Chinese Rocks

27 June 2012 1530 hrs., Granada, Andalucía

I will warn you in advance that this is going to be very long since I have added to it a few times without posting it. I know from the example of the Prince album "Emancipation" that releasing a lot of material at once is commercial suicide, but you're getting this for free. I am sitting here in the hostal in Granada, which is probably the most beautiful city I've ever seen, even though there is no other way to describe the weather than to say it is hot as hell. The girl (very pretty since I am in Spain) working at the hostal who plays the guitar a lot and sings very well is listening to Sgt. Pepper. ("Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" currently, lending a psychedelic air to my sweat/heat buzz). I'm going to the famous Alhambra tomorrow, and I sat and enjoyed a botellón (a very Spanish tradition where you buy horrible cheap wine/beer and drink in public at ridiculous hours) last night with it as a spectacular backdrop. La Alhambra is a breathtaking fortress that spans Spain's history from the Romans to the Visigoths to the Moors to the Christian re-conquest. Napoleon's A blew up one of the towers when France stupidly invaded Spain. During the Spanish Civil War Granada was a major crossroads (as well as the execution site of the poet Federico García Lorca) and I believe that the Nationalists/Franco's henchmen destroyed some of it too. It brought to mind similar youthful experiences in my own neighborhood on the train tracks, or by the James River, except this was a little more monumental of a view, which carried a little more historical gravity. Just slightly. Here it is:


There is no greater pain than to be Stevie Wonder in Granada

I literally got a little misty when I saw it. It is a place I've wanted to see since I discovered it, so it felt similar to finally seeing Bob Dylan live, even though his voice sucked at that point. Horrible analogy. I also thought of a student of mine who recently did a project on Granada and cited the famous flamenco lyric, "No hay nada en la vida como la pena de ser ciego en Granada." (There is nothing in life like the pain of being blind in Granada.) This refers to something that will follow but I saw my first beer that wasn't just a freezing cold (I have had beer served that had ice in it) Amstel, Heineken, or any of the Spanish beers, and it was a Leffe Blonde. Manna! One of my favorites in the world, and for 3 euros with a tapa included. Since I was sweating through my shirt at the time, I really would have loved a Stone Ruination IPA, but still. Better than Alhambra (the beer, not the place) or San Miguel or all the beers I saw in Alicante. Belgium usually wins the beer olympics in my book.

I titled this entry Chinese Rocks because it is a Ramones song, and I keep seeing Ramones shirts everywhere, and a comment on the temperature in that song is apt ("It's hot as a ___"). Family friendly descriptor! (The song was co-written by Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls I believe, hence the unlikely drug reference for the Ramones. Johnny wouldn't normally allow that). I came by bus from Alicante, which was quite efficient and comfortable and needless to say makes the Greyhound experience look like Con Air. They have scheduled stops at very nice and clean places with bathrooms, and you can get coffee or a sandwich, or even a beer (Beer is everywhere here. Water is noticeably hard to find. I am dehydrated and sunburned right now as you'll see due to Isla de Tabarca from two days ago). Last night I had my second tapas experience and I will just say that the food to alcohol ratio is not favorable if you weigh 150 lbs and are sunburned. I have wasted a lot of time on my first Granada day, but I have to rest sometime. Can't keep burning the candle at both ends even though no one in this country seems to require any sleep or water.

I'm livin' on Chinese Rock

Ok, what follows was written previously. Hope that you enjoy it. Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers! That grow so incredibly high! Get it? High! 4:20 man!

22 June 2012, Estación de Chamartín, Madrid, 1300 hrs.? Does it matter?

I haven’t even successfully stopped toting my suitcase into one dead end after another in the train station. I’ve actually seen both of the major Madrid train stations today, and a lot of the aseos. (More on that later). On the first RIC-Dulles flight I was next to a man who “doctors would say has a little bit of a weight problem,” so there was some sweating and some B.O. But it was a very short flight, and he was an affable man who told me about adopting a child from China. The next flight, I’ll just say, included better company even if some clown quipped at me that I dressed to match the plane since my shirt happened to be the same color as the seats (I told him I had planned it). My beautiful Gaelic green seat that really brought out my eyes was literally at the furthest aft starboard side of the vessel- the closest to being a galley slave- "ramming speed"- but somehow I was essentially the mascot for the Minnesota Timberwolves dance squad (or whatever they’re called). Nothing against the corpulent gentleman, but I preferred this arrangement. (The one next to me, who had an engagement ring on, was reading a romance novel called “Dark Lover,” I believe). I had to fill out a waiver because I asked for some Tums as well, which made the Timberwolvtresses swoon! Then they gave me season tickets.

After I celebrated my season ticket acquisition with a gallant round of the foxtrot dance the aisle with multiple Timberwolfettes I was hit with a new malady, since I was too comfortable. My left toe, the knuckle of the toe, whatever that is called, started to swell like mad and hurt to move. Then my whole left leg went numb and hurt like mad, which along with the indigestion, and being on an airplane, made it impossible to sleep. I listened to some classical music on the in-flight indoctrination machine four inches from your face followed by some John Lennon (“Dream #9” is a gorgeous song in that condition). I watched some TV, Mad Men, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Bored to Death. It was amazing that they had all of the shows I actually like on an airplane, since I hate most TV and find it suicidal to endure. Then around what would have been all of four hours after the cabin bedded down, the crew starts serving coffee and giving you yogurt like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I was finally feeling like I could actually sleep when I saw the coast of northern Portugal, and then the sun.

So, once I got here and bid a tearful farewell to the Timberwolves and got through customs I tried to get to the Atocha station ASAP, which required a bus, but then I got to the station and it was very confusing. It smelled like Buenos Aires on first impression. It felt like 3:30 AM. Since it is 6:30 AM in my brain and I did not sleep a wink on the plane, it is a bit surreal right now. Even though I am in such need of sleep that I can’t really hear myself when I try to talk, I think my language navigation is decent. I will immediately dispel the myth that everyone in Europe immediately speaks English to you when they gaze into your innocent and pale blue eyes. False. There seems to be a halitosis problem too today- I encountered it via a helpful geezer in Dulles and a few times here in Madrid. I am willing to give them another chance. My other admonishment would refer to smoking. Guess what? Smoking is bad for you! That said, smokers are prevalent here, (read: “everywhere”) and of course they exhale most of the cigarette and gaze out at the street with the ennui that no American, not even Lou Reed- can achieve.

Let me back up a bit. I stupidly ate at Five Guys in the Dulles airport in this cobbled together moment of starvation/American institutional nostalgia, since all I ate before I left Richmond was a peanut toffee buzz Clif bar with an Odwalla protein monster (I will miss those). I have been paying for it ever since in some kind of misguided, geographically inept Montezuma’s revenge. I ate some chicken thing on the plane, which was okay but didn’t help anything. So for that reason I did not sleep at all, and I missed my train to Alicante. I blame the byzantine rail station, along with indigestion mixed with exhaustion and disorientation. I had to buy a 36 euro addendum to my missed ticket (sharing my plight was a muscular, tanned man carrying a rat dog in a crate). This left from another station, naturally, so I had to pay 15 euros (this was fun because they could have said 100 euros since I bought it through what looked like a bulletproof glass with no audio device) for a ten minute connector, and now I’m killing time until 1:45 when another Alicante train leaves again. I went to a cervecería and ordered a café solo along with un bocadillo de lomo de plancha, “flatiron steak sub,” if I had to translate it. (The only other restaurant choice I saw was called “Foodíssimo!,” a Spanglish term employing the superlative which means VERY Food! I wasn’t going there). The sub was served the Iberian way- excellent bread, no accoutrements whatsoever and olive oil and red wine vinegar bottles to dress it. One waiter was running the whole patio where men heckled him and hailed him verbally, physically, whistled, whatever. I had the thought of watching an RVA hipster waiter putting up with that. The table next to me was five or so men, all dressed well but casually, the right loafers and Armani shades, drinking beers at 11 AM, followed by what looked like cognac. Heavy cigarette consumption, gesticulating, leering at women/whistling/clapping, then some Scotch, coffee. More cigarettes (Winston seems popular). It is funny how when you get to a foreign country you have these conceptions of the way the people live, and then when you see them, they’re underway, as if they had planned it: “Mediterranean machismo exhibit.” In a similar vein I immediately saw Reeboks from the 80’s with the rectangular Union Jack design, people on motorcycles risking their lives to pass a bus, etc. The Guardia Civil was represented in the airport (most famous for carrying out the role of the firing squad during the Spanish Civil War, but really just the cops now). You think they would have changed the name for PR purposes.

24 june 2012 0400 hrs., Hotel H3, Alicante, Valencia

As I write this my adjustment has had another day or so of time. Since I am not mathematically inclined I haven’t calculated the metaphysical equation of how much real time I have gained or lost or how I reversed the rotation of the Earth in some way by changing my body clock by six hours. After that last passage, I successfully boarded a train for Alicante- which was also confusing, again. Everyone on the train was confused because the tickets had a bunch of crap about which car you were supposed to be in, when no one’s number was a choice of cars…so people were just walking the aisles of the train nodding “permiso” to one another. It got sorted out. I would have enjoyed the Spanish countryside, a part of the world I have never seen, except I kept nodding off and was freezing. The A/C was blasting. There was a girl near me who was wearing a massive blanket, who must have known. I don’t know how long the train took, but the mysterious toe thing (“I can get you a toe…”) started up again, and I was still in horrible digestive condition. This was alleviated. End of that discussion. It was sort of uncanny though, because I kept falling asleep, and then I’d wake up and happen to see something in the distance that might have been built in the 10^th century- of course the passengers are unfazed lost in their laptops or whatever on board stimuli, since they’d all seen those things. I made it to Alicante, asked them how to get to my hotel, and they told me to wait for the number 7 bus, aka the slowest bus in Alicante. It took an hour. I would have just taken a cab but some weirdo at the bus stop who had advised me explained that the bus was faster and that a cab was outrageously expensive now that Spain was on the euro…of course it wasn’t fast at all, and he was virtually impossible to understand so who knows what he said. This is a universal phenomenon I have found about bus stops- many times there is a guy who takes some kind of pride in his local transport authority or something and likes to advise strangers on which bus to take and stand up front near the driver (as this guy did) since they take such ownership of the bus experience. Overall I was very grateful for this guy, since he encouraged me to wait and successfully make it to my hotel. I finally made it to the hotel, checked in, and fell asleep with my shoes on and the lights on. I procrastinated on booking the hotel and it is in an industrial zone. My view from my window is a Coca-Cola factory (American hegemony gleaming the distance) and an all you can eat buffet called “Wok Asador,” a contradiction in cooking technique if there ever was such a thing, as well as the lovely postal depot. It reminds me of parts of New Jersey, with a Mediterranean sea breeze atop the factory smell. It is called Hotel H3, and their slogan is “alojamiento inteligente (intelligent lodging).” I felt so intelligent when I saw the view! I slept from what was 8AM to 9:30 AM this morning when a maid busted in and we made eye contact (“Perdona,” and gone.) I then went to the communal bathroom which is a mixture of an airplane lavatory and something out of a Stanley Kubrick film. Everything is automated and cleans itself, and I think I just missed the robot cleaning because it was bleached out like mad. Most annoying is the shower, which cuts off every 30 seconds, and you get a surprise temperature for added effect when you angrily slam the button for the twentieth time to get 30 more seconds of water. It is a very unsettling way to shower. I asked Hal to open the pod doors and he did, and then I went downstairs, had 2 oz. of café solo from a machine, ate my last Clif bar (wish I had brought a box) and talked to the lady that checked me in, who was very helpful since she let me use her cell phone (another artistic guest asked to draw her, and she said yes even though she tried to keep herself from being still while he did it). I called my friend Enrique who I met in Miami, and explained that I forgotten to write down his number before I left and hadn’t had an Internet connection, and when I got to the hotel there was no working phone, and that I was exhausted and that the hotel was too far to walk anywhere near the festivities. At last I was not anonymous and exhausted in the industrial zone. I felt like the trip was finally beginning, and something good would happen. I waited on the patio- dumb move- it was full of smokers. 

So Enrique picked me up, and we went to the la mascleta, which is the fulcrum of the Fiestas de San Joan, the annual public holidays in Alicante. This consists of people in this giant plaza, drinking beer, singing, dancing, listening to these brass bands that dance around and play traditional songs and versions of Abba and the White Stripes with Spanish lyrics, and jam together. You can’t move. Then, these very loud fireworks begin, which are basically just firecrackers since it’s daytime anyway. These are accompanied by drums, which seemed to have meaning since the people cheered after certain cadences. Then there is a barrage of fireworks with drums, which is deafening. But the people all cheer, and then the bands vamp up again. After that there are blocks and blocks of people in tents with insanely carnivorous spreads of food, beer, and red wine and club soda mixes (I didn’t try one- I had one Estrella Galicia and one San Miguel, both Spanish beers that I’d put in that basic European pilsner category epitomized by Pilsner Urquell but including Peroni, Estrella, Stella Artois, and the original Budweiser). There are these giant costume things and sculptures that supposedly cost like 40,000 euros to make, and they are traditionally burned at the end of the festival. Tradition dictates that you heckle the costumers. Enrique yelled, “Hijo de puta” to one. It is also traditional to heckle the firefighters while they extinguish the 40,000 euro bonfire, with things I won’t repeat here. People also wear bathing suits to bask in the crossfire (I couldn’t help but think of regrettable moments of the civil rights movement in the USA). I asked if there was some kind of symbolic or historic reason for the burning and people just sarcastically answered that Spaniards do stupid things as traditions, and party constantly. I also had heard so much about the disparity between Latin America and Spain, sometimes accentuated by people from those regions. I have to say that it is very easy to see the precedents for the Latin temperament in Spain. Maybe this is easier to see in a festive atmosphere, but the connections are certainly there to a third party, from their concept of social interaction to their passion for politics. I had met several of Enrique’s friends and they went to a tapas bar, which had one of those roaming bands inside it, and the place was packed. This was around 3PM. More singing and dancing, and we ate standing up at the bar. Some of the people- I can’t remember any names- stayed out in the street singing and dancing. I had an ommellete with ham (ham is ubiquitous) along with some mayonnaise based sauce. I hate mayonnaise unless it is Duke’s used judiciously in an ensemble piece, but this was not bad. I ordered it because I couldn’t hear anything and I didn’t notice the mayonnaise, I wanted to minimize my interaction, and it was a Galician place and the food was completely unknown to me (no menu, just point to stuff at the bar. I’m an adventurous eater, but I didn’t want pickled tripe or something). After that they went to another place, I guess to feed those who had opted out to dance. They got better tapas, a squid persuasion along with a potato-egg thing and something with a cured fish. Again, you hear what people eat in different parts of the world and then you show up, and there they are, eating it. 

After that it was time to plan for what would happen for the Spain-France match, although several people wanted to stop for another drink. It was interesting because the typical young American temperament would be drunk in this context, but they all seem to drink slowly and are in no hurry, and no one has a lot in one setting. The smoking is another story though. There are surely exceptions to this, but despite drinking at three junctures in the afternoon no one was visibly drunk in our party. Anyway, so for some reason we went to a place that felt like a night club at 2 in the morning in New York or Miami, yet it was 5 PM. It was clearly daylight but the place was packed and you couldn’t move or hear anything. Mercifully we left after fifteen minutes. To be continued.

26 june 2012 +/- 1400 hrs., somewhere in the Murcia community on the way to Granada

Anyway, a bunch of people came to Enrique’s house to watch Spain vs. France. Spain won 2-0 and as you’d expect there were car horns responding to this immediately and chants of “E-th-s-p-a-ny-a” in the street. More fireworks, of course. The fireworks have not stopped. Spain is in an economic crisis but I would imagine that no one in the fireworks industry is suffering. This night was a linguistic challenge since there were about 20 people there, all using expressions that are local as the young will do (no one was reciting soliloquies from “La vida es sueno,” somehow). I am learning a lot of Spanish that I didn’t know and being corrected in my Argentinian phrases. I have resisted the lisp thus far. Some of these people went out to the street parties going on which must have been raucous and lasted till dawn. I did not and stayed with the group that wanted to go home “early” so I was back at the industrial paradise by 3:30.

The next day Enrique and I went to a beach south of Alicante for about 1.5 hours, mercifully. My industrial zone paradise hotel was eschewed in favor of Enrique’s parents’ house for my last night, who of course have been extremely generous and gracious hosts, and packed me a lunch for today after providing a sumptuous breakfast. On the day we went to the beach we had lunch (naturally at 3PM) which included a steak, potatoes, a huge salad with tuna, followed by Greek yogurt and fruit. My favorite was a fruit from Murcia I had never seen called something I can't recall. It reminded me of a persimmon. When I sat down Enrique’s father immediately produced 3 22 oz. of Mahou, the best Spanish beer I have had so far. Beer seems to be everywhere. So far it appears more common than water. I was told this is truer in the south where the people are more festive, and it is hotter. In the north wine is more common evidently and it isn’t as common in the summer. Anyway so this morning I woke up with a horrible sunburn hangover, chapped lips and a wilting face that felt like leather. We went to the Isla de Tabarca, a lovely island near Alicante. Lovely, but sun soaked and shadeless. We went snorkeling and saw lots of fish, etc. The water is very clear. The tradition is to have calderos (a type of summer soup) on Tabarca but they cost more than the boat trip so we packed bocadillos. After I emerged this morning Enrique’s mother immediately asked me what I wanted to eat and produced a bag of croissants, some freshly made zumo de naranja (OJ) Greek yogurt and a huge bowl of peaches, pears, and bananas. She is an estetician so she gave me a lot of skin advice since I looked like I had been trapped in a tanning bed covered in baby oil. I don’t know what it will take for me to start behaving like a fair person and just wear a massive sun hat/female Shiite head wrap/burka (sp?). I’m not even kidding. It’s not like I tan anyway so I should just start dressing like Lawrence of Arabia when I go to the beach. 

Since I am screwing up the chronology, I also experienced “una barbacoa,” which should be easy to figure out. The word I knew, “asado,” is not used. Spain is not a vegetarian paradise. Ham is falling from the sky, and at this there were all kinds of sausages, the best being murcillos and chorizos. It would be impossible to keep Kosher as well since beasts with cloven hooves and creatures that crawl on the ocean floor are commonly served. As we sat down to eat I realized that it was about 10:30, naturally. This was also difficult since there were maybe 15 people, including some children. I am mainly frustrated with myself because I am supposed to know the language already, but the reality is that I haven’t been immersed in many years. But everyone has been patient with me thus far and people have much less stronger ire about the US than people in Latin America, so far. I am good at being diplomatic when necessary, even as I have been reminded that an American soldier killed a Spaniard accidentally in Iraq (I didn’t even know that) and that we have the world’s largest carbon footprint. Of course we do. We drive- we have no choice but to drive- for any trip longer than a mile, since in the majority of situations the American infrastructure makes a person on foot look like a refugee.

My last night in Alicante, after the Isla de Tabarca, I went with Enrique and his father to the Moorish castle overlooking the city, which was excellent. It was fascinating to discuss the Moorish influence in Spain, one of my favorite facets of their culture, with actual Spaniards. Then we went to a Turkish/Moroccan place and met his friends at one of their apartments which was new, in the old city of Alicante. This area looks like Spain in a movie since there are thatched terraces everywhere with wrought iron gates, tiny staircases and gorgeous tile work everywhere (In general the tile work here is strikingly well executed, which makes sense.) His friend had a lovely, miniscule “casita” with a terrace in the shadow of the castle (El Castillo de Santa Barbara) that had a fabulous view of Alicante.

Since it was the last night of las fiestas, there were fireworks again. One of the guys had a key to the park which was above his house and below the castle, somehow, and we went in to go up to see the fireworks from there, even as a guy working there said it was prohibited. He disappeared immediately and we entered with no consequence. The fireworks were on the other side of a giant rock face, as well as the castle, so we basically experienced them in silouette, which was amusing to everyone. For me, I have had enough firework exposure for some time, so I didn’t care. I came back to Enrique’s parents’ house since they gave me an extra key and let myself in to crash.

I have been interrupted multiple times since I’ve started writing this, and I’ve tried to not just make it a laundry list of stuff that I did. I surely had more observations than that. Oh yes. I remember one. On Sunday night, which is the night that they burn the giant figurines, we went to see a burning. The problem was that there are several places where these happen, and the one we chose had its burning scheduled for 2:30 or 3 in the morning, as we were casually informed. This was in the midst of a crazy mixture of a nightclub with a carnival, which had portable rides, fireworks (of course), extremely loud discotech music emanating from the rides, yet full of children and families after midnight on a Sunday. That would be impossible in the US. I really couldn’t believe it. Since the burning happened so late we didn’t stick around the carnival for two hours to wait.

At this point in the bus trip I am in Andalucía, approaching Velez Rubio, and it appears as rustic as I’d imagined. Immediately after I mentioned that an art deco masterpiece cathedral appeared out of nowhere, on cue. Leaving the small town which looks a lot like colonial towns in Mexico, the gigantic Sierra Madre ridge looms to the north, outside the right side window of the bus where I am sitting as we turn slightly more westerly. It looks very hot outside. 35 degrees C inside the bus.

Last note and then I am really stopping- because this is getting boring- but I had the thought as I was in the Moorish castle. I’ve always found it comic to think of the Spanish or the English in what is now the USA wearing their traditional garb, sweating their brains out in the swamps of Mississippi or wherever. De Soto went on a savage burn through the southeast wearing a metal helmet and going a lot of the way on foot (perhaps that explains the barbarism on display). What I’m getting at, is that wearing an iron helmet in Valencia or Murcia or Andalucía would be equally ridiculous and torturous. Also, there is a lot of dust thanks to the geologic conditions, and horses would make it worse. I would have needed my inhaler a lot in that time.

Granada, 1600, still sweating

Back in the present day. I hope you enjoyed my unedited, uncensored, unmasked look at my experiences thus far. Sunday Sunday Sunday! Come back for more monster truck action!

P.S.- In case you don't know, none of the stuff with the Timbewolves happened, but they were on the plane.