Portugal Part 1 - Coimbra

Onde pode acolher-se um fraco humano,
Onde terá segura a curta vida,
Que não se arme e se indigne o Céu sereno
Contra um bicho da terra tão pequeno?

[Where may frail humanity shelter
Briefly, in some secure port,
Where the bright heavens cease to vent their rage
On such insects on so small a stage?]

-- Luis de Camões (1524-1580)

Portugal is a very poor, very faded, very wrung-out type of place. You could see it in the chipped paint of the walls of the buildings, the rusty metal balconies, and the sad-looking potted window-boxes. If you go so far as to read about it, you start to see it in the country´s history -- its periodic subjection to the Spanish crown, its devastating earthquake in Lisbon in 1755, its always-tenuous and quickly-relinquished hold on its piece of the colonial pie. It´s like the poet Camões said... the heavens have been venting their rage on the Portuguese for centuries, and everything is still crumbled, still not recovered.

Look, for example, at the colors of Coimbra, the small, charming university town that we visited first on our trip to our neighbor country...

























Since Coimbra is a comparable city to Salamanca (there uni was started in 1280, ours in 1218), I found it so interesting that they tried, in their way, to make the town colorful... But in the end, everything fell into the same kind of medieval European disrepair that Salamanca has. The difference is that in Salamanca, everything is old-looking tan-colored sandstone, and it can´t look anything but antiquated. In Coimbra, the lazily-painted walls were like a quick inadequate whitewashing of the city´s poverty... like a woman trying to paint over a burn on her face with bad cover-up.

Notice in the top photo the façade it covered with bluish square tiles... These are called azulejos, and they come from Seville. At their prettiest, they look like these, which are from a hallway in the University...



Absolutely everything in Portugal is covered with them, because when the big famous early modern buildings were being built, they didn´t have enough money for the stone carvings and elaborate marblework of Salamanca. The azulejos are a constant reminder of the subjected, melancholy feeling of Portugal.

The University of Coimbra, however, was fantastic. It must be quite the experience to study there, with a library that looks like this (that´s my friend Christian in the fore)...



And a quad (plaza) that looks like this (hi, ashley)...















and this (hi big john, miguel)...















with its big, imperious clock tower (and matt, thinking)...




And a chapel with an unbelievable pipe organ (miguel again)...


















and guys like me looking goofy while posing for pictures with the coimbra rooftops in the background...



and with their old faded, blackening statue of the university´s founder, João I, which looks remarkably like Hans Holbein the Younger´s portrait of Henry VIII...



and again, with Pepe courting Ashley at João´s feet...



And here´s the Law School... Note the words... ¨Faculdade de Direito¨. In Spanish it would be ¨Facultad de Derecho¨. These are the types of similarities that allowed me to annoy everyone by trying to speak Portuguese, which for me meant applying the three or for Portuguese pronunciation rules directly to Spanish. I was a real hit.




A lot of the students at the University live in co-ops called republicas. Here´s an IES staffer, Alfredo, posing with a republica in the background...



Most students who live in the republicas voted for GW Bush, as you can tell by the stickers on this door, which are being so helpfully highlighted by my buddy Jose...



And here´s a republicano himself, who stuck his head out the window to tell us that his republica, was, in fact, co-ed, but only at night, after they get a few drinks into the gals...



And after the university, we saw Coimbra´s small, but fantastic cathedral (with evan and ashley in front)...



and again, with dave...



and finally, with me, pointing out to yinz that leaves are in fact a symbol of portugal, and that´s why they´re all over the entranceway to the cathedral...




and that is where I leave you, for it´s time for literature class. Coming up: more cathedrals, art shots, and bella Lisboa.

Love,
Robbie

La Sierra de Francia

As I may have said before, been travelling faster than I can blog, so this entry is a little out of date, but it deals with a trip I took to an area in Castille, south of Salamanca, called La Sierra de Francia.

The name, like many other place-names in Spain, comes from the sad historical fact that the Iberian peninsula has been overrun by so many different other civilizations (the celts, the Goths, the Berbers, the Romans, Napoleon, etc…) that yes, there are even some French areas.

The highlight of the region is a tiny town called Alberca, a pueblo with lots of narrow streets, and curiously, lots of Tudor-looking architecture like this…



Alberca, we were told by our tour guides, seems like it´s ¨frozen in time¨, with lots of viejos sitting around waiting for you to come chat with them, some of the finest chorizo and jamon Serrano on the continent, and a communal pig called El Cerdo de San Antonio who is allowed walk around the town as he pleases for a year, unimpeded by the rules that normally bar pigs from entering any home, restaurant, or post office they please. At the end of the year of freedom, Fat Anthony is slaughtered and eaten with much theatre (these Spaniards are so predictable…) and a big parade featuring who else but the Virgin Mary, in statue form.

So I made it my goal to find El Cerdo de San Antonio and get a photo of myself either (a) hugging and kissing him or (b) dangling a piece of ham in front of his nose.



Turns out, all the viejos are pretty ornery, El Cerdo de San Antonio either doesn´t exist or wasn´t feeling up to the weater, and chorizo, even the muy rico kind from Alberca, is disgusting.

I did, however, find the biggest wine skin I´ve ever seen, mad out of an entire pig carcass, tanned black. Imagine drinking something in the neighbourhood of 25 bottles of wine out of an ENTIRE pigskin! I tried to buy it but it cost almost €100. Here´s a picture of me sticking my finger in its cauterized naughty bits…



A few more pictures of Alberca. Dave and Evan…



And of course an art shot of the plaza...



Much nicer than Alberca, however, was the Peña de Francia, a huge mountain convent near the pueblo. After a nerve-wracking busride up a very narrow mountain road, we arrived and it looked like this...



And this...



And here´s my friend Daniel looking out over the view...



And climbing on the rocks...



More climbing...



And here´s the all-white Virgin who appeared in the 15th century, because, as we all know, seeing visions of the Virgin is the thing to do in Spain...



Miguel de Unamuno, Salamanca´s foremost man of letters, wrote this poem about her:

Madre Blanca de Castilla
Que a Francia le dio un Rey santo
Maternidad castellana
De corazón todo blanco

Nuestra Señora la Virgen
Madre de Dios soberano
La de la Peña de Francia
En el corazón serrano

De España, sobre las Hurdes
De Extremadura barranco;
Maternidad castellana
Que está de piedad sangrando.

Peña de Francia desnuda
Ay corazón descarinado,
Madre Blanca de Castilla
Dióle a francia Luis el Santo.

(translation will be provided on request, if anyone´s interested enough to leave a comment to that effect.)

And here´s an art shot of this spindly image of Santiago Director of the Dept. Of Homeland Security, looking out over the valley...



And finally, as we were leaving, I got this sweet shot of a guy in traditional garb beating a drum and blowing a flute outside the chapel as the priest was opening the doors for a wedding party that was on its way up to the top (we saw them from the bus on the way down)...



That´s all! Coming up, a two or three part post about Portugal, and then pictures from San Sebastian and Granada. Blog or die! ...and keep those comments coming.

Love,
Robbie

At La Peña de Francia,

Death in the Salamantino Afternoon

rarr!





Hey Folks...

My travels are accumulating so fast that I´m having a hard time keeping up with the blogging. I´ve been to Sierra de Francia and Portugal since I last blogged, but in order to play some catch-up, this entry will be about the bullfight, or corrida de toros, that I saw last week. If you are at all squeamish about things like blood, torture, cruelty to animals, sexism, or brutal re-enactments of ancient rituals of man´s domination over the world of brute instinct, then please do not read on. Some of the pictures will be slightly graphic, though I will try to focus on the humane side of things.

I just finished reading John Dos Passos´Spanish travel novel, Rosinante to the Road Again, which is as much a charming account of a 20-21´year old´s thoughts about being away from home as it is a literary who´s-who of early 20th century Spain. Dos Passos reinvents himself as Telemachus, son of Penelope, travelling with his wild party animal friend Lyaeus, from the small pueblos of western Castilla to Toledo, in the south.

All of it was great, but the part I found most interesting was the theme that he introduces in the first essay, ¨A Gesture and a Quest¨, the idea that Spanish culture is best embodied by an almost undescribable gesture, both vague and immediately recognizable, that is a flagrant defiance of death. Spaniards, he says, are constantly acutely aware (not quite obsessed, but almost) of their oncoming deaths, and so they live their lives in such a way as to say ¨piss off¨ to the destiny to which they know they are bound.

He quotes the Castillian poet Jorge Manrique...

Nuestras vidas son los ríos Our lives are the rivers
Que van a dar en la mar, That will end in the sea
Que es el morir. . . . Which is death...

There are hundreds of places where you can see the gesture... I´ve seen it in the extremely bloody crucifixes in the cathedrals (the Christ figure on the one in Salamanca has real human hair, provided each year by a local wig shop), in the way the Spaniards laze around all day, as if waiting for something big to happen, in the way they cram as much life and partying as possible into each night of fiesta...

"It's the gesture that's so overpowering; don't you feel it in your arms? Something sudden and tremendously muscular."

"When Belmonte turned his back suddenly on the bull and walked away dragging the red cloak on the ground behind him I felt it," said Lyaeus.

"That gesture, a yellow flame against maroon and purple cadences . . . an instant swagger of defiance in the midst of a litany to death the all-powerful. That is Spain. . . . Castile at any rate."

"Is 'swagger' the right word?"

"Find a better."

"For the gesture a medieval knight made when he threw his mailed glove at his enemy's feet or a rose in his lady's window, that a mule-driver makes when he tosses off a glass of aguardiente, that Pastora Imperio makes dancing. . . . Word! Rubbish!" And Lyaeus burst out laughing.

And so I´ve arrived at my point.... The corridas are the perfect example of this unnamable gesture, en vivo. When the torero flicks his muleta (his cape) or steps deftly out of the way of the charging, tremendous bull, there´s something about it that is, if not macabre, at least wholly and entirely Spanish.



That is a picture of Fernando Ordoñez, one of the most famous toreros in Spain. But he is mainly famous because he recently separated from his wife, who is daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Alba. He has cut more than 300 ears in his career (cutting the ear of the toro and giving it to the matador means that he did a good job) and fought over 700 bulls, but to my eye he had no art. He could not stir the toro to any kind of energy or anger, and each of his paseos, the turns of the bull that he executed, were flat and lifeless...



The real star of the show was the 22-year old Serafin Marín, a Sevillano who has only cut 3 ears in his career. He had been out of the ring since May after being gored, and when I saw him it was his first corrida back since then.



His paseos were smooth, elegant, and daring...



guiding the bull into the sand...

and cutting his two ears of the day...



The corrida begins with a big procession into the Plaza de Toros, with each of the three main toreros and their 2 assistants. The picadors, which are prominent in this next photo, ride blindfolded horses...



They carry long spears and their horses are padded heavily on one side to block against the toro´s horns...



When the toreros induce the toro to charge the picador´s horse, it´s the picador´s job to stab the toro in its shoulders, to weaken the shoulder muscles so that when the final dance of death comes, it will charge the matador with its head lowered.



The picador wears a heavily padded boot so that the horns don´t tear up his leg...



After the picadors weaken the bull, the bandililleros come out with two hand-held spikes decorated with crepe-paper. They coax the bull into charging them, then run at the bull at a slight angle, jump over the bull´s head, and plant the spikes in its back. It´s the most bad-ass part of the whole bullfight, and probably the most dangerous...



The final stage of the bullfight takes about 15 minutes, in which the torero does a bunch of sinuous, hypnotizing paseos, leading the toro into the center of the ring (ideally) or to the side, so that he can kill it with his sword. Here is Marin killing:



I insisted to a few of my friends that we should buy wineskins to drink while watching the corrida, but no one listened to me. I did, however, get a shot of this awesome old dude drinking from his like a pro, as well as smoking a cigarette with the same hand...



That guy was pretty lairy. He kept on yelling at the band, which you can see behind this awesome viejo with zero teeth in the next photo. He wanted them to play a paso doble called ¨La Bota¨, which they did, several times, at his gruff requests...



The whole scene was pretty old-school. For my own part, I bought another €2 straw hat for the occasion...



And at the end, after Serafin Marín killed his second bull, the entire Plaza came to its feet and waved white panuelos (handkerchiefs), the ultimate sign of tribute to an artful torero.



And finally, out back after all the swagger and glamour of the toreros, which their shiny traje de luces suits and flamboyant poses, we have the uglier side of things...



....death in the afternoon.

Imagenes de Salamanca

Hey all,

Here's a quick post about my town, Salamanca, and some of the things I've been doing.

For the past few weeks the air's been a bit electric because Las Ferias, the city-wide fairs, were coming, and everywhere parades were being prepared, stages set up, etc... Here's a nice shot of the Plaza Mayor where they were setting up the stage and it was all windy and full of anticipation...



In every plaza in the city, and on a lot of street corners too, they're setting up casetas, these boxcar-looking bars where they sell a cania of cerveza (a little glass of beer) and some tapas for like 1.50 euros. Here's a guy painting his caseta:
















And here's some more casetas:




















And here's me and my roommate Evan (Far left) and my buddy Dave enjoying a cania at a caseta...



Later last week we went to go see a concert given by La Tuna, which, contrary to what you might think is neither a jam band nor a sea-shanty group. It's like this: think of the coolest a-capella group you could ever imagine joining, but only in the sense that it's a club that sings. What I mean is, they play instruments, not just singing, but they're a student group. Each facultad, or department, such as Law, History, Economics, Medicine, etc, has a grupo de La Tuna, and they wear period costumes from the 13th century, with each color of their vests corrseponding to their facultad (yellow for law, red for history, etc). The girl on stage is Maria Angela, one of the IES staffers, and they are serenading her.



The Tuna started sometime around the 13th century, when students started playing together in the plazas and streets of Salamanca for extra cash. It became formalized a few centuries later, and they would hire themselves out for private concerts too and play serenades for the girls who the guys in the group were chasing.



Their capes have ribbons and patches from all the places they've visited, as well as garters and silks from the women they are courting. They sang a bunch of great Spanish songs, including "Las Canarias" and others, and even some popular ones (for us Americans) like "Guantanamera" and "Cielito Lindo".




In the middle of the concert, the guys raised glasses of beers and sang this call-and-response brindis (toast), which I immediately made them teach me after the show:

Del cielo ha caido un grán garafón From the sky has fallen a huge carafe
Para los borrachos de esta reunion For all the drunks of this gathering
Bebiendo, bebiendo, nos Drinkin’, drinkin’, we’re getting cooked
vamos cociendo
Ya vé, ya vé, ya beber vino! Come on, come on drink wine!

Bebamos hasta que no nos conocimos,
O del culo now cayamos!

We drink until we don’t know each other,
Or until we fall on our asses!

Needless to say, it's now the IES kids' drinking anthem.

And finally, an artsy shot of me with cafe con leche and a cigarette in the Bar Sierra de Bejar which is the bar-cafe where my friends and I meet before we go out.



And a shot of me and boys and girls playing dominoes in the Calle de Toro:




And a shot of the Plaza de Toros, which is where I'm going tonight to see a bullfight. This graffiti says "Matadors are murderers". I beg to differ, but we'll see how I feel about it later...



More to come soon on the bullfights and on my recent trip to La Sierra de Francia, where I saw a sky-high convent and did some sweet ambling about on cliff-mounted rocks (scary pictures coming, mom!).

Also, in response to the one outstanding question, they do not have McPaella, but they do have McGazpacho and McFishsticks, which are called McMarins. Also, you can buy a glass of beer at McDonalds.

Love,
Robbie