Let people take what shots they will at Obama and his plan to enroll infants into public service and millionaires into substandard state-sponsored healthcare, because I'm gonna say I LOVE NOT PAYING FOR STUFF.
I don't want to hear any hubu jubu about higher taxes or efficiencies inherent to free markets. Look, I am in a town called Vigo. You don't know where it is? Neither do I. Somewhere in Spain. I hit my head REALLY hard on one of Vigo´s particularly hard concrete sidewalks and woke up screaming about how "they" got me while my brother tried unsucessfuly to stuff the blood back into my skull. Eventually a Vigo cop showed up, said "joder" a few times, and found a Vigo paramedic, who also said "joder", wrapped my head in gauze, and drove me to a hospital. At this hospital I waited for 2 hours, surrounded by enough chronically pained old people to make me say "joder" until some doctors violently shaved the back of my head and poured hydrogen peroxide in my eyes. At least, that is what it felt like.
I waited another 2 hours for the results of a blood test, after which I was mugged for my urine, the testing of which required another 2 hours, until finally an extremely cute Vigo doctor told me I was free to go, but to come back to her if I felt nauseous or dizzy. I asked her if lonely counted. She said no. :(
Anyway. This cost me zero dollars. Zero euros. Not a single commie cent. It was beautiful! It almost made me feel bad about cheating on the metro all those times.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Lisbians
I'm not sure how you are supposed to refer to residents of Lisboa, but I like to imagine that the correct term is Lisbians.
Anyway, before going to Lisboa, I had heard a lot of rumor and speculation. If Spain was Europe's Mexico, people said, then Portugal was Spain's Mexico. I was a little scared, and getting off a bus from Seville at 5 in the morning, in a bus station surrounded by vacant lots and grafitti, I started to question what kind of twisted place Mexico's Mexico would look like. But I survived the first couple predawn shankings, and made it to the metro, which Ross and I used to get to the harbor, trying to catch a sunrise on the water. It was close to seven in the morning, still mostly dark, and not one cafe was open. I cursed the laziness of the Portuguese, and all Latin people, and walked to the waterfront, keeping eyes peeled for the last of the graveyard shift shankers.
The waterfront was beautiful, although the buildings around it were in terrible shape, the reputed splendor of Lisbon's monied past hidden by neglect. Ross and I watched the sunrise through a chainlink fence, until a Portuguese guy in a oddly cocked fedora edged towards us and slurred "Where are you guys from?" He continued talking to us, in a bad Portuguese accent made worse by his stupefying drunkenness, saying that he had lived in a cave in Granada for 2 years until being forced back to Lisbon due to a sick relative, which induced a boredom in him which could apparently only be cured by drinking until 7 in the morning and making techno samples from the sounds of ships mooring and unmooring, which is apparently why he was at the waterfront.
Aside from him however, I have found Lisbians to be extremely friendly, and eerily proficient in English. I had heard that Romance speaking countries, like Italy, Spain, and France are supposed to be among the worst in Europe, but people in Lisbon seem to have excellent English in the most unexpected, and embarassing places, like when Ross and I were in a grocery store debating whether or not to spend 56 euro cents on mustard for our cheese sandwiches, and a clerk burst out in laughter and head shaking, shaming me into assenting to the mustard.
Anyway, before going to Lisboa, I had heard a lot of rumor and speculation. If Spain was Europe's Mexico, people said, then Portugal was Spain's Mexico. I was a little scared, and getting off a bus from Seville at 5 in the morning, in a bus station surrounded by vacant lots and grafitti, I started to question what kind of twisted place Mexico's Mexico would look like. But I survived the first couple predawn shankings, and made it to the metro, which Ross and I used to get to the harbor, trying to catch a sunrise on the water. It was close to seven in the morning, still mostly dark, and not one cafe was open. I cursed the laziness of the Portuguese, and all Latin people, and walked to the waterfront, keeping eyes peeled for the last of the graveyard shift shankers.
The waterfront was beautiful, although the buildings around it were in terrible shape, the reputed splendor of Lisbon's monied past hidden by neglect. Ross and I watched the sunrise through a chainlink fence, until a Portuguese guy in a oddly cocked fedora edged towards us and slurred "Where are you guys from?" He continued talking to us, in a bad Portuguese accent made worse by his stupefying drunkenness, saying that he had lived in a cave in Granada for 2 years until being forced back to Lisbon due to a sick relative, which induced a boredom in him which could apparently only be cured by drinking until 7 in the morning and making techno samples from the sounds of ships mooring and unmooring, which is apparently why he was at the waterfront.
Aside from him however, I have found Lisbians to be extremely friendly, and eerily proficient in English. I had heard that Romance speaking countries, like Italy, Spain, and France are supposed to be among the worst in Europe, but people in Lisbon seem to have excellent English in the most unexpected, and embarassing places, like when Ross and I were in a grocery store debating whether or not to spend 56 euro cents on mustard for our cheese sandwiches, and a clerk burst out in laughter and head shaking, shaming me into assenting to the mustard.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Good God Granada
Ross and I took a 5 hour bus ride from Madrid to Granada that in no way resembled the horrendous bus rides we were subjected to in Morocco, in that nobody flung orange peels at my face and the rest stop looked like someplace humans could live, rather than the dimension Pinhead in Hellraiser comes from.
But Granada is really cool. They have a unique local food called tapas, which is essentially a beer and a piece of food somewhere in between an appetizer and an entree. They usually cost about 2 dollars. Ross considers this to be some kind of fantastic deal, and does nothing all day but eat tapas and ask me if I want to go get some more tapas.
We recently decided that we need a budget if this trip is going to last longer than 3 weeks, so Ross and I decided to stick to about 10 Euros a day, with rollover Euros within the week, but not across the Sunday-Monday divide, coffee and beer excluded. Fortunately, we decided that tapas count as beer.
But Granada is really cool. They have a unique local food called tapas, which is essentially a beer and a piece of food somewhere in between an appetizer and an entree. They usually cost about 2 dollars. Ross considers this to be some kind of fantastic deal, and does nothing all day but eat tapas and ask me if I want to go get some more tapas.
We recently decided that we need a budget if this trip is going to last longer than 3 weeks, so Ross and I decided to stick to about 10 Euros a day, with rollover Euros within the week, but not across the Sunday-Monday divide, coffee and beer excluded. Fortunately, we decided that tapas count as beer.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Kilometro Cero
I´m in Madrid now, although there is a lot I still want to say about Morocco.
Sucks for you Morocco. The first thing I noticed about Madrid was the size. I guess in terms of population, Madrid is about equal with Casablanca, both weighing in at a respectable 3 million, but when I got a look at the Madrid metro map, I was thoroughly intimidated. That thing is a hydra-like beast, serpentine and multi-headed. I had seriously never seen so many lines and transfer stations. So Ross and I disembarked from Easyjet Flight U2 277Y, and upon being confronted with this beastly map, could do nothing but stare dumbfounded.
Fortunately, it turns out that the Madrid Metro is really well designed, and the signs in the transfer stations are printed in such a way that it is almost impossible to get on the wrong train, and the future transfer points and transfer lines are also clearly indicated. So I did that. I bought a ticket for 10 journeys, because Madrid apparently refuses to use a card and credit system for its metro, and I rode around, creepily ogling the cute Spanish girls, with their delightful propensity to wear Converses, and their unsettling desire to wear disgusting, pajama-sized jeans. as well as being harassed by itinerant musicians, who wheel about homemade portable karaoke machines, which they use to torture entire cars full of people until the victims deposit their strange European currency into a hat. It is a weird custom.
I guess that isn´t so weird. But I did notice one uniquely Spanish thing while riding the metro. When Ross and I first rode into Barrio de la Concepcion, which is the closest stop to the person whose couch we are sleeping on, I saw what looked like a "slippery when wet" sign guarding a large pile of sawdust. 3 days later, the pile was still there. Apparently the customary Spanish solution for leaks, and other water related crises is to throw sawdust around and forget about it, which helps explain why the Spanish had such a difficult time hanging on to the Netherlands in the 1600s.
Sucks for you Morocco. The first thing I noticed about Madrid was the size. I guess in terms of population, Madrid is about equal with Casablanca, both weighing in at a respectable 3 million, but when I got a look at the Madrid metro map, I was thoroughly intimidated. That thing is a hydra-like beast, serpentine and multi-headed. I had seriously never seen so many lines and transfer stations. So Ross and I disembarked from Easyjet Flight U2 277Y, and upon being confronted with this beastly map, could do nothing but stare dumbfounded.
Fortunately, it turns out that the Madrid Metro is really well designed, and the signs in the transfer stations are printed in such a way that it is almost impossible to get on the wrong train, and the future transfer points and transfer lines are also clearly indicated. So I did that. I bought a ticket for 10 journeys, because Madrid apparently refuses to use a card and credit system for its metro, and I rode around, creepily ogling the cute Spanish girls, with their delightful propensity to wear Converses, and their unsettling desire to wear disgusting, pajama-sized jeans. as well as being harassed by itinerant musicians, who wheel about homemade portable karaoke machines, which they use to torture entire cars full of people until the victims deposit their strange European currency into a hat. It is a weird custom.
I guess that isn´t so weird. But I did notice one uniquely Spanish thing while riding the metro. When Ross and I first rode into Barrio de la Concepcion, which is the closest stop to the person whose couch we are sleeping on, I saw what looked like a "slippery when wet" sign guarding a large pile of sawdust. 3 days later, the pile was still there. Apparently the customary Spanish solution for leaks, and other water related crises is to throw sawdust around and forget about it, which helps explain why the Spanish had such a difficult time hanging on to the Netherlands in the 1600s.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Taxis, buses, donkeys
Morocco is a pretty large country, but can get pretty sparsely populated on the edges. In the densely populated areas, i.e. the routes between Marrakesh, Rabat, Casablanca, Tangiers, and Fez, there are regular trains and buses. But in the frontier regions, particulaly the dusty towns near the Sahara Desert, traditional transportation tends to..... breakdown, for lack of a better word. Fortunately, a combination of Moroccan entrepeneurship and good samaritism, (or its Koranic equivalent) have combined forces to allow people to move from village to village with an adjective that comes very close to reliably.
The first line of defense is the long distance taxi. I don't know how this institution began, but it is by far the most interesting piece of the Moroccan transportation pie. In all towns, regardless of size, there is an area that can best be described as the taxi depot. There, a host of Moroccan dudes stand idly by their impossibly old and improbably held together Mercedes while shouting the name of the city they are headed. After you find your driver, it is simply a matter of waiting for 5 other passengers (4 in the back, 2 in the front with the driver) heading the same way.
Of course, once the journey is underway, the taxi driver is free to make extra money by picking up anybody he sees on the side of road. I don't know if there is an upper limit to the amount of people allowed into one Mercedes, but can personally testify to at least 12, including the driver.
There are also huge Volkswagen vans prowling the highway system that will stop for anyone and charge an amount of money ranging between 0 and 20 dirham, which is worked out according to a rule system so arcane, I assume it takes a whole life lived in Morocco to understand.
The first line of defense is the long distance taxi. I don't know how this institution began, but it is by far the most interesting piece of the Moroccan transportation pie. In all towns, regardless of size, there is an area that can best be described as the taxi depot. There, a host of Moroccan dudes stand idly by their impossibly old and improbably held together Mercedes while shouting the name of the city they are headed. After you find your driver, it is simply a matter of waiting for 5 other passengers (4 in the back, 2 in the front with the driver) heading the same way.
Of course, once the journey is underway, the taxi driver is free to make extra money by picking up anybody he sees on the side of road. I don't know if there is an upper limit to the amount of people allowed into one Mercedes, but can personally testify to at least 12, including the driver.
There are also huge Volkswagen vans prowling the highway system that will stop for anyone and charge an amount of money ranging between 0 and 20 dirham, which is worked out according to a rule system so arcane, I assume it takes a whole life lived in Morocco to understand.
Moroccan Internet Cafes
I would wager that roughly 1/17th of my time in Morocco has been spent either in search of a cyber, or waiting for the horrendously slow Moroccan internet to load gmail. The Moroccan system of internet cafes, or cybers, has a few rules that I've been able to deduce as I watch the white screen with the small, red "loading..." sign in the bottom right that tells me my gmail account is a mere 3-4 minutes away.
1. The farther away from Casablanca you get, the slower the internet will be.
2. Never ask the staff for help, because they probably know less about computers than your grandmother. (Once, I couldn't log in to skype because there was a new version available, but the internet was so slow that the new version would take 6 hours to download. I called the staff guy over, and he proceeded to delete all the cookies on the computer, individually, and told me to try logging in again. I tried, naturally it didn't work, and again, he deleted the 1 new cookie, and told me to log in again. This happened 4 times.)
3. Never look at another person's monitor, because you won't like what you see.
In a tiny desert town called Tazzerine, where Ross and I were stranded in for one night, we were directed by a friendly seeming Spanish-speaking Moroccan to a small cyber described as "muy tranquilo." We went in, waited ages for the computer to boot up, logged into gmail, snuck in a quick bit of meditation while my inbox loaded, and finally managed to read one email before the power went out. Ross and I looked at eachother, shrugged, and repeated the process, power outage and all, after which we told the manager "nos vamos." He gave us a look of understanding and resignation, and said we didn't have to pay.
Later we found out that the entire town suffers from intermittent power outages, which makes me wonder why anyone would attempt to open a cyber at all.
1. The farther away from Casablanca you get, the slower the internet will be.
2. Never ask the staff for help, because they probably know less about computers than your grandmother. (Once, I couldn't log in to skype because there was a new version available, but the internet was so slow that the new version would take 6 hours to download. I called the staff guy over, and he proceeded to delete all the cookies on the computer, individually, and told me to try logging in again. I tried, naturally it didn't work, and again, he deleted the 1 new cookie, and told me to log in again. This happened 4 times.)
3. Never look at another person's monitor, because you won't like what you see.
In a tiny desert town called Tazzerine, where Ross and I were stranded in for one night, we were directed by a friendly seeming Spanish-speaking Moroccan to a small cyber described as "muy tranquilo." We went in, waited ages for the computer to boot up, logged into gmail, snuck in a quick bit of meditation while my inbox loaded, and finally managed to read one email before the power went out. Ross and I looked at eachother, shrugged, and repeated the process, power outage and all, after which we told the manager "nos vamos." He gave us a look of understanding and resignation, and said we didn't have to pay.
Later we found out that the entire town suffers from intermittent power outages, which makes me wonder why anyone would attempt to open a cyber at all.
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