Hitting up peace in the Montmartre Cemetery
It's a general given that for people in the US, death is a terribly, terribly scary thing and thus you see an entire economy based around the idea that you will never age and will never die. I mean, I saw and ad for life insurance recently and they actually said in the commercial, "if you die". I will never understand this attitude, but after having dealt with two World Wars, the Black Death, and any other number of tragedies, Paris appears to be quite comfortable with it.
Well, it's not that they can't wait to die, but at the same time, they accept it as part of existence, which you can see in the cemeteries around town. They're less a scary place of the dead and more parks of tribute. I find nothing frightening about them and actually think that they're incredibly peaceful with amazing structures. Obviously, Père Lachaise Cemetery gets the most visitors given that it has a lot of famous graves in it like Jim Morrison's. I checked it out two years ago and it is indeed quite cool (the cemetery, not Morrison's grave which is quite plain), especially as you get away from these popular graves.
But, I also visited the Montmartre Cemetery just a few days ago at the recommendation of my friend, Timotheé. It has nowhere near the fame for people outside of France, but is the final resting place for a great many artists and other luminaries from Paris. For instance, Traffaut is buried there as well as others. While it doesn't have the woodsy quality of Lachaise due to a street going over the top of it, it is still quite interesting with all these streets of the dead laid out and waiting.
Despite the frigid cold, it was a welcome change up from the unfortunate visit to Sacre Couer that I mentioned previously. It's not that I would recommend a tour of all the Parisian cemeteries if you visit there, but still, they provide a nice escape from the hustle and bustle with their eternal stillness.
23 12 2009 0 comments
Tags: death, france, paris, the europe
Globalization: Everyone's Eiffel Tower
I had no real interest in staying up in the Montemarte area. I got a "deal" on a hotel for 36€ a night which, in Paris is quite a good price despite the room being just a room with a single shared toilet and shower for the floor. Such are the costs of Parisian opulence. I travel high, live low.
It was cold, damned cold in Paris. The high was -1C and there was a windchill that dropped it to -6C. This was problematic as I had been in Spain, where just three days earlier before the cold really hit, it was 19C for the high, which, in San Francisco means that you go out to tan in Dolores Park. The temperature compounded the feeling of functionary traveling as I just didn't want to do anything. Taking my hands out of my pockets meant cold hands. No hands meant no photographs and the cold overall meant little walking around.
Even still, I was staying in Montemarte and a stroll up to Sacre Coeur for the sake of fundamental tourism was needed, just to go see it despite having already seen it on my first trip to Paris seven years ago. I wish I hadn't. Along any approach to to the hill, there were endless stores with every piece of crap souvenir you could think of and they were all the same. Eiffel this and J'adore that in any size you could want at the same price between all. Why do we need all this? Why can't there just be one single government Crap Store in each district of any town in the world where you go to buy all the sweatshop-produced, globalized garbage that you want?
To add insult to injury, I found that as I tried to walk up the stairs, a fleet of West African guys where there waiting to make a bracelet with my name in it, just the same as in Accra, Ghana. As if having touristic products being mass produced wasn't enough, now the tourism crap of one location is being exported to others. Although I have to admit that when I tried to pretend I couldn't speak English or French with one of the guys who then asked me where I was from in three different language, I said Croatia (yes, I lied, I'm naughty.) Unabashed, he then proceeded to name off just about every famous Croat in history in an attempt to try and lure me in. That was amusing if nothing else and I was quite shocked he didn't start speaking Croatian with me.
It all just came back to a question my grandmother put to me sometime back after I had returned from a lengthy trip when she asked, "Don't you ever get homesick?" She's a sweet lady and it was an honest question that is true for some people. But, I fail to see how it could ever be possible for an American to get homesick anywhere in the world. American corporations have seen to it that their brands are inherent to anywhere you go in the world. I suppose in some way this is the reason I've taking to going to Africa more these days as I enjoy the people in Africa tremendously and outside of Coca-Cola, you just don't get immersed in multi-national advertising.
But back to Paris and Montemarte as I walked through the Sacre Coeur and I took not a single picture. I don't have any particularly good pictures of this place from before and I respected the "no photos" sign inside as people actually do go there to worship. I'm sure it had a great deal to do with the cold, but this throng of tourists in the middle of December all taking crappy photos with their heads chopped off or running a video camera around the perimeter was just too much. Much like Julie Deply's character in Three Days in Paris, I just didn't want to take any photos. But, whereas she wanted to just immerse herself where she was and not put the camera between her and the experience, I just wanted to disconnect where I was. And at the risk of sounding like a forlorn digital asshole, I simply wanted to disconnect for a brief moment, separating from the crappy souvenir stands with their imported goods and the bracelet makers with their imported schtick. I just wanted to be alone, freezing my ass off in the cold and actually look at the situation thinking, "What a bunch of shit. Where is Paris in all of this?"
It turns out that Paris was waiting for me later in the day at the cemetery, la Cantine co-working space, and in the folded layers of butter in the crust a jet-black, blackberry tart that I savored after the last crêpe that I will have in Europe this year. But Sacre Coeur is an island in Paris, a dropoff point for tourists that is best left alone unless you have a reason to be at it. It is not alone in this and tourism has become as much a scourge as corporatism these days. And really, because of this, I leave this article with no links, picture, or anything else connecting it to anything else. There are better things out there and while we steadily work to link all of them together through imbalanced world trade, so many of them are just better left adrift, somewhere... over there, over charged, and over photographed.
21 12 2009 0 comments
Tags: france, globalization, paris, the europe
A colorful prison is still a prison
I've found that it's often the case that the more depressing a place is, the more colorfully it is painted. For instance any ward for terminally ill children in a hospital is dizzying array of colors vomited everywhere as if it is some attempt to stave off the inevitable from the minds of these poor kids. It doesn't really work, but I suppose the effort is appreciated.
Figueres is getting a new provincial (same as a state in the US) prison. Nobody is really happy about this and seeing it going up about a kilometer north of my in-laws house isn't the most awesome thing to witness. Of course, people aren't happy because of the fact that a prison is going and all the riffraff that comes along with that, but because there won't be any new jobs at it due to the fact they're transferring all those working at the provincial prison in Girona currently up to this prison. Spaniards worship government jobs. I know, it's strange, but given the current economic situation in the US, I suppose I can understand to a large degree. My mother-in-law actually recommended for me to look in to getting a job at the prison, although I assume that this is before it was made apparent that job creation would be nill at the new institution.
But, in keeping true to the general theme of Catalonia and having everything being heavily design-oriented, the prison has a "look" to it. As you can see below, they've incorporated all this color in to the outside walls to look like some kind of a Legoland prison. It's weird to see it going in. It's also weird hearing the rumors from people around town that the amenities will include: a gym, full television programming, a library, a pool, physical therapy to go along with the internal hospital, and (I kid you not) massage. Undoubtedly a great deal of this is hearsay, as in reality, you can dress it up as much as you want, but a prison is still a prison what what we need the world over are more schools.
09 12 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, figueres, government, law, the europe
The science of Spanish Weekendology
Today is a very important day. It's important not because it's the day of Immaculate Conception and an official holiday in Spain, but because it is one of two pillar days in an Aqueduct Weekend. But, let's take it slowly as the Aqueduct is definitely the more advanced element in Spanish Weekendology. How about starting with the basics before we move in to this.
The Bridge
A much-loved type of weekend throughout Spain or just about anywhere in the world for that matter. This is a weekend where you have a holiday that falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday and naturally this means that taking off the respective Monday or Friday by spanning it and giving yourself a four day weekend makes a lot of sense. Before I see the "lazy freakin' Spaniards" thought cross your mind, let me remind you that we love doing this in the US with the 4th of July. If it's on a Tuesday or Thursday then shabam-presto, a four day weekend is made.
These Bridge Weekends happen quite a bit and travel planners look far down to the road to anticipate them, offering packages for what they assume will be a four day weekend. Can't say that I blame them.
The Aqueduct
This is less a weekend and more a weekoff, but it is the Holy Grail of time off. In Spain, there are two holidays that fall one day apart from each other. The first is the aforementioned holiday for the Immaculate Conception. The second is the Constitution Day on December 6th. So, you get the 6th and the 8th which, if they fall on a Tuesday and a Thursday form the central pillars of the Aqueduct with the starting and ending weekends forming the other sides. Naturally, if you have off two days off in the middle of the week that are a day apart, then what is really the point of those other three days? The point is to take them off as well and have a nice, nine day holiday at the beginning of December if you can afford it.
The next one of these is going to happen in 2011 and you can bet that there are people who have already planned for it. The Spanish plan these things way, way down the road and I think that they're one of the few things in Spain that might be valued higher than jamón, although that's a pretty strong thing to say, so I put it forth with reservation.
Other Weekends. Other Places.
What I like about Spain is that they don't really try to hide the fact that they do these weekends. On the contrary, how it's done in the US is a bit more annoying as there's the Fatass Weekend wherein people just spread the Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving in to being a whole week but don't admit to it. Then of course there's the Silent Nights Weekend where people work it out to take off either the week between Christmas and New Year's or just take two full weeks off during that time altogether. No one ever wants to admit that they're doing this and because of email they can act like they're in the office all the time. We know that it happens and really, just fess up to it or better yet, just close down the place for a week. We all know that we like holidays.
08 12 2009 0 comments
Tags: holidays, spain, the europe
Spanish 'easy open' technology still in beta; maybe alpha
If you glance below, you'll see the result on my tempting fate and using the 'obertura fàcil' (or 'abre fácil' in Castellano if you will) tab for a package of pasta. Didn't turn out so well. This is not a surprise. Spanish food vendors know that 'easy-open' is the shit because they see it everywhere in the US. But that being as it may, they still have some back-to-the-drawingboard time to spend on their actual implementation of non-knife-needed packaging systems. Of course Spaniards are no where near as fat as Americans, so maybe it's for the better that you gotta fight to get at your food in Spain.
29 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: food, packaging, spain, the europe, us america
The approach of a people
Every other day, I've been trying to go on a run around the castle above my in-laws house. Unfortunately my knee has been giving me problems lately, so I haven't been running as much as I'd like. This period of idle exercise time has made for an idle mind and there was something that was pissing me off every time I'd go for a run which was the graffiti that some bored kids had decided to spray on the back of a power substation tower. Naturally, it was pretty weak graffiti as it was painted by pretty weak hoodlums. In theory it wasn't that big of a deal, but it was getting to me as it had been there for a long time.
I went down to a general store on the Rambla, bought a can of cheap white paint, went up the hill and painted over it. All told it took about 20 minutes of my time and a couple of Euros of my money. No one saw me paint over it and no big deal was made of it. I did it because it bothered me and because no one else was doing anything about it. I did it because despite my split nationalities, I grew up as an American and my grounding in all things practical lies with the can-do attitude of the US.
This is an element of the US that I like a great deal. By and large, it's missing in many Europeans countries. It's obvious why as all of us in the US are descended from those who came to the country with this spirit in mind. There is a downside to this way of doing things though in that can-do leads to a head down, self-centered manner of thinking that is concerned about the individual first and everything else second. It doesn't have to, but it is often the case. When it gets out of hand (and up until the recent economic meltdown, this attitude had gotten so out of hand) it was rending at the foundation of the country. One can only hope that in that strife, there is progress and advancement; not just dead-end polemics.
As way of an alternate example, Spain is a great deal different than the US. Beyond canonization of the pig, this is a socialist country. Yes, for an American that brings up all kinds of allusions to the Red Scare, but socialism is an absolute necessity. It's just a shame it has been forever tainted in American English by shortsighted individuals half a century ago and now as a very thinly-veiled racial insult towards Obama. But Spain looks after its people. If those in power don't, they are quickly not in power. People don't tolerate a malfunctioning government. They expect that if they're ill, the state is there for them or when they're unable to work, again, the state is there. Education is free because it is for the society. This is sorely reminded of when seeing that my former university in California is now $10,000 USD a year to attend when it was 25% of that a when I graduated nine years ago.
The society like the one in Spain seems ideal. But much as how the can-do individualism of the US can too far in one direction, so can the faith in the state. People get complacent. They stop fighting for what they get and those who are power hungry slowly erode away all that was gained. So you end up with some American-Croat with a can of paint going nuts on cleaning up the neighborhood because not only is the local government not cleaning it up, no one is even calling anyone to come clean it up.
Every two or three days I make a run for croissants (and occasional xuixo, god those are good...) and I pass the Rambla in Figueres. There, beneath the shade of the trees in the lingering breaths of summer in an atypical November sit the old men discussing the latest construction projects and the old women talking about how bad their son's wives are. I watch it and realize that as important as I think painting out some minor graffiti is, if in Spain there exists Death's Waiting Room, then help me find a number so that I may sit on a Rambla bench and wait my turn when I grow old.
26 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, spain, the europe, us america
CD's and corks yes, but yard trimmings, no?
It was at the end of last summer that I saw these receptacles and was applauding the local government of Figueres for allowing people the ability to recycle CD's, corks, light bulbs, and a whole slew of other odd, but regularly consumed items. I'm now beginning to think that these receptacles all just dump in to a single trash can at the bottom of the stand though.
What makes me wonder that is the fact that I was getting a bit too much internet and decided to help out my in-laws by trimming up the bushes in their front yard. They appreciated the work. I appreciated the fact that I will no longer hit my head on the low fig tree branches when chasing the Puppy Terror. Naturally, this all seemed well and good until I went to actually dispose of the trimmings and other green waste.
I asked my mother in law to kindly direct me to the proper bin as a number of them are green. She told that there wasn't one. Oh, in that case, I'll load it in the car (somehow) and take it one nearby. No, there aren't any in that there are none. In the whole town. As far as she has searched. What? How can a town that lets you recycle your mobile phone on the street not have bins for completely, of the earth, compostable material? They just don't, that's how.
So naturally, what does one do with this waste? Toss it in the trash? Oh no, that's no good as they'll refuse to pick up the trash bin. So, you end up doing what you the rest of the neighborhood does and you either bag it heavily to hide it in the trash or you dump it by the side of the trash for... I don't know what to happen, some kind of fire I suppose. Naturally, you end up with a pile like you see below. You also end up with me, in one of my less grand moments, sneaking out with my mother in-law at midnight with a handtruck and five massive black plastic bags of yard trimmings to throw in the damned trash to go to the landfill!
I have to say that this is one instance where California beats Spain's ass. Yeah, I know Spain, you can wave that jamón leg back in our faces while taunting the fact that you only allow 27 of them to be exported to the US a year, but still, no green recycling? I mean, I know San Francisco is progressive in general (except when it comes to picking non-insane mayors) and our goal of no waste by 2020 seems crazy, but come on, tree and bush stuff as about as recyclable as you can get. And every major city in the state has this in place. This is all insane as when I looked in the waste bin the next morning, all I saw were covertly dropped bags of green waste that others had dumped 'a chorizo'. Ah, is that what it is? Your recycling programs are so efficient that you actually have no real waste and if we didn't sneak in green waste disguised as actual waste, there would be nothing to pick up? Because if it isn't, shake off the sangría and wake up to green waste!
21 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, figueres, recycling, the europe
A trip down Capmany way to Arché Pagès
I have to admit that I actually visited Capmany last summer, which means that I also visited Celler Arché Pagès last summer as well. Why am I getting around to writing this now, in November? Some of it is just a touch of sloppiness and some of it is that I was all blogged out after writing my ass off about the Maker Faire Africa and Ghana in general over on Subsaharska. So here I am now, with a number of Catalan wine articles to write and am finally getting back around to the lovely trip I had up to this winery.
The family behind Arché Pagès has been making wine for the last four generations with the current winemaker, the son, Bonfill taking over in his mid twenties; lucky bastard. This name is a very old Catalan name which was his grandfather's and it means, "good son". Obviously, it's a bit to live up to.
There is a lot to appreciate about this winery in regards to their praving approach to winemaking. For starters, they found out that old milk pasteurizers were mighty cheap, very large, and worked extremely well as wine tanks for aging. They are in process of replacing all of this, but apparently for starting out, they worked just fine. Then there's the fact that they actually need to both chill and humidify their cellar. Why both? La Tramuntana, that's why (that fucker.) It dries out and warms the air among others things, like knocking around your house while trying to sleep, or blowing you off the castle walls when trying to run...
But of the 14 hectares that they grow on and produce 40-45,000 bottles from, there is enough Garnatxa to go around so that every wine has some. We saw a similar approach in Cantallops where there is a strong belief in the power of Garnatxa as it is an awesome wine. Anyways, on to the wines themselves.
The Sàtirs Blanc has a tart, melon nose that is quite refreshing. The fact it gets no oak leaves it a bit dry, although it is generally rather plush. There is a touch of peach and pear to it, but it remains rather bitter at the end. Then there is Sàtirs Negre (or red) which is very light, gentle wine of about 40% Garnatxa, 30% Cabernet, and 30% Carinyena. There are touches of licorice and mint to the nose, but it loses a good deal of this on the finish, while at the same time remaining quite clean. It should noted that since tasting this year at the winery, I've tasted the new 2005 release and find it to be a great deal more enjoyable with brighter flavors and more bang for the buck.
The Cartesius starts to get more bold. The nose is stronger with a great deal more oak, but it still retains the fruit and berry elements that you find in the Sàtirs. The body is quite dry, but not in an unpleasant manner. The 50% Garnatxa, 30% Cabernet, and 20% Merlot mix works quite well in balance as well as dusting out a touch of sour cherry on the body as it breathes more. Although, overall, I didn't care much for this year, but am anxious to see where the new vintage has gone.
The Bonfill is their top of the line wine and is the namesake of the winemaker. It's 70% Garnatxa and 30% Cabernet, but more importantly, it spends 14 months in new French oak. Apparently they tried American oak with a small batch but didn't care for it. The nose is deliciously smooth with cinnamon and spice to it. The French oak really comes through on the nose as the vanilla heats up quite quickly. The body is wonderfully smooth and clears out very well. Definitely a tasty wine that I've enjoyed since the visit as naturally I bought some of it.
Overall, you can taste the youth of the winemaker and that the wines have some work ahead of them. At the same time, they are indeed quite strong as they are and solid for everyday drinking, especially after I tasted the new Sàtirs Negre.
20 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, the europe, wine, wine reviews
Watch the winds across Empordà
I've mentioned the Tramuntana before. It's a wicked wind that blows through Empordà pretty much all the time. Apparently it also exists with the same name up in Southern France, which makes sense as the name is a derivative of "from the mountain" meaning that it's a cold, bastard wind. It's hard to really put it in to words though, which is why I took a video from the terrace of my in-laws place in Figueres to show how it sweeps across the plane. This video is obviously sped up a great deal, but at the same time, it illustrates the constant churning of this wind and why it tosses around any flight I take when coming in for a landing in Girona or Barcelona.
12 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, figueres, spain, the europe, weather
Who would have thought travel gets harder the more you do it?
I'll start out first and foremost by telling you that this article is borderline bitching about certain aspects of travel. If you're sitting in a cubicle, hating life, I would either recommend to skip it or skip to the bottom where I talk about solutions to the problems I'm about to dig in to. Your choice. There are some good links though, so maybe just click on those before reading my feelings on the American passport...
Passports
Your standard American passport used to get sent out with 18 blank pages for entry/exit stamps and visas. These days, I believe it has 24, but mine is from 2002 and is a bit behind the times. With regular stampings, you can fit 72 entry and exit stamps in there. This seems like a lot and traveling within a huge chunk of Europe these days is just two stamps despite going to multiple countries thanks to blessed Schengen.
I made one trip in 2003, one in 2004, one in 2005, one in 2006, and then a whole bunch starting in 2007. My passport currently has one blank page in it and I have to keep it for another 2 1/2 years, but in some regards, I'm screwed already as the problem lies in visas. To get a visa, you officially need two blanks, facing pages in your passport when you apply for the passport. That eats up pages really fast and it means that if you only have one blank page, you've got a problem. Africa has been eating up pages at a large rate and this won't decrease at any point soon as I need a visa to travel to every country there except South Africa, Senegal, Namibia and of all places, Equatorial Guinea (that would be due to all the oil.) There is a solution to this problem which is to send in my passport, have the government cut out the stitching and add in several more pages. I've seen this done and the passports look like utter crap afterward. Never before has a prav happened at so high a level.
The idiocy is that they just won't simply issue you a new passport even if you fill up the current one and you can only add pages twice. Dumb, yes. Thankfully, if I'm in a really tight bind, the two years of work and the decent amount of application and research money I put in to getting my Croatian passport comes in really handy as it has 29 blank pages and they're "freeform", meaning you can put more than four stamps on a page.
Of course, once the time comes to get a new passport, you can put a small note in the application to get the bible-port, which has 52 pages and is as thick as a prayer book. There is no extra cost to get this and if peak oil doesn't nix flying in the next 10 years, it will probably be an option that I take, despite the fact I'll need a separate bag just for my passport.
But this is really indicative of the American attitude in that hardly anyone leaves the country. Most estimates place the amount of citizens with passports at 20% on the high end and 12% on the low end. I realize that the US is a very large country and so you might never need to leave it, but at the same time, never leaving it makes for all the inbred thinking that we have to date towards the rest of the world. And really, we should all have passports, or better yet, a Federal ID card so that my Social Security Card stays private.
Customs
I'm a bit stumped as of late because I'm getting questioned a lot more when I enter countries. As I mentioned above, my passport has a lot of stamps in it and I would think that would show I travel a bit and am just popping through, no big deal. But no, in London they asked my duration of stay, profession, where I reside, where I am returning to, what I was going to do in England (twice) and then let me through. Even returning to Spain from London, I was asked a number of questions, which has never happened before including how much Spanish I spoke. That was just bizarre as if the agent was going to say, "¡Aha! ¡You said you speak un poco, not un poquito Español! ¡You are obviously going to work illegally here, even though it is Catalunya!"
On a certain level, I really don't mind this as it's a reminder that just because you have an American passport, you don't have a golden ticket to go anywhere else in the world, despite what idiots who go hiking in Iraq and get captured by Iran think. But, I just wish that there would be a consistency to it, although wishing for world peace would probably have more of a chance in being granted. I mean, is it the worry that I might abuse my ability to enter so easy and will work under the table, or worse yet, sell my sugarlumps on the street? This has really only come about as of late and while London was pretty much typical with the general xenophobia there, Spain was more of a shock.
Of course, my other theory is based on the fact that I had no problems in Paris when I flew in, in October. They glanced at my passport and thought, "Huh, American. 4,000th one today. Welcome to Paris, now shut up." The other airports I was flying through were Gatwick in England and Girona in Spain. It's possibly the case that the border agents in these airports feel especially important as they're at minor airports and they have to prove something, thus harassing people more, although they will probably let everyone through. Unless of course you're African or Muslim (or god forbid, both), in which case you get no end of trouble. Again, this is why I don't mind a bit of a hassle when going through as others have it far, far worse. I just wish they would choose some level to be consistent with it.
09 11 2009 0 comments
Tags: airports, immigration, passports, the europe, travel
