Lost La Luncha in La Muncha

*Camera pans across old buildings in present day Madrid*
*Low deep Voiceover speaks* : "La Mavida. This is the old town of Madrid. During daylight hours an empty, filthy place... but during the night when the denizens come out to play, a place of colour, music, noise and youth that does not sleep"
"Meanwhile high above the street life in a small flat ordinary tourist Martin Olds is bent double in the bathroom revisiting the meals of the last 12 hours in the same colourful, violent and noisy way while his wife sits on the couch biting the cushion to stop herself laughing out loud..."

What happened you might ask....what indeed. For that we must turn the clock back to Barcelona.

We arrived in Barcelona and checked into our flat - grateful to finally unwind from the Bus and get to our accommodation...
What can I say about Barcelona? Well it's a big Spanish city. It has an unfinished church building that looks like it has been designed by Dr Seuss (which is by no means a bad thing!). They are football crazy like the rest of Spain - in fact there was a game on in the city between Barca (as the fans call it) and Paris - St Germaine. You might remember that I watched the first leg in France well we found a well heeled joint and sat down to watch the return leg - great fun and won by Barcelona so the locals were all happy.
The have plenty of shopping and for some reason I decided this suited me and I ended up buying one or two items... luckily my darling sister was able to take a few of my clothes home with her so I could pack everything in.
We had a great night in Barcelona eating and saying farewell to the others... because the next morning we were on our separate ways - Helen and Laura to Dubai and home and Adelle and I were off to Madrid.
We flew into Madrid and off to the old town for our flat which the lady told us was an "upgrade". It was in the sense that it was 1 bedroom rather than a studio. However, the location didn't seem like an upgrade at in the early hours of the morning when what sounds like a Mariachi band is playing downstairs along with bullfight and hordes of people shouting Olé.. at one point about 3 on Saturday morning I was woken up by people singing Happy Birthday in Spanish - the whole block must have joined in. It looks exaggerated now when I write this... but it was all true! (why the ! added to the end of the sentence? Because anything said loudly and forcefully must be true! just ask the remains of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin - Joseph "Tailgunner" McCarthy.. )
Into this maelstrom of light, colour and noise steps one Martin and Adelle Olds from Sydney, Australia. We spent the rest of the day visiting markets, eating and generally having a nosey around the place, getting our sights set on a few things.... and then it happened.
12:00 Friday night - Think I might have a problem
1:00 Saturday morning - Realised there actually was a problem.
1:05 - Problem reveals itself.
The next 24 hours was riding the great Gastro roller-coaster with it's valley's of intense nausea followed by the peaks of relief.
We'll draw a curtain delicately over the event but suffice to say I didn't see a whole lot of Madrid, I could move hardly on the Sunday and I still don't have any appetite.
Monday it was off to Toledo by train - very efficient and I spent an excellent few hours in the Army Museum. The museum is situated in the old Alcatraz - which has been the scene of many a drama over the years including an intense battle during the Spanish Civil war. Also visited by that horrible weasel Heinrich Himmler as guest of Franco - thankfully the whole place has had a serious makeover since then.
There is too much to relate about the museum here - it was fantastic. However, more interesting was what it didn't say. Virtually nothing about Franco anywhere. He is listed as a player in the Civil War of course but any other reference seem a little offhand and cursory for someone who occupied such a central part of Spain for so long. A little sheepish are we Army? and so you should be...
They make a favourable reference about his successor who stressed the need for the military to support the new Constitutional Monarchy and civilian control, which was nice. I can't remember his name...

Next stop - Santander, Bilbao, San Sebastián. I might even be catching up.

It's better to love and Toulouse than never love at all...

Sick puns aside, I have to apologise for the state of this blog - it's going downhill rapidly as I'm pushed for time to edit it properly. Anyway as I keep explaining to people - I'm not great with French or Spanish since I'm still struggling with English.
I started writing this post in Barcelona and finished writing it in San Sebastián - so I'm going to cut the section on Languedoc a bit short - I've run out of time.

This is the story of our time in the Languedoc region. Languedoc - how can I praise thee? It's a beautiful place and it was enhanced because we were seeing it with a couple of good friends from Sydney - Cathy and Alain. We visited Cordes sur Cile a smaller medieval town and Carcassonne.
I've been interested in this area of France for a few years now - ever since reading about the Albigensian crusade in the 13th Century. Today we know it as the Cathar faith - although the people in that day were unlikely to call themselves that. They developed some heretical beliefs and then apparently murdered a papal legate - which was not on - so Innocent III declared a crusade on them and basically ordered the French king and his nobles to sort it out. As the local nobles were inclined to let the locals worship how they wish (which was politically pretty smart) they ended up getting the chop as well. It also had the useful outcome, for the French anyway of aligning the region towards themselves and lessening the Aragonese influence. Unfortunately, the result was a lot of people killed and harassed firstly by the crusade and then by the inquisition which descended into the the region with homicidal intent. According the René Weis (in his great book - The Yellow Cross) the last of Cathars were winkled out in 1329 somewhere in the mists of the Pyrenees.
So much for the potted history.
Against this sweeping backdrop of drama and bloodshed we decided to visit the (restored) City of Carcassonne. I've been choking to visit the place ever since I read about it a few years ago. The photos below will describe far better than I can - but it was an awesome place to see and I'm very thankful that the French saw fit to restore the place under Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Carcassonne was the super weapon of it's day - when it was at it's pinnacle of power sitting astride the then Aragon and French border, people just avoided it. Early example of the MAD principle..
Tuesday we headed south to Perpignan to catch the train to Barcelona. Well that was the intention. Unfortunately French rail workers had other ideas - they were going on strike. So we sat around glumly and eventually a bus came which took us across the Pyrenees and into Espanol.

Next stop - Spain.

Where are we now?

Well the last week and a bit has been crazy, before I can turn around twice I realise that my blog is completely out of date. I'm writing this from Barcelona. To catch up I'm going to do one blog outlining what had happened so far and then a couple of blogs on some specific areas.
The rest of the time in Prague was spent catching up with friends and shopping. We visited Plzen on Sunday morning and had lunch with our friends there which was fantastic. On the Monday I took a fairly lengthly walk through the park and up to the Strahov Monastery. I didn't go into the Monastery but I stood looking over the park watching the snow flakes tumbling down. Enchantment!
Tuesday we flew to Marseille and we were all ready for some warmer weather and colour after the bleakness of Prague.
The little place we were staying was called Collobieres. It was about a provincial french as you can find. A village on a river a bit run down in the heel but coming back because of tourists and city folk who want a place in the country. Our place was owned by a lady from Ireland..
Barcelona was playing Paris St Germaine so after basically a beautiful home cooked meal in the local hotel, I stayed with the locals gents at the bar and watched the football. Couldn't understand a word they said to me but it was a great experience.
The next day we headed to a town called Hyéres. The old quarter was typically beautiful area. They had some gardens at the top of the old town looking over the area which were excellent, it was great to see some colour after all the drabness. Some young people thought so too, locals without much to do sitting listening to music, including a wonderful piece from a Korean maestro... Gangnam Style.
I took a long walk along the Réal Collobrier to see the countryside when we got home and then we settled down to a meal from a small local restaurant - Hamburgers and Pomme frites. I have no idea how we ended up with that but apparently they opened the grill for us as a favour so we didn't argue. It was pretty good actually.
The next day saw us visit Grimaud to see the ruins of an old castle, we then visited Cogolin for lunch. There was what turned out to be an Algerian restaurant which advertised a chicken curry - sadly, it was like no chicken curry I have ever had before although what we DID get wasn't too bad. It had been threatening to rain all day and it absolutely bucketed down after lunch so I walked in circles while the girls scurried from shop to shop, finally I took refuge in a laundromat and hooked into someone's open WIFI (thank you unknown benefactor) until it was time to go home.
The next day it was time to travel to Toulouse which we did via Montpellier for lunch. We were so hungry and fed up at the same time (isn't English a great language) that we settled for the first thing we saw - thank you McDonalds. At least they had toilets which is a real lottery in some of these french towns. After lunch the girls headed for the shops while I wandered around looking at the mediocre fusion of old and new architecture, oh I guess that's a bit crusty - it's not bad.
I say wander, but lets be clear - I never wander I always stride reasonably purposefully around where possible try to look as remote from being a tourist as possible - you have less chance of being bothered by beggars, grifters, snake oil salesmen and the rest of the motley collection of chancers that like to prey on tourists. I've only had one persistent person trying to sketch me and I gave him my eyebrows and my sternest Gaullist "non" to send him on his way. Indifference is a most powerful weapon.
Finally we were on our way to Toulouse where we checked into a lovely flat right on the river. The process of checking in took forever, the old couple who owned it proceeded to point out all the features as though we had never used cutlery before. It might have been OK if we understood what they were saying. I tuned out although when I saw the lady point to the crockery and say "le mug, le bowl". Luckily Helen was there to provide the quality attentive feedback... although she told me later she only understood 25% of what they said - the mind boggles.
We had an invitation to tea that night at our friends (who we had come to see) from Sydney and so it was very pleasant to spend the next few days with them. More about that next.

Kafka and the Golem

Dear Reader, as you will have guessed by now this diary (or blog if you will) is chiefly written for my own amusement. It's not a travelogue, I don't have the talent or the patience for such a device. My best hope of describing it is a series of highlights according to my mind. A bit like gold panning... after everything has been sluiced around the nuggets of gold are what I focus on writing. With that... let's talk about Prague.
The interesting thing about Prague is that a couple of things that I had some faint knowledge about suddenly came into focus. The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a book I had heard about - I suppose it was quoted in one of the history books I had read. This is the case with Kafka and Golem. This is where they came into focus..
It all began when Helen suggested that we go on a tour of the Jewish Quarter in old Prague. I immediately signed up.
We had to meet a bloke with an orange umbrella in the old town square near the astronomical clock. So along with a Indian girl from London and Jewish surgeon from Liverpool (with his wife) we set off.
The first stop was outside a plain looking shop with a funny looking clay robot painted on it's outside. It is celebrating the Golem.
I first heard about this Golem when I was 10 or 12 - I read about it in... a Phantom comic. A very rounded Australian education..a famous rabbi in the Jewish ghetto creates a golem to server the people and protect them. He inserts a piece of paper into it's head to start it up and shut it down for the Sabbath. One day he forgets to remove the paper and it goes mad during the Sabbath and runs around destroying things. The rabbi who is in the middle of reciting a psalm in the synagogue, runs out and inserts a piece of paper to shut the golem down. He then returns and restarts the psalm he was reciting - so up till this day they recite that particular psalm twice. Technology - you just can't trust it.
The communists made a film about it and in the end of the golem gets turned into a bread oven making bread for everyone - to each according to his needs comrade...
From there we headed to a large 2 story house... where Kafka was born.
I won't even try to describe Kafka - he defies quick explanation, except to say he was a writer that died when he was 40 of TB after writing a bunch of depressing stories, which may or may not have been dreams or just elaborate jokes. Now-a-days when we caught up in a complex, bizarre and hard to understand situation and we refer to being in a Kafkaesque situation. His writing is enormously influential. I'm half attracted and half repelled.
Being lawyer in the Austro-Hungarian empire apparently was the prefect environment to write these "dreams", I don't know what he saw in his day, but his writings certainly predicted the logical conclusion of the mad schemes of Stalin and Hitler. Which is a morbid to segway to discuss the next couple of locations.
We were to visit 4 synagogues - two being being inactive and essentially a museum to the jewish ghetto. Although jewish merchants have been visiting Prague since the 10 century, from about 1200 to 1750 they were required to live in a ghetto. If they left for business they had to wear a funny yellow hat and a yellow star and christians where not supposed to visit. If that wasn't bad enough they were subjected to bouts of murderous mob violence when the so called christians decided that the bad things happening to them in life (like the plague) was because they tolerated jews in their midst. Before we get on our high horse about the ghetto - there were none in England because the kings periodically kicked all the Jews out to curry favour with the religious establishment and... when they ended up owing the jews a whole lot of money. It took the Commonwealth under Cromwell to grant them real freedom. But I digress.
The ghetto came to an end in the mid 18th century because of enlightenment ideals and so they were free to live anywhere. The ghetto was then levelled and reconstructed based on the boulevards of Paris. So apart from the old Jewish cemetery there is not much to see anymore.
Incredibly, Kafka looked backed and missed the ghetto, maybe he felt that petite bougouise life had corrupted his people.
Accepting the regular bouts of prejudice was certainly a bad strategy when the Nazi's came about and vividly illustrated by the next synagogue which is just a monument to about 88000 Jewish people slaughtered out of Czech. Their names are all written on the walls, firstly by Village and then by Last name and then First name. You walk around and basically the walls are just covered names. It's impossible to describe and I couldn't take photos. More touching was a room upstairs with drawings done by children. Drawings done while they were in camp waiting for for their final destination. A little plaque gave their name, birth and death. Some survived, but most had a death date of 1944. It's impossible to describe the pathos of seeing drawings like you would see in any school halls knowing that they had a few months left to live.
The rest of the tour seems banal in comparison. We visited an old jewish cemetery and another synagogue in the spanish moorish style and we were done.
I always end these sorts of things feeling slightly depressed. So I went and had bought some shoes. The guilt for living assuaged in a fit of materialism.
There where little chance for photos on the tour - so I'm including a monument to the World War II

Prague spring... 45 years late.

The flight to Prague was uneventful, we landed in the early evening to cold and a bit of snow lying around the ground. The people who we rented our apartment sent a man with a van to collect us. Which was great - nothing is worse than arriving in a new place in the dark (particularly where the language used is not keen on vowels) and then trying a to find transport.
We elected to stay in what they call the Old Town part of Prague. It's basically the same architecture as contemporary european but squashed tighter together and older cobblestones. The monolithic chic favoured by the communist rulers thankfully absent. Plenty of those buildings were available in the form of apartments as you drive from the airport - no wonder alcoholism became a national sport.
As with Paris the entrance to the apartment was just a door in the wall straight on the street - a street thronging with tourists to boot. The door looked ancient but with a card reader to get in, 1890's meets Motorola.
Two floors up, a old apartment converted with all the modern conveniences. The ceiling must be at least 15 foot high but warm and cozy. Radiators for the win.
We grabbed something to eat locally, cheap and cheerful. The Czechs haven't adopted the Euro which makes it very cheap to visit, even in the expensive tourist areas - but not so cheap to live. They all head across to Germany to buy their electronic equipment apparently.
The next day I headed up the hill to the Prague castle or Prazsky hrad as it's known in Czech. This joint has a mixed history - people who have resided there include the Kings of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperors, Presidents of Czechoslovakia and now Czech Republic... and the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia - that dark prince of the SS - Reinhard Heydrich.
It sits on the hill overlooking Prague and the river Vltava and it's pretty much what you expect from an ancient castle in the middle of Europe. Apparently the largest castle of it's age in the world.
I wandered around poking my noses into different areas, I would have liked to get into the royal gardens but they are closed until the 1st of April it seems..(although that could be just a joke) so I had to content myself with looking over parapets and taking photos of innocuous doors and stone work to see how many other tourists would rush over to take a picture of something that simply shouldn't be missed.
At regularly intervals a group of 3 soldiers all dressed in blue and warm hats would march down to the entrance of the castle and back again up the hill - they looked pretty bored. There were so many tourists that they had to send another soldier in front to clear the way. People seemed to expect the soldiers to just move around them. Fascists!
It was getting quite grey and cold so I wandered back to the apartment and read up on the Unbearable Lightness of Being, a novel about the Prague Spring (decided against actually reading the novel though - history is interesting enough without adding the existential layer) while I waited further instructions about where we were going to have tea.
As it was Helen's birthday we decided to go to a flash place - right on the river, the food and atmosphere was excellent equal to many top tier places in Sydney. The big difference was price - we probably paid a third of what you'd expect to pay for a similar meal near Circular Quay or Darling Harbour. We walked back to the apartment feeling pleased with ourselves and dodging people trying to entice us into dodgy looking nightclubs. They have this strange habit of putting a huge TV screen in the window showing people dancing and drinking inside... as if to convince us that real nightclub things are going on inside. It could be pre-recorded for all I know.
Tomorrow : Kafka and Golem (no..not the Tolkien kind).
Homework : The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw pact and the "normalisation" period after Prague Spring undermined the goals of international communism. Discuss.

We'll always have Paris.

In which Martin visits the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and we learn some surprising things about shopping in Paris.

Monday was the day for visiting the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. So in the morning we headed off to the Louvre on the Metro. The metro is great, different to the London Underground (which is also fantastic). London metro everyone maintains a slightly detached air even while squashed nose to nose. The Parisian tolerate all sorts of ruckus, people playing instruments, talking loudly, watching noisy TV shows on their mobile device. One bloke was even playing a mobile game with volume turned up to ear splitting levels - no one seemed to mind. They basically treated the metro as an extension of the street. Probably because no journey is that long - you're never more than 30 mins away from anywhere.
We arrived at the Louvre...to see tourists and school kids stretched from one end to the other. Too many! I know it's ironic me saying that.. me being a school kid, but it really detracts from the experience when you're trying to look at something and next minute a chic woman with an umbrella in the air goes marching by leading a bunch of sheep nodding and photographing everything.
The first thing we did was go and see the Mona Lisa. It looked like... the Mona Lisa. Surely the most over produced picture in the history of mankind. It's over 500 years old and apart from 2 years when some Italian "patriot" nicked off with it.. it's been residing at the Louvre since 1797, so it's got significant history and basically stands of the symbol of the arts but frankly to me it just looks like some woman who's left her hat on for too long.
You need weeks to see a place like the Louvre, so I headed to the medieval section and the "statues" before finishing up with the Napoleon III apartments. All very interesting although I have to say the apartments were completely over the top. Rich, baroque style where more is apparently more. Thank goodness the empire came to the end before they ran out of gold leaf.
The Eiffel Tower on the other hand was the soul of simplicity, engineered beauty with this delicate quality even up close. Although I was surprised to find that it was a brown rather than the grey steel colour of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There was only one lift going up, so we waited quite a while to get going... but it was worth it. They view of Paris was excellent and it's worth while going just to see the pictures of the different noters who have been up there.
It's the tallest structure in Paris and it shall remain so because they refuse to allow anything larger.
The next morning it was off to the Notre Dame. Which looks as you would expect..... like a large Cathedral. There were hordes of tourists and school kids around and since I had no desire to pay to enter, I took some ugly photos of the Charles the Great statue (or Charlemagne if you prefer) and left. I didn't see anyone swinging from gargoyle to gargoyle.
The rest of time in Paris was spent shopping, eating and catching up on correspondence. Nothing much to relate except for morning tea at Galleries Lafayette the Special of the Day was... champagne and caviare for a cool 32 euro. At least 2 lots of people ordered it the half hour we were there.. one of them looked like russian mafia.... those merry band of thugs have certainly spoiled the black turtle neck as a "look".
With Adelle's guidance I purchased a couple of items.... at 40% off which made the prices somewhat less eye watering.
Next stop : Prague.
Points if you can name the movie where the heading came from. (Googling is cheating)

Paris - a city set on a river...

When I sit at the keyboard and try to think how I will describe Paris I feel like an pygmy treading where giants have gone before. It would be easier to list who hasn't had a crack at describing the place. Anyway I like Hemmingway's description - a movable feast. Of course when he and une génération perdu were knocking around the place it was somewhat different. Shall we say that the tart looks different but the flavour remains the same?
I certainly enjoyed myself. Paris has a certain vulgar charm.
Firstly, let me say that Parisians are very kind and a tolerant lot to tourists. They assume of course that we are English. When we got a chance we explained we were Je sui Australian or New Zealand. Any reputation for surliness is undeserved, although to be fair we didn't stray too much off the tourist areas - the merchants are not stupid.
We arrived and checked into our apartment which was in Montmartre, which is the area where all the "colour" is. Sort of a Surrey Hills, or what Surrey Hills would like to be . The apartment was very modern, large and with four of us a great price.
The next morning we walked up the hill to Sacre-Coeur. An imposing basilica that sits on the hill in Montmartre. I suffered from some de-ja-vu walking up to it, then I realised I had visited it already -in a computer game called The Saboteur. I started babbling this to Helen, who immediately crossed the road and pretended to be interested in the view.
Anyway, we removed our caps and walked through before heading up further up the hill into the clutches of people wanting us to sign papers, have our picture drawn, buy this and that piece of tourist tat. The girls loved it... I mooched back down the hill and sat in a park. Where I watched black au pair's letting their charges dig up the flowers and generally run riot while they talked on their mobiles. It was too cold to stay long otherwise I could have sat reading and watching the locals for longer.
After managing to resist buying anything except a tasty baguette with ham and cheese we headed back home. I was sorely to tempted to buy a Dali T-Shirt saying "I don't do drugs, I am drugs" but the writing on it was too plain..
The next morning was Sunday, so we went off to meet with some of our folk in the suburbs. It was champion meeting them and it was very uplifting to share an hour with them. They went to a great effort to help with translating.
After some lunch we headed into central Paris, only to be greeted by protestors. The gendarmerie had blocked of the Arc de Triomphe. It was a real family event - people rushing up and down with flags, singing songs and chanting. The gendarmerie linked hands and chatted with the protestors. Sirens, flares, chanting, bullhorns, buses - basically a good day out was had by all. Apparently they were protesting about same-sex marriage and adoption. Since they already have civil union in France and same sex couples can adopt children - I doubt anyone was taking much notice.
The girls went shopping. I froze in the cold and took footage hoping for an incident that I could post on YouTube to world wide acclaim. Sadly everyone behaved themselves.
Tomorrow - art and engineering.