Single

Single man, back in the ring swingin'.

RyanAir has tight weight restrictions. I have to throw out all of my toiletries. We sprint to the plane.

The woman in Bristol gives me a hard time about my passport, though Ryan passes right through. I now have a monitored passport and must leave the UK by March. It should be June.

We catch the Bristol bus, from the airport to the city, with a number of people standing around outside. They are groups of several. There are two seats. Ryan and I board.

The bus pulls in to the Bristol bus station at 1:45 for our 1:45 connection. They've been waiting for us. They toss our stuff in and we take off.

London. Nick Walsh, our friend from college, is amazing. He used to work and serve in the States, which is how we met him. Now we're in his country for New Years. We walk around.

This has been a terrible day. This has been a great day.

Ring in the New Year.

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!!!

La reína estudiante

The hundred-some soldiers in camouflage and berets are stock-straight and getting lambasted by their commanding officer. Watching the placing of a wreath for historically fallen comrades, the corps stands tall as if their upraised chins were also in salute, or they were, say, shackled at attention and made to climb over a wall.

We are at the Air Force Building, and this is but one of the festivities surrounding the long weekend for El Día del Constitución. The wreath-laying done, they break ranks, but wait! This ain't no civilian ceremony! You don't leave when y'er done! This is the military, and you leave only when you're good and told to! At least that's what I perceive is going on, through my broken Spanish and Inma's narration, given the discliplining spectacle in full view of the public.

Of course, we aren't cool enough to be here for the long weekend. We're not cool enough because, in fact, we didn't even know it was a long weekend, much less a holiday. We are here to see Sarah Richardson, la reína estudiante de España before she heads back to Stetson in a few days.

We walk to see her because public transit, though great, censors the true view of a city, and in my dreams I'm riding a bicycle. After the lambasting, we--Sarah la reína estudiante, Inma who is her awesome Spanish friends who casts warmth and culture with every expression, and some other neat friends and Ryan and myself--we all eat tapas and speak much Spanish to kind ears.

It's good to see Sarah. The last time I got to see her was when I wandered into her room at the Wesley House and bugged her for a few minutes (which is how it goes as residents at our beloved campus ministry), and she is now as she was then: friendly, fun, and inspiring, albeit this meeting in two different languages. At night, with even more friends, we wander two hours in search of gelato, which we never find. We do, however, see that an Irish bar is broadcasting the Gator game at 10 PM, and listed as "10 PM" instead of 22:00, for us Tebow fans who keep time differently from the rest of the world.

Of Madrid there is much to say, but here are two key points: Ryan and I were fifteen meters away from the thrones in El Palacio Real and hence fifteen meters away from ruling the Spanish kingdom including all of its wealth and colonies. Secondly, I felt tempted, even justified, to gloat to Pam that we visited El Museo de la Reína Sofía (for free!) and stood beside Picasso's "Guernica" as well as all of the studies that he drew and painted in preparation. But we don't need often ill-begotten and infinite colonial wealth, nor the changing room with wall dècor so intriguing that I can't begin to desribe or fabulous green and red ceilings of carved wood. We don't need a "Porcelain Room" where, running up the walls on all sides appears one solid piece of porcelain, of cherubs connected to grape vines connected to doorknob-type faces one might find on a castle gate, all of this ascending with no cracks. And if we don't need all of that, we definitely don't need to gloat to Pam, because she loves Picasso and that would be mean. Besides, it's nice not having a permanent job and to be suddenly and decisively placed as monarch for life, well past retirement age when I could sit back, drink coffee, and write memoirs--well, that would be royally lame.

Even our close brush with royalty, however, does not alleviate us from being stranded without a hostel for a night due to such a gigantic holiday weekend. Usually, rooms are plentiful and dirt cheap in the off-season, but when all of Spain is out of work for four days and the restaurants of Madrid are standing room only, several backpackers must move elsewhere, such as a midnight bus ride to Granada and napping from 0430 in the metal chairs of a cold bus station, along with several other travelers. Nonetheless, this makes for just one more awesome story, even if it is not a night, especially comfort and temperature-wise, that I would like to repeat.


Now, the monarch job bit is only partially in jest. While it is nice having time to travel in between responsibilities, killing this week while waiting for our next opportunity to open (thanks to the holiday) has been arduous on my wallet as well as my soul. Ryan seems to be doing okay, and was enthralled at the access granted to us in the Palace and the incredible modern, contemporary, and especially videographical collection of La Reína Sofía. I liked these as well but, for me, I have to feel like I'm contributing to society, and, living as uninfluential a life as I do at this moment, I have trouble.

Perhaps it would be different if we were more fiscally viable, supporting not just historical venues and hostels, but the many and varied street performers who help make a place so wackily memorable (that is discounting, however, most of the living statue community, whose presence mostly makes a place more creepy, though there were some delightful ones, including a guy with chicklets for buckteeth, dressed as a waiter with serving plates and drinking glasses, who was permanently sprawled in midair, as if he'd stepped on a banana peel). I'm speaking of the saxophone player, for example, whose soulful music reverberates throughout the clear, spacious Palacio Cristal, in which only a handful are allowed at a time, bouncing off of the art installations and the walls with the leaves of Parque de el Retiro--a sort of Central Park or Boston Common--autumn-colored and waving outside.

Moreover, oh! The local cuisine! And not the cheap stuff, but that which is characteristic and insipiring about a place! Give me a healthy budget for food in Spain and Italy and I will eat all the potatoes and sausage in Ireland!

For now, my prayer for myself is that this heart is moved to poetry and storytelling. This is how I can influence the world and how I can let you know that I love you all. That the people I meet and serve will only be a fan to this flame, and help to channel it rightly. I can, also, follow the advice of dear friends, such as Sarah Campbell, whose heart, at least the part that remains in Madrid, spends time drinking sangria and eating fish at a brightly decorated restaurant with grog barrels in view that describes itself as kind of like "a psychadelic pirate ship". Too slathered in butter, the headless fish tried to escape, but I got it, Sarah, I got it, and 'twas delicious.