DC, Don’t Count

Europe is so small, it’s unfair. If you are European you can get to another country in a couple of hours. In fact if you live in some countries, and want to go anywhere you have no choice but to leave the country. I live in NYC. That means I am 2 hours from Philly, 4 to 5 hours from DC and Boston, and at least ten hours from the closest cool foreign city, Toronto. In Cambridge, we were six hours from Montreal. Meanwhile the annoying Portuguese girls who were doing their hair at 2 AM at our hostel in Sevilla keeping poor Tracey up only had to come 3 and a half hours from Lisbon. It ain’t right. Furthermore, even if I could find cheap transport to Toronto and Montreal, there are no cheap hostels to stay in. And traveling around the US? Forget about it. You can drive forever and get nowhere, and although it hurt to pay 20€ for a dorm bed, the Youth Hostel in NYC is way more than $30. Americans simply don’t have the small distances, cheap airlines and budget accommodations to make travel easy and affordable. Which is a damn shame since as the world’s hegemon Americans more than anyone else need to get out there and travel. It might help us get rid of some of our gringo ignorance. I am jealous of the Europeans who can go spend a weekend in Paris or Barcelona, when the most I can do is DC.

The Rat Tail

White folks with dreadlocks are one of my pet-peeves. Hence Spain drove me crazy, especially since they take the lock to the next level with the rattail. The rattail is what you do when you have already been through the lock stage, so you cut all of your hair short except for a long lock or two at the back of your head. It is hideous. I found the other similar Spainish hairstyles funny, like the broom, where you cut your hair short and then have a short bob puffing out from the back of your head, or the euro-mullet, part-Mohawk, part-mullet, all gel. Or the thick straight-cut bangs. The funniest shit is that regular non-bohemian folks, like the lady at the airport counter wore these ridiculous hair-styles. Again I was loving it except for the damn rat tail. I also really loved the street art and graffiti everywhere and the highly-visible radical political slogans.

Those Windy Streets

Our next stop was my favorite city in Spain, Granada. We got off to an inauspicious start, as we were staying at a hostel in Albaycin the old Muslim Medina and after taking the bus to the center still couldn’t find it. We ended up taking a taxi only to find it that it’s faster to walk and that we had originally been only a few minutes away. One of the most annoying aspects of moving so quickly is that by the time we learned our way around a city we were already on our way to the next city.

We had bought tickets to Alhambra for that day (there I learned my lesson and booked ahead, some folks we met had forgotten to buy their tickets online and had to do some crazy long line to get tickets, if they were even able to buy them.) and I had to run cause my slot at the Palacio Nazaries was from 4 to 4:30 pm. On the way up the hill I asked three people for directions and they all pointed me in different directions. Consequently, I decided not to risk it and we took a taxi even though once again when we arrived we found out that we were only a couple of minutes away. Those damn windy streets. Again I barely made it, and again it rained. The palace was beautiful, but we got soaked.

The hostel in Granada had even more personality. When we arrived soaked, an Italian dude who I realized later was in charge at the reception desk, invited us to the kitchen where he and some other Italian dudes and assorted other foreigners were smoking big cone-shaped Euro-style spliffs. Then we took “soccer” pictures, the kind where the team huddles and the camera takes pictures of a circle of faces. This is also the same place where they had me sleep on a mattress set up on the loft. I had to climb a ladder to get to my bed and once in bed couldn’t stand-up, sit-up or even bend my knees. I paid money for this. Actually I liked sleeping up there, it was warmer and quieter, and I had a full-sized mattress.

The place was full of characters. Another employee was Esther or Pipi, a young Austrian flower child who biked from Austria to Portugal to meet a woman who claimed to be the inspiration for Pipi Longstockings. She said that she had always admired Pipi’s self-confidence and once she found out that Pipi existed she had to meet her. I honestly don’t remember anything about the book and think this lady was an impostor, still it makes for a great story. The next day it rained some more, ruining our plans to explore the city. That night, though, we went clubbing with Pipi. We decided to go to Afrodisiac, which advertised itself as a funk club. We showed up at midnight and that the spot was empty. So empty there wasn’t even someone at the door. We grabbed some beers (with complementary tapas) at a Moroccan bar and then went back to the club which by then was full of casually dressed white folks dancing funny, drinking cheep local brews and smoking way too much. Those fools were rolling hash spliffs freely on the streets. Marijuana is clearly decriminalized in Spain, how enlightened of them. The DJ was decent and every funk song was familiar as some hip hop hit from the last decade. I had to wonder if he only knows of funk through hip hop, or if there are just no good funk songs left unsampled.

God Bless You Doner Kebab

And what did we eat while we were in this beautiful, ancient medieval city in Castile? Doner Kebab. Yup. First of all, it’s great food (thanks Alex for the recommendation) and it’s the cheapest thing available. I felt bad cause in the US I can’t afford Spainish food, and even in Spain I still couldn’t afford no Spainish food. It’s all good though, cause the Kebab folks held me down. They even sell beer.

Beautiful Old Buildings

The next day we went to Toledo, an old medieval town with some really beautiful old buildings. I wondered what it must be like to live among so much history, as there is nothing comparable in the USA. I started to see what people mean by “Old-World charm.” I really enjoyed walking through the old buildings, seeing all of the churches, plazas, and small, windy, medieval streets. It was quaint (not even sarcastically, it was). In front of the cathedral, I chatted up a random French couple. They told me that liked Spain because French people don’t curb their dogs. See the things you learn when you travel.

Development

I hate saying it, but it was just nice to be in a “developed” country. First of all, I regained my anonymity. I was no longer getting constantly approached by vendors and beggars (there were many fewer of those). I was just another face on the metro. And the metro, lord do I miss clean, efficient, reliable, modern, affordable public transportation. There was no need to negotiate the price of my metro ticket, no waxale (Wolof for bargaining), just buy it, wait a few minutes and get on the train. Tracey was saying that the metro system in Madrid was not as fast and clean as others in Europe, but it was the best subway system I have ever used in my life. She needs to come to NYC where every day you see rats the size of small children, can cut through the layers of grime on station walls and dig like an archeologist for clues of a previous civilization and where every New Yorker is a champion at the “hear the rumbling, leap to the edge and tilt your head to the point of losing balance to avoid all of the other heads doing the same thing, just to see if the train is coming game.” At least in Madrid (like in DC) they are nice enough to tell you the train is coming. Beyond the metro, there were some of the other advantages of overdevelopment like cultural diversity, and cleanliness. Then, of course, it was nice to be in a country where I could speak the language and where people knew where I was from, so that rather than getting the dumb stares I usually get when I say La Republique Dominicaine, I got affirming looks when saying La Republica Dominicana. Even if all they did know was the beaches, still it was nice.

Sharp

Unfortunately I wrote down the wrong contact information and I never saw my Dominican friends again, but they had told me about the Dominican neighborhood and I decided to check it out without them. They had both said that they avoid that area cause they knew everybody and all the Dominican girls would be gossiping and hating on them. The Dominican neighborhood in Madrid was interesting cause it was more Boston than NYC, i.e. a couple of thousand Dominican scattered in random neighborhood rather than agglomeration of Dominicanness that is Washington Heights, at least until the yuppies finish their Reconquista of Manhattan. But it did allow them to be as tacky European as they wanted to be, I have never seen more Armani Exchange t-shirts, tight jeans and pointy shoes in my life. Moreover I kept being thrown off by the number of white folks in the area, and had to keep reminding myself that I was in Madrid not Santo Domingo or NYC. Still there were Dominicans there. I asked the first black kid I saw for the barber shop. Regrettably I got a fucked up cut in Dakar from a Guinean dude who messed up the areas around my ears (I am still recovering, I should be fine) and should have waited until Madrid to get a sharp, NYC-style line-up, the kind so sharp you can use your sideburns to trace straight lines on paper. Instead, my new buddy Tracey got to feel what it’s like to be Dominican sharp. Afterward I asked them for a good restaurant and I bought some arroz blanco con gandules and pollo guisado. Again the price was ridiculous, but it was enough that we were able to eat for dinner the next day.