Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Midnight in Barcelona

Absinthe at the Bar Marsella -- Where It Began (photo credit Drew Smith)
If you read this blog, my bet is you have seen the Woody Allen Movie "Midnight in Paris" about the nostalgic young American writer who goes back in time to "The Dingo" in 1920s Paris every night at the stroke of 12, spending time with the "Lost Generation" of Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Picasso, Stein, Dali and more.

In Barcelona, on a little forgotten street a few blocks from "the tourist section" is a little bar named "The Bar Marella" where you can experience your own nostalgic time travel. This bar is 200 years old and has not been dusted or changed whatsoever since the 1920s. It is the place given credit for introducing Absinthe -- the drink of choice for many of the Lost Generation as well as others. It was outlawed once upon a time but came back after the wormwood used in the original form was removed from the process.
Notice the Dust (photo Drew Smith)
Drew, Dad and I went looking for the Bar Marsella -- where the likes of Hemingway, Picasso, Dali, and the famous architect Antoni Gaudi, the genius behind all of the wonders of Barcelona, spent time here drinking the famous drink. While Madrid was Hemingway's favorite Spanish city, when he visited Barcelona this was his favorite bar. It was also the actual location used in another Woody Allen movie, "Vicky Christina Barcelona" (2008).


After Drew left to meet a college friend from Spain, Dad and I met a wonderful couple and we asked them to join us. Laura and Eric were there for the same reasons... literary nerdism. We had run into each other earlier that evening. Once we found the bar, an adventure in and of itself, it looked like it might be closed down. Not to worry, the prostitutes of the area, as well as the policeman, informed us it would not open until 11pm. It turns out this is considered something of a "Red Light District" for Barcelona... and apparently prostitution is legal here since the policeman was working the same block. However, as we all agreed, since the prostitutes were there in the 1920s as well, back when this was known as the place to be, it actually led to the ambiance in strange way. There were no hordes of tourists, something we had been fighting (and contributing to) all day.
With Eric of Portugal and Laura of Atlanta, with Dad at the Bar Marsella
Nope. As the clock struck midnight, and Laura and Eric and Dad and I sat there trading rounds of absinthe (Dad only had one), it dawned on me that this new day was the anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's death. I took the occasion to offer a toast to the man, in his bar, with his drink, among new friends who shared a love of his work just as I do. Whether or not Hemingway's ghost was present, his spirit no doubt was there that night.

You can cut the nostalgia with a knife, almost literally. The paint is peeling. The bottles and pictures on the walls are from the 1920s. The bar keepers did not dress in period costume, but that would have just made it a tourist thing anyway.

Yep, this was a surreal experience -- my very own "Midnight in Paris" and my own Dingo Bar. It is all the more fitting since the greatest surrealist himself -- Salvadore Dali -- used to drink here as well


We shared more rounds of absinthe than I care to (or frankly am able to) remember. Just as I had read in a New York Times article, the real crowd did not show up until after mid-night as well. Eventually, the place was full of people from every walk of life. There was one college-age French Art Student in the corner who was lighting her sugar cube with a bic before the ritualistic pouring of water over the sugar cube to give it a caramelized taste -- a welcome thing if you do not like the taste of licorice. She also knew the reputation of the bar, and sat in the corner drawing the scene that night. The locals hung out at the bar and laughing with friends.

In short, it was perhaps the most memorable way I could kick off "the Hemingway portion" of my trip. Sadly, the Bar Marsella is under siege. The owners of the building in which it is located want to sell. There is a fear that the property will be redeveloped. The city sees it as a way to clean up an area that is very close to the main "tourist" area, if unseen and unknown by most of them right now.

There is a petition online to ask the city to buy it for the $1 million asking price and save it just like it is... no changes, no neon signs, just nostalgia, history, and the authentic and very real experience of traveling back in time. Please Google "Save the Bar Marsella" and sign the petition. Better yet, buy it and move there. You will not regret it.

Save the Bar Marsella!

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Drew Says Goodbye to Tartu

Drew and Dad in the Tartu Square

I know that so far on this trip not munch has been mentioned about Hemingway... however there will be much of that to come. The first stop was Tartu, Estonia, to pick up my son Drew Smith who has been attending the University of Tartu -- one of the oldest universities in Europe -- for the last year. 

Downtown Tartu -- Old Europe at its Best -- Outdoor Cafes and Incredible Climate (for now)
Tartu is located about two hours from Tallinn, the Capital of Estonia. It is the main college for Estonia, so one might expect this 500 year old town to be full of the same thing college towns are known for throughout the world. There is a youth and vitality to this otherwise ancient city.

We were lucky to have arrived in the middle of their very short summer. The climate was in the low 70s and a constant breeze permeated the entire town 24/7.

It Is Festival Season, and These Girls Are Dressed in Traditional Estonian Clothes before Doing Estonian Folk Dances
Politically, today Estonia has a democratically elected parliament, with freedom of speech, religion and what appears to be a very stable regime. It is one of the most prosperous of the EU Member countries. It is a great mix of old and new -- with a boom in start-up IT companies.


Drew took us on a tour of Tartu, its four bridges over the local river, and the many landmarks and old buildings. You can see very clearly the influence of the many countries that have controlled this nation over the years... the Germans, Soviet Russian, Scandinavians, and others. In addition, the walking tour served to keep my walking exercise going in preparation for Kili.

Drew and Dad on the Walking Tour of Tartu

St John's  Catholic Church
For Drew of course, this was a bitter-sweet tour. On the one hand he was able to share this place he has come to love so much with his own family. On the other hand, he was saying goodbye. We visited all of his favorite places one more time. We heard the stories of his year abroad and all the friends he made while there. If you have a child in college, encourage them to take advantage of the amazing study abroad opportunities. There is no education like it anywhere.

At Drew's Favorite Table at His Favorite Place One More Time
On the night of his departure, we finally got my lost bag from the airport -- the one with all the gear for Africa in it, as well as some items from home for Drew. It came just in time, because we left at around mid-night to catch the bus to the airport in Riga, Latvia, for our flight to Barcelona, where the Spanish adventure would begin. As we helped Drew clean and clear out of his down room, there was a sweet kind of sadness as the rain began to fall as we pulled our bags across all the old familiar places one last time for the bus station. I felt sorry for Drew. However, I am glad that his experience was so rich and meaningful as to leave such a impact.  The bus finally arrived, and we all got on and stayed on for some 4-6 hours, until we got to the Riga Airport. At Riga, we had to wait for another 6 or more hours to board our flight to Sweden and then Spain. Finally, we arrived at the end of a very long and bittersweet day.

Fountain of Lovers

E(rnest)=mc12: My Review of "For Whom the Bell Tolls"





Hemingway and the Relativity of Time

One of the best things about long plane trips with lots of connections and waiting is that you can catch-up on all your reading. I cannot imagine how people fly who do not like to read a good book -- it is the only way to pass the time in these situations.

In my case, the page turner was “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, published in 1940 and a book many consider to be Ernest Hemingway’s finest novel and even the pinnacle of his writing career. Written about an American fighting for “The Republicans” in the Spanish Civil War -- something which EH reported on directly from the front in the late 1930s -- it very well could be his finest novel indeed.

The novel begins with the famous passage by John Donne that gives the book its title, advising us that “no man is an island” and that we are all part of humanity “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

We follow the journey of Robert Jordan, a young American professor and journalist form Montana who loves Spain and its people and has traveled to fight on behalf of the people and “the Republicans” against the fascists who are trying to take over country during the Spanish Civil War, a real event that occurred in the late 1930s and that did not end well for the Republicans.  

At the time, Hitler and Mussolini supported Franco in his bid to turn Spain into a fascist ally, and the Russian communists supported the Republicans as a way to counter Hitler and with hopes of creating a socialist ally themselves.  We know that Franco would win, and that it would remain a totalitarian regime until his death in the 1970s. Most people my age actually know him better from the SNL skit after his death when Chevy Chase would repeat the mantra that he is “still dead” every time he did the “news.”

Of course, we know that Ernest is Robert in many ways. Ernest loved Spain and saw it as the best country in Europe if not the world. He especially loved Madrid and the highland areas of the interior region around Madrid and to the North of Spain.  In “This Spanish Earth” -- a documentary he and Don Passos did after being a war correspondent there (you can catch this whole documentary on You Tube), we know that EH is drawing on many of his own experiences and of people he encountered.

Robert is an expert demolitionist and dynamiter, and at the beginning of the story he is given the orders of blowing a strategically important bridge as part of a great Republican offensive being planned in that area just northwest of Madrid, in the mountainous woodlands. He is introduced to a band of gypsies and guerrillas who live in caves and operate behind enemy lines, frustrating the fascists.  He is to blow the bridge just at the start of the offensive, presumably to keep the fascists from retreating across the bridge and pinning them down with no where to go but to surrender to the Republican forces.

One of the amazing things about Hemingway is that he can take what happens over the next three and half days and turn it into a full length novel of interesting story telling and narrative and dialogue between Pillar, Robert, Maria and the whole ban of guerrillas. Interestly, “Pillar” is also the name of his boat, which was short for his wife Pauline, even though this book is dedicated to his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. It could be a derogatory term in some ways, for Pillar was a matronly older women who is domineering over her husband. At the same time, she is very much a pivotal figure in the book who is very close to Robert.

Robert develops a close love interest with Maria, a young refugee of the war whom Pillar saved from near death and shock after her parents and entire family were brutally murdered and raped by the fascists. She was also a rape victim who had her hair cut-off. She was recovering under the wing of Pillar when Robert meets her.

Robert is in this to do war, and yet the young man and Maria, whom he calls “his rabbitt” fall deeply in love and even “get married” over the three and a half day period leading up to the demolition of the bridge and the Republican offensive.

In the process of this story, EH tells what must be autobiographical details about the suicide of Robert’s Dad, and how he used the Civil War era hand gun that his grandfather had passed down. He writes in great detail about suicide and his views on it, but is certainly not for it at this point in his life. He chastises the Dad for being a coward and selfish for taking his own life. Instead, Robert seems to look up to his grandfather, the great and brave soldier who fought well under Sheridan and out west in the “Indian Wars.”

We also get to read, once again, Hemingway’s many thoughts on war and mankind, and death on the battlefield -- a theme he returns to all of the time in his work. It is clear to me that Ernest Hemingway never quite got over his WW I experience as an ambulance driver and wounded survivor of that war.

However, the most interesting impact to me of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is how EH treats time. He and Maria talk movingly of their “marriage” and how time is relative whether it is over a lifetime of 50 years or compressed into three days. Pillar is a palm reader and she has seen something ominous in the palm of Robert. We wonder what this will mean for the fate of our characters.

So Hemingway once again deals with death, war, tragedy, love and -- in this case -- the relativity of time. He seems to say that all time is limited and that -- to borrow another phrase -- “it is the life in your years not the years in your life” that matters. It is how you live your life...That death comes to us all, but life only comes to those who live it in all its fullness and richness whether over a natural lifetime of 80-90 years or just over three days.

It is clear that Robert understands that they could all be on a suicide mission, and while that meant one thing before Maria, it meant quite something else after he meets her in what may be the sweetest love story of the EH works.

Robert and Maria talk of what life will be like “in Madrid” after the battle, and the war. They speak of how they will always “be one together” and where one is the other is always, and that they can never truly be individuals anymore. That this is the true meaning of marriage. This week, as the Supreme Court basically redefined marriage for the modern era to be broader that the “traditional “view of it, I think it fits interestingly into the broader view provided us by these two characters in “Bell Tolls”.

At the end of the book, Robert learns that the fascists may have been tipped off about “the Republican offensive” and that they are preparing to surprise them at the pass and the bridge. He sends his most trusted advisor to headquarters back across dangerous terrain to tell the General in charge of the offensive. Meanwhile, Robert and his band prepare to blow the bridge when the offensive begins. We are on a race to find out if the offensive will be stopped in time or not.

It is indeed one of his greatest works. His dialogue covers much ground and yet uses only a handful fo characters of a few days in a cave north of Madrid. He manages to get all fo the best of Spain as well as the horror of war into the book. Once again, in ways only EH can accomplish, we are there with Robert, side by side, until the last page.

I write this from Drew’s dorm room early on Saturday morning in Tartu, Estonia. Today we prepare to move out of the dorm, ship his stuff home, and fly to Spain ourselves. I am excited to finally visit this country that Papa has taught me so much about in the last few months. Come join with me as we discover “Hemingway’s Spain” together.