Independencia!

Dear journal,

We seem to have taken a horrible wrong turn on our way to Barcelona...

Despite the chilly weather, I am not taking any chances with sun safety...

We got into our hostel at around 2 a.m., and despite our late arrival, the girl at reception figured it would be the perfect time to give us a 25-minute walkthrough of everything there was to do in Barcelona by covering in pen the comically oversized piano map of the city we carried around for the next few days.

The next morning we went to the amazing Bouqueria Market, which was incredible; bustling with people, and crammed tightly with vendors of practically everything, a maze of awninged alleyways hung with strings of sausages and great hocks of meat, lined with ice cascades full of colourful fish, shoppes with high-piled displays of bright candies, fruits, and exotic spices, and full of small, steam-filled kiosks peddling kebabs.  The food was all delicious, and it was one of the first places in my travels that has felt truly foreign– exciting, different, alive with a local flavour that made me truly feel I was in a different country, far from home.

lol

Our first night in Barcelona, we decided, had to be exciting.  So, we decided to go to one of Barcelona's infamous mega-nightclubs, which notoriously don't get bumpin' until after 2 a.m.  The place we went to was called Razzamatazz, and despite its terrible name, was not a gay club (although the distinction between "European" and gay fashion may be too subtle for a plaid-wearing schlub like me to appreciate, so who knows?).

The club was cavernous, with multiple rooms across multiple floors, each one with a different DJ spinning a different genre of music.  They even played "Debaser" by the Pixies and I peed a little.

This way to heaven.

The woman at reception had recommended a part of the beach removed from the main area, which she said was less crowded.  When we got there, we noticed there were a lot of nude dudes (sick band name, btw), either lying on their stomach with their plump, sunburnt buttocks held aloft in salutation, or walking around tugging absentmindedly at their dangling wieners.  Somewhat disheartened, Saringer and I stopped at a beach bar to grab a beer, which we soon noticed was a gay bar, with muscular servers and videos of shirtless men on the TVs, and a DJ spinning trance music.

Come to notice it, this whole area of the beach seemed rather gay– there were men laying together, there were some holding hands– in fact, there was a couple literally lying on top of one another right over there. I suddenly began to wonder if the woman at the hostel had recommended this place because she thought Saringer and I were a couple...

On our last night in Barcelona, we headed to the Born district for drinks and tapas.  As we left one bar for another, our attention was drawn by the cries of a torch-wielding procession marching down the Passeig del Born, chanting slogans for Catalan independence.  "Independencia!" they cried.  They cried some other stuff, too–they had a whole catchphrase going–but this was the only word we recognized.  But no matter!– tonight, they were our revolutionary brothers and sisters!  "Independencia!" we shouted along with them, rallying in the wave of esprit de la revolution as they passed with their banners and flames, Catalan flags draped round their shoulders.  This was our moment!  The world could ignore our voices no longer!  Take that, Oppression!

FUCKING BLOODTHIRSTY PROTESTER

There are few luxuries a traveler enjoys, between miniature towels, showers with palmfuls of handsoap and pilfered shampoo, budget breakfasts, and stiff hostel mattresses.  But there is an important one: non-commitment.  The ability to see a place with the freedom to fall in love with it or discard it casually, versus those who are bound there, and must accept it as home.  To become a revolutionary for a night, then head to the bar, and fly out the next morning.

Holland, 2012

Amsterdam has the type of weather I like best: the sunshine is warm, while the air is cool–almost chilly– and the leaves rustle, and the days taste faintly of Fall; it's the type of weather that reminds me of my childhood. One afternoon, we spent an hour lazing at Rembrantpleine, and as I lay on the grass looking up the clouds slowly gathering high overhead, it was clear that Fall was coming soon, and I wondered if that was a profound metaphor or something.

Mike and I had met up in London, where we stayed at the Green Man Hostel, which was effectively just an all-hours pub with beds upstairs.  The pub/hostel seemed like a fantastic concept in principle, until I found myself lying in bed, kept awake by late-night drunken karaoke that sounded like the banshee ghost of Cyndi Lauper tearfully choking out a white-girl-wasted lament for her lost career.

Passing through Speaker's Corner, we saw a very impassioned dude deliver an incredibly xenophobic rant against the world at large.  He railed against Muslims, the Queen, and spoke of how Saddam was "A very brave man."  So I went over to the nearby Muslim outreach table to pick up a free pocket Qur'an, and got to feel "enlightened" in a self-satisfied white-college-liberal kind of way.

After the madness of London, and nearly a month of the hustle-and-bustle life of a tourist, Amsterdam was a nice change of pace. We stayed there for five days, and explored the city slowly, enjoying its beauty, the kindness of the people there, and lots of fried food and touristy photo-ops–

Stuck.

I was first introduced to Anne Frank obliquely, through the amazing album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, which was inspired after lead singer Jeff Magnum read her diary. If you haven't heard this album, why am I even friends with you?  Go listen to it now.

After seeing Dachau, Anne's house had added resonance, and after hearing the man at Speaker's Corner, it seemed that the lessons of her story were just as relevant today as they were 68 years ago.  I'm reading her diary now, and finding a lot of it unexpectedly pertinent to myself.  Not just because I'm basically a 23 year-old teenager, but also because of Anne's ongoing discussion of identity, her unending, merciless self-examination, and relentless efforts to improve herself.

As she reflects, "To be honest, I can't imagine how anyone could say 'I'm weak' and then stay that way. If you know that about yourself, why not fight it? Why not develop your character?" (July 6, 1944).  We all know people who are stuck in their ways, endlessly talking of some project they're perpetually intending to start soon–that screenplay, those salsa lessons, that blog entry–but which they never seem to get around to.  Who are stuck in the same job, or the same relationship, or the same city, apparently unable to take the first step in changing a situation they dislike, or to change themselves as they intend.

We found the beer.

Hell, for all my globe-trotting, and (occasional) indulgence in sweeping, grandiose philosophizing, I'm probably still one of those people.  My friends joke that most of what I do is perpetually in "pre-production."  But I'm actively seeking to change, and hopefully have finally taken the first step in that process.

I still haven't gotten around to reading that pocket Qu'ran...

Seduction eyes.

Anne further discusses how there seems to be an irreconcilable difference between the public and private self– the joker she pretends to be, and the serious, contemplative Anne within.  Kind of like the duality of Amsterdam itself, with its elegant Old Word charm pocked with gaudy rasta paraphernalia.  It's a dichotomy we all struggle with– for all the careful thought we put into how we act around others, the self we project usually isn't an accurate advertisement for the person we really are on an intimate level.  Who we wish we could be all of the time, instead of just when we're alone.

The search for one's true self is thus a complicated one that seeks to tune out the influence of others, yet is inevitably reactive to them. As Anne perfectly summates, "I keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if... If only there were no other people in the world" (final entry, August 1, 1944).

"If Anyone Can Beat Me, No One Can Beat Me"

By the time we picked up Amanda outside Glasgow, Karl had begun narrating his gear changes. "Nyaaaaahhh third gear, nyaaaaaahhhh... and into fourth gear!" Eleven hours in traffic from Oxford to Glasgow can... do things to a man.

We had rented a standard transmission versus an automatic at Karl's insistence, despite the fact that he'd only ever practiced in one three times, and the bulk of my standard transmission experience consisted of puttering an old equipment cart full of lawn mowers around a golf course last summer. To his head-swelling credit, though, I am alive to write this.

That night, we went to a church that had been inspirationally converted into a pub, and met Amanda's entertainingly racist Jordanian friend Nadia, who told me I looked Japanese on account of my "squinty eyes." Of the many comments my ivory complexion has evoked over the years, this was certainly a first.

The next morning, we set out to conquer Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK, which I felt eminently qualified to do after having already triumphantly surmounted the mountains of Neuschwanstein in Germany. The hike was beautiful-- we ate Amanda's amazing sandwiches for lunch by a waterfall, and stopped for a drink at a nearby lake--

It was cold.

As we neared the top, we noticed a series of cairns that had been built by other hikers over the ages. I decided I wanted to add the highest stone to each. Ever the douchebag strategist, I devised to choose stones that no one else could balance anything on top of without Jenga-ing the entire pile, at which point Karl summarized my "Napoleonic" strategy with the immortal Ringo-esque malapropism, "If anyone can beat me, no one can beat me!"

Then it began to get quite cold.  And while I did pack some warm clothes for my trip-- my waterproof jacket and sweater came in especially handy when the rains descended upon us-- I more-or-less packed for summer, so certain improvisations had to be made, such as wrapping my pajama pants around my face as a sort of slipshod pashmina scarf, with a pair of socks on each hand as makeshift mittens.

Squinty eyes

The top of the mountain was beautiful- rays of sun reached down from the clouds, gently gilding the valley below, the horizon so far away that it seemed to tilt vertiginously from one end of the sky to the other as you looked at it; thick fog drifted preternaturally amidst the eerie ruins of the old mountain observatory, and Macbeth's tortured specter wandered forlornly though the mist; Karl immediately rushed to pee off the side of the mountain.

 

Indeed, the amazing views made it hard not to get a little meditative...

In between taunting the sheep, David Bowie singalongs, enjoying Pichini's paninis, and endless Michael Caine impersonations, we tried something interesting: caricaturing ourselves. Karl proceeded to brag about his peerless standard-transmission driving skills, and I grandiloquently soliloquized about the "sprawling, verdant sylvan hillsides." Parody and reality blended precariously as I began diligently applying sunscreen on the frigid mountainside the moment the clouds parted.

"Max Applying Sunscreen" could be its own photo album by now.

The idea of caricaturing oneself made me think about identity, and how it is we come to be moulded by the people and places we know into a specific character or persona, and I got to thinking (again) about how it is that people change. How is it that we can escape these archetypes and roles that have been created for us (usually with our complicity), and the layers of habit and stereotype that accrue until they become our characters, and we actually do become caricatures of ourselves?

If we travel to lose ourselves so that we may find ourselves again, maybe the answer lies in the pieces of yourself you choose to use or not use as a way of getting back to "you"-- your trail of breadcrumbs through the forest.

So now I just have to get lost. I'm supposed to be good at that.