Galicia: Stay Away From Last Week's Pulpo

(Don't forget, there are lots more photos posted here.

On the final leg of this journey, in a plane heading to Dallas (!), on the return to Portland. Not sure why American routes NY-PDX trips this way, I know they could go through Chicago, but, it is what it is.

I had hoped to do more regular posts, if not every day, then every other. But that was not meant to be. Seemed like there were very few free moments--exploring Santiago, Florence, Rome, visiting with Carlos, Cosimo, Rebecca (and Lidia and Allen in Rome for a couple of lunches) and just being in these wonderful places, there just wasn't enough time. In Santiago, Carlos and I rarely got to sleep before 1 or 2am--it was 5 or later after the Festa in Couso--and I have been literally exhausted most of this trip. Then I came down with an awful cold in Florence which hung out for at least a week or more and that stole whatever extra energy I might have had for writing. I'll try to fill in some gaps over the next few days. Crap, I still have some things from Rio to scribble down.

Ok, the food in Galicia was pretty awful which is pretty funny considering it was food that was one of the primary reasons Carlos and I decided to go there (see the first post on Galicia in the archive). Galcia is Spain's seafood horn of plenty.

When you look at the coastline in the satellite photos on Google Maps, you see row after row of something in every cove and inlet.

Zoom in and you'll see that they are clusters of shellfish "farms" where mussels and other such creatures are cultivated…there are thousands of these floating platforms up and down the coast.

Walk around Santiago's old town and you will see the product of them in every restaurant window, along with octopus, lobsters, crabs, barnacles (called percebes), and all sorts of fish.

Oh, there are also whole beef loins, and other hugh cuts of meat in these refrigerated window displays. Kinda makes you wonder how fresh your food is in any of these since most of the restaurants seemed to be largely empty most of the time. How long has that fish been in that window, señor?

We tried 10 or 15 different restaurants over our week in Santiago, and with the exception of two, all were disappointing and went on the "Don't Go Back" list. We did find a couple of more informal "tapas" places we wandered into more than a couple of times, partly for the food, for me, largely for the beer or wine, and especially, just to soak up some of the local customs and ambience.

Galicia was, and maybe still is, a very impoverished region of Spain. The food still reflects this rather spartan approach to nourishment: lots of boiled potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, turnip greens, called grelos, and so on. Salt must have been too expensive in the old days, and it doesn't occur much in comida galega. This is one of the reasons why so many dishes tasted so flat. One night I ordered a plate of steamed mussels, and that is exactly what I got: steamed mussels…no salt, no seasoning of any kind, no oil, no garlic….N-A-D-A. Had they been seasoned in the least, they would have been spectacular since I'm sure they were very fresh. But for me, they were blah. I managed to score a bit of salt and used that some, but even that didn't wake them up much. My steamed mussels at home, even made with bivalves bought at Safeway are a million times tastier….

One dish we had several times that is a typical Galician starter was caldo galego, or Galician soup which is a meat broth laced with chopped grelos, chunks of potato and sometimes a bit of sausage. Usually, this dish too benefited from a dash or three of salt. Can't remember which, but one version used a broth that must have been ham or bacon based, and it was quite tasty.

Another ubiquitous offering in Santiago is the empanada, but don't think of little turnovers as we are used to from Argentina, but rather, think of a very thin pie, filled with some type of savory filling, no more than a quarter of an inch thick with the entire pie perhaps an inch to an inch and a half, and sometimes delightfully golden brown.

One morning I saw these being delivered to restaurants from a pushcart loaded with trays of empanadas. Carlos ordered one of thesa at a favorite bar called the Gato Negro and he found it delicious; I think the filling was chicken. On our next visit to this humble place which seemed to only attract locals and was, interestingly, maybe the only non-smoking place we entered in all of Galicia, Carlos ordered another slice of empanada. But, surprise! This time the filling was not chicken, not tuna, but instead, the nasty, ever-present pulpo, or octopus! It was amusing to see him pick out the tiny tentacles, and then nibble on the pastry. Yuk, I would have never have eaten even just the pastry, contaminated as it was with tentacle juice and stray sucker molecules! Brave man.

Our first night in town we stopped into one of at least 30 restaurants along the main drag leading from the cathedral, Rua Franco. This place, Taberna do Bispo was mentioned in some of the reading I'd done on Santiago, so we wanted to sample some of their very appealing tapas displayed across the bar. We picked four or five items and drank a couple glasses of wine.

The food was decent, not amazing. But it was fun to choose from the great variety on offer. The routine seems to choose a few tapas, drink a glass of wine, then head to the next bar on the list. We did this a few nights during our week.

The Gato Negro was a regular stop, as was a more student-oriented place, off the tourist trail, called the Cabalo Branco, one of our other favorites run by an older guy and his son, who was in his late forties, at least. The cool thing about this place was that, anyone ordering a drink was presented with a plate of free munchies which varied from night to night. We had bread and cheese, croquettes, a bit of emapnada, and so on, all pretty good.

Draft beer was amazingly present throughout Santiago, and I'm not sure if that is because it's a university town, or just something common to the area, which, by the way, produces some decent wines, especially whites like Albariño and Ribeiro. I liked 'em both, but I ended up drinking more beer, at least on our bar hops.

The local beer is call Estrella Galicia and is pretty quaffable, a light pilsner-style beer. In the bars, one orders a caña, and I had plenty! The Estrela folks provided bars selling their products with a variety of tap styles. Here are a couple.

The one actual restaurant we returned to twice was Casa Manolo, and, unfortunately, we only found it toward the end of the trip. It is apparently a fairly new place with a very contemporary interior.

The other tradition they broke was providing food that actually had flavor! We had a great bowls of lentil soup, caldo galego, a nice plate of fried chicken, a pork milanesa (think chicken fried steak) and on the last visit, some delicious roasted pork ribs that we missed on our first visit. And the funny thing was, this was the cheapest place we ate at: only eight Euros (about twelve bucks) for a full lunch including soup, meat, dessert and a glass of wine.

Very nice. In Europe these days, that is a real bargain. Our mighty dollar ain't so mighty anymore, but rather, the US is more like a third-world country. Thanks to Bush and his insane war mongering. Idiot.

Santiago is a wonderful little town (about 130,000, with 35,000 students), very special, and, yes, magical. I can recommend a visit to anyone interested in exploring a quaint, well-preserved Spanish town with a fascinating history, and very special music. However, pack a lunch, or stick with tapas. Unless you consider pulpo and boiled potatoes gourmet dining, you won't be impressed with the chow.

More Couso Autumn Fest: Bring on the Pipers!

This is more video from the amazing Couso Festa de Outono on 7 Nov, 2009. This video features three of the gaita (bagpipe) based groups we saw.

There were at least two others, maybe more. I spent most of the time inside the pig-smoky room watching the tambourine groups (pandeiretera groups) because1) I like that music a lot; and, 2) It was closer to the beer supply!

Carlos was outside most of the time. Considering how much he likes percussion, this was interesting. So there must have been some other motivation for that (other than, for many new to this music, the pandeiretera stuff can get monotonous)????? Oh, and the fact that Carlos doesn't like beer!!!!

The pipes, of course, came with the Celtic settlers who arrived a few hundred years BC and were a huge force there for hundreds of years.

Interestingly, in the past 15 years or so, even the Irish group the Chieftains have gone to Santiago to record with some of the major artists there including the leading gaita player, Carlos Nuñez.

Check it out:

Italians (Spaniards, etc) Are Afraid of the Draft

One thing that truly mystifies me is why many cultures, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, are so darn afraid of fresh air, at least in "winter". I put that word in quotes because, as I leave Italy--I'm writing this on my flight from Rome to NYC--it's mid-autumn, and the weather has been mostly fantastic. IT HAS NOT BEEN COLD. Highs have been in the upper 60s or low 70s in Rome the last few days, yet, most natives have been bundled up in heavy coats, gloves, hats and sweaters as if a major blizzard were approaching. Plus, I did not enter a single building, be it restaurant, shop, my hotel, cafe, in which the was not blasting hot air, creating tropical conditions more than suitable for raising prize orchids.

Seems like, even though it isn't cold, isn't winter, folks have an automatic "now it's winter" date, maybe November First, after which, even if it's in the sultry seventies, ya just gotta wear your winter duds, crank up the heat, and roast some chestnuts on an open fire. This chestnut thing is not poetic fantasy. Walk around Rome or Florence this time of year and you'll find guys roasting them in charcoal fired contraptions, and they sell these freshly roasted nasty nuggets on the street. I say nasty because, other than maybe eating liver, which I detest, a chestnut is the most vile thing I've ever put in my mouth.

I tried one one (honestly) chilly night in Florence many years ago. Once. One time. I bit into the nut, and PHEWWWWWW…spit it out immediately onto the pavement. It was really disgusting. I can't recall exactly what it was like, other than it was B-A-D. Never again.

I laughed plenty in the last few days in Italy watching Italians saunter around their wonderful cities, totally wrapped up and ready for Jack Frost to bite them on the ass, suck the blood from their necks, knock them down in the snow. Yeah, those 65 degree cold spells are dangerous!

Forget the concept of fresh air. Ain't gonna happen. Seems like a national law that every enclosed space used for just about any human behavior must be stuffy and warm. Don't want that nasty fresh air to hit you and the face and make you gravely ill.

In 1998, I was on a train from Genoa to Milan where I was gonna meet my brother Cris at the airport so we could spend a week bumming around Italy together--I think it was his only real vacation since he'd gotten married. It was chilly out--mid-November--and I had on a sweater and a jacket. But the train compartment was otherwise full of Italians, likewise bundled up. The window, I believe, was open slightly and I welcomed that bit of cooler, fresh air. No sooner had I registered the fact that the window was open, but some heat-starved, draft-hating Italian got up and closed the window, and, I think, also cranked up the heat! It must have already been 80 in there, but that wasn't good enough. Maybe he was trying to sprout some seeds, pop some corn, bake some lasagne, but he wanted any trace of comfort pushed out definitively. And that was that. I think I stripped off my jacket, pulled off my sweater, took off my shirt, and pulled down my pants to get comfortable. Well, some parts of that surely happened. But comfortable I was not to be. Not until the train pulled into Milano Centrale and I could breath fresh air again. And that blast of cold can be as delicious as a glass of cold coca-cola on a hot Texas afternoon.

Flash forward a bit:
Now, funny thing. I'm back in NYC. Got in yesterday afternoon, it was about 60 degrees out. Sunshine to spare. And everyone on the street was bundled up for winter. And the second I entered the hotel (hotel? I'm staying at a hostel for merchant marines run by the Lutheran church, the Seafarers & International House, by far the creepiest place I've stayed on this trip), ok, the moment I entered the hotel, I felt that now-familiar tropical heatwave slap me in the face! This hotel is hotter than any place I was at in Italy or Spain! The lobby could double as the inside of a bakery oven, and my room, which has no thermostat, is equally steamy. The only salvation is that the windows open in the room and I can moderate the temp in that way.

Maybe my observations of such things in foreign countries is heightened by the fact that I'm in foreign countries. We are not, apparently, so different here. I see the same thing in Portland when it gets down to 60 or 65…the NW weenies can't stand those frigid temps and immediately don their stocking caps, gloves, heavy coats and scarves. And they probably find me odd walking around in a t-shirt.

And they are probably correct....

Thank God There Seems to Be a Vital Folk Scene In Galicia

Earlier on this current trip, I was invited to attend an astonishing demonstration of what appears to be a very healthy folk scene in Galicia. The Festa de Outono in Couso, a speck on the map a few miles south of Santiago. This was an Autumn Festival of music, food, mushrooms, and more music. Carlos and I hitched a ride with a music fanatic and practitioner, Suso, who is a friend of Montse, the woman from the group Leilía who I met early in the trip at Sala Nasa (see that post in early November).

We arrived about 9pm, and things were just getting underway. There was music already going under one of two tents, and people were beginning to fill the place. A stone building was where most were, getting their food and beer, while an iron stove outside, stoked with coals from a fire on the ground, was in use roasting chestnuts. I didn't want to go inside the building because it was full of smoke, and an attractive young woman approached us offering some of her chestnuts. (I know there is potential dirty humor here, but believe it or not, I'm not going to touch them, I mean, it.) We talked about "stuff" and she was astonished that two Americans were going to stay in Santiago for an entire week, and that we had somehow stumbled into the sort of "insider" event that was this Festa.

While I continued flirting, I mean, conversing with Yolanda, Carlos braved the smoke to get us beer. When he came out, he was pleased to report that the smoke was not from ciggies, but rather, from an open grill burning firewood in order to roast all manner of pig parts and rabbits. I drank the beer. Then I drank his.

Soon the music really cranked up.
And it went on, and was still in full form at 4.30am when we left. I lost count, but there must have been five different bagpipe groups and as many pandeiretera groups (the tambourine playing singing groups as illustrated in the following video). Most of the pandeiretera groups were inside, which is where I spent most of my time, but one, featuring our pal Soso, performed outside. I'll be posting more videos from this event as time goes on.

Carlos and I shared a plate of grilled pork ribs and sausage, no chestnuts, thanks.

And I consumed enough beer for myself, Carlos, and about three others...I lost count at 12 glasses. Hey, we stayed until 4.30, and the glasses were small. Once the bartender comp'ed me a beer...not sure if it was the free one after #10, or if he was just being friendly toward one of only two foreigners in the place.

All the music ignited dancing inside and out, on concrete, grass, parking lot and mud. It was fantastic and reminded us of Greek, Irish and middle-eastern dancing. The music is surely related to the second and third categories.

 I'll post dancing as well, and this video includes some of that with the pandeiretera group.

I can't begin to tell you how much fun this festa was and how lucky Carlos and I were to be able to attend. It was the highlight of our visit to this otherwise sleepy part of Spain. Everyone was very welcoming, everyone was extremely animated. It was a very special, magical evening. Why is that these keep occurring for me in Santiago?

More on this festa in future video posts...for now, watch this:

Rub It, Baby, Rub It!!!!

Right outside my hotel in Florence is the Mercato Nuovo, the new market, which was new about 500 or more years ago. It is now the site of about 30 stalls each day which sell Florentine stuff like leather goods, silks, junk and more leather. Right outside the market loggia is a bronze statue of a cinghiale, or boar made in 1612. But the name is Little Piggy, Il Porcellino. Tradition says if you rub the snout of the piggy and let a coin drop into the fountain below by letting the coin fall from the piglet's mouth, you will get your wish to return to Florence some day. So I've always rubbed the snout. And it's worked so far. This is my 13th or 14th trip to Florence...I've lost count. I'm so worldly! And the Porcellino has a very shiny nose to prove it's appeal to tourists from everywhere.

Oh, my hotel is called the Il Porcellino Guest House or something along those lines.

Anyway, I spent some time watching the action at the Porcellino, and it was constant, until early, early morning. One night I was awakened by some shrill female voices, drunk for sure, and they were out stroking that thang. It was after 4am.

Here is some of the action around midnight last Saturday. Oh, the great sax soundtrack was free that night, and adds great atmosphere:

(on my computer after you press play, you have to press the little sideways triangle in the progress bar as well)

Band On The Run: Gypsies In Florence With a Weevil In Their Meal!

This is part of a group I've seen a few times in Florence playing in different places, different configurations. I am not sure where they are from, maybe Romania? Anyway, they are great and I wanted to share this. Sorry about the photography...I shot this with my little Canon PowerShot camera from over 100 feet away!!!! Didn't want to be conspicuous!! Overall, not bad, some shaky stuff with Dante at the end!

By the way, they are playing an old Brazilian standard from the 30s called Tico Tico No Fubá--Weevel in the Meal

Don't Touch Me With Your Filthy Lucre

Can't seem to ever have time to write. I've been in Santiago and Florence accompanied by other folks and now, since yesterday, I'm on my own. So maybe I'll be able to update this more often. I still intend to do some things on Galician folk music (I have lots of fotos and videos), Galician attributes, whatever that means, oh, and a more complete rundown on the food. Then I have to catch up with the same stuff for Florence. So many meals, so little time.

Speaking of which, while in Santiago, I actually lost weight, the food was so mediocre and unappealing, though it seemed like we were eating all the time. Now, in less than a week in Florence, I know I've found all that I'd lost, and maybe a bit more.

Another thing, in my Santiago entries, I ranted on and on about the ubiquitous smoke in every restaurant and cafe we entered. Apparently, in most of Spain, such places are, in fact, smoke-free. But Galicia, declared an autonomous regions years ago, still strives to maintain their freedom and disregards what I was told is a national no-smoking rule, and allows folks there to light up at will. From what we saw, I think maybe the law in Galicia requires people to smoke as often as possible, and in as many places as possible!

No celebrity sitings the last few days, we'll see what happens in Rome! As I write this segment, I'm on a EuroStar train to Rome, the trip takes about and hour and forty-five minutes…fast, really. I'm in second class. On all my previous trips, I'd always gone first class, but the prices are so much higher, and for a two hour trip, this is fine. Don't know what I was thinking before.

While I was in Brazil, I noted that guys there have not adopted the shaved head look. Well, in Italy, that is not the case…lots of ugly shaved heads. What ever fashion god decided this was an appealing look certainly had some right strong powers of persuasion. While not as widespread as at home, there are still plenty of 'em here. I had to stare at one last night during dinner. Yuk.

As in Spain, everyone in Italy, especially the women, dress in black. Black shoes, black tights, black pants, black skirts, black sweaters, black coats, black hair. It's crazy. Carlos says it's more practical for city living, and maybe that's true, but come on! Oh, this has been the style in NYC too for many years, so?

Here's a funny observation on Italian bar/cafe habits, maybe anywhere money is given in payment. On the countertop next to the cash register is a little dish or try. Whenever you pay, you put the money in the tray. When the cashier returns the change, it, likewise, goes into the tray. You will NEVER, EVER have a cashier place the money directly into your hand, no matter how outstretched it may be, no matter how impressively large and close and obvious it may be as a receptacle for money coming your way. Forget it. Ain't gonna happen. Likewise, don't even think of trying to put the coins or bills directly into the hand of the cashier. To him or her, you might as well be handing them a fist full of pus, or anthrax powder. They will recoil, resisting any such attempt.

This very thing happened to me the other morning after drinking one of my two morning coffees. The cup was one Euro and ten cents. I didn't hear the amount in cents at first and, after having already placed the one Euro coin on the counter, was confirming the exact figure in cents. He said, "Dieci." Ten. So I pulled out the correct coin and was about to put it into his hand which was positioned over the cash drawer. He grimaced. He nodded downward, For a second, I thought he wanted me to just drop it into the drawer. And then I got it. He was motioning for me to put it on the counter. "NOT IN MY HAND YOU IDIOT," was I'm sure what was running through his mind. So I did the socially acceptable thing and put the damn coin on the counter. Only then was my ten fucking cents safe for him to handle. I guess the marble of the countertop sucks out the kryptonite or those anthrax pustules. Amazing. I wonder if, having been sanitized in this way, the money is safe to put into your mouth. If so, it's one less thing Italian mothers have to teach their kids.

So instead, they teach them about the importance of always wearing black. And that it's ok to eat raw pork in the form of prosciutto, pancetta, lardo, salsiccia cruda. And that, when you eat in a restaurant, you really should order a first course, like soup or pasta, then a second course of meat or fish. And, especially from grandmothers to young women, how to push to the front of the line as if you were the Queen of Italy, and doing so with such aggressiveness and authority--"Of course I have every right to go to the front! I'm a an old woman with power coming directly from god, the king, the queen, and Michael Jackson!!!"---that no one would possibly contest the action.

Yesterday I wasted an hour trying to save time by purchasing my train ticket over the Internets. It seems like an easy and efficient method and the official train website even has an English language version. But you have to register, and that itself is a pain. Then, once you've selected your train, your seat, etc,, it's time to pay. This is where the edge of the black hole begins. Dante, my man! Did you design, or did your Inferno inspire the designers of this website? I punched in my MasterCard number and all the correct data to back it up, a card I use day in and day out for online purchases from vendors all around the world. I had even just purchased an Italian train ticket a few days earlier from a ticket vending machine in Rome. But still, the card was refused. This in itself should not have been a problem, when it happens on other sites, you simply pull out another card, enter the data, and go forward. No biggie.

But this is Italy, and I think the trains are owned by the government. Big problem.

Not only was the card declined by the card processing firm, but because of this, the TrenItalia site told me, not so graciously, that my "account" with them was frozen, and unusable. They were nice enough to tell me how I could reinstate things back to "normal". Here's the helpful email they sent to me, about 24 hours before the train I wanted to catch:

"You can request authorization to re-enable the credit card for making purchases on the Trenitalia website by sending the documentation indicated below, by either fax (06/44104036) or e-mail (areaclienti@trenitalia.it):
- the content of this email,
- your User ID,
- a contact telephone number including the country code (for example 0039 for italy),
- the photocopy/scan of a valid identity document of the person associated to the User ID,
Within 48 hours you will receive the outcome of your request on your e-mail address."

Yeah, I'll get right on that. Then I remembered this had happened before. What I did then was to create a new account with a new user name, a new email address, and so on. So that's what I did. I went through the entire tedious process again, entering a different credit card number as well. Push "Enter" and then see what happens.

Then, with the tension and expectation one must feel when playing the slots in Vegas, I waited.

Declined. And yet another TrenItalia customer account frozen.

(The ad with the trains: Alta Velocitá means High Speed. This does not apply to their website. The other ad with the mom and kid needs no explanation!)

To get this far, I'd probably spent at least 45 minutes. Slow Internets in the hotel, combined with one of the most frustrating websites I have ever encountered. So I went downstairs to see if my buddy "Irma", the daughter of Annamaria, the owner of the little Hotel Porcellino where I was staying, could help. She was so gracious and agreed that sometimes things in Italy could be very frustrating. "That's why I want to live in the US," she declared. We used her account on the train's website and went through the process. And we went through the process again. And then again. And then again. I tried FOUR different credit cards, all perfectly good. But to no avail. And I felt sorry because this had then frozen her "member's account on the website.

So, after all that, I arrived at the station about 9am this morning, went straight to a ticket vending machine (run by TrenItalia, I'll have ypu know) and bought a ticket--for an earlier train--in about 3 minutes. With one of the offending credit cards, of course. Wacky.

I'll get in a bit earlier than expected and hope the woman will be at the B+B to check me in. Who knows!???? Many of these places in Italy are almost self-serve, with no regular hours for the reception desk. I told her I'd be in about noon, and now it will be about 20 minutes earlier. We'll see what happens. I really don't want to hang out on the street, but it won't be for long if that is the case.

A bit later:

Train arrived early, had a nice taxi ride to the hotel, chatting with the driver about restaurants in Rome. I think he was impressed with my knowledge (who wouldn't be?) and called me an expert! I laughed and said, "Maybe in the future."

Got to the hotel, or almost. I had to walk a bit to find it, and the numbers are not obvious. Oh, and 99 on the street is across from 34, so go figure. Lugged the heavy (with books now) suitcase up 4 flights of stairs, checked in and am getting ready to go out, to start soaking up this great city. Lunch is in a bit over an hour at a tiny hole called Sora Margherita. Will be meeting Lidia Agraz and her pal Allan who are staying in Rome for a while.

The room is cramped. Clean, nice bathroom, but the room is cramped. Very cramped. But it's close to everything and that is all that really matters for me.

Rome is a giant city, dirty, noisy, busy, crowded. But I love it.