In search of a style

Today I got my two guys to walk over one of the leather goods markets. "Walk" is actually a bit of a misnomer - we kind of ran by the stalls and I was able to cast a few furtive glances at the goods displayed. That was all that was necessary, however, to confirm that, indeed, stuff is so much more nicely designed here than where I live (polite way of avoiding to point a finger at my choosen home country and saying: you guys can't design a nice toilet paper holder if your life depended on it - which, of course, isn't quite true either but whoever is able to design nice toilet paper holders, door knobs, shoes, purses and wallpaper for that matter charges an outrageous amount for it. I could tell you stories of $25,000 sofas I saw ....)
Anyway: purses, shoes, leather belts and jackets in abundance. Some of them real ugly but most modern, sleek, well-designed, fun, colorful and ever so differnt than what I get at home and all - tata - for an affordable price. I managed - under the disguise of buying a present for Uli's teenage niece (a really cute pink little number with a very modern design and interesting curves) - to score a purse myself. Oh, and how I love it. I am not one who normally is too concerned about coordinating purses with belts, shoes and lipstick. By and large I carry a backpack, wear no lips stick and jewellery and my feet are adorned by a pair of sneakers but this green thingy I fell in love with right away. I won't bore you with the details but suffice it to say its a very modern design, clean lines, leather and it is green - green as the grass, green like those little cute froggsies. Its not going to go with anything I own (well, maybe a few things, like the summer dress that I wore to the park yesterday when for the first time attracted some glances from the local males) but I have wanted it - unconsciously - forever. Best thing is: since we bought the little pinky-pink and the froggy we got a deal on the price and so the whole leather purse came to 35 Euros. I mean - what is there to complain? Problem is - there is always a problem, isn't there - that now I got started and there is no way of knowing where and when it's gonna stop. I saw this aubergine colored purse the other day and if I could ever get around polishing my toe nails I could actually slip on some of these shoes that are displayed all over town ... - you get the idea.
That brings me to the larger issue (attention; this blog is going to be booooring with a capital B for male readers): I need a new style, or rather, I need a style - period. Over the years, with Mr. Max and the demands he puts on my wardrobe, with not being able to wear heels of any kind for the better part of two years because of my hip problem and the style-wise devastating effects of living in Silicon Valley I have lost it on the style front. Whoever lives or has lived in Silicon Valley (sure it's true for other parts of the country in a similar way) knows what I mean with "devastating effect". Where we live wearing Jeans to the opera is considered acceptable, men frequently show up in nice restaurants wearing baggy shorts and Tevas and anything other than jeans or shorts and T-shirt to go shopping would be considered overdressed. There is only super-casual and super-dressy which is reserved for weddings and formal events, that is like once or twice a year. There one better shows up in a long gown not to be standing out in a not so desirable way but other than that very basic wardrobe will do. Since few seem to have a desire for nice affordable stuff it is also very difficult to buy reasonably price nicely designed things.
I could go on about this as it doesn't only pertain to clothing but also to furniture, kitchen ware, lamps, accessories of all kinds. In the US I go furniture shopping mainly at IKEA - not because I particularly want cheap materials and the Swedish meatballs for lunch while I am there but because that is basically the only place where I can get modern design furniture aside from those San Francisco high-end designer places with the $25,000 couches. Anyway, I an deviating from a topic that already is a deviation. So, my style, I need a new one, I need to say good-bye to Silicon Valley casual and find myself something that is affordable, stylish and me. I am stilling chewing - in a figurative sense - on that one. I love sarees but that is really not a particularly practical solution; all black would be very European-existentialist but it's a bit boring and too hot for summer, moreover black fades real quickly in the washing machine (when have I become so darn practical??), and I need to be able to sustain it away from the little froggy green and aubergine purple purses and high-heeled dominatrix shoes of Firenze. I am still working it out but I keep reaching the same conclusion: I better buy some more stuff here which will carry me through for a year or so and then I just have to come back on another extended stay in Europe and stock up.

Got to go. We will be leaving of a three day/two night tour of the "Marken" - an Italian province ajacent to Tuscany - tomorrow. We are planning on going to Urbino and Ancona and maybe another town - wherever it looks nice. We'll hopefully find some Italians along the way and avoid the Japanese bus tours. I'll report when I get back.

Soccer

There is just not that much to report from Firenze. We walk around the town trying not to step on the other tourists toes, stand in line with hundreds of other people for the privilege of climbing stairs or looking at churches, go to the bathroom, or have ice-cream, and pay extraordinarily high entrance fees for pretty much everything. So what is there to report from the city many people dream of seeing and visiting? A few mundane odds and ends. Today was another soccer game at Campo di Marte, the ball park close by. Don't ask me whom Fiorentina played, it doesn't interest me in the slightest but it was pretty obvious they played and they didn't win (okay, it was tied, I looked it up).
I reckon some readers might be upset about this but I have to admit I have never understood all that frenzy about watching sports. In the US, with that whole football, baseball, basketball craziness going on all the time I tend to forget how obsessed Europeans become when it comes to their beloved soccer. Here in Florence we saw crowds of grown men wearing purple (or rather a darkish shade of lavender), normally not a color associated with the typical Italian macho-male, wave flags, get drunk and scream like Max when he pretends to be a baby-dinosaur all in the name of Fiorentina, the cherished home team. There was a constant stream of traffic, police helicopers and in general police presence around Campo di Marte,which means around our house and we could pretty much follow the game by just listening to the collective screams and sighs of the crowd. The mood afterwards was pretty subdued, which I think is far to be preferred to the drunken, horn-kunking, screaming-slogans type of craziness we saw when the beat Palermo last week. I just still marvel at how hords of grown men who seem otherwise pretty reasonable (most, not all) seem to derive a lot of their emotional and maybe even physical wellbeing from the fact that 11 guys - most of which probably weren't born in Florence or even Italy - score one more goal that the 11 guys from Milano (or wherever) - most of which weren't born in Milano (or wherever).
Max and I were on our way to piazza Savanarola to chase pigeons when the game was over and could hardly cross the street for the motorcycles and cars. The fact that they weren't honking like Indian rickshaw drivers hinted that the game didn't end as hoped. The solemn figures slowing walking through the park, their heads bowed did the rest to convince me that, no, "we" did not win this one. Some day somebody please explain to me why this might be important and a reason to feel sad and while he (as presumably the person trying to undertake such a hopeless task will be male) is at it maybe he could broaden the scope of the discussion somewhat and include why and how it makes sense to care one way or the other about some ..... (fill in word that comes to mind) ... game.
Okay, what else? The weather has been nice. Warm and sunny and word must have gotten all the way to Finland and outer Mongolia as the tourists, plentiful to begin with must have doubled or tripled within the last few days. There is basically no getting throught he city anymore. Today we attempted to visit the Boboli gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti. For reasons that have more to do with Max's latest temper-tantrum - which almost resulted in the police being called - than anything else we actually didn't see the gardens. But in addition to a screaming toddler the deterents were: about a mile long line to buy tickets and another mile long line to have them ripped apart again to gain access as well as a steep 9 Euro entrance fee just for the gardens plus the lesser exhibits like the porcelain museum (who would ever claim it to be a good idea to visit a porcelain museum with a child) and the prospect of hearing only Finish, Mongolian, English and German. So we walked back home, across the Ponte Vecchio which was so full of people that we couldn't do "Engele Flieg" ("Fly little Angel" - a very popular thing with tired toddlers where Mom and Dad hold on to a hand each, lift the tired toddler up and swing him forward while saying "Engele flieg!"), towards the Duomo where one could barely think about Engele flieg and up Via Cavour for a bit where we finally were able to sqeeze one "Engele" in.
That's all I have to report, other than that I fianlly actually know my tenses in English as I made a cheat sheet for Jutta and have asked her questions today to practice for her exam coming up tomorrow. It's time to get out of the city and we are planning a trip which probably take us to Ancona and the rest of the "Marken" another province of Italy, surely touristy as well but hopefully much less so than the epicenter of Tuscan tourism that we currently live in.

The "Five Meter House" and other properties

It began about a year ago or even a little more when Max and I were bicycling around the neighborhood. Sort of randomly and without context he pointed out a house to me and said: "this is my house. It's called Five-Meter House." I had no idea where this came from and still don't have but the story has gotten quite elaborate. The Five-Meter House started out being kind of modest but it grows daily and now it's basically a castle with 5 garages and a huge workshop. Originally the Five-Meter House was located in South Carolina - don't ask me why, that was during Max's geography phase - and one day he decided that North Carolina was the place. Subsequently a second Five-Meter House was established on the railroad bridge next to Dumbarton Bridge and the interior design was getting more define. Eventually an unnamed "friend" moved in who seemed to forever be shopping when we asked what he was up to. The friend had another garage suffice it to say. The garages got populated with ATVs, Camry's (Papa has one), Cabrio's (Mama has one), and eventually a Ferrari (the knowledge of fast cars seems to be located somewhere on the Y chromosome). All during the first two months of our trip there was occasional talk of the Five Meter House and that Max had just taken a plane there and back to check that everything was in great working order.
I thought that was it until we reached Frigiliana. After about a week Max decided he had another house there and called it Neely (don't ask). The Neely house is located was across Calle Alta from Alan's house (the one we were renting) and besides Max "Friend Annette" lives there. Daily we had to walk by the Neely House and admire its nice green door and how well Max keeps it. There were more stories about the kitchen in the Neely House and how he and friend Annette are shooting from the roof with cannons. Now in Florence another house got added, the so-called "Paeuschen" House (Paeuschen means short break in German). Paeuschen House is right below us on the fourth floor and so - technically speaking - it is an apartment, not a house. Meanwhile Five Meter House and Neely House moved to Florence as well and are now located on the 3rd and 2nd floor of this house respectively. Since we came here there has been serious addition to the car park - one could almost call it a fleet now. A police car got added, an Alfa Romeo, a Mercedes Benz, another Ferrari and a Seat Micra for the “Friend” (kind of cheap, really). In addition, he has a church, a couple of gas stations, a monastery, and a Roman arch he calls his own plus the usual assortment of backhoes, trucks and cement mixers. He tells us elaborate stories about these places and what great things he and “friend” or “friend Annette” do there, what delicacies they cook up – which always include things like tomatoes or beans that he wouldn’t be caught dead eating in real life. So here we are with a 3 year old real estate tycoon. I hope he is aware of the fact that he will have to work hard get all those goodies for real because Mom and Dad sure won’t be able to afford that lavish life-style.
Back to Italy. Yesterday we did an awfully touristy thing: we climbed the cupola of the Dome. It was 463 steps and Max the mean lean boy machine took off like there is no tomorrow. Mom and Dad followed and eventually Dad ended up carrying Max part of the way. Huffing and puffing tourist were all along the way and the climb on real steep spiral stairs was, well – interesting. Now I suffer from vertigo, serious vertigo, freak me out type of vertigo, I-am-standing-with-my-back-pressed-to-the-wall-and-not-moving-my-ass-a-millimeter type of vertigo and so I probably didn’t get my 6 Euros worth of views and pics but definitely I burned adrenalin for days. Max had a good workout and a sound nap in the afternoon. Every day we go done to the “centro citta” there seem to be more tourists. The piazza in front of the Dome is almost always black with people and the noise level is amazing. We were lucky that we went up the cupola on the early side, by the time we came down the line to get up was wrapping around the corner.
Today we finally went to the monastery that we didn’t get to see due to the wrong directions in the tourist guide the other day. It isn’t far outside Florence but it is outside and I realized how welcome the relative calm and quiet of the countryside was compared to the hustle-bustle of the city. Maybe I am getting old or maybe I never was a big city kind of gal but the endless noise, traffic, crowds of people are definitely going on my nerves big time. We had once entertained the romantic notion of living in Florence, sending Max to the International School there and living the charmed life of ex-expats. Now I am thinking that I would probably start shooting tourist after about three months and so maybe we should reconsider. Not sure Italian prisons are all that much fun.
So anyway, weekend is upon us and we decided to stay put to avoid rushing out of Florence with everybody else on Friday evening or Saturday morning but early next week we’ll be taking a trip to the countryside, hear some birds sing and discuss with Max how they used to shoot canons from this castle or that tower.

English Grammar and other Absurdities

Jutta is staying here with us as she is taking a class at a local school training to be an English language teacher. So we have frequent late night discussions about the most fascinating topic humankind ever came up with: grammar. Hardly any disciplin seems such a random mixture of conventions, habits and hard and fast rules. I challenge all of you (with the exception of Pamela who knows this stuff) to explain to me when to use the Past Perfect Simple vs. the Past Perfect Progressive. Any takers? I certainly had to look up what a Past Perfect is and then remind myself of the simple vs.progressive and then - I still didn't know. Mind you I started learning English in 3rd garde and although I learned more BS than useful things during my first two years I still had 9 solid years of English during Gymnasium (high-school, sort-of) and then got an advanced dregree in a disciplin (biology) where everything of any importance is written or said in English plus I had an American boyfriend and went to a top-tier American business school. And I still didn't know. I do it right most all of the time but I don't know why. On the occasion that I get it wrong I know for a fact that 95% or more of the Americans would have gotten it wrong, too. But here we are talking grammar classes, exams - all that annoying stuff that doesn't rely on intuition or skill but on hard knowledge acquired by hours and hours of memorizing rules and exceptions - actually rules are easy, exceptions are the problem.

So Jutta is sitting here, day in and day out studying grammar and lesson planning while we take trips, explore the city and go pigeon chasing at the local park. In the evening we try and partake in her misery but really - who of you know when one uses "he will be speaking" vs. "he is going to be speaking" of the top of your head? For me it is actually fun because I do not have an exam looming and I think it will help me with studying Spanish when I finally know what that past participle thingy is that I am supposed to be forming in Spanish.

On the fun and entertainment note: we took a train to Pisa today.Max has long been talking about the Leaning Tower and has been speculating when it will come crashing down. The train ride is just over an hour and the weather was forecasted to be somewhat better there than here. So off we were. I have been to Pisa at least once before but it must be close to 20 years (or more - yikes!) and all I remember was being underwhelmed. Given the fact that Pisa is so hyped up I had expected more. Today I was pleasantly surprised, the town, although not as neat and small and cute as Lucca was definitely charming with lots of old buildings, nice pasticerias, piazzas, chiesas and all the other ingredients of Toscany. We had to cross the entire town to get to the Duomo and the Tower and I was thinking to myself while walking that the whole town was pleasantly non-touristy. I mean there were tourist, plenty, but nothing like Florence. That all came to an abrupt stop when we turned the corner and entered the area of the Leaning Tower. It was crawling with tourist of every description, color and nationality. This isn't even close to main season and it was hard to spot the lawn for the people (hyperbole!). So we decided to climb the tower and see the whole circus from above. Max was very excited about the prospect and so we went to buy tickets, expecting outrageous prices but the reality was a differnt ley down: Max was too young, one has to be 8 years old min to climb the tower and although he is tall we couldn't pass him off for 8, especially since Uli had said upfront that he is only 3 to get free admission for him. Tears followed and a lot of complaining about "malo" (bad in Spanish) people until we could sort of satisfy him with the explanation that many a baby had fallen off the tower, contracted a super-big "bobo", and had to spend serious time in a hospital ("Mama, the babies have to be in the hospital for 10!!! minutes - that's super-long") and that he certainly did not want to face that prospect and that's why the policy (accepted authority at this time as they carry pistols) had forbidden boys like Max to climb the tower.

Last time I came I thought the Tower and the Duomo was well worth the trip but the city nothing special, this time I thought that the Tower and the Duomo were highly overrated but the city charming. One thing that seriouls irked me is the shamelessness with which they extort money from the tourists. Sure, you have to pay to go up the tower, but you also have to pay to see the Duomo and if you happen to be interested you have to pay seperately to visit the Baptisterium and yet another church (or museum) next to the Duomo. All tickets have to be bought individually at differnt ticket booths. Give me a break, just consolidate and don't be so greedy as to charge me four times and if you absolutely must at least sell me all the tickets in one place so I don't have to stand in line four times. I mean - no brainer, right - everbody hates queuing.

The result of the Tower age constraint was that Max was annoyed with the lot of them and didn't want to see the Duomo or anything else. Uli and I decided that we have seen enough Duomos, churches, chiesas, iglesias, Kirchen, cathedrals, Jesuses, Madonnas, Saints and Sinners and so we skipped the money extortion scheme of the catholic church altogether and just lounged around the lawn (forbidden, but we are in Italy and nobody gives a damn). To make up for it we lit a candle in one of the other - minor - churches in Pisa on the way to the train station. Finally a real candle with a real wick and real fire. We have been waiting for that ever since we set foot into Spain almost six weeks ago.

Terrible Twos

...but he is almost four? I was sort of smug, we never had those infamous supermarket melt-downs with screaming fits over candy or wanting to rip open a sugar packet and spread the contents over the floor or such like. I thought we were such great parents that our son just didn't feel the need for major rebellion. Sure there was crying and complaining and trying to make deals with us, "Papa, let's make a deal, I get the ice-cream and the candy!" but no major defiance fits and majorly lost tempers etc. - At least until now.

I guess our little engineer is just a little later then the rest of them when it comes to emotional development stages or the uncertainty and break of routine while traveling brought it out - whatever it is we are in defiance central. "No" is the answer to everything, it's almost a reflex. I can catch him off-guard at times by asking him "Max, do you want a piece of chocolate" and he will say "NO!" then it takes 10 seconds for the meaning of it all to sink in and he will come back saying "Mama, I want a huge piece of chocolate". When I say "well, no Max, you just told me that you don't want any so you can't have any now" we have ourselves a melt-down. Of course I don't say that but give him the chocolate anyway as I only offer when he deserves a piece in the first place.

Another pet-peeve of his is walking on the “correct” side of the street. The correct side is always the one we walked on first, regardless of whether it is right or left. After that first time we absolutely have to walk on that side of the street again if not – meltdown. It is also not an option to go from the apartment to a point B, where we have already been before, by a different route than before. I mean, we can, of course but we are paying a price. If we go to the Duomo we have to go exactly the same way we went the first time on exactly the same side of the road. We have to also stop at all the construction sides and look at the warning signs and go through all of them – every single time. “This one means that one can’t throw trash off the scaffold, this one that one has to wear a harness, this one that safety shoes are required, …” Bores me to tears but if I don’t do it – you guessed it, we have a meltdown.

Those are the harmless examples, the ones that do not involve pretend shooting people or their beloved pets or lashing out at innocent strangers who want to comment on his blue eyes (the blond hair do not raise any eye-brows here but the blue eyes definitely do) or trying to hit us or making gestures that even with a lot of goodwill can only be considered extremly respectless. Not much one can do as a parent, or at least nothing much comes to my mind. If one tells him to insistently not behave that way he will do it all the more but on the other hand one can't just stand by and watch him behave like a spoiled brat with strangers. Typical case of damn if you do, damn if you don't.

Recently he had a complete screaming fit because he wanted to sit down, right here and now somewhere in the dirt on the street and not walk the 100 more meters to sit down on a bench at the piazza. Neither explaining or counting to three or promises of ice-cream at the piazza or the threat of not getting an ice-cream at the piazza nor a time-out did any good at all. He disolved into tears and a screaming fit right in front of a bakery, yelled and basically rolled around the ground. People were stopping to watch, the staff of the bakery came out to see who was beeing mistreated there, and the parents seriously lost their temper. He didn't get ice-cream that day and the three of us, Uli, Jutta and I (although I rarely eat ice-cream) treated ourselves to nice big cones full. Well I guess we are having terrible two times two.

Today we had a very Italian moment. We wanted to take the bus to the train station and then another bus to some monastery outside of Firenze. Sounded like a good thing to do on a rainy day (I am really sick of it now, really, really sick of it!). So we stand there and wait, and wait some more and wait some more when finally with about 10 minutes delay the bus shows up. We get in and after a short bit of a ride I hear people around me swearing under their breath along the lines of "Madonna!", "Merda", maybe even stronger terms that I didn't understand - turns out the bus driver had gotten lost. I dare say only in Italy (at least of all European countries) do bus drivers get lost because they are too busy talking on a cell phone to concentrate properly on the road.
The rest is quickly told. We got to the train station, hopped onto bus 31 and got shaken around in it for about 45 minutes. At that time Uli get's a little suspicious and asks a nice elderly lady - one of those who would surely know of any monasteries in greater Firenze - how much longer it will be. well, what can I say: we were on the wrong bus - the travel guide we had consulted and trusted didn't know sh.. (as we are on the matter of swearing anyway) about bus lines and so we were somewhere out there near Grassina or maybe not so near with no monastery anywhere. We got out and had ourselves a nice ride back in a completely stuffed bus because - needless to say - the bus back was delayed as well and lots of people were waiting at every station. So we drove around all morning in buses in the rain - it's still raining now, 5 hours later. Sigh!

My name is Lucca ...

... I live on the second floor. It was actually Luka in this song of Suzanne Vega but we went to Lucca yesterday, as in Lucca, Tuscany, 1 hour and 22 minutes by train from Firenze main station also known as Firenze Santa Maria Novella. To my big surprise - I guess I will have to revisit some of my prejudice against the Italians - the train was on time and it was clean and the whole process of buying tickets and all was pretty efficient. I have been to Lucca before - but I don't care to divulge how many eons ago it was - but I vaguely remembered it as a charming little place with none of the grandeur of Firenze but nice in a kind of intact, wholesome way. And it was. We reached the Centro Citta (city center) after a 3 minute walk from the train station. He whole "centro storico" is surrounded by an intact city wall and has about one church per inhabitant. Truly, there is a church at every corner, sometimes two. I tried to google the exact number but couldn't come up with anything definite quickly. However, I overheard some tourists saying there were 80 churches in Lucca. That strikes me as a bit high but it can't be much less.

Anyway, Lucca is charming with its little narrow streets and piazzas, its many churches and statutes. It is touristy but compared to Florence its an oasis of tranquility and untampered with Italian-ness. One actually hears the Italian language spoken on most corners and in most cafes and bars and although there is the occassional group of bored adolescences eating gelati and listening to Italian rock on a school trip it has the feel of a nice small town that probably really is fun before 10 am and after 5 pm when all the day tourists - such as us - are gone for the day and the locals come out. I enjoyed walking around the town, standing around on the piazzas and having a panini on a park bench. To my great disappointment the candles in the Duomo were fake as well. I had so hoped that after the disappointing experience in Andalucia - candle-wise I mean - Tuscany would turn out more old-fashioned with real wax candles - but no. In the interest of saftety and cleanliness - as stated on a print-out - they were replaced by electric ones. Max, though, dicovered that the electric ones are even more fun than the real ones as one just has to screw them into a socket to make them light up. Before I could say "Don't" he had already screwed in 5 Euros worth of electrical candles. Fortunately the payment is based on an honor system and, I have to admit, seem to not have any honor left in my body. I figured that his intentions where pure and that I could really not be hold responsible for his playful acts and wouldn't have to pay up. And so the Virgin Mary got an additional dozen or so candles and looked much brighter and happier for it. I had to drag Max out and pry five more candles out of his sweaty palms - he just didn't understand why he couldn't do this for the rest of the day.

Saturday seems to be antique market day in Lucca and normally my heart would skip a beat in joy over that news. However, an antique market is definitely a questionable delight with Mr. Distructive around. One forever walks by frail vintage itmes that cost an arm and a leg with Mr.Distructive pointing at them, touching them and wanting to lift them up to show them to you: "Mama, look, a glass chandelier from the 15th century, it breaks real easily. Will you catch?" So there was no leisurely stroll more like a hurried run across the market with us trying all sorts of distractions to get him away from the chandeliers and the 84 piece plate sets before they become 83 piece plate sets.

For a second I had the idea that this could be a nice place to live - big enough to have museums and some cultural activities going on but small enough not to be too noisy and exhausting. Then my eyes fell on a real estate broker's office (they do exist, many of them but no comparison to Andalucia) and I realized that a nice apartment in the center, about as big as our house in Sunnyvale would cost about as much as our house and decided that maybe Lucca wasn't it after all for the time being. Maybe they'll have a real estate crisis too. Stands to reason after overpriced real estate seems to be coming crashing down around the globe.

We took the train back to Firenze in the early afternoon - the man needs his nap - and again the train was on time (more or less but 5 minutes delay is excusable, even for a German). Gliding through the landscape at around 100 km/h was actually very pleasant.It is fast enough to have the feeling that one gets places reasonably fast but slow enough to see things and keep your son entertained with things like "who sees a crane/truck/river whatever?" and even watch people a bit during the stops. My inadequate outfit become abundantly clear to me again - I must have been the only woman not wearing boots and mascara. Many guys were in suits or at least sports jackets. However, my recent attempt to buy myself a more suitable outfit at Zara failed miserably: Somehow the coats are cut for women with shorter upper bodies - never knew mine was so long - and so all the belts of the coats (and they all have belts these days) were sitting sort of between my waist and my breast - not a very stylish look.

Today we walked to the famous Piazza Michelangelo where another reproduction stands. the piazza is located on the other side of the river Arno and has a nice view of all the famous sites of the old town: the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, Palazzo Vecchio, the synagoge, Santa Croce and and a bunch of "minor" churches. I had ebviosned a park bench and a leisurely break with crackers and juice, Max chasing pigeons and Uli and I sitting there enjoyng the sun but I should have known better: the scene up there reminded me a lot of Coit Tower: tourists hauled up by the bus load, people selling t-shirts, sun glasses and leather bags, a Japanse wedding party with videographer completed the picture. The view is truely amazing but how much fun is it to take a picture that another 100,000 people are taking - just today. We need to come again and come earlier. I bet at 9 am few of the tourists venture there and maybe I can find an interesting perspective or two.

I am slowly starting to get the hang of Florence. It took a while and being in a big city with Max is definitely more challenging than village live in Frigiliana. One has to be careful every steps of the way: cars on the street and dog shit on the sidewalks but one gets used to dealing with it just as we got used to the trains running by our apartment all hours of the night when I at first thought that I will not ever sleep through the night.

And here is Max doing what he does best: chasing pigeons

And I thought Andalucia is touristy ...

.... but that was before I walked around Florence on a random morning during off-season (today). I got up at around 6 am today because Max seem to have decided that that's the time he wants to get up in Italy. We spent some time trying to learn how to read but haven't made it much past the ma, me,mi, mo,mu and pa, pe, pi, po, pu. He really isn't much into it and I am trying to come up with fun stuff to do while walking around like finding 5 ma's on street or other signs but the potential for distraction is enormous and it isn't easy to keep him focussed. Later Uli and Max went to visit the fortezza, formerly known as castillo, but there weren't any canons to be seen there much to Max's disappointment.

So I had the rest of the morning off to walk to the centro with my camera and look around, went around the Duomo and on to Palazzo Vecchio next to the Uffici with all the big statutes around and took my first pictures of Firenze and my first impression of what tourist season in Florence means. The line for group entrance to the Duomo was snaking halfway around the building and it is a large building. Everywhere large tourgroups, many of then teenager on what seems to be school outings who can barely pretend to be interested in anything other than themselves, the next gelati store and maybe the stalls with leather bags,wooden Pincchio figurines and woven braclets - we'll I guess I can't complain about that too much as I can still remember that school trip to Rome and our major obsession with flea markets and major annoyance when having to read and translate those darn Latin sentences on tombstones. Then there are lots of Asian groups and the Eastern Europeans definitely have arrived as well.

Huge groups with umbrella wielding tourguides are everywhere and if you care to listen you can hear in a dozend different languages that the cupola of the Duomo is 42 meters wide. Why they always tell you such trivia that nobody ever remember is beyond me. History, one should think, is full of juicy stories that would make for much better entertainment than the exact dimensions of the cupola. To differentiate themselves among the many groups the Asian tour guides have come up with a new idea: instead of wielding umbrellas to keep their flock together they are using sticks with tiny stuffed animals attached - very cute but see for yourself. This one shows a pink animal descretly hiding what Max calls the "pipisito" of Neptune.

The Germans for once seem to be a minority, a sizable one but still, as well as Americans. The later are often easy to recognize as the guys are wearing shorts with white tennis socks and no sweater or jacket despite temperatures in the low 60s. No Italian male would want to be caught dead in such an outfit anywhere outside the sports arena, and even there ....

The Palazzo Vecchio sported a big red sign saying "Human Rights for Tibet". I tried to get a picture of that sign with the statute of Perseus holding Medusa's severed head - thought it might have symbolic interest. However, it didn't work out all that well as I was chased off my vantage point and the black head of Medusa isn't easy to photograph under the best of circumstances. I tried to come up with different shots of the usual suspects David and Neptune etc. with mixed success guess the best thing would be to walk around with a big ladder - that way one could get view points other people typically will not get.

Today Sabine sent me the pdf of the interview we did in Frigiliana for her newspaper SurDeutsche. Nice piece of PR - a bit of Q&A about our trip and a picture of Max and me sitting on a little wall with Frigiliana in the background. I have never been featured in a newspaper before with links to this blog and my photo webpage so this is very exciting. I haven't figued out a way to post it here or on the webpage but if I do I will certainly put it up.

Blatant Lies and a bit of sunshine

Italy offers more of the same can't-do attitude when it comes to daycare that we have already encountered in Spain: sorry, we only accept kids the first three days of July for the following Spetember, he is too old, we are full, too much administrative hassle, etc. We visited 3 schools today (Uli called 10 but 7 said right away "no way") and this is the tally: the first one is still discussing, so we are sort of holding our breath, the second one was full, according to Uli the nun he spoke to was very nice and had the sign-up book with her - for next year - but the place is full to the legal limits - so nothing they or we could do. The third one was "no way that late in the year and only for such a short time" and the fourth, which we found through the third would only accept kids up to 36 months. Now Max doesn't look a day younger than he is and so sneaking him in with the "diaper-bums" or "binki-faces" - as he calls them - wasn't really a viable option. As said, we are still holding out hope for the first one as they haven't said no - they haven't said yes either, but promised an answer by tomorrow. To get this far Uli resorted to some blatant lies: we are temporarily relocating for work and we might, in fact we will very likely, relocate permanently a little down the road and so we want Max to familiarize himself with the schools and language. Sounds real good and after repeating it about a dozend times he is getting good at telling it with a straight face. Since I do not understand every word of what he says but only get the general jist of it I manage to keep a straight face myself - not an easy feat. But, hey, if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. So we are sitting here holding our breath and keeping our fingers crossed - not easy while typing either.
The weather has improved some - no rain today - and so we visitied some of the sights: the Ponte Vecchio, the Palazzo Pitti, the Duomo (again), cast a side glance at the Uffici and the counterfit statute of David standing in front of it and ended up at McDonalds at Via Cavor where Max had his favorite French Fries and as an allowance to Italian taste, I guess, breaded gambas. The kid is so skinny that I am pretty much counting calories not with the goal to limit them but to max them out - pun intended. A medium portion of french fries has 470 kcal , he ate about 80% of that so that's roughly 400 kcal, then the gambas and the sweet juice that should bring him to about 600 and therefore might make up for all the energy he burned during the last couple of hours of walking, running and chasing pigeons.
I took my first Florence picture today but I am not too proud of them so I won't post any. This is an extremely interesting city with a lot going on, including a lot of cliches - again - and so I need some time to think, walk around and experiment to come up with anything interesting because the cupola of the duomo has been done before: form below, above and sideways and any other direction you could possibly think of. It's hard for me to admit but the light yesterday after the rain was so much better than during this day with sun only. So the photographer in me hopes for a little - a tiny little bit - more rain the Californian in me hopes not to lay eyes on a rain cloud during the next 12 weeks.
I am still feeling a bit, well, unfamiliar here. I expected as much in Mexico, where I never did, and India, where I did but for good reasons but not here, where I have been more than once and basically always thought of Italy as the logical choice for the next country to be expats in. It might be the language that makes it harder than it was in Mexico and Spain. I forever want to say Spanish sentences just to catch myself at the very last moment and then feel completely stunned, unable to say anything, even things I used to be able to say in Italian before I started to study Spanish. The two languages are very similar but just different enough to be forever confusing. Like "tener" in Spanish means to have but "tenere" in Italian means "hold" but has an aspect of "have" as well, like in you "have" a thing when you "hold" it. "La sposa" means fiancee in Italian but esposa in Spanish is "wife"- now that does not seem like a big difference but if you are in a Catholic school talking to a nun and your husband introduces you as "mi sposa" with your almost 4 year-old around hoping around you might have a problem.
Anyway, tomorrow hopefully there will be some more sight-seeing and some pictures for posting as well.

Nothing But Rain

Now I love rain (not) and that is exactly what we have got and will have for some time more. it's disgusting, all of Europe seems to be under this raincloud. Now in case I haven't made myself really clear: I hate rain, I absolutely despise it, it depresses me,makes me want to run away. I never got people who get tired of good weather - that's just crazy talk to me, I mean who can seriously be wanting to be wet, cold and miserable? I did some checking on wunderground and it turns out we would have to go as far as Athens, Sicily, or Tirana in Albania to get some decent weather and that, I am afraid, is not going to happen.
Other than that: more of the same with regards to school options for Max as in Spain: too much administrative hassle, no space available and so I have a hyped up almost-four year old running around the apartment throwing everything in sight pretending to shoot of rockets.
It's our third day here, counting the first which might not be entirely fair as we only arrived in the evening, and so far I have seen practically nothing of Florence, a quick glance at the Duomo with Max yesterday and a One Eurostore where I bought a pair of scissors and a few other odds and ends for the appartment which isn't exactly lavishly equipped with kitchen stuff, plates and cutlery. Then the heavy rain drove us home. Very exciting. I can already tell, though, from walking around the rain that the people here are a stylish bunch. I feel like a darn tourist from the boonies in my fleece and running shoes. Where are the knee-high boots and the coat, where are the gloves and scarves every woman on the street, except the nuns and other tourists seem to wear. In other words: where is the next store where I can update my woefully inadequate warderobe? And where can I get some rubber boots for Max as his enchantment with "puddles" continues.
Yesterday Jutta moved in with us. She is here to take class on how to teach English and is basically in class all day long. But still it's nice to be spending some time with her and on the side learning some English grammar, for example the difference between finite and infinite verbs that we discussed last night.
There is really not much else to write about right now as not much has happend. Uli made three appointments with schools for tomorrow so maybe we luck out after all and at the moment the sun came out. We'll after all tomorrow is supposed to be the only nice day for a week or more. It better be true or I will start looking at flights to Tirana.

Italia

It was another gruesome day on the road. Somehow it seemed so easy: we'll just take a quick flight to Milano and then hop into a car and drive ourselves to Firenze and there we are. So much for the theory, the practice was slightly off, off enough to make it a long exhausting day. To start with we flew EasyJet, which seems to think that they are the European Southweat - no assigned seats that is. Now Southwest, as much as I despise them, has it down cold with their 3 boarding groups and their somewhat orderly lines but EasyJet, well, that is a different matter. Unruly crowds of Italian males at the very front by the counter, no lines, a stampede threatening to happen any minute, people pushing and shoving and hauling huge-ass suitcases on the plane and then complaining that they can't find overhead bin space. Then the usual thing happend: two passagers were micracoulosly missing and therefore we couldn't leave. After everything had been sorted out we - of course - had lost our position in line for starting and to make a long story short what should have been a short hop turned out to be an ordeal. EasyJet also doesn't provide anything free of charge anymore, not even a papercup full of lukewarm water or tiny packages of stale pretzels. The seats didn't recline - need I say more.
Finally we landed in Milano, the airport is called Malpensa which is sort of a strange choice given that mal means bad and pensa thoughts, doesn't seem like an auspicious name for an airport. Anyway, the shuttle bus to the car rental dumped us somewhere in the boonies - normally not such a big deal but with 80 kg of luggage and no cart it kind of is. We made our way to the cars just to find out that, oh yes, the cars are here, and here is your reservation but wait, you have to go to the terminal to get the keys. Reminded me of the old joke:
Heaven is a place where the police are English; the chefs are Italian; the car mechanics are German; the lovers are French and it's all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is a place where the police are German; the chefs are English; the car mechanics are French; the lovers are Swiss and it's all organized by the Italians.
Three hours in the car later we reached Firenze. I have to say the Italians seem to have lost their car-mojo sometime in the 90s. I remember them as sporty drivers, sort of fast, a bit reckless maybe but in command of their vehicles. Maybe we had a typical Sunday-driver issue today, along the lines of Grandpa-taking-out-the-car-for-the-first-time-in-ages-for-a-little-Sunday-spin but the driving was horrible. 90% of the drivers were meandering between the lanes, going way too slow for an Italian autostrada, apparently not having a clue what they were doing - and 10% were driving like testosterone-crazed lunatics - sitting on your tail with 5 com to spare, weaving in and out and passing on the right lane (a super-big no-no in Europe, one can only pass on the left side, never on the right) driving supped-up Subarus with spoilers - yukee!
We found the apartment with the help of the GPS system sort of okay - GPS's just never seem to know about road construction and there is plenty of that in Firenze. Anyway, the apartment is nice, on the 5th floor of a not so nice old building but spacious and furnished okay in an interesting mixture of IKEA and vintage (well, let's face it: old) furniture. Max has his own room with his own bed that he already complained - like a real American - is way too small. The train tracks right by the house might be a bit of a problem - I specifically asked about noise and was told that the apartment is quite - well I guess by Italian big city standards trains all hours of the house are not considered noise. The location is good though, pretty close to the center and so I hope we will be able to do a lot on foot.
Tomorrow morning we will take advantage of having the car for a few more hours and take a trip to Ipercoop - the equivalent of Walmart in Merida and Mercadona in Frigiliana to stock up on stuff for the next four weeks. In the evening Jutta will join us as she is in Florence for an English language teaching class. If the weather holds up we'll have a great time - just need to get some decent shoes, a nice overcoat, maybe a couple more sweaters so I won't look like a tourist in this stylish town and I will be all sets for live in the big city.

Clichés

Taking photographs here isn’t easy, the toughest is too avoid clichés. Blue sky, white clouds, white houses and flower pots – it is all too easy to make postcard pics or fall into the “Doors of Frigilana”, “Windows of Almuñecar”, “Flowerpots of Salobreña” trap. This might sound silly to non-photographers but I am struggling hard to come up with a new, fresh perspective, I literally lie awake at night thinking about how in the world I could capture all that white and blue with flower accents and make it look not like the next person’s pictures. And it’s really, really hard and I don’t think I am succeeding. There is something about photographing the conventionally ugly like a rundown shipyard (been there) or an old industrial plant (done that) that makes it easier to avoid the cliché. If you send 20 people out to take pictures of that ship yard they will come back with 20 sets of very different pictures - maybe not conventionally beautiful pictures but individual, characteristic pictures. But let 20 people loose on Frigiliana and you’ll have: beauty, blue, white, flowers, door knockers in shape of hands, black cats on white stairs, the occasional “pensionista” sitting on a red bench against a white house, azulejos with house numbers - all so pretty and all so similar. Okay, so am I really complaining that this place is too nice? I guess so, unthankful brat that I am, but its true beauty sure makes for a more challenging “interesting” subject than ugliness. The bad weather over the last few days helped a bit – grey skies break the routine and give everything a more dramatic, less typical “Sunny Costa del Sol” look but it is still flowerpots against white houses against grey skies. I tried silly stuff like “white on white” – like white steps against white walls, white deck chairs against white floors – gets old quickly and, really, I am not the first one to come up with that one either, nor am I the last one. Now maybe if I convert them into Black & Whites, increase graininess, blow them up, group them, frame them in exhibition thin German silver frames it could look, well passable – but that has nothing to do with photography, that’s post processing. Anybody has any ideas – let me know quick. I don’t expect Florence to be any more ugly.
Yesterday I cheated on one of the 5 most important men in my life: my expensive, Silicon Valley, Asian, non-gay, artsy hairdresser. Alan, I love you, but my hair was a mess after 3 months and so I sought the professional help of Marie-Isabell in the little peluqueria halfway down the 46 steps towards the iglesia. She did a decent job, and given that the whole washing-cutting-blow-drying job cost me 15 Euros, tip included I really can’t complain. I am glad it is over, though, the women among the readers will understand what a scary undertaking it is to trust ones hair to an unknown quantity such as Marie-Isabell especially when one has no idea how to say “for-heavens-sake-don’t-cut-a-millimter-more-than-absolutely-necessary-and-make-sure-there-are-decent-layers” in Spanish. I was so nervous I could barely say a word in Spanish at all let alone understand anything she said in “Andaluce” which turns out to have – like many dialects - a preference for dropping endings, stringing words together or dropping them altogether. So “hasta luego” becomes “luego” – that’s easy just like “see you later” becomes “later” - I can even wrap my mind around “Bueno dia” or “gracia” or “do ciento” but use that same principle on a long and complicated sentence that has something to do with “cortar” (cut) while scissors are dangerously close to cutting short bangs and you might understand the degree of my unease. So it’s done, it won’t win me any prices for “best groomed tourist” or “most innovative haircut on the eastern Costa del Sol” or anything like that but I do not dread looking in the mirror any more than normally and I guess I can’t ask for much more.
Okay, those were just trivia of the traveler’s life. What important things have we seen or done, which important fact about Moorish history in Andalucia have we committed to memory and which educational trips benefiting the impressionable mind of our precious son have we undertaken? Well, we saw another couple of pretty white villages, that must have been really pretty about 30 years ago – that is before they build those awful hotels right between the old town and the beach - and visited two castillos while we were there. Before Max spent 95% of his time talking about canons and firecrackers – now we are up to 98%, the remaining 2% being taken up with request for ice-cream, screams of horror when we want him to eat veggies or encourage him to try a piece of fruit and warnings like: “Mama, careful dog kaka on the street, don’t step in it. Mama, dog kaka!!!” Both villages, Almuñecar and Solabreña, are very nice really, well worth the short trip from Frigiliana. Blindingly white walls, nicely restored castillos and surprisingly few tourists. Those who live in the big hotels on the beach rarely seem to leave the hotels to venture into the old towns. Beats me, but I guess some people really like staying in hotels. On the way back from Almuñecar it started raining and the sun shone so we got treated to a perfect rainbow against the dark grey sky with a fainter second one outside (Max called them the young and the old rainbow). Well, that was a cliché photo op I wasn’t strong enough to pass up ….

Farewells…

Somehow the weather makes us the farewells easier than they would normally be. Just like in Merida, where it started raining and being overcast during our last week and Kerala were we had monsoon-like rain the weather in Andalucia has started to good bad on us. Ironically it happened on the very same day Uli and Uli decided that this was definitely spring weather now and the bit of a cold spell we had had was over. Barely three hours later it started to rain. They really do need the rain here, really, but did it have to be this week, all week until Saturday, our last day here? Needless to say that I a) hate rain with a vengeance, especially when it is cold to boot, b) didn’t think it wise to bring any type of rain protection – umbrella, coat, hat, boots, anything - and c) the rain has turned all of Frigiliana into a riverbed. The water is gushing down the steep streets and steps like a mountain to Max’s delight how both likes stomping around the water and his newest English word: “puddle” which he thinks is hilariously funny. “look, Mama, I am stomping around a PUDDLE – hehehehehe!” Needless to say that Frigiliana doesn’t offer much entertainment on a rainy day, nor does Nerja or even Malaga as the usual options: Picasso Museum, other museums etc are out for obvious reasons - we love our son, truly, dearly, but he is in a bit of a destructive phase and covering the carpet with salt is one thing – an entirely different thing is throwing a “firecracker” at a Picasso painting – an act that could devastate our financial future. So we are talking walks around Frigiliana, are visiting the Internet Café or book store in Nerja, go “visit” the canons on the Balcon de Europa and throw rocks into the Mediterranean. We had hoped to take a trip to Cordoba this week but the weather there is no better than here and the idea of sitting around a hotel room in the rain is frankly even less enchanting then the idea to sit around a house in the rain. I checked the weather forecast from Barcelona to Tangiers and, guess what, even in Morocco it is raining right now – we’d have to go as far as Lisbon to get somewhat more decent weather – not sun, mind you, just a reduction from the 100% probability of precipitation to like 35%. Well, Mom told me that they had freezing temperatures in Konstanz so I guess I should be quite happy with the low 60s we got here.
I started the usual packing ordeal that has come to characterize the last week wherever we go. Basically we have too much stuff and it’s too heavy (those darn books) but it’s not so easy to get rid of stuff either. We’ll be traveling another three months and I don’t want to find myself without some options in the reading and dressing department. It doesn’t really help that both Sevilla and Cadiz each had several Zara stores which I just had to visit and, while there, buy a few things to get a bit of a break from the stuff I have been wearing for three months now. Then there is of course the international used book store in Nerja which overwhelmingly sells junk like Danielle Steel and those cheap thrillers for sale in every airport in the world but they also have a few gems, some of which – along with some cheap thrillers – we picked up the other day. Well, a whole bag full, really. No idea when I’ll next lay eyes on a book in a language I can actually read so better safe than sorry. It stands to reason that there are international bookstores in Florence but I am one of those nervous types who takes three books and five magazines on a weekend trip, just in case, and fears nothing – short of bad weather – more than being stuck somewhere, anywhere without an adequate supply of reading materials. So packing is going to be tricky but I am an old hand at it now and as long as I do the packing and Uli the schlepping it will be okay.
Our son, in his usual way, is majorly obsessed with everything that shoots at the moment. I had sort of felt smug and self-righteous about the fact that he never played with sticks pretending to be guns etc. thinking that we as parents had done an amazing job bringing up a peaceful, tool-loving little boy who couldn’t care less about destruction and the handy tools used to bring it about. Well that was before the firecrackers in Shiva’s honor in Kerala. Ever since it has all been about shooting, canons, guns, pistols, gun-powder, bullets and every possible derivative thereof - non-stop. Literally, he talks about shooting canons, crackers, and bullets 12 hours a day, non-stop in a constant flow of “and then you place the canon ball into the canon and use some powder and then you ignite it and the canon ball will shoot out.” “Mama, the policeman had a pistol on his right side and a Leatherman (knife) in the back.” “Mama!! Are you listening? I am telling you a story about pistols.” “The people in Nerja can’t shoot their canons anymore. Know why? Papa said they run out of gunpowder. They should go and by some more.”
“Papa, you have to give me some money and then I will shoot a firecracker for you. But first you have to walk around the temple over there.”
“Max, dear, that is an ice-cream parlor, not a temple, they don’t have temples in Spain.”
“But they have Iglesias! Can I shoot a canon in an iglesia?” - and on it goes, without a break, with hardly enough time to draw a breath. And I thought his geography obsession was bad – how I wish we could go back to naming capitals of small African countries for entertainment rather than discussing the advantages of black vs. red gunpowder. I am trying not to be too negative because I know from firsthand experience that that will back-fire, the more we discourage him the more obsessed he will become. So far reverse psychology hasn’t worked either, though. I guess we’ll just have to wait until this one burns out, pun intended, and we are off to the next thing, whatever that might be, short of wanting to construct a nuclear war head it can’t possibly be worse. I very much hope we can get him into school in Florence where he can share all his firecracker wisdom with the little Italian boys, they might find the subject as exciting as he does or maybe they turn him onto something else – medieval instruments of torture, maybe, or something innocent like the difference between a Ferrari and a Lamborghini .
Half of our sabbatical is almost over. I can’t believe it and will pretend for a little longer that it isn’t happening and that it will never end. Secretly I am thinking about the next one already, Prague, maybe, Albania sounds interesting and then going back to Laos and how about South Africa … I know I am dreaming but I am on vacation so I might as well.

We Found A Taste Of Real Andalucia

Our second day in Sevilla confirmed our suspicion: this where we would live if we were to live in southern Spain – at least for the winter as the summer (starting in late April) is brutally hot with temperatures above 40 Celsius being the norm rather than the exception. But in early April we had beautiful weather, high 20s (Celsius, of course) super-long evenings – especially with daylight saving times now being in effect it is light until 9 pm - and everything buzzing with people sitting outside having a cerveza or two, eating tapas, kids running around all hours of the night and live just generally being good. The Sevillanos (??) are said to be more arrogant and stand-offish than the rest of the Andalucians but they seemed friendly enough to us. The place definitely exudes more of “capital city” flair, with people on the streets well dressed and seeming more busy and focused to get places rather than just idly strolling around or playing the guitar on the steps of the cathedral. We caught a good time in some sense: between Semana Santa and the Feria, which starts on April 7th, tourists were probably scarcer than normal. Granted we missed Semana Santa which is said to be the most spectacular in all of Andalucia and the Feria which is a big deal with lots of flamenco, music, dancing, fancy dresses, merriment, food, and parading around until the wee hours of the night. It sure sounds great but that would definitely be a without-kid type of event and so paying less than half the price for the hotel than we would just next week and not having to push our way through the flamenco dancing masses with a screaming overtired child seemed an okay compromise. I even liked the souvenirs here, as souvenirs go, some of the t-shirts where actually kind of nice and not just like three grinning frogs saying Sevilla in capital letters underneath. So Sevilla made it to the top of my list of imaginary winter residences that I am dreaming up (Merida being another contender on this list). I could have stayed another day, week or month but we took off in the early afternoon and drove to Cadiz, about half ways between Sevilla and Conil de la Frontera where we were to meet Sabine and Paco on Saturday.

Cadiz certainly is a minor attraction as Andalucian vacation spots go and the surrounding suburbs are awful: ugly high-rise after ugly high-rise in the typically “friendly” pastels but once inside it is actually quite charming. It has been a big port for centuries, ever since the Guadalquivir river silted up depriving Sevilla of its mayor seaport. Unlike many seaports Cadiz seems laid back, not scary or dangerous at all with lots of people out all hours of the day or night eating, drinking and shopping. We spend only 24 hours there but no shady characters crossed my path. Speaking of paths, the streets, like we have come to expect around here, are very narrow and lined by old houses some renovated, some not so but all nice and clean enough to be inviting and fun. We visited the beach close to town which is dominated by this strange looking building that turned out to be an “Institute for Underwater Archeology” – first one I ever run across for sure. Colorful but somewhat run down fisher boats provided more opportunity to take cliché pictures which I resisted – for the most part. We ended up sitting in an area which seemed to have been the lesbian hangout right next to the hole-in-the-wall full bar where everything from a rum and coke to something in grass green that looked rather toxic could be had at 5 pm – and certainly was.

Or only problem with Cadiz was that it was almost impossible to score dinner before 9 pm and since “the man” only had the abbreviated version of his midday nap that seemed like a bad idea. So we ended up on the main plaza eating dinner when everybody else just sort of finished their coffee and cake and had just begun to get into the cerveza with some seriousness. The evening was spent in the bathroom – one more time. Our fancy hotel, which we couldn’t afford by a big stretch during high season was very reasonable during this off season and offered us complimentary usage of the “Aquaplaya” in the morning. So, it being free, we felt duty-bound, put on our bathing suits and trekked down there at 10 am the next morning to play around in various pools of water from ice cold to way too hot, one with rocks on the bottom, one with dozens of lemons and oranges floating around in it - which proved to be wonderful “firecrackers” and Max could not for the live of him resist the temptation to through them ever which way – some with little waterfalls and jets and such stuff. The ice provided for rubbing down after the hot bubble-pool proved to be great for throwing as well, and I have to accept blame for starting that one: it was too much even for me to resist. So soaked and deep-cleaned we took off for towards Conil which we reached only to realize that disaster had struck and Max’s teddy bear had “played around, wandered off and gotten lost” - that at least was the spin we put on it, trying to squeeze and pedagogic moment out of the fact that Uli had to drive back to Cadiz and rescue “Baerchen” and reunite him with Max.

The hotel in Conil was very nice, large modern with something like four pools, a “ciberplaza”, a children’s club, breakfast buffet of the nice kind included etc. Again, it’s one of the places we couldn’t or wouldn’t afford during high season when prices are about three times of what they were now but now it was entirely reasonable. Conil, as Cadiz, is no longer on the Mediterranean but already “around the corner” on the Atlantic which is much rougher, and also more impressive. The weather reminded more of a summer day in San Francisco, that is cold and foggy, than of an archetypical Andalucian summer day which suited us just fine, the ocean was somewhat wild with whitecaps and walking along the beach reminded of a walk along the Pacific. The five of us – Sabine and Paco had arrived as well – took a beach stroll to town, bought some wine, had some food, listed to Max talking about shooting firecrackers or canons in an endless loop, and continued our comparative study of California and Andalucia and the relative advantages and disadvantages of these locations. I tried some Spanish to include Paco more into the conversation as it is hard for him to follow a rapid-fire conversation in German and was partially pleased, partially frustrated with my ability/inability to express myself. I have passed the point where my proudest achievement is asking for directions to the post office and understanding the answer but discussing politics is a different matter and not being able to express myself can get very frustrating. Another funny thing is that – since I am studying Spanish based on English, not German – I automatically fall into English whenever my Spanish fails me (frequently) and then have to force myself back into German - funny how the mind works. It was fun though, at least for us, poor Paco probably got bored terribly during our German discussions but was polite enough to never let on.

This night we spent on the balcony, wrapped in whatever blankets or covers we could find, drinking wine, eating chocolate and discussing politics, culture, and the mundane. I was surprised and then again maybe I wasn’t all that surprised by how easy it was to connect with the two of them. Other than a brief dinner last year in Konstanz I haven’t seen Sabine in probably 15 years and but once met Paco very briefly what must be ages ago, Uli knew neither until we came here, and still it was like we had last talked a month or so ago and it never felt awkward. This reconfirms my theory that expats somehow are on the same wave length due to their shared experience.

Sunday we saw more of the Costa de la Luz, the point where the Brits under Nelson beat the hell out of the combined Spanish and French forces in the battle of Trafalgar back in 1805 (or so). The famous surfing hangouts near Tarifa where the in-crowed of the surfing world idles away the days kite-surfing (well maybe “idle” is not exactly the right term), Tarifa itself, a somewhat sleepy but charming little town with a old Castillo, two canons (big attraction for Max), like 300 bars and restaurants, an iglesia with a “bring your own candle” policy, good seafood and a very good pasteleria. Finally, already on the way back , we saw that mountain ridge that we concluded couldn’t have been anything other than Morocco only 14 km away across the “estrecho” separating the southern tip of Spain from Africa. The other big “lump” just down the road was Gibraltar, which we didn’t have time to visit and doesn’t sound all that interesting anyway unless you are shopping for cheap electronics, booze and cigarettes.
We are back in “our village” now as we have come to call it and our last Andalucian week is upon us. How can that be? So much still to see, Cordoba, a million little towns in the mountains and – just to spook ourselves – some classic examples of developments on the Costa del Sol: Marbella where the absurdly wealthy Arabs hang out and flaunt their wealth, Torremolinos, lovingly called “Torrey” by the Brits who have turned it into “Little London in the Sun” and Torrox, the Torrey of the Germans. Again we will have to prioritize and vow to come back to finish the job we couldn’t finish in these brief four weeks.

The Bathroom Dwellers

I debated whether I should call this blog Sevilla the Beautiful or the Bathroom-Dwellers and found the second one more catchy. We are in Sevilla and staying in another "triple" this one far more spacious than the one in Granada but a single room nevertheless. So it is back to the bathroom for Uli and I in the evenings. Fortunately, it is a large bathroom so I could darg one easy-chair in and the extra plankets provided make for good cushioning in the bathtub. All in all, not a bad situtaion - at least as evenings spend in bathrooms are concerned.
Sevilla is beautiful and of a beauty much easier to see, feel and appreciate then the rough and hidden beauty of Granada. There are wides Avenidas and small little streets, barely wide enough for two people to pass each other, let alone get by the SVU that is coming at them. (When did the Spainards start driving those ridicoulos vehicles and how the hell can they afford the gas for them given the prices at the pump - but more about that later).
The moorish influence is seen clearly and adds a lot to the flair. The city so far has shown us the right combination of well maintained and restored and not being restored so overzealously that it looks fake. All in all it seem to be more of a big city than Granada, which really had too much of a student flavor for my taste. People, especially the older ones, are well-dressed, often outright dressy by US standards just to sit in the cafe and have a cup and a little torta. Yesterday, when we arrived, we just walked around and go a bit of an idea of the city, like where the big iglesia, which really is a cathedral (please don´t ask me what the difference is, it probably has to do with size and importance) is located, etc. In fact, as I read last night in the bathtub the cathedral here is the world´s biggest Gothic cathedral, according to the newest measurements it is larger even than St. Peter´s in Rome and I am blanking on the name of the church in London right now. Inside, we visited it this morning, it is like many of the Gothic "mega-churches" - sort of empty. It´s hard to fill all that space in all three dimensions. Having said that, there is remarkable piece of art after remarkable piece of art in this churche from the exquisit wood-carvings behind the altar to the many, many oil paintings by well-known artists and many sculptures. But there are only so many (like one) oil paintings that you can look at while your child uses his new toy Swiss army knife and pretend it´s a canon and firing sort of randomly. Normally he sort of behaves in churches but this is huge and filled with tourists most of whom never seemed to never have heard the first thing about common courtesy and appropriate behavior in a church but talk loudly, take pictures with flash (although there are signs all over telling people it´s forbidden, etc.) which makes it hard to enforce the strict "no running, only speaking in whispers" rules that normally apply to church visits.
The only thing left from the mosque, that originally stood there, is the Giralda, now serving as the bell tower. We made it up, even I with my vertigo. The saving grace was the fact that the tower doesn´t have any stairs, which freak me out, especially when they are new and made of one of those metall meshy things one can look through and see the void below. This is all done with an incline, a surprisingly gentle one and so it's basically like hiking up a mountain. The view of the top was great. I could have done without the three different large groups of children all at an age where, I have to say , they probably just shouldn´t be taken on art-history outings because they don´t listen to what the teachers have to say anyway, yell on the top of their lungs pretty much constantly and bully their way up and down the Giralda that I had to use my elllbows to keep them from banging into me. Max did well. He who hardly ever eats but still is very active is a pretty mean and lean little "boy-machine" by now. He just flew up that tower, not breaking a sweat, hardly noticing it all.
Now he and Uli are taking a beauty sleep while I sit in the lobby racing the clock of the computer here to finish that blog before my time runs out. We´ll be here until tomorrow and then leave heading towards the coast near Cadiz. No idea where we´ll stay tomorrow, I just hope it has a spaceous bathroom, and on Saturday we'll meet up with Sabine and Paco in a little town near Cadiz - and I am blanking even on that name right now, too. I hope there will be more opportunties to use hotel computers else I'll have to write a mega-blog on Sunday night and post it Monday.
Okay, I have got enough time to mention one curious fact we learned about the Spaniards from Sabine (coming back the SUV thing, which really was a bit of hyperbole) - they seem to be much more like the Americans than say the Germans or Austrians. All of Spain and coastal Andalucia in particular are in the middle of a real estate melt-down very similar to the one we have in the US. I kind of naively assumed that things wouldn´t be so bad as - surely - the Spaniards didn't pull every last cent of equity out of their appreciating houses a few years ago to invest in new cars and plasma TVs and other stuff that losses 50% of its value to day you take it home from the store and the rest over the next 18 months. But - who would have thunk - they did just that. Not only that, they also bought houses way larger (or at least way more expensive) than they can afford way too early in their lives because renting seems to be considered not appropriate for the up and coming young. Big is better, also seems to have become the motto of the Spaniards, although big here is still nowhere near as big as big in the US (nobody has 3000 sqf homes here, which seems to be the minimum acceptable size for a family of three or four) but bigger than ever before. Go figure. No idea why the Spaniards take so happily to these ideas and misconcenptions (at least in my mind they are misconceptions). Anyway, just wanted to add this as it surprised and puzzeled me to some extent and I thought provided a bit of background info on Spain.
Now they started playing really shmaltz music here, the one that goes like "mi amor, mi vida, mi corazon" the whole time - I better get out of here.