The next morning, I wander through slate corridors and arcades on a treasure hunt for obscured relics (definitely not the sort referenced in Dan Brown's thriller; preserve me from killer albino Opus Dei monks, please). The glass-and-steel elevator rises level with the clerestory, right under the vaulted roof of the transept, which gives 21st-century visitors a vantage few would have had, excepting church mice, when the structure was new. The thoroughly modern bedrooms—feather duvets, Roderick Vos chaises, rain showerheads—retain some earlier architectural vestiges, including storm shutters and massive support beams emerging at curious angles from the wall. An angel peeks out from under a coffee table. A friar meditates in an embrasure by the bar. It's hard to imagine what he would think of the bartender's catholic taste in music (Elvis Presley and Melissa Etheridge) or the pan-Asian dim sum appetizers fried hard as diamonds (the locally brewed Gulpener Kloosterbier, named for an abbey in Ter Apel, helps them go down easier). Maastricht may be provincial, but it's still a city, and what I'm looking for is true enclosure. Trust the Cistercians to have found just the place for this 900 years ago: the remote Gerês Mountains of northern Portugal.
Pousada Santa Maria do Bouro, Amares, Portugal
It's only seven in the morning when the bells of Igreja do Bouro start to chime and I nearly jump out of my skin at the Pousada Santa Maria do Bouro, a converted 12th-century monastery attached to the tiny church of this isolated village. The mottled granite walls are two feet thick, and yet the stately notes of the Ave Maria resound through my darkened room, a former monk's cell that present-day designers would deem stylishly austere. Having traveled deep into pine and eucalyptus forests in search of peace and quiet, I do not consider this soulful tolling an auspicious beginning.
Like the paradores of Spain, established in 1928 by King Alfonso XIII as a means of preserving national architectural treasures, the state-owned pousadas of Portugal include several religious structures. The most popular, Santa Maria do Bouro, is a fortress with a severe interior by Porto-based architect Eduardo Souto Moura, who did his level best to leave the broad hallways and courtyards free of contemporary trappings. Apart from an elevator, indoor plumbing, and a few basic furniture groupings, the monastery retains its formidable Romanesque demeanor—right down to the plain bedrooms with their extremely firm mattresses. (Chapter 22 regulates matters relating to the dormitory: each monk gets his own bed and is even provided with a night-light. Benedict doesn't specify how hard the beds should be, but I suspect Souto Moura is something of a literalist.) At first, I find all of this too daunting. It's the middle of the week and early spring, and few guests occupy the 32 rooms on two chilly wings jutting out from the cloister. Slowly, though, apart from an occasional motorcycle roaring up Bouro's main street, I begin to adapt to the utter absence of external distractions. The carillon penetrates, but no cellular signal gets through. Because I don't speak Portuguese, channel surfing on my room's flat-screen TV loses its appeal quickly, and conversations with the shy staff are mostly restricted to pointing at menus and maps. That leaves me with hours and hours to stare out the tall windows at granite hills and to pace a sheltered terrace where orange trees drop ripened fruit on mossy flagstones. No museums, no gift shops, no tours. Strangely, for someone who has the attention span of a hummingbird, this lack of stimuli becomes addictive.
During a quick spin around the homely village square the next morning, I nod to elderly men smoking outside a café that faces the weekly street market, which draws sturdy housewives in black headscarves to dicker with farmers who keep live chicks penned in the back of their trucks. A light rain sends me back to the pousada grounds, where I noodle over pan-seared codfish with caramelized onions in the vast kitchen turned dining hall. (In the adjacent refectory, the brethren once ate in silence, too.) The Portuguese prepare cod a thousand different ways, but my favorite is fried bacalao, paired this evening with garlicky black olives and a glass of inky, old-vine Quinta do Aciprestes Douro. Afterward, left alone in the bar area, I add logs to the blaze in the open fireplace to keep the shadows from getting too spooky. A waiter brings me tiny glasses of the local port to taste. After a second night spent absorbing the otherworldly starkness of this place, and despite the hourly peal of the church bells, I completely lose track of time. That's not a bad thing, except that I am consequently compelled to drive like a maniac in order to catch my flight from Porto to France.
Abbaye de la Bussière, Dijon, France
The Archbishop of Dijon's tenure is currently marked by the decision to unload a beloved white elephant—the 12th-century Abbaye de la Bussière—in the Burgundian village of La Bussière-sur-Ouche. In various incarnations, the edifice has served as a monastery, a baronial hunting lodge, and, until late last year, a freethinking spiritual retreat (tai chi on the lawn, Sunday services in the crypt). The original abbey has a direct ecumenical connection to the Chapter of Cîteaux, the heart and soul of the Cistercian order in Europe, which commissioned Pawson to design Novy´ Dvur in the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, like Kruisherenhotel, La Bussière was falling into ruin. When posted to the diocese of Dijon two years ago, Monseigneur Minnerath saw the writing on the wall. Rather than selling the 18-acre estate to a developer, he offered it to hoteliers Martin and Joy Cummings, of Amberley Castle in West Sussex. It is unclear whether the ensuing brouhaha has more to do with the under-advertised transaction or the new owners being English. Minnerath dismisses the latter idea, saying, "We are all Europeans now, you know."
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