Donde Esta La Biblioteca? Otra Vez

With a couple days to spare between Paris and Amsterdam, we went to the little Belgian town of Brugge to stay with Servas hosts Luk, Lieve, and their 3 kids. It’s unreal how many cultures are crammed into Europe. Brugge is only 3 hours north of Paris by train, but it couldn’t feel more different. French changes to Flemish, croissants to waffles, crepes to chocolate, and secular wine to sacred beer.

After a nice orientation by Luk and Lieve, we set out to explore their “Venice of the North.” The city depends mostly on tourism for its industry so you can imagine how cutesy everything is. We joked as we were looking down on Brugge from the top of the bell tower that everything looked exactly like those ceramic house scenes people buy as Christmas decorations.

We saw one of the few Michelangelo statues to ever leave Italy during the Renaissance at the Church of Our Lady. Like the Renaissance wing of the Louvre, it too was surrounded by crowds of Italians. We also toured a local brewery and learned a lot about Belgian beer. A few things I learned that I used to just pretend I knew is the difference between abbey beer, trappist beer, and dubbel, trippel, and quadruple malts.

Abbey beer is brewed in an “abbey,” which nowadays means that a big company interested in heightened marketability has purchased the name of a beer that used to be brewed in an abbey, but now brews it in regular commercial breweries. Trappist beer is more legit. It’s brewed by trappist monks in a monastery the way it has been since back when beer was the only liquid safe to drink. That’s where dubbel (Flemish for double,) trippel (triple,) and quadruple come in. Single malts were for peasants, or “for when you are just thirsty” as Luk put it. Dubbel malts use twice the amount of malted grains per ounce of water than single malts which means there is more sugar for the yeast to turn into alcohol. Thus, they were more expensive and reserved for the clergy. Trippel means three times the malt/alcohol/expense so only nobility could touch those. Our guide jested that the quadruple brews went straight to the Pope.

Most Belgian beers are dubbel or trippel that start out ranging from 6-9% alcohol and it only goes up from there. We saw some brews that got up to 12%! You Oklahomans may have won the Red River Shoot Out, but that 3.5% beer you were drinking during the game is what they serve the kid’s table at Belgian celebrations.

Luk and Lieve are by far the most traveled of all the Servas hosts we’ve had (or maybe the most traveled people in the world.) They dissected every continent except Africa during their 2-year trek around the world back in the early ‘90s. That wasn’t enough, however, and after a year break they set out again for another 9 months. More recently they un-enrolled their 3 kids for a semester and spent 4 months traveling as a family in South America. We talked at length about all of their experiences and they even dug out the old projector and screen to show us the slideshow of their incredible journey (which was 2 hours long.)

Luk and Lieve are also very involved with Oxfam, grow a good portion of the food they eat, and use only bicycles and public transportation. If they lived in the US they would be flamboyant hippies, but in Belgium/Northern Europe they merely blend in with the crowd. It was hard leaving the comfort of their 100-year old house and delicious vegetarian cooking, but we had to continue north to meet up Andrew Vickers for the last time in yet another entirely different world: Amsterdam.

Rest assured, I won’t attempt one of my verbose abstractions for the jaw-dropping city of Paris. I wouldn’t know where to start; plus I think the name alone carries enough imagery to validate our excitement towards immersing ourselves in this mecca of culture. We spent a week trying to experience as much as we could but of course we didn’t even scratch the surface. There’s enough art, architecture, food, history, design, and ambiance drenching the streets to keep Parisians (and jobless nomad travelers) busy purging themselves with sophistication their whole lives.

In the interest of time I’ll simply state that the major sites (Louvre, Orsay, Pompidou, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, and Versailles) all exceded my expectations and provided massive amounts of entertainment. Lauren has been to Paris before so she knew what to expect, but was nevertheless further delighted. Besides those standard Paris experiences there were also a few other memorable events worth recounting.

We started our first night right with none other than Andrew Melodramatic Vickers. We all enjoyed some €4 wine, talked about how much we had missed each other, and then embarked on a search for cheap (<$10) drinks and cool Parisian bars. We came upon a club under a bridge but the cover was too steep and it was under a bridge, so we opted for the sixth street-esque bar district of Paris. There we found the cool bars with cheap drinks and Andrew's French skills facilitated the mingling with some locals. The next day Andrew lead us to a falafel place his Aunt had recommended that turned out to have the best falafels in Europe. From then on L'Aus du Falafel was the source of at least 40% of our food consumption. It was conveniently located in our favorite part of town – the Jewish neighborhood. Our Paris Servas hosts were the Akakpos; wife Ann-Cecile, husband Olivier, and baby David. Ann-Cecile hails from Brittany in western France and Olivier grew up in Togo in West Africa (hence the name Akakpo.) It’s not every day you meet someone from Togo, so we had a lot of questions for him. When Ann-Cecile isn’t mothering her incessantly happy child David, she is teaching at the local elementary school. She invited us to drop in on the English lesson of a couple classes one day and we eagerly agreed. We showed up a little early and were unexpectedly mobbed by 50 chattering little French people. Ann-Cecile told us it would be good if we could think of a simple song to teach the kids because they had recently learned “Hello Goodbye” by the Beatles. All we could think to teach them was good ‘ol “Eyes of Texas.” The words might have been a little too difficult for them, but they definitely caught on to the corresponding hand gesture. Before all the singing there was a lengthy Q&A session where Lauren and I fielded questions like “Are there airplanes in your city?” from the 7 yr. olds and “Have you been on reality TV?” from the much wiser 9 yr. olds. Ann-Cecile and Olivier were awesome hosts who patiently answered all of our questions. Baby David is only 5 months old, so we interrogated Ann-Cecile about the details of her pregnancy healthcare and maternity leave to compare with Michael Moore’s depiction of the French healthcare system in his film Sicko. She hadn’t seen the movie and probably thought we had some weird neonatal preoccupation.

Unfortunately, a lot of the facts didn’t match up and it sounds like having a baby/receiving medical care in France isn’t quite as dreamy as Michael would have us believe. Still, Ann-Cecile didn’t have any complaints and her healthcare experience sounded pretty impressive. Let’s just say I would recommend delivering a baby in France over the US, but there was no sign of any magical nannies running around doing people’s laundry for free.

Other memorable moments include being stopped in our tracks by the 6 o’clock Eiffel tower light show while marching around the top floor of the transparent Pompidou, touring the infamous architectural promenade scheme of Villa LaRoche by French architect Le Corbusier, and entering the Italian Renaissance wing of the Louvre in search of the Mona Lisa to find what might as well have been the little Italy of Paris with endless Italians huddled around their handiwork.

We barely made it out of Paris on the 14th when all hell broke loose thanks to the French ninnies of the rail workers union that can’t handle a few extra years of work. With a stroke of luck, and a death-defying leap into oncoming traffic by me and all my baggage, we managed to flag down the only available cab in Paris and were able to catch our train to Belgium.

We left behind the ease and comfort of being able to speak(ish) the language back in Spain and dove headfirst into a giant language barrier in France. When people speak French to Lauren and I, our reaction is always the same flustered expression of urgency with our mouths silently fluttering in the hope that a response might spontaneously combust from our reeling minds. An immaculately conceived French response has yet to materialize, but there have been plenty of lengthy silences where no one involved knows what’s going on. Thankfully, the French have completely shattered all stereotypes and been outstandingly friendly and accommodating towards us bumbling idiots.

Lyon was a good mediator between Corsica and Paris. It is a working French city with a large population of students that isn’t the least bit touristy (relatively.) We had a good time imagining that people might’ve mistaken us for locals as long as we didn’t open our mouths or take out the camera/map. There weren’t too many sites to see, so this is where Lauren and I stocked up on winter gear and ate pastries. Lots.

Dear Families,

Internet/time has been very sparse the past few days but the blog should be a little more lively soon. We are in Amsterdam right now and we fly to Warsaw, Poland tomorow. Between Bilboa and here we’ve been to Lyon, Paris, and Brugge Belgium so expect posts about those awesome places in a few (loose use of the word few) days.

Much Love,
Sean and Lauren

p.s. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

After our tearful goodbye to Andrew in Madrid, Lauren and I climbed into a bus that whisked us of to the north of Spain. The poignant yellow and red leaves covering the Spanish countryside mirrored our austere state of consciousness following the dismantling of the Tricycle. We would have to suffer a few days without the bountiful spring of situational comedy that is Andrew Vickers.

Waiting for us in Bilboa was a beautiful piece of architecture by Frank Gehry housing the Guggenheim Museum. Its stunningly original form and the outstanding exhibits on display were the main reason we stopped by for a couple days before flying to France.

We showed up at the Guggenheim thinking we would tour it for two or three hours and then have time to walk over to the historic district of Bilboa. To our surprise, the woman at the ticket counter offered us free audio guides (something we have been refusing to pay for ever since some broken earpieces and useless commentary back in Florence.) Not only was the commentary free this time, it was rich in quality and quantity. The artists themselves even chimed in on many of the modern installments. We spent the entire day scouring the museum and listening to every last word of the guide. Along with explaining everything about the art, it offered tons of interesting information about the building itself. All in all, the visit lasted 5 hours.

It was ironic because I’ve been complaining to Lauren that art ought to be more accessible to the general public. We’ve been jealous of the private tour groups getting pertinent background information while all us penniless travelers have for supplement is a small plaque with the name, date, and artist to inspire our unreliable art history memories. Art is nothing but an eccentric combination of materials without the story behind it. It would be nice if all museums followed the Guggenheim Bilboa’s lead and provided easy to understand educational information alongside their masterpieces.

It turns out that Dia de los Muertos is the Spanish equivalent of Thanksgiving in that it’s the big family holiday before Christmas. This provided a nice jolly vibe, but also lots of crowds. The hub of all our activity in Madrid was a busy plaza named Puerta del Sol. The first thing we did was fight crowds of hungry Spaniards at Madrid’s most popular churro house. They were delicious, but you must need a tolerance for those things because my stomach was killing me after only a modest helping.

Madrid has some cinemas that feature non-dubbed American films and we took advantage of that gem the first night. It was a tough decision because we’d never heard of any of the movies, but we figured we couldn’t go wrong with Brad Pitt. Having been starved so long of ‘moving picture shows,’ Lauren and I enjoyed the beautiful scenery, interesting cinematography, and “old west” feel of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Andrew, however, found it a little too melodramatic.

After that night of rest, we were ready to hit the town hard for another helping of the ludicrous 2:00-7:00AM Spanish nightlife. We were walking to the club we thought we wanted to go to when we ran into a guy named “Lil’ Will.” Lil’ Will hailed from NYC and was working PR for a couple of bars. As you would expect from any true New Yorker, he had only lived in Madrid for 7 months but already “knew a guy” at every bar or club imaginable. He pointed us to a hole in the wall offering 2 for 1 and then to another hole in the wall named Cibeles where we ran into a sea of blonde headed Swedish girls and their male escort named Magnus. Somehow we became engulfed in their group and left Cibeles in search of the mega-discos that had been getting so much hype.

The Swedes were very outgoing and friendly. They were perfect companions during the hours spent on the dance floor at ‘Joy.’ Not only did they tolerate all of our over-the-top ridiculous American dance moves, but they seemed to prefer our humble goofyness over the prevailing Spanish notion that dancing is serious business that is not to be taken lightly. The DJ was great aside from the gratuitous 40-minute stint of salsa.

The next day we escaped to the serenity of Retiro Park. It was by far the largest city park any of us had ever seen and certainly rivaled most in beauty. Retiro is huge, but Madrid is covered with little parks here and there. As Andrew noted, “even the major intersections are beautiful.” Being a city of that size, we were all amazed at how delightful it was to maneuver on foot.

For some (much needed) culture we hit up the Prado and Thyssen museums. The Prado houses some of the most important paintings in the world by hard-hitting Spanish artists like Goya, Velazquez, and El Greco. The belle of the Prado is Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez, revered as the best painting ever stroked onto canvas. The Thyssen was another 1900’s modernism tour-de-force featuring enough abstract expressionism to induce a very concrete headache. It was a full day of art that left us all exhausted mentally and physically.

Madrid was a fantastic place to round out our time in Spain. It gives the cold notion of ‘urban’ a refreshingly novel feeling of friendliness. We had as much fun walking the streets as we did in the bars – it was all amazing.

Sevilla, the home of Flamenco, is crowded with everything flagrantly Spanish: bullfights, discos, botellón, and enormous cathedrals. The “SnL+A” (Sean and Lauren, plus Andrew) tricycle pulled up to Sevilla in time to enjoy a few warm days of touring before a cold front blew in on All-Hallows-Eve and closed the curtains on our artificially enhanced summer. Lauren got to know Sevilla really well back in 2006 when she studied there for a month. Leading up to our arrival she wouldn’t stop talking about how much I was going to love it. Her excitement turned out to be justified and Sevilla quickly became my favorite Spanish city of the handful we’ve visited.

I could sum up a lot of what made me love Sevilla in two words: tiles and courtyards. Everywhere we went there was an exquisite building covered head to toe with colorfully painted tiles and around every corner we found a hidden courtyard filled with trees and stone benches. I’m a real sucker for artsy façades and shaded plazas. The endless pedestrian zones and overly designed city parks didn’t hurt either.

The once round wheels of the SnL+A-cycle gradually started to function more like squares as our time in Spain dragged on. Although that metaphor could work on a multitude of levels, here I mean that we didn’t move too fast. Luckily life in Sevilla seemed to flow at nearly the same easy current and we managed to get a lot done nonetheless – as the following parenthesis plagued run-on sentence will depict.

In the days leading up to Halloween we sampled plenty of “Agua de Sevilla” – a tasty (turns out girly) mix of liquors and ingredients so random they might have been chosen blindly out of a hat, watched as Sevillanos mixed wine and fruit juice and called it “Tinto y Verano,” cheered on the Florida Gators from the Texas Lone Star Saloon (that obviously attracted us like a magnet,) developed mystery rashes all over our bodies possibly due to a mixture of hostel beds and obscure Agua de Sevilla pathogens, spent 30 minutes (6:00-6:30AM-Spanish clubs get a late start) navigating through tiny streets back to our hostel from a bar district called Alfalfa that turned out to be literally 100 yards around a previously unexplored corner the next day, unknowingly saw the tomb of Christopher Columbus, explored an Arabic palace, spilled sangria on the oldest bar in Sevilla (est. 1675,) and enjoyed a two hour flamenco extravaganza.

The night of the flamenco show Andrew had one of his classic Spanish conversations with the waiter who came around taking the included 1st drink orders. It went exactly like this:

Andrew, “Scotch y Soda, porfavor.”
Waiter, “8 Euros.”
Andrew, “Cerveza.”

And then there was Halloween. Spain is completely devoid of any halfway decent costume stores, so we hit up the nearest H&M in search of some inspiration. Lauren saw a sparkly dress and decided on “Rock star,” I grabbed some suspenders and a hat and became “Gangster,” and Andrew found some neon green and neon orange wristbands to depict “Workout Man.” If you’ve seen the photos from the night, you might be asking yourself “what happened to Workout Man?” Workout Man was cast aside at the last minute after an ill received dress-rehearsal involving laughter to the point of tears on Lauren and I’s part.

The evening went off without a hitch (unless you count getting denied from the Halloween party club after waiting in the cold for almost an hour or being the only idiots in Sevilla not dressed as zombies) and we had a blast. Not a day goes by, however, that I don’t think back to Workout Man and the night of neon wristbands that could have been.

Be sure and check out Andrew’s blog for more.

Malaga provided more southern comfort with its warm weather, leisurely pedestrian center, and flavorful food. We stayed in a cutesy hostel near the birthplace of Pablo Picasso and a museum devoted to him is near our favorite of the two vegetarian restaurants we frequented. The short trail continues across the street to the huge cathedral we examined which overlooks a long, palm tree lined avenue that begs to be strolled. That’s where we tried to meet up with Andrew Vickers for the Spanish leg of our joint escapades. Having already explored the city, Lauren and I were supposed to be familiar enough with Malaga to coordinate the rendezvous, but we accidentaly sent him in the wrong direction and then walked in another wrong direction to meet him. Eventually we all bumped into each other.

Andrew made it to the major pedestrian thoroughfare just in time to see our Hungarian street performing hostel roommate before he packed up his act for the night and headed back to the hostel to scrub the paint off his body with his pink loofah. Andrew was feeling a little under the weather and didn’t finish his hamburger at Pans & Company. A wandering homeless guy stumbled up on cue as if he were the maitre’d and Andrew had summoned him. He dug his hungry hands into the meal while nonchalantly asking if he could finish the rest. Andrew obliged and we watched him walk away with two fists full of food. These are the kind of experiences we’re having while our friend Stew is off mingling with national leaders.

Lauren and I hadn’t seen an American movie since The Bourne Ultimatum back in Scotland, so our ears picked up when we noticed that the movie in the lounge of the hostel wasn’t only in English, but words like “Gueros” and “Gary Clark Jr.” were part of the dialogue. We hurried over to watch Grindhouse until the bootlegged copy’s audio cut out and the Kiwi running the show put in The Big Lebowski. The all-American antics of The Dude quenched our thirst for a taste of home.

Nerja is a beach town. While the sun was out we did beachy things. When the rain moved in we spent a day reading and basking in free wireless internet.

Granada was one of the last Moorish strongholds in Spain, so there is plenty of Arabic food, tea, and crafts to enjoy. We (I) ate hummus and falafels until we looked like chickpeas. We drank gallons of soothing, fragrant tea. We went in and out of plenty cluttered bazaars. There weren’t many sites to see besides the Alhambra, so we had a leisurely time.

There’s been a trend of especially enjoying the southern part of every country we visit and Spain is no exception. The Arabic influence in southern Spain gives it a unique and comforting vibe. The Moorish tradition of relaxing in a cozy, ornate teahouse amongst smoky threads of incense is the Arabian equivalent to swinging your legs off the tailgate of a pickup truck with a cold beer in an open pasture. Either works for me.