Some glimpses of the past week

Here I am on a train again, my third straight day of travel. This one, a so-called HotelTrain from Madrid to Paris overnight, is significantly slower than the last 'AVE' ride I took from Barca to Madrid, but the scenery is equally beautiful, if different. Here the sights are more mountainous, the grass shorter and less vibrant, the rocky plains closer but all the more obscure by a reluctantly setting sun that alternately highlights and silhouettes the occasional mountain range. My talkative Venezuelan cabinmate seems intent on preventing me from reading, writing, or doing anything but nod along to trophy stories about the nightlife in Miami, so I've escaped to the train cafe. The bar fits my laptop perfectly; there's Portugese on my left and Spanish on my right. At my side is a new copy of Lolita, something I should've read long ago.

[The introduction above should be rewritten in the past tense, as it's almost a week later now -- thanks to poor net access -- but I'm too lazy to change it. Also, the copy of Lolita no longer looks new.]

Wednesday morning I caught a bus to Toledo, the most famous tourist destination in Cervantes' Castilla-La Mancha region, just south of Madrid. From the bus station I walked toward town, crossing the bridge over the Rio something-or-other at the base of the walled city. Lonely Planet had talked of a youth hostel a short walk up from the river, but as I climbed all I saw was a castle in the place where the hostel ought to be. And then I saw the sign -- the castle was the youth hostel, converted to accomodate several dozen travelers at once, including the loud French high school group assembled on the steps when I arrived. What the place lacked in amenities (no handsoap in the bathrooms?) it made up for in character and price. I threw my bag in a locker and walked back down across the river. Through the gate lay a steep path that zigzagged up into the north part of old Toledo, not far from the main square, Plaza Zocodover, which was conveniently the starting point for Lonely Planet's self-guided walking tour. Sadly, the first four sites on the tour -- the Muslim fortress, military museum, museum Santa Ana, etc -- were closed, and the route was so labrynthine that I just ended up wandering, which I had wanted to do from the getgo. I wound up, down, around alleys this way and that, encountering a fork in the road every hundred feet or so. At each juncture I simply chose whichever way looked more interesting or photogenic, and off I went. On Calle Alfonso XII I stumbled across a small exhibit about Medieval and Early Modern torture techniques and instruments, with a focus on the Inquisition.

Saturday morning in Paris I found my connecting train to Gramat to be full, so I spent a surprise day walking around the Rive Droite (the side of Paris north of the Seine), especially Montmartre, my favorite arrondisement. When I ducked into McDonald's for Wifi that afternoon, a Parisian friend happened to be online. I suggested a drink and peoplewatching in the Marais; he suggested we meet at Les Halles around 7:30, and the plan was made. Afterward I caught the packed night train to Gramat in a reclining seat surrounded by red-and-black-painted travelers headed to a Rugby match in Toulouse. Despuite the terrible arrival time of 5 AM my CouchSurfing host, Bertrand, was waiting at the station. We drove home and I passed out in my own room.

Sunday I visited the cheese festival of Rocamadour, which was the main reason I came to the south of France in the first place, loving cheese and having few other ideas. I tasted literally dozens of goat-, sheep-, and cowmilk cheeses, Cantals and Roqueforts and St. Nectaires and Cabecous and Salers, far more than anyone really ought to in such close succession (not to mention the wines that went with them, plus a random Saffron chutney). I can't take all the blame for the gluttony, though I'd like to: as soon as I'd try a Cantal, for example, say the Jeune ("young" version, aged one to two months) the clerk would insist that I try the Entre-Deux ("between the two," aged three to seven months) and the Vieux ("old", aged more than eight months). Following the tastings, I sat down for a communal picnic lunch. The menu? Salad with mustard vinaigrette and (you guessed it) goat cheese, freshly baked thick-crust bread from Boulangerie Croustillot, Aligot (a more viscous version of mashed potatoes with a healthy serving of cheese mixed in), juicy barbecued lamb, and chocolate cake whose middle layer consisted of ground walnuts and almonds mixed with honey.

With a heavy belly I mosied back into the main part of town to join the throng of tourists descending le chemin des pelerins (the path/route of pilgrims), which led from one crumbling church to another, (the latter more Cathedral-like, to be fair) with photogenic views of the valley and overpriced, overhanging ice cream shops along the way. Up a calf-stretching path that resembled what San Francisco's Lombard Street would look like if the city's lawn maintenance staff went on strike and threw some religious statues along the route in angst, lay more views and an impressive chateau, but by now my digital camera was dead, my attention span shot, and my Euros haevily diminished. Exhausted, I returned to the festival as it was winding down to munch on more goat cheese and await my host.

Back at Bertrand's house, we opened a bottle of local rosé and I hopped onto CouchSurfing.org -- the house had WiFi -- to figure out where the hell I was going to sleep the following night, as my host in Cahors had just emailed me to tell me that her sister had just given birth somewhere in the north of France and she was leaving right away. I requested four couches in Aurillac, the largest city in a Département of Auvergne whose name I'm forgetting, and four in Vichy, the infamous former center of Nazi-occupied France. While I optimistically waited for the responses to come in, my host and I cooked dinner -- he cooked a magret de canard (duck breast) that he had bought in preparation for my visit, and I made a simple sautée of asparagus, endive, and some root with caramelized onions. The rosé, he explained, would not go well with the duck, so we opened a red (one of the few that are meant to be had cold) and chowed down in front of the TV.

Now, (well, "now" as of Monday afternoon), I'm on yet another train, my third but not last of the day, from Gramat to Brive-la-Gaillarde, to Ussel, to Clermont-Ferrand, to Vichy. (Regionally, that's Midi-Pyrenees, to Limousin, to Auvergne, to Centre, I think. Sad that I'm only seeing Auvergne from the train, as it's unbelievably gorgeous.) My layover in Brive was almost four hours, so a companion from the train and I sought out an open cafe -- not an easy feat in a Catholic town on Lundi de Pentecote (Pentecost Monday) -- and then wandered around before coming across a dog show (!) in the middle of the main park. We watched people in suits run in circles with their groomed canines in tow, imagining how ridiculous the spectacle would look like to someone unacquainted with such silly bourgeois relics. I'm planning two or three nights in Vichy and two or three in Roanne, CouchSurfing all the way. Tonight, in fact, my host is sleeping at his girlfriend's house, so he's giving me the keys to his apartment. Sounds like fun.