As this is being written I am listening to Radio Paloma, a German radio station streaming music of the "good old schlager" kind, presently Kristina Back's "Reden Ist Silber Und Küssen Gold" is playing. This station is streaming constantly without commercial interruptions. Knowing German is a great help, but not essential if one likes good music set to good orchestration, something we could wish for quite often on this side of the Atlantic. Do a Google search for radio paloma, then click on "Radio Paloma - 100% Deutschter Schlager." In that window in the upper right hand section click on "starten" and a smaller window will open, again, click on "starten". You may then close your tab for Radio Paloma and sit back and enjoy the music.
Schlager is a particular genre of German music, literally translated it means"hit(s)", but not in the sense of a hit being the hit today or this week or this month, but literally a hit, and hits are timeless. Part of the lure of the hit is the actual "hit" or the beat, which drives the music, sometimes it sounds a bit like disco.
The El Paso Mission Trail has an interesting history which I will not bore you with here except to provide the links to the proper information. This link has a short but rather concise write up of the history of the trail which begins in El Paso TX and ends in Santa Fe NM
http://www.epcounty.com/history/missiontrail.htm
My first encounter with El Paso was back in my youth, when one was not nearly as wise as one likes to think one was at the age of 21. I was serving in the US Army and volunteered in early 1967 for an anti- aircraft missile school reported to be at Fort Bliss El Paso (think young man here with a vivid imagination and knowing that Ciudad Juarez is just on the other side of the river). Things didn't quite work out the way imagined, when the bus arrived at Fort Bliss we were loaded into Army buses and driven what seemed like hours into the New Mexico Desert finally arriving at some little bump in the road named Oro Grande where the school was located. There we learned to shoot airplanes out of the sky with little shoulder fired heat seeking missiles named the "Red Eye". Well this blog is not about the desolation of Oro Grande; 1 mess hall, 2 barracks, 2 class rooms, cactus, scorpions, a rattler or two and not much else.
Other good links with information about the El Paso del Norte Mission Trail are:
ttp://www.elpasomissiontrail.com/.
After completing the check in at the hotel, and we prefer La Quinta as they are reasonably priced, have clean rooms and by the standards of our country a fair Continental Breakfast, by the way I think all people and companies that advertise a continental breakfast should spend about 4 weeks in Europe travelling from place to place eating Continental breakfast. They would much improve what is offered here. The worst continental breakfast I have seen was in a small place in the middle of nowhere Mexico, in the State of Tamaulipas, and if I remember correctly in the small town Tomasena. The continental breakfast table was set in the lobby (a stretch of the imagination) and consisted of a few cups,
one teaspoon, a pot of hot water, a jar of instant coffee, a jar of sugar, a loaf of white bread and a jar of jelly with
one knife provided to spread the jelly. But that is stuff for another posting. Somehow I got off topic here for a bit, allow me to return.
After checking in at the hotel ... we headed out to visit the missions, and remember all of these are still active parishes, as a matter of fact they may be the oldest continuing parishes in the United States. First we went to the Chapel of Presidio Elizario, which dates back to 1684. This date is about 64 years after the Pilgrims arrived on Plymouth Rock. Here is a photo from in front of this mission as we deliberately did not take any photos inside as there were people gathered there praying.
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| The chapel at the Presidio Elizario (The Presidio is no more but the chapel stands) |
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One can almost feel the "Old West" here on the sidewalk,
we are just waiting for a tumbleweed or two to come rolling down the street. |
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| Huge interesting door into - no not the saloon. |
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| Howdy pardner - where's your horse? |
San Elizario holds an interesting historical place. It was at San Elizario that the "First Thanksgiving" in what is now the US took place on April 30th, 1598, say that would be 22 years before the Pilgrims left England / Holland and came across the ocean. Why is this little tidbit not in our history books or taught in our schools?
The community of San Elizario has an interesting history -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Elizario,_Texas
The next stop was at Socorro Mission which is just up the road a few miles from San Elizario but before getting there we had to stop and shoot a picture of a house, wall and gate; I am just fascinated with interesting houses, walls and gates, particularly when adobe brick is used in the construction. It looks so "Southwest".
At Socorro Mission we managed to take a picture inside the mission and I was invited to participate / con- celebrate (in the truest sense of the word con-celebrate) the Mass but unfortunately our schedule did not permit it on this day as the hour was getting late and storm clouds were gathering on the horizon, and we still had one more mission to see.
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| A most interesting and simple "bell tower" |
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| Elegant in its simplicity |
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| Mission Socorro with thunderclouds in the background. |
Here is a link to some of the history
http://www.elpasomissiontrail.com/ and here is the link to Nation Park Service information
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/tx/tx1.htm and last but not least Wikipedia's link to information on this mission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socorro_Mission.
The last stop of the day was at Ysleta Mission which had a festival going on so we got to see the inside of the church as well as Indian dancers and for reasons of accuracy it should be noted that these "Indians" are not really Indians in the sense that we think of Indians of the Southwest. Most likely the dancers were Mestizo of Mexican origin and they are doing dances that relate how they were evangelized when the Franciscan missionaries first came to the New World.
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| A beautiful mission church with the parish administration bulding ruining the view. |
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| From a more pleasing angle. |
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| The inside of the mission. |
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| Youngsters in their "drug store" Indian costumes. |
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| Watch out for that really pointed arrow and strong bow. |
Here is a link for more information on Ysleta Mission
http://ysletamission.org/about/ and
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/tx/tx3.htm
Since we happened to be there during July we did witness some of the celebration of the three day festival
http://ysletamission.org/festival/ . Had we known the festival was taking place we would have scheduled more time in El Paso; lesson learned, do more homework.
The day ended with us having dinner at a just opened Brazilian restaurant that did not yet have its license to sell alcoholic beverages but which did provide complimentary beer, although I am sure the cost was covered somewhere within in the price of the meals. However, it was a good meal. A long enjoyable day with more than one memorable moment - beginning with my passing of an 18 wheeler probably loaded to the maximum, meaning a gross weight of about 80,000 lb and going uphill. I should feel so proud for doing that in our little 2.5 L 4 Cyl. Subaru Forester with all 173 HP doing their best.
