Life in San Miguel de Allende

San Miguel de Allende

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

It’s been harder to keep up writing blog postings because things are so busy for us right now. We left Guadalajara to come to San Miguel de Allende, where we are spending fall term, and we’ve never been more active. San Miguel has about 70,000 residents, of which about 12,000 are ex-pats, mostly Americans, and the ex-pat community is really a community. We’ve been here less than three weeks and I think I know more people by name here than I did after living in Cork for 18 months. There’s always something happening, and we often run into people we know as we walk about town. Just this afternoon, Amy ran into Chip and Deborah, a couple from Texas we met shortly after we arrived, and today marked the fourth time she’s seen them since (I’ve seen them three times).

Let me use this week as an example of just how busy it gets here. The local paper has an insert with a calendar of events for the week, and after looking at this week’s issue, which came out Friday, Amy commented that there wasn’t much to do. So, Saturday Amy went to Zumba (an exercise/dance class) in Parque Juarez. Sunday we went for drinks at a retired artist’s house. Today I graded papers in the morning and afternoon, while Amy went to her photography class. We met to go to a movie made here in San Miguel, and tonight we are seeing an photography exhibit from the teachers for the Sante Fe Workshop, which runs classes here.

Tomorrow and the rest of the week, I’ll grade papers while Amy will continue to take her photography lessons. Tomorrow we have a dance lesson (which we bought at a silent-auction fundraiser a week ago) and tomorrow night I’ll go to a life-drawing session while Amy will attend a language exchange program at the library. Wednesday we have salsa lessons in the evening, and Thursday we’ll both go to the language exchange. Friday we have our Spanish lessons. And this will have been a slow week.

Really, we promise to do better and write more, if we can just find the time.

 

We Bid Goodbye to Europe

Agua Azul vendor

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

We bid goodbye to Europe (for now) and headed to Mexico. That we’re in Mexico might come as a surprise to some, since we had been talking for a year about returning to southern Spain to live in the village of Ojen for fall term. Unfortunately, in July, we heard about the Schengen Agreement. The treaty covers most of Europe and requires all signatories to drop their border restrictions within the treaty area, but beef up their border checks with any countries not in the Schengen area. It means that you can get on a train in one country and travel through several others without once showing your passport. But instead of having 90 days in each country (this seems to be the most common time limit for travel without a work or student visa) travellers have 90 days (out of any six month period) in the whole area.

We had spent too much time in the Schengen zone to stay there this fall, so we considered our possibilities. Should we head to Africa? Maybe the Balkans, which isn’t yet in the Schengen zone? Do we take the Siberian Express to Asia and spend a term in Thailand? In the end, Mexico seemed like a good choice because it would let us continue to work on our Spanish while seeing someplace new, and we’d just be that much closer to the States when we head home for the holidays.

We wanted to end up in Guanajuato, so we checked flights to Mexico City (about 4 hours away by bus) and on to Leon/Guanajuato airport but there was always a problem with the arrival time, the layover, the price, or something. We then noticed Guadalajara was just as close to Guanajuato as Mexico City, the prices were just a little better, and the arrival times not too bad. So, after about 20 minutes consideration we bought ticket to Guadalajara, Mexico.

We knew almost nothing about Guadalajara until we got there. It has a population of over a million people, and it turned out to be a great city. We planned to spend three days there, then extended that by four days, and probably would have stayed even longer had we found a good, inexpensive private room somewhere (the only downside of Guadalajara for us was accommodation).

What’s so great about Guadalajara? The food there was outstanding. We’ve since moved on from Guadalajara, and when we mention the food there, people always say it has the reputation for having the best food in Mexico. That’s easy to believe. At Karne Garibaldi, for example, I found myself making yummy noises every second bite. Seriously, I couldn’t stop doing it. If I described the food at most of the restaurants, it would sound pretty much like the Mexican food people are used to in the U.S. because it’s primarily a meat, some beans, and a salsa or pico de gallo, all wrapped in a tortilla (which is almost always a corn tortilla down here, unlike in America where flour is much more common). But it’s just different, trust me. And unlike places in America which always have the same large selection of tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tostadas, etc., some places here only serve one or two things. This is why Karne Garibaldi has the world record (something like 13 seconds) for getting a meal on the table after it’s ordered (the order pretty much consisting of the size plate you want).

It really seems Guadalajara is a very forward-thinking city, too. For several hours on Sundays, many of the main streets are shut down to automobile traffic so people can walk or ride bikes all over town. Because cars are still allowed on the cross-streets, every intersection has one or two people there to hold traffic until there is a break in the pedestrian and bike traffic. I don’t know if the traffic controllers were volunteers or paid, but either way it’s a massive undertaking. The parks department even has free bikes for people to check out if they need them. Many people headed toward the center of the city, which was also shut down to cars, and people filled the streets and shopped at the stalls of hundreds of vendors.

Actually, I could list so many other wonderful qualities about Guadalajara that this posting would fill a couple of pages. For a choice made entirely for its convenience, Guadalajara couldn’t have been a better jumping off point for our time in Mexico. We’ve already discussed that when we come back to Mexico (and we will) we’ll be sure to check on flights to Guadalajara first.

 

Cork Revisited

Our last stop in Europe was Cork, where we’d first arrived 22 months earlier.  We were going back to sort through a few things we’d left there, deciding what to ship home and what to take with us.  We also wanted to get some more travel shots, since we were headed to Mexico next.  But the real reason for the trip, the reason we spent a week there instead of a day or two, was to see old friends.

In that, the trip was a success.  Every night but the last we spent seeing friends, and it was great craic.  We visited some of our favourite restaurants, and saw all the new stores that have opened in city centre.  We’d only been gone a little over three months but it had changed quite a bit.

Our last day, though, reminded us why it was time to move on.  It was lashing rain, 1.5 inches that day, and those last minute tasks such as shipping things home, which would have taken less than 2 hours to do in Corvallis, took more than 7 in Cork.

Still, we’ll be back.  Shortly after leaving Ireland in June we began to miss our friends there, and we decided to put Europe back into our future travel plans.  It will be a few years from now, but we will return for a year or two.  Maybe someplace drier, though.

 

Eight Days in Paris

The Eiffel Tower

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

Paris was a delight. Contrary to any stereotypes Americans may have about the French in general or Parisians in particular, everyone we met was kind and understanding, despite our lack of any French language skills beyond bonjour and merci.

We had contacted a woman through Craigslist and arranged to rent what we thought was a room in her flat for our eight-day stay. When we arrived though, she gave us some instructions, asked if we had questions, handed us the key and left with her boyfriend. For far less then we would have paid for the most basic hotel room in Paris, we had our own private flat. It was small, very small, but it was in a great non-touristy neighbourhood and we loved it.

I won’t list all the sights, because you know what they are. I will say that the Louvre was not crowded because we went on Friday night, one of two nights it stays open late, and so avoided the daytime rush of tourists. We were able to walk right up to the main entrance and to buy tickets. We even got to within about two or three rows of gawkers beyond the velvet rope around the Mona Lisa, which is about as good as it gets, I think.

It’s fun to stay in a beautiful city like Paris long enough to have the chance to see some of the things many tourists do not. We walked through Bois de Vincennes, the Parc Des Buttes Chaumont, and the Bastille market, and we met up twice with a friend we’d first met in Montenegro. It is a wonderful city simply to exist in. A year or so ago we saw a movie called Paris, j’taime, or Paris, I love you. Now we understand it.

 

A Tale of Two Cities

Venice

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

Between finishing our time in Europe and heading to Mexico, we haven’t posted much recently. So, this is the first of three posts describing our last city visits in Europe (Venice, Paris, and a last goodbye to friends in Cork).

As we mapped out the ever-changing itinerary of our final weeks in Europe, Venice was the big question mark. On the one hand, it is a unique city of incredible beauty. On the other, it’s terribly expensive and overrun with tourists, even more so than other parts of Italy. Amy recently read a blog about a couple who had visited Venice and experienced a bit of shock when they got their bill for coffee at St. Mark’s square, most of it just for the privilege of sitting. Also, we had just read an article in National Geographic which explained that the tourist numbers keep increasing and the local population keeps dwindling, and the negative effects all that was having on the city.

In the end we couldn’t pass up the chance to go so we decided on a quick two-day visit. We arrived early on a Sunday morning, dropped our bags at our hotel, and wandered through the streets of the city, heading in the direction of St. Mark’s square, one of the main attractions of Venice. Because it was still so early and it was Sunday the square was pretty empty when we got there. It was a rare treat to be in such a place without fighting the crowds.

That entire first day was good. Venice is, of course, like no other city in the world, yet it’s all so familiar because of countless movies and TV shows. Amy described it as being on a big movie set, a feeling we had at times in London. I don’t need to describe what it’s like because even if you haven’t been there, you know already.

The second day we experienced all the things we had disliked about Italy the first time around, and a few extras to boot. It was Monday, so all the tourists were still there but the locals were also out in force heading to work, turning the charming narrow streets into claustrophobia-inducing torture chambers (and that’s from someone who loves caving). Nothing was as good as the day before, including our lunch, which was small, mediocre and expensive.

Worst of all, we made the decision to leave our bags at the train station (we were headed out to Paris that night) rather than at the hotel to save us time later. Unfortunately it meant spending €13 on a 15-minute vaporetto ride, basically the Venice equivalent of a bus ride. Then we stood in line for 45 minutes to leave three bags that would later cost us around €20 to reclaim. Every decision we seemed to make that day led to increased costs, long waits and crowds.

As we boarded the train to Paris, we were so glad to have seen Venice and to have experienced it, but we were pretty happy to leave, too.

 

War in the Balkans

Graves from the war – Mostar

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

The thing I just can’t wrap my head around is meeting all these nice Montenegrins, Croatians, and Bosnians, and picturing them all trying to kill each other less than two decades ago.

Yugoslavia was created as a kingdom after World War I, then again under the rule of Marshall Tito after World War II, and therein lies the problem: the country was a creation. Yugoslavia means “land of the south Slavs” and most of the people in the country did at least have their Slavic origins in common and most spoke a common language, Serbo-Croatian, but they had different ethnicities.

It gets complicated quickly. There were six republics in Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. But Tito and Yugoslavia also officially recognized nations, such as the Croatian nation and the Serbian nation. The republics had borders that could be drawn on a map, but the nations represented an ethnic identity. Most Slovenes live in Slovenia, most Croatians live in Croatia, etc., but there were Serbs in Croatia, or Croatians living in Bosnia, and so on. There was no Bosnian ethnicity or nation, but the Republic of Bosnia was home to Croats, Serbs, and Muslims (who were officially given the status of being a nation by Yugoslavia in the ‘60’s).

There were more people who identified themselves as Serbian than any other nationality in Yugoslavia, so Tito came up with a system of checks and balances to keep everyone under federal control, or at least keep them from killing each other. Most of the republics were given a fair amount of autonomy, but not Serbia, since it was potentially so powerful. To ensure the Serbs didn’t get their noses out of joint, he then gave most of the administrative jobs in the other republics to ethnic Serbs.

Communism collapsed in the late 1980s, and people in former communist states in Europe began to feel a strong sense of nationalism. This new sense of nationalism resulted in republics like Slovenia and Croatia declareing themselves independent from Yugoslavia. After a short 10 day war, Slovenia was allowed to leave Yugoslavia, but not Croatia. The difference was there were quite a few Serbs living in Croatia, many clustered in Serbian-majority towns and regions, and the Republic of Serbia wouldn’t let them go.
Almost everyone in Slovenia was ethnically Slovenian.

Once Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, Serbia, led by the completely amoral and opportunistic Slobodan Milosovic, helped ensure the Yugoslavian army would be used to attempt to keep Croatia as part of a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Once Slovenia was allowed to leave, however, it became clear it was really at heart a war between Croats and Serbians, with everyone else caught in the middle.

Bosnia was in the worst situation. Physically located between Croatia and Serbia, with a mixed population of Croatians, Serbians and Muslims, it had three choices, none of which were good: declare their own independence (which Serbia would reject since they wanted to keep all Serbs together and have as large of a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia as possible); stay in a rump Yugoslavia ruled by an unfettered Serbia (which the Croats and Muslims in Bosnia were loathe to accept); or allow itself to be split in two and annexed into Croatia and Serbia (which was intolerable to the Muslims or those still hoping for a Yugoslav state).

Throw in tensions from ethnic Albanians living in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, memories of fighting between Croats and Serbs during World War II, and countless other factors, and war was almost inevitable once the strong hand of the communist rulers was removed. The resulting war (or wars, depending on how you see it) devastated cities and regions. Atrocities were committed on all sides, although there have been far more war crimes indictments against Serbs.

Again, the people we met were all so friendly but it must be difficult to live with the daily reminders of the war. In Mostar and Sarajevo, for example, some buildings still show the pockmarks from bullets, and some are just burned out shells. In cemeteries, there are many headstones showing men who died in 1991 to 1993 at around age 20, and I realized that I was born the same year as many of these men. Seeing all this made us realize we didn’t know as much about the war as we should and we’ve been reading Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia. It’s not always an easy read but it is informative.

 

Zagreb

Sidewalk cafe – Zagreb

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

Who thinks of Zagreb as a great place to visit? People who have been there, that’s who. Zagreb ended up being the best surprise we’ve had in our travels.

Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, which used to be in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so there are sections of Zagreb that look a lot like Austria, and it’s a beautiful city. The main square, Trg Bana Jelicica, and the area around it seem to have found the way to mix the old and the new. Most of the buildings are from the 19th century or earlier but the businesses in them sell the latest fashions and electronics. The city just made us feel content. There was always something happening as well as an abundance of sidewalk cafes where we could sit and watch the world go by.

The food in Zagreb was good, and generally not very expensive, but accommodation costs more than in most places in the region. The best example of this was the hostel we stayed in just north of the square. To get a single bed in a dorm cost almost €20, which is expensive for a hostel, but we could get delicious plates of pasta for less than €4.

I had the feeling, though, that most people in Zagreb have a slight inferiority complex. I bought a CD from a street musician and he asked if we were here on business or “for curiosity.” When I explained we were here as tourists and loved it, he smiled, waggled his head a little, and said, “It’s big but it’s so slow.” I noticed at other times that when we would compliment the city or country people seemed pleased but a little surprised.

Before we got there I never would have thought I could enjoy travelling in the former Yugoslavia for almost a month, but it is a wonderful place. If you get the chance, you really should visit.

 

Bihac

At the end of our first full day in Bihac, I asked Amy if she could think of a town that we liked less, that was more depressing, and that we wanted to get out of sooner.  She thought for a moment and said no.  I agreed.

To be fair, we weren’t seeing Bihac at its best.  We arrived after spending over 6 hours on a bus and the sky was overcast.  And it was Sunday, so nothing was happening and nothing was open.  The town itself was at a low-point, since the main bridge over the Una River was blocked off for reconstruction, with a tarry smoke rising from it, and a green space that looked like a nice park in aerial photographs now looked like an abandoned construction site, with lots of litter and the occasional pile of lumber.

The river itself was a bit of a disappointment, since it was reputed to be the most beautiful in Europe.  It wasn’t.  It’s very pretty, to be sure, but it wasn’t even as beautiful as the river we’d seen less than a week before in Mostar.

The people weren’t as nice and helpful as we’d encountered in other parts of the former Yugoslavia.  We were hauling our bags toward the river because we’d read that Bihac had more B & B’s than most towns in Bosnia and most were by the Una.  It doesn’t.  Walking down the street near the river, we spied a building proclaiming it had rooms, but a man on the street asked us if we wanted a room, and when we said yes, he said they didn’t have them anymore.  We continued down the street to see what else there was but it turned out there was nothing.  Why the man didn’t let us know that and save us a walk is a mystery.

Later we stopped at an internet cafe and were told they were cleaning the computers, four laptops on a table, so we couldn’t use them.  Sure enough, they were dusting them, but we never quite got why we couldn’t use one.  Later, at a second internet cafe we went to, the woman running it turned me away saying there wasn’t a computer available.  Actually, though, she was using one, and when we’d been in there earlier we saw that all she was doing was chatting with her boyfriend online.  We use internet cafes a lot, and it’s not unusual for the employees to use a computer when one is free, or to let a young family member or someone have free use, but they always, always, give up the computer for a paying customer.  Except in Bihac, where the customer is always last.

Every meal we had here was unexceptional.  The hotel was clean and roomy, but also with one of the worst planned bathrooms I’ve ever seen.  To give you just an idea how bad it was, the towel warming rack is on the wall directly facing the showerhead, less than 4 feet distant.  Put your towel on the rack and it will be nicely soaked by the time you need to dry off.

The town center is so small it can be walked in about 5 minutes, and that is not an exaggeration.  We’ve been to lots of big cities and small towns, and we usually seek out the center, which is almost guaranteed to be one of the oldest and most interesting (though usually also touristy) parts of any city.  Unfortunately, Bihac’s town center was mostly new buildings and utterly without charm.  Even the theatre was taunting us, showing Marley and Me, which was not on our to-see list.  To paraphrase a line from Bill Bryson, I would rather have bowel surgery in the woods with a stick.

Amy suggested that it might not be any fun to visit but it could be okay to raise a family there, and I agreed, except for the landmines.  Did I forget to mention the landmines?  The town is at the northern end of a national park, but two sources suggested not walking out of town without a guide, since there are still many unmarked landmines left over from the fighting of the early ‘90s.

So it may have just been the atmosphere, the people, the food, the accommodations, the dull town center, and the landmines, but for some reason we just didn’t like Bihac.

 

Good Steak

Old Town – Sarajevo

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

We usually have a plan for where we are going although the plan changes hourly. Still, I think Sarajevo marked the first time our travel plans changed because of a good steak.

When we left Montenegro, we headed up the Adriatic coast to Split, Croatia. We first got a room for one night, then a second, then two more. We liked Split and Diocletian’s Palace and it was a pleasant break.

As we travelled in Montenegro and Croatia, people kept telling us that Sarajevo was the most beautiful city they’d seen, and a couple of people also mentioned Mostar, which was on the way to Sarajevo. So, off we went to Bosnia and Herzegovina for two nights in Mostar and three in Sarajevo. Mostar has anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 people, depending on which person you speak to or which source you read, but by staying in the old city center near the bridge, it seems much, much smaller. It’s a lovely town. Sarajevo is bigger, but it has a nice old town, and it felt comfortable. We enjoyed the food, too, filling up on burek and čevapi most days.

Eventually our last night in Sarajevo arrived and we were at a loss as to where to go next. No one was pointing out the next great city, or telling us where they’d just come from and had the most wonderful time. We were in quite a funk because all the options seemed to have problems. We knew eventually we were heading northwest toward Venice, and we didn’t want to head in the opposite direction, but the Schengen treaty would keep us from heading out of the Balkans too soon. Staying in Sarajevo was an option, but while it is quite pretty and we were enjoying it, we felt we needed to move on. If Sarajevo ends up feeling a bit of a disappointment to us, it’s not because the city isn’t wonderful, just that it didn’t live up to the hype of being the most beautiful city in Europe.

As we pondered what to do, we sat down to dinner. Then our steaks arrived. Now, Amy is from Texas, where they have good beef and they know how to cook it, but this steak rivalled anything we’d had there. It was tender and tasty and the only problem was it needed to be about twice as big as it was. After the first bite or two we agreed we needed to stay in Sarajevo another night, just so we could come back to the restaurant to get the steak again.

We had to find another place to sleep for the extra night because the pansion where we were staying was booked, and we didn’t have much else to do or see that final extra day, but the steak was worth it.

 

Making Change

Last night at dinner, I handed the waiter a 50 mark note (25 euros) to pay for a dinner that cost 15 marks, but the waiter said he had no change.  None.  He had to go to one of his colleagues to get together the proper change to give me.  That a waiter was completely unable to make any change for his customers should seem surprising, but it isn’t.  In our travels in Europe we’ve noticed a difficulty for anyone to make change.

Earlier yesterday, when I paid for our room in Sarajevo, and gave 250 marks for a bill of over 240 marks, our hostess struggled to make change and had to give me some of it in euros (I’ve read that mixing currencies can be a tactic to cheat tourists out of the correct change, but that wasn’t the case here).  In Zabljak, a woman in line ahead of us at the largest store in town (okay, it was still just a mini mart but it was the largest) was refused when she attempted to buy batteries with a €20 note.

Twice in two days in Grenada last year, in two different stores, I used a €2 coin to pay for a Coke that cost more than €1.  In both cases the clerks looked at the coin, asked if I had something smaller, and when I said I didn’t, they took the coin to a nearby store to break the coin into something smaller so they could make change for me.  For those of you who are math-challenged, the change was less than one euro both days.

What makes it even more difficult is this odd habit of banks to give very large notes.  In most places in America, banks dispense $20 bills, but in Europe the most commonly dispensed bill is a €50 note. We’ve noticed that the less things cost in a community, the larger the bills the bank will dispense.  In Zabljak, for instance, where things cost about 40% what they do in Ireland, the bank gave out €100 notes.  Figuring out how to break these large bills is a challenge in a place where right next door to the bankomat was a pharmacy where I bought a box of ibuprofen for €.82 with a €5 note (the smallest bill in euros) and was asked for something smaller. The pharmacist seemed quite disgusted that I couldn’t produce something more appropriate.