Return to the Red Tape

Just when you´ve had enough of the papers, the signing, the commutes to buildings you´ve never been to in random parts of town, just when you think you´ve done it a thousand times and it won´t ever surprise you or upset you, or ¨grind your gears¨ as some might prefer, it makes an ugly and rather uncomfortable comeback like Brett Favre returning to play for the Vikings.

 Some people say that change is good, and I believe that whole-heartedly, but sometimes change is also something heavy and obnoxious to put up with, like when you pay for a metro pass with 20$ and get 18$ in Sacagawea coins that get easier to carry as you eventually use them, but are at first a total ball-buster to deal with. Let´s just say I´ve got a bag full of Sacagawea coins and they need to be taken all over Madrid. They´re cool 1 or 2 at a time, but a weeks supply of them sort of sucks.

Land ho!

After 3 weeks of sleeping on couches and a solid week of searching all over internet sites, texting and calling random people, riding the metro and walking all over Madrid to buzz said random people's doors, loving all of the places for one thing or another and then finding that there was just something missing, or wrong, or whatever... I've finally found a keeper. 

Being my first time living in a city larger than good ole' Winston-Salem (which is approximately a whopping 225,000 people) I've found that planting yourself next to public transportation that takes you directly where you need to go is one of the most important things to look for in your place of residence. Next comes what kind of amazingly atrocious deposits you need to leave with the former room dwellers ie; two months rent and buying the furniture in the room -possibly a single bed, wardrobe, desk and shelves-. Now the next one not be quite as easy to understand, but being a foreigner in another country requires you to typically look for a single room in an apartment full of random people, this can ultimately present you with seriously wacky situations. I've seen some impressive stuff ranging from techy nerd squad pads to possible illegal immigrant drug trafficking dens. Personally, I wanted to live with Spanish people to make sure that I continued learning, practicing, and improving my language and cultural awareness, while not risking my life, which was actually rather difficult to come across given some of the household situations that I've already described, but, I eventually found a great place with two guys; one from Valladolid, and the other from Cadiz. Sweet baby Jesus does the dude from Cadiz have the funkiest accent, he speaks exactly how Mexicans thinks Spaniards speak, lisping his c's, s's, and z's, all of them (which by the way is not at all how about 95% of the rest of the Spanish speak as they only lisp c's and z's). This is apparently a southern trait shared by very few. 

It can throw you off when talking to him because talking like this makes certain words change into other words simply by the phonetics... ie; if he says "casa", it sounds like /catha/, which normally would be written "caza" and means something completely different (casa = house, caza = hunt). Kind of nuts. 

Anyways, the house is cozy, has a balcony, AC and heating. I've moved into my first apartment in a capital city.

Huelga General (National Strike)

Times are tough in the Iberian Peninsula; Spain is boasting a national unemployment rate of almost 23% as of this year, and a whopping 50% for those who are under 25 years of age. The youth are irate as they are being denied control of their future and the future of their country. New labor reforms promise to save money for the country with budget cuts, but also allow the facilitation of firing workers for less money, along with raised taxes for select businesses, and have both the employed and unemployed sharing a similar fervent anger towards the situation in Spain as of late.

29 March showed millions of Spanish protesting all over Spain in a general strike organized by labor unions against the new reform. The entire country had the opportunity to strike -not attend work- if they so pleased, but would have their salary docked as a consequence.

Whether or not the people in Logroño, La Rioja skipped out on work I can't say, but there were definitely  thousands of protesters at 7p.m. rallying and marching across town until later in the evening.

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General Workers Union

 Avenida de la Paz (Peace Avenue) - Where it all began

 Communists and Anarchists

 The new labor reform was under attack.

 Where there's smoke, there's fire.

 Gorillas in the mist.

 Hangman's quarters

 Young and old, the streets were full.

 "The debts are socialized, but the benefits are privatized" 

 March through the plaza.

 Coffee and a strike.

 The tail end of the strike.

crease-ees

I got on a bus today and the woman behind me tried to give the bus driver 30 cents instead of 60. The bus drivers asks her what she thinks she´s going to do with the 30 cents. She tells him that she´s giving them to him for the bus ride, which flips the bus driver´s switch as he berates her for her insolence and asks her how she thinks it´s possible that it could cost 30 cents since they charge 60 cents, ¨we´re in a crisis¨ he says. Her reply was, ¨exactly¨.

frustracion

Hay que empezar con algo. Hay que ponerse las pilas y superar lo que tiene que ser superado, lograr algo nuevo, alcanzar el siguiente nivel y hacer lo necesario para llegar ahí. En todo caso, dichos niveles no son ni físicos ni alcanzables, son solo ideas manifestadas en algo que te satisface sea lo que sea. Puede ser que delante de uno de esos grandes saltos (cambio de vida para los discapacitados metafóricamente) habrá una rampa todavía sin construir, y además más pronto que pensaba. Todavía no sé si paso de saltarla, dedicar tiempo para asegurar que el salto será seguro y bien pensado, o si cojo velocidad ya para saltarla con éxito como la primera vez que crucé el charco. ¿¿¿España o América???

A hazy vertigo.

Ever been into the mountains on a really cold day when it's snowing, and you think that the conditions are going to fantastic to dig your skis into some fresh snow? That preliminary giddy, childish excitement on the car ride up is pretty standard for the course; and the first jolting blow to the back of your legs by the ski-lift is sure to have you "whooing" if the jackknife turns up the mountain weren't enough, but it's the look down from the beginning of your first run that really does it.

That is if, and only if you can see past the tips of your own skis. A certain northern Spanish ski mountain called Valdezcaray apparently has fame for terrible fog and helacious winds, but who wants to hear that hubbub on a snowy day? Not me, and that first look down was worse than an 80 degree drop-off of a triple black diamond for an amateur because I couldn't tell where the run went, began, ended, or even looked like.

What a terrible concept: to go down a mountain blindly on slick carbon fiber strips, and know that it's full of others doing the same thing. That was one of the most insane feelings ever, looking for shadows of snow blowers as guides, and all the while letting your body react to the unknown grade and turns of your path. Only the fog was reliable. It was as if no one really existed until the lift at the bottom where the blurry shadows became shapes with faces.

The only time that I fell was definitely one for the ridiculous books; not knowing if I was going downhill or up, I found myself tilting backwards until falling and realizing that I was standing sideways on the slope and not moving at all. What an absurd and discombobulating experience.

Oh yea, then we ran our car into a ditch, sitting at a 45 degree angle with snow up to the door handle for 20 minutes until a truck pulled up and 7 Basque men jumped out of it like clowns to pull the car out of the snow and then disappear down the mountain before we could get into the car.

Shazam

Hyperspace Travel

First off : GPS rocks when you are in a foreign country (probably in your own country as well) and are refusing to take the toll roads, which leads you through tiny roads up and down rural mountain roads until you finally reach the new part of the highway that was under construction 50 km earlier.

Speaking of highways that under construction; a GPS apparently has to be manually updated every so often, and if you decide to take that brand spanking new highway with said non-updated GPS, you will find youself flying through hyperspace (according the the GPS) until you encounter a road that existed at least 4 years ago and re-incorporate into the real world again.

Asturias and Galicia are amazing parts of Spain, and I recommend that one and all visit them to eat salty fresh seafood, pound frothy apple ciders and enjoy crisp white wines, all while marveling at the lush mountains with rivers coming from the rocky northern coast of Spain.

Oh yea, and make sure to go with good friends when you do it.

Here are some pictures to do it all justice.

cudillero

Luarca

This is what traveling through hyperspace looks like

 This is what free wine, ham, and cheese from the desk man in a hotel looks like

 Tower of Hercules, La Coruña

 Abastos Market, Santiago de la Compostela

 Octupus a la Gallego with pimientos de padron