There is more and more to know about Quermançó
Whenever I come to this little piece of Northeastern Catalonia and the weather is favorable, I make a trip to the beach. It's a tricky proposition as this area is massively touristic and most of the beaches are dreadful; full of drunken, ruddy people hailing from France and Germany. But, if you take the time to drive up the N-260 out of Figueres and head towards Llança and the "hidden" beaches up there, things get a great deal more tolerable and one can have a nice day out under the sun with folks that are more often than not locals.
It just so happens that as you wind your way over the mountains that border the Empordá plane, there are these castle ruins up on a rock, standing by themselves. I asked #1 Fan about them as, like most who grew up in the US, I have a large fixation on castles. I didn't happen to have one on the hill above my childhood house like #1 Fan did when growing up, so I didn't really get my fill of them. So she said that the castle is a ruin which mostly serves as the backdrop for local heavy metal bandmembers wanting to go pose for group photos and get their proper "Iron Maiden" (still huge in Spain) portrait taken. There are a great many places like this (ruins not Iron Maiden sets) around the area, so we've never bothered to stop at this particular one to date.
As I'm here by myself and #1 Fan is off in Côte d'Ivoire, I took the time to visit Quermançó Castle (pron. 'car-man-so') as it is actually called. Well, it was also an excuse to buy awesome bulk wine. But, I was expecting something along the lines of my experience with Dvigrad, a dead city in Croatia that has some history, but is more just old ruins. It turns out the ruins of Dvigrad were actually a great deal more interesting than Quermançó, but the history of this castle is by far much more detailed.
I don't really need to go in to every historical detail as it's mostly here and what I cobbled together for the Wikipedia article above. It's more the cultural references that I find interesting. For instance, Savaldor Dalí was nuts about this place, wanting to do a number of things with it, but most oddly was to create a gigantic pipe organ that would be powered by the Tramuntana (the devil's fart). This video is on the official site here and while sped up a bit, it shows the voracity of this wind in the area. With wind like that, the pipe organ idea might have just worked and the folks who own the castle currently wanted to make it happen in 2004, although that's never come to be.
But what I really love are the local legends that have popped up around the castle. You can read a few of them here. In summary, The Countess of Molins would make a pretty fun film and The Lady of Quermançó has many different versions, including one where she would only eat the hearts of goats (my brother in-law's girlfriend knew that version.) The Golden Goat is actually interesting for more reasons beyond folklore as there was a lot of fascination with the Jews who used to live in the area prior to the 1492 "eviction". In fact Vilajuïga (the town that sits very close to the base of the rock for the castle) can be interpreted as, "The Jewish Village". And lastly in the legends, there is of course a mention of the Holy Grail, because hey, why not.
Given that the castle is about 1,000 years old, it's no wonder it's found its way in to so many aspects of stories and legend here in Alt Empordá, much more so than Castell de Sant Ferran, which while in much better shape and massive in size to Quermançó, it's only about 250 years old and just doesn't have the air of mystery that a castle up on a rock, deserted for 200 years gets.
You can see a few shots I took up at the ruins starting here.
27 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: castles, catalonia, history, the europe
Now and forever a fan of Catalan bulk wine
There's nothing sophisticated about it. You walk in to a winery like Empordàlia and go straight to the back of the place. There, you will find the massive 10,000 or 25,000 liter stainless steel tanks. At the bottom, a spigot. Nearby, your selection of large or small plastic bottles if you forgot your own.
In Spanish and Catalan it 'a granel' or 'bulk' wine. There is no big secret to it here though. You can find it anywhere in Europe where they make wine, although I'm of the opinion that the best versions of it are in countries along the Mediterranean. In 2007 I stayed with a Croat who owned a pension in Dubrovnik and every week he would lug in a 10L bottle of bulk Plavac Mali that he bought.
Naturally the assumption is that if you're paying €1 a liter instead of €10 for a 750ml bottle, then the quality is going to be less. In some wineries this may be the case, but for everything I've ever tasted that was bought in bulk, such as the wines I just picked up yesterday from Empordàlia, I taste no difference. Their bulk Criança and what you buy in the properly bottled and corked version are the exact same, although there may be a scratch less alcohol in the bulk version. Naturally the big difference is the staying power down the line as air is both your best friend and your worst enemy with wine.
If you buy the bulk wine and plan to keep it for more than a day or two, you need to a) put it in a glass container and b) keep as much air out of there as possible. Otherwise, it will oxidize quite fast and while this is desirable while one is drinking the wine, when one is storing it, it's going to produce something squalid. Given the difficultly in this, it's not a surprise that during the summer, the main bulk customers are fat Germans and French stocking up on cheap booze for the beach as Empordàlia is on the way to one of the closest beaches to the French border.
But all of this is a painful reminder as to how out of control the fancification of wine has become in California. If you can actually find wine to buy in bulk, it's typically of very low quality, which is most likely that way to keep people buying the bottles. I mean, even a wine like the namesake Rubicon from Coppola's winery has a cost-of-goods that is less than $4 per bottle, which includes the grapes, labor, bottle, label, and cork (one of the more expensive elements in wine production.) The wine retails for $110. It's ridiculous. I'm assuming that per liter, if one doesn't bottle the wine, the cost much be somewhere around $0.50 given what bulk sells for here in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, which is about €1 a liter. A 100% markup is pretty typical in business. So why is it not possible to get a bulk wine in California for even $4 a liter? That would be a massive markup, yet it just isn't done. And of course it isn't because of the same reason why we don't use the Metric system or have soccer as our national sport (like the rest of the world on both counts) in that wine, Metric, soccer, and hell, even cheese are seen as European and thus fancy. They're either to be avoided or priced to cost a great deal for the allure of being fancy.
I must now shrug this off and return to living up my cheap, delicious wines and weighing myself in kilograms, thank you.
24 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: better buying, california, the europe, wine
When the merde hits the TGV
Basically the video says it all. I got caught up in a French strike that diverted and disabled the train that I was on. Sucks, but I learned one solid thing in all of this in that while the British are probably the masters of the queue, the French are the masters of waiting. It took merely 10 minutes of being stopped until people started working on getting drunk. The train smelled of cigarettes, alcohol, and a good time quite fast despite everyone doing the boozing and smoking out on the Tarascon platform.
The real crapper in all of this was that I missed my connection to Figueres in Spain by 3 minutes and it was the last one of the day. Thankfully my father-in-law graciously came up and got me, otherwise, I would have probably been forced to continue the "party" at a cheap hotel by the Perpignan rail station.
20 10 2009 1 comment
Tags: france, paris, perpginan, tgv, trains
The Paris ring scam or unfortunate 'bon chance'
For those who haven't experienced it, you'll see some guy (or maybe a girl) off in the distance suddenly come upon a ring as they walk towards you. He'll offer it to you when he sees you, showing that it doesn't fit on their hand and you should take it, but how about some money for a sandwich? It has to be one of the dumbest scams I've ever heard of it, but it must work on greedy idiots because there are so many holes to the scenario, that only something thinking they've suddenly hit the jackpot would fall for it. You can read a more detailed description of it here.
The guy who tried to pull this on me did it verbatim to the example I've outlined exclaiming 'bon chance!' (good luck) to me and forcing me to take the ring. But, it's ridiculous. For starters, why would someone give you a gold ring? For seconders, the ring is obviously crap. You can feel it in the weight of it that it's simply not gold. It doesn't even look like real gold, but like costume jewelry. And thirders, why would someone who, once they give the ring to you, then be asking for money instead of keeping the ring? Obviously, it doesn't add up to anyone who thinks about it for just a minute.
I ended up giving this guy a 0.50€ and told him 'pour l'effort' as I was mostly amused at his trying this on me, although whomever tries in the future will just get the ring tossed back at them since I don't need multiple crappy rings in my life. Of course, he then pleaded for a few Euros more for a sandwich with a Coke. I just told him no and walked off. He followed briefly and I told him I couldn't speak French (which is pretty much completely true.) Naturally he asked if I spoke English to which I said no, Croatian. He shook his head and cussed at me, then walked off to try his next victim, whom I'm sure will give him a 20€ or something outlandish, thus making the money and time he lost on me balance out.
Honestly, I was more worried about someone getting behind me and getting in my bag, which is why I backed up against a wall. Distraction is the #1 pickpocket method. But the funny thing in all of this is that I mentioned it to Parisian friends and they had never heard of the scam which shows that either: I obviously stand out as a tourist or that Parisians never go to the Eiffel Tower or Quai Branly, which is where I encountered this guy. Perhaps due to my shaving every other day instead of the requisite twice a month as is typical for French guys, it is a combination of both.
In the end, it was an amusing adventure that required me to get the 2.50€ sandwich for lunch instead of the 3€ one to be good and try to stay on budget which is oh so incredibly hard with all the delicious wonderfulness that abounds in Paris.
19 10 2009 1 comment
Tags: paris, scams, the europe
So… what goes next to the masterpiece?
I've often wondered this in large galleries. Usually, when it's the case that you've got something like Guernica (wrongfully) at the Reina Sofia in Madrid, you can place the work by itself and everyone is happy because we can absorb to our heart's content. Lesser works be damned.
But what happens when it's a something smaller like Bal du moulin de la Galette by Renoir? You can't take up a whole museum wall with that (it's only about 1.5x1m.) As I saw at the Musée d'Orsay, apparently you go through the entire collection and try to find that awkward best friend of the masterpiece to stick next to it. Yeah, it may not really know what to do and it will often take its queues from the bigger work next to it, but that's okay. Sure, it may get some occasional glances from those checking out the masterpiece, but it won't really know what to do with them
It almost makes you want to feel bad for it, but at the same time, that lesser work has some hard lessons to learn. Maybe it needs to strike out in the world. Maybe go off to America where the playing field is a bit more even. Maybe someday it will walk in the door of any American West Coast museum and say, "Bitches, I'm a fucking Renoir! Showcase my canvas properly!" And then yes, it will get a spot and not have to deal with all the attention that whore, Bal du moulin de la Galette was getting, but this has to be earned. It wasn't born with the good looks of a masterpiece.
18 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: art, france, paris, the europe
A well-spent time at the Musée d'Orsay
I don't even really know where to start with the Musée d'Orsay except to say, yes visit it. I mean, there's the genius of opening an art museum in what was formally Gare d'Orsay, a train station that was unusable due to its short platforms and the fact that Paris feels like it has 50 other major rail stations. Then there is the genius of the collection which is simply hand's down, one of the best collections I've ever personally seen as it's comprised of so many works that I love from Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, Monet, and many, many others.
While the works date from 1848 to 1915, there isn't a focus just on Impressionism as I originally though was was the case. It's true that that is probably the strongest collection, but the Rodin sculptures on the main floor as well as the Art Nouveau pieces are also fantastic. Really, it's all fantastic and about the only thing that isn't are tourists who go there because they don't really know what to do with themselves. I'm not really sure what they're doing in a) the Orsay and b) Paris if enjoying art isn't high on the list, but there they are, meandering along, even crowding up the place in the middle of the week in the middle of October.
I haven't been to the Louvre and have little desire to go anytime soon due to the crowds. Now I have even less desire and don't really see the point as pretty much every great work of art that I admire is in the Orsay. The others are in Madrid.
17 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: france, museums, paris, the europe
Paris Metro stations are like navigating a hangover
Ah, le métro parisien. Je l'adore! The grid is massive and the stations so well placed in the center of the city that you really can get anywhere quite fast and orderly. The only issue is in how they laid out the various lines. This of course is the system's strength because if a train breaks down on one like, it doesn't completely cripple the system like is the case with BART in San Francsco (which actually isn't a metro, but more of a RER system anyways.) Different lines simply don't share tracks. Each is independent, running at various levels under the ground. It's very similar in this way to the Underground in London or most any other metro in Europe which usually started out as competing private transport lines. As opposed to BART where, to save money, station size, and passengers having to actually walk between lines, everything runs through the same platform.
The only downside with Paris is that finding your way between different lines is freakin' dizzying. You loop up and down stairs (oh yeah, basically no escalators, which is bad news when with luggage) and eventually you find your transfer platform quite a ways from your arrival platform. Most stations, it's decently manageable, but a major terminus point such as Republique, which has five different lines shuttling through it, is incredibly difficult to get around. Tied in to this fact is that this station seems to be constantly remodeled which means that handy dandy signs are often no where to be seen, thus leaving you to find your way via "metrosense" which is a lot like the radar that bats have, although due to its not being so developed in humans, you often find yourself on the wrong platform.
14 10 2009 0 comments
Ever get that my-shit's-been-gone-through feeling?
Upon arrival in Paris, my checked suitcase seemed, well, odd. I mean, things get tossed a bit in transit, but it really looked weird and while I packed like an idiot due to a bunch of extra stuff I had to bring with me, it still seemed kinda bizarre.
Then, when digging through stuff, I saw the friendly note below. So, just in case you were thinking about taking a bomb on a plane, yes, they do indeed search the bags from time to time. Oddly enough #1 Fan got her bag searched on the last trip at Paris in transit to Spain. I have no idea what their problem with her bag was, as I doubt it's a random thing. With mine, I'm assuming it was the granola that I was bringing. When wrapped up in a plastic bag, it does indeed seem like a Weapon of Mass Consumption. Yummy go boom yeah on my tongue.
13 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: airplanes, security, travel
The different tastes of a language
It's often asked by those who just don't know if Catalan is a dialect of Spanish. It's not. They're both "dialects" of Latin, although at this point, one would go so far as to say that they're separate languages due to the fact that a Latin speaker and a Spanish or Catalan speaker wouldn't be able to understand one another. To those visiting, it probably seems that this isn't the case as there is a lot of overlap between Catalan and Spanish like they both say "hola" as well as things such as "adiós" and "bienvenido" being "adéu" and "benvingut" in Catalan. These are just a few of many, so you can see where people get this whole "dialect" idea from, although I'm guessing it has more to do with Catalonia being part of Spain than anything else. For instance, Macedonian and Bulgarian are mutually intelligible dialects of one another, but no English speaker would ever assume that as they're separate countries and no one from either of those countries wants to admit it.
But, when you actually dig down in to it and start really working with Catalan, many things are completely different. For instance while "dog" is "perro" in Spanish, it's "gos" in Catalan. But let's look at food, because it's in the language of food where you find the truth of a people.
"bocadillo con jamón y queso"
That is basically a ham sandwich with cheese, but it's oh, oh, oh so delicious as it's with Spanish ham and manchego, drizzled with olive oil. This isn't something limited to Castillian speakers though and it is widely available and vastly consumed in Catalonia as well, but there it's:
"entrepà amb pernil i formatge"
Look at that. There is nothing that matches up, yet it means the exact same thing. If you still think that's still a dialect of Spanish, let me know how.
There is some humor from this though as it is often the case that Catalan words end with the "ll" letter like "coll" which means "neck". It also happens that there are a number of words that are quite similar to Spanish, but that they drop an ending vowel such as "cat" which is "gato" in Spanish and "gat" in Catalan. So a dorky, polyglot joke in Catalonia is to ask for a:
"bocadill amb jamó i ques"
Quite ridiculous and it's a joke that really only makes sense for Catalan speakers, who will most likely smirk if you ask for it. But don't worry, it will taste just as good as a "bocadillo con jamón y queso" except that the bread will be rubbed with tomato and garlic, making it even better actually. Why do I bring this up? Because I'm heading there again for some work on Sunday and staying for the rest of the year and getting fat on pernil in all its heavenly culinary incarnations.
05 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: food, humor, language
