Trains...

At the moment, there's an Indian film production company going full swing in the market place in Faversham. I don't suppose the shop-keepers are all that pleased to have the streets closed off for several days, but there's a crowd of fascinated passers-by and lookers-on. Some seem to have been roped into the production.

In keeping with this unexpected and slightly incongruous international theme, tomorrow we set off by train to go to Austria. We'll be calling to see an old friend - she came to us as an au pair when our children were small, and helped us move to Kent in 1987.  The beautiful and kind young lady we loved so much is now a granny in her own right. It seems scarcely credible, but there it is. She lives in a tiny railway junction town called Attnang-Puchheim about halfway between Salzburg and Linz and we will stay with her for a couple of days.

The decision to go by train was partly curiosity, partly for a quieter journey, definitely an increasing  dislike of the experience of airports, partly a green feeling, and partly to stick two fingers up to the whole Brexit process. The plan when we booked was to be in Europe when the Brexit debacle happened, although the date has changed now.  We bought our tickets from the astonishingly well-informed team at the train shop called Rail Canterbury - how they keep all that info in their heads is a mystery.  For instance, without looking anything up, and in answer to a random enquiry I made, the lady said you can't go to Copenhagen by train in a day - you have to spend a night in Hamburg.  Oh well, that's that then.   Anyway, we'll set off from home about 4am tomorrow via Eurostar to Brussels and then on to Frankfurt and Munich, and we should get to Salzburg by night-time.  One night in a hotel and four nights in a self-catering apartment in the city centre.

The website for Salzburg mostly promotes Mozart tours, or Sound-of-Music tours, and there are the mountains, the salt mine, and the bier kellars to explore.  It's a shame the sun has come out here and things are looking so beautiful and springlike at home, because the temperature in Austria is several degrees colder, but never mind. We're leaving the house and goldfish and pot plants in the care of a friend who's staying - I suppose everything will look different when we come back in a few days.

Our Austrian friend Edith wants us to bring what she calls 'black tee' with us, so we'll do that.  I think tee is an infinitely preferable say of spelling it.

There is so much going on at the moment, with the chaos at Westminster, the huge march in London on Saturday (2 million said the police later on) and the Revoke Article 50 petition well over 5.5million, and the Leavers being so brutal and negative, and the Remain side being awfully polite about it all... while the country goes down the pan, as far as we can see. Money haemorrhaging out of the city, jobs evaporating, and austerity biting down into every aspect of life: hospitals, schools, roads, care homes, emergency services, housing, childhood, etc etc.    The press spouts unexpurgated fascist and racist toxins. It's quite depressing.   Yet while the millions marched in London I was at the Juice Plus conference in Brighton - all rah rah rah! The company forges ahead (thank god).    On the way home from supper at the Brighton Hilton on Friday night, walking along the seafront, we were set on by a very aggressive beggar who stampeded John (our retired eye-surgeon friend), who is well over 6' but in his eighties. The beggar was frightening and we three women moved in to shout at him and get between him and John who is not as nimble on his pins as he was.   Glamour at one moment, and frightening street attack at the next.  This is the world we live in now.  I hope Salzburg offers something more peaceful! 

What you eat

Everyone has to eat. In Barcelona as in so many other places in Spain there is such a passion for food it’s almost overwhelming. 

Every tiny street in the centre has tiny bakeries, cafes, restaurants, fruit shops. 

As part of the planning of the new city in the 19th century, fruit and food markets were incorporated into the plans, and a visit to any one of these is really remarkable.

It is clear that a family can survive on the economic output of one small stall in one of these markets, as also on the output of one of the tiny shops.

In England today that is almost unheard-of. The rates and taxes are too high - one of the powerful reasons for the death of ‘the high street’.

Different market stalls are piled high with all kinds of local produce, fruits, spices, cheeses, fish, meats, cured meats, hams, sausages. It is not just local or Spanish families trading in these glorious good but also the new immigrant communities take part – Indians, Chinese, who knows?

Did we ever have a food culture like this in Britain? I have no idea. But the food culture here is radiant, shining, pulsating with love and skill, tradition and enjoyment, colour, flavour and smell.

Today is our last day. I slipped away from the rest of the party and went down to the Picasso Museum in the old city. It’s a good thing I got there early as it was rapidly filling up with quite large parties – school children, and Japanese and Chinese tourists groups. I was aware of a completely ridiculous sensation of rage that they should stand between me and the paintings. Surely I (the important 'me') was the one who deserves to see the things rather than anybody else?

The museum is housed in a fantastic building, a series of 4 palaces dating from the 14th century. The audio guide is pretty good, I would say essential in fact, to pull the most out of the experience from a first visit. 

It takes about two hours to go round and of course that is nothing like enough time. The museum really concentrates on his early years as an artist and then on the extraordinary reworking he made of the Velazquez Las Meninas, at the very end of his life. So there is very little about his life between about 1906 and 1967. However the works here are riveting, incandescent, inviting you to eat them, incorporate them into your body, just like the fruits in the market stalls.

Perhaps that’s the essence of life in Spain, something corporeal, sensual, colourful, here and now.
Our last lunch was back at the Flax and Kale restaurant, where we sat beside the pretty herb garden in the autumnal sun. I felt as if we were eating Spain.

 

Humility and Fame

Two days of the conference have gone quite fast, filled with interesting presentations and information. The sound levels were far too high - sometimes painfully. But the individual speakers and events were memorable.

Bear Grylls who is a global superstar through his televised adventures, and his role as head scout for 50 million little boys, was one of the star speakers. He spoke about his fear of being at such events, the feeling of exposure, his inadequacy. It was surprisingly moving speech, urging us all to be of service, be humble, and thankful for being alive.

Out in the streets again and freed from the timetable of training meetings we have started to wander around the city. 

One of our small party is eighty years old and has painful legs, so walking is not easy. We called into a chocolate shop – or rather a nougat shop - where everything is so beautifully packaged and offering a wide range of traditional or augmented traditional products, but my goodness, the reliance on sugar to sell! sell! sell! is terrifying.

It turned out that an old friend of mine from Facebook – Kay Newton – was in Barcelona so we agreed to meet for lunch. We have corresponded for several years, but never actually met face-to-face.  She suggested meeting at a restaurant near the university called Kale and Flax which we did, and that turned out to be a revelation, in terms of architecture and menu. 

We had a fabulous meal - all raw food, stylishly presented.

The table next to us was occupied by three young women with very brightly coloured hair. "They look like ‘My Little Pony’"said Kay.

Once we had finished lunch we made our way back towards the apartment and decided to go to the top of the old bull/fighting arena at Plaza Espanya. That is now a shopping centre (thank god). We had met a man in the Metro who explained that the external lift costs 1€ to get the roof but if you use the internal lift inside the shopping centre it’s free. So that is what we did. There is a walkway right round the top of the roof giving views of the whole of the city.

Internally, the architecture is stunning with a very theatrical central space criss-crossed by various escalators and bridges.

We were aware that something must be happening, as a crowd was gathering around the central cinematic floor which has a strange circular screen in it changing all the time and responding to people’s footprints by altering the pattern. Eventually we worked out that a pop-group was going to be appearing a bit later on so we stood and watched as all preparations were made. The pop group turned out to be those girls with multicoloured hair who we’d sat next to at lunch, a band called Sweet California. 
Slightly disappointingly, when they finally arrived their first move was to sit and sign autographs and the wait was too long for us so we went back home

We stopped at a restaurant along the Avenida Parallel on our way and had a glass of wine before we turned in.

If you ever come to Barcelona I recommend a visit to the Kale and Flax restaurant, and I recommend a visit to the top of the bullring shopping centre - the views are spectacular.

Traffic

Barcelona is to a very large extent a grid-planned city. Each road only has traffic travelling in one direction. Because we’ve been at a conference all day we have not done much exploring but our taxi rides to and from various restaurants and other rendezvous has been as smooth as can be. The tree-lined streets are quiet and beautiful. It really is a pleasure to be here.

Local life

Sharing accommodation with friends and colleagues, especially if you’ve never done it before, is always an interesting exercise. There’s a kind of nervous dance about who gets which bedroom and how well private bathroom habits are managed in amongst this new company.

This apartment on the Avenita Parallel can accommodate nine people, but there are only six of us, which is good as it means we have a bit more space.

The Spanish way of life is so civilised and laid-back, shops are open late into the evening and there are bars and cafes open, and people around all the time, so it feels very normal and easy to fit in to. 

We have already found a couple of tapas bars that we like, and been to the shops to buy milk,coffee, fruit etc.

We went to the Sagrada Familia to pick up a wheelchair from a hire place for one of our party, who has a painful leg condition. 

Even in the two or three years since we were last here there have been huge changes to the outside of the church, and not all as harmonious as they might have been. However it is tremendous to see the massive fruit ornaments all brightly coloured, now adorning the outside. There were thousands and thousands of people milling around even in this November season.

Our conference starts today and we are now equipped with entry wristbands and small radio sets to get the instant translations – this will be a truly international conference, and a huge amount of money has been spent on making it all go smoothly.

I slept like a log last night – so tired!

The view of angels

These days, we take it for granted - it seems so normal to catch a plane somewhere.

But it is completely unnatural.
This is the source of my anxiety. But these aerial views of the world are breathtaking.

Our flight from London to Barcelona was smooth and beautiful. To be able to see almost the whole of the Isle of Wight just by looking out of the window was remarkable. 

There were four of us travelling in one group, sitting in different parts of the plane. 

On arrival it was noticeable that the automated scrutiny lines moved about 10 times faster than the old-fashioned man-in-a-booth queues.

We collected our luggage, got a taxi into the city and found our apartment. 

It’s on the level called Principal 2, long and spacious with a courtyard at the back and all the bedrooms leading off the long corridor. Everything is spotlessly clean and the wifi very fast. 

Taking advice from the landlady we found a Tapas bar called Lolita. It seemed very bright and noisy and there were no tables available but the waiter sat us at the bar where we had a fine view of everything.

We had a fabulous meal - sharing tastes of the tapas - corn salad and bean salad, olives, deep fried squid, inspirational patatas bravas, iberian ham, mussels and pork ribs. It was like being at the theatre watching the team preparing the food. 

On the way home we called into a small deli and bought fruit and milk to go in the fridge. And then retired. During the night the rain came and I have been serenaded by the sound of drips and drops of water falling down a kind of vertical shaft outside my window. I have been thinking of the extraordinaire revisions I saw on the aeroplane: the sea as smooth as class (apparently), the clouds spread out like a massive white blanket and then the sun’s hocus-pocus red and grey artwork settling itself towards night as we arrived. Today we’ll go out to explore the city.

Spanish fly

Off today to Barcelona, for a JuicePlus+ conference plus a couple of days r&r either side.

I am in my usual pre-travel panic. I have no idea what to pack.

My friend Amanda says each time she and Julian go away, he travels with a tiny bag saying 'All you need is a spare T-shirt and a clean pair of pants'.  She meanwhile, like me, takes one pair of clean knickers for every day she's going to be away (+ a spare).  And she takes enough clothing to deal with all eventualities of weather.  Just like me - immensely reassuring.

And it's the same conversation I have with Andrew each time. He claims you can rinse your knickers out and they'll dry in no time, so you only need two with you.  Amanda says her response to Julian is 'You pack your case, and I'll pack mine!'

I see the weather in Barcelona is going be around 19 degrees for the time I'll be there - so here in chilly England I am thinking - what the hell will I need to wear for warm weather? And yet it was that temperature here only a couple of weeks ago.

Andrew will drop me off at Ashford to be picked up by Nicky and some of the others in our party... we'll be in Spain by 4 or 5 this afternoon.  The magic of flight.  But at the moment, there are other (darker) worries about all this.

Should any of us be flying anywhere if we are to hold back climate change?

Will we be able to travel to Europe so freely ever again if Brexit goes through?  At the moment it seems that flights will not operate, we'll need visas, our mobile phone roaming charges will revert to extortionate rates, etc etc. 

The last few decades have been so blissfully easy - free of deep anxiety of the international political sort - and comfortable, relatively speaking - but we fear it is all coming to a horrible end, with fascism on the rise, alliances splintering, corruption and change everywhere.  I think the internet has been at the root of all this - computers favouring the counting of money over all other considerations, and the www sweeping through the structures of civilisation (justice, democracy, professional expertise, tradition, honour, truth, etc etc) like a hurricane.  Nothing can withstand the change, apparently, so greed and a lust for power are unleashed - here, in the US, and in many or all other places.

Going to this conference will be uplifting - the company has used the internet to spread honourable ethical standards of decency and good health. There will be 6 or 7 thousand people there.  I feel good to be going. So I had better go and pack.