Home at Last

I'm really glad I kept this blog and took all those pictures, because my year in Spain seems like a dream now.  I am writing to you from my brand new desk in my home office in Charlottesville.  We've been home just over a week.  The bags are unpacked.  The house is more or less back in order.  Everyone has been to the dentist.  We've seen some of our friends, and are making plans to see more of them.  We've eaten burgers, dim sum, Szechuan, Thai, and bagels.  Lots of bagels.  And Zoë and I are getting back to work.  She is remarkably free of stress and anxiety.  Santiago and I are the opposite.

As is often the case, the culture shock coming back has been worst than the culture shock going over.  Here are some of the things that have astonished us in the now seemingly foreign USA.

• This is indeed the land of extra-large supersizing.  We cannot believe how many fries you get with a burger, or how large our coffee mugs are.  And the people!  Mind you, I am not a skinny man, and I was made painfully aware of this by life among the sveldt Spanish.  On any given day, I think I was the fattest person in the General Reading Room of the Biblioteca Nacional.  That is with the exception of the days in which this one particular retired professor showed up.  Guess what country he was from?  Yes, my friends, the good ole' US of A, where I am not by any stretch of the imagination the fattest person around.  No, sir, not anywhere close.  And that is a problem in itself.

• This is also the paradise of the automobile.  I did not drive a car once the entire time we were away, and I loved it.  OK.  To be fair, I think I once parked a rental car we were using.  But Zoë did almost all the driving on those occasions when we traveled by rental car.  Those of you who have experienced my driving, and have been able to compare it to hers, are probably muttering "Thank God!"  The rest of the time we walked.  And took the metro.  And the bus.  And walked.  And Zoë and I lost lots of weight.  And we felt free and easy and happy.  But now we are back in the US of A, where the "A" is for "automobile."  I no longer see people anywhere.  I see cars instead.  I have to drive everywhere, and I don't like it.  Not one bit.  And I know that this is a major contributor to our overall obesity.  I lost 20+ pounds this past year, simply by walking everywhere, even with all those churros and pastries.  Now I'm back where it's almost impossible to walk, because of the distances and the sheer lack of sidewalks.  

• Everyone around us is speaking English!  How can that be?  Don't they know Spanish??!

• Not a single one of these people can either pronounce or spell my name.  I am back to being "Richardo Patron."  Santiago is screwed too.  Zoë is ok in this regard.

• There African Americans everywhere!  This is a very good thing. Diversity.  I missed it.

• Ethnic food is readily available.  Another good thing.  No more pining for Pad Thai, or longing for lemongrass.  

• My experiences with Orange, my cell phone company in Spain, have made me appreciate the quality customer service at at&t.  Yes, you read that right.  The cable company, on the other hand, continues to disappoint.

• I have a smart phone again, and have to be careful about compulsive iPhone behavior.  Yes, I understand that you do not want me to pull out my iPhone to look something up in the middle of a meal.  But why?  It's so much fun . . . Just this once?  I guarantee you you'll be a happier person with the information I am about to find for you.  Oh, and did I show you my cool new app?  You won't believe how cool it is.

• American culture is characterized by what we used to call 'spazzing out.'  Example.  Yesterday, on the Today Show, there was a story that asked the question whether kids should be Facebook friends with their teachers.  It was admitted that 99% of such friendships are innocuous, and can even be constructive.  Kids get homework help, for example.  But that last 1% involves unfortunate situations in which creepy adults have taken advantage of vulnerable young people.  So, since the Today Show is completely incapable of understanding that this is not a statistically significant number of aberrant cases to make for a general problem, it puts on this feature about the "big problem" of FB friendships, and covers efforts to legislate against it.  We even got first person testimony from the unfortunate victim of such abuse.  Worry!! Panic!!  Spazzing OUT!!!  In other words, fabricating a problem where there is none, calling for legislation when it's really a matter of closer parental supervision of kids, responding disproportionately because it's good for TV ratings, whatever it may mean for the culture as a whole.  These are hallmarks of our culture, my friends.  I am trying to keep my TV off (or tuned only to TiVo recordings and Netflix downloads) and ignore mainstream media.  I recommend you do the same.

That's all I can think of for now . . . Thank you all for following our adventures over the course of the past year.  I hope you've had as much fun reading about them as I have had sharing them with you.  ¡Ciao!

Customer Service, Part II

This week has been the source of some anxiety, because next Tuesday, we fly to the United States.  No, not for a nice little vacation that will become a blog post on here, but for good.  We will be going back to our real lives.  The Kid is ready to go.  He wants to see his friends.  He wants to sleep in his bed.  Zoë and I have mixed feelings.  You see, while the Kid had to go to school here in Madrid, and thus had basically the same responsibilities as he does back home, Zoë and I have been living a more carefree life.  Readers of Zoë's blog have read her complaints about shopping, cooking, and laundry.  They may be unaware that she has also had the time to read 120+ books, most of them acquired free on the internet and read on her Kindle.  Not a bad life, really.  Ask her what she thinks of D. H. Lawrence, Truman Capote, Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Hardy, etc.

I, as you know, have been on sabbatical, writing what I am sure will be an epoch-making book on the Spanish in the Pacific Rim, 1520-1640.  You'll know it's done when you see the long lines at bookstores nationwide.  This has been hard work, but also deeply enjoyable work.  As any academic will tell you, no matter how much he or she likes to teach, being on sabbatical is much better than not being on sabbatical.  Especially when that academic is willing to break up his/her archive/library time with ample professional-development experiences, as I choose to call the many trips we have taken.  Now, I must face the horrifying reality of putting together syllabi, answering email, and eventually - gasp - grading papers.  NOOOOO!!!!!!!

But a more practical challenge lay between us and our so-called real lives back in C'ville, and that was packing.  We are now on day three of the great packing extravaganza, and I am happy to say that everything that can be packed right now has been packed.  Astonishingly, we have one fewer bags to check than we had coming here.  How have we managed this astonishing feat?  I will tell you.  We sent winter coats and boots home with my mother in March, and we got rid of a lot of our clothes.  We had brought little to begin with, and much of what we brought either got worn out, no longer fits us (we lost weight!), or we got so sick of it that we can no longer bear to see ourselves in them.  So bags and bags went off to the local equivalent of Goodwill, making ample room for, among other things, several pieces of ceramics, new clothes (some of them Moroccan), new books, an astrolabe, and a five foot Moroccan trumpet.  Are you surprised that we have an astrolabe and a five foot Moroccan trumpet?  Not if you know my son and me.

Today's task was shipping our books.  This was a colossal waste of time and money.  We all shipped books from the US to Spain at great expense, thinking we could not live without them.  Santiago read his.  Zoë did not ship that many.  I simply could not be without certain work-related books.  Of course, they sat on the shelves all year, as I spent time with archive and library collections I had come here to see.  Now it was time to ship the books back, once again at great expense.  We boxed them up.  Santiago and I lugged them downstairs and into the trunk of a cab, and we went to the post office at the Plaza de la Cibeles, where we experienced the sort of customer service that we, sadly, have grown accustomed to.

"You know how much this is going to cost you?  You're going to have to fill out so many forms!," the post office lady squawked.  There's this particular intonation that people around here put into remarks like this that you just don't get in Latin American Spanish.  It's a rising tone that sounds to my ears like a level of alarm completely disproportionate to the situation.  Rationally, I know that it does not indicate this, but it still puts my nerves on edge.  It's like they're saying, "Oh my god, I can't believe you would be so stupid as to actually ship this!" or "I can't even imagine having the time and energy to fill out the enormous pile of forms that you are going to have to fill out, you poor stupid jackass!"

A small douche-off ensued, as they weighed my boxes and quoted me prices that were much higher than what I had gotten using the internet tool for calculating shipping rates were.  "Well, you must have used it wrong!  Did you say you were shipping to the US, or Spain?  Who knows what you did?!"  OK, OK.  I was told I would have to pay in cash, that the post office did not take credit cards, that it had never taken credit cards, that everyone knew this, that it was part of the Natural Law!  OK, OK.  I had not even mentioned my hope of paying with a credit card.  I left the Kid with the boxes, and headed out of the post office, intending to hit an ATM I knew of two blocks away.  But - Lo and Behold! - there at the entrance to the post office was an ATM, which no one had thought to mention.

I came back to the counter to find they had scolded Santiago for not starting on the customs forms.  "Why don't you get going with the forms?  Don't you go to school?"  Santiago had just fumed quietly, eager to avoid a douche-off.  I started filling out forms, and told Santiago to get a pen and do the same.  I was scolded for including information on a line that I was not supposed to fill out. "What?  Why did you put something on this line?"  She consulted with her colleague, who had been the one to inform me about the credit card policy.  She shook her head vigorously.  When I pointed to the written directions I had been following and expressed my confusion, I was shushed, and told a refrán, or popular saying, that said, more or less, "When in doubt, hold back."  I hadn't had any doubts!  The written instructions were quite clear to me!  But I refrained from insisting on this point.  Why escalate the douche-off?  After 11 months, I had learned that much.  I filled out the forms all over again.  I had Santiago fill out a form.

Packages were weighed.  Forms were completed.  There was much typing and asking of questions and spelling of names and addresses.  She declared all my books to be "gifts" because she couldn't find the button on the computer program for "books,"  and I shuddered, thinking about what this might mean in terms of tariffs on the other end.  A woman tried to interrupt so she could find out about a telegraph she was waiting for (a telegraph?), and she got douched off.  I was charged an exorbitant amount, but there was an issue about my payment.  "Don't you have a €5 bill?," she asked, clearly inconvenienced.  "No, sorry."  I was owed €8 in change, and the attendant had to walk all over the post office looking for the freakin' €3 she needed to provide me with my change.  I gritted my teeth as I thought that we wouldn't have this problem if they just accepted credit cards.

My boxes were off.  My customs forms, with the tracking numbers, were in hand, and I thought - mercy me! - to ask a question!

"How long, more or less, do you think it will take for my packages to arrive?"

She looked at me bewildered.  "Oh, I really have no idea whatsoever.  I know that letters to France take a week or two, but I don't know anything about the United States."  Oh.  I realized that everything she knew about the time it took things to reach different destinations was based on her personal experience sending things to friends and family, but that she knew nothing about shipping times in her capacity as a post office employee.

"Vale, vale. Gracias," I mumbled, turning away from the counter.

Did he really say "troglodyte"?

Zoë and Sou'ad work on marinating the lamb.

This is the story of our Morocco trip, Part II.  One of the true highlights of our stay was a cooking class we took at a place called "Café Clock."  The name derives from the fact that the cafe is behind a very old building that housed a water clock.  The clock has been disassembled for analysis and repair.  Apparently, no one really understands quite how it worked.  In any case, we met our teacher, the wonderful Sou'ad at 10am for a  trip to the market to buy our ingredients, which included fresh lamb, various spices, dates, and eggplant.  Along the way she explained how the markets were organized, where and how the meat was butchered, how it was preserved without refrigeration, etc.  Then, up to the kitchen, where Sou'ad had us do the grunt work of chopping onions, peeling almonds, and crushing garlic while she told us about Moroccan cooking and the role of food in Moroccan life.  Sou'ad was open, friendly, talkative, and funny, making the whole experience great fun.  At 2:30pm, we were ready to eat.  The menu included a spicy eggplant salad, a prune and apricot lamb tagine, and almond macaroons.  A "tagine" is a very common Moroccan dish, named after the clay slow-cooker in which it is traditionally made and served.  These days, people use pressure cookers, reducing the tagine itself to the role of a serving dish, out of which the family enjoys a communal meal eaten with bread. The whole meal was delicious, thanks to Sou'ad's formidable talent as a cook.  When she offered to have us back the next day for a meal of our choosing, we jumped at the chance, and made arrangements to have "pastilla" (chicken with spices baked wrapped in filo dough and topped with powdered sugar and cinammon) and chocolate covered dates.  After wandering around in the medina for a few hours, unguided, we stuffed ourselves with Sou'ad's cooking and enjoyed her company once again.

And for Mohamed, more sugar.

Our final day in Morocco was spent on a trip to the Middle Atlas, the mountains to the south of the city.  We were greeted by our driver, who, as it turns out, spoke no English, so the day was spent listening very closely as he explained everything in slow, clear French.  I would like to thank Pasquale Hashemzadeh and the other members of the UVA French language faculty of the mid 80s for making it possible for me to understand roughly 80% of what he said.  We hit a variety of stops in the mountains, most of them local tourist attractions visited by Moroccan families, and in one case, a troop of Moroccan Boy Scouts.  The first was the village of Bhalil.  Our driver asked is if we wanted to stop there to see the . . . did he say "troglodytes"?!  I thought this was a misunderstanding on my part, perhaps an Arabic word that I was hearing all wrong.  But no, he did indeed say "troglodytes," meaning "a cave dweller."  We were met at the entrance to the town by Mr. Mohamed Chraibi, the official guide and himself a . . .  troglodyte.  Like Granada, Bhalil has a section where people long ago converted caves into homes, building structures atop of, or in front of, more or less naturally occurring caves.  Mohamed took us to his cave-home, where we sat and had mint tea, with lots of sugar.  After shoveling three heaping serving spoons of sugar into the teapot, Mohamed poured out the cups, tasted his, and said, "For Mohamed, more sugar."  He always referred to himself in the third person.  He also asked me to share his address with my friends, so that you could contact him if  you were ever in Morocco, and wanted to visit him:

Mr. Mohamed Chraibi
B.P. 42
Bhalil Par Fes
Morocco

He said he is happy to have visitors to his home, and will be glad to show you around and make you tea.  It's polite to pay him for all this, of course.

Zoë makes a monkey very happy.

The other highlight was the macaques.  We drove through the Middle Atlas, seeing the scenery, the lakes, the little towns each with its own diminutive mosque, stopping at an upscale resort town for lunch.  Eventually, we made our way to a national park where cedar trees cover the hills, and provide shelter to macaques introduced from the Middle East.  These supposedly wild macaques have been thoroughly domesticated by visitors who feed them.  Vendors sell bananas and peanuts, and the gentle macaques take them from your hand when you offer these foods to them.  They also hover around picnic blankets, hoping to get lucky.  Interestingly, they know not to beg from the food vendors themselves.  They've learned that the venders won't fork anything over, and actually watch while you buy the food from them before the start looking at you with banana-lust in their beady eyes.  Some of them are exceptionally fat.  I can't imagine any of this is at all good for the animals, but it's been going on for some time and they seem to be completely adapted to it.

Back in Fes, we took a dip in the pool at the riad (yes, fellow Fes travelers, our riad had a pool.  Just try and top that.) and enjoyed a wonderful dinner, another tagine, poolside.  The next day, it was back to Madrid, where we would finally have to face the horrifying reality of packing up our things to go back to the US for good.  Or, where we could keep denial alive by blogging about Morocco.

Off on the Road to Morocco

Morocco was fantastic!!!  At one point, we were standing in the Medina (the old downtown, dating from the middle ages) saying to ourselves, "How could we have ever considered skipping this trip?!"  Why would we have done so?  Well, for one, it was right in the middle of the month between London and our final return to the USA.  Oh, second, we really couldn't afford it.  BUT our logic was that we can't afford any of this anyway, so why stop now?!!  Particularly since Zoë has a big birthday coming up, and she deserved a trip to a place she had always wanted to see . . . So we were off on the road to Morocco, just like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope once were, except that we flew RyanAir instead of riding a camel.  And we weren't singing that dumb song.  Well, I was singing it, but Zoë and Santiago weren't.  They did not approve.

In any case, our destination was the amazing city of Fes, Morocco's traditional capital, and home to the largest and best preserved medieval medina (the aforementioned downtown area) in the Arabic-speakign world.   This was our first trip to an Arabic-speaking country, a Muslim country, and to the continent of Africa.  We stayed at a wonderful place the Riad Cles de Fes.  A "Riad" is an old-style house, large, and constructed around a central courtyard.  Several of Fes's riads have been transformed into bed-and-breakfast places, and ours was one of them.  Built originally in 985 ACE and remodeled in the past six years or so, it was our very own Alhambra, with amazing tile and stucco work, not to mention a friendly staff and delicious food.

Our first full day was spent on a tour of the Medina.  We are not usually ones for guided tours, but in Fes it's essential.  The medina is a warren of little streets and alleys, and you really need a guide to get around it without getting lost, at least until you get your bearings.  Our guide, Aziz, took us around the perimeter of the medina first, to see the old fortifications, the walls, the king's palace, the Jewish quarter, and then he marched us into the medina itself.  There are a few monumental structures inside, including a very large and historic mosque and two medresas, or religious schools, dating from the middle ages.  As non-muslims, we couldn't enter the mosque, but we could peek in from the door.  Going into the medresas was no problem.  All were feasts of tile work and stucco.

As magnificent as these places were, however, they competed for our interest with the medina itself.  The medina in Fes is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, not just for its many, many old buildings, but for the many traditional crafts that are still practiced there.  Both buildings and activities are protected by UNESCO.  As you make your way through its maze of streets, you go through different areas dedicated to different crafts.  Dying, tanning, weaving, brassworking, and others are all represented.  You go through different markets.  Produce.  Meat.  Leather goods.  Shoes.  Traditional clothing.  Western-style clothing.  Spices.  Etc.  All of this takes place on streets that would count as alleyways, or even hallways, in many other places.  Hardly any of them are marked, and there is very little discernible pattern to them.  Except for the occasional motorcycle, you see no motorized vehicles, only donkeys, many of them not particularly happy to be doing what they are doing, like carrying large propane cans.  People jostle you.  Merchants try to hustle you into their stores.  People shout in Arabic or French or a combination thereof. Kids push by with handcarts full of goods.  Stray cats wait patiently for the butcher to drop something.  What is it he's cutting anyway?  Oh, it's a cow's heart!

More to come in the next post.  More pics on Facebook.

A street scene in the Medina

Donkeys in the brassworking quarter

Important Terms for You to Learn Before Visiting Spain

Those of you who know my beloved wife Zoë may be familiar with her ample capacity for linguistic coinages.  Here are a few of the gems she has come up with over the course of the year, which you may find useful on your own travels through Spain.  Notice that many of them could be put to use outside of Spain as well.

• Crone - Not really a coinage, since this the word already existed, but Zoë has brought it out of mothballs to refer to the elderly gypsy women who beg on the streets of Spanish towns and cities, particularly the ones who do so just outside the door of a church.
• Cronage - The crone's performance of her role as a crone.  These women are experts at soliciting sympathy through moaning, limping, and other such displays of misery, authentic or feigned.  When you see a particularly impressive performance, it is appropriate to remark, "That's some damn good cronage!"
• Crone change - Small change that you would not hesitate to part with when moved to give money to a crone.  Anything below twenty cents, or ten, depending on how miserly you are.  This term can be used to refer to such change in any context, even one that has nothing to do with the presence of a crone.  Example: "Do you have a euro for the locker?"  "No, I only have crone change."
• Whack-a-Mole - Throughout Spain, one sees elderly women (not crones) who are exceedingly small in stature, perhaps coming in at less than five feet in height.  Their diminutive size is probably due to privations suffered in their youth, during and after the Spanish Civil War, when hunger and malnutrition were the norms of live for many a Spaniard.  These lovely ladies like to stroll about, often with their arms locked in twos or even threes.  If you find yourself walking behind one, or two, or three of them, you may experience frustration at the pace of their progress down the sidewalk, a pace that is usually much, much slower than the one you would like to assume.  In your frustration, you may find yourself seized with the desire to whack these little ladies as if they were moles in a whack-a-mole game.  We encourage you not to do so, since physical violence is rarely justified, particularly when it is directed against the elderly.  But you might enjoy explaining to your friends, when you arrive at your destination slightly later than anticipated, that you were stuck behind a "whack-a-mole."
• Ho Phone - Only official residents and citizens are allowed to get cellular phones with contracts.  Everyone else has to settle for a debit phone, or "burner," or, as Zoë calls them, a "ho phone," in reference to the use of such phones in the pursuit of illegal activities, such as prostitution.  Notice how much better "ho phone" sounds than some of the alternatives, such as "pimp phone" or "drug dealer phone."  
• Douche-Off - Embarrassment is a problematic emotion in Spanish culture, as it often is in Latin American culture as well.  A common reaction to the experience of embarrassment, especially when it is triggered by an accusation of some sort, is to respond with a counter-accusation, usually leveled in an aggressive tone.  For example, I once witnessed a man complain to the woman cleaning the men's room in a gas station by saying, "You're always cleaning the restroom when I need to use it!"  The cleaning lady responded, in the same frustrated, accusatory tone, "Well, what do you want?  A dirty restroom?"  The original accuser backed off, and waited for her to finish her job.  This exchange of rather angry accusations is called a "douche-off."  The original douchey remark is met with an equally douchey counter-remark.  At this point, the original douche-bag must choose whether to escalate or back off.  Oftentimes, he or she backs off, thereby restoring social order without any sacrifice to anyone's dignity.  Other times, the douche-off continues through another series of exchanges.  This behavior is a long-standing feature of Spanish culture.  Don't believe me?  Check Scott Taylor's Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain.  When I told Scott about the douche-off, he remarked, "That idea got me tenure!"

Notice that these terms, or the activities to which they refer, are not mutually exclusive.  For example, I once stood in the middle of the Corte Inglés (a department store), engaging in a douche-off on my ho phone.  There were whack-a-moles in the immediate vicinity.  

Lo que pica, y lo que non

As we make our way through our last month in Spain, I can't help but think about things that I will miss, and those that I will not miss.  Here are some.

Things I will miss

Chocolate con churros (porras, actually), friends here in Spain, regular access to jamón serrano, The Real Academia de la Historia (an archive), The Biblioteca Nacional, cochinillo asado, the history seminar at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, cordero asado,  having my big meal in the middle of the day and siesta afterwards, one sunny day after another, living within a 10 minute walk of three world-class museums, Picasso's Guernica, the Plaza Mayor in the early morning, being on sabbatical, the sun setting very late in the evening, my tertulia on Tuesday nights, Velázquez's Las Meninas, Las Lanzas, and everything else he painted, the Bismallah Sweet Shop and its fresh samosas, Goya's Tres de mayo, palmeras con chocolate, Goya's Dark Paintings, Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, romanesque art, Breughel's The Triumph of Death, El Greco, the tarta de membrillo at the Horno América, bread from the Museo del Pan Gallego, scones from the bakery on Calle de Leon, reading El Pais in print, the Museo Cerralbo, Lavapiés, La Latina, sweets made with yema, the cathedral in Toledo, fat Spiderman, the Mezquita Cristo de la Luz in Toledo, not having to mow a lawn, the view from our balcony, Restaurante El Labriego, traveling in Europe, the Plaza Santa Ana, having lots of good restaurants within 5 minutes walking of my house, the Buen Retiro park, Can Punyetes restaurant, knowing the city is still very much alive, now mater how late I go to sleep, walking my son back form school, not having to drive, high-speed trains, the clock tower of the Telefónica building, the Café Comercial, the Plaza Canalejas, asadores, the Café Gijón, music & theater in Madrid, calçots, coffee with fellow researchers in the cafeteria of the Biblioteca Nacional, my walk there along the Paseo de Recoletos, the Plaza de la Cibeles in the evening sun, the clock with bells and dancing figures down the street, day trips to amazing places, the reading room at the Ateneo, coffee at the Ateneo (best in Madrid).

Things I will not miss

The euro, life on a single income, being far from family and friends, overpriced restaurants with bad food, mediocre air conditioning, government bureaucracy from hell, the big hunk of meat, not being able to get certain books I need b/c the Biblioteca Nacional does not own them however important they might be, mediocre mail service, my not very comfortable IKEA bed, crowds in the Puerta del sol, the douche-off, IKEA furniture in general, bad customer service, needing a passport-sized photograph for everything,  needing a sello.

London Calling

Hello, mates.  Or is that more Australian?  My test is always, "Does it sound more like Monty Python, or Crocodile Dundee?"  But I digress.  Recently, we were in London.  And before I get more of those "Don't you ever work?!?" remarks out of you lot, I should explain that the trip was motivated by my participation in a conference called "The Global Dimensions of European Knowledge, 1450-1700," at Birkbeck College, University of London.  Not only did I speak at this conference, but I even helped to organize it!  Well, a bit, at least.  I helped my collaborator select the papers, but she did most of the dirty work.  Zoë, Santiago, and I did provide an invaluable service by helping to color-code the nametags on the evening before opening day. If you had not heard of this event, it is probably because of the royal wedding earlier this year, which seems to have monopolized all of the media attention that otherwise would most certainly have been devoted to the conference.  No, I am not bitter about this.  William and Kate did us a favor by diverting the peering paparazzi away from our august gathering of minds.

The most astonishing thing about London for the three of us is that everyone speaks English there.  We knew that they did, of course, but we nevertheless found it strange to be surrounded by people in perfect command of a language that we had become accustomed to hearing only inside our own apartment.  Another astonishing thing was how much things cost.  Accommodations are through the roof, and food is not cheap.  London, it seems, exists to make Spain look affordable.  I should say, though, that the prices were not as bank-breaking as we expected.  We found it easy to eat at affordable prices, if we stuck to ethnic restaurants like Thai places and Asian noodle shops.  This was fine, because this is precisely what we were craving, and British food being what it is  . . . Although we did discover the joys of "Modern British Cuisine," which is basically the British version of the local food movement that you find in other countries.  We had some very taste experiences there.  And now that we're back in Spain, prices in euros seem cheap!

Chapel in Greenwich

We stayed in an apartment on King's Cross Road, not far from King's Cross station, a major transportation hub.  I had two days at the conference while Zoë and the Kid spent time at the Tower of London and, sadly, in the apartment as Zoë tried to recover from a bad cold that hit her just after our arrival.  The three of us managed to see the British Library, the British Museum (the Kid's fave), the National Gallery (my fave), the Victoria & Albert Museum, Somerset House, Greenwich, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey (Zoë's fave), and St. Paul's Cathedral.  Highlights included Poet's Corner in the Abbey, Holbein's "The Ambassadors," a romanesque reliquary at the V&A, Christopher Wren's Chapel at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, riding double-decker buses, eating Asian food, and taking in the over-all atmosphere of this very vibrant city.  We also got to see our friends from this blog post.  They gave us a little tour of their super-cool neighborhood, Notting Hill, but I could not get this fucking song out of my head the entire time we were with them.  Sadly, the market on Portobello Road was not in action when we saw them, so I was not able to verify if  I could have indeed bougth "anything and everything a chap can unload" in its market stalls.

One totally geeky experience which many of you will apprecieate, because you are either a map geek or an Ecuadorian, was standing on either side of the Greenwich Meridian, the imaginary line running through Greenwich, England, that defines the point of origin for measures of longitude around the world.  The experience bears comparison with Ecuador's "Mitad del Mundo" monument, where you can stand on either side of the equator.  0º longitude at Greenwich.  0º latitude at Mitad del Mundo.  Here are some pointless comparisons between the two places, that will allow you to procrastinate working for just a little bit longer:

• The equator is a natural phenomenon, while the prime meridian is entirely arbitrary.  This difference has no effect whatsoever on the geeky thrill involved in visiting them.
• The equator separates the world into northern and southern hemispheres.  Everyone knows this.  Technically, the prime meridian (along with its counterpart, the International Date Line) separates the world into eastern and western hemispheres, but nobody cares.  Who would ever say that the city of London, which lies west of Greenwich and its prime meridian, is in the western hemisphere?  Not I.  
• There are many, many more souvenirs available at Quito's "Mitad del Mundo" monument than at Greenwich's Royal Observatory, but many of the Quito souvenirs are actually Ecuadorian handicrafts that can also be purchased from pan flute bands in any of the world's major cities, while the Greenwich souvenirs are unique to Greenwich, and exclusively prime-meridian-themed.
• At "Mitad del Mundo," you are more likely to eat something that will make you sick.  At the Greenwich Observatory, you are more likely to pay through the nose for whatever you eat.
• At "Mitad del Mundo," when you take your picture with one foot in each hemisphere, you will be facing either east or west.  At the Royal Observatory, when you take your picture with one foot on either side of the prime meridian, you will be facing either north or south.  Another detail that is completely irrelevant to the experience.  
• At "Mitad del Mundo," you will most likely arrive by car or bus.  At the Royal Observatory, you will have walked up a hill in Greenwich Park.  Ironically, however, you are more likely to be out of breath at Mitad del Mundo, because you are 9200+ feet in elevation.  
• "Mitad del Mundo" is an elaborate tourist trap which includes an ethnographic museum and a recreation of Quito's colonial downtown.  It is actually called the "Ciudad Turística [Tourist City] Mitad del Mundo."  The Royal Observatory has the dignity that one would expect from a place once associated with the British crown.  

Please feel free to provide further comparisons in the comments section, or to remark on how stupid you believe this comparison to be.  

Ricardo with one foot on either side of the Prime Meridian

Extremadura & Lisbon

I've blogged about our time in Paris, but not about our other recent excursion to Extremadura and Lisbon.  We had a visit from Zoë's mother.  Long time readers of the blog may remember Susan from my Christmastime post which told of the delightful time she had being stranded in the UK by the incompetence of Heathrow Airport, for five days of her 10-day vacation.  Her disappointment at missing so much time in Spain was assuaged by immediately making plans to come visit us in the spring.  Finally, the time came.  She connected through New York instead of London, and arrived without incident.

We had a choice here.  Either the four of us could spend a week in Madrid, cramped into our 2-bedroom apartment, or we could all go on a fun trip.  Which would you have chosen?  We rented a car and headed for southwest Spain, or "Extremadura," a region that everyone had said to us we had to see, and then for Lisbon just a bit farther beyond.

View of Trujillo & countryside

The trip was a reminder of the fact that you cannot drive more than two hours in Spain without coming across something fabulous (and passing a lot of really nice things along the way to boot).  First stop, Trujillo, a town frozen in time, just over three hours driving from Madrid.  This was where Francisco Pizarro (conqueror of Peru) and Francisco de Orellana (discoverer of the Amazon River) hailed from.  They and their conquistador buddies came back from the New World with their bags full of gold, and used it to build fancy palaces in their hometown.  And then nothing else of note happened in their hometown for the next four-hundred years, making Trujillo a place frozen in time.  The town has a modern section, but it is not too large, so that the historic quarter is still prominent.  When you climb up to the moorish castle at the top, you look out over gorgeous Extremaduran countryside, rather than modern suburbs.

We spent the night in nearby Cáceres, another 45 minutes down the road.  This town also produced conquistadores who enriched the place with New World loot, and also has a beautifully preserved historic center full of buildings from the sixteenth century.  We spent two nights there on a lovely hotel right on the plaza mayor, and had fun wandering through its old cobbled streets.

Afterwards, it was on to Portugal, and a stop at Évora, a town not far from the Spanish-Portuguese frontier.  We had eaten well in Extremadura, but the first truly memorable meal of the trip was here, at a tiny restaurant down a narrow street where we had arroz con pato magret and cordero asado.  The highlight of the town was its beautifully preserved Roman temple, as well as its white-washed streets.

Street in Lisbon's Baixa

That same day, we headed into Lisbon, where we spent three nights.  I wish I could say I loved Lisbon, a city that many of my friends rave about, but I didn't, and neither did Zoë.  Lisbon is shabby, and people who love it find romance in that shabbiness.  We just found shabbiness.  The city feels much more Latin American than any other city we've seen in Europe, but you pay for everything in euros.  We wandered around some of its neighborhoods, saw the castle, the monastery of the Jerónimos, and the Torre de Belém.  I did get a kick, however, from seeing the new Museo de Oriente, a museum of Asian art that features a nice exhibit on Portuguese-Asian art from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  It's in an old cod factory next to the police station in an industrial wharf area.  And we ate well, too, particularly, in our hotel restaurant, where we had dinner once out of sheer exhaustion.  Turns out that the restaurant of the Hotel Aviz is an old establishment where celebrities used to dine.  The meal was spectacular, and included memorable desserts.

The Roman theater in Mérida, on arts day for the kids.

After Lisbon, it was back to Extremadura, and to the city of Mérida.  Unlike Cáceres and Trujillo, Mérida is not know for its general ambience, but for its Roman ruins.  I must admit I was skeptical, having just been to Rome last December, but I was proven wrong.  The ruins are spectacular, and in two cases better than their equivalents in Rome.  There is a very well-preserved  Roman theater, and one of the best preserved circuses in the old Roman world.  The theater was actually in use when we visited, by a group of schoolkids from all over Extremadura who had come in for a performing arts day.  We watched a skit and a dance number before the heat got to us.  The museum of Roman art is spectacular, both for its collection and its architecture.  Large, well-preserved Roman mosaics are hung on walls, where they are visible from Once again, we ate very well, this time at the parador.  Susan had very much wanted to stay in one, so we decided to stay in Mérida's, an eighteenth century convent with a lovely patio. At dinner, we had the best técula mécula of the trip, as well as a fantastic plate of local cheeses.  Técula mécula is an Extremaduran dessert, a sort of almond pie, and it's fabulous.

After Mérida, it was back to Madrid. Susan went back to Boston, this time via Miami rather than London, and we went back to school and to work.

15-M

I couldn't let the week go by without blogging about what's going on in the Puerta del Sol.  You've probably seen on the news that a popular social movement burst onto the Spanish scene on the 15th of May.  It involves the occupation of public squares by protesters eager for political and social change.  The biggest of these demonstrations is here in Madrid, where a group has been camping out in the Puerta del Sol for just shy of two weeks.

At first, I was quite cynical about this.  I swung by the square and saw a bunch of hippies camping out in a square that was plastered with signs expressing noble-sounding but vague ideas.  I sympathized with their plight.  Here were a bunch of young people who do not see a future for themselves, given the current economic crisis.  Unemployment in Spain is at 21%, but among the young it's at 45%.  They're angry with all sorts of institutions, the government, the banks, the schools, for having failed them.  But I did not have any confidence that much would come of this. There are a lot of calls for change and reform, but no real clear message about what shape those reforms should take.  Will the people in charge listen?  Will they feel compelled to make changes?  What changes would those be?  I could not imagine an outcome to all this, other than the protestors eventually going home, leaving the Puerta del Sol a mess.

But today I went by again, with Zoë, after a meeting at Santiago's school, and I found myself inspired.  These people aren't just camping out in the square: they've built a functioning village there.  Under the tarps  one finds a series of well-marked out enclosures.  One is a lending library, the other a day-care center.  One provides emergency medical assistance, and another dispenses donated food to participants. There are meeting areas where different groups discuss their concerns.  Animal rights.  Constitutional reform.  Educational reform.  There are signs everywhere protesting everything, although the stranglehold that Spanish banks have on debtors figures most prominently, I thought.  In Spain, if you default on your mortgage, they foreclose on you, but you still owe the mortgage.  Isn't that incredible?

One sign in particular caught my eye.  It was a series of instructions for how one should behave in the event that the police decided to clear the square.  The instructions urged people to adopt a nonviolent response, to sit down, stay quiet, and send out a text message saying "Sol is being cleared.  Come support us."

Police are all around, but they are clearly bored.  The protestors are orderly, respectful, and completely nonviolent, giving them nothing to do.  While we were there, a guy with a megaphone asked people to avoid using the bathrooms in adjoining businesses, and instead go to those of business farther from the plaza.  Apparently, the business owners immediately around Sol complained that their facilities were being taxed by all the extra use, so the protestors are doing their best to accommodate them.  They've already cleared the spaces in front of businesses, so that customers can get in and out unimpeded, at the request of the owners.

It's really remarkable that something so well-organized has sprung up from a movement that has no visible central leadership.  I hope that when they finally tear the campground apart and go home (this Sunday, they say), they will remain organized, remain nonviolent, and find a way to be effective.

No, We Have not Been Raptured

 Ah, dear readers, too long have I ignored you!  Many of you were probably wondering what had happened to us.  Were they still in Europe?  Or did they go somewhere else?  Were they raptured?  If so, can I have their car? 


No, my friends, we were not taken up into the heavens.  The rapture is not until tomorrow, although I doubt very seriously that it will affect me anyway. I don't think Catholics get raptured, and I'm pretty sure bad ones certainly don't.  Secular Jews?  Not a prayer.  I think everyone can count on Zoë's blog to continue without interruption.  The closest thing to being taken up into the heavens that has happened to us was our ascent of the Eiffel Tower.  

View from the Eiffel Tower.

"But wait!"you might say, "the Eiffel Tower is not in Spain!"  And you would be right to raise this doubt, for as schoolchildren all across America can tell you, it is in London, and has a big clock on it.  Sadly, they would be wrong.  Now, the faithful among you will have by now deduced that we have recently traveled to Paris, while the more cynical might suspect that we really were just in King's Dominion, a Virginia theme park where they have a 1/4 sized replica of the Eiffel Tower.  As proof that we were in the genuine Eiffel Tower, I offer the photo on the right, taken from atop.  As you can see, there is not a roller coaster, parking lot, or cotton candy stand anywhere in sight.  Only buildings and smog, as one might expect from one of the world's most beautiful cities.


Now, if ascending the Eiffel Tower is anything like the rapture, all those faithful souls are in for a rude awakening.  Because ascending the Eiffel Tower is sheer hell.  You wait in line for 2.5 hours to get a ticket, then 45 minutes to get an elevator to the lower level, and then another 45 minutes for the elevator to the top level.  But we had to do it.  Zoë and I had been before, but this was the Kid's first time in Paris, and we couldn't NOT take him to the Eiffel Tower. In the end, Zoë enjoyed this the most, since it gave her a chance to really find out just how arthritic her toes had become over the years.  See how her smile just glows in this picture of her that I took on the elevator ride to the top?  

Don't worry, she was smiling on the inside.

 Luckily, the rest of our time in Paris was nothing whatsoever like our afternoon at the Eiffel Tower.   One highlight was the time we spent with Helen, a friend of mine from H.S. with whom I had recently reconnected via Facebook.  Hi Helen!  Another was Versailles, which we visited on a gorgeous Saturday.  We were taken away by the Petite Trianon, its adjoining gardens, and Marie Antoinette's little hamlet.  We loved the Musée de Cluny, and we found the Sainte Chapelle to be one of those rapturous spaces that is so beautiful that you never want to leave it. The Louvre was wonderful in its overwhelming splendor.  We threw ourselves into the Mona Lisa mosh pit, but preferred by another Leanardo portrait out in the hall that was going unnoticed by the crowds.  We ate very well, at prices similar to those charged in Madrid, and particularly enjoyed the patisserie.  Breakfast every day consisted of treats from the pastry and bread shop on the ground floor of the apartment building where we had rented our tiny but stylish one-bedroom.  Just a few blocks from the Louvre. 


The surprise treat, however, was the Musée de la Musique.  We figured the Kid would enjoy this place, but were surprised to find out that we all loved it.  Five floors take you through the history of western music since 1500, and another gives you a very quick look at nonwestern music.  Each floor features collections of gorgeous musical instruments, but what makes the place really worth the trip is the audio guide, included in the admission.  Not only does it give you the explanations that one usually gets in museum audio guides, but it also gives you musical selections performed on the instruments in the cases.  The whole museum comes to life as you stroll around listening to a harpsichord here, a lute there.  You get rapturous selections from operas in front of dioramas of famous opera houses, and pieces by great composers in front of exhibits dedicated to them.  We kind of had to rush through, but Santiago made us promise that one day we would return to Paris with enough time to listen to each and every single selection in the entire museum.  I said yes, but secretly thought that might be an Eiffel Tower experience all over again.


There was one other Eiffel Tower experience, but I will have to leave it to Zoë to tell you about it.  Only she and the Kid suffered through it, while I gave a lecture at the "Centre Alexandre Koyré de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales et le Centre National de Recherche Scientifique." Some of you may know it better as the Centre Alexandre Koyré of the EHESS/CNRS.  Zoë and the Kid decided to push the physical limits of tourism, to their great regret, while I shared ideas with a rapt group of historians.


Those of you who'd like to know more about our time in Paris can poke around my Ricardo's Paris Google Map.  As for those of you expecting to get raptured tomorrow, wear comfy shoes.  

So-Called Customer Service

Take a look at this Blockbuster training video from 1990:

Perhaps you enjoyed the definitively early-90s ambience of the whole thing.  Did you see the high waist-lines?  All this talk about broken VCR's?  VHS!?!?   LOL!!!  Or perhaps you couldn't stomach the damn thing.  In either case, I hope you noticed what the creepy guy on the video monitor was telling the early-90s cutie, that she needed to show initiative and creativity in order to solve her customers' problems, make them happy, and make sales.

There is not a single sales clerk in all of Spain who has seen this video, or anything remotely like it.  Interactions with sales people often resemble the experience of Philip II in this spoof by a Spanish comedy group:

If you don't speak Spanish, it's worth learning it just to understand this hilarious video.  King Philip II has gone to the workshop to pick up the Armada he has ordered.  He is first treated as an inconvenience, then he's put to work.  He gets scolded for not bringing his claim ticket, and for presuming that the workman would know who he is.  Eventually, the guy recognizes him, and treats him like a celebrity.  Then an argument ensues, because Philip has ordered an "Invincible Armada" and the shop has made an "Armada that is Difficult to Beat," which costs less because the ships are made from particle board rather than solid wood.  Eventually, they agree that Philip will take the armada that's been manufactured, but the guy will put "Invincible Armada" on the receipt so that the enemy will be appropriately cowed.  That is, as long as the King agrees to let the guy's son go the England with the Armada, so that he can learn English.

It's a great parody because it gets so many things right.  The customer is an inconvenience.  Serving the customer is a big fucking favor performed by the employee.  The employee expresses disgust at the customer's demands, and argues with him so that he'll get it through his thick head that he can't have what he wants.  In the end, the customer has to settle.

The weird thing is that if you are the guest rather than the customer in Spain, you are treated like a king.  Spain has a deep and important culture of hospitality whereby hosts do everything in their power to make their guests feel honored and welcome.  People go out of their way.  They make and change plans according to your interests.  They never let you pay for anything.  The let you stay as long as you want.  Even after years of living in Virginia, a place that prides itself on hospitality, I have been astounded by the lengths that Spaniards go to when you are their guest.

None of this translates into a culture of "the customer is always right" service.  In fact, the customer is always wrong.  And the most irritating thing is that few people seem capable of showing initiative or asking questions in order to solve your problems.  Zoë, who does the lion's share of the shopping, can tell you all about this sort of thing.  The eye-rolling.  The look of disgust when you have some sort of special problem.  She's learned the trick of shopping at the same places all the time, because once you are perceived as a regular people start being nice to you.  The other trick is to do what Philip II does in the video.  Change tacks.  Elicit the salesperson's sympathy.  Settle for less.  None of this comes naturally to you if you are from the Americas.

I can tell you about my experience with Orange, the company who provides our cell-phone service.  Santiago had lost his mobile and we needed to replace it.  We use cheap pay-as-you-go phones, or "hooker phones," as Zoë calls them.  I went to the Orange store only to find out that I had too many lines in my name already.  Apparently, each person can have only two hooker-phone lines in his/her name, in order to limit the use of such phones for criminal purposes.   I tried to explain that I was trying to replace a phone that had been lost, and so I really wasn't looking for a  third line, but actually a replacement for one of the two lines I already had.  No idea from the sales clerk about what to do.  She said call Orange. I called the "customer service" line, and they told me there shouldn't be any problem with me getting as many lines as I wanted.  When I told them what had happened at the store, they told me to just go to a different store.  I did this, and, at the store, they told me the same thing they had told me at the first store. I called "customer service" and they confirmed that the sales clerk was right.  I tried to explain that I was trying to replace a lost phone, and they just repeated that I had too many lines already, and could not provide further information.

Then I fucking lost it.  What do you mean you can't provide further information?  I'm sorry, we can't.  Is there someone at Orange who has this information?  Yes.  Can you connect me with them?  No.  They do not deal with customers.  WHAT!!?  Are you aware of how completely absurd that is?   This is an internal policy of Orange.  I WANT TO BUY YOUR FUCKING PRODUCT, ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO MAKE THAT POSSIBLE?!!?  I'm sorry, we cannot provide further information.  I was livid.  My hands were shaking.  I was red in the face.  People around me had gone quiet.  I hung up and stormed out.

Upon getting home and calming down, I checked the internet.  Couldn't buy a phone from the website either.  Then I tried calling them again.  I was connected to the ONE person in the whole company who had seen the Blockbuster training video.  In fact, I think it was Marie herself, who has lost her job at the sinking ship which is Blockbuster, has learned Spanish, and has moved to Spain, where she is spreading the bible of good customer service everywhere she goes.  "Maria," as I shall call her, explained to me that I needed to go to a store and ask for a replacement card, not a new phone.  Ohhhhhhh.  I complimented her and thanked her profusely.

I went to the store, and bought the replacement card with no problem.  So can you sell me a phone as well?  No.  Why?  All our phones come with cards, and you can't have another card.  What am I supposed to do with this replacement card?  You see, he lost his phone as well as the card that was in it.  You need to buy another phone.  NO FUCK!!!  But you can't sell me a phone.  What do I do?  You need to go to the Phone House and buy a telefono libre (an unlocked phone that can be used with any service).  Thank you.

A Triumph of the Ass

I was going to make this post about our recent trip to Valencia, but I've been doing a lot of posting about our trips and very little about other things.  So, briefly, we went to Valencia by invitation of the folks who run the UVA study abroad program there, and had a spectacular time.  I was invited to give a lecture to the students, and then we spent time seeing the city with our various hosts.  They treated us like royalty, making the whole weekend quite memorable.  It was especially nice to see our old friends Agustín and Tammy, who had us for a paella at their apartment facing the Mediterranean.  Zoë and Santiago came back to Madrid on Sunday, while I continued on to Barcelona to give a lecture at the University of Barcelona.

But I keep getting these remarks from people saying that it looks like I'm on an extended vacation.  This is natural, since I have barely, if ever, mentioned my work on this blog.  Yes, we travel a lot, and I have no guilt about it whatsoever, because I figure any travel I do in Spain is a form of professional development.  But we also spend a lot of time in Madrid, where I put in long hours at the Biblioteca Nacional and other libraries and archives.  I thought I would tell you a bit about what all that is about.

Take a look at this map:

This is the closest thing that we have to an official map of the Spanish Empire, from the century or so when that empire was first created (i.e. 1492 - 1600).  In it's original form (this is a slightly modified, later copy) it was published in 1601 as part of an official history of the Spanish discovery and conquest of the Indies sponsored by the Spanish government.  Notice that I did not say "discovery and conquest of the Americas," because, as you can see from this map, the Spanish concept of the "West Indies" included a bunch of transpacific territories that we usually think of as the East Indies, as well as the Americas.  The map includes two vertical lines, one of the colored red and cutting through Brazil, and the other grey and cutting through East Asia.  Everything between these lines is what Spain considered to be its empire, including such places as the Philippines, New Guinea, China, and Japan.

I am writing a book that traces the fortunes of this concept.  I think it's an important one because of the way it helps us think differently about the geographies that were at work in early modern imperialism.  Over the course of the last few decades, a lot of scholars have been talking about the Atlantic world, the whole political, social, economic, and cultural network that arose out of the European encounter with the Americas and Africa.  This map reminds us that early modern imperialism, particularly Spanish imperialism, was transpacific as well as transatlantic.  Spain had ambitions regarding Asia, and once it established itself in the Philippines, it began to trade with China and other countries by way of the market in Manila.  Other scholars have studied the development of this Pacific world in economic terms, and I am trying to study it in cultural terms.  I am trying to figure out what the concept of the "Indies" meant for early modern Spaniards, and how it managed to encompass the Pacific and Asia along with the New World.

My progress so far has been a triumph of the ass.  I wish I had made this expression up, but I actually heard it on NPR, who said that's what writing a book was, a triumph of the ass.  Books happen because authors spend a lot of time sitting on their ass reading and writing and revising and writing and revising.  They do it for hours.  They do it when they don't particularly feel like doing it.  And that's what I've been doing when I haven't been on the road to cool places with the fam.  I've been sitting on my ass, reading letters, travel narratives, histories, plays, secondary sources of all kinds, and writing, writing, writing, writing.  So far, over 250 pages of writing, of which I think 120 or so are usable.  God, I hope 120 pages are usable . . . If not, it's more ass time for me.

My mom comes to Spain

Did you know I was there
when Columbus got back from his trip?

OK, now that I have the Big Hunk of Meat off my chest, I can tell you about my mom's visit at the end of February.

This started with a visit to a museum, of which Madrid has more than 40.  Was it the Prado?  The Reina Sofía?  No, it was the Madrid Wax Museum.  As it turns out, my mom has a thing for wax museums, dating back from a youthful visit to Montreal in the late 50s with her dad.  So we took her to the wax museum, right across the street from the Biblioteca Nacional.  We posed with the Royal Family.  I jumped the velvet rope to get into a picture with Columus.  My mom posed with Antonio Banderas.  But the highlight of it all was the "Tren del Terror."  We got into an amusement-park-ride train-thingie, and it took us down this hallway where we saw huge rats and had giant mechanical sharks pop out at us.  Zoë's favorite was the Star Wars hallway.  Imagine doors opening, and your little train entering a hallway painted black and decorated with star glitter and the sort of styrofoam planets you make for your school science fair.  Above your head, one of the Empire's Galactic Cruisers flies.  It's made of tinfoil.  My favorite was just beyond, in the "Rambo vs. Aliens" room.  I thought it was Apocalypse Now at first, what with its crazed grunts and human heads hanging in the tropical foliage, but then I spotted the big red Alien and that tipped it off.  Train of Terror?  No, more like Train of Hilarity!!  We were laughing so hard our sides ached.  My mom thought it was an excellent wax museum.  Better than the one in Montreal!

The botafumeiro about to be swung into action.

The next day, after a visit to the Palace and a lovely lunch on the Plaza Santa Ana, we were off to Santiago de Compostela, Galicia.  This was a place that Zoë, the Kid and I had really wanted to see, so when my mom said she wanted to see it too, we made plans.  We had a day seeing the Cathedral and its museum, a day wandering around Santiago seeing some smaller sights, and a day driving along Galicia's Costa da Morte before heading back to Madrid.   The best part of the city itself was getting to see the famous botafumeiro in action.  This is an enormous censer that hangs from a pulley system on the ceiling of the cathedral.  Seven or eight men pull on these ropes, and the botafumeiro swings, pendulum like, from one transept to the other in an enormous arc, spewing out incense smoke all over the church.  Apparently, in the many centuries that they've been doing this, the thing has never actually hit anyone, which is good because it weighs something like 80 pounds.  Finally, they let the momentum die down and one of the guys catches it, grabbing the ropes and twirling around to bring it to a halt.  My mom described it best when she described the whole thing as a sort of circus act.

From the scenic overlook on the Costa da Morte

The other highlight was our drive up the coast.  Those of you familiar with Galicia's reputation for rain and mist will be stunned to find out that we had a sunny, clear, warm day for this.  We stopped off in the town of Noia, which would be forgettable if it weren't for its fried calamari sandwiches of the gods.  Then we drove up to much-more-picturesque Muros, and continued along the coast to Fisterra, the peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic that the Romans thought of as the end of the world.  We did the drive in a rented Kia Picanto that could barely manage the hills.  When we passed anyone – always on the downhill – Zoë and I felt the need to lean forward to make sure the care made it.  The coastline was utterly spectacular, and we even forced the car to plod and strain up to a scenic overlook were we could take it all in.  As the car crept into the parking area, we strained to see out into the bay, and were greeted by the vision of a man standing at the railing, peeing over the side.  Too bad he finished before we could get pictures of him to plaster all over the internet.

At the scenic overlook, sans that other visitor.

Our final day, after a fabulous breakfast at the parador, we saw Sta. María del Sar, a romanesque church almost on the outskirts of Santiago famous for almost falling apart.  They made the side naves too high, and the walls too thin, to support the barrel vault of the central nave.  The result is a church that looks a little bit like a Dr. Seuss creation, with the walls sagging out at an angle of almost 50º.

Our review of Santiago and Galicia?  Charming city.  Incredibly friendly people.  Lovely scenery.  And some of the best food in Spain.   Mom had a great visit, and we had a great time seeing her.

The Big Hunk of Meat

Yesterday, I went out to lunch with a couple of colleagues from the States.  They, like me, are Spanish professors at state universities.  Among the things we talked about were heroin use on the pilgrimage route to Santiago and the alarmingly low percentage of members of the Kansas State legislature who hold college degrees (ca. 40%).  But I am not writing to tell you about what we discussed.  I am writing to tell you about what I ate, the Big Hunk of Meat.

We all enjoyed the restaurant's menú.  For those of you unfamiliar with this term, the menú is the prix-fixe meal offered by just about every restaurant in Spain, particularly at midday during the work week.  (The English menu translates as carta) Its existence stems from the collision of long-standing custom with the realities of modern life.  For ages, Spaniards have made the midday meal, taken around 2:30pm, the big meal of the day.  Few people, however, have the time or inclination to travel all the way home at lunchtime, the way they did in the Quito of many years ago, a city that had four rush hours a day.  This creates a demand for big, but affordable meals consisting of two cooked dishes served as separate courses, a beverage, plus coffee and/or dessert.  A businessperson menú usually comes in around €10-15, a bit more if you decide to have both coffee and dessert.

The menú is rarely a memorable meal. In fact, Zoë has sworn them off, after a few too many experiences with affordable menús that ended up being quite disappointing, if not downright disgusting.  It still plays a role in my life, though, particularly when I get together with colleagues for  a meal during the workday, when the emphasis is on meeting and talking without getting too spendy.  The trick is to find a menú that is tasty and satisfying, even if the flavors are nothing to write home about.

Which brings me to the Big Hunk of Meat.  The second course options on your typical menú usually include some fish and/or seafood, and a meat dish or two.  These are often difficult to identify, because food words in Spain are so very different from their Latin American equivalents, so we usually have to look around at what other people are eating and try to match what we see to that's on the page.  My choices in these instances, as in other dining experiences, are guided by the following list of priorities.  I tend to like, in no particular order:

1. Meat over chicken or seafood.
2. Food that requires assembly at the table.
3. Food that requires cooking at the table.
4. Food that involves some sort of special apparatus to be eaten.
5. Food that involves dramatic presentation, like being set on fire.
6. Food served in portions that look more like a dare than dinner.  

You can imagine my fondness for things like fondue, Korean BBQ, Peking duck, and all things flambé. Unfortunately, items meeting criteria 2-5 are rare on a humble menú del día, but items meeting 1 and 6 are common.  The Big Hunk of Meat answers to both.

Codillo de cerdo, an example of the Big Hunk of Meat

The Big Hunk of Meat can take many forms.  It can be lamb or pork.  It can be roasted or braised.  It is usually a joint chopped off the leg of some hapless animal, prepared in such a way as to leave the meat quite tender, albeit sometimes without much flavor.  The central flavor experience is what the Japanese call umami, which is the taste we associate with fat.  Umami is in fact so important to so many Spanish dishes that I am surprised that the language does not have an equivalent word.  The Big Hunk of Meat, as the name implies, is always large.  It would represent a not-so-small feast for an entire family in many parts of our hungry world.  In Spain, it is a single serving.  Hence its attraction to a hungry Spanish professor making (bad) choices off a menú.  

Yesterday, as so often happens to me, I fell for the Big Hunk of Meat.  I like to think that my choice was inspired by thrift, a virtue, rather than gluttony, a vice.  A cardinal sin, even.  The Big Hunk of Meat, about half the size of your head, represents a good value for your money.  I can think of nowhere besides Spain where I can get such a large piece of meat, with an appetizer, a dessert, and a beverage, for so little money.  Who wouldn't go for it?  The answer: anyone who realizes that the Big Hunk of Meat sits heavy in your stomach, making you wonder why you ate the whole damn thing.  

I a moment, I am going out to lunch with Zoë, and I will not get the Big Hunk of Meat.  I promise.  It's a sure thing.  Don't you believe me?    

Escape to the Middle Ages

Last week we needed out.  We came back from Rome and reality hit us like a ton of bricks.  Cooking.  Laundry.  Homework.  The library.  The morning alarm.  We were getting down on Madrid, down on Spain, and needed to do something about it.  So Zoë worked her vacation-planning magic and got us a great deal on a room at the parador in León.  For those of you who don't know the paradores, these are state-run hotels in historical buildings.  Some are better than others, and we had been told that the one in León was spectacular.  Indeed it is.  It's basically a luxy hotel in a sixteenth-century monastery with a killer breakfast buffet.  And kids through 12 years of age stay free at the paradores, so in our case the price can be quite comparable to that of a lesser hotel where we have to pay for the Kid's extra bed.  So we rented a car and took off to León, a provincial capital in northern Spain that is surprisingly close to Madrid when Zoë is driving.

León is the perfect place for this sort of getaway because there are really only two things to see there, but they are both spectacular, so you're not overwhelmed with sightseeing, but you're still happy to have made the trip.  We zipped up there, checked in, had lunch at a promising restaurant that ended up being a dud, and then went to check out the cathedral.  It's known for having the most stained glass of any Spanish gothic cathedral, making it more like its French models than its Spanish cousins.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but you can get a sense of it at their official website.  That's where I got the picture at right.

That evening, the program consisted of lounging, reading, and watching several episodes of Amazing Wedding Cakes, the current TV obsession of Zoë and the Kid.  The next morning, breakfast at the amazing buffet, and a trip to the  Basilica de San Isidoro, León's other major attraction.  Here the big to-do is the Pantheon, the crypt constructed by the kings of León as their burial place.  It preserves almost intact an amazing collection of Romanesque ceiling frescoes.  We couldn't take pictures inside, so here's a pic from Wikipedia so you can see what it was like.  I was thrilled to share these two sites with Zoë and the Kid.  I'd seen them both on a visit to Spain many summers ago, and think the Cathedral and the Pantheon in León are two of the most beautiful things in Spain.

After the Panteón, back in the car.  We zipped back in time for a late lunch/very early dinner at our favorite pizza place in the neighborhood, rejuvenated and excited about Spain once again.  We needed it, since we had visa red-tape to deal with . . .

The New Spanish

I had an insight while reflecting upon an experience in the Rome airport, waiting for our flight to Madrid last week.  My insight has to to with the future of the Spanish language.  A few seats away from us a group of Spaniards were talking.  I couldn't hear quite what they said, but I could pick up a continuous stream of isolated words: joder … coño … puta madre … hostia … coño … joder … puta madre … 


Speakers of Spanish will recognize these words as a series of obscenities.  "Why were they cursing?" you might ask.  I glanced over at the group.  They did not seem frustrated with the inconveniences attending to travel by air.  They did not seem put out by a delay in their departure time.  In fact, they did not seem to be grumpy in any way.  To all appearances, they were simply whiling away the time with pleasant banter.  Pleasant banter punctuated by words whose English translations – were they to appear in this paragraph – would subject my blog to an "adults only" filter of some kind.

Now, those of you who know Spain and Spaniards, I am sure, are not in the least bit surprised.  You know that this is simply how many Spaniards talk.  But as I reflected upon this, my first encounter with Spanish after spending a week hearing nothing but Italian, I was struck by the high frequency of the obscenities, and I had the insight to which I have alluded.   I assure you that it is a novel one.  My ready access to the Biblioteca Nacional has allowed me to peruse the pertinent secondary literature, and I can inform you that I have found no scholarly articles of monographs that advance the argument I will put forth in the paragraphs that follow.

The Spanish people, I argue, are engaged in a linguistic experiment of the most radical kind.  They are attempting to develop a language in which one expresses oneself solely and entirely in obscenities.  Yes, this is what is going on.  Slowly but surely, "clean" words are being eliminated from the language, and their functions are being assigned to a slew of obscenities.  Eventually, only the obscenities will be left, along with some indispensable connecting material like articles and prepositions.

But you might wonder how anyone could express the entire range of human experience exclusively through obscenities.  You will find your answer in the threefold character of Spain's great linguistic experiment: permutations, context, tone.

1. Permutations.  The volume of individual obscenities is considerable, but it certainly does not even begin to approximate the size of the "clean" lexicon.  This limitation is addressed, in part, by combining the obscenities in a variety of permutations.  For example, one can say me cago en la leche, or me cago en la hostia.  Both of these are set phrases that utilize the first person singular conjugation of the verb cagarse, "to defecate," but predicate to this verb different objects, leche, or "[your mother's] milk," and hostia, or "[communion] host."  In this way, Spanish obscenities function like regular language, but unlike regular language, the range of allowable predicates is smaller than the range of syntactically correct predicates.  Thus, one cannot say me cago en el coño.  Not to my knowledge, at least.  One can also abbreviate such expressions, or supplement them.  Me cago en la leche, for example, is really an abbreviation for me cago en la leche de tu madre, which in turn can be extended into me cago en la leche de tu puta/putissima madre, or even me cago en la leche de la putisima madre que te parió.  The wide, but not unlimited, range of permutations allows for a greater number of set expressions than there are individual obscenities.  Competent speakers instinctively know how the different permutations nuance meaning.
2. Context.  Many obscenities acquire their precise meaning from the context in which they are used.  Is the speaker talking back to the television news?  Is he congratulating you on the birth of your baby?  Is she expressing disapproval of your work performance?  Context is what allows these obscenities to signify in ways that have nothing to do with the literal meaning of the obscenities themselves.  Competent speakers will choose the correct permutation for the context in question, thereby communicating meaning with little or no ambiguity.
3. Tone.  Without a doubt the most important, and most elusive of the three characteristics.  The tone in which an obscenity is uttered can radically affect its meaning.  For example, me cago en la leche, when uttered quietly, with a sigh, can mean "I do not think that I can withstand the soul-crushing burden of my meaningless existence anymore," but when uttered explosively and dramatically, can mean "What kind of idiot thinks to park his car here!?!?"  Once again, competent speakers will know how to vary tone, even subtly, to achieve their communicative goals.

Now, you may be saying to yourself that these three characteristics are common to obscenities in many languages, not just Spanish.  But the point is that, in the emerging "New Spanish," these rules will not just govern the use of obscenities, a marginal form of speech, but will govern all language use, since the obscenities will be all that is left.

As the rules of obscene language become the rules of language itself, tone and context will assume unprecedented importance.  Print media will disappear entirely, since it will not be able to function in this new setting.  Imagine a newspaper headline reading ¡Obama jodido!  In the absence of tone and context, it will be impossible to tell what, precisely, is being reported.  Has Obama lost an election?  Has one of his legislative initiatives been defeated?  Has he suffered a serious back injury?  The New Spanish will be able to communicate all of these various meanings, but only through oral communication, utilizing precise tone and drawing upon the specific context to underwrite the communicative project. 

Are there specific impediments to this experiment?  Two stand out, to my mind.  One is the continued use, by many Spaniards, of words that are not obscene.  Just today, while enjoying my cafe con leche in the cafeteria of the Biblioteca Nacional, I tuned in to the conversations around me, eager to identify and enumerate the obscenities in circulation.  During the 5 or 10 minutes that I sipped my beverage and munched on my small jamón sandwich, I heard not a single one!  The second, more serious impediment has to do with the verb "to be."  Most action verbs can be replaced by obscene ones, such as cagarse and  joder, but I do not know of an obscene substitute for the Spanish verbs ser and estar.  Later this week I plan to take the Metro to Spain's prestigious think-tank, the Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) to inquire as to the public resources that are being dedicated to resolving this problem.  I suspect that the percentage of the CSIC budget devoted to researching obscene alternatives to ser and estar is not inconsiderable.  

But while the trip to the CSIC is obligatory, it is not where my heart draws me.  I want to leave the library, march down the avenue to the stately headquarters of the Real Academia Española, and immediately apprise its membership of what is afoot.  I shall direct myself without hesitation to the office of its illustrious director, Dr. Victor García de la Concha, burst into his office, and set forth my argument just as I have done here.  "Do something, your Excellency!  The New Spanish will spell disaster!!" I will cry out.

I fear, however, that it may already be too late.  The director will listen to me, aghast, and then respond with a simple, Joder.