these weeks in the odyssey
1.24.00 -- 2.7.00
tarragona, spain

Tarragona: Not A Spice

Welcome to Tarragona, the latest stop on the Office Odyssey Express! I know, I know -- you're probably saying to yourself, "Tarragona? Where the heck is Tarragona? What in Sam Hill are those two ne'erdowells up to now?" That's probably exactly what each and every one of you are saying. Each and every one of you, that is, with the notable exception of that one guy from Tacoma who keeps writing in and asking me to construct a lengthy metaphor comparing Tarragona to Ted Nugent's magnum opus, "Wango Tango." Take it easy, Dad -- I'll get to it, okay?

Ignoring all the Motor City Madman fans out there for the near term, let's turn our attention back to Tarragona, the self-proclaimed Culture Capital of Southern Catalunya. Tarragona sits tranquilly on the Mediterranean coast, some 100 kilometers south of its big brother, Barcelona. This is why it's the Culture Capital of Southern Catalunya -- Barcelona's pretty much got the rest of Catalunya covered. In fact, that claim is a little bit like Schenectady claiming to be the "Culture Capital of Upstate New York" -- not exactly aiming for the stars.

Still, if Tarragona does not boast quite the breadth of experiences that Barcelona might, it also doesn't suffer from its excesses of people and pollution. And, though I've never been to Schenectady, I can confidently say I'd much rather be here in Tarragona, if only for the fact that I don't have to keep telling people how to spell "Schenectady." Also, Tarragona boasts a rich Roman past -- it even served as the Emperor Augustus' winter home back in 26 BC. Schenectady, on the other hand, has two "Denny's" restaurants. So, it was a tough choice. I like a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast as much as the next guy, but following our usual guideline of, "if it's good enough for the Emperor Augustus, it's good enough for us, too," we decided to winter in Tarragona. I mean, that whole Pax Romana thing really weighs in Augie's favor, if you know what I'm saying.

Unfortunately, most of the lodging opportunities from Augustus' time have long since either crumbled to dust or stopped offering complimentary chocolates on your pillow. And, since we didn't want to camp out in the Roman amphitheater or the forum, we decided on the next best thing -- the Rambla Nova. The Rambla Nova is Tarragona's main boulevard, a wide street cut down the middle by an even wider pedestrian thoroughfare that leads straight to the Balcony of the Mediterranean, a big park overlooking -- yep, you guessed it -- the Mediterranean Sea (that's the view up the Rambla Nova to the Balcony of the Mediterranean pictured at the top of this page). The Balcony of the Mediterranean is definitely one of the nicer parks we've seen on this Odyssey, overshadowing such would-be contenders as the Back Porch of Dresden, the Storage Shed of Prague, and the Unchanged Litterbox of Ravenna. It is not, however, quite as nice as the Warm Lap of Sardinia. Still, we were so enthused about the Balcony that we decided to see if we couldn't stay right there in the general area...but where?

It was at this point that I turned to my new Personal Power mantra -- "WWKD?" Sure, I know it sounds pretty powerful, but you don't know what the initials stand for yet, do you? For all you know it could be something like, "Will Wally Kiss Debbie?," which isn't really all that helpful at all. Even if Wally was going to kiss Debbie, how could that help me find a place to stay? I mean, unless Debbie isn't using her apartment in Tarragona anymore now that Wally's kissed her? Also, I don't even know anybody named "Wally," so that limits its usefulness right from jump street. So, it's definitely not "Will Wally Kiss Debbie." Glad we got that cleared up.

In fact, it's much handier than that -- it's "What Would Kristanne Do?" Whenever I'm feeling a little unclear about what I should be doing, where I should be going, whether I should be changing my socks more frequently or validating the emotions of household pets, I just ask myself, "What would Kristanne do? WWKD?" With that simple little tool, all becomes clear -- the unnecessary layers of selfishness, personal choice, and individual will are peeled away like a domestic orange, leaving only the fruit that is what Kristanne would do in this exact situation. It's a remarkably powerful tool, I'm sure you'll agree. In fact, husbands in the audience, I highly recommend this as a problem solver in your own relationships. Just make sure you change the "K" in "WWKD?" to whatever your wife's first initial is. It probably won't do much for marital harmony (mine or yours) if you go around doing what my wife would do instead of yours.

In this case, I was pretty sure that what Kristanne would do in this situation would be to find a dang place to live. I actually didn't need much help divining this since Kristanne was actively tugging on my sleeve and saying things like, "Let's find a dang place to live." It's much easier to figure out what Kristanne would do when she's telling you what she would do. So, after trundling through a few dimly lit closets with landlords who assured us that it wasn't a problem to charge us three month's rent even though we only wanted to stay for eight weeks, we eventually decided to try a different approach. Do you remember our friend "Doug, Child of Satan" from our stay in Paris? Sure you do -- the guy whose nose started erupting in great geysers of blood the minute we walked inside Notre Dame? Anyway, in addition to being Beelzebub's offspring, he's also a pretty clever guy. During his stay in Barcelona, he stayed in a hotel for the whole time, remarking on more than one occasion, "You know, I may be the Child of Satan, but I know a bargain when I see one." Though we generally frown on taking advice from children of the Dark Prince, we decided to make an exception just this once and see if ole Dougie wasn't telling the truth on this one. Boy, was he ever! The Hotel Lauria (all three stars of it) was right on the Rambla Nova and featured genuine furnished apartments with kitchen, telephone, and television for around $400 a month. Did we want it? You bet we did! Faster than Wally can kiss Debbie, we were dumping backpacks and dancing around our newfound apartment. We even took that picture of Kristanne leaning out of our balcony you see up above. We're home! We're home!

We're dirty! We're dirty! Though spacious and apparently relatively modern, our new apartment had not seen much cleaning upon the departure of its previous tenants. To be sure, the beds were made and the floors were swept, but it was soon readily apparent that the maids in the Hotel Lauria do not do dishes. Other things they don't do include floors, ovens, and the "Macarena" (at least not when I asked them). So, with "WWKD?" in full effect, I took off at a sprint to fetch a bottle of Don Limpio from the local grocery store for some immediate deep cleaning. The maids had informed me that Don Limpio was much tougher than his Italian cousin, Maestro Lindo, and not so afraid to take on the deep stains that other detergents shy away from. At least that's what I think the maids told me. Of course, I also think they told me that Don Limpio is exactly the kind of guy with whom they would do the "Macarena," were he to just drop by the Hotel Lauria and ask, so you might want to take my Spanish translations with a grain of salt, two aspirin, and a gift certificate for "Emergency Berlitz" courses.

After some energetic scrubbing with our new pal, Don Limpio, we were ready to head out into the afternoon sunshine and take in our new surroundings, maybe try to get a feel for the lay of the land. For me, this typically involves going to the land and laying down on it. However, in the interest of staying on speaking terms with the hotel staff, we decided to eschew this technique for the time being, opting instead to walk the fifty yards from our front door to the Balcony of the Mediterranean and see what we could see.

"Well, Kristanne," said I, "I see the Mediterranean Sea. What do you see?"

"Well, Sid," said Kristanne, "I see that you're being a big dodo-bird, that's what I see. And, oh yeah -- the Mediterranean Sea, too."

Thusly reassured, we snapped that picture of me you see there at right (ignoring the passersby who kept addressing me as "Horizon-Head" the whole time), and headed back to the apartment for a little relaxation. We'd been on the road for roughly the length of Jesse Helms' political career (which is to say, forever), and were ready to take a load off for a few hours in our comfortable new digs.

"Comfortable new digs" would have been great. "Comfortable new digs" would have been grand. Heck, I would have even settled for "spartan accommodations, somewhat monkish in character." What I really didn't want, though, was the Marquis de Sade's personal living room set. Our apartment which seemed so "apparently modern" a mere four paragraphs ago had apparently undergone a rapid transformation now that we were actually sitting on the furniture. As fast as we sat down, we sprang back up, surprised by uncomfortable sensations in our posteriors. "Umm, did you feel that, too?," I asked Kristanne. "Feel it?," she replied incredulously. "I'm not sure I'll ever sit down again."

This was not good. It was definitely our preference that we be able to sit down in our new apartment. Simultaneously, we made a new attempt, gingerly lowering ourselves into the waiting pain chairs. This time, we made it all the way down. Grimacing, I managed to turn my rapidly stiffening neck towards Kristanne and through clenched teeth stammer, "I can take it if you can."

"Oh, I can take it, big boy," she replied with some effort and attendant loss of breath. "The question is whether you can take it."

After ten minutes of this kind of witty repartee, we eventually decided that really neither one of us could take it but that we didn't have much choice in the matter. So now, we pretty much just stumble around the apartment all hunched over, hands clasped to our lower backs, saying things like, "the pain, the pain" all the time. And, yes, sometimes I do say "the pain, the pain," just like our old buddy, Tattoo, from Fantasy Island used to say, "dee plane, dee plane!" I find it helps with the pain...right up to the point where Kristanne trips me for as she says, "bothering me with that '70s TV crap." Kristanne definitely prefers her TV from the '90s.

Of course, one of the many downsides of our debilitating new furniture is the fact that pictures of Kristanne and I standing up may well be a thing of the past. That's why you see Kristanne sitting all bent over at the waist in front of the Tarragona cathedral there at left -- she actually hasn't stood up straight since last Sunday. I've got her on a strenuous physical therapy program now, though, so I'm expecting big things in the days to come. Keep those cards and letters coming, folks! Every little bit helps!

Okay, so I'm exaggerating ever so slightly. Still, its more than remarkable that our apartment boasts six chairs and a couch, none of which are even in the same time zone as comfort. At least the beds (yes, there are two of them, nicely pushed together to make room for two) were comfortable. After sleeping the sleep of the somnolent, we woke up with fire in our bellies, a hop in our step, and at least one other cliche designed to indicate that we were otherwise perky. I think I'll go with "Don Limpio in our pants" -- nothing gets you going faster than that. We decided to celebrate our first morning in our new apartment by heading back down to the Balcony of the Mediterranean and having a couple peaceful cafe con leches at an outdoor cafe in the January morning sunshine. What could be better than that?

Alas, as it turned out, pretty much anything could be better than that. Sometime during the night, the extended family of the folks in Vejer who stalked us through the streets with their unmuffled scooters must have got wind of our recent arrival in Tarragona. By way of welcoming us, they decided that today would most definitely be the best day to jackhammer the Balcony of the Mediterranean into the Open Pit of the Mediterranean. Then, they would bulldoze the whole thing into the Slag Heap of the Mediterranean. Needless to say, Open Pits and Slag Heaps are not quite as desirable as Balconies when it comes to a quiet cup of morning coffee. Still, I'm nothing if not persistent (umm, okay, well, "obstinate" might be a better word), so I insisted that we were still going to drink our dang coffee and we were going to like it, whether we liked it or not. So, that's why you see me standing in the Open Pit of the Mediterranean there at right (where yesterday there were only tables and chairs), waiting patiently for Kristanne to bring our coffees. I want my peaceful morning coffee!

After bolting our peaceful morning coffees and pelting the bulldozer with our empty cups, we decided that maybe we should take a little walk around Tarragona and see what the rest of the city was like. Still reeling somewhat from the jackhammers and bulldozers, the beach seemed like the perfect place to calm down, mellow out, smooth our urban wrinkles into bucolic bliss. As the crow flies, the beach is only about 200 yards from the Balcony of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, as the weary Extreme Telecommuters trudge, the beach is about 200 years from the Balcony of the Mediterranean -- there's no direct access, so you have to weave your way through a lengthy labyrinth of Tarragonan backstreets before you finally plunge onto the sand exhausted, your energy entirely spent from the rigors of the journey. Of course, that's when you find out that the beach is under construction, too.

Say what? How can a beach be under construction? I mean, other than in the "Mother Nature is always building beaches" sense of being under construction? We're still not really sure why, but there was definitely heavy equipment everywhere, bulldozing the beach into big piles o' sand, the construction workers honking and waving at each other, saying things like, "Isn't this fun? We're bulldozing the beach into big piles 'o sand!" It seemed like some sort of existential joke: "Why do we bulldoze the beach? It would be better to ask 'what is the beach?' We bulldoze the beach because it is there. It does not matter!" Who knew that Sartre drove a bulldozer in Tarragona? Certainly not us.

After roundly cursing the bulldozers for a while -- "Why do we curse the bulldozers? It would be better to ask 'What the #@$%'s it to you, pal?'" -- we decided that perhaps we would head on down the beach towards the big fish market held daily in the harbor. There's really nothing I love more than a good fish market. Well, except my wife. And my family. And Sportscenter. Let's try again -- I really like a good fish market. Tarragona is reputed to have one of the liveliest in Spain, so we headed on down to check it out. The fish market, though mercifully bulldozer free, was also closed for the siesta. Also, it appeared to be under construction of a sort -- during the siesta, many of the fishermen took to mending their nets by hand (as you can see at right) in the winter sunshine. Though I like to watch action sewing as much as the next guy, we could really only handle a couple of hours of watching this before we headed back to the apartment for....oh, no. He's not really going to do that, is he? Yep -- work.

Our ceaseless travel over the last month was beginning to take its toll on my job productivity (which is to say it had become nigh on nonexistent). Since my nephew is coming for a 12 day stay in a couple weeks, I definitely needed to apply my nose to the grindstone and my posterior to our uncomfortable chairs for some extended bouts of full-on technical writing before he arrived. Unfortunately, our extended travels had dulled my technical writing edge. My usually virile Technical Writing Powers had begun to atrophy from disuse. Instead of writing incisive sentences like "Insert the floppy diskette into the computer's disk drive," I had begun to spew out things like, "Put the plastic thingadoodle in the, you know, like, hole in the box." This wasn't good. I needed something to pump me back up, give me back my edge. Something to fire my latent reserves of Technical Writing Vigor.

Something, in my case, very much like beer. But not just any beer -- "Geniuss" beer! The beer guaranteed to make you smarter! The beer that pumps your IQ while it slakes your thirst! They say that Einstein drank an entire half-rack before he came up with the whole relativity thing. Mensa members are reputed to keep pony-kegs of "Geniuss" in their refrigerators. As for Stephen Hawking, well, let's just say that that tube in his mouth isn't giving him water, if you know what I mean.

Who was I to argue with success? Faster than Kristanne could say, "Umm, Sid, I'm not so sure about this," I had my first can cracked and was on my way to enlightenment. Two cans later, I was definitely starting to feel smarter, saying things like, "Y'know, it's all clear now -- the U.N. is bent on world domination. Those black helicopters and everything...makes a heckuva lot of sense once you think about it clearheadedly. You wanna 'Geniuss,' honey? Maybe you'll get smarter, too!"

Hmm. Apparently, I was the one who needed another "Geniuss" -- insulting Kristanne's intelligence was definitely not the smartest thing for a slowfooted, half-in-the-can Technical Writer to be doing. Not when there are Michelin Guides laying around the apartment, ready to be used as ear-boxing weapons. Wisely, I decided to keep my newfound intelligence to myself for a while. Also, I decided not to share my beer -- clearly, I needed all the "Geniuss" I could get.

Too much work, even while drinking beer, can start to get you down. You need a break in the day, something to keep you going when even the myriad attractions of technical writing are failing to stimulate you. For me, nothing gets me going again quite like a nice paseo (err, stroll) down the Rambla Nova. The paseo is a fixture of Spanish life -- there are set times during every day when the citizenry packs up the family and just starts walking down the main drag, meeting and greeting the citizenry as they go, pressing the flesh and enjoying the sociability of it all. It's a great custom. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have all the nuances of it worked out yet. First of all, it's an incredibly rigid custom, schedule-wise -- if you're not on the Rambla at the right time, you'll be completely alone. There seem to be two main paseos -- one in the mid-morning and one in the early-evening. During these times, the Rambla is packed bow to stern with families of all shapes and sizes, strolling slowly, stopping to chat, maybe even ducking into a cafe to linger over a cup of coffee. These are the easy ones to discern. It's the in-between times we're having difficulty with. For example, there seem to be certain hours that are set aside completely for clots of surly old men who want to straggle along the Rambla complaining about the weather, their gout, or the fact that I'm wearing tennis shoes in winter. Then, there are the Old Lady Hours, where gaggles of grannies push their grandchildren along in strollers, stopping only to chide Kristanne for not having children so that her mother could join the fun. Finally, there's the Pigeon Promenade, when the entire Rambla is reluctantly ceded to the throngs of clamoring pigeons that infest Tarragona, each one of them convinced that it could not possibly flap its wings and actually fly if it tried. So, instead, they toddle along, looking ridiculous, and clamoring at anyone fool enough to trespass on the Rambla during their appointed hour. Yesterday, we finally found the sign like the ones at roller rinks that tells you when the Rambla is reserved for each different group -- a picture of an old man next to its appropriate time, followed by an old woman with its time, and finally a pigeon -- so now we only venture on to the Rambla during the nightly "All Skate" period. All part of learning the culture, my friends -- all part of learning the culture.

When the stress of figuring out the Rambla's schedule starts to get to me, I like to relax by doing a nice load of laundry. Maybe you didn't know this, but here in Spain there appears to be some sort of law against laundromats. There just aren't any. To be sure, there are plenty of cleaners, but oddly, they all operate more like dry cleaners, charging you incredibly exorbitant amounts to launder your clothes. The going rate appears to be about 11 dollars to wash, iron, and dry a pair of pants, which seems more than ridiculous to me since none of my pants are really even worth 11 dollars on the open market (I know -- I checked). Despite my entreaties to wash my clothes "by the kilo," none of the laundries would even hear of it, dismissing me with a wave of their hand and a gratuitous insult (something about "Horizon Head" again, if I remember correctly).

Thus, the sink. And the tub. And the bidet. Since Kristanne still insists on this weird notion that we somehow need clean clothes, we have to find the sparks of invention where the mother of necessity gave birth to them. Or something like that. For us, this means slapping on the pink rubber gloves, filling up the sink, and getting after it, much like you see me doing there at right. I share this picture with you only in the interest of providing a counterpoint to all the "Extreme Telecommuting is great! You should do it, too!" rah-rah boosterism you get around here. It can be hard work, too. Sometimes, my friend, Extreme Telecommuting means washing your undies in the sink. If you can't handle that kind of heat, well, maybe you should just stay the heck out of the kitchen. And the bathroom sink, too.

And that's the Odyssey! Be sure to check back next week as we, umm, well, do some more work and try to get ready for my nephew's visit. Maybe Kristanne will even model the pink rubber gloves. See you next time on the Odyssey!

Last Week's Front Page Picture

As for that picture at left, that's Kristanne styling comfortably in front of the unbelievably chilly Cistercian monastery at Poblet in the mountains west of Tarragona. Though quite beautiful, this particular monastery appeared to be utterly without heat, achieving the rare phenomenon of being much colder indoors than it was outdoors (a phenomenon that goes by the technical name of the "Undercooked Corndog Syndrome"). Home to the well known Holy Order of Perpetually Sniffly Cistercian Monks (official motto -- "Don't Piss Us Off Or We'll Sneeze On You"), this monastery is definitely worth a detour for its architecture alone. Just don't forget your kleenex.