Extra Fofos

"Is It Fish?"

A few weeks ago we were talking about our plans for the three-week winter break, and one of my colleagues said, out of nowhere, "Let's go to Portugal." I, of course, not having any other plans, said, "Sure," not really thinking that we'd actually go. After a few weeks we sat down and made our arrangements, and on the night of December 21st we flew out from Bratislava.

For those of you unaware, I spent three of my formative years living in southern Spain, in the area called Andalucia. I call these years "formative" because I really believe they had a lot of influence on how my life has progressed and what I'm like now. Without that time, I certainly wouldn't be living in Slovakia now. I will have to rhapsodize about my life-changing experience another time, because this post will be quite long enough without it. Anyhow, during that time I had the opportunity to travel to nearby countries, including Portugal. Because I was younger, many of my memories are vague impressions rather than concrete and clear recollections.

I’d been to all three of the countries we were going to visit, but it’d been a long time since then. I was excited to go back and see what was familiar and what was new. There were times I walked into places and thought, 'This is not at all what I remember...the beach should be right there, not way over there,' but then there were times when I definitely knew that I'd been there before.

This winter Europe has been experiencing atypical weather. There’s been snow in England, Scotland, and even Spain, and lots of rain in Italy and Portugal. The weather was one of the poor parts of the trip; everything would have looked much nicer had the sun been out, and indeed, on the days when it was, things were glorious. On the other hand, when we left Bratislava it was -7 C; when we landed in Alicante it was 13 C, so there was some improvement there.

Our first flight was from Bratislava into Alicante, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. We spent the night in a hamburger joint eating patatas fritas, which were just as I remembered, and drinking coffee. In the morning we got on a high-speed train for Madrid. When they say high-speed, they mean it; the speedometer in our carriage showed 159 kph as the top speed. The ride was very smooth and comfortable.

Madrid is, of course, Spain's capital city. There is a square there called Puerta del Sol, and in the square is kilometer 0 for all of Spain's motorways. There's also a statue of a bear and a mulberry tree, which is the symbol of Madrid for some reason. On the other end of the square is a billboard for Tio Pepe sherry. It may be unfortunate that some of the things I most certainly remember from my childhood have to do with alcohol, but here's mi tio.
(My childhood is also the smell of cheaply tanned leather goods, and the color of the dirt in Andalucia, and the sound of seagulls.)

In Madrid we first bought our bus tickets to our next destination. I was able to make myself understood in Spanish rather well, an accomplishment that made me both relieved and pleased. Then we went to El Corte Inglés, the department store that was fancier than I recalled. We bought lunch from the grocery in the basement, and I was tempted to buy many things, like jamón serrano, kiwi syrup, and Cola Cao. That evening, we went out and walked around for a while, and ate an empanada and churros in a churro shop, and then had gelato.

For our second day we started off at the Museo del Prado, one of the great art museums of the world, which has Spain's best collection of classic art. The most renowned work in the Prado is the painting known as "Las Meninas" by Velázquez. It's a painting that I’ve seen replicas of since I was little, and I finally got to see it in person. The Prado also has works by many other famous Spanish painters, notably Goya and El Greco.

From there we visited the Plaza Mayor to check out their so-called Christmas market, which turned out to be mostly cheap toys and decorations, and elements for making belenes. During the Christmas season, Spaniards construct elaborate dioramas showing the events of the nativity. These are often displayed in shopping centers or stores; we saw a belén in the windows of the Corte Inglés in Sevilla. The market in Plaza Mayor had figures, pieces of fake sod, walls, all kinds of bits of things that might go into a belén.

We finished the day by visiting the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the modern art museum. The Reina Sofía is the home of Picasso’s "Guernica," a reaction to the bombing of the town of the same name during the Spanish Civil War. Visitors aren't allowed to photograph "Guernica" itself, but the picture here is a detail of one of Picasso's preliminary sketches for the painting. I much prefer this bull to how he ended up in the final product. This one looks so dopey. The museum has lots of other Picassos, and many other works relating to the Spanish Civil War; which led us to realize that we know very little about that particular event. We had baked sweet potatoes from a street vendor for dinner.

From Madrid we traveled on the night bus to northern Portugal, although this hadn't been the original plan. We arrived in Porto, also known as Oporto, quite early in the morning and found our pensão without too much difficulty. As it was early, we knew we wouldn’t be able to check in, but we at least wanted to drop off our bags before we wandered around in the rain some more. Unfortunately, we had to wake the landlady up in order to drop off our things. She was nice enough for having been woken up around 6:30 am.

Porto is on the River Douro (which is handy for puns: ouro is Portuguese for gold) and rises from its banks onto a hill. A funicular railroad ascends the hill, and we rode it to the top.

You can plan your trip to the last detail, but there will always be unexpected circumstances and events. Sometimes these are not pleasant, such as when you go to buy bus tickets and find out that the bus you’d intended to take was sold out and you have to try to contact your hostel and hope you aren’t charged for the night you’re not spending there (we weren’t). But sometimes these things are serendipitous and wonderful. We were wandering around Porto and came across a stretch of turreted wall. There was nothing that said, “Don’t go up these steps and walk on the wall,” so we did. The steps were grassy, and there were no rails or even cautionary signs. One tower looked out over the river, and the one at the opposite end of the wall looked over the city. The wall is part of the muralha Fernandina, built in the 14th century. I loved that wall. Just climbing up to the top of the wall made me so happy.The Iberian Peninsula is a good place for seafood, so we took advantage of that as much as possible, sometimes without meaning to. We were walking Porto and saw a nice-looking display of sandwiches in a window, so we went in and ordered by means of pointing, since we know very little Portuguese. B got what turned out to be a piece of cod, battered and fried, while I got what looked like it ought to be a sausage sandwich. When I pointed to it, the guy working there said, "Ah, croquettes." Now, where I come from, croquettes are small potato-y things, akin to tater tots. They are not some kind of unidentified fish paste formed into cylinders and then cooked. That was my lunch. Later, in Lisbon, I accidentally ate a (very small) sardine sandwich, and from that point on we found it necessary to question if our food contained any unexpected fish products.

Porto is best known for its production of the fortified wine called port. The area called Vila Nova de Gaia, across the river from Porto proper, is home to the wineries, where you can visit and taste their products. Since we arrived on Christmas Eve, the lodges all closed early, and none were open by the time we made it to Gaia. Luckily shops were still open, and we were able to sample a few different kinds of port. Port is a sweeter wine, which is perfect for someone like me, who doesn’t actually like wine. We bought a bottle of Croft branco (white) and one of Graham's ruby. B, bless her, let us get sweeter ones, because she knew I wouldn't drink them otherwise. On the way back to our room we also picked up a Christmas cake. Those things became our Christmas feast.

Christmas Day in your traditionally Catholic countries is pretty quiet if you don't know anyone. The vast majority of the shops and restaurants were closed, although a few cafes were open, and I went past an open Asian grocery store. I took a walk in the afternoon and saw quite a few buildings in various states of decrepitude, as well as many tiled buildings. The tripeiros, as the people of Porto are called, seem to favor blue. I certainly dug it.

On St. Stephen’s Day we had to wake up the landlady again to get out of the hotel and to our train. Our next stop was Lisbon (Lisboa in Portuguese). Once again, we got to our destination before our lodging was ready for us; in this case, no one was even at the hostel. Fortuitously, it was a nice day, so we got some breakfast--including delicious fresh orange juice for me--and sat by the river behind the metro/train station. The sun was shining over the Rio Tejo, old men were fishing, and there were still parties, or after-parties, as we were to learn, going on. We hadn’t been sitting there long when a young man walked up and asked if it was my first time in Lisbon. I said no, but he was not deterred, and struck up a conversation with us. His name, it turned out, was Francisco, “like San Francisco,” and he’d just come from an after-party. He told us a lot about cork, as he works for his family’s cork business and Portugal produces 70% of the world’s cork, and about Portuguese history, especially its exploration and colonization. He was quite amusing once I decided he wasn’t trying to scam us.

Once we got checked in to our hostel, we set out for some sightseeing that would let us enjoy the sun. Our hostel was rather conveniently situated a few minutes from Cais do Sodré, the last metro stop and the Lisbon terminus for the commuter railroad. Because it serves two networks, the station is well-appointed--it has a grocery store, which made grabbing quick meals easy. Before we left for the first time we went in the grocery and grabbed some things. As I was about to check out I looked over and saw a bag of what appeared to be small croissants. The label said "Extra Fofos." I quickly went from amused to intrigued and ended up buying the extra fofos. I didn't have a bag, and was not offered one, and could only think of the Slovak word for bag, so I carried my purchases with me. I ate most of them on the train, but that bag of extra fofos I carried with me the rest of the day, out in the open, into the castle and the church and the restaurant. I felt pretty foolish.

From Lisbon the commuter train goes west. We only went a few stops, to the area known as Belém. I'd definitely been to Belém before, as it's where the Discoveries Monument and the Torre de Belém are. The Discoveries Monument is exactly what it sounds like, a quite large monument to Portuguese explorers and especially Prince Henry the Navigator, who encouraged exploration. In front of the monument is a world map laid into the pavement, with the dates of Portugal's voyages to different parts of the world. Usually you can go to the top of the monument and look down on it, but it was closed the day we were there. On the front, Prince Henry holds a ship and looks out over the Tejo. I've got respect for Prince Henry, probably in part because I think "the Navigator" is a pretty cool byname, but also because he told his people to go out and look at the world and find out new things, and I appreciate that.

A few minutes' walk west of the Padrão do Descobrimentos is the Torre de Belém. The tower was built as part of Lisbon's defenses. Like the monument, the tower is built of white stone. At high tide, water surrounds it, or at least it used to, based on old pictures and the water line on the base of the tower. Because it was a fortress, the tower today is mostly empty except for a few cannons and information on its history. It has really nice views, though, and is a pretty, interesting building. I didn't go all the way into the highest part, because the tower was a bit crowded, and I have problems enough with spiral staircases without having to share a narrow step with someone trying to go the opposite way.
Still in Belém but off the riverfront are the presidential palace and its museum, and the Jerónimos Monastery, part of which now houses an archaelogical museum. I took the extra fofos to look around the church there, and was righteously indignant at the tourists who were touching tombs and things. We also saw a VW parade.

On Sunday we went to church at St. Andrew's, which turned out to be a Church of Scotland congregation with a bona fide Scot as the pastor. The small congregation was full of old Brits, who were very amusing to talk to. One woman, Scottish herself, has an aunt who lives in my hometown. How weird is that? We had tea and small sandwiches, including the sardine one, and cake. It was most enjoyable. After church we went to the Tile Museum. The decorative tiles are called azulejos, and the museum explained how they were made, and that they were brought into Portugal from Spain, mainly the formerly-Muslim-controlled south. The tile museum is in a former convent, so it's like two museums in one, because you can see the chapter house and the incredibly overgilded chapel of the convent as well as the tiles that you actually came to see.Later that evening we went to the Lisbon city museum to try to learn something about history. The theme of the museum seems to be "We were great, then there was a big earthquake in 1755 and things sucked for a while, but then it got better and it's been great since then." It was not terribly helpful or informative. I recommend you skip it. The castle has much better information, and is way, way cooler.

The next day we took the commuter line out to Cascais to visit the ocean. It was not the most ideal day to walk by the ocean, overcast and grey, but it was not raining, and I walked around in my sweatshirt comfortably all day. We walked from Cascais to Estoril and back, and saw a building called Forte da Cruz, which may or may not be where the Maltese ambassador to Portugal lives, but where I would definitely live. B took some Atlantic spray to the back. For some reason, the ocean in this part of Portugal (maybe in all parts, I don't know) is quite forceful. When waves hit cliffs or manmade structures they tend to throw up a lot of spray. It was really nice being by the ocean, even if it was tempestuous. And for dinner we ate at an Indian restaurant and had two kinds of paneer and it was so good.

On our last day in Lisbon we went up to the castle, because I can't not go to a castle or a cathedral. Apparently one of my New Year's resolutions should be to stop being such a huge, predictable dork and like something that's not medieval. But I'm in Europe, where they keep the medieval things! It would be harder to try to avoid the history than to embrace it and love it. So I will continue carrying on my usual way. We passed the Sé first, and went in there. The cathedral part was nice, though not especially remarkable; but toward the back there was a section that required an entrance fee. I paid the €2.50 without thinking twice, and went outside, where part of the cloister is being excavated. The oldest ruins are from Roman settlements, and continue through the Muslim period into the later Middle Ages. The cloister had a number of chapels, and bits of things that had been dug up were scattered around. It was very atmospheric and would have been quite peaceful but for the other tourists.

After we left the cathedral we carried on up the hill a ways to the castle. The Castelo São Jorge overlooks all of Lisbon, and can be seen from many points below. It displays a classic fortress profile, with crenellated walls and square towers. The museum there has a good overview of the history of Lisbon, from Roman times through the Middle Ages. The castle and the rest of the city were held by Muslims for a time during the 12th century, and in 1147 Christian forces under King Afonso Henriques besieged the castle and succeeded in taking it. Inside the castle you can look at the peacocks, whom I apparently chased around when I was younger, and climb the walls to the various towers. When I walked into one of the courtyards there I had a definite reaction of "Whoa. I've been here before," although I realized that I've been to many castles, and I could have been thinking of a different one. I've had a hard time deciding if I'd prefer to live in the Torre de Belém, Forte da Cruz, or Castelo São Jorge, and still haven't come up with my final choice.
On the Lisbon metro's green line there's a stop called Martim Moniz. We got off the train at this stop to take pictures of the art there. In this station there are little marble soldiers and crusaders on the walls, as well as some bishops and horses. Some of the soldiers appear to be peeking through the closing doors of a train. They're very cute, and, it turns out, rather morbid, because Martim Moniz was one of the heroes of the siege 0f 1147 who died by wedging himself in the door of the castle so the rest of King Afonso's army could get in.

For the record, Portugal has the coolest euros.

We took an overnight bus from Lisbon that was listed as arriving in Sevilla at 5:15 AM. 5:15, while early, seemed a manageable time. We were, therefore, a bit confounded when the bus backed in to the station in Sevilla about an hour early. The city buses weren't running, and clearly the hostel was not going to accept us, so we hung out in the bus station for a while. Sometime after 6 we got on a city bus and rode the route through once before I figured that the stop we needed to get off at didn't have its name on the side of the shelter, like all the others had. So we rode for a few more minutes before we got off and found our way to the hostel.

Back before the dawn of time, I lived about an hour and a half from Sevilla. Some of you might recognize the name better as the anglicized Seville, but I cringe every time I read or hear that. We didn't have very long, only a day, to see the city, but we hit the major sites. First we had some late breakfast of pastries, coffee, and hot chocolate before heading off to the cathedral. The catedral is one of the biggest in the world, and was built in part on the site of a former mosque. One of its main draws on the inside is the tomb of one Cristóbal Colón. Some people obviously claim that Columbus is not really in there, and that he's buried in the New World somewhere, but I choose to believe that he's really there, supported by the grateful kings of the Spanish kingdoms Castile, León, Navarre, and Aragon. And see, there's St. Christopher in the background, literally bearing Christ, just as Columbus thought he was bearing Christ to the New World.Part of the cathedral grounds is the courtyard of the orange trees, where I took a few moments to hug an orange tree.

The Alcázar was originally a Moorish palace, and is more or less right next to the cathedral. It is a great showcase of Andalucian Muslim architecture and decoration. In one section there's a nice manuscript, written in a beautiful chancery hand, and for some reason this manuscript is in a glass case that is itself behind a piece of plexiglass. In my haste to look at the manuscript, I totally failed to notice the first piece of plexiglass, and so succeeded in bouncing my forehead off of said plexiglass. I immediately looked around and said, "I can't believe I just did that!" To my relief, no guards came over and scolded me for trying to get too close to the history; but on the other hand, nobody asked if I was okay, either. Maybe the fact that I was laughing clued them in.

Next we went to the Plaza de Toros and took a brief tour of the bullring. Then we walked up to the Plaza de España. The sun had come out again by this time, and the plaza looked beautiful. It's arranged in a semicircle, and around the edge are little stalls representing different Spanish cities. Unfortunately about half of them were covered for renovation. Overall, though, it was like I remembered. As we walked around, I seemed to recall running with my brother through the covered walkway.

For dinner we found a place that had paella and fought with our shellfish. We emerged triumphant.

Our last stop before coming back to Slovakia was Milan. It turned out to be cheaper to fly from Sevilla to Milan and then Milan to Bratislava, so we did. We got to Milan in the afternoon on New Year's Eve, and, having found our "hostel" which was really a small hotel with a kind of scary elevator, we went out to get dinner from a grocery store. You should have seen all the cheese! It was wondrous. We got chips and water and cheese and salami and focaccia and salad and yogurt and champagne and chocolate, and retired to our room, where we, in the true style of my family, ate chips and watched TV. Shortly after 11 we wandered outside, trying to find somewhere where celebrations would be going down; we never found one central place, but at midnight drank champagne out of plastic cups and watched people shoot off fireworks in the streets.

On the first, more things were open than I'd expected. We went to the Duomo, a very large and pretty building of pink and gray marble. It's celebrating its 400th anniversary this year. B and I took turns waiting outside with our bags, and while I was inside, a Mass was finishing. While I walked around, they started to sing the tune Old Hundredth, which with words we call "Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow," and I started to cry a little, because it was like he was reminding me that no matter where I am, and no matter what language I'm speaking or not speaking or trying to speak, he's there, too, and he was there 400 years ago when they built this amazing building, and he'll be there when it falls down.

Then in the next square there were giant pink snails.
We walked around for a while after that, to La Scala, the famous opera house, and to the Castello Sforzesco, which I have the hardest time remembering how to spell and which wasn't that great. By that time, we couldn't be bothered to go in the museum, and really all it was was a glorified barracks. It had cool walls and towers, but was mostly boring.

We had panini for lunch, then began our trek back to the airport. This is the last picture I took on the trip, in a Milan metro station. Since you can't argue with a big sign, we did as it suggested.