I walked by a river in Vienna, while the chords to Strauss’s most famous waltz were playing through my earphones. “You wanted to walk along a river, right?” asked my brother as he bent over to tie his shoelaces that had come undone during our short tram ride from the hotel. “Well, here you have it.”
“Are you sure this is the Danube?” I asked, looking out at the walls covered in graffiti. I tried to imagine what it looked like decades before, without the graffiti. That was our last day in Vienna, and while the rest of the family were resting at the hotel, my brother and I decided to go out to see more of Vienna and to search for a memorial we hadn’t yet seen.
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Verona begins at the Portoni della Bra. You enter through one of the two large archways, where atop sits a large clock with roman numerals. When I entered it read 11:40, and I was reminded too soon that I barely had a day to explore the city and that the following morning I would already be leaving Italy. The closer I got the more imposing the structure became. Portoni is the Italian word for gates, while in the singular form, Portone, it means doorway or entrance. I find it interesting how a word in one form welcomes, while in another it connotes a necessity to be invited or to have permission to enter. I could imagine that once, a long time ago, soldiers of Verona’s ruling family would march back and forth along the gates’ battlements in surveillance.
The archway leads directly to Piazza Bra, and immediately I begin to understand why Shakespeare wrote these words immortalized behind the Portoni: “There is no world without Verona walls, but purgatory, torture, hell itself.” The middle seat in the back row of a car is informally called “the bitch seat” for a reason. The British call it the pillion, though it’s used more to refer to the second seat of a horse saddle, bicycle, or motorcycle. It’s a less vulgar, more sophisticated way of describing a most uncomfortable spot. And it was on our family road trip to the border of Bukidnon and Davao (BU-DA) that I discovered just how unforgiving riding pillion or riding bitch was. It’ll be worth it, my aunt said. It’s cold and isolated there. You’ll love it.
The entire drive took about seven hours, including a two-hour stopover for lunch. The bitch seat, as I’ve previously mentioned, is the seat with no headrest; the seat where you have to sit with your knees apart because of the awkward hump in the middle of the chair; the one where your butt gets unceremoniously poked by the seat belt buckle even after you’ve wedged it in between the cushions. I never sat on the bitch seat. Ever. But when you’re in the same row as your mom and aunt, it’s only polite to offer yourself as tribute. So for the duration of our drive I sat with my knees apart, buckle against my butt, and my neck hanging off to one side or another when I dozed off. This “Baguio of the South” better be worth it, I thought. We left my aunt’s house at 10 in the morning and stopped at Pine Hills Hotel about an hour and a half later for lunch. This small establishment is owned by a retired couple who often travel out of the country to visit their children. The wife owns a small boutique, where she sells different things she brings home from her travels. My aunt and uncle had travelled that way often enough that the owners already knew who they were, so our purchases at her boutique were given a “friendly discount.” There wasn’t much to see in their area, but I reckoned it was the kind of place people would travel to just to get away for a day or two. I first heard the Concierto de Aranjuez or En Aranjuez con tu Amor in an album by Il Divo, and it continues to be one of the most powerful and emotional songs I have ever heard; no other song has given the sound of a Spanish guitar as much importance as this.
Composed by a Spaniard—Juaquin Rodrigo—it tells the story of a place where the words “dream” and “love” become more than just metaphors for things that will never materialize past imagination; where there is a rumor of gardens with crystal fountains that whisper to the roses about lovers who are no more. But places remember things people don’t or refuse to. Here, the colorless leaves being swept by the wind carry memories of a love once had. Here, he says, love is hidden in the sunsets, in the breeze, and in flowers. The streets all look the same in Sevilla, but still I was certain there was no way I could ever get lost there. I wandered aimlessly through residential areas, peering into patios to catch a glimpse of the patterned tiles that never seemed to repeat themselves. The streets were void of people, save for an old lady I came across who stared at me as if I was out of my mind for looking into random peoples’ courtyards.
I wondered if people found their ways home based solely on the pattern of the tiles on the patios. It’s a silly idea, but I couldn’t stop myself from imagining a man looking to purchase a new home for him and his bride. He would say: I want a house with yellow and blue tiles. He would be disappointed when his realtor would tell him that the pattern had already been taken by señor so and so. You can’t have a house with the same pattern, the realtor would say. You might mistake another man’s house for your own! |
best handled with a glass of wine
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