From time to time in my life I've made colossal decisions that would have seemed comically impossible had I really chosen to think about the likelihood of my success in them. Was I nervous at the age of 20 when I decided (having never left the country before or even flown more than a couple of times) to fly halfway across the world to meet up with a class in Italy for the summer? Did I really think that I could learn a dead language from scratch and actually be able to read it in 10 weeks, or that it would be easy to drop everything and move to the UK for a year and travel Europe on my own? Did I really think that any of these things would turn out well?
To be honest, I chose not to think about them at all. I have a method, you see, when taking big steps. I forget the BIG PICTURE and the grand totality of whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish, and I choose, instead, to focus on tiny intervals of that process (in this case- packing appropriately, getting to the airport, finding my gate). I'm like a horse with blinders on. Before I know it, I'm right in the midst of things and I don't have time to think about whether I CAN do it or not, I'm just doing it.
Besides, the BIG PICTURE doesn't work well for me. You see, my internal voice has regrettably dramatic tendencies when they're given rein. I had decided to travel to a foreign country entirely on my own for the very first time, and these dramatic tendencies decided to display themselves to full effect when the horse blinders came off while at cruising altitude over Belgium, listening to the boisterous German-speakers in the rows around me. "Oh dear God," I thought, "I don't know a word of German besides counting to ten, hello and goodbye, thank you, and where's the restroom! I've planned too many side trips. I'm bound to get lost somewhere, take a wrong train and end up in some remote part of Austria where no one speaks English and I can't get myself home! Something's bound to go wrong! I have no idea what I'm doing! It will be awful and I'll never travel by myself again!" You know. Things of that nature. I never said that my internal voice was rational, just dramatic. Anyway, I mention all this to say that from the moment I set foot in Germany, the world conspired to make all my worries seem ridiculous.
In the lobby of my hotel, the receptionist heard no more than my badly pronounced German greeting before she deftly switched to flawless English and welcomed me to my room. My fears of linguistic inadequacy lifted even more during dinner that night. I had picked the Augustiner-brau biergarten and restaurant which was listed in all the guide books as having some of the best beer and most authentic Bavarian food in Munich. As anyone who's done any traveling knows, its difficult to know what the general protocol is at restaurants in foreign countries. Do you seat yourself? Wait in a certain place to be seated? Ask a waiter? Inevitably, you end up standing around awkwardly near the entrance sending surreptitious glances around at others coming in for a clue, and trying to meet the eye of a member of the wait staff while smiling hopefully and disarmingly. This must be the universal symbol for, "I'm a foreigner and I feel very out of place. Please help!" A waitress carrying two huge of beer in each hand and donning the traditional costume worn by all the waitstaff at any biergarten in Germany strode over and said, "You speak English?". I nodded with a sigh of relief, and she (after glancing around the crowded restaurant for a bit) smiled and said, "You can sit with the professor. She speaks very good English."
Momentarily, I found myself seated across from an elderly former teacher who had defeated several beers of her own already and wasted no time in telling me her life story in great detail. She had three daughters who all went to university in England and remained there after graduation, and they were mortified with her recent decision to leave her flat in Munich and live in the country. Every woman should have a dream, after all, and she had always dreamed of growing old in a house of her own out in the country with a fenced-in garden where she could walk around naked and no one would see or care. Meanwhile, I was taking in this unexpected barrage of conviviality while simultaneously trying to decipher a menu filled with 5 syllable or more German words, all of which meant precisely nothing to me. She must have sensed my confusion, because she suddenly stopped mid-sentence to tell me that I should try the duck. It was the best. I didn't take much convincing, but she was right. It was fantastic! I left an hour and a half and several beers later, with a list of English-speaking schools to apply to and more travel recommendations than I could possibly accomplish. That night, I was serenaded to sleep with a private violin concert. I never figured out what the building behind my hotel was, but it was occupied by a group of musicians who played or sang every evening until very late at night. Sometimes it was instrumental and sometimes it was a group singing German folk music. It was never loud enough to bother me and was always surprisingly good.
The entire week was filled with unexpected conversation with locals on the walk into town or while sitting on park benches eating lunch. Usually, these started when passersby (assuming I was German) started speaking to me in German, but when I looked apologetically confused, most were happy to start over and resume the conversation in English. I met another local the next time I went to the biergarten. This time he was an elderly man who didn't speak much English at all but was still very friendly, and we had a very fluent silent conversation of companionable smiles, and toasts, and mutual admiration of the scenery. He did manage to tell me, somewhat haltingly, of a special lent beer that I should try. As I found out later, it was a sweet and very strong recipe invented as a sort of "liquid bread" by monks who were fasting for lent. For some reason, they all have domineering and masculine names like Salvator and Maximator.
I also met a newlywed couple about my age from Austin Texas (small world! The woman's name was Melinda, too), and a middle aged couple from San Francisco who were on a month-long tour of Eastern Europe and who seemed genuinely happy to have a third party to travel with for the day. I ended up touring Neuschwanstein with them, after which they insisted that I join them for dinner and drinks back in Munich that evening and refused to let me pay my part. I really ended up leaving my vacation feeling that I hadn't traveled on my own much at all.
If I hadn't walked 10 miles a day every day that I was there, I probably would have gained 10 pounds on my trip, because I seem to have made a subconscious pact with myself not to eat a single healthy thing (except sauerkraut- fermented cabbage- which is actually surprisingly good!). Germany is full of very unhealthy food that is really tasty. I don't know why you can't seem to find it outside of Germany. I binged on fried potatoes, schnitzel, German chocolate cake with slices of pear baked inside, and thousands of different kinds of sausage with spicy mustard. Be sure and try the weisswurste, a fresh white sausage made of veal and pork that is not smoked, and therefore perishable and meant to be eaten as a snack between breakfast and lunch. A local saying is that weisswurste should never hear the bells of noon. It is delicious sucked from the skin (which isn't typically eaten) with some sweet mustard and a fresh pretzel. Yum! For a glimpse of local culture at it's best, find a place to go for a drink on a Saturday evening when all the locals are out wearing their traditional dress. You'll see men and women of all ages out and about, the men wearing suspender-ed lederhosen and feathered hats, and women wearing the traditional dress (called a dirndl, I think) with ruffled apron and fluffy-sleeved, low cut shirt.
Although I never really had to speak more than a few words of German during the entire trip, I had my moment of triumph on the last morning that I was there. At breakfast, I was usually waited on by the same couple of people who always spoke to me in English, but on the last morning before I made my way to the airport, I had someone new. He greeted me in German to which I replied, "Guten morgen." Then he asked me a question. I didn't recognize a word of it, but I knew from the usual routine of the week that he was asking what I wanted to drink. "Kaffe, bitte, mit zucher," I replied (probably the only German phrase I had picked up while I was there). Another question- I hoped, about milk. "Ja, danke schon," I answered, and got the usual little pitcher of milk for my coffee. Regardless of the fact that I had spoken less than 10 words and hadn't understood a word that he said, I had had my first conversation completely and comprehensibly in German. Win! :)
Monday, April 25, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
A Not Entirely Perfect (But Very Memorable) Trip to Italy
Rome has never been the luckiest travel destination for me. On my first trip, at age 19 or 20 (I forget), my entire purse was stolen and I spent a day at the U.S. Consulate getting all my important documents replaced. Four years later, older and wiser (so I thought), I travelled with a theft-proof bag full of zippered compartments, a buckled safety flap on the front and a strap that couldn't be cut with a knife by passing motorcycle thieves. I was smug in my invincibility. Too smug, as it turned out. A couple days later I was robbed again on a crowded metro by an ingenious couple of thieves, one of whom distracted me with a smelly armpit in my face while the other deftly outmaneuvered all those tricky thief-proof obstacles and stole my wallet. But this time, I had gotten through the entire trip without a single accident. Triumph was mine! I had beaten the Italian curse!.....Hmm. It just wasn't meant to be.
Rome itself was great! I got WAY too little sleep, drank more than was good for me, learned a ton that I didn't know before, and spent the days fighting off sleep and hangovers and bouncing from foot to broken foot. On the train ride to the airport, I was thinking about how nice it was to have had such a problem-free vacation in Rome. When we reached our terminal, our class gathered around a table at a cafe, drank cute little mini-bottles of terrible wine, had our conclusive discussion of the term then made our way slightly tipsily to the check-in and security screening area. This is when Murphy's law came into effect, because everything that could go wrong did.
It all started with the little metal luggage measurer (the thing you have to put your luggage into to make sure it will fit into the overhead compartment). In all other airports, my bag has easily fit. So of course this time it didn't, and there was a member of staff there guarding the entrance to security and turning back those of us with "oversized" luggage. I made my way over to the baggage check-in line and told the others to go ahead. At the counter, a lady took my ticket, typed on her computer, looked puzzled, typed again, shook her head, and gave my ticket back, telling me that I had the wrong date. My flight didn't leave until tomorrow night. And my stomach plummeted.
I've figured out how it happened, although the explanation doesn't make it sound any less stupid. I was originally planning a much longer trip to see parts of Italy I hadn't seen before. I later decided against it, because I would miss my entire last week of classes. But I was originally going to leave Rome on Tuesday. Apparently this was the date that I had stuck in my mind when I made the tickets. Apparently, I didn't re-check things after my ticket was made. Funny thing is, I had the nagging suspicion all day that something was wrong with my ticket. I kept feeling like I had made it for the wrong time. In fact, before we got on the train I had borrowed someone else's ticket to check. Fiumicino to Gatwick, flight departs 21:20- sigh. All was fine. I never thought about checking the date.
So I called the group ahead of me, and Valentina (our professor) had the idea that I could switch tickets with another member of our class who hadn't been able to make the trip. I was skeptical, but I made my way over to the ticket counter and told my story to the woman at the desk. This woman either hated her job very much or just, in general, hated all other people. She took my tickets with great theatrical sighs and eye-rolling, abused her keyboard for a few seconds, complaining all the while that they were about to close in ten minutes and she didn't have time for these things and this was not her problem. When she was done with this tirade, she handed my tickets back and told me there was nothing she could do. I could change my own tickets, but not without paying a 200 euro fee. So it looked like I was staying in Italy for another night.
This is the sort of time when good technology comes in handy. Like an iPhone with internet, perhaps (I'll take this time to say that I hate Steve Jobs and would very much like to punch him in the face). Instead, I had a piece-of-shit, pay-as-you-go phone with no internet capabilities. Valentina gave me the number of an archaeologist we had met in Rome who had been a part of our class for the last few days and we began to sort out some form of accommodation for the night. Between the two of us, we began calling hostels. Finally, Anna found one that was available and gave me the number...and this is when my phone stopped being able to make international phone calls. And neither could hers. So here I was at 10:00 at night, in a foreign country, with no place to stay, 30 minutes away from Rome, and with no means of communication. I had the number of a place where I could stay, but not the address.
My first thought was to beg the belligerent lady at the ticket counter for help of some sort, so I did this, was verbally abused again and told to go to a travel agency in Terminal B. I really thought that I would be massively ripped off at this place, but without any other options, exhausted and at my threshold of stress tolerance I decided to give it a try. Fortunately, they found me a place at a B&B in Fiumicino for only 44 Euro including transportation to and from the airport, which didn't sound too bad to me. Life was good again.
The Bed and Breakfast was in the house of an adorable Italian couple who didn't speak any English at all. We communicated mostly through hand gestures and a combination of my almost non-existant Spanish and Italian, and whatever words of English they knew. The place seemed absolutely perfect, an idyllic little Italian house with rock floors, high ceilings, wooden shuttered windows and and a big fluffy bed piled with blankets. Within ten minutes, I fell into a deep coma and woke up just in time for breakfast. During breakfast, I was given a post-it note in the sort of English that read like it was translated from Italian with a very bad internet translating site. It told me (I think), that I would need to be out of the house at 9:30 and could not return until 4:00, when one of them would drive me to the airport.
So I found myself at 9:30 am on the streets of Fiumicino, which I knew nothing at all about, without a map, and with no idea what to do or which direction to go. I didn't feel that I could wander very far without losing my sense of direction, and if I couldn't find my way back to the B&B, I would definitely be screwed. But I felt sure that I would find a square or a park or some public place to sit and rest and read a book or something. Instead, what I found was street after street of buildings covered in graffiti, streets lined with trash, small, stand-up cafes with no seating, and lots of thrift stores. And almost immediately I ran into a group of youngish Italian men standing in a group outside a cafe who began to heckle me as I passed and followed me down the street for a while yelling suggestive-sounding things at me. This definitely didn't improve my morale. But I was the only very obviously non-Italian there, so that probably made me a target for their entertainment.
You would imagine that since it is so close to the airport, Fiumicino would see it's share of tourists, but the people in the area I was in seemed taken aback to see a tourist walking around, and definitely didn't seem very friendly to foreigners. Perhaps it was just that particular neighborhood. Everywhere I went I was stared at with quizzical or hostile looks that seemed to ask me what the hell I was doing there. My combination Italian and Spanish didn't work at all here and seemed to frustrate people. I felt very much like a leper or an unusual species of bug. It was not a very comfortable place to spend a day, to say the least, and it seemed that I would spend it walking around in desperation, unsuccessfully trying to find some place to settle for a while or sit down.
After a couple hours of this as I was beginning to think that this would be just about the worst day ever, I came across the harbor and the beach of Fiumicino. The beach itself was dirty, littered with trash, and completely abandoned, but there was a pier nearby where the ships sailed in and out of the harbor. All along this pier, men were fishing, couples were going for a walk and pushing babies in strollers. The water was very blue and crashed against the rocks of the pier, and you could see for a long distance up the beach to the mountains in the distance. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, so I sat on the pier most of that day, reading, listening to the waves and the seagulls, watching the ships come in and out and and the fishermen mostly not catch fish, and becoming increasingly sunburned. It turned into a great day- really, very peaceful, and I was glad I ended up there... But I'm also very glad to be home.
Rome itself was great! I got WAY too little sleep, drank more than was good for me, learned a ton that I didn't know before, and spent the days fighting off sleep and hangovers and bouncing from foot to broken foot. On the train ride to the airport, I was thinking about how nice it was to have had such a problem-free vacation in Rome. When we reached our terminal, our class gathered around a table at a cafe, drank cute little mini-bottles of terrible wine, had our conclusive discussion of the term then made our way slightly tipsily to the check-in and security screening area. This is when Murphy's law came into effect, because everything that could go wrong did.
It all started with the little metal luggage measurer (the thing you have to put your luggage into to make sure it will fit into the overhead compartment). In all other airports, my bag has easily fit. So of course this time it didn't, and there was a member of staff there guarding the entrance to security and turning back those of us with "oversized" luggage. I made my way over to the baggage check-in line and told the others to go ahead. At the counter, a lady took my ticket, typed on her computer, looked puzzled, typed again, shook her head, and gave my ticket back, telling me that I had the wrong date. My flight didn't leave until tomorrow night. And my stomach plummeted.
I've figured out how it happened, although the explanation doesn't make it sound any less stupid. I was originally planning a much longer trip to see parts of Italy I hadn't seen before. I later decided against it, because I would miss my entire last week of classes. But I was originally going to leave Rome on Tuesday. Apparently this was the date that I had stuck in my mind when I made the tickets. Apparently, I didn't re-check things after my ticket was made. Funny thing is, I had the nagging suspicion all day that something was wrong with my ticket. I kept feeling like I had made it for the wrong time. In fact, before we got on the train I had borrowed someone else's ticket to check. Fiumicino to Gatwick, flight departs 21:20- sigh. All was fine. I never thought about checking the date.
So I called the group ahead of me, and Valentina (our professor) had the idea that I could switch tickets with another member of our class who hadn't been able to make the trip. I was skeptical, but I made my way over to the ticket counter and told my story to the woman at the desk. This woman either hated her job very much or just, in general, hated all other people. She took my tickets with great theatrical sighs and eye-rolling, abused her keyboard for a few seconds, complaining all the while that they were about to close in ten minutes and she didn't have time for these things and this was not her problem. When she was done with this tirade, she handed my tickets back and told me there was nothing she could do. I could change my own tickets, but not without paying a 200 euro fee. So it looked like I was staying in Italy for another night.
This is the sort of time when good technology comes in handy. Like an iPhone with internet, perhaps (I'll take this time to say that I hate Steve Jobs and would very much like to punch him in the face). Instead, I had a piece-of-shit, pay-as-you-go phone with no internet capabilities. Valentina gave me the number of an archaeologist we had met in Rome who had been a part of our class for the last few days and we began to sort out some form of accommodation for the night. Between the two of us, we began calling hostels. Finally, Anna found one that was available and gave me the number...and this is when my phone stopped being able to make international phone calls. And neither could hers. So here I was at 10:00 at night, in a foreign country, with no place to stay, 30 minutes away from Rome, and with no means of communication. I had the number of a place where I could stay, but not the address.
My first thought was to beg the belligerent lady at the ticket counter for help of some sort, so I did this, was verbally abused again and told to go to a travel agency in Terminal B. I really thought that I would be massively ripped off at this place, but without any other options, exhausted and at my threshold of stress tolerance I decided to give it a try. Fortunately, they found me a place at a B&B in Fiumicino for only 44 Euro including transportation to and from the airport, which didn't sound too bad to me. Life was good again.
The Bed and Breakfast was in the house of an adorable Italian couple who didn't speak any English at all. We communicated mostly through hand gestures and a combination of my almost non-existant Spanish and Italian, and whatever words of English they knew. The place seemed absolutely perfect, an idyllic little Italian house with rock floors, high ceilings, wooden shuttered windows and and a big fluffy bed piled with blankets. Within ten minutes, I fell into a deep coma and woke up just in time for breakfast. During breakfast, I was given a post-it note in the sort of English that read like it was translated from Italian with a very bad internet translating site. It told me (I think), that I would need to be out of the house at 9:30 and could not return until 4:00, when one of them would drive me to the airport.
So I found myself at 9:30 am on the streets of Fiumicino, which I knew nothing at all about, without a map, and with no idea what to do or which direction to go. I didn't feel that I could wander very far without losing my sense of direction, and if I couldn't find my way back to the B&B, I would definitely be screwed. But I felt sure that I would find a square or a park or some public place to sit and rest and read a book or something. Instead, what I found was street after street of buildings covered in graffiti, streets lined with trash, small, stand-up cafes with no seating, and lots of thrift stores. And almost immediately I ran into a group of youngish Italian men standing in a group outside a cafe who began to heckle me as I passed and followed me down the street for a while yelling suggestive-sounding things at me. This definitely didn't improve my morale. But I was the only very obviously non-Italian there, so that probably made me a target for their entertainment.
You would imagine that since it is so close to the airport, Fiumicino would see it's share of tourists, but the people in the area I was in seemed taken aback to see a tourist walking around, and definitely didn't seem very friendly to foreigners. Perhaps it was just that particular neighborhood. Everywhere I went I was stared at with quizzical or hostile looks that seemed to ask me what the hell I was doing there. My combination Italian and Spanish didn't work at all here and seemed to frustrate people. I felt very much like a leper or an unusual species of bug. It was not a very comfortable place to spend a day, to say the least, and it seemed that I would spend it walking around in desperation, unsuccessfully trying to find some place to settle for a while or sit down.
After a couple hours of this as I was beginning to think that this would be just about the worst day ever, I came across the harbor and the beach of Fiumicino. The beach itself was dirty, littered with trash, and completely abandoned, but there was a pier nearby where the ships sailed in and out of the harbor. All along this pier, men were fishing, couples were going for a walk and pushing babies in strollers. The water was very blue and crashed against the rocks of the pier, and you could see for a long distance up the beach to the mountains in the distance. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, so I sat on the pier most of that day, reading, listening to the waves and the seagulls, watching the ships come in and out and and the fishermen mostly not catch fish, and becoming increasingly sunburned. It turned into a great day- really, very peaceful, and I was glad I ended up there... But I'm also very glad to be home.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Madrid: Fantastic Food, Amazing Museums... oh, and an Egyptian Temple!
I don't know why Spain has never been high on my bucket list of places to visit. I once traveled through the airport on my way to Rome and, glancing out the window, thought, "This place looks really beautiful. Its a shame I'll probably never be back."
As a night owl, Madrid's schedule is definitely something I could adopt. "Early to bed and early to rise" is definitely a foreign concept to Madrilenos. Instead, it's perfectly common to find locals eating breakfast with you at 11 am or noon any day of the week. Everything is done much later there. Lunch (the large meal of the day) is eaten around 2 pm and dinner isn't until 10 or 11 pm. And oh, the food!!
I've decided that southern Europeans just "get" food. Most of the menus (even the ones in English) were incomprehensible, but waiters were happy to supply a recommendation and there was very little that we had there that I didn't love; tripe croquettes, chorizo, paella, and the ubiquitous egg (in an omelette with potatoes, called a tortilla madrilena, scrambled with vegetables, lightly fried and served over fried potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. I think we ended up eating some type of egg at least once a day). So good! The wine was great, too! I should find out why the Spanish have such an obsession with ham. All over Madrid you'll see these ham shrines (Museo de Jamon and Paraiso del Jamon) that carry nothing except row upon row of mummified-looking ham legs. I was definitely curious.
Madrid is definitely a city of great museums. You can tour the royal palace and see many of its lavishly decorated 2,800 rooms, each one distinctively different from the last. You could spend weeks in the Prado, admiring and reading about the thousands of paintings. Helpfully, they provide a guide of the 50 top masterpieces, but you'll still spend hours there and leave feeling mentally exhausted. Although I say this every time I visit a new art museum, I left with a new favorite artist- Rubens. The Prado has an exhibit with 90 of his works! I even developed a growing appreciation for Picasso at the Reina Sophia, where his work is displayed with photographs, films, and propaganda posters from the Spanish Revolution. It was emotionally affecting and deeply disturbing.
Walking north from the Palacio Real, you'll find the strangest attraction of Madrid- an ancient Egyptian temple. That's right, from Egypt. Built 2,200 years ago in Egypt and dedicated to Amun and Isis, the Templo de Debod was threatened by the Aswan Dam in the 1960's. UNESCO made a plea to international countries to rescue this monument and others like it, Spain responded and received the temple as a gesture of thanks. It was removed from Egypt and reassembled piece by piece in Madrid.
Madrid- Forget everything you ever knew about a map.
If you ever go to Madrid (or Spain in general) expect to get lost. Multiple times. Prepare yourself for head-scratching forks in the road, disappearing streets, elusive tourist sites, incomprehensible floor plans and very few (if any) signs. If you do see a sign, don't let yourself get too optimistic. You're likely to find that it points to the same destination in opposing directions. After 4 days in Spain, I feel like we saw a good bit of both Madrid and Toledo, often many times, and sometimes on purpose. Once, coming back from a bookstore and feeling fairly sure (for once) that we were headed in the right direction, we came to an intersection only to find that we were right back where we started. I'm still puzzling over that one. Although, one could make the case that conversation and great map-reading skills are mutually exclusive.
I somehow feel that the Spaniards enjoy their own baffling complexity and are smiling smugly at the foreigners struggling over maps with furrowed brows. Don't worry, though. If you get lost, just ask one of the locals who are incredibly friendly and more than happy to help you out. Perhaps it's all a ruse to lure you into Spain and keep you there. You won't mind. By the time you leave you'll be happily lost and not entirely sure you want to leave so soon anyway.
P.S. An an airport almost-disaster
When it comes to plane travel, I'm usually the person you see sitting at the gate ridiculously early, reading a book. I always overestimate the time it will take me to get to the airport, through security etc, and I hate to feel rushed at an airport, because I'm usually nervous about flying anyway. I hate it.
This time, however, was the exception. I'm not sure how I lost track of time quite so badly in Madrid on that last day there, but found myself on the Metro several stops away from the airport with 30 minutes remaining until my gate closed.
Let me just say that the airport in Madrid is massive, unnecessarily lengthy, and not the quickest airport to navigate. I arrived from the Metro into Terminal 2 and had to walk all the way through it to get to Terminal 1 where I couldn't immediately find the flight information board to find out which gate my flight would be leaving from. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as it would seem later) the EasyJet check in counter was deserted, so I gave the man at the counter my flight info and asked him what gate I would leave from. He shook his head and told me that it was gate A2, but that I probably wouldn't make it there in time.
Luckily, my luggage can be converted into a backpack, so I pulled on the straps and started jogging toward the "A" gates. I make it there and all the gates there are completely deserted, so I knew immediately that something was wrong. A lone security guard walking by asked me what I was doing there, so I told him what my situation was. He pointed out the nearest flight information board and and it turned out that the man at the check-in counter had given me the wrong gate. Mine was B25, a long way in the opposite direction. The security guard looked at me sadly and apologetically and told me that I was too late, the plane was departing and I wouldn't make it in time. But I set off running again, praying for a miracle and made it to the gate exhausted, sweating, gasping for breath and with an entire flight of passengers staring at me oddly for the state I was in. The flight had been delayed and hadn't even boarded yet. Whew! Too close!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Holy Toledo!
Toledo has everything you could possibly wish for in an ancient, scenic hillside town. Occupied by the Romans, the Visigoths, the Moors, and (at one point) the capital of the Spanish Empire, it is a city rich in cultural history and a center for Muslim, Jewish, and Christian worship. It truly lives up to it's title as "Holy Toledo" and a person could spend days exploring the hundreds of churches, cathedrals, monasteries, former mosques, and synagogues that abound on every street.
As you leave the modern town, an arched bridge carries you over the Tajo river to the medieval walls, ramparts, and imposing gates of the old city. From here, labyrinthine streets wind almost vertically to the hilltop Alcazar above you. You enter a different world among the twisted, narrow, cobblestoned alleys. History seeps from the walls and you can easily imagine an armored knight on horseback just around the corner, or the sounds of clattering cart wheels and clinking swords. You may be momentarily disconcerted when a very modern car turns the corner instead, breaking into your little medieval reverie. But you are sure to fall in love with this amazing little town almost immediately. (BTW: Toledo has always been known for its swords, and you can still buy one here if you can figure out how to get it home.)
Forget the map. Just pick a direction and wind your way along it. You might feel a little like a mouse in a cheese maze, but you're bound to end up somewhere interesting, and at any moment a sudden turn in the road might just reward you with a fantastic view over the surrounding countryside.
Don't forget the Catedral. I won't even try to do it justice in writing (a great cathedral can't be described, it has to be felt), but it is immense, overwhelming, lavishly decorated and carved, and yet at the same time beautiful in its simplicity. The carved wooden choir is possibly the most exquisite piece of art I've ever seen. You'll leave a little humbler and with a bit of a crick in the neck.
At night, take the mechanical steps up to the top for a whole new perspective as the lights of the modern town spread out as far as the eye can see. Then wander toward the Cathedral again to get lost in the crowds that appear unexpectedly to eat and shop along the narrow streets. As you leave, you can't imagine what it would be like to live there, but you kind of wish you could.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Planes and Blizzards: A Recipe for Disaster
Yesterday was my first attempt to fly home for Christmas, and it (of course) coincided with the Great London Blizzard of 2010. It ends with me stranded here in my apartment in London with Heathrow Airport shut down at least until Monday. It's a shame that I love to travel so much, since I seem to be cursed with setbacks.
First of all, let me just say that London Heathrow during the holiday rush is bafflingly complicated. There are way too many people who don't know what they're doing (I'll count myself as one of them) and not enough staff to go around. Arriving at Terminal 3, there were so many people crammed tightly into indistinct and meandering lines that it was impossible to sort out which line was which. What you had to do was pick a line that looked promising and ask the people around you which line they thought it might be. You would then get several opinions, but a majority opinion would be taken as an authority on the matter and this would lead to an exodus of the rest of us for other lines to start the process over again. It was like an interpretive dance of confusion.
Once I got through security, all seemed to be going well. There were a few cancellations on the flight board, but they were all morning flights, so I assumed that the runways must still have been icy from the night before. I sipped on a coffee in the main waiting lounge and waited for my gate to open up. My stomach was beginning to unclench from the chaos of check-in and I was soon to be ( I thought) in the air and on my way home for Christmas. Then, on my way to the gate, I passed a window. My heart sank. It wasn't just snowing, it was blizzarding- buckets and sheets of snow in giant, picturesque and artificial-looking flakes that swirled unrelentingly in every direction. More snow than I've ever seen at one time in my life. I stood there staring at it with a sinking feeling of foreboding thinking that this couldn't be good.
However, the staff at the gate seemed to be optimistic as they welcomed me to my flight. I have to confess that the gate system at Heathrow seems unnecessarily complicated. Getting in (initially) is easy enough. You show your ticket and passport to the member of staff who gives it a cursory glance, tears your ticket and waves you into the gate which is cordoned off with plexiglass walls and contains nothing but seating and a Coke machine. Once you're there, there's no getting out easily except in cases of emergency. Most of the time, I'm sure this system works fine as there's usually only about 30 minutes to wait until you board the plane. In our case, though, we waited for 30 minutes, then an hour, then two hours with no word on when/whether we would board. Many people (myself included) waited as long as they possibly could for a restroom before giving in. To leave the gate and go to the restroom (which was about 10 steps from where I was sitting, with a glass wall in between) you had to relinquish your passport, and when you returned you were subjected to a baggage and purse inspection and a security pat down (very thorough- they even checked the insides and bottom of my shoes and the soles of my feet). I couldn't help but think to myself that if a terrorist did somehow manage to make it past the initial airport security, they might conceivably be able to get onto a plane just fine unless, God forbid, they had to use the restroom.
After all that, it was announced that the runways would close until 4 pm and that a decision would be made then about flight status. Until then, we would need to wait in the main lobby and watch the flight screen (from which our flight soon mysteriously disappeared) for more information. Once there, we were all left to fend for ourselves and information was hard to come by. Security staff didn't seem to know any more than we did and the information counter was abandoned except for a handwritten paper message to follow the emergency exit signs for more information if our flight was cancelled. So we waited.
There should be an anthropological study of stranded passengers at airports. It was fascinating how people made the best of the situation. There was not enough seating for everyone, so travelers and families piled luggage and coats into temporary camps in corners and corridors and Heathrow became a refugee village. Provisions were shared, information acquisition became a communal effort and new friendships were formed ("Mummy, this is Olivia and she's from AMERICA!"). In one corner, a baby who was just learning how to craw butt-scooted back and forth between three families who obviously had never met one another before but now clapped encouragingly for the laughing baby as they passed him back and forth. A man with a toddler played Follow-the-Leader through the aisles of a store. Santa, leaving his post in the shopping area, made his way among the groups of families cheering up the bored and disgruntled kids. Any horizontal space large enough was covered in coats and softer bags and made into makeshift beds where some people actually slept (a heroic accomplishment given the noise and the chaos). And then most of the flights were cancelled. We were given a number to call to reschedule and told to leave. You can imagine the chaos that ensued when that many people all tried to leave at the same time.
Then, to top it all off, the Tube was having major problems with signal failures due to the cold, which led to major train delays, massive pileups on the platform, and way too many people on one train. Imagine the circus act where tons of clowns squeeze into one tiny car, then add large/heavy/numerous luggage. It was like a combined game of Twister and Tetris and hilarity ensued any time someone in the center of the train had to maneuver over, around, and under other people and their assorted luggage to get off the train. One lady, completely blocked in by a pile of bags that could not easily be moved, was physically lifted over it by a couple of helpful men, and her suitcase crowd-surfed from hand to hand overhead to join her on the platform. On the positive side, it was the first time I've ever seen human interaction and smiles on the Tube. Fun stuff!
Anyway, I'll get home eventually (perhaps) and meanwhile I have another interesting saga for the travel journal.
First of all, let me just say that London Heathrow during the holiday rush is bafflingly complicated. There are way too many people who don't know what they're doing (I'll count myself as one of them) and not enough staff to go around. Arriving at Terminal 3, there were so many people crammed tightly into indistinct and meandering lines that it was impossible to sort out which line was which. What you had to do was pick a line that looked promising and ask the people around you which line they thought it might be. You would then get several opinions, but a majority opinion would be taken as an authority on the matter and this would lead to an exodus of the rest of us for other lines to start the process over again. It was like an interpretive dance of confusion.
Once I got through security, all seemed to be going well. There were a few cancellations on the flight board, but they were all morning flights, so I assumed that the runways must still have been icy from the night before. I sipped on a coffee in the main waiting lounge and waited for my gate to open up. My stomach was beginning to unclench from the chaos of check-in and I was soon to be ( I thought) in the air and on my way home for Christmas. Then, on my way to the gate, I passed a window. My heart sank. It wasn't just snowing, it was blizzarding- buckets and sheets of snow in giant, picturesque and artificial-looking flakes that swirled unrelentingly in every direction. More snow than I've ever seen at one time in my life. I stood there staring at it with a sinking feeling of foreboding thinking that this couldn't be good.
However, the staff at the gate seemed to be optimistic as they welcomed me to my flight. I have to confess that the gate system at Heathrow seems unnecessarily complicated. Getting in (initially) is easy enough. You show your ticket and passport to the member of staff who gives it a cursory glance, tears your ticket and waves you into the gate which is cordoned off with plexiglass walls and contains nothing but seating and a Coke machine. Once you're there, there's no getting out easily except in cases of emergency. Most of the time, I'm sure this system works fine as there's usually only about 30 minutes to wait until you board the plane. In our case, though, we waited for 30 minutes, then an hour, then two hours with no word on when/whether we would board. Many people (myself included) waited as long as they possibly could for a restroom before giving in. To leave the gate and go to the restroom (which was about 10 steps from where I was sitting, with a glass wall in between) you had to relinquish your passport, and when you returned you were subjected to a baggage and purse inspection and a security pat down (very thorough- they even checked the insides and bottom of my shoes and the soles of my feet). I couldn't help but think to myself that if a terrorist did somehow manage to make it past the initial airport security, they might conceivably be able to get onto a plane just fine unless, God forbid, they had to use the restroom.
After all that, it was announced that the runways would close until 4 pm and that a decision would be made then about flight status. Until then, we would need to wait in the main lobby and watch the flight screen (from which our flight soon mysteriously disappeared) for more information. Once there, we were all left to fend for ourselves and information was hard to come by. Security staff didn't seem to know any more than we did and the information counter was abandoned except for a handwritten paper message to follow the emergency exit signs for more information if our flight was cancelled. So we waited.
There should be an anthropological study of stranded passengers at airports. It was fascinating how people made the best of the situation. There was not enough seating for everyone, so travelers and families piled luggage and coats into temporary camps in corners and corridors and Heathrow became a refugee village. Provisions were shared, information acquisition became a communal effort and new friendships were formed ("Mummy, this is Olivia and she's from AMERICA!"). In one corner, a baby who was just learning how to craw butt-scooted back and forth between three families who obviously had never met one another before but now clapped encouragingly for the laughing baby as they passed him back and forth. A man with a toddler played Follow-the-Leader through the aisles of a store. Santa, leaving his post in the shopping area, made his way among the groups of families cheering up the bored and disgruntled kids. Any horizontal space large enough was covered in coats and softer bags and made into makeshift beds where some people actually slept (a heroic accomplishment given the noise and the chaos). And then most of the flights were cancelled. We were given a number to call to reschedule and told to leave. You can imagine the chaos that ensued when that many people all tried to leave at the same time.
Then, to top it all off, the Tube was having major problems with signal failures due to the cold, which led to major train delays, massive pileups on the platform, and way too many people on one train. Imagine the circus act where tons of clowns squeeze into one tiny car, then add large/heavy/numerous luggage. It was like a combined game of Twister and Tetris and hilarity ensued any time someone in the center of the train had to maneuver over, around, and under other people and their assorted luggage to get off the train. One lady, completely blocked in by a pile of bags that could not easily be moved, was physically lifted over it by a couple of helpful men, and her suitcase crowd-surfed from hand to hand overhead to join her on the platform. On the positive side, it was the first time I've ever seen human interaction and smiles on the Tube. Fun stuff!
Anyway, I'll get home eventually (perhaps) and meanwhile I have another interesting saga for the travel journal.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Bath: It's Wet! (It was raining)
Anyone who's ever read Jane Austin knows of Bath. It's where gentile Georgian ladies in empire-waisted gowns go to take the cure, sip sulfur water for their health, and spend their evenings dancing at balls and hunting for wealthy husbands. That, and the fact that it is named for its famed Roman baths was all that I knew of Bath before my weekend getaway from London. As a history geek and Classicist, that in itself was enough of a draw. But my sister-in-law put it on my must-see list, so I found myself on train, in the rain (which I thought was appropriate, if less than picturesque), on my way to Bath.
From London, Bath is only 90 or so minutes away by train, and you pass though oodles of picturesque countryside on the way there. I only had the day to spend, so I intended to hit the highlights and ended up wishing for more time in this lovely, picturesque little town. Unlike London, Bath is easily walkable and accessible on foot, and after a quick walkabout to orient myself, I stopped at Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths which are catty-corner from one another in the same square.
I am fascinated by cathedrals and always stop in when I see one here in Europe. Like many other English cathedrals, Bath Abbey has an incredible history. The site has been occupied by Christian religious institutions since the 7th century A.D, and may have been built atop earlier pagan temples. The first crowned "King of the English," King Edgar, was crowned here in 973, and the current construction was built in the 12th and 16th centuries and restored in the 18th century. Don't miss the angels ascending Jacob's Ladder to heaven on the west front. Legend has it that a 15th century Bishop of Bath, Oliver King, had it constructed after he visited the Abbey, found its monks more interested in earthly delights than the kingdom of heaven, and had a dream of the Heavenly Host ascending and descending a ladder.
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| Steam and bubbles rising from the surface of the water at Bath |
After tea, I made my way to the Royal Crescent, a semi-circular row of houses at the heart of Georgian Bath. Number 1 is a museum, furnished and maintained in the manner of an 18th century resident. Nearby, you can tour the Bath Assembly Rooms and Fashion Museum, where the fashionable Georgian ladies and gentlemen (Jane Austen and Charles Dickens among them) would gather for balls, concerts, and gambling.
On the way back to the train, I stopped at Pulteney Bridge, spanning the Avon River, and lined with shops. You can take a one-hour river tour here, but I (wet and tired) declined the opportunity, and took the train back to London.
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