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Aus aktuellem Anlass

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Portugal (9)

Yesterday evening, shortly before sunset, on the Praia do Norte---a surfing competition is in preparation:

Conditions are quite unfavorable. There's no wind, and the waves are smallish.

Portugal (8)

We're still in Nazaré, or, more precisely, we moved to Nazaré, which is in some respects the ultimate location. It's the end of the world (photos will follow), but it's also a prime tourist destination with travel buses that can't make it around narrow corners and all the tourist traps you can dream of. John and Alex from the Green Eyes must come visit. You must come visit, too.

We're in Sitio now, the oldest part of the town, on a cliff above the main beach, and this is the view. We had lunch at Restaurante Bohemia, a place around the corner from our apartment, and it lived up to its name, with the owner and his mistress/cook (our guess) getting into a fight. Wonderful. In more than one respect the bizarrest restaurant your rasender reporter has ever been to.  

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The fountain of Geneva --- reviews

We were supposed to put some meat on the last post and share our thoughts about the "The New Dark Age"---that's you and me and Donald Trump and the internet (which he invented)---as seen by the British author James Bridle, the writer who alerted us to the video clip of the previous post. Instead, we got a new five-star review of our novella, mercifully short, and since we forgot to talk about its first review we'll post it as well. Both are on Amazon.

Here goes:

Roma
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sexy, quirky and highly imaginative

Format: Kindle Edition

I adored this short story. Loved the poetic language with fun dialogue and vivid descriptions along with a cast of memorable, sexy fauns. A delicious, irreverent portrayal of Hadrian, all-powerful emperor and lusty lover of a boy lost.

James Beamon
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fun and tawdry bit of history

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

This was a really fun look at an aspect of the Roman Emperor Hadrian's time in Geneva, which amounts to one of the most zany sexual conquests I've ever read. Michael Ampersant delivers the story mostly through dialogue, which provides a very casual feel as if an eccentric neighbor is telling you this crazy wild happening in history while you were just minding your business. Grasping some of the surrounding details may require some Googling or a passion for history, but the core is very clear and concise. Well worth the buck just so you can know the story and can tell it to others!

For the record

Comments will follow...hint: this ends in tears:


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Portugal (7) -- Can you see the surfer?

You can't, actually, not on the notebook display, where he's screened out by an ad for Ampersant's scabrous story about the Fountain of Geneva. So, here he is again...

...the Portuguese surfer Hugo Vau negotiating a 35 m high wave, already known as "big mama", on 19 January 2018---the Guiness Book of Records is pending as to the highest wave surfed on record. And all this happened barely nine moths ago in Nazaré, 100 clicks north of Lisbon, Portugal, a place we visited today. 

(And the reason for these super-waves? We quote Wikipedia: "Nazaré is a popular surfing destination because of its very high breaking waves that form due to the presence of the underwater Nazaré Canyon.[8] As the canyon creates constructive interference between the incoming swell waves, it makes their heights much larger on this stretch of coast.")

Constructive Interference, folks--we were always wondering. Next time you have an argument with your spouse...think of us.

Marry me!

If history "teaches" anything, it teaches irony...and so, here we are, with a set of "propaganda" posters distributed before the Sino-Soviet friendship frayed around 1963 (in those days both countries were "Communist"):

Ironic? Yes, because of the homo-erotic vibes, which, like the waves in Nazaré, anticipate gay marriage.

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Portugal (6)

Yesterday we had almost--almost--posted this picture in our quote-unquote series (note the caption)...

More of this in Michael Ampersant's Green Eyes

...and then, today, we get this...

...with little Michael in the thick of it, on the lookout point of the cliffs between Figueira da Foz and Quiaios. Being a painting, the first picture, by the Turkish artist Taner Cylan, is fiction, but the second one is pure photography by Jason ("connubial bliss") Yoon, and it is real. Here: 

Scratch my back!

Portugal (5) -- Don Quixote

We're on our way to Portugal again, and Chang had the brilliant idea to put in a stop at Campo de Criptana in the La Mancha region south of Madrid, where Don Quixote fought the windmills. Here they are (the windmills):

Yes, folks, really, at least in the sense that one local tourist guide blandly assert that the Don fought the mills, while a second tourist guide suggests that these windmills must have "inspired" Cervantes in writing the pertaining episode. You say. We may have another post about this soon; there is something funny about these mills.

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Back home --- a report from the trenches of global warming

(Another tourist-laden cruise ship on its way to Cannes)

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Just do it!

Back home

We returned to France today. This was Bürchen, kissed by the autumn, yesterday. Photography by Jason Yoon, as always.

In the meantime, Michael signed a contract for a German publication of the GREEN EYES.