Friday November 1, 2002 Greetings from Malaga! It has been a while since I've updated. Two days ago, I flew in from London. I connected with a guy from the UK, and found the youth hostel here. The weather has been simply beautiful, in the high 80s today. The flight from London left very early in the morning, so by mid-afternoon when we had checked in to the hostel, all we could do was make for the beach. Such a life. Yesterday I did a bit more sightseeing. The modern town is relatively ugly, very centrally planned. Thank you Generalissimo Franco. The old town is neat. I climbed a long way uphill to two very old Moorish forts, with great views to the sea. There is a guy with an ice cream stand making a killing from sweaty tourists staggering up the hill. Later on, I drifted by the Plaza del Toros (bullring), where nothing is planned for the near future, and on to the beach. The company has been good here, a bunch of backpackers, and I can order beer in Spanish. Tapas are good, and they are rightfully proud of the Jamon ahumedo (smoked ham). Especially after London, Spain seems cheap, two nights at the hostel cost me 25 Euro (1 Euro is exactly 1 American dollar). Hmm. What else. More beach today, the hottest day yet. It is also a holiday here, Todo Santos (All Saints), lots more people on the streets and beach. I distinctly remember being in Florence a year ago today. The weather here is definitely warmer. The natives may be slightly less beautiful. The traffic is loud, but tonight we change rooms at the hostel, to a courtyard-facing room, should be quieter. Tomorrow a day trip to Ronda, I think, then probably moving on, to Granada. Unless something better happens.

Saturday November 2, 2002. Day trip to Ronda, hill town, on a cliff, cleaved in two by a river in a gorge. Very cool.

Monday November 4, 2002. Granada. Visit La Alhambra, the Moorish fort/palace and "The most sensual building in Europe. A few too many tourists for my taste. Granada is cool, the Albacìn neighborhood especially.

Tuesday, November 5, 2002 It is Cordoba today. On to Sevillia tomorrow, Madrid after that. The Mezquita here in Cordoba is amazing, a thousand year old Mosque, incredibly beautiful, that was basically destroyed by the Catholics when the reconquest took place. It has a renaissance church built into the middle of it. Really strange. I must run. Time flies... P..

Wednesday November 6, 2002. AVE train to Sevillia. Hostel is out of town, but quiet and nice. Sevillia is fascinating, indescribably different than all of the above. More touristed, but still very genuine. Flamenco bar at night, La Carbonaria. Mostly students and tourists, still fun.

Thursday November 7, 2002. Sevillia. The cathedral is supposed to be bigger than St. Peters (Rome) or St. Paul's (London). It is huge. I also walked out along the river a long way, to take some pictures and admire a pair of modernist bridges. The second one makes the Sunshine Skyway look positively clunky. I hope the photos turn out. Hard to believe this is in the city with the Ancient Barrio Santa Cruz. Flamenco again, with different people. I think the place survives on tourists thinking they are the only tourists there, when, in reality, everyone is. Cervesas.

Friday November 8, 2002. AVE (Very fast train, Spain's only really express route) from Sevillia to Madrid. Check in at hostel, surprisingly friendly and quiet. Perhaps it is because the street outside is under construction. Neighborhood a bit dodgy, but really close to everything. Shopping at El Corte Inglés. They really mean a department store. Like 200 departments. Meijer ought to visit. Great groceries.

Saturday November 9, 2002. (Today) Churros y chocolate for breakfast, on to Il Prado. Incredible museum. El Greco is really amazing. I may have found a new favorite painting. Other stuff good too, Goya, Velasquez, et al. I must go to Toledo to see the other Il Greco stuff.

Monday, November 11, 2002 Hi everybody. So I'm still in Madrid. I think it is raining outside, the first time in quite a while. I'm in an EasyInternetCafe. Everything is Home Depot Orange, actually the color of all of the Easy companies, easyJet, easyCar... you get the idea. I have been to these Internet cafes in 4 countries now, and they are the cheapest and fastest places to get online. Last night I saw a production of Handel's "Julius Caesar (in Egypt)." Of course, here he is Gulio. The production was at Teatro Real, the royal opera house here. It was well done, sung in Italian with supertitles in Español. A co-pro with Bologna, it was typical retro-classical-eurotrash. The lighting was the usual European mush of toplight. I think I'm being too hard on it. The theatre was beautiful, a 200 or so year old building heavily renovated recently. They kept the horseshoe shape but cut the columns dividing the boxes to improve sightlines. It was very well done. It seems to be quite a nice space. It sounded good, but the opera itself is Baroque, just not my favorite sound. After the show, I met a friend from the hostel and we went out for paella and sangria. A liter of sangria was 8 euros. Today I visited the third of Madrid's art museum triumvirate, "Renia Sofia" it is the modern art one, and home to some great stuff. Most famous, deservedly so for Picasso's "Guernica." The museum was strong in Spanish modernists, with rooms of Picasso, Dali and Miro. It was inspiring, I have a concept I'm working on now for an installation piece. We will see what develops...Oy, my time runs short... I will have to finish up. Cheers and adios-

Tuesday November 12, 2002. I visited, as a day trip, the ancient city of Toledo. Nothing like Ohio. An hour out of Madrid by train, it is an interesting city, and smack on the Tourist trail. Perhaps this was the reason that I simply didn't fall in love with the place. You can barely turn around without hitting a sword or letter-opener made of Genuine Toledo Steel. I was reminded of the Toledo letter opener that used to be in my Grandma Hofmann's little desk. I saw its brothers by the hundreds. The weather also wasn't the best, it was cooler than I have had yet in Spain. The town is famous for the work of El Greco, but everything seemed too profit oriented. At one point I paid 1.20 euro to see one painting. Admission to the Prado is only 3. And I just wasn't impressed by the artwork as I should have been. I might have been better served returning to the Prado. However, it was really nice to get out of the big city, and see some hills and countryside. I was traveling with a friend, and we had a good lunch. We were having a good time until the ATM ate his card. Seeing as his bank is in Australia, this is a bit of a problem. I learned a valuable lesson, never to withdrawal money with the bank closed. The people on the phone assistance were less than helpful. I returned to Madrid, where I met my Brazilian friend, Jorge, returned from Salamanca for cervesas.

Wednesday November 13, 2002. This morning, I got my act together and pulled out of Madrid. I rode the metro all the way up to Chamartin, the north/east bound train station. I bought a ticket on the 10:55 train to Barcelona. Madrid to Barcelona is a long ride, we pulled in to Estacion Sants at 18:10. Fortunately I had books and food with me. At Sants, I turned around and caught a Regional train, another hour and a half ride, to Figueres. As I had expected, the youth Hostel was no longer in existence. Plan B, witch worked out nicely, was to get a room at a hotel. I paid 15 euro for a private room with 2 single beds, albeit on the 4th (American 5th) floor. I was paying 13 a night in Madrid, and having to share the room with the same bathroom down the hall. Unfortunately, the city of Figueres keeps more northern European hours, and most everything was closed by the time I was looking for dinner. I did eat something, and headed to bed.

Thursday November 14, 2002. The real reason for visiting Figueres, the Dalí. Salvador Dalí was born here, and lived much of his life in the region. He created his own museum the "Museu Dalí" in the burned out ruins of the city's municipal theatre. The place is the largest surrealistic object in the world. Filled with crazy stuff, it was a real treat. Most of my experience with Dali previously had been the melting clocks and such. There was so much more here. The portrait of Mae West, exploded as furniture to fill a whole room. Stand in one spot and look through a lens, and the portrait resolves. Amazing. Check out their homepage for more. The best part about it was that Dalí created it himself, and his mind is at work throughout. The rest of the day, I whiled away. I had some dinner, read my book. Not much action in Figueres. It was nice to relax a bit.

Friday November 15, 2002. I woke up with no hurry this morning. I took a shower in the slightly strange bathroom. There was more hot water today than yesterday. A good thing. The people that run the hotel are really nice, and also run a cafe downstairs. I had my usual Cafe con Leche, said Adios, and headed for the train to Barcelona. An hour and 45 minutes later, we pulled into Sants station. Like a pro, I transferred to the subway, located my Hostel and checked in. I had lunch on the Rambla del Mar, and checked out the harbor close to town. I wandered (or I suppose, rambled) La Ramblas, and looked in at the Cathedral. While eating some Falafel at one of the ubiquitous stands, I met a pair of Americans and a Finn, and had an enjoyable evening, making it into some of Barcelona's more suspect bars.

Saturday, November 16, 2002. Quite an active day today, I took the cable car up Montjuïc, checked out the fort. Made my way downhill to the Olympic Stadium. I visited the superb Fundació Joan Miró. Alexander Calder's mercury fountain is something ethereal and wonderful. The Palace/Catalunya (MNAC) Museu was very good, but came at the end of a long day. I did appreciate the genius of Pavelló Mies van der Rohe. Another night at Gothic Point Hostel, dinner at La Taverneta with fellow hostelers. Beer later with Paddy at an Irish Pub.

Sunday, November 17, 2002. Move to Kabul. Port Olympic and Callas Forever. Dinner with Ben and Bron at port Seafood restaurant. Kabul evening. Sangria. What a hostel!

Monday, November 18, 2002. Gaudi Day. Manzna de la Discòrdia. La Pederea. Parc Güell. Sagrada Familia. Dinner at Indian restaurant. Kabul. Antonio Gaudi was a genius, bar none. Like Michelangelo, his body of work takes your breath away. Photographs cannot do justice to these places he has created. This is another reason that Barcelona is now one of my favorite cities on the planet.

Tuesday, November 19, 2002. It was a little bit rainy this morning, so I headed to the Museu Picasso. It is a great museum, with a deep collection of his early work. Unfortunately there isn't much between the beginning of the Rose period and about 1970. After lunch I headed inland, to a church on a mountain. Called, Tibidabo, this proved much harder to climb than anticipated. The funicular wasn't running, so I walked, fortunately I had food with me, or I wouldn't have made it. It is a neat church, surmounted by a colossal risen Christ, similar to those in Mexico and South America. The strange thing is the amusement park at the feet of the church. Seriously, all kinds of rides, like tilt-a-whirls and even some roller coasters. It was closed, and there are few more eerie things than a disused amusement park. After I descended, I had dinner at La Fonda with some of my Australian colleagues. Wonderful. We caught part of a show at the Harlem Jazz Club. From there it was dancing at MOOG, with lots of Aussies, to terrible 80s music.

Wednesday November 20, 2002. This morning was mostly about recovering from last night. This afternoon's agenda included more chilling out, and catching the vose (voce originale subtitle Español) version of the Bourne Identity (el caso de Bourne). Unfortunately I didn't eat enough for dinner, and had a regular evening at Kabul. Much drinking.

Thursday November 21, 2002. This morning I had one of those illnesses. The funny thing for me is that they never happen right away. I was feeling alright, and on a train bound for Montserrat before I started sweating and shivering with chills. Fortunately, I wasn't violently ill, and when I got off the train and into the fresh air, I was feeling much better. Paddy helped out by providing me with some biscuits and water. After that, Montserrat was incredible. A cable car swoops you up 500 meters to the monastery, home of a black Madonna allegedly carved by St. Peter. This is also the place that the knight Parsifal found the Holy Grail, if you remember your Wagnerian myths. A funicular train took us up higher yet, to some abandoned stone huts. Apparently the bottom fell out in the hermitage industry a few years back. After a nice dessert in the cafe, we descended to the train and Barcelona. This evening, I wisely skipped the scheduled pub-crawl and went and surfed the net. No drinking for me tonight.

Barcelona summary: an amazing hostel; mind blowing Modernisme; Miró and Calder; Jazz; Movies in English; Port Vell; Seafood; Incredible promenade street; stunning views (from Parc Güell, Montjuïc and Tibidabo); the Museu Picasso; nightclubs; Australians; Finns eating Falafel...and on and on. You need to visit.

Sunday, November 24, 2002
Bilbao, España. The Guggenheim Museum here is incredible. I have been hanging out here for two days, after catching a night train from Tarragona on Friday evening. This afternoon I went to the Restaurant in the Museum, which, according to the Rough Guide, is one of the best meals to be had in Bilbao. For a completely reasonable price, I had one of the best meals of my life. Here is the menu:

Mousse de setas tibio, cuajad al horno con salsa de champiñons y sabugo.

Pimentos del piquillo rellenos de bacalo sobre un saltedao de pocuas y pil pil, elaborado a paritr de extractos de lagostino.

Ganache de chocolate negro con praline crujiente de almendra toffee de café y sorbete

agua y vino tinto

pan

(In English, it starts with a Mushroom mousse, baked, topped with jabugo ham (with a mushroom sauce). The entree is Piquillo peppers stuffed with cod, and on a bed of beans and prawn extracts. Dessert was chocolate, with a praline crust topped with toffee and coffee ice cream.)

I fly to Copenhagen tomorrow, Adios España!