MEE – The Michael Edwards Experience

*BANG*

Suddenly my big stupid grin is a mask of horror. On the plus side it solves a particular problem I’ve been trying to deal with, namely how to describe having a good time in a way that is interesting. It solves it because now I am having a very very very bad time. The loud bang could be any number of things but my first impulse is to check if something is shearing off the bike. I stop so I don’t get too far away from anything that has fallen off, but my heart sinks when I hear the loud hissing noise. I know that noise and soon my rear tire sinks as well.

I have a flat tire. I haven’t mentioned this but I live in fear of flat tires, in particular pinch flats as they happen to me quite commonly. A pinch flat generally occurs when you slam into a curb or rock with your rear tire and it pinches the tube causing a small leak. Anyone familiar with flat tires should be able to recognize that this isn’t a pinch flat, but thats what I’m thinking and I’m blaming myself for it. I have done my utmost to baby my rear tire because pinch flats more often occur when you seat the tube into the tire shittily and the tube is compressed between the wheel rim and the edge of the tire. This is a brand new bike and I haven’t replaced the tube so avoiding flats has been my number one priority because the odds of a pinch flat occurring after the first go up quite a bit once I’m involved. I’m really choked.

Up until this point, its been a great ride. The weather was beautiful, the beach was pretty. Hell, I went for a soak at the last beach and have spent the last 30 minutes riding in my swim trunks drying off. The road turned into a trail that followed one of the many picturesque canals and my stupid grin was part realizing that I had really gotten into this bike-packing vibe and part amusement at the boatload of people singing some song in French about bicycles as I ride past and wave. I was comfortable as the crazy guy on a bike and it felt good.

Until now. Now I have a flat. I’m kicking myself “You should have paid more attention, obviously there was a rock that you slammed into, all this work babying your rear tire and you get comfortable for one second and pay more attention to the boat than to the trail and now you have fucked yourself. You’re fucked you know that right? That scary storm cloud that loomed over the beach? The one that turned the playful soak into a ‘maybe I should get going now’ race against the weather? That thing is going to dump a load of rain on you and good luck getting your tube fixed then!”

So. Optimistic thoughts all round as I start taking off my panniers. The boat chugs past and they’re still singing my song and I have to put on a grin and wave because if they realize how choked I am they’ll ask me whats wrong except I won’t understand. Easier to put on a happy face until they’re gone. I unmount the rear wheel and am about to remove the tire when I realize I should check for external damage… and I find a twig sticking out of the tire. Removing it I discover it is almost as long as my index finger and almost all of that was deep inside the tire. I contemplate it and how bad luck strikes at weird times and then snap it. Well. I try to snap it… it won’t even bend! It takes me a good long time to even bend it and I’m afraid of stomping of it because I think it’ll do to my foot what it just did to my tire! Finally it snaps and it turns out it is in fact a rusted piece of metal. Oof. Not good.

Once you get the tube out you can normally hear where the pinch is by pumping in some air. I don’t hear jack shit, but fortunately the canal is right there so option 2 is soak it in water and look for bubbles (I love the bubbles). I look at where the hole should be and discover not one, not two, but THREE punctures in my tube. I’m in shock. This is the most damage I’ve ever seen happen to a tube. No wonder the bang was so loud. I’m not even convinced this is repairable and I certainly don’t have time to find out so I get my spare out. In the end I get the spare tire in, switch my pump to the new valve type, and carefully seat it and then after some pumps confirm that it is seated properly (it wasn’t). An hour after the first panicky moments, I’m ready for the road again.

And now I think that this was again one of those moments of becoming comfortable on my bike trek. I started out ultra-professional, helmet, etc. Sorry mom, but I’ve been biking without a helmet since Barcelona. I just can’t be bothered anymore (for the kids at home: helmets are required for mountain biking because you will definitely slam your head into something in that sport). Earlier I finally was able to shed the jersey for swim trunks. Lance Armstrong would probably slap me for that. None of that matters because now I am a true bike hobo. I can do what I want, and when the flat comes I am no longer frightened. Hell, I think I may have finally seated it properly so I should be good until the next mysterious metal twig.

An email excerpt:

Jackie: Lots of successful campaigns (most, I’d venture to say) were preceded by many failures or only partial successes. Also, how are we defining these? Do we get active members from them? Do we build up an organizer? Do we learn some good tactics? Do we raise class consciousness? All are valid as well as the obvious “Do we organize a local.”
Me: Also, I think ‘raising class consciousness’ as a metric is a cop out. Its what we say when we did shit all but talked to people. It’s unverifiable, generally not useful without actual organization around it, and mostly just what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night.

I was lucky enough to participate in probably my first serious action (i.e. it produced tangible results) here in Catalonia. It involved a lot of standing around and I ironically ended up thinking a lot about how this action reinforces class consciousness (after having slagged it mercilessly in the preceding email). So here’s the details:
It was an information picket at a suburb university, we had a two-sided handout in wordy and less-wordy form. There were multiple access points but it was manageable with about three groups. I was initially confused about the objectives, and clearly everybody else was as well. Before arriving I thought we were doing a full blockade, but later thought we were just handing out flyers, then later still I was informed that our objective was to ruin traffic around the university. It became obvious that the objective was to functionally block the university without necessarily announcing it. That didn’t require actually stopping everyone, which is an important distinction.

What I noticed during the initial phase, when we were just pamphleting, is that after a certain period of time the pamphlet became the passport. We started getting cars who already had a pamphlet and it was almost cute the way they would desperately wave it in order to get past us. What I realized was that this was an assent to our power. Whether or not they acknowledged the legitimacy of our makeshift passport, they acknowledged our power. Not only that, we can have a more lasting effect with the ‘pamphlet as passport’: If these people plan on leaving campus and returning, they have to carry that pamphlet with them the entire day. All of a sudden a shitty piece of propaganda has acquired the status of one of those critical things you carry around with you every day.

All of this was subtle ‘could-have-beens’ that I don’t think really sunk in for anyone else. Is it because I’m grasping here, or is it because we don’t normally think in terms of us having power? I think is is the latter, raising class consciousness needs to have a component that acknowledges the fact that we are using and wielding power. We don’t really have the ability to be surgical with it so it mostly takes the form of “We will fuck your shit up if we don’t get what we want.” This kind of recognition of the core truth of a strike action is critical. The ‘what we want’ part can be fair, equitable, and irrelevant without a foundation of ‘we can and will fuck your shit up.‘

Class consciousness is not just “Oh my buddy and I at work have the same grievances.” It is the acknowledgement of our common power and our willingness to use it for our benefit. Exercising that power, even in small ways like pamphlet-as-passport, demonstrate class consciousness and that is the bread-and-butter of day-to-day class struggle. The producers have a demand of the managers, they improve their position by demonstrating their class consciousness. But my ideal isn’t to have a society where the producers are simply in a better bargaining position, it is to switch the balance of power entirely. Here I think a second event from the action is instructive.

Eventually the cars started to get backed up pretty bad, especially when we were only allowing one car through at a time. Being the foreigner who couldn’t speak the language, a good role for me was clearly traffic direction. So I directed traffic effectively for awhile. When one of the organizers came to check up on me I queried whether we were trying to fuck up traffic or distribute propaganda, because we were doing really good of the former, but I wasn’t sure how effective the latter was when people were furious for having to wait 10-20 minutes to get anywhere. Fortunately we were trying to (with success) disrupt traffic.

But why bother in the first place with traffic direction? Not managing people would create additional havoc that adds to our existing disruption, thereby adding to the basis of our class power. I think I instinctively want to prove that we are capable of managing and maintaining some sense of order because how we act now reflects on how we would act if we become dominant. If the population at large only ever sees us causing a mess then they will inevitably turn to the forces of reaction to defend them from the demon anarchists. I’m not saying this should stay the cudgel of the working class — it should still come down like a pile of bricks on our target and when the dust has cleared I am happy with leaving the mess for the ‘haves’ to clean up. But managing the unintended consequences of actions should be part of any strategy which has a goal of fundamentally altering the balance of power. In the case of our action, we could have let the drivers eventually cause a traffic accident. Without our intervention it was not a question of if, but of when.

If our objective is to solely cause enough havoc to force bosses and bureaucrats to cede to our demands, then sure, let the cars crash and burn. But the secondary function of revolutionary unions has always been to prepare its membership to assume the duties of a functional society and I’m not sure we do that. We must be more capable at brinkmanship while simultaneously being able to manage the potential fallout of it. Within revolutionary unions we understand the need and execution of brinkmanship better than mainstream unions, but I’m not convinced we’re preparing for control.

Whenever you make a demand such as “don’t cut workers wages”, people will get up and ask you “what should the boss do instead to cut costs?” anarchist-communists shouldn’t then sit down and draw him up a business plan, but say managing the business is the managers’ business, we care about our own interests.

–Joseph Kay, Libcom.org

Radicals are good at raising class consciousness. The quote characterizes that sense of a common class interest and, more importantly, how we relate to the managers of capital. I want to consider what we should address in our direct action if we ever want the managers’ business to be our business. We have half the formula in place: Our actions should demonstrate power to the boss and if possible the public. That achieves whatever our short-term objective, be it shutting down a university or getting a workers back-wages. I propose that we must also consider collateral damage beyond our objective because this demonstrates responsibility to the public. Having the public recognize both power and responsibility being displayed in class struggle swings their support away from conservative reaction and paves the way for the abolishment of class roles. The public will see the abolishment of class roles as a reversal of positions and it is critical that they see working class people as responsible enough to hold their new class position. To exercise class power without showing the ability to manage the after effects on bystanders is to shoot the enterprise of revolutionary unions in the foot.

Today I almost got run over by a car.

I’m in a morning information picket at a suburb campus of the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona. The day started rather early at 0540, but it sounds like I got more sleep than most of the other picketers. Things start off a bit late, and there is some confusion about how we’re running the picket at first but we quickly settle into a routine and start choking off the two lanes into the university down to one (and there are other pickets at the other entrances). At first I hand out propaganda with everyone else, but figure I’m better at getting in the way of cars. One of the other guys comes back with biscuits and coffee and because I can’t object effectively in Catalan I’m quickly saddled with the biscuits and a large tub of sugar. Thus begins my signature pose, standing in front of cars clutching at a box of biscuits and sugar in one arm and eating them in the other. Traffic starts to back up pretty bad and the one-lane system doesn’t work further into the roundabout so a friend of my hosts asks me if I can direct traffic (a step up from my current position as Potential Body Bag in Service to the Struggle). I say I’ll do it even though I’ve never done it. I mean how hard can it be right? Turns out sign language isn’t universal and people don’t follow them anyways.

But I quickly get the hang of it, physically imposing myself onto one lane of vehicles to keep the alternating lanes going. Pedro comes and helps me out and despite our language barrier figure shit out. He’ll say “Cual?” to figure out who to let thru and I’ll wave at a car and he’ll block the car behind it so I can let the car I’m current stopping go in behind the car we just let pass. Very simple stuff, but a bit nerve wracking. Pedro has no problems. He just stands there with his sunglasses nursing his cigarette.

Eventually we get one lady who is very adamant that she should go next and not the nice lady beside her who is next in the alternating lane order. She almost causes an accident by cutting in front of the second lady but now she’s made me angry. This entire operation is predicated on the drivers understanding that we’re fairly letting people into the line and she not only undermines that trust, but has challenged my (admittedly only-in-my-head) authority to enforce that relationship. So I slip between her and the car ahead of her so that I don’t get crushed between two cars, but I ensure I am physically touching the front of her car. Hoo, but that wasn’t enough for her. She aggressively accelerates forcing me back unless I want to go under the car (might have been a good move to be honest), eventually forcing me to the side of her car where she runs over the tips of my shoes. People are worried but I try to shake it off, but after about ten more minutes of traffic direction I take a quick break to grab my sunglasses and go back to the simpler job of stalling traffic at the picket itself.

At about 1100 or everyone starts winding things up, its time for the big demo in Barcelona itself. By now Marc and Sonia have drifted off to other places and people realize I have no idea what the plan is when I ask quietly where Sonia is. I watch somewhat bemusedly as a flurry of various cellphone calls, car swaps, passenger swaps and finally affirmative sounds get made. We have a quick (for Spain) lunch where Sonia meets us and then its off to Barcelona.

The march is huge. And there are multiple threads of it. There are songs and chants and firecrackers and one terrible banner drop. I see the police union in the march and wrinkle my nose. We move up and down the CCOO and UGT march (for whatever reason) before we head towards the CGT march which fills up the plaza in front of the Palau de Generalitat (the Palace of the Generalitat, the autonomous government of Catalonia). There were a lot of red and black flags (with CGT emblazoned on them, which I think takes away from their coolness, but it was their march). Lines of cops block access to the palace and the building across from it (another government building I think). Many of the exits are partially blocked by large police vans, and these cops wear fancy berets. But nothing happens, and at the end they play “A Las Barricadas” which was awesome.

This plaza has, I think, an interesting history. I recall an anecdote from one of the first books I read on the Revolution. One day long ago this plaza was filled with people again. Their demands were something of a different nature, what they wanted was guns. Guns to fight the fascists. Guns to resist the inevitable with. But the government wouldn’t arm the workers, oh how dangerous that would be! In the end, the story goes, after hours and hours of inaction a cop starts handing out his extra pistols. Soon, all the cops join in and the workers who want to resist now have the initiative and the government soon collapses in the face of it. That story still sticks with me today, though I can’t quite place where I read it. I’m soaking it all in and then its time to go get our mid-day drinks. By the time we get back the plaza is empty, tourists are already trickling back in, and it looks like nothing ever happened here. In general the tourist district continues functioning as before. This leads me to thinking dark thoughts about the effectiveness of strikes in large populations. If the threat of a strike is “We will fuck your shit up so bad if you don’t do what we want” then I wonder if our teeth haven’t already been pulled by an ever-growing population.

But no time for that! I’m headed to the squat because there is a protest happening in solidarity with prisoners on hunger strike. I get an unexpected companera, another student from Sonia’s campus. Between our conflicting route-finding strategies we get lost and end up completely missing the protest, so we just sit for awhile until its time for the evening CGT march.

On the way I try out a ‘Dracula.’ At our dinner in Tamariu over the weekend I got hassled by Jordi for selecting a generic chocolate covered ice cream popsicle over a Dracula which he claimed (and I believe him) is unique to Spain. To be honest, the description just didn’t sound like it worked but his admonishments did have an effect so I try one. The idea is you got a core that is half strawberry and half vanilla icecream, all of this in a cola shell. I think it would work better with just vanilla and cola.

Anyways, the CGT march is pretty straightforward. We occupy a fairly major road in the core (Passeig de Gracia). I see a dude with a cap styled after the Revolutionary militias. I kind of want to ask him where to get one but I only take a picture instead. I think he thought I was a cop because I’m pretty sure he (very subtly) took at least two pictures that would have included me later in the march.

Along the way I meet Guillermo and Nadine who just got to Barcelona from the States! They’re good folk (Guillermo is a porkchopper for a public-sector union in Albany, NY) who saw the march and just joined in, but they don’t really know whats going on. So I fill them in with what I know, which I supposed makes this a good time to fill you in as well.

If I haven’t mentioned it before ‘crisis’ is a daily lexicon word in Europe now. I’ve always thought that news coverage of the economy back home was mostly bullshit since the word ‘recovery’ was featured a lot but it didn’t seem that evident, but here the opposite is the case. Everyone seems keenly aware that the economy is in crisis, and a lot of people recognize that its going to be used to fuck over anyone who doesn’t have enough clout to protect their little pile. The latest target is public sector workers who are taking a pension cut, pay cut, and clawbacks to job security. A big concern is that the loss of job security is going to be turned immediately into layoffs, but unemployment is already at 20% in Spain so dumping a pile of public sector workers into an already vicious job market isn’t going to improve the situation. Like back home, increasingly the focus is on how the government bails out the banks, but not the people. Guillermo is surprised and is worried that if you can dismantle social-democracy then it doesn’t bode well for the world. In my particular shit-disturbing way I point out that FDR managed to bring elements of social democracy to the States and that they’ve spent the last 60 years dismantling that. So I enjoy the discussion with periodic jabs and we talk a bit about back home as he knows some Wobblies from Albany. Turns out he’s involved in Labour Notes to which he offers me a subscription. I’m torn between attending the anarcho-syndicalist conference or the next Labour Notes conference. We swap emails, and I head off with the university crew, eventually end up a chinese non-stop buffet (oh MAN I missed these) at my urging. I am roundly applauded for my good ideas. I proceed to misrepresent the IWW in my broken Spanish. I’m busy trying to point out that while there are anarcho-syndicalists in the union, we are more interested in providing a framework and the skills for workers to organize themselves but somehow get off track and they might think we’re heavily influenced by Murray Bookchin now. My bad.

We say our goodbyes and I head to the bus stop to go back to Granollers.

But the night isn’t done yet! Convinced I’ve missed my bus, exhausted and uninterested in waiting for a bus to stop and pick up passengers anyways, I give up and get a cab. There is an amusing exchange where the driver tells me it will be 40 euros and I think he says 14 euros. Briefly I think “What is even the point of having the busses, the taxis are cheaper!” but the ridiculousness of that demands I verify and yeah he definitely said “quarenta” and not “quatorze.” I don’t really care at this point, I just need him to know I’ll need a bank machine then. So on the way to Granollers we have a gleeful time talking about the day, it turns out he’s a CGT affiliate. He also likes mountain biking so we talk a bit about cycling, I recommend Moab, he recommends a place in Spain I already forget, but also the province Brittany in France. He complains about having to use TomTom (a GPS drivers map), saying he prefers maps but that customers want information right away so he has to use it. About half of what we talk about is probably us misunderstanding, or not understanding eachother, but I still have a good time. Finally, I get to bed, a full 24 hour day under my belt.

Start of the week, I get my stuff together and ride my bike to the train station and take the train into Barcelona. Today is determined bike riding day. When I get to Passeig de Gracia station in Barcelona I start biking north.

And bike straight into a hill. See my objective is Parc Guinardo which is supposed to have some old air raid shelters from the Revolution, but I mistakenly believed the Repubicans would avoid putting their shelters on GIANT EXPOSED HILLS. I walk a pretty good chunk of this but it quickly becomes worth it as the vista is incredible. I have photos for an entire additional panorama that I don’t need because the view just kept improving as you climbed up.

Eventually I found the air raid shelters (actually bunkers with emplacements for anti-aircraft guns, turns out I confused this with another site) which are actually sort of open and you can walk around. The entire site is coated in graffiti, most of it pretty good. After I head along the hill to Parc Carmel and Parc Guell since I can see them without losing too much of my height before the ride back to the center of the city. I whiz thru Parc Carmel which is better maintained that Parc Guinardo, but ultimately less pretty in my opinion. At some point I cross into Parc Guell and then all of a sudden BLAM walls of tourists. I have no idea that I am in Anton Guadi’s park, all I know is these damned tourists are ruining what would be a fucking awesome roadway to cruise down. They force me to stop periodically and I realize the roadway itself is kind of cool and take photos. I miss most of the rest of the park and zip past the Sagrada Familia then turn around and take some photos there too. I’m pretty set though, I get to the coast and head towards Parc Montjuic.

Within this Parc is a cemetery that contains the graves of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia (founder of the Modern School), Francisco Ascaso (died fighting the fascist uprising), and Buenaventura Durruti (a solid anarchist who deserves to be on everyones t-shirts more than Che Gueverra). I am roundly defeated in my quest for the graves by the fact that the Parc itself is enormous, on another giant hill, and there is no good signage to find the cemetery. Eventually it is getting too late to continue so I ride back into town. I manage to find the Plaza of the Unknown Soldier when I get back to La Rambla. This was somewhat chancy and I begin to get annoyed with the Spanish and apparently Catalonian resistance to signing their Civil War history. The Plaza is special because it was one of many named during the Revolution (much as Gran Via in Madrid used to be CNT Street), but most of those plaza and street markings were scrubbed clean when the fascists won. This plaza marking survived because it got covered up just before the fascists won and survived all the years of dictatorship until finally they were renovating the church and discovered the sign. And there it is today, a simple painted reminder that someone else named the streets here once.

I head around doing some tasks, like picking up some posters from the CNT bookstore for the Anarchist Bookfair Silent Auction (getting those onto my bike was fun!), getting sent to three different Movistar outlets before I found out that to fix my phone I just had to restart it (I’m not used to firmware with significant OS bugs!), and then it was time to head back to Granollers.

I’m already an hour behind when I wanted to leave, which sucks because I’m going to try it on my bike again because I’m pretty sure I know how I screwed up last time. I am well into twilight when I screw up differently and end up heading towards Vilanova de Valles which is going a bit too far east and putting an extra hill between me and Granollers. Rather than backtracking along the road I bike on the service roads in the adjacent fields in the near-dark. That was really refreshing… in fact the entire ride had been an improvement, though it helps not to have the bags. Eventually I get back on course but get a bit turned around in an industrial area. I push past a construction barricade intending to just hop back onto the legit pavement on the other side of it when I realize the soon to be paved road seems to go in my direction… but right now its just gravel. So do I stay or do I go? What if it just ends (this has happened too many times already and by now we’re in night)? Fortunately I notice a guy walking along the construction so I ask him and I miss about half of the details but it seems like I should just follow the road and eventually I get to Granollers. And it works! I arrive triumphantly in Granollers and pick up some donairs for Sonia and I.

The train ride from Zaragoza to Barcelona is surprisingly eventful. As I’m racing to the elevator to get my bike on the train (having timed things closely yet again), I run into another fellow with a bike and panniers. I go down first and get my bike on board and then help him get his bike on board and we talk for a bit. His name is Gorki (thats Basque for Jorge) and his plan is to bike around Corsica because he’s heard they are very anti-touristy and independent. He’s interested in that so off he goes with his reliable old bike. We talk off an on over the long train ride, slowly exhausting our combined Spanish and English but when we get to Barcelona we stay together for a bit, if only to watch our bikes while we go to the bathroom and later get food.

Later I begin to wonder if I’ve tapped into some sort of bike-packer mojo because as we sit in the park eating bananas, bread, and chorizo another grizzled fellow with panniers and bike rides up and casually says “Hola chicos.” This guy is a Polish dude who used to work in Iceland before the financial crisis. He reminds me *a lot* of Rene, the guy who motivated this entire trip in the first place, my peerless vagrant. I’d love to hang out longer but by this time I’m already burning serious daylight and my notes on my path are rather rough.

Biking out of the city turns out to be really pretty as it turns out there is a bike/pedway along the river (really, a creek) and I know that I don’t have to worry about getting back onto the road until there are bridges that cross it. After getting onto the road and going for a ways I roll into a towns traffic circle and find some perplexing signage. There are signs pointing me to Granollers, where I’m going, but the road number doesn’t match what I have written down. Sometimes its better to avoid following the signs and stay on your road, but going straight through the traffic circle doesn’t seem to have the right road number either. I figure following signs is better and follow them through a couple of intersections feeling pretty good about myself. Hell, there are signs from Granollers, so I must be pretty clo– OH MY GOD THAT IS A HIGHWAY ITS TOO LATE TO TURN AROUND, at which point I am reduced to yelling “QUE MAL! QUE MAL! QUE MAL!”

I spent most of the remainder of the ride humming rhythmic variants of “I’m going to die!” to myself. I don’t want to talk what trying to bike across a merging lane is like. Successfully merging onto my originally planned route is probably one of the single most satisfying/relieving experiences of my life. It gave my arrival something of a triumphant air when I finally made it to Sonia’s house.

Sonia is pretty wicked and should be on CouchSurfing in my opinion. If CS lost half its Spanish population and gained Sonia then the site would still have improved drastically. We go out to grab some food and drop by a student friend of hers where we talk a bit about sites and I first get twigged onto the existence of a George Orwell tour. When her friends ask who I am she says I’m her “okupa” which is what they call political squatters here. I think this is awesome. There are plans for actions on June 8th around the general surliness that local labour has reacted to government cutbacks with and I’m already pumped that I can tag along.

The remainder of the week is lazy. I don’t even do anything other than walk around Granollers for the first day. The next day I head into Barcelona really late in the day, run into an American when trying to site myself in front of a bus map so he tags along as I head into the heart of the city because he needs a hostel and I figure its more likely to be down there than anywhere else.

On the way we run into a squat. Or occupied building. I don’t know what the right term is, but its illegal and kind of awesome. We spend a good couple of hours at least (on top of some serious walking) just chilling out. They point me to the CNT bookstore where I spend another hour, and then I figure I should get back. The following day I want to try and find some Orwell/Civil War sites and succeed partially before I have to head to the squat because there is a hackspace scheduled for this evening. I blow an hour and a half there waiting (knowing spain, the thing would really only get started an hour after the schedule said) but the only people who show up look more like dumpster divers of the organic rather than electronic sort. I spend Friday in a bit of a funk, but in the evening some friends of Sonia’s are going up to Costa Brava for a weekend of boating. We drive out in a very nice compact SUV listening to good tunes as I watch the country-side roll by. I realize I miss music. This is reinforced at the end of the weekend and I resolve to recharge my Canadian phone so I can listen to it while I cycle (since my spanish phone is being a piece of shit about detecting that I have music).

I’m not entirely sure if was a language simplification or shorthand, but I’m told that everyone other than Sonia, Susanna, and I own factories on this weekend getaway. But hell, fuck it, I’ll balance fraternizing with class enemies by shit-disturbing everywhere else. Also, it was totally worth it. Costa Brava (and Tamariu in specific) is Capital-P Pretty. I’m MacArthuring a lot but there was definitely a “I will return” moment when I left. Our first night is pretty low-key but we settle in and plan for the boat ride tomorrow.

They have a life jacket which I eschew for the less embarrassing floaty yellow tube. Boats are awesome and I begin formulating a life-plan based around living on one after a fellow in a bigger boat who knew Ramone floated in and cooked some steak on HIS BARBECUE. I’m one of the few people who gets into the water with any frequency as apparently it is cold. It’s not warm, but I’ve been in worse, and all you gotta do is not sit on your ass. And the sun is shining so all you have to do is dry off and eventually you warm back up. Jordi tries out a kayak they have and he ends up flipping it after he gets quite a ways from the boat. Some people from another boat have to help him get back in. When Ramone’s buddy Pere-Juan (Pedro-Juan) shows up in his bigger boat we switch over and have a much-anticipated lunch there. As the sun wears on and I worry more about sunburn we make the trek back down the coast and we troop into our pension.

That evening (and the following lunch) I probably consume more seafood than I’ve eaten in my entire life (and this includes an attempt at salmon at Laura’s behest in Madrid). Shellfish is still, no matter how you look at it, fucking weird. But its ok, and sometimes the sauce is awesome. Well-prepared sea bass still doesn’t compete with good chicken, but it would be an excellent selection for a change of pace. This bodes well for the life-on-a-boat plan.

Storm clouds over Madrid make me glad I’m wearing my biking rain pants. The train ride is pretty, but its clear that the weather report on the region was accurate.

But when I get to Zaragoza it is a beautiful day! No couchsurfers have gotten back to me so I head to the hostal I know about. Albergue Zaragoza is clearly more Spanish-oriented than Cat’s Hostel so I muddle my way through the reception, figuring out that I was good for one night but the next night might be a problem but that I could check out and check in if there are cancellations. When I ask him to repeat himself just to make sure I understand I’m gratified to learn that I managed to get the gist. I run into an American and we go for a walk, later we get an Australian for dinner.

Zaragoza is a very nice city and just about the perfect amount of busy. There is an enormous church here amongst other things and I’m thinking that my original plan to justbike to Monte Oscuro may need to be modified. The next day I do the check out and check in dance and rather than just get one more night, I get two more nights. Then I need to get some oil on my chain as I haven’t done any maintenance since I began the trip… this involves a short trip to a local bike store where I manage to get the first syllable of the word for ‘rag’ wrong (I was saying ‘frapo’ but it is ‘trapo’). Some confusion follows but we come to an understanding and once everything is ready to go, I start biking at about 1230.

The long and shallow climb out of the valley puts me on the some highlands where I see giant windmills. Windmills are pretty much everywhere in this region, and there is something majestic about how they peek out over hills and lazily spin in the wind. Even though I know how big they really are (having seen them in California before) it is always a shock to get up to them and really see it. After visiting a windmill I become convinced that I have either over-shot my goal or that it is ridiculously far away. In the end I head north to reconnect with the regional road I had been using previously and this ends up pointing me straight towards a line of high hills that I had dismissed as not the mountain range I was looking for.

The road I end up on leads me to Perdiguera from which a path leads to the hills. So of course I head towards them. Eventually the road gives out so I can’t bike, but by now I can see a ruined building on the highest hill, but behind several ridges. I climb one ridge and find out it ends before reaching the main one that I am shooting for.

I backtrack and climb the adjacent ridge which I had avoided because it had more thorny bushes. When I realize this ridge dead ends as well I consider climbing down into the ravine and trying the next ridge. I have a feeling that I will always need to climb one more ridge and I’ve been walking for quite some time up here. The wind is strong and moisture-less so I’m a bit chapped but I decide to go for it.

Having made my way up from the ravine I look about and realize I still have a huge climb through the ever present thorny bushes. I consider my situation. I’ve left my water at my bike, partly because I only have one bottle left and I still need to conserve it for the ride back to Zaragoza. I have no water, I have hiked far enough off trail that I am at real risk of becoming lost, I am unsure how easy it is to even backtrack, and it is getting later in the day. I think about how cool that will sound in my blog and then keep hiking. By now I’m periodically just crashing through thornbushes. I have convinced myself that the ruined building is either a Fascist or Republican position from the Civil War. I don’t even know for sure that I’m on the right RIDGE let alone precisely where the front lies, but that building up there, it must be from the war. It keeps me going. When I reach the highest point on the ridge… I discover that I have to descend another ravine and climb again.

At this point common sense manages to rally and come back. I turn back, and am rather surprised by the distance I have to hike back. I finally get back to my bike and ride back to Perdiguera where I take a break on a park bench and clean all the thorns and seeds from my shoes and socks. By now its 4 or 5 and I left at noon. I figure I’ll be fine because its mostly downhill, but I could really use some food. I left without breakfast and had expected to find a decent place to grab food along the way. Since leaving the hostel the best I’ve found is a strawberry popsicle. The gas station outside Perdiguera doesn’t have anything worth buying so I decide to coast towards Zaragoza.

The wind is now in my face, and while I can maintain 20-30 km/hr it is only thru pedaling downhill. At one point I reach a sheltered length and get up to 40 km/hr, then the road turns into the wind and I promptly lose 10 km/hr. The best I find is a gas station with the Spanish equivalent of Ho Hos, which I promptly devour. I make it to the hostel, take a badly needed shower, and then have to wait until dinner is done. But I make a huge amount of spaghetti which is good because I need a huge amount. I hang out with an odd/older australian chap and a german. I notice that my legs are pretty well sunburned. I stay up late on my laptop because there is a party in the building and some assholes are showing how they can sound just like a rooster. My plan is to stay up working on photos until they go back downstairs or go to bed, but eventually they defeat my remaining energy reserves and I go to bed.

I try to sleep in the next day, but it is not to be. I try to do the get up and have breakfast then sleep plan, but end up huffing about on my computer and then finally getting tired enough to go back to bed. After my siesta I eat some food and try to go out for a walk but am eventually driven back by a headache. On my way back I stumble across a couple of volleyball pitches that are stacked with latinos on team and in audience. It’s fun to watch for a while, though I’m curious why no one ever spiked… maybe some sort of pact because of the court size.

Zaragoza is definitely worth seeing, but I probably wouldn’t expect more than two days of attractions. In the end I’m hoping my host in Barcelona doesn’t expect me to be a super-jumpy tourist as I’d be fine with a break at this point.

Tuesday is museum day in Madrid. Except Reina Sofia is closed on Tuesdays. That’s ok, because Laura and I head on over to the Prado. Prado is all very old classical pieces and I’m not really sure what to look for and my feet are quickly becoming tired, but when we hit Goya and some of the other more modern landscapes I finally gel with what I’m seeing. It’s all a bit overwhelming so we head to the Palacio Real which has an entire walking tour of the chambers of royalty and a huge collection of arms and armour. I’m quickly glazing over until I notice the detail going into things, like full ceiling murals and battles depicted on a dudes shield (in detail). By the end of the day I resolve to limit myself to one museum a day because it’s hard to grasp what you’re seeing and properly digest it for later.

In the evening some other Canadians and I are on pubcrawl and get in around 3AM. In five hours half of my room wakes up and clumps around ridiculously loudly, slamming their locker doors (not. kidding.), and generally not being considerate. Finally I just decide to go and get some breakfast in the hopes that they will be gone when I get back. I’m miserably hanging over my cereal when I run into some of the guys from last night. They’re all going to Toledo. It is 9AM. I tell them they’re crazy and go back to bed. I get up a 1PM, beating the Quebecois girl by about thirty minutes. The rest of the day is spent on my laptop while I wait for my laundry to finish.

In the evening I go out with some Americans who I manage to connect with in two ways. Gannon I ran into earlier in the day reading Mona Lisa Overdrive and we talked a bit about Gibson and alternative authors if you liked his style. Grace I don’t even remember how I met, but I’m roaming in search of some of my friends from last night when I run into them and Cara. We end up doing our own pub crawl as I can’t find the other guys and it turns out pretty good. A fellow in the last place we’re at says he recognizes me from a club the previous nice, which either charitably means I am ‘unique’ on the dance floor, or alternatively that I’m so bad that you can never forget it.

The next day I hit Reina Sofia which has a lot of really cool pieces that I gel with better. Eventually I get near the Guernica exhibit where I find old propaganda from the fascist and republican side. This, and the Guernica mural, is pretty cool, but the next floor has this crazy exhibit (almost literally). It’s all centered around this dude named Martin Ramirez who crosses into the States from Mexico for work, which he gets on the railway. Eventually the Depression hits and the next thing you hear is he is being picked up while wandering around kind in kind of a crazy state. Eventually he gets packed off the a mental institution where he is diagnosed by a board of english-only doctors. The art this guy ends up producing is in nearly complete isolation out of paper he glues together himself out of scraps and other supplies basically built up from scratch. His work ends up being abstractly very very repetitive but when you realize that it was method as much as intent you notice small things like multiple seams in a piece as he works in a piece of cardboard with other paper he found. None of it is dated and none of it is aware of existing art movements so it has this timeless and placeless feeling to it all. Probably the most interesting thing I have seen in any museum thus far. My feet are toast, but I want to check out the nearby train station which has a feeling to it that I can only describe as ‘old money.’

My final evening is dinner with the Americans at a Peruvian joint I managed to stumble into as Gannon and I meandered our way back to the hostel the previous night. I am really pumped by this place, I knew it had existed because another peruvian named Guillermo had told me it was around here. Unfortunately he left, but he said he couldn’t find it and that their website was down so he assumed they were closed. This little bit of luck is awesome and everyone walks away satisfied with both the food and drink (INCA KOLA YES). I really want to go out on the town again for my last night but *everyone* bails and in the end just go to bed. That turns out well because I have to catch an early train and that bicycle ride to Chanmartin would have been much more brutal if I was operating on less sleep. As it stands I make it to the train with 15 minutes to spare (and there is only one train I can take with my bike). With that, I’m off to Zaragoza.

I have now been in Madrid for three good days, but my visit to Madrid begins with broken dreams. I’m convinced I can make it to my hostel in time to shower, maybe change, and then… GOGOL BORDELLO. In fact, based on Ticketmaster, THERE ARE STILL TICKETS AVAILABLE. This craziness makes me giddy.

But I fuck up the bus. The train ride back to Bilbao is no problem, though the ticket guy hassled me about something. I think I was on some sort of lift for handicapped people but I was trying to say “OK, so where do you want it?” but he just waved me off and went down the train asking for other tickets. I’ll never know what I did wrong. Oh but the bus.

I know that the bus wants me to do something special with my bike, but I’m hoping it will just be ‘cover it in plastic’ and not ‘take it apart and put it in a box.’ I get to the teller, there is ten minutes until the 1PM bus leaves and I have no idea what she is telling me to do with my bike. I step out of the busy lineup to look up the critical word she seemed to be saying and can’t find it. I try to get back into my place and everyone in Spain is an asshole to me. Fuck you guys, I could have just stood there until the lady said my bike was fine and wasted your time (I am seriously choked about this treatment and wish I had not only wasted their time but mooned them all now too). Anyways, I get back in the lineup knowing what I want to ask. Something like “You need my bike in bag or box?” and 30 minutes later have my ticket after she demonstrated using a pen and a calculator, which was rather original. It takes me a surprising amount of time to bag up my bike and its 10 minutes till the time on my ticket and I’m wondering where my bus is.

My bus *was* on the other side of the platform. I realize this about 15 minutes after it was supposed to arrive. I stand around for another 5 minutes thinking I can just play the stupid foreigner and get on the next bus, but decide not to risk it. I go back to the ticket booth and spend another solid twenty minutes in the lineup so I can say “Please, I need to change” and point at my ticket. She seems unhappy with this. I’m unhappy because I’ve blown two hours. But I’m still good! Given four hours to get to Madrid I still have about an hour to find my hostel, shower, and get directions. This will likely take an hour but I’m counting on their being an opening gig.

The bus to Madrid takes five hours. By the time I’m in my room with my stuff secured I’m sweating buckets, partly due to the really hot weather but also lugging my bags up and down flights of stairs (I couldn’t find my room) and the nervousness of being lost. Once I’m done my shower it is one hour after the show was due to start. In a way, this is far far far too reminiscent of the Milton Keynes hockey quest. I’m really down that it didn’t work out. I wander around looking for a place to eat and decide to drown my sorrows in a nice donair place I find (or ‘doner kebap’ as it is here). It is the best donair I have ever had. So there’s an upside.

When I get back my room is full of Catalans. A few of them speak decent English and between us we communicate. They are here for the european soccer championships, but their team didn’t make it. They’ve spent the subsequent day drinking and carousing and are going to get food and repeat. They invite me out and I think “Hell, better to come home with the drunks than get woken up by them!” It is a good night that helps get me out of my shell and practicing spanish.

The next day I pack up my things and go out to the front. Check out is two hours before I am allowed to check back in for space so I stash my gear and wander down Calle Atocha looking for other hostals and internet. In the end I settle down in a McDonalds, not for the free wifi they provide but for want of an Egg McMuffin. Of course, they haven’t imported those yet, but they do have pancakes (aka ‘tortatas’). Except no maple syrup. The lady asks me ‘chocolata o caramela’ and so I select caramel thinking that maybe this is a spanish way of saying syrup. Nope, its the spanish way of saying caramel! Anyways, after a disappointing breakfast I return and find out that my concerns about lodgement for the evening were unfounded and I am established for the week.

Sitting down for a bit I figure out where I want to go and decide on the Casa de Campo, a GINORMOUS park west of me. Some comments regarding it indicate that you can still see the remains of trenches from the Siege of Madrid. I walk a long ways and don’t find anything. Convinced that the article I’d read was full of shit and that the author couldn’t tell a trench from a ditch if his tactical position depended on it I returned determined to do better research. Then Laura phones me and I have dinner plans!

Laura is a good friend who goes way back. I hosted Juan, a spanish exchange student, for two weeks and he came with three other spaniards. Those two weeks were a whirlwind tour of all the bars I never go to in Edmonton and it left me gasping for breath at the end of it. I credit this debauchery with singlehandedly ending a very serious foray into the World of Warcraft. When they returned I told them I’d be in Spain for 2010, but apparently like everyone else they didn’t quite believe me. So Laura is super-pumped that I’m here, Juan is (sadly) in Africa so we go out for dinner where I have proper tapas instead of doner kebap. Oh and the Germans lost the European championship.

Sunday is ‘find-the-scars-of-the-revolution’ day. Based on more detailed research I now know roughly the line of advance and what things are known to still be there. The trenches in the Casa de Campo are confirmed, but specifics are vague. There are bunkers in the Parque del Oeste, which is sort of on the way and lets me explore Rio Madrid area some more. And apparently you can ’still see the scars’ in Ciudad Universitaria but I think that will turn out to be a waste of time, but it anchors the line I’m going to explore.

See the original plan for the fascists was to cross through the Casa de Campo because it was mostly open ground and into the Ciudad Universitaria which was across the river. This gave General Mola a good foothold in the city proper, and more importantly, a secure river crossing. It was the best of a pile of bad options and was made significantly worse when the battle plans were found on a dead Italian officer. In the end the Casa de Campo became a lethal killing field as Mola tried to push through his original plan and the Republicans did their best to reinforce. It wasn’t until decades after World War II concluded that they finally opened the park back up; until then it was cordoned off because there were still mines and active munitions! Sadly, I cannot find any evidence of this other than some restored bunkers in the Parque del Oeste. I bike much of the Casa de Campo and the only really unique thing I found were the prostitutes (another well-known legacy of the Casa de Campo).

I take a soak in the fountains beside the Rio Manzanes and head in. I plan on taking a shower but I can’t put my bike in the reception any more. It’s filled with bags from everyone wanting to check in or who have already checked out. I attempt to suborn the lady running the desk, but in the end we compromise with her watching it and I get my lock. Thus begins an hour of getting my lock, desperately searching for my key, giving up and going to the the nearby-ish bike store, discovering its closed on Sunday, returning to search some places I forgot to search, and then finally being told I could store it in the reception as the luggage had all moved out. This entire time I just desperately wanted a shower. I spend the rest of the evening alternately searching for a key and preparing initial plans for next week.

Today was spent more casually. I awoke in time for breakfast, showered and then headed out in search of an optica (glasses store). I’d bent my frame a little bit in an excited exchange with the Catalans and was tired of them feeling loose. I also wanted to see the prices on bike locks. I failed to find an optica and the lock prices range from 15 euros to 30 euros. I want to pay 15 euros, but I want the lock that costs 30 euros. I defer this decision until Wednesday when I will do laundry and maybe the key will fall out in the process. In the meantime I drown my sorrows in a McNugget meal. Heading back I spend at least four hours alternately planning my route to Barcelona, sending emails, and trying to catch up this blog and its photos. By the time I emerge from ‘The Cave’ where the internet is best I’m thoroughly tired anyways and plan on just sitting on a couch in the bright living area upstairs. I end up meeting an indian dude named Arnub who has a better map than I have and we end up going for a stroll. It’s a pretty good time and in the process I get to practice Spanish because he doesn’t know any, and I find an optica thanks to some other Canadians who were keeping their eyes open for me. After a pretty satisfying walk Laura and I go to an Indian/Pakistani restaurant that has tandoori chicken that is off the bone. That totally makes up for the really really heavy butter in their butter chicken (aka Makhni Chicken).

Laura takes the Metro home and I’m within walking distance of the hostal so I head down a fairly wide boulevard that looks like it goes in my direction. Quickly, I learn to walk in the very centre as I get accosted by two very aggressive prostitutes. One put an awfully firm hand on my shoulder and after I twisted out of it and got about 10 paces away another grabbed my arm in an awfully firm grip. Then I walk down the middle and am fine, but admittedly kind of shaken. When I get back I run into Arnub who is hanging out with two dudes who turn out to be from Edmonton. We end up wiling the night away at the Big Ben cerveceria before we call it quits. So far, I’m having a pretty good time.

Why visit Guernica? Based on the maps, its just another town in between the big cities. Few people remember their high school war history, and even if they did the Spanish ‘Civil’ War is really only a footnote. In fact, the primary reason the Spanish Revolution is discussed at all is because the fascists bombed Gernika to all hell using German planes and German pilots. Gernika is taught to Canadians because it is one of many collective “Oh shit. Fascists.” moments that are the prelude to World War II. I wanted to visit it expecting maybe a small memorial. I never intended it to be more than a sidebar but some research showed me that there was actually a lot going on with the town. In addition to some extensive material deriving from the towns experience being bombed, Guernica is historically the seat of Basque autonomy. So my train arrived in the stop before Gernika proper and the first thing I do is delay an old man getting off by asking him if this was the right stop. He gets off one sentence and then turns to go and I watch in horror as the doors close. His wife is on the other side looking at him and I think her face said “What the fuck is wrong with these foreigners.” The guy didn’t seem to care too much and just waved and her and said something I couldn’t catch.

Once I really get off the train, I feel like I am in a ghost town again. I have learned a little bit from my experience in Laredo so this does not faze me. It is the siesta, and the siesta is a real thing. When they talk about the siesta in spanish classes everyone is thinking that this is just a code word for ‘we nap over our lunch break’ or even ‘in addition to our lunch break we take a short nap.’ Nothing can compare to coming into full contact with the siesta. *Everything* is closed. For at least three hours, if not four. *Everything.* In Bilbao, Eugenia told me she tried phoning a consulate to find out when they were open and they said “8-1 then siesta… then… well, we don’t know if we can make it in after siesta.” I am told no one actually sleeps during the siesta, but it is not some minor quaint thing about Spanish culture. It is the block of time in which nothing you want will be within walking distance and open.

So I have some time to kill. I make my way up the hill to the Park of the People which is this very tidy park that reminds me of a miniature Devonian. Theoretically this park is intended to showcase unique ecology of the Basque region (something about four types of trees), but nothing is marked. When I first read about the park I was very ‘meh’ on the entire thing: “Four trees of the Basque region. Oh man! Somebody get me postcards to send to all my friends!” However, on the train in I could see forests of trees that were definitely not familiar and certainly looked cool. Sadly, they don’t mark any of the trees or plants like you would expect so I am not significantly more educated on the uniqueness of the Basque eco-region. On one end of the park are two giant sculptures commissioned to commemorate the bombing. I take some photos and then set up in the park to read a book for awhile.

Eventually its time to go investigate my housing options for the night. The buzzing unsurety of where I am sleeping on a given night is particularly bad at this point. I am not precisely sure how homeless people remain at all humane given that they deal with stress an order of magnitude worse every single day. This last thought is particularly pressing when I find that the pension is still not open. I head over to the tourist office to kill time since I *am* fifteen minutes early for the end of the siesta. I end up having a nice chat with an Austrialian guy out for a walk with his little boy. I was surprised to find out he had been living here for ten years, and would have enjoyed talking longer except for the drunk who interrupted us with his one english phrase. I maybe got a bit over-paranoid here, but I recognized the Basque flag on his hat and was concerned that I was aggravating some nationalist pride (that this region definitely has got). I didn’t want to be responsible for outting the Australian as a gringo to a bunch of drunk Basques (though I don’t even think they use the term gringo here), so I wished him well and picked up some maps in the tourist centre.

The pension was still closed. Finally I gave up on it and went next door to a hotel that didn’t have free internet (an important component of my downtime/relaxation plans). At this point I’m still not sure if I just don’t understand how pensions are different from hotels or if the famous Spanish lacksadaisacal-ness just conflicted with my frantic impatience. I imagine a bit of both.

The next day I sleep in really late so I don’t really explore all that much. I go down to the bridge that the fascists were ‘targetting’ when they bombed, but it is so normal that it isn’t even worth a photo. It’s just some bridge that got caught in the middle of a war and watched as it’s town burned around it. But I cross to the other side and walk back towards the city centre and find more graffiti on the way. So I keep following, the walls and walls of the stuff until suddenly I’m in a neighbourhood that reminds me way too much of the poorer areas in Lima. There is still more to be seen, but I am now literally on the wrong side of the tracks and hurry back with my tail between my legs. Finally I check out most of the Museo del Paz. Here there were a few interesting pieces, but it feels weird to take a photo of a photo of a poster from the revolution. Overall it was a pretty good presentation, there is this entire section on what is peace, what it is rooted in, and so on. It balances aggravating quotes like “The most unjust peace is preferable to the most just war” with a pronounced assessment that equality and living conditions are a necessity as well. The section on the bombing is a little bit blood-curdling, but there is a heavy sentiment of reconciliation. The museum closed before I got to see the final bit which was all about how to merge the first and second sections of the museum. So I went hunting for some food, found a chinese joint that was open and then ate in front of the reproduction of Picasso’s “Bombing of Guernica” mural. I go to bed, with an alarm to wake me so I can phone my family. Then I sleep through it because I have to get up early the next day anyways. Which, of course, I do not.

I got blisters on both my feet! But I’m (kind of) happy about it, so thats ok. After sleeping the entire previous day, I had the energy and the health to go exploring while Alex and Eugenia went to Castro-Urdiales to do a bit of flat-hunting. We figured some times off and I went out with them and then headed down the river towards the Gugenheim.

But I didn’t go in. I still had five hours left to go and I wanted to explore more than I wanted to wander in an art museum. Also, I have a bit more difficulty with modern art because I have less anchors to attach my perception to so I just sort of stare blankly at the canvas for a little bit and move on. I figured I had more than enough time later in the day anyways. I had a map of Bilbao and a pretty good understanding of its overall layout and its boundaries, so I proceeded to get thoroughly lost only periodically orienting myself to the map. After awhile I got bored and decided to do something Eugenia suggested. I got on the metro to Portugalete (very user friendly!) and was off.

I was here to check out the Puente Colgante which is this crazy bridge who’s entire goal was to get traffic across the river without messing up the water traffic. It’s actually a pretty cool solution and I’m surprised this is the first one I’ve ever seen. Sadly, the lift to the top-level walkway was closed so I was forced to wander more. I headed inland along the river remembering that I’d passed some burned out buildings in an industrial sector that looked like they had a lot of graffiti. So I figured I’d walk past this large warehouse-factory that I could see and see what I could see.

To my surprise the wall surrounding the factory was already covered in graffiti. Eugenia suggested there might have been some sort of sponsored competition, which makes sense… all the pieces in the most visible locations were very polished, often with several by the same artist, one of them with their own website proudly advertised on their piece. Figuring I had had some good luck I kept walking after taking some photos.

Eventually I got back on the Metro, but I got a good look at the outskirts of Bilbao (their own cities by rights, but considered part of ‘Gran Bilbao’). By the time I got back to the Gugenheim it was time to head in and make dinner for my hosts. After some rather average spaghetti (no mushrooms and I bought a can of puree tomatoes, not whole) I proceed to lose at Carcassonne due to Alex cottoning on to my farmer strategy and then on to a game of poker where Eugenia proved that there is no such thing as probability.

The next day I get on the train to Guernica (Gernika-Lumo in Basque and post-merger with Lumo). On the train I realize what I really need on this trip is downtime. The tourist busses understand part of the formula: Let tourists do touristy things, before they get too overwhelmed scoop them back into the bus, and then let them get comfortable again. Part of what works there is that the downtime lets you relax and absorb what you have just seen or done. Now I’m not endorsing such tourist entrapments, I think a hot/cold approach like that is only good for ensuring you always need tour operators, I’m just saying I see the need for *some* downtime now. My plan is to get a hotel in Guernica and just hide there for two nights. I’ve had to push back my arrival in Madrid (an entire story in of itself). During the day I will spend maybe half exploring the sites and if I feel like it maybe biking into the surrounding hills. If not, I’ll hide in my room. In a very real way, couchsurfing hosts provide this downtime without making you feel antisocial so I’m just having to do it with no one in Guernica to host me.