Day 22, December 16th, 2011
Expenses,Day 22
Pastries: 2.80
Supplies: 7.60
Albuergue: 7.00
MenuPeregrino: 10.00
Total: 27.40
Trip Total: 502.66
Thank goodness that the Monreal albergue is open!
Itwas cloudy today, then rainy, then rainy and windy. This is the first day of rain in 22 days. I'm fine with rain, but rain and wind and cold are pretty unpleasant together. There was some sleet as well.
The camino is stumbling back to the Albergue with Patrick at 9pm after an enormous Menu del Peregrino, a little drunk and knowing that you have 31km to go the next day. His wife likes that he goes on camino in the winter, because the Spanish whorehouses are closed in winter. Could this get any more Canterbury tales?
Carved into the entrance to a graveyard: “Yo que fui, lo que tu eres. Tu seras, lo que yo soi.” "I was what you are. You'll be what I am."
Monday, April 9, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
Camino Entry 21
Day 21, December 15th, 2011
Expenses, Day 21
Resupply (bread, OJ, chorizo): 4.40
Pensión Peregrino: 20.00
Resupply (bread, pastry): 3.30
Fruit: 0.87
Café con leche: 1.10
Total: 29.67
Trip Total: 475.26
Today was a beautiful day for traveling (but aren’t they all?). I spent most of the morning climbing out of the ghost town of Ruesta (pop. = us) along the ridge through logging country. I crested the ridge around 11am and descended through scrub and finally farmland to Sangüesa. I arrived around 3 or 4 in the afternoon – it was a short day of only 22.4km. 25km tomorrow and 30km to Puente la Reina the day after (note: there are two Puente la Reinas on the Camino Aragonés). I crossed the border from Aragón to Navarra as well today.
Sangüesa is bilingual, but I can’t figure out what the other language is. It looks like a Slavic language, with lots of z’s all over the place (note: I discovered later that it is Euskara, the native Basque language. More on this later).
I was fighting off a bit of impatience to be done with the camino today. If I had started from St. Jean Pied-de-Port (a common starting point for the modern pilgrim, located only a few days away in France) I would be only a week away from Santiago right now. With my victory a few days ago on the Camino Catalán, it is tempting to think that I’ve gotten what I need here and that it is time to move on . . . part of me hopes not. I hope that there is more here for me. Keep teaching, camino . . . although one more easy day might be okay before the lessons start again.
And I haven’t reached Santiago. Where I might’ve started doesn’t matter; gotta keep going.
This morning I came to the conclusion that The Empire Strikes Back has the best soundtrack ever written, and that you could listen to just the music and understand the entire plot because of how strongly each character is written into the music. Luke’s theme, Han and Leia, the addition to the Imperial March that happens when the emperor enters . . . etc.
Expenses, Day 21
Resupply (bread, OJ, chorizo): 4.40
Pensión Peregrino: 20.00
Resupply (bread, pastry): 3.30
Fruit: 0.87
Café con leche: 1.10
Total: 29.67
Trip Total: 475.26
Today was a beautiful day for traveling (but aren’t they all?). I spent most of the morning climbing out of the ghost town of Ruesta (pop. = us) along the ridge through logging country. I crested the ridge around 11am and descended through scrub and finally farmland to Sangüesa. I arrived around 3 or 4 in the afternoon – it was a short day of only 22.4km. 25km tomorrow and 30km to Puente la Reina the day after (note: there are two Puente la Reinas on the Camino Aragonés). I crossed the border from Aragón to Navarra as well today.
Sangüesa is bilingual, but I can’t figure out what the other language is. It looks like a Slavic language, with lots of z’s all over the place (note: I discovered later that it is Euskara, the native Basque language. More on this later).
I was fighting off a bit of impatience to be done with the camino today. If I had started from St. Jean Pied-de-Port (a common starting point for the modern pilgrim, located only a few days away in France) I would be only a week away from Santiago right now. With my victory a few days ago on the Camino Catalán, it is tempting to think that I’ve gotten what I need here and that it is time to move on . . . part of me hopes not. I hope that there is more here for me. Keep teaching, camino . . . although one more easy day might be okay before the lessons start again.
And I haven’t reached Santiago. Where I might’ve started doesn’t matter; gotta keep going.
This morning I came to the conclusion that The Empire Strikes Back has the best soundtrack ever written, and that you could listen to just the music and understand the entire plot because of how strongly each character is written into the music. Luke’s theme, Han and Leia, the addition to the Imperial March that happens when the emperor enters . . . etc.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Camino Entry 20
Day 20, December 14th, 2012
Expenses, Day 20:
Albergue in Ruesta (Dinner, Bed, Breakfast tomorrow): 24.00
Breakfast: 3.00
Total: 27.00
Trip Total: 445.59
Today was my first full day on the Camino Aragonés.
The albergue last night was beautiful. Arrés is a tiny fortress town built on the strategic point of a pass through the mountains to the south. The albergue is a reclaimed building that used to be in ruins – I saw before/after pictures on the wall. The walls were standing but the rest was a ruin. That seems to be typical of Rómanesque architecture; floors and roofs are of fragile wood, while the walls are of thick, thick stone.
It is three stories inside. The back entrance is on the ground floor, along with the bathrooms. This floor is smaller than the others, as the raw stone of the mountainside protrudes into the space (creating an odd situation where the toilet and shower cubicles has windows looking onto raw stone). The second floor has two bedrooms, while the third has a kitchen and a living room (the main entrance is on the balcony between the second and third floors). There's also an attic above the stairwell with four more mattresses – 20 beds in all, maybe.
The other pilgrim is a Spaniard, 51 years old, and not actually grumpy. There's a third pilgrim, as well, a French doctor who is 56 and stayed last night in the hotel attached to the bar. We made an odd trio, drinking calimoxto and tossing bits of Spanish, French, and English back and forth.
On the trail yesterday before Arrés I came upon a strange sight. I was following the trail through some woods when I came upon a stony meadow. The stones had been moved off the path, though, and there were a couple small cairns on either side of the path. I climbed a small rise to see that the entire field of stones had been stacked by pilgrims into small cairns. There were hundreds – thousands of them! Some had messages carved or painted on them; others had small gifts or charms wound around the rocks. I left a small pile of my own, made from a few loose rocks nearby.
Since then I've been seeing little cairns with some regularity. There was an old ruined hermitage that I passed in a field; seeing what I though was graffiti, I took a look inside. It wasn't graffiti – it was one of thousands of pilgrim names scratched into the remaining plaster. On the alter was a pile of stones in the shape of a heart. In other places were a small fire pit and a cross made of loose rock, as well as a tin labeled (ironically, I think) “donativo” (or donations, the typical sign in albergues above the box where one pays). I'd like to think that the monks who used to live here would appreciate that the pilgrims are using the ruins for shelter.
Speaking of rocks, I spent much of today walking among a very strange stone. It is gray, very soft, and erodes in small flakes. You can scrape pieces off of boulders just by running your hand along the face – a shower of chips about an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick will follow your fingers. It is very soft to walk on and eventually becomes sticky gray mud.
No plants grow on this rock, but I believe that it is because the roots of any sprouting seeds dislodge the very rock that they try to latch on to, rather than because of any toxicity of the rock itself (although I could be wrong). The strange erosion properties mean that the soft gray rock forms hillsides of sensuous curves, like Picasso painting a voluptuous woman.
Taking a break, I climbed one of the little hills. The way the stone breaks into such small chunks means that it tends to recreate larger landscapes in miniature. I felt like a giant steeping over valleys and rivers . . .
Sometimes a vein of more normal red rock runs through the gray stone. As it erodes, it leaves red “boulders” that fall down the small valleys. It's a whole geological cycle in miniature.
As I passed Artieda, I noticed a change in the landscape. The path followed a narrow green tunnel, sunk beneath the fallow fields and between stone walls that were being torn apart by the invading undergrowth. It was beautiful, but very empty. Not creepy, like before, as this land felt like it was supposed to be empty, but I didn't know why.
Coming in to Ruesta, I saw the remains of an old tower. Nothing special about that – there are lots of ruined towers in Spain, after all. There were other ruined buildings around it, too, and the road had been in an unusual state of disrepair for quite some time (when I could find it all, that is). There were quite a lot of ruined buildings, and as the cracked asphalt led me into town I realized that some of them were much more recent than the keep. Maybe even 20th century . . . what had happened here?
There were a few buildings that showed signs of very recent renovation. These belong to the albergue, a massive affair with 100 beds. It is the only inhabited building in town.
After asking around a little bit, I found out that this whole area was flooded with the construction of a dam. After years, they decommissioned it, and people returned to the area only to find that soil was no longer good for farming. This is why Ruesta is a ghost town, with only an albergue remaining. It is weird to think that this was all underwater at one point.
I love these Spanish soap operas. No one does them as well as the Spanish. They're all set in different time periods – the one on right now is set during the wars with Napolean. Fantastic.
There is a great picture here of people hiking in to the ruins of the city after the dam has been decommissioned. It's like they've found a ruined city on a forgotten planet, or the lost island of Atlantis.
Expenses, Day 20:
Albergue in Ruesta (Dinner, Bed, Breakfast tomorrow): 24.00
Breakfast: 3.00
Total: 27.00
Trip Total: 445.59
Today was my first full day on the Camino Aragonés.
The albergue last night was beautiful. Arrés is a tiny fortress town built on the strategic point of a pass through the mountains to the south. The albergue is a reclaimed building that used to be in ruins – I saw before/after pictures on the wall. The walls were standing but the rest was a ruin. That seems to be typical of Rómanesque architecture; floors and roofs are of fragile wood, while the walls are of thick, thick stone.
It is three stories inside. The back entrance is on the ground floor, along with the bathrooms. This floor is smaller than the others, as the raw stone of the mountainside protrudes into the space (creating an odd situation where the toilet and shower cubicles has windows looking onto raw stone). The second floor has two bedrooms, while the third has a kitchen and a living room (the main entrance is on the balcony between the second and third floors). There's also an attic above the stairwell with four more mattresses – 20 beds in all, maybe.
The other pilgrim is a Spaniard, 51 years old, and not actually grumpy. There's a third pilgrim, as well, a French doctor who is 56 and stayed last night in the hotel attached to the bar. We made an odd trio, drinking calimoxto and tossing bits of Spanish, French, and English back and forth.
On the trail yesterday before Arrés I came upon a strange sight. I was following the trail through some woods when I came upon a stony meadow. The stones had been moved off the path, though, and there were a couple small cairns on either side of the path. I climbed a small rise to see that the entire field of stones had been stacked by pilgrims into small cairns. There were hundreds – thousands of them! Some had messages carved or painted on them; others had small gifts or charms wound around the rocks. I left a small pile of my own, made from a few loose rocks nearby.
Since then I've been seeing little cairns with some regularity. There was an old ruined hermitage that I passed in a field; seeing what I though was graffiti, I took a look inside. It wasn't graffiti – it was one of thousands of pilgrim names scratched into the remaining plaster. On the alter was a pile of stones in the shape of a heart. In other places were a small fire pit and a cross made of loose rock, as well as a tin labeled (ironically, I think) “donativo” (or donations, the typical sign in albergues above the box where one pays). I'd like to think that the monks who used to live here would appreciate that the pilgrims are using the ruins for shelter.
Speaking of rocks, I spent much of today walking among a very strange stone. It is gray, very soft, and erodes in small flakes. You can scrape pieces off of boulders just by running your hand along the face – a shower of chips about an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick will follow your fingers. It is very soft to walk on and eventually becomes sticky gray mud.
No plants grow on this rock, but I believe that it is because the roots of any sprouting seeds dislodge the very rock that they try to latch on to, rather than because of any toxicity of the rock itself (although I could be wrong). The strange erosion properties mean that the soft gray rock forms hillsides of sensuous curves, like Picasso painting a voluptuous woman.
Taking a break, I climbed one of the little hills. The way the stone breaks into such small chunks means that it tends to recreate larger landscapes in miniature. I felt like a giant steeping over valleys and rivers . . .
Sometimes a vein of more normal red rock runs through the gray stone. As it erodes, it leaves red “boulders” that fall down the small valleys. It's a whole geological cycle in miniature.
As I passed Artieda, I noticed a change in the landscape. The path followed a narrow green tunnel, sunk beneath the fallow fields and between stone walls that were being torn apart by the invading undergrowth. It was beautiful, but very empty. Not creepy, like before, as this land felt like it was supposed to be empty, but I didn't know why.
Coming in to Ruesta, I saw the remains of an old tower. Nothing special about that – there are lots of ruined towers in Spain, after all. There were other ruined buildings around it, too, and the road had been in an unusual state of disrepair for quite some time (when I could find it all, that is). There were quite a lot of ruined buildings, and as the cracked asphalt led me into town I realized that some of them were much more recent than the keep. Maybe even 20th century . . . what had happened here?
There were a few buildings that showed signs of very recent renovation. These belong to the albergue, a massive affair with 100 beds. It is the only inhabited building in town.
After asking around a little bit, I found out that this whole area was flooded with the construction of a dam. After years, they decommissioned it, and people returned to the area only to find that soil was no longer good for farming. This is why Ruesta is a ghost town, with only an albergue remaining. It is weird to think that this was all underwater at one point.
I love these Spanish soap operas. No one does them as well as the Spanish. They're all set in different time periods – the one on right now is set during the wars with Napolean. Fantastic.
There is a great picture here of people hiking in to the ruins of the city after the dam has been decommissioned. It's like they've found a ruined city on a forgotten planet, or the lost island of Atlantis.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Crystal Symphony Entry 11
Cadiz is a port city located in Spain just west of the strait of Gibraltar on the Atlantic ocean. The city sits on a narrow spit of land and protects a large harbor. It is a vital strategic point for the passage of trade through the strait (second only to nearby Gibraltar) and has been settled continuously for the past several thousand years. The succession of ownership follows a predictable trend -- first, the Phoenicians, then the Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, Castillians, and finally modern-day Spain.
The city was walled for much of its history, and the old sections of town sit behind the remnants of those walls. A series of pentagonal batteries protect the various approaches to the city, including one that is located at the end of a very long causeway out in the shallows. Columbus sailed from here twice for the New World, on his second and fourth voyages, and it is likely that these walls were the last he saw of the mainland before heading South to the Canary islands. Cadiz was also one of the few Spanish cities to hold out against the French conquest during the Napoleonic wars, and has been the birthplace of several popular revolts (one of them to restore the constitution of 1812).
The old city is a maze of narrow streets, beautiful architecture, and carefully-sculpted parks. The parks are laid out in geometric patterns -- the Moorish influence can be seen in the blue tile and diamond patterning, while the Christian influence can be seen right alongside with the images of the Virgin Mary and widespread use of crosses on just about everything. The huge trees lining these parks are said to have been brought from the New World and planted here -- they are massive, with branches like the limbs of dinosaurs stretching out overhead. Cadiz is one of those social tidewaters, a place where the world's great cultures have each ebbed and flowed, leaving a complicated, layered remnant behind.
It is good to be back in continental Spain once again. I had not realized how much Spain feels like home until I had a warm chocolate Napolitana in my hands (a kind of fluffy pastry with chocolate in the center, not unlike the French pan au chocolat). A long walk along the ocean was just the thing I needed to settle my head today. I'm looking forward to Malaga tomorrow, and then Barcelona most of all.
It is a holy week this week (the build up to Easter), and so the square in front of the cathedral was being prepared for a procession. I saw marching bands warming up and lots of people in strange pointy hats, but due to a rehearsal I had to get back to the ship before they got started. The route was like a parade route, with boxes, television cameras, and barricades everywhere -- to get inside the cathedral was impossible. Many businesses were closed.
The thieves, though, are always working. I learned about a new scam today -- the hard way, of course, as this is how one usually learns about scams -- but it was a cheap enough lesson and provided me with some entertainment as well. On my way back to the ship, a deaf man burst from a side alley and confronted me with a petition to open a center for the deaf. I tried to explain that I wasn't from the area, but as he was deaf he couldn't understand what I was saying . . . I signed the petition and donated a Euro. About ten seconds after he left I realized that the petition had been in English . . . oops. It isn't particularly likely that a petition to open a center for the deaf in Spain is going to be written in English, after all.
The man was still in sight -- I wasn't about to confront him over a single Euro, but I did follow just to see what the deal was. He met again with his partner, who had a big stack of forms, and dropped off the money. I watched them work; it was a fairly professional operation. The second guy kept the money and watched for police, while the front man worked the tourists for cash. A quick whistle and they'd pack up shop; I had to move fast to keep up with them. The real tip off was when I saw the "deaf" man I'd given the donation to talking on his cell phone . . . the half hour of entertainment I got by following and watching them work was definitely worth the Euro I lost. Thieves have got to eat too, after all . . .
The city was walled for much of its history, and the old sections of town sit behind the remnants of those walls. A series of pentagonal batteries protect the various approaches to the city, including one that is located at the end of a very long causeway out in the shallows. Columbus sailed from here twice for the New World, on his second and fourth voyages, and it is likely that these walls were the last he saw of the mainland before heading South to the Canary islands. Cadiz was also one of the few Spanish cities to hold out against the French conquest during the Napoleonic wars, and has been the birthplace of several popular revolts (one of them to restore the constitution of 1812).
The old city is a maze of narrow streets, beautiful architecture, and carefully-sculpted parks. The parks are laid out in geometric patterns -- the Moorish influence can be seen in the blue tile and diamond patterning, while the Christian influence can be seen right alongside with the images of the Virgin Mary and widespread use of crosses on just about everything. The huge trees lining these parks are said to have been brought from the New World and planted here -- they are massive, with branches like the limbs of dinosaurs stretching out overhead. Cadiz is one of those social tidewaters, a place where the world's great cultures have each ebbed and flowed, leaving a complicated, layered remnant behind.
It is good to be back in continental Spain once again. I had not realized how much Spain feels like home until I had a warm chocolate Napolitana in my hands (a kind of fluffy pastry with chocolate in the center, not unlike the French pan au chocolat). A long walk along the ocean was just the thing I needed to settle my head today. I'm looking forward to Malaga tomorrow, and then Barcelona most of all.
It is a holy week this week (the build up to Easter), and so the square in front of the cathedral was being prepared for a procession. I saw marching bands warming up and lots of people in strange pointy hats, but due to a rehearsal I had to get back to the ship before they got started. The route was like a parade route, with boxes, television cameras, and barricades everywhere -- to get inside the cathedral was impossible. Many businesses were closed.
The thieves, though, are always working. I learned about a new scam today -- the hard way, of course, as this is how one usually learns about scams -- but it was a cheap enough lesson and provided me with some entertainment as well. On my way back to the ship, a deaf man burst from a side alley and confronted me with a petition to open a center for the deaf. I tried to explain that I wasn't from the area, but as he was deaf he couldn't understand what I was saying . . . I signed the petition and donated a Euro. About ten seconds after he left I realized that the petition had been in English . . . oops. It isn't particularly likely that a petition to open a center for the deaf in Spain is going to be written in English, after all.
The man was still in sight -- I wasn't about to confront him over a single Euro, but I did follow just to see what the deal was. He met again with his partner, who had a big stack of forms, and dropped off the money. I watched them work; it was a fairly professional operation. The second guy kept the money and watched for police, while the front man worked the tourists for cash. A quick whistle and they'd pack up shop; I had to move fast to keep up with them. The real tip off was when I saw the "deaf" man I'd given the donation to talking on his cell phone . . . the half hour of entertainment I got by following and watching them work was definitely worth the Euro I lost. Thieves have got to eat too, after all . . .
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Crystal Symphony Entry 10
Casablanca.
On land, the city of Casablanca is most famous for the classic 1943 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman . On the ship, it is notorious for being totally unlike the movie (which, in retrospect, should not be too surprising as the movie was filmed on a lot in Los Angeles). Many of the crew who have been here before decided to give it a pass, and the guest newsletter contains a wonderful little warning that I've paraphrased here: “Casablanca is not yet up to the first class tourist standards of Europe with regards to buses and drivers. Occasionally tours may encounter delays and unplanned events. Try to accept these events as cultural experiences.” Despite (or perhaps because of) this obnoxious warning I headed out into the town after crew drill -- aren't unplanned events and cultural experiences the point of traveling?
Oh, and "town" isn't quite the right word. Casablanca is a city of four million people; its history dates back eight thousand years to the Phoenicians, but the modern city was founded as a French settlement at the beginning of the 20th century (Portugal had largely abandoned it two hundred years before). The city speaks a mixture of French and Arabic, although American dollars are widely accepted along with Dirham (the local currency) and Euros. Luckily I have a Quebecois friend on board the ship!
A group of us negotiated with a taxi driver to take a little tour around the city. After deciding on a price we walked out to the car, a battered old diesel BMW with strange elongated doors. It had the body of a sedan but the seating of a van, with one manual window and one automatic. The driver had a cassette mix tape playing that he would rewind every few minutes – I don't know if the Gnawa music and wailing double-reeded horns were for the benefit of us, the tourists, or if he was actually enjoying it. Sylvain, my Quebecois friend, sat in front and chatted happily away with the driver in French while we watched the city go by.
It was my first time on the mainland of the African continent – the Canaries and Madeira are technically part of Africa, but I don't think they really count. It was also my first time in a Muslim country. The dress was half Western and half North African – long, dark colored robes that are good for cutting the heat. Long sleeves and pants are the norm – very few people have exposed forearms or calves. It's hot already, but the sea breeze keeps things cool enough. Inland it's already over forty degrees centigrade.
Our first stop was the Hassan II mosque. This is a relatively new mosque, completed in 1980 for a cost of half a billion dollars. It has the highest minaret in the world, can hold 20,000 people in the prayer hall, and at night shoots a laser 30 kilometers towards Mecca. In the thirty years since it was built it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of Casablanca. Muslim architecture is fascinating because it contains no representative imagery – everything is abstract and symbolic (contrast this with the Christian architecture in nearby Spain, where everything is adorned with images of saints and martyrs). The ceilings, floors, walls, and most other things are covered in complicated patterns either carved into the stone or created through delicate inlaid mosaics. The more delicate layers of patterning are not visible until you've looked at a certain surface for a period of time . . . they disappear into the larger shapes, which in turn disappear into the larger shapes of the building itself. The end result is almost on the level of an optical illusion, where different layers of complication can lie invisible, nested inside one another.
I didn't go inside, as I wanted to respect their place of worship, but I did peek inside the massive gateway to the hall. People were walking past me (men through one door, women through another), slipping out of their shoes at the gateway. It was a beautiful setting – right on the ocean, with the constant sound of the pounding waves and the bright African sun overhead. There was a sign advertising tours (I think – it was in French, after all . . .) but we wanted to see some other parts of the city.
The driver took us along the seaside next. This was definitely the upscale, touristy section of town, full of bars catering to Europeans and cheap beach side resorts. There was even a McDonald's; I don't know if they had McCousCous, but I sort of hope not. Bogart and Bergman would not have looked nearly as good sitting at a plastic booth behind the golden arches.
Our driver dropped us off in another part of town, near a market, so that we could explore. Some of my companions got trapped in a carpet store (the salesperson actually said, “We are not pushy salespeople here!” as he was being a pushy salesperson . . . I was suspect that our driver was getting a cut). As we waited outside the carpet shop, the only girl in our group was subjected to a series of awkward English compliments . . . as a blond young woman, she sticks out in Morocco, and so the men say things that don't really translate right. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like barbie?” is not really a compliment back home, after all. The cab driver had been calling her “belle gazelle” in French which was sort of endearing, but all in all it seems that Morocco is a tough place for Western women.
I began to sense that my companions were feeling a little out of place . . . those of us who had escaped from the rug shop decided to wait by the car until the others emerged (I had hoped they'd come out with big rolls of fabric, but no luck). I, on the other hand, elected to explore a bit, since I don't know when I'll be in Morocco again. The main market was a few streets over, and here I began to feel a lot more comfortable. It was not at all a tourist market – this was a street market in the truest sense of the word, as cars and motorcycles were constantly pushing their way through crowds of people and between vendors' carts. I saw all sorts of things for sale – mostly food, but also questionable electronics, stacks of tires, and books in a wide variety of languages. The degree to which everything was mixed together was fascinating – you could find yourself swept along by a group of children just out of school, stepping over the legs of somewhere working on a car in the middle of the street, while three feet to your left there are suited businessmen taking tea at a small cafe. My favorite sight was the old lady selling passports – a rainbow of booklets in muted hues, presumably liberated from unfortunate tourists. I almost wanted to browse just out of curiosity.
I was surrounded by all sorts of smells. The fumes from a passing moped, a brief blast of roast chicken, and the bitter whiff of hashish wafting out of some darkened corner were all recurring themes. Stores and restaurants that were contained in buildings seem to spill out into the street during the day, only to close at night like a row of blooming flowers. One bakery even brought their ovens onto the sidewalk, a strategy that must be life saving when summer really gets going.
We eventually made our way back to the ship and the numbing safety of our tan plastic cubicles. I am entirely alone in my opinion here on board, but I liked Casablanca. People dislike it because it isn't like the movie, but I disagree. It's an industrial, hot, grimy, jumbled together kind of place with a weird mixture of languages, cultures and customs -- and I like it all the better for those things. If we can let go of our compulsion to judge a place by our own standards, we can begin to see it for what it is. The fifth rule of the camino, “Sometimes there are mountains,” and its corollary, “Sometimes there aren't,” definitely applies here. The world is just the world, whether there are mountains or not, and the Buddha is as surely in the acrid stench of a moped in Casablanca as it is in a Shinto temple on Mount Fuji. People forget that Bogart and Bergman are acting out a story set in a hot, grimy, stench-ridden, smoke-filled gambling hall, located in a city rife with crime and occupied by a fascist state. The beauty of the story is not in the locale; the beauty is in the blossoming of love in a place that is so ugly and worn. In this respect, I think Casablanca is exactly like it was in the movie.
On land, the city of Casablanca is most famous for the classic 1943 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman . On the ship, it is notorious for being totally unlike the movie (which, in retrospect, should not be too surprising as the movie was filmed on a lot in Los Angeles). Many of the crew who have been here before decided to give it a pass, and the guest newsletter contains a wonderful little warning that I've paraphrased here: “Casablanca is not yet up to the first class tourist standards of Europe with regards to buses and drivers. Occasionally tours may encounter delays and unplanned events. Try to accept these events as cultural experiences.” Despite (or perhaps because of) this obnoxious warning I headed out into the town after crew drill -- aren't unplanned events and cultural experiences the point of traveling?
Oh, and "town" isn't quite the right word. Casablanca is a city of four million people; its history dates back eight thousand years to the Phoenicians, but the modern city was founded as a French settlement at the beginning of the 20th century (Portugal had largely abandoned it two hundred years before). The city speaks a mixture of French and Arabic, although American dollars are widely accepted along with Dirham (the local currency) and Euros. Luckily I have a Quebecois friend on board the ship!
A group of us negotiated with a taxi driver to take a little tour around the city. After deciding on a price we walked out to the car, a battered old diesel BMW with strange elongated doors. It had the body of a sedan but the seating of a van, with one manual window and one automatic. The driver had a cassette mix tape playing that he would rewind every few minutes – I don't know if the Gnawa music and wailing double-reeded horns were for the benefit of us, the tourists, or if he was actually enjoying it. Sylvain, my Quebecois friend, sat in front and chatted happily away with the driver in French while we watched the city go by.
It was my first time on the mainland of the African continent – the Canaries and Madeira are technically part of Africa, but I don't think they really count. It was also my first time in a Muslim country. The dress was half Western and half North African – long, dark colored robes that are good for cutting the heat. Long sleeves and pants are the norm – very few people have exposed forearms or calves. It's hot already, but the sea breeze keeps things cool enough. Inland it's already over forty degrees centigrade.
Our first stop was the Hassan II mosque. This is a relatively new mosque, completed in 1980 for a cost of half a billion dollars. It has the highest minaret in the world, can hold 20,000 people in the prayer hall, and at night shoots a laser 30 kilometers towards Mecca. In the thirty years since it was built it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of Casablanca. Muslim architecture is fascinating because it contains no representative imagery – everything is abstract and symbolic (contrast this with the Christian architecture in nearby Spain, where everything is adorned with images of saints and martyrs). The ceilings, floors, walls, and most other things are covered in complicated patterns either carved into the stone or created through delicate inlaid mosaics. The more delicate layers of patterning are not visible until you've looked at a certain surface for a period of time . . . they disappear into the larger shapes, which in turn disappear into the larger shapes of the building itself. The end result is almost on the level of an optical illusion, where different layers of complication can lie invisible, nested inside one another.
I didn't go inside, as I wanted to respect their place of worship, but I did peek inside the massive gateway to the hall. People were walking past me (men through one door, women through another), slipping out of their shoes at the gateway. It was a beautiful setting – right on the ocean, with the constant sound of the pounding waves and the bright African sun overhead. There was a sign advertising tours (I think – it was in French, after all . . .) but we wanted to see some other parts of the city.
The driver took us along the seaside next. This was definitely the upscale, touristy section of town, full of bars catering to Europeans and cheap beach side resorts. There was even a McDonald's; I don't know if they had McCousCous, but I sort of hope not. Bogart and Bergman would not have looked nearly as good sitting at a plastic booth behind the golden arches.
Our driver dropped us off in another part of town, near a market, so that we could explore. Some of my companions got trapped in a carpet store (the salesperson actually said, “We are not pushy salespeople here!” as he was being a pushy salesperson . . . I was suspect that our driver was getting a cut). As we waited outside the carpet shop, the only girl in our group was subjected to a series of awkward English compliments . . . as a blond young woman, she sticks out in Morocco, and so the men say things that don't really translate right. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like barbie?” is not really a compliment back home, after all. The cab driver had been calling her “belle gazelle” in French which was sort of endearing, but all in all it seems that Morocco is a tough place for Western women.
I began to sense that my companions were feeling a little out of place . . . those of us who had escaped from the rug shop decided to wait by the car until the others emerged (I had hoped they'd come out with big rolls of fabric, but no luck). I, on the other hand, elected to explore a bit, since I don't know when I'll be in Morocco again. The main market was a few streets over, and here I began to feel a lot more comfortable. It was not at all a tourist market – this was a street market in the truest sense of the word, as cars and motorcycles were constantly pushing their way through crowds of people and between vendors' carts. I saw all sorts of things for sale – mostly food, but also questionable electronics, stacks of tires, and books in a wide variety of languages. The degree to which everything was mixed together was fascinating – you could find yourself swept along by a group of children just out of school, stepping over the legs of somewhere working on a car in the middle of the street, while three feet to your left there are suited businessmen taking tea at a small cafe. My favorite sight was the old lady selling passports – a rainbow of booklets in muted hues, presumably liberated from unfortunate tourists. I almost wanted to browse just out of curiosity.
I was surrounded by all sorts of smells. The fumes from a passing moped, a brief blast of roast chicken, and the bitter whiff of hashish wafting out of some darkened corner were all recurring themes. Stores and restaurants that were contained in buildings seem to spill out into the street during the day, only to close at night like a row of blooming flowers. One bakery even brought their ovens onto the sidewalk, a strategy that must be life saving when summer really gets going.
We eventually made our way back to the ship and the numbing safety of our tan plastic cubicles. I am entirely alone in my opinion here on board, but I liked Casablanca. People dislike it because it isn't like the movie, but I disagree. It's an industrial, hot, grimy, jumbled together kind of place with a weird mixture of languages, cultures and customs -- and I like it all the better for those things. If we can let go of our compulsion to judge a place by our own standards, we can begin to see it for what it is. The fifth rule of the camino, “Sometimes there are mountains,” and its corollary, “Sometimes there aren't,” definitely applies here. The world is just the world, whether there are mountains or not, and the Buddha is as surely in the acrid stench of a moped in Casablanca as it is in a Shinto temple on Mount Fuji. People forget that Bogart and Bergman are acting out a story set in a hot, grimy, stench-ridden, smoke-filled gambling hall, located in a city rife with crime and occupied by a fascist state. The beauty of the story is not in the locale; the beauty is in the blossoming of love in a place that is so ugly and worn. In this respect, I think Casablanca is exactly like it was in the movie.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Crystal Symphony Entry 9
I've survived another Atlantic crossing . . . we docked in Funchal four days ago, and Lisbon two days after that. It feels good to be back to the Iberian penninsula, although I didn't expect to be back so soon.
I was eating lunch in the mess with my new roommate (Cezar, a Polish-Swedish trombone player) when an older man we didn't recognize came up to us. He asked where we were from, and then returned later with two little pamphlets in our respective languages. "Read, and they will explain you why so many bad things happen to people." It was of course a short collection of musings and bible verses -- although they were from both testaments, which was unusual. The guys from the seafarer's mission usually stick to the new testament, it's a little more upbeat and sailors generally need to hear the good news first.
We were polite and took the booklets -- he was a nice man, and seemed genuine in his beliefs, but I couldn't help but think about his chioce of words. "Explain (to) you why so many bad things happen to people." That's a fairly dismal way to put it . . . from a philosophical standpoint, how can the answer to that question be anything useful? It speaks of a system that has already decided that life is shit before it even happens. That's not how I want to live . . . and how do we know which things are bad and which are good, anyway? I thought of telling him a story from Stephen Mitchell's commentary on the Tao te Ching, but English wasn't his first language and missionaries are not usually very interested in hearing what other people have to say anyway.
The story goes like this:
There was a young farmer who was very poor. He had no wife or children, and only one horse to work his entire farm. One day the horse ran away and he was left with nothing. All the villagers came and said, "Oh, how terrible! What a tragedy!" except for his elderly father, who just smiled. Later he asked his father, "Why do you stay so quiet, father?"
"Because maybe this is not a tragedy. Maybe this is the best of fortunes!"
The farmer shrugged. His father was getting old; he would be patient with him and his foolishness.
A few months later, the horse came back. It had found a wild mate of good stock, and soon the farmer had a whole stable full of excellent horses. He became very rich breeding them and soon had a large estate, a beautiful wife, and a handsome son. All of the villagers said, "Oh, what luck!" except for his father. One day the farmer asked him, "Why are you so quiet, father?"
"Because maybe this is not good luck. Maybe this is the most terrible of fortunes."
The farmer was puzzled, but he loved his father and so he smiled and went about his business.
The farmer's son loved to ride the many horses they had and was an excellent horseman. One day he slipped and fell, breaking his pelvis and receiving other terrible injuries. The villagers gathered around his sick-bed, consoling the farmer and his wife. "Oh, how terrible!" But again the farmer's father said nothing. He just smiled to himself in his big chair in the corner.
"Father, how can you be happy when your grandson is so injured?"
"Because maybe this is not misfortune. Maybe this is the best of luck!"
The farmer was angry, but his grief kept him from fighting with his father.
The son healed slowly, but he had acquired a limp and could not ride any more. The farmer and his wife did not care; they were happy that he was alive. A year later, the barbarians invaded from the North. All able bodied young men were called up to fight in the army; all of the young men from the village were taken except for the farmer's son, who was not fit to fight in the war. The battle was fierce, and nine tenths of the village's young men were killed. The villagers told the farmer, "You are lucky your son could not go!"
But his father sat in the corner, silent.
---
I think you can see the point of the story.
In related news, we will celebrate Easter this cruise, and at the weekly entertainment meeting the cruise director introduced the variety of religious personnel that Crystal has brought on board to cater to the guests' spiritual needs. Usually we have a Catholic priest, but in Lisbon we added a Protestant Minister and a Jewish Rabbi (Passover is coming up as well). I realized as we were leaving that this is the first time in my life when I might actually witness a Priest, a Minister, and a Rabbi walk into a bar . . .
I was eating lunch in the mess with my new roommate (Cezar, a Polish-Swedish trombone player) when an older man we didn't recognize came up to us. He asked where we were from, and then returned later with two little pamphlets in our respective languages. "Read, and they will explain you why so many bad things happen to people." It was of course a short collection of musings and bible verses -- although they were from both testaments, which was unusual. The guys from the seafarer's mission usually stick to the new testament, it's a little more upbeat and sailors generally need to hear the good news first.
We were polite and took the booklets -- he was a nice man, and seemed genuine in his beliefs, but I couldn't help but think about his chioce of words. "Explain (to) you why so many bad things happen to people." That's a fairly dismal way to put it . . . from a philosophical standpoint, how can the answer to that question be anything useful? It speaks of a system that has already decided that life is shit before it even happens. That's not how I want to live . . . and how do we know which things are bad and which are good, anyway? I thought of telling him a story from Stephen Mitchell's commentary on the Tao te Ching, but English wasn't his first language and missionaries are not usually very interested in hearing what other people have to say anyway.
The story goes like this:
There was a young farmer who was very poor. He had no wife or children, and only one horse to work his entire farm. One day the horse ran away and he was left with nothing. All the villagers came and said, "Oh, how terrible! What a tragedy!" except for his elderly father, who just smiled. Later he asked his father, "Why do you stay so quiet, father?"
"Because maybe this is not a tragedy. Maybe this is the best of fortunes!"
The farmer shrugged. His father was getting old; he would be patient with him and his foolishness.
A few months later, the horse came back. It had found a wild mate of good stock, and soon the farmer had a whole stable full of excellent horses. He became very rich breeding them and soon had a large estate, a beautiful wife, and a handsome son. All of the villagers said, "Oh, what luck!" except for his father. One day the farmer asked him, "Why are you so quiet, father?"
"Because maybe this is not good luck. Maybe this is the most terrible of fortunes."
The farmer was puzzled, but he loved his father and so he smiled and went about his business.
The farmer's son loved to ride the many horses they had and was an excellent horseman. One day he slipped and fell, breaking his pelvis and receiving other terrible injuries. The villagers gathered around his sick-bed, consoling the farmer and his wife. "Oh, how terrible!" But again the farmer's father said nothing. He just smiled to himself in his big chair in the corner.
"Father, how can you be happy when your grandson is so injured?"
"Because maybe this is not misfortune. Maybe this is the best of luck!"
The farmer was angry, but his grief kept him from fighting with his father.
The son healed slowly, but he had acquired a limp and could not ride any more. The farmer and his wife did not care; they were happy that he was alive. A year later, the barbarians invaded from the North. All able bodied young men were called up to fight in the army; all of the young men from the village were taken except for the farmer's son, who was not fit to fight in the war. The battle was fierce, and nine tenths of the village's young men were killed. The villagers told the farmer, "You are lucky your son could not go!"
But his father sat in the corner, silent.
---
I think you can see the point of the story.
In related news, we will celebrate Easter this cruise, and at the weekly entertainment meeting the cruise director introduced the variety of religious personnel that Crystal has brought on board to cater to the guests' spiritual needs. Usually we have a Catholic priest, but in Lisbon we added a Protestant Minister and a Jewish Rabbi (Passover is coming up as well). I realized as we were leaving that this is the first time in my life when I might actually witness a Priest, a Minister, and a Rabbi walk into a bar . . .
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Poem of the day 3.28.12
from "The Night Air" by Rumi
"What if a man cannot be made to say anything?
How do you learn his hidden nature?"
"I sit in front of him in silence,
and set up a ladder of patience,
and if in his presence a language from beyond joy
and beyond grief begins to pour from my chest,
I know that his soul is as deep and bright
as the star Canopus rising over Yemen.
And so when I start speaking a powerful right arm
of words sweeping down, I know him from what I say,
and how I say it, because there's a window open
between us, mixing the night air of our beings."
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