One From the Archives

The past week and a half in Perps has been spent dodging rain drops, shivering in a shower without hot water (something’s going on with my hot water heater, though I don’t know what), and watching the Wire with Kili, while crying over the fate of Bubbles and the other characters in the show. Not much to blog about. To please the readership, to keep you interested (particularly in the dwindling days before my return), I’ve decided to pull one from the archives—an experience I didn’t blog about, just in case a situation like this ever arose. Actually, I just didn’t think it was that funny or interesting at the time, but it’s better than recounting days passed watching movies in my studio.

A few weeks ago, one of the other assistants who I’ll refrain from naming (and no, that is not a convenient way of masking that the story is actually about me—I feature too prominently in it in a different way) had a UTI, and we had to take her to the doctor’s. As employees/temporary residents of France, we are all supposed to have health insurance, primary care physicians, and the like, but I find medical coverage absolutely baffling in my own country, let alone in a foreign country where I am not a native speaker of the language. Going to the doctor was a daunting task. A few of the assistants and I were walking around downtown when we decided we needed to take UTI-girl to the doctor, but we had no idea where a doctor’s office would be. We finally ended up just going into an eyeglasses store and asking the optometrist for directions to the closest office, and he directed us to one just up the street.

Doctor’s offices in France (and Europe in general, I think) are not held in huge medical complexes or business parks, but in regular neighbourhoods in normal houses—you’ll see a placard reading Docteur or Médecin or whatever, squeezed right in between two normal residences. Because it was just a normal house, we weren’t sure if we needed to knock, ring the doorbell, or just walk in—it seemed a little weird to us. There was a sign reading, “ring bell for emergencies”, and it seemed like an emergency; we didn’t have an appointment, and we needed treatment for UTI-girl immediately (she had been trying to self-medicate using cranberry juice cocktail and cranberry supplement pills. not quite as effective as antibiotics). I for one was expecting a crotchety old grumpy French man to come to the door in a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck, but instead a young dashing twenty-something answered our call, and you could actually see all of us girls cringe in sympathy as UTI-girl had to explain her girl-problems to Hottie McHotterson. Or rather Hottie LeHotterson.

UTI-girl didn’t want to go into the office by herself, so I went in with her while the other two girls waited in the salle d’attente. UTI-girl and I tried our best to explain the problem in semi-broken French, gave her personal information (name, DOB, etc), and made some small talk about what we were doing in Perpignan. The doctor requested a urine sample, just to be sure she actually did have a UTI. BUT. Instead of handing her a cup and showing her where the bathroom was, he hands her an effing paper stick. You know those tester strips for perfume that they have sitting in cups in department stores? THAT is what the doctor handed UTI-girl. He wanted her to pee on that. Jesus, France.

UTI-girl left to do her business, which left me sitting in the doctor’s office, with the doctor, waiting. It was one of the most awkward things I have ever done. We kind of sat there—I obviously had nothing to do, so mostly I just looked at my hands. He did some work on the computer. At one point, we both looked up at the same time, and it would have been awkward not to acknowledge how awkward it was. So we laughed a little about that, he made a joke about how UTI-girl must have gotten lost, et cetera. And then. And then. To continue the small talk, the doctor mentioned that UTI-girl’s French was very good, and then said, “Yours is great, too, of course, but at her age it’s remarkable to have French that advanced.” Oh my god.

UTI-girl is 20 years old, and doesn’t even actually look 2 years younger than me—we look the same age, more or less. But this doctor, this dashing, successful, French doctor, assumed I was old enough to be OUT of UTI-girl’s age bracket. How old did he think I was, 40? Did he think I was her mother or something ridiculous like that? I was affronted. I couldn’t believe it. How haggard must I have looked?

I didn’t, obviously, say anything about it to the doctor. Right afterwards, UTI-girl walked back in, holding a pee-soaked stick. She held it out towards the doctor, asking, “C’est bon?” which roughly translate to “is this ok?”. He took the paper from her, did something to it, and then responded, “oui, c’est positif”. Never, I repeat, NEVER, just say something is ‘positive’ to a young girl when you’ve just asked her to pee on a stick. Please just qualify that by saying, yes, it’s positive for a UTI.

We’ve all heard (thank you, Michael Moore) about France’s excellent health care system, but none of us really have had the chance to experience its wonders. It’s so incredibly different than the American system—I can tell this even from the small amount of time I spent in that doctor’s office. Before we left, the doctor wrote UTI-girl a prescription, and tallied up the bill. For an unannounced doctor’s visit to a doctor who was not UTI-girl’s primary care physician, without health insurance (she didn’t have her health insurance card on her, and so was actually charged. Had she had the card, it most likely would have been all covered. She can also put in some forms to get reimbursed for the money she did pay, although this is France we’re talking about, so she might not get the money for four or five months), UTI-girl paid 25 euros. The drugs that she picked up at the pharmacy? Ten euros. If the French can do three things right, it’s bread, wine, and medicine.

New photos, coming slowly

I've started a flickr account for my photos--there is a monthly upload limit, though, so I have only added through to just before Kili, Ashley, and Greg arrived. I'll post more when I can, I promise!

Here's the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashleyjailbirdbenson/

Porto: The Wanker on the Beach

*I am posting these in reverse chronological order so that the older days of vacation appear at the TOP of my blog, rather than making you all scroll on down to the bottom to find where my vacation started. Make sense?

I will also try to post other people's pictures as soon as I have a change.*

We arrived in Portugal a few days ago after spending over half the day traveling. It seems like no matter how short a trip we're taking (the flight was only two hours), with waiting times, transport to and from places, and allotments for human error (especially important during travels to countries where I can't read the signs), we can never make a trip that doesn't take up at least half of a day. I spent the 1 1/2 hour coach ride to the airport in Spain asleep, and the two hour flight asleep as well--making up for two weeks of restless nights in a studio full of 3 or 4 people. At least.

Towards the end of the flight, craning my head over Kili and an older Portuguese woman (who spent the flight startling Kili by trying to turn Kili's attention to what could only have been clouds at random intervals throughout the flight), I saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, and the most green I've seen in about 7 months. Portugal is lush. Enough said. We had to take about an hour long metro ride to get from the Porto airport to where we were staying in Povoa de Varzim, and while most of it was spent in the dark after nightfall (and avoiding glares from our fellow riders for making a picnic dinner on the tram...), I was amazed by how much vegetation was around.

Jonna, our lovely Swedish couchsurfing host, met us at the metro station and walked with us the short distance to her flat, explaining a bit about Povoa, about Porto, about Portugal in general, and about how people were going to stare at us a lot. While still on the metro, we had joked about Jonna meeting us at the station with an axe and murdering us then and there, but she actually turned out to be amazing, and welcoming, and it's given us all a lot more security and confidence concerning this couchsurfing thing we're doing on this vacation (Karen confessed this morning that she was still a little scared that we would get murdered the first night in Jonna's flat). Exhausted from a long day of napping, we turned in early without setting an alarm, and slept hard until mid-morning. The next day we spent in Porto itself--not doing much but walking around. The city is gorgeous, full of brightly colored houses, tiled walls, and winding pedestrian streets. You know the scene from Love Actually where the writer goes to Portugal to ask for Aurelia's hand in marriage and the whole town walks up and down those little streets with him looking for her? That is exactly what Porto's streets are like. Porto is cut through by the Douro River, which is lined on one side by port cellars, and on the other by touristy, expensive restaurants (10 euros for lunch, instead of 5) that are nestled in between a boardwalk and a cliff face crammed with old houses. Pictures (a conglommeration from Kili, Ashley, Karen, and Greg's cameras) are to follow. I promise. After heading back to Povoa for the evening, we made a pasta dinner for us and Jonna, and also asked if we could stay another night with her, rather than leaving for Lisbon the next day, which she was more than happy to let us do.

We spent the next day on the beach in Povoa. Although it wasn't quite warm enough to swim or sun ourselves in swimsuits, we were quite comfortable reading in jeans and tank tops, until the unfortunate incident of the wanker in the sand. We were quite nearly the only people on the beach, until Karen tentatively said, "Guys, there's a weird guy over there looking at...nevermind." As soon as we all perked our heads up to see what was going on, he kind of started to walk away, but not all the way. It quickly became apparent that he was just having a wank, right there on the beach, staring at us, like it was the most normal thing in the world. We disappeared behind a sand dune quicker than you could say "out of sight, out of mind". Soon after, when we were sure he had left, we walked back to the flat for a late lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Povoa and popping into cafes to have those requisite cups of coffee or glasses of wine. Before dinner we went briefly back to the beach, where the sun was beginning to set over the water. Kili and I had a sand fight, but the sand in Povoa isn't sand so much as small rocks. I am still coughing those rocks out of my sinuses.

For dinner, we found this weird little restaurant whose clientele were entirely Portuguese, and were all there to watch the futbol game that was playing on the television right next to our dining table. Awkward. Throughout the whole trip Karen has been so good about trying really hard to speak Portuguese, and she has been doing a lovely job--people understand her, and she understands them (even the old old woman who owned the restaurant on the port that we lunched in). When she asked for four glasses of white wine to go with dinner in Povoa, the waiter asked, in perfect though accented English, "Do you want a bottle?" We busted up laughung, especially because we had spent the last ten minutes trying to find translations in our dictionary for the menu that was only available in Portuguese. He didn't know specific fish names in English, either, however, and so we just ended up agreeing that he would bring us something delicious. He did.

This morning we woke up, said good-bye to Jonna and made our way to the station to catch a train to Lisbon, where we are couchsurfing with a guy who describes his home as somewhere between a hostel and a halfway house. We're not so much couchsurfing as sleeping in a tent in his yard...That'll be a big change from Jonna's two extra rooms. I just hope we don't freeze to death. Or die.

Lisbon: Oh God, Lisbon.

We did not die. But I do not love Lisbon. I love Paris. Barcelona. Madrid. Montpellier. Avignon. Collioure. Even Perpignan, now. I hate Lisbon. We cut our time there in half--thank GOD we asked to stay an extra night with Jonna in Porto--and we're on the train now to Faro, after having spent not even a full 48 hours in Lisbon. It was enough time. The thing about traveling on the cheap is that you don't have money for the touristy things, like visiting castles or museums--and those are the things that take up so much time on vacation. We are left with walking around, taking pictures, and eating. There's only so long I can spend walking around a city before I tire of it, no matter how large the city, particularly when it's raining and kind of cold. We ended up going into restaurants and cafes just to escape the weather--which necessitated purchasing something, which negated the "shoestring budget" idea we all had in mind. All this would have been enough on it own to cut our stay short. But.

The icing on the Lisbon-flavored cake, the cherry on the Lisbon sundae, the gravy on the Lisbon-shaped mound of mashed potatoes was the accommodation. We stayed with a young Portuguese man named Joao who hosts at least five couchsurfers per night in his house, and has several tents outside for those who don't request to surf early enough (we were originally supposed to be in a tent, but the bed situation is a bit...loose at Joao's, and we stayed in beds both nights). Joao was a really nice guy, charming and welcoming and very intelligent. His house was a cross between a Bellingham hippy haven and a crack den.

No, no. No one was smoking crack there (to my knowledge, at least...) although I doubt Joao would have batted an eye. The house must never have been cleaned--EVER--since Joao moved in, and the level of flith is exacerbated by the fact that loads of people are moving in and out of there on a day to day basis.

The first night there we stayed in, met up with the ten or so other people there (from an assortment of places like Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Latvia, and Idaho) and had dinner that a nice French couple cooked for everyone. It started to rain, so Karen and I decided to sleep indoors, and we unrolled our sleeping bags onto some mattresses that literally covered the floor in the couchsurfing room, minus enough space to house a broken desk and a desktop computer from 1992. We awoke the next morning after a mostly sleepless and uncomfortable night, kind of grungy but still ready to explore the city. With the dorky touring Europe book stashed away in a purse, we set off through Lisbon, finding cool tiled walls, weird 50s American soda fountain style cafes, and tiny winding streets leading up to a castle at the top of a hill. Wandering around the city was quite nice, but we were all a bit cranky due to lack of sleep, low temperatures, and persistent rain showers--it was amazing how marked an improvement we saw in our moods when the sun decided to come out. After wandering aimlessly for about 9 hours, we found a restaurant in my guidebook (Europe on a Shoestring Budget) that boasted 2.50 euro main dishes and "filling vegetarian" fare). The outside of the building and what we could see of the inside seemed like a 2.50 euros dinner kind of place, and we walked in before looking at the menu to find a lovely restaurant with a stunning view of the city and a menu with mains starting at 10 euros.

Bamboozled.

We are fairly certain that this restaurant starting getting more business because of the listing in the Europe book, completely overhauled themselves, and started charging five times as much for their food. We saw at least two other groups of people come into the restaurant, and then leave once they saw the menu. After the waiter asked what we wanted to drink (water. no way could we afford wine now), we sat leafing through the menu and I started to panic about money. The whole trip was turning out to be far more expensive than any of us had planned. We must have looked miserable--I was actually crying at one point.

At any rate, we looked miserable enough for the owner of the restaurant to send over a bottle of complimentary wine. Then the live music started, and we began to actually enjoy ourselves. Throughout the night, they had two guitarists (one on classical and one of a traditional Portuguese kind of guitar) and two amazing singers who performed fado, a traditional Portuguese style of music whose name means fate. The music is beautiful--very melancholy and sensual. It felt like that scene from "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" where they're at the guitar concert in Barca...except there were no Spaniards asking to take us to Oviedo. Just a lovely Portuguese waiter who spoke with us in French.

After spending nearly 3 hours in the restaurant (and 12 hours away from Joao's) we decided we had put off returning for far too long, and made our way home.

Sometime during that day, we had come to the conclusion that we needed to leave Lisbon rather than stay another day and night there, and booked the hostel for an extra night in Faro. We looked up an internet cafe in the guidebook, and walked for about an hour and a half--in circles--trying to find it. We found the Irish pub (to which we later paid a visit), some weird installation art, and a group of twenty-odd twenty-somethings, blowing whistles as hard as their lungs would let them, and when we FINALLY found the internet cafe, it looked as if it had been abandoned for at least five years. Not even closed, just straight-up abandoned. Like thick layer of dust, old computers still on tables, cups and glasses still in the cupboard abandoned. Thanks, Europe on a Shoestring Budget. We headed back towards the Lisbon visitors center, another hotspot, booked the hostel for another night in Faro, and figured out the earliest train to get outta Lisbon.

When we got back to Joao's, we were surprised to see that no one was home, and we packed up our stuff and hit the hay--almost literally--in peace. Kaz and I slept inside again, and Kili and Ash took the tent outdoors. Maybe about 45 minutes after we turned out the light, the buzzer on the door started ringing. I tried to ignore it at first, but whoever it was was pretty insistent on being let in. When I finally did get up, it turned out to be a girl and a guy, probably just a little but younger than myself. I asked if they were new couchsurfers, and they said no, that they had requested to surf but Joao told them his house was full, but they should stop by to say hi anyway.

Standing in a dimly lit hallway, I apologized for being in my pajamas (our group had to get an early start and I had been sleeping...) and explained that no one was home but maybe they could stop by tomorrow or something. I hoped that would get rid of them, but instead they stood around in awe, staring and asking weird questions:

"So what's Joao like?"
-He's pretty cool. Really chill and welcoming. (Please go away)
"Is that his computer?"
-Yep, there it is. (Obviously it's his computer. Are you done asking inane questions yet?)
"So this is all free?"
-Oh yeah. (You don't actually think I would PAY to live/sleep like this, do you?)
"So what's it like here?"
-It's pretty cool--there's people here from all over, so it's pretty cool to meet people. (I've never felt dirtier in my life, even after a week long camping vacation and a subsequent midnight dip in mercury-ridden Bellingham Bay...)

About 25 minutes after I told them I had been sleeping, they finally decided to leave, and I was able to crawl back into my sleeping bad and tried to go back to sleep.

A few hours later, Kaz and I were woken up by lights and loud voices, and an older woman with a deep voice asked abruptly, "Who's sleeping here?" several times before Kaz and I realized what was going on. Karen sat up and said, "Karen and Ashley" to which the deep-voiced woman replied, "Karen?". Karen said yes, and then the deep-voiced woman said, "Okay, well I'll just hang out here then" and walked back into the kitchen. A bit confused, we went back to sleep, only to be woken up a few hours later by Joao and the rest of the couchsurfers when they stumbled back from the bars in the wee hours, after which very little sleep was had by all.

In the morning, Kaz and I woke up to find 3 or 4 other couchsurfers passed out on mattresses around us, and Ashley on the "emergency bed" (some blankets over crates...) where she had moved to during the night because she got food poisoning and needed to be closer to a bathroom. We packed up all of our stuff, made a quick stop at a Portuguese pharmacy to get Ash meds before heading to the train to get the eff out of Lisbon.

Don't get me wrong. I really like Joao and he was a gracious host. He's the kind of guys who needs couchsurfers, who needs new and different people around. I can appreciate that, and I can also (for a short period of time) appreciate and share his grungy hippy lifestyle. But when it's raining in Lisbon and I have nowhere to escape to other than Joao's dirty kitchen, I just can't hack it.

Next stop: Faro, on the southern coast. Bring on the beach and the sun. And a hostel, where I can step in my room barefoot without fear of contracting a disease.

Faro: Where Sex on the Beach isn't just a bad Drink...

The train ride through the Portugal countryside was stunning--a lot of it was just inland from the western Atlantic coast, and there were stretches of sand dunes with a specific type of tree growing in them that reminded me of the Oregon coast. Ashley was still getting over her food poisoning, and we were all still cranky from a crappy couple of nights in Lisbon. I don't know if I have ever been happier to walk into a hostel than I was when we walked into our digs in Faro. The hostel was really more of a bed and breakfast than a hostel--just a home converted into 7 or so guest rooms, 4 bathrooms, and a kitchen. We stayed in Faro for three days and four nights. Not much to report from here--we spent a few sleepy days there, catching up on lost sleep from Lisbon, being clean, sleeping on the beach, and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. My trip to Portugal marked the first time I have seen the Atlantic, which is huge and powerful and amazing, and so different from the Pacific. It's hard to explain the difference, because obviously both of them are powerful, but the Pacific Ocean is just so pacific. Yeah, I'm really articulate. It's weird that I'll be living right next to that ocean next fall.

Highlights from Faro include: Kili and Ashley (not me...) eating at McDonald's, and the touchy-feely Polish couple actually having sex on the beach. Next stop: Malaga. Exotic Malaga.

Malaga: Where the Waists are Small and the Curves are Kickin'

We spent about 12 hours traveling from Faro to Malaga--we left the hostel for an 9am train, spent about 4 hours on a bus to Seville, spent 3 or 4 hours in Seville, and then spent almost another 4 on a bus from Seville to Malaga. What little we saw of Seville was beautiful--lots of greenery and these lovely smelling trees that looked like over-grown wisteria. We missed our first bus in Seville because we didn't realize that the time changed between Portugal and Spain, so we whiled away the hour or so playing 20 questions (the kicker: telegraph. Try and guess that in 20 questions or less) and talking shit about pigeons. We got to the hostel in Malaga late at night, and went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant--the first real meal that we'd had in days. We'd been subsisting on bread, cheese, sandwich meat, fruits & veggies, and 1 euro soup in Portugal. Too tired to do much else after travelling so much, we read for a bit and passed out.

I think we've all agreed that Malaga was one of the top places we've visited so far--I loved Malaga so much. It is an absolutely gorgeous city. Kili said the gardens and parks in Malaga reminded her of the ones back home in Hawaii. It smelled amazing, and there were flowers in bloom everywhere. We spent the morning and part of the afternoon of our one day in Malaga wandering around the city--poor travellers' favorite past-time--and found a really cool terraced garden leading up to the city's castle/fortress. We spent some time in the center finding gifts for people, and walked almost the whole length of Malaga's beach looking for a good spot to sit in the sun. The beach was unfortunately under constrution while we were there (it looked kind of contaminated anyway...) so we had to settle for a bench on the boardwalk instead. We went back to the hostel in the late afternoon, after picking up dinner supplies (a total fiasco: I tried to make spaghetti, but Karen asked the butcher for ground pork instead of ground beef, and then instead of salt I added baking soad. I don't speak Spanish. It kind of tasted like barbecued spaghetti.) and spent the rest of the evening at the hostel.

We stayed in the Melting Pot hostel there, and it's honestly the best hostel I've ever stayed in--absolutely ideal. Cheap, clean, really friendly staff, pretty small so it's easy to meet people. The lounge areas were great, the kitchen was great. The building that it's in is really amazing, too. It's in a residential area backed up against a hillside, so you climb up a bunch of stairs before getting to the building. There is a terrace with beautiful blue flowers and their ridiculously tropical plants and a we had stunning view of the Mediterranean. After dinner, we played cards with some Australians and a couple of other English people, one of whom in exchanging work at the hostel for an extended (free) stay. He knows Malaga pretty well since he's been around for a while, and so when "quiet hours" hit at the hostel at 11:30, he took us to a really cool local bar that played slamming tunes all night (a mixture of reggae, swing, funk, and anything you can dance to), where we were the only tourists in the bar and where I am fairly certain that I was the first and only specimen of Blondus Maximus many of them had ever seen.

We spent the next morning in the sun on the terrace before checking out around midday. We were all sad to see Malaga and our amazing hostel go, but hopefully Granada will be a good end to our holiday before heading back to Perps early Sunday morning.

Granada: Where the Old Man Tapped my Breast and the Drunken Men Serenaded Us...

The first day in Granada totally sucked. We got in relatively early because the city is only a hop skip and a jump away from Malaga. The bus station was in a really weird out of the way neighborhood and it turns out our hostel was, too. We spent almost 13 euros on a taxi just to get to the hostel, which turned out to be a total bust despite its great rating on the hostel booking website. It wasn't really much of a hostel, either--despite some sad-looking saggy couches in the "lounge"--it was much more like a budget hotel. While we were checking in, a woman was checking out a few days early because her room was small, damp, and cold. Bad chat. When we walked into our room, there were three single beds and one double bed actually touching sides, a small table, and a closet that was blocked by the fourth bed. The bathroom door didn't shut at all, the showerhead sprayed water over the side of the bathtub, and there was no toilet paper in the room. Ashley also pointed out that the hotel looked a lot like some of the shots of the hotel in the Shining, so we spent two days croaking "redrum" and expecting two little girls to be standing at the end of the hall asking to play with us. I was kind of glad that the bathroom door didn't shut.

We walked around Granada a bit that first day, ate some crappy pasta in a crappy restaurant, saw the center, and generally felt cold, grumpy, and ridiculously skint. We walked grudgingly back to the "hostel" and were asleep by nine.

The next day, we woke really early to visit the Alhambra, which was absolutely amazing. Kili and I realized that the palaces were used in some of the shots for the movie The Fall. The architecture and intricacy of the designs were stunning, and the gardens were beautiful, too. SO much green, especially after living in dry Perps for so many months. It reminded me of Washington a bit, actually. I'll post pictures (not from my camera, obv, but stolen photos from the other girls) soon, hopefully. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel and had a nap. Too much excitement.

In the afternoon, we headed back into the center, and found a street lined with tapas restaurants that were filled with locals. There were men dressed in cow suits and groups of girls wearing silly hats. We later found out that everyone from Barcelona holds their bachelor and bachelorette parties in Granada--we must have seen about ten different groups of drunken people (one group of which saw Kili, Ashley, and I sitting on a bench, serenaded us with a Spanish song, jumped up and down, and then told us we were the most beautiful things that they had ever seen and thanked us for our presence in broken English before wandering away singing). The tapas was amazing, but the drunk old man who tapped my breast was not.

After tapas, we wandered around some shops for a while, bought some gifts for people back home, and started to watch a street performer in a square just outside of one of the city's cathedrals. He reminded me of Johnny Depp's character from the movie Benny and Joon. He was actually hilarious--the funniest street performer I have ever, ever seen. His performance was kind of Charlie Chaplin-esque, playing off the passers-by, and creating a movie scenario from some of the spectators.

After the performance, we walked back towards the hostel, and ate dinner at one of the most authentic Mexican restaurants that I think exists in Europe. I was the happiest. 100% happy. Mexican food! I never thought I would have it for my whole time here. I would say I am speechless, but clearly I am not.

I am back in Perps now, getting ready for the last two weeks of work. Less than 24 hours of teaching those brats left.

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

I'm off to sun in Portugal and Spain. Good-bye, good-bye!