The Spanish Inquisition: Travel Recommendations

Our program directors asked us to write recommendations for future students. Since I’ve gotten around so much (har, har), I ended up writing 9 pages. Here they are. You can skim through them or put them in your pocket in case you ever plan a trip to Spain…or Rome, Paris, or London.

Currency
Due to various factors, including our trade and budget deficits, the dollar has been falling against the euro for five years now. So, everything in Europe is more expensive than it was in America. It would behoove you to remind your parents about this sometimes.

Real Madrid Tickets
La Liga plays on Saturdays and Sundays. The Champions League plays on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Finding schedules for both should be easy enough.

In America, buying a ticket on the Internet is cheaper and more convenient than buying one at the box office. The opposite is true for Spanish soccer games. Internet rates are positively criminal, and they run out quickly. Instead, go to the box office, which opens 2 days before each game. Your seat should cost you 30-40E. Lateral, or sideline, seats are superior to fondo, which are behind the goals. Don’t worry about which anfitrión (deck) you have because every seat is good in the Bernabeu.

Transit
I’ve been to many cities, and the one with the best metro system is Madrid. It will be your friend. You can get anywhere inside the city within 30 minutes and to the airport within 45. You lose an average of 5 minutes for each line change, so try to make as few as possible.

Regardless, if you’re planning to go out at night, learn the bus routes to your house. The metro closes at 2 AM and re-opens at 6, which is a couple hours too early and a couple hours too late, respectively. The buses run all night. Walking home is easier than finding a taxi in Madrid on a Friday night.

By the time you arrive, Line 8 may extend to Airport Terminal 4. If not, the bus (204) between T4 and Avenida de America closes at 12 AM. Line 201 between T4 and Barajas is a little faster than the shuttle between the main terminal and T4, but take whatever’s available.

For Madrid suburbs like Alcalá de Henares, Ávila, and Aranjuez, you can use Madrid Cercanías, a train system which also runs out of Atocha Renfe.

Trains run out of Atocha Renfe. The only area to which you should consider taking one is Andalucía, as the Ave cuts 3 hours off your journey through the mountains. For other locations, the buses are cheaper, more flexible, and almost as fast. Here are the lines I know:

Auto-Res – Metro: Conde de Casal – Cáceres, Salamanca, Trujillo, Valencia
Alsa Bus – Metro: Avenida de América – Barcelona, Lisboa, Zaragoza, and between San Sebastián and Bilbao
Cevesa – Metro: Mendez Álvaro – Ávila, Cabezuela del Valle, Plasencia
Continental Auto Bus – Avenida de América – Navarra, País Vasco

Buses play movies, but they don’t give you headphones, so you’ll have to bring your own. Auto-Res plays old films. Continental plays new films. Alsa plays bad films.

You can change your bus tickets for free and cancel them for an 80% rebate up to 3 hours before departure.

I highly recommend striking up conversations with the people sitting next to you on planes, trains, and automobiles. Besides interaction with your host family, it’s the best way to practice your Spanish because you’re stuck together for a couple hours at a time. Also, the majority of the strangers whom I’ve had the courage to meet have been very friendly. I’ve shared contact information with many of them, and from these chats alone, I now have friends from Madrid, Cádiz, Extremadura, France, Mexico, Chile, Australia, and Bangladesh.

To rent a car, you must be 21. I’ve heard the going rate for a weekend is 100E. I recommend this option if you’re traveling with a group to Lisboa.

The airplane lines we used the most were Vueling, EasyJet, and RyanAir. RyanAir’s MO is running very cheap flights out of remote locations, so before you make a reservation, make sure you know exactly where they’re taking you and how to get out of it.

To get around, you need a map. You can get one in a government tourist outpost (look for the i), but they’re always based in the center of the city, the very place you need a map to find. The easiest way to avoid this vicious circle is to get directions directly to your hostel and pick up a map there instead. I’m a bigger fan of using my intuition, though.

Cities
Alcalá de Henares: We passed the first two days of the summer trip here, and the city, so steeped in the culture of the 1500s, gave us a charming introduction to Spain. I have great memories of my first night, the same night Barcelona won the Champions League. Drunken young Spaniards were jumping through the street, some of them driving cars around in circles and honking and honking, in honor of their fellow countrymen’s achievement. After just 16 hours here, I already know the “Oé, oé, campeones” chant. Since the Cercanías and eventually the Metro go there, it makes for a relaxing day trip. Don’t feel guilty if you never make it out here, though, because in terms of ambience and culture, Alcalá is similar to Salamanca.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam has an excellent Van Gogh museum and beautiful architecture which passed through the World Wars unscathed. I think those are the two big reasons that so many young people love to go there.

El estado como un servicio

Los derechos del estado proceden del contrato social.  Los ciudadanos eligen algunos derechos al estado para asegurar la protección de sus otros derechos.  Dar estos derechos al estado no es darlos a los otros ciudadanos individuales; pues el gobierno tiene un estatus legal único.  Lo compararía a un fontanero.  Cuando una persona lo da permisión para reparar su fontanería, no da este derecho de manipular su propiedad a toda la gente – sólo a este individuo.  En la misma manera el gobierno tiene el derecho único para hacer sus trabajos, incluido para aplicar la ley, hacer la guerra y manejar relaciones internacionales.  Estos son los servicios que esta organización provee.

Asumimos el contrato social, pero nunca hay una fecha en que lo firmamos.  Pues ¿el estado es opresión, sí?  Demanda cosas cuando nunca decidíamos participar.  Sócrates resolvía el problema así: si se decide quedarse en el estado hasta que seas adulto, es asumido que se ha firmado el contrato.  Antes, sus padres hacían la decisión para Usted.  Y aunque no hay un acuerdo oficial, se decide cuando se participa en la comunidad.  Si realmente no quisiera vivir en la sociedad, se puede mudarse a otro, y si no quisiera vivir en ninguna sociedad, se puede mudarse al salvaje y vivir como un ermitaño, sin leyes o impuestos o nada.

Cada persona sólo puede hacer el contrato social con uno gobierno en su región.  Sin un gobierno unitario para aplicar la ley en una sociedad grande habría caos si muchos cuerpos diferentes intentaran hacer sus propias leyes y tuvieran sus propias policías dentro de una ciudad.  La gente temería salirse por la calle porque no supiera que leyes violarían por hacerlo.  Puede ser legítimo diferentes niveles del mismo gobierno, como municipio/autonomía/nación, pero no es posible para dos gobiernos y códigos de ley competitivos para tener legitimidad en el mismo espacio.

La ley pretende defender los derechos del pueblo, especialmente a la vida, la libertad, y la propiedad.  La policía aplica las leyes.  Ahora llegamos a uno de los derechos que la gente cede al estado.  Si alguien viola una ley, también viola los derechos de sus vecinos.  Si el gobierno puede probar el crimen (y no antes, según el habeas corpus) tiene el derecho para encarcelarlo, o en otras palabras tomar su derecho a la libertad.  Los vecinos no pueden encarcelar un criminal por si mismo.  Pues el ciudadano cede el derecho para encarcelar y para ser encarcelado al estado para evitar caos.

El pueblo crea el contrato para proteger sus derechos.  Pues el gobierno y su policía no pueden violar estos mismos derechos que tienen que defender.  Si ignora esta responsabilidad o sus otras, el pueblo puede acusarlo en un juicio para que sus vecinos decidan si tenga razón.  Si el estado sigue como un violador muchas veces y gravemente, el pueblo puede disolverlo y empezar de nuevo.

Cuando hablamos de las relaciones internacionales, no hablamos de las relaciones entre ciudadanos de dos países, más de ellas entre sus gobiernos.  Sólo el estado tiene el derecho para representar si mismo frente a otros estados o para declarar guerra, ella entendida como una lucha entre estados.  (Otra vez, es para evitar “el caos de demasiados gobiernos.”)  Los representantes de un país en una guerra es el ejército, y ellos tienen el derecho para atacar y matar a otros ejércitos pero no lo tiene contra los ciudadanos inocentes.  ¿Por qué?  Parece que el ejército debe tener el derecho para matar a todos los ciudadanos porque el gobierno no representa a todos perfectamente, especialmente en el cero de las dictaduras, pero también con democracias y repúblicas porque la representación es imperfecta y casi nunca tendrá todo el pueblo la misma opinión de una guerra.  Podemos considerar a los soldados culpables porque activamente toman armas para el estado, pero por lo menos para matar a otros; es autodefensa.

El derecho de estado sobre la seguridad nacional lo da un derecho limitado para esconder información del pueblo, también, en mi opinión.  Hay ciertos secretos, como la manera para hacer armas nucleares, que serían demasiados peligrosos si fueran públicos.  Para mí, los derechos fundamentales no incluyen el derecho para información completa.  No obstante, el gobierno sólo debe restringir información para razones de seguridad porque el sistema democrático depende en un pueblo informado.

Como los fontaneros mandan cuentas a su casa para sus servicios, el gobierno manda la cuenta, también, y los ambos tienen el derecho para hacerlo por el contrato.  Los impuestos son otro sacrificio del pueblo.  Si no lo se paga, se va a la cárcel.  Y todos de nosotros aprovechamos de los bienes del gobierno, sea programas sociales, carreteras, o la protección del ejército.  Para mí el mayor argumento para el derecho de impuestos es esto: el ejército es necesario para la defensa del país, y so no se paga su parte para esto, se pone en peligro todos sus vecinos.  Seguro que cada ciudadano se va a pagar para algunos programas que no le gusta, pero parte de la responsabilidad del ciudadano democrático es respetar las decisiones del gobierno representativo.

Ahora nos vamos a la moralidad de espiar.  Para mí es una cuestión del derecho de la propiedad.  Decimos en los Estados Unidos que su casa es su fortaleza, y la protección contra la entrada del gobierno en su propiedad sin autorización es consagrada en la constitución nacional.  Antes de que pueda hacerlo, el gobierno necesita probar en un juicio que hay probabilidad que el ciudadano haya cometido un crimen y necesita más evidencia de esto.

Para mí, la protección contra espiar en la casa es claro porque cada ciudadano tiene el derecho para saber quien está en su propiedad.  Los argumentos contra espiando en los medios de comunicación (teléfono, correo, etc.) son menos seguros.  Depende en los contratos entre un hombre y sus proveedores de estos servicios.  El correo, el teléfono, etcétera son servicios, no son derechos.  La privacidad de estos depende en el contrato entre el vendedor y el consumidor.  ¿Puede el gobierno romper un contrato para la seguridad?  Para mí necesitaría evidencia clara de actividad criminal, que anula algunos derechos como yo estipulaba más temprano y no extiende a los otros ciudadanos.

He escrito tanto para el derecho del estado en relación a la defensa nacional o municipal.  Su derecho para hacer otras cosas, como para regular los negocios, es menos cierto en mi opinión.  Me parece que las regulaciones culpen los negocios antes de que ningún crimen haya ocurrido.  Si una acción no viola los derechos de alguien, no debe ser ilegal.

Esto me lleva a una de las contradicciones de la política.  ¿Tiene el pueblo el derecho para violar sus propios derechos?  Para mí, el mayor argumento para el derecho del gobierno para hacer programas sociales es simplemente que esto es la voluntad del pueblo.  Si el pueblo quiere dar su dinero al gobierno a pesar de sus ineficiencias, es su derecho.  ¿Pero tiene el pueblo el derecho para ceder sus derechos de vida y libertad además de su propiedad al estado?  ¿Puede el estado aprovechar estas oportunidades?  Para mí la respuesta es sí, pero que ellos no pueden quitar los derechos de los demás.  Pues la gente sólo puede ceder sus derechos al estado en la ley, necesitaría un voto de 100% con participación absoluta, incluido la participación perpetua que todos los adultos del futuro.  La alternativa sería un caso de la tiranía de la mayoría y no sería justo.

El estado tiene el derecho además para imponer las reglas que quiere en su propia propiedad, como haría otros propietarios si no sea ridículos.  Las multas para aparcamiento ilegal o para ensuciar las calles son ejemplos.

Mis simpatías son para los derechos de los individuales sobre los del estado, y a veces el contrato social me parece más como una justificación ad hoc para el sistema actual que una teoría válida para los derechos del gobierno.  No obstante, me vale la opinión del presidente Abraham Lincoln de los Estados Unidos, que dijo durante la Guerra Civil que “la constitución no es un pacto de suicidio” para justificar las acciones del estado durante la guerra.  Tenemos nuestros propios derechos, pero tenemos que ceder algunos para la orden o la seguridad.  En resumen, el discurso sobre la relación entre los derechos del pueblo y del gobierno debe ser abierto y constante.  Así puede la gente encontrar el equilibrio perfecto entre el estado y los ciudadanos.

Paris in five words

Great men once lived here.

The museums and historical sites were fantastic, the most interesting I’ve seen so far, but the Paris of today didn’t have the dynamism I was expecting. Barcelona is still the most hip city I’ve visited. Now I’m dead set on seeing how London and New York, the English-speaking world’s cultural capitals, compare to them.

A funny coincidence…or is it a ROCKING COINCIDENCE?

Three years ago, the two hottest rock star/actors were Jack Black and Jack White.

Fragments 3

Sometimes, fragments of stories rattle around in my head for a few days and then recede after the rest doesn’t materialize. I’m tired of letting these orphans waste away alone, so I’m going to let them all live together here, as I remember them.

1
My love is the torch which burns brightly through the night. While everyone else sleeps, she is as brilliant as ever. But what will become of her when the oil runs dry?

2
The impassive trumpet player donned his sunglasses and surveyed the high school parking lot. “I don’t care if she’s cute. I don’t care if you like her. The bitch stole my pizza. She’s gonna die.”

3
By the tenth minute his commentary on Unamuno had become a soliloquy about his atheism. His English and Spanish were crashing together at this point, and each time his righteous fury turned to Christianity, the cross I wore around my neck felt heavier.

4
Two men, wearing ponytails and samurai swords, are speaking with each other. They are bathed in so much yellow light that the scene is monochrome. “I can’t do it,” says the younger, his head bowed. “I’m not smart enough. I’m not accomplished enough. I’m not even a good person.” His elder simply smiles and replies, “It is enough.” He leaves to give his life for the other. And as this image fades away, I feel comforted, as if he’s doing it for me.

The Spanish Inquisition: The Football Column

It’s time to write something fun, so I’m going to explain soccer to you all. However, because it’s “football” everywhere in the world except the United States and Australia, even in non-English speaking countries like Spain where the words “foot” and “ball” do not exist (¡that’s “pie” and “pelota” to you!), that’s what I’m generally going to call it. Let’s face it, it just sounds manlier than “soccer.” I hope all you “American football” fans will understand. (Isn’t it ironic that the only men who actually touch the ball with their feet, the punter and kicker, generally aren’t considered “real football players”?)

Soccer/football is the world’s most popular sport, and it’s not hard to understand why. People typically follow the sports they played in their youth – tennis fans, for instance – and everybody in the world played football when they were kids. You can pick up the rules within 30 seconds, and most importantly, the only equipment you need is a ball, or even something that can function like one, such as a pair of rolled-up socks. Any landmark can be a goal. Thus football is the sport of the poor, i.e. most of the people on the planet, and they stay devoted forever. Every time I walk past a beach or a playground, I see a group of people playing, be it 5-year olds who are too short to run or 40-year olds who are too fat.

Why isn’t the sport as popular in America as it is everywhere else? I can only conjecture, but I’ll lead with this: we’re a peculiar sort of people, isolated from Eurasia and Africa by water and from Latin America by language. We’re never even had to learn the metric system. The countries most similar to us in this regard are Canada and Australia, and oddly enough, soccer isn’t big there, either. Soccer didn’t take off in Europe and South America until after the first World War, and by that time baseball and American football had already entrenched themselves in our culture. In the north, hockey was a more natural climactic fit. Basketball became popular after the Second World War, and it was a more natural fit for our poor, who reside predominantly in our cities. So when soccer arrived here, its rivals already had entrenched positions. The strong went to American football; the tall to basketball; the quick to baseball. The world’s beloved football was a “sport for pussies.”

Soccer is growing in the U.S. now, but it’s doing so among a different set: the cosmopolitan middle class, especially kids with European exposure (like, um, me). It’s by far the most popular youth sport, largely because you can throw 22 kids out there and be pretty sure no one’s going to break the rules or will get hurt. When we talk about mothers as a voting bloc, we don’t call them “baseball moms.” Some of these kids are going to be really good when they grow up. The other group in America that’s pushing the game is the immigrants from Latin America. For now, many of the children from these families can’t play for their school teams because they have to work to support themselves, but when Latinos are integrated into our society and raise their economic status, we’re going to have a bounty of footballers and fans on our hands. I have high hopes for our national team over the next twenty years.

Many American spectators think that football is boring, and given the natures of our favorite sports, this is a perfectly understandable phenomenon. All three of our major sports feature hundreds of short bursts of action and long breaks. Everyone knows this about baseball – they realize it somewhere between the fourth and fifth time a pitcher throws to first base during a single at-bat, or when a commercial break between half-innings is longer than the half-inning itself – but for Europeans, this is the defining characteristic of American football as well. Everyone gets together for thirty seconds to figure out what they’re going to do. Then they line up, and they do something for five to ten seconds, and then everyone has to sit through another thirty-second huddle, and so on, and so forth…not to mention the TV timeouts between every change of possession, the regular timeouts, the quarter and halftime breaks, the instant replay reviews. A regular football game takes two and a half hours to complete, and of the 60 minutes on the clock, most of that is run off in the huddle. The Super Bowl lasts four hours! Basketball is better because you can have 2 to 3 minutes of continuous action, but play still restarts after every basket; the clock is only 40-48 minutes, and every 4 minutes of play, everybody stops for a TV timeout. And furthermore, the advertisers get to tell the officials how long the TV timeouts will be.

We are conditioned to this clutter of stoppages and advertisements, but for everybody else in the world, it’s maddening. Compare this to the simplicity of soccer: two 45-minute halves of running clock, two huge chunks of time in which nobody can stop play for advertisements. Yes, play stops for injuries, but the time is then added to the end of the half (rather arbitrarily, I’ve noticed). All the commercials run during halftime, when you know you don’t have to watch them. On the field, play is always developing, with stoppages for fouls and out-of-bounds similar to those in basketball. At any moment, a goal could be scored. You can’t leave your seat knowing the ball’s only on the 20-yard line because it’s so easy to make up the other 80.

If the game’s so “exciting,” American skeptics say next, then why are goals so rare? Well, with so many people on the field who can drop back in front of the net, scoring is very hard to do. It requires either a complete defensive breakdown or a moment of offensive brilliance. The goal of football tactics is to create a situation where a goal is inevitable, as a friend of mine once said. Every one that’s scored is a euphoric moment because you never know when – or if – the next could come. Anything could be the game-winner.

Rules

“Official” football has a couple more complicated rules, so I’ll explain them here. The goalee wears a different jersey than everyone else so the referee knows who’s allowed to use his hands. If the ball crosses the plane of the goal line, it counts. If it goes out of bounds on a sideline, it’s a throw-in; if it goes out on a back line (the one parallel to the goal line), it’s a corner kick. Unlike basketball, it’s legal to put the ball on the out-of-bounds line. You’re only allowed to make three substitutions per game, so they’re almost completely tactical maneuvers; most of the men on the field play all ninety minutes. To prevent “cherry picking,” there’s an offside rule: if your teammate passes to you while there’s no one between you and the goalee, the other team gets the ball. So precision passing is extremely important. If someone’s injured, it’s good sportsmanship, not just in FIFA but everywhere, to kick the ball out of bounds and wait for him to get better or be carted off. Afterwards, the other team then returns the ball to you.