Segovia and Ávila

Silica gel of the Magdalen

File this entry under "idle musings and random connections".

Observation # 1: Each time you buy a new suitcase, or other luggage-type item, it is invariably accompanied by a little packet of something, which I believe to be silica gel. The little packet comes with the inevitable warning "do not ingest", and presumably is included for its desiccant (sp?) properties, as a preventative against mold and mildew.

Observation # 2: Yesterday, while roaming the aisles of the recently-discovered neighborhood supermarket, I yielded to temptation and bought a package of something called "magdalenas cuadradas" (square magdalens), which bore a strong superficial resemblance to the kind of item one might consume as accompaniment to one's morning café con leche. Boy, was I fooled. Upon biting into this "baked good" (a misnomer if ever there was one), the immediate result was to have it suck all of the moisture from my mouth, effect a temporary shutdown of my salivary glands, and send me reeling towards the fridge in search of some resuscitating agua mineral.

Hence my suggestion: a synergistic merger between the producers of silica gel and Grupo "El Arbol", producers of aforementioned magdalenas cuadradas. Though, come to think of it, perhaps the name "El Arbol" should have been warning enough of the ligneous properties of this particular attack on the palate.

Observation # 3: Baked "goods" do not represent the summit of the eSpanish culinary arts.

The plain people of Ireland: Here, what's all this? Nothing for weeks, and now this kind of random rubbish? Has the sun addled your brains?
The management: Very possibly yes. But it's been an exhausting week. I promise to be more focused for the rest of my stay.
The plain people of Ireland: Oh, fair enough so. Carry on!

Kafka on the beach

It seems to me that, if one finds an image of Kafka on the beach, one has a certain obligation to share it with one's readers.

This picture is brought to you courtesy of my Table Talk amigos at Salon.com. Enjoy.

(No, I don´t know who the gentleman on the left might be).

Lesson learned

So, I had a wonderful time during my week at home in San Francisco. Got to catch up with many of my friends (though not as many as I would have liked), spent time hanging out with the kitties, got to see some of my favorite TV programs. One of the things I do miss aquí en España is being able to watch "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" nightly (it's a sad commentary on the state of American news reporting that by far the best summary of current events is available in two satirical programs on the Comedy Channel: nothing can compare with the genius of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who seem to go from strength to strength).

Spanish TV news is, in comparison, a complete disaster, a sort of hyped-up version of typical local news reporting in the U.S. Earlier in the week each of the students in my class made a promise to one of our teachers to try to watch at least two hours of Spanish TV daily. A promise which I, for one, am already regretting, as I don't think it's possible to keep it without risking permanent brain damage. So I am reinterpreting the terms of the bargain with an emphasis on "trying to watch", rather than actually watching.

In my last post I mentioned that the trip from San Francisco was "arduous". With the benefit of hindsight, I have only myself to blame for this. Given a flight leaving San Francisco at 7am on a Sunday morning, arriving in Madrid the next morning at 9am, it probably wasn't the smartest strategy to stay up late Friday night (until 3am Saturday morning), then skip sleep altogether on Saturday night (because I had to leave for the airport at 4.30am), then lose Sunday night altogether to the time difference. By the time I got back to the apartment in Madrid, around mid-morning on Monday, the idea of packing and getting the bus to Salamanca that same day was quite obviously absurd. So instead I slept for about 18 hours straight, finally rousing myself at 7am on Tuesday to face the task of packing everything into my two (medium-sized) bags. I just thank my stars that I had this option, having paid for the apartment in Madrid through the end of July.

Note to self: stop buying books. They weigh a goddamned ton. Although I did manage to squeeze everything into the two bags, I was barely able to lift them, due to the assorted dictionaries, textbooks, reference materials etc. that I seem to have managed to accumulate in the past four months. And suffering cardiac arrest in the midday heat of a Madrid bus station would really be a terrible way to go. So before I move again, all of my books (barring, perhaps, a small dictionary) will have been shipped back to San Francisco.

However, I did manage to make the 2pm bus to Salamanca on Tuesday, and arrived at the school around 5pm, in the searing heat of the afternoon, laden like a pack animal, but otherwise none the worse for wear. I am now safely ensconced in the enormous, relatively expensive, hideously ugly, but very comfortable apartment owned by Don Quijote, two doors down from the school. So I certainly have no excuse for being late for class while here in Salamanca.

Lesson learned for future legs of this trip, and for all future trips:

• Travel light.
• If you can't learn to do without all those books (and apparently I can't), ship them separately.

Aquí estoy

Just to let everyone know: I am here, in Salamanca, safe and sound. A little travel-weary, but presumably that's all part of the experience.

What is Salamanca like? Two words come to mind - old and picturesque. Extraordinarily picturesque. Here is a picture of the Plaza Mayor, to give you an idea

It is also teeming with students, of assorted nationalities. The kind of town which has bars rejoicing in names like "The Irish Rover". Where, regrettably, they sponsor toga parties. Which, you will be glad to hear, I avoid like the plague.

I will have more to tell about Salamanca in subsequent posts. Also more about my journey from San Francisco to Salamanca. Which was, in a word, arduous.

But aquí estoy. Y muy feliz.

Hasta pronto.

Plans

I don't delude myself that anyone is paying really close attention, but anyone who might be tracking such matters will recognize that tomorrow ends my planned 12 weeks of classes here in Madrid. Given that my beginning level in Granada was B1 (beginning intermediate) and that I have been in level C2 (the highest level) for several weeks now, feeling less and less like an impostor, I think it is safe to say that I've learned quite a bit during my time in Madrid.

Not to mention that I've had a blast doing so, while managing to see a fair bit of the city as well. There are, of course, things I didn't manage to do (that trip to Toledo, for instance, or going to the opera, or visiting the Palacio Real), but this is all to the good as it surely means I will come back again. It's a terrific city, with a distinctly different atmosphere than that in Andalucía or Barcelona, and I think spending the best part of 3 months here was an excellent idea. It's nice to be around long enough to have one's regular breakfast spot (Faborit, on the Calle Alcala), a few lunch places where they get to know you as a regular (a shout out to the folks at "Root" on the Calle Virgen de los Peligros, who were always nothing less than amable and would help me with vocabulary questions whenever they had a spare minute).

What next? Well, it turns out that when I made my original plans, I wasn't paying close enough attention to the fact that 3 months equals 13 weeks, not 12. So my time in Salamanca is not slated to start until a week from Monday, leaving me next week free of classes. So I decided earlier in the month, with the very gracious cooperation of my housesitters in San Francisco, to use the week to fly back to San Francisco and catch up on things there for a bit. Accordingly, I fly out tomorrow (Madrid - Filadelfia - San Francisco), arriving Friday evening local time, and will fly back to Madrid, leaving Sunday July 29th, arriving back in Madrid on the morning of Monday July 30th. From where I will take a bus to Salamanca later that day.

There, because I am nothing if not goal-oriented, I will spend 4 weeks taking the preparatory class for an exam called the DELE (Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera), and take the exam itself on August 24th. After which there is no further plan, except that if I don't get to Ireland some time reasonably soon, a whole bunch of folks there are going to be justifiably annoyed, so I imagine that is where I will end up in late August and early September.

And now, you will have to excuse me. I need to start packing. The brand-new maleta, purchased just this afternoon at El Corte Inglés, should come in very useful.

Anyone in the Bay Area reading this is heartily invited to give me a ring (my number is in the San Francisco directory) to catch up, either in phone or in person, next week. Or send me an e-mail. After four months away, I'm dying to catch up with everyone. Assuming people can tear themselves away from the final Harry Potter tome.

So I won't be blogging a whole lot next week. Because I hope to be seeing many of you in person.

David

La grúa y la jirafa

The crane and the giraffe (animated short)

Meadowlands

This afternoon I went to the Prado. Where there is, frankly, an overwhelming amount of art. But I did manage to claw my way through the crowds to see "Las Meninas" (above). Which was larger than I had expected. Silent contemplation was not an option, however.

Overall, I have to say that I prefer Goya to Velazquez. Though that picture of Saturn devouring his son is unabashedly creepy. Not included here, to avoid giving my readers nightmares, though I encourage you to search for it on the web, as it is a very powerful image.

Previous entries have established beyond doubt that I am a lousy writer about art. So I will close this entry here.

The Prado: it's the Louvre of Madrid. Well worth a bisit.

The suite life

Regular readers of this blog will recall a certain amount of gloating a couple of weeks ago, occasioned by my having moved into the fancy suite here at Calle Valverde 32 (4º, izq). Gloating is, of course, always unattractive. More to the point, it is also highly unwise. I realize that now. Because, while the Greek gods may have fallen out of fashion, they are hardly out of work. Eternally s(c)ouring the globe (I personally imagine Hermes as a UPS man) for evidence of hubris, a gloating human somewhere, needing to be taken down a peg or two.

Ot to make my point using a different cliché, be careful what you wish for. Recall, that when I was waxing rhapsodic about the virtues of the suite, one photograph adduced as supporting evidence was the following:



Yes, the delightful "view from the suite, onto the street below". Aye, gentle readers, there's the rub. Let's try adding a few appropriate adjectival phrases to that previous sentence.
"onto the incredibly noisy street, populated by loud, drunken pedestrians and garbage trucks that would raise the dead that pass by at all hours of the morning".

So there's that. A little bit of a noise problem. Which can be addressed, at least in part, by shutting the windows ( a reasonably tight seal) and the heavy wooden shutters. Except that this strategy leads to a little bit of a heat problem at night. Causing the kind of sweaty tossing and turning that is wholly unconducive to getting a good night's sleep.

God, I barely remember what a good night's sleep feels like.

But tonight I have a plan. I have my specially purchased earplugs from the Farmácia, and intend to use them. So that instead of tossing and turning, worrying about balancing the heat and the noise, I can instead toss and turn, obsessing about being unable to get the earplugs out of my ears ever again. Because you know I will. Obsess, that is.

I wonder if Spanish sign language is very different from American sign language?

Good night, gentle readers. Sleep tight.

Seated in the Courtyard in the Alhambra

From A FAR ROCKAWAY OF THE HEART

#76 Seated in the Courtyard in the Alhambra

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


In the gardens of the Alhambra
I stole a small orange and ate it
The pulp dry and bitter
and the juice
(acrid as an arab driven from his land)
made a desert of my mouth
and shriveled up my tongue
in the Sultan's last revenge
And I fell upon the ground
in a deep swoon
Deep as the duende
in a gypsy's keening

Candle Hat

Candle Hat

by Billy Collins

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:

Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,

Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,

Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather

from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror

and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio

addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew

we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head

which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,

a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like

to be wearing such a chandelier on your head

as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read

any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him

lighting the candles one by one, then placing

the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,

the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house

with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door

one dark night in the hill country of Spain.

"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"

as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,

illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.

Bourbon and water

Little baby Sofía was baptised yesterday. That's her, wearing the same christening outfit her sister and her daddy wore in their day. The baptismal font is also some kind of ancient relic, as is the arzebispo cardinal of Madrid. According to my reliable sources, the water in the baptismal font came straight from the river Jordan (insert lame joke about being flown in by Jordan-Air here ad lib).




Here is the Infanta, along with her older sister Leonor (ahead of her in the succession line), her parents and her grandparents. The lady in the pantsuit, holding Leonor, is the queen. Far left and far right are Doña Letizia's parents. Presumably glad that their daughter is adding a bit of variety to the Bourbon gene pool. Interestingly, Letizia's mother and father are now divorced, and her dad has found himself a new trophy wife. For purposes of official photographs, however, aforementioned new trophy wife simply does not exist.


Who have we here? You don't really want all the details, do you? Oh, very well. Back row - assorted duques of hazzard (i.e. the Príncipe's two older sisters and their aristocratty husbands); brunette in the back row is Letizia's sister. Joining the parents and grandparents in the front row are the surviving great-grandparents, all on Letizia's side. Letizia's maternal grandmother seems to have color-coordinated her outfit with the queen. Front row, assorted royal brats (I mean cousins, of course), future Eurotrash. The kid on the right is called Froílan, or something equally improbable.

And with this charming picture of Leonor and the new Christian, we will have to leave things for today. Even my saturation point has been reached. A little Bourbon goes a long way, especially when diluted with water.

Six wives and nine lives

Strindberg and Helium

Possibly my favorite website ever:

http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/absinthe.html
http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/park.html
http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/iron.html
http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/home.html

Of pride and the fall

So this evening, for dinner, I went back to the ribs place. I had bought my copy of El País, and alternated during dinner between reading what the Spaniards think of David Foster Wallace's latest offering "Hablamos de Langostas" (Consider the Lobster) and watching the E-Spanish bersion of that ever-popular American TV staple - the woman who is so fat that she is unable to get out of bed. Parenthetical note - by American standards, the E-spanish señora was a mere piker, weighing in at a puny 210 kg, not even coming close to the 500-pound mark; they don't even pay attention on the Maury Povitch show unless someone is at least 900 lb and needs assistance breaking down the wall of the trailer in order to get out of bed.

Anyway, the ribs were juicy, the waiter was friendly, helping me with vocabulary words, and I was feeling pretty good about my life in general, and my Spanish knowledge in particular. Can you spell P - R - I - D - E ?

The waiter returns with the dessert menu. Nothing piques my appetite, so I decide instead to have a liqueur. With unwarranted self-satisfaction, I order a Drambuie with "un poquito de helado". The waiter seems surprised? Am I sure? Mutual confusion for a half a minute or so, until the penny finally drops. The word for "ice" is not "helado", dammit, it's "hielo".

Though, come to think of it, Drambuie and ice-cream sounds like a pretty decent combination too.

At least the waiter was kind enough not to offer to bring me the English version of the menu.

Torn

I knew nothing about Natalie Imbruglia before seeing these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgT-rZAVdTM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osnUB9bUm-E

Got to give her major points for good humor and charm.

Bun-o-vision

As part of our commitment to scouring the internet for the good stuff so that you can spend your time at work shopping on E-Bay, here is a link to the exciting and entertaining Bun-o-Vision site.

http://www.angryalien.com/

Rabbits re-enacting major Hollywood movies in 30 second summaries - what's not to love?

1000 demons

As I close in on my final week here in Madrid, I begin, very cautiously, to breathe a slow sigh of relief. One of the worries about scheduling a three-month stay, to span the months of May, June, and July was - well - July in Madrid. Whenever I would mention to a Spaniard that I was planning to be in Madrid during July, there would be an inevitable furrowing of the brow, followed by deployment of the phrase "un calor de mil demonios" (the heat of a thousand demons).

But, I am relieved to report, so far things have been entirely soportable. While daytime temperatures have occasionally climbed to the mid-90's, there is a general cooling off at night, and the humidity has been reasonable.

I have my own theory as to why this has been the case. It is my belief that many of the hard-working heat demons have been seconded by Pope Rat-zinger to the newly reopened infierno, to deploy their little toasting forks in poking at Jerry Falwell and his ilk. This leaves central Spain suffering a seasonal shortage of demons, accounting for the relatively tolerable summer temperatures. Exact figures are hard to come by, but if one thinks that each circle of hell would need 100 demons as a skeleton crew, this leaves a maximum of 100 for Madrid.

I am working on an exact equation to convert the number of demons to degrees Fahrenheit, but my formula is not quite ready for prime time. Here, however, is how to convert temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius, and vice versa:

F = 32 + (9/5) x C

C = (5/9) x (F - 32)

On hiatus

To those of you panting for torrid accounts of my torrid adventures in torrid Madrid, I must apologize for the gap between transmissions. Regular blogging will resume next week.

Three odd words

Here are examples of some Spanish words I find odd or noteworthy:

• liderazgo : leadership (with the kind of etymology that presumably gives members of the RAE, the Real Academia Española, the fantods, deriving as it does from the Spanglish "líder").
• esdrújulo/a : bearing the stress on the antepenultimate syllable (example - "esdrújula"); what surprises me about this word is its very existence.
• celestina : a procuress, or madam. Such a mellifluous word deserves a less shabby meaning.

Famous depictions of la celestina in art include those by Picasso and Sorolla (see Friday's post):