Have Bikes, Will Travel

Saturday, 13 January 2024: We’ve run into a spot of bother with the elevator in our building. It was out most of the day Friday, came back in the early evening - and now it’s out again today. 

I went out for my walk this morning - we take the stairs down when going out - and came back to discover the elevator was dead. I had to hike up five flights, again. I have a sneaking suspicion someone, possibly workmen renovating a flat a couple of floors down, is turning it off - putting it ‘on service’ as we say in our building at home when someone is moving in or out and needs exclusive access to one of the two elevators. Trouble is, we have only one lift here. If the workmen are putting it ‘on service,’ who gave them permission to do that? 

It’s not such a big deal for me, but Karen is coming off a period when her arthritic knees have been bothering her. She doesn’t want to take the chance of going out and coming back to a five-flight stair climb - at least until her knees are feeling better. So she refused to go out for a walk yesterday afternoon. I couldn’t blame her.

I did go out. I grabbed a bike around the corner and rode to the central market. Then I wandered aimlessly in the rabbit warren of streets in the ciutat vella (‘old city’ in the local dialect), the parts that were laid out in the middle ages. Here’s a map that gives some sense of what it’s like.

    It’s one of my favourite activities here. As you can see, the streets are in nothing like a grid pattern; they go every which way. Most are too narrow for more than one vehicle. They’re lined with two- and three-storey apartment buildings. Some are pedestrian only. Some are more alleyways than streets. Many have hoardings up around vacant lots where old buildings have been torn down and new ones not built to replace them yet. Despite the grottiness of much of this district, I never feel unsafe here, even after dark. The worst things that can happen are that I end up inadvertently going in a circle and seeing the same things more than once. Or I accidentally veer into one of the areas with tacky tourist shops.

I always have my camera. I’m looking for anything that catches my eye: mainly interesting streetscapes and wall art - there are always new murals every year, plus lots of old favourites - and interesting store fronts. My haul on this outing wasn't up to much, but it’s the process I enjoy.

Later the same day (Saturday): The elevator came back at some point in the early afternoon. Karen and I went out about 3:30 and picked up bikes over at Av. de Peris i Valero (named for Jose Peris y Valero, a 19th century Spanish journalist and progressive politician). This was Karen’s first ride of the year in Valencia. She’d gotten used to her pedal-assist motor at home, so wasn’t sure how her knee would hold up without it. This would be a proof of concept. We went slowly, and she was fine.

We rode down Peris i Valero to the river, crossed it and rode along the other side to the City of Arts & Sciences (CAS), where we ditched the bikes and walked. I never get tired of this place. The architecture is just so outlandish - and so begs to be photographed. There were lots of people about, it being Saturday. By the time we got there, though, the sun that we’d enjoyed on our balcony earlier in the day had disappeared and the threatened cloud cover had materialised. It was about 15C. 

We wandered over to the Caixa Forum, the relatively new exhibition space sponsored by one of the big Spanish banks. They have another exhibit of Egyptian artefacts, this one concentrating on mummies. We saw an excellent one last year with stuff from the British Museum, so we have a taste for it now. We’re going to have to go this week, though, as it’s over 21 January. We were pleased to see the price hadn’t gone up, still €6 (about CDN$9) - pretty reasonable.

We walked up and sat along the Umbracle walkway for a short while, but it was a bit chilly without the sun. So we picked up bikes at the next corner and rode home by a route similar to the one I took running the other day - the high-rise ghetto route, I think of it. But, hey, people gotta live somewhere. And prices in the much more attractive Ruzafa have skyrocketed in recent years, putting it out of reach, I’m guessing, for most Valencians.

Sunday, 14 January 2024: One thing that has changed about travel in the digital era is that you’re never completely away from home anymore. This is to state the fairly obvious, I know. 

We’re in constant touch with people back home, and in England, by email and Facebook Messenger - and this blog, I suppose. We even have a free voice-over-Internet phone service from Fongo that allows us to make calls from here to numbers in London, Ontario as if we were there - and receive calls if necessary too. Not that anybody calls us. 

We can read all the same news that we do at home too. It occurred to me this morning that we have access to an awful lot of quality reading - far more than we ever did in the print era. When we first started coming to Europe, all the news we had from ‘home’ came from the International New York Times

We’ve subscribed for years to the PressReader service ($40 a month). It gives us access to digital facsimile editions of the London Free Press, Globe & Mail and Toronto Star, which one or both of us read every day on our tablets. The Guardian, the UK daily, is there when we want it. (I get The Guardian’s free newsletter of daily headlines by email as well.) PressReader gives us access to hundreds - thousands, actually - of newspapers from all over the world, including right here in Spain. Even English-language Spanish papers aimed at the expat community. 

And it gives us a bunch of magazines too, including weekly Guardian and Observer magazines that I look at regularly. There are hundreds more that we dip into less frequently - including, I discovered recently, Atlantic, one of my old favourites. 

PressReader isn’t  our only source of periodicals either. The London Public Library offers digital facsimiles of a bunch of magazines through its Libby app, including Harpers and New Yorker, which I look at occasionally - and Wired, which I just ‘subscribed’ to this morning (for free). 

I hadn’t looked at Wired closely for a number of years, not since I worked as a tech journalist. Then, it was a pretty nerdy publication with lacklustre writing, very American-centric. Now, judging by the current issue, it’s a much broader-based magazine, with way better writing and a more international flavour. (There is also, I noticed, a UK edition of Wired.)

This morning, I read an excellent article about how ground-penetrating radar - the technology used to locate graves of indigenous children at Canada’s residential schools and find the remains of Richard III in England - is changing how archaeology is done. Some multi-disciplinary teams have ambitious plans to scan vast swaths of land to reveal unsuspected layers of our past. Ground-penetrating radar isn’t exactly up-to-the-minute technology, but this article, written by an award-winning New York Times journalist and book author, is first rate.

Another article was an interview with an American Nobel-prize-winning geneticist, the inventor of the AI-assisted  gene-editing tool called Crispr. She is heading projects that hope to use the technology to ‘edit’ individual genes in particular bacteria in the gut biome to tackle diseases like asthma, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. And finally, I read a short piece about a Nairobi-based African-American entrepreneur using satellite technology to generate data to help small-holder African farmers farm their land more efficiently.

Oh, and of course we get all our books from the London Public Library and read them on our e-book readers. 

On tap today: take in one or more of the exhibits at IVAM, the Valencia Modern Art museum, which we’ll probably get to by bike - it’a about a 20-minute ride from here.

Later the same day: I started feeling a bit cabin feverish late in the morning so went out for a walk around the neighbourhood. Karen was about to start lunch-dinner prep so she didn’t want to come. 

Lots of people about. At home on a Sunday, downtowns are generally dead. Ruzafa isn’t downtown in the sense of being the city centre. But it’s a uniquely European mingling of high-density residential, retail and commercial that feels very urban. And even though most shops are closed on Sunday,  the neighbourhood is quite lively. It’s the day people get out and socialise. Spaniards are as apt to do their socialising in the streets and in cafes and restaurants as at home, so eating and drinking places were starting to fill by noon - even though lunch typically isn’t until later. A big Sunday lunch with family is traditional here. 

It’s cloudy today but a mild 17C and going higher, so the outdoor tables are in high demand. People were mostly noshing on tapas and breakfast-y things when I went by. I saw more than one singleton with a small plate of something, a glass of beer or wine and a book open on the table in front of them. Lots of people are just strolling arm-in-arm or hand-in-hand too. I noticed more than a few middle-aged folks out walking elderly relatives - another Sunday tradition here. It’s a scene. It’s one of the things we love about Spain. 

Coming home along Regne de Valencia, I was struck by this group of small ‘bills’ pasted on the wall of a technical school. They’re protesting the devastation of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The pictures are digitally altered photos, most taken by a Palestinian photojournalist named Belal Khaled. They come from a website/twitter feed called Unmute Gaza. The middle bill with pictures of bombed out buildings in Gaza reads: “Israel murders the Palestinian people. Free Palestine boycott Israel.”

    Valencia has traditionally been a politically progressive place. It was one of the last hold-outs of the democratic Republic before Franco’s dictatorial regime took over in 1936. So it’s not surprising to see public expressions of support for Palestine, a popular stance among European progressives. And the Spanish often use blank walls and hoardings to express their views, about anything.

A little further on as I walked back into the neighbourhood, I noticed - for the first time - a small very ancient-looking convent near the Ruzafa market. I don’t really know if it’s still a convent, but it appears to have some religious function. I was intrigued by this ceramic plaque on the wall. I was pretty sure I knew what it was talking about, but wanted Google Translate to confirm. 

In plain English, it says, ‘This is the place where the surrender of Valencia by King Zayyan was signed on September 28, 1238. King James I [of Spain] entered the city in triumph on October 9, the feast day of Saint Donis.’ It’s referring to the Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula by Europeans and the end of 500 years of Muslim rule by North African and Arab people. This ancient history - the history of conflict between Christians and Muslims - is still very present in Spanish culture today.

The plaque was mounted in October 1985. I wondered, why at that particular moment in history? Turns out that in April of that year, Spain was struck by one of the first of a long series of terrorist attacks by Muslim jihadists. A suspected Al-Qaeda operative bombed a Madrid restaurant, killing 18 and injuring 82 others. Was this Catholic Spain thumbing its nose at the Muslim world? We beat you once, and we will again.

Later still: Karen and I set out a little after 4 for IVAM (Institut Valencià d'Art Modern). We picked up bikes around the corner and rode to the museum. Most of the route was on the inner ring road: Xativa St., then Guillem de Castro St. It was all on bike lanes separated from vehicle traffic, but not without hazards. Lots of heedless tourists and suburbanites enjoying Sunday in the big city. At one point, two women, one looking down at her phone, the other not looking at all - and leading a toddler by the hand -  walked out into the bike lane against the light right in front of Karen. She had to jam on her brakes and came within inches of hitting them. She swore - in English - but they didn’t even acknowledge that anything had happened.

IVAM is a great museum, but the two exhibits we looked at today - there are typically four or five on at any one time - left us…cool. The big one, spread over several rooms, was entitled popular and attempted to illustrate and explain a concept of the popular that Karen and I had great difficulty getting our heads around - even after reading reams of explanatory text in pretty decent English translation. 

This is from the introduction: “Popular is not fame or celebrity. Popular is not the products of mass culture. Popular is not pop. Popular is not the art of the people, nor the identity of the country, nor the symbols of the nation. The popular is not the product of the proletariat or the craftsmanship of the working classes. The popular is not folklore. The popular is not clichés or tourist souvenirs. The popular is not visual candy, one-euro merchandise, advertising royalties.” 

Okay, I was asking myself at this point, so what the fuck is it? I never did get an understandable answer

Whatever “popular” is in the mind of the curator, the exhibit did include some interesting stuff to illustrate it. Some, not a lot. For example, it included colourful posters like this one for Valencia’s Fallas festival, and a set of raunchy prints on the subject of prostitution by George Grosz, an early 20th century German expressionist artist. I also spotted a series of photo images by Cindy Sherman, the famous American artist who specialises in elaborately staged self-portraits in which she dresses up as different characters from pop culture or stereotypes.

George Grosz print

Wall of George Grosz prints about prostitution

    We bailed before the last rooms. We might go back to it later, but probably not. The good thing is, we didn’t pay to get in. IVAM is free on Sundays. Being cheap, that’s when we always go. 

The other show we looked in on was a kind of retrospective reconsideration of the second-rank Spanish artist Ignacio Pinazo. I’d never heard of him. He was working at the same time as the Impressionists (late 19th, early 20th century). According to the explanatory text, his work didn’t go over well with “the elitist art market.” We could see why. (Not that we’re elitist or anything.) Where the Impressionists applied paint loosely, Pinazo was loose to the point of near abstraction. And where the Impressionists were all about colour and light, most of Pinazo’s paintings are dark. To make it worse, it seemed he couldn’t afford supplies and almost all the examples shown in the exhibit were miniatures. Miniature landscapes don’t very often work well - in my humble opinion. 

Ignacio Pinazo, Firecrackers (the little puffs of smoke maybe?)

By the time we came out, it was dusk. We’d spent longer than I thought. We walked back through the funky Carmen neighbourhood, with me snapping pics along the way. 

Not sure what the spire is...Karen walking on right

    The guys in this one were giving me a cheerful finger as they walked by, and called out an ironic ‘Thank you’ in English as they went. 

It was slow-going. Karen’s knee was just about done in from two hours of standing around on top of the bike ride to the museum. She had to stop and sit down by the central market. It was almost 7 by the time we got home, and pitch dark. 

15th century silk exchange lit up on left