This year, when I open my door on Halloween night to kids announcing "trick or treat," I'm opting for "trick."
Of course, I won't dare any wayward schoolchildren to play a trick on me, although I'd be interested to see whether any of them had thought through a "Plan B" for this kind of situation. I won't even deny them the handout they sought when the knocked on my door.
Instead, I'm giving out tricks disguised as treats.
Anyone can hand out candy on Halloween. The prudish among us can hand out apples or floss or bags of tea. People who hate children can hand out rocks. Fundamentalists could hand out "tracks" that explain the salvation process, which I'm pretty sure I received a few times growing up in semi-rural Alabama.
But who among us can hand out packets of Splenda?
I mean, besides me.
This has been a dream of mine for a couple of years.
Two years ago, I stocked my house with just enough candy to survive Halloween night. When 8:00 p.m. hit and we were down to seven pieces of candy in the house, I tried desperately to think of a backup plan that didn't involve going out to the store. Walgreens was only 2 blocks away, and I really didn't haven anything else to do, but it was dark outside and I was fighting for Principle. Or possibly just laziness.
But either way, I wasn't going back outside. Instead, I scavenged the house for back-up plans to distribute once my seven pieces of candy disappeared. When the results of my search were 2 apples, an assortment of tea bags and two partially unwanted cats, I got a bit nervous, but I was absolutely committed to the plan.
Thankfully, only five other kids came to my door that night, but the evening taught me a lesson: never again would I risk running out of good candy and having to resort to giving out something ridiculous.
Instead, I would stock up on ridiculous things to start with. This way, if I run out of stuff to hand out, no one will be disappointed.
The only rule of this exercise is that nothing I give out will be so utterly ludicrous that it is self-evidently meant as a joke. There will be no rubber chickens, no pocket-sized New Testaments (with Psalms and Proverbs included, for reasons never properly explained), and no bags of rocks or condoms. Instead, everything I give out will be something that someone, somewhere, might actually think was appropriate.
So, this Halloween, I'll be the old lady handing out bags or tea or muffin mix. I'll be the weirdo handing out Star Wars trading cards and leftover Valentines Day candy or cards with the names still visible. I'll be the cheapskate distributing my unwanted old VHS tapes, including the homemade ones.
I'll save my best stuff for the teenagers to old to be doing this, or the parents with one-year-olds who are clearly looking to score for themselves, because their kids can't even eat solid food yet. These groups will get yogurt. If the container busts before they get home, that isn't my problem.
So if you need some Mardi Gras beads, come on by. If you're out of long underwear, I have some extra that I don't need. If you need a vacuum cleaner that only sort of works, or that Singing Butler painting that was popular 10 years ago at Bombay Company, you know where to find me.
And thanks to Starbucks, I have both more packets of Splenda and more temporarily trendy CDs from now-faded artists than I know what to do with.
Or actually, I now know exactly what to do with them: give them to you and your bratty little children.
What's more, if you don't have a place to put all these things, I'm pretty sure I have some old, deep, baking dishes left over from my last yard sale.
You're welcome to them all.
It's my treat.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
October: Still the Best Month
I'm running behind this week, and don't have time to write. So it's a good thing I haven't gotten around to my annual tradition of re-posting my wildly popular (by my standards, at least) blog from two years ago celebrating the joys of October.
This way, I can do it now and not have to write anything new this week.
Procrastination has its advantages.
October is the best month of the year, and I know many of you agree because this is the most widely read post on this site I've ever written by a couple hundred hits.
So enjoy the beautiful weather, and maybe take your computer outside to read all about it here:
http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-october-is-best-month-of-year.html
This way, I can do it now and not have to write anything new this week.
Procrastination has its advantages.
October is the best month of the year, and I know many of you agree because this is the most widely read post on this site I've ever written by a couple hundred hits.
So enjoy the beautiful weather, and maybe take your computer outside to read all about it here:
http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-october-is-best-month-of-year.html
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
A Solution to Our Government Shutdown: Name My Cat Dictator
So the government is shut down, and a better one doesn't seem likely to open in its place anytime soon.
But maybe it should.
While Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are locked in a room pretending to negotiate as their respective staffs try fruitlessly to tell them apart, we, as a nation, should collectively tell them "never mind."
Instead, imagine their surprise when they come out of their little room look around and, once they pull their heads out of their respective backsides, discover they've been replaced.
By my cat.
That's right. In the new system I hereby propose, there will be no more parties who care more about getting elected than about governing, and who refuse to negotiate because they know the other party will get blamed for the shutdown. There will be no extremists who dispute that accepting a validly enacted piece of legislation they don't happen to like is the price of living in a democracy.
Instead of dysfunctional mess in which we currently find ourselves, I propose our nation cede all its governing power over to one source: Trouble, my housecat.
The benefits of this idea barely fit onto this page.
TroubleCat wastes no time deliberating. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it. For example, if she wants foreign aid, she scratches my leg and meows incessantly until I give in and give her some of my chicken.
Vladamir Putin would be no match for this negotiating tactic.
In our current government, beneficial legislation gets derailed because neither party wants the other to get credit for passing it. What little does eventually get passed is so corrupted by special interests who fund our legislator's re-election campaigns that it no longer benefits the population at large.
These problems would end if Trouble were in charge. Give her a piece of legislation that stinks and she will poop on it.
Give her a piece of good legislation and she will possibly still poop on it, but she will at least riffle through it and scratch it up first. And if you focus a laser pointer on its relevant points, she will give it her undivided attention, at least until a bug flies by.
This is progress over what we have now.
The advantages don't end there. Trouble would hold no press conferences and would never appear on cable talk shows to refuse to answer the hosts' questions directly. She would not waste time on dumb proposals that have no chance of passing just to appease her political base. While she couldn't find Iraq on a map, at least that means she wouldn't go to war with it.
Her health care plan consists of lots of naps. And no matter what struggles she might face, she will always land on her feet.
Most importantly, the constant and exhausting stalemates between two political parties who can't work together would cease if we just named Trouble our Cat Dictator for Life.
For all nine lives, for that matter.
Trouble would get things done. For example, she would personally increase our nation's paper bag and laundry basket inspection programs, which would in turn dramatically decrease the number of bag-and-basket-related deaths, assuming she could ever find her way out to sign the bill.
Also, she would have to learn to learn how to hold a pen in her mouth and sign things. But this seems more likely than Republicans and Democrats ever working together.
Of course, I realize that this plan is not without drawbacks.
Some might be alarmed at the idea of Trouble having her finger over our nuclear arsenal. Fortunately, she doesn't have opposable thumbs so this is not a significant concern.
Some might fear she could easily be bought off for a mere can of Fancy Feast. But I can assure anyone concerned that the moment she finishes her treat, she will be back to the same self-centered creature she always was, having no concern or loyalty to anyone but herself.
Others might contend that a cat with a below-average IQ, even for cats, is not the most qualified candidate to have dictatorial control over the free world. But this argument overlooks that fact that she is the only cat who has volunteered, through her master's proxy, to serve.
Detractors might argue that Trouble would probably not realize she was leading the free world, even if she was put in charge.
Some might even go so far as to contend that she doesn't actually care about anyone who lives outside her house, and any positive actions she took for our country would probably be completely accidental.
But this hardly differentiates her from our politicians, and at least she is fluffy and cute.
But maybe it should.
While Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are locked in a room pretending to negotiate as their respective staffs try fruitlessly to tell them apart, we, as a nation, should collectively tell them "never mind."
Instead, imagine their surprise when they come out of their little room look around and, once they pull their heads out of their respective backsides, discover they've been replaced.
By my cat.
That's right. In the new system I hereby propose, there will be no more parties who care more about getting elected than about governing, and who refuse to negotiate because they know the other party will get blamed for the shutdown. There will be no extremists who dispute that accepting a validly enacted piece of legislation they don't happen to like is the price of living in a democracy.
Instead of dysfunctional mess in which we currently find ourselves, I propose our nation cede all its governing power over to one source: Trouble, my housecat.
The benefits of this idea barely fit onto this page.
TroubleCat wastes no time deliberating. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it. For example, if she wants foreign aid, she scratches my leg and meows incessantly until I give in and give her some of my chicken.
Vladamir Putin would be no match for this negotiating tactic.
In our current government, beneficial legislation gets derailed because neither party wants the other to get credit for passing it. What little does eventually get passed is so corrupted by special interests who fund our legislator's re-election campaigns that it no longer benefits the population at large.
These problems would end if Trouble were in charge. Give her a piece of legislation that stinks and she will poop on it.
Give her a piece of good legislation and she will possibly still poop on it, but she will at least riffle through it and scratch it up first. And if you focus a laser pointer on its relevant points, she will give it her undivided attention, at least until a bug flies by.
This is progress over what we have now.
The advantages don't end there. Trouble would hold no press conferences and would never appear on cable talk shows to refuse to answer the hosts' questions directly. She would not waste time on dumb proposals that have no chance of passing just to appease her political base. While she couldn't find Iraq on a map, at least that means she wouldn't go to war with it.
Her health care plan consists of lots of naps. And no matter what struggles she might face, she will always land on her feet.
Most importantly, the constant and exhausting stalemates between two political parties who can't work together would cease if we just named Trouble our Cat Dictator for Life.
For all nine lives, for that matter.
Trouble would get things done. For example, she would personally increase our nation's paper bag and laundry basket inspection programs, which would in turn dramatically decrease the number of bag-and-basket-related deaths, assuming she could ever find her way out to sign the bill.
Also, she would have to learn to learn how to hold a pen in her mouth and sign things. But this seems more likely than Republicans and Democrats ever working together.
Of course, I realize that this plan is not without drawbacks.
Some might be alarmed at the idea of Trouble having her finger over our nuclear arsenal. Fortunately, she doesn't have opposable thumbs so this is not a significant concern.
Some might fear she could easily be bought off for a mere can of Fancy Feast. But I can assure anyone concerned that the moment she finishes her treat, she will be back to the same self-centered creature she always was, having no concern or loyalty to anyone but herself.
Others might contend that a cat with a below-average IQ, even for cats, is not the most qualified candidate to have dictatorial control over the free world. But this argument overlooks that fact that she is the only cat who has volunteered, through her master's proxy, to serve.
Detractors might argue that Trouble would probably not realize she was leading the free world, even if she was put in charge.
Some might even go so far as to contend that she doesn't actually care about anyone who lives outside her house, and any positive actions she took for our country would probably be completely accidental.
But this hardly differentiates her from our politicians, and at least she is fluffy and cute.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
A Day in the Life of a Lawyer
It's late on a Tuesday night, I'm in a different time zone and probably should be sleeping. It's already after 11 and I need to be up at 7 in the morning for court. But with the change in time zone, I'm neither sleepy nor fully prepared. I can barely focus my nervous energy.
God help me.
I have something called an oral argument tomorrow. It's first thing in the morning, before the appellate court one level below the U.S. Supreme Court.
It will either provide me a unique opportunity to demonstrate the mastery of my appellate advocacy, and validate me against all my childhood critics, or it will be a Chinese water torture in which I demonstrate to the court and a room full of observing lawyers that I've wasted my life by choosing a profession the demands of which are hopelessly beyond my abilities.
It's pretty much one or the other.
Oral argument is the most intense adrenaline rush a lawyer can ever endure. All eyes of the court focus on the lawyer, as he or she gets a specified time to make their case before a panel of appellate judges, who can--and do--interrupt at any time with questions. And anything is fair game.
The attorney must be prepared to know any fact within what is often a several-thousand-page record. (And you get bonus points if you can pinpoint the page of the transcript where that fact can be found). As the attorney, you must be prepared to discuss any similar case within your jurisdiction, and to argue how its facts either help your position or, at worst, are distinguishable from it.
You must not only be prepared to discuss how the law relates to your case, but how your case would turn out if the facts were just a little bit different in one critical regard, because judges like to think about the policy implications of their decisions.
And after you finish answering whatever specific question you face, you must seamlessly transition back into your argument until you get interrupted again, which is generally not long. Often the judges will start arguing with each other, asking you to solve their disagreement, and you must choose how to answer the questions without alienating either. The judges will point out potential flaws in the arguments of both sides and tell each of you why they might rule against you, and it's up to you to allay their fears or change their minds.
Trials are stressful too, but often the witnesses have as much to do with the outcome as the lawyer. In an appellate oral argument, it's just two attorneys pushing down on the scales of justice, arguing whether or not the trial court got it right.
It is a high wire act, but there's no better feeling in law than pulling it off.
This particular case is harder than usual. It's full of complex medical terminology that is hard to understand. A different attorney handled it at the trial level, and even wrote the brief whose merits I was pressed into arguing when he left. I would not have approached it the way he did, and I as try to comprehend his complex procedural argument as to why the convicted defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not properly preserved for review, a sobering reality strikes me:
I'm one early morning brain fart away from enabling a guilty man go free through my sheer incompetence.
I try to look at the bright side. Maybe if I screw up, it will just mean that the defendant gets a new trial. In that case, it's not so bad. It just means that I'm one brain fart away from forcing some distant district attorney to have to re-call a long list of witnesses and panel a new jury and probably pay a new set of experts to come testify, and make any potential victim re-live their trauma.
Sometimes, that result is inescapable. If that's what justice demands, then so be it. But the idea that it might happen because I failed to think of the winning response to what should have been an answerable question is enough to drive one to drink.
Or at least it would be, if I didn't have court in just a few hours.
The work is never done in preparing for one of those things. There's always some other hypothetical question the judges might ask, some other fact from the record they might want to know. There's always some snappier way to deliver one of your lines. And you can never practice your presentation too many times.
This is especially challenging for me. Oral argument has always been my best skill as an attorney, but I'm consistently horrible when there's no audience in front of me, so I never really know how prepared I actually am.
Somewhere long after midnight, I recognize that my argument is as good as its ever going to be and settle into my hotel bedroom, setting two alarms and a wake-up call, just in case.
As I practice my delivery in the shower the next morning, I think of other questions about the factual record. I need to look through the trial transcript again, but my stomach is so torn up from the stress that I can't stay out of the bathroom for more than 3 minutes at a time to look at my computer.
After a few minutes too long, I find what I'm looking for (I mean, besides the bathroom), and race to court to check in for my argument a few minutes later than I would like. The clerk gives me a look, and I narrowly decide against explaining that my near-the-deadline arrival time was due entirely to the fire in my bowels.
Thankfully, I have just enough time to go back to the bathroom before court starts. This is already as bad as that colonoscopy I had last year, and I haven't even been examined by the judges yet.
Any lawyer is capable of getting inescapably confused by unexpected phrasing of a question or suddenly forgetting the name of their client at an inopportune time (which happens more often than you'd think). Like a gymnast or figure skater, once you lose your rhythm and routine it's nearly impossible to get it back. No amount of preparation can fully guard against that, but one's ability to think outside the script at least improves with experience.
But weirdly, my butterflies always go away once I face my first question. I won't get the Court's opinion for weeks, but for now, at least, I'm happy with how I did.
I don't have the strength to celebrate when it's finally over. My mind goes numb (even more so than usual, that is) for awhile, but it eventually occurs to me how I could have better answered certain questions in the perfect world.
I know I can't make the world perfect, though. Instead, as I grab some coffee to sustain me for the long drive home, I just hope that I haven't made it worse by anything that I forgot.
What an odd profession I chose. Mechanics see a problem and fix it with their hands. Doctors see a problem and treat it with medicine. Lawyers see an issue and argue about whether it was a problem.
I just really hope I didn't leave anything out of that argument.
God help me.
I have something called an oral argument tomorrow. It's first thing in the morning, before the appellate court one level below the U.S. Supreme Court.
It will either provide me a unique opportunity to demonstrate the mastery of my appellate advocacy, and validate me against all my childhood critics, or it will be a Chinese water torture in which I demonstrate to the court and a room full of observing lawyers that I've wasted my life by choosing a profession the demands of which are hopelessly beyond my abilities.
It's pretty much one or the other.
Oral argument is the most intense adrenaline rush a lawyer can ever endure. All eyes of the court focus on the lawyer, as he or she gets a specified time to make their case before a panel of appellate judges, who can--and do--interrupt at any time with questions. And anything is fair game.
The attorney must be prepared to know any fact within what is often a several-thousand-page record. (And you get bonus points if you can pinpoint the page of the transcript where that fact can be found). As the attorney, you must be prepared to discuss any similar case within your jurisdiction, and to argue how its facts either help your position or, at worst, are distinguishable from it.
You must not only be prepared to discuss how the law relates to your case, but how your case would turn out if the facts were just a little bit different in one critical regard, because judges like to think about the policy implications of their decisions.
And after you finish answering whatever specific question you face, you must seamlessly transition back into your argument until you get interrupted again, which is generally not long. Often the judges will start arguing with each other, asking you to solve their disagreement, and you must choose how to answer the questions without alienating either. The judges will point out potential flaws in the arguments of both sides and tell each of you why they might rule against you, and it's up to you to allay their fears or change their minds.
Trials are stressful too, but often the witnesses have as much to do with the outcome as the lawyer. In an appellate oral argument, it's just two attorneys pushing down on the scales of justice, arguing whether or not the trial court got it right.
It is a high wire act, but there's no better feeling in law than pulling it off.
This particular case is harder than usual. It's full of complex medical terminology that is hard to understand. A different attorney handled it at the trial level, and even wrote the brief whose merits I was pressed into arguing when he left. I would not have approached it the way he did, and I as try to comprehend his complex procedural argument as to why the convicted defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not properly preserved for review, a sobering reality strikes me:
I'm one early morning brain fart away from enabling a guilty man go free through my sheer incompetence.
I try to look at the bright side. Maybe if I screw up, it will just mean that the defendant gets a new trial. In that case, it's not so bad. It just means that I'm one brain fart away from forcing some distant district attorney to have to re-call a long list of witnesses and panel a new jury and probably pay a new set of experts to come testify, and make any potential victim re-live their trauma.
Sometimes, that result is inescapable. If that's what justice demands, then so be it. But the idea that it might happen because I failed to think of the winning response to what should have been an answerable question is enough to drive one to drink.
Or at least it would be, if I didn't have court in just a few hours.
The work is never done in preparing for one of those things. There's always some other hypothetical question the judges might ask, some other fact from the record they might want to know. There's always some snappier way to deliver one of your lines. And you can never practice your presentation too many times.
This is especially challenging for me. Oral argument has always been my best skill as an attorney, but I'm consistently horrible when there's no audience in front of me, so I never really know how prepared I actually am.
Somewhere long after midnight, I recognize that my argument is as good as its ever going to be and settle into my hotel bedroom, setting two alarms and a wake-up call, just in case.
As I practice my delivery in the shower the next morning, I think of other questions about the factual record. I need to look through the trial transcript again, but my stomach is so torn up from the stress that I can't stay out of the bathroom for more than 3 minutes at a time to look at my computer.
After a few minutes too long, I find what I'm looking for (I mean, besides the bathroom), and race to court to check in for my argument a few minutes later than I would like. The clerk gives me a look, and I narrowly decide against explaining that my near-the-deadline arrival time was due entirely to the fire in my bowels.
Thankfully, I have just enough time to go back to the bathroom before court starts. This is already as bad as that colonoscopy I had last year, and I haven't even been examined by the judges yet.
Any lawyer is capable of getting inescapably confused by unexpected phrasing of a question or suddenly forgetting the name of their client at an inopportune time (which happens more often than you'd think). Like a gymnast or figure skater, once you lose your rhythm and routine it's nearly impossible to get it back. No amount of preparation can fully guard against that, but one's ability to think outside the script at least improves with experience.
But weirdly, my butterflies always go away once I face my first question. I won't get the Court's opinion for weeks, but for now, at least, I'm happy with how I did.
I don't have the strength to celebrate when it's finally over. My mind goes numb (even more so than usual, that is) for awhile, but it eventually occurs to me how I could have better answered certain questions in the perfect world.
I know I can't make the world perfect, though. Instead, as I grab some coffee to sustain me for the long drive home, I just hope that I haven't made it worse by anything that I forgot.
What an odd profession I chose. Mechanics see a problem and fix it with their hands. Doctors see a problem and treat it with medicine. Lawyers see an issue and argue about whether it was a problem.
I just really hope I didn't leave anything out of that argument.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Blogging Through Spain: Part 3 of 3
This is the retroactive diary of days 5-9 of my time in Spain, which mostly took place in Barcelona. It was awesome! The trip, that is. You can read the diary and decide the rest for yourself.
You can also check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them the first time.
Day 5:
We move slowly on our last morning in Madrid, as the four days of non-stop activity are finally taking their toll. We're catching a train to Barcelona in a couple of hours, but I could sleep the rest of the day.
We haven't even left yet and I'm already tired, but I remind myself that I'll be meeting up with my sister and her family soon and looking at Gaudi's masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, and that makes it better.
I run to the supermarket two blocks away to grab a few things for lunch. As I check out, the cashier asks me in Spanish whether I have a grocery store rewards card.
Just as I'm starting to feel like I belong here, it's time to go.
As we arrive in Barcelona, I realize I need to figure out where we're going once we disembark. I map out the subway system and we're ready to go. There's just one thing wrong.
I'm having an unusual amount of difficulty reading the signs. They seem sort-of familiar but still indecipherable. After a few puzzling minutes I realize that the signs aren't in Spanish but it's French-influenced cousin Catalon. This is going to be an adventure.
In Madrid, only three people spoke English in the entire city. We had read in the guidebooks that English was more prevalent in Barcelona. This turned out to be true. In Barcelona, 12 people in the entire city spoke English. Of course, five of them were members of my family, but let's not get overly technical.
We get to the apartment and check in. It occurs to me that amidst the activity of the last week, I didn't double-verify what time my sister is supposed to get here. She had originally told me 10, and then 6, but I didn't reconfirm that before she left for Spain 3 weeks ago.
Regardless, we have at least an hour, so we make the 15-minute walk to the local public market, which is called La Boqueria, but would more accurately be described as Heaven. It holds the largest collection of fruit, meats and seafood the world has ever known. The fruit is colorful and cheap, and you could devour it all on the spot if only people weren't bumping into you all the time. (Weird thing about Europe: no one says "excuse me" when they bump into you or block your way, because it happens so often. I never got used to that. I kept saying the Spanish equivalent of excuse me when I bumped into people, and they looked seemed more offended that I apologized than that I ran into them in the first place.)
But there isn't too much time to get lost in the sea of colorful fruit, so we take a quick walk through and come back.
There's still no sign of my sister, so we pass the time with a 2-Euro bottle of wine from the grocery store, where I'm again asked if I have a customer loyalty card. I'm picking up right where I left off!
On my way back to the apartment I'm also asked for directions. Weirdly, the signs are predominately in Catalon, but everyone seems to speak Spanish.
We pass the time looking out from our balcony with our wine and the evening turns into night. By about 8, we assume that my sister and her family must have been on the 10 o'clock flight after all, so we make the 15-minute trek back to the market.
It was closed. So were most of the shops we passed on the way to it. I guess Barcelona doesn't stay open as late as Madrid. The guidebooks didn't mention that either. If I ever meet Mr. Fodor or Mr. Frommer (assuming they're not actually the same person), we're going to have a serious talk.
We walk La Rambla, Barcelona's long tree-lined pedestrian walkway, and head back, where my sister, brother-in law and their 8 year old daughter have just arrived. A celebratory glass of wine and some conversation later, and we all turn in early.
Day 6
"We have to go," my wife says as the alarm sounds at some ungodly time like 7:30. "The guidebooks say if you don't get to Sagrada Familia early, the line gets crazy."
"I don't know, maybe it would be better to get a good night's sleep and then deal with the line?" I suggest.
"We can sleep when we're dead."
Touche.
So Liz and I walk the 8 blocks to Sagrada Familia while my family sleeps in. The adrenaline takes over the fatigue as we walk. If there's one thing in Spain we wanted to see, this is it.
We turn the corner to find it, and expect to behold majesty. Instead, we see scaffolding. Lots of scaffolding. The cathedral is open, but still unfinished, and the construction on the front overwhelms the church, which also looks surprisingly small.
Even worse, we get there by 9:15, but it's already too late. The line wraps around the entire building, and a guide is telling people not to bother because it's a four-hour wait.
Rick Steves and his cohorts have failed us again.
Between the construction on the city's signature landmark, the early closing times and the ubiquitous Catalon, Barcelona was not off to a good start.
But at least the guide didn't issue her wait-time warning in Catalon, or we would have wasted our whole day.
We take the walk to a couple other Gaudi architectural sites, which both surpass our suddenly lowered expectations. We met my family, go back to La Boqueria, wander the streets and take in the Picasso Museum.
Everyone else went to bed while my sister and I stay up late discussing Life, the Universe and Everything, and what life might look like if all our dreams come true.
It's what we do. And by the end of the day, Barcelona seems like a wonderful place to be.
Days 7-8
Friday and Saturday in Barcelona are a blur. There was so much to see and we did it so quickly, that it all runs together.
We went to the Barcelona Cathedral, which was beautiful and reminded my brother-in-law and I both of Notre Dame. I tried to light a candle for my most fervent prayer request, but the wicks were so short that I extinguished four before I finally got one to light. I like to think that the one new flame I eventually lit burned with the energy of my prayer and the prior four combined. We took the elevator up to the roof and had an amazing view of the city.
We had a tasty dinner of fresh squid and spicy potatoes, we wandered, ate some churros and went to the Museum of Chocolate. We told inside jokes and delighted my eight-year-old niece with stories about the craziness of all her other family members. Like the time her granddad put catfish in our swimming pool.
I stuck my arm in the Mediterranean, and I rammed unsuccessfully into the base of two more orange trees, hoping one would fall. I ate a killer paella, sat on shaded tables in beautiful squares, and got lost more than a couple of times.
Finally, in a last gasp effort, we dashed to Sagrada Familia to take one more shot at getting in. Amazingly, late Saturday afternoon was quiet and we got inside after a 25-minute wait. The interior was striking in its simplicity. From an architect known for his outlandish designs, the inside was surprisingly and beautifully plain.
The building doesn't look that tall from the outside, but on the inside, the undecorated brown columns seem to rise to just short of Heaven. The windows are stained and beautiful, but the rest of the cathedral is overwhelming mostly for its for its sheer simplistic magnitude.
A viewing area was fenced off on the backside of the church, which was blessedly scaffold-free. It was amazing in its detail, as seemingly hundreds of scenes were carved into the surface of the cathedral. The door of the cathedral looked like a yawning mouth swallowing unholy tourists that by the dozens, and spitting them out forever changed by the majesty of the inside.
While my wife took pictures, I slipped away to a little prayer cubby facing a stained-glass window. I prayed silently for the same things that I pray for often, but somehow those familiar requests seemed more powerful here. The words echoed in my head, and then seemed to linger in the air, as though this space contained some kind of supernatural microphone. "Whatever might come between now and the next time I'm here," I asked, "guide me through it and show me where to go."
Sagrada Familia had redeemed itself from the scaffolding. There's a presence in the building that feels like the energy of millions of earnest prayers bundled together, even amidst the noise of the gawking tour groups.
I'm glad we came back.
Day 9
If you a flight leaving from the Barcelona airport anytime this decade, you should probably starting heading that way.
We picked up a taxi two and a half hours before our flight.
After a surprisingly long cab ride we got to the airport. I took a right upon entering, as the cab driver had instructed (thankfully, they don't seem to use "apunte" (or whatever that word was) in Barcelona as their vague multi-purpose preposition, as they do in Madrid). But when we looked at the flight screen, no American Airlines flights were listed and all the departing flights were to somewhere else in Europe.
So he were are, an hour and forty-five minutes from the departure of our international flight, in the wrong place, where no one spoke English and the signs weren't even Spanish. Panic began to set in.
There was a long walkway that claimed to lead to another "concourse" (not "terminal"), but that might still not take us to where we needed to be. No signs mentioned anything about American Airlines, so it seemed risky to try it.
Also, we had strategically spent all of our Euro except a few coins, so if we needed to catch a bus to some other terminal, and the fare was more than a couple Euro, we'd be out of luck.
To make matters worse, there were the only two customer service desks in sight had lines that appeared to be at least half an hour long. We wandered around aimlessly, looking for someone to whom I could ask directions, praying I'd be able to understand them.
After a distressing few minutes, I found an agent took pity on me and told me to take the free shuttle on the front corner when I put on my extra-desperate face and used overly formal Spanish.
The Barcelona Airport was apparently two different airports that not only existed completely independently of each other, and didn't even acknowledge the other's existence, and we had been in the wrong one.
After an excruciatingly long shuttle ride across the "same" airport, we got to our 8-person check-in line with over an hour to spare and took at deep breath. Or at least we did until we noticed that our line hadn't moved in the 10 minutes we'd been standing there.
We finally got to the front of the line 45 minutes before our flight, having not yet cleared security. Apparently the check-in delay was because our flight was oversold and they were trying to find volunteers to take another one. He offered us $1200 and a free hotel to stay another night in Barcelona, but that would have meant coming back to this airport tomorrow so no amount of money on earth wasn't worth it.
Instead, we took the same deal to take a connecting flight through Miami that would get us home four hours later.
We gained seven hours traveling back through time zones, so we had a 31-hour day. The 10-hour flight to Miami seemed to take twice as long as the 7.5 hour flight from New York, but we felt ok when we landed.
A few hours into our layover, our sleep-deprived bodies started to crash. I walked to an airport coffee shop to try to find a way to survive the layover.
The menu was in Spanish, and the barista didn't speak English either. My cell phone worked now, but I was still basically in Spain.
It was a fitting end.
We eventually slept our way through the flight home, where a friend picked us up and took us home.
It's weird to be back. I instinctively spoke broken Spanish to strangers for a day or two upon my return, and I didn't feel totally right from the jetlag for about a week. I still miss the free olives that come with every order. I miss the tapas and the two-dollar wine. I miss the beauty of the Moorish architecture and the palm trees, I miss the dinners where the waiter doesn't pressure you out of your table the moment your plate is empty. I miss the fresh, more flavorful food, I miss my sister and her family and I even miss the orange trees whose fruit lay tantalizingly beyond my grasp.
I miss the feeling of to expanding my horizons to the point of almost fitting in to a different culture.
I'll be back here someday. I don't know when. I never dreamed it would take six years to get to Europe after the last time I'd come. I guess you never really know how life would unfold in the future, so all you can do is enjoy the moment.
But I know, barring some unforeseen misfortune, I'll be back again. Part of me was always here, even before I came.
And the next time, I hope you'll come with me. And if you don't, you should make it a point to get here on your own.
You can also check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them the first time.
Day 5:
We move slowly on our last morning in Madrid, as the four days of non-stop activity are finally taking their toll. We're catching a train to Barcelona in a couple of hours, but I could sleep the rest of the day.
We haven't even left yet and I'm already tired, but I remind myself that I'll be meeting up with my sister and her family soon and looking at Gaudi's masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, and that makes it better.
I run to the supermarket two blocks away to grab a few things for lunch. As I check out, the cashier asks me in Spanish whether I have a grocery store rewards card.
Just as I'm starting to feel like I belong here, it's time to go.
As we arrive in Barcelona, I realize I need to figure out where we're going once we disembark. I map out the subway system and we're ready to go. There's just one thing wrong.
I'm having an unusual amount of difficulty reading the signs. They seem sort-of familiar but still indecipherable. After a few puzzling minutes I realize that the signs aren't in Spanish but it's French-influenced cousin Catalon. This is going to be an adventure.
In Madrid, only three people spoke English in the entire city. We had read in the guidebooks that English was more prevalent in Barcelona. This turned out to be true. In Barcelona, 12 people in the entire city spoke English. Of course, five of them were members of my family, but let's not get overly technical.
We get to the apartment and check in. It occurs to me that amidst the activity of the last week, I didn't double-verify what time my sister is supposed to get here. She had originally told me 10, and then 6, but I didn't reconfirm that before she left for Spain 3 weeks ago.
Regardless, we have at least an hour, so we make the 15-minute walk to the local public market, which is called La Boqueria, but would more accurately be described as Heaven. It holds the largest collection of fruit, meats and seafood the world has ever known. The fruit is colorful and cheap, and you could devour it all on the spot if only people weren't bumping into you all the time. (Weird thing about Europe: no one says "excuse me" when they bump into you or block your way, because it happens so often. I never got used to that. I kept saying the Spanish equivalent of excuse me when I bumped into people, and they looked seemed more offended that I apologized than that I ran into them in the first place.)
But there isn't too much time to get lost in the sea of colorful fruit, so we take a quick walk through and come back.
There's still no sign of my sister, so we pass the time with a 2-Euro bottle of wine from the grocery store, where I'm again asked if I have a customer loyalty card. I'm picking up right where I left off!
On my way back to the apartment I'm also asked for directions. Weirdly, the signs are predominately in Catalon, but everyone seems to speak Spanish.
We pass the time looking out from our balcony with our wine and the evening turns into night. By about 8, we assume that my sister and her family must have been on the 10 o'clock flight after all, so we make the 15-minute trek back to the market.
It was closed. So were most of the shops we passed on the way to it. I guess Barcelona doesn't stay open as late as Madrid. The guidebooks didn't mention that either. If I ever meet Mr. Fodor or Mr. Frommer (assuming they're not actually the same person), we're going to have a serious talk.
We walk La Rambla, Barcelona's long tree-lined pedestrian walkway, and head back, where my sister, brother-in law and their 8 year old daughter have just arrived. A celebratory glass of wine and some conversation later, and we all turn in early.
Day 6
"We have to go," my wife says as the alarm sounds at some ungodly time like 7:30. "The guidebooks say if you don't get to Sagrada Familia early, the line gets crazy."
"I don't know, maybe it would be better to get a good night's sleep and then deal with the line?" I suggest.
"We can sleep when we're dead."
Touche.
So Liz and I walk the 8 blocks to Sagrada Familia while my family sleeps in. The adrenaline takes over the fatigue as we walk. If there's one thing in Spain we wanted to see, this is it.
We turn the corner to find it, and expect to behold majesty. Instead, we see scaffolding. Lots of scaffolding. The cathedral is open, but still unfinished, and the construction on the front overwhelms the church, which also looks surprisingly small.
Even worse, we get there by 9:15, but it's already too late. The line wraps around the entire building, and a guide is telling people not to bother because it's a four-hour wait.
Rick Steves and his cohorts have failed us again.
Between the construction on the city's signature landmark, the early closing times and the ubiquitous Catalon, Barcelona was not off to a good start.
But at least the guide didn't issue her wait-time warning in Catalon, or we would have wasted our whole day.
We take the walk to a couple other Gaudi architectural sites, which both surpass our suddenly lowered expectations. We met my family, go back to La Boqueria, wander the streets and take in the Picasso Museum.
Everyone else went to bed while my sister and I stay up late discussing Life, the Universe and Everything, and what life might look like if all our dreams come true.
It's what we do. And by the end of the day, Barcelona seems like a wonderful place to be.
Days 7-8
Friday and Saturday in Barcelona are a blur. There was so much to see and we did it so quickly, that it all runs together.
We went to the Barcelona Cathedral, which was beautiful and reminded my brother-in-law and I both of Notre Dame. I tried to light a candle for my most fervent prayer request, but the wicks were so short that I extinguished four before I finally got one to light. I like to think that the one new flame I eventually lit burned with the energy of my prayer and the prior four combined. We took the elevator up to the roof and had an amazing view of the city.
We had a tasty dinner of fresh squid and spicy potatoes, we wandered, ate some churros and went to the Museum of Chocolate. We told inside jokes and delighted my eight-year-old niece with stories about the craziness of all her other family members. Like the time her granddad put catfish in our swimming pool.
I stuck my arm in the Mediterranean, and I rammed unsuccessfully into the base of two more orange trees, hoping one would fall. I ate a killer paella, sat on shaded tables in beautiful squares, and got lost more than a couple of times.
Finally, in a last gasp effort, we dashed to Sagrada Familia to take one more shot at getting in. Amazingly, late Saturday afternoon was quiet and we got inside after a 25-minute wait. The interior was striking in its simplicity. From an architect known for his outlandish designs, the inside was surprisingly and beautifully plain.
The building doesn't look that tall from the outside, but on the inside, the undecorated brown columns seem to rise to just short of Heaven. The windows are stained and beautiful, but the rest of the cathedral is overwhelming mostly for its for its sheer simplistic magnitude.
A viewing area was fenced off on the backside of the church, which was blessedly scaffold-free. It was amazing in its detail, as seemingly hundreds of scenes were carved into the surface of the cathedral. The door of the cathedral looked like a yawning mouth swallowing unholy tourists that by the dozens, and spitting them out forever changed by the majesty of the inside.
While my wife took pictures, I slipped away to a little prayer cubby facing a stained-glass window. I prayed silently for the same things that I pray for often, but somehow those familiar requests seemed more powerful here. The words echoed in my head, and then seemed to linger in the air, as though this space contained some kind of supernatural microphone. "Whatever might come between now and the next time I'm here," I asked, "guide me through it and show me where to go."
Sagrada Familia had redeemed itself from the scaffolding. There's a presence in the building that feels like the energy of millions of earnest prayers bundled together, even amidst the noise of the gawking tour groups.
I'm glad we came back.
Day 9
If you a flight leaving from the Barcelona airport anytime this decade, you should probably starting heading that way.
We picked up a taxi two and a half hours before our flight.
After a surprisingly long cab ride we got to the airport. I took a right upon entering, as the cab driver had instructed (thankfully, they don't seem to use "apunte" (or whatever that word was) in Barcelona as their vague multi-purpose preposition, as they do in Madrid). But when we looked at the flight screen, no American Airlines flights were listed and all the departing flights were to somewhere else in Europe.
So he were are, an hour and forty-five minutes from the departure of our international flight, in the wrong place, where no one spoke English and the signs weren't even Spanish. Panic began to set in.
There was a long walkway that claimed to lead to another "concourse" (not "terminal"), but that might still not take us to where we needed to be. No signs mentioned anything about American Airlines, so it seemed risky to try it.
Also, we had strategically spent all of our Euro except a few coins, so if we needed to catch a bus to some other terminal, and the fare was more than a couple Euro, we'd be out of luck.
To make matters worse, there were the only two customer service desks in sight had lines that appeared to be at least half an hour long. We wandered around aimlessly, looking for someone to whom I could ask directions, praying I'd be able to understand them.
After a distressing few minutes, I found an agent took pity on me and told me to take the free shuttle on the front corner when I put on my extra-desperate face and used overly formal Spanish.
The Barcelona Airport was apparently two different airports that not only existed completely independently of each other, and didn't even acknowledge the other's existence, and we had been in the wrong one.
After an excruciatingly long shuttle ride across the "same" airport, we got to our 8-person check-in line with over an hour to spare and took at deep breath. Or at least we did until we noticed that our line hadn't moved in the 10 minutes we'd been standing there.
We finally got to the front of the line 45 minutes before our flight, having not yet cleared security. Apparently the check-in delay was because our flight was oversold and they were trying to find volunteers to take another one. He offered us $1200 and a free hotel to stay another night in Barcelona, but that would have meant coming back to this airport tomorrow so no amount of money on earth wasn't worth it.
Instead, we took the same deal to take a connecting flight through Miami that would get us home four hours later.
We gained seven hours traveling back through time zones, so we had a 31-hour day. The 10-hour flight to Miami seemed to take twice as long as the 7.5 hour flight from New York, but we felt ok when we landed.
A few hours into our layover, our sleep-deprived bodies started to crash. I walked to an airport coffee shop to try to find a way to survive the layover.
The menu was in Spanish, and the barista didn't speak English either. My cell phone worked now, but I was still basically in Spain.
It was a fitting end.
We eventually slept our way through the flight home, where a friend picked us up and took us home.
It's weird to be back. I instinctively spoke broken Spanish to strangers for a day or two upon my return, and I didn't feel totally right from the jetlag for about a week. I still miss the free olives that come with every order. I miss the tapas and the two-dollar wine. I miss the beauty of the Moorish architecture and the palm trees, I miss the dinners where the waiter doesn't pressure you out of your table the moment your plate is empty. I miss the fresh, more flavorful food, I miss my sister and her family and I even miss the orange trees whose fruit lay tantalizingly beyond my grasp.
I miss the feeling of to expanding my horizons to the point of almost fitting in to a different culture.
I'll be back here someday. I don't know when. I never dreamed it would take six years to get to Europe after the last time I'd come. I guess you never really know how life would unfold in the future, so all you can do is enjoy the moment.
But I know, barring some unforeseen misfortune, I'll be back again. Part of me was always here, even before I came.
And the next time, I hope you'll come with me. And if you don't, you should make it a point to get here on your own.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Hangin' with Donald Miller
If you enjoy this blog, you can thank Donald Miller.
He's best known for writing Blue Like Jazz, an autobiographical story of how he found God despite his church's attempt to reduce spirituality into a set of arbitrary rules and political ideology. Having lived that story firsthand, I love that book.
But it wasn't the one that changed my life. It was after reading another of Miller's books, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, that I decided it was time to start writing again and do something more meaningful with my life.
The first post I ever wrote on this site took a quote from it:
"The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person's story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don't want anything, we are living boring stories, and if we want a Roomba vacuum cleaner, we are living stupid stories."
I decided then to live a more meaningful story. And last night, with this blog within a whisper of its 15,000th hit, the story included a chapter where I got to meet Donald Miller.
Miller gave a lecture at Belmont University last night, and it turns out we have a mutual friend (who is also a writer), so I got to speak with Don for a just a few minutes when his lecture was done.
Sometimes people complain that they feel let down when they meet their hero. Donald Miller was the nicest famous person I've ever met.
I thanked him for inspiring me to start the blog. He seemed genuinely touched that he'd helped change the trajectory of my life. He signed the book I've re-read so many times by now, and he waited patiently while I awkwardly misdirected our mutual friend Mark how to take a picture with my new cell phone.
Miller writes with such strong opinions, that I was a little surprised that in person he was so pleasantly humble and unbound to his own ideas. Of course, I don't agree with everything he's ever written (and I've read it all), but the time to discuss that wasn't last night.
Maybe next time it will be.
In the lecture he gave, my favorite analogy he gave was about how no one can prove a sunset is prettier than camel dung. But if you experience them both, it makes that reality undeniable.
It's the same way with God. I'll never prove God is real or argue you into believing what I do. But if those of us who claim to experience a loving power bigger than ourselves live lives that point toward something beautiful, maybe, just maybe, someone else will take a few steps closer to that beauty as well, and be positively changed for having seen it.
That's actually part of why this blog is here.
It hasn't brought me fame or fortune or even a cent of cash. But among the 15,000 times someone has clicked on this site since Don inspired me to launch it, I hope at least a few of you found something beautiful, something that rang unprovably but undeniably true, or maybe just something funny that made a crappy day, week, or season in life seem just a little tolerable.
And if you did, you can thank Donald Miller.
Just like I did.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Blogging Through Spain (Part 2 of 3): Holy Toledo!
You've reached the middle part of my retrospective blog diary of my 8 days in Spain. You can read about days one through three, in Madrid, here:
http://www.andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/09/blogging-through-spain-part-1-of-3.html
(I would post a link to part 3 as well, but I haven't written it yet.)
On day 4, we woke up early to catch a train from Madrid to Toledo. But not early enough.
Day 4:
We're taking a day trip to Toledo. It's a 30-minute ride and it's the city where the expression "Holy Toledo" originated. As we leave our apartment, that's about all I know of our destination, except that Toledo is holy.
We had decided to come here because, prior to its present incarnation as the spiritual center of Catholic Spain, the city was previously ruled by the Islamic Moors and also had a huge Jewish presence. Because of the three cultures that have influenced it, it's filled with buildings that have alternatively been mosques, synagogues and cathedrals.
As we sleepily wobble out our apartment at the break of dawn to catch our train, I'm already regretting the trip. I'm enjoying Madrid so much. I'd rather just sleep in and eat more tapas and olives and leave the religious diversity and cultural encounters for some other day, when I'm not so tired.
The situation isn't helped by the fact that we miss our train. Our apartment guide claimed we were a 20-minute walk from the train station. About 25 minutes into our walk, we begin to freak out. We should have been there by now. We gave ourselves 35 minutes, but it still wasn't enough.
We ran the last stretch of the way, but it still took every minute of the 35 just to get inside the door of the station. It took another 15 to figure out where in the multi-level train station we needed to go once we got there.
By then, our train was long gone.
Thankfully, there was another one a hour and a half later. We had hoped we could use the same ticket for the next one, but, as with every other transaction, I would have to ask in Spanish.
The answer was clearly "no," although I couldn't decipher the specific details. I was then directed to another window ("apunte" from the customer service desk) where I could buy new tickets.
After an extra hour's wait, we boarded for Toledo. When we arrived at Toledo's beautiful Moroccan-style train station, we couldn't even see the city, so we decided to take the $2 bus into downtown.
It would be the best decision we made all week.
The large, overfilled bus whizzed uphill through the winding mountain road, coming inches away from colliding with both passing traffic and hanging cliffs, taking turns to ensure that its passengers on each side were equally terrified. But the alternative would have been to walk up the functional equivalent of the stairway to Heaven.
Or the stairway to Holy Toledo.
Toldeo is at the peak of a mountain, overlooking a river and valley on all sides. The city isn't really a city in the normal meaning of the term. Instead, it's an old medieval fortress that thousands of modern people happen to live and work in. There's a river at the base of the mountain that serves as a natural moat.
The "streets" are winding cobblestone walkways that appear to have been unchanged for 600 years. There isn't enough room for cars and people to coincide, so when a car comes by, pedestrians must cling to the fortress walls and pray for their lives to allow room for the car to pass. Thankfully, the city is reputed to be holy because of the numerous houses of worship it contains, so the pedestrians prayers are generally answered.
Aside from the occasional passing car, it looks like we've traveled back in time to before the Renaissance. It's brutally hot and the winding medieval alleyways ("streets" are too strong of a word to describe them) are impossible to navigate or even map, but it's still impossible not to love Toledo. It's hard to imagine something like this still exists.
I stand in awe. I've never seen anything like this.
"Holy Toledo," is all I can think to say.
We are in a living castle, right down to the moat surrounding us on all sides. I keep looking up at the fortress towers, expecting to see a princess, or a dragon, or perhaps a dragon princess. The noise from the occasional second-floor tv destroys the illusion, but somehow increases the surreal nature of the vibe.
We wander to a couple of former synagogues that look like mosques, but are now cathedrals. The Moorish architecture on the inside and outside of the buildings looks like a scene from Casablanca. I had always wanted to see Morocco, but I can't imagine this isn't the same thing, only prettier and with a language barrier more easily navigated.
Holy Toledo.
The Islamic African Moors controlled this area for 700 years. When they were finally driven out of control in the 1400s, their architects stayed over, because the pre-Renaissance Europeans couldn't build things this pretty. As a result, even the cathedrals and synagogues built inside the old fortress in look like Mosques. Toledo has eight or nine of these, all beautiful, and they all look straight out of Arabian Nights.
It's hard to imagine how a fort/town this small every supported so many houses of worship. But that's why the city is considered so holy.
After visiting the two synagogues, we go inside a monastery. It was beautiful like everything else in Toledo, but what I remember most is that it had an orange tree in the courtyard. The courtyard was blocked off to prevent people like me from stealing oranges. This made me mad because it seemed like a religious institution like this should have been on the honor system. And more importantly, the fence kept me from stealing a fresh Spanish orange that I'd been dreaming about for months.
We grabbed lunch in a break between architectural wonders. Predictably, the waiter/owner/manager who ran the little shop we ducked into spoke very little English. We did just fine, at least until the clueless New Yorkers wandered in just behind us.
When they struggled to order, I tried to fill in the gaps from the table next over. The waiter had recommended three specific dishes, but they wanted more details, despite the fact that neither had a clue how to communicate.
Somewhere along the way, they heard the word "tomate," which they recognized to mean tomato.
"Oh, so is that like spaghetti?" one of them yelled to me, sitting at the next table over.
I struggled to find a way to answer their question in a way that both the waiter and these clueless customers would understand. It didn't help that I hadn't even heard what dish they were talking about, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be spaghetti. This was Spain, after all not Italy.
After they finally clumsily and painfully ordered an appetizer ("chicken") using English entirely, I introduced myself.
I offered to help, telling them (in English) that while I wasn't fluent in Spanish, I knew enough to communicate.
"Oh, we do to," they said. And then they began asking each other if either knew the Spanish word for "chicken."
They didn't.
In fact, the two of them knew a grand total of six words between them, and that's only if you double-counted the three words they both seemed to know. That would have been fine, had we not gotten dragged unwillingly into their constant attempts to grab the waiter's attention ask obscure, inane questions.
We ate a fantastic meal and left, interrupted occasionally by our waiter's requests to translate the bizarre requests of the tourists beside us.
No, the restaurant doesn't have "ranch" salad dressing.
Yes, the papas bravas are "kind of" like French fries, but why did you come here if you want to eat French fries?
No, they don't have hamburgers.
"Carne" means meat. "Calamari" means "calamari."
Yes, I can translate the word for "bathroom" but why did you come here without even knowing that?
And why couldn't you have at least asked me these questions beforehand, instead of forcing the waiter to turn to me when he showed up and couldn't answer your questions in English?
Two hours after we left, we happened to wander by the restaurant on our way to catch a taxi out of town. Our "friends" were just leaving the restaurant. I can only imagine what happened in the meantime, but they looked pleasantly clueless, oblivious to the fact that they'd probably just erased 5 years of the restaurant owner's life. It was an 8 hour flight to get here. Couldn't you have opened a phrasebook for half an hour of that?
And I just knew from the way the carried themselves that if they ever met a tourist in America would was equally unprepared, they would turn up their noses.
No wonder so many people hate Americans.
After lunch, we see an old mosque that had been converted into a church, and an old church that had been converted to a museum. It was somehow even more beautiful than everything else we had seen.
There are other sites to see, most of them religious, but after the six of them we've seen, we've reached the point of diminishing returns. It's time to move on.
We catch a taxi across the bridge to the hotel on another mountain across the river. It overlooks the city, so we sit under a tent on the patio and have drinks (and olives) while we absorb the last bit of this crazy place. I still can't believe it actually exists, why they let cars drive on the medieval roads, or why anyone chooses to live in this old fortress. It's magical, but it can't make for an easy life.
But I'm glad they do.
I wasn't excited to come here, but it's the most astounding thing I've ever seen. Three cultures live in one city. Which is a 15th Century fortress. On the top of mountain surrounded by a moat, and blossoming with orange trees that the monastery won't let me steal.
Holy Toledo.
If you ever get a chance, you have to see this place. It was my favorite day of the whole trip, even with our obnoxious entitled friends from New York who drove both us and our waiter crazy.
We take a taxi to the train station, which itself looks like an Arabian Palace, where Liz takes a final round of pictures, and we board the train to head back to Madrid.
After another wonderful round of showers, we head back out into the Madrilleno night, but we're hot and tired and we've already been to the restaurants that look the best, so we head back a little earlier than the night before.
"What did you think of our day?" I ask.
"It was wonderful," Liz says. "What were your thoughts?"
I pause. Only one phrase comes to mind.
"Holy Toledo."
We reluctantly go to bed again around midnight, sad at the idea of leaving our apartment the next day, but intrigued by what awaits in Barcelona...
To be continued..
http://www.andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/09/blogging-through-spain-part-1-of-3.html
(I would post a link to part 3 as well, but I haven't written it yet.)
On day 4, we woke up early to catch a train from Madrid to Toledo. But not early enough.
Day 4:
We're taking a day trip to Toledo. It's a 30-minute ride and it's the city where the expression "Holy Toledo" originated. As we leave our apartment, that's about all I know of our destination, except that Toledo is holy.
We had decided to come here because, prior to its present incarnation as the spiritual center of Catholic Spain, the city was previously ruled by the Islamic Moors and also had a huge Jewish presence. Because of the three cultures that have influenced it, it's filled with buildings that have alternatively been mosques, synagogues and cathedrals.
As we sleepily wobble out our apartment at the break of dawn to catch our train, I'm already regretting the trip. I'm enjoying Madrid so much. I'd rather just sleep in and eat more tapas and olives and leave the religious diversity and cultural encounters for some other day, when I'm not so tired.
The situation isn't helped by the fact that we miss our train. Our apartment guide claimed we were a 20-minute walk from the train station. About 25 minutes into our walk, we begin to freak out. We should have been there by now. We gave ourselves 35 minutes, but it still wasn't enough.
We ran the last stretch of the way, but it still took every minute of the 35 just to get inside the door of the station. It took another 15 to figure out where in the multi-level train station we needed to go once we got there.
By then, our train was long gone.
Thankfully, there was another one a hour and a half later. We had hoped we could use the same ticket for the next one, but, as with every other transaction, I would have to ask in Spanish.
The answer was clearly "no," although I couldn't decipher the specific details. I was then directed to another window ("apunte" from the customer service desk) where I could buy new tickets.
After an extra hour's wait, we boarded for Toledo. When we arrived at Toledo's beautiful Moroccan-style train station, we couldn't even see the city, so we decided to take the $2 bus into downtown.
It would be the best decision we made all week.
The large, overfilled bus whizzed uphill through the winding mountain road, coming inches away from colliding with both passing traffic and hanging cliffs, taking turns to ensure that its passengers on each side were equally terrified. But the alternative would have been to walk up the functional equivalent of the stairway to Heaven.
Or the stairway to Holy Toledo.
Toldeo is at the peak of a mountain, overlooking a river and valley on all sides. The city isn't really a city in the normal meaning of the term. Instead, it's an old medieval fortress that thousands of modern people happen to live and work in. There's a river at the base of the mountain that serves as a natural moat.
The "streets" are winding cobblestone walkways that appear to have been unchanged for 600 years. There isn't enough room for cars and people to coincide, so when a car comes by, pedestrians must cling to the fortress walls and pray for their lives to allow room for the car to pass. Thankfully, the city is reputed to be holy because of the numerous houses of worship it contains, so the pedestrians prayers are generally answered.
Aside from the occasional passing car, it looks like we've traveled back in time to before the Renaissance. It's brutally hot and the winding medieval alleyways ("streets" are too strong of a word to describe them) are impossible to navigate or even map, but it's still impossible not to love Toledo. It's hard to imagine something like this still exists.
I stand in awe. I've never seen anything like this.
"Holy Toledo," is all I can think to say.
We are in a living castle, right down to the moat surrounding us on all sides. I keep looking up at the fortress towers, expecting to see a princess, or a dragon, or perhaps a dragon princess. The noise from the occasional second-floor tv destroys the illusion, but somehow increases the surreal nature of the vibe.
We wander to a couple of former synagogues that look like mosques, but are now cathedrals. The Moorish architecture on the inside and outside of the buildings looks like a scene from Casablanca. I had always wanted to see Morocco, but I can't imagine this isn't the same thing, only prettier and with a language barrier more easily navigated.
Holy Toledo.
The Islamic African Moors controlled this area for 700 years. When they were finally driven out of control in the 1400s, their architects stayed over, because the pre-Renaissance Europeans couldn't build things this pretty. As a result, even the cathedrals and synagogues built inside the old fortress in look like Mosques. Toledo has eight or nine of these, all beautiful, and they all look straight out of Arabian Nights.
It's hard to imagine how a fort/town this small every supported so many houses of worship. But that's why the city is considered so holy.
After visiting the two synagogues, we go inside a monastery. It was beautiful like everything else in Toledo, but what I remember most is that it had an orange tree in the courtyard. The courtyard was blocked off to prevent people like me from stealing oranges. This made me mad because it seemed like a religious institution like this should have been on the honor system. And more importantly, the fence kept me from stealing a fresh Spanish orange that I'd been dreaming about for months.
We grabbed lunch in a break between architectural wonders. Predictably, the waiter/owner/manager who ran the little shop we ducked into spoke very little English. We did just fine, at least until the clueless New Yorkers wandered in just behind us.
When they struggled to order, I tried to fill in the gaps from the table next over. The waiter had recommended three specific dishes, but they wanted more details, despite the fact that neither had a clue how to communicate.
Somewhere along the way, they heard the word "tomate," which they recognized to mean tomato.
"Oh, so is that like spaghetti?" one of them yelled to me, sitting at the next table over.
I struggled to find a way to answer their question in a way that both the waiter and these clueless customers would understand. It didn't help that I hadn't even heard what dish they were talking about, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be spaghetti. This was Spain, after all not Italy.
After they finally clumsily and painfully ordered an appetizer ("chicken") using English entirely, I introduced myself.
I offered to help, telling them (in English) that while I wasn't fluent in Spanish, I knew enough to communicate.
"Oh, we do to," they said. And then they began asking each other if either knew the Spanish word for "chicken."
They didn't.
In fact, the two of them knew a grand total of six words between them, and that's only if you double-counted the three words they both seemed to know. That would have been fine, had we not gotten dragged unwillingly into their constant attempts to grab the waiter's attention ask obscure, inane questions.
We ate a fantastic meal and left, interrupted occasionally by our waiter's requests to translate the bizarre requests of the tourists beside us.
No, the restaurant doesn't have "ranch" salad dressing.
Yes, the papas bravas are "kind of" like French fries, but why did you come here if you want to eat French fries?
No, they don't have hamburgers.
"Carne" means meat. "Calamari" means "calamari."
Yes, I can translate the word for "bathroom" but why did you come here without even knowing that?
And why couldn't you have at least asked me these questions beforehand, instead of forcing the waiter to turn to me when he showed up and couldn't answer your questions in English?
Two hours after we left, we happened to wander by the restaurant on our way to catch a taxi out of town. Our "friends" were just leaving the restaurant. I can only imagine what happened in the meantime, but they looked pleasantly clueless, oblivious to the fact that they'd probably just erased 5 years of the restaurant owner's life. It was an 8 hour flight to get here. Couldn't you have opened a phrasebook for half an hour of that?
And I just knew from the way the carried themselves that if they ever met a tourist in America would was equally unprepared, they would turn up their noses.
No wonder so many people hate Americans.
After lunch, we see an old mosque that had been converted into a church, and an old church that had been converted to a museum. It was somehow even more beautiful than everything else we had seen.
There are other sites to see, most of them religious, but after the six of them we've seen, we've reached the point of diminishing returns. It's time to move on.
We catch a taxi across the bridge to the hotel on another mountain across the river. It overlooks the city, so we sit under a tent on the patio and have drinks (and olives) while we absorb the last bit of this crazy place. I still can't believe it actually exists, why they let cars drive on the medieval roads, or why anyone chooses to live in this old fortress. It's magical, but it can't make for an easy life.
But I'm glad they do.
I wasn't excited to come here, but it's the most astounding thing I've ever seen. Three cultures live in one city. Which is a 15th Century fortress. On the top of mountain surrounded by a moat, and blossoming with orange trees that the monastery won't let me steal.
Holy Toledo.
If you ever get a chance, you have to see this place. It was my favorite day of the whole trip, even with our obnoxious entitled friends from New York who drove both us and our waiter crazy.
We take a taxi to the train station, which itself looks like an Arabian Palace, where Liz takes a final round of pictures, and we board the train to head back to Madrid.
After another wonderful round of showers, we head back out into the Madrilleno night, but we're hot and tired and we've already been to the restaurants that look the best, so we head back a little earlier than the night before.
"What did you think of our day?" I ask.
"It was wonderful," Liz says. "What were your thoughts?"
I pause. Only one phrase comes to mind.
"Holy Toledo."
We reluctantly go to bed again around midnight, sad at the idea of leaving our apartment the next day, but intrigued by what awaits in Barcelona...
To be continued..
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