lunch time in spain
Posted by Admin on 07 2, 2010 Comments Off
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I started the operation by getting as sweaty as humanly possible, which I accomplished by hauling large pieces of baggage from my home to Incheon International Airport. I deposited my laptop and enormous luggage in a locker (sorry, Joonam) there and brought only the faithful, converted Twins bag, full of enough clean clothes for five or six days, with me to Munich and then to Madrid, where I spent a day and a half at the lush and tastefully-furnished apartment of a one Miss Emily Dunham and another one Miss Lauren Borst. And their roommate from Peru.
My arrival at said apartment was at a late hour. The next day Emily took me on a walking tour of the area of Madrid near her home. Plaza Mayor! Parque del Retiro! Fountains! Foliage! Flowers! Very nice looking city. I approached a kid who had a YouthWorks! shirt on; he reacted quite uncomfortably despite what I considered to be my most pleasant disposition. Stupid foreigners.
After lunch I flew to Ibiza, Spain. This island paradise would not be on my radar were it not for the illegal residency of a one Nasty Nate. However, since he is there, I constantly and annoyingly have information about it clogging up and slowing down my synapses:
Ibiza is the third-largest island in the chain of the Balearic Islands, which are all located some 50 miles off the eastern coast of Spain in the ol' Mediterranean Sea. The island is about 200 square miles. The other chunks of land big enough to mention are Mallorca, Minorca, and Formentera. The capital of this quaint island is a town of the same name. There are few other noteworthy towns. San Antonio and Santa Eulalia, maybe. A synthesis of the numbers that Google gave me puts the island's total population at around 115,000, probably not counting tourists such as myself. The main two tourist draws are the beaches and the nightlife. The biggest nightclub in the world, Privilege, is located there. Count it.
The days between June 16 and June 25 are a blur. Not the drunken, semiconscious blur that the typical Ibizan vacationer experiences, but the blur that comes from having an awful memory and from not touching a pen for nine days. While many events occurred, their chronological occurrence is, at best, unimportant. So, I will expound alphabetically. During the stay in Ibiza, I...
...applauded during soccer games of the World Cup variety. We watched three. The first was the U.S.-Slovenia 2-2 draw on June 18; we accidentally stumbled upon it while gallivanting through the shopping district in the city of Ibiza. The only complete game I got to view was Spain's 2-1 mutilation of Honduras; this one we saw at some chill restaurant that has a neat foosball table. Hours, nay, minutes before I was supposed to flee the island, we saw the last of Spain's group stage games, this one against Chile. For reasons to be stated in the future, I didn't know how this particular game turned out until quite a bit later. I also happened to see Spain lose to Switzerland on the 16th while in the airport in Madrid, Germany demolishing England on the 27th in the airport in Frankfurt, and Argentina dismantling Mexico on the same day at Incheon Int'l. And I saw...oh. You've quit reading. Never mind.
...became sunburned. Not as bad as during other times in my life, though. Try harder, Mediterranean sun, you sally.
...constructed a list of all different kinds of meat.
...drove around on Nate’s moto with him.
...eased through Dalt Vila. This is some sort of fortress up on a hill in the middle of Ibiza Town that kept ancient inhabitants safe via wall and cannon.
...found a vast various of beaches. The quality of increased as the week progressed; good planning, Nasty. Everyone else on the island, having very little to do between sleeping and partying harder than the Minnesota Vikings on Lake Minnetonka, also showed up at the beaches most afternoons as well.
...greeted Nasty’s special lady friend Leila. Finally. She is cool and laughs a lot and, frankly, a lot more hospitable to and patient with us visitors than I would have been had a band of Rock Rapids residents invaded my Spanish home.
...had a li’l ride on a magic party boat. We were minding our own business on one of the beaches, and some floozy came up and gave us a pitch for this journey into the blue waters of the sea...on a magic boat. For a hefty price, the trip to Formentera (isn't it great that you already know where that is?!) included: a delicious meal, motos for everyone once on Formentera, jet ski rides (though the details on this were fuzzy), open bar (probably why the details were fuzzy, and remained so), circus animals, and young, attractive people of both genders. We went. There were no animals or moto rides; we didn't even land on the destination island. The jet ski rides were limited. The open bar was not. Food was fine. Company was questionable. While I enjoyed myself, because I enjoy boat rides on the high seas, I thought the trip epitomized what the island was about, and it wasn't that pretty. A lot of people did just hang out, but there was constantly hard techno blaring out and some sort of pathetic attempts at getting a dance party going. It seemed to me like the attractively-disguised emptiness that the pleasures of the world offer. While we sat by and watched, amused. Anyway. I will not lie: these are pictures from Tyler's camera. One is obviously some of us calmly enjoying the magic boat party. The other is obviously some of us wildly enjoying the magic boat party.
...inspected many free, online episodes of “The Office.”
...journeyed out to the lighthouse that guards the city of Ibiza. We sat ‘round and watched the waves crash. Try convincing me that there is something else more relaxing out there and I will call you a fool. A fool in love.
...kicked it with natives of San Juan, a small town in the northern quadrant of Ibiza, at its town celebration. The actual title of the celebration escapes me, or we were never informed of it, but there was a certain pervasive hippie theme going on throughout the festival. Some of the festivities included fire-leaping, a DJ playing oldies hits from the 60's and 70's, a street disco (read: wild rave), and fire swingers. All very interesting.
...longed to remember the Spanish I’d learned in my four years of it in high school. I didn’t actually have to use it that much, but I felt dumber than I do in Korea for not understanding the amiable natives.
...met up with the Tuenges. For you ignorant cretins out there, the word “Tuenge” means “wise and generous hunter-gatherers” in Burmese. It is also the surname of not only Nasty but also his mother, father, and brother. His sister Amy had a good run with the name but ultimately found it less than satisfying. Nate's parents Ron and Darsha were in Ibiza for the first couple days I was. Always good to see them and get a more seasoned perspective on life. Nate’s brother Tyler was also present for the duration of my own time in I-Town; we had many a laugh, kept our ears open for spoken English, and laid plans to lay Pizza Ranch to complete and utter waste when we were both back in Rock Rapids. Obviously it was a complete joy getting to see Nasty Nate himself, as we had not spoken face-to-face in over a calendar year. We spoke of times past, times present, times to come, and Major League Baseball. Hopefully we meet again in shorter time.
...noticed quite a sunset on the horizon in San Antonio. We had to come through quite a crowd to get to the spot, but it was sweet and peaceful.
...zoomed out to a hippie market. Okay, actually, we didn't zoom; we took our sweet time. Never hurry, never worry. The market sold all you’d imagine a hippie market to sell: souvenirs, marijuana paraphernalia, tattoos, stylish clothing, tie-dye t-shirts, visually-enticing but practically-useless items, key chains, gods of wood and stone, and paper weights. The only items I showed any interest in were some books; the proprietor told me that though her friends spoke quite highly of “The Lost Symbol,” she didn’t like it that much. Word.
Alas. All good things must come to an end. On Friday, June 25th, in the middle of the previously-mentioned Spain-Chile game, I was graciously transported to Ibiza's airport for my 11:00 p.m. flight back to Madrid. When I got there, problems arose. First, as I checked in, I was informed that my flight would be taking off one hour and forty-five minutes later than it was scheduled to. Second, there was an alarming lack of televisions within the airport terminal, possibly as a terrorist prevention measure, possibly because all the island's finances had already been spent on smutty advertising for its plethora of clubs, possibly because soccer, and current events in general, are not a priority there. Third, my flight did not take off an hour and forty-five minutes late; it took off three hours late, which, for those of you who passed second grade arithmetic, was at 2 AM. Madrid's subway stops running at 1:30 a.m., which is fairly generous, in my opinion, so after we landed, I hunkered down and slept on a bench in Madrid-Barajas Airport until 7 a.m.
At which point my second round in Madrid began. Accompanied by Miss Dunham, I got to see still more of what appears to be a relatively cool city. We went to get groceries, perused through a park, saw a couple walking a pig, hit up a comtemporary art museum, ate lunch, observed the tradition of the siesta, watched the U.S. soccer team choke against Ghana's, grabbed dinner, and called it good. Solid day!
The next morning I got up and flew back to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where my parents and Sunshine picked me up and took me home. More on that trip later, because, believe it or not, it was not as simple as it sounds.
Despite the emergence of several sweet extra opportunities (hangin' with other Bethel livers-abroad, seeing some of Madrid, flying over almost all of the 4,000+ miles of Russia), the focal point of this expedition to Spain was to see Nasty Nate in Ibiza. In thinking about the whole trip, there were a horde of factors influencing my experience there. The main one, obviously, was seeing Nasty, my highly-toted "best friend from high school in Iowa." Then there were the elements of meeting Leila and also seeing the Tuenges. Obviously there was the observation of and brief immersion of the general European lifestyle, the Spanish culture, the Ibizan customs, and, most specifically, the way Ibiza is during the summer, at the peak of the tourist season on which the economy there relies so much. It could have ended there, but two other elements weighed on me, though they combined to make a strange juxtaposition: the fact that days before leaving I'd completed, at least for a while, the most demanding job I'd ever held and the fact that the next step was to get on home to Rock Rapids and the Midwest, where I would be reunited with my family, within distance of my friends, close enough to Minneapolis to watch Twins games, and completely on my own time in my own environment. The former made me want to do a whole lot of nothin' and the latter made me want to take action and see everyone and do things.
There is a lot to consider. I don't have a concrete concluding statement about it in its entirity except that it was a mix of things and that that made it a little weird. At least there was plenty of time to experience and consider most of what was going on, because we were not that busy. Most days began between 10 and 12 in the morning, but we rarely went anywhere before 2 or 3, after lunch. And even when we went places, we mostly just hung out; not too stressful. Which was good, in a way, but at times left me, an achiever/producer type, a bit adrift.
Which, as far as I could see and judging by what Nate had to say about Ibiza, is probably how I would feel if I lived there. Cool enough place; there is a sizable night life and plenty to do in regards to that, and lots of beaches and spots in which to enjoy the natural world. But the job Nate had for a long time never let him work more than sixteen hours a week; I believe that the average work week only encompasses twenty-five hours each semana. Which sounds cool, but also seems like after a while occupants who were used to doing more would want to...do more. It is all a matter of cultural relativity, I suppose. If one were raised someplace where a twenty-five hour work week was normal, then Ibiza would be sweet. If one were used to primarily working eight-hour days all week, one might be unsure what to do with all of one's time.
All in all, though, the time was well-spent. There was excitement and adventure, and there was peace and calm. A good mix.
