This Is The Stuff, A Tale of Two Restaurants

Every now and then, it becomes necessary to head over to Louisiana and visit my old pal Mr. LeJeune for some of his superb meat products, most notably garlic sausage and tasso. In the 40 or so years I've been making this trip, a lot has changed. There are, for instance, more and better places to stay. There's been a resurgence of pride in the local culture. And these two things have resulted in a lot more tourism. Which is a good thing (for the locals making money off of it) and a bad thing. Which we'll get to in a minute.

Now, last week it became essential for me to get out of town before I lost my mind. You know, mostly the same thing that's been oppressing all of us Americans, but also the fact that I just wanted to be somewhere else, even for a short time. I had a short visit to San Francisco in January that was pretty unsatisfactory for the most part (some day I'll realize that that place and I just don't get along, plan the trip so as to get what I wanted done, see who I wanted to see, and leave before my blood pressure gets too much of a workout), but nothing since then. With little money, but my flexible work schedule (I'd just finished the next-to-last chapter of The History of Rock & Roll, Vol. 2) it boiled down to a quick drive to Lafayette, overnight in a hotel, visit Mr. Le Jeune the next morning, and come back here.

It's a long trip, but my friend K said she'd like to join me, to keep me from nodding off or becoming too tired along the way. The only downside is that, as in San Francisco, my sense of taste and smell is still intermittent. I'm probably going to have to go see the only doctor who's actually treated me for it successfully, and he's in France. (American doctors, motivated by greed, want to do an operation that works briefly, then shuts off the sense for the rest of your life. I don't want that, thanks. And a flight to France would be way cheaper than the operation, as would be the price of the medications.) These days, though, it's been clearing up in the mornings most days, so that was a plus.

The drive out was hellish, mostly due to a stretch east of Houston, where we sat while three lanes folded into two somewhere around Bay City. We got in to Lafayette about 5 and checked in to a place I'd stayed at before, the Hilton, a giant high-rise and probably the tallest building in town. The last time was in the late '80s, when it was the only decent hotel in town, and I spent most of a day fighting food poisoning I'd gotten at Mulate's, which had once been a decent place to eat before they started courting the still-rare tour-bus crowd.

The hotel's now a Doubletree By Hilton with modernized decor, and it was filled with pre-teen baseball players and their parents, but that didn't matter: I passed out for a half-hour nap as soon as the bed was within striking range. I woke, refreshed, and then the next decision was where to eat. Weirdly, in the middle of a place famous for its food, there weren't many choices. I didn't want to drive too far from Lafayette, like to Breaux Bridge, and crawfish season has been over for a while, so it was a problem. Both of us were dressed fairly casually, which left out Café Vermillionville, which was getting kind of long in the tooth anyway. What remained wasn't very inspiring to say the least: there was a chain called the Blue Dog Café, an annoying reminder of the late George Rodrigue, who made an empire out of a cutsey cur (he was an okay painter before the dog took over his life, but not nearly as good as Francis Pavy). The only remaining choice seemed to be something called the Bon Temps Grill, which Tripadvisor rated #1 in the city and which happened to be real near the hotel. So the Bon Temps it was.

Now, from a cursory glance at the website, I knew this wasn't going to be traditional Cajun food, but food -- described as "swamp edge cuisine" -- that took from Cajun traditions and worked with them. Fine with me. My taste buds had shut down, but that was nothing new. The place was hopping when we got there, so it was evidently popular, and the waitress was top-notch. The only warning of what was to come was a basket of cold, dry garlic bread slapped onto the table first thing. K wasn't very hungry, so she ordered the seafood stuffed mushrooms as a main and a side-salad. I saw remoulade shrimp, which is a traditional dish, albeit from New Orleans, and since I'd only made it myself years ago (and, I should add, made it well), I ordered that, along with a stuffed pork chop, something I'd discovered at the long-gone Stop & Shop supermarket in Lake Charles ages ago. The butcher there was a genius, and his boudin, beef tasso smoked on mahogany, and stuffed pork chops were sublime.

Well, the food came quickly, my shrimp and her mushrooms, followed too quickly by the salads, which caused the waitress to come apologize for that lapse. I assured her that it wasn't as if they'd get cold. My shrimp seemed to taste okay, though, although I could only barely discern the taste, but K was irate: here were these mushroom caps with, well, basically a lump of bread on them, surrounded by supposed tasso-and-pepper gravy that was indistinguishable from the stuff you get on a chicken-fried steak. I soon found out, too, that the shrimp were done like guacamole in a bad Mexican joint: piled on a mountain of shredded lettuce. Then came my pork chop. It was a pork chop. It was thick. Instead of being sliced lengthwise and filled with stuffing, there was a hole a little bigger than a quarter with a tiny plug of stuffing wedged into it. The pork chop was pretty good, but hey, I grill pork chops at home all the time. Annoyingly, they also provided a knife to cut it with that was like a cutlass.

It was while I was sawing away at the chop that K noticed something. "This music is fake," she said. "I don't recognize any of it." What she meant was that the Muzak, which was blues, wasn't the original recordings. And she was right: just then some song I did recognize played, and it was...off. The whole thing left me puzzled. We paid our bill and left, full but unsatisfied.

The next morning the idea was to get to Eunice to see LeJeune before noon and head back, but as usual that's not the way it happened. But there was another restaurant I'd seen on my last trip over that interested me and from what I could tell, it was breakfast and lunch only. The name, though, worried me a bit: T-Coon's. I remember being shocked 35 years earlier by discovering a guy named T-Neg in the Cecilia, Louisiana phone book (slightly smaller than a monthly issue of Reader's Digest). But then I remembered the word "coonass" referring to Cajuns. A lot of them don't like it; some claim it's derived from a regional French word, conasse, meaning a stupid woman, or silly bitch, according to my French dictionary. But the front of the restaurant shows a coon stirring a black pot. And anyway, a decent breakfast is the hardest thing to find in these parts, so we went. Again, the place was packed. Unlike the night before, though, my nose was playing nice, and the smell was excellent. So was the Mellow Gold coffee, a coffee/chicory blend, light on the chicory, that's the house java.

K still wasn't hungry, but she ordered a sausage-and-biscuit combo. The waitress asked her if she wanted pork sausage or a link and I urged the link: that's what we were here for. I was intrigued by the courtbouillon omelet. To me, courbouillon was always (in Cajun cooking: it's a whole different thing in French) a fish stew with a roux-based tomato sauce served over rice. The waitress said it was mixed seafood with a sauce in an omelet. Okay, I'll take it, with a biscuit and grits, which I wasn't going to eat much of. While we waited, I picked up a box of seasoning from the table. It was T-Coon's The Stuff. Okay, I'd seen and used Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning for years, and on one of my recent visits I'd stopped at the Slap Ya Mama! store in Ville Platte on a Cajun friend's recommendation and bought a box of their seasoning, which was a bit better.

The breakfast came, and I noticed a nice touch: both biscuits were wrapped in some paper: old timey! But...where was the butter? K surfaced out of hers long enough to say "It doesn't need any." I took a bite. She was right. And, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I very lightly dusted the grits with The Stuff. Quite different from the others. But enough carbs: this omelet was sending my nose a message that my mouth needed to investigate. The courtbouillon turned out to be much thicker than I was used to, but the mixture of catfish, crawish, and shrimp, not to mention the seasoning, was exquisite.

As we were enjoying the meal, a guy with a T-Coon's shirt that said David on it came over to ask how we were doing. Then he asked where we were from  and K said "Austin." "Well," said David "I'll try to keep from makin' any librul jokes." A chorus of grunts came from behind me, and a couple of ominous chuckles. (I later saw that it was a quartet of gentlemen in camo, either Army or National Guard). I told him that his coutbouillon was different than what I'd encountered before and he was off, talking with passion about how he was about to raise his prices 12 ½ percent because he refused to stint on quality. "That's a quarter pound of crawish goes into each omelet. I have those links made by a friend over in Abbeville to my own recipe. The catfish comes from over in Mississippi and it's fresh, not frozen." It was a nice little conversation.

"I'm gonna change your life," he told me. "I'ma give her a box of The Stuff, and when she starts adding it to your food, well, look out: things are gonna get a lot better for both of you." And he told the waitress to make sure she gave K a box of it.

There it is: The Stuff

By avoiding politics and other minefields, I was rather liking David, because without mentioning tradition, he was still passionate about it. (You can see more of this passion on the front page of his website). As I waited in the car for K to finish smoking -- she only takes a few puffs, but puff she must, and she does it outside, not in the car -- I saw the list of daily lunch specials painted on the front of the restaurant: smothered rabbit, short-rib fricassée, smothered chicken and okra, and that courtbouillon on Fridays. But it was getting on, and we still had to vacate the hotel and get to Eunice.

We did, and now I have 20 lbs of sausage and tasso in the fridge waiting to be packed into freezer bags and frozen, except what I'll use to make red beans and rice (without rice) for dinner tonight. But before I press "publish" on this, I've been thinking about Cajun culture, tradition, and Americans.

My takeaway is this: As I've long realized, Americans are so alienated from their own country by this point that they usually don't know where they are. Oh, sure, they can check their phones and use Google Maps, but that's not where they are. The thousands of people who've moved to Austin since I last lived here, they don't know where they are, either. They've bought into the marketing slogan of keeping Austin weird, mouthed the slogan about the live music capital of America, but they don't know how it got that way in the first place, nor why it actually isn't either of these things any more.

And Americans who go to Cajun country don't know where they are, either. They come to Lafayette and stay there, possibly because they're attending a Ragin' Cajuns football game or doing oil business (not much of that left), or whatever. Few of them have even a superficial knowledge of where they are: the imagery in their heads are of alligators, crawfish, Blue Dogs, and swamps dripping with Spanish moss. There are accordions and fiddles involved somehow, probably to play blues, because the often-subtle distinctions between Cajun and Creole music is of no interest. They probably think Dr. John, Mac Rebbenack, is a Cajun. They don't understand the distinction between New Orleans and Lafayette, let alone New Orleans and Grand Mouton, Eunice, or Ville Platte. And ultimately, this is sad, especially if they spend more time there than we did this time. So they go to the Bon Ton and get their buttons pushed, no matter that it's a mediocre joint just a bit above a fast-casual restaurant. They hear piped-in blues, no matter that that's not the local indigenous music (hey, shaddup, Eddie Shuler), no matter that it's 21st century remakes by the Muzak Corporation or that ilk. They go away happy.

In no way will they want to engage with David Billeaud and T-Coon's, unless they happen in by mistake, in which case they'll be wary and a bit conservative about what they order and then be surprised that it's as good as it is. They're not going to get his cultural conservatism (not to mention his background music, which is mostly zydeco: I recognized two versions of "Hip et Tai-yo," both, I think, by Clifton Chenier), or understand why he'd rather raise his prices than compromise his quality. And if they got to talking politics, well, who knows?

Mr. LeJeune up in Eunice is just as culturally conservative as Billeaud is. He even makes ponce, a rarity which is sausage meat stuffed into a pig's stomach and smoked. I bought one last time I was there but couldn't find anyone to eat it with me. It was, unsurprisingly, excellent. I have no idea what his politics are, and after 35 years, I don't give a damn. Some things are above that, and these men have that figured out. They're members of their community, they practice their faith (which is Catholic: another ominous thing is the incursion of evangelical fundamentalism in Cajun culture, which could erase it before you know it), they interact with their neighbors, like the soldiers and the table of teachers who were finishing up when we walked in. And when I interact with them and their kind, I know where I am, know I'm a visitor who's treated with respect because I treat them with respect, as I would if they were visiting me. This is what's increasingly being lost in this country, as we tribalize and march towards one-party rule and fascism. It's an emergency, like so many other things happening at the moment, and an emergency that's so small it risks getting lost. I feel it because I don't feel at home in Austin, and haven't since returning almost five years ago, so it's a personal emergency for me.

Anyway, that's my takeaway. That and a box of The Stuff.

Rye Bread and Ghosts

Yes, I'm well aware that it's been six months since I've posted here, but it's been pretty crazy. I'm trying to get this second (and final) volume of The History of Rock & Roll done -- it's due in July of next year -- while negotiating Life Itself (as Austinites know, we lost a dear friend earlier this year, and I spent some time with her during her last days in San Antonio) and the trials of squeezing out the last drops of a book advance that I predicted would run out in November. And I was right.

But I had a shining light to follow: in March, at SXSW, I was asked by a friend from Finland if I'd like to do a keynote at their Musiikki & Media conference in early October. I've never been to Finland, and I was assured that Tampere, the city where the event was was "sort of Finland's Austin" (only, one presumes, without edible Mexican food), and, furthermore, that I could get a round trip from Helsinki to Berlin cheap on Air Berlin, so I could add on a cheap trip to my past to the whole experience. Which is pretty much what happened. So here's the story, with pictures.

* * *

The route the Finns sent me on started with that damn non-stop flight to Heathrow, one of the two non-stops to Europe from here (the other being to Frankfurt). Heathrow is a vision of Hell at any time, not to mention after a 9-hour flight on a plane with rather limited legroom, and of course no matter where you're going, you have to change terminals, so you have to go through security again, where the ill-tempered British security minions yell at you and hurry you along. This time I was so hassled by them that I thought I'd lost my house keys until an accident at my hotel in Tampere revealed that I'd tossed it into my computer bag along with my loose change as someone was yelling HURRY HURRY HURRY at me. Whew. 

But first I was headed to Helsinki, where by a fortuitious error I'd booked two days in a hotel to recover before heading to Tampere. Paid for them, too. And I'd accidentally picked a very nice hotel: Radisson Blu Plaza, which is in part the former corporate headquarters of an old company whose product I couldn't quite figure out, but featured stained glass windows and heroic decorations. 

Workers, the lifeblood of any company

Another error -- not nearly as fortuitous -- was not knowing that Finland is two whole time zones away from Central European Time, which is what I'm used to in Spain or Germany. To say I was particularly gazorbled when I pulled into the hotel at 6pm is no understatement. I also had a problem: I'd no-refund paid for those two days, but the conference wanted me in Tampere the next day. Fortunately, my train wasn't until later, so this gave me time to be a little more liberal with my checkout time -- and meet Pekka Lainen, something of a superstar on Finnish public radio, who'd be interviewing me for the keynote. We hashed over what we'd be talking about over lunch (I passed on the chile con carne tacos and ordered fish -- Arctic char, to be exact) and as he said good-bye, the rain stopped for the first time since I'd arrived and I grabbed my camera and walked to a square Pekka had mentioned over by the University. It's overlooked by a huge white church, which, since the sun was out, gleamed beautifully. 

This is Constitution Square, and since I had a train to catch, I didn't explore much, but I did notice across the street the oldest building in Helsinki. 

As you may be able to see if you click the picture, it dates from 1785. That's right: the entire nation of Finland is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. It used to be Russia. And thereby hangs a tale, which we'll get to in a minute. 

I got back to the hotel, packed, and caught my train. It takes about 90 minutes to get to Tampere from Helsinki, and it rained intermittently the whole way. Before it got too dark, I looked at the countryside and the occasional town. The architecture is quite different from western Europe, and one feature I thought rather silly: metal ladders on the roofs which led to the ground. It occurred to me that these were fire escapes, and they'd get hot if the house was on fire. Really dumb, until I had a flash: they weren't fire escapes. They were snow escapes. Yes, they get a bit of snow in Finland in the winter, as you may have heard. 

The hotel where the conference was held was also the hotel where I was put up, a huge tower, the largest or second-largest structure in Tampere (it was hard to tell; the explanatory text was in Finnish, a language with no cognates in English, but fortunately every public bathroom I used had a little man or woman cutout, because if it had just been the word I'd have been out of luck). Naturally I went the wrong way, and, being still very gazorbled, took a cab when I walked across town to the other hotel the chain maintains in Tampere. There was a mandatory welcome party, I grabbed a meal in the hotel restaurant and eventually crashed.

Tampere from the 13th Floor (Yes, there were Elevators)

Jet-lag got me up early, so I checked my mail and Facebook and...uh-oh: Pekka was planning on catching a train in Helsinki at the time our interview was scheduled to start! Fortunately that got straightened out and he arrived on time. It was a great interview, and went way over our time limit. The discussions continued in the hotel restaurant, and by the time it was all over, it was mid-afternoon. This was a good thing: my return to Helsinki wasn't for another day. I had 24 hours to see what was in Tampere. I mentioned this on Facebook, and a Finnish woman I know suggested the Lenin Museum. The Lenin Museum?

But there it was on the map, so off I went. A relic of the Russians was nearby.

Now, if I remembered the map right...

I didn't. I took a wrong turn and kept walking. There was a park. I remembered a park from the map, so I kept walking. There were mushrooms. Big mushrooms.

You can't tell from the photo, but this guy was close to two feet tall.

Each lobe was the size of my hand.

And these were like mini-pizzas

Eventually, I came upon a sewage treatment plant, which was way wrong. Had a nice view, though.

But none of this was supposed to be there. I turned around, and for the first time I remembered that my phone was in my pocket, so I dialled up Google Maps. I had a 37-minute walk ahead of me. The day was overcast, wet from the previous day's rains. I was still jet-lagged. I walked and walked and after about 20 minutes of slogging through industrial wasteland and alongside a freeway, I arrived just down the hill from the Russian church at a place where I should have turned right instead of left. The phone said I still had 18 minutes to go. I don't know if it was a combination of jet-lag and diabetes or what, but I was exhausted and starving. I lurched onto a traffic island and felt myself losing my balance as oncoming traffic sped inches away from me. I threw out an arm and embraced a traffic sign. When the light changed, I trudged in the right direction and sure enough: there was a park. I had to sit down, but soon enough felt good enough to soldier on. An arm of the park I'd sat in divided a street on the right, and I walked where the phone told me to. And there was the Lenin Museum, confusingly enough in the administrative building of the state theater. And, a quick look at the map told me, the market hall was just a few minutes away, so, knowing that I needed to eat, I headed in that direction, and found it. Right inside there was a lunch counter, and the woman behind it spoke simple English. I ordered what she said was chicken in a cheese sauce with mashed potatoes. It wasn't like any chicken in cheese sauce I'd imagined, but it was very good, and not just because I was hungry. The rest of the food hall, I discovered, was mostly lunch counters, but then, I doubt there were many crops in early October.

Okay, time for Lenin. The building was fairly opulent, and I eventually learned that it had been the union hall for all the industrial unions in Tampere, where Finland's heavy industries created factory equipment and locomotives. I'd even passed an ancient locomotive in the industrial section I'd wandered through. In the early 20th century, Tampere's workers were unionized and were very interested in the communism/socialism brewing elsewhere in Russia, so when a couple of Bolshevik thugs knocked over a bank in Estonia (another Russian province), they realized they were too hot for Petersburg, where most of the rest of the Bolsheviks were and fled to the small provincial city of Tampere, where the union guy welcomed them at the opulent union hall, all polished wood and marble. One of the thugs was a Georgian named Josep Dzhugashvili, who seemed hot to get the revolution going, so the Finns sent word to Germany, where Lenin was hanging out, and he got on the famous sealed train to Tampere. The unionists introduced him to the bank robbers and he soon decided it was time to go back to Petersburg and get this Party started. When he arrived, he was greeted in an office at the union hall, which is now the Lenin Museum. There's actually not much in it, the major artifact being Lenin's cane (although it's not even his cane, but an exact replica traded to Tampere's mayor, who brought the original to Moscow on a friendship tour some years ago), and there's this corny bit:

Red marks the spot!

I'm pretty sure you can't read what's on the red spot on the floor, but it says that this is the exact spot where Lenin and Stalin first met. The corny bit of Lenin in the sidecar ("Have your picture taken on the motorcycle!") and the life-size Stalin figure (my friend JJ Gordon, during his acting career, performed a one-man play called I Am Joseph Stalin, about one of the doubles Stalin used, and I have to say that I never met Stalin -- thank heavens -- but this thing's the spitting image of JJ) give you something of the flavor of the place. Cool gift-shop, though, if you don't have enough Commie crap.

The reason this is Finland's 100th birthday is because once the Bolsheviks took over the Russian government, they thanked Finland by giving it its independence. Of course, they also changed their mind, which resulted in yet another 1917 revolution, and that's given as the reason Finnish, inscrutable as it is, is the national language. (Actually, Swedish is the second official language, which means German-speakers can sort of make out some signs).

The next day, I returned to Helsinki, and spent the night, flying off to Berlin for a short visit, my first to the place I'd lived for 15 years for eight years. I understood it had changed. Uh, yeah.

* * *

Dude, where's my apartment?

It's really hard to take a picture of what's not there, but since Berlin has always been a city of vanished places, I got kind of good at it there. This one takes some explanation, though, because it's not a very good picture of something that's not there. Okay, my old apartment was impossible to find unless you knew the secret. The yellowish building in the center of the picture was Borsigstr. 2. Next door on the right was 1, and next door on the left was 4. I was in 3, which, for reasons known only to the city of Berlin, referred to the building behind 2. Somehow, my landlord sold off the driveway you'd walk down to get to it, the tiny vacant lot on the side of the driveway, and part of the parking lot behind the building to developers, who put up the grey building, which is now allegedly a four-star hotel. I need not remind anyone who visited me at this place that my apartment was barely even a one-star one. The note on the grey door, which was never open during the 11 years I lived here, says that access to 3 was through the hotel garage. 

That was only the first shock. Although I could probably have found cheaper and better accommodation, for nostalgia's sake I chose the hotel on the corner (to the left and all the way up the block), Honigmond. Honigmond started as a bar during Communist days, the Borsigeck. It was the favored watering hole for the students at the theological seminary in the church two doors up from my place, and back then, the church and divinity students were secret centers of dissidence, as was the theater. Borsigeck was also a favorite of another bunch of malcontents, actors. The code word for meetings was "playing chess at Borsigeck." After the regime change, a bunch of Borsigeck folks bought the bar and renovated it in turn-of-the-century elegance, and made the kitchen into one that produced excellent German food, with a weekly menu that also had Italian touches. I first ate there with my editor at the English-language magazine whose offices were not too far away, Checkpoint. It had just reopened, and we thought that, as far off the track as it was, it was doomed. Hardly. It was a neighborhood joint, our secret. Once they acquired the whole building and turned it into a hotel, I wondered what the breakfast was like, but I never found out. Eventually, they bought two more buildings to add to the hotel. It made me happy; I ate and drank there a lot, and when I started my communication company, Berlin Information Group, we'd commandeer the back room on Tuesday nights, which were very slow, and have our meetings there until someone talked a developer into giving us free office space a couple of blocks away.  So you see why I picked the hotel. 

But Honigmond the restaurant died earlier this year. The space has far fewer tables, and it is now Neumond. And on Neumond's dinner menu, amidst all the gussied up dishes, is that signifier of Euro-hipsterdom gone bad: a fancy cheeseburger. I had breakfast there my first day (very generic) and went elsewhere from then on. (Yes, I'll get to food in a minute here). 

But beyond all this there was an onslaught of change to absorb. My friend Nikki picked me up at the airport and after I checked in, we went for a walk just to check it out. Torstr., on whose corner I almost lived (it's a major street, so it was good to have a couple of buildings muffling the noise), had been a collection of this and that, a couple of bakeries, kebab stands, a television repair place...that sort of miscellanea. There were a couple of restaurants, especially late in the game, with an excellent if terminally trendy Chinese place, the super-snotty Bandol (I was denied entrance once because I was wearing jeans, which was so out of place in that neighborhood that I just laughed at them), and an excellent Italian place. Now, it's wall-to-wall restaurants, of which the only one I recognized was Bandol. Some of them, I was told, were quite good. Many appeared to be hipster-yupster in appeal: a great number of people with money from elsewhere in Germany have arrived, and it's unlikely I could even manage to aford an apartment on a side-street. By the time we made the grand circle, I was dizzy. Nikki drove off and I went uptairs to think. 

The next day I kept walking, this time below Torstr. in the so-called Scheunenviertel, which had been filled with emigrants between the wars and featured the Neue Synagogue, a prominent Reform congregation that was accidentally bombed by the British in World War II. When I lived there, it was where the edgy galleries were, a couple of odd bars, and our magazine offices, and, later, the studios of JazzRadio, where I did three shows a week for about 8 years. I took a lot of shitty photographs. But not all of them were bad. 

The Empty Apartment

For some reason, I'd never gotten a good shot of this memorial to the deportation of the neighborhood Jews. Or maybe this is better than the ones I took because the greenery's had eight more years to grow in. I could have framed it better, though. 

I think the reason the photos were so bad, though, was because I wasn't looking at what was there, which is, well, kind of important. I was looking at what I remembered, and that made accurate documentation imposible. Okay, and the early-morning light was off; I never got up this early when I lived there. But it's also that there were ghosts. Things I expected to see that weren't there. The hotel was quite close to the apartment of my short-lived ex-girlfriend, Lady Drunkula. She may still be there if she isn't dead, which she might well be; it'd only be a question of whether someone murdered her, she had an accident while drunk, or she drank herself to death. I'd walk past places and memories came back to me despite myself. I found I didn't much enjoy this. 

To be honest, though, I returned without much of a plan, many of the people I wanted to see were out of town or busy, and I realized that the next visit would have to be planned a bit differently. And there should be one, but maybe not too soon. 

One thing that went off brilliantly was that the same day I went below Torstr. I also went to the Bode Museum to look at their room of Tilman Riemenschneider sculptures. The Nordrhenisch school of wood-carvers appeal to me greatly, and I've seen plenty of their work over the years, but Riemenschneider is a cut above. The Bode doesn't even have a lot of them, I discovered. I'd remembered a lot more when I was rushing through the Bode for the first (and until now only) time I'd gone there, writing it up for one of the many guidebooks I'd worked for, and since everything in Berlin is always under construction, there was a room with at least one of his pieces that was blocked off. But the room that had ones was fascinating. I'm not even a sculpture guy, but these knocked me out. 

Venetian dude

Another Venetian dude

No idea dude

And then there was Riemenschneider. The masterpiece was the four Evangelists. 

All together

And, of course, the band of angels.

Most of the rest of the museum is later stuff that doesn't appeal to me, much of which isn't first-rate (that'd be off by Potsdamer Platz in the Gemäldegalerie), and I went and overdosed myself by buying a ticket good for all the museums so I could see what they'd done to the Neues Museum, which had a hole you could (and some did) drive a truck through due to wartime bombing. It's now been patched up, rebuilt, and houses Greek and Egyptian things, including that bust of Tutankhamen's wife (and sister) Nefertiti. Bet you thought that was in the Metropolitan, eh? In the basement was a nice show about the beginnings of civilization in China and Egypt, their similarities and differences as demonstrated by objects. As is the custom in Germany, though, the museum was grossly overheated, I was getting tired, and so I went back to the hotel after an increasingly more cursory glance at this exhibit. 

My proposed last-night mass meetup wound up being Nikki, two of her boys, Uwe, her ex, who is also the father of one of the kids, and my friends John and Aimee, at a bar Uwe was running (and has since left) called Kegelbahn. It was pretty low-key, especially since John and Aimee had to leave early, but at one point we were all at the table nursing our beers and I said "You know, this place has ruined me. I just can't get used to the States." And...well, I can't. It's not just our grotesque, evil President, or the utter alienation of the new, bloated Austin. It's a way of living that overlays the entire country I've seen since I've been back. I just don't like it. If it were mere culture-shock, it would have worn off. And it hasn't. I'm not sure what I'll do, exactly, but I can't budge for another couple of years, while I write this next book and promote it when it comes out. I didn't really have any choice in returning: there were things here I needed to use for the book. But once I don't have that choice...

* * *

A FEW CULINARY NOTES:

Finland is probably not high on your list of countries for destination dining, but should you have to do there, you shouldn't regret it. One thing I noticed immediately was that the bread there is extraordinary. This is because it's mostly rye; wheat doesn't grow too well, so it's not as much used in the national cuisine. At breakfast in the hotel, I got that immediately, including a crispbread covered with seeds that I brought back with me. The cheeses were good, too. 

I had dinner at some fine places. My friend Karen in Berlin suggested Seahorse, in Helsinki, whose business card advertises "Finnish food and culture since 1934," which would be better for someone who, unlike me, does not have a deep, visceral distaste for beets, root vegetables being another of the mainstays of local agriculture. I had some herring, some of which had a camphor flavor (not bad, but weird), and then a "Scandinavian hash" of ham and potatoes that wasn't too memorable. Cheap and friendly joint, though. Another place I enjoyed quite a bit was Kuu, which means "month" in Finnish (it's the suffix of the names of all the months, the waitress explained). The salmon cured in aqavit with a crayfish sauce was super, and the reindeer stew (had to have it once!) was very well done, letting the distinctive flavor of the meat play off the berry-studded wine reduction brilliantly. A mixture of locals and Japanese tourists, superb service, highly recommended. My third dinner was at Bryggeri, which, as you can tell from its (Swedish) name is a brewpub, but one with extraordinary food, matched with the in-house beers. I had a bit of a cold so I remember I started with their cheese and charcuterie plate, but my taste buds faded before the main course so I don't remember what I had. And the receipt is in Finnish. Recommended, though. Bryggeri is also near the harbor, which is where you'll find the market hall, which has far more food than restaurants (including a pancake place with the motto, in English, "A pancake a day keeps the sadness away," which tells you everything you need to know about Seasonal Affect Disorder in Finland), where I got a nice snack of a slice of superb smoked salmon which I munched as I walked around. 

In Tampere, I ate twice at the hotel restaurant (not particularly recommended, although there was nothing wrong with it) and once at Tiiliholvi, a place which also seems to have a branch in Helsinki. This was very nice, although I was the only person in the place when I went. A soup of root vegetables was a fine Finnish start, and the "duck two ways" turned out to be breast meat and liver, each with its own sauce. They brag that they have the best wine cellar in town, and if the glass of Les Douves Latour Carnet (I was intimidated by the "Latour" part, but it was affordable) was anything to go by, they're right. It was not only a perfect accompaniment, but a profound wine -- and, as I discovered on my return, a $20 bottle if you can find it. 

In Berlin, after the Honigmond disappointment, I went down the street to a place that had opened when I was living there. I hadn't liked it, thinking it pretentious but not cooking to meet its pretentions, so I never went back. But this time, it appeared that the spirit of the old Honigmond had just picked up and walked a block. True, Alpenstück has white tablecloths, but the Radeberger beer is just as good, and the bread, well, that's different. The reason is that they've expanded across the street, clearing out a hairdresser and a bar (Smily :-) der Friseur and Cheer's -- a copy-editor's nightmare in 3-D) to put in a bakery-cafe, whose first-rate breads and pastries would have been a real boon to the 'hood back when I was living there. 

Quite the adventure, and now I'm back in the USA, where hamburgers (and cheeseburgers) sizzle on an open grill night and day. But I know I'll be back to Berlin. And who knows, maybe Finland. 

Surrounded By Jews -- ¿In Spain?

Next stop Toledo. If I could manage it, that is: the brave concierge at my hotel spent 2 ½ hours negotiating the Renfe website trying to get a ticket, and the best he could do was to get a confirmation number for me to show the ticket agent. To be honest, if the cabbie hadn't taken me through the park, I would have known how close the station really was and done it in person, but we agreed it was an educational experience and he might be asked to do it again.

That said, I walked down to the train station, bid the turtles a brief adios, and got on a train that took a bit over an hour to get to Toledo. Again, the scenery was almost nonexistent, but once we got there, it was obvious why a city had grown up there, surrounded as it is by a river. But the first thing I had to do was get out of the train station. That was easy enough, but the station was gorgeous.

Although compared to the rest of the city the station is obviously recent, it deliberately recalls the work of the Mudéjars, Muslims who stayed in Spain after the reconquista, the taking of the former Arab state of al-Andaluz by the Spanish. This, and the vibrant Jewish community the city had supported, was part of what I came to see.

Yawn. Another city on another hill. Taken near the railroad station. 

This time the cab driver took me through the park again, but he had to: Toledo is seriously pedestrianized, and its drivable streets aren't real intuitive. I'd picked my hotel carefully: it was the only one that mentioned that it was in the heart of the old judería, the Jewish neighborhood, which proved to be a smart place to be from a number of viewpoints. For one thing, it was away from the tourist crush. For another thing, signs all over town point to the synagogues, and just a few feet away was the Maria Blanca synagogue, which I hustled off to see. This had been built by the Mudéjars for the local Jews and then, after the Expulsion, had been turned into a church dedicated to the purity of the Virgin by a fanatical priest. Now it's been reclaimed as a historical monument, and the Arab influence is everywhere.

The main sanctuary is marked off by these pillars

 Outside, there's a small building with an art gallery in it, and that's where I headed next. A friend in Austin had told me that a friend of hers sometimes worked there, spoke English, and gave a great tour of the judería if you asked for an appointment. Her name is not Naomi, so that's what I'll call her: tour guides are heavily regulated in Toledo, mostly for good reasons (and there are tons of tourists on tours you'll encounter as you walk the streets). Leading an unlicensed tour can get you a massive fine, so if you're headed to Toledo and want the tour, let me know and I'll let her know. We made an appointment for the next day.

I had the rest of the day to wander around. The medieval city part of Toledo -- the part on the hill -- isn't all that large, and my next stop was the Sephardic Museum, housed in another former synagogue, El Tránsito.

Impossible to photograph the main room, but I tried

Upstairs there was this room with these inscriptions. I later learned that the inscription in the roundel was probably Hebrew, but written in Arabic script! 

The inside of this synagogue reflects the wealth of Samuel Levi, who built it (and was later murdered by the king, Pedro the Cruel, who seized his money) and here again the Arabic influence is everywhere. The museum itself tries a bit too hard, presuming no knowledge of Judaism whatever, which, for Spanish visitors, might be true. It's remarkable, though, that as much of the original decoration and structure remains, and it's worth the couple of Euros it costs to get in just to wander around and gaze.

From here I wandered around a bit, going up the hill and looking for other sites that might fill me in on the city's history. My advice is to be careful: even the city-sanctioned sites can be a ripoff. There was a (non-sanctioned) museum in a former monastery dedicated to the Cathars and other sacred military orders who participated in the Crusades. It's run by a crazy deaf guy who hands you a book of translations of the captions on a bunch of pictures set up in the main part of the museum. Not a single authentic artifact around: it appears to be run by a company that produces ripoff "museums" like this and the inevitable Museum of Torture you find in various European cities. You'd learn more from a magazine article on the Crusades. But the church of El Salvador, which is sanctioned, is just as much of a ripoff. It advertises itself as an archeological site with Visigothic and Arab elements, but you go in and walk into the courtyard and up some stairs and see a bunch of stones with no labelling to tell you what they are. You emerge €2.50 poorer and no wiser.

It was okay: I'd already paid the fake Crusader museum €2.50, and I was learning my way around this part of town. I'd eaten lunch next to a church where Toledo's most famous Christian, El Greco, had a painting (didn't go in: €2.50 saved), and marvelled at the huge number of souvenir shops selling swords (Toledo blades! A sign in the train station warns that you might not be able to take "certain souvenirs" as carryon luggage, and this is what they mean) and knives and lots and lots of bits of damasqueño, gold-inlaid steel, an art brought to the city by Jews from Damascus. I came close to the cathedral, but managed to miss it, and the afternoon was ending, so I headed back to the hotel to start to think about dinner.

A quick search on the web indicated that there wasn't much in the judería (and none of it kosher, not that that was an issue for me), but a restaurant called La Orza looked good. I used TripAdvisor's Fork app to make a reservation and went off at the appointed time. Turned out that Fork had made the reservation for the next night instead, but after a bit of sniffing, they found me a table next to a gaggle of obnoxious Germans who alternated their time between arguing which was the best Kenny G album and berating the waiter over various allergy issues. I alternated between hating them and marvelling that my German came back so quickly. But the food was spectacular: a "carpaccio" of fresh boletus mushrooms studded with some kind of truffle cream and a loin of venison with a not-too-sweet glaze. The wine was just as good: a locally-grown wine called Martúe, which will set you back a whopping €6.80 in the local stores and is a stunning blend of Syrah, Cabernet, Merlot, Tempranillo, and Petit Verdot.

The next day at noon, I met Naomi in front of Maria Blanca, and was treated to a tour of the invisible judería. It's invisible, of course, because of 1492, the year Ferdinand and Isabella, co-rulers of a newly-unified Spain, ordered all the non-Christians out of the country, an order that was enforced by the Vatican's faith police, aka the Inquisition. Convert or leave was the order, and many agreed to convert, at least on the surface. It was the Inquisition's job to prove those conversions by trying those accused of continuing to practice Jewish rituals, a practice known as auto-da-fé. If you got that far, you were probably going to be sentenced to death.

According to Naomi, it's thought that the first Jews on the Iberian Peninsula came with Phoenician traders, and stayed on to form an infrastructure for traders. The Romans also brought Jews, who did business tasks, including banking. (I've always loved the fact that Cologne had Jews before it had Germans: it was a Roman colonial administrative center from which the Germanic tribes were, for obvious reasons, excluded). The conquest of Iberia by the Arabs didn't change much: their Islam had been coexisting with Judaism in northern Africa, and the two cultures' preoccupations -- theology, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine -- meshed pretty well, although the Jews honed in on medicine and their kabbalistic studies had an impact on astronomy/astrology that helped the Arabs' Mediterranean seafaring become more accurate. Toledo had a whole section of its judería that consisted of nothing but kabbalistic synagogues and midrashes (schools). The reconquista forced the Arabs to convert eventually (although as the tons of Mudéjar work in Toledo shows, not immediately), but since the Jews were sequestered in the judería (both by decree and choice), they stayed on until 1492.

Naomi made an interesting point that I hadn't considered: Christian children were by and large not educated unless they were of the ruling classes. Education was paramount in Arab and Jewish society: madrassas and midrashes (notice the similarity in the terms) provided an education for all children, and in the judería, at least, wealthy Jews subsidized the less well-off. In this way, a bright but poor Jewish kid could ascend the ladder of society, lifting his family with him. No wonder the Christian rabble feared and despised them, and the Jews built walls to control who could get in and out of their community, and when.

As we walked the back streets of the judería, Naomi's x-ray vision saw through walls and floors, illuminating very ordinary-seeming things. The wall behind Maria Blanca, for instance, was oriented towards Jerusalem, and after the Expulsion, conversos, the nominally Catholic former Jews, would touch it surreptitiously. Secret signs pointed to a house with a well in it, essential for fire control in the judería.

This ball is just one of several well signs; once you know about them, you see them everywhere in the júderia.

A set of chains is a secret memorial for a Jewish blacksmith who lived in that house and was ordered to forge them to bind prisoners headed to the auto-da-fé -- many of whom were Jews.

Naomi saw through floors: the cellars of the Jewish houses housed some Jews before they could get out of Spain, and many of them buried their treasures there, confident Spain would let them back in. A house in the former judería, then, became a hot item on the post-Expulsion real estate market: Jews were forbidden to take money or gold out of the country when they left, and everyone just knew there were giant hoards of gold in thoes cellars. And there may have been, but the most recent item to emerge from a cellar was a tattered Torah, displayed in the Sephardic Museum.

Some Jews didn't go far: many conversos settled in the hills outside of Toledo, forming all-Jewish -- excuse me, converso -- communities who, over time, forgot about their heritage, at least a little bit. Naomi's visited some of them, and found a baker in one who made an egg bread on Saturdays that, for some reason, always sold out. Why make it then? Why does it sell out? It's a dimly-remembered challah, made with eggs to keep it moist over the Sabbath, when you can't bake a new loaf. A few Spanish scholars are beginning to look into this, and a trickle of money from Israel is helping out.

Most of Naomi's tour didn't lend itself to photographs: the Jews of Toledo are mostly ghosts by now. Even Naomi isn't Jewish by tradition: her father was a Sephardic Jew, but her mother isn't, and Jewish descent is matrilineal. I'm pretty sure she's officialized her Judaism by now; her passion for the subject shows a deep internalization of an ethos that exists proudly in a small number of Spaniards in the 21st century.

All over the judería, I noticed tiny tiles set into walls and paths.

Sefarad

The name of God

The mysterious menorah

I didn't quite get Naomi's explanation of this, but the top one, when all of them are mapped onto a map of Toledo, forms a map of Sefarad, the Jewish name for the Iberian Peninsula. The city did this project to promote the Jewish heritage of Toledo, but they botched it badly: they placed them on the roadway, under trash baskets, and other inappropriate places: no observant Jew would tread on the name of God, but lots of nonobservant tourists (including me before I heard the explanation) would and did.

I was astonished how much I'd learned in a short time, and Naomi had to get back to work and pick her daughter up from school, so I thanked her profusely and gave her a tip, and wished her luck in her ongoing research into a subject that was actually pretty taboo until just recently. As I wandered off, in search of the El Greco House and lunch (not necessarily in that order) it occurred to me that Toledo's really missing a bet not marketing the judería to American Jewish tourists, but later I realized that American Jews are overwhelmingly Ashkenazi (Eastern European and, according to Naomi, more focused on rules and laws), not Sephardic (more focused on mysticism and science, she said). Before I could muse further, an outdoor cervesería with inviting food hove into view, and I sat. Lunch was a mind-blowing thing called a timbal de codorniz, which Google seems to have as any round, layered cold tapa. Mine had (I think) pickled rabbit and green peas in an aspic and was just what the doctor ordered.

It turned out that the El Greco House was just past the Sephardic Museum, and by this point I figured I had to give the Christians a little something of my time, and if there was a Toledan Christian deserving of it, it would be El Greco, who was, as his name shows, a Greek from Crete who came to Spain after training in Venice. He was sure that with his skills, he could get all kinds of gigs, especially in what was then the capital of Spain. He was wrong: the very things that make people consider him a master today repelled the authorities, and although he kept on painting, he never made as much money as his more conventional contemporaries. His stock was at an all-time low when the Toledan Marquis of Vega Inclán decided to celebrate him by turning El Greco's house into a museum. There were a couple of hitches: the property wasn't actually El Greco's former house (nobody seems to know where it was), and it turned out not many of his paintings were available to buy, since they were in the Prado, the Metropolitan Museum, and elsewhere. The Marquis got what he could, including a full set of portraits of Jesus and the Apostles (there's another set by El Greco, more conventional in style, in, I think, the Cathedral), slapped them into the house, threw in some period furniture, and then discovered that the house had been built over Samuel Levi's house, and its cellar was intact. (Did he find anything there? Who knows? But it's notable that although it's set back from the road, the museum is next door to the Sephardic Museum in the synagogue Levi built: €5 gets you a ticket to both). I was dead tired from walking by now, and just two blocks from my hotel, so I went back and crashed for a while.

When I woke up, I decided to walk to the train station to get my next day's tickets to Valencia. I exited through the Jews' Gate and walked twenty minutes to the station, got my ticket to Madrid and then Valencia (the guy wouldn't book me on the Valencia train that was eight minutes after the Toledo train got in -- gotta love ol' Renfe! -- so I'd have to spend an hour with the turtles), and walked back via the upper old town, where the Alcázar, the huge fort, was, getting there via a very convenient network of escalators, a very civilized way to ascend to that part of town.

Obviously not the Jews' Gate any more...

That night, I ate at the hotel's restaurant, which was actually pretty good. I had partridge, which is the city's signature dish, and I would have enjoyed it more if it weren't the gaspergoo of the avian world: like the Cajun alleged-delicacy, it seems to have thousands of bones.

The next morning I had a bit of time, and went next door to the hotel and wandered through what I could of the church of San Juan de los Reyes, built to commemorate the union of the kingdoms of Aragon and Castille through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. Built on the site of the kaballists' neighborhood, it apparently has chains liberated from the Christian slaves in Arabic Granada when it was liberated, but all that was open was a chapel and the cloisters, which show more Mujédar influence, its origins long lost to those who built it. Or were they?

Soon enough, it was time for a cab to the station. Next up, Valencia, and more Arabs, Jews -- and Romans, too.

'Bye, Toledo

Europe, Spring 2016, Part Five: Spain Again and Out

I'll admit to a certain relief as I steered the Peugeot out of Montpellier and on to the motorway (which was, along most of its length, the old Roman Via Domitia) towards Perpignan to return it. Maybe if I'd had someone with me to whom I could have shown bits of my past, perhaps driven up to Pic St. Loup and up the tiny road that leads to the ruined castle hanging off its companion escarpment l'Hortus that I thought I'd hallucinated until I actually was able to stop and photograph it. Or maybe I needed the down-time as a day of drawing a deep breath before heading into the last couple of days of this trip.

Spring in this part of the world announces itself with wind. Cold winds sweep out of the mountains and lower the temperature until they're countered by warmer winds from the south, the Mediterranean, and Africa itself. I used to sweep up a fine yellow dust that blew into my apartment, and someone who knew told me that this was sand from the Sahara in Algeria, picked up and transported to coastal France. The winds were in full effect on the highway, and I had to pay attention to stay in my lane, and make sure that the gigantic semi-trucks stayed in theirs. Fortunately there weren't many campers on the road: signs in French, English, Spanish, and German appeared every dozen or so miles warning against violent cross-winds.

But at least I didn't have any problem finding the Center of the World again, even if I did make a misstep finding the parking garage and, then, the rental return. It was okay: I had plenty of time before my train to Girona at 3:17. I was concerned about the scratches -- very concerned -- but just as concerned that Europcar had closed for lunch and there were various customers milling around. My body was sending me signals, so I went to the main waiting room, found some packaged sandwiches, and found a French BLT, speck, lettuce, marinated tomatoes on a seeded baguette. I knew I'd burn off enough glucose toting the case of wine that this wouldn't be an issue. Then I headed back to the Europcar area to wait. Apparently someone had tipped off the cops that someone arriving on the train from Marseille, a teenage boy, might be trouble, and a number of suspects had their luggage searched. Another pair, who looked to be in the demographic, were apparently undercover cops, checking in with the uniforms from time to time.

Eventually the agent reappeared, several families pushed ahead of me and got their cars, and I returned mine. She didn't seem unduly concerned about the scratches and I still haven't heard anything. My American Express card showed only the $100 I'd charged on it, so who knows. And the train to Girona, when I finally got on it, was impossibly crowded and noisy, but it was only 45 minutes, so I arrived in Girona, got a cab despite the fact that my hotel was only a few blocks away (luggage again) and checked in to a once-elegant hotel (cigarette burns on the desk? really?) crowded with British and Scottish golfers. I went out as soon as I'd stashed my luggage to look at the town, but the weather had other ideas and I returned, somewhat damper for the experience, about a half-hour later.

For dinner, I hit the city's oldest restaurant, Casa Marieta, and had some odd pâtés to start, then a dish of squid with green peas, which was interesting. But I'd read a description of the place as "tired," and that's just how it seemed. Surely there was someone doing something more interesting with Catalan food here. Fortunately, there was.

The next morning I set off to see the obvious sights and to figure out what the story was with Girona. I'd read that it had the best-preserved Jewish quarter in Spain and deduced from that, mistakenly, that the Jews hadn't been expelled from Girona with the rest of the Spanish Jews in 1492. A visit to the Jewish Museum set me straight, as well as inadvertantly providing me with a perfect first stop in figuring the place out. The Jewish quarter, El Call, had apparently existed in one form or another since before 1000 CE, and besides becoming a center of trade, it was a center of Jewish intellectual life, epitomized by Mossé ben Nahman (1194-1270), who must have been a busy guy, since he penned famous commentaries on the Talmud, systematized the Kabballah, wrote poetry, practiced medicine, and found a little time to preach at the synagogue, which at the time was located atop Girona's hill next door to the cathedral. He left town in his old age and died in Acre, which the museum puts in Israel, but I seem to remember as a Jordanian city. By the time of Mossé's death, though, Gironans had become suspicious of the Jews, and demanded a wall be built around the Call. Riots and laws persecuting the Jews began in 1381, and a lot of them converted, at least outwardly, but they continued to socialize with the unconverted and also made mistakes when practicing their new religion's rituals. The Inquisition finally came to town to see what was up, mostly because Barcelona, where they'd been working, kept having bouts of plague, and Jews started emptying out the Call. The usual punishment for being a Jew was burning in a bonfire, but so many had left by the time the Inquisition's bureaucracy had found them guilty that straw dolls were used in almost every case. And by 1492, of course, the Jews had all left. The Inquisition proved so popular with the people of Girona that in 1820, during the Riego Uprising (unexplained in the wall caption), the House of the Inquisition was burned to the ground, destroying all its records. With the Jews gone, they'd gone after herbalists, homosexuals, witches, Lutherans, and anyone else they didn't like.

If you wanted to sum up the history of the Jews of Girona, a rather ugly sculpture in the museum's courtyard does a great job:

On one side, the Zodiac, an astrolabe, various navigational instruments, and Mossé with a book...

...and on the other side, Columbus sailing from a Jew-free Spain using those instruments.

It was time to climb the hill, where the rest of the story would unfold, and explore the cathedral and its surroundings. The Museu d'Art is located in one of the buildings where the cathedral's bureaucracy was once housed, including its prison, and it has an impressive amount of mostly older stuff (ie, right up my alley), including a minor work by the Master of Cabestany, a long painted beam of unknown provenance, showing a procession of monks,

Rather badly captured here, but click to enlarge

the ubiquitous lion-eating-a guy carving, 

There's one in Montpellier, too. No idea.

and lots more. Impressive. Eventually, you leave into the plaza in front of the cathedral, where, letting my eyes adjust to the bright sunlight, I saw an act of rather shocking violence: I was noting the seagulls that were up there among the pigeons, because they were about two feet from one end to the other. As I was trying to decode whether or not the cathedral was actually open (it still serves as a cathedral, after all, with several Masses a day) I noticed that one of the seagulls had taken a small black pigeon in its beak and had broken its neck, and was bashing it against the pavement to hasten its death as it flapped its wings, ever more feebly. I'd always known that seagulls were eaters of every sort of junk available, but had no idea they'd hunt live prey. 

Although, in its odd way, it set me up for the cathedral, which is big, filled with Baroque chapels as over-the-top as any Spanish Baroque art can be (and that's plenty, althoug I do like that period's organ music), lots of depictions of martyrdom (Spanish Catholicism is gory) and its treasury has, as its central display, a very old tapestry depicting the Creation. I liked that a lot: it was a cheapo way of teaching the bible to the illiterate masses and it's crowded with bible stories and other goodies, like the pair of Jews at the bottom who serve as an informal logo for the Jewish Museum. 

Outside again, I descended the hill and headed for the grandly-named Archaeological Museum of Catalonia, housed in the former church of San Pere de Gallegants, which has a nice cloister and good paintings in the museum part showing how ancient people lived here (burning the dead, putting them in ceramic vessels, and burying them surrounded by mini-Stonehenges of rocks) and were influenced by the Greeks and, later, the Romans. Christianity seems to have arrived early, around the 4th century, possibly with Roman colonial settlers, and there are apparently small basilicas out in the countryside dating from then, centered around the cult of St. Felix the Martyr, who remains the city's patron saint. 

Next I went to the "Arab baths," so-called not because they were made by resident Arabs (a people who seem missing from the city history, interestingly enough) but because they were in the style the Arabs employed: first a cold dip, then outdoors, then a hot  room for the steam. The building dates from 1194, but there really isn't enough of it to warrant a visit, and it was made less pleasant by a couple of those cult-kids making new-agey music on what looks like an overturned wok with dimples in it. Those suckers are loud!

It was time for lunch, and as I made my way down the street, I passed the City Museum, which would be the perfect knitting-together of the various threads I'd gathered so far, but I wasn't going to miss another meal and get goofy, so I went to a place in the Call and had the one signature Catalan dish I'd missed in my visits to Barcelona: botifarra amb mongetes, which looks like this: 

Right: sausage and beans

It wasn't all that distinguished, but it was just enough to fill the gap, and I was off for my last museum of the day. 

The City Museum starts out with one of the weirder rooms I've ever been in. It was once a Capuchin monastery, and when the monks died, they were arranged in a seated position and placed in the dessicarium. 

Dry up, bro!

When the corpses were mummified by the air circulating around them, they were dressed in their old robes and displayed in another part of the monastery. Memento mori, dudes!

The city museum is big on history and light on artifacts, which was okay by me, and the period between the Romans and the Inquisition is wisely left to other institutions in the city, but come the 19th century and the city's realization that its economic growth was stunted by its still being encircled by the age-old city wall, the citizens decided to tear most of it down so the city could grow. It became a printing center and had a few other industries, but it also suffered badly when it was bombed (by the Spanish government) during the Civil War in 1938. There is an amazing small display of children's drawings of the bombardment, all done in typical primitive kid style with bright crayons, and it reminded me that, starting with that, Spain became ruled by a fascist dictatorship under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, with full support from the Church, and that it remained so until 1975. With the current stirrings of reactionary right-wing politics fuelled by extreme conservative religion in the United States, remembering Spain's history during these times is a disturbing and, I'd say, necessary thing to do. 

After that, I was museumed out, and started strolling back towards the hotel. Along the way, I passed a restaurant that looked interesting enough, wrote down its name (incorrectly, but thank heavens for Google Maps, where I just zoomed in further and further until its name appeared) and, when I eventually got back, I checked out their website. There, I thought, would be a meal worthy of Girona's spirit. 

Because there is a spirit there, as there is in Barcelona, but it's more concentrated because the town is smaller. The place thrums with activity: Lance Armstrong, Gerry told me, took a house here because the hills were great training places for him and his team, and although I'm used to being a minority group as a pedestrian in Austin, not until Girona was I outnumbered by bikers. Had it not been for a book festival in the evening that drew crowds to its entertainment part, between the golfers and the bikers, I might not have seen any civilians at all. I liked this place, and once I arrived at my interesting-looking restaurant (where I'd reserved: you have to, I'd say), Llevataps, the deal was sealed. I started with a warm salad that contained calçots, a uniquely Catalan cousin of the green onion and leek that's usually roasted, touched with a bit of romesco sauce, went on to an absolutely amazing dish of grilled artichokes and razor clams, which concentrated the artichoke flavors while charring the leaves -- a tour-de-force -- and finished up with tender octopus whose method of preparation I didn't note, because by then I was too full and had to regretfully leave half of it behind. With this, I had a bottle of Io Masia Serra, a brilliant combo of Cabernet Sauvignon, black Grenache, and Merlot, one of those creative red blends I've favored recently, and which paired with the artichokes and clams spectacularly. Without question, the best meal of the trip, and not nearly the most expensive. The staff was friendly and the whole experience underscored my belief that Catalonia is well ahead of France in experimenting and creating within the tradition, extending it instead of merely preserving it. I gotta get back to this place. 

Obligatory cliched pic of houses along the Onyar River

Non-obligatory picture of feline residents of the river's edge

* * *

I had no train to meet to get me to Barcelona the next day, but I wanted to get going, even though I knew the hotel wouldn't have my room ready. But I seemed to have trouble getting out of hotels on this trip: construction workers hit a power line in Narbonne, trapping everyone inside (the front door had an electric eye to open it) for an hour or so, and Sunday morning in Girona, there was the city's annual 10,000k run. The brilliant folks who organized it managed to cut off the three big streets surrounding the hotel so no cabs could pick anyone up. This lasted for 90 minutes, with one of the desk ladies getting testier and testier with the cab company, who didn't seem to have any idea if there were a solution or how long the race would last. I hung out in the lobby, watching runners dash in to use the john and then dash out again, and finally the thing ended and a cab took me to the railroad station, where I was offered a fast train and a slow train. The fast train got me into Barcelona ten minutes earlier, so I chose the slow one, which took a different route and went through some lovely countryside. Had I but known, I could have gotten off at the Paseig de Gracia station in Barcelona, two blocks from my hotel. I also realized that, if one left at about 9, one could do a day-trip to Girona from Barcelona. Llevataps is open for lunch, too. 

Monday I checked out, but I also met a friend from Austin who arrived that day to start a trip with his girlfriend that would also take in Florence, where they would do some work on a film they're making. She wouldn't be in until later, so I took him to try to get a cheap phone, then to the hotel/housing agency that handled the apartment they'd rented to get the key, then to the apartment, and then back up to the housing agency's next door neighbor, a stellar northern Spanish tapas joint called Pulperia Bar Celta. A perfect last meal in Barcelona!

* * *

I'd also booked this end of the flight badly, and had to overnight at an overpriced, dingy hotel at Heathrow, a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. After that, though, I had a long time to think about the trip (and, much as I'd disliked the Austin-Heathrow nonstop on the way out, this flight wasn't nearly as crowded, so I had some room). And I did. Beauty had clearly been encountered and enjoyed -- luxuriated in, even -- both natural and man-made. Love was, of course, unchanged, except for a nagging realization that a lot of women I'd been encountering in the States thought it unseemly that I could still be interested at my advanced age. Of course, my friend who was just starting his Barcelona trip was with a woman ten years younger than me -- and he's nearly ten years older than I am. I landed in Austin to discover a text from him: "What a big lovely city, Paris with a better attitude." Can't say that about the city I'd just landed in, and I'm going to have to cope with that somehow. I'm about to embark on a period where if all goes well I should see some changes in my material and professional life, and I intend to take as much advantage of that as possible. I would dearly love to get out of Austin: it's a bad fit, and had I known, I needn't have come here when I realized I couldn't stay in France any more. This isn't the place to bitch about that now. Just do your work, keep the love and beauty thing in your mind, and keep on. 

* * *

Two days after I got back, I ran out of coffee and headed up to Anderson's to re-fill. The next morning I poured some beans out of the bag into the grinder and took the egg man's rubber band to close it up. It snapped.