favorite part of the day was the time in the castle on the hill. Actually, we were both enormously impressed by the Alcazar. The ceilings were magnificent with the best in the room of kings. I’d like a scarf with that pattern in a nice silky fabric. It was turquoise and gold.
Spanish kings and queens must like to look up in their castles.







The armory had beautiful armor and, though I thought I had my fill of ornate yesterday, I did like the ornate amour. I think these were for tournaments and not for war but none of it looks comfy or protective. My favorite outfit had an articulated heart on the breast plate and smaller versions of the same design on the arms, elbows, legs, feet, knee wings (Well, what would you call them?) and thighs. Considering the tools of the time it’s amazing that the craftsmen could do such work. I really wished I could take some castings of those designs.









Before leaving we walked the entire length of the Aqueduct to find the stone at the end totally dry of course.

The spurs on the shoes reached out behind the heel at least 10 inches and the toes in front were knife thin and equally long. How did they walk let alone fight in those things? It could be that these were only the shoes worn for parade while on horses but it’s hard to imagine how anyone thought that these would be reasonable pieces of armor.

Rick liked the great old buildings throughout the old part of town and the narrow little streets that they nested up against. The streets were full of people most of the day though from 2-5 shops closed and the streets were empty for siesta.

We ended our day by walking to the very end of the aqueduct. It made two turns and while the water channel continued to flow down hill the structure itself adapted to the lay of the land so that it went from a towering bridge to a waist-high wall. Empty of water, full of dignity. What modern structures will last 2,000 years?

Touring Spain

MADRID

AIRPORT Madrid was already a marvel before we left the airport. We walked up a ramp and snaked back and around a few turns before getting into the building. Once there, bright red support beams held up a curving roof. The curve and lilt of the roof was intriguing and then I realized that the supporting beams were turning orange. It’s true. They gently became orange and then yellow and in the distance we could see green, blue and violet. The whole length of the building (It wouldn’t surprise me if it was half a mile.) spanned the rainbow with each set of beams a slightly different until all of ROYGBIV was there.
Then, this huge building wasn’t enough. We took a train to baggage claim. How big is this place?
Landing and customs and baggage claim were all in terminal 4 but we had to find terminal 2 to pick up our tourist Metro passes. We rode a bus for about 5 miles to get to the other terminals. Terminals 1-3 are not impressive but older, industrial spaces.

THE CITY We checked into our hotel and went out for a walk. The buildings aren’t as ceaselessly amazing as they are in Prague but there are some wonderful structures. Many have ornate doors or elaborate painted tiles. We admired one building with gears and architectural equipment adorning the windows and grates and then looked into the windows of the next building to find Flamenco dresses.
The manequins were decked out with shawls wrapped around their shoulders and fans laid at their feet. Inside a rack of dresses showed very few alike. I picked up a skirt and found it amazingly heavy. It would be work to dance with all those pounds of fabric flapping at one’s ankles.
A wall held glass fronted drawers full of fabric roses for the hair and another held a case of fans in more colors than the airport support beams. There were men’s suits and hats and women’s plastic combs and tiaras. The store offered both children’s and adult sizeas for dancers able and willing to pay.
Two dresses I liked were 335 and 510 Euros. I didn’t see the price on the men’s clothing but I did take a photo of the rack of dresses before we moved onward.

FOOD There are a few Spanish foods we meant to try and one of them is a ham, jamon serrano. These are salt cured and mountain air dried and priced at between 40 and 15 Euros per kilo. Traditionally it is served in a paper thin slice with a fried egg. The promise of another taste would not bring me back to Spain.
The color is of burgundy with translucent white fat on the edge. The texture is of stiff leather, unyielding in the mouth with a lingering sense of grease. Perhaps one develops a taste for it over time.
The hams stand in stainless steel or wooden racks in store windows or on restaurant bars. The toe aims upward in a delicate point that makes me think of both a dainty ballerina and someone from Robin Hood’s band who might have carried it on the shoulder through the woods. Often a multi-colored, braided rope is looped at the ankle. In stores they hang by the rope forming a salt-cured décor overhead and are often accompanied by huge wheels of cheese.
Eating here, at least at the start, is difficult. I tend not to enjoy expensive meals and they seem to be the only kind available. Eating in Madrid is not about nutrition but rather about entertainment and a gentle passing of the time. We stopped for a glass of lemonade for Rick and a glass of horchata (Almond milk, I think.) for me and it cost $12.
We almost ate at the world’s oldest restaurant, as designated by the Guinness Book of World Records. Botin seemed small, at least from the outside where it is oak and glass. Inside we were told there would be a 20 minute wait so we left since we were hungry then but I did snap a few photos and we found the menu in the window. Perhaps their ham would have been better than what we found that morning but it looked the same standing in its rack and I don’t think the cute chef’s hats in the kitchen would have made me feel any better about it.
Botin was established in 1725 so maybe Robin Hood’s buds did make a delivery. We also learned from the guide book that the eating area occupies 4 floors so it is larger than it looks.
We ate instead at Café Vergara where chicken and French fries were more to my liking. The oak wainscoting was up over our ears and the wonderful plaster molding gave the room a very nice sense of style. Visiting the rest room required walking through a curving tunnel reminiscent of some of the restaurants we ate in while in Prague.

ROYAL PALACE On our second day we went to the Royal Palace, the Spanish king’s primary residence. It is so ornate that it seems there could me no ornate item, or Spanish money, left in the country for others. The throne room was red velvet – furniture and walls. The ceiling was painted fresco and the rest of the room was gold leaf. Anyone sitting on those thrones would have to feel above the rest of humankind.
Other rooms were painted, tapestried, frescoed, carved, marbled and parquetried within an inch of their lives, The king’s dressing room was about 30 by 50 feet and he also had anti-chambers and sleeping rooms and a study and I don’t know what all.
The “simple” chapel was scaled back from original plans because the king decided he needed more living space but it was pretty large and ornate just the same,
The royal armory is a bit empty just now. Most of it is in Beijing for an Olympics “Spain in China” celebration. We saw samples of armor for horses and men – parade armor, jousting armor and battle armor.

STYLE One thing that captures my attention is the “style” of the people. Shoes, for example, are very interesting. Mine are Asolo approach shoes of sensible Gor-tex with rubber soles that grip. They fairly shout, “If I wore anything stylish, my feet would hurt up to my knees so I’m wearing these instead.”
I am willing to admit that I may be the only one who can hear this conversation with my shoes but the word clodhoppers comes to my mind anyway. My shoes are the only ones in Madrid suited to the term. The rest of the city wears shiny, pointy-toed shoes (even the suits of armor had pointy shoes) that make me wonder if they’ve had toes shortened or amputated to get their feet inside. A foot doctor wanted me to do that once so that I could enjoy fashionable shoes. I found another doctor.

Many women here wear strappy shoes with more open area than leather. There are several boots about town and many have pin-point spike heels that require the foot to maneuver a very steady and straight step in order to allow the walker to maintain upright position. In such shoes, I would fall on my face – or whatever.
I start and end the day by flossing my toes. This is not the correct term but it is a toe stretch taught to me by Norma and it seems to eliminate foot and leg fatigue. In combination with my shoes it has allowed me long (unstylish) hikes across Madrid.

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD We easily found our apartment and sat at a table just outside the door to wait for our contact with the key. This is where we first met Vintecinco, but I digress.
We called the apartment contact from the hotel and the phone was out of service. This made us briefly concerned since Rick had made reservations and a significant deposit. The hotel’s receptionist helped us to understand the message and then Rick found another phone number on the Internet. It seems the contact’s cell phone was stolen. They gave us the new number and we arranged to meet him at the apartment at 4.
We arrived there, in Lavapies, a multi-ethnic, working class neighborhood with an active public square, at 3:40 so Rick went in the bar below the apartment to order a beer. We sat on a sidewalk table, inches from the road and waited. A man in T-shirt and jeans stopped and talked while shrugging his shoulders and smiling. The only thing I understood was vintecinco. He eventually gave up and left.
Our contact arrived at 4:10 and showed us the apartment, explained the rules (no fiestas, take out the garbage, wash the dishes, don’t use the dishwasher because it is broken but a man may come to fix it tomorrow) and took a stack of euros.
We moved in and then walked to the grocery store. On the way, we saw Vintecinco. A boy was sitting a a table with a half eaten plate of food. He motioned to Vintecinco who came to the table, took the boy's fork and sat to finish the plate of food.
At the grocery store we found salad greens and fruit and wine but we did not find peanut butter. We brought the food to the apartment but were too hungry to cook so we went just over to the square for a meal. The entire area buzzed with activity from cars, motor cycles, street sweepers, kids at play, neighbors visiting, brightly dressed people walking through and plenty of barking dogs and chirping birds.
Someone arrived with flattened cardboard boxes and plopped them on the pavement in front of an occupied bench. Immediately another man sat heavily on one end, beer bottle to lips. Both of those men seemed to know all those on the bench – a big bellied man in a pink shirt and bald head, two laughing women and a man with two dogs who were leashed together at the neck. Those dogs went wild when other dogs walked through their square.
All the benches held people – sitting and talking or deep in siesta. Vientecinco stopped by and this is when I named him. Again, all I understood was the vinetecinco but Rick gave him some money and he shrugged and went to repeat his tale at other tables. I expect to see him again.

We took another city walk in the evening and sat for a while in another square where the children were wildly playing soccer and roller skating. A chair at the table next to ours went flying once and, while the ball wasn't really that low, we both accepted the urge to duck.

Story Jar - Chinatown, Singapore

Chinatown, Singapore, 1950
To know people, visit their homes. The Chinatown Heritage Museum in Singapore is a home built of wood and heartbreak. Visiting it left me with silent tears and haunting dreams. It is a museum to never forget.
Not long ago, Singapore began tearing down whole portions of Chinatown but people realized that the old shophouses were full of history and personality so they changed plans and blocks of old buildings were renovated. Three of those renovated buildings became the Chinese Heritage Museum, a shophouse outfitted with the belongings of the people who lived in it.
The museum encompasses three narrow structures. On the ground floor, one is a restored tailor’s shop, the second a café (calendar and décor circa October 1963) and the third became the museum’s gift shop.
The tailor shop faced the street and behind the store a work room held sewing machines, tables and ironing boards. This was where the apprentices worked and slept. There was an open courtyard – sort of – an open shaft that mined air and light for the building and gave people a place to hang laundry.
The tailor and his family had a large living area but also a kitchen, bathing stall and “toilet” – a wooden bucket in a stall. Above, people were packed in, nearly stacked up. Rooms full of possessions tell the story well.
The front room of the second floor - prime real estate because of two windows admitting air and light - housed a doctor and his daughter. The room is filled with their furniture, medicines, books, curtains on the windows and notes about their lives at the time. The two of them shared about 100 square feet. At night, they had space to stretch out on sleeping mats but in the day the area was a medical office and dispensary.
In the next room four maids enjoyed a small window and about 80 square feet of living area. The room behind theirs, about the same size but without windows, housed a working couple and 8 children. Sleeping shelves were built into the walls and clothes hung on hooks. There was a small table with a few dishes and not much else. A TV monitor was hooked up running a video of one of the children who told about living there – the noise, heat, stifling air, poverty and lack of privacy.
The next room housed four Samsui women. These Chinese construction workers dressed in blue jackets and red hats and always wore jade bracelets for luck and protection. Human trucks - they moved baskets of rock and soil to clear construction sites or they brought baskets of bricks to brick layers. They expanded their dark living space into the hall by taking turns sleeping in a hammock at night. By dawn, they were up, the hammock was down, and the hall was open for traffic.
A shoe hawker filled her room with a bed and bags of shoes and could easily hang her laundry because she was next to that air tunnel. Further back was a carpenter, his wife and their baby. This family had furniture and toys in their room and a cupboard in the hall with kitchen ware. All of the rooms had windows opening to the hall and the doorways were covered with curtains or left open. There was no area for privacy or comfort.
At the far end were four construction workers who, according to the others in the building, smoked opium in a shared room. A bed in their room had a red light in one corner to simulate a fire that one of them started by knocking over a pipe. Luckily the fire was discovered quickly and put out before it killed everyone.
The last room was the communal kitchen and bathroom – again with no windows since buildings were constructed back to back. There were shower and “toilet” stalls. In this recreation, the kitchen sink had a little pump so it seemed that water dribbled over plastic veggies in a bowl while another setup simulated steam from the teakettle. A row of blackened woks on the wall above a cooking pit illustrated the shared cooking area. A museum sign (in 4 languages) encouraged people to look at plastic “night soil” in the bucket.
Water was piped into the building sometime in the late 40s and electricity brightened it in the 50s but sewers didn't come until almost 1960 so the night soil had to be carried out to the front of the building to a daily collection wagon. A bit of a trip or stumble on the worn steps and we can only imagine the mess.
The museum added sounds – radio news and music, people talking and cooking - and collected furniture and stories from the families. All the rooms were recreated as accurately as possible to show how people lived in Singapore while I was growing up in a huge three bedroom apartment in Buffalo with lights, water, sewer, doors and so much space.
In the museum area one could watch videos of some of the people involved. A man talked of helping his parents run a food stall, a job he now has as an adult. The doctor’s daughter talked of her struggles and one of the Samsui women told of her difficult life. The tailor described the neighborhood.
Rick and I went back to our huge hotel room thinking of how much room we had and thought of our obscenely large house in Wellsville.

Story Jar - Would You Like a Couch?

Note: This issue of Story Jar has brought more comments than any other since the Story Jar resumed publication. People stopped by my booth at the Cuba Garlic Festival just to laugh and others called or stopped me on the street. It seems we all have moved boxes of books into and out of some interesting apartments.)


Would you like a couch?

When Em and Josh lived in Brookline (near Boston) they had to park on nasty streets, walk past creepy buildings and stress out over whether or not the car would be towed away. Living in Somerville seemed much friendlier so when they found an apartment they could afford they started packing. We all went to help move their mountain of books-n-stuff.
The 4th floor living room:

Rick drove the truck with our old couch and some other furniture and Jay drove my car with a set of 4 maple chairs and a table made with the legs from my “first” kitchen table nicely updated and repaired with a beautiful piece of curly maple on top. We drove through rain most of the time wondering about the integrity of the tarp wrapped around the couch and cursing the van that insisted its top speed was 45 mph.
We wanted to get the couch in the new apartment to free up the truck and to avoid another rain storm and we got there in time for rush hour, Boston’s version of vehicular warfare. While cars were gushing through every street, we had to make an emergency stop. The muffler fell off the van. We dragged it for a little while looking for a place to stop. Jay reached under the car and ripped the muffler free. Rick stopped with us so Jay popped the muffler in the truck with the couch rather than leave it on the road.
We fought through the traffic and found the new apartment but the previous tenants, two girls, hadn't moved anything out of it yet and – worse - it seemed they hadn’t cleaned it since moving in – if then.
There wasn’t a space large enough to leave the couch so we left it in the truck, met everyone for dinner and then Rick and I drove the truck to a motel hoping that we would still have the furniture in it in the morning. The sun rose on an undisturbed truck so fresh and rested with an oatmeal breakfast we started the serious work of moving.
We went to the old apartment and spent a few hours carrying stuff down from the fourth floor. We filled the front yard with Em’s and Josh’s possessions and occasionally sat on something to ponder the next trip up all those stairs for another box, generally of books.
At about noon, Rick and Em went to pick up the U-Haul while the rest of us ate lunch on the box-strewn lawn. After too little rest, Rick drove up with the big truck and we started filling it – every inch of it. We left the apartment white-glove-clean and locked it but kept the key just in case. Good thing.
We drove across Boston again and found that the new apartment was still full and still dirty. I asked the girls about their cleaning plan and they said they’d finished. Now listen, there was garbage overflowing and moldy food in the fridge and the stove was encased in gunk. The toilet was – polite words escape me - and I’ve never seen a worse tub.
Rick and I crossed paths several times during the day occasionally discussing when we could stop helping our children move. We swept a box of trash from the floor in one bedroom and did a quick mopping (our mop) before stacking all of Em's and Josh's stuff into the front bedroom and part of the kitchen while the girls moved their stuff out. One girl walked all the way down to the street with a single video tape in her hands. Together they repeatedly and slowly filled a two-wheeled shopping cart and walked the two blocks to their new apartment and then came back for more. Extraordinary behavior considering that they both had cars.
We managed to get everything out of the U-Haul and return it in the allotted time but we were too exhausted so we went back to the empty apartment and carted pillows and blankets back up to the fourth floor. All of us slept on the floor pretending that we were comfy and that nobody snored. In the morning we showered and used our shirts as towels and let our hair drip.
On this third day of moving, the girls were still getting stuff out. They were moving larger things and as they carried down and we carried up. Finally we took the couch out of the truck but it simply wouldn’t go up the narrow steps. It didn't fit. No way. No how. We had to wrap it back up to take it home –through a second thunder storm.
The kitchen after intense cleaning:

Em and Josh planned to use our old couch and toss out the older love seat but the love seat could be taken apart and carried up stairs so they were stuck with it. The double bed mattress was just a couple of inches too big for this narrow, twisty, turny stairway but it could bend a little. A hearty push on the box springs got it stuck in the hall and redesigned the contour of the wall before Rick, ever the engineer, peeled back the mattress cover, cut the corners with a hacksaw making it just slightly smaller and got the thing up the stairs.
He found thumbtacks on various walls and used them to tack the fabric back on the corners. Good as new.
Much of the time that others were trying to move the mattress, Jay worked to get the bathroom door to close (apparently it never had before) and the rest of us took turns scrubbing this and that. After the truck was emptied, 7 people spent 8 solid hours cleaning just to feel comfortable about standing in the rooms.
As I write this, it is Sunday night after a hellishly long day. Though it will take along while before this apartment “feels” clean, I know it will soon be cute and cozy. We’ve decided to stay the night because we’re tired and there’s still a huge list of chores including: get a new TV (long story in itself), find a couple of used bikes and get some joint compound to patch the holes in the stairwell.
Pushing that thought aside I was just about ready to use the clean tub in preparation for sleep on a mattress but someone is rasping away with the hacksaw again and I can’t decide whether or not to ignore it.