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Oct. 29th, 2006 09:27 pm
Living for the dead
Lovely day in Pilsen, despite the travel difficulties. (What's worse than watching your train pull away as you're walking to the el station? Watching it sit there motionless for minutes on end; we took an express bus instead.) I imagine it was a lovely day almost everywhere in Chicago because it was FREAKIN' GORGEOUS.
Is there anything more enjoyable than taking fun people somewhere they've always wanted to go but have never gotten around to visiting? Diego and Gus loved Pilsen. Every other gorgeous brick house we passed, Gus said "Papi, will you buy that for me?" In particular, there was a vacant shop with a bowed-out rear wall that cried out to him to become a bookstore.
I also got my first look inside St. Adalbert of Prague (a.k.a. San Adalberto or Św. Wojciech). All these years, I've assumed it was a Czech foundation, since Adalbert/Vojtěch was a Bohemian nobleman martyred in Prussia and Pilsen has always been described to me as an originally Czech neighbourhood. (The Encyclopedia of Chicago set me straight on that: "Another Polish district appeared just west of 18th Street and Ashland Avenue, where in 1874 Poles founded St. Adalbert's parish.") But he's also highly revered in Poland (under the name "Wojciech"), and the stained glass windows rather give the game away with legends like "Św. Stanisław Kostka" (i.e. a Polish saint's name in Polish spelling). I couldn't decipher the Polish inscription above the altar beyond the fact that it was an invocation of the BVM on a par with the Spanish below it, "Virgen de Guadalupe, ruega por nosotros".
The only downside was that I saw so little of the posse that had acted on my invitation (amplied and clarified by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunj, the Details Man). Part of it was timing issues, part of it was our desire to try out one of the dozens of restaurants there which is not Nuevo León (not that there's anything wrong with it--the first half-dozen times). We struck gold with Cocina Mundial and its respectful, well-executed Latin-fusion dishes, of which more later.
One of these days, I need to put on my anthropologist's cap and interview Gus properly. He's from Loja in the south of Ecuador and he's a font of information about the culture and cuisine. Today he was promising me samples of an herbal tea they drink called tisana locally (and horchata by the Quiteños, 'cause they crazy) and describing a special Day of the Dead drink called colada morada. (I even found a recipe online--for what good it will do, given that half the ingredients are unobtainable outside of the Andes.)
I'm continuing to press him on regionalisms. Today I netted a beauty: sorbete. Anyone care to guess what that refers to in his native dialect? Also, a guagua to him is a baby (from Quechua wáwa), not a bus, as it is to Cubans and other Caribbeans. He told about being panhandled in Miami by someone looking for money "por la guagua". He was baffled; where was the baby that was obstensibly to benefit from his charity?
Is there anything more enjoyable than taking fun people somewhere they've always wanted to go but have never gotten around to visiting? Diego and Gus loved Pilsen. Every other gorgeous brick house we passed, Gus said "Papi, will you buy that for me?" In particular, there was a vacant shop with a bowed-out rear wall that cried out to him to become a bookstore.
I also got my first look inside St. Adalbert of Prague (a.k.a. San Adalberto or Św. Wojciech). All these years, I've assumed it was a Czech foundation, since Adalbert/Vojtěch was a Bohemian nobleman martyred in Prussia and Pilsen has always been described to me as an originally Czech neighbourhood. (The Encyclopedia of Chicago set me straight on that: "Another Polish district appeared just west of 18th Street and Ashland Avenue, where in 1874 Poles founded St. Adalbert's parish.") But he's also highly revered in Poland (under the name "Wojciech"), and the stained glass windows rather give the game away with legends like "Św. Stanisław Kostka" (i.e. a Polish saint's name in Polish spelling). I couldn't decipher the Polish inscription above the altar beyond the fact that it was an invocation of the BVM on a par with the Spanish below it, "Virgen de Guadalupe, ruega por nosotros".
The only downside was that I saw so little of the posse that had acted on my invitation (amplied and clarified by
bunj, the Details Man). Part of it was timing issues, part of it was our desire to try out one of the dozens of restaurants there which is not Nuevo León (not that there's anything wrong with it--the first half-dozen times). We struck gold with Cocina Mundial and its respectful, well-executed Latin-fusion dishes, of which more later.One of these days, I need to put on my anthropologist's cap and interview Gus properly. He's from Loja in the south of Ecuador and he's a font of information about the culture and cuisine. Today he was promising me samples of an herbal tea they drink called tisana locally (and horchata by the Quiteños, 'cause they crazy) and describing a special Day of the Dead drink called colada morada. (I even found a recipe online--for what good it will do, given that half the ingredients are unobtainable outside of the Andes.)
I'm continuing to press him on regionalisms. Today I netted a beauty: sorbete. Anyone care to guess what that refers to in his native dialect? Also, a guagua to him is a baby (from Quechua wáwa), not a bus, as it is to Cubans and other Caribbeans. He told about being panhandled in Miami by someone looking for money "por la guagua". He was baffled; where was the baby that was obstensibly to benefit from his charity?