09 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
Nothing could have prepared me for Catalan. Well, maybe my sixty years of French study and forty years of Spanish study and those two miserable years of Latin. But the Catalan independence movement around here has become so fierce that the signs and menus are no longer bilingual in Catalan and Castilian Spanish, as they were just last year. It’s all Catalan, all the time.
07 Sunday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
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We love our hosts! Vicens and Jeanette own the apartment we’re renting in Girona. They have provided us with an astounding place to live (remind me someday to tell you about the hot tub that shoots fountains in the air), and yesterday – quite to our surprise – they offered to take us on a drive to the Costa Brava, the “rugged coast” of northeastern Spain. Thirteen hours of unremitting wonder!
05 Friday Apr 2013
Posted in Travel
Slimy things on beds of ice. This is sort of the general tenor of the fish stalls at our Mercat, which is Catalan for market. The Mercat, of course, is full of raw, natural, farm-fresh unprocessed food. I’ll try any fruit or vegetable, but when it comes to proteins, I will admit that I prefer boneless, finless, scale-free meats and fish which I can recognize, and which is not still looking at me. I am not proud of this, but that’s how it is.
01 Monday Apr 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel, Video
We have just arrived at our apartment in Girona. We committed to this place for three months, sight unseen. It cudda been Hell, but instead it’s Heaven (especially at this height).
29 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
This is the hamburger I ordered at the Slow Bar in Portland, Oregon today. I wanted this for my last American meal because it is big and juicy and has great beef and two onion rings, which is exactly as many as any mature human can or should eat at once. I know there are probably great burgers in Europe somewhere, but I don’t know how long it will be until I find one.
27 Wednesday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
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Robin paid in cash. Wads of bills and pocket change. All told: $1,969.47. I carried it to the bank – surreptitiously looking around me as I walked – and dumped it on an unsuspecting teller as if it was contraband. Which in a way, is what it was.
26 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
Nuri Kilani, ca. 2010
A friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago. His death brought his friends – very good friends – together. We cooked together. Drank some beer. Laughed at memories. Exchanged hugs and tears and backslaps and fistbumps. And at one o’clock last Friday night we buried him. Threw his ashes in the air and watched them sparkle in the moonlight.
24 Sunday Mar 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
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We have moved across town to our friend’s flat while she is in Hawaii so that the estate-sale people could organize and tag and display the things we left behind. Robin Caton, our sale maven, suggested I visit the sale at the opening minute – 9 AM – when the most…er, colorful…people push their way in after standing in a chilly early morning queue.
20 Wednesday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
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OMG! I didn’t mean to sell that! It happens. It happened to us today when we visited the just-posted estate-sale website of our stuff. It’s an exercise in folly. And fate. And, well, surrender.
18 Monday Mar 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
With a sigh of relief, everything destined for our storage unit is now there – and there’s room left over. It’s kismet. However, two disparate storage strategies have emerged, vindicating the Venus-and-Mars interpretation of the gender binary.
The Expat Almanac 