What’s next

Chris was looking at photos from Spain last night. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was mourning.

We’ve been home for a month now, and I’ve been avoiding writing this last post long enough. Like everyone, we’ve been getting used to living in the new world created by our modern plague. And like Chris said, like many people, we’ve been mourning.

No, no one we know has died from the virus. We’ve simply been mourning what came before and what could have been.

And I feel a little silly or self-indulgent writing those words exactly because no one we know has died, we haven’t lost our jobs (yet?), we aren’t going hungry, we aren’t even sick. Still, as we tell our children, “your emotions are real,” so I guess my emotions are real too.

I look at the beautiful pictures Chris took of our time in Zarautz, and I think, “we lived there” and “we lived there?” and I’m sad because we don’t live there right now. But I also know that there is not the same there now. It is still locked down and tantalizingly close to the beach and hills, but, like Tantalus, the folks in Zarautz can’t touch either. So, even if we were there, we wouldn’t really be living there; we’d just be existing there.

Now, spring is finally coming to Minneapolis, and I can go outside in my yard. I can go for a run on the banks of the Mississippi. I can even go for a bike ride. I can be less stressed because I don’t have to think about how I’m going to get my family across an ocean during a global pandemic. I can be happy.

I can be. I will be. I’m just still processing all of this.

So, yeah, it was a blast to live in northern Spain for seven months, to explore there and to explore bits of France, Germany, and Austria as well. It was fun and enlightening to meet new people and experience a new culture. It was even fun forcing my children to write about it on these pages and to write about it myself, and it will be fun to read these writings in the future I’m sure.

At the moment, life is not as fun as all of that, but I’m confident it will be again soon.

And with that, we bid you adieu until our travels take us somewhere exciting and new.

At home, but still traveling via Ticket to Ride

Stay tuned

Hey folks, we are home safe and groggy, though all of our bags are not– including the XBox (Henry just can’t catch a break) and most of Chris’s clothes (whoops).

Anyhow, in the next week or so we’ll post some final thoughts on our recent adventures to give ourselves, and anyone else who wants it, a sense of an ending.

Thanks so much for all the good wishes. They helped get us home. Now we’ll see if they protected us from the virus.

Lockdown day eight

This has probably been one of the weirdest days of my 51 years.

At the beginning of the day, I thought we might return to the US sometime in April at the earliest, which was already a change from our previous arrival of July. We had not told anyone that that might be happening because we weren’t even sure if that flight would take off.

By 3 PM, after THREE emails from the US embassy in Spain encouraging hysteria and providing very little concrete information, we had tickets for Wednesday morning (I’m writing this on a Sunday). I just don’t even know what to think, and I like to think I’m not a total idiot. We are being lead to believe that international travel, either into the US or through the EU, is going to be suspended in the next week. The one specific thing we were told is “go home this week or prepare to stay indefinitely” and, oh, yeah, “Iberia airlines still has flights open this week.”

Well, pardon my groseria, but WTF. Indefinitely is a very big word. Indefinitely gets one’s attention. And never mind that I’ve already paid extra for tickets on KLM. Now I have to buy tickets on Iberia because KLM is booked for this week. Can I get a whipping boy, someone I can just beat on because you people are making me crazy?

So, I just want to clarify that we are perfectly safe here in Zarautz. In fact, I think Spain is doing a better job of handling the virus than the US at the moment. Do I like being locked in my apartment most of the day? No, but it seems to be working, and every night at 8 PM there’s balcony applause and, recently, a two or three song dance party and singalong. Now, I have put myself and my family on multiple airplanes, which are Petri dishes on a good day, to fly back to a country that looks clueless because we are not prepared to stay here indefinitely.

I’m gonna go eat the jar of anchovy-flavored olives in the fridge. I think there’s a whole link of fuet there too, and maybe some gin. Can you say estrés?

Lockdown day three

Gill: The bad news is that the raw number of infected folks, and dead folks, in Spain continues to rise. The goods news is that as a percentage today’s rise was much lower than previous days. It could be a statistical blip, or it could be a first turn in the right direction.

Also, troubling for a non-European Union citizen is the closing of Spain’s borders and possibly even airspace. We weren’t planning on going anywhere, but not being allowed to is a different story. It feels a bit claustrophobic. I guess we need to get used to it.

Chris and I went to the BM today (that’s our grocery store; still entertained that it’s called BM– having a “bm” has a whole new meaning for us). We rounded the corner of the apartment building and were surprised to find a silent line of about 20 people standing approximately four feet apart from each other checking their phones and waiting to be let into the grocery store one at a time as other people came out. No pushing or shoving. No visible signs of impatience. Just waiting.

Chris sent me home to do sabbatical work and said she’d text me when she needed help carrying the groceries back to the apartment. She has the audio version of the book Proust and the Squid on her phone at the moment, so she unironically listened to a book about reading as she waited.

Ninety minutes later, she texted. The most entertaining thing she told me as we made the brief walk home was that most of the people in the store were waiting at the fresh fish counter. To me, this encapsulates the approach to the crisis at the moment here in Zarautz: sure, I might get coronavirus and die, but why should that stop me from having a good lunch. I love that.

Henry: We had online class today so I put Thomas the Tank Engine, gangster Caillou, and Henry Danger on my screen when the teacher wasn’t on. It was another mostly boring day. Happy Saint Patrick’s day. I haven’t been outside the complex in two days, so it’s getting really annoying.

Frankie: Today I had my first online classes using Google Meet, and they were…uneventful. It was sort of cool seeing everyone on their different screens with siblings and whatnot, but at the same time, they all spoke in Basque. I made dinner today, homemade mac’n’cheese, a comfort food staple. I spend a lot of time on my computer these days, oh well. I honestly wonder if we’re gonna go back in two weeks, or if we’re not. It’ll be interesting to see. Anyways, Americans, enjoy being able to go outside without having to go to a grocery store.

Chris: I never thought I’d love standing in line to get into a grocery store, but it was an opportunity to stand OUTSIDE in a space bigger than our balcony for over an hour. What’s not to love? Well, actually, truth be told, I never thought I’d have to stand in line to get into a grocery store either. This is unchartered territory, and I’m not really a fan. I wish I could teleport us back to Minneapolis. But since I cannot, I will try to embrace the words of Jean-Luc Picard, “Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”

Lockdown day one

Gill: Yeah, so, the government of Spain snuck the lockdown out early. We thought we had all day today (Sunday) to get used to the idea, but they put it into effect immediately last night. We aren’t supposed to leave our house unless we need food, medicine, to take out the trash, or to take the dog for a walk.

Hmm, we need a dog.

Fortunately, our apartment building is hidden from the main streets by other apartment buildings so we can probably do laps of the parking lot if things get really bad. We have heard one story already from one of Chris’s colleagues about his friend getting a 1500 euro ticket for going surfing today. Bummer, dude.

There still doesn’t seem to be any real panic. I went to our little market briefly today to buy bread and pick up a newspaper to learn the details of the lockdown. People were out and were well behaved, keeping their distance and going only as far as they needed by all appearances.

We had lunch on the balcony and just hung out all day. I guess we’ll see how the next 14 days work out.

Frankie: I AM SO BORED.

A few minutes ago many people came out to their balconies applauding and whistling, I am not entirely sure why, but I assume it has something to do with the coronavirus. I have seen lots of stuff like this on the interweb where people cheer and play music in their separate balconies during the quarantine.

It is official, Spain is actually quarantined. It’s crazy. And very, very boring. Plus, I still have a ton of schoolwork, I just have to do it at home on my own computer.

Oh well. Someday this will all be someone’s very interesting History Day project.

Chris: Like Frankie, I was heartened by the people on their balconies applauding in unison at 8 pm this evening. This small act gives me hope. I am very unhappy about our current situation, yet I cannot change it. One day at a time, I guess…

Henry: I’m bored. I don’t really have anything to do. This is REALLY boring. Being locked inside is really annoying.

State of alarm?

By the time you read this, you may have heard that the Spanish government has declared a “state of alarm” and is meeting today, Saturday, to decide exactly what that means. If you are interested in more details, check out the English language version of the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

In Madrid, the hardest-hit place in Spain so far, it has meant shutting down everything except grocery stores, butchers, bakeries and the like, as well as pharmacies and newsstands. This is a big blow to Spain’s national pastimes of cafe sitting and tapas eating. There are going to be some serious withdrawal symptoms.

Chris and I did some cafe sitting yesterday just to make sure we got it in before the hammer came down. Today, to celebrate the state of alarm, we are walking one town over, to Orio, to have a nice meal on the beach since that may not be possible for a few weeks. As the kids have explained, there is already no school or sports or band for the next two weeks. We are going to be a very close-knit family by the time this is over– if we don’t kill each other first.

In all seriousness, the general tenor here in Zarautz is fairly relaxed (despite Henry’s comments to the contrary). People are concerned, but there is not a sense of panic, at least not that I have noticed. Spaniards are normally close-talkers and touch each other more than Americans, and we’ve noticed a change in those behaviors, but it is sunny today and this morning the malecón (the concrete boardwalk on the beach) was busy with folks walking and talking, just a little further away from each other than normal.

Given the situation in Spain, we can’t really go anywhere except the US (our idiot president’s so-called travel ban from Europe does not apply to US citizens; it doesn’t even apply to British citizens, which is just weird), and if we go home we’ll have to go into quarantine for two weeks. Frankly, I’d rather just sit tight, enjoy the beach and the mountains, the cheap wine and the fresh seafood, and just wait this out. As long as the Spanish government doesn’t kick us out, that’s what we plan to do.

So, please, don’t be alarmed, not for us at least.

My sabbatical magnum opus

For those loosely following my sabbatical progress through this blog, I proclaim that I have now created my magnum opus when it comes to my somewhat pathetic attempts at video game/interactive fiction production.

The reason the link below is my magnum opus is because I made it myself in the development tool that has been causing me the most frustration: GameMaker Studio 2. As I think I’ve said before, unlike Ink and Twine, which are narrative-based, GameMaker is a video game programming software that is based on creating two-dimensional visuals. And, as I’ve also said before, something about programming for visual content has made GameMaker much more challenging for me. I can program stories fairly easily (not necessarily good stories, but stories). I can, ironically, envision them. Visual interactions are harder for me to program. I can’t easily “see” what the code needs to do to make the visuals work. That seems odd to me, but it is my current self-diagnosis.

When I say “I made it myself” in the previous paragraph, I am differentiating it from the tutorials I followed to make previous games like Spacerocks and Breakout. For this one, I started from scratch. I had an idea of what I wanted rather than copying someone else’s ideas. I drew all the little characters and the background myself. I blundered through coding the interactions and motions I wanted based on the numerous tutorials I have attempted in the last six months. When I was stuck, I searched the internet for snippets of code or videos of people doing something similar or forums where others were asking similar questions to the ones I had. I pieced this work together into a shambling Frankenstein’s monster of code that would make any serious programmer as terrified as the original readers of Mary Shelley’s book.

But it’s my monster, my magnum opus, and I’m ridiculously proud of having made it. Educationally, it returns to material I’ve covered before (how to quote sources correctly) but in a much different way.

Without further introduction, then, here is Signal and Cite.

Two days in Normandy

Last Thursday we left Paris for Normandy by slow train. This was just as well since the weather in Paris had turned from what we enjoyed, partial sun and moderately cool temperatures, to what we had expected for this time of year, cold and rain.

The rain, apparently, has been a prominent influence in Normandy this year. As we rolled through the French countryside, the fields were sodden and often flooded. There were lakes where there should not have been. We could tell by the trees standing in the water.

Our base of operations in Normandy was Bayeux, in the former British sector for those of you keeping score at home, one of only two major towns in Normandy that escaped bombing by both sides during the war, so it still has its medieval charm and its cathedral.

Bayeux getting medieval
Notre-Dame de Bayeux (above and right)

The cathedral, Notre-Dame de Bayeux, is as big as its charred sister in Paris, has similar flying buttresses to support the roof, and the lower portions of its two main towers and its crypt have been standing since the 11th century. Just to put that in perspective, when you are walking in those portions of the cathedral you are walking where people who knew and talked to William the Conqueror, he of 1066 fame, once walked and talked. The interior also has some playful features like the different decorative motifs on each of the arches in the main sanctuary, one of which is a collection of devil heads– a prudent reminder for the faithful at their prayers, I suppose.

Tapestry detail: building the armada

Also in Bayeux is the Bayeux Tapestry. I will be the first to admit that I thought a museum dedicated to a tapestry would be a serious snooze-fest, but I was wrong, wrong, wrong. First, there’s the fact that the thing is 70 meters long by about 50 cm tall, and it is all rolled out for your enjoyment in a darkened room with an explanatory narration that follows you as you follow the tapestry. The story on the tapestry is the immediate backstory leading up to the Battle of Hastings and William’s eventual coronation. Not to be a spoiler, but Harold II doesn’t come out looking too good. Well, that, and he dies. The whole thing was a propaganda piece made not long after William’s success for his largely illiterate subjects.

In addition to the viewing of the tapestry itself, there is a short film giving more information about its construction and history and a small museum that includes a number of interesting panels, displays, and even dioramas (which, by the way, are much better than what the Jesuits at Azpeitia could come up with). I was just really impressed with the presentation and design of the museum as well as the artifact itself. A pleasant surprise all ’round.

Rene shows us the view from the Higgins boats

The main reason, however, that we went to Normandy was to see the landing areas, both beaches and drop zones, for the D-Day invasion. We had hired a guide, a Dutch WWII enthusiast named Rene, for an all-day tour on Friday to drive us around to different sights and give us historical insights as we went. The invasion zone is spread across 60 miles and still consists mostly of one-lane roads, so it was very helpful to have someone who knew the lay of the land.

Can you see the stained-glass paratroopers?
Pont du Hoc: there was a really big German cannon right there

It was a raw, rainy, blustery day, perfect for Normandy on leap day. Rene picked us up around 9:15, and we went first to St. Mare Eglise to see the Airborne Museum and the town itself, including a tour of its small church made famous by a hanging Red Buttons in the movie The Longest Day. We had lunch there as well, crepes and croque monsieurs in a bistro on the square before heading to Utah beach, Pont du Hoc, and then Omaha beach, all in the American sector.

Of the three, Pont du Hoc was the most arresting. It was a German gun emplacement for four WWI era 150 mm cannon that could fire on both Utah and Omaha. This is where the US Rangers had to climb up straight up 100 ft cliffs using grappling hooks and ladders under German fire (also shown in The Longest Day). There are still shell holes as large as cars on top of the cliff and a fully intact German observation bunker that can be explored. The burnt roof beams inside the bunker from the US flamethrowers used to clear it are still visible. That surprised me given that 75 years have passed; I can’t imagine they’ll hang on for much longer.

Omaha beach is terrifying and mind bending for what happened there, but there’s not much left to see. A few small, stark bunkers cling to the dunes, but time is having its way with them.

The American cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer, our last stop, is exactly the opposite experience. Time seems to have stopped there. The grounds are immaculate, and even on this drizzly day it was beautiful and full of life because most of the landscaping is done with evergreens. The grass may have looked even brighter green against the grey backdrop of the sky. The cemetery is a grid of white marble crosses and stars of David with two main walkways in the shape of a cross and two large memorials, one a semicircle of columns and the other a small circular chapel. The whole affair is perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean at the northeastern end of Omaha beach.

Colleville-Sur-Mer

We only had an hour there because we arrived around 4 PM and they close at 5 PM in the winter. We strolled the grounds while Rene pointed out the markers of some soldiers with notable stories, a set of twins, a father and son, a group of African American nurses, and lamented the fact that we couldn’t walk on the grass to get a better view because last summer’s hordes had destroyed the lawns. Even so, strangely, I found myself not wanting to leave. It was so beautiful and so peaceful that I’m not afraid to be cliched about it. I guess that’s what a cemetery is supposed to be, but most of the ones I have visited have failed in those respects. This one works. It’s like the archetype of the cemetery, the sublime example. It’s the kind of cemetery that makes you think, “I could spend eternity here,” even when you know in your rational mind that that isn’t what happens in anyone’s belief system. Nobody thinks your body just lies in the ground admiring the view once you are buried, but, all the same, it might be okay in this place.

On our last day in Normandy, we visited the beach at Arromanches-les-Bains, which was on Gold beach in the British sector. There is a 360° movie theater on top of the cliffs next to the town that puts on a stirring 19-minute film of documentary footage on nine screens. We shared the experience with only three other wayward tourists, and it was stirring. How can one not get a little choked up when Sir Winston starts growling, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets . . . we shall never surrender” in booming surround sound.

Henry and me with a Sherman at Arromanches; Henry’s the tall one
A piece of the Mulberry near shore; the white caps on the horizon mark the man-made breakwater

The other impressive item at Arromanches is the remains of the “Mulberry harbor,” a breakwater and harbor that the British and Americans made from whole cloth with scuttled ships and hunks of concrete the length of a football field towed from the UK and sunk off shore. I had read about these many times, but I had never realized the enormity of the task or the size of the harbor itself. When I first saw a portion of the breakwater from the land, I thought it was a tug towing a series of barges on long cables, but then it just kept getting longer and longer. The breakwater was 1.5 miles long. There were four steel and concrete piers within it for cargo ships to unload onto, and these could support the weight of Sherman tanks. This was a massive engineering marvel in the turbulent seas of the English Channel. There was another Mulberry in the American sector, but a storm destroyed it two weeks after it was built. Seventy-five years later, the harbor at Arromanches is also a ruin, but not so much that you can’t see how impressive it was.

So, yeah, Normandy was cool.

Paris museum overview

(As is often the case, if you click on the title above, you’ll see a new image in the banner.)

Louvre: ancient stuff and lots of it; huge, enormous, massive, overwhelming. We took the 90-minute dash of a tour in English and glad we did. It would have taken us days to find Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and Mona Lisa. We would have needed a basket of breadcrumbs and maybe a compass. Instead, we had a lovely, slightly disheveled woman who reminded me of Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter. She seemed to have an unending well of patience as she guided a group of 20 through the madhouse of the Louvre trying to explain why these classic works of art were indeed classic and even giving us a brief history of portraiture from Eastern Orthodox iconography to the Renaissance so we could put the Mona Lisa in context when we finally waded through the hoards to see it. We roamed around a little after the tour on our own, but mostly we were just bewildered. And if that is what the Louvre is like in February, I can’t even imagine summer.

As already mentioned, we also stopped in to view the gigantic Water Lilies at Musee de l’Orangerie. Again, so glad to have come in the off-season. They must limit entrance times or something in the summer. I don’t know how you’d actually see anything otherwise. We were only sharing with a few dozen others.

On our last full day in Paris, we visited the Musee d’Orsay and the Pompidou Center. On the off chance that anyone wants to take my advice on museum visits in Paris, I’d say if you only have the time to visit one, go with the d’Orsay. The impressionist and post-impressionist collection is incredible. Around every corner, there’s a painting you’ll recognize, and the ones you don’t recognize are just as beautiful. I still can’t fully comprehend how they make the reflections of the light on water look like that. I stared at some of them until my eyes hurt trying to get a hint. Then there are the multiple Van Gogh self portraits over time which are heartbreaking when seen in close succession. That man was in some serious mental pain. Aside from these paintings, there is also an impressive collection of sculpture, some truly massive realist paintings from Gustave Courbet, and a set of art nouveau rooms which must have been J.R.R. Tolkien’s inspiration for the Elven refuge of Rivendell. In addition to all this, the building itself, a train station built in 1900, is just fun to be in. Finally, go early in the morning and in the off season for best results, though your mileage may vary.

The Pompidou Center is one of those buildings that looks like it has been turned inside out. There’s one in London too, but I don’t remember the name of it at the moment. Some of the art on the inside seems to match this theme as well since the Pompidou’s collection focuses on modern and contemporary art. Think Georges Braque, Picasso, Sonia Delaunay, Paul Klee, Moholy-Nagy, Mark Rothko, and that ilk. Then there’s Warhol and Claes Oldenburg and related pop artists. From there, the Pompidou Center’s fourth floor launches into some seriously conceptual art of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Good on them for trying to be on the cutting edge, but I must admit I think I fell off that edge more than once. It’s the kind of art (mostly sculptural) that makes you go, “Huh?”– which is probably the point. It turns out that I prefer my art to make me go “Wow!” instead of “Huh?” but there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophies. When you get bored with the “Huh?” art, you can leave the galleries and scurry through the human Habitrail that hangs off one facade of the building. Turns out, they really are as fun as they look in the hamster-sized version.

There are a bazillion more art museums in Paris, but these are the ones we visited in between strolling the streets of the city and taking in the art that is Paris itself.

P.S. to a previous P.S. I am now officially going on record to say that Paris no longer deserves its reputation as a place where snooty French people refuse to speak English to American yokels. I know three phrases in French, and one of them is “I’m sorry; I don’t know how to speak French,” and the people we interacted with in Paris were lovely and helpful and sometimes even self-deprecating about their inability to speak English. If you are not a an ugly American, you will have Paris in the palm of your hand. Just be nice and self-deprecating yourself about your inability to speak French, and you’ll get kindness back in spades.