Monthly Archives: September 2009

9. World Cup ’98

I was on my way to continue research in the National Library in Santiago, Chile when I heard the announcement that Chile had made it through to the second round of the World Cup games.  That was a very big deal since the country had been banned from the Games for fifteen years because of a minor infraction(a fan had killed a Referee).  The whole street broke into cheers, confetti appeared from nowhere and everyone began partying in the streets.  I was walking behind a woman and her little boy who was waving the national flag and singing the Ricky Martin song which was the theme for the year, when, all of a sudden, people started screaming and running to try to get into the stores before the metal curtains came down and were locked by terrified store owners.  Down the street I could see the anti terrorist troops riding their horses towards the crowd and behind them huge gray tanks with water cannons which were spraying people with water and tear gas laced with pepper.  I started coughing and crying like everyone else.  I wrapped my muffler around my mouth to be able to breathe a little until I managed to run behind the main buildings.  I made it to the rear entrance of the library.  The doors were officially closed, but the guards recognized me as a regular researcher and let me in.  I ran to my sanctuary in the microfilm room in the basement and tried to continue my work. I think it was that day that I came across my most valuable find of the research trip.  It was a full-color caricature of Valle-Inclán, the Spanish author whom I have been studying for a 100 years.  To my knowledge, I was the first person to have seen it since it was published in 1910 while Valle was on a tour of South America with his wife, the actress Josefina Blanco who was part of the María Guerrero-Díaz de Mendoza theater Company.  But even that find was not enough to make me forget what was happening outside.   I had no idea how I was going to find Professor Entwell in all the confusion, but, luckily, he found me in the basement and we took several buses and a taxi to finally make it back to the Chilean couple’s home where we staying.  We watched the news that night to see what had happened down town, but there was not one single mention of any problem and the next day there was not even a scrap of confetti left on the street.  It gave us the ieerie feeling that nothing had changed in Chile since the old Pinochet days when all “disturbances ” due to sports or politics were brutally silenced

10. The Road to Coroico

When I told Professor Entwell that we needed to go to the lovely town on the Bolivian side of the Amazon called Coroico, I explained that we should see another part of Bolivia, not just the Andean highlands in order to get a more complete view of that wonderfully complex country.  I neglected to tell him, however, that our bible, the Lonely Planet Guidebook, had named the way to Coroico as the most dangerous road in the world. More than 180 people had been killed when their vehicles fell off the still unfinished road down the cliff towards the river below. I did make sure, that we did as Lonely Planet recommended and got tickets on a minibus which was supposed to fall over the cliff less often than regular sized buses.  At first the ride up into the highlands above La Paz seemed very uneventful.   Then our driver stopped to let everyone pee over the side of the road before we started our descent towards the jungle floor.  We noticed that the driver threw some bones to the wild dogs along the road and poured a little aguardiente on the tires of the minibus.  He was appeasing the guardians of the road and blessing his vehicle for the next part of our trip. And we were going to need that blessing!  The asphalt turned abruptly to dirt and the highway became a one-way road. barely wide enough for one vehicle let alone one that needed to pass.  On our right side, there rose a steep cliff covered with dusty vines.  On our left, the road fell off over another cliff. An occasional waterfall ran under the bus making the road a little slippery.  Then it began to rain.   But, the scariest part of the trip was when a truck, not just any old truck but one of those huge Japanese work trucks with its bed full of other travelers, would approach us, from the opposite direction, determined to pass .The two drivers would get out to use their foot to test the ground to see how close they could get to the edge without falling off.  Then everyone would hold their breath as the two vehicles inched their way past each other. And every once in awhile a lone cyclist would come racing down the hill crisscrossing the road between all the vehicles lined up behind each other.   Professor Entwell could not open his eyes.  I couldn’t close mine. We told each other that we had had a good life and were ready to go if it had to be.  But we were happy to finish the trip alive, that part at least. Coroico is indeed a lovely place, green and blooming if a little damp.  Our” hippy style” hotel had a balcony overlooking the valley and we could hear the student band practicing in the school below.  The food was good even though we didn’t feel like eating too much.  I don’t know why, but we spent only one night there and the next day we started back up the road to La Paz.  This time we took a seat farther towards the back so we wouldn’t have to see the road.  We had just gotten more or less comfortable, when the driver stopped to pick up two other passengers.  One was a very large woman whose multiple skirts, worn one on top of the other in the indigenous style   made her larger still. She was bound and determined to take her huge sack of potatoes with her on the trip.  She argued with the driver and yelled at him until he finally agreed to load the potatoes on top of the bus which caused the roof to bend dangerously close to our heads.  The other traveler seemed to be the big woman’s daughter She was carrying a baby on her back. We thought we might have to put up with some crying during the trip, but the woman nursed her baby and it slept the entire way back.  This time, we were old pros and were not at all worried about making it back in one piece.  We were even telling a new traveling companion about our adventures.  The challenge on this part of the trip was the dust. that rose from the very dry road.  There were two choices, open the windows and choke on the dust or close the windows and choke on the odor of bodies which didn’t have the luxury of being bathed very often.  I honestly don’t remember which one we chose, but I do remember very clearly returning to our hotel in La Paz and taking a long hot bath.

11. Provence in the Andes.

The town of Aguascalientes, Peru at least the way it looked in 1998, confirmed our notion that things in Latin America, at least to our eyes, look like they are either in the process of being built or of falling down.  After spending a glorious pair of days in Machu Picchu, we wanted to have dinner at a restaurant that Professor Entwell had overheard someone raving about on the bus coming down from the Inca citadel . The Prof thought he heard the name of the restaurant to be “Indianapolis.”  But the owner of our little unfinished hotel in an unfinished street had never heard of the place. Finally he realized that the Professor was talking about El Indio Feliz(The Happy Indian) and he insisted on leading us there by the hand since it was hard to navigate the dark streets which looked especially unfriendly at that hour.  When we went into the little building that looked very unassuming from outside, it was like being in Provence, with the signature  blue and yellow  pottery, flowers and table linens.  The Indio Feliz was run by a Bolivian woman married to a French man.  They hoped to finish the upstairs oneday and turn the place into a BandB.  To help them with that goal they had placed the ceramic bulls of Pucará on the rafters pointing to the next part to be worked on.  It was too early for the French style meal which was to be served at the French-style hour of 9:00, so we decided to order a drink beforehand. We ordered a pizco sour made with Peruvian bitters, very high in alcohol which we expected to come in a small glass like we had been having in Cuzco.  Instead it came in  very large tall glasses.  It was delicious and when we went outside for a walk, Aguascalientes had been transformed!  The people were so friendly, every shop was beautiful and the town was totally enchanting. We finished the evening with a fabulous dinner and arrived back at our lovely hotel with some beautiful jewelry from one of the beautiful shops.

3. BYOB

On our honeymoon in Greece, we had returned to Athens after visiting the islands and found that every hotel in the city was full.  After fruitless searching, we decided to split up.  One of us would look in one direction, and the other in the other direction until someone found a place for us to stay.  The Professor was the first to have some luck and signaled me to come join him.  As I walked in, with my suitcase, I noticed that the several women grouped around the receptionist’s station seemed to be pointing and chuckling about me.  But knowing that that is a common perception of someone who doesn’t speak the language other people are using, I didn’t let it bother me and I paid attention, instead to  Professor Entwell. He was pointing out that not only were we lucky to find a room at this late hour but that it was incredibly cheap.  As we carried our bags up the rickety stairs, we noticed tell -tale sounds coming from some of the rooms and realized that we were in a brothel.  The girls had probably been laughing at us because the Professor had invented his own version of BYOB (Bring your own booze), making it “Bring your own babe”.

4. It’s Greek to me

On that same trip to Greece, I proudly announced to the Professor that as a sorority girl I had learned the Greek alphabet and could guide us back to the street our hotel was on.  But when we tried to retrace our steps without any luck, I realized that the sign I had memorized meant “One Way street”

5. DREAM HOUSE

One of the first things that attracted me to Professor Entwell, other than the fact that he was handsome, liked to dance and was sophisticated enough to order a brandy Alexander, was his interest in architecture.  As a girl I had spent many happy hours in my father’s architecture office studying plans for his houses and making up my own.  So I recognized in the Professor another fan of fine buildings.  One of the Prof’s  favorite subjects was to tell me about  Anselm House in Philadelphia  where he had spent time in the Christian Brothers’ seminary.  The house was built in the 1920s in the Tudor style favored by the Main Line families.   This house was a copy of a real English Tudor House called Compton Wynyates. The  Philadelphia house was a wedding present to the Wiedener daughter who was marrying her tennis coach. (Those are the same Wiedeners who gave the money for  the Harvard library which bears their name.)  Professor Entwell would lovingly describe the linen fold walnut wainscoting in the dining room and the landscaping.  There was a hill of daffodils that bloomed in the spring and a weeping cherry trained to blossom over a reflecting pond.

I was charmed and the house became part of my fantasy life.

Soon after we were married, we visited Philadelphia and the Professor offered to show me The House., so we drove out to see it.   Even though the Tudor style carriage house at the entrance looked a little shabby, the Prof me assured me as we drove down the long winding driveway, that any moment I would start seeing the house from its various, carefully designed perspectives.  We drove and drove without catching sight of the house.  Finally we came to the end of the road only to see the remains of two beautiful handmade brick chimneys lying on the ground.  The house had just been demolished to make way for some condominiums!  I was very disappointed, but the Prof promised that I would see the real house on our next trip to England.

On that occasion, we rented a car , consulted our map and drove out to see Compton Wynyates.  We got just close enough to read the sign that said “closed to the public”.  All I got to see was the roof of the house as we drove away back to London.

During our sabbatical stay in Madrid several years later, Professor Entwell wrote to the current owner and resident of Compton Wynyates, Spencer Compton, Lord of Northhampton.  We were both amazed when “Spence” wrote back thanking the Professor for his interest in the house, and even more amazing, inviting him to come for lunch and a visit. Of course the Professor had to go, but I needed to continue my research in Madrid and take care of our nine-year old son, David, who was attending school there.

Professor Entwell was received very graciously and served lunch by the butler in the magnificent dining room of The House.  “Spence” gave the Prof .permission to look over the house on his own and he spent three hours exploring the many floors filled with antique furniture and old paintings , but he had not brought the camera, which in the days before digital would have been too invasive anyway. That meant that I didn’t even get to see photos of The House.

So maybe I am not destined to ever be there, but I had another glimpse of hope the other day when the Professor announced that among his “anxiety” dreams that come regularly at the beginning of every semester, he had dreamed about The House.  Maybe that means that The House is still alive in our dreams and I can continue to hope to see it one day.