lisboa - les van a quitar hasta las pantalones

Go to Lisbon. Lisbon is thus far the most interesting place I have visited in Europe. The city proper houses half a million people and the metro area 3 million. Lisbon feels enormous. It is relatively inexpensive for a capital city, which makes sense with Portugal’s slower economy. It really feels like a busy capital city, with less closings during siesta and on Sunday compared to Sevilla. There are immigrants and tourists from all over the world. There is no one great monument that brings tourists to Lisbon, like the Alhambra in Córdoba, Statue of Liberty in Chicago, or Eiffel Tower in London. There are monuments, beautiful squares and charming neighborhoods to walk through all over the city. All of Lisbon is built on hillsides which slope to the sea. Lisbon is all about the ocean, which is at its side. Everything in the city from monuments to food to the subway passes are maritime themed. Most of the city was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake, and much of the rebuilt areas are laid out in grids, which makes it relatively navigable. Lisbon’s Bairro Alto has the biggest party I have ever seen. And, if that’s not enough, it has a sister city in Jersey City, New Jersey. When you go, two suggestions. One: buy a map of the city. It’s big and the sites you are going to want to visit are spread out. Two: book something ahead, especially if you want to be in a good location. We had a tough time on a Thursday in March.

When we got to Lisbon, it was about 9 at night, and we got ridiculously lost. We were trying to find the central neighborhoods of Baixa and Bairro Alto. We were unaware that we had lost ourselves in Belém, which isn’t even connected to the other two. It was like driving around Queens for an hour trying to find the East Village. We finally talked to an older woman in a tourist agency who spoke English. She told us how badly we had erred and pointed us in the right direction. Do not use the Lets Go maps to attempt to drive around the city. They are only slightly more useful for walking. Sevilla, Lagos, Madrid and Lisbon maps were all barely better than nothing. Don’t get me wrong I love the book, but use their listings for lodging and sites and get a separate map. We left the car in a parking garage built underneath Pr. da Dom Pedro IV (a huge square) in Baixa so we could find a place to stay for the night.

I had not booked lodging, which is sometimes spontaneous and fun, and sometimes stupid. I couldn’t find anything on Hostelworld, and had heard from friends that had gone over Christmas that there were a ton of places to stay in Lisbon if you just walk around. Most cheap lodging is in the form of the pensão (pensión in Spanish), which avoid the dorm-style rooms of hostels, but are still cheap. There are a lot in Lisbon, but the tend to be on the third floor of a building with no elevator. There are generally few rooms and a grumpy man that rejects you and you have just wasted a bunch of time on his stairs. After half an hour of wandering Baixa into Bairro Alto it became apparent that this was not going to be as easy as we had hoped. We found one place that had space for Friday and Saturday but not Thurs so Dan and I got on that by writing our names in a book and depositing 20 euro. We spent another hour trying to find a pensão for the night using the crappy Lets Go map. We found a spot on the slope that leads from Baixa (low neighborhood) to Bairro Alto (high neighborhood). I’m still not sure it was real. This tiny wiry man who must have been 80 told us they were full. Izzi, frustrated, asked where else to go. He said he had one room, but it was small. We said we didn’t care we had sleeping bags and could use the floor we were desperate. Then some other guests entered and proceeded to have a lengthy argument over payment for about ten minutes. Then he told us he had a triple and took us through David Bowie’s goblin palace of staircases leaping and dodging around corners. This is a guy I could call Papa. I have no idea why he said they were full, nor if all the other places that told us they had no space had other definition for the word “full”, but he lead us to a clean room with three single beds for 35 euro. It says on the business card that the speak English and French, but that’s not Papa, it’s Bruno. (Pensão Duque, Calçada de Duque, 53 tel 213 463 444) We went and moved the car to a side street where we hoped it would left alone by hoodlums and authorities alike. Izzi is an excellent parallel parker. We ate at an Asian fusion restaurant called Nood. It was trying to be all modern and hip and was packed with young people. This looks like our kind of place, eh? Maybe it just opened. It’s about the worst restaurant I have been to in my life. Food was too expensive and not that great. They brought the wine when we were just about done with the food. I think they forgot to give us utensils, too. So stupid. And to bed.

The next day we got up at a reasonable time feeling great. We checked on the car and had coffee at a great little shop full of old men. We took the clean, timely, inexpensive Metro, which they revamped for the EuroCopa in 2004, to Parque Nações built for the 1998 World Expo. We bought food at the supermarket so we could make sandwiches and hang out by the water. The weather was beautiful for the first day of the trip. The park was huge, but more of a complex than a park. There was a children’s science museum and an aquarium and a tram that you could ride over the whole park. There was also a cool little grassy area with very artificial Teletubby-esque hills built into it where people were lounging and kids running and yelling. There were also some cool volcano/tsunami fountains. It was something different. Probably a good place to bring the kids.

We came back to the center and decided to head up to Castelo de São Jorge, a ruined castle at the top of the hillside Alfama district. It was the old Moorish quarter and the only section not destroyed by the 1755 earthquake. It is similar in some ways to the Santa Cruz district of Sevilla, with old winding streets that give a feeling that you are in another time. Alfama, however, is all on the side of a hill, so half of it’s streets are actually staircases. Where Santa Cruz has become the most expensive place to live in Sevilla, and is kept pristine for tourists, Alfama feels much more a part of the daily life of long-time inhabitants. In Santa Cruz you can look into courtyards with pristine azulejos (tile-work). Where in Alfama we passed a row of houses with crumbling azulejos covering the entire facade, mixed in with hanging laundry, yelling neighbors and convenience stores. The castle on top is just ruins and mainly noted for the views it offers of the city (and sea) in all directions. As it is free to residents, we saw a group of old Lisboans inside playing some sort of Portuguese pinochle at a stone table. Just going up to the castle, you know, to chill out. Stopped at a terrace bar on the way down, also sick views. It was windy and getting kind of cold at this point.

We drove Izzi to the airport, which turned out to be very easy and very close, and got another parking spot on our favorite street. I was so happy every time we went to check and saw that little sea foam green Citroen peeking out at us. We ate at a cafetería style restaurant in Barrio alto. The food is mostly seafood with a lot of emphasis placed on bacalao, the salted cod the explorers packed into barrels and has to be soaked for 24 hours to remove enough salt to make it edible. We also got inexpensive but tasty steak. It was a good meal for the money. We happened to see a Lisboan Semana Santa procession coming through around 10pm. It was a lot less intense than Sevilla, obviously. There were many of the same elements: a police escort, mantels placed over balconies lining the route, music, idol on a platform, etc. but everything was toned down a little without the klan suits and the immense crowds watching and bringing the whole neighborhood to a standstill.
Then the party started n Barrio Alto and it was super crazy. There were more people in the streets than I have ever seen, and this was not a special occasion, it was just Friday. The area is not that huge, probably five or six blocks wide and ten or twelve blocks long, but it is just packed with bars and clubs. They give you all your drinks in plastic cups because the bars are as crowded as the streets and it’s just expected that you will go outside and walk around. There are so many people in the streets that it’s difficult to pass through the streets on foot. When a couple of taxis tried to make their way through the crowd it was comical. The crowd thought it was hilarious to ignore the cab which tried to get as close as possible to hitting people and had to stop for 5-10 minutes to pass through an intersection. We didn’t get two drinks at the same bar, saw some live music, got offered various drugs about 200 times in about five hours, no joke, and got mugged about two minutes from our pensao. Just like she said, pues, hast los pantalones no pero hasta el jersey. I hate that elevator.
The next day we went to the Feria de Ladras, a huge open-air market, the thieves market. It was kind of ironic considering the events of the night before, the weather was iffy, but an interesting take on the flea market.
One of the highlights of the trip for me anyway was the Museu Arquelógico do Carmo, an archaeological museum housed in a ruined church. The roof of the church collapsed in the earthquake. Various repair efforts were mounted but eventually it was just left alone. The walls are intact and the main building is a sculpture garden of sorts with religious statues and whatnot scattered about. In the interior there is a collection of Lisboan relics from the stone age to the middle ages to the renaissance which combine for an interesting overall historical perspective.
Saturday night we were too scared to go out and we had to leave at 7 am anyway. We went to a deli-style shop for salted meats and cheese. Dude behind the counter complemented by attempt at Portuguese and I felt cool for about 40 seconds, when talking to the next customer it was revealed that he was fluent in German and English in addition to Portuguese and Spanish. How is it that I have to focus so much just to be sufficient in a second language and the guy in the butcher shop in Lisbon speaks four languages well. It’s frustrating. My flat mate is fluent in four languages. My girlfriend is fluent in three. Whaddyagonnado. Americans are so bad when it comes to languages. Anyway I was also able to have a half-hour conversation with the dueña of the pensão entirely in Portuguese, so I was back on top. Then Dan and I borrowed two glasses and a bottle opener and spent the night with a deck of cards, two bottles of wine, cheese, bread, peri peri sauce and salted meats. Pathetic, and awesome. I guess that’s how I would sum up the whole trip, us being the former and the city the latter. Lisbon definitely won.
ps – you guys owe me fotos

lagos/evora

Izzi and I rented a car on Tuesday morning while little Danny slept in. We rented rom Altea, which is associated with National. Some companies do not allow you to leave the country with the car. Most don’t like it if you want to drop it off in another country and charge you a big fee. It ended up being about 250 euro from Tuesday am to Sunday AM, which is plenty. The convenience factor was huge though. Parking was annoying, but not impossible in Lisbon. Driving around in the cities sucked, but that’s just because I hate driving in any city. Driving in Boston is much worse. Portuguese drivers have a reputation for being really bad. According to Let’s Go Portugal has the highest road mortality rate in Europe. The Spanish were like “driving in Portugal? good luck.” I didn’t really notice a big difference between Spanish and Portuguese drivers. Both drive little cars on little roads and high speeds and make passes on two-lane roads that you wouldn’t think about in the states first because it’s illegal and second because it’s illogical. I started to get into it though driving back from Ronda with Jon to the point where he was uncomfortable, which is always fun. We took multi-lane highways through most of Portugal so we didn’t have to deal with getting around slow trucks, which was nice. The lime-green Citroen C2 that we rented had zero pickup compared to the car Jon and I had rented the week before so it would not have been fun to attempt to pass slower-moving traffic with this guy. Gas and tolls in Portugal can add up also. Gas was an average of 10-20 cents more per liter. That adds up fast. We paid one toll that was 20 euro, which isn’t as bad as France but it’s not very much fun. The car was purely for convenience and time efficiency. And speedy it was, compared with public transport. I have heard tales of woe concerning the 7-hour bus ride from Lisbon to Sevilla. Dan and I made the drive in about 3.5. We did get kind of lost, ok pretty damn turned around in Lisbon when we arrived, but that was our only real car mishap. It was like driving around Brooklyn for an hour trying to find the Village.

We drove about 2.5 hours along the southern coast at a steady 150 km/hr to Lagos, Portugal. My friends from Sandwich had all pumped this place up as possibly the best place they had gone on their European trip the summer before, so I had high expectations. It was a bummer becasuse we really didn’t have the weather we were banking on. The week before when Paddy and Linni were here it was hot and sunny every day. In Lagos it rained at least some every day. Lisbon was better but not much. We stayed at the Rising Cock hostel, which isn’t as inappropriate of a name as it sounds. The national symbol of Portugal is the rooster and you see it everywhere like the toro in Spain. The hostel is owned by two brothers of Portuguese descent who went to BC and Northeastern and are under 30. Their parents work there too, making crepes and lemon tea for breakfast and helping out at reception, etc. They also own the restaurant across the street, which is not cheap but has good quality food. We stayed in a little room in a separate building away from the actiona little bit, which turned out to be what made the stay so great. It was 18 euro each/night as I had paid for dorm rooms. The room had two double beds. It’s a little more thean I had hoped to pay, having heard that portugal was really cheap. The hostel was full of English-speakers, mostly American, mostly studying abroad somewhere in Spain and on Spring break. Those who were not on Spring break were travel lifers.Frequent exchange: “how long have you been here?” “just a week.” “really? I’ve been here 16 days. I think I might head out next week.” Are you serious? Why did you come here at all? Just go to Daytona Beach! Everyone we talked to said that all there is to do is go to the beach and the same four bars every day. Anyways, we felt old immediately upon entering. The three of also matched perfectly in our zip hoodies, jeans, hipster arafat scarves, sneakers, plastic glasses and haircuts. This place would have been perfect 5 years ago, but we felt a little out of place. Dan cooked an awesome pasta in the kitchen with the chorizo we bought in the grocery store nearby. The common room had a bunch of couches, coffee tables and a porch. There was free internet on the computers in the lounge, and one of the computers was connected by magic t a big screen tv and speakers so you could blast music videos. This helped to turn this lounge into a sort of meat market for 20-yr olds around 1030 at night. Everyone who’s “in” calls it the Hrd Cock Cafe. Cute. We drank our litros on the terraza and watched the show. can’t go wrong. The most ridiculous part is that the employees and pseudo-residents and the parents themselves insist that everyone call them Mama and Papa. That is never going to happen. I don’t even call my own parents that, and I’m not 6, so there’s no way I’mgoing to start using that terminology now.

We headed out to check out the bars around 1. Everyone who had been at the Cock was trashed . The first spot we went to, Three Monkeys had darts which was cool. They also had a funnel, which was not. Patrons there are encouraged to funnel a beer so tha t tally mark can be placed next to your country of origin on a big chalkboard. OK we did it. Izzi has a photo of the board with three tallies next to Kyrgyzstan. The we went t oa bar up the street called Inside Out. They were playing great dance music. For the second straight bar we tried to start a dance party to no avail. Even dancing on some furniture. The young kids were too wasted to even move. Chicks were totally digging us though. They even played some MJ, and to paraphrase Dan, if MJ fails to get the people moving , it’s hopeless.

We drove to Sages, the southwestern tip of Europe, the next day. There was a huge fort and cliffs all around. It;’s where Prince henry the navigator had his famnous (I guess) school for explorers. I went swimming just to prove a point. We had dinner in a little village and went on a wild megaliticos chase. It was a good little excursion. The night was exactly like the one before, and it was Wednesday.

The next day we drove to Evoras, which is about 45 minutes east of Lisbon, specifically to check out the Capilla dos Ossos. Yes we added an extra hour and a half of driving to see a church made entirely of bones. It was totally worth it. So effing creepy. It was made with bones dug up from the old cemetery in town and is probably a good 10x15 meters. Lot’s of femurs, skulls, fibias a nd tibias and good times. There are also the mummified bodies of a father and son hanging from one of the walls. So wierd and awesome. The Catholic church does some really awesome things once in a while.

hermanitos

This guy on Calle Zaragosa makes the best helado in town hands down.
Linni and Paddy came and spent a week and four days respectively. Linni had the amazing Sevilla weather. Lots of time chilling by the river with some tinto. She discovered that my building has an azotea. A sick one. She actually east food now, which is great. Leadoff dinner at Coloniales, always amazing(ly cheap). Linni did Santa Cruz and the Museo de Bellas Artes. We observed the large population of North American Scum and how ridiculously easy it is to pick out the study abroad kids (GDB), and what stupid crap they seem to be saying in loud voices at all times. I feel like every time i hear English around the city (which is kind of a lot) its some embarrassment saying things like ‘did you see what she was wearing last night?’ ‘oh my gad i was so drunk’ and other things heard around campus. Anyways when Paddy got here they hit the Real Maestranza (bull ring) for the tour. We saw some live flamenco at Laberinto one night, which was totally chill, and at Carbonería the other night, where the performers seemed super sick of tourists and people who won’t shut up during the show. When I was done with my grueling three-day workweek, we did the cathedral (third-biggest in Europe to St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London). When it was commissioned in 1401 the builders wanted to make a building so extravagant that “those who come after us will take us for madmen.” Probably the best quote about church design of all time. Rick Steves pointed out to us the Roman foundation, Moorish arches and Reconquista bell tower on the Giralda. We also hit the Alcazares, the royal palace and garden; the oldest royal residence still in use. I guess when Juan Carlos (aka un coche perdido) comes to Sevilla he stays there. I was kinda sick but finally got it together for a night out on Friday, complete with churros (paddy’s new favorite, linnis new enemy), prepared Anneso style with tons of sugar dumped on them, and molten chocolate, the remainder of which Paddy drank out of a long-stemmed wine glass. Kid’s got class. They barely got out of here in time, rolling on the AVE.

tienes bailar?

So Jonny came to visit. We chilled in Sevilla for most of the time. It weather was still real nice and warm, so we rented a car named Pepe, a Nissan Micra 5-speed diesel with unbelievable pick-up to head to the beach. Drove down the coast past Jerez and Cadiz to Tarifa, pretty much as far south as you can get in Spain. Further south then Gibraltar. you can see Morocco and its where the ferries to tangiers leave from, although we decided to stay in spain because we would probably die in morocco, knowing us and the combination of bad decisions that would promptly ensue. tarifa, as we found out for ourselves upon arrival is renowned as the windiest place in europe. great. its huge for kite surfing, which is ridiculous, and looks about 1000 times harder than regular surfing (which is already too hard for poeple like us) because it heaps on the complications of windsurfing and flying one of those ridiculous stunt kites. so for all these wind bums its paradise. for us its just too cold to go swimming and sand is hitting me in the face right now. it is pretty cool to stand there and feel the south(?) mistral wind blowing across the strait of gibraltar. thinking about the mythological implications of hercules and ulysses and the warm air blowing accross from Africa. Africa: joder. we spend one night there, supposedly night life is awesome in the summer. it felt like winter on cape cod in march even though the weather was on the upswing already. the other cool thing that the wind has done in tarifa is to create a huge dune. the wind blown in the same direction most of the time so the sand blows accross and piles up on the other side of the cove. there are all these full grown trees that are 2/3 buried. The dune shifts throughout the year. It's pretty cool.
we drove, well i drove, down the costa del sol to marbella. its so built up its hideous. we then turned north to go through the sierra morena mountains. there was this legendary bandit, el Tempranillo that lived up in there and used to stop everyone going through in the early 1800’s on the route to Ronda. Ronda is a cool town. it looks just you would imagine a town with a bandit roaming the hills in the distance. there is a huge natural gorge that cuts the city in half with an ancient bridge, there is a cell under the bridge where they used to keep prisoners, pretty badass. its also the birthplace of modern bullfighting. the bull ring has a museum and they let you go in and see all the inner workings and rooms of the ring. pretty neat. we ate at el porton c/pedro romero 7 semi touristy with an english language menu outisde, but still plenty of locals inside at the bar. lots of food, reasonable price. we got ice cream. twice. of course. la jijonenca c/ espinola 30 was the better one. we tried to go these neolithic caves cuevas de pilota, privately owned caves on park land, outside ronda but we were gonna run out of time to get the car back so we had to go.
on saturday yiyi, my intercambio friend from jaen was having a party in alameda in the afternoon to celebrate two of her friends’ bdays and her saint day. since my bday was only a couple days away she invited us along which was cool. this included a bunch of live performances by her friends bands, which were infinitely better than the spanish pop me and jon were forced to listen to on our raod trip. later on sean came up from jerez and anneso and her friend vero joined us as well. izzi and dan arrived via first class high speed AVE around 9pm and i recogered them from the train station. more anything? more everything!

peter cottontail

two of the most important and famous festivals spanish culture has to offer (up there with tomatina, san fermines and las fallas) take place in sevilla. semana santa translates literally to “holy week” It takes place in the week leading up to easter Sunday starting on the previous sunday. the celebration centers around pasos in which the idols from the abundant churches throughout the city are placed on elaborately decorated platforms or palillos, which are then placed on the heads of a couple of dozen of the faithful/penitent (guys with rags tied around their heads. the palillos can be seen in progress in tallers around the city beforehand. linni and i even saw a group marching with a palillo on their heads loaded with sandbags to simulate the weight that they will have to bear once it is completely decorated. The pasos are accompanied by dozens to hundreds of nazarenos, people who pay a nominal some to the church to be involved for whatever reason they might have. These men women and children dress in robes, usually of solid color, with matching hood with eye holes. The hoods contain cones that stand over a meter high atop the head. Like a wizard. A grand wizard if you will. (It’s actually where the kkk got the idea for their outfits.) the processions vary in seriousness. some of the nazarenos walk in silence, barefoot for reasons of penitence. others wear sneakers and life up their hoods to smoke cigarettes and chat with friends in the crowd. There is a band with each pasos. They have been practicing for months. It sounds like something you would imagine hearing at a bullfight if you have never been to a bullfight. or like that trumpet at the beginning of that black eyed peas song. all very minor and melancholy. i mean it centers around the death of jesus so i suppose it makes sense that its not peppy. All the pasos pass through the cathedral in the center, do a 360 and then go home. Some come from pretty far and take routes that lead them around on an 8-hour tour of the city. There are pasos going on 24 hours a day. as you might imagine, this can make it rather difficult for anyone who actually wished to get around the city. the moorish design of the city already makes the roads inefficient and basically useless for anything but foot traffic. which is fine. its great actually. except when they close off a lot of the main through streets for the pasos. there are cops directing traffic and if you wait in a line you can eventually cross a street when the traffic of the paso is stopped for a bit. everything around the cathedral and avenida de la constitution is completely sectioned off and private for the sevilla elite. my bike was rendered completely useless anywhere near the center. we watched about a couple of hours of pasos on Sunday. i must say it was impressive. the palillos are really intricate, one of mary on a throne, another of jesus being abused by some life size roman soldiers, another with jesus just screaming and all kinds of plants all around him. the army of nazarenos is striking at teh very least, especially for someone from the us i think. the men were out in their suits and the girls in their dresses. everyone looked great. especially the girls. then tried to meet up with two friends who were only what is usually a 7-minute walk away. after nearly an hour of trying to find a route to where they were watching a paso, we got out of the madness and went home. we watched another hour on day two. i was glad we already had plans to get out of town on the morning of day three.

my students were baffled when i explained that easter was only one day in the states, and that in addition to the religious significance we commemorate it with the visit of a large basket-bearing rabbit who sneaks into our houses and yards in the middle of the night and leaves clandestine treats around for children to scramble and fight over in their easter bonnets when they get home from church. some of this candy is inevitably discovered during a long-put-off cleaning in august and is disgusting. i felt like david sedaris trying to explain this. but i guess the have the easter bunny in france and portugal so i guess franco kept him out along with progress.

Tomorrow, you go see the madonna.

I went to Milan to meet up with the new Mr. and Mrs. Alan and Lauren Bronfeld on Valentine’s day weekend. Tovah came with me. We flew Ryanair to Bergamo for under 100 euro round trip. We then took a bus from the airport to the train station in Milan for 8 euro. It came with a free return trip for one of us but we didn’t use it. We went directly to Bologna on the train which I think was about 30 euro.
Bologna is great. It’s very small for being a internationally known Italian city. The main tourist attractions are a pair of towers in the center, one of which is leaning. St. Stephen’s Basilica is also pretty awesome. Supposedly it’s where Pontius Pilate came to absolve himself of the sin of having Jesus executed. Overall Bologna is just a beautiful city. You can walk around the whole center very easily. There aren’t so many standout sights, but every plaza is cool, and the majority of the sidewalks are covered by collonades. It was an awesome place to just wander without even using the map and just check out the architecture and storefronts, as lame as that sounds.
The food in Italy is totally amazing and cheap. We got pizza twice in bologna, two different styles, both cheap and crispy and delicious. The dinner we got included steak, handmade raviolis and a bottle caraffe of wine and cost around 30 euro which was or course balling out for us but totally worth it. I mean it’s Italy fer chrissakes. Tovah was drawn in by pretty much every window display we saw. We got gelato at this place Tovah’s friend recommended and it was awesome. The pistachio was possibly as good as Nauset Ice Cream. The owner had us try almost every flavor. He spoke pretty much perfect English. It is amazing in Italy how many people speak English well. Pretty much every time we were lost or confused we would ask for directions in Spanish, trying to make it sound a little more Italian. Any Italian under 30 would reply in great English. Even the bartender at the pub we went to in miniscule Azargo. Soooo unlike Spain. That was also not my experience in France. The coolest part was how many people asked if we were Spanish. We were psyched.
Also ended having a English-Italian-Spanish conversation with a guy who worked in a shop that specialized in ancient stringed instruments. They had old guitars and violins, but were more into lutes and other crazy things. He gave me a brochure for my nono.
We stayed in the most hilarious place. It was about 10 km outside of the center, a 10 euro cab ride or a one euro ride on this shuttle that went right to it. The bus schedule was not so clear however, so we missed the last shuttle the first night. It was mainly a camping facility. The receptionist told us he would show us to our chalet. Apparently chalet is the Italian word for “double wide”. It was pretty awesome though. The heat cranked and there was a towel warmer, for some reason.
Nightlife was surprisingly fun. Ended up at a club that actually played hip-hop. That never happens in Seville, it’s always house or some shit. There are a ton of students. We ended up going back relatively early, like 1 or 2 but the streets were starting to fill up.
The next day we went to meet Alan, Lauren and Alan’s friend from his study abroad days at San Siro stadium in Milan. We saw Inter play against another Italian team I don’t remember which one. The Inter faithful were crazy; jumping up and down and chanting that anyone who doesn’t jump is a fan of the other team. I love that. Pointing and repeating “amici” was a surprisingly successful way to get security to let us go down to the first level were the friends were. They put in Luis Figo for the last 10 minutes or so. Everyone went nuts. Guy is a legend.
Alan’s buddy was in a fishing tournament, so they went to a participants’ dinner. With the help of the navigational system (awesome) we made it to Azargo, the tiny town outside of Bergamo where Alan’s friend lives. Tovah and Lauren and I got pizza again there, so good. Then on to JJ’s Irish Pub. Hilarious cast of locals. Alan made best friends with one without actually communicating at all. We played darts and hung out until the wee hours when Lauren, the only sober one got to drive us all drunk to the airport in Bergamo. I passed out in the back while Lauren was trying to figure her way around a road block and Alan was arguing with the British woman whose recorded voice accompanied the GPS.

its been a while

let me splain
no
there is too much
let me sum up

i am the foreign guy

Part of my reason for coming here in the first place was to put myself in a situation where I would be out of my comfort zone. Up ‘til now I had never lived outside of wonderful, near-perfect Massachusetts with this past year being the first year I was more than twenty minutes from a close relative. Even here I’ve been surrounded by familiarity, mostly due to the fact that just about all my friends are American. I speak a lot of (too much) English and have hot dogs or tacos for dinner.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be the foreign guy. No. That’s not true. I’ve never wondered what its like to be the foreign guy. I’ve always just been glad I’m not the foreign guy because the foreign guy is always weird. Also, people treat the foreign guy in one of three ways: 1) The foreign guy is weird, let’s make fun of him 2) The foreign guy is different, let’s ignore him 3) The foreign guy is interesting let’s see what that’s about.
I rearranged my rigorous schedule of nothing so I could go skiing with my flat mate Fran for a week. Fran is a professor and teaches people how to be gym teachers. He is also working on his PhD in said subject area. He also gave me a bike for Christmas (Dia de Reyes, actually). If you want give someone that Christmas morning little kid feeling again I highly recommend a bike, a red one if possible. It really is the most exciting present you can get. I haven’t been so excited about a gift since the I was ten and came downstairs to find a bike next to the tree. I think I was clapping I was so happy.
Saturday at midnight we left Sevilla on a bus loaded with four other friends of the Fran and forty or so of his students. The students are not much younger than I am, 20-23 yrs old, but here it’s common to live with your parents until after 30. So most of them were dropped off by their parents, who hug and kiss them goodbye and wave to the bus, which makes them seem about 17. My goal was to make one Spanish friend on the trip. I may have succeeded. On the other maybe people just gave me their email addresses to be nice and plan on ignoring my grammatically adorable electronic advances. It remains to be seen.
We changed drivers in Madrid and headed on, stopping for lunch in Catalunya. We reached Andorra after 17 hours on the road. We headed right to the mountain to rent equipment before heading to the hotel about half an hour away to eat and crash out. Skiing in the morning.
Andorra was definitely not on my list of places I want to see in Europe. It is a oddity, a landlocked country (principality) in the Pyrenees between Spain and France. The official language is Catalan. There are no sales taxes so Spanish, French, British and German tourists flock to ski and buy cigarettes and electronics. It’s like making North Conway, NH it’s own country. The city we stayed is is called Vella it’s more or less the hub. It’s all hotels and stores. Everything closes at 8. There are a handful of bars. We went to Corinthians, a pub with beer coolers from which you serve yourself and pay by the bottle later, and Borsa, a club where the dinks change price on stock market-esque screens depending on the demand. Cute. Overall a very quiet night time scene.
Grandvilaria, the mountain, is made up of five peaks. It is also connected to another mountain, so if you buy another lift ticket you can pass back and forth between nine or so. A one day pass is around 40€. Trails are divided, in increasing order of difficulty, into green, blue, red and black. About 75% of the trails were open. There was cover and some ice on the trails. It was total spring skiing in New England. The temperature got up to 50+ degrees in the afternoon.
I had the only decent sandwich, by my standards, that I haven’t made myself at a roadside cafe in Catalunya. Sandwiches in Andalucia are one ingredient (jamon or cheese) on a roll. I mean this was no Deli, but meat and cheese and some sort of spread on fresh baked bread was pretty awesome. I had seconds.

@ home

10 days at home

life in spain is so easy but i still felt lazy – probly cause theres video games
plenty of time to relax and see who i should have seen...even thought i saw rory

you have to either always act like its the last time you are going to see everyone or never act like it. if you start getting fancy and acting that way sometimes, people get confused and offended

3 days in boston
i love you

3 days in nyc
i love you

thanks given

Remember the first time you crossed the street without your mom, or read a book, or cleaned yourself after using the toilet? You’re a big kid now, that’s for sure. That’s how I felt this weekend after hosting Thanksgiving in my apartment. I mean it wasn’t just like home. Buying pre-cooked chickens from the supermercado isn’t quite the same as roasting a turkey all day, but what are you supposed to do if you don’t have an oven? Most people had to eat standing up and no one was related, but there was still a little bit of drama. And although there were no corn or cranberry products available, last minute improvisations of stuffing and sweet potatoes sealed the deal and made it feel a little like that most American of holidays.

We had representatives of three European countries present to witness the American celebration of the coming together of the native American peoples and the European newcomers for a beautiful dinner. Those were the happy times, before the resettlements, smallpox blankets, alcoholism and casinos, and that’s what we taught our European friends. When some members of our party donned paper headbands with feathers in the back, it was with utmost reverence to our Wampanoag brothers, who saved our ancestors from starvation 400 years ago. Even on the way to bar afterward, the Spaniards in the streets seemed to understand our show of gratitude as they whooped like the Chippewa themselves at our coming.

francia - fetes des lumieres

My first excursion into another country came on the puente of the Immaculada, a four-day weekend. I went to visit Manuela who is studying is Aix-en-Provence, not far from Marseilles in southern France. It was the first time I had been on a flight that was not either leaving or returning to my home in the states. It was a little bit of a strange sensation. It really made Sevilla seem even more like my new, albeit temporary home base. It was also, since Japan, the first time I had been somewhere where I am completely incapable of interacting with anyone, having zero language skills. It’s frustrating and makes me want to learn at least basic French. Maybe next year.

I had rented a car through a website called easyterra.com. They gave me a confirmation number. It was a good thing Manuela met me at the airport. Easyterra is not a car-rental company but some sort of middleman company. We had to go from company to company at the airport and eventually got our Twingo from Europcar. It was about 25 euro/day including unlimited kilometers but not petrol. Unfortunately, I forgot my driver’s license so we had to rent it under her name, which cost us a bundle in extra insurance because she is under twenty-five. She is probably the only girl I would trust to drive around Europe in a stick-shift. Of course I had to have a go at it later, I couldn’t miss a chance to dive a tiny French car in France and watch the speedometer go up to 150.

I guess they call Aix a mini Paris because of the high fashion and fine dining and such that is found in such a tiny city. I’ve never been to Paris. Aix was nice though. Fancy and pretty expensive compared to Andalucía. I was introduced to vin chaud a hot wine spiced with cinnamon, clove and lemon and sometimes with brandy, which is sold on the street in the Christmas market. Our dinner was a local specialty of mussels and fries. They were the best mussels I’ve ever had, so tender, not rubbery like mussels often can be. The waitress gave us a complimentary apertif and dessert licor because she knew Manuela. I hadn’t slept, but we went out to IPN, where’s Mauela’s roommate’s Moroccan boyfriend got us to skip the line because he is totally on the scene in Aix. They had Mighty Boosh on mute on the tv. They didn’t have a liquor license, just beer wine and Martini, which is not martini and tastes kind of like franette. Most of the crowd is really drunk international students and everyone dances to basically American music. Girls can earn free drinks by dancing on the pole on the bar. Great.

On Friday we went to Arles to see the amphitheatre. There really wasn’t much else going on there. The amphitheatre was really cool and they had restored one section of it to what it would have looked like 2000 yrs ago. The best part was getting to Arles and not taking the main highway, seeing the countryside and chateaus from the road.

Saturday was the real deal. We drove three hours on the main toll road to Lyon, the second biggest city in France. (It cost about 20 euro each way to use the road.) 8 December is the culmination of their biggest festival Fetes del Lumieres or something close to that, the festival of lights. These are not Christmas lights. Many of the displays are designed and realized by artists and are really cool and different. They are all over the city. The lights are illuminated from 6pm to 1am. That is definitely not enough time to see everything. You can get a free tourist guide to the festival exhibits in English which includes a map of where the pieces are found in the city and suggested walking routes depending on your time and priorities.

The traffic getting into the city was pretty insane, but when you are used to Boston it’s not a big deal. We accidentally did a lap around the main square which was a bad idea. We found parking in a garage for around 10 euro and headed back toward the displays we had passed. The Rhone river divides the city like the Guadalquivir here in Sevilla. There were displays on the banks of both forks of the river and merchants selling vin chaud for 1.50-2.50 euro. There are barges along one of the banks that are actually huge bars that open up later at night. I used the shadiest bathroom I have ever gone to. I didn’t think I would make it back. We tried to enter the main square but it was just too crazy so we headed accross the second branch of the river toward the oldest part of the city. The cathedral on the hill overlooking the city was backlit and looked like a castle. We caught the end of the vigil mass and some sort of ritual burning of stuff with torches and whatnot outside. We ate Chinese food and proceeded to the main square around 1230, which was now pretty deserted. The French do not party like the Spanish. Through the use of French cell phones We were able to meet up with the Aussie I had met in Madrid for a couple glasses of wine at the apartment of one of his French friends. We headed back to Aix around where I slept for an hour and headed back to the airport.

After a couple of days in France I have concluded: French people really do wear berets, but not in such numbers to make it ridiculous. French people are always walking around with baguettes wrapped in a single sheet of paper that doesn’t even cover the bread. The wine is good. France is way more expensive than Spain. French girls are beautiful. French is a crazy language. There is no way you can read French and pronounce it, there are always at least 3 superfluous letters at the end of the word. French people are not jerks, everyone we asked for help was really helpful, you just have to speak basic French.

sam brown is the only real friend i have

There’s just something special about meeting one of your closest friends in a European capital. It all feels inherently wackier and like anything can happen. You know it was typical Sandwich from the beginning.

I never asked Sam what time he was arriving in Madrid. I took the three o’clock bus from Sevilla, which would put me in around nine. While I was at the one rest stop the bus makes (a la Fung Wah) Sam called me from a payphone. He had neglected to bring the piece of paper on which he had written the address of the hostel. I actually knew the Metro stop, but nothing more, as I had stowed my Spain travel guide beneath the bus. So Sam had some fun walking in circles using what he remembered from high school to find the hostel (Mad Hostel 17 euro dorms) we had booked for Thursday and Friday night. The hostel has a good location near enough to Plaza Mayor, Sol, and the museums. I found Sam wearing a fun hat in the hostel room where we met a Scot and an Aussie who will both figure in later. We went out to eat some typical (albeit overpriced) Spanish dishes for the newcomer.

After a breakfast of bread, cheese and juice boxes among bums in a small park, we showed our versatility by going to an art museum. We went to the Reina Sofía, Madrid’s modern art museum, basically just to see Picasso’s Guernica. It’s awesome. I think worth the price of admission (6/3 euro for students) by itself. There are many works by Dalí and Miró. I fell asleep watching the Buñuel follow-up to El Perro Andaluz which in addition to intentionally making no sense, was in French, a language which to me makes less sense than slicin’ up eyeballs.

After a kebap lunch, where the Egyptian employee was intent on convincing us that not all his countrymen live in the desert and ride around on camels, we made it to the Prado, the renascence partner of the RS where we saw works of Goya, Velasquez and El Greco. Also really cool, and even cooler because, at least on Fridays, I don’t really know the rules, its free starting at 6pm. You just have to wait in a serious line but it moves. The security guards were the first of many to be confused by Sam’s antique Polaroid camera.

We headed out that night with our Scottish roommate and a Canadian. The biggest discovery for me was that you can basically drink for free until around 2am. There are promoters all over the streets offering you free drinks or at least drink deals, which is great because otherwise Madrid gets pretty expensive. Finished the night with another kebap and a discussion of tomorrow’s football match with an older Spanish gentleman. We were getting psyched.

For Saturday night, Sam had gotten tickets to the Spain-Sweden Euro Cup qualifier match. If either team one they would clinch a spot in the tournament. The game started at 10pm. We cooked lunch in the hostel. We found out that Sam had signed up for and solicited a time change for an airport shuttle for which he had not shown up because we misunderstood the date. We didn’t get our key deposits back because we checked out an hour late. There was not room at the hostel for the night. We decided to stow out bags in the bus station and get it later. Looking at the city map, a local asked us where we wanted to go and told us specifically to take a certain bus because it was faster than the Metro. We decided to ignore him (what does he know) and walk. Distances on maps are deceptive. It was far and one of the wheels on Sam’s suitcase was broken so we had to carry it because it was wearing a hold in the suitcase to drag it. At Mendez Álvaro, the bus station I bought a 1am bus ticket. The luggage storage was not lockers, but a man supervising a room, which closed at 1130 pm. No good. On the map, there is a luggage storage symbol at Nuevos Ministerios, the Mero stop from which you catch the line to the airport. Don’t believe it, it’s a total lie. There is not luggage storage there. There was a couple of years ago, but they redid the station and no longer. We headed out to the airport where Sam put his bag in a locker. At this point it was at least 600 and we were beginning to lose our minds and an appropriate discussion ensued about how great our friends are because we don’t plan anything, then fuck everything up and just laugh, which is exactly what was happening. Becky would have been annoyed. I had accepted that I would be carrying my backpack all night so whatever. We won a brief battle with a vending machine, which lightened our spirits ostensibly. After introducing Sam to the Corte Inglés, we bought ourselves scarves and a Spanish flag to cover my backpack and headed to the stadium, where we assumed we would be loved.

The crowd outside was awesome. They thought it was hilarious that there were Americans at the game. They love Freddy Adu. One guy was particularly fascinated by Sam’s camera. You’d think he was an aborigine. There were riot police on foot and horseback everywhere keeping the Spanish and Swedish separate. There were separate entrances, stairs, seating sections, bathrooms, and refreshment stands so the two sides never had to mix. The Swedes were restricted to an upper deck sections, where they made an admirable amount of noise, and were enclosed by a huge net to prevent their throwing objects on to the heads of unsuspecting Spaniards below. For this same reason, stadium security removed my Nalgene bottle from my person. We later heard a story of an Italian soccer match where someone had managed to sneak a Vespa into the stadium and threw it off the top deck and killed someone. Red Sox Yankees is apparently nothing. No one is dead from that one. Spain had never lost at home and they kept up their streak winning 3-1 even though Torres was sidelined with an injury.

We decided it would be a good idea to party all night. We got a lot of wishy-washy answers when we asked people where to party. We were on the point of giving up, having been turned away from the red carpet clubs much to the mirth of the bouncers, when we stumbled upon a small bar called Babelia which was full to its capacity of about 25. Sam’s hat was a huge hit with the ladies, who all wanted to wear it and dance with him to the 90’s alternative rock hits being pumped out by the dj. By the end the bartenders were giving us free drinks and encouraging us to continue on to the next spot when they closed at 5. Sam got in a cab at this point and I took the train back to the bus station. I don’t think we said goodbye. It would have been awkward anyway.

Next week it’s Brussels