Wed., 12/30/2009--1-3:30 pm. Anja and I borrow Uschi's VW (in German: 'FaoVay') and run some shopping errands, then we drive along one of the main country roads past Hachborn until a little huddle of buildings appears on our right. Erbenhausen. It starts to rain pretty heavily again just as she lets me out, asking me me again if I really want to do this. Answer: more yes than no (I was cooped up all day yesterday and enough is enough). I push out. It is country and just above zero celsius/32 fahrenheit. Visibility is 500 ft or so to a dead gray horizon or whatever comes first. The fog pulses in, clears now and again, then settles back down.
If this was Young Frankenstein I would tell my sidekick, 'It could be worse, it could be windy.' and the wind would come up immediately. But thankfully it doesn't. The rain is intermittent, but the air is always heavy with the portent of more. And when the fog really comes close and hangs in the tree branches and magnifies the sounds of dripping I wonder what it is like to be a wild animal in the woods I'm passing through. I know I am heading, however indirectly, to a shower and a meal and a warm bed. Your Wildschwein (wild boar), the deer and rabbits and foxes....they've got 3-4 more months of this. Short gray days. Cold and wet. And there will be wind. And either prey to catch or predators to avoid.
I walk thru the middle of the Hofs; well maintained, cobble-stoned courtyards of easily 2500 square feet, ringed on three sides by living spaces and storage for humans, farm animals and everything needed to support them. There are only three Hofs here but they are all large, 3-4 stories all around the perimeter and still doing the work for which they were originally intended hundreds of years ago. I have often thought of buying one of these just like this along with the land with which most of them come. And they are not remotely expensive relative to anything in an urban area. I find the architecture beautiful and the bones of the buildings extraordinary; stone and brick on the bottom, often in combination with massive half timbered oak supports above, and between the oak a stucco of sticks and wadding, the actual daub often interestingly painted in a style called Kratzwerk; literally 'scratch work'. The style of architecture is called Fachwerk and it is supported and protected by the German government. I think to blow out the floors on just one wing, reinforce the structure with I-beams, and make the 'great room' to end most great rooms. 50 x 100 feet with 40 foot ceilings. With a huge country kitchen at one end looking out at the fields and forests and gardens, and the room extending from the kitchen becoming a giant work room with desks and couches and bookshelves, a giant fireplace with a spit, and an open mezzanine for reading and erudite philosophical discussions over port and other conversational aids. This is eminently doable and a dream I have not completely given up on......but who will come visit us in the back of beyond? I am working on that.
The Fachwerk challenge German faces is that the younger generation doesn't like to work much with their hands in the cold; instead, they'd prefer to live in condo's, create synthetic securites for banks to bet on, and eat sushi in Frankfurt or Munich. Sound at all familiar?
In a minute (not a New York minute) I'm thru the Hofs and in the open, Wald (forest: 'vault') on my right and Feld (field: 'felt') on my left. I am walking straight away from the road. I pass a tiny country cemetery to my left and go right into the Wald. The rain continues. The ground is slushy and slippery, patches of ice and what is left of last nights snow. There has been some heavy machinery thru here recently and it created big ruts and ridges. The ridges are mush and the ruts are a sludgy mixture of ice and snow and water and mud; I have to watch each footfall because I don't want to end up up to my fetlock in freezing mud with a few hours ahead of me in unknown terrain.
The path ends after 100 yards or so. Nowhere easy to go. I retrace my steps, go past the cemetery and head uphill. 200-300 yards or so and I hit another dead end. Now what? I decide to make my own path through close pine woods and after a few minutes of dodging wet branches I come out into a clearing and do find a path of sorts; overgrown and treacherous, unused except I can see paw prints; something without a human master has passed by since last nights snowfall.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Germany in the Fog January 2010
I see the beginning of a blood trail, crimson soaking into ice. I hear snarling and rending noises. I pick up the pace as silently as possible but they are all around me. I see them at the edges of my vision in the fog, loping along, fangs dripping gore. They're herding me somewhere. I start to run thru the woods, thighs pumping in the mud, cap pulled off by a passing branch and forgotten, face lacerated, heart heaving. Why didn't I bring the Glock?.......
OKOK. Nothing is going to happen. I just thought, if you're bored, I'd liven it up a little. I do recommend Saki's The Interlopers if you like death stalking in the forest stories.
My way home will eventually be marked by a line of electrical towers that march thru the woods like kilted samurai warriors. Follow them and eventually I'll find my village and the fields around it I actually know by sight. But the fog is so dense I can't see the towers anywhere, which means I'm just wandering in this surreal field/forest landscape with no landmarks whatsoever. Up and down. I hear birds and somewhere in an undefinable distance the sounds of traffic. Fog is a strange conduit; sounds travel but direction and distance are scrambled. I am in the middle of a field or forest and I hear a truck that sounds like it is 100 feet away. Worse, it sounds like it is coming from my right, then my left, then from dead ahead.
I find an asphalt lane edging another Wald and Feld; then suddenly I am cresting the middle of several Felds, completely in the open. The rains lessens, the fogs lifts, and I see the Hochspannung towers (the samurai) like sentinels and follow them. The road twists and turns, rises and dips. I am completely alone. I have not seen another person since I left the Hofs.
It is so strange to walk in this world. Alternatively wonderful and a little scary. In an era of instant communication I didn't bring my cell phone. For a few hours I don't exist. I am quite cold and wet, but as long as I move my core is warm enough. I pump with my hands until they begin to freeze, then I put them in my pockets next to my femoral arteries. Two or three years ago I walked in a similar landscape through fields and forests. It was Fall and only cool, but my mind wandered and after a couple of hours I came out of a forest expecting to know right where I was, and instead saw absolutely nothing I recognized. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already behind the last hill. I realized I had no idea anymore, having twisted and turned so many times, which way was even home. But even more than that, looking over this timeless Dorf (village) it seemed like I might have also walked into the Twilight Zone. I imagined my next vision being that of an old man and a horse drawn plow, and then other signs to let me know it was 1850 or 1750, not 2007 or so. I thought maybe I could retrace my path back to where I got lost and get home that way, but remember this place and how to find it when I wanted to go back in time again.
I follow the power lines around a series of Felds and finally take a path down a hill. Almost an hour has passed. I can hear traffic ahead of me (that's how it sounds) and when I come out into the open a sense of chagrin is total; I am less than 200 yards from where I got out of the car. All the lefts and rights, of fighting my way through a pathless forest and slushy, slippery paths and I am right back to exactly where I started.
Back up the hill I go. Over to the right looking again for my power poles. Can't see anything thru the fog. My hands are wet and freezing and it is hard to get them to go into my pants pockets, which are sticking to my skin. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe I should have brought the cell phone. I turn right at what appears to be the top of the hill, go along for a bit, then hit another downhill path, the only one visible. Another 3-4 minutes dodging puddles and ice. Traffic sounds. I am back to the same road. Shit!
I read an article in the last couple of years, about how French peasants in the countryside whiled away the winter months in the 1850's. It turns out they whiled them away mostly by sleeping. 4 or 5 to a bed for warmth since there was never enough wood to keep them warm. 18 hours a day for months at a time since they had no incentive to do Jacqueshit, neither the land nor very little of anything else actually belonging to them. And never enough food to keep their energy up, so why get up in the first place? Basically, they hibernated.
It is 2:20 or so. What passes for sunset here, a kind of joke since the gray that never leaves most days just gets darker until it becomes black again for another 16 hours, happens at around 4:30. Sunset is called here, with typical German precision, 'Sonnenuntergang', or 'sun go under'. 'Look Wilhelm, sun go under'! You may have notice I capitalize lots of German words....in German they capitalize each and every noun. Always.
I head again back up the hill. The fog lifts and the power lines come into view finally. Things start to make real sense. The weather comes and goes but now I know where in general I am. I could venture back into the Wald beyond the poles, but I do worry now that I'm going to be late for dinner, which is set for 4pm. Like the French peasants we often eat just two meals a day in the Winter. Root vegetables two ways! Actually, we eat like kings. Better, even. But especially if there are only 2 meals I don't want to miss one. So, I hurry....back thru Hachborn, along a Feld thru Ebsdorf, then across the last mile or more of fields separating Ebsdorf and Beltershausen. I can't see much of anything but I'm close to home.
The rain begins to sheet down and my hands are mostly useless. I spare a moment for soldiers trying to load ammo into old rifles in the trenches in WWl. Their hands were useless and their feet were rotting in their boots. Bombs were falling, and other people they often couldn't see were firing machine gunsat them while they huddled waist deep in mud and blood and snow. And death. Every once in awhile an officer in a warm house somewhere would decide it was time to jump up and charge across the Feld with fixed bayonets. What a good idea that must have seemed!
3:15 sees me home. I am sopping wet. It takes minutes just to get my gloves off. My hands can't grip or feel the zippers on my jacket or the laces on my shoes. But no one was shooting at me. And dinner was terrific.
OKOK. Nothing is going to happen. I just thought, if you're bored, I'd liven it up a little. I do recommend Saki's The Interlopers if you like death stalking in the forest stories.
My way home will eventually be marked by a line of electrical towers that march thru the woods like kilted samurai warriors. Follow them and eventually I'll find my village and the fields around it I actually know by sight. But the fog is so dense I can't see the towers anywhere, which means I'm just wandering in this surreal field/forest landscape with no landmarks whatsoever. Up and down. I hear birds and somewhere in an undefinable distance the sounds of traffic. Fog is a strange conduit; sounds travel but direction and distance are scrambled. I am in the middle of a field or forest and I hear a truck that sounds like it is 100 feet away. Worse, it sounds like it is coming from my right, then my left, then from dead ahead.
I find an asphalt lane edging another Wald and Feld; then suddenly I am cresting the middle of several Felds, completely in the open. The rains lessens, the fogs lifts, and I see the Hochspannung towers (the samurai) like sentinels and follow them. The road twists and turns, rises and dips. I am completely alone. I have not seen another person since I left the Hofs.
It is so strange to walk in this world. Alternatively wonderful and a little scary. In an era of instant communication I didn't bring my cell phone. For a few hours I don't exist. I am quite cold and wet, but as long as I move my core is warm enough. I pump with my hands until they begin to freeze, then I put them in my pockets next to my femoral arteries. Two or three years ago I walked in a similar landscape through fields and forests. It was Fall and only cool, but my mind wandered and after a couple of hours I came out of a forest expecting to know right where I was, and instead saw absolutely nothing I recognized. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already behind the last hill. I realized I had no idea anymore, having twisted and turned so many times, which way was even home. But even more than that, looking over this timeless Dorf (village) it seemed like I might have also walked into the Twilight Zone. I imagined my next vision being that of an old man and a horse drawn plow, and then other signs to let me know it was 1850 or 1750, not 2007 or so. I thought maybe I could retrace my path back to where I got lost and get home that way, but remember this place and how to find it when I wanted to go back in time again.
I follow the power lines around a series of Felds and finally take a path down a hill. Almost an hour has passed. I can hear traffic ahead of me (that's how it sounds) and when I come out into the open a sense of chagrin is total; I am less than 200 yards from where I got out of the car. All the lefts and rights, of fighting my way through a pathless forest and slushy, slippery paths and I am right back to exactly where I started.
Back up the hill I go. Over to the right looking again for my power poles. Can't see anything thru the fog. My hands are wet and freezing and it is hard to get them to go into my pants pockets, which are sticking to my skin. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe I should have brought the cell phone. I turn right at what appears to be the top of the hill, go along for a bit, then hit another downhill path, the only one visible. Another 3-4 minutes dodging puddles and ice. Traffic sounds. I am back to the same road. Shit!
I read an article in the last couple of years, about how French peasants in the countryside whiled away the winter months in the 1850's. It turns out they whiled them away mostly by sleeping. 4 or 5 to a bed for warmth since there was never enough wood to keep them warm. 18 hours a day for months at a time since they had no incentive to do Jacqueshit, neither the land nor very little of anything else actually belonging to them. And never enough food to keep their energy up, so why get up in the first place? Basically, they hibernated.
It is 2:20 or so. What passes for sunset here, a kind of joke since the gray that never leaves most days just gets darker until it becomes black again for another 16 hours, happens at around 4:30. Sunset is called here, with typical German precision, 'Sonnenuntergang', or 'sun go under'. 'Look Wilhelm, sun go under'! You may have notice I capitalize lots of German words....in German they capitalize each and every noun. Always.
I head again back up the hill. The fog lifts and the power lines come into view finally. Things start to make real sense. The weather comes and goes but now I know where in general I am. I could venture back into the Wald beyond the poles, but I do worry now that I'm going to be late for dinner, which is set for 4pm. Like the French peasants we often eat just two meals a day in the Winter. Root vegetables two ways! Actually, we eat like kings. Better, even. But especially if there are only 2 meals I don't want to miss one. So, I hurry....back thru Hachborn, along a Feld thru Ebsdorf, then across the last mile or more of fields separating Ebsdorf and Beltershausen. I can't see much of anything but I'm close to home.
The rain begins to sheet down and my hands are mostly useless. I spare a moment for soldiers trying to load ammo into old rifles in the trenches in WWl. Their hands were useless and their feet were rotting in their boots. Bombs were falling, and other people they often couldn't see were firing machine guns
3:15 sees me home. I am sopping wet. It takes minutes just to get my gloves off. My hands can't grip or feel the zippers on my jacket or the laces on my shoes. But no one was shooting at me. And dinner was terrific.
Mallorcan Journal November 2009
We land on Mallorca around 2 in the afternoon and find our rented car and Anja gets her navigational bearings and off we go to the Marriott Son Antem near Llucmajor. Area seems clean but as with much of the island there is some undefinable smell that takes getting used to. Weather is a balmy but not humidly tropical 70. The pattern every day has been a quick fade from sun thru sunset into darkness between 5:30 and 6:15, with nightime down to a still nice 50 and days at or above 70. There has been some fog reported but we've been getting up late we've missed it.
We settle into our way too big accomodations (three very nice bedrooms, with 5 beds in total, two quite nice baths, three flat screen tv's, etc). Way better this than our shithole in Brac last year. Everything works, the showers are great. Super kitchen with washer/dryer. We're happy.
The Marriott is out by itself in very flat countryside but near a freeway artery and is primarily a golf resort, with 3 or 4 tennis courts tossed in. It could be SoCal except for the predominance of German accents among the guests. The island, like the Canaries, does have a lot of Germans. But we much prefer Mallorca...everything seems much more lively and there is much more scope for hiking in various terrain and the availability of different foods, and of a retained Spanish culture (as opposed to an offshore German old folks home). And it really is clean, with, like Prague and Dresden, lots of work going on on historic buildings, etc.
We unpack and head up past Llucmajor to the Monasterio de Cura on top of the Massis (massif?) de Randa. Nice views but we missed sunset so they are all pretty muted. We drive back down into and Llucmajor, getting lost in the tiny one way streets and gingerly making turns with inches to spare. Eventually we find our way to the store we were directed to and stock up on the necessities. Then home to plot our moves for the morrow and chow down on chicken and rice.
Sunday finds us on the way to Valldemossa on the north side of the island about 45 minutes away from our resort. Our path leads up and up, through rocks and roots and scrub oak and olive trees and healthy looking wild goats. And more rocks. Very reminiscent to us both of our walks all over Brac early last year. Also the smoke here and there in the air, spiralling up from the pruning fires. We pass a small enclosed field/back yard of ancient olive trees, huge trunks, dead in places, but supporting new growth on top. Like gnarled body builders with withered arms. We can hear a dog barking down in Valldemossa, and then a confused rooster joins it discordantly. We pick our way up, coming after a couple of hours or so to a, rocky, plateau. And along with the fabulous views.....the Archduke's path. Of rocks, of course. The Austrian Archduke Ludwig Salvator bought this upland territory and had his 'people' build him a path so he could ride around and look about, much like Yertle the Turtle. That must have some piece of work and it really is beautiful in places where they literally built causeways that make it easier to negotiate the terrain and the path takes you out to views back into the interior of the island and out to sea and along the northwest coast ( I would have hated to have been any of his horses). We found some trees just down from the heights that provided some shelter from a very brisk wind and had our lunch of 6 grained bread with olive oil and jamon, accompanied by an apple and some gruyere and water. Wonderful. Then we picked our way along the plateau for awhile and then traversed down and down back to Valldemossa. Near the heights we came across two ex-pat Brits, having the time of their lives to listen to them....they had just mountain biked up from the other direction and were headed down the path, which they knew, that we had come up....pretty impressive! Back in Valldemossa we spent a few minutes casing the town; very nice but again the smells...weird. Then the drive back to the Marriott and a sub par dinner at one of their restaurants. But not bad enough to ruin a terrific day.
Monday we drive further afield, out to Alcudia on the east side of the island (about an hours easy drive, but we both wonder what it is like in the summer?). Here we park in a preserve and then hike around and up to Talaia d'Alcudia (445m), meeting many wild goats (dark brown on top, black on their undersides; very handsome) along the way, birds soaring in the distance (could some of the black ones be ravens?). It is a great path up the ridge to the peak, marked with rock cairns and that is about all. But well done. It reminded me of the Wat between Amrum and Fohr in the Frisian Islands, where if you're not careful to know and stay on the path the tide will come back in and kill you (here it would just have meant clambering back down and trying different ascents until you got it right). The peak here (the Talaia), as opposed to Sunday's rounded plateau, is a point with enough room for the 20-30 folks we find (having met nobody til we got to the top) there lolling about having lunch. We have our snack and head back down the other side, along a nice ridge path with grasses and waist high vegetation, descending into a cool pine forest, switchbacks, ferns, and the rocks sharing space with softer footing. Then back along an undulating road to our car. And back to Llucmajor to do some shopping and then back home for steaks, red wine, and rice. Another great day.
Tuesday finds us wandering Palma. First the cathedral, then the old town. Then along the harbor and finally up to the Castillo de Bellver, a round little fort with nice views back down to Palma and north along the coast up to the mountains. We had a frankly bad lunch at the Grand Cafe but a terrific dinner at a little place in the old town called S'Olivera. Then back home. 3 for 3.
Wednesday we get going a bit earlier. Drive to Palma and park. Walk thru old town and buy tickets on the 100 year old, narrow guage train to Soller. This wonderful little contrivance with its lacquered wood simplicity and old time lighting, was a time travel treat. Winding thru the countryside and then noisily ascending into the mountains amidst peaks and forests with views and my head (carefully!) out the window from time to time to look along the track and catch the late morning breeze. Lunch in Soller's central square seemed kind of timeless; our waitress coming out of the restaurant and across the street to serve us our pasta's and drinks, standing there with our meals until traffic went by, the locals and long time tourists meeting and greeting in babel-like fashion and the children just out of school for lunch running back to their homes.
Then we walked to this tiny town of Biniaraix (how to say it?; still don't quite know) and from there another spirited climb of near 2,000 feet up an old 15th century pilgrims trail, all rock of course and beautifully done, up and up and up, passing through unbelievable numbers of terraced gardens, a steep, twisting gorge opening up on our right and our path just twisting and hugging the mountainside. Sadly, we ran out of time somewhere near the top and had to double time it back down in order to try and see another highly recommended little town (Fornalutx, which we also decided to bypass) and get back to our train on time. This we eventually did, the train clanking on its way under growing darkness and both of us dozing most of the way back to Palma, where we had a terrific seafood dinner at Duke's, walked back to the car and drove home. 4 for 4!
Thursday we drive back to Soller on the MA-11 and then up the MA-10 to the Cuber reservoir (some world famous chef who works here says its the nicest spot on the island. Basically driving up the same mountains we climbed yesterday but we were curious as to how our hike was supposed to have ended on Wednesday. At the reservoir we find a high mountain rocky terrain with lots of sheep, some cows, and up in the rocks we see goats...the same healthy looking dark brown on top/black on the bottom variety. Watching them bound down a hill can excite a fair amount of envy! There was a variety of very thick and useful looking horns (shapes like ten speed handlebars and reverse bicep curls...very sturdy) on the goats. It took us a steady 70 minutes to hike down to our end point of Wednesday, so our total descent time was 2:15. After a snack it took another 70 minutes to go back up to the car, so the total ascent time, with stops for water and photo-ops, was on the order of 2:30. So, all in all a total of 3:45, while the signs say the total time each way is 4:05. So, we're about 50% faster!
We drive back thru Soller, back thru the tunnel and make a pit stop at the Gardens of Alfabia, dating from the 1240's or so, having been originated by a Moor who snuggled up to Jaume l when he invaded the Balearics. Very nice little terraced gardens with some great old vines and a place where you can start your own waterworks. Sadly, most of the flowers are completely gone this time of year, but on the other hand we had the place mostly to ourselves and with the fog coming down it gave the place an otherworldly, time warp kind of feel that was ghostly and cool. Definitely worth a visit.
Then back to Llucmajor for our last shopping trip and home to a nice dinner of pork filet, rice, sauteed onions, some very nice concoction Anja cooked up of diced olives, herbs de provence and other seasonings; accompanied by tasty red and white beverages, of course! 5 for 5!
Friday-last day. We decide instead of up and down to go coastal and around. So, it's off on the familiar series of roundabouts up to Valldemossa, then continuing on to Deia. We have parking problems (max two hours) so I go up to La Residencia and the friendly Mabel lets us stay for free in their lot. Place on a fast blush looks wonderful, but we pick up sticks and head downhill to Cala Deia (Deia cove) and the ocean, then along the coast to Port de Soller..what turns out to be an adventurous scramble and Anja's favorite hike. Here they say the hike takes 4+ hours and they're not far off; you just can't do it fast. There has been recent and constant erosion and the trail is obviously a work in progress, across precarious washes, pulling oneself thru fallen trees, slipping here and there, getting lost at least half a dozen times and having to go back and refigure the trail, which is marked with blotches of red paint and little rock cairns. But because of all the course changes occasionally the markers aren't clear, or lead nowhere and we have to go back and find the newer markers, etc. There were fences to climb (they call them stiles, and they are mostly of wood and you climb up one side and down the other), the crystal water to admire, the rocky and pine strewn headlands to gawk at, and of course the rock walls to walk on top of and along and through (when they have fallen down and that's the new path). Like all the walks plenty of chances to turn ankles, etc., but we made it through again, clambering straight up and straight down, slipping occasionally but always catching ourselves, without mishap. No way to mountain bike or jog this path. It's just too treacherous and too easy to get lost. Eventually we climb out, find a road and then another path winding around and down to Port de Soller, have a beer and find the bus stop, and take, in the gathering darkness a fascinating (I was a front row spectator) half hour bus ride on the coast road back to Deia. Sometimes the bus driver comes to a complete halt to let oncoming traffic come by, other times making turns he goes so wide the branches on the other side of the road were brushing our vehicle. We are on the outside side of the road most of the time going south so my side of the bus often seems to be hanging out over thin air or about to hit the roadside curbs (after going through which we'd just be in free fall). But we make it back to Deia, we go back for a drink at La Residencia and tour the place in the darkness....definitely a place to fall in love with and we grab brochures and promise ourselves to come back. One of most charming hotels (part of the Orient Express chain) we've ever seen....something to do on a honeymoon!, or next year.
Then it's windy roads for us back thru Valldemossa and back home, deciding we don't need any more gas and will have done the whole week on one tank. Home finds us with a problem: the internet is out. That's a pain (and one reason why I've been up since 4am), but no biggie in the scheme of things. Obviously, we're back up and soon will be leaving for London and the kids.
Anja, usually the more reserved of the two of us, is already making plans to come back. There's clearly more to see and do and explore, and if we've been lucky (we have!) it will be great fun to do the things we've already done over again. We are told we got very good weather (lucky again!) but this seems like the time to be here...cooler, less crowded, etc. And still escaping from the much colder mainland. And we can still stay at Marriott for at least a week of our stay.
Notes:
-We've actually not spent much money here; eating in most of the time and taking sandwiches for our hikes.
-We did not see one lizard (and only one snake-dead) the whole week; are there none/so few or have they already, like most of the tourists, gone into hibernation. No deer, no predators (though we did see one warning sign for something that looked scarily like a wolverine!) evident.
-We're very impressed with how much care the island shows; it's clean and really well maintained. Hope they can keep the balance in the little towns where clearly much is changing and tourist and ex-pat money is flooding in. Who wants to slave rebuilding rock walls in the mountains when you can earn much more in an office or building spec homes?
We'll be back!!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The butcher, the baker....the fruit guy, the cheese guy....et les flics
Today is Thursday the 20th of March, 2008; or, if you prefer, the 29th of Ventose (wind), the sixth month of CCXVI (the 216th year) of the agricultural calendar adopted in 1793 during the French Revolution (and tossed out by Napolean in 1804). Supposed to be light rain and mid 40's, but lately that gets mixed with some sun....still great walking and poking around weather, and it'll warm up next week a bit. But spring is coming, and having been here 5 weeks or so now the changes are palpable and everywhere: in the feel of the air, in the extra hours of daylight (it seemed, in late December in Germany, like it was dark gray by 4pm, but now, here, two-thirds of the way through March it is light til past 7 pm), in the buds on the trees along the Seine and the Champs Elysee and in the Jardins. The sunsets are wonderful this time of year.....wild, living skies turning gray and purple with shafts of sunlight penetrating fast moving skies and dusk setting in the south west. Best viewed from one of the many bridges of the Seine itself.
Last night I was out on errands in the rainy twilight, arranging things with my not anymore local but still favored caviste (wine guy) so that you all have enough to drink (interesting tidbit....delivery is free, but if his delivery guy has to cross the river the max is 12-18 bottles). I had to cross the Seine myself to get there, and coming back a huge full moon had come up to the east and was fighting to be seen through the darkening, scudding nuages (clouds).
We moved in, in two tries, on Tuesday. Spent that morning cleaning up our soon to be late and not much lamented bathroom, then took the bulk of our luggage down to the street and around the corner to a cab stand and across the Seine to our new digs at 21 Rue du Cirque (you'll find it north of the Seine, starting one block north of the Champs Elysees, just to the left of the Avenue de Marigny and the Elysee Palace)....just one longish block. Met our 'guide' M- (more on this later), unloaded and got a few explanations of how things worked, checked the internet, took a cab back to Rue de L'Universite for a last meal with Clothilde (sad all round but also the last of her marvelous cooking and especially her tarte tatins). Then, with my tennis bag hoisted on my shoulder we walked back, across the Seine, through the Tuileries, across the Place de la Concorde, past the Hotel Crillon, made our way past the carloads of flics, gendarmes and paramilitary anti-terrorist units guarding the American Embassy on Avenue Gabriel, past the guards holding the fort on the South side of the Elysee Palace, and up the street to our new crib (the rain nicely holding off for the most part). The rest of the day was settling in and getting things to work.
Yesterday I got up and found out we didn't have the 'necessities' for our sybaritic lifestyle, so I went foraging. Local boulangerie/patisserie on the corner (check), local meat market (for the few times we might want meat--check). I returned home with the daily baguette, some almond croissants, some creme for the coffee, a banana, some overpriced strawberry jam...enough to cobble together breakfast. Late morning found us walking into centre ville, along the Rue St. Honore to the Place Colette (make note that Jaime would like the costumes at the boutique store by the Comedie Francaise), through a covered alley to the gardens of the Palais Royal, indifferent lunch, then continue into the not to be missed Gallerie Vivienne (getting cards at marvelous looking Le Grand Colbert for lunch...Jess, that'll be lunch on Saturday maybe!), and around and around. I feel good, in the sense that I have a cocky idea I know my way in Paris a bit. But on this walk, backtracking and turning this way and that, I got turned around so many times I lost track. Paris is very flat so even the boy scout 'downhill to the water' mantra is of no use here; i.e.--sometimes in the space of a few moments I don't even know which direction to look for the Seine. The streets are twisting rabbit warrens or suddenly change names even when they haven't changed direction at all. I think perhaps they have so much history and so many heroes, scoundrels, politicians (sorry for the redundancy),saints and martyrs to memorialize that each Rue and Avenue and Boulevard has to do double, triple or more duty to try and fit them all in. Thus Avenue Friedland becomes Boulevard Haussman becomes Boulevard Montmartre morphs into Blvd Poissonniere, Bonne Nouvelle, St. Denis and finally St. Martin, only changing direction slightly as it takes one across Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Republic.
'One'. I don't know what all of you know about the French language (I suspect young Jessica is our best speaker and I will be testing her at every opportunity), but the ubiquitous use of the third person impersonal in speech I find off-putting. My friend Richard once described a brief conversation he had with a concierge in Italy: 'Is it cool to wear shorts here?' 'Si senor, if one is a child.' 'One' would enjoy dinner at this restaurant, for example. Really? Well, that's what some'one' might want, but what do you want? It makes them all sound like pretentious athletes or dead emperors.
We return to our 'hood' (and to our travelogue) in the afternoon, stopping to buy some fruit around the corner from the delightful Mahfoud Hareche at Le Potager Mermoz. Mahfoud has been in Paris for 30 years but hasn't lost his Algerian accent and Paris hasn't beat out his friendly manner (or, cynically, maybe he just wants to sell us more legumes). But as we leave he does a nice thing.....seeing we are heading to the cheese shop a few doors down he runs after us and makes introductions to Jean-Luc the cheese guy...Like that, we are set up. During our l'apres midi peregrinations I also stopped at several banks to see if I could change one of my 500 euro notes (we thought we might have to pay for our lodgings up front in cash so we brought roughly $24,000 in cash, all in big notes....each worth about $800, and largely uncashable). None of the major banks would do it...if you aren't a customer sucking wind on their passbook pittances then you, pardon...'one', is scum de pond. None of the small shops can do it. But my caviste at Nicolas.....he did it. So, I'm in....as long as I continue to buy vast quantities of Bordeaux, anyway.
And lastly, les flics (the cops). Specifically, the tax police. We received an urgent email the night before we moved in......our 'facilitators', based out of Seattle, had received a phone call from someone supposedly calling from France, supposedly investigating the Italian owners of our apartment. The caller did not leave a name or number. But they called our new building manager (Linda) before we arrived Tuesday promising a friendly visit that afternoon. Our contact in the French Resistance (otherwise known as the local rep of our facilitator) has told us not to open the door to anyone we don't know...in fact not to answer the door at all and to pretend we are not there (which we just did 5 minutes ago). We are instructed to pretend not to speak any French (that shouldn't be tough). We are forbidden to answer the phones (there is a gray one and a black one....one makes a sound like attacking bull elephants, the other ring is a classical tune). We are given a cover story.....we are friends of the owners and of course staying for free and of course, a la Seargeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes.....'We know nothing!'). Above all, we don't know anybody in the Resistance....how we got the keys is a mystery. I try to explain that under torture I will probably confess to pretty much anything, but they don't listen. Anyway, so far so good (i.e.--only the one knock at the door, no one in a trenchcoat loitering around the entrance) though each day we do hear the phones, one after the other, competing with each other stereophonically. Maybe they are coming again. Who knows. Stay tuned. My next communique may have to be smuggled out out of the Bastille in a piece of bread. One lives in fear. A bientot, or perhaps adieu.
Last night I was out on errands in the rainy twilight, arranging things with my not anymore local but still favored caviste (wine guy) so that you all have enough to drink (interesting tidbit....delivery is free, but if his delivery guy has to cross the river the max is 12-18 bottles). I had to cross the Seine myself to get there, and coming back a huge full moon had come up to the east and was fighting to be seen through the darkening, scudding nuages (clouds).
We moved in, in two tries, on Tuesday. Spent that morning cleaning up our soon to be late and not much lamented bathroom, then took the bulk of our luggage down to the street and around the corner to a cab stand and across the Seine to our new digs at 21 Rue du Cirque (you'll find it north of the Seine, starting one block north of the Champs Elysees, just to the left of the Avenue de Marigny and the Elysee Palace)....just one longish block. Met our 'guide' M- (more on this later), unloaded and got a few explanations of how things worked, checked the internet, took a cab back to Rue de L'Universite for a last meal with Clothilde (sad all round but also the last of her marvelous cooking and especially her tarte tatins). Then, with my tennis bag hoisted on my shoulder we walked back, across the Seine, through the Tuileries, across the Place de la Concorde, past the Hotel Crillon, made our way past the carloads of flics, gendarmes and paramilitary anti-terrorist units guarding the American Embassy on Avenue Gabriel, past the guards holding the fort on the South side of the Elysee Palace, and up the street to our new crib (the rain nicely holding off for the most part). The rest of the day was settling in and getting things to work.
Yesterday I got up and found out we didn't have the 'necessities' for our sybaritic lifestyle, so I went foraging. Local boulangerie/patisserie on the corner (check), local meat market (for the few times we might want meat--check). I returned home with the daily baguette, some almond croissants, some creme for the coffee, a banana, some overpriced strawberry jam...enough to cobble together breakfast. Late morning found us walking into centre ville, along the Rue St. Honore to the Place Colette (make note that Jaime would like the costumes at the boutique store by the Comedie Francaise), through a covered alley to the gardens of the Palais Royal, indifferent lunch, then continue into the not to be missed Gallerie Vivienne (getting cards at marvelous looking Le Grand Colbert for lunch...Jess, that'll be lunch on Saturday maybe!), and around and around. I feel good, in the sense that I have a cocky idea I know my way in Paris a bit. But on this walk, backtracking and turning this way and that, I got turned around so many times I lost track. Paris is very flat so even the boy scout 'downhill to the water' mantra is of no use here; i.e.--sometimes in the space of a few moments I don't even know which direction to look for the Seine. The streets are twisting rabbit warrens or suddenly change names even when they haven't changed direction at all. I think perhaps they have so much history and so many heroes, scoundrels, politicians (sorry for the redundancy),saints and martyrs to memorialize that each Rue and Avenue and Boulevard has to do double, triple or more duty to try and fit them all in. Thus Avenue Friedland becomes Boulevard Haussman becomes Boulevard Montmartre morphs into Blvd Poissonniere, Bonne Nouvelle, St. Denis and finally St. Martin, only changing direction slightly as it takes one across Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Republic.
'One'. I don't know what all of you know about the French language (I suspect young Jessica is our best speaker and I will be testing her at every opportunity), but the ubiquitous use of the third person impersonal in speech I find off-putting. My friend Richard once described a brief conversation he had with a concierge in Italy: 'Is it cool to wear shorts here?' 'Si senor, if one is a child.' 'One' would enjoy dinner at this restaurant, for example. Really? Well, that's what some'one' might want, but what do you want? It makes them all sound like pretentious athletes or dead emperors.
We return to our 'hood' (and to our travelogue) in the afternoon, stopping to buy some fruit around the corner from the delightful Mahfoud Hareche at Le Potager Mermoz. Mahfoud has been in Paris for 30 years but hasn't lost his Algerian accent and Paris hasn't beat out his friendly manner (or, cynically, maybe he just wants to sell us more legumes). But as we leave he does a nice thing.....seeing we are heading to the cheese shop a few doors down he runs after us and makes introductions to Jean-Luc the cheese guy...Like that, we are set up. During our l'apres midi peregrinations I also stopped at several banks to see if I could change one of my 500 euro notes (we thought we might have to pay for our lodgings up front in cash so we brought roughly $24,000 in cash, all in big notes....each worth about $800, and largely uncashable). None of the major banks would do it...if you aren't a customer sucking wind on their passbook pittances then you, pardon...'one', is scum de pond. None of the small shops can do it. But my caviste at Nicolas.....he did it. So, I'm in....as long as I continue to buy vast quantities of Bordeaux, anyway.
And lastly, les flics (the cops). Specifically, the tax police. We received an urgent email the night before we moved in......our 'facilitators', based out of Seattle, had received a phone call from someone supposedly calling from France, supposedly investigating the Italian owners of our apartment. The caller did not leave a name or number. But they called our new building manager (Linda) before we arrived Tuesday promising a friendly visit that afternoon. Our contact in the French Resistance (otherwise known as the local rep of our facilitator) has told us not to open the door to anyone we don't know...in fact not to answer the door at all and to pretend we are not there (which we just did 5 minutes ago). We are instructed to pretend not to speak any French (that shouldn't be tough). We are forbidden to answer the phones (there is a gray one and a black one....one makes a sound like attacking bull elephants, the other ring is a classical tune). We are given a cover story.....we are friends of the owners and of course staying for free and of course, a la Seargeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes.....'We know nothing!'). Above all, we don't know anybody in the Resistance....how we got the keys is a mystery. I try to explain that under torture I will probably confess to pretty much anything, but they don't listen. Anyway, so far so good (i.e.--only the one knock at the door, no one in a trenchcoat loitering around the entrance) though each day we do hear the phones, one after the other, competing with each other stereophonically. Maybe they are coming again. Who knows. Stay tuned. My next communique may have to be smuggled out out of the Bastille in a piece of bread. One lives in fear. A bientot, or perhaps adieu.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Parisian Moments Two Movie Reviews March 18, 2008
Yesterday Anja dumped me to go spend some girl time with some female classmates at a cloister near the Pantheon. I took myself off to see Peter Greenaway's new movie Nightwatchers, an interesting but somehow soporific film i am not sure i really 'got'....fair warning to the rest of you. Something about Rembrandt doing a lot of fornicating and figuring out a murder conspiracy that leads him to paint a huge picture that reveals the truth if you know how to parse all the imagery. He also spends a lot of time on his roof musing with some young prostitutes. I got to the theatre early and had to use the pissoir, paid for the ticket and asked the manager where it was and he told me, in French so i missed part of the explanation but he obviously didn't want me to go there right away because the last show was letting out. Okay, whatever, maybe he was worried about my safety pushing through the outrushing parisian assnobs. So, I waited for a couple of minutes and then went down, searched around and found out that the way to the loo was down the right side of the room my movie was in.....if you're following me that means that when my movie was actually playing folks would wander in, go down the side, use the facility and come back the same way. So, I do this, take a left behind the actual screen, very narrow here, find the tightest metal spiral staircase I have ever essayed, climb that and find myself in a postage stamp of a space with five fat old french women and one fat old french man. We are actually finding it hard not to touch each other as we wait for two doors to open to the two toilets, which from the top of the stairs is maybe three or four feet away. Immediately to my right is a sink (i mean immediately as in....next to me, one step back and I am going back down the stairs); the parisians are filling up all the space in between. And then I notice that to the left is a pissoir....a urinal. Two of the women are right in front of it, have their backs to it cuz it is right there in the open space, and they are unhappy anyway but even more upset to see another man. I had no wish to piss in front of a bunch of old women on my own, so I hesitated, but it was the obvious fact that they didn't want me to piss in front of them so much more than I didn't want to piss in front of them that spurred me to action. They parted grudgingly for me and as I initiated my stream I fancied I could feel their distaste, that I could see their already elevated noses gain just a bit more altitude. I wish I could have managed a fart, but finishing leisurely and then washing my hands in front of them was a far better experience than the movie itself.
As an aside, how can a city so full of itself and it's haute couture and haute culture also have streets so full of dog shit......how does one reconcile those two together? I just don't get it.
The next night Anja and I went to see Taken, the new Liam Neeson film, a mindlessly violent riff/rip of so many other senseless violence movies it was hard to ever get into it. The first few scenes establish he is a divorced dad living in reduced circumstances who has quit his high violence former life in the CIA, though his old buddies still come by for brewskies and steak, in order to spend some time and 'reconnect' with his extraordinarily insipid 17 year old daughter. He buys her a hi end all in one karaoke system for her birthday and takes it to her party which is being held at her stepfathers palace. She is unwrapping his offering when stepdad oneups him by giving her a horse.....bye bye 'old' dad. Of course we don't really know how badass he is, and neither does his family. The kid is very shortly thereafter on her way to Europe to follow the summer U-2 tour. He of course tries to drill a little common sense into her on the way to the airport, but she hasn't been in Paris for more than 30 minutes before she and her hard to believe even more ditzy girl friend have been kidnapped. She is talking to her dad as the mob carries off her buddy and he is packing before she is even out the door, having simultaneously recorded their voices and instructed her on what to do and then warning her captors that he is coming after them. 30 minutes later he is on the stepdad's private jet. He has also called his old beer buddies from 'Langley' (why didn't he invite some of them along?), played the voice recording for them and almost instantly found out the perps are an Albanian mob that turns innocent girls into crack whores. These Albanians are so tough (The Usual Suspects) that even the Russian mafia gives them a wide berth. And, to give the story some added spice, he is told that he only has 96 hours before little dipshit will be sold and disappearred. Gosh, what to do? Find the spotter at the airport, beat the shit out him, beat the shit of his buddy, steal a car, chase down the spotter who leaps off an off ramp and escapes only to mess it up by stepping back into the street to check out his pursuer only to get t-boned by a semi ala Meet Joe Black (note to self: in the unlikely event of ever escaping from a situation like this, DO NOT back into the street to check on my pursuer without looking both ways first). Seems like a dead end now...what to do? Find out where Albanians hang out in Paris, talk stupid to one of their street whores, then plant a bug on the Albanian pimp who shows up to beat him up, having had the forethought to hire an Albanian translater first, then go back to the car, listen to the pimp bad mouth him to some other Albanians, follow the Albanian to where a whole bunch of Albanians run a combo wrecking yard slash outdoor brothel, infiltrate brothel and find his daughters jacket, kill a couple of customers and then all the Albanians in various and sundry.....where is Joe-Bob anymore.....kung-fu, shooting-fu, car chase into a fork lift-fu, etc. He kills all the Albanians! What to do....oh, in escaping from and killing all the Albanians he also avoids several hails of bullets and he also grabs the innocent crack whore with his kids jacket. Of course, like every ex-spook he has a safe house from the old days (check each and every Robert Ludlum novel) and a scant few minutes later, with nary a peep from the flics (cops) he has his new friend in a hotel room and has rustled up some drugs and an IV. Crack whore wakes up and tells him she's nice and his daughter is nice and she gave her the jacket.....oh, and I remember that they took me to a house on Rue de Paradis with a red door. That's it for the crack whore......we never hear of her again. The sun hasn't moved on the horizon and Liam's outside the house with the red door masquerading as a French police bigshot who talks himself into the house, in English (note to self: never fall for the fake French inspector scam if the scam artist can't speak any French), with the scam that he is renegotiating the Albanians monthly payoff to the police department. He spins this line long enough to identity the actual Albanian he talked to on his daughter's phone....though why he goes to the trouble is not clear because right afterwards he kills ALL THE REST OF THE ALBANIANS. All except one. After he kills almost all the Albanians he wanders around the house and finds the useless girl friend who is already dead of an overdose so she's not around to complicate the plot any further. Anyway, back to the last Albanian.......he is wounded but unfortunately for him still conscious. Scant moments after the aforementioned carnage we find our hero, who has miraculously found himself a dark basement, with two very large nails in hand which he drives into the thighs of the remaining, thoroughly tied up to a chair Albanian. While delivering a sermon on the dependability of the Parisian power grid and reminiscing nostalgically of the old days, our hero is deftly hooking our vicious mobster's new metal appendages into said mains. Now there is a few tense moments of ask the question, get spat on by recalcitrant mobster, apply liberal amounts of electricity, watch veins bulge on mobster, ask question, get spat on again, apply power longer, get answer to question, turn power back on, and leave (right out of Man on Fire) mobster to fry.
We move immedately to our next venue, a rich man's party palace near the Seine where drugged up crack whore novitiates are being sold to the highest bidder. Well, we kill a few people and get into the auction and make sure that the bidder we are now holding hostage actually buys our daughter (who of course was the last and best auction item). And now, on the way to actually get his daughter....disaster. Our hero is felled from behind and moments later is hanging from a pipe. Enter rich guy, who asks a few questions, orders his 4 men to kill Liam quietly and exits back to his party. Not only does our hero kill these four armed men from an initial position that seems slightly disadvanteous, but he does it so quickly that the rich guy hasn't even reached the elevator. Liam kills one more guy to get to the rich guy who of course wants to bargain, but after he answers a few questions our hero toasts him in his elevator. Our hero exits the building. Notes his little girl being bundled into a big Audi. Chases said Audi on foot along the Seine (ala French Connection ll.....yes, I know that was Marseilles). Eventually gets tired of running and somehow grabs a high end car of his own. Follows the auction winner (amazingly, the guy he made buy his daughter has taken possession of his purchase) to a supersized yacht (by the way, Paris being denuded of Albanians by now the new bad guys are high gloss, impeccably dressed, champagne swilling, oily petrotrash). Yacht gets underway, our hero follows and eventually jumps out of the car and off one of the Seine bridges onto the boat where he lands, rolls into a petrothug, kills him and AFTER being discovered kills ALL OF THE PETROSCUM. The denouement, after all the minor fish have been executed, is that he finds himself in a room with your quintessential fat oily Arab in a voluminous burnoose, holding an evil looking knife to our hero's daughter's virginal (well, probably not anymore) neck. He too wants to bargain. He too barely has time to draw a deep breath (shades of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive...."I don't negotiate!") before....well, you know.
I won't bore you with the rest; if 95% of the movie is violent nonsense, the last 5 reaches rarified heights of mushy moronity.
As an aside, how can a city so full of itself and it's haute couture and haute culture also have streets so full of dog shit......how does one reconcile those two together? I just don't get it.
The next night Anja and I went to see Taken, the new Liam Neeson film, a mindlessly violent riff/rip of so many other senseless violence movies it was hard to ever get into it. The first few scenes establish he is a divorced dad living in reduced circumstances who has quit his high violence former life in the CIA, though his old buddies still come by for brewskies and steak, in order to spend some time and 'reconnect' with his extraordinarily insipid 17 year old daughter. He buys her a hi end all in one karaoke system for her birthday and takes it to her party which is being held at her stepfathers palace. She is unwrapping his offering when stepdad oneups him by giving her a horse.....bye bye 'old' dad. Of course we don't really know how badass he is, and neither does his family. The kid is very shortly thereafter on her way to Europe to follow the summer U-2 tour. He of course tries to drill a little common sense into her on the way to the airport, but she hasn't been in Paris for more than 30 minutes before she and her hard to believe even more ditzy girl friend have been kidnapped. She is talking to her dad as the mob carries off her buddy and he is packing before she is even out the door, having simultaneously recorded their voices and instructed her on what to do and then warning her captors that he is coming after them. 30 minutes later he is on the stepdad's private jet. He has also called his old beer buddies from 'Langley' (why didn't he invite some of them along?), played the voice recording for them and almost instantly found out the perps are an Albanian mob that turns innocent girls into crack whores. These Albanians are so tough (The Usual Suspects) that even the Russian mafia gives them a wide berth. And, to give the story some added spice, he is told that he only has 96 hours before little dipshit will be sold and disappearred. Gosh, what to do? Find the spotter at the airport, beat the shit out him, beat the shit of his buddy, steal a car, chase down the spotter who leaps off an off ramp and escapes only to mess it up by stepping back into the street to check out his pursuer only to get t-boned by a semi ala Meet Joe Black (note to self: in the unlikely event of ever escaping from a situation like this, DO NOT back into the street to check on my pursuer without looking both ways first). Seems like a dead end now...what to do? Find out where Albanians hang out in Paris, talk stupid to one of their street whores, then plant a bug on the Albanian pimp who shows up to beat him up, having had the forethought to hire an Albanian translater first, then go back to the car, listen to the pimp bad mouth him to some other Albanians, follow the Albanian to where a whole bunch of Albanians run a combo wrecking yard slash outdoor brothel, infiltrate brothel and find his daughters jacket, kill a couple of customers and then all the Albanians in various and sundry.....where is Joe-Bob anymore.....kung-fu, shooting-fu, car chase into a fork lift-fu, etc. He kills all the Albanians! What to do....oh, in escaping from and killing all the Albanians he also avoids several hails of bullets and he also grabs the innocent crack whore with his kids jacket. Of course, like every ex-spook he has a safe house from the old days (check each and every Robert Ludlum novel) and a scant few minutes later, with nary a peep from the flics (cops) he has his new friend in a hotel room and has rustled up some drugs and an IV. Crack whore wakes up and tells him she's nice and his daughter is nice and she gave her the jacket.....oh, and I remember that they took me to a house on Rue de Paradis with a red door. That's it for the crack whore......we never hear of her again. The sun hasn't moved on the horizon and Liam's outside the house with the red door masquerading as a French police bigshot who talks himself into the house, in English (note to self: never fall for the fake French inspector scam if the scam artist can't speak any French), with the scam that he is renegotiating the Albanians monthly payoff to the police department. He spins this line long enough to identity the actual Albanian he talked to on his daughter's phone....though why he goes to the trouble is not clear because right afterwards he kills ALL THE REST OF THE ALBANIANS. All except one. After he kills almost all the Albanians he wanders around the house and finds the useless girl friend who is already dead of an overdose so she's not around to complicate the plot any further. Anyway, back to the last Albanian.......he is wounded but unfortunately for him still conscious. Scant moments after the aforementioned carnage we find our hero, who has miraculously found himself a dark basement, with two very large nails in hand which he drives into the thighs of the remaining, thoroughly tied up to a chair Albanian. While delivering a sermon on the dependability of the Parisian power grid and reminiscing nostalgically of the old days, our hero is deftly hooking our vicious mobster's new metal appendages into said mains. Now there is a few tense moments of ask the question, get spat on by recalcitrant mobster, apply liberal amounts of electricity, watch veins bulge on mobster, ask question, get spat on again, apply power longer, get answer to question, turn power back on, and leave (right out of Man on Fire) mobster to fry.
We move immedately to our next venue, a rich man's party palace near the Seine where drugged up crack whore novitiates are being sold to the highest bidder. Well, we kill a few people and get into the auction and make sure that the bidder we are now holding hostage actually buys our daughter (who of course was the last and best auction item). And now, on the way to actually get his daughter....disaster. Our hero is felled from behind and moments later is hanging from a pipe. Enter rich guy, who asks a few questions, orders his 4 men to kill Liam quietly and exits back to his party. Not only does our hero kill these four armed men from an initial position that seems slightly disadvanteous, but he does it so quickly that the rich guy hasn't even reached the elevator. Liam kills one more guy to get to the rich guy who of course wants to bargain, but after he answers a few questions our hero toasts him in his elevator. Our hero exits the building. Notes his little girl being bundled into a big Audi. Chases said Audi on foot along the Seine (ala French Connection ll.....yes, I know that was Marseilles). Eventually gets tired of running and somehow grabs a high end car of his own. Follows the auction winner (amazingly, the guy he made buy his daughter has taken possession of his purchase) to a supersized yacht (by the way, Paris being denuded of Albanians by now the new bad guys are high gloss, impeccably dressed, champagne swilling, oily petrotrash). Yacht gets underway, our hero follows and eventually jumps out of the car and off one of the Seine bridges onto the boat where he lands, rolls into a petrothug, kills him and AFTER being discovered kills ALL OF THE PETROSCUM. The denouement, after all the minor fish have been executed, is that he finds himself in a room with your quintessential fat oily Arab in a voluminous burnoose, holding an evil looking knife to our hero's daughter's virginal (well, probably not anymore) neck. He too wants to bargain. He too barely has time to draw a deep breath (shades of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive...."I don't negotiate!") before....well, you know.
I won't bore you with the rest; if 95% of the movie is violent nonsense, the last 5 reaches rarified heights of mushy moronity.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
March 2, 2008 Two weeks in Paris; moving on to past participles
So, it has been a quick two weeks of Parisian life in the 6th arrondisement. We arrived on the 15th of February and quickly settled into our new pied a terre which has a wonderful location and fabulous hosts, but is quite expensive for what is really one bathroom with a not really optimal shower and one very small toilet, hidden inside a closet, that is isolated on the other side of the house. The internet connection is iffy, there is no landline even just to receive calls. But again, the pluses are there and we’ve been happy. But for guests this would be a nightmare. So, we’ve been doing the Paris two step, checking every website and web-vetting an innumerable number of quasi possibilities.
Yesterday morning was typical; outside the door at 10am to meet Xavier at a superb location around the corner from the Jardin du Luxembourg. He is very nice, but the apartment is a shithole. There isn’t a single nice thing about it, it’s not clean, the paint is flaking and the kitchen cooking ensemble consisted of a hot plate….that’s it. No stove. No oven. And the price: 6,200 euro’s or about $9,300 a month! But that’s not all. He is also trying to sell the place and the asking price (no parking either) is a cool 1.2 million euro’s, or 1.8 million dollars. He vouchsafed that the living area was 112 square metres, so essentially for this broken down space that would need to be completely gutted and renovated he wanted the equivalent of $1,500 a square foot…..essentially 3 times what we got for 12th avenue. Ridiculous, but who knows.
We looked at a cheaper apartment on a 6th floor walkup and the stairs and entryway looked like a set from the slasher movie Hostel…..it was so bad it was weird. We went to another near the Pantheon and the owner is prattling on about his family and how the kids had enjoyed growing up there and I was thinking: it looks like a place a coven of crack whores have been living in. The furniture looked like all the springs were gone, the carpet was totally threadbare, the kitchen looked like an unrenovated and unclean revenant of the 1970’s and the beds were worse than those you’d find in a dorm. The place had zero class or appeal, but he still wanted $5,000 a month or so. Did I mention that most of these places have no or only a vestigial lift (think one person and one carry on item). It’s depressing, but we are soldiering on.
We passed our first two weeks at Alliance Francaise. I was relegated to complete beginner status, where I belong. Anja is the next grade up and working much harder than I on tenses and word position and prepositions and what not. We both plan to work very hard these next two weeks and then I will probably quit for the next few weeks because of guests. But we both put in the hours…up to 3-4 hours after the four hours of class every day. Our normal day is up at 7 or 7:30 and have a light breakfast of coffee and bread ‘integrale’ (with nuts and dried fruits---very tasty and healthy) with olive oil, and couple of gulps each of orange juice and mineral water, maybe a quick shower, and we’re off for our twenty minute hike up the Rue du Bac, crossing Boulevard St. Germain
at the intersection of Boulevard Raspail, continuing up Raspail to Rue Fleurus where we take a quick left for 10 metres to our classes. Raspail itself is not a beautiful street but the walk is invigorating this time of year and reminds me of similar experiences in Florence (1994/5) and Lucerne (1997), when I was studying Italian and German.
My class, like Anja’s, is (most of us will continue) an international one. We have Ray, a doctor from the U.S. who speaks Arab, is in his mid forties, and lives in Chad (here: Tchad) with his wife and two kids. He is here for now while the violence hopefully subsides back in the desert. Very cool….but not a life I could handle.
Next to Ray is the nice but most useless member of our band: Kana from Japon. She has so little command of the verbal language and also cannot understand even basic questions that it is really embarrassing. Sometimes the teacher will ask her a question three or four time and eventually, sometimes, her simple moon face lights up and she animatedly bursts out with some diaphragm originating vowel sounds that shows that she ‘got it’….but it is almost always a false alarm and is then followed by a number of additional one-off vowel bursts, as if she was trying to grunt out all the two letter words in the world that end in ‘h’….uh!....ah!....eh! and so forth. The she lapses back into her normal catatonic state. She is a hairstylist and her mom and dad run a little restaurant back in the old country. I don’t get it; why is she here wasting her money and time?
We have the beautiful 30 year old blond Inge from the Czech Republic, living here with her fiancé Mano, a native of NYC out of Indian parents. He was taking lessons too but is off now to try his hand at some investment boutique.
There is Mo from Israel. Cute and very opinionated. And Magda, here with her whole Polish family, taking some time off from working on her advanced degree in Psychology. Diego from Bresil, and Arturo from Mexico. Not sure what their raison d’etre to be here is, since neither of them looks to be studying. And Tom from Sydney…typical friendly outgoing sport loving Aussie with a good mind and a good sense of humor. There is the lovely 20 something Henrietta from Norway, also blond but perhaps less mentally endowed than Inge (or perhaps more shy).
To my immediate left is the ‘in gamba’ (very chic and cool, fast and smart) Elisabetta from near Venice. She works for La Mode (Moda?) but is following love here to Paris. To my right the bright and chunky Asian American Connie, chafing about how slow the class is going (she’s right). She is very nice, studying contract law in New York and California. Chris from NYC is to her right, very nice childless forty something, here for three years with her husband and dog. And last, at the end of the table, the enigmatic Natalia from Russia. Early 20’s, supposedly an economist in training and dancer (what kind and for how much, I wonder), living in expensive digs near the Champs Elysee probably symbiotically on some fat oligarch’s rubles (but seriously, what do I know?).
I have spent 80 hours with these people the last two weeks, not to mention our nice but perhaps not optimally organized professor, Isabelle. And that feels really kind of weird, as if at my age I should be somehow more in control of the people I hang out with, regardless of the milieu, for such extended periods. I haven’t spent that much time cumulatively with either Jaime or Frank the last 6 months….and that is sad.
Anyway, Paris. I feel like I have passed some mark of distinction by having walked the city extensively for two weeks now and having avoided every single piece of dog shit. Paris is way better than twenty years ago and has made much progress on the merde issue over the passing of time…..but the Parisiens are still distressingly filthy regarding their pets. There is shit somewhere on each street, though, interestingly, I can’t say I have actually smelled even one piece. The streets in any event are disgusting in general. Every night I hear and every day I see the endless green trucks sweeping and cleaning garbage and literally kind of watering the streets, and yet if you stop on any rue and just look, you see that each is covered with a patina of shit and gum and spit and the ever present trail of wet new, sticky drying and cold trail piss. There is also more vomit here than elsewhere, seems to me. You just walk down any main street and there will be some dog, like as not with some superior looking Paris snob holding the leash, taking a (considering the ambient temperature) steamy dump nearby or in your way.
Mind you, there are the attractions. The light is beautiful in the afternoons regardless of the weather. The place is alive with people at all hours of the day. It is a walker’s dream, with new nooks and crannies and discoveries to found everywhere. The streets are twisted like an old crones back and then a block later they explode into broad boulevards with grand vista’s, Places, and monuments. And the other stuff in all the guidebooks.
We have been eating and drinking very well, I would say. I have refound my respect for medium priced French wine and have been consuming more than my share of Graves and Cotes du Rhone with price tags in the $10-15 vicinity for the most part, and they have been wonderful (deeper and suppler than I remember, with fruit I can actually taste instead of barely find). And we have used a guide book and other recommendations to find a number of very nice bistro’s and postcard size eating establishments all over the city. We have had some extraordinary quiches (avec champignon; le meilleur!) and cheeses (none better than Clothildes cheese pie with Robluchon right here at home).
Okay, gotta go do some homework.
So, it has been a quick two weeks of Parisian life in the 6th arrondisement. We arrived on the 15th of February and quickly settled into our new pied a terre which has a wonderful location and fabulous hosts, but is quite expensive for what is really one bathroom with a not really optimal shower and one very small toilet, hidden inside a closet, that is isolated on the other side of the house. The internet connection is iffy, there is no landline even just to receive calls. But again, the pluses are there and we’ve been happy. But for guests this would be a nightmare. So, we’ve been doing the Paris two step, checking every website and web-vetting an innumerable number of quasi possibilities.
Yesterday morning was typical; outside the door at 10am to meet Xavier at a superb location around the corner from the Jardin du Luxembourg. He is very nice, but the apartment is a shithole. There isn’t a single nice thing about it, it’s not clean, the paint is flaking and the kitchen cooking ensemble consisted of a hot plate….that’s it. No stove. No oven. And the price: 6,200 euro’s or about $9,300 a month! But that’s not all. He is also trying to sell the place and the asking price (no parking either) is a cool 1.2 million euro’s, or 1.8 million dollars. He vouchsafed that the living area was 112 square metres, so essentially for this broken down space that would need to be completely gutted and renovated he wanted the equivalent of $1,500 a square foot…..essentially 3 times what we got for 12th avenue. Ridiculous, but who knows.
We looked at a cheaper apartment on a 6th floor walkup and the stairs and entryway looked like a set from the slasher movie Hostel…..it was so bad it was weird. We went to another near the Pantheon and the owner is prattling on about his family and how the kids had enjoyed growing up there and I was thinking: it looks like a place a coven of crack whores have been living in. The furniture looked like all the springs were gone, the carpet was totally threadbare, the kitchen looked like an unrenovated and unclean revenant of the 1970’s and the beds were worse than those you’d find in a dorm. The place had zero class or appeal, but he still wanted $5,000 a month or so. Did I mention that most of these places have no or only a vestigial lift (think one person and one carry on item). It’s depressing, but we are soldiering on.
We passed our first two weeks at Alliance Francaise. I was relegated to complete beginner status, where I belong. Anja is the next grade up and working much harder than I on tenses and word position and prepositions and what not. We both plan to work very hard these next two weeks and then I will probably quit for the next few weeks because of guests. But we both put in the hours…up to 3-4 hours after the four hours of class every day. Our normal day is up at 7 or 7:30 and have a light breakfast of coffee and bread ‘integrale’ (with nuts and dried fruits---very tasty and healthy) with olive oil, and couple of gulps each of orange juice and mineral water, maybe a quick shower, and we’re off for our twenty minute hike up the Rue du Bac, crossing Boulevard St. Germain
at the intersection of Boulevard Raspail, continuing up Raspail to Rue Fleurus where we take a quick left for 10 metres to our classes. Raspail itself is not a beautiful street but the walk is invigorating this time of year and reminds me of similar experiences in Florence (1994/5) and Lucerne (1997), when I was studying Italian and German.
My class, like Anja’s, is (most of us will continue) an international one. We have Ray, a doctor from the U.S. who speaks Arab, is in his mid forties, and lives in Chad (here: Tchad) with his wife and two kids. He is here for now while the violence hopefully subsides back in the desert. Very cool….but not a life I could handle.
Next to Ray is the nice but most useless member of our band: Kana from Japon. She has so little command of the verbal language and also cannot understand even basic questions that it is really embarrassing. Sometimes the teacher will ask her a question three or four time and eventually, sometimes, her simple moon face lights up and she animatedly bursts out with some diaphragm originating vowel sounds that shows that she ‘got it’….but it is almost always a false alarm and is then followed by a number of additional one-off vowel bursts, as if she was trying to grunt out all the two letter words in the world that end in ‘h’….uh!....ah!....eh! and so forth. The she lapses back into her normal catatonic state. She is a hairstylist and her mom and dad run a little restaurant back in the old country. I don’t get it; why is she here wasting her money and time?
We have the beautiful 30 year old blond Inge from the Czech Republic, living here with her fiancé Mano, a native of NYC out of Indian parents. He was taking lessons too but is off now to try his hand at some investment boutique.
There is Mo from Israel. Cute and very opinionated. And Magda, here with her whole Polish family, taking some time off from working on her advanced degree in Psychology. Diego from Bresil, and Arturo from Mexico. Not sure what their raison d’etre to be here is, since neither of them looks to be studying. And Tom from Sydney…typical friendly outgoing sport loving Aussie with a good mind and a good sense of humor. There is the lovely 20 something Henrietta from Norway, also blond but perhaps less mentally endowed than Inge (or perhaps more shy).
To my immediate left is the ‘in gamba’ (very chic and cool, fast and smart) Elisabetta from near Venice. She works for La Mode (Moda?) but is following love here to Paris. To my right the bright and chunky Asian American Connie, chafing about how slow the class is going (she’s right). She is very nice, studying contract law in New York and California. Chris from NYC is to her right, very nice childless forty something, here for three years with her husband and dog. And last, at the end of the table, the enigmatic Natalia from Russia. Early 20’s, supposedly an economist in training and dancer (what kind and for how much, I wonder), living in expensive digs near the Champs Elysee probably symbiotically on some fat oligarch’s rubles (but seriously, what do I know?).
I have spent 80 hours with these people the last two weeks, not to mention our nice but perhaps not optimally organized professor, Isabelle. And that feels really kind of weird, as if at my age I should be somehow more in control of the people I hang out with, regardless of the milieu, for such extended periods. I haven’t spent that much time cumulatively with either Jaime or Frank the last 6 months….and that is sad.
Anyway, Paris. I feel like I have passed some mark of distinction by having walked the city extensively for two weeks now and having avoided every single piece of dog shit. Paris is way better than twenty years ago and has made much progress on the merde issue over the passing of time…..but the Parisiens are still distressingly filthy regarding their pets. There is shit somewhere on each street, though, interestingly, I can’t say I have actually smelled even one piece. The streets in any event are disgusting in general. Every night I hear and every day I see the endless green trucks sweeping and cleaning garbage and literally kind of watering the streets, and yet if you stop on any rue and just look, you see that each is covered with a patina of shit and gum and spit and the ever present trail of wet new, sticky drying and cold trail piss. There is also more vomit here than elsewhere, seems to me. You just walk down any main street and there will be some dog, like as not with some superior looking Paris snob holding the leash, taking a (considering the ambient temperature) steamy dump nearby or in your way.
Mind you, there are the attractions. The light is beautiful in the afternoons regardless of the weather. The place is alive with people at all hours of the day. It is a walker’s dream, with new nooks and crannies and discoveries to found everywhere. The streets are twisted like an old crones back and then a block later they explode into broad boulevards with grand vista’s, Places, and monuments. And the other stuff in all the guidebooks.
We have been eating and drinking very well, I would say. I have refound my respect for medium priced French wine and have been consuming more than my share of Graves and Cotes du Rhone with price tags in the $10-15 vicinity for the most part, and they have been wonderful (deeper and suppler than I remember, with fruit I can actually taste instead of barely find). And we have used a guide book and other recommendations to find a number of very nice bistro’s and postcard size eating establishments all over the city. We have had some extraordinary quiches (avec champignon; le meilleur!) and cheeses (none better than Clothildes cheese pie with Robluchon right here at home).
Okay, gotta go do some homework.
March 2, 2008 To Hell with RW Emerson
In Paris---Some thoughts out of chronological order. I remember reading RWE and his saying that travel in most instances is over rated. And I have decided I hate that; I do go looking (which is mostly what he derides, saying most of what one will ever want is already close at hand) and I do go to look. I relish the journey itself and yes I am trying to find meaning both in that journey and also from the journey. If speaking a second language gives one a second soul (I give no credence to the first but I like the quote), then travel certainly gives a different perspective. One of the few ways I can imagine overcoming previously held beliefs and opinions is to walk in other lands and see how other people in other locales/countries/continents live. To refute Henry James, one can even do more than simply 'rearrange prejudices'.
Thoughts from Vidova Gora-looking west to Hvar and south into the haze. VG is not very high but it is the highest place on this island and in the vicinity. Regarding Hvar from on high with field burns visible around the island reminded me of scenes from the Lord of the Rings. The signal fires, for one. And with the multitude of islands surrounding us and undulating mistily in the distance I had thoughts of Cirdan the shipwright at the Grey Havens taking the elves, except Arwen, off to wherever they were planning to spend eternity. There is a comm station up here on the top of the mountain, and a little restaurant (closed, of course), and scrub brush and lots of rock and occasional birds soaring and whirling and crying out in their various voices, some shrill and warbling, others sounding like harsh harbingers of war, death and pestilence (the ravens of LOTR, perhaps).
I was reading three books to while away the long, painful nighs on Brac while I waited to see if the crackling noises all through the stygian darkness were just from the 19th century heater or from hands at the door. I wondered whether they city folk in Split could hear what sounded like chanting and if so what they told their kids, or whether they kept them indoors on 'island bbq night'. I wondered is that the surf of the Adriatic or the howls of the local Cthulhu Mythos as they decended on our largely undefended bungalow.
I was reading Alain Bottones book on travel and there are some very interesting anecdotes and some much deeper thoughts, some of which are evident to me on my little diatribe on RWE. Walking in nature is a step away from the daily rat race; it is going physically to the forest and getting out of the trees. It is taking time away from being in a reactive mode to a reflective one, and it is worth every moment if just to recharge my batteries. When I am depressed I walk; it is my best cathartic reaction. At the end of 2-3 hours of wandering, thinking and not thinking, on and off topics of concern, my problem is usually reduced to an action plan or a acceptance of whatever is going to happen......and it is hard most times to know whether the thought process brought the peace of mind, or perhaps just the walk itself.
The second book was Smile When you're Lying about the travel industry and the lies they tell and it was mostly very funny and light.
Lastly, I read with most relish Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, a futuristic romp on a grand, imaginative scale, beautifully conceived and executed. An absolute treat. Ranks right up there for pleasure with The Baroque Cycle.
Thoughts from Vidova Gora-looking west to Hvar and south into the haze. VG is not very high but it is the highest place on this island and in the vicinity. Regarding Hvar from on high with field burns visible around the island reminded me of scenes from the Lord of the Rings. The signal fires, for one. And with the multitude of islands surrounding us and undulating mistily in the distance I had thoughts of Cirdan the shipwright at the Grey Havens taking the elves, except Arwen, off to wherever they were planning to spend eternity. There is a comm station up here on the top of the mountain, and a little restaurant (closed, of course), and scrub brush and lots of rock and occasional birds soaring and whirling and crying out in their various voices, some shrill and warbling, others sounding like harsh harbingers of war, death and pestilence (the ravens of LOTR, perhaps).
I was reading three books to while away the long, painful nighs on Brac while I waited to see if the crackling noises all through the stygian darkness were just from the 19th century heater or from hands at the door. I wondered whether they city folk in Split could hear what sounded like chanting and if so what they told their kids, or whether they kept them indoors on 'island bbq night'. I wondered is that the surf of the Adriatic or the howls of the local Cthulhu Mythos as they decended on our largely undefended bungalow.
I was reading Alain Bottones book on travel and there are some very interesting anecdotes and some much deeper thoughts, some of which are evident to me on my little diatribe on RWE. Walking in nature is a step away from the daily rat race; it is going physically to the forest and getting out of the trees. It is taking time away from being in a reactive mode to a reflective one, and it is worth every moment if just to recharge my batteries. When I am depressed I walk; it is my best cathartic reaction. At the end of 2-3 hours of wandering, thinking and not thinking, on and off topics of concern, my problem is usually reduced to an action plan or a acceptance of whatever is going to happen......and it is hard most times to know whether the thought process brought the peace of mind, or perhaps just the walk itself.
The second book was Smile When you're Lying about the travel industry and the lies they tell and it was mostly very funny and light.
Lastly, I read with most relish Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, a futuristic romp on a grand, imaginative scale, beautifully conceived and executed. An absolute treat. Ranks right up there for pleasure with The Baroque Cycle.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Croatian Journal; German Vegetables
January 16, 2008 Dubrovnik, Croatia. Cloudy but nice. Windy. Rain earlier but dry when we were finally out of the hotel. 10-12 Celsius is my guess. Dark at 5pm. We arrived yesterday after an uneventful morning in Frankfurt; up at 7:15, packed, paid and out the door at 8:05, 500 meters with the luggage in hand to the hauptbahnhof (main train station), the S9 to the airport, seamless check in, half full flight, land, luggage, met by Nikola the taxi driver, deposited w/out fanfare at Hilton Imperial just outside of D-old town. First thing I noticed was the clouds and the rock strewn hills behind and above the airport, dominating the inland skyline with little else in view. It is….just rocks, reminiscent of Cortina D'Ampezzo in Italy. Then the sea on the left, with occasional islands as we wound along the coast. Quite dramatic. The hotel has a nice surprise for us, upgrading our room and including free access to the executive lounge, conveniently located practically next door. Our room is excellent, nice sized with a side view out to the ocean, a comfy king sized bed, and a spotless marble bathroom. We can have breakfast in the lounge or more formally downstairs, but also they serve hard liquor and wine from the afternoon and also bottled water is also on the house here. Also, some decent food…..we are thinking of just eating what they offer tonight! Yesterday we wandered the old town for 2-3 hours. Impressions: the old city is mostly very clean and gridded, so easy to negotiate. However, it is hard to describe places and streets because the spelling and pronunciation is so alien to anything either of us know that it is hard to remember. Anja said she was impressing things 'visually' for that reason; it is hard to process them any other way. There are elements of Rome (lots of cats) and Italian hill towns here. Steep little streets to the left of the main drag, with a mix of restaurants and shops to accompany the neighborhood. To the right more residential and more obvious damage from the bombing of 1991. From points of elevation it is easy to see what buildings have been reroofed and which haven't; the old, multi-colored tiles (not many left) echoing the buildings not important enough or not enough damaged in the bombardment. Much of this residential area has another smell sadly redolent of some old Italian homes….that of wet cat, and of cat excrement, which is found quite often underfoot. Not so many dogs here, but the cats wander everywhere. Lots of black, white, and spotted black, white and ginger felines. Since the old city is so full of rock, with few areas for gardens and no fields of note, it is not hard to imagine why the excrement is so obvious….they have very little dirt to hide it in! The main drag and the massive wall surrounding the old city (which we investigated today) are both spotless; the latter is also undergoing substantial work. The wall is wonderful and gives views up the hill, out to the ocean, and over the entire interior of the city. It is also a typical example of Europe versus America; in America the wall probably wouldn't be open at all because of the possibility of accidents, or if it were it would be protected by 8 feet of chicken wire. Here there are innumerable opportunities for a careless adult or child to kill or maim themselves. You have to take responsibility for yourself, something that America's litigious society just doesn't get. Here if you can't take care of yourself or do something stupid and kill yourself, that's it…your whole extended family doesn't get to retire for the next five generations on the lawsuit. It is clearly a Mediterranean climate here; everywhere are orange and lemon trees laden with fruit---some of it tantalizingly close to the wall/former battlement as you wander by staring down into backyards and into bedrooms. The TV here is fun to watch; for example: Friends, with Croatian subtitles. During the day I have caught a little of the Aussie Tennis Open, but at night it is thrilling Polish and Croatian women's volleyball pretty much non-stop, with some riveting English snooker championship thrown in for filler. As an aside, Germany was even worse….day after day of a combination of ski jumping (how many ski jumps in a row can one watch?) and the cross country ski stand and shoot then ski, then lie down and shoot team and individual championships…equally tiresome. The unit of currency here is the Kuna. The Kuna is worth about 20 cents U.S. and is 1:7+ versus the Euro. But the name makes me laugh. It doesn't seem like a serious name for a national currency. Today a girl came up to me in a hotel lobby (we had stopped to look in and at the view) and offered us tea and unlimited side dishes for only….50 Kuna! It shouldn't be funny but it is; what is that in seashells or sticks? Anja and I ask ourselves many of the same questions (after all, we are on a voyage of discovery….to discover new places and in so doing discover where we want to live)…..could either of us live here? We like some aspects of it, but the answer for both of us is a strong no. A little too parochial, a little too 'just touristy'. A little too 'eng' (a German term meaning 'tight' and in this context referring both to the lack of space but also to the dearth of things to do, and that there are only a couple of roads to get back and forth). Which often leads us to add commentary to Anja's vaunted and much bandied 'Alpine' theory which posits that mountain areas are cleaner, have less unemployment and fewer homeless, than the lowlands. A new wrinkle to the primary thesis is that beach communities are usually among the dirtiest areas with the highest number of obvious slackers. Outside the Old Town this does indeed seem to come into play, with more garbage and graffiti and less attention to cleanliness. Why so? The Old Town is largely an exception given it has to be clean to attract the tourists (and there aren't many of them to attract this time of year), but warm beaches attract people of all stripes who want to relax, and people who want to relax don't concentrate on being clean but rather on relaxing and so they leave things lying about while they are sunning themselves. Or so our theory goes. Neither of us is a beach goer (for long) and we both like things pretty clean, so it is the mountains we are most interested in; plus, the hiking is better. While we push forward on our journey the stock markets around the world are tumbling at a pretty alarming rate—the U.S. indexes off to their worst start, according to some news reports I saw, since 1931. I am not surprised, but also not alarmed (though maybe I should be, I have taken lots of risk off the table in order to be ready for what I hope to be a once in a generation type of opportunity when the excesses have been beaten out and some blood trickles into the gutters). Oh, joy. January 17, 2008—Dubrovnik—Thursday More of same. In the markets and here with the weather. We sleep in late, which is just as well since the sounds and fury outside make it seem like Dubrovnik is being shelled again. Rain and wind and lightning and thunder, and some of it pretty damn close. Fun. We toddle roadside at noon and take a bus up to Babin Kuk to check out times for our bus to Split (no ferries this time of year) and connection to Brac (say it: Bratch). Then we wander, out and around the marina/port, then back around Lapad (say it however you like; it won't be 100% wrong or right….just don't put the emphasis on the last syllable…ever…or so I am told). The Italian hill sea side town resemblance grows on closer acquaintance with both good and bad connotations; good: the views of the sea and sense of timelessness. Bad: time isn't standing still, and the ugly modern boxes on some of the hills are an alarming eyesore. Also, the many scooters and their 'rice rocket/zanzare' buzz ring bells at both ends of the spectrum (I love them but hate the sounds and smell that come with them). In addition, some of the new hotels going up are massive and massively out of place. It ain't the Spanish coast, yet, but they need to be careful. The sky threatens all day but never opens up after the morning's onslaught, so we just wander and wonder. Discuss the future, the world's business climate and all the usual stuff. Meanwhile the islet runs out to the ocean and we see some of the islands in the gray distance. Daily routines: well, here in Croatia we don't have any. In Germany they were 'misty'. There are a myriad of excuses why so few mornings had a 'plan' but the mitigating circumstances include: it is cold (really fucking cold, and dark) outside, and there is no pressing need….to do anything on any individual day….so we don't sweat almost any of them! There is guilt on my part, because I am not on vacation, and even if this were some (very) long term vacation it is not the way I 'work'—I need some structure in order to feel good about myself, and so far this is mostly lacking. By the bye, sun rise here is around 8:30 and sunset at 4:15; it is night after 5pm. Back to Germany Kohl: and I don't mean Helmut. German is the land, as Adin puts it, of breakfast meat. Here in winter it is also the land of Kohl…Rotkohl (red cabbage), Blumenkohl(cauliflower), Weisskohl (?-the chief ingredient in cole slaw/Kohl/Kraut Salat ), Rosenkohl (brussel sprouts), Grunkohl (some kind of weisskraut). Kohl = cabbage = kraut. Two Krauts make Krauter (rhymes with goiter). One harvests different kinds of Kohl, which are basically cabbages, and processes them into cold salads and warm (Sauer)Kraut. But Krauter, meaning for instance a salad made from two different kinds of Kraut, is also the name for herbs. So, be careful what you ask for. The most important thing to know is that all forms of this winter vegetable, and make no mistake Kraut in all its redoubtable forms is the quintessential German winter veggie, give the imbiber tremendous wind…as in, intestinal gas. You are warned. As a last aside, in the hands of good cooks it is also really tasty. January 21, 2008—9:20 am. On the Croatian island of Brac, off the coast from Split. Just awake after almost 11 hours of interrupted but mostly not uncomfortable sleep. Yesterday was bright, sunny and in the teens, as they say hereabouts. We got a late start (well, Anja did) and left our 'efficiency' at 11:30 after experiments in making coffee and toast on our 2nd world appliances. So far today it is a 'white out'; I can see the water just now thru the window but it just disappears into nothingness. Maybe they changed the rules whilst we slumbered. We arrived on the 19th at 6pm to discover we are virtually alone in our sprawling complex of hotel, resort and fractional ownership establishments. It is extremely weird and more than a little off-putting; think Lady in the Water combined with Hitchcock and Tom Tryon…..looks somewhere near idyllic but who knows what is underneath all those glances and impenetrable grunts. Paranoia is inevitable when we don't understand almost everything. We don't know if they are talking about us right in front of us. Every laugh we can hear is ever so slightly chilling. Perhaps they all want to know how we'll taste. Friday was: pack, taxi (leaving Federer on serve in the middle of the fifth set of a terrific match against Tipsarevic), 4 hours of sparsely populated bus, ferry, taxi. The ferry was best as we got to watch the sun set slowly in the south west as we departed Split; it was completely dark as the Jadrolinja ship Marjan pulled into our new home port. The 80 Kuna taxi ride from Supetar port is forced, because the driver has to take a giant detour around the outside of town to drop us at the Waterman complex, also in Supetar, because of some local ordinance which seems designed - inasmuch as there are plenty of cars lying in the direct route we walked back to town – to separate us from most of the 80 Kuna. Yesterday I got up pretty early, after a hellish night. Some part of the previous day's journey had done something to my back and nothing was comfortable. It was a combination of sharp pain and then a spreading ache and then more sharp pain for 7-8 hours. I walked completely alone to the local not so supermarket where I obtained part of a loaf of bread, a months worth of butter, jam, coffee, little disks of sahne for the coffee, some joghurt, fruit, and other essentials. It was Sunday but some men were working on the little road just making a stone fence/wall on the property. As Anja says, this time of year basically seems just prep work for the summer orgy of tourists. Even more so than Dubrovnik, there are a lot of shuttered businesses…..and nobody like us. We have hardly heard any German or English, or anything but what we assume is Croat. Assume because none of it is familiar or makes any sense. There is no internet access here (well, in the office, for $10.00 and hour, there is some connection) in the room, which is why this is currently being written on Word. There is quite a lot of difference between 'getting away' and being 'cut off' (and here I don't really mean the internet, just most of the day to day things we are used to and find really convenient). It is also true that we exchanged for this room and everything that it is and that it is not….we exchanged a two bedroom two bath luxurious accommodation in Newport Beach that sleeps 8 in comfort instead of no one comfortably, which has a full kitchen, handy barbeque equipment, three plasma TV's, a state of the art wireless internet connection for free and too many other conveniences to mention…..and also a balcony overlooking the ocean to boot. There is 1200 square feet of ten time's higher quality and more comfortable space as opposed to what we guess to be on the order of 550 of….not very much at all. Blocky furniture, 7 channels of mostly Croatian gibberish (actually hilarious to watch…when I watch German or Italian or French I know I don't understand; here, while hugely unfair, I can't be sure they are making any sense in the first place. No single word has any meaning). I love to talk with everybody and here, even though I have read, and asked the few people who speak English, I can not for the life of me get anyone to respond to my version of 'hi'. Anyway, yes I am disappointed. And while it's nice to not be overrun by other tourists taking all the space on the beach (which I don't want in any case) it is eerie to walk thru the complex without meeting anything except the usual cadre of 'watch cats' (and who knows what they are saying….at least I know they'd eat us given the chance). There are about 20 relevant activities or services listed on the Interval International sheet and just about the only one that we will use is the Coin Laundry (which we are not even sure includes a dryer since all over the island and Dubrovnik hanging to dry seems to be the mantra). As one for instance, there is a swimming pool listed but the only pool gives off the appearance of having been used as a pissoir by the locals since it was closed for the season. And it is weird to come home at night in silent darkness…it wouldn't take much or many to whack us, steal our shit, and use us as the main ingredient for the community bbq night. There are 'bikes' listed, but the only bikes available are in town and there don't appear to be any bike trails (also listed), so unless we want to play dodge ball with the local buses we're screwed. Cell phones work, though. We might be able to call for help. But who? At whatever cost I talked to Jaime and Frank yesterday; Jaime is excited about her new classes and Frank is without his best friends again and bored (as usual). Rocks and Quarries. We decided to set off and see if we could find a hill town called Skrip. But the tourist office is closed for Sunday so we took our best series of shots (all signage here is pretty useless) and ended up in Splitska (kind of what we're thinking of doing in general) after wandering in a quite beautiful wilderness (after being given directions by a snaggle-toothed local) and then along the shore. Nothing was open in Splitska so we continued to Postira. These are both little 'up from the port' communities with a church or two and locals sitting along the marble quays sipping coffee, beer and the local slivovitz equivalent. And talking about eating us. I just read this to Anja and she smiles and says 'yeah but they're all so friendly and they speak English'….she is so naïve. Everyone knows they used quarried rock from this island to build Diocletian's palace in Split and also the White House in D.C. And, eventually after feasting on a mystery meat goulash in Postira (this was precisely the only dish at the only restaurant) and taking the not so secret way back to Splitska we decided to try to find our way uphill…… Interruption: it is now 9:40 am on Tuesday. Monday was overcast all day which was fine as it turned out for us but not for world stock markets---virtually everything more or less crashed, with the U.S. 'spared' only because it was on holiday (MLK). Today everything is again getting buried and to say the world's economies have 'decoupled' looks to be as much bullshit as I thought. …..to Skrip. According to one local it was 5 klics uphill, and there was a local's way but it was too tough to find and impossible to explain. We find that a lot, along with an appalling lack on the islander's part to really know how far things are. It is a bit more than 3 klics, and though indeed uphill hardly a death march. It took us by two played out quarries and we did find a short cut and at the top a clearly marked pedestrian path down to Splitska. Meanwhile, lots of rocks…underfoot, made into walls and formed into cairns or looking like the huegelgraben in and around Marburg. Also reminiscent of the catacombs of Paris where large bones are stacked next to the path to form a kind of wall and the smaller bones are tossed over them to molder in stygian darkness behind; here the big rocks are laid to form somewhat circular barriers and then the smaller stones are thrown inside….when internal pressures or time force the issue the barriers bleed out like water. We often stared up hills and across valleys…..rocks everywhere. More rock in Skrip (you get the idea), a small town with a kind of causeway with no verges on the road to the church. Groups of men having beer and smoking (yes, they all smoke and still do in bars and restaurants…..an unwelcome reminder of how it used to be) and up under the lee of the church a throng competing on the parish bocce pitch. They all stared a bit and muttered, but what it was they muttered would have been unintelligible in any language. Behind the church we did have one grand moment, walking out to vista point (unmarked, just lucky) that gave a panoramic view way down to a cultivated valley, across that to more olive groves and impossible rock walls and formations, and back over our left shoulders across the strait to the mainland and Split or the towns leading to it along our previous bus path. This was a short visit as, nice as the day was, it was getting cooler and the sun was going down and we had miles to go. So, back down the hill, forsaking what I think would have been a likely shortcut for the surety of a known path (getting lost in the darkness on ankle unfriendly country goat paths was unappealing to both of us) to within half a klic of Splitska and then left along what rapidly became a dark road with no lights for the last 5 klics to Supetar. Which in itself was quite dangerous because the cars came very quickly and were all over the completely unlighted road and it was not safe for us to move all the way over but also not safe to move off the road because often as not there a drop and no way to see it. We were quite happy to make it back to 'S' unscathed. We dined at a restaurant Anja had remembered reading about, and walked home, in darkness and dew, a bit after 7pm, having completed something like 25 klics in all. Showers seemed in order. Anja got things going, but they didn't go long. I had hoped we were plugged into mains, but sadly this was not the case. There is, now we noticed it, a tiny water heater over the toilet and when it's gone, all too fast, it doesn't come back for hours, if ever. After waiting half an hour with the meter not budging and me getting even colder, we called our lifeline, Sabina. There wasn't much she could do so she ended up giving us the key to the unit next door and there I went for an equally unsatisfactory wash after locking Anja in, peeking in every cupboard in my place and then locking myself in, then showering while imagining scenes from Frenzy or Psycho and eventually running out of hot/warm water before the meter said I would so by the time I was done I was pretty miserable. But, at least we had had some good exercise and, fitfully, we slept a very long time. Yesterday was Monday and we got up late and strolled into town while trying to formulate some plan for the week. We asked enough questions to make ourselves unwelcome at the mostly friendly but useless tourist info office, then looked into renting a car, then grabbed some sandwiches for lunch, got some food for dinner (having decided to try to eat in) and set off along the coast the other direction. Our destination was the little, and unmentioned, town of Mirca (Meer'-tsa). Getting there was uneventful (coastal path, lots of trees and rocks, Split visible across the gray water), the town presentable by the water and more interesting across the 'big' road uphill with more of what we had seen elsewhere with the locals burning brush and sprucing up the olive orchards, repairing rock walls and generally puttering and building. Not bad. And then we got a break when some workers asked us in passable English if we wanted/needed 'informations'. So, we chatted the three of them up and got some directions for our next big hike, to Milna via Lozisca (Lo-zhish'-cha) and Bobovisca (Bo-bo-vish'-cha)1 and 2 (there's a coastal 'B' and an uphill 'B'). Of course, earlier in the day the less than useful tourist info person had opined there were no country paths possible in that direction. We thanked them profusely and wove our way along another path thru town, back in what we correctly perceived was the right direction to 'S' and the coast and back to our apartment. To have wine and cheese and grapes and prosciutto and coffee and the last of the Ritter Sport 'Dunkle Voll-Nuss'. No Michelin stars but not bad at all! That was all done pretty early so we watched our one English channel/lifeline (CNN) give us the Monday market meltdown news and OZ open updates (Federer thru to the quarters in straight sets). Then it was off to bed but as was the case two nights earlier not much sleep, both of us tossing and turning and alternately getting up and reading, drinking a bit of water and visiting the loo.
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