Mallorca Part 2

The rest of our stay in Mallorca was very sunny and much warmer. On Wednesday we walked around Palma, a bit lost until we found a tourist information center and got a city map. The first time we tried that, a man was clearly dressed as a city worker and had a bunch of maps, but when we asked for one he said we couldn't have it. Weird. We walked up to Bellver Castle, which was 7 km round trip from the city center. At one point we were standing at a corner, looking at our map to make sure we found the right street to turn onto, and a guy stopped and said, "You look lost, can I help you find something?" We told him we were going to the castle and he replied that it was too far away. We said, "Wow, that's really helpful," (well not really, but that's what we were thinking.) Krishna asked him if he could also recommend an authentic Mallorquin restaurant and he told us to go to a pizza place we had just passed and say that Giorgio sent us. We decided that he was not going to be any help whatsoever and kept walking until we eventually found the pedestrian path up to the castle. "Whatever, Giorgio, you are so wrong!" we said (not that he was around to be proven wrong, but it was still funny to us).

We also went to the Mercat de Olivar, an indoors farmer's market in Palma and took plenty of pictures. Krishna took pictures of the fish with the scary teeth, but I decided vegetables were a safer subject to photograph. I still feel awkward taking pictures in that kind of situation, but then I remind myself that I shouldn't care if they think I'm a crazy American photographing groceries or my lunch, because the likelihood of ever seeing any of those people again is very small.

On Thursday we took the bus to Port de Soller and then the antique train up to the city of Soller. It was 4€ for a 15 minute train ride. The only reason we took the train was because a British guy staying at our bed and breakfast asked us if we had ridden the antique train and looked very alarmed when we said we had not. "Oh dear!", he said, so we thought there must be something amazing that we were missing, but it was kind of a let-down. I also prefer walking around because I get to see a lot more than I would from a train that is moving too fast to result in decent photographs. So with that in mind, we decided to do another long walk on Friday, since it was our last day on the island and our plane didn't leave until after 9 pm. Our B&B host, Gonzalo, recommended walking on the road from Valldemossa to the Port de Valldemossa, saying,"It's not too steepy," which is now a new favorite word of mine. If you're wondering why so many cities on Mallorca have both a town high up in the hills and a port several kilometers down to sea level, it's because that served as a defense against invaders since it was much harder to capture a walled-in town situated in the mountains than it was to invade a port. It's a much smaller port than Soller's port, but that also meant that we didn't have to worry about getting run over by tour buses. The walk was 7 km each way, but the way to the port was all downhill and the way back up to the town was much harder. We did the returning walk in 1 1/2 hrs, which was pretty good considering it was a constant uphill climb around narrow bends in the road.

We had a few more hours to kill before we needed to be at the airport, so we found a nice Spanish restaurant in Palma and had a leisurely lunch, a bottle of wine, then coffee and dessert, which was a good end to a great trip with my BFF. I thought Valldemossa was a lovely town and our B&B had amazing hosts. The breakfast is great, and I found out that the cookie I really liked is called 'mantecado,' and is made with lard (when I asked Gonzalo what kind of cookie it was, he said, "It's made from the fat of the pigs. It's not a diet cookie," and then he puffed out his cheeks and waddled around like he was hefty). I found a recipe for the cookie on the internets and I'm going to make them when I get back to Portland. Mallorquins are a big fan of lard apparently, because there was also a delicious flaky pastry made with lard called an 'ensaimada'. The one drawback to staying in Valldemossa was that many of the restaurants were closed because it wasn't the high tourist season so we just ate a huge breakfast and then a late lunch every day. I also felt like we spent a lot of time on the bus because we didn't want to drive a stick-shift around crazy winding roads, so we had to take the bus to Palma first before we could get to any other town on the island. It would probably be easier to do that during the summer when the bus runs more frequently than once every hour and a half.

Mallorca

Krishna and I are currently in Valldemossa, Mallorca. Mallorca is an island off of the coast of Spain and it is a very popular destination for German tourists who want to party it up at the beach, so there is a direct flight from Nuremberg to Palma de Mallorca. It is the low season for tourists and there's no way I'm going for a swim right now, so we're staying in a little bed and breakfast slightly inland. Mallorca normally has mild winters, around 50-60 degrees, so of course they are currently having an unusually snowy winter. I'm not complaining though; I'll take 40-50 degrees any day instead of 10 like it was in Nuremberg. There has been a fair amount of snow in the mornings here because Valldemossa is at a higher elevation, but it all melts in the afternoon when the sun comes out. Valldemossa is a cute little town. When we arrived my first thought of finding our B&B by the color of its shutters was completely dashed when we saw that the entire town is comprised of old stone houses and every single one has green shutters. Maybe they only sell green paint in town? Yesterday we went for a nice hike where we may or may not have walked an extra mile or two up a mountain due to navigational error. But, the sun was shining over the snow-capped peaks and we were hiking alongside orange and lemon groves, so I really enjoyed the beautiful scenery even while we were slightly lost. We got back to the part of the walk where we were supposed to go down crumbling old stone steps that we had missed the first time, due to the helpful directions given by a guy who asked us where we were from and when I answered USA, he responded with "Ah, California! Santa Monica, Pamela Anderson!" Baha! Apparently she is still popular with the male population of Soller.

We also later got turned around trying to find the bus station in Soller and when I asked two women where the bus stop back to the 210 bus towards Valldemossa was, the younger one (the other lady's daughter perhaps?) said "It's too hard to explain, so I'll just show you." It turned out they lived near the bus stop so she walked us there and we thanked her a million times for being so nice. When Krishna and I pool our Spanish vocabulary together, we can (mostly) be understood or at least flounder around until we find someone who will help us out in English or German (but so far we have not run into anyone else speaking Gujengleutsch). I was proud of myself for asking, "Donde esta la estacion de bus para el bus 210 de Soller a Valldemossa?" and I'm not even sure if that is grammatically correct or not. We had to wait awhile for the bus but were slightly entertained by the guy who played his music for us, including "Oooh baby, I love your ways," and also by the drunk man in a long black trench coat and hat who was stumbling around with a beer can in hand while trying to read the bus schedule using his lighter.

Today we went to several wineries in Binnissalem and Santa Maria del Cami (and I added a few bottles of olive oil to my olive-oil-stockpile) before we had lunch in Palma at a lovely little place recommended by two women who were walking by. Before I left for Germany, Krishna told me to stop eating pork for awhile so that I would be running a pork-deficit before I ate it for an entire month in Germany, but the same thing can be said about Mallorca/Spain too, especially for those of us who abhor seafood. Spaniards also eat late; lunch is normally around 2:30 and dinner at 10! Our bed and breakfast serves a continental breakfast of fresh fruit, Spanish cheeses, Serrano ham and sobbressada, bread with tomato and olive oil, coffee, the most delicious freshly-squeezed orange juice, and little cookies, one of them topped with toasted pine nuts and the other rolled in powdered sugar. I will get the recipe for that second cookie before we leave, I promise! So especially yesterday, it was a good thing to stock up at breakfast time because we didn't get lunch after our hike until 4:30 and we were too tired to stay up for dinner (and we're getting old, apparently).

Coffee

Since it has been so cold, we've been drinking a lot of warm beverages. Krishna and Yagnesh bought a swanky Italian espresso machine after they moved to Nuremberg so cappuccinos with breakfast or a snack has been the norm.
I've been joking with Krishna that Portland espresso beverages all come with cool designs and so I was going to send hers back until they were beautiful, so she made a cappuccino called "Two Dots". Not quite as beautiful as these two lattes from Portland, but even more delicious. :-)

Coffeehouse Northwest


Cloud Seven Cafe

Neuschwanstein

Mom always said to never get in a car with strangers, but then again she wasn't contemplating a 40 minute wait in sub-zero temperatures for the bus or an equally-long and equally-cold 3 mile snowy walk to the Schwangau train station. Krishna had asked a man how far it was to Schwangau from the castle, and then he came back a few minutes later and asked us if we wanted a ride to the station. Quickly confirming that he was a well-dressed middle-aged man who did not seem the serial-killer type and he was traveling with a normal-looking woman in his car, which was not a windowless white van with "Free Candy" painted on the side, we gratefully accepted and were dropped off at the station without incident.

This was the conclusion to our day-trip to see the Hohenswangau and Neuschwanstein castles. It was a fairly long day; we left at 6:45 am to walk to the Nuremberg train station, and then transferred to three more trains. We also had an unscheduled stop because we bought a Bayern Pass, which is 29€ and is valid for the whole day for up to 5 people, but unfortunately you can't use the Bayern Pass until after 9 am and we didn't know that, so we were chucked off the train (though politely) and had to buy a ticket for the interim travel time and sit around for almost an hour until the next train arrived. We finally reached Schwangau at noon, toured both castles, left for the 4 hour journey again after we were transported by our non-axe-murdering-nice German-man to the train station, and made a hot chocolate stop to ward off frostbite. If I was not already highly-caffeinated before I got to Germany due to the unfortunate consequence of so many good coffee shops in Portland, my stay in Nuremberg will contribute greatly. I guess it's as much an excuse for the consumption of multiple cappuccinos and/or hot tea or hot chocolate as traveling in the summer in Europe is an excuse to eat lots of gelato, but I digress.....back to the castles!

I think even though it was so cold, it was worth it to see the castles and evergreen trees blanketed in snow. Hohenswangau castle was built by Ludwig II's father and it was the castle that Ludwig lived in as a child and continued to live in during the construction of his own castle. He even had a telescope in his room so he could check on the construction of Nueschwanstein, which took over 15 years and then the poor guy was only able to live in his new castle for 172 days before he was deposed by his uncle Luitpold on grounds of insanity, and also spending the family fortune on building 3 castles at the same time...hey, we all make mistakes, right? :-P. As evidenced by the decor, Ludwig was a big fan of swans, the composer Richard Wagner, and the color blue. Neuschwanstein is the castle that inspired the Disney castle with its white stone and blue tiled rooftop, and Ludwig took much of his inspiration from his close friendship with Wagner and had several murals of Wagner's operas painted in the castle, as well as a beautiful stage built for performances. Unfortunately Wagner never got to see Neuschwanstein because he died 3 years before the final construction on the castle exterior was completed. In fact, Ludwig also never got to see the completion of the castle and most of the second floor was never decorated and remains bare. The king was a good swimmer, yet both he and his doctor, who had accompanied him on a walk, were found dead in the lake just 1 day after he was deposed. Coincidence.... I think not!

Nuremberg

It has been so cold that even I gave up on running when I saw that it was -4 F at 8:30 am. I did the only responsible thing I could think of, which was to go back to sleep until 10:30 and wake up in time for hazelnut pancakes and cappuccinos. Sorry Shamrock 8K, please forgive me. I'm going to try running in the afternoon when it is slightly warmer, and all of the museums are closed on Monday anyway. We're going to a Super Bowl party with some other ex-pats Krishna has met, but due to the time difference we're having the party on Monday evening and watching the game from DVR, though it is probably impossible not to know who won the game unless we forgo checking emails, Facebook, and U.S. news websites for the entire day.

So far I have gone to the toy museum, which is very close to Krishna's apartment, and yesterday I went to the Dokumentationzentrum, which tells the history of the Nazi Party and Nuremberg's significance as the site for the Nazi rallies and propaganda. The plan was for me to join an English-speaking tour of the Old Town as well, but when I showed up to the meeting spot, there was no one there. I guess they were too chicken to lead a walking tour when it was 10 F outside. So, lacking that tour, I made up my own, which consisted of taking pictures of churches in between visits to shops selling chocolate and other necessary confections, before I went to the Documentationzentrum. I should add that Krishna and Yagnesh were not with me but they had told me what bus to take, so not only did I succeed in getting on the correct bus (#36), I also successfully bought my own bus ticket after several repeats of, "Tages carte, bitte" (day pass, please). When traveling in a foreign country, even the small things that I figure out in another language seem like accomplishments. I rode the bus and didn't get lost or end up in Poland, so I am awesome!

As for food other than chocolate, Krishna and I have been cooking most nights. So far we have made Turkish lamb kebab and rice pilaf, stir fried green beans and Sichuan peppercorn potatoes, roast pork shoulder with parsnips and potatoes, and kidney bean curry and potato carmelized onion curry with Malabar roti/Kerala paratha/missy roti (everywhere we went in Kerala the name changed, but the bread was the same flaky roti slathered liberally with ghee, and I have made the recipe from 660 Curries multiple times and think its pretty close to the best rotis we ate in Munnar). If you noticed a certain potato theme, you would be correct in assuming that there is a plethora of potatoes available. As far as trying local cuisine, I have yet to try the lebkuchen, but I met Krishna yesterday for a late afternoon snack of Nurnberger bratwurst (Drie im Weckla, which means 3 in a bun because they are thin, small sausages served 3 to each bun). They are quite tasty. Pork is the most popular meat here, so about a month before I got here, Krishna told me to stop eating pork so that I would have a pork deficit at the beginning of my trip. :-p Tonight I tried the Schäufele (roast pork shoulder) which was quite tasty.

Krishna and Yagnesh are speaking fairly good German already, so now they speak to each other in a mix of English, Gujarati, and German. I'm not sure what you would call this new language they have invented, maybe Gujangleutsch or Duetschenglarati? Dean and I used to joke that when Krishna and Yagnesh would switch to speaking Gujarati in front of us, that they were saying things like, "When will these white people go home already?!", and now they can do that in not one, but two languages. But so far so good; I don't think they're ready to send me home yet.