Allusion Two: XKCD

Take a moment and revel in the fact that this allusion is host to another allusion. It’s like a mirror reflecting a mirror.

Okay, now picture this: you are standing on a stone wall, blocked from the edge of the mountain by massive ramparts that seem both as sturdy as the earth and shockingly sparse as a barrier between you and the open air that whips around your face and hair. You can see for miles in every direction. Look one way and forested land brings you to the beginning of the ocean, which eventually, in something resembling a horizon, falls off into the sky. Look the other way and you see hills and forests and towns sprawling out as far as your eye can manage. Look down and you see a lush flowering of trees dotted with chateaux, monasteries, and palaces. (Just don’t look behind you, or the German tourist doing the can-can over the edge might change the source of your breathlessness from exhilaration to fear.)

The castle was built into the mountain nearly a thousand years ago by the Moors. Unlike the kings who used this place as an artistic royal hang-out in the 1800s, the builders of the castle didn’t want the beauty of the view. They could see potential enemies approaching from any and all directions. As romantic as an “ancient castle on top of a windswept mountain” sounds, the structure was built to be the opposite of romantic: a purely utilitarian defensive endeavor. Both the Captain and I have visions of people plummeting to their deaths -- including the German can-can girl. We are shocked and delighted by the lack of ropes, rails, and warnings.

When we visited one of the palaces of the village -- not one of those dotting the forest below us, but one facing us on an opposing hilltop -- we found a similar child-like delight. As fascinating as it was to wander through the ornate rooms of the palace and imagine myself living in the lady-in-waiting’s chamber (less rich, but more charming than the queen’s), I loved best the climbing into (decorative) turrets and creeping along the walkways that hug the outside of the palace, dropping off into the brush clinging to the mountainside.

We are also delighted, in an unromantic way, by the wind turbines that speckle the tops of many of the hills we can see. We took a train ride out to the castle village of Sintra, as well as a few bus trips across Portugal, and we found the wind turbines everywhere. Not enough that they feel ubiquitous or overwhelming, but enough that they are part of the landscape -- surprisingly modern in a country that is still very much in touch with the beauty of its history.

On each bus trip we took -- a shorter one to and from Fatima and a longer one to and from Porto -- I watch the wind turbines, expecting them to come alive. I wanted to bring both -- the wind turbines and the bus -- back to the US. The public transportation, inter and intra-city, tended to be both affordable and convenient. We took trains, buses, boats, and cabs for all ten days and never once wished for a rental car. In fact, the driving patterns were difficult to follow. And the parking patterns even more so. More than once, we were almost hit by a parking car whose driver decided to jump his car onto the sidewalk and back up until it seemed like a good patch of sidewalk on which to leave his car.

Allusion One: The Arm of the Starfish

Madeline L’Engle is one of my favorite authors. Besides the fact that I enjoy her writing and stories, she has a talent for setting her worlds just next to ours -- everything is exactly the same and exactly right, except that she adds in a tad of history or geography that is not quite real. Her characters all inhabit this world with six degrees of separation, giving it a realistic texture.  This particular novel is set in Portugal and has a chase scene that winds through the streets, museums, and monasteries of Lisbon. So, of course, when I found myself running through the streets, museums, and monasteries of Lisbon, I thought of Adam and Joshua.

Two things from the book stuck out in my memory. First, that Portuguese is a difficult language to learn, even if you know Spanish. It was a true God-send the amount of English that had permeated the culture in Portugal. Most young people we encountered spoke English at least passibly, some very well. We learned please and thank you and a very few other words before reaching Portugal, but they have a whole bunch of sounds that don’t resemble English or Spanish. So I ended up being able to read it enough to get by, to understand it enough to feel like I almost should be able to know something, and to speak it enough to look like a fool.

One of my favorite linguistic encounters came with a nun in Fatima. We wanted to go on a tour of the gift exhibition (they display votive gifts that people have left for Our Lady of Fatima). We asked the nun at the desk, “Fala ingles?” She did not, but offered us French, Italian, and Spanish as alternatives to Portuguese. So I got the information for the tour in Spanish, which was clearly not a native tongue for either of us.

My next favorite linguistic encounter was with a taxi driver who spoke no English. He was clearly a boisterous and friendly man, however. The Captain pointed to a map to show where we wanted to go -- “Oh, monasterio -- Geronimos!” He then began a conversation about how cold it was outside. It contained more laughter than substantial communication. When we approached our destination, he pointed out to us where we wanted to eat pastries and coffee as well as how to get to another historical site nearby -- all with hand gestures, sound effects, and our half-dozen words of Portuguese.

The second aspect of Portugal that stuck out to me from L’Engle’s book was the warm, light, airy feel of the country. This feeling was partly true. The warm is a thing. We only had temperatures in the mid-50s, but a few people we met assured us that this was cold -- January weather. Which means that plants stay alive because there is little, if any, frost. Flowers were still bravely in bloom, oranges were ripening on trees, and markets had planters of herbs springing into the walkways. The wind whipped away whatever heat might make it out of our (wind-proof) jackets, but the sun reassured us that it was not as cold as we thought.

As for the lightness and the airiness… we were in cities and they felt like cities -- just with narrower roads (and sidewalks) than we were used to. And many of the roads and sidewalks were limestone cobbles -- prettier than pavement at home, but worse on ankles that bricks. I saw many many women braving them in high heels, which seemed to be a very particular talent. In both Lisbon and Porto (the two cities we got to know), we embarked on lengthy walking tours across this sidewalk and saw houses in an array of light colors. Many sported the colored tile that is a hallmark of Portuguese architecture. Almost all were roofed in red clay tiles. So while the city seemed city-ish when walking through it, when looked at from above or afar, almost every Portuguese town or city we passed looked light and airy.

I want to reread The Arm of the Starfish and see which monastery hosts the end of the chase scene. We visited one monastery in Lisbon and looked at one from afar. The monastery was a huge, ancient stone building that held ornate religious art and the earthly remains of long-gone monarchs. The tabernacle was large enough that Jesus’ earthly form could have been inside it, holding His cross -- and it still would have looked too big to do the job. But I’ll get into more details about monarchs and monasteries in another allusion. (Teaser: the First Amendment.)

Portugal in Allusions

It has recently come to my attention that I have been silent longer than I guaranteed in my last post.  To honor my promise to be back for Advent, I am making it for the... last day of Advent (more or less).  I have been writing a series of posts so that I can stick them up one at a time and start stockpiling some more posts and ideas for posts.  And here is your beginning: 


As you know, I recently got married.  And, though work took me out of town right away, the Captain* and I did get to embark on an adventure of a honeymoon, just a little delayed.  We flew across the ocean to a little country called Portugal to visit a part of Europe that he had not yet seen.  I had not yet seen any of Europe -- it was my first time using my brand-new passport.

I could spend the next few weeks going on and on about Portugal, but one of my goals is not to bored my 3.14 loyal readers.  So instead, I will have a few posts chronicling our adventures in a series of allusions -- because we understand everything new in terms of what we know.  If you ask me in real life, I will tell you stories and show you pictures… once they make it off my camera and the Captain’s phone.



*Yes, he has been pseudonymless up until this point.  He is remarkably difficult to name.  I hope this makes you think of the Sound of Music.  When I told our DJs that we wanted to be introduced as Captain and Mrs. von Trapp, one of them took notes.  The other one got it and laughed.  Like Captain von Trapp, he can sing and dance.  Unlike Captain von Trapp, he has no children.  Like Mrs. von Trapp, I have an affinity for nuns.  Unlike Mrs. von Trapp, I cannot sing or dance.