Travel notes

During this trip that brought us by train and bus from Madrid to Paris, to Lourdes, Toulouse, Rome and Milan, we learned so much that a group tour or a trip by air will never be able to provide. I have collected a lot of notes about the countries that we visited or areas we passed by, a glimpse of the people and the country.

Of course, Spain is familiar to us and we have many names, places and terminologies that have been  imbedded in our culture. This is the result of 400 years of Spanish rule and the teaching of Spanish in high school and college, until the government under President Ferdinand Marcos, responding to “nationalistic” movement, removed Spanish from the curriculum.

What is wonderful is that Spanish and Italian share many words, though pronounced and even written differently but for the phonetics they are similar. A Filipino traveler who has a modicum of knowledge of Spanish and good English will be able to get by in Madrid, in Rome and in France, even understand the people in these countries if they spoke slowly enough for us to catch the words. Unfortunately, they talk very fast, though when asked to speak slowly they did oblige.

The result of the teaching of English in high school in these countries is paying off because young and middle-aged people can understand a little English.

The train and bus rides gave us a glimpse of the countryside. Of the three countries, France has the best countryside with its wide swath of agricultural lands that are cultivated in such a way that the fields looked like gardens.

This is the result of mechanized farming. We did not see people working on the land but tractors plowing the fields and machines harvesting the wheat field with the grains loaded automatically into trucks. There were, however, few grains silos, one of them looked like an inverted funnel rising up into the sky.

One of the remarkable notes is the clumps or pockets of trees within the farm. No matter how plain the field, there is always this forest within. Low-lying areas are planted with trees. Behind the house of Eric Fougeirol, husband of our niece, Dr. Marilou Estoya, in Rambouillet where we stayed for two nights, there is a forest of several hundred hectares where the kings of France and now the President hunt.

There are other state farms, one of which, Eric told me, could be thousands of hectares. He also hunts for pheasants during allowed times. Last week, Malou told us, a deer wandered into their garden.

The small forests are required by law as they become sanctuaries for flora and fauna of France. This is the same in Spain and in Italian farms. They are also important to keep the ground water level high.

While the farms of France and Spain are mainly on flat lands, those of Rome are of rolling hills but trees are all over as .well.

The exchange rate of the euro shows a continuing slide. That is good for us, but the European union does not accept dollars, only euros so that we have to keep on exchanging dollars for euros and we lose in the process. The drop in the value of the euro thus allows us to recoup our loss in the exchange.

While the hotels and stores do not accept dollars, they accept credit cards. This is one way for the euro to cut both ways – from the exchange rate and from the exchange fees.

Be careful when you drink your coffee in Milan. We had coffee and the waiter told us to vacate the table because that is for “waiter’s orders” which means only those who order food or drink from the waiter, rather than from the counter, can use the table for free.

He relented when I told him we will pay for the table and he gave us his own receipt from his own cash register. We paid 2 euros or P108 for the table, the same cost as a small cup of espresso coffee. The waiter had his own business with tables.

Also in Milan, we ordered hamburger with French fries and chicken nuggets. In the Philippines, they go with ketchup but in Milan it has none of that, not even for the fries. When we asked for ketchup the girl said we have to add euro .20 or just about ten pesos for a small satchet.

It seems Milan, despite its beautiful architecture shown even in its train station, is exploiting travelers. So beware in Milan, no matter what you heard of this great city. The station, however, is a work of art, a marvel in sculpting which one can find all over Rome.*

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