It must be a rare occasion for an American to be denied entry at a border. Billions of people on this planet must go through the oftentimes dehumanizing process of applying for visas, dehumanizing because you and your personality are generally reduced to a set of numbers, such as your income, amount of prior travel, evidence of returning home, and statistical likelihood of your people entering on a tourist or transit visa and sticking around for good. And so I get stamped out of Lebanon, which was itself an interesting experience for they wanted to know the last place I stayed at in the country. By place I specifically mean hotel, which is typically a question that you get asked before entering the country on the entrance form, and is something that never occurred to me would get asked upon my leaving. So, of course, I had forgotten the name of the hotel. The Lebanese officer asks me, I flub the question, recalling only phonetically some bits of the name “Hotel Shawarma” … “Hotel Shamoon” … “Hotel Shamra” … yes, that’s it, “Hotel Shamra” in Baalbek! The guy looks at me skeptically – “I have never heard of a Hotel Shamra in Baalbek.” But yes, yes that was the name, I replied. The man turns to the officer next to him, he had no clue, but offered “Hotel Shouman?” Which of course was right. During this 30 seconds I was terrified of entering the dungeon that must be Lebanese bureaucracy. Thank you border officer, for remembering the name of my hotel for me.

And so the taxi takes us through the no-man’s land that is the space between the Lebanese and Syrian immigration stations. So technically, prior to being denied entry to Syria I did in fact see Syria. And what did I see? Pictures of Bashar al-Assad, the country’s president, on a giant billboard looking very white and Western and with a caption in English about progress. More interestingly for someone who’d lived in Massachusetts the prior 4 years, there was a giant Dunkin Donuts. Right side of the road, big American parking lot, big American coffee and donut shop. In Syria, before the border station. That’s what I saw of Syria: ugly mug of Bashar, and Dunkin’.

So I get back to Beirut with the help of 3 Americans caught in the same predicament as I, one of which was working in Beirut for an NGO, the other two had come from the States to visit her and go on tour of Syria. While I deeply appreciated their generosity as well as that of their Lebanese driver (they took me back to Beirut and fed me, asking for nothing in return), the car ride reinforced my skepticism of Americans who go to “developing countries” and take up positions at NGOs. NGOs, for those not involved in the parlance, means “non-governmental organization” and essentially form what we in the biz call “civil society.” Civil society is the layer of organizations, associations, etc, all the social groupings that exist outside the state government and which help society function. The big thing in developing countries is to reduce the state presence and build these non-state organizations, and often these organizations are of foreign origin, e.g. the USA. In essence, you have an American group formed on foreign soil with the mission to “help” the local people in one way or another, but in particular towards the goal of “development.” This whole scenario reminds me of Thoreau’s quote: “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” These groups’ basic function for the US is to pave the way for the development of a capitalist workforce and to win over locals to the US’ foreign policy. The idea is to educate, as well as to demonstrate the “soft power” of the US, in order to balance versus the “hard power” on display in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So this woman’s job, predictably, was in education – her group, of which she was the director, was to teach women how to read and provide this service free of charge. So her task was to manage the financial backend of this outfit, to secure funding so that the organization’s target – poor Shiite women in south Beirut – could come to the classes regardless of their income level. Her other task was to demonstrate that they provided these women good language training. Apparently her organization succeeded on both counts. What made me sick in all this was her categorical attitude towards Lebanese people, politics, and the involvement of the US. Shiites needed to be won over by the US, directed away from supporting Hezbollah, which essentially was a regressive entity seeking to destroy Lebanon’s democracy. The US needed to use “hard power,” to use the “stick” in order to show these regressive elements of Lebanese society that the US means business. To which, her friend replies, “but aren’t you here to pursue the soft power approach,” pointing to her role as an educator, a role that sought to educate and lift women out of poverty, and through this act of kindness rehabilitate the US’ reputation in south Beirut – this all consistent with the idea of “soft power”. There was no good answer for this. She was a typical cog in the US’ foreign policy machine. Though a transplant onto a foreign soil, she perceived herself an authority on what the local people need. And the blasé manner in which she spoke of all this made it sound like it was all so obvious, that none of what she was saying was questionable, that there is no possible interrogation of statements like “we need to develop their civil society” and “develop their economy”.

I sat silently, listening, feeling like an anthropologist who is studying the Orientalist in their native habitat.

Savory:

Dürüm – dürüm literally means “wrap,” and is made from a bread they call “lavash”. To my mind, lavash and (wheat) tortilla are twins of the bread world. Here in Istanbul, dürümler (that’s the plural form of dürüm!) tend to be filled with döner kebap meat and cheese, then grilled so that it all melts together. This is perhaps the only food that I’ve seen combine a bread, meat, and cheese here. To an American meat and cheese just seem to naturally go together, but just as that first delicious street taco in Mexico can teach you, properly spiced and seasoned meat, when prepared well, needs no cheese. So it is with many of the delicious eats described below.

Dürümzade – a dürüm shop featured on Anthony Bourdain’s show, and for good reason. It’s hard to say which is the star of this production, the wrap or the meat inside. Both go over a charcoal grill, and get a delicious smoky flavor. The wrap is brushed with oil and spices, and has a great crumb and chew. The meat in the style of Adana kebap, a long skewered piece of lamb grilled over charcoal, smoky, spicy, addictive. Kebap, I learn, basically refers to anything that is a meat dish or food that features meat. Thus if you say you want a kebap, it could mean all sorts of things here. If you talk about “döner kebap,” this means shaved meat from a döner machine (the machine that rotates the big slab of meat), but does not mean a particular preparation. That is specified by the bread in which you eat your döner kebap – typically pide (pita) or dürüm (wrap). Pide and dürüm don’t always feature döner, pide can be prepared as a pizza, and dürüm as mentioned above can simply be a grilled chease.

Islak hamburger – also on Bourdain’s show, also incredibly addictive, this literally means “wet burger”. Imagine a slider whose buns have been soaked in a tangy marinara sauce, and yet somehow maintain structural integrity in your hand. How they do it, I have no idea. Imagine a really good sloppy Joe that doesn’t reduce your hands to a disgusting mess. I don’t want to think about the meat’s origins.

Lahmacun – Turkey’s pizza, very thin crust, what in the States we would call “cracker crust” only it is somewhere tantalizingly between chewy and crispy, and is obviously made by people who know how to make super thin crust pizzas, unlike most “cracker crust” pizza-makers in the US. Typically topped with a lamb, tomato, and parsley mix, perhaps a lemon on the side to squeeze.

Kokoreç – in Philadelphia, where my girlfriend had her first cheesesteak, she said that Turkey makes something very similar – kokoreç. True, both are chopped meat mixed with onions (etc.) prepared on a flat griddle loaded with grease. Differences: rather than beef, kokoreç is made with lamb intestines and offal. It is also heavily spiced, and is quite spicy. No cheese. Verdict: ridiculously good.

Gözleme – Turkey’s quesadilla. Really good.

Kumpi – One thing that surprised me, Turks really like stuffed baked potatos. Basically they are twice-baked, then stuffed/topped with anything you could possibly think of. End result, a giant potato bomb. Bake a potato once, I am not interested. Bake it, scoop the stuff out, add lipids and herbs, stuff the potato with this mixture, bake it again, and then top it with things that tickle my palate? Sign me up.

Börek – fried layered pastry with sucuk or feta and parsley inside. Crispy, tangy, classic.

Sucuk / paprika – Turkey’s sausage, the two things main qualities are beef and paprika. Paprika here is a particular thing. It looks like crushed red chili, but it has a flavor halfway between red chili and Hungarian sweet paprika. I’m salivating.

Iskender kebap – Shaved kebap with tomato sauce, over croutons that melt and get soft, with peppers and yogurt. One of the “refined” kebap dishes. Kind of like Turkish Thanksgiving meal.

Mantı – described as “Turkish ravioli,” but I think they more closely resemble steamed shumai. Typically topped with yogurt and sumac.

Sweet:

Mado ice cream – Mado is a mini-chain, their ice cream is better than American style ice cream and on par with gelato. The trick here is orchid flour, or the ground up tubers of the orchid plant. It thickens the ice cream and adds a slight but distinct texture that I find really enticing. And the flavors are remarkable, including the pistachio, which to me defines gelato and yet is exquisite in the Mado form. Gelato was always my pinnacle. I am rethinking this – a major statement coming from me.

Ekmek tatliler – literally “sweet bread”, it is bread and honey but more accurately described as honey coagulated into a solid form, more “want some bread with your honey” than the other way around. Those without a serious sweet tooth might be wary. Best topped with “kaymak” – Turkish cream, which also goes great with honey on bread for breakfast.

Simit – simit is a circular bread, something of a mix between a bagel and a pretzel, which when stuffed with chocolate also adds a dash of pain au chocolate to the mélange.

Baklava – sublime. Enough said.

Profiterol – the French puff and cream pastry gets topped with semi-sweet chocolate sauce here. Decadent yet somehow not particularly sweet and thus endlessly edible.

Turkey really, really knows how to make pastry and desserts, so I have a long way to go down the dessert aisle.

So where is this town with the strange name?  We are up in the Mount Lebanon range, behind the town and up up up is Lebanon’s tallest peak, at over 3000m (9500ft).  I had little idea that Lebanon was quite this mountainous – and beautiful mountains they are.  So Bcharré sits at the end of the long, narrow Qadisha Valley, cupped in the back of its bowl.  The views above and below the town are magic:  above the town are the famous Cedars of God, one of the last remaining ancient cedar groves in Lebanon; and below is the Qadisha, stunning valley full of fig and cherry trees, really more of a ravine, an impressively verdant and lush ravine, than a valley.

On our first day here we looked like lost tourists trying to find our hotel (indeed, we were), and as typical in Lebanon, if you look lost, people will actively engage you to try to help you out.  I can’t count how many acts of assistance we’ve received in this country, not to mention the similarly countless times we’ve heard “welcome to Lebanon” or “hi, how are you?” in English.  The people take hospitality to the next level here, which is humorous considering the average reaction of my friends and family to the news I was traveling here (you’re going where??).  So this guy helps orient us, turns out he had immigrated to Sydney and was back in Bcharré for the summer.  We run into the same guy later that night (small town), and he offers to take us with him up to see the Cedars at sunset.  So we drove up in his BMW with his two young daughters (who really liked the town’s pizza place), savoring a view over the valley draped in fog and the soft light of dusk.  The next day we went back, courtesy of a soldier with whom we hitched a ride.  This time we walked around the cedar grove, a deliciously smelly place, a calm aura about it, really lovely.  We walked back to town along the old Bcharré road, full of hairpin turns which afforded great vistas to us pedestrians (this town and our story here is so full of great vistas I’m going to run out of synonyms).

The next day, yesterday, we walked down the valley, another beautiful day of walking and looking, including a trip to a semi-hidden waterfall, and a view into the ravine, cascading walls covered in summer haze, as if the valley disappeared at the end into nothingness.  There we received another act of kindness, a ride back up to Bcharré by a guy who lived in the village at the valley floor.  We had to turn down two other ride offers when we were relaxing down there, again the Lebanese don’t lack for generosity.  His conversation with us largely centered around the question of what two Americans are doing in Lebanon, haven’t your people scared you away from us? (this was a common question for us in Lebanon).  He also talked a lot about the local politics, Bcharré is the center of the Maronite Christian population (Catholic group, founded by a priest named Maron who emigrated from Syria to these mountains to found his sect), and Lebanon’s history can to a considerable degree be described as conflict, reconciliation, and cooperation between the Christians (Maronite, Catholic, Greek Orthodox), and Muslims (Shiite and Sunni).  There is little intermixing, aside from perhaps Beirut, the south and the Bekkaa Valley are majority Shiite, the north coast Sunni, Chouf is the location of the Druze, and the Qadisha Valley the Christians.  The Druze are a particularly fascinating people, I advise Wikipedia’ing them.  Lebanon’s political system is described as one of “power sharing,” where the Christians get the presidency, chief of the military, and the head of the treasury, while the Muslims get the all-important prime minister position, thus explaining the lament of our driver that the Christians have lost nearly all power here, a position exacerbated by Christians emigrating out of the country.

Thus with such a balancing act, you get a heavy armed presence at election time, to make sure things do not go astray, a statement which of course contains the implicit understanding that the military itself will not lead things “astray,” but that does not seem to be a worry here.  My guess is that this is due to the military’s weakness: there is a reason Hezbollah is capable of carving out its own armed, semi-autonomous territory within Lebanon, and why it was Hezbollah which successfully fended off Israel in 2006, rather than the Lebanese military.  These thoughts were reinforced by the four Lebanese soldiers who stayed in our hotel two nights ago, guys who must have been in their early 30s but acted as if they were 12, a quartet of men behaving like little boys, leaving me with the thought “no wonder Hezbollah exists.”

So back to the tourism, this has certainly been our favorite three days of the trip.  Between the last time I wrote and today, we also visited Byblos and Tripoli, the former pretty and the latter interesting (in the sense that all Lebanese cities are “interesting” – experiences I am happy to have had, but not a tourist’s dream, though the old souk area of Tripoli was cool).  But after spending a week in Lebanon’s cities, a few days in its mountains, in a calm town with clean air (and did I mention the views??) … I should also mention in closing how disorienting yet interesting it is to be in a place where one hears Arabic and yet the skyline is dominated by the spires of Christian churches, to see the Arabic script on church doorways.  The mental disconnect there is pretty fun to explore.  I do look forward, however, to hearing the call to prayer again.  Unlike in Morocco, here it has tended to be very melodic, and occasionally beautiful.

So we decided to travel south, to spend a night in Sidon and visit Tyre as well.  Old names from the Bible, these two cities had always stuck in my head.  As a kid, I read the story of Hiram delivering the cedar to Jerusalem to build the temple, and growing up you read of the Phoenecians and their trading and how an offshoot founded Carthage which went on to be Rome’s main rival during the Roman Republic.   I’ll be collecting a lot of these Biblical places on my journey – Damascus soon, and in a couple weeks Sanliurfa, aka Ur the birthplace of Abraham.  I won’t be far from Antakya, aka Antioch the birthplace of Peter.  And, best yet, I’ll be traveling to a town where Aramaic is still the primary language, an hour into the mountains outside Damascus.  Jesus language!

On the drive down to Sidon we passed through several military checkpoints, including a UN station, where a UN tank was stationed.  But aside from this, there was little reminder that war had taken place here only four years prior.  Hezbollah’s presence is muted as well, a few flags here and there, but their military seems to have left the cities with the persistence of peace.  You get used to seeing soldiers with machine guns standing about here and there.  Sounds a bit crazy, but it’s true, they just blend into the background.  Upon arriving into Sidon the two of us walked past a jeep full of soldiers, who all greeted us with “marhaba” (hello).  A friendly welcome from a mass of people bristling with machine guns is not something that the brain easily computes.  But in Lebanon it somehow makes sense.

Once in Sidon we got down to business, eating some food.  The seafood here, as you might imagine, is fresh – the waters here are crystal blue, looking at the sea just makes you want to run to the nearest fishmonger.  So that’s basically what I did, picking my fish (fishes, actually) from a case with a pretty good variety.  I say fishes because I wanted the things that looked like mutant giant sardines, which as I had imagined were really good fried.  Not super cheap, ½ a pound for $5, but worth it.  The food here is otherwise pretty affordable, they seem to run on a French menu idea of appetizers (mezzes) and mains.  Ordering a few mezzes tends to get you out of the restaurant around $5-10 lighter, and they mostly revolve around legumes and vegetables.  Aside from fish, the baked goods (sweet and savory) are killer – they do some great pizza-like things.

A side-note pressing to be told as I look out the window of my bus to Tripoli: French is conspicuously absent in Lebanon, English is clearly the second language of choice.  This makes sense, as Lebanon was a French colony for a much shorter time than was Morocco.  The billboards tend to advertise luxury goods, household consumer appliances, alcohol, fashion, “wellness” related things, and coffee.  A surprising number of billboards feature no Arabic at all.  They clearly are targeting an elite consumer, who achieves this elite status at least in part through knowledge of English.  One surprising string of ads featured women in bras, billboards advertising for a lingerie company.  Caitlin noted, “This would never fly in Jordan.”  It is interesting to compare Lebanon’s image as seen from the United States with its on the ground reality.  Again, though, I don’t want to make too broad or strong a conclusion about all this – I’ve only Morocco as my point of comparison, and I’ve only spent a few days here so far.  Adding Syria to the mix should prove interesting.

So back to the Sidon story.  We were wandering around the old medina (old city), where it is often difficult to tell whether the path you are following connects to another path or whether it will dead-end into someone’s front door.  The medina in Sidon is all stone, narrow and windy, nooks and crannies, etc etc.  So I wander up a set of stairs, pretty sure I was walking into someone’s house (often the doors are left open, so you literally see into their houses), but curious enough to keep going.  I stopped when I heard a voice from below, a man saying something to me.  Caitlin turned to talk to him, from which it became clear that I was indeed walking into a house, one with a view of a ruined cathedral behind it.  We were invited in.  Soon we were sitting in this man’s living room, surrounded by curious and smiling faces.  He had a large family, though we were assured that by Arab standards it was quite small.  As is traditional, these “jihadis” (for you, Natrone) offered us food and drink and hookah (grape flavored, really good).  We spent a few hours there, Caitlin as the translator, our conversation wandering this way and that.  It was a bit stressful, being guests of a family you don’t even know, a family that was very, very generous with their food by Western standards (this a standard thing in the Arab world).  This left me wondering and hoping that their generosity didn’t come at a great price to the family itself.  As my girlfriend tells me, even the poorest family will present everything they have – hospitality yes, but it’s also about maintaining appearances.  As an American, I worry about taking from someone who does not have much to give.

We decided to do a daytrip to Tyre the next day, and bring the family back something as a thank you.  Brazil and Germany flags seemed like a good idea, given the fact that half the family would be supporting Germany and the other Brazil during the World Cup.  Well, in Tyre Caitlin’s health began to degrade.  Once back in Sidon that night, she was bed-ridden, knocked out by a stomach bug.  I felt bad for her then, but not nearly as bad as I did in the middle of that night, when I awoke vomiting-shitting everything out of my system.  That day turned into yesterday, which was a total loss, both of us curled up in our beds just trying to wait for things to get better.  They did, we awoke today improved.

Prior to leaving Sidon, we delivered the flags to the family, a day later than we had planned.  They had invited us back to breakfast, but that day we could barely leave our beds, much less think of eating food.  When I walked up the steps to the house (ahead of Caitlin, as she has a habit of walking behind you, and wasn’t feeling quite as energetic as I was) I came upon the family’s door, which was open.  Inside were several people I did not recognize, mostly older women and young kids, and a man in a Lebanese army uniform, whose look towards me immediately become a glare.  I’m sure he was wondering what this Western asshole was doing coming up to his family’s house and peering in on the women and children.  I immediately started wondering if I had gotten the wrong house, though I was certain (rightly) that it was the same place.  It got better once Caitlin made it up and one of the ladies in the house recognized us from two nights before.  I swear, we had 10 people with us that night, of which only two (the lady and a young boy) were there today.  There was a brief conversation in Arabic, our gift (which felt paltry and lame compared to their generosity, though the boy clearly was happy with his new Germany flag) was given, and then we quickly left.

I don’t have much more to say about Madrid: big European cities are too comfortable and familiar to me.

So two days ago I flew Madrid to Beirut, a much less terrifying two flights than my Boston-Madrid flight that triggered every ounce of my irrational fear of flying. This is something that I have developed as I have aged, I have no clue as to why. I’d like someone to explain this to me.

Once at the Beirut airport, I had to wait for my old friend and Lebanon travel partner Caitlin to fly in from Amman. We were slightly worried about her ability to enter Lebanon as she had been through Israel on a prior trip to Egypt. The Lebanese will not admit anyone with an Israel stamp on her passport. She didn’t get stamped entering Israel, as the Israelis are conscious of the travel restrictions that result from their stamp entering your book, but she at the same time couldn’t demonstrate how she got from this part of Egypt to that part of Jordan without entering Israel. Luckily, unlike the Syrians who have a reputation for looking for missing exit or entry stamps, the Lebanese were rather lax at the airport. They gave my passport a flip through, but weren’t really that interested in investigating its contents. Likely the same for her, she got her visa and we had a happy reunion in the terminal.

So what is Beirut like? The first thing that struck us was the Las Vegas-styled people, as if our part of town was club central, and a non-stop procession of expensive German cars clogging the road. No clubs but instead swanky bars and restaurants. Our first impression of Beirut was certainly the ostentatious people. The next day we awoke and walked the long distance from East Beirut, location of our hotel, to West Beirut, passing the central district on our way. The center of the city is an absolute deadzone, save for construction crews and a stray taxi. The place is a ghost town, comprised of condo buildings new, old, or about to be born. In the middle is the towering Holiday Inn, shelled and abandoned to rot in 1975, a monument to Lebanon’s civil war. And then we got to west Beirut, finally, after what seemed an interminable walk in the sun, which left me with a bit of a sunstroke. Enough to feel mildly nauseous, and my skin, though not burnt thanks to sunscreen, highly sensitive to the sun. Even the evening sun felt like a heat lamp. First time in my life.

Some oddities were noticed, in particular the German, Brazilian, Spanish and Italian flags that are flying from nearly every car and waving from many a window. It is, of course, World Cup season, and apparently the Lebanese, having no real national team to speak of, adopt one of the top national teams of the world as their personal favorite. Germany seems to be the popular choice, Brazil second. That night we watched Bayern Munchen play Inter Milan in the Champions League final, which I stupidly missed during my stay in Madrid because I wasn’t paying attention to the schedule, ignorant of the fact that the final was being held in Madrid the day after my flight to Beirut. Bummer, considering I am a fan of Inter Milan, who won (of course, Jose Mourinho is the Special One!). The bartender too was an Inter fan, which meant free shots and champagne following the game. A great time.  When asked about the flags, a Lebanese man explained that Lebanon is a democracy and the people enjoy using it.  Why they don’t select an Arab team, which certainly was my experience in Morocco (where they were rooting for Egypt in last year’s Confederation’s Cup), is to me a testament of how much Lebanon looks towards Europe.  It strikes me that Europe and Lebanon’s proximity to it culturally is used by the Lebanese to distinguish themselves from the rest of the Arab world.  Though, as a word of warning, it is a typical and dangerous thing for an outsider to try to make a statement about such a diverse people as the Lebanese, who for decades fought against one another, through such a superficial attribute – their football affinities.  It’s simply one of the more obvious things to the eye.  What is visually absent is not necessarily absent in the minds of some of the people here.

This is how I survived four years in a small town like Northampton, MA.  Madrid is not a small town, obviously (fourth largest city in Europe, behind Istanbul, London and Berlin), and so there are a lot of places that would meet this description.  This means that I can be a bit pickier.  First thing that comes to mind are my immediate surroundings: I am writing in a café that that has good food and coffee and “feels right” – La Lolina.  I just finished eating a spinach salad with two large rounds of chevre, walnuts, raisins, mushrooms, and a honey-mustard dressing for 8 euro, which really should have fed two people rather than one.  Toss in good lighting, corner placement, open doors to the outside air, comfortable armchairs, and you got a place beckoning for my money and behind.  Cafes are my living room and my office.  With this in mind, the café is perhaps all-important.  But secondly, as an American I want to live in a part of the city that exudes Europe:  small streets, pedestrians, streets of pre-WWII architecture.  Madrid is a bit more architecturally heterogenous than most major European cities, it certainly did not have a Haussman to regularize construction.  It has a somewhat eclectic mix of styles, which is part of its charm.  Eclectic is good, concrete and formless post-war architecture is bad.  I know that I am living a stereotype, the American who takes to neoclassical architecture and Parisian balconies.  Doesn’t matter.  I could rationalize my aesthetic preferences, but I won’t bother.

Malasaña might be the place: pretty, narrow, well stocked with quality-of-life places (such as this café), and plenty of metro stops around.  We’ll see: the search must continue, as I don’t know which school I’ll be placed at and thus which public transit lines I’ll need to use.  Plus I need to visit the Retiro – Madrid’s celebrated park.  For example, J. Leon in Philly lives about four blocks from Rittenhouse Square, it is a treat leaving his flat and walking those brief minutes to trees and sun.  Living near the park has its charms.  I wonder, though, about the usefulness of a park from October to March.  A nice plaza is always good to have nearby, but a park?  Will I live in Madrid past next spring?  An open question.  My significant other will have something to say about this.

The worst thing about bed bugs is absolutely the paranoia that an encounter with them induces.  Anything and everything, every sensation (an itch?), every mattress (a harbor?), every article of clothing (infested?) could be a sign that they are near and hungry.  Cultivating the paranoia is the fact that their bites often do not appear or become itchy until a day or two after – delayed reactions are great for inducing another bout of fear!  You think you’re in the clear and suddenly a new red mark on your wrist – what is it?  A mosquito bite?  A new bed bug encounter?  Did you fumble a red pen?  Or just the time-release bite of love that kissed you a few days prior from an eight-legged source which is no longer in your vicinity?  Can you really know if you are in the clear?  Did they lay eggs on your clothes, a surprise gift for you just wait a few weeks?  Well, thanks Cat’s Hostel for the memories, guaranteed to linger on.

But you didn’t come hear to read about bugs and I certainly didn’t travel to Madrid to visit them.  So let’s talk about the beautiful drink sitting to my right.  Café con leche.  At home, I am not a cappuccino drinker, and as my compañero Nathan will tell you I am liable to castigate anyone who I care about for drinking a latte.  Coffee flavored milk is, well,– if you want milk, order milk.  So I arrive at Madrid airport with no euros and realize I can’t withdraw them until I call my bank and let them know I’m in Spain.  This puts me in a pickle.  (You always forget something before you leave for a trip, and this time it was the bank, and canceling my gym membership).  I needed two euro to take the metro into the city, so I bought a coffee with some dollars to get euro in change .  So the lady pulls a big shot into a cup, and then asks “leche?” in a way that made it clear that I was to indeed want some milk with that.  Fine, milk me.  I sit down, exhausted, and take a sip: goddamn.  Europeans always claim to have superior milk to ours (in that it tastes like something), and perhaps I am on the road to becoming a believer.  My argument was always that milk is something formative – the milk you drink growing up is milk and anything else that calls itself “milk” but doesn’t taste like your milk is some bastardization and probably came from pigs or rats rather than cows.  While this is still likely true, I can recognize that the combination of Spanish coffee and Spanish milk is heavenly, two liquids made for one another.

//Pause to scratch my thigh – bed bug?//

So yesterday at the infernal hostel I was relaxing in a chair and reading a philosopher (no need to name-drop, it’s already bad enough) when someone had this same reaction and asked me “why are you reading XXXX while on vacation?”  He explained that he was entering a MA program in theology at Notre Dame and had done a minor in philosophy as an undergraduate.  All this is innocent enough, we had a fairly long conversation about the relationship between Greek thought and Christianity, on the Stoics and John and the centrality of logos to both (John: “in the beginning there was the word” [logos]).  Then we started talking about popes, how JP 2 was the grandfather everyone wanted to have, how Ratzinger is not a shiny beam of warmth.  I related how JP 2 reminded me of Padre Pio, a beloved Italian saint of the early to mid 20^th century.  Here the fun began, the guy was all about Padre Pio.  To be canonized one must perform miracles, and my new Catholic friend informed me that Padre Pio had “bilocated” on multiple occasions (read: was in two places at the same time), including once where he bilocated into the middle of an dogfight (Top Gun teaches you vocabulary) during WWII and was seen by the pilots, and once where he bilocated into the tent of a general who was about to commit suicide and cajoled the man into reconsidering (the man later was said to have visited double-P, and rather than “hello” or “buon giorno” received this as his greeting: “that was quite the night!”).  PP also had all five stigmata, which “bled more than most stigmatas,” he had levitated, etc etc.  So he’s Saint Padre Pio and we should believe in his miracles because some of the witnesses are still alive.  So are people who were at Roswell, but I didn’t make this point to him.  For it was a surreal experience, by my line of work and place of residence I don’t encounter true believers, although I certainly recognize the type having grown up in a evangelical household (in other news, Catholics are the only remaining group about whom it is OK to slur, and the sex scandal is being trumped up by the New York Times).  I feel a little bad relating this story for the guy was quite friendly and reminded me of Butters if Butters looked like a cross between Ryan Phillipe and David Beckham, but preserving this story is decidedly more important than any karmic retribution I am tempting.