16/7/2007
Well, it seems as if I’ve found my compatriots in crime for everywhere we go we’ve got trouble and adventure. My kind of rolling with the punches sort of folk. So… where to begin? I think we should begin with the Friday before our Saturday departure when Marta was nice enough to call hostel after hostel and then a good handful of hotels to help us find lodging… thanks Marta. But unfortunately her efforts were somewhat fruitless aside from the lovely experience of hanging out in the smoldering hot San Boal library—yeah, that sure was a blast.
It seems, however, that us four amigos just don’t get that sometimes someone like God doesn’t want you to go somewhere… like for example Gijón. This is what happens when you get a group of stubborns together with a single golden idea in mind. This is the story of those saucy little stubborns:
One delightfully carefree Friday in Spain a group of four amigas decided that their Spain trip wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the playa, aka “the beach.” Which beach they wondered? The answer was tossed about a bit… Santander? Lisboa? Finally the muchachas decided on Gijón thanks to the recommendations of the Let’s Go Spain and Portugal book. Happily we trotted on down to the bus station (quite a delightful graffiti filled walk) to buy our billetes. Ah. The bus line we chose (since each bus line seems to have a monopoly on different cities and regions) was ALSA. Que crap was ALSA… but I get ahead of myself. We got to the bus window and spoke with a fairly disarming lady, that is, disarming until she started to make mistakes. At first when we asked for four tickets to Gijón (but we were to pay with separate credit cards) She said sure, and then charged one credit card and all was well, but then when she charged the other, she decided then to tell us that there was only one more ticket on that same bus. Now, for those of you who know me and are reading this, I’ll have you know, it was not I who was discussing tickets with this lady and rather my friend Aubrey who speaks Spanish quite well and understands it well, so there really was no language confusion. I truly think the lady was just crazy or a few crayolas short of a box, and the box was only a small one to begin with. She probably only had a few primary colors, we’re talking red and blue, maybe yellow but that might be pushing it. But I digress… let’s get back to the story at hand. We got our tix changed to a later bus, needless to say (but not before she accidentally charged Jennifer’s credit card for a ticket for a bus that had a return trip on that same day) and then, weeeee we were off!
The bus ride felt surprisingly short. Five hours of driving through gorgeous mountains, I believe they are called the Picos de Europa. So pretty. I am totally that tourist that takes countless pictures until my camera says, “no I need a rest, my batteries are dead.” Then I buy more batteries. Should have done a little planning at Costco before I left. Anyhoo. The bus ride was lovely and we got to Gijón with high spirits and a thirst for adventure. First thing we decided to seek out lodging. My señora told me it was easy to find hostels because there are a lot that don’t advertise and you should just walk to the streets to find a little one with a room open. Not so much actually.
We called: “Hola, esta completo por la noche?” They said: “Si, todo completo.” We cried: “Gracias.” And that was it until Mirielle found one that had room for four! Until, that is, her phone started screaming in her ear like a dying cat, or a really angry dad while she was talking to the woman at the hostel. Something was wrong with technology that day. We decided not to chance it and to just take a cab up to the place… except that once we got there, the woman at first decided not to answer her doorbell or phone and then once she did answer she told us that some chicos came by and she no longer had space. Que crappy poo log son of a mother of five piece of bum luck that was!
“Hmmm…” thought us four. What to do? We decided that when bad luck falls upon the day, the best way to remedy the situation is to go to the beach. And we did. And what a beach it was! I didn’t take a picture. Who could have guessed? But if the reader would be so kind as to imagine: it was a jam-packed, colorful beach. The beach was towel after towel of folk sunning themselves and smoking and laughing and playing cards. We went swimming and salted our fish-belly white bodies until we got hungry and the beach started to empty. We figured we’d walk about a bit and amuse ourselves since we’d pretty much resigned ourselves to a night without sleep.
We walked for awhile trying to see if a bar would beckon us and eventually one did. The bar said, “I beckon you with my gracious goodies and delicious libations.” We followed the beckon happily and sat at a wooden table outside near a grass filled plaza. The place was a sidreria and since sidra (cider) is a specialty of the region we decided to imbibe a few bottles and play some yahtzee. (Me gustan juegos). The cider tasted unlike any woodchuck or wyders cider. It was much less sweet and bubbly and kind of tasted like sour apple juice… yeah, so since that’s what cider is (sour apple juice) essentially, it was kind of strange. That’s the stuff mom says to throw out. But we drank it! Pretty alright, I must say, but the thing with the cider is that you don’t just pour it like a normal beer. The custom is to pour it into a glass from as high up as possible (of course spilling the stuff everywhere unless you’re well trained which I came to discover I am not) so as to make it bubble a bit and then the inch or so of cider in your glass is to be taken like a shot, right away or else it goes flat. Apparently it’s muy fuerte that way. I don’t know. It wasn’t so muy fuerte to me. I think it might be easier to get a buzz from miller light than that stuff.
Our waiter at the sidreria was busy and kind of ridiculously inattentive. We had two bottles and asked for a menu, but he never came back to ask us if we wanted anything else. In fact I think he was ignoring us intentionally. “Whatevs,” we decided, so we left him what we figured was the check… hope was enough… man, I don’t know, and went out in search of another spot to order food figuring we could at least have a nice meal since we weren’t spending a whole hunk of change on lodging… heh. Everywhere seemed to be full, even though there were plenty of tables open, so don’t quite know why that was. Finally we found another sidreria where they told us we could wait to eat and order drinks in the meantime. We ordered sangria. Tasty, cider sangria, with not much of a punch cause after three pitchers I still felt kind of like I’d been drinking juice that was only alcoholic because it had gone slightly sour… not that I’m complaining, I was happy just to sit and make friends.
I like making friends, and eventually we made friends first with the bartender, Paco, then with the owner, whose name I draw a blank on, and then with two fellow that ended up being our chaperones for the rest of the night. Their names were Oscar and Miguel. They were visiting family in Gijón from Madrid. They were pretty nice fellows really, and luckily a touch older and more professional than the other drunkards pissing about. We waited for our table for about an hour, before I finally asked the owner if we could just order at the bar, and he pulled us up a little round barrel table to sit at and so we sat. When I go out to dinner I like to ask waiters to order for me both here and in the US. Having been a waiter, I know that my fellow waiters know what they’re doing and so I said, “Kind sir, please order us your favorites,” to which he replied, “What do you like?” And we replied, “everything,” which is true.
He brought us octopus that was slightly spicy with some potatoes in olive oil and deliciousness, some sort of broiled peppers with salt and deliciousness, as well as a (I’m going to guess crab?) spread with mini toasts and mayonnaise, also with deliciousness. Mirielle was all about some meat, so she ordered on top of all that deliciousness a plate of meats. Crap. It was a lot of food. Shouldn’t have done it, but what the hey, we’re in Spain, and we’re all about some sampling.
Later on in the evening the owner thought I was drunk. Which I wasn’t. I was not tres copas, no sir. In fact I was not. I was just really happy. I’m siempre allegra especially when I’m eating. I think we made him happy. He started to smile once we started talking like crazy fools in Spanish. You know, just mixing tenses and palabras around for things that they don’t really mean. What a delightful mess it all was.
He eventually sat us at a table outside whereupon Mirielle, Aubrey and Jennifer went about making friends with the aforementioned Carlos and Miguel while I went inside to use the washroom and proceeded to profess my love for Paco the aged bartender. I also talked for a while with the owner’s daughter who is learning both English and French. She told me she thought English was ugly. I agreed with her. Then I did a shot and got the bill. I’m a real trooper. I feel like, however, the shot size in spain is literally double that of the shots we pour in the states. Uh… they also put them in larger glasses and instead of chilling them by shaking them with ice, they just throw two ice cubes in your cup and toss her on the bar. Interesting.
Once the check was settled and I said my fond farewells to my new bar family, I headed to the patio with our new found Spanish, male friends. These guys were way more tres copas then me, that’s for sure, but we worked on that the rest of the night. By that point we were all kind of depressed for not having a place to stay, so I decided to brighten the mood by ordering more shots! Clearly drinking is better than being tired, sober and sad. I learned that from my customers at Raven’s; what role models! We decided for some reason that I can not put my finger on, to drink whiskey. And apparently we did monster monster shots of Johnny walker red? I’m not so sure though, that it was in fact Johnny walker, unless in Spain Johnny walker tastes like cat vomit. And funny I mention vomit, because a funny thing happened: we all almost vomited right then and there from those shots. No… better: those vile liquids of evil pleasure.
At that point the bar was closing and our friends decided to show us the bars of the area. We sat outside and ordered a few more cocktails, talked about life, languages, work, Spain, the States and various other cosas. Más cosas, más cosas, verdad. When that bar closed at four… well, we went clubbing basically. It’s funny—I always think I’m going to want to dance, but when it comes down to it… I don’t. The clubs were interesting, though.
They were amazingly packed. We went to one called bananas, that was Andy Warhol themed, and then another that was something else. And when I say something else I mean out of control. Mind you, we all also had our backpacks with us so walking through the crowds was a bit more tricky than usual, so something else means we could barely walk ten feet in ten minutes without people bumpin up on us and trying to lick our faces and the likes. Hmmm. Interesting.
After that second club, we were pretty tired and decided to tromp on up to the peninsula in search of … a bed? I guess that was the plan. We found a delightful little outcropping covered in grass and wildflowers with the sounds of the breaking waves below and from there, we passed the freak out. Hard. Hard pass out. For serious. I don’t remember anything after my head hit my towel with my arms wrapped about my backpack, until I woke up to the sun the next day. Yay! We didn’t fall off the cliff in our sleep!
So, once we woke up we did the whole, “hey! We’re still alive!” thing and felt pretty good about ourselves, and afterwards went to the beach for more swimming. Sunday, however, was cloudy and cold, so we didn’t stay long and instead found some pizza, coffee and tea for me. It was nice. We were happy. Tired, but overall, things had gone well. We had had a European adventure that is for sure.
Next thing was to make it to the train station! Once we made it there however, we discovered that the lady we had initially had problems with in Salamanca, had made yet another mistake and had given me a ticket from Gijón to Salamanca on Tuesday, the 17th instead of Sunday the 15th. Que rollo. I teared up a bit when he told me the date on my ticket was wrong. There’s nothing worse than to feel lost and tired in a city you don’t know in a language you also don’t speak particularly well.
Jennifer, the doll that she is, decided to try and change her ticket with me so I wouldn’t be alone in my terrible journey. We went immediately into the bus station to change our tickets and the lady tried to charge us for the change of tickets that was the other bus lady’s mistake, that sack of junk! I said joder, and no way. So maybe what happened next is my fault, but Miguel from the night before had said that you can get pretty far with a smile and a por favor, so I utilized that advice with the bus lady yet still maintained a firm quasai irritated attitude.
What happened next was simply unbelievable. We got back to the bus station at seven for our eight o’clock bus after going to the sidreria from the night before to once again thank the owner and have some more pulpo. We went directly to the bus that said Salamanca and asked the bus driver if that bus was the correct bus. He said no. Oh. We went then to the man who turned out to be the jefe and asked him and he directed us to the bus that we eventually got on. We found our seats, however, were taken and we found that odd, because the girls in our seats had tickets with the same numbers we had… so we went to the bus driver of that bus and he ran around for about 5 minutes looking for his boss to make sure we were on the right bus. Once he found his boss, his boss looked at our tickets and simply said, just get on this bus and take an open seat, so we did. And were happy… until we got to Léon. In Léon the bus stopped and everyone else got off. Everyone. The bus driver, came up to us and said “hey ladies, this is the last stop,” and my jaw dropped. My sleep filled eyes filled with disbelief and fear and confusion.
WHY HAD WE BEEN ON THE WRONG BUS FOR THREE HOURS? Mother of chrimeney crickets. Right? Who does that happen to? Me apparently. So. We got off the bus still a little confused—maybe we were supposed to change buses? Nope. AND the jefe had kept our ticket stubs, so we had to go find our bus driver so he could look through his pile of tickets for ours so we could go and try to change them inside. At first he was a little distanced, and happy to be done with work, but then I think he realized our situation was dire, and he understood that if we tried to explain our more than complex situation with the broken Spanish that he understood we had, all would not go well, so he helped us. He saw us waiting in a line of about ten at the bus station and went up to the front of the line to help us cut and find out if there was another bus coming. There was but it apparently had not come yet, so as soon as the next bus showed up we ran to it with the adorable little gray haired, 5’3” Spanish bus driver and he played host. The first bus wasn’t the right one, nor the second, but the third, thank goodness, was the right bus and we got on. Shivering and still cold from the beach and then the rain, in our shorts and measly sweaters that were too soaked to wear, we got on and curled our feet up onto the heater by the window and literally pulled the curtain over ourselves to keep from feeling the cold air blowing from the vents. Lordy lord.
Amazing how things happen and you just have to know how to speak Spanish and you kind of can. Kind of. Dear me, what a weekend in Spain. That day I really missed English. I would have raised a bit of hell so sickeningly sugar coated that someone would have gotten drunk on sarcasm. And that’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Heh. Uh, all three of you who do (AKA Marta and Gaby and maybe me fellow).
PS. Sorry I’m so wordy and it’s your job to read this.
17/7/2007
Hoy nos aprendimos el imperfecto en mi clase favorita: gramática. No sé porque me encanta gramática, pero es verdad. Todas las otras personas en mi clase me parecían aburridos en clase, pero a mí me pone alegra. Es bizarro, no? Pienso que la razón que gramática me pone de buen humor es porque me encanta hablar (claro) y cuándo no puedo decir exactamente esto que quiero me da pánico hablar.
Entonces, voy a practicar el imperfecto y el pretérito:
Eso es una historia de mi vida pasado, de un día que me dio miedo.
Un día hace 3 años me asaltó. Era invierno después de una tempestad de nieve grande. Era caminando desde trabajo en un metro de nieve y había mucho frío. Era noviembre y viví sólo 3 zoquetas del bar dónde trabajó, entonces caminé a mi casa normalmente después de trabajo. Él hombre que me asaltó era oscuro y bajo con guantas negras y también un sombrero de cráneo negro. Él vino de la oscuridad en frente de mi lentamente y pensé de nada porque me parecía un hombre normal. Eso era verdad hasta que me dio un puñetazo en mi cara y caí en la nieve.
No había nadie en la calle por ayuda. Él pudo sus dedos en mi boca y no pude gritar. Claro que después de esto mordí sus dedos muy fuerte hasta que él los eliminó y me llamó palabras malas. Me dio mas puñetazos antes de robó mi mochila. Intentaría agarrar sus testículos y romperlos de su cuerpo pero antes de podría hacerlo él era corriendo por la calle con mi mochila y todo el dinero que gané esa fin de semana. Que rollo.
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