Sketches of Spain

[Savonarola]

The closest major airport to me is Orlando.  It features some of the cheapest fights in the country; but there is a heavy price to pay.  Flights into Orlando are filled with children wound up beyond the comprehension of a middle aged engineer.  Flights out are filled with worn out and cranky children.

Fortunately I had a short flight from Orlando to Philadelphia.  I was going to Spain for training on the TETRA radio technology.  On the next leg of the flight I was seated near six high school girls.  They were the entire senior class from a small private high school in New Jersey on their senior trip.  They were so excited they could not stand it.  Everything was better in Spain.  They were going to have such a good time.  They'd meet all sorts of cool people and go on amazing adventures.  They might not ever come back.  It was just all too exciting.

Listening to them in the evening as the flight took off I found myself thinking "Ah to be young again."     As the flight landed at the east coast equivalent to three in the morning and they were still going strong I found myself hoping that such terrible things would happen to them in Spain that a telenovela would be made of their trip  ; and that they'd drop a goat on them in Manganeses de la Polvorosa  ; and that the ghost of Franco would haunt them for kissing boys they were not engaged to  .

I was with several other engineers from GE.  We're using the radio system to support a project in Colombia.  Our boss was there, he had been given the nickname "El Jefe" by one of my co-workers while they were in Colombia.  The Spaniards got a chuckle out of that but Colombians take that quite seriously and treat him with a great deal of deference.

We spent a couple days in Barcelona to adjust to the time change.  I adjust to time change by drinking plenty of water and walking around outside.  My coworkers drink.  I've been to Barcelona before, so I showed them the Ramblas; and we went through every tacky tourist bar on that long walk.  We even stopped in the "World of Ham" where you can buy the clamp and board Spaniards use to slice ham.

That evening we met Jose, the CEO of our supplier.  He took us to a restaurant in one of the back alleys of the Bari Gothic.  It was like in Goodfellas, we walked through a narrow bar, through the kitchen where I felt almost singed by the wood burning oven and then it opened up into a large restaurant.  We were sat near a bachelorette party.  Jose turned to me and said, "I fear women in a restaurant more than a child on an airplane."

That turned out to be a wise sentiment, as we were serenaded by the shrieks and squeals of drunken women throughout the night.  One of our engineers, Ken, bought them a pitcher of Sangria and the bride to be exchanged bises with everyone on our table.

As we left the restaurant late in the evening there were a number of men out on the street selling individual beers out of a six pack.  They were actually drug dealers and the proffered six packs was the advertisement.  There were also touts for clubs; I went to one with my coworkers Ken and Nick.  They provided free shots of wretched Spanish liqueur with every drink.  Nick, who lived in Fort Lauderdale for some time, was amused that a quarter way around the world they were playing South Florida club music.

Nick's girlfriend was concerned that he was going to go to strip clubs.  Her friends had told her that the strip clubs were like brothels in Spain.  Ken told him to tell his girlfriend to get new friends.

Jose showed us around the city the next day.  He made it his personal mission to sell Spain, as he was certain that Americans, upon hearing that Spain had a 26% unemployment, would think it was like the Dominican Republic.  We would envision a man dancing the merengue in a pile of filth when we thought of Spain.  He felt that in order to do business he needed to demonstrate Spain was just as modern and proficient as Italy or France.

This vision of a man dancing in filth, Jose said, was the fault of politicians who were all burros of brainless monkeys.  He would have preferred Berlusconi, who at least sold Italy successfully.  In fact he was a fan of dictators, and said that the greatest leaders had always been dictators; like Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn and Bill Clinton.  Jose's plan was to split Spain along the Ebro River; I'm not sure which part he wanted to remain in.

Jose is a self-made man; so I thought that might explain some of his odd political views.  After all Ross Perot had some odd ideas too.  Later that week I met a Catalan manager said that if Spain rejected allowing Catalan their referendum for independence that terrorism was a perfectly acceptable alternative.  That manager and a Basque engineer both took grave offense that a Franco era politician had said that the best thing in Madrid was to take coffee in the Plaza Mayor.  (I could have that completely wrong.  It really didn't make sense, but they kept repeating it.)  One of the Castilian engineers thought that the banking crisis was deliberately created by the EU in order to destroy wages in the PIIGS countries so that they could have cheap manufacturing there.  From the standpoint of an American it seemed that the whole of Spanish politics were completely insane.

The real nationalism, politics and state religion of Spain, though, is jamon.  All the Spaniards agreed that their ham is the best in the world, nothing like prosciutto and it was the fault of the burros and brainless monkeys for not successfully exporting it.  It occurred to me that this is what happens when you expel all the Jews and Muslims from your country.

The Spaniards took all their food seriously.  Jose thought that America's greatest failure was our lack of decent anchovies.  Several other engineers were aghast that even the French were starting to get their lunches from Kebap stands instead of having proper three hour lunches.

The training facility was at our suppliers headquarters in Zaragoza.  We took the high speed train there.  The ride is smooth, but the cars seem to sway at the higher speeds.  We spent the trip there in the bar car.  I wasn't drinking, but it felt like I had been pounding them as the ground beneath me kept shifting.

The first thing anyone you meet there will tell you is that "Zaragoza" is a corruption of "Caesar Augustus" for whom the town was named.  There are some Roman ruins below the city that you can visit.  I saw the forum, which are mostly ruined bases of pillars.  The city was a Moorish stronghold, and the palace has a Moorish core.  It was expanded by the Christian rulers.  The main tower there (the Troubadour Tower) is the setting for the Verdi opera there "Il Trovatore."  The cathedral is similarly a converted mosque; but the church that dominates the main square is the basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar.  The name refers to a vision Saint James was said to have had of Saint Mary on a pillar.  This is the patron saint of Spanish speaking countries and every year they have a feast with all of the countries represented.  The statue of Mary on a Pillar is sold as a kitschy trinket everywhere.  At the basilica you can even get the image of it on a lighter; suitable for bringing to your next auto-da-fe.

The Spanish way of life really took its toll on me.  We'd eat dinner at 10, we'd make it in at midnight but our hotel was right on a main thoroughfare and we would hear revelers until at least two in the morning; then we'd be back in class at 8 in the morning.  The Spaniards always looked exhausted in the morning.

At the end of the trip we went back to Barcelona and saw the headquarters for the city transportation.  They have monitors up all over the place where they watch the CCTV cameras in the subway station.  Big brother is watching you... step out of trains.

[The Brain]

You didn't see the brand new deserted airport or the highway to nowhere? Spain isn't a third world country in so many ways, a pity you only saw the wacko political views.

[Iormlund]

Silly man. Next time you come to Zaragoza at least warn me and I'll invite you to a couple beers.

[Razgovory]

I thought there would be pictures.

[MadImmortalMan]

Fortunately I had a short flight from Orlando to Philadelphia.  I was going to Spain for training on the TETRA radio technology.  On the next leg of the flight I was seated near six high school girls.  They were the entire senior class from a small private high school in New Jersey on their senior trip.  They were so excited they could not stand it.  Everything was better in Spain.  They were going to have such a good time.  They'd meet all sorts of cool people and go on amazing adventures.  They might not ever come back.  It was just all too exciting.

Everything is magnified when you're a kid. If a thing is exciting, it's way more exciting. If a thing is depressing, it's the end of the world. Even food tastes stronger because your taste buds are young. It's why childhood experiences are more powerful for us, and people tend to like the music they listened to as a teenager. And why things like divorce and deaths in the family are harder on kids.

[The Brain]

Kids bounce back like a motherfucker.

[Savonarola]

Silly man. Next time you come to Zaragoza at least warn me and I'll invite you to a couple beers.

That depends, do you live on the right side of the Ebro or the wrong side? 



I couldn't get away this time through.  I may have to go for a factory acceptance test in the future; if I do I'll let you know.  Unfortunately I'm a lot more likely to go to Santa Marta, Colombia next.

[Savonarola]

I thought there would be pictures.

There wasn't even a trumpet solo.   

[The Larch]

I knew that a Sav's thread about Spain would deliver. Warn us next time and we'll do a proper welcoming. I'm in Barcelona right now and I can relate to some of the embarrassment/puzzlement that you see in the Ramblas and around it. The other day my buddies and me were walking back home after clubbing and we were sexually harassed by African prostitutes. I felt a little bit Slargosy after that.

Btw, regarding the personal weirdness and strange ideas of the Spanish people you met, my guess is that a fair deal of it can be chalked down to them being engineers. 

[celedhring]

To be honest, I avoid the Ramblas when walking back up after clubbing. As you noticed, part of the prossies' shtick is to double up as pickpockets when they harass you. It's still a pretty funny sight to see all the dressed up high-class lot exiting the Liceu after an opera night and mix up with the drunkards and the prossies. Only in Barcelona 

The thing with engineers is that they think of everything as engines, so they splice, cut, rearrange and throw away with savantic abandon 

[The Larch]

Yeah, in fact Momo, one of the Serbian guys, got his phone stolen by the prostitutes and only realized it the next morning after I guess a gazillion phone calls were made to Nigeria with it. 

[Savonarola]

In Barcelona no one gave a second look at a group of people speaking English; but in Zaragoza we stood out.  In one bar a young lady with dyed blonde hair approached us and immediately zeroed in on "El Jefe" (who is nearing retirement.)  She wanted to practice her English.  He lived in Florida; how interesting she was going to Miami in the fall.  Could she have his e-mail address or meet him in that bar later?  Como se dice "Sugar daddy?"

One of our party had lived in Panama for a few years and spoke some passable Spanish.  There's some pitfalls going from New World Spanish and Castillian.  He found out the hard way that "Vamos a tomar," doesn't mean "Let's drink" in Spain.

I had taken some Spanish at a community college, but it's deteriorated and I have a bad habit of pronouncing all foreign words as though they were French.  Hilarity ensued when I tried to order a "Chocolate coulant" at a restaurant.

Ah well, as Voltaire said, had it not been for the Tower of Babel the whole world would still speak French.  One of our supplier's had an operational manager from Montreal.  Upon visiting Barcelona for the first time he read the Catalan instructions in the train stations.  He said it was the poorest French he had ever encountered.

Another of our supplier's managers was an American expatriate who had married a Spanish woman.  His eldest son was in culinary school.  He was eager to learn how to slice ham, as the ham slicer is paid a premium in Spanish restaurants.  Once again, this is what happens when you kick out all the Jews and Muslims from your country.

Our project manager kept ordering "Hamburguesa" at the restaurants we went to.  He was planning to do so at a high end restaurant we were at as there was "Hamburguesa de atun rojo" on the menu.  He ordered lamb instead when I told him what he would have gotten had he ordered that.  Afterwards he ate Spanish food.

[celedhring]

I request further info; how hard was the way your friend found out the meaning of "Vamos a tomar" in peninsular Spanish?

[Capetan Mihali]

What does it mean in Spain?

[Ideologue]

"We go to take"?  Sounds socialist.  NO PASARAN.