Monthly Archives: February 2023

February 21, 2023 · 8:38 pm

Montpellier, France

In the fall of 2002, I attended the Accent Français language school for adults in Montpellier, France from September 16 through 27. I had studied French from grade five through grade twelve and also took French literature courses every year in college. I never earned anything less than an A- in all my French courses and I studied the grammar and the vocabulary assiduously. I would practice conjugating verbs in all tenses, writing them out over and over, and I tested myself on vocabulary with flash cards that I made. I did this for FUN. I read classical and modern French literature and loved it. Gerard Depardieu as Moliere’s infamous Tartuffe is one of my all-time favorite movies.

In spite of all these years of study, however, I had an appalling command of the spoken (and heard) language which became obvious when I first traveled to France in the late 1990s. I remember being really embarrassed during a trip to the Dordogne with my English friends in 1998 as we shopped in the supermarket or ate out at local restaurants. I had almost zero ability to carry on simple conversations and they easily stepped in to rescue me from my floundering on multiple occasions.

I have a knack with foreign languages and I can now converse in four languages (other than English) with some facility, so this terrible inability to communicate in a language I love pained me. In a trip to Nerja, Spain in 2001 I got the idea of attending a language school for adults when I walked past a Spanish language immersion school in that town.

Me in Nerja, Spain, May 2001

I always regretted not taking a semester abroad in college so this seemed like an opportunity finally to have that kind of experience. I researched possible programs and selected the Accent Français program in Montpellier and opted to stay with a local family for the two weeks of the course. I remember trying to get it approved as a study leave for work (UO Libraries didn’t buy that idea), but there was never any doubt that I was going to go, even though it required me to take two weeks of vacation. I flew into Paris on Saturday, the 14th of September, and immediately took a high-speed train (TGV – Train à grande vitesse) from Paris to Montpellier. The trip took over five hours (370 miles or 596 km) and I arrived in the evening. I could not move into my family accommodations until Sunday afternoon so I stayed in a cheap hotel in the center of town that Saturday night. On Sunday, things were closed down in the town so I wandered aimlessly, looking for an open Internet cafe, until it was time for me to meet my family.

My family consisted of a woman in her forties (Mme Gilardi) and her 20-something daughter. I had a room to myself (sharing the wall of my room with the daughter’s room, who played her music late into the night) and I was fed breakfast and dinner. Lunch was on my own. They had a small house with an outside courtyard and they did their best to make conversation with me and make me comfortable. I got to try out the local cuisine, which was a mixture of foods from different parts of the world.

Mme Gilardi and her daughter
The Gilardi residence, Montpellier
Breakfast at the Gilardi home

Montpellier has a lot of migrants from different parts of the world. For most of its history, and even today, Montpellier is known for its significant Spanish population, heritage and influence. Montpellier also has significant Occitan, Moroccan, Algerian, and Italian communities.

On Monday morning, September 17, I made my way to the school in the center of the town. The teachers were all younger than I was and my classmates ranged in age from 18 through the mid 70s. In another life, I would have liked to work in such an establishment.

Two of my instructors from the school
My favorite classmates, retired couple from England
View of the city street from the 2nd floor balcony of the school

The classes were arranged by level of language proficiency which was tested by a written exam and an oral interview prior to a new student being sent to a classroom. Classes ran continuously, and new students would be sent to a class already in session. Students came and went every Monday, depending on how long they had contracted for. Some students were only there for a week and some had signed up for months. I tested at the intermediate level. I was embarrassed at my gross ignorance, again, during this placement process because they asked me who the President of France was and I did not know! I learned that lesson and have been far more aware of French history and politics since that two-week program. The classes were hard. We were given a lot of grammar, a lot of current vocabulary, and a lot of information about French society. And we had to talk and apply what we were given, on the spot. I remember feeling shy during some of the exercises but I did them and I definitely improved in the two weeks. I think we had one or two breaks between classes during the course of the day and we had a lunch break on our own. I always went out to a local boulangerie and got a fromage/jambon (ham and cheese) sandwich and usually spent a few minutes in a nearby Internet cafe on the lunch break. We also got some individual tutoring sessions as part of the course, The best thing I got out of my individual tutoring sessions was being given some sections from the book EVIDENCES INVISIBLES. AMÉRICAINS ET FRANÇAIS AU QUOTIDIEN (also available in English) which was a book written by a French woman married to an American man. The author addressed a wide variety of topics but the one that has stayed with me is the different perceptions of what is considered normal conversation in French versus American culture. To put it simplistically, a French person shows they are engaged and interested in a conversation by jumping in and adding to the conversation. The American practice of sitting back and waiting for the speaker to finish before adding something is perceived to be disinterested and even rude. The lack of awareness of the different cultural norms can lead to many misunderstandings and hard feelings. This is true of every interaction between different cultures. I wish that more people approached their interactions with people from a different culture with an understanding that what they consider NORMAL is actually just what they have been taught or have experienced and another person’s view of normal can be very different.

Sometimes on lunch breaks or before I went “home” after classes, I would explore the city. I was somewhat timid and this was before smartphones and Google maps. I am also notoriously bad at reading paper maps so I stayed in a pretty confined area so I wouldn’t get lost. I wandered through the city park, I walked down to the train station, I looked at some monuments, I did a little shopping. It’s not just that I was timid. I was also a woman alone in a city that was experiencing rapid changes to its demographics and it sometimes felt slightly unsafe to me. It was at the Montpellier train station that I learned the French word “voyou” for thug to describe the teenage boys who would not stop following and harassing me.

City park in Montpellier
City park in Montpellier
Arc de triomphe, Montpellier
Monument in Montpellier, probably Joan of Arc

The school also arranged occasional excursions. On September 21st, there was a bus excursion to Arles, a city on the Rhône River in Provence. Arles is known for many remains from the Roman era, including Arles Amphitheatre (les Arènes d’Arles), now hosting plays, concerts and bullfights. It is 82 km or 51 miles away from Montpellier. On this bus trip, we also swung through the Camargue, a natural region located south of Arles, between the Mediterranean Sea and the two arms of the Rhône river delta. Wild horses and flamingos (and 400 other species of birds) roam the brine ponds of the Camargue. It is a stunningly beautiful and otherworldly landscape. Our tour guide was a charming man who played a flute as he walked and told us the history of the region. In Arles, I loved the market, the city square, the Roman ruins and I just wish we had had some time to wander.

Camargue flamingoes, photo by Sylvain Caillot photos
Camargue salt marshes
Arles city view
Arles harbor
Arles
Arles market
Arles market
Arles Roman ruins
Arles Roman ruins
Arles Roman ruins
Arles Roman ruins

At the end of the two weeks in the French language immersion program, I was joined in Montpellier by my ex-husband. Unfortunately, we both got terrible colds and ended up disappointed with the rest of the trip. I wish I had been better prepared by having studied up on the region and the city. I wish that I had had a decent camera to take more and better pictures. And I wish I had had a happier traveling companion who would have wanted to explore and discover things serendipitously. It’s unlikely that I will ever go back to the region but I am very glad to have been there,

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February 11, 2023 · 11:36 pm

The Politics of Exclusion, Hate, and Fear in Florida

Last updated June 9, 2023

Not all links are open to non subscribers, although I have tried to include links that anyone can access.

The following articles provide evidence of an organized campaign following the GOP’s long-term strategy being played out in Florida. They show a dizzying number of efforts in Florida to shut down and marginalize anyone who does not follow the white, heterosexual, male party line. It is a well organized and carefully thought-out effort and should be of concern to us all – because it doesn’t stop in Florida.

I have been using this blog to document what I see as a growing “fear of the other” that is manifested through book bans, anti-LGBTQ legislation, bans on critical race theory, laws prohibiting abortion, attacks on people of color, or attacks on people from non-Christian religious backgrounds. I update the list of articles listed in this post every few days. Every day brings new attacks on the rights of individuals in the state of Florida and, sadly, the list keeps growing.

For about 18 years, I lived in different parts of Florida and worked within the State University System. During my years as a library dean at two different universities in Florida, I was part of university administrations charged with implementing policies established by the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Board of Governors. Until 2021, Florida public universities and colleges were charged by the Board of Governors with promoting a diverse learning environment and we were evaluated for eligibility for funding based, in part, on our success. This was laid out in their Regulation 2.003, Equity and Access. Universities and colleges established committees, initiatives, revised their strategic plans and mission statements to incorporate these concepts, and they hired staff to develop meaningful programs in support of a diverse community.

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But now, diversity. equity and inclusion (DEI) is labeled divisive by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Being gay or transgender is a dangerous “woke” concept and the Governor has declared that slavery was not all bad. Books are being banned (overwhelmingly those by or about people of color or non-heterosexual people), teachers and librarians are being called “groomers” and are threatened with felony prosecution for making unapproved books available, female athletes are being pressured to provide details of their menstrual cycles to prove that they were born female, the Advanced Placement course on African-American history may not be taught in Florida public schools, math textbooks were banned because they were judged to be woke, and public employees are required to turn over emails and cell phone texts so that the state can search for evidence of DEI activity. The Governor says he wants Florida students to study Western civilization. Yet, as Tim Padgett makes clear in his February 2 analysis for WLRN, the initiatives that the governor is promoting to exclude people and ideas that he deems “woke” are in opposition to the precepts of Western civilization. The earmark of Western civilization is the  “exaltation of the individual human being” [and] “ entails, by default, the dignified inclusion of all those individual human beings — in schools, history books, businesses, media and government — no matter which boxes they check on the census form.”

The days of celebrating diversity seem to be gone for universities in Florida, especially with the placement of right-wing political cronies to head many of the state’s universities and colleges. University Web sites are being scrubbed of content that the current state government finds distasteful in their anti-WOKE campaign. Thankfully, though, faculty have not yet been completely cowed, as seen in the United Faculty of Florida-FAU chapter’s Statement on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Students around the state have also been protesting the state’s attacks on diversity and have sometimes been getting arrested and mistreated for their efforts.

Not everyone in Florida supports these moves by the Governor and the Legislature. So, why aren’t more people taking to the streets to protest? As a learned professor friend of mine reminded me, an April 2021 law providing civil immunity for people who drive their cars into crowds of protesters might have something to do with it, as well as newer legislative efforts to ban protests outside homes or at the state capitol. Clearly, the First Amendment is only for some people in Florida. And people are afraid.

DeSantis and his minions are taking this Fear of “the Other” to an entirely new level. This isn’t just happening by chance. It is a coordinated, long-term strategy – as Thom Hartmann lays out very clearly in his article Why Would Anybody Embrace Fascism?:

“There was an actual rationale for this, laid out by Russell Kirk in his 1951 book The Conservative Mind …Kirk argued that without clearly defined classes and power structures — essentially without the morbidly rich in complete control — society would devolve into chaos.

He and his followers essentially predicted in 1953 that if college students, women, working people, and people of color ever got even close to social and political power at the same level as wealthy white men, all hell would break loose.”

The following articles — and the ones listed at the beginning of this post — provide evidence of an organized campaign following the GOP’s long-term strategy being effectively executed in Florida. 

There are many more examples not listed here — and there will be many more the next day, and the next, and the day after that. I will try to do periodic updates. Unfortunately, there is so much happening in Florida right now that it is hard to keep up.

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3 Comments

Filed under Book banning, Censorship, Diversity, equity, and inclusion, Intolerance, Racism, Tolerance & Inclusivity

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February 9, 2023 · 10:59 pm

Paris, France

Paris is a magical city. I have been there at least seven times between 1998 and 2018. Sometimes I spent only a day or two there, basically just using it as a departure and a landing city for trips spent elsewhere. I have also spent longer periods of time there, getting to know the city by walking through the different arrondissements, taking the subway to get around, or just wandering aimlessly to see what I discovered.

Initially, I did not want to go to France. I had bought into the North American prejudice that said the French were rude and unpleasant; I had no interest in visiting the country. This was true even though I had studied the French language, since I was in fifth grade all the way through college, and I loved the language and the literature. My father had traveled in France at the end of World War II and he taught me my very first French words. I used to enjoy looking at his pictures from his time stationed in Paris following its liberation by the Allies. He loved his time in France, England, Scotland, and Germany as a radio operator at the end of World War II and he passed along to me his love of travel and getting to know different people.

My father on a bridge in Paris, 1944 or 1945

Fortunately for me, I had a very good French friend in Indiana who was a gracious and charming person and who was the opposite of rude and unpleasant. One time, when he was traveling to Paris to give a paper at the Sorbonne, he invited my ex-husband to join him there for a few days. That experience was so wonderful that my ex and I traveled together there for the first time in August of 1998 and several other times after that. In all the trips I have made to Paris, with hundreds of interactions with Parisians all over, I only experienced rudeness one time.

Me on the Champs-Élysées, early 2000s

Starting with that first trip in 1998 until my last trip in the fall of 2018, I have been to the top of the Eiffel Tower several times (and even had dinner there once), spent time walking on the Champs-Élysées and visiting cafes there and elsewhere, been to the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, wandered along the bouquinistes and artists’ stalls on the Seine, took an excursion on a Bateau Mouche on the Seine with a tour guide who spoke an impressive number of languages fluently, visited Notre Dame cathedral multiple times (before it caught fire in 2019), marveled at Paris Plages (where the city turns the Seine riverbanks and the Villette canal basin into a summer beach resort), relaxed in the Luxembourg Garden, taken the train to Monet’s home in Giverny, browsed through Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, and had countless wonderful glasses of wine or fresh croissants at one of the thousands of sidewalk cafes that are everywhere.

Me at dinner in one of the restaurants on top of the Eiffel Tower in 2004

Paris has many small neighborhoods that are home to local people and are not designed for tourists. But even the touristy neighborhoods are charming and provide great food and wine for reasonable prices. It’s easy to eat well in Paris without breaking the bank. You can eat at cafes or pick up food at local shops and make impromptu picnics along the banks of the Seine, in one of the big public parks, or in one of the small green spaces that are found in almost every neighborhood.

One of the neighborhoods featuring great restaurants found throughout Paris

There are dozens of famous sites throughout Paris that are worth visiting, as the following pictures illustrate. They live up to the hype.

The steps by Montmartre
Wolfgang browsing the bouquinistes and artist stalls on the Seine, 2018
Me in front of the famous Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, September 2018
Me in front of Notre Dame around 2004
Notre Dame, September 2018
Coming up to the Eiffel Tower, September 2018
At the foot of the Eiffel Tower, 2018
View of Paris from the Eiffel Tower, September 2018
Wolfgang gazing out on Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower, 2018
Luxembourg Garden, September 2018
Luxembourg Garden, September 2018
Monet’s garden in Giverny in the early 2000s
Steps of Montmartre
Outside the Louvre, 2018

My favorite part of visiting a city is just wandering, not always knowing where I am, and just enjoying whatever I find. Wolfgang and I spent a scant three days/two nights in Paris in September 2018; we had absolutely no itinerary. We wandered, took the metro, did a hop on-hop off bus tour, got lost many times, and just soaked up the atmosphere wherever we happened to find ourselves. We took over 700 pictures. The following pictures are some prime examples of our adventure of serendipitous discovery in Paris for three days in September 2018.

Typical cafe scene, September 2018
Crepe vendor on the street, 2018
Bateaux Mouches on the Seine, 2018
Public art, 2018
Anonymous park somewhere in Paris, 2018
Parisian neighborhood store, 2018
Unknown building on our lost wanderings the first night Wolfgang and I were in Paris, September 2018
Typical shop window of an épicerie
Typical street scene, 2018. Europeans get around quite a lot with motorcycles and scooters.
Certainly a famous building but anonymous to us in our wanderings, September 2018
Ubiquitous cafe scene, September 2018
Beauty on every street
Another ordinary doorway, somewhere in Paris
Typical Parisian neighborhood
Street scene showing the corner buildings found throughout Paris
Architectural gems everywhere – just look up
City of bridges
City of bridges
Le Pont Neuf seen from below street level, walking along the banks of the Seine
Parisians love their river and spend their leisure time on its banks
Moules – the French love mussels so much that there is even a fast-food chain specializing in serving different types
Architectural surprises abound for anyone who opens their eyes
Love locks on a bridge in Paris, September 2018
The metro – easy way to get around Paris if you can handle stairs and aren’t worried about getting lost occasionally
Fromage – just a small sampling of the wonderful cheeses available everywhere
Street market
Gare du Nord train station where you catch the Eurostar train to London
The Eurostar train to London

Wolfgang, like me initially, was not enthusiastic about going to Paris. But after a few hours he wished we had booked a longer stay before heading back to our friends outside London. Paris is definitely a city we would like to visit again.

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February 3, 2023 · 12:27 pm

Lover of reading

A bibliophile, by one definition available through a Google search, is a person who collects or has a great love of books. That is me. But more than the books themselves, I have a great love of reading. I love reading physical books, magazines, and newspapers. I love reading articles and now I read entire books on my phone, computer, and e-reader. I don’t know what the correct word is for someone who just loves to read, regardless of format. But it’s broader than just bibliophile.

When I was a small child, we lived far out in the country, on a dirt road. Our nearest neighbors were pig farmers. a mile away. We had one car and only my father drove; my mother never learned to drive. I never visited a library until I started school. The closest I came to a book store at that time was the small corner store in the hamlet about five miles away that had a rack of magazines and a revolving stand of Little Golden Books .

My mother loved to read and had her nose in a book as often as she could. I do not remember ever having my parents read TO me. We had no library at home. I read anything I could get my hands on, which at home consisted of a few magazines, a small collection of Hardy Boys mystery books that my brothers had, Readers Digest condensed books that my mother read, and later the Bible when my parents bought me a children’s Bible after I announced I wanted to go to church. I remember reading some portfolio-sized soft-cover book about Christmas that was in the house and learning the songs in it and asking my parents what various words meant. There was no dictionary in the house and this was decades before the Internet. A treat for me was when my father would stop at the corner store and let me pick out a Little Golden Book to take home and read, over and over.

My parents separated when I was ten and that meant that my mother and I went to live with her parents in a suburb of Philadelphia for two years. I was given several books by my mother and my aunts as Christmas or birthday presents. I remember The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, Heidi, Swiss Family Robinson, and Little Women.

I must have visited the school libraries in my elementary schools but I have no memory of them or the visits. The first library I remember visiting was the public library in the town that my mother and I moved to when I was twelve, Wayne, Pennsylvania. I remember wandering the shelves on my own and picking out whatever I wanted to read and bringing the books home to read. No one ever bothered me or tried to tell me what to read or not read, and I explored the world of books in a very haphazard way. I remember picking up one book that was clearly an adult book that was a story of a white woman taken captive by native Americans and how she was absorbed into the culture and became a wife of one of the men in the tribe. That is the only book I remember from that library although I know I checked out many books, willy nilly.

In eighth grade at Radnor Junior High School in Wayne, I had a wonderful English teacher who changed my life. His name was Charles Crawford and he assigned great books for the class. I specifically remember being assigned The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and falling in love with his writing and then reading everything I could get my hands on by Ray Bradbury for the next ten years. I had a small collection of Ray Bradbury books in paperback for many years and I still have my original copy of The Martian Chronicles printed in 1967 or 1968 in my very small library of about 100 physical books.

Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

I did NOT become a librarian because I loved to read or because I loved books!!! I became a librarian because I was hired to work in college and university libraries due to my study of foreign languages and those libraries were always looking for people who could read and understand other languages. After two years as a student assistant in my college library and another seven years as a library worker in two other academic libraries, I completed my master’s degree and became a professional librarian. I fell into librarianship. I was good at the work and I believe strongly in the underlying principles of librarianship: providing free and unfettered access to information and helping people to find and use the information they need – and to think critically. But I never aspired to be a librarian. My love of reading and my career as a librarian are two separate things. In fact, once I got into positions where I was hiring other people to work in libraries, I always rated negatively any prospective worker who said they wanted to work in libraries or became a librarian because they loved books or reading. I always felt like telling them: “Get a life!!!”

The first actual bookstore I remember was a cramped little bookstore that sat on the corner right before you got to the Wayne train station. I used all of my allowance to buy books there. I remember walking through that store, picking up and examining books and deciding which book I was going to buy. I discovered some wonderful books there that broadened my world view, including Hiroshima and other books by John Hersey, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I, Robot and other books by Isaac Asimov, The October Country, The Illustrated Man and other books by Ray Bradbury, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and many more. I had my first bookcase in my room and intuitively organized my books first by genre, then by author, then by title. I was a natural cataloger and loved the years I spent working as a cataloger in libraries, cataloging whatever crossed my desk.

In my lifetime, I purchased thousands of books. In my many moves to new locations, the thing that always made me feel like I was home was when I could unpack and shelve my books on my bookcases. As I got older, I got tired of carting around all those books and I periodically would purge my collections and give the books away to co-workers. I never tried to sell them. Working in libraries, I always had a group of people who were eager to have any books that I chose to give away.

As I rose through the ranks in libraries and eventually had my own office, I would keep some books on bookcases in my office and others at home. I have always considered the books on my bookcases to be a window into my soul and personality. The books in my office always contained my textbooks, dictionaries, and works of literature for the six foreign languages I have studied. In my office, I also included works of history or social awareness that would quietly announce to anyone interested what I believed. There would also be some professional works of librarianship. Travel books always featured heavily. My cookbooks I kept at home, as well as most of my fiction.

As I got older and grew more tired of packing up and carting books around to new locations, the bulk of my physical book collection was in my offices. By the time I retired from my last job at Florida Atlantic University, only my cookbooks and some very personal books were at home. The following images are of my bookshelves in my last office as Dean of University Libraries at Florida Atlantic University. I left 95% pf my books to the library or to colleagues there, including most of the cookbooks I had at home.

My current physical library is contained in one small bookcase and consists primarily of a few cookbooks, some books with sentimental value, a few titles I consider seminal, and some mementos. The story this bookcase tells me is of a pared down life but with a focus on travel, cooking, and intellectual and emotional challenge. Another story it tells me is that I have given up on the illusion of control. The books are not organized by genre, by author, or by title. Like my life, they are a jumble, with connections that may not be obvious.

My reading now is almost entirely digital, either on my phone, computer or my e-reader. This is due to my declining vision from Fuchs Dystrophy. Except for a favorite mystery author, my reading is eclectic, moving between fiction, memoirs, popular science, and social work. My love of the study of foreign languages seems to be in the past, although I still love a well-written travel book or books about living in other countries.

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February 1, 2023 · 10:48 pm

Portugal, October 1995

In October 1995, my ex-husband and I traveled to Portugal for about a week. Leaving from Indianapolis, we first landed in London where we stayed with friends outside London for a few days before flying on to Portugal.

I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. I spoke fluent Brazilian Portuguese (from when I traveled to and lived in Brazil for part of 1979 and 1980) and I watched the Portuguese news every night for about two months before our trip to get my ear accustomed to the different accent. I did not expect it to be like Brazil, but I was surprised — and dismayed — at just how different the people were. The people I met in Brazil were boisterous, outgoing, and full of life. The people in Portugal seemed surly, unhappy, and resentful. I had been hoping for connection and instead faced rejection and hostility almost everywhere. I was very naive and ill-informed. We were so ignorant that we didn’t even know that a major election was taking place the day of our arrival in Lisbon. Perhaps if we had been better informed and prepared, the trip would have been more enjoyable.

We flew from London to Faro, the southernmost city and capital of the district of the same name, in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. We took a high-speed train from Faro to Lisbon. I remember being surprised that we were crossing a bridge over the Tagus River to get into the city. I was clearly not a very well prepared traveler.

Faro was a lovely port city and we should have enjoyed it. But I can’t say that we did.

Faro
Faro
Faro

I don’t remember the exact date we arrived in Portugal. All I have to guide me is my memory of what was happening at the time and one postcard dated October 3, 1995 that I had sent to my father.

Postcard sent to my father, dated October 3, 1995. I got this postcard back after my father died. He had cataloged all the postcards I had ever sent him and the misspelled label at the top is his.
Postcard sent to my father, dated October 3, 1995

I do know that we arrived in Lisbon on October 1, 1995, the day that the Socialist Party won a major victory in the National Assembly. I know this because we were out on the streets that night as the crowds celebrated this massive shift in power. We had to ask people what was going on. I remember how happy people were as they marched, paraded, and celebrated that night.

These were the days when we had only an old camera and carried 110 film with us, so I have very few pictures from this trip. And I wasn’t smart enough to keep a journal of all the places we visited. I mostly just have impressions. I wish I had been more aware and had kept a journal and had taken more pictures. Portugal was beautiful and I feel like this week was a huge missed opportunity.

I remember visiting the Cidade Alta and the Cidade Baixa – the upper and lower city in Lisbon. I remember walking up hills and being exhausted. We saw azulejos, a form of Spanish and Portuguese painted tin-glazed ceramic tilework whose tradition dates from the days that the Arabs controlled the Iberian peninsula. I remember going to a port bar, whose menu had hundreds of different kinds of port wine – although we had to work hard to find a selection that they were actually serving. I had my first white port at this bar. I remember eating out at a several restaurants where the food was excellent but where we were treated with what seemed like indifference (if we were lucky) and usually rudeness. It was very different from our experiences in England, France and Spain. My impression was that the Portuguese people were struggling economically, that they were the poor cousins of the European Union at the time, and that they resented their dependence on foreign tourists. I owe it to myself — and them — to read up on Portuguese history and try to understand this period of time in Portugal.

Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon

One day, we decided to visit the beach town of Tavira. We took a local train from Faro and then, from the train station in Tavira, a bus to the beach. On the bus we encountered tourists from Germany, England, Australia, Spain and elsewhere in Europe. We were the only Americans. The bus driver was rude and surly to all of us. We chatted on the bus among ourselves and bonded over how unpleasant the people we had encountered were. I gathered from this experience that it wasn’t just us and it wasn’t just that we were Americans that resulted in the consistent unpleasantness we experienced. As I mentioned, I spoke fluent Portuguese – fluent enough that my husband had to drag me away from the ticket booth in the Tavira train station when I had finally had enough of the gratuitous nastiness and got into a heated argument with the woman selling tickets at the train station! (That was the only time in our years of travel throughout Europe that my ex had to control ME, as I normally had to drag him away from embarrassing situations of his creation on our various travels.) We got to the beach, looked around, and returned to Faro pretty quickly.

Tavira

I have never been back to Portugal. I know many people who have been to Portugal and had a lovely time. If I were younger, perhaps I would go back and give it another try. It seems unlikely that I will venture there again at this time of my life, though. If I am able to travel to Europe again, I will go to France, Spain, or Germany. Se Deus quiser! (God willing)

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