Gypsy Serenade continue… August 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Paris, Tour, Trails, Trip , 3commentsThere in a tiled room in the basement the pleasure began: Gonzalo’s daughter danced for us. She was fifteen, lithe, conscious of her own body and beautiful in her art, and all the while as the spectators’ enthusiasm grew her father watched her, drinking Jerez, nodding his head and smiling.
Presently he drew me aside to suggest that if I would like to give him a certain sum his wife and daughter would go immediately and prepare a gypsy supper. He explained that their house down under the railway by the Bridge of Three Eyes had only one room, but his own eyes shone as he described the delights of a gypsy supper. (more…)
Gypsy Serenade August 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : England, Germany, Hotels, Restaurant , 3commentsBy the time the train arrived in Madrid the Arabs had stolen my coat. I had not been long in the restaurant car: ten minutes, the length of a cognac. I was coming south from England; they were returning home from a factory in Germany.
On the way to the hotel I stopped the taxi to have a drink in a bar. Outside it was winter and raining. He was standing inside, an old brown overcoat and a white shirt buttoned without a tie, around forty. One of his sons was dancing in worn-out boots, the other singing for him, to the clapping of hands without a guitar. They looked about ten, with long hair, both so brown and handsome I could have hugged them; (more…)
The Monuments in the Shadows continue… April 5, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Egypt, Embassy, Europe, The Nile , add a commentWe begin to encounter many Western sources in the fifteenth and, particularly, the sixteenth centuries, when the pilgrims were joined by merchants. The frontiers of the Orient were opened to European merchants at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the first European ambassadors began to install themselves in Egypt on a permanent basis. This was accompanied by an increase in the number of publications with accounts of journeys to eastern lands, and the taste for the foreign spread among cultivated Europeans. A visit to the pyramids was an adventure that might be dangerous, as there was the risk of being attacked by Bedouins. Despite this, many Europeans went there and then published accounts of their experiences. Among other things, we owe to these hardy adventurers the report of one of the first cases of “tourist exploitation,” on the part of the inhabitants of Giza. Although the Great Pyramid had been open for some time, the natives regularly blocked the entrance after every visit, in order to be able to “open” it up again for the next visitors and thus get a tip. At the end of the sixteenth century, Sakkara was added to the itinerary; the visitors liked to enter the mastabas and unearth the mummies in order to open them up and look for jewels. (more…)
