Out of town again

I won't be posting anything new this week as I'll be out of town and away from my computer. I'll be posting again next week though.

Germans - You Mean I Have To Pay For That?

Pop quiz time:

Say you’re in a store - you’ve chosen the items you want, you’re ready to leave and you find yourself standing in the cashier line. Based on previous experience, what’s your next line of action?

a. Pay for your items and leave.

Now, you may be tempted to ask, “wait a second… where are the other options?” but, let’s be honest, there aren’t any other options are there? I could have tried something clever like, “b. Jump the line and make a dash” or, “c. Barter” but that would have been ridiculous.

Things have worked in pretty much the same fashion since the Aboriginal Australians started dealing in ochre and seashells in 100,000 BCE. That’s what makes every trip to a German supermarket so frustrating. I really find it hard to believe that this country hasn’t received the memo on how transactions are conducted. The women here are the biggest offenders and though the German male seems to have figured out the basics, even he doesn’t have my full confidence.

Allow me to illustrate: let’s pretend you’re in line behind Gudrun (a proper German name). The cashier will scan all of Gudrun’s items and then tell her the total. She will then let out an audible exclamation of surprise (Oh!), and then calmly reach into her purse for her wallet. It doesn’t matter that Gudrun just watched five people successfully complete transactions ahead of her - the payment part still comes as a complete shock to her. As if that weren’t maddening enough, Gudrun will insist on fishing exact change out of her wallet despite the fact that there is a long queue waiting for her and despite my hopeful wishes for her bumbling nincompoopery to cease.

(Quick digression: you can also count on there only being one, maybe two, registers open during the busiest shopping times. Even if the supermarket employs 100 cashiers, 49 of them will be on vacation and 50 of them will be sick at any given time.)

While I don’t have anything against paying with exact change, the way it’s done here tends to drag out for an inexplicably long time. If the total to be paid is 17.86 Euros, Gudrun will pull out a 10 and a 5 then start the search for the appropriate coins with a inner monologue that goes something like this:

Ok, I have a 2 Euro coin and two 1 Euro coins. I may need a Euro later but if I paid with the two 1s, that’d get rid of some of my change. I guess I’ll pay with the 2 though. Now, I have to find the 86 cents. Should I pay with four 20s, a 5 and a 1; four 20s and three 2s; a 50, a 20, a 10, a 5 and a 1; two 20s, four 10s, two 2s and two 1s or…

I will watch this with my blood pressure steadily increasing, then glance around to see if anyone else share’s my incredulity. No one does. Germans are as immune to this as the English are to dentistry.

My girlfriend tried to bring this custom into Ireland and she was thrown out of the shop.

I felt vindicated. Bless the Irish.

A Palestinian Peace Rally

How do Palestinians show that they're united against violence? By bringing rocket launchers and machine guns to their peace rallies (note the Reuters caption in the pics. Click the pictures to make them bigger.). Feel the love.

Link to original


Link to original

Scotland – Part II

Sunday, April 8th

I woke up and ate another kick ass breakfast before heading out again. This time, I had a new objective: Stirling. I was actually torn between two destinations, the Rosslyn Chapel (made famous in The DaVinci Code) and Stirling. As much as I would like to have seen Rosslyn, I couldn’t justify spending a whole day in one chapel when I could spend the day in a city with an ass-load of history. It’s been said of the city that whoever controls it, controls the whole of Scotland – so great it its strategic value.

Having made my final decision, I made my way over to the Waverly train station to make sure I could go and get back at a reasonable time and, when I found out that I could, I bought a ticket and waited for my train. I browsed the shop in the train station for some suitable reading material and came to the conclusion that there must be a ton of perverts in Scotland. Everywhere you go, there are indescribable amounts of pornographic magazines. I’m not talking about Playboys either, I’m talking about full-penetration anal and stuff like that. Not that I’m judging or anything. I’m just saying…

I ended up settling for a kick-ass guitar mag though. The cover featured Stevie Ray Vaughan and it also had articles on Nuno Bettencourt, Mike Einziger (Incubus) and the dudes from Mastodon. If that weren’t enough, they had an awesome tech section and gear review section. Everything about this particular magazine was aces.

My train finally arrived and I settled in and started reading to kill the time on my one-hour journey. It went by super quickly and I alighted (that’s British English for “got off”) in Stirling fresh and ready to go. I walked down what I assumed was the main drag only to see a bunch of ragamuffin kids and not much else. I went in the other direction, guided by my trusty train station map and decided to make my way to the castle.

I bought my admission ticket and spent some time in the gift shop looking for anything that wasn’t tacky but came away disappointed. I made my way into the castle and, since it was Easter Sunday, there were all kinds of activities gears around rats, err... children, and they were running all over the damn place. It was still a really cool visit though. As in Edinburgh, the castle is built upon a crag and there are good views of the city and it is a highly defensible position.

After the castle I wandered around the town to see what else was going on. I stopped by Argyll’s lodgings (an old villa that’s been more or less preserved as a museum) and then walked around the Church of the Holy Rude and its graveyard. I don’t know if this’ll sound morbid or not, but Scotland has the coolest graveyards ever.

I stumbled about the rest of the city before deciding it was time to make my way over to the Wallace Monument. It’s on a hill a few miles outside of the city and it is visible from nearly any point in Stirling. I read in my guidebook that William Wallace’s sword is on display there and that the view from the top includes seven different battlegrounds which seemed bad-ass enough. I started walking in the general direction before coming to the conclusion that it was fucking far away and I tried to find a bus. Unfortunately, the bus stops in Stirling don’t have any stops or destination information posted on them so you pretty much have to be a local to know which bus goes where. I went into a convenience shop to ask which bus to take and they told me that there wasn’t one that went directly to the monument and since it was Sunday service, I’d probably have to wait ages for the bus anyway. They did, however, point out that the monument was only a 15 minute walk and pointed out the way. I was comforted by this and set off by foot.

15 minutes my mother-fucking ass…

I walked for AGES and the only thing that kept me going was my iron will not to be defeated by this monument. I carried forward and made it to the base of the hill. I climbed up the hill to the admission gate (inexplicably lower than the monument itself) and arrived just in time to watch the last bus take a load of people up to the front steps of the monument. So, I had to walk all the way up the damn mountain now and arrived with little time to spare. Now all I had to do was climb up another 60+ meters (probably 15 floors or so) on a narrow pain in the ass stairway dodging the people that had gone up and were now coming back down.

Let me say this: screw the Wallace Monument. The building looked cool enough but there really wasn’t anything in there except Wallace’s sword (which was ginormous). The views were cool but if you’re ever in Stirling and thinking about making the trip on foot, skip it. I have pictures; I’ll show them to you and save you the trouble. I will say that the views were pretty nice though. The town of Stirling was most prominent but the battlegrounds for the Battle of Stirling Bridge and the Battle of Bannockburn were pointed out on plaques so you could triangulate their approximate locations. I made my way back down and took the requisite pictures of William Wallace’s sword, which was, legitimately, as tall as Danny. You may think that isn’t SO big because Danny’s a runt but actually think about carrying a sword that size for a moment. Wallace was freakin’ strong.

After the monument, I had no choice but to walk back to the city but it did afford me the opportunity to visit Stirling Bridge where William Wallace led the Scots to one of their major victories over the English.

I started to notice a nauseating smell but disregarded it until my curiosity got the best of me. Naturally, I was the source of the smell. You see, it was cold and windy that day, so I wore a sweater with a jacket on top of that. However, all the walking (seriously, I covered a ridiculous amount of territory that day) had caused me to perspire without my really noticing it. The jacket incubated the sweat which created a seriously disturbing odor and it was while I was all funkified that the one cute girl in all of Scotland decided to sit next to me at the train station as I was waiting for the train back to Edinburgh. Awesome.

I rode back to Edinburgh but climbed out for a quick stop in the small town of Linlithgow. It’s where Mary Queen of Scots was born and there is an old palace in ruins there that I thought I’d check out. I walked around there for a little bit and took some cool photos before dragging my exhausted and smelly ass back to the train station.

Upon arriving back in Scotland, I visited the last few things on my list before settling in at the pub close to my hotel again. I ate a tasty burger and had a few beers, chatting with the bartender whom I barely understood before heading back to the hotel and passing out dead.

Monday, April 9th

I woke up, ate and then went to the airport to fly back to Munich.

Scotland - Part I

Here’s the trip report for Scotland. I made this trip solo as Kathi’s sister was dirt-ass broke and unable to go. Also, she had an invite to spend Easter at her grandmother’s house. I was also invited but upon weighing my options: Scotland or Kathi’s sister’s grandma’s house, I opted for Scotland.

Friday, April 6th

I arrived in Edinburgh in the late afternoon and I have to say, landing in a foreign country where they are native speakers of you language is a huge benefit. I went found an ATM so I could withdraw my money directly in Pounds rather than paying huge commissions to switch from Euros. I’m smart like that. After that it was on to the airport bus which deposited me near the Waverly train station. From there I caught another bus to take me to my hotel. I went up to my room and it was as tiny as the room in Portugal. It was cool though as I wasn’t going to be spending a whole bunch of time there anyway.

I left the hotel to scout my neighborhood and grab some food. I chose the Chinese place because it was near my hotel and I was able to bring the food back and just chill. There were only two other customers in the place and they left the joint before even ordering because the service was so crappy. The owner had the nerve to cop some attitude with them about it too. I’m thinking to myself, “look dude, there are only three people in your whole shitty restaurant, there’s no excuse for poor service.” I ordered my sweet and sour pork to go and waited for ages. I was excited when I did get my food and carried it back to the room. My mouth was watering when I opened up the bag but I was terribly disappointed. People make jokes about the meat in Chinese restaurants but this could have honestly been rat or cat or some other bullshit creature. The rice was shit (how do you fuck up rice?) and the sweet and sour sauce tasted like sewage. That’s how my first night in Scotland ended.

Saturday, April 7th

The next day got off to a really good start though. The breakfast at the hotel was no joke: two eggs with bacon, sausage, beans and a shitload of toast. After grubbing, I headed out to see the city. I my first stop was the area near the university. I also made a stop at Greyfriars Kirk and took a photo of “Greyfriars Bobby.”

Greyfriars Bobby was a little dog owned by some dude a long time ago. I don’t know exactly when but it was a long time ago. In any event, the dude died when Bobby was still young and he (Bobby) followed the procession to the dude’s grave and then dutifully sat on his grave for 13-14 years. The city council tried to kick the dog out of the graveyard multiple times but he always found his way back. Soon enough, Bobby became a bit of a celebrity and a military unit even adopted him and took him up into the castle to be the unit’s mascot. Bobby, however, escaped from the castle, ran down the crag and resumed his vigil on his master’s grave. Then Disney made a movie about him and now he’s real popular. Touching story though.

Anyway, I checked out the graveyard which sits on a hill. I later found out that the graveyard used to sit on level ground but the mass graves of people killed by the plague were so full that they had to bring in earth from other locations to cover all the bodies, hence the hill is actually an artificial hill created by the remains of thousands upon thousands of dead plague victims. Neat!

The other attraction at the Greyfriars Kirk was the tomb of Bloody MacKenzie, a dude that tortured and killed a whole bunch of Scots upon orders from England when they two countries weren’t exactly getting along. A bum broke into his grave some time ago and got the piss scared out of him and since then, the MacKenzie poltergeist has caused a host of problems. Google the MacKenzie Poltergeist or check out the Wikipedia site here.

After Greyfriars, I walked around the castle area and then headed back down to the Cow Gate and then to George Hariot’s School. I walked through the Meadows and took a bus back to the castle. There were a couple of churches there that I stopped off at before walking through the Prince’s Street gardens and over to Carlton Hill. From there it was down to Holyrood Palace.

This palace was pretty cool. It’s the place where the Queen of England stays when she’s in Scotland. A tour takes you through all the royal chambers and the salon where official/state events take place (such as the knighting of Sean Connery). You also get to explore Mary Queen of Scots former lodgings and the supper room where her advisor/lover was apprehended by the king, stabbed over 50 times and then left to bleed out on the floor. Ahh, the good old days!

After Holyrood, I walked up the Royal Mile back to the main churches and then the castle itself. The castle was awesome. There was a lot of history there and some pretty kick ass fortifications. There are also a couple of museums including one that has doors from hundreds of years ago. The doors were in a prison and have graffiti from former POWs, including some of the first known American graffiti. They used to take prisoners from the Revolutionary War there and one of them carved a crude picture of his ship flying one of the first representations of the Stars and Stripes into the door.

After the castle, I headed into the new town and just wandered around there aimlessly. I killed a good amount of time there then went back to my hotel to drop off some stuff before heading back into the city. I wanted to take pictures of the city at night but I have to say that as beautiful as Edinburgh is, they need to light it up a bit better because a lot of shit was just dark and dead after the sun went down.

The last real thing I did was take part in a ghost tour. It kinda hokey at times but there was a lot of good and grim information, even if the scares were lacking.

I finished up the tour and headed to a pub to get my drink on but there was nothing really going on (well, I was chatted up by a pair of girls celebrating their friend’s “hen night,” which means bachelorette party. I might have spent some time with them if one of them wasn’t an obnoxious land whale. Why are the fat chicks always the loudest, most abrasive shitheads?). I moved on to a pub nearer to my hotel and chilled there will a Stella to end my first full day in Edinburgh.

This is new...

Have you ever heard of a chick shitting out of her pussy? Well... now you have.

Part VI – Barcelona

Saturday, March 17th

We woke up and took the bus into the city. We were deposited right near the enormous statue of Christopher Columbus and then immediately made our way down La Rambla, which is the city’s main tourist/shopping drag. It was from somewhere on La Rambla where I mailed a defaced version of a rafa marquez postcard to Bryan. I thought he’d appreciate it. We ambled down to Plaza Catalunya and then headed off to see Barcelona’s Cathedral. We were mildly disappointed because the exterior didn’t look that hot to begin with but was undergoing reservations on top of that. We debated whether or not to even pay the entrance fee when I decided, “what the hell, why not?” and we went in. It was a wise, wise decision. The Barcelona Cathedral is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. Everything about the interior was great. We were also able to take an elevator to the roof where we had kick-ass views of the city. We went back down and strolled though the courtyard and monastery attached to the cathedral then made our way to the Parc de la Ciutadella. While strolling through the park, I happened to notice a gaggle of Muslims. The men were all on their prayer mats and their women were fussing about a couple of their shithead kids. It was then that I noticed the most extraordinary thing: one of the women had sent her kid off behind a park bench to SHIT right in the park. There were fucking bathrooms just a few meters away but no, that was too much trouble so she had the little fucking rat pull down his pants and push out a log right in the middle of a crowded city park. I was going to take a picture of this but ultimately decided against it. I wanted to teach the whore mother a lesson, as it surely would have been somewhat embarrassing for her but in the end I pussied out and couldn’t bring myself to do it. Fucking animals.

After the park and shitting episode, we went to check out some of Gaudi’s work. He was a lunatic architect that primarily did his work in Barcelona. A lot of people shit themselves over his architecture but I have to admit I thought it was incredibly ugly and inappropriate. His stuff stands out a mile away. You’ll have a row of buildings and then, inexplicably, one that looks like some Down’s kid with crayons drew the blueprints for which were then actually built. Ok, it’s not THAT bad and there’s certainly something to be said for his very, very unique style but, as I said earlier, I still thought it was a little too kooky and inappropriate. We topped that off with his masterwork, The Sagrada Familia church (google it for pictures and you’ll see what I mean of his stuff).

After some more sight-seeing adventures, we made our way back to La Rambla for paella and sangria. It was a great meal and a really cool atmosphere. Afterward, we were still a little restless so we went to a bar that we had taken note of earlier. We had some more drinks, including some shots of Absinthe, in this really cool bar near the Santa Maria called the “Tangara” or something. We were feeling pretty good after this and we were also feeling pretty lost so we consulted a bus map to find the route we needed to get back to our hotel. While waiting at the Plaza de Catalunya for our bus, we made the acquaintance of a seemingly nice young woman who told us that she was going in the same direction as us. Her intention was to buy drugs. She let us in on a little secret: the Zona Franca area, where we were staying, was a drug hot spot in Barcelona because it’s kind of isolated and, therefore, not often patrolled by policemen. After hearing this, we looked around the bus (this was well into the night) and noticed that, sure enough, most of the people on board looked like loser-ass junkies. For being a crackhead though, she was a very nice person and actually lent us the correct bus fare since we had to pay with exact change – something we didn’t have. All the junkies got out a few stops before our hotel though, which was a small relief and we made it back without further incident. We did notice that our room had been made up though. That was nice considering the fucking “Do Not Disturb” sign had been hanging on the door all day long.

Sunday, March 18th

We were flying out the next morning so this was the last full day of the trip.

I got it started off with a bang as I took the biggest shit known to human kind. I was on the toilet for a solid 20 minutes and there were only a few seconds in that entire time where I wasn’t voiding something I had previously eaten. It sounds disgusting, but you’d have been impressed. Trust me.

We went back into the city and ate a delicious breakfast at Subway. We still didn’t have change so I had to pay with a fifty but the lady couldn’t change it. She let us eat and then pay at the end which was a small but very cool gesture.

We went back to see a few more of Gaudi’s buildings but they were still just wacky buildings. We took a long, long hike to Park Guell – another Gaudi creation – and were left with the same feeling: yeah it’s original and unique but it’s still a letdown. After that I decided to hit up a palace of another sort: the Camp Nou where FC Barcelona plays. It was gigantic but I kind liked the imposing front of the Bernabeu better, to tell the truth. After that, there was a monastery that Kathi’s sister wanted to visit so we hiked for ages and ages to get there only to notice that it was closed and not altogether thrilling in the first place. We dragged ourselves to the Plaza de Espana and were rewarded with the sights there. We walked around Montjuic and visited the Olympic sights. We kicked around Montjuic for a while and then headed back to La Rambla for some real food.

We stopped at a Chinese place for paella (sounds weird, but it’s true) and we scored a smoking deal outside on the Rambla itself after being denied paella inside. We only paid 12 Euros or so but we were treated to a great salad, paella, sangria and then ice cream. Having seen all that we really wanted to see, we got back on the bus to the hotel with another gang of junkies in tow and headed for a decent night’s rest.

There was one more adventure left though. Kathi’s sister had been driving the whole time since I can’t drive standard. Since we made it back to the hotel relatively early, she decided to give me an impromptu driving lesson. You know, I had always thought that I could at least drive a stick to the hospital in an emergency or something but I was fucking wrong. I could barely start the thing and neither going forward nor going backward was possible in my incapable hands. For once, I was the one getting shit for shitty driving so a little bit of cosmic justice was served.

Stupid fucking karma.

Part V – Madrid

Thursday, March 15th

We woke up to the sound of construction. Unlike our hotel “in” Seville, our hotel in Madrid was right in the middle of the city. We stumbled down to breakfast and waited ages before getting a table and settling in to our little breakfast.

After breakfast we headed into the heart of the city and checked out the opera house, the palace, cathedral and some other stuff in the area before heading off to Retiro, the city’s major park. As we were walking out of the subway, I was offered drugs for the first time in Spain. This guy was nice though, unlike the dudes in Lisbon which were all kinds of shady. Now don’t get me wrong, having anyone offer you drugs is pretty high on the shady scale but when I told this dude, “no thanks,” he backed off and was cool about it. On top of that, we started walking in the wrong direction and kindly put us on the right track. I thought that was nice of him. After leaving the park we decided to go to the Reina Sofia art museum. I have to say, seeing the Dali and Gris paintings up close was amazing. The highlight of the museum was Picasso’s “Guernica” though. And I’ll tell you what: it’s completely different seeing these pieces up close. A lot of though went into the paintings, evidenced by the multiple, multiple planning sketches that Picasso made. And another thing: you might think Picasso painted some whack shit and was a hack but the dude could have painted ANYTHING he wanted. If you see some of his earlier stuff, you see that he paints realism with the best of them. A phenomenal talent, really. That was the good stuff though. There was also some crapola. They had some video work by some avant garde women artists that, while the message was kind of cool, the execution was lacking. It was made more agreeable by the appearance of tits though. Tits always save the day.

We stomped around the city some more before I made the executive decision to see the Santiago Bernabeu – the home of Real Madrid. After a couple of brief photographs, we went to Plaza del Sol and passed up a chance to eat at Restaurante Gallego to eat at the KFC. We made a note to come back to the Gallego restaurant the next day but didn’t end up having time to actually carry out the plan so I blew my chance.

After grubbing, we went back to the palace to get pictures of it and the cathedral at night. We went back to the hotel to drop off some stuff and then headed out in Chueca for beers and tapas. We were dragged into a bar by a woman promising a “buy one, get one free” deal but the place was D-E-A-D so we had our beer (the free one never materialized) and then left for a more lively location. On the way back to the hotel, we noticed a bar with tons of people spilling out into the square so I suggested to Kathi’s sister that we go see what that was all about. We headed back there and noticed that it was a sausage party. But much more than that. There were only men that prefer the company of other men, if you catch my drift, so I quickly shot down my own idea and headed off to a fake Irish pub to have my beers. Kathi’s sister wasn’t ass sharp on the idea so we didn’t stay very long. Mm hmm.

Friday, March 16th

We woke up and were served our breakfast ricky-tick compared to the previous day’s wait. After that we checked our some more sights, including the city’s bullfighting ring before heading to a small Egyptian palace. It only seemed mildly intriguing, but we stayed there for some time. Apparently the Egyptians broke and old temple down brick by brick and sent it to Spain as a gift for… something. So, right in the middle of Madrid, there’s a fully legit Egyptian temple which is surprising and surprisingly cool.

Afterwards, we walked for ages to get to the Campo del Moro, essentially the palace’s garden, and ended up getting lost and wasting a ton of time because it was laid out by a fucking retard. I was upset because I wanted to have some time to visit the Museo del Prado and I got stuck in the fucking park. I did eventually make it to the museum though and, being thoroughly unimpressed with the previous museum, Kathi’s sister decided to skip it. I went in and bought the tour guides and whole nine yards. Without the gf, I was able to see the things that interested me and take my time where I wanted to. Again, it was great. We met back up at a pre-determined time and only had time for a quick bite to eat at Burger King (we ate well in Madrid) before we jumped in the car to head off. We had to settle our parking bill though and it was a nice 51 Euros. Jumpin’ Jiminy!

We left the city and drove for ages to find the damn freeway and when we finally DID find the freeway, there was an accident and a traffic jam for miles. We did eventually make it to Barcelona but finding our hotel was an adventure. It (surprise!) was poorly marked and we literally drove by it at least two times before someone pointed it out to us and we pulled in. We checked in and the dude at the desk was rude but the actual room was kick ass. The only thing that blew was the lack of privacy in the bathroom. The door was frosted glass and the shower had no door or separation at all. It was ultimately ok because I was just there with my girlfriend but if I was there with my buddies, it would have been more than a little uncomfortable. This, however, was made up by the fact that there were FREE PORN CHANNELS! At least that’s what I though. Kathi’s sister made me turn them off though in case there weren’t actually free. I was reminded a lot of our hotel in Mannheim during the World Cup…

Part IV – Seville

Tuesday, March 13th

We left Lisbon in the morning and drove through the rest of crappy Portugal. Actually, the scenery was nice but Lisbon left a bitter taste in my mouth as did the fucking toll system they had for their freeways. I have not idea what we paid total, but I remember the short drive from Lisbon to the Spanish border was 18 Euros. It felt good to be back in Spain though.

We drove for a while until we got to the town of Sanlucar, just outside of Seville. It was kind of shitty being so far away from the action but Kathi’s sister and her nose for budget places sniffed this place out. It wasn’t all bad though as it was a four-star hotel. The only reason it was so cheap was because it was so far away from every thing.

We made it into town in the afternoon with plenty of time left to go exploring so we unloaded our stuff and went into Seville. Seville was awesome. We didn’t do any real in-depth stuff though, we just strolled about looking at things and taking mental notes of places we’d like to come back to and spend some real time in. I did decide something in Seville though: Germans are one of the certainties in life. What I mean is, you’ve all heard the expression, “the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes.” Well, you can add, “and you will run into fuckstain Germans wherever you are on vacation.” I likened the Germans to the world’s herpes and Kathi’s sister wasn’t amused. They talk shit about how little Americans see of the world and slap themselves on the back because they travel so much, etc. but that’s easy as shit when YOU NEVER FUCKING WORK! Lazy god damn Europeans.

Wednesday, March 14th

We drove back into the city and wanted to check out the Real Alcazar but there were so many people in line that we decided to put that off. We stumbled around looking at the sights and got lost trying to find a wrought iron cross that was supposed to be all bitchin’ and stuff. We finally located near (what else?) a group of Germans and the reason we couldn’t find it was because it was a rinky-dink little thing. It looked like something one of your semi-retarded relatives would give to you after they made it in shop class. We went back to the Alcazar which didn’t have long queues anymore and took a look around. I tell you… being royalty back in the day must’ve been the bees knees. We killed a whole bunch of time in the Alcazar before heading to the Cathedral which was absolutely enormous. You probably could have played a football game inside this thing and I’m not even remotely joking.

Afterwards we visited a couple of squares that we’d missed the previous day and then headed back to a little place we stopped at the day before for churros. This time we wanted something to really eat so we settled in for our first taste of paella, which was, like almost everything else we ate in Spain, delicious. To top it off, our table was right near the waitress station and one of the girls there had an ass sculpted by Michelangelo. It was one of the rare moments where an atheist is forced to consider, however briefly, the fact that perhaps there is a god.

After eating and putzing around for a bit longer, we hit the road again and headed for Madrid. Again, we were plagued by shitty street marking. At one point, Kathi’s sister drove us up the wrong way of a one-way street. This time however, I kept silent because it was absolutely unavoidable because the craptacular street markings. I loved Spain but they really, really, need to work on that.

We eventually made it to our hotel and the dude that checked us in spoke every language known to man. When we got there, he was speaking in French to some stupid frogs that were also checking in. He then hollered something at the help in Spanish and then to me in English. When he say Kathi’s sister’s German I.D., he started speaking to us in German. After we got settled in, we had to move our illegally parked car to a real garage and on the way back to the hotel, we saw two people fucking up against the wall in the alley. They probably thought they were being all sly and whatnot but really, they weren’t. I considered taking a picture but decided against it. I kinda wish I had though…

It was quite an introduction to the city though.

Imus

Ok, I'm back from my Easter vacation in Scotland. I'll finish up my reports from Spain and then do one up for Scotland (I'll put up picture too...) but first, a quick note from the Don Imus uproar.

Honestly, I was away when this whole thing went down and now I'm catching up via ESPN reports and reports from other news sources. There was, however, one thing that caught my eye, and I'll get to that in a second.

First of all, I don't give a shit about Don Imus. They can fire his ass or keep him in a job and neither would matter one lick to me. I should also say that what he said was impossibly stupid. How you can work in that industry and think it's ok to call any black people "nappy headed" anythings is beyond me.

Still... perhaps a person's history should be explored before they're condemned and their life is effectively ruined.

I mean, Kramer knew what he was doing and there's no excuse for that. It seems to me, though, that Imus was just trying to be funny (something he rarely succeeds at, by the way) and majorly fucked up. So, the usual suspects are calling for his firing, saying his apologies aren't enough, etc.

Now to the thing that bothered me. It comes from this ESPN report, about halfway down the article. Al Sharpton is quoted as saying:

"This is not about whether you're a good man. What you said was racist."

Of course it's not about what you're really like at your core - you said bad wods. Does that not speak volumes about what Sharpton's all about? I'm not a religious person, as you all know too well, but isn't there a maxim that says "hate the sin, love the sinner" or something like that? Wouldn't a reverend know something like this? A person can be redeemed, right? Well apparently not. Even if you're a good person (no wait, this doesn't even figure into the equation), you're an untouchable leper if you utter the wrong words - regardless of your motivation. Treat the symptom, not the disease. Actually, kill the carrier whether or not they actually have the disease. That's the ticket.

Typical of the far left, methinks. When it comes to policy, only motivation matters and never the actual results. However, when it comes to words, the letter matters more than the spirit/motivation.

The PC gods need another sacrifice.

At least it's Don Imus and not someone important.

Part III – Pontevedra and Lisbon

Sunday, March 11th

We woke up in Santiago and had a spectacularly shitty breakfast of cheap store bought donuts and other crap that we picked up at the super market before my skull covering was ruined. Then we headed out to Pontevedra.

The drive was quick and uneventful. We then found a garage to park in and Kathi’s sister STILL couldn’t put the fucking automobile between the lines. I haven’t seen a display of ineptness this mind-boggling since Jorge Larrionda last June. Once again I expressed my dissatisfaction.

We got out of the parking lot and set off to explore the city. My first move was to pick up some stamps and acquire a map so we could find our way around. We saw the cathedral and a few other sites but I have to say that, as a whole, Pontevedra was nice but underwhelming. We hit a bunch of the major attractions before heading off to lunch at the Praza 5 Calles. I ordered another Galician pork dish called Zorza which was a bit more spicy than the delicious Raxo that Kathi’s sister ordered. That stuff is awesome. But anyhow, our lunch was made a little more stressful by the family that was sitting next to us outside and their god damn shitty, unruly kids. They were running around like little savages so imagine my delight when one of them fucking biffed it hard. Eat shit little girl!

There was one thing that was really cool about Pontevedra though. Everyone knows that Columbus set sail for India but found the New World instead and most people even know that his flagship was called the Santa Maria. What most people don’t know is that the Santa Maria was built in Pontevedra and - more than that - since she was a Galician ship, she was actually called Santa Maria “La Gallega.” The ship that discovered the Americas and “changed the destiny of the world” (from a monument to Columbus…). Not too shabby, eh?

After we finished exploring Pontevedra (it was tiny so we only spent the morning and afternoon there), we got back into the car and drove to Lisbon. There is something else that warrants mentioning. Kathi’s sister was REPEATEDLY outsmarted by the power windows button in the car. She would push the “window up” button when she wanted to put the window down. When that didn’t work, she didn’t try the button in the other direction. That, you see, would have been logical and much too out of character. What she did instead was push the button (in the wrong direction) harder and then harder still, even though results were lacking. If it were an isolated incident, then I could chalk it up to an innocent mistake. This was the fourth or fifth time though and I regret to say it wasn’t the last time the window button threw her for a loop. Once again I voiced my concerns. Later, we had to gas up for the first time and she couldn’t open the gas cap. And the last thing I’ll say is that we went off track once because she can’t understand directions. There was a fork in the motorway coming up but I had foreseen it and told her the direction we needed to go. I thought that was a pretty clear indicator but as the fork drew nearer she asked which way we needed to go. I pointed to the right but she drove to the left. I asked why she went in the wrong direction an she replied that I hadn’t given her a clear enough signal. I MOTHERFUCKING POINTED, IT’S NOT SEMAPHORE OR SOME COMPLICATED ASS SIGN LANGUAGE! FUCK!!!!!

But I digress. There was something else to irritate me.

I wrote before about the maddening lack of street signs in Spain. Portugal was even worse. Way f’n worse. We got into Lisbon as the sun was setting and, though our hotel was in the center of the city and should have been reasonable easy to find, we spent a very maddening hour and a half in the vicinity of the hotel without finding it. Getting stuck in Lisbon traffic is a fate worse than hell. At one point we missed our turn because the street wasn’t marked and couldn’t even turn around for well over a couple of miles. That’s not even the worst of it: we drove over the Golden Gate bridge (at least it looked like the Golden Gate bridge) and ended up on a highway we couldn’t get off of, ended up on the other side of Lisbon (remember, we were within a mile or so of our hotel when we went astray), were finally able to turn around and go in the direction but we had to go back over the Golden Gate bridge into the city, where it becomes a toll-bridge. When we finally found the hotel, the place was a dumpy shithole. But our bed had dolphin themed sheets. As far as Kathi’s sister was concerened, it was five-star quality.

Monday, March 12th

We woke up and headed down to breakfast which was surprisingly good. Afterward, I got a map from the old dude at the reception desk as well as a crash course in Portuguese.

We bought a pass for the public transportation and headed out to see Lisbon. We were put in the right direction by a kind woman at the bus stop and that was one of the last positive things that happened in Lisbon. Although we were on the right bus, it took AGES to get to the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos and we were next to some fucking stink bag French tourists. And I mean that literally, not just because they were shithead Frenchies but because they really smelled like a bag of smashed assholes. Way to enforce stereotypes there, bungholes.

When we got to our destination, it was actually pretty cool, if only because I’d never seen a church that was a good one-and-a-half to two football fields long. This thing was insane. From there we saw the monument to Portugal’s colonial days and then the Tower of Belem, which was also pretty cool though it was closed and we couldn’t go inside. It was at this Tower that I was offered a genuine Armani watch at a discount price. At least I was assured that it was genuine when I raised my doubts by laughing in the guy’s face. I still decided to pass though.

We took a train back to the center of the city and walked up to the main square. This is the spot where I received the first of my five offers for drugs. No more than 50 feet away from a police officer, no less. Lisbon was shady. And there wasn’t much to see there that I was interested in. I mean, in Spain you could still see traces of the empire's glory. In Lisbon? Not so much. To be frank, I pretty much hated it. I would curse Portugal often enough that it started to irritate Kathi’s sister so I made her a deal: when I started to complain about hating Lisbon, she was to remind me that the US beat Portugal in the 2002 World Cup and that made me feel better about the whole situation.

If Lisbon had a redeeming feature, was the castle. I have to admit that it was pretty kick-ass and we heard a street performer type guitar player that was so awesome I bought his cd. Still, the city as a whole was still a huge disappointment. To make things worse, I developed a blister on my right foot that I couldn’t do anything about since I didn’t have anything sharp enough to pop it with and I didn’t want to tear off all the skin as I knew there was still plenty of walking to be done on the trip.

It got dark and we headed back to a square near our hotel where I grabbed something to eat and got to watch the first half of that night’s Benfica game. That night was also peaceful between Kathi’s sister and I. Since she didn’t have to drive, we didn’t have a reason to argue. Word.