Interlude 2: "Yes, we want!" ...to learn English poorly?

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/madrid/Yes/we/want/anunciar/coles/bilingues/mal/ingles/elpepusoc/20100416elpmad_1/Tes


The reason people like me have jobs in Spain, the reason those jobs can sometimes be challenging... and the reason more people should hire us.

Seriously, people. This is just embarrassing.

(For those of you who speak only English, I'll see if I can work up a translation one of these days. Basically, the new slogan to advertise bilingual schools is simply "Yes, we want!" No direct object in sight.)

LOLcats have taken over the Consejería de Educación. It's the only logical conclusion.

Interlude: obsesión fotográfica

Reviewing, editing, and hunting among a myriad of my old photographs is at once an exercise in patience (there’s so many!) and in vanity (some of them came out quite well!), and a swift jog to the memory—which, I imagine, is a large part of the reason why I take so many pictures in the first place. I don’t want to forget a single corner of the places I have loved.

A friend once half-jokingly accused me of paying more attention to the pictures I take than to my actual surroundings. On one hand, that’s not true at all. I do enjoy the actual traveling more than I enjoy taking pictures. I don’t see the world solely through a camera lens. And yet… it’s hard to stop seeing in angles and light and repeating or contrasting elements. Photography is an art, and I take as much pleasure in it as I do in my writing. And, of course, there’s the other half of the equation, the half that keeps me clicking the shutter even if the light is poor or the colors drab.

One look at those photos, and I am once again walking down a cobblestone street lined with jewel-toned tiles, once again breathing the tangy ocean air, once again smelling ripe oranges or hearing the trill of a goldfinch. The truth is, I hoard these photographs (I almost never delete even the muddled ones). I keep them as a backup, a trigger for my memory. I have spent significant time in nursing homes; I have seen firsthand memory ravaged by time. And I know a few photos could never stave off that kind of disaster, but I don’t want to fall prey even to a casual forgetting. I do not want to surrender my memories to the mist of time that devours so much of our lives. I have been wondrously happy here. Twenty years from now, I want to have something vivid to hold onto—not just the names of a few cities ticked off a list or a vague recollection of contentment. It’s the same with everywhere I go, every place I’ve called home. I want to be able to conjure the walls of my house, the needles of the pine trees surrounding the cabin, the color of the sky caught in the spray of a fountain… the people and places I may never see again, and that are therefore all the more precious.



I try not to see the world through my camera lens (though judging by the sheer quantity of photos I take, many of you may not believe me). But I am desperate to have it capture my world, because I am stubborn and greedy and refuse to let go completely and consign any one moment solely to the dim past. So when my camera comes out at a dinner or on a walk down Gran Vía or even for the snow-covered branches of a birch tree back home, please bear with me. It may be a futile pursuit to try and capture each fleeting moment, but it soothes my heart nonetheless. And who knows—some of those pictures might just turn out to be beautiful, too.

I now return you to your regular programming.

through the looking glass, and what she found there

Wonderland (a.k.a. the town of Sintra)

I spent a day in Sintra with María and Luis, a Spanish couple I met at the B&B who invited me along as our plans coincided. It made for a lovely day with pleasant company, and though they took very few pictures themselves, they didn't seem to mind my halts and wanderings. And if we went along at a slightly faster pace than I normally would, well, at least we got to see more. Even the weather cooperated, giving my first glimpse of sun all weekend.

Sintra is a little storybook town about 20 miles outside Lisbon. The streets are walled by azure blues and cotton candy pinks, saffron yellow and sunset orange…. Even the ruined, tumbledown houses were enchanting. We saw one we dubbed the Casa Fantasmas, or the Haunted House. It was all moss and broken windows, vine-covered gates held shut by rusting locks and the sheer weight of ivy. It was right out of a gothic novel—lushness and decay intertwined, melancholy writ in leaf and stone. As a town, Sintra reminded me vaguely of Segovia—old, quaint, comfortable—only more vertical, and with the color setting on 150% saturate.

It has an odd palace with giant conical kitchen chimneys (various theories on these include a prescient vision of a particular Madonna costume…) right in the center of town. The city itself is also studded with miniature palaces and giant mansions, including the Quinta da Regaleira with its mysterious gardens and tile-decorated tunnels. And if you start on a steep hike up the mountainside, you’ll find even more impressive palaces.

We stopped at the Castelo dos Mouros, the ruins of an 8th or 9th century Moorish castle that sprawls across the mountain, overlooking the city.

A slightly strenuous walk further up, and we arrived at the spectacular Palacio da Pena, which seems to have been inspired by an Easter egg. Let me rephrase: el Palacio da Pena seems to be a giant Easter egg, only with turrets and battlements. You sort of have to see it to believe it. I found the giant red, yellow, and blue walls enchanting rather than gaudy, and I even liked the ghoulish sea monster guarding the main gate. And inside… let’s just say it’s good to be the king. Or queen. Or lady-in-waiting. Or head secretary to the ladies-in-waiting… You get the picture.

These monarchs must have had a phobia of blank space. Even every corner of the ceiling was ornately decorated. Jaw-droppingly decorated. Chandeliers shaped like vines, complete with flowers and translucent leaves; bronze statues of Turks bearing candelabras; intricately carved and gilded desks; walls painted to look like carvings; a teak-filled India-themed room; even a room with papier-mâché furniture, of all things! (The little informational plaque neglected to mention if this last was fully functional or not.)

I could have easily spent another day in Sintra, exploring the subterranean passages under the Quinta da Regaleira, combing the back alleys of town, visiting the other castles buried in the surrounding mountains—perhaps next time.


...and now, the rest of the story.

So, overall, everything went swimmingly—except for the return flight, which was delayed by 3 hours or so, and I got home ridiculously late and tired. Even that had a high point, though: when we were finally on board, the pilot apologized for the delay of “aproximadamente dos horas”—and all the passengers erupted in a chorus of indignant voices “TRES HORAS!” When the pilot repeated in English “approximately two hours”, one lone voice cried out from the back of the plane “THREE HOURS!” No, it wasn’t mine. I just muttered unpleasant things sleepily to myself and went back to my book.

the ups and downs (literally!) of Lisbon

“Are you going to make a bridge?”

In Spain, long weekends are usually puentes—literally, bridges: a festival falls on a Thursday, for example, and people “bridge” the festival and the weekend by taking Friday off too. Or, as in the case of this particular weekend, a Monday-Tuesday combination. I think it’s a fabulous concept, one we should adopt in the U.S. as soon as possible, along with siesta. Sure, less work gets done. But we’d all be a lot happier! Anyway, as for the title… well, that’s one of the teachers at my school trying his best to ask about vacation plans in English. Some things just don’t translate.

I did, in the end, “make a bridge” and finally made it to Lisbon! I arrived at my bed & breakfast (!) early Saturday morning. The owner, Antonio, promptly sat me down and gave me maps and advice in a combination of English, Spanish, and Portuguese that quickly became the standard for my trip. Then, instead of just pointing me to a supermarket to buy some shampoo (sigh, airline restrictions), he took me there in his car… by way of a long detour through the old part of town and a stop at an overlook for an enchanting glimpse of the city. Quite the welcome, eh?

Cuesta la cuesta!

Lisbon is a rather vertical city made up of seven hills, and therefore seven distinct neighborhoods. I mainly covered one area of the city per day, so I’ll organize by neighborhood. Regardless of the location, though, I did enough walking and trekking and navigating steep hills and rough cobblestones to be guilt-free when it came to indulging in some of Lisbon’s many delightful pastries! How often is it, after all, that despite all your best efforts you lose weight on vacation?

Baixa & Rossio

The elegant part of town, the heart of downtown Lisbon, with grand plazas and statues and fountains and a triumphant arch (which was, oddly enough, flanked by giant sculptures of the Beatles). I spent a fair amount of time hovering in and around the bakeries and pastelarias there, and taking pictures of the Christmas lights strung over the perfectly straight, criss-cross streets of la Baixa. I ran across an artisan jewelry fair in the grandest plaza of them all, Praça do Comercio, right next to the river. Lots of leather and glasswork, which almost made up for the fact that much of the plaza was under construction and cut off from view.

I think every time I wandered through Rossio I ended up getting a delectable pastéis de nata (cream-filled pastry) or a strawberry-shaped marzipan treat or a lovely suspiro, a swirl of hardened meringue that melts immediately on your tongue. I ate well in Lisbon, and cheaply. Bacalao dorado, a lovely cod dish I had tried once before, is still my favorite, though. And the coffee was every bit as strong as I expected it to be! Almost like coffee-flavored syrup… with effects akin to a small caffeine bomb.

Bairro Alto & Chiado

The hip part of town. Though I didn’t bother going out on the town, I did stumble across an elegant little wine tasting erected under a pair of tents. Live musicians, expensive wines, good cheese—and extremely cheap (Lisbon is far less expensive than Madrid, across the board). And, oddly enough, I ran into a few Americans currently studying in Madrid and also vacationing in Lisbon. Actually, I think I may have met more Spaniards than Portuguese on my little trip. It seems everyone in Spain flocks to Portugal for puente!

I saw relatively little of Bairro Alto compared with the other neighborhoods I spent my time in, but I did spend several hours in the burned out ruins of a church up there. Instead of a ceiling, the stone arches overhead look like the blackened skeleton of an inverted ship’s hull, and everything is open to sky. I found it rather enchanting at sunset—the photos do far more justice to it than my description does.

Alfama

La Alfama is the tangled, sprawling Moorish neighborhood that climbs its way up the hill to the castle and then slips down on the other side, stretching tendrils of narrow streets out to the river. It is low-slung decrepit houses and tumbledown gardens flanked by gull-white churches. Entire façades covered in colorful, hand-painted tiles. Rippling terracotta rooftops. Rain glistening on uneven cobblestones. Stray cats slinking in the shadows. A lonely, shaggy sunflower climbing up an iron trellis. And faint strains of fado from somewhere further up, further in… It is the home of fado, that mournful Portuguese song that traces its roots to the sea, and goes hand in hand with one of my favorite words, which coincidentally has no good translation. Saudade, a sort of nostalgia for something that never was.

After wandering through Sé Cathedral, pausing at every overlook to capture dazzling glimpses of the city and the sparkling river Tejo, and stumbling across a gem of an old church, garden, and tile-covered patio, I heard someone singing and followed it to a little restaurant I probably couldn’t find again if I tried. I listened to a few songs of fado: one woman sang, two men played the guitar. Beautiful, haunting, sweet. And when I went to sit down and eat, I discovered that the fadistas were actually the owners and waiters as well. Go figure. I ordered an octopus salad, and one of them came up to me and proffered his guitar. “You’re next!” he said. (People speak a fair bit more English in Lisbon than they do in Madrid…) He gave me two more chances before the meal and concert were over! They do say blondes have more fun…

Castelo Sao Jorge perches atop the Alfama, overlooking the whole city of Lisbon. It was spritzing rain when I made the trek up, but I think it was the buffeting wind that drove away most everyone else. Luckily, I´d had the foresight (or sheer dumb luck) to bring a miniature tripod, because between the wind trying to snatch my camera away and the weak, dim light that managed to filter through the looming clouds, my poor camera wouldn’t have been up to a single steady shot on its own. But the view was amazing, past the droplets of rain coating my glasses!

One last delight of the Alfama is the network of trams that run throughout. Wires overhead curve with the streets, and cars and trams roll in line with each other up and down the hills. Yellow number 28, the most famous, takes a circuitous route through the heart of the Alfama, but there are others—red, wood-paneled, white paint peeling, that wind through the neighborhood.

I wish I could have spent more time wandering the Alfama, and I wish I’d had better light. It was the one thing I missed: the fabled Lisbon light. It was raining off and on for much of my vacation, though never too heavily. Naturally, the day I left it cleared up!

Belém

Belém is further out from the center of Lisbon, and at first glance almost looks like a smaller town rather than part of the same city. Smaller houses in chalky hues of red, blue, green, and gold; orange trees lining the sidewalks; a famous pastelería with a line winding out the door, everyone waiting patiently for a little cream-filled, cinnamon-dusted pastry; and, of course, the more monumental highlights.

The Monument to the Discoveries is a monolith rising over the river with much larger-than-life, angular statues marching up its sides. Down the road… er, river, pier, whatever… is the Torre de Belém. Sadly, I didn’t have time to go inside, but it seemed to have much the same style of architecture as the Monasterio dos Jerónimos, which is certainly the jewel of Belém. (Hm… a Belém gem… heehee! Sorry. I think I was weaned on Dr. Seuss.)

The monastery is impressive enough on the outside, grand and eloquent, with a beautiful church inside, naturally. But the two-story cloister is far and away the best part. I spent two hours winding through grapevine columns and past filigreed windows, peering at miniscule carvings of leaves in that most intricate of styles—Manuelino, named after a Portuguese king who must have had some phobia of empty space because everything is carved, engraved, sculpted, or otherwise decorated. Up on the second level of the cloister, I even saw my first ever grasshopper gargoyle. Now how can you beat that?


Up next: Sintra.

Lovely Lisbon: flashback entries

Lisbon (to backtrack significantly to the beginning of December... oops) was, I think, the first solo vacation I have ever taken. Naturally, I love traveling with friends or family—but this was a whole new kind of relaxation! No worries about making someone impatient with my incessant photo-snapping, no one else’s preferences to consider on food or beverage, no one wanting to go back to the hotel too early or stay out too late, no one to drag me into a chic clothing store or a cheesy tourist shop or to try to keep track of in a crowd. For the most part, I still prefer traveling with company. But Lisbon, in just a few short days, has become my getaway city, my writerly retreat, my whimsical, selfish indulgence.

Needless to say, I loved it.

Normally I organize things chronologically. Or, rarely, in a Top 10 list. But Lisbon, though relatively small, is a varied city. Each new neighborhood (bairro) has its own personality. Lisbon is roughly made up of seven hills (each basically its own bairro), most of which I was able to visit. So I’ve organized this little travelogue (should it be travelblogue?) according to the bairros, to collect my observations and recollections of each into one place rather than scattering them—well, to the seven hills.

I started part of this some time ago (as is only natural, given the whole trip was two months ago!), but it’s taken me a while to finish… and to sort through all those pictures. The next few updates will be me trying, woefully late, to catch up to myself. So to speak.

Resolute

I was going to write some nice, boring New Year’s resolutions, and the first one that came to mind was “I will not procrastinate”. Well, we all know THAT will never happen, so I came up with something a little different instead…

I hereby resolve, in this New Year of 2010, to procrastinate by the following methods (in no particular order):

1.) Finish organizing and editing my photos… and perhaps work on deleting a few for a change.

2.) Update my blog more often with random and/or trivial bits of information and observations.

3.) Write meandering notes to friends and family back home.

4.) Have coffee or go out for tapas with friends around Madrid.

5.) Type up all those quotes I have scribbled on scraps of paper.

6.) Translate my thesis into English.

7.) Learn to cook something out of the ordinary… like fresh crab.

8.) Try to publish a short story or two.

9.) Take a couple day or weekend trips around parts of Spain I haven’t been to yet.

10.) Keep wandering around Madrid until I know it by heart!

An actual update with my trips to Lisbon and Minnesota, as well as some more crazy weather in Spain and a few travel fiascos, will be forthcoming, along with accompanying photos--just as soon as I start procrastinating!

Happy New Year,
Mary