There are tens of thousands of villages in France, and most of them have been inhabited for centuries.  Many had been settlements since Roman and even prehistoric times.  So you might think that the towns where medieval dwellings, churches and castles have been protected from demolition would be similar.  Yet Tournon’s character differed greatly from that of Viviers, the second town along The Rhône that we toured on our way south along the river.

         Viviers was even smaller than Tournon.  Its population was under 4,000.  Our guide resided in Viviers, but she was one of the few who did.  We learned that Viviers was almost deserted, though some people maintained weekend or holiday homes there.

         There were no jobs for the young, who were generally disinclined to stay where there was a dearth of amusements as well as employment.  As the town’s population had dwindled, Viviers could not afford to improve its infrastructure to the national standards enforced by the Ministry of Health.  The water supply was inadequate, among other deficiencies.  There was a single place left to buy food, at a butcher’s shop.  A person had to leave the village in order to obtain essential supplies and services. 

HL on Viviers' main thoroughfare

          Everyone in the tour group commented on Viviers’ cleanliness and serenity.  There were no broken cobbles or fallen walls. Inarguably, it was picturesque.  It could have been the set for a movie with its action set in the Middle Ages, one that omitted the period’s squalor from the screen.  I thought that Viviers was eerie.  Whereas Tournon was a place where people engaged in a full range of human activities, Viviers was a dead town reanimated as a tourist attraction.

Saint Vincent's was the smallest cathedral in France.  It was one of the few public edifices in Viviers that was open all year.  The architecture was a mixture of Romanesque, Gothic, and 18th Century styles.  Pipe organ concerts were held there regularly.

         There was a market being held near the quayside, and it was by far the liveliest scene in the town.  It was held weekly in the Summer months, when tourists might lay aside their cameras to do some shopping.  Near the market was a sign for the Street of the Sorcerers, but there was no time left for me to search for it.  Neither our guides nor anyone else whom I asked seemed to know anything about it.

The market made Viviers feel less petrified. 

This street's history might well merit some research.

          From Viviers, we sailed for Avignon.  To do so, the ship had to pass through a series of locks, including the deepest (or tallest?) one on the Rhône.  A ship entering the Bollène lock, or ecluse, drops more than 20 meters.  HL and I were not the only passengers to stay on deck to watch as we descended.

We did not want to miss the M/S Chanson’s passage through the Bollène lock.  The captain and crew managed the ship with their usual sang-froid.

Collège de Tournon-sur-Rhône

         Once there had been sixteen towers on Tournon’s defensive wall.  Sophie led us on a path to the highest remaining tower.  The wind had strengthened after the rain, and it was driving the clouds from that stretch of the Rhône Valley.

One of Tournon's 16th Century defensive towers, with a statue of the Virgin Mary added in 1860.

          Though you might imagine that we were suffering from a surfeit of churches, the Eglise Saint-Julien had some unusual features to rekindle our interest.  Probably erected on the site of an ancient pagan temple, the Romanesque church was last rebuilt in the Gothic style of the 1300’s.  Its inner arches were wider and lower than  most Gothic ones.  As they supported less weight than their more pointed counterparts, the church had to be roofed with wood rather than stone.

Interior of the Church of Saint-Julien

The Old Town, Tournon

         Sophie had promised us a treat, and so took us to a chocolate maker’s shop in Tournon’s old city.  The proprietors were friends of hers, members of the younger generation of a family business.  They had also inherited the founder's passion for fine chocolate.  The founder was the present owner's father.  He had been a senior quality controller for the famous firm of Valrhona.  At some point, he decided to use his expertise to perfect new chocolate types on a much smaller scale.  It was not until we had left the village that I realized that the name Valrhona was derived from the Valley of the Rhône.

Sophie with Melchior, current head chocolatier of Las Llanas Chocolaterie
   

         Generally, I do not care for chocolate, but I tasted some samples that morning that justified Sophie’s praise.  The shop was named Las Llanas.  If ever you are in Tournon, I recommended that you go there.  And your arriving in that village is no more unlikely than my having been there, buying a bar of Blond Chocolate.


 

          Rain was forecast for Lyon on Sunday morning, imperiling our tour group’s ascent to the Basilica of Nôtre Dame of Fourvière.  HL and I had taken the Paris Metro the previous week, but not as part of an official activity.  Getting to the Basilica in Lyon was to be the group׳s first use of public transportation. Laden with umbrellas, our windbreakers rustling, we sallied forth to the Metro station.  As it was only two blocks to the stop on Place Bellecour, our passing through the Metro’s portals was somewhat anticlimactic.
 
        Nowhere is the rivalry between Paris and Lyon more obvious than in the matter of the dueling Eiffel Towers.  Giselle, one of our pair of tour directors, was a passionate advocate for Lyon.  She had been born and educated there.  Giselle informed us gleefully that Felix Bartholdi produced both towers from the same materials and design, but the one in Lyon was slightly taller.

Lyon's Eiffel Tower
 

         There were several funiculars that conveyed the Lyonnaise to the higher sections of their city.  Our Metro tickets gained us admission to the funicular.  Each Metro ticket was valid for a whole day’s unlimited travel on all forms of public transportation.  We rode the funicular with the steepest route to the Hill of Fourvière, site of the Basilica.  From there, we had a panoramic view of Lyon and its  environs.  The drizzle was almost imperceptible by then.

Funicular to the Fourvière Hilltop 

         By the standards of the Cathedral of Lyon, the Basilica was newly constructed, dating from 1884.  The Romans had established the outpost that became Lugdunum, later Lyon, on the hilltop in 43  CE.  The name Fourvière may have been derived from Forum Vetus, Old Forum in Latin.

         Those of you familiar with ecclesiastical nomenclature will know that the far smaller, medieval Cathedral of Lyon is the one where the bishop presides.  The bishop's symbolic throne (cathedra) is there.  The Pope designates a church as a Basilica owing to some architectural, historical or religious distinction.  The Basilica of  Fourvière was erected to thank the Virgin Mary for her alleged role in Lyon's being spared during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War.  

The Basilica of Nôtre Dame

Detail of the front of the Basilica

       
          The style of the church was fanciful.  The exterior was chiefly Romanesque Revival (if there is a Romanesque Revival).
Within were many mosaic murals with evident Byzantine influence, all tiled and many gilded.
 
         The grateful, relieved Lyonnaise raised construction funds by subscription.  These were sufficient to decorate every surface, from the vaulted ceilings to the floors, with brilliant colors and bas-reliefs.  With its rich hues and abundant gilding, the Basilica was almost garish.

         There was a Sunday service in progress while we were at the Basilica, so I took only a few photographs. Our tour director, Elodie, gave each of us in her group a piece of blue candy, a type associated with the Basilica.  Some extremely pious, and doubtless hardy, worshippers go up and down the stairs on their knees.  Some ease the pain by kneeling on little pillows as they go.  The sweets were called Cushions of Our Lady.  They were chocolates shaped into sugary blue rectangles colored with curaçao.  I was tempted by the candy, but passed on the penance.

One of the local chocolate and marzipan candies called Cuissons de Lyon, or, Cushions of Our Lady

         We walked to the Old City, or Vieux Lyon, after our first night aboard the ship.  As our ship was docked on the Rhône, we had to cross a pedestrian bridge to reach the Saone quayside.  There are more medieval and Renaissance mansions in Vieux Lyon than anywhere in Europe except Venice, and most in Lyon are in a better state of preservation.

The bank of the Saône River, site of the oldest part of Lyon 

          We walked on freshly cobblestoned streets past shops, bakeries and restaurants serving regional dishes as we followed our guide to the Cathédrale of Lyon.  The cathedral was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and completed in 1480.  By then, it had been under construction for 300 years.  Its Romanesque and Gothic elements blended in a way that I could not have expected to look as harmonious as it did.

La Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Lyon 

          During the Renaissance, the silk trade enriched Lyon’s merchants.  Some built ostentatious houses, flaunting their wealth with aristocratic embellishments such as towers.  The Rose Tower, La Tour Rose, was one of the grandest of these.

The Rose Tower, in Vieux Lyon
         

         Not content with merely trading in silk, Lyon’s merchants financed a venture in local sericulture.  It was slow to succeed.  Once it did, however, the silk industry became vital to Lyon’s economy until the 20th Century.  To keep the bolts of silk dry as they were carried between workshops, structures were erected that had roofed passages between them.   These are called traboules, and they still form an extensive network.

Courtyard door into the Long Traboule

In the Long Traboule

         The original silk factory buildings were converted into apartments, so our tour group had to keep quiet while we traversed the longest of the traboules.  Only the flats on the top floors got much light, and all of them were quite small.  Even so, they were desirable dwellings.  And that is so despite the residents‘ having to tolerate having tourists traipse through their ground floor premises on a regular basis.

         The pre-Olympics security restrictions deprived us of a boat ride on the Seine River.  On the Friday morning prior to our departure from Paris, our tour group had been scheduled to have the quintessential tourists’ experience of the bateau mouche.  I was not unduly disappointed, as we were about to meet our river ship in Lyon.  There was likely to be enough time on the water to satisfy me.

          The tour directors settled our group onto a bus and we set out for — where else? — the Gare de Lyon.  There was very little shade at the station, and the midday temperature climbed as we queued for our train.  The train was delayed, another normal occurrence in France.  Much as I like to participate in local daily activities when I travel, I make an exception for waiting on line in the heat.

        Our train was not, in fact, delayed.  When our guides learned that the train was to leave on time, they began herding us to the platform with some urgency.  Unapologetically conflicting announcements, too, are typical of the French railway system.  Our carriage was the last on the TGV train to Lyon. 

The platform for the TGV train from Paris to Lyon
        

         TGV was the abbreviation for Train à Grande Vitesse, a high-speed passenger train.  Its average speed was about 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, per hour.  It did not move so quickly as to blur the landscape.  Visible from the windows was a bland succession of fields bordered by trees that failed to keep me awake. 

This was our cabin on the M/S Chanson, the river ship that we boarded at the dock in Lyon.

This flower bouquet sculpture by Jeong Hwa Choi was next to the dock.  It was part of a temporary show in Lyon in 2003, and proved so popular that the city purchased it for permanent exhibit.   

La Place Bellecour is the largest pedestrian square in Europe.  Located in central Lyon, it was once a parade ground.

         Another bus awaited us in Lyon, a city sprawling across the ridges above the confluence of two rivers, the Rhône and the Saône.  Owing to its strategic location, Lyon, called Lugdunum by the Romans, had been the capital of Roman Gaul.  I had not realized that Lyon today was such a populous and proud city.  The Lyonnaise like to believe that their home rivals, if not surpasses, Paris in terms of architecture, food, culture, and every measure of urban quality.  Within the next few days, I would be able to form my own opinion on the topic. 

The Rhône at Lyon, facing towards the Old City, with the Basilica of Nôtre Dame de Fourvière visible on the hilltop.

          I could have entitled this “The More-ais” because I have already described most of the sites where I took these pictures.  The Paris History Museum had two galleries displaying antique tobacconists' signs, some mounted on the walls and as many suspended from the ceiling.  Most were pierced or painted tin, but others were bas-relief sculptures or paintings on metal.  The formerly ubiquitous Parisian tabac has not vanished from the city.  In its present form, however, a tobacconist's shop does not advertise its wares with the whimsy and creativity that showed in the old tabac signs.

Antique tobacconist's shop sign in the Paris History Museum

Trompe l'oeil mural from the Hôtel de Luyens, now in the Paris History Museum

           By becoming a museum, the Hotel Carnavalet avoided being demolished when it fell into disrepair.  Neighboring derelict  mansions had been razed rather than restored.  A trompe l’oeil mural was rescued from the defunct Hôtel de Luyens.  Its illusory group of aristocrats in a Classical setting overlooks the museum’s staircase.

          There was a cafe in the museum’s courtyard garden where HL and I stopped for a cool drink.  Though the menu was limited and the fare overpriced even by Parisian standards, I felt content to be there watching the bees gather pollen until their legs looked floured.

Fabula, the courtyard café at the Paris History Museum 

       One of the most famous denizens of Le Marais was Victor Hugo.  The prolific 19th Century man of letters and his family lived for some years in a house in a corner of Place des Vosges.  Now it is a museum, open to the public at no charge.  Hugo may have been more renowned as a critic of the French Empire than as a novelist.  Certainly Hugo was successful and admired when he decorated his house with fine fabrics, furniture and porcelain, many of them gifts. The opulent chinoiserie style predominated, though the lighting did not permit me to capture much of its effect.

In the Victor Hugo House museum on the Place des Vosges

I stopped at the entrance to the Parmentier Metro station, near the graceful Art Nouveau sign, on my last morning in Paris

        Can anyone ever bid Paris farewell?  I had to make the attempt at the conclusion of our two days in the City of Lights.  Our next stop was to be Lyon.  

          The Marais is one of the oldest sections of Paris, and one of the best to tour on foot. The French aristocracy built its palaces there during the Renaissance, in proximity to the king’s residence and Paris’ first royal square, now the Place des Vosges.  When newer districts became more fashionable, only the minor nobles remained.  Eventually they left, too, deserting their grand houses.

          Le Marais became the Jewish quarter as Paris continued to expand.  Today the district retains its narrow, crooked streets, having been spared from the massive 19th Century reconstruction of Paris that transformed it into a modern capital instead of a medieval city.

          On our second morning walk through Le Marais, we found a synagogue designed by the Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard.  Guimard’s wife was Jewish, according to our tour guide.  There were still five synagogues in the district, as well as Jewish schools, bookstores, and Kosher food shops. 

Art Nouveau faҫade of the Agoudas Keheilos synagogue by Guimard, of Paris Metro gates renown

         Also in Le Marais was the Paris History Museum, opened in the Hôtel Carnavalet  in 1880.  Admission was free, and the museum was well curated, with informative as well as decorative exhibits.  Its inner courtyard contained the only statue of Louis XIV, the Sun King, to have escaped destruction during the French Revolution.  All of the other such royal monuments
throughout Paris were replicas.  Pieces of the smashed original bronzes were on display in the museum.

Statue of Louis XIV in the courtyard of the Hôtel Carnavalet, by the 17th Century sculptor Antoine Coysevox

         HL and I followed the Parisians’ example and relaxed in the Place des Vosges, once the Place Royal.  It was the oldest of the royal squares, enclosed by arcade-like pavilions and shaded by symmetrical borders of linden trees.  Lawns, paths, benches, and flowerbeds relieved the formality of the fountains and the equestrian statue of Louis XIII that dominated the park.  It was a refuge from urban noise and congestion that enticed us to linger, and so we did.

One of the four fountains in the Place des Vosges, dating from 1825

Young mother and child in the Place des Vosges 

Couple on a bench in the Place des Vosges
 

          Paris was the first place in Europe that I had ever visited, so long ago that air travel was an adventure rather than an ordeal. Despite my original and instant infatuation with the French capital, I had not been back in Paris for decades, not until HL and I emerged from the labyrinthine Charles De Gaulle airport early on that Wednesday morning.

         HL and I were not going to replicate my initial Paris itinerary.  I had made that first trip with my friend Miri, when both of us were among the callowest of youths despite our New York City background.  During that historic sojourn, Miri and I went to the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the many other attractions that continue to grace postcards.  HL and I were slated to be in Paris for only two days.  After that, we would depart with our tour group for Lyon, to begin a river cruise along The Rhône.

           Paris was preparing to host the Olympic Games.  As a result, bridges across the Seine, the river that bisects Paris, were being closed.  The influx of tourists, always numerous in Summer, had become so great that the tickets for admittance to famous venues had been sold out for months.  The local gendarmes were out in force, their ranks augmented by the national police.  This may be just my own peculiar perspective, but a gaggle of gendarmes is not exactly a welcoming prospect.

  
The police presence in Paris was inescapable during the days prior to the Olympics.
        

           Our hotel opened onto the Place de la Republique, scene of many political protests and street battles for liberation. It was in the Marais, the historic Jewish quarter.  Also in the Marais was the Museum of Art and History of Judaism, or mahJ, which was not at all crowded.  In 1998, the Jewish museum moved from its previous quarters into a renovated 17th Century chateau, the Hotel de Saint-Aignan.  Ever since, it has been expanding its collection.

HL at the entrance to the Museum of Art and History of Judaism

        Among the museum’s acquisitions was an antique painted sukkah from Austria.  Also worth noting were several Chagall paintings that I had never seen before, most from early in the artist’s career.  In particular, I liked Chagall's The Lovers in Grey, from 1917.

The sukkah from Austria, mid-19th Century

The Lovers in Grey, by Marc Chagall, from 1917

           HL and I ended our first day with a late stroll beside the Saint Martin canal.  The banks and pedestrian bridges of the old canal were maintained as a park.  Both Parisians and tourists took advantage of the cooling evening to sit and listen to the rush of the water.

       Naturally, I wanted to go to the Western Wall (Kotel ha-Ma’aravi in Hebrew, or simply The Kotel), beside the Temple Mount. The Kotel plaza had changed so much since my last visit that it was almost unrecognizable.  It was not just the absence of crowds that I noticed, though few tourists have come to Israel since last October.  The beggars that used to ask for alms from visitors to Judaism’s most hallowed site also have deserted the area.  Now there are information kiosks and a surfeit of signage in a plaza swept as clean of character as of debris.

       It was not until I was very near The Wall that I felt its ineffable attraction.  For millennia, Jews have revered this remnant of the Second Temple as the holiest site in the Holy Land.  Most of those around me were young women in modest attire, presumably students at a religious school.  They rocked slightly as they murmured their prayers.  I brought my face so close to The Kotel that the warmth of its Sun-warmed stones radiated onto my skin.  

       I could have remained there indefinitely, had I not been aware that my companions would be waiting for me to exit the women’s section.  As is customary, I walked backwards when I left, so as not to turn my gaze away from The Wall.

Jon guiding us through one of the quarters in Jerusalem's Old City

A Byzantine arch under excavation

Entrance to the Western Wall Plaza

The Western Wall, Kotel ha-Ma'aravi

        Before the war in Gaza reduced travel to Israel so drastically, guides would conduct regular food tours of Machane Yehuda.  There are restaurants scattered throughout the market, and one of the oldest is Azura.  Azura is owned by members of the third or fourth generation of a Iraqi Jewish family.  With Dalia and Y. to lead the way, HL and I met friends there on Thursday for an early lunch.  Afterwards, I purchased some Medjool dates.  The dates were remarkably sweet, as the memories of these days were certain to be.

Machane Yehuda shoppers on Thursday morning

Habitués of Machane Yehuda near Azura Restaurant

Brunch at Azura

I bought some plump, delectable Medjool dates in Machane Yehuda, my sole purchase there.

        After Hamas attacked, however, the past could not be isolated from the present. The museum removed some of its most precious pieces from the galleries in order to keep them safe in case missiles damaged the exhibition halls.  There was a new, temporary exhibit replacing the stored artifacts with artworks created in response to the 7 October attack.  It was called Splinters from the Storm.  

       At the end of October 2023, Israel’s National Library moved into its new building close to the Bible Lands Museum.  Y., HL and I appreciated the library’s architecture, from its asymmetrical exterior to its grand yet inviting interior. From the atrium, we could peer into the enormous circular reading room that formed the library’s core.

       It was not until we descended to the entrance level that we saw the chairs, each empty save for a picture of one of the hostages still in Gaza.  On the day in May when I saw the Library, there were more than 100 chairs waiting to be filled.

Peacock mosaic from the Byzantine Period in Israel

Mummified hawk from ancient Egypt

Model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, c. 66 CE

October 2023, by Noa Arad Yairi
(In Splinters from the Storm exhibit)

 The National Library of Israel

These empty chairs in the main Reading Room were for the Hostages still in Gaza.  As of my visit

to Israel's National Library, there were more than a hundred of them.

       There were few other passengers, even though many people usually travel on Yom ha-Zicharon in order to visit cemeteries and to be with their relatives.  I was relieved that our carriage was not crowded, owing to the elephantine amount of luggage that we had with us. 

       We had to change trains in Tel Aviv.  The train paused at the Ben Gurion station just before 11 AM.  The other passengers rose from their seats.  So did we.  Exactly on the hour, the sirens' scream began.  Everyone stood unmoving for the two minutes’ duration of the tribute to the slain.  Then people on the platform started walking, voices rose, train doors closed, and we resumed our journey.

       In Jerusalem, Dalia and Y. welcomed us.  Not only did they lodge us in comfort in their guest room, but also procured invitations for us to join them at two Yom ha-Atzmaut parties.  Yom ha-Atzmaut is Independence Day, and Monday evening marked the anniversary of the state of Israel's creation in 1948.  

        The celebration of Independence usually is a joyous one, counteracting the sorrow of the previous national day of mourning.  This year, however, no fireworks brightened the skies over the city.  After eight months of enemy missile bombardments, Israelis were disinclined to regard aerial explosions as entertainment.  While we were at a rooftop party, we saw sporadic, colorful laser flashes, but too few to consider it a show.

         On our first morning in Jerusalem, our hosts took us on a walk through their elegant old neighborhood.  Few cars and pedestrians were on the streets.  It was very quiet, as if the previous day’s sirens’ ululation had just ended.  

         Later, we attended a garden party where all whom we met were quite congenial, eating and drinking, chatting and sometimes laughing.  Our friends Ava and Asher, also Jerusalem denizens, joined us there. We had been looking forward to being with them, and we relished their company.  The weather, too, was ideal, slightly cool for May.  Yet there was no loud music or impassioned talking.  Hardly any car horns honked on the surrounding blocks.  No one seemed to know how much, if at all, to celebrate.  The shadow that fell over us was not caused solely by the tall loquat tree that spread its boughs above the garden.

A train station banner that read Zachor — Remember

Our friends Y. and Dalia, out hosts in Jerusalem

A rooftop Yom ha-Atzmaut party in Jerusalem, where it was cold and extremely windy

View from the rooftop, with a few blue lights for Yom ha-Atzmaut

A house in the Ottoman style common in Jerusalem’s older
neighborhoods 

Window in the Villa Deccan, a mansion converted into a small Natural History Museum, unexpectedly open on Yom ha-Atzmaut

          Z. was our host in Karkur, where HL and I arrived by train from Tel Aviv on Friday.   Primarily a painter, Z. has two studio areas in her sunlit, airy home that is filled with her art.   Last year, she created a tiled mural for the community center in neighboring Pardes Hanna, though she had never before made a mosaic.  Undaunted, Z. learned the requisite techniques and designed a mural based on the orange groves that had sustained the settlement.  Then she organized a group of volunteers, most of them inexperienced, to complete the project in a mere three months.    The mural is entitled Kol ha-Pardes, The Voice of the Grove.     

           On Saturday afternoon, Z. hosted a party for HL and me. She invited our friends who live in Israel, as well as their partners and a few others whom she wanted us to meet.  Decades had passed since I had seen some of those who came. 

           There was an abundance of food, drink and conversation.  When I looked at the group picture of the occasion, it occurred to me that Z. had managed to make another mosaic, this time a human one. 

Z. with the mural in Pardes Hanna that she designed 

Harvest in the orange grove

People of the Mosaic Persuasion

Shabbat dinner with Z. in a seaside restaurant in Caesarea

Shabbat evening service held in the Roman ruins in Caesarea 

         The museum occupied the former City Hall.  In addition to illustrated descriptions of local history and culture, there were contemporary artworks that expressed the city’s spirit.  Among the most imaginative was an installation entitled To the Labor and to the Craft.  It was the collaborative creation of two Israeli artists, Itamar Gross and Shahaf Ram, both previously unknown to me.  In the center of a room devoted to the work stood a rusted, two-wheeled cart with a video screen set inside it.  An animation played constantly on the screen.  On the surrounding walls were collages that might have served as story boards, each framed and incorporating a small sketchbook.

       Later, we walked through Gan Meir, a park evidently favored by many parents with babies and toddlers on that afternoon.  The mature trees provided welcome shade.  A tall bookcase stood near a circular pond where water lilies bloomed.  The juxtaposition seemed as natural as it was pleasing to contemplate.

Part of the installation To the Labor and to the Craft, by Itamar Gross and Shahaf Ram, 2023

The central part of the multimedia installation, a rusted metal cart containing a video screen

Another part of the Gross/Shahaf installation

Gan Meir, or Meir Garden, a park with a free library as well as ponds and playgrounds 

Dinner with Daniela and Ari in Ouzeria, a Greek restaurant in Florentin 

A decorative, if anachronistic, mural of Theodore Herzl gazing at modern Tel Aviv
 

       Our friends had told us about the museum’s transformation, but I had not expected ANU to be quite so exciting a place.  A museum guide suggested that HL and I begin at the top, or third floor.  That level was dedicated to contemporary Jews in all their diversity.  Huge photographic portraits of different types of Jewish families lined the walls.  On video screens, people described their approaches to their Jewish identities.  Each participant had made a brief recording, and I do not know if the videos had been programmed to emphasize contrast.  Certainly there were at least as many differences as the commonalities that the installation sought to demonstrate.

       There were multimedia presentations on Jewish history that were as entertaining as they were informative.  There were sections that highlighted Jewish contributions to culture, science and the arts.  Some animations were accompanied by clever narratives and sound tracks.  They seemed to appeal to elementary and high school students as well as to their teachers and superannuated foreign tourists.

       One of the interactive exhibits that impressed me most was a virtual set of bookshelves, with titles visible on the books’ spines.  When you selected a volume of poetry, it opened to a verse and its translation that had been set to music.  Then a singer or group performed, a video appearing on a section of the screen.

       ANU is the world’s largest Jewish museum, with a collection so vast that only a modest percentage of it can be displayed at any time.  There were far fewer miniature synagogues to see than I recalled from that past visit.  Yet I was not disappointed, as there was a profusion of treasures new to me. 

       I must mention that there was also a hastily mounted show of art inspired by the 7 October attack and its aftermath.  That was curated by the art director of the Kibbutz Be’eri gallery, a survivor of the massacre.  I am not including any of those images here. 

Stone with text excerpted from Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, carving date unknown but at least 1,000 years old

Some contemporary members of our extended family

HL at the virtual poetry library

Kapparot, by Andi Arnovitz, from 2014, reinterpreted the list of transgressions recited on Yom Kippur.  They were written on the black feathers; the white feathers were blank.

Model of the Zabludow wooden synagogue in northern Poland, reputedly constructed without nails in the 1600’s.  It was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941.

One of the most valuable manuscripts in the museum’s collection, the Sassoon Codex is the earliest one containing 24 books of the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) bound as a book rather than a scroll.  A scribe produced it in the 900’s CE.  This was an exact replica in the case. Presumably, the actual Codex was deep in the museum’s vaults.
 

       Then, at 10 AM, the Yom ha-Shoah siren sounded.  Immediately, everyone stopped moving.  Pedestrians and drivers, laborers and shoppers, absolutely everyone stood stock-still in silence for two minutes.  There was neither speech nor traffic noise.  Six million souls rushed noiselessly into the space that the sirens’ wail had cleared for them in the world of the living.

       This year, the annual contemplation of the Six Million victims of the Nazi genocide was especially poignant.  It was the first time that I had experienced Yom ha-Shoah in Israel.  I was proud to witness the solemn solidarity with which the Jewish nation marked the occasion.

       As the last reverberation of the sirens faded, all those around me resumed their activities. At first, they did so tentatively, as if waking from a dream or, more accurately, a nightmare.  By afternoon, Tel Aviv had regained its rhythm. 

       Our friend and indefatigable tour guide, Daniela,  showed us more of the city.  We went to the Shuk Levinsy, once primarily a spice market.  There we shared a meal consisting of many small dishes, most so tasty that I consumed far more than hunger
demanded. 

       We strolled around old neighborhoods near the central business district, where formerly neglected blocks of century-old houses had been restored to elegance.  The old Turkish railway from Yafo to Jerusalem had been transformed into a linear urban park favored by cyclists, walkers, tourists and residents.  Though new office and apartment towers are changing its skyline daily, Tel Aviv remains a city of shared public spaces, with the next coffee house, sculpture garden or park just around the corner.

Construction workers and others standing at attention while the siren sounded

A meal in Shuk Levinsky with Daniela and Ari

This fountain by Nahum Gutman was commissioned by the municipality of Tel Aviv in 1971.  The artist illustrated his impressions of Yafo’s and Tel Aviv’s history in his mosaics.

The former Ottoman rail line, now
Park Ha-Tachanah (Railway Park)

A spice merchant’s shop in Shuk Levinsky (Levinsky Market)

Ladies Who Lunch, in Shuk Levinsky
 

           Since 7 October, a truly Black Sabbath, the protests’ focus has shifted.  Those who oppose Netanyahu and his coalition of rabid clowns still are calling for his ouster.  They have additional causes to inflame their wrath.  To the list of his crimes, they add the Prime Minister’s incompetent conduct of the war on Hamas and his failure to secure the return of the hostages in Gaza.

          When HL and I joined our friends at the close of Shabbat, there were two consecutive demonstrations.  The usual one on Kaplan Street was very well organized, with video screens, sound equipment, a slate of speakers and even an old surplus army tank beside tables of T-shirts and hats printed with relevant Hebrew phrases.  People gathered near the stage, which was close to the Kiriya, the headquarters of the security forces.

          Those groups supporting the hostages’ families held a separate protest after 9 PM. Their priority was bringing home the captives.  Political and military goals were secondary at most.  With the heightened emotions surrounding the hostage issue, some demonstrators had been confronting the police, with violent results.

          Most of the protesters were middle-aged or older, and I felt comfortable among them.  Daniela and I had talked about my accompanying her to Kaplan Street some day.  Then it was happening, no longer a mere wish.  Knowing the context, I could follow most of what was said in Hebrew.  Elections Now is a simple enough slogan.

          Younger people arrived as the speeches, punctuated by shouted assent and blaring horns, continued.  Daniela and Ari were veterans of these rallies, and they thought that the crowd was larger that night than it had been for weeks.

           I was happy to add my voice to those calling for change, even though I cannot vote in Israel’s elections.  We do what we can, and raise one another’s spirits in the process. 

           Especially inspiring was our friend Z.'s presence.  She came to the demonstration on a bus with a group from her home in Karkur, 60 kilometers north of Tel Aviv.  I have always admired her commitment to opposing injustice and caring for others.  I had not seen Z. for years, and the demonstration was a most apt setting for our reunion.

Z. is on the left, also on The Left, beaming.

Ari and HL

The tank parked along the route to the Kiriya

Throughout Tel Aviv, there are large toy bears, painted to look bruised and bloody, bound to benches or tied up in trees.
They are yet another reminder of the hostages, and of the cruelty that they have been enduring for all these months.
 

          We rode into Florentin to meet Daniela on Friday afternoon.  She conducted us to Yafo’s old Flea Market. Yafo, or Jaffa, was an Arab port for centuries.  In 1909, some Jewish residents founded Tel Aviv in the sand dunes adjacent to the ancient port.  After Israel won its independence in 1948, Tel Aviv quickly came to dominate its elder neighbor in size and population.

            Some decades ago, avant-garde artists, Jewish and otherwise, moved into Yafo’s lofts and living spaces.  They were attracted by the low rents and the town’s distinctive, if dilapidated, Levantine style.  Yafo has since become fashionable.  Predictably, used goods stands now are giving way to vintage apparel shops, and street food vendors to restaurateurs.  Middle Eastern music played from storefront speakers as shoppers prepared for Shabbat.  Some youthful revelers congregated at the bars, starting their weekends only slightly prematurely.

            We craved falafel and had some for lunch, on freshly baked pita.  The falafel were cooked to order.  The food was delicious, but the gratification of my gastronomic whim was not the most notable aspect of the experience.  In people’s interactions, I sensed no hostility to mar the pre-Shabbat mood.  The dangers of war and the omnipresent accusation of the hostages’ faces may make our divisions seem inevitable and our future blighted.  For a few hours in Yafo, however, I could believe in a better time.

Gordon Beach, where we would board the bus

Parking in Tel Aviv’s narrow residential streets requires both nerve and skill.

An alley in Yafo’s old Flea Market

The man who prepared our falafel looked like a Jewish Ethiopian, though he might have been an Eritrean guest worker.

Fine dining with Daniela and HL
 

       Along the way, I stopped in a bank lobby in order to obtain a small amount of Israeli currency.  On the ATM screen was the familiar yet anguished demand for the return of those kidnapped and still captive in Gaza: Bring Them Home. 

       A further few blocks’ walk brought us to the extensive museum complex.  There we paused, immobilized by horror.  Since October, the museum’s plaza has been Hostage Square, in Hebrew, Kikar ha-Hatufim.  The world can recognize the victims’ weeping friends and relatives, the spontaneous assemblages, artworks, signs, and photographs of the captives that fill the plaza.  These have been featured in the media during the past few months, long enough to render them stale news. 

       People looking online spare the pictures a glance, whether of glee or sympathy, before turning to the next digital distraction.  It is quite different to be there, to be inside Hostage Square, the epicenter of the heartbreak that continues to disrupt the nation’s pulse.

         It has become common for those who receive honors or feel great joy to act so overwhelmed that they cannot articulate their gratitude.  I believe that this specious verbal inadequacy originates in television talk shows.  It is as offensive as it is untrue. Both English and Hebrew have more than enough words, and no shortage of talented writers, singers and speakers, to describe the shock, grief, anger and pain that afflict Israelis today.  That said, the images in Hostage Square are even more eloquent than reams of rhetoric or even poetry.  Let me show you some of those that most affected me.

Reminders of the hostages’ plight can appear anywhere in Israel.

The hostages’ places at the Seder table remained empty at Passover.

The tunnel is a facsimile of those that Hamas dug under much of Gaza; the kidnappers retreated  into networks of such tunnels with many of the captives.

My rough translation of the Hebrew phrase in white letters is
The Eternity (Eternal One) of Israel will not lie.
 

       Though I was relieved to regain possession of my luggage, I could not help reflecting on the series of errors that had kept it from me for days.  Airlines in several countries had contributed to the abysmally poor handling of a routine task.  That, alas, is not the kind of international cooperation that we applaud.
      
        HL and I needed a few supplies, so we walked to a neighborhood market near the Tel Aviv home of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion.  In front of the house were statues of Paula and David Ben Gurion by the sculptor Shira Zelwer.  Unlike heroic bronzes on tall pedestals, the Ben Gurion‘s stand at street level, in realistic postures. They were cast in bronze and covered in granolith, a finely ground granite applied as a paste that can be painted when it dries.
           
        The couple might be anyone’s grandparents, unglamorous, familiar, and much loved.  Enhancing the illusion of the accessibility of her subjects were some pigeons that Zelwer placed near the couple’s feet.  I was not the only one who has confused the birds with their living models.

       HL and I braved the bus system on our way to meet Daniela and Ari for dinner.  D. had provided us with a prepaid transit card and meticulous directions.  And our waiting a few minutes at a bus stop at the beach could not be accounted a hardship. 

       We rode with  students, parents with babies in strollers, pensioners, and people who did not fit into any easily determined category.  One such passenger was dressed like an Orthodox Jewish woman, with long sleeves, a skirt and covered hair.  The person’s lipstick was incongruously bright, and the eyeliner applied so thickly and inexpertly that I wondered if there had been any light in the room where it had been done.

       I was intrigued and amused by much that I discovered in Tel Aviv.  Yet the reminders of the 7 October attack,  and the  ensuing war, were ubiquitous.  As I was climbing the stairs to our flat at the end of a pleasant night, I passed a door decorated with a sign.  On it, I read: I also was at there, meaning the Nova Music Festival.  (Nova took place near the Gazan border, where Hamas abused and slaughtered many youthful festival attendees.)

    The statement on the sign may have been literal, as some did survive the carnage.  It was also an expression of solidarity with the victims and their families, but it might have included the millions not physically present at the site.  Israel’s Jews may not think as one, but I watched them mourn as one.  And they cannot stop yet.

The tale of the traveling bag reached a satisfactory conclusion.

This tribute to the memories of David and Paula Ben Gurion includes several pigeons.

As we awaited Bus #4, HL and I gazed at the Mediterranean Sea.

Some of our fellow passengers were more exotic than others.

“I too was there”
 

         The images of those taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October are everywhere.  Their names and faces greeted us at the airport.  The exhortation to Bring Them Back is not restricted to graffiti and T-shirts, but appears on billboards and the walls of cafés, schools, post offices and all manner of buildings.  The absence of the captives still in Gaza is a grief that has its own mute presence, one palpable to all Israelis.  It unites them in anguish, however they differ in outlook regarding any other topic.

         The Shuk Ha-Carmel, or Carmel market, is a bazaar where one can purchase inexpensive goods.  It was bustling, busier than I had expected that it would be on a Tuesday.  Bring Them Home, and other more vengeful messages, decorated shirts, backpacks, bandannas and bracelets.  I was there to obtain some items that I still needed in order to function without the contents of my missing suitcase.  A message from the retrieval service hinted at the bag’s delivery on the following day.  Meanwhile, I replaced essential supplies and, in the process, even acquired some fripperies.

         On Tuesday evening, we met Daniela and Ari at Habima Square to attend a jazz concert in the magnificently named Palace of Culture (Heychal Tarbeut).  First, we fortified ourselves with some pizza at a nearby eatery, where pieces cut to one’s specifications were sold according to weight.  By 9 PM, we had taken our seats in one of the smallest theaters within the Palace.  It was the perfect size to hear a jazz combo, as the stage was well within view of every seat.

         The program featured Eli Degibri and his ensemble.  Degibri is a saxophonist, composer and bandleader famous in Israel and in international jazz circles.  He had produced a new album dedicated to his elderly parents.  Degibri played with great invention and energy, complemented by a superb pianist, bassist and drummer.

         A string section consisting of two violinists, a violist and a cellist joined the quartet for the last part of the program.  It was an extremely affecting composition that was the jazz equivalent of a tone poem.  Of course it was about the current war, beginning with a pastoral melody and swelling into a frenetic interplay of drums and saxophone.  It subsided into a wrenching threnody that silenced the audience for a moment before it gave Degibri and his musicians a standing ovation.  The 7 October attack and its aftermath are the national text and subtext, an inescapable undercurrent in the flow of daily activities.  Degibri’s was an excellent concert, though it feels wrong to me to call it entertainment.

The Atalena monument was a recent and somber addition to the Tel Aviv beachfront.

A more whimsical artwork was the sculpture entitled Beyond the Limits, an upside-down monkey atop a cacao pod, by Zadok Ben David.

I enjoyed shopping at the Shuk ha-Carmel, and would have done so even if I had my found my luggage at the baggage claim in Ben Gurion airport when I first arrived.

The sign atop the Palace of Culture expressed the national desire unequivocally.

At the Tony Vespa pizzeria, I learned how large a piece of pizza weighs 100 grams.

If you have the chance to see Eli Degibri perform, I recommend that you do so, even if you are not a jazz aficionado.
 

       After dining at one of our friends’ favorite Italian restaurants, we proceeded to Yafo, where some stores were open.  Muslim shop assistants were at work, as they did not observe the holiday.  I was able to acquire a few basic garments to wear until my laggard luggage might rejoin me.  Then we went to Yafo Beach to gaze at the Mediterranean Sea, savoring the salt breeze after sunset.
    
       We ended the night in the Romano Center, which once housed garment makers but now is an arcade with record, stamp and coin shops along the sides of an unroofed event space.  Moroccan Jews mark the end of Passover with a party called the Maimouna.  It has become part of the holiday celebrations for Israeli Jews from all backgrounds.  We had happened upon a Maimouna celebration at the Romano Center.  A band played Arab and Sephardi songs, and a DJ provided the music when the musicians took a break.  The crowd was young, dressed in their motley yet somehow chic garb, singing, swaying, and laughing. I could not think of a better way to be leaving Egypt, hearts high despite the horrors of these times.

The Little Girl in the center of the mural is the work of an artist who uses the name Imaginary Duck.  The character appears in various guises throughout Tel Aviv.

HL, Daniela and Ari in the American-German Colony.  Some of the Colony's old wooden buildings were brought from The States in the early 20th Century and reassembled in Tel Aviv.

This is a typical alley in the part of Florentin that has yet to be refurbished.

Ari and Daniela near their apartment in Fiorentin, Tel Aviv

This is the studio of sculptor Sophie Jungreis, in the German-American Colony, Tel Aviv

Ari and HL with me at Yafo Beach
 

            At last, the Sun appeared, granting us the kind of day that has made Florida a perennially popular Winter destination.  The morning mist burned off even before the beachcombers and treasure seekers finished their early rounds.  D., HL and I were able to wander along the beach without a care.  D. and HL could be somewhat more insouciant than I, as my skin tends to burn even when I marinate myself in sunblock lotion.  

Men with metal detectors are common on Jacksonville Beach.

         The Jacksonville Pier had to be replaced after hurricanes damaged it in 2016 and in 2017.  It was Hurricane Irma in 2017 that completed the demolition.  The new pier was still under construction during our previous visits to D.  It was rebuilt about ten feet higher than its predecessor, for additional protection against storm surges.  The pier reopened in 2022.

I took a picture of my Birthday Man under the Jacksonville Pier.

         It was the first time that HL and I could walk to the end of Jacksonville Pier.  With D., we gazed at the waves and the anglers.  Pelicans flew over the water in tight formations.  One intrepid pelican left his fellows in order to investigate the anglers' activities at close range.

The pelican spied an angler's catch and landed within striking distance.

         The pelican savored a morsel of fish that an angler threw in front of the hungry bird.  Then the pelican flapped his wings and bobbed his head up and down, enlisting the aid of gravity to move the snack down his gullet.  His movements on the pier were less graceful than those in the air or on the water, but we three were an appreciative audience for his impromptu dance.

The pelican remained on the railing, ready to swoop whenever the next fisherman was feeling generous. 

         In Jacksonville Beach, the weather remained cool and damp.  Our hotel room had a balcony overlooking the roiling ocean.  HL and I could stand there and observe the grey waves dissolving into the silvery sky.  Conditions were not conducive to the seaside rambles that I had imagined taking with HL and my friend D.  D. resides a few miles from the beach and walks there frequently, but not when it is chilly.  On inclement days, she was inclined to turn on her patio heater and watch the birds that gathered at her feeders.  D. suggested that HL and I could see some Dalí prints in a local gallery, if we were feeling restless.  No sooner had my friend mentioned the Spanish Surrealist than I was eager to discover which Dalí works were on display.   

         Gallery 725 was situated between a restaurant and a dog groomer's shop.  As we parked, I lowered my already modest expectations.  So I was unprepared to have ranks of handsomely framed prints greet my eyes.  They lined the gallery's walls, arranged according to the mythological theme of each series. 

I admired the chandelier, which would not have disgraced a gallery in any major city.

         When we entered the gallery, only the proprietor was there, seated at a desk in the back.  She explained that the prints belonged to Christine Argillet, the daughter of Dalí's publisher, Pierre Argillet.  Madame Argillet, as she styles herself, inherited her father's extensive collection of works on paper by his friend and collaborator.  The owner has been selling the etchings, watercolors and lithographs in groups, offering them through Gallery 725, over the course of the past several years.  I do not know the nature of the connection between Madame Argillet and the gallery's owners, as the woman did not divulge it.  

         Dalí called his series Suites.  Some illustrations from his Suite, Mythologie (Mythology), featured the goddess Venus.  There were also selections from Goethe's Faust, Les Hippies (The Hippies), and Les Poemes Secrets d'Apollinaire (The Secret Poems of Apollinaire).

Oedipus and the Sphinx, from the Mythologie Suite

         It was an hour, perhaps more, before we left the gallery and its enchantments.  Whatever the actual meteorological conditions, the gloom had lifted.

          Guy was not feeling his best, so he did not join his parents and us for a walk in the forest near their house.  There is nowehere in Gainesville tht is far from woods and wetlands.  My Young Friend and S., his partner, led us along the muddy course of a creek.  It was cloudy and so humid that we might have been in a terrarium.  When the skies darkened to slate and the thunder rumbled, we turned back towards' our hosts' home, only slightly wet from that afternoon's shower.

Remnants of the native hardwood hammocks border the housing tracts throughout north central Florida.

         After I presented Guy with his new cards, I thought that I should teach him a little about using them.  I travel with a compact Tarot deck, but I had not read the cards in quite a while.  The truth is that I had avoided consulting the Tarot.  I had not been prepared to take any drastic measures to solve a persistent problem, as the cards might well indicate.  I laid out what I had meant to be a simple, sample pattern, explaining what I was seeing and how it might be  interpreted.  Or so I thought.  The cards fairly leaped through my fingers.  The spread, though it consisted of only five cards, transmitted one of the most significant messages that I have ever received.  The air in the room quivered, and my voice faltered.  I should have known that there could be nothing casual in my interactions with the Tarot, especially since I had postponed touching the cards for so long.  Whether or not teenaged Guy derives any insight from his deck,  I have benefited already from giving him his first taste of Tarot.  

Florida Swamp by William Glackens, undated, early 20th Century

         I admit readily that there are gaps in my knowledge of North American art.  Happily, I filled a significant one last year, when I became acquainted with the works of William Glackens.   I learned about him as I prepared for a trip to Philadelphia's superlative Barnes Collection.  Once, Glackens was lauded as The American Renoir, in a late phase of a successful career that began with his work as a reporter and  illustrator for newspapers and magazines.  As one of The Eight in New York, he painted muted scenes of urban life, intended as social commentary.  Glackens, however, was not content with the restricted palette and subject matter of the Ashcan School.  Influenced by Impressionism, he devoted the last part of his career to depicting the leisure class in brightly hued costumes at sunlit resorts.  I believe that Glackens' haunting Florida swamp landscape predated his treatments of parks, racetracks and marinas.  To me, those woods draped in Spanish Moss were simultaneously alluring and portentous, increasing my admiration of Glackens' range and skill. 

Trailer Park Garden by Stevan Dohanos, 1951

          The Harn Museum introduced me to the art of Stevan Dohanos.  Dohanos was a prolific illustrator, much influenced by Edward Hopper and Grant Wood.  Dohanos worked in advertising, and received commissions for the covers of popular magazines.  Dohanos was a genre painter, specializing in realistic yet fond glimpses of ordinary Americans at work and play. During World War Two, he produced recruitment posters for the U.S. Army.  In peacetime, Dohanos emulated Norman Rockwell in designing many covers for The Saturday Evening Post.  Another artist might have painted a retirees' trailer park as a sad or squalid place, but Dohanos suffused his picture with a benign glow.  

                  The weather in Gainesville that afternoon was not as fair as it was in Dohanos' Florida vignette.  Rain began to fall from the clouds that had been gathering for hours.  The thunder and lightning dissuaded us from walking in the meditation garden beside the Asian wing.  That stroll will have to await our next visit to the Harn Museum.  

        Often it happens that an achingly early flight does not align with hotel room access at one's destination.  So it was with us when we went to north Florida for HL's Birthday.  You, my patient Readers, know that I am the one who insists on leaving town for  our natal anniversaries.  HL did not object, though he may have experienced some misgivings while we waited on the car rental line at Jacksonville airport.  Eventually, we claimed our sedan and turned towards Gainesville. 

       Gainesville lies about 70 miles from Jacksonville, via roads that meander southwest through forests of pine and live oak.  Curtains of Spanish Moss hang from the oaks' boughs, rendering the woods mysterious on even the brightest days.  HL suggested that we visit the University of Florida's art museum before checking into our hotel.   He had read that there was a temporary exhibit of Himalayan artworks there.  Though we had been in Gainesville a few years ago, it was a long time since I had been on the university campus.  So the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, opened in 1990, was new to both of us.    

         We were greeted by Esterio Segura's Hybridization of a Chrysler.  It did not require much imagination to interpret the contemporary Cuban sculptor's addition of aircraft wings to a 1953 automobile as a desire for flight, both physical and imaginative. 

       We were delighted to learn that the featured exhibit was a collection from the Rubin Museum of Himalyan Art, in New York.  The Rubin Museum, on West 17th Street, was one of our favorite places in The City.

The Harn is spacious, modern and spare, with ample room for acquisitions in the Asian wing that was added in 2012.

This thangka, a Tibetan Buddhist religious painting, was displayed with its traditional mounting.

Classical Himalayan painters prepare their rich pigments from ground minerals, some of them semi-precious.

This gilt-copper flying naga figure was made in Tibet or Nepal in the 14th Century.

Nagas are semi-divine, serpentine beings that appear often in decorative art. 

       Some of the pieces were familiar to me.  Wonderful as it was to see them in this unexpected setting, the Himalayan paintings, sculptures and ritual objects on loan were not all that the Harn Museum had to offer...

This iguana lingered near the breakfast café at our hotel in Quepos.

         More generally, Pura Vida describes the outlook of the population in a country that abolished its army 75 years ago: slow down, stop worrying, and appreciate the pageant occurring all around you.  Let us be kind to one another in this place of sweet fruits and sunshine, where more than a thousand species of butterflies make their home.

          Our last day at the beach was devoted to Pura Vida.  We walked beside the beach until we found a place where we could have breakfast and watch the ocean.  Souvenir and snack merchants were setting out their wares.  We sat at the table for quite a while, and still had to ask for the check.  

         All three of us rested during the hottest part of the day.  The humidity increased and some clouds had appeared by the time that we went to our nearby beach.  The water was warm, causing minimal shock of entry.  We dodged the waves until they started knocking me down.  Then we repaired to the hotel pool to swim as the Sun set, a vermillion orb sinking into the waves.

         Pura Vida remains undefinable, but the spirit manifests itself in myriad ways. Here are a few illustrations:

         An old school bus transformed into a restaurant

A fresh coconut drinks cart left unguarded on the sand

Hotel doors decorated with hand-carved animals and birds, with a different design for each room

A man weaving palm fronds into hats for sale 

Chifre, a traditional dish made with ingredients so fresh and flavorful that it makes you wonder if what you had been eating until you came to Costa Rica actually was food

         The howler monkeys in the trees near our beach hotel were particularly noisy at night.  I found that I did not mind being awakened by them.  I could listen to the waves while I waited for sleep to reclaim me.  Lying in the soft darkness, I would let my breathing slow as I adjusted to the rhythm of la Pura Vida.

Being strapped into my safety harness

My ground crew
 

       HL endured the Sun’s relentless rays for over 20 minutes in order to take pictures of every stage of my journey.  After I was buckled into a life jacket and harness, I was attached to a tow cable.  Two young men helped me walk forward in a crouch until I felt the line grow taut.  Then I was airborne, held aloft under a tricolor sail.

Taking to the sky

      As I rose above the beach and the rocky, forested offshore islets, the air cooled.  I could hear nothing but the wind. An incessant whisper.  I was seated on a strap, rocking slightly as if on a child’s swing, with no need to grasp any part of the harness to feel secure.  It is difficult to describe the sensation of floating in utter tranquility, outwardly in motion while internally at rest, to anyone who has not experienced it.  For me, it was blissful.  The clarity of the air enhanced the mingled blue hues of the ocean.  I saw every leaf on every branch as I sailed above the trees, even though I just glanced at them in passing.

        After the boat curved back towards the beach, I did give a thought to my landing.  I would not be collected by the boat as I was during my previous foray into parasailing.  This time, I would be deposited into the surf and retrieved by someone on a jet ski.  I tightened the cord on my sunhat in preparation, lest I lose it if I sank to any depth at the rendezvous point.
 

        The descent was gentle.  I was submerged for only a moment and the jet ski was there, as promised, when I surfaced.  The hardest part of my return was climbing onto the back of the jet ski as it bobbed in the waves.  The boy operating the jet ski assisted me while another boy swam beside, unclipping my harness.  It was my first ride on a jet ski, and, though brief, it was long enough for me to understand jet skiing’s appeal.

The retrieval

 

          Our guide was Josue, a wiry, middle-aged fellow who had been conducting tourists through Manuel Antonio for decades.  He assured us that the lengthy queue for admittance was shorter than it would be during the following week.  The park is thronged throughout the high season, a period of three months beginning in December.

         Manuel Antonio is home to several types of monkeys, including the agile, sociable Capuchins and the far larger, distinctly unfriendly, howlers.  The howlers' booming cries startled me every time that I heard them.

         I had been told that I was most likely to see the face of a sloth in Manuel Antonio, instead of just its back.  The three-toed sloth is the one that appears to be smiling.  HL managed to photograph a sloth's face, using his camera's long lens, but I was unable to do so.

         The sighting of an extremely venomous snake provided the day's excitement.  The Fer-de-Lance (from French, meaning an iron spearhead) is a pit viper so poisonous that it is responsible for more human deaths than any other snake in Latin America.  Its irritability and high venom production make for a dangerous combination.  The guide helped us to find the Fer-de-lance, which was so well camouflaged that it remained invisible to my phone's camera. 

         Even though the snake was a baby, the Fer-de-lance could be lethal.  The guides did not permit their charges to approach it too closely.  Josue informed us that the snakebite treatment, antivenin, had been invented in Costa Rica. If that were true, it was a fact that the Ministry of Tourism might choose not to publicize.  

         After the tour, Ava, HL and I went for a swim.  The waves were gentle, and the clear turquoise water was quite warm near the shore.  Being in the ocean simultaneously revitalized and soothed me.  I could have stayed in it indefinitely, had we not been obliged to take turns guarding our belongings from pilfering monkeys in search of treats.

An agouti, a common forest rodent

Heliconia flower

A male Capuchin monkey

Mother and baby Capuchin monkey
 

The woodcarver had decorated the roadside viewing platform with one of his carvings.  

       The highway became straighter and busier as we approached the ocean.  The weather became hotter and more humid as the afternoon advanced.  Near the town of Jaco, vendors were hacking open coconuts to sell the juice.  I purchased one from a fellow who did not seem to be doing any business.   My coconut was not a small young one with sweet juice.  It was unwieldy and heavy, and whatever liquid it contained had an unpleasant taste.  Even worse, it was leaking, so I had to discard it in short order.  I decided to try drinking fresh coconut juice when I came across another vendor, preferably one with other customers.

It is difficult to see a sloth in its rainforest habitat, so I took this picture of the facsimile clinging to the C in the sign for the beachfront town of Jaco.

The coco frío vendor with his unsatisfactory wares

A female coati was unperturbed by our proximity.

         It was towards the end of our sylvan exploration that we noticed a pair of cat-like forms moving rapidly along vine-laden branches, high overhead.  Jorge was practically dancing with excitement as he told us that the animals were olingos, another procyanid, like coatis and raccoons.   There were other guides with their own small groups behind us on the path.  Jorge alerted them so that they, too, could watch the olingos darting through the forest canopy.  The olingos, alas, moved too quickly for me to photograph them.

         Olingos are nocturnal and therefore rarely observed in daylight.  It had been months since Jorge had glimpsed one, let alone two, even at night.  A few paces further down the trail was another pair of olingos.  I thought that they might have been the first two, but Jorge said that the second two were larger.  He was convinced that we had seen four of the elusive olingos, and was elated by our good luck.  I was willing to celebrate any number of the exotic creatures that had graced our tour with their presence.  

Ava, HL and I before our trek through the cloudless forest
 

A tiny full-grown avocado, one of many types of the fruit that grows in Costa Rica

In any landscape in Costa Rica, water is never far away.

This picture was taken from the inside of a ficus tree, a Strangler Fig hundreds of years old.
 

Costa Rica is reputed to have a greater variety of hummingbirds than anywhere else on Earth.
 

         On the way back to San José,  Dario and we toured a wildlife rescue facility (Rescate Animal in Spanish).  Zoos are illegal in Costa Rica, so any animals kept in captivity must be unable to survive in the wild.  We chose to believe that the resident birds and beasts in the Rescate could not be rehabilitated well enough to let them fend for themselves.  I must say that, to my inexpert eye, the creatures all looked fit, with glossy fur or feathers.  We were pleased when Dario chose to accompany us.  He was familiar with the place, having taken his family there several times.  Our amiable driver proved adept at spotting the inhabitants of the thickly forested enclosures.

The Collared Aracari is a small species of toucan.

Our guide was a very good sport, happy to pose with an old friend.

Even in repose, this jaguar looked healthy as well as lethal. 

HL and I began to wilt in the afternoon heat at the Rescate.

          With their flexible, sock-shaped snouts and rounded bodies, tapirs look like survivors of the age of early mammals.  They have always appealed to me.  Costa Rica is home to the Baird's Tapir, the largest of the world's four tapir species.  Tapirs are hard to observe in their natural habitat, as their coats tend to blend into the shaded, dense foliage.  These elusive herbivores depend on camouflage as a defense against predators.  Their size also helps protect them from all but pumas, jaguars, crocodiles and, of course, humans.  Tapirs are the largest mammals in Central and South America, a fact which surprised me.  Adult tapirs can weigh more than 350 kilograms (about 770 pounds).             

          The tapir in the refuge was not hiding, nor was it moving much.  I had been awake long enough to think that the recumbent tapir had the right idea.  Instead of napping, however, I kept taking pictures for as long as my phone’s battery lasted.

Hydrangeas (Hortensias)

         After we had downed mugs of steaming coffee, we strolled in the garden.  Hydrangeas, Hortensias in Spanish, grew in profusion, as did amaryllis and Bird of Paradise flowers.  Dario showed us the coffee ripening on the handsome trees.  The red fruit had to be picked by hand.  The coffee fruit, called cherries, contained the seeds that we know as coffee beans.  The beans would be washed and roasted, and, eventually, ground.  As a coffee aficionada, I appreciated all the stages of cultivation that brought the essential beverage to my table every morning.   

Coffee cherries 

Bird of Paradise flowers in the coffee plantation's garden 

       Poás Volcano rises to a height of about 2,700 meters.  Its crater is shaped like a vast bowl. The crater contains a lake of lava that is extremely  acidic, causing acid rain to fall in the area.  Even more dangerous are the explosive gases that the volcano emits.  At times, the national park surrounding Poás has to be evacuated.  The volcano is quite active.  Its last major eruption occurred in 2019.

The path to the peak was lined with flowering Gunnera plants.  The Gunnera leaves are so large that they are known as Poor Man's Umbrella (Sombrilla de Pobre)

The Gunnera's leaves and flowers give it a prehistoric appearance.  In fact, it is a member of a plant family 

that has flourished in the tropics for about 100 million years.

       The high altitude and moist air give Poás its own weather.   Often, clouds obscure the peak.  It was cool and misty as HL and I started walking uphill.  Soon it became cold, windy and wet.  When we reached the observation deck, we peered down into a featureless whiteness.  We waited as the sky lightened and darkened alternatively, so we could see our shadows before we had to seek shelter from the pelting rain once again.  The volcano remained shrouded from view.  So I could not verify its existence with my own eyes.  HL and I had known that Poás might not be visible, so we left, somewhat disappointed but intent on getting warm and dry.

                                                                       Though I lingered at the railing above the crater, I saw only the thick mist.  

Signs like this one illustrated what the mists concealed from us.

        It was almost closing time for the tri-level Museos del Banco when HL and I left the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum.  The second, or middle, level was reserved for temporary exhibitions.  The staircase was situated so that we could peer into the gallery as we ascended to the street level.  A series of paintings covered the walls.  All of them were the works of the Costa Rican artist Rolando Faba.  The title of the assemblage was Salto al Vacío, A Leap into the Void.  If ever a phrase were designed to intrigue me, that was it.  Obviously, the paintings merited at least a cursory inspection.

Often, I find the commentary in a gallery intrusive.  In the case of Faba's Leap, it seemed integral to the exhibit.    

          Faba, it transpired, was as much a conceptual artist as a painter.   Five series of Faba's recent works represented visual responses to philosophical queries.  Faba's explorations of form, technique and meaning made the Costa Rican artist seem a worthy heir to the 20th Century avant garde.  His intellectual and spiritual quests had led him to explore many Eastern as well as Western traditions.  This range of influences was apparent in such titles as Serie Brahmanda, the Brahmanda Series, with its Hindu name, and La Farmacía Celestial, The Celestial Pharmacy, a term from European alchemy.   

          Faba's paintings were varied: some dense abstractions, some geometric, and others spare and reminiscent of Asian calligraphy.  A number of compositions incorporated animal and floral forms.  The color palette ran the gamut from garish vermillion, turquoise and metallic gold to brooding monochromes.   I had to admire the way that the differences in form, hue and texture revealed, rather than disguised, the artist's singular style.      

          Though he has lived in Barcelona for the past two decades, Rolando Faba is most famous in Costa Rica.  I had not heard of him until HL and I stopped to satisfy our curiosity about the display.  I admit to being unfamiliar with the works of many contemporary artists, so I was pleased to discover Faba on my first day in his native land.      

       U Sulé means house in the language of the Bribri, a tribe native to the mountainous Talamanca region on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.  The traditional Bribri dwelling is a conical, thatched hut.  The Bribri model of the Universe is shaped like two huts joined at the base, accommodating nine levels of reality, each home to a different kind of being.   

       According to this scheme, the middle plane is the Earth, created for human clans to inhabit.   That world is called Iriria.  

            The installation was interactive and elaborate.  There was a thick metal pole in the center of the oval enclosure, and on it was a two-sided handle on a ring that moved up and down the pole's surface.  The structure resembled a spinal column, with the handle like a vertebra and the pole like the spinal cord passing through it.   There were marks on the pole, equally spaced, each corresponding to one of the nine cosmic realms.  When you pushed the bar to align with a mark, moving images illustrating that level were projected across the curved interior walls.  There was a descriptive narration for each realm, with a background of tribal music and, where relevant, bird and animal cries.

The home of the god Sibo, where it ascended after creating the Earth

The place where the darkness and its spirits were sent
 

          HL and I spent a long time sampling all the worlds.  I shall not regale you with the details of every one.  Especially fascinating to me was the topmost point, where the Creator's parent dwelled.  It was the place of total silence, and I read those words in Spanish and English several times.   Reluctantly, we left the mythic cosmos, and then only when we ceded the exhibit to a family with two young children.  

       A widely spiraling staircase ended in an antechamber designed to look like an archaeological excavation site, presumably a tomb.  

         The collection contained thousands of Pre-Columbian artifacts, ceramic and stone as well as gold.  There were works from the indigenous people of all the regions of what would become Costa Rica.  The objects had been made between 700 to 1500 CE.  Golden jewelry and ritual items gleamed in the showcases.  I was impressed by the goldsmiths' skill as well as their designs, many of them incorporating the animals of the region.  These included miniature jaguars, deer, harpy eagles and even a pair of golden lobsters.

The displays were well lit and labeled.  In addition to numerous maps and explanatory texts, there was a scale model of an indigenous village and life-sized figures wearing warriors' and shamans' regalia. 

          I should have been satisfied if the exhibits that I have mentioned so far were all that the museum had to offer.  Yet the most remarkable work there was not made of gold, gems or earthenware, but of light.  You may, justifiably, accuse me of saving the best for last.  Yet the installation called U Sulé merits a separate description, and I shall provide it anon.
       

Teatro Nacional, San José

           Our flight landed in San José after dark, so we saw little more of the Costa Rican capital than the stream of tail lights on the roads from the airport to our hotel until the next morning.  To the best of my knowledge, no one has described San José as a beautiful city.  Its commercial thoroughfares were lined with fast food outlets and casino billboards.  Heavy traffic clogged the streets leading to the city center.   Buses were ubiquitous, mobile factories for producing malodorous exhaust.  

          The incessant blasting of horns and cries of lottery ticket hawkers was muted as HL and I approached one of San  José’s few historical landmarks, the National Theater (Teatro Nacional).  It was not a relic of Spanish colonialism, but a monument to the pretensions of the conquerors' heirs, Costa Rica’s coffee magnates.   Their cultural ideals were European, so the design and ornamentation, including the marble on the lobby pillars, all were imported.  An Italian sculptor, Pietro Bulgarelli, was commissioned to make the statues of the Muses that grace the lobby.

La Comedia (Comedy) by Pietro Bulgarelli
               

        One must take a formal tour in order to see the interior of the theater.  Our guide was a young woman, an actor who spoke fluent English to our group of assorted foreigners.  

        The National Theater opened in 1897.  Its roccoco second-floor foyer was undergoing restoration.  I watched several people there engrossed in the painstaking application of fresh gold leaf to plaster flora and fauna.  The work was supposed to be finished in six months.  Meanwhile, the theater was open, though there were no shows scheduled
during our time in San Jose.

Restoration in progress in the second-floor salon

         After the tour, we had lunch in the Café del Teatro.  We resisted the pastries, but I succumbed to a postprandial cappuccino on the premises where coffee grandees once indulged their Europhilia.  On reflection, I should have ordered two.

Cappuccino Alma de Café, a specialty of the theater café

The foam support was more like an amateur art project than a therapeutic device.

          Tempted though I was  to hibernate through my recuperation, I needed physical therapy.  My insurance would cover twelve sessions, a minimum of two per week.  The physical therapy practice was in the same medical building as the surgeon's office.  HL, who was at least as eager as I to have me recover the use of my right hand, was not only my chauffeur but my companion throughout the attenuated process.  He sat beside me as I learned various series of exercises to restore my flexibility.  Even better, he encouraged me to perform the prescribed sequences several times each day.  

          The first therapist who evaluated my condition also fashioned a custom removable splint for me.  In all, three therapists monitored my progress over the course of a month.  Each was personable, experienced and dedicated to her profession.  I suppose that my reacting to competence with surprise reveals a certain cynicism.  In my defense, recent history, both personal and global, may excuse this darkening of my attitude. 

           I approached my rehabilitation with all of the fanaticism associated with my astrological Sign, Scorpio.  I stretched, pulled and prodded as directed, determined to be the therapists' star pupil.  My hand and wrist were weak, but soon I could hold a pen again.  I still needed help to wash my hair and manage daily tasks.  My dislike of dependency provided additional motivation for me to regain full function.  I strove to impress the therapists, and was rewarded with an early discharge after only seven sessions.  When I saw the surgeon in June for more X-rays, Dr. L. was almost as pleased as I was by the results of his handiwork (pun intended).    

The physical therapists gave me progressively denser pieces of putty to manipulate, and mildly abrasive squares of plastic to massage the scar tissue.

          I wish that this were the end of this story.  My wrist bones and surrounding tissues, however, will not heal completely for some months yet.  After that, I can use light weights in hopes of restoring my muscular strength.  The scar will continue to fade.  Less likely to dim is the realization that any one of us can be humbled by Fortune in an instant, and that it is haste as often as pride that can precede a fall.

          I assumed that I was getting Valium or a related drug to quell anxiety.   Usually I could tolerate such drugs well, but I began to wonder if I had been dosed with a hallucinogenic when the anesthesiologist entered my cubicle.  I shall call her Dr. X because her speech was almost unintelligible to me, so her name remained a mystery.  Dr. X. was a tall, curvaceous woman with dark, glossy skin and a tower of multi-colored braids coiled atop her head.  A chartreuse cloth surgical cap crowned the construction.  Her artificial fingernails looked like bejewelled miniature surfboards, distracting me from whatever information she was attempting to impart.  How could she wear latex gloves?  I doubted whether I had any real choices at that point.  The anesthesiologist could have been describing my coming exsanguination for all that I cared. 

          At some point, a benevolent Lene had draped a heated blanket over me.  I was so relaxed that I was not startled when the surgeon, Dr. L., materialized at the head of my bed.   He asked if I was all right.  In retrospect, it was an odd question. Then Dr. L. repeated his willingness to pray for me before he performed the surgery.  Despite the Valium,  I still possessed greater mental acuity than that of a bowl of tapioca, so I requested that he pray for me.  While he did so, I wanted to grit my teeth but managed to smile.  It was in my interest to have the man who was about to take a scalpel to my wrist be in the best possible frame of mind.   

I was upset when I thought that my ring would have to be cut off my swollen finger during surgery, but one of the kind nurses was able to remove it, intact, while I was unconscious.

          On my initial visit to Dr. L's office, HL and I had to wait quite a while before being ushered into the consulting room.   The cubicle's walls were crowded with even more explicitly religious mottoes than those in the waiting room.  As I read them, my apprehension increased.  

There was nothing subtle about the surgeon's computer screen saver, either in the medical allusion or the piety.

          Dr. L. turned out to be a short man with a harried air.  He spoke with no trace of an accent, though he had an Asian name and facial features.  His framed diplomas indicated that he had been educated in the state.  He may have been born there as well.  I was glad that the physician was a native English speaker,  since he had to interpret the details of my X-ray and describe the operation that I needed.  

          Dr. L. explained the problem with efficiency and authority.  I understood that the bone would knit crookedly without surgical intervention.  Dr. L. proposed inserting a little metal plate in my wrist to align the ends of the broken radial bone.  He would secure the plate with pins, and the bone would heal around them.   The metal plate would be a permanent addition.   Dr. L. was willing to perform the operation on the following day.

          I was more than ready to have my wrist reconstructed.  For once, the prospect of general anesthesia did not perturb me.  In   fact, by that point I looked forward to a few hours' respite from the pain that had racked me for most of a week.  

           After Dr. L. instructed me on the pre-operative protocol, I thought that the consultation was over.  Dr. L., however, had something more to say.  He informed HL and me that he, and everyone who worked in his practice, belonged to a fellowship of  faith.  It was hardly a surprise.  Evangelical Christians are common in this region.   Such fundamentalists' beliefs used to seem ludicrous to me.  Here, even those educated in medical science are not immune to the promise of salvation.  When Dr. L. offered to pray for me,  I managed not to squirm.  Instead, I accepted what was meant to be a gift with the best grace that I could muster.  I was not about to risk alienating a surgeon whose skills I needed.    

I seem to have tripped over one of the concrete teeth designed to prevent parking cars on the sidewalk.

         Eating dinner in such a state was impossible.  As HL led me back to our hotel, I hoped that the injury might be a severe sprain rather than a fracture.  My assessment was colored by my reluctance to go to a Dutch hospital on a Friday night, and possibly miss our return flight the next morning.  With the aid of ice and the strongest analgesics in our travel supplies, I was able to fly back with HL.  By the time that the plane landed, my fingers looked like a bunch of miniature purple bananas.  

          You, my astute Readers, will have guessed by now that I had indeed broken my wrist.  The X-ray that my usual doctor ordered revealed that I had sustained a Colles fracture, a very common type.  Technically, it was a distal fracture of the radius with dorsal angulation.  In other words, my wrist was a mess.  Putting it in a cast would not be sufficient.  In order to have my wrist repaired,  I required the services of an orthopedic surgeon.  My doctor had two possible candidates in mind.  The first was on vacation.  None of his associates would be able to see me for weeks.  The second call was to Dr. L., a hand specialist who was also a cosmetic surgeon.  I was able to secure an appointment with him a mere two days after my initial X-ray.

Here was the bad news, in black and white.

           Dr.L.'s waiting room was small,  with samples of silicon breast implants on the reception counter beside a vase of fabric flowers in need of dusting.  The decor compensated for its lack of aesthetic distinction with an abundance of reading material, in the form of signs.  These were mounted on the walls and all available horizontal surfaces.  All bore slogans and quotations meant to be inspirational.  Whenever I looked up from my book, I could not avoid a visual barrage of cheerful banalities.  I had noticed similar signs in other medical settings, though never in such profusion.  Poor taste is so widespread that it is not alarming in itself.  Nonetheless, my unease increased as I awaited my consultation.  As you will learn, my instincts had not failed me.   

        King’s Day festivities did not diminish attendance at the museum.  We had bought our tickets while still in The States, assuming that Van Gogh’s popularity would make the museum an obligatory tourist destination.  At the entrance, signs informed us that all of the day’s tickets had sold out, and it seemed that as many local denizens as foreigners were there.

         The Van Gogh Museum is fifty years old, though it is housed in a contemporary glass-walled structure near the Rijksmuseum.  Van Gogh’s nephew and namesake, Vincent, was instrumental in organizing the core collection.  

         I had to admire the curators’ acumen in choosing to focus on the person in addition to the paintings.  Usually I resist that sort of orientation, but I liked the chronological display of self-portraits in Van Gogh’s case because they illustrated his development as an artist.  The series forced an intimacy with the painter as a complex man, not the stereotypical sad genius with an iconic style and poor impulse control.  

         There were paintings from every phase of Van Gogh’s abbreviated life. Many were so familiar that being near them in the galleries felt unreal.  Others were less well known, and a few were completely new to me. There were also paintings by other artists who had influenced Van Gogh, some of them his friends.   I have always appreciated the beauty and vitality of Van Gogh’s art.  So do millions around the world.  I was not prepared, however, for the intensity of emotion that I experienced as I saw Van Gogh’s inner turbulence expressed on canvas all around me.  

         We emerged from the museum into sunshine.  The museum plaza and streets were filling with merrymakers sporting orange clothing and accessories.  The holiday mood assuaged the lingering melancholy of Van Gogh’s fate.  

         Our trip ends tomorrow, and I thank you for joining me in the Low Countries.  May I invite you to join me on my next adventure?   Hopefully, it will be soon...  

Self-Portrait, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1887

The Vicarage at Nuenen, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1885

The Sower, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

Irises, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1890

        The venerable Rijksmuseum had dedicated much effort to directing the crowds.  Once we reached the galleries, however, we were surrounded by so many people that it required more patience than I care to muster to approach the paintings.  Some rooms were not as mobbed as others.  Even with so many overly tall strangers present, I was awed anew by Vermeer’s vision and his incomparable technique.

         The general excitement over the Vermeer show did not eclipse the splendor of the permanent collection for me.  I had looked forward avidly to being in the Rijksmuseum.  Seldom have I been so keenly aware of feeling happy as I was on this precious day.

 The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Procuress, by Johannes (Jan) Vermeer

The Milkmaid, by Vermeer

Rembrandt painted this group portrait, familiar to many from the Dutch Masters cigar brand.

The 27th of April is the current Dutch King’s birthday.  In honor of The House of Orange, even a Thai restaurant was decorated in the royal color.
 

         The Sephardic community was richer and more established at first, but the Great Synagogue of the Ashkenazis came to rival the grand Portuguese Synagogue in due course.  The latter still has an active congregation.  To this day, the main synagogue building has neither artificial heat nor electric lights.  Hundreds of candles in numerous brass chandeliers provide illumination for holiday services, as they had during the Golden Age.  The Great Synagogue, no longer consecrated, has become a museum.  It is also a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.  In addition to restorations of the original furnishings, the Great Synagogue complex contains a treasury of art and ritual objects.

          As we walked back to the hotel, I thought about Spinoza and the generations of Jews who had played their parts in Amsterdam's story.  The intellectually insatiable Spinoza may be the most famous Portuguese Jew associated with the city.  During his lifetime, Spinoza was lauded for his precocious scholarship, and later reviled for his unorthodox ideas.  Now he is revered as one of the most influential Western philosophers.  Spinoza's ghost accompanied me as I trod through the columned interior of the Portuguese Synagogue.  Whether they were refugees from the Inquisition or Dutch citizens born into merchant dynasties, all the Jews of Amsterdam, living and dead, seemed to be there with us.
 

The Jewish Quarter Museum sanctuary, with Torah scrolls on display.

There is a scattering of sand on the ground floor of the Portuguese Synagogue, to symbolize the desert of the Promised Land and to muffle footsteps.

Model of the Portuguese Synagogue

The women’s gallery in the Portuguese Synagogue
 

Every Fourth of May, the King and Queen of the Netherlands pay tribute to the Dutch Jews murdered by the Nazis at this quayside memorial.  Think of the gesture as you will, but the royal couple’s laying a wreath there is more of an official acknowledgement of the genocide than most European countries make.
 

A shop selling coffee and items related to brewing it in newly fashionable Jordaan.
 

Gypsy Vanner horses at Annemieke's tulip picking garden in Hillegom

A few of the flowers at Keukenhof Botanical Gardens

Tulips and Grape Hyacinths

Our custom bouquet of tulips 
 

Tamira and Marcel, our hosts for “Koffie”

Enkhuizen on a flawless morning

The Naviduct, another Dutch engineering feat
 

       The Zuider Zee Museum is in Enkhuizen, a fishing village with a harbor that could accommodate our cruise ship.  In the morning, we walked through streets of neat brick homes and shops.  Bricks also formed the pavements and lined the tops of the dikes.  Enkhuizen’s 17th Century buildings were meticulously tended and still in use.  The Zuider Zee Museum was mostly outdoors, comprising much of the village, but Enkhuizen was not altogether quaint.  Though the herring were no longer at their doorsteps, fishermen still plied their trade. Sailors mended nets while their fellow villagers smoked fish for sale to tourists.  And there was a huge marina packed with so many private and rental sailboats that their masts looked like a stand of dry reeds.

        After lunch aboard the ship, we queued up at a ferry dock for a ride to the far end of the village.  The air was warmer by then.  After disembarking from the ferry dock, we covered as much of Enkhuizen village on foot as possible.  We went into the indoor museum to look at antique sailboats and maritime artifacts, all displayed in an impressively modern facility.  As we left at closing time, the rain resumed.   It began falling heavily as we wound our way back to the dock and our dry quarters aboard the M/S Harmony.

I have been to some fairly remote places, and thus feel confident in deeming Enkhuizen a candidate for the title of The End of the World.

Some Dutch boats have wing-like leeboards to help them maneuver in canals and shallow bays. 

As this herring smoker plied his trade,  we watched him feed bits of fish to a sullen tricolor cat and to a heron that the man had nearly tamed.

There was a replica of Henry Hudson’s ship, The Half Moon (Haelve Moon), in Einkhuizen harbor.  The Dutch sponsored Hudson’s voyages to North America, though the explorer was English. 

 Cheese shop in Delft

 Tulips beside a Delft canal

 Painter applying glaze to Delftware by hand

Technician checking newly-fired wares at Royal Delft Porcelain Factory

Antique Delftware panel
 

 

Goats at Kinderdijk

A wooden windmill

Miri, HL and me with our guide Karel; yes, the Dutch do tend to be tall people.

Kinderdijk

Willemsbrug (William's Bridge) in central Rotterdam. spanning the Nieuw Maas (New Meuse), a tributary of the Rhine River
 

Veere

The former town hall, now the Veere Museum, is to the right of the house with the colorful shutters

A lesson in medieval Dutch history

The courtroom

Antique Kitchen Equipment

        Our local guide, Wim, was proud of his city for its policies as well as its past.  He showed us some walls where graffiti were permitted, acknowledging that the authorities could not prevent all street art but they could exercise some control over it.  Every few months, city workers cover the graffiti with a fresh coat of white paint.  I was impressed by the simple sanity of the practice.

       For me, as for many others, Ghent owes its international renown to the Van Eyck brothers, creators of the Ghent Altarpiece.
Since its 15th-Century completion, the vibrant, richly detailed Adoration of the Mystic Lamb has been stolen, recovered, hidden from vandals, restored and coveted anew. 

        The Ghent Altarpiece is back in Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, so that was today’s destination.  Miri, HL and I added tickets for an AR (Augmented Reality) show to our admission package.  We descended to the Romanesque crypt, where we were fitted with AR headsets.  We were guided through a holographic reenactment of Hubert’s and Jan Van Eyck’s creation of their Flemish  Gothic tour-de-force, including an explanation of its symbolism. Then we went upstairs to marvel at the altarpiece itself. 
      
       There are many images of the astonishing work on the Internet and in art books, so I shall direct you to those rather than include my own photographs.  In case you wonder if the AR presentation detracted from my viewing of the altarpiece, I found that the virtual prelude actually enhanced the experience.
 

The street gallery of graffiti

St. Bavo’s Cathedral’s crypt

Souvenirs from the cathedral’s gift shop

Stat​​​​​ues of dancers mounted on a roof, Ghent

Oude Stad (Old Town), Ghent

The British sculptor Henry Moore designed this grouping of statues honoring the laborers who constructed the medieval Cathedral of Our Lady.  Moore is better known for his massive, more abstract statues than the more realistic figurative work outside Antwerp's grandest Gothic cathedral. 

The Assumption, by Peter Paul Rubens, hangs above the cathedral’s main altar.

This modern extension set atop a late 19th Century resembles a ship, and may represent Antwerp as a port city.
 

Near the Museum’s entrance

Detail of the immersive video of Bruegel’s painting

Petit Sablon Park
 

Daffodils in Parc de Bruxelles

Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the inspiration for W.H.Auden’s  poem, Musee des Beaux Artes

(which I recommend if you have not read it already, or even if you have )
 

           Our guide, Karel, greeted us at the dock where the M/S Harmony was moored.  Several broad-shouldered crewmen relieved us of our suitcases in order to deliver them to our cabins.  Then they directed us the dining area so that we could have lunch, accompanied by our choice of wine.  White-clad waiters beamed at us.  I had relished our autonomy as we wandered around Brussels, but I was ready to relinquish control to our Grand Circle tour guides.

          After lunch, a shuttle bus took any passengers to Antwerp’s historic central district.  Miri, HL and I joined them.  The winding streets were dense with tall,  step-gabled townhouses, many topped with the gilded figures of beasts, people or objects identifying guilds and other medieval enterprises.  Within a few blocks, we found Baroque and Gothic churches, plazas with elaborate fountains, and even a castle beside the River Scheldt.

          Tomorrow morning, our guide will lead us on a formal walking tour, so I anticipate learning more about all that I have noticed so far.
 

The River Scheldt, viewed from our cabin

This sculpture depicts Nello and Patrasche, from the maudlin novella, “A Dog of Flanders”.   The ingenious piece is by Flemish artist Batist Vermuelen.

Antwerp's Grote Markt (Central Square), with the clock tower of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal (Cathedral of Our Lady) behind it

Het Steen (The Rock), a fortress completed around 1225, is the oldest building in Antwerp.

          The Belgians’ assertions about the superiority of their carbohydrates are not restricted to chocolate and waffles.  They claim also to have invented and perfected frites, which are never called French fries within Belgian borders.  The sliced potatoes are fried twice.  Once the oil is drained, the frites are served with a variety of sauces. 
      
           We discharged our cultural obligation when we bought frites  as an  afternoon snack.  Frites do  taste better than their non-Belgian counterparts, but that was far from a culinary epiphany. I  can do without them again for another few decades.

      Most notable today was my reunion with M., with whom I made my first trip to Europe before the invention of wheeled suitcases.  Together with HL, we revisited the Grand Place, Brussels’ medieval central square.  Its carved and gilded  buildings rise like walls on all four sides of the paved plaza.  Restored and maintained since the mid-1800’s, the Grand Place looked as glorious as I had remembered.  Dominating it were the Hotel de Ville, or City Hall, and the Maison du Roí, now the city’s historical museum. 

       The City Hall’s Gothic spire was emblematic of the power wielded by Brussels’ merchant class during the High Middle Ages.  Opposite it physically as well as philosophically was the King’s House, never a residence but an imposing administrative center for the dukes of Brabant.   It houses an extensive collection of art and artifacts pertinent to Brussels’ development.  We were happy to find shelter there from the biting wind, among Romanesque statuary, antique town models, and many other treasures.

       Every stroll in Brussels reveals more of its numerous monuments to the pedestrian. Towards dusk, we happened upon a war memorial containing the tomb of an unknown soldier. The monument was dedicated to those who died fighting in Belgium’s 1830 war for independence from The Netherlands, as well as those who fell in World War II.  A statue of the Emperor Leopold stood atop the column.  Particularly fine were the two bronze lions flanking the tomb, guarding the flame that undulated in the wind.

 

Les frites
 

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
 

Back of the war memorial
 

M. in the Grand Place
 

The Museum of the City of Brussels, inside The King’s House
 

         If you tell someone that you are going to Belgium, it is likely that your listener’s response will be to insist that you visit Bruges. Bruges’ charm has received the imprimatur of the United Nations as well as that of the countless tourists who have marveled at the beauty of the Gothic architecture that caused the city to be designated a World Heritage site.  From the 12th through the 15th Century, Bruges was the wealthiest city in Northern Europe.  The wool trade was the basis for its prosperity.  Bruges’s merchants and artisans expressed their civic pride by funding the construction of the
City Hall that dominates the Markt, the main plaza.  They also commissioned handsome guild halls where they might meet with their professional peers, as well as the inevitable cathedrals.  

         The oldest remaining churches were Romanesque, now overlaid with Gothic amid even neo-Gothic elements.  Gabled brick residences lining the warren of curving streets were back in use as shops and residences, though the defensive wall that sheltered them from envious feudal neighbors has vanished.  Bruges was not destroyed in any of the wars that pulverized Flanders’ towns throughout the past few hundred years.  From a distance, Bruges’ gabled canal houses, its stone bridges arching over canals, and its towers adorned with a heraldic bestiary appear enchanted, as if a spell had spared the city from the attrition of history.  Then you see the tourists thronging the medieval lanes, obscuring the carved house façades and filling the breadth of the cobbled main streets like a parade in disarray.

       Chocolatiers, waffle stands, souvenirs and bistros abounded, as well as fast food chain restaurants and apparel shops better suited to suburban malls than restored Gothic workshops and domiciles. The canals that once had extended the traders’ reach beyond the course of Bruges’ River Reie were packed with tour boats, each with every seat filled despite the chilly wind and occasional rain shower.  On one street near the Markt, there were five horse-drawn carriages stopped in a line.  All had passengers, and all had to wait for a gap in the stream of pedestrians before moving forward.

       My original intent had been to see the collection of early Flemish masterworks, particularly those of Van Eyck and Memling, in the Groeninge Museum.  As of this month, however, that museum changed its weekday closure from Mondays to Wednesdays.  As if that were not enough to cause me dismay, there was a Wednesday fair set up in the Markt and the Burg, the second-largest medieval plaza.  Rides and games for children vied for space beside produce and souvenir stands.  Sirens blended with the cacophony of voices and recorded amusement sound tracks.  The crowd moved through a miasma compounded of sugar and beer, and other effluvia that I did not care to analyze.

        That is not to say that you should avoid Bruges.  Had the weather been warmer and the wind speed lower, and had I been able to view the Flemish paintings as I had first wished to do, mine would have been a completely different experience.  So by now you will have guessed my advice: if you venture to Bruges, avoid doing so on a Wednesday (that is, Mitvoeg in Flemish Dutch, and Mercredi in French).

The walk from the train station into the old city center promoted a sense of serenity.

Then the mob in the restored urban core dispelled that tranquil mood.  I waited until most of the other tourists had cleared the street before I attempted to take a picture.  

Bruges’ canal houses have waterline entrances for those who arrive by boat.

          The spiralling symbols on an old bison skin recorded the history of a Nakota band.  Lone Dog kept the Winter count from about 1800 until 1870, relying on Yanktonais Nakota elders' memories of their youth, when the Plains were dark with bison, as well as the chronicler's own experience.  Lone Dog and his people lived again for me in that coil of figures.  

          As if Lone Dog's hide painting were not astonishing enough, mounted near it was an early Navajo rug.  Hosteen Klah was a shaman famous, and, to some traditionalists, infamous, as a weaver.  Hosteen Klah was the first to preserve the sandpainting designs in woven wool.  Sandpaintings are destroyed at the conclusion of Navajo rituals, so some regarded Hosteen Klah's transfer of the patterns to weaving as sacrilege.  Since that time, almost a century ago, there have been many Navajo weavers.  It is still a tribal art.  Now the rugs are valued by collectors throughout the world as well as by members of the tribe.  Angled Corn with Holy People - The Nightway Ceremony  retains its beauty and its healing power.

          Yet it was the Ghost Dance shirt that moved me most profoundly.  The Sioux tribes were decimated and demoralized when a prophet, Wovoka, rose among them.  Wovoka taught his followers chants and dances that would strengthen the warriors and make them victorious.  The elaborately painted, beaded and fringed Ghost Dance shirts would repel the soldiers' bullets.  If the dance were performed properly for five days, the soldiers and settlers would be driven from the land.  The bison herds would return, and the old order would be restored.  The dancers, alas, did not prevail.  I imagined them, already Ghosts on the Plains, as the winds bore away their chants. 

          The museum seemed to have been deliberately concealed in that conventional neighborhood.  A mastodon skeleton dominated the entryway, a towering Pleistocene doorman. Its extravagant tusks almost filled the narrow passage.      

          Very few others had ventured out in the wet weather that Monday.  The museum was far larger than it appeared from the street, like a building in a dream where every room leads to a series of more mysterious chambers.  Despite its extent, it retained the atmosphere of an idiosyncratic collector's home.   There were so many Amerindian artifacts that many had to be displayed in drawers below the showcases.  The arrowhead collection was as comprehensive as it was well organized, by culture as well as by historical period.  
 

Kelly Green painted a mural of Plains riders on one of the museum's interior walls.

David Hockney's 15 Canvas Study of the Grand Canyon dominated a passage between galleries.  

          At first, I thought that there could not be a more quintessentially American composition than a framed crucifix made of paper money.  A closer look revealed that it was not a collage but an astonishing trompe l'oeil  painting by Victor Dubreuil.  Dubreuil was a 19th Century American artist, born in France, who specialized in numismatic subjects.  He painted Cross of Gold  in 1879.  The element of visual deception made the oil painting even more richly symbolic of national hypocrisy.  

          Hanging in the space above the staircase was Gabriel Dawe's Plexus No. 27, a work as abstract as Dubreuil's was representational.   The Mexican artist used 60 miles of string to create the wing-like sculpture.  It was mounted and lit beautifully.  Gazing up at Plexus, I felt weightless, as if I could soar up the stairwell.  And HL's photograph does it justice.  I believe that it is one of the best pictures that he took during our trip.     

 Plexus No. 27, by Gabriel Dawe, 2014

          The setting was far more distinctive than the cuisine.  The menu was similar to that of other museum cafés, with eccentric combinations of ingredients meant to denote culinary sophistication.  The plates were presented attractively, with regional delicacies like collard greens covered in melted cheese joining the obligatory multi-hued chard, cream soups, and artisanal breads.  The portions were meager and the prices were high, especially for Arkansas, but no more inflated than I had anticipated.  Only inexperience would induce a truly hungry person to dine in a museum restaurant. Your Fond Correspondent was content to watch the rain dissolve the landscape as I sipped excellent coffee from a mug.  

  Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart, suspended above the tables at Eleven

          Part of the permanent collection was a mirror room installation by Yayoi Kusama.  She entitled it Infinity Mirror: My Heart is Dancing into the Universe.  The artist completed it in 2018, when she was nearly ninety.  HL and I were enchanted by our brief enclosure in the chamber with the glowing, polka-dotted spheres.  We lined up again in order to immerse ourselves in Kusama's projected imagination a second time.  Our hearts were dancing, too. 

          I took this picture of HL as he photographed Kusama's installation.

         Much is touted as unique, or nonsensically, very unique, and the description seldom is accurate.  Several of the works at Crystal Bridges, however, were notable for their originality.  One was included in Fashioning America.   It was an interactive digital display that allowed museum visitors to vary the costume of a rotating winged figure on a screen.  It might have been the portrayal of an archangel.  We could move our hands over a cylindrical control panel to produce minute alterations to the avatar of the artist.     

The futurist Viktoria Modesta was named as a collaborator rather than the sole designer of the digital piece.

Teri Greeves' Converse Red added tribal motifs to the high-heeled sneakers sung about in early rock 'n' roll lyrics.  

          One of the reasons that I had postponed a trip to Crystal Bridges was my ambivalence towards contemporary art.  Nor was I  an aficionada of American art.  Abstract Expressionism left me unmoved, though not for lack of exposure to it during my formative years.  I am an unabashed Europhile who, since childhood, has favored paintings and sculptures from previous centuries over those of living artists.  Every time that I consulted the Crystal Bridges website, its offerings were unexciting.  So I was rewarded doubly for overcoming my reluctance to go to Bentonville, Arkansas.  Not only did I experience the scope and quality of Crystal Bridges' collection, but also the disappearance of my bias. 

          The special exhibition at Crystal Bridges was  Fashioning America: From Grit to Glamour.  While it was not as spectacular as some exhibits of fashion as art that I have been privileged to see, it was interesting enough to merit the price of the tickets.  Many of the garments had been selected to illustrate the notion that this nation is one comprised of immigrants, innovators, and underdogs.  

This is Citizen Dress, made by Maria de los Angeles  in 2019.  The sculptor was born in Mexico and lives in New York City.  Her work addresses immigration, sovereignty, hypocrisy, and power, among other issues.

Nudie Cohn, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant, is credited with creating the Rhinestone Cowboy style, Western wear adapted for Hollywood.

The Chrysler Building was twinned on this Art Deco jacket from the 1930's. 

          The first examples of American art that greeted me were 18th Century paintings of some members of a New York Jewish family, the Levy-Franks.  They were attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck.  I learned that Duyckinck, a descendent of Dutch colonists, had been a successful portraitist patronized by the former Nieuw Amsterdam's wealthy merchant class.   

          I can understand the reasons that the general populace tends to overestimate the number of Jews in the world.  A disproportionate number of my co-religionists have risen to prominence in a myriad of fields.  There have been accomplished, influential Jews in every era, flourishing despite our dispersion across the globe.  So I was only mildly surprised when my very distant relatives gazed tranquilly back at me from the gallery wall.

Abigail Levy-Franks, the family matriarch

This painting is believed to depict David Franks and his wife, Richa.

This evening dress was designed by Ralph Lauren,  another Jewish connection 

Narcissus Garden by Yayoi Kusama

Maman by Louise Bourgeois

          There were very few people left on the museum's grounds as we turned back towards the entrance.  It was quiet, so we could hear a rustling on the path that led to the shuttered Frank Lloyd Wright house.  The slight sound was the dry leaves crunching beneath the hooves of a young doe.   She was standing a few yards from us.  With her grey coat, she was almost invisible in the twilight.  We stood very still, hoping that the deer would not perceive us as a threat.  Apparently she judged us harmless, as she did not bolt.  Instead, she looked at us calmly, permitting us to take her picture.  She walked a few paces and stopped to chew on one of her slender hind legs, then looked back as if to ascertain that we were still admiring her.  We remained, her rapt audience, until the night enfolded us and the deer was erased by the trees. 

The outdoor exhibitions at Crystal Bridges closed after sunset, officially.  I meant to hurry but I could not, my progress along the path arrested by some of the interpretations of Architecture at Home.  Five architects had been asked to erect full-size prototypes of affordable dwellings.  The results were more ideologically provocative than practical.  It was a temporary installation, due to be dismantled a few weeks after we saw it.  That seemed fitting to me, as did the one permanent placement among them.  The Fly's Eye Dome was one of Buckminster Fuller's last designs.  It was a variation of the geodesic dome that the futurist Fuller popularized as a solution to the housing shortage after the Second World War.  HL and I were drawn to sit inside it in the gathering silence, as the departing museum visitors made their way to the parking lots.    

This prototype, by Stella Betts and David Leven, was a tree house that I had to pause to explore.   

          Buckminster Fuller's fame had ebbed by the end of the Twentieth Century.  In contrast, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright retains his renown.  The Bachman-Wilson House is an example of Wright's residential style that was relocated to Crystal Bridges' grounds.  When flooding in New Jersey threatened the house, its owners sought a safer site for it.   The house was taken apart and reassembled  atop a slight rise in the Arkansas woods.  
  

The Bachman-Wilson House was closed.  We could not have taken pictures inside even if it had been open, as interior photography was prohibited there.

          Until the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in 2011, Bentonville's claim to fame, or infamy, was as the site of the original Walmart store.  Alice Walton, the heiress of the retail chain's founder, commissioned the architect Moshe Safdie to design a museum on a tract of Ozark woodland on the outskirts of Bentonville.  Walton's family wealth financed the rapid acquisition of a  superb permanent collection.   In addition, there are ample galleries for temporary exhibits, plus exterior installations, water features, and garden paths extending over more than a hundred acres.    

A stainless steel tree by Roxy Paine stands before the museum's entrance.

The museum buildings were closing when we arrived that evening, and the Sun had begun to set.

          Bathhouse Row is just the urban edge of Hot Springs National Park, which covers thousands of acres.  The park contains numerous hiking trails as well as dozens of thermal springs.  While HL and I did not do much walking, we did drive into the woods, to the summit of Hot Springs Mountain.  There we ascended the tower, a steel latticework, that the park service operates as a concession.  We paid the admission fee and elected to ride the elevator, rather than climb the stairs for more than two hundred feet.  The observation deck afforded us a fine panorama of the Zig Zag Mountains, the section of the Ouachita range that contains the park, the city of Hot Springs, and the surrounding Valley of the Vapors.  The Zig Zag Mountains are unusual not only for their sharply folded geological profile, but also for their orientation from east to west.  Almost all of the continent's other ranges run north to south.

HL in Hot Springs National Park

This poster depicts the previous observation tower, demolished in 1975 and replaced by the current tower in 1983. 

          The afternoon shadows were lengthening when we checked into our room.  We lodged in an unprepossessing motel opposite the far larger and pricier Oaklawn Casino.  Gambling had played almost as important a role in Hot Springs' development as had its bathhouses.  Those who came to benefit from the waters could not, after all, soak in them day and night.  And they would have healthy companions in need of amusement.  The population of those seeking diversion swelled tremendously with the inception of Spring training for baseball teams.

The present Arlington Hotel, dating from 1924, was favored by baseball players and tourists with a taste for luxury. 

          Owing to my total disinterest in team sports, I had been ignorant of the fact that Hot Springs was the cradle of Spring training.  HL and I did notice the historical markers and hotel lobby displays that form some of the stops along the Baseball Trail (sic).  Spring training began in 1886.  At that time, cards and games of chance must have supplemented the wagering at informal racetracks close to town.  Horse racing was extremely popular in the era immediately preceding the mass production of motor vehicles.  It is hard for us to envision the ubiquity of horses in the past, and the social status that breeders of winning thoroughbreds enjoyed.  A professional track, Oaklawn Park, opened in 1904.  It is still in operation though, unfortunately, the track was closed until December.   

This mural in the Arlington Hotel lobby was the closest that I came to seeing the Oaklawn Racetrack.

          It was the lure of athletic competitions, both human and equine, that allowed Hot Springs to flourish during The Depression, while most American communities withered.  According to local lore, Hot Springs became a neutral zone where mobsters from rival organizations could attend the races and patronize the spa hotels in relative safety.  They could bet on baseball, stakes races, and whatever else took their fancy.  In the 1920's and 1930's, long before Las Vegas earned its Sin City notoriety, criminal bosses were treated as visiting celebrities in Hot Springs.  

The Arlington Hotel retains its Art Deco charm.

Public access to the hot mineral springs, off Central Avenue

           The land became hilly, and woods appeared after we crossed into Arkansas.  Hot Springs is surrounded by the Ouachita Mountains, where the forest was bright with the coppery and golden tints of Autumn.  I learned that the healing waters that had enticed my grandmother to Hot Springs were on territory that the Quapaw tribe had ceded to the federal government, early in the 1800's.  Various tribes had been regular visitors to the valley, revering the springs' powers for centuries before Europeans crossed the Atlantic.  The magic was strong enough for the hot springs to become the first natural attraction given protection by the nascent nation.  Now the thermal springs and the 1880's spa hotels of Bathhouse Row are within Hot Springs National Park.

Buckstaff Bathhouse, opened in 1912, still offers traditional mineral baths to the public.

Quapaw Bathhouse, from 1922, is the third bathhouse established on its site on Bathhouse Row, on Central Avenue.  It offers thermal pools and some contemporary spa services.

The Hotel Hale, formerly the Hale Bathhouse, is the oldest edifice on Bathhouse Row.  It dates from 1892.  Its suites feature tubs connected to the hot mineral springs.

The entrance to Hot Springs National Park, on Bathhouse Row

          Both of my mother's parents came from the Bucovina region of what was then Romania, now Ukraine.  My Grandma M. was small and very fair, with delicate features and extraordinarily blue eyes, truly cerulean.  In contrast, my Grandpa F. had an olive complexion, dark eyes, and abundant, dark, curly hair.  He was not tall, but thickly built and very strong.  His work as a banquet waiter was strenuous, and the hours were long.  During his rare leisure time, whenever the weather permitted, my grandfather delighted in going to Brighton Beach.  There, he would lie in the sunshine until his skin acquired the rich hue of mahogany.

          Everyone in our family was accustomed to my grandparents' appearance as a couple. The citizens of Hot Springs, however, were offended by the sight of the pale woman on the arm of the brown-skinned man.  Mistaken for an interracial couple, my grandparents were denied service in several restaurants.  I learned about it from overhearing my parents' amused whispers and the murmurred halves of their phone conversations.  At that time, I had no idea that anything like anti-miscegenation laws existed.  For the record, it was not until 1973 that such odious legislation was repealed in Arkansas.

          In recent years, I have contrived to celebrate my birthday out of town.  My first inclination always is to leave the country, but we had family travel booked for late November.  So it behooved me to curb my extravagance. HL and I decided that we would take a modest road trip, and finally visit Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville.  That art museum attracts tourists from all over the globe, but it is isolated in northwest Arkansas.  We had never mustered the requisite enthusiasm to drive there until we thought of combining it with a day in Hot Springs.  For that itinerary, all that I needed to pack were casual clothes, sturdy shoes, and a pair of cheap sunglasses from my defiantly extensive collection.     

           Simona exhorted us all to try the national spirit, a beverage called ţuica (pronounced tz'WEE-kah).  It is a clear plum liquor that some travelers call "Romanian White Lightning".  Romania's soil is ideal for fruit trees, and produces more plums than any other European country.  The majority of the plum harvest is used for ţuica.  As elsewhere in The Balkans, the custom was to down a shot on an empty stomach, before a meal.  It burned my throat, not unpleasantly.  In a moment, I was overcome by the stunned euphoria of someone who wakens from sleeping too long in the hot sunshine.  

                                                                                             Some of us revelers, post-ţuica 

           For a while, I remained sunken into a corner of the couch, unable to do more than grin.  We stayed at Simona's as long as possible, eating, drinking, and laughing.  We sang and danced a little, fond and nostalgic, as we tend to be at our too infrequent reunions.  Two days were too few to be with my friends.

          I was as reluctant to leave them as I was grateful for my extraordinary luck in having been able to meet them in Bucharest.  And two days were too few to be there.  I could have toured Romania happily for weeks.  Three of us would return to Israel, and four to The States.   I could not predict when I might see them again.  HL and I would leave for the airport in a matter of hours, and land in a place that had all but ceased to exist for us.  Once back, I would remind myself that Jupiter, bestower of good fortune, is the ruler of my horoscope.  Then I could begin to envision another improbable adventure. 


 

            G. could not spare us much more time, as there was a choir rehearsal in progress.  He gave me the impression that he was a person who assumed a great deal of responsibility, and, as a result, was busy almost constantly.   G. admitted us to a back room where men in kippot sat around a polished table covered with books and sheets of music.  We sank onto folding chairs and listened to them practicing.  Though I am not an aficionada of Ashkenazi Jewish liturgical music, I thought that the men sang well, perpetuating the eponymous choral tradition.  In that setting, I felt privileged to be able to hear their voices.

          We were allowed access to the Great Synagogue's gallery, where more exhibits were stored.  Glass cases held wooden models of synagogues outside Bucharest.  Most had been destroyed or had fallen into ruin.  Once, there had been a hundred or more synagogues outside the capital, serving Romania's Jews.  Today, very few of the surviving communities can afford to maintain the handsome edifices preserved in miniature in the displays.  

          A docent detached herself from a few other visitors and approached us.  She was a tall, dignified woman in a dark suit.  I could not determne her age.  Her name was Hilda.  She knew the history of Romania's Jews thoroughly, as it was the history of her family as well as the nation.  After The War, there were about 5,000 Jews left in Romania, almost all of them in Bucharest.  In the 1920's, there had been about 700,000 Jews, though the country's borders had encompassed more territory at that time.  Bucharest's Jews had been instrumental in the city's development.  Their skills and labor had helped transform the feudal settlement into a modern urban one. 

          Before The War, there had been forty synagogues in Bucharest, and nineteen Jewish schools.  Now there are only three synagogues in operation.  It is no mean feat for them to continue existing.  Scholars debate the exact figures for the genocide, but 280,000 to 380,000 Romanian Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their auxiliaries.  It is a stupefying statistic, but it does not, alas, represent the greatest number of Jews killed in any country.  That sorry distinction is one for which there have been all too many contestants.

       Simona had arranged for us to tour the synagogue with G., a friend of her son's, a young man active in the congregation.  G.'s English was fluent and unaccented.  Knowledgeable and earnest, G. wanted us to appreciate the Choral Temple within the context of Jewish history in Romania.  G. conducted us to a museum housed temporarily in a neighboring synagogue.  Before he left the Choral Temple, G. removed his knitted kippah and stored it in a pocket of his jacket.  HL  followed G.'s example.  Advertising one's Jewish identity was, evidently, still imprudent in Bucharest.

          We walked a few blocks until we came to a building with smooth yellow walls.  It was the Great Synagogue, or Sinagoga Mare, dwarfed by the featureless concrete towers that hemmed in the street where it stood.  It had opened in 1847.  Ceaușescu had  ordered many synagogues and churches to be razed when he was redesigning the city.  It became official policy to surround those houses of worship that escaped the wrecking ball with high-rises notable for their stark Soviet monotony.  Only three synagogues remained in operation after the dictator's Systematization (sic), when he redrew the map of Bucharest to make room for monuments to his megalomania.  

          Our levity yielded to solemnity when we met Simona and our Israeli friends at the Choral Temple, Templul Coral in Romanian.  In front of the entrance was an imposing menorah.  We could tell at once that the dark metal menorah was a monument to the hundreds of thousands of Romania's murdered Jews.  The Communists had not permitted specific memorials for the Jewish or Roma victims of Nazi genocide.  They commemorated only those who had perished in the war against Fascism.  No one was eager to acknowledge the extent of the slaughter, or the Romanian Legionnaires' active role in the Nazis' extermination scheme.  It was not until 1991 that the monument could be erected. 

          In contrast to the visual portent of the menorah, the Choral Temple was a pastel architectural fantasy in the Neo-Moorish style.  Gazing at the stone striping of the faҫade, we were struck by the synagogue's resemblance to the larger Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest.  The model for both temples had been the Leopoldstadt Great Synagogue in Vienna.  The Leopoldstadt had been the inspiration for Prague's Spanish Synagogue as well.  Until the Nazis and their minions destroyed it on Kristallnacht in 1938, the Leopoldstadt had been the grandest synagogue in Vienna.

          Bucharest's Choral Temple was completed in 1867.  First an earthquake, and then the Second World War (the one that I am tempted to call, simply, The War) damaged it badly.  It was restored once the war ended.  More recently, it underwent eight years of renovation, funded by the post-Communist Romanian government in conjunction with international Jewish organizations.

            Another taxi ride brought us to a completely different sort of hotel.  We had booked rooms on-line for Miri and Petra and for ourselves at the modest Hotel Otopeni.  It was situated on a side street so small that the taxi driver had trouble finding it.  We had chosen the hotel for its proximity to the airport, since our flight back to The States was scheduled to depart before dawn.  HL's and my lodgings turned out to consist of two large rooms.  Miri and Petra also had a two-room suite.  In ours, there was a sitting room with a couch, a coffee table, chairs and a desk.  The other room held a bed with tables on both sides, and a looming armoire.  The furnishings were like those in a New York City apartment in The Fifties.  The bathroom alone had been modernized.  Whoever had been responsible for the remodeling had installed a garish, turquoise fiberglass sink that had me reaching for my camera.  The sink was functional, but so incongruous as to be comic.

                We waited for a table in a press of tourists and convivial local residents.  No sooner had we ordered some dishes than two pairs of dancers claimed the middle of the tiled floor.  They were young and lithe, and twirled close to our table in a modified tango.  A string quartet provided the music.  After we applauded, the prettier of the two female dancers  held her hand out to HL and invited him to the dance floor.  I did not blame her, as HL is still a handsome man, and thus a more tolerable choice than any of the other male diners.  He looked uncomfortable at first, but his reluctance dissolved as his winsome partner smiled at him.  

  It was late afternoon when we arrived at one of Bucharest's premier tourist attractions, The Village Museum.  It was situated in Herastrau Park, an extensive urban green space that enclosed a lake.  Adjacent to the park was the Arcul de Triumf, modeled on the much larger memorial in Paris.  The Village Museum consisted of 272 houses, windmills, barns and other structures that had been moved there from all of Romania's nine historic regions.  The mountainous, wooded geography, sectioned by rivers, had isolated villages from one another.  As a result, distinctive local types of dwellings had developed throughout the countryside.  Wood was the main material for all of them.  Some of the wooden houses rested on first stories of native stone.  The majority of the peasants' homes had thickly thatched roofs, to insulate them somewhat from the bitter Winter weather in the Carpathian Mountains.   

   The Village Museum is a popular photographic backdrop for wedding pictures.

          The outdoor museum would have been a fine diversion, had I not been so impatient to meet our friends from Israel.  They had come to meet us and to visit Simona, who lived in Bucharest.  I knew and liked Simona, with whom I had become acquainted during Simona's visits to The States.  We had arranged to have our rendezvous at the Village Museum.  And Then We Were Eight, obstructing the entrance as we embraced and greeted one another.  

          No visit to Bucharest would be complete without a stop at its most infamous place of interest, the colossal Palace of the Parliament.  As the physical manifestation of Ceaușescu's megalomania, it may have earned more opprobrium than mere architectural ugliness might inspire.  Under leaden skies, we saw the Palace's white bulk from afar.  The scale was pharaonic, magnifying the dullness of its design.  Yet I had known far more unsightly, bare modern structures to win the adulation of critics and plutocrats.  Aside from the unsightliness of its proportions, The Palace of Parliament was less of an eyesore than most corporate skyscrapers and au courant beachfront homes.

          Ceaușescu had meant his to be the ultimate palace, one glorifying The People rather than a reigning dynasty.  His name for it had been The People's House.  Some Bucharesters still may refer to it that way, but only ironically.  Ceaușescu and his wife were executed in 1989, years before the Palace was ready for occupancy.  The first person to address a cheering crowd from the Gargantuan building's central balcony was not destined to be the dictator, but the American pop star Michael Jackson.  The entertainer's knowledge of geography had left something to be desired when, in 1992, Jackson greeted the inhabitants of the city by shouting, I love Budapest! 
 

          Romania had undergone the most violent emergence from Communism of any of the former Soviet bloc countries.  More than a thousand people had been killed in the fighting in Bucharest.  That number became more than a statistic when Radi introduced us to Egmund.  To hear his story, our group assembled at one corner of Revolution Square.   We stood behind the small, brick Kretzulescu Church, a relic from the 1720's.  Our guide referred to Egmund as a hero of the Revolution.  He was a clean-shaven, dark-haired man in his forties.  He wore a Romanian tricolor flag of blue, yellow, and red like a poncho, with a hole in the middle.  Those who had begun defying Ceaușescu had adopted this as their standard, tearing the Communist Party insignia out of the center of the flag.

          A native of Bucharest, Egmund had been a student during the December 1989 riots.  His friends and he had wanted to fight for democracy on the front lines.  The dictator sent tanks into the streets to quell the revolt.  Ceaușescu had ordered his
security forces to fire on protestors, most of them unarmed.  In the ensuing chaos, Egmund was wounded.  He rolled up his sleeve to show us the scar from a bullet.  His best friend had been killed beside him.  The flag that Egmund had draped over his shoulders was stained with the dead youth's blood.  I stood in silence for a while, contrasting Egmund's narrative with the frivolity of the North American life that I was accustomed to lead. 

          Wars, earthquakes, and oppressive regimes had not disfigured Bucharest, the grande dame,  completely.  Some of the tree-lined boulevards and noble residences remained, though the palaces had been converted into banks, museums, and government offices.  And there were monuments, some fin-de-siècle equestrian bronzes as well as new ones commemorating the overthrow of the Communist dictatorship in 1989.

           The strangest of the contemporary monuments was in the heart of Bucharest, in the former Palace Square, now Revolution Square.  It was a pale concrete obelisk about 25 meters tall, skewering a dark, hollow ovoid made of intertwining steel vines.  At its base were stylized figures representing the heroes of the 1989 Revolution.  Its official name was the Monument of Rebirth, but our local guide told us that everyone called it The Impaled Potato.  I had to agree that the resemblance was inescapable, especially if one specified that the potato had been charred.  The monument was erected in 2005.  Long after the revolt toppled the hated Ceaușescu, people still mistrusted official sentiment and mocked it.  There was a splotch of red paint on the monument's shaft that made it look as if the pierced potato was bleeding.  I could not determine if the scarlet pigment was the work of an outraged art critic or just part of the statue.  

           Romania's postwar dictator, Ceaușescu, had admired the gigantic modern edifices that he had been showed when he toured China and North Korea.  During the 1970's, he had fine, old neighborhoods in Bucharest demolished in order to make room for his grandiose Civic Center (Centrul Civic).  The dictator's policy of Systematization replaced elegant Nineteenth Century districts in the urban core with banausic, prefabricated concrete dormitory blocks ten stories tall.  These came into view as we passed the city limits, adorned now with the distinctly non-Socialist addition of enormous advertising banners.  They touted global brands and local businesses.  These banners covered much of the upper surfaces of most buildings, and vied in ugliness with the peeling paint and cracked concrete.

Most of the 1,100 rooms of Ceaușescu's Palatul Parlamentului (Palace of Parliament) remain empty despite its housing the Romanian legislature, three museums and a conference center. 

          The next morning, a valedictory mood prevailed.  It was overcast and chilly.  We took our leave of the vessel that had carried us to seven ports in four countries.  Owing to the Danube River's low level. we had to enter the fifth country on our itinerary by bus.

           We crossed a steel truss bridge from Ruse, Bulgaria, to Giurgiu, Romania.  It had been built in the 1950's by Soviet engineers.  When it connected two countries behind the Iron Curtain, it was called the Friendship Bridge.  Now it was known as the Danube Bridge, and there was no sign of friendship.  The buses were halted on the Romanian side of the bridge.  The guards leafed through piles of papers, as unhurried as if they were proofreading their doctoral dissertations.  We left the confines of our idle buses until the drizzle and rising winds sent us back to our seats.  After a long while, two of our guides approached the guards' booth.  They extended some currency to a seated guard; it looked like a wad of U.S. dollars, but I was not close enough to be sure.

          Before we reached the border, Radi had reassured us that the tour company routinely budgeted for bribes to the obstructive functionaries.  Even so, we could expect a prolonged delay.  Romania's Communist dictatorship had been a brutal one, and the people were not doing well in its aftermath.  According to Radi, the current petty tyrants were as bad as their predecessors, only younger.  The culture of corruption was endemic.  In all, we cooled our heels for about an hour and a half, the same amount of time that it took to ride north to Bucharest from the crossing.  

          The Palace Hotel was luxurious, especially by Bulgarian standards.  Most of the staff spoke at least a little English.  There were fresh flowers arranged in marble vases in the lobby.  The tables were covered in white linen and set with an unstinting assortment of glassware, most of it clean.  The food was of lesser quality than the fare on the ship, but it was plentiful and varied.  There were quite a few vegetarian dishes and, best of all, a selection of cakes worth photographing.

          The sugary banquet did not keep us from the beach for long.  We removed our shoes, rolled up our pants, and waded into the sea.  It was tepid, though the breeze and lack of sunshine made me feel cool.  I washed my face with the mildly saline water.  The Black Sea did not smell briny, owing to the high volume of fresh water that it receives from rainfall and the rivers that empty into it.  The Black Sea basin has little tidal variation, so we could have stayed in the shallows indefinitely, watching the coral-billed terns flying over the steel-colored water.  I was very happy, having attained a goal that I had not realized, until then, was so important to me: I had reached the Black Sea.

          Radi led us through narrow residential streets to a hybrid edifice nearby.  It had a smooth, grey faҫade, ornamented with a Star of David, in front of a glass and steel addition at least as large as the original structure.    The older part looked as if it had been refaced with unpainted concrete.  We walked up to the entrance and heard singing.  It was the second day of Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, and the afternoon prayer service was in progress.  We withdrew, and stood near a tall gate of iron bars at the side of the synagogue.  Security was still, or again, an issue for Varna's remaining thousand or so Jews.

          We lingered there long enough to attract the attention of an adolescent girl clad in a lacy holiday outfit.  She was holding a girl toddler, perhaps her sister, in her arms.  The older girl was slender and barely able to support the weight of her burden.  I could imagine the toddler fussing during the service, and her older relative being dispatched to amuse her outside the sanctuary.  As we turned to go, we wished the teenager a Happy New Year, in Hebrew, but she may not have heard.  She stared after us, unsmiling.

                                                                                             The newlyweds

                                                                                         The lovely Lola

         

          In Classical times, Varna was a Greek trading colony called Odessos.  Successive empires realized the value of the Black Sea port and left their traces in its soil.  Perhaps most visible were the Thermae, the ruins of the Roman baths.  The Romans ruled Odessos for centuries, incorporating it into their province of Moesia.  Varna's Thermae were among the largest in Europe.  The Skorpil Brothers had done some of their excavating there.  The Archeological Museum admministered the site, and the admission price helped to fund the preservation of the ruins.  The cost of the tickets was money well spent, as we could pass freely from one section of the massive bathing complex to another, admiring the ancient brickwork at close range.  Parts of it formed twisted towers, like the stumps of immense teeth.  Arches supported vaulted colonnades that were more than twenty meters high.  There had been chambers for hot air and a series of pools containing water at various temperatures.  The Roman engineers had been able to channel local mineral springs into the baths.  Portions of the plumbing system lay exposed to view, as well as some of the vanished structures' foundations.  Though the sky above the ruins was cloudy, the scene was a serene rather than a melancholy one.  With modern multiple dwellings overlooking the Thermae, Varna seemed to be embracing its lengthy past. 

           The state-owned museum housed an extensive collection of artifacts, from the prehistric through the Roman, Byzantine, medieval and Ottoman periods.  Its most famous exhibit occupied three halls.  This was the Gold of Varna, the earliest trove of golden objects ever discovered.  The treasure had been in a necropolis containing graves from a Copper Age civilization that had flourished in the Fifth Millennium BCE.  It was uncovered in 1972, when the foundations for a factory were being dug in one of the city's industrial zones.

          The skeletons of dozens of men and women were recovered from the site.  Those on display had been reassembled in the poses in which they had been unearthed.  Most of the jewelry adorned only a few men, indicating an early social stratification.  The precious metal had been fashioned into disks, bracelets, beads, collars, diadems and penis sheaths.  The Chalcolithic craftsmen who made the jewelry may have been Europe's first goldsmiths.  In all, more than three hundred gold items had been removed from the necropolis.

           One of the male skeletons was likely to have been that of a king or high priest, as the precious grave goods in his burial were the richest and most numerous.  His finger bones held a rudimentary scepter, an axe handle wrapped in sheets of beaten gold.  The gold shone as brightly against the bones as it must have on the day that it was buried.   Only it had not been buried.  It was, in fact, not gold; the museum exhibited only replicas of the artifacts.  Even the bones were substitutes, made of plastic.  I did not hear about that until much later in the trip.  It did not matter.  At the time, I believed that I was peering at the Gold of Varna and was suitably awed by its antiquity.  Had the pieces been the originals, I dare say that they would have looked just the same to me.

          Radi explained the significance of her gifts:  they were martenitsi, exchanged by Bulgarians on the first of March, a festival called Martenitsa.  One can acquire a martenitsa only as a present.  Relatives and friends give dozens of them to one another.  Bulgarians pin them to their clothes or wear them on their wrists from March first until they see a migrating stork or swallow, or a tree in bloom.  This is meant to encourage Baba Marta, a cantankerous, mythical crone who personifies the cold weather, to relent and let Spring arrive early.

           Once one has observed the first sign of Spring, he or she ties the martenitsa to the limb of a tree.  Or one can place the martenitsa beneath a stone, and wait for small creature to crawl near it.  A worm or insect might be auspicious, or a spider might signify bad luck.  Bulgarians associated white with strength and purity, and red with love, good health and fecundity.  I did not need to be an ethnographer to guess that festooning the flowering trees was a vestigial fertility rite.  Bulgaria's population did not shift from the villages to the cities until relatively late, when the Communist regime compelled many peasants to become industrial workers.  So the charming atavism of exchanging martenitsi survived.  It may have become even more entrenched with the resurgence of nationalism throughout the former Soviet bloc.

          When we had booked our trip, the tour company had apprised us of the possibility that the fluctuating river level could influence the choice of ports.  We would remain docked in Ruse, and the ship would be our hotel for the last two nights of the cruise.  Buses would take us to the Black Sea through Bulgaria instead of Romania, to the port of Varna.

          When I heard that, I gripped HL's hand and began to grin.  I had wanted to visit Varna ever since I first read Bram Stoker's Dracula.  The very name conjured up a port so remote and exotic that I was thrilled by the prospect of being there.  Varna was Radi's home, and she had praised its beaches and general ambiance more than once.  Meeting a native of Varna had transferred the city from my imagination to a place with an actual longitude and latitude.  When Radi spoke of Varna, I was sorry that it had not been included in our itinerary.  When it was added, it felt like a gift.

On the road from Ruse to Varna, as seen from the bus

          One shop window offered a glimpse of Bulgaria's pre-Christian past.  Pagan customs persisted throughout rural Europe, especially in villages isolated by mountainous, wooded terrain.  Elements of ancient tribal rites were incorporated into holiday observances sanctioned by church authorities.  Looking at these costumes, I thought of Stravinsky's Rites of Spring.  Folkways are not always quaint.  

          A young woman with close-cropped hair was our guide to the church.  She held forth in passable English on the church's origin during Arbanassi's heyday, early in the Seventeenth Century.  The Orthodox merchants had donated funds to decorate their new church as lavishly as possible.  They had hired icon painters from other parts of Bulgaria and Romania to render the holy images in the medieval style.  There was a splendid iconostasis, painstakingly restored, as were the frescoes.  The profusion of precisely colored figures was dazzling, in complete contrast to the church's rude stone walls.  To avoid risking the ire of their Muslim Turkish rulers, the Arbanassi merchants had left the church's exterior plain.

          Here I admit that I was unable to pay much attention to the guide's speech.  There were no seats in the church, and I was very tired.  My throat was sore and my chest tight.  I was about to leave in search of a bench when four monks filed in to stand in front of our group.  They began to sing.  The quartet was dressed with ecclesiastical elegance, in black cassocks with scarlet piping.  Their a cappella performance was as much chanting as singing.  The monks harmonized in a sonorous language, presumably Church Slavonic.  One of the four voices was considerably lower than the other three, a contrabass, a distinctive feature of Eastern Orthodox liturgical music.  I had a fit of coughing and had to leave the church, rather than interrupt the concert.  Radi brought me a glass of water.  She told me that the four singers were professional vocalists, not monks.   I might have guessed that, had I not been distracted by my cough.  I liked thinking that we tourists were providing some income, however modest, for Bulgarian musicians.    

           It had not always been so small a settlement.  In the Eighteenth Century, it had become a trading center, after a series of revolts had won Bulgarians a measure of autonomy from the faltering Ottoman Empire.  The affluent merchants in Arbanassi built grand houses in what became known as Bulgarian Revival style.   In addition, they financed the construction of five churchs and a monastery.  Arbanassi's wealth drew brigands, who raided the town repeatedly.  Outbreaks of plague further exposed the town, which was pillaged and burned.  Its inhabitants fled to Romania or Greece.  Arbanassi dwindled in importance until its current revival.  Today, there are a few hundred ipeople living there, operating guest houses, retaurants, and handicrafts shops.  Our group stopped to tour The Merchant's house Museum.  It was a structure with a fortress-like bottom story of heavily mortared  stones and recessed, slitted windows.  The upper story was more gracious, made of wood, with many windows.  

          The merchant family's quarters reflected Turkish influence, with low platforms for sitting and sleeping, covered in richly colored rugs.  Red and pine green were the dominant hues in the textiles that brightened the whitewashed rooms.  Some rooms were reserved for the household's women, most notably the birthing room and nursery.  The interior of the Merchant's House looked comfortable, even luxurious, in contrast to its rough outer defenses.  

          The Tsarevets Fortress was a combination of ruins and restorations.  A bridge over the Yantra gorge led from the fortress to the town, formerly named Tarnovo, or Tarnograd.  A stone heraldic lion resting its paw on a shield guarded the entrance to Tsarevets.  The handsome gates, bridge, and carved feline guardian had all been refurbished.  Most striking was the stern grey fortification called Baldwin's Tower.  There was a legend that Tsar Kaloyan captured the noble Flemish Crusader, Baldwin.  Baldwin had made himself the Latin King of Constantinople.  Baldwin was supposed to have died in his prison.  It was an ignominious end, as are so many in East European lore.  Remnants of palaces, churches and houses dotted the hill behind the gates.  Atop the hill was the rebuilt Patriarch's Complex, surrounding an intact church with a tall steeple.  We did not have time to walk to the summit of the hill because we had to return to the bus and proceed to Arbanassi. 

          Despite its deplorable condition, the Vidin synagogue was still beautiful.  I was tempted to enter it, as much to stand there for a few, silent moments as to explore the littered interior.  That was not possible, as the parade of our fellow travelers already had left HL and me behind, but I knew that I would be writing about it.  And the abandoned synagogue inspired one of my New Moon paintings.  I add to this series each Rosh HaShanah , the resumption of the cycle of the Jewish year.  Unlikely as it seemed as I peered through its empty casements, the synagogue might yet be restored.  Many of the major attractions in Eastern Europe had been reconstructed from rubble since the Second World War.  If the Jews of Bulgaria could be saved, in defiance of the odds, so, too, might the Vidin Synagogue.
  

          It was not until I had returned to The States and done some research that I learned that Radi's account of royal heroism was, at best, an oversimplification.  King Boris became a German ally in order to reclaim territory that Bulgaria had been forced to cede to Romania and Greece after the First World War.  When the Nazis occupied those areas, they offered them to the king in exchange for his fealty.  Part of the price was the enforcement of a Bulgarian version of the Nuremberg Laws that legitimized the persecution of the Jews.  King Boris, however, was an uncooperative partner, as he was reluctant to commit his troops to fight the Soviets.  That must have irked Hitler and his high command.  King Boris' eleventh-hour refusal  to yield the Jews of Bulgaria would have guaranteed a death sentence.  The boxcars were waiting in railyards throughout Bulgaria.  And King Boris already had countenanced the deportation of 20,000 Macedonian and Romanian Jews from his reconstituted realm.  They perished in Treblinka and Majdanek.  Technically, they were not Bulgarian Jews.  King Boris was not so intent on preserving Jewish lives as he was on asserting his sovreignty.  He had not realized how dangerous that would prove to be. 

          When Vidin's Jews erected their synagogue in 1894, their community was thriving.  Bulgarian Jews had been granted civil equality and a high degree of integration into the fledgling nation's economy.  Once, the ruin had been the grandest of Vidin's five synagogues, with crystal chandeliers commissioned from Vienna.  In the 1940's, The Nazis seized and plundered it.  They used the building for storage.  After the war, the Soviets' client Communist government discouraged religious expression.  The Jews saw dim prospects for their future in the Soviet bloc.  After 1948, most Bulgarian Jews emigrated to Israel.  

          The dogs had distracted me so that I had not noticed an imposing, derelict structure across the road until we had drawn abreast of it.  Behind a fence topped with barbed wire was the ruin of the Vidin synagogue.  Its image remains the single most indelible one of the entire trip.  I see it dreaming and waking, and when I am trying to fall asleep.  Once, it had been a splendid edifice, one of the largest synagogues in Bulgaria.  It was erected in 1894, in the Neo-Moorish style of the Dohanyi Synagogue in Budapest.  It had four towers and two tiers of paired, arched windows through which we could view the sky, as the synagogue had no roof.  Trees had taken root in the inner courtyard, and vines had grown over the faҫade.  Tangled foliage spilled from the lower windows, and tree limbs protruded from the upper ones.  The bricks had lost most of their covering layer of stucco.

          Convenient as it would have been to regard the Vidin Synagogue as a poignant symbol of the doom of European Jewry, that would not be accurate.  Rather, the tale of its abandonment was one of the mutability of Fortune and the ineptitude of Eastern European bureaucracy.  Franz K., do I hear you chuckling, again?  Allow me to explain, in my next post.

          Baba Vida was preserved in its entirety, making it unique among Bulgaria's medieval castles.  The Turks had demolished most of the others when they occupied The Balkans.  Baba Vida's site was another of those that the Romans and, later, the Celts,  had fortified.  The bastion that we toured had four square towers and a double ring of curtain walls.  Construction began in the Tenth Century.  The stronghold was completed in the Fourteenth Century, and was the rulers' residence during the brief existence of the Tsardom of Vidin.  Baba Vida was still an effective defense six hundred years later, when the Austrians modified it to accommodate gunnery emplacements.

           In prior ages, the moat would have contained water instead of grass.  The passages between the oppressively thick stone walls would not have been silent, especially near the cells for prisoners.  As we walked through Baba Vida, we could understand how the fortress had withstood numerous sieges.  Not all of it was accessible, and some of the staircases required tight turns and sound nerves.  We climbed to the ramparts and looked out over The Danube, which angled sharply at Vidin. 

          I was unabashedly fascinated by these obituary notices, known as Necrolog.  In Bulgaria, the dead are not gone.  Their visages offer all who pass the promise of love and redemption.  When people died, their families posted these notices at the graveyard, the church, and wherever else they chose.  They might mail them to distant kin.  A Necrolog might list only the dates of birth and death,  or include the cause of death.  Some Necrologs addressed the defunct loved one, often in verse.  Some who composed the Necrologs signed their names, or identified themselves simply as The Bereaved.   A Necrolog will be posted not only after someone's demise, but also forty days later, then at three-month intervals for the next year or so.  After that, the practice is to post one only once a year per decedent.  At that juncture, the Necrolog becomes very similar to the Yahrtzeit, when Jews light a candle to mark the anniversary of a relative's death.  

         Once, Vidin had been an important river port.  While it still possessed a faded fin-de-siècle grace, Vidin also contained many reminders of its lengthy Ottoman past.  Domed roofs and vestigial crescents marked the locations of former mosques and bath houses.  After the First World War, many Muslims left Bulgaria for Turkey.  Our guides had arranged for us to visit one of the last mosques that served Vidin's dwindling Muslim population.  As we walked towards the mosque, we were accosted by a Roma woman and her daughters.  The woman spoke some Bulgarian, and Radi translated it.  The woman had three daughters, and the eldest of them was twelve.  The younger girls were seven and four, small-boned and quiet.  

           All three girls had purplish circles around their eyes.  They looked undernourished and none too clean.  One of the retired teachers in our group wanted to know if the children attended school.  Through Radi, the mother, with much energetic nodding, reassured the solicitous Midwesterner that the girls did, in fact, go to school.  She beamed as if proud of securing a formal education for her daughters.  It was a Sunday, so it was plausible, but I doubted that it was true. Later, Radi agreed that the woman would have said whatever she thought that the foreign tourists wanted to hear.  Several members of our group gave the Roma woman money, despite our guides' prior admonitions.            

          Bulgaria was terra incognita to me,  even more than its bellicose neighbors.  The Ottomans had vanquished and then ruled Bulgaria until 1878.  Bulgaria had been aligned with the losing sides in both World Wars.  Towards the end of the Second World War, Bulgaria changed sides and welcomed the Russians, their Slavic brothers responding to a common foe.  After the installation of a Communist government in 1944, Bulgaria became a Soviet satellite.  In the post-Soviet era, the Bulgarians were not as sentimental about The Communism as many Serbs seemed to be.  They could not fail to be conscious, however, of their loss of security in the free market (sic) economy that had replaced their highly centralized one.

           Vidin was not without charm, though it was evident that the town had seen better days.  At the quayside where we disembarked was a dirt-streaked white gazebo with the name "Vidin" inscribed on it in Cyrillic letters.  The streets were paved in a geometric red brick and pale concrete, but they were grimy and, in some places, missing bricks.  The Neoclassical faҫades of mansions, apartment blocks and hotels were cracked and in need of paint.  

Iron Gates, Lock I

Dining Inside the Lock 

            Since we were spending the entire day sailing, HL and I signed up for a tour of the galley.  That revelation of the culinary choreography relieved that afternoon's sense of confinement.  The Slovakian executive chef allowed a dozen passengers at a time into his immaculate, stainless steel domain.  His minions and he demonstrated how they conjured three elaborate meals a day for two hundred people from a kitchen and pantry area smaller than a living room  in an average North American home.  The cooking crew had only nine seconds to fill and garnish each plate before a waiter carried it to the dining room.  I was impressed not only by the speed, but also the unremitting nature of the labor.  No sooner had the staff cleaned the kitchen than it was time to start preparing another meal.  The consistently high quality of the food on board ws even more laudable after I had toured the galley. 

          Towards evening, the ship entered the second lock, Iron Gates II, some 50 kilometers from the first lock.  The second dam had been built in 1984.  The Sun was low as we proceeded towards the dam, and the play of the cliffs' shadows and the light on the river's surface was hypnotic.  The ship had to be lowered about 14 meters in each lock, and traverse the same distance, 300 meters, before emerging on the river once again.  Going through the second lock was no longer a novelty, but it was still worth standing on the top deck to watch it again. 

          The Decebalus relief does not date from antiquity, as one might suppose, but from the last decade of the Twentieth Century.  A Romanian entrepreneur named Dragan commissioned the work.  The ambitious Dragan wrested his riches from the wreckage of Comunism.  His brand of romantic nationalism inspired his tribute to the Dacian hero.   For five years, a team of sculptors had dynamited the cliff, shaping it with a series of controlled explosions.  Then they had labored for at least as long again to carve the monarch's features.  Lest there be any doubt about the source of the colossal donation to Romania, the relief included a Latin inscription, legible from quite a distance.  It read Decebalus Rex -- Dragan Fecit  (Decebalus the King -- Made by Dragan).

           Another place of interest on the Romanian side was a small monastery, the reconstruction of a late medieval one that had been demolished and rebuilt repeatedly over the course of 500 years.  The latest iteration of the Mraconia Monastery dated from 1993.  Its predecessor had been inundated once the dams were completed.  Part of the monastery stood atop a concrete boathouse, and I thought about how isolated it must have been before an inland, modern road had been extended to reach it.  Only a few monks were in residence.  Wide steps led from the water's edge to the white church, one with three dark-tiled domes in the Romanian eclesiastical style.  Atop the central dome and the pair of smaller domes on the bell towers were shiny, gold-toned crucifixes.  The river lapped incessantly at the base of the picturesque compound, which resembled a toy model of a monastery even before it began to dwindle from view.  

Mraconia Monastery

          Our daily printed agenda had alerted us to look for the Tabula Traiana, a Roman monument carved into the rock two millennia ago.  It was on the Serbian side of the defile.  The Emperor Trajan had overseen the erection of a bridge over The Danube to link Roman roads.  It enabled the legions to conquer Dacia, the kingdom that the victors renamed Romania.  Trajan had his accomplishment commemorated on a plaque carved into the rock, so that future generations would learn of his military glory.  The lettering was incised into a rectangle about four meters wide and two meters high.  The Tabula would have been underwater if the dam's engineers had not raised it to safety in its present location.  It was an engineering feat that the ancient Romans would have appreciated.

Trajan's Tablet, a Roman Monument from the Second Century

Approaching the Iron Gates

          When I climbed onto the upper deck, the weather was warm.   The ship was sailing through a rocky gorge.  We approached the Iron Gates under a hazy sky.  On The Danube's southern shore rose the hills of Serbia.  To the north, we had our first sight of Romania.  Limestone cliffs rose hundreds of meters above the water, jutting from the steep, forested slopes on both sides.  The border between the two countries was in the middle of The Danube.  The scenery was a magnificent as the ship's crew had assured us that it would be.  One of the crew broadcast commentary from the wheelhouse.  The guides circulated among those on deck, augmenting the crew members' descriptions with their own remarks.  People clustered in the bow, taking pictures or simply admiring the view. 

That night, there were two programs on the ship.  The first was a presentation by Emanuela, a young Roma woman.  The Roma, more familiar to speakers of English as Gypsies, form an impoverished underclass throughout The Balkans.  Theirs is the perennial story of a dark-skinned minority with its own language and customs.  For centuries, the Roma have inspired distrust and hatred.  They used to occupy a marginal place in the landscape, encamping near towns, mending pots, sharpening knives, playing music at weddings, and then going back on the road.  Now the Roma are no longer nomads.  Those who escaped the Nazis were forced into fixed abodes throughout the Communist bloc.  Wherever they were not herded into grim concrete apartment blocks, the Roma settled in shantytowns without running water or sanitation.                                                                                                               

         A Roma Settlement 

Roma Woman Picking through Trash in Belgrade

          Their general illiteracy and suspicion of outsiders have compounded the discrimination that the Roma face. In maintaining their tribal identity, the Roma have resisted integration into Serbian society.  They avoid enrolling their children in school and often train them to beg.  The Roma children who do attend school tend to be segregated in classes for those with intellectual disabilities.  Our guides warned us not to give alms to mendicant Roma, especially women holding infants and toddlers.  Emanuela confirmed that parents would drug their children so that they would look sweetly asleep, and increase the poignancy of the adult panhandlers' appeals.

           It is only in recent years that some young Roma women, like Emanuela, have rejected their traditional limitations and obtained educations.  I suppose that should have been encouraging.  Instead, I was disheartened by the deplorable familiarity of the narrative. It would require a titanic commitment of resources to address the poverty that spawns petty crime, domestic abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction among the Roma.  I could tell that many of my fellow passengers were moved by Emanuela's presentation.  A number of them made donations to the social service agency that employed Emanuela.  Then we filed into the dining room, where white-jacketed waiters served us a dinner with several courses, filling our wine glasses assiduously the while.

café tables,  Belgradians were sitting with friends, drinking, eating, and, of course, smoking.  It was the middle of the afternoon, and the citizenry was not at all averse to indulging in alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and flirtation. Almost everyone was well dressed and engaged in conversation, either on their phones or face to face with their confederates.  Graceful, long-limbed young men and women streamed past, the boys in narrow slacks and the girls in short skirts.  Tall women strode by in dizzyingly high heels.  HL and I ordered drinks and sat back to watch the sidewalk show.  We must be forgiven for snapping surreptitious, candid pictures of the Belgradians around us.

On Prince Michael (Knez Mihailov) Street

           We passed used booksellers' stalls and several bookstores.  The window of Plato's Bookstore displayed a variety of T-shirts printed with anti-American and anti-capitalist slogans.  Naturally, we had to go inside.  There we found more merchandise  that demonstrated that not all Serbians had been converted to soi-disant Western democracy.  T-shirts sold at the kiosks were even more emphatic.  One could choose apparel, mugs or magnets bearing the image of any one of several past dictators and current local demagogues.  I bought a postcard that denigrated Coca-Cola, not sparing the profanity, and praised slivovitz, presumably the proper beverage for Serbian patriots.  There was a T-shirt imprinted with the same sentiment on offer.  Had I been able to think of anyone who might wear such a gift, I might have bought the shirt.