September 10, 2002

on spain. and travel.

tomorrow at 9.50 am, on the anniversary of september 11, i´m going to be flying from alicante (on the east coast of spain, below valencia) to london.

i´ve been here for a month. and i´ve enjoyed my time here. i´m going to miss spain, even though i´ve had a lot of very depressed moments.

:::...

before i left australia, i thought that travelling by myself would be easier than travelling with friends. i´m now able to compare the two states of travel (having spent 11 days with aidan and his brother james).

there are so many good things about travelling by yourself. you can do what you want, when you want. you don´t have to make compromises. and best of all it is so much easier to meet new, wonderful and exciting people (you know who you are).

but they are also some of the downsides of travelling alone. often one person´s ideas aren´t enough to occupy a day, and travelling with another person means that you get to experience things you probably wouldn´t have done by yourself. (wine tasting in st emillion for instance, a day trip to salamanca or a shared drive from cordoba to seville).

making compromises is one of the lovely things about spending time with other people. it feels like a drag when you have to do it, but you miss out on the continued interaction and the development of relationships when you´re by yourself all the time. for seventh months my relationships with most people i know aren´t going to have a chance to develop because i´m not going to have enough contact and interaction with them.

meeting new people is great, your email list expands, but within a couple of days, or even within 24 hours, a person who you could have any number of conversations with, is on their way to the next city on their journey, while you head off in your own direction.

many people who i´ve met in the last month have asked me, what it is like travelling by myself. it´s hard, but i felt that when i was with aidan and james that i almost completely slacked off in taking responsibility. travelling by myself is making me take more responsibility for my own person than i have ever done before. it´s scary.

my conclusion is. it is very hard travelling by myself. particularly for the length of time that i´ve chosen, but i´m lucky enough to be able to meet up with people i know and travel with them in between. but i don´t think i could let myself do this any other way.

:::...

spain.

i like this place, but i can´t say that i know about the country. then again, i´ve lived in adelaide, australia all my life and i don´t know anything about where i´ve come from.

the way people drink alcohol in spain seems sensible. throughout the night they have little snacks (tapas) which prevents them from getting plastered. if you want to see this in action, go to granada, where the tapas are always generously given away with a drink.

but then, i also saw people downing beer with their breakfast whilst in sevilla. that does not seem sensible.

[to be continued in london. the internet cafe is closing]

Posted by pipstar at 10:25 PM | Comments: *

 

September 09, 2002

picassohead

Posted by pipstar at 10:44 PM | Comments:

 

one month down

i´ve been travelling for just over a month now. yesterday marked a month since my arrival in spain and a month until my twenty third birthday.

i´ve just been reading through aidan´s reflections on his last 8 months and particularly his last three months of travel. it magnified for me his attitude to travel which i noticed during the week and a half we spent together.

before he left australia he had intentions about what he wanted to get out of his time away. he wanted to mature and gain independence, to understand the complexities of european history and to meet different people.

after a month, i´m still finding it hard to work out whether i actually have any intentions about my
time away.

i don´t feel stronger as a person. in many ways i feel weaker, and so very insignificant in the world.

in some ways i think that that is a good thing. it´s helping me to understand how immense and varied this world is.

but on the other hand, this feeling of insignificance has made me retreat into myself more and more. i seem to spend all my time sitting in parks reading.

my stepdad once said of me in my youth, that i didn´t seem to actually live my life, i just lived vicariously through the books that i was reading.

before i left adelaide it was similar, i was reading books, but i was also spending hours reading other people´s websites, blogs and travel stories. now that i´m actually travelling, i wonder whether i have any stories of my own to tell.

i wish that someone would tell me why i´m doing this!? did i mention anything about what was driving me to do this?

or did i just decide to go travelling as some type of rite of passage? because if i did, it doesn´t really seem to be worthwhile.

i´m here with access to these amazing places. i walk past famous works of art and through cities where tremendous acts of history have taken place, and it doesn´t seem to make an impact on me.

i feel like i´m on a film set. everything is clean and shiny, and i´m surrounded by other tourists... everyone seems to be holding a map of the city in front of them. this doesn´t feel real to me.

i feel like i should be on a mission.

if i was an artist, fine, then i could be driven by the art which i have access to. an architect, the buildings. but what am i being driven by, a web designer´s desire to assess the internet cafes of europe?

someone please remind me of why i´m not wasting my time or money!

Posted by pipstar at 04:20 PM | Comments: *

 

on my cold

i´m feeling healthier, but i also experienced horrid symptoms that i suffered in my youth.

my eye is better, and i don´t need to blow my nose every five minutes. but i do have a horrible cough which prevents me from sleeping.

Posted by pipstar at 03:58 PM | Comments:

 

September 06, 2002

travel health: 85%

since my second to last day in granada, i´ve been suffering from some horrible summer lurgee which initally manifested itself as extreme fatigue and then conjunctivitis in my right eye.

luckily in spain you can purchase anti-biotic medications over the counter, so i was able to get some eyedrops.

but i now seem to have some variety of very productive sinus infection on my right side as well.

because i need to see the sights of seville and i need to wake up in the morning for breakfast, i´m not getting much recuperative sleep. and i´m unable to inhale eucalyptus laden steam, and i don´t have any cough medicine.

so it´s going to take a while to feel 100% again

Posted by pipstar at 11:08 AM | Comments: **

 

September 05, 2002

sevilla

one of the reasons why i wanted to come to seville was the film nobody knows anybody, which i saw late at night on sbs.

now i´m finally here!

and i keep on recognising landmarks from the film!

Posted by pipstar at 12:53 PM | Comments:

 

cordoba

mezquita good. marred by cathedral parts.

felt a little lonely, but met nice people in the hostel. still haven´t washed my clothes.

best food was chickpeas with spinach (Garbanzos Con Espinacas) though i´d miss out the boiled egg listed in the recipe.

nice ruins to the northwest, thanks to nanny for the ride there and to seville. pity we couldn´t have a picnic on the site.

i had conjunctivitis in my right eye, but i got hold of some antibiotic eyedrops and everything seems a little bit better now.

Posted by pipstar at 12:47 PM | Comments:

 

August 31, 2002

alhambra [bring on the cliches]

yesterday we went to the alhambra.

my rough guide describes it as the most sensual building in europe. they weren´t lying.

up until about 150 years ago, the buildings and grounds were ruins, inhabited by some of the poorest people in granada. the american author washington irving published a book, tales of the alhambra, which caused a surge of interest in the monument.

the highlight for me was definitely the palacio nazaries, the remains of the moorish palace built in the 13th century. the walls are delicately carved and mosaiced with repeating patterns and motifs. no two rooms contained exactly the same pattern.

unfortunately i was about to collapse from exhaustion at the end of the afternoon and much of the generalife area was closed, so i missed out quite a bit, but the gardens were also extremely beautiful.

i´d have to agree with the rough guides author that the alhambra is a sensual building and area. everything was designed to create feelings of relaxation and enjoyment - pools for touch, fountains for sound and sight, the gardens for scent and sight and so forth.

:::...

images of the alhambra - via istockphoto

washington irving, author of tales of the alhambra

some tales of the alhambra available online.

Posted by pipstar at 09:57 PM | Comments:

 

for those at home

now that i´m actually overseas looking at art galleries, museums and famous monuments, i really have to wonder why i haven´t done the same thing back home.

adelaide is full of great stuff to do, and i´m sure your cities are too!

so here´s my advice for feeling like you´re travelling:

don´t take a car. unless you´re driving out of the city (eg mclaren vale or barossa from adelaide) try to go places by public transport and walking.

pack a daypack with a journal, a water bottle, some candy, a camera and a novel to read. if you have a guidebook for your country, take it along so that you can find out about your city in the way that a tourist would.

go into your local tourist office. either speak in a foreign language that you actually know, or put on an incomprehensible accent and ask for information about your city and region.

ask the people at the tourist office what they recommend doing. pretend you only have a day or two in town, that way you´ll find out about the best stuff.

you won´t really need a map. but if you stand on street corners looking confused with the map held out in front, you will really feel like you´re travelling.

if you´re with a friend, take photos of each other in front of your local monuments. get strangers to take photos of you... hand them the camera and with your dodgy accent say "photo... take... please". smile a lot.

either try to eat within the smallest budget possible or go into a cafe that you´ve never been to before. (you have to feel like you´re in a different place).

if the tourist office has told you of a local specialty food... go and try it! i´m peeved that i´ve lived in adelaide all my life, yet i´ve never actually tried a pie floater!

if someone asks where you are from, you could tell the truth or you could play around with an amazing secret identity.

this might be the point where you go to a pub targeted at tourists and

at the end of the day you´ll feel like you´ve done so much more with your free time. and when you do finally leave the country you´ll be able to knowledgably recommend the things you´ve done to people you meet!

get crafty has an article on taking a global holiday without travelling

and keri-smith has a mini-comic on how to have a free mini-vacation

Posted by pipstar at 02:29 PM | Comments:

 

oh no.

kylie´s love at first sight and shivaree´s oh no are playing in the internet cafe.

ace.

dawn is packing and about to get on a plane and ljc has a travel blog for her trip to london and paris.

Posted by pipstar at 01:41 PM | Comments:

 

hashcocainesexdvd

¿guess what we did last night?

Posted by pipstar at 01:18 PM | Comments: *

 

August 30, 2002

la tomatina

on wednesday, aidan, james and i had the good fortune to catch a lift with scott and lisa to buñol, home of la tomatina.

until we get our photos processed it´s going to be hard for you to believe how completely covered in tomato one could get.

but to cover it all...

for about an hour we stood around in a mosh-pit like environment in the main street of buñol. the locals had draped plastic over their doors and windows and many of them stood on their roofs to watch the action.

"agua! agua! agua!"

and they threw water down on us.

boys started tearing their shirts off and throwing them in the air. most girls ended up having their shirts torn off. (i managed to keep my sandals and my tshirt... a pretty amazing achievement).

at about 12 an explosion went off and after a few minutes a tiptruck bearing tonnes of tomatoes and about 10 young spanish men came along the street. initially bits of tomato splattered against the wall i was pressed against, but soon i was getting hit in the head by tomatoes.

unless you have been hit in the head by tomato, you will have no idea as to how painful they can be.

after another few minutes i looked at the centre of the street. people were covered in tomato. and every boy was without a shirt.

for the next forty minutes tomato was thrown. whole tomatoes, chunks of tomato, sloppy bits of tomato juice.

(and when you have tomato juice all over you, all through your hair, it also gets into your eyes. and your eyes begin to water because of the citric acid in the tomato juice.)

all you can taste and smell is tomato. and all normal rules are off.

clothing is torn off. you´re allowed to throw your food. and throwing stuff at people´s faces does not seem so bad.

more tomato filled trucks move along the street, and the crowd pushes to the footpaths.

all my clothes were pink and heavy with juice. as were the rags of torn-off tshirts on the street.

and as the tomatoes gradually were squashed down into skin, seeds and water, the only things left to throw were tomato juice soaked shirts.

ow!

after an hour of fighting another explosion was let off. a signal that the fight was over.

but semi-violent tshirt battles between rival groups kept on going for about half an hour, which made moving to a non war-zone very difficult.

and then you attempted to rinse off the tomato remains from your body and hair and changed into clean clothes.

but we were still finding tomato seeds and pulp in our hair and ears for hours later.

Posted by pipstar at 04:54 PM | Comments:

 

August 27, 2002

valencia - spain´s dope capital

at least that´s what it seems to be. every second store we´ve been into has had some dope related merchandise going on.

but we are in the most fertile area of spain. so possibly it´s just a general horicultural sentiment.

and i´ve tried freshly squeezed orange juice... in the home of valencia oranges.

yum.

tomorrow we go to buñol for la tomatina!

Posted by pipstar at 11:14 PM | Comments:

 

August 26, 2002

important news about pantalons

as i´d sat on gum earlier in the week in one pair of pants, and the pair of jeans i brought with me have a broken fly, i decided that i´d eventually consolidate two pairs of pants into one new pair.

but i didn´t expect to do this so soon. i was thinking that i´d wait a couple of weeks!

aidan, james and i all wandered off in different directions for the morning. my mission: to buy a new book, to look at the sagrada familia and to eventually eat something.

i managed to find the bookstore with english language books after stopping to admire a couple of gaudi buildings, and then chose anna karenina over my initial preference of white teeth by xadie smith.

sweet.

but then i started looking in clothing stores.

and i saw a jumper that i almost almost bought... but a jumper wasn´t on my list of allowed purchases. (it was so good... kinda like a hoody but without the hood. and it was a cool petrol blue with funky daisies embroidered on it.)

what a terrible description. but it really was good!

i didn´t buy it.

but i did end up getting a pair of lightweight jeans which are very flared. almost cullottes.

i must say that they make me look very cool. but i think that they´re a little too long to be practical. the first day that it rains and i have to walk through puddles i´m going to curse that i ever bought these pants.

Posted by pipstar at 04:33 PM | Comments:

 

August 25, 2002

granada and the alhambra

tickets for the alhambra have to be bought in advance and can be found here

Posted by pipstar at 10:12 PM | Comments:

 

valencia and bunol and human gazpacho

in a couple of days aidan, james and myself will catch a train to valencia. we´ll be able to have a walk around the city and get to eat paella.

but more importantly we´ll be going to la tomatina.

i didn´t post it earlier as i haven´t had a chance to write about barcelona yet, but on the first day i managed to sit down on some old chewing gum. luckily the pants weren´t that important... so i´m going to be able to throw them away after a giant tomato fight!

Posted by pipstar at 10:10 PM | Comments:

 

August 23, 2002

barcelona

we are here.

the picasso museum today.

Posted by pipstar at 09:47 PM | Comments:

 

digitalnation

tired and a little confused

aidan´s here with me!

and i´m happy.

Posted by pipstar at 09:24 PM | Comments:

 

August 19, 2002

tin horses

this afternoon i wandered down to the palace on the western side of madrid.

the frescos were nice, but there was nowhere to sit down to look at them so you ended up with a crick in your neck.

i was most impressed with the royal pharmacy, which had hundreds of the old chemical / herb jars that chemists used to use. jars for leeches are just one of those things you don´t see very often in australia.

they had drawers for herbs with pictures of the plants painted on them. and then there was the alchemist´s room, which fits in so well with reading foucault´s pendulum. i began imagining people trying to turn base metal into gold.

i was not so impressed with the armoury. at no point did they write down how heavy a suit of armour would have been!

:::...

i´m continually amazed at how detailed everything is. sure, in australia we have the iron lace on verandahs, but here everything seems to be forged, mosaiced, embroidered, painted, etched within an inch of its life.

Posted by pipstar at 07:34 PM | Comments:

 

will and ed

while on the search for accomodation in bordeaux i came across will and ed´s european vacation, a far superior online travel journal.

Posted by pipstar at 07:30 PM | Comments:

 

true dreams

yikes, in a day´s time i´m going to be hanging out with aidan again!

what a great way to be reunited... we´ll both be stinky after trips on overnight trains. which is way better than one of us being stinky and the other super clean and dandified.

could it be that i´m not going to know what to talk about? that i may actually be speechless?

naah.

Posted by pipstar at 12:19 PM | Comments: *

 

August 18, 2002

thyssen bornemisza

i´m just about to go have a look at the thyssen bornemisza museum.

Posted by pipstar at 12:46 PM | Comments:

 

david sedaris

i came across the story "rooster at the hitchin´post" via dollarshort, and i´ve discovered a whole lot of very funny writing...

if i was at home i´d spend the entire day reading through all the old articles. but i´m going to use them as travel cheer up stories.

Posted by pipstar at 12:11 PM | Comments:

 

y'all

i hung out with christy, matt, jonathon and rebecca yesterday. they´re the sweet texan kids who kept me company in bilbao. and they managed to catch the wrong train back to madrid.

we walked up to an oldskool brunswick st like place where i bought a €4 shirt and rebecca bought a fabulous €60 leather and fur pimp jacket (they even had ones with embroidered flowers!).

i think that i have found my true shopping allies.

and i get to meet up with them in italy!

Posted by pipstar at 12:08 PM | Comments:

 

careless

i´ve had paul kelly´s song careless stuck in my head for the last day. and there wasn´t anyone around who i could ask about the lyrics.

but thankfully the internet saved me from seven months of "how many angels on a pin, how many tears in a bottle of gin". which is lucky, especially considering i didn´t burn any paul kelly and i wouldn´t have been able to get the song out of my head.

Posted by pipstar at 11:34 AM | Comments:

 

August 16, 2002

pasta... just like home

it´s easy to get into the habit of not eating. you´re so busy saving money or doing other stuff that your blood sugar plunges and you feel like shit.

i´m finding it hard to eat without drinking many cups of tea as well.

i´m conscious of needing to eat, thanks lue for the lolly advice.

i feel like i´m going to be eating pasta and jar sauce for the rest of my life. this is so much like moving out of home. there aren´t any of the ingredients lying around like herbs and garlic and red wine which you need to make your own sauce.

yesterday, before i caught the train back to madrid i bought a block of lindt chocolate - to provide energy and comfort (it´s so hot here that it´s got a little melty). the euro may be worth two australian dollars, but when i saw €0.98 lindt i couldn´t resist... it seems to be so cheap!

Posted by pipstar at 08:59 AM | Comments: *

 

much better

i have somewhere to sleep for the next four days.

bliss.

and elvis costello is playing over the sound system.

Posted by pipstar at 05:58 AM | Comments:

 

August 15, 2002

completo

i have posted a lot today haven´t i?

it happens to be feast of the assumption and every store is shut. apart from the few dealing with tourists today. and i´ve been upset.

and i´m waiting to find out if i´ve got a place in my old hostal (at the moment it´s as much like home as i can get!).

i´m feeling much better. i´ve spoken to mum for about 20 minutes and i sat on some steps and read in a park. it smelt like a men´s toilet. so i didn´t sit there for very long.

i´ve also actually eaten. which makes me feel so much better. aidan and jess will both understand the benefits and problems associated with travel fasting. you might save money eating only one big meal a day, but you feel like crap.

i think that i must have lost about 3 kilos in the last week. but i´m also getting a tan. which in some odd way makes up for the lack of food.

another dodgy webcam photo!

i know that i would never actually go home just one week into my trip... but i really felt like shit. thankyou jess, pete and mum for your immediate support.

i feel much better now that i´m back in madrid. there´s still stuff that i can do here (like watch a bullfight, go to the prado etc) . and i´ll be able to take a couple of day trips to places like toledo and segovia.

i think that i´ll stay here until i have to go to barcelona to meet aidan.

Posted by pipstar at 09:56 PM | Comments: *

 

a welcome departure

i arrived at the hostal to leave bilbao at about 7.30 for an 11.05 train. let´s just say that i was eager to get out of that city.

i wrote a lot of stuff in my journal which sets the scene for my first post of today. i´ll write that out in a minute.

i drew a picture while i was waiting in the train station. a group of old spanish people watched the progress of the picture (you´ll have to wait a few months for a scanned version!) and complemented me in spanish. one woman managed to tell me in english that it was pretty. they made me feel happy.

i´ve also put up a dodgy photo of my picture of me running away from the fruit store owner.

:::...

from my journal:

it´s hard trying to describe why i´m feeling like this. i´m much better when i´m around people. it´s easier to make decisions. you get to discuss what you´re doing and you always have someone to share enjoyment and disappointment with.

i´m cool being alone in australia, but there i know what to fall back on. if i´m interstate it will take less than a day to get home.

the other annoying thing is that i´m so far away froma support network. i would love someone i know to appear, give me a hug and say "you can do it!".

the closest person to be able to do that with is in nice, and it´s a week until i see them. but travelling alone is about being alone. the people you love aren´t there.

iknowthateverythingwillworkout.
ilovethegoodbitsofthis.butihate
thingsrightnow.i´msogladtobe
leavingexpensivecompletofucked
upbilbao.ireallydon´tlikeithereatall.

i´m so eager to get away... and so afraid of getting lost again that i´m at the station 4 hours too early. i have packet brioche, lindt chocolate, water and juice in my bag. i think i might end up eating burger king for the second time today.

ow. i have a terrible headache. i think i´m sunburnt. i haven´t eaten enough. i want my friends here.

i´m slightly nervous about turkey. i´ve found the attitude of men here very hard to bear. cathy from ireland was propositioned, groped twice and followed by two men all within about an hour.

i´ve been fine. but for the first time in my life i have to behave in a relatively submissive manner whilst walking around. i have to keep my eyes lowered and i try to not wear anything too revealing... and this is just spain!

how can women bear this [and worse] for their entire lives?

so i might not spend that much time in turkey. if so, i might be able to meet up with karen and her friends at the start of their trip to croatia!

:::...

i miss alex and mum and ed and dad and everything else about home. familiar is good and bad. but overall good.

Posted by pipstar at 09:18 PM | Comments: *

 

happy little vegemites

i suppose that while you´re away, your national identity is in some ways brought to the fore. i´ve been speaking to people a lot about port willunga and the maclarenvale wine region and the adelaide hills and how cheap australian food is and i made cathy smell vegemite! her facial expression was so funny!

i think that karah and cam know the facial expression i mean!

Posted by pipstar at 08:44 PM | Comments:

 

bilbao - not all that bad if you don´t have to sleep there

i met some lovely texan kids @ the renfe desk in bilbao. they were also trying to book a night train to madrid.

hello jonathon, christy and matt!

i´d started crying in front of christy - she was so sweet!

they invited me to go to the bus station with them. they had a ticket to madrid, but they had to leave from san sebastian, which meant catching a bus there.

they actually said "y'all" and matt lives in san antonio near the alamo! that made me happy.

i walked back to the guggenheim with them. it´s amazing how much better things look when you have people to admire them with.

i hung around with matt while jonathon and christy went and had a look inside. i wanted to have a look, but i didn´t feel like rushing around. and my feet were so sore!

matt and i wandered around and ate icecream and talked about the difference between australian and us university systems. i tried to convince him that it´s lucky getting pooped on by a bird. in the same way that getting bitten by a shark is lucky. but it´s a different type of lucky if you win the lottery.

we all sat next to a fountain in a square on the gran via of bilbao. at one point we looked up to a hotel window to see a naked guy getting dressed. once he realised that we where all watching with our mouth agape, he very gracefully waved at us.

Posted by pipstar at 08:42 PM | Comments:

 

madrid > bilbao > madrid

the train ride to bilbao was very nice - the countryside is at first dry, and then very hilly and beautiful. at one point there was a very rocky mountain range breaking through the ground, it was magnificent.

[bring on the travel adjectives]

i arrived in bilbao with no accomodation booked, but i´d prepared by writing out a list of addresses off the internet.

i reckon that there must have been about 8-10 backpackers coming off the train from madrid. I walked around with a group of irish people, and then with an australian girl (karen?) and her boyfriend julian.

everything; hostal, hotel, pension had signs up... COMPLETO!

i ended up walking around with karen and julian. they´d earlier had an offer of a sofabed to sleep on for €30 - we thought that we could do better - so we walked and walked - but nothing.

eventually we went to hostal roquefor (with the sofa bed). i ended up getting to sleep on the floor (with cushions underneath) for the grand total of €13. it was €40 for the three of us - expensive, but at 11.45pm in a strange town where they hardly know any english and instead they speak basque or catalan spanish, anywhere to sleep sounds great.

it was a residential hotsal - with old men suffering from parkinsons shuffling along the corridors. the blankets that karen and julian were given, were stained with horrible brown marks. i didn´t look too closely at my blankets, but i was very grateful for the sleep sheet ed gave me as a going away present.

walking around that night was ok. it was with other people, if necessary we could have all stayed at the train station together.

but the morning after i went all tough and independent and decided to walk around by myself looking for a place for the night. no such luck... still completo!

and then i crossed the river and managed to get lost. i found the smelly but interesting fish and meat market because it looked like a train station. but it wasn´t.

i kinda stumbled down intoa a worn down, almost slum-like (by australian standards) area. but i found a hostal for €30 a night. i think it must have doubled as a crackhouse as the owner looked like a junkie and outside someone seemed to be waiting for a fix. the room was horrid, it smelt really bad and i wouldn´t have felt safe at night.

so no accomodation.

i was okay at this point - i´d decided to buy a ticket out of that night, but i also wanted to get a spanish rail pass so i could have a month´s unlimited train travel for €180. but i got misdirected twice while looking for a place that sold the card.

at the renfe station i found jules and karen again. they´d been sensible and found a room opposite the sofa bed hostal... i should have stuck with them. when i saw them i almost started crying heavily. but i held on.

i planned to meet jules and karen at the guggenheim, but it was so hot and i couldn´t find them. so i walked back to the renfe station and bought a ticket.

back to madrid.

i can´t believe it but i felt homesick for madrid.

Posted by pipstar at 07:25 PM | Comments:

 

alone

i hate this. i feel alone.

i need someone to be with me while i´m doing this.

i´m considering giving up on the whole thing. and i´ve only been away a week.

Posted by pipstar at 05:55 PM | Comments: ***

 

August 13, 2002

salamanca

yesterday i went with cathy to salamanca. it´s about a two hour train ride from madrid.

it´s a very beautiful city which is famous for the detailed carving on its old buildings. on the cathedral there´s an astronaut carving!

the weather must have reached about 40° yesterday, which was not so bad as i had a really lovely icecream (strawberry sorbet). and we sat in a garden to escape the heat (underneath a mulberry tree. a bird pooped on my book.).

one of the most enjoyable things was going to the museum of art deco and art nouveau. it´s in a beautiful building with very elaborate stained glass everywhere. there were beautiful sculptures of dancers which looked like they were about to leap and break out of their glass cases.

salamanca made madrid feel really dusty and crowded and expensive. i´m glad to be leaving this afternoon.

about salamanca

university of salamanca

tribuna de salamanca

Posted by pipstar at 08:33 PM | Comments:

 

humancombustion

before i left australia, i always had an idea about what i´d do within the next day. if i wanted to stay at home and watch tv, i could do that. if i was going to go to melbourne i could ring up and book a train ticket safe in the knowledge that i´d be able to get a place.

i know where everything is: supermarket, bus stations, police stations, and more importantly i know the language and people in the cities i want to visit.

but here i don´t know those things.

up until about an hour ago, i didn´t know which city i was going to be in. i wanted to go to Léon, but i couldn´t get a ticket... so i fumbled around with the renfe internet site (luckily it´s in english) until i found that i could get a ticket to bilbao this afternoon.

but once i´m in bilbao i have no idea where i´m going to stay. i´ve written down a list of hostals below €20 a night and hopefully i´ll be able to find somewhere cheap at 9.30 tonight.

it´s new having no idea what i´m going to do. it´s kinda good. i feel brave. i also feel a little bit nervous that i´ll only be able to get a €30 bed... but i can always wake up tomorrow morning and find a more affordable hostal.

:::...

i´ve said goodbye to the friends that i´ve made since i arrived: cathy, katie and nadia.

i met nadia and katie on the plane from london.. and cathy in the hostal. once nadia and katie left i hung out with cathy.

now i´m finally on my own. without practiced spanish speakers with me.

but it will all be good.

Posted by pipstar at 08:09 PM | Comments:

 

August 11, 2002

the stars

big polluted cities prevent me from seeing the spanish stars, but i like this painting by miro

Posted by pipstar at 11:15 PM | Comments:

 

reine sofia

yesterday i wandered around madrid and took photos of stuff i´d seen earlier like the cathedral ceiling and i had a gander at the crypt, which still has people being buried there.

mosaics, gilding and so many madonnas.

i figured that purchasing my own food and getting into this self-catering business would be best done earlier than later, so i went into a market area and started to choose some fruit.

warning: don´t pick up the fruit! you´ll get yelled at!

it seems like the most important information for spanish travellers was left out of "Europe on a Shoestring"!

the guy took the peach out of my hand and told me to go away. at least i guess that that is what he was saying... i almost cried and gave up on the entire trip.

but then i found an extremely overpriced self service grocery and was able to buy food.

i met up with nadia and katie (nadia: "whoops! i should have told you about not picking things up") and we went to the museo nacional centro de arte reine sofia for their free saturday afternoon session.

my feet got pretty sore. and i was very tired (we´d stayed out until 3am the night before) so i went back to the hostal, read and slept. cathy from ireland and i attempted to go see billy wilder´s "the big carnival" (in english with spanish subtitles) but we were unable to get tickets. so we bought icecream and went back to the hostal, read and slept.

what an amazing saturday.

Posted by pipstar at 10:47 PM | Comments:

 

more links

spanish youth hostels

renfe - the national rail company

easyjet - cheapest flights to uk from spain

yha booking

Posted by pipstar at 09:38 PM | Comments:

 

August 10, 2002

idiomatication

spaniards keep on coming up to me and asking me for help... in spanish!

i don´t even look spanish... i look like some bizarre world citizen.

maybe they think that i´m american.

anyway, i just spent the last half hour trying to help a spanish woman sign up for hotmail... on a spanish version of the site!

she had no english, a little bit of french and i only had english, a little bit of french and hardly any spanish!

we managed to get absolutely nowhere! each time we created a new email address she´d be asked to enter her credit card details.

hopefully everything works out, we finally agreed (with much nodding and smiling and shoulder shrugging) that she should get some spanish language help!

Posted by pipstar at 07:48 PM | Comments:

 

sounds (iwishihadaminidiscrecorder)

the fan in my bedroom last night

spanish guitar

the whistle as street sellers warn each other of the police

the whoohwhooohthckthckthck of women fanning themselves

Posted by pipstar at 05:34 AM | Comments: *

 

i found a reason

i moved into my next hostal this morning. it´s newly renovated, so the kitchen and bathrooms are good and the bedding is still new. there´s no airconditioning, but the windows onto the balconies are open and ventilation through the building (from the centre patios) keeps everything quite cool.

on this map my hostal is at I-13. it´s quite close to everything.

the weather isn´t as hot as i expected, but isabel, a spanish girl i met through nadia said that the weather has been quite poor in madrid this summer.

after i emailed you yesterday i walked west of sol (the centre point... literally of spain) to the palace, cathedral and gardens.

(sol is numbered 2 on the map, the gardens and paris are at 3)

apparently the madrid cathedral isn´t that good, but i found it fascinating. i didn´t go into the palace, but the outside looks good. everything is on such a grand scale!

the ceiling of the cathedral is painted in beautiful bright colours, i´m going to walk over (possibly tomorrow morning) to take photos. i think that the patterns would make a really lovely embroidered cushion cover.

in full light, while i was sitting in the jardins sabatini i saw a little bat flying around! it must have been lost. and i knew it was a bat because i could see the sillouhette of it´s wing structure. it was strange seeing a bat in light. i´ve only ever seen them curled up at the zoo or heard them that night when ed explained that we could hear their sonar / radar bleeps.

i felt so excited that a bats wings actually look like the batman logo!

food is so expensive here. it equates to $4 for an orange granita! but clothes are relatively cheap. and the shoes they´re so nice. but my bag is so heavy and i have 7 months to go! yikes!

madrid seems to be made up of tourists. all the madrilenos have gone to the coast for their summer holidays and the city is quite empty... even by adelaidean standards!

last night i had tapas for the first time. some fried escabeche fish (tasty buy boney) potato croquettes, pimientos (basically grilled capsicum). and today katie and i had a menu del dia lunch which will largely sustain us for the rest of the day. our (lack of) language skills confused both us and the waiter. we ordered gazpacho but ended up with pasta and sauce (dissapointingly like heinz spaghetti), grilled fish (so good!) and veal.

oh the coffee that i had this morning was amazing! the hotel room came with breakfast... croissant, roll, juice and coffee. i didn´t eat again until 3.30.

i couldn´t check into my hostal until 1.30 so i walked over to the parque del retiro while i waited. (i´m waiting until tomorrow to go to museums as a lot of them are free on saturday afternoons and sundays).

there was a large greenhouse with a pond in front of it. the pond was fenced off and there was a little bit of grass along the edge. there were very pompous geese parading around and around. and every now and then they´d start honking away. [there was a very cute gosling paddling around]

i sing a lot at home, but never that much or loudly in public. i feel that i can sing loudly here without caring (in the parks) as most people won´t be able to understand what i´m singing.

this morning.... selections from cat power´s covers record... [i can´t get no] satisfaction and i found a reason.

strangely there are a lot of old men sitting in the sun with their tops off. they´re already dark brown... possibly ít´s some kind of status symbol.

Posted by pipstar at 05:18 AM | Comments:

 

August 09, 2002

sleep

flying into madrid, the landscape reminded me of australia in summer.

dry. paddocks.

we flew over a bullring.

:::...

arriving in madrid at barajas airport was similar to arrival in adelaide (though there were more planes) but you walked straight onto the tarmac.

and having a british passport is so good. it means that you pretty much walk through customs no fuss (experienced in london when i went out through customs accidentally even though i was meant to go to the transit area... whoops!)

not that it would have mattered anyway. there was no beuracracy at barajas and katie, nadia and i (we met on the plane) just walked on through. no hassles.

i was able to get into madrid without any hassles as i met two girls called katie and nadia on the flight from london. nadia lived here last year so she showed me the ropes about getting around. i think that i´d have been fine without her as the metro system looks easy and i can (thanks to french) understand the general jist of most signs and notices.

the hotel i´m staying in tonight is old and relatively expensive compared to where i´ll be for the rest of my time in madrid. i´ve got a tiny balcony overlooking calle alcala which is pretty cool. there are shabby but nice armchairs on the landings, and there´s a courtyard with seating and potplants and a cage with budgies in. it´s pretty.

from the balcony i watched as street sellers all suddenly picked up their blankets of stuff and walked away when a policeman came near.

aside from that i´ve slept and come to the internet cafe around the corner.

i´m going to go for a bit of a walk now. to experience madrid.

but i´m feeling tired. sun will be good for my lagging mind.

[i managed to capture a bitmap of myself looking pale, dazed and confused.]

Posted by pipstar at 02:11 AM | Comments: **

 

August 01, 2002

spanish links

madrid links

spanish street directory

sevilla online

sagrada familia

barcelona online

travelling in spain

ok spain

madrid tourist board

go madrid

about madrid

turisme de barclona

barcelona

about barcelona

Posted by pipstar at 02:06 AM | Comments: **

 

May 12, 2002

sevilla

seville, spain

it's not very long until i go! i think that i'll probably go after the 19th of august... my passports are getting organised..

i have to...
get a new isic card (and a new unisa student card)
"lose" my keycard so i can get a europe friendly pin number
buy a backpack
buy a ticket
pack

Posted by pipstar at 01:43 AM | Comments: *