The chile manzano vine in the garden. 23 December 2011.

And thank you to all of you who have read my posts, sent comments, and confirmed my instinct that blogging opens new doors to sharing ideas and information with others. Happy Christmas to you all and may the New Year bring you new vistas and rewarding work.

She swept in, determined to make the photographic best of her few days there.

“Let me see the Yellow Pages,” she said, “and in a matter of hours I will know more about any town than people who have lived there for years.”

It sounds obvious, perhaps.  It had never occurred to me however.  And as I travelled about the United States, I adopted the tactic she had taught me.  No longer did I just skim the Yellow Pages for the local restaurants.  Cement companies, beauty parlors, barbecue joints, mining suppliers, used car companies all began to add up to a picture of the community that I was encountering.

The Yellow Pages are vanishing. And trees and landfills will benefit.  And Lynne will be glad of that.  I have yet to figure out whether on-line resources will give me anything like this quick thumbnail sketch of the life of a town or city.

And as I looked at Lynne’s spare and unsparing photographs of the spaces that we humans have made for ourselves, it changed my view of buildings.  No longer did I see them brimming with life, but stripped of that life.  What curious, chilly spaces remained.

In June, Lynne Cohen won the Scotiabank Photography Award, and it doesn’t get much better than that.  You will find a sample of her photos Lynne Cohen’s web page.

And the awful irony is that Lynne is having to spend a good bit of time in hospitals now.  That’s not something anyone enjoys.  What extra sadness\tension\distance, though, can it create in someone who has spent their life documenting the space that humans have wrought for themselves?

For Lynne.

Black-eyed peas waiting for a drizzle of honey

Black-eyed peas are one of  the four common dried beans and peas here in Girona, Catalonia, Spain, the other three being lentils, chickpeas and alubias (white beans).

Because I wasn’t sure how they were served, I asked an expert, the butcher’s wife who sells them ready cooked.

With a drizzle of olive oil.

Or cooked with a bit of cured pork of some kind, onions, and garlic.

Or, in winter, with a drizzle of honey.

Her remarks opened a whole world of sweetened dried beans, not least the red adzuki bean paste of the Japanese, the modern sweet baked beans of the Americans (I understand they used not to be so sweet).

It is a wonderful way to travel. You spend two to six months working away from home, giving you a chance to get to know the place and its people.

It’s not all roses though, things can go terribly wrong, you can have a miserable time if you don’t figure out what you are up to. So, prompted by queries from two or three friends over the last few days, here are my reflections on how to maximize the chances of having a good time.  Luckily it’s much, much easier than it used to be, thanks to more short term housing and the internet to find it.

Warning. I’m not going to say much about exploring food, food history, or food politics.  That will perhaps be the subject of a second post.

1.  Before leaving: finding somewhere to stay

Essential.  The place you stay can make or break your visits.  If you don’t arrange it before you go, you will waste half your precious time looking.

Sometimes your host offers to find a place. This can be a mixed blessing.  I have vivid memories of a crumbling hotel filled with poverty stricken retirees on the north side of Chicago, of a filthy apartment in Melbourne, of an apartment at a research institute outside New York designed by a famous architect and in a lovely rural setting, but aging fast and a mile and a half walk to the nearest shops (oh, the poor wives of physicists visiting from Russia or East Europe who didn’t even speak much English).

So I like to take things into my own hands. The options are three.

1. Some kind of exchange or rental from an individual who is away just this once. Academics on sabbatical, for instance.

Yikes, this sounds fine. I’m now very wary of it.   Rarely do the dates mesh, so either you are cohabiting with the owner or staying in a hotel or paying for time you are not there, none of these good. Rarely does the owner understand that you have no idea that the chipped mug they won in a fair is one of their most precious possessions.  Rarely do they clear closets and work spaces. Rarely do they explain all the idiosyncrasies of their appliances.  And often they want grass cutting, pet sitting. Whether this is worth it for a reduction in rent is your call, but it is a tie and limits your ability to travel.

2.  Short term “executive housing” usually run by a big company.  This runs from the low end (suite hotels) to the high end (and that’s high indeed).

This is, of course, soulless and says little of the place.  At times, that’s a good thing. And it’s professional, unless you go way low, it’s clean and has the basics you need, someone to call if things go wrong, you can ask for specific furniture (desks) and you pay only for the days you are there.  My choice for the US.

3.  Rental from owners  who have just one or two places to rent, usually in holiday areas, or perhaps an agency that manages these places.

Better than 1 because the owner has less vested in the place. Rarely is it professionally managed (light bulbs missing, not enough spoons–like one, bent frying pans) and often not super clean.

Anyway, it’s off to the internet.  Start at least three to four months in advance and set aside several hours for several days. Google variants on the city name + short term rentals/executive housing/holiday flats, etc. etc.  in English and the language of the place.  This will throw up furnished apartments that include furniture, linens, kitchen stuff, wi fi, cable television.  It’s too pricey and time-consuming to have to acquire and then ditch all this stuff.  A washer and dryer is nice.It’s true you observe a slice of life at the laundromat but there are better ways to spend your time.

Don’t even try to make careful notes.  Just get an idea of price range and where they are located.

Now compare this with your list of essentials: access to public transport and shops if you won’t have a car, parking if you will; elevator if the apartment is more than three or four stories up; a table where you can work (vacation rentals cram beds into every space and have no work surfaces); heat or air depending on the location; wi fi; and so on.

Now deal with sticker shock. This is going to cost you twice as much per month as an  an annual rental.

Now go back and narrow it down. Write to your best options. Sometimes you can negotiate prices down (holiday areas off season).

2. Before leaving: other stuff

Negotiate how you get keys.  Try to avoid a night in a hotel.  In the US, a lock box is ideal.

Packing. Your work is most important.  The rest you can buy there if necessary.  Even so, essentials that I always take include

a sharp kitchen knife

an apron (cuts down on laundry)

medications (you don’t want to hassle getting prescriptions),

a couple of fat “junk reads” (thrillers, detective stories or the like) in English

face cloths (flannels) if going outside the Anglo world

spare folding suitcase for the stuff that I inevitably collect

twist ties, plastic baggies, and bulldog clips (organizing papers, hanging laundry, closing the packets of food, etc)

a portable coffee press (REI makes an unbreakable plastic vacuum two-cup one that  you can drink directly from if necessary), filled with plastic bags with enough coffee, tea, sugar and dried milk, a life saver if you arrive late on Sunday and everything is closed.

3. Before leaving: decide on a project

Apart from your work, it’s nice to come back feeling you have accomplished something.  And if you go without a focus for your spare time, it’s easy to end up as a tourist rushing from sight to sight. Reeeeely booorrring.

So choose a project. Better mastery of a foreign language, perhaps, new friends, a knowledge of Romanesque architecture, or Argentinian tango. Please, please not helping the local people.  You are there to learn and until you have, you can’t help.   It’s condescending, assumes that people need your help, and creates huge barriers.

For me, outside the US the projects usually food and what makes the place tick.  In the US  it’s shopping (replenishing books, electronics and clothes that I can’t get in Mexico) and friends.

Nothing too ambitious.  You will not have much spare time or energy.

And let it change as opportunities open when you arrive.

4. Arrival:  how to take care of business, work, and home affairs

Immediately type up address, cross streets, home phone, cells, work phones, contacts and emergency numbers and put one by each phone or computer, one in each wallet.  Will save hours of grief.

Immediately establish a place to put keys.

Immediately set up some filing system. I buy a packet of letter envelopes, another packet of 8 by 10s and label them (receipts, receipts for tax, contacts, memorabilia, project, chores, etc etc).  These are cheap and things don’t fall out of them.  Purge before you go home.

Immediately take photos of the apartment the way it is, so that you can remember how to restore it to its original order if you move things (as you will).

Oh and then there are home affairs.  Insurance still comes due, deadlines still exist, letters still have to be dealt with. Set a bit of time aside a couple of times a week and do this or you will suffer later.

5. Arrival: food

Keep the kitchen to the most basic foods, especially where spices and condiments are concerned.   Try the local things, to be sure, but see morale curve below.

Forget grilling, you usually won’t have anything to grill on.  Forget baking, it takes lots of equipment and a reasonably functioning oven.  This is time for stewing, boiling, frying. If someone in the family cannot live without American sweets, I have found that pudding is the answer; you only need a saucepan and spoon.  You can find cornstarch and cocoa powder in the most unlikely of places, and there’s always sugar and long life or dried milk.

6. Stay:  how to stay ahead of the morale curve

Arriving is so exciting, exploring the neighborhood, popping into shops, listing the museums to visit and the trips to take, for a few days it is all-absorbing. It’s also a huge learning curve, everything from the location of the light switches to the layout of the city to new friends.

So suddenly there’s a down.  Often it’s triggered by something trivial.  You can’t sleep because of the church bells or the neighbor’s party.  You’d planned on cooking the local fish only to discover that no pan is big enough and no knife sharp enough to cut it up.  You have had it with the place, big time.

Give yourself a break.  If you are in Florence and can’t take another Renaissance painting (yes this can happen), go to the Browning Museum and wallow in England of the Victorian era.  If your head is spinning with the language, retire to bed with the English-language junk novel (or needlework or the like) you packed for just this moment.   If you need a hamburger, go to McDonald’s.

Next day, just take things steady.  You can only absorb so much.  Things improve.  A week or so later you will never want to leave.

7. Stay: work and leisure

Work. First priority every day.  If someone is paying you, you do what is necessary, even if it means not seeing the Taj Mahal.

Leisure. Amazing what you can do in an hour’s stroll a day. This Guardian article has good ideas on experiencing foreign places. (h/t Organically Cooked).  Don’t worry that you are not seeing the Taj Mahal. You are doing something infinitely more interesting and rewarding by living in the place, pursuing your project, and experiencing local life.

8. Stay: keeping house

Horrible reality. You will have MORE housework to do while you are away, even if you lower your normal standards a bit.

You may well have to do a preliminary clean of your accommodation (see above).  I feel it is fair to throw out duplicate take out menus, broken plastic cutlery, stray plastic bags.  Sweep up all the mouldering plastic bottles, broken kitchen implements, topless plastic boxes and stow them in one cupboard out of the way.  Same in the bathroom.  Half used hotel shampoos go. Mildewing cleaning rags go.

The smaller space, inadequate storage, and inadequate cleaning tools mean more work. And laundry. And frequent shopping because you can’t stock up (and may not have a car).

Earplugs help with noise. Masking tape and aluminum foil or brown paper substitute for curtains (though the bedroom is then dark all day).

Buy a cheerful plant or two and local newspapers and magazines, even if you don’t speak much of the language.

9. Stay: money

You will spend more than you planned. Always.  Leaving aside the cost of short term rental, there’s kitchen set up, and probably stuff for your work, perhaps rent wi fi, perhaps a printer, perhaps a door to serve as a makeshift desk. You may need to invest in a good dictionary.

Count on this in advance.

10. Leaving: how to reach completion

Packing takes longer than you think.  Start several days ahead.

Get out your photos and put things back where they were.

Give your dictionary, spare office supplies to a a friend.

Do not give that half bottle of cooking oil, half packet of sugar to a friend.  It is never welcome. Grit your teeth and throw it away.  Waste is inevitable.

Leave the place clean. It’ll make you feel better.

_________

ENJOY!

Given the hoopla about the cuisine of Catalonia in recent years, it’s a bit hard to approach it with an open mind.  I’m lucky that our host is a Catalan, a great lover of food.  And I’m lucky that we are associated with the university and thus have access to others like him.

And therefore I decided not to bring Colman Andrews’ excellent Catalan Cuisine with me.  And I probably won’t go back to the Celler de Can Roca, much as I enjoyed it last time I was here (just about my only excursion into the world of world class restaurants, and an amusing one at that, of which perhaps more later).   Instead, I’m just poking about.

A stroll to Carrefour about a mile away furnished me (apart from toilet paper, soap, salt, sugar, etc etc) with the essential cart that everyone tows along on their shopping expeditions.  If the sidewalks of Mexico City weren’t such a nightmare to traverse, this would be going back with me.

Lunch with friends under the arches in the Plaza Independencia drove home the point that locals don’t take kindly to any confusion between Spanish food and Catalan food. And every shop assistant makes it clear that speaking English is preferable to speaking Spanish, so it’s out with my copy of Teach Yourself Catalan.

The town library has a wonderful collection of books about the area for sale, including cookbooks.  Teach Yourself Catalan comes in handy here too.

The market, the bakeries and the charcuterias are splendid.  Here’s one treat for starters. It’s a coca de piñones (pine nuts) y chicharron (pork rind) flavored with anise and dusted with white sugar.  I understand it’s really for the day of San Juan but never mind.  It’s an irresistible combination of flavors.

Meantime, looks as if the Jesuits are out.

cultivating the right type of mushroom on soiled nappies can break down 90% of the material they are made of within two months. Within four, they are degraded completely. What is more, she says, despite their unsavoury diet the fungi in question, Pleurotus ostreatus (better known as oyster mushrooms), are safe to eat. To prove the point she has, indeed, eaten them.

Bioremediation: Bottom feeders | The Economist.

So if you see markets flooded with cheap oyster mushrooms in a couple of years, you’ll know why.  But are enough people going to follow Dr Vazquez’s example and eat them?

Year 29, second month of winter, day 10.
On this day the crew passed the five guard-posts [Medjay guarding the necropolis]. of the tomb saying: “We are hungry, for 18 days have already elapsed in this month[past payday - i.e., giving of food and supplies];” and they sat down at the rear of the [mortuary] temple of Menkheperre [Thutmose III].

I missed this long and fascinating post from Diana Buja when I was travelling.   Well worth reading and pondering. Nothing could be better testimony to the long history of protesting over bread.