Jon Lovitz and Rude Waiters

6/1/10 – 6/3/10: Madrid, Spain

I never thought I’d say this, but Spain feels a lot like home. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been in South America for the past three months and after too long in one-of-a-kind countries like Bolivia, just about anything would feel like home. Perhaps it’s because we can once again drink the tap water, order ice in our beverages and throw toilet paper in the toilet. Perhaps it’s symbolic: we just left our vacation with our families, so it’s as if we are moving away to college and then work, just like we did a few years ago in the States.

My gut feeling though is that it’s the people. Madrid is Bizarro America. In Bolivia and Peru, I could usually take one look at someone and decide if they were a local or a tourist. (Keep in mind, I’m generalizing here – I probably didn’t correctly spot 100% of the locals there, but there was usually a common look amongst most local men and women.) Many women, for example, wore very colorful and ornate outfits. It seemed like almost every Bolivian woman had on a bowler hat and carried a brightly-colored blanket full of stuff on her back.

Upon arriving in Madrid though, I was amazed at how – for lack of a better term – not Spanish people looked. The darker skin of South America? Gone. The flamboyant clothing? Gone. Instead I saw thousands of people who looked exactly like people I know. If I weren’t in Madrid, I probably would have gone up to many of them to say hi. Instead, I looked on from my safe distance, whispering to Zhou:

“It’s the guy I worked with at Wachovia!”
“Look, there’s Nick Nolte!”
“Hey, there goes my friend’s girlfriend! What’s she doing with that guy?”
“I’m pretty sure that was my next-door neighbor growing up!”

I didn’t write down a full list, but I’m also positive I saw Roger Ebert, my old boss and two other co-workers, Jon Lovitz, the local weatherman and even Minnie Mouse.

Doesn't she look just like Minnie?

If I had wanted to, I probably could have got a poker game going with just old acquaintances from high school. (Unfortunately I didn’t know how to say “poker” in Spanish.) Although it is a bit weird seeing so many people I know, it’s also kind of nice.

…

My other subtle, ingenious observation here has been regarding restaurant service. I had heard that waiters in France were rude, but never did I expect the same out of classy, awesome Madrid! Before I make my next comment, let me preface with a short story.

Zhou enjoys eating out at a nice restaurant occasionally, so back when we had jobs I would take her to the Melting Pot every year on our anniversary. For those of you who’ve never been: don’t go. It costs a fortune, but the food is so good that it sucks you into returning again, and again. (Remember, this is coming from a guy whose favorite restaurants are Skyline Chili and BW3.) And to top it all off, we’ve had excellent service every time we’ve gone. One waiter was so good that I tipped over 25% on a $100 meal.

Story’s over. Here in Madrid, for the first and second times that I can remember, I left a restaurant without giving a tip. (Zhou has been leaving me in charge of the money lately.) At one restaurant every single waiter ignored us for about 20 minutes, and when one finally took our order he wouldn’t clear our table of the previous customers’ dinner remains. In fact, he later brought us our dishes and squeezed them into the small gaps between the leftover trash, plates, cigarettes and spilled food. At another restaurant the waitress refused to put anything down in front of us. Instead, she put everything, one-by-one into the far corner (closest to her) of the table behind the salt shakers and olive oil. Only after we reached over and got it for ourselves would she bring another dish. And not once did either of the servers say a word to us. Maybe that’s just how it is here in Europe. It really makes me miss the over-friendly service workers that we encountered throughout South America.

That being said, I really like Madrid.

Full of character.

Colorful gardens.

Magnificent buildings.

Vivid skies.

Real-life statue people making out.

The Royal Palace.

Ornate lampposts.

Picturesque narrow streets.

Historical churches.

Egyptian temples.

Beautiful sunsets.

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Puzzles for Postcards

The Truth Behind This Famed Man Anagram

Taunt-Making Hunk
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Pictures of the Day: Zhou The Photographer doing a compare and contrast of the Royal Palace and Plaza Mayor.

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Lord I Was Born a Ramblin’ Man

5/13/10: Cabanaconde, Peru

We have now spent close to 630 hours on buses and somehow found a way to either (a) blog about them or (b) avoid blogging about them by writing about random nonsense that sort of pertains to traveling. Today we spent another 6.5 hours taking a bus from Cabanaconde to Arequipa, then we hopped on a ten-hour overnight bus hoping to get to Cusco. (Whoa – I have two parentheticals that I wanted to include at the end of that sentence. I’m not sure how to deal with that, so I’ll move them out into the meat of the paragraph and hope for the best.) First, for those of you wondering how to get from Cabanaconde to Arequipa, don’t take the tourist bus. We were hoping to get away from the loud, awful Spanish music of the local bus, but found ourselves inside a bus with extremely loud, obnoxious Spanish music anyway. Of course we had more leg room, but a ride that should have taken five hours took nine because of the boring tourist stops and slow tourist driver. We’d recommend you just put up with the dusty, crowded local bus and save a ton of time. Second, I said hoping to get to Cusco because technically I should be writing this blog at the end of the day while we’re still on the bus. If I happened to wait until, say, a week later to write it, you’d know Zhou and I didn’t die in the past week, and that would ruin the suspense of a daily blog. But I’m not sitting on a couch at our hostel in Cusco after finishing the Inca Trail with Dad and Steve (assuming he made it here), I’m writing this on May 13th, just as I should.

Wow, that went on longer than I thought it would. What I wanted to write about today was that no matter how much I enjoy writing the blog, I enjoy spending time with my family more. And let’s face it – you’ve probably figured out by now that we just did the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and that Steve is here, alive and well. He’s actually sitting on the couch across from me, looking at sports on his iPod. So now you can look forward to upcoming posts introducing Peruvian Steve to our audience, and then describing the trials and tribulations of cowboy-hat-wearing Dad, non-acclimatized Steve, trekking-master Zhou and myself tackling the trek to Machu Picchu.

But in the meantime, we’ve got a deck of cards and two iPods for Play-and-Pass Scramble 2, so we’ve got a lot to do today. I don’t have time to indulge you with hilarious posts, so I’ll leave you with some pictures from today.

We were lucky enough to catch Feast of the Cross in Copacabana and today we caught Chivay's smaller version of the festival while passing through the town. Has anyone else been to two such festivals this year?

Let sleeping dogs lie, then post pictures of them on your blog.

[Editor's Note: If this post were ful of grammactical miscues and speeling errors, that's cause it's the first time I can rember that Zhou didn't not get a chance to edit my post before it b-came public. sorry bout that.]
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Puzzles for Postcards

This Famous Place Is Really Hard to Anagram

Hi Champ Cucu!
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Picture of the Day: We want to make Dad and Steve’s overnight bus rides as comfortable as possible, so we’re taking Cruz Del Sur through Peru. Yes, they have a comfortable waiting room complete with wireless and nice bathrooms.

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The Tears of My Loneliness Produced This Salt

4/22/10: Southwest Circuit, Bolivia

I’m typing this while sitting on a bench made of salt. The floor is covered in salt and there is a salt flamingo on the wall opposite me. There is a salt chandelier on the ceiling. All the other trucks that had been hanging out with us along our stops today are nowhere to be found. The six of us are the only ones at this hotel.

We arrived here about an hour and a half ago with a stern warning from Maxima, “Si problema esta noche, nos vamos!” The four of us had all nodded solemnly at this statement. But Maxima – what problema?

Sam and Matt are teaching Jesus how to play blackjack. I think he’s winning. Kevin is taking a hot shower for 10 Bolivianos. Maxima is somehow cooking up yet another fabulous dinner with just one gas burner and two pots.

Me? I have no idea what is going on. All day today Maxima has been trying to explain something to us (hence the problema) – we think something having to do with a blockade that might prevent us from getting to Salar de Uyuni tomorrow morning. From what the four of us have pieced together, some villagers are protesting tour trucks from Tupiza driving through their village by forming a blockade along the road, forcing you to go around the long way rather than through their village. From what I imagined, we would be confronted by an angry mob of pitchfork-wielding locals, who would shout angry (and unintelligible) things at us in Spanish and then climb onto our Toyota and jump up and down on it until the roof split. Maybe that’s what Maxima meant by “una problema.” Or maybe she was referring to man-eating spiders. Really, we have no clue. All we know is that the last two nights we had the company of ten other tour trucks and tonight we’re alone with “una problema” hanging ominously over our heads.

Anyway, since we don’t really know what’s going on – whether it’s angry locals or angry spiders, we can’t really be bothered to worry too much about it. So instead of sitting here wondering what might or might not happen tonight and tomorrow, let’s just go through some pictures from today instead, shall we?

We were the first group to get to Laguna Colorada this morning, so we had it all to ourselves for a little while.

Kevin's first task of the day was to accidentally scare all the flamingos away. “I did it so you could get a picture of the flamingos flying away!”

Matt and Sam studying what they thought was a puma print.

The famous “Stone Tree” sits behind barbed wire.

Have you ever seen four better jumpers? Nope, me neither.

A picture of a picture.

A Kevin head.

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Puzzles for Postcards

Lots of Fish to Fry Up High Anagram

Take Cat Cilia
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Picture of the Day: How we fill our Land Cruiser with gas.

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Uno Hot Dog = One Hot Dog

4/3/10: Osorno, Chile

K: Do you want to sit with the bags while I go order?
Z: Sure, that works.

Hindsight being 20/20 like it is, I should have responded, “well then, make yourself comfortable because it’s going to be a half hour before I get back.” (Side note: I don’t really understand the phrase, “hindsight is 20/20.” My brother has something like 20/10 vision and there’s no way he sees better than hindsight. If he does, then he’s really misusing his talents.) I really didn’t expect the following situation to unfold at a small food stand in a grocery store.

After waiting politely for my turn to order amongst the miniature mob of locals who didn’t wait politely for theirs, I stepped up to the counter confident of my ability to bring back a delicious dinner to my waiting wife.

“Hola! Uno hot dog Italiano y una Coca.” The “hola” came off a bit too strong, but I nailed the first part of the order. I was ready to move on to the second when I was hit with a severe case of deja vu. The lady talked back!

Having learned from my prior experiences though, I didn’t panic this time. I simply leaned forward and gave a polite lo siento (“I’m sorry”) as if I didn’t hear the response. I’m pretty sure though that the lady implied from the terrified tourist look on my face that the lo siento referred to the fact that I was sorry I didn’t understand Spanish at all. She immediately went into panic mode herself, calling over another worker, who called over another worker, who began shouting for another. Pretty much the entire food stand operation had stalled from the look I had given.

The newly-formed scrum of food stand workers had an intense discussion, all the while making sure to avoid eye contact with me. You know who had no problem staring at me though? The folks waiting for their orders. I am confident that if they had received any food by this point they would have thrown it at me. On the other hand, those that had received their food were happily eating it. Quite the catch-22.

Eventually the workers broke the huddle and the lady at the cash register finally looked at me again. I’m not quite sure what came of the lengthy discussion, as she seemed to be waiting for me to break the ice. I did.

“Uno hot dog Italiano y una Coca, por favor.”
“Si.”
“Y una hamburguesa y papas fritas y Coca.”
“Lo siento, no hamburguesa.”
“Oh. Una pizza?”

The lady pointed me to the counter around the corner where they kept the frozen pizzas. I planned on eating the pizza now, so this clearly wasn’t going to cut it. Now though I was out of the line. (I think the conclusion they had come to in the scrum was to get the tall foreigner with the bad bedhead out of here as quickly as possible.) I perused the already-prepared foods counter and settled on some marisco empanadas. To your surprise I’m sure, I actually had no idea what marisco is, but I really didn’t want to have to order food again verbally so I took a chance.

I got back in the back of the line/mosh pit and slowly worked my way toward the front to try again. There’s a reason someone invented the phrase “third time’s a charm.” This time I had no problem. I even managed to tell them the order was for here, aqui and that I wanted my empanadas warmed in the oven, caliente. To top it all off, they asked me which of the three sauces I wanted on Zhou’s hot dog, and I told them “si.”

Nearly thirty minutes later, I victoriously made the ten-foot walk back to the table Zhou had staked out for us. The empanadas were terrible.
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Puzzles for Postcards

How in the World Did They Make This Anagram?

A Tissue Atom
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Picture of the Day: Last night’s sunset in Bariloche.

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Longest Day Ever

3/10/10

We spent the night last night at the Auckland airport because our flight out to Sydney was at 6am and we didn’t want to worry about getting to the airport at 4am. (This makes two nights spent at the Auckland airport, and I have to say that I much prefer Changi.) Accordingly, I woke up at 4:15am to the sound of my alarm, sat up in my sleeping bag liner, rubbed my blurry eyes and saw Kevin wide awake sitting on the chairs across from me, just looking at me.

Z: Did you not sleep?
K: No, I just spent the whole night staring at you.
Z: I know we’re married now, but that’s still creepy.
K: No, I’m just kidding. I slept, but there was so much noise going on that I thought we missed our flight.

But, as Kevin should have remembered from our other night spent in the Auckland airport, it’s quite the happening place at four in the morning.

Having spent only four hours sleeping, we debated the merits of brushing our teeth but then decided against it. We checked into our flight and sat at the McDonald’s while Kevin ate our entire remaining stock of food – two hard-boiled eggs, five or six Ritz crackers and two pieces of bread. I couldn’t stomach the idea of eating anything at that hour, and I marveled at how Kevin had the fortitude to eat all those unappetizing things before five in the morning – especially the Ritz crackers. Ritz crackers are great in their place (like under tuna or cheddar cheese), but they are most definitely not a breakfast food.

We then both slept through the flight to Sydney, waking up only to eat a delicious airplane breakfast of gelatinous egg and some kind of muffin. After a few hours in the Sydney airport sitting next to approximately 1,000 giggling Japanese schoolgirls, we boarded our flight to Buenos Aires, where the guy next to me hogged the empty seat between us and made me very passive-aggressively angry. I imagined all the things I could say to him, from the polite, “Do you mind sitting in your own seat?” to the more abrupt “You over-cologned, seat-hogging, inconsiderate space-taker! I hate you!” But I never said them out loud.

I think I need to learn to become more assertive.

Finally, 22 hours after waking up in Auckland at 4:15am, two flights, three movies and a few naps later, we landed in Buenos Aires at 10:15am with a full day ahead of us. And I have to be honest with you, I thought that it would feel so great to gain that extra 14 hours and be able to see into the future, but now that we’re here in the future I can tell you with confidence that it’s not all that it’s hyped up to be. Turns out time-traveling really tires you out. Who knew?
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Puzzles for Postcards

This Anagram Is on Fire!

Feared Luge Riot
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Picture of the Day: Since we can’t really read the menus, when Kevin saw the word “pollo” (pronounced posho here in Argentina) in a cheap sandwich, he went for it. Hmm.

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