IV Memories

"You know the name of it!  You know the name!" I was amazed to see my usually serene sister jumping up and down in her chair with excitement and joy.  I had just told her that my childhood friend, Joan Marie, who had come to Bogota for the wedding was wondering if the "Arlequin" bakery was still functioning.  Apparently my sister, Gloria had been trying for around 40 years to locate the bakery we used to visit once a year or so when as children we were brought to Bogota.  She had not been able to find  anyone who remembered the  race cars, rocking horses, swans, and many other interesting shapes made of chocolate by this German family bakery.

The internet provided the address and phone number and we all piled into two taxicabs and made the trip across the city.  I remembered the chocolate alligators with their white-sugar teeth, and the swans which gave the most candy for your money since they were filled with nonpareils, but I had completely forgotten the huge chocolate beetles which were my brother's favorite and which we had assumed were cockroaches.  I had also forgotten about the restaurant and tearoom upstairs where my mother and her friends would have the rare treat of a pastry and a cup of tea.  This bakery had seemed an impossibly magical place to us when we made an occasional trip from the jungles where we lived to the big city of Bogota.

After visiting the bakery, Joan Marie, Ben, Victoria, and I went for a little walk through the neighborhood where we had first arrived in Bogota which we had not seen in 35 or 40 years.  The early memories flooding into my mind were quite negative, from my first horrified encounters with grimy beggar children and my terror at the warnings I had heard about blond children being prime targets for kidnappings, to my reluctant attendance in a little preschool where I was shocked when the teacher used my skirt to wipe my nose and disappointed when a classmate's birthday cake turned out to be an incredibly dry and inedible fruitcake.  I remember hiding behind the couch reading the only book I could find in English.

But there were also good memories from later years when my culture shock had worn off of playing "kick-the-can" in the street and running down to the corner store to buy a piece of bubble gum. And the crazy teenage memories of pranks such as throwing a lit firecracker out of a third-story window into a neighbor's window where they were having a loud party that was keeping us awake.

Bogota's cold climate (it is located high in the Andes mountains), crowded urban setting, and sophisticated, cultured population had always been a fascinating change from the isolated rural setting and hot climate of the mission center where we lived most of the time.  I used to think it was such a shame that ice cream was only available in the cold city and not in the hot jungles.