If you're ever in Hendaye, a pleasant ocean side town if there ever
was one, just across from Hondariba, here are two good addresses to
visit.

Good things to eat abound at the Charcuterie Perrin, 10  rue des Pins
(about three blocks from the beach). Plenty of local products, like
sausages and pâtés, but also cooked dishes like stuffed fish filets,
delicious meat balls in an original sauce, curried or roast chicken,
and most important smiles from the nice folks that run it.

Now to the serious quest for local wines. Le Caviste du Marché, 20 bis
Avenue des Mimosas, has just opened his doors. Stop by and talk to
this fellow, he knows the local producers, many of whose wines you
can't find outside the area. This summer, a regional chocolate
specialty house will be opening right next door. Something for
everyone.

Hendaye has another unique quality: without exception, the taxi
drivers are true ambassadors of the region. The first one took out his
iPhone and proudly showed off beautiful sunset photos on the beach and
shots around town. Each time we got in a taxi, the driver was helpful
and pleasant, offering up any information you'd need in a way a friend
of a friend might do.

As much as I'm anxious to get home, I will always retain this feeling
of welcome from the various folks at Hendaye.

:r

(download)

Click here to download:

Meet_the_Locals_Hendaye_Pays_B.zip (121 KB)

Continued from part 1 & 2 of My "Night" with Gala Dali

The gig was in some large venue, I'd say a few thousand people and the cigarette lighter thing at the end. Impressive. No Gala before the gig, none after. Well, when I invited her, I thought she wouldn't show, so I wasn't surprised.  When you play music in front of thousands of people who make a huge light show of tiny flames at the end, you don't think about some middle-aged lady you'd invited on a lark to stop by, anyway. Several of us went to hang out with some people we had met at the concert, and here's where things got foggy. A lot of drinking went on, no drugs, not that alcohol isn't a drug, but my recollection of how things happened is gone. Some of the highlights have stayed with me all these years.

First we somehow found ourselves at the seaside and got on a small fishing boat. I recall a lot of rapid Spanish and suddenly we were headed out in the harbor. A while later, as charming as this was, everyone was getting like "ok, we better go back" because it kinda looked like we were gonna go fishing seriously and we did have other cities to play in! While I don't know what the fishermen made of all this, they did bring us back to the shore.

We then somehow got to a bar. Funny how it always gets back to a bar. So this bar, and it was now maybe 3 AM, is filled with the kind of people you'd see in a 40's movie set: sailors in striped long sleeve T-shirts, huge brawls starting and ending with no one watching or caring. We had a bunch of drinks, and left, passing in an alley, by a bakery where someone went in and brought out a bunch of fresh rolls. Christ, this should have been a credit card ad: trip to Spain: $800. "Fresh-baked bread in a dark alley near the sea, priceless."

It was 8 AM when we returned to the hotel. I went up to my room and its unmussed bed for my guitar. On the way down I stopped at Gala's room and knocked. Gala opened the door in a nightgown and bade me come in with an arm whose palm went in an arc from me towards the inside of her room.

"So, you couldn't come and see us play last night?" I said, trying to be cool.
She said "Oh, I was there and after, I see Dali and tell him of your great success." Then she took some hotel stationary and wrote several lines on it. She pointed to the paper and said, "You come for lunch sometime. You take a train to here" indicating the name of the place they lived on the Costa Brava "and then you take taxi here. I pay for taxi."

The note she signed, an invitation to come and visit Gala and Salvador Dali in Cadaquès, a note that for all I know could have been sold at auction for the price of a very fine bottle of wine, was stolen out of my car in the late 70's.

The unforgettable closing line though, the one that has rung throughout the decades since the  incident, and the last words to me from the 80 year-old Gala Dali were: "But if you rich... I no pay taxi!"

I remember this story as one in a collection of things I've lived that  are a little out of the ordinary, but I'll bet Gala herself had a  million of these interludes with men half her age if Wikipedia is to  be believed.

Photo: Mundo Desconcertante (Jorge Louzao Penalva)

Salvador Dali Museum, which I would have had a private visit to had I gone. Damn!

In the early 1980's, I applied for a "permanent" residence visa in France. I recall the visit to the police station, the cop asking me questions and hammering away with two fingers on a typewriter. Up until that time I had never voted in any election, so I wasn't exactly a "political activist".

I remember the periodic visits to renew my work permit in various locations and what the crowded halls of those places were like. The quiet desperation (of which I was fortunately not saddled with). The faces, the accents, and the civil servants doing what must be a horrible job, eventually giving in to their own frustration. I also recall radical changes to immigration law that would definitely affect me.

At one time, I wrote tot he US embassy to find out about dual nationality. I recevied back a letter - this was pre-Internet. That letter had a lot of admonishing statements in it, the main thrust being "While it may seem convenient when living permanently outside the United States to do so, you may lose your American citizenship for several reasons if you ask for citizenship in a foreign country". There was no definitive answer, just several cases, many of which seemed to be innocent people who suddenly were told they were no longer citizens of the US. This letter gave me pause for several years. I don't but what we were told as kids, "greatest GD country in the world!" because there is no greatest country. There may be a mightiest country, but it was brought to its knees more than once, and unless you see Viet Nam as a victory, its might wasn't enough to vanquish. SOmetimes, often in fact, we go kill tons of people for the wrong reasons.

I finally asked for, and one year later was given French citizenship after residing here for a couple of decades. It is a matter of convenience, of not having to renew documents or deal with changes to immigration laws.

After doing the weekly conference for over 2 1/2 years, several regulars had a Chance to meet up at Astricon in Phoenix last week. I think everyone came away happy to have been there. Two of them had the courage to bring their wives, something I might do next time, depending on where it is held. Thanks to all who participated! http://VUC.me for video and more info on VUC, the largest live voip conference with an average of 35 callers and thousands of downloads. Sent from high above Chicago.

Edited from ORD

Gimmie a ticket for an airplane

This is when I understood why people said "No one flies to Milan!". We landed in Milan and then the flight to Pescara was cancelled. I couldn't understand what was being said on the public address, so I found the Alitalia window and tried to find out. "Why was the flight cancelled?" I asked, and the woman there put her palm down and made a gesture like a plane flying, first climbing up and then tumbling rapidly down to crash. Then she somehow got the notion of fog to me, which if you think for a second, is not easy to convey without words. We found someone who spoke French or English, and then came the killer: "This ticket is expired, I can't help you." The "Not valid before..." was being understood as not valid after. Anyway, after a long argument and getting three or four other people to come and look, I was issued a train ticket and somehow got the bus to go to the train station and then somehow found the train. What ensued was Twilight Zone material.

Ain't got time to take a fast train

The train: very crowded in spite of the fact that we were leaving late at night. Although it wasn't chickens and goats in the cars, that is the image that I had then and that I retrieve now, total chaos, it looked like the 1920's with ethnic costumes the likes of which I'd never seen, someplace totally out of my time. Only one person spoke anything close to English or French. I had expected to find French speakers, since we aren't that far from France, but I never did in Italy. The English speaker and I exchanged a few words from time to time but he was tired and I didn't want to bother him. There were a lot of workers getting off at tiny hamlets here and there, and large women in all black. This was the Adriatic coast.

Lonely days are gone

I had to make a connection and the stop was at 3AM. I tripled checked and asked my guy and a conductor, yes: I was to sit in an empty station (I think this was Pescara) from 3AM to about 5:45 when my train came. I sat on my suitcase in the dark station. The lounge was closed and no one was around, there was almost no light. I needed to go to the restroom and saw two doors, but there were only words, no symbols to make the sexes clear. "What the hell, it's 4AM!" but I lucked out and got the one with urinals. While I was relieving myself, I heard a dull, rhythmic thumping. When I went outside, I couldn't hear anything. Since I had hours with nothing to do, at about 4:30, I went back near the rest rooms and heard the thumping. I follwed my ears around the corner and way down at the other end of the platform, there was a window all lit up, invisible from where I'd been sitting on my suitcase. I went over towards the light. "I'll be damned!" It was a café with probably 50 people in it, huge counters of pastries, meats, sandwiches, and everyone having a great time with their drinks, wine, beer, coffee and a jukebox playing "The Letter" by Joe Cocker. I stepped in, grabbed some food and went to the register to pay and order coffee. Not a single person looked at me or in my direction even. Now we're going from Rod Serling to Stephen King. I was given coffee, but for some reason, they wouldn't let me pay anything, and went over to lean on a post (no seats available) and look around.

to be continued

I'm a comin' home

Places: Minneapolis, Bellevue, Seattle, Berkeley, Mill Valley, Fresno,Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Iowa City, San Antonio, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Manhattan Beach, Silverlake, Montecito Heights, Simi Valley, Van Nuys, Venice, Paris, Bordeaux. Every place I've lived has a separate and distinct vibe. What creates a vibe?

Air quality and odors, noise level, population density, architecture,advertising, language, regional accents, expressions of people on the street (where there are streets and people on them). Also, the relations you have with people from those you pass on the street to neighbors to those with whom you live. The look you got on the street in say, Mill Valley where every single resident would say "hello" and smile and nod to everyone they met would be so much different than the experience in Chicago, L.A. or Paris.

I recall the first time I set foot in Paris, for example, in the late 1970's. The first sensory impression was the very heavy odor of diesel fumes. Paris is very polluted by cars. Cars bring noise, too, and myfirst morning in the Hotel Boëtie, a symphony of car horns was my wakeup call. Paris is densely populated, so there's lots of street noise and activity as well. Delivery people calling out to each other, buses, pedestrians. Out on that street, when you pass a café, you can smell the espresso. Often, walking by a bakery you can smell the bread or croissants fresh from the oven. All this in spite of the diesel fumes.You used to see teams of men sweeping the water by in the gutters with"brooms" with bottoms which, although plastic, were green and made to look like branches in a fractal sort of way.

Life in Paris was radically different than the one I had left in L.A.and every day was a new discovery. The first days in the hotel, before Ifound a place to rent, were quite an adventure. Much of my French practice was done in the tiny bar there in the hotel, because I quickly discovered that in order to overcome the sensation of expressing oneself at the level of a four year old, some kind of anti-inhibition method was needed. Either sex or alcohol work well for this, but at that point in time I was limited to the latter, so in the evenings I often spoke tobusiness people passing through. It was great fun, and my French improved considerably during the first week by the total immersion. The staff was great, too. At night, there was an Egyptian student who patiently helped me improve my vocabulary in areas the books don't usually cover. During the day, the Spanish clerk was friendly and helpful and the maids were adorable.

In the second week, a tech was sent to help me and he was ready to accept the offer of a "girlfriend" that one of the night staff had been suggesting we try since he'd arrived. The call was made to arrange this.We were sitting in the bar when a lovely Eurasian woman came and sat down next to me with a big smile. She asked in French about my astrology. Since I'd lived through the L.A. days of people asking that, I should have had no trouble understanding it but I knew she was D's "girlfriend". I will call her W for woman. Here's the rest of that conversation in my improving by the moment, but still not ready for prime time French:

W: "What's your sign, baby? "

R: "I do not have any children."

W: "No I mean like Goat, Fish..."

R: "I do not have animals, either."
W: "What is you as-tr-lo-gi-ca-l sign?"

R: "Ah. Yes. I have been a Cancer, but it is only that my friend who he telephoned for yourself. You are for me not here."
W: "So, how does one do?"

R: "Fine. How do you do?"

W: "No, I meant, how can we make the switch politely?"

R: "What Switch. The light switch?"

W: "Are you being stupid on purpose, or what?" (Smiling)

R: "Ok, I see what you are meaning. I will erect myself and move myself to the bar of whiskey. Then you will move yourself over on the leather thing to be next to my friend."

When they went upstairs, I felt lonely but oddly fulfilled by mylinguistic experience. I like the idea that languages used to be called "tongues". That's what ties together the experience of the four of usand makes it coherent. I'd never forget Paris. Maybe that's why I moved back and lived there for over 25 years.