Madison, WI, U.S.A.:

I’m sitting here in the UW Law Library, scamming internet access and watching students trudge up and down Bascom hill. This is the literal epicenter of the city that’s been my home for the last nine years, and I don’t know quite what to do with myself. Since arriving in the U.S. nearly five days ago I’ve managed to expand my list of possessions with a laptop, mobile, and few clothes, but I still haven’t retrieved my car or any of my things from storage. Similarly I’ve found a place to sleep, but I have no home here. All this creates a peculiar contradiction of familiarity: I’m living out of my backpack, wandering around alone and planning no more than hours into the future, which is exactly what I’m now used to; at the same time, I’m surrounded by sights and people that are intimately familiar and are tied to all my recent memories of stability and belonging.

My journey home was uneventful (discounting as an event me going to Heathrow instead of Gatwick and, after taking a bus to the correct airport, my making it from the bus to the plan in 10 minutes), which is all you can really ask from air travel these days. I was happy that I managed to expertly stretch the cash that Brother Nathan loaned me, although despite my best efforts I ended up with £6.75 in my pocket that I couldn’t use up. (One might wonder why I had to borrow cash from Brother Nathan, since I never mentioned the time in Sevilla that my wonderfully-worn travel pants disintegrated, disgorging my wallet into the back of a cab and causing me to cancel the credit and check cards which were my only means of getting cash. However, because I never mentioned that story, the reader will have to continue to speculate). Within three hours of landing I was in Madison, and within two days I’d mostly adjusted to the new time zone. Everything, it seems, is coming up Piznarski.

So I’m without a home and not much of a plan, but my near future seems easier than ever. I once again have a mobile, a computer, and a car; I speak the local language fluently; and all around me are people I know. This seems like the perfect place to wing it.

Later.
-w

London, England:

In two days (and some time zone shennannigans) I’ll be back in the U.S. To quote Ted Theodore Logan, “Whoa”.

Ireland and England have been a good transition back to reality, and hopefully will lessen some of the culture-shock of returning to the States. After a bit over a week here, I’m just starting to get used to the fact that I speak the language here. When I approach someone to conduct business, I still find myself mentally preparing what I’m going to say, but I’m getting better about it and am just beginning to realize that I actually can wing it.

Highlights from the last week:

Ireland

• They call Ireland the Emerald Isle, but I never realized how many different shades of green existed before I came here.  Amazing, astounding shades of green. It’s really nice of them to paint each blade of grass like that just for the tourists.
• Fields and fields full of peat. Makes me want to like scotch.
• Driving was amazing – I’m so glad we didn’t take a bus or train. Riding shotgun (on the left) was in the perfect position on the pleasure-pain boundary – I got amazing views and felt moments away from death at the same time. Fun! Thanks Nathan, for driving – it would have been worse with me behind the wheel.

England

• God, I love the Tate Modern. I spend two afternoons here, and could easily spend two more.
• I found a new love: The Design Museum. I spend a few hours just in the bookshop – it was a total nerdgasm.
• The weather here has been remarkable; I think I bring good weather luck with me. Perhaps I should do Seattle a favor and move there.
• Off to Cheltenham to visit a friend; staying with other friends tomorrow, then back. See you stateside!

Galway, Ireland: 

It’s been a busy week.

Sevilla is wonderful and beautiful and now near the top of my places to live. The weather is fantastic (assuming you like hot) and the people seem preternaturally happy, which of course suits me. All good things must come to an end, though, and I left there to spend a scant 18 hours in Madrid. Sad to spend so little time there, but it gave me enough of a taste of the city that I now see what’s possible and know I will enjoy myself when I come back.

Monday I flew from Madrid to Dublin, Ireland where I met Brother Nathan, who found himself with a week free and decided to meet me in Europe. It sounds silly, but the Guinness here really is better, and between the creamy dark stuff and the shining green of the countryside we’ve been enthralled with this country.

Unfortunately, our travels here are short-lived, since I’ll be flying with Nathan back to England tomorrow. Pictures and more writing will follow soon (and oh, the pictures!), but for now, I’m alive and still kicking.

Sevilla, Spain:

I was clever. I had a plan. All I had to do was wake up at 6:00, take the morning train from Porto to Lisboa, Metro to the bus station, and take the late-morning bus to Sevilla.

Sigh.

My very good excuse is that I was up until 2:00 finishing El Juego de Ender (spoiler: it’s fantastic), so I was nervous about missing my alarm. This meant that I found myself waking up repeatedly in a panic, only to discover that it was still the middle of the night. Then I woke up again and found it was 7:00. My 10:30 bus wouldn’t work, but according to the Internet, source of all truth and knowledge, there was a 12:30 bus. Which, by some bizarre Portugese logic, turned out be a 21:30 bus, so hurrah! I got 9 hours in Lisboa for “free”.

The city is nice. Without a map, I had to rely on my now well-honed instincts to find the city center (look for converging Metro lines; look for water; look for impossibly clustered streets), but that worked fine. All in all it was a very pleasant place to spend a day wandering, eating, writing, and reading, although, predictably, it was a little overrun with tourists. I got back to the bus well ahead of time, and after we left I remembered the hard way why I pay for couchettes on night trains. Two words: Ugh. gh.

We arrived at 04.00. As in, 4 a.m., the guard at the bus station hurried us outside so he could lock the door of the station behind us. As in, 4 a.m., the city busses weren’t running yet, so I had an (admitedly pleasant) 1/2 hour walk to my hostel, navigating by GPS the shortest linear route through all the fun twisty Spanish alleys.

So I’m in Sevilla. The hostel is nice: I used Windows Vista for the first time getting my upcoming accomodations in order (it’s shiny!), then got about an hour’s rest(-ish) on the couch before the very nice staff member woke be because his boss was going to be coming on duty, then had coffee and read on the terrace. I’m still waiting to check in, and my body hasn’t explained to me if I’m going to be sleeping today, or if we’ll just call it a wash and move right on to daytime, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it either way.

“… Here it goes down. Down into my belly. Mmm, mmm, mmm”

Porto, Portugal:

I came to Portugal just about 24 hours ago for one reason: to drink port at its source. Having done that today, I’m ready to depart in 9 hours time.

I came not from Santiago de Compostela, but from Vigo, the coastal city in the south of Galicia. Going there was fairly arbitrary, but I just wanted to see more of Galicia. Unfortunately, while Vigo is a nice enough city, it’s not particularly full of things to do; the main advantage it offered was being and easy destination on the train and close to Portugal. If I’d had my camping gear with me I would have taken a bus from Santiago and gotten off at the quaintest quietest Galego village I could find and camped, but I for some stupid reason (I’m being serious here) I still feel the compulsion to sleep indoors. It’s on my list of things to work on.

One of the things that Vigo does have going for it, however, is this bad-assed sculpture of a fish man. All hail FishMan!!

Porto, as it turns out, is also pretty cool. It suffers from the opposite problem as San Sebastian, however: this time, the map trivializes the vast distances that are somehow crammed into each centimeter. Even better, just because a road crosses another on the map doesn’t mean you can turn onto it. Because the whole city is build onto the giant hills coming from the river, you may realize that the road you’re crossing is 60 feet below you!

Since I was successful in my goal today, I can now leave this country without having learned anything about it or done one (non-alcoholic) cultural thing. I think the slight pride I’m feeling in that accomplishment is related to the pride one gets from avoiding responsibility. And, as long as I can buy my bus ticket back to Spain tomorrow I can wipe all 3 words I know of Portuguese from my mind. Satisfying!

PS:  The other awesome thing that Vigo had was the light that hit this particular abandoned building. I sat and stared at it for about five minutes, because it really truly looked like this.

Santiago de Compostela, Spain:

As it happens, the big winner of my personal travel lotery was Santiago de Compostela. I’d wanted to see Galicia, which due to its location in the extreme northwest of Spain looks way more like Ireland than it does Spain. Even better, there really are traces of Galica’s Celtic past everywhere, from the language to the random Celtic music. The historical fact I like best about Santiago is that it is the world’s oldest tourist destination – people have been coming here continuously for 1200 years, back when most people never made it out of their village. How cool is that? The route (OK, pilgramage) even inspired the world’s first guidebook back in 1130. And all this because someone decided that (a) St. James came to Spain, (b) his bones miraculously came to Galicia after he was killed in Jerusalem, and (c) the remains were found 750 years later. Good job, guys.

Yesterday was a travel day as I had to transfer trains in Madrid. It was my first time getting away from the ocean in 7 weeks, which was strange, I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to sea are. As we rode into the Extremadura I watched as the landscape change from Northern California to Colorado to Nebraska and back. While I can’t wait to get back to Madrid to check out the city, the land here is far more beautiful. Rolling hills, morning mist, and trees trees trees. I got into the train station at 7:20 and walked down the empty streets in the dark into the old town. By the time I had meandered my way to the cathedral, the sun and the city’s people had both risen and the day was starting to bussle with activity. Here’s to a new day, in every sense.

San Sebastian, Spain:

By my calculations (which I admit may be tainted by too much jamón, babalao, champiñones and tinto) I’ve been in San Sebastian for 6 nights, and today was to be my day of departure from yet another paradise. However, at 13.00 I’m still surfing the interwebs and realizing that I’ve passed the window to get anywhere far away, which would make the most economical use of my soon-to-expire rail pass. As such, I’m beginning to accept the idea that I may not reach escape velocity today. I fully acknowledge that if I truly wanted to go somewhere today I would have started thinking yesterday about where I was going — and I was totally going to think about it, I swear!! — but these kinds of hard decisions require a lot of concentration and research before I can make an arbitrary choice. So tomorrow remains a surprise, which is fine by me.

While in Barcelona, my friend Kate and I went to the Contemporary Art Museum. In addition to the single strangest film I’ve ever seen (which literally left us unable to cope with reality for 20-30 minutes afterwards), one of the pieces was a slideshow of photos from a WTO protest in Seattle. The photos gave me a strange feeling, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. I realized that all the people in the photos looked familiar. I’d never met any of them, but they all looked American in a very real and recognizable, but intangible way. I knew these people; I knew their faces, their hair, their Columbia jackets and their backwards-baseball caps. The other thing I felt, though, was their foreignness, as it’s been so long since I’ve seen those faces or felt that American vibe. It will be strange coming back, I think. I wonder where I’ll be more comfortable.

The unexpected highlight of Barcelona was the architecture. I knew that the city was proud of Gaudí and had heard of the Sagrada Familia, but I was shocked by how good architecture pervaded the town. There was the Sagrada Familia itself, which instantly skyrocketed itself to the top of my list as the coolest church in the world. It’s been under construction since 1882, but they’d better be right when they predict it’ll be done in the next 10-20 years, since I can’t wait to attend a service there. Simply astounding. There were all of Gaudí’s lesser works spread throughout the city, which were also amazing. Did you know that Castle Grayskull is in Barcelona? True. Parc Güell was a cross between Candyland and the park on the river Styx, and was a great place to spend an afternoon. But what I really loved was how deeply the appreciation for design was instilled in the town’s consciousness. You can see it in the clever curve of the embankment under a bridge, the interlocking arches of the pedestrian walkway to a shopping mall, and the aesthetic nod new buildings give to their centuries-old neighbors. This is how you can integrate old and new. This is what I’d love America to rediscover.

So this afternoon I’ll continue figuring out where to be next, and undoubtedly surprise myself. Now, I believe, is the time for food; perhaps a nice bocadillo. Mmmm.

Oh, and I lost all my underwear in Europe. Oops.

San Sebastian, Spain:

I took the night train from Barcelona last night and am in San Sebastian (aka Donostia), safely tucked away in Basque (that’s Euskadi to you, fascist Castillian swine). Somehow, without realizing it, I spent 10 days in Barcelona. I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m pretty sure I had a great time. I’ll post something about that later.

Today, after riding the bus nearly back to the train station, realizing where I was, then getting off when I understood that I could have just walked in the first place, I checked into my hostel. I happily did my laundry (I won’t tell you how long its been since I don’t want my mother to know) and spent the afternoon at the beach. I keep saying it, but days like this are hard. The difference now is that I somehow ended up in one of the best food cities in the world; San Sebastian has more Michelin stars per capita than any other city, even Paris. I expect I’ll get to a few restaurants, but I think tonight will have to be a traditional pintxo (tapa) crawl — one item at each bar — as this is the area that allegedly perfected that Aldelucian idea.

¡Salud!

PS: El Juego de Ender is awesome!

Barcelona, España:

Rome passed fairly uneventfully; of course I went to the Vatican, climbed St. Peter’s, and saw the Coliseum (even dodging tourists, it turns out I can run around it in 1:28). But I also spent a couple of days seeing the pool at the campground I was at, and as it happens it was quite refreshing not to have to wipe salt-water off my face everytime I went swimming. For whatever reason Rome never grabbed me; perhaps it was the generally run-down feel of the city, perhaps it was my physical isolation from the city center (the campground, while nice, was a bus-and-train ride away), or perhaps it was that I was just yearning for ye olde España. Either way, on Thursday afternoon I was happy to take the train to Civitivecchia and take a ferry across the Mediterranean to Barcelona.

23 hours later I walked off the giant ship with my pack on my back, onto the streets of Spain. I decided to just meander, and was heartened to find that I was starting from the heart of the city. I found a place to stay and soon discovered that calling Spain the country that never sleeps is not at all an exageration; it’s an odd feeling to realize that fact that the Metro closes between 24.00 and 05.00 is significant because it affects your going-out time (you have to make sure to start early!) instead of your coming-home time. I also learned that the all-night lifestyle isn’t sustainable with my predilection for waking early – I spent a huge portion of yesterday sleeping as pennance.

Today, though, I’m very happy. After a nice bit of wandering through the city, I found a bounty of librerías and bought El Juego de Ender, my second-favorite book, and an English-Spanish dictionary. This should keep my busy for a while…

Chilling at the Coliseum

Fighting off the clouds in Barcelona with Cristopher Columbus (who, in an odd bit of trivia, is pointing at Libya)

Roma, Italy:

I finally made it out of Amalfi and am in Rome trying to do as the Romans do, which means barging to the front of every queue possible.

It is hard to adjust back to the city lifestyle, though; I got in Saturday night late and headed straight to my campground, which is fair, but on my first full day in Rome what sights did I see? The pool. Don’t let anyone fool you – it’s very nice – but I’m trying to get some motivation to head into the city center and see some amazing-cool things that are older than America, Canada, and Mexico put together.

PS: Roma Termini is the coolest train station I’ve seen yet – it’s easily better than half of the airports I’ve been to. Go Rome!