Four Weeks, Four Countries - Ilka Cohen (the little red hen read aloud TXT) 📗

Gibraltar in search of the famous Barbary apes. Of which we found plenty. They are by no means shy but like to hang around the tourist stops, such as St. Michael’s Cave in hope of food. And if you obey the signs and refuse to feed them, they sometimes just take what they want. We observed a female with a cute newborn dangling from her breast ripping an ice cream bar right off a little boy’s hand. Others will climb on people’s shoulders for photos – but definitely expect a treat in return. The apes’ antics were so comical to watch, they were an absolute highlight for the entire family. But the reserve had more to offer. An atmospheric stalactite cave, used for concerts today, as hospital during the war, picnic and dueling ground in Victorian times and, with bone and skull findings as proof, apparently already popular in Neanderthal times. We also visited the old Moorish fortress towering over the town, with a huge British flag on top and – of course – apes monkeying around.
Then we wandered through the town of Gibraltar for a while, which is truly an outpost of the old British empire. Red English phone booths and a mix of English and more Mediterranean architecture. Fish and chips shops everywhere, Marks & Spencer, English pubs. Its 40000 inhabitants enjoy a large degree of autonomy today, though they are officially part of the UK. They speak English, Spanish and a local version of Spanglish hard to follow for outsiders. Spain still would like to have the rock back, Great Britain to keep it, and the Gibraltans, apparently, to be left alone. There is a trilateral commission in place to discuss the issue but apparently without great hurry or pressure.
Leaving Gibraltar, we turned to the coastal road, enjoying more glances of Africa, a tempting view of Tarife – no time, no time – and then stopped again at Baelo Claudia, Roman settlement from the 2nd century BC and the second-best Spain has to offer after Italica. Not quite as large or well-preserved, but it makes up for that with its wonderful location right at the ocean and along long white sand beaches. Besides there was still plenty left of it to see. Baelo Claudia had been a place to catch and process tuna since very ancient, that is Phoenician, times. Aside from fish, its main product was garum, a spicy fish sauce tremendously popular all over the Roman Empire. Marcus, who had lost patience with ruins quickly in previous years, was intrigued by this one, so we took our time exploring. Which left less time for our final destination of the day, Cadiz, but still enough to make it to the Casa Obispo before it closed at 8 p.m. This archeological museum is basically the excavation of the foundations of one single building. An archbishop’s palace in more modern times, a building has existed at the spot since pre-Phoenician times, and careful excavation has revealed layer upon layer. 3000 years of settlement history in one big basement, with glass walks to cross from Phoenician retaining wall to Roman cistern to medieval storage room. No spectacular statues really but Marcus, who had pressed for this stop, was impressed anyway. Just to know that this room or that wall had been around for thousands of years, to contemplate all the changes the city had lived through. Cadiz is assumed to be Europe’s oldest still occupied city.
We had enough daylight left to get a good impression of today’s Cadiz or at least its center. Since it is cramped on a narrow peninsula, people have built on top of old structures forever, the current center is mostly 18th to 19th century. The overall impression is Baroque, underlined by the huge Baroque cathedral, and somehow more Malta or Southern Italy than Seville or Cordoba. More yellow hues and sandstone than white, not quite as clean, and with more people in the streets, though this might have been due to the evening hour. I sampled fresh fried seafood from a paper bag, delicious, and we all had dinner at a small street café served by the owner who did not speak a word of English and served some pretty good tapas and cheap local wine.
The sun was drowning in the sea when we left, for the most spectacular Spanish sunset of the week. Stopping only one more time to allow Maureen to take photos of a sunflower field in the sunset light, we were back at our hotel past midnight. First we had dropped off Maureen and said good-bye since she was to leave by bus to Seville and plane from there the next morning.

And now there was just the departure day left. Though the plane only left in the afternoon, leaving us with enough time to pack quite leisurely in the morning and then spent a few last hours at Faro’s city beach, Praio de Faro. This turned into the warmest day yet, in the mid 80s, perfect for playing in the surf and some actual sunbathing. We also had a look at Faro, unpretentious and friendly. Again, there were storks everywhere, even the lamp posts. We ate lunch in a café run by an elderly woman with a Vietnamese parrot. She did not speak English, but fluently French. I wonder whether she had been in Vietnam in her youth, in the old colonial days.
Finally, it was time to turn in the car and fly back to Bremen. Since we arrived late in the evening, we spent the night at the Eureka Bed and Breakfast – surrounded by young participants of the Special Olympics. More reliable trains sped us back to our Leipzig home the next morning, while Micah traveled on to a chess tournament in Berlin. The separation from the Southern sun and beaches was eased by the fact that it was actually hotter in Germany. And by the port wine and Portuguese “chocolate salami” and the many photos we brought back as mementos.


The best of the rest

Another 13 days remained before our return to America. Aaron managed to see another country – he spent a week in Belgrade, Serbia, researching old articles in the national archives. I was envious and a bit sad I could not go along. But in the end, this turned into such a full week for me that I am no longer sure who got the better deal. There was the street festival at Georg-Schwarz-Straße just a day after our return. I went with Andrea who has lived all her life in the neighborhood and seemed to know half its population. The most interesting part was a 24-hour art exhibit that had been set up in an uninhabited 4-story apartment building. A wide variety of artwork combined under the loose thematic umbrella of “Copy and Reality”. Some really funny pieces like bread rolls that looked more or less vaguely like the Venus of Willenbach, a can of Campbell tomato soup opened and splashed over a canvas as answer to Andy Warhol, pretty moving light structures projected at a ceiling that were caused by wriggling maggots. A water fountain installation made of toilet bowls. A chicken on a fork next to a speared dove with the title “Eating comes before morality”. My favorite was a somewhat surrealist painting called “Moon Robber”, a girl who had caught the moon in her balloon. I even called the artist the next day and inquired about it. 300 Euros, and it would probably have been negotiable. But we really did not have the money left, so a photo of it had to do. There was also music on a stage and in some backyards, with more to come at night.
In the evening, I went with Conny to the nightclub “Telegraph” for some dancing, where we met Andrea again also. And with Andrea I finally returned to the street fest and a concert inside the apartment of some guy where we danced the night away till 4 a.m., to a certain degree of displeasure by our respective husbands. Aaron had to leave at 8 a.m., so at least I made myself get up and have breakfast with him, then collapsed back to bed.

The next morning Marcus and I were off to Berlin. Where we met Micah, who had come away from the bughouse chess tournament pleased and with a cup and certificate for being B-finals team winner, handed over the apartment keys and saw him off back to Leipzig while we stayed to help Maureen moving out, spend some more time with my mother, and, in my case, meet two more classmates. Especially Kerstin who had been unable to make it to Magdeburg since she is confined to a wheelchair, making traveling difficult. I had not seen her since we were 18, so there was a lot to talk about sitting in a ship restaurant at the Spree river.

After an intense cleaning effort in Maureen’s place, I said good-bye to her the next afternoon and took Marcus along to Potsdam to meet my friend Thomas. We went on a long hike through the beautiful parks of Sanssouci until Marcus felt he couldn’t walk another step. At which point we switched to walking through downtime Potsdam, sweetening the deal by throwing in a nice döner dinner. Then in Thomas’ camper bus along the lakes surrounding Potsdam in search of a campground. We ended up pitching our tent at a private camping club, Flottstelle Schwielowsee, invited by friendly club members. The lake right next to the tent looked inviting, and so we ventured out in Thomas’ huge Russian folding kayak, a three-seater. Plenty of bats flattered around us, fish jumped out of the water, herons flew to their roosting spots. The sun set in front of us while a huge almost full moon rose up in the back. Perfect.
More kayaking followed in the morning, to Werder and back, with fish-eating stop in Werder. Smoked eel, hadn’t had that in quite a few years. Then it was time to break camp and for Marcus and me to get to the train and back to Leipzig. Heavily loaded since we brought back Maureen’s computer for Conny who picked us up at the railway station and later helped me cheer the German team in the soccer world cup on TV.
There was one unspoken-for evening left, Thursday night. But luckily, Andrea called just in time to invite me to come along to see a documentary about the Doors, “When You Are Strange” in the courtyard of my favorite clothing store, Ms. Hippie. I had caught a summer virus from Maureen and was a bit feverish but certainly still in a more sober mindset than Jim Morrison ever was.
The next day I met another friend, Monika, for lunch, and in the end we agreed to go to “Klassik Airleben”, an open-air concert by the famous Gewandhausorchester and the Leipzig Opera the same evening. They performed a concert version of “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat), a popular operetta by Johann Strauß. Some real bats showed up, too, as well as a large happy