Will leaves for Spain and also this blog temporarily

In late June 2005 I left to study in Spain for four months at a school of language. This was the most educational experience of my life next to college. It provided the opportunity to interact everyday with a multitude of cultures in a casual setting. I made friends from Spain, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Italy, Thailand, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and the list goes on. From political discussion to class study groups to conversations regarding the best beer in town, not only was I learning the Spanish language but about many cultures.

This following is my first email correspondence after leaving the country. This was sent from Dublin, the first stop of my trip. You should note that in the email it mentions that my travels in Spain are documented not in this blog but its own at

http://willatspain.blogspot.com/

Without further ado, here is that aforementioned email:

Hello all,



First off to clarify, I don't know how the contacts
will appear when you receive this email, but on my
end I have created a listserve called "friends" that
includes most of you and then about 9 straggling email
addresses.  So, in case this distinction is apparent
on your end as well, let me clarify to those alienated
that this is because you are my enemies and I will
destroy you.  No, it means that you are a new email
address and I have not yet added you to my contacts
and will do so after sending this email.

So, I am off on a trip to Spain for 3 months. I'm
currently in Ireland for 3 days, then to Scotland for
5 days, then to England for 5 days, and then to
Spain for 3 months.

On previous trips I have updated you on my adventures by clogging
your inbox with rambling emails.I've now decided to start keeping
notes of travels at a blog site so that you can check up on me at your
leisure.  Hopefully I'll remember to write in this blog or at least
remember my login and password.  Some of you may recall that
Rettberg started a blog about six months ago and gave it some really
intellectual obscure name that I promptly forgot, and I think he did
too, and therefore never checked again.I tried to go with the
straightforward route, however "sexrobot" and "builtlikeatank" were
taken so I had to go with "willatspain":

http://willatspain.blogspot.com/

FYI, "willinspain", was already taken.In fact, I checked
out this guys totally lame blog.Last week he had no entries, just some
fancy opening page with his name saying that he's in Spain.Feel free
to be a "blog pirate" and write him demanding his domain
name (By the way, I just coined the phrase "blog pirate" so take note
when it sweeps the e-nation).I should also clarify that my blog site
contains nothing other than my name and a brief entry testing that
the blog works; but that's beside the point.

Will

Switzerland February 2005

In February of 2005 our family friends from England, Roger Newnam and his two sons Jamie and Edward, invited our family to join them in skiing the Swiss Alps for a couple weeks. I was the only member of my family that was able to make the trip and had a terrific time. I decided that I would spend one week with them in Champery, a small mountain city in the Southwest corner of the country, and the other traveling the country.

I never wrote an official synopsis chronicling my time abroad, but did send a thank you letter to Roger for the invitation which sufficiently sums up my tours after leaving slopes. And it follows:

Hey Roger, thank you for the fun time in Switzerland. It was terrific to see you and Ed and Jamie and great fun to meet the rest of the crew. I just went snowboarding in Colorado yesterday and realized how spoiled I have become. Crowds? Trees? Only one Valley to ski in? What’s this about? Yes, I’ll have to make it back to the Alps. What a good time it was this year. Everyone had a great sense of humor and I don’t think I have laughed so much in a while. I was glad that we were able to stick together during the ski day (aside from my occasional foray into the woods where I’d feast on powerbars and locate hidden escalators that would quickly send me to the bottom ahead of the group), some good conversations were had on the lifts and in the lodges. I was glad that Simon, Ed, and Jamie decided to venture into a bit of ‘off piste’ after the third day and experience the glory of fresh powder. I know you and Charles watched wistfully as the four of us headed off into the snowy depths knowing that if only the both of you didn’t have to carry the backpacks you would have been leaping off cornices and dropping cliffs all week. Next year, I’ll carry one of the packs.

It sounded like the second week was fun, I received the text message that you had gone cross country skiing on one day and enjoyed it. I hope Charles continued to have a great time, I was impressed by the fact that he was the only person not to return from the slopes after 2 hours skiing the night after we went out to the clubs. Well, great, I hope to make it up next year. Hopefully, I’ll already be in Europe. My plan now is to quit my current job in May or June or July depending on how much money I can save and fly to Spain and study the language and then head East from there and will definitely make a stop in the UK. This was largely inspired by how much I enjoyed traveling around Switzerland my second week. Below is a summary of my trip.

My whirlwind tour of the EU’s insurrectional nation was a success. Among the many things I learned in my travels the two most important were that the abbreviation ‘CH’ for the country and its currency comes from “Convencion Helvetica;” the Helvetians having occupied the lands before being conquered by the Romans; the other fact, and only slightly less important, is that Haagan Daaz is not even a word in German; sadly this bit of information reduced my German vocabulary to “Guttentag” and “Volkswagen.”

Well, I suppose I should give some organization to this recount of my sojourn so I’ll begin with where I left you, at the train station in Lausanne. From there I headed down to the lake to admire the stunning view of the Alps across the water. Soon the sun began its descent and the frigid winds nipped at the tips of my fingers so I decided to try and find a place to stay the night. I proceeded confidently in the direction of a hostel mentioned in my guide and found myself lost in a matter of minutes. I eventually found a payphone and called the hostel’s front desk and spoke with a guy who knew just enough English to inform me that “Yes, I can give reservation for tonight.” and not enough English to understand me saying “Yeah, hey great, but I have no idea where you are; what’s the address!?” After another hour of wandering I stumbled upon the building, paid the bill, went to bed, woke up, and took the train to Basel. The train arrived in Basel right on time at 2:53 and I was greeted at 2:53 and 30 seconds by our family friend’s cousin, Regula, who apologized profusely for being late and explained how the traffic was much worse than she had expected…some stereotypes were not dispelled during my trip. Regula took me back to her family’s place where I met their son and her husband Robert. They were all extremely nice and we had good conversation. As it turned out, Regula is fluent in English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Norwegian, and Japanese; good lord I felt like an idiot.

Due to the language barrier I wasn’t able to do a great deal of interacting with the locals rather I spent much of my time observing and thus most of my time in Basel was spent at various art galleries and museums. While Switzerland had a seemingly limitless quantity of Picasso’s, Giacometti’s, Chagall’s, and of course their local patron Klee, I was most excited by a collection of work by an artist named Jean Tingueley who seems to have made it his hobby to bring as many of Doctor Seuss’s inventions to life as possible. His “machine art?” was truly incredible; an amalgam of electrically powered, brilliantly colored cogs and belts and fans and garden gnomes and ladders and power drills that spun, undulated, swooped, bent, and sprang all while making a tremendous racket to no functional purpose; I thought that I had stumbled onto the set of a Tim Burton film. See image below for an example of his work:

After my stop at the museums, I went for a walk along the Rhine and eventually back to my host family’s. That night I was treated to a delicious meal of raqulette (I’m trying to spell this like a piece of sports equipment and I don’t think that’s right) which involved each individual melting cheese with onions, curry, paprika, and/or olives over potatoes. The next day I headed off to Zurich. The motivation for this travel decision was partially in hopes that I might catch a bit of the renown Fasnacht festival that was supposed to begin some time that week, but largely because I associate the city with James Bond. So in hopes of confounding some nefarious mastermind or perhaps of reaping some of the more libidinous benefits of being an international man of mystery I headed East. Zurich is joked about being derived from two German words “Zu” and “Reich” meaning “Too Rich”, which makes more sense than its actual derivation which has something to with a nearby Roman ruin. This was the most expensive place I had been in Switzerland; so much for the vodka martinis, I was barely able to afford the local lager. I spent most of the first evening out at the bars with some people I met at the hostel and turned in at a relatively sane hour. The next morning I woke up and rented a bike and rode along Lake Zurich for a while. I then decided to catch the bus up to the zoo. One thing that was cool was the electric eel exhibit. They had some eels in a tank and above it an digital screen displaying their present voltage. Generally they fluctuated at around 80-100 volts but after pounding on the glass I was able to rev them up to like 150. No, I wouldn't harm animals, not even eels, however I will have electric eels power my pirate ship on lake titicaca when the winds are bad; they'll also power my house and I'll have an eel powered car. Pretty much, I guess I just see the world headed in the general direction of eel power. Another interesting spectacle was the baby duck exhibit (or that's what I thought it was). Just a lone lost duckling behind a glass wall wandering aimlessly around in this constructed desert landscape. Then suddenly out of nowhere, BAM, this brown flash from the top corner swoops down and slaughters his little ball of fuzz and proceeds to eat it while clutching it in its razor talons. Turns out hawks were the main attraction.  The 6 year old kid next to me previously enamored by the cute little animal had a stricken look of horror on his face. I hope he turned out alright.
Following the zoo I headed into, what I thought were, some botanical gardens nearby; as it turned out I was in a graveyard. In the hope that I might find a back entrance to this place so I could go to the actual botanical gardens, I continued on through and so happened on James Joyce’s grave?! If it weren’t for the several strategically located signs leading me toward his final resting place I probably would have walked right on by, which is probably what he would have wanted. But as it was, with all the commercial buildup, I felt the need to commemorate the moment and so I told him that his books were hard and took a photo. I found my way out and had a nice walk in the woods and eventually headed back to the hostel and then out to the bars again with some people from the hostel. While out, I tried Absinthe for the first and last time. There probably would never have been a first time if somebody had told me that to make Absinthe all you need is ethanol and anise, but as it was I had to suffer through the breathtaking conflagration of my mouth, throat, and stomach, and had the taste of licorice taint every drink for the rest of the evening. We stayed out late and eventually headed back to the hostel for more drinking. At some point I went to bed and woke up with a horrendous hangover. I then headed off to the train station and in my stupor came literally two inches from being run over by a local tram. I don’t know if it was the blast of air to my face or the realization that an object was entering my peripheral vision at a phenomenal speed that made me jerk my head back and sent adrenaline coursing through my body, but either way, that instinctual reaction is the sole reason my head is still securely fastened to my torso. Suddenly sober, I quickly made my way to the station and headed back to Lausanne where I wanted to see a museum that was closed during my earlier stay: Le Musee de l’Art Brut. I have been told that the translation is ‘Museum of Ugly Art.’ And I suppose that would make sense. At the entrance, a sign explained that the work herein was selected because it exhibited a total lack of any artistic training or concordance with trends of any time. It was interesting because each exhibit had a bio of the artist. Mostly the work was done by schizophrenics or other crazy people, but occasionally there were totally normal people included. This struck me as pretty funny because I was trying to figure out how they gathered the art for this museum and whether it was a complement to you and your work if it was in there. Maybe they have scouts that go and say to the artist "hey we’ve been looking at your work and we’d really like to put it on show in our museum" I suppose this would be a real ego booster until you showed up at the museum with your family to brag about your artwork and realize that your display is right between the pedophile’s work and the guy who earned a living scavenging bones from the abattoirs and carving them into combs and needles before he eventually went crazy and started scribbling doodles on toilet paper. Or maybe some of these artists volunteer their work, which is just as weird because then you’d have to say to yourself, "you know, even though I devote almost all my day to this artwork I really have no idea what I’m doing and think my work would fit in perfectly here."

From Lausanne I caught my final train back to Geneva, spent the night in a hostel and headed back to The States the following day. The only thing worth noting on the flight back was an amusing interaction I had with some Brits on the ride back who were headed out to Vail for the week with their wives and kids who were sitting a few rows ahead. They were concerned about the drive to Vail they would have to make that evening because they were so jet lagged, so I thought I’d offer them the Ambien (a prescription sleeping pill) that worked well for me when I flew in to Switzerland. As I was saying this to them I realized I sounded like some kind of weirdo drug dealer and so I told them this and they laughed and then I informed them that this was simply what Bush had meant by privatizing health care. Then we all laughed again; unfortunately this time my laughter was entirely sardonic as I thought, what is my country doing and what the hell am I doing back here. Thus, the seed was planted to return to Europe when I had enough money.

Great, well good to see you on the trip I hope to see you all again sooner than next year.

Cheers, Will

My Last Post - An Ocean in the Andes

Palabra arribe, homies! This is my last email regarding the trip as I
return to the states today. actually I return tomorrow, but the gauntlet of
flights and layovers has begun. I have 10 bolivianos and 20 soles in my
pocket which I will squander on magazines, glass bottled coca-cola (much
more bubbly), and internet cafe´s until I return to the states as the
terrible exchange rates will probably return me roughly a nickel. Speaking
of exchange rates I{ve decided that in the future I should base my vacation
plans solely on exchange rates. My sister and I went out to dinner the
other night at Copacabana at Lake Titicaca where I ordered two glasses of
wine, a 14] pizza, and my sister ordered some vegetarian meal, a cup of tea,
and a bottle of water all for 85 Bolivianos, $11 dollars american.

This last week my sister and I were able to do some really
cool stuff. First off, we went to a soccer game, I suppose "awesome"
encapsulates most of the experience. I think it is a
requirement for anyone traveling anywhere in Europe or Latin America to go
to a soccer game while there. Because the single word "awesome" hardly does the event
justice I'll try an elaborate analogy: You know how much fun it is to see a baseball
game in the cheap seats center field section with the, rowdy, drunk, crowd is, Well, imagine every seat in the field crowded with such people supporting THEIR national pastime,
oh, and no security anywhere; this
was what going to the soccer game was like. M80´s and Roman Candles being
lit in seats right next to us, everyone yelling at something, and bottle
rockets being launched at the opposing team. During the opposing team´s
free kick at our end somebody hucked a pack of black cats at the kicker
which went off right next to his head causing him to duck and run about five
feet in the other direction. Needless to say he completely botched the kick.
Good stuff, got some good photos.

We spent a couple days at Lake Titicaca. An incredible place, it´s ^the
highest navigable lake in the world.^ They have a boat on their lake, big whoop,
it's much cooler to say that it´s like visting the ocean at 12,000ft. I think the
Bolivians actually think it is the ocean, they actually have a navy on the lake, I
guess just in case Peru gets grabby. We stayed in Copacabana for a night and
then spent the next day on Isla del Sol. Isla Del Sol is probably one of
the most beautiful places I´ve ever been in my life. Replete with white
sand beaches, tropical blue waters, and local farming community and villages
that conjure up images of Sicily from the Godfather movies it is stunning
sight to behold and most amazingly it remains largely untouched by the tourism
industry and any commerical enterprises; there are neither shops nor hotels and not
even the handselling of little Isla del Sol memorabilia. My sister and
I did a near solitary trek from the North end to the South end of the island which was
approximately five miles on an white sandstone path over rolling
hills past Incan ruins and deserted remains of stone huts conjuring up
images from a world out of Myst (a computer game for those of you not in the
Know). The stay at Lake Titicaca and particulary my time on Isla del Sol
was probably my favorite part of my three week stay in South America.

This time spent away from the hustle and bustle of America has afforded me
much time for self reflection and I´ve learned a lot about myself. I know
now that I can{t grow a beard. It comes in patchy; except around the neck;
I could grow a pretty mean neck beard out of the right three quarters of my
neck. The other thing I learned is than in my older age I think I am going
to be a pirate on Lake Titicaca, I{ll be known as Óld Neck Beard, scurge of
the lake, I´ll rob tourist boats and eventually save up enough loot to bury
it somewhere on Isla del Sol. Then I{ll create a map for the treasure and
put it behind an old picture in somebody{s attic in a house on the Oregon
Coast. Isla Del Sol would be a good place to do some treasure hunting if I
were a Goonie, and I am.

Well, thanks to all those of you who responded to my emails it was great to
hear from you.

I´m off to Colorado where I´ll soon quit my job and start some other
endeavor.

Will

In Bolivia: Intestinal Issues and a Giant Jesus

Hay dios mio! The foreigners have lain seige on the eastern keyboard. Our ally the question mark has regrouped and joined forces with the 0 in the North while the semicolon and colon have divided to join the comma and period in the south. A guerrilla effort seems to have begun with the brackets and braces and have recruited such allies as the +,*, and some unknown character (Ç) that looks like a C with a goatie (probably allied with the French). With a coordinated effort I think we can resecure the neutral territory of the shift and return key and flank the Spanish (ñ and ´) and Germans (^) from the poles. Good luck troops!

The following paragraph explicitly describes the horrors of "Incan Indigestion" so skip ahead if you like.

Well, I have arrived in Bolivia and an uninvited guest by the name of Giardia has decided to join me. He enjoys spending much time in the bathroom which is creating quite a conflict of interests. In an effort to get to know this guy a little better I consulted my travel disease book I was given by a doctor back in the states. Upon reading up, I saw that there was no entry for Giardia, instead the only ailment whose title fit my condition was discreetly known as [traveller}s diarrahea[. The doctor had devoted an entire page to this illness, which seemed a bit excessive; my description might have been a little more brief, something like {look in the toilet{, that's probably Giardias fault. But apparently there are RULES about having this condition that are nearly as confusing and lengthy as the game of Cricket. Apparently to be eligible you must pass at least three loose stools sucessively, and a minimum of 17 loose stools before you can win. If one passes any semi solid stool intemediate to 2 soft stools one must pass at least one more soft stool before continuing his stool count. I found the game confusing and painful and so I quit and am now on an antibiotic which has killed off any bacteria in my system and actually seems to have destroyed this head cold that I picked up around the same time. So now I am in Cochabamba Bolivia and all{s well. While the citizens seem to lack the, what we deem, fundamental importance of keeping their city clean, I think that most of the citizens are fairly happy with their current existence. As an American who has never had access to nothing less than the best, it is quite a transition. I met my sister{s family who she has been staying with for the last couple months and they are nice.

Yesterday, we went hiking up to the top of a mountain where a giant Jesus, in fact the largest in South America and the highest in the world overlooks the valley of Cochabamba.

On a new point without transition, though I suppose that was a transition sortof, While there are many struggling industries in this developing world, illicit drug cartels are not one of them. We toured the wealthy, drug lord, neighborhoods and noted one house in particular. The place is armed with guards carrying machine guns and there is a satellite dish and radio tower within the confines. We asked who lived there of one guard, who promtly responded that the American Consultate lived there. But, as I have quickly learned that anyone and everyone will lie to you about anything here, we asked another guard on the other side of the house. We asked him if this was the american consulates house, he replied no. We asked who did live here and he continually looked my sister up and down as if searching for a wire and never answered the question and got even more distant when she audaciously asked if the house used to belong to a narco-trafficer. I don{t expect to live through my stay in this country, but this trips been good so >far. That{s pretty much it, hope all{s well. Will

The River Wild

Hi, new computer, new keyboard, now the apostrophe is gone and has
been replaced by the bracket; quotes are still MIA. I don{t plan on
spending my whole vacation on email, but I yesterday was fun, and
interesting. My sister left Cuzco to return to Bolivia a couple
days ago, so without a fluent tour guide in the area I decided to do
some river rafting on the Chucysaca? Anyway, I arrived to join the
rafting trip and met the other members of my trip, 6 israelis. There was a set of triplets which
made it totally impossible for me to retain any of their names, two
other girls - hammone and mahore, and a guy named Ron.
They all spoke English well, but didn{t seem to have a whole of interest in doing so. So in the
few short conversations I had with them I understood that they had
all just finished their military service and were taking time before
university to travel the world. I asked them
what they thought of the wall being built in their country, and
their immediate response was [we came here so we don{t have to think
about it[ and I left it at that.

My day was a lot of fun, the triplets who were in my boat were a lot
of great. I was initially upset because the rapids we were going to go
through were a low class three and so not too difficult, however
when I fell out of the boat and found myself trapped underneath it
for a few seconds, my adrenaline got going, and I stopped being
pissed about the trip not being exciting enough. At the end
of the day we ate lunch and were given access to hot showers (which is
a rarity around here).

I met them later that evening at a dance club, and that was pretty
fun, though they didn{t really want to talk a whole lot.

See ya,

Will

Entry 1 From Cuzco To Macchu Picchu

> hola como estas.  Soy en Cuzco, Peru y lo es muy
> bueno.  Hope all is well
> with you.  This keyboard is very funny with lots of
> extra characters. There
> are two shift buttons and many keys have three
> functions.  This makes me a
> slow typer.  Well, that pretty much sums up my stay
> in Cuzco, so I´ll see
> you all in a couple weeks.
>
> Will
>
> Ha ha ha, estoy muy comico!  Okay, there´s actually
> some neat stuff going on
> here.  We´ve been eating in a lot of cool
> restaraunts in the area enjoying
> local cuisine including alpaca, cuzquena beer, some
> corn beer stuff called
> pisquo?, and I have tried for the last few days to
> order cuy, or grilled
> guinea pig, but it takes three hours to prepare and
> we´ve been to busy and
> hungry to have time to make such reservations.
> During many of the meals
> there are live bands that seem to kind of sneak into
> the restaraunt and
> start playing their music and then asking for money
> ´(I´m not sure whether
> any of this is organized by the restaraunt manager).
>  These groups are quite
> skilled at playing the wind pipes, and most
> especially skilled at playing
> Paul Simon´s ´¨I´d rather be a sparrow than a
> snail¨´song.  In fact, it must
> be a requirement for most of these flute masters to
> learn this song becaues
> it has been almost omnipresent during my my stay so
> far in this country.
> My sister and I just returned from Macchu Picchu
> yesterday which was a lot
> of fun.  We were there on a two day trip where the
> first day we were to
> catch a train from cuzco and get to Macchu Picchu
> around noon and spend the
> rest of that day there and then try and kill a
> second day in Aguas
> Calientes, the town at the base of Macchu Picchu
> where we were staying. 
> This would have been the plan were it not for the
> luck that my sister
> suffered a terrible bout of altitude sickness/heat
> exhaustion soon after
> arriving at Macchu Picchu requiring me to enlist the
> help of three english
> men to help me carry her out of the site to the
> medic center.  It was pretty
> scary at the time, but she recovered quickly after
> sitting in the shade at
> lower altitude.  The three guys were extremely
> helpful as was the action
> themesong, being played during the whole event by
> some lone piper on the top
> of Macchu Picchu, of ¨¨i´d rather be a sparrow than
> a snail...¨  You may
> have noticed that the damn umlaut sign has taken of
> the quote button key.  I
> can´t find the quote key.    Any way, it all worked
> out for the better
> because we spent the rest of the evening in aguas
> calientes drinking coca
> (as in cocaine leaf) tea (which by the way is
> nothing like the drug cocaine,
> in fact it is not a drug at all, I tried snorting
> the leaves) which helps
> cope with altitude sickness.  We got up at 5:30 the
> next morning and were
> among the first group to arrive at the site.  We
> then proceeded to hike to
> the ¨sun gate¨, then over to the top of ¨huana
> picchu¨ and then over to ïnca
> point¨ All were absolutely breathtaking hikes, quite
> literally I guess, but
> I mean to imply that the view and beauty of the area
> was incredible.   I
> have two rolls of of photos taken in the area, and I
> don´t think any of them
> can come close to expressing the awesomeness of the
> area.  Because the first
> train doesn´t arrive at Macchu Picchu until 11:00am
> we shared the sight with
> only a few hundred other tourists for our entire
> visit.  Also most of our
> hikes were in the shade.
>
> Well, there are many more stories I have to tell you
> all, but right now I
> have to go because the band in front of this
> internet cafe has started to
> play the Paul Simon tune again.
>
> Will

My South American Sojourn: August - Sept 2004

For two weeks starting in late August 2004 I had the opportunity to visit and absorb the sights and culture of Bolivia and Peru. My sister, who had just completed a three month program in Cochabamba, Bolivia wanted to travel for a bit before heading home and as it was one of the only opportunities I would have to travel this region of the world with a fluent travel guide I took a chance.

It is not until recently that I started writing post trip synopses of my adventures abroad so this blog will largely be a collection of email correspondences with friends.