You Can Tell that There's An Economic Crisis

You Can Tell that There's An Economic Crisis in the US because. . .

1. There's way more musicians out on the sidewalk playing for spare change than at any point in recent memory. And some of them, are terrible. There's this one dude who basically just plays his bongos--admittedly, in rhythm--with karaoke tracks. Nothing fancy, no lead or counter beats, just a simple pulse

2. You can now sometimes negotiate prices at stores, even clothing stores. I've overheard several women talking about they haggled for a better price in the WP, and actually got it. Now, in Africa + the Middle East, this is normal. But never in my entire life did I think you could haggle anything in America except the price of a car

3. The streets are filled with Priuses. It's like a little army of hybrids

4. Borders is closing its flagship store on Michigan Avenue. Not only that, but the Borders on Halsted + has completely eliminated its CD collection, replacing it with old chick lit novels it never sold last year

5. The new question at Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) has changed from paper or plastic to, do you want a bag? And fuck, it should be a question

6. Paradoxically, money spent on escapist entertainment of any and all sorts has been largely unaffected by the crisis, in some cases, even exploding, which makes sense. Don't believe me? Just Google the Great Depression + the Silver Screen. You'll be amazed and see clear parallels. Then Google movies, DVD + especially video games sales, and you'll see that they're doing just fine in the US, even with bit torrent engines

7. Local or regional vacations are in right now

8. The tip jar for baristas at every café I visit is visibly emptier than it was a year ago. People aren't tipping out of service guilt, or because they're trying to be nice like they used to

9. More homeless people in Lakeview who appear to be getting a lot less back on their return

10. Americans are trying to make money in ways I've never seen them do before. For example, Saturday night, LB + I were leaving one of our fave vegan restaurants in NoChi, when this Polish guy opened the door of his truck and asked us if we wanted a ride (speaking in a very strong Polish accent), explaining that we could just pay him the $4.50 we were going to plop down on CTA's desk for taking the bus. For a second, I actually considered it too

11. Getting a job is rough right now. In Esquire, there's an article about how one man applied to a 100 jobs + barely got any interviews

12. Americans are selling their gold since it's the only thing to have actually increased in value. LB sold her engagement ring, which we lived on for several weeks. And there's this new phenomenon called gold parties, especially on the West Coast, where people mingle at a jeweler or an appraiser's house, eat some brie, sip some zingy Chardonnay, bringing bibelots, bloody marriage bands and dreaded heirlooms they've never worn before, and one by one the host inspects the jewelry and makes them an offer

13. Colleges are now giving special consideration to rich applicants, as if they need any more special consideration! Reed College actually had to remove hundreds of qualfied applicants who needed financial aid and replace them with students who didn't, which will have horrendous consequences for the socio-economic diversity of an incoming class

14. I know quite a few Chicagoans who don't drive anymore, or who switched to bikes, or mass transit, or have developed a nasty walking habit

15. Giving strangers cigarettes requires character evaluation now. Not just anyone gets to bum a cigarette, especially when each one costs .37

16. I'm much pickier about who I give money to on the street, and I don't feel bad when I don't hand over the linty coins in my front pockets the way I used to

17. The Preppy look is making a major comeback, even for hipsters, and I don't think it's a coincidence this time. For amnesiacs, think back to the late 90's when Tommy was huge for black teens, often from low-income neighborhoods. The image of prosperity, wealth + abundance is hard to resist when you're going through tough times. For some people, that's their whole life

18. The unemployment stigma that used to exist, doesn't anymore. There are people with advanced degrees who are out of work right now

19. Real luxury items--not simply the appearance of wealth--have plummeted. It's about fucking time. Hummer, ba-bye

20. Labeling Obama a socialist for trying to improve the healthcare system just isn't working for the majority of Americans, as long as they get insurance

[La version en castellano a cotinuación. . .]

Culture Shock + Fickle Atoms

I've read about culture shock before, but I'd never actually experienced it until now. I think I've always been delighted by the idea of not recognizing my own country prima facia, of seeing my native land the way a foreigner does if only for a few moments. It excites me, that basic idea. To see the streets of Chicago with fresh, curious + rapacious eyes. It means, I can love my city, I can recreate my city all over again, one street + apartment cornice + carved stone balcony + half-life memory at a time like the narrator in Borges's "Circular Ruins," creating his son one body part at a time in his dreams. It's a creative process where you never feel immune to beauty. After all, familiarity, on some basic level, is immunity. When we become familiar with places, which is really, the experience of sifting through memory connected to space + time, we stop being affected by those places, we stop exploring what they mean to us until we're lost again, until we're exiled by time.

Other moments, I know I'm in Chicago, but I'm afraid we'll fly to another continent any day now until we're stuck in the marshes of debt + knee-deep in the rich dyes of travel again, possibly transported during naps + extended daydreams inside the din of cafés.

Even Zoe, our Shia-Poo, worries that we're living transparently, flickering between realities + portals like fickle atoms dancing under obsolete electron microscopes. Sometimes, she curls up on our suitcases which we still use for some of our clothes since there isn't enough space in our bedroom for Argentina.

Since I've been back, every time I wake up I wonder if I'm in Buenos Aires for a second. Sometimes, I actually fear it's Marrakech + LB + I are stuck in the Médina again, counting the seconds until the night blots out the natural light like someone nailing shut the windows of a condemned house. Often, part of me feels like we're returning to Argentina any time now, as if Chicago + our trip through West Europe + Morocco were a simple lapse of destination, not part of our return back to Chicago. I know that even if LB + I don't call our apartment in Palermo Viejo our home anymore (LB never did, actually), we've still spent the last year in a world where the experience of time is different than it is in America. Time was slow + painful, calm + deceitful; in Argentina, the time contemplates, becomes distracted, slows down + twists its temporal fabric into small loops of redundant motion, simultaneously acclerating experience + slowing down time. Until we arrive in LA, South America is a tireless remainder of images that goes on and on inside my mind, several years past the decimal point.

Here are some facts which explain my mindswirl:

1. Four continents in four weeks (South America, North America, Europe + Africa). How do you explain that to someone without sounding like a jet-setter?

2. Eight countries in thirty days (Argentina, the US, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland + Morocco). Which language do you speak in?

3.Twelve cities in one month (Buenos Aires, Chicago, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lille, Geneva, Madrid, Marrakech, Casablanca, Sitges + Barcelona). How can you have an opinion of one city when they all start to bleed together?

4. Nineteen Legs of Our Journey:

Buenos Aires to Chicago
Chicago to Paris
Paris to Amsterdam
Amsterdam to Brussels
Brussels to Lille
Lille to Paris
Paris to Geneva
Geneva to Paris
Paris to Irún
Irún to Madrid
Madrid to Casablanca
Casablanca to Marrakech
Marrakech to Casablanca
Casablanca to Madrid
Madrid to Barcelona
Barcelona to Sitges
Sitges to Barcelona
Barcelona to Paris
Paris to Chicago

How do you get your mind around that?

Even if part of me is still several thousand miles away, slowly returning to a city + a country that once haunted my thoughts back in the dirty, vibrant, frenetic streets of Buenos Aires, I love Chicago, in part because she is complex enough that I have to create a new relationship with her, starting from a new beginning.

My Walking Meditation

A strange thing happened as I was walking to Argo Tea today (Chicago). Somewhere between Waveland + Hawthorne, I realized that I was meditating as I walked. I didn't do it deliberately, but I was completely at peace, calm, my mind, empty of chatter, self-consciousness or idle thoughts. I meditate pretty regularly--except for in Europe, for some reason--but I'm always sitting down, in a controlled + quiet environment. But this just happened to me. And I only realized what was going on at first by the way that people were looking at me. For ten blocks, I was radiating something calm + pure + content, and there was no casuality there. I mean, nothing specific had happened to me. I just sort of walked into it. Even now I'm trying to come back down, wondering when I retreat into my mind again, to protect myself from the storm. . .

The Endlessness of Paris

What's amazing about Paris is its endlessness. No matter how many times you come back to Paris, and this is something like our fourth time here in the past month, Paris is an endless city, a continuous volume of unfolding stories that not only affect one another during your trip, but change with each revisit like Borges' Libro de Arena. The temperature, the white light + the shadows that buildings cast, the choice of café, arrondissement + connecting street, even the art + wine that you consume on that particular day changes this city's appearance, the way it tastes, its texture. Paris is never the same city, too insecure to be anything less than beautiful. In fact she cannot be the same city, she doesn't want to be, afraid of her own silence, insipidness, boredom, she is addicted to nuance + tradition, modernity + timelessness, losing you within the folds of her dress. Paris is protected by her endlessness, she is made more beautiful by her inaccessibility, constrained + breathless by her own design.

Today we:

1. Walked inside Sacré Coeur, before taking fotos from on top of the hill

2. Scaled the vertical streets of Montmartre, both during the day + at night

3. Watched a movie being filmed

4. Ate yet another perfect baguette

5. Drank hot chocolates at the Café de Deux Moulins, the famous café where Amélie was filmed

6. Walked through a Parisian Farmer's Market

7. Spedwalked through Les Halles--I kinda hate that part of Paris

8. Spent some time near the Centre Pompidou, before we went inside the bookstore, where I bought a moleskine + a short book by Roland Barthes (in French)

9. Stared at the Bastille for like three seconds

10. Ate some of the best vegetarian Chinese food I've ever had, and that includes my two favorite Chinese vegetarian restaurants on Pell Street and in the LES in NYC

11. LB + I ate two incredible pains au chocolat

12. We made love while it rained, then managed to salvage the rest of the day exploring another side of Paris neither of us had ever seen, walking from the Jules Joffrin Metro stop all the way down past the 1ere arrondissement

Here are some new pictures from our day:

Gauditopia

I'm not sure what we were trying to prove in the past twenty-four hours, but LB + I covered so much ground it's kinda demented really. The thing is, everything is so compact + so clearly delineated on a map, it's shaded in different color gradations to denote neighborhoods + streets, subways + tourist traps. Everything is so stunningly obvious with a bird's eye point of view. But your legs have a different agenda, and maps don't have to walk their own scales either. Let's just say that when we we finally slept, we collapsed onto the bed, too tired to tango if you know what I mean.

Here are some of the places we hit today:

1. Another Gaudi apartment I'm too lazy to look up, but I assure you it's not the one near Passeig de Grácia, whichever one that is

2. All of Parc Güell, which is one of the prettiest parks I've ever seen. Added bonus: we watched a French teenager throw an empty soda bottle at a performing samurai who got so understandably pissed off, he chased him around in circles until that kid tried to hide behind the field trip chaperones, where the samurai explained in choppy French that the Arab-French fucker had just thrown something at his head. The miscreant got yelled at, we stepped to the side and enjoyed the show as he tried to deny any wrongdoing: --c'est pas moi, he cried. No one believed him

3. The Sagrada Familia. For those of you shaking your head, just google "Barcelona" and you'll see Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece, a sort of architectural paean to Christianity, in all of its mutilated glory. This cathedral is stunning. But it's also really fucking weird. I mean, it looks like a place where space aliens deposited old lightbulbs. Or said another way: imagine a towering giant grabbing a handful of wet sand + then squeezing his hands to squirt the sand into tall piles. That's the Sagrada Familia

4. Torre Agbar, probably the second or third most famous tower in Barcelona's landscape, and without a doubt, the largest red-white-and-blue glass dildo in the whole world

5. The Arc de Triomf, which was like a Gaudian version of the French L'Arc de Triomphe. In a strange sort of way, I like it more than the French one, perhaps because it's less hyped and people get to walk through it because it's part of the city grid, not stranded on some island with the tomb of the unknown soldier where crazy Parisian drivers go in circles until they throw up on themselves. But I dunno, maybe they don't actually throw up on themselves. Maybe I just like imagining French people throwing up on themselves as they drive around in circles to avoid the Champs-Elysée

6. Parc de la Ciutadella: this was a consolation prize for the fact that our hotel forgot to wake us up so we missed our train to Montpellier where we'd scheduled a five-hour layover to explore the city a bit, and our only other choice in Barcelona was to buy ghetto seats for this overpriced, night Train to Paris that left twelve hours later (with the help of another 140 dollars, of course) + spend all day either in this park like a homeless couple (cf. our first night in Barcelona) or inside the Estació de França (#7). By the way, we saw green parrots in the park. And, as an addendum, I don't care how much work it is, I'm gonna get me a couple free nights at hotel heartache, + Whitney Houston, you can help me sing the chorus sister . . .

7. The Estació de França, where LB + I spent at least seven hours, doing absolutely nothing as we waited for time to pass. We tried to stretch our humble dinner of olive bread + vegan curry pâté + cookies as far as we could, but in the end, we were ready to get back to Paris. In Europe, it was the closest thing we had to home.

Human Pyramids, Shitting Mimes + Supermarkets of Culture in Barcelona

It’s odd the way things worked out: our first night in Barcelona, LB + I were supposed to stay at Hostal San Medin, but after we showed up, the dude acted like he’d never heard of us. He told us we weren’t on the list even before we could tell him our names. Once both of us had told him our names, he was like no, you’re not here. When I insisted that we’d made reservations more than a month ago, he said he’d never heard of us, and that if we didn’t mind, he was going to walk back upstairs and get back to work, looking at Russian porn on the internet. Okay, I added that last part out of bitterness. LB was really freaked out + I was pissed. I mean, arriving in any city at eleven at night without a place to stay + a limited income is pretty much a recipe for eight hours of homelessness. I mean, sleeping at a train station when you're 21 is vaguely romantic, but when you're in your mid-30's + you have a girlfriend who didn't sign up for that kind of hardcore adventure + you're not even sure you can deal with the shit you went through as a Peace Volunteers 8 years ago, it doesn't look good. Finally, however, we walked—unknowingly—into a five star hotel, begging the receptionist to help us.

We ended up being lucky for two reasons:

One, they had no rooms available, which is good because we would have laid down more than 200 Euros (around 300 bucks), which is more than we spent for the next four nights combined in Barcelona.

Two, the receptionist was simply awesome. She gave us a map of the city, marked three hotels + hostels she knew of off the top of her head, + was genuinely concerned about us, even though we weren't clients of hers. It was amazing. The kindness continued though: after walking to one of the hotels she’d recommended—Hotel Christina—the two receptionists told us they didn’t have any rooms either (this time, it would have cost 115 Euros), but they were also awesome and they called almost ten hotels on our behalf, checking rates + availability. Finally, once things were starting to look really bleak in the non-Hollywood version of bleak, the Russian receptionists told us we could leave our bags in their storage room + then she took us to a hole in the wall (but totally clean + beautifully located) hostel called Hostal Mozart, where the owners, Paraguayos, as luck would have it, let us stay in an room for 40 Euros, which was actually cheaper than at that fucking hostel where that dude pretended he’d never heard of us before.
Our bed was amazingly comfortable + we slept like triatheletes. The next day, we wandered around for a little while before running into Plaza de Gràcia where we discovered a human pyramid demonstration. It was such a stunning piece of serendipity. LB + I are already in Love with Barcelona. I mean, fuck, that was fast.

Our next four days in Barcelona would follow this presage. Even if Barcelona hadn't been so beautiful, it would have been impossible not to love the people in Barcelona: so kind + helpful,
slightly eccentric + unique, so open + approachable, a stark contrast with the cranky, middle-aged women of Madrid.

Here are pictures for the first two days from the Bari Gótic, the neglected Joan Miro Park, (Plaça de) Grácia, La Rambla, Plaça de Catalunya, Passeig de Colom, La Ribera, a few Gaudi apartments, the Boquería Market + a dizzying number of street shots.

Sitges Is Like the French Riviera, But Without French People

Lb + I found this inexpensive, three-star hotel in Sitges by accident while looking for cheap hotels in the greater Barcelona area. Sitges, as it turned out, is a 25-minute train ride from the city center + right on the Mediterrean Sea. It’s charming, quaint, pretty, tranquil + totally unpretentious. It’s like the anti-French Riviera: no dramatic Frenchies or inflated tourist prices, no celebrity glitz or paparazzi. Not only that, but our hotel is actually ten steps from the beach, and somehow cost less money than staying in Barcelona Proper. Yo, we are blessed indeed. So, for our first day, we explored Sitges. That way, we won’t feel guilty spending the next three days wandering around Barcelona. After slumming the vida loca in a bunch of one-star hotels with shared bathrooms, loud (read: pubescent) French teenagers slamming doors, permanently damp sheets, drunk Greek tourists flicking the hallway lights on + off at four in the morning, push-button showers + German guys pissing with the door open, I have to say, our hotel room feels like a Sultan’s palace. The bathroom itself, makes me want to cry + the sound of ocean waves in the background is fucking mesmerizing.

Destroying My Feet in Casablanca

Ah, feet. How much doth I destroy thee. Today we walked so much through Casablanca in the deceiving Moroccan heat that once we returned to our hotel in the early afternoon, I fell asleep almost immediately. It was kinda strange: I put my hands above my head + then I just disappeared into my dreamworld. Here are some highlights of the day:

1. We walked to Le Quartier des Habous, which was basically an artificially created Medina invented by the French to resolve overcrowding in Casablanca. What’s great about this quartier is that there are just hundreds of shops selling traditional Moroccan clothes: triangle-toes shoes, pastel hijabs, belegant urqas, formal, embroidered gowns + tunics. I bought a beautiful, sage green skullcap there for only 15 Dirhams. That place was really fascinating

2. We tried looking for the Parc de la Ligue Arabe, but got lost too many times + ended up abandoning the search

3. LB + I bought some traditional Moroccan desserts—cornes de gazelle (these amazing pastries filled with almond paste, cinnamon, orange zest, confectioners' sugar + orange blossom water)

4. Then we walked for at least an hour (not deliberately), searching for Place de Mohammed V. It’s a landmark, nothing else.

5. We ate fantastic Chinese food, (Chop Suey + Shrimp Fried Rice), exhausted + overwhelmed. To give you an idea of how hot we were, we drank a whole Liter of water + haven’t gone to the bathroom once today.

6. We binged on the expensive Moroccan desserts mentioned in #3 before our accidental two-hour siesta

7. We checked our email + then walked to the Taverne du Dauphin + ate great calamari, breaking our veganish diet vow for at least the hundreth time this year (we’re not going vegan again until we’re back in Chicago, in case you’re wondering)

8. Shower + Sleep

Here are some pictures from our day. Enjoy!

The Third Largest Mosque in the World, The Little Thief + Our Blue Oasis

After walking to the Hassan II Mosque, which was just too large—not to mention stunning—to capture with my sad, little point and shoot dcam, LB + I dodged this deranged little pickpocket who kept plopping down ten feet away from us, eyeing LB’s purse from the corner of his eye. Ten cuidado con tu cartera, I told her, every time I felt his little eyes scanning the bulges in the purse. When we couldn’t take it anymore, we walked to the beach, where el ladronito eventually followed us again after a half an hour, our cue to leave for sure.

We walked back to our hotel, stopping my La Sqala on the way to eat a light snack. La Sqala was a former defense encampment. Now, the lushly blue café Mauré is there: there were gurgling fountains, a gazebo, blossoming trees, blue tilework + a trellis. It was idyllic, especially after our walk in the sun. For food, we ate small, flavorful dishes of lemon lentils, mint hummus, red pepper + artichoke, cucumber + tomato salad, a bowl of seasoned Moroccan olives, soft, traditional Moroccan bread + a perfect smoothie of strawberry, pineapple, peace + cardamom. For dessert, we indulged in fresh pineapple, kiwi, apple s+ banana slices, dipping each piece into a bowl of melting chocolate. It was—how can I say this?—fucking fantastic. And all for less twenty-eight dollars.

At the hotel, we drank more Moroccan tea + checked our email in the beautiful lounge, softened with Sultan pillows + colored lamps, listening to walls shake as the adjacent café erupted with men shouting after Barcelona scored a goal. Today was simple, kinetic + nurturing, which is ideal after a day of heat, complications + paralysis.

The Slow, Hot Exodus: My Trainride From Marrakech to Casablanca

Today was a test of patience. LB + I woke up, ate breakfast (after the woman in charge of the Riad joked that there was in fact no breakfast for us, making me think: just another way to save money, huh?). Then, we found a taxi close to the Ghetto, and took it to the Gare de Marrakech for less than half of what she charged us (cf. with this entry from 2-3 May 2009), then we took some money out of the ATM, bought two tickets for Casablanca + jumped on the train with less than ten minutes to spare. We even got seats this time, with room for our little suitcases! Everything seemed to working really well.

And then the train stopped. . .

And ended up stopping so many times that we actually lost count. And when I say the train stopped, I don’t mean it stopped just for the twelve tiny train stations that peppered the route from Marrakech to Casa. I also mean, that the train stopped intermittently to let other trains race on by, as if to accentuate how slow our train was. It also stopped honestly for no goddamn reason whatsoever. And when it did move, sometime it crawled for forty minutes before stopping again. And then we’d sit there in this incredible heat, the air-conditioné cars actually trapping the heat since there were only a few windows per car and the air-conditioning was imperceptible. LB had to stop herself from passing out + I had to talk to her sweetly + play Nusrat Ali Fateh Kan songs for her on my iPod, sweating my ass off. And what a shame—the view of the Moroccan countryside was stunning too! The real proof that the train ride had become unbearable was when even Moroccans began fanning themselves with their hijabs. By the time the train had mysteriously stopped a mere hundred feet from the L’Oasis station (which is about fifteen minutes from Casa Voyageurs), where it stayed for twenty agonizing minutes, passengers got so sick of the heat that they started hopping off the train en masse. I’m not gonna lie, that train ride sucked ass.

Fortunately, after almost getting mugged in Marrakech, taken advantage of by the women in charge of our Riad + asphyxiated inside our wounded train, Casablanca—with all of its pollution + traffic—was a dream. I practically fell in love with the traffic lights (there aren’t any in the Medina), the wifi in the lounge (ditto), the proximity to places of interest, even the fact that our hotel doesn’t charge us for Moroccan tea. I also like that there aren’t tatterdemalions on every street corner waiting to spring on you, asking for a cadeau, or trying to follow you so they can charge you afterwards. And people like to speak French in Casa. Oh fuck man, what a dream.
After Buenos Aires, I have maybe too much tolerance for dirty cities. Even so, you can see the Atlantic ocean from our balcony + this time our bathroom has a door. They might be simple luxuries, but I fucking appreciate them right now.

Surprisingly, being in Casablanca is great right now. That's something no one ever writes in guidebooks.

Time Warp, Arabic Keyboards + Marrakechi Rooftops

Today we visited the Palais de Badia. Though made by the famous sultan of the Saadien Dynasty, Ahmed Al Mansour Al-Dahbi (aka the Gold King), the Badia palace was supposed to be a conscious imitation of the Alhambra Palace in Granada. And though I think it was destroyed in the 17th century, you could still see how striking it must have been four decades ago. I could almost picture it as I walked around in debilitating heat: four reflective ponds, one in each corner of the massive courtyard, the place where four shallow rectangles now are; there was a grove, infected with orange, lemon + fig trees, + a hammam guilded in beautiful tilework with such clean splendor. I could almost picture the palace as it used to be, at night, lit with streaking candles, their burning imagery, translated into haloes of water. It was a broken paradise, but there were moments.

I loved the cranes on top of the Palace’s walls. You could see a little suburbia of nests, high above the courtyard, lined on top of the roofs. Interesting how the function of the palace stays the same but the family changes from one species to another.

Afterwards, LB + I walked to the Royal Palace, but it was closed, + the security guard made me erase the one measly picture I’d taken of it. I guess I should have taken two—he only asked me to erase the last shot, after all. To take a break from the din of Marrakech’s streets, we stepped into a cybercafé run by a young girl covered from heat to toe in what looked like a well-worn cotton sheet. She was sweet + soft-spoken, but even she couldn’t help me with that damn Arabic keyboard. It was so confusing: there were multiple places for the period, the Q + the A buttons were reversed, there was a second alt button, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to write a @. Then there was the fact that when I tried to check my facebook account, the cursor kept going from right to left, even after I’d changed the setting to French, and from left to right again— God, I hate Windows. Try typing your password when you can’t even type in numbers with any certainty, it becomes a bad game really quickly. I think it took me thirty minutes just to sign in, by that time, I was exhausted I just decided to change my status, so I paid the friend of the sweet girl in the bed sheet, + then we walked back to Djemaa El Fna, ate more Seven Vegetable Couscous + some more vegetable tajine.

After that, we walked home. And this time, we finally knew exactly where we were going, which is nothing short of rad. I did mark a few of the walls with pencil, I’m not gonna lie, seeing as we live really far from the center of the Medina, and we have to walk through an insane, winding, confusing maze of unmarked streets, with little runts waiting for you at the end of every street. It’s like a really bad shoot’em video game where the bad guys are street waifs + one-eyed teenagers, and you only have so much time to make it home safely. Once we finally returned to our Riad, we had the whole place to ourselves. LB + I hung out on the terrace, ate some leftover pizza, we went onto the rooftop, watched a French gameshow on the TV downstairs in the common quarters where a woman has to fill in the missing song lyrics of popular French Love Songs while members of the audience swayed back + forth. Finally, we watched LB’s favorite movie on her iPod (“The Sweetest Thing”), and then we discovered, after changing the time zone on my computer, that we have been waking up + going to bed two hours ahead of schedule without even knowing it. Basically, we’ve been living in time warp for the entire time we were here in Marrakech. In a way, that makes so much more sense.

Tomorrow, we’re taking a train to Casa where we’ll hopefully find a good wifi connection + a good Asian restaurant.

Marrakech: Not for the Faint of Heart

These past two days have been a lush, intense, insane lesson in contrast. After LB + I took the Metro from Madrid to the airport, checked in + flew to Casablanca, our journey had only begun. On our flight, we met Freddie Jackson, who told us about the Grammy he won in 1986, before explaining that he was going to do some back-up singing for Ihlam, the famous Arabic singer. Getting to Marrakech, on the other hand, was a photographic novel in its own right.

Here are a few things I’ve learned so far:

1. Moroccans, are by and large, fascinated by my Arabic tattoo. Some of them seem to love it: I’ve gotten a ton of smiles, thumbs up, a few men shook my hand out of gratitude, and more than one girl has recited it back to me, smiling (more on that later)

2. After almost getting mugged last night by a group of six Moroccan teenagers that insisted on helping us and then tried to charge me 20 fucking Euros, a delicate situation that ended by me arguing with the leader in French for twenty minutes, surrounded by his pseudo-thugs in a dark, abandoned street (to be honest, the situation was even more fucked up than I’m describing it—LB was shaking, if that gives you any idea), ultimately I dished out all of my coins (Dirhams) to avoid getting beaten up or stabbed, or even worse. So, I’ve learned that the tourist industry is huge in Marrakech, not to mention largely European. I can’t tell you how many times I had to tell people that I don’t have any Euros. After talking with the woman in charge of the Riad LB + I are staying at, I’ve learned that she once had Slovenian guests that just walked around passing out four Euros to kids on the street, which is making our lives as budget travelers, just a fucking nightmare

3. I’ve never been hit up for hash + opium as much as I have today. I don’t know what it is about my appearance—the tat’s, the jeans, the piercing, the false swagger—but I felt like an open target for drug dealers, some of which, looked really really tweaked out on the blues

4. Moroccans are by large, very friendly (those fuckers from last night notwithstanding), and they appreciate the smallest crumb of Arabic. A shukran goes a long way here.

5. Like in Burkina Faso, you have to figure out who the faux types are (the sketchy conmen that always saying mon ami), otherwise you’ll feel like everyone is trying to rip you off, which in a way, they are. And honestly, unless prices are posted + fixed, that’s pretty much unavoidable. After LB + I had the most amazing experience walking through the Souks, talking to merchants, gazing at spices, shoes, hijabs, djellabas + tea sets, the fact is that the scarf I was haggling for, for almost twenty minutes, was still way more than what a Morrocan would have paid for the same item. That’s just how it is, and since I’m not living here, I have to understand that to some extent.

Within reason, that is: one commerçant, after I asked him how much a scarf was, told me it was 16 Euros, which is an enormous sum of money for a staple item like scarf, where more than half of Marrakechi women wear as hijabs.
--That’s a rip-off I told him in French, + walked away.

He didn’t even bother to respond because he knew it was true. The problem is, that dude knew he could get away with it. Many Europeans, with their strong currency, probably don’t realize what they’re doing by paying too much money for items (or conversely, passing out four Euros to kids on the street), but the fact is that they’re establishing a horrendous precedent that non-Europeans can’t afford. At least not peeps like us

6. The term “air-conditioned” is a relative term, at least in the second class part of the train, where I had to stand up for over an hour. We were sweating our asses off before some guy opened the train door, which definitely cooled the car down, but also filled it with sheets of dust, cigarette smoke + pollen

7. Moroccan girls are kinda flirty. I mean, it’s a bit surprising for me. I know Morocco is much more religiously + culturally moderate than many other Arab countries, but still, I’ve seen quite a few girls flutter or smile—or even stare—at me, using these beautiful trained assassin eyes that just melt my icy exterior. Maybe, it’s just my Arabic tattoo, which they seem to read with great interest. Or possibly, they just think I’m a hashish addict

8. Moroccan tea might just be the most delicious tea in the world, but that shit is suh-wee-heet. It’s like liquid cavities

9. This city is not for the faint of heart. Marrakech brings back many memories of living in West Africa + walking through Le Grande Marché in Ouaga: it has something to do with the hot, burning, slightly acrid smell in the air. It has something to do with the energy, the intensity + the chaos in the stalls + outside in the streets as mopeds accelerate between groups of heavily-dressed women in burqas and a truck carrying bottled water, racing right towards you, veering to the side at the very last minute. In a way, that is the right metaphor for life in Africa, always heading towards catastrophe + avoiding it at the last minute

10. Sometimes, it’s hard to shake the feeling that everyone is trying to rip you off. Even the woman in charge of the hotel where we’re staying seems in on the game: she charged us 7 Euros to go from the Gare to Riad. When LB + I took the taxi back to the gare two days later, it costs 30 Dirhams (in other words, less than half). She also wanted to take us to a restaurant where entrées were around 17-22 Euros, which is more than we paid in Madrid. I kept telling her no, not tonight, but she insisted on taking us there personally anyway, even though I’d made it perfectly clear that we were on a budget and her restaurant was out of our price range. When it turned out there was no room for us, she tried persuading the guy she obviously has some deal with, but he couldn’t help her. And then, when that didn’t work, she tried persuading two of the hosts on the ground floor. Finally, they said we could eat in the dark on the terrace, but I stood firm. But when I asked her to help us locate a restaurant that we had written down, suddenly, she’d never heard of any of the streets (or restaurants) we’d mentioned. The next day, she was still talking about that hyperexpensive restaurant, saying that all Morrocans know it’s the best restaurant in Marrakech. Later on, after joking that she should charge us for telling us “secrets” like how much toothpaste + shampoo should really cost, as opposed to what Marrakechis actually charge us, based on the TII (the tourist inflation index), she told me: the only thing I ask is that if someone asks you where to eat in Marrakech, that you told them to go to that restaurant. Fuck, could she make it any more obvious that she’s getting a kick-back? To top everything off, after overpaying our hotel bill by 20 Dirhams (I didn’t have the exact change), she told me she’d pay me back the day we left. And right before we took our half-price taxi to the station, she handed me a 10 Dirham coin. I refused to haggle this time. Though I felt like we did connect on the second day after I argued with her on the first about being overcharged (pointing out, among other things, that we weren’t European + didn’t carry a pocketful of Euros around us), finally it just became too obvious that she rips off her guests habitually. I ended up liking her, but I never really trusted her, which kinda sucks.

11. Speaking French here is a bit of a guilty pleasure. In Burkina Faso, it was the lingua franca. So many tribes were artificially placed next to each other + only Jula + French were spoken by the largest strands of Burkinabè society, so speaking French there was crucial. But in Marrakech, there are many Morrocans who don’t like—or aren’t comfortable—speaking French. And then there are many more who do so reluctantly. So, though I’ve had no problem communicating with people in French, inserting my ten words of Arabic whenever possible, I feel kinda guilty about it + I feel like there are limitations as to how well I can connect with people as long as I bypass their own language

Chill in Madrid

Today was chill, and that’s exactly what we wanted. We slept in, got dressed, went to our fave little café on Fuencarral (café cotidiano) + ordered another fresh—not to mention, massive—smoothie, two spinach hojaldres + a hot, chocolate-covered brownie + all for less than 11 Euros. Then we walked Plaza España, ate our modest lunch of bread (which was hard to come by today since it’s el día de trabajador), the remaining olives left over from Paris, the remaining syrup waffle cookies left over from Amsterdam, some weird bacon-flavored cheetoes (still vegetarian) + some fruit juice we bought here in Madrid.

Afterwards, we tried to walk to Jardín Ferraz, but got lost and ended up at Jardín de Sabatini, then Casa de Campo before retracing our steps + finding our way up a hundred, strangely-spaced steps. At the park, we took it easy + talked, watched teenagers making out on the lawn and finally made our way to Templo de Debod, which, to be honest, was probably the biggest let-down in Madrid. I don't know what I was expecting, but those three slabs of stone in the shape of a giant staple wasn’t it. Finally, LB + I walked back to Sol, and finally ordered bocadillos at this hole in the wall joint right across the street from our hotel. We got what we paid for, I’ll just say that. The bread was stale, the dude basically charged us for sauce (salsa brava + mayonnaise), and was generally unfriendly to me. But it was still the cheapest dinner we’ve had yet in Europe (nine Euros), so I’m not going to complain, even though it’s tempting. And now, after a terrible shower + listening to French teenagers slamming doors, shouting in the hallways + gossiping underneath the camouflage of whisper, I think we’re leaving Madrid at the right time. But we’ll be back some day (besides next Saturday, I mean). I’m just not sure when yet.

The Three P's

Plazas, Palacios + Paella, that is. . .

Today was our most photogenic day in Madrid. We walked through Plaza Mayor twice--once when it was sunny + another time in a glossy downpour. We also visited the Palacio Real, but felt duped after waiting in line for twenty minutes, only to find out that entry wasn't free, even though the sign clearly claimed entrada gratuita, a minor detail for the security guard I talked to who quizzed me for five minutes:

--So what does the sign say?
--It says that admission is free.
--What else?
--Admission is free for four month period [from April 2009 until July 2009].
--And?
--And today's date is within that four month period.
--What else?
--That's all it says.
--No, you have to read it closely
--I did.
--That's not all it says.
--I assure you it is.
--Look, she said, dismissing me, everything isn't free.

After this, LB + I walked to La Latina, looked for a good Tapas restaurant, but only found a few, then we had tea at a café before heading back to Plaza Mayor, and then, after dark, corpulent clouds threatened the neutrality of the sky since the morning, we got stuck in a Spring storm as it started to downpour.

Finally, after making it back to our hotel, where I got in another inane argument with the cranky receptionist at the front desk who started testing my identity:

--Nombre [name]?
--Bliss.
--No, tu nombre.
--Bliss.
--Jackson Bliss, LB said, in a Peruvian accent.
--Mi appelido [surname] es Bliss, mi nombre es Jackson.
--No, hay otra nombre [no, there's another name here].
--Fine, I said, J. Jackson Bliss.
--Acá dice Jonathan [here it says Jonathan]
--That's my first name but I don't go by that.
--That doesn't matter, she said, what matters is what's written here.

I gave her an incredulous look. Spaniards, you have to understand, often have five, six, even seven names, and they often go by their third, fifth, or second name. This is very normal.

Then another guest asked her a question and she proceeded to ignore us. Later on, to test our theory, LB talked to her, and she smiled this fake smile + then turned to me + glared. I laughed.

But, Spanish female stubborness aside, our day was fantastic, and LB + I found redemption in our food, as we often do. This time, it was our dinner. We lucked out big time. With two minutes left at my computer at this cybercafé we visited (while vaguely Eastern European, chain-smoking boys played violent first-person video games), we found the name of a famous paellaría, located close to our hotel. So after freshening up, we walked to La Barranca, and got seated immediately despite not having reservations. There we ate some of the best Paelle we've ever eaten in our entire lives. And though we broke our vegetarian vow for a few hours to eat a little sea food, I have to say, it was totally worth it. That paella was worth capping someone for. It was that good. Then, after strolling around Sol for awhile, we went home, listened to French teenagers whispering in the hallway, and we made love, falling asleep as drunk Madrileños sang rock songs + Mozart arias in the street at four in the morning.

Graffiti 1

Surprisingly Unhelpful Unless You're Looking for the Metro

Street 1

Street 2

Arch towards Plaza Mayor

Streets 3

Plaza Mayor 1

Plaza Mayor 2

LB in Action, Looking Like a Charlie's Angel

Plaza Mayor 3

I Really Thought This Was a Real Guy for a Second: You Never Know in Spain. Some Dude Could Totally Be Wearing a Fake Metal Suit

Madrid Buildingscape

Madrid Skyline

Catedral de la Almudena

Catedral de la Almudena 2

Bridge

Madrid Skyline 4

Catedral de la Almudena 3

Door

Catedral de la Almudena 4

Palacio Real 1

Palacio Real 2

LB in Action 2

Palacio Real 3

Here's One of Many Signs Confusing the Shit out of Tourists, Most of Whom, Just End up Dishing Out the Entrance Fee after Waiting in Line for Thirty Minutes

Sidewise

Madrid Skyline 5

Streets 4

Streets 5

Streets 6

Spanish Flag

Streets 7

Streets 8

I Could Be Wrong, but I Think This Was a Store for Pope Gear

Plaza Mayor 4

Plaza Mayor 5

The World's Largest Bra--LB Could Have Worn These As Hot Pants

Plaza Mayor 6

LB, Looking Almost Angelic

Plaza Mayor 7

Plaza Mayor 8

Plaza Mayor 9

Plaza Mayor 10

Plaza Mayor 11

Plaza Mayor 12

Plaza Mayor 13

Streets 9

Land of Paella

Inside La Barraca

Inside La Barraca 2

Paella Worth Capping Someone for

LB, All Smiles before She Eats

I Love This Hotel. Its Motto is:

Yes, In Fact, I Do. Maybe We Could Escape from the World of Gossipy French Teenagers + Feisty Front Desk Receptionists

A Random Spanish Plaza with People Just Kicking It

Graffiti 2

The Prado + Parque del Retiro

After trekking for twenty-four hours, LB + I slept in today. Though simple + almost staid, our little room has charm. Part of it is our balcony on the third floor that gives a stunning view of Sol, a swarming, hip barrio in Madrid. After taking our sweet-ass time, we got dressed, went to a café to jump on the wifi train for a couple of hours + drink possibly the most delicious juice cocktail I’d ever had, freshly squeezed pineapple, banana, strawberry + orange juice in this large glass goblet large enough to satiate every member of the Spanish Academy.

Finally, after realizing that Spaniards can—and do—smoke anyplace they damn well please, we decided to leave the café + walk to the Parque del Retiro, eat some bread + olives, and drink a caribe drink that tasted exactly like a virgin piña colada. Then we strolled around the lake as clusters of koi formed pockets of red-orange gelatin underneath the water. Then, we took some pictures of the memorial for King Felipe IV, bought a Lime-Pineapple popsicle + sat down on another bench, marveling at how clean the park was. Compared to most parks in Buenos Aires where dog shit + piss forms a protective barrier over the topsoil, + garbage + cigarette butts are littered everywhere on the lawn + sidewalk, Parque del Retiro was insanely clean + well-maintained in comparison. I saw no less than two sanitation workers emptying + collecting errant garbage in the two hours we were there (which is two more than I ever saw in an Argentine park, hate to say it).

Finally, we were ready to hit the Prado. Even though the security guard harassed me for having a mate bombilla in my satchel (I forgot to unpack it when we were in Chicago for those six tiny hours), a fact that’s even more ironic considering that LB was carrying a fucking Swiss Army Knife in her purse, even so, the Prado was impressive. I admit, I’m not a huge fan of art before the 19th century. Even so, the Prado had a small + excellent collection of paintings by Goya, Velázquez, Rubens, El Greco + Carvaggio. I’m not a huge fan of blood’n’guts Catholicism + portraits of European aristocrats tend to bore the living hell out of me, but that said, I thought the collection was extensive + fairly impressive. And despite the fact that the security guards (and some stared at my tattoos (this happened every time I went into Coto in Buenos Aires too, for reasons I never really understood), LB + I saw some of the most famous Spanish art in the world, which was rad. Afterwards, we were mad hungry so we went to a supercheap Thai restaurant + then walked around Sol for an hour, taking multiple shots of Madrid to get that perfect slow-shutter speed shot that makes you feel—no matter how impermanently—like a professional.

Streets 1

Streets 2

Streets 3

Streets 4

Entrance to Museo del Prado

Tribute to Goya

Second Entrance to the Museum

An Old Church Across from the Prado

Topiary

Sign for Parque del Retiro

Entrance to the Park, Formerly Known as El Parque de Madrid

Strolling through the Park

Beautiful, Sculptured Trees

Sidewalk

Architectural Tribute to One of the Great Spanish Reyes

Front View

Part of Me Wanted to Believe this Was a Commemoration for the Importance of the Patata in Spanish Cuisine, but No

Lake + Koi in the Distance

Back When It Was Parque de Madrid

LB in Front of the Prado

Metro Map

Sol Metro Entrance

Streets 5

I Love the Neon

Graffiti 1

Streets 6

Sign for Gran Vía

Streets 7

Instituto Cervantes

Palacio de Telecommunicaciones--Madrid's City Hall

Palacio de Telecommunicaciones 2

Palacio de Telecommunicaciones 3

Spanish Flags

Streets 8

Chilling in Our Hotel Room

Kiss Kiss

First Day in Madrid

Genève
Paris
Irún
Madrid

When you rattle off those names, it evokes something cosmopolitan, like say, the life of a jet-setter, who flaunts his inner European by bathing in brut champagne + suddenly wearing scarves and smoking after fatty meals. The reality for us was anything but luxurious.

After returning to Paris for five hours, LB + I came up with a plan: we needed to buy some healthy snacks, and we refused to pay 20 Euros to store each of our two large suitcases at Gare d’Austerliz for three measly hours, so instead we decided that she would sit in a bistro with our luggage while I went out into the feral majesty of Paris, making my way to Biocoop on la Rue de la Glacière to buy organic juice, nuts, bean pâté + non-hydrogenated cookies. Ah fuck, so much for plans.

As it turned out, Rue de la Glacière was a lot farther than it looked on our crappy map. In map reality, it looked four or maybe five blocks away. But, drawn to scale + injected with reality, Biocoop was actually more than twenty blocks each way. After passing L’École Normale Supérieure + Le Monde, I found the store, walking inside in a complete daze. I slowly picked up the things on my list (juice, nuts, vegetarian pâté, healthy* cookies, olives) when I got to the counter. Then the cashier asked me:

--Votre numéro de compte?
--I don’t have an account here, I explained.
--Okay. 21.50 Euros please, she said.
I handed her my debit/credit card
--Is this a debit or credit card? She asked.
--It’s both, I said. It depends.
--On what?
--On whether the machine accepts debit cards or not.
--But, can you enter in your password, I mean?
--Yeah.
--Or can it be used as a credit card?
--Both. I think it should work, not trying to explain anymore.
She inserted the card and absolutely nothing happened. I mean, nothing. You could hear the sound of locusts serenading the cold air. Then she tried swiping the card again: nothing.
--Shit, okay, I said, in that case, I’ll go find an ATM and return.
--So you’re American? She asked.
--Yeah, I explained. The truth is, in that one moment, I forgot the French word for ATM, even though I’ve used it a million times, so I actually used the word ATM, instead of distributeur automatique.

I walk through the door, ignore the people staring at me, and walk back to a main street. I ask a random woman on the street where an ATM is (and this time the right word pops out of my mouth). She confesses she doesn’t know that arrondissement very well, but she knows one fifteen minutes away. I thank her + say, I’m going to see if I can find one a little closer. Then I ask a random man, who happens to know that neighborhood well. He points across the street. I thank him, wait for traffic, take out a hundred Euros, run back to Biocoop, and then I stand next to the cashier awkwardly. She explains to the man at the front of the line that I was already there. He frowns. I pretend to whistle. It gets weird, in a cultural way, I mean. Then I hand her money, realize she wants to give me a box for my food, I tell her I’ll buy a bag, she re-adjusts the total, and then I walk into the street with a paper bag full of food: a delicate relationship for sure.

And then it starts raining. Fifteen blocks later, I’m drenched, not to mention worried that LB is waiting at the bistro with tears in her eyes, not understanding a single thing the waitress is telling her as she uses exaggerated gestures to translate—Madame, you have to move your luggage (she points to the luggage), we have a five Euro an hour minimum (she pulls out three Euro coins from her pocket, and starts pointing at them madly), did you order flowers Madame? (she pretends to inhale a bouquet of invisible roses, which confuses her even more). Even so, I have to buy a baguette, and to sweeten my two hour absence, I’ll buy LB something sweet with coconut + chocolate. I finally enter the boulangerie, drenched + dripping like a used bath towel and the woman behind the counter speaks to me in curt sentences, and I start to wonder if this is just how she talks normally, or if she’s trying to get the American with the shaved head, the strange lip-ring + the soggy grocery bag,who’s leaving a slug trail on the floor out of her store before customers start opening up their umbrellas inside. I buy the baguette + the triangle de coco, speedwalk to Gare d’Austerlitz as the rain gathers confidence, breaking the sky with fresh layers of steely, hard water, and then, three, maybe four blocks before I get there, the bag, being paper and all, it just splits apart. So I stuff my jacket + pockets, my satchel, anything that can be filled, I fill it with groceries, holding the rest in my arms. Because I’m an environmentalist at heart, I can’t litter, so I drag the broken, soggy grocery bag with my pinky, with my arms crammed with groceries + my pockets bulging with mysterious sharp boxes. I get started at, I get leered at, a homeless man sees me + turns away like I’m embarrassing him. I want to scream, or break down + cry, anything except walk through that terminal with groceries in my arms, but it’s raining, I’m cold + angry + pretty much pissed off but determined to bring back something for us so I keep walking until I’m in the bistro, and then LB gives me a look like what- -happened-to-you-I-feel-so-bad kinda look, and everything calms down, it's all okay, at least until I realize today, at the Spanish/French border, that I somehow lost the change from my grocery bill( 80 Euros). Then, of course, I felt like an asshole. Again.

But that’s where the drama ends. LB + I take a charming couchette train from Paris to Irún where we slept for almost seven hours, and then we take a Spanish train to Madrid, and they serve us tortilla español, coffee, whole-wheat rolls, with tiny containers of olive + oil, salt + pepper and jam (which we immediately confiscate). LB and I fall asleep again, finally arrive in Madrid, before gathering our wits and figuring out how to use the Madrid subway. Once we’ve arrived at our hotel, we take a deep breath, eat some healthy snacks + then we go out and buy a map of the city. I have to say, Madrid is so much cleaner than Buenos Aires, and their subway is immaculate, air-conditioned + even more odd for me, punctual.

Goodbye Land of Rich Chocolates, Perfect Watches + Clean Air

French Countryside

Paris School of Design

The Great Trek to Biocoop

Paris Streets 1

Sartre's Hood

L'École Normal Supérieure

All the French News that's Fit to be Printed

Paris Streets 2

Our Couchette Car, and We Were Lucky: We Didn't Have Bunkmates Either

My Bed

LB Lounging + Radiating Some Kind of Beautiful

Passing into the Night

Biarritz

Spanish Countryside 1

Spanish Town

Spanish Countryside 2

Spanish Countryside 3

Spanish Countryside 4

¡Por Fin!, Madrid

The Madrileño Subway

The View from the Balcony in our Hotel Room: to the Left

To the Right

Madrid Streets 1

Madrid Streets 2

Madrid Streets 3

Close-Up

Madrid Streets 4

Graffiti 1

Madrid Streets 5

For A Second, I Had an Amsterdam Flashback: This is a Seed Bank for Serious Pot Smokers, Which We Are Not

Madrid Streets 6

Madrid Streets 7

Graffiti 2

Madrid Streets 8

A Question I Ask Myself All the Fucking Time

Madrid Streets 9

6 Trains + A Long Walk in Geneva

Amsterdam
Bruxelles (Brussels)
Lille
Paris
Genève (Geneva)

These are the cities we've walked through in the course of eleven hours, just to get to Switzerland. The itinerary goes something like this:

1. First LB + I took the tram from the second--read: shitty--hostel we stayed at to Rembrandt Plein. Problem was, the 14 tram had to make a detour around Rembrandt Plein. The 20-minute ride to nowhere now took 40 minutes as the streets erupted with tourists, arriving in droves for the Fair. After we got off, we jumped on another tram headed towards Centraal. We had almost an hour to kill. Evidently, we overplanned.

2. From Amsterdam we took a train that was supposed to be the Thalys but wasn't, from Amsterdam to Bruxelles (Brussels).

3. From Bruxelles we took the TGV to Lille, France, where we had 15 minutes to change from the Lille Europe to the Lille Flandres station. If I hadn't started chatting with this really friendly French guy who happened to be making the same connecting train, we would have walked inside this gigantic mall, filled with horny teenagers instead, and totally missed our train.

4. From Lille, France, we took another TGV to Paris' Gare du Nord station.

5. Once we arrived at Gare du Nord, we had a little less than an hour to take the RER train from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon. Fortunately, they were a mere two stations apart.

6. From Gare de Lyon, we traveled by train from Paris to Genève, Switzerland in around four hours.

Along the way, I mistakenly ordered two heavy plates of assorted French cheeses + chocolate mousse, thinking they were part of the free food + beverage that Eurail pass holders sitting in first class get for paying a supplément. Wrong. 31 Euros later, after failing to explain my way out of something I would never have ordered in my right mind if I'd had to actually pay for it (one plate of cheese was enough to kill you, frankly), I took it like a man. . . and then apologized profusely to LB for wasting our money. Later on, we checked the Eurail Pass booklet, and the train from Paris to Geneva is the only train of ours that does not come with a free meal + drink. Right then. . .

In Geneva, we've walked around for several days now, slowly exploring the split personality of the city. At first, we found the Northern part to be insipid, empty, too new to have real personality. It was largely unimpressive--UN buildings + all. I mean, I mistook the UNHCR for a gas station for Christ's sake. But, after we took the trolley to Corvin Station, and crossed the bridge to the southern part of the city, then the real beauty of Genève began unfolding before our eyes. The older the buildings were, the prettier the city became.

The Fair in Amsterdam

People Lining up for Some Sugar Variant

We Left Amsterdam at the Right Time

The TGV from Bruxelles to Lille

Small Belgian Towns

Belgian Countryside

LB, Resting Her Chin on Dutch Mineral Water

The TGV from Lille to Paris

French Countryside

French Countryside 2

One of the Cheese Bricks I Got Scammed into Buying

Swiss Francs Might Very Well Be the Most Colorful Money in the Whole Wide World

In Genève (Geneva)

Boo! Hiss!

Translation: A Superdog, That's a Superowner. In Case You're Wondering, These Are Doggie Bags

A Map of Cultural Events in Geneva

I Honestly Thought the UN High Commisioner for Refugees Was a Gas Station

At the Place des Nations Unies

I Know the Symbolism is Important, but for the Life of Me, I Can't Figure out What It Is

Front View of the UN in Geneva

Front View 2

Third-World, Polyglot Professional Bureaucrats, Looking to Leave the Mother Land Permanently, Please Apply Here!

Taking the Tram away from Sadville

Basilique de Notre Dame (Not to be Confused with One of my Alma Maters)
I Loved This Little Van: It's a Safe-Sex + Health Information Van Where You Can Get Check-Ups, Free Condoms + Information Pamphlets about the Pituatary Gland

Street 1

Crossing the Bridge

Street 2

Street 3

Swiss License Plate

As LB + I Were Eating Some Leftover Food from Biomarkt in a Park, I Saw This Statue and Realized I Loved this Radical Georges Favon, Whoever he Was. Translation: No Progress without Social Justice

Street 4

Skate Park

A Farmer's Market

Farmer's Market 2

Farmer's Market 3

The 5 Swiss Franc Coin is Massive. I Felt Like I Was Holding a Goddamn Medallion in My Pocket

These Fountains of "Drinkable Water" Were Everywhere

Possibly One of the Strangest Things I've Seen in Years: If You're Confused as to What You're Looking at, You're Not the Only One. This Is an Old Woman Walking on a Crutch, with a Rabbit, a Live, Bunny Rabbit Scrambling up Her Back. Every Four to Five Steps, the Rabbit Would Fall Halway down Her Back, and Then Kick Its Feet Frantically Up Her Back Again to Get back on to Her Shoulder. LB + I Watched as a Genèvois Followed Along, Taking Pictures with her Cellphone

Street 4

Street 5

Street 6

Swiss Balconies

The Swiss Protestants

Street 7

A Café in the English Park

Chess Players

Rampe de la Treille

Street 8

Street 9

Street 10

Street 11

Street 12

Street 13

Then, We Saw the Snowy Peaks in the Background + Everything Changed

The View Up There

Public Fountains

Street 14

Street 15

Not That It's a Big Deal or Anything, but I Kinda Wondered If This Guy Knew His Name Had Been Placed underneath a Clock

Street 16

Fountain 2

Street 17

The Little Café Where We Drank Authentic Hot Chocolate + Ate a Mouelle au Chocolat (a Soft, Spongy, Chocolate Cake with Warm Chocolate Sauce Oozing from the Center)

Fountain 3

LB Walking Down the Hill

Street 18

The View from the Promenade

Hotel de la Paix

A Duck on Lake Geneva

The Jetée des Eaux Vives

Across the Lake

One of My Last Looks at Lake Geneva

The Character Sketch, Not the Plot Thriller

These past two days have been the perfect balance of the ambitious tourist, quietly enforcing each and every cultural stereotype of Netherlands, and the calm, placid native, taking the tram, going grocery shopping, sitting at a café on the canal while fretting tourists race by on yellow tour bikes, trying to squeeze every last second in to their trip.

After LB + I realized that the Dutch hipster company, G-Star, which happens to be our favorite clothes company in the whole world, was closed for renovation on the cheeky PC Hooftstraat, a two-block section of Amsterdam where the fashion giants basically line up their stores, one after another, like slices of white bread, we decided to replace vapid consumerism with schizophrenic art. In so many ways, they are practically the same thing. So, we went to the Van Gogh Museum, shelling 30 Euros. After the initial shock of paying forty dollars sunk in, we spent the next two hours looking at some of the finest—and in many cases, most famous—Van Gogh art the world has ever seen. Some highlights were: Sunflowers, Starry Night (which was on loan from the MOMA, where I saw it back in 1997), the Potato Eaters, Irises, two important self-portraits, the Bedroom in Arles, the Pink Peach Tree + Wheatfield under Thunderclouds. In short, the collection was fantastic + temporary

Later, LB + I decided to visit our first—and as it turned out, only—coffee shop in Amsterdam called originally enough, Smokey’s. I bought a fat joint that was mixed with organic herbs: it was light, smoother, soft, nothing too intense for either us. LB, it should be noted, was smoking weed for the first time, and I wanted it to be a positive experience. After we felt contet and light, we finished our too-sweet and too-cold smoothies, and walked home. Then we made love, ate a bunch of healthy snacks we’d bought at Biomarkt (organic paprika potato chips, organic dark chocolate, fruit cocktail juice), and got dressed. We walked for forty minutes to several Thai restaurants before finding one that was still open that late, and then we devoured our Pad Thai, and chatted with the friendly waitress for a half an hour. When LB + I told her we were originally from Chicago, she said, I love Chicago. I lived there for one year. Kuwait, + Amsterdam, she knew well, but Chicago she loved. Interestingly, LB + I felt the exact opposite. We were slowly falling in love with Amsterdam, wondered how much rent went for an apartment in Jordaan Plein, whether LB could find a job, all sorts of crazy counterfactual scenarios that spelled out love in make-believe.

Today, we relaxed. We took the Tram to Prinsengracht, walked around Jordaan Plein, drank orange juice + ate pesto Caprese sandwiches on tables bordering the Prinsengracht Canal, bought some snacks for our long train voyage tomorrow, then we sat on benches at Museumplein, nibbled on organic potato chips + drank agave and cola nut flavored soda that was fantastic, surprisingly, before making our way to Golden Temple, this vegetarian restaurant near Frederiks Plein. The food was light, delicious; the mango chutney was so hot it had burned away the fruit by the time it had made it to our mouths; the waitress was sweet + forgetful. Tomorrow we take the Thalys train back to Paris, and from there we take another high-speed train to . . .

Ultimately, it's not the big things that make us love Amsterdam so much, it's all of the little details, the miniature idiosyncracies of this city: Dauchsands sleeping in windows, the decoration on people's bikes (plaid vinyl book bags, flower bouquets--and sometimes, tiny girlfriends), all lovingly tied around the handlebars along with statues of Norse Female gods, used a battle rams, and wire + wooden baskets attached to the front, it's the colorful things like tiny apartments, clean air + safe sidewalks, it's smelling freesia growing around an apartment door, noticing dwarf figurines dancing on the sill, a button-down table cloth, eating Pad Thai next to a naked cherub light on the restaurant table, and it's all the other stories I've seen with my own eyes, a mother peddling furiously while her two kids hang from either side of the bike, a hundred crystalline canals, each one with a different name + personality, it's about seeing Hare Krishnas dancing near Rembrandt Plein, the lush, soft, earthy perfumed tones as you wisk through the Flower Market, the boat houses rocking back + forth as the streets wane, it's indelible oddities like the Marijuana, the Torture + the Sex Museum, and above all, it's the Dutch people: so kind + helpful, so considerate + friendly, so approachable + relaxed. Amsterdam is like a clean Venice; it's the racially and cultural diverse older sister of Portland (Oregon) without rain or heroin junkies. Amsterdam is everything I'd want a city to be: beautiful, clean, friendly, progressive, multicultural, rich historically, transit and bike-friendly, stylish without being pretentious, and above all else, so unbelieably charming.

Here is the last roll of Amsterdam:

Canal 1

Freesia in the Window

Tiny Apartment

LB + I Almost Cried We Loved This Place So Much: They Even Had Organic Dog Food

Where All the Organic Snacks Are Hiding

Near Museum Plein

Near Museum Plein 2

Walking from the Van Gogh Museum

Dutch Phone Booth

Our Consolation Prize after Walking down PC Hoofstraat Street Sans Goodies

Museum Plein 1

Museum Plein 2

Museum Plein 3

This Is Like That Part in Fight Club Where Objects Speak in First Person

Street 1

Inside the Van Gogh Museum 1

Inside the Van Gogh Museum 2

A Close-up of the City

Canal 1

Hare Krishnas Dancing

The Joint

Damn, It's Been A Long, Long Time

Happy Times

Dazed, but Not Confused

LB Is So Damn Adorable. Notice the Cause . . .

And Effect

Cause . . .

And Effect

And This Was Before We Even Smoked

Inside Smokey's 1

Inside Smokey's 2

For LB's First Time, She Smoked Like a Fucking Pro, Man

Ah, Happy Times

Okay, One Last Time. Cause. . .

And Effect

Then, There Was Just a Stub

Our Walk in Search of Thai Food at Ten at Night

The Holy Bridge

Canal Reflections

One of the Lights inside the Restaurant

The Tablecloth

Just Guess How You Turn the Lamp on

LB Contemplating

Not Sure What the Hell I Was Doing

Cheese Glorious Cheese

Canals 2

Graffiti 1

Graffiti 2

Street 2

Canal 3

Street 3

Street 4

Graffiti 3

Bike Decoration

Chilling at a Café on Prisengracht Canal

Our Café

Canal 4

Cheese Glorious Cheese 2

Graffiti 4

Golden Temple Restaurant

LB Reading the Menu

View from inside the Restaurant

The Golden Temple's Tea Selection

Canal 5

Bike Decoration 2

Finally, a Windmill

Bikes, Canals + Red Lights

Today was amazing. LB + I just did two things I've always wanted to do: visit the Anne Frank House + walking around Amsterdam's Red Light District. LB + I walked our asses off, absolutely smitten by Amsterdam's canals, virtually run over twice by speedsters on old bikes + then later on, we watched in fascination as groups of drunk men went shopping for kicks, yelling comments at especially attractive prostitutes. We even saw two German boys bargain with a large black woman:

--We want a show.
--I'll give you both a show then.
--But we want good show.
And then they disappeared into her little love cubicle.

Another conversation I heard later on as we passed girls pivoting in windows was in German this time, but I understood what they were saying anyways since they used so many cognates. It went something like this:

--Did you really like her?
--Ja
--She looked like your mother.
--No, she didn't.
--Yes, she looked like your mother.

No Freudian analysis necessary. . .

So, here are the pictures of our day, a perfect, dynamic walking narrative through history + culture as we approached--one step at a time--that beautiful and contradictory nature of Dutch society which makes this city so clean, beautiful, charming + open. A visual testament:

The View from our Bedroom

Canals 1

Rembrandtplein 1

Rembrandtplein 2

Wooden Clogs

Bikes in the Alley

Flower Market 1

Flower Market 2

Flower Market 3

Flower Market 4

Rembrandtplein 3

Bikes 2

Streets 1

Streets 2

Canals 2

Streets 3

Canals 3

Bikes 3

One Beautiful Random Door that Isn't Random at All

Streets 4

Canals 4

Anne Frank House 1

Our Ticket to History

Anne Frank House 2

Anne Frank House 3

Streets 5

It's Not Really a Museum, as it Turned out

LB, Deep in Thought about her Future G-Star Purchase

A Little Café on Prisengracht Street

Café 2

My Next Outift

Next to the Anne Frank Huis

Canal 5

Street 6

Bikes 4

As LB + I Were Walking to the Biomarkt, We Passed This + I Laughed So Loud. It Says: Homo Sapiens Non Urinat in Ventum. Or, a thinking man doesn't piss in the wind. So Random

Rijksmuseum

Street 6

Canal 6

The View from Our Window at Night

I Wanted this Little Scooter So Bad

Wax Obama

Street 7

Street 8

Entering the Red Light District

There's One Word You See Over + Over Again in the RLD

It's Called the I Love You Shop

This Great Condom Store

With Condoms in the Shape of Animals + City Icons (Out of Photograph: the Eiffel Tower Condom)

Moulin Rouge Swank House

Not for the Faint of Heart

In the Middle of Everything

One of Many Live Sexshows

Another Beautiful Street in the Middle of the RLD

Canal 7

It's Hard to Make out The Sign, but This is the Marijuana/Hash/Hemp Museum

For Hardcore Smokers

Streets 9

Graffiti

Nirvana Island in a Sea of 15-Minute Lovers

Looks Kinda like the State Fair, and Probably Just As Safe as the Ferris Wheel

One of Many Dark Alleys Filled with Prostitutes

Alley 2

Alley 3

Where all the Magic Happens

More Smokeshops between Red Alleys

Don't We All Feel This Way after Getting Some Action?

The End of the Red Light District

Before the City Fair

LB Pointed out That This Was Phallic. . . Contextually, Yes

The Flag of Netherlands

Graffiti near Rembrandtplein

Streets 10

From Paris to Amsterdam

There's something about trains I just love. Maybe it's the synchronicity of time passing and distance covered--something an airplane betrays, by transporting you around the globe while distorting the passing of time, not just with airplane speed, but with movies, artificial meal + sleep time. Maybe I'm just Old Skool with transit, or I think that music is the perfect companion to train rides, always linear, always building distance; movement is a train's natural state of inertia after all. Trains were made to move, just like our bodies.

I also like the interaction on trains. I always meets interesting people on board. This time, LB + I met an adorable Belgian couple. The wife kept flirting with him, waving her book in his face, pushing him with her feet, nudging him with her elbow. They'd kissed, laugh, hug eachother. They were exactly how I hope to be when I get older. Eventually, we had an interesting cross-conversation. I spoke to them in French; she spoke to LB + I in Spanish; he spoke to me in English.

--He's American, she said, in French.
--Tu le répètes, he'd say, smiling [you just said that].
--He's crazy about America, she said.
--Really? I asked.
--I've seen 40 states, he said in English.
--Really? LB said.
--Wow, I said, Americans haven't seen that many states, I lamented.

Anyway, from Gare du Nord, LB + I traveled up through Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam to Amsterdam, swimming between city + country in an effortless stream. Here are some pics from the beginning of the train ride to our first night in Amsterdam:

LB Was Making A Face at Me

Outside of Paris

Antwerp

The Modern Dutch Windmill