off again

a new direction for the blog

I accomplished two things today:

a) exchanging the two crappy English books I've been carrying around, and which I picked up for free in Morocco for the sole reason that they were the only books in English, for some better ones at a used bookstore in Tel Aviv. Which should make my flight back on Thursday a lot more bearable.

b) had a BRUSH WITH FAME. Yes...Raya and I ate dinner at a restaurant tonight, in the presence of greatness. We were sitting next to two famous Israelis who I have never heard of! Their names are Keren Mor and Menashe Noy and they are actors who have been on TV and in movies. I did not realize this until we left the restaurant, because they were sitting really close and Raya couldn't exactly tell me til we were out of earshot.

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But anyway, this has helped me figure something out. You know, since I'm going to be back in the US on Thursday, I wasn't sure exactly what to do with the blog - just put it on hold again until I take another trip? Or keep writing? Now I realize that I should turn it into a celebrity blog, stalking the rich and famous! I will have to study up though to make sure I recognize them next time.

all over the place

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On Saturday I went with my aunt and uncle to Masada. The weather was really bad - you could hardly see 10 feet in front of you - so I didn't get much of a view from the top or anything, but it was still really interesting.

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One thing I realized on this trip which I had never actually noticed before is that the Masada story is really freaking weird and awful. (Quick version: Jewish rebels hide out on this mountaintop fortress under siege by Romans, realize Romans are gonna win, so they choose by lots 10 guys to kill everyone up there and then each other so when the Romans finally bust in they just find a big pile of bodies. Um. Yes. Great.)

 Then a stop at the Dead Sea - didn't swim just looked. The thick white salt formations on the rocks look like some kind of crazy frosting.

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After that we went to a kibbutz nearby, Ein Gedi, which runs a botanical garden walk through the kibbutz itself. Essentially they just planted a bunch of cool stuff and then charge you to walk through it, but it's kept up really well and the kibbutz as well as being pretty inside is in a very dramatic location - right up against the mountains and next to the dead sea - amazing views.

 And then they randomly gave us free coffee and cake at this guesthouse! No complaints!

Yesterday I came back by train to Tel Aviv area, where Raya and Tamir and I went to lunch and a couple of bookstores and saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire. At one point the two of them were at a store with a 6-books-for-100-shekels deal, but could only find 5 they wanted, so they had me pick out a sixth book in hebrew based entirely on cover illustration since I am illiterate. Let's see how that turns out...

cave people

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Today I was at Beit Guvrin national park, where there are many kinds of caves. There are caves from hundreds of years BCE, with hundreds of carved out niches to attract pigeons to fatten up and eat for dinner.

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There are huge multilevel systems of caves from the same era used for water cisterns and olive presses, with curving stone staircases winding endlessly down and down.

There are later caves which are for tombs, and later caves which are actually bell-shaped quarries, cut from the hole in the top.

All of this is almost invisible from above ground, except for the fenced-off entrances and archeological dig tents you'd never know anything was here except cows grazing.

These cows were total scaredy cats, by the way, they kept running off as soon as we'd get remotely close. I've never seen a cow run away before. Don't they normally just stand there chewing their cud etc?

Exciting event #2 of the day: After much buildup, I finally ate a Krembo, apparently the highlight of any trip to Israel! This is a very thin chocolate shell covering a strange-textured, sort of marshmallowey but not really, creamy filling. They are wrapped by hand since it's too delicate for a machine, and are only seen in the winter. Maybe this trip was good timing after all?

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cave people

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Today I was at Beit Guvrin national park, where there are many kinds of caves. There are caves from hundreds of years BCE, with hundreds of carved out niches to attract pigeons to fatten up and eat for dinner.

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There are huge multilevel systems of caves from the same era used for water cisterns and olive presses, with curving stone staircases winding endlessly down and down.

There are later caves which are for tombs, and later caves which are actually bell-shaped quarries, cut from the hole in the top.

All of this is almost invisible from above ground, except for the fenced-off entrances and archeological dig tents you'd never know anything was here except cows grazing.

These cows were total scaredy cats, by the way, they kept running off as soon as we'd get remotely close. I've never seen a cow run away before. Don't they normally just stand there chewing their cud etc?

Exciting event #2 of the day: After much buildup, I finally ate a Krembo, apparently the highlight of any trip to Israel! This is a very thin chocolate shell covering a strange-textured, sort of marshmallowey but not really, creamy filling. They are wrapped by hand since it's too delicate for a machine, and are only seen in the winter. Maybe this trip was good timing after all?

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blue sky, blue sea

Today I was finally given permission by the Israel Meteorological Description Authority to say that it is "warm" here. Before, apparently, it was "cool." "Cool" = a nice June day in Wisconsin. "Warm" = freaking August in Wisconsin, or in my book, HOT.

In the morning Noa and I went to Jaffa and walked around markets and the restored old city area, where 100% of the businesses are expensive jewelry and arty gift shops. The sun was shining and the water was freakishly blue. It was all very paradisey actually.

In the afternoon I got to hang out and watch while a Spanish news crew interviewed my aunt Julia about her peace work and what it's like living on the kibbutz trying not to get hit by rockets all the time. This is for a program they're doing on the effect of the war on people here. Tomorrow they're going to try to go into Gaza. So, uh, watch out for that on your local TV I guess, if you happen to live in Barcelona, which no one who reads this blog does.

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Tomorrow I am apparently going to see some caves. Which sounds good to me. Man it's nice not to have to plan anything but just go where people tell me!

lightning round

OK, so, a quick recap. A few days ago I flew with my mom from Marrakesh to Madrid, where she got on a flight back home and I caught one to Tel Aviv. Before splitting up, though, we had a day in Madrid, went downtown, found a veggie restaurant and then wandered the streets. We accidently ran into a big anti-Israel demonstration there, which was more upsetting to me than I expected. More and more as this trip has gone on I feel like I can't think about anything but what's been going on in Israel and Gaza - and that's before I got here. Anyway. 

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The flights all went fine, blah blah. Because of the cease-fire I was able to go stay with my aunt and uncle on the kibbutz for a few days. It's in the Negev within rocket range so it was not always clear that that would be possible, and I feel very lucky that it was...since I flew in the morning after the cease fire people keep saying "couldn't you have come three weeks ago?"

The kibbutz is so small, peaceful and quiet. I wasn't there when there were rocket alarms and everyone had to go run to their safe room, of course. It's strange to be in a place that's in some ways so much calmer than anywhere else I've been yet and in other ways a thousand times more tense. It's great to be staying with family and real people again instead of bouncing from one rented bed to another. But it's also very hard to be here right now. Or maybe ever, I don't know. This is my first trip to Israel as an adult, and I had no idea how I would feel being here or how I would see it. I still don't know - I have been so emotional but I can't even interpret my own reactions.

The next day, after a nice tour of the kibbutz and its factory, my aunt Julia drove me all around on a zionist negev tour. First stop Revivim, one of the first kibbutzim in the Negev, which has the original settlement from the 1940s preserved and set up so you can tour it from its original stage as an agricultural research station, first basically just a cave, then some shacks and trenches and a stone lookout tower.

Posters - what's inside a grenade, and how to throw one.

This cave was where the original settlers lived, then became a makeshift hospital.

In case guns in caves don't do it for you, this place also has 2 airplanes and some creepy statues with clothes falling off.

To think that anyone came to this place and thought it was a good spot for agricultural experiments is completely insane in the first place - and then it worked??

After that we saw Ben Gurion's desert home (simple) and panoramic desert lookout (gorgeous.)

The final stop on the tour was this amazing house belonging to Julia's friend Tal and her family. Tal's husband Rodney is an architect and he designed and built this place completely with his own two hands out of found materials from the local area. I've never seen a house like it. It's built out in the middle of nowhere between two nature reserves, and they have wireless internet, but they don't have running water.

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After that I came back to Tel Aviv and have been hanging out with a few of my many lovely cousins.

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And, you know. Walking around downtown Tel Aviv. Watching the inaugeration. Talking about politics and life stuff. Watching the speech again. Sitting around by the beach some more, soaking up the sun and half-assedly trying to take pictures and think of how to blog this as a regular travel destination which is not what it feels like at all.

I don't want to get political here and I don't know if I could even organize my thoughts enough to do so if I tried, anyway, but the war and everything else has really been consuming my mind and making it hard for me to think of what I can write instead. I guess all I can say right now is that it seems different from here than it does on TV. And I'm learning a lot, and I'm glad that I'm here. 

happy Obama day!

First of all, so sorry for the long gap in between posting. I was traveling a lot for a few days (Morocco to Madrid to Israel) and then having all kinds of weird problems preventing me from uploading photos. But it looks like I've got this big batch uploading now, and once I get them up on flickr I'll try to get both the pictures and my thoughts organized enough for a good post about all I've been up to.

Second and more important - how do you all like your new President!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I might have to pinch myself every so often for a little while just to make sure this is really really real. I'm kind of sorry to be out of the country on this day, but much more than that, happy beyond words that this day has finally come.

why do I only like the photos I take in the rain?

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A quiet and drizzly and mud puddle-y last day in Morocco. A lot of the morning was spent packing and getting ready for the next phase of traveling. After that a short visit to les tombeaux Saadiens, avec les chats Saadiens et la tortue Saadienne.

Rain, graves, cats, wandering, etc. etc. I am sorry if this blog is too repetitive. I'm sitting here on my last night in Morocco, my throat so fucked up that I can barely talk, thinking that I don't really feel like writing much either - maybe more reflection tomorrow. If I don't get a chance in Madrid then the next blog will be from Israel...

See you there.

souk insanity

So many things to buy! Lantern made out of sardine tins?

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Tall twisty triangle lanterns?

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Plastic babies in plastic bags?

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Rugs of every possible variety?

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Unfinished slabs of wood?

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Halal cholesterol free, gluten free watermelon gummies manufactured by someone who has never seen or tasted an actual watermelon? (HINT: Yes obviously I bought these. They were nasty. I ate them all.)

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Lovely Crab?

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Shopping at home takes it out of me enough, but shopping here is on another planet of difficulty. Today was the day of running around from souk to souk buying gifts for a bunch of people and it was quite an ordeal.

For one thing it's very difficult to know what anything costs at all. To even start to get an idea of what the price might be, you first have to talk to someone for a really long time and eventually, like 10 minutes in, he will quote you a price. This price is completely wrong and way too high. But it might be only twice what it should be, or it could be 10 times what it should be. How do you know? I don't have a clue. Then you have to go into a bargaining session which can take a freaking hour and in the end he acts like you're causing his family to die of starvation, but still every time I feel like I probably got ripped off.

This might be fun for some but I hate arguing with people. I really hate it! Yet I am apparently not as much of a pushover as most tourists because they usually seem really genuinely mad at me when it's all done. So it's like my cheap side and hatred of spending money, battling with my shy side and hatred of getting in fights with strangers, and by 3 pm today I was ready to drop of emotional exhaustion.

Luckily I will not be forced to shop tomorrow. Unluckily, it's my last real day in Morocco. On Saturday morning it's already time to go the airport and fly to Madrid, then on Sunday on to Tel Aviv. I wish I had more time here to go further south, to the desert or Essouira, but on the other hand it will be so nice to have a breath of cleaner air. I can feel my throat disintegrating every time I inhale lately.

the plague

Well, it had to happen I guess. My mom and I are both officially sick now, with some horrible combo of fever/cold/sore throat/upset stomach situation. It is possible that the sore throat is just due to the unbelievable pollution here, which you can actually see drifting in waves of ugly gas across the boulevards. We walked to the Ville Nouvelle today which would actually have been very pretty and nice, a big spread out pink city with palm trees, except for the constant hacking cough due to breathing 95% exhaust fumes, 5% air.

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The Ville Nouvelle also has a supermarket which at first I thought maybe didn't carry Laughing Cow cheese, because it wasn't in the cheese section. This would be the first supermarket I've ever seen that didn't have it, so that would really be a landmark event, since I had previously thought that the Laughing Cow distribution people had in fact achieved total world domination. But it turned out their streak was unbroken as I turned the corner and realized that it was not in the cheese section because Laughing Cow has its own entire aisle.

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We also sort of accidently wandered over to the Jewish cemetary in the Medina here, which is a tourist attraction for some reason I don't understand at all. I mean...are there that many Jewish tourists in Morocco? Do non-Jews really enjoy visiting old Jewish ghettos and cemetaries and synagogues which are all abandoned of course because there are no Jews living here anymore? And if so, why? Confusing.

I like the looms and colored wool here better than the rugs they make out of them. Maybe I will just decorate my house with a loom instead. 

the everything's 10 dirham store

The old city in Marrakesh is so different from the one in Fez. There are wide streets and big open squares and parks everywhere, totally without the narrow, closed in, mazelike feeling of Fez's medina. It's cold here too at night and in the morning, but the sunlight is so direct it warms everything up all through the middle of the day. It's so bright that it hurts my eyes even wearing sunglasses and washes all the color out of everything, making all my photos look almost black and white.

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This is apparently by far the coldest as well as the rainiest Moroccan winter ever, which probably has something to do with the fact that it's pretty much the lowest of the low season here now. We are staying in a room in a beautiful riad which we booked for dirt cheap because there are no tourists - we are literally the only guests there.

In the center of the medina are the souks, so colorful and covered in these slat roofs which let all these tiny beams of light in, very beautiful.

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The wool hanging around is in the dyer's area, they string it up like that to dry.

The color of Marrakesh is orangey-pink - the houses, the dirt, the wastebaskets, even the city buses are this color, and the sky is so blue...

The smell of Marrakesh is exhaust - the air is so polluted and the cars and mopeds give off such a stink. There are donkeys here everywhere too, like in Fez, with long dirty fur and pulling carts that look much too big for them.

If you go up to the third floor anywhere here you can see the snow-capped mountains around the city.

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The trip here from Fez went fine, but was made significantly more uncomfortable by the fact that I had developed a fever the night before we left in addition to the sniffly cold that's been annoying me since Lisbon. So I was popping ibuprofen but still achy, headachy, and miserable throughout the 7 hour train ride in a small compartment packed with people talking to and often yelling at each other very loudly in Arabic. I mean they all seemed perfectly friendly (though very yelly) but it was the last place on earth I wanted to be. Which reminds me of another thing I will never get used to about Morocco: every man I pass on the street talks to me. If he has a shop he tries to get me to buy something, if he doesn't he wants me to pay him to guide me somewhere or else just hit on or harrass me. I can't STAND it. I HATE it when strangers talk to me on the street (except when people say hi in a neighborly way, that's fine.) Even if they mean well it makes me feel awful and when they're obnoxious and pushy I just want to scream. God I miss the midwest sometimes, where people who don't know you have the decency to leave you the fuck alone...

OK, enough complaining. On a side note, I keep getting emails from people who are like, "Are you REALLY going to Israel?" Yes, I am still going unless something catastrophic happens between now and Sunday. But seriously, don't worry, I'm not planning a day trip to Gaza, as if anyone would let me do that anyway.

scrub scrub

This afternoon we visited the hammam or baths, which was AMAZING. I totally had no idea what to expect. For one thing, I was thinking about baths, as in, pools of water, which this was not. First you walk into an unmarked door and down some stairs into a changing area where you get naked (except for underwear, which everyone leaves on) and leave all your stuff except soap and shampoo, then descend through a few different empty rooms, getting ever warmer and steamier, until you get to the main place. It's just a big steam room full of mats and little plastic stools and buckets of hot water and lots of women and girls of all ages. There was one bigger, older lady who I guess was the manager of the place and was always bellowing at people to move. She was in her underwear too.

Then for like two hours it was a cycle of having buckets of hot water thrown over me, getting soaped up, washing the soap off, getting scrubbed with an exfoliating thingy, more buckets of hot water, shampoo, buckets, scrubbing, buckets, torture/massage, buckets, different kind of soap, buckets scrubbing and buckets and more buckets of hot water.

I am pretty sure that I don't have a single speck of dirt left on my body anywhere.

My mom and I were helped through this whole process by Karima and her sister (I am so sorry I never really got your name, Karima's sister!) We barely had any language in common - Karima and I were able to marginally communicate through each of our broken French - but that didn't really turn out to be much of a problem.

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All of the people in this photo are extremely clean.

Tomorrow I'm going to be on a super long train to Marrakesh all day, which I'm kind of dreading after coming thisclose to dying of hypothermia on the last one, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get internet access right away but I will try. Until then...

I broke Volubilis

Today was finally sunny and we took the opportunity to look at stuff around but not in Fez. First stop was the Roman town of Volubilis, which is of course a ruin, but one out in the middle of nowhere with tons of stuff preserved so you can actually walk around and see the whole city plan and basilica and mosaics and things. The paths were muddy so the best way to get around was to walk on the low remains of walls. There is really no kind of protection or security there, everyone is just climbing all over. But when I tried to get up on one wall I slipped in the mud and the two rocks I was holding on to kind of...fell off. Dude this thing was built 2200 years ago! And I broke it! Oops.

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Animals enjoy Roman ruins too!

Apparently this year Morocco is getting more rain than it has in the last 30 years, so thank climate change is for the extreme greenness of the countryside.

After that, in a nearby city, Meknes, my mom and I went into an old royal granary and stables, where they stored all the food and water for the king as well as his 12,000 arabian horses. (You might ask why anyone could possibly need 12,000 horses, but keep in mind he also had 500 wives and 800 children so this was what you might call a large family.) We had to take a tour to go in, which sounded kind of annoying but was actually HILARIOUS. First the guide, Muhammad, took my camera from me, then he grabbed us both by the arms and pulled us into the exact places he wanted us to stand in order to take pictures. He dragged us from room to room, making us stand in certain locations and then taking a photo. What we actually wanted to look at or take pictures of was of course of no importance....

There was also a mausoleum and a bunch of gates in Meknes.

The end.

mud and mint tea

Morocco, seen from Spain:

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Spain, seen from the ferry:

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We stepped off the boat in Tangier to pouring rain, a horde of taxis, and loudspeakers blaring "I Want it That Way" by the Backstreet Boys. Then it was on the the train station and a five hour ride to Fez, easy enough though I was shivering like crazy the whole time - nothing here is heated, and it's been chilly and overcast, so once your clothes get wet and cold it's hard to ever warm up. The train whizzed and sometimes crawled past mountains, cities and towns, markets, farms, sheep, fruit trees, red mud roads, horses pulling carts, satellite dishes, cement block suburbs, and hour after hour of incredibly beautiful green rolling hills. I had been told not to talk to anyone on the train, but no one tried to talk to us.

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We're staying right in the medina of Fez, which is the old city (like 8th century old), an endless labyrinth of streets crammed with people and stores and animals and businesses. It's a huge tourist attraction but not just a tourist attraction, this place would clearly go on without us. There's amazing tilework everywhere, also stinky mud and tons of guys standing around on every corner doing nothing. I'm sleeping in my own room on the top floor of an incredible restored apartment building, and I feel a little unworthy.

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Besides wandering the medina and trying not to get trapped by amateur tour guides and herded into their shops, my mom and I walked this morning to the old Jewish ghetto, the Mellah, and saw a restored synagogue and a view of the cemetary, which was locked. All of the Jews from Fez are gone from here now, mostly to Israel. These were apparently the tenements of the 14th century...

This afternoon while I was having my second avocado milkshake there was some kind of rally/protest thing which happened where hundreds of mostly high school looking boys ran through the street with Moroccan flags chanting something.

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So I'm having a little bit of a problem photographing Fez, and here it is. I can take pictures of landscapes and buildings and sites. I don't know how to take pictures of the medina. It's all these little narrow streets full of people, and I feel like it would be so rude and awful to whip out the cam and start snapping away at them - but then I'm looking at this meager batch of photos and thinking how far it is from capturing anything about what this is like.

migrating south for the hell of it

This will have to be a superquick post as I'm in an internet place which is about to close - this morning was the last in Sevilla, took a whirlwind tour through the Real Alcazar and the Cathedral - then on to the bus station to hop an afternoon bus to Tarifa, where we're getting the ferry to Tangier tomorrow morning.

Tarifa is a very small, mostly closed, fairly sketchy little beach town with lots of dreadlocked hippies here to do drugs and windsurf. Wind and ferries seem to be the only businesses around - there are also wind farms all around the countryside. This is also the closest point of Spain to Africa, and it is so, so, so close. The other shore and mountains look so nearby that you could swim it - it's a 35 minute ferry ride so I know this is a little deceiving, but seriously. It's all misty mountains and small little twinkling lights which look like a little town across the strait - actually Tangier, which is supposed to be a total pit of a city. I can see Russia Africa from my house hostal!

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Tomorrow the plan is to take the morning ferry across and then a five hour train to Fez. I will try my best to get internet tomorrow night but I have really no clue how easy or hard it will be in Morocco.

I don't even have time to upload most of my pictures right now, which blows. So here you get a random collection of the ones that uploaded first.

"save" the world, etc.

Sevilla has a ton of recycling bins which are all painted and decorated differently, obviously some kind of city project like the painted cows on the street or globes in Chicago - but so much better because these are actually useful things for people to throw their plastic in, not just decorative. I approve.

In our wanderings, my mom and I ran into this velomobile parked on the street. I took some pictures and then its inventor, Ricardo, who was hanging out nearby, came over to open it up and show us how it works. It's basically a reclining bicycle with a car type body around it - you pedal to push it forward but it also has a rechargeable battery for headlights and stuff. He says it goes up to 60 km/hour and he rides it all around the streets of the city...

Since pretty much everything was closed, after having coffee we went to walk around the big park which is left over from an exhibition Sevilla put on in the 20's.

One of the buildings has a bunch of tiled maps of Spain, including one of Sevilla, which shows something I think is very weird. Look at the compass - all of the city maps for this place are turned 90 degrees so that North is on the left side instead of the top. So confusing and bizarre! I am really offended by this for some reason. It's hard enough for me to find my way around with my crappy sense of direction without people changing which direction North is. Not fair.

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Tomorrow we're going to spend the morning here in Sevilla, then head to Tarifa, on the coast, in order to catch the ferry to Morocco on Thursday morning. I wish I had more time for southern Spain, but still - CANNOT WAIT.

recap time

Wow, I finally got a computer which is working right and enough time to make a real post, and there's so much to catch up on. (Although I'm still having trouble figuring out how to type an apostrophe without copying and pasting.)

Item One: Went to Sintra. This is the only picture which was still on my camera when it came back from the dead:

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Sintra...land of blurry cars and MYSTERY. I think I'll leave it there.

Item Two: Natan left, I spent another day walking around Lisbon by myself in the rain. However, this time I was prepared. I had Natan's umbrella which he very nicely left for me, I rolled my jeans up so they wouldn't touch the ground and soak up all the puddles, and I wore flip flops instead of my soggy old shoes and socks.

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This worked perfectly in the sense of ending the day with dry clothes for once, but it was a little hard on my poor cold feet.

Item Three: My mom flew in and met me in Lisbon! She was luggage free due to airline issues, as usual, but otherwise well.We went down the waterfront and then to some parks and things, waiting for our night bus to Sevilla.

Some people scratched graffitti all over this cactus.

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After sun set we went and looked at old trams and elevators and things...

Then it was time for the bus.

Item Four: Night bus to Sevilla. Dudes this bus is RIDIC. First, they take away your food. Then, they were playing a horrible old Marlon Brando movie dubbed into Spanish really loud until midnight so you couldn´t sleep. And at midnight, they pull over at this random rest stop and the bus driver makes everyone get out for half an hour and sit in the rest stop. The only explanation either of us could think of is that this is a total scam to make you buy dinner there. Anyway eventually they let us back on and we dozed off for a bit until getting into Sevilla at the pitch-black, everything-is-closed-and-there-are-no-taxis-or-local-buses hour of 4:55 am. Anyway, we stumbled through the streets half-awake to our hotel for tonight, where the kindly front desk guy let us doze off again on some couches in the lobby until it was actually morning...

 Item Five: The sun came up and hey, we´re in Sevilla!

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It is very orangey and nice and full of gift shops that sell fans. It is also, seriously, closed down for today AND tomorrow because Christmas is apparently still going on. Give me a break, how can every single freaking day be a holiday? Don´t people here ever go to work? Lazy asses! By the way, I want a job in Spain.

And now I think I shall go back to the hotel and zzzzzzzz out while my mom frantically calls around trying to find her lost luggage and get it forwarded here.

half baked

THE CAMERA HAS RECOVERED.

Yes...after days of trying to dry it out on its own, I came up with the brilliant plan of putting it near the scary electric heater to bake it back into health. I put it there for an hour, and then tried to turn it on, and worse than before, it wouldnt even start to turn on. Oh shit! I thought I had ruined it for good, but actually I think I saved it, because an hour later I tried again and it turned on just fine and has been working ever since. Lucky lucky me.

And now for some reason Vox is not really working and also Im kind of drunk after sharing many bottles of wine and port with a german guy and some other people I just met. Everytime I try to hit the apostrophe key or insert a photo something bad happens. I am not sober enough to figure out this problem tonigh and make a good regular blog postt. I will try again tomorrow.

Night.

a sad day in blogville

MY CAMERA IS DEAD, OMG.

I think it died from getting wet, although it worked last night - maybe the moisture like seeped in overnight? I don't know, but I am hoping that maybe it will dry eventually and work again. This is terrible, terrible news, and it makes me think that this country (Portugal) might have some kind of CURSE against cameras, since Natan dropped his in Porto and it also died. So maybe...once I get to Sevilla, it will work again? Maybe? Yes? Come back to life little camera, I need you!!

Well, to make up for the no pictures of Sintra, I present instead a special blog feature:

*  *  *  *
Natan's Corner

So, as you know, Malka was not alone over the last three weeks. She had a trip companion over that last three weeks - me. Sadly, this is my last day on vacation as I have to return to my job. I would like to take this opportunity to say that I had a wonderful time on this trip and really enjoyed both Spain and Portugal. Malka has graciously allowed me to guest blog on my last day and give some of my impressions.

Some highlighits:
Tossa Del Mar - Beautiful cove and views.
Cathedral in Toledo - Amazingly ornate.
Porto - The whole city (when it wasn't closed on Sunday).
Barcelona - Gaudi's works.
Madrid - The great streets and the Prado.

Some lowlights:
Three days of rain in Lisbon - blah.
Being propositioned by a hooker in Madrid.
Breaking my newly bought camera - Totally my fault by the way.

Overall a very satisfying trip and one that I would recommend that others do as well - 3.5/4 stars.

*  *  *  *

There you have it folks, the trip so far has a 3.5 GPA and has made the Dean's List. So goodbye to Natan and to my precious, wonderful, killed-by-rain-hopefully-only-temporarily camera.

three angels

I started the morning close to tears after dreaming that a beloved place from my childhood had been destroyed, only to wake up and realize it never existed in the first place. Hello 2009.

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After breakfast, I thought I'd ring in the new year by taking a long walk uphill, in the rain, by myself, to a cemetary. I didn't have a map that showed where it was, so I followed the tracks of the tram that was supposed to go there. About an hour into the walk it went from raining normally to raining extremely hard, and since all the shops and cafes were closed I ducked into a church to get out of the rain for a minute and accidentally walked into a funeral. There were two soldiers guarding the coffin and a service going on. I beat a quick retreat.

An hour-ish after that, about when I got to the cemetary, the hard rain turned into an incredible downpour. I was soaked to the skin almost immediately - at first I kept trying to find dry parts of my shirt under my hoodie to wipe off the camera so I could keep taking pictures, but then it became impossible.

The cemetary itself is really more of a mausoleum city, very large, and totally deserted. Apparently I'm the only person who thought to celebrate the holiday in a downpour among the dead people...can't think why? At one point I hid under a huge tree for shelter, looked down and noticed four cats were doing the same. After that I spotted cats under a lot of the big trees. There must be a lot of cats who live there. They were the only other living beings around.

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I had thought that after the cemetary I would take the tram back, but by that time, I had started to feel like my wetness really defined me and that it would be wrong somehow to get on public transportation with all of the dry, tram-taking people. So I wrung out my hoodie at the bus stop the best I could, put it back on, set my ipod to sad Bob Dylan songs (thanks Abe) and started the trudge back towards downtown. It was all around a day for wallowing in misery, but in a good way. I was very happy the whole time, though also very sad.

On the way back I passed the same church as the funeral was letting out. One of the soldiers was outside pacing around talking on his cell phon

Back at the hostel, the atmosphere could best be described as "sleepover party that's gone on way too long" - all the same French people from last night's New Years Eve party are still cooped up here, stuck because of the rain and everything being closed, lying around on beanbag chairs watching the Simpsons and playing cards. Why are all of the people here French? I don't know, but they are.

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Tomorrow is Natan's last day before going home, and weather permitting we're planning an expedition to Sintra....

frustration!

For some reason the firewall here on the hostel computer is blocking Flickr and I cannot figure out a way to upload my photos. I then went out in search of an internet place somewhere else...walked for HOURS...found absolutely nothing. It's been pouring rain since I got here and everything is now closed and I'm trying to figure out what the hell I can scrounge for dinner.

I don't know if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy by this point or what, but New Years Eve always seems to go wrong for me.

Arghhhh.

Update: I managed to find a way to upload photos, excruciatingly slowly and one at a time, through the old version of the Flickr site made for mobile phones. I've managed a total of four so far. If I have to do it this way the whole time I'm in Lisboa I am going to tear all of my hair out.

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blah blah blah

No pics yet today, so far I've just been on trains (4 of them) and settling into new place in Lisboa. So this will be a special TEXT ONLY blog update. Don't get too excited.

Last night I managed to find a vegetarian-friendly restaurant (!!!!) where Natan and I ate dinner. It was great. However while we were there, you will not believe this, but he started making fun of this blog and saying it was "boring." According to that traitor this is how my blog goes:

Day 15: Tried to order vegetarian food. Got pork.
Day 27: Ate a potato. No end in sight.
Day 34: Looked for vegetables. Failed.

Now as you all know this is completely unfair, as the endless search for non-pork takes up only maybe a third of the blog. So I decided to abandon him in Porto and venture off on my own.

Unfortunately it turned out he had his own train ticket so we ended up sitting next to each other on the ride to Lisboa after all. To pass the time we made up a game where we ranked all fifty states into 5 tiers, based on their importance, famousness, population, whether we always forget they exist, etc. (But not based on how well we like the state, or else WI would be tier 1, which objectively I must admit that it isn't.) So I'm sure you will be happy to know that if you happen to live in California, Florida, Texas or New York you are a resident of a tier 1 state! If not, tough luck. Anyone who would like to know the exact ranking of their own state please email or comment and I will let you know where you stand.

So anyway here I am in Lisboa, where I'm staying until Sunday. Natan is going home on Saturday morning, then on Sunday I'm meeting up with my mom, with whom I will be travelling to Sevilla, Tarifa, Fez and Marrakesh, then back to Madrid, then on by myself to Israel...

I love monday morning

Last night Natan and I went out to look for a restaurant for dinner, which was challenging on a Sunday night. Finally we found one that was open. There were two vegetarian options: garlic omelette and garlic pasta. Let me make it clear that all the meat dishes had other ingredients, like you know, tomato and sauces and vegetables and spices and whatever, but for vegetarians, no. Garlic is the only flavor allowed to vegetarians in this country. Not that I'm BITTER. Anyway, Natan ordered a kebab and this is the amazing thing he got:

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Yes that is huge chunks of beef and whole shrimps, on a metal skewer, hanging from another metal post, screwed into a wooden base. Of course.

This morning I went a very beautiful bookstore, Livraria Lello, which was packed with about 50% book-buyers and 50% picture-takers all jostling for space on the staircase.

I guess you can see why.

Then, to continue the luxury theme, lunch in the Majestic Cafe.

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It was all right.

Other things I did today: a tour/tasting at a Port wine cellar (I understand this is mandatory for Porto tourists), talked to cats on rooftops, went up and down many stairs and back and forth across bridges, and invented an alternate reality where Kerry beat Bush in 2004 and then debated with Natan for about an hour if Obama would have then been elected president in 2012 (I say yes, assuming that Edwards' affair would still have taken place and become public around 2008, forcing Kerry to dump him from the ticket when he ran for reelection so he would not have been the default candidate in 2012.)

I don't know if this will be clear in the blog, but the picture below is of two Sandemen facing off across the river. The one on the left is a black cut-out and on the right, a black and yellow sign. (Sandeman is a port company and this guy is their logo/mascot.) 

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This is my last day in Opossum Oporto* - tomorrow will be posting from Lisboa. What will I wander around taking pictures of there? STAY TUNED.

*this joke copyright Overcoat Industries Int'l

and I still haven't figured out if this city is supposed to be called porto or oporto

So many buildings here are falling apart and falling down. Some seem to just be in bad shape, lots of others are obviously abandoned, roofless and filled with trash. And I'm not talking about way out away from the touristy parts - right near the river, the bridge, a million restaurants and postcard shops. I can't quite figure out the relationship here between the houses in amazing locations with gorgeous views, completely falling to shit, and the brand-new shiny mall up the street.

I took a million pictures today. Porto is very photogenic, I think, or else it's just that I always want to take pictures of things that are sort of dirty and messed-up in an attractive way, which this city is definitely full of. Every part of the older buildings is discolored, moldy or rusted or whitewashed and texture-y and, you know, full of "vintage charm" by which I mean holes.

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I crossed the bridge and climbed a hill to this church area, which also had rows of ancient cannons and an army guy with a gun creepily patrolling. I didn't take a photo of him because I didn't want to get shot.

On this corner, in the grassy area on the left of the photo, I stepped onto an outdoor staircase and accidentally saw a woman crouched in the corner shooting up, who glared at me while her two little kids played nearby with pieces of trash and an abandoned oven.

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 New fact I learned last night: J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, actually lived in Porto for a few years before becoming the most succesful author of all time or whatever. It actually makes sense to me, I can feel the Harry Potterishness here...and those of you who know my love for the boy wizard know this is a compliment in my book

.And here's some more learning for you all! It turns out that Portoguese is in fact not weird Spanish but a whole different language which I totally can't understand! These are the only things I know how to say in Portoguese:

-sim, nao, por favor, obrigado (useful)

-cachaça (not useful in Portugal)

-o senhor beixozinhos-beixozinhos (not useful under any circumstances.)

Apparently I look like a local, too, because people keep talking to me at length in Portoguese long after my blank stare might have alerted them to my stupid-tourist status, and then say, "oh, I thought you were Portoguese" in perfect English. OK then!

 

the four food groups

OK everyone, guess what I did today! If you guessed "Got to a new city then wandered around doing nothing in particular," then you are catching on to this blog. Spoiler alert: this is pretty much all I'm going to be doing for the next month too.

Last night I was in a shitty mood because I didn't have a real dinner and was tired of all other human beings and out of money and stuck at a train station waiting for an overnight train which I knew was going to make for an uncomfortable night. To console myself I literally spent my last euro on a bag of spaghetti-themed gummies.

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This may not have been making good choices.

Well, anyway, the many trains thing came out fine and Natan and I arrived, tired and lost but not too miserable in rainy Porto this afternoon. After a shower, change of clothes and some CNN-watching I went out to explore. Porto is small, dudes. It's really ridiculously pretty, but most everything is closed today (on Saturday afternoon right after Christmas??) and a lot of places look boarded up and closed for good. Compared to Madrid it's so quiet and tiny and empty. That's not a bad thing. And like I said, seriously ridiculously pretty all around.

If you don't believe me, below is the inside of the mall. It's like disneyworld.

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I went into this mall because my hands were super dry and I wanted to see if I could find a store with lotion samples I could steal. Success. However, weirdly, the lotion I used is scented with hemp. So now my hands are not dry, but they do smell strongly of weed. I guess that's OK?

There are soooo many goodlooking pastries around here that I am paralyzed with indecision every time I see a shop window and end up not getting any. Pics to come. For lunch I had a tuna sandwich, one of my main sources of nutrition so far on this trip. 90% of the restaurants/cafe/snack bars around here have only one non-ham-based item on the menu, if any, so for almost every meal so far I end up eating either potatos, falafel, or a tuna sandwich. Potatos...falafel...tuna sandwich. Repeat times a million. And now, spaghetti gummies. It's a miracle I don't have scurvy yet. (Just kidding, I also eat fruit from the markets, I'm not going to die of malnutrition.)

Back to what I mentioned earlier about CNN watching for a second. I watched about an hour of coverage of what's going on today in Gaza, which was mostly the same tape on loop of people being carried to hospitals and rockets in the distance, constant repetition of the death count and statements from both sides explaining how they had no choice about their actions. This is so insanely fucking depressing that it's hard for me to write a lighthearted blog post about the weirdness of traveling today, but anyway, I did my best. Everyone in Israel please keep safe.

ciao for now

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Another cold but gorgeous day in Madrid. I went to the botanical gardens, which are huge but currently sad, brown, and dead, in order to see the exhibit which is up there about medieval engineering. VERY cool, tons of models of medieval ships and bridges and aqueducts and water wheels and all kinds of stuff. Some of them move and work. Also highly informative how-to videos for things like casting a bell or whatever other medieval-style work you plan on doing in your spare time.

Not to mention a giant dreidel!

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So after that Natan and I stood freezing our asses off in line for half an hour to get into the Prado. (It later turned out that the line was actually just for the special exhibit and to see the permanent collection we could have walked right in. I don't want to talk about it.) Luckily there was entertainment in line in the form of two little girls playing with jump ropes. One of them was doing OK. The other, over the course of HALF AN HOUR, only managed to even get the rope past her head about one time in ten, and actually jumped over it exactly three times. Hey you guys, I finally found the one person on earth less physically coordinated than I am! Awww, hang in there, cute little girl who sucks at jump rope.

The museum itself was great, more manageable than I thought it might be, and I was very impressed with these super detailed little gallery guide books they were selling, with tons of color painting reproductions, for only one euro apiece. I got four of them to read later - Bosch, Velasquez and two on Goya. These will come in handy tonight because I'm about to embark on a 14-hour-ish train journey to Porto, and I have nothing else to read.

In fact, I didn't bring a single book on this trip with me at all.

Now, OK. As many of you know I am obsessed with books and in a good week will read one or two a day. But at the end of my frenzied packing and getting ready for this trip, I was basically incapable of making even simple decisions, like which books to take. So I didn't bring any. (SMART.) I've been stealing Natan's but now his stash is running low too. Uh oh...approaching critical levels of no reading material! Emergency!!!!!

Next post will be from Portugal, unless of course everything goes terribly wrong.

:)

All the museums and and big stores are closed today, so I thought it would be a good chance to walk around the parks and paseos and, you know, enjoy the great outdoors or somethng. It's a perfect winter day here - cold but sunny and beautiful. A lot of people are still around everywhere, mostly couples and families with little kids. The first park area I went too felt too crowded for me to really enjoy. Also I realized that I desperately needed a cup of coffee.

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So after walking around a bit, I went back to the main streets in search of a Starbucks. Let me explain: I realize that looking for a Starbucks in Spain is almost the epitome of American lameness (second only to looking for a McDonalds for dinner) but I swear I have a good reason. All this traveling has left me so peopled-out and exhausted. I didn't remotely want to sit in a smoky little cafe and drink coffee, or at an outdoor table in a crowded plaza. I wanted to be alone with my coffee and my book and a park bench out of sight or sound of any other human beings. I need to be ALONE sometimes, dammit!

Anyway...eventually (and it took an hour or two) I managed to fulfill my quest.

yessssss.

OK so after I got some of that antisociality out of my system, I did some more wandering in parks and streets, until I walked into this internet cafe just now. It's not a day that really lends itself to good blogging stories. I talked to no one except a barista, I did nothing but walk and read and take some pictures. It was wonderful, though. An ideal vacation day.

It's funny because Madrid, of all of the places I'm going on this trip, was a total afterthought. I originally really wanted to travel farther North in Spain from Barcelona, but ended up here instead because of the realities of limited time and inconvenient train routes. I love it, though. I don't know how much of this has to do with the place fitting my mood or just being the kind of place I like - or whether it has to do with coming here a week into the trip, when I'm in the perfect moment of being used to traveling but not yet tired of it. In any case I'm feeling happier and more comfortable here than I have anywhere yet, and sorry that tomorrow is my last day here, at least on this leg of the trip. But no worries, I'll be back.

the day before christmas

Wandering around Madrid today it's seemed less like a terrifying shopping day and more like a Halloween party. There are masks and wigs for sale everywhere, and tons of people (adults and kids) are wearing them. People in Mickey Mouse and Spiderman costumes are everywhere handing out balloon swords. A small child with a balloon sword actually stabbed me in the stomach as I walked past him - so watch out, the little ones can be vicious. There's a lot of music playing, and a ton of street performers.

On top of the characters I recognized (Yoda, drag queen, human statue) there were some weirder ones. Like this guy with cat face paint who sat in a garbage can u ntil someone put money in his hat, then opened the garbage can, screamed, and shook the hand of a small child. Everyone in the crowd cracked up every time. Bizarre/adorable.

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Tonight Natan and I FINALLY managed to get together all of the necessary ingredients to celebrate The Chanukah. In fact we celebrated the first four nights all at once (and said the prayer four times and everything.)

Happy twenty-fourth day of December, everybody.

let's try this again

So I finally figured out where all the tourists are: Toledo! We got off the train and immediately everyone whips out their cameras and starts taking snaps of the train station (above.) Granted the train station was awesome, it was still very funny.

It turns out that Toledo was a great place to go because it has lots of two of my favorite things, Visigoths and archbishop's capes. (I did not know either of these were my favorite things before yesterday.) Unfortunately it also has lots of two of my least favorite things, swastikas and Santa Claus. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

So the first place we went was the two still existing ex-synagogues from when Jews used to live here in ye olden days along with Christians and Muslims. Both are museums now. (In the pictures above, you can see a model of old Toledo with the Jewish Quarter buildings.) This is clearly a big stop on the Israeli tour of Spain because we ran into tons of them yesterday. Actually, the synagogues were very cool. Of course going into them was the only time except for airports & train stations that I've had to go through serious security here, but, well, yeah. There were several gift shops selling tchachkes for all three religions mixed together, kind of like monotheism disneyworld style or something. OK, but seriously - there were swastikas spray painted everywhere which kind of diminished whatever heartwarming quality they might have been going for. I should mention that every time I've been outside Barcelona or Madrid on this trip I've seen a ton of swastika graffitti but Toledo was the worst. Lovely.

Then naturally it was time to go into some of the many, many, many churches around. First was the 13th century church which contained the museum of Visigoth culture, which I wasn't able to take pictures of. It was awesome though. They had a bible written in Visigoth! And shit tons of belt buckles. Visigoths heart Jesus and belt buckles.

Then I had some coffee and marzipan cake.

Next on the tour was the main cathedral, which contains a huge gold thing which apparently is officially called a "monstrosity" although I would really call the whole thing a monstrosity, or maybe an insane baroque nightmare. This place was seriously bananas to the point of obscenity. But very interesting. The best thing they had, though, was a room full of the hats & capes worn by archbishops of the cathedral dating back to the 1400s - seventy of them, like six hundred years old. And they were in PERFECT shape. All totally embroidered in gold and beaded like crazy. But just perfect condition...I couldn't believe it. I was thinking about how at the museum I was looking at these dresses which were just a hundred years old or so - and high quality, and cared for, and they're just disintegrating and absolutely shredding to bits. 

I was not supposed to take pics in the cathedral at all but I was sadly unable to control myself. I had to do it really fast while hiding from the guards so the quality is not tops.

So I went and found a security guard and tried to interview him about the robes. I managed to figure out through the language barrier that nothing special is done to conserve them, they just hang there (on wooden posts basically), no special climate control or anything, no one's job is to take care of them. Amazing. Seventy of them!!!

Like always, but even more so with this post, you can see the rest of the photos on my Flickr.

tomorrow I'm so sleeping in

This was a long day. By that I mean, a good, but LONG day mostly spent walking around the old city of Toledo. I ended up with tons of pics and Flickr is taking ages to upload them tonight, like it's making me upload them one at a time and it's after 11 pm and I've been up since like the crack of dawn (or seven AM, whatever) and so far it's only managed to get twelve of the 70-something photos I took today, and I'm way too tired right now to stay up long enough to do the rest.

I have no idea if the sentence I just wrote even makes sense.

So to sum up: Toledo was very interesting, I am very exhausted, long recap post to come in the morning, good night everybody.

happy chanukah, sort of

So far Natan and I have done a terrible job celebrating. He ate a donut, not even a jelly donut, and I ate a potato omelette...or as I prefer to call it, an egg-flavored latke. In my defense it was swimming in oil. But we are working on improving for nights 2 through 8. Maybe even with a new hastily-purchased gift shop chanukiah. Stay tuned.

This morning we took the high speed AVE train to Madrid (pics of the Madrid train station above, nice right?) and dumped our stuff at the new digs - a budget hotel instead of a hostel this time, OH LUXURY. The main nice thing about it is that there are so many fewer people around, which is truly relaxing. Also the walls are not lime green. Also, there is a minibar! Granted the minibar has nothing in it, but that´s even better, because it's now an empty refrigerator in which I can store my cheese.

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I'm not sure why, but Natan felt that it was "weird" that I was sitting on the floor taking pictures of my cheese in a refrigerator. This is his reaction:

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Anyway, so on the train I had a chance to read the Let's Go book's entry on Madrid, which is funnier than you might expect. The person who wrote it has some kind of major, MAJOR hate-on for Gran Via, devoting paragraphs upon paragraphs to how awful it is, full of McDonald's and neon signs and crowds of shoppers and cars and it's a terrible terrible terrible hellhole of a street and how you should avoid it at all costs. So of course our hotel happens to be off Gran Via, so after reading all of that, I was shocked to get off the Metro and discover that Gran Via is....a perfectly normal street. No, really. It's pretty much exactly like any other big shopping street in a big city. Huh? Possibilities: a) the blocks that I walked on were not the evil blocks. b) the evil only comes out at certain times of day. c) Let's Go is not always 100% accurate.

So despite being in an awesome new city full of bars and clubs and super exciting nightlife etc., being the boring person I am, my big plan is to...go upstairs and watch TV. You see, this TV gets CNN, and at some point CNN is likely to show Obama, and I NEED MY OBAMA/POLITICS FIX SO BAD YOU GUYS. I am like in withdrawal after the last week. Maybe they'll even say something about the Blago story! God I am such a dork I even embarrass myself sometimes.

tomorrow: maybe a quick trip to Toledo before everything closes down for Christmas?

last day in Barcelona

I wandered down to the waterfront area, which is very Navy Pier-esque in its tourist-centric, huge-mall-having way, but still nice. For some reason tourist traps never seem as awful to me in other cities as they do at home. I was thinking that maybe tourists to Chicago are not such dumbasses as I usually assume for going to Navy Pier. Maybe I'm the dumbass for being unable to appreciate it, or for thinking that what I'm doing here is any more worthwhile.

I bought a lighter jacket at a discount store, because I don't feel like hauling my big wool coat and boots to Madrid with me tomorrow. It's already warm enough here that the coat is overkill and in the sunlight a long-sleeved T-shirt is all I need. So goodbye to the winter gear. Supposedly the places I'm going are only going to get warmer from here on out, here's hoping that's true!

Sorry for lame-ish blog two days in a row - I'm in the middle of dealing with some major school headaches right now and it's eating up all of my available internet time. Hopefully this will all be resolved shortly and I can go back to giving the blog the time and attention it deserves.

tomorrow from Madrid!

lazy Saturday

not much time or many pics to post today, so this will be a short one. I slept really, really late, then went to Park Guell, then wandered around some more and made a lot of difficult international calls to work out logistical stuff and went to a supermarket and an H&M and blah blah blah boring things like that. And now there are two very anxious young people behind me desperate for me to give up this computer so they can check their facebooks for another hour, and because I am so nice, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

the mountains

 

Here is a timeline of selected moments in the history of the monastery of Ripoll, about two hours north of Barcelona at the beginning of the Pyrenees, as copied from the brochure I picked up there.

880: "Wilfred the Hairy founded the monastery." (This was just his English name of course; in French, he was called Guifre. I cannot report what he called himself in any other languages because my brochure is only in English and French.)

1032: "Consecration of the New Basilica."

1428: "Earthquake. Big Damage."

15th-19th Century: "Great Misfortunes."

In all seriousness, I loved this monastery and I thought it was amazing. These incredibly huge stone walls and barrel vaults and all of that, but I don't know, I loved it.

Another feature of the monastery is the funeral monument of Count Ramon Berenguer III. After admiring this, Natan and I headed to Snack Bar Ramon, which I can only assume is named in tribute (?) and which is also, like the monastery, cheap and amazing. There were a lot of other people in there but all of them were old men smoking like 5 cigarettes, at once, apiece. I'm pretty sure I have lung cancer now after being in there for an hour. (Side note: everyone smokes inside everywhere here and it is SO DISGUSTING.) The menu didn't seem to contain anything non-meat based...for example, under the heading ¨"vegetarian food," the options were hamburger, ham, or sausage. However I managed to convey an order for a tuna sandwich, confirmed with hand gestures for making a sandwich and a spare loaf of bread as a prop, and lo and behold a tuna sandwich arrived! I also got a beer for one euro which I think is cheaper than anything in history.

The downside of this excellent lunch was that we had to eat in absolute silence because all of the old men in there were glued to a TV broadcasting some kind of event where they were picking groups for the playoffs for some soccer thing. Natan tried to explain it to me but I didn't really get it, also I don't care. Basically it was this man sitting at a very long desk with a very enormous trophy drawing names out of a hat. Thrilling TV let me tell you!

Aside from those two lovely attractions, absolutely everything to see or do in the town of Ripoll was closed. Ripoll is also a tourist destination...I guess...although FAR less spiffed-up than Tossa was. It doesn't seem nearly as prosperous either. The whole town, to be honest, smelled really bad, like exhaust and I don't know what. There was grafitti everywhere and tons of cars and just kind of general ugliness...I don't know how much of it was the season though, it reminded me a little of how Madison goes through a brown and ugly stage after fall but before there's snow on the ground. Just climbing a hill a little way above town, the air suddenly smelled good again.

One more thing, overheard this morning in the hostel kitchen...

Grown man, speaking very seriously:¨"But it's really just his spongy body that gives them that square shape - if he took them off, they'd just be pants!"

the sea

Wandering around lost last night I finally found an Orange (cell phone company) store, which was perfect because I am in posession of an Orange cell phone with prepaid minutes, but with the sad drawback that no one can remember its PIN number so it doesn't work at all. Earlier the Orange people had said that it was not possible to get the PIN back and that we'd have to buy a whole new card and lose all the minutes that had been paid for, so this is what I went in to do.

Unfortunately, no matter how I tried to explain the whole forgotten PIN situation to the very glamorous and very not-English-speaking woman working there, she just stared at me like I was a moron. The fourth time into my incompetent broken Spanish explanation of what had happened, she rolled her eyes, grabbed the phone out of my hand, punched like six keys and handed it back to me with a new PIN number and working perfectly. I think that this was a situation where my obvious idiocy really worked in my favor, because apparently she just decided that I was far too much of a loser to have successfully stolen someone else's phone, and gave me a new PIN against company rules to make me go away so she could close up for the night. Win!

This morning Natan and I went to Tossa de Mar, a small tourist town on the coast, supposedly an hour and twenty minutes away by bus. This estimate does not include the time it takes when your bus breaks down halfway there. But no worries, we got there eventually, and despite Natan's complaints that I must have chosen a shitty place to go because we were two of only four people on the bus, it was actually really beautiful & nice. It's interesting to be in a town whose only business is clearly tourism during the lowest of the low season, mid-week in December. Except for the bar by the bus station the town was essentially deserted, with most businesses closed for the season and only a few other people walking around on the streets. What was extra strange about it was that the weather was beautiful, sunny and not cold - it was a perfect day for walking around the castle, lighthouse, old cobbled streets etc. - really picture-perfect and yet we were the only ones there.

We finally found a restaurant that was open for lunch, and we were the only customers. The obviously bored owner hung out at our table and talked to us constantly. He kept taking pictures off the wall and bringing them over to point things out. The before shot of Tossa: his grandfather sitting on the ground, making a basket for fishing, when no one ever came here on purpose. Then the pictures of Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra from when they came to Tossa in 1949 to shoot the movie "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman" and singlehandedly invented the tourism industry. Every other building here now is a hotel.

The castle and mountains and views of the sea are gorgeous. I was grateful the whole time that there was no one else there, except for a small crew of guys putting up what looked like a big nativity scene in an old half-destroyed church. There were cats chilling out everywhere all over town. Natan made fun of me for only taking pictures of cats and funny signs while he got snaps of the majestic stuff. What can I say, cats are cute.

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On the bus back to Barcelona, I realized that this was the first day I've been relaxed since September.

being in the church is supposed to feel like being in a forest

Sometimes it's hard to know when not to take pictures. Today I was standing in front of the Sagrada Familia and thinking, there is no picture that I can take here that will be better than the first five images that come up in a google search. The light, angle, etc. wasn't particularly good, and I'm not that great of a photographer. But it still felt too weird to stand there holding my camera and not snap it; so here is the result.

Going to really famous places is always confusing to me. There's the competition between what you expect to see and what you do see, and what you think you should feel and what you do feel. I came to Sagrada Familia with sky-high expectations - it was one of the things I was really looking forward to seeing - and as usual was a bit lost when I got there. Don´t get me wrong - it's a beautiful, amazing place. But half of me wishes I never knew about anything until seeing it myself.

Up on the tower, my heights thing kicked in and I got really, really shaky. I really didn't expect to have that kind of reaction, but something about the bright sunlight outside and dark little staircase inside and long, long drop to the ground really got to me. I pretty much clutched the railing all the way back down.

After a whole morning and afternoon of being a nice, obedient tourist and following the walking tour to all the Gaudi sights, I needed some alone time and took a long, random walk around nowhere in particular on my own. I started thinking that all the trees here look very Gaudi-esque. Or do all trees everywhere?

cold and rainy (but with palm trees)

On the left: adorable sheep chess set. On the right: horrific outdoor pet store that will haunt my dreams. According to Let`s Go the pet store stalls are world-famous. In NIGHTMARE world. They are full of horrible little birds cheeping their lungs out. They also sell pigeons.What kind of person would BUY a pigeon?? That would be an amazing combo of stupid & crazy.

The map I brought makes it look as if the downtown/old city part of Barcelona is pretty large, when in fact everything is right next to everything else. Because of this all morning Natan and I overshot every destination we tried to get to and ended up in a different neighborhood entirely. No problem though, since our whole goal was just to walk around and see stuff...which stuff in particular was not so important.

There is an awesome food market right by where we´re staying, with all kinds of parts of meat and fish I had never thought of before. Also fruits and veggies and cheeses and mushrooms and all kinds of olives...the seafood was all alive and wriggling. Abe, wish you were here. It´s been raining all day, so otherwise I´ve mostly been stepping in puddles while trying to take pics of things. It´s been wonderful. (that last sentence was not sarcastic, it really has been.) Everything is beautiful and interesting, but expensive. I made Natan walk around for hours looking for a cheap place for lunch then and ended up paying $9 for basically fast food because I was about to die of hunger. WHY ARE MY DOLLARS WORTH NOTHING. Oh well, I guess I´ll just be broke forever, no biggie!

In back of the gothic cathedral. This is the face Natan made when I said I was going to take a picture of him; he says, "I look best with my eyes closed." Then he took a picture of me where I am glaring at him, because we´re arguing about if, in the first picture he took of me, my face looked fat. I know, I am so charming. However I post these lovely portraits in the interests of accuracy.

Although Barcelona is obviously very touristy it still feels chill and relaxing right now, not so overwhelming or full of people. This may be related to the fact that it's winter, low season, the middle of the week, and pouring rain, but still. And everyone has been nice to me despite the fact that I am incompetent at life and can never understand them.

Last but not least: the bathroom stall which is doubles as a hall of mirrors. Genius! But also sort of disconcerting!

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what day is it? and who am I?

first stop, Barcelona....

You may ask why of all the worthwhile things to take photos of here, I instead have four pictures of my hostel room and its tiny tiny terrace. The answer is that by the time I got here, after 24 hours straight packing and 20 hours traveling coming right after a week of finals craziness, I am so fucking exhausted that I can barely focus my eyes. And now that I´ve used up the last of my energy writing this post, I am going to take a very, very long nap. More updates tomorrow

p.s. that bag of trailmix is my dinner. I know you´re jealous.

and after a brief hiatus

So most or all of you who are reading this know that I took a quick detour along the way of my fabulous traveling/blogging lifestyle and spent two years living in Chicago. And not keeping a blog at all. But about 10 hours from now I'm flying out again from O'Hare, and I'm determined that this blog will be back and BETTER THAN EVER, or at least not too much worse. Stay tuned....

au revoir

Last night we (Abe, Dad, Mechas, Helena, Catalina and I) went out to an organic vegetarian restaurant near here, where I ordered a French dessert which turned out to be...applesauce. Uh, ok. But it was fun.

On my last day in Paris, I did...not much. Went to the Jewish museum then had coffee in the afternoon, and Abe cooked up a really good dinner at the apartment.

More than anything, I feel kind of sad right now. A few weeks ago I would have been happy to see home and have  those comforts but right now I just feel like, "wait, not yet!" I'm stressing about stupid little things about the trip home, when really it's just being BACK that I'm not ready for.

I kind of forgot what I do with myself when I'm not traveling.

I guess I'll figure it out, because 24 hours from now, my plane is scheduled to touch down in Chicago....

museuming

Yesterday and the day before I spent most of my time at one museum or another, trying to cram in all the art-viewing within my 2 day admission pass. You might notice if you look at my flickr that I took a lot of painting photos. I'm not posting them here because I don't think anyone else really wants to look at bad pictures of random paintings - it's hard to take a good one with crowds jostling you - I took them to remind myself of what I thought was good/dumb/ugly/interesting, or had good clothes. Mostly that last one.

So the Musee D'Orsay (I am not even going to try with the accents here) is in an old converted train station, and the building is super cool.

The collection is a lot of impressionists and other art sort of around that timeframe. I really liked the painting and also their exhibit of Art Nouveau furniture. I have to say, furniture is definitely the thing that style is most suited to in my opinion. It gets kind of overdone in 2d and the buildings can be a little much for me but I do love the curvy beds & desks. I wonder does anyone make stuff like this anymore to sell, I bet you could make a shit-ton of money at it.

This is actually part of a larger theory I have that if you manufactured, say, cars, that looked exactly like the old "classic" models, and not just vaguely vintage-style, they would sell like crazy. Laurie and I were talking about this one day, making an MP3 player or Ipod case that looked like an old cassette tape. I know so many people who would eat that kind of thing up, including me.

The middle ages museum in a castle-thing on top of some old ruins, which is another good building choice.

My favorite thing about looking at middle ages stuff is when it's completely nutty, like say a drinking horn with chicken feet or a hourse with a spout.

I'm also always interested in why people from 1000 years ago in Europe had such bad posture that they couldn't even make their damn statues stand up straight.

The gallery of disembodied heads and the gallery of disenheaded bodies were in the same room.

So then it was onto the Musee des Arts Decoratifs/Musee de la Publicite/Musee de la Mode, which is like a 3-museums-in-1 deal. I hear there is a good historical collection in the fashion museum, but all they had out was a temporary exhibit of Balenciaga dresses from the early 20th century, which was boring. The Publicite exhibit also did not thrill me (as my grandmother would say.) My favorite, again, was the furniture stuff, especially an Art Deco office and a lot of other rooms put together in the complete style of one era. Unfortunately my batteries died after 3 pictures so I don't have much to look at.

Last but I do not dare to say least, I went to the Louvre. Despite dire crowd warnings it was actually not all that bad, except right around the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. And as soon as I got on a different floor, I was walking through empty rooms.

Celebrity works of art are a weird phenomenon. Why are people insane to see those 2 pieces, who otherwise couldn't tell a Leonardo from a Picasso and don't care, either? Just because they're famous, but why are they famous? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Mona Lisa isn't great, but I spent like 20 minutes looking at some other Leonardo paintings which the hordes walking by never spared a glance at, and which are just as good, important, whatever.

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I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that for people who are not very much into visual art, they don't know what to look at, especially in a huge museum, and even if they have a painting pointed out to them they don't know where to start with appreciating it. But with a superfamous one like Mona Lisa, they've seen it so many times it's already familiar and they understand what they're supposed to get out of it, so they do get something out of it...maybe.

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Important Art Lesson I learned: No matter what you are painting or sculpting, be it religious, historical, portrait, abstract, or anything else, it is always appropriate - perhaps even necessary - to include a naked lady fondling her own breasts. Seriously. Everywhere.

So then this happened to me.

Man with Cam: Picture? (pointing at self and GF)
(I take their picture.)

Man with Cam #2, nearby: Picture?
Me: Um, you want me to take your picture?
MwC2: No, no. I take sexy video girls in Louvre.
Me: What?
MwC2: I take sexy video. In the toilet if you want!
(I laugh.)
MwC2, offendedly: Is not funny! Is not a joke!

Then he followed me around for a while until I managed to convey to him that I really didn't want to take sexy videos in the toilet. But seriously, what the hell? Is there like a market for Girls Gone Wild Louvre Edition?

not homesick just tired

Yesterday was a nice but kind of uneventful day. I didn’t really leave the house until the afternoon, and then just to walk around a little, see the Arenes du something and visit with some old friends of my dad’s.

Lame as it is, I’m so happy just to sit around doing nothing much that it’s hard to get my ass motivated to go anywhere. Like right now, it’s noon, I got up an hour ago, and I have yet to even finish my cup of coffee.

Maybe I should be making more of a sightseeing effort, but the thing is, I’m exhausted. And I’ll be back to school & work soon enough.

bonne annee

In 2007, I predict I will be spending less time hanging out at euro train stations - because yesterday Abe and I got to Paris, where I'll be staying for a week before flying straight home. But first a few more thoughts on Amsterdam.

Ania & co's house is about 250 years old and right on the Singel canal, just outside the old city walls. I think the architecture of that area is so neat, and the inside of the house too, but Ania says after 30 years she finds the style a little monotonous. We walked around the neighborhood to a market nearby, then got some coffee and apple cake.

At the flea market there was a man with a display of rugs and chairs, and at one point a little girl walked her big dog up to it. The dog sniffed a little and then took a piss all over 2 rugs. The stall owner yelled a bit and then he started laughing, laid a couple paper towels down to soak it up, and put the rugs right back on sale.

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Abe, Eden and I all got little rubber elephants from Ania to remember the day....awwwww.

So then it was goodbye mom (she's off to Israel) and Abe and I made our way to Paris by way of Antwerp, Lille, and more than one local train. It was fine though, and we were here at my dad's apartment in plenty of time for New Years.

The apartment is so fucking nice. Best things about it:
1. I get to sleep in a real bed in a room by myself! (while Abe and Ernie take couches in the living room...should I feel guilty?)
2. Internet access whenever
3. A kitchen w/ a coffeemaker
4. It really is a nice apartment
5. IT'S IN PARIS.

So after resting a little I celebrated New Years Colombian style with Abe and my dad, Ernie, Mechas, and her nieces Catalina and Helena who are visiting Paris at the moment also.

First we played the pictures & captions game, which Ernie calls Picture Description and has very slightly different rules for. (This is not a mandatory traditional New Years thing.)

We also ate pastries from the gorgeous shop down the street. (This either.)

Then we all received brand new yellow underwear (Mechas had 4 styles available, including a "thong or bikini" choice for the girls) and had to put it on, then pack a bag or suitcase with symbols of what we want to happen or achieve in the new year, and at the stroke of midnight, run around the block with it. I included a flip flop for good weather. Outside in this neighborhood everyone went out on their balcony or opened their window and yelled "bonne annee" at their chother, and at us.

Then we ate 12 grapes to represent the months of 07, and drank apple brandy to represent, I guess, how wasted we all plan to get during those 12 months.

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Happy New Year, everybody.

market day

I'm posting from the beautiful house of some friends in Amsterdam. We got the chance to be taken around to a food market and walk around the neighborhood by Ania, Kees, and their daughter Eden and now Ania is generously letting me use her computer - I only have a minute before we have to go meet for dinner, so here's some pictures and I'll try to write more later.

competition

Hey, Abe has a blog too. So check that for an alternate view of the end of my trip...

falafel waffles & ollie bollen

Yesterday was kind of shopping heavy - flea market in the morning, stores in the afternoon. The flea market here is awesome and there's definitely good deals to be had, as well as lots of stinky ass fish. French fries in a cone with curry sauce = goodness. I bought a bunch of fleamarket shit and a black dress, which I now want to alter the top of, hmmm, how will I manage it with only a needle, black thread, nail scissors and safety pins...

The Amsterdam public library is totally kickass with an espresso bar, delicious cheese pastries which you can eat while reading all the newspapers and mags, and free internet for anyone who walks in - plus stained glass windows and shit. Oh and books. In Dutch. Whatevs.

All of the streets in the central area are varying degrees of cute and fun, the narrow buildings are pretty excellent, it doesn't have a lot of monumental crap but it's a nice place to walk around for sure.

Abe came in to Amsterdam Centraal last night and immediately became obsessed with waffles, but instead we went and had dinner at a Peruvian restaurant which was very very slow, and served the world's tiniest pisco sours, but the food was tasty.

also seen above: Happy New Year plants in the local supermarket.

Aside from the lib, which has no USB ports so I can't use it for photo upload, the main places to use the net here are "coffeeshops" which are really more like bars where everyone smokes up. I'm here at the Betty Boop one now. Today it's not too busy but the other night, holy crap, you walk in and get a contact high...I'm going to blame my inability to remember what to post about on that, OK?

family reunion

My last day in Munich, Paloma and I met up in the morning to do a little more tourism downtown. We saw the English Garden (empty), the university (closed), the Alter Peter tower (deserted) - all kidding aside, it was fun, and I got some cool views of Munich through the fog.

Then we went back to the Hiller's house and Paloma let me use her computer while watching Russian figure skaters on German TV, before having dinner w/ the whole family. They were all amazingly nice to me, and it was the nicest Christmas I've ever celebrated. There's not much competition for that, of course, never having celebrated, but still! Not that hanging out with Australians in the hostel bar isn't fun but there's something to be said for a change.

Then off to Amsterdam the next morning, unfortunately I was pretty sick and feeling like shit the whole train ride, but I guess if there's one day to be really out of it, the train day isn't a bad one. It's not like I was exactly missing anything. I met up with my mom in the Amsterdam train station, and we bussed it out to the room we're staying in - it's a B&B which is really just a room in a family house, in a residential area of a north suburb. The neighborhood is extremely cute with tiny canals everywhere, like most houses have their own little moat. Then I slept for a billion years and woke up feeling better.

(Sorry for some reason I can't rotate that last photo at the moment.)

This afternoon we dealt with some train drama (like an hour and a half waiting for a ticket window, FGS) and then wandered around trying to avoid being run down by trams or potheads while looking at pretty flower markets & such. The Van Gogh museum had an exhibit about Van Gogh's influence on expressionists, with lots of side by side paintings of other artists compared to Mr. 1.5 ears, which was interesting, but funny because most of the non-VG paintings they had up there really REALLY suffered by comparison and I left thinking "wow, expressionism kind of blows." Which was probably not the intended point.

the very next day

OK, so do you guys know the Wham song "Last Christmas"? I mean, does this get played in the US? I swear I had never heard it before in my life, until this trip, when I have learned that it is the most popular song in history, by which I mean it is playing in every single store I have walked into so far. It has lodged itself so deeply in my brain that it now plays in my dreams. Oh my god make it stop. But seriously, does anyone know what I'm talking about, does this get airplay at home too and I just somehow missed it until now?

Goodbye Christmas Markets.

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Hello, closed down city. The only businesses open in Munich today are McDonalds & this internet cafe. No convenience stores, no supermarkets, no nothing. And apparently nothing will open up again until WEDNESDAY. Um, yeah, Germans take their holiday pretty serious!

Luckily, thanks to a connection from my aunt Julia, I got to meet her student Patrick, his girlfriend Paloma, and Patrick's family, who live out in the suburbs of Munich and are all super nice people - so I took the subway out to their house for coffee this afternoon and Paloma and I are meeting up tomorrow morning to see some sights downtown. (And somehow I need to find something I can buy to bring them as thanks for inviting me to have Christmas with them, which would be easy on any other day...) It's so nice to be out of tourist-land for a change, this definitely made my day.

The Munich subway is very easy to use, pretty expensive, and the weird thing about it is that the tunnels are all lit, not just the stations, so it's not like hurtling through darkness the way I'm used to. On my walk home from the station I went along some big, deserted shopping streets and took some pictures of the displays. Most of them are very thoughtful and some are really elaborate and animatronic. The main downside is that all of the mannequins are fucking terrifying.

This makes a big change from the Budapest theory of window display, which looked like it was the result of a citywide contest that went, "how much crap can you fit in one window? GO!"

Finally, one last question. Say you are in an underground pedestrian walkway. It is on fire. There are stairs right in front of you leading up to the street. Could "down" POSSIBLY be the right direction to run?

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I must be missing something.

out with the old

at long last, I have found an internet cafe that accepts my camera! And it's not even that expensive, score. So as promised, the last batch of Prague photos are up. (I can only show the last few here, lots more on flickr)

All right then, Munich. I did a "free" walking tour this morning (of course I had to tip the guy, but then he did buy me a shot, so, hey) where we saw such fascinating & famous sites as the place where you park your dog

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The store where all the mannequins are scary clones

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The ad series that has different items of jewelry over the copy "Brillant Schmuck," and the Birkenstock store that seems to sell only stripper shoes, sadly, did not photograph well.

In reality, the tour was of a lot of buildings and monuments and things, all of which look gothic but are actually completely fake and built 50 years ago. Seriously. Apparently after 80% of downtown Munich was destroyed by bombing in WWII, the city decided to spend all of its cash to rebuild it all exactly the way it used to be, using original plans and photographs for reference. So now you could walk around completely oblivious that anything at all has happened here since 1910, except for maybe all the department stores getting neon signs. A few sites are marked with a little plaque on the ground, but its all very under the radar, especially considering this is basically the birthplace of Nazi party and all kinds of garbage. But nevermind that, lets look at the glockenspiel!!!!

Or not. The glockenspiel blows, I am sorry to report. It's this clock thing on the side of a building thats supposed to do a show twice a day with bells and little moving figures and impress everyone. Sadly, it's out of tune, the figures are lame, it's half broken and completely sucky, except for the funny name.

And then I spent more time wandering around the Christmas market, which this is the last day of. Tomorrow is when they celebrate the holiday here, so I have no idea what if anything will be open, or what I will do. I guess I'll walk around and see...

more tripping

For some reason I'm having a hell of a time finding an internet place lately that will let me upload pictures. I prepaid for this one before realizing that the USB port doesn't actually WORK, so whatever, I give up for the night. I'll try to find a better internet cafe tomorrow and put up the last of the Prague photos.

So hey, I'm in Munich. The trip here is kind of hazy in my mind, because before leaving I was feeling nasty and took an Italian dramamine-type pill, which knocked me out so cold that the next thing I knew I was in Germany and I don't even remember getting my passport stamped, or changing train cars, which I apparently did, successfully even? Well, all right then. Maybe I shouldn't take that stuff next time. I am still in a strange, cold, mental fog...

Fortunately, Munich is very easy to navigate so far, even for the sedated. After finding my hostel here and dumping my stuff, I walked to the main square and shopping street, where there is (natch) a big Christmas market with all the stuff the Czech ones had and more. I ate some kind of fried thing from a stall, which was very delicious, and now my arteries are destroyed forever. But my only regret is that I couldn't finish off the meal with some crazy candy on a stick because of my stupid teeth.