The Train to Madrid

It's been a long time since we drove to Madrid. Taking the train is so much more relaxed. The train from Alicante to Atocha Renfe station in the center of Madrid takes only 3 hours and 15 minutes, and there are several to choose from throughout the day. You buy a reserved seat, and you travel in comfort, with plenty of leg room and  free auriculares (earphones) to listen to music or watch a movie. Granted, it is invariably a movie in Spanish, also with Spanish subtitulos, and the subtitles are small enough unless you are sitting in the row immediately in front of the screen that they neither help nor hinder. I was sitting halfway back in Coche 4 and together with the distance and the glare from sun pouring in through the window next to my seat, I couldn't see all that well anyway. Still, I take the opportunity to view a dubbed-in-Spanish movie for free as the opportunity to have a Spanish lesson for free, so I followed along in between looking out the window at the passing scenery at beautiful, rolling hills, sometimes revealing freshly plowed terrain.

It's always interesting to guess what the name of the movie is and where it is from. When the language of a movie changes from its original, the title changes, too, and it usually isn't just a direct translation of the original. I had missed the opening credits, too--just looked up from the book I had been reading for my real Spanish class on Monday and noticed that the screen had switched from black with a DVD logo on it to live action, so I switched the dial from the pleasant American jazz I had been listening to in the background. This movie was about baseball, so I suspected it was originally an American movie. I became more sure when I thought I heard some talk about Carolina del Sur, but I don't know of any baseball team in South Carolina. However, at one point I heard the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, so there was no doubt. I followed the story loosely about a lawyer daughter of an aging man who had been, I gathered, a baseball star earlier in his life, but now was just getting old.

This turned out to be a rather long movie, and we were soon to roll into the end station when the action concluded, without any crescendo, I must say, and the title appeared on the screen: Curvas de la Vida. Now I'm home and I've taken the trouble to use the Internet to find out what it was I saw. To begin with, I hadn't realized that the old thin man I saw in the distance was Clint Eastwood. The movie, in English, is Trouble with the Curve, surprisingly a very recent (2012) film.This review from a Charleston newspaper makes me realize that I missed what was probably the funniest scene in the picture by not seeing the very beginning.

Oh well. I enjoyed practicing my listening skills, and I excuse myself for not recognizing the aging Clint Eastwood from a distance by virtue of the fact that I didn't ever hear his voice--amazing how important the voice is to one's persona, I now think. I also enjoyed the scenery outside the gently rolling train as we made our way through the countryside going toward Madrid, and the sky really was as blue as it shows in the picture above. Next month a high-speed train is supposed to open between Alicante and Madrid--we've seen workers laying tracks and renovating the station for months. It should cut an hour off the trip, and I suppose we will take it once to see what it's like, but I doubt that I will be tempted to pay the assuredly higher price too often. Why do that if it will interfere with my language and film education?

Hotel Amenities

When we first came to Spain, almost ten years ago, we almost always stayed at three- or four-star hotels when we traveled within the country. Even though I have enjoyed many nice hotels in the United States, usually during professional conferences, I was impressed. There was often a huge hot and cold buffet breakfast included, and the amenities in the bathroom did not end with miniature bottles of  shampoo, conditioner, and hand lotion, but also included individual packages of a toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving kits, shoe horns, combs, packs of pañuelos (paper handkerchiefs) and make-up removal cloths. There was a lovely system then, whereby you went to the nearest travel agency, paid 40 or 50 euros up front, and the agency secured your night's stay at a luxury hotel and gave you a voucher to present upon check-in, which, for some reason had to be by 6:00 PM. I think now it was a development plan to help subsidize both the travel agents and the hotels. At any rate, it doesn't seem to exist any more, a casualty, no doubt, of "the crisis" and the widespread use of the Internet. Why go to a travel agent to book a hotel when you have Booking.com and TripAdvisor?

So now we choose our hotel on the Internet, but that is not all that has changed. Prices have gone up considerably. The bountiful breakfast is less bountiful now, and usually it is an added charge--but that's not bad because it's better for the budget and the waistline to go to the nearest café and get a café con leche and a tostada for two or three euros. The amenities are not quite as plentiful or varied as they were in the past, either.

Our requirements now are simply to find lodging in a location that is convenient to get to, regardless of our mode of transportation (which now is often train rather than car) and convenient to where we are going (the airport, embassies, a cultural event, whatever). Location, price, and free wi-fi in the room are the three things we look for now. Lately we have been trying a type of lodging that has always been around, but we had overlooked it: the hostal. The hostal, hostel in English, has improved since the days of congregate dorm-type rooms of our youth. In most hostels one can still rent a bed in a dormitory with a shared bath down the hall, I guess, but you can also rent a private room with its own en-suite bath, a flat-screen TV, air conditioning, and, most importantly, free in-room Internet access. In Spain as in the U.S., it seems that the lower the price of the room, the higher the chance of free access, whereas the higher the price of the room, the more you will be expected to pay for this everyday utility.

This overnight in Madrid we stayed in our third hostal--we used one in Barcelona at Christmas, and another one, in a different part of the city, when we were in Madrid earlier this spring. Both had been perfectly adequate, and this one was, too, especially for 50 euros in the center of the city. It was a large room in an older building, but it had been totally and rather artistically renovated. There was a toilet in a separate room that may have formerly been a closet, a shower (no bathtub) in a different separate "closet," and a sink in the room itself. But there were two large beds with good mattresses and comforters with beautiful and perfectly ironed white covers, both overlooked by a Picasso self-portrait reproduced on the wall, a funky full-length mirror, nice and easily manipulated persiana blinds on the two wide windows, the flat-screen TV, and a view of the fire escape when the blinds were open--but it was a view of a purple-painted fire escape. Then, too, this was as green as any hotel/hostel I have been in. A sign on the wall gave ten tips for sustainability, and they weren't just "throw your towel on the floor if you want a new one; hang it up if you will use it again" in ten languages. Did it even mention saving water? It didn't need to, because the shower stayed on for only ten seconds, though you could then push the handle again and again, as many times as you wanted, but each time you could feel guilty about using water.

Amenities were few--and far between, as one would expect with separate toilet, shower, and hand-wash facilities. If fact, there were none of the usual or formerly usual amenities. Soap and shampoo were provided from a dispenser in the shower room. There wasn't even a hair dryer (waste of electricity, probably). But there was one amenity that I had never had provided in a hotel before. When I went to hide my iPad under the pillow on my bed prior to going out for dinner, I found a soft cloth bag hanging from the rung of the bed frame. Upon inspection, I discovered that it held a tiny package--one handily placed condom.

There was a bag on the other side of the bed, too.

April Showers

The trumpet flower plant, a week ago, before the rains.
© Johannes Bjorner 2013

I woke this Sunday in Spain to the pitter-patter of rain on the rooftop. It was the fourth consecutive day of rain. I don't remember any other time here in which it has rained so long.

Not that it has rained continuously throughout the four days, but it has rained every single one of them, and the feeling and experience of rain has permeated the days. It started late Wednesday, as we were in the midst of our third and final game of petanca, nearing 7:00 in the  evening. The wind was strong and the clouds were darkening. It rained that night, but nevertheless I got up the next morning and put in a load of laundry, because I had managed to stain both my white pirate pants and my favorite white pullover (100% cotton, made in Denmark but purchased years ago at Garnet Hill in Franconia, New Hampshire) with tomato sauce the night before when I was making dinner. By the time the washing machine was done, the clouds were spewing forth with water again.

Friday morning promptly at 5:00 I was awakened with a horrendous clap of thunder, pouring rain, and noisy winds, but it cleared enough by 10:30 that we were able to sit outdoors comfortably in Los Montesinos for the Fourth Friday coffee hour of the tiny American community that we go to each month. By afternoon we had had more rain, more sun, and then more rain, so that Friday afternoon petanca was cancelled. Saturday morning was also gray and wet. By now I had rescued the whitened laundry that I had hung on the outside line and which had experienced at least two extra rinses, and brought it inside to dry. Then, of course, it cleared again and we took advantage of the day to run out to Quesada to buy some birthday cards, wrapping paper, and have a cup of coffee at the Halfway House. It rained much of the afternoon, but I didn't feel bad about that, because I have a big writing project that I wanted to work on, and if you have to be inside on a weekend day, it might as well be raining. This morning I still had words to write, so I didn't object too much when I heard the rain on the rooftop, though it did mean that I wouldn't go to the outdoor market and purchase the week's supply of fruits, vegetables, and frutos secos. Very often, when the weather is gray in the morning, it clears up by 4:00 in the afternoon, so I just planned to work until the sun came out and then we could go out and enjoy what probably would be a brief respite from our cabin fever.

Sure enough, at 3:51 I noticed that the sun was pouring in my office window. It didn't take much longer before we were out the door--but where to? Stores and shopping malls are not open on Sundays, the outdoor market had long since closed, we did not want a late Sunday dinner in a restaurant. So we drove to Los Montesinos, ten minutes or so away, and found that the metal tables and chairs were sitting out front of El Tambalache bar just as you enter town. I thought it was still too cold to sit at a sidewalk table, so we went inside and enjoyed the ambiance of a neighborhood bar on Sunday afternoon. Five or six men were talking noisily at the bar among themselves and the two men who were standing outside at the pass-through window. A soccer game was on the TV, playing silently because separate audio was playing first English, then Spanish pop music. We ordered a vino tinto and tinto de verano (pushing the summer season a little, I thought) and also picked up a small bag of Lay's Artesanas potato chips, fried in 100% olive oil. Today's regional newspaper was lying on the bar, and as we drank we read the news, a nice savings because, although we often buy a newspaper, we never do on Sunday because it costs so much more that day. A front page story told us that 40 liters of hail had fallen per meter during a 15-minute period the day before in Alicante. Also we read that the waiting time for operations from the  public health system has doubled in the last year, due to reductions in staff of medical personnel. The  day's cartoon showed a man asking his doctor whether he would come out [alive, presumably] from his operation. The doctor responded tartly: You´ll be lucky to come into the operation!

We were back home in no more than an hour and it still hasn't started raining again yet, but the newspaper said that the "unsettled" weather would continue in the area until Tuesday. Not a good sign for us, as we leave at 7:00 in the morning to take some friends to the train station in Alicante on their way to embark on a cruise. They, at least, will manage to get out of the rain for awhile. Cruise ships have big indoors.

The Spring Garden

Goldie coming out to enjoy the spring sun and to survey her domain from the front step. 

© Johannes Bjorner 2013

 

A Walk on the Beach

Finally it's spring. Really spring. That delightful season in Spain when it's not too cold and it's not too hot.

Of course, to preserve that delicate balance, you need to change clothing at least three times a day. Today I am putting away my winter clothes and getting out my summer garb. I'm hoping this doesn't put the jinx on the weather, as it usually does when we say "This is the last time we'll need the fire" while we watch TV at night. We haven't had a fire for several evenings now, and I am just about ready to plant the white silk flowers that I bought for that purpose in the black square of the fireplace grate for the summer, but I haven't done it yet, because we may just need that fire again some time.

How many times I need to change clothes each day depends on when I get up. I need long pants and long sleeves for the morning and evening,and even during the day if I am inside the house at my desk or in the kitchen, but after wearing long pants to play petanca in the afternoon a couple times this week, and being too hot, I decided that I really needed to retrieve my 3/4 length pants. Yesterday I cut down on the number of wardrobe changes by staying in bed reading until 11:00 AM. That meant I could put on the one pair of pirate pants that I had kept out of storage for the transition season for the afternoon. I also donned a sleeveless laced tank top, one I had purchased years ago at an arts and craft fair somewhere in New England, which has a matching long-sleeved men's shirt with lacy cut-outs and applique--perfect if there are breezes or too much sun. I was a little cold as I sat at the computer in my office in early afternoon, but I was perfectly dressed when we ventured out mid-afternoon for a drive to the Mediterranean, only ten or fifteen minutes away by car.

Middagsblomster
Photo credit Johannes Bjorner

We parked at La Mata, a neighborhood in the north of Torrevieja, and got out to walk to the beach. There is a boardwalk that stretches along the Mediterranean for several kilometers, and we walked south toward the city. We had been on a stretch of the boardwalk before, but it was a couple years ago. We passed small cafés and chiringuitos as we followed the boardwalk around sand dunes and beach greenery with the magenta middagsblomster and another blue wildflower that I had not seen elsewhere. It was a perfect spring Saturday afternoon. There were several people sunning themselves in swimsuits or just reading in a beach chair. We saw a sailboat. Other people were walking or biking along the boardwalk. We heard lots of Spanish voices, some German, and a very few English. We stopped for a cup of café con leche, and then walked on, and then we turned back and stopped for a caña and tapa, and we watched some real experts playing petanca before we got back to the car at 5:30 or so.

There had been a breeze along the coast, but I was fine in my sleeveless top as long as we stayed in the sun, which was not difficult. When I got home, however, I disappeared upstairs immediately and changed into the slacks and long-sleeved cotton-knit shirt that were still hanging on the side of the dirty clothes basket from the previous evening. After our traditional Saturday evening smørrebrød we settled down for an unusually good Saturday evening of television. Once in awhile I glanced at the empty black hole under the mantel, but we did not light a fire. I did pull a wool blanket over me as we moved into the second hour of the evening's program, however.

Poverty in Spain

The CoastRider, in an especially informative issue dated April 2, put some statistics about poverty in Spain to the faces of distress that we have begun seeing even in our area along the Costa Blanca. The research came from the FOESSA Foundation, the Fomento de Estudios Sociales y de Sociología Aplicada, which was founded in 1965 to provide "the most objective and continuous research possible on the social situation and changes in Spain," according to my reading of its mission statement. I downloaded its 2013 report and looked through it, but because I find economics tough going in any language, I rely mostly on The CoastRider's interpretation:

• 10 million people in Spain--21% of the population--are living in "relative poverty." Relative poverty is defined as having an annual income less than 60% of the national income. A family unit of two adults and two children living in relative poverty live on less than 15,330 euros (about US $20,000).

• There are now 3 million people living in Spain under "extreme poverty." That is 6.4% of the population. Extreme poverty is defined as having an annual income of 30% or less of the national average, or 3,650 euros (about US $4,750).

• A total of 38% of one-parent families are living below the poverty line--11.7% in extreme poverty.

• The percent of households with everyone out of work has grown from 2.5% before the crisis to 10.6% at the end of 2012. That is more than 1.8 million people.

Elsewhere in the issue, the Bank of Spain says that the jobless rate could reach 27% by the end of 2013 and that not until 2014 is "the pace of job destruction ... expected to moderate substantially ... and ... job creation ... begin."

The visible signs of the economic crisis have moved beyond half-finished building projects, empty holiday units, reduced hours of service in medical and government offices, and shuttered or ever-changing cafés, restaurants, and shops. We don't know a lot of Spanish people, but I know two women whose husbands have not worked for two years. One is young enough that he can at least use the time to care for their infant daughter while the mother works; the other is old enough that he will probably never have another job in his lifetime. Another young family is working hard to remain in Spain; she is running the business that had supported them here for several years, but he has had to return to another European Union country for work and is now able to join his family only once a month. We know a retail shop owner who owes two suppliers 15,000 euros and doesn't have it, and is being taken to court--as if that is supposed to produce money from somewhere. We know a middle-aged divorced woman who worked for less than ten years before she lost her job and whose public unemployment benefits have now run out after two years; her former husband had already stopped all financial help. While in Madrid a few weeks ago, we saw numerous street beggars, whom we had rarely seen in the city before. And even down here on the costa, the street musicians who greet you with a cheerful song as you approach the grocery store and always thank you for your change when you come out are singing a little less brightly now and smiling only rarely.

Petanca Tournament

This past Sunday in Spain I did not write here, as I was otherwise occupied--for much longer than I had planned--in the Danish Friends Club's annual mixed doubles petanca tournament. It had been ages since we had played with the full club, as the day for social petanca has changed to one for which we have another arrangement. So we were glad to go out on a Sunday morning and see people who we have not seen for awhile, and play a game or two of petanca.

Wearing the Bronze
Photo courtesy of Danske Venners Klub Torrevieja 2013

It was much more festive than I had anticipated. When we arrived at the early hour of 9:00 AM I was put to work by the crew that had clearly been there for an hour already. My task was to spread the liver paté that someone else had made onto tiny melba toasts. So much for that contribution. By the time I was finished the others had arrived and we were having coffee and liver paté before the schedules for the first round of games between 38 teams were posted. Three teams were to play two games each in that first round. Then there was to be a second round of playoffs before the quarterfinals and the semifinals. But I wasn't really concerned with those. I was just wondering whether there would be time after we were knocked out of competition to sample a hot dog before we scooted off to the Sunday market that closes at about 2:00 PM.

There wasn't. We played and played and played again. And again. And one more time, I think, though I have lost track by now. We made it through to the quarterfinals and the semifinals, ending with a big surprise--the Bronze Medal for third place.

But the best part of it all was that it was a gorgeous sunny spring day. My neck is also bronze from the sun.

Changing Time(s)

I went for my second One to One training session on my new Macintosh computer on Thursday this week at the Apple Store in Nueva Condomina in Murcia. Last time I worked with Miguel, who spoke excellent English. This time I worked with Maria, who claimed "poco ingles," and I was feeling adventurous, so we spoke Spanish. Maria started me out with the various features in the dock. When we looked at the Dashboard, I realized that the clock still showed Cupertino time. That wasn't useful to either one of us, and Maria quickly showed me how to change it to Madrid time.

I think she mentioned something about an alarm clock function, but I must have missed that and only heard her say that she didn't need a despertador to wake up because she had two cats. This I understood right away, as we have one cat, Goldie, who would never permit any other cat competition in the house. Goldie usually awakens us promptly at 6:00 AM to inform us that it is time for us to open the doors so she can go outside to inspect her fiefdom. "Si, entiendo," I said, laughing, "tenemos una gata y ella nos despertamos cada mañana a las 6:00."

'No," said Maria, "my cats have been waking up at 5:00 lately." And that's when I remembered that for the past two mornings, Goldie also had been making her appearance at 5:00.

I took this opportunity to verify with Maria that it was this coming weekend that Spain changes from winter time, the equivalent of standard time, to summer time, the equivalent of the quaintly named Daylight Savings Time (just how, exactly, does DST "save" daylight, where does it store it, and why does it not increase in value over six months of summer, anyway?)

Yes, Maria and I agreed, the cats must sense that we are about to change time.

And so we did, last night, or rather, this morning, at 2:00 AM. Or at the hour at which we went to bed, which was considerably earlier than 2:00 for me. And sure enough, Goldie let us sleep this morning until 7:00 AM on the clock, which was the old standard of 6:00 AM. How considerate of her!

And just as Maria had told me, the time on my new computer changed automatically overnight. That didn't surprise me--Macs are not the only computers that change time automatically as long as you have the right location built in. (What I'm waiting for is one that automatically adjusts to whatever time zone I am in without me having to tell it that I have changed locations.) I am using the new computer to write this blogpost, but it is slow going. Macs have changed considerably in the 15 years since I last used one on a daily basis, and it is going to take me some time to catch up.

Spring Signs and Rituals

There was a gentle rain this Sunday in Spain on Easter morning. I didn't even realize it until I went outside to put towels in the washing machine, but then I saw that the pavement tile was wet and, when I raised the lid on the large plastic garden container that hides the laundry, there was a small spill-off of water. I put the laundry in the washing machine anyway, because I have faith that the sun will come out sometime before the day is over.

If a little rain isn't a sign of spring, I don't know what is. This week has been full of signs, and that seems appropriate, especially as we were approaching Easter, although it was a little early this year.

Early in the week as I was hanging clothing out to dry, I realized that I had a line full of warm socks although I didn't have any on myself that day at all. I haven't switched to sandals yet, but I have started wearing my hole-y "air-conditioned" plastic garden clogs (I have three pairs) that I can wear with or without socks and let my feet air out while still keeping them off cold tile floors.

Forgive me for talking about matters of personal hygiene, but I also shaved my legs for the first time in awhile, since I was putting on what we used to refer to as nylon stockings but what are now (still, I hope) referred to as pantyhose, or tights. The occasion was that concert last weekend, and I wore a skirt with natural-colored stockings and let my legs breathe after their winter hibernation.

I had carefully saved a few spring clothes at the back of my closet when putting away summer things last fall, and I was glad because I have been in to them several times now. A friend told me yesterday that they had spent the previous day doing the summer/winter clothing exchange, so all their winter things were now packed away, seasonal donations had been made, and she had a list of clothing accessories they needed to buy in preparation for their upcoming May cruise, but I haven't taken that big a step yet and I don't have a cruise to prepare for.

Spring travel has started. There have been an unusual number of young children at the cafes and restaurants, and the grocery stores, that we have frequented in the past few days. They are here on spring break, with their parents or without, to visit the grandparents. Or the grandparents have gone home to Scandinavia or the UK to participate in the communions and confirmations, and Easter and other festivities of the spring season, even though both those areas of the world are experiencing anything but spring weather.

Our house has warmed up sufficiently so that we have gone several days without turning on the infrared heating panels that were a major investment last year for the upstairs bedroom and bath. They worked well, and we may add them to a couple other rooms later on this year when we begin to think about colder weather again.We have also gone a couple evenings without using the gas-fired fireplace while watching the news and night-time television. Each time we plunk down the euros for a propane bottle--and the number was just increased again this week so we are now paying almost double what it started out to be when we got the gas heater four years ago, but it is still worth it--one of us says "This is probably the last bottle we will need to buy before the summer." Then I say, "Don't bank on it."

When the cleaners were here last week they vacuumed and rolled the two carpets from the dining room and living room that we use in the winter but which we take up in the summer because they would be way too warm. They were able to get one rug into a giant plastic bag for storage, but the other was too large, and it waits, in the guest bath, for a custom-designed plastic bag arrangement before it can go out for storage.

Speaking of storage, I sat with a friend in our downstairs sun room--the one we pass through whenever we enter or leave the house, and the one in which we eat lunch almost every day, early one evening this week, having a glass of wine. All of a sudden I raised my eyes to the ceiling and there was the last one of the Christmas decorations, dangling from a hook in the ceiling that used to hold a hanging plant that died--obviously because we had failed to raise our eyes and a watering can often enough. There is a Danish song that says "Christmas lasts until Easter," and we certainly held up that tradition this year.

Of course it is just coincidence that in 2013 we changed from "summer time" to "winter time" the night before Easter. That timing didn't make it easy to get to Easter sunrise services, if there were any. Europe always changes to summer time the last weekend in March, and I find it disorienting and mildly annoying that Europe and the U.S. don't participate in this annual spring ritual on the same day, or night.

We participated in my favorite spring tradition yesterday afternoon--we went to Los Montesinos de Tapas in a neighboring town. This is the third or maybe the fourth time we have been to this tapas festival, which is always held on the weekend of Semana Santa, leading up to Easter. This year I remembered it in advance, without even seeing any notice in the newspapers or on posters. As opposed to today, yesterday was warm and sunny and about 90 degrees F. in the sun, and we sat in the sun on the central plaza of Los Montesinos at two different bars, enjoying albondigas (meatballs) at the first and something called La Campesina, a delicious slice of warm ham and red pepper on bread, at the second, with our beers. We thought one more tapa would round out our lunch nicely and were ready to move on when some friends happened by. So we did move on, with them, to another place, where we sat inside because it was too hot in the sun, and talked over a tapa of morcilla (black sausage) on a thin layer of cooked apple, with a hard-boiled quail egg. Delicious!

It's moving on toward 3:30 summer time now. The sky is lightening by the minute but there is still no sun. The clean towels are languishing in the washing machine, and soon I will have to decide whether to move them over to the tumble dryer or hang them on the line. On rainy days in this part of Spain it almost always gets sunny by 4:00 in the afternoon. But does the sun know that we changed the clocks last night? Will it also spring forward so I can make my decision at summer 4:00?

Plaza de Colón, Madrid

We had time to spare last Wednesday, March 20, as we walked along Calle de Serrano in Madrid from the embassy of the United States to the embassy of Denmark, and it was warm and sunny. After locating the Danish embassy we went across the street to the Plaza de Colón, where a number of police or military (it's hard to tell which is which) were standing about. We thought perhaps they were there in preparation for an upcoming political demonstration, as we had previously seen signs in the Metro station that there were planned work stoppages later that day. But no, they said they were there because they raise a large flag one day each month, and they are always there when the flag goes up.

We thought we might as well be there, too, since we just happened to be there on the one day of the month that the flag was raised, and it just happened to be sunny and warm, and there just happened to be an empty table at a cafetería across the street, and we just happened to have plenty of time. So we stopped and had a coffee and a granizado and read the newspaper, and a few minutes after noontime we heard music and saw that an enormous flag was being unfurled. It went up quickly, and then the band marched away and there was no more music. The flag continued flying and every so often was spread out to its full width in a gentle breeze.

All Eyes on Center

Saturday evening we went to our second concert of the weekend; this one was at Torrevieja's new Auditorio Conservatorio Internacional, where we had been only once before, to an inaugural concert in January. In true Spanish style, this concert started at 9:00 PM, and I was a little worried about falling asleep at that hour with a "heavy" program of Mozart's Symphony no. 25 in G Minor, K. 183, and the Requiem, K. 626.

I needn't have worried. Symphony no. 25 is the one played at the beginning scenes of the film Amadeus and is quite lively. You wouldn't expect a Requiem to be lively, but the twelve movements provided more variation than I had expected, and the 75-member chorus plus soloists all combined (with the 50-member orchestra) to keep me not only awake but interested. I am learning, too, that it is always entertaining to watch this young but accomplished orchestra directed by José F. Sánchez in the gorgeous and glorious auditorium of the conservatory.

The conservatory itself is brand new and from all appearances no expense was spared in its decoration, except for whatever it would have cost to put up directional signs.With no ushers to direct you, it is really difficult to find your seat, so we planned on arriving 45 minutes early for the hunt. Although we had been there once before, we did not have seats in the same section this time, but I thought that I remembered that when finding our previous D section on the second floor that we had seen the F section nearby.

No ushers, but the ticket-taker at the door did tell us to go to the second floor, on the right-hand side. We had previously been on the left. Oh well, we went up and found our places, Section F, Row 8, seats 24 and 26, without much trouble. Other people were not so lucky, and up until the lights dimmed there were people milling around looking for 14 and 3 and all sorts of other numbers. We thought we had figured out that the even numbers were on the right of the row and the odd numbers were on the left.

We were correct, but what I had failed to notice was the corollary of that rule. If we were sitting on the aisle in seats numbered 24 and 26, and the odd numbers were toward the left, how far left were they? On the opposite aisle, it turns out, for there was no center aisle. And where does that leave seats numbered 1 and 2? In the center of the row, that's where. You can see it on the plan that I have now found, but which I had not located last night. Keep your eyes on the center of the rows to find 1 and 2. Except on the shorter rows, of course, where there are no seats 1 and 2.

Songs for the 60s

Torrevieja String Ensemble Playing The Beatles ©2013 Johannes Bjorner

Friday was a nice, warm, and sunny day and it was still fairly warm when we left at 5:30 in the afternoon, bound for downtown Torrevieja with three good friends for a round of tapas before going on to a concert at the Palacio de la Música. I had been looking forward to this event ever since I first heard about it on January 6 at another musical performance at the new International Conservatory auditorium of Torrevieja. This was billed as a concert with a string ensemble playing songs of The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. Just the nostalgia trip back to the '60s that I would need in March, as I approached a 60s-something birthday, I had thought then.

We had not been to this concert hall before, and though we found an imposing structure, the auditorium for this concert was surprisingly intimate, seating only 240, and perfect for chamber music such as this. We were in the fourth or fifth row on the main floor and we could see and hear everything, including the expressions on the faces of the musicians.

The string ensemble turned out to be a quintet, with four violins (they were all the same size from my vantage point) and a cello. The concertmaster surprised us all by greeting us, first in Spanish and then in English, saying that the five people on stage were to be playing, but we in the audience were supposed to do the singing. We were, of course, a mixed group of British and Germans and Scandinavians and other northern Europeans, in addition to some Spaniards, and we never really broke out in chorus, but I heard a lot of humming.

One thing I had forgotten about musical performances in Spain, or at least in Torrevieja, is that there are no ushers and, perhaps as a consequence, programs are not distributed. We didn't actually find the printed program until we were leaving the palacio after the concert. There it was, on a table beside the door! During the concert we just listened as each song began and even I was able to identify most tunes before we were in to the second or third measure. Here is the program information that we didn't find until later, reprinted verbatim:

I PARTE

If I Fell . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Bridge Over Troubled Water . . . . . . . . . . . Simon & Garfunquel

Lady Madonna . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Hey Jude . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Let It Be . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Killing Me Softly With His Song . . . . . . . . . . Simon & Garfunquel

Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Get Back . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

II PARTE

And I Loved Her . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Eight Days a Week . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Michelle . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

When I'm Sixty Four . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

I Feel Fine . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

A Hard Day's Night . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

Yellow Submarine . . . . . . . . . . Lennon-McCartney

I had been surprised, when I heard the opening bars of "Killing Me Softly," that it was included in this group, but Johannes and I have a special relationship with this song from years past. At one time he worked at a small company in Massachusetts, where he was responsible for developing circuitry to improve sound quality on a recording device (this was pre-digital recording). "Killing Me Softly" was the test song that had been recorded to use as a quality standard, and its strains were heard several times a day by Johannes and the other personnel in the lab for more than a few months, until everyone wanted to kill the project. And then I heard the story of the trials with this appropriate song for many more years. So when "Killing Me Softly" was played at this concert in Torrevieja it surprised me, but it only added to the nostalgia of the evening. Mind you, this morning I spent an hour or so scouring the Internet to find some relationship between Simon & Garfunkel and "Killing Me Softly With His Song," and I have found none, though I did learn, from several sources besides this one at Wikipedia, that its origins are "disputed."

Whether you were or are a Beatles fan or not, another dimension is added when you hear it from strings and see the pleasure on the faces of a group of musicians as they go through the movements to elicit the sounds. The concertmaster said that this performance was something the group wanted to give the "English community," by which I understand him to mean the multinational immigrant peoples that make up about half of the Torrevieja area population, most of whom are old enough to remember the sounds of the '60s as a part of their youth, many of whom may have learned English from the music, and more than a few of whom have already answered the "When I'm Sixty-Four" question in the affirmative.

It was a lovely evening.

Día del Padre

This coming Tuesday, March 19, is Father's Day in Spain. It is a public holiday. Banks and all the stores will be closed. Father's Day has been celebrated nationally in Spain on this date since 1951. March 19 was chosen because, in the Catholic calendar, it is also the feast day of San José. There is something very fitting about celebrating fatherhood in connection with the person who was the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus, who the world knows as a simple carpenter but who must have been a humble and very accepting father.

El Día del Padre is a little different this year. Since it falls on a Tuesday, the Spanish temptation is to hacer un puente, to make a bridge, from the weekend to the holiday; in other words, to have a long weekend without having to go to work. And the calendar cooperated, for this year January 6, which is Los Reyes, Three Kings Day, or Epiphany, happened to fall on a Sunday, a day that is not normally a work day at all. So workers were "cheated" out of a day off, except that they voted, or decided somehow, to move Reyes to Monday, March 18, the day between the weekend and Día del Padre. Not the actual celebration of Reyes, of course, but the official day off from work. This provides the perfect bridge to a long, long weekend.

That's why I am not having my municipally sponsored Spanish lesson tomorrow morning, because it is the public holiday that workers did not have in January. Signs have been up in the grocery stores saying that they will be open for part of the day on this substitute holiday on Monday, and we are hoping that some professional offices will be open--accountants are what we are after now--but I am betting we will be disappointed. That means we will most likely have to wait until Wednesday to touch base with the accountant, because Tuesday, is definitely a holiday for all, and nothing will be open. Stores and shops will be fined if they are open to conduct business on this day--unless they are in the leisure or hospitality business, that is.

Mothering Sunday

Last Sunday, March 10, was Mothering Sunday in Spain. Or, no, it was Mothering Sunday in the U.K., but given the number of Brits who live in this part of Spain, it may as well have been a Spanish holiday. This year I saw it coming. It seemed like every one of the free weekly newspapers carried big ads, or adverts, as we say here, for special Sunday dinner  menus on Mothering Sunday. No sooner was Valentine's Day out of the way than the adverts started up reminding anyone who cared to think about it that here was another good reason to go out for a sumptuous dinner.

Nevertheless I forgot on the day itself. Last Sunday morning was beautifully sunny and warmer than it had been for several days. Instead of going to our usual outdoor Sunday market, the Zoco, we headed off toward Guardamar and the market on the Lemon Tree Road for a change. It is bigger, and many say the prices are cheaper, and they have a whole different set of small outdoor cafe bars where you can have coffee, wine or beer, English breakfast, German wursts, or all sorts of other food and drink.

We parked at the edge of El Raso urbanization next door and started walking across the first of two or three dirt parking lots toward the market. I was enjoying the sunlight but looking directly into it, so I saw the solitary man coming toward me but I wasn't focused on him any more than that he was walking straight toward us, carrying his market purchases. He called out to me first, "No, they are not for you!" he said jokingly. I must have been smiling more than I thought.

As we approached each other I could see that he had not one but two huge bouquets of flowers in his arms. One was all day lilies, and the other was mixed stems. I don't think he was carrying anything else, though it had seemed, when I first saw him, that his arms were full. And so they were. "These aren't for you," he repeated. "They are for my wife. It's Mothering Sunday today, in Britain, and I'm taking these home to my wife." He obviously was cheerful and anticipating the pleasure his gift would bring. We acknowledged that they were beautiful, exchanged a few more pleasant words, reveled in the beautiful day and loving sentiments, and then moved on in opposite directions.

Later in the day I kept thinking of his enthusiasm, and silently complimented the Brits on making this a day honoring "mothering" rather than "mothers," presumably paying note to all women, and people, who are nourishers of life, rather than only those who may have given it biologically. And then I thought how appropriate it was that the British day to honor mothering was so close to International Women's Day, which had also been celebrated with many special events in Spain that same week, on March 8.

And then I did a little research and discovered how wrong my assumptions had been. This year  Mothering Day was March 10--the closest Sunday to March 8--but it's one of those floating holidays that depend on the natural  calendar, like Easter. In fact, Mothering Sunday is always celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent, and it is because Easter falls so early this year that it happened to coincide with International Women's Day. And that's not all. Mothering Day did not originate to honor mothers or mothering. "Mothering" refers to the "mother church," and the tradition was that on this fourth Sunday in Lent, people who had moved away from the village where they had been born and baptized would go "a-mothering" to their mother church and then enjoy a family visit. The holiday became very important during the years when young people moved from their homes "into service" in mansions at some distance from their homes, and they were given one special day to go home to their families, for they were never given the time to go home on holidays like Christmas or Easter itself. The move from emphasis on Mothering Sunday as a day to go to the home church to a day to honor mothers came about after Mother's Day became a fixture of life in the United States. During World War II, when many U.S. soldiers were stationed in Great Britain, they spread the idea of celebrating their mothers with flowers and cards and remembrance.

Both the BBC and Wikipedia have articles about the origins and current celebrations of Mothering Sunday, but one should also check out the trademarked Mothering-Sunday UK site.

Morning Concerts

Most mornings this week I have awakened to the sound of birds singing. Apparently they nest, or flit around, in the yucca trees outside the sliding glass door of the full-height window leading to the French balcony off the second-story bedroom. That window is shaded first (outside) with the aluminum reja--standard equipment in Spanish houses--that rolls down its full length at night, and second (inside) with the voluminous, heavy, floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall curtains that we installed a year ago to try to offset the effects of no central heating and less-than-tight construction (also standard in Spanish houses).

Still the sound comes in. It's a sign of spring, because one day it's there--and you probably don't notice it then--but the second day--that's when you notice it! On that second day this week it started a little before 7:00 AM. I am not a birder, so I can't tell you what birds are singing and what they are signalling. They chirp, and whistle, and tweet. There seems to be a conversation, and sometimes you can mark movement of the songsters, but I am still too much asleep to get up and part the curtains and roll up the reja to see what they are doing. And of course it is sill dark out at this hour, so it wouldn't do much good even if I did feel like getting up.

So I lie in bed and listen to the bird concert, a whole cacophony of sound from different species, presumably saying different things, or the same thing, but disagreeing, or the same thing in their own dialect. Who knows? It is a beautiful sound, and it lasts for 15 or 20 minutes and then it ceases.

Ten or 15 minutes later it starts up again. What has happened in the meantime? Perhaps the sun is approaching the horizon and warnings need to be given. Another symphony erupts and I lie in bed, tapping solitaires, scanning yesterday's headlines of my top ten newspapers from the Newseum, or catching up on reading from The Economist or (recently) The New Yorker. And then, a few minutes later, it subsides. A few precious encores peep through, but after awhile I recognize that today's bird concert is over.

This Sunday morning I woke a little after 7:00 and welcomed the concert again. I was entertained with peeps and chirps and tweets and whistles and songs for 15 minutes, and then the music lapsed. I waited through the intermission, stepping out only for a trip to the bathroom and downstairs to pick up a cup of coffee, but then, back to bed for the second part of my morning concert.

It never came. I did hear a fear tweets and chirps, much like stray instruments tuning up in between sets, but when the clock moved to after 8:00, I had to recognize that this morning I had slept thorough the first act and intermission, and had only awakened for the second and concluding set. Part of what makes birdsong so unutterably beautiful, I think, is the sheer unexpectedness of it. Even though I made a mental note to try to wake up earlier tomorrow morning, therefore, the best thing will be if I wake up not thinking in advance that I want to catch the morning concert, but that I just hear it.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Many years ago I drove to work early in the morning, leaving my house in Massachusetts before 7:00 AM and driving south along Route 3 and then down Massachusetts Avenue to a parking lot in Cambridge just north of the Charles river. Depending on traffic, it took anywhere from one hour and 15 minutes to 2 hours. I could always gauge my progress early because I listened to the National Public Radio station WGBH, and Robert J. Lurtsema would begin his Morning Pro Musica program promptly at 7:00 with bird songs. I don't think this YouTube rendition is exactly the same thing, but it's a decent substitute.

First of March

March came in like a lamb where I was in Spain last Friday. It was a big change from the day prior, when I had been sitting calmly in the morning writing a lengthy stream-of-consciousness email at my desk while downloading thousands of emails onto a new laptop at my side and hardly noticing that the pitter-patter of light rain had intensified to a heavy downpour. And then I heard a clap of thunder so sudden and so loud and so near that I looked around to see if we were having an earthquake! We were not, but more earth-shattering thunder followed and then I heard the sound of hail on the roof and the terrace floor outside. This was just at the time that Johannes' piano lesson was finishing, but it would have been inhospitable to send anyone out with ice balls falling and water gushing down the street and overflowing the drains, so I went downstairs and joined Johannes and his teacher for a hot cup of coffee while we waited for the rain to stop, or at least let up enough so she could step out the door to her car.

We sat in the living room with coffee, warming ourselves inside and out with the sight and flames of the gas fire when all of a sudden another clap of thunder came and squeezed out the lights. And as the lights died, so, of course, did all electricity and my heart sank as I felt the email that had been on my desktop screen upstairs flow out into the world of no return, because I had been writing on the hard-wired computer instead of the battery-operated laptop. The gas fire stayed on, but my world was a little dimmer than it had been before. I still have not been able to resurrect the consciousness that had been streaming so prodigiously as I wrote while downloading all those email messages from the past three weeks that I didn't really want, but didn't know how to stop the flow.

The piano teacher did go home within the hour, and Thursday afternoon the weather cleared and waters receded enough so we dared drive out to inspect our surroundings (that low spot in the pavement on our access road that we always forget about until it rains must have been overflowing with water when she tried to drive through it). And on Friday morning the sun rose, and the sky was blue, there were no clouds, and no wind.

At 4:30 Friday afternoon it was a glorious day and I drove out alone to meet an American girl friend for a coffee and a long-overdue chat. We had our choice of cafe bars in the plaza of Los Montesinos but we decided to sit inside at Carl's, because the outside tables were in the shade and we wanted to be in this location so that my friend could easily catch her son when he came down that lane from his music lesson. But we sat at a table just inside the open door and next to a window, so we could watch the afternoon fade and the activity in the plaza while we talked. We had a lot to catch up on, and the conversation didn't stop until 6:30, when I needed to leave to drive home to assemble the dinner menu that I had left at the latest possible stage of pre-preparation. My friend is American, but she keeps a Spanish household, so she could have gone on for another hour and a half before going home to start her dinner preparations.

As it turned out, I left at a very good time. At 6:30 or so I made my way out of town with parking lights on, but as I drove the secondary roads toward home, I flicked on the regular driving lights. The sky changed from cerulean blue to shades of orange and red as sunlight found its way around enormous white clouds and then the sun itself slipped behind a cloud and I turned in another direction, and when I drove into Montebello and parked in front of my house, the beautiful early evening sky was replaced by two-story houses, though the view probably extended for several more minutes out in the countryside.

It was a lovely conversation and a lovely drive home.

Car Culture

I don't pay too much attention to car models and features, but I was really impressed last Sunday evening when our friends lifted the hatchback on whatever car they have, which they had backed into the diagonal parking space adjacent to the seaside promenade in the town of Santa Pola. The back seat of their car had been removed or folded down to form a long expanse level with the floor of the trunk, and on this "table" were a single lit candle, a vase holding a fresh red rosebud, a bottle of cava and four glasses, and an assortment of tidbits that I learned later were roast duck breast on homemade croutons. It was the pre-dinner anniversary surprise that our 45-years-married friends had planned not just for themselves, but for us.

The bottle of cava was uncorked in a jiffy; music suddenly sounded--from the car CD-player, probably--and the anniversary couple obliged us with a dance on the promenade in front of the Mediterranean. Spanish passers-by stopped to watch the festivities, and upon being told the story, wished them enhorrabuena. It was a touching and very festive little celebration. This was the ultimate of tailgating, I declared, and I tried to explain to this not-American couple the U.S. custom of tailgating for sports events. I failed, and I know I will never again think of tailgate parties without remembering this one.

It has been a week of thinking about cars. Ours stopped, or rather, failed to start, right out in front of our house early in the week. The starter turned and choked, but it just couldn't start. Well, it could have happened in a worse place; we just went back inside, waited for 15 minutes, came back out, and our Ford Fusion started fine. No more problems for a couple days, but then one morning we stopped to drop off papers, bottles, and containers at the recycling bins on the other side of our urbanization, and by the time we had emptied the bags and climbed back into the car, it refused once more to start. Well, at least we were home in our own development, so this time we pushed the car to the curb, locked it, and walked the four short blocks home.

We had been meaning to get it to service anyway--we knew we needed new refrigerant for the air conditioning--so it suddenly seemed as though making the appointment sooner rather than later would be a good idea. When we went up to the bins after an hour's rest, and once again it started up easily, we drove straight to the repair garage, not wanting to strain our luck for a third time. Alas, no loaner car was available for another week, the following Thursday, and we are, here in Spain, a one-car family. Well, maybe our luck would hold out, we thought. But we have a couple important appointments this week that depend on our getting somewhere at a certain time.

  

Friday morning we both woke up with the same thought. First we drove to our planned coffee date with the small American group we know here, and then we drove in to Torrevieja to the rental agency where we had been such good customers before buying this car four years ago. I stayed in our car with the motor running while Johannes went in to sign the papers for a rental. What a disappointment, though--there were no rentals available! Fortunately we did not drive very far toward home before we found another rental agency. This one had a car to rent. Again, I stayed in our car with the motor running while Johannes went in to do the paper work. Forty-five minutes later (!) we were on our way again, this time straight to the garage, which was happy to get this job ahead of schedule and has tentatively estimated that we should get ours back on Tuesday.

That will be nice, and in addition to diagnosing and fixing the starter situation, they are going to fix the a/c and mount four new tires. We are reminded, especially as we see news of the driving and parking problems in the snow-covered northeast U.S., how little time we spend worrying about our car here--and how little money is spent on maintenance and repairs (not true, though, of the initial cost and gasoline). We never have to think about antifreeze or the effects of salt on the roadways, and even the occasional dusting of Sahara sand that floats over with the rain can be washed off at the one-euro car wash down the street.

For now, though, we don't have to think about washing a rental car, and while we wait for the six-year-old Ford to look and act like new again, we can enjoy the experience of trying out a make that is brand new for me. I would have been happy if we could have rented a smart car, as none of the appointments we have this week involve trips to the airport of carrying friends around, but we didn't have that choice. What was available on no notice was a Tata Vista. That is serving us well, and contrary to what I expected from what I had heard was a "basic" Indian car, this one is at least as large inside as our Ford Fusion. But I am not planning any tailgating party.

Happy Anniversary!

Later today we are going to the seaside town of Santa Pola, to have dinner with Danish friends in an Argentine restaurant run by an Argentine of Danish parentage. It is our friends' 45th wedding anniversary, something that we find hard to believe because they don't seem old enough to have been married for 45 years, but since this year we will also celebrate our own 45th wedding anniversary, if all goes well, I suppose it is possible.

Thursday of this week, which was also Valentine's Day, dawned as a perfect day: sunny, the warmest we have had, and none of the strong winds that have blown through lately. I did a little work and then needed a break from the computer. So did Johannes, so we set out for a drive, and since we knew we would be going to this restaurant later this week but were not sure exactly where it was, we headed the car north to scout out the area.

It's a good thing we did, because Gloria Pérez Sanchez, our GPS lady, seems to have lost her good will and doesn't want to work for us any more. After a couple starts and stops, we found ourselves in the town of Santa Pola, but without any idea of how to find the restaurant. We stopped a couple times to ask directions, and since we were hungry but were nowhere near any restaurant except McDonald's, we ended up having chicken sandwiches at McDonald's for Valentine's lunch. Ironic, since I had not made it to a McDonald's during the three weeks I was in the U.S., and had even held myself back from the one in the Madrid airport, where I am often tempted to have breakfast when I come in from an overnight transatlantic flight and have to wait hours for my flight to Alicante. Here in the Santa Pola McDonald's, we were not alone, and a young couple who knew something of the area directed us to Calle de Mar, taking into account the one-way streets that had always forced us into detours from which we could never escape. We eventually found the restaurant and also the way out of town again, and look forward to meeting our friends there this evening.

It did not occur to me then, but it has since, that this blog, Sundays in Spain, was born in Santa Pola several years ago. I've done some homework during the week and re-discovered my first post, "Al mal tiempo buena cara." That was on October 12, 2008 and spoke of our experience in a small Santa Pola restaurant watching the other diners, one group of whom turned out to be a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, their boda de oro. Fifty years is just five years beyond 45, of course, and I realize now that I have been writing this blog for nearly five years--225 posts--and it doesn't seem all that long. We just might make it to 50.

In the meantime, happy anniversary to all who have any number of years and any occasion to celebrate.

Settling In Again

It has now been just a little over a week that I have been back in Spain, and during that time I have been doing slowly the things I customarily do when I return from my jaunts to the U.S. It wasn't until today that I could get up and say that I had had a normal night's rest--I went to sleep at 11:00 and woke up naturally at 7:00. Every other night in the week I had been awake long into the night, and often took a sleep-inducing PM medication at 2:00 or 3:00 AM, before sleeping until 9:00 AM--unheard of for me normally.

I unpacked two suitcases and received the usual greetings from the TSA, who I have now figured out are not particularly interested in the vitamins, Triscuits, and other curiosities I bring back from home, but do take account of the computer that I pack in the middle of a suitcase so as not to have to display it at various security checkpoints. I managed to get things out of my luggage and move the suitcases to storage a lot earlier than I usually do, though not everything got put away in its proper place until today, and there are still some papers to go through.

I washed clothing. I did not come home with a lot of dirty laundry but a bunch had certainly accumulated in my absence. Fortunately we have been blessed with mostly sunny and surprisingly warm days this week, so hanging clothes out to dry has been a pleasure.

I visited the Sunday outdoor market and my two favorite grocery stores and replenished the refrigerator and freezer with fruits and vegetables for our lunches, and the few frozen dinner items I keep on hand for the evenings when I do not feel like cooking. And I used two of those dinner items (San Jacobos and bollas de patata) last night.

I went to my group Spanish class on Monday and to petanca with the Danes on Tuesday, and our book group held its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, so in a single week I saw almost all the people in my face-to-face social network. Still remaining is my Danish Spanish teacher, who was under the weather with a recurring cold, but I will see her tomorrow. The small American group also awaits the "Fourth Friday" coffee, but that will be this coming Friday.

I also saw my hairdresser and the optician, to cut off the hair that had grown in the last six weeks and partially replace the eyeglasses I had inadvertently left at my sister's in Cincinnati. I had had it on my agenda to replace those glasses, so this "emergency" made me do it a little quicker than I would have otherwise, and now I am trying to get used to new distance glasses--I gave up on the dream of "three-in-one" distance/reading/sun glasses, which after a year did not do any function really well.

Somehow I also managed to get some professional work done, putting in several hours on the web and with editing, and writing and sending an overdue article that my ever-patient editor greeted with the words "Worth the wait"!

And then I spent all day yesterday reading travel books, chasing down websites, and then making airline reservations for a combined business-vacation trip in August this year! I would have liked to delay this activity and not even think about going off again until I was more settled, but half the world has vacation in August, so it was imperative to get the reservations nailed down while they were still available. But now I can put those notations away and not be concerned with them for another few months, except when I may begin to sense that it has been too long since I had a little adventure outside the routine.

Carnival

Last night much of the world celebrated Chinese New Year, but in Cádiz, Spain, they celebrated Carnaval. It is a vibrant, colorful, noisy celebration that lasts days (and nights), just as Mardi Gras does in New Orleans, and Carnival does in Rio de Janeiro.

Easter, and therefore Carnaval, comes early this year. I was reminded of it by my seatmate-once-removed (blessings abound whenever there is an empty seat between you and the next person on a plane) between New York and Madrid. She was on her way to Cádiz to celebrate and, I believe, speak at one of the events of the carnaval. Her father, an anthropologist, had passed a sabbatical in a town near Cádiz back in the 1950s; he and his family returned several times over the years, and lived there for long periods of time, so this was a homecoming for my fellow traveler.  Jerome Mintz wrote two books about this part of Spain. The Anarchists of Casas Viejas, originally published in 1983, is a classic oral history and analysis of an incident in the small town of Casas Viejas that happened in Civil War-era Spain and the subsequent Franco dictatorship; it was reissued by Indiana University Press in 2004. Carnival Song and Society: Gossip, Sexuality and Creativity in Andalusia, published in 1997, describes, primarily the songs of carnival and how they evolved from the mid-1960s (still under Franco) through to 1990. Both these books are now on my reading list.

You can get a flavor of the 2013 Carnaval in Cádiz and the importance of the satirical songs here in several clips from El Huffington Post.

A Taste of Tucson

Saguaro cactus,by Gentry George, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

 For three weeks I have been criss-crossing the United States: first in Cincinnati after a layover in JFK airport, then in Seattle via Chicago, then in Tucson after landing in the Phoenix airport, then back to Cincinnati by way of Dallas, and finally back to Madrid and Alicante, through JFK, skirting the snowstorm that battered the northeast and reminded me of the 1978 blizzard. I often find Spanish influences as I pass through my home country, but this time I found even more.

I was enchanted with Tucson, where it seems that half the streets have Spanish names--but not like those on the Spanish streets here, which are often named after cultural and political personages. These names focus more on geographical and topological features. Paseo del Arenal was my headquarters, though the official mailing address is N. Paseo del Arenal, I was told, and I wondered whether that would be Paseo del Arenal Norte or North Paseo del Arenal. In either case, when we ventured out by foot from that nominally sandy area, we encountered other street names that I was happy to be able to recognize: Paseo del Suelo (ground), Paseo de la Cumbre (summit), Paseo del Cenador (arbor, though my first recognition was dining room--probably not the meaning on this street sign), Paseo de la Pereza (laziness, or slowness--perhaps this street was on the way to the cumbre) and Paseo Sereno (not only calm, but also clear or with night dew, I found out when checking my dictionary, but we did not walk there at night, so I don't know).

As we drove I also spied caminos, which seemed to be substantial roads in Tucson, not like the little unnamed service roads, often dead-end, that I see here in Spain. We found mesas and parques and palos verdes and sahuaro, which seems to be a phonetic re-spelling of the characteristic saguaro cactus. I saw lots of cacti at Sabino Canyon, a part of Coronado National Forest, and at Saguaro National Park, as well as a stunning nature video. The Sonoran Desert in Arizona is very different from the Tabernas Desert in Almeria, Spain and provides much more pleasant and varied vistas, and better interpretation.

The Sonoran Desert stretches from Mexico into Arizona--Tucson is only about an hour's drive from the Mexican border--and of course the Spanish influence in Tucson is Mexican, not Spanish-from-Spain. (All the better for the wonderful "modern Mexican" food we sampled at Blanco at La Encantada mall.) There is also a notable American Indian influence, as the area is inhabited by the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and the Tohono O'Odham Nation. There is much more to see on a subsequent visit.

Strawberries in January

We get lots of fresh fruit at all times of the year, but there are noticeable seasons. Lemons and oranges have started appearing in large bags at cheap prices (one euro for a dozen or so lemons) at the Sunday Zoco market now, and indeed, we can see farmers harvesting them all around us. We have even harvested a few lemons from our own tree. I realized recently that it had been ages since I had seen a strawberry, but this morning at the Zoco, while I was buying bananas and grapes, the fruit handler was practically forcing a large, ripe strawberry into Johannes' mouth, so before I knew it, we had a few strawberries, as well.

Since I am rarely in the U.S. during strawberry season, I don't know whether American strawberries have gotten as large as those here in Spain. The ones purchased today are about two inches in height (or length--how does one measure a strawberry?). Two were sufficient to dice onto the top of our lunchtime fruit salad. They were delicious, but I think they will be even sweeter as the season progresses.

I wonder about the size of U.S. strawberries, because, coincidentally just this morning I was reading an article in The CoastRider, one of the newsier free weeklies, that said "Spanish robotics firm takes US by storm." The Agrobot company, based in Huelva, reportedly has successfully tested a prototype strawberry picking robot in Watsonville, California "where 40% of the State's strawberries are produced" and now is planning the manufacture of strawberry pickers in the U.S. Apparently the robots are able to function flexibly enough that size doesn't matter. Harvesting costs for "fresh" strawberries are reduced 50% with the robot and 90% for the "industrial" strawberries that are used for purees and yoghurts.

It is wonderful to read about a success for Spanish industry.

New Year - Kings Concert

Last week's concert by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Torrevieja was a joyful and spirited occasion. The printed program, as opposed to the tickets, dubbed it "Concierto Año Nuevo - Reyes" but, in English, just "New Year's Concert." The program was reminiscent of what to the English and presumably German-speaking population is a traditional New Year's concert, similar to the one shown on PBS by the Vienna Philharmonic on New Year's Day, though this orchestra has been playing together for far less time--just four years. Here is what we heard:

Programa

I Parte

La Revoltosa (Preludio) ....... R. Chapi

Marcha Española Op. 433 ....... J. Strauss

Danza Hungaras No. 5 ....... J. Brahms

Pizzicato Polka ....... Johan y Josef Strauss

Marcha Persa Op. 289 ....... J. Strauss

Vals de la Bella Durmiente ....... P. I. Tchaikovsky

Tik-Tak, Polka Op. 365 ....... J. Strauss

Auf der Jagd Op. 373 ....... J. Strauss

II Parte

La Dolores (Jota) ....... T. Bretón (Solista: Francisco Moreno)

Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka Op. 214 ....... J. Strauss

Vals del Emperador Op. 437 ....... J. Strauss

Champagner Galop Op. 14 ....... H. C. Lumbye

Vals del Danubio Azul Op. 314 ....... J. Strauss

Plus three encore pieces, whose names I don't know but whose melodies were just as recognizable as most of those above.

The new auditorium at the International Conservatory of Music in Torrevieja is elegant and seemed to provide excellent seating for almost all of the 1400 attendees, though there was a mad scramble to find seats in the three-level facility, since ushers were non-existent and signage was minimal. The orchestra, which was just loaning the facility, was so good that the next day we accepted their invitation to become sponsors, paid our money, and thus will be notified ahead of time of upcoming concerts and special functions. Since we had made our way innocently, while exploring the building, into the champagne reception for members only during the intermission, it was the least we could do. The next concert is scheduled for March, Mozart's Requiem.

Happy New Year - Feliz Reyes

Santa's Job is Finished, ©Johannes Bjorner 2009

Today in Spain is not just Sunday. It is the Twelfth Day of Christmas and the Reyes Magos, the Three Kings, have finally arrived in Spain from the Orient to give children their holiday gifts. True, in today's multicultural Spain, many children get gifts from Papa Noël on the 25th of December as well as from the Three Kings on January 6. Since we don't have children, we don't make a fuss over Reyes but I usually aim for this day as the day to finish removal of the Christmas decorations. One of the joys of living in a country that celebrates Reyes is that you don't have to take down holiday decorations on New Year's Day. That's especially good, since I am usually later than normal in getting them up.

I have been collecting the different items from various rooms for the past two or three days, washing the linens in preparation for packing them away until next year, making the decision to throw out a couple that no longer amuse me or that have gotten torn or broken, and generally assembling them in one place, ready to put in boxes. Later today I will put them in boxes, but I won't put the boxes away just yet. I still need to wait a couple days, looking high and low, literally, to find those that have escaped my glance even though I tried to be systematic about collecting them--and seeing what comes up in the laundry over the next day or two.

We are celebrating the day this year, however, by going to a concert, a Concierto Extraordianario de Reyes, performed by the Ars Aetheria orchestra in the auditorium of the new Conservatorio Internacional de Música of Torrevieja. We will hear Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms, according to the announcement that we saw this morning in one of the Norwegian free newspapers. If all goes well, we will also hear a Danish classic, The Champagne Galop, by Hans Christian Lumbye, which begins with the sound of a champagne cork being released from a bottle. That must be why the foreign press is announcing this concert as a New Year's concert. The tickets, however, say it is a Reyes concert. The Spaniards won't fight a battle over this, because any day is a fine day for  hearing the pop of a cork from a bottle of good Spanish cava.

Here through YouTube is Champagnegaloppen played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Feliz Reyes and Happy New Year!

Happy Books

Inside Happy Books, ©Johannes Bjorner 2012

One of the unexpected pleasures we had in Barcelona was stumbling upon a store called Happy Books. Given the name and the bright colors of children's books and cookbooks on display in bins out front, I thought at first that it was a bookstore for light reading only. The store was crowded (this was the Sunday before Christmas) but we made our way in to browse, and then we went farther and farther in. True, I found a good share of light reading (pizza cookbooks in a circular shape, for example) and young adult books (YA classic editions of literature from around the world, including Lazarillo de Tormes, a Spanish classic that I had read part of). As I got farther in, however, through room after room leading to the next, I found many forms of enlightenment. The clean, modern architecture gave way to older, more historic, and beautifully restored stone and brick arches--but still with excellent lighting. We browsed for a long time, and we stood in line to make a purchase. As we left I asked if the store was open tomorrow (Christmas Eve day). We were happy to hear that it was.

But we never got back to Happy Books, because later that evening we discovered Casa del Libro just a few steps down from our hostal on the Rambla. Another large bookstore, with sections for English and French and German books, in addition to Spanish. By this time it was ready to close, so we went back there the next day. Twice, as I recall--once early in the morning and then again later at night. We are obviously starved for the ambiance of large, well-equipped bookstores, and I am glad that by now in my stay in Spain I have gotten to the point where I can browse and buy comfortably in Spanish. We left eventually without all the books we wanted--size of luggage being one consideration, but also the realization that while some things look compelling when on holiday with loads of time looming, they too often lie languishing when you return to everyday life and have lots of other things to do.

Yesterday, however, we were suddenly "in need" of a travel book, or at least in need of browsing some travel books. Lo and behold, and thanks to the Web, we found that Casa del Libro has many casas, and one of them is in Alicante city. It was a beautiful, warm day for a drive, so off we went. As we approached our destination we found a parking lot with no difficulty and dived in--the rule in Alicante being to "park first, then walk."  We set off on foot for the store and found it with only a little backtracking. We browsed for an hour, and limited ourselves to one selection. "Should it be wrapped?" I was asked at the cashiers, because everyone else was buying gifts for the Reyes Magos to deliver that evening. The Three Kings bypassed our house last night, and that's just as well, because we have already had a very full holiday season, planned and unplanned. One of the unexpected pleasures of the new year is the discovery of a good multilingual bookstore within an hour's drive of our house. And close to a fine little restaurant we had seen during the walk from the garage, where we treated ourselves to the menu del dia, a larger-than-normal luncheon for us, which made the day all the more enjoyable.