tomleslie.ca

Saturday, April 6, 2002 20:22

Weather: cool & cloudy

Location: restaurant of the Warwick Hotel, Geneva, Switzerland

I got up early this morning and tromped up to the Sants station for my train. I was running a bit short of time, so I picked up a coffee and a salami sandwich and took them onboard. The car I was in was mostly full of older American couples travelling through Europe on Eurail passes, and they seemed quite concerned, appropriately as it turned out, as the train sat in the station a full half hour after the scheduled departure time before shuddering off.

The journey to Montpellier unfolded smoothly, but as the miles went by we did not at all catch up on the schedule. Indeed, we continued to fall behind, slowly, so that we arrive 40 minutes late. I had hopes that the speed change would help–once at the French border we switched engines and started going much faster–but it was already fully planned into the schedule. It turned out that the only train that was on time the whole day was the TGV that left Montpellier for Geneva 10 minutes before we arrived–the TGV I’d been aiming to get to.

By Montpellier my translation skills had been called upon by the Americans. When a French railway official came through the train to announce our late arrival and the probability that travellers to Lyon & Geneva would miss their connection, there were a lot of blank stares in the car and I stepped in to help. In Montpellier I had a full gaggle of followers as we progressed to the Salle d’Acceuil, where the SNCF staff were gamely (and with impressive calmness, politeness, and multilingual fluency) dealing with the horde of displaced travellers.

My flock and I were steered towards a 14:44 TGV to Lyon, and told that although seating would not be assured, our lack of reservations would not be an issue and we could grab any available unreserved seat. I passed all of this on, and as we had an hour to wait I left the others and went off to buy lunch and a newspaper.

The TGV duly arrived, and I got on. There were two halves, but as the train was not due to split until after Lyon it didn’t really matter which half we boarded. I ended up on the Brussels half, while the rest of my former flock went for the front cars, bound for Lille. As it turned out, my half had just enough unreserved seating for me to score one for the full journey to Lyon, while my Americans ended up standing most of the way. However, in my half the air conditioning seemed to have failed, so it was quite warm and I shed my Goretex jacket.

En route to Lyon, I had two neighbours, for different stages of the trip. Until Nimes, there was a student next to me, who explained why all the trains were so full: spring break had just started. From Nimes to Lyon, my neighbour was a French author, on her way up to Belgium where she is involved in the creation of a unique work of art. A little village is recording the aural history of its current inhabitants, which will be inscribed onto durable materials (successive, and large, layers of glass, it seemed) and formed into a sculpture which would be placed in the village square. My neighbour’s task is to take the raw, unedited transcripts and to edit them into a semi-coherent narrative. It’s a wonderful idea, a sort of artistic time capsule for the future inhabitants of the area, to capture the spirit of the generations living out life there in this time of great change.

Back to the journey: in Lyon I got out and found the track for the train to Geneva. Another train, to Strasburg I think, was on the track, but I was assured the Geneva train would soon replace it. My American friends soon showed up, and a few minutes later the Strasburg train chugged off.

We had a major shock when, a few minutes later, the Geneva train showed up; it only had four cars! It pulled up to the front of the platform, leaving those of us at the back of the platform to scramble forward. Worse yet, the back two cars of the train were due to split off and not go to Geneva at all! So we were many too many for the available seats, and I ended up sitting on my pack for most of the way, and standing for the last half hour.

Despite this, I was in pretty good spirits. I had, after all, successfully made two connections without a prior reservation, and was set to arrive in Geneva several hours before my original “Plan B”, though two hours after my original “Plan A”, that uniquely punctual TGV from Montpellier. I was thinking warmly and with some pride about my skill in navigating this complex and somewhat frustrating system, when I realized I’d forgotten to pick up my jacket from the TGV to Lyon. It’s now somewhere en route to Brussels, and I hope somebody gets good use from it as there’s basically no way I’ll ever see it again.

On arrival in Geneva, I unloaded and passed through customs. I’d avoided visiting the washroom on the train, not just because it was a washroom on a train but because on the Lyon to Geneva train there were so many people that two people were actually sitting in the washroom the whole trip. In Geneva I expected to find clean and well-serviced washrooms, and so I did, but they had been outsourced to the “McClean” company, and were charging [Euro] 0.80 for a urinal or [Euro] 1.50 for the use of a toilet! How Switzerland has fallen.

Amazingly, the only other option for the whole place seemed to be in a restaurant which had a little sign indicating that the washrooms were for customer use only. Here I drew the line, and used the damn things anyway.

In short order thereafter, I made my ongoing train booking for Tuesday, got some Swiss francs from a bank machine (damn their lack of Euros!) and reached my uncle on the phone. They’re at a diplomatic function, but will be picking me up in a few minutes. I’t just time to finish my coffee!

[Later note: though I’m infuriated by my stupidity in losing my jacket, I’m going to gamble that I won’t need to buy another Goretex for this trip. I’m sure they’ll be cheaper at home, and the rest of my trip will be through warm countries. I’ll try and pick up a light, packable raincoat, and replace it when I get home.]

Friday, April 5, 2002 22:34

Weather: The sun´s gone down, but it was a beautiful day, cool and clear

Location: Internet café, on the edge of the university district of Barcelona

Well, it´s been a busy couple of days. I guess it´ll be best to pick it up where I last left off, at La Sagrada Familia. I see I didn´t actually spell out that it is a church under construction, but that was probably obvious.

When we left it, we first went for a late but necessary lunch. Afterwards, the priority was to confirm where we were going to sleep that night. This turned out to be pretty difficult. Hostal Goya was unable to confirm that we could stay there (and it looked doubtful), and the leads that they´d suggested were not working out either. Paul, who has the best Spanish of our group, went through my Lonely Planet and called every hostel and hotel on the list: not one of them had a room. Finally, we started working on the more expensive hotels in Kelly´s guide book. Here, we found one that had a single double room, so Paul and Kelly booked it. I was concerned about the prices, though, so Patrick and I decided we´d get our bags and go to the tourist office to get their help in finding somewhere. We agreed to meet Paul and Kelly there after they´d checked in.

The tourist office had an efficient system for finding the right hostals for their visitors, sorted by price. We got the last two rooms in a relatively cheap category, in a reasonable hotel that´s unfortunately in a rather seedy part of town. We met Paul and Kelly, set a time and place for dinner, and headed off to check in, our afternoon essentially gone.

The Hotel Coronado turned out to be much better than we had a right to hope, despite its uninspired location. I got a huge room, with three single beds and an attached full bathroom, for about €40 per night. Patrick´s was slightly smaller for his single night there, but was still quite reasonable. (He, along with Paul and Kelly, are heading back to Madrid today.)

Dinner was pizzas in a small restaurant tucked into the alley beside the Palau de la Músico Catalana. Then we went into this marvellous building. Again, we were struck by Barcelona´s striking architectural style, this time an art deco masterpiece with brightly coloured mosaics and stained glass windows everywhere. The hall itself had a fabulous stained glass chandalier, huge statues of pegasi and valkyries, and musicians whose bodies started as mosaics but ended as statuary sticking out of the walls with their instruments. The hall was relatively small, but had a wonderfully clear acoustic, so everything could be heard clearly, despite our poor sight lines to the stage.

The concert performance of Mozart´s opera was fine, but the libretto we were given was bilingual in Italian and Catalan, and none of us were good enough in either language to follow the plot. By the intermission, we were all tired and decided we´d seen and heard what needed to be seen and heard, and we headed out for a nightcap on the Rambla, the main largely pedestrian central street. As we arrived, one of the human statues lining the street (entertainers out to collect change from the crowds) suddenly came to life and roared at a passing group of girls, who screamed in surprise and pleasure, to everyone´s amusement. We sat in an outdoor cafe with small beers and watched the entertainers do their thing.

When we returned to the hotel, I said goodbye to Patrick. He´d decided to spend today (Friday) looking around more of Barcelona, which he seems to have frankly fallen in love with, while I was going to head out early to the Monestir de Montserrat with Paul and Kelly.

This morning I got up bright and early, had a shower, and went up to the main train station (Estació Sants), where I was to meet Paul and Kelly. Unfortunately, the trains to the Monestir turned out to be run by a separate regional train company from the Plaça d´Espanya station, not from Sants, so our first step was to walk the 15 minutes between the stations. At Plaça d´Espanya, we had no trouble finding the Monestir desk where we picked up a combined train and visit ticket, which included the cable car up the mountain to the monastery and unlimited use of the funiculars there.

We got off the little commuter train (three cars) at the Monastir´s station, next door to the cable car, and goggled at the mountain looming over us, the huge monastery a small but imposing block two thirds of the way up. The cable car whisked us up to the lower area of the monastery, and we walked up towards the main section. The monastery, now one of Spain´s most popular tourist sites, includes two hotels and several restaurants, and a new cog railway is being built to allow more visitors to leave their cars at the bottom and come up without them. While I applaud the ecological intent of this, I´m not sure the monastery really needs more visitors: it seemed to have quite enough school children in massive bused-in packs for any tourist site.

In any case, it was now late morning and we had things to see and walks to do. After a quick look around the main grounds and a peek into the basilica (which we couldn´t enter due to a service in progress) we hiked down to a little chapel perched on an elbow of the rock below the monastery. The path was wide and paved, but we found few other people, and it was pleasant to leave behind the construction site for a while. On the way back up, we passed several statues including one of Christ bearing the cross, donated by the Christian communities of the Bisbat of Barcelona. We had no idea what a Bisbat is, so we imagined a big, benevolent monster. A funicular took us up the last couple of hundred metres of the climb in quiet comfort.

We had an excellent lunch at the Hotel Abat Cisneros, pulling out the stops a bit as this was to be the last time I ate with my friends before they headed south and I head north. After yummy appetizers (olives, cheese, and little breaded cream cheese sticks) I had a delicious lamb dish with mixed mushrooms (amusingly translated as ¨scrambled mushrooms¨ on the menu). Dessert was creme brulé, apparently called ¨Crema Catalana¨ in the local tongue.

After lunch we had a quick visit to the Black Virgin, a black stone statue of the Virgin and Child which is one of the Monastir´s main attractions. It was getting to late afternoon, but the mountain called. We took the Funicular de Sant Joan up 250m from the monastery and set out on the Sant Jerom hike, listed as 1 hour. On the way up, we stopped in several places to admire the increasingly amazing views. The monastery is set on a mountain with a bewildering number of steep rounded peaks (hence the name Montserrat), and the walk gave us some marvellous views down into the valley, and then, over the lower hills on either side towards the Mediterannean, the Pyrenees, and finally, in all directions. The views were simply fantastic, and the path itself also had some wonderful highlights, including the little chapel of Sant Jerom, closed but visible through the barred windows, the precipitous drop over some of the cliff edges, and a few solidly constructed viewing platforms, including one right at the top. There, we ran into a group of rambling Germans, who seemed fearless about the heights, walking right up to the edges of the cliffs. One was kind enough to take a group shot of us.

Then we noticed the time. The sun was starting its descent, and we had only an hour and 40 minutes to descend to the monastery to catch the last cable car down into the valley. It had taken us that long to walk up to the top from the top of the funicular… We set off briskly. Going down was much faster than going up, but somehow we missed the (signposted) intersection where the path that would have taken us straight back down to the monastery, instead of back to the funicular, branched off. That meant we ended up back at the funicular at 6:05, with 35 minutes before the cable car… but since the last funicular stopped at 6:00 (it was still on its way down when we arrived) we thought we were out of options. The only clearly marked walk down to the monastery was listed as 50 minutes!

Then we noticed that the gate to the stairs down the side of the funicular building was not locked. We went down it, and peered around the corner. A metal catwalk led to a steep metal staircase attached to the side of the funicular track. This was clearly for emergency purposes, or maintenance, but since the funicular was no longer running for the day it might be ok. We started down, but soon came upon a ¨no passage¨ sign that confirmed we weren´t supposed to be here. We set back up. Near the top again, we ran into the funicular operator, who was just starting his walk down. Paul asked him if we could go down, and to our surprise, he said it was ok, since the funicular was indeed not running any more.

We had a hair-raising walk down the stairs, which started out metal but were uneven stone in the middle. The stairs were very steep, and we certainly didn´t want to slip and fall, so we kept hold of the guard rail on our right hand the whole way down. It was quite dirty and thoroughly blackened our hands. When we reached the bottom and looked up it seemed impossible that we had made it down, but we had, and with 10 minutes to spare, we stopped for a washroom break, picked up ice creams, and were at the cable car station in plenty of time.

At the bottom, we had some time before our train back to Barcelona, so we had a quick stop in the station´s ¨bar¨: actually, the back garden of an enterprising neighbour of the station who had set up tables, a covered area, and a bar counter to make some easy money off the trains running by the end of her garden.

In Barcelona, I said goodbye to Paul and Kelly. It´s been wonderful travelling with them again, but they´re off back to Madrid with Patrick on an overnight train tonight. Kelly goes back to Canada on Tuesday (and, being Kelly, straight into TWO choir rehearsals Tuesday night), and Paul´s spending the rest of the week in Spain before heading back to New York. For me, I´m off to Geneva tomorrow, but had some catching up on my emails to do. I headed downtown, grabbed a quick dinner, and dropped in to the nearest Internet café to get to work…

And now, I believe my legs have earned a quick trip to bed.

It´s raining in Barcelona, but our spirits remain undampened. Not even the lack of sleep on the overnight train from Madrid has been able to keep us down (though a nap wouldn’t go amiss…). I think I´m going to like this city very, very much. Anyplace you feel positive about in the pouring rain on 3 hours´ sleep has something going for it!

I´m looking forward to investigating the architecture of Gaudi in the next two days. Stay tuned for postcards…

This terminal is about to boot me off. But I´ll be back!

Tuesday, April 2, 2002 14:47

Weather: Some high haze, but still sunny and warm, not too hot

Location: Interpublic Communication Services, Carrera de San Jeronimo, Madrid

Today we´ve got a long techno soundtrack in the ´net café, which is almost at capacity.

Yesterday went on according to plan. I walked down to Atocha with Paul and Patrick and we had no trouble booking literas (couchettes) from Madrid to Barcelona for Tuesday night (tonight). Paul and Patrick found that they could book return tickets for a mere €31, which seems really cheap for a 7-9 hour journey.

I went for a long leisurely stroll up through the Parque del Buen Retiro, taking a detour to see the crystal palace (unimpressive, unfortunately) and to go to a couple of newsstands for the Herald Tribune and the Independant. Then I made my way up to the Gran Cafe de Gijón, had a cappucino, a ham and cheese sandwich, and a big bowl of ice cream, while reading my papers and watching the world go by.

A couple of hours later Paul and Patrick met me there, enjoyed ice creams of their own, and we walked back to the hostal to meet Kelly. She hadn´t arrive yet, but was there shortly afterwards.

A bit after 9pm we were ready for dinner. We knocked on Alex and Justine´s door, but Alex was not feeling well so only Justine came out with us. With five people, we decided we had enough to really enjoy a tapas menu. Kelly was avoiding seafood (possible developing allergies) but the rest of us split calamares, sausages, patates bravas, sardines, and anchovies, while enjoying more of the tasty (and cheap!) beer. Afterwards we went down the street to our ¨regular¨, continued chatting, and had some more to drink. We ended up making plans to all go see the Museo Arqueológico together the next day.

I forgot to reset my alarm clock, though I did remember to turn it on, so Patrick and I woke up an hour later than planned, at 9am. We got up, had a shower, met up with Justine again and headed down for breakfast, where we found Paul and Kelly. (We´d been knocking on their door, but assumed they were sleeping in when they didn´t answer.) After breakfast we checked out of the hostal and headed off for the museum. Justine´s degree, in Biological Anthropology, included quite a bit of archeology so she was able to give Patrick and me very educated notes on the neolithic flints and other early tools. We went through about half of the museum´s collection, including a temporary exhibit of Roman construction techniques (interesting but difficult to translate).

After lunch we all split up to do separate projects for the afternoon, with a plan to meet for dinner at 7. I walked with Justine back towards the hostal (and in my case, the Internet café). She was going to check up on Alex and go off to the train station to book their tickets to Bilbao for tomorrow. Patrick was off to the Naval museum. Paul and Kelly were still discussing their plans for the afternoon when I left, Kelly planning to walk around and get a feel for the city, and then tour the Monastiero de las Descalzas Reales, while Paul was going to pick up his visit of the Thyssen-Bournemisza where he left off on Sunday. I´m not sure what I´m going to do for the afternoon: I bought a paper and may just end up sitting in a park somewhere for a while. It´s really nice out, so I may do some more wandering.

Sunday, March 31, 2002 10:10

Weather: Blue skies, cool breezes, warm sun

Location: La Suiza patisserie

Paul and I made it up and out around 9am yesterday, had breakfast at La Suiza, and were at the Prado shortly after 10. At first, it looked like it was closed again, and I despaired. Then we saw the long lineups snaking towards the northern end of the building, where the entrance really was.

Inside, we took our separate paces and went through the 1st floor, where we´d entered. There was a lot of spectacular art, principally Spanish, but also including substantial areas of Flemish and Dutch art, with which I´m a little more familiar. Each piece was accompanied by a little plaque bearing explanatory detail, but these were exclusively in Spanish so I found them somewhat frustrating and slow to work through. As a result, I tended to skip through the galleries much faster than Paul, who lingered to read and appreciate each work.

We went down to the museum´s cafeteria for lunch, which featured gazpacho soup and an excellent paella mixta. By that time, I was getting tired of the 18th century art on the first floor.

We restarted in the roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor, which had some truly exceptional works. Having recently read another book set in Rome, and always being drawn by the sordid histories of its many and varied emperors, I especially enjoyed working through the art from their various eras. Paul helped me work through translating some of the descriptive texts, which also helped.

Finally, we worked quickly through the rest of the ground floor, both tiring at this point. I wished I´d started there: the earlier art was filled with much more detail and colour than the later works upstairs, and I wished for more time to appreciate them. Guess I´ll just have to come back!

We walked back towards the Plaza de Santa Ana, found a bar, and stopped in for a drink and to figure out the next step. This was pretty clear: laundry. The first laundromat was still closed (and shows every sign of being out of business) but the second was open and full of people. We loaded our clothes in and went to work on the Internet terminals. The place was expensive–€7 for a full load wash & dry–but I for one was in no position to quibble.

After a nap, we went out for a walk and dinner. We covered a lot of ground, and it was 11pm by the time we got back to our quartier. As usual, it was packed with people. We had excellent calamari and ham tapas with wine, then moved on, sampling a couple of other cerveseries [not sure this is the right term] before calling it a night at 1:30 and heading to bed.