Uncategorized

June 1, 2010November 4, 2011

Hair-Trigger Flamenco

Enlarge photo

It was a sore-mouth, déjà vu experience. To me, a rustic ham sandwich in Spain is one of the edible icons of Europe. It’s that simple marriage of crusty fresh bread and lovingly sliced ham, cut with care from the ham hock that fills a vise mounted in any bar or restaurant. Now I eat these simple sandwiches to celebrate being in Spain, but the raw roof of my mouth took me back to my student trips here, when I ate my jamón bocadillo because it was all I could afford.

Pressing that hard crust against the tender ceiling of my mouth on my last day before flying home, I reviewed the many delights of my latest trip through Spain.

A year ago I had discovered a new favorite restaurant in Córdoba — Bodegas Campos. I came back twice and basically ate my way through their tapas menu. After my second visit, I knew I’d be back this year with the TV crew.

Now I was working with Isabel, a charming local guide who talks about food with the passion of a mother talking about her children. Her love and enthusiasm for Spanish cuisine translated well on TV. And it was a festival night, so the restaurant was packed with well-dressed Córdobans. One difficulty of filming in a restaurant is that we need lots of light, and this can ruin the ambience (and wear out our welcome in a hurry). Our cameraman’s new electric light comes with a slider, so we can let the brightness creep up — and no one notices (we hope).

Every plate seemed to glisten. The meal was made to order for TV: a montage of Spanish delights from the roasted almonds and spicy green olives that hit the table automatically, to the local salmorejo (like a super thick, bright orange gazpacho), boquerones (anchovies), fried eggplant, and “Arab Salad” with cod and delicate orange sections. Spaniards love their croquetas, which seem like glorified Tater Tots to me. Isabel was enthusiastic about the croquetas, so I figured, if ever I’d appreciate croquetas, it would be in a fine place like Bodegas Campos. Nope. Still just Tater Tots. The rabo de toro (bull-tail stew) was as dark as meat can be…almost inky in flavor. The jamón ibérico — a gift from the restaurant — was the best ham in Spain and very expensive. With its fat not lining the meat but mixed in, it was glistening with taste — eating it was the culinary equivalent of pinning a boutonniere onto a tux. The wine was the kind they bring out special glasses for.

Feeling underdressed for the filming, I zipped back to the hotel in a taxi between courses to get my sweater. On the way there, we passed a square thriving with people partying. On the way back, the same street was blocked by a religious procession. I had to get out and walk. One minute I was thrilled to be in the restaurant filming all that wonderful food; the next I was amazed we were missing parties in the squares and an exotic religious procession in the streets.

Excited, I called Isabel and asked her to get the crew out in the streets to film the procession. Seeing alcohol-fueled partying around a towering red cross and then a somber procession was poignant. In AndalucÃa, revelry and religiosity seem to go hand in hand: The same passion and energy dedicated to partying is put into long, sober, religious processions which clog the city’s narrow streets. Trumpets blare a fanfare, children practice long and hard to win the honor of carrying the float, candles jostle in unison as they glide in the dark of the night, and everyone runs to the streets to be a part of the procession.

Travel in Andalucía is like this. There’s always something going on. We were in Córdoba for the Festival of the Crosses, where each neighborhood parties around its own towering cross made of red carnations. Church bells ring not only a call to prayer, but a call to fiesta. And locals enthusiastically use a special day in the church calendar as a springboard for a community party.

Our filming took until midnight. We finished with the on-camera close of the show where, presiding over a table of local delights, I looked to the camera and said, “You want a recipe for a great trip? Blend history, culture, local friends, and great food. I hope you enjoyed our look at some of the highlights of Southern Spain. I’m Rick Steves. Until next time, keep on travelin’. Adiós.”

Then we packed up the gear, said goodnight to Isabel, and caught a taxi home. We passed that romantically lit square — still thriving and hauntingly beautiful to me — with four people dancing flamenco on an elevated stage in the middle of a Renoir crowd. I desperately wanted to stop, but I knew it was too late to film — we were all just wasted. For the rest of my life, I’ll remember that image of the magic flamenco party that we didn’t film.

The next day, the barrio parties were basically over. We looked and looked and finally found one square that was lively. It was their first year entering the contest, their cross won first prize yesterday, and it seemed they’d been celebrating ever since. It was a scene of exhausted, hung-over happiness — like they had been eating and drinking and dancing for 24 hours (which they probably had). Now the cross was abandoned — missing carnations like a bum misses teeth, and the dancing was over. The last of the revelers gathered around the makeshift bar which seemed to provide physical support for those determined to carry on. I needed dancing around the cross for our TV show. Our guide said they were finished dancing. But with a simple suggestion, I was able to rouse the gang, and the yard was once again thriving with slinky flamenco.

We’ve been in Andalucía for a week filming our show, and it’s a hair-trigger flamenco society. I like hair-trigger cultures. Just as Austria is a hair-trigger waltzing society, AndalucÃa is just waiting for the simplest excuse to put castanets into motion and dance. (This flamenco party on-demand reminded me of a filming experience on a Danube cruise. Every boat I’d been on played Strauss waltzes for crowds to dance on the deck. Sure enough, I came with my crew to film — and our boat had no music system. It didn’t matter. I cajoled 30 retired Austrians and Germans out of their chairs, away from their white wines, and onto the deck. Singing a Strauss waltz and waving my arms dramatically, I struck up an imaginary orchestra, and the entire gang effortlessly broke into a glorious waltz. Coursing down the mighty Danube, we filmed as they danced a particularly smiley waltz. Later, back in our editing studio, we laid in some actual Strauss music to the same beat I provided on the Danube that day. And, as far as TV was concerned, the Blue Danube cruise came with music.)

On that little plaza in Córdoba, I exhorted the exhausted gang to dance around their tired carnation cross. Within seconds the energy and magic of the previous night’s party had recombusted. Sinuous arms, toned and leggy legs, heels with attitude, flowing hair…everything churned with a silky Andalusian soul. Like I imagine crickets rattle their tails for sex, Andalusian women dressed in their peacock finery click their castanets. And the starlight was brought to us all by alcohol.

With enough dancing filmed, I let the fake party die, and everyone resumed their positions — propped up by the bar. They filled a bottle cap with a ritual shot of firewater and gave it to me. As two dozen onlookers watched, I downed it. With my head thrown back, knowing the camera was rolling and all Andalusian eyes were on me, I was plunged into what seemed like a long silence. I wanted to say something really clever or meaningful. But I could only come up with a cliché — “Olé!” No problem. Everyone cheered.

May 26, 2010November 8, 2011

Memories of Istanbul

Enlarge photo

To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is Istanbul.

I first visited Istanbul in the 1970s. Some of my earliest — and most vivid — memories of that trip are of the colorful locals. Scruffy kids sold cherry juice, and old men would grab huge cucumbers from wheeled carts, then peel, quarter, and salt them, and sell them for pennies. Traffic jams seemed to last all day…and drivers seemed to accept them as an excuse not to work.

Holding piping-hot hourglass-shaped glasses of tea tenderly by the cooler rim, I’d sip while Turks told me the wisdom of hot drinks on hot days: It heats up your body in order to make the heat of the day relatively cooler and more bearable. Sipping tea, we’d play backgammon with boards chattering all around with careening little dice — their handmade dots never not lining up.

Tourists would gather awestruck by a sound-and-light show, as the thunderous voice of the sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, spun yarns of palace intrigue with the floodlit domes of the Blue Mosque towering overhead. (While a few tourist attractions around Europe still cling to the old sound-and-light technology, these days many of those shows seem almost comically antiquated.)

To intensify the Istanbul experience, I’d ride a dolmus (shared minibus taxi) into the suburbs, and wander through neighborhoods that had never encountered an American — places where locals would stare at me as if I couldn’t see them…as if I were an inanimate object. They just studied me like an intricate Brueghel painting. Being stared at like you’re a freak, sometimes you just decide to play the role. I’ll never forget the fun my friend and I had grabbing a football-shaped honeydew mellow, hiking it, and melodramatically going out for a pass and making the catch. Children would practice their English with me. They’d ask, “What is your name?” To confuse them I would say, “Four o’clock.”

I’d hang out in the venerable Pudding Shop, watching the older-than-me hippies gather and plan their across-Asia bus trips to India. Eating my sutlac — rice pudding with cinnamon — I’d dream about someday making that adventure. (Eventually I did.)

I visited Turkey every year through my twenties. It was the unplanned but natural cherry on top of every European adventure. Each year, the political tenor was different, depending upon who was in power there, who was president back home, and the latest propaganda. Politically naive pawns of the Cold War, the Turk on the street would flip-flop — one year, they’d say, “America: imperialist fascist.” The next year, they’d say, “America and Turkey friends” (with index fingers rubbing together in a way that seemed like some kind of sexual sign language).

While the 1970s magic in many places has been plowed under by modern affluence, exploring Istanbul in 2010 is every bit as rich an experience.

May 21, 2010November 8, 2011

Ferret Legging and Rustic Pubs: Escaping the Cotswold Cliches

Enlarge photo

For three decades, I’ve said it’s a temptation for a travel writer to overuse the word “quaint,” and I reserve my use of that word to describe England’s Cotswold villages. The Cotswolds — while a world apart from London — are just a couple of hours’ drive away. This tidy little region of characteristic old towns is perfect for the American traveler looking to balance urban Britain with some thatched cuteness.

Each of Europe’s famous cutesy regions has a historical basis for its present-day charm. For the Cotswolds, it’s a combination of old sheep wealth (big fancy manor houses, gorgeous churches, and stately market towns — all paid for by wool) and isolation. The Cotswolds have been isolated from the rest of England both economically (since the wool trade collapsed) and physically (highway and train service to the region is sparse, making it a kind of backwater that missed the modern economic current).

Of course, these poster-child-pretty English villages are very touristy. And, as in just about any much-promoted region (Germany’s Rhineland, Italy’s Tuscany, Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, France’s Provence), the tourist circuit is a well-trampled route, with parking lots big enough for buses, hotels that can accommodate 50-person tour groups, and huggable traffic-free villages.

The challenge, of course, is to get behind the touristy facade. I make a point to leave Wiesbaden on the Rhine, Greve in Tuscany, and Killarney in Ireland to the big-bus tourists. The towns to avoid in the Cotswolds are Bourton-on-the-Water and Broadway. But there are always alternatives without the aggressive promotional budgets and favor of the national tourist board.

To get beyond the cliches, travelers need to find the rough underbelly. I have an appetite for local scuttlebutt that isn’t promoted by the sanitized, politically correct tourist boards. Ditch the glossy brochures, and gossip with locals in the pubs. Asking a native over a pint about traditions that persist even in the touristy present, I was told of “ferret legging” as a way of testing the toughness of young lads. They’d make the young man put on a pair of baggy pants, tie off the cuffs, then insert two angry ferrets (little weasel-like creatures) who would fight it out inside the pants while he was wearing them. (I don’t know if this still happens…but the image has certainly stuck with me.)

Admittedly, most Cotswold residents who can afford to live in these cutesy towns are escapees from the big city. They’re wealthy and enjoying the idyllic English retirement of their dreams. But the lanes, cemeteries, thatches, and old churches have a plush and fragrant connection with their past.

Cemeteries in Cotswold churchyards are often built up over years of burials, leaving the path to the village church actually lower than the graveyard ground level. Tolkien-esque trees seem to grip old churches. In Stow-on-the-Wold, I swear the side door to the church — flanked by two ancient yew trees — was the sight of the classic “Behold I stand at the door and knock” scene.

In the touristy Cotswolds, spend some time in the less-pretty towns in the less-pretty pubs, and be sure to talk to locals. And if someone wants to drop a couple of angry ferrets down your trousers, buy them a pint and say, “After you.”

May 19, 2010November 8, 2011

Sweet-and-Sour Lake Hallstatt

Enlarge photo

When I think of my favorite places in Europe (other than the great capitals), they are where both nature and culture mix. While big-time resorts with big-time promotional budgets look good on the Web, in reality they’re more concrete than charm, with jammed parking lots and cookie-cutter hotel rooms. I’ll take the offbeat places, where creaky locals walk gingerly on creaky floorboards, where each balcony has a lovingly watered and one-of-a-kind flowerbox, and where swans know just the right time to paddle by for scraps from diners at lakeside dinner tables.

I like to say that the town of Hallstatt, on the lake of Hallstatt (two hours south of Salzburg, in Austria), is “where locals commune with nature.” It’s rare that a town’s charm will get me out of bed early. But there’s something about the glassy waters of Lake Hallstatt viewed from the high end of town: The church spire is mirrored in the tranquil water, and then the shuttle boat from the train station across the lake cuts through — like a knife putting a swirl in the icing on a big cake.

Back in my rented room (Zimmer in German), my hostess is Frau Zimmermann. For years I stayed in her place mainly because I couldn’t get over the idea that her name meant “Mrs. Room-for-rent-man.” Her breakfast room is where I came up with the descriptor “well-antlered.” That means more than just lots of trophies on the wall. A well-antlered place creaks with tradition, from the homemade marmalade to the down-filled comforters, and from the apron that the hostess wears to the fact that you don’t email your credit card number to make a reservation…you just phone her, agree on a date and price for your room, give her your name, and then show up.

As I dine lakeside in Hallstatt, the swans crane their necks for bits of bread. With a generous basket to parcel out, I feel like I’m running an orphanage. As they stretch greedily, reaching for each bit of crust I loft, I think they do it well enough that if they were cranes, they’d be swaning. Free bread makes the once-graceful swans a flailing gaggle of hungry grubbers.

Traditional green felt hats distinguished by jaunty decorative feathers are big in Austria. On my first trip to Europe, when I was just a teenybopper, my Dad and I each bought one of these characteristic hats and had a friendly competition filling it with souvenir pins and fancy feathers. Now, 40 years later, I happen to be in town during the annual feather-in-the-hat party, and local men are all out with their finest Tirolean-type hats — each with a very proud feather sprouting from the rim. Many men have handlebar moustaches to match. Watching them strut around in their lederhosen worn shiny by a lifetime of such rituals, I consider life before tourism here in what would have been a remote community at the deepest point of a long, dead-end lake.

Facing the lake is the home of a man who fills his house with debris he’s collected from bottom of Lake Hallstatt. Of course, the history here goes back literally millennia. But the most fascinating treasure from the lakebed dates from just 65 years ago. It’s the trove of Nazi paraphernalia he’s gathered, including piles of war medallions. As I try to sort this out, his explanation makes perfect sense: When it became clear that Germany would lose World War II, throughout the Third Reich, anyone who had won any honors would chuck them any way they could. Lakes offered a perfect solution. In a post-Nazi world, who wants trophies honoring their heroic contribution to that regime on their wall or bookshelf?

As the swans grab their bread, as Frau Zimmermann hangs her comforters over view balconies to fluff up and air, and as the men display their hat-capping finery, I gaze out at the lake. I imagine a scene two generations earlier, when once-fierce Nazi heroes, now filled with fright, came to the lakeside under cover of darkness, and hurled their treasured medals — evidence of their complicity with Hitler — into Lake Hallstatt…my vote for the most beautiful lake in Austria.

May 17, 2010November 8, 2011

Setting an Ambush in Tangier

I can’t think of any big city in Europe where you wake up literally at “cock crow.” The roosters of Tangier, even more than the minaret’s call to prayer, make sure the city is awake early…and today, my day began at cock crow.

I step to my hotel window and see Europe across the busy strait, and ponder the view. In the distance is the Rock of Gibraltar. Seeing clearly every boat between here and there, I can understand why Britain is determined to keep that strategic piece of rock — and why, through much of the 20th century, Tangier was considered too strategic to be controlled by any one country, and therefore was jointly ruled by the European powers. No boat enters or leaves the Mediterranean without being noticed by Gibraltar or Tangier.

The vast majority of tourists here in Tangier are day-trippers. But, in spite of its “Arabian efficiency” (hotels have lots of doormen and maids, but their printers function more as wrinklers if you happen to be a travel writer in need of a printout), I like to spend the night.

Meeting my TV crew, we catch a taxi up to the kasbah (castle). I hear a tap-tap-tap, look back, and see my back window filled with the toothy grin of a little boy. He leapt onto the cab for the ride, legs and arms spread across its back side with nothing to grip. Seeing a sudden stop about to happen and with nothing to hold onto, his smile disappears and he slinks back, eventually hopping safely off the cab. Later, he and a little girl hop onto the rear bumper of a delivery truck, hitching an exciting ride as it threads through the keyhole gate out of the kasbah and down into the old town.

We’re in Tangier’s kasbah to film the tour groups herded through their predictable series of Kodak moments. I want travelers to side-trip from Spain to Tangier — but also to understand the consequences of opting for the popular bus tour. Waiting in the fortress square for the tour group, I feel like part of an ambush. The snake charmers are poised to turn on the charm. The folkloric musicians have taken their places. The woman at the gift shop stands ready at her door. Little kids organize their postcards. My cameraman locks the camera onto the tripod, which makes that loading-a-shotgun sound you hear in TV westerns. Then, like Apaches coming over the bluff, the tour group appears and follows their guides trustingly into the square. The snake is yanked out of his box, the drum and squawky horn play, and the folkloric three-stringed guitar player gets the tassel on his fez orbiting his head. Some giggling tourist gets a big, lazy reptile for a necklace, and all the group snaps photos. Moments later, the group is gone — rushing to the carpet shop — and the snake is thrown back into the box, lid shut, baking in the midday sun.

I don’t often think about animals. But imagining snakes in dark, hot boxes awaiting tour groups has me noticing the rough lot in life of animals in Tangier. A few minutes later, in the market, I see a writhing burlap bag lashed to the rack atop a beat-up old car— it’s filled with chicken awaiting sale at the market. Then I nearly step on a scrawny cat with a fishtail hanging out its mouth like a Bogart cigarette.

Cats seem to scavenge, stretch, and yawn everywhere. A family of cats fills a crusty doorway. A small truck pulls up, and a man with white gloves grabs five kittens, one by one. With each grab, the little cat stiffens its legs and is tossed ingloriously through a hole into the van. When the man with gloves runs out of kittens, he goes for the mother. She snarls. He jerks back. She scampers. The toothless man who feeds the cats — a fixture on this square — clearly knows that a trip in the white-gloved man’s truck is a death sentence, and shoos away his feline friends. The cats scram as the man in the gloves has a word with the toothless cat-lover.

Then a funeral procession interrupts the scene. Ten men surrounded by a happy commotion of children parade by, singing a religious song with the reverence of “Happy Birthday.” The body, wrapped in a blanket and set in a bed of fresh hay, is jiggled on its wooden rack as all the men jockey to “give the departed one a shoulder,” and the mobile ritual disappears around the bend.

Later, back down by the port, the same tour group passes me, heading down to catch their ferry. I see them clutching their bags and purses, attracting hustlers like flies. Saying no just makes things worse. Just as on my last visit to Tangier, when I encounter groups like this, I can only think, “self-imposed hostage crisis.” And when exploring this travelers’ fantasy on my own, I can only think, “How could anyone be in southern Spain — so close — and not hop over to experience this wonderland?”