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.