You Never Miss the Water till the Well Runs Dry

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

One of the things I liked most about living in an ex-Soviet republic like Azerbaijan was the public art. It seemed that every square had some sort of socialist-reaslist sculpture exalting the working class, Huge works in metal actually representing our lives as something admirable. In other countries I had travelled through, public art always seemed to be either religious, historical, folkloric or odd mixtures of the three. While kings, crosses and military heroes dominated public spaces elsewhere, out on the banks of the Caspian outrageously heroic factory workers marched off to glorious Monday mornings in the Baku oilfields. Politics and the joys of coalmining aside, these muscular odes to the proletariat offered a completely different roost for pigeons than the usual tragedy on the cross, despot of the day or couples dancing a local dance. With work about to start on making San Pedro de Alcantara a pedestrian street, there will surely be some sort of statue placed in the new golden mile of Caceres. But rather than a hero riding a horse from the past, why not celebrate some heroes from the present? The brave, selfless people who volunteer to help fight against an enemy much more present and lethal than any opposing belief or invading army. The people who struggle day to day to keep us healthy while their bosses cut back on everything that isn’t tied down and privatize the rest. Creating impossible working conditions all the while accusing the hard working doctors and nurses of being incompetent. Perhaps the statue of the brave nurse who might have touched her face should be left to preside over the Plaza Mayor in the city she almost died defending and choose another for our city. Personally, I would vote for a monument to the tireless midwife who helps bring new life into our city every day. A woman who twice kept my wife out of the surgical unit by never giving up and going far beyond the normal call of duty. Let the birds rest on statues that celebrate the kingly and the dead and let’s honor those that keep us living. 

Monumental Rock, Monsanto, Portugal

Perched high above a patchwork of olive groves and cork forests, a holy mountain juts 758 meters (2486 feet) from the surrounding plain. It's a sacred playground overlooking neighboring villages where naughty gods once used huge granite boulders as their croquet pieces, and left them scattered, forgetting to clean up after themselves. Over the centuries croquet balls morphed into houses, and then into a village. Be brave and dine under tons of rock on wild boar at the Restaurante Petiscos e Granitos, then siesta under a slab the size of a truck. Nobel Prize laureate Jose Saramago said it all when he insisted, “The traveler thinks he has seen stones of every type, that is until he sees Monsanto.

#smalltown #climbing #nature #forest #mountain #village #castle #getaway #geology #rural #local #mediterranean #rocks #rocky #stones #localfood #fruits #wildboar #landscape #legend #orchards #olives #boulders #oldstone #geologicanomaly #olivegrove #corktrees # #geologicalformations #geologyrocks #placestonap #cork #josesaramago

Originally published on Trazzler

Ogopogo Gets its Revenge

Remember when sea monsters were scary green dragon-like creatures that swallowed entire ships and saved the ravishing maiden for dessert? Times have changed. In this lake just about big enough to be a sea lives a legend that has morphed from its First Nation tale origins into a Disney-friendly smiling reptile that adorns everything from beach towels to key chains. Dig past the marketing to its origins and you'll find the eerily named Rattlesnake Island south of Kelowna. The tribes of the area give this as the birthplace of the beast that lurks beneath the water skiers and parasailers that dot this Canadian loch. Now a Provincial Park, the behemoth's lair is a peaceful place to tie up your boat and hike due to the fact that motor vehicles are not invited to the party. 2003 saw one of the worst wildfires ever in the region scorch most of the area, perhaps the perfect setting to imagine an enraged titan seeking revenge for its Mickey Mouse transformation.

#hiking #boating #loch #lake #outdoors #island #nature #getaway #kitsch #statepark #nativeamerican #story #firstnation #legend #tchotchkes #creature #beast #forestfires #seamonsters

Originally published on Trazzler

Camden Market

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I grew up in my brother’s clothes, literally. I’m the youngest of two and inherited everything that survived his slips, spills and falls. One thing that drove my mother mad was that he was so hard on shoes that they almost never made it onto my feet and thanks to that, I got a shiny new pair that could easily climb slides every September. Everything else however, from winter jackets to baseball gloves, had seen a few battles before I first put them on. So in a sense I grew up second hand and when I started buying my own clothes, buying them second hand seemed like a natural progression. Where I come from, second hand shops are quite common. Like everything else these days, attempts have been made to rebrand these shops under names like vintage or boutique but at the end of the day they all sell stuff that people have sweated in before you get the chance to do the same. I have never really understood why Spaniards are happy to fly to London and search through the Camden markets for clothes yet refuse to do so here. Today's washing machines get stranger's dirt out just as well as stains ground in by cousins and older siblings. All the same, I was surprised to see the controversy surrounding the sale of second hand school uniforms here in Caceres the other day. The debate regarding school uniforms aside, I couldn’t believe that the police had been called in to deal with families trying to lessen the tremendous financial burden of sending their kids to school. In a place where the local police are rather laissez-faire in their policing, their urgency to deal with mothers swapping clothes seemed odd to say the least. My eldest daughter is three and as she’s going to a public school, we don’t have to buy uniforms, but the extra school material not covered in the cutback budgets of the school has cost us over two hundred euros. One of the main arguments I hear people use for sending their kids to the semi-private (yet funded by public funds?) religious schools is the values that they are under the impression that they represent. I guess the lesson in thrift that my used jeans represented isn’t one of them. 

Idanha-a-Velha...Good Coffee starts here

Around these parts the border is porous and exactly where Portuguese villages become Spanish is lost among the cork tree forests (and in today's Europe so is the point). Sometimes the little white houses are fringed with blue sometimes yellow but walk through the immense walls and past the Visigothic church and into a bar and the confusion ends. Even in this quiet stony little village of 79 people  the difference is clear, or should I say... black. Long a source of contraband across the Sierra de Gata into Spain, Portuguese coffee is just...better. Order one and see.

#architecture #churches #smalltown #coffee #flowers #village #culture #getaway #cafe #border #pueblo #color #villages #frontier #walls # #linguistic #floral #walledcities #dialect

Originally published on Trazzler

IKEA Pilgrims

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

Once upon a time, long before the giant Shanghai Bazaars arrived with their low-cost, low-quality plasticy imitation rags, legend has it that Cacereños would drive down across the border to Elvas to buy towels and then take advantage of the trip to have a cheap bite to eat there in Portugal. Times have changed and people don’t seem to need as many towels as they used to, though more than a few locals still nip across the border for lunch. That’s not to say that Cacereños no longer jump in the car for a bit of shopping tourism. Trips to the DYI meccas in Sevilla and Madrid still constitute Saturday pilgrimages for those who enjoying puzzling over the multilingual instructions needed to put together their furniture. Now, a new addition to Saturday drives down EX-100 has appeared. A giant Leroy Merlin now draws us south for a hammer or two before nipping over to take a stroll among Portuguese shoppers in the El Faro mega mall. But if you stop and think for a minute, what drives other Extremeños to come to Caceres? Sure, it’s hard to find a day when you don’t hear Portuguese in the old town but how often do our regional neighbours bother to come to us for a visit? Other than bringing the odd family visitor to risk twisting an ankle in the potholed streets of our crumbling UNESCO jewel, what brings people to our city? For those in nearby villages, it’s to give birth, see a specialist, get a paper stamped or take part in the springtime migration of plastic bags and tetrabrics for the WOMAD festival. But what more? For many, one of the great faults of Caceres is the lack of an El Corte Ingles department store. But nearby Badajoz already has one and the chance of IKEA opening here in seems about as likely as the high-speed AVE train reaching Caceres before little green men from Mars visit and make land travel irrelevant. If we don’t want the mock obituaries of Caceres found on the empty shop windows in Pintores Street to come true, it’s going to take some creative thinking beyond fluffy towels and cheap screwdrivers to lure visitors beyond the Almohad walls.

Finding Towel Space at Sun-Oka Provincial Park in the Okanagan

You've been waiting for your summer vacation all year, dreaming at your desk of scenes straight out of a feel-good 80s movie. The day finally comes and the deep blue of lake Okanagan stretches out over 80 miles before you. But wait...where are you going to throw down that newly bought beach towel? Seems the rest of Canada has had the same dream as you! Fear not, your towel can still find a spot to unveil and show off its wit. Head 15 minutes north of Penticton to the Sun-Oka Provincial Park and enjoy the spectacular views back towards the city while shading under the leafy trees. Rest up for the year is long, the name of the park says it all, sun and lake Okanagan, all for you and the resident ducks to enjoy.

#beach #wildlife #nature #lake #swimming #views #summer #park #getaway #statepark #relaxing #idyllic #avoidingcrowds #okanagan

Originally published on Trazzler

Catching up on your Quixote at the swimming hole

Let's face it, summers are rather hot in Spain... but where can you escape the heat if sand, elbow-to-elbow towels and the built-up coasts don't appeal? Go West! Trace the spine of the central mountain system as far and deep as you can get before you turn Portuguese and you'll find the answer. In the Sierra de Gata and las Hurdes, cool clean water tumbles out of the mountains into perfect natural swimming holes. Being so utterly civilized, Spaniards wouldn't dream of enjoying a place like this without tapas and cold beer nearby and in the town of Hoyos, the town hall has even set up a free riverside library so that you catch up on your Quixotes.

#kids #river #smalltown #mountains #nature #swimming #summer #getaway #swimminghole #libraries #border #piscinanatural #mountainwater #hurdes #lashurdes #sierradegata #garganta #piscinasnaturales

Originally published on Trazzler

El Mirador de la Memoria

The bullet holes you see in the sculptures at El Torno are real and recent. It has been more than 70 years since the guns of the civil war officially fell silent and more than 30 since Spain's brutal dictator died peacefully in his sleep. Even after so many years, tensions here lie close to the surface (as do the dead in unmarked mass graves across the land). The Spanish Civil War is still in many ways an open wound, one that festers yet is purposely ignored due to a national pact of amnesia. Overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys in the country, the gunned down and defeated were given a memorial and their peace, but it lasted for only a few hours when they faced a firing squad once again.

#history #valley #view #sunset #sculpture #landmark #war #death #fighting #spanishcivilwar #warmemorial #civilwar #memorial #mirador #panorama #europeanhistory #dictatorship #remembrance #scars #bullets #spanishhistory #fascism #jerte #wounds #leydelamemoria #miradordelamemoria

Originally published on Trazzler

Heads or Tails?

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I was sitting in a bar in the Calle Moret having a midday caña (little beer) when I heard the news. One of the older regulars burst into the bar and said, 'Have you heard? The old elephant matador has gone on safari for good!' The volume on one the TVs that seem to be found in the corner of every bar in Spain was quickly turned up and sure enough, his royal highness Don Juan Carlos had abdicated. At this time of the day, the clientel varies between pensioners having a pitarra (young local wine) before lunch and civil servants who work nearby taking late coffee breaks; not a tattoo, rasta or perroflauta (hippy) in sight. Surprise quickly turned to irony as the conversation veered towards his sexual conquests and their amazment that his wife hadn't thrown him out long ago. Another pitarra was poured and they moved on to the amount of Vega Sicilias the ex-king had enjoyed on their tax dime. Thirty minutes passed by and I realized that not a word had been mentioned that could have been construed as positive, that is if you don't count some of the admiration expressed for his ability to dupe his wife. The next day and since then for that matter however, the newspapers have spoken of a different Spain. One that doesn't seem to coincide with the conversations I am overhearing in bars, at work, in the check out line or waiting to pick up my daughter at daycare. It seems that you have to turn to page twenty-six to find a line or two about the fact that no Spaniard under the age of fifty-six has been able to vote on their model of government. Keep reading and you get the impression that the dreaded r-word is only reserved for anti-establishment types and hoary bearded old Marxists. There's also almost a complete black out regarding those on the right of the political spectrum who share no love loss for the monarchy, in particular those on the farther right who still view the ex-king as a traitor who went back on his word with el generalissimo. The inability or perhaps unwillingness to state that a republic is not necessarily the Republic and that each and every citizen should be able to aspire to be head of state seemed so surreal to me until my wife flipped a Canadian coin at me and said, “Heads or tails?” As the coin landed in my hand, I looked down and saw the profile of England's Queen Elizabeth staring up at me and realized that yes, things could indeed get even more absurd.

Spanish Sunday Afternoons #8

Riding the Metro in Madrid and you suddenly turn around.

Is it a new horror movie that's just been released?