European Odyssey

My railpass record says it all: A trip to the airport. A trip back to the Brussels central station. A trip to the other airport. A trip back to the Brussels main station. A trip via the (super-expensive) high-speed train to London. Ugh.

I got up at 5 a.m. to get to the Brussels airport super, incredibly early – I arrived nearly 3 hours before my flight was scheduled to depart. I’m not scared of flying, but I’m always horribly afraid of missing my flights. With reason, apparently. I won’t dwell on the details, mostly because I don’t want to recall them, but it was an awful, expensive morning, and I almost didn’t get through the UK’s border security. (The agent made fun of Arkansas, too! Who does that?)

I haven’t seen enough of London to make any judgments yet, except that it is indeed as expensive as I had feared. It costs four pounds (aka $8) to take the tube, no matter how short a trip! I spent four pounds calling my mom last night, for a total of about 60 seconds of airtime. The super-cheap Chinese restaurant next to my hostel is a blessed exception to this madness.

In this grey city, I feel like I’m in mourning for the loss of my trip. After a full five weeks of country hopping, it seemed like a death sentence to get stuck on an island, no matter how worldly and impressive an island. It’s equally oppressive to see the school year approach, and to know winter is coming. Winter on a grey island! How will I manage? Where did my summer in Spain go? My misery is compounded by the fact I managed to pick up a nice little cold somewhere. (I think it was from a cute Australian, so that makes it almost worthwhile.)

To make myself feel better, I’ve been perusing my albums of old photos. Some of them are there because they’re great photos. Others are there because they were great experiences. (E.g. the photo with our sexy professor. I got to touch him!!) Rather than posting them all here, I’ve provided a link to an album.  Here it is: The Best of the Best of Europe!  Hope you enjoy!

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I would also like to take this time to reflect on the female traveler’s favorite week of the month. For a list of funny euphemisms for this natural but bothersome cycle, click here.

About a week ago, aware that my time was fast approaching and in need of supplies, I entered a supermarket in Germany. I found this, and only this:

I looked to the left, to the right. There was nothing else. No Tampax© Pearl, no Tampax at all! There were no applicators to be found, not even cardboard. “There – there must be some mistake!” I screamed in horror.

I checked in another supermarket, which offered even less variety. The normal absorbency had all been sold out, leaving only Super and Light. That just wouldn’t do. A fancy-schmancy pharmacy was my last hope, but there, too, there was only O.B. I gave in, paid my four euros and left. Leave it to the Germans, who sort their trash into four different types of recyclables, to be equally environmentally aware with their tampons. And they saved paper by only printing the instructions in German. Eek!

As it turned out, it wasn’t so bad. They’re way smaller and lighter than any tampon with an applicator, even the Tampax© Compak. And even with German instructions, it’s just not too hard to figure out what you have to do with it. O.B. has won a respectful fan, if not a convert. It also helped that I spent the following three days in Belgium, home of the world’s best chocolate (and beer). How lucky is that?

My stay in Germany and my travels without Mandi have largely seemed uneventful.  I mostly passed the four days in Berlin on my laptop, finishing up my last remaining hours of work for the Employment Blawg and writing some Spanish essays to get credit for my time in Spain.  There’s nothing to ruin a city like spending your time there fulfilling bureaucratic requirements.  I did spend a few hours each day seeing the sights, though.   

Friday night, having met a pair of Spanish cousins and two girls from Italy, I went out to a lounge/bar with them.  Although most of us were proficient in two languages, there was no common language among us.  We all ordered drinks in English and spent the night speaking in an intriguing mixture of Spanish, English, and Italian.  Berlin is famous for its nightlife, and some locals teased us for heading home at 1 a.m.  I half regretted not having the full, stay-up-til-the-next-morning experience, but the next day my four companions all had fevers and sore throats, so I was happy I had treated my immune system well. 

On Saturday, when I spent six hours working on the blawg and several more hours on the New York Times website trying to get caught up on current events, my only “sight” was a nearby Italian restaurant.  Their 2€ soups and 3€ pizzas were a sight for sore eyes, though, after an expensive week on in Belgium and the Netherlands. 

Sunday I wrote my much-loathed Spanish paper.  Finally freed of that responsibility, I made my first jaunt into the city alone.  I found the Hamburg Bahnhof art gallery, home of several very interesting exhibits.  The main exposition was a huge display of trash art, which I was more than happy to ignore.  Instead I focused on a nice sampling of paintings by … some guy.  It might be dull, but I am a huge fan of paintings that are just juxtapositions of flat color.  This is one from a series called the Grove, which represent the organic nature and colors of an olive grove in the very flat, geometric nature of square paintings.  I liked the irony of that, plus it matched my shirt. 

There was also an audiovisual work on the second floor that captivated my interest for half an hour.  It was an oral history of Manhattan Island that accompanied a video panorama of the island.  The emphasis was on the Dutch and English settlers and their interactions with the local Indian population, as well as on the importance of names.  Very nice.

From there I found the equally artistic Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  The plot of land is covered with grey stone blocks of varying shapes and sizes.  Apparently the memorial was designed to have no metaphorical significance.  For instance, the number of stones was dictated solely by the size of the land. 

The museum underneath was very well run and very powerful.  The most affecting part was an exhibit about fifteen different families and how the Holocaust affected each one.  Time and rising emotion limited me to reading only one of them: only the younger sister survived, but the father and older brother were killed just weeks before the end of the war. 

On Monday I explored the next chapters in Berlin’s history: the Berlin wall and the Reichstag building.  I visited the longest remaining stretch of the wall, called the New Side Gallery.  I saw the famous painting of (someone famous) kissing (someone else famous), as well as some other less famed ones.  Many panels consisted mostly of peeling paint.

I came across one panel where “Nunca tu solo caminaras” (“You will never walk alone”) was written.  I liked that, since it was only my second solo excursion ever. 

I took the train to the Reichstag building, home to the Bundestag, Germany’s congress.  The building remains from before the world wars (although it received some serious damage).  After the reunion of the two halves of Germany, when the capital was moved from Bonn back to Berlin, the Reichstag building was revamped.  The huge glass cupola and gigantic paned glass windows represent the transparency of the new German government, and visitors are allowed to ascend to the very tippy-top of the dome. 

The building is annually visited by 11 million tourists, since the tower affords an amazing view of the city.  I arrived at 8 p.m. to find a half-hour wait.  When I finally reached the front of the line, I was herded into a small glass antechamber with perhaps fifty others, and the door closed behind me.  We stood there for a good fifteen seconds before another door opened and we were allowed into the building. I’m not a public relations expert, but it doesn’t seem prudent for a visitor’s first impression of the new German government to involve being crammed into a little room and trapped there, however temporarily. The view from the top was indeed gorgeous, though, and worth both the wait and the claustrophobic entrance experience.  Here’s a shot of the famous Brandenburg Gate. 

The most surprising part about being up their, looking over the vastness of the city, was when I a woman tapped me on the shoulder and waved hello.  I waved back and turned back around, until it dawned on me that I did indeed know her.  She was a Dutch woman, one of two I met on my first day in Berlin, when I was utterly confounded by the ticket machine for the S-bahn, rather lost, and crying.  She had helped me find where I was going.   With the entire city as a backdrop, it seemed even more incredible that we should find ourselves together again.  Even rarer: we met again on the U-Bahn heading to our respective hostels!  Europe has been funny that way. 

Dresden 

The next morning I headed off early for Dresden.  I took the train, as always, and was very pleased with the experience.  There were gorgeous vistas of rivers, mountains, farmland, villages, cities, windmills, fields of solar panels, and even just pretty train stations.  It was just as picturesque as flying, except everything was at a human scale.  And because I wasn’t driving, there was no need to keep my eyes on the road.  The shame of it all was that, through the double paned glass, and at high speeds, it was impossible to record the experience to share with others.  You’ll just have to buy a ticket and take the journey yourselves.  It’s gorgeous. 

In Dresden I stayed in the most beautiful, second most boring hostel of the trip.  I shared my room with two middle-aged businessmen.  Uck.  (Hostel reviews coming Sept. 1, when I finish my travels.)  The benefits were threefold: it was cheap, very close to the train station, and in the center of the bar and restaurant district.   

After a ridiculously long and delicious nap and a bite of Chinese food, I found a lovely little hole-in-the-wall place called the Teegadrom.  It was a dark and comfortable tea room/bar where I got a glass of cider and a mug chai tea and took in some more of Estampillas Bostonianas, my book of Spanish travel journalism.  I thought fondly of Kurt Vonnegut as I drifted off to sleep later.  If not for Slaughterhouse-Five I never would have gone to the lovely city.

From Amsterdam we took a short train to the nearby, arch-enemy city of Rotterdam.  Mandi and I spent most of our time organizing and splitting up our belongings.  A fantastic falafel run and a multi-cultural game of charades also enriched our evening, which we spent in the best hostel of the entire trip.  Hostel ROOM Rotterdam has about fifteen rooms, each with a different theme.  Ours was the Dutch Delight room.  Check it out!

There was also a recipe for Dutch Pea Soup painted on the wall behind Mandi’s bed.  Aside from some pesky mosquitoes that found their way into our room, the hostel was the best one of the whole trip.  The breakfast was a veritable buffet!  Wheat and white bread, dozens of jams and spreads, tea, coffee, and some delicious cereal with dried fruit.  (Thank God for a break from Corn Flakes!) 

The staff was incredibly friendly, offering us each a free shot of Dutch gin and organizing a rousing game of charades.  (Embarrassingly, the Turkish girl on my team knew a lot more about American movies, music, and TV shows than I did!) Inspired by my lovely stay at Hostel ROOM Rotterdam, I’m going to review each of the other hostels I’ve stayed at on the first half of my trip.  But that’s for next time. 

Now I’m going to lament how much I miss my sister, how much I’m scared about traveling on my own, how big my suitcase is without Mandi to help share the weight of the travel gear, etc.  Alright, lament completed.  Wish me luck on my solo travel!

I preface this description with the explanation that our hostel was about an hour outside of Amsterdam by train (two other branches of the same hostel were located in downtown and uptown Amsterdam).  So I never saw the true nightlife of Amsterdam, but the day-life was quite enough for me.  However, I do apologize for being unable to recount stories of true debauchery.

Day 1 

We arrived in A-dam on Monday evening and searched out the downtown branch of our hostel, so we could stow our stuff for a few hours and travel the town.  We found it easily enough, and when we walked in we were assaulted by the smell of pot smoke.   In our quest to find the luggage room, we found that the elevator was occupied by a pair of waaaay-out-of-it guys.  The elevator doors opened, they stared at us and giggled slowly and pushed the Door Close button.  So we took the stairs. 

The beauty of Amsterdam took me by surprise.  It had been a nice, partly-cloudy day, and we came through town just as the sun was sinking.  The reflections in the canals were impressive.  We found a small restaurant, got some warm mozzarella and pesto sandwiches, and said our goodbyes to our traveling mate Nikki as we caught the shuttle to the beach. 

In the shuttle we met a guy from Damascus who had grown up in Arkansas (turned out he and I have mutual friends at Hendrix College) and had studied at St. Louis University (he’s a fan of Imo’s Pizza and the super-cheap Jack-in-the-Box tacos).  Small world, I’d say!  (In Rotterdam I met another guy, this time from upstate New York, who was familiar with and had been to Conway, Arkansas.) 

At the hostel we collapsed, in preparation for waking up early and heading back downtown.   

Day 2

Amazing spinach soup.  Lots of wandering.  A visit to the local post office, where there are four different slots for various types of mail.  I picked the far left one.  Dad, I hope my postcard still gets to you!

We spent a nice, long time canal-watching.  Who couldn’t stare mindlessly at something this beautiful?  After about an hour of silent reflection, we headed toward the nearest bagel shop, where Mandi and I shared one sesame seed bagel with pesto and tomato cream cheese and one cinnamon raisin bagel with maple syrup, banana slices, and powdered cinnamon.  Whoa.  Whooaaa. 

As yet unsatisfied, we walked a bit farther and encountered a grocery store.  Part of our plan included cheese, and at the cheese counter we encountered one of the most interesting locals of the trip: a young woman (about my age, I’d guess) who proceeded to tell us the bulk of her life story, punctuated with, “I’m really not sure why I’m telling you this, but …”.  Mandi and I heard her family secrets about divorce and sibling rivalry and some stories about the dangers of living in Africa and how it changed her life and taught her that even when the cheese slicer cuts off pieces of her fingers, life is still good.  Of course it’s always nice to talk with locals, but there was something seriously odd about that interaction.   

After eating the cheese and passing through the Red Light district, we headed back to the train station and back to the beach hostel, where we very unexpectedly encountered our Scottish friends we’d met in Belgium.  Nice. 

Day 3 

The final day we headed back bright and early to visit the Van Gogh museum.  The first floor, the permanent collection of Van Gogh’s works, was stuffed to the brim with tourists making pilgrimages to see the great European works.  Far and away my favorite part was seeing one of his self-portraits, a work that I copied full-size in oil pastels as part of my Basic Art class in ninth grade.  Having studied and replicated those strokes, it was fantastic to see it in person, just inches from me.  The work was a lot lighter, less gray, than the copy I worked from.  The brushstrokes were also a lot smaller and finer than I had realized.  Photography within the museum was prohibited.  This image does it no justice.

The second floor, much emptier of visitors, featured a rare look at Van Gogh’s sketches.  Because the drawings are on very sensitive paper, they are usually stored away and very infrequently displayed.  My favorite were Van Gogh’s sketches from a how-to-draw book, from when he was learning how to draw figures.  It’s a close replica, but definitely imperfect.  It’s a good thing he placed higher value on showing the personality of a place or person than representing it with complete technical accuracy. 

There was also a special exhibit about how Van Gogh learned to use color the way he did.  He read many texts about color theory and the color wheel (i.e., contrasting colors make each other appear brighter).  However, having only really seen Dutch art, he applied the theories incorrectly.  Poor guy!  Once he got out and traveled, he improved a lot. 

The third floor featured some Monets, Gaugins, and Seurats, as well as some very impressive paintings by names I didn’t recognize.  Three floors worth of works and three hours of absorbing artistic genius made me a little less bitter about the 10 euros I paid to enter.  But only a little. 

For lunch we found a sandwich shop run by a friendly Egyptian man.  We each paid for our own sandwich, leading me to realize that we had just “gone Dutch.”  Dutch treat.  Get it?  Ok, lame pun. We then headed for the famous Botanical Garden, but with an entrance fee of 6 euros apiece, Mandi and I decided to take a nap on the lawn instead.  I’m not quite sure how Mandi snapped this photo of me without me knowing, but it’s a cute one. 

To wind up the day, we headed by a supermarket to pick up some Heineken.  (What’s a visit to Amsterdam without Heineken?)  An interesting side note is that the supermarkets in northern Europe are infinitely more American and pre-packaged than those in Spain and Portugal.  Check out this adorable display of easy-to-make meals.  It’s a four-step process: Noodles/Rice/Potatoes + Vegetable + Meat + Sauce = Dinner!  The supermarket also sold individually-wrapped red peppers, for whatever reason. 

Beer in hand, we strolled through the Red Light district as the sun began to dip in the horizon.  Sex shops abounded, some more offensive than others.  I quite enjoyed window shopping at the Condomerie, although the store had already closed.  Check out these themed condoms. 

And the prostitutes?  Well, they were half-naked, sitting in front of windows.  Many of them were quite a bit less attractive than I expected – one looked like she could be your aunt, and most had a lot more pudge than you’d ever see on a porn star.  It really made me realize that they’re regular women.  To me, perhaps the most difficult part would be trying to look sexy, hour after hour, without getting bored.  (Ok, well that would actually probably be the second most difficult part.)

I never saw a man go in, but I did see two come out (of separate doors).  I also saw several children walking by with their parents, to my great surprise.  Oh, to have heard what the parents were saying to their children!  Were explaining prostitution to their kids, or had they mistakenly thought that Oudekerkstrasse was the way to the zoo? 

After a visit to a piercing parlor where the man advised that, should I pierce my nose, I pierce the right nostril, we headed back to little ol’ Noordwijk on the train.  There we grabbed blankets and beers and sat on the beach, alternating between listening to the iPod and listening to the waves crash.  Here’s a picture from the next morning.  It was actually quite a beautiful place.  It was almost a shame we spent all our time in Amsterdam.

And so ended the warm half of the trip.  The cold half, which sort of started in chilly Barcelona, commenced in earnest when we exited the night train in Bern, Switzerland.  When we pulled up to the station at eight in the morning, the sky was grey and all the locals were wearing winter coats and scarves.  That was August 10^th.  

To be honest, I’ve been wearing the same pair of jeans since that morning.  With several Febreezings, they’ve managed quite nicely – a blessing, since they’re my only pair of long pants.  I’m also blessed with one long-sleeved shirt and one thin sweater, plus a pretty little pashmina the thickness of cheesecloth.  Brr!

So, bundled up in my jeans and sweater, I walked around the city of Bern with Mandi.  We found this statue atop a fountain: an ogre consuming helpless babes.  Yum?   

An elephant act had been planned as part of a street festival that afternoon, but the weather was too cold for the elephants to handle.  Later that evening, dozens street performers ignored the chill as part of Buskers Bern, a three-day street festival.  We stopped awhile and listened to a hammered dulcimer player.  (I had an unusual interest in dulcimers as a child, so there was some nostalgia.)  We ended the night watching a group of three truly creepy acrobats.  Mandi deemed it one of the best poi shows she’s ever seen, but the performers’ bizarre costumes and eerie background music (plus the unseasonably cold weather) made it feel like Halloween. 

The next morning we took a train to Brussels, one of my favorite cities of the trip.  After some unexpectedly large expenditures during the first half of the trip (i.e., a first-class night train), we had been keeping our wallets very, very closed.  No restaurants, no alcohol, few museums, eating only enough to live.  In Brussels we finally chilled out, spending the extra few euros to try the famed waffles, chocolate, french fries and beer.  Check out this greasy, greasy wrapper from the waffle.  Eww.

Between our gastronomic delights we perused the town, finding some fantastically quirky shops and a bar called L’Homo Erectus (“the erect homo”).  We also found this little guy, Mannekin Pis.  He’s possibly the main tourist attraction in Brussels.

The best thing we found in Brussels was the company in the hostel.  Two great Scottish girls, two friendly Swedes, a group of peppy Britons, a Slovenian gal, and a super-nice graphic designer from New York.  We paired up with the designer, Nikki, the next day, since we were both headed for Amsterdam.  Together we toured the last brewery in Brussels that uses wild yeast and doesn’t micromanage the fermentation process.  Their unique style gives the beer a sour, acidic, but enjoyable taste.  We also found a great flea market, where I found a two-euro little white clutch purse.  (Compact and cheap.  The best travel purchase ever.)  Then we found the train station and took train to A-dam. 

Amsterdam, as many will attest, is a magical place – and not just because of its mushrooms.  I left Brussels having forgotten to get the e-mail addresses of the Swedes and the Scottish girls.  What are the odds, then, that I ran into one of the Swedes two days later outside of the Van Gogh museum?  Even weirder: the two Scottish girls booked the same room in the same hostel as we did.  Even weirder: the hostel is an hour outside of Amsterdam. 

Amsterdam was so weird that it actually deserves its own post.  So I’ll end this one here, with the side-note that Amsterdam is indeed cold enough (and windy, and rainy, and windy) to merit inclusion on the list of unexpectedly cold cities we visited during the second half of the trip.  (It’s also on the much-too-long list of places where I wore the same pair of pants.  Don’t judge.)

This post was written about four days ago, but I was unable to post it before the WiFi cut out.  Oops.  In the intervening days we’ve traveled to Bern, Switzerland; Brussels, Belgium; and Amsterdam, Holland.  More on those later.

Mandi and I are in Barcelona, after three days in Madrid, two in Lisbon, one in Porto (home of the heavy-hitting Port wine), two in Santiago de Compostela, and two in Madrid.  During that whirlwind week-and-a-smidge, we managed to miss two trains, and we came much too close to missing a third yesterday.  Here are the highlights of what else we did:

In Madrid, we visited the Thyssen museum, where there was an exhibit of Van Gogh’s last works before he walked off into the woods one day and shot himself in the chest.  Apparently he knew the end was near, because he was absolutely churning out art at the end of his life – something like 70 paintings in as many days.  We also visited the Reina Sofia, home to Picasso’s Guernica, Salvador Dalí’s El Gran Masturbador, and a really interesting set of self-portraits using costumes as disguises. 

Afterwards, we found a small grocery market with “granadillas” for sale.  Since “granadas” are pomegranates and Mandi and I love pomegranates, we bought the granadilla and ate it.  It looked like alien eggs about to hatch and tasted like slimy grapes.  It’s surely my last granadilla.

That evening, we went to El Parque de el Buen Retiro and found the absolute coolest playground ever.  Mandi and I had no qualms about waiting our turns in line behind five year olds, and it was worth it.

In Lisbon, we took a local train to the town of Belém, as suggested by Rick Steves.  Gorgeous, old, red-roofed buildings, laundry on the line.  Amazing pastry shop.  Nice shoreline.  And in the local cathedral we stumbled upon the tomb of Vasco de Gama, world-famous explorer!  Thanks, Rick!  Then, we returned to historic Lisbon and got completely lost in the maze of tiny streets.  We ended up in a very sweet, rather poor, residential neighborhood, where a pair of incredibly kind 60-year-old locals directed us back toward our hotel.

The next day in Lisbon, we skipped the 10 Euro aquarium for the nearby Pavilion of Knowledge.  There were rides that made me really, really jealous to have already grown up.  One was a harness that let you bounce as if you were on the moon.  The one pictured below is a Velcro suit that kids could wear and jump onto a Velcro mat on the wall, and they’d stick there!  Jealous!  We made up for it by riding this bicycle across a tiny wire stretched dozens of meters above the floor.

In Porto we pulled another Lisbon by getting lost in the residential area of town and taking photos.  It’s an incredibly nice way to spend an afternoon.  We spent the evening at the hostel drinking Port and talking late into the night with folks from Canada, Poland, Switzerland and Texas.  We spent the morning pissed off that we missed our train back to Spain.  Oops!  We took a bus instead, where the man next to us insisted that we could not possibly be twins.  Hmm.

Santiago de Compostela was full of Christians from all over the world who had just made their pilgrimage to the holy city.  It was also home to dozens of clown troops from all over the world who had assembled for the annual FestiClown festival.  With the church bells clanging ominously in the background, we watched one clown bounce on a trampoline and flip over the head of an innocent audience member.  We also met a nice local woman and her dog Pin (pronounced “peen”).  She said he’s the second dog she’s called Pin.  The first had the full name Ping Pong, and the current one is named Pink Floyd.

Santiago de Compostela was also home to an interesting food pyramid sign that had dedicated the lowest, largest rung of the pyramid to beverages.  A compelling thought, but the illustrations showed pictures of water, juice, and — to any nutritionist’s shock — soda cans.  It turned out that the pyramid, which was taped onto the display window of a pharmacy, was produced by Coca-Cola.  Sketchy!

Back in Madrid we spent nearly two hours trying to send Mandi’s gigantic (22 kilo) suitcase to her host family in France, so we didn’t have to tote it around everywhere.  Small problem: none of the boxes were big enough to fit the suitcase.  Answer: after much thinking, the postal workers used two boxes, some packing paper, and a TON of packing tape to cover it.  Bigger problem: we didn’t realize that the suitcase weighed 22 kilos until AFTER we had it all wrapped up.  France will only accept packages that weigh less than 20 kilos.  Oops!

The postal workers cut the box open, we took some heavy stuff out, and then we sealed it all back up and packed another box with the heaviest goodies.  The postal workers (Miguel and his compatriots) were the most amazing I’ve ever dealt with.  In the United States, there is nothing like that.  They told us it helped that we were pretty young ladies.  Thank god I had showered that day, or we’d never have gotten it sent!  As it was, we arrived to the train station five minutes after our high-speed train to Toledo left.  Oops again!

We waited two hours in an incredibly long line and got new tickets to Toledo.  Although most of the museums were closed because it was Monday, we were still glad to have persevered.  During the course of our four-hour stay, we spoke with two local artisans, a paraplegic Spanish woman, and a pair of ticked-off Israeli Jews.  We learned how the typical Toledan jewelry is made (teensy gold threads are pressed into soft steel, and then the piece is heated until the metals fuse).  We also learned that the thin, hilly, cobbled streets of Toledo are less than ideal for a woman in a wheelchair.  Lastly, we learned that if you come all the way to Spain from Israel to see the Sephardic Museum in Toledo, you want to come on a day when it’s open – a.k.a. not Monday.

Yesterday we missed another train to El Escorial, and instead of waiting for the next one, we decided to camp out in the airport, recharge the cell phone and computer, reserve all the train tickets for the rest of the trip, and book hostels.  A quick metro ride back into downtown Madrid for some dinner almost cost us our fourth train, but we made it!

In Barcelona, we spent the day largely passed out in the hotel, after an overly bumpy night train from Madrid.  We also indulged in some pizza — the first hot food I’ve had in days.  Our usual m.o. is to buy nectarines, apples, bread, peanut butter, and whatever else looks cheap, tasty, and easy, at local super markets.  It’s cheap and pretty healthy, but it’s not momma’s cookin’.  I miss you momma!  I miss you all!