Wednesday, May 31, 2006

A hard rain

You're not allowed to smoke on Italian trains, but people still do. There's not much reason not to since, according to the sign on the door in front of me, the fine for being caught smoking is seven euros. Does that deter anyone?

Trst is sorely lacking in restaurants, but we found a cute little homey one (toilet was a hole in the floor, whatever) and I've officially come around to white wine with seafood. After all the white wine, the waiter brought us free grappa. Then he brought us something ouzo-like. By this point it was pouring rain and we kinda wanted to have coffee and wait out the rain, but we really couldn't have handled any more free ouzo so we made a run for it. I spent the whole trip back to the hotel cursing Trst and rain at the top of my lungs. I hate Trst.

I woke up this morning to what I thought was a beautiful sunrise outside my window. it was actually a street light, and it was still pouring. I hate Trst. We spent about an hour alternating between MTV and CNN on the hotel TV hoping the rain would let up, but it just got worse. We ended up taking a cab the three blocks to the train station, and it was five euros well spent. I hate Trst.

The last stop on the trip was a sprint through Venice, from where we fly back to Barcelona tonight. I was so grumpy from the rain this morning that I didn't really even want to go to Venice. Heading straight for the airport and sitting there for six hours sounded better than doing anything outside. But even though it was crowded and cold and rainy (at least it wasn't raining sideways anymore) and a little smelly, I really loved it. The canals are cool and really didn't smell that bad, and the tourists stay pretty concentrated in a few areas so there are neighborhoods that aren't crowded at all. We walked around and ate pizza and had coffee and went to the Basilica San Marco, which is where St. Mark's remains are buried. That was all we had time for, but it was great. I'll definitely have to go back.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Dead man's town

May 29

When the boat dropped us off at 7am in Rijeka, there were no accommodation-offering old ladies to greet us. Rijeka was cold and grey and industrial. We took one look around and said fuck Rijeka and hopped the next bus to Italy. The next bus wasn't for seven hours, though, so we had some time to kill. We had coffee. Walked around a little. Had coffee again. Slooowly. Waited for it to be lunch time. Had lunch. Waited for the bus. Left. I admit we didn't exactly give Rijeka a fair shot. But after the paradise that was southern Croatia, this cold cloudy dirty port city just didn't measure up. Maybe nothing would have measured up. Sorry, Rijeka.

One good thing about my shitty geography is it makes for pleasant surprises every now and then. Like Slovenia. I didn't know Slovenia was between Croatia and Italy, but apparently it is so I went through Slovenia today. It looked pretty and green. Very exciting.

Anyway, stop number two on our tour of depressing port cities was Trieste, Italy. Or, as they say in Croatia, Trst. Who needs vowels? Trst is a little nicer than Rijeka, but not all that impressive so far. I wanna go back to Dubrovnik!

One thing about Croatia is it's not an easy country to get around. Maybe if that doesn't change it will keep it from becoming unbearably touristy, I dunno. You can't really go between coastal cities by train, because the trains pretty much only go to Zagreb, the capital, which is way over in the northeast part of the country. So to go 200km you'd have to take a train all the way across the country and back. There are buses, but they take a long time because the roads are two-lane and all twisty. Even driving like a maniac, it takes a while to cover any ground. And there are boats, but they're also very slow and never seem to drop you off in quite the right place. I'd be glad to deal with those complications, though, if they keep away masses of tourists.

Monday, May 29, 2006

A bigger boat

Went swimming today and I did a pretty bad job of putting on sunscreen, so I have some patches of sunburn. Then I fell in the shower and hurt my arm. But at least I'm not seasick. I was really nervous about taking so many ferries this trip, because sometimes I get seasick and it's really, really awful. But so far so good, just some post-boat dizziness and that's manageable.

The beach today was all rock and the rocks were so white that they almost glowed. Very cool. Also very slippery, but whatever. (Not as dangerous as the shower, it turns out.) I felt like I was in a Corona commercial, only better because I wasn't actually drinking Corona. Corona sucks.

Tonight we're on another overnight ferry to Rijeka, a port city in the northern part of Croatia. Apparently not much of a destination, but it's where the boat goes. We had to take another cab across Hvar Island to get to the ferry port, and the ride today was even scarier than yesterday's. I mean, exhilarating. I swear, the driver accelerated around curves. Tight curves with steep inclines, around the sides of mountains. He looked a little scary, too, so I wasn't sure whether to be more afraid of going over a cliff or being sold into the human slave trade. Exhilarating. In the end, he just dropped us off at a deserted port in the middle of nowhere. Two hours before our boat was supposed to leave, the place was an absolute dead zone. Lucky for us, though, it was a dead zone with an open grocery store across the street, so we got some ham and bread and cheese to eat on the boat. (The food options on our last overnight boat sucked.) We even found some decent-looking wine that appears to have a screw cap; if not I'll have to endear myself to the boat bartender. And even though the port bar never opened, our boat did come for us. Of all the places I've seen in Croatia so far, the Stari Grad port two hours before departure is the one where I'd least like to be stranded.

My phone is becoming less and less useful. First it stopped working as a phone when my credit ran out in a country that doesn't recognize my ATM card. But I could still get text messages (mostly from Vodaphone, whatever), and it has a clock. But then last night it somehow got turned off, and then when I turned it back on I managed to enter my pin incorrectly three times so now I'm completely locked out. Which probably means a trip to the Vodaphone store back in Barcelona (never a good time), and also means that our only timekeeping device is my alarm clock. Time for me to get a watch.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Ties, war, Tito

We left Dubrovnik early this morning to go back to Split to take a boat to Hvar Island. I managed to stay awake for most of the bus ride this time (including another swing through Bosnia) and I'm still kinda feeling the afterglow of how great it was. The most beautiful bus trip ever.

The Lonely Planet says Hvar attracts international jetsetters. I was hoping for Mick Jagger, but all we saw were the same tourists we've been seeing all over Croatia. It's really nice though, even without Mick. There's a little bay with boats and there are some nice churches. (A nun kicked me out of one because I'm wearing a tank top. It happened right after a little kid told Shane to stop talking. They didn't think much of us in that church.) There's also an old fortress up on a hill; it's now a catering facility but still pretty cool to walk around.

The boat from Split drops you off on the wrong side of the island, so we shared a cab with some annoying British women to Hvar town. They really drive like maniacs here. We were on this narrow two-lane road with hills and curves and the driver kept passing people and I'm pretty sure the car left the ground going over a hill. And the British women kept distracting him with unnecessary details about their plans in Hvar, causing him to occasionally turn around and look at them, swerving a little in the process. I guess it's not a real cab ride in a foreign country if you don't fear for your life at least once.

In all the Croatian cities we've been to so far, the sidewalks are made of marble, at least in the old parts of town. It looks cool, but marble is pretty slippery and so are both pairs of shoes I brought with me. Marble is also really hard, so I've been walking extra carefully. I hope I don't fall.

Another good thing about Croatia (whose Croatian name is Hrvatska--why does everyone else call it Croatia?) is there are cats everywhere. All the restaurants we've been to have a cat or two wandering around.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

I'm so dizzy

The world is still spinning a little. There's a slight chance that it's from the liter of red wine our waiter brought us instead of the half liter we ordered last night, but I'm still blaming the boat.

We went swimming today. I don't normally prioritize swimming when I travel; I didn't even remember to pack my bathing suit this trip. But the water is so beautiful (and it's hot here) that I decided yesterday I had to swim in it. I bought a cheap bathing suit and we spent this afternoon at the beach. The people we're staying with suggested a place to go, and I was disappointed at first that there was no sand at all. It was a rock and cement beach. But it was really cool; you climb down the rocks to get to the water and then you're in this blue-green paradise surrounded by rocks and cliffs. It was pretty amazing. Before coming here I thought Cadaques was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen, but Cadaques is beautiful in a small, charming way. This is beautiful in a powerful, overwhelming way.

For dinner I dragged us halfway up a mountain looking for the perfect restaurant. I've turned into a total pain in the ass about restaurants: I don't want anything touristy even thought I'm a tourist; it has to be authentic, and not too expensive. And we did finally find, if not the perfect restaurant, the perfect view and really good wine. It was basically a hotel bar that served food and we sat outside and watched the sun set over the old town. I do such romantic shit with my nonromantic friends.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Beautiful, blah blah blah

So I went to Bosnia today. Dubrovnik isn't connected by land to the rest of Croatia so you have to go through Bosnia to get there. Pretty uneventful; they didn't even stamp my passport. But still, I went to Bosnia.

The bus ride from Split to Dubrovnik was fantastically beautiful, at least the twenty minutes or so that I was able to stay awake for. The road winds around these cliffs that drop down to the sea, which is about fifty different shades of blue and green. There were people sailing, mountains in the background. It was perfect.

When we arrived in Dubrovnik we got absolutely bombarded with old ladies offering rooms. We had to fend them all off because we already had a room; some were really hard to get rid of. We already had a room because my landlord, who is fast becoming my favorite person ever, recommended a place to stay. It's cheap and in a beautiful house in a great location and the owners even let us use their washing machine. Making the reservation was a little bit of a mess, though, because the credit on my cell phone ran out while I was making the reservation. (Vodaphone must be really screwing me on international calling rates.) And I don't know how to recharge my phone since my ATM card doesn't work here. No problem, we'll just call from a pay phone. But we couldn't find any pay phones. Everyone we asked pointed us in the same general direction and said they're near the post office, but we can't find the post office either. Eventually we found a phone, got some change for the phone, and then realized that the phones only take prepaid phone cards. Shane was about ready to firebomb Croatia by this point; his anger somehow made me super calm about the situation, which probably just irritated him more (sorry, Shane). We found a kiosk and bought a phone card, but with country codes, city codes, and zeros in between, it took about ten different tries and we nearly gave up before I got the call through. But we finally made the reservation and the place is great. It even has nice art on the walls.

Dubrovnik's old city isn't really old anymore. The Yugoslav army pretty much destroyed the city in 1990-91 and it's since all been rebuilt. (Could whoever managed that project please help with La Sagrada Familia?) You can walk on top of the city walls and tell the new terracotta roofs from the old ones--a lot more new than old.

And it is just so, so beautiful here. I'm an absolute sucker for beaches and mountains together, and this is pretty much paradise. Except for the other tourists.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Makin' a kuna run

I hate boats. Oh, I hate boats. The big ones don't make me seasick, but I've been on land for almost twelve hours now and I still feel dizzy and floaty. The last time I took an overnight ferry it took several days for the world to stop rocking back and forth. Sucks.

I hate boats, but I love Croatia. It reminds me more of Russia than anywhere I've been since Russia: the language, the markets, the people drinking beer at 10am. We're in Split right now, because that's where the boat dropped us off. We'd heard that once you get off the boat there are old ladies all over offering accommodation. And sure enough, when we got off the boat there was Helga offering us a room. She's not exactly old, but she made us coffee and fed us strawberries. She takes in boarders because she needs to have her eyes operated on and the government doesn't provide any health care assistance. I had been wondering if maybe I should have haggled with her over the price of the room, but if I had the eye story would have made me feel really guilty.

The Roman emperor Diocletian retired to a palace in Split sometime around the fourth century. The walls are still mostly in place and now there's a whole little neighborhood inside them. It would be pretty cool to be able to say you live inside the Diocletian Palace. There's also a seventh century church and a 60 meter tower you can climb up; it's got great views and my dizziness from the boat only made it a little vertiginous.

A little outside the center is the Mestrovic Gallery. Ivan Mestrovic studied with Rodin and sculpted male figures really well. His females were almost all a little out of proportion, but he did male bodies well. To get to the museum we took this really nice walk along the water. The sea is all pretty and green and there are mountains and people were swimming. It's great to be off-season, too, because there aren't many other tourists here.

One down side to Croatia is that their ATMs won't give me money, so Shane is our only source of kuna (the Croatian currency; doesn't kuna sound kinda dirty?). Also, the bars tend not to serve food, which is a little frustrating only because I've gotten used to Spain and we had a hard time finding lunch today. But the coffee is pretty good here and they even bring you a glass of water with it. For free. I do miss free water. All the bars in town seem to have the same drink prices. Not sure if it's a communist relic or collusion, but it means we don't need to worry about comparing prices, anyway.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, my phone seemed to have reception all across the Adriatic, and Vodaphone was the first to welcome me to Croatia. If only I could use my phone instead of my ATM card to get some kuna....

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

I think it involves a boat

This morning's sprint through Florence consisted mainly of haggling at the market for a leather jacket that I absolutely don't need (but it stopped me in my tracks and I love it and Mario swears it has a five-year warranty) and going inside the Duomo. Where it turned out that I did need the leather jacket, because I'm wearing a tank top and bare shoulders would apparently desecrate the church in a way that flash photography, baseball hats, and tour groups don't. I'm taking it as a sign that buying the jacket was the right thing to do. The Duomo is the fourth largest cathedral in the world; just across from it is the baptistery where Dante was baptised. Very cool: old, Roman architecture, nice art. I won't go on about it. And I think the coffee in Italy is a tiny bit better than the coffee in Spain. But don't tell Spain I said that.

We left Florence this afternoon to go to Ancona to catch the ferry to Croatia. The cops in the Florence train station were on Segways. I have a hard time being intimidated by people on Segways.

I'm not really a boat person. I tend to get seasick. But the big boat across the Adriatic from Ancona, Italy, to Split, Croatia, seemed like our best option so here we are. I am so glad we didn't rent a car. Getting the cars on the boat was somehow chaotic and slow at the same time and it definitely would have stressed me out. There was one guy who took the license plate off his car before he drove it onto the boat; not sure what kind of operation they're running here, exactly.

While we were waiting to board the boat we were cornered by this guy wearing shorts with a hole in the crotch who told us about how he used to live in Detroit but had to leave because there were too many black people there. What is it with the racists everywhere we go? He was saying that the 1950's were great, but then in the 60's Martin Luther King started the civil rights movement and brought black people to the north. Then he said he wasn't racist but that "black people are just hard on things, you know, they break things." I kind of wanted to break him. Thankfully the conversation ended when some other guy's car started rolling backwards and almost hit a bit truck that may or may not have contained explosives. Sprinting across the parking lot, the car owner was somehow able to stop the car just before it hit the truck, and in the excitement we were able to get the hell away from the racist.

Another unpleasant thing, there's guy on the boat laying on a couch in the bar area. He's got his shirt completely unbuttoned and half off, was kinda fondling his chest hair when we walked past, and had a large plate of cold cuts in front of him. Otherwise the boat is kind of okay, though. There are some people on the deck singing what sounds like a Croatian version of "If you're happy and you know it." They just formed a conga line. There's a guy in what looks like a monk's outfit wandering around. And we're drinking Zlatorog, crappy Slovenian beer with a picture of a gazelle on the can. So we may have learned the Slovenian word for Gazelle.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Flying by the seats of our pants

Woke up this morning and hopped a train to Italy. No idea where we'll sleep tonight; everything in Florence seems to be booked. Whatever.

We went through this tunnel on the train and when we came out everything looked older and more run down. Sure enough, we'd just crossed into Italy. Vodaphone keeps sending me text messages when I change countries; I can't decide how I feel about the fact that my cell phone company knows exactly where I am. Calling Italy from France on a Spanish phone can't be cheap, but at least we have the option. We'll see how it does in Croatia.

Intercountry trains are funny. Going from Barcelona to Montpellier the announcements were in Spanish, then Catalan, then French. Until we crossed into France, where they were in French then Spanish, doing away with Catalan entirely. Going from France to Italy, everything was in French while we were in France and once we crossed into Italy it switched to Italian followed by English. Even though it's all the same train.

Anyway. I miss Spain. I mean, of course I miss Spain. I can mostly communicate and basically know what I'm doing there. (Funny how you have to go away to realize that.) But I think it's more than that. I think I miss the people. I miss being able to go into any bar, anywhere, and get coffee and a ham sandwich and know it's gonna be good. I even kinda miss the mullets and piercings. Uh oh.

On the second of the three trains that it took to go from Nice to Florence (we left Nice at 10am and arrived in Florence at 6:30pm), the bathroom was a hole in the bottom of the train. There was a toilet-like seat, but it just led to a hole where everything fell out and landed on the tracks below. Yuck.

Florence is really nice, but already really touristy even in May. And it's gonna be really rushed: We're leaving tomorrow afternoon to take more trains across Italy and then take a ferry to Croatia. But Croatia is the whole point of this trip; I'll travel around Italy for real some other time. Oh, and we finally found a hotel that's actually pretty nice and fairly cheap. Sometimes you get lucky.

I keep trying to speak Spanish here, hoping that people will understand me and that I'll then understand when they speak Italian back to me. It seemed to work with this adorable old man on the train from Nice, but other than that it either fails completely or people answer me in English. Oh well. Croatian will be our fourth language in four days. It's kinda like Russian so I'll try to get by in really bad Russian, but I think we'll be in trouble unless people speak some English. My Serbian landlord says that everyone in Croatia speaks English, but I've learned that "Everyone speaks English" can mean drastically different things to different people.

We met these racist Australians on the first train today. In addition to complaining about how there are too many black people in Paris, they were saying that Australia had to send soldiers to Iraq because the US saved their asses in World War II. I know a lot of people think that way; I'm not sure I do. At some point the ass-saving WWII debts have to be forgiven, right? Anyway, I also met this Scottish girl who mistook my saying I speak English for saying I am English, and when she realized I'm American started lecturing me on how I should never tell anyone I'm English because "that's the worst." Okay. People are weird.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Nice-ties

Marc Chagall paintings are so fucking cool; you can stare at them for hours (okay, minutes) and keep finding different things to look at. He does really incredible things with color, and uses all these different levels of clarity and intensity so his paintings seem to be done in layers and come to you in waves. And he works all these funny little creatures into the background and they all look friendly, like you want to pet them. Chagall (he was Russian, you know, well Belorussian) painted a series of biblical scenes for the French government and theyàre in this museum in Nice and itsà really amazing. I was being that tourist trying to photograph the art because it was so, so good.

Nice also has a Matisse museum that didn't really do that much for me. There was some stuff that I liked (some dark still lifes, completely different from what he's famous for) but mostly a lot of studies and sculptures that I wasn't so excited about. And it was in this building that had a lot of things, like shutters and ceiling detail, painted on. I know it's a style, but it reminded me of one of those tuxedo t-shirts. I'm easy, but maybe not a total art whore.

Anyway, I like Nice so much better today than I did last night. The Chagall and Matisse museums are about a half hour walk from the city center, up in the hills, and you go through some really nice neighborhoods with cool architecture to get there. It looks a little like southern California, but with more character. The wealthy seem to live pretty well in Nice. And I had a really good roast beef sandwich for lunch.

I didn't feel like we were being crazy gung-ho tourists, but we did a lot today. In addition to the Chagall and Matisse museums we went to a modern art museum and the Nice Russian Orthodox church. None of the museums were that big, so we got through them pretty quickly. The Orthodox church was funded in part by Nicholas II's mother: Apparently a lot of Russians moved to the south of France in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nicholas II's (the one the communists killed) mom was originally engaged to the tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, but he died (in Nice, that's why the church is there; there's also a monument to him there) and she ended up married to Tsar Alexander III. Kind of a shitty deal, I think; I don't know much about Nicholas Alexandrovich, but Alexander III was ugly and an asshole.

Nice also has a really cool beach. It's rocks, not sand, but the water is all these beautiful different shades of blue and there are mountains and palm trees and big waves. The weather was perfect today, which made it even easier to fall back in love with Nice.

In addition to the museums, churches, and beach, we sort of made plans for tomorrow. We're going to Florence. My Spanish cell phone couldn't call France from France, but I can call Italy just fine. And in broken, broken Italian I was able to discern that all the affordable hotels in the Lonely Planet are booked. So we'll have to find a plan B when we get there. More adventurous that way.

Based on all of one city, France sees to have more comforts than Spain. Por ejemplo, the public bathrooms here have hot water in the faucets, and ware well stocked with toilet paper. Often they even have paper towels instead of hand dryers. But Spain is cheaper and the coffee's just as good. And French computer keyboards are nearly unusable. You have to push the shift key to type a period and they switch the A and the Z. It's their country, they can do what they want, but that's just silly.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Everybody's talkin' at me

11am
We've been stopped under a Pyrenee for a while now. I'm pretty sure this isn't the border crossing, so I'm not sure why the delay.... Okay, we're moving again. There are no Spanish people on this train; everyone's either American or French. I've alienated them all with my hacking. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, and Shane is Jon Voight. It's just a cold, really, but it sounds awful. Good thing the SARS scare is over, or I might have ended up in quarantine or something.

And. Why can people not read their train tickets and get in the right seat? It's not that difficult. Really.

4pm
The first thing you see when you walk out of the train station in Montpellier is a McDonald's; I'm not sure if I think that's funny or sad. We were planning to stay tonight in Montpellier, for no particular reason except that it's on the way and there was a direct train from Barcelona and this Canadian girl I met in a hostel said something about it, but then the guidebook got me all excited about Nice so we decided to keep going. The guy at the train station ticket counter was the nicest French person ever, super helpful and patient with our bad French. So our main activity in Montpellier was buying a ticket on the next train out. We also walked through a little park and bought sandwiches. France is pretty uneventful so far. We don't have a place to stay in Nice and can't make reservations because for some reason my phone won't call France. Hopefully we won't end up on the streets or, more likely, crammed into the laundry room or attic of some crappy hostel.

Guys in military fatigues carrying giant guns and wearing berets pace around the train stations here in France. They're in the airports, too. You can make all kinds of jokes about the French army, but in person they're pretty intimidating.

12am
I fell in love with Nice before I really met it. Always a bad idea. It has all these art museums that sound great, and it even has a Russian Orthodox church. I was really excited for Nice, but then we got here and it's all tourists, construction, neon, and internet places. The beach is nice, and we found a hotel and had a good dinner, but so far I liked Nice better before I got here. On another note, nothing makes me feel better about my Spanish skills than trying to speak a language I really don't speak. Like French.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Nerds have a natural aversion to mullets

Mullets are funny. Not when they're forced on you, though. My friend had her hair cut the other day, specifically said she didn't want it short on top, got a mullet anyway, and when she complained afterwards was told that she looks better with the mullet. I may never have my hair cut again.

Anyway, tomorrow my friend and I are leaving on, if not the most half-assed trip ever, at least the most half-assed trip I've been on in a while. We were originally deciding between Morocco and Portugal, but Morocco sounded a little too adventurous and Portugal wasn't quite adventurous enough. Croatia somehow seemed like the right compromise. We don't know anything about Croatia, but we've heard it's nice. We were planning to drive there; I was gonna learn how to drive a manual car in the airport parking lot. But we just couldn't get a straight answer on whether we're even allowed to drive into Croatia or not (maybe we need a special license, stamp, registration, whatever, maybe not), and my Serbian landlord got us half-convinced that we could easily end up in a Croatian prison. Which would make a damn good story, but probably wouldn't provide stunning views of the Adriatic. So it's gone from a car trip to a plane, train, and boat trip; and even though we threw it together pretty last-minute, it's gonna be great. Tomorrow we're taking a train to Montpellier in France, from there we'll go somewhere in Northern Italy, and from there to Croatia. On the way back we'll fly to Barcelona from Venice. We don't have any hotels booked, but between us we speak two Romance languages badly and we have a Lonely Planet. What could go wrong? Plus, I have a cold that's manifesting itself in my usual loud, hacking cough, so anyone who might otherwise mess with us might think I have tuberculosis and rob someone else. You really can rationalize anything.

Friday, May 19, 2006

¡Barça! ¡Barça! ¡Baaaar-ça!

So we won the fútbol game. I got bear-hugged/tackled by some really excited strangers. It was a pretty good game: Arsenal scored first and was up 1-0 for most of the game, then Barcelona scored two quick goals in the last ten minutes or so. And the city went nuts. The police quickly blocked off most of the main streets and everyone converged on La Rambla. Everyone. There were people crawling up lampposts, kids out past their bedtimes, old people drinking canned beer purchased illegally on the street. There was so much happiness and excitement in the air--I wonder what it would have been like if they'd lost. It was a long night, but by this morning the city seemed pretty much back to normal, except for the occasional sign or streamer left out and more people than usual wearing Barca shirts. Now the World Cup is coming up, but Spanish people don't get excited about their country, they get excited about their city or their region. So we'll see how much people are into the Spanish fútbol team.

I've heard from some locals that the police here are pretty useless; I haven't really had any interactions with them myself so I don't have much of an opinion. But maybe they are a little bit lazy. I was walking around today and passed some guys selling fake designer sunglasses on the street. A cop car drove up, and the guys packed up their operation (really, really quickly) and casually walked away. The cop car kept going. Once it was gone, the sunglasses guys came back and set up shop again. Kind of an exercise in futility, no? The police would have to get out of the car to actually do anything, but I guess they just don't care.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Not football, not soccer, fútbol

The Barcelona fútbol team is playing Arsenal (they're from London) for their league championship tonight. I continue to do a pretty crappy job of getting into fútbol, but this is pretty hard to miss. Everyone seems to be wearing an FC Barcelona jersey; some are carrying flags. Even more kids than usual are playing fútbol in the street. Cars honk at groups of fans. You can feel the excitement all over town; I spent the afternoon running errands, so I really did feel the excitement all over the city. I like it when cities get excited; it makes you feel like you're part of something. I felt that way a lot in New York and hardly ever do here.

There's this website here with weekly event listings and one of the events for today is titled "Unheard of Silencio en Barcelona." They say "Going for a walk around the city may seem like an unoriginal activity, but on Wednesday the 17th it most certainly won’t be. You will never have seen such a still, quiet and breathless Barcelona.... You could hug the Pedrera, lie down in the middle of a carless calle Aragó, climb to the top of Columbus’s statue and bite his finger... you could even sneak into the Ayuntamiento and steal a flag. No-one would notice. Do whatever you want. Barcelona is YOURS!"

GOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Just drink beer

So I'm having a party. I'm not a party-thrower. I like parties, but I like other people to have them. I'm afraid that no one will come, or that no one will talk to each other, or I don't know what. It's just not really my thing. But I have this deck and my friend convinced me I need to put it to use, and I have these friends in town, so I decided to go for it. And even if no one shows up but the five people who I know will show up, it will be fun. And more drinks for us that way. It's gonna be a stand around and drink and listen to music party (my midwest roots coming through): I made a playlist on my iPod and I'll buy lots of drinks. That's enough, right? I'm hoping the food will work itself out.

Anyway, the thing about drinks is they're heavy. So I started buying them early. I had exactly an hour after my Spanish class today before I was supposed to meet my friends for dinner. I convinced myself I had time to stop at the grocery store and buy some beer. Anytime you have to convince yourself you have time to go to the grocery store, you probably don't have time. But I convinced myself. Normally at 7ish pm my grocery store is nearly empty. Today it was a chaotic madhouse. I got my beer, water, and yogurt and waited in line. Normally you bag your own groceries here in Spain, but today the cashier bagged them. And did a horrible job. She put two six packs of beer in one plastic bag; of course the bag was going to break. But before I could reorganize the bags, the other bag with the water and yogurt broke and there, in the middle of the grocery store checkout aisle insanity, was my water bottle, on the floor and leaking everywhere. Mierda. I quickly decided that dealing with the grocery store staff wasn't worth it (no one seemed interested in helping anyway), so I put the yogurt in a different bag, took one of the six packs out of its bag, and carried the water bottle upside-down (the hole from the fall was on the bottom) so it wouldn't leak. So I had two six packs of beer, my laptop, my purse, a bag of clothes, yogurt, and a big hole-y bottle of water that had to be held upside down so it didn't leak. Normally when you're lugging a ton of crap around it's just an exercise in brute strength, but the water bottle meant I had to be a little bit graceful, too. Or at least balanced. It didn't work so well. I spilled a little, and I spilled a little more dragging everything up the five flights of stairs to my apartment. But I got it all inside and even had an empty water bottle that I hadn't thrown away yet, so I could pour the water from the broken bottle into the old empty one. But I forgot my physics, and when I took the lid off the upside down bottle with a hole in it, the water came gushing out all over the place. In the end I managed to salvage about a third of the water and make it to dinner, sweaty and grumpy but more or less on time. It was never about the money, it was about the weight of the water and not wanting to have to carry more water around later. But still, I have about seven centimos worth of water to show for all of that. And I'm still gonna have to buy more tomorrow.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The most phallic mountains ever









  =  



  ?

The Torre Agbar (Agbar Tower) was designed by Jean Nouvel (who I guess is famous but I don't know architects), who claims to have been inspired by Montserrat, a mountain range outside Barcelona. I'm skeptical, because clearly the Torre Agbar is a giant condom. But Montserrat is a little phallic, too. Maybe he was inspired by Montserrat and condoms.

Anyway, I went to Montserrat with some friends today. It's about an hour train ride from Barcelona and then you take a cable car up. There's a Benedictine monastery tucked away in Montserrat and there's also a music school; we heard the boys' choir sing in the basilica. It was as close as I've been to a church service in a while and it freaked me out a little, but the singing was good. Super crowded with tourists, though; I wonder how the monks feel about all that. We also hiked up to the highest point of the mountain range, where we met a really cool Texan and two obnoxious Canadians. More blatant regional stereotypes, I know, but it seemed backwards. Then on the train ride home we met more Texans: two women in their 60's or maybe even 70's who are here with a tour group. I wasn't expecting to like them, but they were super cool. They blew off their tour group to go to the mountains by themselves and were figuring out the subway and gave us their metro cards because they didn't need them anymore. I hope I'm still traveling when I'm that age.

Here's a better picture of the mountains.

Monday, May 15, 2006

It's... interesting

I'm really good at rationalizing things. If there were rationalization (or verb conjugation) factories, I'd be all set. I'm in a little bit of trouble with the IRS because I fucked up my 2003 taxes. I wish I didn't owe them money, but if I'd paid what I owed then I would have been broke then. Maybe I wouldn't have gone to Russia after grad school; maybe I would have stayed in Boston and learned to sail. That wouldn't have been for the best. So I'm choosing to see my tax mistake as a high-interest loan that I needed for life expenses but wouldn't have taken if I'd realized it was a loan. See how well it works?

I was telling my friend the tax story tonight and in the same conversation heard myself saying that one of my top priorities right now is to make my life interesting. And it is; I'm not just rationalizing that one. People in the midwest often use the word interesting as a euphemism for bad. Not me. Things that suck are often interesting, but in a good way. And you can rationalize all kinds of sucky things as interesting. (Maybe I'm more midwestern than I like to admit.) My hero Julie Powell once said something like "The thing about being a moron is it makes your life more interesting." Same idea. If life went according to plan that would be boring. Right?

Sunday, May 14, 2006

No. Sleep. Till...

I heard a Brooklyn accent on the street today. After a few months away I guess I can sort of understand why some people might not need to live in New York. But I'm still an absolute sucker for it; I wanted to hug a complete stranger today just because he sounded like New York. The city can pretty much do no wrong for me. If it's pouring rain and I'm running late and I can't get a cab, it's pouring rain and I'm late and can't get a cab in New York. If it's 100° in the subway and the train won't come and I'm banging my head against the wall, I'm that crazy subway person in New York. It's the kind of attitude that I generally find intolerable in others, but I never got over it.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this, it's just what's in my head right now so I thought I'd throw it out there.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Clean, or something like it

After a week of shared bathrooms and sketchy towels, I was really excited to take a shower at home. (I've come a long way with my bathroom. You get used to things.) But I came home to find that the gas can for my hot water heater needs to be replaced. And my landlord's son, who usually replaces it, isn't around to do it. My landlord said she'd send someone else over either last night or this morning.

I tried really hard to change it myself. I'm smart, I'm capable, it shouldn't be that difficult. I can't do it. I've tried before, I'll probably try again, but I can't do it. After you hook the gas tank up to the water heater you have to light it by sticking a match into a hole in the heater. And eventually my often-silent inner voice of reason always kicks in and reminds me that I'm playing with matches and a large can of gas and if it's not working I clearly don't know what I'm doing and I should stop before I blow myself up. And then I stop. I really hate that I'm at the mercy of others for something so basic, but I don't want to set myself on fire, either.

Anyway, at 11am no one had come to light the tank and I was getting bored. I had to bathe, but I just didn't have it in me to take a cold shower. It's not just that cold showers are unpleasant, they actually hurt. A lot. So I put a big bowl of water in the microwave and gave myself a standing sponge bath. That's when I heard the knock on the door. There was no way I could answer it quickly, so I still have no hot water. And even though I technically bathed, I'm still feeling pretty grubby. And my hair is gross.

So I'm not gonna date my bathroom. Every time I start to trust it, it fucks me over and leaves me feeling dirty.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Don't mess with Catalunya

I think if I had a younger sibling I would make fun of it and beat up on it but also be very protective of it. I gripe about the language and the politics and stuff here in Catalunya, but people who don't live here aren't allowed to. I yelled at this Canadian guy at the hostel in Granada for calling Catalan a dialect of Spanish. I don't even know what the word dialect means exactly, but I know Catalan is a separate language not a dialect, and no North American is gonna go around calling it a dialect without getting yelled at. Then in Málaga I found myself lecturing some people on the complexities of Catalan nationalism after someone referred to Catalans as separatists. I know the same could be said of me sometimes, but people shouldn't spout off about things they don't know about.

Anyway. Some final thoughts on the Andalucia trip.
All the tourists in Granada seemed to be British; Málaga was full of Germans. I wonder why the difference.
If someone else from Málaga ever becomes famous, there won't be anything left to name after him/her because everything in this place is named after Picasso.
The Málaga airport has designated smoking areas. They're these little tables scattered throughout the airport with a square marked by tape on the floor around them; you have to be inside the square to smoke. So all these otherwise uncrowded areas of the airport have all these people crowded around the little smoking tables. I should have taken a picture, but I would have felt ridiculous.
Free tapas are so great.
Oh, and this is interesting. To get to the Alcazaba (the castle) in Málaga you have to walk up a hill. The hill is next to the bullring, and on the way up there's a spot where you can look down into the bullring (the roof is open). It looked like they were practicing, but instead of bulls there were little kids running around. Now that's an idea. Not that I actually advocate the spearing of little kids, but at least then everyone would realize what a barbaric sport it is.

Some photos are posted here.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Uncorked

I think you could have beaten me with sticks today and, as long as the beating didn't take place on a bus, I'd have been okay with it. There's not that much to do in Málaga, so it was kind of okay that I was lazy and spent an hour having coffee this morning. I was observing people, that counts. I see a lot of people drinking decaffeinated coffee here in Andalucia; you can tell it's decaf because it's served as a glass of hot milk with a packet of instant coffee. Yuck. I don't think I've ever noticed anyone in Barcelona drinking decaffeinated coffee. And speaking of coffee, it is so good here in Spain. I don't know what my problem was before, but I've completely come around to Spanish coffee. I am gonna be such a pain in the ass back in the US.

Anyway, Málaga has a really beautiful cathedral. I keep thinking that I'm done with cathedrals (they can be kind of expensive and start to all look the same after a while) but then whenever I see one that's really nice from the outside I end up wanting to go in. So I paid the 3.50€ for the Málaga cathedral, and it wasn't so special. It had some nice art, though, and when this woman asked me where the exit was I understood her and was able to answer. Small victories. And Málaga has an okay modern art museum.

Málaga also has an Alhambra-like castle/fortress on a hill, but I just couldn't get that excited about it after seeing the Alhambra. [Whoa! A guy in MC Hammer pants just walked past me. Remember those pants that are tight around the calves and the crotch goes down to your knees? Straight out of 1989. I've seen a few people around Spain wearing similar pants, but these are the most authentically MC Hammer that I've seen.] It's also really cloudy today, and spring in Barcelona has made me even more intolerant of less-than-ideal weather. Makes me want to stay inside and have coffee all day. Or wine. They make sweet wine here; it tastes like port. It's good. Port is from Portugal, you know.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

In another country

Gibraltar, 11am. Yup, it´s a big rock.
I'm hoping for a new stamp in my passport (Gibraltar is part of England, after all) but they´re nowhere near that formal here. To get from border control to the city of Gibraltar you have to walk across the runway of the Gibraltar airport, which would be charming except that the area is patrolled by military guys with machine guns. Kinda kills the small-village vibe. There are signs everywhere that say: "You are crossing a live runway. Pedestrians keep between the white lines. Please cross quickly." Okay. The only non-zoo, non-human primates in Europe live on the rock of Gibraltar, in case you're wondering what I'm doing here. I think they were brought over from Africa at some point.

12:30pm.Show me the monkeys!
I hate Gibraltar. It´s not entirely Gibraltar´s fault; I hate the Lonely Planet, too. Piece of advice to any potential guidebook writers out there: If the only way to get to the monkeys, short of a three hour hike, is by cable car, don´t say "A fine way to access the nature reserve is by cable car" and then also say that most of Gibraltar is accessible by foot. That makes it sound like walking to the monkeys is a viable option. It´s not. (Actually the three hour hike sounds great, but I´m only here for the day and don´t have time. And guidebooks just shouldn't be misleading.) And Gibraltar doesn't help with its complete lack of signage on how to get to the monkeys. The monkeys are why people come here! Anyone who comes to Gibraltar for fish and chips or jewelry shopping doesn't deserve a sign. I've spent way too much time wandering lost around this place. And the fact that they speak English here (this is England, after all) should be refreshing, but it's just fucking me up. I can't speak Spanish, but I seem to have forgotten how to buy tickets and ask for directions in English. Joder.

2:30pm. Everybody likes monkeys.
Okay I'm better now. The monkeys are well worth the three-hour bus ride with about fifty stops and the stress of getting to the top of the rock. And what ever gave me the idea that walking to the monkeys would be easy? It's a huge rock, you don't just stroll up to the top of it. I'm an idiot.

The monkeys run around and fight and play and aren't afraid of people at all. If you get close they'll jump on you. There are signs all over saying to be careful if you have food because they'll try to steal it. The signs also say not to touch the monkeys but this nice old guy who feeds some of them takes a liking to me I guess and lets me feed them and gets a baby one to climb on my shoulder for a picture. Her name is Jessica.

You can see Morocco from the rock, but only when the clouds aren't in the way. There are these weird clouds here called levant or something that look like they were made by a smoke machine and that completely block any view. When I first get to the top of the rock it's clear, so I get to see Africa before it clouds over.

6pm. Get me off this fucking rock.
So. I met this nice Dutch boy in Granada. I fascinate him. He's very nice, but he doesn't fascinate me. Whatever. We were supposed to go to Gibraltar together but at 7am he wasn't on the bus so I went by myself. No problem. After the monkeys I came down from the rock and went to the Trafalgar Cemetery, where British soldiers who died after the Battle of Trafalgar are buried. And in the cemetery I hear someone calling my name. It's my Dutch friend, who caught the next bus and somehow found me in the Trafalgar cemetery. If only he fascinated me....

We go back to the rock and see the monkeys. Everyone likes monkeys; it was fun to see them again. But we have a bus to catch (the last bus back to Málaga leaves at 5:30) so after a quick visit with the monkeys we go to catch the cable car to leave. And it doesn't come. And it doesn't come. And it doesn't come. We can see it down at the bottom of the rock, just sitting there. Maybe it's broken? Maybe I misread the signs and it's stopped running for the day? There are cabs on the rock and we passed a restaurant, so we head back to the restaurant to see if we can get a cab there. But the trip from the restaurant to the cable car stop was all down the rock, meaning the trip back to the restaurant from the cable car stop goes up the rock. It takes forever. We're probably gonna miss the bus, but maybe if we can get a cab to take us all the way to the border we'll have a chance. But the cabs don't go down the rock; they only go up the rock. That makes no fucking sense, but whatever, we've got more important things to worry about, like coming up with a Plan B. (Actually, we're on to Plan C now.) We try to hitch a ride. No luck. We try to join a tour group. No luck. At this point we've definitely missed the bus so time isn't such a concern, but the sooner we get to the bus station, the better our chances are of finding an indirect route back to Málaga tonight. We walk. If it takes three hours to walk up the rock, it can't take that long to walk down. While we're walking down, the cables cars start running again. We end up in someone's backyard because we miss a small graffiti-covered sign marking the footpath. We turn around and hike back up for a while. I scream "Fuck you, Gibraltar!" at the top of my lungs and feel a little better. I'm doing all of this in flip-flops.

We finally get off the rock. There's a plane landing so we have to wait a while to cross the runway to get to the border. We wonder if we'll have to hitchhike back to Málaga.

12am. Home sweet hostal.
It wasn't that bad. We had to change buses and the trip took about five hours instead of three, but we did make it back to Málaga. And sucky things tend to make better stories. And we saw the monkeys. Everybody likes monkeys.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Ronda is gorges

So I'm on the bus to Ronda this morning, twisting around the Sierra Nevadas, and on the side of this big hill is a car. With a tree through the roof. Like someone drove the car down the hill right into the tree and then just left it there. The tree was all the way up to the windshield, so it must have hit pretty hard. I'm choosing to believe it was done intentionally; it's the only way I can get a kick out of how comical it looked without being a horrible person.

The bus ride this morning was a little chaotic. Everything is a little chaotic in Spain. The online schedule showed buses leaving every hour or so, so I got to the bus station around 8:30 to catch the 9am bus. The guy at the ticket counter said the next bus was at 10. I asked if there wasn't a 9am bus, and he told me that maybe another bus company had one leaving at 9 and I should ask at the information booth. The guy at the information booth told me to go to ticket booth 14. So I went to booth 14 and there was a sign saying the booth was closed and to go to track 13. There was no one at track 13, but there was a bus from the same company at track 8. So I asked that bus driver if he was going to Ronda and he said yes, but not until 2:30 (was he gonna sit there for 5 hours?) and that the 9am bus would leave from track 11. And sure enough, at about 8:55 the 9am bus to Ronda pulled into track 11. So it all worked out, but with maximum confusion. Then on the way back, my bus was supposed to leave at 5pm from track 4. There was a bus at track 4 with a sign that said Málaga; so far, so good. I went to the bathroom and when I came back the Málaga sign was gone from the bus at track 4. 5pm came and went. Around 5:15 they put a Málaga sign on the bus at track 1. People started putting their stuff on the bus. A few minutes later a guy in a grease-stained jumpsuit who looked like he was still in the process of fixing the bus herded us over to a different bus across the street. I can think of no better explanation than that they try to make it confusing so people will have chaotic bus stories to tell.

Anyway, I ended up not liking Ronda as much as I thought I would--it's a lot more touristy than I wanted it to be. It has this huge gorge which is pretty amazing, but the other attractions (churches, museum, a former palace) felt a little forced. I was picturing an old deserted frontier town, just me and the gorge and some oxtail. I should have known better--the place is in the Lonely Planet, of course it's not gonna be deserted. I guess I've gotta get over the guidebook thing if I want to get away from other tourists. Still, the gorge was pretty cool. You can climb down to the bottom through this cave, complete with authentic puddles and water dripping on your head. Coming back up hurt. And there are some really nice gardens to feed my new obsession with photographing flowers. Bullfighting is big here (I guess some of the modern bullfighting techniques were developed here) but that's not really my thing. And I had oxtail. So in the end it was me and the gorge and the oxtail. And souvenir shops and films stores and tourists. Whatever. Oh, and I got this crazy map from a hostel here that had south at the top and north at the bottom. I was about ready to have myself committed before I figured it out.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Smile like you mean it

Sometimes if I don´t recognize something on a menu, I´ll order it just to figure out what it is. It´s how I learned that boquerones are sardines, not sandwiches. This morning I ordered toast with sobrasada. I was hoping it would be some kind of jam, and I guess it is sort of like jam, only made out of sausage not fruit. Not bad actually, but not really what I wanted--spreadable may be my least favorite Spanish pork product so far.

I´m in Málaga now, and absolutely disgusting. The hot water wasn´t working at the hostel in Granada, and it was too early to check into the one in Málaga when I got there. So I haven´t showered and I´m in the same clothes I wore yesterday to hike around the Alhambra and hang out in smoky bars. Yuck.

Anyway, about ten years after Guernica, Picasso moved to Antibes and got happy. I like the Picasso Museum in Barcelona better than the one here in Málaga (Barcelona has more early stuff, Málaga has more cubist and weird stuff), but the museum here does have this great temporary exhibit of works from when Picasso was living in Antibes in the 1940´s. It was mostly paintings and drawings of fauns, nymphs, and centaurs. (After seeing lots of examples I still don´t know what a faun is, except that sometimes they have horns.) And they were so simple and so happy, but in a good way. The faces were mostly lines and dots and squiggles (think :-) ), but they were adorable and they kept making me smile. Sometimes I wonder if I´m really appreciating greatness or if on some level I just like things because I know I´m supposed to. But I definitely don´t go around smiling in spite of myself over just anything.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation

The word fabulous really isn´t part of my everyday vernacular, but right now I can think of nothing more fabulous than the Alhambra. It´s architecture and art and views and fountains and history and flowers and cats. There were cats all over, it was great. But here´s my problem with trying to be a travel writer. I could try to write about the architecture or the water transport system or how beautiful the gardens are but it probably wouldn´t work. And even if it did, what would be the point exactly? People who are into travel want to travel, not read about travel, right?

Well, ignore that issue for now, I guess. There are roses growing everywhere here. I don´t know what the face-masked crowd was protesting yesterday, but Granada smells really good to me. It´s hard not to drink too much here: The tapas are free if you buy a drink, but they´re not that big. So you have to have a lot of drinks to get a free dinner. This British guy in my hostel was emptying out his locker today: half a bottle of wine, three beers, big bottle of Jaegermeister, and half a can of Limonata. Someone asked him how old he was and he said eighteen. Eighteen. I´m crashing with people ten years younger than me. Whoa. Alcoholic British boy aside, the hostel is full of Americans. But all the tourists I see in the city seem to be British. I wonder what the Americans do all day, and where the British sleep.

It´s hard to find good blues in Spain, but really who needs blues when you´ve got flamenco? There´s this thing with flamenco that it´s sort of supposed to happen spontaneously and that the really hard core flamenco-doers won´t really perform if they think tourists are in the audience. Or something. If that´s the case then what I saw last night probably wasn´t the real thing; it didn´t feel touristy but there were definitely tourists there. Whatever. It was really, really good. Flamenco guitar blows my mind; it sounds like five different instruments are being played, all from six strings and two hands. And. Forget statistics, forget travel writing, forget saving the world. I wanna be a flamenco dancer.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Down South

The first time I traveled outside the US or Canada was almost exactly four years ago, and the first place that really felt like a different planet was southern Spain. So arriving in Andalucia today and having it feel familiar was nice; the bus ride from Málaga to Granada looked pretty much like what I remember. Brown and green, curvy and hilly, bull signs on the side of the road, trees that I´m choosing to believe grow olives. No fields of sunflowers, though; I guess maybe itś too early for them. The trip four years ago was eye opening and life changing and it was good to come back to the place where it happened.

The trip this morning was a little painful because of a 6am flight but otherwise went off without a hitch. When I arrived in Granada there were protesters in face masks blocking one of the main streets: They were protesting against a nauseating smell in Santa Fe, wherever that is. I like this place.

Granada was the last capital of Muslim-ruled Spain, and the big attraction here is the ruling palace from that time, the Alhambra. More on that tomorrow after I actually go to it. today I walked around the old Islamic quarter and went to the Cathedral and saw themausoleumm of Ferdinand and Isabel. It is so different from Barcelona. The Islamic architecture makes it look completely different. People are friendlier: I´ve already had several conversations with strangers here and that hardly ever happens in Barcelona. You get a free tapa when you buy a drink; I had wine and cheese today for 1.60 euros. And they speak Spanish. The accents are a little different (they drop s´s at the end of words) but that I can deal with. I respect the Catalan issue, but it complicates things. The bars seem to have sangria on draft, at least that´s what I assume tinto de verano (red wine of summer) means. All the tourists seem to be British.

It rained a little today. It´s not supposed to rain in Andalucia, ever. But then the sun came back out and made a big rainbow, so I guess it´s okay.

Friday, May 05, 2006

SOTP!

On the way home tonight I saw the words SOTP INVASION spray painted on the side of a building. Assuming sotp isn´t some abbreviation or something, that´s gotta be the worst spelling mistake ever. And weird that Spanish graffiti would use the English word "stop." (Invasion is the same in English and Spanish.) But the stop signs here stay STOP, which is maybe where it came from. I keep meaning to ask someone why they aren´t in Spanish. STOP isn´t universal. Bolivian stop signs are in Spanish; they say ALTA. Well, the one Bolivian stop sign that I saw on the news said ALTA, anyway. The Spanish government is quietly freaking out about Bolivia´s nationalizing its gas, so it´s been in the news a lot lately.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

They killed him (eventually)

They're obsessed with car accidents here. Whatever channel you watch, the nightly news always reports the daily death toll from car accidents and shows footage from the worst ones. Someone told me that Spain has one of the highest traffic-related death rates in Europe and that the news coverage is meant to increase awareness and encourage people to drive more carefully. Makes me wonder how much say the government has in what gets shown on TV, but for now that's not the point. The point is this: Normally the day's car accidents are the lead story on the news; tonight it was that it took 90 minutes to execute that guy in Ohio. I couldn't understand everything they were saying, as usual, but the newscaster's tone was really grave, and they were clearly reporting this as a tragedy. Also, when talking about the execution they used the verb asesinar, which means to assassinate or murder. No euphemisms here. The BBC covered the story in a similar, if slightly more impartial, tone, pointing out that in some states people can still be executed by hanging or firing squad and that witnesses (spectators?) can be present at executions.

I realize that my summarizing two news stories doesn't exactly constitute hard evidence, but trust me. Europe thinks we're barbarians. Maybe a moot point, though, since being pro-death penalty seems to correlate with not giving a fuck what Europe thinks.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

There's no Spain in baseball!

I'm trying. I'm really trying. Last night I got a little bit lazy about staying up to watch the Red Sox-Yankees game, but tonight I did it. 1am on NASN (North American Sports Network, the single source for American sports here in Spain): Sox-Yankees live. What else would the Irish bars be showing at 1am on a Tuesday?

I have yet to meet anyone here who's willing to stay up all night with me on a Tuesday to watch baseball, so I went by myself. More adventurous that way. And I was excited. I haven't watched baseball since the Sox got knocked out of the playoffs last year, and they're in first place (in their division, anyway) and playing the Yankees.

Do you know what the Irish bars were showing? Hockey. Turns out Spain is on some different NASN satellite that doesn't necessarily show what the NASN website says it's gonna show and whose programming schedule seems to be available nowhere. Mierda. And if it doesn't show the Red Sox playing the Yankees, it must never show baseball. At least not until hockey and basketball seasons are over. Spain is just not a baseball country. At all. I like hockey okay, but not enough to stay up all night drinking expensive Guinness with tourists. Joder.

And, in other news, there was this woman in line in front of me at the grocery store tonight buying ketchup. The bottle was bright red and said Sabor tradicional, autèntic Ketchup (that's "traditional flavor, authentic ketchup" in Catalan), and it had pictures of a hamburger, a hot dog, and french fries. It kind of made me feel sorry for her.

[Late addition: Turns out the ball game was rained out so I didn't miss anything. And could have just stayed home. Whatever.]

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Wash my brain!

Remain calm: Channel 2 has been hijacked. It used to be a pretty typical Spanish TV station: some news, some sports, some cartoons, some trashy soap operas. But when I tuned in at 10pm tonight to watch my favorite cleavage-bearing news anchor, they were showing starving kids in Africa. I could understand the narration pretty well, and it kept talking about how it's not Christian to allow such suffering to happen without trying to help. Channel 2 has become Solidaria TV. The commercials are anti-smoking and pro-exercise. After the starving children show was a short bit called Palabras de Vida (Words of Life) that talked about god and Jesus. Then there was this very boring but at least not preachy show about Colin Chapman, the guy who started Lotus racing cars, but about ten minutes into it they abruptly switched to more public service commercials and then showed Estamos contigo (We are with you). The announcer said that Estamos contigo would have mensajes del cielo, literally "messages from the sky" but I guess it probably means "messages from heaven" because tonight's theme was bautismo en agua (baptism in water).

Those of you who know me may be wondering why I lasted so long on Solidaria TV, AKA The God Channel. I could understand it. On all the shows and commercials they spoke slowly and clearly and used easy words and I could understand almost all of it. That almost never happens. I'll watch almost anything in Spanish if I can understand it; my listening skills are nowhere near good enough to allow me to be picky. There must be a lot of other people like me out there: Using TV to practice Spanish and watching whatever is most understandable. So they (you know, they) can throw whatever propaganda they want at us bad Spanish speakers; as long as it's spoken slowly and clearly, we'll probably watch. Whoa. Solidaria TV may be onto something. Expats, beware!

Monday, May 01, 2006

Más fotos

My friend had people over for dinner tonight and I was supposed to bring beer. I thought I'd have some fun stories about how hard it is to buy beer here on Sundays because all the stores are closed. But then I passed this gas station that sold beer, and it was even cold. It was too easy. So no fun stories there, sorry.

But here are some pictures from the Basque Country. I'll try to have a more interesting day tomorrow.