Am I Stoned or is That a Picasso?

Seville faded into the distance and the long train ride to Barcelona was nearly over. I had passed the time by speaking with a Spanish woman I met on the train. Since my Spanish was about as good as her English we sputtered, coughed, and otherwise choked our way through a conversation. A primitive communication system was developed using various hand signals, exaggerated facial expressions, and good old pencil and paper. It was amazing. With time and a little patience we were both able to convey issues that were of deep cultural import, such as "Choo-choo go Barcelona now". I'm still not positive but she was either a school teacher or the Mayor of Madrid. I arrived safely and quickly took stock of the place.


Barcelona was a wonderful city. Its beautiful seaport, open air markets, and twisty gothic quarter are magnificent. The pedestrian walk called Las Ramblas was lined with a variety of living "statues". Men and women dressed as Native Americans, Roman guards, God, the Devil, Michael Jackson, and the like, all standing perfectly still, as if their non-paraplegic frozen musculature was worthy of monetary gain. Las Ramblas also contained a very impressive array of flower shops, jewelry stands, and several open-air pet shops selling exotic animals such as baby emu and odd little chickens (no joke). If you follow the throng of people you flow right down to the water's edge where a massive spire is topped with a statue of Christopher Columbus pointing towards the New World, as if to say, "Hey, I see some people over there we can massacre!" I visited the Segrada Familia, the Gaudi cathedral that has been under construction for a little over 100 years and looks far from being finished. Unfortunately it is heavily scaffolded at the moment which removes quite a bit of the majesty. Undaunted by the construction I climbed the spiral staircase hundreds of feet up the dizzying tower so I could see what it was like to vomit from the top of a Barcelona church; same as anywhere else, I suppose. The Park Guell (another Gaudi creation) was more of highlight in my opinion with cool architecture that looked like it was lifted straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.
Later, I met up with a couple of fun girls (whose names will be withheld to protect the guilty) and we tooled around a bit. Apparently, Barcelona is stocked with giant bricks of hash (note to family members: just add the word "browns" whenever I say hash and you'll feel fine again). The girls got a hold of some, we smoked up in their room without inhaling, then went over to the Picasso museum, because, honestly, where else would you go at that point? The gallery included a lot of his early work, including lesser known paintings of giant bags of Fritos and Hostess cupcakes. Come to think of it I may have just been stoned.

There's a Hand Down My Pants and it isn't Mine

For some, having a beautiful Spanish girl?s hand down their pants might seem like a dream come true. Unfortunately it was rush hour on the metro and we were far from alone. Oh yeah, and she was trying for my wallet. It was extremely subtle and quite unnoticeable with the jostling crowd but a buddy of mine saw it happen and alerted me. Luckily I don?t carry a wallet and had nothing in my pockets but some lint. So Madrid became the first city I?ve even been pseudo-robbed in.


Being in Madrid, I decided to take in a bullfight. Despite the fact that I was supposed to be disgusted by this barbarous event I found myself actually enjoying it. Now let me be clear here: I don?t like the idea of killing a bull for sport, it?s definitely cruel, and I will probably never see one again, but it was a thrilling cultural experience and exactly the kind of thing I came to Europe to see. Thousands of locals packed the stadium on a rainy afternoon to see the fight. A vibrant crowd filled the air with energy. The fluid, graceful, movements of the matadors in their traditional garb was exciting. People passed around platters of tapas (little snacks) to everyone in the vicinity as they cheered and jeered the spectacle. It was a little slice of life that was decidedly unique in an increasingly homogenized Europe. I feel I can say this with at least a modicum of authority since, in seven cities, I have yet to be more than ten minutes from a Starbucks.
It seems the only other thing to do in Madrid is get drunk. There are an awful lot of bars and people are still loudly roaming the streets at three in the morning. I met a bunch of interesting people again at the hostels and we roamed around the usual sites but Madrid didn?t really do it for me. I?m not much of a drinker and some soggy weather didn?t improve my outlook. The real highlight was the Palace of Something I Can?t Remember Right Now. I also went to the Prado museum, home to hundreds of impressive paintings from guys that died a long time ago. Discarding Madrid like a soiled sock, I headed off to Seville.
Seville was the Spain of my dreams. Narrow cobblestone streets, colorful buildings, incredible architecture, beautiful plazas, amazing gardens, up to 50% off on life insurance. Wow. Unfortunately due to a series of scheduling snafus I ended staying for only about 6 hours. I still covered a pretty good chunk of the sites on a gorgeous day. It was here, in Seville, that I experienced probably my first moment of pure synergistic perfection in this world. For one reason or another it appeared that everyone in Seville was getting married on the same day. For some reason there were literally dozens of couples wandering around in tuxedos and wedding dresses having their pictures taken by photographers. The sun was hanging low in the sky as I walked through an arch into a pedestrian plaza behind a truly stunning cathedral. The plaza was rectangular, surrounded by colorful buildings and bordered by low trees that were full of brilliant, ripe oranges. In the center was a fountain with ducks. The spire of the cathedral could be seen over the edge of the buildings and everything glowed with the reddish hue of a setting sun. Several brides and grooms mulled around the plaza, striking poses. It was at this moment that the cathedral bells started ringing, a brilliant echoing sound that reverberated off the walls and touched the very soul. My eyes immediately welled up with tears. It was, for me, a perfect moment. And I will leave you with that.

The Nigerian Bracelet Scam

It's called gay Pah-ree. As such I expected it to be teeming with overt, or at the least, latent homosexuality. Not so. Paris is a beautiful city filled with lots of interesting heterosexual people just like you and me. And tales of the French being rude? Over exaggerated. As it turns out, you can?t tell if someone is being rude if you don?t understand a single goddamned thing they are saying. Seriously.


So tell me if you?ve heard this one before. You?re standing on the steps of the Sacre Coer, a beautiful cathedral high on a hill that overlooks the entire city of Paris, and a man approaches you and asks you to hold out your finger. He is, of course, heterosexual. You tell him you?re not interested but he pushes and prods, following you up the steps until he roughly grabs your arm and loops a piece of colorful string around your finger. Before you know it he is expertly weaving a beautiful multi-hued bracelet with your finger as the hook. He?s from Nigeria and this is a mystical, magical Nigerian bracelet that will be imbued with a wish of your choice. It is, of course, free of charge. Before I know it he?s done and it is wrapped around my wrist and knotted off. It was a cool bracelet. Now, as I said, the bracelet was free but the knot apparently costs seven euro. That?s the scam. Though not surprised, I declined to pay. He asked what I thought it was worth, getting agitated, and I told him it was worth nothing since I had not wanted it. I offered to have it cut from my wrist and he hemmed and hawed until he saw I would not budge. Dismissed with a sneer, I walked away with a free Nigerian wishing bracelet from a con man on my first day in Paris. It?s a week later and I?m still wearing it.



The rest of Paris was also a joy. I did a big city walk like London to hit all the major sites. It?s amazing how much you can accomplish in a day on foot. I saw Notre Dame (yet another big cathedral), the Latin Quarter (pretty touristy, didn?t hear a lick of Latin), walked along the river, ate some pastries, saw the plaza housing the entrance to the Lourve (the museum itself was closed), contemplated the controversial pyramid entrance and its likelihood of housing the Grail, walked the Champs D? Elysees to the Arc D? Triumph, collapsed for an hour, ate some more pastries, then walked the seedy streets of Montmarte.



On my second day Paris was apparently closed. I hopped a metro to the edge of town so I could get on a train for Versailles but they were on strike. No, not the train, the entire Palace of Versailles was on strike. Not deterred I rode another couple of metros to find the catacombs of Paris, a labyrinth of underground tunnels filled with the bones of tens of thousands of Parisians from centuries past. Though it took me a lordly length of time to find it, it too was closed. Till June. For renovations. How you renovate piles of bones is beyond me, maybe they bleach them. Disappointed but determined to see dead people I headed over to the massive cemetery known as Pere Lachaise. This cemetery is so massive that it has its own named streets and a map that rivals that of Paris itself in terms of complexity. No metro though. Those who truly know me best might know why I would visit such a place. After forty minutes of twisted and confusing cobblestone streets I found what I was looking for. Though many famous people are buried here only one tomb is gated off and lorded over by guards. There, surround by visitors throwing flowers, whiskey, CDs, sunglasses, and whatever else they could find was the grave of Jim Morrison. Actually, the grave itself was quite simple. And the graffiti, bust of Jim, and etchings on the surrounding tombs had all been sanded down and washed away. Nevertheless, it was an interesting site and a good end to my two and a half day trip to Paris.

What to do When Urine Trouble

In our last episode I left you in a seedy internet cafe on the streets of Montmarte, Paris. But the real story - as is often the case - lay not in the destination, but in the journey. Getting to Paris was a little trickier than I thought. Having spent the night at my friend Val?s in Cambridge, I crept out the door at the crack of dawn to catch an early bus. Since I was unfamiliar with the geography of the city I left myself some additional time to walk to the station. Val had drawn me a map but nevertheless I got lost walking through the subway (which is the term for an underground pedestrian walkway in England). I walked quite a ways before realizing I had gone in the wrong direction. Doubling back to the subway, I reoriented myself. Once again I went the wrong way. Time was running short and I began to get nervous. That was when I actually saw the bus zoom past me in the opposite direction, heading towards the station. I followed it with my eyes for a moment then bolted after it. My knees ached and my ankles feigned death as the 30lb pack on my back sent shockwaves down my legs with each clodhopping step. I was gasping for air, my lungs an angry furnace. With a little luck I managed to make it just before they closed the doors. Sweaty and exhausted I slumped in my seat and quickly drained about half of my Camelbak. This is known as foreshadowing.


The ride was supposed to be three hours long and the water from my Camelbak didn't filter through my kidneys and into my bladder until about 30 minutes after we boarded. Now this shouldn?t have been a problem. England has a great public transport system and these were nice coach buses with restrooms in the back. So you can imagine my surprise when I found the door to be locked. At first I thought maybe it was locked when the bus was moving so I waited until the next stop and tried again. No such luck. I asked around to see if there was some sort of secret British handshake one needed to perform in order to gain entry or perhaps some sort of pee-pee dance. They assured me it should be open and that any performace on my part would be unnecessary, though possibly entertaining. At the ninety minute mark I got up to ask the bus driver if he knew the door was locked. He said the only reason it would be locked is if it were out of order and, regardless, he had no key. Dejected, I headed back to my seat and tried to distract myself by writing in my journal and reading my guidebook. After two hours I felt internal organs quietly rearrange themselves to try and handle the overflow. Desperate thoughts passed through my head. My Camelbak was half empty; maybe I could refill it. I even had a sweatshirt in my lap I could use to cover myself up. I fidgeted with the bottle in my hand. No one was sitting next to me and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could pull if off without too many people noticing. The hell with that.

Two and a half hours into the ride I needed to go worse than any animal in the history of the earth. I ran to the front and explained to the bus driver that I literally wasn?t going to make it. He promised that he would scan ahead for a public toilet but reminded me that I would need change to get inside (public restrooms in England require money). I quickly rifled through my pockets and came up with several bills and some pocket lint, but nary a coin in sight. I was exasperated. Fortunately an old woman up front overheard my story and pulled a one pound coin from her purse just as the bus driver spotted a loo in the center divider.



We pulled over and I snatched the coin from her frail hand as a busload of passengers watched me hop over a railing, dodge two lanes of traffic, then hop another railing into the center divider. I lunged toward the restroom, my arm outstretched, the coin in my fingertips, for all the world looking like I was trying to win some sort of urology marathon. You can only imagine the shock on my face when my hand glanced off the slot.



The coin didn't fit. Glancing down I noticed a sign casually mentioning that only 20 and 50 pea coins would work. It was roughly this point in time that I decided there was no God. My eyes darted around and landed on a Pizza Hut on the far side of the street. I repeated the hop, dodge, hop situation on the far side of the street and dashed for the door. It was locked. Now imagine taking this whole scene in from the window of the bus. The color completely drained from my face as my second grade fears were about to be revisited. There was time for one last-ditch effort. Spotting some strange restaurant that appeared to be open I burst through the doors like a madman. Speaking some manic, garbled language I?m certain wasn't English I babbled something about a lifetime of indentured servitude, my first born child, and a one pound coin to use their restroom. A begrudging nod of the head saved an embarrasing mess in their entryway. My mind finally at ease, I carefully dodged traffic and leapt my way back across the street to the bus. The driver and passengers had all waited patiently while this scene unfolded before their incredulous eyes, yet no one uttered a word as the bus continued on its merry way. And that, my friends, is both the definition of English hospitality and "What to do When Urine Trouble".

Bath, Bed, and Beyond

Sometimes your world stops making sense. Sometimes you lay awake at night while visions of another life drift steadily across your consciousness. Sometimes you really need to get away from it all. Sometimes you need to cross an international border silently in the night. Of course, sometimes you just need to get laid.


No job, no direction, and a malaise generally relegated to reptiles in winter slowly take hold. The cure: a three month solo trek through Europe. Thus begins the epic story of one young man's struggle to find the world's best mug of beer, despite the fact that he doesn't drink them. Our story begins somewhere inside the cavernous Heathrow Airport of London?

I am desperately looking for a urinal, before accepting my fate and using the loo. Despite this seemingly insurmountable obstacle I managed to soldier my way onto a bus headed for the city of Bath, thus paving the way for the witty title of these ramblings. Bath is a beautiful city whose lovely architecture - composed almost entirely from a cream colored limestone that is mined in the surrounding area ? made for a worthy first stop. Here I would see the first of several thousand cathedrals which dot the European countryside. As a Jew I haven?t spent much time in churches, though my understanding is they are quite popular with several million of the world?s inhabitants. I assume this has something to do with all the free guilt they dole out.



I toured the city and generally settled in to my new life. Almost immediately I began meeting Canadians, a trend that would continue throughout the length of the trip. Despite the fact that many Canadians don?t learn how to walk until they are eighteen, having spent the better part of their lives on ice skates, they are remarkably able travellers. That evening I went to a pub called the Pig and Whistle (little known fact: pigs can't fly but they can whistle) where a local patron challenged me to a game of foosball. He had no idea what he was getting into. Over the past six years I had honed my foosball skills while working as a Web Designer for an eCommerce company. Working is probably a loose term, since I spent a good chunk of my time at the office foosball table working on my wrist shot. Okay, maybe the business plans for some of these companies left something to be desired, but I if I were you I wouldn?t challenge a laid off tech worker to any bar games. Suffice to say, I annihilated my opponent in five back-to-back matches and was swiftly elevated to the status of Greek God. Now it's important to note that the English don't actually worship Greek Gods so I was treated with the deference normally reserved for mouldy cheese.



My second day in Bath I wandered the Roman baths which give the city its name. The crumbling ruins spoke of a time when bathing nude with women was an accepted practice, instead of grounds for expulsion from my local gym. After the ruins I joined a free walking tour where I met a lovely girl named Amy. Our guide was a bit dry so we spent much of the tour talking amongst ourselves before going off and grabbing a bite to eat. I learned that she was attending school in England and she learned that I am deathly afraid of sock puppets. However, we were both from New York. She had a bus to catch back to school so we traded email addresses and said our goodbyes, neither of us expecting that our paths would cross again.



I was soon off to London myself. London is a special place, where the dollar is as weak as your Grandmother and goods cost twice as much as in America. I spent my time visiting many of the notable sites but not spending the money to actually go inside any of them. It's amazing what you can accomplish in a day on foot. I visited Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Bridge, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery (where I breezed by notable works from Monet, DaVinci, and Picasso), the British Museum (an amazing collection of history's unearthed refuse), Shakespeare?s Globe Theater, London Bridge, and finally the Tower of London. Whew! A real highlight was seeing the actual Rosetta Stone, a piece of chiseled rock that contained not only the key to unlocking the secret of Egyptian hieroglyphics but a really ripping recipe for lentil soup.



My energy spent, I hopped a late bus to Cambridge and met up with an old co-worker of mine, Val Agostino, who is running the European operations of my former employer. Val and his lovely wife were nice enough to house me, feed me, and tour me around the city. Cambridge is gorgeous. The universities are brilliant displays of architecture and a photographer's dream. The landscaping literally defies description in its clean-cut precision. All in all a beautiful place to live. I also got to see our European office, which had a surprisingly large amount of alcohol in it. Those darn eCommerce companies never change. I promised Val I wouldn't blab but I'm pretty sure the only thing they do there is drink. So now I am in Paris and I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Montmarte down the street from the Moulin Rouge. I've been here for two days now, but that is a story for a different day.