On this trip I have had many fans (made up primarily of people who have to love me like my family and friends). One of these awesome individuals took such an active interest in my travels that he wrote a list of questions which I truly enjoyed thinking about. It has taken me awhile to give them the time they deserve, and I still ended up a little short on a few. However, for whomever is curious, here are some thoughts. Thank you to Michael Gratta for getting some rusty cogs grinding.
Was Josep affected by the dairy strike in Europe?
I meant to ask him about it, but he seemed to be a man with a real love for his life and one who was just clinging on to that sort of existence. His dream was to be able to sell artisenal cheese so that he was not forced into a situation where he would have to switch to more modern methods like hay and corn fed cows. Even now Josep has to sell his milk at a low price to be thrown into a mixed vat and homogenized and superheat treated. Considering the Spanish expertise on meat I would expect better than just the UHT (Ultra Heat Treated = tasteless) milk that I had everywhere outside the farm.
Is everyone freaking out about a recession over there too?
Everyone abroad vacillates between talking about how wealthy we are and how we are undergoing a huge recession and our money is worthless. It's all over the place and seems to affect no one worse than traveling Americans who get hounded for being wealthy and dominant or get ripped off for the dollar. But that's just the self involved perspective. Surprisingly, no one seems to have any desire to travel to the USA (the only ones who do have no capability because of our horribly strict VISA policy).
What are the thoughts about the future of american politics?
American politics are another confusion. People in India seem to be on the Obama train in some places and all about Bush (and therefore I assume McCain) in others. The strangest place was Macedonia where everyone knows perfectly well that they don't like what Bush does, but because he supports Macedonia in front of Greece they are on board with the Republicans. Overall most people know about our economy sinking faster than the Titanic, but they all still claim that we are the superpower of the world. I don't know what to think about it really, but I think the future, hopefully under Obama, will show that we are ready to step back and listen to how the rest of the world thinks we should handle ourselves. By the same token, I do see a need to maintain some influence in the Middle East; there are a lot of ideas out there I would like to keep far away from my hemisphere after having even befriended some of the Muslim world's most amazing people.
What does tumeric come from?
Turmeric is actually native to South Asia and is pervasive in Indian, especially South, cuisine. The yellow powder is widely traded in the south of India along with saffron (a more flavorful and expensive but similarly hued spice). It actually comes from a green leafy plant that reminds me of some houseplants back home; and, like the one I accidentally killed before I left, they require quite a bit of water. The spice is part of the root system and is baked in an oven and ground to a powder to create its household form. In addition, turmeric is often used in Indian ceremonies and worship because of its bright color and has a special place in Hindu tradition.
Did you go to Sintra in Portugal?
Sintra in Portugal was a beautiful place to drive around. Genna and I met some lovely people and gaped out the car window at the hillsides covered in vineyards. I love the steep narrow roads that force everyone to drive reasonably sized vehicles and the small community feel of it all. As we drove up to the northern border with Spain, people and scenery just kept getting friendlier and more beautiful. When we reached the absolutely adorable northernmost wine region of Melgaco, well known for their espumantes or Portuguese champagne, it almost felt like we had reached Zion.
Did you go to Granada?
Sadly, we did not make it to the south of Spain. Would you like to take a trip with me and show me around?
What was working on the farm like?
Working on the farm was one of the most phenomenal experiences of my life. Actually, since I am a rather blessed individual, I should pick a more descriptive adjective.
Working on the farm was not only educational in an agricultural aspect, but was perhaps the luckiest Genna and I have been on this entire trip. Here's why: the WOOFing organization is a little bit of a crap shoot as far as I have heard. While some "farmers" who have paid the fees to be a part of the organization truly are aiming themselves towards complete sustainability, many are said to be more like expatriates who have bought some comparatively cheap land and are looking for a place to hang out and be little hippies until the end of their days. I have no problem with this. Josep, on the other hand, I would imagine had a farm completely unlike most on the WOOFing list.
First of all, he ran one of the last traditional type dairy farms in probably all of Spain. The cows ate fresh grass every day, were talked to like children (albeit unruly ones) and cared for exclusively by Josep for the last 11 years. Genna and I worked our butts off and combined we could still never accomplish half of what this man could in one day. It's only after peeling the last callous off my palms in Macedonia that I truly was able to understand the fortune that Genna and I had to find such a quirky and traditional Catalunyan family to show us what the north of Spain was really about. I'm certain I will never experience anything like it again.
Are you homesick?
You know, there are things I miss about home, like my family and friends, but I love meeting new people and seeing how others get along. I would say my love for home ties with my love for the entire globe, so I'd like to divide my time between the two. Of course the other part about that is that I really have not had a long-term living quarter since I moved from Dirty Jersey (my first love) at age 16. So I guess that makes it all the easier for me to think of the world as my home, which, as corny as it sounds, I truly believe.
Are you going back to colorado?
As it turns out, I am going back to Colorado. I love the state and people of Colorado; it's a place that has a lot to offer when you don't know where you are going or what you are doing. It's a place where there is a laid back peace that I need when I'm not invested in a project. It's also a place where people, beyond all reason, seem to love me. Still, I had hoped to go to New York this September for graduate school and psyched myself up to see the leaves change for the first time in years. I hope to stay out here long enough to figure some things out, but not forever. I do think it's time to move on with my life and start something new somewhere new...anywhere.
What should I do with my life?
Learn. I can't figure any of it out so in the meantime I just think if I can open my eyes and ears and take time to think before I talk and act perhaps things will fall into place by my facilitation not overactive engagement. I guess it's sort of a laissez faire approach to life, but if it's done with the right heart I am hoping it has great potential. We'll see. (Too sappy? Get a tattoo to balance it out.)
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Timeout for the Juvenile Delinquent
I wake up with a large metal pot beside me and overly chipper rays streaming in from the open sun room. Outside I hear Genna arguing with Pavle about the Greeks and Macedonia's right to their name. It's 5 o'clock in the morning.
When I get up to use the bathroom the memory of last night's party rises from my quivering vacant stomach and spreads violently throughout the trashed apartment. I barely make it back to bed before my legs give out. Five hours later I emerge once more to find a dozing Genna in pristine flat. Could it all have been just a dream?
No, my Macedonian friends managed to out "hospitalitate" me in my own space right down to mopping the floor while Genna and I dripped punch-flavored dribble down our dozing chins. Now this is an embarrassment.
It all started when our attempt to introduce the drinking game Quarters (which I am good at) degenerated into a perfidious game of low card (which, if it had any skill involved, I would suck at). Not only do I draw the initial two low cards, but also discover that this means I am to drink double - oh, and I can't leave the table until drinking at least 3. In other words I'm screwed.
It takes little more than an hour for us to run out of beer and vodka and for me to be focusing on people's pupils in a lame attempt to appear sober. This is what I get when I try to combine American and Macedonian party tradition: drunk by midnight with a party that intends to be bumping until 4. By 1 AM I am perched on a pitch black landing 2 floors above and hung over a flower pot and wishing for swift death.
Finally I hear Genna sneak out of the apartment in search of me. I let out a weak murmur, relieved and grateful that she is alone and I can admit my plight. The girl is an angel. After failing in her attempt to teach me how to make myself throw up she navigates me down the stairs, through the bustle of hopefully happy party-goers and into bed. As I try to slow down the merry-go-round that has become Pance's air mattress, a trickle of Macedonians come to sympathize. Despite my mortification, one after another offers a empathetic memories of similar moments of inebriation. For my part, I had made it to 25 without betraying myself so egregiously and figured I was in the clear. Wrong.
And so it seems that all hopes to prove to these people that I could be as nice, as giving, as totally hospitable as seems to be their nature have failed. Instead I find myself ever more grateful for their patience with my flailing American ways. Yet I wonder, was it a good party?
When I get up to use the bathroom the memory of last night's party rises from my quivering vacant stomach and spreads violently throughout the trashed apartment. I barely make it back to bed before my legs give out. Five hours later I emerge once more to find a dozing Genna in pristine flat. Could it all have been just a dream?
No, my Macedonian friends managed to out "hospitalitate" me in my own space right down to mopping the floor while Genna and I dripped punch-flavored dribble down our dozing chins. Now this is an embarrassment.
It all started when our attempt to introduce the drinking game Quarters (which I am good at) degenerated into a perfidious game of low card (which, if it had any skill involved, I would suck at). Not only do I draw the initial two low cards, but also discover that this means I am to drink double - oh, and I can't leave the table until drinking at least 3. In other words I'm screwed.
It takes little more than an hour for us to run out of beer and vodka and for me to be focusing on people's pupils in a lame attempt to appear sober. This is what I get when I try to combine American and Macedonian party tradition: drunk by midnight with a party that intends to be bumping until 4. By 1 AM I am perched on a pitch black landing 2 floors above and hung over a flower pot and wishing for swift death.
Finally I hear Genna sneak out of the apartment in search of me. I let out a weak murmur, relieved and grateful that she is alone and I can admit my plight. The girl is an angel. After failing in her attempt to teach me how to make myself throw up she navigates me down the stairs, through the bustle of hopefully happy party-goers and into bed. As I try to slow down the merry-go-round that has become Pance's air mattress, a trickle of Macedonians come to sympathize. Despite my mortification, one after another offers a empathetic memories of similar moments of inebriation. For my part, I had made it to 25 without betraying myself so egregiously and figured I was in the clear. Wrong.
And so it seems that all hopes to prove to these people that I could be as nice, as giving, as totally hospitable as seems to be their nature have failed. Instead I find myself ever more grateful for their patience with my flailing American ways. Yet I wonder, was it a good party?
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Wind up to NASA's 4th finest
At 3:30 in the afternoon I call Genna from our favorite cafe where I have been cutting and pasting away my afternoon. "She'll be here in 20 minutes if you can make it." I pause for a minute, wondering if there is some feasible way that I can not make it. But the ease of using Skopje's Partizanska buses makes for a timely arrival, leaving me with little legitimate excuse to ditch out.
It's a combination of factors that urges my naughty shoulder devil to forsake Genna for this journey to see a pile of rocks on top of a hill in the farmlands outside of Skopje. At the top of the list is UNESCO and hospitality. That's right. We are in a situation in which UNESCO and hospitality have the potential to ruin our lives. First of all, UNESCO, I don't know if you foresaw this when you set about to indulge the great and lesser nations of this world by throwing your clement little labels willy nilly across the globe, but I beg you: STOP!
We have dropped jaws at Agra and Varanasi; we have creeped the rickety tracks of the toy train in Darjeeling; we have been sexually harassed outside the crumbling Red Fort in Delhi and in the Medina of Marrakech. We have intoxicated ourselves in the Alto Douro Wine Region; we have circumnavigated the Monastary of Batalha; we have stalled the car lost in the hilly cultural landscapes of Sintra and we have blistered our heels in the old cities of Salamanca, Cáceres and Merida. And yes, we have also been lectured about missing the great rock-art sites in the Coa Valley, the historic city of Meknes, Santiago de Compostela and Goa. No, we did NOT make it to Granada or Evora or Fez. And damnit, before we make it home there is a damn good chance that Genna and I will not have been to the one and only Macedonian UNESCO heritage site: Ohrid. So, UNESCO, I beg you, end this plague of pride that you, like some depraved ecumenical Santa, have dispersed helter skelter upon this earth. You are killing me.
Secondly, hospitality, is it possible to have too much of it? Since we would be nowhere without our extensive Macedonian network, that's a big round NO. However, it is possible to have too much of it in too short of time: I call it hospitality saturation. They are amazing. Macedonians are so adept at hosting that a 22 year old (featured in Macedonia's newspaper with a subtitle reading They may look small in number, but these hooligans cause a big mess), is able to arise from an all night bender, stumble down the street, take us two bus rides away to his uncle's bakery where we learn to make burek, and manage to hold off chain smoking in front of his father the whole while. Oh yeah, and at any level of intoxication or sleep deprivation the kid can beat me at backgammon while ensuring that I have a Nescafe in one hand and a lemonade in the other.
Their capability to over-indulge me with host offerings is as epic as their ability to commune. On the day of our trip to the largest waterfall in Macedonia our incredible guests manage to get a borrowed car from Skopje to come pick us up from the bus station, serve us a breakfast of yogurt, fresh apricot juice, water, Turkish coffee and fresh homemade pastry before driving us to the border with Bulgaria. Here, while we overcome the difficulties of a lost and stalled vehicle, we purchase a watermelon, a round of beers, and a delicious fruit I've never seen or tasted before in my life. Our return rewards us with 5 kebaps, a Shopska salad and another round of beers. Then, on the way back towards the city we pause for a look at Stip's oldest church and a hike up to the town's viewing point where the pervasively popular cross at the summit signifies our triumph. Anetta then buys us coffee while she waits for our bus to come pick us up and take us back to the waiting arms of Pance's parents who have dinner prepared to be followed by ice cream and coffee. Saturated I say.
So, after a full week or of these types of interactions (pause for more passive Peace Corps Jerry who just gets me drunk and lets me pass out on his couch), I realize that my base saturation level is far askew from my Eastern European counterparts. This, I tell myself, will be my final endured UNESCO moment and from here on out I will make these kindly Macedonians mete out their hospitality in more reasonable doses, like once a day. And so, let the Kokino adventure begin...
Friday, June 27, 2008
Travelling in Pairs (Part 2)
Today is Genna's turn to make it happen, and perhaps it is because of my excesses that she chooses the way she does. Still, at least until this afternoon, I am bound to her as a loyal travel partner and friend. Along our nightly adventure of finding a place to sleep Genna and I come across one of Portugal's many sport centers. This is something we find remarkable about the country - along with an incredible knowledge about wine and regional pride, each little town seems to have the most well-funded sports complex that I have ever come across. It's a nice change from requiring my first born to afford the overcrowded gyms of Boulder, or worse, joining one of our expansive networks of Megachurches in the US that substitute for community builders in a country that refuses to fund secular wholesome social organizations (yes, I have become a raging liberal thanks to travel and the New Yorker). Anyway, I make the mistake of driving past one such sports complex where Genna, again to my misfortune, notices a large pool inside.
"I know, let's get up and swim laps tomorrow!"
Alright, this girl has got to be joking. I make her drink wine and eat ice cream and she's about to drag me into a pool in the middle of Portugal to swim laps? Does she know that my mother is worried that I will drown someday because I am such a pathetic flailing swimmer? She doesn't, nor does she care.
The morning arrives and I hope the girl has forgotten about this ill-advised bout of motivation. Luck is not with me. Having sacrificed both of our absolutely rockin' pack towels to the travel gods, we are left bringing some stinky laundry into the recreation center housing my chlorinated nemesis. Once inside we are promptly interrogated about whether we possess the required swim caps. Does this lady know that I do not have so much as a bathing suit let alone a swim cap? Well no problem then, she hands over two child size caps for me to tuck my 2 foot mane underneath.
Once in the locker room, beside what is becoming a regular entourage of elementary schoolers, I stuff my rolls into a neon green sports bra bargained down to 20 derham in the harassing markets of Marrakech. The tush gets tucked into a set of men's boxer briefs stolen from a Moroccan surfer on the beaches of Imessouane, and finally the hair bubbles out of the head condom that the Portuguese think will somehow contain me (I'm an extra large like everybody else you know). We do our best to avert our eyes from the mirrors as we pad out to the pool, me meanwhile cursing Genna with every waddled step.
We emerge to a team of aerobicisers in the small pool, a flock of youngin's in swim class readying themselves to belly flop into the lanes, and parents abound in the bleachers above to watch little Johnny, I mean Juan-i, thrash about in the blue-bottomed pit. I have immediate flashbacks of red splotchy bellies and chlorinated lungs. Great.
I make a personal note to ensure that Genna dies a miserable death at some point in the near future as a woman in a very sleek looking one piece speedo approaches us with a confused look on her face. It turns out that this is a one-piece only sort of pool and do we not have speedos with us? Well, wouldn't-ya-know, I do have a speedo right with me I just opted for the far superior armamentarium that is my lime green bra and men's underwear combo. She must have not sensed my urgent telepathy, because to my absolute disappointment the woman allows us to carry on. And so to the stares of every adult in the room and some of my traitor 8 year old compatriots we submerge ourselves in the tepid pools and prepare to stroke.
Since we have also been waved off of the kickboards I will now have to prove my mother wrong by surviving this entire adventure without any flotation device aside from the butt cheeks I've been busy padding over the past 6 months of travel. The still psyched Genna drags me across the pool lap by lap, me constantly pulling up my inferior sports bra for fear that I will flash a crowd of onlookers who are all too busy trying to figure out what the hell we are doing there. After what seems like the longest 45 minutes of my life the girl agrees that it is time to raise ourselves out of this water torture.
I trudge my soppy way to free showers, the silver lining on this madness, and assure myself that the next time I feel our ideas of a "good time" seem like they should be an even trade I will promptly bop Genna over the head with a leg of jamón Iberica.
"I know, let's get up and swim laps tomorrow!"
Alright, this girl has got to be joking. I make her drink wine and eat ice cream and she's about to drag me into a pool in the middle of Portugal to swim laps? Does she know that my mother is worried that I will drown someday because I am such a pathetic flailing swimmer? She doesn't, nor does she care.
The morning arrives and I hope the girl has forgotten about this ill-advised bout of motivation. Luck is not with me. Having sacrificed both of our absolutely rockin' pack towels to the travel gods, we are left bringing some stinky laundry into the recreation center housing my chlorinated nemesis. Once inside we are promptly interrogated about whether we possess the required swim caps. Does this lady know that I do not have so much as a bathing suit let alone a swim cap? Well no problem then, she hands over two child size caps for me to tuck my 2 foot mane underneath.
Once in the locker room, beside what is becoming a regular entourage of elementary schoolers, I stuff my rolls into a neon green sports bra bargained down to 20 derham in the harassing markets of Marrakech. The tush gets tucked into a set of men's boxer briefs stolen from a Moroccan surfer on the beaches of Imessouane, and finally the hair bubbles out of the head condom that the Portuguese think will somehow contain me (I'm an extra large like everybody else you know). We do our best to avert our eyes from the mirrors as we pad out to the pool, me meanwhile cursing Genna with every waddled step.
We emerge to a team of aerobicisers in the small pool, a flock of youngin's in swim class readying themselves to belly flop into the lanes, and parents abound in the bleachers above to watch little Johnny, I mean Juan-i, thrash about in the blue-bottomed pit. I have immediate flashbacks of red splotchy bellies and chlorinated lungs. Great.
I make a personal note to ensure that Genna dies a miserable death at some point in the near future as a woman in a very sleek looking one piece speedo approaches us with a confused look on her face. It turns out that this is a one-piece only sort of pool and do we not have speedos with us? Well, wouldn't-ya-know, I do have a speedo right with me I just opted for the far superior armamentarium that is my lime green bra and men's underwear combo. She must have not sensed my urgent telepathy, because to my absolute disappointment the woman allows us to carry on. And so to the stares of every adult in the room and some of my traitor 8 year old compatriots we submerge ourselves in the tepid pools and prepare to stroke.
Since we have also been waved off of the kickboards I will now have to prove my mother wrong by surviving this entire adventure without any flotation device aside from the butt cheeks I've been busy padding over the past 6 months of travel. The still psyched Genna drags me across the pool lap by lap, me constantly pulling up my inferior sports bra for fear that I will flash a crowd of onlookers who are all too busy trying to figure out what the hell we are doing there. After what seems like the longest 45 minutes of my life the girl agrees that it is time to raise ourselves out of this water torture.
I trudge my soppy way to free showers, the silver lining on this madness, and assure myself that the next time I feel our ideas of a "good time" seem like they should be an even trade I will promptly bop Genna over the head with a leg of jamón Iberica.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Travelling in Pairs (Part 1)
Genna and I travel in a way that involves me dragging Genna into stores of goodies, markets with bounties of fruits and vegetables and any street-side stall that seems to be frying up mystery meats. She is a good sport and chows down brain or the curiously raw tasting sausages that are offered in narrow alleys or along sewage strewn streets. On my side of the bargain I do little but follow Genna into various bookstores or the Erotic Art Museum in Barcelona. The trade-off is more than fair to anyone in my shoes: fried brain vs. books and sex. She’s a good sport.
Occasionally the two of us ante up and commit to finding a monument or some Roman ruins, taking as many pictures as possible to prove to one and all that we are indeed educating ourselves as we eat our way around the world. But this, of course, is a sacrifice on both of our parts.
I don’t realize it until it has happened, but it comes my turn to even the deal somewhere around the middle of our road trip through Portugal. We wake up in the quaint (as if every Portuguese town weren’t the wholesomest damn thing you ever did see) community of Anadia, and I am more excited than ever because today we have a visit to the center wine production facility of Borlido. I am so eager in fact, that I ensure that we arrive to the famed little wine region of Sanghalos several hours early to track down our establishment before getting the usual meia leite de maquina at a cafe nearby. Then, just because we have a little extra time, I also make the girl tag along the journey down the roto do vinho to see if the kind people at the Casa de Saima would let us drop by unannounced. Although luck is not with me at the lush gardens of Saima, I do note an ice cream parlor we simply must stop by after our 2:00 appointment.
The tour through the Quinta is an unrivaled experience. We arrive in the waiting room of a Portuguese mansion that has been restored to house the offices and meeting facilities for the Borlido estate. In the outside courtyard a large fountain provides a relaxing soundtrack beneath the shade of grandiose palms and your usual Portuguese abundance of flowers and foliage. The setting gives no indication of all that goes on in the bowels beyond the creamy yellow paint and traditional blue mural tiles of its outside facade.
A glamorous young woman in silver heels, a glittery silver top and jewelry to match comes to greet us with some of the best English we have come across in Portugal. She leads us through the converted building and down a set of stairs at the bottom of which we are shot out into the shiny processing unit of liquors, liquors and more liquors. It's as though we have entered the world of Willie Wonka: polished pieces of equipment are buzzing and churning and the smell of almond fills the air.
An hour and a half later Genna and I have seen the endless caves (a creeping reminder of Poe's Cask of Amontillado), have learned the tedious process of quarter rotating the yeasty espumantes twice a day and have gotten a personal look at the corking, bottling and labeling lines where strong and proficient women smartly package and ship thousands of bottles a day. We have learned of the Portuguese drink known as the Tango which is a beer flavored with a the popular red grozhela berry and we have engaged our host with the intriguing dialectic over the Doniminacion de Origin Controlada labels that many Portuguese bottles boast to claim their single origin status. I am giddy with new information.
On our way out Genna and I inquire about this young glamorous woman's position at Borlido, as she seems to not only know everything, but is frequently called for questioning throughout our very personal tour. Just as we are about to step out of the wide garage and into the sunlight, as if emerging from a Food Network program tour or one of Mr. Roger's explorations into the zipper factory, we learn that we have been lead on a thorough personal tour by the winemaster and maker herself. Score.
Beaming with our fortune, I "drag" Genna to the ice cream shop down the street. Genna sees the closed blinds and door and waits in the car while I insist on running up to give the handle a turn. Locked. Maybe a knock I think.
A bent and smiley old Portuguese woman in a candy-striped tunic opens the door. Her Hobart mixer churns in the background while a counter chockablock with chocolate. I cannot help but invite myself into what is clearly more a processing facility than a vendor (and beckon Genna to come with). The woman does not speak any English but she can imagine why I am there. Without so much as a word between us she scoops two giant balls of stracciatella and plops them onto a double barreled sugar cone.
By the time Genna arrives I am a schoolgirl licking up my sweet treat as fast as it melts and have promptly made friends with the household hound - a sweet and aged cocker spaniel. The girl shakes her head at my absolute ridiculousness before the woman hands her a double cone of the same. As we sit there between the threshold of the ice cream shop and the interior which is clearly the woman's household kitchen I cede power to Genna for the next morning's activities; today is a day I got exactly what I wanted.
Occasionally the two of us ante up and commit to finding a monument or some Roman ruins, taking as many pictures as possible to prove to one and all that we are indeed educating ourselves as we eat our way around the world. But this, of course, is a sacrifice on both of our parts.
I don’t realize it until it has happened, but it comes my turn to even the deal somewhere around the middle of our road trip through Portugal. We wake up in the quaint (as if every Portuguese town weren’t the wholesomest damn thing you ever did see) community of Anadia, and I am more excited than ever because today we have a visit to the center wine production facility of Borlido. I am so eager in fact, that I ensure that we arrive to the famed little wine region of Sanghalos several hours early to track down our establishment before getting the usual meia leite de maquina at a cafe nearby. Then, just because we have a little extra time, I also make the girl tag along the journey down the roto do vinho to see if the kind people at the Casa de Saima would let us drop by unannounced. Although luck is not with me at the lush gardens of Saima, I do note an ice cream parlor we simply must stop by after our 2:00 appointment.
The tour through the Quinta is an unrivaled experience. We arrive in the waiting room of a Portuguese mansion that has been restored to house the offices and meeting facilities for the Borlido estate. In the outside courtyard a large fountain provides a relaxing soundtrack beneath the shade of grandiose palms and your usual Portuguese abundance of flowers and foliage. The setting gives no indication of all that goes on in the bowels beyond the creamy yellow paint and traditional blue mural tiles of its outside facade.
A glamorous young woman in silver heels, a glittery silver top and jewelry to match comes to greet us with some of the best English we have come across in Portugal. She leads us through the converted building and down a set of stairs at the bottom of which we are shot out into the shiny processing unit of liquors, liquors and more liquors. It's as though we have entered the world of Willie Wonka: polished pieces of equipment are buzzing and churning and the smell of almond fills the air.
An hour and a half later Genna and I have seen the endless caves (a creeping reminder of Poe's Cask of Amontillado), have learned the tedious process of quarter rotating the yeasty espumantes twice a day and have gotten a personal look at the corking, bottling and labeling lines where strong and proficient women smartly package and ship thousands of bottles a day. We have learned of the Portuguese drink known as the Tango which is a beer flavored with a the popular red grozhela berry and we have engaged our host with the intriguing dialectic over the Doniminacion de Origin Controlada labels that many Portuguese bottles boast to claim their single origin status. I am giddy with new information.
On our way out Genna and I inquire about this young glamorous woman's position at Borlido, as she seems to not only know everything, but is frequently called for questioning throughout our very personal tour. Just as we are about to step out of the wide garage and into the sunlight, as if emerging from a Food Network program tour or one of Mr. Roger's explorations into the zipper factory, we learn that we have been lead on a thorough personal tour by the winemaster and maker herself. Score.
Beaming with our fortune, I "drag" Genna to the ice cream shop down the street. Genna sees the closed blinds and door and waits in the car while I insist on running up to give the handle a turn. Locked. Maybe a knock I think.
A bent and smiley old Portuguese woman in a candy-striped tunic opens the door. Her Hobart mixer churns in the background while a counter chockablock with chocolate. I cannot help but invite myself into what is clearly more a processing facility than a vendor (and beckon Genna to come with). The woman does not speak any English but she can imagine why I am there. Without so much as a word between us she scoops two giant balls of stracciatella and plops them onto a double barreled sugar cone.
By the time Genna arrives I am a schoolgirl licking up my sweet treat as fast as it melts and have promptly made friends with the household hound - a sweet and aged cocker spaniel. The girl shakes her head at my absolute ridiculousness before the woman hands her a double cone of the same. As we sit there between the threshold of the ice cream shop and the interior which is clearly the woman's household kitchen I cede power to Genna for the next morning's activities; today is a day I got exactly what I wanted.
Friday, June 13, 2008
The Scenic Route
When I was a child (perhaps when we all were) my father would take my brother and me on routes he would euphimistically call "sidehighway trips." We knew better. Either the man was lost and wasn't admitting it, or worse, the man wanted to show us something educational or historical...groan. Somehow, some 10 years later, I find myself in my first rental vehicle, insurance waved (just like my parents would do), indicating to Genna the little brown sign on the side of the road, "Look, el roto do vinho! Let's go down that way." Away we bumble down the narrow roads of regions known for their brancos, tintos or espumantes just ogling at the vineyards, quaint houses just drowning in flowers and geriatric men camped at cafes watching the cars go by. When did I turn into my parents?
I suppose I must have done it sometime over the past decade but well before the rest of my kind. As it is, Genna and I seem to be not only the first Americans meandering around this place, but now the only people within about 20 years of our age. This is all well and good for us, at the port cellars in Porto we take charge and exuberantly ask questions about brandies and grape varieties, brown-nosing our way quickly to heads of the class. While the French tourists down their samples the honeymooners delicately sip theirs, leaving 3/4 of a glass just beckoning to be wineswept, especially when they have done so with a particularly pricey special reserve.
minesweeping: the act of taking for one's own the leftover food or drink of another (winesweeping: the act of minesweeping wine)
By midafternoon outlooks on driving out of Porto are grim and we are bound by our state of intoxication to another night in the beautiful riverside city of Porto. As we watch the sun set over the town reflecting pink off the houses that jut out of the steep hills on either side of the valley, we think of our mothers and how much they would like it, refusing to admit that we do, in fact enjoy it ourselves. Luckily for us Europe's obsession with soccer/futbol means that every night has entertainment to offer in the form of a giant screen staged in the center of town around which nearly everyone gathers and drinks either Super Bock or Sagres watery national beers. Now here's something we can do.
Still, in the process of watching France lose multiple times, the Netherlands triumph as often and Croatia, Romania and the Czechs go from highs to lows, I realize that even when becoming a soccer devotee it is impossible to catch a goal on live television:
Leigh takes a sip of beer, "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!"
"Damn."
Leigh gets up to go to the bathroom, "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!"
"Damn."
Leigh swears that she will not peel her eyes from the screen for 10 minutes, "Game over; Italy wins."
"Another Super Bock for me."
So, as our road adventure continues we head up north to the quaint castle-topped town of Melgaço where we taste the northern vinho verdes and espumantes which are just sworn to be leaps and bounds better than their sister fermentation: champagne. While I cannot swear to this I can swear that the northern Portuguese are some of the friendliest people on the face of the planet and their cultural pride is so welcoming that I am inclined to agree with whatever they tell me. If I had a 5 cent Euro for the number of times a person drew us a map for directions or simply walked with us to our destination I'd be super wealthy in US dollars (yes, it does suck to be on the Euro).
This is no more true than when we roll our Ibiza into the little town of Anadia where the Vine and Wine festival is about to get kicked off. The month of June is a regular extravaganza of free food, drink and entertainment in Portugal, and we have hit the motherload. It starts at the Bairrada Museum of Wine in the center of town. I am like an exhuberant school child as we approach the doors of the building that is to educate me on exactly what I love: people's love for food and booze. This is only more appropriate considering the crowd that awaits to enter. Standing in pairs two large classes of second-graders wait until the museum curator finished his cigarette and is ready to begin their tour. Don't you just love Europe?
So here Genna and I are, accompanying a bunch of 8 year old mini enologists through one of the most modern educational museums I have ever been in. The art exhibit in the top hall boasts a full floor with the title "Our King, The Pig." This takes some explanation: the traditional delicacy of Bairrada is the much prized roast suckling pig or leitao assada. So yes, they pretty much take a baby pig, skewer it down the middle, turn it slowly over a flame until its meat nearly melts off its fat little body and then serve it up with some delicious tinto espumante and an orange to cut through the soft thick flesh.
If their is one thing these Portuguese know how to do it is to fuse tradition with the modern and take pride in it. Acrylic, oil and spray painted canvases boast every impression of the leitao, including some very reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm. At one point I find myself standing before a taxonomized piglet sitting in a high chair sporting a bonnet and a pacifier, meanwhile accompanied by an eery barnyard soundtrack. But yes, I do still plan on eating that little creature this evening at the festival...and apparently so do the rest of the elementary schoolers.
We emerge from the museum tagging along at the end of the line of children wondering when snacktime is and whether we can exchange our juicebox for wine. This is no matter as the Vine and Wine Festival is about to kick off and the adventure really starts...
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Teenagers
He could smell it. She had it and he wanted it...BAD. On the farm, when a cow is in heat there is no mistaking it. We are like the parents with horny teenage children. We see it in their eyes. We give them a stern talking to about the curfew: you MUST be back for the evening milking, or else. And just like me at that age, it is to no avail.
The moment the chains are released those two disappear like fugitives to greener pastures (so to speak). The toro sounds his huffy possessive moo, a signal that the surrounding herd is his and his only. But this week Mandarina has the seat of preference. She is the favored concubine among his harem: a young, beautiful bovine just exuding sexuality...literally.
So, when opportunities mount so does our bull. The evening milking comes and the cattle call is sounded by Josep and myself, "Chicas, venga!" As the sky illuminates the clouds into a fluorescent expansive of pink against the lush mountainside the girls wander their way back up to the farmhouse to relieve themselves of the incredible weight that a day full of eating has condensed into their udders. Genna stands guard, ready to take up the battle of the cereals. Genna against ruminant, ruminant against Genna. It turns out, we are neither stronger nor smarter than cows. Genna discovers the strength aspect when trying to guard the evening doling of cereals from the early arrivers who cheekily pilfer neighboring allotments or sneak into the cereal shed when we´re not looking. We both discover the intelligence aspect when we realize that even cows stop eating when they´re full, which is more than we can say. I´m only waiting for one to memorize the numbers of my checking account. But heck, that´s what you can expect from an animal that can lick INSIDE of its nostrils AND move each ear independently.
When the sun fades and the full moon rises to illuminate our valley we realize that we will not be seeing either the bull or Mandarina tonight. Tonight dinner conversation involves the usual talk of vacas in Catalan, only now "Mandarina" seems to be interspersed as often as "vacas" among the bubbling Catalan. Tomorrow, it seems, there will be hell to pay.
We arise at around eight to the sound of a buzzsaw that is the generator running suction throughout the milking barns that surround the house. Genna, not a morning girl, but definitely a bra-wearing one, awkwardly slings tangled straps around her shoulders as she forages for stinky sweatpants and a 5th day teashirt before stumbling into the bathroom we both been dreaming about since round 6AM.
By this time I am downstairs and in my shit-stained coveralls, albeit braless, and have stolen the one small pair of boots without the hole. I arrive at my post, bucket in hand, active and ready for duty sir. On a good day I arrive just in time for the first canister of milk to be poured into my bucket which I lug, lift, and pour (with finesse of course) into the double sieved huge vat. The variable amounts of milk these girls can crank out is absolutely astonishing. While some will provide only enough for breakfast, others can keep us supplied for a week.
After two weeks Genna and I have just about got this down to a science. While she hauls I scoop shit out of the second milking room and vice versa. Meanwhile we have learned to be of assistance with various tube attachments used for suction and have even personally fastened a sucker or two onto engorged teets. We swear that one day we could be in charge of the milking, but there would be no need for that as the man has been working 11 years, milking both day and night, with not one day off...NOT ONE.
Still, there is one thing I have turned out to be useful for on the farm. You might even say I´m a cowgirl. When the girls come in for their morning milking there are always a few stragglers. Today, I have rounded up all but Mandarina and the Toro and so it is that I am heading down to the electric fence to see if they have finally wandered their delinquent selves back to the gate this morning.
The good thing about being the parent of a bovine is that they come with a built-in security system. This does not only refer to the cowbell (farmer GPS) around their necks (that I´m sure my parents would have liked to attach to me), but also to the nature of the animal. Udders do not take time off for a little recreation.
There they stand, whiny adolescents lowing outside of the gate, knowing that they´re in trouble. When I open the gate, the bull meanders in, lazy and exhausted from the night´s fling and now seemingly disinterested in his conquest. Poor Mandarina, on the other hand, is in a state so pathetically hilarious that I almost keel over laughing. Hanging, bloated and massive between her shaking legs sags an enormous sack of udders dripping rich white dairy all over the cobblestone driveway.
"Venga" I tell her like the upset parent I should be, meanwhile chortling with amusement. She steps forward, each back leg painstakingly straddling the engorged balloon as she attempts to waddle her way up the hill. Her legs quiver with the weight and the awkwardness of her load. When we finally reach the milking barn the bull collapses on the floor in a heap. "I know how you feel," says Genna, "sometimes I get that way too." Mandarina, equally lethargic, leaks her way to her post where Josep does her the favor of immediately attaching the suction to her swollen teets. As they begin to deflate I swear I see relief pass across that bovine´s giant glossy eyes. Serves her right, think the three of us concerned parents as we give each other knowing winks. Ahh...teenagers.
The moment the chains are released those two disappear like fugitives to greener pastures (so to speak). The toro sounds his huffy possessive moo, a signal that the surrounding herd is his and his only. But this week Mandarina has the seat of preference. She is the favored concubine among his harem: a young, beautiful bovine just exuding sexuality...literally.
So, when opportunities mount so does our bull. The evening milking comes and the cattle call is sounded by Josep and myself, "Chicas, venga!" As the sky illuminates the clouds into a fluorescent expansive of pink against the lush mountainside the girls wander their way back up to the farmhouse to relieve themselves of the incredible weight that a day full of eating has condensed into their udders. Genna stands guard, ready to take up the battle of the cereals. Genna against ruminant, ruminant against Genna. It turns out, we are neither stronger nor smarter than cows. Genna discovers the strength aspect when trying to guard the evening doling of cereals from the early arrivers who cheekily pilfer neighboring allotments or sneak into the cereal shed when we´re not looking. We both discover the intelligence aspect when we realize that even cows stop eating when they´re full, which is more than we can say. I´m only waiting for one to memorize the numbers of my checking account. But heck, that´s what you can expect from an animal that can lick INSIDE of its nostrils AND move each ear independently.
When the sun fades and the full moon rises to illuminate our valley we realize that we will not be seeing either the bull or Mandarina tonight. Tonight dinner conversation involves the usual talk of vacas in Catalan, only now "Mandarina" seems to be interspersed as often as "vacas" among the bubbling Catalan. Tomorrow, it seems, there will be hell to pay.
We arise at around eight to the sound of a buzzsaw that is the generator running suction throughout the milking barns that surround the house. Genna, not a morning girl, but definitely a bra-wearing one, awkwardly slings tangled straps around her shoulders as she forages for stinky sweatpants and a 5th day teashirt before stumbling into the bathroom we both been dreaming about since round 6AM.
By this time I am downstairs and in my shit-stained coveralls, albeit braless, and have stolen the one small pair of boots without the hole. I arrive at my post, bucket in hand, active and ready for duty sir. On a good day I arrive just in time for the first canister of milk to be poured into my bucket which I lug, lift, and pour (with finesse of course) into the double sieved huge vat. The variable amounts of milk these girls can crank out is absolutely astonishing. While some will provide only enough for breakfast, others can keep us supplied for a week.
After two weeks Genna and I have just about got this down to a science. While she hauls I scoop shit out of the second milking room and vice versa. Meanwhile we have learned to be of assistance with various tube attachments used for suction and have even personally fastened a sucker or two onto engorged teets. We swear that one day we could be in charge of the milking, but there would be no need for that as the man has been working 11 years, milking both day and night, with not one day off...NOT ONE.
Still, there is one thing I have turned out to be useful for on the farm. You might even say I´m a cowgirl. When the girls come in for their morning milking there are always a few stragglers. Today, I have rounded up all but Mandarina and the Toro and so it is that I am heading down to the electric fence to see if they have finally wandered their delinquent selves back to the gate this morning.
The good thing about being the parent of a bovine is that they come with a built-in security system. This does not only refer to the cowbell (farmer GPS) around their necks (that I´m sure my parents would have liked to attach to me), but also to the nature of the animal. Udders do not take time off for a little recreation.
There they stand, whiny adolescents lowing outside of the gate, knowing that they´re in trouble. When I open the gate, the bull meanders in, lazy and exhausted from the night´s fling and now seemingly disinterested in his conquest. Poor Mandarina, on the other hand, is in a state so pathetically hilarious that I almost keel over laughing. Hanging, bloated and massive between her shaking legs sags an enormous sack of udders dripping rich white dairy all over the cobblestone driveway.
"Venga" I tell her like the upset parent I should be, meanwhile chortling with amusement. She steps forward, each back leg painstakingly straddling the engorged balloon as she attempts to waddle her way up the hill. Her legs quiver with the weight and the awkwardness of her load. When we finally reach the milking barn the bull collapses on the floor in a heap. "I know how you feel," says Genna, "sometimes I get that way too." Mandarina, equally lethargic, leaks her way to her post where Josep does her the favor of immediately attaching the suction to her swollen teets. As they begin to deflate I swear I see relief pass across that bovine´s giant glossy eyes. Serves her right, think the three of us concerned parents as we give each other knowing winks. Ahh...teenagers.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Here ducky ducky ducky...
After arguing in volcanic Catalan over how best to put out the kitchen fire the stooped couple makes their way up the wooden stairs to bed. Though my stomach is heavy with meat I sneak one last piece of sausage from the big wooden object used to store all uneaten foodstuffs (this includes pasta, rice and other perishibles you might think better left in the refrigerator occupying the other room). The night´s dinner has been a feast of sausages of all shapes, sizes, colors and consistencies paired with an equally varied spread of cheeses. To this we add a bottle of wine and enormous slices of bread smeared with tomatoes. Why they insist on smearing their innards on bread making a soggy glue out of perfectly good leavened wheat I have yet to understand.
Still, this is no match to Sunday brunch – a marvel unto its own. Genna and I come in from turning cheese, a daily activity here on the farm, to find a steaming skillet of paella hot and beckoning. Paella is one of those things you are always tempted to order when offered on a restaurant menu and I have only recently learned that this inevitably leads to disappointment. Why is this so? This is so precisely because there are still some, albeit very few, people out there skilled in the traditional assembly of that incomparable acheivement that is paella.
Three times in my life I have had the fortune of reaching paella orgasm.
Number 1. David´s host mom in Quito, Ecuador manages to pull it off with only seafood (guilt rests on me, the lamentable pescetarian at the time).
Number 2. Grimy bar in Caracas, Venezuela finds me before a dish meant for 4 (across from Molly, lamentable vegetarian) with a tentacle hanging out of my mouth.
Number 3. Farmhouse Girona Spain at which arrives the paella to beat all paellas – fresh peas boiled and added afterwards to the unfathomably rich conglomeration of rice, mussels, whole unpeeled shrimp and the smallest bits of pork for flavor (absolutely nothing to lament).
Genna and I toss our diets out the window as if they were the frisbees we once so athletically threw and instead scoop up every last bit of gooey sauce not forgetting to clean our plates shiny with bread. Who needs a cigarette?
But there is no time for this. Unbeknownst to us, this is Sunday, and Sunday means that not only is there another course but there is the traditional Cava to go with it. Suddenly I recall yesterday afternoon when I inquired as to what Tia (Aunty) was tossing that whiskey into the piping pot on the stove. “Pato para mañana” comes her nonchalant reply. Pato? You mean delicious duck that is undoubtedly the brethren of our two friends that noisily amble in front of the house day in and day out? The very same, well, their brother actually.
And so it is that Tia disappears everyday to come back with either a rabbit from the barn to our left or a duck from the barn below. The woman is a miracle worker with barnyard creatures and whiskey. So, despite our distended bellies here it is, a duck feast, sitting before us emanating the most mouthwatering ducky aroma I have ever introduced into my craving nasal passages. There is nothing to do now but to ask Genna for another piece of bread.
If there is one thing I have learned about edibles on this trip it is how to eat and appreciate bones, spines and other small impasses that get between me and my meat. In Immesouane it was scale, spine and fin here it is little duck bones, shrimp heads and pork skins. Not only are these hurdles a pleasure to suck on or pick at, but they are the only thing that keep me from devouring my meals at torpedo speed allowing me to better savor every juicy morsel of recently slaughtered creature.
Oh the greasy tender insanity that is a slowly bubbled duck. Every time I think I can stop I reach over for another morsel of bread to sop up the reduced fatty broth that puddles on the center plate: here there is a piece of succulent duck skin, there I get a taste of gizzard. And I wash it all down with some bubbly bitter Cava – the champagne of Spain you might say.
And this is how Genna and I look forward to scooping shit, loading hay and hauling milk all day. Every push of the wheelbarrow, every lift of the shovel, every heave of the bucket is an excuse for that last tallow-logged morsel. And did I mention that we eat chocolate and hot milk for breakfast?
Cultural Conundrums
At about 11:30 PM the crowds around the Medina in Marrakech begin to thin out. Families stroll to their homes in the newer areas of the city, couples wander off down the inconspicuous alleys towards their Riads and after a brief transition most mixed gender groups and tourists have dispersed. Thus around midnight the working men are left to pack away stands of fried fish, steaming escargot and roasted goat heads only to be reloaded the following afternoon when the "A-yoh" calls begin anew and people are led (often by the wrist) over to one area or, if you are smart enough to respond "Deja mange," made to promise to return once their hunger has.
After mounting this knife edge of time one arrives at the other side, the side where the x-chromosome no longer exists. Young men are in groups of two to seven. Old men crouch outside of one establishment or another looking unproductive. And middle aged men usually sit at the doorways to their Riads seeming equally worthless. Genna and I have become accustomed to these people and learn to avoid them, especially the young, as best we can as they coo to us or beckon us or straight up just try to greet us. The problem, of course, is the latter, as having a good man just crave a decent hello is something we care to encourage in the culture (not to mention is often turns out useful to know such people for informational purposes).
On this particular evening Genna and I have an insurmountable chocolate craving; and I dare admit that along with out recent Coke addiction has come a Snickers fetish as well. So, after losing a highly important rosham I set off down our alley to wander towards the last open shop window and retrieve our midnight treat. When I enter onto the main Medina road that our Riad alley joins I arrive at the bustling point in the evening where the people flow down the alley like Vesuvius has erupted and so I join into the stream and head off towards the corner shop.
As I arrive at the corner, no more than 5 minutes later, I notice the crowds have begun to rapidly thin and I know it would behove me to pick up my pace. Before entering the shop I am descended upon by a few young adults keen to chat it up with me and who knows what else. I do my usual pretend-they-don´t-exist routine and take refuge with the shopkeeper when they start to pursue. Unfortunately, as is the case in many countries, despite my being second in line, I am left until after the last to serve as I am the only woman who needs assistance.
Chocolate bar in hand I check outside the shop door to ensure that coast is clear. When I see no testerone obstruction in my path I make my way for the corner which I am about to round when the same man, in his twenties, heavy and hanging with a group of equally motley cronies approach me at the corner. I whisk by him at a pace impossible for conversation but am immediately pursued down the cobbled streets back towards my Riad. Despite my pace the man speeds up yelling at me in French and begins to reach his hands down his pants.
When I recognize what is occuring I set off at a run listening to the man and his disgusting noises of masturbation pursue me in the background. I still don´t know if the boy is joking to impress his friends or if he truly has decided to jerk off on a street that is at the least occupied by dozens of men. Sprinting around the corner I could vomit I am so disgusted by the behavior of this animal, his friends, and every spectator on the street that just let it happen.
So you could blame it on me for being out so late. You could blame it on the men for being pigs. You could blame it on the culture for leaving these boys no other sexual recourse than this level of degredation. But when it comes down to it - I don´t regret it.
The following day Genna and I are approached by another one of these nasty characters and asked if we like sex. It is only because of the previous evening´s events that I have had enough experience and am fed up enough with these men to let this boy have it. At the top of my lungs and in front of a crowded street of I let this boy know that he is a pig and should ashamed of himself. Before my eyes the boy´s face shrinks to a small pimple of an object. For the first time, after two months in Morocco, I feel power over this little puke who I am standing up to before a street full of onlookers. The boy stops dead in his tracks and for the first time we are not pursued halfway down the block like other fellow lady travellers. It is through this knowledge and this power that I have gained that I feel that I am able to protect myself better than before and am able to share this experience with others.
Of the many countries I have been to (and luckily there have been many) Morocco is one of the few that I will almost surely revisit. However, Morocco is also the country that has caused me the most distress as a woman and nearly chased me out by the time I purchased my ticket to fly to first world Spain. I write this in the hopes that these words empower other women because as culturally relatavist as the trip has made us there are some beliefs of mine that will never change. I am a feminist.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Ca va - Ca March - Sa rhol
In leaving the oceanside for the desert one realizes something about the Moroccan terrain: it is composed of two things almost entirely - dirt and rocks. Along the beach there is rock that runs into water; in the interior there are rocks that turn into dirt and back into rocks again. Children dig in the dirt and play with the rocks. Kasbahs rise out of the dirt, like rocks but made of dirt. Rocks are headstone markers wedged in dirt. An oven is a chamber of dirt sealed by a rock.
Eight hours into the desert we travel through this terrain into the massive Draa Valley when, out of nowhere, sprouts the forest of date palms that characterize the center of southern nomad civilization. As we make our way through the ancient kasbahs of the south the skin tones begin to mimic the many hues of the dirt and rocks that surround them. Limbs and faces start at a cafe bronze and change to a deep chocolate and an even darker ebony as we near the Algerian border. Noses grow flatter and wider for some and the long Arab slope fades to a minority.
M'Hamid is the end of the road in the southwest, from here there is nothing but desert. The bus stops in the evening and Genna and I, determined to make it here without having booked a desert expedition in Essouaira, Orzaozate or en route, are immediately hasseled by flocks of men in traditional blue and gold garb. We make the stroll to the end of the small village and back before negotiating for a cheap room at the center of town. It's kinda like those time share programs older people get sucked into. I'm like my parents, determined to take the free vacation and leave without purchasing. So we sit through the camel trekking schpeel and leave our decision for morning.
From what I have seen of this world, there are very few women that are not confined to the house or to gathering something in a field. So, when Nezha crosses my path with one child in hand and the other on hip and only after translating a lunch invite between me and the girl I am trying to communicate with mentions that she also organizes camel treks I am almost immediately sold.
By the end of the afternoon Genna and I are on the ultimate four wheel drive, vehicle, the donkey drawn cart with a child in each lap. Flies settle in their nostrils and upon their chocolate stained lips as they snooze off, chalky black afro curls pressed into Genna's motherly bosom. The girl can hardly handle the urge to kiss the child. I roll my eyes and laugh at her obvious infatuation. Years of babysitting have left my nigh invincible to cute factors, though French/Berber speaking two year olds are just about the limit. Still, when Genna later gets into a fight over her glasses that the three year old has absconded with I do my best not to chuckle too visibly.
After enjoying a candle lit tajine in the bivouac we head to bed for the exciting adventure ahead of us the next day: a six day foray into the desert to the famed dunes of Erg Chigaga. The morning reveals a mere preamble of what is to come when awake to find our faces covered in sand along with all of our things including a nice sable tinted pair of toothbrushes. The blanket sealing our dirt chamber flaps with the wind swirling up new fresh coats with every gust. We head to the bathroom (pick your palm tree) and begin acclamitization to grit between our teeth.
The morning is spent waiting out the wind after which we meet our chamellier (read: one that takes care of chamels = camels), Mohammed, our cuisiniere/guide (guess), Humza, and our two dromadaires (camels with one hump) who we soon name Arnold and Henry. And so our life is handed into the hands of these tall scrawny men outfited in faux Nike flip flops and a sweater or the traditional robe and a pair of fairly mangy and querulous camels.
It isn't until later that evening that I discover that Mohamed and Humza can hardly understand each other because one is Arab Nomad and the other is Berber. Over the course of the next few days this situation gets even more hysterical as the two argue over just about everything: take 1 Humza and Mhd. argue over spot to pitch tent, take 2 Humza and Mhd. argue about where to put Henry and Arnold, take 3 Humza and Mhd. argue about how to make traditional bread in the sand, take 4 Humza and Mhd. argue about how to pack the water.
The linguistic triumph of the voyage is when, one night after a delicious bowl of harira and a less than tasty glutonous mush of 35 minute boiled macaroni (for some reason that's how they do it here), we manage a joke in 4 languages. As it turns out, the jokes here, even the dirty ones, are about camels. And so it is that Mohammed puts a dirty Berber camel joke into Arabic Nomad while Humza repeats it to me in French and I repeat it to Genna in English. Let's just say that we now all know what the "petite service" means.
So that's how it goes most nights in the desert. Under the banner of the Milky Way we learn to translate "histoires" and share them with our new friends while one of us throws the perfect kindling upon the dry desert flames. Every nomad we meet seems to freely acknowledge his love for this life and has no desire to part from the unpredictable winds, the scorching heat of the sun or the bone dry feel of sand in every fathomable oriface of ones body. One day Genna and I try to explain to Humza what a hamburger is and he counters our claims of delicious saying that his favorite foods are tajine and cous cous - the only two things he eats and most likely has eaten. It's an unimaginable life that one can't help but be awestuck by. Oh yeah, and we also decide we may stop at the one Mac Donald's in the south on our way back to the coast.
While Genna and I do our best to appreciate the terrain change; which goes from mostly rocks and some dirt to just dirt to just rocks and then to mostly dirt and some rocks then back again, the saddle sores given us by Arnold and Henry become so painful that by the last day of our journey we are glad to dismount our new friends (the camels not the guides) and bid them adieu. It isn't until this final day upon meeting a couple of Spaniards at the bivouac for dinner that Genna and I come to realize that the 6 day trip we have just taken is not for the faint of heart. We are in a small minority of people traveling the distance by camel and on foot and not by 4x4. Not only this, but we get rave reviews for helping set up and break down camp even in the swirling winds of our last two days that sneak into your eye sockets, belly button armpits and nostrils despite the constant turban covering head face and neck. We also manage a pretty mean spaghetti one evening much to the pleasure of Arnold and Henry who are expert slurpers.
The desert, in a nutshell, is an unreal adventure that I think one can only understand by fusing observation of it with observation of its people and their love for it. The most frequent request we get out here is not to marry and move a person from their place to ours, but to come, buy a home, and stay there with them. And so it is that we left M'Hamid with the intention of making it promptly back to the beach and up north but instead found ourselves waylaid not far away in another desert town called Zagora.
In Zagora random acts of kindness are more common than they are rare, or at least in our case. One minute Genna and I are discussing saving money because of an unexpected last minute expense in M'Hamid and the next we are offered floor space in an antique shop and a free home-cooked dinner. One night turns into two and one meal into five when the two friendly antique store owners give us gift after gift and meal after meal including a drive to the next town over to discover desert ceramics and the Jewish Kasbah of old. At one point we are let into an ancient cave-like synogue by an ancient man with a stoop where holes are dug into the mud walls for candles and a larger one at the center to house the Torah.
It us only upon tearing ourselves away from these new friends and onto the bus towards Telouine that we truly believe our luck with these people. It is an indescribable friendliness that that spreads like a frosting of kindness over the south of Morocco (ok, weird imagery, but oh how sweet and delicious it is and how well it translates with the Arabic word - beneen).
And that's how it is that we are here in the land of saffron with the sun setting over the rocky hills, adamantly refusing to hurry ourselves out of this bubble of kindness.
Eight hours into the desert we travel through this terrain into the massive Draa Valley when, out of nowhere, sprouts the forest of date palms that characterize the center of southern nomad civilization. As we make our way through the ancient kasbahs of the south the skin tones begin to mimic the many hues of the dirt and rocks that surround them. Limbs and faces start at a cafe bronze and change to a deep chocolate and an even darker ebony as we near the Algerian border. Noses grow flatter and wider for some and the long Arab slope fades to a minority.
M'Hamid is the end of the road in the southwest, from here there is nothing but desert. The bus stops in the evening and Genna and I, determined to make it here without having booked a desert expedition in Essouaira, Orzaozate or en route, are immediately hasseled by flocks of men in traditional blue and gold garb. We make the stroll to the end of the small village and back before negotiating for a cheap room at the center of town. It's kinda like those time share programs older people get sucked into. I'm like my parents, determined to take the free vacation and leave without purchasing. So we sit through the camel trekking schpeel and leave our decision for morning.
From what I have seen of this world, there are very few women that are not confined to the house or to gathering something in a field. So, when Nezha crosses my path with one child in hand and the other on hip and only after translating a lunch invite between me and the girl I am trying to communicate with mentions that she also organizes camel treks I am almost immediately sold.
By the end of the afternoon Genna and I are on the ultimate four wheel drive, vehicle, the donkey drawn cart with a child in each lap. Flies settle in their nostrils and upon their chocolate stained lips as they snooze off, chalky black afro curls pressed into Genna's motherly bosom. The girl can hardly handle the urge to kiss the child. I roll my eyes and laugh at her obvious infatuation. Years of babysitting have left my nigh invincible to cute factors, though French/Berber speaking two year olds are just about the limit. Still, when Genna later gets into a fight over her glasses that the three year old has absconded with I do my best not to chuckle too visibly.
After enjoying a candle lit tajine in the bivouac we head to bed for the exciting adventure ahead of us the next day: a six day foray into the desert to the famed dunes of Erg Chigaga. The morning reveals a mere preamble of what is to come when awake to find our faces covered in sand along with all of our things including a nice sable tinted pair of toothbrushes. The blanket sealing our dirt chamber flaps with the wind swirling up new fresh coats with every gust. We head to the bathroom (pick your palm tree) and begin acclamitization to grit between our teeth.
The morning is spent waiting out the wind after which we meet our chamellier (read: one that takes care of chamels = camels), Mohammed, our cuisiniere/guide (guess), Humza, and our two dromadaires (camels with one hump) who we soon name Arnold and Henry. And so our life is handed into the hands of these tall scrawny men outfited in faux Nike flip flops and a sweater or the traditional robe and a pair of fairly mangy and querulous camels.
It isn't until later that evening that I discover that Mohamed and Humza can hardly understand each other because one is Arab Nomad and the other is Berber. Over the course of the next few days this situation gets even more hysterical as the two argue over just about everything: take 1 Humza and Mhd. argue over spot to pitch tent, take 2 Humza and Mhd. argue about where to put Henry and Arnold, take 3 Humza and Mhd. argue about how to make traditional bread in the sand, take 4 Humza and Mhd. argue about how to pack the water.
The linguistic triumph of the voyage is when, one night after a delicious bowl of harira and a less than tasty glutonous mush of 35 minute boiled macaroni (for some reason that's how they do it here), we manage a joke in 4 languages. As it turns out, the jokes here, even the dirty ones, are about camels. And so it is that Mohammed puts a dirty Berber camel joke into Arabic Nomad while Humza repeats it to me in French and I repeat it to Genna in English. Let's just say that we now all know what the "petite service" means.
So that's how it goes most nights in the desert. Under the banner of the Milky Way we learn to translate "histoires" and share them with our new friends while one of us throws the perfect kindling upon the dry desert flames. Every nomad we meet seems to freely acknowledge his love for this life and has no desire to part from the unpredictable winds, the scorching heat of the sun or the bone dry feel of sand in every fathomable oriface of ones body. One day Genna and I try to explain to Humza what a hamburger is and he counters our claims of delicious saying that his favorite foods are tajine and cous cous - the only two things he eats and most likely has eaten. It's an unimaginable life that one can't help but be awestuck by. Oh yeah, and we also decide we may stop at the one Mac Donald's in the south on our way back to the coast.
While Genna and I do our best to appreciate the terrain change; which goes from mostly rocks and some dirt to just dirt to just rocks and then to mostly dirt and some rocks then back again, the saddle sores given us by Arnold and Henry become so painful that by the last day of our journey we are glad to dismount our new friends (the camels not the guides) and bid them adieu. It isn't until this final day upon meeting a couple of Spaniards at the bivouac for dinner that Genna and I come to realize that the 6 day trip we have just taken is not for the faint of heart. We are in a small minority of people traveling the distance by camel and on foot and not by 4x4. Not only this, but we get rave reviews for helping set up and break down camp even in the swirling winds of our last two days that sneak into your eye sockets, belly button armpits and nostrils despite the constant turban covering head face and neck. We also manage a pretty mean spaghetti one evening much to the pleasure of Arnold and Henry who are expert slurpers.
The desert, in a nutshell, is an unreal adventure that I think one can only understand by fusing observation of it with observation of its people and their love for it. The most frequent request we get out here is not to marry and move a person from their place to ours, but to come, buy a home, and stay there with them. And so it is that we left M'Hamid with the intention of making it promptly back to the beach and up north but instead found ourselves waylaid not far away in another desert town called Zagora.
In Zagora random acts of kindness are more common than they are rare, or at least in our case. One minute Genna and I are discussing saving money because of an unexpected last minute expense in M'Hamid and the next we are offered floor space in an antique shop and a free home-cooked dinner. One night turns into two and one meal into five when the two friendly antique store owners give us gift after gift and meal after meal including a drive to the next town over to discover desert ceramics and the Jewish Kasbah of old. At one point we are let into an ancient cave-like synogue by an ancient man with a stoop where holes are dug into the mud walls for candles and a larger one at the center to house the Torah.
It us only upon tearing ourselves away from these new friends and onto the bus towards Telouine that we truly believe our luck with these people. It is an indescribable friendliness that that spreads like a frosting of kindness over the south of Morocco (ok, weird imagery, but oh how sweet and delicious it is and how well it translates with the Arabic word - beneen).
And that's how it is that we are here in the land of saffron with the sun setting over the rocky hills, adamantly refusing to hurry ourselves out of this bubble of kindness.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Fsheesht?
Escaping Imsuoane is an ipossible feat. We teeter in limbo between staying forever and leaving for good. This means that currently our packs rest in our reserved beachfront room while we take a brief sojourn to the desert. Meanwhile we assure ourselves that this is a huge step towards moving on...either that or learning to surf. About the only thing that can get one to leave Imsuoane other than lack of money is lack of fish. When the wind is high and the sea is choppy the little village turns into a ghost town. The remaining men of the village sit in Cafe Imsouane sucking down green tea without mint, because there is none, and watching the same Berber film that they watch every day. As the film goes: woman marries man, woman falls in love with singer at wedding, singer loves another woman, things then get confusing until the film ends with extended shot of singer riding souped up scooter.
On mornings like this the Imsouane boys open their portals for a few seconds to precisely calibrate the day's swell and wave height and promptly shut the blue door and the light out until mid afternoon. On days like this the sieste is globally enjoyed and while the moon sliver crosses the setting sun you recline on the roof and watch the net of stars begin to appear across the sky.
Also on days like this you are lucky if you eat vegetable cous cous and maybe some secretly purchased chicken from over the mountain; but usually you eat eggs: lots and lots of eggs. Three mornings have been spent perfecting the crepe and perhaps just as many consuming some sort of omelet-like concoction. After a few days of this you are eating rice or plain instant cous cous and can consider yourself really mod if you are given the scoop on grilled octopus with argan oil and tomatos and invited to join. Rain comes and breaks the plaster off the walls and into the pipes drains that collect our drinking water. The day afterward, before everything has settled the well yields a fun confettied liquid that we drink nonetheless.
After so many days of backgammon, weird-rules checkers and bad attempts at the djembe one finally gets late in the morning and decides: today I will really try to leave Imsouane. After another several hours of tea drinking, hanging around and basic loitering you actually get into a car with a backpack and let them take you away thinking to yourself, "What the hell am I doing?"
Upon arriving in Agadir I eat half of a roast chicken with crisp browned skin and the most perfect french fries: soft in the middle, mildly crisp and crunch outside . We don't realize how different life has been until we seek to wash our hands and are surprised and delighted by running water. There is also electricity most of the time, and from the wall not the battery! About the only thing that really matters though is the hamam...
On mornings like this the Imsouane boys open their portals for a few seconds to precisely calibrate the day's swell and wave height and promptly shut the blue door and the light out until mid afternoon. On days like this the sieste is globally enjoyed and while the moon sliver crosses the setting sun you recline on the roof and watch the net of stars begin to appear across the sky.
Also on days like this you are lucky if you eat vegetable cous cous and maybe some secretly purchased chicken from over the mountain; but usually you eat eggs: lots and lots of eggs. Three mornings have been spent perfecting the crepe and perhaps just as many consuming some sort of omelet-like concoction. After a few days of this you are eating rice or plain instant cous cous and can consider yourself really mod if you are given the scoop on grilled octopus with argan oil and tomatos and invited to join. Rain comes and breaks the plaster off the walls and into the pipes drains that collect our drinking water. The day afterward, before everything has settled the well yields a fun confettied liquid that we drink nonetheless.
After so many days of backgammon, weird-rules checkers and bad attempts at the djembe one finally gets late in the morning and decides: today I will really try to leave Imsouane. After another several hours of tea drinking, hanging around and basic loitering you actually get into a car with a backpack and let them take you away thinking to yourself, "What the hell am I doing?"
Upon arriving in Agadir I eat half of a roast chicken with crisp browned skin and the most perfect french fries: soft in the middle, mildly crisp and crunch outside . We don't realize how different life has been until we seek to wash our hands and are surprised and delighted by running water. There is also electricity most of the time, and from the wall not the battery! About the only thing that really matters though is the hamam...
Friday, April 4, 2008
Little Surfer Girl
After a night of entertainment by a country mom who made us the most delicious peanut butter argan oil conctoction on the face of the planet, Genna and I wander lazily down the road that came to join the fishing village of Imssouane with the rest of the developing Moroccan beach fronts. This place, however, seems to be still devoid of your average tourist, rather attracting ambling surfers, van loads of hippies (and their bleach blonde babies) and the occasional caravan of older Europeans in shiny new campers. The day consists of waking up, eating, surfing, showering, eating, surfing again, drinking green tea, smoking, more eating, more tea, more smoking, and occasionally, some gambling. So far Westerners have managed to arouse the locals' interest in both dice and poker, and there's talk of backgammon. If two Imssouanians hadn't swept the French man for 400 durham things would seem different.With that said, one can say that I'm pretty fluent in French here, as I have the words that seem necessary for life in Imssouane: sable/sand, vent/wind, vague/wave, soleil/sun, la mousse/ white cap, hashish/hashish, palmes/paddle, etois/stars, poisson/fish
And so after 8 days lost in this black hold paradise we come to civilization for one thing only really: ATM.
If only paradise could last like this forever. Enshallah...
Trop de sable, pas de chance
As it turns out, making your own escargot is not nearly the facile qctivity that one might be led to believe. After an hour or two of devoted hunting, reveling in the reverse suction schewp of the snail abdicating its partnership with the beach we arrive proudly with a full bucket. Our friends entertain the whim by throwing it over the tank for 20 minutes of simmering. When the feast arrives to the table we realize our first mistake: everything in the town is eaten with bread, everything except soup. So Brahim dives into his sewing kit and provides 4 sewing needles. This is all we need, it takes everyone 5 snails or so to realize that there is most definitely a rinsing process used by the Marrackech vendors who attract all those young slurp happy children and myself. And so, we sheepishly push the bucket aside grateful that the gifted chefs of Imsuoane know better than to trust an American chef with dinner.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
A smattering
Oh Morocco, what a mixed bag of pleasures. It is a place where the "a" is where the "q" should be and the period is where no one should place sucha frequently used item of punctuation. Aside from this and the insane prices of pretty much everything, it's quite Utopic: warm sun, clean bathrooms, boys love us and delicious food in abundance.
Here the women cover themselves from head to foot, but that foot part is nothing but style. Peaking out from their luxurious flowing kaftans are inevitably the most stylish of stilleto pumps. These pointed pedestals hold up the heftiest of Mediterranean women, who prance around with the finesse of a ballerina despite the addition of both boobs and butt. The men are something of another story. Lanky men draped in fabric often have their hoods up to keep out the beating North African sun. The stiff material of the ensemble means that the hoods stand on end, and despite the usually organic color of the outfit one can't help but be constantly reminded of the KKK. It's a weird phenomenon reserved for the few Americans to ponder over.
Genna and I have managed to drink a gallon or so of sweet gunpowder tea in which is submerged a sizable branch of fresh mint, as well as the delicious yogurt mixi drink in a collection of flavors (my favorite so far being avocado). The latter is reminiscent of the Indian lassi and more refreshing than you might think a dairy beverage capable of being. We have also managed to try a delicious Moroccan Halana Merlot and search some place that may allow us to tour their vineyard.
The food experience extends from the richest cousc cous au viande to Essouaira's famed fish tagine. Last night's affair brought Genna and I to the seaside with eyes bigger than our stomachs. But, as we have learned from many devoted years of overeating, when the food challenges, you challenge back. I will most certainly have to upload the bucket of carcasses our fish frenzy left, but let me just say for now that there is such a thing as too many shrimp. Also BEWARE OF SCAMPI! You might think they sound like the most innocuous dish on the Red Lobster menu, but as delicious as those buggers are, they come equipped with the most elaborate array of defense mechanisms any underwater vermin could produce. Think of trying to bite into a cactus and then add booby traps to that.
Perhaps the most difficult part about Morocco is the feel-need-to-buy that goes with being in a tourist town surrounded by a multitude of the most beautiful rugs, tables, bowls, lamps and leatherwork one has ever seen. For this reason I have been enlisting my family in the operation of needing something that will give me an excuse to shop. Anyone else?
And so the Moroccan adventure continues. We hope to reach small towns with olive or argan oil, and the desert along our journey, but aside from that Morocco is an ambling sort of journey. Until then we enjoy the seaside sun, the salty breeze, and the fact that my face is as smooth as a baby's tush and my hair has the softness of angora.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
FOODEETAILS
Genna seems to cover all the major adventures in her blog so I suppose that leaves me to the details. The FOODEETAILS! Ha!
#1. Bittercorn: It tastes like it sounds and it sounds like it looks and I guess that means it tastes like it looks too. Bittercorn is the gnarliest little green pointy booger you ever did see. It hangs like it wants to be a fruit and perhaps that's what god should have put in the garden if he really wanted to teach Eve a lesson. Actually, the first bite wasn't so bad, the outside has a meaty vegetative texture and tastes much like the unrightfully but much maligned zucchini. The seeds, however, are another story. Their putrid taste leeks into everything that surrounds them, the rice, the sauce, the meat. I can see their plate compatriots running away in fear, but it is too late, all are infected. Genna and I make it through the first few bites with little hassel, and then it is only a teary-eyed race to the finish, a delicate balance of rice then rank, rank then rice with an eye always on having the rice finish last. I lose.
#2. Cherrapunjee tomato: Holy crap! Ok, so at first, to the unknowing eye, it looks like it could be any regular beefsteak. One is soon to discover, upon closer examination,that this gem shows not the slightest resemblance to its hide-bearing fish-inbred modern day "sibling". First of all, it's red. I mean this thing is actually, truly, really RED. It's not tinted orange-red over waxy watery nothingness labeled tomato #4171. It's that luscious red that makes you think Happy Birthday Mr. President. It's the type of red that says, "STOP now! Wait just a minute and take a bite of my ripe, toned, fleshy roundness and see what you think." So that is exactly what we did, and
then came the revelation. I mean, if John had come down and told me from his own mouth what the end of the end would be like I would have to say, "No, my dear friend, this is what the end of the end is." It has the sweetest juice with ever so slight of a tang that cascades over one's tongue like you imagine that waterfall does upon those Sports Illustrated models wearing painted on bikinis. It has succulent flesh that exudes the zingy essence of earth, rain and piquancy. It has a tender skin, supple yet slim, easy to sink one's teeth into with not the slightest bit of force. Dear John, of all the revelations, I like this one the best.
#3 Pig parfait: It's kinda like parfait I decided. They cut it out as if they were removing a plug
from one of those enormous wheels of aging cheese, only layered, like parfait. So there it is, core to surface: pig. The top layer, pig skin really, is like that tasty granola coating or chocolate frosting they put on top of the custard layer for pure tactile enjoyment. Makes mouth happy. In this case, it's a little different. I mean here I am burrowing into what is still clearly identifiable as soggy pale swine epidermis to get to its doughy interior. This custard relative is a section of fat so thick I can virtually see the entire piece dividing itself into artery sized globules to float itself down through my veins and waddle its fatty way to each valve of my precious ventricles. There it will stick its insoluble plump rump roundly into my cardiac organ and just bide its time. So, if we're talking custard comparisons we are talking custard made with cream and egg yolks, none of that Yoplait CarbSmart fake emulsified bullshit. The next layer takes custard to a new level: marbling. This ruffled fatty fun is some other kind of pig pleasure, layered on like a baby dressed for snow storm arms so stuffed they point out at right angles from their sides. The fourth and final layer is the reason we all lead ourselves to believe that parfaits, and pig, are something of a health food. The berries tell us, "Sure, it's better than ice cream then, right?" and that little slab of white meat clinging tenaciously to its fatty friends say, "I'm the other white meat, remember?" Still, though the health stuff might all be bunk with both parfaits and pig, when it comes down to it delving into those strata with its myriad layers of texture and taste is all the pleasure of each tier taken to the exponential power of combining it with each additional tier: a piled pig perfection to be admired.
#1. Bittercorn: It tastes like it sounds and it sounds like it looks and I guess that means it tastes like it looks too. Bittercorn is the gnarliest little green pointy booger you ever did see. It hangs like it wants to be a fruit and perhaps that's what god should have put in the garden if he really wanted to teach Eve a lesson. Actually, the first bite wasn't so bad, the outside has a meaty vegetative texture and tastes much like the unrightfully but much maligned zucchini. The seeds, however, are another story. Their putrid taste leeks into everything that surrounds them, the rice, the sauce, the meat. I can see their plate compatriots running away in fear, but it is too late, all are infected. Genna and I make it through the first few bites with little hassel, and then it is only a teary-eyed race to the finish, a delicate balance of rice then rank, rank then rice with an eye always on having the rice finish last. I lose.
#2. Cherrapunjee tomato: Holy crap! Ok, so at first, to the unknowing eye, it looks like it could be any regular beefsteak. One is soon to discover, upon closer examination,that this gem shows not the slightest resemblance to its hide-bearing fish-inbred modern day "sibling". First of all, it's red. I mean this thing is actually, truly, really RED. It's not tinted orange-red over waxy watery nothingness labeled tomato #4171. It's that luscious red that makes you think Happy Birthday Mr. President. It's the type of red that says, "STOP now! Wait just a minute and take a bite of my ripe, toned, fleshy roundness and see what you think." So that is exactly what we did, and
then came the revelation. I mean, if John had come down and told me from his own mouth what the end of the end would be like I would have to say, "No, my dear friend, this is what the end of the end is." It has the sweetest juice with ever so slight of a tang that cascades over one's tongue like you imagine that waterfall does upon those Sports Illustrated models wearing painted on bikinis. It has succulent flesh that exudes the zingy essence of earth, rain and piquancy. It has a tender skin, supple yet slim, easy to sink one's teeth into with not the slightest bit of force. Dear John, of all the revelations, I like this one the best.#3 Pig parfait: It's kinda like parfait I decided. They cut it out as if they were removing a plug
from one of those enormous wheels of aging cheese, only layered, like parfait. So there it is, core to surface: pig. The top layer, pig skin really, is like that tasty granola coating or chocolate frosting they put on top of the custard layer for pure tactile enjoyment. Makes mouth happy. In this case, it's a little different. I mean here I am burrowing into what is still clearly identifiable as soggy pale swine epidermis to get to its doughy interior. This custard relative is a section of fat so thick I can virtually see the entire piece dividing itself into artery sized globules to float itself down through my veins and waddle its fatty way to each valve of my precious ventricles. There it will stick its insoluble plump rump roundly into my cardiac organ and just bide its time. So, if we're talking custard comparisons we are talking custard made with cream and egg yolks, none of that Yoplait CarbSmart fake emulsified bullshit. The next layer takes custard to a new level: marbling. This ruffled fatty fun is some other kind of pig pleasure, layered on like a baby dressed for snow storm arms so stuffed they point out at right angles from their sides. The fourth and final layer is the reason we all lead ourselves to believe that parfaits, and pig, are something of a health food. The berries tell us, "Sure, it's better than ice cream then, right?" and that little slab of white meat clinging tenaciously to its fatty friends say, "I'm the other white meat, remember?" Still, though the health stuff might all be bunk with both parfaits and pig, when it comes down to it delving into those strata with its myriad layers of texture and taste is all the pleasure of each tier taken to the exponential power of combining it with each additional tier: a piled pig perfection to be admired.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Hashish or Harissa?
We walk down the bund with what I sense is a little bit of discretion. I follow Mudasir-Ali closely like a small child who realizes that there is something both imminent and important one should be silently respectful of. As I try to keep pace along the bund I almost run straight into the lagoon of mud that stretches before us. The way over is remarkably simple, the bricks are set strategically, making me grateful to be in a culture where there men are on average my height. I use the wall to balance myself as we skip along until we hit the second to last brick, or should I say the space where the penultimate brick should lie. Nothing less than genius prompts Muda and I to turn around simultaneously, grab the last brick, hand it up in line, and place it between us and the final step. Prideful and dry we hop to land on the the other side.
Crossing the bridge I watch the women selling fish chatter with each other hovered over their kandris one hand occupied by steaming chai the other gesticulating the merits of her catch. Piles of guts sit between their legs. Every once in awhile they thrust a handful over the edge, explaining why I see the remarkable cloud of eagles circling overhead.
At this point all I know is that we are heading towards food with authority unlike I have ever seen a male muster, especially a Kashmiri male. The boys that I see do nothing day in and day during this season have passed along a secret like a magnolia or a handkerchief given as a clandestine for action to the sercret society below ground.
After a right, a left and another two rights we are down an arbitrary alley with an arbitrary door around which men are clustered to get inside. After a slow trickle leaks some bodies from the space Muda and I slip past. Inside it takes some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once they do I take in the scene.
An wrinkled slender man sits atop a wide iron platform thrusting its girth across half the room. This leaves a hallway through which to enter and a small wood floored space in the rear that now remains empty. I can't help but confirm that the man sitting cross legged upon his platform is a real life version of the multi-armed fire-tender at the bathhouse in Miyazaki's brilliant creation, Spirited Away. His five-fingered tentacles coordinate themselves with impressive fluidity as they reach for bread above his head, to the side for salt, to the other for a smattering of pig's stomach and below into the pit of his blackened furnace. His outstretched limb disappears into its depth arising with the treasure for which everyone gathers.
Opposite him in the narrow passageway men seem as though they are stuffed into a betting hall or dressed down for the New York Stock Exchange. Each holds a bill, sometimes 2, in his hand waving it at the man with the limber and eloquent armed chef. As the men lick their thin lips, their dark skin fading into the darkness of the room, the assembly finally begins. He sets out copper plates, as many as can fit the platter. A plop of grey glutenous matter retrieved from the bowels of the iron oven slides onto each plate. From a bucket behind he scoops a dollop of sheep's stomach to toss onto the heap. The man now reaches above, dexterously flicking the oil can from above into his hand. He pours the liquid into the pan at his side and flame instantly licks up the side of the pan and wall lighting up the room for an instant. He lifts the wok and pours the iron tinged oil upon each plate. It runs across the meaty pudding forming a glistening transparent blanket reminding me of the smooth drops of oil bespeckling Frasca's Avocado Soup with Rock Shrimp Boulder's summer sunset.
The men, knowing that the preparation has come to a close, toss their ten rupee bills in the plate sitting next to the cheg. They make rapid fire demands of his "sous," a fast-working boy with a pile of dishes to deal with. Dry but sturdy Kashmiri bread gets handed out for scooping the muddy mix. Within moments the dishes are cleared leaving some grumpy hopefuls to await the next round. The lucky resign to the unoccupied corner crouching over their hot plates with lusty pleasure.
Mudasir and I do something few can afford. We get an entire bowl of the madness assembled for us and Muda's family (my offering, as it were). When the compartment returns to my hands, grease trickling down the sides and muttony mush squeezing out the top as if in greeting, I am instructed to put it under my ferhen. I can't believe the boy is serious as I know that his ferhen is kept preciously clean and does not lend well to any sort of mistreatment. He reconfirms that that's where the mess should go, as once we emerge from the dark den "people will start asking."
And so, we head back to Mudasir's teal two-roomed house where we will share this precious preparation of winter celebration. Somehow being trapped in Kashmir, I have discovered via the underground network as if it were booze, hashish or weaponry, the ultimate Kashmiri treasure: Harissa.
Crossing the bridge I watch the women selling fish chatter with each other hovered over their kandris one hand occupied by steaming chai the other gesticulating the merits of her catch. Piles of guts sit between their legs. Every once in awhile they thrust a handful over the edge, explaining why I see the remarkable cloud of eagles circling overhead.
At this point all I know is that we are heading towards food with authority unlike I have ever seen a male muster, especially a Kashmiri male. The boys that I see do nothing day in and day during this season have passed along a secret like a magnolia or a handkerchief given as a clandestine for action to the sercret society below ground.
After a right, a left and another two rights we are down an arbitrary alley with an arbitrary door around which men are clustered to get inside. After a slow trickle leaks some bodies from the space Muda and I slip past. Inside it takes some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once they do I take in the scene.
An wrinkled slender man sits atop a wide iron platform thrusting its girth across half the room. This leaves a hallway through which to enter and a small wood floored space in the rear that now remains empty. I can't help but confirm that the man sitting cross legged upon his platform is a real life version of the multi-armed fire-tender at the bathhouse in Miyazaki's brilliant creation, Spirited Away. His five-fingered tentacles coordinate themselves with impressive fluidity as they reach for bread above his head, to the side for salt, to the other for a smattering of pig's stomach and below into the pit of his blackened furnace. His outstretched limb disappears into its depth arising with the treasure for which everyone gathers.
Opposite him in the narrow passageway men seem as though they are stuffed into a betting hall or dressed down for the New York Stock Exchange. Each holds a bill, sometimes 2, in his hand waving it at the man with the limber and eloquent armed chef. As the men lick their thin lips, their dark skin fading into the darkness of the room, the assembly finally begins. He sets out copper plates, as many as can fit the platter. A plop of grey glutenous matter retrieved from the bowels of the iron oven slides onto each plate. From a bucket behind he scoops a dollop of sheep's stomach to toss onto the heap. The man now reaches above, dexterously flicking the oil can from above into his hand. He pours the liquid into the pan at his side and flame instantly licks up the side of the pan and wall lighting up the room for an instant. He lifts the wok and pours the iron tinged oil upon each plate. It runs across the meaty pudding forming a glistening transparent blanket reminding me of the smooth drops of oil bespeckling Frasca's Avocado Soup with Rock Shrimp Boulder's summer sunset.
The men, knowing that the preparation has come to a close, toss their ten rupee bills in the plate sitting next to the cheg. They make rapid fire demands of his "sous," a fast-working boy with a pile of dishes to deal with. Dry but sturdy Kashmiri bread gets handed out for scooping the muddy mix. Within moments the dishes are cleared leaving some grumpy hopefuls to await the next round. The lucky resign to the unoccupied corner crouching over their hot plates with lusty pleasure.
Mudasir and I do something few can afford. We get an entire bowl of the madness assembled for us and Muda's family (my offering, as it were). When the compartment returns to my hands, grease trickling down the sides and muttony mush squeezing out the top as if in greeting, I am instructed to put it under my ferhen. I can't believe the boy is serious as I know that his ferhen is kept preciously clean and does not lend well to any sort of mistreatment. He reconfirms that that's where the mess should go, as once we emerge from the dark den "people will start asking."
And so, we head back to Mudasir's teal two-roomed house where we will share this precious preparation of winter celebration. Somehow being trapped in Kashmir, I have discovered via the underground network as if it were booze, hashish or weaponry, the ultimate Kashmiri treasure: Harissa.
To Pee or not to Pee
I often feel as though this entire experience could be conveyed through the lens of my bodily functions. There are so many places that I could take this hunch; however, to keep my grandmother alive and sheltered from the shock such a description would inevitably deliver I will keep this PG...13.
The bus to Jammu stops for the first time in 4 hours, not because the passengers may want to rest their cramped legs, but because we are stuck on a cliff in a traffic jam. I try to gauge whether it might be safe to skip out and duck into some bushes to relieve my flummoxed bladder. Last time Genna and I left the bus it was to check on our free-flowing packs merely plopped on top of the bus. We were nearly left upon its roof and it was only by scaling the ladder 3 rungs at a time that we jumped into the bus's moving door in time (leaving our luggage as free as a hippie girl's breasts).
So this time, needless to say, I was a little wary about hopping off the bus. Even if we were the only white girls around for miles, our fares had been paid and the bus was cramped. My body begged to differ with my careful consideration so I hopped off the bus with men who had heard the same nagging from nature for the past 3 hours.
Of all the reasons why I hate men I think at the top of my list lies this peeing while standing up phenomenon. If there is one thing that gets me really pissed OFF it's that men CAN and DO piss ON anything they damn well please to. This holds especially true for developing nations. So, while I have to scurry around the cliff's edge for a life-threatening 5 minutes, they get to pee in the middle of the road which I then have to walk across. Furthermore, my only chance for relief comes at a time when our bus has just rounded the inside nook of this mountain making my choices for privacy rather limited.
So here I stand, err, squat, above me a grid-lock of buses, hopefully in solid tetras form until my return, and across from me another long line of traffic undoubtedly gawking at my white behind dressed in fleece pajamas, a beacon of chubby hairless pale tissue, great. Finishing my business is another fun system in which I sit, as per usual, deliberating between that eternal choice: wipe with snow or shake it off. The vroom vroom of the bus makes that decision right quick for me and as I haul up my knickers squirming with the disgust of feeling those last droplets sprinkle my thighs.
Struggling up the mountain, it isn't until I hop the ladder that fences off the road from the ledge below that I realize I'm in trouble: not only has my bus moved, but there are at least 10 just like it both behind and in front of me. Brown face after brown face peer from their windows staring at me - because I belong on their bus or because I'm a lost white girl on a national highway in the middle of the mountains? Eeny meeny miny moe will have to work for this one. I pick a bus a few lengths up from where I imagine I dismounted and hop in the door. From the back seat where Genna and I are crammed in I see her relieved face smile back at me. She informs me that the bus's population did their best to calm the girl down when she jumped up for fear that I would be left behind. Lucky I didn't bring T.P. I suppose.
The next 8 hours reveal much of the mystery behind our being stuck in Srinigar these past weeks. Trucks are wedged bumper to bumper along the miles of mountain passes. Some bring water, others bring mountains of foodstuffs depleted from the city and villages alike during the snowfall. The view down the side of the switchbacks is unparalleled. Grass roofs are visible on the cliff side exhaling trickles of warmth from their small chimneys. Into the mountainside are etched steppes green with vegetation, each a massive hand crafted tier of velvet. Below weaves the strong of what I imagine to be the Jelham River. It's current brings both the Kashmir Valley and the surrounding mountains alive with a deciduous forest unrivaled by any other region.
At times Genna has to close her eyes as we wobble to and fro on the bumpy pass. Highway signs read random messages some about road safety others just basic advice like, stay clean and your friends will love you.
My next inappropriate description begins 18 hours later and yes, I'm still on a bus. In Jammu, for a reason we will never quite figure out, we let ourselves be herded from one 12 hour bus ride to the next only realizing why everyone has warned us to the contrary when we attempt to lull ourselves asleep. With an ajar window, no blankets and a road that bounces us to a height halfway up towards the ceiling there is little chance that we will do anything but suffer for the next haul of this seemingly infinite trip.
Somehow regardless of how parched we let ourselves become Genna and I find that we need a bathroom every 4 hours. This rarely happens. 12 hours, however, is pressing upon our sanity. So at hour number 11, when the bus finally stops to allow us some respite, the men and two little disheveled white girls erupt from the bus. Yet again, we pass the queue of pissers slide into a ditch and deal with the fact that most of the world can glimpse our gleaming behinds while we water the arid Delhi ground. At this point I would thank Krishna for so much as a hover toilet with the pitcher I have finally become accustomed to.
And so it is that we say Kuda-ha-fis to Kashmir, the land of piercing black eyes, succulent meatballs, and 16 year old minds in 25 year old bodies.
The bus to Jammu stops for the first time in 4 hours, not because the passengers may want to rest their cramped legs, but because we are stuck on a cliff in a traffic jam. I try to gauge whether it might be safe to skip out and duck into some bushes to relieve my flummoxed bladder. Last time Genna and I left the bus it was to check on our free-flowing packs merely plopped on top of the bus. We were nearly left upon its roof and it was only by scaling the ladder 3 rungs at a time that we jumped into the bus's moving door in time (leaving our luggage as free as a hippie girl's breasts).
So this time, needless to say, I was a little wary about hopping off the bus. Even if we were the only white girls around for miles, our fares had been paid and the bus was cramped. My body begged to differ with my careful consideration so I hopped off the bus with men who had heard the same nagging from nature for the past 3 hours.
Of all the reasons why I hate men I think at the top of my list lies this peeing while standing up phenomenon. If there is one thing that gets me really pissed OFF it's that men CAN and DO piss ON anything they damn well please to. This holds especially true for developing nations. So, while I have to scurry around the cliff's edge for a life-threatening 5 minutes, they get to pee in the middle of the road which I then have to walk across. Furthermore, my only chance for relief comes at a time when our bus has just rounded the inside nook of this mountain making my choices for privacy rather limited.
So here I stand, err, squat, above me a grid-lock of buses, hopefully in solid tetras form until my return, and across from me another long line of traffic undoubtedly gawking at my white behind dressed in fleece pajamas, a beacon of chubby hairless pale tissue, great. Finishing my business is another fun system in which I sit, as per usual, deliberating between that eternal choice: wipe with snow or shake it off. The vroom vroom of the bus makes that decision right quick for me and as I haul up my knickers squirming with the disgust of feeling those last droplets sprinkle my thighs.
Struggling up the mountain, it isn't until I hop the ladder that fences off the road from the ledge below that I realize I'm in trouble: not only has my bus moved, but there are at least 10 just like it both behind and in front of me. Brown face after brown face peer from their windows staring at me - because I belong on their bus or because I'm a lost white girl on a national highway in the middle of the mountains? Eeny meeny miny moe will have to work for this one. I pick a bus a few lengths up from where I imagine I dismounted and hop in the door. From the back seat where Genna and I are crammed in I see her relieved face smile back at me. She informs me that the bus's population did their best to calm the girl down when she jumped up for fear that I would be left behind. Lucky I didn't bring T.P. I suppose.
The next 8 hours reveal much of the mystery behind our being stuck in Srinigar these past weeks. Trucks are wedged bumper to bumper along the miles of mountain passes. Some bring water, others bring mountains of foodstuffs depleted from the city and villages alike during the snowfall. The view down the side of the switchbacks is unparalleled. Grass roofs are visible on the cliff side exhaling trickles of warmth from their small chimneys. Into the mountainside are etched steppes green with vegetation, each a massive hand crafted tier of velvet. Below weaves the strong of what I imagine to be the Jelham River. It's current brings both the Kashmir Valley and the surrounding mountains alive with a deciduous forest unrivaled by any other region.
At times Genna has to close her eyes as we wobble to and fro on the bumpy pass. Highway signs read random messages some about road safety others just basic advice like, stay clean and your friends will love you.
My next inappropriate description begins 18 hours later and yes, I'm still on a bus. In Jammu, for a reason we will never quite figure out, we let ourselves be herded from one 12 hour bus ride to the next only realizing why everyone has warned us to the contrary when we attempt to lull ourselves asleep. With an ajar window, no blankets and a road that bounces us to a height halfway up towards the ceiling there is little chance that we will do anything but suffer for the next haul of this seemingly infinite trip.
Somehow regardless of how parched we let ourselves become Genna and I find that we need a bathroom every 4 hours. This rarely happens. 12 hours, however, is pressing upon our sanity. So at hour number 11, when the bus finally stops to allow us some respite, the men and two little disheveled white girls erupt from the bus. Yet again, we pass the queue of pissers slide into a ditch and deal with the fact that most of the world can glimpse our gleaming behinds while we water the arid Delhi ground. At this point I would thank Krishna for so much as a hover toilet with the pitcher I have finally become accustomed to.
And so it is that we say Kuda-ha-fis to Kashmir, the land of piercing black eyes, succulent meatballs, and 16 year old minds in 25 year old bodies.
Monday, February 4, 2008
WAS WANt some more
Alright, so I think it might be day 7 or so in Kashmir. Somehow we are finding it hard to leave this place, and for so many reasons. Perhaps the greatest one of these being Was Wan (pronounced Vas Van).
The day before the "40 Day" event that marks some appropriate period after a death the feast is prepared. On the banks of the Jehlum River the the Was Was family, famed for their specific preparation of the feast, sets out no less than a dozen copper pots over smoldering logs. A man sits, crouched over a small glossy stump chopping a mountain of small red onions using an elegant cleaver that reminds me of a elf hat. The preparation occurs well into the night only to begin early the next day.
The following day the overseers of the feast, the head of the family for which it is prepared, sit around smoking hukahs which they pass among the men while the children roam around in the dirt. I watch from above as one man assembles balls of mutton for another to smooth over long steel rods. The kabobs are then placed directly over the fire and turned slowly for the perfect roast. One huge copper platter cradles the 50 some-odd balls that will be made into kabobs for the day.
I sit on the ledge above, drooling like a basset hound, until I can take it no longer. My nose drags me down into the pit to gaze over the ornately designed copperware and the rich smelling paneer, saag, 3 kinds of meatballs and racks upon racks of mutton. I go along pointing to each one, beckoning forth word after word that I struggle to pronounce and immediately forget.
As the time approaches men gather round rasing elegant tents across the dirt road known as the bund. It occurs to me that what this really is is a block party. The Kashmiri block party is one that segregates the women and the men. When the food is ready we womenfolk gather in the tent waiting to feast. Segregation occurs in this case for the most perfect reason I can think of: the men are our servants.
Genna and I are a little confused by the event and as the men arrive with pitchers for hand washing we wonder where we fit in along the jumbled and tightly knit groups of women. We make the mistake of assuming that we are invited into the fold only to find out from the confusion of the women sitting aside from us that this is an event meant for groups of families to eat together in fours. And so, with some guidance we are pushed into our own family group. This is perfect for two reasons: one, Genna and I feel like our own family on this trip, two, we have no idea what in the hell we are doing. The rice arrives for each group on large round copper platters no less than a foot and a half across. And then the flight arrives.
First comes sheep stomach with rich turmeric filled sauce, next a small rack of fried lamb ribs, next appears the rogon josh (mutton chops in another sauce I would be unable to describe), and then a flock of meatballs each in a separate sauce and interspersed with a sercing of pickled slaw and saag tasting of Dal Lake. The women dig in with their hands. We are no masters of shoveling rice and meat into our small mouths. I've been laughed at several times over the past week for my pathetic attempts. Perhaps the hardest task is meatball separation. I study the people around me trying to understand whether I am to bite the meatball as a whole or divide it into saller pieces with my fingers. Somehow when I look at the other women the meatball is present one minute and absent the next; is there any way these women take down a fist sized meatball in one bite? The mystery is partially solved when we find the women shoving meat into green plastic bags provided for the occasion. It's a block party with goody bags!
Genna and I, in an attempt to cover up our pathetic attempts to finish our food, ask for a goody bag ourselves and being to shovel our uneaten food in. Horrified looks cross the faces next to us. We're mortified. What have we done wrong? Slowly, I raise the bag and my hand and then the bag in an effort to understand our mistake. As I go to put one more handful of rice the horror reappears. Rice, is not for saving, meat is for saving.
And so, with a few mistakes, Genna and I make our ugly American way through the 40 day feast. Lip smackin' good.
The day before the "40 Day" event that marks some appropriate period after a death the feast is prepared. On the banks of the Jehlum River the the Was Was family, famed for their specific preparation of the feast, sets out no less than a dozen copper pots over smoldering logs. A man sits, crouched over a small glossy stump chopping a mountain of small red onions using an elegant cleaver that reminds me of a elf hat. The preparation occurs well into the night only to begin early the next day.
The following day the overseers of the feast, the head of the family for which it is prepared, sit around smoking hukahs which they pass among the men while the children roam around in the dirt. I watch from above as one man assembles balls of mutton for another to smooth over long steel rods. The kabobs are then placed directly over the fire and turned slowly for the perfect roast. One huge copper platter cradles the 50 some-odd balls that will be made into kabobs for the day.
I sit on the ledge above, drooling like a basset hound, until I can take it no longer. My nose drags me down into the pit to gaze over the ornately designed copperware and the rich smelling paneer, saag, 3 kinds of meatballs and racks upon racks of mutton. I go along pointing to each one, beckoning forth word after word that I struggle to pronounce and immediately forget.
As the time approaches men gather round rasing elegant tents across the dirt road known as the bund. It occurs to me that what this really is is a block party. The Kashmiri block party is one that segregates the women and the men. When the food is ready we womenfolk gather in the tent waiting to feast. Segregation occurs in this case for the most perfect reason I can think of: the men are our servants.
Genna and I are a little confused by the event and as the men arrive with pitchers for hand washing we wonder where we fit in along the jumbled and tightly knit groups of women. We make the mistake of assuming that we are invited into the fold only to find out from the confusion of the women sitting aside from us that this is an event meant for groups of families to eat together in fours. And so, with some guidance we are pushed into our own family group. This is perfect for two reasons: one, Genna and I feel like our own family on this trip, two, we have no idea what in the hell we are doing. The rice arrives for each group on large round copper platters no less than a foot and a half across. And then the flight arrives.
First comes sheep stomach with rich turmeric filled sauce, next a small rack of fried lamb ribs, next appears the rogon josh (mutton chops in another sauce I would be unable to describe), and then a flock of meatballs each in a separate sauce and interspersed with a sercing of pickled slaw and saag tasting of Dal Lake. The women dig in with their hands. We are no masters of shoveling rice and meat into our small mouths. I've been laughed at several times over the past week for my pathetic attempts. Perhaps the hardest task is meatball separation. I study the people around me trying to understand whether I am to bite the meatball as a whole or divide it into saller pieces with my fingers. Somehow when I look at the other women the meatball is present one minute and absent the next; is there any way these women take down a fist sized meatball in one bite? The mystery is partially solved when we find the women shoving meat into green plastic bags provided for the occasion. It's a block party with goody bags!
Genna and I, in an attempt to cover up our pathetic attempts to finish our food, ask for a goody bag ourselves and being to shovel our uneaten food in. Horrified looks cross the faces next to us. We're mortified. What have we done wrong? Slowly, I raise the bag and my hand and then the bag in an effort to understand our mistake. As I go to put one more handful of rice the horror reappears. Rice, is not for saving, meat is for saving.
And so, with a few mistakes, Genna and I make our ugly American way through the 40 day feast. Lip smackin' good.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The Story of the Cheeky Donkey
Lateef assured us "no problem...you have problem you come back and see me." It's like I've never been thrown for a loop before. And so, we arrive at the airport, manage to botch no less than 4 orders of airport operations and in a matter of a couple hours the Himalayas loom below us in their enormous splendor.
As it turns out, Himilayan regions are cold in the winter time. As it also turns out, Genna and I are prepared for an idealized India of dry heat and possible monsoon rains (yes mom, you told me so). On the plus side, this means that we are the only white people for miles. On the down side, IT'S FRIGGIN COLD OUT HERE! Here begins a week of me and my Lufthansa pashmina.
Now let me just say, for the record, that it was all Genna's idea. Thats right, Miss Walk On The Safe Side told ME that we should go to Kashmir. And so, here we are dining on chai made by our man-servent Rashid who also "gets the heating" ready for frigid catwalk down the hallway to the icebox that is our room. The man humbly enters and stuffs our shared bed with four boiling hot water bottles that we promptly wedge between our hairless human limbs. It's rather a pathetic site how dependent we are upon the man - and it's awesome.
As is only possible with girls like Genna and myself, Rashid slowly warms up to our disheveled Americanness and begins to chat with us in broken English about this that and the other thing we don't understand. I convince the man to show me how to make paratha that evening and he invites us to the kitchen! 3 days in India and I've already found myself in a kitchen. The rolling pin is a solid and well oiled miniature of its US counterpart and does the trick of rolling round chapatis on a marble slab with perfection. With a few attempts of my own I'd say I rather mastered the technique.
Later that evening as Rashid begins to open up again as we have a discussion about Kashmir's quality of saffron. Kashmir, incidentally, is famous for the ludicrouisly expensive stamen: a lingum of sorts, how appropriate. Rashid tells us of the poor quality that is sold in Srinigar and passed off as the real thing. Soon, our rapt attention and his trust in us evokes possibly the best luck I have ever come across. The man opens his wallet revealing a wad of fresh saffrom threads from his home village that farms the flowers. He removes two barely dried strings and places them in my palm. As we let them melt on our tongues the man explains the infinite healing qualities of the magic stem and how this relates to the Koran. SAFFRONGASM!
And so, with a craving stomach we head for the journey of vashvan today: vashvan being a Kashmiri dish to whcih we have been invited by a townie. News to come, more eloquent and better structured. Ciao for now!
As it turns out, Himilayan regions are cold in the winter time. As it also turns out, Genna and I are prepared for an idealized India of dry heat and possible monsoon rains (yes mom, you told me so). On the plus side, this means that we are the only white people for miles. On the down side, IT'S FRIGGIN COLD OUT HERE! Here begins a week of me and my Lufthansa pashmina.
Now let me just say, for the record, that it was all Genna's idea. Thats right, Miss Walk On The Safe Side told ME that we should go to Kashmir. And so, here we are dining on chai made by our man-servent Rashid who also "gets the heating" ready for frigid catwalk down the hallway to the icebox that is our room. The man humbly enters and stuffs our shared bed with four boiling hot water bottles that we promptly wedge between our hairless human limbs. It's rather a pathetic site how dependent we are upon the man - and it's awesome.
As is only possible with girls like Genna and myself, Rashid slowly warms up to our disheveled Americanness and begins to chat with us in broken English about this that and the other thing we don't understand. I convince the man to show me how to make paratha that evening and he invites us to the kitchen! 3 days in India and I've already found myself in a kitchen. The rolling pin is a solid and well oiled miniature of its US counterpart and does the trick of rolling round chapatis on a marble slab with perfection. With a few attempts of my own I'd say I rather mastered the technique.
Later that evening as Rashid begins to open up again as we have a discussion about Kashmir's quality of saffron. Kashmir, incidentally, is famous for the ludicrouisly expensive stamen: a lingum of sorts, how appropriate. Rashid tells us of the poor quality that is sold in Srinigar and passed off as the real thing. Soon, our rapt attention and his trust in us evokes possibly the best luck I have ever come across. The man opens his wallet revealing a wad of fresh saffrom threads from his home village that farms the flowers. He removes two barely dried strings and places them in my palm. As we let them melt on our tongues the man explains the infinite healing qualities of the magic stem and how this relates to the Koran. SAFFRONGASM!
And so, with a craving stomach we head for the journey of vashvan today: vashvan being a Kashmiri dish to whcih we have been invited by a townie. News to come, more eloquent and better structured. Ciao for now!
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