Happy Thanksgiving!

To those of you who are wondering where I've been, it occurred to me that I probably never mentioned here that I was going "home" for the thanksgiving holiday.  So right now I'm sitting in St Louis at my brothers waiting around for thanksgiving dinner later on today.  Monday I flew back from italy to chicago and yesterday we drove down to St. Louis.  It's a short stay though -- I'll be getting back on a plane Saturday and then head up to Germany to visit some old friends and family before moving on down through the balkans. 

So for those of my friends in the states, I'm here!  Happy Thanksgiving! 

To the rest of the world, don't worry (or rather be very very worried) because I shall return very soon =)

ciao

The art of a good con

I should preface this entry with the comment that it was actually written a few weeks ago on the train from lisbon to faro -- that would put it back on the 26th of october.
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I'm somewhat ashamed (or I suppose maybe embarrassed is more the word) to admit that I allowed myself to be conned the other day. Yes, I realize that's an odd way of putting it -- allowing oneself to be conned rather than just saying I was conned, but then again I think that's kind of the way a good con really works -- all the while its taking place, one has the feel, a certain apprehension, that something is amiss, and yet for whatever reason, be it sloth, pride, greed (or any of the other seven deadly sins) one can't help but go along for the ride... In my case I'd say pride and sloth were the culprits. I was taking a break to sit down in a square near the water side just at the base of the main avenue in lisbon when a girl came along and asked something in portugese. I just kind of shook my head and said in spanish, "lo siento, no puedo hablar portugese".
"English? Do you speak english?"
"Yes," I answered apprehensively.
"I'm sorry, do you know what time it is?" she asked.
I took out my cell phone and said "I think it's 2:15 if my phone is still on spanish time"
Then she went into her sob story -- more or less -- I mean it wasn't that abrupt that she started asking for help, first she asked if I knew how far the airport was. Allegedly that damn air france had lost her luggage -- never take them. Did I have a guide book, or know where one could exchange money? I said I only had a few pages, but there seemed to be a number of places to exchange money up the main avenue -- I'd seen them that morning as I walked to my hostel (first mistake).
"Oh, which hostel are you staying in?"
"Uh, the hostel. I don't know if it has a name. Just up the street quite a ways"
"The one by picaus? That's where I'm staying"
"Yeah, that one."
"Ah, I thought you looked familiar"
It's funny how suggestible our minds are. I did remember seeing a girl as I checked in, and the girl did look more or less like her, so of course at the mere suggestion that she had seen me my brain just filled in the blank and let itself believe that was her. All plausible, but at the same time I was aware there was a distinct possibility she was playing me for a fool -- after all, everything she said had been more or less ambiguous and all the blanks had been filled in after I had hesitantly offered up enough information...
"You see, I've been to the western union office, I had some money wired there, but I don't have my card" uh, or the story went something like that because I wasn't really paying that much attention. Honestly I was more interested in eating my roll and cheese -- it was good! Mmm, multigrain and crisp... "I tried to exchange my Rens, but they won't take them, I have these coins...."
"Oh, you wont have much luck then, banks don't like to exhange coins no matter where you go. Not sure they'll take south african currency anywhere here though".
"I hate to be a bother, but do you think there's anyway you could help me out? I could give you my rens and then I'll find you in the hostel and I can give you back the euros for the rens."
This is of course where my pride came in... So hard to watch a damsel in distress (and no, she wasn't all that attractive so this wasn't motivated out of lust!) I figured ten euros would probably get her whereever she needed to go so I looked in my wallet -- damn, all I had was two twenties and a five. I really didn't want to give her twenty, but I decided to be a good sumaritan and trust her. "Here, take twenty. I'll be around the hostel tonight. If you want to, you'll find me and give it back." She started to offer me the rens, but I said, "no, don't worry, I trust you. They're no good to me."
She of course thanked me profusely and then said she was staying in room 424, what room was I in... I hadn't checked in yet, so I didn't have one. She asked for my name so she could write it down. I was again apprehensive of giving out that kind of information, but I wrote it down on her map.
Then she was off. I finished my roll and started to snack on some sunflower seeds and raisins. Within a minute or two she was back.
"I'm sorry, but maybe you can help me out here -- how much is 37 dollars? My seminar is 37 dollars but I have to pay in euros."
"One euro is 1.30 dollars so that's about 30 euros."
She started doing the math on her paper, 10 euros would be 13 dollars, 20 euros would be 26 dollars, 30 euros would be 39 dollars, so 37 dollars would be about 29 dollars. "I'm terribly sorry to keep bothering you, I know you're trying to eat, but do you think I could borrow a few more euros?"
Now I was annoyed. It was pretty obvious at this point that she'd conned me and now she was just milking me for all I was worth.
"I thought you have everything in your bag? Aren't you going to the airport before your seminar?"
"Yes, but I have to check in first, and the check in time is soon, so if ... Bla bla bla bla..."
"I'm sorry, I would, but if I give you another twenty, then I won't have any money myself and I'd really rather not walk around with nothing on me." (this was a complete and total lie -- I had more money in my money belt and of course there was that other 5 I'd mentioned...)
"Oh, if you'd like, I can meet you at rossio, say a little after 4? Do you think you can make it that long?"
Now this may sound ludicrous, but to tell you the truth, that last little bit annoys me the most. It's one thing to con me out of some money, but to suggest that we meet at some random place at some allotted time, knowing very well that I would of course show up and she wouldn't, and I would therefore spend a couple hours waiting around and wasting my time looking for her, now that's just plain inconsiderate! I said no way. But the fool that I am, knowing very well I would most likely never see that money again, I gave her the extra twenty -- pride got the better of me and I didn't want to be an @$$hole... I said no, I didn't want to meet her at rossio. If she was for real I knew she'd find me and get the money back to me. Then she walked off and appologized again for interruptinig my snack.
You know what I did next? I suppose I should have followed her, or even offered to go along with her, or asked for some identification or something. I didn't do any of that. As soon as she walked away, I got the hell out of there -- for two reasons -- first I didn't want her coming back and asking for more, but second, even if she was legitimate and was going to give me my money back, anybody in the square who might have been looking our way had just seen me hand out money twice to the same girl. Talk about a mark! So I packed up my snack and quickly walked away.
There was no room 424 in my hostel.
I'm reminded of the time when I went for a hair cut and asked for her to take an inch and a half off. She said, oh, do you want me to use the number 8 guard? No, I want it to be an inch and a half. Right now it's about three, please don't take it down shorter than an inch and a half of it'll stick up.
No, trust me, it'll look good.
No, I know my hair, it'll stick up. Please no clippers.
I should have walked out of the place at that point, but instead let her use the clipper figuring if she insisted that much she had no idea how to cut with scissors. Sometimes I just need to walk away when I know bad things are about to happen...

Fwd: An hour from madrid

I'm about an hour away from the madrid chamartin train station and I happen to know there's a wireless hotspot there (mainly the last one I was able to sync up from...) so I figured I'd try to get something put together before arriving.
I just spent the last night on a train from algeciras -- there was a little internet terminal there at the train station that charged a euro for 10 minutes -- I tried sending a short entry with 30 seconds left that said nothing more than "I'm alive -- heading toward madrid..." I know I hit send before my time ran out, but with gmail I'm never quite sure if it actually succeeded (sorry gmail, I'm quite greatful for the free pop access, so I hate to knock your service).
Anyway, you all know me, and I can't just tell you what I've been up to before I rant and rave about something. I've spent a few nights on trains, and last night has to have been the worst. I got a couchette from algeciras and this was one of the six person ones that I was expecting every other time and somehow never got up until now. There were only four of us in the compartment, but I was one of the ones on top, and one of the other guys was also on top. He was exactly the one guy I'd rather not have had to share a compartment with. Pute madre! (sorry, to all the spanish speaking world, but I've heard a lot of that from the girls I was hanging out with the last few days, and somehow if I sware in spanish I feel like it won't disturb my mom as much =) Anyway, this was your run of the mill hippy type guy with long hair not quite yet rolled into dreads, scrawny frame, a couple tatoos, relatively dirty, a bit on the smelly side, constantly coughing... And I got to sleep a few feet a way from him. Considering the couchette was about a foot shorter than me, there wasn't much I could do but fold my legs which tends to work best when your on your side. It was easier to face away from the wall, but that meant facing him, which, if he was facing me, meant smelling his breath... About two hours into the ride I roll over through the veil of darkness notice he's doing the exact same thing the german girls had to deal with from the guy in the riga hostel -- wanking off. Come on! I'm trying to sleep here! Have some common decency and use the bathroom! An hour or so later the ladder starts rattling constantly and I keep having to push it to one side to stop it. I see a flash of light and I think maybe its my neighbor trying to figure out how to stop the raddle -- apparently he has his own way to deal with it, because the flash of light is from a lighter and he isn't looking at the ladder -- he's warming up some hash to go have a smoke... Soon there after he disappears out into the hall and comes back smelling as you'd expect. At this point I decide I've had enought --- I put my flip flops on and spend the rest of the night in the cafeteria car. I mean really -- talk about rude, he could have at least offered to share ;-)
Ok, enough of my rants and raves. I know some of you really just want to know what the hell I've been up to. I decided to hell with everything else and if I was going to morocco I couldn't cop out and just do the ferry ride over, tap my hands on the ground, say finally, I've been to africa and then head back right away. Instead as I think I mentioned, I hopped on a night train to marakesh with a spanish/argentinian couple and checked into a hotel there. My second day there I ended up hanging out mostly with Carlos and Luciana and getting a little bit of practice with my spanish. I have to say I am quite a bit messed up with languages at this point -- always back and forth between spanish and french. The other day I spoke a few words of german with a waiter and half way through groaned because I broke into spanish!
Mostly we just wandered around the medina haggling with the shop keepers -- they were looking to buy some shoes, but I don't think they ever actually did while I was around. The only thing I bought all trip was a bit of saffron -- and I know I overpaid. A little over 5 bucks for 2.5 grams. It may have been cheaper than in the states, but I'm sure I could have done better if I'd shopped around and haggled for it. This was in Fes though and I guess I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, the first day in marakesh I was trying to find the palace and decided the easiest way to find tourist stuff was to follow other tourists. As I didn't want the two australian girls to think I was stalking them, I introduced myself and found they also had no clue where they were going. We spent a while looking for the palace only to eventually figure out that all you couldl really do was walk by the big wall around it -- not particularly interesting. Afterwards we had dinner and tea, and I think it was during my conversation with them that I finally had a revelation as to why european music is so plastic and overproduced -- all the comments I've made in the past about the music here, they don't apply to the UK -- they have their own set of underground music. I was talking about my music preferences when it comes to listening to spanish or french music though, and I tend to like the more poppy crap, largely because its easier to understand the lyrics. Why it took me so long to put myself in the europeans shoes and realize they don't speak native english, so of course they'd prefer stuff that's easier to understand, and even more so, the familiarity of the same songs played over and over again year after year, because you already know the lyrics to them, well, duh, that kind of all explains it!
Yeah, yeah, I know, enough of the desultory remarks. I'm pulling into the station soon though so I'll have to wrap this up quickly. Lets see, left marakesh for a night in rabat, stayed at an overpriced hotel because I didn't have a map and couldn't find anything else. Didn't think much of rabat so I left the next day.
Met an australian couple on the train to fes and walked to the hostel with them. Split the cost of a guide with them the next morning to see the medina -- that's when I paid too much for the safron. One shop was selling skarves and clothes and after a good 10 minutes of me trying my best at french to explain why I wasn't going to buy anything, the shopkeeper gave up the hard sell and admitted he spoke fluent english because he'd lived in texas for 20 years! We had a good laugh after that. At lunch with the aussies, a moroccan at the table next to us asked where we were from. He said he thought I was american and flashed his illinois drivers license. Then went on to tell us how he married an american woman, and after a few questions from us quickly clarified that he had a wife here and his american wife was just a fake so he could get the citizenship. Apparently the going rate is 10k if anybody wants to make a quick buck =)
The next day I took a bus over to chefchaon with the aussie couple. Some guys at my hotel in marakesh had highly recommended it and given me a card for the hotel where they'd stayed. We weren't disappointed -- aside from some of the annoyances of the peddlers trying to sell you stuff or show your their shops, it was very tranquil up in the hills.
From there I headed out on a bus with plans to hop on a 36 hour ferry to france. On the bus though I sat behind three spanish girls who had just come over for a quick visit and were going to spend the night in asila before taking their ferry back to algeciras. From there they were driving to a town outside of cadiz and then to bilbao -- Ane offered for me to join them (depending on whether the luggage all fit) and that was too much of a spur of the moment adventure for me to pass up so I jumped at the opportunity. Unfortunately the luggage didn't fit, and it was raining so we didn't make it to asila -- instead we just split a room at a hotel in tanger and then they were nice enough to squeeze me in for a ride from the port to the trainstation. So that's a quick summary of morocco...
I'm pulling into madrid now and think my batteries about to die, so ciao!

im alive

in  allgeciras heading to barcelona...