Extreme Telecommuting -- An Office Odyssey


these weeks in the odyssey
1.3.00 -- 1.24.00
zurich, munich, malaga, nerja, granada, baeza, ubeda, cordoba, sevilla, cadiz, vejer, gibraltar, ronda, peniscola, tarragona




If It's Tuesday, We Must Be In Spain

Here at the Office Odyssey, we're never too busy to stop and watch a good Spanish Mediterranean sunset (like that one pictured at right). Spanish Mediterranean sunsets, as I'm sure you're no doubt aware, take place for the most part in and around the Spanish Mediterranean (well, there and in the "Spainland" exhibit at Disneyworld). Our more astute readers will probably recall that just last week, we were schussing down snowy slopes in the Swiss Alps (to the extent that tumbling off sleds counts as "schussing," we were anyway). What happened? What mysterious force gained us our exile from the rapidly dawning ice age in Central Europe and magically transported us to the mild winters and verdant orange groves of Spain?




There goes the sun...deedle-deedle.


Well, they're called airplanes. They fly out of airports and take you pretty much wherever you want to go, so long as you don't mind the questionable food, cramped quarters, and ritual dehumanization associated with modern air travel. We, as it turns out, don't mind this a bit, especially if we get an extra packet of those great honey-roasted peanuts they serve for lunch. Of course, before you can get on the airplane, you have to get through the airport. Ordinarily, this is not much of a challenge, but when you're flying out of the Munich Airport Nation State, things can get a little bit dicey. Just slightly smaller than the former Austro-Hungarian empire (though never ruled by a Habsburg), the Munich Airport Nation State covers what appears to be most of Bavaria, Bohemia, and at least one other hazily-defined Central European region known chiefly for its beer and its citizens' slightly unnerving habit of spitting a lot when they talk. It's tough to navigate, too -- after spending several lost hours wandering the West Concourse (known previously in these pages as "Switzerland"), we took the Autobahn north to the Main Concourse, some two weeks by horseback from Munich. Since neither of us really wanted to rent horses, though, we just took our car, eventually managing to catch a nice half-hour commuter flight from the parking lot over to the terminal itself. Then, it was just a matter of contracting a rickshaw to shuttle our belongings the few remaining miles to our gate before finally slumping exhaustedly into our seats a comfortable two or three minutes before takeoff. We're on our way to Spain at last!


Good lord, man, get that pasty guy out of the sun!

Yes, that Spain! The one way down south there, stapled on to the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees, home of good weather (as seen in that smiling picture of me at the Alhambra at left), good food, and now us, too. After successfully navigating our connection in Mallorca (a connection wherein they forcibly bused us from one end of the terminal to the other, only to make us walk the entire distance back to the original end so as to catch our connecting flight), Jo and Chris met us at the Malaga airport (they'd taken an earlier flight), rental car in hand, ready to take on the sights of Andalucia. After Chris drove the car into a few random walls and over a few curbs directly in front of the rental office -- "It counts as preexisting damage," he reassured us. "You'll thank me later." -- we stashed some of our excess baggage in a locker at the train station (they didn't have them at the airport) and were soon on our way up the coast to Nerja, home of some really amazing caves. It was here that we had our first encounter with the Spanish custom of "siesta."

In Spanish, "siesta" translates literally to "the time at which we sit on our balconies with cool drinks while watching stupid tourists go from business to business, searching in vain for one that is open." As you can see, Spanish can be a very concise language. The siesta lasts from approximately 2-5 PM in Spain. Depending on the size of the town and their varying commitments to midday relaxation, you can find anywhere from zero to five businesses open during this time of the day. Actually, for most of the year, the siesta makes a heckuva lot of sense for Spain's typically sizzling climate -- during the most sweltry part of the day, the Spanish are safely indoors, relaxing in the shade while the dogs and the tourists are out toppling from heat stroke. It's just that in winter (which is not very hot here), the nicest part of the day takes place exactly during the three or four hours while they're inside. So, while the four of us soaked up the gorgeous late afternoon sunshine on a deck above the Mediterranean, waiting for the caves to open, the Spanish were scoffing at this sixty-five degree weather, preferring to come out instead once the sun had gone comfortably beyond the horizon and the temperature had dropped to the forties. This would make more sense if the Spanish seemed to have any kind of natural resistance to chilly weather at all. They don't. If the temperature looks like it might drop below fifty-five here, children come lumbering out their homes dressed in gear usually reserved for deep-sea divers in the Bering Sea to play soccer underneath the streetlamps. It's a rather surreal scene, I'm sure you'll agree, these hordes of youngsters with bell helmets clamped to their breastplates galumphing about after a soccer ball, tripping on each others oxygen tubes and trying to avoid getting "the bends." Carrying that image a wee bit too far, aren't we? Yes, I do think so.


The caves at Nerja were fantastic, their epic grandeur marred only by the park's decision to pipe a tape loop of the same sixteen bars of Mozart's "A Little Night Music" over the sound system the entire time we were there. This went a long way towards explaining both the rapid turnover in cave visitors they experienced as well as the drooling madmen they employed as guards and ticket takers. Though JoAnn felt like telling the management that "there's more to Mozart than the damn Nachtmusik, man," Chris surehandedly headed her off with a well-placed hypodermic and a healthy dose of elephant tranquilizer. There's nothing scarier than a miffed Mozart fan, I tell you.

Nothing, that is, unless you count a miffed Mozart fan relearning how to drive a manual transmission on a narrow, twisting mountain road in a foreign country. Reasoning that the best place to put our tranquilized friend was "in the driver's seat, where we can keep an eye on her," we all agreed that JoAnn should drive from Nerja to Granada. In hindsight, this was probably a questionable decision. To be sure, our first tipoff should've come when JoAnn informed us that, "Other than turning right, I'm an excellent driver. I just have a little trouble going to my right." Though this is exactly the same problem that kept me out of the NBA (well, that and the fact that the long eighty-two game season would conflict with my grueling training regimen of drinking beer and watching TV), no one seemed to view that as much of a yellow flag. And, really, how often do you need to turn a car right during the course of the average drive? If it gets really problematic, we figured, "she can just make three lefts, and that will be fine."


Fifteen lifechanging minutes later, Kristanne and I were begging Chris for a little hit of the elephant tranquilizer he'd used on Jo earlier. Chris was ignoring us, though, choosing instead to use his entire stash on himself before passing out in a lump of catatonic jelly on the car floor. For her part, JoAnn acted like it was just another day at the office, eventually screeching to a halt in front of the first hotel we found in Granada, taking a long, disdaining look at our ashen faces and white knuckles and delivering her verdict on our sorry state of affairs with a scornful mutter of, "ya buncha wimps." Thusly admonished, we peeled our white-knuckled fists off of each other and trudged up to our hotel room, ready to quiver our way off to sleep before visiting the Alhambra in the morning.

At this point, you're probably expecting me to make like Washington Irving and regale you with Tales of the Alhambra, right? Since I rarely (if ever) avoid an obvious joke, I'll do my best for you. Here goes:

"Once upon a time, in a city known only as Granada, four travellers came from afar to visit the Alhambra."

Pretty good so far, huh? Wait, it gets better.

"After a pleasant night's rest, they woke up and toured the grounds without incident.
The End."

Woo-hoo, now that's a Tale of the Alhambra! Well, okay, so maybe I'm not Washington Irving. Still, even though it leaves out the whole incident where we stripped to our skivvies and battled a black-clad Ninja Death Squad (they're everywhere in the Alhambra, in case you're wondering), I think it makes up in succinctness what it lacks in detail. Bravo!

The Alhambra was fantastic -- the 14th century pinnacle of Muslim architecture in Spain, all done up in fantastically detailed stucco work (like that at right) and gorgeous open courtyards (like the ones above and below). The Muslims, as it turns out, really knew how to do Muslim architecture. By the way, there's absolutely no charge for that last revealing insight into the architectural history of Spain. Later on, I'll be adding thoughts along similar lines for Sevilla ("The Sevillans really knew how to build Sevilla.") and Gibraltar ("The British really knew their way around big rocks in the Mediterranean."). We know that that's precisely the sort of probing cultural analysis the Office Odyssey audience has come to expect from us.

Kristanne made me put this picture in here. Pretty cool, isn't it?

After a tough day spent touring the Alhambra -- it's absolutely immense and consists of loads of different buildings -- we were ready to sample the delights of Granadan nightlife. Looming large among these delights is the whole tapas experience. "Tapas" translates literally to "small plates of vegetableless food for which you will pay large sums of money, o silly tourist boy" (there's that concise Spanish language again). They're a big part of the Spanish cuisine scene in which groups of people will come to a cafe or bar and snack on a few tapas with a glass of wine or beer before dinner. This typically starts around 7:00 PM, or so, after which people will eventually start heading off to dinner around 9:30 to 10:00 PM. Then, right around midnight, most Spaniards like to return to the tapas bar where they started so they can curse out the owner for getting them so full that they couldn't enjoy their dinners. After ten minutes of inspired oaths and lots of finger pointing, the two parties like to pat each other on the back and make up over some more tapas. Around 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, though, the bar owner will overstep his luck and say something he doesn't really mean about his customer's mother. At this point, the customer will stand up, kick the owner twice in each shin, and leave the bar in a giant hissy fit, screaming and cussing all the way. As you can see, the Spanish cuisine scene has a very rigid and detailed code of conduct.

Being tourists, though, we were only expected to adhere to the more commonly known parts of this script -- eat some tapas, eat some dinner. No cussing, kicking, or screaming required. This sounded great to us (well, most of us -- Kristanne really wanted to get in some shin-kicking), so we headed off to Granada's old quarter, eager to try one of the best-known (and oldest) tapas bars in town. Fortunately, Chris and Jo had brought an incredibly detailed arsenal of travel guides, so we were easily able to track this place down, sliding into a rare table for four in the bar before the main crush of people hit. Tapas is mainly a stand-up kind of thing -- groups of people merrily congregate around an upturned wine barrel and snack on the delicacies of their choice -- so we were pretty happy to get one of the three or four tables in this bar. In fact, we were so happy that we ended up jealously guarding this table from 7:00 to right around 1:00 in the morning, periodically snacking on delicious tidbits of olives, pates, cured hams, smoked fish, and really just about every other thing on the menu while enjoying some great conversation. Meanwhile, the bar teemed and teemed with groups of convivial Spanish folk, everybody having a great time, nobody minding the cramped quarters. We agreed to just forget about dinner and eventually made our sated way back to our hotel, a thoroughly enjoyable evening (even without the cussing and shin-kicking) behind us.


This is the Patio de los Leones...not Leon's Patio.

Granada was fantastic, but we needed to keep moving, keep on searching for that next big bounce. The word on the street was placing that next big bounce somewhere around Cordoba, so we pointed the car in that direction, bound for more Moorish delights in the Mezquita. Before we could get to Cordoba, though, we decided to stop in two smaller towns along the way. The first, Baeza, was a nifty little town with a pretty town square and some interesting architecture. Agreeing that the warm sunshine and open plaza of the town square was too good to pass up, we decided to have lunch outdoors at an agreeable little cafe. It was here that we discovered the limitations of my ability to speak Spanish. Oh, to be sure, these limitations were already darn apparent to me -- the quizzical looks that greeted my every utterance, my requests for coffee resulting in someone offering me a pair of stockings, the face slappings from waitresses whom I'd inadvertently offended -- all these things pointed to the fact that I just possibly might need to brush up a bit on some of the finer points of the language. After all, it had been some 15 years since my dimly recalled days of falling asleep in Spanish class in high school -- how much can one reasonably be expected to remember? Still, I must say that I was caught completely by surprise when my innocent question of "Honored Innkeeper, where's the bathroom?," resulted in our Baezan waiter bringing us a bottomless feast of what must have been every bit of food he had in his kitchen. Langostinos were followed by pork loin which was followed by a whole tuna which was followed by a suckling pig with a baked apple in its mouth which was followed by the waiter sneaking over to the adjacent restaurant to try to rustle up some more food for which he could overcharge the American suckers at table two. Having consumed Baeza's entire food supply for the next week, we set about trundling ourselves about its historic old town before once again hitting the road for Ubeda.


After our epic meal in Baeza, Cordoba was pretty much looking like a pipe dream, so we decided to stay the night in Ubeda, the second of the two interesting towns along the way to Cordoba. It was here that Kristanne and I got a little hint about some of the trifling readjustments in our personal lives we might be looking forward to once we return to the States. From the Tawdry Little Secret of the Odyssey Department, we must confess that we do not do laundry as often as one might in, say, the civilized world. Living out of backpacks as we do, we have a limited amount of wardrobe choices, so we tend to rotate them a few times before eventually hitting the laundromat. It just makes sense for the way we live. However, Chris and JoAnn had obviously not acclimated to our slightly gamey way of doing things and were in urgent need of doing a little laundry. Ignoring their subtly dropped hints -- hints such as, "Hey, you know, as long as we're doing laundry, maybe you guys...," and "You know, Sid, hygiene is important. And that can start with something as simple as clean clothes," and my personal favorite, "Wash your dang clothes, Mr. and Mrs. Stinkypants!" -- we decided to humor them by working with the hotel manager in Ubeda to get their clothes cleaned. Though the manager was somewhat cagey about when the clothes would actually be done ("Who can say? It would be as well to ask when will the dove's cry echo through the palms.") he came through the next afternoon with flying colors. Chris rejoiced by immediately changing his socks right there on the city street, clearly happy to be back in clean clothes again. For our part, Kristanne and I openly mocked him, saying things like, "You know, Chris, it looks like you definitely have at least a few more days in that pair before you have to worry...you mind if Sid wears 'em for awhile?" Like I said -- subtle readjustments we're going to need to make once we get home. Still, this little incident did go a long way towards explaining why Chris and Jo always left the windows down in the car in addition to their requests for hotel rooms on "a different floor than our olfactory-impaired friends."

Laundry done, we all headed out to dinner at a restaurant recommended to us by the hotel manager. By this time, we were pretty much the consummate old Spanish pros and waited until at least 9:00 before going to eat. Even with this preventive measure, we were still the first ones there, barely even blinking when the bartender chided us that this was an hour more suitable for breakfast than dinner. Still, he agreed to open the dining room for us after a few drinks and the ubiquitous tapas in the bar, even gracing us with a free appetizer once we sat down. This appetizer consisted of about eight perfectly round meatish balls swimming in a brown gravy. This appetizer also proved to be the topic of some rather urgent conversation at our table. "Do you think they're testicles?," asked Kristanne. "I'm pretty sure they're testicles." After some careful examination, JoAnn chimed in with a wary, "Well, they're definitely the right shape for testicles. And they do eat testicles here. They might be testicles." After probing them with her fork, JoAnn satisfied herself that they weren't going to explode or anything and took the somewhat incautious step of actually eating one. "Testicles, schmesticles," she said. "These babies are delicious!" After watching her with grim curiosity to make sure she didn't get sick or anything, we all finally gave in to hunger and started in on the mystery meatballs, ultimately being reassured by our waiter that they were in fact, just that -- meatballs. After a great dinner, we paid our bill and made for the exit, only to be surprised that the first Spanish diners of the evening were finally just showing up now at about 11:30 PM. You know that whole "you've got to get up pretty early in the morning to beat me" proverb? Not true in Spain. You can pretty much just wake up whenever the heck you want to and beat them.


On to Cordoba! By this time, JoAnn was an old pro with the manual transmission and the narrow Spanish streets and she ably piloted us straight to the heart of the old city. Unfortunately, once you get to the old city, you're pretty much just screwed -- the labyrinth of one way streets, pedestrian streets, and streets closed for construction makes it a nightmare to drive in. Also, Cordoba definitely adhered to the urban planning adage of most Mediterranean basin cities -- "The tourist who makes but a single wrong turn shall be forced to leave the city before being allowed to try again." After our third abortive attempt to reach our hotel, we were variously contemplating nasty letters to the town council, abandoning the car on a curb, or just getting back on the highway and driving to Germany. We compromised and settled for seriously illegal maneuvers, JoAnn's jaw taking on a businesslike set as she plowed past horse-drawn carriages, nattering tourists, and screaming priests on the pedestrian street that promised to lead to our hotel. It worked! In fact, as it turned out, it wasn't even illegal -- the street we'd used was actually open to the cars of hotel guests. We were just supposed to ignore all the signs that pointedly informed us that we would be beaten by the aforementioned screaming priests if we even thought of driving down there.

Our hotel turned out to be worth the effort, directly across the street from the Mezquita as it was. The Mezquita (pictured at right) is the old Moorish mosque of Cordoba. First built in the late eighth century, it has undergone periodic changes throughout the years as the Moors enlarged it, and then underwent some serious changes once the Christians got a hold of it after the Reconquest (for example, the addition of a cathedral within the mosque is probably something the Moors would not have done if they'd had their druthers).

The Mezquita is a magical place, full of row after row of the striped arches you see at right. In fact, the old town of Cordoba as a whole is a great place, chock full of narrow pedestrian streets (that's right, I'm liking them in this paragraph now that I'm out of the car) and interesting architectural oddities. If you'd like to see some of the interesting architectural oddities, I suggest that you contact JoAnn since she took approximately three thousand rolls worth of pictures in Cordoba, most of them depicting doors. JoAnn has a sort of carpet bombing policy towards photography, leaving no frame unsnapped.

'Mezquita' means 'mosque'....not 'mesquite tree.'

Then they beat up the audience.

After another dinner consistent with our whole "never eat vegetables in Spain" philosophy, we decided to catch a flamenco dancing performance at a theater near our hotel. Actually, "theater" may be overstating it -- it actually resembled nothing so much as a high school study hall with a few folding chairs randomly thrown in. Despite the less than overwhelming ambience, the flamenco dancing itself was fantastic, like nothing I've ever seen in my myriad (okay, three or four) trips to western dance exhibitions. Flamenco is sort of the dance of the righteously indignant (or, as Chris put it, "the seriously pissed off"), full of lots of disdainful gestures and scornful flourishes, some of them seemingly directed at the audience. In fact, one of the dancers seemed to be staring right at me every time she came up and struck that "You want a piece of me?" pose you see pictured at left, her eyes boring holes in my apparently guilty self. As I slunk ever deeper into my chair, ashamed for whatever the heck I must have done to offend her, she proceeded to stomp about the stage like a much more talented (and much less boring) version of that Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance guy. In fact, in a cage match, I'm pretty much betting all my money on this lady to stomp the Lord of the Dance into jelly. This, of course, is not to say that flamenco dancers routinely accept cage match offers -- I'm pretty sure they don't. Still, if some budding entrepreneur out there is looking to make a fast buck, rest assured that I'd be first in line to pony up the bucks for pay-per-view to watch Michael Flatley get stomped by a flamenco dancer. I might be the last in line, too, though, so you're definitely taking your chances. Forewarned, as they say, is definitely forearmed.


Cordoba was wonderful, but time was getting tight on our Andalucian ambling -- Chris and Jo only had about five or six days left for sightseeing. Given their current itinerary, it was looking like we needed to see approximately 10 sights per hour to satisfy their goals. Trying out best to match this daunting pace, we immediately headed for Sevilla and a handy hotel. After an hour or so spent fumbling about the usual maze of one way streets, closed streets, and streets without names, we changed our needs from "handy" to "the first one we find." Since I apparently speak some Spanish, I was delegated to run into each hotel and see if they had any vacancies. Failing that, I was to settle for a pair of stockings or all the food in Sevilla -- whichever my Spanish could get us. Sidling up to the first counter to ask my by-now-familiar question of, "Do you have two free rooms for the night?," I was somewhat taken aback by the desk clerk's response. This response, pitched somewhere between the whine of a cement saw and the screaming of an aircraft engine and packed with all the disdain of our Cordoban flamenco dancer from the last paragraph consisted entirely of her spitting the word, "What?!?!," at me, nicely accompanied by her Sevillan death glare. It was actually kind of amazing how she managed to draw a simple one syllable word out for what must have been a good five seconds of scorn. Duly impressed but somewhat frightened, I repeated my question, though this time including the words for "honored desk clerk" (well, either that, or "I like carrots," I'm not sure which). Returning to civility, the desk clerk assured me that, yes, they did have such habitations and, yes, we were welcome to stay there, even though she did not like me as a person. Apparently, an appetite for carrots can make you overlook a lot here in Sevilla.


Since this was Sunday, we decided to take the whole "day of rest" thing seriously and headed off to our rooms for a couple of hours before reconvening for some more damn tapas. Unbeknownst to our fellow travellers, this was all part of my plan, giving me a few hours in which to divine whether there was a bar in town that might by chance be showing that evening's NFL playoff game between our hometown Seattle Seahawks and the Miami Dolphins on their TV. Within minutes of figuring out that I had to dial eight to get an outside line, I had struck gold at a little establishment known as the "Lone Star Chili Palace," right across the street from the big Sevilla cathedral (official name -- "Big Sevilla Cathedral"). Convincing Jo and Chris that even though they were only in Spain for a few weeks, they really needed to come to an American-style bar serving cuisine from their home state of Texas to watch a football game proved to be not only difficult but impossible. So, after a meal at the oldest tapas bar in Sevilla (dating back to 1764, though the food seemed much fresher than that), Kristanne and I sprinted across town to make the kickoff at the Chili Palace. Sometimes, lowbrow kicks are the best kicks of all. And, yes, the Seachickens did lose, da bums.

Turning our attention back to the cultural smorgasbord that is Sevilla, we started the next day by heading straight to the Big Sevilla Cathedral, a cathedral reportedly inspired by the infamous quotation of the time, "Let us build a cathedral so immense that everyone, on beholding it, will take us for madmen." It is big. So big, in fact, that as we wandered its length, we found ourselves whispering to one another, "Who would build such a thing? Were they mad? Crazy? Touched in the head?" Kristanne took it a little too far, though, refusing to stop singing the refrain to "Living la Vida Loca," the whole time, eventually getting us kicked out for changing the words to "This church is so big, it's loco." Still, before we ended up in the street, we did manage to get that picture of Christopher Columbus' tomb you see at right. And, yes, we do mean that Christopher Columbus.

Oh, noone special...just Christopher Columbus.

Travelin', travelin', travelin'...it's the travenlin' gang.

Sevilla was wonderful, but unfortunately workplace reality was beginning to catch up with me. Though I do sometimes manage a credible impression of a wealthy retiree living off his savings (or a bratty kid living off his trust fund), the fact remains that I am not. Boy, am I ever not. After our fast traveling for the past month or so (ever since we left Prague), I'd been sort of tap-dancing on the thin ice, workwise. Alas, my indulgent ways had finally caught up with me, forcing me to hole up in a hotel room for a couple of days and serve some time for my employer. Lamentably, this meant that Kristanne and I would have to bid a fond farewell to Extreme Fellow Travellers Jo and Chris, allowing them to proceed on their merry way without our burden. Amazingly, we'd been able to hang out with them for almost two weeks, all the way from the snowcapped peaks of the Swiss Alps to the sunkissed shores of the Spanish Mediterranean. Now, we would have to say our goodbyes on the poop-pocked sidewalks of Sevilla.

First, though, we really needed to see a second-rate art museum. So, after a mildly pointless two hours spent prowling the Sevilla Fine Arts Museum (the only first-rate room of which was closed), we snapped that commemorative shot you see there at left in one of its patios and prepared for Jo and Chris' departure. This preparation consisted almost entirely of a lot of hysterics from Kristanne and JoAnn, culminating in a frenzied hug that would probably still be going on to this minute if Chris and I hadn't had the good sense to peel their weeping bodies apart. Best friends are weird, man.


After so much excitement with Jo and Chris, we both felt more than a little bit empty upon their departure. Even though we never feel lonely with each other, it always amazes us how great it feels to see friends and loved ones from back home. Which reminds us -- space is filling up fast here for the final two months of the European Office Odyssey. If you're thinking about visiting us while you've still got time, please do reserve ahead. Also, don't forget to tip your waiter. Thank you.

The next forty-eight hours or so were pretty much a blur for both of us. For me, that blur consisted almost entirely of a laptop screen and help files for a Packet Over SONET Network Analyzer (which was almost exactly as entertaining as it sounds). For Kristanne, I'm just guessing, but it would probably be a blur of FreeCell, Tetris, potato chips, and experimentation with different shades of nail polish. Again, that's just a guess -- you'd have to confirm the reality with her.

By this time, we were positively champing at the bit to get back on the road. As much as we liked Sevilla, we hadn't planned on staying there for five days. So, after renting a subcompact car and getting our usual free upgrade to some strange sort of Renault minivan (we rent from a car rental clearinghouse that gets bargain rates from the rental agencies to let them rent the cars they don't ordinarily rent -- for example, a Renault minivan), we hit the road south to Cadiz and points beyond. Cadiz was remarkable for its views and the octopus divers hucking big ole octopi up on the beach for their dinners, but there was nothing much else there to hold us. So, after a quick lunch, we continued south through some of the "Pueblo Blanco" territory of Andalucia, so named for the picturesque white villages that dot its landscape. It was right about this time that we began to go completely insane -- our car seemed to be emitting some sort of high pitched whine whenever it exceeded 20 km/h, rising in pitch the faster we went. At first, we thought these must have been some deer whistles gone bad, designed to frighten off carjackers instead of animals, but, being the molecular biologists we very nearly were (frog dissection scared us both off), we eventually figured out that if we simply retracted the car antenna, the noise would go away. We are almost exactly that bright.


Temporarily reassured of our sanity, we rolled into the scenic pueblo blanco of Vejer (pictured at right), situated high atop a plug of rock with commanding views of the surrounding scenery. Since it was getting rather late in the day, we decided just to grab a room at one of the two hotels in town and do a little exploring. Vejer was the very embodiment of quaint with its winding cobbled lanes periodically giving way to impossibly grand vistas of the valleys below. As we did our best to get ourselves happily lost, it became clear that this town was relatively unspoiled, its small plazas and shops crowded with townsfolk who clearly all knew one another, calling out happily across the streets to one another in singsong Spanish. This was driven home even more decisively when we chanced upon a group of children playing outside the town church. Upon seeing our decidedly foreign faces, one youngster uttered with an air of amazement, "Turistas!" Hey, man, how could you tell?

Feeling very happy but a little bit cold from the chilly wind at the top of the rock, we ducked into an attractive little streetside cafe for a cafe con leche and pastry. Vejer was feeling just great -- an oasis of small-town civility in the bucolic plains of Andalucia. As we began making plans to rent an apartment here and make it the final stop on the Office Odyssey European Tour, we abruptly discovered Vejer's dark side -- scooters. Unmuffled scooters shrieking through the streets, raising a din so great as to remove the possibility of belief in a world beyond noise. Adding to the ruckus were the workmen apparently using chainsaws to remove the town's Christmas decorations. As will happen in these situations, a crowd of old men quickly gathered, all of them screaming at the workmen about how they would do it if they were young enough to still hold a chainsaw, ya dumb whippersnappers. Soon, it became clear that these people were actively persecuting us. That youngster's declaration of "turistas" in the last paragraph was less an amazed revelation and more of a clarion call to arms for the town's scooter-riding population. Soon, people were sprinting past the cafe to get back to their garages and remove their scooters' mufflers so they could come down to the cafe and rev their engines outside our table before we left. This, we gather, is what amounts to high sport in Vejer.

There's no pueblo like a pueblo blanco.

After sprinting back to our hotel with our hands clamped over our ears, chanting "the horror...the horror...," Kristanne and I eventually attempted to sleep in our unheated room. Oh, to be sure, there was a heater -- it's just that it didn't work. Immobilized under a mountain of blankets, our teeth chattering, we finally slept the sleep of the battle fatigued, waking up with ice forming in our nose hairs. Although we both agree that there's nothing better for a night of bad sleep than a nice, warm shower, we unfortunately had to forego that due to the total lack of hot water in our hotel. Did we mention that this hotel cost about $18 a night? Alas, my complaints to the hotel manager fell on -- well, not deaf, but definitely uncaring ears. She certainly listened and understood our unenviable plight, but when it came time to ask for some money off the bill (more for ceremony than anything, since it was so low to begin with), her only answer was, "No." Not, "I'm sorry, but no." Not, "Certainly, Mr. Heaton. Right away!." Just, "No." Thanks to my usual snappy comebacks, though -- in this case, stammering something like, "Well...well, you can bet that I'll be telling all my friends who come to Vejer about this, ma'am!" -- we felt like we regained the upper hand by the end of the exchange. She definitely felt the bitter sting of my wrath.

After defrosting ourselves with a little bit of coffee, we hopped back into the Renault minivan and headed up the coast to Gibraltar. We were prepared for this to be a little bit strange -- Gibraltar is actually one of the last outposts of the British Empire, a genuine Crown Colony right there in Spain with border crossings and everything. Owing to one of my more persistent childhood delusions (others include the nagging sensation that I was born to be the Queen of England), I was still picturing the rock of Gibraltar as a giant rock disconnected from the mainland. It's not. It is a giant rock, but it's definitely connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. In fact, as you drive through customs and across this strip of land, you actually drive directly across Gibraltar's giant airstrip. It's a very neat feeling, though you can't help but hope that they haven't screwed up the traffic signals today.


'Rock ape,' my tuckus -- you're just a monkey, pal.

Going to Gibraltar is incredibly disorienting -- one second you're in Spain, limping along with your Spanish, and the next second, well, you're in Britain, limping along with your British. As soon as we crossed into Gibraltar, we immediately knew we were back in the U.K. -- traffic roundabouts, tons of them littering the streetscape, everybody turning endlessly in circles instead of going to a normal intersection and waiting for a light to change. No one loves a good roundabout more than the British.

Since we didn't particularly want to relive our memories of bad British food, we opted to skip the restaurants in the main town and proceed directly to the upper rock where most of the tourist sites are. Visiting in off season as we were, they even let us drive our own car up there, something they don't do during the high season. Kristanne and I are nothing if not good Americans -- we hate to get out of our car and onto public buses -- so we made the perilous drive up the crumbly cliffs of the rock. After paying the stiff admission fee (luckily, Kristanne still had some British pounds from our time in Edinburgh), we pressed on to our urgent date with the famous Gibraltar rock apes (pictured at left). Before you can see the rock apes, though, you have to tour the cave (it's actually a British law). The cave was neat (not as nice as Nerja's), though somewhat marred by some miscreant Alabaman's need to have prominently scrawled "Jim From Alabama Was Here -- 12/59" on a highly visible wall. Thanks, Jim! Everyone over here still thinks we Americans are a bunch of dumbasses, in case you're wondering!

Next up was the rock apes, also known as the "Barbary Apes," or sometimes, "those #@$* apes." No one really knows where the apes came from (my personal guess is Alabama, but then I'm not very good at geography), but the legend tells us that so long as the apes remain on the rock, British rule will still be in force. This, of course, is why you see Spanish helicopters constantly circling the rock, taking potshots at the apes. Actually, the Spanish definitely have some resentment going on about Gibraltar. Until 1985, the border between Spain and Gibraltar was closed by the Spanish. In addition, all postal and telephone communications were cut. Even today, the Spanish border guards routinely harass people leaving Gibraltar for Spain, with lines often so long as to necessitate two hour waits. They don't, however, shoot at the apes from helicopters -- I just made that up.


After an hour or so of playing "touch the monkey," I finally managed to peel Kristanne away from the rock apes and up to the Great Siege Tunnels the British carved out of the rock for defensive purposes. As you go into the tunnels, there is a big sign warning everyone that though the walk to the end of the tunnels is pleasant, the walk back up to the entrance can be "quite strenuous." This seemed civil enough, the authorities wanting to forestall any potential heart attacks in the tunnel. Naturally, then, it came as quite a surprise when upon rounding the first corner we were accosted by a life-size mannequin in period costume suddenly shouting at us, "Halt! Who goes there?," at a volume that would make a heavy metal band blush. Apparently, having weeded out the elderly and infirm with their sign at the entrance, the authorities felt perfectly fine about giving the rest of us heart attacks -- I just about bit it right then and there.

The Great Siege Tunnels (and, really, all of Gibraltar) were very interesting, but we were starting to feel like we needed to make some time up the coast. So, after a quick stop at an internet cafe to check my work email (and to marvel at a cute little six year old being allowed to play the ultra-violent shoot-em-up video game, Quake), we headed out of town, back to Spain and away from Britain.

It was as if we had never left Spain -- everything looked the same. Of course, if you're only gone for four or five hours, I suppose this is to be expected. Still, I marveled openly at this phenomenon, going on at some length about the porousness of certain borders until Kristanne abruptly admonished me to "shut your hole, there, Marco Polo-breath." Okay. Will do.

After an uneventful drive, we eventually settled into a hotel in Marbella, the toniest resort on the Spanish Mediterranean (and home to Connery....Sean Connery). Since it was off season, we managed to get a room for a cheap rate. Unfortunately, so did just about everyone in the entire country of England, obviously there to cash in on the cachet of Marbella at a low offseason rate (you can still say "I vacationed in Marbella this year," regardless of whether you did it in June or January). The place was absolutely stuffed with astonishingly palefaced limeys trotting about in shorts and sandals as though it were 80 degrees out. It wasn't. This hotel was one of those package establishments where for a fixed rate you get your room, your buffet meals, and some shockingly bad "entertainment" every night. Since the buffet looked unappetizing (and cost about $25 apiece without drinks, an unheard of rate in Spain), we opted to miss out on tonight's "Beauty Contest and Pudding Toss" and headed for the town of Marbella itself. After battling some nasty traffic and getting rear-ended once (no damage, thanks), we finally ended up in probably the one place in Marbella that didn't explicitly cater to foreigners. After an excellent meal, we reluctantly returned to our hotel, only to be treated to the dubious pleasure of briefly conversing with four drunk Brits swimming in the unheated pool in 40 degree temperatures. Umm, no thanks. We think we'll go swimming later. Like in May.


The next morning, after running the gauntlet of swimsuit-clad Brits tanning in the nonexistent sun, we took the challenging drive through the mountains to Ronda, an impossibly picturesque village built on two pillars of rocks straddling a bottomless ravine (well, technically it does have a bottom, I guess). In addition to its scenic setting, Ronda is also the home of bullfighting, the very place where the original rules were laid down back in the late 17th century. To commemorate this event, Kristanne and I decided to take a picture in the Plaza de Toros of her charging me while making little bullhorns on the top of her head with her fingers. Unfortunately, we didn't time it quite right, so you'll have to make do with that candid shot you see at right. "Death in the Afternoon," it ain't.

No bull -- this is the Plaza de Toros

Ronda is one of the most beautiful towns we've seen on this here European Odyssey. In addition to its splendid physical setting (see those two shots below if you don't believe me, Mr. Doubty-Pants), it also has a huge number of craftsman making gorgeous pine furniture. The prices are good, too, though shipping might run you a pretty penny. Has anybody priced UPS from Ronda to Seattle recently? Let us know.


Could Ronda possibly be... ...any more beautiful?

After a pleasant lunch in Ronda, we decided to drive further into the mountains to check out a giant cave which reputedly held rock paintings dating back to 25,000 years ago. This turned out to be an excellent decision. The cave itself was not run as a tourist site, but as a working archaeological site. Tours were led by a researcher who after admitting our smallish group (five others in addition to us), locked the gate to the cave (that's it to the left of Kristanne in that photo at right) and shut a heavy iron door. In the pitch darkness, he then proceeded to light two kerosene lanterns. One, he kept for himself. The other, he handed to one of our group who would bring up the rear. Then, descending into the darkness, we took off in single file. The cave itself was incredibly hot and humid, even though it was quite chilly outside. Water dripped off everything, lending an eerie feel to the proceedings as we squeezed through narrow passages and ducked under low ceilings. Things had definitely not been sanitized for tourists -- it was slipperier than Bill Clinton before the grand jury and the stairs were as unpredictable as Bob Dole in bed, all of it unlit other than by the flickering lanternlight. Hmm -- reading that last sentence, I'd say I've definitely been in Europe too long -- I'll start moving the references into the current presidential campaign any week now...I swear.

Rounding a curve after some ten minutes of walking, we saw our first cave painting. Kristanne has seen these kinds of things before (Kristanne seems to have seen everything before thanks to her comprehensive adolescence in Europe), but it absolutely took my breath away to see something created by human hands 25,000 years ago. These paintings actually are thought to even predate those at the more famous caves in Altamira. After marveling at the paintings for a while, I finally got the nerve up to ask the researcher a few questions in Spanish. This guy seemed to be related to that hotel desk clerk back in Cordoba, because (after telling me he had neither stockings nor food) he answered each and every question with an exasperated shrug of his shoulders and a disgusted, "We don't know, man. It was the Paleolithic era, for crying out loud. 25,000 years ago, okay!" Umm, yes. Okay. Nevermind.

Despite once again ticking off the Spanish, the cave tour was an unqualified success, topped off by a large painting of what was definitely a fish. I like fish. The only rough spot to the entire tour was the young British couple hacking up their lungs with rattling coughs in between slipping and falling on their rears. There's really nothing better than spreading germs in a warm, humid place for enriching everyone's health. Don't be surprised if the next killer flu bug comes from a small cave in Spain called Cueva de la Pileta after having mutated dangerously for decades in its warm, wet, environs. You heard it here first.

Kristanne as Cavewoman.

Cueva de la Pileta was a long way from both anywhere and nowhere, so we saddled up the Renault and pointed it northish. By the way, the fact that the contours of the Spanish coastline do not conform to strict N-S-E-W directions really irritates me -- it makes giving directions much more difficult than it needs to be. Therefore, by Office Odyssey fiat, I hereby dictate that the Iberian Peninsula is now a square with each of its coastlines proceeding along absolutely perfect N-S-E-W compass points. You can do that kind of thing when you've got your own web page -- I highly recommend it.

So, we began to drive straight north up Spain's eastern coast, trying to get as close to our eventual destination of Peniscola, many kilometers distant, as we could. It was here that we disproved once and for all that whole "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains" thing. It doesn't. In fact, what we figured out is that the rain in Spain actually falls mainly on Sid and Kristanne while they drive up a winding two-lane coastal highway. Battling through the monsoon with her usual aplomb, Kristanne quickly fell into her standard "when in doubt, keep driving" modus operandi, dismissing my feeble attempts to point out likely looking hotels along the way by stomping on the gas pedal and innocently commenting, "Ah, shucks -- looks like we just missed that one. Guess we'll have to keep on driving!" After four or five hours of this nonsense, I finally saw my opportunity -- Kristanne momentarily removed her hands from the wheel to crack her knuckles, so I made a mad lurch for the wheel and hastily steered us to the first convenient exit.


Ahhh...Tarragona.

The madness had to end somewhere. In this case, it ended in Almeria, a relatively unremarkable town where we finally settled in for the night. The next day we planned to reach what we hoped would be our final destination, the seaside town of Peniscola where we hoped to find an apartment. Unfortunately, when we arrived, Peniscola was closed. I don't mean that it was siesta, or that a few businesses were closed -- the entire town appeared to be shut down for the off season. Initially, we decided to spend the night and give it a proper chance in the morning. However, after trying to rent a room from what appeared to be the only hotel that was open out of the at least fifty in town, we decided that perhaps Peniscola wasn't for us. This decision became much easier after I concluded a twenty minute argument with a toothless old lady about how to turn on the heater in the room she wanted to rent us (we'd wised up since our frostbitten night in Vejer). I'm not really sure how Kristanne kept from laughing as the old lady and I took turns snatching the remote control for the heater out of one another's hands while trying to demonstrate how it worked, all the while nattering away at one another in broken Spanish. I kept looking around to make sure I wasn't on Candid Camera, or something. Convinced that I wasn't, I reassured the lady that though I believed her that the heat in this building had once worked, it wasn't doing so now, so we were going to try someplace else. Like Barcelona. In response, the lady pointedly informed me that, no, I could not have her stockings and that we were welcome to leave at once. Will do, thanks.

And so we came to Tarragona, tranquil and sophisticated. We'd planned on visiting Tarragona anyway -- its Roman ruins and old town are legendary (that's me sitting on the amphitheater at left) -- but we hadn't planned on living there. After we struck out in Peniscola, though, we were open to anything. Tarragona is a whole lot more than anything, pleasantly situated on a hillside above the sparkling Mediterranean and featuring a long paseo with a welcoming pedestrian thoroughfare down the middle. It's all very Spanish and very beautiful. We decided to stay.


Unfortunately, however, we arrived on a Saturday, so there was nothing we could do about finding an apartment until Monday. After killing a couple of hours with such rousing games as "Whose Socks Stink Worse?," and "Cheat Death In The Pounding Mediterranean Surf," (that's Kristanne taking a particularly dangerous turn at right), though, we were bored. After moving around so much for so long, we constantly needed to up the ante on our thrill-o-meter. That's when we decided to track down the whole Spice Mystery. Simply stated, the Spice Mystery is this -- does the town of Tarragona give its name to the spice, tarragon? Or vice-versa? Or are they completely unrelated? As you can plainly see, Kristanne and I really know how to concoct a scintillating challenge.

After some abortive inquiries with random passersby, we were none the wiser. Also, it didn't help matters that neither of really knew what tarragon tasted like (though we were both pretty sure it had ended up on chicken at least once). On a whim, we decided to go to the grocery store and do a little research, see if maybe they had a nice big bottle of "Tarragona" on their spice rack (though I, for one, thought it might just be labeled "Aqui," the Spanish word for "here"). No luck. After much gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts (not ours), we finally struck upon the genius idea of looking in my little Spanish dictionary (steel traps, our minds). It was there that we found the truth -- tarragon is actually called "cumin" here. No, wait -- that's not it. Tarragon, in fact, is actually called "estragon" here, shattering our illusions about Tarragona (the town) being the spice's namesake. You heard it here first. And if you hear it differently somewhere else, please do box the people who say it about the ears with a handy Spanish dictionary. You have our permission.

Our Spice Mystery ended up occupying the better part of our weekend, so in what felt like the blink of an eye (or what we hope will be the length of Ricky Martin's career), Monday was upon us. We quickly managed to find a nice, cheap apartment right on the Rambla Nova and a single block from the Balcony of the Mediterranean (a big park overlooking the sea from the top of the hillside). It's pretty much just great to be enjoying blue skies and sunny weather while the weather reports back home in Seattle seem to indicate the omnipresent rain. And, yes, for those of you back home -- we definitely are rubbing that in. Tarragona may not be a spice, but it's definitely very nice!

Run, Kristanne!

And so ends our epic journey through southern Spain and up to our new home in Tarragona! Be sure to check back next week as we, umm, well, sleep for a week or so. It promises to be a real barnburner of an episode! See you next time on the Odyssey!




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Sunshine...romance...what could be better?

As for that picture at left, that's Kristanne giving me my daily dental hygiene check-up, making sure that I'm still flossing after meals. This particular inspection is taking place in the gardens of the Alcazar of the Umayyads in Cordoba, a particularly appropriate spot given the Ummayads' legendary obsession with dental health. Few people seem to know it, but the Umayyads actually invented placque during a particularly slow afternoon in the summer of 1362. You heard it here first (and last, we're hoping).

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