Madrid in Spain, 2014 Halloween

Hello again to everyone.
We are back in Madrid, Spain; not in Madrid, New Mexico or all the other locations with a city by this name.   
We spent our 1st full day in Madrid wandering the streets, the beautiful parks and enjoying the gorgeous weather; if we were in the States I would call this Indian Summer.  The leaves are in various colours of autumn, roses and other flowers are in bloom, and we're enjoying our time here as much as we always do.  
Parque del Buen Retiro is where we spent a lot of time today.  We wandered into a (free) art exhibit with some very beautiful still lifes and her portraits are wonderfully expressive.  For those who are interested the artist is Marta Gómez de la Serna (www.martagomezdelaserna.com).
I've attached some photos of a European green woodpecker (Picus viridis) that may, based on my understanding of colouring, be a male; I leave it to my birding friends to determine more.  There is also a standard park variety of pigeon hanging head down to get at the berries on a tree; behaviour I don't recall ever seeing from a North American pigeon.  Again, birding friends, pipe-in on this one.  This visit included seeing a small lizard basking on the warm concrete.  Some of the park's fountains are still running and there were many, many people picnicking, bicycling, reading, and meditating in this blissful environment.
Halloween has been joyfully embraced in Spain.  Shop windows and restaurants are decorated, wait-staff, many children and young adults are in full costume.  We learned that sometimes they say "trick or treat" and sometimes the Spanish equivalent. 
We wandered into a bicycle shop, various clothing stores, antique stores, and a tiny produce store for a bit of fruit for the day.  We also were able to enter another small and beautiful church (so many are locked up when not having a service); this one seems to be where Ferdinand VI and a notable Duke are interred

.  I've some pictures containing explanations of the aforesaid gentlemen that have yet to be translated.  
We travel on the train tomorrow to Alicante and we will most likely see an assortment of how the Spanish celebrate Dia de los Muertos on the 1st and 2nd of November.   

The land of H.C. Andersen

Until I saw all the references to Hans Christian Andersen I'd forgotten that he was Danish.  I immediately had the story of "Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates" fill my head and I haven't thought of that for years.  The statue of The Little Mermaid at the harbor is 100 years old this year and I can tell you that she is not showing her age at all, still a beautiful maid.

Copenhagen is full of beautiful parks with lakes and fountains.  Walking through them is a joy and though it is definitely autumn there is still plenty of beauty.  There are bicycles in abundance and they are truly a major mode of transportation.  Many streets have separate bike lanes defined by a curb from the car lanes and sometimes another curb that defines the pedestrian way.  Sometimes it is all flat but marked by different kinds of paving stones and sometimes just by paint.  Many of the bicyclists drive very fast so it was a quick learning process of where not to walk.

The bicycles are designed for carrying multiples of kids or groceries or other cargo with large tubs between the bicyclist's seat and the front wheel.  There is even a race for 'cargo' bikes to determine best speed design so don't think of them as slow moving!  One morning a bride was in the tub in her long white gown and the well-dressed groom was happily pedaling them to their destination.

The National Museum is huge and it is free.  Even the special exhibit, Vikings, is free.  The Viking exhibit was a very lengthy history of their lives, their plunders, and their treasures.  The Danes have a law that is several hundred years old that says any treasure found belongs to the State.  Some of the medieval and earlier treasures have, such as pots of silver money ( like a Leprechaun's pot ) have been found hidden under ancient floor boards.  A couple of magnificent gold cloak pins from the Viking era were found at the bottom of a fence post hole.  It was an extensive exhibit and all of the descriptions were in English as well as Danish.

When it rains in Denmark find a space to have some brew.  The weather patterns are known to the natives so just watch for when they vacate the outdoor tables en masse.

The Copper House

There is something about being on the same turf where my father was raised that forces a higher level of ancestral awareness.  What were my grandparent's dreams when they had this home in Berlin built?  Did they realize then that a copper-sided, basically pre-fabricated home would last a long, long time? The style of house they chose is now a topic for many discussions and and some thesis papers.  A web search for "Kupferhaus" will bring up a variety of articles.  One of the articles has my grandparent's named as original owners.

The exterior of this home is very close to how it was originally.  The current owner has put a lot of effort into bringing it back to the original look. The exterior has been stripped of its white paint.  The original embossed steel walls and ceilings on the interior of the house have been uncovered allowing magnets to be used anywhere for putting up art.  The inside has some changes as I would expect to happen over time.  A different and larger room is now the kitchen and my father's bedroom is now a modern bathroom.

Though the backyard property line has been shortened over time, it wasn't difficult to envision my father and aunt and my grandparents making this a home.  The old photos we have help me make the transition between then and now.  If there hadn't been political issues, especially against Jews, how long might my grandparents have lived in the home they built?

Berlin ?

My father's fears must have made quite an impression on me in my early years.  Now I am trying to grasp and reconcile what I saw in Berlin with what he felt about Germany.
As usual, there is a free walking tour where the guides live on their tips.  They relate the short version of what happened during the cruces of Hitler's rise, war, Cold War, wall up, airlift, wall down, re-unification.

Beginning when I was a child I heard my father's intermittent and vehement statements of concern that America was headed down the path that Hitler had taken Germany.  I piece together bits of remembered stories of how my father's family, though safely fled to Turkey, was never able to fully reconstruct what they'd had in Berlin.  My father left for the USA as a teenager and didn't see his parents, sibling, aunts/uncles again until many, many years later.  My father embraced the USA and he did quite well in this land of opportunity and its freedoms.

Now that I've visited this city I've still only an inkling of what transpired back then.  The walls that separated east and west are now visible in only one segment and there is talk of removing that.  I vote for what remains of the walls to stay so that the visual acts as a greater reminder of history.  I prefer to use the plural because it was not a single wall but multiple walls that were constructed to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to leave.  You might get over one wall but not 2 or 3.  And the distance between the walls gave ample opportunity for soldiers to kill escape attemptors.

When I first went to Germany in the early 70s my father forbade me to go to Berlin.  The trip was on his nickel and I had no burning desire to go there so I didn't see how Berlin was.  Now I understand why he feared he could lose a daughter if I went to Berlin and, at that moment, politics changed for the worse.  Being raised in the land of the free I had no perception of worst case possibilities.  There is a potential penalty for that lack of knowledge.  As I consider the continuing loss of citizens freedoms due to a governmental 'concern' for citizens safety the seriousness of politics becomes a whale in my goldfish bowl.

Brno and Praha and . . .

The Czech Republic has such classic beauty in its cities and in its rural areas.  Whether I'm walking through a city's main plaza or watching the fields and small towns passing as I ride through on the train, there is more of a fairy tale aspect here than I feel in other places.

Though Brno has s population of 400,000 or so there is a small town feeling about it.  Everything is intimate in its proximity to the center where the daily farmer's market flourishes.  The folk festival we located by following our ears to find the entrance to an internal courtyard was great fun.  The minimal amount of traffic encountered during our wandering has me wonder where everybody is.

Zlin is famous for Bata shoes and the shoe manufacturing has been outsourced to lower-labor-cost countries.  So now the huge stretch of warehouse-sized buildings are being converted to other uses such as the university's consolidation.  From the middle of town, which has a large amount of parks, you can see the forests and grass climbing the hills surrounding this area.  Our interpreter owns a cooking school here and has world class chefs come in as instructors.  Yes, there are occasionally classes in English!

Praha ( aka Prague ) is the largest city in CZ, the capital, and it is bustling.  Yes, a farmer's market was there and had delicious produce.  The Lobkowicz Palace and its story of Nazi occupation and then the 1986 overthrow is well worth the price of admission.  The palace grounds contain St. Vitus Cathedral which is wondrous as well.  A boat ride on the Vltava River as darkness falls and the lights come on is great way to end the day.

This past spring the Vltava flooded and ruined the ground floor of many of the buildings that line the river. All that today's tourist sees is an extensive exhibit of poster-size photos in the river park showing the height of the flood waters and, if you take the time to notice, it is evident that the lowest levels of buildings have fresher paint.

It all projects a fairy tale quality for me and I would not be too surprised to suddenly become a Connecticut Yankee a la Mark Twain.

Doležal family roots

Tuesday, 3 September, 2013, was the day for the long awaited visit to the town where Gary's father was born and raised.  Gary and his father had tried to make this same trip in 1968 and then the Soviets closed the Czech border just weeks before their departure; it was a huge disappointment.  Now it is Gary and I who are visiting this very small agricultural community.  The reception we were given was wonderful and heartening due to the generosity of strangers; strangers that are now friends.

We were met at the train station by Zuzka, our interpreter for the day, and we immediately drove the few minutes to the Oldrichovice town hall where we were met by the Mayor and her 2nd in command.  It was raining slightly and they came out to the car with umbrellas to shepherd us inside.  We immediately were guided to a conference table set with traditional pastries and offered tea and coffee.  As introductions were being made some lovely and delicious open-faced sandwiches were also set on the table.  Soon there was slivovitz on the table; so what if it was only 10:30 in the morning and we are drinking a serious liquor.  It was homemade and smoother than anything I'd ever tasted from a commercial distillery.

We talked some of the Doležal family and how land records didn't exist anymore or were tucked away in another city's archive location.  Zuzka was doing quite well with interpreting in both directions and everyone was having fun.  More than an hour's time flew by as we talked, then the interpreter, then they talked, then the interpreter, and so on.  After we'd taken some photos of us with the Mayor, Marie Bartková, and we took photos of the aerial view photo of the town as well as of the Accessor's plat.  A phone call was made to the current owners of the Doležal farm and we walked the short distance to meet them.

Mr. Zelik, the current owner of the farm, was at the street to greet us.  Mr. Zelik is the son of the man that bought this farm from Gary's grandfather.  He is 3 years younger than Gary and has some knowledge of the old times.  Though the original buildings are gone the current storage shed was built over the original vaulted root cellar.  There are sections of the original kitchen linoleum being used outside to cover a muddy area from a water tap.  Then it was inside for more Czech hospitality.

Pastries, weinerschneitzel, potato salad, and more slivovitz.  Mrs. Zelik is a fine cook as everything was so delicious.  And then more homemade slivovitz, and more.  We laughed and joked with each
other as Zuzka translated.  The Zeliks gave photos to us that had been given or sent to the elder Mr. Zelik by Gary's grandfather, some of which we'd never seen.  It was more than we'd hoped for and we are so happy that we made this trip.

More Istanbul

Istanbul's population is roughly 20 million people which is about the same size as Beijing.  Another comparison would be that New York, the state not NYC, has about 20 million people.
The blend of all the sounds from so many people is surprisingly easy on the ear.  I wonder if the sounds are softened ( in relative terms ) due to the hilly topography, being surrounded and split by so much water, or a lack of skyscrapers.  At any rate, it was loud but not like I recall NYC.

We went to Istanbul for a family reunion; the family that my father's sister married into makes me ever so slightly familialy attached and we were thoroughly included.  Gastronomic tours, museum tours, a trip on the Bosphorus, group meals and various walks through different parts of the city.

The Hagia Sophia is amazing and splendid and the architectural wonder of its time due to the immensity of the domed ceiling and so few pillars to hold it all up.  It's beuatiful and awe inspiring and though I'd seen photos of it before visiting that is nothing compared to reality.  The tile mosaics are wondrous and many are hidden under a layer of plaster since Muslims don't allow any images of humans or animals and this used to be a mosque.

We also visited the Chora which is the Byzantine version of Christianity.  Small and tucked into a residential area in the western part of Istanbul the tile mosaics are from a later period than the Hagia Sophia and the detail that was then possible is a defining factor.  The Byzantine era mosaics show Mary being given to Joseph and the subsequent dismay when, though Joseph has been away from home traveling for many months, she knows that she is pregnant.  So many lovely detailed mosaics cover many of the walls and ceilings.  The artists were still learning depth perception so some of the mosaics make me look twice to figure out what is amiss.

The gift shop has books in many languages and one is about the Chora and the Hagia Sophia.  I took a photo of the ISBN so I can try to borrow it from the library.

There is so much I didn't see that would require another visit.  And then I would repeat the Gastronomic tour with Megan!