While it may not rival Barcelona or Seville or Cadiz for beauty, we heard that Valencia is a very “livable” city. That has definitely been true in our case. Our small apartment is in a vibrant neighborhood called Russafa, also spelled Ruzafa, with a market that you can breeze through in transit, browsing the stalls of fruits and vegetables and cured olives and meats and cheeses and seafood packed on ice in astonishing bounty.
Saturday morning oyster and cava at the fish market.
A few times a week we visit a movie theater called Babel that shows films in their original language. We walk a mile or so to get there often in the cold. There is usually a line to get in as the Valencianos are avid film goers and they don’t open the doors until five minutes before the show but the associated cafe serves good tapas and salads and the staff is friendly, which counts a lot. It is excellent practice to hear the movies in English and simultaneously process the Spanish subtitles, especially when the translations are not exact equivalents. I always come away with a few new turns of phrase and some juicy four letter words so I will at least know when someone is cussing at me. On the walk home we try to find a place for a drink, hoping for a diamond in the rough as every other business seems to be a bar or restaurant.
The back of our apartment building faces a school playground which means it is open and light and relatively free of visual pollution. These inner courtyards are known as the patios de manzanas, as a city block is called a manzana, which is Spanish for “apple.” At 9 am each morning the kids and their parents arrive and pop music blasts across the open space and for the rest of the day and into the early evening you can hear the voices of excited children chasing each other and playing all kinds of games and sports. Beyond the school are tile roofed apartment buildings and the cupolas of a few old churches and some draping electrical wires. Antennas stick up from the rooftops like stems of wild fennel gone to flower and you wonder if they have any use in today’s technosphere. The clouds and light can be quite dramatic as the city is close to the sea. The winter sky is often awash in pink and tangerine, with gray wooly clouds hanging low then torn apart and giving way to brilliant patches of blue.
The “patio de manzana” behind our apartment building in Russafa.
One day when I was suffering the beginnings of what became a rather serious case of the flu I decided to visit one of the neighborhood’s bazillion local hair cutting salons. The owner of the shop was a young Valenciano who I’d seen before on an earlier scouting trip. I should have known when he started with the electric razor that something was amiss and I left with hair that has not been as short since I was in second grade, the old high and tight buzz cut that I successfully avoided all my life until now. It is both scary and mildly exhilarating to witness the sculptural shape of your head and stark outline of your ears from a bold new perspective. A former hairdresser told me that it takes at least five days for a new haircut to grow in but the minimalist look has not readily grown on me. Note to self: only have hair cut by someone who uses scissors primarily and never when under the fog of influenza.
I buy wine from a man named Augustin who owns a bar on a busy boulevard called the Gran Via de les Germanies. His place reminds me of a great local bookstore. The wines are very carefully displayed on glass shelves that span two floors. Some are kept behind locked glass cases and on the second floor there is a glass catwalk that overlooks the bar with rows of wines three bottles high. Augustin has a great sense for Spanish wines of high quality and good value and he searches for bottles like a librarian guarding rare manuscripts. He is middle aged with graying hair and reading glasses and usually wears a navy blue sweater vest at least in winter and has a reputation among locals for being a bit of a curmudgeon. Quite honestly, I’m sure that working with Juan Q Publico day in and day out could do that to anyone.
A few disclaimers offer clues about these apparent tensions. One chalkboard reads: “No somos un fast food, ten paciencia y disfruta el momento,” which means “we’re not fast food, have patience and enjoy the moment.” Another describes his philosophy around the Ambar beers on tap, which are from Zaragosa. “Fresca no quiere decir fria,” which I interpret to mean don’t freak out if it’s not ice cold like Bud Light. This is intentional.
Augustin and I get along quite well. I try to go there before the rush hour because the place always becomes packed as he has a reputation not only for high quality low cost wines but also for fine Iberian and Serrano hams which hang on the hoof by the dozens as well as at least twenty cheeses and other tasty tapas. His cured olives are the best we have found in the city. Someday my canvas backpack might tear from the weight of carrying six bottles home, which rarely cost more than 10 Euros a piece.
These I guess are the kinds of relationships you make in an urban neighborhood which so quickly becomes your own little universe. It’s important because understanding the Spanish wines is no simple matter. There are temperanillos and granaches and gracianos and mencias, Priorats, Riojas, Riberas and Bierzos, crianzas and reservas and that’s barely scratching the surface of the reds. Augustin confides in me about the cost of living in Spain. “You used to be able to live in this country very cheaply,” he says. “Now it’s just money, money, money.” He is also helpful in correcting my Spanish descriptions of wines. “You never say a wine is beautiful or pretty. It’s either good or bad.”
Valencian street graffiti: news travels fast, far and wide.
In this week’s Dispatch from the Shit Hole we watched the stock market take a major nose dive while the usually credit seeking Rusky-in-chief remained remarkably silent on the issue. Not one but two of Trump’s staffers have resigned because of serial wife abuse, though we learn that they are both “fine people” in the eyes of both the president and his lackey Republican establishment. Trump predictably refused to release a memo that would accurately describe why the allegations about foreign meddling during his presidential campaign are legitimate. And surprise, surprise, he wants a big military parade in the mold of most dictators. Can’t anyone advise him to keep these wet dreams private?
The opera house adjacent the Berklee Valencia campus.
The Berklee College of Music’s international campus is located in the bowels of the Palau des Artes Reina Sofía complex, a white mosaic monolith that looks like a cross between a gigantic fish and a space station. Reflecting pools separate the complex of buildings which not only include Berklee and the opera house where Placido Domingo’s team practices but a science museum we have yet to visit. The school is bursting at the seams with graduate and undergraduate students and I go as early as possible everyday to find a practice room. The opera and orchestra folks have the beautiful venue while the jazz and pop artists wallow in the shadows. No matter. Musicians are habitual and adaptable creatures and born to suffer.
I am daily filled with emotions of intense creative stimulation and extreme humility. The ability to execute what is in your imagination eludes most mortal humans. I struggle with sight reading and demanding harmonic structures and am continually told to loosen up, open up, be more fluid, and so on. I choose to do this with my precious time even though I feel like I am perpetually behind the eight ball. So I make small goals that serve as daily and weekly guideposts for climbing the unattainable musical ladder in the sky.
Becoming a Valenciano, if only for a little while, has been a worthy adventure.
