2003-01-12 - 8:59 p.m.
Jan 20 update
In Lisbon, where it has rained pretty much all day and I am wet like an otter. All the museums were closed today except for the Casa do Fado, which is about fado music, the nostalgic lamenting stuff that Portuguese people sing. It was pretty cool. I really liked the Paredes guys, Artur and his son Carlos. The museum had some CD listening stations (kind of advertorial) and I listened to the Paredes play and it was very jangly, like complex indie rock.
Ate a fish for dinner. It was the best meal all trip, because it was not greasy and it came with vegetables. And it was cheap - only $7. I have been eating a lot of seafood here, prawns and octopi and squid and fishes. It is what Portuguese people eat, because the ocean and the sea are right here.
I can not make contractions because I can not find the apostrophe key.Today I also went to a castle, the castle of St. George, which dates to the 5th century. At the top there is a big park where you can look out and see the city. It was very windy and not raining when I was up in the park, thank goodness, so I got to stand there and enjoy the view and feel alive for a while. Most of my time here I have been bored, because Sat. night no one was out and it was raining, Sunday everything was closed except for some museums but not all, and today all the sites/sights are closed. So I just walk around like a hobo. Yesterday I went to three different malls: one to go to the bathroom, one because I was bored and needed to go to the bathroom, and it was the only thing open (other than some churches, which I also visited), and one because I was really super-bored. The third mall is the largest on the Iberian peninsula. It had an Indian restaurant and a Mexican restaurant.
I think I will go to Sevilla tomorrow to escape the rain and the scary desolated streets and the Portuguese that I do not understand, even though it sounds nice to the ear. Then maybe Cordoba, then Grenada. Will be back in Madrid on the 27th to visit Toledo and Segovia for day trips. Then back home. Looking forward to feeling heat and seeing friends. I have not really spoken to anyone in four days. Kind of feel like a monk. Just "hello" and "I do not understand Portuguese" in English or Spanish. Wrote a lot in my journal, but there are not many things to say about Lisbon in terms of "this person was really neat" and whatnot because I have not met anyone.
On the bright side, things that I like about Lisbon: The broken up old buildings, the pastries, the fish, the music they play in the main square in the Baixa (downtown), the hills (gives you a good hike), palm trees, boats.
Jan 16 update
I am having a wonderful time ... right now in Coruna, which is on the west coast, at the top (Galicia). Got here this morning after taking a bus with some extremely drunk, loud and obnoxious American college students and their much less cavemanic professors. I really can't take little spoiled suburban brats whose daddies pay for them to act like assholes in foreign countries. I really can't. They just make it harder for the rest of us who try to respect the people who live in the places we visit. Sometimes I think it�s a good thing that these noisy little bastards get to go abroad and get a little wake-up call when they realize that they can�t get their Biggie-size Cokes and fries, but then I run into the kids like the ones last night and wonder if it makes any difference. They�re so stuck in their mindless little worlds, where everything sucks and the point of life is to be the loudest and least eloquent person around. Okay, now I�m complaining, but I just have to say that these kids were complaining about everything they could find: the weather, the food, the everything. I think a lot of Americans believe that nothing is ever good enough, because everything sucks. It could always be better, fresher, hipper. It�s very warm here on the west coast, like Austin, and the ocean surrounds the city center. It�s a fisherman�s town, and is close to where the Prestige oil spill occurred; many windows feature signs that say "Nunca Mais," which is Gallego (the language of Galicia ... like Spanish but a little different) for "Never Again." Just ascended the oldest lighthouse in the world, and have seen many of the sights in the city, which has about 250,000 residents. Today I took pictures of brightly painted boats and rocks and waves and things ... blue skies, vistas galore, crashing waters of the Atlantic ... and many feral cats, which hang out on the rocks and provide good photo subjects (a little shy about taking strangers� pictures without asking). Some people here take food to the cats. I was walking near the beach and came across a woman emptying a can of wet cat food onto a concrete platform, her legs dangling off the edge over the rocks, and a group of about six cats scurrying all around her. It kind of reminded me of this particular neighborhood in Istanbul which also had a lot of feral cats, but the people there just ignored the cats. When I was there five years ago (time flies!) I walked around this neighborhood with a little kitten that I had to abandon, unfortunately, because you can't really take cats on trains.Tomorrow I�ll go to Santiago de Compostela, then Vigo (and hopefully to see a Spanish indie rock band at the club Nashville), then Portugal and south. Then back to Spain: Sevilla, Toledo, Grenada, and back to Madrid. I hope it warms up in the Madrid area by the time I have to return - the temps in Castilla y Leon are the coldest in 10 years! And now that my blood runs according to the Texan thermometer, well, it was pretty freezing for me. A funny thing (though it�s not so funny when you�re trying to take a shower or sleep) about Spain is that the hostel owners don�t keep the heat on at night, and for much of the day as well. So I�ve been running around a little bit zombie-like, because the cold penetrates the blankets and keeps me awake. Don�t really feel tired, though ... can still walk my usual 8 hours a day-on-the-road.
Here in Coruna I�m staying in an old place that doesn�t have any radiators at all ... though it will probably be warmer than Salamanca, which was super-duper cold. The woman who runs the place is overbearing and keeps yelling at this guy who is I�m not sure where but somewhere in the place. Weird. Okay, my time is up at the Internet cafe, so gotta go. More later, you can bet.Hola de Espa�a
Hi to all. I�m fine and sort of having fun - you know how I am. Last night I went to see the Cynics and they were quite surprised to see me. After seeing them play (very good! garage rock at its finest) to about 300-400 enthusiastic Spaniards, we went to a bar owned by their friend and drank for free, which was very nice considering a beer costs around $4 here. Then we went to an after-hours club and you couldn�t move. Some guy with a very cool afro hairstyle was bouncing up and down, doing a James Brown thing. The bass player from the Posies was at this club too, which was called "No Fun." We left at 6am and I walked home, past the neighborhood prostitutes.
I was so tired when I got here that my sleep schedule has been all screwed up and I�m missing all the museums and tourist crap. Not sure whether to wait around and hang out with the Cynics till Wed., when they play their next show, or move on to Segovia. It�s nice to have Pittsburghers closeby. Meantime, all I�ve been doing is walking around and buying clothes. You just can�t get nice jackets in the US because the manufacturers create clothing for tank-shaped women (rightfully so in many cases) and I�m not a tank. Also very nice shoes here ...
The first person I met here was a guy with a dog who said he wanted an American woman to sleep with. The second person I met was a Polish guy who�s been sleeping on the streets of Europe for 10 years. He seemed Spanish but he was from Lodz. This should prove that I just have that special kind of magnetism that attracts all the winners. But hey, great short story fodder.
Things I�ve seen
About 100,000 supermodel typesA "museum of ham"
Multiple "sex shops"
A store that sells nothing but scissors; another that sells nothing but measuring devices - scales and whatnot
an old woman going ballistic over a fallen bicycle ... you could hear her screaming for blocks
totally packed department stores
old women with pink hair
Things I�ve eaten
PizzaTartelette cookies (French, packaged, yum)
Tuna sandwich
Chocolate sundae
fried squid rings (calamare)
tortilla (not so good)
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Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse. � Lily Tomlin |
