My only regret about Europe was that I didn't get outside more. I love cities, but even in Europe you get sick of them and have the need to go into nature. I saw plenty of beautiful country from the inside of buses and trains, but I could count on one hand the number of days, out of three months in Europe, that I spent outside one concrete jungle or another.
I consoled myself with the notion that South America was about outdoor tourism anyway and I would make up for it there. My first opportunity for this was in Mendoza, a charming city set at the foot of the Andes in Argentina's wine country. I went trekking, horseback riding, cycling; the whole bit. It was just a start, and I'd get further outside later. After this brief respite, though, it was back to the city.
That city would be Santiago, the capital of Chile that lies on the other side of the mountains from Mendoza. The bus ride there was the most scenic of my trip. The weather was sunny and mild in Mendoza but where I crossed the border high in the Andes it was snowing hard. About four hours after clearing customs I'd reached the capital.
The rap on Santiago is that it's sleepy and no great loss to skip. But I was to have one good night. I was drinking beer with a couple guys from Switzerland who were touring South America on motorcycles - and who were the greatest, nicest guys - when a local girl who worked there invited us to a party. She was studying to be an actress and it was some kind of theater fundraiser. We had nothing better to do so we followed her.
The setting was the first floor of a long, narrow house. It was an old building with high ceilings and worn crown moulding. In the front at a folding table students were selling beer and a mixed drink they put ice cream in. It was an ok scene, people milling about, smoking, talking in Spanish. The real show, though, was in the back.
Here was a large room with a concrete floor that could fit about a hundred people. There was a rudimentary stage set up in the back of the room and to the sides of the entrance bleachers that faced the stage. Up on it was a group of adult musicians playing traditional Chilean music. There were four men, some with instruments (an accordion was present), some who just sang. A sole woman playing a guitar. They all wore country clothes.
To the music they played a troupe of children danced. I guessed they ranged in age from 10 to 15 years old. The girls all wore the same white dress with a purple floral print and purple accents. The boys wore gaucho outfits, with wide black hats with neck cords and red tassels hanging from their waists. The boys wore spurs. The dancing was wonderful in its childish uncertainty and what a way, I thought, that some societies have for channeling the feelings that arrive at that age.
But in Chile despite a perhaps more wholesome upbringing kids still grow up weird. The music came to a close and the dancing children and their parents who'd been watching from the bleachers cleared out and who gets up there next but a young drag queen. The room went dark. He began (or should I say 'she'?) by lighting a cigarette and smoking it, or pretending to smoke it, way too fast, like she was out of breath and the smoke was air, to the point where she looked like she was about to vomit coughing. There then followed a monologue in Spanish that I couldn't understand but which got some good laughs and then a striptease dance.
After he/she finished a salsa band got up there and played for hours. We danced the night away. The two Swiss guys both pulled girls. I didn't feel like working. I'd be working the next night when I was supposed to meet up with a girl from Santiago who I'd met in Buenos Aires. Around this time I was feeling very lonely for a woman. I saw a cute hipster girl at the party, a local girl, who wore glasses. I watched her dance and finally I thought of something to say to her. She had a boyfriend, an American. "I guess I'm late," I said. She smiled honestly and sweetly and said, "but we can still talk!"
I had bad weather the rest of my time in Santiago and the girl I'd met in Buenos Aires cancelled on me. In one redemption I stumbled onto a dusty antiquarian bookstore where I found an old hardcover of T.S. Eliot's essays on poets. I sat down on the floor and read the one on Goethe.
I'd heard from everyone who had an opinion on Chile not to miss Valparaiso, a seaside city full of street art and a cultural hotbed. The poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda had a house there you could tour. That was my next stop.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Friday, November 16, 2012
Money Problems: Buenos Aires
Given that we were engaged in a feverish debauch my friend and I did a reasonable job of seeing Buenos Aires. We checked out most of the notable districts, attended some cultural events, and even made an expedition to the childhood home of famed Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, which we thought was a museum but turned out to be a regular home only featuring a commemorative plaque on the outside wall.
But we also spent a hell of alot of time drinking and recovering from that drinking, and that was time spent not seeing the city. As both a literary mecca, full of bookstores, and the most architecturally distinct city in South America Buenos Aires held a special allure for me, and I wasn't done with the place. So when Kyle left I moved to a quiet hostel away from the city center and set out to have another look. I toured the renown Recoleta cemetery, saw a tango show, had lunch with a Wall Street Journal correspondent. With just a day left in my stay it looked like I was going to have my cake in Buenos Aires and eat it too: an epic party and a quality tour. Then I got involved in something.
Though not known as a party hostel, the place I'd moved to in the tony Palermo neighborhood still offered the obligatory pub crawl a few times a week. I was on one of these, drinking in some bar when I started talking to a girl from Barcelona who lived in BA. Or rather, in hindsight, she started talking to me. She brought up some kind of currency exchange transaction she wanted me to do. Something about changing pesos into dollars and then back into pesos. Though I was half-drunk it still sounded fishy but she assured me it was perfectly safe, she did it all the time, etc. She said she'd pay me but what I wanted was the story.
"Ok, I'll do it," I said to her.
"Good! Tomorrow you call me and we go to the centro and do it."
"It's a plan. Just out of curiosity, how much money do you want me to change?"
"I don't know, like five thousand dollars?"
About three months before my arrival the government in Argentina forbid its citizens from purchasing US dollars. The dollar has long acted as a second currency in Argentina, due to historic instability in the value of the peso caused by government mismanagement. Thus people here covet the dollar, which they trust will hold its value. The new restriction, imposed in an effort to control the exchange rate, has only allowed the black market for dollars to further flourish. The official rate of exchange is something like 4.25 pesos for one dollar. On the street you can get over 6.
Foreigners, however, are not fully subject to the prohibition. Foreign tourists when arriving in Argentina can exchange their dollars for pesos at an official change-house. They then have the right to reverse that transaction and get their dollars back. That is, they have a way to obtain dollars that regular Argentines do not. In this loophole lie the scheme I would be accessory to. I would change pesos into dollars at the official rate and then give the dollars to the girl, who would change them back into pesos at the more favorable black market rate. They would make around 50% on their money.
I got in touch with the girl and gave her my name, passport number and date of entry into Argentina. We met up at my hostel and took the metro to the city center where the exchange houses are all located. We ducked into an alley and she produced a forged receipt stating I had received 20,000 pesos in exchange for dollars at a certain house. Then she handed me three wads of cash bound by rubber-bands that totaled that amount.
I walked into the office which looked like a small bank, with tellers at their windows. At first the woman I dealt with refused my document because it was dated differently than my entry into Argentina. Finally I got across to her that I had arrived one day but not changed money until three days later. She started the process. The period of time she had both my passport and the forged receipt behind the counter was a long five minutes. If she called me out then I was in serious trouble. I did my best fake space-out, trying to make it all look boring and routine and most importantly legitimate. On the inside I was sweating. At last she produced receipts for me to sign and when that was done she gave me my passport back and a ticket. I took the ticket to the next counter and was given fifty hundred-dollar bills and change. I counted the money and with it all there I walked out of the store.
I caught sight of my handler. She was watching me from the far street-corner. She hadn't taken her eyes off me for a moment. What if I had just stolen the money? Dived into a cab or run off. I thought about it. I crossed the street and walked up to her.
"Todo bien," I said and smiled a big smile I'd been hiding behind a stern face to make her nervous, for fun. She smiled back nervously and led me down the street. After we'd walked a little ways we stopped and I gave her the cash. She made a quick count and then peeled off one of the hundreds and handed it to me. My fee.
We went for a beer and while sitting there I asked her, "So you just hang around bars and look for foreigners like me to do this with?"
"Beats working in a restaurant," she said.
That afternoon I was on a bus west to Mendoza, the Andes, and Chile beyond.
But we also spent a hell of alot of time drinking and recovering from that drinking, and that was time spent not seeing the city. As both a literary mecca, full of bookstores, and the most architecturally distinct city in South America Buenos Aires held a special allure for me, and I wasn't done with the place. So when Kyle left I moved to a quiet hostel away from the city center and set out to have another look. I toured the renown Recoleta cemetery, saw a tango show, had lunch with a Wall Street Journal correspondent. With just a day left in my stay it looked like I was going to have my cake in Buenos Aires and eat it too: an epic party and a quality tour. Then I got involved in something.
Though not known as a party hostel, the place I'd moved to in the tony Palermo neighborhood still offered the obligatory pub crawl a few times a week. I was on one of these, drinking in some bar when I started talking to a girl from Barcelona who lived in BA. Or rather, in hindsight, she started talking to me. She brought up some kind of currency exchange transaction she wanted me to do. Something about changing pesos into dollars and then back into pesos. Though I was half-drunk it still sounded fishy but she assured me it was perfectly safe, she did it all the time, etc. She said she'd pay me but what I wanted was the story.
"Ok, I'll do it," I said to her.
"Good! Tomorrow you call me and we go to the centro and do it."
"It's a plan. Just out of curiosity, how much money do you want me to change?"
"I don't know, like five thousand dollars?"
About three months before my arrival the government in Argentina forbid its citizens from purchasing US dollars. The dollar has long acted as a second currency in Argentina, due to historic instability in the value of the peso caused by government mismanagement. Thus people here covet the dollar, which they trust will hold its value. The new restriction, imposed in an effort to control the exchange rate, has only allowed the black market for dollars to further flourish. The official rate of exchange is something like 4.25 pesos for one dollar. On the street you can get over 6.
Foreigners, however, are not fully subject to the prohibition. Foreign tourists when arriving in Argentina can exchange their dollars for pesos at an official change-house. They then have the right to reverse that transaction and get their dollars back. That is, they have a way to obtain dollars that regular Argentines do not. In this loophole lie the scheme I would be accessory to. I would change pesos into dollars at the official rate and then give the dollars to the girl, who would change them back into pesos at the more favorable black market rate. They would make around 50% on their money.
I got in touch with the girl and gave her my name, passport number and date of entry into Argentina. We met up at my hostel and took the metro to the city center where the exchange houses are all located. We ducked into an alley and she produced a forged receipt stating I had received 20,000 pesos in exchange for dollars at a certain house. Then she handed me three wads of cash bound by rubber-bands that totaled that amount.
I walked into the office which looked like a small bank, with tellers at their windows. At first the woman I dealt with refused my document because it was dated differently than my entry into Argentina. Finally I got across to her that I had arrived one day but not changed money until three days later. She started the process. The period of time she had both my passport and the forged receipt behind the counter was a long five minutes. If she called me out then I was in serious trouble. I did my best fake space-out, trying to make it all look boring and routine and most importantly legitimate. On the inside I was sweating. At last she produced receipts for me to sign and when that was done she gave me my passport back and a ticket. I took the ticket to the next counter and was given fifty hundred-dollar bills and change. I counted the money and with it all there I walked out of the store.
I caught sight of my handler. She was watching me from the far street-corner. She hadn't taken her eyes off me for a moment. What if I had just stolen the money? Dived into a cab or run off. I thought about it. I crossed the street and walked up to her.
"Todo bien," I said and smiled a big smile I'd been hiding behind a stern face to make her nervous, for fun. She smiled back nervously and led me down the street. After we'd walked a little ways we stopped and I gave her the cash. She made a quick count and then peeled off one of the hundreds and handed it to me. My fee.
We went for a beer and while sitting there I asked her, "So you just hang around bars and look for foreigners like me to do this with?"
"Beats working in a restaurant," she said.
That afternoon I was on a bus west to Mendoza, the Andes, and Chile beyond.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
A New Continent & An Old Friend
In college Kyle Weber was co-conspirator number one. If they put people in jail for consuming vast quantities of alcohol they'd have to separate us in prison or we'd just spend all day hatching new drinking crimes. Looking online I saw that Milhouse Avenue hostel, located in the center of Buenos Aires, seemed to be the main party spot and the best place to pick up where we always left off. We booked it.
The day I left Spain I saw the sun rise over the plains of Andalucia on a bus from Seville to Madrid and saw it rise again as my plane descended into Buenos Aires Argentina. The first thing I noticed was the change of season. Before this trip I'd only traveled abroad to Europe, which obviously has the same season as back home, and to the tropics, which have no season. Buenos Aires though, deep in the Southern Hemisphere, was the opposite of where I'd been. The oppressive heat of southern Spain was replaced by the cold air of early Spring. Pale winter sunlight on the august edifices, the monuments to faded glory.
I decided to walk the mile or two from where the airport shuttle dropped me off to the hostel. I already liked this town. It had a New York City vibe to it. Passing mile after mile of apartment buildings on the way from the airport I saw its massiveness and here in the center I could feel its density. There were people everywhere, many fashionable, absorbed in their appointments, errands, tasks. Their lives.
I was at the hostel maybe an hour when my friend walked in. We actually began with restraint - just two beers apiece over lunch in a literary cafe in the San Telmo neighborhood. We walked around, crashed a civic choir's concert, witnessed a youth street protest. Good, we agreed, to experience some culture before the debauch began in earnest.
By this point in my journey I'd stayed in quite a few hostels and met a lot of great people, but I never had a crew like the one we put together at Milhouse. Drunken lunatics with hearts of gold - there could have been no better accomplices. Later on I met other travelers who stayed there and didn't like it. They said the place felt sterile, the people distant. Guess we just lucked out.
Every night Milhouse or its sister hostel has a party and then everyone goes out to a club. That first night Kyle made it home before I did but when I walked in our dorm room he popped his head up.
"Hey bmac."
"Hey."
"How was the rest of your night?"
"Great. Yours?"
"Great."
"Going to bed?"
"I'm not ready to but i might."
"I want to keep drinking."
"Let's steal something from the hostel."
"You serious?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go."
Fortunately we revised our plans and decided to obtain booze legally. Perhaps our somewhat deranged, desperate state was more apparent than I imagined because we were refused entry to several establishments and sale at several stores. Perhaps it was just morning. It was getting light now and the night's last revelers were trickling out of the closing bars. Finally we found a store whose owner discreetly pulled four 16 oz. cans of Quilmes beer from behind rows of soda-pop in the refrigerated case and sold them to us. We left the store and made our way back to the Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest street in the world. We found some park benches on a grassy median and sat down and with each of us having arrived twenty-four hours earlier from different quadrants of the world we cracked our beers and watched Buenos Aires come to life. Ladies walking small dogs, old men shambling along their secret predawn routes. It was warm out and the sky was blue. It was going to be a beautiful day.
And one of our greatest benders. After a riot of a soccer game, a weed-fogged drum party in a converted warehouse, and a giant t-shirt wearing cockroach, among other highlights, it was finally time to part ways. On his last day Kyle went out to buy some fabric his sister, who's a designer, had requested. He failed to do this and we went to a bar. Where else to say goodbye? When it was time I gave him a hug and wished him farewell and watched him walk out the bar. There were some Irish kids drinking there who had just checked into Milhouse. I pulled up a chair and got back to what I was doing before Kyle arrived: having a good time by myself. But it wasn't quite the same. When it comes to partying, I could only have so much fun without the guy.
ADDENDUM: On our second or third night at Milhouse we met a young English guy who was traveling in South America for a month and had come to BA from Bolivia straight through on an 80-hour bus ride. To alleviate the obvious hardship of riding a Bolivian bus for 80 hours he'd obtained in Bolivia, legally, a variety of pharmaceutical depressants to take on the bus. He was studying to be a doctor and had confidence that he could apply his medical knowledge toward getting him through the ride. His confidence was misplaced. Where he faltered was the dosage. Downers can cause forgetfulness and if taken to excess outright amnesia. When he first got on the bus he took too many pills, later forgot he had taken them, and took more. Soon he had taken around four times the proper dose, blacked out completely, and encountered misfortune. He lost his iphone, ipod, and other gear (South America and BA specifically seem to be a graveyard of iphones. I met 4 people, in addition to myself, who lost one). On the bus he met a Colombian guy named Fernando who, seeing his compromised state, had at one point placed his jacket in the overhead compartment for safekeeping. When they had to disembark somewhere to switch buses Fernando grabbed the jacket and tried to give it to our friend. "That's not mine," he said. Despite Fernando's pleadings he denied the jacket. Ten minutes later he asked Fernando if he had seen his jacket anywhere.
The day I left Spain I saw the sun rise over the plains of Andalucia on a bus from Seville to Madrid and saw it rise again as my plane descended into Buenos Aires Argentina. The first thing I noticed was the change of season. Before this trip I'd only traveled abroad to Europe, which obviously has the same season as back home, and to the tropics, which have no season. Buenos Aires though, deep in the Southern Hemisphere, was the opposite of where I'd been. The oppressive heat of southern Spain was replaced by the cold air of early Spring. Pale winter sunlight on the august edifices, the monuments to faded glory.
I decided to walk the mile or two from where the airport shuttle dropped me off to the hostel. I already liked this town. It had a New York City vibe to it. Passing mile after mile of apartment buildings on the way from the airport I saw its massiveness and here in the center I could feel its density. There were people everywhere, many fashionable, absorbed in their appointments, errands, tasks. Their lives.
I was at the hostel maybe an hour when my friend walked in. We actually began with restraint - just two beers apiece over lunch in a literary cafe in the San Telmo neighborhood. We walked around, crashed a civic choir's concert, witnessed a youth street protest. Good, we agreed, to experience some culture before the debauch began in earnest.
By this point in my journey I'd stayed in quite a few hostels and met a lot of great people, but I never had a crew like the one we put together at Milhouse. Drunken lunatics with hearts of gold - there could have been no better accomplices. Later on I met other travelers who stayed there and didn't like it. They said the place felt sterile, the people distant. Guess we just lucked out.
Every night Milhouse or its sister hostel has a party and then everyone goes out to a club. That first night Kyle made it home before I did but when I walked in our dorm room he popped his head up.
"Hey bmac."
"Hey."
"How was the rest of your night?"
"Great. Yours?"
"Great."
"Going to bed?"
"I'm not ready to but i might."
"I want to keep drinking."
"Let's steal something from the hostel."
"You serious?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go."
Fortunately we revised our plans and decided to obtain booze legally. Perhaps our somewhat deranged, desperate state was more apparent than I imagined because we were refused entry to several establishments and sale at several stores. Perhaps it was just morning. It was getting light now and the night's last revelers were trickling out of the closing bars. Finally we found a store whose owner discreetly pulled four 16 oz. cans of Quilmes beer from behind rows of soda-pop in the refrigerated case and sold them to us. We left the store and made our way back to the Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest street in the world. We found some park benches on a grassy median and sat down and with each of us having arrived twenty-four hours earlier from different quadrants of the world we cracked our beers and watched Buenos Aires come to life. Ladies walking small dogs, old men shambling along their secret predawn routes. It was warm out and the sky was blue. It was going to be a beautiful day.
And one of our greatest benders. After a riot of a soccer game, a weed-fogged drum party in a converted warehouse, and a giant t-shirt wearing cockroach, among other highlights, it was finally time to part ways. On his last day Kyle went out to buy some fabric his sister, who's a designer, had requested. He failed to do this and we went to a bar. Where else to say goodbye? When it was time I gave him a hug and wished him farewell and watched him walk out the bar. There were some Irish kids drinking there who had just checked into Milhouse. I pulled up a chair and got back to what I was doing before Kyle arrived: having a good time by myself. But it wasn't quite the same. When it comes to partying, I could only have so much fun without the guy.
ADDENDUM: On our second or third night at Milhouse we met a young English guy who was traveling in South America for a month and had come to BA from Bolivia straight through on an 80-hour bus ride. To alleviate the obvious hardship of riding a Bolivian bus for 80 hours he'd obtained in Bolivia, legally, a variety of pharmaceutical depressants to take on the bus. He was studying to be a doctor and had confidence that he could apply his medical knowledge toward getting him through the ride. His confidence was misplaced. Where he faltered was the dosage. Downers can cause forgetfulness and if taken to excess outright amnesia. When he first got on the bus he took too many pills, later forgot he had taken them, and took more. Soon he had taken around four times the proper dose, blacked out completely, and encountered misfortune. He lost his iphone, ipod, and other gear (South America and BA specifically seem to be a graveyard of iphones. I met 4 people, in addition to myself, who lost one). On the bus he met a Colombian guy named Fernando who, seeing his compromised state, had at one point placed his jacket in the overhead compartment for safekeeping. When they had to disembark somewhere to switch buses Fernando grabbed the jacket and tried to give it to our friend. "That's not mine," he said. Despite Fernando's pleadings he denied the jacket. Ten minutes later he asked Fernando if he had seen his jacket anywhere.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
The Sisters Visit
You can't beat the first foray. For me there's no rush that compared to arriving in a foreign land for the first time as an unsupervised adult. I was lucky enough to have experienced this feeling twice before; the trips I'd taken prior to my current odyssey had been so short that the novelty never wore off. That feeling was sure gone now. After traveling for more than two months I'd long grown used to being away. The initial intoxication is replaced by subtler satisfactions: becoming a better traveler through the practice; a new view of your life back home; primary knowledge of a people, a nation, a continent. But you'll never get back that first high.
The next best thing is to see someone else get it. And when it's someone you love, it's a wonderful thing to witness. Neither of my sisters had been to Europe and this trip was their college graduation present. My dad had agreed to send them before I left home but less than a month before we were supposed to meet the plane tickets still had not been bought. But he did come through and the plan was set: rendezvous in Barcelona, travel down the coast to Valencia, then head to Madrid from where they'd fly back home. I took a train from Segovia to Madrid and then another to Barcelona. We had a very happy reunion at the hostel and then went out exploring.
Barcelona has all the basic requirements to be counted among the great cities of the world: beautiful streets and buildings; a rich cultural and arts scene; cool stores, bars, museums, et cetera et cetera. But they come for the party, for that uniquely Spanish brand of languid hedonism. And no place in Spain does it like Barcelona.
A little adventure wasn't long in coming. After some drinks and dancing I suggested we round out the night with a stroll up La Rambla, the main tourist drag in Barcelona. By day it makes for a family-friendly paseo full of flower merchants, souvenir hawkers, and street artists who'll do your portrait in five minutes. At night you leave the kids at home. African prostitutes solicit johns in the pale, lurid wash of the streetlights. Drug dealers softly call their wares as they walk past. Thieves lurk in the shadows. But one cool thing about Barcelona and Europe in general is that people can hang out on the streets doing whatever they want and the police don't hassle them like they would in the states. The locals take full advantage of this and so despite all the sketchy characters on La Rambla there's hundreds of people around, so it feels safe.
It was on our way there that we fell into it. Our guide was to be a drunken young Scot saying something about a "Sherlock Holmes" bar. I was a little skeptical but my sister Anne seemed to have no doubts and so I followed on. He led us to some random apartment building and up the back stairwell. "Here's where we get Taken!" I joked. But instead of getting kidnapped we found ourselves in a space that looked more like an apartment than a bar. But a bar it was - and one of the coolest I've drank at in my life, let alone in Spain. Soft light from worn, gold sconces; silhouettes in oval frames; good tunes, good crowd. My youngest sister, just out of college, conversed with a chic Mexicana expat who maybe gave her a glimpse of just how cool adult life can be. We couldn't have asked for a better first night or a better town to start in.
Their visit wasn't without its setbacks. We all had our share of bad moods, stupid spats, and a few logistical headaches as well, the most memorable of which featured a cab driver in Valencia screaming at me at the top of his lungs as we raced to catch a bus and I nervously expressed he might be going the wrong way. But that was all nothing. The time with my sisters in Spain was the best of my trip.
Toward the end of their visit we were sitting on the sidewalk terrace of some cafe talking about the trip and they said they felt different having come. To have a great time and go back changed - that's all you can ask from a trip to Europe.
The morning of their departure from Madrid I woke up early to make sure they got off alright. These were special companions, but goodbye was the same. I was alone again. I had ten days or so left in Spain and was headed south. Andalucia, a final surfeit of loveliness from a country that offers the traveler everything. But in a way, I was looking past it. Europe, and with it the first half of my trip, was ending. I was headed to the former colonies, to my own hemisphere and the route that would take me home. I was headed to Argentina.
The next best thing is to see someone else get it. And when it's someone you love, it's a wonderful thing to witness. Neither of my sisters had been to Europe and this trip was their college graduation present. My dad had agreed to send them before I left home but less than a month before we were supposed to meet the plane tickets still had not been bought. But he did come through and the plan was set: rendezvous in Barcelona, travel down the coast to Valencia, then head to Madrid from where they'd fly back home. I took a train from Segovia to Madrid and then another to Barcelona. We had a very happy reunion at the hostel and then went out exploring.
Barcelona has all the basic requirements to be counted among the great cities of the world: beautiful streets and buildings; a rich cultural and arts scene; cool stores, bars, museums, et cetera et cetera. But they come for the party, for that uniquely Spanish brand of languid hedonism. And no place in Spain does it like Barcelona.
A little adventure wasn't long in coming. After some drinks and dancing I suggested we round out the night with a stroll up La Rambla, the main tourist drag in Barcelona. By day it makes for a family-friendly paseo full of flower merchants, souvenir hawkers, and street artists who'll do your portrait in five minutes. At night you leave the kids at home. African prostitutes solicit johns in the pale, lurid wash of the streetlights. Drug dealers softly call their wares as they walk past. Thieves lurk in the shadows. But one cool thing about Barcelona and Europe in general is that people can hang out on the streets doing whatever they want and the police don't hassle them like they would in the states. The locals take full advantage of this and so despite all the sketchy characters on La Rambla there's hundreds of people around, so it feels safe.
It was on our way there that we fell into it. Our guide was to be a drunken young Scot saying something about a "Sherlock Holmes" bar. I was a little skeptical but my sister Anne seemed to have no doubts and so I followed on. He led us to some random apartment building and up the back stairwell. "Here's where we get Taken!" I joked. But instead of getting kidnapped we found ourselves in a space that looked more like an apartment than a bar. But a bar it was - and one of the coolest I've drank at in my life, let alone in Spain. Soft light from worn, gold sconces; silhouettes in oval frames; good tunes, good crowd. My youngest sister, just out of college, conversed with a chic Mexicana expat who maybe gave her a glimpse of just how cool adult life can be. We couldn't have asked for a better first night or a better town to start in.
Their visit wasn't without its setbacks. We all had our share of bad moods, stupid spats, and a few logistical headaches as well, the most memorable of which featured a cab driver in Valencia screaming at me at the top of his lungs as we raced to catch a bus and I nervously expressed he might be going the wrong way. But that was all nothing. The time with my sisters in Spain was the best of my trip.
Toward the end of their visit we were sitting on the sidewalk terrace of some cafe talking about the trip and they said they felt different having come. To have a great time and go back changed - that's all you can ask from a trip to Europe.
The morning of their departure from Madrid I woke up early to make sure they got off alright. These were special companions, but goodbye was the same. I was alone again. I had ten days or so left in Spain and was headed south. Andalucia, a final surfeit of loveliness from a country that offers the traveler everything. But in a way, I was looking past it. Europe, and with it the first half of my trip, was ending. I was headed to the former colonies, to my own hemisphere and the route that would take me home. I was headed to Argentina.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Salamanca
After Santiago I was headed to Spain proper. I qualify in this way because Spain is not exactly a united nation. True Spain is Madrid and the center of country. Historically it is Castile, Leon and Aragon, the regions united by the marriage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the year 1469. The periphery of the country is essentially conquered lands. There exists some degree of separatism in almost all the outlying provinces and in several, such as the Basque country, Galicia and Catalonia, there are outright independence movements.
The city of Salamanca, some 200 miles northwest of Madrid, was my destination. Looking out my bus window the seaclouds of the north were soon gone and bright yellow sunshine filled the land. Haystacks cluttered the broad, dry plains like spilled corn. Like crumbs of gold. We arrived at the station and I made my way into town.
Almost every small to midsize city in Spain has at its core a lovely old town and sprawling out from that in all directions revolting blocks of painted concrete constructed in the 1960's economic boom. Many a skyline is ruined by this architectural blight. Luckily Salamanca is not counted among its victims.
In addition to being unmarred, the town looks unlike any other that I saw in Spain. Every building is made with a locally-quarried, reddish-yellow stone that at the end of the day turns gold and pink in the sunset light. There are tranquil, tucked-away gardens, a grand cathedral among other architectural wonders, and the most impressive public square in Spain. It's tough to beat the big cities, particularly Barcelona, for man-made beauty. But after those, and really equal to them only different, Salamanca was the loveliest place I saw in that country.
It's also a college town - the third-oldest in Europe. In my dorm room was a Mexican guy named Ossi, short for Osorio, who was a student and had just finished his term. We got to talking and he mentioned he was going for tapas and then salsa dancing with a girl from Valencia who he knew from school. He kindly invited me to come along.
That was the first and perhaps the only time I ate tapas with a Spaniard in a natural setting. That is, when the Spaniard was not a hostel employee or tour guide or something. Ossi kept making fun of the girl's penchant for dropping her napkin on the floor rather than throwing it away, a Spanish custom that inevitably leads to the quality of uncleanliness that marks all authentic tapas bars. She really couldn't help it.
After tapas we went to the salsa bar. Here I was left behind. I got out on the floor and did my best with the girl but I was a lost cause from the start. It's just not something a person can pick up the first try, or so I consoled myself.
My new friends showed me how it's done. The Mexican in his white pants was like a dervish and the girl, who by day was an unassuming biologist, became the sexiest thing in that bar when she started to move. They were perfectly in sync, in step and in the sway of their hips and in the way their arms trailed across the other's back when they turned in passing. I watched them dance a few songs and then Ossi came over to the table I was sitting at with a drink while the girl stayed on the floor. He was covered in sweat.
"That was some show you guys put on," I said to him.
"We have experience. If you practiced you could dance just as good."
"I doubt it."
We drank our drinks.
"Have you got any designs on her?" I asked him. "Because I don't see how you can dance like that with a girl and have there be no feelings."
"It was actually the first time we danced together. We met here, but I never danced with her before tonight."
"Well you two are just a natural pair then aren't you."
He just smiled and looked away.
There were plans to get chocolate churros from some place that didn't open until 4 AM but by the time we left the bar I was dead tired and I wanted to give them some time alone anyway. We walked back to the hotel and I said goodnight and left them in the street. The Spanish girl looked fresh as a daisy. She had wanted to keep dancing. She hardly drank a thing all night.
After Salamanca I visited a few old, small towns near Madrid. Segovia with its Roman aqueduct. Avila with its medieval walls entirely intact. I wanted to relax and be alone because soon I would have plenty of company. My sisters were coming to Europe for the first time. I would meet them in Barcelona.
The city of Salamanca, some 200 miles northwest of Madrid, was my destination. Looking out my bus window the seaclouds of the north were soon gone and bright yellow sunshine filled the land. Haystacks cluttered the broad, dry plains like spilled corn. Like crumbs of gold. We arrived at the station and I made my way into town.
Almost every small to midsize city in Spain has at its core a lovely old town and sprawling out from that in all directions revolting blocks of painted concrete constructed in the 1960's economic boom. Many a skyline is ruined by this architectural blight. Luckily Salamanca is not counted among its victims.
In addition to being unmarred, the town looks unlike any other that I saw in Spain. Every building is made with a locally-quarried, reddish-yellow stone that at the end of the day turns gold and pink in the sunset light. There are tranquil, tucked-away gardens, a grand cathedral among other architectural wonders, and the most impressive public square in Spain. It's tough to beat the big cities, particularly Barcelona, for man-made beauty. But after those, and really equal to them only different, Salamanca was the loveliest place I saw in that country.
It's also a college town - the third-oldest in Europe. In my dorm room was a Mexican guy named Ossi, short for Osorio, who was a student and had just finished his term. We got to talking and he mentioned he was going for tapas and then salsa dancing with a girl from Valencia who he knew from school. He kindly invited me to come along.
That was the first and perhaps the only time I ate tapas with a Spaniard in a natural setting. That is, when the Spaniard was not a hostel employee or tour guide or something. Ossi kept making fun of the girl's penchant for dropping her napkin on the floor rather than throwing it away, a Spanish custom that inevitably leads to the quality of uncleanliness that marks all authentic tapas bars. She really couldn't help it.
After tapas we went to the salsa bar. Here I was left behind. I got out on the floor and did my best with the girl but I was a lost cause from the start. It's just not something a person can pick up the first try, or so I consoled myself.
My new friends showed me how it's done. The Mexican in his white pants was like a dervish and the girl, who by day was an unassuming biologist, became the sexiest thing in that bar when she started to move. They were perfectly in sync, in step and in the sway of their hips and in the way their arms trailed across the other's back when they turned in passing. I watched them dance a few songs and then Ossi came over to the table I was sitting at with a drink while the girl stayed on the floor. He was covered in sweat.
"That was some show you guys put on," I said to him.
"We have experience. If you practiced you could dance just as good."
"I doubt it."
We drank our drinks.
"Have you got any designs on her?" I asked him. "Because I don't see how you can dance like that with a girl and have there be no feelings."
"It was actually the first time we danced together. We met here, but I never danced with her before tonight."
"Well you two are just a natural pair then aren't you."
He just smiled and looked away.
There were plans to get chocolate churros from some place that didn't open until 4 AM but by the time we left the bar I was dead tired and I wanted to give them some time alone anyway. We walked back to the hotel and I said goodnight and left them in the street. The Spanish girl looked fresh as a daisy. She had wanted to keep dancing. She hardly drank a thing all night.
After Salamanca I visited a few old, small towns near Madrid. Segovia with its Roman aqueduct. Avila with its medieval walls entirely intact. I wanted to relax and be alone because soon I would have plenty of company. My sisters were coming to Europe for the first time. I would meet them in Barcelona.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Santiago de Compostela
Two days after the bullfight I left Gijón on a bus to the city of Santiago de Compostela. Santiago is located in Galicia, a region of Spain in the extreme northwest of the country, north of Portugal. It is Spain's holiest city and its cathedral the final resting place of St. James the disciple. After the death of Jesus James went to Spain, then a Roman province, to preach the good news. He was eventually beheaded in Judea for the crime of subverting the state religion but his remains were supposedly repatriated back to Spain and, again supposedly, interred at the cathedral.
In medieval times there was a pilgrimage wherein devout Christians walked, usually from the south of France but really from anywhere in Europe, to Santiago. This journey was called the Camino de Santiago. It still exists today, and while some people still do it for religious reasons most just do it for fun. From the customary starting point in France you walk some six to eight hours every day for a month to get there. All over Europe but especially in northern Spain seashells - the symbol of the camino as the grooves of the shell lead to the base just as all possible routes converge on Santiago - are pasted on signs, chiseled into walls, and painted on streets, accompanied by an arrow pointing in the direction the pilgrim needs to go.
I met many people at my hostel and around town who had done the camino. You can see them too just as they arrive in the main plaza, dominated by the magnificent facade of the cathedral. Some sit by themselves quietly, reflecting on their journey. Others jump for joy and embrace their friends and fellow travelers. And then there are some who are so overcome by emotion that they break down crying. This last type is a moving one to see. (I am aware the Camino would have been a fitting activity given the title of this blog. I had a great time traveling northern Spain by bus and harbor no regrets.)
The final step of the journey is attendance at a high mass said daily at the cathedral. I met a girl at my hostel who had walked the camino but had not yet gone to church. She was waiting for a specific mass where something would take place which she could only describe at "the swing thing." She asked me to go and wanting to check out the pilgrim mass anyway, and being curious about this "thing", I agreed. It was a five o'clock mass. We took our seats in a pew about halfway up the rows. Mass was in but a wing of the great cathedral and behind the pews snaked a line of tourists waiting to venerate the saint's remains.
This being church the mass had hardly started before I started wondering how long this was going to take. And did I mention the mass was in Spanish. I got through it and after communion a team of priests started preparing the show we'd come for. They brought forth a silver censer the size of a fire hydrant attached by rope to a pulley on the ceiling, a hundred feet high. They opened it, piled in hot coals and on top of those the incense. Then they fastened down the cover of the urn and hauled it off the ground using the counter-rope coming down from the pulley.
The swinging started. The priests pulled the rope up and down in steady heaves like men ringing a belfry. They got it going and at full extension the urn was swinging in a half-circle the length of the church and nearly touched the ceiling. It was easily moving 50 mph. The church filled with the incense smoke and its sweet burning smell. This shit was dangerous. If the receptacle had snapped off a crowd of several hundred worshippers and tourists would have been sprayed with pounds of burning coals plus the urn itself, a sight part of me would have liked to see had I not been in this hypothetical volley's direct path. Maybe if they swung a giant censer of burning incense through church at the end of every mass, I thought, people wouldn't leave after communion.
It had rained the whole time I was in Santiago but finally opened up my last day there and I got to photograph the cathedral and plaza in good sunlight. A few results below. The next day I was off to Salamanca.
In medieval times there was a pilgrimage wherein devout Christians walked, usually from the south of France but really from anywhere in Europe, to Santiago. This journey was called the Camino de Santiago. It still exists today, and while some people still do it for religious reasons most just do it for fun. From the customary starting point in France you walk some six to eight hours every day for a month to get there. All over Europe but especially in northern Spain seashells - the symbol of the camino as the grooves of the shell lead to the base just as all possible routes converge on Santiago - are pasted on signs, chiseled into walls, and painted on streets, accompanied by an arrow pointing in the direction the pilgrim needs to go.
I met many people at my hostel and around town who had done the camino. You can see them too just as they arrive in the main plaza, dominated by the magnificent facade of the cathedral. Some sit by themselves quietly, reflecting on their journey. Others jump for joy and embrace their friends and fellow travelers. And then there are some who are so overcome by emotion that they break down crying. This last type is a moving one to see. (I am aware the Camino would have been a fitting activity given the title of this blog. I had a great time traveling northern Spain by bus and harbor no regrets.)
The final step of the journey is attendance at a high mass said daily at the cathedral. I met a girl at my hostel who had walked the camino but had not yet gone to church. She was waiting for a specific mass where something would take place which she could only describe at "the swing thing." She asked me to go and wanting to check out the pilgrim mass anyway, and being curious about this "thing", I agreed. It was a five o'clock mass. We took our seats in a pew about halfway up the rows. Mass was in but a wing of the great cathedral and behind the pews snaked a line of tourists waiting to venerate the saint's remains.
This being church the mass had hardly started before I started wondering how long this was going to take. And did I mention the mass was in Spanish. I got through it and after communion a team of priests started preparing the show we'd come for. They brought forth a silver censer the size of a fire hydrant attached by rope to a pulley on the ceiling, a hundred feet high. They opened it, piled in hot coals and on top of those the incense. Then they fastened down the cover of the urn and hauled it off the ground using the counter-rope coming down from the pulley.
The swinging started. The priests pulled the rope up and down in steady heaves like men ringing a belfry. They got it going and at full extension the urn was swinging in a half-circle the length of the church and nearly touched the ceiling. It was easily moving 50 mph. The church filled with the incense smoke and its sweet burning smell. This shit was dangerous. If the receptacle had snapped off a crowd of several hundred worshippers and tourists would have been sprayed with pounds of burning coals plus the urn itself, a sight part of me would have liked to see had I not been in this hypothetical volley's direct path. Maybe if they swung a giant censer of burning incense through church at the end of every mass, I thought, people wouldn't leave after communion.
It had rained the whole time I was in Santiago but finally opened up my last day there and I got to photograph the cathedral and plaza in good sunlight. A few results below. The next day I was off to Salamanca.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
The Victor Carried Flowers
The second day after I took leave of my Italian friends was a Saturday and was the day I'd picked to attend my first bullfight. I wanted to go on a weekend because I figured there'd be more people. I was worried nobody would come. Many of the Spanish I'd had the chance to ask about bullfighting said they weren't interested. That it just wasn't something the young generation was into. I didn't know how I was going to react to the violence and to undergo a potentially distressing experience for a dying tradition was a worrisome prospect.
There were the usual justifications for going. I was trying to travel deeply, to gain for myself some true knowledge of Spain, and how could I do that without bearing witness to perhaps the country's most famous symbol? It was something to see, something to say I'd done. I was curious. And yeah, Hemingway had loved bullfighting and written about it. But these weren't the real reasons I was going.
"When the beautiful carries off the victory over the monstrous, then is grand style achieved." I don't know how many times I've quoted that line as my aesthetic creed. Now I wanted to find out if I had the stomach for it. If I had the balls to willingly behold the torture and killing of an innocent animal for the beauty that might be born from it.
I got out of bed and after lunch at a cafe I walked to the corrida. The building was three stacked rings of red brick arches built into cream-colored stone. I found beside the main entrance a little window where tickets were still being sold. I was standing in line when a woman approached me. She was dressed up in a floral skirt and heels and a frilled silk blouse. She looked about thirty years old. She asked me in Spanish if I was alone and when I replied that I was she explained that she was in possession of an extra ticket. She was with her parents and her father had been offered a better seat by a friend which he had taken but now they had the extra ticket. I would have to sit with them.
This was too good. We agreed on a price and walked through the tall gates of the corrida and up the concrete steps from the concourse to the plain stone bleachers and took our seats.
Perhaps the eulogies were premature; the place was full. All segments of society seemed to be represented. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor as far as was discernible by their dress and seating section.
There was a traditional band hidden behind the far wall of the arena and at exactly five o'clock it struck up some plaintive air handed down from long ago and the party of combatants entered. The two matadors walked in the center dressed in embroidered suits and neckties and black bowed hats. Together with the picadors on horseback wearing armor and the banderilleros afoot beside them bearing swords and other instruments of death they looked like medieval knights at tournament.
After a short commencement ceremony the first team of assistants took their stations behind wooden stands located just inside the wall of the arena where the bull cannot get to and the bull was released into the ring.
At first sight it is a thing of terror. The size is impressive but more so is its quickness. You can see it knows it is in an unfamiliar place, at the least. Whether it knows it is being hunted I couldn't tell but I could tell it was scared and that this fear only made it desperate and more ferocious. After the bull was goaded by the assistants' taunting to tire itself by running about the ring the mounted picador came away from the wall. The bull attempted to gore the horse (which is protected by matting it wears) while the picador stabbed it in the back with his lance. After the picador had done his job other assistants, the banderilleros, emerged on foot with sticks fitted at one end with steel barbs. They got the bull to charge and just as it was about to gore them in one motion they leapt out of the way and stabbed the sticks into the bull.
The matador now entered the ring and engaged the bull. He dandled the cape before its eyes which gave him control of the animal and with this power willed the bull to trot back and forth across his leaning form like a showdog. But he must have made some mistake because during one close pass the cape became tangled in the bull's hooves and the matador lost hold of it. The spell was broken. The fighter immediately retreated to the wall and the bull trampled the cape and tossed it with its horns and then stared at the fighter with spiteful anger. Like he was rubbing it in. Which he was.
The cape was retrieved and returned to the torero and with it he restored his power over the bull. But the fanciness with the cape was over. The time to kill had come. Mesmerizing the bull with the cape in his left hand he leveled the sword in his right. He struck at the bull's back but the sword did not go all the way in. The crowd moaned at this failure and the protagonist again receded to the wall while the bull stamped and wheeled and tossed its head defiantly. The fighter was given a new sword and with this he stabbed the bull about the neck five or six times but still could not bring it down and the crowd murmured worriedly with each false blow and the fighter looked troubled and ashamed.
At last the bull was wounded fatally and it lay down to die. The crowd applauded politely but even to a novice such as myself it was obvious this fight had not been a success. There was a break in the action while the ring was cleared for the next fight and people got up from their seats to buy beer or use the toilet or smoke.
About ten minutes later the second fight began. The bull was prepared for killing in the same way as in the first fight. When the matador entered the ring blood was bubbling from the shoulderwounds and flowing with bits of gore down the flank of the animal in a glossy red streak. He made the bull his toy just as the first fighter had done only there were no mistakes this time and the resultant applause fed the fighter's confidence. At one point after a successful suerte (which is the word for any intentional maneuver in the ring) the fighter looked up to the crowd as if to call for witness to his dominance and in doing so turned his back to the animal entirely with those horns not five feet away.
The day had been cloudy to this point but around this time the sun broke through and with the late afternoon light arced over the sand the full visual poetry of the scene was made manifest. The matador was in the sun whose reflection slid up and down the chrome of his sword and his scarlet cape was bright as blood. The bull meanwhile stood in the shade cast by the roof and the bluish dark enshrouding him was like a cloak of doom. The time to kill was again at hand. The torero bent back his body like a dancer and taunted the bull to come and kill him if it dared and then he drove the point of the sword between the shoulderblades and pushed it in to the handle. He did not give an inch but rather stepped closer to the bull which staggered and knelt and finally fell to the ground not to rise again.
The handsome face. The blood on the gold brocade. The matador was given a bouquet and he walked a lap around the edge of the ring waving to the cheering spectators, many of whom rained down hats or scarves or other articles each of which he picked up and threw back to its owner with a broad smile.
When the matador had thus moved away from the dying animal to take the adulation of the crowd an assistant came forth and plunged a spike into the bull's brain and it stretched out dead. The crowd was going crazy with everyone waving white kerchiefs in the air and all eyes turned to the best seat in the house, the center balcony adorned with festoons and bunting and a red banner marked with the insignia of the Principality of Asturias where sat the president of the fiesta.
He was a large man probably sixty years old with a big mustache. The crowd cheered and waved their kerchiefs until finally the president stoic in his perch rose to his feet and bowed to the torero with one arm folded before him as a sign he would accept the ear. A roar went up from the crowd and someone bent down over the dead bull to cut the ear off and then wiped the blade each side in turn just above the gaping eye. The ear was then wrapped in a cloth and given to a courier for immediate transport to the balcony.
"So he gets the ear, the president?" I asked the girl.
"Sí"
"And he gets all of them?"
"Sí. If the crowd gives its approval."
"He's going to have a lot of ears."
"Sí. But he gives them to the people."
After the matter of the ear had been resolved the matador looked up to the president's booth once more and twirled his index finger in the air like an umpire calling a disputed home run fair. The president nodded his assent to what request I did not know and in the strangest part of this so foreign and bizarre spectacle the dead bull was chained by the horns to a team of horses and dragged around the arena while the crowd applauded wildly.
I found this act of applauding the dead animal particularly sad and morbid. It was at this point I realized that bullfights might not be for me. The problem was that I saw no danger to the man. To my eyes it had all the authenticity of professional wrestling except for the death which made it maudlin. Hemingway would say that either I could not perceive the danger to the man because of my lack of knowledge of bullfighting or perhaps it really did not exist because the bull was inferior. More likely though, he would say, is that the matador simply made a dangerous and difficult thing look easy by virtue of his skill. Despite this understanding I found myself rooting for the fighter to be gored. That the animal is tortured and killed in a bullfight does not bother me. If this stance makes me cruel or otherwise morally contemptible then fine. What did bother me was that the bull never seemed to have a chance. What I saw seemed an execution, not a fight.
If the unfairness of the contest and the bloodthirstiness of the crowd turned me off I will say that I found certain aspects of the spectacle to be unexpectedly beautiful. The costumes and the ceremony yes but especially the music. It was at times profoundly sorrowful, at other times triumphant, but it was always moving. A bullfight is a glimpse into the past. A nobler, more barbarous past when violent death had not yet been robbed of its realness and immediacy and the man who had the courage to get in the ring with a wild beast and the ability to kill it was a hero.
The expression in Spanish to ask if something is worth doing is, "¿Vale la pena?" or literally, "Is it worth the sorrow?" It's a fitting way to ask about what I had witnessed. I would say it was.
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