The flight to New Orleans was relatively painless. When we got past the clouds and the snowy landscape further north, the view out the window showed brown soggy ground laced with branching rivers and streams. It was so flat! And muddy! And brown!
I landed and called my hotel to ask them the best way to get to and from the airport. They recommended I catch the airport shuttle outside the baggage claim that will take you to any hotel in New Orleans, for a fee of course. The driver nearly fell over himself trying to help me, and I soon figured out why. Our first stop was at a hotel with a French name, a granite column façade, and a doorman with a top hat. I soon ceased to be impressed with the doormen, however, because the next four hotels had them too. I sank further and further down in my seat with each stop: Marriott, Sheraton, Marriott. And of course the stop right before mine, the hotel I had found on the Internet for $20 a night, was the Ritz Carleton. Momentarily, I felt a little better. We were already on Canal Street, which was where my hotel was. I could only be a few blocks from the Ritz – how bad could it be? We stopped.
Oh God. I couldn’t even see the entrance. There it was, overshadowed by the beauty supply shop next door and invisible because there was no doorman to help me out. The canvas over the door was worn and ragged and it looked more like the entrance to a cheap lawyer’s building. I thought about making a show of giving the driver a 5-cent tip, especially since he’d just received a $20 from Mr. Ritz Carleton, but thought better of it.
After checking in, I made my way up to the third floor. I noticed the smell when I stepped off the elevator, but it didn’t really get to me until I was in my room with the door shut and felt like I was in the middle of a smoker’s convention. The room was small but cute, with a sink, TV with a remote, fridge, double bed and old-fashioned striped wallpaper. The furniture was dark polished wood and the little window looked out onto the street. I tried to ignore the smell that reminded me of what it would be like if I were ever stuck in a smoke stack, but I couldn’t do it. I went back downstairs to ask if they could change my room. Yes, Ebony said, but I would be on the second floor, and there wasn’t a women’s bathroom on that floor. Was that okay? Sure, I said, then went back to the chimney to wait for my new quarters. In just 10 minutes I felt sick enough to die. I wondered if the room had been tested for other noxious gasses. Was there a hose hooked up to a car somewhere?
My new room was probably specially designated for goody-two-shoes Northerners that whine about the smoking rooms. My new TV had no remote, was probably built in the late ‘70s and had an attached clock radio. This could have been considered a plus, except only one channel came in, and the damn thing turned on by itself at midnight. There was no fridge, and this time the view was a brick wall. When I sat on the bed it protested loudly and sank a couple inches. Hmmm…too much chocolate. The walls were the same cloth wallpaper as upstairs, except for the wall behind the bed’s headboard, which they had covered after they ran out of pink striped wallpaper, so they used blush pink carpet instead. The door looked termite-riddled, but thankfully the rest of the room was clear of vermin and lacked any sort of smoky smell. I leaned against the sink and it almost came out of the wall.
Showing posts with label traveling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traveling. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Addiction Takes Hold, Again
There’s a drink called Adios Motherfucker; it was named after me.
This morning I woke up sweaty and feeling suffocated in my sheets. Suddenly, an idea that had been rolling around in my head from awhile took hold and shook me.
GET OUT.
So I did what I had to do, what I usually do when this happens: I obeyed.
And here I am, 300 miles from home, sitting on a lakeshore in Canada. I have no idea what time it is, but the light is fading and a city to the north of me – Summerland, I learned later – is starting to emerge, one star-speck of light at a time. There’s a breeze that is bringing the waves lapping to the shore, and it almost hides the sound of the highway on the hill behind me.
When I finally pressed my foot to the gas pedal in my old beat up Subaru after hours of prep and forgetting things, I felt a relief and a buoyancy that I haven’t felt in a long time. I rolled down the window and screamed. It too was something I’d needed for awhile, but I had been afraid to disturb the neighbors.
I don’t think it says anything good about me that I feel the most real when I am alone. I nearly cried at the joy of seeing nothing in front of me but the open road; nothing next to me but some jerky and my laptop; nothing to do but see how far north I could make it before dark. Suddenly, words that had been locked inside me started to spill out, and I felt waves of inspiration hitting me as palpably as I feel the water of this Canadian lake around my feet.
I am made for this. If it weren’t for the knowledge that I am a European mutt, I would swear that I am from a long-lost nomadic tribe. I feel safer with the wind at my back and the unknown ahead than I do in a bed that I can call my own. I can’t find a part of me that fits in a house. I can’t find a part of me that is willing to give up my freedom for a home. I fight this urge, this addiction, this need, but somehow I can never conquer it, and I’m not sure I want to. What I want is a way to sustain it, to live off it, to bleed it dry, then milk it for more. I want property in third world countries, to know the names of the locals, to explain to others the shape and size of a country they’ve never heard of that I now call my own. I want to be able to scream from the tops of the mountains without wondering if people can hear me. I want to wake up in the morning without feeling like the sheets are trying to strangle me – because I don’t belong to them, they belong to me.
Love and addicted kisses
Morgan
This morning I woke up sweaty and feeling suffocated in my sheets. Suddenly, an idea that had been rolling around in my head from awhile took hold and shook me.
GET OUT.
So I did what I had to do, what I usually do when this happens: I obeyed.
And here I am, 300 miles from home, sitting on a lakeshore in Canada. I have no idea what time it is, but the light is fading and a city to the north of me – Summerland, I learned later – is starting to emerge, one star-speck of light at a time. There’s a breeze that is bringing the waves lapping to the shore, and it almost hides the sound of the highway on the hill behind me.
When I finally pressed my foot to the gas pedal in my old beat up Subaru after hours of prep and forgetting things, I felt a relief and a buoyancy that I haven’t felt in a long time. I rolled down the window and screamed. It too was something I’d needed for awhile, but I had been afraid to disturb the neighbors.
I don’t think it says anything good about me that I feel the most real when I am alone. I nearly cried at the joy of seeing nothing in front of me but the open road; nothing next to me but some jerky and my laptop; nothing to do but see how far north I could make it before dark. Suddenly, words that had been locked inside me started to spill out, and I felt waves of inspiration hitting me as palpably as I feel the water of this Canadian lake around my feet.
I am made for this. If it weren’t for the knowledge that I am a European mutt, I would swear that I am from a long-lost nomadic tribe. I feel safer with the wind at my back and the unknown ahead than I do in a bed that I can call my own. I can’t find a part of me that fits in a house. I can’t find a part of me that is willing to give up my freedom for a home. I fight this urge, this addiction, this need, but somehow I can never conquer it, and I’m not sure I want to. What I want is a way to sustain it, to live off it, to bleed it dry, then milk it for more. I want property in third world countries, to know the names of the locals, to explain to others the shape and size of a country they’ve never heard of that I now call my own. I want to be able to scream from the tops of the mountains without wondering if people can hear me. I want to wake up in the morning without feeling like the sheets are trying to strangle me – because I don’t belong to them, they belong to me.
Love and addicted kisses
Morgan
Friday, August 21, 2009
Nostril Plugs, Anyone?
So these are a couple ideas I've had for new inventions, designed especially to help new ski instructors run their classes in a more efficient manner:
The headband helmet: made especially for little girls in beginning ski school whose parent's don't seem to think about the fact that it will be much harder for their princesses to ski if their hair freezes in a veil over their face. This new helmet will come in pretty girlie colors and have a built-in headband to keep their hair out of their face and mouth. This will also help the instructor because she will know if they are even looking in her general direction when she's explaining some of the rudimentary of skiing.
The yapper trapper: a device like a muzzle to keep children from shrieking about how they want their mommy, that their feet are cold, that they can't move, and that they hate their wonderful instructor.
The kiddie stopper: a big rubber thing that you can stick in the ground that the kids can ski down and run into when they can't stop on the bunny hill (which, by the way, has the vertical incline of a grassy knoll, but they can still manage to start going mach 5 and ramming into the fence and/or the snowboard class at the bottom) that will give just enough that they stop going forward, but will save the poor instructor, whose main job seems to be a stopper for said out of control children, especially the ones that weigh as much as poor instructor.
And finally, the nostril plug: for all ages and in a variety of colors, this hand device is rammed into the nostrils to prevent big snot bubbles and excess drippage that completely gross out the ever-patient instructor, who even if she has Kleenex will inevitably have to put the used ones in her pocket, where they freeze into big green balls.
The headband helmet: made especially for little girls in beginning ski school whose parent's don't seem to think about the fact that it will be much harder for their princesses to ski if their hair freezes in a veil over their face. This new helmet will come in pretty girlie colors and have a built-in headband to keep their hair out of their face and mouth. This will also help the instructor because she will know if they are even looking in her general direction when she's explaining some of the rudimentary of skiing.
The yapper trapper: a device like a muzzle to keep children from shrieking about how they want their mommy, that their feet are cold, that they can't move, and that they hate their wonderful instructor.
The kiddie stopper: a big rubber thing that you can stick in the ground that the kids can ski down and run into when they can't stop on the bunny hill (which, by the way, has the vertical incline of a grassy knoll, but they can still manage to start going mach 5 and ramming into the fence and/or the snowboard class at the bottom) that will give just enough that they stop going forward, but will save the poor instructor, whose main job seems to be a stopper for said out of control children, especially the ones that weigh as much as poor instructor.
And finally, the nostril plug: for all ages and in a variety of colors, this hand device is rammed into the nostrils to prevent big snot bubbles and excess drippage that completely gross out the ever-patient instructor, who even if she has Kleenex will inevitably have to put the used ones in her pocket, where they freeze into big green balls.
Night Diving on the Great Barrier Reef
I sit uncomfortably in inky blackness, trying not to fall onto Linton, who patiently bears my weight as I struggle to put on my fins. I'm the last one ready, and probably the most nervous, but I take a deep breath, let it out, and readjust my mask.
"Ready," I say. I put the regulator in my mouth and try to breathe through the tube that snakes to the tank on my back. It's heavy and trying to pull me backward into the water.
"One, two, three, GO!" someone yells, and I surrender to the tank, letting it pull me in. My flashlight points straight into the sky, before becoming obscured by the dark water. I do a flip and end up upright next to the dinghy, held afloat by my vest. There are six others with me, and we're at Bait Reef, an outer layer of the Great Barrier Reef off the Whitsunday Islands. It's my first night dive ever, and I try to control a part of me that's trying to panic. For the moment I succeed, and soon we're descending in invisible elevators into the void below us.
This is different than the experience I had earlier today, in the daylight. Now the water is obscured by tiny particles, like snowflakes that absorb the light. Earlier, the sunlight was caught by schools of hand-sized fish, throwing rainbows everywhere in a shower of prisms. The coral was only slightly blurred by the depth, giving it a dusty appearance: pale rose, chalky blue, smudged green. There were giant clams with pursed disapproving lips in neon colored patterns, like 80's clothing.
Now, the same trip is completely different. What we can see is only what we ourselves illuminate, and it has the appearance of a watery bone yard. The coral has gone pale, and looks like jumbled piles of deer antlers at one point, a huge brain at another. The fish are curious and follow us, using our flashlight beams to find their prey.
I struggle with staying on the bottom, and for a while I have to purposely swim toward the ocean floor, wasting energy and air that I'll want later. I finally realize my vest still has air in it. Once I release it, I sink to within inches of the coral for a better view.
We wander through a chasm between the coral columns, and I am under a dark shelf. When I look up, the coral beckons, pulsating, trying to capture food brought toward it on the current. I know it makes a noise, I can tell, but all I can hear is the sound of my own raspy breathing. It comforts me, because it means that I am alive and this isn't a dream. I am underwater in the darkness of the Great Barrier Reef.
Even though I'm more comfortable now, my initial panic uses up my air, and I have to surface with my buddy before the rest of the group. We look up, and the water is lit above us; you can see our air bubbles illuminated from the flashlights below, and from another source of light above them in the dark night. When I clear the surface, I am looking right into the source: a golden honey-colored moon has just risen, right behind the masts of a sailboat. I look straight up into a smattering of stars, and around me to the lights of the other boats on their moorings. When I look down again, I'm over the coral, and it glows in the moonlight, beckoning me, waving in the current.
I let a whoop, and my salty lips stretch into a smile that takes up my whole face. My after-dive euphoria is the only buoyancy I need, and I will float on it for years to come.
"Ready," I say. I put the regulator in my mouth and try to breathe through the tube that snakes to the tank on my back. It's heavy and trying to pull me backward into the water.
"One, two, three, GO!" someone yells, and I surrender to the tank, letting it pull me in. My flashlight points straight into the sky, before becoming obscured by the dark water. I do a flip and end up upright next to the dinghy, held afloat by my vest. There are six others with me, and we're at Bait Reef, an outer layer of the Great Barrier Reef off the Whitsunday Islands. It's my first night dive ever, and I try to control a part of me that's trying to panic. For the moment I succeed, and soon we're descending in invisible elevators into the void below us.
This is different than the experience I had earlier today, in the daylight. Now the water is obscured by tiny particles, like snowflakes that absorb the light. Earlier, the sunlight was caught by schools of hand-sized fish, throwing rainbows everywhere in a shower of prisms. The coral was only slightly blurred by the depth, giving it a dusty appearance: pale rose, chalky blue, smudged green. There were giant clams with pursed disapproving lips in neon colored patterns, like 80's clothing.
Now, the same trip is completely different. What we can see is only what we ourselves illuminate, and it has the appearance of a watery bone yard. The coral has gone pale, and looks like jumbled piles of deer antlers at one point, a huge brain at another. The fish are curious and follow us, using our flashlight beams to find their prey.
I struggle with staying on the bottom, and for a while I have to purposely swim toward the ocean floor, wasting energy and air that I'll want later. I finally realize my vest still has air in it. Once I release it, I sink to within inches of the coral for a better view.
We wander through a chasm between the coral columns, and I am under a dark shelf. When I look up, the coral beckons, pulsating, trying to capture food brought toward it on the current. I know it makes a noise, I can tell, but all I can hear is the sound of my own raspy breathing. It comforts me, because it means that I am alive and this isn't a dream. I am underwater in the darkness of the Great Barrier Reef.
Even though I'm more comfortable now, my initial panic uses up my air, and I have to surface with my buddy before the rest of the group. We look up, and the water is lit above us; you can see our air bubbles illuminated from the flashlights below, and from another source of light above them in the dark night. When I clear the surface, I am looking right into the source: a golden honey-colored moon has just risen, right behind the masts of a sailboat. I look straight up into a smattering of stars, and around me to the lights of the other boats on their moorings. When I look down again, I'm over the coral, and it glows in the moonlight, beckoning me, waving in the current.
I let a whoop, and my salty lips stretch into a smile that takes up my whole face. My after-dive euphoria is the only buoyancy I need, and I will float on it for years to come.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Venetian Glass and a Dumbass
After my overpriced and wholly American meal near Piazza San Marcos in Venice, I continued on through the rain, hearing much more English than Italian. I discovered that, despite the confined space of the narrow streets, the Italians weren’t anything like the Spaniards and almost hugged the foul-smelling walls to keep from running into me. Despite my hobo appearance and the fact that I had been carrying everything I had on my back from the last seven weeks, I had made sure to wash almost daily with soap and water, and at first was puzzled at their preference to the musty wet brick. Then I noticed they were doing it to other tourists as well, and as an American I was supposed to enjoy having my space, a fact I had obviously forgotten in my short time away from home. Since I assumed the Venetians weren’t skirting us out of cultural deference, I deduced that they probably found us to be a vermin-like race whose mannerisms were contagious through direct contact.
I wandered around some more until I made it to the boat stop that took me straight to Murano, home of the Venetian glass shops that gave all the local shop owners something to arrange when they weren’t blatantly watching you browse. I was directed to what I assume was just one of many glass factories on the island and stood with a mixed group of tourists as a narrator tried his best to explain the process in five languages as the glassblowers silently ignored us. Although there really seemed to be no method to their madness, they moved around their workshop with quiet efficiency, seemingly oblivious to the gawkers standing 20 feet away. They were toting around metal rods with red-hot globules on one end, rolling the rod constantly to keep the liquid glass from dipping off onto the floor. The maestro and his helpers knew just how fast to roll the rods to keep the shape of the glass uniform as they blew air through the rod and into the glass bubble, creating a hot balloon on the end of a stick. Slowly, the glass cooled and was decorated with colorful beads and stripes before a stand, neck and handles were added to make a one-of-a-kind vase. The maestro actually looked more like he should have been serving a prison sentence than blowing intricate glass shapes. He had tattooed arms, silver looped earrings, a Mr. Clean bald head and smoked constantly. He could have been hammering out license plates for all the fervor he was putting into it. Nevertheless, I had never seen anything like it and was disappointed when I was shooed into the showroom so other people could watch.
I was looking at jewelry when I was noticed and latched onto by one of the salesmen, a 20-something Italian with curly hair, green half-lidded eyes and a swaggering insolence that made me want to whop him upside the head with a piece of heavy and sharp-edged Venetian glass. He informed me that the jewelry was half off, then proceeded to belt out songs in various languages until he noticed I was actually a lot more interested in the glass than what he had to say. Then he said something along the lines of putta matre, which sounds a lot like the Spanish puta madre, which in turn translates into something like “mother bitch.” In Spain at least, it is used as a generic term, like son of a bitch, to swear under your breath when you’re tired, bored, frustrated, or just for something to say. The thing is, he didn’t mumble it under his breath. He practically yelled it, which is probably why I understood it. I chuckled, and he looked up.
“Do I…crack you up?” he asked, without the least bit of warmth and a triple dose of sarcasm. I moved away, toward some cheap glass animals at the other end of the store. But he didn’t get the hint. Mr. Insolent followed me and waited while I picked out a small green swan. I asked if they had a way to package things to make sure they wouldn’t break.
“We wrap them in bubble paper and you can play football with them if you like,” he responded.
If anyone else had been speaking, this comment would have seemed funny and perhaps even charming, but Mr. Insolent was so very insincere that it seemed someone had coached him on what to say without bothering to tell him how to say it so it would work. I picked out a gondola to go with my swan and two necklaces. Mr. Insolent charged me 10 Euros instead of 14 Euros, he said, because he was such a nice guy.
“Do I make you happy? Do you want to kiss me?”
I didn’t answer, hoping it was an offhanded comment he wouldn’t repeat. He raised his half-lidded eyes and looked into mine.
“Do you want to kiss me? Do you want to kiss me, for an hour?” he probed, smirking impudently.
“Yeah, just like everyone else who gives me a discount,” I said dryly, not wanting him to take back his generosity but having to resist the urge to throw up all over him.
He made a gesture like he was going to kiss my hand as I took my package from him.
“Ciao, bella.”
“Putta matre,” I mumbled.
I wandered around some more until I made it to the boat stop that took me straight to Murano, home of the Venetian glass shops that gave all the local shop owners something to arrange when they weren’t blatantly watching you browse. I was directed to what I assume was just one of many glass factories on the island and stood with a mixed group of tourists as a narrator tried his best to explain the process in five languages as the glassblowers silently ignored us. Although there really seemed to be no method to their madness, they moved around their workshop with quiet efficiency, seemingly oblivious to the gawkers standing 20 feet away. They were toting around metal rods with red-hot globules on one end, rolling the rod constantly to keep the liquid glass from dipping off onto the floor. The maestro and his helpers knew just how fast to roll the rods to keep the shape of the glass uniform as they blew air through the rod and into the glass bubble, creating a hot balloon on the end of a stick. Slowly, the glass cooled and was decorated with colorful beads and stripes before a stand, neck and handles were added to make a one-of-a-kind vase. The maestro actually looked more like he should have been serving a prison sentence than blowing intricate glass shapes. He had tattooed arms, silver looped earrings, a Mr. Clean bald head and smoked constantly. He could have been hammering out license plates for all the fervor he was putting into it. Nevertheless, I had never seen anything like it and was disappointed when I was shooed into the showroom so other people could watch.
I was looking at jewelry when I was noticed and latched onto by one of the salesmen, a 20-something Italian with curly hair, green half-lidded eyes and a swaggering insolence that made me want to whop him upside the head with a piece of heavy and sharp-edged Venetian glass. He informed me that the jewelry was half off, then proceeded to belt out songs in various languages until he noticed I was actually a lot more interested in the glass than what he had to say. Then he said something along the lines of putta matre, which sounds a lot like the Spanish puta madre, which in turn translates into something like “mother bitch.” In Spain at least, it is used as a generic term, like son of a bitch, to swear under your breath when you’re tired, bored, frustrated, or just for something to say. The thing is, he didn’t mumble it under his breath. He practically yelled it, which is probably why I understood it. I chuckled, and he looked up.
“Do I…crack you up?” he asked, without the least bit of warmth and a triple dose of sarcasm. I moved away, toward some cheap glass animals at the other end of the store. But he didn’t get the hint. Mr. Insolent followed me and waited while I picked out a small green swan. I asked if they had a way to package things to make sure they wouldn’t break.
“We wrap them in bubble paper and you can play football with them if you like,” he responded.
If anyone else had been speaking, this comment would have seemed funny and perhaps even charming, but Mr. Insolent was so very insincere that it seemed someone had coached him on what to say without bothering to tell him how to say it so it would work. I picked out a gondola to go with my swan and two necklaces. Mr. Insolent charged me 10 Euros instead of 14 Euros, he said, because he was such a nice guy.
“Do I make you happy? Do you want to kiss me?”
I didn’t answer, hoping it was an offhanded comment he wouldn’t repeat. He raised his half-lidded eyes and looked into mine.
“Do you want to kiss me? Do you want to kiss me, for an hour?” he probed, smirking impudently.
“Yeah, just like everyone else who gives me a discount,” I said dryly, not wanting him to take back his generosity but having to resist the urge to throw up all over him.
He made a gesture like he was going to kiss my hand as I took my package from him.
“Ciao, bella.”
“Putta matre,” I mumbled.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Never Again, I Swear
We got to London at 7 a.m., after jostling all night through England. I spent about 30 minutes in the bus station, smoothing out the wrinkles left in my face from the bus seat, then tried to figure out how much I could see of the city in very little time. In truth, I was so exhausted that there was nothing I saw that I later remembered.
By late afternoon, I just wanted to lay down and fall asleep anywhere that would have me. I decided to get my bags and head to the airport, hoping they would let me on the evening flight to Málaga, since my current flight was scheduled to leave at 7 a.m. Once I factored in tromping through the streets in the wee hours of the morning from the hostel to the bus stop, the hour-plus bus ride to the airport and the requirement of having to check in an hour and a half before departure, it wasn’t worth paying 20 pounds for three hours of sleep in London proper.
The help desk was more than helpful once they heard my predicament.
“Oh, sure you could get on a flight tonight, but you have to pay the difference in cost, which would be about £140.”
Considering I had paid about £30 for the ticket, this was outrageous to me.
“Even if the seat would be empty anyway?” I asked.
“Yep. Sorry.”
Ever so helpful people.
So I sat down for a 12-hour wait. I decided I didn’t want to try and curl myself into a wholly unnatural position in one of the chair banks with its annoying armrests until fewer people were around to watch me snore and twitch. I brought a book out and started to read instead. Soon an elderly grandmother came and sat down next to me with a cartful of luggage.
“They wanted to charge me £80 to take an earlier flight to Belfast,” she said indignantly.
And that was how it started. I was stuck talking to Irish Granny for three hours while she waited for her flight to Belfast, and all the while she was tut-tut ting over how much this cost, or how many black people were working at the airport, or how her children lived so far from home, or how America was a country of the devil (though she had never actually been there to witness our devil-worshipping) or how the British added an “r” to the end of all the words that ended in vowels. Despite her constant wrinkled nose and the huge mole on her eyelid that flapped when she blinked, I found her to be comforting in a grandmotherly sort of way. You know: old, wrinkled, set in her ways, and wondering just what kind of devil-worshipping parents I had who let me go traipsing all over the world alone.
Eventually I said goodbye to Irish Granny and settled as comfortably as I could into a carpet-covered chair with my luggage as a footrest and my inflatable airplane pillow. I may as well have been trying to get comfortable sleeping in a tree. I twisted and turned and at one point hung my legs over the armrest. All this accomplished was turning my legs blue and waking me up with nightmares that they had been cut off and a metal rod put in my back.
Finally, I was released from my tortured state by someone else’s pure genius: he stretched out on the floor. Even though it was hard, cold tile, I was relieved, because I was lying down and my legs were still intact. I folded my sheet in half and crawled inside. Although it was a fitful sleep interrupted constantly by a British voice reminding me to never leave my luggage unattended and that the pay-park machine accepted credit cards, it was, nevertheless, sleep.
From that moment on, I had nothing but flights with 24-hour layovers in between. I went back to my chain-smoking companions in Málaga and bought wine and olive oil with them to take home with me. To make room for my purchases, I gave away a towel, clothes and shoes and shared one last night of second-hand smoke and chocolate with my old friends. The best part of getting there, however, was the shower. I had gone so long without bathing that I felt I had been dipped in body coating candle wax.
The next morning, I boarded a flight back to London. The plane left an hour late, causing me to run like a frightened deer from my gate through the halls, impatiently plod through security, onto a bus, and through another terminal, only to arrive with ten minutes to spare. I wasn’t too surprised when I reached New York and my bag wasn’t on the conveyor belt, the first time I had actually checked it during my whole time abroad. I was out of luck, though, because the only shirt I had with me was the one I was wearing, which I had managed to decorate with a huge dollop of braised beef on the plane.
After an extremely restless night of sleep in the same hostel where I had begun my adventures nearly two months before, I was struck with jet lag and nowhere to rest until my flight took off at 9 p.m. I had arrived at about midnight, and the only room left was right next to the common room, which was full of yuck-yuck laughers until 3 a.m. I woke up too early and packed my purse to see what I could see before my flight left. I gave in and bought an “I NY” T-shirt that almost looked worse than the braised beef decoration. I was so tired and fed up that I ended up in the airport extremely early, without a bag and having finished my book. When I finally climbed on my flight back to Washington, I vowed to stay out of airports for as long as humanly possible. Or at least until the travel bug bit me again. Then, when I was tired of my job and inspecting my backpack and airfare prices, I would have forgotten all about the braised beef shirt and how uncomfortable it is to sleep on airport floors.
By late afternoon, I just wanted to lay down and fall asleep anywhere that would have me. I decided to get my bags and head to the airport, hoping they would let me on the evening flight to Málaga, since my current flight was scheduled to leave at 7 a.m. Once I factored in tromping through the streets in the wee hours of the morning from the hostel to the bus stop, the hour-plus bus ride to the airport and the requirement of having to check in an hour and a half before departure, it wasn’t worth paying 20 pounds for three hours of sleep in London proper.
The help desk was more than helpful once they heard my predicament.
“Oh, sure you could get on a flight tonight, but you have to pay the difference in cost, which would be about £140.”
Considering I had paid about £30 for the ticket, this was outrageous to me.
“Even if the seat would be empty anyway?” I asked.
“Yep. Sorry.”
Ever so helpful people.
So I sat down for a 12-hour wait. I decided I didn’t want to try and curl myself into a wholly unnatural position in one of the chair banks with its annoying armrests until fewer people were around to watch me snore and twitch. I brought a book out and started to read instead. Soon an elderly grandmother came and sat down next to me with a cartful of luggage.
“They wanted to charge me £80 to take an earlier flight to Belfast,” she said indignantly.
And that was how it started. I was stuck talking to Irish Granny for three hours while she waited for her flight to Belfast, and all the while she was tut-tut ting over how much this cost, or how many black people were working at the airport, or how her children lived so far from home, or how America was a country of the devil (though she had never actually been there to witness our devil-worshipping) or how the British added an “r” to the end of all the words that ended in vowels. Despite her constant wrinkled nose and the huge mole on her eyelid that flapped when she blinked, I found her to be comforting in a grandmotherly sort of way. You know: old, wrinkled, set in her ways, and wondering just what kind of devil-worshipping parents I had who let me go traipsing all over the world alone.
Eventually I said goodbye to Irish Granny and settled as comfortably as I could into a carpet-covered chair with my luggage as a footrest and my inflatable airplane pillow. I may as well have been trying to get comfortable sleeping in a tree. I twisted and turned and at one point hung my legs over the armrest. All this accomplished was turning my legs blue and waking me up with nightmares that they had been cut off and a metal rod put in my back.
Finally, I was released from my tortured state by someone else’s pure genius: he stretched out on the floor. Even though it was hard, cold tile, I was relieved, because I was lying down and my legs were still intact. I folded my sheet in half and crawled inside. Although it was a fitful sleep interrupted constantly by a British voice reminding me to never leave my luggage unattended and that the pay-park machine accepted credit cards, it was, nevertheless, sleep.
From that moment on, I had nothing but flights with 24-hour layovers in between. I went back to my chain-smoking companions in Málaga and bought wine and olive oil with them to take home with me. To make room for my purchases, I gave away a towel, clothes and shoes and shared one last night of second-hand smoke and chocolate with my old friends. The best part of getting there, however, was the shower. I had gone so long without bathing that I felt I had been dipped in body coating candle wax.
The next morning, I boarded a flight back to London. The plane left an hour late, causing me to run like a frightened deer from my gate through the halls, impatiently plod through security, onto a bus, and through another terminal, only to arrive with ten minutes to spare. I wasn’t too surprised when I reached New York and my bag wasn’t on the conveyor belt, the first time I had actually checked it during my whole time abroad. I was out of luck, though, because the only shirt I had with me was the one I was wearing, which I had managed to decorate with a huge dollop of braised beef on the plane.
After an extremely restless night of sleep in the same hostel where I had begun my adventures nearly two months before, I was struck with jet lag and nowhere to rest until my flight took off at 9 p.m. I had arrived at about midnight, and the only room left was right next to the common room, which was full of yuck-yuck laughers until 3 a.m. I woke up too early and packed my purse to see what I could see before my flight left. I gave in and bought an “I NY” T-shirt that almost looked worse than the braised beef decoration. I was so tired and fed up that I ended up in the airport extremely early, without a bag and having finished my book. When I finally climbed on my flight back to Washington, I vowed to stay out of airports for as long as humanly possible. Or at least until the travel bug bit me again. Then, when I was tired of my job and inspecting my backpack and airfare prices, I would have forgotten all about the braised beef shirt and how uncomfortable it is to sleep on airport floors.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Calamities With Stripes
Though it didn't seem like it until I looked back on the past few weeks that I had been living in Mexico, really I had been through a series of calamities that were trying, but nonetheless must have made me stronger. Otherwise, there is absolutely no reason to suffer through them.
Calamity number one: Montezuma’s revenge hit me upside the head with a double-edged ax. Well, actually, it was in the stomach, and for those that don’t know what Montezuma’s revenge is, you've had the luck of never having it. Basically, there are all sorts of very enthusiastic stomach bugs that the Mexicans put in the food here to slowly but surely kill off the gringos that have infiltrated their country. Symptoms include diarrhea, lack of appetite, the urge to vomit, and doubling over in pain and whining for mommy, all in the middle of watching the dubbed version of Bad Boys in a movie theater. Treatment is finding a Mexican doctor that does not have his own office but will meet you at the nearest hospital, where he'll examine you in an extra examination room, give you a shot of antibiotics in the ass, charge you $40, give you a prescription and a list of foods you can't eat, including chocolate even though it's your birthday, and send you on your way.
Calamity number two: the rain. It does not rain. It waterfalls on top of you. It does. Constantly. It never stops. Actually, it does. The rain stops long enough for you to go outside, look carefully around as if trying to spot a waiting predator, get through the front gate and make it a couple of blocks. BAM! Thunder, lightning and dark clouds scoot in at ¨lightning speed¨ and you're drenched and stepping in puddles up to your neck.
Calamity number three: I am being sucked bloodless by the mosquitoes. The house I live in has a back garden with a fountain that is never on but has plenty of standing water where the little bloodsuckers breed. They somehow make it from there upstairs into my room and are slowly killing me while I sleep, which is the only time I wear shorts. My legs look like a minefield. It doesn't help that Mexican mosquitoes don't have the whining approach like their U.S. relatives, so they can sneak up on you undetected. It also doesn't help that when I am asleep, I don't notice that I am scratching my legs until I awake in a bloody frenzy. I showed my landlord my wounds, and she looked genuinely confused. How strange, she said, standing in front of the open sliding glass door that leads out to the garden and waving away some bug that flew too close to her. Because the mosquitoes rarely come in the house, and we never leave the doors open. I stood there in front of her, my legs trickling blood, and thought of all the days I had come home and found the sliding doors open. Actually, I didn't even have to think of all the days, because it was every day! Then she gave me a real zinger: maybe it's just your exotic blood. Ha! She just called a white, redheaded freckled girl from Washington exotic! THAT is a calamity! What an insult the really exotic people of the world!
Calamity number four: my job. I knew this was going to happen, but that didn't stop it from happening. As part of my job as an intern for an English language newspaper, I wrote a story about all the nasty things you can find in the tap water here and why you shouldn't drink it. I gave it to the editor on a Tuesday (the paper is finished on Thursdays) and asked him to look it over to see what else it needed. He lost it and didn't ask for it again until Thursday morning. I gave it back, he told me to change the lead, then I had it proofed by the copy editor and turned it in. It didn't come out in the paper that week. He called me in on the next Tuesday and gave me something that I am sure was once my article, but it was really impossible to tell because it was covered in teal and black ink. He went through it with me, telling me things I needed to change, some of which made a lot of sense, and others that I think changed the whole meaning of the damn thing. This, I have discovered, is because when I talk to the editor about an article, he has already decided what's going to be in it before he sees it. I could tell him I'm writing a story about the zoo, and if he decides he wants to hear about the monkeys and I write about the zebras, he'll tell me I am all wrong in saying the monkeys have stripes.
Anyway, I make the corrections, and hand it over to the copy editor, who gives me back a paper that, as he fondly put it, was a bloodbath (he uses a red pen). By this point I am fed up. He too thinks I am trying to paint stripes on the monkeys and refuses to listen when I try to explain that they are ZEBRAS. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried angry bitter tears and was afraid to wash my face afterward for fear that I would inhale something dangerous from the tap water. I finished all the corrections and turned the thing in yet again. Once again, it doesn't come out in the paper. Moreover, I find another article that I had originally written where the editor took all the information I gave him and wrote his own article. So I decided to talk to him about this. As I sat there trying my best to keep from acting like a leaky faucet, he told me in no uncertain terms that he was usually being nice to me just because I was an intern, that I obviously didn't know enough about water quality or how the water gets through the pipes to write a story about it, that he has the right to change my articles without telling me, especially when I turn them in 20 minutes before deadline (which, by the way, I have NEVER done unless it's given to me right before deadline. I turn most of them in a day early.) He also said that I am not good enough at translating to get the full context of a conversation and write it again in perfect English, and oh, by the way, don't get discouraged, because you're by far the best intern we've ever had. Apparently the others were trying to paint stripes on buildings or something.
In response, I went home, waved away the buzzing mosquitoes, and consoled myself by eating my way through the rest of a chocolate pudding pie.
The lesson? They are monkeys, regardless of the stripes, and chocolate really is a cure-all.
Calamity number one: Montezuma’s revenge hit me upside the head with a double-edged ax. Well, actually, it was in the stomach, and for those that don’t know what Montezuma’s revenge is, you've had the luck of never having it. Basically, there are all sorts of very enthusiastic stomach bugs that the Mexicans put in the food here to slowly but surely kill off the gringos that have infiltrated their country. Symptoms include diarrhea, lack of appetite, the urge to vomit, and doubling over in pain and whining for mommy, all in the middle of watching the dubbed version of Bad Boys in a movie theater. Treatment is finding a Mexican doctor that does not have his own office but will meet you at the nearest hospital, where he'll examine you in an extra examination room, give you a shot of antibiotics in the ass, charge you $40, give you a prescription and a list of foods you can't eat, including chocolate even though it's your birthday, and send you on your way.
Calamity number two: the rain. It does not rain. It waterfalls on top of you. It does. Constantly. It never stops. Actually, it does. The rain stops long enough for you to go outside, look carefully around as if trying to spot a waiting predator, get through the front gate and make it a couple of blocks. BAM! Thunder, lightning and dark clouds scoot in at ¨lightning speed¨ and you're drenched and stepping in puddles up to your neck.
Calamity number three: I am being sucked bloodless by the mosquitoes. The house I live in has a back garden with a fountain that is never on but has plenty of standing water where the little bloodsuckers breed. They somehow make it from there upstairs into my room and are slowly killing me while I sleep, which is the only time I wear shorts. My legs look like a minefield. It doesn't help that Mexican mosquitoes don't have the whining approach like their U.S. relatives, so they can sneak up on you undetected. It also doesn't help that when I am asleep, I don't notice that I am scratching my legs until I awake in a bloody frenzy. I showed my landlord my wounds, and she looked genuinely confused. How strange, she said, standing in front of the open sliding glass door that leads out to the garden and waving away some bug that flew too close to her. Because the mosquitoes rarely come in the house, and we never leave the doors open. I stood there in front of her, my legs trickling blood, and thought of all the days I had come home and found the sliding doors open. Actually, I didn't even have to think of all the days, because it was every day! Then she gave me a real zinger: maybe it's just your exotic blood. Ha! She just called a white, redheaded freckled girl from Washington exotic! THAT is a calamity! What an insult the really exotic people of the world!
Calamity number four: my job. I knew this was going to happen, but that didn't stop it from happening. As part of my job as an intern for an English language newspaper, I wrote a story about all the nasty things you can find in the tap water here and why you shouldn't drink it. I gave it to the editor on a Tuesday (the paper is finished on Thursdays) and asked him to look it over to see what else it needed. He lost it and didn't ask for it again until Thursday morning. I gave it back, he told me to change the lead, then I had it proofed by the copy editor and turned it in. It didn't come out in the paper that week. He called me in on the next Tuesday and gave me something that I am sure was once my article, but it was really impossible to tell because it was covered in teal and black ink. He went through it with me, telling me things I needed to change, some of which made a lot of sense, and others that I think changed the whole meaning of the damn thing. This, I have discovered, is because when I talk to the editor about an article, he has already decided what's going to be in it before he sees it. I could tell him I'm writing a story about the zoo, and if he decides he wants to hear about the monkeys and I write about the zebras, he'll tell me I am all wrong in saying the monkeys have stripes.
Anyway, I make the corrections, and hand it over to the copy editor, who gives me back a paper that, as he fondly put it, was a bloodbath (he uses a red pen). By this point I am fed up. He too thinks I am trying to paint stripes on the monkeys and refuses to listen when I try to explain that they are ZEBRAS. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried angry bitter tears and was afraid to wash my face afterward for fear that I would inhale something dangerous from the tap water. I finished all the corrections and turned the thing in yet again. Once again, it doesn't come out in the paper. Moreover, I find another article that I had originally written where the editor took all the information I gave him and wrote his own article. So I decided to talk to him about this. As I sat there trying my best to keep from acting like a leaky faucet, he told me in no uncertain terms that he was usually being nice to me just because I was an intern, that I obviously didn't know enough about water quality or how the water gets through the pipes to write a story about it, that he has the right to change my articles without telling me, especially when I turn them in 20 minutes before deadline (which, by the way, I have NEVER done unless it's given to me right before deadline. I turn most of them in a day early.) He also said that I am not good enough at translating to get the full context of a conversation and write it again in perfect English, and oh, by the way, don't get discouraged, because you're by far the best intern we've ever had. Apparently the others were trying to paint stripes on buildings or something.
In response, I went home, waved away the buzzing mosquitoes, and consoled myself by eating my way through the rest of a chocolate pudding pie.
The lesson? They are monkeys, regardless of the stripes, and chocolate really is a cure-all.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Paris Laundry
After I checked in to my hotel in Paris I hauled my stuff up to my room. There were three single beds and a bathroom done completely in a peachy pink plastic. The shower was about the size of a casket, and the whole bathroom was about double that. Nevertheless, it was the first private peeing place I had had. I immediately marked it as my territory by throwing all of my toiletry items sporadically on its peachy plastic shelves and counter, emptied out my backpack, refilled it with my dirty clothes (all of them) and raced back out to the Laundromat I had seen nearby.
I studied the machines with distrust and the box that looked like an old-fashioned nuclear reactor control console with fascination. I finally managed to figure out that you put the money into a rusty slot, push the button with the number corresponding to the machine you want to use, and voila! clean clothes, here I come. There were three different sizes of washers, and I chose the second biggest, since I was washing nearly everything I had brought with me. I then needed change, and my first experience with French customer service was a positive one: I bought a yogurt and the kind woman threw in a blueberry muffin at no extra charge. She used gestures right along with mine, instead of trying to see how much French I understood, since obviously I didn’t speak any. She even knew what I wanted when I held out the five-Euro bill she had given me, a desperate look on my face. If I were she, I might have feigned ignorance and kept it as a tip.
I went back to the Laundromat with my newly acquired wad of change and loaded them one by one into the console. As soon as I hit the button for the washer, I realized that after all this time, after all my travels, I still managed to make some incredibly stupid mistakes. I heard a lock slide into place, echoing with finality as it would in a prison, and the washer started up. I screeched and ran over to try to yank the door open, only stopping momentarily to drop my backpack, which was still jammed full of my dirty clothes. I stared in pain through the front window of the empty washer as it filled with water, preparing to go through the cycle I had just paid 5.50 Euros for without having had the sense to load the damn thing first. Of course, being that it was a public Laundromat, of course the door would lock once activated so people could do errands while their clothes were being cleaned without having to worry about someone rifling through their undergarments in the middle of a cycle. I hung my head and sighed a deep, frustrated sigh. I only had enough change left for a smaller washer and I wasn’t about to go back to that nice old woman and have her wonder if I had a gambling problem or if I only paid for drugs in change. I loaded up a smaller washer, and much to my consternation everything fit without any sort of problem. I then realized, ten minutes into the cycle, that I had put the laundry soap in the wrong side of the soap compartment. I switched it over, not hard because they were soap tablets, but when I checked again they still weren’t dissolving. So there I was, mashing soap tablets with a pen in a dirty public laundry mat that was costing me 9 Euros due to my own stupidity. It was snowing outside and a cold wind was turning me to ice where I stood, in the least protective of all my clothing because it was the only thing I had that didn’t need to be washed and sandals because all my socks were dirty. It didn’t help that there were two men in the Laundromat who had witnessed the entire scene, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I looked up and saw the directions written in English on a huge sign right in front of me. Really, it took up the whole wall. I wanted to climb into a washer and never come out. I could just imagine these men going home to their families, sitting around drinking wine and eating French bread and telling about the stupid American at the Laundromat. It just proves, they would say, that Americans never wash their clothes.
Forty-five minutes later, I hauled all of my clothes back to my room, sopping wet sopping because I didn’t have enough change to dry them. I hung them around the room, cranked up the heater and sat in a rainforest.
After a shower, I furthered my own shame when I started to apply some lotion I had bought in Venice. I remembered finding it to have a very strange texture – like rubbery mucus – and had amused myself for quite awhile during the first application, making designs on my legs that resembled sand ripples in a changing wind. It wasn’t until putting it on after that first shower in Paris, however, that I noticed it bubbling when I applied it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it was bubbling because it was not lotion, but body wash. I had simply been looking for the word crema, which is both Spanish and Italian for lotion, but if I had taken five minutes to think about doccia, the word that accompanied crema on the bottle that could have been any cream from soap to shampoo to car polish, I would have realized that the Italian pronunciation made the word sound a lot like the Spanish word for shower: ducha.
I studied the machines with distrust and the box that looked like an old-fashioned nuclear reactor control console with fascination. I finally managed to figure out that you put the money into a rusty slot, push the button with the number corresponding to the machine you want to use, and voila! clean clothes, here I come. There were three different sizes of washers, and I chose the second biggest, since I was washing nearly everything I had brought with me. I then needed change, and my first experience with French customer service was a positive one: I bought a yogurt and the kind woman threw in a blueberry muffin at no extra charge. She used gestures right along with mine, instead of trying to see how much French I understood, since obviously I didn’t speak any. She even knew what I wanted when I held out the five-Euro bill she had given me, a desperate look on my face. If I were she, I might have feigned ignorance and kept it as a tip.
I went back to the Laundromat with my newly acquired wad of change and loaded them one by one into the console. As soon as I hit the button for the washer, I realized that after all this time, after all my travels, I still managed to make some incredibly stupid mistakes. I heard a lock slide into place, echoing with finality as it would in a prison, and the washer started up. I screeched and ran over to try to yank the door open, only stopping momentarily to drop my backpack, which was still jammed full of my dirty clothes. I stared in pain through the front window of the empty washer as it filled with water, preparing to go through the cycle I had just paid 5.50 Euros for without having had the sense to load the damn thing first. Of course, being that it was a public Laundromat, of course the door would lock once activated so people could do errands while their clothes were being cleaned without having to worry about someone rifling through their undergarments in the middle of a cycle. I hung my head and sighed a deep, frustrated sigh. I only had enough change left for a smaller washer and I wasn’t about to go back to that nice old woman and have her wonder if I had a gambling problem or if I only paid for drugs in change. I loaded up a smaller washer, and much to my consternation everything fit without any sort of problem. I then realized, ten minutes into the cycle, that I had put the laundry soap in the wrong side of the soap compartment. I switched it over, not hard because they were soap tablets, but when I checked again they still weren’t dissolving. So there I was, mashing soap tablets with a pen in a dirty public laundry mat that was costing me 9 Euros due to my own stupidity. It was snowing outside and a cold wind was turning me to ice where I stood, in the least protective of all my clothing because it was the only thing I had that didn’t need to be washed and sandals because all my socks were dirty. It didn’t help that there were two men in the Laundromat who had witnessed the entire scene, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I looked up and saw the directions written in English on a huge sign right in front of me. Really, it took up the whole wall. I wanted to climb into a washer and never come out. I could just imagine these men going home to their families, sitting around drinking wine and eating French bread and telling about the stupid American at the Laundromat. It just proves, they would say, that Americans never wash their clothes.
Forty-five minutes later, I hauled all of my clothes back to my room, sopping wet sopping because I didn’t have enough change to dry them. I hung them around the room, cranked up the heater and sat in a rainforest.
After a shower, I furthered my own shame when I started to apply some lotion I had bought in Venice. I remembered finding it to have a very strange texture – like rubbery mucus – and had amused myself for quite awhile during the first application, making designs on my legs that resembled sand ripples in a changing wind. It wasn’t until putting it on after that first shower in Paris, however, that I noticed it bubbling when I applied it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it was bubbling because it was not lotion, but body wash. I had simply been looking for the word crema, which is both Spanish and Italian for lotion, but if I had taken five minutes to think about doccia, the word that accompanied crema on the bottle that could have been any cream from soap to shampoo to car polish, I would have realized that the Italian pronunciation made the word sound a lot like the Spanish word for shower: ducha.
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