On Saturday, December 15th, 2007, I was bitten by a radioactive spider, which granted me super-powers. Well, that's if "was bitten by" is a figure of speech that means "received", "a radioactive spider" is construed as "an email", and "super-powers" is interpreted as "admission to Stanford University.” I can't allow utmost linguistic precision to undermine a potentially illuminating metaphor, so bear with me.
The point is, I really did receive an important blessing that evening, even if it didn't take the form of my most enduring wish of waking up one day as a super-hero. I was given the opportunity to undertake a journey to the western sea to live with other passionate, dedicated and intelligent people, to receive lessons from legends and masters of their crafts, and to find out what it was that I really wanted to do with all of the gifts that I had been given in life. It is only now that I realize that my wish was granted in the first place – all of those things that I just mentioned were a part of Bruce Wayne’s development into Batman and Scott Summers, Jean Grey, and Hank McCoy transition from awkward teenagers to full-fledged X-Men. Stanford had given me the chance to inhabit the narrative that I had treasured from the time that I had first read X-Men #1 as a kid.
Through all of this, I was continuously provided with occasions to find out what I wanted to prioritize in my life. There was a tantalizing spread of possibilities, from rising to positions of power and prestige, to accruing great wealth, or maybe heading out for one globetrotting adventurer after another. Even as I considered these options, or some combination of all of them, there was one thought that remained unobtrusively planted on the edge of conscious thought. It hummed softly but insistently during each phase of the process of deciding the direction of my life. It was a line from Amazing Fantasy #15 from August of 1962, often incorrectly attributed to Ben Parker: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This text-box exhortation hung over a devastated Peter Parker when he realized that his own unwillingness to act selflessly had resulted indirectly in the death of his beloved Uncle Ben. He would carry the accompanying load of guilt with him for the rest of his life. It would be the spur that would push him to his limits in a never-ending pursuit of a just world, a world where the good guys won and the bad guys lost and the happy music during the credits didn’t ring phony.
Peter Parker’s burden of responsibility is ours too, if we are courageous enough to accept it. For us, it is not guilt that calls us to this challenge, but rather an empowering sense of possibility. We have been given a great boon of smarts, talent, and support, both through the luck of genetics, location, and time as well as through our own and our family’s hard work. Stanford presents us with a choice: will we choose to use our great power to bring about positive change for this world, our world? Will we have the guts and the grit to confront seemingly insurmountable foes like climate change, xenophobia, and war? Will we be able to balance the clear success permitted by the pursuit of individual goals with the perhaps less immediately gratifying task of creating a fair and compassionate society, inch by inch? I won’t pretend to know the answer for every person, or even for myself, but I will say this: when the credits roll, we don’t get a second chance.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Suspect is Outstanding
(Note - This is one of the entries that I submitted as a portion of my application to be a columnist with the Stanford Daily during Autumn Quarter 2010.)
Crime is an exciting subject - to read about, to watch in movies, to perpetrate in video games. From Capone to Gordon Gekko, the Joker to Bernie Madoff, we as a society make a point of paradoxically reviling the perpetrators of horrible crimes while sometimes finding ourselves admiring the sheer gall of their “achievements”.
A serial manifestation of this mixed disgust and fascination is the “Police Blotter”, a compilation published in the Stanford Daily and based upon reports provided by the Stanford Department for Public Safety. This section details three weeks’ worth of assorted rule-breaking, misdemeanors, and felonies. While the purpose of this publication is primarily to keep the Stanford populace informed about criminal activity on campus, I often find myself reading it not out of any desire to protect myself but rather out of need for some shallow voyeuristic intrigue and some useless statistics. It’s easier than reading an IR paper and a better stall tactic than refreshing my Webmail account (again). There’s something about the contrast between the extremely detailed reporting of the time, location, and nature of the dirty deeds in question with the extremely vague descriptions of the (anonymous) persons involved. No motivations, no complications, no judgments. Just the facts.
Just to spice things up, the writer of the August 12th edition of this feature goes so far as to (inadvertently) praise a wrongdoer: “At 2 a.m., a suspect used a fire extinguisher in the hallway of Branner Hall. The suspect fled on foot and is outstanding.” Even though this complement is the result of a grammatical error rather than honest appreciation of fire-extinguisher use, it’s nice to finally hear some passionate character assessment in our otherwise clinically dry crime pages.
Crime is an exciting subject - to read about, to watch in movies, to perpetrate in video games. From Capone to Gordon Gekko, the Joker to Bernie Madoff, we as a society make a point of paradoxically reviling the perpetrators of horrible crimes while sometimes finding ourselves admiring the sheer gall of their “achievements”.
A serial manifestation of this mixed disgust and fascination is the “Police Blotter”, a compilation published in the Stanford Daily and based upon reports provided by the Stanford Department for Public Safety. This section details three weeks’ worth of assorted rule-breaking, misdemeanors, and felonies. While the purpose of this publication is primarily to keep the Stanford populace informed about criminal activity on campus, I often find myself reading it not out of any desire to protect myself but rather out of need for some shallow voyeuristic intrigue and some useless statistics. It’s easier than reading an IR paper and a better stall tactic than refreshing my Webmail account (again). There’s something about the contrast between the extremely detailed reporting of the time, location, and nature of the dirty deeds in question with the extremely vague descriptions of the (anonymous) persons involved. No motivations, no complications, no judgments. Just the facts.
Just to spice things up, the writer of the August 12th edition of this feature goes so far as to (inadvertently) praise a wrongdoer: “At 2 a.m., a suspect used a fire extinguisher in the hallway of Branner Hall. The suspect fled on foot and is outstanding.” Even though this complement is the result of a grammatical error rather than honest appreciation of fire-extinguisher use, it’s nice to finally hear some passionate character assessment in our otherwise clinically dry crime pages.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
I haven't forgotten...
...to post about Galicia, Barcelona, and the last couple of weeks in Spain. Oh yes, and Rome. Rome's pretty cool. Posts upcoming involving the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and cantaloupe gelato.
Friday, May 28, 2010
1001 Minus 997 Nights - Stave the Third
Home.
That´s the first thought that hit me as I opened my eyes. We were finally heading back to Madrid after a long weekend in Tangiers, and what´s more, I´d get there in time for my weekly soccer game at 10:30. Our flight was to leave at 4:25 that day, so we had plenty of time to eat a nice, relaxed breakfast, pack up our things, and go explore one last landmark.
THE CAVES OF HERCULES!!! Supposedly the last resting place of Hercules after his labours, the juxtaposition of the caves' exterior silhouette against the foaming Mediterranean is truly an awesome sight. The roar of the cresting waves drowned out any other thoughts but those of humble appreciation for such incredible natural beauty.
After finishing up at the caves, we took a leisurely taxi ride to Ibn Battouta International Airport. We got there at roughly 2:30 and calmly went up to the ticket window. Check-in went smoothly. "You were wrong old man," I chuckled to myself, a satisfied smile forming on my lips. The day before we had been in a Moroccan town called Chefchaouen, and our guide, Mohammed, had mentioned something about a second ash cloud emerging over Europe, blocking out the sky and grounding hundreds more flights. "That happened two weeks ago, not this week," we had told him, secretly having a laugh at his expense on the bus ride home. Everyone knew that (unpronounceable and unspellable Icelandic volcano)´s dominion over Europe had finally been broken, perhaps by some Icelandic dwarf finally dropping a Ring Pop into (unpronounceable and unspellable Icelandic volcano)´s fiery core. We were in the clear.
Several minutes later we queued up at security, reaching the checkpoint in no time at all. I handed the burly, no-nonsense man guard my passport and my boarding pass. He looked at them, and said four words that instantly turned everything upside down: "No plane. Flight cancelled." I thought that perhaps there had been some failure of communication, seeing as how English was not his first language. I turned pleadingly to the other guard and asked him in Spanish if what I had heard was true. He nodded nonchalantly, and turned to other business. The volcano had reared its ugly head once again. Perhaps doubting the prophecies of a man named Mohammed was not the soundest course of action. Well, at least when it came to air travel.
The next 30 hours were a blur, and from what I can now remember, the following occurred on Monday, May 10th, and Tuesday, May 11th:
3:30PM - Frantic scramble to attempt to board other flights at the airport that are destined for Malaga, Barcelona, Sevilla - anywhere on the Iberian peninsula. Just get us out of Morocco!
4:00PM - Using a janky airport internet network, we vainly try to Skype as many airlines as possible, hoping to board one of their other planes.
4:30PM - Well, there goes that. All flights going to Spain are grounded.
5:00PM - Somebody suggests that we employ the naval option. With 80 minutes until the ferry leaves from the port of Tangiers, we hightail it back to the Hotel Continental. The front desk lets us use the internet to check bus timetables for when we get to Spain. There is a bus from Algeciras, the other end of the ferry journey, that leaves at 9:00PM. We are overjoyed momentarily, but then realize that Morocco is one time zone behind Spain.
6:00PM - We have purchased our ferry tickets and are waiting in line at customs. The sunlight is oppressively bright through the plate glass windows. Time is ticking.
6:30PM - The ferry has still yet to leave, as it wants to allow more trucks to enter its hold, thereby maximizing profits for the journey. The wait is agonizing because we know that regardless, a certain bus will be leaving from Algeciras in one and one half hours.
6:45PM - We feel the engines rumble to life as the ferry finally heads out of Tangiers port. I have never been so happy to see a city receding into the distant horizon.
7:00PM - Aboard the ferry there is a duty free store selling a 5 euro bottle of vodka. After the long, frustrating day, that and a series of great games of hearts are just what the doctor ordered. Laughter abounds as the queen of hearts does her rounds.
8:55PM - As the ferry is docking, we overhear four other passengers next to us saying how they too are attempting to catch a bus at 9:00PM. My fellow travel-mates whisper to me, "When the door opens, RUN to the bus station. We have to get those seats!" I don't need any encouragement. I burst out of the boat and shoot down the gangway. I'm running so fast that I almost forget to stop at customs...smooth, Clay. Once I assure the Spanish border guards that I'm not an illegal immigrant, I resume my dead sprint. I emerge out of the building and feel Spanish pavement under my poorly laced gym shoes. My chest is heaving under the dusky sky. I hop over a concrete barrier and feel the weight in my backpack jostling around in mid-air. The dull moan of container ships reaching port echoes across the harbor. I land on the other side, willing my heart to keep going, praying that I can get there in time. 15 meters behind me, I hear footfalls. I kick it into second gear as I speed across a wide boulevard, just two blocks from my destination. All of the halogen lights bleed into my peripheral vision and I imagine that I'm on the Millenium Falcon, beating my old 12 parsec record for the Kessel Run. For a second, I'm free.
8:58PM - The bus is sold out.
9:05PM - We check into a small hostel, having received directions earlier to an internet cafe from a pair of prostitutes on a corner. Algeciras is dingy and drab, but the beds in the room are clean and inviting after the long day.
11:00PM - We all fall asleep to "Fake Plastic Trees". And it wears him out...
9:05AM - I wave out the side window as our bus departs from Algeciras. Homeward bound.
5:00PM - The sun absolutely lights up the gorgeous Spanish countryside. Red clay soil rises up in rolling hills that stretch to the horizon, where softly whirring windmills taunt the Man of the La Mancha.
8:30PM - By now, the sun has started its descent. I have arrived at Puerta del Sol, the very center of Madrid. I stand over the 0 km marker for all of Spain, close my eyes, and smile. I'm home.
That´s the first thought that hit me as I opened my eyes. We were finally heading back to Madrid after a long weekend in Tangiers, and what´s more, I´d get there in time for my weekly soccer game at 10:30. Our flight was to leave at 4:25 that day, so we had plenty of time to eat a nice, relaxed breakfast, pack up our things, and go explore one last landmark.
THE CAVES OF HERCULES!!! Supposedly the last resting place of Hercules after his labours, the juxtaposition of the caves' exterior silhouette against the foaming Mediterranean is truly an awesome sight. The roar of the cresting waves drowned out any other thoughts but those of humble appreciation for such incredible natural beauty.After finishing up at the caves, we took a leisurely taxi ride to Ibn Battouta International Airport. We got there at roughly 2:30 and calmly went up to the ticket window. Check-in went smoothly. "You were wrong old man," I chuckled to myself, a satisfied smile forming on my lips. The day before we had been in a Moroccan town called Chefchaouen, and our guide, Mohammed, had mentioned something about a second ash cloud emerging over Europe, blocking out the sky and grounding hundreds more flights. "That happened two weeks ago, not this week," we had told him, secretly having a laugh at his expense on the bus ride home. Everyone knew that (unpronounceable and unspellable Icelandic volcano)´s dominion over Europe had finally been broken, perhaps by some Icelandic dwarf finally dropping a Ring Pop into (unpronounceable and unspellable Icelandic volcano)´s fiery core. We were in the clear.
Several minutes later we queued up at security, reaching the checkpoint in no time at all. I handed the burly, no-nonsense man guard my passport and my boarding pass. He looked at them, and said four words that instantly turned everything upside down: "No plane. Flight cancelled." I thought that perhaps there had been some failure of communication, seeing as how English was not his first language. I turned pleadingly to the other guard and asked him in Spanish if what I had heard was true. He nodded nonchalantly, and turned to other business. The volcano had reared its ugly head once again. Perhaps doubting the prophecies of a man named Mohammed was not the soundest course of action. Well, at least when it came to air travel.
The next 30 hours were a blur, and from what I can now remember, the following occurred on Monday, May 10th, and Tuesday, May 11th:
3:30PM - Frantic scramble to attempt to board other flights at the airport that are destined for Malaga, Barcelona, Sevilla - anywhere on the Iberian peninsula. Just get us out of Morocco!
4:00PM - Using a janky airport internet network, we vainly try to Skype as many airlines as possible, hoping to board one of their other planes.4:30PM - Well, there goes that. All flights going to Spain are grounded.
5:00PM - Somebody suggests that we employ the naval option. With 80 minutes until the ferry leaves from the port of Tangiers, we hightail it back to the Hotel Continental. The front desk lets us use the internet to check bus timetables for when we get to Spain. There is a bus from Algeciras, the other end of the ferry journey, that leaves at 9:00PM. We are overjoyed momentarily, but then realize that Morocco is one time zone behind Spain.
6:00PM - We have purchased our ferry tickets and are waiting in line at customs. The sunlight is oppressively bright through the plate glass windows. Time is ticking.
6:30PM - The ferry has still yet to leave, as it wants to allow more trucks to enter its hold, thereby maximizing profits for the journey. The wait is agonizing because we know that regardless, a certain bus will be leaving from Algeciras in one and one half hours.
6:45PM - We feel the engines rumble to life as the ferry finally heads out of Tangiers port. I have never been so happy to see a city receding into the distant horizon.7:00PM - Aboard the ferry there is a duty free store selling a 5 euro bottle of vodka. After the long, frustrating day, that and a series of great games of hearts are just what the doctor ordered. Laughter abounds as the queen of hearts does her rounds.
8:55PM - As the ferry is docking, we overhear four other passengers next to us saying how they too are attempting to catch a bus at 9:00PM. My fellow travel-mates whisper to me, "When the door opens, RUN to the bus station. We have to get those seats!" I don't need any encouragement. I burst out of the boat and shoot down the gangway. I'm running so fast that I almost forget to stop at customs...smooth, Clay. Once I assure the Spanish border guards that I'm not an illegal immigrant, I resume my dead sprint. I emerge out of the building and feel Spanish pavement under my poorly laced gym shoes. My chest is heaving under the dusky sky. I hop over a concrete barrier and feel the weight in my backpack jostling around in mid-air. The dull moan of container ships reaching port echoes across the harbor. I land on the other side, willing my heart to keep going, praying that I can get there in time. 15 meters behind me, I hear footfalls. I kick it into second gear as I speed across a wide boulevard, just two blocks from my destination. All of the halogen lights bleed into my peripheral vision and I imagine that I'm on the Millenium Falcon, beating my old 12 parsec record for the Kessel Run. For a second, I'm free.
8:58PM - The bus is sold out.
9:05PM - We check into a small hostel, having received directions earlier to an internet cafe from a pair of prostitutes on a corner. Algeciras is dingy and drab, but the beds in the room are clean and inviting after the long day.
11:00PM - We all fall asleep to "Fake Plastic Trees". And it wears him out...
9:05AM - I wave out the side window as our bus departs from Algeciras. Homeward bound.
5:00PM - The sun absolutely lights up the gorgeous Spanish countryside. Red clay soil rises up in rolling hills that stretch to the horizon, where softly whirring windmills taunt the Man of the La Mancha.
8:30PM - By now, the sun has started its descent. I have arrived at Puerta del Sol, the very center of Madrid. I stand over the 0 km marker for all of Spain, close my eyes, and smile. I'm home.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
1001 Minus 997 Nights - Stave the Second
Stave the Second - Dirhams, Nickels, and Dimes
The first day of a trip is always the hardest, right? You know, what with all the shuttling between airports and hotels and trains and buses. It´s just such a relief to get to your destination and not be subjected to the stressful occupation of managing timetables.
This is why breakfast on Saturday morning was so perfect. We were at the Hotel Continental in Tangiers, seated in an ornately decorated dining room with a view of the bustling port below. The walls were covered in painstakingly arranged geometric patterns, and the sheer variety of different shaped tiles spiraling across the expanse of the room was humbling in its beauty. The food was hardly material to the proceedings, as I spent more time just staring at my surroundings than I did focusing on the nuances of the croissant sitting in front of me. For any of you who don't know me, just remember that more than half of the posts in this blog are dedicated to descriptions of food in its many delicious forms, so for me to ignore it requires a rather sizable distraction, like, say, the dazzling piece of artwork that I was sitting inside. We finished at a leisurely pace, then headed downstairs for another day under the Tangerine sun.
On the concierge´s recommendation, we headed out in search of the Kasbah and the legendary Cafe Hafa, which was supposedly Mick and Keith´s favorite hang out back in the day. We made our way through the warren-like allies of the Medina for half an hour, and finally had to ask a 7-year old kid to guide us out of the laberinth, up the hill to the Kasbah. When we arrived at the interior courtyard of the fortress, perched on the cliffs high above the Mediterranean, our little guide turned to us and said, "Give me money man!" By this point, all of us had definitely read the tour books about Morocco that stated that this was a common occurrence, but then again, it was only a kid. I gave him a dirham and he happily scampered away. As the weekend progressed, I would look back fondly on this incident, because all of the similar ones to come would see larger sums of dirhams changing hands under less innocent circumstances.
After a brief exploration of the museum inside the old fortress, we decided that it was high time to find this Cafe Hafa for an afternoon mint tea at the seaside. Not two minutes later, an unassuming man of roughly 40 emerged from an alley flanking the street on which we were walking. "What is it you look for? I take you there." When one of us let slip that our intended final destination was Cafe Hafa, he replied, "Sure, sure. Cafe on the wall? Famous cafe. Very famous, I can take you there, just follow me." Nick, one of the members of our group, flatly declined the man's advances, sensing some sort of trick. Not sensing any danger from the active man in front of me, I convinced Nick and the rest of the group to give him a chance. After following him for several blocks down, around, and through the dwellings near the north seawall, we arrived at the same spot where we had been standing not 5 minutes ago. That was it for Nick. "We're not going to follow you anymore. You don't know where Cafe Hafa is. We only want to go to Cafe Hafa, and not anywhere else." The man's response was as assured as ever, "Cafe Hafa, sure, sure, just follow me." Nick was having none of it. "We're not going to pay you any money, and we don't want to follow you because you're not going to take us to Cafe Hafa." Sensing that the game was up, our ostensible guide's face soured. He turned around in a huff, and faced me, the least "American" looking person in our group: "We are not criminals! Tell your American friends that we are not children! They do not know what they are doing!" I looked over to Nick, uncomfortable that he had singled me out as some sort of cultural ambassador, but more so because I had gotten us into the whole affair in the first place. Nick just shook his head, and we kept on walking.
Every block or so, one of us would ask a passing Tangerine if they knew where this supposedly venerable locale was, but we were met shrugs or people who would just swear that it was right over there. You know. Around the corner from that other place. In my time outside the United States, I have been forced to learn that giving good directions is not as heavily emphasized throughout the whole world. Spaniards, Costa Ricans, and now Moroccans all seem willing to help, but the problem is that they'll "help" even if they have no idea what so ever where your desired destination is located. This inevitably creates frustration for the lost tourist, and under that blinding mid-day sun, such feelings were considerably amplified. Just as we were about to call it a day and head home, we came upon a bespectacled man of about 30, wearing a sweater despite the raw heat radiating down from above. Nick asked him if he knew where Cafe Hafa was, and he nodded. Another person in the group then made it very clear that we would not be paying him anything for directions or guidance, but he shook his head slowly, stating in a mixture of Spanish and English that he was not a guide of anytime. Cautiously, we followed him down a sloping stone road, which then rose anew and turned the corner into a seemingly blind alley. "Oh great," I thought, "we just got played again...". But it was not to be. There, at the end of the alley, was a sign painted in faded light blue paint, denoting the establishment in front of us as none other than Cafe Hafa. Our guide bowed slightly, gracefully, and told us to enjoy. Feeling silly for my doubts, I put my hand on my heart and offered a hearfelt "Shookran", before turning around and entering.
There is a very, very good reason why Cafe Hafa is famous. Sure, there are cafes in Paris and Madrid and Rome with nice views of wide-open plazas, or ornate fountains, or charmingly narrow streets. Cafe Hafa, however, is in another category, location wise. Cafe Hafa's five levels hang like balconies directly over the Mediterranean itself, seamlessly integrated into the wall of the very cliff upon which they are built. Each terrace descends from the last one and holds a small collection of tacky plastic tables and chairs, shaded by crudely pruned trees. From that lofty perch, the panoramic view out onto the calm Mediterranean was impossibly expansive, stretching out to the distant horizon. Gusts of warm air found their way up the cliff face, buffeting the bright red Moroccan flag to the point that it was fully unfurled against the whimsical blue sky. The place was filled with a modest number of Moroccan men, young and old, all nursing glasses of steaming hot mint tea. Mint tea for Moroccans is like coffee for Argentines, or wine for Italians: that is to say, you best not get in the way of a Moroccan man and his tea. Up to that point, I still didn't see what the big deal was with mint tea; the cups that we had had the night before had been like drinking liquid rock candy. I gave the beverage in question the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps we had just been served a terrible example of an otherwise fine refreshment. Our group took a table in a relatively shaded corner, and I walked up to the top level to get our tea. A wizened old man took my order, and set to work preparing our tea with the relaxed perfection of movement that only comes from tens of years of practice. Something told me that this same man had once served a young Mick Jagger tea at this very same spot.
When he had finished this ritual, for it can only be called that, he handed me the four piping hot glasses of minty infusion in a metal carrying rack. The loose mint leafs floated idly in the slightly brown liquid, and an ample amount of dissolving sugar crystals could be seen at the bottom of each glass. I arrived at the table and found that someone else at our table had ordered flatbread, olives, and an oily lentil soup. I nibbled at the marinated olives and dipped some of the hearty bread into the soup, waiting for my tea to reach a more drinkable temperature. To speed the process along and enhance the flavors too, I took to muddling the mint inside with my spoon, hoping that my knowledge of mojito-making would be applicable elsewhere. When I finally dared to bring the glass to my lips, I took a sizable sip and allowed the tea to sit in my mouth. There, as there was yesterday, was that hefty sugary presence, but here it was enshrined in a bewitching thrall of mint flavor, subtly accented by the minimal amount of black tea that was also part of the mix. Similar looks of pleasure popped up on the faces of the rest of the people in my group. Now it was quite apparent what all the hullabaloo was about. We stayed there for another two hours, lazily enjoying our tea, our snacks, and the rapturous breeze coming off the gently undulating sea below.
Compared with our walk to Cafe Hafa, the walk back was a relatively unassuming affair. Our only stop was a tiny hole in the wall bakery that enticed us to enter with its ample piles of delicious looking Mediterranean pastries. My eyes took to the usually skimming, quickly attempting to ascertain if the target in question was present in the glass case before me. A glistening pile of honey soaked triangle confirmed my suspicions. There they lay. I asked the man behind the counter how much they cost. His response was better than I ever could have hoped. I asked for 5 pieces, and slid my 10 dirhams (roughly $1) across the counter in return. I hastily unwrapped my recently acquired baklava and went to work. In a matter of minutes, all I had to show for that well-spent dollar were lips covered in pieces of phylo dough and walnuts and fingers saturated with sticky honey. Nothing like some fresh, in-house baked goods to really make an afternoon. As we walked back to the hotel, we passed no less than six bakeries. To my surprise, each bakery had a similar pile of golden triangle, all made in the very same way. It would appear that they all bought their baklava from the same whole seller. "Well," I thought to myself, slightly bitter, "there goes that whole fantasy of finding 'artisan baklava' made from some forgotten recipe. I suppose I should have known better." I would have stayed bitter for a little bit longer, but as I bit my lip in frustration, I tasted some of the recently departed honey that had remained there. A slight smile broke out on my face. "Authentic" or not, I guess it's just impossible to be unhappy when you've just eaten that much good baklava.
After a lengthy afternoon siesta and uneventful dinner, we made it back to the hotel, worn out from the long day. I proposed watching a movie before bed, which pretty much limited it to the one DVD that I had remembered to bring along with me: Wedding Crashers. Now, nothing could have been further away from our current situation than the travails of a duo of mischievous, maladjusted, yet good-natured divorce attorneys scheming to run away with two of the Treasury Secretary's daughters, but it was just what we needed. I have found in my time abroad that a movie from home can carry you back in an instant, and for those two hours of run-time, you can feel the couch in a Stanford lounge under you or forget that outside the window next to you lays some strange and foreign land. Given the decided lack of profundity involved in the movie in question, it was nevertheless amazing that all of the weariness of travel, all the slight tinges of homesickness, all the cultural mishaps of the day melted away as we laughed ourselves silly, enjoying that brief journey back home by way of a most unlikely vehicle.
The following morning we had made plans to grab a bus to town named Chefchaouen roughly 150 km away. Chefchaouen's name was derived from the local language's term for "twin horns", and was so called because of the two mountain peaks that rose up behind the town square. However, when we made it to the hotel's front door, we heard a rather unwelcome sound outside my window. It was raining, and hard at that. Perfect timing. Momentarily stalled by our feelings of disappointment, we didn't notice a stout, round looking man with intense beady eyes approaching us. "Tell me your zip code!", he bellowed in heavily accented English. His jovial demeanor combined with such an odd request left us staring at him, unsure of what to do. "Your zip code. In the United States? What is it?" I mustered up the wherewithal to say 708. "Chicago!" Not bad, I though, but that's a pretty big city, easy enough to memorize. My doubts were vanquished in the next 30 seconds, as he deftly named the home towns of my other three friends, as well as a random additional assortment of American cities, with only the zip code to go by. The man introduced himself as Jimmy, and launched into a non-stop, rapid fire discourse on the relation between Morocco and the US (Morocco was the first country to recognize the US in 1777). He was very physical, grabbing shoulders at various points for emphasis. After several minutes of being caught in a veritable whirlwind of this burly man's excited pronouncements, we managed to make our way outside into the rain. What a character.
We ran out into the rain, which was roaring in off the sea, carried by vast, steel grey clouds. We made our way down a treacherously slippery switchback and down to the taxi cab turnaround. We had to get to the CTM terminal at thus bus station downtown, roughly five minutes away. A similar journey the night before had cost 15 dirhams, so we were surprised when the first driver demanded 30 dirhams. Nick refuted his offer and moved to next car in line. Before we could get there, the spurned first driver yelled something in Arabic to the second driver. I caught the word "Americans", but everything else was lost in the rain. The second driver rolled down his passenger side window and stated that it would cost us 40 dirhams to get to the CTM terminal. The first driver cast us a satisfied, mean-spirited smile from beneath an alcove across the street. It was just then as I was looking at him, thinking of a choice stream of invective to launch in his general direction, when I saw a giant CTM logo plastered on the building against which the first driver was leaning. Here, right on this corner, not 20 feet from the taxi cabs, was a secondary terminal for our bus company. Not only had these ruffians attempted to price gouge us, but they would have taken us on a wild goose chase around the Medina before dropping us off where we started. I guess 40 dirhams isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, but it was more the idea that these "men" were attempting to prey on a portion of a population that they thought vulnerable: tourists. Having excoriated them adequately in my mind, I joined the group as we ran inside and bought our tickets for the ride to Chefchaouen. The cost per ticket? 40 dirhams. As we moved back outside to board the bus, I saw the two taxi drivers talking on the corner. I flashed them a particularly impish smile and climbed up the stairs onto the bus.
My momentary happiness was not to last. At the last stop before leaving Tangiers, a group of eight teenagers boarded our bus and sat in the two rows of seats in front of ours. Normally, there would be nothing at all wrong with this scenario, were it not for a seemingly marked peculiarity among Moroccan teenagers - they don't use headphones when they listen to their music. As a result, we were treated to several hours worth of terrible, dissonant Moroccan and French "rap" that sounded like somebody like a drunk a Peppy le Peu being rolled down a hill in a port o' potty. Just to add to the fun, a couple of them decided it would be great to (a) throw on some porn, (b) throw up all over the seat in front of them, and (c) have farting contests. I was very much ready to call them out on it, but then the rational side of my brain told me that I was not in America, I didn't speak their language, and the bus driver would inevitably side with them. I gave up on that idea, and decided instead to look out at the fast changing terrain of the Rif Mountains and accompanying valleys. It was almost pretty enough to make me forget that I was sitting in on a live show from dumbass and the seven dwarves. Almost.
Just before we arrive in Chefchaouen, a short, mustachioed main approached us in the back of the bus to ask us where we were from. When we stated that we were American, he paid his compliments to the Eagles for giving the world "Hotel California". As our conversation continued, he stated outright that he wasn't a guide, he had no interest in our money, and that he only wanted to make sure that we enjoyed his hometown that he was so proud of. We got off the bus and followed him to the Medina, figuring that nothing bad would become of it. His opening schpiel had been convincing, especially because he addressed all the normal points of contention. As we wound our way behind him, trying to keep up with his quick, determined steps, he explained that the famous blue coloration
of the buildings in Chefchaouen was due to a dried compound that was mixed in with the paint to fend of mosquitos (a week later I found that this is a fabrication - the buildings there are painted that color because of a Jewish exodus from Spain to that part of Morocco following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492). We continued walking up a hill towards the center of the Medina as he explained why he liked to show tourists around town: "I know that lots of Americans get ripped off by guides, taxi drivers, store owners, you know." Yes. Yes I do. "I want to show them that not all Moroccans are like that. Not all of us are trying to take your money. Then you can go tell your friends how we really are." His words were inspiring, given our recent experiences, and only emboldened our confidence in our new found guide.
About 15 minutes later, our conversation turned to the many rugs and scarves that we saw hanging in the various stalls lining the narrow streets of the Medina. Mohammed (our guide), leaned in and told us in a conspiratorial tone that all of these were hugely overpriced, and that the only way to get a good price was to go to a carpet factory elsewhere in town. Yeah, yeah, laugh if you know where this one is going, but the way he slipped it in to the conversation made it seem much more mundane at the time. We rounded the corner and found ourselves in front of a small store front, where a merchant was waiting, welcoming us into the room. Mohammed encouraged us to enter, telling us how to greet the merchant properly in Arabic. The man, out of nothing but generosity, decided to allow us to tour the blanket weaving looms on the top floor of the shop. That feeling that you get when things aren't quite right amplified slightly in my head. I turned back and scrutinized Mohammed. He seemed to sense what I was thinking, and replied: "There's no pressure to buy anything. It's just a tour. If you want to leave, you can." His open demeanor was just reassuring enough that it caused me to ignore my gut. We climbed the stairs and entered the room where a jolly old man in a cleanly pressed shirt was busy at work hand weaving a carpet on an ancient looking loom. The dexterity with which he threw the shuttle across the bed of threads was really impressive. Mohammed gestured for one of us to stand next to the craftsman, inside the loom.
I was first in line, so I did so. As soon as I stepped in, I fell into a spell of amazement at the incredible skill of the man to my right. He smiled good naturedly and even helped me thread a small section of a blanket. Everyone was laughing and smiling, enjoying the chance to have found such a random, unique experience not a half hour after getting off of the bus. When the demonstration was over we headed back downstairs. That's when all the little (OK, fine, blatantly obvious in hindsight) hints clicked: I saw a tray of mint tea, the beverage of hospitality and business negotiations, sitting on the small table in the middle of the room. As we were ushered to our seats, the shop owner opened with his well-rehearsed sales pitch, being sure to include those golden buzzwords for American tourists: "heritage", "cooperative", "artisan", "hand-crafted". At presentations end, I told Mohammed that I was not interested in buying anything, as did Steph, the one girl in our group. Mohammed played his role as the good cop perfectly, stating that that was not a problem at all. Every time the carpet seller's offer grew to persistent or expensive, Mohammed would do us the "favor" of having him reduce the price for "the students". The shop-owners air was always graceful and accomodating, but there was an unmistakeable undercurrent of less generous sentiments that I couldn't quite put my finger on. This was a well-orchestrated game that had clearly been well practiced for many years. I took solitude in knowing that Mick Jagger probably did the same song and dance at least once in his time in Morocco. The last two members of our group finally bargained two scarves down to an only slightly inflated price, and we finally escaped from the shop.
After a fine meal of delicious apricot almond beef tagine (a cooking method for meat involving a special type of clay pot), and a short walk around the town square, we headed down to the bus station in order to buy our return tickets to Tangiers. When we got there, we found to our dismay that the CTM office was closed, and all that remained in terms of transportation companies was the one housed in a tiny closet, presided over by a greasy, skinny man sitting behind a desk crowded with stacks of papers. I walked up to him, opening my questioning in Spanish. In Morocco, that's a preservation mechanism; if you open in English, you're usually asking to be taken advantage of. I asked him how much the tickets would be for the 7PM bus back to Tangiers. He told me that it would be 55 dirhams, but I had anticipated his bald faced lie. Before I started talking with him, I had studied the sheet on the wall to my left that detailed the exact prices to be charged for each route. Our tickets should have been 36 dirhams. When I confronted him with this information, he barely flinched: "It's a supplement. You have to have a supplement." I asked him why in a patient tone that belied my anger. His only response was "It's a supplement. You have to have a supplement." He was running the only show in town, and he knew that he had us at his mercy. We would have to get a far more expensive taxi back to Tangiers if we weren't going to play his game. Just wanting to be home at this point, we decided to ante up with the extra dirhams and buy our tickets.
During our time waiting for the bus, the question came up as to if this sort of small scale price scamming was OK on the part of third world inhabitants at the expense of first world travelers. On one hand, it was stealing, plain and simple. On the other, what was being taken was a pittance. I wouldn't want for food should I find myself with 20 less dirhams. Maybe some of these people, or their families, would. But could an unethical act like this be defensible merely on the grounds that it wasn't too much of a bother to those being robbed? It had certainly felt like a bother, all the calculating gazes and clear grafts that we had run into today, all the times we'd been played. Maybe it wasn't just the money involved, it was the sense that one was being used, lied to, tricked, like some object of amusement and financial gain. One person in our group opined that it was just something to be accepted: you were going to pay the unspoken "tourist tax" no matter what, so why not just factor it into your budget, and go on enjoying your trip? It was a reasonable suggestion, but the string of recent scams made it a bitter pill to swallow.
Two hours later, when the bus finally arrived at the bus lot, we quickly moved to the doors to board. We grabbed chairs near several groups of older, quieter looking people, having learned our lesson earlier that day. Just as the bus was about to leave, a group of twenty year old men boarded the bus. They were carrying drums. I turned to Steph and our eyes opened wide, bracing for part two of the Tangiers-Chefchaouen traveling circus. Our friends did no disappoint. They banged their drums vigorously and without any sense of rhythm, and slurred drunken chants in Arabic, interspersed with awkwardly out of place lines from famous American rap songs. If you've read T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", then perhaps I can accurately communicate to you the unfortunate nature of the situation. Think of the fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", and you'll get a pretty good grasp of what it was like being on that bus: noise without music, no respite, no release.
In an attempt to drown out the waves of sound emanating from the backseat denizens behind me, I began talking with Steph about a concept that I had recently thought of: the home meter. It was actually a unit of measurement. Distance wasn't the qualifier, but instead a decreasing sense of feeling at home in each successive place farther away from home. For example, at that point in time, we were in Chefchaouen, which was a trip away from Tangiers, our base for the weekend, which was a trip away from Madrid, our home for the quarter, which was a transatlantic flight away from Stanford or Chicago. That would mean that I was three home-meters away at that point in time. As our discussion continued, the bus barreled along towards Tangiers, doing its best to decrease our home meter counts to 2.
We got back to the hotel, exhausted, half-deaf, and tired beyond measure. After a long day of financial hooliganism, we could finally just sit in peace in our hotel room, and find sanctuary enjoying the good-natured banter in "Wedding Crashers" between Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson as they talked together on the sea shore. The sound of the waves behind them was tranquil and rhythmic, their voices low, but assured. Pretty soon one of the guys in our group was asleep, snoring peacefully. I sat there on the bed in room 315, and savored the quiet. On my bedside table were a pair of five dirham coins. I picked one of them up and examined it silently. Was it worth getting riled up over this? This was a vacation, after all. Money gets spent, but that's just part of the deal. The important things to focus on are, and always have been, the hours on the terraces at Cafe Hafa and all the other hours and minutes and moments like them.
The first day of a trip is always the hardest, right? You know, what with all the shuttling between airports and hotels and trains and buses. It´s just such a relief to get to your destination and not be subjected to the stressful occupation of managing timetables.
This is why breakfast on Saturday morning was so perfect. We were at the Hotel Continental in Tangiers, seated in an ornately decorated dining room with a view of the bustling port below. The walls were covered in painstakingly arranged geometric patterns, and the sheer variety of different shaped tiles spiraling across the expanse of the room was humbling in its beauty. The food was hardly material to the proceedings, as I spent more time just staring at my surroundings than I did focusing on the nuances of the croissant sitting in front of me. For any of you who don't know me, just remember that more than half of the posts in this blog are dedicated to descriptions of food in its many delicious forms, so for me to ignore it requires a rather sizable distraction, like, say, the dazzling piece of artwork that I was sitting inside. We finished at a leisurely pace, then headed downstairs for another day under the Tangerine sun.On the concierge´s recommendation, we headed out in search of the Kasbah and the legendary Cafe Hafa, which was supposedly Mick and Keith´s favorite hang out back in the day. We made our way through the warren-like allies of the Medina for half an hour, and finally had to ask a 7-year old kid to guide us out of the laberinth, up the hill to the Kasbah. When we arrived at the interior courtyard of the fortress, perched on the cliffs high above the Mediterranean, our little guide turned to us and said, "Give me money man!" By this point, all of us had definitely read the tour books about Morocco that stated that this was a common occurrence, but then again, it was only a kid. I gave him a dirham and he happily scampered away. As the weekend progressed, I would look back fondly on this incident, because all of the similar ones to come would see larger sums of dirhams changing hands under less innocent circumstances.
After a brief exploration of the museum inside the old fortress, we decided that it was high time to find this Cafe Hafa for an afternoon mint tea at the seaside. Not two minutes later, an unassuming man of roughly 40 emerged from an alley flanking the street on which we were walking. "What is it you look for? I take you there." When one of us let slip that our intended final destination was Cafe Hafa, he replied, "Sure, sure. Cafe on the wall? Famous cafe. Very famous, I can take you there, just follow me." Nick, one of the members of our group, flatly declined the man's advances, sensing some sort of trick. Not sensing any danger from the active man in front of me, I convinced Nick and the rest of the group to give him a chance. After following him for several blocks down, around, and through the dwellings near the north seawall, we arrived at the same spot where we had been standing not 5 minutes ago. That was it for Nick. "We're not going to follow you anymore. You don't know where Cafe Hafa is. We only want to go to Cafe Hafa, and not anywhere else." The man's response was as assured as ever, "Cafe Hafa, sure, sure, just follow me." Nick was having none of it. "We're not going to pay you any money, and we don't want to follow you because you're not going to take us to Cafe Hafa." Sensing that the game was up, our ostensible guide's face soured. He turned around in a huff, and faced me, the least "American" looking person in our group: "We are not criminals! Tell your American friends that we are not children! They do not know what they are doing!" I looked over to Nick, uncomfortable that he had singled me out as some sort of cultural ambassador, but more so because I had gotten us into the whole affair in the first place. Nick just shook his head, and we kept on walking.
Every block or so, one of us would ask a passing Tangerine if they knew where this supposedly venerable locale was, but we were met shrugs or people who would just swear that it was right over there. You know. Around the corner from that other place. In my time outside the United States, I have been forced to learn that giving good directions is not as heavily emphasized throughout the whole world. Spaniards, Costa Ricans, and now Moroccans all seem willing to help, but the problem is that they'll "help" even if they have no idea what so ever where your desired destination is located. This inevitably creates frustration for the lost tourist, and under that blinding mid-day sun, such feelings were considerably amplified. Just as we were about to call it a day and head home, we came upon a bespectacled man of about 30, wearing a sweater despite the raw heat radiating down from above. Nick asked him if he knew where Cafe Hafa was, and he nodded. Another person in the group then made it very clear that we would not be paying him anything for directions or guidance, but he shook his head slowly, stating in a mixture of Spanish and English that he was not a guide of anytime. Cautiously, we followed him down a sloping stone road, which then rose anew and turned the corner into a seemingly blind alley. "Oh great," I thought, "we just got played again...". But it was not to be. There, at the end of the alley, was a sign painted in faded light blue paint, denoting the establishment in front of us as none other than Cafe Hafa. Our guide bowed slightly, gracefully, and told us to enjoy. Feeling silly for my doubts, I put my hand on my heart and offered a hearfelt "Shookran", before turning around and entering.
There is a very, very good reason why Cafe Hafa is famous. Sure, there are cafes in Paris and Madrid and Rome with nice views of wide-open plazas, or ornate fountains, or charmingly narrow streets. Cafe Hafa, however, is in another category, location wise. Cafe Hafa's five levels hang like balconies directly over the Mediterranean itself, seamlessly integrated into the wall of the very cliff upon which they are built. Each terrace descends from the last one and holds a small collection of tacky plastic tables and chairs, shaded by crudely pruned trees. From that lofty perch, the panoramic view out onto the calm Mediterranean was impossibly expansive, stretching out to the distant horizon. Gusts of warm air found their way up the cliff face, buffeting the bright red Moroccan flag to the point that it was fully unfurled against the whimsical blue sky. The place was filled with a modest number of Moroccan men, young and old, all nursing glasses of steaming hot mint tea. Mint tea for Moroccans is like coffee for Argentines, or wine for Italians: that is to say, you best not get in the way of a Moroccan man and his tea. Up to that point, I still didn't see what the big deal was with mint tea; the cups that we had had the night before had been like drinking liquid rock candy. I gave the beverage in question the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps we had just been served a terrible example of an otherwise fine refreshment. Our group took a table in a relatively shaded corner, and I walked up to the top level to get our tea. A wizened old man took my order, and set to work preparing our tea with the relaxed perfection of movement that only comes from tens of years of practice. Something told me that this same man had once served a young Mick Jagger tea at this very same spot.When he had finished this ritual, for it can only be called that, he handed me the four piping hot glasses of minty infusion in a metal carrying rack. The loose mint leafs floated idly in the slightly brown liquid, and an ample amount of dissolving sugar crystals could be seen at the bottom of each glass. I arrived at the table and found that someone else at our table had ordered flatbread, olives, and an oily lentil soup. I nibbled at the marinated olives and dipped some of the hearty bread into the soup, waiting for my tea to reach a more drinkable temperature. To speed the process along and enhance the flavors too, I took to muddling the mint inside with my spoon, hoping that my knowledge of mojito-making would be applicable elsewhere. When I finally dared to bring the glass to my lips, I took a sizable sip and allowed the tea to sit in my mouth. There, as there was yesterday, was that hefty sugary presence, but here it was enshrined in a bewitching thrall of mint flavor, subtly accented by the minimal amount of black tea that was also part of the mix. Similar looks of pleasure popped up on the faces of the rest of the people in my group. Now it was quite apparent what all the hullabaloo was about. We stayed there for another two hours, lazily enjoying our tea, our snacks, and the rapturous breeze coming off the gently undulating sea below.
Compared with our walk to Cafe Hafa, the walk back was a relatively unassuming affair. Our only stop was a tiny hole in the wall bakery that enticed us to enter with its ample piles of delicious looking Mediterranean pastries. My eyes took to the usually skimming, quickly attempting to ascertain if the target in question was present in the glass case before me. A glistening pile of honey soaked triangle confirmed my suspicions. There they lay. I asked the man behind the counter how much they cost. His response was better than I ever could have hoped. I asked for 5 pieces, and slid my 10 dirhams (roughly $1) across the counter in return. I hastily unwrapped my recently acquired baklava and went to work. In a matter of minutes, all I had to show for that well-spent dollar were lips covered in pieces of phylo dough and walnuts and fingers saturated with sticky honey. Nothing like some fresh, in-house baked goods to really make an afternoon. As we walked back to the hotel, we passed no less than six bakeries. To my surprise, each bakery had a similar pile of golden triangle, all made in the very same way. It would appear that they all bought their baklava from the same whole seller. "Well," I thought to myself, slightly bitter, "there goes that whole fantasy of finding 'artisan baklava' made from some forgotten recipe. I suppose I should have known better." I would have stayed bitter for a little bit longer, but as I bit my lip in frustration, I tasted some of the recently departed honey that had remained there. A slight smile broke out on my face. "Authentic" or not, I guess it's just impossible to be unhappy when you've just eaten that much good baklava.
After a lengthy afternoon siesta and uneventful dinner, we made it back to the hotel, worn out from the long day. I proposed watching a movie before bed, which pretty much limited it to the one DVD that I had remembered to bring along with me: Wedding Crashers. Now, nothing could have been further away from our current situation than the travails of a duo of mischievous, maladjusted, yet good-natured divorce attorneys scheming to run away with two of the Treasury Secretary's daughters, but it was just what we needed. I have found in my time abroad that a movie from home can carry you back in an instant, and for those two hours of run-time, you can feel the couch in a Stanford lounge under you or forget that outside the window next to you lays some strange and foreign land. Given the decided lack of profundity involved in the movie in question, it was nevertheless amazing that all of the weariness of travel, all the slight tinges of homesickness, all the cultural mishaps of the day melted away as we laughed ourselves silly, enjoying that brief journey back home by way of a most unlikely vehicle.
The following morning we had made plans to grab a bus to town named Chefchaouen roughly 150 km away. Chefchaouen's name was derived from the local language's term for "twin horns", and was so called because of the two mountain peaks that rose up behind the town square. However, when we made it to the hotel's front door, we heard a rather unwelcome sound outside my window. It was raining, and hard at that. Perfect timing. Momentarily stalled by our feelings of disappointment, we didn't notice a stout, round looking man with intense beady eyes approaching us. "Tell me your zip code!", he bellowed in heavily accented English. His jovial demeanor combined with such an odd request left us staring at him, unsure of what to do. "Your zip code. In the United States? What is it?" I mustered up the wherewithal to say 708. "Chicago!" Not bad, I though, but that's a pretty big city, easy enough to memorize. My doubts were vanquished in the next 30 seconds, as he deftly named the home towns of my other three friends, as well as a random additional assortment of American cities, with only the zip code to go by. The man introduced himself as Jimmy, and launched into a non-stop, rapid fire discourse on the relation between Morocco and the US (Morocco was the first country to recognize the US in 1777). He was very physical, grabbing shoulders at various points for emphasis. After several minutes of being caught in a veritable whirlwind of this burly man's excited pronouncements, we managed to make our way outside into the rain. What a character.
We ran out into the rain, which was roaring in off the sea, carried by vast, steel grey clouds. We made our way down a treacherously slippery switchback and down to the taxi cab turnaround. We had to get to the CTM terminal at thus bus station downtown, roughly five minutes away. A similar journey the night before had cost 15 dirhams, so we were surprised when the first driver demanded 30 dirhams. Nick refuted his offer and moved to next car in line. Before we could get there, the spurned first driver yelled something in Arabic to the second driver. I caught the word "Americans", but everything else was lost in the rain. The second driver rolled down his passenger side window and stated that it would cost us 40 dirhams to get to the CTM terminal. The first driver cast us a satisfied, mean-spirited smile from beneath an alcove across the street. It was just then as I was looking at him, thinking of a choice stream of invective to launch in his general direction, when I saw a giant CTM logo plastered on the building against which the first driver was leaning. Here, right on this corner, not 20 feet from the taxi cabs, was a secondary terminal for our bus company. Not only had these ruffians attempted to price gouge us, but they would have taken us on a wild goose chase around the Medina before dropping us off where we started. I guess 40 dirhams isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, but it was more the idea that these "men" were attempting to prey on a portion of a population that they thought vulnerable: tourists. Having excoriated them adequately in my mind, I joined the group as we ran inside and bought our tickets for the ride to Chefchaouen. The cost per ticket? 40 dirhams. As we moved back outside to board the bus, I saw the two taxi drivers talking on the corner. I flashed them a particularly impish smile and climbed up the stairs onto the bus.
My momentary happiness was not to last. At the last stop before leaving Tangiers, a group of eight teenagers boarded our bus and sat in the two rows of seats in front of ours. Normally, there would be nothing at all wrong with this scenario, were it not for a seemingly marked peculiarity among Moroccan teenagers - they don't use headphones when they listen to their music. As a result, we were treated to several hours worth of terrible, dissonant Moroccan and French "rap" that sounded like somebody like a drunk a Peppy le Peu being rolled down a hill in a port o' potty. Just to add to the fun, a couple of them decided it would be great to (a) throw on some porn, (b) throw up all over the seat in front of them, and (c) have farting contests. I was very much ready to call them out on it, but then the rational side of my brain told me that I was not in America, I didn't speak their language, and the bus driver would inevitably side with them. I gave up on that idea, and decided instead to look out at the fast changing terrain of the Rif Mountains and accompanying valleys. It was almost pretty enough to make me forget that I was sitting in on a live show from dumbass and the seven dwarves. Almost.
Just before we arrive in Chefchaouen, a short, mustachioed main approached us in the back of the bus to ask us where we were from. When we stated that we were American, he paid his compliments to the Eagles for giving the world "Hotel California". As our conversation continued, he stated outright that he wasn't a guide, he had no interest in our money, and that he only wanted to make sure that we enjoyed his hometown that he was so proud of. We got off the bus and followed him to the Medina, figuring that nothing bad would become of it. His opening schpiel had been convincing, especially because he addressed all the normal points of contention. As we wound our way behind him, trying to keep up with his quick, determined steps, he explained that the famous blue coloration
of the buildings in Chefchaouen was due to a dried compound that was mixed in with the paint to fend of mosquitos (a week later I found that this is a fabrication - the buildings there are painted that color because of a Jewish exodus from Spain to that part of Morocco following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492). We continued walking up a hill towards the center of the Medina as he explained why he liked to show tourists around town: "I know that lots of Americans get ripped off by guides, taxi drivers, store owners, you know." Yes. Yes I do. "I want to show them that not all Moroccans are like that. Not all of us are trying to take your money. Then you can go tell your friends how we really are." His words were inspiring, given our recent experiences, and only emboldened our confidence in our new found guide.About 15 minutes later, our conversation turned to the many rugs and scarves that we saw hanging in the various stalls lining the narrow streets of the Medina. Mohammed (our guide), leaned in and told us in a conspiratorial tone that all of these were hugely overpriced, and that the only way to get a good price was to go to a carpet factory elsewhere in town. Yeah, yeah, laugh if you know where this one is going, but the way he slipped it in to the conversation made it seem much more mundane at the time. We rounded the corner and found ourselves in front of a small store front, where a merchant was waiting, welcoming us into the room. Mohammed encouraged us to enter, telling us how to greet the merchant properly in Arabic. The man, out of nothing but generosity, decided to allow us to tour the blanket weaving looms on the top floor of the shop. That feeling that you get when things aren't quite right amplified slightly in my head. I turned back and scrutinized Mohammed. He seemed to sense what I was thinking, and replied: "There's no pressure to buy anything. It's just a tour. If you want to leave, you can." His open demeanor was just reassuring enough that it caused me to ignore my gut. We climbed the stairs and entered the room where a jolly old man in a cleanly pressed shirt was busy at work hand weaving a carpet on an ancient looking loom. The dexterity with which he threw the shuttle across the bed of threads was really impressive. Mohammed gestured for one of us to stand next to the craftsman, inside the loom.
I was first in line, so I did so. As soon as I stepped in, I fell into a spell of amazement at the incredible skill of the man to my right. He smiled good naturedly and even helped me thread a small section of a blanket. Everyone was laughing and smiling, enjoying the chance to have found such a random, unique experience not a half hour after getting off of the bus. When the demonstration was over we headed back downstairs. That's when all the little (OK, fine, blatantly obvious in hindsight) hints clicked: I saw a tray of mint tea, the beverage of hospitality and business negotiations, sitting on the small table in the middle of the room. As we were ushered to our seats, the shop owner opened with his well-rehearsed sales pitch, being sure to include those golden buzzwords for American tourists: "heritage", "cooperative", "artisan", "hand-crafted". At presentations end, I told Mohammed that I was not interested in buying anything, as did Steph, the one girl in our group. Mohammed played his role as the good cop perfectly, stating that that was not a problem at all. Every time the carpet seller's offer grew to persistent or expensive, Mohammed would do us the "favor" of having him reduce the price for "the students". The shop-owners air was always graceful and accomodating, but there was an unmistakeable undercurrent of less generous sentiments that I couldn't quite put my finger on. This was a well-orchestrated game that had clearly been well practiced for many years. I took solitude in knowing that Mick Jagger probably did the same song and dance at least once in his time in Morocco. The last two members of our group finally bargained two scarves down to an only slightly inflated price, and we finally escaped from the shop.
After a fine meal of delicious apricot almond beef tagine (a cooking method for meat involving a special type of clay pot), and a short walk around the town square, we headed down to the bus station in order to buy our return tickets to Tangiers. When we got there, we found to our dismay that the CTM office was closed, and all that remained in terms of transportation companies was the one housed in a tiny closet, presided over by a greasy, skinny man sitting behind a desk crowded with stacks of papers. I walked up to him, opening my questioning in Spanish. In Morocco, that's a preservation mechanism; if you open in English, you're usually asking to be taken advantage of. I asked him how much the tickets would be for the 7PM bus back to Tangiers. He told me that it would be 55 dirhams, but I had anticipated his bald faced lie. Before I started talking with him, I had studied the sheet on the wall to my left that detailed the exact prices to be charged for each route. Our tickets should have been 36 dirhams. When I confronted him with this information, he barely flinched: "It's a supplement. You have to have a supplement." I asked him why in a patient tone that belied my anger. His only response was "It's a supplement. You have to have a supplement." He was running the only show in town, and he knew that he had us at his mercy. We would have to get a far more expensive taxi back to Tangiers if we weren't going to play his game. Just wanting to be home at this point, we decided to ante up with the extra dirhams and buy our tickets.During our time waiting for the bus, the question came up as to if this sort of small scale price scamming was OK on the part of third world inhabitants at the expense of first world travelers. On one hand, it was stealing, plain and simple. On the other, what was being taken was a pittance. I wouldn't want for food should I find myself with 20 less dirhams. Maybe some of these people, or their families, would. But could an unethical act like this be defensible merely on the grounds that it wasn't too much of a bother to those being robbed? It had certainly felt like a bother, all the calculating gazes and clear grafts that we had run into today, all the times we'd been played. Maybe it wasn't just the money involved, it was the sense that one was being used, lied to, tricked, like some object of amusement and financial gain. One person in our group opined that it was just something to be accepted: you were going to pay the unspoken "tourist tax" no matter what, so why not just factor it into your budget, and go on enjoying your trip? It was a reasonable suggestion, but the string of recent scams made it a bitter pill to swallow.
Two hours later, when the bus finally arrived at the bus lot, we quickly moved to the doors to board. We grabbed chairs near several groups of older, quieter looking people, having learned our lesson earlier that day. Just as the bus was about to leave, a group of twenty year old men boarded the bus. They were carrying drums. I turned to Steph and our eyes opened wide, bracing for part two of the Tangiers-Chefchaouen traveling circus. Our friends did no disappoint. They banged their drums vigorously and without any sense of rhythm, and slurred drunken chants in Arabic, interspersed with awkwardly out of place lines from famous American rap songs. If you've read T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", then perhaps I can accurately communicate to you the unfortunate nature of the situation. Think of the fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", and you'll get a pretty good grasp of what it was like being on that bus: noise without music, no respite, no release.
In an attempt to drown out the waves of sound emanating from the backseat denizens behind me, I began talking with Steph about a concept that I had recently thought of: the home meter. It was actually a unit of measurement. Distance wasn't the qualifier, but instead a decreasing sense of feeling at home in each successive place farther away from home. For example, at that point in time, we were in Chefchaouen, which was a trip away from Tangiers, our base for the weekend, which was a trip away from Madrid, our home for the quarter, which was a transatlantic flight away from Stanford or Chicago. That would mean that I was three home-meters away at that point in time. As our discussion continued, the bus barreled along towards Tangiers, doing its best to decrease our home meter counts to 2.
We got back to the hotel, exhausted, half-deaf, and tired beyond measure. After a long day of financial hooliganism, we could finally just sit in peace in our hotel room, and find sanctuary enjoying the good-natured banter in "Wedding Crashers" between Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson as they talked together on the sea shore. The sound of the waves behind them was tranquil and rhythmic, their voices low, but assured. Pretty soon one of the guys in our group was asleep, snoring peacefully. I sat there on the bed in room 315, and savored the quiet. On my bedside table were a pair of five dirham coins. I picked one of them up and examined it silently. Was it worth getting riled up over this? This was a vacation, after all. Money gets spent, but that's just part of the deal. The important things to focus on are, and always have been, the hours on the terraces at Cafe Hafa and all the other hours and minutes and moments like them.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Madrid on the Cheap
NOTE: I apologize for not having posted in over a week and a half. I'll just attribute it to laziness and leave it at that. There will be at least three new posts this week, including this one.
So, you've just flown into Barajas and grabbed the Metro to Sol. You're standing there, hungry, sober, and ready to have some fun. But what's this? You're a poor college student? Never fear. With this personally, um...researched...guide, you'll be able to have a grand old time in Madrid. The location for each place is in parentheses, stating the closest Metro stop.
Food and Drink
El Museo de Jamon (Various, Sol) - This chain has roughly five locations in Old Madrid, the most visible of these being on Calle Mayor one block southwest of Puerta del Sol, the city's zero point and center. They have ham sandwiches on fresh baked bread for 1 euro. Ask for a "bocadillo de jamon" or three, and then go munch on them as you walk around the bustling streets that surround this, the tastiest museum in Madrid.
Cien Montaditos (Various, Gran Via, Opera, Atocha) - Another chain with many locations across Spain, mostly concentrated in Madrid. The one located just north of the Opera house has a wonderful view of Plaza de Oriente and the Palacio Real, and the one in Gran Via lets you watch the afternoon crowds migrate from Gran Via (literally, Broadway) to Sol. They specialize in tiny 4 inch sandwiches on mini-french bread rolls, filled with every combination of ingredient imaginable. Every Wednesday, every sandwich and drink on the menu is 1 euro. That includes 1 liter "jarras" of beer, clara (beer and lemon soda), and tinto de verano (red wine and lemon soda). Literally every single Wednesday that we've been in Madrid, a huge contingent of the Stanford in Madrid folks have made the pilgrimage to Montaditos to satisfy those late-afternoon cravings.
El Tigre (Gran Via or Chueca) - This is the best bar for your money in the city. Entire nights have been saved by "El Tigre's" incredible deals. For 6 Euros, you can get a 1.5 liter mojito (blindingly strong if you're a girl and you flirt with the barmen) and a full plate piled high with one of the better collections of tapas available in Madrid, typically croquetas (fried mashed potato dumplings), ham/chorizo on bread, tortilla espanola (a thick egg, potato, and onion omelette), and rings of breaded calamares (squid). El Tigre fills up at 10 PM every day of the week, and by midnight, there's hardly any room to move around inside. The crowd is a wonderful mix of Madrilenos and abroad students, as word has spread around the city praising the virtue of this tiny tavern just off the main drag. To get there, walk east from the Gran Via Metro stop and turn left on Calle de Hortaleza, then take a right on Calle de la Infanta, or walk south from the Chueca Metro stop until Calle de la Infanta and take a right. Additionally, make sure to talk with the Brazilian bouncer that works the front door most nights; not only is he a third-dan black belt in jiu-jitsu, but he also happens to be a really nice guy.
Fun
Walk Around! (Everywhere) - I cannot emphasize this enough: Madrid, especially the Old City, is meant to be walked. The sheer number of amazing monuments, plazas, and buildings that you'll find within a mile of Puerta del Sol is incredible, from the softly lit green and red glow of the Tio Pepe sign high above Sol to the Austrian architecture that surrounds Plaza Mayor, to the playground in Plaza de Oriente that has a breathtaking view of the Palacio Real. The Metro might get you from place to place more quickly, but then you miss all the sights above ground. Treat yourself, then, to a self-guided walking tour, as roundabout as it may be, around one of the best walking cities in Europe.
Get Your Art On: El Prado and La Reina Sofia (Banco de Espana, Atocha) - If you were making a list of some of the finest collections of art on the face of this earth, then Madrid would definitely merit serious consideration. El Museo de Prado holds an impressive collection of works by old Spanish masters such as Velazquez and Goya, as well as a slew of other extremely recognizable and famous works including Fra Angelico's "The Annutiation" (which I guarantee you've seen on the front of a Christmas card...) and Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights". If you go from 6PM to 8PM any day of the week or 5PM to 8PM on Sunday, you don't have to pony up the euros to get in. If you get there a little early for the free admission period, there's a gently sloped hill by the east entrance that's perfect for a quick siesta under the sun, usually accompanied by the sounds of a man making his way through beautiful Flamenco pieces on his acoustic guitar. If your tastes in art tend towards more recent work, then you'll want to head a bit further south on Paseo del Prado, onward to La Reina Sofia, Madrid's modern art museum. The imposing exterior facade of the building makes it look like a prison, granted, but it's definitely worth your while to weather the unsettling first impression and head on inside. There you'll find the most famous piece of Spanish artwork, period: Picasso's "Guernica". This gigantic (11.5 by 25.5 feet) painting depicts the 1937 bombing of a town in northern Spain during the Spanish civil war. This work was Picasso's attempt to render war in all of its ugliness and naked horror, and, as it's lasting importance and fame suggests, he obviously was onto something when he painted this jarring and fragmented nightmare. In addition to this, there are many other works by Picasso, Dali, and Miro. From 7PM to 9PM on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, 2:30PM to 9PM on Saturday, and 10AM to 2:30 PM on Sunday, you can enter free of charge.
El Templo de Debod (Plaza de Espana) - In the early 1960s, the construction of the Aswan Damn in Egypt gravely threatened existing ruins downriver, so Spain joined an international effort to prevent damage to these priceless archeological treasures. To thank Spain for its aid at such a key juncture, Egypt donated the Templo de Debod to Spain in 1968, and it was reassembled piece by piece in Parque del Oeste, just north of the Palacio Real, in Madrid. Parque del Oeste is located on the western edge of Old Madrid, and to its west, steep cliffs drop off into the Campo del Moro below. As a result, there is a largely unobstructed view of the western sky from the Parque del Oeste and the Templo de Debod, which makes this the premier spot in the whole city for watching the sun set. As the sun slowly descends, the park is aglow in gentle orange light and the sky turns various shades of pink and purple, as you can see in the photo above. The Templo at night is truly a sight to behold, and you don't have to pay a penny to admire these transplanted ancient treasures rising up from a tranquil reflecting pool, basked in the rays from the falling sun. And best of all, here in Madrid you don't have to ask the pharaoh to make sure the sun comes back up the next day.
Los
Jardines de Buen Retiro (Retiro) - New York City has Central Park, Chicago has Grant Park, and Madrid has El Retiro, a public park that sprawls across 350 square acres of the eastern portion of the city center. Aptly named the "lungs of Madrid" for the immense quantity and variety of trees that reside on its grounds, El Retiro is one of the Sunday morning destination for Madrilenos of every age. While there, people grab a bench to pleasure read, sit in the shade for a picnic with friends, or go for a brisk jog down El Paseo de Estatuas (a long avenue flanked by statues of famous dead people) or along miles of other paths that snake across the park. If you're feeling a bit more adventurous, head on over to the Estanque del Retiro, a huge pond where you can rent boats for a lazily time floating underneath the weekend sun.
I hope that you've found something that suits your fancy in this admittedly abbreviated guide. I'll be doing similar articles later this summer for Rome, Florence, Venice, Dubrovnik, and Istanbul. Hasta luego!
So, you've just flown into Barajas and grabbed the Metro to Sol. You're standing there, hungry, sober, and ready to have some fun. But what's this? You're a poor college student? Never fear. With this personally, um...researched...guide, you'll be able to have a grand old time in Madrid. The location for each place is in parentheses, stating the closest Metro stop.
Food and Drink
El Museo de Jamon (Various, Sol) - This chain has roughly five locations in Old Madrid, the most visible of these being on Calle Mayor one block southwest of Puerta del Sol, the city's zero point and center. They have ham sandwiches on fresh baked bread for 1 euro. Ask for a "bocadillo de jamon" or three, and then go munch on them as you walk around the bustling streets that surround this, the tastiest museum in Madrid.Cien Montaditos (Various, Gran Via, Opera, Atocha) - Another chain with many locations across Spain, mostly concentrated in Madrid. The one located just north of the Opera house has a wonderful view of Plaza de Oriente and the Palacio Real, and the one in Gran Via lets you watch the afternoon crowds migrate from Gran Via (literally, Broadway) to Sol. They specialize in tiny 4 inch sandwiches on mini-french bread rolls, filled with every combination of ingredient imaginable. Every Wednesday, every sandwich and drink on the menu is 1 euro. That includes 1 liter "jarras" of beer, clara (beer and lemon soda), and tinto de verano (red wine and lemon soda). Literally every single Wednesday that we've been in Madrid, a huge contingent of the Stanford in Madrid folks have made the pilgrimage to Montaditos to satisfy those late-afternoon cravings.
El Tigre (Gran Via or Chueca) - This is the best bar for your money in the city. Entire nights have been saved by "El Tigre's" incredible deals. For 6 Euros, you can get a 1.5 liter mojito (blindingly strong if you're a girl and you flirt with the barmen) and a full plate piled high with one of the better collections of tapas available in Madrid, typically croquetas (fried mashed potato dumplings), ham/chorizo on bread, tortilla espanola (a thick egg, potato, and onion omelette), and rings of breaded calamares (squid). El Tigre fills up at 10 PM every day of the week, and by midnight, there's hardly any room to move around inside. The crowd is a wonderful mix of Madrilenos and abroad students, as word has spread around the city praising the virtue of this tiny tavern just off the main drag. To get there, walk east from the Gran Via Metro stop and turn left on Calle de Hortaleza, then take a right on Calle de la Infanta, or walk south from the Chueca Metro stop until Calle de la Infanta and take a right. Additionally, make sure to talk with the Brazilian bouncer that works the front door most nights; not only is he a third-dan black belt in jiu-jitsu, but he also happens to be a really nice guy.Fun
Walk Around! (Everywhere) - I cannot emphasize this enough: Madrid, especially the Old City, is meant to be walked. The sheer number of amazing monuments, plazas, and buildings that you'll find within a mile of Puerta del Sol is incredible, from the softly lit green and red glow of the Tio Pepe sign high above Sol to the Austrian architecture that surrounds Plaza Mayor, to the playground in Plaza de Oriente that has a breathtaking view of the Palacio Real. The Metro might get you from place to place more quickly, but then you miss all the sights above ground. Treat yourself, then, to a self-guided walking tour, as roundabout as it may be, around one of the best walking cities in Europe.
Get Your Art On: El Prado and La Reina Sofia (Banco de Espana, Atocha) - If you were making a list of some of the finest collections of art on the face of this earth, then Madrid would definitely merit serious consideration. El Museo de Prado holds an impressive collection of works by old Spanish masters such as Velazquez and Goya, as well as a slew of other extremely recognizable and famous works including Fra Angelico's "The Annutiation" (which I guarantee you've seen on the front of a Christmas card...) and Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights". If you go from 6PM to 8PM any day of the week or 5PM to 8PM on Sunday, you don't have to pony up the euros to get in. If you get there a little early for the free admission period, there's a gently sloped hill by the east entrance that's perfect for a quick siesta under the sun, usually accompanied by the sounds of a man making his way through beautiful Flamenco pieces on his acoustic guitar. If your tastes in art tend towards more recent work, then you'll want to head a bit further south on Paseo del Prado, onward to La Reina Sofia, Madrid's modern art museum. The imposing exterior facade of the building makes it look like a prison, granted, but it's definitely worth your while to weather the unsettling first impression and head on inside. There you'll find the most famous piece of Spanish artwork, period: Picasso's "Guernica". This gigantic (11.5 by 25.5 feet) painting depicts the 1937 bombing of a town in northern Spain during the Spanish civil war. This work was Picasso's attempt to render war in all of its ugliness and naked horror, and, as it's lasting importance and fame suggests, he obviously was onto something when he painted this jarring and fragmented nightmare. In addition to this, there are many other works by Picasso, Dali, and Miro. From 7PM to 9PM on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, 2:30PM to 9PM on Saturday, and 10AM to 2:30 PM on Sunday, you can enter free of charge.
El Templo de Debod (Plaza de Espana) - In the early 1960s, the construction of the Aswan Damn in Egypt gravely threatened existing ruins downriver, so Spain joined an international effort to prevent damage to these priceless archeological treasures. To thank Spain for its aid at such a key juncture, Egypt donated the Templo de Debod to Spain in 1968, and it was reassembled piece by piece in Parque del Oeste, just north of the Palacio Real, in Madrid. Parque del Oeste is located on the western edge of Old Madrid, and to its west, steep cliffs drop off into the Campo del Moro below. As a result, there is a largely unobstructed view of the western sky from the Parque del Oeste and the Templo de Debod, which makes this the premier spot in the whole city for watching the sun set. As the sun slowly descends, the park is aglow in gentle orange light and the sky turns various shades of pink and purple, as you can see in the photo above. The Templo at night is truly a sight to behold, and you don't have to pay a penny to admire these transplanted ancient treasures rising up from a tranquil reflecting pool, basked in the rays from the falling sun. And best of all, here in Madrid you don't have to ask the pharaoh to make sure the sun comes back up the next day.Los
Jardines de Buen Retiro (Retiro) - New York City has Central Park, Chicago has Grant Park, and Madrid has El Retiro, a public park that sprawls across 350 square acres of the eastern portion of the city center. Aptly named the "lungs of Madrid" for the immense quantity and variety of trees that reside on its grounds, El Retiro is one of the Sunday morning destination for Madrilenos of every age. While there, people grab a bench to pleasure read, sit in the shade for a picnic with friends, or go for a brisk jog down El Paseo de Estatuas (a long avenue flanked by statues of famous dead people) or along miles of other paths that snake across the park. If you're feeling a bit more adventurous, head on over to the Estanque del Retiro, a huge pond where you can rent boats for a lazily time floating underneath the weekend sun.I hope that you've found something that suits your fancy in this admittedly abbreviated guide. I'll be doing similar articles later this summer for Rome, Florence, Venice, Dubrovnik, and Istanbul. Hasta luego!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
1001 Minus 997 Nights - Prelude and Stave the First
Prelude
It's 3 PM, local time, on Monday, May 10, 2010. My flight out of Ibn Battouta International Airport has been canceled by a natural disaster, and I'm flat out of dirhams. Why can't I still be munching on olives? And more importantly, how am I supposed to get home on time?
Stave the First - Another World
It all started out innocuously enough. We boarded our Ryanair flight bound for the northern Moroccan coastal city of Tangiers on Friday, settling comfortably into the exit row seats to take advantage of the extra leg room that they provided. My friend Nick and I's seatmate, a long-haired, environmental educator from Colorado named Andrew, spent most of the flight talking with us about our various adventures in California and our plans for the weekend. Hunger kicked in about midway through the flight, amd I succumbed to the $4 pringles being offered by Ryanair, devouring them ravenously during a rather jarring landing onto Moroccan soil. We disembarked directly onto the tarmac, descending the exterior stairs off of the plane as hot gusts of wind barreled across the airstrip, giving all of us that tastefully disheveled hair that is prone to happen under such conditions. All we needed were sunglasses and some stern looking bodyguards, and we'd be well on our way to VIP status. Our group, which consisted of Nick, Alexei, Stef, and I passed through customs along with Andrew, his brother Joe, and his sister Sarah. It turned out that they hadn’t arranged a place to stay, so they decided to follow us to the Hotel Continental, were we would be staying the weekend.
We went out in front of the airport to the area where all the taxis were lined up. A sign clearly displayed the rates charged to arrive at a certain destination, so we confidently marched up to the waiting drivers. I began in Spanish, betting that I would have better luck than resorting immediately to English. This driver would have none of it. He offered a price that was 1.5 times the listed price, and would not budge one inch. Even though we all knew that we were being gypped (a recurring theme for the rest of our trip), we were eager to just get to the hotel. We agreed to the inflated price, which still worked out to less than 15 euros, and started the drive into Tangiers. The airport is located on the outskirts of town, and all you can see for miles around it is a dry expanse of windswept shrub-land. However, as we neared Tangiers, dusty tracts of soil gave way to dozens of unfinished concrete buildings. Some of them had signs stating that construction had begun in 1995, yet there they lay, skeletons rising a hundred feet above the crowded arteries heading downtown. After visits to several large cities in the developing world, including Guatemala City, Managua, and Tangiers, I'm struck by the lack of glass and steel in the built environment, something that we take for granted in the United States. Civil engineering related musings aside, five minutes later we arrived at the sea wall by the port. Just as we stepped out of the cab, we were accosted by the first of many touts (fake guides who give unrequested tours and then expect payment at tour's end) that we would encounter during the course of weekend. Even as we waved him away in three different languages, he followed us all the way to the the Hotel Continental. We had to enter the building to finally lose him. We checked in at the front desk, taking in all the details of this favorite haunt of Kerouac, Burroughs, and Francis Ford Coppola. As intricate and beautiful as certain elements of the interior were, ripe with murals and beautiful Arab-styled sitting rooms, there was definitely something about the ambiance that suggested a glory-filled past that had now faded into a languishing present, all the while keeping watch over the bustling port from the cliffs above. As we settled into our rooms, the minarets' evening call to prayer echoed in through our open windows. There was absolutely no mistaking that we were no longer in Spain.
After a fruitless direction-getting experience at the front desk of the hotel, we decided to just head out to explore the Medina (old town). Incredibly, the guide that had followed us there was waiting for us outside of the hotel, almost an hour later! We quickly ditched him and headed out past the hotel gates. Fortunately for the directionally challenged, in the Medina, one can always arrive at the Hotel Continental or the beach by walking downhill, so it was a simple matter of trekking uphill to ensure that we made our way into the heart of the Medina. We passed by a slew of clothing stores, currency exchanges, diseased alley cats (one of which literally was curling up to die in the middle of the road), honking motorcarts, hijab-wearing women, tacky souvenir stores, and cafes. All of these cafes were filled with men enjoying a mint tea, facing outwards towards the street. Clearly, the whole institution is set up to facilitate conversation and people watching, and we would learn over the course of the weekend that this "Moroccan whiskey", as they call mint tea, is a beverage of extreme importance in Morocco. We stopped at a random cafe and went inside for our first drinks in the land of dirhams, and for the price of a tinto de verano in Madrid, we got two glasses of incredibly delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice and two shots of some pretty serious espresso. We toasted our safe arrival in Tangiers, before heading back out into the grimy streets to continue exploring our new surrounding. Several blocks later, we stumbled into an enclosed market with stands filled with fresh fruit, freshly-killed chickens, and, most importantly, mountains and mountains of olives of every variety under the sun. We stopped at the first olive stall and asked for a mixed bag of olives, which the cashier happily shook together for us. In one of the first of many adventures in language this weekend, marked by a mish-mash of varying fluidity composed of English, Spanish, French, and Arabic, we thanked him for carrying such amazing produce. That's actually a lie; all we did was stick some of the olives in our mouths and grin like idiots as we enjoyed their meaty, garlicky deliciousness. Knowing that it would come in handy, Nick somehow asked the shopkeeper how to say "thank you" in Arabic, and thus, we learned shukran. Already having sampled two stores' worth of Moroccan munchies, we barely made it another block before the smell of fresh baked pan au chocolat lured us into a boulangerie. For just 2 dirham (the equivalent of roughly a US quarter), one could enjoy a warm, flaky chocolate filled crossaint. In the name of cultural immersion, I ate three of them in as many minutes. More than content, we left the bakery and continued to munch on our olives as we made our way back down the hill that descends to the sea, the way before us drenched in the smells of nearby spice shops. Never before have I seen such piles of freshly ground turmeric, cayenne, cumin, cinnamon bark, nutmeg, and anise, all combining to yield a dizzying bouquet of smells so potent that in my rapturous enjoyment of this olfactory delight, I was almost run over by a taxicab.
I had read earlier online that every evening, groups of Tangerines (yes, that is what you call residents from Tangiers, and yes, I did see a Tangerine eating a Tangerine) head down to the beach to play fútbol. In hopes of finding a game to join, I walked down to the seaside, only to be greeted by sand that looked like something out of a desert, undulating gently out to the port on the western horizon. The first game that I approached was a no-go, despite the fact that I used the near universal gesture for kicking a football in an attempt to communicate my desire to play. Not easily deterred, I went up to another group and asked in Spanish if they would allow me to join them. The third guy in their group spoke Spanish, and he smilingly assented to my request. Lacking anything better, they all called me "Español" as I dropped right into the fray. As I ran in my blue-jeans up and down the shore, splashing through waves, and shifting back to defense on the sand, I made a mental note to enjoy the simple pleasure that I was so lucky to be experiencing. Here I was, in a country where I didn't speak the language, playing a game of pickup with a group of guys that I had never met before, having the time of my life. We were taking part in a ritual that knows no boundaries on this earth; we pushed up field, traded passes, and set up one goal after another. Through it all the evening sun was setting in the distance, its waning rays lighting up the skyline with a warm orange glow.
Tired, sweaty, and smiling like the proverbial kid on Christmas, I rejoined the group for the walk back to the Medina. We were making our way down the beachfront boulevard when we happened upon a boiled snail stand being run out of the bed of a pickup truck. This man had two immense pots filled to the brim, one with fresh-out-of-the-pot snails, and the other with discarded shells. It was like sunflower seeds, except for the fact that instead of a kernel there was a deceased gastropod. Sensing our interest, the patron of the stand handed us a small bowl with four boiled snails, accompanied with an ebullient and soul-warming spiced broth that I imagine would ward of the combined effect of a dementor attack, a failed midterm, and a hangover. Tentatively at first, then with the gusto owed such a culinary treat, we extracted the juicy bits of meat from the shells with toothpicks. And yes, they did taste like chicken. As we finished, we moved to pay the man for such a wonderful treat, but in a simple, graceful gesture, he moved his hand to his heart and bowed his head slightly, refusing to accept any payment. We might not have had spoken language to understand one another, but such magnanimity transcends verbal communication.
As we made our way back up the hill to the Medina at dark we had a chuckle as we passed a hotel named "Pension de Detroit", and snagged a date or two from a stand on the way. The substantial medjools did not disappoint, as they joined the growing menu that we had been accumulating in our constant grazing. We wandered for a bit through the warren-like alleyways of the Medina when a man emerged from a nook and started telling us about his restaurant, which he repeated again and again as being featured in “The Planet” (likely Lonely Planet, and his restaurant, who's name I never caught, is likely Restaurant Le Kasbah). When we initially declined his offer, he started complaining about the "paranoia" that Americans appear to exhibit in their serial mistrust of anyone who offers them anything here. He very well may have a point, what with all of us tourists reading the same guide books, all of which state not to trust any Moroccan man who approaches you with an offer on the street. This is not the only handicapping effect produced by tourist guide books; another more troubling one is the tendency to mistrust or avoid any place not listed in the guide book, all out of fear or lack of knowledge. I know that there were times when our group passed by a cafe, disqualifying it solely on the grounds that it "wasn't in the guide". It was an automatic behavior, one that needed to be constantly checked in order to ever take a chance on a new place. As much wonder as there is in finding a recommended place in all its celebrated glory, there is obviously the intoxicating thrill of unearthing the proverbial diamond in the rough. All these thoughts in mind, we finally decided to go back to his restaurant and give it a try. We enjoyed a fixed price menu composed of harira (oily, thick Moroccan soup), vegetable and chicken tagine, pastilla (a triangular pastry filled with curried chicken and covered with cinnamon and powdered sugar), and of course, those little balls of semolina, couscous. We closed our meal with some unrelentingly sweet mint tea, accompanied by Andrew, Joe, and Sara, who had ended up at the same restaurant that evening. We exchanged stories of that day's adventures, then rolled back to the hotel in a pack of seven, full, happy, and ready for a well earned night of rest.
To see how the rest of the adventure unfolds, tune in again for Stave the Second - Dirhams, Nickels, and Dimes. Coming soon...
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Iron Man 2
*All of you readers stateside are surely aware that Iron Man 2 debuts this coming Friday, May 7. Through some stroke of luck, those of us across the pond were blessed by the fact that it opened here the Friday before, on April 30. Sure enough, I could not resist the allure of seeing it before my brother could; what follows is a review of Old Shellhead's second go-round. :D
SPOILERS AHEAD! DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS!
Batman Begins was good; The Dark Knight was downright great. So too with Terminator and T2, Alien and Aliens, and Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. It would appear that the trick to avoiding the much dreaded sequel syndrome is to either make a comic book movie or to have James Cameron take over directing duties. Even though Jon Favreau is helming this flick instead of Mr. Avatar, Iron Man 2 ought to be fantastic according to this line of thought, seeing as how Iron Man was one of the best comic book movies ever.
Well, it's good. It's just not great. There were moments throughout the film that had me laughing out loud, pumping my fist, or attempting in vain to prevent from going into a full-blown nerdgasm. However, for all it's snappy dialogue, satisfying action sequences, and downright awesome pieces of fan-service to all the Marvel-ites out there, Iron Man 2 ultimately fails to deliver on its potential. The result is hardly anything to scoff at it, it just never reaches the heights to which its predecessor soared.
The film opens in a dingy Moscow apartment in the dead of winter, where we find Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke, seething Russian through a grill that would put Flavor Flav to shame) tending to his dying father as he watches Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) proclaiming to the world that he is indeed Iron Man. When his father passes away, Vanko does what any self respecting Russian antagonists would do: he drinks a swig of vodka and then builds a super-weapon in five minutes. I don't know about you, but it just feels like there are far too many geniuses in the Marvel universe, all of whom seem to know high level particle physics, astronomical amounts of electrical engineering, and the ins and out of welding, soldering, and "hacking". In my time in college I've only met one guy that has that kind of knowledge (see CM 305, right side), but he's far more interested in listening to really great classic rock than he is in becoming a super-villain. At least that's my hope.
Anyways, over the next half-hour, scribe Justin Theroux fills in the plot and motivations. Apparently, Ivan and Tony's dads were both involved in the creation of the original arc reactor technology, which Tony recreated on a miniaturized scale in the first movie to save his life and become Iron Man. Vanko Sr. decided he wanted to profit from the invention, Stark Sr. said no, Vanko Sr. got deported to Siberia, Vanko Jr. blames Stark Sr. for the death of Vanko Sr., so Vanko Jr. wants to destroy Stark Jr. Clear as day, no?
It's a passable story, but it's not what draws us in. That honor would go instead to the wonderful performances by just about every actor in a major role in this film. Downey Jr. gives a two-hour symposium on why he was born to play Tony Stark, blending ultra fast mumbling, unabashed self-involvement, and winning vulnerability to great effect. Where Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne avoids the spotlight at all costs, Tony absolutely relishes it. If there were to ever be a billionaire playboy superhero, I would place even money on him acting exactly how Stark does. Even though the script puts him in the same situation as he was in the first movie, ie build something to keep himself alive, Downey imparts the role with just as much gusto as before, hitting every note on the register as he jumps from hilarious neuroticism straight to self-assured heroics. His quest to save the world is aided by Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), his confidant and assistant, who manages to balance being flustered by Stark's pre-teen behavior with tough-as-nails love that keeps our crimson and gold crusader on the right track. When Potts is elevated to Stark Enterprises CEO, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) steps in as Tony's personal assitant. She's actually a spy for SHIELD, an international intelligence organization run by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson in a role that's unnecessary for the movie), and Romanoff is the star of the show. She absolutely exudes poise, her reserved demeanor belying the explosive ability and searing sexuality lurking just beneath the surface. Every scene that's she's in is an absolute treat, each of her lines coming out in a clipped, efficient cadence that's insanely attractive. All of this is to not even mention that she has the best action scene that a Marvel character has had since Nightcrawler made a mockery of the White House's security team back in X-Men 2.
As the movie continues, we're introduced to Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a seedy industrialist who is clearly used to playing second fiddle to Tony in every department. He's just a little shorter, a little less at ease, and a lot skeazier. Hammer teams with Vanko after watching Ivan humiliate Tony Stark on the streets of Monaco during a Formula 1 race, all in an attempt to vindicate his own inadequacy by destroying everything that Tony has built. Rockwell's over the top embrace of his character's inferiority complex makes his scenes great fun to watch, as he does everything he can to tighten the vice on Tony. The movie even explores penis envy with Stark and Hammer artillery as proxies; you'll know the scene I'm talking about when you see it.
Rounding out the big players is Rhodey (Don Cheadle), Stark's air force colonel buddy. Tasked with making sure that Tony stay in check, Rhodey eventually comes by an older edition of the Iron Man suit. Hammer pimps it out for a military showcase at Stark's Expo, and, predictably, it's really good at blowing shit up. The addition of War Machine was nice as fan service, but was not integral to the movie's plot. Two other famous Marvelites makes tangential appearances in the film, as we're treated to a view of Mjolnir in a New Mexico crater and a certain shield being used as a paperweight. Come 2012, when the Avengers movie debuts, I'm sure we'll see more from these two characters.
Though I rail against his inclusion, there is, admittedly, one absolutely gorgeous shot with Iron Man and War Machine standing back to back on the side of a terraced hill, cherry blossom petals swirling around them like some Japanese revenge flick. The camera pans out to show the impending danger advancing on their position, pausing for one perfect moment, where all is still save for the gently falling petals. Predictably, it is at this moment that all hell breaks loose, and the movie regains its breakneck pace.
Another one of the movie's finest shots comes when Vanko is initally making his way onto the track at Monaco in an attempt to kill Stark. Having constructed an arc-reactor powered exoskeleton complete with plasma charged bullwhips, Vanko turns the device on as he lumbers menacingly onto the fairway. The searing heat from the plasma ignites the jacket that he's wearing over the device, and the fabric bursts into flames right on his back. Vanko doesn't even pause as his bad-ass meter soars skyward.
Despite all these positive aspects, the movie admittedly suffers merely from having to stand in the shadow of the nearly perfect original Iron Man movie. The hefty emotional resonance of a broken man working to make the best of his second chance at a decent life is difficult to match, though Downey musters everything he can in an ultimately vain attempt to recapture that pureness of sentiment. In the middle of the movie, Tony is looking through his father's work for clues on an undiscovered element. After hours of puzzling over the challenge, he finally has a breakthrough upon seeing a certain physical model that his father built 30 years ago. As he quickly pieces together the message that his father hid for him to one day discover, he laughs to himself, saying, "Dead 20 years and he's still taking me to school." Though the heir may succeed in its own right, it is still ultimately measured against the standard set by its predecessor. As with Tony, so too with Iron Man 2.
Final Rating - 3 Stars out of 4 Possible
Monday, May 3, 2010
On Saturn and Tea Parties
Nom nom nom. Beef jerky.Actually, that's Saturn. And he's eating one of his sons. According to the legend, Saturn ate each of his sons as they were born in order to prevent a prophecy that declared that one would one day grow up to succeed him. As luck would have it, his wife Ops hid Jupiter, her sixth son, who went on to complete the prophecy.
In this painting, Saturn is the stark naked ravages of old age, the violent manifestation of the quiet realization that you are no longer in control. Each bite that he takes is an act of fruitless defiance against the inevitable passing of time, an attempt to destroy the reality of tomorrow to preserve the dream of yesterday. In this sense, Saturn is the Tea Party Movement. I'm not saying that Tea Partiers are child-eating cannibals; I'll leave that segment to the folks at MSNBC, when the need to air something fun during sweeps. My point is that the fear of change consumes both Saturn and Tea Partiers.
But first, a little context. The Spanish painter Francisco Goya originally painted this work directly onto one of the dining room walls of his house outside of Madrid. This and the rest of the paintings on the interior walls of the house make up what are known as his Black Paintings. At that point in his life, Goya was by most accounts cynical and bitter in his old age. He feared the looming possibility of death, or worse yet, the obsolescence of the senility and insanity into which he was slipping. After his death, the painting was scraped of the wall and transferred to canvas. It now rests in a dimly lit room in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Back to our friends with the sachets. A recent demographic survey from CNN found that the Tea Party Movement is predominantly male, white, wealthier than working class, and college educated. In a less than brilliant insight, I believe that those who embrace the Tea Party Movement do so out of fear that they are being "marginalized" by the growing ranks and influence of those who are not "their people" - that is, Latinos, Blacks, and Asians, among others. Throughout American history, our presidents, senators, industry men, writers, and scientists have come almost exclusively from the same background as those who take part in the Tea Party Movement. This type of person has held a privileged place in American society, enjoying a much greater breadth of opportunities than any other group over the same period. To be confronted with a future (ie 2050) where half of the population is not white, the United States is potentially not the world's only superpower, and colleges continue to award to degrees to a diverse cross section of the population is a perfect nightmare for those conservative Tea Party Members who are already uneasy, if not livid, about their diminishing social cachet.
In response to this trend, the members of the Tea Party Movement are "hunkering down" to preserve the world in which they are most comfortable, powerful, and secure, that world being an imaginary past where every man was a self-sustaining dynamo who did everything by himself. In his paper “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”, sociologist Robert Putnam speaks to this short-term “hunkering down” against the perceived threat that racial and socio-economic diversity bring, set against the backdrop of an America where racial diversity is increasing at a rapid pace. It is an entirely natural reaction, if you think about it. One group is accustomed to having things their way, and when another group comes along to compete for resources, frustration, anger, and violence result. You need look no further than SB 1070 in Arizona, the present growth of right-wing militia groups all across America, or an older sibling that throws a tantrum because the younger sibling is receiving the attention that had once been lavished solely upon the first-born. Better yet, you could just look to Saturn, and watch him in his frenzied desire to destroy that which brings tidings of a future, a future that does not include him on center stage.
The sad part is that neither the Tea Party Movement nor Saturn read the rest of Putnam's article. Putnam demonstrates that in communities where racial integration was finally successful, greater economic robustness and levels of intra-community socialization were reported in future years. The force that was initially construed by the standing White community as being a threat over time became a boon, yielding positive results for the community as a whole.
So I say unto you, Tea Partiers, fret not about cultural dilution. If you decide to continue on your anti-big-government bent, then fret instead about out of control defense spending (28 % of ALL US tax revenue for 2010), politicians who avoid dealing with the vertiginous climb of the US national debt (up $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2009, and in total 87% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product), and bank lobbyists that seek to weaken legislation that would help diminish the grossly misaligned incentives currently in place in financial markets in our country. And to you, Saturn, I recommend that you come to Spain. Bring your kids, and you can all have some nice 1 Euro ham sandwiches at El Museo de Jamon. Not only will you save a lot on floss and Tums, but you'll also have the chance to enjoy an afternoon in a wonderful country.
Update: After re-reading this post, I realize that it does not apportion sufficient credit to the role of the 2007-2010 financial crisis in the development of the Tea Party Movement. As unlikely as the situation may be, if there is anyone who would like to read a more thorough take on the rise of the TPM, I would be more than willing to forward a sociology term paper that I wrote on said subject this March. This blog post as it stands only addresses one aspect of what I believe makes the TPM tick, and should not be understood as a catch-all analysis of the TPM as a whole.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The Perpetual Asterisk
I was walking along Gran Via the other day in downtown Madrid when a woman in 6 inch heels and a white miniskirt approached me. "Querido, te quiero," she said, as she slid her hand around to the side of my waist. Her voice was muted, almost bored. There's was no variation in its tone, no subtle inflections. We did not make eye contact.
I was clearly one in a long line of "Querido"s for the day, one of whom would hopefully accept her thinly veiled proposal so that, at least on an economic basis, her day could be considered a success. As I brushed her arm away and continued walking, I noticed 10 or 12 other women decked out in similar attire, either leaning against receded doorways or canvassing the plaza. Sure, they were dressed to the nines, dolled up with layer upon layer of makeup, but there was something unmistakably pathetic about their endeavor. Most people completely ignored them as they went on with their lives, but a small minority cast withering glances in their direction. There was no glib Roy Orbison playing softly in the background, no Ricardo Gere earnestly searching for his pretty woman.
As I kept walking, I walked by a man on the corner who was quietly asking for something, anything, coins, food, water. Most people completely ignored them as they went on with their lives, but a small minority cast withering glances in their direction. A few seconds later I walked by a restaurant with outdoor tables. Two couples had recently finished their meals. I say finished in a loose fashion; they had decided that they had eaten enough, despite the fact that there were whole cuts of pork, a plate full of rice, and olives left untouched. The busboy came along and cleared the plates' contents into a waiting garbage bin. I didn't have the heart to look back at the man on the corner.
Meanwhile, the plaza was filled with crowds of happy tourists and locals alike, congregating there to catch up on last week's gossip or to plan next week's adventures, ignoring the ugly reality that had decided to share that plaza with them. Among the sprawling boulevards, lush parks, and ritzy restaurants of Madrid there's a group of people who's plight society has conveniently decided to place in the proverbial blind spot. And that's the perpetual asterisk*.
This is not some holier than thou rant. This is not a scathing indictment of the people of Madrid. This is not a doom and gloom essay on how humanity is rotten and apathetic and cruel. This is not a guilt trip. This is not an intentional shot at the heartstrings. This is not some piece of flaneur artistry. This is not a reminder that we live in an imperfect world, for such a statement is obvious.
I do not expect you to go home, liquidate all your assets into cash, and donate it all to Oxfam to save thousands of children in Africa that die every day for want of basic necessities. I do not expect you to write your state senator or mayor or president, asking them to ensure adequate nutrition for the 17.3 million Americans in 2008 who had "very low food security" (up 8.8 million from 2000), although that would be nice (USDA, 2008). I do not expect you to move to a monastery in the mountains, learn the arts of the ninja, don a terrifying mask, and return with a vengeance to become the scourge of pimps worldwide, although that would admittedly be a proactive step.
Instead, I am only asking you to do three things:
1) Buy lunch for a homeless person, prostitute, or beggar. You don't have to eat with them if that makes you nervous, but get them a sandwich, a bag of chips, and some fruit or something. They might not accept it, so if this happens, find another person. They might not say thank you, but I'm sure your self-esteem can survive that hit. They might say thank you and start a conversation, in which case you get to have that warm fuzzy feeling and the chance to hear about someone's life. Cost to you: ~$5, 5 minutes of your time.
2) The next time that you are at a restaurant, observe the portion sizes of your neighbors. Order according to your appetite, not just because it's a great deal if I get the ribs and chicken combo with three sides and a bottomless drink. Then, finish everything you ordered, and stop for a moment to savor just how good it feels to be pleasantly full. Cost to you: you save money, < 5 minutes of your time
3) Most of all, resist a defeatist attitude. I know that feeding one person once is not sustainable. I know that it does not fight the entrenched social ill. I know that it's easy to just say, "meh, prostitution is the world's oldest profession, so whatever". I have no delusions of grandeur about the impact this post will have. I do not think that someone will read it, experience a profound change of heart, and go on to become an international campaigner against poverty and oppression. All I ask is that as you continue with you relatively privileged life, you remind yourself as frequently as possible that there's still work to be done, and that you can play a small but noticeable role in fighting the good fight.
-Clay
I was clearly one in a long line of "Querido"s for the day, one of whom would hopefully accept her thinly veiled proposal so that, at least on an economic basis, her day could be considered a success. As I brushed her arm away and continued walking, I noticed 10 or 12 other women decked out in similar attire, either leaning against receded doorways or canvassing the plaza. Sure, they were dressed to the nines, dolled up with layer upon layer of makeup, but there was something unmistakably pathetic about their endeavor. Most people completely ignored them as they went on with their lives, but a small minority cast withering glances in their direction. There was no glib Roy Orbison playing softly in the background, no Ricardo Gere earnestly searching for his pretty woman.
As I kept walking, I walked by a man on the corner who was quietly asking for something, anything, coins, food, water. Most people completely ignored them as they went on with their lives, but a small minority cast withering glances in their direction. A few seconds later I walked by a restaurant with outdoor tables. Two couples had recently finished their meals. I say finished in a loose fashion; they had decided that they had eaten enough, despite the fact that there were whole cuts of pork, a plate full of rice, and olives left untouched. The busboy came along and cleared the plates' contents into a waiting garbage bin. I didn't have the heart to look back at the man on the corner.
Meanwhile, the plaza was filled with crowds of happy tourists and locals alike, congregating there to catch up on last week's gossip or to plan next week's adventures, ignoring the ugly reality that had decided to share that plaza with them. Among the sprawling boulevards, lush parks, and ritzy restaurants of Madrid there's a group of people who's plight society has conveniently decided to place in the proverbial blind spot. And that's the perpetual asterisk*.
This is not some holier than thou rant. This is not a scathing indictment of the people of Madrid. This is not a doom and gloom essay on how humanity is rotten and apathetic and cruel. This is not a guilt trip. This is not an intentional shot at the heartstrings. This is not some piece of flaneur artistry. This is not a reminder that we live in an imperfect world, for such a statement is obvious.
I do not expect you to go home, liquidate all your assets into cash, and donate it all to Oxfam to save thousands of children in Africa that die every day for want of basic necessities. I do not expect you to write your state senator or mayor or president, asking them to ensure adequate nutrition for the 17.3 million Americans in 2008 who had "very low food security" (up 8.8 million from 2000), although that would be nice (USDA, 2008). I do not expect you to move to a monastery in the mountains, learn the arts of the ninja, don a terrifying mask, and return with a vengeance to become the scourge of pimps worldwide, although that would admittedly be a proactive step.
Instead, I am only asking you to do three things:
1) Buy lunch for a homeless person, prostitute, or beggar. You don't have to eat with them if that makes you nervous, but get them a sandwich, a bag of chips, and some fruit or something. They might not accept it, so if this happens, find another person. They might not say thank you, but I'm sure your self-esteem can survive that hit. They might say thank you and start a conversation, in which case you get to have that warm fuzzy feeling and the chance to hear about someone's life. Cost to you: ~$5, 5 minutes of your time.
2) The next time that you are at a restaurant, observe the portion sizes of your neighbors. Order according to your appetite, not just because it's a great deal if I get the ribs and chicken combo with three sides and a bottomless drink. Then, finish everything you ordered, and stop for a moment to savor just how good it feels to be pleasantly full. Cost to you: you save money, < 5 minutes of your time
3) Most of all, resist a defeatist attitude. I know that feeding one person once is not sustainable. I know that it does not fight the entrenched social ill. I know that it's easy to just say, "meh, prostitution is the world's oldest profession, so whatever". I have no delusions of grandeur about the impact this post will have. I do not think that someone will read it, experience a profound change of heart, and go on to become an international campaigner against poverty and oppression. All I ask is that as you continue with you relatively privileged life, you remind yourself as frequently as possible that there's still work to be done, and that you can play a small but noticeable role in fighting the good fight.
-Clay
Sunday, April 18, 2010
FOOD! DRINKS! NAPS! (See? You looked.)
I have taken two two-hour naps a day for the past two weeks. I'll let that detail settle in for a bit.
That additional four hours of sleep a day has not been an entirely voluntary undertaking, a fact that I will freely admit. Every minute of that has been a food coma. At this point, you are likely just a bit jealous, a sentiment that I will likely cultivate for the remainder of this post. If you don't enjoy being told in painstaking detail about a full range of culinary delights, then let this be your fair warning to stop reading. Here goes.
On my way across the Atlantic, I had the good luck of ingesting a spot of poorly concocted jam. Following this, it was my luck for the following four hours to unceremoniously become close friends with the middle water closet on the starboard side of the plane. Upon landing in London, I bought a pair of bananas from Starbucks and snarfed them down in an attempt to ameliorate the discomfort. Inauspicious beginnings to a trip, to say nothing.
Hours later, I found myself seated at a white linen covered table on the second floor of a swanky hotel a block away from Puerta del Sol in Madrid. I had just finished a plate of cannelloni, a plate of broiled chicken and potatoes, and several glasses of wine. The waiters had kindly cleared our plates and presented us with a dessert dish of sliced kiwi. In a run that would have made Bill Murray circa "Groundhog Day" jealous, I and the rest of the Stanford in Madrid crew repeated this type of dining engagement for the next week during our orientation trip through Andalucia in the South of Spain. Every lunch and dinner was a three course engagement, a sizable "salad", followed by a main course, followed by a dessert, all washed down with a bottomless bottle of Spanish red wine.
If that was our introduction to the high end of the Spanish dining experience, then our nightly bar crawls were an education in much more standard Spanish fare. Make no mistake, though; "standard" Spanish fare is anything but boring. Tapas ranging the gamut from piping hot croquetas (mashed potato dumplings of sorts) to spicy and toothsome chorizo (seasoned sausage) to paper thin strips of jamon iberica (Iberian ham) all made there way happily down my gullet over the course of the trip. One night, we were visiting Malaga, a city on the southern Mediterranean coast, on Friday of Holy Week. The city was ripe with processions of great fanfare pertaining to the Christian celebration of Easter, and thousands upon thousands of people filled the streets and bars. After night fell, three of my friends and I stumbled upon a back alley bar, the kind that is fetishized in travelogues as a "diamond in the rough" or a "local haunt"; personally, we were just happy to find a place that had any space inside to spare. We clustered up close to the bar and made merry conversation with an affable bartender who was distributing canas of beer with such speed that one would think that prohibition was due to begin the next day.
In Spanish that was just fast enough to bewilder but just slow enough to befriend, he made joke after joke about the throngs of people that had descended upon the watering hole tonight, often slipping in a bit of unmitigated flirtation aimed at the lone chica in our group. As the rest of us finished our delciously tender rings of lightly breaded calamari (squid), he offered her a free triple shot of vodka, provided that she drink it with no chaser. With gusto befitting someone undertaking a cultural immersion, she christened our entrance into the Spanish culinary life with abandon, only to be quickly beset by a series of coughs at shot's end. The bartender and the rest of the staff bellowed with good-natured laughter, and we all raised our glasses in salutation.
My arrival to my Spanish host family's home was telling. I walked into their fourth floor apartment in the La Latina neighborhood of Madrid, and headed down the hall to find the three of them sitting in the family room. Ofelia, my host mom, introduced herself first, then Aida, her sister, did the same, followed by Gustavo, Ofelia's nephew. Much more on them in a later post. Not two minutes after these introductions, I was seated at their kitchen table with half of a 13 inch in diameter tortilla espanola (an inch thick omelet deal with onions, potatoes, and eggs, this is one of the most emblematic of all Spanish dishes) in front of me. I was told, in cheerful but not uncertain, terms, that this was all mine to eat, and that it would behoove me to do so. More than happy to oblige, I tucked into my meal. I could get used to this, I told myself.
Over the next two weeks, lunch was every day at 2:30 or so, and dinner every day at 9:30 or so. As I mentioned in an earlier post, lunch is the more serious endeavor in Spain, dwarfing dinner in size. My meals over this time period included the following:
Pastel de Patata - an Argentinian dish similar to Shepherd's Pie, with a thick layer of mashed potatoes baked on top of a mixture of ground beef, raisins, onions, peas, carrot, and herbs; my host family is Argentinian, which is extremely fortunate for me, given the sheer variety of food that makes up Argentinian cuisine; the sweetness of the raisins perfectly sets of the smoky richness of the ground beef, all capped off with pillowy fold of potatoes
Merluza - a type of Cod, that's prepared with a heavy breading
Lentils with Spinach and Carrots - rich and hearty for the several rainy days that we've had so far this quarter in Madrid
Pollo a la Portuguesa y Lomo de Puerco a la Portuguesa - these dishes involve a kind of meat cooked in fillet form with a seasoned mixture of peas, carrots, and brown gravy; the meat is well salted and its flavor lights up the surrounding veggies
Seafood Paella and Vegetable Paella - this typical and celebrated Spanish dish originated on the Valencian coast; it involves saffron seasoned rice (which turns the rice bright yellow) which is cooked in a delicious broth mixed with various types of mariscos (seafood), meats, and vegetables; Ofelia and Aida always make it on Sundays
Pan Tumac - a spectacularly simple and delicious sandwich originating in Catalonia, a region in the north-east of Spain that fiercely defends its linguistic and cultural heritage; consists of horizontally sliced, fresh baguette filled with slices of jamon, fresh tomatoes, and a drizzling of Spanish olive oil; the flavors mingle perfectly every time
Pastel de Choclo - a dish that Ofelia claims is Uruguayan, but resembles in description a Chilean dish by this name; it features smooth corn pudding baked atop a mixture of ground beef, olives, raisins, peas, and green onions; the saltiness of the olives really complements the corn mix
Suffice it to say, that after a lunch or dinner involving any one of these behemoths is enough caloric intake to make your body say "Good night! Transitioning to rest-and-digest functionality! All additional systems set to standby." It's at this point that the allure of my waiting bed is a Siren's song that I'm helpless to resist. It usually only takes a few minutes before I'm out, off to the Land of Nod to dream about my next culinary experience.
All of this is to say nothing of the countless churros, porras, and chocolate at Chocolateria San Gines, the 60 cent mini-baguette sandwiches at Cien Montaditos, or the nun-made sequillos that have all found their way into my happy stomach over the course of the past couple of weeks, but all of these deserve their own story, later. Right now, my bed just looks too attractive...
That additional four hours of sleep a day has not been an entirely voluntary undertaking, a fact that I will freely admit. Every minute of that has been a food coma. At this point, you are likely just a bit jealous, a sentiment that I will likely cultivate for the remainder of this post. If you don't enjoy being told in painstaking detail about a full range of culinary delights, then let this be your fair warning to stop reading. Here goes.
On my way across the Atlantic, I had the good luck of ingesting a spot of poorly concocted jam. Following this, it was my luck for the following four hours to unceremoniously become close friends with the middle water closet on the starboard side of the plane. Upon landing in London, I bought a pair of bananas from Starbucks and snarfed them down in an attempt to ameliorate the discomfort. Inauspicious beginnings to a trip, to say nothing.
Hours later, I found myself seated at a white linen covered table on the second floor of a swanky hotel a block away from Puerta del Sol in Madrid. I had just finished a plate of cannelloni, a plate of broiled chicken and potatoes, and several glasses of wine. The waiters had kindly cleared our plates and presented us with a dessert dish of sliced kiwi. In a run that would have made Bill Murray circa "Groundhog Day" jealous, I and the rest of the Stanford in Madrid crew repeated this type of dining engagement for the next week during our orientation trip through Andalucia in the South of Spain. Every lunch and dinner was a three course engagement, a sizable "salad", followed by a main course, followed by a dessert, all washed down with a bottomless bottle of Spanish red wine.
If that was our introduction to the high end of the Spanish dining experience, then our nightly bar crawls were an education in much more standard Spanish fare. Make no mistake, though; "standard" Spanish fare is anything but boring. Tapas ranging the gamut from piping hot croquetas (mashed potato dumplings of sorts) to spicy and toothsome chorizo (seasoned sausage) to paper thin strips of jamon iberica (Iberian ham) all made there way happily down my gullet over the course of the trip. One night, we were visiting Malaga, a city on the southern Mediterranean coast, on Friday of Holy Week. The city was ripe with processions of great fanfare pertaining to the Christian celebration of Easter, and thousands upon thousands of people filled the streets and bars. After night fell, three of my friends and I stumbled upon a back alley bar, the kind that is fetishized in travelogues as a "diamond in the rough" or a "local haunt"; personally, we were just happy to find a place that had any space inside to spare. We clustered up close to the bar and made merry conversation with an affable bartender who was distributing canas of beer with such speed that one would think that prohibition was due to begin the next day.
In Spanish that was just fast enough to bewilder but just slow enough to befriend, he made joke after joke about the throngs of people that had descended upon the watering hole tonight, often slipping in a bit of unmitigated flirtation aimed at the lone chica in our group. As the rest of us finished our delciously tender rings of lightly breaded calamari (squid), he offered her a free triple shot of vodka, provided that she drink it with no chaser. With gusto befitting someone undertaking a cultural immersion, she christened our entrance into the Spanish culinary life with abandon, only to be quickly beset by a series of coughs at shot's end. The bartender and the rest of the staff bellowed with good-natured laughter, and we all raised our glasses in salutation.My arrival to my Spanish host family's home was telling. I walked into their fourth floor apartment in the La Latina neighborhood of Madrid, and headed down the hall to find the three of them sitting in the family room. Ofelia, my host mom, introduced herself first, then Aida, her sister, did the same, followed by Gustavo, Ofelia's nephew. Much more on them in a later post. Not two minutes after these introductions, I was seated at their kitchen table with half of a 13 inch in diameter tortilla espanola (an inch thick omelet deal with onions, potatoes, and eggs, this is one of the most emblematic of all Spanish dishes) in front of me. I was told, in cheerful but not uncertain, terms, that this was all mine to eat, and that it would behoove me to do so. More than happy to oblige, I tucked into my meal. I could get used to this, I told myself.
Over the next two weeks, lunch was every day at 2:30 or so, and dinner every day at 9:30 or so. As I mentioned in an earlier post, lunch is the more serious endeavor in Spain, dwarfing dinner in size. My meals over this time period included the following:
Pastel de Patata - an Argentinian dish similar to Shepherd's Pie, with a thick layer of mashed potatoes baked on top of a mixture of ground beef, raisins, onions, peas, carrot, and herbs; my host family is Argentinian, which is extremely fortunate for me, given the sheer variety of food that makes up Argentinian cuisine; the sweetness of the raisins perfectly sets of the smoky richness of the ground beef, all capped off with pillowy fold of potatoes
Merluza - a type of Cod, that's prepared with a heavy breading
Lentils with Spinach and Carrots - rich and hearty for the several rainy days that we've had so far this quarter in Madrid
Pollo a la Portuguesa y Lomo de Puerco a la Portuguesa - these dishes involve a kind of meat cooked in fillet form with a seasoned mixture of peas, carrots, and brown gravy; the meat is well salted and its flavor lights up the surrounding veggies
Seafood Paella and Vegetable Paella - this typical and celebrated Spanish dish originated on the Valencian coast; it involves saffron seasoned rice (which turns the rice bright yellow) which is cooked in a delicious broth mixed with various types of mariscos (seafood), meats, and vegetables; Ofelia and Aida always make it on SundaysPan Tumac - a spectacularly simple and delicious sandwich originating in Catalonia, a region in the north-east of Spain that fiercely defends its linguistic and cultural heritage; consists of horizontally sliced, fresh baguette filled with slices of jamon, fresh tomatoes, and a drizzling of Spanish olive oil; the flavors mingle perfectly every time
Pastel de Choclo - a dish that Ofelia claims is Uruguayan, but resembles in description a Chilean dish by this name; it features smooth corn pudding baked atop a mixture of ground beef, olives, raisins, peas, and green onions; the saltiness of the olives really complements the corn mix
Suffice it to say, that after a lunch or dinner involving any one of these behemoths is enough caloric intake to make your body say "Good night! Transitioning to rest-and-digest functionality! All additional systems set to standby." It's at this point that the allure of my waiting bed is a Siren's song that I'm helpless to resist. It usually only takes a few minutes before I'm out, off to the Land of Nod to dream about my next culinary experience.
All of this is to say nothing of the countless churros, porras, and chocolate at Chocolateria San Gines, the 60 cent mini-baguette sandwiches at Cien Montaditos, or the nun-made sequillos that have all found their way into my happy stomach over the course of the past couple of weeks, but all of these deserve their own story, later. Right now, my bed just looks too attractive...
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