Twenty years ago a friend and former house mate of mine named Glenn Veale sent me and my current housemate a cassette letter invitation to visit him in his home town of Johannesburg, South Africa. My friend and current housemate at the time was a fellow named John Rosenberg a very talented professional piano player. It was our mutual friend from Jo-berg who had introduced John and I and that was how he became my house mate after his marriage broke up. I had a comfortable amount of treasure in my piggy bank and I was eager to blow some of it on a travel adventure. For several evenings, lubricated by several glasses of wine we started exploring the possibilities of going to visit our friend Glenn who had described in enticing detail his four bedroom house on two acres of landscaped lusciousness including swimming pool and tennis court.
Here's travel partner, Johnny Surf, sitting in at the piano at a trattoria where enjoyed complimentary dinner and drinks. John played and I sang selections from my portfolio of Sinatra classics. Luckily I knew all the words to "Three Coins in the Fountain" as were within walking distance of the famous "Fontana de Trevi" of which Frankie sings...
Here's our buddy Glenn on the right, who put the bug in our ear that started this whole travel adventure going. That's me, Mickey da Mayor on the left in a silly rainbow colored painter's hat.
Here's our buddy Glenn on the right, who put the bug in our ear that started this whole travel adventure going. That's me, Mickey da Mayor on the left in a silly rainbow colored painter's hat.
Glenn was residing there with his girlfriend and assured us that there was plenty of space. He was eager to show us his home town and country. At the time there was a travel agent living in the cottage that my brother and I had recently built on our little homestead. She was a “newby” in the business but very smart and very motivated. “Sure, guys, I can book you any flights you want. I can you do a round-the-world trip with open return date and departure sight!” It turns out that, because at that time, South Africa was still under apartheid government, most airlines were not flying there. That somehow scotched the round-the-world idea.
Instead, we decided that a separate back and forth to South Africa from Heathrow was the way to go. We booked an overnight flight from SF to London, leaving on 2/18/93. We boned up on our coming trip by buying three Rick Steeves’ travel books: “Europe Through the Back Door”, “Europe 101” and “Mona Winks”. The first book tells you how to travel “correctly” by avoiding air conditioned buses and large guided tours given by bored guides who feed you a bunch of malarkey. The second book is a primer in modern European history. The third book provides tours of all the great history and art museums. It includes detailed floor plans of all the must-see museums so you could easily make your way to the important pictures and statues to admire and why they are admirable. (Steeves majored in European art history in college). In his first book he recommends the cool places to see in each country in Europe. Basically, what to see, why and how to see it, where to go, where to stay, where and what to eat and drink and how to mingle with the local ‘hoi polloi’.
The night before our transatlantic flight proved to be a harbinger of things to come. John had, of course, waited till the last minute to pack. Somehow, we managed to make our flight and spent the duration of our ‘red-eye‘ flight drinking mimosas and flirting with two Spanish ladies who were conveniently seated next to us.
We arrived without incident at Heathrow airport in the afternoon with an hour or so to kill before our next flight to Madrid. Since it was mid-February, we decided to do the low countries (Spain, Southern France, Italy, Greece, Israel and Egypt) first, saving ‘upper‘ Europe for the later, hopefully warmer, months. John, having lugged his bags off the carousel to our our Spanish departure gate, suddenly realized what a colossal mistake he’d made in packing so much stuff.
When traveling Europe through the back door, Steeves recommends traveling light. He even shows you what and how to pack and what to pack it in. If you pack exactly what he recommends it will all fit snugly in a Rick Steeves designed ruck sack. It’s brilliant, simple and rugged. Made of durable canvas and double stitched, it has handles and straps that allow it to be carried vertically or horizontally by hand, or on the back like a backpack, leaving the hands free. It fits snugly in overhead compartments in airplanes, buses and trains. It has multiple pouches for such things as passports, travel schedules, your travel diary and, of course, his books. Regarding his books, he recommends ripping out the sections pertaining to the places you’ve already been to to conserve space (and no doubt hopes you’ll leave those sections in a place where other intrepid travelers might find them and perhaps buy the entire books).
John and I, in our enthusiasm to travel in true back door fashion, had purchased his ruck sacks for our trip; mine in grey and his in burgundy. I followed Steeves’ packing advice virtually to the letter and all I was carrying for the next three months was this single, marvelous, conveyance. John, on the other hand, in addition to his overstuffed ruck sack, had several other bags which he now found to be a major nuisance and a likely impediment to our coming travel adventures. “Mike, I think I made some packing mistakes. I need to repack and send my overflow back home. I’m going to the airport post office to take care of this problem. Wait right here and I’ll be back in time for the flight to Madrid.”
I’ll bet you can guess where this is going. As I sat there waiting and watching the time till our departure loom ever closer, I realized that John not only had both our Eurail-passes and most of our traveler’s checks, he also had the tickets for our soon-to-be-boarding flight to Madrid. I don’t remember time ever passing that quickly before. At the last possible minute John comes running up to the gate with just his ruck sack. Yea John! Maybe this mad-cap adventure will work out after all. How silly of me.
We arrived in Madrid without further adventure and proceeded to our little Rick-Steeves-recommended pensione and unpacked. The ground floor of this establishment was a tappas bar which we (perhaps I should say whee!) immediately retired to. By this time it was probably around ten or eleven o’clock in the evening but I was so excited to finally be in Europe that the time of night seemed irrelevant.
I had originally planned my great European adventure for the summer after my graduation from University. My parents had offered to send me the cash equivalent of their trip from Hawaii (my home) for the graduation ceremony if I’d rather have that than their presence. I realized that that money could finance a frugal backpack based trip to the old world, the land of my WASP ancestors. There was also the fact that one of the many wonderful things about going to University in California was that I’d be 2200 miles from home and up and away on my life as my own man. There was also the minor issue of a class I had to repeat that Summer before I would truly graduate and be able to receive my diploma. Instead, if I attended graduation, I would be handed an empty diploma case which would be awkward to explain to the parents. I decided to take the cash.
With that settled I was free to not attend the graduation festivities. Though I’d be missing out on one of those seminal events in one’s life, my alternative plan seemed a good enough consolation. My recently acquired girlfriend was coming over to do her laundry and we would have the house to ourselves. I lived with four other seniors off campus, all of whom would be going to the graduation ceremonies, all dressed up in their caps and gowns and accompanied by their proud parents. The plan was to wait till everybody left the house, put the laundry in the washing machine and then give ourselves up to lascivious cavort. To add to our cavorting pleasure, said girlfriend found two large capsules of organic mescaline in her husband’s shirt pocket. (Did I mention that she was married? More on that later...). In the spirit of cavort, we immediately swallowed the drugs, lit some candles, put on Van Morrisen, took our clothes off and waited for the mescaline to kick in.
Soon, a delightful psychedelic haze overtook us and the cavorting switched into high gear. We spent the rest of the afternoon languidly pursuing the arts of lovemaking. That is until we heard the graduation party returning to the house, including the proud parents. We laid low in my bedroom trying to be as quiet as two psychedelicized mice pissing in cotton. (One of my latin teachers at boarding school, when he wanted to be alone to nurse his hangover would sometimes dismiss us early with the admonishment to be as quiet as mice pissing in cotton.) After what seemed like an eternity, the proud parents left and we could make our getaway. We put on our clothes, removed her laundry from the drier and I drove her back to her house. She assured me that her husband would be working during the time of our idyl and besides, they had an open marriage.
We arrived at her house only to find that the husband was home and the marriage was, apparently, only open at one end---hers. In addition, when the cuckolded husband discovered that his drugs were not only missing but had been consumed by her and her illicit lover, he went, understandably ‘postal’, which was ironic since he worked for the post office...
With some of my graduation money I purchased a round trip ticket to jolly old England and set off to say goodbye to my brother who was ‘doing time‘ in the Navy. He lived several hours away in Stockton and I was desperately hoping that my very delicate and problematic English sports car would make the voyage there and back. Alas, it was not to be. The engine seized up in the 100 plus degree heat in Stockton and I had to use my travel money to fix my car. That was the end of my highly anticipated great adventure in Europe. I promised myself that I would get there someday. Twenty three years later that someday had finally arrived.
BRING ON THE FLAMENCO
John and I seated ourselves at the tappas bar and waited for the lovely blond senorita to serve us. “Queremos un botella de vino rojas, por favor”. I said in my best phrase book Spanish. The bar wench smiled at us and said: “You don’t have to try and speak Spanish with me, I’m from Connecticut...”. That would make further communication a lot easier. Having studied and loved and played Flamenco guitar music in high school, my desperate desire for the evening’s entertainment was to find a real Flamenco show to attend that was in the best Europe-through-the-back-door tradition.
Our lovely American bar keep knew of just such a place and she gave us directions to give to a cab driver. The show would start around 1AM. I AM? We soon learned that nothing of any entertainment value started before 1 AM. Dinner was usually somewhere between 11 PM and midnight. So John and I whiled away the ensuing hours eating wonderful tappas and drinking botellas de vino rojas, tinto and blancas. At the appointed hour we hailed a cab and gave our cabby the directions. He turned and looked at us as if to say: surely mi amigos, you have made some mistake. The directions we had given him would put us in the middle of a seedy semi-industrial section of Madrid, hardly suitable for tourists. Trusting our American bar maid, we insisted that the Flamenco show was to be held there at 115 Los Carricol (I don’t really remember the actual address but I think that was the street name...). We knocked on a large unmarked grey door. The door opened and were told that yes, there was a Flamenco show there that night and it would start in about an hour. Please repair to the tappas bar around the corner and come back in about 45 minutes. It turns out that this Flamenco show was equivalent to one our ‘raves‘ back in the states, where a secret and usually somewhat seedy location is utilized to produce a sort of spontaneous underground music event that only certain chosen people would be invited to. Rick Steeves would be proud of us.
Accordingly, we repaired to the bar around the corner and ordered up some more vino. This place was what I could only assume was a typical working class bar for this portion of Madrid. Everyone there, mostly middle and older aged men, was standing while they drank their wine and smoked their cigarettes. Hanging above the length of the bar were cured whole sides of ham, or ‘jamon’. These jamons were sliced thin and served like prosciutto usually on a thick crusty sour-dough type bread. Looking down, I noticed, with some squeamishness, that the floor was being used as a sort of spittoon. Wine, spittle and cigarette butts littered the floor. Looking up felt like being in a charnel house; looking down felt like standing in a spittoon. Welcome to Madrid...I must say, I kind of liked it.
Eventually the time came to go back to our Spanish Flamenco rave cave. We stepped through the large industrial door, paid our entry fee and sat down at a little worn wooden table halfway to the stage. While waiting for our botella of vino to arrive, I eagerly glanced around to drink in all the lovely Spanish faces. The people (by that I mean women) that I looked at all had the most wonderful features. Mostly pale but darkly complected, they had wonderful noses and piercing eyes. One beauty who I was admiring had vivid blue eyes, flawless olive skin and a nose whose profile was the quarter arc of a circle. It was love at first sight. It occurred to me that these were the original people from whom all things latin and hispanic flowed. With the exception of Brazil, every country south of the American border owed their existence to this one country. These were the pure bloods, the thoroughbreds of all the hispanic peoples. By comparison typical Americans now seemed to me to be nothing more than mutts. I wasn’t sure if it was inbreeding or crossbreeding that was to blame. All I know was that I was thrilled with the noble faces I saw around me, bathed in candle light, beaming with anticipation of the coming show.
Soon the guitarists and the dancers took the stage and the music and dancing commenced. I was instantly transported back to my boarding school dorm room. Les Hixon, teacher and former Flamenco guitar student of the great Montoya, was teaching my roommate and me the mysteries of this wonderful Gypsy music. For several years we immersed ourselves in Flamenco guitar music and tried our best to master the playing of it on our Spanish guitars. We had to learn the rasqueado, the piccato, the vibrato and the three-fingered tremolo in order to play decent Flamenco. We soon leapt past the well known and well worn Malaguena to the Soleares and other Flamenco folk styles.
Flamenco is similar to jazz in that a particular tune is never played exactly the same way twice. In fact the tunes are nothing more than platforms from which the guitarist launches himself. Using a basic chord structure unique to each song, the guitarist stylizes his playing to suit his, and his dancers’, mood. I was reminded of some of the Flamenco greats we had learned about and listened to almost 30 years ago. Sabicas, Angel Romero, Paco di Lucia and Manitas de Plata (hands of silver).
Not his real name, Manitas was a local legend in his home village near Seville in Southern Spain, the heart of Flamenco music. As an illiterate Gypsy he was fiercely ignorant of the outside world since all that mattered was his music and the culture of his people. The great Picasso had come to hear him play once and was so inspired by his soulful and passionate playing that he painted a picture on the back of Manitas’ guitar. Word of his towering talent spread as far as New York where some aspiring music producer wanted to record him. He flew to Seville and journeyed to the little village where Manitas resided.
Upon hearing of the offer, Manitas said sure, he’d be happy to play in this man’s recording studio as long as he didn’t have to get on an airplane or a boat. The music producer had his recording gear sent from New York and asked if Manitas knew of anyplace locally that would be suitable to record. Manitas’ reccommended setting up in a small local stone church nearby which just happened to have stunning acoustics. Manitas was often accompanied by an old half blind compadre who sang these old Gypsy folk laments. The Gypsies (who now preferred to be called Roma) have much to lament about having been persecuted for most of their history. There are many Flamenco patrons who maintain that only a Gypsy can truly bring out the passion and pathos of this music. The recording that was made that day is well known among Flamenco guitar enthusiasts as a masterpiece.
As the fierce music with its own wonderfully singular tempos washed over me, I gave myself up to my emotions. All that wonderful music came back to me from my boarding school dorm room and the tears flowed without restraint or embarrassment. I’m sure Rick Steeves and Manitas de Plata would have been proud. When the show was over we retired to our cozy little room in the pensione with just enough room for two beds and night stands. “Goodnight John, or rather “buenos noches”, what a wonderful evening. I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much with my crying. I can’t wait to see what day two has in store!” With that I drifted off to sleep, next to my friend and travel companion for the next three months.
I know that I had drifted off to sleep because at some time later that night I had a dream. I dreamt that I was in a huge and very reverberant cathedral. Somewhere near by, someone was operating a chain saw and the noise was deafening. I awoke to find that the chain saw was John’s snoring. With each noisy breath the walls of our room seemed to contract and expand. John had forewarned me that he was training himself to sleep on his back in order to be more “open to the universe”, and he may snore a little in that position. If it were to happen, I was to just wake him up, tell him he was snoring and to please roll over on his side. I did so to muddled results. Thus ended the first day of our great American travel adventure.
ENTER THE BAD CONTESSA
The next day we wandered around Madrid soaking up the sights and sounds. We visited the Prado museum and Mr. Steeves faithfully lead us around via his art museum book. That evening we took a bus to the little walled town of Toledo. It was February 22 the day before ash wednesday. This had no significance to us until we began talking to a lovely young senorita who was also going to Toledo. It turns out that that night was “carnival”, their equivalent to our Mardi Gras. Intrigued, we asked her to tell us what would transpire that evening. “Oh everyone gets dressed up in silly costumes and pulls pranks on other people. There’s lots of drinking, eating, dancing and music. Various marching bands follow each other around town playing.”
As we approached Toledo, from an overpass we looked down on rows of musicians walking along, dressed in costumes and blasting away on their instruments. Our senorita explained that each marching band is a social group just like the “krewes” of Mardi Gras. They decide on a theme, create similar costumes based on that theme and create dance steps that they perform between songs. They’re all ages of both sexes. People from all over come to watch as each group tries to outdo the others. They were all lined up like a big conga line marching, playing and dancing as they headed for the walled city. We said goodbye to our lovely companion; checked in to our pensione in the neighborhood just below the town proper; dropped our bags and headed for the fabled walled city. This place is a serious fortress town. It’s partially circled by the Rio Tago. You could imagine El Cid riding out of this fortress through the huge wooden doors guarding the city, on his way to do battle with the Moors.
As we pass through the gate into the city they are masses of people pressed together laughing, drinking, hollering to each other and singing. We can hear drums in the distance. It’s like some big joyful bacchanalian celebration. We flow with the moving throng of people down a narrow alley. I think of British soccer matches where all the fans are pressed up against each other. I hope no one panics and starts a stampede... The alley opens up into a little square and people have a chance to spread out a little. There are all kinds of food and wine booths in the square. Hmmm, shall I go with the barbecued blood sausage or the pickled pimento pepper? What would our travel guru Rick Steeves advise? The “Back Door” philosophy says buy one of both.
A young woman starts weaving her way toward us. “Hi, you’re Americans aren’t you? Good. I want to practice my English with you. Listen I’m out of money. Could you perhaps buy me one of those pepper rojas? If you do I’ll be your guide and show you around Toledo. You picked a great night to visit.” Well, if this isn’t a perfect “Back Door” moment I don’t know what is. We proffer up a few pesetas for a pepper. Her English is surprisingly good. It turns out that, in her youth, she spent a summer in Fresno, of all places. We tell her that we hail from a little village just north of San Francisco.
“Oh San Francisco! I only got to go there once but it was so wonderful. It reminded me of a lovely European city. Certainly more than Fresno did.” Our companion was probably in her mid thirties. Her husky voice suggested many late nights of smoke and drink; perhaps other vices as well. As we wander together through the throngs of merry makers I notice that she, unlike everyone else, is not in costume. I ask why. “Well, it’s kind of a long story. My grandfather was Franco’s second in command. When Franco vanquished the loyalists my grandfather was rewarded with the keys to the city of Toledo. So he was kind of the lord of Toledo. That made all of us a kind of royalty around here. We own many properties in the area and we have a huge estate across the river. Some of the family still live there but I live in an apartment here in town. We don’t dress up so the common people can come up to us and make fun or insult us. By tradition we must smile and take their insults with a good humor. Because they are in costume we’re not supposed to know who they are. But I usually know.
The large castle in the back left of the picture is where we saw the pairs of rings hanging high up on the back wall. Later on in this narrative "the bad contessa" tells us what their original purpose was for.
My brothers, back in the early seventies, opened the first, and still most successful, discotheque in town. When Franco was in power there were people lined up around the block to get into our disco. After his death, our influence here waned a bit and now the lines waiting to get in only stretch halfway around the block. Everyone here knows us and gives us respect. But because of our stupid macho culture here, my brothers get to run the nightclub. It’s nice because it’s a huge money machine and it has made all of us wealthy, but I don’t get to participate in the business because I’m a woman.”
We asked her what her name was. She said just call me Linda del valle. Linda of the valley. Her proper name was too long to remember. I asked her how far back her family went in this area. Her answer: “All the way back”. But around town people just call her “Valley”.
She fills up her time with travel and she is also a columnist for the local paper where she covers the social scene, of which she is a part. She admits that she sometimes takes out her frustrations about being excluded from the family businesses by being a bit snarky and lampooning the whole social scene. For this reason some people resent her and others are wary of her and her power to pillory them.
I asked her about her travels. It turns out that her latest journey was quite an interesting one. She and her boyfriend had decided to embrace the philosophy of “la dolce far niente” (the sweetness of doing nothing). They took a trip in the boyfriend’s BMW to the southern tip of Spain and took a car ferry to Morrocco. The plan was to drive to Marrakesh and score some primo hashish, the drug of choice in Toledo. For some reason the boyfriend got cold feet and after a big row with Valley he got back in the car and took the ferry back to Spain, leaving the contessa stranded, on her own, in Marrakesh. Undaunted our “bad contessa” decides to go through with the plan. She manages to meet up with her hash connection and makes her buy. Unfortunately the hash she bought came in hundreds of little foil packets the size of large gum balls.
Realizing that she will not be able to smuggle the hash back to Spain on the ferry in this condition, she hatches a plan. She gets a seedy little room near the ferry terminal that night and laboriously cuts open all the hash balls with a razor. In the process she manages to cut her fingers several times. Undaunted, she takes all the bloodied hash balls and mashes them into packets about the size of a dollar bill, each one about an inch thick. She wraps each one in tin foil and lays them out inside the legs of one of her panty hose. She ties the panty hose around her waist, under her blouse and somehow, miraculously gets home, safe and sound with her stash. Linda del Valle, Morroccan hash smuggler: Bad Contessa!
After she tells us this story, “Valley” pulls out of the pocket of her jeans a plug of cocoa brown hashish the size of a horse suppository. I think we’re having a “back door” adventure. She suggests that we go to her apartment and get high. We wind our way down the narrow, ancient alleyways and pass through the door of an old three story building. Although the outside looks somewhat decrepit, inside her penthouse, which comprises the entire floor, everything is beautiful modern Spanish decor. We recline on a luxurious pile of Moroccan pillows while “Valley” rolls up a mighty spliff of tobacco and crumbled hash. We drink some wine, talk of California life versus her life in Toledo, and get high.
I ask her about a strange sight we saw earlier of hundreds of pairs of iron rings hanging high on the back wall of the town’s big castle. “Oh that...yeah back in the days of the Inquisition that’s where they hung people they thought were heretics.” I don’t remember reading about that in the travel guide. Nothing like a little local knowledge. Linda wants to get back out there where the action is and continue her “noblesse oblige” to the townspeople. As we wander around this jolly carnival madness, everywhere we go people call out to our senorita. Playful insults are shouted out back and forth. As the town social columnist, she knows who everybody is. “They can’t fool me; I know them too well; besides they wear the same costumes pretty much every year. But because it’s carnival, it is our tradition here in Toledo, going back hundreds of years not to take offense at anything that is said on this night.
A young boy of about twelve comes running up to us and squares off in front of Linda. He is wearing an oversize army jacket. He looks at Linda and starts giggling. Linda turns to us, smiles and says with a bit of mischief in her voice, “I know what’s coming next; watch”. With that, the boy opens up his jacket and a giant cloth phallus drops down from his chest to his crotch where a ribbon holds it in an “erect” position. John and I stare at this outrageous display while Linda laughs and gives him an affectionate pinch on the cheek. Our young miscreant howls with joy at his little act of defiance. He packs his “unit” back into his jacket and goes racing away to find his next “flasher” victim. “Hey Rick Steeves, are we having back door fun yet?"
By this time as we straggle back to Linda’s apartment it’s early morning. In a couple of hours we will be taking our first Eurail trip to Barcelona. Linda tells us that she has a special going away treat for us to launch our next travel adventure. She unlocks a beautiful lacquered box and pulls out another gum ball of a different sort. The box also contains a piece of foil shaped like a straw and another piece of foil about six inches square with a crease in the middle. John looks up at Linda and says, “So, you like to chase the dragon, eh?”
Now I had heard the expression before in a Steeley Dan song but I didn’t know what it meant. John as a professional musician knew all about it. The ball was “brown tar heroin”, less refined than the usual white powder form; this heroin was roughly the consistency of a tootsie roll. Linda smeared a generous chunk of this stuff down the center of the crease in the foil. As Linda was preparing our next adventure, John explained what was going to happen.
“You put the straw to your mouth while the other person holds a lighter under the foil. The flame from the lighter heats up the smear of the heroin tar and it starts to slowly run down the crease in the foil and smoke comes up. You inhale the trail of smoking heroin as it runs down the crease. That is called chasing the dragon!” I questioned John about the wisdom of indulging in this unseemly bit of folly, especially before having to go to the train station and figure out our first Eurail trip. John assured me that as the experienced traveler that he was, and one who had obviously chased the dragon before, we would be fine. He promised to get us on the train to Barcelona at the appointed time. With that, I threw caution to the wind and we three, “partners in crime”, proceeded to chase the dragon.
We all collapsed back on the bed of pillows in a state of hazy revery. Sometime later we managed to straighten up enough to get on our way. Ms. Valley accompanied us back to our pensione where we hurriedly packed and the three of us walked over to the train station. “I really had fun with you guys tonight. It was great getting to hang out with a couple of California “caballeros”. It sounds like you have a great trip planned. Here’s my address, drop me a postcard some time. Vaya con Dios!” And with that we said our goodbyes to our Bad Contessa, Linda of the Valley.
As we took our seats on the train after a crazy sleepless night “doing Carnival” in Toledo I thought to myself, “Wow, we have just had two wonderfully adventurous days and nights on our trip. Two down...eighty-eight to go! Little did I know what lay in store for us that night in Barcelona! More on that later.
Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres
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