3. Spain: Santiago, La Coruña to Madrid

Santiago de Compostela, Oct. 6, 1982

Our room was dark so we got a late start and rather a bad one. I could not find my glasses anywhere. We had decided that I had left them in the bathroom and somebody had lifted them. The landlady then appeared, had the glasses, and had found them in the public bathroom.  Lesson learned cheaply.  As we left the building for breakfast, we got the first of many rains.  The sun came out after a while as we started to walk up toward the “old town.” We happened on a park that was on neither of our maps; it turned out to be the Alameda; almost a mile by a half-mile. Tree-lined lanes go up to ancient stone church and go down the other side in a series of gardens, shaded terraces and an open park with a large fountain. All around are the whitewashed three-four story houses and in the distance the forested hills. It was our favorite park ever, until the rain hit us. It rained hard off and on the rest of the day with intermittent sunshine.

We made our way from there through narrow winding streets with very clean and well-kept stone and whitewashed buildings (15-16th century?).  Our goal was the plaza where stands the cathedral where St. James (Santiago) is supposed to be buried. He is supposed to have traveled around northern Spain in the first century, after washing up on the shores of Galicia where his ship went down. He then went back to Judaea where he was killed. His disciples are said to have brought his remains back to Santiago to be buried. At some point in the wars with the Muslims, the Gallegos were fighting a battle with the Moors when a knight in black arrived and killed all the Moors off. The Gallegos recognized him to be St. James, thus the name of Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Moor-slayer). He went on to become the patron saint of the fight against the Moors and is now patron saint of Spain. The myth and place have international importance and it is supposed to be the third most important place of Christian pilgrimage after Jerusalem and Rome. This year happens to be a holy year because St. James day, June 25, falls on a Sunday. It will not happen again for 11 years, so everybody is making the trip. That was certainly our main reason for making the trip… The Pope is coming later this month.

Santiago de Compostela City Hall and hotel

We went to the pilgrim’s mass at noon, and among other things got to see the “world-famous” botafumeiros, an incense burner, perhaps 2 m tall by 0.5 m diameter that hangs from the and ceiling and is swung wildly across the cathedral by 8 men hanging onto a rope at the other end.  Quite a sight. The burner is all silver. The 12^th - century, enormous cathedral also has a beautiful, enclosed cloister that now houses a museum that holds a floor of 17th century tapestries and two floors of archeological things they’ve found around the cathedral. Most interesting to us were the tombs and items dating between first and 11th centuries that were dug up directly underneath the cathedral floor. The 12th century dudes built right on top of the age-old cemetery and church.

Other than the mentioned we just walked and walked and walked, looking at the old buildings, and speculating about the “natives.” Ah yes, another old Robison custom - we rode a bus out to the end of the line and back. Oh no, the gastronomic account. We found our way to an old market, bought more cheese, more bread, and more fruit.  It was still raining so we decided to eat our repast on a bench that had recently, but not too recently, been occupied by a fish merchant.  Grandmother is getting tired of bread and cheese. For supper we decided to splurge, went to a pub type of a place near the market and ordered “typical.” Of note was a dish that consisted of diced squid, in a greasy black sauce (their ink, we now know), that one eats with a toothpick. Grandmother got a piece of pepper in her first tentative tentacle taste (sorry). For a while it looked she might end up in the same place as St. James.

Santiago de Compostela - La Coruña - Madrid Oct. 7, 1982

(HELENA) This trip was really quite short. Grandmother had the brilliant idea, the night before, of our scouting the way to the railroad station, so this morning we got to the station 20 minutes early. One thing is certain, we HAVE to buy a travel alarm, because Grandmother is leaving us and even she had to keep looking at her watch with the flashlight during the night. But, as I said, we made it for our early train.

The main thing about the countryside we went through was that it was hilly (small hills) and very green, I guess mostly with vegetable gardens_.

Now, when we left S. de C. we knew we were short of pesetas, but we really had a bad moment when we discovered that we were in La Coruña just in time to catch what all tourist books warn against. Yep, we got there for the day of the city’s patron: Virgen del Rosario, we were informed of that by the driver of the bus that took us into the city, so we had enough pesetas to pay the fare and then he changed 6 dollars for us. Since we were just going to be there a day, Dan asked around until he found a restaurant that would keep our luggage and accept dollars for eating there.  It was rather expensive, but it was worth it to not have to cart around all of our bags.

Of one accord we Bolivian/Kansans headed first for the harbor. It was busy since it was a holiday, but it was strange that we could hardly smell fish in a big fishing port. After that we wandered even more aimlessly than we had in Salamanca and Santiago de Compostela. Dan and I clambered on the rocks around a fort that (according to Dan) must be from no later than the 1500’s. Then we saw a place dedicated to the memory of Sir John Moore who fought against Napoleon in the Battle of Elvina.

La Coruña Harbor

Since it was the main saint´s day, everybody was out in their finery, and we even got to see and hear some typical bagpipes as several school bands marched through the city.  The bagpipes are considered an indication of the Celtic influence in Galicia.

Gallego bagpipe band

The older part of town is built on a blob of land separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of land, so we went just a few blocks from the port to a neat beach. The beach is set below the road whose sidewalk allows you to walk out on a platform.  We must have stood there for 45 minutes just watching the waves come in. And there was a STRONG wind blowing.

I’m afraid that one of our strongest memories of La Coruña was leaving it. Luckily we allowed ourselves 2 hours to get to the train station, Dan had asked 2 bus drivers what bus we should take and both said either 1 or 14.  When we tried to get the 1, the driver informed us very impatiently that his bus didn’t go by the station.  An older man overheard us and told us to catch the 5. We eventually got it, but only after waiting at the wrong corner for ten minutes.  Even after getting to the station we had problems. When Dan asked what track the train would be on, the man felt he couldn’t understand Spanish and told him in English to go to the first track.  We ambled over there and were about to get on the waiting train when we discovered that things looked a little strange. Not only did the sign give a time of departure three hours later than ours, but the place was deserted. Dan got on and found that our train really left from track 8.  It was about to leave so we clambered through the wrong train down and across the tracks (rather a high step down for Grandmother) to get our correct train. We just made our train and even had to face the wrath of a man who wanted us to go all the way around rather than cross the tracks (a train was even arriving on one of the tracks we crossed).  Whew. (This is Dan now) I’ll say it was a large step for Gm. Without much exaggeration, the step from train to track was probably well over a meter, and she towers at 1.55 m. It was on the off side of the train towards another track (with the approaching train). A woman came up and helped me from below, but Gm got one foot caught on the step, the other swinging for something solid. She didn’t want to let go of the rail either, she was trying to keep her purse from slipping, our train was supposed to be leaving….. But we made our train! The cause of the problem was that after seeing my passport the ticket agent insisted on speaking “English” and plain gave us the wrong information. Now, we couldn’t understand Gallego when we overheard it, but everybody could speak Spanish also.

We have had fun when people try to place out accent in Spanish.  One dude on the train asked if we had Canary Islands background because we had “claridad de sonoridad” (clarity of sound) in our speech. Ehem![1] We had fair luck with the train. The 2nd class car was composed of 8-seat compartments and we got one to ourselves. We were able to lift the arm rest and Gm. stretched out and slept the night through -- almost. We had a full compartment of rather happy young men next door. They started drinking right away, and by 2100 hrs were banging in time on the compartment, and were especially vociferous on our many stops. The next morning one of them pulled out a bugle and played several “tunes” for us. It turned out that they were a group that had just gotten out of the army.

Madrid, Friday, Oct. 8

We decided to take Gm. directly to the airport even though we had 6 hrs. before her onward flight to Germany . If we waited, we would be fighting rush-hour traffic across town and back. We had a leisurely breakfast and got her checked in good time.  It all went smoothly except for a small altercation. Gm. and I were standing in line at a ticket counter and some people got in front of us. Well, Gm’s ears went flat, she started gritting her teeth and took issue.  In the meantime I got into the “other” line. It provided enough distraction that I had finished our business by the time she had finished a discussion with a man behind.  The last we saw of her she was marching through the metal detector on her way to Germany, with her feathers still ruffled.

Things were very quiet after she left. We bathed and wrote letters until Hugo and I went out to investigate Madrid night life, We started at a plaza where apparently most narcotic traffic goes on, and indeed there were several groups of pharmaceutical afi­cionados sitting around. It is the center of probably hundreds of bars in a late 18th C neighborhood. We walked in and out of a gay bar, punk bars, rock bars, jazz bars, flamenco bars, intellectual bars, none really of note except an intellectual one.  As we were about to walk out we noticed that a very big, black young man was setting up in a corner.  He had some bongo drums, a saxophone, pipes of pan, bells around his ankles, etc. When he finally got going he spun round and round and round for about ten minutes alternately playing on the sax, emitting rhythmic yells, or a combination of both.  He had a pair of sunglasses that he put on and off without losing rhythm. When he had them on he played one tune, when he took them off he played another. All the time spinning in place.  It will be interesting to see if this is commonplace in Africa or if we have witnessed the birth and death of a form of music. Apparently the crowd didn’t suit him, because after passing the hat, he left without ever playing the drums.

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[1] We have since learned that the Canary Islands, due to their isolation, has an “older” Spanish such as is spoken in the highlands of Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and Ecuador.  Some consider the Canary Islands to be Spain´s first colony.