Walls Come Tumbling Down

Twenty years ago - on 9 November - the wall came tumbling down. The Berlin Wall. It was an event that had all manner of consequences. The East German football team, needing only a point to qualify for the World Cup, lost 3-0 against Austria on 15 November, the players' minds on other things, it is said. And so the bizarre prospect of the newly liberated East Germans meeting West Germany in the final never came to pass, and West Germany, of course, went on to win.

But more importantly, the fall of the Wall meant that Ossies could travel abroad freely, and not only those playing for the national football team and athletes pumped full of steroids by the Stasi-controlled coaching regime at the likes of the Berlin performance centre. And what was the first destination for many? You guessed it, Mallorca. The people of the later to be reunified country were reunited even before official reunification took place - on the beaches of Playa de Palma.

In April 1990, the first tourists from the DDR came to Mallorca. Ten thousand of them were invited - free of charge. Hotels and full board were provided by the Balearic Government, while the flights were paid for by the tour operators - TUI and Neckermann. Of course April was not high season, so finding the rooms was probably not too difficult, but it was still a considerable gesture, especially if it meant that a new market in the east of Germany was going to be forged over the following years. Perhaps it wasn't a completely altruistic exercise.

There is a fascinating article about this in the "Diario", one that refers to the fact that the visitors, used to being controlled and having to seek permission, couldn't quite come to terms with being able to come and go as they pleased from the hotels. They also, apparently, couldn't get enough of the oranges. Like Brits who pack their suitcases with sleeves of Lambert & Butler, so the original Ossie tourists went back, bags bulging with fruit.

Ten thousand holidays - free. Maybe they should think of something similar now, and not just for east Germans.


Yesterday was, depending on how you prefer to call it, All Saints, the day of the witches or the day of the dead. On 1 November, the cemeteries are packed with those taking their tributes. The florists of Mallorca do a roaring trade the day before All Saints. Day of the dead, though, seems somewhat apt. 1 November is also the first day after the season finishes. Being both a holiday, a Sunday and the morning after Hallowe'en festivities, had you been venturing out in the morning, you might have been shocked at just how quiet, nay dead, it all seemed. The season ends, and they celebrate it with the day of the dead.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - John Lennon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAJ2AoEwDvY. Today's title - The Cappuccino Kid went political.

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All The Leaves Are Brown

Like the cicadas in their death throes, Playa de Muro falters towards its seasonal end. Whereas the cicadas, sucked of their greenness, hurl themselves pitiably into walls or onto terrace floors, Playa de Muro is still, silent almost in its last staggering moments. It just gives up. There's nothing left, or very little. The life that is left is equally pitiable. A supermarket with lilos that no-one needs, flip-flops flopping forlornly on racks, the Pepsi and soft drinks cabinets shuttered over as the stock had been allowed to run out days ago. The tabacs stopped bothering to order newspapers at the start of the week, the girls are at their busiest in compiling closing-up inventories; no-one is even buying sleeves of cigarettes. The flags on the beach indicate that lifeguards are still on guard, but there are ever fewer for them to watch over as the hotels limp on with their last remaining guests before the whitewash and brown paper are dragged out of the store-rooms and smothered across the insides of the glass facades. Boots of cars are open, revealing suitcases and boxes of small belongings, ready for transportation to who knows where. The apartments are emptying, the season's population moving on and the "for-rent" signs being hung up.

This is how it ends. The season just fades away but not without recriminations - someone's sold off the TV or taken the fridge, so it gets said, someone misunderstands the contract terms and is not entitled to the dole, so it gets said. The season fades away and things fall apart - the centre cannot hold, it has given up trying after the months of managing to hold things together.

The streets become ghostly. At night there is no-one, no-one wandering to or wandering back, no-one shouting or laughing. Gone is the tribute entertainment of the evening that blows on the breeze from the hotels and disturbs a now-forgotten hot night on the villa terrace. During the day, the little train has stopped and been shunted into its winter sidings, the trikes no longer squeak past, their drivers no more shrieking or screaming. The wire fences go up, creating no-go areas of hotel complexes, the pine needles get tossed and pile up against every wall along with sweet wrappers fallen from litter bins and a yellowing page of a newspaper taken on the wind. The garden lawns become a confusion of renewed grass but also brittle, colourless bracts of fallen bougainvillaea, the grey-sand decayed branches of palms, ever more brown pine needles and the similarly brown leaves of this tree and that plant. This is how it ends. Every year the same, and you somehow wonder if it will come back. But it does. Because in spring, this will be how it starts - they arrive and rent their apartments, sign their contracts, sweep the terraces, scrape away the brown paper, wipe away the whitewash, bring out the lilos and the flip-flops, stock the drinks cabinets, the tobacco shelves and the newspaper stands. Every year the same, the same cycle as every year.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "I Think I'm In Love", Spiritualized, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjRXogjKHLk. Today's title - first line from one of the great songs.

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Summer Is Over

"I'm off to gather mushrooms." Those wacky French, always truffling around in the undergrowth snouting out fungus. It had never occurred to me that anyone, let alone a French visitor, might trek up to La Victoria and usher away the mountain goats before they could snaffle all the fungal booty. But it's that time of the year. Into the forests they go in search of firewood - not, I guess, that they're meant to - and the they is anyone with a wood-burner. Unused for several months, the burner is now being relieved of old ash and being re-commissioned once more.

The dew hangs thick on the grass that leaps up in a matter of a few days. It is this, the dew, as much as the torrents of September, that brings lawns back to life and to enjoy a spell of rapid re-growth before the sun loses more of its power and the gardens retreat into the winter time. Snails slime out from beneath stones, while the dying cicadas, in their shrouds of browny-grey, slam against walls in their last moments of disorientation before coming to rest and to await the ants. Flies crawl on terrace furniture and erratically buzz into faces; persistent, they land on arms or lobes, seek out spots to rub their legs in kitchens and bathrooms. The spray should kill them as well the autumn-returned mosquitoes, but rarely seems to.

The days shift from clear skies to grey, from calm to wind and from temperateness to chill. The beaches, where in summer the kiters and surfers are barred, now are littered with the colours of sails, boards with graffito go-faster, heavy-metallic blazes, and obsessive, freaky-haired surfies squeezed into wet suits. The wind from the sea is starting to cut. Hands reveal a purpleness unseen since early in the year, and jackets are zipped up to the neck, heads poking out from upraised collars that are caught on gusts and smack against an ear.

The "butaneros" are newly busy. Orange bottles, hidden in utility rooms, are lugged onto the streets to await the parping of the gas truck. Heaters are wheeled out and re-acquainted with the containers that vaporise their spectral, watery toxicity. In the supermarkets, the shelves change their contents, the greengrocery becomes greener as the likes of broccoli come back into fashion as the complement to legume-based stews. Refreshing summer whites begin to disappear as heavy reds regain their dominance in the wine sections.

From wardrobes and drawers come sweaters and sweatshirts, destined for the wash to fragrant-conditioner away the mustiness accumulated in the dead air of summer. Heavier clothing may be needed, but there are still tourists spirited enough to be shirtless and to take the iciness of a beer where a tea is demanded. The glass facades of some hotels are already whitewashed as end-of-summer shutdown signals the sad end of another season.

Winter's coming, and the tramuntana north wind blows south, forcing sand back against the wooden barriers and the flaking paint of shore-side villa walls. The sea rebels against the turquoise of summer. Turbulent, tossed by the tramuntana, it shrieks a green-seaweed greyness - an army colour, that of a tank - splashing up its detritus onto the water's edge, building castles of kiwi-moulded sea grass on the sand. The anger of the bay roars through the night, remonstrating with a forlorn and desperate desire to eke out just a few more hours and days of the season.

Summer's over.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "High", Lighthouse Family (Lightweight Family was how Steve Wright cruelly dubbed them), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59LnsrWkyFM. Today's title - one of her lesser-known songs, but it's terrific and so was she. Think another season.

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