Xacobeo, part II

We spent the next couple of hours wandering through the streets, often accompanied by an extremely loud and raucous spanish style oompah band.  We passed by an ancient university building and saw musicians taking a break from playing traditional galician music.  This was the nationalist section of the festival.  A lot of hip-looking young people were milling around under signs for Nunca Maís (an ecological group dedicated to preventing disasters like the recent Prestige oil spill on the galician coast -- it's allied with some radical nationalist groups) and anti-ñ signs (a statement against the Spanish language, which has the ñ, in favor of gallego, which does not) carrying huge plastic bottles of cheap plonk.

We ambled to another plaza in time to hear the last couple of songs by the francophone Orchestre Nationale de Barbès.  They put on an excellent show.  They cobbled together traditional arab vocals and percussion with some more western elements, like long electric guitar solos and surreal coordinated back-up dances à la The Supremes.  They're final song was a french-accented version of Sympathy for the Devil.  Quite a choice for a saint's birthday celebration.

We started heading home at 3am, though no one else on the street showed signs of being tired.

Xacobeo 2004 (journal 7/25)

So last night was the big festival. We arrived at the enormous plaza in front of the cathedral about 1 1/2 hours early. We managed to get 1/4 of the way into the plaza before coming up against a wall of people. We did manage to secure a good view of the cathedral, though. And so we waited, hot and smooshed up against the rest of the crowd.

The mood was festive for the most part -- beach balls materialized and were tapped around the plaza. There were some attempts at cross-plaza communication. A person near us called out, "MARIA!!" and, with the voices of thirty or forty people near him helping, he succeeded in making contact. A group of people somewhere else in the plaza cried out, "JORGE!!"

The king and his family and President Zapatero arrived. Everyone got very excited when the king made his appearance on the highest balcony. The social classes were well defined. In a building facing the cathedral, there were two levels of balconies. The top balcony was sparsely populated by the royal family and the president and his entourage. The second balcony was packed with very well dressed people. Everyone else stood on the plaza, badly dressed and sweating.

Finally the fireworks began. They were amazing and lasted for about 45 minutes.  There were shooting stars above the cathedral, flames blasting out of urns on the church façade, huge explosions of delicate white sparks... it really defies description.  There was also apparently a ritual burning of a model of a mosque in Córdoba, but if they chose to do that this year, I wasn't in the right position to see it.

When it was all over, we were covered in fine soot from the explosions.  After the last firework went off, there was a long moment of awed silence before the applause and cheering began.

Vilgarcía de Arousa (from journal 7/24)

It's the day of the big fiesta and like seemingly everyone in Santiago, Maria and I decided to go to the beach.

Almost as soon as the train left Santiago, we were in the countryside.  We passed through thickets of evergreens, through towns where each house had its own plot of land with corn and (I think) squash.  Some had ancient horreos that are used to store grain and other things in a dry place.   Maria told me that long ago a new husband and wife would have sex for the first time underneath the horreo.  For fertility -- both theirs and the earth's, I'd imagine.  A sort of feedback loop of fertility.  Pilgrims with beaten wooden sticks wound their way through the small plots of land, headed towards Santiago.

I looked out the left hand side window as we rounded a curve and suddenly the forest opened out onto a glittering river.  The landscape did look sort of mystical, the way galicians always insist it does.  I looked out the right hand side window and saw a factory belching out turds of dark smoke.

We arrived in Vilgarcía de Arousa about an hour later.  After the beauty of the ride, the beach itself was a bit of a shock.  It was sort of like if there were a beach next to the part of the New Jersey Turnpike that's closest to New York.  On the left was what I think ws a cement factory.  On the right, along the shore, were enormous soviet-looking hotels -- grey cement with small windows and streaks of rust. 

But I forgot my camera.  Aren't you disappointed?

The sand had a fair amount of garbage strewn around and the water near the shore was choked with seaweed. 

But sunshine is sunshine, so we spread our towels on the sand, ate our lunch of canned olives and bread, and took a nap.  A little later Maria took out a book to read -- Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  A little light beach reading...

A little later I went wading.  You could see tiny, almost transparent fish darting back and forth, and live periwinkles clung to clam shells.  Further out, you could see larger fish glinting in the sun as they jumped.

We just arrived at the train station to find that the train we thought was arriving only comes on weekdays.  But that's OK -- we're eating juicy peaches and taking in the view of the mountains above the cement factory.

uhhhh

It seems like the official song of the big saint´s birthday festival here is It's Raining Men....

Red Button

Finally getting my luggage was quite a challenge.  Last sunday I called several phone numbers and rasped the ears of poor Iberia clerks with my bad spanish.  I learned, finally, that my stuff had arrived in the Santiago airport.

On monday afternoon, I called more numbers.  And more.  As some, there was someone to answer the phone, and they gave me more numbers to call.  At those numbers, no one answered.

I finally went to the Iberia office with my lost baggage receipt.  The lady there was very nice, and spent 20 minutes or so calling different numbers.  But in the end all she could do was give me another number to call when I got home.

So I called it.  The lady there had no record of my name or reference number.  So I took the advice of Señora Matos and launched into a whole tearful schpiel about how I don´t have clean clothes, how I've been wearing the same underwear for three days...  Just as I sounded as though I was about to become completely unhinged, the lady on the other end of the line miraculously found some record of me and told me that I would have to come to the airport personally to pick the bag up from customs.  This made me extremely angry, as they were the people who lost the damned things in the first place and promised to send it to my house.

The next day I took a bus to the Santiago airport, was in itself a bit of a rigamarole.  There's no sign for the bus, so you have to walk into shops you believe to be near where the bus stops and ask salespeople.  Who are invariably nice about it and point you in the right direction.

The bus was about half filled with dusty pilgrims and their sticks and rucksacks.  The other half were old men and housewives of all ages who live in the countryside that surrounds the airport.

Several older women pushed ahead of me onto the bus, shouting either at me or at each other in Gallego.

I arrived at the airport and went looking for La aduana.  I finally found a small sign with an arrow pointing towards the arrivals section.  But when I arrived, I saw only automatic doors that opened from the other side.  So I went upstairs and asked someone.  They said there was a small bell by the automatic doors that I needed to ring.

So I finally found it, a tiny red doorbell with

ADUANA

written underneath it.  I pressed it, tremendously excited at the thought of clean underwear.
But no one answered.  I rang again.  And again.  Still no one.
 
I thought of all that I´d had to do to finally arrive at this tiny red button in this tiny airport in the middle of the countryside.  I felt on the verge of tears.
 
I played the red button like an instrument, trying to convey my annoyance and desperation to the person I was hoping was on the other side.

Finally, the automatic doors opened and a short, squat man in an ill-fitting olive uniform covered with pins and badges told me that I needed to be accompanied by a member of the Iberia staff.  He reminded me a little of the Man Behind the Curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

So off I went to the Iberia office, was directed to a second, smaller office where after some probably incoherent explanation on my part, a grave woman in an Iberia uniform said something into her walkie-talkie and slowly walked with me, keys jangling, to the Aduana where the doors opened on the first ring 
All three of us walked solemly into the terminal.  The Aduana unlocked the door to a small room and beckoned me inside with a wave of his hand, as though he were a hotelier showing me a room.
 
And there it was!  My bag, finally, covered with stickers and papers.
 
After a few questions -- when did you arrive? when did your bag arrive? do you have your baggage claim stickers? -- followed by some incomprehensible mumbling between the aduana and the Iberia functionary, and I was free to wheel my bag away.

schoolmates

I´m in spanish class with people from all over europe.  Without exception people here are very smart.  It's a tiny tower of babel where people draw on all of their linguistic resources to communicate with one another.

• I live with Maria, a quiet economics student from Austria.  We tend to communicate in Spanish because her english is bad and my german is non-existent.  This morning she told me about the organic farm her parents run in the austrian countryside.  ("We haff... uh... pollos... and... vacas...")

There are two rather culturally schizophrenic Italians.

• One is the son of italian parents who own a restaurant in england.  He's a born-again Christian who plans to spend the next 10 years in Andalucia.
• The other grew up in Italy the son of an Italian father and a Bermudan mother.  He's currently living in Strausbourg, France and working as an engineer for Johnson & Johnson.
• Julia is from Cardiff, Wales.  She´s one of several language teachers who have chosen to spend their summer as students.  She´s a thin vegetarian with long, long brown hair and wine colored lips -- half the time from vino tinto and half the time from lipstick.
• A pair of goofy dutch journalists.  They live in Brussels and work as EU correspondants.  The male half of the couple is the only Dutch person I´ve ever met with bad English.  This includes includes homeless people lying on the streets of Amsterdam.  He looks a little like a more northern version of Roberto Benigni.  He has that same sort of village idiot look -- hyperanimated hands and face.  It´s hard not to smile when you see him.
• An Austrian legal intern. He´s a little boring, but spent 15 minutes or so yesterday telling me how he´d like to study hebrew so he can study the caballah in the original.
• Ursula is an enormous German woman who works as a chaplain in a cancer ward.  She´s on a year-long sabbatical and spent the six weeks antecedant to her arrival walking the camino de Santiago. 

special interests

It occurs to me that if you're really into bagpipes and octopus, Santiago de Compostela is your kind of town.  The local specialty is squid in every incarnation imaginable.  And there is a very old Celtic tradition here that manifests itself in modern times as strolling gangs of students playing bagpipes.  They look sort of similar, octopi and bagpipes...

 

Politics

Over lunch a few days ago the couple I live with told a story about another student they had had staying with them, an American.  They said that each time he tried to bring up politics, the husband pretended to not to hear or understand him.

I took this as a kind of instructive allegory and haven´t tried to sound them out on Spanish or world politics.  We spoke a little bit about the gallego language -- if galicians should speak it instead of spanish, etc, but they very quickly assured me that the whole debate over gallego was "just politics."

This is 180º degrees different from the people in Catalunya, who couldn´t wait to give you their opinion on every divisive political topic conceivable, from catalunyan nationalism to their opinions on Iraq.

In my mind, these incidents are related to another that happened a couple of days ago.  I was in the kitchen with Señora Matos when we heard several very loud booms.  I immediately ran to the window, trying to find out what it was.  Señora Matos continued peeling potatoes, explaining that it didn´t much matter what it was, since it wasn't in our neighbourhood.

I later found out that the city has been testing fireworks every day at noon in preparation for the big festival on sunday.  I can't figure out exactly why, since testing fireworks seems to make as much sense as testing a match.

arrival #2

I arrived at the place I´ll be staying at 11am.  It´s in the ¨new city,¨ a couple of blocks from the old,  UN world heritage site, city.  The building itself is completely without charm - grey cement, streaked with moisture.  But the inside is nice.  My room is a good size, and I have a window that overlooks the street.  Even though my suitcase still hasn´t arrived, it feels good to be able to take a shower and rest.
 
The local internet café is kind of fun.  It´s a flight down from the street and quite hot despite the fan that blows my hair in all directions.  It´s full of pimply, cigarette smoking teenagers who play against one another in networked games.  The whole thing is presided over by a heavy guy with long greasy hair who has more than a passing resemblance to silent bob.

from my journal, 7-18-04

I got off the train at 7:30 this morning in Santiago.  While I was trying (and failing) to understand how to lock my backpack in the consigne, I guess everyone who exited the train with me had already gone.
 
So it was empty as I walked up the hill towards the center of town.  As I got closer, clumps of drunken teenagers materialized, some still clutching their glasses of beer.  A pair of weaving girls stopped me to ask where the Praza de Galicia was.  I pointed the way because I knew it from looking at the map earlier, but it struck me that you´d have to be pretty drunk to mistake me for someone who knows where she´s going.
 
I continued going up, out of the new city, following a narrow stone street.
 
Another group of teenagers noticed me smirking at an enormous padded bra in a store window and struck up a conversation.  We continued chatting in english and spanish until one of them cried, "Oh, my head! I can´t think anymore!" and they said their goodbyes.
 
I made it to the cathedral as the bells rang for 8 o´clock. And what a church!  I won´t even bother to try to describe the building itself, but the whole edifice sits on a hill that overlooks misty mountains.  I´m sitting in the main plaza now, partly because it´s beautiful and partly because there seem to be fewer groups of winos here than elsewhere.
 
I´m watching pilgrims arrive, which is a pretty good pastime.  A group of bicyclists in bright blue and pink racing uniforms are posing for a portrait in front of the church.  Some pilgrims leap for joy or hug one another when they arrive.  Some put down their packs, look up, shrug, and move on.  I guess everyone has their own way experiencing something they´ve been hiking three weeks to see.
 
By 10am the narrow streets echo with the clattering of pilgrims´wooden walking sticks.

Reina Sofía, continued

The third exhibit was Salvador Dalí - in particular, it dealt with his relationship to ¨the masses.¨ They screened some commercials he did in the 60s for airlines and cars.  They made me uncomfortable -- the 20th century is behind me and I still have a problem with the mixture of capitalism and high culture.
 
The exhibit also included copies of a daily newspaper he put out (the Dalí News, get it?) that was, predictably, all about himself.  The headlines were wonderful:
 

Truman

Marshall

Picasso

Dalí, In

Artistic Crisis and Rebellion Spread

 

Or, this one:

 

Dalí

Triumphs

in

Apotheose

of

Homerus

Richard Wagner Reported Killed

 

One of the newspaper articles concerned his mustache.  He´d keep fake ones in his pocket in a small box and offer them to friends like cigarettes -- ¨Mustache? And you, mustache?¨

 

He explained that he grew his mustache because he didn´t smoke and needed something to do with his hands. So I guess offering them to others would be a logical extension.

 
 

Reina Sofía

I visited the Museo Reina Sofía today.  There was an exhibition entitled ¨Monochromes¨ -- a collection of monochromatic modern art organized by color, black, red, blue, gold, silver, white.  My two favorite pieces were both lenses. 
 
The first was an enormous circular rose colored lense that offered a view, slightly shrunken, out a window to a garden outside. When I looked, an old man was standing in the garden in the left 1/3 of the window.  The whole thing was so balanced it almost looked purposeful.  When you stood with your back to the window and looked through the lense, you could see other people in the museum (slightly magnified and blush-colored) crowded around the lense looking at you.
 
The second lens was actually two grey polarized lenses, V-shaped and arranged like this: >>.  As you walked around them, you saw the other side of the room in greyish gloom (when you were looking through only one) or, abruptly, yourself when the two lenses overlapped and the polarized filters blocked all light, leaving only your reflection on the shiny surface.
 
Next was a Lichenstein exhibit.  One of my favorites there was a painting of the upper half of a masked man, eyes wild.  The speech bubble said, ¨What?! Why do you ask that? What do you know about my image replicator?¨

last night

Last night as I was walking back to the hostal, I saw an old woman turn a garbage can over and pick off the ground a fresh white carnation.  She ripped the stem away, kissed the flower, and placed it reverently on the protruding cornerstone of a nearby building.

mirror and accordion emporium

I´ve been noticing small shops that sell combinations of things whose relationship only makes sense in the context of a dream -- eyeglasses and clocks, paper and aquariums.  Like some living Appolinaire poem. 

from my journal 7/16/04

My first two trips in the city indicated that this is a european capital city like any other -- a multicolored and efficient subway system, big department stores, a crowded train station, a sleek airport.  I felt like I´d been here before.
 
But on my third trip out, having finished my tiring and stressful errands, my eyes were open a little wider and the city rewarded me.  In some sections the streets are narrow and medieval, so that you can´t see more than a block in front of you, but the hills that the city is built upon afford unlikely vistas.
 
 

arrival

So I´ve arrived in Madrid!  My luggage didn´t though.  Seems it like Amsterdam better.  This is, of course, disappointing to me and discomfiting to the people who will be forced to smell my 3 day old clothes.  Not too big a deal, though.  At least I don´t have to carry the darn thing.
 
I wasn´t in this jolly  mood a few hours ago.  I didn´t get much sleep on the plane last night and am in that strange stumbling state peculiar to jetlag.  I found a sale at the big department store here and went in to pick up some necessities - shampoo, soap, underwear, shirt.  It was bright and antiseptic in there and loud techno was blaring.  The colors of the moment in Madrid are electric pink, a lime green so bright it hurts the eyes, radioactive lemon... I almost called it quits as I woozily pawed through the stinging colors.  But I didn´t and now I´m the owner of a tomato red tank top.  And after a shower I´m feeling much more generous towards the world.
 
The street the hostal is on has a unique and wonderful quality -- it seems different every time I walk down it.  First it had the home of Lope de Vega on it.  Next sortie, it had Cervantes´home.  On one outing a tiny cafe with dark wood and dusty bottles.  The next, a fancy hair salon. 
 
I think I need to get some sleep.

first daughter

Guess who might be joining me in Santiago de Compostela this summer: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/377277 [it looks like that link is broken now -- one of the Bush daughters (Jenna?) made the pilgrimage in June. I wonder if the secret service came too. If I were the president´s daughter I think might get a kick out of having really strenuous athletic hobbies that the secret service would have to accompany me doing).]