The above recording of this post for those of you who prefer to listen.
Oh sure, traveling is about museums and monuments and historical sites. But, the part I like the most is getting a glimpse of daily life, eavesdropping, mixing it up with the locals. Add a foreign language and I’m in heaven. I invent words when I’m not sure. Everybody has some fun! I love knowing about their day-to-day lives.
Like the little boy sitting on the steps of a little church next to the incredible Ristoro di Lamole, up in the Italian hills near Florence. (Love speaking foreign language with little kids. They talk slow!) Here’s an Italian lesson:
…or the dinner at the LE BALZAAR, an historic little brasserie in the Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne. Our very french apartment is upstairs. I decide to try out a phrase I had learned years before from a friend who married a frenchman. Ramène-pas ta fraise sounds benign enough, but it translates roughly as ‘f—- you! The story went that a french tourist was VERY pissed at a NY cop and hissed, ‘Don’t bring back your strawberry!’ Righto, the cop thought. Well, I decide to innocently ask the waiters at LE BALZAAR about this phrase I had learned.
You can imagine…the maître d’ can’t believe hearing this coming out of the mouth of a middle aged American woman! He calls all the waitstaff, the busboys, whoever he can find, to have me repeat it for them. I do. Multiple times. Great guffaws of laughter all around. I happily accept a thank you gift that sits proudly on my kitchen shelf.
…or the kid who sat opposite us on the train to La Spezia.
…or the kind old man up in the olive tree with his two sons. When I see them, I have to pull over, to the edge of the field. (Mary, my co-traveller, is very patient). One son says he’d like to visit America. It’s big, yes? Yes, I say. The other son says Preferisco piccolo (I prefer small). Up there in the breathtaking hills of Tuscany, I have to agree with him.
So many stories. I’ll finish with the Romeiros in São Miguel.
We first see the Romeiros while driving through the little town of Rabo de Peixe. A group of men dressed in capes and colorful scarves are walking along the side of the road, carrying long walking sticks. We wonder what it’s about, who they are, why they’re dressed like that, where they’re headed. But we drive on and soon forget about them, continuing our dazzling journey around São Miguel’s other-worldly geography.
The Azores are a volcanic archipelago sitting in the pathway of the Gulf Stream, half-way across the Atlantic from the US to Portugal. Cows graze on impossibly steep green hillsides which drop to the wild sea, caldeiros, gigantic craters of rock hollowed out by volcanos, creating deep blue-green lakes, bubbling thermal pools. Saltos (waterfalls) emerge from thick cryptomeria forests to fall into jaw-dropping gorges below.
And so, we hardly notice the Romeiros amidst all the splendor, but we see them again, on our early evening journey on the way to yet another charming little family-owned fish joint, this time on the road towards Porto Formoso, which is not called ‘beautiful port’ for nothing.
But I can’t ask anyone about the Romeiros. My romance language-trained brain is having a tough enough time with my few phrases of Portuguese without muddying the waters with questions about capes and sticks.
It isn’t until Bill wants to buy a little Romeiro figurine at the Ponta Delgada Airport gift shop, as we make our swift Covid 19 departure from São Miguel, that we get the story. (We were scheduled to fly out on Wednesday, March 18. That’s March 18, 2020. El Trumpo Magnifico had announced a few days earlier that no one will be able to enter the US. ??!!??! We zip to the airport on Monday to find out about our flight. It has been cancelled. The guy at the desk is on the phone, frantically trying to find us another flight. He looks up and asks, can you leave today? You bet. We are greeted in Boston with people in space suits, no customs, no nothin’, just get outta here.)
But back to the Romeiros. In her thick Portuguese English, the shopkeeper gives us a lesson on what they mean to the people of São Miguel.
The tradition of the march began in the 16th century after a devastating earthquake and landslide buried the then-capital, Villa Franco do Campo, killing more than 5000 people. Men began to march to pay homage to the Virgin Mary and to atone for the sins that might have been the cause of such devastation. They began to pray, walking from village to village to give thanks for blessings and to urge people to atone for their sins.
The walk happens every year now during the first week of March. Groups of Romeiros, grandfathers, fathers, sons, depart from their villages to make the roughly 80 mile week-long pilgrimage clockwise around the island. They are welcomed, fed and sheltered in each village by grateful townsfolk.
The shopkeeper expands on what this all means in São Miguel. I was brought to the Catholic church as an infant, she says, cradling an imaginary baby. I am not that any more, but the Romeiros are more than religion. They represent the belief in the idea of community, that we are here to help each other. The world is being divided into the rich vs. the poor. This is not the way. The Romeiros remind all the people of São Miguel that we must be kind, caring of one another – that we are in this life together.
She wrapped our little figurine in paper and we said our good-byes. Our romeiro sits (alongside the Balzaar dishes) on our kitchen shelf - a daily reminder that we’re in this life together.
I can hear your voice saying “don’t take back your strawberry!” in English but with a French accent!
Like the touch "an historic". Very British wot?