Homegrown Holidays

Slump Day

2008-03-07T05:03:00.000-08:00

Today is a slump day. I'm burnt out. I decided not to go to England because I couldn't bear the thought of 12 straight hours in trains and buses and stations; it made a tightness in my chest. I've spent hours slumped over my laptop trying to get this paycheck fiasco straightened out, instead of finding friends and exploring the city. I have no curiosity left anyway. I feel like a perpetual greaseball; no matter how many showers I take, I still ooze. It is drizzling outside. My ear canals would rather I go deaf than see another earplug for the rest of their existence. This morning, my four male roommates decided to get up at 6 a.m. and douse themselves in Axe. (Axe should be banned for public health reasons; it's more of a lung hazard and unpleasantness than smoking is.) Today, I paid 30 Euro to sleep in a room with an average of 8 inches between the bunk beds. I say average because people must move the actual bunk beds in order to get into them. I am eating a weird Dutch gingerbread cake snack thing for lunch. Ontbijtkoek. Yeah, I know. It sounds like a swear word to me, too.

So tomorrow I go to Paris, instead England.

Stranded in Amsterdam

2008-03-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

Well, not really. But I might as well be. See, the whole key to this trip was that I could work online for the Examiner and get paid while traveling. The working online thing has been going swimmingly. The getting paid part... not so much. Today I found out that my boss at the newspaper, the one in charge of making sure I get paid (yeah, that one), doesn't work there anymore. Hasn't since, oh, maybe two weeks ago. Therefore : . No paychecks for me. Meanwhile, I'm bopping around Germany spending, not extravagantly, but my fair share on beer and weiner schnitzl.

Plus, there's been some kind of massive email server crash at the paper, nobody is answering their phones, not even the accountants, and... I am in Amsterdam.

Venice

2008-02-22T13:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, it takes a good deal of concentration to balance a lamp post on one's head.

I took a morning train to Venice from Florence. Originally, I meant to take a 6:28 train that I spotted glancing through my timetable, but after I pried myself out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and rolled myself into the Santa Maria Novella train station with ten minutes to spare, I saw no such train departing. Only a 6:28 to Milan, which was in the opposite direction. I am not capable of panic nor coherent thought at six in the morning, so I sat down and squinted through the timetable again. It insisted there was a 6:28 to Venice. So I went to the ticket agent and asked for it, but she knew of no such train to Venice. The first one left at 8:30 a.m. and required a 15 Euro reservation. Well. I paid it, annoyed, and, because I knew my luck with trains and had left the doors to the hostel carefully cracked after I turned in my keys, I trudged back and slipped back into my room to nap until the next train.

It was only after I was on the 8:30 train to Venice and the early morning fog had cleared from by head, that I realized I could have taken the train to Milan, got off at Bologna, and switched to a train to Venice, which would have put me there two hours earlier and 15 Euros richer, since those would have been regional trains. Sigh.

In Venice, I bought a city map (3.50 Euro!) and stowed my bags at the train station (11.20 Euro!!) and began walking to San Marco. I spotted a little grocery store and bought crackers, tuna spread (it comes in nifty little squeeze tubes here), and a small bottle of green tea (6.15 Euro!!!) for lunch. All that comes out to about thirty US dollars. I should have known better about the grocery store though. It was sandwiched between a glass shop and a mask shop.
Venice is like one big charming queue to San Marco. I didn't even need the map; there are yellow arrowed signs everywhere, even offering alternate routes. Tourists line up in the narrow streets and walk through gauntlets of shops, mostly selling glass and masks, but also metalworking and pizza, until the queue spits us out into the Piazzo di San Marco clear across town.

About Venetian glass and masks. I have never seen so much colored glass.... everything. Glass jewelry, glass candlesticks, glass fruit centerpieces, glass bowls to put the glass fruit in, glass vases and lampshades and giant glass chandeliers, glass menageries, glass orchestras and Santa Clauses and devils and angels and glass fish in glass bowls with glass kittens, four-foot glass abstract sculptures, six-foot glass trees with glass birds in them, glass ice cream, glass pizza. The word "glass" lost complete meaning after a while and I could feel only that I had somehow landed in a strange, breakable parallel universe of transparent jewel tones. I looked down and felt slightly surprised that the pavement was not glass, but stone.

The masks were even more mesmerizing, hanging about with their flirtatious red-lipped smirks. The female masks were all of one face. She was delicately featured, with a small full mouth, always painted into a cupid's bow inside the lipline. Sometimes she would have faux antique porcelain cracks over her face, sometimes curlicues of glitter or jewels, and then, near the hairline, she sprouted into a glorious array of feathers or sometimes delicate metal lace. They were fantastic. I didn't buy one. First of all, a mask is extremely symbolic, but for one to mean anything to me, I must first wear it and let it change me, because wearing a mask always changes one. For instance, how many women who are used to wearing makeup are comfortable being themselves in public without any? As a quotable character once said, "Masks are extremely comfortable. I think everyone should wear them." Anyway, for a mask to have any symbolism, I need to be able to take it off and look at it in awe and say, "I became that face. That face used to be me." If I hadn't missed the Venetian Carnivale, I would have bought and used one in a heartbeat and delighted in its meaning ever after. Unfortunately, I missed carnivale in Venice. Also, it seemed such a shame to take one out of its native habitat. How much more glorious the masks all were, splendid in their shop windows. As soon as a tourist held one apart from the others, it lost half its magic, like a wildflower apart from its field is only a gaudy weed. I am sentimentalizing, I know. But that is the way it was.

It was the same with the glass. One of those darling little glass turtle families would be unbearably kitschy in an actual home... could you imagine a two-foot sculptured glass Pegasus in your mother's living room? Maybe it could work in an ultra-modern decor with no fabric, only white leather and stainless steel. But it was absolutely marvelous in the shop, surrounded by its kind.

After gawking into the shop windows, I arrived at the Basilica di San Marco. It was marvelous, just like the picture books, everything was marvelous. Except for the pigeons. The pigeons were mildly amusing at best, enough to induce a pigeon-phobia at worst. For one Euro a tourist could buy a packet of birdseed from a vendor, hold the birdseed in her hand, and have the privilege of being attacked by dozens of pigeons. The most entertaining option I saw was a brother throwing birdseed on his little sister and watching her run and flail in terror as the birds swarmed her.

After the Basilica, I went to the Titian exhibit at the Gallerie dell Accademie (or something like that. There are a lot of Academy Galleries in Italy), wandered a bit more, got lost, watched the sunset, got unlost, and meandered back to the train station. Having some time left, I decided splurge on lemon gelato and limoncello. The limoncello was packaged in a tiny, suspiciously-touristy bottle, but I had sworn to myself to try limoncello before I left Italy. So, with my ransomed luggage, I sat on the train station steps in front of the Grande Canal and ate my vanilla gelato (the gelato lady misheard) and chugged my little bottle of limoncello, thinking about masks and gondolas and Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Badalona

2008-02-14T11:32:00.000-08:00

The best thing about Badalona was the beach. I would go sit in the sun on the sand and try to get over the Papetti-withdrawal while watching people playing with their dogs in the surf and letting noise of the waves would drown out the self-pity.

I spent an unforgivable amount of time parked in the windowless lounge with my laptop. There was a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas poster I became quite intimate with. Definitely loved my roommates though--Greta and Jeremy (an Italian-Kiwi couple), and Aleta from Alaska.

Our last night, I got a six-pack of Voll-Damm and we all walked down to the beach to pretend to be trashy, though Jeremy said in New Zealand drinking beer on the beach was cool, not trashy. Aleta suggested jumping in the Mediterranean, which we did and which Aleta was rather more prepared to handle, being from Alaska where they "do this every day." See us huddled there in our coats? That is because it was cold.... maybe mid-forties. But I have swam in the Mediterranean.

The next morning before I left I took one last walk on the beach. The waves were up so there were surfers and wind surfers and even a kite surfer. I took some pictures, but they all told me to come back tomorrow when the waves would be bigger and the pictures better. Alas. I was to be on a ferry to Civitavecchia that night.

Badalona is typical Catalonia... revived by the 1992 Olympics, laid-back and easy going but still with a vestige of pride in its ancient history. There was an equestrian parade on Sunday... everyone who had a horse and a caballero costume turned out, sweating under their black flat-brimmed hats and cropped jackets. The old ideal arrogance of Spanish wealth and nobility was in their faces, the way they held their cigarettes behind their second knuckle and scowled behind their hand as they inhaled, the way they ignored the crowds and the kids, looking over the heads into the distance. They held their horses' necks tight in and arched and the horses' mouths were foaming from the strain. Fancy carriages and peasant carts and girls on their ponies trotted by too, tossing out lemon drops and hard candy, but I think it was the caballeros everyone came to admire.

The Looming Deadline

2008-02-07T15:18:00.000-08:00

Currently kicking back on the beach in Badalona, Spain while simultaneously racing to finish the notoriously inane novel in the next five days. Have been posting to my photo album, though, which you can find here.

A Street Performer and his Dog in Lisbon, Portugal

2008-02-07T04:42:00.000-08:00

View of Alhambra from Rambutan Hostel in Granada, Spain

2008-02-02T08:50:00.000-08:00

Un Mil y Uno Noches

2008-01-23T12:32:00.000-08:00

In an epic quest for a hookah bar, we found two, right off the Plaza de España in Madrid. The first, El Principe de Egypto (or something like that) Eric and I tried. Don't go here.... unless, oh, maybe you actually are the prince of Egypt and thus can afford it. Two tiny saucers of hummus and baba ganouj, pita bread, and a pot of tea came out to about 20 Euros. We had no money left for the hookah.

The second place, Un Mil y Uno Noches, we all went together and it was quite excellent. We smoked honeyed tobacco and drank melon tea and it was altogether decadent and lovely. The decor was even a bit more refined. Eva and I are planning on going back when I return to Madrid. We have lots of other plans too... that little green chocolate shop, the artisan soap shop, the Reina Sofia again... I will write about it all when the time comes.

Toledo

2008-01-23T08:06:00.000-08:00

The tourism industry in Toledo has three pillars: 1) swords, knives, and suits of armor, 2) marzipan, and 3) Don Quixote. Here is me with a Don Quixote. The marzipan, we ate (amazing), and the swords, well, did you know that the Eragon series has its own line of swords? Fancy traveling to Toledo, Spain to learn that.

The city, about an hour's bus ride south of Madrid, is a maze of narrow, twisting, cobblestone alleyways that call themselves streets and, indeed, drivers still somehow manage to hurtle through them at unbelievable speeds, even though they have to fold in their sideview mirrors in order to fit between the stone walls of the buildings. Local pedestrians have made an art of throwing themselves into the nearest doorsill at the sound of an approaching car. And Toledo is a hill, so between dodging cars and hiking twenty degree inclines, sightseeing is quite the athletic undertaking.

Toledo is breathtakingly beautiful though. Sephardic, Moorish and Christian gothic architecture, mostly 600 to 700 years old, is everywhere. And the history... Anyway, I loved being there. If all of Europe is like this, it's only going to get harder and harder to leave.

Oh and Christina, here is one picture of a castle, though I am sure I will find plenty more.

Eric and Eva

2008-01-21T07:32:00.000-08:00

Here are my sightseeing buddies... we all know each other from PHC. Eric is a landscape architecture grad student living in Lisbon, Portugal and Eva just got a job teaching business English in Madrid. Here we are, taking a break from Picasso and eating fresh Spanish bread at the Reina Sofia. Couldn't ask for more fantastic fellow wanderers.

Andy Goldsworthy

2008-01-21T06:47:00.000-08:00

As Eric pointed out, how did that conversation begin when Andy Goldsworthy approached the Parque del Retiro officials? Maybe, "Hi, I have a lot of big logs. May I come stack them very precariously in your glass house?"

The exhibit was breathtaking... Christina, I wish you could have been there. Goldsworthy built three huge domes (you can walk inside), plus an egg-shaped sculpture, made entirely of and only Scots Pine from the forests north of Madrid in the Palacio de Cristal. The egg sculpture was the most amazing, mostly because it was hard to believe it wasn't going to collapse the next moment. About ten feet high, it was smaller on the bottom, grew out, and then peaked at the top, exactly like an egg. We weren't supposed to take pictures inside, but Eva did anyway, so I will post one when she emails them to me.

We also went to the Reina Sofia and saw Picasso's Guernica, plus about a billion and two other Picasso paintings, sketches, and sculptures, and an Alexander Calder mobile.

Warhol

2008-01-20T11:33:00.000-08:00

Eva spotted some advertisements for an Andy Warhol exhibit, Warhol on Warhol, in central Madrid, not far from our hostel, so we trotted over, this being the last day of the exhibit. La Casa Encendida, a private group that supports artists, had gathered quite the collection of reprints, sketches, paintings, films, and original Polaroids both of and by Warhol.

After five rooms of Warhol, one begins to get a slightly sticky feeling in one's mouth, much like after one drinks a fountain drink whose syrup/carbonated water ratio is a bit off. Photos of beautiful, preening socialites get stale quick. But after a while, one realizes these socialites, they're really not that beautiful and it is something of Warhol's genius that they appear so.

The exhibit pamphlet mentioned Warhol's skill in capturing natural, human expressions in his photographs and films, but this is true only in a limited sense. He was good at capturing one particular expression that happens to be very natural and very human--narcissism. The thing about narcissism is that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy; if one believes one is beautiful, then, in an oddly objective but nauseating way, one is beautiful. Warhol's skill is more of skill in grooming and fluffing his own and other people's natural bent towards god and godess-like posturing. Also, Warhol's talent lives on posthumously. One sees these incredibly flattering Polariods (Polaroids not being known for their flattering quality) of minorly photogenic people and thinks, wow, if they can be beautiful, so can I. And one goes out to the little photo booth outside the exhibit and blatantly poses as narcissitically as one can and, for two Euro, receives a Warhol-ized postcard of oneself. And thus, Warhol's enduring legacy is pop art that not only the public enjoys, but the public can be.

Las Rebajas

2008-01-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

All is well. The hostel filled up quite suddenly this weekend and I now have 15 roommates. There are three other rooms of 8 people each and only two shared bathrooms, but it seems to work okay. Madrid has a month-long shopping spree, las rebajas, when the whole city goes on sale and everyone runs around in impossibly cute outfits buying even more impossibly cute stuff. That probably explains why 9 out of 10 of my fellow hostellers are female.

Madrid

2008-01-18T11:05:00.000-08:00

Staying in the very nice United World International Hostel on Gran Via with a few other Americans, a couple of Brits, and a smattering of Belgians. Still jetlagged but walked around for a bit last night and today with Eva. Our current challenge seems to be finding decent food. Last night we tried to translate a Chinese menu written in Spanish, with not much luck. We ended up with sort of a greasy pile of noodles, chicken in a weirdly gelatinous lemon sauce, and ice cream.

This morning we wandered into Pans and Company, a sort of a wannabe Cosi boasting an American-style "Funburger," but only because I was looking for wi-fi (said "wee-fee" here) connection. No connection, but we got breakfast anyway and I accidently had my first jamón serrano--a dry-cured ham served raw in thin slices. Not pleasant. Slimy and tough and not especially flavorful. I should try it again somewhere less fast foodish.

Gatwick

2008-01-17T03:17:00.000-08:00

It's five in the morning and I'm surrounded by hundreds of people who think it's lunchtime and are saying things like "poppet" and "smoking is strictly forbidden." Bizarre.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with A Really Long Plane Ride

2008-01-09T11:18:00.001-08:00

Armed only with laptop, camera, Eurail pass, and a smattering of Spanish, I will be taking off from Houston to Madrid a week from today and spending two months exploring the hostels and wi-fi hot spots of Western Europe. Kathleen Crislip, the nice travel writer lady from About.com, calls it "flashpacking."

I'll be reviewing hostels, cafes, museums, and online travel guides, posting architectural and people photos, and sharing all the weird adventures that could only happen to me and me alone. I'll keep you updated on the mythical subculture of backpackers, in February no less, so you'll get to know the truly hard-core species. A veritable fountain of travel ideas and advice and information I shall be.

This should be pretty entertaining, because, besides the sightseeing and photographing and blogging, I'll be writing my usual online freelance work, frantically pulling together a certain half-finished novel (deadline Feb. 12), scribbling glowing picture postcards to the wistful friends I am abandoning, and noting private thoughts in my lovely new journal I bought for the occasion. Oh, and shopping for wedding gifts. Apparently, my friends got together and thought it would be funny if they all got married in the same year.

So yes. If you have any advice or cautions or must-see recommendations or wedding gift ideas, do post them. I'll be posting my itinerary as I go, so keep checking back.