Last

Leaving a hotel room, I always feel at least a slight twinge of loss. My room for a night, but my room no longer as soon as I shut the door behind me. Not that I'd spent much time in my Madrid room, but it doesn't take much for me to get attached. I paid the bill at the front desk and left the Hostal Don Juan forever.

In the early morning streets yesterday people made their way to work, more than a few with hair still wet from morning ablutions. In the doorways and foyers of small hotels women in institutional white dresses mopped floors and washed windows. At the street curb men in flourescent green jumpsuits emptied trash bins into big trucks. The shops were still closed, but the cafes were open and people stood inside at the counters drinking small cups of coffee. I walked up Calle Fuencarrel towards the Tribunal Metro station, thinking about how often I had set off in the morning from a newly familiar place, moving towards the novel and unfamiliar. This was my favorite part of a day of travel, the early light, the cool air, a fresh curiosity and before me the means to indulge it. I walked slowly, and only reluctantly descended into the busy Metro station and traded foot travel for a train.

At the airport I bought a copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I was afraid that the only book I had left, The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela, would be too dark and would discolor my going-home mood. But The Road, about a father and son traveling by foot hopelessly across a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by fire and mayhem, was no less grim than the Cela novel, which is the confession of a murderer, written from prison. I ended up having time, a whole day in the air and airports, to read both short books, and while the end of The Road made my eyes water and my face crumple, neither of these excellent books damaged the I'm-almost-home good feeling of the day. When I started the Cela book, his name made me think of Finesterre, where at the spot where the path came down to the sea I'd come upon a larger than life bust of him with the nose knocked off.

As on the flight out, the Iberian Airlines plane was Spanish territory and the announcements were made first and more thoroughly in Spanish. The flight attendants too spoke to me in Spanish, though I noted that to others--who looked more obviously American?--they spoke English, and I wondered if after two months I had begun to take on the appearance of a Spaniard. Or maybe I just looked alert at such simple questions as, what would you like to drink? and, pasta or chicken? I certainly did have the skill to respond correctly to brief requests, but the long and muffled p.a. announcements eluded my full comprehension. My Spanish did improve substantially during the trip, but I'm afraid I still must've often looked like a deer in headlights when someone directed a long stream of the language in my direction. To be fair, I could sometimes discern enough to determine the speaker's meaning and make the necessary response; other times I could pick out a few key troubling words and repeat them as a means of asking for clarification; but sometimes I could do nothing more than smile sheeplessly and say "no entiendo," which translates, roughly, as "I'm sorry, but I have no fucking idea what you just said."

On the long flight to Chicago I had a window seat with no window, just a solid bulkhead. I felt cocooned, but not unpleasantly so. I paused often from my reading to simply sit and enjoy the pleasure of air travel's in-betweenness--those hours when you have left one place but before you have arrived in another, when you have no responsibility to act but only to be. And to maybe practice retrospection. Which I did. I opened my notebook and thought to see if I had any profound conclusions.... but ending up simply making two long lists, one titled "I met many people," the other "I went to many places."

In Chicago I stood in a long line for Customs, waited for my duffelbag to come through (amazed at the number and size of my fellow passengers' luggage; even out and about in the world we need a lot of stuff); went through Immigration; checked my bag again (no official had even glanced at it); took a train to another part of the airport; walked down a long terminal and right on to my connecting flight. Contemporary travel is a marvel of logistical accomplishment. And even so we are impatient, but think of how slow travel must have been even a short time ago.

Of course then my flight was delayed. We sat out on the tarmac for over an hour while a violent thunderstorm passed through, rocking the plane with strong winds. I had a window seat again, and two people in their mid-twenties, strangers to each other, sat beside me. The person just to my left was a Korean-American man, and he held a small video device on which he was watching an episode of South Park. On the aisle sat a tall, dark-haired woman talking on a cell phone to her mother in Rosemount. My two aisle-mates had not spoken until we parked on a side runway and the pilot announced our delay. But then they started and did not stop until we landed in Minneapolis. The man was returning from visiting relatives in Chicago, the woman from a six-month stay in Barcelona. They were both recent graduates, she from Winona State with a degree in Human Resources, he from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Physics; they bonded over the need they shared to find a job.

The woman said she had liked Barcelona but that there were a lot of strange people. She said she was glad to be going back to Minnesota, and then showed the man a picture of her chocolate lab whose name was Brownie. She had a boyfriend in Rosemount too, and they had agreed when she left not to see other people. She had returned early and hadn't told him, and she wanted to surprise him and bring him flowers. She asked the man, with some concern, "do you think it's ok to give him flowers? I mean, what would you think if a girl gave you flowers? I don't mean roses, but you know, something more macho?" The man chuckled uncomfortably, clearly wanting to say flowers wouldn't interest him in the least, but politely answering, "yeah, I think that'd be okay." I wanted to interrupt and be more encouraging, but they weren't talking to me; I was just the middle-aged guy at the window, eavesdropping.

Over the course of the flight the young woman told about her other travels. She had been all over the world--to Australia, to Vietnam and Thailand, to South Africa, all around Europe.... For some reason I was surprised. From the little I could discern (and, admittedly, judge) about her, I wouldn't have thought that she would be someone to devote so much time and effort to wandering about the world. But clearly she had made a great and ongoing effort. I wondered why, and as I could not ask, I wondered why I myself did much the same if not necessarily in the same manner. Why go off to Spain for two months? Like her I was coming home after a longish stint abroad, and the ending begged the question, why had I left home? It's a simple but not an easy question. I could say, I wanted to see northern Spain, and that's true but hardly sufficient. I could say, I wanted to work on my Spanish, and I did, but considering my limited success that can only be a tangential reason. I could say, I simply wanted to be somewhere other than Minnesota, and that feels closer to an actual motivation, if not a particularly interesting one. Maybe the best I can do is repeat some of what I said at the dinner table in Finesterre near the sea, when discussing pilgrimage with Mandy and Salima and Eddy. I wanted to cultivate knowledge and experience, and the way to do that, I thought and think, was to put myself out in the far flung world alone. I wanted to be moved, in general and in a Spanish manner. I wanted to be changed. And I was changed, of course. How is the next question, but that might take some time yet.

In Minneapolis at the baggage carousel I saw the well-traveled young woman take up a massive backpack and then look around for her seat mate. I could see him on the other side, but her view was blocked. She hesitated, then shouldered her pack and headed for the door, looking back over her shoulder twice more. Just after the second and last look, she came into the man's line of sight and he saw her, and watched her pass out the automatic doors. They had exchanged emial addresses but my guess is they won't use them. Travel nets one discoveries and connections, but it's also a litany of places and people left behind, lost.

I retrieved my bag and went out the doors too. Soon Alix pulled up and she got out of the car crying and we hugged and I cried a little too, and I was home.

In Madrid one is compelled to eat

Yesterday was a travel day, mostly, today too, the last one, and tonight I will sleep in my own bed. Which will be both familiar and odd. I calculate that since leaving home I have slept in thirty-seven different beds.

In the morning yesterday Rachael made poached eggs for breakfast, which I don´t believe I´ve ever eaten before, so add another new experience to my two months´ journey, though I don´t suppose poached eggs are particularly English (or are they?). We rode the train together from Brighton to London Gatwick, where she was meeting her mother and sister, who were flying in from Australia, and where we reluctantly said goodbye.

I remained at Gatwick longer than planned as my EasyJet--an egregious misnomer--flight was delayed two hours. I was already feeling a a little unloved, since when I'd gone through security my backpack was singled out for full unpacking and inspection and general touching of all my things ("would you turn on your camera so I can see if it works?" and isn't actually a bomb?). EasyJet employs festival seating, and when the flight finally did board there was an unseemly rush to get on. The airline does divide passengers into two groups, A and B, but when the hoards of Spanish teenagers returning home ignored the rights of the A group and crowded the door, the agent gave up and let everyone through together. Bad parenting, that.

We flew over Brighton, and I could pick out the pier and the Marina, a park near Rachael´s rowhouse, as well as Cuckmere Haven and the Seven Sisters to the east.

As on my previous EasyJet flight a few days ago, the passengers broke into applause the moment after we had landed safely. I don't recall such a repsonse on other carriers.

In Madrid I experienced a couple stressful hours before I reached the calming oasis of my hostal. I first had to go to the train station to retrieve my other bag from the Left Luggage room, an operation that was much more complicated than one would expect. Rather than providing the lengthy and boring details, I´ll just say that repated trips for correct change and then a broken locker tested my travel resilience.

A couple changes on the Metro, a long walk down Calle de Fuencarrel, and I finally and with much relief reached the Hostal Don Juan, on the Plaza Vazquez de Mella. I had the good fortune to have booked a room in the gay quarter of town, which meant lots of interesting shops and good restaurants, as well as numerous hip people on the streets. The hostal was on the third floor of a large building, up a wide wood staircase and through a big door; oil paintings and faded tapestries covered the walls inside.

I soon set off again and walked west in search of a used bookshop that purported to sell English-language books, but the shop was not where it was supposed to be. I happily settled for the nearby Plaza de Oriente, bordered but not overshadowed by the ornate Palacio Real. Just to the right of that big white monster, the sun stood above a distant hill, bathing the park with late day yellowy-orange light. Madrilenos sat in the grass in small bunches talking and drinking and ignoring the many big statues of long-dead Spanish important people. I sat on a bench and enjoyed the sunset too. For the first time in sometime I was on my own for an evening, and while I felt melancholy, with leavetakings and endings, mostly I felt happy to be in Madrid with a few evening hours to look about and eat.

In Madrid there are literally hundreds of bars serving tapas and raciones, and it was no little challenge to choose one from among them. Indecisive, I wandered past dozens and dozens, nearly all of which looked appealing in some way, whether they were of the traditional sort, such as El Museo de Jamon, with rows of hog legs hanging closely nestled together overhead, or the supercool mod-modern style, such as at Bocaito, an undersea grotto lit soft blue and pink. In the end I wandered into the Huertas section and settled on Las Bravas, which, with its orange plastic motif, offered little in the way of aesthetic pleasure, at least of the visual sort. But I'd come for the tortilla, which was lovely. An older man served me a small plate completely taken up by the round tortilla, which he doused with Las Bravas' patented spicy, orange-colored sauce; he poured me a small glass of beer too, and I stood at a narrow counter looking out the window onto the now dark street and I ate, with great appetite and satisfaction.

I wandered onwards afterwards, thinking maybe I would top off with an ice cream. I passed through Plaza Santa Ana where several people dressed in pirate costume and standing in a fake ship were putting on a perfromance for a large crowd. Two policewoman ambled past me, both smoking cigarettes. Not for the first time I admired Spain's informality.

Later I was in Chueca, the gay section, walking along narrow streets where the bright shops were all closed, when I was stopped by a sheet of paper taped up in the window of the Restaurante Momo. It described an intriguing menu meal for twelve euros.... I wasn't really hungry, but it was eleven and my night in Madrid was winding down, and what else was I going to do, and why not, I thought, eat more good food. And so I went inside and sat down at a table.

Two men with close-cropped hair, notable biceps, and movie star stubble worked the front of the restaurant, and a few of the dozen or so tables were occupied by men too, mostly in pairs and mostly in sleeveless shirts and sporting tattoos on their arms. To start, a carafe of red wine, bread, and a nice salad, described on the menu as "Ensalada con queso de Burgos con salsa balsamica." Segundo, I chose the salmon a la mostaza (in mustard sauce), which arrived with french fries, of course, and was a success. But best of all was the postre, moco de chocolate, which the menu translated vividly but obscurely as "House's chocolate pudin--anti-depressive!" This was a piece of moist cake, almost a brownie, smothered in a thick chocolate sauce (which indeed tasted pudding-like) and topped with a perfect dollop of thick whipped cream. At this point I wasn't the tiniest bit hungry, but I ate my moco with great pleasure, slowly and with smaller and smaller bites as I proceeded, trying to stave off the inevitable finish.

At midnight I finally rose from the table and went back out into the night. I walked a bit more, but soon returned to the Hostal Don Juan, where the man at the night desk gently admonished me for not leaving my room key with him. Still at the end I have things to learn. Chastened, but not much, I went to my compact room, and lay down on my last foreign bed.

On the South Downs with the Long Man

Yesterday in the cool, sunny morning I sat in the back garden among a crowd of potted plants and ate a bowl of cereal. Laundry flapped on the line, and neighbors on the right and at the back were out in their tiny backyards (separated by stone walls) hanging out their own wash. As in Spain, in England few people have clothes dryers. My cereal brand name, according the the box, was "Just Right," but I would´ve substituted "It Will Do" or maybe "Sort of OK."

Rachael and I drove to the center of town to the Brighton Market, a Sunday swap meet in a big parking lot. Used clothes, a few antiques, kitsch, books and music and movies, boxes of old photographs, framed prints and paintings, lots of junk. Surprisingly cheap, considering everything else in England seems wildly expensive.

We met Rachael´s friend Angie at the market and sat together at a plastic table beside a tea and cakes van. Angie teaches university classes on the social aspects of healthcare, in particular the role of community work. Her original field was anthropolgy, and she´s a trained psychotherapist; not too long ago she published a book on adoption. For her doctoral dissertation, also published, she wrote about the culture of prostitution in Alicante, a coastal Spanish town, where she lived while doing the research.

A dozen or so years ago Angie and her partner adopted three kids, siblings. As a psychotherapist she is working on developing something she calls resilience therapy, but I didn´t get a chance to ask for an explanation, or to hear more from this obviously fascinating person. Her three kids--Michael (17), Ed (14), and Becky (12) showed up together at the market and came to our table, much to Angie´s obvious pleasure. Rachael quizzed them each about their current doings while they stood smiling and squinting in the sun.

In the early afternoon Rachael and I drove east out of town to East Sussex in her pink car. In the village of Alciston (which is quite near Bloomsbury), we ate a long lunch at the Rose Cottage Inn, an old and ivy-ed and cliche but real English countryside inn. Inside an old woman and an ancient woman sat together at a small table. The old woman said, "at least I´m not the fattest one here," and when Rachael turned to her and laughed, the woman said, "oh, I´m not referring to you, dear." I wanted to sit down with them, but they were just finishing and figuring out their bill.

Near the inn we went walking on the South Downs, first up around a steep green hillside where lay the Long Man of Wilmington, a figure outlined in the underlying white chalk rock, and maybe one hundred yards tall. The ancient figure was re-discovered in 1874, and no one really knows its significance, but the outline is regularly freshened up. At the top of the slope a pair of barrows rise up in the green grass, and I thought of Frodo and his nearly fatal night in a barrow probably not dissimilar. Beyond the ridge we walked through high rolling fields dotted with sheep. The afternoon was windy and bright, and a little cool when clouds would momentarily block the sun. The sea rose up on the horizon a few miles to the south.

Later we drove down to near the sea, to a place called Cuckmere Haven, and walked along a small stream across an open green to the shore. Small waves rolled in, rattling the round stones of which the beach was composed. To the east rose a high white chalk headland, the first of the Seven Sisters, which march off to the town of Eastbourne ten miles distant. One can walk along the coast up and over the high headlands, but we´d come too late in the day for that adventure.

Instead we drove back to Brighton, where Rachael made a small, lovely dinner of potatoes, mushrooms, spinach, and veggie sausages. On the Camino she (rightly) ridiculed my claim of vegetarianism, after watching me finish off one too many chuletas. But in Brighton it´s been a pleasure to return to the gentle vegetable fold (well, mostly; I suppose there was the hogroast, a bit of delicious apostasy). After eating Rachael had me read aloud from a volume in the Mommentrolls series, a set of Finnish children´s stories. When my narcolepsy kicked in, I handed the book to her.

Each day in Brighton was full and a pleasure right through. Already Spain seems part of the past, but I still have an evening in Madrid. Then I´m for home.

I am a pirate

Brighton is hilly, and the hillsides are all traversed by rowhouses, chimneyed and slate-roofed. There are always seagulls in the sky, calling out noisily.

Yesterday morning Rachael and I drove westward along the coast in her pink Nissan Figaro, through towns such as Hove and Arundel and Chichester. English place names are like words in a poem, beautiful and evocative--intimately connected, for me, to books and reading, to the imaginative landscape of myriad eighteenth and nineteenth century British novels.

We drove through West Sussex, to Kingley Vale, an ancient yew forest on the chalk downlands. The trees are squat and wide, with broad twisty trunks, reddish-brown bark, and long limbs that grow more sideways than upwards; the lower branches droop down to the duff, and sometimes will send down roots where they contact the forest floor, giving birth to a new tree. We ambled through the Robin Hood grove and out the other side to where a steep, grassy slope reached up towards a ridge. Halfway up we sat down on the green turf and ate a picnic overlooking the yews, with Chichester in the distance down the valley, and beyond the town the sea.

We lingered a bit too long, because we were late for the medieval wedding at Highdown Hillfort, another park, near Worthing back along the coast. Once at Highdown, we could not find the hillfort, though we wandered about and asked directions of some of the people out for a Saturday stroll, none of whom were helpful. We ended up missing the ceremony entirely (which was not actually a wedding, but what they called a "handfasting," an old pagan practice in which the relationship is reviewed once a year and the two people then decide whether or not to continue or to make adjustments). I did, though, get to see the celebrants when they returned to the car park in small, costumed bunches.

The invitation had requested medieval dress, but added that one could also dress "pirate, dragon, jester, or musketeer." Dragons and jesters were rare, but there were many pirates (including the groom himself) and a few musketeers among the Knights and Maid Marions. Myself, I'd tied a red bandana around my head and sported a single dangly silver earring Rachael had loaned me. Not much more than a gesture, I'm afraid, but my brown rolled up pants were vaguely pirate-y too. Most of the guests had more full costumes but a number were historically or regionally anomalous--a smattering of Elizabethan and Tudor, a few Tyrolean or beer garden. One man, inexplicably, wore a Sherlock Holmes outfit.

While we missed the ceremony, we did attend the reception at a pub, The Cricketers, down in Worthing. In a green garden at the back of the pub tables were set out in the grass. A whole and large pig was impaled on a spit, roasting over a bed of hot coals, its legs stretched out forward and back, the open cavity of its underside facing down. Its mouth and eyes were open. Rachael was taken aback, though we had been forewarned of the "hogroast." We found a table of her friends, and she said, with disapproval, "its eyes are blue." Milky blue, I'd describe them, in their cooked state. Several of her friends, also vegetarians, shared Rachael's discomfort, and shivered in agreement.

These were friends from work, and notably more conventional than those I'd met the night before. They were Worthing people, and apparently Worthing is rather dowdy in comparison to bohemian Brighton. But like many of the Brighton folk, the wedding couple were setting out on a new relationship after shedding previous longterm partners. The bride, Harri, had been married for twenty-five largely unsatisfactory years to someone Rachael described as a "grumpy bastard." Now she had taken up with John, a train driver, and appeared quite happy. She came around to our table and the conversation turned to John's qualities. Harri recalled a saw that the other woman recognized: that it actually takes five men to satisfy a woman: one for for intellectual stimulation, one for good sex, one for his good looks, one for his money, and one who is handy (or "DIY," as Harri put it). She was happy to report that John fulfilled three of these requirements, but she didn't say which three.

All the women at my table--Carol and Lorna and Sam and Foxie and Elaine--worked in health care, and the conversation was mostly work-related, though more about bad managers than actual sick people. Eventually the pig was declared finished, and a blonde man in shorts began slicing pieces from its haunches and from along its ribs. Rachael pointed and said, "look," her voice indicating both horror and wonder. We soon joined a long line headed towards the pig and platters of meat and shish kabobs. Rachael opted for baked potato and roast corn and salad, but I did have some of the pig and it was excellent.

Already Spain is receding. England and the English have captured my attention, and I want to walk all over the country and see what is to be seen and talk to people who speak with appealing and mellifluous accents.

Selections from my first day in Brighton

Yesterday I drank four cups of tea, adopting a favored custom of the natives here in England. I was enjoying my second, sitting at the small kitchen table, when one of Bella's friends, Sara, arrived, and the two tall, blonde young women came and stood in the kitchen door. Sara had just returned from her maiden flight as a flight attendant for Virgin Atlantic, and she was full with the experience, telling about it in a laughing but excited manner. Before she took the job she had, she said, always been made queasy by the smell of airline food ("it made you vomit," interrupted Bella, "I've seen you"), but interestingly, while working with the food for a number of hours she suuffered no ill effects. Her first trip had been a flight from London to Barbados, which Shania Twain was on, seated in first class with her husband and young son. During the flight one of the attendants asked the seven-year-old boy if he wanted a bread roll, and he hesitated, then said she would have to ask his mother. When Ms. Twain was appealed to, she first said, "did he ask for a roll?" When the attendant said, no, she had offered him one, mother decided, "yes, but only a brown one." The boy timidly took the roll and nibbled on the end, fearfully watching his mother out the corner of his eye (Ok, I made up that last part).

If Shania was a bit cold and imperious, her husband was the opposite, chatty and friendly. But, Sara added, "he's quite ugly. Possibly the ugliest man I've ever seen."

Rachael took me out to walk around Brighton. For the first time in "weeks," as everyone we met repeated, it wasn't raining, but the day was cool and blustery. We walked along the bohemian streets, which reminded me of Camden Market in London, though less touristy. There were many young people about from various parts of Europe (there are numerous English-language schools in town), a number of hippy sorts, and lots and lots of queer people--apparently Brighton is something like the Provincetown of England.

We went into small thrift stores, each supporting some cause such as Oxfam or Vets for Pets; we searched for potential pirate costume items, as we were supposed to attend a medieval wedding the next day (more tomoorow). We also stopped into used bookstores so I could examine the travel book sections. Eventually we ended up down at the seaside where the wind was blowing a gale and big foamy waves were marching in and crashing on the rocky shingle. A thin spray filled the air, even well back from the water's edge, and no one was having a bathe. Out on Brighton Pier we had fish and chips, and the Irishman behind the counter said he couldn't believe it was July, what with the terrible weather and the resulting small number of people out for a stroll. There were just enough folks for me (including a flotilla of elderly in wheelchiars, well tucked in with lap blankets, their wispy hair tossing about their heads), and I found the wind and waves dramatic and was not at all put out.

For dinner Rachael made pasta and a big dish of homity (a sort of potato pie), and several of her friends came over to eat. Debbie arrived first, a dapper woman in corduroy pants, brown suit jacket, waistcoat and snowy white shirt. We had the same haircut and I immediately took a liking to her. She and her partner have a two-year-old daughter named Lilith, and we talked about the value and power of such a name. Like most people with small children, she talked of Lilith with a mixture of awe, dread, and overwhelming love. A couple soon appeared: Melanie and Rachael met in a drama class, and Melanie works at the local art house movie theater; Melanie's boyfriend Steven is a tennis coach and plays bass in a punk band, and later I wished I'd asked him if he'd read Infinite Jest.

Two more woman arrived, Ella and Lucy, both midwives. At one point in the evening after dinner and well into the drinking, they and Rachael launched in on a series of midwifery anecdotes, the most memorable of which was about a woman who had had an orgasm with each contraction. At that point, Donald, a gay man in his fifties who Rachael hadn't seen for four years but who had called up earlier depressed and wanting company, launched into a story of his own birth. Apparently one day when he was fourteen, sitting with his mother and grandmother, his grandmother had said, "go on, you ought to tell him." And his mother replied, "no I don't have to do any such thing," but his grandmother persisted, and finally his mother did tell him--that he was actually born, at home, into a toilet. This was the punchline of the story, one Donald meant to be a surprise, but all three midwives broke in and said that such a thing was not at all unusual, that it happened all the time, you'd be surprised.

Later Ella's husband arrived, Harper, a striking looking man, tall and bald and bearded. He manages bands and singers, including at one time Goldfrap (who Rachael tells me has been on The L-Word), and who was also his ex-girlfriend and had recently fired him because he married Ella. He had been at a pub somewhere and took a taxi over becasue he was a little drunk. He arrived a bit late for Ella's taste; and she didn't like that he had been smoking cigarettes. "I can smell them on your hand and in your beard," she said.

He replied, deadpan, "I don't smoke."

"He does," she said, turning to us, "he's a sneaky bastard."

Harper said, "I haven't been smoking."

Ella laughed and said, "you have." A few minutes later she was planting a series of kisses on his smooth pate.

Donald told several bad jokes that I can't remember, though one involved the police consulting a monkey at an accident scene. He was a little drunk and got testy if anyone spoke in the midst of one of his story jokes. After Donald left in a taxi, Ella said something about him, and Harper, who didn't know Donald, said, "you mean the damaged man." Ella objected strongly to this term, saying that Donald was "lovely."

Harper is the first person I've met on the trip who has been to Minnesota. He was there in Janaury years ago and it was "bloody cold" and he was not impressed, in part because he was miserable about some woman and in part because he didn't manage to spot Prince in any of the clubs.

Ella and Harper had only been married a year or so. She had last been with a woman, and for some time, and when they broke up, her partner, from spite, had seduced a woman who Ella had long had a crush on. This woman, who owned a shop called Pussy that sold retro and kink sundries, was Harper's wife, though not for much longer. Harper and Ella, separately, both had to give up their houses, but their two ex-s pooled their resources and bought a nice big place and moved in together. Subsequently Ella and Harper had been thrown together at family functions (everyone involved had children), and soon they were dating.... There's more to this complicated story, but I'll leave it there. It was one of many that these intriguing people shared over the course of the night. Rachael told stories too, the comic variety, sung to the accompaniment of a ukelele in a spoken word/song style for which she is deservedly admired by her friends, who laugh and join in and add verses of their own.

Though there was much hilarity throughout the evening, it also had a sort of memorial feel, as Rachael's friends are quite distraught that she is leaving them next month and moving around the world to Alice Springs. A place she sang a long song about.

My first day in Brighton was a success.

Madrid makes for good walking

Modern travel is fast, convenient (mostly), and brutal--on the nerves, mine anyway. Yesterday I spent as a passenger, passive in a series of padded seats--first in Manolo's car to the Vallodolid train station, then in the train to the outskirts of Madrid, then in the Metro to and from downtown (not padded), then in an EasyJet jet to London, and finally in another train with Rachael down to Brighton. I did spend a few pleasant hours afoot in Madrid, mostly in Parque del Retiro, certainly the best part of my day.

There's probably no better way to first see a big city than coming up from underground, coming up into the sunlight and the noise, the hordes of people, the traffic.... It's a moment of spectacle and discovery and excitement. My first sight of central Madrid was on the Gran Via, a wide and busy street lined with posh shops and sidewalk cafes. Four and five stories of balconies rose up overhead on white stone buildings topped with ornate cornices and towers. People filled the wide sidewalks, beautiful woman and men, tourists, waiters among the crowded cafe tables. Immediately three black gay men passed me laughing. Several women in head scarves went by, then a Japanese couple, then a sun-burned group of people speaking British. Of course such diversity is not unexpected in a city like Madrid, but still, I noticed, after nearly two months in northern Spain, a region of great cultural uniformity.

I walked first to the Parque del Retiro, happy in the substantial heat of the day to be under the shady trees. I passed along the white dirt paths, admiring the trees and inspecting the older people sitting on wooden benches, the younger people laying out in the grass in the sun. At a fountain a woman in Minnie Mouse costume stood waiting for a customer, her mouse head canted up to let the breeze cool her face. A couple came near and she pulled down the head and waved animal balloons at them. Her accomplice, standing nearby in a padded Spider Man outfit, accosted another pair, also with the promise of shapeable balloons, while I slipped past unseen. I came to a rectangular lake, where people were out rowing around in small boats; the women wore bikini tops, the men went shirtless. Eventually I found a small table and sat down to a long lunch of bread and cheese and walnuts and orange and chocolate. Afterwards the park was large enough that I got lost.

Eventually I passed by the Prado, wanting to go inside but with too little time before having to go out to the airport. I walked through narrow streets, past a house where Cervantes lived and died, and past an American girl who said, "yeah, 'Sweet Home Alabama.'" I thought, do you know that that is a reactionary and quasi-racist song?

In the arcade around the Plaza Mayor most of the shops were devoted to either ham or souvenirs or stamps. I wouldn't have thought that the philatelic trade could support so many stores.

I walked to the nearby Sol, a roundish hub from which a number of streets radiated, each wide and each brimful of people, some on the way somewhere, some shopping, many like me simply gawking. I took Calle Montera uphill back towards Gran Via, passing shoe and discount clothing stores, more souvenir shops, bars and cafes, and then numerous prostitutes. This last was a surprise, though someone had told me weeks before that prostitution was legal in Spain. But it was the location of the women, and the time of day, which seemed to me incongruous. They were young and old both, and all lightly dressed. They stood alone under small sycamore trees, or in groups of two and three sitting on narrow ledges in front of the shop windows. One of the older woman, wearing a halter top, stood in the middle of the passing throng with her hands on her hips, challenging the passing men with a hard look. All of the women held small purses under their arms. I passed close to one young woman and saw the word "Cornel" tattooed lightly on her upper arm. At the top of the street a plump young woman in a tiny denim skirt stood just outside the door of a McDonald's.

I rode the subway out to the airport and began the ordeal of flying EasyJet. Long lines, long waits, late departure. On the plane I was surrounded by young and shaggy-haired British men returning from holiday; one wore a t-shirt that said "I got out of bed and dressed, what more do you want?" I arrived in London at ten and found Rachael. She had come in just an hour before from Paris, where she had spent the last five days with her daughter, Bella. We rode the train to Brighton, and then walked a half hour in the dark, up and down steep hills through wet and cool neighborhoods to her street, Hollingbury Rise. Inside her rowhouse I met Bella, who is twenty and who was sitting in front of a computer and talking on the phone; I thought, this feels comfortingly familiar.

Manolo

Soon after I returned to Espinosa, Manolo decided to take me to Salamanca. A month ago, when I was in Espinosa for the Christening, I´d said I might visit that city after the the Camino, but I long ago changed my mind. However, I got to see it after all, through the further and still impressive generosity of Manolo.

I keep being surprised by how close together everything is in Spain; turns out that Salamanca is just sixty miles southwest of Vallodolid. An hour in the car and we were into the busy center of the city, and parked in an underground garage. We walked first to the famous Plaza Mayor, a neat square surrounded by pale-gold stone buildings, with arcades and shops all around the ground-level. The edges of the open plaza are filled with tables spilling out from cafes. Along the inside facades, just above the arcade arches, are frieze busts of Spanish leaders from across the centuries, each head set in an oval medallion. In one corner is Franco, which for me was a bit of a surprise--in my travels I´ve seen little to honor or even note the man who ruled Spain for four decades of the twentieth century. Later we would visit the Archivo de Guerra Civil, and the story told there was thoroughly pro-Republican and anti-Nationalist/Fascist.

We also did the cathedral, which impressed me despite my qualms. How can you not be moved by so much stone and and space and accomplishment, despite the familiar scenes of mayhem covering the walls and filling the side chapels. We also walked down to the Rio Tormes to see a roman bridge. We walked out to the middle, and I thought, yep, a roman bridge; Manolo waited till I was ready, and then we walked back the way we´d come and back up into the old city.

All the buildings in Salamanca are built from the same pale-gold stone, quarried locally. It´s this uniformity that apparently accounts for the city´s reputation for beauty (well, that and the size and grace of the buldings themselves too, I suppose). But for me the sameness made Salamanca a little less interesting than other cities. On the other hand, I only walked around for two hours. Manolo was perfectly accomodating, but I could tell I was being humored. At the end of the two hours I suggested we look for some place for "la comida" (the midday meal), thinking that such a respite might revive my companion´s flagging interest. But Manolo already had a restaurant in mind, one ten miles south of the city. Though he tried to keep his voice neutral, the hopeful tone was unmistakable when he asked me if I was finished with Salamanca. He gestured at the map I held as if to indicate that we´d seen everything already. I hesitated just a moment, and then agreed, yes, we had; let´s get out of here.

We ate at my first roadside restaurant in Spain, the Meson Viejo del Jamon. Manolo had first learned of the place from a truck driver friend, and he´d had eaten there twice before. He told me, with great anticipation, that the jamon was particularly toothsome.

We passed through the bar, where huge hamhocks hung in a close row over the drinkers´ heads, and into the smoky dining room. Soon a plate of thinly sliced jamon was on our table. Yes, indeed, very good, but expensive at ten euros for six or seven slices. Once the jamon was disposed of we ordered the menu; for me, ensalada patata (quite good), then chuletas (so-so), and finally natillas (I´m still not tired of this pleasure). A huge jug of wine too, which meant I slept most of the ride home.

Back in Vallodolid I had the afternoon to myself for walking and writing and sitting on park benches. I returned to the piso for dinner, which was huevous guisado. Simple but nice.

Even at this late date I often don´t understand what Montse says to me, which happened as usual when we were having dinner and she quizzed me on my plans for the next days. This is a bit mortifying. I also have a hard time with Sergio, which is disappointing because he seems to really want to talk with me, and I want to talk more with him too. In these moments of difficulty, though, Manolo always steps in. I will look blank at some remark, the speaker will look to Manolo, I will turn to him too--and then he will pause, smile, say, "ah, si," then my name--"Copp-air"--and proceed to explain the matter at hand in words and at a speed that I can understand.

After dinner we all went over to Maite and Sergio´s apartment so I could say goodbye. Maite bounced a fussy Sara in her stroller, Montse loomed close to her, and we men watched a standoff then shootout on a Spanish tv program akin to The Sopranos. Maite´s last words were about Naomi and the boys: abrazos and besos for them all.

I thought I was done for the night, but Manolo said, how about a drink, and we walked to a nearby mall, up to a bar-ice cream shop with a terrace overlooking the far flung suburbs. Manolo had a J & B, while he ordered me a large ice cream sundae. Why not. We had passed the Restuarante Asiatico on the way, and I asked how he liked "Asian" food. He said he didn´t know, he´d never tried it; Montse "no quiere."

We sat on the terrace in companionable silence, while a young couple two tables over made out with considerable passion. Manolo was unphased so I decided to be too. Instead I asked about his immediate plans. Next week the harvest begins, he told me. First the barley, then the oats, finally the wheat. It´ll take about two weeks of long days, working with his brother-in-law Femo, to get it all in. Once the grains are finished he´ll start cutting and baling hay again, though less this year than last. He leaned forward and put a hand on his back and grimaced. Towards the end of August the work will slacken; but then he´ll begin work on the merendero, and on the roof for the bodega. "Siempre mas," he laughed.

We sat for a long time, my sundae done, while he nursed his drink and we faced the view side by side.

This morning he drove me to the train station and insisted on accompanying me inside and out onto the platform. He asked when I would return, and I asked when he would come to Minnesota. Finally, I tried to express my gratitude, but he waved it off. He said that Naomi and the boys and I were his "otra familia," and I choked up and told him he and his were the same for me. We shook hands several times.

Now I am in Madrid, and tonight I fly to London.