these weeks in the odyssey
3.13.00 -- 3.27.00
toledo, madrid, london, edinburgh?

Holy Toledo!

Chiaroscuro -- a time-honored artistic technique in which contrasting shades of light and shadow are used to intriguing effect. Sid -- a guy who knows how to press the button on the digital camera. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and join these two volatile elements in one seething cauldron of creative abandon? I'll tell you what happens -- you get pictures very much like that one at right of the Synagogue of Santa Maria la Blanca in Toledo, Spain. You get pictures that deliver gleaming testimony to the power of chiaroscuro. And, well, my ability to press buttons.

As exciting as chiaroscuric photographs are, they're just one of the many attractions in Toledo, Spain, a city that gets really angry if you say things like, "Hey, I got me a cousin from Toledo....Ohio! Hahahaha!" Yes, definitely do not say things like that in Toledo, Spain, a city that is only too willing to beat annoying tourists about their heads and necks with overhardened pieces of marzipan while chanting friendly slogans like, "Kill The Pig," or "Bye-Bye, Yankee, Bye-Bye," or, my personal favorite, "Sid Is A Big Schmuck And Therefore Must Be Beaten With Marzipan." The Toledans are excellent chanters.

What you can do in Toledo, however, is take pleasant strolls through its winding, medieval streets, marveling at the architecture, stopping to admire the pleasant vistas afforded by the delightful hilltop setting or to shop for handcrafted pottery in the many artisans' workshops. This is what the guidebooks will tell you and, by the by, it's all true. What they don't tell you, however, is that during your pleasant strolls through winding, medieval streets you may also find it necessary to elbow your way through milling hordes of tourists, physically restrain shopkeepers from dragging you in to view their stores of assorted tourist bric-a-brac (unless you really do need a ceramic sundial with an inscription reading 'My Friend Went To Toledo And All I Got Was This Lousy Sundial, The Big Jerk'), or scale a brick wall so as to avoid being mowed down by the many delivery trucks barreling down the streets and sidewalks. No, the guidebooks pretty much just let you find that stuff out on your own.

Fortunately, Kristanne is very good at dealing with adversity. A couple of her exploratory jabs with the Michelin Guide were enough to dissuade the milling crowds of tourists from ever getting in our way again (I can still hear the plaintive cries of one old German tourist who was moaning something about his 'poor artificial hip,' the big sissy). As for the shopkeepers, well, they soon got wind of Kristanne's take-no-prisoners (and hurt them if you do) attitude and left us alone, too. That just left the delivery trucks to contend with and even they seemed to scatter after the first volley of Kristanne's home-cooked Molotov cocktails. My sweetie really knows how to tour a town, I tell you.

Before we knew it, it seemed like we had the entire town of Toledo to ourselves (as you can see by that amazingly uncrowded shot of Kristanne in the Synagogue of Santa Maria la Blanca at left). Basking in our newfound tranquility, we ambled from synagogue to cathedral to museum to tapas bar all at our own leisurely pace. Toledo is another striking example of the crosscultural pollination that went on in Spain back in the day, featuring as it does an old Jewish Quarter ('juderia'), plenty of Moorish architectural accents (including the synagogue pictured at left which was fashioned out of an abandoned mosque after the expulsion of the Moors), and all of it topped off by a healthy dose of native Spanish culture. It's a fascinating place, full of magic and enchantment. Just make sure you bring Kristanne along to pave the way.

After a hard day of touring Toledo, we needed food. Sustenance. Fuel for our tanks. After rejecting the first 20 or 30 restaurants we walked past for reasons ranging from "no free range chicken" to "no electricity" (our standards were dropping the further we walked), we finally let our hunger make the decision, pushing us into the next open door we could find. Though we were the only patrons in the place, we decided to risk it, mainly since at this point we were both hungry enough to eat warm dishwater and call it soup.

As it turned out, our instincts were impeccable. Before we could even explain that we didn't speak Spanish very well, the owner/chef was reciting the virtues of his daily specials, bringing us free drinks, introducing us to his family, and inviting us over to his place tomorrow to "watch the game and knock back a couple of cold ones." Well, either that or he was insulting my taste in clothes -- it was kinda hard to tell.

The relentless friendliness continued right through what was probably the best meal we'd eaten in Spain. Over French onion soup ('Spanish French onion soup'?), the chef's two sons took turns telling us stories, teaching us Spanish phrases, and inquiring about our travels. Once we got to the main course, the chef had to drag the more 'chistoso' (storytelling) of his two sons back into the kitchen (comically scolding him all the way) so we could have a few moments to eat our food. Once the food was gone, free coffees, desserts, and brandies were produced and the conversation began to flow. No more diners were coming, so they turned down the lights, loosened their ties, and poured themselves a glass of wine so as to relax and enjoy the conversation. My mind was beginning to whirl -- I hadn't spoken so much uninterrupted Spanish during our entire stay here. At least I think it was the Spanish that was making me loopy -- Ramon (the more 'chistoso' son) had also brought me a free chipito (shot) of what looked, smelled, and tasted like kerosene, loudly insisting that I take it in one gulp. Always a sucker for testosteronic goading, I threw that baby down with a confident flourish. Unfortunately, my 'confident flourish' rapidly transformed into a 'pained wince,' once the offending liquor made its way down my craw (much to the shared hilarity of everyone else in the room).

Time passed and before we knew it, we'd been there for four and a half hours talking with this friendly crew. Though we could have stayed all night, we took that picture you see there at right before heading off into the night, big grins on our faces and warm happiness in our bellies. It was a great night!

Back to our hotel in the country we went, ready to get a good night's sleep before taking on what remained of Toledo and heading back to Madrid to catch our plane. Our hotel was an incredible place, built out of an old 16th century farmhouse on a plain above Toledo. To get there, you drive some four kilometers out of town and take a right turn through an old stucco gate and down a dirt road before you pull up in front of this strikingly handsome farmhouse. From our room's balcony, you could look out over olive groves full of singing birds and down to the beauty of Toledo below. All that, and it was cheap, too, checking in at about half the price of any of the other hotels we'd checked out in town!

We didn't want to leave -- Toledo was beautiful, our hotel room was peaceful, and the weather was just right for taking it easy. Unfortunately, email and Easy Jet wait for no one, so after our Last Leisurely Breakfast In Spain (I'm openly weeping at the memory as I type this), we headed down to get our email at that handy combination Internet Cube\Pinball Machine you see pictured there at left. Basically, the way this works is that you keep getting more internet time the higher your pinball score. So, while Kristanne manned the flippers, I did my best to get all our email before the last ball dropped. Oh, sure -- there were some nervous moments when I thought I was going to get us disqualified on a Tilt (I invoked a bad java script in Netscape), but Kristanne pulled us out with a timely extra ball special just as our last email downloaded. Phew!

Our email safely downloaded (and the high score comfortably in hand), we headed back to Madrid to catch our Easy Jet on over to London. Easy Jet is a European discount airline that features orange jets, no frills, and a Greek owner who goes by only one name ("Stelios"). Apparently, ole Stelios is trying to create a kinda cult of personality a la Donald Trump or Ted Turner -- the entire in-flight magazine basically amounted to an advertisement for how great Stelios is and why he loves us and how much joy it brings him to offer discounted airfare. Thanks, Stelios!

Easy Jet kinda takes the "no frills" thing to ridiculous places. Not only do you get festival seating (first come, first served), no food, and a steady of barrage of Steliosmania!, but the flight attendants actually seem charged with making your flight less comfortable. If you show any sign of being comfortable, they feel like it's their duty to come on over to your aisle and encourage the person in front of you to recline their chair. Then, they give the kid behind you a toy drum set and ask him to recreate the twelve minute drum solo from Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." Finally, if you're still managing a grin somehow, they put on golf spikes and jump up and down on your lap until you scream for mercy. They definitely want you to taste the pain for your low fare.

One of the reasons Easy Jet is able to offer such low fares (besides the relatively low cost of golf spikes these days) is because they fly into lesser-known airports. For example, our flight was not really going to "London," it was going to "London Luton," which is really just a fancy way of saying "Luton," which might as well be saying "Nowhere Near London -- Yep, That's Luton." In fact, saying "London Luton" is a little bit like saying "London Yukon Territory" -- they're approximately the same distance apart.

Unfortunately, Kristanne and I never really keyed into this crucial bit of information until we were already in "London Luton Taipei." Once there, we found that the only hotel next to the airport was already chock full of similarly deceived Easy Jet passengers (each of them now no doubt sticking pins into the cute little "Stelios Doll" the airline had seen fit to provide each of us with). What to do? Taxi? Train? Bus? Our options were looking a bit grim.

The arrival of Bus 666 (pictured at right) did little to reassure us that all was right in the London Luton Reykjavik world. Did we dare get on this bus? We had a pretty good idea of where it was going -- the Luton express straight to Beelzebub's antechamber. No way, baby. Instead, we hopped a taxi to downtown Luton, hoping that there might be a hotel there that could take care of our meager needs.

Boy, was there ever! Though we were somewhat disturbed that the name of Luton's main street was "Cheapside" (good lord, did Bus 666 take you to the Cheapside?), we swallowed our fear and headed into the first hotel we saw to inquire about a room. As it turned out, the name "Cheapside" was almost as much of a misnomer as "London Luton" -- there was nothing cheap about this hotel. Though somewhat shabby and obviously nowhere near anyone in their right mind would want to stay when visiting London, they still had the temerity to ask for the equivalent of over $100/night. Yikes. Though $100 was basically our housing budget for an entire month in the Czech Republic, we decided to bite the bullet and rest our bones for the evening. Besides, maybe we'd get one of those really great British breakfasts in the morning with mushy sausages, grilled tomato, baked beans, and toast. No one makes toast like the British.

After schlepping our bag up five narrow flights of stairs and through 12 different fire doors (if there ever was a fire, the poor guests would be too tired from opening up the dang doors to get themselves to safety), we finally arrived at...The Strongbow Suite!

Yes, the Strongbow Suite, a hotel room brought to you entirely by beer. Our first clue that there was something, well, special about this room came when we arrived at the door and saw that it bore a largish placard proclaiming, "Brought To You By Strongbow," complete with the brewery's logo. Umm, okay. Cool?

Inside the room, things got even stranger. This was definitely the first hotel room we'd stayed in featuring a large neon beer sign over the bed (pictured at left). I began to envision trying to sleep with that thing sputtering its neon all night over our domes. Fortunately, the same light switch that controlled the room lights also controlled the beer sign. Unfortunately, this meant that if you wanted lights, you also got the beer sign, a questionable bit of restful ambience. I quickly inspected the rest of the room to make sure it didn't feature barstools, free peanuts, or loud drunks in the corner impugning the honor of the queen. Happily, the rest of the room was pretty much as expected, save for the beer advertisements placed strategically on the walls where one would normally expect bad hotel art. Ahh, the Strongbow Suite! I bet Stelios stays there when he's in town, too.

The next morning dawned with a complimentary beer in bed, all part of the Strongbow Suite experience. I'm kidding -- morning dawned with pretty much exactly the traditional British breakfast I described a few paragraphs ago, right down to that great British toast. Boy, do the British ever know toast!

Alas, the next morning also dawned with a familiar problem here on the Office Odyssey -- no place to live. Our original plan had been to run down some housing in London for the two weeks before our flight back to the States left. Our original plan was conceived in innocence, naivete, or, if you prefer, outright ignorance. Two dozen phone calls and a couple hours spent browsing the web told us what we should probably have already known -- London is ridiculously expensive. The cheapest apartment we were finding was checking in at the equivalent of over $1000 for two weeks (this for something suspiciously called "London Bulgaria"). Adopting a different approach, I began asking prospective landlords if they might have anything in the $500-600 range for two weeks. This provoked much hilarity on the part of our prospective landlords and much inspired cursing on the part of your still homeless and apparently quite destitute Extreme Telecommuters.

London wasn't working -- we needed a new plan. A plan that would put us in comfortable, exciting environs. A plan that wouldn't break our bank account. A plan that put us, quite simply, in Edinburgh.

Yes, that Edinburgh! The very same one in which we stayed for two months back in the relative innocence of September and October! That same reasonably-priced Edinburgh that we remembered so well! Was it still there?

Two phone calls reassured us that, yes, it was definitely still there. In fact, not only was Edinburgh still there, but our old apartment was still there, too, ready for us to move in. When would we like to move in? After putting our heads together for a second we answered, "Well, we're in London right now. Does about six hours sound okay?" Extreme Telecommuters definitely like to live in the present tense.

Happily, our old landlord remembered us fondly and proved to be very accommodating. Not only was she willing to drive up from the Borders and put clean linen on the beds, but she was also willing to leave the keys to the apartment with our old friend Ean, the bartender at the Waverley Pub across the street. All this even though she didn't really know Ean and didn't have any signatures or money from us. Trust is a great thing!

After the six or seven week train ride from London Luton to London London, we found ourselves in Kings Cross Train Station, waiting for the train north to Edinburgh. Kings Cross is a rather shoddy place, chock full of panhandlers, ripoff artists, and thieves. While waiting for our train, we were aggressively panhandled some ten times (and cursed out once when we refused to give) before a woman came up and asked me what time it was. Since I was sitting at a cafe table alone with all our stuff while Kristanne made a phone call, I was a little bit wary. This was a good thing since as I turned to talk to her and give her the time, I caught out of the corner of my eye a shadowy presence coming up from the other side of the table and making towards our bags while I was distracted. Fortunately, we'd battened our bags down pretty well, so when I whipped around to confront this guy he hadn't managed to get anything. I gave them both dirty looks as they walked away, really showing them a thing or two. Yep, I definitely know how to teach the thieves a lesson. They won't be trying that little ploy again any time soon, I tell you!

After the aggressive annoyances of Kings Cross, we were both relieved to get on the train and head north to Edinburgh. After some four hours, the countryside gradually began to look familiar and as we finally rounded the last corners and rolled into Waverley Station, we both felt like we were home in some small way. That's really one of the great things about this Odyssey -- we both feel as if we have five new hometowns. A short hike from the station later, we walked back into our old favorite pub, much to the surprise and delight of our old friend, Arantza, the Bartender from Bilbao. After much frenzied hugging, storytelling, and laughing, we lugged our belongings back up a very familiar 63 stairs and into our new old apartment. Home at last!

Seeing Edinburgh was like seeing an old friend...and an English-speaking one at that. Since the last four months had been in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Spain, it was nice to have a healthy dose of English newspapers, magazines, and movies. Our first day, we reveled in the luxury of watching an honest to goodness movie in a language we both understood (sort of...it had been awhile), noshing on fistfuls of popcorn all the while.

Good things, alas, must eventually come to an end. Kristanne needed to be back in Seattle on March 23d to start teaching her Art History section back at the University of Washington. As luck would have it, I needed to stay overseas for at least another two weeks so as to qualify for a tax credit (you need to stay 330 out of 365 days overseas and I was stuck at 318 or so). So, after three days in Edinburgh, with sad hearts and many tears, we bade a heartfelt farewell to both each other and the team portion of the European Office Odyssey. Kristanne got on a train (pictured at left) and headed down to London to catch her flight back to London Seattle. I sprinted after that train as far as I dared, waving and jumping at her as it pulled out of the station, but eventually I could sprint no further. Feeling somewhat melancholy, I went back to our little Edinburgh apartment, a solo Extreme Telecommuter for the first time.

Being without Kristanne was more than a little weird -- we'd been near constant companions for the last twelve months, rarely spending more than a single day apart (and that only once while I went to New York for a wedding and she stayed in Zurich). This was definitely going to take a little getting used to. As a curiously apropos metaphor, Kristanne had taken one of our two little battery-powered speakers with her back to Seattle, leaving me with the other. As I sat and listened to music in mono, I envisioned her back in Seattle, listening to the other half and turning us into a long-distance stereo. See you soon, sweetheart!

Ah, but we're getting a wee bit too melancholy, aren't we? Where are the cheesy puns, the ludicrous lies, the wacky non-sequiturs? Rest easy, gentle reader, rest easy -- they're en route even as we speak! Check back next week to see how I fare during a ten-day return to bachelorhood, capped off by a triumphant journey back to Seattle. The Odyssey ends next week, my friends! Savor it while you can and we'll see you next week!

Last Week's Front Page Picture

As for that picture at left, that's just another one of my patented techniques for pampering the ladies -- hotel rooms themed after beer. Sure, any joker can rent a penthouse suite in Chelsea or Kensington, but how many guys can find a hotel room on the outskirts of London brought to you by beer? Complete with a neon bar sign over the bed, beer advertisements on the walls, and a placard reading, "Strongbow Brewery Room" on the front door, this latest romantic blitz from my arsenal d'amour was a real hit with Kristanne. Which is to say, once she saw it, she hit me.