Gome World

Weird and wonderful Catalonian food

When Hadley and her classmates take a tour of Barcelona in Twilight Cave: The Scourge Of Catalonia (Book 1) the unpleasant Mrs. Holstein and her suck-up teacher's pet, Tiffany Kistlebutt make interesting choices for lunch:

"Why don't you watch me order, children, and then you can learn something.  Ah, Pescaditos Frito.  That will be small pieces of fried fish, I expect.  Like fish sticks.  I shall have those..."

I don't think that this was what Mrs. Holstein had in mind.

...a large pile of tiny fish; two inches long, dipped in batter, and then fried whole.  You could still see their little fins, their little tails, and their beady little eyes looking up at you from the plate.

Tiffany Kistlebutt was sure she could do better:

"Let me try to translate this one, Mrs. Holstein.  I think it says "Fish and Potatoes - a Catalonian specialty."  I expect that will be their version of fish and chips."

  Tiffany's meal was also not what she had in mind:

A large chunk of tough-looking cod, complete with wrinkly skin and bones sticking out, sat on top of a piece of bread floating in a yellow oily broth in which several boiled potatoes and some pieces of hard-boiled egg floated.  Tiffany pushed herself back from the table, and looked as though she was going to be sick.  Hadley felt like her own day was steadily improving.

Both of these were meals that I tried when I visited Barcelona.  I must admit that they were NOT my favorites!  I also did not like the pile of rubbery pieces of Cuttlefish:

But don't get me wrong, most of the food that I ate in Barcelona and the surrounding area was absolutely delicious.  The descriptions that I give of the preparations of tapas in the kitchens of Casa Segovia were based very closely on some of the wonderful meals.

Alina arranged mushrooms, baby squid, olives, chunks of cod or pork and cherry tomatoes on a skewer, rolled it in smoked paprika, and then put it on a platter to pass to one of the cooks... Someone pulled from the oven a tray stacked with baked onions stuffed with spinach and pine nuts, and roast aubergines with goat cheese and anchovy fillets.  The salty, oily smells made Alina's mouth water.  On the table behind her someone was slicing Catalonian black sausage and laying slivers of smoked eels on top of toasted bread with a scoop of fig marmalade piled on top of that.  And on the nearby stove one of the other teenage girls was stirring pots containing all the wonderful sauces that got poured over the tapas before they were served.  Alina could smell plum sauce, the fiery tomato allioli for the toast potatas bravas, and a tangy green puree of lentils and garlic.

If you get a chance to visit Barcelona be sure to go to a Tapas restaurant and sample a few of the amazing dishes that they produce.  Although some of them may be weird, most all of them are wonderful

I do love wacky sculptures!

Although I sometimes make fun of weird modern art in my books I hope you can tell that I really love art of all sorts.  Good art is meant to surprise you or make you think differently about something or make you see a detail about something that you didn't realize before.  Even art that seems to provoke unpleasant feelings is doing a useful service to you by making you think more deeply about why you have that reaction.  The emotional connection that humans have with rock and metal that has been carved into shapes for a practical purpose or for an artistic purpose is one of the themes that I explore in my Gome stories.  So I had a lot of fun describing the sculpture garden in the grounds of Casa Segovia in Twilight Cave: The Scourge Of Catalonia (Book 1).  I got the inspiration by looking at some of the magnificent and fantastical sculptures that I saw around Barcelona.  some of these are very traditional and classical, like cherubs, or naked gods holding boats or baskets of fruit on their heads or backs while babies crawl over them...

    With other more modern sculptures it is sometimes hard to tell what the artist had in mind.  The Catalonian sculpture Joan Miro seems to have liked birds a lot because a lot of his sculptures have birds in their titles although he is not all that good at carving things that look much like birds!

   

The big tall colorful one in the paddling pool is very famous and is called "Woman and Bird."  Hmmmm...  I think that he must have got frustrated by his art sometimes and just got mad.  Here are three paintings that are shown in his museum in Barcelona that just look like he threw three pots of black paint at the wall:

In fact I am quite sure that that IS what he did!  What do you think they look like?  What about the big black thing with the hole in its middle standing behind the man in the art gallery?  Do you think that is meant to be a space alien or someone who is just very hungry?  Can you give it a title?

What is your favorite sculpture?  I'd love to see what drawings or carvings or clay sculptures that you come up with.

The imaginary decadence of Segovia

In Twilight Cave: The Scourge Of Catalonia (Book 1)  Finnley, Hadley, and their class mates from the Magnolia Academy of Arts and Sciences are taken on a trip to visit the magnificent country estate of Baltazar Mendoza, a famous Spanish art collector.  The estate, surrounded by olive groves and vineyards is called Segovia and is a complete figment of my imagination.  When I visited Barcelona a few years ago I was impressed with the rocky mountains near the monastery of Montserrat.  I thought that this would be a great

place to set a grand estate where a mysterious and powerful stranger could show the children some of the amazing delights of this region of Spain.  I found inspiration for the huge mansionof Casa Segovia when I visited the National Museum of Art of Catalonia in Barcelona.  This grand building with its neat terraces and sculptures is filled with hundreds of rooms and stairways where it would be easy to get lost.  There are lots of amazing pieces of art but I have to tell you that once you have seen four or five paintings of unhappy looking bearded men standing in front of their horses with dogs lying at their feet all the pictures begin to look kind of the same!  However, the building itself gave me ideas for Casa Segovia. My description of the ballroom in Casa Segovia where the American visitors are given a welcoming reception was based on the magnificent interior of MNAC (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya).

The ballroom at Casa Segovia was the grandest room Alina had ever seen.  The floor of polished green granite shimmered all around her like she was walking across a frozen pond.  Tall marble columns supported high arches, balconies, and alcoves where statues of naked gods stared down critically from above.  Higher still, in the domes ceiling, colorful frescos depicted Catalonian workers fighting for their freedom.  Lights shone down in thick golden shafts that angled through the air from recessed windows.  It sparkled off the crystal chandeliers and made rainbow patterns that danced above Alina's head.

The magic of Sagrada Familia

In the heart of the city of Barcelona you will come across a contruction project like nothing else you have ever seen.  The enormous cathedral of Sagrada Familia will be regarded as one of the great wonders of the modern world when (and some people would say IF!) it is ever finished.  The project was started over 100 years ago when the Catalonian artist and architect Antoni Gaudi was alive.  Gaudi loved to give his buildings curves and features that reflected the living world and so it looks very different from most cathedrals built hundreds of years ago.

In Twilight Cave: The Scourge Of Catalonia (Book 1) Hadley is taken on a tour of Barcelona that includes a visit to Sagrada Familia with her school class.  Although most of her classmates are quickly bored Hadley is astonished at the strange and moving carvings all over the cathedral:

    Hadley finds it mesmerizing to stare up at some of the strange sculptures carved above the four entrances to the cathedral.  One of these is a green cypress tree covered in white marble doves of peace.  As Alina looks at this she is suprised to see that one of the white doves begins to move all by itself.  Her friend Alina is the only other person who sees this.  The white marble dove moves away from where it was sitting and disappears behind the tree.  Where the dove had been sitting a small cloud of greenish yellow smoke rises up which reminds Alina of the cloud that was left when the evil gome Desperandum stole another Gaudi sculpture from Parc Guell.  Here is a picture of the cypress tree and the doves:

I hope that the pictures in this and other weblog posts give you a better sense of what the city of Barcelona is like.  If you ever get a chance to visit Barcelona then I advise you to take it.  It is a very exciting city with lots of interesting things to see and great food to eat.

Discovering Barcelona

The second trilogy of Wullie-The-Mahaar-Gome stories, Twilight Cave takes place in the Catalonian region of Spain in the city of Barcelona and in the mountains in the countryside near Montserrat.  I know that when I am reading a story I love to be taken to an exciting or exotic place where I have never been before and fell as if the author is painting a vivid enough picture that I can imagine being there.  When I visited Barcelona and the surrounding region of Catalonia a few years ago I couldn't resist the idea of setting one of my stories there.  Barcelona sits on the Mediterranean coast on the north east of Spain.  The city just fizzes with life.  The broad street called La Rambla boasts that it is the world's most exciting street.  Although cars and scooters rocket up and down a narrow path on either side the center of La Rambla is a broad pedestrian walkway with tourist stalls, entertainers, "living statues," con artists, booths selling food and with quaint alleys leading off into other parts of the city.    Nothing gets going in Barcelona until about 10 or 11 in the morning.  People have lunch in the late afternoon and things only really get lively after 9 o'clock at night.  On warm summer evenings it is wonderful to wander the streets and smell the heavenly spices from food being prepared in the cafes and restaurants.  When I visited with my family we tried to do some sightseeing in the late morning and early afternoon before it got too hot and then we came back to our little apartment in an alley off Del Carme to have a quiet "happy hour" in the air-conditioned living room before setting out for a delicious meal of tapas (small dishes of delicious food, like appetizers, that you can share with friends).

There is so much to see in Barcelona.  We loved Parc Guell so much that I had to begin the story, Twilight Cave: The Scourge Of Catalonia (Book 1) in Parc Guell.  The wacky sculptures and architecture designed by Antoni Gaudi give the place a playful fairy tale feel to it but as you will find out in Chapter 1 this very quickly turns into a nightmare for Alina, one of the new characters in the story.  Although Alina has been born and raised in Barcelona she finds herself fleeing for her life through the dangerous streets into the Barri Gotic district.     In a later chapter both Alina and Hadley spend a day in Barcelona during the daytime when things seem a lot less scary although they still find weird things happening to them.  They see the tourist buses and police cars which all look rather strange to Hadley.  They visit the amazing cathedral, Sagrada Familia, that is still being built after 100 years.  When it is finally finished it will probably be considered one of the wonders of the modern world.  Even half-built it is an amazing sight.  Here are a few more pictures of Barcelona.   

  I hope that you will enjoy exploring Barcelona with Hadley, Alina and me by reading Twilight Cave.  If you ever get a chance to go visit Barcelona for yourself you should jump at it.  It is one of the world's most exciting and intersting cities.

The Edinburgh Military Tattoo

If you are planning a trip to Scotland during August when the Edinburgh International Arts Festival is on try to get tickets to go and see the Tattoo.  I describe it in quite a lot of detail in The Doomed Castle which is part three of The Blackhope Scaur Trilogy.  You often have to book months in advance.  Here is the official website http://www.edintattoo.co.uk/ .  I have been to see the Tattoo several times during my life and have never been disappointed.  When you tour the castle during the day in summertime you can see the bleachers that have been erected on the esplanade:

It is impressive enough during the day but at night time the whole place takes on a magical appearance.  With multicolored floodlights casting images on the massive castle wall, and fireworks and smoke and laser shows piercing the night air you feel as if you are truly in the middle of a memorable historical event.  And when the gates from the upper castle open and hundreds of kilted pipers march out playing in unison the night is filled with the deafening noise of that most traditional Scottish instrument.  Depending on your musical taste you may feel trapped by the crowd and unable to get away!  Spare a thought for the ancient English armies that came across the border to fight the Scottish army.  Bagpipes were used to put fear into the enemy troops for the wailing sound could be heard by the enemy from miles away, long before they could see who they were fighting. 

So imagine that you are sitting there among the bleachers late in the evening on the last night of The Tattoo wondering whether gomes might be attacking the castle, plotting to steal the crown jewels or blow the whole place up...

Touring Edinburgh Castle

In the chapter called "Gathering Storms at The Castle" in Blackhope Scaur Finn, Hadley, and Finn's family take a tour of Edinburgh Castle.  If you ever get the chance to visit Edinburgh I highly recommend that you take such a tour.  It is impressive enough from the outside but when you get inside it truly feels like a whole little ancient village with cobbled streets and strange buildings.

Finn enjoys pretending to be firing one of the cannons on the Argyll Battery launching a cannon all the way across Princes Street Gardens to hit the monument that stands on Princes Street in honor of Sir Walter Scott.  Here is the view Finn got sighting along the barrel. Both Hadley and Finn get a fright when the One-O'clock Gun is fired.  That really does still happen every day at 1 p.m. and can be heard all over the city.

The gun that fires at one-o'clock is fairly modern, as you can see, but they really do have the ancient siege-gun that was built in the 1440s.  It could hurl a metal cannon weighing almost a ton for over two miles and was used to smash castle walls.  Here is a picture of a modern-day tourist leaning against it with a pile of cannons sitting nearby.  Each of these cannons is about the same size and shape as Big Tek in the story. 

There really is a Crown Square and the Palace that holds the Scottish crown jewels.  I hope you can imagine a helicopter landing in Crown Square and an unpleasant French woman in a long black coat and high heeled boots struggling across the square with a suitcase. 

It is easy to let your imagination go wild when you are touring Edinburgh Castle.  Take a look at the tourists walking across Crown Square and try to imagine which of them are really spies, murderers or aliens in disguise...

The House at Moray Place

At the opening of Blackhope Scaur part two of The Blackhope Scaur Trilogy Finn and his family arrive at the house that Uncle Hugh McDougall is renting for the summer in the center of Edinburgh at Moray Place.  Although I invented the details of what the house was like on the inside I kept as much as I could of the details accurate.  Moray place really exists and presents an austere facade to the world.   As you can see it is a monotonous gray color and all the houses look much the same as each other.

At the entrance to each house there are steps going up to a large solid wooden door.  I say in the story that all the doors are painted a slightly different shade of green, which isn't exactly true.  Here is one that is blue!  You can see that there are basement  rooms set below the level of the street. Finn gets to sleep on that room during his stay and is unsettled by the sounds and sights and smells of the place.  There are solid wrought iron railings on the fences that line the street.  They look a bit like spears and give Moray Place an even more unwelcoming feel, as if the houses are very well defended from outside intruders.

When Finn and Hadley leave to go exploring they go through the back garden, out a lane and head for the corner.  Wullie scampers along keeping himself hidden beneath the kerb.   Here is a picture of a small back garden at Moray Place and the corner where they set off for their late evening adventure following The McCrones.  This garden is smaller than the one I describe in the book and does not have a fountain containing a bad-tempered moss-covered gargoyle, so you will just have to imagine that part.

Is Scottish food really THAT bad?

You will notice in Blackhope Scaur (the second part of The Blackhope Scaur Trilogy) that I make fun of Scottish food.  You can listen to me describing Hadley's mom, Riversong, tackling the "full Scottish breakfast" at the Burntfield Hotel shortly after the family arrive in Edinburgh: http://gomeworld.typepad.com/gome_world/2007/05/blackhope_scaur.html

Some people eat most of their meals at gourmet restaurants like this one where you can eat such delicacies as "Deep fried Mars Bar and chips." 

I am not kidding.  Get a Mars bar (or a Snickers or any other chocolate bar that you fancy), dip it in batter, drop it in the boiling fat fryer for a few seconds, and then place it decoratively on top of a pile of soggy French fries slathered in vinegar and HP sauce.  Remember to place the batter-fried-Mars-Bar decoratively, mind you... at a jaunty and artistic angle.  Remember, presentation is half the art of fine cuisine.  You can then wash it down with a glass of the subtle and delicately flavored beverage advertised on the side of this Edinburgh taxicab. 

But in truth, you can get some wonderful food in Scotland.  There is a place in Edinburgh called Henderson's on Hanover Street, which has been serving fabulous organic vegetarian dishes for over thirty years.  And if you like venison or beef cooked to perfection, and served with a decent helping of potatoes, then you'll be quite happy in Scotland. 

It has been said, rather unkindly, that although plates in Scotland may look round, this is an optical illusion.  They are really triangular.  One corner is for a pile of some sort of unrecognizable overcooked brown meat, another corner is for a pile of greenish unrecognizable vegetable (probably peas), while the third and largest corner is for potatoes in their endlessly fascinating varieties: mashed, boiled, baked, roasted, fried...

This is not true nowadays.  I have eaten some spectacularly tasty meals in Scotland in recent years. 

Fancy a little smoked salmon as an appetizer...?

And as for desserts, the Scots can't be beat.     It seems that every restaurant has its own version of "Sticky Toffee Pudding." 

  They are all different enough from each other that it is always worth while trying them wherever you go...

Well why not...?

But there is no Pier 71!

If you live around Seattle you may find and recognize many familiar landmarks in The Rusty Pelican as Finn, Hadley, and Wullie search for clues all over the city as they try to find and rescue Uncle Hugh.  For readers who have never visited Seattle you may wonder how much of the descriptions are true.  Here is a little photo tour of some key places in the story.

There really is a Perkins Lane in Magnolia, although I have never seen any neighboring houses with a cool pulley note system running between them.  I have also never seen a house with a slobbering English bulldog in the yard or a man practicing Tai Chi in his pajamas on the front lawn.  However, there are plenty of expensive black cars with tinted windows.  Here is the parking lot at Discovery Park where Uncle Hugh got tricked into being a gallant gentleman helping out a French lady with a broken down car.     The next thing he knew he had been knocked unconscious and captured...

Finn and Hadley arrange to meet Marie Claire at the Seattle Center, a famous landmark from the World's Fair in 1960.  They follow her on the monorail that goes right past the two round towers of the Westin Hotel. 

As they run away to avoid being captured by the crooks, the hotel staff, the doormen or the Seattle police Finn, Hadley and Wullie dive down some smelly alleys where they can hide behind the garbage-filled dumpsters.  Seattle has plenty of those in the downtown area on the way to the waterfront.  But if you go on down to the waterfront and look for Pier 71 you will be out of luck.  There are many piers that jut out into Elliott Bay like a row of crooked teeth, but they stop at number 70.  See, there is nothing to the north of Pier 70 (at least at the time I wrote this story).  Some of the piers are quite fancy and have restaurants and amusement parks in them, but others are old and crumbling.  Here are a few photos to show you the variety.  There are some marinas near the piers.  If you go down the steps you can go on floating wooden walkways out to the boats, so the Happy Sake boat would have been moored someplace like this.  Out at the end of some of the piers there are industrial barges moored.  Here is an example of what some of them look like.  Unfortunately you won't find The Rusty Pelican Barge moored out there anymore.  The police confiscated it and towed it away as a public safety hazard after they found it spewing blue and yellow smoke out of every crack.  They were even more disgusted when they went on board and found piles of fish guts and luminous paint everywhere...

Here is a picture drawn by an elementary student in Bend Oregon which captures the sinister and evil feel of The Rusty Pelican Barge: