Odds and Ends and Snaps

If you can, visit Italy in the off-season, between early November and late March. There's no crowds, prices are lower, and the atmosphere is much more relaxed. During this last trip, we never once had to stand in line anywhere, not even at the Uffizi or the Accademia in Florence.

Memorize these two words, because you will need them: spingere means "push"; tirare means "pull."

To buy train tickets, go to any travel agency (l'agenzia di viaggi) that displays the Trenitalia logo. You'll pay the same price and get much friendlier service than wading through the crowds at the station.

The Italian term for jet lag is jet lag.

Indoor heating and cooling is an iffy affair: some places will be too warm and some places will be too cold. In any event, Italians seem to dress by the calendar, not the thermometer. If it's December, they will be wearing scarves and coats, even in a restaurant heated to 85°. Be prepared to add or remove clothing as necessary.

The only flat part of Italy is the lower Po Valley, Parma-Modena-Bologna-Ravenna. Everywhere else, be ready to walk up and down hills. A lot.

Another important word is sciopero (SHOW-per-o), meaning strike, as in a labor stoppage. Strikes are an Italian tradition of long standing. Tourists learn of strikes by standing at a bus stop alone for twenty minutes until a helpful Italian walks by shaking his head and says sciopero!

Flying home across seven time zones in one day is hard on mind and body. But it's worth it.

Here's my snaps from the trip on Flickr. And as always, there's a slideshow version.

Christmas in Bologna

Eating

Italy is full of art, architecture, culture, history, beautiful scenery, and wonderful people, but the main reason to visit here is to eat. Mangiare!

As soon as we arrived in Bologna we headed down the block to Pizz'Altero for their wonderful pizza al taglio, chunky rectangles of thick pizza. The next day we had a three-hour lunch at a agriturismo with Cinzia and Sergio, sampling the different pastas of Emilia-Romagna and discovering crescentine, puffy fat squares of fried bread topped with different kinds of cheeses and cured meats. It's been pretty much an eat-a-thon ever since.

Our usual routine is to have breakfast at the hotel, a cappuccino or two along with pastries, salami and bread, or whatever else they put out that morning. Lunch is very light, a sandwich or snack eaten on the go. We save our appetites for dinner, the big meal of the day.

The food in Italy varies considerably from region to region, and even from city to city. In Bologna we dove into big plates of tagliatelle alla bolognese, flat noodles with meat sauce, and I had to have a cotoletta alla bolognese, a veal cutlet breaded and fried and topped with ham and cheese. Since we moved south into Tuscany we've had bruschette (grilled bread with garlic, olive oil, and diced fresh tomatoes), pappardelle (very wide flat pasta) with cinghiale (wild boar) sauce, thinly sliced beef on rucola, fried artichokes, and ravioli di zucca (pumpkin). At one little family place in the Oltrarno in Florence, we had arista, huge slices of pork perfectly oven-roasted.

The biggest problem each night has been, what do we order? Italian menus are made up of antipasti (appetizers, some quite substantial), primi piatti (first dishes, usually pasta), secondi piatti (second dishes, meats), contorni (side dishes) and dolci (dessert). Sometimes we split an antipasto then each have a primo. Or we split a primo and each have a secondo. Or I'll get an antipasto and a secondo while Terri will have a primo and a contorno. If we have a dolce, we share it. The serving size varies from restaurant to restaurant so it's hard to tell if you're ordering too much. Twice so far we couldn't finish our food, as delicious as it was.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

We bring along a dictionary but it's not much help. Menu listings use special terms and regional dialects that are never in the book. Rather than being a problem, this gives us an excuse to try new things and surprise ourselves. Sometimes we pay too much, sometimes we don't order the right things, sometimes we get too little or not enough. The only certain thing is that in all the time we've spent in Italy, we've never had a bad meal.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

With every meal we order a carafe (liter or half-liter) of house wine, almost always rosso (red), and it's always good and half the price or less of the cheapest bottle on the wine list. We also get a bottle of acqua minerale naturale (no carbonation); Italians do not serve tap water in restaurants and if you ask they will only answer with a puzzled expression.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

The waiter never brings the check until we ask for it. We sit at the table as long as we like and linger over the last of the wine and water. Finally, when I know it's time for a lie down back at the hotel, I get her attention and ask, "Il conto, per favore." We wander out into the Italian night, suffused with a rosy glow of contented satisfaction, and start thinking about what we'll eat tomorrow.

Here's the trip photos I've posted on Flickr. And here's dessert at the end of a lovely meal.

Beautiful Beginning

Sunday was our first full day in Italy, and what a perfect day it was.

We dawdled over breakfast and took our time getting ready. Near noon, we walked out to the Porta Saragozza, one of the many gates into the old city dating from the Middle Ages. We sat on a bench and soaked up some sun for a few minutes before our friends Cinzia and Sergio came to pick us up for a drive into the countryside for Sunday lunch.

N.B. Sunday lunch is very important in Italy. Restaurants are packed as families and friends get together for big meals and long conversations.

Sergio's sister Manuela and her partner, Luca, are the proprietors of an agriturismo north of Bologna, near the small town of Granarolo dell'Emilia. (Luca also makes dog sleds.) We arrived around 1 and the place was packed with a lively crowd. There was much chatting about the menu of the day, as Cinzia and Sergio explained all the possibilities. (Our dictionaries got a real workout: Cinzia knows some English, Terri and I know a little Italian, Sergio knows a little English.) In the end, it was too difficult to decide so we got plates of all the primi piatti and shared them around. That was followed by a big platter of crescentine, hot squares of puffy fried bread, accompanied by prosciutto, pancetta, salumi, and cheeses. We eventually finished it all and left around 4, feeling very satisfied and full and happy about life.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

As we were driving back into town, Sergio had the excellent idea of driving up into the hills to San Michele di Bosco, a church and hospital complex overlooking Bologna. The timing was perfect: the sun was setting, the sky was blue and pink, and the lights of the city were spread before us.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

After leaving San Michele, Sergio found a parking spot just outside the city walls. We strolled up Via Santo Stefano, blending into the evening passeggiatta as all of Bologna seemed to be out and about. In Piazza Maggiore, we joined the crowd watching Beppe Maniglia play his guitar, as he has been doing for over 30 years.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

At last it was time to say goodbye. There were fond farewells all around and promises to share photos and stories and talk of the next time we'd all get together.

Here's the trip photos I've posted on Flickr.

Italy #10: Bologna and Tuscany

Our last trip out of the country was back in May, when we explored northern Portugal. Some, um, issues arose after that trip, preventing further travel; we didn't even make it to Buenos Aires in August, for the second year in a row. But those issues are now resolved and we are ready to once again fly way up in the air, heading to Italy for the tenth time. Have I mentioned that we like Italy?

Our ninth trip to Italy was in December 2011, when we visited new places and old favorites in the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. This time we'll fly into and out of Bologna, a regional hub with convenient connections to Madrid.

We're looking forward to seeing our friends Cinzi e Sergio in Bologna, where we'll spend the first few days. After that, we'll be retracing some of our earliest trips: several days each in Florence, Siena, and Arezzo. I'm excited just thinking about it: tagliatelle alla bolognese anywhere within a kilometer or two of Piazza Maggiore, bistecca alla fiorentina at Buca dell'Orafo in Firenze, risotto at Il Biondo in Siena, the fabulous Piero della Francesca frescoes in Arezzo, maybe even a quick side trip to Sansepolcro. And since it's the holiday shopping season, there will be lots of open markets to make the evening passeggiata especially enjoyable.

While we head off to the airport, you can read about my first trip to Italy, on our honeymoon in 1999.

At First Sight

And no blog post would be complete without a picture. In 2005, I happened to catch the light of the setting sun on the Florence Duomo using an antiquated photographic medium called 'film':

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

Next post and snaps will be from Italy!

Reflections on Veterans Day

I'm uneasy if someone thanks me for being a veteran. I did not join the Army to serve my country, to keep my fellow citizens safe and free, or to bring democracy to foreign nations. I joined because I didn't have a girlfriend and ran out of money for college; my new draft card marked me as 1-A. Joining voluntarily might let me avoid the infantry and become a pilot. Surely, I thought, pilots had lots of girlfriends.

In October 1967, at the age of 18, I was shipped off to basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. By January I had started flight school at Fort Wolters, Texas, near Mineral Wells, and then finished at Fort Hunter-Stewart just outside Savannah, Georgia. By October 1968 I had my wings and my bars and was headed to Vietnam.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

Even then, as young and naive as I was, I had no illusion that I was helping the Vietnamese people or protecting friends and family back home. There was no feeling of pride for participating in a noble cause, only relief at being alive day to day. Flying helicopters was fun and exciting but even in a war zone military rules and regulations could be silly. The most popular acronym was FTA, F**k the Army.

Click on the image for a larger view and more details.

Looking back after all these years, I could try to convince myself that I had done something worthy of thanks, that I had served someone or something, but I must be honest with myself. I was an aimless kid with few options who could pass a flight physical. The war, like virtually all wars, was cruel, senseless, and unnecessary. Along with thousands of others, I was swept along by events and actions beyond my ability to understand or control.

Welcome me home if you'd like. (This can be important to Vietnam vets.) Perhaps congratulate me for being lucky enough to make it back. But thanks? Save that for when I buy lunch.

Happy Birthday, Tootie

Tootie died in the first days of 1996, just as the Internet was taking over the world. He missed it all: never surfed the World Wide Web, never sent an email, didn't own a computer. Google "tootie wegner" and there's nothing out there, nothing at all, he never existed, except now, maybe, this blog post.

Tootie and me in 1954

Tootie Wegner -- Stephen Andrew Wegner -- was my little brother. He was born a 'blue baby' because of Rh factor incompatibility, and the only treatment at the time was a complete transfusion. I remember his coming home from the hospital, the top of his head covered with needle marks where they had given him new blood. I had been an only child, doted on by my mother, for over four years, but now, with a sickly brother who needed constant attention, I was suddenly hurtled from the center of the universe to the far periphery of my family's consciousness.

(As near as I can recall, our father nicknamed Tootie after a friend of his, a rodeo rider, who may have been one of the many people who gave blood for the transfusion. From the time he was born, for everyone, my brother was Tootie; Momma was the lone holdout, always calling him Stephen and me Michael.)

Tootie survived and thrived, became strong and healthy. Looking back, though, I realize that the sickliness never completely left him. While I breezed through childhood illnesses like measles and mumps and chicken pox, each one brought him almost to death's door. In high school he again got very sick and had to have some sort of operation.

Tootie in first grade

We were born four and a half years apart but were six years apart in school. We looked so unlike each other that people were surprised to learn we were brothers. When we were kids I was merciless to him, the awful way older brothers can be, but I made peace when he grew to be several inches taller and some pounds heavier than me.

I can't say we had much in common, even after we grew up. I drank wine; he drank beer. I read books; he danced the Cotton-Eyed Joe at The Lumberyard. He played the guitar, self-taught; I could only play records.

After a few years in the Navy (mostly aboard the carrier USS Constellation) and then a short and bitterly unpleasant marriage, Tootie hit some hard times and lived with me in Austin. Eventually he found a good job and moved away, first to Louisiana and then to California, and remarried. We'd talk on the phone occasionally but didn't say much; I didn't play golf and he didn't have kids. He prospered, bought a house, then was diagnosed with hepatitis C. His health deteriorated, he moved up the list to get a liver transplant, but when his turn came the operation went wrong and he slipped into a coma and died, only 42 years old. It was the kind of news you don't say on the telephone, so I drove down to Galveston to tell Momma her little boy didn't make it.

I've wanted to write about Tootie but haven't been sure what to say. I miss him, of course. I feel cheated, not having a sibling to grow old with, to plan reunions and swap stories and reminisce. Had he lived, we'd be celebrating his 60th birthday this month, and knowing him, it would have been a great party.

Tootie is Best Man at one of my weddings

About Portugal

We've been back in Texas a week now. Our bags are put away and our bodies have re-adjusted from Western European Summer Time to Central Daylight Time, but I'm still thinking about Portugal. In lieu of listing things to do and places to see, I'll pass along some random observations.

For someone like me who loves to ride trains and buses, Northern Portugal is a dream. Porto has a modern, efficient system of buses, trams, and subway. The metro system connects with the suburban commuter trains that go as far out as Braga and Guimarães, and those in turn connect with the larger national train network. Getting from place to place was a genuine pleasure.

Click on any image for a larger view and more details.

Traditional Portuguese cuisine has 1000 recipes. You can get beef, veal, pork, chicken, fish, sausage, and octopus. The other 993 recipes are different ways of preparing bacalhau, salted cod. It's everywhere, and it's good. In the supermarket, you can find the meat/fish counter by the smell and sight of a big stack of stiff, dried salted cod.

PUXE on an entry door does not mean 'push,' it means 'pull.' Push is EMPURRE.

Pastry shops are to Portugal what shoe stores are to Italy: there's at least two in every block. There are hundreds of different kinds of sweets, and I'm hoping to try them all before I die. So far, my favorites are pastel de nata (little tart made from filo dough with an egg custard filling), bolo de berlim (puffy doughnut thingie partially sliced open to contain a cream filling and dusted with sugar and cinnamon), and bolo de arroz (small rice flour muffin perfect to accompany morning coffee).

Portugal has the cleanest restrooms I've ever seen: in small hole-in-the-wall restaurants, train stations, museums, even the public restrooms in city squares. The cities are clean, too, with minimal litter and recycling bins everywhere.

Not only are the Portuguese clean, they're very nice. We were always able to find someone to explain away our confusion or point us in the right direction.

Over the years, I've looked at hundreds of photos of the picturesque terraced vineyards that produce Port wine but nothing prepared me for seeing them in person. Mile after mile of rocky, narrow shelves zigzagging up the steep hillsides on both sides of the winding river, each barely wide enough for one or two rows of vines. I took many photos but none could fully capture the awe and beauty of the Alto Douro.

I like firm mattresses but Portugal has the hardest beds I've ever slept on. Most places use only box springs with no mattress on top.

Yes, of course, we will go back. There's still much to do, much to see, and much to eat and drink.

Portugal is a wonderfully photogenic place. Terri and I took hundreds of snaps, and I've posted my favorite ones here:

Portugal in Spring, 2013

And of course there's a slideshow version.

On to Viana do Castelo

It's been a pleasantly hectic ten days on the move in northern Portugal. So hectic that I haven't posted reports about our trip. There's doing and writing about doing, and at the moment I don't have the time and energy to do both. We all know there's more important things in life than blogging.

We've spent five nights in Porto, three in Pinhão, and two in Guimarães. Today we're headed to Viana do Castelo, where we'll spend two nights, before finishing up with three nights in Braga.

I'll post more detailed reports after we get back, but for now I'll add a link to our snaps so far:

Portugal in Spring, 2013. And of course there's a slideshow version.

Random observation: Portugal has the cleanest restrooms and the hardest beds in the civilized world.

Portugal, Again

On Sunday we're flying back to Portugal, our fourth trip there in two years. This time we'll fly in and out of Porto to explore the northern part of the country, almost two and a half weeks traveling between Porto, Pinhão, Guimarães, Viana do Castelo, and Braga.

You've already read about the way we travel, and this trip will illustrate another of our quirks. We like to go beyond the usual destinations commonly published in guidebooks and explore lesser-known locales. For example, every guide to Italy mentions Rome, Florence, and Venice, but most of our travel there has been to what I call The Other Italy, wonderful cities with enticing food, art, culture, and history and very few tourists.

So it will be on this trip. There's lots of information about Lisbon and quite a bit about Porto, but Braga? Viana do Castelo? Not so much. We've done a fair amount of research but much of our adventure will be spontaneous and unexpected -- Serendipity is a good friend of ours.

We considered renting a car. (The last time I drove in Europe was in 2002 when we wandered around Italy's Le Marche region for a couple of weeks.) Checking on rates and regulations showed that things had gotten more expensive and more complicated: the rental itself was reasonable, but then there's several layers of insurance that cost far more than the rental itself, and even then it didn't cover glass, tires, or undercarriage. Look out for potholes! Renting a toll tag is extra. Gas is around $8 a gallon and Portugal has the worst accident rate in Western Europe. When I found out that I'd have to pay yet another fee and find a local AAA office to get the recommended international driving permit, it all got to be too much. I chickened out. We'll miss visiting some out of the way quintas and I dearly wanted to visit Almendra, the family home of our friend Ana, but in the end I opted for less stressful train travel.

Laptop and cameras are packed -- stand by for updates.

The Way We Travel

Terri thought it might be interesting to tell others the how and why of our traveling, since we seem to approach things a little differently. So, this blog post is mostly Terri with a little bit of me.

It occurred to me, while relaxing in our Lisbon apartment on a rainy afternoon, that the way we travel may seem quite odd to most people.

After checking out every travel book available at the library for a particular destination, and making a rough list of things to do, the goal is not scratching those 'must-see' tourist attractions off the bucket list. Many times, the most important and famous monuments, like the Rialto Bridge in Venice, the Leaning Tower in Pisa, and the Trevi Fountain in Rome, for example, wind up being the least memorable experiences. They are crowded with tourists and kitschy souvenir kiosks. They aren't real. Walking around Venice at night is real -- you have this quiet magical place to yourself after all the day-trippers have left.

It's important to stay long enough to get a sense of place, to know a city and figure out how to get around via public transportation. (Deciphering bus and subway and tram schedules and fares and how they interconnect is far from easy, but being able to use the public transportation system is essential for understanding a city.) We aren't early risers, so we take our time and usually head out to explore around 11 a.m. With a detailed map and usually the Rick Steves and Eyewitness travel books, we start out on foot and walk around and take in the sights. Then stop somewhere for lunch, depending on where we end up. Then head in a different direction, exploring a different neighborhood, and so on. The next day, figure out how to ride the bus/subway, go a little further and get home in time for dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. Then another neighborhood, church, museum. And so on. There's no time for day trips to nearby cities -- that comes later, once you have a sense of place. What's left undone on your list becomes the starting point for the next trip. By the third trip, we know the city pretty well and venture out even further, with day trips to nearby places.

I realize that our independent style of traveling is quite different -- by being perfectly content walking around the neighborhood, eating lunch at the restaurant across the street, going to the grocery store, buying pastries at the bakery, buying a bus pass from the amiable guy in the shop next door, and sitting at scenic overlooks and taking in the view. And when it starts raining, going back to the apartment to listen to fado and to plan the next day, and maybe even the next trip to a new city.

I'll add a few things. We've traveled a lot but haven't been to that many places: UK, only London, once; France, only Paris, twice; Spain, only Madrid twice and Barcelona once; but Italy nine times, month-long escapes to Buenos Aires six times, and Portugal three times and planning more. We always go in the off-season. We don't buy travel books, we borrow them from the library. We plan ahead but often make last minute changes depending on weather, our mood, and new information. We go back to places we like but try to add at least one new destination every year. We prefer apartments to hotel rooms. We can't hide the fact that we're tourists but we work very hard to be as unobtrusive as possible.

And that's the way we travel.

Mostly by Bus

Our trip so far has been going to different parts of Lisbon and exploring. To get around, we've gone on some very long bus rides. I love very long bus rides, especially if I am lucky enough to get a seat. Figuring out stops and transfers can be challenging, but fortunately I am married to someone highly skilled in deciphering bus maps and routes. We always end up some place interesting.

We've eaten frango assado (roasted chicken) two days in a row and had at least one pastel de nata per day.

Today will be like the other days, I think, except we may not have frango assado. While we're out and about, here's some snaps to look at: Terri and Mike in Lisbon, 2013 edition. For your convenience, Flickr makes it easy to watch a slideshow of our trip so far.

March means Lisbon

A few weeks ago, I flippantly suggested that we go to Lisbon for lunch. We laughed at my silliness but then looked at each other and asked, why not? After all, as I've written before, lunch in Portugal is a wonderful thing. The silly idea became a serious plan and within a few days we had reserved air tickets and wired a deposit on an apartment in Largo da Graça.

So, tomorrow we're off, DFW to Madrid, then Madrid to Lisbon. By late Tuesday afternoon we should be walking to the Pingo Doce supermarket to pick up a few necessities after which will come the difficult task of deciding where to eat.

This will be the third March in a row we've visited Lisbon. Of course we'll eat lunch and I'll have a custard or three, and we hope to see our dear friends Ana and Manny. And we have a long list of things to do and places to see.

Until we have a chance to settle in and post some snaps, here's a photo from our 2011 trip, a view from the miradouro (scenic overlook) around the corner from our apartment.

Couples Weekend

Everyone has told us we shouldn't even consider moving to Seattle until we've been there in the winter. Of course we took this as a challenge and decided to visit Seattle in the winter.

There was a bit of rain when we arrived on Thursday but by Friday the sun was shining and Mt. Rainier was out in its glory. Our hotel's in Capitol Hill so we spent the morning walking around the neighborhood, visiting the Sorrento Hotel and the Frye Museum before grabbing a burger for lunch at Dick's Drive-In and recovering by sitting in Cal Anderson Park. Later in the day we walked downtown to Pike Market and along the waterfront, stopping for a chowder taste-testing at Ivar's. Our hotel was uphill from there so we wandered over to Pioneer Square to wait for the hotel van to pick us up.

On Saturday the fun really began. Terri had gotten in touch with Gwen, an old friend from their days working for the Texas Legislature, who has moved on to much bigger and better things and now lives in Seattle. She and her boyfriend Kerry picked us up at the hotel for a whirlwind day of eating, driving, and walking. We had lunch at Plum's, took a drive through Madison Park and Queen Anne, enjoyed incredible views from Kerry's beautiful condo in Belltown, walked leisurely down and back up 1st Street, ate a light dinner of Vietnamese crêpes at Long's, and finished with a nighttime drive out to the suburbs across the lake. It was one of those perfect travel days, hosted by a lovely couple we hope to see again soon.

On Sunday the fun continued. While the rest of the world gathered to watch some sort of sporting event, a super something or other, we enjoyed the quiet streets and headed to the Seattle Museum of Art. Afterwards, we went to the top of the Smith Tower to enjoy the views. In the evening we walked up Broadway to the heart of the Capitol District and the home of our friends George and Ward. George and I have 'known' each other for years via Flickr and lately on Facebook, but this was our first chance to meet in person. He prepared a wonderful dinner (shellfish and pasta!) and I finally got the hear the story of how a kid from Minneapolis went to Manhattan, Hawaii, and now Seattle with stops in India and Paris, but still wants to go back to Venice. Ward and George are the poster children for Family Values: they've been together for 56 years.

Today is our final full day in Seattle and we're still figuring out what to do. Terri is checking the ferry schedules so I suspect we may get out on the Sound.

I am still going through the snaps from the trip; this is what I have so far: my camera's view of Seattle.

Into a Time of Can't

I grew up in a simpler time, when there were three television networks, two superpowers, and one phone company. Life had but one direction, upward and onward, more and better, cast off the old and embrace the modern, a world of exciting potential. Progress! Rockets shot satellites into space, jet airliners zoomed through the skies, doctors eradicated diseases, everyone could afford a car in the garage and a TV in the living room. Interstate highways! A man on the moon! Better living through chemistry!

All of this took effort and money, of course, but the question was never if but when. We would figure out a way to build it or invent it or discover it, then the rest of the world could marvel at what we had accomplished while we boldly marched ahead to outdo ourselves again. We tackled racism and sexism and wars with confidence and assurance that we would make things right. We had problems but more importantly we had solutions.

This American Optimism was infectious and intoxicating. But it did not last. Slowly, over the years, the lively spirit of can do became the half-muttered resignation of can't. Public proclamations of future greatness ring hollow, especially when they're followed by long lists of things we have to reduce or eliminate. The excited Yes! of fifty years ago is now a meek no or, at best, probably not.

How did it happen? Was the decline in expectations inevitable? Will those who are growing up and maturing now be affected by the larger sense of limits and constraints? Will the young and new be able to reverse the decline of the old and worn-out?