around the world as slowly as possible

the devil´s backbone

2008-03-09T19:30:00.001-04:00

this morning i got on the bus from Mazatlan to Durango without having done my homework. most of the 6.5 hour ride is through mountains which I´m sure were beautiful but since I spent most of the trip with my eyes closed trying desperately not to throw up, i´ll have to take your word for it. The driver was taking switchbacks and hairpins at 80km an hour and passing semis on blind curves (another good reason to keep my eyes shut).

i got on the bus with a large yogurt and an even larger chocolate muffin (as an aside, is there really any such thing as a chocolate muffin? isn´t it just a giant cupcake?) and settled in, looking forward to the ride and to my breakfast. Three hours later the yogurt was steaming hot fresh from my stomach in a clear plastic bag (why do i have to keep barfing into plastic bags on or near public transportation?) and the muffin had either rolled off the edge of the seat or been nicked by the dodgy old man sitting behind me.

By the time we got to a rest stop (after I had been holding the bag of vomurt in my lap for about 40 minutes) I was such a mess I had forgotten the word for "garbage" (basura) and was pestering the lady behind the counter for a bag (bolsa)..."where is the bag?" "is there a bag here?" finally she figured it out, told me what the correct word was and then.....gave me a bag.

some new photos from Mexico

2008-03-01T18:17:00.002-05:00

i'm having a lot of trouble lately with Flickr (Yahoo won't accept my credit cards and I've lost my Pro account) but was able to upload a few new photos from Mexico:

Sea Lions in Guerrero Negro:

Also saw lots and lots of grey whales in the lagoon there but they're not quite as photogenic...

Hummingbird in Baja:

Vanna White in Mazatlan:

(the van I've been staying in)

One of the Carnival floats in La Paz:

More on Flickr.

you can take the girl out of the trash, but you can't take the trash out of the girl

2008-02-29T18:41:00.002-05:00

so I live in a van. yes, I live in a white cargo van, this week and last.
I'm in Sayulita, north of Puerto Vallarta, with an old friend I met in Spain 2 years ago and who just happened to be in Baja when I was there. So we travelled together to the mainland.
The van is actually pretty cool, much bigger than you'd think...if I'd seen more Dr. Who I could make an appropriate reference here.

I have more freckles than I've had since I was 12.
I'm not a very good surfer.
Today went snorkeling for the first time and saw a variety of fish and dolphins and even a humpback whale. We accidentally caught a pelican with a fishhook (that part was not so cool). The pelican survived to see another day.

We'll probably be here till Monday at least, then I might catch a ride a little bit north (Ira is heading home).
Battery is out, more soon.

sunburn already

2008-02-09T23:36:00.000-05:00

mexico. yes.

currently in Baja California where the days are nice and warm and the nights are colder than expected.

apparently there are whales around here someplace but all I see are eagles.

amichevole

2007-09-17T05:37:00.000-04:00

i don't know what "amichevole" means, but when I typed an "a" into the title field it popped up as an option. I took it because I can't think of a better title.

Currently in Greece, Santorini to be exact, lazing about on the beach and doing almost nothing at all. Yesterday I walked for three hours along the edge of the caldera from Fira/Thira to Oia. Every day as the sun goes down the western edge of Oia fills with tourists who come to witness this little known and rare phenomenon called "sunset".
A greek/canadian used car salesman tries to pick up every women who walks past, using the unique approach of commenting on her apparel.
"Nice Pumas."
"They're fake."
"Where you from? Want to get a glass of wine?"

I spent about a week in Istanbul - it took all of 12 hours to fall in love with the city and decide that I want to live there one day. I stayed with the brilliant Marion who put up with my ever expanding stay (and yes! was the inspiration for the fishing rods photo!). Marion showed me a side of the city I never expected to see, namely the side where enormous blond tranny prostitutes mace small men and then run away on impossible stilettos.

In Istanbul my digestive woes began, and lasted for the remainder of my time in Turkey. I don't know what it was - brushing my teeth with local water, bad mayonnaise on a doner kebap, the ayran? It culminated in Antalya with me wandering around town in a daze, clutching a bag of vomit and searching in vain for a trashcan.

new photos

2007-08-28T07:09:00.000-04:00

finally i've had some photos developed. you can see all on flickr, but my favourites are here:

in Romania:

in Istanbul people fish off the bridges over the Bosphorous. In the background is (i think) the New Mosque.

This is the beach and sunrise at Sulina, in the Danube Delta. I spent several nights here in my tent, but didn't get any photos of the wild dogs chasing cows down the beach, pity.

Cemetery, Sulina, Romania:

Romanian train:

Lviv Ukraine, Opera House

Outside the train station in Chernivtsi, Ukraine

oh god what happened to August?

2007-08-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

Honestly? I think I lost a few days.
Since last post:
-met some cool Germans in Sighisoara and hitchhiked with one of them to Sibiu (macho jackass driver listening to the worst music I have ever heard - Bad Boys Blue? After reading the wikipedia entry I know why I was thinking about Milli Vanilli the whole time.), where we went to a really fun free Goran Bregovic concert and danced and danced. Also in Sibiu I smashed my toe against a doorjamb and seem to have dislocated it. Anyone have any idea of the possible ramifications of leaving this untreated? It doesn't really hurt anymore...
-then to Brasov where hung out with a cool Australian, Sara...we climbed a hill, ate a lot of food...I went to Bran Castle which is nice in itself (though really too full of tourists and tat) but has practically no relation to Dracula so if that's what you're looking for you can probably skip it. I regret the money I spent to go there if that tells you anything. The place is much more forbidding in photos and drawings.
-then Bucharest where I hostelled and CouchSurfed for a few days with a really nice couple (and their absolutely hilarious dog, an enormous [to me] St. Bernard who greets guests by flopping at their feet and rolling on her back). I have to recommend the Peasant Museum in Bucharest, it's full of beautiful things and they're presented in a really innovative way, I think. The only thing I would ask for is a little more information about various traditions, for example styles in embroidery and egg decoration, and also some English translations of the stuff on communism in the basement. This is really minor however, I spent 3 or 4 hours there as it is.
-finally a slow train/ferry combo to Sulina, on the coast in the Danube Delta, where I camped on the beach with the stray dogs, cows, and a few other campers. Nightclub or party on the beach with bad dance music for a couple of the nights, but last night for some reason it was all quiet. Gorgeous clear skies to stare at the stars and Milky Way all night. Strong hot sun to sunburn my back with all day (some very VERY unfortunate tan lines).
-now back in Tulcea, looking forward to tonight in cheap hotel with a real bed, a real toilet, and Turner Classic Movies before I get on an overnight bus to Istanbul tomorrow.

red blood

2007-07-30T13:11:00.000-04:00

this evening, as i sat on a wall overlooking Sighisoara (steps away from the house where Vlad Tepes aka Vlad Dracul aka Vlad the Impaler aka Dracula was supposedly born) I was approached by a drunk young man with piercing green and bloodshot red eyes and a plastic jug of white wine. he introduced himself as a poet, bemoaned the fact that I couldn't speak Romanian (apparently if I could understand him he would make me fall in love with him by the power of his words), and told me "you have such white skin....but your blood, it is red in your veins....and your heart", baring his teeth a little at the mention of blood.
shivudder.

eating perogies from a jar at the Moldovan border

2007-07-30T11:55:00.000-04:00

it's a labour of love, boiling up bowl after bowl of perogies when it's 35C outside and 41C in the kitchen. but you see, i knew i was leaving the country soon.

so in Odessa I would have perogies for lunch, then go to the beach and swim and watch the characters (an old woman standing around with seaweed carefully smoothed over her nose and chest...an old man with Einstein hair, two teeth, two pairs of glasses - one over the other - standing with his hands on the waistband of his shorts as though he's getting ready to tear them off at any moment), and then come back and eat some more.

in Kiev and Lviv i was able to go to cheap restaurants and point at a vat of dumplings or cabbage rolls and get what i wanted, but in Odessa i decided to go a different route (more adventurous or less adventurous? can't decide) and buy them frozen at the grocery store.

problem of course is I can't read the writing on the package (ok, i've mostly figured out the Cyrillic alphabet and could sound out the words, but wouldn't know what they mean).
day 1 - brought home a package, boiled it up, got REALLY excited, smothered them with butter and sour cream and...bit into a dumpling filled with ground beef hearts and potato.
day 2 - another try, this time they were stuffed with sweet cottage cheese. more acceptable than the vile beef heart variety but still not the potato and onion goodness i was hoping for.
day 3 - third time's a charm! it's the GREEN package. that's all I can tell you.

my last night I boiled up a full bag and stuffed the leftovers into an empty pickle jar, and took it to eat on the bus to Moldova the next day.

My neighbour on the bus was looking at me a bit funny, but he turned out to be the kind of guy who isn't allowed into the country even when he hides 70 griven in the back of his Georgian passport and slips it to the border guard. we left him behind at the Moldovan border.

Luckily I was able to get through no problem as I took a bus that bypasses Transnistria (daily at 11am from Odessa->Chisinau) in order to avoid the bribe shakedown and hours of wasted hours at the border. It still took about 6 hours (for two cities that are less than 200km apart).

then of course i was supposed to meet my CouchSurfing host, Irina...unfortunately my cell phone was dead and there was no internet around so i tried to get to the centre on my own. normally this isn't a problem but for some reason i missed the centre and ended up at the end of the minibus line. so the drivers put me back on a bus in the opposite direction and seemed to say they would tell me where to get off this time. but then, after we'd been driving for about 5 minutes the driver got off his cell phone, stopped the van, took my bags out and put them in someone's driveway, and gestured vaguely toward the garage. then drove off while i stood there gaping like a fool in the middle of nowhere for about 5 minutes, waiting for something to happen. finally another bus came by.

it is HOT here.

2007-07-29T10:28:00.000-04:00

it was hot in Lviv.
it was hot in Kiev.
it was extra hot in Odessa.
it was hot in Chisinau, and it's freaking crazy dry sauna hot here in Iasi.

unfortunately photos from all these places will have to wait till i get them developed but some fragments:

Lviv - very beautiful. full of weddings on summer weekends, hordes of gleaming new brides roam the pretty parts of town, chased by frantic photographers and bewildered husbands.
old men play chess on the benches in the park, small crowds gather around the exciting games.

as an added bonus the guy who runs the hostel (the big hostel not the small one) is frequently intoxicated (frequently in the early morning), and might let you do your laundry for free. while showing me the machine he ashed his cigarette inside of it.

Kiev - i really liked Kiev although the accommodations (an HI hostel, no hot water, none of the advertised amenities like internet, train ticket office, etc etc) were too expensive and a bit dreary. it's a big city, a real city, you can walk forever. The Saint Sophia Cathedral is impressive (and 1000 years old!). I drank a lot of coffee, walked 7 hours every day, sweated.

Odessa - first off i got very nerdily excited about seeing the Odessa Steps (aka Potemkin Stairs) due to 4 years of film studies and repeated viewings of the Battleship Potemkin. I just kept seeing that baby carriage careering down the stairs....
Later met some people at the hostel and spent the next several days wilting in the heat or rejuvenating in the sea.

the trains in Ukraine are mainly a pain

2007-07-20T07:29:00.000-04:00

actually the trains themselves are fine, a little slow but very cheap for 2nd class and pretty comfortable.

however I have discovered one of the outer circles of hell, right here on earth...it's the main hall of the Lviv train station. It looks great from the outside (as all gates to hell probably do) but then you walk inside and are trapped in the sort of nightmare where you have a task to perform but you can't read any of the signs and you can't communicate with any of the people, and you know you want to get a ticket for the 8:11 train to Kiev and you have it all written down on a piece of paper in Cyrillic even so you go to a cashier and wait in line for a long time and then she looks at your paper with disdain and pokes at her computer and shakes her head and writes 8:54, but you can see the 8:11 listed on the departures board so you go to booth #2 and try there and she says No No No so you go to information and wait in line and they say "go to #2" so you go back and she says no, and points at some sign you can't read, so you go back to information and they look at you like you're a complete idiot moron and say NUMBER TWO so you go back to number 2 and she won't even look at you anymore so you give up on the 8:11 and decide to get a ticket for the 8:54. so you go to the booth you THINK should sell tickets for the 8:54, because that seems to be what the sign taped up on the glass indicates, even though you can't actually read it, and you wait in line for a long long time and an old man tries to sidle in front of you in the queue, like you won't notice, and then you get to the front of the line and the ticket seller won't sell you anything for the 8:54, and writes down 12:33, and you start to feel like you are losing your mind so you go back to the first booth, and wait there for a long time, and ask for the 8:54 and wait for what seems like an eternity before the woman behind the glass nods and ACTUALLY SMILES and you feel like crying you're so relieved. and of course because this is a nightmare you are carrying a 25kg weight on your back the whole time.

i'm not sure how I ended up in Ukraine already...

2007-07-13T04:19:00.000-04:00

I'm travelling with Franck from France, the CouchSurfer I met in Budapest. We met up in Cluj two and a half days ago and since then we've:
1. hitchhiked from Cluj through northern Transylvania and the Carpathians to Borsec...originally planning to go to Sovata and then head south, it was raining off and on all day so we decided to stay in the truck as long as we could.
We drove through incredible valleys filled with gorgeous little villages, orthodox churches, silver scaled rooftops and women in scarves.

2. spent 5 hours in Romanian Orthodox masses and slept at a monastary...In Borsec another trucker picked us up, we were planning to have him drop us off at a lake about 60 km away, but again the rain intervened. the trucker was saying something about monastaries and how we could sleep at one. So we said "ok", thinking he was going to drive us there.
The rain was pretty biblical and every village we passed featured people standing outside, staring at the river in concern. Then he stopped the truck and let us out, pointing down a road and saying "two kilometers". It was getting dark and we had no idea where to go. Plus we were at the edge of the forest and had been talking about bears all day. This was a small dirt road in the middle of nowhere so we stuck our thumbs out at the next car that came by and miraculously she stopped. A very well dressed woman in a very nice car filled with flowers and garment bags and all white interior STOPPED for a couple of muddy hitchhikers and offered to drive us to the monastary. We didn't even know which one we were going to go to, so she said she would take us where she was going and see if they would let us stay.
We drove up to Sihastria in the rain and twilight and as we got out of the car were struck by the sound of drums and chanting monks. Franck and I just stared and grinned as Florica pulled an extra headscarf out of her car and tied it around my messy head.
She went in to consult with the priest and eventually we were called in to meet him, a man all in black with a long black beard. They spoke and spoke in Romanian and asked us if we were hungry and conferred some more. The priest blessed us and then held onto my arm with an iron grip. We had no idea what they were talking about but finally the priest gave Florica a key and she took us to our room so we could change.
Then dinner, wonderful simple soup and bean stew and wine and vegetables all from the monastary, and then the mass.

By this time it was already 10pm but the mass would continue until 11:30 or 12. It was still pouring rain so Florica pulled me under her umbrella (poor Franck was exposed to the elements) and we walked through the dark and cobblestones toward the basilica and the sound of the chanting. We walked around a corner and suddenly saw one of the most cinematic views i've ever seen with my own eyes...a vast white courtyard under a black sky, illuminated by the light coming out of the basilica.
This is the place. Imagine it at night in a flooding rain.
We sat in mass for an hour or two, kneeling on the floor, I trying to keep the scarf on my head (a constant struggle). It was very beautiful but I had no idea what was going on so just tried to blend in as much as possible.

Next morning, same thing. Florica and her friend told us to be at the basilica at 9 am (while they didn't show up till 10!) and again we sat through the multi-hour Byzantine sort of mass. Again, fascinating watching the monks come and go, old ladies kneeling and praying, young girls scratching their noses and looking around and obviously wishing they were elsewhere...

Then more amazing food, all made at the monastary - vegetable and cheese soup, bread, polenta with soft mild cow's cheese and cream, their own white wine, turkish coffee.

Then Florica and her friend took us for a tour of a couple other famous monastaries in the region, Secu and Manastirea Neamt; bought us souvenir picture cards and small icons to carry with us; and took us to the bus station in the nearest town.

Did I mention that nobody charged us a penny for all of this?

3. Hitchhiked across the Ukranian border, not sure about visa requirements...
From Targu Neamt we hitched to Suceava, and from Suceava to the Ukranian border. Incredible luck with our rides, both times it was the first car that passed that picked us up.
We had no idea what the visa requirements were for Ukraine (my LP from a couple years ago said i must have a visa, but an american guy i met last week said he thought the rules had changed). No internet anywhere, frantically texting anyone we thought would be at a computer to see if they could check, finally just ended up getting in the car and seeing what happened.
And they let us through, no problem, no visa, no money, no nothing. A very long line at the border but we were allowed to ride through with a Ukranian family who then drove us to a 'hotel' (see: Everything is Illuminated) in the nearby town. 3 Euros a night, each.

4. Trying to get to Lviv...today we jumped on a small local bus bound for Chernivtsi (still very near the Romanian border) and I thought we were going to get lynched for taking up two people worth of space...just when i thought they couldn't get one more stout old lady on the bus they managed to cram one on.
So we are now in Chernivtsi, waiting for the next bus to Lviv, looking forward to perogies for lunch. It's pretty nice here, but the language barrier is a serious problem. We're still pretty intimidated by the Cyrillic, but people are generally nice.

I can't access gmail from here but hopefully will be able to get to it in a bigger city.

2007-07-10T09:39:00.000-04:00

now in Cluj-Napoca. just saw a woman at the market unapologetically walking around with a wet cabbage leaf on her head (well, it is hot). i bought half a kilo of tomatoes from two old men and they threw in a handful of peppers and a couple of smiles.

the little girl sitting beside me is staring at me and threatening to throw a tantrum.
more soon.

the end of Budapest, hello Romania

2007-07-08T14:57:00.000-04:00

it's 10 pm in Oradea, Romania. i'm in a small, somewhat hard to find, exuberantly friendly hostel - 60 minutes after i arrived last night i had already been presented with two shots of palinka, a portion of some house painters' dinner, and was down in the wine cellar drinking a red aszu dessert wine called Cadarissima (fantastic). not only that, but the hostel was actually full so one of the guys who works here gave me his bed (he slept elsewhere).
so far, so good. (okay except for the part where a weird Hungarian guy I can't communicate with just wandered into my room in his underwear and stared at my back for a while...he didn't want to use the computer...I'm locking the door tonight.)

still, it was hard to say goodbye to Budapest and all the amazing people who have befriended me.
if i could split myself into two or three parts i would leave a piece there.

the last two weeks were incredibly hectic and my plans for lazing about the city, visiting museums etc were way too optimistic. packing, cleaning, figuring out trains, deciding where to go (last possible minute), writing reports (last possible minute), recovering from a typical weekend with Sergio and Frederico, cooking up a feast featuring the random remnants of our freezer and pantry (thanks Natasha and Natasha's mum and everyone who ate!), doing all the administration involved in eventually getting paid and trying to send a package home without spending all the money I've earned (UPS wanted several hundred dollars. i've gone with the dodgy postal system instead.) took up all of my time. At least the time that was not being spent at West Balkan and Szimpla Kert. Four nights in a row at the same club? What do I think this is, 1995 at Zaphod's?

On my way home from this evening (Night#1 at West Balkan, with some very fun French Couchsurfers who were crashing at our place):

I saw this view of Andrassy and just had to stand in the middle of the road to capture it. This is Budapest.

new budapest photos

2007-06-27T08:43:00.000-04:00

some more photos posted up at flickr...

this is me in Heroes' Square, early Sunday morning. part of a truly epic weekend which included wheelbarrow races in the park (i sustained mild injuries when my face met the dirt) and saw the indefatigable Natasha and I stay out all night, then make a breakfast picnic to eat in the park, then go to the flea market. we stopped along the way to take some photos.

many other general photos of the city too, including:

tram in front of parliament

our favourite gyros place:

etc etc.

in other news, only 2.5 more days of work left before i can go back to being a full-time loafer. i must say I can't wait.
the weather here has finally cooled down a bit. excited about friends coming in for the weekend.
nowhere near being packed. have no idea where i'm going next.

how time flies

2007-06-13T15:21:00.000-04:00

June is speeding by and my date of departure is looming. I will be leaving Budapest at the beginning of July and heading east - to Romania, Ukraine, and then wherever I decide to go from there.

I am receiving conflicting messages from my students re: Romania and Ukraine...most of them seem to be concerned for my safety but it's a 50-50 split on whether I'm to meet my end in Romania or Ukraine. I hear "Ukraine is safe, no problem. But you need to be very careful in Romania.". Then a couple of hours later I hear "Romania is very safe, it just has a bad reputation...but I don't think you should go to Ukraine."

This is the advice equivalent of matter meeting anti-matter.

I have started researching and getting ready, tearing the relevant portions out of the massive Lonely Planet Europe guide I inherited, trying to once again think in terms of weight and bulk. Last night I went on an insane "test-pack" kick at 10pm when I should have been going to bed. The "test-pack" involves me looking around my room (which I have lived in for 5 months) and thinking, "i am not carrying this shit on my back for the next four months.", then trying to see what will actually fit in said backpack. Not a lot. I'm feeling ruthless these days, hence the book surgery.

Still, it could be worse. The only good thing about being terminally broke/not getting paid for two months/etc. is that it is impossible to accumulate much stuff.

I am now faced with the dreaded carry-it-on-your-back-or-lose-it-in-the-mail dilemma.
For example: film negatives. Do I really want to carry around 5-10 little canisters of negatives + CDs of scanned negs? Or do I want to send them home in the mail and risk losing them forever? I feel like I have already tempted fate enough when it comes to the post...like sending stuff to Carrie and Josh's place with the wrong postal code. and having it end up at the home of some fantastically kind stranger who eventually (usually after I have given up the package as lost) brings it to their front door. THREE TIMES.

I am going to buy that guy a present and I am going to stop tempting fate (first step - get the right postal code).

Also, the Hungarian postal service is notoriously....umm...how should I put it. Takey? Pinchy? Lossy? Some stuff I'm not so worried about - if someone really wants my CELTA notes and teaching materials they can have them. But currently broken/potentially fixable digital camera? Pricey boots? Souvenirs? Apparently irreplaceable CELTA certificate? Not so much.

this afternoon

2007-05-22T08:47:00.000-04:00

mid-afternoon, a thunderstorm is blowing in to compensate for this morning's 30 degree heat...class in an hour and I'm drinking tea and trying to polish up a lesson on future tenses (how many can you name?).
this pre-storm light is really lovely.

trying to decide whether to take advantage of the current easyjet sale and book all my flights for the rest of the summer/fall in advance. which would mean knowing exactly where i'm going to be on specific dates. which gives me a headache.

a conversation from earlier in the day has sparked dreams of running away to south america and learning to dance.

new photos

2007-05-21T04:53:00.001-04:00

new photos up on flickr. i've been experimenting with cross-processing slide film but should have done my homework before using Fuji Sensia 100, which makes everything red. oh well.

some samples:
Liberty Bridge (Szabadság híd), Budapest

the roof outside my door

birthday cake

pedal car in the park

Ibolya and her feast

the Hungary/Slovakia border

Esztergom, Hungary

accents and stumblers

2007-05-17T06:24:00.000-04:00

it was great to see James and Yasmin on the weekend, we went to some of my favourite bars and drank beer until they succumbed to jet lag (hey, they made it till about 3:30 - that's a trouper in my book). I wish I could say I then went to bed but no, I sat up till 5 am eating tortilla chips in bed and reading a book about wizards.

apparently J and Y have powerful magic as well because a few days later a friend told me that my Canadian accent had "come back". where had it gone? to be honest I feel a bit like Madonna these days, I hear myself speak and think "why the hell did I say it like that? what, do I think I'm English or something?"

on the tram the other day a large elderly businessman fell on top of me. I thought for one terrified moment that he was having a heart attack - then I smelled the booze.

the unbelievable truth

2007-05-02T09:16:00.000-04:00

i just read today (in a review for Waitress) about Adrienne Shelley's completely senseless murder last year. I had no idea.
for various Hal Hartley related reasons I have a very soft spot for Adrienne Shelley (see: Trust and The Unbelievable Truth).
i am sitting here on the verge of tears over the death, 6 months ago, of someone i didn't personally know.

completely exhausted, nothing interesting

2007-04-26T05:56:00.000-04:00

apologies for the lack of exciting updates but this whole getting-up-at-6:30-thing is really starting to get me down. Maybe I'm getting sick too because by the end of each day I'm completely wiped out. I've been under the covers before 10pm not once, but TWICE already this week. Those who know me know that this is simply not right.
on the bright side one of my classes was observed by my employer and she gave me some really encouraging feedback. i've got a few more classes on my schedule, starting this week, which means i will definitely be able to pay the rent, and eat, and maybe - just maybe - drink some beer next month too.
i am completely at a loss as to what to do after June. stay here for a few more months and teach some more (not gonna save much money though - maybe a little bit, but nothing substantial)? look for a contract elsewhere in Europe? travel for the summer (the thought of living on a Greek beach is appealing)? go home for a little while (probably going to save that for the fall or winter though)?

learning dirty Hungarian words from a middle aged woman

2007-04-18T05:28:00.000-04:00

So our housekeeper/cleaner is back this week, frying up some pork balls on the stove. When I got home from class around 10 am she was already finished with the soup and creamy potatoes and I must have accidentally told her I was hungry cause she served me up a big old plate of lunch at 10:15.
Now she's cooking up the aforementioned pork balls - pronounced "fashult"...don't ask me for a spelling because when I looked up the spelling she provided me it seems to translate as "fascist". Fun as that would be, I don't think she's frying up any fascists today.

The entertaining part was when I, trying to pronounce the name of this food, said "fass" (i think the Hungarian spelling is fasz) and she started giggling and waving her arms, "nem! nem!". Clearly this was a dirty word so I would just say it every so often to make her laugh.
Finally she said "puszi, angolul" (puszi means "kiss", but sounds like "pussy"). so I told her, "puszi means kiss".
"igen igen, something something puszi angolul"
"puzsi in english is kiss"

this went on for a couple minutes till it finally became clear that she was saying "yes yes, i KNOW that it means kiss, but...".

I still couldn't figure out what she was talking about. Maybe fasz was a really specific word for some sort of dirty kissing activity?
Finally I turned on the computer and discovered that fasz translates to "prick, pizzle, pintle, dick, cock, pecker" (PINTLE? I have never heard of a pintle).

She brought out the fried fascist balls and we sat at the table and nibbled at them. I said, with a knowing look on my face, "Ah, fasz...nem yo." (ah, fasz is not good). She laughed and said "igen, ferfi" (yes, man) and pointed downward. Then she said "puszi? angolul?".
Aha! Finally I understood. She was getting cats and chickens confused.
I said, "pussy, angolul...two things. meow meow!"
"Nem!" she gasped, a shocked look on her face.
"Igen! meow meow! And also...noi"...and I pointed at my lap. (noi means woman)
"Ah!" she said, laughing again.
Then she got serious.
"fasz, angolul?
"fasz in angolul is..um.....cock."
"COCK?"
"igen. um......also....um...dick."

I was deliberating whether to also provide the more formal "penis", but decided that two new vocabulary words were good enough for one day.

good. soup.

2007-04-05T05:26:00.000-04:00

yesterday our housekeeper (a very nice lady who comes in once a week to clean, so I guess housekeeper is a good enough word, that or cleaning lady) made an enormous Hungarian feast - goulash soup, vegetable soup, pork schnitzel or something, french fries, fried cauliflower, rice, noodles with lard. the common ingredient is lard or oil. i came home from a class to find her halfway done everything but I got to help out with the dumplings for the soup.

we had a long conversation while I rolled out the dumplings. unfortunately since I don't speak Hungarian, I have no idea what we discussed. but at the appropriate pause I would say something like 'jo leves!' or 'uborka?' or 'ah, paradiscom!'.

to put this in context, imagine you have a foreign visitor. conversations consist of you saying intelligent things, and your companion responding with 'soup good!' or 'cucumber?', or 'ah, tomato!'.

mother may i? duck duck goose?

2007-04-05T05:22:00.000-04:00

tonight i begin tutoring two little boys (6 and 8). i don't even know what a 6 year old is. as in, I couldn't pick a 6 year old out of a line up that included a 4 year old and a 5 year old.

and I can't remember ANY children's games.

they lived in Canada for a couple of years so they should have some language, my job is to keep them from losing it. and, today at least, it's to make sure the parents ask me to come back for a second lesson!

it's not that i don't respect you...

2007-04-02T15:29:00.000-04:00

dear Slovakia,

i'm sorry about the way i keep using you and then throwing you away.

love,
a

bird meets head

2007-04-02T04:34:00.000-04:00

yesterday a bird flew into the side of my head.

this morning I got up at 6, to go to a 7:30 lesson in the middle of nowhere. the guy didn't show up so I spent 90 minutes sitting in the lobby of an insurance company.

this afternoon I'm going to Slovakia. again.

imperium

2007-04-01T09:29:00.000-04:00

spent most of this beautiful weekend reading Ryszard Kapuscinski's wonderful Imperium, about the Soviet Union. Imperium in one hand, a small atlas in the other...you can now add Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the list of places I want to visit.

wanderlust also triggered by Gina's recent blog entries....that passport! those photos! my god. what am I doing in Budapest, working for The Man?

because that's what I'm doing now - freelance english teaching, for anyone with any sort of 'business' background in their previous life, means Business English. and that is all about going into oil companies, insurance and finance corporations and government agencies....

my eyes!

2007-03-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

this afternoon i think i saw a man...um...touching himself as he walked down the street. and when I say street, i mean extremely busy major street. and when i say touching, i mean it looked like he was trying to milk a cow. but fast.
i didn't see any flesh but he had that "i'm a pervert, you wanna see?" look in his eyes as I passed.

in other news, my schedule is practically full although I probably won't make enough money this month to cover my expenses, and I had another interview today with a school who wanted to know if I had my bachelor's degree handy. like here in Budapest. like the physical piece of paper.

like I keep that in my backpack?

not much else of interest. i am trying not to spend any money. therefore, I am very boring.
also, addicted to stupid facebook.

oh, forgot to mention....

2007-03-21T12:20:00.000-04:00

...I'm staying in Budapest for at least 3 more months. probably.

boring dream blog entry

2007-03-21T08:52:00.000-04:00

this morning i dreamt i was late for a flight - i was going somewhere like Brazil and just stuffed a bathing suit and towel and a few other things into a bunch of bags. for some reason ending up with three different bags of stuff.
then i realized i had 30 minutes before the plane left and i was still at home. so i called someone and changed to a later flight.
i woke up and checked the clock; it was 5:30 so went back to sleep.
unfortunately, in my dreams i still had to catch that plane. i now had 3 or so hours to get to the airport. it took an hour to get out of the house and another hour to get to the place where i could catch the bus to the airport.
i tried to ask someone at the bus station which one would take me to the airport, but they didn't speak english. i did know the bus number though. Bus number 134.
things were falling out of my bags. it was snowing heavily. i walked into the bus station and
saw that there were hundreds of bus stops, in no particular order.

by this time the plane was leaving in 40 minutes and the airport was 45 minutes away.
i sat down on my bags.

then i woke up again because it was time to go teach my very first real lesson! the stupid plane dream being some fairly obvious anxiety about sleeping in and not getting to class on time (class is at 8:00).

turns out what i should have been worried about instead was where to go. i went to this huge office building, arrived a little early, but then realized that i didn't know which floor the class was on or who to ask for. it was in an email that i had forgotten to print out. the receptionist let me in to the first floor where i wandered around looking for something that looked like a class. (something like wandering around looking for bus 134).

a guy tried to help me out (also i'm sure he was somewhat concerned about this
random stranger wandering around the office), and then the receptionist let me use her computer to check the email.

i finally made it to the right floor.

late.

the class is great though.

lots and lots and lots of new photos

2007-03-20T08:10:00.000-04:00

because the digital camera died, i've been using film for the past couple of months.
not very happily either, since I haven't used film in almost a year...all the photos I took were complete crap and I was worried i would have the same problem this time.
so i took three rolls in yesterday, and for less than $20 had them developed and scanned onto cd in less than 3 hours.
i'm way WAY happier with the results than i expected to be...

this is National Day

this is Parliament

these are Hungarian skaters

this is the flea market

this is cake

this is the thermal lake at Heviz

this is the lock fence in Pecs

this is the train station at Tokaj on a foggy night

this is a wine tasting

see all of these and MORE in full technicolour glory on flickr.

this is what you get when you google yourself.

2007-03-17T11:59:00.000-04:00

i had completely forgotten about this. i'm not sure what i said but i'm pretty sure i didn't say it in french! click here and then scroll down for hyper-flattering photo and silly quote.

some things you should check out

2007-03-16T12:56:00.000-04:00

my friend Doug is a holistic nutritionist (you won't believe how much trouble i just had trying to spell that) and has recently started up a fantastic (you could even say....super-fantastic) nutrition blog and newsletter. check out Radical Nutrition. and don't eat artificial sweeteners.

my friend Josh is currently blogging from South By Southwest in Austin, where he has just seen that little kewpie Lily Allen perform. seems she's just started her takeover of North America. you lucky sods, you haven't been overexposed yet? seriously, i'm going to barf if i hear 'Smile' one more time. though i did see a pretty cool video mash-up of that song + the cure's lullabye.

nothing to see here, ma'am

2007-03-15T21:00:00.000-04:00

so around 8 i finally left the apartment and when i opened the door to the street, was relieved to see the police were dismantling the barricades. whew! and i congratulated myself on great timing.

then i turned the corner and saw that that had merely MOVED the barricades. so i followed a wee squad of riot police down toward the new and improved barricade and when i was approached by one of them just pointed at myself and then pointed at the street past the barrier...as in "me go out? yes?"

as i tried to pass another cop said something to me in Hungarian and i replied "nem maygar, angolul?" which means something like "no hungarian, english?" this came out extra-meek without my even trying...heavily armed people just do that to me i guess.

so they let me pass and i walked down to the main avenue, through some old-ish clouds of tear gas. it wasn't so strong anymore but the air tasted like shit and my eyes were watering. at that point i was a little past Oktogon already and couldn't see many police anymore, just people out in the street. the street was shut down and there were lots of people with flags, some wearing balaclavas....one large garbage bin was on fire in the middle of the street and i passed some people in the process of lighting another one on fire as well. there were also plenty of people who just looked like they were out for a stroll.

just as i was turning the corner toward Phil's place i heard "pop-pop-pop" and the rushing sound you get when a lot of people start to run. turned back to see several tear gas canisters start to steam and a big crowd of people heading toward the train station. it felt a bit undignified to run, especially since i was on a side street and more especially since i was clutching a package of paper napkins in one hand. but i sped up. two men dressed in waiter-style tuxedos stood outside of a doorway, watching what was going on.

then i went up to watch Benedicte make crepes (which were impressively delicious). other arrivals spoke of seeing a car on fire, people being sprayed with water cannons...however this was apparently much much better than the situation back in October, and it would probably be over by midnight.

sure enough, when i walked home 5 hours later there was no sign that anything at all had happened. the sidewalks were cleared of debris, the street was being sprayed down and cleaned, and i had no trouble getting back into the apartment.

not some guy with a loudspeaker

2007-03-15T13:28:00.000-04:00

so i was wrong. that wasn't some bozo with a loudspeaker and a truck, it's a demonstration outside the House of Terror. I have no idea which party or political 'wing' this represents as I can't understand what they're saying. However I did see several Arpad flags.

Hungarian politics are too complicated for me to comment on.

Anyway, my block has been barricaded and there are probably 40-50 riot police at the end of the street. I have been watching from my bedroom window and it's hard to tell what's happening - sometimes it looks like the crowd is dispersing and then a chant rises up again. Then they fall silent, then they chant again. The crowd has definitely moved back from the barricades but it doesn't look people are leaving (also it's hard to tell how many people are actually out there because i can't see around the buildings).

I'm supposed to go over to Phil's in about an hour - really not looking forward to walking through a cordon of mini-Darth Vaders to get there. I hope this is all over by the time I come home too because I don't know how I'm going to talk my way through a barricade.

**update**
when I looked again most of the protesters appeared to be gone but there were even MORE police. why? while i was pondering this, they opened the barricades and about 15 cops ran out and out of view to the front of the House of Terror. A cat came streaking across the street in the opposite direction (cats are smart). a police car pulled up on Andrassy, followed by a large group of even more riot police. I'm not sure how many, maybe 30 maybe 50, but they looked pretty beetly and intimidating with the lights flashing off their helmets and shields. Then they all ran off to the front of the Terror house too, again out of my sight.

now i can't see any protesters at all but there are even more police than before, even on the 'calmer' side of the barricade which just leads out to a quiet side street. there's a line of riot police three deep standing about 5 feet behind a barricade. two freaked out looking backpackers hurry past. a guy holding a Hungarian flag stands in front of the barricade and his friend takes his photo against the backdrop of police. i can hear some people laughing but i can't tell if it's onlookers or police.

no rioting yet

2007-03-15T13:09:00.000-04:00

Everything seems to be pretty calm on National Day so far. i went out for a walk and saw a lot of people walking around with flags, but that's about it. I didn't go down to where the rallies were happening. There's a pretty strong police presence around some places i went past - the Synagogue and the US Embassy and the Terror House (a museum which is in a house once used as a prison by the Arrow Cross Party and the Nazis and then the Soviets. It's down the street from me.).

I can hear some people shouting things out on the street right now, but it's probably just some guy with loudspeakers and a truck.

robots

2007-03-15T12:54:00.000-04:00

How cool is this?

check out Bennett Robot Works. I think I have the fixings for a least a couple of robots sitting in a box back in Toronto.

googlicious

2007-03-13T05:32:00.000-04:00

a small but increasing number of people are finding this blog via web searches such as:
heviz sex show
picking up hookers
hookers getting filmed
picking up prostitutes

not exactly sure why since, before today, I mentioned prostitution like one or two times. This post effectively triples the hooker wordcount on this blog. I look forward to the increased traffic.

Hello whore seekers! You won't find what you're looking for here. Try searching for something more specific.

a jumped up pantry boy, who never knew his place

2007-03-12T16:16:00.000-04:00

interviews! i got interviews. unfortunately there's a national holiday on thursday which means everyone's either taking the whole week off or thursday, friday, and monday at least.

the holiday is 'National Day' which commemorates the 1848 Revolution. i'm not too clear on what exactly is going to go down but we've been warned to expect lots of protests. stories like "police will use rubber bullets when it is deemed necessary on March 15" or "Jews advised to stay at home (holocaust denier guest of honour)" are not promising. There were some anti-government protests last fall, which turned violent, and it seems like something similar is expected again this time. And it's going to bring out all the right-wing fucknut wack-jobs.

watching MTV2 - Fall Out Boy (btw - does anyone else get 'this ain't a scene' in their head for days at a time? how do you make it go away?) doing a countdown of their top 10 favourite Smiths and Morrissey videos....the oldest ones i'd never seen before. god he was hot. i guess he's still kind of hot now but those old videos were just....distracting. man.

good ol' Mustapha...remember him?

2007-03-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

Remember Mustapha?
Remember the time he got arrested, or the second time he got arrested, or the time he took Steph and I to a whorehouse, or the time i realized just how full of shit he really was...?

Well, every so often he sends me an incomprehensible sort of update email.
The latest one is pretty good. I think it came from space.

salut ca va bien arndisデビュー30周年を迎えた浜田省吾の“I am a
father”にインスパイアされた「キャッチボール」と “Thank
you”にインスパイアされた「君と歩いた道」の2作品の本編に

加え、
Disk2には出演者はもちろん、浜田省吾も登場するメイキ今年始め大阪･広島をはじめ全国各地で
cava bien 上映された映画「TWO
LOVE」が待望のDVD化ングを始め、予告編、プロダクションノok
beyートなど盛り沢山の特典映像を収録！ mustapha

procrastinating

2007-03-08T06:45:00.000-05:00

blagh.....not sure how i went from being hyper-motivated to brain-dead but i can't even respond to email let alone write a CV today. now i'm just obsessed with the Geotagging feature on Flickr - when did they put this up? what a great way to spend a beautiful day in Budapest. Indoors shuffling virtual photos around.

i'm a teacher! gimme some cake. is that gin?

2007-03-07T05:25:00.000-05:00

it's done, it's over, and I passed. actually i did better than I expected to, though i don't know if that will actually make much of a difference when looking for jobs.

it's wednesday today and i've spent the last 5 days 'celebrating' the end of the course which means any excuse to eat cake, drink coffee, sit in bathhouses, buy stuff at flea markets, drink gin, eat too much food or watch movies has been exploited.

sadly, all binges must end. today i will start looking for a job. a few classmates have already found work so I'm feeling good about my prospects.

budapest is gorgeous right now, yesterday was 20 degrees t-shirt weather and today looks to be the same. i have a mild sunburn - not what i expected from budapest in March.

depending on the work situation i may be here indefinitely, i have a great living situation (it involves british sattelite television) and it seems like every corner of this city holds something new and cool. definitely staying till the end of the month anyway.

I have posted some new photos on flickr...they're two or three months old but it's some stuff from vienna and krakow. working on getting some hungary photos up there soon.

whew!

2007-02-14T04:03:00.000-05:00

i actually have a few minutes to spare. let me tell you about my world these days. this is my general daily schedule:

get up around 7:30
8:30-9:00 am: walk to school
9:00 - 11:30 : work on lesson plan or other homework
11:30 - 5 pm - input sessions and feedback on previous lessons. at lunch, try to finish lesson plan for tonight.
5-6 pm : desperately try to finish printing materials for class at 6, read over lesson plan so I know what i'm doing
6-8:15 pm : teach a class (not the whole class, three of us - out of our group of 5 - will each teach a 40 minute lesson...so i don't teach every day but still have to attend the class and take notes of everything)
8:30 - 9 pm : walk home
9 - 9:30 pm : eat dinner
9:30 - 2 a.m : work on next day's lesson plan or other homework
2 - 7:30 a.m. : sleep. dream about teaching class and trying to explain the meaning of words like 'represent'

by the end of day last Thursday we were all completely exhausted. There are 16 people in the course and we're split into three groups of 5 or 6 people, and each group has its own class of students. Sometimes there are lessons which are unassessed which means that our tutor/observer leaves the room and we teach without being graded on it. Last Thursday, while poor Krista was teaching an unassessed class, three of us trainees in the back completely. lost. our. shit. I mean hysterical, uncontrollable laughter, for no apparent reason. There was mascara all over my face by the end of it. Thank god the tutor wasn't there. Students were very confused.

We teach a pre-intermediate class, which means they can communicate fairly well but simply and their grammar isn't very clean. Our class is fairly small (only around 8-10 people show up) and quiet so it's hard to get them to speak up in class. Also we have a set of identical teenaged twin boys...at the beginning of each class we have to ascertain who is who.
So far I've taught 4 classes....the first two were painful (you remember Charlie Brown's teacher? wa-wa-wa-wa-waa-waaaaaa.....that was me. Ugh.), the last two have gone fairly well and been really fun. What I've learned is that if you want to bring things up a notch, you should try to incorporate a picture of a ham into your lesson. I like pointing to ham and making people tell me what it is. Ham. It's just fun!
However I'm lucky because I haven't had to do a grammar class yet. How on earth can you make a grammar class interesting? Hopefully I will be able to use a pork product of some sort.

It's Wednesday of the second week already and so far I'm less exhausted than I was last week...I think it's because last night I made an effort to get at least 6 hours of sleep. It's amazing what the body can get used to. Oh....maybe all those large lattes I've been drinking have something to do with it as well. I'm going to enjoy this feeling of well restedness as long as I can because I know it won't last. I have two assignments due next week plus a class every couple of days to teach.

Ham!

p.s. if anyone has tried to call me and left a message on the answering machine...I'm sorry but I don't know how to access the voice mail yet so I haven't got the message...will hopefully figure that out on the weekend.

what have I gotten myself into?

2007-02-05T12:35:00.000-05:00

I'm staying in Budapest for a while...I have a room in an apartment and a phone and everything. It feels so weirdly permanent, even though it's only for a month (i think).

The reason I'm staying is that I've enrolled in an english teacher training course (the CELTA certificate if that means anything to you). Today was the first day and I teach my first class (a 30 minute lesson) tomorrow night. I bought a grammar book yesterday which only proved to me how very little I know about English grammar. I probably know more about French grammar. Actually, I think the course is going to be great but I'm apprehensive about the 'teaching a real class' aspect of the whole thing. Feels like I'm heading for a root canal or something.

Apologies as well for the lack of new photos but my digital camera is still broken. I'm using film now but haven't had any developed yet.

Have I mentioned the thermal lake yet? About 3 hours south of here there is a town called Heviz which boasts a thermal lake. That means the water is warm all year, and generally filled with elderly people looking for a 'cure'. It's medicinal (read: mildly radioactive among other things). I arrived in Heviz not knowing where I was going to stay, but luckily I ran into Yi Ling on the bus...she offered so share her room with me! Sweet! We went to the lake and hung out...the water's warm. Ish. I wouldn't take a bath that cold. It was cool being outside at this time of year in a lake but not the most comfortable experience. Later, inside, an older Hungarian man started talking to us in english so we had a conversation with him for a while. In the dressing room after the lake had closed a woman started jabbering at us in Hungarian with a very intense expression on her face. After about 10 minutes we figured out she was telling us to stay away from the bad man. Basically what I could understand was "man", "no", and "sex". Clear enough!

water and wine (hungarian rhapsody)

2007-01-23T06:34:00.000-05:00

Budapest was fun, and Hungarians are great...where else can you hang out at a crazy painter's apartment drinking Jim Beam till the wee hours and being served goulash (which I believe was supposed to be somebody's lunch the next day) at 2:30 in the morning by an exceptionally drunk, middle-aged William Shatner lookalike with a major Grand Canyon obsession? Shat had some pretty complicated porn on his video-playing cell phone but he couldn't figure out how to dial a US number. I wish I spoke Hungarian so I could have listened in on the conversation he had with the phone support guy. I wonder if support people get a lot of drunken late night calls. Does it alleviate the boredom?
I have now got a recipe for really good goulash written out in shaky Hungarian...we will see if I ever manage to get it translated.

Also great was the opportunity to hang out with Phil and Benedicte again and check out a serbian gypsy brass band (and kick some major butt at foosball, though I can't take any credit for that. James is a foosball hustler.).

Finally we decided to get out into the country and headed to Eger where we were intercepted at the train station by Margaret (Margit?) a sweet widow who rents out her spare bedroom for the best deal in the country. Eger was all about too much red wine (the home of Bull's Blood) and partying with long haired youngsters who took us under their wing and down into the Eagle club which I think was under a basilica. The recovery phase was aided by Eger's thermal baths which allow you to sit outside in a steamy warm pool and enjoy a water massage.

Then we decided to see Boldogkő castle at Boldogköváralja (this country has many things in common with Iceland - thermally heated pools and unpronouncable place names being among them). For an approximately 160 km journey we had to take 4 different trains and one bus. Then we learned that Boldogköváralja has no accommodations at this time of year and since it was getting dark and the last train was in an hour, we had to forego seeing the castle up close and personal and start walking to the nearest train station (2 km away). The train 'station' was in the middle of nowhere, guarded by two possibly feral dogs, but we eventually found it and the train eventually came. James gamely tried to interact with the giggling teenagers sitting behind us and at one point a woman came over with her cell phone and stuck it in his face...she didn't speak english but her friend on the phone did and they wanted to make sure we were going to make it to our destination intact. They were very kind and very concerned and she must have brought the phone back to us two or three times so her friend could provide more information.
On the next train (the 6th? 7th? of the day? it's so hard to keep track...) we met a Canadian and a Brazilian girl who were in Hungary on a Rotary Exchange for their last year of high school, which brightened the last leg of a very long day considerably as they gave us their pins and cards and helped us get off at the right station and bonded with J over mutual exchange experiences.
In Sarospatak we ate delicious italian food and also delicious hungarian food (an enormous soup and plate of chicken and potatoes and some mysterious but tasty green sauce for $3!).

Next on the agenda was Tokaj, wine country, where we landed after dark and were taken around town by Sylvester and Istvan, a couple of 14 year old men-about-town who helped us find a hotel and entertained us with very broken english. We still can't figure out why Sylvester started to undo his pants at one point, but a firm "stop" and a stern look put a stop to that weirdness right away. Then they looked embarrassed like we had misinterpreted something and said "Sylvester, stupid boy!".

If you ever go to Tokaj, do yourself a favour and go do a wine tasting. I don't even like white wine but Tokaj is something special, especially the sweet 6 Puttonyo Aszu.

A little buzzed, we hopped on the next train or two for Debrecen which is Hungary's second largest city but frankly not all that exciting. Perhaps something to do with it being the middle of the week in low season. Still, the Hungarians proved themselves once again as what started as a quiet drink in a little bar turned into an extravaganza of fun and weirdness courtesy of Joe who blew enormous smoke rings and pretended to be in love with me. Bonus: I can sort of blow smoke rings now.
Debrecen also has thermal baths, some of which are dark brown and small of coal tar - highly theraputic I am certain. The best was the hot and cold dipping pools, where you can slip from 20 degree water into 40 degree water...stingy!

And finally, on to Pecs (pronounced Paich), where I am now...Pecs was once again all about smelly thermal baths (in Harkany, near the Croatian border) and italian food. We didn't have time to go out to the thermal lake in Heviz before James had to go home (stupid work!;) but I am going to hang out here for a couple more days and then check it out on my own.

one year anniversary!

2007-01-06T07:34:00.000-05:00

i can't believe it's been exactly one year since i left Toronto with a raging hangover and landed in Paris, drooling with jet lag. But it's true. i celebrated here in Budapest with my friend James over big bowls of goulash soup and thick dark beer, after being given an impromptu tour of the city by Leslie, James' drinking buddy from the night before who we had just run into on the street.

i have also just set an unbreakable record for myself in the category of 'least amount of time spent in one country' - i went to Slovakia for 36 hours. I don't think i can beat that (passing through in transit or layover of course doesn't count). Bratislava was nice though!

happy new year

2007-01-01T10:34:00.000-05:00

happy new year everyone! i rang the year in here in krakow at a hostel party featuring free beer and wine and champagne and food all night (all night means till well after 6 a.m.), and approximately 7 men for every woman. it's a good combination.

we went to the town square at midnight to watch the fireworks with a bunch of Scots in kilts and if you haven't wandered around an eastern european city with a man in a kilt on new year's eve then you haven't lived. everybody loves the Scots! People would come up to them and just give them cans of beer. Everyone wanted a photo. Drunk middle aged women giggled hysterically and tried to look up their kilts.

i went to bed at 6 but woke up again around 9 to the sound of a drunken australian who had lost the keys to his locker shouting HAPPY FUCKIN NEW YEAR in the middle of the room. he had to board a plane in a couple of hours. the receptionist couldn't find extra keys for the lockers. someone came in with a crowbar and tore the doors off two of the lockers. so that's 2007 so far.

as for other krakow events...so that night i was supposed to go back to the bar to meet the Canadian and the Belgian i either was too late or they didn't show because they weren't there. but I did discover that the drunk english guy is the sort of alcoholic who ends the night with his fly undone and mysterious stains on the front of his trousers, as he tries to convince you to get in a taxi with him to go dancing at another club. your refusal will elicit comments like "why? i dont....i don't want to SHAG you!" well honey, that is really beside the point. when i arrived anyway he was on the verge of being kicked out of the bar but he did introduce me to some people before he was tossed. one of them was Olga who said 'i am going to some other bars, you can come with me if you like'. okay! she took me to awesome places i would never have found on my own.
The next morning Keith took me off on a walking tour of the city, but unfortunately it was so foggy there was almost no point. Still it was really nice and he also introduced me to the fine dish of potato pancakes with goulash.
So far i have managed to eat perogies every single day without fail.

Finally, mystical energy and planned obsolescence have teamed up to destroy my camera. I think the warranty expired three days ago. Yesterday I went to Wawel castel which apparently hosts one of the 7 great energy chakras of the earth in one corner of the courtyard.
All i know is that my camera was working 5 minutes before i went in there, i stood in that area of the courtyard for about 5 minutes, and then 30 seconds later as i walked away and tried to turn the camera on it started screeching and beeping like R2D2 in a microwave.
Which is why i have no photos of the madness that was last night. major bummer.

krakow is weird, in a good way

2006-12-28T14:45:00.000-05:00

i finally got a room last night. the girl finally woke up and realized where she was. another cop showed up and asked to see everyone's id. except for mine. i felt a little left out.

wandered into a cafe this afternoon and soon found myself embroiled in conversation with drunk Ian the british composer, who called his friend Keith from Saskatoon to come meet us. Then there was another Canadian and a Belgian. I am supposed to go back to meet them in about an hour, and then do something with Keith tomorrow. Drunk Ian is on a bender but thinks he wants to go to Gdansk with me. But I am pretty sure I do not want to go to Gdansk with Ian! I have never seen one person drink so much vodka.

when i went to a pierogy place for dinner i ran into the same Serbian couple i had breakfasted with this morning so we had dinner together as well. Polish food is great so far. Cabbage with sausage and of course pierogies. Perogy perogy perogy. I could eat them all day. Probably will.

christmas day as a backpacker?

2006-12-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

carrie wants to know about backpacker christmas? as you know i am not the most christmasy of individuals so for me it wasn't especially exciting...normally in my family we celebrate on the 24th anyway so i can tell you about both action-packed days...

xmas eve - up pre-dawn to attend Catholic Mass. the point of this was to hear the Vienna Boy's Choir who perform at this particular mass every sunday. i was near the front of the standing room line which is free so i was basically standing in the middle of the chapel which was awesome. near the end the boys came down to sing a few carols. a couple were so tiny!
then...i went out for chocolate cake and hot chocolate with a couple of australian girls i met in line, then went back to the hostel to eat lunch. spent a couple of hours talking with an american guy who kept talking about how places like Spain didn't jibe with his 'culture'. Huh? After a while i figured out that he was some sort of evangelical christian. we went for a walk to the christmas market at the town hall where i tried to take photos of the very cool lights in the trees, mostly unsuccessfully. then i went back to the hostel and ate pasta and went to bed early (only 5 hours of sleep the night before).

xmas day - um...i don't know what i did actually. oh, i had breakfast and then went to the ballet. then went to a cafe for more hot chocolate and apple strudel, then called my parents, then went back to the hostel and...went to sleep.
exciting stuff!

scene from the glamorous life of a backpacker

2006-12-27T22:23:00.000-05:00

it is 4:30 a.m and i have just arrived in krakow after 7 hours on a bus. walked into the hostel to find a girl asleep on the couch and one guy passed out standing up at the reception counter. i woke up the guy but he doesn't seem to work here. then another drunk guy came in. then we found some sober people and they said the girl on the couch works here.
i shook her for a while but she only snored louder.
now both drunk guys are behind the reception counter raiding for goodies. i don't think they are even speaking the same language to each other.

this place is fucked. i will try again to wake the girl up now. stay tuned!

UPDATE:
Paul the drunk Dutch guy and i managed to briefly wake the girl up, but when I asked her if she works here she said NO and went back to sleep.
then Paul gave me a beer.
then a cop came in. but he didn't speak any english or dutch or french. so he just looked around. then left.

now the girl has a phone call and Paul is trying again to wake her...

black peter (a bit late...)

2006-12-16T13:07:00.000-05:00

so I must talk about Sinterklaas and Swarte Piet, although they have come and gone already this year. in Belgium and the Netherlands there is a tradition that Sinterklaas (and Sint is the real deal, the inspiration for our Santa Claus) comes to town sometime in November - he sails in from Spain - and then distributes presents on Dec. 5 or 6 (depending on the country). He is accompanied by his 'helpers', Swarte Pieten (Black Peters). See the wikipedia entry for more information.
Anyway, even before Sinterklaas arrived I was noticing these strange decorations and advertisements that featured what appeared to be people in blackface! Woah! I didn't know much about the tradition here and so someone had to explain it all to me. All right, I guess...but it was still really weird and not a little uncomfortable for this white north american to attend the Sinterklaas parade in Amsterdam and see armies of mostly white people running around painted black.

But at least I knew what was going on.
Back at the hostel I listened in as some very stoned young (white) Americans tried to figure out what the hell they had just witnessed and they tried to explain it to someone who hadn't seen it.
"...and it's like...these little kids are like, painted, like, black!"
"Oh my god!"
"yeah! and they're like, with their like parents and everything! and it's so..."
"oh, weird!"
"...and they're like wearing these like little outfits, and like hats and stuff. they're like Shakespearean or something..."
"wow...it's so like...weeeeeird...."
"um...what are you guys talking about? I wasn't listening..."

the conversation lasted for like, an hour.

"red light" = very popular

2006-12-12T09:05:00.000-05:00

hilariously (or pathetically), this photo which has been tagged and titled with the words "red light district" has been viewed more times in the past 5 days than most of my other photos combined.

I'm thinking of putting "hooker boobies" in the tags of all my photos from now on. Is that cheating?

quietness

2006-12-09T13:18:00.000-05:00

december 9 already? how?
right now in antwerp, recovering from a week long bout of...something...food poisoning? flu? who knows, but it kept tricking me into thinking i was better and eating things and then making it worse. i think it was from eating a couple of unwashed grapes at a grocer's in the netherlands, the guy wanted me to try them so i could choose which kind i liked best. bad idea. anyway i am very familiar with my bed here in antwerp.

it's too bad too because Shannon introduced me to her friend Ken who introduced me to his friend Nathalie and they are both very cool, taking me out for a really nice dinner on my first night, which I couldn't really eat being already sick and all. I also got a tour of the antwerp red light district which is quite impressive.

it's been a quiet month. i read a massive and incredible book (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West) which has inspired me to get down to the Balkans asap.

spent a total of two weeks crashing with Frederico in Eindhoven ("probably the least interesting city in the netherlands"...well I wouldn't agree with that, it's a nice livable place with a good museum), went to see Misia, a fado singer - too bad i can't understand Portuguese. i like fado a lot but i get the impression that it's about 50 times better if you know what they're saying. we went to see Babel one night and didn't realize till it started that the film was in Berber, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese and English with Dutch subtitles. perhaps an appropriate way to see that particular movie.

visited Rotterdam and hung out with the Saddest Australian in the World (dutch girl, heartbreak, you know the story)...the hague...

amsterdam was agonizingly and unexpectedly sordid and teeming with shitfaced losers. i arrived on the eve of a football match involving a british team which is never the best time to arrive in a city. walking down the Damrak in the middle of the day felt creepy and gross. maybe i'm just bitter because i couldn't get into any fun hostels (even in low season, you need to book ahead unless you want to stay someplace crappy in the red light district). wandered into the red light district once in the middle of the day and didn't feel comfortable - a man leered at me and said something dirty in dutch. funny how you don't have to be able to speak the language to understand that particular sentiment.
not to completely slam amsterdam, it was also very beautiful and i had some nice times there. just too bad about all the tourists.

in a used bookstore i finally found some books I have been searching for for months. i must have looked in every new and used bookstore and charity shop in the UK, only to find them in amsterdam. happy day.

that's about all. how are you?

new photos

2006-11-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

finally uploaded new photos from Iceland, Denmark and the Netherlands.

more photos on flickr.

the decline and decline and decline of the american empire

2006-11-13T13:08:00.000-05:00

oh my god...i am sitting in this hostel where MTV's my super sweet sixteen or whatever is on tv right now. if this spoiled bitch Ava was my kid I would shoot myself. sweet christ.
this programme makes me want to punch things in the face. and I was all peaced out today too. screw you MTV, I hate you and your stupid squealing bullshit.

I think it is extra offensive right now because I just had 10 or so days of wonderful TV-free peace and quiet and conversation and food and music and port and Icelandic liquor at a friend's place...and now I am in beautiful Utrecht in a hostel where the tv dominates the lounge thus forcing me to endure MTV and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. but i will put up with a lot in order to use free internet.

on the upside, Utrecht is really very beautiful, canals and bricks and armies of cyclists. they really know how to do cycling as a form of transport in this country (in Denmark too). there are proper lanes (that people actually don't seem to use as a parking space), even bike specific traffic lights. And even though they sell helmets in the stores, I have not seen a single person wearing one.

copenhagen i love you

2006-10-31T12:01:00.000-05:00

My last two days in Reykjavik involved drinking way too much beer (trying to keep up with Frenchmen), finding a whole brand new still sealed 1 litre bottle of vodka in my room (nobody knew where it came from so it´s mine now! that´s worth about 70 bucks in iceland), and not sleeping at all the last night.

I also got to sample the delights of the Nordica Hotel, courtesy of Monique, which after the Salvation Army dive was like nirvana....spas and massages and big clean bathrooms.

Then Monique and I flew to Copenhagen and into yet another fabulous hotel, the Hotel Skt. Petri which has the BEST beds and extra-nabbable products. Monique was here for about five days during which we changed hotels a couple times (including the D'Angleterre which has a sort of faded grandeur thing going on), drank a lot of beer, were treated to Mexican food by some random guys (just when I was craving Mexican too), did a tour of various castles, walked past Pink on the street (I swear it was her, she was playing a show here that night) and saw Sweden. We didn´t go to Sweden but we saw it from across the water at the castle at Helsingør (aka Shakespeare´s Elsinore from Hamlet).

Now she's gone and I'm back at a youth hostel where I belong...sleeping in and walking around this gorgeous city and buying hot new Camper boots because my running shoes were so busted they were making one of my toes go numb. It would be stupid to let one of my toes fall off just for the sake of economy.

Copenhagen is not really what I expected...I am not sure what I expected but it's much more beautiful; filled with spires and canals and bridges.

I have to say I am not as enamored of Christiania as I had thought I would be. I went there twice - once in the evening with Monique and once during the day by myself. In the evening it was fine and we hung out and had a beer and wandered around. That is it was fine till it got dark. We were mostly on and around Pusher Street where there were no streetlights and a lot of dudes hanging around fires in barrels. At one point we just both looked at each other and said "I think we should leave now."
I went back a few days later in the middle of the afternoon. Again I was mostly on Pusher Street so maybe other areas are less creepy but I have a serious problem with any place that has a 30:1 male to female ratio. I especially hate looking around and realizing I am the only female person in eyeshot. There was a big squad of police roaming around but that really didn't help the atmosphere. Lots of dogs too. Big aggressive dogs off leash.
I don´t know - maybe if I knew my way around a bit more I would like the place better, but it all just felt really furtive and sad, for all the bright paintings and murals. It's no Kensington Market.

"oh my god. oh my god!"

2006-10-22T13:10:00.000-04:00

that is what you would have heard me screaming last night (this morning?) at approx 2:30 when I ran into Monique, my roomate from french school in Villefranche, in the middle of Laugavegar street in Reykjavik. I had no idea she was there, she had no idea I was there, yet there we were. I had already found and been separated from several groups of "instant friends" that night so why not one more? So off we went to some extra swank bar (a far cry from the dives I have been frequenting of late!) till about 3:30 and then Monique and co. went to bed and Jose (another instant hostel friend) and I went off and found some other friends in the lineup for a much smaller sweatier dingier place. Dancing till 6 a.m. - it's even crazier than Barcelona!
Even more amazing - we're on the same flight Tuesday morning to Copenhagen and since Monique is there for work, I get to crash in a sweet sweet hotel room and tag along as she investigates the best food, clubs, and activites that Copenhagen has to offer. I have a lot to learn from this woman.

Airwaves has been freaking incredible...I've seen 30 shows in 4 days and there are a few more tonight yet..including Patrick Watson who is playing his ass off at this festival. Highlights were We Are Scientists, Datarock, The Whitest Boy Alive, Islands (I only saw their in-store performance and decided to see another band, 120 Days instead of their full show at the Art Museum...a decision I have come to regret since even though 120 Days was pretty good, I suspect that Islands show was transcendental. It was later described to me as "the best thing I have ever seen in my life". damn), Brazilian Girls...the list goes on and on and on.
God I've missed music.

James and Robyn, this is for you.

2006-10-09T20:23:00.000-04:00

In honour of Robyn's upcoming birthday (and for James just because he mentioned it earlier)...I ate it. I ate Hakarl.

I ate putrid rotting shark meat. Actually it wasn't as bad as I had feared. Although it was pretty damn bad.

Evidence, and dozens of newly uploaded Iceland photos, can be found here on Flickr.

rock in reykjavik

2006-10-09T19:06:00.000-04:00

i don't think I have seen a real concert since I left home (aside from some dubious performances in Barcelona...), so it´s pretty exciting that I will be attending this:
Iceland Airwaves from Oct 18 to 22nd. Well, exciting for me anyway.

This means I get a week or so to relax and chill and then about 5 days of unapologetic rocking out, $10 beers be damned.

I have been taking a rather 'what happens in iceland, stays in iceland' approach to food and vegetarianism. sort of like my previous 'what happens in france/spain/morocco...' experiences. I'm pleased to report that Icelandic hot dogs are freaking delicious. Apparently they are made with lamb.
They are even better when rolled in bacon, deep fried, and then covered in cheese and crispy fried onions.

iceland: fog, skyr, and amorous horses

2006-10-03T08:07:00.000-04:00

we have been driving around iceland for about 11 days...for six of them there was no sunlight at all, only fog. also, a horse tried to have sex with our car (while three others tried to eat the paint off it).

we left Reykjavik on Friday with our little green car, Thor (or þor, if you want to get technical about it) and started around the island clockwise.
Two days on the Snaefellsnes peninsula (home to the access point for the centre of the earth - read Jules Verne if you don´t believe me), then up through the Vatsnes peninsula and over to Sauðarkrokur, home of slightly creepy men, excellent farmstays well out of town and away from the crepy men, and exceptional librarians. When I logged in and found some information about my great-grandparents in an email from home, along with the name of the wife of a distant relative who lives nearby, the librarians got in gear, calling up people in the phone book ("we're not going to give up until we have his phone number!" she said to me), looking at the list of farms where my great and great-great grandparents were born and telling me which ones are abandoned, which are now inhabited by people she knows...apparently one, where my great-grandmother's mother was born, is now abandoned but was a location used in filming ain Icelandic crime movie last year, Kalda Sloð.
Then she called the Emigration Centre is Hofsos (Hot Sauce!) and got the guy to open up for us even though it is closed for the season.

He was nice and let us in for free even, looked through the database and told me that I could probably knock on doors throughout the country and announce myself as a relation. He even called a guy he knows, who is my...i don´t know, like eighth cousin 3 times removed...and jokingly told him that we were showing up on his doorstep to stay for a couple of weeks. Unfortunatly he lived in the opposite direction of the one we were going in and we didn´t have time to see him or the relations in Varmahlið either.

We spent a day in Akureyri and then two in Reykjalið at Lake Myvatn where we did driving lessons on top of volcanos, watched pools of boiling mud, and swam outside in a hot pool at night.

On the way to Kopasker we stopped in Husavik which we soon discovered is the new-ish home of the Icelandic Phallological Museum - actually it´s been there for a couple of years but our guide book is old. If you're on the verge of looking Phallological up in the dictionary, don't bother...yes it is indeed a Penis Museum.
The museum was closed for the season but as we could hear someone in the basement we knocked on the window and hoped for the best ("willy answer the door?" - credit has to go to Jessica for that one).
He let us in and we took in the sight of dozens of animal penises - whales (enormous and terrifying) to mice (hee!). Also displayed with pride and anticipation are agreements from four men who will donate their genitals to the museum upon passing (and possibly even before in one case!). Each contract is displayed alongside images and artifacts relating to the member in question, these range from photos to plaster casts to silicone. The silcone is ELMO, who is quite a specimen indeed. I took a photo (which I will not display here) and it makes us giggle every time we see it, like two old ladies at a Chippendales show. Apparently if you go to the right sort of store you can buy your very own silicone Elmo, he´s that famous.

Amusingly the Husavik church sports an extremely penis-like doorknob, however we were unable to determine whether the two institutions were in collaboration on that one.

We went to an amazing enormous horseshoe shaped canyon called Asbyrgi (legend has it that this is where Odin's horse accidentally touched ground once) and were the only people there, wandering around this gorgeous silent place filled with trees in full autumn colour. Legend also has it that this is a haven of the Hidden People as well but they were, well, hidden to us.

Beautiful waterfalls (the biggest have names like Dettifoss and Sellfoss and Hafragilsfoss...can you guess what FOSS means?) but we drive past dozens of smaller and maybe even more beautiful waterfalls every day, just spilling down over the mountains behind farms and in the middle of nowhere.

We drove around the northernmost point of Iceland, a couple of km from the arctic circle, went to the visitor's centre for an enormous dam that is being built and has just started to be filled a couple of days ago (there have been lots of ongoing protests but it looks like there's no going back now) - we couldn't get in to see the dam itself though as it's on a 4x4 track and our insurance won't cover it. All the good stuff is on 4x4 tracks. I must come back here in the summer time.

On the shores of the apparently monster infested Lögurinn lake we visited Iceland's cute little 'forest'...actually it´s quite nice. Nestled within is Iceland's oldest tree. It has been named GUTTORMSLUNDER. It was planted in.... 1938. It is about 20m high and when I saw it I accidentally yelled "you mean that's it?". Sorry Guttormslunder...

In Stöðvarfjördur we spent the night in the cutest little converted church imaginable, what a great place to stay. Visited one of the world's largest mineral collections and bought some shiny rocks to carry around with us.

Last night we stayed in Höfn and spent about 3 hours swimming outside again in the heated pool. Towns in Canada should do this too - even when it's 3 degrees outside, as long as the pool is warm it is very comfortable.

We have finally reached glacier country, I don´t know if we will actually go onto it today but we can see it which is pretty cool. This is the third biggest icecap in the world after Antarctica and Greenland.

Okay, I know, what you really want to know about is Þor and the horses right?
We stopped at the edge of a field one day to take some photos of some beautiful Icelandic Horses, not noticing that they were not fenced in...we rolled down the windows and the horses came right over and soon our car was surrounded - they must be used to tourists with free food.
Unfortunately we didn´t have any food so since the windows were still down the horses started trying to get IN the car. Then we noticed that all the horses were licking the windows and the trunk, a couple at the front were gnawing on the headlights, and one resourceful filly had located the rear door handle and was rubbing her backside against it. And she wasn´t scratching anything, folks. It took several beeps of the horn and finally just starting to move the car slowly to get free. We still haven´t washed the car and you can see horse tongue marks all over it.

Poor Þor, we haven´t been treating him that well...driving over a road that was only about halfway constructed we started to notice a scraping sound coming from the right wheel well. We had to stop at the nearest mechanics shop where Gunnar extracted a tiny stone and identified the source of our troubles.
We christened the stone Elmo.

It's strange but a lot of the people we've been meeting remind me a little of Grandpa - quiet men who have his voice and way of speaking. It makes me miss him and I wish I could send him a postcard and a bucket of fresh Skyr.

photos have been uploaded to flickr. see here for scotland photos. it´s too expensive right now to get the iceland ones posted.

congratulations!

2006-09-30T22:40:00.000-04:00

so it took some clever sleuthing but I can finally say

congratulations neena and chad!

send me a picture! i want to see this beautiful new addition to the world.

love
a

london love

2006-09-19T18:34:00.000-04:00

ahhhh...i am so rejuvenated.
Shabnam (from the famous Spain road trip adventure) just happens to be in London right now so when I arrived I found an email inviting me to come and hang out and stay at her cousin's place. just fabulous, after 6 weeks or so of wandering around it was so great to see someone I know and eat a delicious and incredibly well presented home cooked meal with warm and wonderful and welcoming people. thanks nanaz and eric and raphaelle!
plus Shabby and I have been going through some of the same things lately and it was really good to be able to talk to someone I can relate to on this. I feel much better now.
so we hung out for a couple of days and just wandered the city, slept late, had long discussions over beers in pubs, and then I got on a train and came out to Stowmarket to spend the day with Jane and her family. Also wonderful and warm and welcoming (her dad printed me out a map of Iceland!).
There are some strange things swirling around like how I was magically presented with 10 pounds by an Underground ticket machine (I tried to yell for the guy whose change it was to come back but he didn't hear so I just gave it to an attendant), and then how I missed my train today and had to sneak onto the next train which technically I wasn't allowed to be on with my 'cheap' ticket, but the ticket guy didn't even say a word, like how I accidentally came away from the chocolate shop with two bonus bags of chocolates instead of one...

Iceland is going to be expensive and the conversion from ISK to $ is going to be a tough one to do in my head (63 to 1) so I guess what it means is that I should just not bother with conversions at all.

Tomorrow Jane will drive me to the airport and then I'm off to (one of) the ancestral homeland. Jessica whom I met in Inverness might be renting a car so our tentative plan is to drive around the country.

ouch (body and bank account)

2006-09-17T06:55:00.000-04:00

Manchester is all a blur, as my night out with Joey involved several gin and tonics too many and the next day was spent on the hostel couch trying not to move. As a consequence I know nothing about Manchester other than where all the good gay bars are.
We were sitting in one place when we were approached by drunk Mancunian Martin.
"What's your name?"
"Maaaaaaa!"
"What?"
"Maaaaaaaa aaah!"
"What is he saying?"
"It's Maaarhaaan!"
It was sort of entertaining trying to figure out what he was saying all night. But not really.

Bizarrely I get hit on more (by men) at gay clubs than at ostensibly straight ones. I suppose it helps to be one of the only straight females in the place.

Then I came to Bath which I love, it's beautiful and loaded with things to do. Everything is very expensive. The Roman Baths are interesting and of course I had to have the traditional tea at the Pump Room, it's the aging bookish spinsterly thing to do. Pricey but tasty (clotted cream! Where have you been all my life!?!?), I couldn't eat again for the rest of the day. I also drank the water (the natural mineral hot spring water) which is served up by a strange man in period livery. He was impressed that I drank the whole glass, apparently nobody ever gets through it all. It is pretty vile but there are something like 43 minerals in that water. In retrospect it tasted a little like Leslie tap water.

Unfortunately I cannot recommend the Jane Austen Centre which doesn't have a lot going on other than an "exclusive" video featuring Amanda Root (from the movie version of Persuasion), which features Ms. Root wandering pensively around the Assembly Rooms. Because I'm a nerd I already knew everything they were talking about and at 6 quid to get in, it's too much.

Yesterday I did a tour of Stonehenge/Avebury/Silbury Hill/Lacock (where some Harry Potter and new Pride and Prejudice stuff was apparently filmed)/Castle Combe. I've never done a day tour like that before (a horror of those enormous coaches that pull up and disgorge a wave of tourists at the 'attractions') however this one was really good and I saw much more than I would have on my own in my limited time. It was a Mad Max tour if anyone is looking for something similar, only 16 people in the van too so you feel like less of a jerk.
At Avebury our guide Keith handed out a couple sets of dowsing rods, as Avebury seems to lie on a 'ley line' (invisible energy line). I was the recipient of the first set of rods, along with another man, and we were instructed to walk toward a large stone. Oh the pressure! We wandered around for a couple of minutes with nothing happening and then one of his rods swung off to the right. Nothing had happened with my rods yet and as I walked toward the other man a skeptical American woman jeered "You must have bad karma!" Oh shut up.
Anyway as soon as I passed over the same spot as the other man, sure enough my rods swung around. It was pretty cool, they just moved in my hands with no interference from me, and according to Keith there is no water or electricity line in that spot. We passed the rods on and it worked for most of the other people as well.

Somewhere between Manchester and Bath something happened to my left shoulder, something like a pinched nerve, I don't know, which means that when I breathe deeply or move in certain seemingly random ways or try to sleep I find myself in excruciating pain. This is very bad considering I live out of an enormous freaking backpack. I'm going to London this afternoon and hopefully will be able to find a doctor. Painkillers don't seem to be working (although I haven't tried the ones with codeine yet...).

random bits

2006-09-12T15:33:00.000-04:00

on Lewis I took the bus one day out to see various sights like Callanish and the blackhouses at Garenin and the broch at Dun Carloway. Sitting with an hour to kill in a very rural bus stop - I wasn't even sure the bus was going to pass by there, just living off hope really - a woman and her little boy wandered by.
"Hello hello!!" the boy shouted at me...I had passed them earlier and he had given me a dried up seedy flower so we were now on quite intimate terms. He ran into the shelter and jumped on my lap while I chatted to his mum. Boring boring for little boys so to get our attention he ran around the sides of the shelter, licking the windows. I didn't find out till later that "windowlicker" is a really really rude thing to say to someone in Scotland, so it'a a good thing I didn't say "Your son is a real windowlicker!" to this poor woman.
He wanted me to come home with them but when I said I had to wait for the bus he settled for making piles of earthworms on my shoes. After a few minutes a car pulled up, it was a woman who knew the woman I was talking to. A few minutes more and I had somehow been offered a ride back into Stornoway with this new woman and her very amusing boy, Alex aged 4. Alex didn't have any worms but we got along just fine anyway.

After the Callanish debacle I went down to Tarbert on the Isle of Harris (which is actually connected to the Isle of Lewis...shh...don't tell anyone, I'm not sure they know). If Harris sounds familiar to you, think tweed...Harris Tweed. Given my unholy lust for all things tweed it's quite lucky I managed to get away from there without buying a whole new outfit. However the stylings on offer in the shops ran more toward the Stout Matron side of the spectrum, while I was looking for Naughty Librarian clothes. I do however have a small new tweed wallet which I fondle with great happiness.

From Harris to Skye, two days in Portree which seem to have been completely uneventful because I can't remember anything about them. Then a day in Kyleakin and Kyle of Lochalsh, where I spent the evening trapped in conversation (only one small lounge and an Italian couple getting it on in my dorm) with the lamest Australian I have ever met. A homophobic jackass who looked like Benny Hill, he put that idiot Said to shame (see Said's story here). Within 45 minutes: "have you ever kissed a girl?" "have you ever had sex in a hostel?".
I even told him the Said story laced with all of the sarcasm and irony I could muster but he wasn't getting it. Poor stupid fool.

Next morning a bus to Inverness with the intention of going out to Speyside to check out the distilleries, however by the time I got there it was really too late, and there was no accommodation east of Inverness anyway. Snap decision time - get on the next train south and get the hell out of Scotland.
It wasn't till a couple days later that I slapped myself on the forehead...dammit! I went to Scotland and forgot to eat Haggis!? Even after I've been told that vegetarian Haggis is really really good? Grrrr. Add the fact that I didn't eat a deep fried Mars bar either. I am ashamed of myself. At least I drank a little scotch.

So I ended up in Penrith at the edge of the Lake District, in the fleabaggiest hotel room above a bar. At least there was a tv. And the shower was hot.

Then to Windermere and Ambleside in the midst of the best weather I've seen in weeks, clear and sunny and actually HOT. The scenery is spectacular as well, or at least it would be if the place weren't lousy with tourists (yeah I know I am one of them). Tourists tourists every where, roads filled with cars, lakesides covered with shops and marinas. The hostel in Ambleside was great though, a huge old place with giant lounge and dining room, and the nicest Melmac plates I have ever seen.

Today I arrived in Manchester where I met up with Joey from Valencia who is working here now. Tonight is going to be good.

communing with the rain

2006-09-07T06:43:00.000-04:00

I really went to the isle of Lewis to see this (photo borrowed from here:
)

The standing stones at Callanish / Calanais. I went out Thursday morning and was suitably impressed, wandered around...browsing some of the literature in the shop I learn that one of the theories as to its existence is that is was built to track various lunar phenomena, such as the 'lunar standstill' which occurs every 18.6 years.
Later that day I heard something about some 'lunar event' happening maybe next week at the stones, and resolved to find out what it was.

The tourist office gave me a number. On Saturday afternoon, as I was about to get on a bus to leave the area, I called the number. A sleepy sounding old man answered the phone...I had no idea what to ask for and he was not particularly forthcoming. "Is something happening at the stones with the moon next week? Is it the full moon?"

"Nothing happens with the full moon. "
long pause.
"But the standstill is tonight."

Okay! Getting more information was like pulling teeth however I was able to learn that
a) all B&Bs in the area were full for the weekend
b) there is no organized expedition from Stornoway to get there
c) the last bus on Saturday leaves around 6 p.m., and there are no more buses until Monday morning.

In that case the obvious solution is to buy a tent and camp out at the stones. I mean really, if I just happen to be in a place where something rare is happening it is my duty to go and check it out, right?

In retrospect this was a somewhat stupid idea though it seemed like a good one at the time.

On the bus on the way out there I had visions of a grand pagan gathering full of entertaining crystal people. What I found was one old gnarly guy in a tent, a couple of caravans, and a handful of people in rainproof clothes hanging about with cameras. Oh well.

I set up my tent and wandered over to the onlookers. It was about 6:45 and the sun was getting low. There were differing opinions on when the moonrise actually was. I started talking to Guy and Les from England who gave me chocolate and we shivered and stared off in a southerly direction. Pointless really as the horizon was completely obscured by clouds - the wind was blowing hard and although when I had arrived the weather had seemed promising it became pretty obvious that nobody was going to be seeing the moon. This was cemented with the arrival of rain, and I retreated to my tent to read a book and eat cake.

I tried to sleep after a while but rain (which sounded like hail) and wind and unbearable coldness of the ground make it all not so fun. I'm talking insane rain. Diluvian rain. This is the last time I go camping without a mat.

Everything became worthwhile however at around 4:30 a.m. when I crept outside to pee in the bushes - the rain had stopped, there was a big clear spot in the sky and every single star that there is was there to be looked at. The brightest sky I have seen in my life, with stars like chips of ice and close enough to touch.

The next night was a little more exciting...not as many people but Les and Guy came back, this time with a largeish bottle of Scotch! Clever boys. We stood around and drank (PURELY MEDICINAL) with a woman who had driven all the way from London the previous day. As the scotch took effect we sat at the base of one of the stones and willed the clouds to part. The weather was slightly better and we could actually see the glow of the moon behind the clouds. A couple of times a silvery edge was revealed and I must tell you, I have never seen people more excited about the moon in my life. It was like the dolphin sighting on the ferry from Ullapool to Stornoway - a cheer goes up, people scramble for cameras, grown men giggle and tear down the decks in order to see the school as it passes.

However those glimpses were brief and as fun as it was to stand around in the pitch dark drizzle staring at clouds, I went to bed.

Currently in Portree on the Isle of Skye, still trying to catch up on sleep (and having the weirdest dreams in the process) but happily I did not get a cold.

Other recent adventures involve falling in a bog, and a long philosophical discussion with a group of complete strangers in a hostel covering everything from serial killers to feminism to archaeology and the nature of the universe. I couldn't believe we weren't stoned.

ooh look! two posts in one day!

2006-08-28T14:50:00.000-04:00

how terribly extravagant! the reason for this is that my new hostel in Ullapool (West House - go there) offers ONE HOUR OF INTERNET FOR ONE POUND. This is surely the best damn deal in the UK. I am way too excited.

Ullapool is possibly one of the best smelling places I have ever been to. It smells of fresh air and cut grass and the sea. There's not a whole lot going on here but it's enough just to walk around and smell things. The only place that might be on par is Soller on Mallorca, which smells like orange blossoms.

8 free minutes

2006-08-28T06:32:00.000-04:00

i have 8 free internet minutes left on this library computer. what can I write in 15 minutes.

i've been in the highlands for a week or two now, first Fort William where I climbed halfway up the highest mountain (in the UK?) Ben Nevis. Gorgeous, and I was impressed with myself since I really only set out for the base.
The hostel there was cool and I chatted with an amusingly flirtatious Texan. Imagine someone saying this to you in a heavy heavy Texas accent:
"hey...y'all are kinda cross-eyed....hey that's kind of cute..."
Awwww.

Then Loch Ness where I do have to admit I was hoping to yes, see the monster. Maybe I would be lucky! Happy that other people have since admitted the same ambition to me, I feel less stupid. Needless to say I did not see the Loch Ness Monster. There was a promising rise in the water at one point but it was just a wave.

Then up to Carbisdale Castle which is rumoured to be haunted and is now a giant youth hostel. I didn't see any ghosts though something or someone blew on my leg one night as I was trying to go to sleep. That couldn't have been a dream, could it?
The castle environment was strange...on my last night I walked up into the ballroom to see an old man squeezing out Auld Lang Syne on an accordian (which of course makes one think of Raju) and a couple of scottish girls teaching german teenagers how to highland dance. Imagine an enormous blond german boy wearing a kilt and spinning around and you'll get the idea.

3 minutes left.
currently in Inverness, been here for three days and it's nice but I'm headed for Ullapool and then the Outer Hebrides in about 2 hours.

Must go, sorry about the lack of photos (it is really stunning here too) but it is too too expensive to upload.

anybody wanna come to Reykjavik?

2006-08-20T14:05:00.000-04:00

I just bought a ticket to fly from London to Reykjavik for £36. That's around 80 or 90 dollars. September 20....come on. You know you want to.

feel your bat boy

2006-08-17T09:29:00.000-04:00

I finally fulfilled a lifelong ambition and saw Bat Boy: The Musical which was highly entertaining (hold your bat boy! feel your bat boy!)...props to Bat Boy himself who was really cute in spite of the teeth and ears.
On the way to see the batshow I think I became part of some lame performance art or candid camera show...I was taking photos of a fire spinner when this lardy middle aged guy approached me and started talking about my camera, and then started fiddling with my camera, and then started talking about his admiration for George W., and sorrow that a ceasefire had been called in Lebanon because, after all "they're only Muslims" at which point I muttered "fuck off" involuntarily and left. He was talking like Sean Cullen which is why I think it was fake.

I went to see this Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht opera thing one night...an actor was playing Brecht. I was too cheap to shill out for a programme but as soon as he started talking I was like..."is that Don McKellar? that sounds like Don McKellar...that kind of looks like Don McKellar..." This bothered me throughout the performance until I was able to look over someone's shoulder and determine that yes indeed it was the star of Highway 61. Funny.

Walking through Edinburgh's High Street during the festival is all about pushing through an enormous crowd of tourists and performers, a sea of paper cuts from the endless flyers pushed in your face...a guy who looks like Cillian Murphy's ugly twin wanders along a queue asking, in the most exaggeratedly bored voice "would you like to hear about our play Bitches and Money? No? It's really rawther good...excuse me sir, would you like to hear about our play Bitches and Money? It's Reservoir Dogs set in the Victorian Era...No?".

One afternoon I got half price tickets to see Girl Blog from Iraq: Baghdad Burning which is a dramatization of the writing of Riverbend, a young woman writing from Baghdad. It covers from the early days of the occupation until right now (they update the play as she updates the blog) and it was incredibly affecting. Anyone who thinks the war was and continues to be a great idea should read her blog.

Speaking about the war, I also miraculously managed to get tickets to a forum called "Reporters in the Field" which was to feature Robert Fisk but who had to cancel his appearance because he's still in Lebanon, which is why I suspect I was able to get a ticket at the last minute. The other guests were Asne Seierstad who wrote The Bookseller of Kabul (which I read in french so I didn't quite get everything but regardless it was interesting), and George Packer who wrote The Assassin's Gate about his time in Iraq. He was asked about all this tiptoeing around the use of the phrase "civil war" in Iraq. He said that right now, in Iraq, it IS a civil war and any avoidance of the term is simply politicking and semantics. It was very interesting...in Iraq it seems a great deal of the 'reporting' is actually done by Iraqi stringers because western reporters are too afraid to go into many parts of Baghdad and the rest of the country to talk to people.

And then, because one cannot think about war all of the time, I went to watch other people dance.
One, called Knots is about marriage and ends with a stage covered in booze and fake blood.
The other, The Wild Party which was based on this poem and features a great live three piece jazz band...very very fun. Unfortunately the performance was at 12:30 in the afternoon. That's just wrong. You need time to get a little gin in you before you go see something like that. And irresponsible and frivolous as I may be, 12:30 is still too early for cocktails.

Finally, Jeanette Winterson was absolutely brilliant. I've never heard her read before and was amazed not only by the speed at which the words left her mouth but also the wide range of topics she was able to cover. It was like being inside someone's brain.

not a deep fried mars bar in sight

2006-08-14T16:23:00.000-04:00

Sorry Gegtik... I really haven't seen one yet. Believe me I am looking.
Edinburgh is in the middle of festival season, there is an Arts Festival, Fringe Festival, Book Festival, Film Festival...and I'm sure a variety of other things I'm forgetting about.
I plan to cover it from all angles starting tonight with BAT BOY THE MUSICAL which I will be seeing in about an hour. Woo hoo! Then we move the brow up a little with a couple of Weill/Brecht operas and then on Friday I'm going to a Jeanette Winterson reading....very happy I was able to get tickets for that.
Internet access is obscenely expensive here. Send an email so that it's at least worthwhile for me to log on. Ciao!

RED ALERT! RED ALERT! SITUATION CRITICAL! pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

2006-08-10T06:51:00.000-04:00

be afraid! be very afraid!

so the 'terror threat level' in the UK has been raised to CRITICAL following the discovery of an AIRLINES TERROR PLOT against flights originating in the UK.

this news is BIG BIG, however not apparently big enough to disrupt coverage of the European Women's 100 metre Hurdles Competition. At least on the channel the hostel television was tuned to. This is probably for the best as coverage of the TERROR PLOT (BBC's words, not mine) didn't start until the hurdles were hurdled by which time most of the breakfast crowd had already left the dining room. Unfortunately the news did leave one poor Spanish girl crying into her cell phone trying to figure out how she was going to get home.

don't worry about me though. I ride the bus.

glorious glasgow

2006-08-08T11:32:00.000-04:00

the sheer abundance of toilet paper is blowing my mind. for the first few days I had to stop myself from stealing a roll every time I went into a public washroom.

it's green here, and there's rain and tea and streets filled with cute boys who don't catcall. paradise.

goodbye essaouira

2006-08-03T15:52:00.000-04:00

so I'm flying tomorrow to London.
yesterday I said goodbye to Essaouira, where I've spent about 6 weeks and met a lot of people that I'm going to miss.

Originally I had planned to leave a couple of days ago, to go to Chefchaouen. Unfortunately I left all the planning to the last minute and then realized that Chefchaouen is at least 13 hours away from Essaouira, and I only had 4 days till my flight. So much for that.

In addition I met Sergio and Frederico, a couple of wicked Portuguese guys on the terrace of the hotel on what I THOUGHT was my second last night...we wound up partying our faces off for four nights in a row - in bars, in carpet shops, in tiny rooms above carpet shops (with Russians and mice), on the terrace - frequently losing the ability to speak properly somewhere along the way. I am going to miss them but my liver and lungs are probably better off.

That's the crappy thing about planning ahead though...here I was all pleased with myself for getting a cheap flight to london and arranging accommodations in Edinburgh during the festivals there. Then an opportunity presents itself to spontaneously ride off into the sunset (well, into Portugal anyway) with some cool people, and I can't take it!

So I had to say goodbye to them, and to the french girls, Lucie and Stephanie, who were always fun and improved my french a million times and made me laugh and showed me places in Essaouira I never knew about, and to Simo who invited me to the wedding and makes great kefta tagine.

And to Adil who works at the riad, my little Moroccan brother who taught me how to cook tagine and m'semmen (crepes) and zalouk, who gave me a surprise birthday present, and who never ever hit on me.

Also his brother Amine, the slightly older voice of reason in the more fucked up moments (such as the night we - Adil and Frederico and Sergio and I - realized we were out of booze but that some other guests had left a bottle of champagne in the fridge to cool...).

And finally to the craziest looking hotel I have ever seen, it was like living in Wonderland. I would show you a picture of the turtle but unfortunately he died. They buried him on the beach.

marriage, moroccan style

2006-08-02T14:48:00.000-04:00

so as mentioned I went to a wedding a few weeks ago...it was a fascinating if exhausting experience.
my friends Simo and Mohammed invited Lucie and Stephanie and I down to Agadir for their sister Fatima's wedding. Unfortunately Steph couldn't make it due to unforseen medical problems (i.e. morocco belly) but Lucie was able to come thank god.

Basically it was three solid days of eating, playing with children (who are fascinated by digital cameras), and having absolutely no clue as to what was going on.

My Arabic is limited to "hello, peace", "how are you", "eat", "delicious", "beautiful", "two", "okay", "bon appetit", "a little", "a lot", "thank you", "no", "yes", "what is your name", "bread", "water", "congratulations", "here, take this", and "thank you for the joint". i can also say "donkey" and "cow" in one of the Berber languages, which always gets a laugh.
It's amazing how well one can manage with this limited vocabulary, we spent the weekend in a house filled, no stuffed, with people who didn't speak french or english but who were extremely entertained by our proclamations of "yes! very delicious!" or "much beautiful!" etc etc. Actually the sisters did speak some french which made things much easier.

Friday: i am there with the family (lucie is coming up the next day) for a little party for the female family and friends. We all gather in the living room, someone taps out a rhythm with spoons on a tea tray, someone else plays a hand drum, several others sing and make a sound with their mouth and tongue whose name escapes me (I want to say ululate but maybe that is more of a grieving thing?). Anyway. You know. wah-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la! it's amazing.
The younger girls get up to dance, tying a scarf around their hips to emphasize the movements through their baggy clothes; as they dance some of the older women tuck 100 and 200 dirham bills into their collars or under the scarf. As they finish dancing and move to sit down they give the money back. Eventually the inevitable happens and I am pulled up to dance. Moroccan dancing involves a lot of complicated shoulder, foot, and booty moves in my eyes and I just know I wasn't pulling it off! However I found that as long as I moved my butt around fast enough everyone in the room would be hugely entertained and tell me I was a natural! The shoulder shimmy was a little tougher.
As it gets late and people start to leave I am shown to my sleeping space on the long end of the cushioned benches. It is incredibly hot and the room soon fills up with women and children sleeping on the floor or the cushions. People have a remarkable ability to fall asleep really almost anywhere.

Saturday: Lucie arrives and I am no longer the only person in the room without a clue. It's a great moment. In the afternoon, while Fatima is still at the beauty parlour having her hair and makeup done, the house starts to fill up.
The terrace has been covered for the occasion and will be the main room for all of the marriage festivities. Everyone sits on cushions on the floor and there seems to be a natural separation of men and women, men in the back hanging out and the women up front closer to the action.

Fatima arrives to great fanfare, looking beautiful in her crown and dress covered in gold. She sits in the front of the room, her bare feet are elevated and the henna artist starts to work.

As this goes on (it takes a while) more people arrive. More excitingly, the groom and his family and their gifts arrive. This includes a bunch of musicians and a live sheep that is destined to become tomorrow's feast (the sheep not the musicians). Everyone runs downstairs to greet the cart, to sing and dance and clap as the gifts are passed into the house.

We go back upstairs to drink tea and entertain small children with the digital camera until finally the henna is done.

While we wait for it to dry Lucie and I have our hands hennaed as well...it was several weeks ago but I still have very faint traces of colour on my palms.

Finally, the henna is washed off.
For a while now Lucie and I have been speculating as to the identity and location of the groom. There is a man seated beside Fatima but surely this guy, with his baseball cap and moustaches and dour expression cannot possibly be the groom. We decide he must be the groom's father. It's not until we see Fatima exchanging rings with the 'father' that we realize our mistake. Gaaa! But he looks so old and unhappy! Turns out he is really only a few years older than she is - younger than I am in fact - and seems to be a very nice guy.

After the rings are exchanged that's pretty much it for the day, the bride and groom have a little time together in private to talk, and then everyone goes home. Later that evening all the men come back and they have a big party upstairs for the guys.

Lucie and I hang out with the sheep.

Sunday: I wake up early in the morning to the brief bleat of a doomed sheep. Then I fall asleep again.

When we wake up for good we see the sheep's carcass lying on the stairs, waiting to be cooked.

In most homes here you wear your shoes only as far as the entrance to the first room, and then take them off and enter the room barefoot. There also seems to be a rather communal approach to shoes which meant that whenever I wanted to go anywhere I had to figure out who had taken my flip flops first (the problem with big feet is that everyone can wear your shoes but you can't wear anyone elses).

Once they are recovered, it's Kaftan Time! Adil from the hotel has lent me one of his sister's outfits but it turns out to be too heavy for the heat and the occasion. Loubna, one of the sisters, takes us to her aunt's place to find me a kaftan. This turns out to be quite possibly the loudest article of clothing I have ever worn, or will ever wear, in my life.

After several pots of tea and a hammam we rush back to the house in order to change and take our seats upstairs. The room is stifling and as we wait for things to start everyone is entertained by watching Lucie and I sit in the bride and groom's thrones with various family members.

It was funny because as the only non-Moroccans there we really stood out and were treated a little bit like special guests; sitting on the thrones, hanging out with Fatima while she waited for everyone to show up...earlier in the afternoon we sat in the darkened bedroom with all three sisters and some little cousins, watching as the guys set things up and as the band arrived. We sat in the dark so that we could watch and giggle over the arriving guys without being seen ourselves.

The evening went on as follows:
- the band starts playing, the younger girls start to dance in the middle of the room

- the bride and groom make their first entrance of the night

- we are brought downstairs to feast on roasted chicken and then on mutton tagine. I drop a prune on the kaftan (catastrophe!)

- we go back upstairs and Lucie and I find ourselves pulled up to dance, happily this is in a large group of people so our failings are hopefully disguised. I also find it difficult to dance while wearing a tent.

- the bride and groom make their second appearance, after a costume change

- more dancing. it becomes clear that several male guests have been nipping out for secret drinks. Mohammed is almost busted with a bottle of pastis but manages to hide it, and he and Lucie and I head out for the nearest dark alley to do some shots.

- the bride and groom make their third appearance...this time first one, and then the other, is hoisted into the air on a small decorated platform and moved around the room to cheering and applause. Fatima tosses out party favours and is nearly mobbed when the platform is set down.

- we get in a bunch of cars (and about 15 people pile into the back of a truck) to drive into Agadir and do a tour. As we attempt to leave the neighbourhood the bride and groom's decorated car is accosted by the local drunk and/or madman who blocks the road and shouts "i want to get married too!"

- as we drive around Agadire, Loubna (who is sitting beside me) throws up in her headscarf. another car overheats. The car bearing Mohammed seems to be lost.

- we head for a large parking lot where Fatima and Mohamed (her husband, not her brother) pose for more photos. We wait for Brother Mohammed to show up but he never does.

- we drive back to the groom's house where Fatima and her new husband sit on their bed in their bedroom (which has blue fun-fur wallpaper! I'm not kidding) while everyone comes in to say hello.

It's around this time that Simo explains to us the thing about the bedsheets. It's all in french but my understanding is that in a few hours the couple's bloodstained bedsheets will be displayed to us. I'm not sure how I feel about this...regardless Lucie and I spend the next day or so waiting to see this happen. It never does, and we're not sure whether we're relieved or disappointed.

- finally we drive back to the family home. On the way we pass the missing Mohammed heading off somewhere on a motorcycle. As he sees us pass he turns around and comes back to the house. Lucie and I are inside with about half of the family when all of a sudden all the people outside are screaming and yelling. My first thought is "oh god the very old grandmother has just died". I try to get out of the way as people stream outside to see what's going on. A woman thumps me on the chest with her hand and give me a look - I can't tell if it's saying "get the hell out of my way" or "what is going on?".

Lucie and I are still standing around as people start to come back in, girls and children are crying and looking frightened...then the father of the bride is carried in, unconscious but gasping for breath at the same time. He is laid down on a cushion while people attend to him...Lucie is a nurse so stands by to make sure everything is okay but I am useless and go outside to get out of the way while they bring him around.

We have no idea what is happening, everyone is crying or angry or yelling in Arabic. This is surely one of the more uncomfortable hours of my entire life. Lucie and I move into the empty living room (where one woman and one child have been sleeping on the floor throughout all of the excitement) and wait for what seems like forever for everything to die down so we can retrieve our bags and change into our sleeping clothes. Around 4 a.m. finally people start to go to sleep. Lucie ends up curled up on a piece of sheepskin on the floor. I am wedged into a corner with two pairs of feet in my face. It appears to me that we have worn out our welcome.

Monday: The instant we wake up Lucie and I plan to leave right away. We find out that the problem the night before had been a huge fight between the brothers.
Our escape is hampered by the disappearance, yet again, of my goddamn shoes.
Simo tells us to wait an hour or so for him and he will come with us.

One hour turns into seven as Lucie and I help clean up, then go to a cafe with Simo and one of the guys from the band - where the television is tuned to Al Jazeera's coverage of the Israeli bombings of Lebanon. The volume is high and everyone is watching. I feel very conspicuous and uncomfortable.

I am told, among other things, that September 11th was orchestrated by "The Jews" and the US Government - that there is documentary footage of all the Jews escaping from the World Trade Center shortly before the planes struck (although when pressed for specifics of this footage the topic quickly changes), that infact there were NO PLANES at all, blah blah blah. I try to refute this in french but cannot find the words.

We go back to the house where it is now time to deliver all of the gifts and Fatima's personal belongings over to her new home. Everyone gets dressed up again (except Lucie and I, who think we're going to be leaving town any minute), and the procession starts. Things are getting fun again and I'm glad to still be here.

All of the gifts and things have been arranged on the back of a couple of mule-drawn carts, everyone gets behind the carts with a couple of hand drums and some other percussion and we're off.

After a few minutes however we stop and a group of men build a small fire in the middle of the road. What? Turns out that their drum is not tight enough so they're just quickly using the heat from the fire to tighten it up.

Once the drum is deemed adequate we set off again and walk for about an hour and a half through the town to the house. Once again clapping and singing and chanting we we go. Lucie and I are getting good at clapping...it's a complicated beat that didn't seem natural to me at first.

When we arrive (and the bloodied bedsheets are NOT displayed to my simulateous delight and disappointment) everything is taken inside and we feast once more on chicken and mutton. Everyone is amused by my attempts to eat with my hands (cutlery is not used, everyone sits around a round table with a communal dish and dips into the food with bread held in the right hand). The dessert involves vermicelli noodles and I am having a lot of trouble actually getting it into my mouth.

Finally, FINALLY! Simo is really ready to leave for Essaouira. By the time we get back it's after 1 a.m. and I'm desperate for a bed. I'm so exhausted that for the next three days I barely speak to anyone.

It was a great experience but unbelievably intense. I would do it all over agin. How great for us, practically strangers, to be invited into the home during this crazy time for the family.

edinburgh, here I come

2006-07-27T14:21:00.000-04:00

anybody know anybody with couchspace in Edinburgh?
Just in case...I'm flying to London Aug 4, and then probably heading up to Scotland almost right away. I want to check out at least some of the Edinburgh Fringe festival which runs through August although I don't know exactly when I'll get there.

Updates on the crazy wedding I went to a couple of weeks ago will have to wait as I am suffering from the wickedest hangover this side of Spain. That's what you get for drinking Pernod all night with crazy French girls.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2006-07-20T17:52:00.000-04:00

BONJOUR STYLO BONJOUR PHOTO BONJOUR DIRHAM BONJOUR BONBON

2006-07-10T15:51:00.000-04:00

I was so happy that Phil wanted to go trekking because I don't think I would have done it otherwise.
We settled on spending a couple of days going out to./coming back from Jebel Toubkal, and then another three days walking between the towns of Imlil and Setti Fatma.

We decided to do it all without a guide which I think turned out to be a wise decision...at this time of the year the weather was great and we generally found that the paths were easy to find and navigate (aided by some maps and instructions in my Lonely Planet Morocco). Except for the thing with the trees on the second day where we accidentally went up into mountain goat territory and eventually found ourselves incapable of further progress and so had to climb down to the real path (amazing how the real path becomes more visible the further you are away from it sometimes). Well, Phil climbed down. I slid on my ass. A local dude came scampering across the loose rubble and supervised the end of this particular ordeal.

We were chased by terrifying children through a number of small villages. Children chanting
BONJOUR STYLO
BONJOUR DIRHAM
BONJOUR PHOTO
BONJOUR BONBON
as they chase at your heels, holding your hands.
In at least two different places we were followed for many many minutes and then even when they stopped following us they continued shouting hopefully yet plaintively, like we might, just might, turn around and deliver the goods
BONJOUR STYLO
BONJOUR DIRHAM
BONJOUR PHOTO
BONJOUR BONBON
for many many minutes more.

Oh how I want to kill the people who taught these kids these words.

In one place we were blockaded by women bearing large loads of prickly looking thistles on their back as they demanded chocolate.

One scary invisible crone shrieked something at us from a window when it looked like we were about to take the wrong path out of town.

One woman was bitterly disappointed when Phil did not give her his hat. I think she wanted his hat. I'm pretty sure we got the Evil Eye for that one.

That said it was always interesting and to be honest I would put up with a lot of shit to be able to walk through this:

Many more photos at Flickr

Finally thanks to Bénédicte and Phil for the Brumisateur, for a much needed dose of Normal (and also to Phil for not complaining about my slow uphill pace). Shukran!

how to baffle a mountain climber

2006-07-10T15:42:00.000-04:00

How to baffle and confuse mountain climbers, as well as pudgy American Arabists:
- Spend a day hiking up to about 3200m altitude to a refuge just around the corner from the highest mountain in North Africa (Jebel Toubkal). Take your time. Enjoy the scenery.

- Hang out at the refuge, talk about how you're not really all that interested in climbing to the tops of mountains just for the sake of it.

- While everyone else at the refuge leaves at 5 a.m. to do the ascent, sleep in until 8 a.m. and enjoy a leisurely breakfast outdoors. Watch people hobble back to the refuge after their ascents.

- Turn around and hike back down without climbing the mountain at all.

It is hilarious. Trust me.

Mustaph/fas of the world ain't nothing but trouble.

2006-07-10T14:59:00.000-04:00

turns out that Mustapha, after "borrowing" 100 dirhams (about 15 dollars) from me on the day I left - because he "really really needed to go back to the desert right away to work and he couldn't find his brother etc etc" which was such obvious bullshit I originally said "no way" but then felt bad in case, just in case, he was telling the truth...it's only $15 I told myself - stayed in Essaouira for the ramainder of the festival.

I was not amused to run into him on the streets of Marrakech shortly after Phil left. I've decided that he's (Mustapha, not Phil) quite definitely profoundly stupid, but it's a cunning sort of stupid if you know what I mean.

Mustapha seemed to have fogotten the lie he told me and greeted me like my best buddy, followed me around Jemaa el Fna for about an hour while I mostly ignored him, tried to find out where I was staying, promised to return my money...whatever. He did look a little worried when he found out I was going to be going back to Essaouira. I gave him the slip and haven't seen him since.

Back in Essaouira I discovered that Mustapha had told numerous people that I was his girlfriend of 5 years (oh HELL no, that would be like doing it with a retarded monkey and if you have ever seen Mustapha dance then you know what I mean), had tried to rip Adil off, had stayed for the entire festival, blah blah blah. One day when hanging out with Benedicte and Phil and Mohammed, Mohammed had done some shopping for Benedicte to try to get a good price for her, as opposed to the ripoff tourist price. Mohammed told me the other day that Mustapha expressed shock and surprise that Mohammed had been honest with Benedicte about the price he had paid for the items..."why don't you make some profit for yourself?".

I have now had a series of paranoid revelations such as:
- if Hassan stole the money then he and Mustapha probably split it, or it was Mustapha himself who really stole it when we were in the desert
- the thing with the police in Ouarzazate may have been fake
- one time at the Gnawa Festival I was in the crowd with Mustapha, someone grabbed my ass really quickly and immediately Mustapha collared a little kid that had been walking past and started yelling at him in Arabic. The kid looked really really confused...I now think it was Mustapha who grabbed my ass and then blamed it on someone else to create a situation where he was my "protector". Although I did get groped a couple other times that night when Mustapha was nowhere to be found.

One very frustrating thing is that people are often very very willing to pass on negative information about other acquaintances, but only after waiting for a while. Like Mohammed only telling me the thing about the shopping yesterday. Like Adil only telling me about being Mustapha's 'girlfriend' after I returned to Essaouira. They could have told me this weeks ago.

The worst example of this relates to NEWMustafa, yes yet another one, who I met on my first day back in Essaouira (Canada Day in fact) while I was waiting in a cafe, he seemed cool, not creepy, and after spending a week with Phil (where I discovered that travelling in Morocco with a big white guy is infinitely different than travelling here alone or with other women or with Moroccan men) I think I was just more open to trusting people.
So I met up with him and one of his friends the next day and we went to their riad and they made me a really tasty vegetarian tagine and salads and soup...the meal was great and everything was fine even though NewMustafa seemed disappointed that I didn't want to
a) drink beer
b) smoke hash
c) have a massage
d) dance
like a good tourist girl.

A couple of days later I'm talking to Adil (who runs my hotel) and he says "You know that Mustafa you were with the other day. Watch out. He is in trouble with the police for drugging some Chinese girls, they went to the police. I saw his photo at the station."

Okay, barring questions about why Adil was at the police station and why, if NewMustafa is a sex offender, is he also running a hotel...OH MY GOD! WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THIS RIGHT AWAY?

I get paranoid again and notice how NewMustafa had made certain dishes that he wouldn't eat because they were too 'acidic', how he never drank alcohol but kept offering it to me, etc.

At this point in the story I would like to day "Please calm down, Mom and Dad, I'm fine, I have not been drugged and/or ravished by anyone and it's going to stay that way."

So I avoided NewMustafa for a couple days, when I did run into him didn't accept any invitations to dinner, or to smoke, and he got really weird about how I was being uptight, liked to be alone too much, didn't like to party enough, not like the other tourist girls, I should be here to have a good time since I'm on vacation. I think now he has decided I'm not worth it and I don't think I will be receiving any more invitations to dinner thank god.

I don't know if that story about him is true but I do know that he is insecure and pushy and whiny and behaves like a child when he doesn't get what he wants. And that's enough.

mimi and leila

2006-07-10T13:33:00.000-04:00

i live in a pink and yellow and green riad (a small hotel in a traditional home) in Essaouira with Adil who runs the place, a variety of his brothers, other staff, various guests, and a small turtle named Mimi.

nobody can pronounce my name so they have christened me Leila.

one of the women who works at the riad has been really cool, she took me to the local hammam the other day where once again I scoured off several tablespoons worth of dead skin and is going to teach me how to make m'smma (this fantastic crepe).

in spite of my previous comments about the dorkiness of henna on tourists I have just been hennaed, for free courtesy of a friend of Adil's, and now have lovely temporary tattoos all over my hands.

i am learning some Arabic and might start taking lessons soon.

watched the World Cup final in an Italian bar filled with supporters for both teams. after the Italian victory I walked to the main square and passed the Essaouira Italian Victory Parade which consisted of about 7 very happy Italian people running around with a flag.

people keep feeding me tagine. delicious homemade tagine.

men keep trying to follow me home.
"just talking! I just want to talk! I'm not like the others!"
"i saw you at the cafe and wanted to talk to you"

there's also the classic "like my sister" line. When a dude tells me I'm like his sister is when the bullshit alarm goes off. Except Adil...I think he's actually all right, maybe a little overprotective but honest.

i can't remember the last time I washed my jeans. it may have been in Spain. that was in May. that was seven weeks ago. they look clean and they don't smell and that's the only thing that matters.

most days I get up, go out for breakfast (fresh orange juice, m'semma [the crepe] with loads of butter and honey, coffee or tea), get a newspaper, read a book. walk around, go to the patisserie to eat pastries and read, hang out at the cafe with Mohammed and Simo or at the riad with Adil and Amin or at the nearby organic vegetarian restaurant, La Triskalla (TOFU! For the first time in MONTHS!). Days go by fast when there's nothing to do but read and eat and speak broken french and smoke and drink tea. I can't believe it's already the 10th.

I am currently, right this very moment in fact, embroiled in an MSN conversation with Driss of Casablanca who I met in Essaouira during the festival through Phil and Mohammed and Benedicte - he has decided he "loves" me, although it's a "friendly love"...I am not sure what this means exactly, maybe he wrote it in french and then Babelfished it, but he really really wants me to come to Casablanca, to go see his cousin in Agadir...maybe if I can't go to Casa he will come to visit me here...sigh.

cops, the palmeraie, the sahara, surfing, gnaoua festival...

2006-06-22T11:30:00.000-04:00

oh man where to start.
so the day after the brothel thing we met up with Hassan and Mustapha and took off for the Gorges du Dades, where we did not actually manage to see the gorge because Hassan was tweaked out by all of the OTHER faux guides hanging out but where we did have the best tagine I've had so far at this tiny place on the side of the road. It was some sort of meat with vegetables but it actually had flavour which is sometimes had to come by in a tagine. Yum, and so unbelievably cheap - like 5 or 10 dirhams I think, which is about $1.50. To feed 4 people. This place didn't have a bathroom so when I had to go the proprietors let me into their house to use the bathroom there.
Then to Tinehrir to visit with some of Mustapha's family (tea tea tea) and then to a little village called Ait Aritane in the Palmeraie to stay with Hassan's family (more tea). At first he said we were staying at a gite and made no mention of the fact that this was his family. What, like he didn't think we'd figure it out? What a tool. Anyway the home was very cool, rooms spread out through the old kasbah, and his parents and sister were kind and welcoming.

We walked through the green palmeraie in the evening watching the women working in the fields in their bright clothes, we ate apricots straight off the tree, we ate dinner (couscous) around a big plate with all the men in the house - and both Steph and I were admonished for holding our utensils with our left hands...awkward since we're both left handed. After everyone had eaten their fill the plate was passed to Hassan's mother and sister (who had prepared the meal) and they ate too. Was this the usual routine or was it just because with Steph and I there there was no extra room around the plate?
We watched sattelite television - Jon Cusack movies in english with no subtitles on Saudi channels, Al Jazeera, arabic music videos. And drank yet more tea.
At bedtime we were shown our room which was a nice formal living room with upholstered benches lining all of the walls. You could probably seat 50 people in that room easily.

Next day went to the Gorges du Todra...it started to rain the instant we stepped out of the taxi so we stopped in a restaurant for, you guessed it, more fucking tea.
As we waited the rain came harder and harder...at a break we tried to go outside and cross the little river so we could walk around the gorge a bit. At that moment someone started yelling 'look at the river' and we watched as the normally small clear river was overrun with masses of brown water coming down from the mountains.

This knocked out the little bridge and effectively stranded us in our restaurant.
Finally a system was set up where everyone took off their shoes, rolled up their pants, and waded across the stream...just when I thought it was safe to put my shoes on again the rain started, heavier then before and we had to run through the gorge and through overflowing streams to escape an anticipated flash flood or something. This never happened but everyone was running their asses off to get out of there so it seemed rather dire at the time.

That afternoon we went back to Tinehrir to hang out with Mustapha's family some more (tea) and buy food...in a dodgy part of town (it felt dodgy to Steph and I, like most of Tinehrir, full of leering men "hel-lo? hel-lo?") Hassan stopped to use the internet and Mustapha and Steph and I waited downstairs. Next thing we knew Mustapha was scuffling with some guy who was pulling things out of Mustapha's pockets...we had no idea what was going on and assumed this was yet some more guy who looked at us the wrong way, M didn't ask for any help so when they walked off together across the street we thought that maybe they even knew each other or were going to talk to somebody. We didn't figure out it was a cop until we saw them both in a car with a uniformed traffic cop leaning in the window talking to the other guy. We started yelling up at Hassan to get the hell down here and help his friend but he just stayed in the internet cafe. I'm sure the situation wasn't helped by the fact that H had a large chunk of recently purchased hash in his pocket but come on dude, leave the shit upstairs and come down to help your friend.
No doing so Steph and I walked over just as the car was taking off and refused to stop for us. So, forgetting we were in Morocco and not Canada we walked up to the poor traffic cop;
"what the hell? that was our friend! where is he going?!"
"the police station"
"what? this is so stupid! he's not a faux guide, he's our friend! and now we're alone here with nobody to protect us! you're so stupid! what are you doing! you think you're protecting tourists? what are we supposed to do now!? this is dangerous, look around!"
"you have to go to the station and get him out"
"well how the hell are we supposed to get there? we don't know our way around! this is so stupid!"
"look, I don't know, take a taxi. it's not my problem"

Thanks helpful traffic cop. Though as we walked away we realised which country we were in and that abusing the police is not a good idea even in Canada. I think he was too taken aback by our fury to do anything though.
So we had to get Hassan who reluctantly (what a dick! too bad the real faux guide didn't get busted) walked us to the station, through dark shitty alleys where people yelled "putain" (whore) at us and he didn't even look around. Of Mustapha's situation he said "oh we'll probably have to leave him in there overnight". When we got to the corner of the street the station was on he cowered behing a building and made us go find Mustapha on our own. Luckily he'd already been released (after apparently being hit and forced to pay 100dh in a bullshit 'fine') and was walking our way.
Mustapha later told us he thought that some faux guide had paid the cop to take Mustapha away so that this guy could scoop up Steph and I and our business but it all seems a bit paranoid. Nobody else approached us...however to be honest at this point I don't know. Anything is possible here.

Finally we got back to the house in the palmeraie, it was dark and late but Hassan's mother, Calo, and sister were hanging out with some other women outside the house. Steph and I hung out with them, I saw the donkey and cow and calf and sheep and learned the berber words for these animals...we were completely incapable of communicating with these women but somehow we managed to spend a good 15 or 20 minutes together all holding hands and laughing hysterically over I don't know what. One woman then started pulling me toward her house...huh? Did I just agree to sleep at her place? That's cool but I haven't eaten yet and all my stuff is inside Calo's house...I found myself really really wishing I could understand the language, really really wanting to stay in this place for a long time to get to know these people.
Unfortunately I have to eat and so separated myself from the other woman and headed inside for more couscous and tea. Steph and I watched Hassan's sister (I wish I could remember her name) make the couscous - working with her bare hands to pull the chicken apart to spread the meat out. She encouraged me to try it and I nearly scalded my hands it was so hot.

The next morning we were supposed to go to Merzouga but it turned out there had been even more problems with the rains out there and the village was closed, the police were not letting anyone in. So we decided to go to M'Hamid instead which is west of Merzouga - Mustapha had worked out in that part of the desert before and knew some people. Hassan stayed in Tinehrir since his faux guiding skills were useless in M'Hamid and he realized he wasn't going to get any more money out of us. We reluctantly gave him 300 dirhams for the food and accommodation - reluctantly only because we were pretty sure his family was not going to receive any of the cash from that shifty little weasel. Mustapha was outraged to see us giving Hassan money, especially since his family had also offered to take us in, for free. It was a weird situation. Steph and I were on the bus, M was sitting behind us, then he would have run off the bus to talk to Hassan, then he would come back all pissed off, then he would run off again...we looked out the window once and saw M standing with the traffic cop from the previous night...oh no! I nearly ran off the bus before M waved to indicate that it was all right and the cop was just telling him about our little conversation from the night before. The cop smiled and waved at us and all was well.

When we got to Ouarzazate we were looking for a grands taxi to take us to M'Hamid when M flagged down a passing 4x4 - it was his friend Ismail who he had worked with in the past. Ismail's brother Mohamed has a desert excursions business and they could take us out no problem.
Hopped in Mohamed's four-day-old Range Rover along with his mother and two other women - one of whom was extremely elderly and prone to fits of the giggles - and went to M'Hamid.

We dined on carpets outside the restaurant at Mohamed's empty hotel where he told us stories about asteroid hunting (apparently a good business in the desert if you can find them).

Then, finally, to the Sahara...hopped in the car with Mohamed and Steph and Mustapha and Mohammed the Cook and....drove around M'Hamid searching desperately for freaking ROLLING PAPERS of all things. It seems that some things are universal.

Then, once we had that taken care of we drove out to Mohamed's bivouac (camp) in the desert. He popped in a tape and as we drove over the dunes we listened to a collection of cheesy western pop ballads at full volume. The result? For me, the Sahara will always be indelibly linked with 'I Will Always Love You' and 'Winds of Change'.
What else:
- walking through the dunes at night is incredible, the stars in the desert when the moon goes down are like nothing else. No other light source for miles and miles and miles.
- camels are not really the most comfortable ride

- you can eat spaghettit with your hands and cook bread in the sand in the desert

- it turns out that the 'a-ok' hand sign, you know where you make your thumb and index finger into a circle and then fan your other three fingers out...that's not so good here in Morocco. It DIRTY. Unfortunately I had been doing it a lot to innocent people. In a restaurant if someone asked if the food was good? Obscene hand gesture. If some one asked me how I was doing? Obscene hand gesture.

- Mohamed offered me a job at the bivouac, staying there for free and doing excursions in exchange for translation work on their website and helping out with publicity and incoming tourists. I happily accepted but changed my mind when he made a marginally too aggressive pass at Stephanie and also when I saw how some of the guys at the camp started looking at me when they found out I was going to be staying, alone. At first Mustapha was all like "yeah, this is great, Ismail is like my brother, everything will be cool, I told him to look out for you, nobody will bother you". But this was all when he was really high. When he sobered up the story changed to "if you stay you're going to have trouble, beaucoup de derangement, Ismail isn't cool, I saw him bothering some other girls last night, it's your life but I don't think you should stay." Mutar the Camel Guy agreed with Mustapha and seemed to think I would be safer at his house. Yeah, I don't think so.
So unfortunately I had to turn the job down and return to Marrakech with Steph.

- On the way to Marrakech we stopped in Ouarzazate where I belatedly discovered the theft of 500 dh (about 75 dollars) from my wallet - since I hadn't been counting my money every day I have no clue when it was stolen but I am fairly certain it was Hassan. Of course it could have been someone in the desert or even Mustapha, I'm really not sure. Also in Ourazazate we stopped at Ismail's sister's house to drop something off for him and of course to drink TEA. Ismail suddenly decided that if I wasn't going to stay in the desert he wasn't going to either and if I was going to Essaouira, he was going to Essaouira, and why didn't I come with him?
No really, it's all right, I want to go to Marrakech with Steph first...
"Why you no want to come with me? Come with me to Essaouira."
"No thanks, really it's all right."
"Why. Why. No, you come with me. I am on vacation for one month, I take you with me. You don't pay for nothing. I have the truck, you come with me."
"NO I AM GOING TO MARRAKECH AND I AM NOT GOING ON VACATION WITH YOU."
"Why. Why you no want to come with me. Really is okay, you must come, Mustapha you must convince her to come,..."

And so on and so on...this seriously went on for about half an hour until we got up and left. Did I mention that this guy is absolutely enormous, like 6 foot 5 or something? I was so pissed off and stressed out that by the time we got to the train station and we were beseiged by begging dirty snot nosed six-year olds "dirham? stylo?" (tourists - stop giving these fucking kids pens, okay?) I had really had enough and had a minor breakdown of the "waaaah I want my mommy and I want to go home" variety while children swarmed over me and my backpack. Luckily Steph was there to look after me in my pathetic teary state.
Mustapha seemed completely bewildered...I tried to explain it to him: "all your friends are pigs! I hate all your friends! They are not nice! They bother me all the time! They won't leave me alone! If I ever meet any of your friends ever again tell him that I will never ever have sex with him so he should leave me alone!"
Poor guy, I'm still not sure he understands.

- I came to Essaouira on my own after Steph went back to Montreal and essentially didn't talk to anyone for 5 days.

It was a nice break after not having been alone since the end of April but after a while I got bored so went to:

- Surfland! At this time of year it's essentially a french children's summer surf camp but they do adults lessons and if there's space it's not a problem for adults to stay there as well. So I stayed in a tent for 5 days and tried to learn how to surf (from the most unbearably HOT surf instructor - unfortunately it seems the only man in Morocco who doesn't want to get in my pants). Surfing is really fun but very difficult. I was anticipating not being able to balance myself on the board but it turned out that was the easy part. The problem is paddling - both out to the waves in the first place and then trying to get enough speed on an incoming wave to be able to get up on it. I need to work on my upper body strength but I am determined to try again.
It was weird hanging out with these kids...well I didn't hang out with them all that much but did eat with them...in fact they were mostly teenagers and more than once I saw a girl start to quietly cry in the middle of a meal for really no apparent reason at all.

- Then back to Essaouira where I met up with Mustapha and also Phil! I knew he and Benedicte were here in this part of Morocco but we had been in different towns at different times and I thought they had already left Essaouira. Happily no and it's been nice the past couple of days to hang out at the cafe, talk about Toronto, etc.
The Gnaoua/Gnawa festival starts tonight and the town is filling up. Prices have gone up as well. It should be fun though.

Future plans: trekking with Phil in the High Atlas next week, then returning to Essaouira where I've been given a good deal on a sweet hotel room in a really nice riad for the entire month of July. The french classes I thought I was going to take are as it turns out not what I want, but I think I'll stay anyway and study on my own, speak as much french as I can, maybe try some more surfing down the coast.

the weirdest day so far, or: how we ended up dancing with sad eyed prostitutes in a moroccan brothel

2006-06-09T15:09:00.000-04:00

Steph and I left Marrakech on Wednesday to head out to Ouarzazate.
It was a beautiful but nauseating ride through the Atlas Mountains, endless winding and speeding up and slowing down.

We arrived in Ouarzazte at dusk and who should meet us at the bus station but Mustapha! This was unexpected, I had told him where I was going but thought he was on his way to Merzouga or something. I do have to admit however that I very rarely understand what he says so maybe we had made a plan to meet up and I just didn't realize it.
Anyway, he walked us through the town to our hotel...it was a dodgy dodgy walk through a pretty crappy looking town, dark streets lined with dudes staring at us. Steph and I both admitted later to a brief bit of worry that Mustapha was actually just leading us to an alley to be robbed and murdered. Luckily we were just paranoid because he took us right to our hotel and then out to his friend's cafe for dinner (and I suspect to show us off).

We made plans to meet the next morning and he took us out to the famous kasbah at Ait Benhaddou (where a number of films including Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia have been filmed).

Getting there involved the "grands taxi" - one of the more terrifying modes of transport...it's a big old car (maybe a mercedes or something) that will have 6 passengers and 1 driver crammed into it - 4 in the back and 3 in the front. Seatbelts are not an option and you will really get to know your neighbour.
The Kasbah was pretty cool, we wandered around, ate an orange, then walked back to Hassan's brother's hotel and restaurant where we met who else but Hassan. He convinced us that instead of going straight to M'Hamid and the desert, it was okay now to go to Merzouga and that we should go with him through the gorges and then go to the desert at Merzouga.

Then it was time to head back to Ouarzazate. There were no grands taxis around so Hassan flagged down a passing milk truck and convinced the driver to let us ride back to the nearest small town where we could get a real taxi.
So we climbed in the back with the flies and the giant milk tank and smaller bottles and drove through the rocky desert from remote dwelling to remote dwelling picking up and dropping off jugs of milk.

The people were always amused when the truck door opened to display us sitting in the back. At one home a tiny little girl less than 2 years old was passed into the cab of the truck to come along for a ride. The three men in the cab played with her and made her giggle like they were all her grandpas.

Finally we got back to Ouarzazate and Mustapha took us to a "music festival" which turned out to be like a local town fair complete with midway rides and stalls selling junky housewares. Just like home except there was no beer garden, just a lot of tea. The music wasn't going to start for several hours so we sat at the tea tent with some older guy Mustapha knew and a woman we assumed to be his wife.
We were pretty much the only tourists around...we saw one other blond woman briefly, but she disappeared and wasn't seen again. There were a lot of stares and I believe that a group of youngish guys offered Mustapha some money for us. It was nice of him to say no.
Waiting for the music we did bumper cars and ate cotton candy and watched boys breakdance and then finally it was about time for the music to start.

Mustapha's friend Said who-looks-just-like-John-Leguizamo appeared and we were introduced. Said's interests became apparent right off the bat; "you are both very pretty" and "do you have a boyfriend" being among his initial comments.
The performers were all verrrrry serious and dressed in suits.
For the first couple of songs, which were pretty slow, there were a few other local women in the crowd, mostly young kids and older women. But after the third song or so we looked around and we were absolutely the ONLY females around in a sea of guys. About 50% of whom were openly staring at us, mostly curiously but some hungrily. I asked M if it was all right for us to be there and he said yes, no problem...turns out he had paid the police to watch us and also we were right beside the barrier so
if there was any trouble I had my escape route planned.
It was really crazy actually - because of the limited contact between men and women men tend to be really physical with each other in a way that would be SUPER GAY at home. Everyone knows this already but yeah, guys here do walk around holding hands, arms around each other, etc etc.
When the music really got going dudes were dancing with each other, some really provocatively...my ass there's no homosexuality here. But for the most part it was pretty straight, just a bunch of guys having a really good time, dancing around in circles, doing conga lines, running around, jumping up and down.
I made the mistake of looking around and accidentally making eye contact with a short dude in a white baseball cap. After that where ever I looked, there he was, leering at us and dancing.
All of a sudden Mustapha took off and the next thing we knew there was a big scuffle and some guys were pulling him off of Baseball Cap guy. Turns out Baseball Cap had started doing some inventive dance moves with his tongue in our general direction and M saw this.
Steph and I are like "okay it's time to get out of here, we shouldn't be here" but the guys said no, it's fine, don't worry. However after the THIRD fight the guys finally conceded and we all took off.
I had mentioned something to Said earlier about missing beer (no beer in two weeks! that's harsh especially after Spain.) so he proposed that we go to a bar. Yaaay! Finally a chance to check out a Moroccan bar.

They took us to this place with live music, a few women dancing on stage, and a couple of tourists grinding on the dance floor.
We saw the older guy and his wife that we had been sitting with earlier. I'm so naive that Said and Mustapha actually had to tell me that "No, that's not his wife. That's a prostitute. All the Moroccan women here are prostitutes."
Yikes! Still, the atmosphere was pretty chill. The beer tasted great and it was such a weird environment to observe. There were far more men than women and even here the men were drunkenly dancing with each other.
The dancers on stage were wearing bulky robes and doing a shimmying sort of dance, one in particular, the one in white, could do some incredible things with her hips.

The dancers for the most part didn't really seem to be all that into it even though the music was so infectious that when I went to the bathroom even the old bathroom attendant was dancing her ass off.At one point all the musicians from the other show arrived at the bar and went up on stage to play too. They looked like they were having a much better time here.
Said and I had a conversation that mostly consisted of him trying to get me to talk about sex. For example, he started off with a sort of innocuous question about life in Canada and how it is different from Morocco. This somehow led to a discussion of homosexuality, specifically lesbians...like did I know any lesbians personally? Oh really?
"And so...when you go out for a drink with your lesbian friends...do you then experiment with each other?"
"Huh?"
"If you have a drink with a lesbian will you kiss after?"
"Uh, Said...lesbians aren't animals you know."
"Oh." A look of tremendous disappointment crossed his face.

Then, a few minutes later he tried again when I innocently asked him what Moroccan girls his age do for fun since they can't go to bars and stuff.
"You know, masturbation?"
"Uh, Said...that's not what I meant."
"Oh". More disappointment.

Finally he just decides to go for broke and asks me some very direct questions about my sex life...Said, you horny little bastard! Give it up!
"Uh, Said...that's personal and I'm not going to discuss it."
"Oh"
That's pretty much where the conversation ended.

After a while we decided to dance too - the other tourists had left and Steph and I were definitely the main attraction which was kind of weird. It was all very unsexy, what we were doing, really we were just jumping around, but all the guys were watching us. I felt badly for the hookers.
At one point the floor was clear so the woman in white took it over, was joined by a couple guys...then she came over to our table and pulled me up to dance with her. She looked a lot like Catherine Keener but with sadder eyes. I think she wanted to dance with us just to take a break from all the guys...she sat at our table for a while too but we didn't talk much.
It was a strange place.

quick update

2006-06-04T10:41:00.000-04:00

we haven't had a hot shower in several days and Mustapha keeps getting arrested.

We had to take off our shoes yesterday to run through a river of mud at the Todra Gorge to escape the torrential rains.

Hassan is a chickenshit and we've left him in Tinehrir...

aside from that things are great.

heading to the desert at M'Hamzid tonight for 3 or 4 days then Steph has to go back to Montreal. Booooo!

tourist police

2006-05-30T09:31:00.000-04:00

A day or two after we arrived in Marrakech we made the acquaintance of Mustapha, a 23 year old Berber nomad guy who hangs out in Marrakech for some reason we can't quite ascertain...we know for sure that he is very very interested in acquiring a Canadian wife (but I think he's a little young for me).
Anyway, we see Mustapha around every few days and are definitely at the buddy stage, stop and say hello and chat a little bit when we see him. Yesterday we were walking down one of the streets off of Jemaa el Fna when who do we see but Mustapha. We stop, chat, start walking in the same direction still chatting...we notice that he is looking around sort of cagily and walking not exactly with us but not exactly not with us...he falls behind and then goes ahead etc. Ooookay...all of a sudden he stops to talk to an older man on a motorcycle...is this a friend? We keep walking thinking he's met a friend but then glance back and notice that Mustapha is now flanked by two police officers...what is going on? Do they think he's been hustling us? We've seen people hauled off by the tourist police before - if it looks like someone is trying to be a faux guide or is hassling tourists the cops will come out of nowhere and take them off. Apparently Moroccans (and this probably mostly applies to men because I rarely if ever see Moroccan women talking to tourists unless they work in a shop or hotel) are not supposed to be hanging out with tourists at all unless they are official guides. If the cops think you're hustling people you can go to jail for 2 days.
So we start freaking out a little...oh god! This guy is going to go to jail for a couple days because we talked to him? What do we do? Is it better for us to leave or go back and talk to the police? We're staring at this whole scene, very concerned, starting to walk toward them, when the guy on the motorcycle approaches us "Is this guy bothering you?"
"NO! He's our friend!"
"How long has he been your friend."
"A week, 10 days...he's not bothering us, he has never bothered us..."
"Okay you go now."
Oooh shit...that doesn't seem to have fixed anything and the cops are still taking Mustapha off into the square between them. This is so messed up!
In a way I appreciate the tourist police because apparently they have made things a lot better but where are they when I'm getting groped by some guy in the crowd? Or when we're attacked by henna girls with syringes? I mean it is definitely possible he's a hustler of some sort (he's always running off on mysterious errands - but for all we know he's just going to talk to friends) but whatever, he's always been cool to us...
There's nothing we can do at this point so we keep going and hope he's all right.
A little while later thank god we run into him in the square again. It's all right he says, they belived us but they took him around the corner and demanded a little baksheesh (bribe) in the form of 50 dirham. He said that when he told them he didn't have any money they let him go. Phew!
That was crazy. We hang out with him at our hotel and drink tea, a friend of his, Hassan, from the desert shows up and is also staying at our hotel so we go out for dinner and then a walk around the square.

Again the guys are very paranoid to be seen with us and sort of take off and come back again...it's all very weird. Damn police!

Tomorrow I am leaving Marrakech to meet Steph in Ouarzazate - we will probably stay there for a couple of days and then go into the desert. We were originally planning to go to Merzouga but apparently they had some deadly rains (!) there over the weekend (there was a spectacular lightning storm here on the weekend) and several people were killed and many homes were lost. So it doesn't seem quite right to go out there right now. We will probably head south to Zagora instead.

m. alain and the hammam

2006-05-30T07:58:00.000-04:00

On Friday Steph (a cool girl from Quebec who we met in our dorm) wanted to go out and get prices for various excursions and so we decided to go with her. The first place was near our hotel and easy to find but the other place was, according to the lonely planet map, on some unnamed street somewhere in the deeps of the medina. We set out in the general direction and asked directions of many people along the way...as we got closer we would hear "oh yes, it's just around the corner, just take the first left and then the second left and it's there" and so on. We walked around and around, away from the main streets with the shops into the more residential parts, which are narrow crooked unmarked alley-like streets lined with blank white walls and small doors. The only noise seems to come from a faraway radio playing arabic pop music. A boy who is eating at a bakery kindly helps us to find our destination and once we've found it takes off again without asking for any money. However one of the boys that he asked for directions things we should pay him, as do the group of smaller children who are all playing around the corner from M. Alain's door. Unfortunately M. Alain is not home, nobody knows when he will be home, they have no brochures...why don't we call later? Okay...and while we're at it why don't we leave before the children tear us apart? They are getting a little intense.

After that it was time for a hammam. We decided to go for the luxury tourist option at the Marrakech Hilton (ooooh...swanky!) so Steph called them up and got the prices...wow! 70 dirhams for a massage (about $10)! With everything else included (the bath and the scrub)...sounds too good to be true!
It kind of was. The phone call had been a little misleading as we discovered when we got there. And it was a looong ass cab ride out there too. The Hilton is nowhere near Jemaa el Fna (the main square in the old part of town).
So we walk in to the women's side (after I very nearly walk straight in to the men's side, which could have been a serious problem) and discover that it is actually 200 dh for everything, plus we have to pay extra for soap and scrubber and massage oil, and towels (we kind of didn't think to bring anything. duh).
Steph argues with the woman at the desk a little and the we sit to confer about whether we are willing to spend this much money. In the meantime a large group of French women come in and pay the full price and buy all the extras...this must have made the girl at the desk happy because she then offered us a deal - we each get the full set of services for 160 dh and then we can share the soap and oil and scrubber between the three of us. It's unorthodox but it works, we decide that today is princess day.
We're really not sure what to do...did we need to bring bathing suits? Can we just wear underwear? All I have is underwear and a tank top and no towel so I put that on and walk out...the ladies start talking to me in arabic...take my glasses off my face and point at my top disapprovingly...I don't understand a word anyone is saying and now I'm blind, in my underwear. All three of us are sort of standing around confused and Tara is as blind as I am...poor Steph must now be our translator and our eyes! We walk through a large wooden door into steam...the women at the door stop me and point at my top again...what? Finally they decide to take matters into their own hands and just take my shirt off for me. Oh. Okay.
They lead us to stools in front of large marble basins that are filling with water, sit us down and show us that we are to use the plastic bowl to scoop water out of the basin to throw over ourselves. A lady takes a handful of the black soap (a very soft dark soap) and rubs it on our backs for us and then indicates that we should soap the rest of our bodies ourselves and then leave the soap on. Yes, I think we are capable of that...once we've done that we are led to the sauna where we sit with the french women for 10 minutes and I somehow manage to get soap in my eyes.

Then we come out of the sauna and hang out and prepare to be scrubbed. There's a lot of hanging out, tossing a little water on yourself, relaxing...I kind of feel like an elephant. Finally we are led into the scrubbing room. I lay down on a big marble slab and a woman takes a rough cloth and scours the hell out of ALL of my skin. I watch in horror and fascination as huge clumps of dead white skin start to appear...it is so gross! It looks like cottage cheese. The women who work here are remarkably happy for having one of the world's more revolting jobs (yes I know it could be worse but scouring dead skin off of tourists? come on.)...the one who is scrubbing me laughs at the look of disgust on my face and I laugh back as I try to convey "sorry I am so unexfoliated and disgusting!" to her. It feels really great by the way.
Finally she's done and tells me to go take a shower and wait for the massage. So it's back to the basin to chill out some more, toss more water over my head, until massage time.
Once again I lay down on a big slab only it's slick with oil and I'm afraid I'm going to fall off. The masseuse has to pull me back from the edge a couple of times as I do get dangerously close to slipping over. It's a kickass massage, first with oil and then with soap(!) and then she too sends me to the showers. And it's all over.
We walk out and the staff return our clothes and things to us and we sit in the relaxing dry changing room with a bunch of French women and watch them be rude to the staff. So this is why people hate the French. It's excruciating to watch - this withered old naked white lady bitching out the staff because they haven't brought her her frigging glasses straight awaym while the others laugh. They are all old enough to know better. And everyone who works there is so nice.
All in all we were there for about three hours...for the equivalent of $30 that is a pretty great deal.

Call me WHITE CHICKEN

2006-05-27T15:24:00.000-04:00

I have to give it to the guy for inventiveness...most people just call us Gazelles which seems to be slang for foreign women. But one guy in the Marrakech souk picked a much more appealing and attractive animal to compare me to..."Pssssssst...heeey white chicken!!" Ugh, yeah guy. You need to work on that one.

Took the ferry from Tarifa to Tangier (where I was completely and shockingly waved through the passport control for leaving the Shengen region/EU...the guy was inspecting EVERYONE's passport in great detail and I was you know whatting in my pants since I had been there about a month and a half too long but he just looked at my picture page and then tossed the passport back at me. Maybe because it had only been issued in December. Happy day anyway.) and immediately got scammed on the taxi ride from the port to the train station (40 dirham, I hear it should only be about 10, oh well. 40 dirham is about 6 dollars). Caught the next train for Fes and spent the next 2 hours in airconditioned comfort. Then we had to change trains and got one that had a broken AC. It was about 43 degrees C outside and I had hardly any water. Also wearing jeans which was a bad idea. Tara later said I looked like I was going to die. Felt like it too. Some helpful gentlemen on the train offered to help us find guides and hotels in Fes...thanks but we're sorted.

Fes was a bit strange...we always felt like we were missing something. Like there was some really cool city waiting to be discovered but it was always around the next corner. I think part of the problem is that we were staying in the Nouvelle Ville (the new city/the part built by the French). There were very few Western tourists and we were very conspicuous. I realised that my wardrobe was waaay too tarty (lots of short sleeves and exposed shoulders and knee length skirts) which is pretty funny. I never though I would fall on that end of the spectrum.
We took an official guided tour of the souk which was cool although we did somehow manage to end up in about six different shops - carpet shop, wood shop, leather shop, spice shop, etc etc. We bought nothing and our guide was getting exasperated. But we saw the tanneries and a lot of other cool stuff (including a fresh camel head, minus body).

The rest of Fes is kind of a blur, we found a couple of spots we liked eating at - one breakfast place that had thick crepes drizzled with honey, and another juice place that made this crazy fruit salad with avocado juice.
After three nights we were done and got on the train for the 8 hour trip to Marrakech - AC working this time thank god.

When we arrived here we instantly fell in love with the city. Our hotel is just off the main square (Djemaa El-Fna) which is absolutely huge and filled with orange juice carts and henna ladies and snake charmers during the day is supplemented with with open air ("we have air conditioning!") food stands, storytellers, drummers, monkey pimps, and magicians and fortune tellers at night.

And tourists. Always always tonnes and tonnes of tourists - mostly French it seems like. Many of the tourists dress in the most shocking manner...it's like - don't you know where you are? That this is a fairly conservative place and it is probably not a great idea for you to wear your miniskirt? Or short shorts (on men even, horrible)? Or tank tops that you are spilling out of? Have some f'ing respect.
Anyway, the square is absolutely crazy and really fun to wander around but watch out for the henna ladies (or as we sometimes call them, "The Henna Bitches from Hell"). Mostly they are cool and will take no for an answer. But one night while Tara was drinking an orange juice I was approached by this girl "hey! you want henna?"
"no thanks"
"okay, my name is Mona, you remember, okay?"
"okay sure"
"here I make you present"
"no really I don't want it, but thank you anyway"
"no no! I make you nice present, is good luck!"
And she grabs my hand and whips out this absolutely MASSIVE SYRINGE. It takes me a second to register that it's not a needle but a hollow tube for squirting out the henna, but even so. There is no way I want that thing anywhere near the back of my hand.
"NO! Thanks! NO!"
and I try to grab my hand away but she has a stronger grip than I do and has already started applying the design to my hand. Sigh. She does a big flower design on the back of my hand which pisses me off because I am really not into henna in the first place - I think it looks f'ing stupid on tourists. sorry. - and now I'm going to have to walk around with my hand in my pocket for the next week. Great.
So she finally finishes, "there...is good luck for you."
"Thanks. Bye."
"Now you make me present. Is good luck."
"No, I didn't want it. Sorry."
"NO NO! You make me present! You give me money now! Good luck! Good luck!"
"No! I said no and you put it on my anyway. Goodbye."
And we start to walk away. This is where the fun starts as this girl chases me all over the square, starts getting in my face, calls her friends over and they start getting in my face...I wipe it off with about half of our toilet paper, Tara is looking very alarmed and I am getting REALLY pissed off as this amounts to extortion and I am not giving this f'ing chick one single dirham. Finally we escape into the souk.
A few days later I am walking around with Stephanie from Quebec and she is approached by the same girl with the same line...I try to hide so she can't see my face (although she probably doesn't remember me anymore) and Stephanie is quicker and more forceful than I am and manages not to get squirted.

Marrakech - what else. The OJ is divine, I didn't eat for a few days because everything just went through me like a freight train if you know what I mean, we are staying in the dorm of a big hotel with cats and kittens wandering in and out as they like, I don't like being stared at and greeted constantly or having to lie about my husband back at the hotel but in general the harrassment is not unbearable (except the guys who cop feels or rub their crotches against your backside in the crowded square, but that only happened a couple of times), bought some great shoes, learning how to haggle, tiring of tagine already but so far the Harira (soup) is great, the weather has been fairly cool lately (it's raining like a mofo right now), we went out to some huge waterfalls today and saw monkeys, watched groups of urchins right out of Oliver Twist flog macaroons (cookies) in the square...and learned not to eat the cookies because when they kids stop working for more than a couple minutes their pimp or runner or father or whatever comes running out to get them going again and scatters them and their cookies in the ground. And those cookies get picked right back up again and placed carefully back on the tray to be offered to more unsuspecting tourists.
There is a lot of poverty and a lot of people begging which is sad. People circle the touristy restaurants with plastic bags for leftovers. One guy with a mad gleam in his eye walked straight up to our table and picked up a crust of pizza and stuffed it in his mouth. He stood there chewing and staring at us and then took another piece and stuffed it in his mouth and continued to stand there. It was pretty confrontational and we were a liiiittle uncomfortable...I mean he was more than welcome to the food as we were finished eating anyway. But. I guess I don't like to be confronted so aggressively about my privileged position. Oh well. I should get used to it.
Whooo, huge thunder...I should sign off before the power goes out.
Morocco photos are here: Flickr

fear and loathing in extremadura

2006-05-22T11:33:00.000-04:00

On tuesday afternoon Johnny, Shabby and I got our rental car and set off to find a cozy beach to sleep on. It was a good thing that the two girls from Quebec had decided to bail at the last minute because the first thing the car rental guy said when he saw us and all our luggage was "this car is too small for you". A moment of panic as this was the last car available but she turned out to be the perfect size. We christened her Guapita (we decided that this means "little pretty one").

Drove southeast along the coast to Los Canos de Meca and found a good parking space for the car, right beside some steps that lead directly down to the beach. Which was perfect...nearly deserted, separated from homes and their inhabitants by steep cliffs and walls, overlooking a rough patch of the Atlantic and a lighthouse. While the sun set we drank to our good fortune and found a spot for a fire, then feasted on the greatest smoked salmon/cheese/fried eggplant sandwiches ever (why does food taste so much better outside?).

At first we thought someone should stay in the car overnight considering the group of fairly dodgy hippies we'd seen hanging out with their half dead dogs earlier in the day but a nice British passerby told us that the hippies usually disappeared at night. So we ignored the "beware" graffiti that was all over the walls and stairwell and grabbed our sleeping bags and a bottle of local sherry (Canasta?) and settled in for the night.
Have you ever tried to sleep through a sandstorm? Neither had I. I don't recommend it. At least I wasn't awake while the rats were working on the bag of food we had left outside with us. Still, the sky was clear and the moon and stars were out and I could track their progress across the sky as I work up every hour or so. We managed to get a little bit of sleep and the next morning headed back past Cadiz to Huelva.
Found another amazing beach, this time with warm calm water perfect for swimming in and big dunes to shelter us from the wind (and other people).

We bought tinfoil and vegetables and roasted up everything we could think of - garlic, potatoes, bread and cheese, peppers, asparagus, onion...Johnny noticed wild rosemary growing all over the place but when I went to pick some for our meal I went to the wrong plant and came back with some other vaguely rosemary-ish plant instead. Hey, it was dark. This unknown stuff made its way into a little bit of our food before the others noticed it was not rosemary and someone with a better sense of smell went off to find the real thing. It doesn't seem to have been poisonous so all is well.
After dinner we drank our second bottle of sherry and decided that since the beach was completely deserted a little skinny dipping was definitely in order so stripped down and ran through the moonlight into the warm ocean.
The next morning, since the beach was still deserted Shabby and I did the same thing, wearing only slightly more clothing. Smart girl went down earlier than I did...a bunch of lucky fishermen showed up while I was still in the water. Oh well. It's Europe. They're used to that kind of thing.
Johnny fried up some eggs and potatoes and cheese and whatever else would fry and we rigged up a shelter from the sun.
It is amazing how unbelievably cold it can get at night and how unbearably hot it can be only a few hours later once the sun gets up.
Then it was time to head north into Extremadura, exact destination not really known but we knew it when we found it. While Shabby and I slept, Johnny noticed an isolated lake at km 103 on the highway. We stopped in the closest town for yet more provisions (in retrospect three blocks of cheese was overkill) and drove down to the lake. It was beautiful and the photos do not do it justice, surrounded by wildflowers, absolutely full of fish...once again we watched the sun set and the moon rise while we laughed till we cried over our good fortune and various other things.

The crying part may have something to do with pollen since we were running around in the flowers (I've discovered allergies I didn't know I had). Found stones that looked like faces and watched the water ripple as fish chased the stones J threw in the lake.

Once again ate one of the greatest meals ever as J fried up some fish with onions and garlic and sherry and potatoes...a simple simple salad of cucumber slices with lemon. Appetized on a giant jar of Extremadura olives/pickles/onions and drank a bottle of the smoothest Extremadura wine...everything tastes better in Extremadura.
Later J pulled out his poi and taught me how to use them. This went well once (well considering there was no fire. If they were on fire I would not have a face left) until I slammed one into a tree and kevlar exploded all over the place.
Once again we set up our sleeping bags on the ground but this was not so fun as it was freezing outside and there were a lot of mosquitos. It was way too uncomfortable so I decided to sleep in the car. Unfortunately when I started hearing the plastic food bags move of their own volition I got the impression that something else had made the same decision, something unpleasant like a snake or a rat. I went back out to the ground but we never did find any creatures in the car.
After three mostly sleepless nights in a row, plus the past several days in Cadiz at the Hostel of No Sleep we were a bunch of wrecks the next day. Drove further north to a small town called Zafra where we stopped for lunch and a quick nap, sleeping bags and all, in the public park. Just like dirty nasty hippies...oh the shame. At least we didn't have half starved dogs and cats on leashes with us.
Then continued north to Caceres where we expected to find a sleepy little town with plenty of empty cheap hostal beds to welcome us.
Imagine our surprise when, after finally finding a parking space and wondering why there were so many people walking around, we walked into the Plaza Mayor (main square in Caceres) to find thousands of people hanging out, dancing, drumming, drinking and a huge stage set up at one end. It seems that universe did not want us to sleep and sent us to the WOMAD music festival instead. We inquired at a few hotels and even asked the police but everyone told us that everything in town was full. Great. What to do? Buy beer and go dance, that's what to do.
A funk band was playing, featuring a tiny wizened old guitar player that we originally thought was a woman but who turned out to be a man...people were dancing with kids on their shoulders and storks were flying overhead wondering what the hell was going on. Blood sugar started dropping and we ate two large pizzas in record time, "like frat boys" as J put it. Our appetites were a major theme of this trip, at least for Shabby and I...we were eating like maniacs, all the time. Constantly hungry for some reason. Johnny would sometimes just sit back and watch us like the circus freaks we were.

Eventually, around maybe 2 a.m. after some time spent around a drum circle (and if you can fall asleep in that noise you really need to go to bed) we needed sleep. Desperately. The inital plan was to sleep in the car but this was really not appealing expecially since the car was starting to smell of old food. We drove around the town for a while, hoping to find a motel (North America style) on the outskirts. Nothing. J drove to the next (tiny) town where S asked someone at a bar where we could find a motel. Nothing there but he led us partway to the next town in his car and told us about a couple of possibilities. The first place was staffed by a suspicious looking fat man who said "completo" and sent us packing. The second place thank GOD had a triple room and we finally finally slept through the night. I have never appreciated a bed more in my life.
Saturday we felt a million times better and drove to Trujillo where we hung out in the square and watched the storks and made tuna sandwiches for lunch.

Then drove waaay back down into Andalucia to Ronda where we had brief scare when it looked like there was yet another event happening (a bike race). Happily we were still able to find a room and spent the evening wandering around Ronda, eating dinner in the square and watching teenagers tamper with the fountain. A beautiful girl no more than 15 but dressed like she was 21 and on her way to a club walked by a couple of times to the delight of some skeevy guys at the next table.
The next day we got up and wandered around old Ronda, came across yet another spectacle (Spain is one spectacle after another after another)...a religious parade winding through the streets.

We also saw the best preserved Arab Baths on the Iberian Peninsula and drove to some small town whose name I forget and ate gazpacho and some other thick pasty soup and some of the most delicious beef I have ever tasted.

Our waitress was adorable, bullfighting was on the tv, and the power went out every 5 minutes or so.
We then tried to drive up to a mountain (again I forget the name) but partway there the clouds were so thick that there was no visibility so we decided to decend.

Here is where things started to get dodgy.

According to the map, and various road signs, the road we were on would take us all the way to Malaga which was the direction we wanted to go. Unfortunately we were extremely low on gas and the road kept getting narrower and cloudier as we went on. We came to a fork in the road with signs that pointed to Malaga in both directions...we took what turned out to be the wrong road which started to climb again and turned into a one lane barely paved track which had cats lounging in the middle of it and inbred looking dogs lurching out at passing cars on dangerous curves. J finally decided he had had enough and turned around back to the fork. Thank god because THAT road led to an actual real highway and a real town with a real gas station. Lesson in this is to stay on the thick red and green lines on the map, not the skinny white ones that run through the mountains.

We stopped in some resort port near Marballa and tried to figure out where to go...S made a reservation with a hostal in a nearby town called San Pedro de something and we took off to find it.
When we got there we drove around for a while before finally nabbing a parking space right around the corner from our hostal; this town was full of parked cars and we were ecstatic to find a spot. So ecstatic we neglected to look for signs re: parking rules. Dun dun dun.....
Grabbed our packs out of the car and walked to what should have been the entrance to the hostal. I noticed a man wearing too short shorts taking out his garbage and looking at us curiously. We got to the hotel door and pressed the button but there was no response and no sign of life. After the couple of minutes Shorts Man came over to us and started speaking to us in rapid Spanish that none of us could understand. Something about another door....so we followed him around the corner while he tried a key that didn't work on another door. More unintelligable spanish while we follow him back around the corner and he starts pointing at a building across the street. At this point we are looking and whispering at each other about finding another place while Shorts Man follows us saying something about a mother and baby. Then another guy shows up who may or may not work at this hotel but there is still nobody to let us and and frankly at this point we are a little weirded out.
We find another place down the street and dump our stuff. When we go outside again Shorts Man is standing on the corner and we carefully avoid him.
The next morning Johnny gets up to get some food or use the internet or something. He comes back more quickly than expected with very very bad news...Guapita has been towed! This leads to a day long ordeal which features Shabby running around trying to find the police station, then coming all the way back to where we are to get the car key, then going back to the police station, then running to find a bank machine because they only take cash, then taking a cab out somewhere because the car is not actually at the police station, then driving back downtown to find us, sans navigator. I should mention that she only learned to drive stick about 5 days ago and first gear has continued to be a problem. Trial by fire! Meanwhile I mostly sit on my ass and eat cheese.
When she finally drives past us we cheer and Johnny runs to haul her out of the car so he can park it. Then we feast on chinese food.
What a way to start our last day together...
Things improve when we drive to Tarifa and find a hostal with kitchen where we can cook our Last Supper. Once again this is mostly Johnny cooking up a kickass pasta and steak combo while Shabby and I work on the salad and pre-dinner cocktails. At 10 the night manager came up to kick us out of the kitchen so we retired to our room to get wasted on gin and end this trip RIGHT.
The next day we get up just barely in time to check out, eat our dinner left overs for breakfast because there is no power for cooking eggs for some reason, and then say good bye.
The timing is impeccable because just as they walk out the door Tara, my Australian travelling partner for Morocco, walks in. Turns out she knows Johnny from Granada...small world, the hostels of southern Spain...
And so I hug J and S and Guapita goodbye

(and forget half my stuff in the car so they have to come back and return it to me) and get ready for Morocco.....

Sleepless in Sevilla

2006-05-08T17:37:00.000-04:00

I showed up in Sevilla a week and a half ago with no place to stay, fingers crossed that there would still be walk in space or couches available at the hostel there. I mean I arrived at 7 a.m., how could I possibly get scooped?
Walked into the hostel to see people sacked out all over the place, bags all over the place...even that early in the morning it was a bit of a madhouse. When I responded no to the question "do you have a reservation?" a pained look crossed my questioner's face and he told me they didn't have any space. But if I liked I could get on the waiting list for the couch, there was only one person ahead of me for it. Aaaargh.
I stashed my bags and set out looking for a hostal (cheap hotel) with rooms. I checked in at about 8 or 10 of them with my bad spanish "buscar una habitacion for la noche?". The response was inevitably "completo!" which means "we're full! too bad for you!".
Finally I walked in to a place where I noticed the proprieter was speaking english with another harried looking young woman and pointing her in the direction of another hotel. So I asked him if he had a place, received the expected "completo" response, and then asked if he knew of any other places that had rooms available. This guy was so amazing, he got on the phone and called three or four places but all were full. Finally he asked if I was willing to stay out of town ("yes!") and called a place in a town about 12 km outside of Sevilla. They had a room thank god and so I was booked in for three nights at 25 Euros a night...not too shabby,
The reason for all this madness is the Feria de Abril which takes place every year. This is a huge fair that takes over the city for about a week and features daily bullfights, women all over the city in fancy flamenco dress, huge combs in their hair, men in suits and not a mullet in sight (I have finally located all of Spain's hot men. They are in Sevilla.), people riding through the city on horseback or in carriages, all on their way to the massive fairgrounds. The fairgrounds themselves are amazing, street after street of private tents that people and their friends party in, impromptu flamenco in the street, mothers and small daughters in matching dresses dancing, horses and horses and more horses and large water trucks spraying down the streets. Trying to get across the street becomes an exercise in 19th Century common sense...I mean do I get the right of way or does the horse? How close do I want to get to one of those things? You can't exactly dodge between them like they're Smart Cars can you?
It was really cool to see although I always had to catch a bus back to my hotel town so could never stay for the real party late at night.
I very seriously considered going to a bullfight (I know I know, but I want to try to understand) but discovered they were more expensive than I thought and so gave up on that idea. Probably for the best.
I met an old man at the bus stop who didn't speak any english and knew a few words in french...there wasn't anyone else to talk to so he talked to me even though he knew I couldn't understand him. He decided to give me Spanish lessons using French and Italian as a base. We went through "Toi? es Tu!", "Nino? es Petit Garcon!" and finally "Nina? es Petit Garcona!". Ahhhh....claro! Gracias. When we got off the bus we walked as far as the bull ring which was his destination and he pointed me toward the Feria grounds. I think he was trying to make a date to meet up again but I kept saying "huh?" and finally he gave me up as being too stupid.
On Monday the fair was over and I was able to get a bed in the hostel where I stayed for 5 nights. As usual I met a bunch of great people and we spent too many nights staying up too late. I was thoroughly trounced at chess and finished reading Don Quixote. Took a day trip to Cordoba to see the amazing and massive mosque with a cathedral built in the middle of it. It was incredible and I will post photos soon.
I responded to some stress on my last day there by getting stinking drunk and making an ass of myself in various ways involving cameras and falling down (I maintain I was pushed) and then sobered up sitting by the river listening to people play bongos in the distance until the sky got light at 7 a.m.
I came to Cadiz a couple of days ago and met up with some cool people here as well...we're planning to rent a car tomorrow and head out on a 5 or 6 day road trip up into Extremadura and then back down to the Costa del Luz and Tarifa. We're going to sleep on beaches where we can and in the car where we can't and just go until we smell so bad we can't stand it anymore. I can't wait.

war zone Valencia

2006-04-26T15:23:00.001-04:00

I arrived in Valencia on Saturday night and as I walked to the hostel a marching band came out of nowhere and passed through the square. This should have been my first clue that something was going down in Valencia.

The hostel was cool and I met a few people to go out with that night, Joey from Texas and Alison from London. Alison went home around 2 or 3 but J and I found ourselves in a series of bars and clubs (you ever have that moment when someone asks you what time it is and you look at your watch and it's a quarter to 6 and you have no idea where the last three hours have gone? it was like that).
I have become one of those odious women who lies about her age. Or who allows other people to lie about her age...but when the extremely attractive Dutch boy you've been talking to for a couple hours reveals his age as 21 and asks how old you are, and your jaw drops open as you think of something to say, and your quick thinking drinking partner pipes up with "Twenty-five. She's twenty-five." you might not come clean either.
Actually it's weird...personally I think I look like I am 30 years old...not a lot older and not a lot younger. But maybe because I´ve been hanging out with a lot of younger people lately I've encountered a LOT of surprised looks when I say I'm 30. I've heard everything from 23 to 28 when people try to guess. I am loving this and am going to play it up as much as I can, especially since all the sun exposure I've been getting and will continue to get is going to age me superfast in the next two years or so. Leatherface here I come.

The next day everyone in the hostel was awakened by a combination of church bells and loud explosions. But we were all too hung over to actually get up and investigate. Sad.
When I finally did leave the hostel I came across the remnants of a fireworks display in one of the squares and tantalizing glimpses of dissolving parades - like a group of women dressed in black wearing mantillas, or yet another marching band. An altar/stage was set up in the square near the hostel (I saw several of these in squares throughout the city) and people were preparing for a pageant and poetry recital featuring kids dressed as monks and (what looked to me like) pirates. Probably not pirates though.
I wish I could tell you what it was all about but I'm still not sure I know. I think it was the Feast of Sant Vicent Ferrer.

Monday was a holiday which meant absolutely nothing was open but I finally got to see the parade.

After watching the parade for a while I wandered around some more and found a large square filled with people...well as filled as it could be considering a huge chunk of it was cordoned off because that's where the fireworks were set to go off.

The coloured things on the strings are explosives. As some sort of anthem played (Valencian I assume) and people sang under their breaths a couple of guys came out to set up miniature rocket launchers under the strings.
When the music ended one of them lit a fuse and that started one of the most violently loud and powerful pyro displays I have ever seen.
It sent small spinners of fire and coloured smoke into the air.

At ground level the square started filling with smoke and you could see bright fires flare. The impact was earth shaking and I had to plug my ears. The whole place looked like a war zone and people were loving it.

That night Alison and Joey and I went out again even though it was a tough slog finding any open bars or clubs (you'd think that on a holiday people would be partying....?? no.) and finally ended up dancing till 6 at Venial which is apparently Valencia's oldest gay bar (and conveniently just down the street from the hostel!) it was pretty empty but the Kim Cattrall lookalike was fun to watch.

Finally yesterday I went to the cathedral and saw wonderous things like the Holy Grail (yes! the real one! maybe.) and a saint's dead withered arm in a box. I will never understand relics.

knee deep in sheep (and other wildlife stories)

2006-04-26T15:23:00.000-04:00

Palma at night:

After a couple of nights in Palma I was done with it and decided to take this antique train

up to a small town in the north of the island called Sóller, where I had what is possibly the best hotel room so far...18 euros for a double bed, a giant palm tree outside my window, and a sink. Perhaps my standards have gotten low but I nearly squealed out loud when the door opened to reveal this little paradise. I ended up staying there for four nights.
The best part (and here I'm being sarcastic) was the built in wake up call. Every morning around 7:30 or 8 two of the world's most adorable charming sweet little children went out to play soccer in the courtyard under my window. This game usually involved slamming a large red rubber ball against the ground, the tables, the chairs, the walls, the doors, the windows, the dogs, and against each other. Then the trash talk would start.
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"
"GAAAAAAAA!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGH!""
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"
And so on. Their vocabularies were somewhat limited.
After the kids went in for breakfast the dogs took advantage of a little alone time to chase each other and make strange dog sounds in the courtyard.

On my second day I did a really nice hike to a nearby beach in a cove, the Cala de Deia. It took about three hours to get there and maybe an hour and three quarters to get back. I blame this on the fact that I could not stop taking photographs and also that I took several wrong paths on the way there.
Hey. If you were at a fork in the road and one of the paths was blocked by a giant white horse, which way would you go? I opted for the path of least resistance. It was the wrong choice.
Elsewhere you have to walk through farmers' fields and pastures and someone had taken it on himself to post a sign indicating that the destination was in the opposite direction of where it actually was. Thank god for Germans on the trail with detailed maps.

Finally I found the place...I was expecting naked swimming (Lonely Planet says so! It must be true, all day every day!) but found a few hikers and families hanging out on the garbage strewn rocks. The water was beautiful and extremely powerful - you can't see from my photos but the waves were really rough and the water was pounding the rocks so hard you could hear them boom.

A couple of days later I did another hike which took me in the opposite direction up into the hills through terraced sheep grazing areas.

I walked past one field containing a giant donkey which Hee Hawed at me as I passed. I may be a farmgirl but that was a first.

At one point I found myself surrounded by sheep who were rather surprised by and unhappy about my presence. Most of them ran off ahead while some ran down the steep side of the hill. One little lamb was caught all along with me on the trail and it couldn´t get down the side. So it ran ahead of me bleating what sounded like "MAAAAAA!!!" which made me feel bad but what could I do...it was getting dark and I wasn´t about to hang out there all night. It would turn around every few minutes and glare at me and yell for its mother and then run off ahead again.

Later as I walked home I saw a duck attack and kill a duckling. It was extremely disturbing and I'm not quite sure what I saw...all I know is that the duck grabbed the duckling in its beak and shook it and pecked at it until it wasn't moving anymore. Even after the thing was clearly dead the duck kept coming back every few minutes to go at it again. An older woman walked past with two small children and they stopped to watch the ducks...I found myself cringing thinking "please don't see please don't see" but luckily this was in between attacks.

After leaving Sóller I went to the Cuevas del Drach near Porto Cristo on the east side of the island. These are a massive system of caves filled with stalactites and stalagmites and one of the the worlds largest underground lakes. It takes about 30 minutes to walk through the caves and there are probably a couple of hundred people on each tour. At the edge of the lake an amphitheatre of sorts has been set up and everyone files in to sit on benches and listen to a brief concert of classical music played by musicians on a boat floating through the lake. It´s all very Phantom of the Opera. Actually the music was kind of nice but they should not make it mandatory because Í'm pretty sure that a large chunk of the audience was not feeling the vibe. Like the Three Stooges in front of me for example...a beefy father and son team who actually smacked one another upside the head and giggled as the concert was going on. Alas nobody was poked in the eye.
After the music ended we were all ferried across the lake on small white boats and then exited. As I was waiting for the bus to take me back to Palma I was staring into space, lost in thought...I heard the ladies beside me giggling and when I actually focused on what was in front of me saw a massive peacock staring at me. Staring at me and taking a large peacock dump.
Later a bus ran over the poo and the ladies laughed harder than ever.

all man from the waist up

2006-04-15T16:17:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday the guys convinced me to go out to check out a club that possibly had good music ("you can sleep when you´re dead." Can you believe that line worked? Twist my rubber arm.). So around 1:30 we set out for a place just off Placa Catalunya, I think it was called City Hall.
When we got there the bouncer informed us it was going to cost 10 Euros to get in. F&%* that! So we turned around, got a couple beers, and started walking back home along the Rambla. Then our luck turned; one of the guys ran into a girl he knew who just happened to be handing out free passes to the club we had just tried to get into. So we headed back up and went in (just behind some poor american suckers who were actually paying the cover), prepared to dance.
What we found was a concert that was just starting (at 2:30am!). I have no idea who it was but it was a dude in leather pants and a big puffy leather jacket and converse high tops singing while another guy played the synth. Things got better when the guy took his jacket off and wasn´t wearing anything underneath...but the best was when THE DANCER got up on stage. A painfully painfully thin man who was all woman from the waist down (high heeled boots, stockings, garters, a half girdle) and all man from the waist up (white tank top, suspenders, white collar and cuffs, black tie, hat, beard...and possibly eyeliner) stood behind the singer...cigarette held off to the side like he didn´t want to smell the smoke, he had the best dispassionate robot dance I´ve ever seen in my life. Seriously this guy was awesome; his facial expression did not change once. We couldn´t keep our eyes off him - I´ve never regretted not having my camera on me more.
The music was a bit tedious so we were all very happy when they got off stage and a dj started playing. That was short lived however since after one song another band took over...they had very amusing hair and outfits but after a few more songs it was unbearable and we had to leave.
It was all worth it for dancing guy though.

In Palma de Mallorca right now...it appears that my ´dorm´ is a room with 2 beds that I have to share with (ewww) a BOY! That I´ve never met before. Hostels - you never know what you´re gonna get. No I don´t mean it like that, you perv.

The overnight-no-cabin-cause-i-am-cheap ferry ride was fine, I slept for a few hours on a couch in the bar area where they kept playing Amelie on a loop and two Irish guys with a massive stack of beer cans in front of them talked loudly of their various sexual exploits. All very interesting.

I sat on the beach this afteroon and read and dodged creepy creeps.
Does this scenario ever actually get anyone laid?
- sitting really close to you (when the beach is practically deserted)
- staring at you for 3 minutes
- then saying "Hola! Hola!" repeatedly when you ignore the stare
- when you finally look up and say "No espanol" and "No comprende" and go back to your book, coming over and crouching next to you
- holding out his clammy hand in your face until you´re forced to shake it in the hope this will make him go away
- not letting go of said hand and then kissing it (this is when the yelling starts)
- and then kissing his fingers and touching your cheek with these nasty damp digits

They´ll go away if you start saying "NO! Adios!" really loud but what the eff. What is the point of this?
Ladies, women and girls - if ANY of you are encouraging this behaviour by actually hooking up with these guys, STOP NOW FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Not that I think this poorly of you.
Actually, I don´t think they´re even really trying to meet people, I think they just get off on freaking random women out. Which makes me really sad and angry.

I need to learn how to say "Get the fuck away from me before I cut you, asshole." in Spanish. Anybody know how to do this?

Dali Tattoo

2006-04-14T10:18:00.000-04:00

I got out of the house long enough on Wednesday to take the train up to Figueres so I could check out the Dali Museum up there. As usual I missed the train I wanted to take (but in this case only had to wait an hour) and got there around 2. Yet another word of advice: if you go to Figueres to see the Dali Museum please do some research in advance and print yourself out a map or something. Don't just assume you'll be able to leave the train station and magically find it. When you leave the station there's a nice little sign that points that way, but that's pretty much the only one. After 90 minutes of wandering, and asking directions from no less than 4 people, I was starting to wonder if the whole thing was some elablorate surrealist hoax (or is that something the dadaists would be more likely to do...Carrie? Shannon?) and that maybe the museum didn't exist at all.
Finally, FINALLY I found it (and it's pretty unmissable - a red building covered in yellow...I'm not sure what they are...croissants? Probably not croissants...the whole thing is topped with giant white eggs. Very cool looking.) and made my way inside.

There's a big courtyard in the middle with a huge sculpture. A guy stood up on the platform and pulled up his pantleg to display his Dali tattoo and pose for a photo. Apparently it didn't turn out very well because he left and then came back five minutes later to do the same thing.

The interior of the museum is amazing...there are about 22 rooms absolutely crammed with things to look at: paintings, sculpture, drawings, lithographs. One room is mostly taken up by one architect's attempt to reproduce the painting "Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment" as an Apartment. It's pretty cool. To see it from the right perspective you have to climb up a ladder to a platform and look through a large lens.

I'm finally leaving Barcelona tonight on the night ferry to Palma (on the island of Mallorca). Because I'm cheap and tickets are more expensive if you don't book more than 48 hours in advance, I've taken a seat rather than a bed for this trip. I hope I don't live to regret that decision...7 hours on a ferry overnight with no bed? I'll let you know.

lemmy's groupie

2006-04-11T20:27:00.000-04:00

I put up a few new pictures...
Here's me on a rooftop:

And me and various roommates and hangers on, drunk and dancing:

But enough about me...I love this building.

More at Flickr.

four men and a little lady

2006-04-06T13:26:00.001-04:00

Wow....I've already been in Barcelona for two weeks and what do I have to show for it?
Well, I'm extremely well rested for one thing, as I've settled very well into the daily rhythm here in the Black Hole of Slack...this mostly involves getting up around 2 p.m., making something to eat, reading and hanging out for a while, if it's nice out going for a walk (either sightseeing or going to the beach), coming back when it gets dark, reading and hanging out some more, maybe eating dinner, watching the downloads of the day (South Park, The Daily Show, Colbert, etc etc), maybe a movie, hanging out some more and going to bed around 4 or 5 a.m.

On weekends or Mondays this may be expanded to include going dancing at a cool club called Sidecar (however in Spanish this is pronounced See-day-car)...it's the Zaphod Beeblebrox of the Placa Reial and it closes at 5 a.m. Sweet.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before but in Barcelona you can walk down the street (at night) or sit on the beach (during the day) and drink beer at the same time. In fact there are dozens of gentlemen wandering the narrow streets of the Raval or the Rambla or the various Placas with 6-packs of inexplicably cold beer dangling from their hands. They'll sell you a can for 1 Euro on the street or 2 on the beach where there's not as much competition or something.

I'm not sure about the legality of this activity but I haven't seen the police do anything about it, although I've been told that all of these guys have their own little hiding places just in case. Also, shortly before I arrived in Barcelona there was the Macrobotellon...I think a botellon is an informal gathering of people hanging out and drinking, like a little street party, and a macrobotellon is just a bigger one of those. On March 17th a big nation-wide Macrobotellon was organized as a protest against some anti-street drinking legislation (I was in Malaga and it was raining and a mumbly French guy was trying to explain it to me which is why I really didn't know what it was till I arrived in Barcelona) and people went out and partied in the streets in cities all over. In Barcelona, things didn't go so well.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4818180.stm

Anyway, on most nights this isn't an issue so if you're halfway through a can of beer and it's time to go, you can just take it with you on the walk to the bar. Or, if you don't have any beer at home, you can buy one almost as soon as you walk out the door. I love this. I also love leaving the club all tired and sweaty at 5 a.m. and walking home along the Ramblas watching hookers accost solitary men...these ladies are very aggro and they really really want your 10 Euros. 10 Euros! That's a bloody steal.

the illustrated entry

2006-03-27T12:09:00.000-05:00

So I uploaded a whackload of photos this weekend going way back to France...here are some highlights.

The town at the base of Mont St Michel:

Macarons d'Amiens...we bought a bag of these in Amiens and slowly worked our way through them. They don´t look like much but they're so delicious you think you could eat 10, but they're so rich two a day is actually the limit.

A canister of Anti-Gas ointment from a WWI museum:

These stones were very sad, part of a memorial to the unknown dead of WWI. We visited another small military cemetery nearby which had stones that ran the gamut...sometimes it would list the full name and regiment and date of death, others had only regiment and date of death, others had country only, some had date of death only and no country even. This would all have been based on the information that could be recovered from the body at the time.

This is what the land looks like at Vimy Ridge...most of it is planted with trees and has signs cautioning people to keep off the land because of the possibility of unexploded land mines.

That little sign stuck in the ground marks the spot where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.

A lot of the buildings in Rouen´s old city look like this.

More from Carnival in Tolosa, Spain - I love the look on this girl´s face.

Nuns at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Sunset in Barcelona:

Crazy-looking seahorse at the Barcelona Aquarium:

Aww, look at them. So compatible:

Gaudi´s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona:

Alicante - we tried to climb this and got about halfway up to discover that all the gates were locked and we couldn´t go any further. Mom and Dad later took the lift up to the top:

The Alhambra in Granada:

Las Fallas is a festival that happens every March in Valencia. I belive that people make giant papier mache figures and then at the end of it all but one are burned (the one that´s saved is voted on by the people). It´s a huge huge party. I wanted to go but it´s impossible to find accommodations on short notice so I didn´t end up going until Monday, the day after it ended. At the hostel we met people who had come in a few days earlier and either slept on the beach or didn´t sleep at all so maybe that could have been an option.
Anyway, this seems to be the one that survived this year. It was out in a square on Monday (and for at least the next couple of days...I don´t know long it stays out) - the square was thronged with tonnes of poeple taking photos. They were mostly elderly, I don´t know why...maybe all the younger people were still recovering from the night before?

la cucaracha

2006-03-23T14:22:00.000-05:00

That does mean the cockroach doesn't it?

So I'm happily ensconced in my new Barcelona digs for (hopefully) the next couple weeks. It's really big, in an incredible location just on the edge of the Raval, I don't have to pay a lot (it's much cheaper than a hostel), I get my own room which is not nearly as small as I was led to believe, the guys who live here are cool (skateboards in the hallway, lots of Afghan Whigs and Archers of Loaf albums in the iTunes library, and daily downloads of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report), good sized kitchen with a gas stove...and a big ass cockroach running around on top of said stove. We met when I lifted the water pot off the burner and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.
Two years of living in Palais Lansdowne with my furry little grey friends taught me that when you think you see something move out of the corner of your eye, your eye is probably not playing tricks on you.

Mr. Cucaracha is about 3/4 of an inch long and a rusty brown colour. He's wily and hard to catch once he sets his mind to it...oh it might look like he's just bumbling around on the stove top with no particular destination in mind, but when you rush out to grab some paper to squish him with he will find a hidey hole and then you'll be sorry. Update! I went back in later and found like 4 more Cucarachas running around on the stove. The guys say they see them occasionally...I must be super lucky to get such a show on my first day!

Anyway, this is a new and interesting experience, I've never really lived with roaches before. I'll let you know how it goes.

In other news, Valencia was nice. Even though I was about 12 hours late and missed the end of Las Fallas I was still met (unexpectedly) at the train station by the friend (who is currently cycling down the coast) I had just stood up for lunch...he decided to stay in Valencia and take a day off from the ride so I got an instant companion and a guide to take me to the hostel. This is not to be undervalued as the instructions to get to the hostel as defined online are something like this: "when you get out of the train station turn right and take three steps then look to your left. You will see a building that looks sort of like a castle. Walk toward it until you get to the Citibank, then turn left. Jump up and down seven times. Walk 150 paces until you see the statue of elvis and then close your eyes and quack like a duck. Open your eyes, walk for 10 meters, and voila! Knock on the red door and we'll buzz you in."

I exaggerate only slightly. The odd thing is that the directions generally do work, it's just a pain playing Treasure Map with a backpack strapped on your back.

The weather in Valencia was fantastic - on Tuesday it must have been in the high 20s (according to one sign it was even 30 degrees at one point) and sunny, we walked to the beach assuming that if a city's built on the sea the beach can't be too far from downtown. More than an hour and several blisters later (note to self: do not walk anywhere in flip flops ever again) we found the beach. It was nice, if a little powdery (still finding sand in the pockets of my jeans), so we drank a little sangria, lay in the sun for a little while, and then headed back. The buses in Valencia have televisions in them.

yo soy stupido

2006-03-19T15:53:00.000-05:00

Travel tip #4 from your friendly neighbourhood idiot:
Read the train ticket carefully. Think about what the numbers written on it mean.
For example, 20:15 is not 10:15 p.m., it is 8:15 p.m.
If you fail to do this you run the risk of realizing, at 8:10 p.m. while you are using the bathroom in your hostel, that 20 is 8 and that you have 5 minutes to get on the train.
You can always try to do what I did, which was to run out of the bathroom screaming "oh my god call me a taxi!" at the hostel guys who grabbed my bags for me and ran me out to the square where the taxis are, only to find that because of the film festival taxis are rare tonight and the only one that came by was scooped by some jerk from North America who said "I was here first". Finally I got a taxi who drove like mad to the station but alas, I was 5 minutes late.
Then came the fun part which was trying not to cry while the ticket guys tried to change the ticket for me only to discover that everything from Malaga to Valencia is booked up until Tuesday and that because I missed the train I can't get a refund (because I would like to try to take the bus), they can only change it to the next available ticket. Finally I was able to find someone who spoke english behind the counter and he arranged for me to leave tomorrow morning and go through Cordoba, but I will still get to Valencia tomorrow afternoon. Not bad.
Then there was the triumphant return to the hostel where at least I was treated to free sangria and sympathy...and a reduction on the price for tonight (so nice).
So that's what...10 euros in taxis plus 13 euros in ticket supplements plus 10 euros for a place to sleep...33 euros or about $50.

Stupidity is expensive.

the rain in spain...

2006-03-19T10:57:00.000-05:00

...falls mainly on Malaga.
I don't know if this is normal but it hasn't really stopped raining since I arrived. There have been brief breaks in the rain but it always seems to start up again. This has made it difficult to see the city but what I have seen is pretty nice and I think I'll come back later on.

I arrived on Friday which coincidentally was the first day of the Malaga Film Festival and the main theatre (the one with the red carpet and screaming crowds and Spanish film stars that I don't recognize) is about 2 blocks away from the hostel. Walking around the first night I came across this scene and of course had to settle in to watch. I think I saw the woman from Y Tu Mama Tambien and then got very excited thinking that maybe her costars would appear but if they were there I didn't see them. I kept waiting for Antonio Banderas to appear (I don't know if he's in attendance but apparently this is his home town) but since I couldn't see over the crowd anymore, and it was raining, I gave up and went home.

After 2 very late nights in Granada (and with the sneaking suspicion that I was getting a cold) I told myself that I was going to be a good girl and go to bed early. I forgot that it was Friday. And St. Patrick's Day. So I went down to the lounge and in two or three hours found myself with a group of others at an Irish Pub swilling Heiniken. How does this happen? I don't know. But I managed to extricate myself at the reasonable hour of 3 a.m. (I don't know what the deal is with liquor laws here in Spain but I haven't heard anything about 'last call' since I arrived)

There are a few french guys staying and working here so I've been practicing with them...it's hard though. One guy I can barely understand (too bad too because he's really cute...okay I have to go off on a tangent here. Before I came to Spain all I heard about was the hotness of Spanish men. Someone needs to answer for this because I feel I have been misled. Don't get me wrong, there are many attractive people in this country but in a contest of 'hot guys seen on the street on any given day' I think France wins, hands down.)

The rain yesterday was unbelievable but it let up a little in the evening and we met up with this great Welsh couple we had met the night before for drinks. It's great to go out with people who actually live in a place because they've already tested it and know where to go and what to do. They've also generously offered me a place to stay if I come back and since I would like to see Malaga in the sun I think I will take them up on that when I come back south.
We went to a great place (all big wooden tables and stools and tiled walls) for tapas and then to El Pimpi, a very cool bar that in addition to being Antonio Banderas' favourite bar in Malaga is also room after room after patio after room of bar. I think it must be two or three buildings spliced together because rooms just seem to breed other rooms. Also it has this great wall with photos of famous visitors including one of Tony Blair crouching next to or hugging a cask or something, looking like a dork.

Around 1 I really wasn't feeling well so went home all excited about the great fantastic 10 hour sleep I was going to have. What I got were an Italian couple whispering to each other from their bunks, drunken idiots screaming and breaking bottles in the street outside at 3 a.m., a roommate who came home at 4 a.m., a couple people who packed up their stuff and left around...I don't know...but it was too early. Note to anyone who stays in a hostel. Don't pack all of your stuff in fucking noisy plastic bags. And don't put them in your backpack, and then pull them out, and put them back in again...etc etc. How many times can one person insert and remove a plastic bag from a backpack? A lot of times as I discovered this morning. Really, if you're leaving early and you're only there for one night, why would you unpack all your shit in the first place? Anyway. Needless to say the anticipated 10 hour sleep did not happen.

I'm sure I'll be able to make up for it tonight though, when I hop on the 10:30 train that arrives in Valencia at around 5 a.m. tomorrow...if I'm lucky Las Fallas will still be happening and I might see something burn!

After that, looks like the cheap room in Barcelona is on so I will probably stay there for a couple weeks at least. Of course this all depends on the guys I'm staying with (I've not met them before) and the room itself...hopefully it's not a closet with a mattress on the floor! But I hope for good things.

Finally I may also have a local tour guide in the form of Mr Louis Vuitton sac (aka mr. soccer game or mr. darcy) who has sent me an email indicating he would "love to see" me. Frankly I find this a bit dodgy as I was neither looking my best nor at my most charming that night. To be honest I was pretty drunk on beer and sangria (and I was not alone....Mom...) and my lazy eye was probably in full effect. Maybe he has a thing for cross-eyed girls. We shall see.

Grrrranada

2006-03-17T06:59:00.000-05:00

My time in Granada can be divided into two phases: pre-parental-departure and post-parental-departure.

Granada in the time of the parents:
- a 'friendly' taxi driver who offered to take us to see flamenco on our first night in town and who took the very very scenic (i.e. 30 Euro) route there and back
- getting dropped off at the flamenco place about an hour before the show started (mr. taxi driver kindly offered to take us to see the view of the Alhambra at night to kill time before the show...meter running of course. we had to turn that kind offer down) and being the only three people there while dancers warm up. It's not so bad however as we have a pretty good view of the Alhambra under the nearly full moon anyway. At the very last minute two huge busloads full of Canadian and Japanese students pull up and the place is suddenly full.
- the show is fine, the music and dancing are good, but the whole thing is so bizarre and calculated in this long narrow cavelike room lined with tourists, copper pots and pans hanging from the ceiling...I feel kind of like a john. The music is extremely percussive with a guitarist and a singer and a drummer and everyone else in the group clapping complicated rhythms and I find myself unable to not tap my feet to the rhythm and so I am shocked, shocked! to look down the rows of feet and legs lining the room and see not one single other foot or knee or hand moving in the audience. It must be like dancing for dead people. The second group of dancers is older and really very good...it includes a very old woman who gets up near the end of the set and sings and dances for us which is pretty cool. Then comes the 'audience monkey dance' portion of the evening as one of the dancers goes around the room pulling various audience members up one at a time to dance a few seconds with her. Maybe it's because these people are not wearing the right shoes but holy shit they can't dance. Not that I would have done any better but the contrast is pretty striking.
- the Alhambra monument is pretty amazing and we spend about 5 hours there wandering around the grounds and palaces and ruins and towers and beautiful gardens. There's an outdoor stairway in the Generalife area (the sultan's private garden I believe) with running water coursing through hollowed out railings and the sound it makes is amazing.
- we see the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel who, among other things, financed Columbus' 'discovery' of the Americas. Also of their loco daughter 'Joan the Mad' who really loved her philandering husband, even after he was dead....
- the cathedral is beautiful and bright and a welcome change after all the gothic grey and stone of France

Granda after the parents go back to Madrid and then Saskatchewan (bye Mom and Dad! I had a great time, and thanks for all the beer, Popeye!)
- move to a hostel in a different part of town and immediately fall into the routine of lazy lazy days and staying up till 4 or 5 am every morning
- spend the days reading the papers in a sunny square with a big fountain in the middle, watching the streams of hippies and punks and uncategorizable dudes with mullets (the mullet is back with a serious vengance here in Spain...or maybe it just never went away. it's scary, though maybe not quite as scary as Toronto hipsters with ironic mullets and hideous 80s eyeglasses that cover half the face)
- wonder at the group of three skinny formless 11 year old girls who come to the square every day with a boom box and a stack of cds and who perform a grotesque parody of 'sexy' dancing to Destiny's Child songs and bad spanish dance music when they should be in school.
- find myself at 2 a.m. in an empty bar which looks like a flamenco cave...my companions start performing impromptu spoken word and then a couple guys show up with a drum and then a bunch of other guys show up with a guitar and we hear some real flamenco unexpectly in this place we thought was going to be a reggae bar...
- standing on the roof at 5 a.m. with James Dean (who, in case you were wondering, has been reincarnated as a precocious 23 year old from Chicago) looking over the city under a huge fat bright moon and stars after drinking beer all night...

Now I'm off to Malaga. See you there.

what was Hieronymus Bosch smoking?

2006-03-10T12:11:00.000-05:00

After an 8 hour train ride from San Sebastian I met my parents in Madrid and we set out to drink as much beer and Baileys as possible.
I had many many problems with the language (Uno caña, s´il vous plait) and accidentally ordered giant plates of cheese for dinner, not once, but twice.

We spent hours and hours in the Prado with its crazy Bosch paintings....the Garden of Earthly Delights seemed to have nearly as large a crowd as the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. I was eventually able to get up close and personal with this incredibly weird piece of work, but you´d need hours to inspect the whole thing. Nevertheless it was very very cool.
The Prado is so huge and there is so much to see that I didn´t see it all unfortunately (I did see most of it though, and it was incredible). I don´t think I had ever seen any paintings by El Greco before and I really liked them a lot. The colours were fantastic.
We also went to the Reina Sophia which houses Picasso´s Guernica (which was pretty cool to see after seeing reproductions for so long) and the Thyssen-Bornemisza where I could have spent two days giving myself a private art history degree. As it was I ran out of time on the middle floor and had to rush through the impressionists.

To break up all the cultcha we wandered around the city checking out the Puerto del Sol, Placa Mayor etc etc (and our hotel was in a perfect location for all this walking, literally down the street from the Thyssen museum).

It seems to be a universal law that if you´re wandering around at night and you don´t really know where you´re going you WILL eventually end up in a red light district. We took a nice walk down a little street lined with lovely young ladies, me thinking...hmmm, there must be a club around here or something, everyone is all dressed up. Hmmmm, why are there so many groups of girls standing along the side of the street? Why is that girl pulling on my dad´s sleeve? O my GOD! And so on.

Madrid was cool but after three days it was time to hit Barcelona. Really we didn´t do a lot but since the weather was nicer than in Madrid we could do our drinking outside. We also spent a lot of time walking up and down La Rambla checking out the Michael Jackson impersonator, the living statues, and the red-faced and drunken Chelsea Boys who had come to town to support their team in a match against FC Barcelona. Maybe it´s because all of the good ones stay home, but this glimpse of english manhood makes my heart go out to the women of England. Sad, sad, sad to see these sad packs of 40 year old men roving the city, drooling and shouting incomprehensibly.
This level of madness made us think it was a final game but it turned out to be a semifinal or something...we found an american style bar and grill where most of the tables were reserved for the game but as we arrived early and were such wide-eyed strangers to the game of football our waiter let us have the last unreserved table to watch the game at. The bar started filling up with Barcelona supporters and the staff were turning people away. I went to the bathroom and when I came back Mom was chatting up a very very pretty man who had been seated at the extra seat at our table (how on earth she managed that I will never know). He was very nice, even though he was carrying one of those preposterous Louis Vuitton man-pouches. He tried to explain the game to us and offered to show me around the town when I come back to Barcelona.
Then, suddenly, I was trapped in a Jane Austen novel as my mother, Mrs. Bennet, went at him.
"Soooo, do you have a family?"
"Yes, my family is in Barcelo..."
"No, what I mean is ARE YOU MARRIED?"
"Oh. I am divorced."
"Ahhh...and what do you do for a living?"
"I have a communications and internet company."
"Oh! My daughter here studied communications and used to work with the internet!"

She was practically rubbing her hands together...okay, sorry Mom, I´m exaggerating. But not much! Poor guy...though I did get a pretty man´s phone number out of the deal so I guess it´s not all bad.

The game was great fun to watch as the bar was full of Barcelona supporters who went mad when they scored in the second half.

After a few days in Barcelona we decided to head to the heat and bought train tickets to Alicante along the coast where it is finally finally hot. Around 26º during the day and 20º at night...I lay on the beach this afternoon and caught the first sunburn of the year, may it be the first of many.
We´re here for a couple more nights (we got a pretty sweet room at a cute little hotel here) and then I think we´re off to Granada.