​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 years of marriage.  This is number 29 of a series about our lives and travels. If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017. Older posts you'll find below that are a previous series about later travels.  

​            "A taste of Eastern Europe, that's enough for now," Sherrill told me.  "We can come back another time."  
            In the fall of 1988, that may or may not have been true.  We didn't know it, but the whole area was about to explode with the fireworks of change.  Our exploration began with a flight on an ancient Balkan Airlines plane from Vienna to Rouse, Bulgaria.  We were startled to see uniformed soldiers carrying huge guns in the Vienna airport.  We'd never seen anything like that before in our 24 years of traveling together.  The Balkan plane—its colors were green, red, and rust—took off at a terrifying angle, struggling to get into the air as quickly as possible.  Once we were aloft, the two male flight attendants, both stretching the worn seams of their uniforms, thrust at each of the passengers a box lunch of bread and sliced salami white with fat. We survived both the flight and the lunch, but descending into Rouse was almost as alarming as taking off from Vienna had been—plus the runway had to have been made of broken cobblestones and pottery shards.  

​            The Yugoslavian boat that we boarded wasn't new or grand, but we hadn't expected luxury.  The next day, it took us along the Danube to a small port in Romania.  A nervous teenage soldier who may not have been mature enough to shave stood on a wall with a gun almost as long as he was tall, watching us leave the boat and get onto a bus.  As far as we could tell, dramatic change didn't seem to be in the air, but we didn't know what was bubbling underneath.  During that day, however, we picked up clues about what might be going on.
            "I'll tell you the truth," the young Romanian guide began, as the bus headed toward Bucharest.  "And answer your questions, but please no recording devices.  You must understand that half of this country is spying on the other half and we never know for certain who belongs to which half."
            We all nodded agreement, but before we got very far the antique Soviet-built bus broke down.  The driver didn't seem upset about it.  He just pulled out a magazine and stretched out to read it.
            "I'll have to arrange for a new bus," the guide told us.  "Excuse me." 
            We had no idea how he'd do that, since we were surrounded by scruffy-looking fields.  However, he just walked back to a little green car that had been following us, talked with the two men in it, and they drove off to do something.  When the second bus came to get us, the little green car was with it and stayed with us the rest of the day.  

​            As we continued, we noticed two things: the driver had to pilot the old bus through an archipelago of holes and rock piles and the villages and farms we were passing were wretchedly poor.
            "Who lives there?" Sherrill asked. 
            "Around here, it's mostly Roma—gypsies."  The guide glanced at the bus driver, as if he suddenly wasn't sure whether or not the man understood English.  "They have a hard time.  Also, the Nazis killed many of them—at least eleven thousand.  They were taken away, along with the Jews."
            We learned a little about the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, who ran the country with him, but our guide obviously was trying to be discreet.  Every time the bus stopped, for whatever reason, that little car also stopped behind us.  In Bucharest, while we had lunch, it waited across the street from the restaurant.
            "Do those two ever eat or go to the toilet?" Sherrill asked.
            "Not when they're in the Secret Police," our guide told us. 
            "That's the Secret Police?"
            We drove around the enormous "People's Palace" built by the Ceausescus.  Third largest building in the world, by volume, the guide told us, with 3,000 rooms—its style seemed to be Early Wedding Cake.  The center of old Bucharest was razed to make room for it.  We never would have guessed that Bucharest once was called the Paris of the Balkans.  Later, we dropped in at a service at one of the three Orthodox  churches that were moved, instead of torn down, because they were considered historic.  The rotund, bearded Orthodox priest smiled a lot at us after the service, showing his brown teeth, but either he knew no English or was afraid to be seen talking with us.  Just a year later, as it turned out, central Bucharest was a battle zone.  Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu fled, but were caught, tried, and shot on Christmas day 1989.  

​            The next morning, we continued on the boat to Belgrade, capital of what still was called Yugoslavia, passing between the huge limestone cliffs known as the Iron Gates.
            Belgrade was almost as gray as Bucharest, but seemed to be starting to shake off its gloomy past.  The stores were busy and actually full of merchandise.  In a large bookstore, Sherrill found a bizarre, rather fascinating, and surprisingly cheap, copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Serbo-Croatian.  Was it significant that in these countries held by ruthless dictators we often found translations of Lewis Carroll's tale of the innocent but clever child trying to outsmart the lunatic monarchs?  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were Sherrill's favorite books—which may have reflected her own view of the world.  

​            Later, in the hills outside of Belgrade, we visited the grave and memorial of Marshal Tito, the man who pulled together the six countries that made up Yugoslavia and president for life of this patchwork country.  An honor guard that marched in front of his marble tomb was changed several times a day in an elaborate ceremony.  Soon, without Tito's iron fist, each of the little countries would assert itself, proclaiming its own identity again.  On a later trip, we'd see the result of that struggle.  

​            From the river, the historic buildings of Budapest glittered in the sun as if they were spackled with jewels—especially the gothic spires of the nineteenth century parliament building.  As we explored the city, we agreed that Budapest was definitely one of the places to which we'd return.  We never got around it, but we saw a lot while we were there—on both sides of the river—and indulged in a romantic dinner in a picturesque basement restaurant (much more elegant than the one where we had lunch in Prague), complete with Gulyas (goulash) paprika and a strolling violinist.  (Sometimes, it was fun to give in and act like tourists.) We agreed that when we returned it would be by train through the spectacular 19th century railroad station—very Orient Express.  

​             Continuing on the boat from Budapest, we admired the Baroque towers of the Benedictine Melk Abbey poised like royalty on the cliff top, then stopped to survey the art collection in the abbey.  In the museum, we found the elaborately carved bone reliquary of St. Coloman, an Irish saint who had been tortured and murdered in Germany en route to the Holy Land.  His body, it was said, didn't rot for almost two years after he was hung.  Eventually, his relics were transferred to Melk.  One more reliquary for Sherrill's list.

​             Later, we passed through one of enormous locks on the river.  Part of the ship's superstructure had to be collapsed so it could slide under the bridge spanning the lock.  Sherrill grinned when the captain banged the ship's sides against the edges of the lock.
            "No better than we did in England."  

        Getting off the train in Prague in 1988 was stepping into a Kafka tale of dark streets, decaying buildings, shadows, and suspicion that unseen eyes watched.  The old train station near the top of Wenceslas Square spilled Sherrill and me onto a flight of grimy steps.  Suitcases in hand, we trudged downhill toward where we hoped we'd find our hotel. 
      On the train from Vienna, we'd shared a compartment with a smug Swiss and a self-conscious Pole in a badly made suit that looked as if its seams would leap apart at any moment.  Between Austria and Czechoslovakia, the train stopped twice, once on each side of a viciously fenced no-man's land, so officials could check documents, scowl, and intimidate.  Each time, the miserable Pole looked as if he'd melt in a puddle of fear and despair, but eventually the train lurched on its way with him still clutching the arms of his seat. 

​            The once grand, arte-nouveau Communist-run Interhotel Ambassador-Zlata Husa lurked two-thirds of the way down Wenceslas Square.  The receptionist in her worn uniform glumly checked us in and turned us over to a bellboy who, the moment the elevator doors closed, offered to exchange dollars for a favorable, if illegal, rate. We declined the opportunity, the first of many.  The hotel management apparently clung to the fantasy that the establishment retained an aura of elegance despite the fact that we were shoved a fistful of cheaply printed vouchers for meals in the hotel restaurants.  Food at the various restaurants and cafes needed different numbers of vouchers.  If we used them all, we'd have to pay with cash—assuming we could get either a table or food. 

     Hiking around the impoverished but beautiful city during the next days showed us that life behind the Iron Curtain was an endurance contest.  Everyone seemed exhausted.  Very few spoke English.  We saw  tourists, but no other Americans, just European tourists, except for a single Japanese group.  Prague had been spared bombing during World War Two, so we could admire the beauty of its architecture, even though the handsome old buildings often were dirty and unkempt.  However, we felt sorry for the shabby, hungry people.  Soon, we shared that hungry look.  One afternoon, every restaurant we tried was either shuttered or just closing.  They'd run out of food, they told us. 
      Finally, Sherrill spied a basement place down several steps from the street—a cafe for local workers and their families.  Even then we had to wait until we could share a table with a Czech family.  They stared, but weren't unfriendly.  The menu was faded and stained, but it didn't matter because the waiter told us that the only thing left was Weiner schnitzel and potatoes.  Later, when the waiter brought the bill I discovered under a tidily mended napkin an offer to change money, but I had no doubt that if I tried it Big Brother would swoop down.  I'd read The Trial and knew very well that all of us are guilty until proven otherwise. 

     Sherrill, a children's librarian, collected editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, especially from the countries where we traveled.  Over the years, she filled a large bookcase with dozens of Lewis Carroll's book in different languages and with a range of illustrations reflecting different cultures.  The cities of Eastern Europe, we discovered, were poor and gloomy, but rich with bookstores.  In a large, badly lit shop in Prague we found a Czech edition of Alice, oversize, with dramatic, stylized black and white illustrations, different from any we'd seen before, but in their way beautiful.  Books, we also discovered, were one of the bargains behind the iron curtain—too bad they were so heavy to carry back home. 

      In the dusty old National Museum at the top of Wenceslas Square, we discovered a large stuffed birdlike creature labeled as a Dodo Bird.  With its gigantic beak, fat belly, and wild feathers and tail, it did resemble Tenniel's drawings in Alice, but we couldn't help feeling skeptical.  As we continued exploring, seeking Kafka's House in the shadow of Hradcany Castle above the Vltava River, walking across the dirty Charles Bridge, and strolling in the grimy old city, we wished that we'd seen Prague before the Communist takeover after the war.  Each evening, we returned to the threadbare luxury of our hotel for a stingy meal at one of its restaurants, but after a week we'd used up our vouchers.  

      "Let's try that nice-looking place we saw in the old town," Sherrill suggested.
     "We'll need a reservation.  I saw a little sign on the door."
      "Get the desk clerk to call."
     Together, we walked up to him.  Slipping him a tip, I asked him to call for us.
       "Impossible."
       "Then we'll eat at the French Restaurant here," Sherrill told him, although we had the impression that it was reserved for guests more important than mere tourists. 
        "Impossible," he repeated. 
        "One or the other," I said.
        He didn't like the ultimatum, but we stood there, waiting.  Finally, he said that he'd see what he could do.  Clearly, he didn't want to return the tip.  A while later, he called up to our room.  A table for us had been located in hotel's French restaurant.  That evening, we found ourselves at a small table wedged between a flamboyantly dressed ballet troop from the Soviet Union and some stout Czech bureaucrats. 

          Later that night, we discovered that nothing is permanent, not even in Communist Czechoslovakia.  From our fourth floor hotel room window, we watched a crowd of sign-carrying young protestors spreading like a swarm of insects across lower Wenceslas Square until, without warning, several Black Marias and black buses with painted-over windows appeared, dumping black-garbed, club-carrying police.  The demonstrators melted into side streets and alleys, cops chasing them.  Those who weren't fast enough were beaten and dragged into the Black Marias and buses.
          "This can't go on," Sherrill said.
        As things turned out, it didn't—and it didn't take long.  It was scarcely more than a year until the "velvet revolution."  

   The next morning, our train reservations in hand, we hiked up to the main station and sat the waiting room watching for our train back to Vienna to appear on the board.  Time passed, but our train number didn't appear.  I tried to ask station employees, but none of them admitted to knowing English.  More time went by, still our train wasn't listed and I couldn't get any explanation.  Finally, a stubby middle-aged man in a soiled suit walked up and asked in broken English if he could help.  I explained our problem.  He went away, then returned.
      "Train leaving early," he said.  "Different station." He glanced around.  "Where  your woman?"  Sherrill stood up.  I thrust some currency into his hand.  "Go to subway--there," he said.  "Get on train to...."  He wrote a name on a scrap of paper.  "Go three stops."  He held up three short fingers.  "Hurry!" 
       Shouting a thanks, grabbing our suitcases, we rushed down the stairs to the subway, jumped on a train, counted stops, jumped off, looked at the board there for a platform, ran to it, and just as the train to Vienna started to move leaped onto it.  Once we caught our breath, we walked through the car until we found a place to sit and calm down.  Eventually, a conductor verified that we were, in fact, headed to Vienna.
        Life in the old Eastern Block.  The good old days.

To be continued.... 
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​ 
            If you enjoy these posts, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.  Please pass them on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
            You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-book of my novel, The Night Action.  It has been called the last great novel of an past era.  "The novel careens around the night spots of San Francisco's North Beach and the words seem to fly off the page in the style of Tom Wolfe or the lyrics of Tom Waits."  The book is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.      Click on the title for the link.   

​            Spring, 1988 was especially beautiful in Berkeley.  We took advantage of the weather with a celebration on the deck overlooking the garden that Simone and Paul had created for their new home.  Trees and shrubs were luxuriant, responding to the moisture and sun of the Bay Area, and the flowers were blooming in a carnival of color.  Just a few months later, however, Sherrill and I were following the shadows racing across Spain's sun burnt hills.

​            The thirsty terrain did remind us of parts of the West Coast not too far from Berkeley, but instead of passing golden poppies or California missions, we saw Moorish castles and the remains of Rome's far-flung empire.  In the city of Merida alone, we found the longest surviving Roman bridge, a temple to goddess Diana, an amphitheatre where gladiators fought, and a hippodrome where chariots raced.  We wondered what still lurked under the modern city.  And when we hiked along the streets of ancient Italica, near Seville, we found the remains of an even larger amphitheatre, public baths, and the mosaic floors of Roman villas. 

​            Rome, of course, wasn't the only empire to leave bits and pieces of their world behind in what became Spain.  In one day, sometimes less, we walked among Roman, Christian, and Islamic splendors.  Each place had a story—maybe history, maybe myth. The famous places were well known for a reason, but sometimes a site previously unknown to us was as interesting as better known ones.  Then, sometimes, everything seemed like a deck of pictures in the hands of a sly magician, shuffling crazily in front of us—or was the experience about the unpredictability of it?  
            In my memory, the huge Seville cathedral and ornate bell tower (originally the grandest of minarets for a long ago razed mosque) dominates the city, but I also remember lush green gardens and ripe oranges on the ground, exuding their sweet perfume as they rotted.  Sherrill hit the jackpot here when it came to reliquaries, including one with a thorn from Jesus's crown, one with a piece of the True Cross, and another with one of St. Peter's ribs.  I confess that I was more interested in the tomb just inside the cathedral door where Christopher Columbus's remains finally rested after boomeranging across the Atlantic several times—unless, as some people suspected, it was only his brother's bones.  

​            Walking through Cordoba's old city was a luxurious adventure.  We never knew what would be around the corner or beyond the next block, but could be sure it would be beautiful.  Sherrill loved the gardens and flower-filled courtyards.  At various times, we found ourselves on the irregular little streets of the old Jewish quarter or gazing down an alley of whitewashed buildings covered with hanging flower pots or suddenly in view of the arches of a Roman bridge still spanning the river, the enormous bulk of the great mosque just beyond.  
​
            "If you loved me," Sherrill told me, "you'd buy me Spanish tiles and flowerpots."
            "And carry them home for you."
            "Of course."  

​            A massive bell tower led us to Cordoba's great mosque, where we wandered among a vast forest of columns under red and white striped arches until abruptly we confronted the huge, almost overwhelming, cathedral built inside with its 16th century Renaissance nave—which explained the bell tower that replaced the old minaret.  Despite its size, the church seemed to have been swallowed like a fish by the great whale of the mosque.  Before we left, we did pay our respects to the bejeweled golden reliquary of St. Ursula in the cathedral treasury, shaped the way an anonymous medieval craftsman must have imagined her head should look.  It certainly was spectacular, but Sherrill never did learn which of the saint's body parts was hidden in it. 

​            Out on the street, dusk had turned the bell tower into a pale blurred shape.  I paused while Sherrill, backlit by the rising moon, gazed up at it, then we walked to our hotel.  The golden light of the day was gone, but had left warm memories on our faces.  As we walked, I touched a wall with my fingers and discovered that it held its own memory of the ninety degree day.  For a while, we joined the evening paseo of families and young people strolling the streets together, looking into shops, buying drinks and tapas and other snacks, enjoying the cooling evening, waiting for the hour to dine.  At least once, we heard the dramatic sounds of flamenco, but didn't see where that song of love and pain was coming from.  

​            A few days later, as we waited to cross the bridge on the way out of town, a man carrying a bucket and soggy rag rushed up to our car and smeared the rag across the windshield in front of Sherrill, leaving a disgusting mess on the glass, then held out a hand for money to clean it off.
            "No!" Sherrill told the man, rolling up the side window.
            Despite the sun half-blinding her through the wet mess, she turned onto the bridge.  This gypsy wasn't going to intimidate her!  When she reached the other side of the bridge, she found a place to park, I got out, and did the best I could to clean the windshield.  

            We'd already encountered gypsies in Spain and would see more, including some very aggressive ones—adults and children—outside our hotel in Granada.  A year later, in Romania, we'd see encampments of very poor, badly treated, gypsies—or Roma, as they should be called.  Still later, however, we spent Easter with the local people in a Bulgarian village, including a number of Roma, who had been integrated into village life, educated and employed contributing members of the little town.  During and after Easter dinner, everyone took turns toasting everyone else, Roma and non-Roma, with a strong, locally produced, wine until all three dozen of us were one red-faced family, at least for the day.  
            In Granada, we weren't able to get a room at the parador inside the Alhambra, but—we told ourselves—it didn't matter because we'd be spending most of our time exploring that vast complex of buildings, gardens, fountains, and reflecting pools, anyway, not hanging out in the parador.  More than anyplace else on this trip, Sherrill had wanted to see the Alhambra, its beautiful architecture, gardens, and courtyards.  Perhaps the most beautiful of the many patios and courtyards we saw there was the Court of the Lions, a private retreat of Mohammad V in the fourteenth century.  Small thin-tailed lizards darted across the tiles and walls as if they were directing our eyes to different features and details.  Delicate calligraphic tracings, plaster reliefs, and mosaics of countless small tiles gave every room and space a surprisingly light and cool feeling, despite the heat of the day.  I could see Sherrill returning to Berkeley, ripping out flower beds, and replacing them with tiled courtyards and reflecting pools.  Fortunately, she also loved English-style gardens like the one she'd already made for us.
To be continued.... 
​

            If you enjoy these posts, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.  Please pass them on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

​            The Spanish city of Toledo first brought to mind the apparition-like paintings of El Greco and then the notorious siege during the Civil War of the 1930s that left so much in ruins, but as we explored its hills and alleys we discovered much more and saw that in its long history it truly had become the "city of three cultures" -- Christian, Muslim, and Jewish.  Our surprisingly modern parador stood across the river from Toledo, but with large windows that gave us views of historic old buildings and tiled roofs rising from the steep hills under a tempestuous sky, the great sixteenth century fortress of the Alcazar dominating it all—a scene eerily out of an El Greco painting.  

           Part of the pleasure of exploring cities such as Toledo was that they were so different from the modern world we knew too well.  The cobblestone streets winding between the stone buildings were so narrow that whenever we heard an approaching vehicle we jumped into the closest doorway.  We couldn't see more than a few buildings ahead or behind, and felt as if we were finding our way through a maze. 
           "At least, I'm not trying to drive," Sherrill said after one of those cars nearly clipped us.
            Finally, quite lost, I tried my high school Spanish on a tiny black-garbed old woman carrying a large basket up the road.  She paused, peered up at me from beneath her shawl, poured out a brief flood of Spanish accompanied by short, emphatic gestures, then resumed her climb.  Despite her small size, her legs must have been steel.  

​            Although years had passed since the Spanish Civil War, from time to time we saw lingering wounds from the fighting between the republicans and the supporters of the Spanish dictator, Franco.  Battered and pocked by bullets and battles, the enormous Alcazar crowning the hill still showed scars as we approached it.  A few years later, in East Berlin, we'd see similar wounds from World War II.  It seemed appropriate as we zigzagged along the narrow streets, that we discovered a frigid basement museum of torture devices used against Protestants during the Spanish Inquisition.  Several blacksmiths must have been very creative some time in the past; it was difficult to imagine how some of those contraptions would be used on their victims.  We had little doubt, however, that over the centuries they also were used on anyone who challenged the powers that be. 
            I don't remember seeing any animals in Toledo, not a dog or a bird in the sky, not a cat, although they must have been there.  In my memory, the city primarily was stone piled upon stone—except for the El Greco house and museum in the Jewish quarter.  To see so many El Greco masterpieces in one place was an overwhelming experience: the passion, the faith, the brilliance of execution, left us dazzled. 
            One evening, as we sat in the Posada's large two-level dining room, a group came in and settled around a long table on the upper area.  They all seemed to be involved with a man in a wheelchair who was positioned at the head.  It wasn't until they all were seated at the table that we realized that the man in the wheelchair was Stephen Hawking.  

 Francisco Franco, dead for more than ten years when we were there, was entombed in a gigantic crypt in the heart of a small mountain topped by a giant cross visible from at least twenty miles away, surrounded by a vast memorial to the men who fell during the Spanish Civil War.  Dictator for almost forty years, before he died he restored the monarchy and put Juan Carlos I on the throne of a constitutional monarchy.  This seemed very hard to reconcile with the assertive fascist architecture in the style of Nazi Germany.  When we entered the central nave of the crypt, we might have been walking into a giant fascist railroad station. 

​One of our favorite cities for strolling was the golden-hued university town, Salamanca, home to the oldest university in Spain and fourth oldest in Europe.  The university was old when Columbus lectured about his discoveries there.  The Plaza Mayor in the old city with its galleries and arcades felt comfortable, as well venerable and beautiful.  Maybe the city appealed to us because we were from Berkeley.  

"I could live here," I told Sherrill.
​She patted my cheek with her hand:
"You'd have to work on your Spanish first, sweetie."  

            As brave as Sherrill was on the highways and roads of Spain, she met her match on the cliff-side road up to the hanging town of Cuenca.  Crowded onto the top of a steep stone mesa, many of the narrow old houses, some several stories tall, cling or "hang" to the sides of the cliffs.  Some of the houses looked to us as if they'd been squeezed out of clefts in the rocks.  The narrow road up from the parking lot below bent sharply several times. I told Sherrill that we could walk up, but she said that she could manage the road.  She started driving up, but when, a third of the way, she came to a second right angle turn sloping steeply upward, no guardrail either beside or behind us, she stopped.
         "I can't!" she said.  It was obvious that if she started rolling backward after making the turn we'd plunge off the cliff.
         I got out of the car and guided her as she very slowly backed down.  We were scarcely on flat land when a truck charged down the road from the town, clearly unable to stop as it swung around the corners.  Sherrill clutched my shoulder.
        "What if we'd been up there?"
        Instead of driving, we walked up the road to explore the picturesque little town.  Unusual and interesting as it was, it wasn't worth dying for--not even to peruse its rare silver reliquaries.   

​            As we drove south, we were enchanted more and more by hills of silvery-hued olive trees.  We'd learned that olive trees live to be hundreds of years old, even to a thousand.  Several times, we passed mile after mile of thick, gnarled trunks and roots crowned with clouds of silver-green leaves.  Other times, the smear of silvery green that we saw on the horizon turned out to be groves of cork trees.  We learned to recognize the raw orange-red trunks, naked of their thick bark.  I was reminded of my favorite book when I was very small, Munro Leaf's Ferdinand, the story of a young bull who preferred smelling flowers under a cork tree to fighting in the bullring.  I even had a little black rubber Ferdinand who looked just like the pictures in my book.  I played with him so much that his horns, made of white rubber, wouldn't stay in his head.  Aside from Ferdinand, neither of us had an interest in seeing a bullfight.  The pageantry would have been exciting, but we never cared for blood sports.  
To be continued....     

​            If you enjoy these posts, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.  Please pass them on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
            You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-book of my novel, The Night Action.  It has been called the last great novel of an past era.  "The novel careens around the night spots of San Francisco's North Beach and the words seem to fly off the page in the style of Tom Wolfe or the lyrics of Tom Waits."  The book is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.      Click on the title for the link.  

​            It lasted only one hour, but was unforgettable.  For my forty-seventh birthday, Sherrill surprised me with a flight over San Francisco Bay.  She knew that I regretted coming along too late for the old dirigibles.  The Goodyear blimp wasn't the Graf Zeppelin, but at last I was going up in a lighter than air vehicle.  From a side air field at Oakland airport, I was suspended with several other passengers in the gondola under the huge sausage-shaped balloon.  We floated over the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island, skimmed Alcatraz's concrete bastions, passed the sun-reflecting towers of Oakland and San Francisco and silvery remnants of morning fog hovering ghost-like on the Golden Gate, then, circling over tankers and yachts, drifted back to the Oakland air field, where Sherrill was gazing up at us from behind her ever-present oversized sunglasses.  What a way to travel! I thought. 
            A week with old friends at an Oregon resort later that year was a welcome break from meeting publication deadlines and coping with library patrons.  Once, we all might have lived together in a commune, but instead had to plan ahead where and when to meet.  The joy was that whenever we came together it was as if we'd never been apart.  This, Sherrill and I felt, was true friendship. 

​            Sherrill worked out most of the details for our trips, partly because of the long hours I put in as an editor and writer, but also because she loved doing it.  Although she enjoyed being in new places, I think she liked gathering information almost as much.  Page after page of detailed notes, carefully organized, steadily piled up over weeks and months, along with brochures and books and photocopies from magazines and guides.  This time, she was preoccupied with Spain.
            Madrid, Segovia, Salamanca, Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, Toledo: the names were a necklace of exotic jewels that we couldn't wait to fondle and during the trip we discovered several more gems.  Visiting other countries, a friend once told me, is the best way to understand the diversity of the human spirit.  Spain gave us many opportunities to broaden our appreciation of that diversity.  

​            Madrid meant first the Prado's vast galleries of human genius, but the city had more to offer us, as well.  We stood stunned before the force of the tormented figures, human and animal, in Guernica, Picasso's attack on the atrocities of war, in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte.  The serene majesty of the ancient Temple of Debod, donated by Egypt in gratitude for Spain's help in saving the temples of Abu Simbel from drowning behind Aswan dam, lifted us to another time and place, as did the perfect reproductions at the archeological museum of the 35,000 year-old Altamira cave paintings of bison, horses, wild boar, and deer.  Astonishingly lifelike, the figures seemed to shift and change position, watching us, as we studied them.  Already, we'd learned from our travels that not only is the past everywhere, but that it's not really past, but pulsating with life—if we allow ourselves to experience it. 

​            Exploring the city also meant visiting the Botanical Gardens, strolling through plazas great and small, and many stops at tapas bars, where we coped with clouds of cigarette smoke so we could indulge in endless mini-plates of savory and spicy treats.  We even learned to throw the shrimp shells on the floor the way the locals did.  A few times, we managed to stay awake late enough to eat dinner at the same time as the Spaniards—well, some of them, at least—and ate the best paella of our lives.
*          *         * 

​            I can't say why Sherrill and I were so fascinated by Philip II of Spain.  Maybe it was because he seemed to be such a miserable human being.  His portraits certainly suggested that and his great palace at Escorial confirmed everything we'd read about him.  Who could be happy living in that monstrous, gloomy mausoleum?  Aside from political reasons, that could've been enough to keep Elizabeth I of England from marrying him.  On the other hand, we had joyous memories of Segovia—maybe because we nearly passed out under the Roman aqueduct that spans the center of that hilly town.  

​            Bravely, Sherrill criss-crossed Spain behind the steering wheel of a rental car, since trains couldn't take us to many of the places we wanted to explore.  Driving through the harsh beauty of the Spanish countryside reminded us of the dry "golden" hills of California.  From time to time, though, we'd spy the ruins of a medieval castle on a golden hilltop.  When we first saw the silhouette of a huge black bull posing in the distance we couldn't believe that Spanish bulls grew to that size.  Then, later on, another black bull, its testicles as big as cannonballs, appeared, and then another, and we realized that they were billboards--no words, just the black bulls, scattered across the terrain. 
            Segovia, we learned, was known for, among other things, roast suckling pig, so after visiting the huge fairy tale-like castle, we stopped at a hillside restaurant from which we could view the towers and turrets while we ate.  The portions, one with a trotter, the other with a hairy ear, were enormous—but delicious.  (I still ate four-legged animals, then.)  The waiter kept filling our wine glasses as we devoured the crunchy-skinned pig, then when we declared we couldn't eat another bite, he brought us each a digestif.  The glasses were small, but he refilled them several times.

            Finally, Sherrill and I escaped the waiter's attentions and staggered down the cobblestone road toward the center of Segovia and, we hoped, our hotel.  When we reached the foot of the hill, our heads swimming in an invisible sea someplace above our bodies, we sat down under one of the stone arches of the massive Roman aqueduct.  I have no memory of finding our hotel, but we must have since that was where we woke up the next morning.
            "You shouldn't get me drunk like that," Sherrill told me.
            "Me?" I protested.  "It wasn't me."
            "Ha!"
            We promised each other: no more roast suckling pig and no more digestifs.  I do remember that we managed to visit the spectacular gardens of the eighteenth century palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso near Segovia.  I photographed Sherrill looking overwhelmed by their beauty—or maybe it was lingering effect of the digestifs.

            Eventually, I'm not sure when, securely behind her sunglasses, Sherrill drove us across more dry hills and valleys to Avila and our parador, built next to one of the round, crenellated towers of the medieval stone walls that embraced the city.  Supposedly, a reliquary in the cathedral held the heart of St. Teresa of Avila, which was pierced by a burning arrow held by an angel, but instead it was in a nearby convent, along with a finger from her right hand.  Her right foot, left eye, and part of her jaw are said to be on display around the world.  Raised a Catholic, although she lapsed as a teenager, Sherrill began to keep a list of sacred body parts that we encountered in Spain and other countries.  After a while, it grew into quite a substantial list with some surprising bits and pieces of saints.
To be continued.... ​

            If you enjoy these posts, you might enjoy exploring the rest of my website, too. Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.
            You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-book of my first novel, The Night Action.  It has been called the last great novel of an past era.  "The novel careens around the night spots of San Francisco's North Beach and the words seem to fly off the page in the style of Tom Wolfe or the lyrics of Tom Waits."  The book is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Click on the title for the link.