A Return to Spanish Time: Canary Islands Tour Diary

A Return to Spanish Time

Though we sit just north in the tropics, it is not a very warm evening. Much warmer than where we came from, but brisk nevertheless. I tug my blazer tighter over my shoulders and bring my tea cup to my lips. Amy bears up under the cold relatively well, however. She hates cold, which is why we’re here. We flew to Gran Canaria to escape February’s dregs. An upgrade from daytime freezing to evening briskness makes the briskness that much more bearable.

In the air another attraction floats upon the breeze. The vacation we’re taking commemorates Carnival. Carnival marks, hypothetically, the last gasp of hedonism before Lent and the aesthetic run-up to the Catholic Easter. The U.S.A. only finds Carnival in full form in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but across the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and scads of other places, it offers parades, street parties, dancing, booze, and purported joy. I have never been through a Carnival (skipping out on New Orleans a couple weeks before Mardi Gras hit last year), but Amy has years of experience from her time in South America. I feel like I’ve been through several of them myself, having heard Amy’s stories and (sometimes fuzzy) recollections many times over. 

We sit at a café in Parque San Telmo in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, and wait for the Carnival to roll in. My cell phone reads 8:30. The Parade is due to make its final turn at our corner at 8:30, finishing just below the second-floor balcony of our hotel room. When we checked in earlier that day, our initially taciturn receptionist could hardly contain his excitement over how perfect our spot was, looking over the park and the grand finale. We feel contained excitement as we sit and wait for our waiter to bring us the bill; I am the retiring, boring type and so don’t imagine I’ll make it through much of a Carnival if it goes late, and Amy is conditioned to believe that Brazil > everywhere else, especially regarding Carnival, the country’s finest annual celebration. The parade is tardy; Spanish time is usually an approximate thing, biased towards the later side of any announced time. The parade’s tardiness doesn’t surprise us so much as reassure us, the warm embrace of an old friend.

We walk out to the corner. The sound of synchronized drums draws us closer. The crowd at the corner is relatively insignificant, no more than one or two deep at any given point on the road. The first group marches through, a group of drummers and instrumentalists, almost like a group from your small-town Memorial Day Parade, except all dressed in green. After them came a few more dancing Krewes (the New Orleans term, meaning the dancing group that marches in the parade), a few tawdry floats carrying the Queen, 1^st through 4^th Ladies, Grand Dame, and Drag Queen of the Carnival, respectively, and then a couple semi-trucks.

At last Amy feels excitement, as the trucks recall Brazil’s Carnival. The trucks are probably an evolution from the floats and walking krewes of yesteryear Carnivals. They operate like themed-party buses, everybody on board dressed in a matching costume – Flintstones, Superheroes, Cats – while a DJ bumps the tunes to a thundering level. Everybody on the truck is meant to be dancing and merrymaking, though most of the truck people are drinking and yelling instead. 

A few trucks pass and at 9:15 a lull sets in. We decide we’ve seen enough.  We return to our room, still dressed but at least freed of the burden of other people. I stand out on the balcony and watch the crowd of people below. Earlier, there was a preponderance of Superman and Wonderwoman outfits, mostly of skimpy nature, as well as a lot of men dolled up in women’s costumes, also of a skimpy nature. Now, I cannot pick out any specific dominant theme, mostly just stragglers from the krewes and trucks that have already passed.

As we stand out on our balcony, Spanish time reasserts itself with a vengeance. The parade hit a lull, a delay, but resumes beneath our eyes. The semis roll one or two down our street at a time. The truck turns the corner 200 meters away from us, its melody reaches our ears a truck length after that, and then the truck crawls past our balcony, stopping at the intersection 50 meters to our left. If lucky, the truck can soak in the spotlight and play its music for another 15-30 seconds, but as the night wears on, the cops instructing them to cut the sub-woofers and move it along get there quicker and quicker. Meanwhile, the next truck or two has already reached our point on the street, the sound systems overlapping, waves falling atop one another, us locked beneath those waves, struggling for air.

Or dancing. Mostly dancing. So we dance. We dance along together, the most we’ve ever danced together, the most Amy has ever allowed me to dance in her presence. That’s because my dancing is rhythmic but uncoordinated, unreasonable and uncontrolled, imagined fluidity replaced by spastic movements and rigid meandering over the 4/4 time signatures. The sort of thing I’m not to do in public in her presence. But here, it’s Spanish Time, it’s Carnival, we’re up on a balcony, and all we can do is take pictures and laugh about it. No one can see us anyway.

Except that some of the people on the trucks are taking our photos. We’re creating quite the little scene, it seems. Some of those drunks down there are cheering, waving, snapping. We wave back. We dance. I add a bounce or two to my moves. We laugh. Carnival roars.

This goes for an hour, and then it things peter out again. No more semis. We stop dancing, stop sweating. The noise in the street and in the park below persists but on a lower level, without the foreground clamor of the music. We stay out on the balcony and watch and glow. 

On the edge of the street below us, a girl kicks a bottle. She is maybe 10 years old and dressed in what looks like a “traditional” costume; long purple skirt and white shirt, her black hair flows down her shoulders even as it is tied in a knot. She kicks the glass bottle along the street curb. The bottle rolls, banks off the curb once or twice, giving way to her soft power. She kicks it one time too many, and it shatters.

The girl retreats across the street. Her mother and other relatives are talking in a circle there. They don’t pay much attention to her, don’t notice her. She flits in and out of the group, walks behind a tree in the park, and then returns to our side of the street. She’s found another glass bottle. She’s kicking it again. Predictably, after a few paltry efforts, she breaks it again.

We are too far away and too foreign besides to say anything as the girl starts kicking her third bottle in the same area. People stand on the other side of the curb railing with the glass breaking just below them. At the 3^rd, pattern-confirming bottle, they speak up, sharing our shock. They tell the girl to stop kicking the bottle. She stops. The bottle remains intact. The girl scurries back to her mother’s circle. The mother stomps over to the scene of the crime and yells at the people who spoke up to her daughter (the mother stands conspicuously closer to the middle of the street, away from the broken glass). The people, an older couple and another older man, yell back. The man peels off and finds a police officer. The mother gives not an inch. Her husband, dressed in a washer woman’s outfit with the top of a Christmas tree or a really funky hat on top of his head, acts as a moderating presence and also speaks to the daughter. No one takes him very seriously.

The police officer arrives. Some sort of resolution is reached – your daughter can’t kick any more glass bottles tonight, you need to leave this family alone, none of you can call one another a stupid puta, etc. No arrests are to be made in this situation, and there’s not much else to do. The plaintiffs, or else the street’s defenders, leave their post along the curb to try to revivify their Carnival joy. The cop and the girl’s parents continue to talk with much more laughter. The tumult dies down. The night and the Carnival continue to flow, softly.

And then, as we sleep, Spanish Time rears its head twice or thrice more; the semis circle back through the park once and again, just as loud as the first time. The noise threatens our sleep. I, exhausted from the flight, sleep through most of it, though I swear that at quarter to 4 I’m awakened by the thumping tunes one last time. Amy sleeps fitfully through the Carnival iterations, perhaps suffering for her Brazil-based hubris. She says that I’m wrong about the last cycle taking place that late. 

Spanish time, ladies and gentlemen.

Beeping into the Blind on the GC-200

The thing about it is, the more dangerous something is, the more thrilling. The more we have to risk to achieve something, the more it appears worth it. Life is founded on the principle of efficiency, arbitrage, and that idea; we will risk only as much as a reward merits. So, for a greater reward, we will risk more.

With risk come fear and a chance of failure. Amy – cowering and half-hyperventilating in the passenger seat, picturing us crashing through the fragile guard rail and plummeting over the cliff into more rocks and chasms and eventually the ocean, telling me to go slower, laughing at my beeping, and squeezing in dramatic scenery photos with her new camera all the while – decided the mountain drive only deserved to be risked once.

                “San Nicolas isn’t much to see in and of itself, but this trip is about the journey, not the destination. A 30km drive through the coastal mountains is one of the prettiest settings you will ever go through.”

So said our guide (I’m paraphrasing). The drive began at the foot of the hill where we were staying in Agaete, on the Western coast of Gran Canaria. We had been there for a day and already were succumbing to island fever. With nothing else to do, a beautiful drive down to the touristy but picturesque Puerto Mogan struck us as a winning proposition.  (San Nicolas is about the halfway point between Agaete and Puerto Mogan).

We left around noon. Google Maps told us it would be a 1h20m trip, which would have us in Puerto Mogan in time for a late lunch. Our car was a Toyota Auris, a small 4-door with an incongruous 6 gear manual transmission. On the highway driving to Agaete two days earlier, I hit 6^th a couple of times, coasting at 100 Km/Hr, until the dashboard light quickly suggested I shift down to 5^th as we hit a hill. There might be a use for the Toyota Auris’s 6^th gear on flat highways and long stretches, but it would be completely unnecessary on this trip.

We entered GC-200, the road that would take us the 65 kilometers to Puerto Mogan, unsuspectingly. The road began with a slight incline and a few lazy bends. There was a white line dividing us from the other side of the road. All was calm. Amy began taking photos out the window of Agaete below, of the coastline coming into view, of the mountains in front of us. Gran Canaria is considered something of a “mini-continent”, with a varied landscape; the coastline features quaint towns and pebbly or coarsely sanded beaches, while the interior has more of the rugged look, with mountains stretching up to 5,000 feet and the reddish-brown visage of the barren hills that can be found in Spain, Morocco, or New Mexico.

Rugged mountains and narrow “highways”. After a few easy kilometers, we were climbing up and down the mountain, driving through blind curve after blind curve, and finding that there was no more dividing line painted on the road. The beauty out the window, plentiful, was now obscured. Blocking our beauty was not the scenery, not the mountains getting in the way of anything else, but the fact that I was driving and couldn’t look too much at the scenery, and Amy was panicking because I was driving.

The GC-200 offers an ideal setting for car commercials. There are car commercials that take place in green rolling hills on roads with hairpin turns and endless switchbacks; there are car commercials that emphasize the open road and the plains and the thrill of adventure – the GC-200 offers neither of these. It provides a third possible setting: rugged coastal mountains with frequent turns and undulations, with the promised land of water and sun and fun just around the next (blind) corner. It is really a beautiful drive.

The problem is that I am no car commercial driver, and no commercial for the Toyota Auris will feature such driving. I have never been confused for a good driver. Amy has never been confused for a person who relinquishes control in such crucial circumstances easily. The Toyota Auris does not handle uphills very well, and on this drive I rarely achieved even 4^th gear, let alone 6^th. We were also tourists, and obvious ones, not sure where we were going and ignorant of which way the road would curve when.

"At least if we crashed, the ocean would douse the flames..."

All of which led to the scene I began with: Amy panicking at my side while I tried to maintain a balance between cool consideration and competence. When going up, I would get the car up to about 40-50 km/h (roughly 25-30 mph) in 2^nd or 3^rd gear; when going down, I would let the car coast at about 50-60 km/h, riding heavy on the brakes. As we were tourists, and timid ones, we would often get passed. Passing on a narrow mountain road isn’t easy; there’s hardly space for two cars on the road as is, and then if a foolhardy driver tries to do it on a curve, they risk getting smashed by a car coming the other way. We found a way to be passed, though, because there are few trivial things worse than having someone riding on your ass on a narrow road where you can’t help but feel sorry for them since after all you’re the one going half as fast as everybody else: I would pull on to the rare shoulders or to the little bubbles on the road where a car might stop to get a picture of the view, or else edge towards the right on a stretch of road where we could see no one was coming the other way and wave my hand so that the car tailing me started heading me instead. We were passed by bolder tourists, by eye-rolling locals, and even by runaway buses who handled the curves like they were so many city streets, with abandon. “Those poor bus passengers,” said Amy time and again, thinking of how bad she felt just sitting in our car.

"And if we crash, at least this photo will be evidence that I didn't have a heart attack first..."

We learned a technique from the cars that passed us. Some of the drivers, at least, when nearing a curve, would begin to beep. At first I thought the beeping was directed at me, being sensitive to criticism. Then I realized they were short, staccato, friendly beeps. Warning beeps. Beeps to announce one’s presence on the road, bursts of noise and self-affirmation.

This being a trick that could only help our safety, beeping quickly fell into my arsenal on the GC-200. As we approached a curve, I would beep once sharply, then twice more for a follow-up. Some of the curves kept going, with no end to the blindness in sight, and so I kept beeping every couple of seconds. I felt like a satellite drifting out in space, sending signals out to alert other intelligent beings of my presence. The scariest thing, of course, would be to receive a signal in return.

Nothing scarier happened to us than almost running into one pickup truck barreling around a curve fairly on (going 40 km/h allows for a fair deal of reaction time, at least). We also stopped towards the end at “El Balcon”, a scenic viewpoint. A man ran a concessions stand there, and he found my initial parking job unsatisfactory, requiring me to back out on the road across both lanes of traffic and straighten up. I had visions of rolling backwards forever. Amy was so flustered she spoke with the man in English first as she got out of the car; when she switched to Spanish, he in turn grew flustered, saying “Coño, hablas español?”  And yet, we survived.

We survived the whole drive, of course. The 1h20m stretched into two hours, what with the crawling speeds and the stops. We received very few beeps in return, but we made it to Puerto Mogan, where our finest meal of the vacation awaited us, with smooth vegetable paella and the best croquetas I had all trip. We took nice photos. Somehow, it was all worth it.

And then we went back around the island the other way, taking the highways. It took less time than the trip through the mountains. The drive was not worth a second trip through the mountains, and anyway, Amy’s heart and my ears wouldn’t stand it. Coño, indeed.

An Experience, A Life

The following conversation would be typical for me if I actually talked to people:

"Where have you been?"

"I was in Spain for two months."

"Oh, awesome! What were you doing there?"

"Not much. Bumming around, teaching English, traveling."

"Where were you in Spain?"

"Madrid, mostly."

"So, what's it like to live in Spain?"

And...STOP dialogue!

Ok, so maybe that dialogue never happens. But it's not hard to imagine. I lived in Madrid for a span of 56 days, nearly two months, and while I only spent about 40 of those days in the city, that should be enough time to get to know Madrid. To get a feel for a city. An understanding.

So I have an understanding. I can say what it's like to live in Madrid. But with qualifications; I know what it's like to live in Madrid when you speak almost no Spanish, don't have to worry about money because of what you've earned or been given previously, teach English for kicks, live in the central strip of the city (from my metro stop, Arguelles, as the NW point until Lavapies in the SW, Retiro and the Paseos in the SE, and the northern part of the paseos in the NE, with excursions to Vincente Calderon further south and the University further North), and associate mostly with expats of one type or another.

What's it like? It's nice. I enjoyed it, and got what I wanted out of the experience - a little spare cash, a little "work" experience, plenty of artistic inspiration, time spent with Ben, a few new acquaintances, a base of Spanish, stories to tell. But what I got out of it is different from what others get out of it.

For example, when you catalog the visitors to Madrid, especially the American ones, there are four main types.

Tourist - Self-explanatory. Usually older, because it takes us time to age out of the desire to be hip, as well as the self-awareness to avoid doing touristy things. Also, fanny packs make more sense on the other side of 35. Seeks out bullfights if they have time.

Student Abroad - College juniors, hungry to live abroad and take easy classes. They mostly go to bars with one another and relish in the late nights that are common to Madrid, enjoy their time terribly much, especially when they speak on the phone to their parents and on facebook posts to their friends. Falls in love with bullfights. When they return to the states, they are forever changed, doomed to a life of reminiscing over their fantastic semester in Madrid.

Expat - Artistic inclinations, most likely in his/her 20's and post-graduate stage, eager to shed their nationality and embrace either Spain itself or an identity of internationalism, which is to say, no identity at all. The type of people who set up literature clubs or fastidiously avoid American fast food places. A desire to perfect Spanish, so as to blend in all the better. No bullfights.

People who don't give a... - They're in Madrid for an indefinite amount of time. They speak good enough Spanish, but aren't practicing at home or anything. They might have a Spanish lover/significant other. If they want to get a good beer, they go to an Irish pub. They watch football, American football, whenever they get a chance. At this point, they're too lazy to travel. They don't care about bullfights, but will go if they get a free ticket.

So those are the four categories. They're not hard and fast; you'll see people drift from 3 to 4, 2 to 3, and so forth. 2 has condescension for 1 though they're quite close in nature, while 3 condescends to 2 except when they have social interaction that might lead to pleasing rewards. 3 used to be the Hemingway-type, which of course means yes to bullfights. And there are drifters - I'd characterize myself as an advanced 2, with hints of both 4 and 1. In Moscow I was more a 3 type (which may have been why I didn't observe the dichotomy of Americans in the city. I met something like 2 of them).

All these people come away with their own experience of Madrid. Some find it exotic, others peaceful, others a great party city. A way to specify this phenomenon: when I came to Madrid for 3-4 days in 2006, I came away with two big things about the city: the night life was crazy, and the siesta was very interesting. This based on living in a hostel where everybody went out a lot and where we ate dinner late. The short story I wrote out of that experience is a fairly cynical piece on alienation.

Now I see Madrid as follows: a busy, modern city that still has a good grasp on an easygoing life. The siesta is mostly a non-factor; the night life is utterly inessential if that's not what you're into (as I am not). The day does unfold at a slower, later pace; dinner will not come before 8 unless you force it, and if you plan to go out, there's no need to leave the apartment before 9:30. Going out without any intentions of staying up late leaves you at home at 2:30. Everybody smokes in bars. The food is very good, especially the gazpachos and the croquetas. Flamenco is really cool, though it's not quite a part of every day culture. And no, I didn't go to a bull fight, mostly out of disinterest, but also lack of time.

Madrid is a cool place. It's big enough that chances are, you'll find the opportunity to do the things you like to do, or run into people who can help you out in that search. The pace and the size allow for the quiet and the freedom that make it feel small. As Jordan Baker said, large parties are so intimate.

So that's my time in Madrid. On the one hand, I'd be comfortable returning to Madrid, because it is a cool city. On the other hand, I can check it off on my list of places to live in. I don't need to go back there, but I wouldn't mind it if the situation set up right.

And this blog is out, until I get to Israel in August. To my 6 readers, thanks for your time. Enjoy the summer. And L'Chaim, I guess.

Galloping around Galicia, by car, train, plane, and rock show

Any journey that begins with just barely catching your train is surely destined to be a good one. So it was for Ben and I, as we dilly-dallied in his apartment until 1:35, in advance of our 2:20 train to Santiago. Now, 40 minutes would probably be sufficient for a trip from Arguelles, our metro stop, to Chamartin, where our train prepared to depart. But then we had to walk to the metro station, just in time to miss the 4 train heading east.
A series of decisions made in trying circumstances - such characterizes the vital moments of our lives. In such a moment, Ben made the call to ride the 3 south two stops and from there catch the speedy 10 heading north, rather than take the tedious 6 five stops to catch the 10 at a higher point. We hopped on the 3, switched efficiently at Plaza de España to catch the 10, and our prospects looked good. We arrived at the metro station at about 2:10.
This meant a five minute walk had to be made with all due haste to ensure our spot on the train. We hustled, hesitated at one crucial juncture before selecting the proper route, and indeed made the train. We were the last ones admitted, scanning our bags through the metal detectors quickly before getting on the first coach of the train. By the time we reached our seats on the other side of the train, the engine had started and the journey had begun. Not quite getting on the train to Lausanne two years ago as it was moving, but still.

And so our five day journey to Galicia began. The train ride was a peaceful, wearying 7 hour trek across green plains and hills. Ben taught me 6 to 12, a card game resembling rummy, which I subsequently taught him. A little girl in a pink sweatshirt danced up and down our coach, and Bourne Ultimatum and Stardust played on the tv. It was most tranquil.

Our arrival in Santiago de Compostela was largely without incident, beyond the fact that at 9:30, it was quite bright out. Galicia is the Northwest province of Spain, which leads to later nights and earlier mornings, sun wise. Also, the weather is similar to England; the sky perpetually wavers between picturesque blue and white, and more ominous gray. In the morning it is always foggy, and while we were there it was usually gorgeous in the afternoon.

We only spent about 15 hours in Santiago, but they were good hours. Santiago is somewhat of a touristy city, a northern relative to Granada in many ways. The center is old, gothic, and can twist a visitor around just as much as Granada. The major difference is that here the attraction is the Cathedral, a beautiful behemoth that is visible from just about anywhere, always offering a reference point for you to find your way from. Outside the center, just like Granada, is a modern city with a famed university. The surrounding landscape is also quite impressive, full of lush green hills. Don't believe me? Well...

Mutton Chop caressing beneath the grand cathedral

There's a Ferris Wheel somewhere out there? Can you see it? If not, drink more tea.

A view of Galicia from the Cathedral Square. Artsy, no?

Now the story resumes on Friday, around noon, but with a key detail from the day before. As we got out of the train at Santiago, we knew we had only a short time there before we would embark for Villagarcia de Arousa, a small beach town that was holding the Festival Do Norte, where we would interview Broken Social Scene and then watch them play. Looking ahead, we asked about the cost of a train ticket to VdA. Two to three euros. Sounds pretty good.
However, we were also concerned by a different issue: we had nowhere to stay at VdA. Naturally, the town of 35,619 inhabitants had limited place to stay, and the festivalgoers had already inquired into the low-cost places. So while sleeping outside or on the beach were options, and we were reasonably certain that we'd find a place if we looked hard enough, the situation was not ideal.
In such a state we were open to suggestions. Fate smiled on us in the form of Avis and Europa Car signs; why not rent a car and just sleep in it?
So Friday, we got to the train station early enough to check with car rental companies before making a decision. As it turns out, the company we didn't see at first, National, offered the best deal. It was within our cost threshold, and so, sold! (err, rented) We had our very own Citroen C2 for two days and 780 Km. The roads would be our playground, now!
As Ben doesn't know how to drive manual, and wouldn't let me attempt to teach him (an event with a 50% likelihood of leading to good times and disaster), I assumed the driver's seat for the next two days. Ben took shotgun and navigated, and we were out of the city and back on the open roads. Well, first we had to pay a 13 euro parking ticket, but oh well. And then there was a toll or two. But we were driving through the toll, at least!
We arrived in Villagarcia, which smelt only a little like the ocean. Our primary mission in the afternoon was to arrange and hold an interview with BSS, as I mentioned. This all went swimmingly, as you can read about on 30music (pt. 1 here, pt. 2 here). In fact, I'm going to leave out all mention of the concert and the band and the manliness of Evan Cranley (in the flesh; the legend will play a part later in this adventure) and leave that for the 'zine. It's called cross-promotion.

With a staggering 8 hours between the end of our interview with the band and their scheduled show time (a fact they were unaware of, in all likelihood), we took off for a few more coastal cities. We drove about an hour to get to O Grove, a town known for its seafood, the region's general specialty. We walked along the beach and then played some tunes by the waterfront, to the delight or dismay of fishermen working late hours.

The rocks at O Grove. O Grove rocks.

We began our return towards VdA at 9:00, stopping in Cambados, home of famous vineyards for Albariño wine, a white. Naturally, I ordered Ribeiro instead, another famous Galician white. Sometimes I can be a jerk. In other news, Ben had octopus, which was fun.

Again, I exclude the following section of our trip, which was at the concert. It was great; read about it elsewhere. Needless to say, we grew as friends and had a great time, and when 4:30 in the morning rolled around, we were quite eager to pass out in our car.

The Citroen C2 is a rather small car. It's a two door with a back seat, but the recline action on the front two chairs isn't great. Additionally, it's a narrow, if boxy car. So we rejiggered everything as best as we could, Ben settled into the back seat, and I reclined in the shotgun seat. Sleep was far from there, but we tried.

My intermittent rest, sans dreaming, was at last halted by two tour buses who decided to pull in front of us in the parking lot of the Fexdega, where the concert had taken place. Loud speaking in an unknown language - it could have been Spanish, it could have been the local language (Gallego), it could have been something else - was enough to get me out of bed, so I walked around the car and mused on what to do. It was also enough to cause Ben to stir, so I told him I wanted to go to the mall to use the facilities and stock up on my survival kit.

Of course, Saturday wasn't just Saturday: it was the day of Galician literature, a holiday. That's a great holiday, and I want to learn about 2008's honoree, Xose Maria Alvarez Blazquez, but it sure is frustrating to not be able to take care of business and buy food until noon. In fact, we couldn't wait that long - I read Borges and took down some notes on the trip to date, but I needed to get out of there. So at 11 we took off for the North coast

That was another one of our crucial decisions, to do the village hopping we had planned on doing Monday on Saturday instead, and in a mere two hours, we were driving on the AC 862 along the northern coast of Galicia. We decided to go to Ribadeo, because, well, it was the last city in Galicia.

On the way, Ben remembered a student's suggestion: we should go check out San Andreas de Teixido, a small town known to house Celtic ruins. We saw a sign for it, and knowing nothing more than that sentence, we decided to take the turn.

In case I haven't made it clear, we knew very little about San Andreas de Teixido. We knew even less about the road we were driving on. This latter fact held true even as we drove on it. Because, well, we couldn't see anything:

So it appears that to get to the Celtic ruins, you have to drive through the abyss. Wild horses and cattle guard the road. To get a clearer picture of our condition, Ben and I got out of the car and ascended to the peak of the abyss. From there we couldn't see anything, but we could at least make our presence felt:

We drove a little farther, descending a tiny bit on the mountain. We could then see a little bit to either side of us. On one side of the road were giants who would not allow us to pass without us consenting to a glorious battle to the death. Needless to say, I heeded to the call and proved myself victorious, while Ben documented the moment:


As our reward, we found a beautiful hike on the other side of the road. Passing through mud and, uhh, "mud", we found the edge of a forest and a stunning vista of the ocean below. It was all a cruel hoax though, because without magic, death-defying efforts, or a rope, there was no reaching the ocean. Tantalized, we stopped short and returned back to our car

All the same, it's a pretty view, isn't it?

It was only after another ten minutes of driving, one more stop for a nice viewpoint, and a cow toll that we reached the town itself. The town was small and quiet, with roads only made for walking upon. We descended into a small square next to the chapel, and while Ben paused to plan, I laid down on a wall. 20 minutes later I woke up to see him returning from the ruins. So that was that.

Our next choice was easier: there was no way I was driving back through the abyss, if such a thing were metaphysically possible, so we continued on another road that spit us back out on the AC 862 (or its sister, the AC 566) a little bit farther West. So we had to drive on ground already covered, but we made it into Ortigueira with no problems in the late afternoon, around 5 pm. The perfect time for a Cruzcampo Light or some sun-aided napping. We parked near the port, where Spanish families and wedding parties walked along or sat in the cafes. I did some scouting and acquired a survival pack (ham and cheese empanadas, a pack of Ham-flavored chips (they're pretty good, though having a mid-sized bag of them in one pop is a bit much) and a chocolate-filled pastry). Then I found a grassy knoll and a bench. I ate and read Borges and watched a little boy get yelled at his mother for kicking a soda can, and then break into tears when his older brother stole the can and threw it away. Culture is usually universal.

That eternal bug to keep going impelled us to drive East during sunset, and we ended up in Viveiro, another 30 minutes down the road. This is another small city, though it got in our guide book. We arrived, drove around for a suitable spot to pack up for the night, and then hunted out for dinner. Ben aptly described our eatery as the Spanish equivalent to "Fuddruckers", from high-school clientele to cheap and large burgers. We supped sufficiently and returned to our parking lot/sleeping quarters del dia. There was a couple in the car next to us using their car for a different sort of sleeping, so we backed up to the other side of the lot and shacked up. I got the back seat this time, which was probably an improvement, though not a sizable one.


Sunday morning market woke us up this time. The clinking of pipes beneath white tarp roofs to our right, specifically. It was just before 9, which means our span of sleep extended nearly ten hours, though we both knew better than to say we slept that long. We were about an hour away from A Coruña, and the foggy, rainy road awaited us. I did the driving while Ben discovered that one of the advantages to sleeping in the car is that your bed moves with you.

Everything went well - I found the way to the city easily, we dropped off the car, found a hostel, and settled in to get real sleep. More importantly, we encountered Don Rent. Naturally, Don Rent is a place you can rent cars from. One might call him the Don of rental cars. In fact, he went so far as to call himself that, except in a foreign language (English, duh). Not only did this lead to a string of general Don jokes - including our ultimate disappointment with Don Croissant, a pastry shop in A Coruña closed on Tuesdays - but a second life to our string of Evan Cranley jokes (from Broken Social Scene). As you can imagine, by A Coruña we were travel drunk.
A statue that looked like the legend himself. It was also on Albert Camus street, which is alienatingly cool.

Beyond the Don Manly jokes, the only two big things to discuss about A Coruña (a very nice city, by the way, a good synthesis of old and new, big city and laidback comfort) are the beach and the tower of Hercules. Of the latter: the story goes that Hercules built the tower with his own bare hands, as a testament to his defeat over Geryon. In the very least, the tower dates back to the second century B.C.E., though it got refurbished a little bit in th 17th or 18th century, C.E.

In any case, the tower is a premium tourist attraction in A Coruña. It is not, however, a World Heritage Site. No UNESCO super-protection, no prestige and all that. In the Praza do Maria Pita, the center square, there is a big sign in four languages (Gallego, Spanish, English, French) that implores visitors to "embrace the tower of Hercules. By your embraces we will achieve our goal," of WHS status. So, always amenable to helping out, I did my best:



And then, for my tongue in cheek, as well as dashing good looks, I received punishment befitting Hercules. Invisible peoples lashed me with invisible ropes to the nearby sundial, Rosa de los Vientos, and well, it wasn't good:

There's only one solution to all that straining: the beach.

The beach, Playa del Orzan, was fairly dirty and fairly vacant when we settled onto it. It was only about 20-22° out and a Monday afternoon, so understandable. The sand was fairly rocky and uncomfortable, yet for most of the beach, there were very few good skipping stones. The sun was not as strong as in Morocco, for example, but still capable of doing damage. And the water on the beach was clear, with decent waves and almost no seaweed (it looked worth on other beaches in the city). Also, the water was fairly cold, but not so cold as to deny the irrepressible joy that one gets from submerging himself in the water and feeling its purity, of allowing that purity, that triumph to wash over oneself in salty, liquid form.

How would I know? Well:


A good one to end on for Galicia. And though the time stamp might say this is May 21st, I finished this post from the States. Which means all that's left is a wrap-up post. It'll be up sometime. Maybe.

Quest for a Quest, or Quixote's Questions Queried by us all

Somebody, maybe Kundera, said that everyone who would read fiction would become a Quixote of sorts, allowing themselves to enter an imagined world and live in that new place, separated from (if familiar to) their own. This willing self-deception is a scant degree away from Alonso Quixano's madness that drives him to be the famous knight in Cervantes's famous story. Nowhere is a reader's quixotic nature more prevalent than in reading Don Quixote itself. At least, that's how it worked for me.

I first tried to read Quixote in 2004, while I was a sophomore in college. Over my initial years at university, a hunger to read all the classics overtook me. (This hunger stretched to music sophomore year, when I finally ordered a couple of Beatles records. Rubber Soul almost kept me from going deeper, but then Revolver confirmed the efforts and opened the door to everything else. But I digress...) I tried some John-Jacques Rousseau, because the "Noble Savage" appealed to my existentialist/nihilistic freshman self (his tedious prose did not). I read Faust, which was interesting in any case, if not great. It was much better than Sorrows of Young Werther, which I didn't get to until a couple years later. I took up the Bible, making it to the legal graveyard that is Deuteronomy, or Numbers, I forget which. In any case, Quixote loomed on the horizon, and by the time I finally bought a big, fairly cheap edition, with the Charles Jarvis translation and an introduction by E.C. Riley, I was excited to try.

Over the end of a school year and the summer, I made it about 100 pages. I was just about at the first interpolated episode of romance that Cervantes horns into the story, and for the most part I was entertained. This wasn't the usual muck of a Paradise Lost or Iliad, with fascinating material but mind-numbing verse. The book wasn't great yet, but I could sense Cervantes's sense of humor, and indeed those first episodes are the most memorable for Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, of fighting with the coachman and of charging at the windmills. I had a sense that this was worthwhile.

Things happened and I got a little distracted from reading Quixote. But along with those things was a conversation I had with one of my older brother's friends. "Read the abridged version," he told me, "you'll get just as much out of it." I have always had a need for "the real thing", phony as that might be, so the idea of reading an abridged version didn't ring right. But 800+ pages still loomed, and there was school and wrestling to keep busy with, and so somehow I didn't continue reading the book, and didn't pick up an abridged version either. My first attempt had failed like so many battles against sheep.

Near the end of 2005, I found somewhere on a blog, probably associated with Bookslut, the idea of reading 50 books in a year, and of some sort of livejournal community to go with it. I didn't really get the whole community thing, though I started my own livejournal to note brief impressions on the books I would read. I plunged into the effort in 2006, and would have easily passed the mark if not for that inconvenient trip to Russia, where I had to read in my second language for 2 and a half months. I tallied 4 more books on my list, but fell 9 short of the ultimate goal, something I rue to this day...

In response, in 2007 I smashed the number, getting to 55. And there was quality in that number, too: I graded 9 of the books as A's, and 16 as A-'s (grade inflation, I know, but humor me). Some of those books were long too, though none matched up to Quixote (I did read Anna Karenina in 2006, for class. But that's a much lighter read, thanks to Tolstoy's elegance).

Ahh, but here's the rub of all this - it would appear I'm just reading for the sake of reading, for the chance to finish and say, "I've read 55 books, I've read Quixote, etc!" A pretty hollow justification, even if you accept the elitist intellectual climbing desires behind it.

There's no denying the satisfaction in finishing a book though, and being able to say, "Yeah, I've read that." It doesn't have to be boasting, necessarily, but a confident assertion that you've covered some ground, in your own way. And really, that's how you have to approach much of the creative arts - read, listen, watch, look at as much as you can, especially the higher esteemed stuff, and sift through until you get to the stuff that hits you in the chakra, the stuff that really counts. I can't claim to like everything, or most of the things even, that I see in art museums, but then there's the one or two paintings that speak to me, whether Kokoschka's Two Nudes or Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. There's an essential filtering process in the discovery of good art, and that includes rejoicing at the greatness, respecting that which doesn't hit you, and rejecting that which strikes you as wrong, or overly praised.

But there's no point in going through this process if you don't like art, for example. Sure, you give it a chance, and nothing comes of it, why bother. Perhaps the most exceptional example of South Indian verse will strike me as something essential, but if I have to filter through all the rest of it to find that essence, and if I don't like South Indian verse, the effort might not be worth it. Though the discovery of essence is almost always worth it. (I have no thoughts about South Indian verse, of course, either positive or negative).

That's how it is for me with reading. I love reading, and immersing myself into a good new book, into burying myself in the author's world. That's a big part of my desire to write - to share in that process from the other side.

When I read, my favorite moment is almost always the first few pages after the halfway mark in a book. By then, either one of two things occur to me. If the author has earned my trust, then I savor the pleasure ensured to me in the second half of the book, as well as the knowledge that soon I'll be done with the book, and be able to possess it intellectually as a complete entity (or in Kafka's case, an entity that was almost complete and still better than everybody else). If the author hasn't earned my trust, at least I'm halfway done with the book. Or as with Edith Wharton, my perception of the quality can be totally flipped to the good.

In this love of reading, including both the journey and the destination, I see something of a duality inherent in almost anything, between the intellectual and the sensual. There's the same sort of mental satisfaction that accompanies the physical joys to all sorts of acts, from sports to food to sex (not that I'd know...) to friendship. There's the satisfaction of the act itself, but also the thrill of doing the right thing, of doing what you "want" to do, or "should" do. It's a thrill to be with another person because you enjoy their company, but also because at the time, that's right. (This idea doesn't quite reach everywhere - I had a hard time thinking how I get intellectual satisfaction from eating a peanut butter sandwich, except for the frequency with which I do it at home, which makes me unusual, which I like. And also the nostalgic ties to childhood and other lost innocences, I suppose, but then we'd get too psychological).

So to return to Quixote, I took another shot at it in 2007, I believe. While at home I got about 70 pages deep, starting at the beginning again, and then put it off for more pressing books. And somewhere between those two efforts there may have been another attempt at the behemoth, with similarly scant results.

When I set my plans to go to Madrid, at last, I decided that this would be the perfect time to read Quixote to the end, at last. I would accept no failure, and would push through the droughts that kept me from completion in the past. And then I'd find out if it was worth the effort.

On the interminable plane ride to Madrid, via Paris, where I could not sleep and where my ears got blocked up terribly, affected further by a cold I caught from my sister just before leaving, which also left my voice in tattered shape for a week in Madrid, I returned to the same 100 pages I had already read, more or less. I went through them fairly quickly, but I had reached that height before, and it was no promise of further success.

Upon first arriving in Madrid, I stayed with Ben, the 3rd person in an apartment that is cozy for 2, and so didn't really have the comfort to read as I might like. Then I had to settle into a new apartment with a landlady I couldn't quite understand. So no progress. But the perhaps most fitting inspiration impelled me to forge to places heretofore unknown to me: my trip to Andalusia with Ben.

Quixote mostly takes place in between Andalusia and Madrid, meaning we were only going through the setting for the epic. But going through meant a long bus ride with nothing to think about, and that meant a lot of reading time. Not only did I read a lot (240 pages, as mentioned on this blog), but I also read some great stuff. My bookmark features the notes "p.132, p. 147", moments where I not only really liked what I was reading but actually laughed out loud, which I don't do often while reading. The former features Sancho Panza and Don Quixote vomiting on one another, the latter about Sancho telling a story to his master that leads to great arguments. Stupid physical and dialog humor, perhaps, but also really great for something over 400 years old.

That was the big hump for me, though I didn't get to the halfway point. Over the better part of 3 more weeks, I chipped away at the story, before bed or on weekends when I had more free time, or even on the metro when I went to classes on the outskirts of the city. And at last, in the final week of April, with much jollity and sadness, I finished Don Quixote.

See, the end of a great book is bittersweet. There's that satisfaction of completing that I mentioned, but also the sad fact that there's no more to read. This was especially the case with Bolaño's Savage Detectives, a work that I've recommended to people of 4 different nationalities and just about everybody I meet. There the blurry brilliance of the first half slowly enfolds the inevitable heaviness and sadness of life through the second half of the book, in a way that transcends its initial brilliance for an excessive beauty.

Here, things were neater - Quixano recovered his mind, got sick, and died. The end. But even though we knew he was deceived, crazy, we wanted Quixote to be vindicated, to emerge triumphant. A foolish, quixotic hope, but inherent in my reading of the book. I can't really add much or anything to what has been said everywhere on Quixote and all that attends it. But it took me in with it, and showed its worth and its essence, while being a fantastic journey as well. That it took four years and as many tries may be part of the natural process. Hasta lo'o, you other Quixotes.

A whole new meaning to searching for the afikomen

No one will ever confuse me for the most observant Jew. I hold certain beliefs and follow certain religious customs, but owing to upbringing and inclination, I’m not the most practicing tribe member, you might say. I didn’t learn what kosher was until 6^th grade, for example, and even then the concept confused me greatly, and does so to this day.

I have taken my practice of religion though, limited as it is, with me during my travels. Back on the trip that inspired this blog, in 2006, I upheld the fast on Yom Kippur while living in Moscow. This involved eating dinner with my host family as they celebrated Vera Nikolavena’s (the mother) name day, and then refusing the dessert that came with it, as it occurred after sunset (or at least the time I had designated as sunset, roughly 7:00 p.m.). I didn’t explain myself, which further confused them, since they thought I was a junk food junkie. The next morning I purposely woke up late to skip breakfast, then managed to get through wrestling practice without eating or drinking (fairly normal, actually), and then keep myself occupied the rest of the day. At sunset I sat in the upper balcony of a theater with the host family, as we attended the staging of a British play whose name I can’t remember. The play was a slapstick affair, but more importantly, I had snuck in a chocolate covered marshmallow, and during intermission I broke the fast in gourmet fashion.

Last year, I kicked off Passover in a location naturally hostile to my people, and wholly ill fitting our storied ways: South Carolina. My friend Tara took me to her family/community Seder in Greenville. Of course, everything was quite fine, and it was probably the most proper and pleasant Passover I’ve spent. But, in all fairness, we were more or less in the shadow of Bob Jones University. That has to count for something, right?

Anyway, this time I’m in Spain for the holiday. Passover features the other tradition I try to uphold each year – no eating of leavened products for eight days (it would appear that most of the rituals I follow have to do with self-denial through eating methods. I wonder where I got that from). Again, my knowledge of the situation is flawed; I didn’t realize, for example, that rice is a no go until I went on a date with a Jewish girl during Passover. So sushi is an unlawful escape. But my diet in Spain is pretty basic as it is, so I thought I could manage pretty well. There was only one thing missing: Matzah.

***

“Well, I don’t think prison will ever be a problem for you,” Ben told me as we sat on a bench near the Sevilla Cathedral and ate lunch.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“All they give you is bread and water, and you seem ok with that.”

It’s true. I was displaying my patented survival guide for how to travel and sustain yourself on the cheap: a 1-L carton of apple juice, a loaf of bread, and some form of chocolate is all you need. I followed this in Russia, perfected it when I swung through Helsinki, and have continued to preach its viability here on the Iberian Peninsula.

You would be right to presume, then, that not being able to eat bread for eight days would be difficult for me. My daily consumption before Passover has roughly been as follows: cereal (usually involving chocolate, as they’re big on chocolate cereal here) and maybe tea for breakfast; fried chicken or hamburgers with sautéed onions, a cup of apple juice, and a piece or two of bread for lunch; and whichever of chicken and hamburgers I didn’t have for lunch along with the same additions, or alternatively two pieces of bread with Nutella. So bread and leavened products (hello, cereal!) is a big part of my day-to-day Spain.

On all past Passovers, I’ve managed to cover up for the problem with bread’s thin, low-taste substitute specially designed for the holiday, namely matzah. You see, my penchant for eating a lot of bread is probably a legacy of my love for peanut butter. The gooey ochre cream is my favorite food, if that’s possible, and when I have it around, I eat a peanut butter sandwich once a day, on average.

Two things prevent me from falling back on that strategy in Spain, though one is easily ameliorated. That would be the first reason, which is that there is no peanut butter in Spain, excepting an exceptionally high exported from the U.S. import of Jif, which comes in a tiny container for nearly 4 turkeys (they call euros “turkeys” in Spanish, sort of like how we say “bucks”, except cooler and much more valuable). Not worth it. And not that big a deal, because the aforementioned hazelnut/chocolate cream known as Nutella steps in as a solid replacement off the bench. Which would be all well and good, except I have nothing to spread that Nutella onto this week. No bread, right? So I need matzah. And where does one go to find matzah in Madrid?

The answer, of course, is the same place one goes to find anything else in Madrid or anywhere in the world: the internets. It wasn’t a straightforward effort, but after beginning with “Madrid Matzah” and then turning to “Sephardic cardboard bread”, I hit upon “Synagogues Madrid” as my appropriate search term. A few hoops after that I was at www.comjuderia.org, a website for the Jewish community in Madrid.

The community is based around one synagogue, Synagogue Beth Yaacov, an orthodox community about 20 minutes away from me by foot (interestingly enough, it is closest to the Iglesia metro stop, Spanish for church). While I spent a good Shabbat at an orthodox synagogue in Vilnius back in ’06 (see “Lithuania Always Comes Near the End” in the archives), I don’t think my loose form of Judaism is the best match for their, umm, orthodoxy. Not that they wouldn’t welcome me, but it would be awkward. Also, they probably speak Spanish, which, well, you know…

So I decided against attempting to find a Seder to attend here and settled on just finding matzah. The website above listed four potential sources for the big, flat crackers. Three were close to the synagogue, and one was a little bit farther to the Northeast, up the paseos a bit. That last one was El Corte Ingles, the Costco cum uber department store that is endemic in Spain. I thought I’d try there first.

Passover started Saturday at sunset, so I went to El Corte Ingles on Friday afternoon. It was a rushed visit – I went right after a literature club gathering, and right before my final lesson for the week. The trip involved a few stops on the metro, and then a little orienting to make sure I was going the right way. Still, ECI is a pretty big establishment, so there’s no missing it

I entered on the ground floor, which held the supermarket. I didn’t have a clear idea of where matzah would be, but I thought checking near bread or bakeries might be a start. In ECI, there’s a supermarket and then a bunch of little “shops” – bakery, deli, etc. I went to the outer bakery and the outer foreign goods store, but nothing came of it. Time was running short, because I had to take those few metro stops back to get to class by 5. I raced through the supermarket itself, but from bread to fish, sodas to wine, I couldn’t find anything that would do the trick. I snagged a sandwich for a quick dinner bite, seeing as I could still eat bread for another 27 hours or so, and then rolled out.

So there was still Saturday to go looking around. I took a walk over to the Iglesia area. The weather was lousy, as it had been for most of the two weeks preceding Passover. La Boutique Del Pan was well lit and reasonably full of people and sundry sorts of bread, but in my tiptoe stance, I couldn’t spot any matzah on the shelves. Uninterested in asking in poor Spanish, I gave up and went to the butchers.

Of course, Saturday is Shabbat, so Carniceria Shalom would be closed. Carniceria Elias too, as it turned out. And since everything in Spain closes on Sunday, more or less, I didn’t have much hope for hooking up the matzah issues before the end of the weekend.

I survived just fine for the opening days of Passover, but the matzah was still missing. When it comes down to it, the matzah isn’t absolutely essential to Passover. Yes, it’s our only substitute for bread, but if you’re willing to Atkins it up, there’s not much to miss taste-wise. But for me it didn’t feel right to go without matzah. Instead of wandering the deserts, lost after crossing the Red Sea, I felt adrift in the now sunny streets of Madrid, without my raft of unleavened carbs to carry me to shore.

So on Tuesday when I had a two and a half hour break in my schedule, I resolved to resolve the problem as best as I could. Iglesia is also about 20 minutes from where I work, so I walked there after class. The timing was such that I arrived just before 5:00, so when I saw both butcheries closed, there was one saving grace: perhaps it was still siesta. Siesta in Madrid isn’t as big a deal as I thought last time: stores close from 2-5 and the pace might relax a bit, but for the most part life goes on. The biggest adjustment to Spanish scheduling is the “dinner past 10 pm” standard, and that’s not so bad either since everybody stays out later.

In this case, I hoped that the reason Carniceria Elias showed no signs of its existence beyond its name on the awning, with metal doors rolled down over the windows like on a garage, was the siesta. Carniceria Shalom was in a similar state, but the garage windows didn’t go all the way to the ground, which gave me hope that they were preparing to open at 5.

A few loops around the neighborhood and a purchase of a small bag of chips later, I returned to the places in question. Though it was indeed after 5, Elias showed no further hints of life, and Shalom’s garage windows did not creep up an inch. That doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t open at 5:14, right after I left; Madrid is not considered to be the most punctual place.

But leave I did, because I didn’t want to wait around forever, and because I had a new hint for my search at ol’ El Corte Ingles. Apparently, right next to that very fish section I had passed with pinched nostrils and nary a glance three days before, there was the kosher section. Well, if anywhere in Madrid would have matzah, presumably it’d be the one El Corte Ingles that had a kosher section.

There was no walking from where I was to El Corte Ingles, but I did it anyway. A few minutes to the paseo, and then a 20-minute stroll along the paseo until I got to the familiar green pennant signs. I had a familiarity with the layout and with the supermarket, so I entered with a plan. Past the produce, ignore the sweets, and blammo! There was the fish counter, and indeed right next to it was an island of kosher goods.

On top of that island were packs of matzah. Big packs. In fact, double packs of matzah. They weren’t selling single boxes – you had to buy two, for about 8 turkeys, as they were imported too. Usually, slightly more than one box is enough for me for the week. Here we were almost halfway through the week, and I was in a final dilemma. Get the double box and surely have a surplus of matzah, or buy a small box of matzah crackers or bite-sized matzah pieces that would likely run out before the end of Passover but cost half as much? Well, at the risk of perpetuating ill-fitting stereotypes, I went with the small box. After all, I made it the first two days of Passover without matzah. I could probably make the last two, and then not have to worry about extras.

Back in high school, my friend Pete, a big Texan, and I had a tradition where every Passover he would ceremoniously take a piece of matzah from the cafeteria and break it over my face. Actually, he’d do that more than once during the week. It was all in great fun, and there was plenty of matzah to go around for such foolishness.

Now, I realize that the substance can at times be quite a luxury. I walked to the metro from El Corte Ingles with my bag of matzah and chocolate (I was running low), and a big smile on my face, knowing I wouldn’t have the chance to waste this matzah similarly, but that at least I found some. And I knew that thin salty unleavened bread would never taste so good as this time.

And so, all came to a happy end. Matzah and nutella is a great mix, I found a bridge to carry through Passover and uphold tradition, and things got messy in only the best of ways. For your viewing amusement: