Nervous American, Abroad

Amsterdam: "Whoa! Hookers!"

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 17:57:29 -0400

I was oddly fascinated with the ladies standing in the red-curtained “window brothels” of Amsterdam’s red-light district. Not like I haven’t seen prostitutes before — Madrid’s crudely nicknamed “Calle de las Putas” was within walking distance from my apartment, after all. But these women looked like they should be in lad mags, they were so glossily done-up in their crazy underwear and big hair and boobs. Standing behind the glass, they also oddly recalled the Barbie dolls I opened on Christmas morning as a child, except these ladies were life-sized and they moved around and had sex for money. Barbie had many professions, but never went in for sex work, as far as I knew.

As a polite Midwesterner, I felt that staring would be rude, so I just kept sneaking glances as I walked down the street. My boyfriend, walking at my side, sensed it would be bad form to check out hookers whilst strolling with his lady, and so gallantly kept his eyes on the sidewalk.

I understand Amsterdam is a wild place; I really wouldn’t know. Being with a significant other is lovely, but it also makes you a much more boring person. With my girlfriends I’m sure I’d have partied all hours. But with my boyfriend, the two of us became fairly lame. Going to clubs in the red-light district seemed like a rather silly thing to do. A pair of monogamous nerds, nervously wandering about the town in their sensible shoes and eyeglasses? Eh…

Instead, we ate stroopwafels (little caramel-waffle treats, the best things ever), drank lots of good beer, had some hearty, stick-to-your-ribs Dutch foods, among other things. Another fantastic free walking tour, where we learned about the city’s outdoor urinals, its history as a freewheeling place, its mysterious, mammarian artworks:

In case you can’t tell: that’s a disembodied hand, rounding second base.

If you DO want to do some lame tourist things in Amsterdam when you go, prepare for long lines. We waited about 90 minutes for the (very good) Van Gogh Museum, and never did make it to the Anne Frank House — the lines were easily two hours long, which I understand is quite typical. If you go, I would recommend purchasing the Amsterdam card, in which you pay a flat fee and get a ton of freebies and reduced-price offers — including free admission to many museums - but, more importantly, you get to line-jump ahead of all the schmucks who aren’t carrying one. We had opted not to, figuring we wouldn’t use it very much, but if you’ve got the time, it’s probably a good idea.

Amsterdam has an amazing assortment of weird museums, none of which I managed to go see: The sex museum, obviously, and the marijuana & hemp museum, a fluorescent art museum, a smoking pipe museum, and museums of spectacles, of purses, of watches & clocks, of medical oddities…. too bad, really, because I adore museums. Guess I need to go back?

A canal at night.

Amsterdam is called “the Venice of the north,” but our tour guide said it actually has more canals than Venice. Fun fact.

Amsterdam also has a lot of bikes, as you might have heard - many of them, perhaps unsurprisingly, end up in the canals. The city employs boats to trawl the waters, dredging up tons of submerged bikes every year. They also haul up tiny cars, which bikers sometimes toss into the canals under cover of night - these micro-cars, no bigger than golf carts, are legally allowed to occupy bike lanes. They go quite slowly. Bikers do not approve of this. Thus, into the canals they go. Not sure how often it happens, but, apparently it’s a thing.

The Dutch, although generally a very nice people, do seem to be quite brusque. Bicyclists in Amsterdam will indeed run you over; so will the trams. That’s something to be aware of, if you’re super high and not paying attention. Or if you’re nerdily snapping photos. Whatever, really.

Chapter 3: Everybody takes off their clothes, but they feel kinda weird about it.

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 12:02:00 -0500

Sometimes in life, you find yourself in a Turkish bathhouse, yelping and skittering away as a Turkish woman tries to disrobe you in front of your friends. It happens to the best of us.

And in retrospect, I really should have seen it coming. To explain: We three travelers obviously wanted to experience a real Turkish bath — it’s a huge part of the culture, as these bathhouses have been around for centuries. Also, weeks on the road had left us with a feeling of persistent griminess. We all felt the need for a good wash.

These bathhouses work a bit like a spa. First you go for some sauna time, then an attendant scrubs you from head to toe with soft soap, and then you go for a soak in the bathhouse’s tubs. The bathhouses are large tiled rooms dotted with faucets and pools, and ours was mostly underground, so it had a coolly sheltered feel to it (photos were generally not allowed, which I understand).

My friends and I knew we’d be unclothed for our scrub, but for some reason we figured we’d have, I don’t know, a bit more privacy? Like we’d be alone with our designated scrubber, behind some partition or something. Clearly, we’d forgotten where we were.

It happens sometimes on the road, where you catch yourself thinking things like: “Why is there no safety railing here? Or, Why is there no sign marking the bus stop? Why is this shop closed? Why are all these people naked?

The answer to all those questions is the same: Because you’re in Southern Europe.

After we checked in, we stashed our clothes in our individual little changing rooms and emerged in our towels. We next went to hang out in our sauna, guided by a cheery Turkish woman who spoke no English and wore a bikini (she did work in a bathhouse, remember, so the bikini made sense. On the street the women often wore multiple layers of long clothes, even in the heat, but here they all hung out in swimsuits.)

After we marinated in the sauna for awhile, the lady beckoned us out, and she immediately went for my towel and tried to whip it right off me. Right there, in front of my friends! I was greatly alarmed.

I hate to wreck anybody’s image of typical girls’ locker room behavior, but, in the U.S. at least, most girls don’t just hang out naked in front of their friends. We all casually saunter behind stalls or just try to keep it as modest as possible. So the idea of just like, hangin’ out and whatnot, all unclothed, in front of my friends, was an idea I was not ready for.

On pure reflex, I darted away. In her bikini, the Turkish lady gave chase, shouting “Wait!” at me in Spanish (they get a lot of Spanish tourists there; she had apparently never bothered to learn the English).

I danced around, clutching at my towel, while my friends were similarly being accosted by an unsmiling middle-aged woman in a one-piece swimsuit who had very little patience for our (my) foolishness. My friends weren’t crazy about the situation either, but they handled their disrobing with much better grace — trying to maintain some modesty, but also staring and laughing at me as I batted the Turkish woman away. They told me that they would have averted their eyes, except I was making such a spectacle of myself that it was impossible not to watch.

So here’s a lesson: When a Turkish bath-house employee wants you to get naked in front of people, just play it cool, man.

***

It must have seemed very strange to these local women, when you consider it. Here we Western-type chicks think nothing of strolling around on the streets in what must seem to be outrageously skimpy summer dresses, but there, in the privacy of the bathhouse, surrounded by female attendants, we were squawking and protesting.

Eventually we did just get over it. I surrendered my towel, got doused with giant puffs of soap, and the lady put on these gloves that look like giant oven mitts and got to scrubbing, taking off loopy strings of dead skin in the process. It’s oddly fascinating and sort of gross, seeing all these lumps as they get sloughed off. It didn’t hurt, either, just felt like a sort of pleasant massage. I felt like a dog, getting a highly efficient wash from an impatient owner. And I emerged feeling, indeed, far softer and cleaner than I’d started out.

And then my friends and I rendezvoused in one of the big tubs and all had a good laugh. Totally worthwhile experience. But yeah, I was pretty quick to grab that towel and put it on again.

Istanbul, part two

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:01:43 -0500

Haunted places around the city center.

The Hagia Sophia

From the outside, the Hagia Sophia isn’t much to look at. But the interior? It feels gorgeously haunted — faded walls of ashy grey, dozens of iron chandeliers, a kind of decrepit grandeur over everything. As you walk, the eyes of old icons stare down at you from the walls. During our visit, the mid-morning light filtered in with a dreamy golden quality and the heat seemed to mute everything. It was one of my favorite spots.

The Hagia Sophia has seen a lot of stuff in its day, being torn down and remade with every major change here. Starting out as an Eastern Orthodox Basilica in 306, it burned down a couple times, as these things always do. But presiding rulers always re-built.

After Constantinople became Muslim Istanbul, the place became a mosque. Then the first Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, turned it into a museum.

(Ataturk is a true giant of history, by the way. His rule as a general and statesman pretty much molded modern Turkey out of the old Ottoman Empire. And yet I’d never heard of the guy before going there. In school I was too busy learning about World War II those four or five times, I guess)

The Basilica Cistern

Not a satanic lair, although that would have been my first guess.

Ancient Muslim people were assiduous cistern-builders. Clean water, and bathing in general, were very big for them. Christians appear to have been more content with their own filth, and didn’t really take the time to lay down the infrastructure.

An impressive legacy of this religious preference for fresh, flowing water: 1) gorgeous fountains, as one finds in the Alhambra in Spanish Granada, and 2) old cisterns for water storage under Istanbul and quite a few in other places, including, again, Spain.

They’re all hushed, cool, and damp-smelling without being dank … most of them, anyway. This one was originally an old basilica during the Byzantium days, and was a water source until only a few decades ago. Currently it is the home of many fat fish that swim and splash lazily in the dark water, as well as a cheesy photo booth at the entrance where you can dress like a belly dancer or Ottoman warrior.

Oh, and Wikipedia says it’s been featured in the Bond movie From Russia with Love, and Assassin’s Creed! Neither of which I have seen.

The Grand Bazaar

Speaking of Bond, Daniel Craig was in a high-speed chase through the Grand Bazaar in that rad opening scene in Skyfall. I was doubly thrilled, as I had been there!

It pretty much looks like this photo I got from the Guardian except with less Daniel Craig and more of me overpaying for jewelry.

This picture I did take — spices from the Bazaar.

Whatever tourist stuff you want, it’s there. The bazaar is many, many hallways of trinkets, furniture, food and of course, jewelry. The shopkeeps are pretty vocal about trying to attract your attention or sell you something, but it’s more amusing than annoying.

The Blue Mosque

A view from the outside. It was built in the 17th century, so it’s still the “new” mosque, compared to the Hagia Sophia.

From the inside…

I’m so accustomed to churches, it’s strange to be in a major house of worship like this. No pews or statues or images, just the lovely fugue of repeated scrollwork covering the walls, and hundreds of people kneeling and reciting in worship inside on the wide open floor.

Tourists come and go outside the mosque as the faithful worship inside.

Speaking of the Muslim faith, we happened to be visiting during the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan is a roaming holiday, and it happened to be in July/August of 2012… which, then you think about it, is horrible luck. Adherents cannot eat from sunup to sundown, so that’s roughly from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., according to timeanddate.com. That’s a long time to go without so much as a snack. And here I am, a Catholic on the verge of Lent, who is already dreading the Ash Wednesday fast. And our “fast” still allows for some light nibbling throughout the day. Not really that hardcore, although I’ll be whining about it plenty loudly come Wednesday.

One good thing about the Ramadan fast (other than the spiritual benefits) is the sunset meal, which is a vast, chummy communal event for many Muslim people. The green spaces near the Blue Mosque, for example, were packed with picnicking families at 8 p.m. every night, enormous platters of delicious-smelling food at hand. And right at sundown, everybody was feasting happily, together.

Google translate tells me this means “Religious morality is.” Gotta work some kinks out of that, it seems.

NEXT TIME: Turkish baths. Things …get awkward.

ISTANBUL (PART ONE)

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 22:32:00 -0500

A city so big, it requires an all-caps blog title.

In part one, we arrive. Things go sorta badly.

At this point in our journey, we had clocked in about three weeks on the road — three weeks of getting lost and awkwardly asking for directions, of cramming ourselves into tiny hostels, of trying not to slip on donkey poo. We’d fallen asleep in public parks, we’d desperately dashed — luggage thudding with every step — to catch the ferry on time. We zealously over-applied sunscreen. We had an awesome time.

So as we headed to our last stop, Istanbul, we were feeling pretty confident about things. One more city? No problem! Congratulatory high-fives all around.

Istanbul, it turns out, was not a city we should have taken for granted.

Some pertinent information:

FACT #1) Istanbul is big. Holy bejeezus, is it ever. At 13.9 million residents, give or take, it’s the largest metropolitan area in Europe. And it is apparently required that, several times a day, every citizen must go out, get in their car, and enthusiastically jam at once onto the streets and honk loudly at each other.

FACT #2) All those people gotta live somewhere: Istanbul is quite sprawly. And its mass-transit system is — surprisingly for a city of its size and sophistication — really terrible. NPR recently reported that their subway system (such as it is) often faces work delays because every time crews try to dig more tunnels they run into more artifacts (that link, for example, talks about running across an entire fleet from ancient Byzantium)

I imagine it’s like, “Boss, got some more priceless treasures over here!” they holler to the foreman, who busts out of his trailer in a fury of swears, and then angrily calls his guy over at city hall to tell him the news. Then everybody takes off their hard-hats and goes to, I don’t know, smoke a hookah and drink some strong coffee or something. Whatever it is Turkish construction workers do on their leisure time.

The point is, Istanbul’s subway system is broken up into fragments — there’s a tram, a proper metro, some random underground train, a regular train, Charon’s ferry on the River Styx, the path to Mordor, I don’t even know. Look at a map of this thing. What I’m saying is, it’s very complex.

One might even call it … Byzantine?**

Ahem. Which leads us to…

FACT #3) We had a rousingly unsuccessful arrival into the city.

We were staying a couple nights at a friend’s apartment, and getting there from the airport proved… difficult. We took the subway into the city as far as we could, hoping to save money, and then hopped in a cab. We wrote down our address and gave it to the cabbie, who assured us that he knew of our destination. But after 45 minutes sitting in traffic, punctuated by furious bursts of driving in the wrong direction, it turned out that no, he had no earthly idea where we were going.

My friend Samantha called her friend (our host), who burned up many euros of precious time on Samantha’s phone card to laboriously explain things to our cabbie. We finally arrived, about an hour after getting into the cab.

Do I need to mention we were sweaty and sleep-deprived for all of this? At this point, you should just be assuming that yes, we were.

END PART ONE. Next up: Some touring! Underground cisterns, cruising the Bosphorus River, and those mosques you always see in movies that are set in Istanbul.

Like this one:

**FOOTNOTE (for people who hang out on the internet a lot).

Cappadocia. I pretended to be Indiana Jones.

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:51:00 -0500

Except, regrettably, I did not fight any Nazis. But on the plus side, there were no Nazis here to fight, which I think we can all acknowledge as a positive.

Old pigeon coops, carved high in the rocks.

Some crazy friggin’ rocks. Plus some abandoned homes and coops carved up in there.

For tourists, Turkey has stunning beaches and one hell of a capital city to visit. But plenty of countries have beaches and historic cities: What they don’t have is Cappadocia.

This region, smack in the middle of the country, is a windswept plain marked by amazing rock formations that look sort of like the badlands of South Dakota, but with the addition of “fairy chimneys” — spiked rocks molded by volcanic activity and other peculiar geological forces. But for added awesomeness, these rocks are soft enough to carve up, and have been inhabited over the centuries.

Views of Goreme, where we stayed.

We arrived there half-delirious — this time from lack of sleep, not heat. A lot of our arrivals were made in a haze of confusion and extreme fatigue, but Cappadocia was one of the worst. We’d taken a night bus there, riding from about midnight to 7 a.m.-ish or so, jolting through the Turkish countryside, unable to sleep as the bus rattled along. The big red digital clock hanging at the front of the bus glowed through the dark, and I watched the hours scrape by. Two o’clock… 2:25 a.m…. 2:40 … 3 a.m….My head hurt. My eyeballs were like sandpaper.

But then we arrived, just as the sun was coming up, and our bleary eyes beheld:

and:

We spent a lot of time wandering around various cities on this voyage, taking in the scenes. But nowhere was quite like Cappadocia.

And, you’ll notice, hot-air ballooning is the preferred tourist activity of the place. It was obviously on our to-do list, although first we had to stagger our way to the hostel — and yes, sit around and wait for a few hours before it opened/our rooms were ready. Again.

The Balloons

They’re pricey, but well worth it. You call around to find a good company, and can take your pick from a range of options. The cheaper ones put something like 25 people in a single, huge basket, while the top-of-the-line ones put you in a smaller one where you aren’t jostling with everybody to get a good view — but, obviously, are much more expensive.

We aimed for the mid-range, putting us in a basket with about a dozen people in it. Among them was a tiny Italian child who was interested for about 10 minutes before he crouched in a corner of the basket and went back to playing with his phone or whatever thing kids play with nowadays. (Speaking of, remember when Gameboy was a thing? That was such a huge deal, getting to play Nintendo whilst out and about. But I digress).

To back up: The tour companies pick you up from your hostels well before sunrise. We were lucky to have a clear, calm morning. They first fed us breakfast, then drove us to the balloon site, where we got to watch the men use large, impressive flame throwers to inflate the balloon. We clambered aboard and our pilot cheerfully explained how to brace ourselves if the landing was bumpy and the basket toppled on its side.

He also made a few droll jokes. Example: “Is this your first balloon ride? Oh, mine too.”

WHOA WITH THE JOKES, SMARTGUY.

….Also hey, look how freckly I was! Oh my. I write this in January in Massachusetts, where the sun does not shine. How very melancholy.

These hot air rides are generally extremely safe; there was one recent incident, however, when a British tourist fell to his death after his balloon was clipped by another. Being there, you can understand how it happens as the skies above Cappadocia fill up with a herd of balloons every morning. Safety is obviously a huge issue, so you hope that kind of horrifying accident will never happen again.

Because, yes, it’s great. Such a strange and beautiful way to pass an hour, rising smoothly into the air and drifting around above the stunning landscape. Accompanied by other balloons in the sky, you get to see the sun come up and feel the cool air on your face, and see the ground far below.

Ahhhhhhhh.

We landed smoothly and safely. No crash-landing crouch required.

The caves:

Another tourist must: going on a tour of the underground city (Oh yes, underground cities. So, so rad).

Early Christians, to hide from the persecution of Romans, dug hives of living quarters underground complete with defensive fortifications and traps — twisting tunnels and surprise holes that made it really easy to pick off enemy soldiers as they crawled or stumbled inside one-by-one. They’re not the most ornate of caves, however, so while they’re impressive to behold, don’t expect, like, elaborate living quarters.

The outdoor carve-outs are somewhat more fun to scamper around in.

Long-ago Christians carved large places of worship in the sides of the rocks, painting them with tempera paint (where the yolk from pigeon eggs, for example, comes in handy). We arranged a tour through our hostel and got carted up to a particularly amazing site, which basically had a multi-level cathedral hewn straight out of the rock.

What the what?

Check me out here, wearing my super-rad jean shorts … I miss those things. RIP, jorts. I donated them to a charity back in Madrid, although I’m pretty sure even the most impoverished Madrileña would refuse to wear them.

Anyway… the pictures don’t nearly do it justice. The place was obviously crawling with tourists so it was actually hard to get a photo snapped off without getting some random dude meandering into the shot, but it was still delightful, full of breathless moments. I swear, tons of my favorite old-school YA adventure novels were set in places like this. I may have to go back here someday.

Travel Information:

As I mentioned, we took a bus here, although there is a tiny airport that also services the area (and which, if you have the funds, I would recommend).

Our lodgings were Rock Valley Pansion in Goreme, which is an amazing hostel and I highly recommend it. Very Turkish in flavor, with be-rugged communal sitting areas and a little bar/breakfast room with tasty, tasty foods, this is like the platonic ideal of “hostel.” Its common areas promote the kind of inter-guest chats and friendly conversations that make hostels far superior to hotels in terms of making friends or sharing travel tips. The staff is extremely helpful, and it has a pool.

Of course, our un-air conditioned room got pretty stifling (Cappadocia is far, far cooler than our other stops, but still), and you have to share a few bathrooms with a lot of people. But, eh. Such is life in a hostel.

Antalya, Turkey. If there was AC, we were all over it.

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:11:00 -0500

Turkish adventures continue…

Approaching in our un-air conditioned bus, Antalya loomed pretty large on the horizon. It’s a big town, with a giant main street of cinderblock buildings and endless cheap-looking shops at ground level. It’s all functional, and not terribly pretty. But the old town, as Old World old-towns usually are, is lovely.

It was here that we had our worst time finding the hostel. The shuttle pulled away, leaving us instantly confused as to where we were. A nice Turk saw our confusion, and (as Turks are wont to do) gave us directions, which we tried — unsuccessfully — to follow.

So it went like this: Every time as we pulled out maps, some nearby lounging Turk, with a vaguely Arabian-Nights accent, would inquire, “where are you going?” They always knew of our hostel, and always gave us directions — we would trudge a bit, then promptly get lost. In sweaty despair, we would pull out the map again and have another Turk holler at us.

But, find the hostel we did!

This is not our hostel. It is some Roman ruins at the entrance to the old city, which are prettier than our hostel.

Antalya’s old city is compact, easily explorable in a day. Fascinating little shops full of Arabian-styled goods, along with mysterious corners, old wooden buildings and stone towers. You can promenade along this old stone fortification looking out onto the water, and see the lights of the city slung around the harbor. Antalya has great restaurants, too, although we were lured into the first one solely because they had air conditioning. Seriously, the guy in the entrance (whose job it was to lure people in) just looked at us and called, “We have air conditioning!” which was all we needed to hear.

They blared what seemed like the Turkish version of schmaltzy 1970s love ballads at us the whole meal, but they were cheap and I was famished, so, meh.

One regret — we needed more time in Antalya. Just a few hours’ ride outside the city is a ton of extra stuff, like old ruins and amazing landscapes. If you go, maybe give yourself an extra day to roam outside the city.

Gorgeous lamps everywhere. I wanted one, but it surely would have broken during our travels.

But we spent our brief time there well. We were lucky enough to nab a spot at this postage stamp-sized beach that’s only accessible if you walk through this particular restaurant that hides the beach from view. I never would have guessed it was open to ruffians like us, but you can pay a few Turkish lire for a chair practically in the water.

Our hostel was Sabah Pansiyon, a very, very Turkish place with open-air courtyards and areas with rugs and pillows, ideal for smoking a hookah. Well-located, although, obviously, sometimes difficult to find. Breakfast is free, so you can eat the traditional cheese and olives, with decent coffee, to your heart’s content. Our four-bedroom dorm was tiny, though, which was irritating, and the nearest bathrooms were across the courtyard, up a staircase, and through the shared kitchen.

Another thing about Turkish bathrooms — we found that, often, there is no designated “shower” as such. Just a showerhead jutting out of the wall, which sprays out at will, splashing over the toilet and besoggy-ing the toilet paper. It wasn’t so bad at Sabah, because the showerhead was a ways away from the toilet/sink area, but it wasn’t always so comfortably far. Kinda awkward. Glad I had my shower shoes.

Next, on to Cappadocia! You’ll like this one.

Sneak preview

We arrive in Turkey; Marmaris

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 21:33:00 -0500

When the Blue Mosque shows up in movies now (Skyfall, Taken 2), I elbow the person next to me, nod at the screen and say, “Ya know, not to brag… but I’ve been there.” And then sit back in my seat, quite satisfied with myself.

Culture Clashes

Turkey straddles the line between Europe and Asia, and a few cultural differences immediately stand out. Observation No. 1: Most conversations with Turkish people end in sweaty, awkward confusion. The Turks have three basic levels of English-speaking ability.

No English. You just speak English at them, helplessly, and they speak Turkish at you, amusedly. You wear a look of deep chagrin.

A few key words of English: Like “bus,” and “6 o’clock!” but that is all. Vital context is inevitably missing, so you make nervous noises like, “ahhhhhh,” and repeat one-word questions at them, like, “Here?” or “Cost?” You look helplessly at your friends, who shrug. You concentrate very hard on hand signals and hope to divine their meaning. You wear a look of deep chagrin.

Intermediate-level, conversational English: The Turks often don’t speak great English, but they absolutely do not care. They press on, with flamboyant abandon, as they butcher the language in an attempt to sell you things or give you directions.

About this — Turkish men love to give directions to tourists! They friggin’ love it. Can’t get enough of it. Are these directions accurate? Not always!

Actually, we have no way of knowing for sure. Maybe the fault wasn’t with the directions, just that the city was a damn nightmare to navigate. A charming, exotic, frustrating nightmare.

Who can follow directions when steps No. 3 and 4 are something like, “Is a small street. Go to small street! There is the wood door, you go right. Not the wood door, wrong.” Oh… kay? Sir, this intersection has eight streets branching off of it, and every door is made of wood. And it is so hot I am sweating out my actual brain cells. The air is a boiling stew. I am dying right now.

In tourist-heavy areas, particularly in Istanbul, the storefronts are lined with men (and they are always men) whose job it is to cajole passers-by into their restaurants or shops. They always have some witty, jovial quip, some (usually) good-natured back-and-forth. And again, that cheerful disregard for the niceties of English, which is funny and occasionally endearing.

Of course, there are some interesting gender dynamics at play here. Women can be seen walking down the street (often in long skirts and coats, with headscarves, even in the blazing heat), but not always. But you almost never see women working at the shops or restaurants. Always a waiter, never a waitress.

And some of the men’s comments to women tourists take the form of borderline-insulting catcalls — but then, my summer dresses must look extremely slutty to them, especially relative to the Turkish women nearby. I wish that didn’t entitle them to make assumptions about my activities, but that seems unavoidable.

At the spice market, Istanbul

Marmaris

Our first stop, however, was very un-traditional. Marmaris was a fishing village not too long ago, but its perfect beaches were an irresistible lure for tourists and developers. Now it’s all beaches and clubs — crazy, loud clubs.

Sorry it’s a poorly constructed shot, it’s the only one I have that wasn’t just a blur of lights and flames. Things were hectic in there.

Along the Marmaris waterfront is an enormous line of bars and restaurants. One street over, is an enormous line of clubs. No cover charge at any of them, and a lot of Europe’s favorite dance hits blaring. A pretty wild scene, and great if you love the Euro-party vibe.

We only had one night there, so we chilled out with hookahs and mojitos before hitting the clubs. And yeah. Drinks and whatnot. Music. You know, clubs.

We rushed off to Antalya the very next day, but I must tell you about our hostel in Marmaris — Maltepe Pension.

As it happens, we ran into our hostel proprietor almost as soon as we landed in Turkey (some ticket agent pointed him out to us… we are unsure if the hostel owner just hangs out at the ferry station or what, but like I said; Turkish conversations are bewildering sometimes. Best just to let it be).

The proprietor told us how to get to the hostel, and then said, with a very serious look —

“As soon as you arrive, you will see my sister. You will know her because she is very very fat.”

Us: “Oh!… uh…sure?”

Him, with an air of sadness: “No, really. She is the fattest in Turkey. Second-fattest in Europe. You will feel sorry for her when you see her, she is so fat. She is my sister.”

This went on for awhile, with us trying to duck the topic of his sister’s obesity, and him bringing it up again, assuring us we would be horrified.

So we showed up to the hostel, where the proprietor sat us down and gave us apple tea (common in Turkey, very tasty), and eventually showed us his “sister.”

Gleefully, he presented us with the following:

Yep, pretty fat.

It was the guy’s little joke — I don’t know how he arrived at her ranking as “fattest in Turkey, second-fattest in Europe,” but I can attest that this is one large cat.

So if you stay here (and you should, it’s perfectly nice for a cheap joint), it might be strange, but you will not encounter Johnny Depp’s mom from “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” The cat is pretty interesting to see, though, especially when it decides to hoist itself up for a walk. Thing is like a fur-covered whiskey barrel with legs.

More Greeks!

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:39:59 -0400

We arrived on the sunny shores of Kos at 7 a.m., when the streets were deserted except for the last lingering drunk people, walking home from the clubs.

We had taken an overnight ferry, leaving Santorini at about 1 a.m. I had pushed two chairs together and slept for a few hours, jolting up to defensively clutch at my purse every half-hour or so. By morning we were tired; it was very hot. Our room wouldn’t be ready until the afternoon, so we stashed our bags and stumbled around sweatily for several hours. I have never been so happy to get to a hotel room.*

*I should say “at that point.” Antalya, Turkey, had not yet happened.

Kos is a tourist/beach/club town. Kitschy souvenir shops, a few trendy clubs, lots of British and Dutch people hanging out. Kind of a kick to see the old Roman ruins (yes, Roman — they conquered the Greeks), and ancient walls and fortresses, plopped in the middle of tacky touristville.

But my favorite bit? Renting a bike and getting outside the city. You go pedaling down the rural roads, coasting through long stretches of fields and trees as the insects hum, with the ocean popping in and out of view. You bike, then beach, then bike and beach again. It’s a fine way to live.

It is super pleasant. Also the roads are blessedly flat.

The promenade in Kos. Lots of boat tours, but we mostly stayed by the shore and ate yogurt.

Then, the ferry to Rhodes.

Rhodes is best-known for its Colossus, which no longer exists and nowadays we’re not even sure where it was located. It was 107 feet tall, constructed around 280 B.C., but an earthquake knocked it down only about 50 years later.

Now, Rhodes is the usual warren of twisting ancient streets, but with a decidedly Middle-Eastern flavor. Indeed, it was owned by Muslims on a few occasions. Rhodes has changed hands quite a few times — our old friends, the Knights Hospitallier, owned it for a couple centuries before losing it to the Ottoman Empire in 1523. They merely relocated to Malta, as I discussed here, where they would eventually have a re-match with the Ottomans in a crazy bloodbath.

What does this mean for tourists like us? That Rhodes is pretty packed with culture: Ancient Greeks, ancient Arabs, Medieval Christian knights, Ottoman Turks, all serving as a backdrop for present-day Greeks’ excellent food and hospitality.

Inside Rhodes’ archaeology museum. The artifacts are cool enough, but the building itself is really the best part.

The gloomy palace, where it’s pretty easy to envision knights striding grimly down the hallways.

Elli Beach was one of my favorite beaches, solely on the basis of that random diving board right there.

At night the streets and plazas are packed with tourists roaming around the shops and restaurants. The shopping was good in Rhodes — even I was tempted to buy stuff.

My tour of Europe seemed to have two major historical themes: The clash of Christians versus Muslims, and the horrific scars of World War II. It seems like no matter where I went, there were memorials to the Nazis’ victims, and Rhodes was sadly no exception. It had once seen a thriving Jewish population — the descendants of Jewish people expelled from Spain, as it happens — who had their own unique culture and language. Now that culture is preserved lovingly by the island’s now-smaller Jewish population. If you can, you really should check out the synagogue/museum that, in part, stands as a memorial to those people who died or fled. It’s a little hard to find (most things are in Rhodes, it seems), but well worth it.

Also well worth seeing: the ancient ruins. We got to check out an old temple ruin in the hills above the city. It wasn’t the most elaborate structure, but we visited around sunset, and it was pretty great to wander around the almost-deserted park area in the fading light.

Lodging information:

Kos Bay Hotel: Kos is a fairly expensive place to stay, so if you’re going, this is a decent bet. The location seems a bit sketchy, as you have to pass by a few run-down structures to get there, but it’s clean and safe. Our bathroom was private to our room, but it did not have a shower curtain. Our beds were nice, but they were crammed three to a room that was clearly only meant to fit two. So… eh. At least the service was good.

Mango Rooms in Rhodes: A very cramped private room/bathroom, but the AC was powerful and the location was really good for the price. Also right above a really cool bar/restaurant. But then, all the food on Rhodes was pretty great, so you can’t miss there.

Greece: Riding an angry donkey*

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:53:00 -0400

*Not a euphemism

The island of Santorini

The Parthenon, Athens

Greece can be a tough country to do on a budget — despite the ongoing financial crisis there, it ain’t cheap. Or it wasn’t in July 2012, anyway. Many of those islands are spaced far from each other, and we were at the mercy of the ferry schedules and prices, which are high. We managed to hit four stops: Athens, Santorini, Kos, Rhodes.

At this remove, what do I remember about Greece? Sun-washed beaches, blue sea, poetically craggy landscape. Yes. And most importantly, food. The overflowing pitas, stuffed with meats! The Greek salads! They are exactly as we make a “Greek salad” in the U.S., but it’s better there because the ingredients are just fresher, it seems, and have more flavor. And the feta, good lord, the feta. Greece transportation and lodging can be expensive, but the food is cheap.

Speaking of cheap — if you have a student ID, access to all historical sites is free. Glorious.

And that’s lucky, because it costs 12 euros to get into the Parthenon in Greece. Although I understand the great importance of the site, to the naked eye… it’s really a few dusty pillars swarming with tourists. That’s sorta what you get. The new, gleaming museum at the base of the hill — which we also got into for free — is actually cooler to look at. All the well-preserved artifacts are in there, along with some good explanations about the place and the people. Also, air conditioning and no dust blowing in your face.

But the floors are made of glass, so if you’re wearing a skirt just know that the people on the level below you can see right on up there. Just a note of caution, ladies. And I guess also American gentlemen who favor loose shorts.

The city of Athens is not especially beautiful, but the tourist/central shopping district is fun to wander around in after you’ve seen the city’s historic spots. You want some sandals? They got sandals. Boy, do they. Also sea-sponges to use as loofahs, Grecian-style dresses, and enough tacky graphic t-shirts to clothe everybody’s embarrassing dads and white-trash cousins for years to come. They also have frozen yogurt aplenty in Athens, but, this being Greece, they do it better: GREEK frozen yogurt. Thick Greek yogurt, that is also fro-yo. Wrap your brain around that for a second.

The protests against economic austerity had calmed down during our stop in Athens — the most we saw of it was extra gun-toting guards around government buildings. Obviously that changed when autumn came back, but summertime seemed to be a breather for protesters.

Athens only requires about a day of sightseeing, then it’s off island-hopping. We headed to Santorini.

Sunset-watching is a major event on the island.

Santorini has a distinctive color scheme. Not all buildings look like this, but clearly there are enough to be charming.

What to do on Santorini? Beaches, obviously. And clearly, you’re going to wander the narrow, sloping streets and join the crowds along the hillside to watch the sunsets. But I barely even need to mention such things. What I should mention, however, is that you need to 1) rent an ATV and 2) ride some donkeys.

Rent an ATV and just zip along the roads to different beaches or lookout points. You have the roar of the engine in your years as breathtaking views whip by. And nothing says “Tourist: Out and proud” like riding an ATV in traffic while wearing a swimsuit. 24-hour rental will cost you something like 15-25 euros, depending.

Also, donkeys. If you happen to find yourself at the Old Port, and you hand 5 euros to the brusque, non-English-speaking Greek man corralling donkeys, he will lead one over, angrily direct you to the saddle, and as soon as you’re on there he’ll give the donkey a mighty slap on the rear and send it trotting, with you awkwardly hanging on, up the massive stone steps. You are now without a guide, on the back of an extremely irritable pack animal — one that keeps slipping on the giant piles of donkey poo that carpet its path.

About these steps from the Old Port — there are many hundreds of them, winding up a staggeringly high hillside to the village above. We had walked down them a few hours earlier, and ourselves did slip on donkey feces and risk getting kicked in the face by the many random herds of donkeys crowding the pathway.

An example of the herds that you must tiptoe through. They have a lot of these animals just hanging around.

Those steps go on FOREVER. So the ride up was, on balance, better than the walk down. But our donkeys were not friends with each other. Oh no. Mine kept lunging at my friend’s donkey, and I watched in great fear as hers craned its neck over and bit mine, hard, on the neck. This, while barreling quickly up those very steep steps. I had visions of our donkeys just deciding to throw down and have one of those up-on-hind-legs fighting moments and then losing their balance and falling/crushing my friend and I under our respective mounts. But instead I just scraped my knee. This happened when my donkey, veering past another animal with an air of great disgust, careened too close to a wall. I now have a nickel-sized scar on there. The kind of souvenir money cannot buy.

Once we were safely dismounted, we agreed it was hilarious and fun and that we probably weren’t going to do it again for awhile. Still, I do recommend it. I don’t know your life, but donkey-riding opportunities do not just grow on trees so you’d better take advantage.

Lodging info:

In Athens, we had the great fortune to stay with a couch-surfing host, who was awesome.** A friend who’d stayed with him previously had recommended him to us, and similarly vouched that we were nice, trustworthy travelers. He gave us a tour our first night in town, and then we all got gyros and beers together. One of those ideal couchsurfing experiences that make for the best kinds of trips.

In Santorini, we stayed at a hostel/hotel but had an equally great experience (The Greeks, as far as we can tell, are just super nice people). If you’re in Santorini, you must try to stay at Pension Stella in Karterados. The lodgings are very nice, but it’s the proprietors who make it the best — George and Stella are amazing people who work overtime to help their guests. Just, stay with them, for real.

**If you’re unfamiliar, couchsurfing.org is a way to connect travelers. You put up a personal profile and say you’re either willing to host travelers, or looking for a spare couch to crash on in a particular city (You can send messages to people who have volunteered to host, and see if they can take you in). It’s like a lower-rent AirBnB, except I believe couchsurfing predates that site, and couchsurfing is free. Obviously you have to do your homework and make sure that your host/traveler is all above-board, has solid recommendations, doesn’t seem like a weirdo, etc., and I personally wouldn’t couchsurf alone, although lots of people do. As part of couchsurfing, it’s expected that you will hang out with your host/traveler, at least for part of the time. After all, part of the point is to meet people from other countries. Which is cool.

Croatia, part II: The injuries begin

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:35:00 -0400

I wanted to call this Croatia: First Blood, thus tying in a Rambo reference to a blog post that includes me sustaining minor cuts. But I figured it was a bit of a stretch.

Possibly the most distinctive, gorgeous part of this gorgeous country is the Plitvice Lakes National Park. This place is a damn wonderland.

Blue-green water, endless waterfalls, in the midst of a leafy forest of friggin magic. We spent half a day getting there, then we stayed two nights and spent an entire day bussing it back to the coast, all for maybe six hours’ hike in this park. But, yeah, it was worth it.

The interior of Croatia is forests and mountains and bears and whatnot, and in the middle is a particular series of lakes, fed by underwater streams and waterfalls. It’s created by some complex geological process that I read about and promptly forgot. But, you guys, it’s real pretty. Swimming is not allowed, and I understand why. With water this clear, I would have felt like I was befouling it just by getting in.

It’s like Narnia up there. (The books, that is — not the movies, which weren’t that great.)

Yes, the water is that clear.

Here I am at one of the lookout points, being enchanted.

Yep.

There isn’t much surrounding the park, which actually makes the place nicer and more laid-back. We found the one cheap restaurant near us, and stayed at a modest hostel. It was actually inside an apartment building, which in turn looked like a 1970s-era college dorm. In fact the village outside the park all pretty much looked like it was put up in the 1970s. Rapidly.

It’s a popular spot — we did encounter large crowds, but we really didn’t care. The place was so gorgeous, it was hard to be annoyed.

Then, onto Dubrovnik!

In case you’ve forgotten — or were too young/unborn to remember — Dubrovnik got smashed up pretty good in the early 90s. I won’t get into the crazy intricacies of the war (I tried to brush up on Croatian history, then I got confused and tired), but basically Croatia tried to declare independence from Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia objected. Bombed and burned, the city’s beautiful buildings and streets (not to mention the civilian population living there) suffered because of it.

The city has been cleaned up quite a bit — it actually looks shinier than many European capitals, precisely because much of it has been so recently fixed up. But the white stone streets are pocked with holes from the shelling, and every once in awhile there are other reminders: A sign outside a building, maybe, or the photos in the war museum or the odd gift-shop book documenting the period. It’s incredible, to look at the teeming tourist hordes, the beautiful streets and peaceful night sky, and compare it to photos from 1991.

But that was then: Now, Dubrovnik is quite popular, and rightly so.

Views looking into and over the old city.

Dubrovnik is a beautiful place to wander. The old city is a walled-in neighborhood perched right on the Mediterranean, surrounded by picturesque cliffs and the usual sapphire-blue waters. Plenty of old churches and statues (No European city lacks for churches and statues. Except maybe Amsterdam), but the real must-do is a walk around the top of the city walls. You pay admission to get up there, but you can wander however long you want, peering into the city and out to sea.

Tourists on the street. Actual Croatians are probably the minority during summer months.

Handily, the sea is quite accessible from the old town. One can also go sea-kayaking right from the cove by the main gate, although winds were too high for us to kayak during our trip. We consoled ourselves with seafood paella and a cold lager by the docks, and then, because it’s always best to go swimming after a ton of food and beer, we went to our next adventure: rock-jumping.

A five-minute walk from the docks, just outside the city walls, is a cluster of tall rocks. One can jump off of them quite safely (unless one is really stupid or unlucky). Although I can tell you, standing on the outcropping, looking far down and seeing the jagged underwater rocks at an indeterminate depth below you, does give you pause. Or maybe that’s only if you’re Nervous. As I am.

But I jumped! And survived, bones unbroken.

Jumping was fun. Getting back on shore was a challenge. Remember those high winds that prevented us from sea kayaking? They were still busy, whipping up those waves in a salty frenzy, and us in the choppy water got tossed around and raked over the rocks as we scrambled back from the water.

I saw this exact thing happen on Bay Watch, and it ended with David Hasselhof’s character breaking his back. I was gravely concerned.

Instead we just got cuts on our legs, feet and hands. And then a day later, those cuts got itchy-red and full of pus-like fluid, so I imagine some kind of algae-related infection? But nobody’s limbs or digits rotted and fell off, so that’s ok then.

I got off a quick shot of some kid jumping after the wind calmed down. It doesn’t even look very high, but it totally was, I promise. Also my friend Irene’s hand is in the shot, whoops.

Dubrovnik is also a lovely city on a warm night. Outdoor cafes, strolling ice-cream-lickers, brilliant lights. We spent a good hour or so just sitting by the port, people-watching and resting our feet.

If you hadn’t noticed, Dubrovnik is quite a hilly city. Not handicap-friendly.

Travel information:

For Plitvice, we stayed at Apartment Sanja. This, you will recall, was the simple one that felt like a baby boomer’s college dorm. But it has a full kitchen, is very well located for the price, and best of all, a really nice proprietor. When we got off at the wrong bus stop and called him, he drove over (his daughter in tow) to pick us up. He gave us excellent information for touring the park and was generally a super nice dude. The wifi didn’t work very well, but meh.

Family Stanos in Dubrovnik was similarly staffed by a super nice dude, who similarly lived in the place with his family. He poured us some traditional Croatian liqueur, gave us awesome recommendations, and showed us to our pretty, comfortable room. It’s outside the old city, and it’s a fair walk down (and then back up) many, many stone steps to get there, but cost was much lower and we didn’t much mind the exercise. For the hospitality, I’d say it was well worth it.

Croatia is so hot right now. Part I

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 18:59:00 -0400

Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Back in February, some friends asked me if I might want to join them in their summer travels to Croatia, Greece and Turkey. Would I like to come along? Oh no, sorry guys but I have to run along home. Let’s hurry up and end this marvelous year! I have to rush back and be unemployed.

Of course I went. I’m not nuts.

So from February onward, I and my two friends (an American and Canadian, respectively) would periodically gather to “travel plan”: Have a boozy dinner, get sorta buzzed and drop sizable amounts of money. Plane tickets, hostel bookings, ferry rides, etc, all had to be handled ahead of time. We are North Americans, after all, not a bunch of fly-by-night Australians, with their spontaneity and sense of adventure.

We had like a billion of these meetings. It’s tough to plan such an ambitious itinerary, especially when you are hitting up multiple regions and have to deal with Greece’s ferry schedule. And you don’t read Turkish.

I will skip explanations of why we picked the specific itineraries we did. We were constrained by time and a limited budget, but did everything we could. By the time we were to actually leave, we had a thick packet of printouts with information, reservation confirmations, bus schedules and the like. That paid off pretty well.

FIRST: Croatia.

Lonely Planet map of Croatia.

We flew into Dubrovnik on a 6:45 a.m. flight out of Madrid. From there we caught a nearly five-hour bus straight to the city of Split.

The countryside was green and gorgeous, the city was full of summer cocktail cafes and tourists stands. It was hotter than the devil’s undergarments. I had slept almost not at all; one cannot sleep when the bus driver is careening across mountains and slamming on his horn and brake, often simultaneously. I was, predictably, hungry. It was in this sweaty, confused state that we, for the first time of many, got off the bus, located a map, and wandered around until we found our hostel.

I feel that I cannot properly convey how hot it was in Split that day. Oh God… so sweaty. So, so sweaty. I had worn black hiking pants on the bus. This was a grave error. Southern Europeans, in summer, tend to wear as little as possible, and I found this a wise custom. I was to put those pants away and not put them on again.

Everything improved — again, for the first of many times — when we got inside and turned on the air conditioning.

But enough complaining. I should probably tell you about Croatia!

Split

The city of Split is the largest on the Dalmatian Coast.* It apparently started as a Greek colony, but it boomed when Emperor Diocletian picked it as the spot to build his palace in the 4th Century. The word “palace” in this sense is misleading — this is not a palace. This is a fortified, walled-in neighborhood of white stone streets, decked with ornate arches and dotted with vine-covered ruins. But it’s no museum. People live there. It is packed with restaurants and shops, and in the summer, lots of tourists.

*The coast is named after an ancient tribe that lived there, not the dog. The dog was named for the tribe, and we actually saw hardly any of them around.

Diocletian built it as his retirement home, but it was so big and sprawling it was home to thousands of people and a whole city sorta sprang up around it. The palace was a ruin after Romans abandoned it, but in the 7th century barbarians invaded — as barbarians often do — and the local population fled into the walls and took up residence. My Lonely Planet book says some of their descendants reside there to this day.

Example. Cheap dining, among the ruins.

The palace is also situated very close to a lovely promenade, and is within walking distance to a few public beaches. Warning: Get to these beaches early, before all the beach chairs are claimed. Because you’re gonna want some beach chairs.

I lament that I did not take a picture of the sand at this particular beach. But I could just throw some sand in a full ash tray and snap a photo; it would look quite similar. The sky was cloudless, the sea was crystal-blue — such a wholesome place! I don’t understand the compulsion to smoke in that environment, but there they were. I also don’t understand why absolutely everybody feels they can carry off wearing a two-piece, and, on a related note, I do not understand how the middle-aged people of Croatia develop stomachs of the size and firmness of a whole watermelon. Life is full of mysteries.

But — and this is true of every beach we visited — the water was amazing. Warm, green-blue, perfectly clear right down to the sandy sea floor as you tread water above.

The Blue Cave

Not all Lonely Planet guides are equal. The Croatian one perhaps needs some extra work. For example, one of the country’s “top experiences” according to the book, is visiting a cave off the coast that can be toured by boat. During much of the morning, the sun hits the inside so that the water reflects the light and fills the place with a brilliant, glowing blue. However the guide gives you zero idea as to how to get to this place.

We investigated extensively, and finally figured it out. We took a 90-minute ferry to another island (if I recall correctly), where we got on a 30-minute bus to the other side of this island, where we ran around until we found a tour that had room for us. Then it was another boat ride to another island. THEN we got in the boat that takes you to the cave. Then we had approximately five minutes of time before the boat turned around and left the cave. My photos are blurry. Sorry. There was very little time.

See how pretty? It was a sweet five minutes, at least.

The entrance of the cave. The boat captain makes you duck down to get in there, or your face will get scraped off.

The tour included dropping us off at a different island for more beach-time, but it was rather a lot of work to get there. Oh well.

There’s plenty more to see in the region, but we had to take off to our next stop!

Travel info for Split

We stayed at a place called Hostel Split, at Poljana Kneza Trpmira 1: About a 10-minute walk from the main promenade, comfortable beds and sweet, blessed air conditioning. I found the staff to be rather unsmiling, blunt-speaking people, but they were super nice. Americans tend to equate “unsmiling” with “rude,” but it is important to remember that it is not always so.

For food, we just grabbed slices of pizza from the ubiquitous pizza shops around Diocletian’s palace — being so close to Italy, Italian food figured prominently in Split. Even a few of the iffy-looking spots had surprisingly awesome slices. And coming from Madrid, where pizza isn’t as big a thing, made constant pizza-dinners pretty ok. But you can also find cheap (and correspondingly lower-quality) sit-down Italian meals by the ruins as well.

The ash-tray beach. Still quite nice, all things considered.

Home again! I don't even know what to do with myself.

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:55:00 -0400

I start this post in a manner quite similar to the way I started the entire blog: Bewildered, and sitting among piles of boxes and messy open suitcases. I am in Massachusetts. I am sorta tired. I am unemployed. I could use a snack.

There are some differences, however. Now, when I turn on Telemundo, I understand what is being said.

The sight of American currency is fascinating to me. It’s just so ugly, but in an appealing way.

When startled, I yelp “Ay!” instead of “Ah!”

I have surprised myself by getting a bit tan.

I had a busy summer, and there is much to tell. I will have blog posts on all the countries I visited: Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, Holland and Belgium. Plus a bonus post about, yes, another region of Spain (Spain just won’t quit, y’all). I have tons of photos to upload to my laptop, and will share them with you.

For the moment, however, I am trying to process my re-entry to the U.S., almost a year after I originally left it. It does not feel weird to be back; it feels quite natural. I am happy to return to certain things, like the delightful notion that stores here are actually open much of the time, and do not close their doors cruelly and arbitrarily just at the moment when you need something from them. In this country, if I want to buy a honey-glazed ham, a jet ski and some fine stationary at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday, I could probably make that happen. Because this is AMURICA.

Also, if I’m at a restaurant and ask for a glass of tap water, nobody is going to sigh heavily and stomp away, only to bring me back a thimbleful of water and a disdainful look. I have never understood why some European restaurants give you static — or are seriously just super confused — if you ask for tap water. LOOK AT ME, snobby Maltese waitress. Look at my face, clothing and overall demeanor. Is this the face of a person who pays for bottled water at restaurants? No it is not.

And, oh yeah, in many European countries, I would say it is more socially acceptable to cut in line. So if you’re standing in a queue, you have to guard your place with vigilance lest some nonchalant Spaniard innocently sidle in front of you. In America, cutting is highly frowned upon and only done by jerks. So here, I can shuffle into line at the store and stare into space without, like, a whole slew of Hungarians thundering in.

…Despite my happiness about these things, I do miss Spain. My last morning in Madrid, I sat down sadly with my final cafe con leche and tortilla de patata (with nice crusty bread, of course), and swore to come back someday. I am so happy to be among my old friends and family, and in my own country, but my ears miss the sound of Spanish in the streets. There is a notable lack of cafes. Things seem a bit too plain. Possibly a bit too new and scrubbed. So yeah, I would like to go back sometime, hopefully not too far off.

And in the interim, plenty of time to reminisce via further blog posts. Next up: Beautiful Croatia, where “beach” and “ashtray” apparently are synonymous. Stay tuned!

Camino de Santiago. Tales from a pilgrimage.

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 09:29:13 -0400

My journal entry from the first day of my travels on the Camino de Santiago:

Day 1: Sweaty. Gnats. Arrived by bus to starting-off point, Sarria, at 6 p.m. Were eager to get walking, so we found the trail. Note: Walking in hot evenings a bad idea (see: sweat and gnats). Arrived at hostel, had beers. Spiritual progress: Zero, but hopeful for tomorrow. Query: If you have to, uh, take care of some business on the road, is it acceptable to just pop behind a tree? Must investigate. Other query: So these holy saint-bones, can we actually see them? Wanna see some bones.

For another taste from the trail, this is a sad, desperate entry I wrote after midnight in my bunkbed, by the light from the window.

Night 1: Snores. Sweet agonizing Christ. Bunkmates are two old men, one young man and his girlfriend, who must be deaf. All three men’s noses and throats are thundering – thundering! — in a roaring chorus. Farts also clearly audible. I may not be a hearty walker, but at least I can pass a night silently and unflatulently….Cannot sleep. Every moment, an explosion from someone’s nasal cavity or ass. Rage: Mounting. Spiritual progress: Negative. I am a worse person than I was five hours ago.

That was the first 12 hours of my spiritual pilgrimage. A rocky start for a journey, both physically — I did not sleep very well that night — and spiritually. I tried to cultivate serenity in the face of suffering, and did not wholly succeed.

I should give some background…

The Camino de Santiago is a Medieval pilgrimage that, for most pilgrims, begins over the border in France, crossing through the Pyrenees and nearly all the way across the top half of Spain, 760 kilometers long. It ends in the cathedral in the city of Santiago de Compostela. For over a thousand years, millions of pilgrims have stumbled into that church, worn and weary and smelly, and collapsed gratefully into the pews. Last week, I was one of them.

Me in front of the cathedral, post-pilgrimage. I am wearing a seashell — shells are the symbol of Saint James, so all pilgrims hang seashells on their backpacks. I wore mine for Mass that day to show I was legit.

True, I didn’t quite make it all 760 kilometers. I didn’t have that kind of time, frankly, and I suspected my feet were ill-constructed to take on such a journey without a shorter trial run first (don’t mock me, I have delicate arches).

Also I wasn’t smelly. It’s 2012. We have deodorant now.

But a friend and I did walk 117k, backpacks weighing on us every step, and qualified ourselves for official pilgrimhood. We even have the documents to prove it.

We went because we were curious, partly, as to what the big draw is. Although it’s not well-known in the U.S., thousands of people walk the Camino, both the main “Camino Frances” which I described already, or the many side-Caminos — other pathways coming in from every direction, and sometimes from as far off as Germany, but always culminating in Santiago de Compostela, a city in the Spanish region of Galicia. The cathedral there is the resting place, supposedly, of the bones of St. James the Apostle. Nowadays the path is available for all spiritual seekers, or the non-religious who are just interested in the history or the hike.

The Camino is well-marked with arrows, taking you through fields and forests and farms and tiny, tiny villages. The dawns were misty and cool, the early mornings bright and pleasant. The cows, plentiful. The cow-pies, a constant hazard.

The Way, just after dawn.

We walked for five days, more or less, staying mostly in the designated pilgrim hostels along the way. There, you are given a bunk assignment, often in a large room crammed with other pilgrims. No bedding, so bring a sleeping bag. There are showers, although they are often distressingly un-private.

You wake up at 6 or 6:30 a.m. or so, pack up your stuff, and just start walking. It’s a very simple life. But you meet dozens of fellow pilgrims — you’re keeping pace with roughly the same crowd every day, so lots of faces become familiar. We met Cheerful Cork Lady, Chatty kid from Florida, Mild-Mannered Veronese, Over-sharing British Guy, Super nice and awesome German, Intense sock-tan German, Mysterious Gandalf, and many others. Along the path are little signs and impromptu altars made by other pilgrims, shouting out encouragement. “Buen Camino!” is the typical greeting on the trail.

Yellow arrows mark the path though farms and villages. This one decorated a village house.

We hid under trees when the rain hammered at us, we stopped to eat Galician octopus, we took a shot of the local liquor, we crossed over many charming stone bridges. I bandaged blisters, I randomly developed a limp one day, and my right shoulder strongly objected to the weight of my backpack for awhile there. We stopped to pray in the many little stone churches along the trail. It was all … oddly satisfying. My least-favorite parts were actually the couple hours before bedtime, when there was nothing much to do. I was weirdly eager to get up and start walking again.

As for the city of Santiago de Compostela, the Medieval center and surrounding areas are beautiful and unlike any other old city I’ve been to. The Galicians trace their heritage from the Celtic tribes, so the place is like a Spanish-Irish blend, really. But the food is great — the bread, especially, is amazing — and the Galicians we met were all very kind.

Maybe I’ll come back to do the whole thing someday? Lots of pilgrims were in their 60s and 70s. I hope I’m sprightly enough to do such a thing after a few more decades. But I guess we’ll see?

Lisbon: Terraces, cobblestones, livestock

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:09:35 -0400

My first solo trip. I did not get lost OR robbed, so I’d say it was a success.

Graffiti that I felt was rather pertinent to my situation.

Part of what’s so crazy about my year here is that, for all that I’ve seen and done, there is always more. I will not get to Morocco before my time here is up; neither will I get to Barcelona (I am angry about this. I have been like everywhere in Spain EXCEPT Barcelona. But I WILL go there. You hear that, Barca? I’m comin’ for you).

So I at least wanted to get Portugal crossed off my list. I’d been to Oporto; I figured I needed Lisbon as well. But all my friends have already been to Lisbon, it seems, so I decided to buy a plane ticket my own damn self.

Ahhhhhhhh, nice.

“But, Laura, weren’t you nervous?” “Naw, son.”

If you look closely, you can see the reflection of my own arm in my sunglasses, as I take the picture. Of myself. Looking tough on a castle.

Well maybe I was slightly nervous.

But Lisbon is a pretty safe city, so meh. Mostly I was concerned about getting on the wrong bus or something and missing my flight, after which I would feel like an idiot. So my worries were about doing something stupid that would cost me money, which aren’t that major, really.

Lisbon is a great wandering-around city. I am fairly museum’d out at this point, so I didn’t bother to do much beyond meander the Medieval quarter, the Barrio Alto and the shoreline to the river. It’s all arranged on steep hills so you’ll turn a corner and find yourself on a lovely terrace, seeing the full sweep of the city and onto the river. And there’s always an outdoor cafe serving their constantly awesome Portugese wine. But it’s strange — as I noticed in Oporto, the city is both beautiful and decayed, with gorgeous buildings next to derelict vacants. Peeling paint, garbage bins all over the sidewalks. Homeless people asleep in garbage-strewn allies, mere footsteps from the outdoor diners at high-end restaurants. Must be a Portuguese thing? It certainly makes for an odd contrast.

I also happened upon the weekend of a strange agricultural festival in Lisbon. Basically everyone in Portugal, and a apparently a fair percentage of Spain, descended upon the Praca Do Comercio — the giant, iconic square facing the river. There was a big concert, but most interestingly, there were livestock pens and plant exhibitions. Seriously, pigs and chickens and cows, hanging out in the stateliest plaza of the whole city. It was the Iowa freaking State Fair, just without people eating fried food on sticks.*

*Although if we’re being honest, the comparison is significantly weakened if there is no food-on-a-stick. State fairs just aren’t state fairs unless that is happening.

Scarecrows, I guess.

If you go to Lisbon, you should also head to Sintra. An easy train ride away, Sintra is a giant forested area that has a number of castles, a charming village and an old monastery. I only had time for the big one, the Pena Palace. But this place was worth it.

I’ve seen a fair number of castles in my time. But this might have been my favorite. Most castles are from an age when the structure needed to be a fort as well as a royal residence, so they lack a certain fairy-tale charm. Sintra’s Pena Palace, however, was built by a Portugese king in the 19th century, and those guys were super into Romanticism as an architectural movement. And, everybody, Romanticism is my jam. I love that giddy flowery stuff. Observe:

Magical.

WHAAAAAT. This is the giant sculpture over one of the main entrances. I love this, I want it tattooed on my face.

The forest surrounding the palace is also beautiful, with lots of whimsical buildings and little garden areas and bridges in the forest. So, very like a fairy tale. Which, I can’t help it, I really love.

From Sintra, a couple other spots are an easy bus ride. Cabo de la Roca, the westernmost point of the European Continent, which has big views of the ocean and is quite pretty to gaze at for about 10 minutes; and Cascais, a charming little seaside town I passed a pleasant hour in. I had a pork sandwich and a beer on the beach, and got on the next train back to Lisbon. Without getting lost, woooooo.

Last day, I went to the Torre de Belem, a 16th century tower that looks like it’s made of white ivory set next to the river. It was originally on a small island in the river, but the Earthquake of 1755 changed the river’s flow so now the tower is basically on shore (P.S. that earthquake was pretty intense). The tower was pretty, but the best part was eating the Pasteis de Belem, a little cream-based pastry sold in the town. Portugal has awesome baked goods, far superior to that of their co-Iberians, the Spaniards. Spain, your pastries are always too dry. You know it’s true.

Did I feel like a weirdo, traveling alone, eating at cafes and sipping wine by myself? Not really. Lots of people travel solo; it’s pretty common. You can make friends in your hostel pretty easily, although in my case I was hardly there. I wasn’t bold enough to go out for a night drinking by myself, but everything else was fine. It’s even kinda nice to set your own agenda without having to discuss and vote on everything. Still, I do prefer to travel with friends — it’s nice to have some cohorts to share things with, in the end.

Almost time to ship out...

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:52:00 -0400

Now the real fun can begin.

It’s mid-June. My school days are winding down. In July and August, I will travel throughout the continent in a huge international experiment to see how much of my savings I can hang on to, and how tired and cranky I can make myself.*

*Stay tuned to see how many more countries I will soon be nervous in! Hint: There are many.

I’m looking forward to my travels, but my time as an honest-to-God resident of this city is drawing to a close. I find this depressing. I walk around disconsolately, muttering, “I live in Spain. I live IN Spain. I LIVE in Spain” to myself because very soon I will no longer be able to say that. To a careful listener I sound like a person having a mental breakdown, but no, concerned Spaniards, I am sane — just melancholic.

Statue of King Carlos III in Puerta del Sol. I will miss you, statue of King Carlos.

Culture fatigue hasn’t been a big problem for me. I mean, sure, I wish Spain would get more on board with the concept of “customer service” as a thing. And of course some Madrileños are randomly (extremely) rude, which is a related problem. And I do occasionally want to stand on my corner at night and yell at everyone to stop peeing on my street. The smell of piss is far too frequent a part of my daily life here. And while you’re at it, everybody, pick up after your yappy little dogs. My street is an obstacle course of dog crap.

I could go on about these minor annoyances, but I am focusing on the good right now. Here are things I will miss about Madrid, in no particular order:

Cheap wine. For budget-conscious winos, Spain is the promised land. Have I mentioned you can get yourself a good bottle for 2 euros or less?

Cheap cheeses. Self-explanatory.

The coffee! My God, the coffee. It’s almost always great, no matter where you go. And the ubiquitous loaves of nice crusty bread you can get anywhere for 50 cents or less, and the fruits are just fresher and more flavorful … the food is good, is what I’m saying.

I snuck a picture while sitting at my favorite cafe one day. Remind me to go back and get a better shot, for old time’s sake…

The community of auxiliares and international people I’ve met. I like these people; they are my friends. I want to continue hanging out with them. It seems shocking that the friends I’ve made here, and see so frequently, will soon no longer be a part of my daily life. It’s weird. I’ll also miss our shared traveling lifestyle. Now, it is quite unexceptional to hear, “Sorry I can’t hang out with you guys! Going to Lisbon. Hey, wait, you should try to come!” Or, “What are you doing the weekend of the 14th? I’m trying to go to Berlin, are you free?” These are magical times. Would that it could always be so.

Madrid, the city. With enough to time explore this place, you can really find the good stuff. The unhurried strolls through Campo del Moro, the leisurely cups of coffee or wine with your daily newspaper, the awesome bars and dance clubs, the free museums. Check this out:

This is Museo Cerralbo, the restored home of a 19th century nobleman in the city. Guy’s house is nuts. I spent a Sunday afternoon wandering, just gawping at the insane opulence. Most touring visitors don’t have time for a lesser-known gem like this; I did. I also live near enough to the Museo del Prado to just swing through during their free evenings for an hour or so. “Just goin’ to look at some Goya or Hieronymus Bosch for a bit. No big deal,” I say. Also, Madrid is a very livable place. By now, I know its neighborhoods, I have favorite bars and hang-outs, and yet there is more to see and always something going on. People knock Madrid a lot, but I like this town.

My students — both the kids and the adult learners from my night classes — and the teachers from my school. Again, I like these people. I want them to come to America so I can welcome them and show them around and give them sandwiches and cold beers to refresh themselves. Well, not the kids from my school, that would be wildly inappropriate. But everybody else is invited. The other teachers have all been very welcoming and kind, and it’s been really great to work at my school.

A bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting … but may add later.

Inside the teachers' lounge: Things I've learned

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:44:00 -0400

Kids: They’re like people, only smaller

I speak only English to my students, but hanging out in a classroom and listening to the back-and-forth of kids and teachers has done wonders for my knowledge of yelling- or whining-based Spanish phrases. I am a whiz at spitting out variations of the following:

“Porque te digo!” = “Because I said so!”

“Pero no he hecho nada!” = “But I didn’t do anything!”

“Está diciendo palabrotas!” = “He/she is saying swear words!”

“Está llorando!” = “He/She is crying!”

“Que te callas!” = “Shut up!”

“Callaos todos!” = “Everybody shut up!”

Clearly, our classrooms are models of quiet and orderly behavior.

I realize I’m not a “real” teacher, with “qualifications” or “training” or much “experience.” But I’ve now spent nearly a year in an elementary school, conducting lessons, getting to know the kids, and gossiping with the other teachers. It’s been… eye-opening.

Example: If you suspected one of your elementary school teachers didn’t like you personally, then yeah, she didn’t like you. You probably misbehaved in class or were a little jerk to your fellow students. Not to say you didn’t turn out all right, but she had to deal with you during a nasty phase. Your parents love you forever, but your teacher had to wrest control of the classroom from you and the other little savages and try to force you to learn something. Is it any wonder she didn’t necessarily feel tons of affection for you?

Or, maybe she was just nuts or burnt-out on teaching and hated you for no reason. Sometimes people are just terrible.

And if your teachers loved you, well, you probably already knew that.

Do we, as teachers, totally gossip about the kids? Yes. Do we have favorites? Pffft, good God, yes. We just try really hard not to show it. Are individual children sometimes the subject of harsh, frustrated rants or dire predictions that he or she will come to no good? If you have to ask, you clearly don’t spend much time around children.

It’s actually kinda hard to write this post… I can’t REALLY let loose because you’ll think I’m a child-hating monster. This is not the case! I really like these children. It’s quite fun to have reasonable conversations and find out about their lives and opinions. But they are also incredibly frustrating and make me deeply afraid of raising children of my own someday. What if they’re lazy? What if they’re disrespectful? What if they have sass-mouths? WHAT THEN? Probably best not to think about it.

But of course, we don’t get to see how these kids will end up as adults. They’re still quite young — who knows how they’ll turn out? Heck, some of these kids have changed a lot even just this school year, just trying on new personalities to see what fits.

I do suppose you can kinda predict some outcomes… some kids are hardworking, charming, sensible and kind, and I figure it’d take a lot to knock them off that path. Some kids are smart but troublemakers, or have zero motivation — they could go either way. And some are lazy to a degree I wouldn’t have thought possible,* so you can kinda squint a little and imagine them sitting, slack-jawed and staring into space, at an unchallenging desk job someday in 20 years, just as they have done every day in class.

*Mind-bogglingly lazy. Just, really, displaying epic levels of not-giving-a-damn.

But I’m here to make them speak English, dangit, and it’s worked to a somewhat maybe possibly degree. I anticipate the last day of school will be full of awkward goodbyes — recall, I am awkward around children — but I will take lots of pictures of the students and probably wonder fondly, in the years ahead, whatever became of them.

Ireland, Part One.

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:26:08 -0400

Here’s the thing about Dublin: It is a damn fine city to hang out in. Lovely pubs, nice daytime strolls, plenty of nightlife. I am going to do a full-on Ireland countryside tour in August, but I was able to enjoy a preliminary Dublin jaunt this month to whet my appetite.

I met with a couple friends there, one of whom had lived in the city for a couple years during the days of the Celtic Tiger. Colleen called up some Dubliners* to hang out with, enlivening our nights and also proving to me that, yes, I am unable to keep pace with Irish drinkers. And with everybody else, actually … which is troubling as I have lately had plenty of practice.

Again, if you can manage to stick with local-type people during your travels, do so. That way, you can hang out with international types and feel popular and cosmopolitan, while your friends back home are stuck drinking with people from the same country as they are, which is not as cool.

*Fun fact: the Irish “you” plural, when they address groups of people, is “youse,” similar to the manner of Italian mobsters on TV shows. It is the Irish “vosotros” form, if you will, and I like it very much.

Our jaunt to the Irish countryside.

Overlooking the river

At Trinity College in Dublin

At St. Stephen’s Green in the city.

Tourist checklist:

We went to the (very worthwhile) Kilmainham Gaol and became depressed about Irish history — lots of Irish patriots were locked up and executed there. We went on a day trip to the Irish countryside and were all like, “yep, that is some green countryside over there.” And we went to the Guinness brewery and got slightly weirded out at how excessive that place is. As my friend put it, it’s not so much a brewery as some sort of temple to the Guinness demi-god. But if you go, beer is included in the price of admission! Also it’s fun to see the place and have a drink in the rooftop bar overlooking the city.

We wandered St. Stephen’s Green, we hung out around Temple Bar. We saw a really good, interesting, funny play at the Abbey Theatre and then discussed it afterward over drinks, like sophisticated adults. Then we went dancing at the gay bars downtown! Huzzah.

A pint at Grogan’s, one of my new favorite spots. I like Beamish, even better than Guinness 1) possibly because I have a mystical, possibly ancestral connection to County Cork, where this is brewed or 2) I am secretly a damn hipster and Guinness is just too mainstream, or 3) maybe I just like the taste. Take your pick.

Statue of Molly Malone, from the famous Dublin street ballad. Lady is MERE CENTIMETERS away from a nip slip right there.**

**And yeah, Europeans, we spell it “centimeters” instead of “centimetres,” what of it? We also spell them “center” and “theater.” AMERICA.

We sampled the city’s gay dance scene as well, places called The George (which I liked, although the bouncers were kinda jerks), and The Dragon (which I didn’t like because it was far too crowded and not many people were actually, ya know, dancing.) Both have cover charges, by the way.

Otherwise we just wandered in to likely-looking pubs, some “meh” but mostly good, and ate a lot of heavy fried things. I remember it all quite fondly.

Our day trip was to Glendalough, a gorgeous ruin/graveyard/park only like an hour’s drive outside Dublin. There are like, bogs and sheep and glorious green hills and it’s all a little ridiculous after awhile. But, do be careful if you’re renting a car — manual cars are crazy expensive to rent, and driving stick on the opposite side of the road is rather stressful if you’re not used to it. Not that I would know firsthand; I blithely allowed my friend to shoulder that burden. But the stream of muttered curse words coming from the driver’s seat, and the smell of burning clutch, indicated that it was not entirely stress-free in the early going. We made it there in one piece, but I was extremely glad I didn’t have to drive.

Our lodgings were quite nice: Jurys Inn on Parnell Street, close to all the major stuff in Dublin. When you travel with job-having adults, you tend to stay in actual hotels, instead of the usual round of hostels. But this one had a few specials going, so we got onto a pretty sweet deal.

Then, back to Spain… but don’t worry, Ireland, I shall return.

Andalucía, parte dos

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:44:00 -0400

The sequel! Córdoba and Sevilla.

Oh, I’ve toured Spain. I’ve toured the crap out of this place. And yet I still have places to go! I STILL HAVEN’T BEEN TO BARCELONA. Not to mention the northern part of the country, which I hear is awesome! Spain, why do you have so many things to do? Why can’t you knock it off, already, and let a girl just hang out in her apartment, wearing fat pants and watching Parks and Rec? But no. Instead I have to go to more places. FINE.

I’ve been to Cadiz and Granada, but ya also gotta hit up Córdoba and Sevilla if you want to qualify for your basic Andalucia (southern Spain) tourist certificate.* So I rolled on down to the bus station and headed south once again.

*This is not a real thing

Granada is a lovely old-world maze of narrow streets, with the giant Alhambra dominating the hillside; Sevilla is the more cosmopolitan, worldly version of Andalusian beauty; and Córdoba … well Córdoba is cute, too.

That is where we started — Córdoba, as I mentioned before, was the capital of Muslim Spain during the days of the Caliphate, before the Muslim kingdom fractured into smaller pieces. The major remnant of this time is the grand Mezquita, a giant mosque. After Christians took over, they basically plonked a Gothic cathedral in the middle of it. But it’s a testament to the Mezquita’s size and grandeur that the cathedral seems sort of tiny in comparison to the rest of the building that surrounds it.

Christian cathedral, with glimpses of the Muslim architecture behind it.

The Mezquita’s repeating red-and-white striped arches are iconic, and the vast chamber is impressive and otherworldly. It would also make a sweet, sweet place for a game of hide-and-seek or tag. Or “ghost in the graveyard,” even, I’m not picky. Not sardines, though, because that’s boring.

Córdoba also has some lovely plazas and restaurants, and we happened to arrive for the celebration of Las Cruces, one of the many Spanish holidays where the theme is some variation on “outdoor drinking.” This time, it was “outdoor drinking next to decorated crosses and sorrowful pictures of Jesus.”

This is a picture of one of the main crosses, but this photo was taken before people took up their drinking positions around it.

But Córdoba is a smallish city, and 24 hours is more than enough time to enjoy it. Then it was on to Sevilla, a city with a much different flavor.

Pretty much every major Spanish town has a massive cathedral, some sort of royal residence/fort, and probably an art museum. Sevilla has these. They are very nice.**

**After awhile, you just run out of things to say about churches and castles.

Sevilla was once the major port city. This was where the plunder of the Americas flowed in, brought inland through the Guadalquivir river where it was less likely to be stolen by pirates. So Sevilla was big-time during Spain’s golden age, and the city’s size reflects that — a few wealthy Golden Age homes have been turned into museums, there are tons of great cafe areas, like a billion ancient little churches, and a pretty solid shopping district.

But my favorite part is newer: It’s the park district and palace built for the 1929 World’s Fair. Lonely Planet was sorta dismissive of the place in its description, but I thought it was fantastic. Most importantly, it was different then the typical old-world Spain stuff. I wanted to have a picnic there.

Aha! See how nice?

Also, because I love flamenco, we checked out one of the city’s better (free) performance venues. Flamenco is a gypsy art form, and if you’ve seen it, you know it’s supposed to be intensely emotional. Purists say that flamenco is only “real” when it is spontaneous — flamenco performed for an audience, therefore, is only a shadow of the real thing.

And I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the staged shows, where they charge you 50 euros for a sub-par meal and a performance, are pretty stilted and bad. But I don’t think it’d be possible, or wise, for me to just try to hang out in the gypsy barrios and wait for somebody to break out a guitar. So we went where basically everybody recommended — La Carbonería, which looks like a converted garage but puts on a hell of a show. Passion and talent, and alcohol, and they don’t even charge you admission. Just, get there early if you want to go.

OH YEAH, and also? I know I come from an age where everybody thinks they have to record every experience and put it online immediately, but there is something to be said for shutting up, putting away your camera, and living in the moment. In other words, when the fiery Flemenco dancer is electrifying everybody with her jaw-dropping moves up there, how about you don’t spring up and take her picture, or try to record it all? Camera flashes — not to mention horribly rude people standing up to record her on video — are a huge buzzkill for everyone. So let the lady work in peace, all right? You are bugging everybody. I feel like I see this kind of thing a lot on my travels: Something awesome will be happening, some great performance or whatever, and instead of just enjoying it, everybody is jockeying for prime camera position. Good lord.

Travel notes:

Cordoba

Hostel was Hostel Fonda La Corredera. Fantastic location, clean and quaintly old-time Cordoba. But the bathrooms on our floor were hilariously tiny (and we are not very large people, my friend and I), and it wasn’t a terribly sociable place, if you want to make friends. Also, the place is closed from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. every day, so you can’t check in or leave/pick up your luggage at that time. My friend and I had to just wheel our luggage from the bus station to a restaurant and take a leisurely lunch until the place opened. I know, right? Friggin’ Spain.

Good food to be had at Calle de la Plata (Calle Victoriano Rivera). Eat the salmorejo! It’s basically tomato spread that you put on bread. Sounds boring… but it’s tasty, very typical of the city and comes with extra fixings. The huevos rotos are also awesome there.

Sevilla

Hostel was Hostel One Sevilla, which was pretty well located in the large city (far from some stuff, but in a city of Sevilla’s size, that is hard to avoid). It’s very sociable, a cool building, free internet. Some of the bedding wasn’t as clean as we’d have liked? But overall I’d stay there again.

The courtyard at the Casa de Pilatos, a museum that is a dead rich guy’s house

The Cathedral, which is actually more impressive from the outside than the inside, I’d say

A view of the bridge between the neighborhood of Triana and the old city of Sevilla, overlooked by a matador.

Madrid: I keep accidentally head-butting people

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:21:58 -0400

Also, children here have filthy mouths

Besos:

I once lamented the double-kiss greeting that is standard in Spain. On account of the awkwardness.

I’ve gotten better at it. But there are still issues, sometimes. First of all, this is usually not a kiss so much as a “touch cheeks briefly on one side, then another, while making kissing noises.” For the first few months, when I could sense that kiss-time might be approaching, I would thrust my face out and wait, in agitation, for a confused Spaniard to realize that I was expecting him to put his face on there. Eventually I got better timing, and now that hardly ever happens. But sometimes I get overconfident and shove my cheek out eagerly, hitting the other person’s cheekbone with too much force. Then I overcompensate by laughing too loudly and run away.

Europe! What is the deal with you not understanding that peanut butter is awesome?

Seriously. No one here gets it. You can buy peanut butter here — some clever supplier realized all these expats crave the stuff, and duly supplied it — but it’s expensive and Europeans in general have zero curiosity about it. Spaniards of my acquaintance seem to assume it’s horribly fattening and bad for you (which, sure, but c’mon, it’s no worse than Nutella), and one friend seemed outright disgusted by it. And he’s never even tried it! This perplexes me.

Swearing

“Bad words” are way more acceptable in Spain. Contrary to stereotype, Spaniards speak to one another very very informally. You use the informal “tu” for “you” in Spanish with most people here, whereas Latin Americans address each other much more politely. And that informality also extends to frequent use of words like mierda (the s-word) and joder (the f-word)* which I hear out of the mouths of 10-year-olds all the time. “Mierda” won’t get you remotely in trouble, although “joder” is somewhat frowned upon in school, at least. When the kids want to ask to go to the bathroom, they actually say, “Puedo piss?” Which means, obviously, “can I piss?” This is simply the way it is said. It’s informal, but nobody gets told not to say it.

My favorite little detail — you know the song “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” It’s a classic; the tune is recognizable anywhere. It’s a back-and-forth thing, “Laura stole the cookie from the cookie jar!” “Not me!” “Yes, you!” “Couldn’t be!” “Then who?”

In Spain, the lyrics to that tune are “Who took a piss in the sleeping bag?” This is sung at school. “Teacher took a piss in the sleeping bag!” “Not me!” “Yes you!”

Although it occurs to me that it’d be pretty easy to figure out the answer to this question. One must merely ask, “Who among us smells of urine?”

There, mystery solved.

** Observe (cough, cough, parents) that I scrupulously refuse to swear in English on this blog … even though I sometimes really want to.

My friends and I are delighted by the sight of U.S. dollars for some reason

We never see anything but euros or pounds or Czech crowns or whatever, so when we see a greenback, it somehow enchants us. So ugly and and green! And dollars seem so oddly small compared to European currencies! It’s a nostalgic thing right now.

Spaniards are super big on family and sharing — I like this, but I also find some aspects of it strange

My students go hang out at their grandparents’ houses, like, every Sunday. They play with their cousins, they see their aunts and uncles. I would have liked to do that, growing up. Big extended family gatherings were only like three times a year, what with everybody roving around and scattered in that very American way of ours.

It’s now common for young adults to move back in with their parents in the U.S., which I think is perfectly reasonable, but in Spain, the kids straight-up don’t ever leave until they get married or circumstance forces it somehow. I know one Spaniard, my age, who has lived in one bedroom her entire life. She went to college in Madrid, so there was no need to move. Her brother and sister, also in their twenties, still live there. They all seem quite content with each other. I think it’s a fine system, but it also blows my mind to think that, at my age and with all the random apartments and different cities I’ve lived in, I could just as easily have never left my cozy little room in Omaha. I both find the good in that idea, and find it inconceivable. In America, it’s simply not done.

Spaniards are also pretty laid-back about sharing their things. Families are always renting rooms in their apartments, for example — in the U.S. it’s considered such a huge deal to have some stranger in your home for extended periods, but here it’s normal. Lots of Americans live rent-free with families in exchange for English lessons for the kids, for example.

Maybe because other people are always in your business anyway, you might as well? This busybody attitude can be fun to watch, particularly at school, where the kids are far less concerned about “their” stuff than we were. When I was in elementary school I hated lending my school supplies out to people, because they might come back all grubby or not come back at all. But here, if someone asks, “does anybody have a pen?” the surrounding students whip out writing utensils and practically throw them at the borrower. It’s nice.

Emotions are always running high

The kids are quick to rally around a crying classmate. Tears break out way more frequently here than I remember from my school days, among both boys and girls. And immediately, even if they’re not particularly friends, other kids swarm in with hugs and pats and sympathetic words. If anybody cried when I was in sixth grade, everyone just froze or pretended not to notice, or a select few girls would follow you to the bathroom, where you’d have fled in shame. Here, everybody just comes in for a hug, the tears dry up and you go about your business. These kids can sometimes be absolutely terrible to each other, mind you, just like American kids. But there is a more general sense of camaraderie and shared emotion here. However, that means that when one kid is singled out and bullied, it’s almost even more tragic.

I checked it out, guys. Scotland is still awesome.

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:07:38 -0400

Attention: Click the following link for the soundtrack to today’s blog post:

Soundtrack!

Is it playing? OK, now we can start.

Scotland loomed pretty large in my youth.

If you don’t know who this is… I have nothing to further say to you.

I grew up watching Highlander (the original movie and TV series!) and Braveheart. I had a lot of emotional investment in the lives shaggy men who wore kilts and spoke with outlandish accents. So I was pretty pumped about going to Scotland. It was even weirdly nostalgic, in a way.

Me, on the Isle of Skye in the Highlands.

Scotland is gorgeous. The weather isn’t always nice, but it just adds to the drama, really… and the people were super pleasant. Really cool old cities, but the countryside is probably more memorable. Much of our trip was spent driving around, and then stopping to gape at things.

Isle of Skye again. It was, like, friggin Middle Earth up in there sometimes, except with nicely paved roads.

Loch Lomond, with my friend/chauffeur Emily gazing across the waters.

Some of the landscapes are sort of alien-looking, especially when the fog sets in.

…and then we got caught up in an insanely rad swordfight and just completely lost our damn minds.

Related note: Hey, remember the days before Mel Gibson was revealed to be a hateful — or at least violently disturbed — person? Those were good times.

We started our trip in Edinburgh. Edinburgh was awesomely gloomy — I also got a somberly cerebral vibe from the place. Lots of smart people came from Scotland, after all, and the buildings have a very learned, university-like mien. Although some of them were actual university buildings, so… yeah, I suppose that makes sense. It’s in my top-five prettiest European towns, I have to say.

Ruins of an old abbey

We also went to Stirling, so here’s a couple little photos:

I enjoy a good graveyard, and also a nice wrought-iron gate every now and again.

You’ll probably do a lot of driving if you go to Scotland, which can be a challenge. Wrong side of the road, often in the rain, while keeping an eye out for wandering sheep. Sometimes down to one lane, for both directions of traffic. Trust me, readers, when I tell you it is very good that I was not driving. Recall the name of this blog. I am a high-strung person. It would have been bad.

So I, wisely, made my friend Emily do it. Emily is level-headed, and has some experience in driving on the other side of the road. She was to be the steady hand at the wheel; my contribution was eating all our road snacks and distracting her by yelling, “look at that!” while she was trying to negotiate difficult turns. I also repeated whatever the GPS said, in case she didn’t hear it the first time.

We drove along Loch Lomond; we rejoiced when our hostels turned out to have wifi; we mourned when they did not. We wandered into the Highlands, where I successfully resisted the urge to knock Emily over and scream, “THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!” I spent one happy morning watching British children’s programming, which is quite droll. We freaked out every time we saw baby lambs gamboling adorably alongside the road — those things are cute, y’all.

We had haggis as part of our Easter dinner (it was actually really good). We drank tasty dark beers and we listened to folk music, both Scottish and otherwise — I know I’m getting a tad homesick, because I might possibly have gotten really really excited when some people at one hostel started playing Dixie Chicks. We scrambled up hillsides and nearly got knocked down by the wind. We saw some Highland cows, which to me look like made-up animals and not real things. It was Easter, so I found some jelly beans and ate the whole bag in one go. Pretty standard, really.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown, for people who are interested or who want to head to Scotland someday:

Edinburgh

Tourist attractions! Edinburgh castle, and then Holyrood House — Edinburgh Castle is a bigger deal, as it was more militariliy important, but Holyrood House is equally interesting.

We booked a tour with “The Real Mary King’s Close,” and toured the remains of a 18th- and 17th-century neighborhood, now entombed underneath other buildings. I am reminded to once again be thankful that the plague is no longer a regular feature of urban life. We also hit up the National Museum of Scotland, which is glorious for history nerds like us.

Pubs! The White Hart Inn, which we stumbled upon in search of food and then realized that it was in the guidebooks — one of the oldest in Edinburgh, and Robert Burns used to eat there. The meat pies are pretty good, too. One of the rare times when showing up to a guidebook-suggested place didn’t result in spending a ton of money at a hugely overcrowded place.

The Bow Bar, which has fantastic beer and a knowledgeable barman. Also Sandy Bells, which we mostly went to for the live music, although that does get crowded.

Lodging! Argyle Backpackers Hostel. Reasonably priced, a short walk from the old town, homelike and friendly. Very nice! However, I was intellectually bested by an overly complicated showerhead.

Stirling

Tourism! You can knock out Stirling in a day. We did the castle, which was fascinating — strategically vital for Scotland and, again, more tourist-friendly than Edinburgh castle. We also walked around the graveyard (see above) and up through the hills above the town. The Wallace monument is nearby, but we skipped it because they wanted us to pay money to see it, and we were feeling poor that day.

Pubs! We happened upon a place called Whistle Binkie’s, which we highly recommend for its great craft beers. After a few hours there, we stumbled into what appaared to be some Scottish version of Applebee’s, called, I think, “The Walls”? Hard to remember. I don’t recommend it, unless you first have your standards lowered by getting a little tipsy at Whistle Binkie’s. In that case, cheers.

Lodging! Stirling Youth Hostel was in a converted old church, made into serviceable but bare-bones rooms. Felt like the dorms at a low-rent bording school from the 70s. But we had our own bathroom, so eh.

Loch Lomond/Trossachs National Park

Tourism! We drove around and stopped by the roadside a lot. That’s… pretty much it. It all depends on what part of the park you’re staying at. We stayed at Crianlarich, which was nice but mostly serves as a jumping-off point for hard-core hikers or random motorists like us.

Lodging! Crianlarich Hotel. Actually a Best Western — in other words, a real hotel. I never get to see the insides of these any more, so this was quite something. I felt downright classy, what with the private bathroom and all. It was pretty reasonably priced, too.

Isle of Skye (Highlands)

Tourism! Because we weren’t hillwalkers (hikers, in other words), we basically drove around to admire the natural wonders of the island, which are plentiful. Any tourist map of the island will have plenty of markings for spots to visit. You drive there, you get out of the car and scramble around for awhile. We also did the Talisker Whisky tour, which was educational.

Pubs! Isle of Skye is quite rural. Not a hotbed of rowdy nightlife. Portree, the island’s biggest town, has a few nice pubs and one excellent restaurant whose name totally escapes me. Our nights were spent drinking in the hostel, which brings me to…

Lodging! Skyewalker Hostel sounds cheesy as hell, but it’s a great place, seriously. The accommodations are good. Not, like, jaw-dropping, but good — but the couple running the place are keen to make sure you are having an awesome time. Friendly without being overbearing, extremely helpful… it’s one of those “family atmosphere” type hostels, which I’ve come to appreciate more and more as I’ve traveled around.

The Fairy’s Glen, Isle of Skye.