First Look: Cairo

My first glimpse of Cairo looked like this:



That is, the car that the hotel driver brought to the airport ran out of oil halfway back to Cairo. I sat in the car, on a busy street, as other cars whizzed by. I got out after a while, thinking that if someone hit the car, I didn’t really want to be in it. The driver finally showed up in a taxi, bearing a plastic jug full of oil.

My flight had been late, and the driver had been later, because he’d been wandering around the airport looking for me.

“Taxi? I give you good price.”

“No, thank you. Someone is waiting for me.”

“But they are not here.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

He finally showed up and whisked me onto the parking lot shuttle bus. Madam, your oil-free chariot awaits!

And She's Off

I guess I should admit it—it wasn't the wheelie bag's fault that I hated or broke it.

It was that I am carrying way too much crap for my two-month stay in Cairo. The external work hard drive, the Arabic language book, clothing suited for an office—it all barely fit in my new wheeled duffel. And lowering that down the five ancient flights of broken stairs in my Raval apartment building was painful, though its svelte(r) profile WAS easier to manage than a boxy suitcase.

I reckon I was clever about it. I packed and dragged the bag to the airport last night, stored it in a locker, and reclaimed it this morning along with my carry-on. This way I only had one bag to manage, and was able to do it when the trains were open.

This morning, at 4:30, I threw what was left in the carry-on and trekked up to the stop for the Night Bus. Should I walk through El Raval and Las Ramblas or take the long way around up the safe streets? The old city has its share of thieves and muggers at night, looking to prey on the drunk. And I was carrying two passports, a laptop, an iPod, several hundred dollars, a digital camera, and a copy of Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik. Maybe they wouldn't be so keen on the latter but the rest would make quite a haul.

I walked the long way.

Alitalia took me out of Barcelona, via Milan. Cairo awaits. Here's a dirty little secret I should not admit in public. (My apologies to those who love it.)

I don't even like Cairo. Its traffic, pollution, and touts are annoying. I've been grabbed and (attemped)hustled by men there more than anywhere in the world. And here I go, off to live there. Oh, joy.

Too Much Xocolata

Once, in 2004, my pal Lynne and I ducked into a cafe on Ramblas. We were tired and just looking to rest and have a hot drink. I got a coffee. She ordered a hot chocolate.

Uh... whoa. What the hell is that?

Turns out that xocolata is a specialty of Barcelona.

It's chilly here today in January of 2007, so I wanted a hot drink. I checked with Barcelona & xocolata aficionado Jeff for his favorite hot chocolate drinking place and headed over.

Here's what I got:



This stuff packs a wallop.In 2005, a UK newspaper writer described it as the "heart-attack inducing impact of the drinking chocolate."

The xocolata was delicious but I couldn't finish it. I couldn't even get halfway through it. Afterwards, I felt such a sugar-rush I had to make an emergency falafel stop to offset the sickening feeling of having consumed too much sugar on an empty stomach.

Here's one blogger's opinion on the best hot chocolate in Barcelona. Jeff agrees with most of these. I'm not sure I could work my way through the list to find out.

Trailer for Sale or Rent

It's Sunday, a big day for rotisserie chicken and chips here in Spain. I hoped to find some, but didn't have the energy to go down to the Mediterranean to HM's favorite cheapie. I paced the streets of the old quarter instead, hoping to find a good lunch spot.

But it's Sunday, and Spain is closed on Sunday, except for restaurants overflowing with families and friends out for a meal.

What a great idea, to set aside Sunday for family and rest.

Unless you're alone.

Looking in at all those friends and families, laughing and enjoying each other's company, I was reminded of an email I got from the Other Marie a few days ago.

"I can't help but be a little jealous. I always thought I'd be the one out there doing what you're doing. But I remember how lonely it is."

The Other Marie was born in Scotland, grew up in Italy, and spent a few years in Spain along the way. She administered study abroad programs for a major student-exchange organization for years and now does it at a university in upstate New York, where she lives with her husband and two kids.

It's so good to have someone just get it without even saying anything. That's one thing that is so great about the Other Marie. I didn't even complain and she knew.

Yes, it's lonely living this way. Being a transient has its good points, of course. Not everyone gets sent to Egypt to set up a comic book company, or runs off to Uganda to live in the jungle with a man they met in Sudan. Or has a flat they rent sometimes--in Spain.

But the problem with being a worker-nomad is that you aren't quite here, and aren't quite there. Your friends at home have lives, which continue on without you, to where you just aren't a part of them anymore. The transient friends you meet on the road are temps, mostly, and after a while you can't even be bothered to make new ones. Your best friend is rectangular and white and has backlighting.

When I was in Barcelona this past spring, I met my-then beau here. He was abruptly recalled by the factory a short time later, but we had a lovely visit before his warranty expired. And when I lived here in 2004, my pal Lynne was working just up the coast in Mataro, and HM visited for about three weeks total of the 90 days that I was here. And Fiona came to visit once, as did Nikki. When Nikki arrived, we rented a car and drove up and down the coast. Nothing lonely about that trip.

And this time, when I bought my ticket with a stopover in Barcelona, it didn't occur to me that I didn't know anyone here.

Oops.

I'm not saying I'd rather I had a normal job and no passport. Just that for all the excitement of a life on the road, it has its downsides. Loneliness and alienation are par for the course, the price one pays for the ability to move freely without responsibilities at home.

Am I saying I dislike living this way? Not at all. It isn't really up to me any longer. Fate cornered me. I fought it for a while, but it gave me a headache. Resistance is futile. If I weren't here, I'd wish I were.

Scooters Galore

I'm always stunned by how many scooters there are in Barcelona. There are thousands of them buzzing around. Sometimes I like it, because it looks like a fun way to get around. Other times, the combined noise of a bazillion scooters is just plain annoying.

Gaudi & New Socks: Perfect Together

Being in the inspiring city of Barcelona does not, unfortunately, exempt me from performing uninspiring chores.

On Thursday, I trekked out to Carrefour to buy socks. Yesterday, I got a (lousy) haircut, bought a universal sink plug at the hardware store (my third, but the others are in NJ), got a .90 euro plug adapter for my work external hard drive (another one for the collection, though I’d remembered to bring along the UK-Egypt adapter), and this morning I had to cut my toenails (very exciting, but when the toe next to it gets bloody and gouged from the toenail, it’s time to act) and do laundry (then hang it out the 5th story window on the rolling clothesline).

But at least I get to do it in Barcelona, where the normal buildings are pretty nice and the nice buildings are right out of fairy tales.

What's that Word?

In 2004, I lived up in the chi-chi part of town for a month before fleeing doormen and upscale living to Raval, a place more my speed. Herr Marlboro came to visit then, and he became obsessed with this building, which he called “the egg.”

That’s not how I would describe this building. Was it a language difficulty? (H.M. spoke German as a first language.) No, everyone knows the English word for what this building should be nicknamed. But H.M. was bizarrely polite and old-fashioned in some ways.

Me, I was a little more interested in what was down the street from the building. A churros stand! Yummy. Those are like doughnuts, but instead of being round, they are long and straight, like “the egg.” In New York, guys sell churros from wheeled carts at Union Square subway station.

Not Flicka!

I wonder what this place sells.

Leaner, Meaner Wheelie

Here it is, my new wheelie bag!

My hope is that I will get along better with something more narrow and tall, rather than a square. I think it will be harder to destroy this one as in theory it should be more manageable on stairs. (Is my subconscious actually discussing men? What are the stairs a metaphor for?)

I really wanted the 195 euro Mandarina Duck one. It was a work of art (I am exaggerating but it's nice). But 3 out of 3 travel writers surveyed destroyed their first "real" suitcases, and one of those clobbered her second as well, so I thought perhaps this "Boomerang" (the house brand) wheeled duffel from El Corte Ingles would be a good test model.

Why? Because it was 39 euros. If I'm going to destroy another case, let's make it a cheap one.

Working Girl

crack. snap.

I shuddered. The woman who had just sat down at the next workstation habitually cracked her knuckles.

Would it be rude to ask her to cut that out? This is a library! You’re not supposed to make noise. How do you say “knuckles” in Spanish? Not a clue.

She’d sat next to me yesterday too. I guess she also has a lot of work.

Yes, I’m in Barcelona. But no, I’m not on holiday. I'm not roaming the streets of the Old City, stopping for shopping and coffee. I wake up in the mornings and commute a few blocks (on foot) to the library. My library card gets me through the door and onto the wi-fi. I then proceed to work all day.

Which, as you may already be aware, is no way to live. And it does not jive with my new plan to stop taking on more work than I can handle and refuse any work that is not either 1) my primary job or 2) somehow beneficial to me personally (not only financially, which is how I got into this overcommitted mess in the first place).

I still have to finish last year’s commitments. Which all take time. Lots and lots of time. It's cutting seriously into my real job, but I'm trying hard to sneak in bits of real-job along the way. I can upload while I write, but I can't upload while I research (I use a buggy virtual hard drive that can't walk and chew gum at the same time).

The library is not a bad place to work, if one must spend ten days in Barcelona chained to a desk. It’s warm here, the wi-fi is free, and there are public toilets within the complex. The only problem is that my card only admits me six times, so I cannot leave for lunch unless I want my card punched again. I starve instead, until sometime after six, when I am so hungry I can’t function. Then I race out of the library and eat the first unhealthy-but-hot thing I see.

I know what everyone would say. You're in Barcelona! Live a little. But it's not a vacation. It's my life. I have to work just like you. The only difference is the surroundings as I walk home from work to my little apartment.

I know working all the time isn't much of a life, whether it's in Barcelona, Jersey City, or Kuwait. Michael Kraiger told me he'd read an article about people who had changed their lives.

"You mean people who have done things like sell their homes, quit their jobs, and gone around the world for a year without airplanes, and then become authors?"

Point taken, I expect. Lifestyle changes do not equal Cinderella-esque results. My prince is not stuck in traffic. Money does not fall from the sky once you follow your dreams.

Give me another week. The end is not in sight but it's just around the bend.