First day on Camino

This is a part of Spain that no one sees. Small towns, car dealerships, highways running along the Via de la Plata of the Camino de Santiago. Honestly, I don't know much about this road other than it is one of the five traditional pilgrim routes that the apostle James (a.k.a. "Santiago") took while bringing Christianity to Spain, yet I am not sure why there are five. Ours, the Via de la Plata, starts in Sevilla and directs us via yellow arrows through Andalucía, Extremadura, all the way up to Santiago. The yellow arrows are over everything, on street signs, on old rubble beside the rural roads, a simple yellow like three sloppy strokes of a paintbrush pointing us forward.

In a way this is much like the Pilgrimage for Peace with Rachel. By saying this I do not mean by any stretch that I am as hardcore as Rachel and those folks, mostly in middle age or later, who committed to the 50-day, 1000-mile walk, sharing the message of peace twice a day with community centers, schools, churches, and throughout the day with the common folk on the road. I'm not even as hardcore as the people who joined for one more day than I did, but I relate in that, as people see us walking, they cheer us on. It seems every few cars are proud of us, honking and waving, and that small towns know exactly what we are no matter from what culture. Merav is right, there's something about peregrinos, those pilgrims that the road draws, that local people strongly respect.

This rapport with the locals proves very advantageous to us in Santiponce, fourteen kilometers away from our destination. When the deluge comes, as it does for us in Spain, we realize how foreign this part of Spain is to such water from the heavens. Their architecture includes almost no overhangs, and we duck into a church, into restaurant door wells, and anything that will keep us dry. Even in the rain, though, people are friendly, one man shielding Ryan and me with his umbrella talking about this and that while our rucksacks and a distant Merav were continuing to get soaked. He told us about a woman in the middle of the town who lived alone and welcomes pilgrims, so, after some wandering and trying to find free bedding at an old monastery (which is closed), we get back to the center of town, where several women tell us to find this Carmen. We knock on her door and get no answer, so I ask the barkeep two doors down, and, instead of getting the phone number like I asked, he walks us to the house, and bangs loud enough to bring Carmen to the door. She is old and smiley and brings us in. We have to pay, and it's expensive for the Camino, but we were willing to pay much more to get dry on such a day. We watch Inglourious Basterds, stretch our sore limbs, and stretch our clothes out to dry after a very good day.

Read more about the Pilgrimage for Peace either here: http://walkaboutpilgrims.blogspot.com/2009/11/zigzag-back-through-these-states.html

or here: http://peacewalk-newengland.com/

Multinational like home: Stories from the road

Give it grief, Starbucks is a respect-deserving solid cup of coffee. We all have our comforts of home: Merav's is the Hebrew-lettered cigarettes she found stuffed in her bag when she ran out of rolling papers. Ryan's is peanut butter or video games, neither of which we have right now. He is smarter than us when it comes to churros as well, only engaging in churros y chocolate with us once, and watching us stuff custard-filled, chocolate-covered churros rellenos in our faces without even a hint of wistfulness or wanting to take our gastronomical place.

Occasionally, in Ireland and Spain, we go for a McFlurry, which feels a little anathema to me. Yet when an establishment like McDonalds––which I usually avoid completely for its very-bad-for-you nature––when they have free Wifi and we don't know where our hostel is, McDonalds comes in very handy. As does a McFlurry when you need a little something other than bread, sausage, cheese, and carrots.

Starbucks takes it up another notch, though. Whereas Spanish coffee is condensed and strong, fueled by a strong espresso culture full of cafe con leche and cafe cortados, there's nothing quite like the size and, with it, the continuity of a large, American coffee. Needing something to remind me of home, I stroll into a Starbucks in Sevilla and get all the way to the counter before I realize the horror: they only have one coffee brewer, and it's decaf. In DuPont Circle, DC, we have five. Yet I'm already there, so I place an order for a cafe americano, much the same thing, made with espresso and hot water. And it's good, that full flavor, the sixteen ounces that no Spanish coffee can touch. While I'm fine not having a home, I wish I could pack up this coffee and bring it with me, in a French press, like the tortoise its shell.

In other news, Merav finds me out slower than Ryan. While Ryan understands a good bit, I am the only Spanish speaker, which is to say, I am the only one who can ask for complicated directions, then gather Ryan in so he can help me understand what in the world is being said in reply. He figures me out the quickest, but that's also because he knows me better.

Merav, however, is different. So we both tell her, as I did Ryan, if she are ever stuck in a restaurant without knowing what to order, she should say this simple sentence. Same as––and yes, it is rather miraculous that it works in this setting––if she is ever interested in a Spanish guy such as Manuel-the-awesome-Spanish-barman-wearing-a-Big Lebowski-shirt-who-is-30-the-perfect-age-for-a-28-year-old-single-Israeli-woman-who-is-kind-and-introduces-us-to-great-new-music-that-we-like-and-inspired-him-to-play-the-ukelele, if she meets a guy like this, she should simply say, "Quisiera el pulpo." Though she never used it (and I don't think we'd have let her), I would have loved to see Manuel's face should she look at him flirtatiously and subtly say: "I would like the octopus."

Later, after finding this out, Merav tells us that octopi are actually quite smart. During her diving-with-dolphins-and-taking-pictures-of-them job, she learned that someone put food in a wine bottle, dropped it in the ocean, and the octopus actually opened the wine bottle and got the food. For the easily amused (like me), that image is a simple joy of life.

Bus stations

The middleaged Spanish barmen have the look of culinary opportunists, standing invitingly at a room-long bar where I am sending vibes to pastries, wishing they would leave their protective glass casing and come towards my belly... It is the bus station in Granada, which we visited at 4:30 AM when we arrived and to which we've returned at 7 after a rough sleep in the cold, headrest-less metal chairs. The barmen are the same, with the somewhat snappy dress that suggests professional and clean, but not intimidating; with the look in the eyes that says, "Please ask me a question, and let me answer it with a sandwich, beer, or pastry."

Crossing back and forth over the United States' Eastern Seaboard, I became well acquainted with Amtrak stations. I have noticed, whereas some stations are real gems (many great holdovers from older days, New York City's Penn and DC's Union Station being fine examples) most lack tremendously in the culinary department. In fairness, one can find a good steak or such during meal times on the train itself, but, if one is laid over in Jacksonville, one is relegated to chips and cookies from one vending machine, ice cream or soda from another, and – is it oddly? – hamburgers from another machine.

The irony is, with such a breadth of vending machines, Jacksonville is an upscale station compared to others.

Enough of this ragging on Amtrak. What this contrast really is to me is an interesting glance into cultural values. For the Spanish, it is important to have – if not healthy – fresh food, beer & wine, and espresso readily available while traveling. The barmen, who seem to have served for years, pass us everything on a ceramic plate, with real silverware, and one can watch the crema as it slides down the glass to finely settle on the espresso halfway down. We in the States don't demand such treatment, nor do we demand such a professional level of service from, for instance, the grills one may find in a Greyhound station. I wonder: if stations were supplied with fifteen-different-species-of-sweet-and-savory-(and chocolate!) pastries, would we even eat them? Are napolitanos too rich for our blood? Do we eat so fast that we don't have the time to fully experience an eclair? Or, hey, do we just not like sweet fillings and puff pastry because they are bad for our pastry, and we have a figure to watch?

Regardless, I think all of our lives could be enriched by more bocadillo cutters: machines like those which divide ham into cold cuts, they split a thick hoagie roll into a sandwich bun in the twinkling of an eye, the invisible blade almost completely halving the thing with a satisfying twang! twang!! twang!!! To me, the onomatopoeia could be better heard as awesome! awesome!! awesome!!!