Carcassonne, France

It wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Jumanji, but still we had images of one of our favorite board games, Carcassonne, coming to life as we made our way to the fortified city in southern France. It was the stop between our Christmas visit with Charlie and Ann and our ski trip to the Haute Pyrenees. We have played the game for years and wanted to see the real thing.

Carcassonne, an old city on the northern front of the Pyrenees, played a part in the long running border disputes between France and Spain, before they even were France and Spain as we know them today. Its strategic location meant that for hundreds of years it was repeatedly a target for whoever wanted control of the region. It was also a stronghold for a group of Cathars, who were on the wrong side of the power curve with the Inquisition, bless their souls. It is fortified with not just one, but two walls, enclosing it. Or at least enclosing those who were inside. The unlucky ones who lived in the village below provided food and raw materials to those inside. When an invader showed up, you were bumming if you were left high and dry outside the fort, not privileged to enjoy the benefits of all that defensive engineering.

Not unlike the Alhambra, this fabulous historical and architectural wonder was neglected for centuries and was overrun by countless squatters. Eventually the authorities said enough is enough, we need to tear that eyesore down. But the locals rallied and a long renovation process resulted in a fabulous restoration as well as a great economic resource for the area. Millions come here every year to visit.

These old places are filled with layers and layers of history, which confuse me. That seems to be my refrain, confusion and wonder. How do you tease out the different periods, the different struggles, the separate histories, economies, etc. from a castle and its community? It’s a melting pot of time. And each of these places that we visit is tied to the others, with common characters, plot lines, themes.


Sometimes a mundane detail, a sundial for example, sets me thinking. There is a very interesting sundial on the wall at Carcassonne. When was it built? How does it work? How were other people telling time at that same time in history? (Why didn’t I take the tour so I could get the answers to these questions?)

Standing there I am reminded of the sundial in the castle in Segovia, and the meridian embedded in the floor at El Escorial, and even Thomas Jefferson’s clock at Monticello, and John Harrison’s ambition to develop a chronometer that would fundamentally alter sea navigation. Time. Measuring time. Telling time. Telling the community what time it is. How do we do it? How did they do it? Why is it important?


There are thousands and thousands of these details, questions, distractions. How do we ever make it out of any of these places? The kids get hungry. And then it’s time to leave.

Never Lost with Nancy the Navigator

I thought I had the GPS all sorted out. I had deciphered how to use it before packing for France. Actually, getting to France wasn't going to be the hard part. Getting out of Madrid was. I was sure I had it worked out. I programmed in Charlie and Ann's address the night before departure, and we were ready to go. In the morning, we loaded the car, I turned Nancy the Navigator on, and confidently sat back to let Nancy tell Jack where to go.

The first time we rented a car in Madrid we discovered the city’s spectacular network of underground highways. Who knew? We’d been here for months but had only been on foot and on the Metro. There we were, in an underground maze, in a city with outrageously poor signage. It was a little stressful in the car that day, so for our trip to France we rented a GPS with the car. No sweat. It’s Hertz’s Never Lost system. We’d be golden. For added assurance I bought several new Madrid maps in a variety of scales, to meet our every need.

We needed to enter the tunnels less than a mile from home which didn’t leave much time to get oriented to Nancy’s style. Jack wanted to know why Nancy was telling us how far it was to Dr. Alvarez. “That’s the name of a street we’re headed toward,” I assured him. I was determined to follow Nancy’s directions to prove my prowess with this technology. And with that, we dropped down into the tunnel. It turns out that Nancys don’t receive signals underground. Good thing I had all those maps ready to consult. Suffice to say that when we finally saw sunlight again we didn’t know where the hell we were. Apparently we were somewhere southwest of Madrid, and we wanted to be northeast.

Luckily we had Nancy to set us straight. She did a lot of recalculating. “Just follow her directions, she knows where to go.” Now that I had all those maps out I could see generally what we were aiming for. But it was going to be a little tricky getting from where we were to where we wanted to be. It seemed that between Nancy and me we could work it out. But every time I told Jack to turn, Nancy objected and began recalculating. An hour later we had toured a great deal of the wrong side of town and were still utterly lost. Still recalculating.

“Why does that thing keep telling us how far away we are from Dr. Alvarez?” Jack demanded. “Turn that thing off and figure out where we are!” Right. Nancy had been determined to get us to Dr. Alvarez’s office and didn’t realize we wanted to see Charlie and Ann in France after all.

You’d think that at this point you could just ditch the electronics and rely on good old fashioned map reading. But Spanish maps can’t keep pace with road construction. So between the outdated maps, the outrageously poor signage, and the general complexity of metropolitan driving we needed more experience and more luck to begin our escape from Madrid. Or maybe just a little more experience programming Nancy.

About a third of the way to France I timidly turned Nancy back on and started reading the instructions.

Belenes

Courtesy of mdiocuh galeals

There are nativity scenes, or Belenes (Bethlehems), popping up everywhere. At Anna’s school each class is responsible for part of the scene. Anna is working on a sheep to add to the flock. Each store, restaurant, home, public office building, has at minimum the nacimiento, the manger scene with Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus usually an angel and a couple animals. But for the vast majority, this is just the nucleus. Most Belenes include the whole village, and sometimes the whole countryside. It takes a village, you know, to raise a baby. The Spanish nativity scene gives you all of it.

One friend told us that when her children were young they set up their Belén early in the month, and the kids moved the figures around to act out the Christmas story during the holiday season. King’s Day is traditionally more important than Christmas Day here, and the day when gifts are exchanged. During the 12 days of Christmas (the days between Christ’s birth and the arrival of the magi), the kids moved the figures of the magi from far away in the fields, through the village, and finally had them arriving at the manager scene on January 6.

We went over to Plaza Mayor to check out the Christmas market where you go to get everything for your Belén. I’ve never been particularly drawn to the nativity scene. But I’m tempted; this looks like a lot of fun. I can imagine getting into an elaborate scene with back stories and developing plot lines. The market is chock full of stalls, each specializing in a particular type of figure or prop. Some carry only the nacimiento, but in every size and price you can image. Some carry only animals. Some of the priciest stalls offer elaborate mechanical moving items: moving windmills, a baker pulling bread of the oven, a man chopping wood. The prices are incredible. Some pieces go for over a couple hundred euros. Other stalls sell minutia: pottery pieces, bundles of firewood, loaves of bread.





The serious connoisseurs don’t randomly buy pieces and throw them together. There is a real art to this process, and families spend years building their villages. The manger scene is the where you start and has to be larger than everything else. Figures at distance from the main action are proportionately smaller to create perspective. This makes me wonder if you move your Wise Men closer and closer to Jesus each day, do you have to get different sized figures to keep things in proper scale throughout the story?

There is another element of the Spanish Belén that Jack wishes I wouldn’t mention. The caganer. Literally, the shitter. The caganer is a Catalonian tradition; a Belén villager caught in the act of squatting with his pants down, yes, taking a dump. Some claim the caganer represents fertilization of the crops, prosperity for the new year. I think mostly it’s Spaniards having a good laugh. He's usually out of the way being discrete. There are traditional caganers, a Catalonian with a little red cap, and more contemporary caganers in the image of just about any public figure you can think of.


In the end, the caganer is the only Belén figure that I bought, but Jack keeps hiding from view when I put it out on the shelf, our only Christmas decoration beyond out little Christmas tree.