Spring in Europe, the time when Brussels sprouts!

The Grand Place, Brussels.

I couldn't help it.

Apart from the "interesting" experience with Ryanair (in a mid-western way, as in "Hmm, your new jell-o casserole is very interesting), our time in brussels was terrific. Truly terrific. It was green. It was cool. There are parts of Brussels that really remind me of Boston, and that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside as we took the metro around the city. The Belgian version of the "T" even goes both above and below ground, just like the beloved green line of my youth.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Brussels. While thousands and thousands of people were stranded in lovely locales, like the Frankfurt airport departure lounge, we spent our volcano-imposed vacation in the lovely home of our friends Carmen and Gilbert, and their daughter Elisa. We spent our days exploring different parts of the historical district of Brussels, and our evenings relaxing with friends. We were thankful for our particular plight every single day.

For people who have never been to Brussels, there are a few really important talking points:

• It is the capital of Belgium, and has about 1 million inhabitants.
• It has two official languages: French, and Flemish (the Belgian version of Dutch).
• It is the capital of the European Union and so is filled with gov't functionaries.
• Brussels is famous for three products: Chocolate, lace, and beer.
• We tested notable varieties of two of the above (guess which ones?).

Ben and Chaia discovered very quickly that if you wander into a chocolate store (these are countless in Brussels), sooner or later someone that works there will offer you some of their products. We followed our kids into dozens of chocolate shops.

There is a big difference between drinking beer, and "drinkin' beer" (as my Kansas City family would say). In Brussels I did some of the former. This is not your sit-on-the-couch, drink-beer because-it's-there kind of experience. This is true high quality beer tasting, and Belgium produces some world-class beers. I tried a beer called "Tripel Karmeleit" (Ben called it "Chicken Caramelized") that was truly exceptional. I also tried a beer called (for real) "Delirium Tremens."

It's amazing. Someone, somewhere, called it "the best beer in the world." That, of course, is silly, as beer tastes are broad. It is, though, one of the best I have ever tasted.

Unfortunately the beer stores do not give out free samples. I tried wandering around for a while, just to make sure though.

TAKE IT BACK!!

Has anyone out there flown with Ryanair before?

You know the old adage, "if it seems to good to be true, it probably is?"

Yeah, that's Ryanair.

The four of us flew from Zaragoza (a teeny-weeny airport) direct to Brussels, capital of Belgium and of the European Union, for peanuts. Really, it only cost us 200 Euros round-trip! Think about it: That's 50 Euros per person (about $70) to fly two hours. that includes taxes and landing fees. CHEAP!

Of course, they allow no free checked bags, allow one, strictly-defined carry on per person (if you have a camera, purse, book, whatever beyond your one bag, you can't CARRY it on the plane), and sell all consumables aboard including water. The seats also don't tilt back AT ALL, and there are no seat back pockets (nothing to put in them anyways). There are also no assigned seats. For an extra 10 Euros you can get "priority boarding" which allows you to get on the plane with the other "priority boarders" before the regular schmoes. They don't pre-board kids and babies either.
And if you don't print your own ticket, they charge you 30 Euros to print yours for you.

But hey, $70 round trip to Belgium!!!

Until there is a problem....

Like a volcano.

Who knew?

The day after we arrived in Brussels for a 4-day visit with Ximo's sister Carmen (who I realized I hadn't seen since I was in high school...as a student), the Brynjolfsson volcano sneezed ash all over northern Europe. I know it isn't really called that, but it's the only Icelandic word I know and, as an aside, was the longest word I could spell in first grade. Just ask my best friend at the time, Alan Brynjolfsson.

So our return flight was cancelled. No problem, right? Hundreds of thousands of people stranded, flights cancelled, all one has to do is to re-book the flight.

Hello, Ryanair.
Hello, Ryanair?
Hmm.........

Ryanair has a special customer service number to call if you need to talk to a person (call me crazy, but...). Oh yeah, to call costs 1 Euro PER MINUTE. Not that it matters, because for four days they didn't answer the phone.

I thought about going to the airport, but it was closed. So no one from Ryanair was there to see me either.

Which leaves the web site. www.ryanair.com is so complicated that I swear I once got to a page with nothing but a picture of the Minotaur, and to get back to the homepage I had to rip the battery out of my computer. The website told me, in very clear terms, that I had to change my flight because it had been "volcanoed." no problem.

Except that on Ryanair, once you print your tickets you can no longer change your flight. The page I ended up on told me to click on the "change flights" button on the left side of the page.

There were no buttons of any kind on the left side of the page.

Eventually I gave up, figured that "some day I'll find someone that actually works for Ryanair and get this part fixed" (even thinking this now makes me giggle a little), and I booked a brand new flight.

Which also got "volcanoed."

Unfortunately the "other flight," in addition to being cancelled, cost 240 Euros one-way. Funny how that works. In the end we found, at the last minute, a flight to a different city in Spain (Girona), and after 4 extra days in Brussels (which, by the way, were wonderful and I'll write about them TOMORROW) we flew out of northern Europe and back to Spain. Then allwe had was a 7-hour train ride home.

RENFE, the Spanish train company, lets you take as many bags as you want.

And their offices are staffed with real, smiling people.

Who will talk to you for free.

One-a-day, plus photo.

Here goes:

After Semana Santa (which is really "10-days Santa") life got more or less back to normal. that is to say, we didn't have school Monday (still Semana Santa), I don't teach on tuesday, and on Wednesday I went to Madrid with Pat to get her (and our suitcase full of ski boots, helmets, pants, etc.) on the flight back to the US. I also spent the rest of the day engaged in a couple of my favorite pursuits this year: Museum visiting and eating. I engaged in the former at the Joaquín Sorolla museum/house, and the latter at an Indian restaurant (FINALLY, some spicy food!). Sorolla was Spain's best known impressionist painter, and since he hailed from Valencia, most of his best work deals with the Mediterranean sun on the beach. His home in Madrid was converted into a museum displaying his best works along with some original furniture and Sorolla's ceramic collection. At 3 Euros, well worth the trip.

Image courtesy of: http://www.canvaz.com/sorolla/joaquin-sorolla-bastida-023.jpg

After returning to Zaragoza, I had 2 days of classes, a weekend (Ben's soccer game, of course), and 2 more days of classes, then we departed for Belgium. That goes in tomorrow's blog, Justyne.

April showers bring visitors and "Semana Santa"

A number of things have kept me from posting recently, including visitors and volcanos (or is it "volcanoes?"). I'll try and remember the past month, giving some special attention to Holy Week here in Zaragoza.

After Pat's sister Paula departed for the US we entered our week of "descanso" or "vacaciones," SYA's spring break. Pat did a time-share exchange for a week in an apartment on the Mediterranean coast, between Barcelona and Valencia, in a town called Alcocéber (or Alcossebre, if you are speaking Catalán, the language spoken commonly along the northern Mediterranean coast of Spain). We were in a cute, little apartment in a HUUUUUGE apartment complex (well, huge by my Bethel, Maine standards). The apartment had a giant balcony (sweet) and a couple of swimming pools, and was a 5-minute walk from a really nice beach.

Now the Twilight Zone-like part: The beach was empty. As in, there were usually enywhere from 10-20 people at any time on the whole beach. The water? Clean, nice little waves, not super-cold.
There were only two swimmers in the sea all week: Ben, and Chaia.

Apparently "beach weather" in Spain only means "super-hot, too-crowded-to-see-the-water, between-June 15-and-September 15 weather." At least that's what it said on the sign next to the giant, empty swimming pool: Open June 15-Sept. 15, 10AM-8PM. Now, I'm no cold weather swmmer. I don't even like to go in the ocean off of Maine in the heat of summer. but C'MON!! It was in the mid-sixties while we were in Alcossebre, and sunny. The swimming pool was as empty as the beach, which was as empty as the condo complex.

We were early. So we enjoyed something rare and special: An empty, sunny, kinda-sorta-warm beach.

We also took a couple of day trips to Peñíscola and Valencia. Peñíscola is a beach town that also has a waterfront mini-mountain, crowned with a castle built by the Knights Templar. It was also the temporary home of one of the Popes, at a time when there were actually two Popes at the same time (it's true, look it up- "Antipope Benedict XIII").

Castle, Peñíscola.

We also went to Valencia, about an hour south of us, to visit Ximo (our friend who picked us up in the laundry truck last July). We had a terrific day visiting the historic center of Valencia as well as the VERY modern Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Sciences, in Catalán). A truly terrific day and evening spent in Ximo's company. Here are a couple of shots from that day:

After a few days on the beach, as headed back to Zaragoza for one of Spain's really special events: Semana Santa, or Holy Week. During this time between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, in a number of cities in Spain (although I'm told that Sevilla and Zaragoza are notable places), statues of Jesus are carried through the city by organizations called cofradías, in reenactments of the stations of the cross. Each day various cofradías (origially "brotherhoods," but many members are now women and children) follow different routes through the city, accompanied by drummers, incense-carriers, and women in black. It's very cool pageantry, and tends to shake Americans to their politically-correct cores. It seems that the KKK co-opted the costumes of the cofradías, which pre-date the Klan by several hundred years. It takes a bit of getting used to:

The processions, very LOUD here, I might add, go on throughout the city day and night, as there are probably 25 cofradías in Zaragoza. the other thing I forgot to mention is that they also carry/push large floats of very realistic-looking scenes of the Passion of Christ along with them. the biggest procession of them all happens on viernes Santo (Good Friday), and it's more than 2 hours long as it passes any given point, with all of the brotherhoods (their outfits Do give a whole new spin on the word "brotherHOOD") participating. And, of course, the BIIIG procession came right down our street, right under our window.


It was a loud evening.

Next up: "I don't know where I'm-a gonna go, when the volcano blows."

Time for visitors

Spring is sprung, part 2.

We have “made it” past the winter season. Now, those of you who really know me are scratching their heads, trying to figure out the last sentence. I am a winter-lover, the kind of person who greets winter storm warnings with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I love winter. Winter to me is fireplaces, snowshoeing, lots and lots and lots of skiing, darts, apres-ski gigs, and a world full of white , with more white falling as I watch mesmerized through my living room or classroom windows.

We had none of that here.


Zaragoza is, as I’ve said repeatedly, a very dry place. It gets somewhat cold, and is consistently windy, but that’s about it for winter. It snowed in Zaragoza twice this winter, and the longest that the snow lasted was a few hours. No one has a fireplace. I haven’t played a gig since last June. All of the dart boards that I have found this year (even in the “Irish” pubs) are the hideous electronic kind that I liken to a mirage of an oasis in the desert; the kind that that turns to sand just as you reach down to drink. I have been skiing here this winter, and the skiing has been really great. Ben and I skied at three outstanding Pyrenees ski areas this winter, for a total of 12 days for Ben and 6 for me (Andee and Chaia skied one day too). But six days of skiing for me usually means a week in which I skied both Saturday and Sunday. It was great, but it was a bit of a tease as well.

So winter is over. Hurray! On with spring, and spring brought us a visitor. Frances Soctomah came all the way from Bethel to photograph some of the shmoogly-googly-gillions of churches and castles to be found in and around Zaragoza, for her Senior Point project. I spent a couple of days with her, showing her around to some of my favorite places, visiting some local sights, and going to Jaca and Huesca to see the cathedrals there. While here, and staying with Alejandro’s family, Frances also got to sit in on my classes (I’m sorry she missed the one on abortion, she would have been fascinated).

After Frances left, we got to spent time with some other visitors (we are now entering the final phase of our year in Spain, the part of the year when lots of people come to see us): My mother-in-law and her sister. We couldn’t have asked for more gracious guests, and we took them to all of our favorite tapas haunts, historical sights, and Barcelona. Pat (my mother-in-law) and Paula (her sister) traveled, while here, to Jaca and to Madrid while we finished up our week leading into spring break, otherwise known as Semana Santa (holy week).

THAT week will have to wait for my next entry, but suffice to say for now that it will include a trip to Valencia, and several days on the beach.

Here, to end, is a photo of one of the manymanymanyMANY Holy Thursday processions in Zaragoza:

Hmmmmm........