Madrid & Barcelona

I'm so over travel.

The people in Barcelona are so nice. Many towns have nice people, but are somewhat standoffish about tourism, but in Barcelona, they really appreciate the mixing of cultures that tourism brings. From the moment we showed up, we were treated as visiting royalty. This friendliness must derive from generally trusting and interdependent relationships with their surrounding neighbors as well. That being said, I am somewhat tired of travel, at least in the traditional tourist sense. Oh yay, your city has old beautiful Cathedrals with gaudy gold plated ugly art. You claim romantic meandering streets, I see filthy, uneven, dilapidated, narrow and overcrowded alleys. I bet you even have a museum or two. Well odds are those are boring or filled with crappy art. Noone cares that you had some people in the 60s that explored their sexuality by dumping paint on themselves, or someone in the late 80s who thought painting a canvas a single color was art. Yeah, and that guy that was born in your city that actually was a good artist? Well he probably left because your crappy city didn't appreciate him when he was around, and that's probably why your museum about him doesn't have any of his good stuff. You probably even have an old castle or two which might actually be cool, except that your country isn't a power anymore, and hasn't been since most likely the 1500s. And you of course won't talk about that. In Spain for five whole days, and not one mention of the Spanish Armada. Not ONE. Nevermind that its probably the most important battle in Spain's history, but noone mentions it. Oh sure, you sent off Columbus to the new world, and Ferdinand and Isabella and all that. Congratufuckinlations. Noone even seemed to know when the Spanish Armada was defeated. (8/8/1588 for those who are wondering). With that, I'll end my rant.

Madrid was actually full of nice people, unlike the Catalonians. There wasn't a whole lot in Madrid, but we had some great Mexican food, and saw the palace. Apparently Madrid was a tiny city until the last century. I can't really blame anyone for that -- there's no real reason for it to be anything special: no water, no natural beauty, just centrally located as a seat of government. Barcelona was a bit cooler. There was a really awesome church that has been under construction since the late 1800s, called La Sagrida Familia. Its unbelievably cool, and large. Gaudi started work on it, and realizing he had no chance of finishing it in his lifetime, he started making blueprints and plaster molds of how he wanted it to look. Then he got run over by a tram. No joke -- though its only mentioned sort of indirectly at the museum. Anyway, Gaudi sort of ran the show in Barcelona for a while, as he influenced all kinds of architecture there. He made some really cool apartments, designed an awesome park on the top of the highest hill overlooking the city, and of course the church. Anyway, the church really took off again in the early 1990s, when the Olympic money started pouring in. Apparently construction has just exploded since 2001, and they now hope to finish it by 2026. Seriously though, this thing is amazing. Its humongous. The aerial picture above is a couple of years old. A couple of the pictures were taken from the towers that we had to take a lift up to access.

The other cool thing in Barcelona, perhaps surprisingly so, was the Picasso museum. I really wasn't much of a fan of his stuff, but the museum was much more about him, and his progression as an artist, which was fascinating to see. They showed a whole bunch of his early stuff, which showed a lot of impressionism influences. Seeing his ability to paint quite compelling in that style made me appreciate his later cubism pieces, as it was quite clear that he could paint more traditionally pleasing art pieces, but chose instead to paint as he did. Viewed in this light, his later work became much more amenable to me, as I think I am a fan of imperfection. Generally perfection is pretty boring and stale. I mean, take college football for example. Having a playoff and declared national champ would be boring because the system would be "perfect." The more chaotic old bowl system provides much more enjoyment precisely because it is imperfect. Perfection is just too easy, too simple. Part of me wonders if much of academia exists precisely for this reason -- the "correct" answer is often too easy and boring, so intellectually gifted and astute person either consciously or subconsciously confuse the issue or devise abtuse and abstract ways of viewing the issue out of sheer boredom rather than any desire for knowledge or correctness. And while that sort of imperfection annoys me, in art I do believe I appreciate it. A perfectly crafted watercolor of a gorgeous sunset or stunning waterfall may be quite pleasing to the eye, but there's nothing to it. Its just a pretty picture without any real substance. Every now and again simple beauty is pleasant to admire, but it isn't going to compel deep thought, intimate conversation, or spiritual enlightenment, or whatever other phrase you want to use to describe what art is supposed to do to oneself. Anyway, that's about all I've got on the issue. And the weekend.



Next week to Brussels, Bruges, and Amsterdam.

Porto

This past weekend saw us head to Portugal. Initially flying into Porto, we thought we'd check out Lisbon (Lisboa) for a day as well, so we got to experience delightful Portugese busses for a fairly lengthy journey as you can tell by the map. And by delightful, I mean rather average, wholly unremarkable. Not sure why I attempted the sarcasm there -- well, yes I am. It's habitual.

In any event, the whole of Portugal that we were able to witness was lovely, and the weather was spectacular. I am glad indeed that I brought at least one pair of shorts with me. I have a feeling they may be getting a lot of use next weekend in Espana as well. Day one in Porto saw us check into our hotel, and then wander down to the river. Since it was just about 11 AM, we felt as though we were getting behind the locals in terms of wine consumption. So we sat ourselves down at a nice little riverside cafe and had the best Sangria I've ever tasted. This stuff was delicious -- smooth, tasty, and quite refreshing in the hot sun. In fact, the Sangria was so good, we more or less abandoned any plans we had for the rest of the day, and spent much of it sitting at that cafe, until we decided to take a river cruise. Spectacularly, it was only 10 Euros for about an hour of zipping about. That more or less sums up the extent of our day.

Day 2 we decided to take some tours of the port wineries, which Porto is famous for. After some confusion on the directions, we arrived at half past 10, eager to learn all about the process. I must confess to being non-plussed by my experiences with port beforehand, but I have now seen the light and am reformed. And now let me offer a piece of marketing advice in the mold of my father. Some clever winery should offer small, lightweight, and easy to carry sample packs of port wine, and call it Portability. But I digress. Perhaps the most famous winery, Sandeman, had awful wine and a lame overproduced tour. After three tours, most of our group tuckered out and returned to the Sangria place across the river. Myself and John continued on,
exploring the Ferreira winery. They were the clear winner of the day in terms of tours and tastings at the winery. Their tour was informative and their samples were actually quite good. I also answered a question correctly on the tour winning for myself a 3rd glass to taste.

After Ferreira, John and I decided to explore the area, getting ourself fully lost and then finding we had quite by accident ended up right where we began. This could only mean one thing -- it was time to try more port. We found a little shop along the river near these wineries that sold all different types of the port, and it was quite inexpensive. We saddled up to the bar, and started the sampling. Lagrima, Ruby, 10 year tawny, 20 year tawny, 1986 Colheita, and one other I can't quite recall. The whole thing came out to less than 10 euros a piece for some unbelievably good port. I don't understand why the wineries don't give you samples of this, because I was ready to buy a bottle on the spot after tasting the 10 year. The 20 year was divine, I only wish I had been fully sober by the time we ordered it. I've never experienced a stronger aftertaste (of caramel no less). Needless to say, I picked up a bottle of Kopke 10 year tawny at duty free on the way home. And of course, after a day experiencing the local flavors, there was only one suitable place for dinner: Pizza Hut. One family style stuffed crust pizza for two later, we headed back toward the hotel, running into the rest of our group at the Imperial McDonalds getting softserve. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this branch of Ronald's McArmy. The building was quite beautiful, and the soft-serve didn't appear to be taking anyone away on trains,
but I still figured I'd be better off not asking any questions. Those deep fryers could cause some serious pain. I also mentally noted it as a decent spot to hole up in event of a zombie attack.

Lisbon. Not a whole lot to say about it except that we saw some really crappy contemporary art (the kind of shit where they put up a blank canvass and call it art), were offered drugs constantly, I figured out that my camera can do cool things, like take a mostly black and white picture with one color highlighted, and there was a pretty cool castle. Oh, and on the way to Lisbon we went through Fatima, which was having a huge festival and I think the pope was there. Really, the trip to Lisbon just showed how much new money is coming into Portugal. Their infrastructure has clearly been upgraded recently. Their highways were all new and pristine, their light rail systems were well run and clean, and new construction like whoa on the outskirts of cities.

Picture Time!
(Pictures aren't able to upload right now. I guess. I'll get them a little later.)

Classes, by request

So, now that we're into week two of classes, I figure I'll give some folk an update on those. If you're not interested in the academic side of things, go ahead and skip on down to the Oslo post. But first, I'd just like to get a plug in for Avenue Q -- a really funny and good play that I saw last Wednesday.

I have four of my five classes selected, and I'm still trying to decide between an Information Law class Tuesday morning, and a Secure Transactions class on Thursday with a prof I really like. Anyway, the classes I am enrolled in thus far:

1) Law of Finance and Foreign Investment in Emerging Economies -- This is almost more of a policy class on emerging markets and how to deal with them. It is reminiscent of a globalization class I took my junior year at ND. While the prof is no Susan Pratt, he is pretty awesome, and I plan on taking at least two classes from him.

2) Comparative Banking and Finance Law -- Finally, the class I've been waiting for, where basic banking policies are explained to me, and in a comparative environment so I can see what makes sense and what doesn't. The prof is the same as the class above, and while he is pro-American, he thinks that FDR's response to the Stock Crash went too far, and is ineffective today anyway. I think he and I will get along nicely.

3) Communications Law -- Different prof, but I really like his style -- Again this takes a comparative look at the different policy aspects of regulations on telephony, as well as broadcast and internet communications. The focus is on the carriage of data, and not on the data itself. Again, a class that will hopefully explain an area of infrastructure that I'm not entirely familiar with.

4) International Trade and Investment Dispute Settlement -- I may end up dropping this one in favor of Information Law (which is by the same prof as class 3). But, the first day was fairly interesting, if difficult to follow because of the fellow's Greek accent. The co-teacher, an Irishwoman has to be impossible for non-native English speakers to understand as she is rapid-fire, but I have an easier time understanding her than the Greek.


I had wanted to take an Immigration & Nationality Law course, but the professor was awful, and the amount of work was unbelievable. For a two hour class that meets once a week, he wanted us to be prepared to discuss over 1000 pages each class. What's worse is that he refused to assign any specific reading, he would simply pass out a sheet with some topics, and a couple of books he thought might be helpful. While he had written a dissertation (which he was none too shy to recommend to us for reading) he gave off the aura of a pretentious grad student who is obsessed with his own academia. Prakash Shah, you're an egotistical prick. He refused to give straight answers on simple questions. For example, in the earliest discussions, he indicated that Britain had an interesting issue in this area of law because it wanted to refuse to allow nationals to immigrate to the UK. None of the Americans in the class understood what the hell he was talking about, so we asked him what he meant by "national" and if he could define it. His response? "Well, is 'national' something you can even define? What does it mean to be a national anyway?" That's all fine and dandy if everyone's using the same terminology, but we weren't even on the same page vernacular-wise, and he refused to clarify the issue. At the first break, I think all but 5 people left.

Oslo

If I could use two words to describe Oslo, they would be 1) Gorgeous, 2) Expensive. The first you will see in the pictures. The second is shown by the fact that a burger meal at TGI Fridays (which is quite popular over there) is listed as 200 Kroner, or between $35 and $40. Also, by the fact that the cheapest hostel we could find charged about $40 a night per person, and was basically a hotel room. We had a private room with three beds, a TV, DVD player, and full size Fridge in the room. Really quite stunning for a hostel. Oh, and our hostel was protected by Ninjas. Or had been assaulted by them. Either way -- Ninjas were involved, which makes it way sweeter.

So the next comment on Oslo is that the people there are all very friendly, and all speak excellent English. Honestly, this place felt like a cleaner, more expensive version of America. On the topic of graffiti, one of the funniest things I saw was a mother teaching her child letters from a graffiti tag. Lemonade out of lemons indeed. About the only thing we didn't like about Oslo other than the cost was their beer laws. No beer could be sold on Sunday, and no beer could be sold after 6 PM at grocery stores. Even when they could sell it, taxes accounted for about half the price, putting a half litre of the cheap stuff at 20 Kroner (~$4) in grocery stores. At a restaurant or bar, you'd be paying 60 Kroner (~$12) for the same swill. Of course, we found the same stuff at duty free for half the price. Never thought I'd say this, but please oh please give me US taxes.

So, what we did -- Friday we showed up exhausted from the early morning Ryanair flight that we almost missed because security took about an hour to get through. After sprinting through the terminal we couldn't even get a glass of water, unless of course we wanted to pay 3 pounds for it. Anyway, we walked around the city, got our bearings, saw the national gallery (home of The Scream), and watched the sun set down at the harbor.

Day two, we went up north of the city and explored some hiking trails. Took some intentional wrong turns, got lost a bit, and then of course re-found our way randomly. The hiking was gorgeous, if a bit muddy at times. We ended the day by discovering that our hostel had free DVD rentals.

Day three we began by visiting the fortress and castle grounds above the harbor. Very scenic, with some great shots of boats on the water. While up there, we discovered that a British warship, the HMS Lancaster was in port, and apparently open to the public. We we hopped on over to that and said Cheerio to some friendly British folk with large guns. Apparently part of the stated mission of the British navy is to go to different ports and simply fly the flag and engage the locals in a friendly fashion. In any event, it was a nice added bonus to the trip. From there we hopped into the Nobel Peace Prize museum, which was free because they were renovating one of the exhibits. Probably the coolest thing there was the speculation over Teddy Roosevelt's peace prize. The controversy was that the Norwegian counsel selected him to gain the powerful US as an ally. Of all the awards, his was the only that was on display in a distinctively different color. Then we headed over to a very large pretty park, that was full of weird naked statues. I'll post a couple of pictures below -- definitely an odd place. I think the weirdest part though was the kids climbing all over them and posing for pictures.

Day four was spent at two museums -- the viking ship museum, and the cultural history museum. The cultural history museum was amazing, and definitely worth the cost of admission.


Picture Time!

In honor of Touchdown Jesus.

Another weird naked statue.

Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemuchlichkeit!

This is Oktoberfest. Granted, its taken from last year's festival, and we were in the Augustiner rather than the Paulener tent, but it pretty accurately describes the event.

Anyway, let's recap how the trip went down.
Earlier last week -- Tom, Steve and Chance have just booked their flight, when I walk into the room and they ask me if I want to go. I do, so I book myself and Chris tickets, and then the flight filled up, so there was no more room. Yes, we booked the whole thing about 3 days before we left. Awesome.

Thursday ~2 PM -- Show up to Heathrow and check into Alitalia. Alitalia has no idea what's going on, but they end up booking us on a direct flight to Munich on Lufthansa instead of through Rome. This works out well, as we will show up at the same time as before, but we leave four hours later. For this inconvenience Alitalia gave us some vouchers to use at an airport bar. We do. Interestingly enough, the prices at the airport bar are cheaper (and for better beer) than any of the pubs around us. Also, Heineken actually tastes good this side of the Atlantic.

Lufthansa sailed us a smooth ship down to Munich, and we had the quickest customs of all time. There was literally no wait, just walk right up to the glass, flashed our passports, and into Germany we went. Now, the guy we ended up staying with was awesome. One of the guys Chance worked with this summer knew a guy in Munich where he had crashed before, Franz. Turns out Franz's family was in town, but his neighbor, Joseph, had room, so we got a place for pretty cheap. Here's where I slept:

Anyway, Joseph was about mid 50s, but was a real philosopher. Wish I had a picture of the guy, but a cool dude. We had no idea what he looked like, how old etc... just that we were going to meet him at a bar near his place. Luckily it all worked out. We also met a nice Irish girl on the train into the city that advised us about which tents were touristy, and which tents were awesome.

The next morning, we showed up at the Augustiner tent about 10 AM, which is known for having the best beer in Munich. They did. In Munich, they serve the beers in liters, and everyone was dressed in liderhosen and Bavarian dresses. Here are some pictures from the festivities:
Here is the boat that the band played on. They played a song called Ein Prosit, which sort of sounded like a national anthem. In the youtube video above, you can hear it about 20 seconds in. Being the good German nationalists that we are, we thought we'd stand up when they played the song -- of course all we got were funny looks. They played it about every 7 or 8 minutes. However, by the end of the day, many of the tables were standing up with us. Anyway, the lyrics are "Ein Prosit, ein prosit, der Gemuchlichkeit!" Which translated roughly means "Cheers, we're all in a good comfortable place!"
A view down the right side of our table with the band in the far background, behind random dude dancing on the table. Or possibly he's trying to get out to go use the restroom. Who knows? Anyway, why are you looking at her and not the cuties?











Here's myself with Tom and Chance on the right, and a guy who's name I forget on the left.












Here's the end of the day festivities with Chris, Steve and Tom. The picture is a bit blurry, which is sort of how things looked in real life too. This was about at 3:30, or 4, and it was definitely, well, time for us to make our exit.











Another view down the right side of our table. And then, a short video of our good times there:





But, lest we be confused for mere booze-hounds without any cultural interest, on Day 2, we made our way around Munich on a bike tour. If any of you are in Europe in a city with a Mike's Bike tours, I highly recommend them. Fantastic. Some of the highlights were, in order: The old town square, the statue of Munich's first real leader, a couple of a gorgeous Church that took 110 years to build, us sitting in the second largest biergarten in the world, and a video of guys who surf on a river in Munich. Here are a couple shots from that: