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.  

Roman Holiday

Long-time readers of the blog will remember my long-ago posts about our trip to Andalucía, when we saw Córdoba, Seville, Cádiz, the pueblos blancos, and Granada in seven days.  The trip was wonderful, but quite the whirlwind, and we were quite conscious that we were only getting to see the biggest attractions in each place.  So when it came to planning our trip for Christmas vacation, we decided to take a different strategy.  This time we had nine days, and we would spend them all in one place, taking things slowly, relaxing along the way.  We asked the Kid where in Europe he most wanted to go, and he immediately said "Rome!"

There were two reasons for this preference. One was that the Kid had studied Rome in third grade, with his mom/teacher, and had learned all about the Roman Republic.  The second was that, back in 2007, Zoë had taken me to Rome for three days to celebrate my 40th birthday.  Three years later, the Kid was still resentful about being left behind, and wanted to "catch up" with everything we'd seen.  I won't bother to try to determine which of these motivations weighed heavier in his mind.

The trip was made possible by Zoë's amazing mutant power, which allows her to find the best airfares, hotels/apartments anywhere.  As in Barcelona, our savings came at a cost.  We flew Ryan Air, whose seats do not recline, and who nickels-and-dimes you for everything.  The most astonishing thing on sale?  Scratch tickets.  The money goes to charity.  We think it's the employee retirement fund.  Our apartment was roomy and attractive, but on a ground floor / basement, and ended up being rather damp.  Still the prices were right, and the location of the apartment could not be beat.  Right near the Castel Sant' Angelo, on the Roman side of the Tiber, 10 minutes walking from the Piazza Navona.

I will not burden you with a blow-by-blow account which few of you will read anyway.   Those of you with interest, time to waste, or papers to grade, can spend time looking at my Ricardo's Rome Google Map.  There, I have marked everything we saw, and just about everywhere we ate.  You can click on the icons to see our reviews/reactions/advice.  The map is meant to be part journal, part resource for any of you planning your own trip to Rome one day.  For the rest of you, here are the highlights:

• We saw 18 churches, including St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.  For a full list, see the Google Map.  The Sistine Chapel, of course, was sublime.  I found myself very moved by it, just as much as the first time I saw it years ago.  St. Peter's was also spectacular.  It's not beautiful, but stunning.  What caught us all by surprise, however, were the Roman and medieval mosaics that you can see in Rome's oldest churches, like the Basilica of Cosmo & Damiani, or the Basilica of Santa María in Trastevere.  For pics of some of these, see Facebook.  We ended up going from one church to the other, on a mosaic hunt.
• We have long been fascinated by relics.  Not for devotional reasons, since we're all a pretty secular lot, but for the perverse fascination with this sort of fetishism.  We saw loads of cool relics, including the skull of St. Agnes, pieces of the manger, and the teeth of St. Martial.  Then there were the reliquaries containing cool relics that you couldn't see, like the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul, Peter's finger, and pieces from the table of the Last Supper.  Who knows if any of this stuff is actually what people believe it to be, but the ambiguity is one of the things that  make them so fascinating to us.
• We saw ruins.  Lots of ruins.  The Forum, the Palatine Hill, the Baths of Diocletian, etc.  The ruins in Rome proper were stunning, but what made our experience with all this really special was the day trip we took to Ostia Antica.  This was once Rome's port city.  It ended up getting buried by mud and silt over the years, and has now been mostly excavated, allowing you to visit a Roman city, as you do in visiting Pompeii or Herculaneum.  Ostia, though, is not crowded.  Oftentimes we found ourselves alone, wandering among the buildings.   Highlights included the theater, the tavern, the mill, and the latrines.  The Kid and I got to sit on 2000-year-old toilets.  "Sit," that is.  Notice there is no "h" in that word.
• We ate.  No splurge dinners to fancy Rome restaurants.  Just good, solid, affordable Roman food throughout the trip.  Lots of great pasta and pizza, and amazing gelato.  Great carbonara, artichokes in oil, fried zucchini, and some really good desserts involving marzipan, cheese, and fruit.

Now, attentive readers will have noticed a contradiction between the list above and the plans as set out in the first paragraph.  Did we take things slowly?  Relax?  Not at all.  You see, Rome is inexhaustible.  We are not, but we did our darnedest to test the limits.  My hip started to hurt.  Zoë's feet were killing her.  But we had a big fistful of naproxen sodium and we powered on.  Our last day we had an hour to kill before our transportation picked us up, so we went to the Castel Sant' Angelo and slowly, agonizingly trudged up its ramps and stairs to take in the view.  You can't tell from the picture we took there that we are all utterly and completely drained.

The best part of it all?  Witnessing the Kid's enthusiastic and engaged responses to everything.  He was thrilled as he entered the Colosseum (although later he found it a letdown).  He wanted to take pictures of everything in the Egyptian rooms of the Vatican Museums.  He was clearly moved by the Sistine Chapel.  He could not get over the fact that he was walking on the same roads that Roman emperors had walked upon in the Forum.  He wanted to take in every detail of every church.  He learned to distinguish at a snap between Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics.  He developed a preference for Bernini over Borromini.  He loved the pasta and gelato.  All in all, I think we made up for leaving him home three years ago.

The worst part of it all?  Enduring the Kid's enthusiastic and engaged reactions to everything.  Those of you who know my son know what a talker he can be.  Everything he sees and experiences comes accompanied by constant verbal commentary.  Sometimes he has wonderful things to say, like when he walked into a church, looked around, and said, "This is basically a Renaissance church with a Baroque altar, right?"  In our nerdy family, this is like scoring a touchdown.  Sometimes, though when the hour is late, and everyone is tired, it's all a bit too much for Dad with his sore hip and Mom with her aching feet, particularly if the naproxen sodium has begun to wear off.  I'll leave you with one example, a conversation had while exploring the crypt of the St. Peter's Basilica:

Santiago: I was just thinking.  When the Pope signs a check, does he use his Pope name or his real name?

Mom: Who pays for anything with checks these days?

Dad: Please, mi hijito, can you stop talking for the next ten minutes, and just look at the stuff?

Christmas, Come Hell or Highwater

I am writing this as I wait on hold with American Airlines.  This is a favor I am gladly doing for my mother-in-law, who is obviously a most unfortunate holiday traveler, as you will see from this post.  A lesson from the Almighty?  Or just a good ole fashioned cluster-fuck?  You, dear reader, can decide.

Zoë's family – Mother (M), Sister (S), Brother-in-Law (BIL), and Adorable Little Nephew (ALN) – were to join us for Christmas in Madrid.  S and BIL were quite anxious during the week leading up to their departure, because they really did not know how ALN would handle the rigors of transatlantic travel, to Europe no less!  M, meanwhile, was blasé about the whole thing, since she regularly travels to Kenya on trips that involve not just lengthy flights, but overland travel in jeep-like conveyances over dusty roads into remote areas.  The great irony here is that S, BIL and ALN arrived without incident, stroller and pack 'n' play included, while M was cast by the Furies into the traveler's Hell that is also known as Heathrow Airport.  

Day 1 - Having arrived the day before, S, BIL, and ALN were ready to stroll around, have a great lunch, and start getting to know Madrid.  We at "El Fogón de la Abuela," a mom-and-pop restaurant near the Kid's school that makes great croquetas and roasted meats.  M was stuck in a flea-bitten hotel near Heathrow, hoping that they would be able to de-ice planes the next day and get her out of the UK.

Day 2 - More of the same.  Those of us in Madrid were busy discovering how lovely the city is at Christmastime.  The downtown area is decked out in Christmas lights.  There is an enormous electric tree in the Puerta del Sol.  The Plaza Mayor hosts a Christmas market.  We went to the Chocolatería San Ginés to enjoy the best hot chocolate in Madrid, while people at surrounding tables burst out in Christmas carols.  M befriended the random selection of hapless unfortunates who were also stuck in the flea-bitten hotel and tried to scrounge a half-decent meal at the local pub.

Day 3 - In Madrid, more strolling.  A visit to the Prado, where BIL was delighted to see Bosch's Garden of Earlthly Delights and S was thrilled by Goya's Semi-Submerged Dog.  M, meanwhile, paid an outrageous amount of money to a British cabbie to get to lovely Lutton, England, where the airport was up and running, and where she would be able to catch an Easyjet flight out to Madrid the next day.  The hotel in Lutton was equally flea-bitten.  At least it had food, such as it was.  The place close to Heathrow had run out.  

Day 4 - In Madrid, still more strolling about.  A trip along the Gran Vía, culminating in hot chocolate at the overpriced but lovely café of the Círculo de Bellas Artes.  And, finally, in the evening . . . TA DA!!!  The glorious arrival of Zoë's Mother, after a delay of 5 days!!!!!!!!  And how much snow did they get in England?  10cm!!!!!  For the metrically-challenged among you, that is less than 5 inches.  The busiest, most important airport of the capital of what was once the almighty British Empire was utterly paralyzed by fewer than 5 inches of snow.  Wusses.

Day 5 - All together at last!!!  M wanted to go to the Reina Sofía, Madrid's wonderful modern art museum, and we went, because obviously we were going to do whatever she wanted.  She loved the museum, particularly its centerpiece, Picasso's Guernica, and we loved sharing it with her.  We had lunch at a local cheap-eats place, El Lacon, where the chipirones a la plancha (sauteed cuttlefish) were just fabulous.

It was the Kid's birthday, so that night we enjoyed ponche de yema, a type of cake, from the Mallorquina, Madrid's best bakery/pastry shop. 

Day 6 - December 24th.  The big day.  For those of you unfamiliar with Christmas traditions in the Latin world, Christmas Eve is the big celebration, not Christmas day.  We had ordered prepared food from El Corte Inglés, Spain's biggest department store.  For a surprisingly affordable cost, we got lobster bisque, mushroom-stuffed turkey, sauteed mushrooms, and an apple tart.  We added a salad and mashed potatoes, and - voila! - dinner was served.  Well, except for a little incident where we thought that the oven in M's apartment was not working . . . but we solved that.  After dinner and presents, M and I went to midnight mass at San Ginés, one of Madrid's most beautiful and historic old churches.  The beauty of the setting almost made up for the pathetically mechanical mass.  No choir.  No singing.  A priest who seemed like he'd been roused from his bed to say mass, and was eager to get back.  At the end, they did something called "the Adoration of the Child," which involved having everyone line up to kiss the foot of a little statue of the Christ child.  My mother-in-law, a Protestant, was stunned by the idolatry of it all.  I got a kick out of the priest's reassurance to the congregation, "To make this go faster, we have two."  Two Christs, that is.  God forbid that anyone spend any more time than absolutely necessary in church!!

Day 7 - December 25th.  We got together at our house to consume something we had bought at a nearby bakery the day before, with no real certainty of what it was.  It was a baked good, shaped like an anguila (eel) biting its own tail.  It had frosting and came with candied fruit.  It was clearly a special treat, and a sweet one, so we wanted to try it.  The Kid especially, since he is particularly fond of sweet treats.  As it turned out, these anguilas are made of cabello de angel (angel's hair), which is a type of candied squash. That's the filling.  The outside is marzipan, one of the greatest foodstuffs known to human-kind.  I think it's meant to be eaten as a dessert, but we ate it as a breakfast, largely because we had confused it with these other things they were selling at La Mallorquina, called roscos de Navidad.  It was unbelievably sweet, particularly when paired with the candied peaches, cherries, and pears.  By this morning, we had eaten the whole thing.  

Day 8 - Farewell BIL, S, and ALN!!  They flew out this morning.  ALN proved to be a hardy traveler.  He adjusted to the time change with no problem, and was all smiles and giggles about 90% of the time.  He also learned a new trick, napping in his stroller, which we all hope will stick upon his return to the US, since it is very liberating for parents when their 14-month-old does not have to nap in his crib all the time.  

The rest of us went to Toledo, where we had a magical day.  A Toledo trip was what the Kid had wanted to do for his birthday, but we weren't able to because: 1) M had arrived the night before and we had all gotten to bed late; and 2) the Kid had woken up in the middle of the night to vomit all over his bed.  But, it ended up being for the best, because it was rainy on his actual birthday, but sunny on the day we actually went. We took the train, and managed to see both of the medieval synagogues, the little 1000-year-old mosque, before having a superb lunch at the "Taberna Alfileritos." We had a rice dish, some duck spring rolls, roasted lamb and venison, and a wonderful chocolate dessert.  Basically, traditional dishes reinterpreted, very well, along modern lines.  Then it was off to Toledo's magnificent cathedral, and back to Madrid, …

… where my mother-in-law has discovered that her flight to the US has been cancelled.  I am still on hold with American Airlines, more than one hour after beginning this blog post, waiting to see if we can at least get her across the Atlantic tomorrow.  

Done!  American answered just as I finished writing the last sentence.  She is getting out tomorrow!  Going home to Boston!  By way of Dallas/Ft Worth. Arriving at midnight.   At least this time, there should be no flea-bitten hotels, or English food.