RAIN IN SPAIN
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| The entrance door to 16 Calle Aguilas. The sidewalk is a foot and a half wide. |
From the roof of my
friend Bonnie’s palacio (actually, she has an apartment within a palacio) on the Calle Aguilas we could look over all of central
Seville (Sevilla). The sky was
heavy with clouds. It hadn’t
rained since we arrived that midday, but the odds for taking along umbrellas when
we walked in the city later seemed pretty high. Rain was to play around with us
for much of the week.
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| Heavy clouds over Seville, from the roof of 16 Calle Aguilas. |
Beautiful spaces
like this palacio–marble columns and floors, a fountain in the atrium and plenty
of ornamental grillwork–are sights usually only glimpsed when someone happens
to emerge through a tiny one-person-at-a-time door (think pet door for humans)
onto a foot and a half of sidewalk.
The small door is part of an immense twenty-foot or so double door, big
enough to have once admitted vast companies of one thing or another. On the roofs of these places there can
be surprises, like a spiral staircase to the uppermost roof garden and perhaps
a swimming pool as we saw at Bonnie’s.
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| Looking in from the entrance |
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| The living room of Bonnie's apartment |
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| One of the streets in the labyrinth that is old Seville |
On what I think was
our first (rainy) day we visited the Infanta Louisa, a private hospital. Not sightseeing, alas, but to get some
meds for an incipient urinary tract infection Ken was developing. A TV monitor in the filled small
waiting area showed the numbers waiting patients were assigned. The loudspeaker called out numbers, and
finally ours–ciento cincuenta y nueve!––a reception that brought to mind my last visit to the motor vehicle bureau.
We met with a young Cuban doctor who spoke a bit of English (although
Bonnie was our translator), picked up a prescription, paid with a credit card
and left.
In a day or two Ken
was feeling better.
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| Easter week processions were mostly over, but for the procession of this particular group. The "float" is moved by men underneath the cloth who carry it on the back of their necks. Small rectangular openings in the front allow them to see (barely) where they are going. The float is heavy. |
On another rainy
day shortly thereafter–a no kidding around rain this time–it seemed a good day
to visit a particularly beautiful medieval convent, the convent of Santa Paula
inhabited by cloistered Jerónimas nuns (followers
of St. Jerome). It
dates from 1475, the current facade from 1503. Like many other such ancient buildings in Sevilla, it
combines several styles: Mudéjar (Andalusian
muslim), Gothic and Renaissance, the chapel altarpiece a baroque creation of
1730. It is chock full of art: paintings, decorative and sacred
objects, and–oddly, to me–a goodly number of dioramas created by nuns in the 17th and 18th centuries. These
must have taken ages to build, but obviously time was something they had in
abundance.
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| Behind bars: the interior courtyard of Santa Paula |
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| Inside one of the rooms in Santa Paula |
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| John the Baptist head (sculpture or ceramic?) |
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| One of the nuns' 18th century dioramas. This was the largest. |
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| Detail from the above diorama |
Earlier we
had stopped in at another cloistered convent a few doors down the Calle Aguilas
where the nuns sell sweets that they make themselves to raise money. It seems such an odd transaction in the
present day, finding pastries on shelves behind an old iron grill, pulling a
chain to summon help, and then seeing a small friendly person in full habit
emerge to take the cookies you select, collect the cash, and retreat out of
sight. Many convents like this one
have fallen on hard times with fewer young women–certainly fewer of those with
means–wanting to become nuns, much less cloistered nuns. I was stuck by the short stature of
every nun we came across compared with women in the general public. It was my guess that they had once been
members of very poor rural families and perhaps undernourished as children.
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| Selling sweets in a cloistered convent |
DOING THE MACARENA
Ken, one-time altar
boy, lapsed Catholic, self-declared atheist, doesn’t react well to heavy
religiosity. Every time I pointed
out some little scene in one of the convent dioramas he murmured something like
“uh” and gave only a cursory look.
Then he leaned a against a table and said “I need to sit down.” There was a bench near the
entrance, about the only thing I saw that someone could sit on. Surrounded by several visitors on their
way out and the nun who was showing us around, Ken passed out cold.
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| Ken contemplating an altarpiece moments before he collapsed |
A man who appeared from nowhere felt
for his pulse. He gave us a concerned look. The nun was in tears. An ambulance was called. A long minute passed. It was frightening. Then Ken came around. The ambulance arrived. First rule of Spanish emergency
care: only one person in the
ambulance. Better, we agreed, to
have someone with Ken who spoke Spanish, so Bonnie went along and I followed later in a taxi. The nun said she would pray for
us.
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| The nun in charge of showing guests around. She is talking with Bonnie minutes before Ken collapsed |
Ken, Bonnie,
and I reunited in the huge emergency waiting area of the Macarena hospital. As a hospital connected with the Seville medical school, it seemed like a sound choice. I found Ken lying on a gurney, and feeling relatively chipper. He had not yet been seen by
anyone. We quickly realized that here,
instead of the nurse/doctor/aide/whomever visiting the patient, the patient on
the gurney visits the room of the nurse/doctor/aide/whomever. In other words, you sit in the waiting
room next to your patient’s gurney.
The patient’s name is announced on the public address system along with
the room number you need to visit.
You meet with someone in one room, return to the waiting area, then wait
for the patient’s name to be called again and move to another room. These announcements were constant. Signs on the wall urged silence and
tranquility–no yapping on cell phones–but given the constant announcements and
orderlies rushing around and occasionally yelling, it was anything but tranquil.
The atmosphere felt so much like
an airport lounge I half expected to hear flight announcements. We waited.
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| Ken at the Macarena, on his gurney, looking pretty good |
We wheeled Ken into room 9 (a tiny
office space with desk, a couple of chairs and barely room for the gurney) where
we were asked a few questions, some irrelevant, by two people, one of whom was
a doctor, although we weren’t sure which one. We described how he had
fainted. There was a half-hearted
question about medications that I only half answered. We mentioned he had colorectal cancer. No questions
concerned his overall health, and so far no one had taken his temperature or
checked his vital signs, usually the first order of business. Back to the waiting room, gurney in tow. I don’t remember how many consulting
rooms we visited, but I know we went into room 9 twice. Then, finally, some sort of decision
had apparently been made by someone (no idea who) that Ken be admitted for
observation, as he was moved to observation room 2. Hours had gone by.
The door to
room 2 was impenetrable. No window. The door was posted “Authorized Personnel
Only.” Time went by. We stood outside room 2. We waited. And waited. What were they doing in there? Is there something
dangerous going on that you have to be authorized? There was no place to sit. No doctor
came to talk with us. Who was the doctor anyway? Ken probably had no idea where we were either.
Did I
mention that the day we left for Spain Ken couldn’t find his wallet? We had done a frantic house and pants
pockets search but came up empty.* Ultimately we left without his wallet. Here in the Macarena he might as well have been a homeless person, a man without a country:
no identification, no home address, no money, no credit cards, no hearing to speak of and no Spanish. Plus a faulty memory. I had to let Ken know I was nearby. i decided to do the forbidden, and opened the door. (“No
one allowed…”) Ken was there, resting on his gurney, and two orderlies (doctors?
nurses?) were sitting next to him, chatting. Other than that, nothing whatever was happening. We learned they were simply waiting for word to move
Ken to another bed. We told Ken we
had to leave but that we would be back that night.
Ken’s faulty memory
is probably the reason the doctor we saw when we arrived that night for
visiting hours (I should say visiting minutes,
15 precisely that we almost missed entirely as we were late) thought Ken had
hit his head “because he had amnesia.”
Amnesia? Bonnie suggested the doctor read the
damn chart. The head injury theory
might explain why they did a brain scan on top of the EKG, the blood test, the
urine test, the x-ray and whatever else.
(Please, I thought, let this cost
less than $5,000!)
The next morning
Bonnie and I prepared for our 1 o’clock visiting minutes. Then at 11 o’clock we got a phone
call: “Come immediately, the
doctor needs to talk to you!”
Oh my God.
No problem! You see, the doctor is only available to
speak to patients’ families at 11!
There was no emergency. The
doctor, a personage we hadn’t seen before, wanted only to explain to us the
test results. Nothing of significance seemed to have been unearthed. (He didn’t mention Ken’s underlying cancer. Maybe he didn’t
know about it?) In fact, Ken
was to be released. The doctor
gave us copies of all the test results and we were free to go. He handed me three
low-dose aspirin with solemn instructions to have Ken take these at mealtimes. (I still wondered:
why did he faint? Had I missed something?) We ushered Ken into a wheelchair and pushed him to a spot near the
front door while Bonnie went off into the nether reaches of the hospital to
locate the bill.
After some time Bonnie
reappeared with a hospital financial person in tow. The good news:
the bill was an amazingly low $450. The bad news: it had to paid right away, in cash. In my wallet I had only 200 euros. The financial person, who spoke no
English, was to accompany me to the bank across the boulevard so that I could
withdraw cash and pay the hospital so that we could take Ken home. (Reminds you of a scam, doesn't it?) It
was, once again, pouring some serious rain. Huddling under umbrellas, we crossed the boulevard and walked to the bank, Bonnie coming along to translate. At the bank ATM my credit card was immediately declined.
(What could happen in a week? Why should I have bothered to notify the credit card company I was going to Spain?) We tried it at the bank next door,
me and the finance lady. Declined. The atmosphere was getting tense. I was convinced she thought I intended to defraud the hospital. Or possibly
she was thinking she would lose her job if she didn’t get the hospital’s money. Out into the rain again and back to
bank number one. (I’m thinking about Ken, without
identification or ability to communicate in Spanish, waiting alone across the
street, abandoned…) I thought, well, I’ll
use my bank debit card. No
problem. Call me peculiar, but it
happens I remember my debit PIN in two ways: my finger placement on the keypad and by 4 letters (not
numbers). All the keypads I use are
arranged 1, 2, 3, first row, 4, 5, 6, second row, etc. Not this one.
The first row was 1, 4, 7, the second 2 ,5, 8. My fingers froze.
I could not remember, figure out, or type the password. In fact I couldn’t even think. One more try and the ATM would lock up
my card. (I’ve got to do this because I have to ransom Ken, waiting all alone
back there in the Macarena!) At
the critical moment I didn’t have the sense to look to look at the keypad of my
iPhone that would have revealed the letters that go with the numbers of my
PIN. The keypad locked up. The financial lady's patience was at a complete end, and she finally concluded (as Bonnie translated) that we could take Ken home as long as I swore to wire the money as
soon as we got home.** I swore.
We rescued Ken from
the Macarena entrance, taxied back to Bonnie’s palacio, had some wine, and went
to a flamenco show that night, all three of us.
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| Flamenco dresses and other traditional dress are sold everywhere. Seville has strong cultural traditions. Families get together for days of dancing, horse riding, and feasting. |
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| With one of Bonnie's friends in the Plaza Alfalfa, after the Maracarena |
No more convents for Ken!
AFTER THE RAIN
The weather in
Seville the week we were there–intermittent sunshine and rain showers with
occasional downpours–mirrored our own experiences. Awful times, crazy times, usually accompanied by rain, were thankfully more
or less equaled by good times and sunshine, at least when it mattered.
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| One of the many really neat bars on our street |
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| Another nice little nearby bar |
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| They compost in Seville! |
While Ken was in
the hospital Bonnie and I hung out in the Bar Alfalfa (on Calle Aguilas, where just about everything was located) for wifi. ("Weefee" in Seville.) We
visited the Palacio Pilatos on the same street but in the opposite direction. This Palacio is also a mixture of Mudéjar and Renaissance architecture, dating primarily from
the 16th century. It’s
forms are graceful, its gardens lovely.
I went there a second time later on with Ken. It was a preview on a smaller scale of the magnificent Alcázar that I was able to see one sunny
morning.
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| The interior facade of the Palacio Pilatos |
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| The upper floor is furnished for family members of the original nobility if/when they visit |
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| Gardens of the Palacio Pilatos |
A World Heritage
Site, the Alcázar is said to be
the most beautiful palace in Spain and one of the most outstanding examples of mudéjar architecture.
It’s located at one of the
loveliest plazas in Seville, near the enormous cathedral and the Archive of the
Indies, the home of the documents of the earliest Spanish conquistadors and
explorers.
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| The Archives, the cathedral, the Alcázar are all on this fabulous plaza |
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| A small part of the enormous cathedral |
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| Inside the Archive of the Indies |
The Arab Almohad
Caliphate that originated in Morocco expanded to southern Spain in 1172 and it was
around this time that the Alcázar
was begun. Rulers over the
centuries added, built over, and rebuilt many sections of the palace throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, right up to the 19th century. It is impressively preserved. The harmony of architecture and gardens
is exquisite. It was the
splendor of these extensive gardens that I especially wanted to see.
They were built not just to supply food for the residents of the palace (there are orange trees heavy with fruit) but clearly for aesthetic reasons. Water is everywhere in the form of little channels, jets, ponds and pools. It’s hard to capture the beauty in mere words. You need to hear the sounds of water, smell the scents of the flowers, hear the peacocks, and feel the sun. It is a sensory experience.
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| The baths at the Alcazar; a cool rainwater channel just below the garden level |
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| NOT THE ALCAZAR: A modern sweeping thing (known locally as the mushroom) in the old city. |
LESSONS LEARNED
How to make Tinto
Verrano (summer wine): Take half a
cup of red wine and mix with half a cup of lemon or lime soda, pour over ice,
and toss in a half lemon slice. Very popular.
Tapas are
terrific. Make a meal of tapa,
wine and dessert and at current prices it might set you back $10, maybe more,
maybe less. Go big and it could be
$25.
Remember your damn
PINs.
*Later found. In a pants pocket we hadn’t checked.
**After
I came to my senses about the password, Bonnie wisely suggested we deposit the
money for the bill in a branch of the same bank the hospital uses, only this
bank was right down the street. And
that, after an hour of further Kafkaesque hassles––"the bank can only deposit the money if you are a member of the Spanish health system; but we need to deposit the money because we are not members of the Spanish health system, etc., etc"––is what we did.
