Two piles of dirt

One of the works on display at the Antoni Tàpeis Foundation is called Deus piles de terra. And that pretty much sums it up.

Do you ever catch yourself doing something gross? I was walking down the street today trying to put my earplug-style headphones in my ears and zip my purse at the same time, when I realized I had put one of my earplugs in my mouth. An earplug that spends a lot of time in my ear. Yuck.

It's kind of a big deal that I was using headphones at all, though. When I first got here I never took my iPod out with me. Partly because everything was new and different and exciting and I wanted to take it all in without distraction, but mostly because I was afraid of getting robbed. I'm still careful and watch my back and generally avoid certain streets after dark, but I'm not afraid anymore. Barcelona isn't out to get me; I always knew that, but it took being here a while to really believe it. That said, I have two iPods and it's the old one that I take out with me. I'm not scared, but why tempt fate?

A thousand words

I finally have a cable for my camera (thanks, Mom!). I'll post more photos eventually, but for now here are some of the ones I took in Cadaques and Figueres. May take a while to load, sorry.

((Boiiing!))

What is it about walking in the rain that makes you get all introspective? I knew when I went out tonight that it would probably rain; it was raining a little before I left. But I decided, based on no evidence whatsoever, that it wouldn't really rain, so I didn't bring an umbrella. Of course it rained, so now I'm all introspective. And feeling like a gas molecule, bouncing around in some frictionless space. My life moves forward smoothly enough in whatever direction it's going until it collides with something that sends it off in a whole other direction. Unlike a molecule I am capable of taking charge of my life and moving myself in different directions, but in practice I tend not to. I react to what life throws at me, rather than being proactive about what I want from life. When I put it that way it doesn't sound like a great strategy, but it's worked pretty well so far.

Anyway, before I got all wet and introspective, I was planning to write about bilingual humor. I don't mean bilingual in the sense of actually speaking two languages, just that the jokes involve two languages. (In fact, maybe the less Spanish you speak the better, I dunno.) My sense of humor is a little jodido (fucked), so you might not laugh. Here goes. My friend says he speaks Spanish un pollo. It kinda sounds like un poco which means "a little," but it actually means "a chicken." "I speak Spanish a chicken." That's funny. My mom and I were walking by this newsstand the other day and she asked me "Does that say 'Date a bathroom?'" The magazine cover did in fact say Date un baño and un baño does mean "a bathroom." (Technically baño means "bath," but it's used for bathroom.) But date in Spanish is a command meaning "give yourself," so the whole thing means "Give yourself a bath." Probably an article about spas or something, but "Date a bathroom" is funny. And really not much worse than most of the dating advice in women's magazines, I bet. Bathrooms don't move to New Jersey, or send the wine back.

Paint a Vulgar Picture

I repeat: Having visitors is a great excuse for sightseeing. Finally made it to one of the houses that Gaudí designed. I could try to describe it really well, using words like ornate and flowing and sinuous, but I just don't think it would work. So I'll just say that it's really fucking cool. The Sagrada Familia is great, but I prefer Gaudí's works that aren't giant construction sites. Just me.

We also went to an exhibition by this Russian/Ukrainian/Polish artist, Kasimir Malevich. He invented Suprematism, which in it's 'purest' form (and I say that with one eyebrow raised) consists of things like a big black square on a white canvas. Kinda cool to look at; I might even hang something like that on my wall if I ever have a wall of my own to hang things on. But I don't really get it. The exhibition did convince me that there may be something to get, though. He painted all kinds of different stuff in different phases of his career, and was clearly a very talented and serious artist: He wasn't just some jackoff painting squares. After the Suprematism thing (early 1900's) he got into architecture and did a lot of anti-communist, anti-Soviet painting, so it's not like he started painting squares out of laziness, either. He was up to something, I just don't really get what.

Shhh! You'll wake up the art.

You never see photographs of a young Picasso. Not that I´m complaining. He was an adorable old man. But he was famous long before he was old--wasn´t anyone taking pictures?

Spanish people don't say "Shhh" when they want you to be quiet. They say "Ssss," because the Spanish language doesn't use the sh sound. I realized this at the Picasso Museum today; I heard a lot of Ssss-ing because there were several school groups going through the museum. And these kids were little, maybe six or seven years old. Now admittedly I don´t know much about little kids except that I don´t like them. But aren´t six-year-olds a little young to get anything out of the Picasso Museum? Wouldn´t everyone be better off if they stayed at school and made their own art? Or went to a sculpture garden or something, where they can touch the art? One of the kids was chewing gum and he kept taking it out of his mouth and playing with it. It could have gotten on the art. Maybe I sound like an old stodgy librarian, but that´s just wrong.

Oh, and I had this crazy shot last night. We went out for a fancy dinner (it was sooo good) and they brought us this concoction of salt, maple syrup, cream, and champagne. Bizarre, but really good.

What have I done to deserve this?

My mom is a saint and agreed to take some of my stuff back to the US with her. Good-bye, winter coat and slutty brown boots! Moving the suitcase full of winter clothes and unwearable shoes from my apartment to her hotel taught me something new about the Barcelona subway. It was designed by assholes. There are all these unnecessary stairs: You'll be walking down a hallway and walk down some stairs, only to walk up some more at the end of the hall. Why would anyone put those stairs there, other than to fuck with people carrying suitcases? I've walked up and down the stairs lots of times before, just never noticed what an unnecessary pain in the ass they are when I wasn't lugging around a heavy wheeled object. Mean, mean, mean.

Charcoal burning everywhere

I used to say Sundays in Spain were depressing, but it's really more like manic depression. The stores are all closed and normally all the Spanish people stay home. Then on Easter the stores were open and people were out. Today was the Dia de Sant Jordi (Day of Saint George), the patron saint of Catalunya, and everyone was out. Music, parades, street fares. The line to get into the Picasso museum was down the street, a foreboding sign of what Barcelona will feel like once tourist season starts for real. My mom is visiting and I'd been telling her how much Sundays here suck; now the thinks I'm full of shit.

It's tradition here that on St. Jordi day girls give guys books and guys give girls roses. My problems with this are twofold. First, it's like another Valentine's Day. Fuck that. Second, and I'm really not trying to be a pain in the ass here, flowers and books? Girls are pretty and boys are smart? I know it's just tradition, and roses are pretty and they smell good, but still. I'd be way more excited about a boy who gave me books than one who gave me flowers.

First Self Portrait

Conspicuously absent from the Museu Nacional d´Art de Catalunya is Salvador Dalí. He was Catalan: born in Figueres, lived in Cadaques for 40+ years. Eccentric and flamboyant, he was also the complete antithesis of the stereotypically closed, serious Catalan. He embraced Catalunya: He lived here and he built his museum here. But I wonder what Catalunya thinks of him.

Maybe it´s not personal. There weren´t many Miros on display at MNAC either. Maybe the museum aims to show less well-known Catalan artists. And I guess the process by which art is distributed to different museums isn´t really governed by where the art should be. Maybe it´s hard to get good Dalís; maybe the donors gave them to some other museums. Still, it seems strange that the Catalunyan art museum only has three minor Dalís.

Get in the queue

The metro system of any large city should conveniently go to the airport. I decree it. Such is the case in a lot of cities, just none of the ones that I´ve lived in. The Boston subway claims to go to the aiport, but you have to take a shuttle bus from the subway station and the buses don´t run often enough and it´s a big pain in the ass. To get to Laguardia airport in New York via public transportation, you crawl across 125th Street on the always crazy-crowded M60 bus which stops about every two blocks; to get to JFK you can take the A train, but then you have to take this other train that costs $5, which not only rips you off but also fucks you up by leaving an uneven dollar amount on your metro card. (Round trip, whatever. Shut up.) Even poor people in New York take cabs to the airport. Here in Barcelona the metro used to go to the airport, but now because of some kind of construction you have to take a bus that´s just as painful as the M60. Worse even, because the Barcelona airport bus also goes to the bus station, so you have two distinct groups of confused people with too much luggage. The subway goes to the bus station. The airport bus really doesn´t have to.

One of the great things about subways is they separate the process of paying and getting into the system from the process of getting onto the vehicle of transport. Another is that many people can get on a subway car at the same time. Basically, you can be slow on the subway without slowing everyone else down. On a bus, anyone who´s got more luggage than they can handle or has questions or doesn´t speak the right language or otherwise doesn´t know what they´re doing slows everything down. And on an airport bus, that´s pretty much everyone. There´s never enough room for the luggage; getting on takes forever; getting off takes forever. It´s a total friggin´ disaster. Add to that the fact that in Barcelona the airport bus costs 3.65 euros, meaning that everyone has to wait for the bus driver to make change, because who has 3.65 euros exactly? Everyone would benefit if they just rounded the cost up to 4 euros. And fixed the metro.

Sorry. I´ve had that rant building up for a while. I´m better now.

The Spanish Federation?

Zapatero is all the rage right now. The Spanish prime minister has been in office for two years now, the Spanish economy is good, he´s on the cover of Newsweek International. Let me throw in my two centimos: I kind of have a crush on him. He looks funny in pictures sometimes because he makes strange faces, and I´d like him better with longer, scruffier hair, but he´s very attractive. He´s got really nice blue eyes and he´s very well dressed and he´s tall. And he pulled the Spanish troops out of Iraq. I totally want him.

And. Andalucia wants to be a nation now, too? I know I´m just a foreigner, but isn´t Andalucia just about as Spanish as Spain gets? It´s bullfighting and tapas and warm weather and friendly people. And they speak Spanish there. In Catalunya and the Basque Country, the want for autonomy comes partly from the fact that those regions are different from the rest of Spain: different language, different culture, different history. Spain is a patchwork, so you can kind of argue that any of the regions are different from the rest of Spain, but Andalucia? I dunno. Spain is made up of 17 autonomous regions. What if they just replaced the words "autonomous region" with "nation"? Probably not enough for the Basques, but wouldn´t that make everyone else happy? Spain coud be a federation of nations, like the Russian Federation. Well, maybe not like the Russian Federation, but you know what I mean. I´ll try to mention it to José.

In the wrong band

I'm really bad at the "What languages do you speak?" game. English and nowhere near enough Spanish is a really boring answer, so sometimes I cheat a little and say I speak some Russian. It's not completely untrue: I can conjugate in the present tense; count to about twenty; and say important things like beer, wine, and ice cream. But I really can't have a conversation in Russian. Most of the people I encounter don't speak Russian themselves, though, so I can usually get away with it.

When I was traveling last week I had my landlord pick up my mail for me, and when I went to pick it up today a woman whom I'd never seen before answered the door. I was all set to speak Spanish with my landlord, but for some reason being faced with a stranger sent me into a tailspin and what came out of my mouth was more or less the Spanish equivalent of "I have traveled... I live upstairs... Tamara... collect... my mail." I suck. I think the woman at the door was my landlord's housekeeper and her Spanish, although way better than mine, wasn't great either. She told me to come back later and I said I would, but then we just kept talking in bad Spanish. She asked me if I'm an English speaker and if I speak any other languages, so I told her I speak a tiny bit (un pocito-ito-ito) of Russian. And then she started speaking Russian, dammit, and I had to admit I didn't understand a word (at least I remember how to say "I don't understand" in Russian). At the lowest point of the conversation, I found myself trying to explain, in a horrendous mix of Spanish and Russian why, at twenty-eight, I'm still single. Argh.

And in the continuing saga of "Spaniards are less concerned with personal injury and/or lawsuits than Americans are," I went to this aerobics class tonight. You know those big balls you see at the gym, people do crunches and stuff on them? Imagine one of those balls cut in half, then imagine jumping up and down on it (flat part on the floor, jumping on the round part). The possibilities for injury are numerous, and I didn't even have to sign a waver form. It was fun though; the instructor kept saying "¡Arriba!", which may be my favorite Spanish word. And the chorus of one of the techno songs they played repeated "Fuck you" over and over, which both made me laugh and, in a room full of Spanish people, made me feel like I was in on a little secret.

Never saw my hometown

On summer weekends in Michigan, everyone from downstate drives up north. They leave on Friday afternoon and go back on Sunday night and, regardless of the exact destination, for a large part of the trip there's only one way to get there. I've done it myself, and it's not pretty. The bus ride home from Pamplona last night reminded me of summers in Michigan. The scenery here is nicer, and I didn't spend the whole trip worrying that my car might overheat and blow up like I used to in Michigan, but aside from that it was pretty much the same. The trip was supposed to be five or six hours long; it ended up being almost eight. It could have been a lot worse: The girl sitting next to me stayed in her own space and didn't smell bad. And I got to watch Anna and the King and some Cuba Gooding, Jr. movie, dubbed. They also showed some Arnold Schwarzenegger movie (told you it was a long ride), but the dubbing didn't seem to preserve Arnold's accent and I lost interest.

Coming back to Barcelona really did feel like coming home, yet another piece of evidence that I do in fact live here. After traveling it's always nice to be able to get around without a map.

Es complicado

Pamplona used to be walled. Some of the walls are still in place and they've built nice parks around them. Also, some of the walls are raised so you can climb on them for nice views of the mountains. Walking around the parks today seemed like a good idea, a nice relaxing way to end the trip and the museums are closed anyway. Except that it's raining. And the bag check at the bus station was abandoned. I still did the park thing, in the rain and carrying my backpack, but it wasn't quite the same. At one point I was starting to worry that I'd gotten lost, in the rain and carrying my backpack. Then I walked over this trench that I'm choosing to believe used to be a moat and through what looked like a castle entrance, and was back in the old town. Old cities are great for stuff like that.

Not that I really expected it to, but a week in the Basque Country didn't clarify too much the separatism issues. It is different here: It looks different; the language is completely different; the people are kind of different, I guess. I know the Basques were really repressed under Franco, and that kind of repression always has consequences. But I still don't get the burning desire for independence. Never having had my own culture, language, or identity repressed, maybe I'm not really capable of getting it. I never felt unsafe or anything, but you do get the impression that autonomy-related issues are hotter topics here than in Catalunya. San Sebastian and Pamplona both had some streets full of sketchy-ish looking bars covered with separatist paraphernalia (maybe I just missed those neighborhoods in Bilbao). Most public spaces either had signs saying No fijar carteles (Don't hang signs) or were covered with political posters. Basque flags are everywhere, and in San Sebastian there were signs all over that said (in English): "Tourist remember. You are not in Spain or in France. You are in the Basque Country." It all just seems a little more extreme than in Catalunya. One thing that surprised me, though, is that the Basque language is nowhere near as pervasive here as Catalan is in Catalunya. I haven't seen much of anything written only in Basque, things tend to be in both Spanish and Basque or Spanish only, whereas in Catalunya if something is written in only one language (signs, menus) it's usually Catalan. Catalan is certainly less alienating than Basque: Anyone who speaks some Spanish or French can kind of figure out written Catalan, whereas if you don't speak Basque you won't understand it spoken or written, period. I also haven't heard people speaking Basque that much, but one of the cider house Basques told me it's because I've been in cities, and that in smaller towns everyone speaks Basque. Unintelligible as it is, the little bit of Basque that I've heard sounds nice.

Anyway, I like the Basque country. The food is good, the wine is good, the people are nice, the politics are complicated, and the bathrooms are perpetually out of toilet paper. I'll leave you with some Basque words, so you can see how different the language is.

Ez erre: No smoking
Irekita: Open
Itxita: Closed
Sarrera: Entrance
Irteera: Exit
Sagardoa: Cider
Ardoa: Wine
Zuritoa: Beer
Donostia: San Sebastian
Iruña: Pamplona

The cider house Basques also taught me to say "I speak a little Basque," but now I forget how. Probably for the best, since it's a complete lie.

I´m not dead yet

We had this half-assed idea to go to church this morning--"We´re in Spain on Easter, let´s see what mass is like." We didn´t make it. Probably for the best; I always feel a little guilty crashing religious observances as a tourist. In Pamplona we happened to show up at the cathedral just as mass was letting out; the choir was singing that aleluia song and we didn´t bother anyone or take up space during the service so it all worked out pretty well. And I´m not starving to death here. It seems like Easter is the one Sunday of the year that Spanish people don´t stay home. The restaurants are all open, people are out; lots of tourists but a lot of locals, too, I think.

I went to the bull ring (couldn´t go in, just walked around the outside--there´s a statue of Hemingway in front) and walked the route that the bulls run; I don´t want any more to do with the running of the bulls than that. I don´t care if it´s culturally intolerant, I can´t be open-minded about bullrighting or anything associated with it. There´s a clock near the bull ring counting down the time (down to the second) until July 6 when the bulls run; I won´t be here.

And, to keep you updated on the hostel situation (more of a pension: private room, shared bathroom), the one here has a lot of character in a romantic, literary kind of way. (It´s also clean and smells nice, so when I say it has character I don´t mean it sucks.) The room is really small with no exterior windows and a little table with one chair. It kind of makes me want to drink a bottle of wine and pass out while trying to write my masterpiece. It´s the kind of room I imagine Russian literary characters like Roskolnikov from Crime and Punishment living in, only cleaner.

I used to think (I forget why) that Euskara, the Basque language, was related to Finnish and Hungarian and so derived from Mongolian. It seems kind of reasonable, if only because all three are really strange languages and Basque, like Finnish, has a lot of k´s. The one Basque person I remembered to ask told me that no, Basque isn´t related to any other languages. My guidebook says that Basques have been in Europe longer than anyone else and no one really knows where they came from. My friend and I figured it out. Basque is a weird language; Gaelic is a weird language. On signs and stuff, Basque words are often written in a font that kind of resembles that font they always use for Irish pub signs. Basques throw rocks; isn´t Stonehenge Celtic? (Or Druid, but aren´t Druidslike Celtics?) Basques are Celtic! ....Okay, clearly we have no friggin´ clue what we´re talking about, but on a very sleepy bus ride from San Sebastian to Pamplona, the idea made us laugh really hard. Maybe you had to be there.

Stuck inside of Euskadi

It was definitely in my best interests that my friend missed her train last night. Because when she went back to the train station today to change the ticket, she found out that the trains to Barcelona from both San Sebastian and Pamplona are booked until Wednesday. And the one rental car company in San Sebastian has no cars. My plan was to take the bus to Pamplona tomorrow and then take the train back to Barcelona Monday night, and I had just assumed that getting the tickets would be no problem. Wrong. Turns out all of Spain came to the Basque country for the Semana Santa, and getting out isn´t so easy. So we spent this morning in various lines at bus station ticket counters trying to figure out how to get home. We thought we might be stuck in the Basque Country forever, but it all worked out. My own plans are basically unchanged--I´ll take the bus to Pamplonea tomorrow and instead of taking a night train home on Monday I´ll take an afternoon bus. My friend, who just wants to get back to Barcelona yesterday, has to wait until tomorrow and go through Pamplona to get there. But at least we´ll get home, as long as no more pork products get between us and the bus station. Or I may starve to death in Pamplona first, because I´ll be there on Easter and the whole town will probably be shut down, leaving me foodless. We´ll see.

They make cider here in the Basque country, and between January and April (the time that the cider finishes fermenting and becomes ready to drink) you can eat at the cidrerías. They set up tables (no chairs; you stand) in the cider houses and serve bread, tortilla de bacalao (cod omelette), some other fish dish, a giant grilled wonderful omigod I´m still thinking about it cooked over flames bloody hunk of steak, cheese and walnuts for desert, and all the cider you can drink. And wow was it good. Mostly because of the steak, but all of the food was very good and I really liked the cider. It´s not sweet like the hard cider you get in the US, and a little more yeast-y. You pour your own right from the barrels. It´s a little bit complicated with the cider, because you´re only supposed to pour a little tiny bit at a time, then you drink it and go back for more. I gues it´s not supposed to be exposed to air for very long. I had poured what I thought was a pretty small amount, and was still told I was doing it wrong. So it´s really hard to know how much you´ve drunk or do any sort of pacing. You can read about cidrerías in guidebooks, so they´re now a little touristy, but there were definitely locals there, too. (More on that below.)

Getting to the cidrerías was an adventure. We had the address of the place where we wanted to go, but it was in another town, required a bus to get there, and we didn´t have a map. It took a while to find the right bus but finally we did and the bus driver said he´d tell us where to get off. The bus was packed with people, including what appeared to be some kind of bachelor party--they were really drunk and loud and smelly and singing. Eventually the bus cleared out and a little later the bus driver told us we could either get off where we were and hike for an hour up a hill to get to the restaurant, or get off later and take a cheap cab ride there. Uh, we´ll take the cab. But then everything got all confusing; my friend speaks fluent Spanish and it was still a mess. The bus driver told us that the place we were planning to go to isn´t a real cidrerías and we should go somewhere else insetead. He had a lot of suggestions, but couldn´t seem to give us a straight answer about where we should get off and whether or not places were within walking distance. We ended up staying on the bus until the end of the route, then riding halfway back to San Sebastian before we got to the bus driver´s cidrerías. He was going on and on about where we should go and how it´s a little late in the season for cider, and kept seeming to almost drive off the road because he was paying more attention to talking to us than to driving. After a lot of conflicting information, we finally found the place. The bus driver also suggested we hitchhike back to San Sebastian after dinner. Well, I may starve to death in Pamplona tomorrow anyway, so why not live a little?

A while back my Spanish teacher was telling me about Spanish regional stereotypes. I forget most of them, but Catalans are cheap; Madrileños are snobs; and Vascos son brutos. There´s some traditional Basque game that´s all about picking up and throwing big rocks; you get the idea. We made friends with some Basques at the cidrerías. (Real Basques, del pueblo. One of them told my friend they don´t get out of the pueblo much.) They were singing really loudly, and they kind of started fighting a few times at the cidrerías. Then they started throwing bread and walnuts. This really tough-looking Basque girl with a mullet and dreadlocks overheard someone refer to me as American, and she came charging at me, yelling "American? Bush?" I saw my life flash before my eyes. I guess being beaten to death by an angry Basque is a better story than starving to death in Pamplona on Easter, but if possible I´d rather just keep living. She didn´t beat me up, though; in fact, I think she made friends with me. She was very drunkenly telling me in English that her English sucks (I had been speaking Spanish) and that her friend plays fútbol. Okay. We went out with some of the guys after the cider house. Brutos or not, being European the Basques still did some things that few self-respecting heterosexual American guys would do, like unashamedly fixing their hair in mirrors on the wall and man dancing to slow songs. The Basques (these particular ones anyway) are much friendlier than most Barcelonans, and we had fun hanging out with them. Definitely a cultural experience. And a pretty good last supper, if this Pamplona thing doesn´t work out.

Street meat

Today was so relaxing. Until tonight. My friend from Barcelona is here in San Sebastian and we went to the beach and had lunch and walked around and had coffee and hiked up this little hill to a big Jesus statue. The weather was perfect so it was a great day to just hang out outside. For dinner we had tapas with the most frugal Spaniards ever. They´re here from Salamanca (which is left of Madrid, they told me), and they brought their own ham with them. Like all Spaniards, they think ham from their part of Spain is the best, but I think it was mostly a saving money thing. They had also brought lomo (another Spanish pork product), sausage, and two kinds of cheese. And water. And alcohol. And they were carrying it all around with them in their backpacks. So we had tapas with these guys and then had to leave because my friend was taking the night train back to Barcelona and had her bags at my hostel. But we´d been talking about the ham and lomo all night and finally they convinced us to try some. So there we were, on the streets of San Sebastian, eating Spanish artesanal pork products out of a backpack. And, like all Spanish pork products, they were really good. And I guess we lost track of time and my friend and I ended up having to sprint back to the hostel so she could get her stuff and catch her train, which she ended up missing by one minute, because she had been eating Spanish meat on the street. So she´s still here. Luckily my hostel had an extra bed, so it wasn´t a complete disaster. But be careful with Spanish pork. It can be dangerous.

Oh, and my hostel, that I was bracing myself for because I found it on the internet and it´s not in any guidebooks? It´s so nice. This is the best hostel I´ve ever stayed in: the bathrooms are spotless; the towels are nice; and they even make the beds every day, like in a hotel. And it´s run by this Russian woman. Her name is Olga and I understand her Spanish and she´s jealous of my Spanish resident card. It´s perfect.

Spanish Bombs

There are lots of pine trees here; it looks like Michigan, except with mountains and terracotta and the occasional palm tree.

I forgot to go on about the Guggenheim museum building yesterday. I´m not usually a big fan of modern architecture, but I´ll take exception here. The building is all layered and silvery and shiny like a fish. Frank Gehry is into fishes; when he was a kid he used to go to the market with his grandmother and she would buy a carp and keep it in the bathtub until it was time to eat it (thank you, audio guide). He´s been into fish ever since. There´s a big fish sculpture in Barcelona that he designed I think for the Olympics. Anyway, all the silver makes the building look pretty industrial, so it fits in with the rest of Bilbao, but it´s also nice to look at so it makes the city look better. Also, there´s this cool statue of a dog or a cat or something in front of the museum, but instead of being made of typical statue material, it´s all flowers (imagine a giant flower pot in the shape of a big puppy). Like a stuffed animal, but alive kind of.

Guernica is between Bilbao and San Sebastian, so it made sense to stop there on the way to San Sebastian. But it turns out the most direct route from Guernica to San Sebastian is back through Bilbao. Oh well. Guernica is noteworthy because Hitler bombed the hell out of it during the Spanish Civil War (here in Spain they just call it the Civil War) and because of the resulting Picasso painting. So in Guernica, I went to the Peace Museum and saw a tiled mural of Picasso´s Guernica (the real thing is in Madrid). Nothing like a peace museum to make you feel all pacifist. The people working there seemed really proud of the museum and were very nice and helpful; in addition to written translations of the information they had English and French speakers on staff and had translations of all the films that they show. I have to admit, I didn´t know much about the bombing of Guernica before today, probably would never even have heard of it if not for the painting, so the museum was really interesting. Apparently the German government fairly recently apologized for their role in the bombing, but the Spanish government has never owned up to its involvement. At the time Franco accused the Basque nationalists of burning the town themselves, even though a) that´s absurd and b) the town was clearly bombed, not burned. Guernica has since been completely rebuilt, no bombed-out buildings left for posterity. It´s a pretty small town, and except for the war-themed stuff that´s not too much to see. There´s a nice park and some cool sculptures, including one by Eduardo Chillida, who seems to be all over the Basque Country, that really looked like a sculptural intepretation of Picasso´s Guernica. But I couldn´t find any information on it; maybe I just saw Guernica in it because I was in Guernica, I dunno. And it smelled good; I guess lilacs like this climate. Oh, and one more thing about Guernica. I´m no fan of spoofs; to me the spoof is the lowest possible form of humor, way below poop jokes or people falling down. But one spoof, if you want to call it that, that I really did like is this painting at the Contemporary Art Museum in Moscow. It´s a spoof on Guernica, using characters from the Simpsons. Brilliant.

I got to San Sebastian this evening. It´s really pretty here. Waves crashing on rocks pretty. Beach at night pretty. Romantic pretty. You can only get so romantic with yourself, though, especially in public, and the couples are starting to get to me. The Spanish are an affectionate people, and it seems like everywhere I go I´m surrounded by couples making out. It´s normal for people to live with their parents well into their 20´s here, often until they get married, which is another reason for all the PDA: There´s nowhere else to do it. I was walking behind this couple having a fight the other night. They were really going at it; at one point the girl pushed the guy up against a wall and was trying to hit him. Discomforting as live violence is, part of me was just glad I wasn´t watching them make out.

Modern art is big

My hostel is fine. It´s fine. It´s cold. And loud. But it´s fine. It may be the nicest place I stay this trip, so it kinda has to be fine. I try not to touch too much in the (shared) bathrooms. Both the hot water and the pressure in the shower come and go. The water pressure really comes and goes. The shower is the kind with a wall mount, and when the pressure finally kicked in, it sent the shower nozzle flying off the wall, soaking the bathroom, hitting me in the head, and leaving me blindly fumbling for the spewing thing, because of course this all happened when I had soap on my eyes. I´ve gotta get a benefactor. I had another Chevy Chase-like moment today using a public (pay) toilet. I was mixed emotions about using it (I´m cheap and there´s the ick factor), but I was kinda curious and I kinda had to go, so I paid my 30 centimos, the door opened, and I went in. I didn´t really want to be seen using a public toilet, and I really didn´t want to be seen, you know, using a public toilet. I wanted to lock the door. But there was only one handle on the inside of the door, and moving it made the door open again. I stubbornly tried three times to lock the door, each time just opening it, thereby causing more or less the result I had hoped to avoid, that being seen in a public toilet. In the end I just chose to believe the door was locked from the outside, and no one walked in on me.

The police here are scary. They drive green army issue-looking Jeep Cherokees and, in addition to the pistols in their pants, they wear these rifle-type guns slung around their necks. I know nothing about guns, but the rifles look really old, like something you might see in a museum from a long-gone war. Like they might just as easily backfire as hit their intended target.

Anyway, today I did museums. I don´t usually do audio guides, but the Guggenheim Bilbao is so interesting architecturally that I thought I might learn some cool stuff. And the audio guide did point out some things about the building that I wouldn´t have otherwise known or noticed. But mostly I just laughed at the British announcer´s deadpan speaking. In addition to "Modern art is big", some of my favorite quotes were the following. "The curves are gentle but...powerfully sensual. You´ll see people going up to the walls and stroking them. You might feel a desire to do so yourself." "...walk into the atrium. Isn´t it a wonderful place." (No question mark there, it was definitely a statement.) And, talking about how in most museums the rooms connect and you visit one after another, "Sometimes it can feel as if there´s no escape. But here there is an escape: this space [the atrium] to which you can return after every gallery to refresh the spirit before your next encounter with the demands of contemporary art." So the Guggenheim was very cool, but most of what was on display was this big exhibition of Russian art. Which is great; I´m into Russia, and there´s good Russian art that most people haven´t seen and don´t know about (I once got into a fight with someone about the mere existence of Russian art. It exists.) It´s just that I already saw that exhibit at the Gubggenheim New York last fall. Oh well. Worth seeing again. The New York exhibition had Russian translations of everything, but there was no Russian here, which was kind of disappointing. There are definitely way more Russians in New York than in Bilbao, but Russians both live in and visit Spain, and the translations were already done since they had them in New York, so I don´t know why they weren´t displayed. Everything was already in three languages (Basque, Spanish, and English), maybe they just didn´t have room.

Bilbao also has a nice fine arts museum, focusing mostly on Spanish and particularly Basque painting and sculpture. It had a lot of good stuff, especially a lot of good modern art. There´s this Basque painter Juan de Echevarría who did really cool impressionist still lifes (lives?); check him out if you´re into that sort of thing. There was this old guy who wouldn´t stop talking to me in the modern art section. I might have liked talking to him if I could have understood him, but he had this really raspy voice that made him hard to understand and he wouldn´t speak up or slow down. He seemed to be complaining about the choice of works on display; I think he thought some of the artists had done better work than what the museum was showing. He was also saying something about artists being poor and I think he called van Gogh a sellout.

I had some other strange interactions with people today. I was buying a sandwich at this bar and talked briefly with the bartender and this other guy sitting at the bar (both older guys), first about what kind of sandwich I wanted, then about how I´m sunburned. I told them I´d been at the beach in Cadaques, they´d never heard of Cadaques, I told them it´s on the Costa Brava. I clearly don´t speak Spanish well, but after all of that they must have known that I speak some. We did have a conversation, after all. But then they started talking to each other about how I´m guapa (good-looking)! Did they think I wouldn´t understand? Did they not care? Were they trying to get a reaction? Maybe I should have asked, but I just left with my sandwich and went to it in the park. Where some guy exposed himself to me. Classy.

Pais Vasco

I hate European air travel. Mostly because I hate air travel, period, but I have two additional gripes that seem specific to Europe (outside the Americas, anyway). One is that at the ticket counters here, they form a separate line at each counter rather than having one line where you go to the first open counter. Do they know nothing of queueing theory? I know nothing about queueing theory (did I even spell it right?), but it´s so obvious that one line is more efficient. Also, they don´t use jetways as much here. Often you have to take a bus across the runway to the plane. Maybe it´s somehow more efficient or safe or something to have buses rather than planes driving across the runway? I dunno. But I have a very visceral and maybe slightly overreactive hatred for the buses. If it´s an efficiency thing, the airport powers that be should really focus their energies on the check-in lines. I´m a dumbass and thought my flight to Bilbao was an hour earlier than it actually is (at least I didn´t err in the other direction), so I´ve had a lot of time to stew on these airport issues.

So anyway, I flew to Bilbao today. It´s clearly in a transitional state. It apparently used to be an industrial wasteland and parts of it are still pretty ugly. There´s a ton of construction, which is probably a good sign but also ugly, and there are some really cool buildings in the old part of town, but a lot of them look pretty dirty and neglected. But there are some really nice parks and plazas with lots of flowers and there´s some really cool architecture. The cathedral is really beautiful, and different inside from the typical European cathedral. It´s really arty, with some cool sculptures and stained glass that looks like flowers and sunsets. There´s a river running through the town, which is nice just because I haven´t seen one in a while. (Barcelona does have that whole Mediterranean thing going for it, but I like rivers). Unfortunately it´s a very very dirty river that only looks nice from far away. It´s hilly, and a lot greener here than in Barcelona, fewer palm trees. The landscape is pretty, but not beautiful.

There´s a biggish park near the Guggenheim Museum that reminded me of Central Park. For no particular reason other than that it´s big, I guess. There was this big open gazebo-type thing with lilacs hanging from it and fountains inside. Once inside I stayed for a minute because the lilacs smelled so good. Then I noticed there was music playing. Something classical that I´m far too uncultured to be able to identify. Maybe Tchaikovsky; it sounded like Loony Tunes or a beef commercial. Then I noticed that the fountains were going with the music: choreographed water. And the sun was pretty bright so there were lots of little rainbows. It was like watching fireworks, made out of water.

And. I just saw the most fucked up parade. Ever. (Easter is kind of a weeklong event here in Spain, so there´s lots of stuff going on.) People of all ages in robes and KKK hats. Really. They were these very tall pointy hats that covered the whole face and had holes cut out to see through. The outfits were different colors: first purple; then blue; then white, which was really creepy; then black, which was even creepier. And they were playing this music with really loud intense drums that sounded like a battle march. Some people weren´t wearing shoes. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but ETA wears masks. Striking KKK resemblance aside (people here probably don´t know about the KKK, I think it´s a pretty uniquely American thing), aren´t creepy masks a look to be avoided here? I guess if it´s a religious thing than changing it would be letting the terrorists win. Still, I don´t know if it was more the KKK resemblance or the ETA thing (I came here with no intentions of being concerned with or even thinking about ETA), but it really kinda freaked me out.

Oh, and Basque food is famous for being creative and different and wonderful. Tonight I had this egg and mushroom dish that was very, very good.

Rudie can´t fail

I just assigned my students' final grades. It's not over yet: There's a meeting next week where the professors talk about the grades (why?), and then there's the awful day of student complaints and requests for regrades. But the grades have more or less been determined. And I failed people. I've never failed anyone before. When I was teaching in the US I tried to be part of the solution, rather than the problem, of grade inflation. But I tried in the form of giving people C's, not failing them. Failing people is a lot of work. They're gonna complain and make your life unpleasant, and in US universities there's often a lot more paperwork required to fail someone. (Am I giving away too much dirt about higher education in the US?) Here apparently it's much more common to fail people, which hopefully means it will be less of a pain in the ass to fail people. Some of my students were repeating the class for the second or even the third time, so maybe they're used to it by now? I know I shouldn't, but I feel bad failing them. Sympathy isn't one of my more prominent personality traits; why is it rearing its ugly head now?

Big Time

It's official: People read my blog. Maybe not that many, but enough for the spam comments to have started (websites that no one goes to don't get spammed). So that's cool, I guess.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't get the spam thing. Is anyone reading this gonna click on a link to some online shoe store and buy shoes because someone spammed it onto my blog? The possibility is made even more unlikely by the fact that the comment was posted to an entry I wrote back in February--who would even see it? It's kind of like the awful, awful pickup lines you sometimes hear from guys who I have to believe aren't really trying. I was walking in New York one day and this homeless-looking guy came up to me and said "Heeeeyyy, wanna be my ho?" What would he have done if I said yes? Has anyone in the history of the world ever said yes to that kind of question?

Little trip to heaven

I would never accuse Dalí of making sense, but you can see what must have inspired him everywhere here. The rocks really do have holes in them.

There's a big difference between Friday and Saturday here: Yesterday I felt like I had the town to myself; today it feels full of tourists. And everyone here seems to be French. It must get pretty bad in the summer; I'm glad I'm here now.

I met this really cool Swedish girl on the bus from Figueres. We went out last night and I'm nursing a mild red wine hangover today. Aside from going to the very small Cadaques museum, I've been mostly sitting on rocks today; not my usual travel style, but it's nice. Also, I CAN'T STOP taking pictures. I'm starting to drive myself crazy, but it's so beautiful here that I want to capture all of it. Hard to do when you're a shitty photographer, but I try.

Another day, another Dalí

OH. MY. GOD. Wowowowowow. I haven´t been to that many places, but Cadaques may be the most beautiful place I´ve ever seen. I´ve been walking around grinning like an idiot. I want to call everyone I know and tell them to come here. The town surrounds a little bay and the sun sparkles on the water and the white houses fold into the mountains... nothing I write is gonna do this place justice. It´s just fabulous.

Getting here yesterday was kind of a mess. I was stuck in Figueres longer than I wanted to be because the buses don´t run very often. When I finally got here the sun set before I was able to find my hotel, so I wandered around in the dark fearing for my life for a while. They really don´t do street signs here, and a lot of the streets are no more than narrow paths, sometimes involving stairs. Finally I broke down and asked for directions and this nice woman walked me most of the way to the hotel and made me feel good about humanity. It´s no surprise that the hotel is full of Dalí prints, but it is noteworthy that my favorite of his paintings (Christ of St. John of the Cross) is hanging in my room. Which also has a view of the sea. Did I mention that I love it here?

Port Lligat is a short (or long, if you get lost like I did) walk from Cadaques and is where Dalí lived for forty years or so. I read somewhere that he got the Spanish government to declare the whole town (it´s tiny) a national monument so that no one else could build there, then he bought all three other houses in the town (told you it´s tiny) so no one else would live there. The house where he lived apparently started out as several fishing huts and over the course of years he bought and connected them. The house has been a museum since 1997. The first thing you see when you walk in is a giant grizzly bear with stuffed snales and a rifle hanging from its neck; that kind of sums up what the place is like. One room had a giant birdcage in front of a window overlooking the water (at least the caged canary had a nice view) as well as a tiny cage on the wall where he kept a cricket. He liked to hear cricket chirping. Poor cricket. Of course there were eggs everywhere; there were also some statues of the Michelin man outside in the garden.

There´s not much surrounding Cadaques and Port Lligat; walking along the roads that wind through the hills, you feel very small and away from everything. It´s dry here, and there are cacti and desert-looking flowers. And there are all these isolated rocky beaches that you can hike down to, and the water is all different shades of blue and green. I think I´m in love. I´ll post pictures once I get a new camera cable (I´m working on it).

I feel a little silly calling anything here surreal (get it?) but the town church really was. When I walked in it was empty (except for the organ player, I guess, but I couldn´t see the organ player) with organ music so loud I wondered if they were trying to get me to leave. And instead of the typical church art, they had arty art, even some weird stuff. I was half waiting for objects to start flying around.

I found this ear

There was this one-legged pigeon today. I was sitting on a bench eating a sandwich and I felt sorry for him (I´ve decided the one-legged pigeon was male) so I threw him a piece of bread. He hopped (couldn´t walk) closer to me to get the bread, and then I could see that he was also missing a toe. Then another pigeon stole his bread and I felt really bad. And curious. Was it a birth-defect? A leg- and toe-mangling accident? A series of freak accidents? While I was contemplating these questions, I swear he sneezed and that was it, I had to get up and leave. That pigeon was depressing the hell out of me.

Anyway. The Dalí museum in Figueres was designed by Dalí himself. It´s a disconnect I don´t normally thing about, but most of the art you see is in museums, which can´t really be the setting most artists have in mind when they´re creating art, can it? (Unless they´re just thinking about making money....) Museums serve their purpose well, but art in context is great; one of my favorite things about the Dalí museum is that it´s his art displayed the way he wanted it displayed. And of course it´s wonderfully weird. A bucket on the wall here, a big cutout of Freud there, mirrors, ears. It was mostly his own works, but there were also some pieces by others from his personal collection--mostly pretty traditional stuff that was nothing like the art he created. Dalí also made jewelry, a lot of which was on display and which was very, very cool. My favorite was a charm on a neclace of an eye with a clock face painted on it and a tear in the corner. And there was this big gold heart with a square cut out and this red jeweled blob in the shape of a human heart inside and it was beating. Trippy.

People say Figueres is kind of a hole, and it kind of is. It´s not that bad, but there´s not much redeeming here besides the museum. Also, there are tons of perfume stores, which in Spain is a pretty sure sign that you´re in a crappy tourist trap.

Is that, like, California?

Some have accused my Spanish teacher of not being a "real" teacher. Whatever that means. (I'm still waiting for someone to accuse me of not being a "real doctor". It's gonna be great.) It's true that Spanish class consists of a lot of chatting, but that's practice. And I've learned the hard way that being able to conjugate and being able to speak are very, very different. Anyway, just last night in class we somehow got on the topic of the media, and this Dutch guy said that although the print media in the US can be okay, the televised news is all the same and all a bunch of fluff. I agreed with the fluff part, but nearly started yelling about how Fox News is worse than the rest. (I never even watched TV in the US, what do I know?) Little did I know that we were only a day away from the fluff factor's being raised to about the thousandth power. Katie Couric is taking over the CBS Evening News? What the FUCK? What is the US televised news coming to? What is the world coming to? Network news wasn't a pillar of journalistic integrity before, I know, but Katie Couric? Kill your television!

GOOAAALLL!!!!

Spanish TV is weird. Shows don't necessarily start or end on the hour or the half hour--this news show I like starts at 9:40, and morning cartoons (much easier to understand than adult shows) start at really arbitrary times (I guess on the hour/half hour is also arbitrary, but it's what I'm used to). Commercial breaks are of very varying lengths. Sometimes they'll show one commercial and then go back to regular programming; other times they'll show commercials for ten minutes straight. And they'll often show the same commercial twice during the long sets. Seems like an odd use of advertising dollars. Also, a lot of the commercials have music with English lyrics. I could sorta see if they were popular songs that most people would recognize, but often they're not. Not that many people here speak English--wouldn't they better reach whoever their target audience is in Spanish? The ad for processed cookies with a cheesy English-language jingle can't really be aimed at English speakers, can it? The female newscasters show a lot of cleavage. And the dubbing just freaks me out. I do like the fúbol announcers, though.

Yankees suck! Yankees suck!

A while back I was out with this guy and we were talking about class reunions. I told him I'd skipped my ten year high school reunion to go to a Red Sox game, and he leaned across the table and kissed me. It was one of those perfect moments that made me glow at the time and still makes me smile when I think about it.

I wish I had a similarly kissworthy story about the hoops I jumped through to watch the Sox season opener yesterday, but one can't jump through hoops that don't exist. There's one channel in Europe that shows baseball games (NASN, North American Sports Network), and it also shows basketball, hockey, American football, and NASCAR. Maybe golf, too, I dunno. NASN was at least showing baseball yesterday, but it was showing the Mets vs. Nationals and then the Braves vs. Dodgers. Hello? American League? Don't know how they picked those two--maybe just because New York and LA are such big cities? But why not show the Yankees? Not that I want to watch the Yankees, but you've gotta figure there are more Yankees fans than Mets fans wherever you go, with the possible exception of Shea Stadium. [Okay scratch that, just realized the Yankees played a night game.] And the Braves are popular all over the US because of Ted Turner, but I don't think that counts for much here, since probably no one gets WTBS. Anyway, not really games I care about, but baseball games nonetheless. The English and Irish bars here show a lot of sports, so this afternoon I called this Irish bar I'd heard of to make sure they'd be showing the games. The nice Irish guy who answered the phone didn't seem to understand my accent very well and kept thinking I was talking about basketball, but finally he did confirm that they would be showing BASEball tonight.

So I went to the Irish bar. I walked in to find the TV turned off and about five people sitting around the bar, looking like they were having some kind of private meeting. I asked the friendliest face among them if she knew whether they'd be showing baseball, and she said "You should ask the bartender, but he's not here right now." Okay. To occupy myself until the bartender got back from wherever he was, I texted my friend who had thankfully agreed to meet me there even though she doesn't really like baseball, saying "The Dubliner is so fucked up." It really is a weird place. (And texting is such a good way to look a little less clueless when you'd otherwise be standing there like an idiot.) So finally the bartender showed up and turned the game on. I felt a little bad that it might ruin the vibe of whatever private club I had interrupted, but whatever. I called and they said they were showing baseball and I was watching baseball, dammit. Thank god my friend showed up though, because we were the only ones on the TV side of the bar all night; I don't think I would have lasted long by myself.

Like I said, I didn't care about either game that much, but the Atlanta-LA game definitely brought back some old Red Sox memories. Nomar injured on the sidelines, D-Lowe allowing four runs in the first inning, Grady Little. Good times.

Give me all your pity and your money

Things to do when you're feeling sorry for yourself:

1. Go to the beach. You'll have to walk for a while to get away from the crowds, but it will be good for you. Sit on a rock.
   
2. Call home.
   
3. Walk across town listening to whiny, self-absorbed indy rock on your steal-able iPod. I recommend Bright Eyes.
   
4. Have a friend tell you that if your life is too easy people will hate you for it.
   
5. Walk past the cathedral at night.
   
6. Think dirty thoughts about cigarettes.
   
7. Have a drink on the balcony.

Just some suggestions.

At the transmission party

I probably sound like kind of a twit when I write about art. I don't really know about art, I just like it. The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona is very contemporary, and by contemporary I mean weird. Piles of sticks on the floor weird. There was this video piece playing the same scene over and over again: A man pulls out a chair for a woman to sit down at a table, and when she goes to sit down he pulls the chair away and she falls; as she's getting up, she pokes him in the ass; he yells and smacks her, she throws water in his face; they push each other around; she kicks him in the crotch, he knees her in the crotch; and they both end up on the floor in pain. Over and over and over and over. There was a projector clicking through a slide show of mostly blank slides. What I found the most bizarre was a series of panels by a guy from Michigan of all places (Mike Kelley, ever heard of him?). They looked like newspaper stories. Three were from small Michigan papers (the Ann Arbor News, something from Wayne, and something from western Michigan) and chronicled in graphic first-person detail the abuse inflicted on a Catholic boy by some Protestant kids, including rape by communion bread. (I've never taken communion myself but I'm pretty sure a wafer wouldn't withstand all the things he wrote about doing to/with it. I guess that's why it's art and not journalism.) Between those three were panels from the LA Times and the Detroit News, containing restaurant and theatre reviews, respectively. Clearly he's drawing a distinction between big cities and small towns but beyond that I'm not sure what his intentions were. Bad things happen in small towns? Bad people live in small towns? City people are out of touch? I like weird modern art, but I don't pretend to get it. I also like the really disturbing stuff--not sure what that says about me.

Random Thoughts

I was in Spain about four years ago; it was my first trip abroad and it was amazing and exhilarating and mind-boggling. It was also filled with bad sangria. I haven't had much sangria since moving here, so I still don't really know whether it's normal to make it with fruit cocktail here or if we were just so obviously tourists that we kept being served the crappy tourist sangria. I do know now that it gets worse than fruit cocktail sangria: They sell boxed sangria here. There were some high school kids drinking it on the metro last night.

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There's a lot more mixing of ages at bars here than in the US. Last night I was at this neighborhood/meat market bar (my friend just finished a drawn-out breakup of a psuedo-relationship and needed to be hit on, even if it was by sketchy guys) and while it was mostly people in their 20's and 30's, there were some people there who were probably in their 50's. I like that.

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The grocery stores here are never crowded, at least not in my neighborhood. At first I thought maybe I was just going at odd times, but I've been on Saturday mornings, Saturday afternoons, weekday evenings, the occasional weekday afternoon, and they're always nearly empty. It's nice, but I don't understand it. Could be because there are tons of grocery stores in my neighborhood, but why are there tons of grocery stores if they're all empty? It's one of many things that I'm inclined to attribute to the fact that the economy here is more socialist: Stores can stay open without making much profit because there's more government protection. But I have no idea if that's really the case.