Tomorrow

Tomorrow hopefully I'll have wifi and then you'll get a post. For now, hello from Sorrento!

Pre and Post Lunch Thoughts

Pre lunch:

Fucking nuns. They're everywhere! I understand that this is the Vatican and all and that there are necessarily a lot of nuns around, but you'd think if they were important enough to get selected to live at church central that they'd have work to do or something.Don't you nuns have some place to be or is it just your new duty in life to walk extremely slowly in front of me with your goddamn umbrella threatening to poke me in the eye? Move it, Sister!

Fucking umbrellas. I hate them anyway and everyone has them here. And if for some reason you don't well there are about a million dudes trying to sell you one. What really gets me is when a family of four is carrying four and trying to walk abreast on the narrow sidewalk. Do NOT make me walk into moped traffic just to avoid your stupid umbrella parade. It's not even raining anymore!

Post lunch:

I like wine.

I found a pub/restaurant run by some Irish people for lunch. The special was a pretty good deal and as I sat there waiting for the bill (which took FOREVER. I'm beginning to think there's some special signal in Ireland for getting the check that I am unaware of. It was like this in Ireland, too.) I messed around on my phone calendar and realized that I've been gone exactly four weeks. Wow, cool! That only leaves..... SEVEN MORE WEEKS TO GO????? Why didn't anyone tell me I was going to be gone so long?

The Colosseum yesterday was rad. I knew it was near the Metro stop, but I wasn't prepared for it being RIGHT AT THE OPENING. Bang! There's the motherfucking Colosseum! I spent all afternoon walking around that and the Forum and the Pantheon, all of which were really fucking cool. Why were all those people waiting to see the stupid Vatican in the rain? Man, fuck the Sistine Chapel.

I've found a place to watch the Champions League games tonight and tomorrow. I have a TV in my room, but of course there's no important soccer matches on it. "It's all about the money," explained the woman at reception. Indeed.

I forgot to book a room in Amsterdam for my birthday and it's already filling up. Dammit!

Pfff, whatever

I'm already forgetting about the unpleasantness of last night. We'll just leave it at that I had to spend the night on a cot in the hostel's basement where they store linen, cleaning supplies and occasionally staff. It was weird and it wasn't even the weirdest part of it all, but enough about that.

Venice can wipe away all your worries. It may be hot and crowded, you will most certainly be lost and everything's expensive, but there's no automobile traffic, the canals cool the breeze and.. well, it's friggin' VENICE. There really are funnily dressed men oaring boats through narrow canals and waterborne cabs deliver passengers in both the busy canals and in the quieter areas. I didn't take many pictures because you've seen Venice. There are countless photos and movies done by much better photographers than I, who have the option of clearing the streets/viewpoints when necessary.

The mandatory train reservations in Italy are a joke. I was the only one on my 92-person car for the first three stops. At its peak, it held about seven people. Why did I have to plop down fifteen Euro to secure a place instead of just hopping onboard with my railpass? Ok ok, more money, I can answer that. Still, grr.

The hostel here in Florence is a fortress in a warzone-like city. No one comes here to look at the city itself, just a couple of sites. Heat, lawless traffic and pickpockets encourage you to move quickly from site to site, which means it's really nice that the hostel has a both a bar and a restaurant with decently priced, good food. I don't have to venture out into food-poisoning land (hello Youngest Sis) AND they serve BREAKFAST!!! Full English all-you-can-eat BREAKFAST! I'm so excited I don't know what to do.

The Uffizi gallery is free tomorrow, so after BREAKFAST! I'm going to hustle down there and wait in line. Hooray art!

And Now for a WTF Moment

And I'm gonna leave you on that cliffhanger, because I don't really feel like talking about it right now. What a fucking weird night, though.

Oh yeah, and I'm in Venice. Woot?

Ok, so TODAY is the last full day in Spain this time

I thought yesterday was my last day. That's what I get for thinking in this country. I've liked Barcelona so far, but it's a little high-strung, hot and insanely crowded. The problem was the I wanted to catch a night train to Milan this evening, but since this particular train only runs a couple times a week it was already sold out. So the best I could do was book another night in Barcelona and get a Ryanair flight over to Venice to keep all the reservations in Italy I just made. More problems followed in that the hostel I was at in Barcelona was full, so I had to move across town, and the airport I'm flying out of is something like 125km from Barcelona (Girona). Also it's some stupid holiday (again) that involves parades (again) with whistles and men giving roses to women. The sidewalks are shoulder to shoulder people and it's impossible to figure out where you are when you're a midget.

I was so stressed out by the time I got here (and moved rooms/beds/floors due to a mix-up) that I thought I was going to pass out from dehydration. Fortunately, there was a friendly Canadian girl in the bunk below mine and we conspired to charge our computers and do laundry up on the 7th floor terrace bar. Naturally this involved drinking large amounts of sangria, some of which was free by way of apology of the guy at reception. Sure there are famous buildings and churches and museums, but all I wanted to do was chill out for an afternoon. We did manage to make our way to the beach where I solidified the sunburn I had brewing from the roof and watched some shirtless boys play soccer.

And of course, this being Spain, the day is practically beginning. I've just been informed that the hostel bar is open until 4am, so after acquiring some patatas bravas and maybe a sandwich I think I'll retire here and drink myself to sleep. Should take about two drinks.

Last Full Day in Logrono

It's time to move on so I don't end up actually moving in here. I'm getting too used to staying up 'til three, sleeping 'til noon and taking a siesta every afternoon. I'm never going to leave if I don't run away and soon. So tomorrow I'm off to Barcelona for a day, then an overnight train (hopefully) to Milan and then Venice. Yeah, Venice! There was an Indiana Jones AND a Bond movie filmed there! Oh and of course there's other stuff too. I'm sure it's all important.

Afterward, I'll be a couple days in Florence and then three days in Rome. I'd also like to see Pompeii, but Naples and the surrounding area sounds like a huge pain in the ass, so we'll see. I'm personally really excited about heading up north again to the land of sensible people that understand the concept of breakfast.

Last night we went out for a couple of drinks and ended up being mobbed by a group of Catalans who had spent the day touring bodegas (wineries) and were consequently nearly destroyed by the time midnight rolled around. For anyone in such a state, shots are probably not the wisest idea, but always seem to sound that way, so the kids put back some more and pretty soon they were practically puddles, groping, slurring and dropping their drinks. Honestly though, it was a fun night. They were at the bar solely to have a good time and get laid and I absolutely can't fault them for that. It was also one of those times that being a foreigner is fuggin' AWESOME. Despite the fact that there were much cuter girls in the bar and that the language barrier was definitely huge, I had my pick of adorable Barcelonians (er, whatever they're called).

Unfortunately, during the melee my cousin attempted to take embarrassing pictures of me and when she tried to get the flash to work, accidentally erased all of my pictures and videos. I'm currently trying to recover those, but it's taking forever. Meantime, I'll post some pics of those I have.

Some Funny Stuff

Spain is strange, of course. It's a foreign country; it's supposed to be strange. If I didn't like strange, I wouldn't travel, right? So here's a list of things that have struck me as particularly funny or odd.

- In case you simply can't make it through a trip to the grocery store without a beer, there is a bar in the front of Simply market.

- As we walked out the door to head to the soccer game on Sunday "morning" (that's about 2pm) we accidentally caught sight of a young man, probably in his mid to late twenties, bent over to tie his shoe, exposing his entire underside. He was wearing a thong. A hot pink thong.

- There is an underwear store in Logrono whose display case is lit up at night and features rotating torsos to model the underwear. I have a video and if I have enough bandwidth later today I may post it. There are no thongs.

- There is a rad bar here called Jake. It's dark and grungy, usually uncrowded (and therefore unsmokey) and has good music and an arcade with tons of great old games. The thing is, "Jake" is not how you and I would say it. It's pronounced "haw-kgay".

- On the way back from Vitoria, we had to change trains at Miranda de Ebro. MDE is apparently THE hub for this part of Spain and as far as I know the train station is the entire town. We couldn't see our next platform so we followed and elaborate set of signs, down and up stairs, and through a tunnel only to come out about twenty feet from where we started with a clear path back to the original platform. How much money and effort went into creating tunnel access to platform 4?

- They have these cheap stores here that sell crap like notebooks and flip flops and all sorts of knickknacks. They're called Chinos. Really. Anyway, I needed a new towel, so we went to one when I first got here. We then found, across the aisle from the school supplies, a collection of figurines featuring women sitting on giant (proportional to the women) penises, plain ol' penises, and funny-looking penises. Why? Why why WHY why why?

- Possibly to be continued...

A much more cheerful story than the last post

I'm still in Spain, being lazy and not planning the rest of my trip, mainly. We did however manage to see a soccer game live, which is quite an achievement considering the logistics, timing, locations and language barriers involved in doing such things. We made our way up into Basque country (yes, impeccable timing, I know, given the recent ETA arrests) to the city of Vitoria to watch Deportivo Alaves take on the unpronounceable Xerez.

The bus ride up there was kind of absurd in that we stopped in every podunk pueblo in the 80km between the Logrono and Vitoria. The bus - a full sized coach carrying about ten people at a time - would actually drive up a mountain on a road about four feet wide and lined with stone cathedrals and apartments. Oncoming traffic had to pull onto the sidewalk, if there was one, or backup until they reached a pulloff. Two and a half hours later we finally pulled into Vitoria and embarked on an hour long and futile effort to find something to eat that was more substantial that a slab of ham on a half of baguette. Sundays area big deal here, I guess. No restaurant, bar or cafe has their kitchen running and not a single store - department, convenience or otherwise - is open either.

Getting to the game from there was easier than we anticipated because everyone else in town seemed to be walking that direction, too. By squinting at the rendering of the stadium seating layout, we guessed at the cheapest seats and were sent behind the goal. Sadly, we were on the opposite end from the supporters' group. Oh well. We had a marching band on our side, does that make up for it? The stadium holds just under 19,000 and I'd say it was a little over half full.

Deportivo aren't great this year and currently sit one place out of the drop zone, and Xerez are nearly a lock to get promoted. So it was therefore rather surprising when Deportivo dominated possession early on and even had a few chances. Here's a pic of one of them that forced the goalkeeper into making a save.

But that early dominance was mostly a result of Xerez not playing well, coupled with a lot of long balls and fast guys to chase them down. Once fast guys start to tire and opposition's central midfield remembers to possess the ball and run the game a little, things start to get difficult for the underdogs. Xerez had started to come back into the game and I was certain they were about to score when, really against the run of play, Deportivo scored. It looked offsides from our angle and there was a moment of quiet while everyone looked at the linesman and the ref to see what the signal was. Xerez surrounded the linesman, but the goal stood and the crowd came to life.

However, it was extremely short-lived as Xerez equalized less than two minutes from play restarting. Deportivo's defense then seemed to crumple and they were lucky not to give up several more goals in the next short span of time. Inevitably, Xerez took the lead and then spent the remaining twenty minutes or so of the game feigning injuries, kicking the ball high into the stands, and substituting in slow-motion. At the announcement of four minutes extra time the majority of fans in my section began to file out. There was almost karmic justice dispensed to them, as in the final seconds of the match, Deportivo forced the goalkeeper into a save and also hit the crossbar. At least the half dozen traveling fans were going nuts.

No Shit

We found a mummy.


We visited another pueblo yesterday, this one much smaller and closer. After surveying most of it - it took about 20 minutes of strolling - we found a cemetery and decided to go in. The gate required unlocking with a key that was about ten inches long and weighed must have weighed four pounds, which was cool just for novelty's sake. Inside there were flowers all over the wall graves since it was just Easter, a small chapel with a bizarre and elaborate crucifix, and another small building just to the left of the chapel. This little building piqued my curiosity as the door was only opened a wedge and it seemed more run down than the rest of the place. Inside was what looked like a raised well, with some pieces of wood covering most of the opening. On the floor were a couple pairs of shoes, oddly. I couldn't see much of anything inside the structure, but something inside the well-hole looked a whole lot like a femur. I tried to take a picture to get a glimpse of what lie inside, but my flash wouldn't turn on and so my cousin cheerfully volunteered to use her own camera. As soon as she takes a couple snaps she let out this whisper/scream, "ahhhhhhhhh eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! it's a FOOT! There's a FOOT EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" and we quickly walked out the gates.

And then, dear god, I just scared the crap out of myself. This next picture shows that it's not just a foot, there's a torso and a head. Criminy, incinerate or bury, don't half-ass either!

I guess I should edit the first sentence of this post. We found a mummy AND a rotting corpse and a pile of bones. Whoa.

Just some pics

I'm just going to post a few pictures today because I haven't updated in awhile and I'm really too hungover to write anything. Also, when I'm drunk - and boy howdy was I ever last night - I talk a lot. Like, I can't fucking shut up. I cornered some poor guy who made the mistake of telling me he'd played soccer for a university in America, indicating his English was pretty good, and he actually had to have his dad come and rescue him before I bored him into a coma. So I'm a little talked out.

Logrono:




No, I don't know why Death is painted on the sidewalk. In fact, I don't even know if it is a sidewalk or a road. Either seem to be acceptable for driving.


I also don't know why the Spanish insist on putting gigantic testicles on all of their horse statues or why this particular one is treading on severed heads. This whole country is a bit of a mystery to me.


Dive bar. There are exactly two seats inside of this place, so you take your beer and drink it out on the street. It's very, very odd.


Drinking in public.


This is supposed to show how small the "pints" are here, but my stupid tiny hands make the glass look normal sized.

Anti-Zombie Apocalypse... Always.

After a stressful train trip - we left Madrid a half hour late, and then the conductor came on board our car and said, "blah blah blah MINUTOS! blah blah blah MINUTOS! blah blah blah" and no one could translate for me, leaving me concerned that I was never actually going to get to there at all, let alone on time - I finally got in to Logrono. My cousin and her boyfriend met me at the train station. We dropped my stuff off at her apartment, chugged some Jack Daniels then went out to the show she had been telling me about. Logrono is not a big place at all and the streets seemed nearly deserted, but we opened the door to a club full of smoke - most of it not tobacco - people and a band on stage. The music was cheesy rock n roll with a band that didn't take itself too seriously. It was hard not to dance a little while sucking down the pisswater beer they serve in Spain (seriously, the beer is terrible here!). Unfortunately, we missed the opening bands and only got to see a few songs before the show ended and I was subjected to endless introductions in mostly Spanish in which I was kissed in that Euro way by about two dozen people.

My cousin's boyfriend, Miguel, is an anarchist. Anarchists are the same the world over and their views can be summarized as follows: You are wrong. Everything they do or say about anything is absolutely right, always. Siempre. Hypocrisy is not a state that is ever applicable to themselves. They will never let you hear the end of it if they find you that one time you ate at a McDonald's, but think nothing of chain smoking their Phillip Morris cigarettes.

Miguel knew that I had been in the army and Afghanistan and was eager to tell me exactly what he thought of that. I just laughed. He tells me he could never obey orders and that fighting for one's country is stupid. When I told him that it's not about "your country" it's about your buddies and doing your job and not giving a shit, he of course balked. Ya see, another thing about anarchists, especially young ones, is that everything one does has to have a great purpose. He gets in fights himself as part of the the antifa (antifascists) gang who fight the fascist gangs, and that's perfectly justifiable because then he's fighting, well, fucking fascists. There's a good, moral purpose to it. Killing Taliban though is not because those guys are just fighting the invaders and they'd be ordinary peace-lovin' folk if the U.S. hadn't invaded their country and killed their families.

It's not like I haven't thought about this stuff. I've thought about it, I've struggled with it and I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care. 22-year-old anarchists from Spain who still live in the same house they were born in and don't have a clue how life works on a planet earth are not going to tell me how to live and expect me to take them seriously. Fortunately, I can find it amusing rather than being offended.

On the title of the post. The anarcho-punks here are fond of wearing t-shirts that say "anti-fascista... siempre." Now, as an American the term anti-fascist is always amusing, since no matter how close to actual fascism our country gets, the term is always derogatory. Even the swastika-tattooed actual neo-Nazis in America are offended at the term. Saying you're anti-fascist is sort of like saying you're anti-zombie apocalypse. I mean, duh. I'd also be against the idea of a Death Star exploding the planet with laser beams, too; I'm not going to make a t-shirt out of it. It's an obvious statement to begin with, but adding "siempre" to it just takes the cake. I'm anti-zombie apocalypse always. My cousin would now like to design a t-shirt that says "anti-fascista... a veces." But of course that's only funny to Americans who live here, because as it turns out, there ARE sometimes-fascists. They're the skins and punks who just like to fight, and will do anything to fit in with their friends, who may not be as idealistic as young Miguel here.

OK, this post is longer than I intended. I'm just pleased that I can still write in English, as my brain has had to function in half-languages for the past two or three days. Off to read a bit then watch some football and drink shitty beer.

Yesterday

Am I understanding this correctly? If you join the corpsecorps of the national police of Spain you get a flying car??? Totally unfair! I joined the “greatest army in the world” and all I got was stupid college money. Funny thing though, I’d always imagined flying cars when they finally came to being would be, I dunno, sexier?

Oh oh oh, you’re saying that’s not a flying car? It’s just a poorly done photo collage and that the new recruits are supposed to go on high speed chases in what appears to be a Geo Metro with approximately 1.5” of clearance? Lame. Next you’re going to tell me those aren’t flying horses in the top left either. Pft.

Speaking of Geos, long ago my friends managed to squish six of us into one and drive up to San Fransisco from Monterey. I can’t remember what we were doing up there specifically, but I do know that we were too young to drink so it wasn’t anything nefarious (for once). San Fransisco, as you probably know, is Dr. Seuss-like improbably steep. There are buildings on top of what look like roller coaster roads and it would seem precarious even if you didn’t have in the back of your mind that it was also on top of a huge and active fault line. We were climbing one of these absurd streets near China Town when the little Geo couldn’t take it anymore. It slowed, the driver shifted downward, it continued to slow, then stop, then drift backwards. She had it floored, but there we went and those of us in the back seat turned around to navigate only to realize to everyone’s horror, that we were on a one-way street and traffic was coming on all four lanes. All six of us then screamed, “NEEE AAAH AHHHHHAHHH! …..LEFT, er, RIGHT! NO THE OTHER WAY IN REVERSE!” as we somehow swung into a tiny dark alley that was lined with dumpsters and smelled like fish. The question was then what to do from there. The alley was a deadend and it was one-way uphill on the street . So we....








...I CAN’T REMEMBER!





ha ha.



As you can see, I have nothing to write about today in regards to my trip. My day is roughly divided into three three-and-a-half hour chunks: train to Madrid; Madrid; train to Logrono. I’ve spent the better part of an hour staring at this stupid police recruitment poster and I’m about to lose it with boredom.

A Lost Post from Manchester

Found this in a rambling Word document.

5 April - Trains and Football

The trip from Glasgow to Manchester wasn’t what you’d call smooth. My first train was cancelled and replaced by a bus in which I was sat next to the largest man in the north of England and in front of a shrieking baby. Large man was really upset about something to do with football and his girlfriend and his ex and his kid and his job, and he when he wasn’t swearing at people over the phone about it, he was ordering people to move things out of the way of his giant feet. At Carlisle I transferred to a perfect train – nearly empty with friendly people and comfy seats – but we were only on it for about five minutes before we were in Preston and I had to change trains again. I’m sorry to report, Sister Who May Read This, I didn’t get a good look at the town of our surname even supposing the train went near there (Preston is close by, that’s the only reason I may have had a chance to see it), mainly because the last train I was on was so full that even though I had a supposedly reserved seat, I had to stand with a group of people, smashed between the luggage rack and toilet and couldn’t see a thing.

I still had the shakes from that bitch of a hangover I was nursing and I wasn’t about to go out even if it was Saturday night in the middle of the city, so I crawled into bed at about nine and mostly slept over the racket of the clubbers in the street below. The poor guy in the bunk below me was in bed at least an hour before me and if this morning was anythign to go by, had to sleep in until about eleven. He seemed really disturbed by the loud people outside. I may be a light sleeper, but I’m glad I’m still able to get up and do things even if fatigued or traveling wouldn’t be any fun at all.

I made a daytrip Sunday to York to walk through York Minster – a giant church that was built on top of an old Roman building. I went there a few years ago with my army buddy and his wife and newborn kid and thought it was the coolest. Of course, I was about two days out of the army and everything was just fabulous to me. One of my favorite memories of all time is floating down the Ouse (pronounced “ooze”. Isn’t that the coolest name for a river ever?) while drinking some foamy beer (Tetley’s I believe) and giggling every fifteen seconds, “I’m not in the army anymore!” This trip was also beautiful and sunny and while I enjoyed the church and walking through the cobblestone streets and along the old walls of the city, it kind of made me miss my friends a whole lot. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen them and they’re not big on writing.

I made it back to Manchester theoretically in time to catch the Manchester United vs Aston Villa match, but I couldn’t find a bar that was showing it for the life of me. I returned to the hostel after a half hour of searching and got directions towards a couple different places halfway across town. I made it to one of them at half time to find the score at 1-1. There were a couple of young guys with Villa shirts on, but the bar seemed mostly United fans. When Villa scored to make it 2-1, there didn’t seem to be much of a reaction and I suddenly worried that maybe the people there just weren’t into the game and were only putting up with it on their afternoon out. But then Ronaldo evened the score with an unthreatening-looking ground ball that snuck into the corner of the net and there was a bit of cheering. The game then got really exciting with some back and forth play and some great cutting passes from United. The moment began to build for them and when five minutes of stoppage time was announced a cheer went around – that may be enough! Earlier in the half, Nani – definitely my least favorite player for United – was replaced by some 17-year-old I’d never heard of who had apparently never played for the first team. At about three minutes into stoppage time the ball was pinging around the edge of the box and then in to the 17-year-old who made this crazy stop and turn and curved an absolutely perfect shot into the top right corner. You couldn’t have choreographed a better shot, play or ending to a game. The entire bar erupted (well, except the Villa fans, of course), chairs fell over as people jumped up and down, hugging each other and shouting. The kid who scored the goal reacted just as you’d expect a teenager who’s just scored on his debut for the biggest club in the world in front of the home fans, running circles, shrieking while his teammates mobbed him. In the stands, the cameras picked up on a grown man, crying with relief. If United win the league title this year, and it looks unlikely they’ll lose it now, this game will go down as a key point in the season and I am very glad I got to be present for it.

Photos?

I am reasonably sure that this link will work even if you're not a facebook member. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049323&id=42004799&ref=share

Facebook lets me put a bunch more photos online than Flickr so I'm gonna go with them. It's fast too.

Happy Easter, everyone

I'm stuck in Valencia another night because, as I feared, all the trains out to Logrono are full. Pooh. Tomorrow I roll into my cousin's town at 10 o'clock at night, which is kinda crap as well. Three hour layover in Madrid! Again! At least I'm riding first class on the way from Madrid to Logrono.

Nearly everything is closed today for Easter, so I'm hanging out in the bar/dayroom area surfing the net and not much else. Hopefully there will be some footy on tonight so I can have something to occupy my time.

Anyway, have some ham and potato salad for me, alright?

This dude is cool

Here's a dude. I'm not sure what he's gesticulating at, but it sort of looks like he's about to perform a magic trick, "Abracadabra!" or something. There's also another dude in the picture. He's sleeping under a canvas sack on the bottom right. I didn't notice him until after I'd snapped it. Sorry sleeping dude! Hope I didn't wake you.

Valencia-ah-ah

I have had that Decemberists song in my head ever since I left my room in Madrid. My original plan was to buy a train ticket for the evening, store my luggage somewhere (I thought I'd seen a rack of lockers when I arrived) then see the Prado for a couple hours before catching my train. But as I walked past the Prado and past the blocks and blocks of people waiting to get in, I began to think that maybe it just wasn't going to be possible today. Then I got to the train station to find out that nearly everything was sold out except at the inconveniently timed 3:20 departure - not enough time to go anywhere, way too much to spend at Puerta de Atocha.

Oh, I didn't mention yesterday that due to the stupid stupid non-holiday of Good Friday, the Prado was closed. Arrrrrrgh. That's all I wanted to do in Madrid. Ohhhh well, I guess I'll have to come back.

I'm in Valencia at the moment which seems like the place I probably should have started in. It's small, yet has things to do, and the hostel is about perfect. It's modern, clean, has a bar and wireless, and there's footy on the big screen. We'll see if my tune changes if there are people shouting outside my window all night like in every other hostel I've stayed in so far (excepting Malaga, but that was only because my room didn't have a window. There was a lot of shouting anyway.). Here are a couple of pics of the place. Ok ok, it's really just two different zooms of the same thing, ya got me.

Weird Sandwich Alert

I'm currently eating a tuna and egg sandwich. It has on it tomatoes and.... carrots? It's pretty yummy, I guess but... tuna and egg? tuna and carrots? EGG and carrots? What the hell.

One more thing. Why is tuna "atun" in Spanish? Who misplaced the A, us or them? Or is "tun" a place and the "a" is the from, as in "from tun"? The things I think about.

Whoa, vertigo daffodils!

From Europe 2009

I promise I didn't then fall off the wall. This is in York, by the way. So are the rest of the pics in this post.

From Europe 2009

From Europe 2009

From Europe 2009

I've had to do some genealogy in the past and as it turns out, this guy is one of my ancestors, King Edward I, otherwise known as Longshanks. It seems we've always been grumpy bastards with stupid hair.

From Europe 2009

But as far as I'm aware, I'm not related to either of the mouthbreathers. It looks like they were caught by the camera.... except it was by a chiseler. He must've been fast.

From Europe 2009

York Minster. So huge it can't even fit in the camera frame. Pretty impressive, isn't it?

It's What's for Dinner

Ugh, I feel wretched. Obviously cookies are the cure.

Here's the Thing

Everything is supremely difficult in Spain. The simplest of tasks - turning on a light, crossing the street, opening a freaking door - strains my brain and patience to an uncomfortable level. The more advanced things like validating a rail pass and getting the proper train ticket when no one speaks English, or finding an unadvertised hostel in the middle of a city have me frustrated to the point where I've seriously considered throwing my things and jumping up and down, screaming obscenities. I was thisclose to kicking a stone wall while wailing, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" while trying to find my hostel today, when a man with perfect English shouted to me from across the street if I was looking for the place he worked at. And just like that I was up in my own room.

Did I mention I'm in Madrid now? Well, I am. I rode on the best train I've ever been on. It was so comfortable I was sad when we arrived. 26 is the magical age in Europe when one becomes old and no longer eligible for student rates or 2nd class tickets, so I've been permanently bumped up to first class, at least on the long distance trains.

The scenery on the way up was dry and mountainous with patches of vibrant green farmland, as well as strange shaped pine trees and some sort of crop that looked like refined sagebrush, planted in rows. I listened to my ipod until it ran out of batteries, wrote in my journal and used up precious mobile credits from my UK number in order to check my email repeatedly. It's a habit and I can't break it.

My room here in Madrid is painted the color I sort of imagined every building in Spain to be - pinkish orange - and it's almost narrow enough for me to touch both walls if I hold my arms out. It's adorable though and seeing as I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, I don't think I'll be leaving it much this evening. I'm going to upload some pictures, go find a bite to eat, then head to bed early.

Shot O´Clock

I´m apparently staying in a hostel made for frat boys/sorority girls on spring break. I apply the frat boy/etc term internationally, by the way. This morning at about ten our hostel front desk dude yelled, "SHOT O´CLOCK! TIME FOR SHOTS! GET UP!" And so right before laundry I ended up taking a tequila shot and retrieving the lemon slice from the bartender´s mouth. I´m wayyyyyyyy too old for this. Not that I´m complaining too much.

After shots and laundry I played cards wtih some girls from Amsterdam and Germany, then headed to the beach. The Amsterdam girl and I ordered some fried squid and paella, of which I could only eat a little. The stuff is rich! And the only thing I ate yesterday was a hamburger, so my stomach wasn´t used to too much food. I put my feet in the water for a bit, but it was way cold and we just found a place with some grass and palm trees to lay in the sun a bit. Of course, I think I was already burnt at that point, so I´ll probably be miserable tonight when the radiation sets in.

Last night I tried to catch some Champions League football and the bartender at the place I was recommended was really perplexed as to why an American girl would have any interest in football at all, let alone European football. A few English guys joined us and we flipped between the games, which meant that in a total of six goals scored that evening, we saw exactly one. Since Barcelona is playing tonight, I bet there will be more people in to watch the game.

Glasgow! Day Three

I was pretty stoked for Friday because The Boy (as they kept calling him) was going to take me out for some music and I was going to drink a lot of adult beverages. And that wasn´t until the evening and in the mean time I was in Glasgow with all its cool buildings and tons of people walking. So I tootled around town in the morning, taking pictures of things and generally looking like a tourist. Then I met up with everyone except The Boy and drank some Guinness and ate some great Indian food at a place called the Wee Curry Shop. NOM NOM NOM, god I love food. Why does everyone (guide books, etc) say the UK has such crappy cuisine? I guess the traditional food isn´t all that great (tongue salad, anyone?) but that doesn´t mean they haven´t imported everything delicious from the rest of the world.

Late evening finally rolled around, The Boy came over and we walked to the other side of town to some bar full of young people. Bars here are hilarious. Because of the lower drinking age there are groups of kids that look like they´re still in high school (in fact, they probably are), all of them have drinks in their hands and are acting like it´s totally normal. It´s kind of surreal and yet pleasant. It´s really nice to be around younger people and it adds a lot of energy to places.

Unfortunately, bars and pubs close at like 11 or 12 or something ridiculous like that and if ya wanna stay out you have to find a club. The Boy´s friend was DJing that night at such a place, so we headed there after last call at the pub. The midget bouncer (alright, alright. he was taller than me) nearly didn´t let me in, accused me of being too drunk and only relented after giving me a warning about not getting "too steamy" or something. I was way more miffed about this than I should have been. I only had two beers - TWO! I was in no way drunk. But I got even more pissed off when we walked in and the first thing we see is some girl with no underwear and her pants hanging halfway down her ass tumble over to the ground, pants falling further, after trying to complete a fairly simple dance move (The Upright Walk, I think it´s called). The Boy winced and said, "That´s about the most undignified thing I´ve ever seen." How the fuck did she get in there? Grrr.

But the music was good, the drinks were drinky and the dance floor filled with people to laugh at. I´m not much of a dancer myself, so The Boy and I chatted and drank on the sidelines instead. I don´t know what time it was when we left there, but outside it was suddenly drizzling and the streets were filled with squeaking, bleached blonde girls staggering around in packs and grunting, hollering boys also staggering around in packs. Some police vans and taxi cabs mingled among the human traffic adn the general noise of the place was "RARRARRARRARR". It was a happy madness though and a few blocks away it was comparatively silent.

Useless, I am

Still don´t have an adaptor yet, despite walking around for about two hours this morning. My laptop is very forlorn with it´s blinking "I´m dead" light. There are two blog posts pleading to be let out of it.

In the meantime I´ll have to forget about my electronic concerns, get some food, then plop myself on the beach. It´s GORGEOUS here!

a little out of order.

Before Glasgow Day Three, I need to vent a bit, and in any case the blog I have all typed up for that is stuck on my laptop whose battery has died and I don´t yet have an adaptor for Spain. This is an ancient, ancient computer I´m typing on, the buttons are different and the S and W keys aren´t orking very well. Bear ith me.

Yes, Spain is where I am. I´m still calming down from the overwhelming entrance to the country. First I couldn´t figure out the train. It took me a lot of looking dumb and lost before I read the one sign that explained that there was construction on the rails and my stop was closed. When I got to my alternate stop I looked at my map and thought, "It´s a nice evening. I´ll just walk across town, get a feel for the place." Well it turn out there´s this holiday called "Easter". Some dude died. Now every year around this time Spain has these crazy parades with four tiered crucifixes and giant float made of candels. This would be a neat spectacle if I was a) expecting it and b) it wasn´t blocking every conceivable route to my hostel. And I walked right into it and didn´t know what was happening until I was smashed on a sidewalk, feet off the ground, with a marching band playing and candlelit Jesus above me. I´m not sure I´ve been in a stranger situation.

On the bright side, I got to see, literally, the entire town, even the rougher areas that some of the locals with their children were seeing for the first time too. Becaue there were so many people out, dark creepy areas became somewhat friendly. The scenery would go from hard scrabble, crumbling clay building with graffiti everywhere to a castle, surrounded by tall skinny palm trees that leaned across the moon.

The map got me there, even if I had to take the longest route imaginable. The direction that the hostel provided said to not climb the hill. Apparently that meant, "climb most of the way up the hill, then turn left up the dark, steep stairs climb the rest of it." The hostel does not have wifi like it claimed, the showers are down the scariest hallway I´ve seen since my late grandpa´s wine cellar he called the Dungeon. There´s a very loud and drunk girl from Chicago in the bar that´s right next to my room who is trying desperately to screw any and every boy with a funny foreign name. The boys for their part are drinking straight out of a bottle and smoking a four-foot high hookah. It´s enough to make a girl not want to stay in a hostel ever again. (When I win the lottery) I could just hop in a cab and say, "take me to [respectable hotel]" where upon arriving at my room I could then fire up the laptop and write a blog about what a chore it is to fly.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be more with it.

Glasgow! Day Two

The sun came out the second day and we drove up to Loch Lomond and Loch Long. Oddly enough, the area reminded me of the Columbia Gorge, minus the wind and a little less steep. I was surprised at the amount of trees. During my last trip to Scotland I took a backpackers' tour through the highlands and I'm not sure I saw a single tree. Ok, that's probably exaggerating, but I maintain that there are far more trees in the Loch Lomond/Long area than further north. We drank some coffee (good! they do coffee in Scotland far better than the Irish), ate some food, visited their boat, and went on a hike during which the spaniel went on a rampage through every mud puddle she came across.

The American that lives there took me out to dinner that night to a Mexican restaurant. After my experiences at Puffins: A Northwest Canadian Bistro in Korea that served "Pah-jee-tahs" and put raisins in nearly everything, I was morbidly curious as to what the Scots would do with Mexican food. Turns out, they probably do it better than in Mexico! I got something covered in chocolate sauce. Spicy chocolate sauce! Holy mother of god was it good. Why had I never considered chocolate with Mexican food?

After eating I plopped down on a bench in George Square to digest some of the giant meal and had a staring contest with a pigeon. It got chased off by a seagull. I'm sure it then pooped on someone's head.

Glasgow! Day One or How Meeting People on the Internet Isn't a Bad Thing

The bus ride up to Glasgow was uneventful if late and a little boring. I have to admit to being a tad nervous about meeting the people in Glasgow. Sure, I've "known" them for a long time, but have you ever tried to explain the concept of blogging to someone who isn't too familiar with the internet? It's impossible to not sound ridiculous. After trying to find a dignified way of explaining to the customs/immigration agent how I knew people in the UK I finally just sighed and said, "I met them on the internet." That terminator of a woman just stared at me, letting the ridiculousness of the statement sink in while I looked down at my shoes sheepishly. Then she stamped my passport, slid it back and forgot about me. Some people are just born into their jobs.

Anyway, obviously I'm alive and blogging, so they didn't turn out to be serial killers or anything. In fact, they're about the nicest people in the world. Even their underbite-plagued spaniel was charming.

Glasgow itself was really, really nice. I don’t know where I’d gotten the impression (ok, I do know – the news and that book about hooligans “How Soccer Explains the World”) that Glasgow was a seedy, dangerous place. Sure I’d seen pretty pictures of statues and historic buildings and things, but I’d always assumed that just outside the frame of the shot someone was being stabbed. But it really is nice, mostly clean, and I felt totally safe the whole time. In fact, I felt safer there than in most cities in Ameica. I wonder how those news reporters who write up those stories on violent Glasgow would react to a place like LA. Hell, North Portland might be too much for them. There were seemingly endless amounts of old stone buildings with either domes, ornate carvings or statues on top of them, wide pedestrian only streets and packs of people. I’m not sure I’ve seen a place with more walkers (er, that’s people walking, not those things pushed by the geriatric).

After unsuccessfully trying to watch a soccer match, I got back to the apartment I was staying at and tried in vain to stay up late enough to watch the US men's qualifier against Costa Rica. Though I fell asleep before it started, I got a hold of my mom via text message and talked on the phone to my cousin that I'll be staying with in Spain.

Bad Blogger

Really, Sara? It's been a week since I left and I've only made one post on here. Crap, I haven't even written in my journal, which is really weird. In any case, here's a round up that may be out of order and confusing, but ya know what? You'll live.

The first day in Manchester (March 31st)

One thing I was really looking forward to doing once I hit Manchester was to eat kebabs. For whatever reason, Manchester and that whole area are covered with kebab shops that serve big mounds of cheap, delicious meat. I'm hungry just thinking about it now. Unfortunately, after 21 million hours of flying and waiting in airports and flying some more my stomach was really, really unhappy. It was totally unfair then that my hostel was in the part of town occupied by a lot of Middle Easterners (there was a bank next door called "Habib Bank" -- the love bank?) and all of their great food that I couldn't eat.

So... after being temporarily kicked out of the hostel I decided to wander around the city and make my way towards Old Trafford. I sat and people-watched at some square (Piccadilly Gardens, I think it was) for awhile. There was a guy playing some sort of homemade harp-like thing attached to a speaker. The music coming from it was beautiful, but I couldn't begin to tell you what sort of music it was, other than from somewhere in Asia. It really reminded me of Pioneer Square in that well-dressed professionals ate their lunch or stalked by along with students and homeless people and teenagers in tracksuits.

A couple things I learned from the people-watching: pigeon-chasing is Very Serious Business for the children of Manchester. They will hunt down every last one that dares land on the ground, completely oblivious to incoming trams, cars, etc. The girls and women were all very fancily dressed, hair done just so, and covered in makeup. Made me feel like even more of a slob.

After that, I hopped on the tram to get to the stadium. The Metrolink, as they called it, is like an older version of Portland's MAX light rail. The inside was steel gray with bright orange paint that had seriously flaked off. It reminded me of movies about life in prison. The Metrolink seemed to serve primarily very old people, and Japanese tourists who wanted to see Old Trafford. I really don't think there was a person under the age of 80 on that tram that didn't get off at the stadium.

You (whoever you are) are probably not very interested in the stadium itself. If you (again, whoever you are) are unaware of Old Trafford, it's where Manchester United play soccer. The tour was pretty neat though for someone who's watched a whole lot of English soccer but has never seen these places in person. OT hold just under 77,000, which means it has ten thousand more seats than the next biggest stadium I've ever been to - Qwest field in awful Seattle - but seemed smaller than the place. No matter where we walked in the stadium the view of the pitch was perfect and everything seemed close, as opposed to Qwest which seems like a cavern (probably this is because last time I was there those snobby fans up who wouldn't support a lower division team only had 1,500 people in the stadium and the only ones making noise were those of us in the visitors' section) and it's nearly impossible to see the goal on the far side. The tour group went through the locker room and the players' lounge as well as the players' tunnel. I have to admit, the last part was pretty cool, walking out towards the pitch and imagining the home crowd RIGHT THERE. I was however, unimpressed with ticket prices. No wonder Man Utd fans get called the Prawn Sandwich Brigade. Actual humans couldn't ever afford to go there and I suspect that tour is as close to attending a game as I'll ever get. Oh well, there's always cable TV.

That evening I spent a great deal of time walking in circles through the streets because I evidently left my sense of direction in Portland (or maybe Atlanta). At the end of it, I did manage to pick up a cell phone and a sandwich, so that was something at least. I barely made it to a reasonable bed time before passing out at eight.... and waking up again at midnight (roommates back from the club), one (more roommates), two, two-thirty... and so on until it was finally six or so. Then it was on to Glasgow!