One of my favorite Christmas songs

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

Refrain

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;
Christ the everlasting Lord;
Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Refrain

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

St. Paul's Cathedral Choir on You Tube

Longan in syrup - a confession

Last week I needed to stow some food in a kitchen cabinet and to find a space I removed a can with fruit that had been there for ages. Then I left the can standing around for a few days and decided that it did not make for a nice kitchen adournment and had to go, but what about its contents?
The can with an Asian fruit called "longan" was a present by my best friend and his family when they took us on a rainy but very pleasurable day-trip to Amsterdam in August 2002 where we had dinner in a Chinese restaurant. They stocked up on Vietnamese food and invited us to taste this fruit. We thanked them and put away the can, first at our home in Berlin, Germany, and then here in the Catalan countryside. An inscription on the can said that its contents was "best before February 2004". Nearly six years later, I found myself with the dilemma of what to do with it now.
I opened the can, as the waste had to be separated into its metallic and organic parts. The fruit looked still fine, emitted no suspicious smells, so I tasted it. It was still fine. A taste difficult to describe, sweet. The texture is like grape.
I find it a little embarassing that it took me so long to get back to my friend's present - and I am glad that the fruit endured all that time in its can, so that I still had the chance to taste it. Better late than never.

Village life (V): Snowed in

Yesterday the weatherforecast announced snow from an altitude of 200m+ for today, and today it snowed; we are at around 230m above sea-level. Already in the morning, the village hall secretary told us via the loudspeakers for messages for the villagers that there would be no transport for the schoolkids who go to school in the county capital 7kms away. It snowed all day and the village got more or less cut off from the outside world. The trains are still running, though the first one at 7 a.m. did not come. Around midday the snowing got heavier and from late afternoon onwards there have been some short power outages; a little annoying but everyone's glad if the power comes back after a few seconds or a minute. In a winter storm on January 24, we were without electricity for 12 hours - and that was quite uncomfortable as our gas heating depends on electricity to run. Fortunately, my in-laws have an emergency generator so that we could spend some time with light and heat there.
It would be troublesome if the snow lasted for a longer time as we would run out of food soon but for a day or two it is still enjoyable for the kids.

P.S., one day later: I forgot to mention that yesterday the physician could not make his usual visit to the village, neither the grocery seller, and today there was no mail service.

Village life (IV)

Living in the countryside does not mean being eco-friendly in one's behavior. If you stroll around the fields you find a lot of places that the local wine growers use as makeshift dumps for construction waste. Some also leave empty herbicide and pesticide plastic containers there.
As there is virtually no public transport for short distances - except for the train (for middle distances)- everybody who works outside the village needs a car. That means two to three cars for a lot of families. The problem is that the village was built in pre-automotive days, the streets are narrow, and there is only limited parking space. On weekends, when most people are at home and the owners of second homes come to the village, traffic gets quite dense and parking becomes nearly impossible. Another problem is that most villagers either cannot or do not want to spend a lot of money on a car, which means that the local fleet is quite old; and there are some cars that might hail from pre-catalysator days with the resulting exhaust fumes...
There are other factors that influence negatively on air-quality. Tractors are diesel-engine powered and the engineers of Fiat Agri and the likes do not seem to pay too much attention on reducing fume and noise emissions. Another point is that a lot of houses rely on open fire places and wood-fuelled stoves for heating. The problem here is that some seem to burn whatever they find (judging from the smells) and that few houses have adequate filters for the fumes.
The good thing is that one can usually walk out into the fields and enjoy the fresh country air there - if one does not do it on a foggy day with a farmer burning his waste, as the fumes stick around underneath the fog...

Village life (III)

One aspect of life in a small village that one discovers only after a certain time is that there is a high incidence of mental illness, at least in our village. One finds a lot of "strange, rare" people. Normally, one doesn't see them very often, they don't participate in village feasts, etc. And their condition is normally of a mild to moderate kind. They are often loners. I feel uncomfortable in the presence of some of them. All have fixed habits. One woman walks a dog regularly. One middle-aged guy talks to himself and drives his car to a neighboring village every day at exactly the same time. One is a runner. One left for a convent to become a nun. Some appear to be stored in the countryside, away from their family in the city. The relatively high number of cases is probably due to a kind of "in-breeding" over the centuries. Our area has always been sparsely populated and before cars became a common good (as recently as maybe 30 years ago), communication and contact with the outside world was difficult. So the villagers married their kids to their neighbors' kids, and so on, and everybody ended up being related to most of the others - and the gene pool became relatively small. Today marriages between villagers are rare. Those unfortunate enough to be mentally ill can get treatment at a hospital around 25km away from here, i.e. if they have relatives who acknowledge their condition, support them actively and drive them there...
A pertinent entry for a grey, stormy and cold fall day.

St. Martin´s little summer

On or shortly after St. Martin´s (november 11), summer is coming back to Catalunya for a few days or a week; they call it "l'estiuet de Sant Martí" (Saint Martin´s little summer). The temperatures are not as high as in summer but the days are sunny and nice and the temperatures are above normal for late fall. It's been the case again this year; yesterday afternoon, the temperature rose to 28ºC. For the next days the forecast is less sunny and with temperatures between 20 and 25ºC. Unfortunately, with the nice weather, the flies have been back, too... but who wants to talk about the weather?

Day of the Imprisoned Writer

To mark and remembered the international Day of the Imprisoned Writer, I paste a piece that I found on the International Freedom of Expression eXchange: The global network for free expression (ifex.org) page.

To mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer (DoIW) on 15 November, the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN (WiPC) is highlighting the cases of imprisoned writers and honouring those who have been slain for defending free speech. WiPC is calling on all activists and writers to show solidarity on behalf of persecuted writers by sending appeals to authorities. This year WiPC is shining a spotlight on five people from around the world.

WiPC is urgently asking for help for two dissidents facing long prison sentences.

Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, former president and current board member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, has been detained since 8 December 2008, for advocating political reform and the protection of human rights. He was charged in June 2009 with "incitement to subversion of state power." If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison. He has had limited access to his lawyer and family. He has a long history of human rights activism and has been harassed, arrested, imprisoned and censored on numerous occasions. Liu Xiaobo first received support from International PEN in 1989 after he was arrested for protesting in Tiananmen Square.

The other imprisoned dissident that WiPC is focusing on is singer/songwriter Lapiro de Mbanga who has been detained since April 2008 and was fined US$640,000 for writing a song critical of Cameroonian President Paul Biya. He is serving a three-year sentence for alleged complicity in anti-government riots. In October, it was reported that he was suffering from typhoid fever.

WiPC also continues to advocate for Maziar Bahari, a journalist, playwright and filmmaker with dual Iranian and Canadian citizenship who was detained during this year's media crackdown after the disputed Iranian presidential elections in June. After four months in Tehran's Evin prison he was released on bail on 17 October. Although he is now in the U.K., Bahari still faces charges.

The 15 November campaign is also an effort to remember killed journalists and bring attention to the dangers their colleagues continue to face. Russian journalist Natalya Estemirova was abducted from her Grozny apartment in Chechnya and murdered in July this year. She was found shot to death in nearby Ingushetia. She uncovered massive, ongoing human rights violations and was the only reliable source of information on Chechnya for other journalists and human rights organisations. In Mexico, Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez Ávila, an anthropologist, author and indigenous rights activist, was beaten to death in Guerrero state in July 2008.

Please send appeals for these highlighted cases on or around 15 November to the correct authorities as well as to the embassy concerned in your own country. Other suggested actions include organising a petition that can be sent to the embassy of the country on 15 November with a letter requesting an audience with the ambassador or organising a signature campaign to get prominent writers, media personalities and others to sign an appeal. Letters to newspapers, peaceful marches, or an event where works by imprisoned writers will be read, to which the press is invited, are also possible actions. Please report back to WiPC if you get a positive response.

For more information on each of these cases and on where to send specific appeals, please contact Sara Whyatt or Tamsin Mitchell at tel: + 44 (0) 20 7405 0338, or email: sara.whyatt (@) internationalpen.org.uk or tamsin.mitchell (@) internationalpen.org.uk

Diari del Priorat - The Priorat Daily

The title is misleading as it is meant to become a weekly paper. Right now it is a biweekly that wants to inform the small and scattered population of Priorat county (9700 inhabitants) of what is going on in the 23 villages that belong to it. The first pages are normally dedicated to a longer report, then come op-ed pages, economic news, stories from the county capital Falset (2700 inhabitants) and the rest of the territory, some culture, sports and picture pages with photos of recent events. There is a poster at the center pages, normally of a local sports team. The paper depends very much on the information of its reader as there is a very small editorial staff that cannot possibly know what is going on in all of the already mentioned villages.

Political corruption

I don´t want to comment or to judge here, just to give testimony of a situation that I find noteworthy and troubling.
For quite a while now, the news on Catalan and Spanish television have been dominated by corruption scandals in various parts of the country. The party that comes off worst is the ultra-conservative Popular Party (PP). It all began with a spying scandal within the ranks of the PP in Madrid. Then came "el caso Gürtel" (Gürtel=German "belt"=Spanish "correa") around the corrupt relationships between a public relations firm (Orange Market) headed by a man named Correa and the Popular Party in Madrid and Valencia. Correa was a guest at the wedding of former Prime Minister Aznar's daughter to Alejandro Agag, another one involved in the scandal, at the El Escorial royal palace. In Valencia, the state governor was accused of taking suits in return for giving PR events to Orange Market, there headed by a name nick-named "Bigotes" for his spectacular moustache, but the case was ended inconclusively. In Mallorca, the former PP government is accused of financing the party by over-charging for a bicycle arena (PalmArena). And the latest case coming to light was around the Socialist mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramanet, a Barcelona suburb, who worked with a building firm and some intermediaries in money laundering and reclassification of land. This is the most notorious case of political corruption in Spain and it normally works like this: the municipality sells land not specified for building that it owns to a building firm on the cheap; a short time later the council decides to reclassify it, which increases its worth manifold, and the builder builds houses, shopping centers or whatever there. The builder makes a handsome profit and the municipality gets a nice tax revenue for the building, but nothing for the increased value of the land that originally was not for building. And the mayor and the others implied get a nice unofficial and tax-free bonus by the builder... These mentioned were only the most spectacular cases but it is like a national scourge. Part of the fault lies with the poor financing for communities who depend very much on building taxes. By selling the land in their property, they find a short-term remedy for their financial problems but sell the only "family silver" they have; and in the past they helped to create the real-estate bubble that burst about two years ago.

Exercises in translation (II)

from: Avui, October 11, 2009, p. 23

Spain will continue being the EU's leader in job destruction

Editorial office, Barcelona

At year's end, 3 of every ten new unemployed in the EU will be Spanish. According to the "labor euro-index," elaborated by IESE business school and temp-work agency Adecco, Spain will continue leading the job destruction, though it will be more moderate if compared to earlier trimesters. The report analyses the job market's evolution of seven European countries: Spain, France, Germany, Ital, Portugal, United Kingdom and Poland (similar to Spain in population). Taken together, these markets have registered three million people less in employment, double the number than in the three months before. "Never before in a twelve-months span our group of seven countries had destroyed so many jobs," the authors of the document stress. Germany is the country that has had a better evolution, while Spain's is the most "dramatic."

The future jobless rate
Spain has lost within a year 1,480,000 jobs, a fall of more than 7%. That means it has counted for nearly one in every two jobs lost in the EU during the past year. As to the unemployment rate, the study published by IESE and Adecco calculates that the European community rate will rise by 2.5%, as as to be at 10.3% at year's end. That means an increase of 3% in two years. If you took out Spain of this calculation, the increase would be smaller, 1.8%.

(The original in Catalan is as confusing as to numbers and semesters, trimester, years,... observed...)

A ride on a regional train

About three weeks ago, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I went by train back from the capital to our village on the Barcelona-Zaragoza regional train. The train model was that normally used as a local train: the overhead baggage racks were very small, so there were bags all over the place. The air-conditioning did not work properly and they train shuddered heavily at higher speeds. There was a homeless-looking traveller who tried to discuss the price of the fare with the ticket inspector; later on he was talking to himself while manipulating empty beer cans into objects whose utility I could not imagine. There were "internal immigrants" from other parts of Spain who led very loud mobile phone conversations and "real immigrants" with hardly any luggage but a bicycle they needed to leave somewhere. There were young parents adoring their shouting offspring. Then a guy with expensive clothing (e.g. Munich shoes, a luxury trainer fashion shoe brand from Barcelona)and a plastic bag of a local "hard" discount store (Dia, headquartered near Madrid but part of Carrefour of France; there are no local hard discounters; Lidl is ubiquitous in Catalan cities, Aldi only in middle-sized towns; Mercadona from Valencia is a very good local discounter as they avoid cardboard boxes in their stores and have a line of good exclusive products -- in the countryside where we live, there is only Dia:( ). Hardly anybody was looking outside at the fascinating landscape: first the Mediterranean at the feet of the rail tracks, then olive groves and vineyards...

Grape harvest deluxe

A cloudy day in late September. 7:30 a.m.: getting off to a 20 min. four-wheel drive into the mountains. Awaiting us is a vineyard around a mountain house with spectacular views. All in all we are three tractors and trailers, their drivers and four more co-workers/family and friends. These are well-kept vines in tidy rows with few rotten or reddish grapes. The owner likes big buckets: the first trailer fills rapidly but one's back also notes it. After about one and a half hours of work, it is time for breakfast: everybody brought their own but there is fresh coffee. After about three quarters of an hour, off to work again. Three hours later: dinner, the best part of the workday. There is meat roasted on a big grill: chicken for the timid like me, and a variety of local sausages, rabbit (?); accompanied by beans, grilled vegetables, roasted bread, cake, and wine, coffee, brandy.
All in all two hours of rest and another two hours of work.
Most interesting: the story-telling, experiences of the past, travel adventures from central Europe in the 1990s and Iran already in the new millenium (for breakfast). Complaints about a wife not letting her husband having a tv. Gossip from the past: a lot of stories about unwed women looking for and getting their satisfaction, even in times of state catholicism under Franco; these stories came after the alcohol-laden dinner...
[The blogger was interrupted by his daughter here, otherwise the later part could have been more exhaustive...]

Noah Gordon's "The bodega"

This is not a work of high-brow literature, but you would not expect it from this author anyway. It has the usual Gordon plot of a young person with a more than questionable future who then succeeds against all odds due to hard work, self-discipline and a lot of luck.
What distinguishes this novel is its setting in a Catalan wine-growing region in the second half of the 19th century. Gordon has a fine eye for the details of wine-growing and the various factors that lead to a good wine, such as terroir, climate, hard work, the right mix of grape varieties, storage, etc.
The story is set against the background of the "Carlist civil war". Gordon's hero undergoes a long preparatory process for a war in which he will finally not fight. The narration of how he gets out of more than one desperate situation makes for entertaining bedtime reading.
Recommended if your are interested in 19th century Spanish and Catalan social history and/or wine-growing in general, as a lof of the labor-intensive process still remains basically the same today.

Odd is that Gordon sets his novel in a Catalan landscape and then uses the Spanish word "bodega" in the the English title, instead of the Catalan "celler". Odder still is its German title "Der Katalane" (the Catalan).

Back to school

Today was the first day of the new school year for about 1.2M students in Catalunya - after 85 days of summer holidays. Related topics on the news were the fear of the new flu spreading through class-rooms, and the introduction of laptop computers replacing traditional textbooks for the first 130.000 (?) or so of students.

My encounter with Ted Kennedy

When I heard of his death on Wednesday morning, I remembered that I really met Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009) once, i.e. I saw him “live“.
It was in the fall of 1995 when I studied American Foreign Policy and American Politics at American University in Washington, D.C. Part of the studies was a semester-long internship at some typical “Beltway institution.“ Following the advice of a college professor from Texas whom I knew and who at that time worked for the State Department in D.C., I did not end up in the Senate or with some lobbyists but at the offices of NBC News’ “Meet the Press,“ at that time present by Tim Russert. During the intership days I had to cut out a lot of stories from newspapers from all over the US that had previously been scrutinized and marked by the producers of the show. Another task was to register incoming calls from viewers. And photocopying, of course. Not too exciting all in all you might think.
The real perk was to be able to be present before and while the show was on air on Sunday mornings. It meant showing up at around 7 a.m. at the studio in case there were some last-minute photocopies to be made, etc., and to meet the guests at the door, and show them to the make-up room and the lounge. This way I met, among others, Newt Gingrich, Steve Forbes, Bob Woodward, Bob Dole, the Reverend Jesse Jackson (“Good morning, brother!“), Al Gore, and Ted Kennedy.
Though I don’t remember having exchanged any words with him or shaken his hand, I remember his spectacular, young second (?) wife and his daughter from a previous marriage and her family who accompanied the then sprightly 63-year-old with the typical Kennedyesque full shock of hair. The encounter wiht his daughter was slightly embarassing as she asked me: “Could we have a peek?“ (at the lounge where her father and Bob Dole were waiting for their appearance at the 48th anniversary show) and I understood: “Could we have a pee?,“ and sent them to the bathroom. After she had been to the bathroom door she didn’t make a fuss but repeated her request, and that was it, I thought.
The next morning, when I was on my way to the intership, the NBC studios were near the AU campuses so that I could walk there, I saw her in a car (maybe a light blue Saab) waiting at a red traffic light while I was crossing the road in front of her – and she greeted me!
I am not sure if by a honk or just waving her hand, but I really appreciated the gesture (and probably fell in love with her for a while).
So, this is in reality more a memory of Ted’s daughter than of the patriarch himself but for me a cherished one. And the only serious jobs I had after university both dealt with John F. Kennedy, one of Ted’s older brothers, and the Kennedy family. That’s why this American dynasty is special to me and why I mourn the recent deaths of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics, and of Edward M. Kennedy.

(Due to enormous stress before an important exam, this will be the last entry for a while. This blogger will miss the therapeutical effects of blogging.)

A visit to the employment office

After an absence of about two years, yesterday I finally went to the employment office again as I had heard about a job offer of a public entity that "administers" a nearby mountain range and I wanted to know more about the offer.
The people attending those looking for jobs were more relaxed and friendlier than I remembered them though their workload has increased a lot recently. There was a long line of people waiting but about half of them only had to show up to affirm that they were still looking for a job; otherwise they lose their benefits. Quite a lot of them looked unemployable to my prejudiced eyes.
Then there was a woman who was astonished when she learned that as long as she is on benefits she cannot leave the country for more than 14 days.
Another came to complain either about her low wage or about the little she gets in unemployment benefits as she allegedly has to care for her grandchild, too, I could not hear her; but I heard the staff's response who explained to her that about 80% of the population, even people with university degrees, live on 1,100 EUR or less - working full time.
And I had thought people came to the employment office to enquire about jobs...
Finally it was my turn and I learned that they had not got all the information about the job offer I was interested in yet. They renewed my status as "unemployed AND looking for a job" and told me I had to return another day if I wanted to know more.
Not a really successful visit for me - but very interesting as to watching a piece of the social situation of this country.

Things I miss from Germany

During a recent visit of my parents' in Germany I realized again that there are a few things that I miss dearly - it is not the German weather, of course.
As all expatriates I miss the variety of breads but I find this tolerable. Other things I find more difficult to bear.
I had the chance to watch the evening news on public television and was really amazed: there were no commercial breaks in between, and sports news and the weather forecast did not take up nearly half of the time (as they do here). And there was more talk about global events and developments than about local affairs (a weakness of the admittedly regional TV3 - the "national" Catalan TV station). [But there are no fees for watching TV here.]
Also, as far as I am aware of the Spanish and Catalan press, there are no publications like "Die Zeit" or "Der Spiegel" here. I can find them on the web, but it is not the same reading from a screen or sitting somewhere comfortably with a printed paper in hand - 3G internet access is still quite expensive...
And then I realized why people are so fascinated by the German Autobahn. There are highways here, too, but they are all toll-roads, the lanes are narrower than those in Germany, and there is no extra side lane in case your car breaks down, etc. All this makes driving in Germany a lot more pleasurable than driving here.[Though car taxes are a lot lower here than in Germany.]
Another thing that I find very disturbing (though I once said I wanted to be positive on this blog) is that here public life virtually shuts down for summer vacation in August. As everybody wants - or does not have a choice but - to have their summer vacation in July and/or August suddenly the mail delivery becomes slower, and certain services are not available until September. All the TV stations put their regular programs on hold, emit even more commercials, and repeat old movies, their own series and other cheap productions from the last 30 years.[A welcome exception from this summer "hibernation": my local public library stays open five days a week, though, which I find more important than the changes to the TV programs.]

Books for pedestrians, and some thoughts on bicyles

Looking through old editions of The Economist, I found interesting book reviews that I want to remind myself of in the future. One book is called The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism (2008) by Geoff Nicholson, another one is What I talk About When I Talk About Running (2008) by Haruki Murakami, currently one of my favorite authors.
Due to a "weak lung" I am not a great runner but find the topic fascinating.
As to the footwear, I saw an article with nice models, some of them even ecological, on the web of Intelligent Life, the lifestyle edition of the above mentioned weekly, "The skeptical shopper examines trainers for men". The link is http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/intelligent-life/heel

I used to go around a lot by bicycle but in our hilly region that is a very strenous pasttime. In an article on Giant Manufacturing of Taiwan I found an interesting bit of information that I fully believe: "Each market has its own idiosyncracies. Europeans mainly use bikes for commuting, but have the odd habit of ignoring models made explicitly for that purpose in favour of sleekier, faster models which are then expensively modified." ("On your bike," The Economist, September 20th 2008, p. 67)
In Barcelona one can observe an astonishing number of people going around on stylish Brompton folding bicycles; in Germany their simplest model costs around 875,- EUR. (I tried to copy a picture from their website but I did not succeed.)

The Forum neighbourhood in Barcelona

If you really want to see one of the dreariest neighbourhoods of Barcelona, go to the area where in 2004 they held the "Forum of Cultures". It is still being "rehabilitated" but is about as charming as Alexanderplatz in Berlin before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Whereever you look there are new skyscrapers: hotels, office and apartment buildings. And hardly any people. But that is fully understandable as the streets there are made for cars, very broad and very long - and fully exposed to the sun. The Diagonal Mar shopping centre offers the full range of Spanish and international chain boutiques and fast-food outlets and might be worth a visit if you really need a specific item. And on the coast you can find a huge photovoltaic shield. But as to the charm and vibrance of Barcelona, do not look for it here.
By the way, the route of the Tour de France stage between Girona and Barcelona yesterday did not pass here and today's with the destination Andorra will not either.

Village life (II)

Summer starts with Saint John's eve (June 23). A group of people goes to a neighboring village to get the flame from Canigó mountain (some myth about the Catalan countries). With that flame a bonfire is set on fire in the village and people light firecrackers to make a lot of noise. At around 10 p.m., those who bought a ticket congregate in the event hall to have dinner together: bread with ham or cheese or some pizza-like cake with tuna, spinach or a local sausage, accompanied by local wine. For dessert a typical cream cake with multicolored fruit and coffee (with a shot of brandy if you like). And then there will be a band playing music for the ball.
On Saint John's day itself (June 24) the local swimming pool opens at noon to inaugurate the summer season that lasts until September 11. There is a swimmer's pool and a shallow, small one for kids. If you like a quiet swim you have to come between three and five in the afternoon when the locals have their siesta. At around five, people start coming to the pool; more or less always the same who like to spread their towels at exactly the same spot and mingle with the same people every day. At lot of the regulars are vacationers who have second homes in the village and come here only during some weeks of the summer.
There is a snack bar and a small playground with very old equipment that does not look like fulfilling actual safety standards.
There are rumors about a general makeover of the main pool next year.

Exercises in translation (I)

Exercises in translation (I)

Unauthorized translation of an op-ed piece by Almudena Grandes that appeared in Spanish in El País Semanal (June 7, 2009):

A GRAIN OF WHEAT

Newly-made books have an agreeable smell, like spring. Spring smells like new books; this undescribable fragrance for which there are neither adjectives nor possible synonyms, the smell that emit brand-new plastified covers, the intactness of the adolescent spines, still smooth, without a wrinkle. Old books, those that put on a tenacious, yellowish patina, smell equally agreeable but their aroma is different. Read books smell like other people’s lives, mysterious lives led by unknown others, men with rough skin, women with polished nails, who held them in their hands when they were new and smelled like spring, when they still emitted the perfume of newly-made books, paper, ink, and love. Above all, love.
Love inspired by books is a complex passion, as difficult to explain as life – that is nourished by them and of which they feed. Love that summons an author and a reader around an excellent piece of design; this so simple and so perfect object, so cheap, so versatile, so easy to use and so often to reuse, light, small, easily portable and rigorously docile to its owner’s will, because it works without batteries or outlets, because it does not freeze nor does it need updates, because – apart from some primary education – it does not need any special knowledge, and it can be used as well underneath the earth as at an altitude of 9.000 feet (sic!) – how do people who do not read bear transoceanic flights? – it’s one of these loves that change anybody’s life. For this reason it is justified that spring loves books and that books fall in love with spring.

Writing a book means creating a deserted island and desiring passionately a shipwreck. Every book that is published is a new point, a black speck, round and tiny, in the neverending blue of knowledge, of human thinking. Every author has created it with its beaches and volcanoes, its coves and its dangers, its jungles, its deserts. And he or she has seen to it that it be habitable, has filled its seas with fish and its woods with wildlife, has hid under its strategic rocks springs of drinking water, has fertilized conscientiously its plains for the sowing of fruit and coconut trees, and has lifted itself to the height of God, even though he or she has needed many more than six days to create all this and to check that it is good.
After that, irremediably human again, they have kept their findgers crossed and desired with all of their strength that a ship might sink near its shores, that at least one male or female survivor let themselves save by the waves to then regain conscience lying in the sand. From this point on all the power is with the shipwrecked. On his or her will depends if this island gives up being deserted, grows, expands, consolidates as a fertile and mighty continent; or if this black speck, hazardously abandoned by the maps, loses its form and its color, shrinks in size until there is nothing left but a brown shadow, later on grey, a blurred, fragile, dusty memory, finally nothing.
It is clear that Robinson Crusoe changed my life. It did not change yours? You cannot imagine the envy I feel because this means that you can still read it for the first time. That you can still experiment this supreme emotion of the moment when Robinson leaves his hut, looks on the ground as he does every day, and discovers there a small green, tender plant that is familiar to hin because it is wheat; a grain of wheat that has come all the way there nobody knows how; because he had looked eagerly for the grain transported by his ship without ever finding it; and still, one solitary grain mus thave kept stuck to a wooden board, a box, in the depth of a sack, to losen itself on time, to fall into the earth and receive the rainwater, to sun’s warmth until its hidden germination. Oh, what a sublime trick; oh, what majestic work of art; oh, what glorious daring; oh, what a marvellous milling wheel of those that in the moment of swallowing them nourish more than bread! How many grains of wheat still await us in all those books tha we still need to read!

If you go out on the street, if you let yourself guide by the sun’s will during the slow, lazy mornings of this spring that is eager to become summer, you will find more than you could carry home in half a dozen plastic bags. It is possible that they are already, right now, calling you, that they cry out your first and also your family names, because even though you might not believe it, they already know you. Go meeting them, do not doubt. Look at them, touch them, breathe them in, succumb to the ink’s drunkenness that flows from the sides of all the huts in all the fairs open in nearly every Spanish city, and breathe in their perfume. Because newly-made books smell agreeable all year round, but when their smell mixes with that of spring, they fabricate an aroma very much comparable to the perfume of happiness.

© original text: Almudena Grandes, El País Semanal, 2009
© translation: this blogger, 2009

On Amazon.com I was not able to find any work by Grandes translated into English.

El cafè de la república (The republic's café)

This is the name of my favorite radio show on Catalunya Radio. They broadcast it every weekday night between 9 and 11 p.m. It is a program in which the host, Joan Barril - with a deep, mellow voice - comments on stories in the news of the same day. On some stories they give a lot more information than the regular news programs. They have a part in which they make a poem of some of the news. They have expert columns, some music and a part that is called "today in numbers". In contrast to other formats on Catalan media they have a wider focus than just Catalonia or Spain. And they do not include as many commercial breaks as other programs.

Playgrounds on Passeig de Sant Joan, Barcelona

The playgrounds on Pg. de St. Joan should have their own entry: there are five or so of them, every 100m a new one. This is the highest playground density I know of. As far as I have observed, they are all equipped by Lappset, a Finnish maker of playground equipment. Wherever a bolt could result dangerous for a kid’s play it is covered in plastic. But some of the climbing structures are really high and difficult – and recently I watched a girl that had just gotten a bloody nose by falling down from one of it.
In the mornings there are few kids who come escorted by their parents; normally those who come are taken there by their grandparents or a South-American or African nanny. In the afternoons, there are more kids, and more with their parents. One realizes that this must be a well off area of the city if one looks closely at the clothes these kids wear: a lot of them come with uniforms of private, usually religious schools. (From their behavior towards smaller kids you would not guess that they get a value-based education though. ) Shoes by Geox seem to be essential, the rest of the apparel by the likes of Hilfinger, Lauren, and Levi’s – for children who outgrow their stuff in a few weeks time sometimes.

Casa Macayo

This building is an attraction for tourists really interested in architecture. It is situated on Passeig de St. Joan in Barcelona, between Diagonal and Provença. I would not have noticed it if it were not for the tourists who come and try to take a picture of it. One cannot take a picture of it standing directly in front of the building, so people try from the middle of the walking area (“passeig” is an especially broad avenue with wide sidewalks or a middlewalk). There they realize that there is a playground in front of it – that is where I sit and watch. Now they have to make a choice: they either accept the playground on the picture, or they walk inside the gated playground and take their picture of the building with only a few trees in front of it. Because a lot of them walk inside I have come to notice the importance of Casa Macayo. You can probably find it on the web, surely in Google’s Streetview.

On blogging

Found an old article from The New York Review of Books (February 2008) by Sarah Boxer on blogs and blogging. Here are some memorable quotations:

"In late 2007, the count passed 100 million. (The largest number of blog posts, some 37 percent, are now in Japanese, according to a recent Washington Post article by Blaine Harden, and most of these are polite and self-effacing—"karaoke for shy people." Thirty-six percent of posts are in English, and most of them are the opposite of polite and self-effacing.)"

"Now that fame and links are one and the same, there are bloggers out there who will do practically anything— start rumors, tell lies, pick fights, create fake personas, and post embarrassing videos—to get noticed and linked to. They are, in the parlance of the blogosphere, "link whores." And those who succeed are blog celebrities, or "blogebrities.""

"In 2002 it was bloggers like Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Atrios (a pseudonym) of Eschaton who first publicized Trent Lott's racist remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, leading to Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader."
"For many bloggers infamy is better than no kind of famy at all. "

"To go unnoticed in this democracy is to not exist. This kind of existential pressure, naturally, ups the ante on language. Invective—hilarious, acidulous invective, often served up with false apologies—is everywhere. The law of the blogosphere is Hobbesian: survival of the snarkiest."

"Of course I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that bloggers have fouler mouths, tougher hides, and cooler thesauruses than most of the people I've read in print. Here's a sampling of words gleaned from some of my favorite blogs:

anyhoo, bitchitude, fan-fucking-tabulous, hole-esque, nastified, alternapop, coffin-snatching, YouTube-ization, touzing, Daddio, manky, nutters, therapised, Boo-Ya Nation, dildopreneur, dudely, flava, haz-mat, nut sac, sexbot, underwearian, fugly, vomit-y, consciousness-jumped, tear-assed, fetbryo, grapetastically, mommyblogdaciousness, Nero-crazy, Engrish, pidginized, votenfreude, angsty, malgovernment, bejesus, JumboTron, man-dresses, babe-aliciousness, droit de senny."

"Bloggers are golden when they're at the bottom of the heap, kicking up. Give them a salary, a book contract, or a press credential, though, and it just isn't the same. (And this includes, for the most part, the blogs set up by magazines, companies, and newspapers.) Why? When you write for pay, you worry about lawsuits, sentence structure, and word choice. You worry about your boss, your publisher, your mother, and your superego looking over your shoulder. And that's no way to blog."

"Blog writing is id writing—grandiose, dreamy, private, free-associative, infantile, sexy, petty, dirty. Whether bloggers tell the truth or really are who they claim to be is another matter, but WTF. They are what they write. And you can't fake that. ;-)"

Sorry to NYRB for the kind of plagiarism but I had only the article on my computer, not the exact reference to get to it - and was too lazy to google for it...

Making a fool of myself

This will be a personal entry for a change: I just learned that intellectual property rights are taken very seriously on the German Wikipedia. I put in a translation of an article from the Catalan Wikipedia on Moisès Broggi, a surgeon born in 1908 with an interesting biography that I found relevant, and it was removed within minutes. The moderator found it superflous, I think, and then I found out on his discussion board that you cannot just translate articles from other Wikis. First, you have to ask for permission and name the article you want to translate. Then, they decide if they let you - and import all of the original article's history into your translation - if they finally accept it...
So, not a free for all, but a highly organized and hierarchical system. I then went to the English Wiki to see if my articles where still there, e.g. a partial translation of a Catalan article on Maria Barbal. It is still there but they want more references. But how to find references for an author who has not been translated into English yet?
I feel foolish to have invested an hour of my spare time into a little translation that was then just erased...

Audi Q3

By now every Catalan will have heard of the planned Audi Q3. For weeks its name was on the news every day as the Audi headquarters in Germany studied in which of the many Volkswagen production sites this model would be produced. After the workers of Seat agreed to a salary freeze for the next years and the regional Catalan and central Spanish governments chipped in a few hundred million Euro in soft loans the Seat factory in Martorell won the internal competition so that from 2011 this new model will be produced there. It will be the most expensive passenger car ever to be built in Spain (at least in modern democratic Spain as the history of Hispano-Suiza and similar models is long over).
It will be so expensive that probably none of the workers building it will ever drive one. And it will probably be so "dirty" that it would not qualify for new subsidies about to be given to car buyers who trade in their at least ten year old former cars for new ones that contaminate less.
And it will not free Spain from its slave-like relation with international car companies, such as Ford, General Motors or Renault, that build small passenger vehicles in not really efficient plants (compared to those by Japanese carmakers; due to low educational standards) at various Spanish locations and squeeze out subsidies from all layers of government whenever there is a crisis and a reason to threaten with massive job cuts.

Village life (I)

This might become a series of entries talking about the pros and cons of living in a small village of 400 inhabitants as I have done for more or less of the past six years now.
One basic fact is that everybody knows everybody else, at least by sight. This brings a lot of security as every "foreigner", i.e. everybody who is not known to live here, is watched closely. On the other hand, it makes it difficult to keep great parts of one's life private as one is watched constantly even though one belongs.
Another basic fact is that a lot of the villagers are pensioners who have enough time to sit outside their houses or walk around and watch what is going on.
Small villages have the disadvantage that they lack shops and services, though ours has a small food store, two coffee-bars, a butcher's, and a beautician's. Even the county capital seven kilometres away does not have a decent supermarket or a laundry service.
Due to the lack of industry and big roads, the air is clean; and apart from tractors in the morning and the motorcycles of some irritating mechanics on Sunday afternoon the atmosphere is quiet.

Grow your own lemon tree

It is really easy to grow a lemon or orange tree at home. You just have to put the seeds that you find inside your citrus fruit into a small flowerpot filled with earth. The seeds just need a thin layer of earth over them. Pour a little water into the pot, then place it in a warm, sunny space and wait. Never let the earth dry totally. Once the seedling has a height of a few inches you can replant it into a bigger pot - or just let it grow. Cut off the lowest leaves now and then, otherwise the tree will not grow very much. Dust off the other leaves so that they can breathe. And never ever expose the tree to frost as it will die.
And do not expect fruit on your tree, with the exception of the case that you live in an area where there grow a lot of citrus trees - but then you probably would not read these amateur instructions.

My Sant Jordi 2009

At 10:30 a.m. the Ramblas in Barcelona were already full of people. Normally, it is still rather quiet at this hour as most of the shops don't open before 10 or 11 a.m. One could buy roses from a wide variety of sellers: kids trying to make money for their graduation journey, others selling roses for some charity, others trying to earn some extra euro with their small unemployment allowance, ... I would call it a sign of the current economic crisis that one could buy soft-cover books and not only expensive hard-cover editions (though in Spain you find few really "hard" covers). Apart from the rose and book sellers there were stalls by political parties, the Red Cross, Intermon Oxfam, etc. There were a lot of beggars trying to sell paper handkerchiefs by the single packet - and probably a lot of pickpockets.
The bestsellers of this year's Sant Jordi were the first two volumes of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy - the Spanish and Catalan editions' third volume will be published in June. I found it a comforting thought that a lot of people bought books written by "serious" authors - and not those published by football players, former fashion models, TV presenters, actors, chefs, etc. that steal a lot of attention that better went to real literature.
This year's Sant Jordi also saw the official beginning of "bookcrossing" in Catalonia. A BMW dealership sponsored a few hundred copies, the Miró museum placed books on art at various locations in Barcelona, etc. Hopefully, this will lead the Catalans to become not just leading entrepreneurs in the Spanish and Catalan language publishing world (that they already are) but also serious readers.

April 23, St. George's Day

The 23rd of April, Saint George's Day [La diada de Sant Jordi], is a special day here as Sant Jordi is Catalonia's patron saint, among many other countries according to the Wikipedia. The real George was a Roman soldier who died as martyr on April 23, 303 A.D. In the most popular legend, he saves a princess from being devoured by a feroucious dragon who wants a human sacrifice every day - and in the process kills the dragon. In Catalonia it is the day of the people in love, of roses and books. Everywhere in the centre of villages and cities, flowersellers and booksellers put up booths with roses and the latest offerings of the literary market respectively. The men give a red rose to the women they like, not just to their loved ones, and the women give books to the men, though not to everyone they receive a rose from. The book part was added after April 23 became "international day of the book" in 1930 in remembrance of Cervantes's death in 1616.
Not only lovers, flowersellers, and booksellers like this day but also the Kenian rose-growers who provide the millions of roses sold on this day alone...

The Gibraltar Chronicle

According to a newspiece in El País (8/3/09), The Gibraltar Chronicle is a very special newspaper for three reasons: it is the oldest periodical still in circulation on the Iberian peninsula; it had the exclusive news of admiral Nelson's death at the battle of Trafalgar; and it is one of the few newspapers that could not appear for a few weeks due to the fact that all of its editorial staff was killed by yellow fever.
The news in the Spanish newspaper was that the Instituto Cervantes (cultural institution similar to British Council or Goethe Institut) will open a seat in Gibraltar later this year. After reading this article, I opened Murakami's novel "Sputnik Sweetheart", and on the first page appeared a metaphor with Gibraltar - very Murakamiesque to me...

Public readings

As in all of Southern Europe, as far as I know, Catalonia has few people reading books regularly. To remedy this situation, the regional governments of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, the regions' booksellers' associations, and the regional transport authority of Barcelona distribute free leaflets in metro stations (next to the ticket-vending machines) that contain the first pages of a novel or a poetry book. Such a leaflet gives you a taste of the book, and you might end up buying the book (-or checking it out from a public library-), and reading on. There is a double aim: to promote reading in general, and to have more people reading in Catalan. The book thus introduced changes every week. To interact with other readers, there's a website: www.quellegeixes.cat (what are you reading.cat)
I doubt the measure's efficiency with non-readers but find it a great way for readers to spend their time on the metro or bus (apart from reading the free newspapers, distributed widely but a little thin on substance) and to get to know a wide range of novels and poetry.

Barceloneta

Though I wrote about the bad state of Barcelona's beaches a few weeks ago, I did not mean to say that I do not like the old quarter of Barceloneta and its adjoining beach. Barceloneta is quite small and full of narrow streets with rows of low four or five story buildings that are being renovated or have been renovated already. There live a lot of older people and immigrants; on a recent stroll I saw a "halal" butcher and a Chinese-run fruit and veggie store.
It is also very interesting to go to the beach, though just not for the quality of the sand or its installations. The interesting thing about the beach is watching people. Tourists from all over the world, of course. Illegal immigrants, mainly from Africa, sleeping with their few belongings around them on the beach. The typical locals are old-timers that sit around with few clothes on all year round playing domino. Others, equally exposed to the elements, walk up and down the beach. There are people in suits, women with stiletto heels, but also punks. Then there is a group of middle-aged men who look like unemployed truck-drivers who exercise their muscles on some basic fitness equipment; alas, the most protruding part of their bodies will always be the belly. Sometimes, young, athletic female joggers interrupt their running for a few moments and join the unemployed truck-drivers for a little muscle flexing; immediately they get all the attention, and the men get a lot more serious about their exercises...

James Bond "Casino Royale" - the worst ever

Until last night I had a slight weakness for James Bond movies, especially the not politically correct ones from the 1970s, and saw more or less all that they put on television. Then I watched "Casino Royale" which I had taped from Spanish public television TVE. It is the most disgustingly violent I have ever seen. And for a few minutes, James Bond is driving around in a Ford Mondeo, a Ford. Then he is asked for the brand of his watch: "Rolex?" - "No, Omega." Ridiculous. Maybe it contains some lessons for poker players. Towards the end, Bond's fighting around with a small army of well-armed opponents brings down a Venetian palazzo. The denouement takes for ever; and I do not know how the movie ends - though I imagine that James survives - because TVE started the movie later then scheduled and put in so many commercials that it did not fit on a three-hour cassette - ah, yes, I am still using an old-fashioned VCR. No more new Bond movies with Daniel Craig for me!

Public bicycles

Some cities have begun putting bicycles at the disposal of their citizens. With previous registration and for a fee of 30,- EUR per year (in the case of Barcelona,"bicing"; "Sevici" in Sevilla), you can hire a bicycle at bicycle parking areas (docking stations) around the city with a user card, use it for 30 minutes at a time, and then leave it at the same or another parking area. The time limit makes it a convenient means of transport for point-to-point rides and prevents the system from putting commercial bicycle rentals out of business. With bicycles available all over the city you do not need to buy, store, and maintain your own bicycle. Problems in the case of Barcelona are that the system shuts down at night at the same time as the subway, and that often downtown in the morning you do not find a parking space, and in the afternoon you do not find a bicycle as everybody wants to go in the same direction at the same time. Another general problem of traffic in Barcelona is that there is too little space and very few, often inconveniently placed bicycle lanes. Apart from the user fees, the systems are paid for with licenses for the commercial exploitation of bus-stop (and other) billboards (by the likes of JCDecaux) and publicity on the bicycles (as you can see in the picture).
Thanks to an old article in The Economist (September 22, 2007) I learned that the great competitors for urban bike-operations were JCDecaux and Clear Channel Outdoor, and that at that time there were already rental schemes in place "in more than a dozen cities including Vienna, Lyon, Brussels, Seville ... Cordoba... Barcelona, Oslo, Stockholm and Rennes." Bologna also has them.

Seville in the rain

Here is my personal impression of Sevilla, capital of Andalucia, Spain, tainted by unusually bad weather and influenced by the company of a two-year-old, at times in a carriage. In general I would say that Seville is overrated. The historic center is comparatively quiet, full of nice buildings and (uncomfortably) narrow streets. Many of the broader ones are lined with orange trees that were full of over-ripe fruit.
Really worth seeing are the "Real Alcazar", an old palace with spectacular Moorish architecture and sprawling gardens full of magnolias, palm and orange trees [www.patronato-alcazarsevilla.es], and the cathedral, the third biggest in the world, with "La Giralda", a former minaret by its side.
We really liked our hotel, "Petit Palace Canalejas", a centrally located two-star hotel belonging to the "High Tech" chain: all the rooms have broadband internet access, a laptop computer, a static bicycle, and there is a buffet breakfast, not too common in Spanish hotels of this category [www.hthoteles.com].
As to museums, my fellow travellers did not let me see any. From reading a tourist guide one gets the impression that Sevilla is a great place for sitting around in cafés or bars, drinking, and watching people. With 15°C and grey skies or rain, that was not really an option for great spans of time. And two-year olds do not like it, either.
Families with small children might better abstain as we found only four playgrounds in as many days - and not in strategic locations. Another problem with children is "street hygiene" as the young ones like to pick up things from the ground and touch walls - and the streets of Sevilla are very smelly...
As we went during off-season, the number of tourists was still bearable. I would not like to see the crowds during Easter week and for the "Feria de Abril" - and would not like to pay hotel rates, restaurants, etc. during these times.
Ryanair flies to Sevilla from various European locations so you might want to have a go on your own - if you can bear the bad conscience for the "carbon footprint" you leave behind. There are high-speed trains from Madrid and Barcelona, too.

Politicians and facial hair

Politics in Spain is hardly an edifying spectacle; and the longer you watch it, the more you understand how they came about to fight a bloody civil war (1936-1939). What is interesting though, is that a lot of politicians sport bears of all kinds: mustachoes, goatees, and full beards, and it is no prerogative of some left-wing, generation 1968-types. The leader of the conservative Popular party, Mariano Rajoy, has one, too. The second vice-prime minister and finance and economics minister, Pedro Solbes, wears one, some times in the form of a three-days-shade, sometimes fuller grown. The new justice minister whose name sounds somewhat like "Canaan" wears the thickest one I have seen in politicians yet. And there is Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, of course. In the US, I cannot remember any cabinet secretary with a beard, though Ben Bernanke sports one. In Germany, the sometime SPD boss and prime minister of Rhenania-Palatinate, Kurt Beck, wears one, but I would not call him the typical politician - think he is a craftsman, not a lawyer, and married to a hairdresser...

Universal health coverage

Recently I saw two documentaries on the U.S. health care system and what it means for many Americans to be without coverage. Even if they feel really sick they cannot go and see a doctor because they cannot pay the fees. And some who go to "welfare" physicians and are diagnosed with cancer, then cannot afford the medication to treat their disease and will die prematurely.
For all the weaknesses of the health care systems of Germany and Spain, the ones I know by personal experience, I still prefer an imperfect public system with some waiting lists but everybody insured to an excellent one for the priviliged majority that excludes about 16% of the population (like the one in the USA).
Both documentaries stressed the enormous power of the health care lobbies in D.C. that prevent improvements such as cuts in drug prices for U.S. patients who are likely to pay six times as much for their medication as Canadians or Europeans do for the same products.
It will be interesting to see if and how the new President will find a solution to this while he has to struggle with the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The beaches in Barcelona

Although I think that blogs should give you positive news and thoughts, today I would like to warn you about the beaches in Barcelona: as you can see from the pictures, they are in repair or awaiting it after a few ferocious winter storms. During the off-season months (i.e. basically always except for July and August) you don't find lifeguards or public toilets, the sand is full of cigarette stubs, and the surroundings do not smell too well...
There are a lot of reasons for coming to Barcelona: spectacular architecture, good food, great shopping, a vibrant music festival scene, etc. But if you are mainly interested in a nice beach, go somewhere else, e.g. Palma de Mallorca, Valencia or Malaga.

My first literary comment

I am reading Maria Barbal's novel "Emma" these days, written in Catalan. It deals with a woman who has 'sunk' from a normal, middle-class life into homelessness. But she has kept a functioning mind for most of the time. On a notepad that she found abandoned together with a pen she writes her story from a first person perspective. It is really fascinating; and her entries into the paper notebook could also be blog entries - if only she had a notebook and wireless 3G access wherever she went...

My first entry

So this is where I will pour out my soul to who-knows-who in the endless spheres of the world wide web.

I hope to write about me and the place where I live and to comment on contemporary events, such as past Saturday's heavy storm and subsequent power failure that left our village in the dark for nearly 12 hours but made for a fantastic evening sky.

It is past midnight so I really should be going to bed, otherwise my little daughter's enthusiastic cry for her father and her milk in the early morning will get me to a bad start.