Go Traveling!

Start your day, or enjoy your lunch, or end your day (your choice) with this little delight. Our beloved Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi has lent his mellifluous voice to a brief video spot encouraging y'all to come see Italy's magic.



And on the flip-side, this is the same politician who, in October of 2009, said about his political opponent Rosy Bindi, “I recognise you are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent.” This comment sparked wide-spread outrage and protests and has led to an on-going confrontation between the two that transcends just their political differences, the latest installment coming just recently, when Mr. Berlusconi, making remarks at a university graduation ceremony was reported to have said it was nice to see so many pretty young women and then went on to say, "there are young women who get top grades and don't look like Rosy Bindi".

That's Special

These days, if you head out of Ancona, for a Festa della Sangria say, or to go to the beach, it's unavoidable that you'll pass numerous and frequent fields of sunflowers. They're beautiful. Turned to the sun, a yellow area rug on the sides of hills, at the base of hills, in between fields of wheat, showing off their color next to the greens and browns of the other crops. In the next couple of weeks they'll begin to turn brown and ugly as they are left to die and dry before being harvested and turned into oil. But for now, it's an incredible sight, faces turned to the sun, brilliant and eye catching. A blanket of yellow from a distance and then thousands of individual flowers, singular then blurred and tall as you zip past.




My friend Niky (Nicoletta Pasquini), an amazing photographer, has unknowingly donated the next two images and there a whole bunch of other great pictures on her website.




And while on the subject of things that are special, this is a special four minutes.

Barcelona Report. Finally.

I think I mentioned some time ago that I was going to Barcelona for the weekend? If I didn't, I meant to, and I did, go to Barcelona that is. It's really simple to do from here. Take the train to Rome and then the plane to Barcelona, that's it. From there, where you are reading this that is, it might sound a bit more posh saying, "I'm going to Barcelona for the weekend". At least that's what Olivia told me when I mentioned off-hand in an email that I was going to Barcelona for the weekend. With all the budget airlines, it's sort of like buying a ticket to go to San Francisco for the weekend, about the same price, only when you get off the plane, instead of still being in the U.S. of A you're in Spain and once again you are clueless about what anyone is saying.

When I'm lucky enough to visit a city like Barcelona I'm struck by how international they are. The iconic buildings, instantly recognizable. The history. The vastness. How normal and ordinary it all seems to those who call it home. The sheer number and variety of people and languages being spoken. I made the mistake of hubris by ordering in Spanish once by combining the words on the menu with por favor and then having to awkwardly switch to English when the waiter's follow-up question was far beyond my ability to comprehend or respond to. No matter, he effortlessly switched to perfect English and I later heard him speaking French at another table. And in a bar later in the weekend, the bartender switched from Spanish to English to Russian without missing a beat, stole my heart, and wasn't even trying to show-off. What's my point? I don't know. Something like, Barcelona is one of those places that the world keeps arriving at and it's overwhelming and astounding - at once unfathomable yet also totally enjoyable and impressive.

The reason I went to Barcelona was to see it (of course) and because a friend of mine had invited me. See, when I worked at Lingo Systems for all those years I met a lot of people all over the world, but only via email, and over the years we became friends. When I left Lingo, a number of them very generously (foolishly?) told me I would be welcome to visit if I was ever in the neighborhood so to speak. When I got back in touch with my Barcelona friend she insisted I come to visit her and her husband and their dog Pepa. Thinking over her invite, I figured Barcelona was as good a place as any, if not better, to spend my 4th of July. And there it is. And here is Pepa doing yoga.


I'm not normally much for making lists except for the occasional grocery list or if there is something I need to remember to do later (which I guess isn't really a list but more of a note in which case, I'm a big one for making notes, but not lists). But anywhup, the point I'm trying to make is that I have decided to use the list format to recount my trip, but since I don't do many of them it might not be very good.

A List Of Things I Liked About Barcelona

I. Incredibly gracious, generous and warm hosts who opened their home to me, essentially a complete stranger, and went out of their way to make me feel welcome and share their city with me up until the day I left, even though after a few days, just like fish, I had probably begun to smell a little.

2. The hop-on-hop-off tourist bus. In a city this big, with so much to see so spread out, a bus that delivers you to the front door of most everything is fantastic.


Take the bus and all this will be yours.
I used the bus on Friday to "get the lay of the land" so to speak, and on Monday I used the Metro to re-visit those places I wanted to get a little longer look at. Which brings me to...

2a. The Metro. It's clean. It's affordable. It's a train arriving every two minutes convenient. It's air-conditioned. I love the Metro in Paris for its nostalgia inducing charm, but the Barcelona Metro smacks the Paris one around and makes it say, "Tío" or maybe "Oncle". It goes everywhere you want to be and blows cool air up your bloomers while doing it. And in Barcelona, cold air in your bloomers is awesome, like if you arrived at the Screen Door at 10am on Saturday morning and there was fresh coffee and no line. That kind of awesome.

3. La Boqueria.


I like food. No duh. So I liked this market, but this market is more than food. It's food art. It's like Pike Place Market or the PSU Farmer's Market but on steroids. Organic, locally-produced, seasonal steroids, but still, steroids. It's one of the more popular destinations to visit in Barcelona I gather. However, in my continuing quest to maintain my uninterrupted track-record of near total ignorance of each new place I visit I had no idea it existed and only stumbled upon it shortly before closing, otherwise I could have easily spent a couple hours wandering the aisles and ogling the merchandise. You know how Portland has a bunch of establishments where you can ogle the merchandise but you have to pay $1 to do so and you can't touch? Here you can touch and ogle for free! You have to see these pictures.

C. La Vaca Paca. It's only 10 Euros! A dining experience suited to the American abroad yet apparently enthusiastically embraced by both tourists and locals alike.

5. Drunk Dutch soccer fans. I was on La Rambla, a tourist heavy area when the Holland vs. Brazil World Cup match ended and a throng of about 100 oranje-clad Dutch fans danced and sang in jubilation over their victory, sweeping many unwary bystanders up and turning them Dutch for a moment. A distinctly nationalistic moment in an international city during a global event. The Rambla is fascinating. A wide, tree covered boulevard that connects the center of downtown Barcelona to the port by cutting through the center of the old part of town.


There are buskers and hustlers the entire way along it and while it's impossible to get lost on the Rambla, turn left or right into the gothic district and in moments you're wandering in circles or sitting on a bench drinking a cool beverage.


Not pictured: cool beverage.


VI. The Pool. On a Saturday where it was easily near 40 degrees, having this just outside your bedroom door was absolute luxury.



6. Seafood Paella and Sangria con Cava (Spanish champagne) on the beach for Sunday lunch. It's the perfect way to relax and prepare for the hottest part of the day and the perfect recipe for a siesta during the hottest part of the day.




I forgot to take a picture of it but the gin & tonic served as a digestif after the meal was astounding. In a large wine glass, no bigger than that, combine large chunks of ice and approximately 6 oz. of gin. Maybe it was 8 oz. It was enough that I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a big cocktail, two people could share this quite nicely," as I took my first sip only to discover that the glass just held gin. There was a small bottle of Schwepp's tonic on the side to add as appropriate.

8. The Architecture? I'm no expert, but apparently Barcelona is stuffed to the gills with architecturally marvelous and important buildings. Neat-o.





9,2. San Miguel Beer. Strangely, this beer has its roots in SE Asia, but it's served everywhere. I guess that makes it the PBR of Spain - originally from elsewhere but claimed by the locals. Everyone serves it in big, heavy, chilled mugs that instantly start to sweat in the heat with promises of vacationey goodness satisfaction.


Vacationey Goodness Satisfaction

10. Spain winning their semi-final. Fireworks, drums, screaming, car horns, dancing, flares, fires, a national celebration. I was Spanish for the moment. And I missed by a week the epic celebration following the final. My friend Isabel said she didn't go to work for the first three days the following week because of the fiesta everywhere.

A List Of Things I Didn't Like About Barcelona

1. The Heat. It was hot.

2. The Heat. Uncomfortably hot.

iii. Dutch Soccer Fans. I was rooting for Brazil in that match. Stop rubbing it in.

Quatro. The Heat. I mean really hot. Lead story on the Spanish nightly news hot.

But that's it. Nothing really.

It deserves another look. There are so many gardens and parks and other things to explore that due to the time I had, the size of the city, and sheer scope of options (and yes, the heat) I feel like I hardly took it all in. I just have to convince my friends they want this smelly salmon back.

Lines? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Lines!

A line, as in a queue, is called la fila in Italian. I don't know why they have a word for it because Italians don't do lines. They do blobs. Maybe they came up with a word for it so they could describe what they WEREN'T doing. As in: Non facciamo la fila: perchè mai dovremmo? In the US, if people are waiting for a ticket window to open in order to buy tickets to a movie, a line will form as more and more people arrive and wait. In Italy, as people arrive they will all hover in the general vicinity of the window, and as soon as it opens there is a simultaneous migration to the window and an attempt to prove that two bodies can indeed occupy the same space at the same time.

There is never a line. Don't look for one and don't stand behind a person expecting to shuffle forward in an orderly fashion behind them. If you see something that looks like a line, don't be fooled. It's a practical joke being played. A line won't happen. If you aren't moving forward, you're going backwards. Bars. Kebab stands. Gelaterie. Ski lifts. Anywhere there is more than one person trying to get somewhere. Look out for number one, that's you. Italians in foreign airports are fantastic because they apply the same principle that apply at home and can't understand the hostility they encounter from everyone else dutifully waiting their turn.

This problem of the line is exacerbated in any situation where there is no "official" form of control. For instance, on Tuesday, I was sat in the waiting room waiting to see the immigration official. The process is to greet anyone already waiting and inquire about who was the last to arrive. That person identified, you will follow them and thus, a "line" forms. Invariably though, there are those for whom this just will not do and they attempt to circumvent the wait through a variety of tactics, odious and obnoxious. They lurk near the office door and sidle in when it opens for the next person. They say they just have a quick question and rush in, only to take twenty minutes. They latch on to whoever happens to actually be next, like a parasite, and follow them in, and just like in nature the host organism is left hollow and whithered while the parasite thrives. Or with a shrug of the shoulders they simply cut and bull their way in. Any of these, despite the squalling and protestations of the abused. Understandably, nobody likes when their turn is taken, but they all know that next time it will be they who take the mickey out of a waiting-room full of chumps so the protestations are never too insistent. More an acknowledgement of a game well played than distaste for the behavior.

None of this is good news for an American indoctrinated in the absoluteness of the line and intoxicated by its orderly efficiency. And the Germans practically lose their minds over it. When I see a group of German tourists in town I follow them around waiting for them to start a line in a shop or bar somewhere and then I watch the hilarity ensue.

The post-office and banks have solved the blob problem by installing ticket systems, like a US DMV office. Take a ticket, when your number is called, approach. It's a cultural adjustment and understandably will take time, so people still hover near the teller windows, genetically predisposed to trying to cut the queue. Or they feign needing a pen or something totally unrelated and the attention of the teller gained they launch into their business. But if your ticket doesn't have the right number, both the teller and the customer whose turn it actually is have the right, and the pleasure, of hollering at you. The fun starts when your teller can't help you (maybe their printer is out of paper and they haven't bothered to get more paper) and they tell you just to go to the next window over as soon as it's free. So you do. Except the next person with the ticket for that window has also arrived which means at a minimum there are now four people involved which is more than enough for a complete impasse.

But in the end it all works itself out. We get by just fine the way it is. I eventually picked up my documents. I eventually mailed them from the post office. Only two steps left and I'll have my new permesso. Figo!

Life's A Beach

I promise I'll post something in the near future more interesting than my oddly tilted and disembodied head and Valentina's maleducatiòn.

Not for nothing, a day at the beach might not cure what ails you after a long night out quite like brunch at the Screendoor or Gravy's, but it's close.

My Permesso expires in September which means I have to start the renewal process now if I want to maintain my legal residency status as it can take 60-70 days for the new one to be issued. Assuming all goes well. Since this is bureaucracy, Italian bureaucracy at that, all will most likely not go well. Not to mention, it will soon be August and in Italy, as in most of Europe, absolutely nothing gets done during the month of August when everyone takes their summer holiday. So far, I've had two appointments to obtain and complete required paperwork. They went very smoothly so I'm optimistic that previous experience and good fortune are on my side. All that remains is purchasing the required tax stamp, taking new identification photos, a trip to the post office, fingerprinting, and two trips to the Questura and at the end of all that I'll be a legal resident for another year. The question is, can I get that at all done before September? The better question is, will they let me get that all done before September? The quest is on!