Did I go to Spain by myself for two weeks in August? Yes I did. Did I spend most of my time there writing down my thoughts in my omnipresent pocket journal? Yes I did. Is it now November and I am just now getting around to sharing those thoughts? Yes it is. So sue me. I’ve been busy okay. But at long last I’ve finally been able to transcribe a sort of “best of” on the ol’ internet here. But be warned: It might take you longer to read all this stuff than my actual trip lasted.
(By the way, I wrote a not insignificant chunk of this in the courtyard of a 12th century Moorish palace. Where do you do your blogging?)
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*I think there should be a TV show where they pit the wildest, craziest, most unhinged American college kids they can find against average Madrid residents chosen at random from the phone book in events like “drinking”, “staying out late”, “partying” and “general craziness”. I’d put all my money on the Madrilenos.
*If you’re eating dinner before 9:00 in Spain then you might as well wear a sign that says “I’m an American and I chose to stick to my normal lunch time and am therefore now hungry because I can’t be bothered to adapt to a foreign culture”
*You want some fucking pictures of Jesus? The Prado Museum in Madrid has got em.
(Speaking of which, were you lonely at home around August 11th? That’s because all the Americans in the world were at The Prado. Seriously, it was like an apple pie NASCAR convention up in there.)
*Things I learned while looking at Picasso’s "Guernica":
-It is large
-War is hard
*While looking at mid-20th century Spanish art I was struck by the fact that probably 95% of Americans have either forgotten or never knew in the first place that just forty years ago Spain was a closed country with no foreign relations or contact with the world outside its borders. I was struck by the same thing when watching Japan, our friend, ally, and worshipper of our culture, portrayed as our sworn enemy on The Pacific. Makes you wonder how our children and our children’s children will view Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, and Afghanistan.
*All you need to know about Palacio Real is that there is a room in it made entirely of porcelain. Is it a room of great importance you ask? No. It’s simply The Porcelain Room. Its entire purpose is to be made of porcelain. That’s its whole reason for being.
*As a follow up of sorts to that last point, I think the reason old buildings and art are so intricately detailed has more to do with how bored people used to be than anything else. I mean, of course people were willing to spend years intricately detailing thousands of individual tiles, what else did they have going on? The new season of The Bachelor wasn’t going to be on for at least 650 more years.
*I think the word “amazed” came from the experience of being in a really awesome maze.
*I feel very strongly that Toledo is the Venice of Spain. The similarities are uncanny. Well other than the canals. But who notices those in Venice anyway?
*Why do we take pictures?
To capture the uncaptureable.
To describe the undescribeable.
To share that which cannot be shared.
Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but they’re still worth very little. We spend so much time on our vacations, at places, during events, engaged in a futile activity. Yet we always try and we always will because to not do so is to admit defeat to the enormity and awesome power of the universe. And lord knows we can’t let the universe win.
*Ways to know you’re not in America:
-You see a man with a small child on his shoulders drinking a massive glass of sangria at a street fair after midnight on a Thursday night and no one seems troubled or remotely concerned.
-Two 60-plus year old women walk into a jazz club at 1:00am on a Tuesday and each almost immediately start chugging their own mug of beer.
-The uber-nerdy looking girl with frizzy hair, thick glasses, and high-water mom jeans can dance as good or better than Michael Jackson.
*There’s a very unique kind of awkward experienced when you start speaking Spanish to someone in Spain only to find out that they only speak French. What, my whole ONE other language isn’t enough for you?
(By the way, if you want to feel bad about your language skills, try talking to a trilingual homeless guy.)
*And speaking of knowing another language - were there times I ordered things in cafes that maybe I didn’t want simply because I had misunderstood the server or couldn’t totally read and understand the menu? That might have happened once or twice. But if in those situations I had at any point explained that to the server then they would have known that I didn’t totally understand the Spanish language and that therefore I was just another ugly American who wasn’t fluent in any other languages just like they thought I was. And therefore I would not have been able to heal the rift between America and the rest of the world, and then eventually there would be nuclear war. So, okay, maybe I ate some strange cuts of meat I didn’t necessarly want; at least we wont have nuclear war.
*How many times did I feel the urge to reach into my pocket for a phone that wasn’t there? 800,000,000. And that’s an exact count.
*Popular Spanish joke: To be or estar, that is the question
*Several times on the trip I saw places called "Museo de Jamon". Either something is lost in translation or ham is much more interesting than I realize.
*The Last Airbender hadn’t come out there yet. Should I have warned them? I decided against it because I was so impressed that the marketing department was able to make the cast so Spanish looking on the poster. On a related note, did you know that Selma Hayek was the lead of Grown Ups?
*Anyone who’s traveled with me knows that there’s nothing I love more than old churches. Which considering my views on organized religion is seemingly rather strange. But as I’ve always said, it’s because not only are churches usually the most beautiful and culturally important buildings in any given town, but because they’re also the best places to really feel history. And I think I’ve figured out why that is. It’s because churches are the only places of historical interest left that haven’t been “museumified”. You know how when you visit anywhere that’s even remotely touristy that place has become so overrun with signs and displays and exhibits that it no longer has the feel of authenticity? Like for example when Anne Frank was hiding out in her attic it didn’t have a bunch of plaques and shit everywhere. But when the Spanish royal family met with Magellan on his way around the world from The Cathedral of Seville, the chapel where they did that looked and felt almost exactly as it does today. And that’s not just because its still a functioning house of worship but because, just generally speaking, it ain’t kosher to fuck with God’s house in any way. So that’s the (reductive) reason I have such a hard on for temples to the baby Jesus.
*Speaking of which….
Come on Cathedral de Valencia, it’s like you’re not even trying! Where is your choir chamber decorated by one of Spain’s great painters and filled with individually carved figures made out of rare wood that indicate each and every seat number? Where is your ridiculously ornate organ made solely from precious metals? Where is your room that serves no other purpose than to house diamond encrusted treasures? The fucking Holy Grail and an old royal chapel? Is that all you got? You might as well slap Jesus in the face.
*And while we're here Valencia, renaming all your streets in Valencio is annoying and confusing. I know you're trying to reclaim your language and cultural heritage from years of oppression and death and blah blah blah but your maps are now hard to follow for visitors who are in your city for a single day. So you should really think about that.
*I’ve realized that my new goal in life is to be the kind of person who can pull off white pants.
*Other realizations I had while in Spain:
-Location is a temporary condition
-For better or worse tomorrow always follows today
-If you’re trying to get away from swarms of flying insects that have been attacking you all day, a dried out riverbed immediately after a rainstorm is not the best place to do that
*I’m going to start a restaurant where you can’t order a main course, you can only order small appetizer-sized portions, only I’ll price each of them between $8-$12 so you’ll spend $40 on a meal of snacks that won’t leave you feeling fully satisfied. I’ll make millions!
*While we're on the subject...by far the most popular word used in hostels in Spain is "tapas". Everyone is obsessed with saying tapas. And, sure, it’s a fun word to say, but it doesn’t mean some exotic type of cuisine. It just means "small portion". It indicates the exact same food you get as a main course, just a smaller potion of it. So all the hundreds of people in hostels who were saying things like "where can I get good tapas?" "where are there cheap tapas?" "where are all the tapas?" "tapas tapas of tapas" were basically only saying "where are the small portions of food?" Just sayin.
*Can someone who has stayed in a lot of hostels please explain to me the hanging out at the hostel bar thing. I guess it’s a cousin to hanging out at the hotel bar, which makes some sense if you’re staying in a boring city for work. But if you are paying money for the express purpose of traveling and experiencing a new place, then why are you sitting in a shitty windowless bar with strictly other tourists and no connection of any kind to the city at large. When I travel the main thing I want to do is get a real feel for the place and experience as many authentically local things as I can. And there are few things I can feel safer guaranteeing that locals NEVER do than going to a hostel in their own city and drinking at its bar. Plus, if I wanted to spend time in a small, cramped, dark space with too many people I could have just stayed in New York.
*When you think about it, The United States of America is a pretty terrible name for a country.
*As much as military time annoys me, I do have to admit that it is actually a better system. We Americans really can be such assholes what with our way of telling time that is unique to us and our measurement system that makes no sense and our temperature system where 32 is 0.
*Do people from other countries feel the need to represent their native country well while traveling abroad? For example, does a French person say to themselves while traveling “whatever I do, I need to be sure not to come off like a rude Frenchman”?
*I think applying spray-on deodorant is the easiest possible way of saying to people “You are hereby no longer required to take me seriously as a person”.
*The fact that when the walk signs turn green in Spain they also make a sound that can best be described as "someone shooting lasers at you" really put some urgency into my street crossings.
*Things I realized after the fact that I had mistakenly said in Spanish:
-“I’m very spicy”
-“Is this the hill where you use the bathroom?”
-“I would like one of the sandwiches traditional to your region”
-“I put the key in me”
*If you lived in Spain and your name was Cece you’d probably always think that someone was calling your name. And you’d slowly go insane.
*They say music transcends all nationalities, all cultures, all creeds. So apparently does waking up feeling like P. Diddy.
*Hey, you know what shockingly doesn’t sound good? A Spanish language cover of “The Reason” by Hoobastank
*How to know you’ve found the ghetto: when there’s a small child holding a baby and there are no adults in sight.
*Thought had while cursing in a church: Why does the Lord care if we take his name in vain? That’s a little sensitive for an all-powerful deity don’t you think? And is it just his name? What if I said “damn the all-powerful creator of the universe”? Am I allowed to take him in vain conceptually? And is this really one of the ten most important rules for life?
*If you have some free time on your hands you should really vote for Granada to be European Cultural Capital 2016. I don’t know what that is or what it means or even if it’s a real thing, I just know that they REALLY want to be it. Like a lot. Like to the point where I’m a little embarrassed for them. So go on the internet and vote for them. Because they could really use it apparently. Plus their city is utterly charming and could use some more attention.
*In Spain there appears to be a very strong regional preference for certain beers. The ones I was able to pin down:
Madrid – Mahout
Seville – Cruzcampo
Barcelona – Estrella Damm (although San Miguel was a close second)
*Legitimate questions:
How often do Spanish people actually eat paella?
Why are there different electrical outlets in different countries?
Why are there different “regions” for DVDs?
How did the American restaurant tipping system develop?
Why in European bars do you turn the beer taps rather than pull them down?
How do foreign comic book nerds feel about Captain America?
*Observations had while watching basketball in Spain
-Rather than calling them "field goals" and "three pointers" they call them "tries for two" and "triples". A little wordy perhaps but I like it.
-Since they're so used to watching futbol they haven't figured out yet what to do with stoppages in time. During timeouts rather than go to commercial they broadcast the coach's huddle, mic-ed up and everything. And the audience seems to think that what the coach has to say is VERY important. At the bar where I was watching the game some kid came in talking loudly during a timeout and the patrons all hushed him so they could listen to the coach. It was adorable.
-I'm pretty sure if Pau Gasol ran for president of Spain he would win in a landslide
*Sometimes you worry about your future, your life. You want stability, security, success. You want to be taken care of, provided for, loved. You want to understand the infinite wisdom of the universe. And sometimes all you want is a strawberry Fanta.
*Lastly, after returning from Spain I moved to Los Angeles. I remember getting picked up at the airport the first night and feeling so full of excitement, of opportunity, so filled with the sense of holy shit I’m actually here, I’m actually doing this. This place I have imagined and dreamed about and planned for - this moment it is actually here. I didn’t know what to expect at first and everything from going to the grocery store to walking down the street felt new and exciting. And now a few months into living here I still love it and feel energized by it, but the feeling of newness and of the unknown feels like a million years ago. And part of me mourns that I can never not know this place ever again. I can never look forward to coming here in the same way again because I will always know what being here is. And that’s something I found myself thinking time after time in Spain. After reading about every city for months in books, imagining what they would be like, going to sleep at night dreaming of them, I would emerge from a train station or an airport or a bus station and see this city unfold before me for the first time and I would be giddy with anticipation. Every turn around every new corner was an exciting new adventure. But by the end of the day, when I could find my way around without a map and my feet hurt from walking so much and I had passed by the same plaza for the third time, I would experience the most common source of existential depression while on vacation: the sense that I can never not know this place ever again. And that’s the tragedy of knowing is that you can never unknow. The old can never be new again. You’ll always know what’s around that corner. You’ll never be able to erase from your mind the Albayzin at dusk so you can experience it again for the first time. You’ll always know how that book ends. Luckily life is long. And the world is large.
Until next time…
