Stray mailout - 24.12.02

You can always tell a British tourist city by the amount and availability of porn and prostitution. So on the surface Amsterdam and Barcelona are a little similar.

I’ve decided I don’t like Amsterdam. It's got nothing I want. In Dutch culture it's rude to make eye contact, so you know straight off that anyone who looks at you wants something.

My hostels were right in the middle of the red light district, so admittedly I did put myself in the wrong place to be; since no, I don’t want to buy your drugs, sex, or give you money when you’re not only just going to get high, but you’re high right now.

Got to bundle up warm tho, which I always enjoy, most days it was about negative four Celsius.

Finally got to Spain, and got to see it with the girl with Spanish eyes and the names of two mice, who only dreams when she’s awake and remembers everything she’s ever felt.

After a week in Madrid and a too quick trip down south to Grenada (and my first glimpse of snow for over a year) we ended up in San Sebastian/Donosti for Mayte’s new job in a five star hotel. And after being snuck in (snuck being the wrong word since the _entire_ staff was working at the time and I just had to look like I somehow belonged there, saying ola to everyone, drunkenly) I have to say that luxury hotels are overrated. Definitely not worth the four to six hundred Euro a night, plus. Although you do get a phone next to the toilet, just so you know your staying five star baby.

San Sebastian is the most passionately nationalist city in Basque country, although, and I could be wrong about this, it's not actually part of Basque.

Basque is officially part of Spain, having local government that answers to Madrid, but probably best you don’t bring it up with the locals, coz they take the whole thing pretty damn seriously. The Spanish I was with were nervous as hell on the way in, knowing something I didn’t.

The Basque people are probably the nicest general populace I have ever met. I couldn’t understand what they were actually saying, but just watching them talking to others they are invariably happy and good-humoured. They do have a tendency to blow shit up, but these days that’s looked down on more for being passé than psycho.

Everywhere in the north of Spain is covered in graffiti saying how good E.T.A. is and proclaiming the fascist regime that is the Spanish government. But, and I could be wrong about this; Spain doesn’t really do much of anything to Basque, one way or the other. As was pointed out to me, these days we’re all just Europeans.

E.T.A. was formed in the 60’s (?) in response to this real asshole of a dictator called Franco who wanted a homogenized Spain, so killed a lot of people. Franco got chucked, much to the relief of everyone except probably the U.S. government, but as usually happens with revolutionary groups that don’t accomplish their aims quick enough, they had become too much of a power structure to just disband.

A bomb went off in a parking building near San Sebastian/Donosti while I was there. No one was hurt. I’ve heard different things about E.T.A.’s tactics. Some say they’re pretty accurate, only killing the policemen and journalists they’re after. Either that or they deliberately target crowded public places. Depends who you talk to.

All the road signs give place names in Basque and Spanish, but the latter have been spray-painted out, and all the maps are in Spanish only, making navigating kinda tricky.

San Sebastian/Donosti would have a huge tourist industry, but the separatism scares everyone away.

Other than those who have to travel to study, Spanish people don’t leave home until their late twenties. They claim it's for money reasons, but if you do the math they’d only pay about a quarter of their income in rent, compared to the third to half the rest of us have to.

Most of them really don’t like living at home, but will put up with it so they can save up to buy a house and have a car.

Every single person in Spain owns a car. Their not bad drivers, and Spain doesn’t suffer the sort of mass congestion currently killing Ireland and the U.K., but they are incredibly impatient. They HATE it when you do less than 125% of the speed limit, but they are quite happy to wait while you block the whole road trying to find a park. They’re used to it. The parking situation in that country is completely out of control. At night there’s not a square meter of Spain without a car on it. They park in the middle of the road, on roundabouts, across pedestrian crossings.

In San Sebastian the council’s installed traffic light controlled crossings every hundred meters, which go off whether there’s pedestrians or not, and stay red for several minutes. They’ve put roundabouts where there isn’t an intersection. I was told it's a deliberate attempt to piss off drivers, who’d rather spend two hours (literally) driving to work than twelve minutes on the subway. But at the same time they’re setting to double the price of public transport.

I’m glad I didn’t pick up more than a little Spanish, otherwise I’d be able to fully appreciate how terrible Spanish television is. Worst on earth. Prime time is a two hour panel discussion of a minor celebrity going down the shops surrounded by twenty camera crews. Followed by two hours talking about that night’s episode of big brother.

Although I must admit that Spanish big brother does sound a hell of a lot more interesting than the Australian version. The amount of sleeping around, nudity and back stabbing could almost maybe justify conversation on it.

Made the fatal mistake of not getting any sleep on the eleven hour flight back to Malaysia, so now, more than a week later I’m still on Europe time. My biological clock refuses to admit anything’s wrong, not letting me get sleepy until five in the morning, so I never go to sleep before five, which just reinforces the bio clock’s convictions. Man I miss breakfast.

It wasn’t my fault. On Malaysian airlines you have your own screen built into the seat in front, and seven channels of movies. Giving me seven channels of movies is like giving a gun to a monkey. By the time I’d watched absolutely everything we were lining up to land.

Aah Malaysian Airlines, Chinese food, two audio channels of Bollywood music (which I secretly like) and a big arrow on the flight info screen telling you the direction of Mecca. Private prayer rooms.

Flying into Australia they made the unusual move of turning off all the cabin lights, letting me look out over the cloud and desert lit up under a full moon. It was like being in orbit. It was beautiful.

On the Light Rail Train in Kuala Lumpur there’s signs saying

NO eating

smoking

manners (which somehow means public displays of affection, there’s a

silhouette of two people snogging behind it.)

durian

At least once per country I’ll find myself in the situation of having a bunch of locals standing back and snickering while one of them offers me some local delicacy that invariably horrifies foreigners. In Spain it was snails, Germany; (something)wurst, Ireland; Guiness, England; absolutely anything and in Malaysia it's durian. It's a smelly fruit with a taste and consistency resembling banana flavored spreadable cheese. It's banned in most places because it's really, really smelly. I kinda liked it.

Australia is having some very weird weather, even considering that _every_single_country_ I’ve been to is having the most bazaar weather in history. Mum Earth’s got a temperature and she’s pissed off.

Here it's all bush fires, worst drought on record and no sun. The sky today is white. Not cloudy, not hazy, just white to every horizon. At night thunderstorms with no rain.

So it's Christmas here for a month or so, then back to Europe to work on a ski field. If I can.

Random highlights from the last four months:

Standing on the storm closed street that runs by the beach in San Sebastian, letting the waves breaking against the seawall rain heavy spray down on me. My jeans got completely saturated and I froze but it was worth it. It always is.

Pulling into Dublin late at night for our street performance the next day, Brigitte winds down her window at the lights and yells the verse she’s been practicing to the packed car next to us. Without missing a beat the driver comes back with one better. The light went green before we could pass him a pen and paper to write it down.

There can’t be too many countries where you can get into an unprovoked poetry face off, and lose.

Getting a hitch with a slightly crazed Albanian ex-gangster who now runs a fish’n’chippery in Innis. Man Albania sounds like a loose country.

Getting a free bus trip to the cliffs of Moher so we could be photographed having fun and getting somewhat inebriated in sunny, beautiful Ireland for a language school brochure. Unfortunately it was in the middle of one of the worst thunderstorm I’ve ever seen.

On the beach with the camera guy shouting ‘smile!’ and us yelling ‘take the damn picture!’

I offered to computer out the storm clouds for them, but they declined.

Friday I’m getting the photos from the whole trip developed, will mail out the good ones.

Until then I’ve attached a pic of my Om shaped mole that appeared overnight on my hip a few months ago. Merry fucking Christmas.

Daniel.

Have good times, wherever in the world you are.