My Geriatric Spanish Adventure

I’ve written and rewritten about my experience in Spain three times already in a desperate attempt to make myself sound culturally sensitive. But then I realized that this is my perspective on things. I don't need to make Spain feel good about hosting me. No need to sugar coat my less than desirable experience.

So “how could I not like Spain,” you must be asking. Well, quite simply, Spain makes me feel like a senior citizen.

Let me explain:

1) Spaniards party hard…and late. I’ve never been one to like staying up late anyways (I think my college roommates can vouch for that). Which is why everyone was so surprised when my ill-informed self committed to go out to a club our first night in Spain. I should have guessed that this would be a late night when the pre-gaming started around midnight. We didn’t even get to the bar until 2am and the club until 4:30am. By the time I got back to my hostel, it was nearly 7am. Spain makes me feel elderly, because while the lively “youngins” are out until 7am, I was tucked into my bed every night at midnight or 1am.

2) Spaniards take naps (or sorry, they "siesta"). And when in Rome, right? I'm not saying I didn't take naps in college. But those naps were because i pulled an all nighter to finish a paper. These "siesta" naps are just to get through an average day. Emily and I integrated ourselves right quick into this siesta business. And just like that old adage about black girls, “once you nap, you never go back?” Ever since, I’ve been napping just to get through the day.

3) Spaniards eat late. And Steve Dry does not. So whereas most of the people in Spain are eating dinner around 10pm, I'm ready at 6pm. I'm getting weird looks from the waiters at the restaurants. Even the old, short, purple haired Spanish women were looking at me weird. I kept wishing that Spain would adopt the [name that family restaurant] senior citizen deal, where you get some tuna melt or fish sandwich for half price before 4pm. I always wondered who capitalized on the deal. And now I know, it’s me. It turns out my father was right: I actually am a 60 year old man.

4) Spain had me coughing like an elderly chain smoker for at least two weeks. Why you ask? Apparently they disagree with the rest of the world and all of science which "suggests" that smoking kills. Nah, they're too good for that. They don’t have a surgeon general’s warning on their cigarette packets and smoking is permitted inside all indoor establishments. This killed me (figuratively…and at least a little bit literally). I think if there hadn’t been smoking EVERYWHERE, I could have dealt with my other issues. But Spain went to far there.

Of course, I did tons of great things in Spain. But let’s be honest, I’m a far better complainer than anything else. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on the rest of my geriatric Spanish adventure.

MTV European Music Awards Concert

Dominatrix lead singer with a...is that a chainsaw in her hand?

Confirmed: she is a middle aged, chainsaw carrying dominatrix. (but not a drag queen...i checked)

La Guernica: The only part of Madrid I actually recognized

Damn tourists gettin' in my picture.

One of four supposed resting places of Christopher Columbus' body

Plaza del Toros: Gonna go kill me some dinner.

After they zambonied the shit out of the plaza de toros.

strip club? no, flamenco dancing.

Tio Pepe: Sherry Tasting.

I consider this a traffic hazard...wouldn't a giant naked man distract you around a round-about?

Pueblos Blancos

We're sending this pic into the 1001 ways to tie a scarf website.

This was right before we realized we were lost and had 20 minutes to get back to the bus station.

Losing my (Ryanair) Virginity

After four days in London, I headed to Madrid with Surabhi and Emily. Unlike my trip to London, we didn’t spend as much time waiting in the Gatwick airport. This was mainly because we got like 4 hours of sleep the night before (too much celebrating for Guy Hawkes Day) and slept in a little longer than usual. And even by the time we arrived at the airport, I was not awake enough to truly appreciate the experience of losing my Ryanair virginity…dun, dun dun.

Still a Ryanair virgin...moments before penetration.

After we realized we could buy scratch tickets...or was it the smokeless cigarettes?

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of riding Ryanair, let me give you a little taste of the experience. Ryanair is a little like staying up late and watching those infomercials. First, Ryanair flights never leave after 9am in the morning of before 10pm in the evening. And since they fly out of the most obscure airports in the region, it takes you hours to get to your airport. As a result, you’re tired the entire trip (just like when you are watching those infomercials).

Second, the entire flight is huge three ring circus of advertisement. One woman is always responsible for selling the smokeless cigarettes (which come in flavors like strawberry, mint, and menthol, in case you were wondering). Another woman tries to sell you any sort of fragrance or style of watch known to man. And let’s not forget the woman who walks up and down the aisles with a fan of lottery tickets (only £2, what a steal!).

Third, Ryanair primarily employs eastern European women whose make-up resembles that of a prostitute. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind Eastern Europeans or prostitutes, but its hard for me to put confidence in a flight crew that looks like they’re better prepared to service you in the bathroom than in your seat (and I don’t doubt, if Ryanair could find a legal loophole, that the flight attendants would happily escort you to the mile high club for an additional charge). I could go on and on about Ryanair, but I’ll save that for another day.

Tuckered out after the experience that was Ryanair.

London! (finally)

Aside from turbulence, I think the thing I hate most about traveling by plane is feeling like you are going to miss your flight. This might explain why I’m sitting at a coffee shop at the Edinburgh Airport two and a half hours before my departure. You might be thinking, “You only spent £20 on this flight; it’s not a big deal if you miss it.” And you're probably right. But after fitting a weeks worth of clothes in a backpack (a miracle in and of itself), I was not about to miss this flight. And if you think this is the first time I’ve been this early to a flight this semester, then you haven't met the woman at the Costa Coffee kiosk who already knows my order: grande mocha (yeah, I’m hard-core). In fact, just two weeks ago, I was sitting in this very airport, waiting for my flight to London-Heathrow. Having never been to London, I obviously took the town by storm. But, rather than try to recount every antic over the five days I was there, I thought I would just share a few observations I made from my first experience.

1) The London Bridge is not really falling down. It’s actually quite secure. This was a disappointing discovery for me. I can’t help but think that this was the brilliant political platform for some parliamentary candidate. S/he probably promised to restore the bridge back to working capacity, not thinking of all of us poor tourists who came across the pond to see a dilapidated bridge. I sent in a comment card to the London Bridge museum explaining my disappointment. Still no word back. And why is it so much less majestic than the London Tower Bridge. I don’t want a t-shirt or a picture taken on something shitty like that. What do I say, “oh yeah, this is a t-shirt I bought to commemorate my visit to a flat boring, well-constructed bridge.

"...is falling down, falling down, falling down."

London Bridge: boring and structurally sound

London Tower Bridge: definitely better

2) The leaning tower of London (aka Big Ben). Look out Pisa, London wants to join in. But once Londoners realize their clock tower is leaning, some stupid politician will come and fix it, just like the bridge.

Just lending a hand to Big Ben

3) Royal guards do not always wear red poof ball hats. Again, London let me down. I searched everywhere for one of those classic London sights: a royal guard standing by the palace, wearing his red poofy hat and not smiling. Apparently, they wore black in the winter (?) or else they were mourning someone’s death? Idk.

Classic American

4) Changing of the guard? WTF? This whole changing of the guard thing just blew my mind. I thought this was another case of smoke and mirrors, like those magicians who try to distract you with one hand while they swap out different colored scarves with the other. I spent an hour and half watching a bunch of band members prance around with their instruments and play Star Wars theme music and “It’s a wonderful world.” And yet, after all of that, I was not actually sure that they changed the guards. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN! AND WHAT ABOUT THE RED POOFY HATS!!! REFUND!

Marching band in Buckingham.

5) London 2012 is a misnomer. They should call it: Stratford 2012. After visiting the London Tower, I saw an Olympics flag flying outside this building, so I went in to ask them where I could find all things Olympics. They directed me towards the Stratford stop on the Tube. The Tube map made this trip look deceivingly short, but an hour later, I finally got to Stratford, a suburb outside the city. This was where they are constructing the Olympic village. They weren't giving tours of the construction site, but they also didn't patrol the site well. So I broke some laws and ventured into the athletes village in search of some Olympic rings or something. I found a big cloud looking building and what I think was the Olympic stadium. I'll count that as a success.

Oh hi Olympic rings...

They call it "the cloud," but I was hungry, so I thought it looked more like a marshmallow.

Evidence of an alien attack on London.

if strikes continue as they have, this could be how the Olympic village looks in two years. get excited!

6) Harrods takes the term “elevator music” to another level. So for those of you who have been living under a rock (like I have), Harrods is the incredibly fancy department store, where normal people visit and rich people shop. After walking in, I got lost in this labyrinth of a food court. When I finally got out, I passed by this Diana and Dodi memorial (not gonna lie…kind of creeped out by this) and made my way to the escalators. As I traveled up the escalator, I enjoyed some beautiful opera music. Then as I approached the fourth floor, I looked to my right to find a woman, actually singing opera off one of the balconies. WTF Harrods! No elevator/escalator will ever be the same.

The next Susan Boyle.

7) Platform 9 ¾ is actually between platform’s 8 and 9. Let me preface this observation with the fact that I’ve never gotten past page 30 of the first Harry Potter book, so this might be obvious to others. Despite having never read the books, I knew that the platform was at the Kingscross train station. When I got there, I walked to platform 9, which makes sense to me. Then I walked down about three quarters of the way. I got worried when I didn’t see the little baggage cart thing sticking out of the wall. So I walked a little farther, then a little bit farther. I got to the end of the platform and turned around. I walked the entire length of the platform again…still no platform 9 ¾. I continued to do this for about 5 minutes (mind you, there is no train scheduled to leave from this platform for another hour). So I eventually went to ask this woman in a fluorescent yellow top. As I breathed in to ask her my question, she just said, “its on platform 8,” not even looking up from her book. Thanks. (But really, does that even make sense?)

I'm such a hypocrite.

8) We can blame the sexual corruption of London’s youth on the invasion by phallus-loving aliens. Yes, I kid you not, I found their space ship in the financial district. They landed their phallic-shaped vehicle right behind this historical district of London. And tell me you aren’t distracted from this traditional building by the giant shiny dildo in the back.

Dildo spaceship. More aliens!

9) Afternoon tea is expensive! This was probably just a misconception on my part, but what happened to tea being the cheap option? I mean, its just water and some leaves. We went to Fosters and Masons (the Queen gets her groceries from them) for afternoon tea. So I sat down and looked at the mirror, expecting to pay something like £5 or something for a few scones (bisquits) and a kettle of tea. Try £15. I nearly went outside and gathered my own leaves, boiled my own water, and baked my own scones for that price.

10) PPF Speed Walking comes in handy; Deb Ingles would be so proud! On the first night in London, a bunch of the Bobby’s decided to go the Evensong one night at Westminster Abbey. We got there two minutes after 5pm, for the 5pm mass. We tried to plead with the monk to let us in, much he just stood their stoically, not responding. We’ll come back another time, we thought. So on our last night at about 4:30pm, we realized we still had not gone to the Abbey. So the four of us all but ran out of Fosters and Mason and made our way to the Abbey. Luckily, I took speed walking for my PPF (a mandatory physical fitness requirement at Emory). The cool thing about having Big Ben around is that it rings every 15 minutes and so at about 4:45, it started to ring and we started getting anxious. About the same moment, the rain started to pour. So we are now literally running through the streets of London, in the pouring rain, in the dark, trying to get to this evensong. I literally got to the gate of the Abbey as Big Ben rang for 5:00pm. So basically I sat through an entire service drenched in some mixture of rain and sweat. So enjoyable.

Does this remind anyone else of Home Alone?

Can't you just see a guy with a snow shovel coming out of the shadows?

Loch Ness or Lost Mess?

When I came to Scotland in September, I knew next to nothing about the country. I couldn’t correctly identify the flag (I bought a Finish flag from a flea market for a pound…and proudly displayed it in my window for a few weeks), didn’t realize that Scotland and England shared an island (geography was never my strong point…I mean Ohio is deceivingly far east!), and had never seen Braveheart. The only real historical information (if you can even call it that) I had about Scotland came from my earliest memories watching Scooby Doo and Shaggy solving the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster. Therefore, when given the opportunity to take the Sharan on its inaugural 2010 road trip, I chose to go to Loch Ness. I mean who is gonna say no to chasing evil eel-like monsters around a lake all day? I’d bring my tazer…it would be great. So I got my new hall crew together (it didn’t take long, there were only four of us), and we planned a day trip up to the legendary lake.

Easy mistaken, right? (l-Finnish, r-Scottish)

So much more fun!

Sounds pretty straight forward right? Well, it probably would have, but the GPS wasn’t working that day, and we all know how reliable Mapquest directions can be. Nevertheless, we got there in just under 3 hours. You might think that after spending such a long time getting to such a famous destination, that we would go straight to the loch. But never underestimate the power of discount shopping on the likes of city folk like us. An hour and a half later, 10 pounds poorer, and a shirt, a pair of shoes, and a pair of slacks richer, we finally made our way to the great Loch Ness.

We zipped past the sign originally. I stopped the car, put it in reverse until we were far enough away to take this picture.

Me, Colleen, Molly, Greg, and Nessie!!!!!

Here’s something Rick Steve’s didn’t tell me in his travel guide: Loch Ness is just a lake. I know how simple that sounds, but really, there is NOTHING to do there, except look at a lake. You basically just drive around this ordinary lake and hope to God there is a random cloud overhead that feigns the appearance of the legendary “Nessie” in the water. Unless of course you want to spend 15 pounds to get on a cruise boat, in which case, you basically do the same thing on boat instead. So we spent a while driving down the coast, until the initial “Ohhhhh, Loooch Nessssss” hypnosis wore off. Then we found ourselves sucked into Nessieland instead. There is a special place in tourist heaven for Nessieland, which saves unsuspecting tourists from total boredom on a daily basis. All those tourists looking for zoo with baby nessies or who just want a nessie snow globe. It’s just a wee side attraction, but it has a “life-size” replica of the monster. Popular amongst children ages 3-15 and apparently college students from America. After snapping a few photos with the monster, we went on our way.

Pit stop.

Okay, really this time. We found Nessie!!!

Next stop: the Urquhart Castle. Never heard of it? Neither had we. And to be honest, we got there just in time for it to close, so we are still pretty much clueless as to what went on in the castle. But I was pretty sure that it was the castle that Shaggy and Scooby ran up and down in their desperate attempt to avoid the Loch Ness monster. I know you’re all judging me for not being more knowledgeable about this colorful part of Scottish history, but I didn’t promise you a history lesson here.

Castle, Shmastle. Kings or something lived here.

Now, if this were a classic British novel, then this would be where the story takes a turn towards the climax. This is the pivotal scene where things start to get good. So if you’re just skimming this blog like a knob, here’d be a good place to start reading again.

If you know me, then you know I hate backtracking. I can’t stand the idea of seeing the same place twice, so I suggested that we just keep following the loch down to the end, and try to meet up with the motorway further south (see the map below). My co-pilot, Colleen, said she didn’t see any roads on the map that met up with the motorway. I laughed it off though, insisting that there MUST be some small country roads that connect the loch to the main highway. “Don’t worry!”

So we continue on. And we are loving life. We stop off on the side of the road and take cute scenic pictures. We even happen upon a castle. While visiting our quaint fantasy world, we heard some boys yelling in the distance. We followed the sounds down a dirt pathway. And, I kid you not, we walked onto what I though was the most beautiful scene I had ever encountered. A giant lake, perfectly calm, was reflecting all the colors of the trees and the clouds onto its surface. And there was this gang of boys. The Lost boys, lost no more! And to our right, a legit sinking ship. I swear, we were in our own fairy tale.

Our secret castle...much better!!!

Check out that reflection!

"We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen. But, we would like a brandy."

Our Lost Boys

Before long, the sun started to set, so we returned to reality and the ol’ Sharan. We drove for an hour or so as the sun completely set. Now it was dark and we were all getting tired and cranky…I mean hungry. We stopped for dinner at a pub, called Paddy’s, at about 7:30pm. While the others are going to the bathroom and looking through the menu, I walked up to the bartender and asked him how long it would take to get back to St. Andrews. Bear in mind, I’m expecting it to be like an hour, maybe an hour and a half trip from here. He literally turns to me and says, “Like the university? We’re on the west coast and that’s on the east coast. I have no idea.” With that, he chuckled and returned to work. I was literally defeated by his comment. I was pretty much ready to curl up into a ball, as I ran to gas station across the street to ask the attendant there. She also laughed at me, when I asked her how far we were from St. Andrews. She pulled out a map and explained that we were in Fort William, which happened to be on the complete opposite coast. We were within 30 minutes of the Isle of Skye (To put this in perspective, we had planned to take a 2 day trip to the Isle of Skye, because it was so far away!!!). We were about 4.5 hours from our destination.

red

At this point, we made the executive decision to stop making pit stops for scenic photos.

I think this picture best describes the mood by dinner time.

After dinner, we returned to the gas station to stock up for the long haul back to St. Andrews. 1 Red Bull, 1 Diet Pepsi, 2 packages of crispy M&Ms (yeah, the one’s that are discontinued in the US…be jealous), and a can of Pringles (we really couldn’t stop, once it was popped), we were back on the road for our 4.5 hour drive back to St. Andrews. I tried to imagine how pretty the mountains would have looked in the light as I drove through Glencoe (that is, when I wasn’t worried about giant 16-wheelers careening towards me on narrow mountain roads). I owe a special shout out to the creators of “never have I ever” and “would you rather,” the only things that made the drive back bearable. Final arrival time: 11:34pm. Total trip time: 14 hours, 34 minutes.

I’m sure there are quite a few take home messages that you can glean from this story. I’ll just hit on a few: 1) Legends seem to be a lot more fun when Shaggy and Scooby are around; 2) Always follow the voices of little boys (that sounds so wrong); and 3) Always take the road less travelled, unless you’re in Scotland. Then, by all means, take the printed directions!

Anyways, here’s a little video I put together from our trip this weekend! Enjoy!