Pays Basque!

The chateau tour was nice... We took a scenic route through some of the more famous growing regions and toured the cellars and production rooms. There was a lot of talk about having respect for the wines, and all the other superstition that's developed over centuries of wine-making. Interesting if not a tad wanky. I bought a 1995 bottle from Chateâu D'Agassac to drink over my couple of nights down here in Bayonne. I broke my bottle-opener trying to get the cork out and ended up just pushing the remains of the eroded cork inside... so I've been drinking wine from a plastic cup, with cork fragments floating throughout... However, it is lovely wine. All of the Irish pubs in Bordeaux were holding Australia Day celebrations on Saturday night. The Cock & Bull advertised 'Rolf Harris! Dame Edna! Kangaroos! Come and get pissed like a true Australian!' I had an early night though. Given that I didn't make it to the Spanish Basque country (Bilbao, San Sebastian, Pamplona...) I headed south from Bordeaux yesterday in order to visit the French Basque country. Bayonne is a very very quiet little town. I assume it's much busier in Summer because they seem to have a lot of hotels. But at the moment it's populated by eccentric locals; ageing hippies, gypsies, and a lot of apparently homeless people drinking vodka and beer under bus shelters. It feels like the French equivalent of the NSW North Coast. There's not much indicating the ancient Basque culture. I tried to find the local Basque Museum but all signs seems to point in different directions. Nevertheless, there's plenty of those charming old French people who actually do wear berrets and carry baguettes under their arms. In the afternoon I went to Bayonne's little art museum. It feels like a smalltown public library except that it's got rooms filled with Rubens, Goyas, and Roman antiquities. They seem to have had the bright idea of letting visitors leave their comments on post-it notes... and I don't think the museum administration regulates the English-language comments much - there was a great big painting of two female nudes in a woodland setting, and someone had stuck up a note beside it saying 'lick my tits'. Brilliant. There's a pretty strong North African influence in this part of France, so I went to a Moroccan restaurant last night. I'm getting used to this dining-alone business. I like to think that I look like a food critic preparing a restaurant review... This morning I caught the bus to the nearby beach town of Biarritz, which of course, being Winter, was all but deserted. Apparently Napoleon used to visit on his Summer holidays, and it's supposed to have the best surfing in France. Today it was shrouded in fog, most of the shops were closed, the sea was choppy and there were only a few brave surfers out there... It's an impressive coastline though. I'm considering heading to Paris tomorrow but I may stop somewhere along the way.

Bordeaux

Wow, I had no idea France had shunned the Qwerty keyboard format - this will make typing very slow... I got up before sunrise on Thursday to travel to Toulouse. The unheated minibus wound its way down the snowy side of the Pyrenees as the sun came up behind the mountains. It was three hours to Toulouse. I walked around a bit, bought a croissant, and then hopped a two-hour train to Bordeaux. I guess I was expecting some quaint little village surrounded by vineyards but Bordeaux is a fully fledged city, just big enough to be depressing in the way that all cities can be... As I was walking into town from the train station a huge protest march was forming - a union thing as far as I could tell, but there were tens of thousands of people streaming down one of the main streets flying flags and singing protest songs through loud-halers, sounding romantic as anything does in French... That night I went to a restaurant and had veal escalope with a couple of glasses of Bordeaux blanc. The veal was like a big succulent pound of white baby's flesh. Mmm. Yesterday I traversed the city on foot. Everyone has been lovely. The women all flirt politely, and everyone's willing to laugh off my complete ignorance of the French language... The comic shops are huge and it's not just spotty fat guys with ponytails who shop in them. Last night I went to see the circus that's currently visiting. I had a second class seat and I sat where the usher told me to. Unfortunately it was right in front of two very excited little kids, such that I think I must have completely blocked their view of the entire circus (I had to laugh later - it was like something out of a French candid camera show). Their dad asked me to move very politely and I was happy to oblige (oui oui!)... so I sat next to some nice British girls toward the back of the tent, near the orchestra pit (yes, French circuses have orchestra pits). The circus was incredible. Their clowns were classic French mime artists. Tigers. Zebras. Camels. Elephants. A troupe of Chinese acrobats. This afternoon I'm going on an organised tour of some local chateaus, so I'm likely to be spending Australia Day quaffing with a bunch of Grey Nomads I guess.

destino Figueres

I´m writing from Andorra, the tiny nation in the Pyrenees Alps wedged between Spain and France. There´s not a lot to do in Andorra if you´re not into shopping or walking around in ski-gear looking rich... so I´m killing the few hours between what I consider dinnertime and what the Spanish consider dinnertime (restaurants don´t even open until after 8pm). Yeah, officially Andorra is an independent principality but it feels like another Catalonian city - albeit in a vastly different setting. Yesterday I finally made it to Figueres and the marvelous Dalí Theatre-Museum. Basically, in the early ´70s Dalí converted the town´s old theatre into one immersive surrealist artwork in homage to himself and to the artists that he admired (but mostly to himself). Signs point the way from the train station, but it´s hard to miss the enormous peach-coloured building crowned with eggs and decorated all over with loaves of bread. Inside, some of his most recognisable paintings are hung in small rooms amongst installation works (eg, a gold-painted chimp skeleton with a woman´s face in its belly, a nude bust dotted with ants and a limp baguette draped over its head, and an entire room is dedicated to a spatial reproduction of the Mae West painting). Some of it seemed a bit outdated, particularly his later experiments with optical illusions and computer imaging (such as it was in the ´70s), but it was such an exciting place... There were two other Dalí museums that I had planned to see, but they would have been separate bus trips to his house at Portlligat and to his castle at Pubol... Too much Dalí would be a bad thing and I didn´t feel like playing too much into the personality cult anyway. This morning in Girona I got up early, caught the train back to Barcelona, and then had a 3-hour bus ride up into the mountains. Eventually out of Spain and into Andorra. The town is warm and sunny but surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It´s got a lethargic pace, not as busy as I´d expected given that we should be in the middle of the skiing season. The waiter at the cafe I was in this afternoon had nothing better to do than to lazily, repeatedly, chase the ducks away from the empty seating area. Andorra is not an easy place to get in or out of. There´s two mini-buses daily that head to France, and I had to choose the earlier option of 5.30am for tomorrow morning. It´s 3 hours to Toulouse, and from there I´ll be heading west to Bordeaux for a few days. I think. Adios.

Catalunya continued

Anyway, as I was saying... Girona is about 90 minutes by train from Barcelona. I got here yesterday and was lucky enough to get a bed in a quirky little pensió that seems to be very popular. They have a private zen garden and keep a lot of dogs: there are dogs in the room above me and they run around an awful lot. Girona itself is so damn lovely it brings tears to my eyes. It was a medieval town built around a river, but these days the river has slowed to a trickle, so all the bridges are crossing either barren ground or water that is only a foot or so deep. Nevertheless, they are very pretty bridges and the old part of town still looks as if it´s out of the dark ages. Many of the streets are too narrow for cars so there´s lots of scooters and bikes. Catalunya (Catalonia) is surprisingly distinct from Madrid and Zaragosa. The language is like a shade between Spanish and French, and everything is written first in Catalan, then Spanish, then English (this part of Spain is traditionally popular with English tourists). This morning I chose a random town from a map of the region and took a bus out to Palafrugell (pronounced Pala-froo-jay apparently). It was pretty nondescript. It looked on the map as if it was on the coast, but there was no water to be seen. Nevertheless it was nice to drive through the countryside - the vineyards and the old brick Spanish mansions. I had lunch at a cafe that was full of young people, was served by a guy with a dreadlocked mullet, and it was all very nice really... I try to smile as much as possible but I must sound like a pretty rude customer with my mangled Spanish. Tomorrow I take the train to Daliland, and maybe the next day I will leave Spain for Andorra. I´m undecided.

Catalunya; Barcelona, Girona, Palafrugell

I had some hassles in Zaragosa involving my credit card. It´s not working... and even a frantic international call to the Commonwealth Bank help centre was unable to resolve it. However, I´ve discovered that I can use my cash card to withdraw money so I´m leaving the problem unaddressed for now. Needless to say, I was in a shitty mood on the day I arrived in Barcelona. As a city it´s nowhere near as mad as Madrid (at least not during the day). It´s got a relaxed coastal vibe, and the coast is indeed beautiful. The Mediterranean Sea backs right up to the main street, and the temperature seems to hover at around 20 degrees. The puffy English tourists were loving it. I dragged my backpack around to five or so hostals before finding a vacancy in a filthy little place with greasy walls and a lingering cigarette smog. The cleaner was nice though - she called me Chico. The beds squeaked with every movement so that on my last night I was awoken by the couple next door having sex... On the first day I went to the Picasso Museum, a converted mansion that keeps mainly paintings from his formative years. Realist landscapes and portraits that he painted in his teens. There were also a few from his blue period, his rose period, and from the later years when he took cubism to its absolute limits... One room had nothing but reproductions (50 plus) of Valasquez´ famous Las Meninas - the figures becoming more and more distorted and unrecognisable in each painting. He had a sense of humour. At night I went to the Harlem Jazz Club, drank sickly sweet Spanish beer and saw a decent blues band. The place was so filled with smoke I had to rinse my eyes out before I could go to sleep. On the second day in Barcelona I caught the metro out to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi´s amazing temple. It´s been in construction since 1892 and is expected to be finished in 2020. As it is, it´s still very much a construction site - although there didn´t seem to be much work going on. I suppose that´s why it´s taken over 100 years to build. The design is generally described as organic or humanistic... It looks as if it´s just grown out of the ground. I spent the afternoon walking around the waterfront and the older parts of town... Barcelona is an ugly place at night. The crowd pulses down La Rambla. Drunk and stoned. The drug trade is very open... even though the local police dress like Black Panthers and seem to be pretty vigilante. I slept through the second night. Yesterday I caught the train from Barcelona to Girona. I´m being kicked out of this internet cafe... they close at dos.

en el camino a Zaragosa

I spent three nights in Madrid and now I´m in the northern city of Zaragosa for a night. I´d never heard of Zaragosa until a couple of days ago when I discovered it as a dot on the map between Madrid and Barcelona... but it´s got a long history stretching back to Roman days. Ceasar Augusta has left his name all over the place and there are plenty of ruins to be seen. It was ruled by Muslims for a few centuries, but nowadays the cathedral casts the whole town in a very Catholic shadow. Yesterday in Madrid I went back to Atocha to visit the Museo Del Reine Sofia, which exhibits much of Spain´s modern art collection. Picasso´s Guernica was surprisingly emotive... having been an expression of Picasso´s anger at the Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, which killed a lot of civilians, and which could probably have been classed as ¨terror bombing¨ - a war crime - but wasn´t (see Wikipedia). The Guernica painting is surrounded by countless other Picasso works including a number of original sketches for the mural. A class of primary-aged children were on an excursion to the museum and I wondered what they made of it all. There were a number of Dali paintings including La Gran Masturbador, as well as quite a few of his earlier more conservative works. Unfortunately I was almost disappointed by the Dali paintings - I guess they just weren´t as big or as flawless as I´d imagined them to be... (I´m still going to Daliland). From the museum I walked toward the botanical gardens and found a used book market. I bought some Spanish comics from the ´60s. I´d planned on seeing a flamenco show last night but found that I really didn´t like the idea of sitting alone in a restaurant for another night. So I did the rounds of the tapas bars instead. I had to make an early start this morning to get out of Madrid. The train to Zaragosa travels at over 250km/hour. The landscape was a dull brown except for the green of olive trees and the scarlet of some mystery bushes. The topography´s pretty impressive though - mountains, cliffs, and valleys on all sides. Every part of Zaragosa seems to be undergoing renovations at the moment. Even the enormous cathedral is half-steeped in scaffolding. I suppose it´s all in preparation for Expo Zaragosa 2008, which seems to be a pretty big deal here... The official mascot, Fluvi (which looks like a cross between E.T. and the thing from Lilo & Stitch), is pictured everywhere and official expo merchandise is available from every store. The main plaza is a huge open area that separates the cathedral from a tangle of narrow laneways called El Tubo (The Tube). I´ve been exploring the streets with my ¨touristic map¨ in hand. I´m going to buy some boots tonight. Everyone here has such great shoes...

Madrid, España

¡Hola! It´s been a hectic couple of days, but I find myself now in a 24-hour internet cafe in the 24-hour city of Madrid... struggling over a keyboard with all sorts of non-anglophonic characters on it. My final night in London was a bit anti-climactic again. I´d decided to go and see Lee ´Scratch´ Perry at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, but upon getting there I didn´t like the look of the crowd forming outside the venue and I was still fighting jetlag... so I caught the tube back to Oxford Circus and was asleep by 9pm. I woke up at 5 yesterday morning thinking that I should probably book my train to Edinburgh given that I was planning on leaving as soon as possible. However, I found that tickets were over 100 pounds - prohibitively expensive, like everything else in London. So I figured I should just fly to Madrid instead. One hour later I was on the train to Gatwick Airport, and three hours later I was touching down in Madrid. It took three trains to get from the airport into the centre of town, and the Metro system is extremely crowded, hot, and noisy, with each interchange involving about half a dozen flights of stairs and a long walk. However, the ticket counter at the airport did have a big print of ´The Great Masturbator´ on its back wall, which was pretty cool. Emerging from the underground Sol Station into Puerta Del Sol (reportedly the heart and soul of Madrid) I was blown away by how foreign it all looked, and how true it was to my preconceptions of Spain. The vitality of the place is infectious. I´m staying in a self-contained room a block away from Puerta Del Sol for only 42€ per night, which is roughly what I was paying at the hostel in London. So I dropped by backpack there then spent a couple of hours walking the streets, stumbled upon the amazing Plaza Mayor. I had a siesta in the evening and went out to eat at 10pm, as the Madrileños do. I ordered a bocadillo panceta at Museo Del Jamon (Museum of Ham) and then stood at the bar eating my pancetta sandwich while the night buzzed on around me. This morning I went to a cafe, which in Madrid terms is indistinguishable from a bar or a restaurant. Their desayuno especial (special breakfast) comes with a glass of wine. I just had an omelette and espresso though, and then sat and smoked for a spell... Later this morning I caught the metro out to Atocha, where the art museums and the big gardens are, and local poor people line the sidewalks with blankets of pirated DVDs. I saw a guy chase another guy who had run off with his blanket and was dropping DVDs everywhere. Anyway, the Museo Del Prado was absolutely incredible. The queue for admission was about 200 metres long and seemed to be mostly Spanish people. There was a fine mist of rain and a busker was playing the most beautiful flamenco guitar and people waiting so graciously as the line inched forward. It´s inspiring to see people queue for an art gallery, and then pay for admission before being walked through metal detectors. The Prado only seems to house classical art - up to 1900 or so - but there´s still such an amazing range. The Bosch triptychs were terrifying, and it´s impossible to believe they were painted 500 years ago. I wasn´t expecting to find ´The Garden of Earthly Delights´ there. Similarly, it was great to get up close to some Brueghels in all their comic detail. There seemed to be rooms full of Rubens and Goya. My legs were aching before I´d seen half of the collection. Across the road from the gallery I had another bocadillo for lunch (I may be eating a lot of bocadillos in Spain), and drank Mahou, a Madrid beer, while the bartender talked at me enthusiastically. That´s something I´ve noticed here - they don´t accommodate much for English-speakers and any Spanish that you can manage is taken for granted. This is in comparison to Indonesia, where every effort made at Bahasa Indonesia is applauded like a baby´s first words. I guess I yearn that kind of reinforcement. Maybe I fit in too well here. I like to think that. I love Spain.

London

It was a long couple of flights that got me to London. During my two hours in San Francisco I bought a New Yorker magazine and a bag of peanutbutter m&ms... and the rest of America will have to wait until I get back there on the way home. The customs procedure at San Francisco airport was incredible. Everyone had to remove their shoes, belts and jackets, and we were herded through the metal detectors by officers who yelled like drill sergeants. I found the hostel in London easily enough but my bed wasn't ready yet so I went out to find some breakfast before crashing (having not slept for 40 hours or so). It was still early on Saturday morning so the streets were pretty bare but the weather was sunny and not unbearably cold. After coffee and a croissant I didn't feel like sleeping. And I'd already been charmed by the quaint shopfronts, the cobblestone streets and little winding alleyways. So I kept walking, through Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, down to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and across the bridge of the same name. The fog of tourists was pretty getting thick down there, all bumping into each other, taking photos of people in front of buildings. I followed the Thames along South Bank, past the London Eye (which smelled like Liquid Paper - smells are one of the unexpected joys of travel). I came to the Tate Modern and whizzed around the collection. Lots of Jackson Pollock and Picasso... and some grotesque Francis Bacons that caught my attention. After bangers at mash in a pub I must have gotten back to the hostel at around 4pm (I'm still without a timepiece), and slept until 3am. So I strolled up to Oxford Street, where the nighttime crowd was just dispersing via pedicab and bigredbus. I ate a foul beef cornish and sat up watching telly with a drunk lad from Cambridge who kept telling me how shit London is (he'd just had a fight with a bouncer). This morning I caught the train out to Camden where the market was just revving up. There were plenty of authentic British punks, and an amazing sprawl of pretty ordinary stalls vending cheap souvenirs and/or goth/punk/new-age gear. Still, a great atmosphere, and a world away from the Camden I know. From Camden I went by tube to Finchley Road, to see the Freud Museum. This is where Freud lived for the final year of his life, and I assume it's where he shot himself in the end (but this wasn't verified by any information offered in the museum). The original therapy couch was there, transported from his office in Vienna. His library of books. And his collection of archaeological artefacts - lots of pocket-sized totems and such that would have been easy to steal, I assume. The halls were lined with various portraits of the man. Two were drawn by Salvador Dali when they met in 1938. What was striking about the museum is that it's a very unassuming little house... and the home movies narrated by his daughter Anna Freud (with lots of coughing, weezing, and general old-lady sounds) show him as a frail but playful old man. I've done a bit more walking today, had a couple of pints in various places, but London is so expensive, I'm going to have to be careful. I was planning on staying an extra night in order to see a play at the Lyric Hammersmith tomorrow - an aerial theatre production of Kafka's <I>Metamorphosis</I> with (get this) an original score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. But, apparently it's sold out. So I guess I'll be training northward to Edinburgh tomorrow morning. My Spanish roommate may be expecting a beer with me tonight. I slept through our date last night, and he used my towel (passive aggression?). I have the feeling that I'm not going to be as prolific with my blogging as I was in Indonesia. It's a combination of internet access being less affordable, and my days being more full. We'll see. Stay tuned.