Oíche Shamhna Shona Daoibh

Basque people don't have a tradition of celebrating Halloween, but with American movies and such it has become more common for people to have Halloween costume parties for their kids, although trick or treating is looked upon as odd. These guys were still celebrating on November 1st, and I was surprised to see the jack o' lanterns.

Donde dije digo, digo (San) Diego

In San Diego for a conference. The hermit crab races were a highlight. It was that kind of conference.

I got to see one of my favorite parts of California, that is, the pelicans.

Lucha libre/siga la lucha.

Historic Old Town San Diego. My European co-worker, who had never been to the U.S., was unimpressed by any of the "historic" parts of California that we visited, acting perplexed that furniture that could be in her grandparents' house could be placed in a museum. On Old Town, her remark was "it's like Disneyland. It's all a lie."

A beach in Coronado.

The Hotel Del Coronado, conference site and lodging to the stars. My co-worker's remark about the lodgers, one of whom she saw hand a 50 to a valet, was "they're all drug dealers". We stayed in the HoJo as the Del would have exceeded our per diem...

A bird rescuer brought some of his charges to Seaport Village. Obviously they were a lot cooler than anything else on offer.

A Coronado beach

Arches inside of Balboa Park, definitely our favorite visit.

Botanical gardens of Balboa Park.

 

Nectar of the Nor'East

I cannot endorse this product highly enough. I would be happy to shill them in Europe for a lifetime supply, if anyone from Leclerc is reading. Upon my return from NY, one of my co-workers asked me, in Spanish, with no prior reference to the subject and many thousands of miles away from any place where it is produced, if I had brought any maple syrup with me. I said Yes, as a matter of fact, I can bring you some if you want, and he thought for a minute and told me no, it's fattening. I EMBRACE FATNESS thankyu. And besides, maple products regulate the blood sugar. In a way...

Gone Again

Riparius

 

Find the dragon

 

OK Slip Falls

You will have friends everywhere if you know your flora.

Rock lobstah!

Newcomb Lake

Lake George

Ruffed grouse wuz here.

Near but not the Hudson.

Just Stahp It.

Below the Blue Ledges/actually the Hudson.

Summer and Siófok

Summer is never long enough-the sheep are in their summer haircuts and the people are at their festivals. Here is a daunting Basque modality of bowling. The people on the other side were playing toka.

Baby donk and pottoka

The annual Rocio procession.

I stumbled upon some patches of bee orchids.

When you go to Hungary, you change your euros for Hungarian Forints. 1 euro=~305 forints, so exchanging 50 or 100 euros gets you a fistful of bills with a mafia-esque number of zeros. It reminds me when people around our parts talk about prices in pesatas-the currency of the Spanish state prior to the euro-people will say 'hey, how much did you spend on your apartment?' 'Oh, a hillion bajillion pillion pesetas.' There was an actual supermarket in the Budapest airport where I purchased a bagful of some kind of wicked butter pastry filled with spinach and cheese for 0.99 forints, or practically no money, as it were.

I visited Siófok, Hungary for a work conference. It is a town on Lake Balaton, the largest lake in central Europe, and as the website delightfully says, is located in "Transdanubia", which clearly neighbors Westeros and is down the road from Middle Earth. Because Hungary is land-locked, this is a very popular place for summer vacations, and people come down from Germany to stay. I have not seen as flat a place as Hungary since Michigan.

I think this means for rent. Hungarian is one of those rare non-Indo European European languages, which is to say, not in the least understandable to people who speak Germanic/Latinate languages. If you don't speak a Finno-Ugric language already, it makes for outstanding insomnia t.v. watching because it is like spoken music, with an ever-so-occasional Latin loan word to jolt you awake. 

As you get further away from Siófok proper, the pretty summer homes give way to concrete apartment blocks and abandoned-looking, old curtain-strewn shoebox cabins that are somehow inhabited, largely by young people visiting from parts European, all of whom are listening to American pop music and electronica. The mid 20th century was apparently a rough time for the country (what with its 'salami tactics' and all), and you can still see its influence in the summer resorts, which oddly resemble U.S. engineering schools. When I arrived it was rainy and cool, and there were crows everywhere, making it one of the more gothic places I've been. Everything everywhere was remarkably clean, and the stocky people were all covertly watchful of me. None of this stops people from wanting to have a good time, though, and you can go to this advertised cell block resort to enjoy that Ibiza Feeling.

There were new-looking but not especially well-attended monuments all over, of people I didn't recognize. I live in a foreign country all the time, and yet I felt even more foreign and unknowing than usual.

Perhaps madame would like a Dish of Waterworld? And you sir, Dishes of wildworld? No? Well perhaps some Beef Meat Food. Ah, very good. All the Hungarians I interacted with were stunningly fluent in English and often poly poly polyglot, though this did not necessarily extend to the dining establishments. An Irish colleague ordered some pizza, only to be brought kebabs, which were apparently good, anyway.

Alas, my sojourn meant that I missed a great deal of Lasarteko Festak.

Naturally, this horse is appalled.

The Crumbs of Empire

 At long last, I am able to get off the bus and post some photos of Roma Aeterna, home to the FAO. Seeing as it is so heavily visited, it is difficult not to plunge immediately into cliche, but Rome is eternally fascinating and historically humbling, with a continuity that forces a degree of perspective that is absent in our parts. We arrived not long before the European parliamentary elections and the canonization of a couple of late popes, so the crowd density was positively biofilm-esque. This photo to the left is an election campaign poster that says "Europe, not Germany," a commonly expressed sentiment all over south Europe.

The Spanish Steps. Keats (John) used to live nearby, and the area was popular with other tubercular writers, since the entire rest of the world was not already sitting on the steps.

The Trevi Fountain. Fountains like this provided drinking water to Rome's population. Everywhere there are ingenious (and beautifully made) constructions for coping with the necessities before electricity, motor vehicles, etc.

A mosaic inside the walls of the Colosseum.

Seating at the Colosseum, or Flavian Amphitheater. Hundreds of thousand died to entertain. Some claim that the place was filled with water to stage mock naval battles, but that seems...hard to believe. We think we're bad and clever, with our reality shows, but we're comparatively tame. You can see the building in more detail online. 

And now we enter the Roman forum, a theme park of ruins built on a marsh, chock full of imperial temples of all kinds and was the major meeting point in the city for centuries. Go see a great, comprehensive picture here. This is the Temple of Romulus, built to commemorate the child of an emperor.

These temples were often re-purposed over the years.

There is an endless amount to read about this stuff, if you're so inclined.

The apartments of the vestal virgins.

A view of the city from the Forum.

Cat sanctuary! <3

Outside St. Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican.

St. Peter's Basilica

Inside the courtyard of the Vatican Museums. The collections can be viewed online, which may be the best idea. The crowds were sufficient to induce PTSD. However, the collections were unreal. It is here that the wealth of the Catholic church, which is just an abstraction to a New World kid like myself, becomes most apparent. Room after room after room of master works, priceless antiquities, friezes, sculpture...here a Michaelangelo painting, over there in the corner, apropos of nothing, a Rodin model...just because that's where there was space for it. The windows were open to the rain, and people poured through like each one had to catch a flight, children touching ancient Greek marble...I had an impression of livestock, of little control being exercised over any of it, but I'm sure a lot more was going on that I didn't see. Yes, we saw the Sistine Chapel, and yes, it was one of the most special things I've ever seen. 

Part of the Vatican Museum collections.

In Trastevere, near the Campo di Fiore, which has a large open-air market.