Gracias. And adios.

NOTE:  It’s been 8 days since I wrote the entry below.  I don’t know why I haven’t posted it yet.   Maybe the end of the blog signals the end of my adventure.  And I don’t like saying goodbye.  But it’s time.

* * *

Our departure from Barcelona was not without drama.  One last “Clasico” last night as Barca played Real Madrid in Bernabeu Stadium; a lackluster start by Barca that ended with a 2-2 tie—a fine result given that they will play in Camp Nou on Wednesday.  We’ll be watching from our living room in Brooklyn.  I went to bed just after Villa’s magnificent goal after an assist by Messi, knowing that today would be a long day, and I never sleep on airplanes.

We ordered a taxi for 6 am, and set our alarm clock for 5.  Our duffel bags were at the door and ready to go, piled up like so many sleeping giants.  We started to load the luggage into the elevator at about 10 minutes before 6—much more organized and calm than usual, for us.  Alec had turned from the elevator into the apartment to grab another bag when the elevator doors started to close.  He called for me to hold them open and I lunged for the door.  The back of my pants caught on the latch and I heard the ripping sound before I could stop.  Neither did I get to the elevator in time.

The doors closed, so I pressed the button to get them to open again.  They did not.  We could see the elevator from the side of the shaft, and it was not moving.  Alec raced down the 5 flights to the lobby to see if he could get it to descend, but it did not.  The elevator was stuck, with three pieces of our luggage inside.  The taxi arrived.  I woke up Laura to see whether the building had a super living there; no luck.  I went down to explain what was going on to the taxi driver, who volunteered to call the fire department.  By that time Laura had woken John, who was helping Alec bring the rest of our bags down. We figured we would just go to the airport and have them send the imprisoned bags later.

And then, miraculously, the elevator started to move.  It went down to the ground floor, and the doors opened.  We quickly removed our bags, but I did not get back in that elevator.  We had had the kids sleep half-dressed, so they were still groggy as we walked down the stairs together.  Milo rubbed his eyes, took my hand and said, “Mama, I’m kind of excited about going to New York, but also kind of sad about leaving Barcelona.”  “I know exactly how you feel, Milo,” I replied.  Exactly.

Everything else went smoothly—our flight to Geneva left and arrived on time, and we boarded our flight to JFK without a hitch.  The kids think we are in first class because they have their own personal video screens, and there is an ample supply of kids’ videos.  We land in New York this afternoon.  Alec’s brother, Nick, who drove us to the airport 13 months ago, will pick us up and bring us home.

As we fly over the Atlantic, increasing our distance from Barcelona and shortening the space between ourselves and New York, it seems right to end this blog.  I didn’t plan to write a blog—it was the answer to the problem of how to keep in touch with family and friends when so much was happening.  I sat down in the office one day during that first couple of weeks, surrounded by boxes, and thought—“Maybe I should start a blog—it can’t be that hard.”  A few clicks later and the blog was created, and I was on my way to writing my first post.

It didn’t take me long to realize that what I had initiated for other people fulfilled me as well.  I hadn’t written much besides emails and memos for the two years prior to our departure for Spain, and writing the blog made me remember how much I liked writing, and not just academic writing.  I started carrying a camera to capture the “photo of the day.”  And I paid a different kind of attention to my surroundings and my experiences because I wanted to be able to describe it all later.

Sitting out on John and Laura’s terrace the other night, Laura asked me what was the most important thing I had gotten out of this year in Barcelona.  I thought for a moment—but not too long—and answered, “Slowing down.”  I am one of the most productive people I know, but the truth is, I am a whole lot happier when I have less on my plate.  Slowing down does not come naturally to me.  Having a year of sabbatical in which I had no deadlines, no set meetings, and no concrete deliverables certainly helped.  And being in Barcelona—where the culture is much more about working to live than living to work, as it is in New York—provided the perfect context for my adventure in doing less.  I never received an email from a work colleague after 7 pm.  No one I know in Barcelona takes work home on the weekend.  Preparing a meal and sharing it with friends is a valid way to spend a day or evening.

Although I rose to the challenge of doing less this past year, I know the real challenge is about to begin.  In one week, I have my first faculty meeting.  The world in which I live in New York does not support the kind of life I learned to live this past year—New York is a powerful drug for a task junkie like me.  I have no doubt that I will ramp it up some—it would be hard not to.  But I’ll do my best to hold onto the calm, and practice what I’ve learned until my new habits become more, well . . . habitual.

There’s much more, of course, but if you’ve read this blog at all regularly, you know it by now.  I hope you’ve enjoyed following my adventures.  It’s been fun to live them and satisfying to write about them.

When I first started learning Spanish, in Guatemala nearly 20 years ago, I would sit in a church courtyard with my teacher, a middle-aged woman who would chatter on and on while I tried to follow her stories and reply appropriately.  It seemed as though every tale was sprinkled liberally with her saying “Gracias, Adios.  Gracias, Adios.”  I couldn’t figure out why.  Finally, I asked the family I was staying with.  “Why is everyone always saying “Thank you, goodbye?” in the middle of their stories?”  The mother laughed and said, “It’s not “thank you, goodbye” they’re saying.  It’s “thank God!—Gracias a Dios.”  Too funny. I still think of that when I hear someone say it.  And so, dear reader, to you I say,  Gracias. And adios.

Back to BCN

42 days, 5 countries, 8 ferries, 5,237 kilometers and 15 beds later, we are back in Barcelona.  We arrived on Thursday evening after two long days of driving.  Our friends Jon and Laura, who recently moved here for their own magical year, were kind enough to let us stay with them in their fabulous Barri Gotic apartment.  Their kids, Django and Xara, get along terrifically with ours, so it’s a good match.  Perhaps foreseeing the chaos we would trail in our wake, they left on Friday morning for a couple of days in Mont Blanc.  By the time they get back this afternoon, all should be ship shape.

Since we arrived, Alec has sold our car, closed our bank accounts, shut down our cell phones, and retrieved the luggage we stored at the movers’.  I did mountains of laundry and took the kids to the zoo.  Fearing that we would be over the weight limit with our luggage and wanting to avoid the nasty airport charges, Alec bought a luggage scale.  It is Sunday morning and nearly every bag is very close to the 23 kilo maximum. 

I took a break from the packing yesterday afternoon to meet my friend Isabel for one last trip to the baths.  It was roasting outside so I wasn’t sure if sitting in a steam room would be the right call, but somehow it was perfect—we spent more time than usual in the icy cold plunge.  I could feel my body temperature dropping, dropping, dropping.  We went for a cava in the Born afterwards and said so long, for now.  She is a good friend.

Meanwhile, Alec took the kids to the Museum of the Mammoth, which is right in this neighborhood and where we have never been.  They loved it.  Then it was more packing and organizing until bedtime.

Today we are headed to the Mies van der Rohe pavilion on Montjuic—one of those places we never managed to get to in a whole year.  Then dinner with Laura and Jon, and then, hopefully, an early bedtime—we have to be at the airport by 7 am for the long flight home.

That's A Moray!

One more thing about Venice.  It’s one of those places where there are sufficient numbers of tourists to support a market for wandering accordion players.  They stand on the fringe of the seating area, play for awhile, and then come in and pass the hat.  They all seem to play from the same songbook—Volare, the theme from The Godfather.  C.C., little biologist that she is, got confused upon listening to the lyrics of That’s Amore.  “Mama, why is that man singing about moray eels, and what does it have to do with the moon hitting your eye like a pizza pie?”

Venice!

Arriving in Venice by boat is pretty fantastic.  We began to enter the canal sometime after 8 am on Sunday, and we all went up on deck to get our first glimpse of the city.  It is a beautiful approach—I felt as though I was floating into a Renaissance painting.

A young man from our hotel met us at Piazzale Roma and walked the kids and I to our room with our luggage, while Alec went to park the car.  He ended up getting lost, and nearly two hours had transpired by the time he got back.  Which meant it was time for lunch. 

I had read about a place to get really good pizza, and it seemed like a reasonably close walk, but then again we had never walked in Venice before.  It is incredibly easy to get turned around, so what should have been a 10 minute walk ended up being closer to a half hour.  It was super hot, and after many promises that we were “really close” which turned out not to be true, Milo finally sat down in the middle of the street and announced that he would not walk another step.  Fortunately there are no cars in Venice, so while his move was dramatic, it was not dangerous.  It turned out that he had staged his sit in a mere block from the restaurant, so we were able to cajole him from his position to a seat at the table.  A big glass of water and a few bites of bread revived him.

Aside from the absence of cars, which means much easier walking with the kids as well as no vehicular noise and pollution, the best thing about Venice is that the canals are everywhere.  And canals, as we quickly learned, are instant entertainment. On our very first walk to our hotel, C.C. and Milo had discovered crabs in the canal.  It is nearly impossible to go to a restaurant that is not right next to a canal, so our kids spent the majority of every meal emptying our bread basket and feeding the fish and crabs.  It worked for all of us.

We spent most of that first day in the general vicinity of our hotel—walking punctuated by stops for meals and gelato breaks.  Venice really is an enchanting city.  But it also feels more than a little unreal.  Virtually everyone on the street is carrying a map of the city, and you are much more likely to hear people speaking English, German, or French than Italian.  The population of Venice has been declining and is currently about 60,000—not very big at all.  And, 15 million tourists visit every year.  I don’t know what the tourist/resident ratio is for other cities, but I would be willing to bet that Venice’s is very high.  Walking around, you don’t see much of the stuff of real life—grocery stores and hardware stores, doctor’s offices and schools.

On Monday we decided to brave the crowds at Piazza San Marco.  I had read on one website about visiting Venice with kids that a Magic Treehouse book takes place there, so I had downloaded onto C.C.’s Kindle and read it to them.  I had hoped I had read my last Magic Treehouse book—they are beyond formulaic.  But it turned out to be a good move because the book features the clock tower and the Doge’s Palace—it may have been hard to get our kids to get excited about sightseeing without the motivation the story provided.

We started out at the basilica—we had gotten tickets online so were able to walk right in.  Well, almost right in.  I was stopped because my sleeveless dress failed to cover me up sufficiently.  It’s a nice dress, really, but I guess there just wasn’t enough of it. The lack of sleeves and the fact that it did not reach my knees obliged me to plunk down 2 euros for a wine colored disposable “cape” and a clashing rust colored square to tie around my waist, sarong style.  I am quite certain that these items were actually disposable tablecloths—a smaller one for my shoulders and a larger size for my legs.  Many of the other female visitors were wearing tank tops, but most were magically pulling scarves and shawls out of their bags to cover their shoulders.  Somehow I missed the memo.

The kids hung in pretty well—they were fascinated by the jewels in the Pall D’oro and the remains of one of the saints—anything involving bones goes over pretty big with them.  They are also quite convinced that the white-robed priest they saw crossing the sanctuary was the pope.  It all started on our first ferry to Croatia.  It seems that the pope rode one of the ferry line’s boats, and the boats all feature a photo of the pope disembarking and waving.  Ever since then the kids think they see popes everywhere, and I can’t seem to get them to understand that there is only one pope, and that he is unlikely to be walking around the streets of Greece, or wherever we happen to be.

As you walk around the basilica, for which entry is free, you have the option to plunk down 4 euros here and 4 euros there to see the chalice collection, the big horses on the roof, the gold and jewels.  Once Alec gets going, he wants to see it all.  Milo was super thirsty and I was starting to get hot in my tablecloth schmata—whatever it was made of, it was not breathable.  So we moved quickly through the mosaics and made our way out to the piazza again.

We got some lunch, after striking out at three places that we had targeted that were closed for August, and then hit the Palazzo Ducale.  It is impressive and overwhelming—sort of a Who’s Who of the Italian renaissance.  And hot.  It was a broiling hot day and we didn’t spend a minute of it in air conditioning.  The palazzo has an impressive arms and armor collection, and we spent more time there than any other part of the place because C.C. has recently become fascinated with knights.  I think it is a consequence of her interest in dragons which is somehow connected to her dinosaur obsession. In any case, we looked at a LOT of swords, crossbows, helmets, daggers, and shields.  The kids were also fascinated by the prisons.

Alec really wanted to go to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, but the kids needed some down time and, frankly, so did I.  After a very long and crowded water bus ride back to the Dorsoduro, we revived ourselves with a little gelato, picked up our laundry, and went back to our room.  Our air conditioning had not worked for the first day, and we were beyond ecstatic to find our room to be chilly as an ice box.  I commanded the kids to strip down and take a cool shower, then set them up with the Rocky and Bullwinkle videos I had downloaded—I really like Rocky and Bullwinkle, and it seems to have stood the test of time.  I stood under water as cold as I could manage and then just lay flat on the bed until Alec returned.

We had promised the kids a gondola ride, and decided to take one to dinner.  Milo, in particular, beamed the entire ride.  It was the perfect time to go—out of the direct sun, just as the shadows were beginning to fall.  As we pulled up next to our restaurant, one of the waiters opened up a canalside window, and we exited the boat through the window, which was pretty cool. 

We ate at Osteria la Zucca, a restaurant Jody and Matt had recommended from their trip to Venice two years ago.  It was perhaps the best meal of our entire trip.  While not a vegetarian restaurant, la Zucca is a place that celebrates vegetables.  We shared an outrageously good pumpkin flan—its creamy texture underscored by the crunch of toasted pumpkin seed sprinkled on top, as well as carrots cooked with curry and yogurt, and spinach with butter and sesame.  I had a fabulous vegetable lasagna and Alec had a duck confit with apples.  It was a truly outstanding meal.

Today, we wound our way through several neighborhoods before getting on a water bus to take us to the Biennale. It was much, much cooler today, so perfect for lingering in the gardens. 

I really enjoyed much of what was in the central pavilion, and the kids dug right into the Norma Jeanne installation, which started out as an enormous block of Play Doh in stripes of red, black and white to evoke the Arab flag but which is now a room covered with the Play Doh creations of visitors.  A sign on the wall invited visitors to do what they wished with the Play Doh, and to either take the creations with them or leave them in the room, but not to leave them in other parts of the biennale.  We left the kids there for awhile to play, and when they met up with us, Milo had an enormous block of the stuff which he wants to bring back to Brooklyn.  It has made it back to our hotel room, but Brooklyn?  I don’t know.  We saw a lot of the show, but by no means all of it.   Not surprisingly, much of the art was overtly political—the Egyptian artist, Ahmed Basiony, died while documenting the uprising in Cairo in January. The American pavilion, an installation by Allora and Calzadilla, comments on war, capitalism and consumption.  We all liked “Algorithm”, a piece that consists of a pipe organ in which an ATM machine is incorporated—the organ plays loud, churchy cords when you take money out.  We stretched the kids as far as we could, and then retreated back to the hotel for a little rest before dinner.

After we got our mojo back, we walked to the Jewish ghetto, found a playground for the kids, and ate dinner in Canareggio.  Once again our top restaurant choices were closed, and we ended up having a truly mediocre meal, which is always unfortunate in Italy.  There is much more to do and see, but it’s time to get back to Barcelona.

Venice Photos

Milo's Fruit Fiasco

On January 1, Alec announced that his new year’s resolution would be to eat more fruit, and he invited Milo to join him.  You need to know that, with the exception of apple sauce, Milo eats no fruit (and virtually no vegetables).   He accepted Alec’s invitation, but added:  “I’ll bet Greece has very good fruit.  I’ll start eating fruit this summer in Greece.”  Alec agreed to this compromise. So you can imagine that Alec and I were pretty excited when we finally arrived in Greece and made that first trip to the market with Milo.  He asked us to buy watermelon and apples, which, he declared, would be his first two fruits.  He asked for some apple slices on his dinner plate.

But then, when it actually came time to put the apple in his mouth, and the rest of us were leaning forward, holding our breath . . . he couldn’t do it.  Or he wouldn’t. I think we’ve been hornswaggled, that the little minx just bought himself seven months of not being badgered by his parents.

We’ve tried most of the obvious tactics. We’re good role models.  We always have a variety of fruit and vegetables on hand.  Milo even grew vegetables at his school in Barcelona and loved selling them in the schoolyard, a la Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard.  But try them?  He is more of an entrepreneur than an omnivore.

If I could do one thing over as a parent, it would be to capitulate less to the demands for kid food—hot dogs, grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, and all kinds of nuggets.  C.C., although she eats a very healthy and balanced diet, has no desire to take risks where food is concerned.  Like most parents of my generation, we have gotten ourselves into a situation in which we cook not one, but two or three dinners.  My parents would never have been so gullible.  Where did we go wrong? 

When we have had breakthroughs, such as the curry noodles Milo has come to love, they have been the result of going to places we really want to eat that do not have kid food.  And somehow, our kids don’t starve.  Although I have been grateful for every bowl of spaghetti Bolognese we have encountered on our travels, I sometimes wish the dish had never been invented.

We have no desire to have power struggles over food—although we did set up an unfortunate face-off between Milo and a tiny piece of mango in Mesta that lasted more than an hour.  We clearly lost the battle.  So we have resorted to a time-tested strategy that we probably should have implemented years ago.  We put something on Milo’s plate at every meal—a grape, a cherry tomato, a slice of cooked carrot—and he does not get a sweet unless he eats it.  He’s eating a lot less dessert these days.

The beginning of the end of the journey

A night in crisp sheets and an extra pillow to put beneath my knees to support my back did wonders for my constitution.  Alec took the kids down to breakfast early and they were back before I even woke up.

The Aegeon Beach Hotel is one of those places where there are lounge chairs and umbrellas set up on the beach for you.  We felt luxurious ditching our mismatched, salt-stiffened towels for the spiffy blue hotel ones, and sitting up off the sand in comfortable chairs.  We had the morning to hang out and swim, and go for one last snorkel in the sea, the Temple of Poseidon watching over us from a nearby hill.

Although we had to check out of our room at noon, the hotel folks were kind enough to let us use another room to shower and change before we left.  We grabbed lunch at the taverna next door and then hit the road.  One last Greek salad, one last order of fried cheese—it’s good stuff.

We had a 3 ½ hour drive from Sounio to Patra, where we would board our last and longest ferry.  We arrived in Patra early enough to stretch our legs in the square and get some pizza for the kids.  A local newsstand stocked a huge range of magazines and newspapers in English, which made me unreasonably happy—I picked up The Economist and People to catch up on the important and interesting news of the day.

Our boat was scheduled to depart at midnight, but we were able to board at 9:30, so we schlepped our stuff on board (including a few bags of food Alec insisted on stopping at the market for on the way) and got settled into our cabin.  We have a window which, although it is salt-encrusted, is a luxury.

There is something romantic about traveling by sea, and the fact that we are getting somewhere while we sleep—instead of driving for days through Albania and Macedonia, which Alec tried to convince me would be a good idea for awhile there—is terrific. In reality, however, the room is pretty much like a Motel 6 room, except with bunk beds and a smaller bathroom.

When we woke up this morning, we were in port somewhere.  I left the room to get some tea, only to find much of the floor space outside occupied by people sleeping on blow up rafts, sleeping beds, fold-up lounge chairs, and beach towels.  One guy had spilled out of the common room in which his family had settled, his large, hairy belly protruding into the hallway on the way to one of the coffee shops.  The ship folks seem to keep some of the lounges sleeper free, thank goodness.

There is a pool on board, and the kids have been swimming, messing with the new art supplies we brought with us, and playing in the room.  I’ve nearly finished my fall syllabus.  We sleep on the boat again tonight, and arrive in Venice early tomorrow morning.