Down Under, by Bill Bryson

I always wanted to visit Australia, and I hope to do so this year. So, to get some information and the feeling of the place, I ordered Down Under from Amazon. It was the first book I read by Bill Bryson. He's funny, sometimes a little too conscienciously so, but I was glad an Australian friend of mine told me the book was "pretty accurate". Anyway, I think my goal was fulfilled, I ended the book wanting more than ever to go, and with some ideas of what I wish to see. I hope I'll have some experiences of my own to share after I've been there. Until then, I leave you with some funny quotes of this book.

I am thus able to report that the following are all real places: Wee Waa, Poowong, Burrumbuttock, Suggan Buggan, Boomahnoomoonah, Waaia, Mullumbimby, Ewlyamartup, Jiggalong and the supremely satisfying Tittybong.

One of the most cherishable peculiarities of Australians is that they like to build big things in the shape of other things. Give them a bale of chicken wire, some fibreglass and a pot of paint and they will make you, say, an enormous pineapple or strawberry or, as here, a lobster. Then they put a café and a gift shop inside, erect a big sign beside the highway (for the benefit of people whose acuity evidently does not extend to spotting a fifty-foot high piece of fruit standing beside an otherwise empty highway), then sit back and wait for the money to roll in. [...] You can, if you have sufficient petrol, money and nothing approaching a real life, visit a Big Prawn, a Big Koala, a Big Oyster (with searchlights for eyes, apparently), a Big Lawnmower, a Big Marlin, a Big Orange and a Big Merino Ram, among many others.

Australians [...] spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's OK now because he's off the life-support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.

Australia is mostly empty and a long way away. Its population is small and its role in the world consequently peripheral. It doesn't have coups, recklessly overfish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner. It is stable and peaceful and good. It doesn't need watching, and so we don't. But I will tell you this: the loss is entirely ours.

I really want to go there.

A week in Israel

Israel is one of those places that leaves no one indifferent. It arouses all kind of passions, both pro and against it; its geography and History is deeply embedded in our culture, and its modern politics has been used as a proxy for other debates for decades. So, there are a number of motives to go there; mine were mostly to visit a historic place so important for our own history and culture and to get to know its present-day reality first hand. Of course it’s not possible to become sufficiently knowledgeable about a country after a one week visit, but I came back certainly more aware of the real Israel than I was. I had my opinions about it, and they are not much changed, but they are somewhat more solid now.



We arrived at night, and after a surprisingly quick control at the airport (we had been warned they were worse than the US immigration, but it was not our experience, maybe because we were Portuguese Caucasian tourists), spent a night in Tel Aviv and collected a rental car in the morning. We left the city and headed North by the coast.



The first impression one gets from Israel, from Tel Aviv, its suburbs and the villages along the road (and later confirmed in the countryside) is how new and dynamic it looks. There’s building everywhere, houses and apartment blocks, the roads are in excellent state, everybody is rushing about their business. The new buildings are usually ugly, one gets the impression of people caring about practicality over esthetics, a little like Portugal in the 70s and 80s. The driving is aggressive and careless, worse than here, and it didn’t surprise me to pass several road accidents, some of them quite serious.



The first touristic stop was at the ruins of Caesarea, by the Mediterranean, a small site well preserved, with a beautiful aqueduct and lots of tourist excursions. We also passed a few luxury villas neighborhoods – as someone from facebook had put it: “where the rich and famous live” – and then met for a coffee a very nice and interesting Israeli lady living at Binyamina. It was our first long conversation with an Israeli citizen and, as later meetings with others would confirm, they often have very eventful life histories and experiences that are so alien to our own “normal” and protected lives, and help to understand the meaning of the state of Israel.



We then crossed the Carmel hills on the way to Haifa, passing several lively Druze villages – again the sensation of new and old mixed, the simultaneous strangeness and familiarity of a Western Mediterranean country with Middle Eastern touches. Haifa is a busy modern city with a big harbor, we just passed it and headed towards Akko.



We arrived after dark – in Israel the sun sets too early for the season, we later learned it was because the religious conservatives don’t want to change the time zone – and wondered through the narrow streets of the old city until we sat in a small Arab restaurant by an arcaded square and treated ourselves to a gorgeous Middle Eastern meal – the food in Israel is delicious, a combination of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine, with some influences from Northern Eastern Europe.



The next morning, we strolled along the old city of Akko – Acre of the Crusaders, the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem after the fall of Jerusalem. It’s an incredible place, a maze of narrow cobbled streets, shady arcaded squares, restaurants and cafés, minarets and small mosques, a lively souk and a beautiful harbor. The most impressive thing is that, unlike other well preserved medieval cities I’ve been to, this one is totally lively and lived in; you see the people going around on their daily chores, poor houses, ruined and renewed ones, and all the bustle of a busy neighborhood, which probably gives a more true sense of how life was in these cities centuries ago than the cleaned versions we see elsewhere. I loved Akko.



Leaving Akko, a careless driver bumped into our car while unparking; “in Israel we never call the police for things like these!” he said, and after settling the affair with the car rental company, we went on to Tsfat. It was extremely interesting leaving a lively predominantly Arab city and arriving in a lively predominantly Jewish one. Tsfat, the ancient Safed, has been for centuries the capital of Kabballah studies, and so it’s a center of Jewish Orthodox students and latter-days/New Age American hippies. Perched on a hill, with beautiful panoramic views all around, Tsfat is a beautiful place. We strolled through the Artists Quarter with its cafés, modern sculptures and American tourist/hippies, then the old Jewish quarter with souvenir shops and the old synagogues – we visited one of them, the Ari Ashkenazy synagogue. It was funny, after the Arab souk in Akko a few hours before, the Jewish souvenir shops, and the flock of Jewish kids, students at some Yeshiva, in his black hats and with their characteristic hairdos rushing for a fast food meal after class, as in any other Western city.



From Tsfat, we took a road along the Jordan valley, green and peaceful in Spring weather, towards the Golan Heights, where we stayed at the Merom Golan, formerly a kibbutz, now an inn. After an excellent dinner at the local restaurant and a good night’s sleep, we watched the landscape over the Syrian border and towards Mount Hermon, a beautiful green country. We then travelled across the Golan Heights, passing the imposing old Crusader castle Nimrod Fortress, adequately named Belvoir in the old days, until Metula, the northernmost city of Israel by the Lebanese border.



From Metula we drove south towards the Sea of Galilee, passing the village of Rosh Pinna, where we stopped for a lemonade and some sightseeing. At the margins of the Sea of Galilee, we passed the ugly Tiberias, a tacky summer resort, and continued south until the Roman ruins of Bet She’an, by the Jordanian border. It’s an impressive site, the old Roman city of Scythopolis, destroyed by an earthquake in 749, one of the best Roman ruins I’ve seen so far. From Bet She’an, we drove directly to Jerusalem, where we arrived at night after a huge traffic jam.



Jerusalem, at last, the uberfamous city. It was different than I imagined it, for the better. Old and modern, a cauldron of different cultures and religions – a cliché, but true. The first day, we went to visit the Yad Vashem, the impressive memorial to the Holocaust. An excellent museum, and the eerie Children’s Memorial, I went out overwhelmed as always with the enormous pointlessness of such atrocities, and wondering how on Earth anyone could still believe in a God of justice after what had happened. We met then another Israeli lady from Ashquelon, after a pleasant stroll in Mount Herzl, she treated us to a nice lunch in the beautiful neighborhood of Ein Kerem. We went back to the city center and took a stroll along the lively Jaffa Road, before meeting two Israeli guys for a beer, and another pleasant conversation.



The next day, we headed to the Old City. Traditionally, we went in through the Jaffa Gate, and walked along the touristy King David Street, a mix of Arab souk and souvenir shop street. The Old City is an incredible place, a maze of narrow streets, where in a few hundred meters one goes from a Muslim neighborhood to a Jewish one, and with churches and monks and nuns in the middle. Crowdy and touristy as it is, it still keeps the atmosphere of a cultural, religious and ethnic melting pot, very lively and surprisingly clean. We headed towards the Western Wall, the holiest of the Jewish places. It was full of people, mostly Jews and a lot of tourists. I don’t know if it was a special day, because there were a lot of Jews celebrating some religious initiating ceremony for young kids – they arrived chanting and dancing, then dressed them in religious garb and walked around chanting and taking pictures. I’m totally non-religious, but enjoyed watching the sight of happy people celebrating their culture, particularly meaningful after the morning at Yad Vashem the day before.



We left the Old City through the Dung Gate and climbed the stairway up the Mount of Olives, from where we enjoyed the spectacular view over Jerusalem, with the beautiful Dome of the Rock – the most beautiful building in the city – dominating the sights. On the top of the Mount of Olives we visited the small and neglected chapel of the Ascension, and then went back down and reentered the Old City by the Lions Gate.



I had not noticed the Temple Mount had a visiting schedule, so we got there just after closing time, and since the next day was a Friday, I wasn’t able to visit the Dome of the Rock or the Al-Aqsa Mosque – a good reason to go back to Jerusalem! But I saw the golden Dome of the Rock, and it’s as beautiful as I ever imagined it. So we wondered through the Muslim Quarter and the Via Dolorosa until the church of the Holy Sepulchre.



It is not a particularly beautiful church, but it is an impressive one. We watched the pilgrims kissing the Stone of Unction and queuing for the Sepulchre, and visited the deep Saint Helena’s chapel. I dreamt about the old times and the riots brought by the Holy Fire ceremony in the old days. We then had a pomegranate juice at a café nearby and headed towards the Jewish Quarter, with its Roman ruins, synagogues and tourist shops, and had a cappuccino at the Hurva Square.



The next day, we walked through the new city of Jerusalem – Rehavia, the Knesset, Jaffa Road, and the Mahane Yehude Market. It is a lively and cosmopolitan city.



From Jerusalem, we took the bus to Tel Aviv. It is a very modern city, no men in kipas as in Jerusalem, lots of café terraces and people walking their dogs; it was Shabbat, so most of the stores were closed. We crossed a quiet city and spent the morning in Neve Tzedek, an old European quarter founded in 1887 near Jaffa, with some interesting buildings and nice cafés; and HaTachana, the old railway station turned a pleasant zone of cafés and street performances. Then we walked along the seaside to Jaffa, the ancient harbor – again lots of café terraces, the marina, and the old quarter. Then, back to the city center, spotting some of the numerous Bauhaus buildings on the way.



We spent the last morning in Israel enjoying the café terraces and taking a look at the Carmel Market; then the taxi driver that drove us to the airport was a fitting final meeting – a talkative 40-something from Be’er-Sheva who had been all around the world in a series of jobs from trucker to male strippers manager.



All in all, it was a very interesting trip, and I liked the country very much. It was a good experience being in a young country where people are patriotic, so unlike this old and decadent Portugal, where history and the present are both so intense and all pervading. I sincerely wish them to solve the problem of the Occupied Territories, they’re such an indomitable and admirable country in so many ways, its very existence and democratic character quite a feat in such a troubled area, the occupation in its present form is hardly worthy of them. Guess things are changing though, with the coming of age of a mostly secular youth. I hope to go back – and still there is Petra, another place I always wanted to see.

Diaries, by George Orwell

I have a deep admiration for George Orwell, he had an extremely lucid mind and a seldom equaled capacity of understanding and analyzing men and politics.

His diaries are a very interesting reading, he was extremely observant and interested in everything around him, from Moroccan customs to the life of miners and the habits of birds or the growth of vegetables. He was an obsessive compiler of lists and registers, and sometimes these diaries are tedious when it comes to the counting of eggs or the description of the weather. He was a kind of Renaissance man of the 20th century.

One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all more or less proStalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc., are suddenly forgotten. So also with Franco, Mussolini, etc., should they ultimately come over to us. - 3.7.41

The English pacifist works himself up into frenzies about the concentration camps in the Isle of Man and forgets about those in Germany, etc., etc. One notices this in the case of people one disagrees with, such as Fascists or pacifists but in fact everyone is the same, at least everyone who has definite opinions. Everyone is dishonest, and everyone is utterly heartless towards people who are outside the immediate range of his own interests. What is most striking of all is the way sympathy can be turned on and off like a tap according to political expediency. All the pinks, or most of them, who flung themselves to and fro in their rage against Nazi atrocities before the war, forget all about these atrocities and obviously lost their sympathy with the Jews etc. as soon as the war began to bore them. Ditto with people who hated Russia like poison up to June 22 1941 and then suddenly forgot about the purges, the G.P.U. etc. the moment Russia came into the war. I am not thinking of lying for political ends, but in actual changes of subjective feeling. - 27.4.42

Weekend in Spain

I like Spain very much, and recently I could have another taste of it, spending a weekend in Toledo and Madrid.

I always wished to visit Toledo, ever since I've known El Greco and that he lived and painted there. So I finally went there. After a bad start - late plane, wallet lost, train missed - everything went fine. The weather was splendid - cold and sunny - and it was a pleasure to see Toledo by the Tagus, an ocher colored city with old walls and dominated by the massive Alcázar. The hotel on the Judería - the old Jewish quarter - was very nice, and we took a stroll along the narrow cobbled streets heading towards the cathedral. The town is very touristic, an important weekend destination being a short 30 minute travel from Madrid, and there are souvenir shops everywhere.

The cathedral is impressively huge, reminding us this used to be the capital of Castille. I was particularly impressed by the magnificent choir, with the amazing woodwork, and the paintings several remarkable portraits of saints by El Greco and a beautiful John the Baptist by Caravaggio.

The next day, we visited the main sights. I could finally see the famous Funeral of the Count of Orgaz, as beautiful as I expected, and that was never moved or restored. The Monastery of Santa Maria de los Reyes, built by the Catholic Kings to celebrate their victory over Portugal, was a pleasant surprise - a beautiful cloister, with an amazing mudéjar ceiling and the always enchanting diversity of gothic stone sculptures - having to decorate immense spaces, that's how the medieval artists expressed themselves, one can appreciate that as well on the Flemish town halls, for instance.

Then there were the synagogues. Santa María la Blanca is impressive, with the horseshoe arches and the sculpted capitels; and the Sinagoga del Transito as well, with its Sephardic Jewish Museum; their size attests the importance of the Jewish minority in Spain before the Catholic Kings expelled the Jews.

And then there were the café terraces at Plaza del Zocodover, and the Spanish liveliness, always so uplifting.

After Toledo, Madrid. It was my third time there, and as I know it better, I like it more. I love the crowds at Gran Via, having chocolate at the Plaza Mayor, having a snack at the San Miguel Market, buying books at Casa del Libro, just wondering along the streets.

I went to see the Matadero Cineteca, a new cultural space in an ancient slaughterhouse, and didn't like it much - the space is great, but it's been made as a kind of urban-depressive place, the kind of artsy set that is more reminiscent of post-industrial Berlin, with dreary and unimaginative "art". A waste of a beautiful space.

So, I'm glad I live next to Spain, and I'm looking forward to go there again. If one can't have a castle in Spain, at least one can spend weekends there, and that's great.

The Three Eras of Christmas

Under the Sun, the Letters of Bruce Chatwin

I think the first Chatwin book I read was The Vice-Roy of Ouidah, a long time ago; I liked it, but it didn't impress me much. It was In Patagonia that captivated me, and then I read everything by him I found, and liked him more and more. Somehow, there's something about Bruce Chatwin - both his writing and himself - that I felt extremely drawn to; some intrinsic characteristic I felt identified with and spoke to my own inner self. I wouldn't know how to define it, and there's a lot about him totally different from me, and a few qualities I actively dislike, but still there's something about Chatwin... After all, it was not by chance I adopted the word chatwinesque, that I first read in the Susannah Clapp biography of Chatwin, and named my blog What Am I Doing Here, the title of one of his collections of texts.

Maybe it's something about the way he sees the world, his permanent need for escape, his restlessness, his ironic humor, his esthetics, his restrained and elegant writing, his insatiable appetite for all kinds of knowledge, his eclecticism, his capacity to dream about places and cultures that made his observations and writings about them so enlightening and interesting... It was probably a combination of all that.

So, I was curious to read this collection of his letters, and they were indeed interesting to read. A lot of it had been quoted in his biography by Nicholas Shakespeare. Once again I disliked some of his personality traits - the maniac side, the thoughtlessness towards others, the snobbishness - but felt identified with other of his characteristics - his endless curiosity, his lust for life, his sense of humor. Somehow I felt some of the comments by his widow sounded like a late settling of accounts, which seem a little cheap. He may have been far from perfect, and probably he was a terrible person to live with, but he wrote wonderful books like In Patagonia, The Songlines, and lots of great essays like the ones collected in What Am I Doing Here, and that's more than we can say about most of people / writers.

Why wonder? [...] Why do I become restless after a single month in a single place, unbearable after two? (I am, I admit, a bad case.) [...] Wondering may settle some of my natural curiosity and my urge to explore, but then I am tugged back by a longing for home. I have a compulsion to wonder and a compulsion to return - a homing instinct like a migrating bird.

Last couple of days in Madagascar - Ambohimanga and goodbye to Tana

After a couple of days relaxing at Nosy Be, I flew back to Tana. The last two days in Madagascar were spent in a visit to Ambohimanga and strolling and shopping for souvenirs.

Ambohimanga is one of the sacred hills on the Antananarive plateau, the highest and most sacred of them all, the ancient capital of the Merina kingdom, under which the island was unified in the 18th century. These days, it’s a small village on top of the only hill that still keeps its ancient forest in the plateau (it was sacred, so the trees escaped the deforestation that consumed the neighboring country to produce coal), with the ancient fortified palace precincts, a UNESCO world heritage site. There were several doors in the ancient wall, one can see one of them today, and the heavy circular stone that used to close it, moved by 40 slaves. Before entering the palace precinct, one sees the place of sacrifices to the ancestors’ spirits, a flat stone by a huge ficus tree. The main Malagasy religion is still animism, and there are still frequent sacrifices there: chicken, ducks, zebus in special occasions, and several zebu skulls hang on the tree.

I hired a licensed guide, a short woman named Emma, that took me for the tour of the site, telling the stories of the place in her accented French – never have I heard so many times the word “sacré”. In Ambohimanga, literally everything is sacré. Theprecinct is an impressively beautiful place, with an incredible view over the plateau.

First, there are the ancient ficus trees (“l’arbre sacré!”), one of them surrounded by 12 stones, representing the king and his 12 wives (“douze, le numéro sacré!”), and the enclosure where the zebus are kept and fed before being sacrificed. Then, the king’s palace (king Andriambelomasina, and yes, she could say this word without hesitation), a modest wooden building (“c’était du luxe quand même!”), with pillars of huge palisanders (“le bois pour les rois – sacré!”); one cannot take pictures of the interior (“c’est sacré!”), where the king’s bed is by the eastern wall (“où le soleil se lève, c’est le côté sacré!”), and the king used to be perched on the ceiling while giving audience, so he wouldn’t be seen to be protected from potential attacks and would answer petitions by throwing pebbles from above, while the favorite wife entertained the guests. One should leave the palace walking backwards so one wouldn’t turn his back on the king – “mais vous pouvez sortir comme vous voulez”.

Next to the king’s palace, there’s the queen’s summer palace, a 19th century wooden building, a kind of European villa, built for the infamous queen Ranavalonna I, whose main residence was the “palais de la reine” in Tana. Small but comfortable, it’s a curious house, with the dining-room with a runaway trapdoor and cupboards with mirrors so she could watch if anyone would try to poison her, and her portraits in Victorian attire, on a stool to look taller (“elle avait seulemant 1.40m”) and heavily powdered (“elle voulait être blanche… comme Michael Jackson!”). She had lots of lovers (“meme des esclaves!”) and her son was deposed because suspected of not being of royal blood (“il est né 14 mois après la mort du roi”).

Up a few steps from the palaces, there are the royal tomb, and then the sacred pools, where the king had his annual sacred bath, with rain water carried by 40 virgins. There was a special staircase for the king, through a door crowned by a sculpted ficus leaf – “la feuille sacrée.

I loved Ambohimanga (the name means ”beautiful hill”), and after leaving Emma – who, in her dignified poise, was probably not much different from Ranavalonna – wondered in the woods watching the breathtaking view. Sacred places, here or anywhere else, are not chosen randomly; there’s always something impressive about them.

On my last day, I wondered through the city, feeling somewhat familiar with it, stopping for coffee at the Café de la Gare, having a drink with a new acquaintance, and buying some souvenirs. Chocolates, t-shirts, and beautiful wooden handicraft at the Marché de la Digue – a few sculptures and masks and a chess set.

So, all in all, it was quite a trip. Nature, culture, food and rest, and a lot of time by myself, something I hadn’t noticed how much I missed until enjoying it.

L'Oeuvre, by Emile Zola

This was one of the few Rougon-Macquart novels I hadn't read. I started reading them as a teenager, with Nana and Germinal, and was always impressed by Zola's powerful writing. These novels are a true fresco of the French society under the Second Empire, and of human nature in general, each one dealing with a particular theme - provincial politics in La Fortune des Rougons and La Conquête de Plassans, urban speculation in La Curée, proletarian work in Germinal, department stores in Au Bonheur des Dames, church hypocrisy in La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, alcoholism in L'Assomoir, etc etc... This time, the theme is art and creativity, and once more the tone is deeply pessimistic; one gets depressed reading the hopeless struggle and the ineluctable descent of Claude Lantier, the génie manqué, as when reading the appalling narrative of Gervaise's abasement by drinking in L'Assomoir, one of the most distressful books I ever read. One wonders why he was so pessimistic about the art scene of the Impressionism, that was such a happy period in art, so lively and new, but I guess it had to do with the ensemble of his work, the general disenchantment with human nature and society that he experienced. And it's actually quite understandable; when I read his books, I can't help but seeing the depiction of my own country's present society, so vividly described in books like La Curée. It's depressing, but totally true.

Madagascar - a road trip and idling at Nosy Be

From Ankarana, I went by road to Ankify, to take the boat to the Island of Nosy Be. It was a most beautiful drive, along valleys and fields of red-brown earth, cocoa, cashew and ylang-ylang trees, vendors on the side of the road, where I bought some tasty cashew nuts. But it was also a grim taste of Malagasy roads: stretches of good road and stretches of appalling potholes, with young people and kids shoveling gravel into the holes and waiting for some money from the drivers. Also, in every village, people hammering stones to make gravel, that will be eventually bought by some factories. Near Ambilobe, a bridge had collapsed under a heavy truck a month ago, and they diverted the road so we passed the river over pebbles – the passengers of the taxi-brousses had to step out and cross on foot, with water to their ankles, so the vehicle would be lighter – but what about when the rains come in a few weeks? And this is the main road in the North of the country… And Patrick kept saying: “Les Malgaches, ça n’existe pas!”, as he did when, in Diego Suárez, he had shown me a hospital built with Chinese money a few years before (one of several in the country) that stood completely empty, with not even basic furniture.

At Ankify, I took a speed boat to Nosy Be, where I spent two days in lazy idleness at the beach, swimming, reading and eating. The beach is beautiful, the sea water warm. The touristy village of Abitaloaka, near my hotel, featured a lot of old European guys with young Malagasy girls, which was a little disheartening. I’m sure the snorkeling and diving at Nosy Be must be wonderful, but I just idled on the beach and read, resting from the hikes of previous days.