Not What You Signed Up For

A series of related things happened recently:

1. I went to Israel
2. David Bowie died.
3. I got my second tattoo.

While the second two may be clearly related to each other, on the surface they seem to have nothing to do with going to Israel, and all together they still wouldn't appear to have anything to do with making choices about my acting career. And yet, going to Israel helped me become the woman in the picture below, which in turn helped me realize the kind of artist I want to be.

While I was on my birthright trip, I found myself saying to my new friends something I've said occasionally over the last several years - that if I weren't an actor, I would look like such a weirdo - covered in tattoos, with short hair constantly dyed some weird color (purple is first on the list). And I realized, during a conversation about tattoos with a few friends on the trip who had some, that I didn't want to continue pursuing a career where I didn't feel like myself.

David Bowie, my great artistic inspiration, the inspiration to freaks and weirdos and aspiring weirdos of generations, died on January 10, 2016. I found out early in the morning of the 11th, before 9 am Israel time, while America was sleeping. Our group was sitting in a national park while our guide told us about a former military outpost we could see on a mountain in the distance. He pulled out his phone to look up a specific detail, and, upon launching the internet, proclaimed "Oh fuck, David Bowie died." That was how I found out my hero, the Starman, the Thin White Duke, Ziggy Stardust, was gone from this planet. I suppose we were only borrowing him from somewhere else.

On the bus after our hike that morning I was allowed to take over the audio system for a while, and played all of his hits for the regular fans, and then played all of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust for my own sake. The whole group had seen me silently weeping throughout the morning, not having any way of knowing how much Bowie meant to me. And as much as I wished in the moment that I could have locked myself in my room to mourn alone, I'm so grateful now that I was able to process my grief the way that I did - with his music, surrounded by the beautiful landscapes of Israel.

That evening, we went to a hot spring located right along the Galilee, with incredible views of the sea and surrounding mountains. That was where I finally had a chance to relax, with my Squad, and chat about tattoos and mundane things. That was where I told more of my friends there was a freak trapped in this pretty normal-looking, albeit-red-headed, person. And that was when I decided I was going to let myself be me, and look how I want to look, and do what I want to do, and find or create the theatre projects that support that.

We spent a lot of time on the bus the next day, driving from the Golan Heights to Haifa to Jerusalem. During one of the quieter stretches, an idea for a tattoo came to me - not any of the three I already wanted, a new one. As soon as the idea was fully formed in my mind, it felt weird that it wasn't already a part of my skin. The picture that came into my head on Tuesday ended up on my body on Friday, the day after I got back from Israel.

My second tattoo, inked boldly on my chest, is the signifier of my decision to be me, and do "the industry" my way. It may have been a decision that prevents me from getting cast in some roles, working on some projects. But that's okay. I have never felt more like myself than since getting this tattoo. The lightning bolt is of course the most iconic Bowie symbol (though it's always associated with Ziggy Stardust when in fact it's from the album art for Aladdin Sane and was never worn on the Ziggy tour). The black stars symbolize his last album, Blackstar, released on his birthday, two days before his death. And the Hebrew says "ho lo ahuva at lo l'vad," which translates to "Oh no love, you're not alone" - a lyric from Bowie's "Rock n Roll Suicide," my favorite song of his, and translated with the help of several people who have made me feel very "not alone" - Elaun, our tour guide who accidentally broke the news, Jack, our security guard and member of the Squad, and my friend Michael, who I met during the RENT party in 2008 and who has always held a special place in my heart for a number of reasons only he can understand.

Right over my heart, a big red lightning bolt is difficult to hide. I have no intention of hiding it anyway. I'm proud that it's a part of who I am. Deeply connected to Bowie, to Israel, to being a weirdo.

My only other tattoo has, for a year now, slightly more subtly proclaimed my self at its deepest level. The "Hope" tattoo, in the Harry Potter title font, was one I thought about for almost four years rather than four days. But proclaiming my lifelong literal middle name in the typeface of a sixteen-year love affair seemed like a good start to proclaiming who I am on my skin. (This photo happens to also feature a length of blue yarn tied around my wrist, still here two weeks after I left Israel, connecting me to the rest of Bus 486.)

I posted this last picture on facebook because I felt good about my hair the day I took it, but after looking at it more I realized it really summed up me at this moment in time. I subtitled it "Not the granddaughter my grandparents signed up for, but the only one they got." No one expects, when a baby is born, that she is going to grow up to love classic rock and dye her hair bright red and get big tattoos and be a weirdo. But I'm awful proud of the weirdo I've been, and the one I'm growing to be.

Will you stay in our lovers' story

If you stay, you won't be sorry

Cause we believe in you

Soon you'll grow

So take a chance

On a couple of kooks

Hung up on romancing

-- David Bowie, "Kooks" Hunky Dory

America, Germany, Israel, and Identity

In the month that I've been back in New York since my trip to London and Berlin, I've become a hermit. I get up, I go about my morning routine, I go to work, I come home. I make no plans, and those engagements I previously committed to I frequently bail on at the last minute. I skipped the NYRF reunion the weekend after my return; I skipped the Daryl Roth Theatre (where Fuerza Bruta plays) holiday party this week. I make vague half-plans for drinks or lunches and then don't follow up on them. I hide in my apartment, in books, in solitude.

While in Berlin, on my Red Berlin walking tour, I told my tour guide briefly about the play I've been writing since my last visit, and asked if he had any insight into the daily lives of East Berliners. He recommended I read Stasiland, a book by Anna Funder, an Australian writer who lived in Berlin for a time in the 90s, while Germany was still rebuilding itself. I bought the book recently, and over the last week have spent every train ride to and from work disappearing into East Germany, a country that no longer exists, but whose citizens are still largely alive and well, some only a few years older than I am. Both sides of my family have roots in Germany, and lately I constantly wonder what my life would have been like if I had grown up there.

Tonight I went to my pre-trip orientation for my Birthright trip to Israel. Birthright is a gift of a free ten day trip, from the government of Israel and Jewish communities around the world, to young adults of Jewish heritage. I come from a multi-faith family in a multi-faith country. I always felt, growing up, that I didn't really have much of a national heritage, because the heritage of America, as it was taught to me and as I've experienced it for twenty-five years, is that our nation is a one of many nations. In the scheme of countries globally, we're on the young side. We don't have thousands of years of history as a nation. And similarly, in the religious sphere, I grew up Unitarian Universalist, the religion of many religions. Because my mom grew up Christian and my dad was raised Jewish, I, like so many children of interfaith marriages, grew up in a church full of families with diverse backgrounds and beliefs. Unitarian Universalism came from the merging of two religions and technically, by definition, is a cult, because it is less than one hundred years old since the merger.

Neither my national nor my religious heritage have the longest historical background. That has always made me feel a little lost, in the greater scheme of things. I applied for the Birthright trip because I am desperate for a deeper connection to something, to my Jewish heritage. Judaism has rather a long history, you could say. But I grew up as "the only Hanukkah kid in my class," as I said when I came home from one of my first days of Kindergarten. I lit Hanukkah candles with my family in November or December throughout my childhood, and that was most of my experience of "being Jewish" for a long time. I have only attended four Bar/Bat Mitzvahs in my life, all for people I am barely or almost related to - children of my dad's cousin (second cousins? Once removed? I never know), his college friend's daughter, my "cousin" who is the child of my "uncle" Marty, another of my dad's closest college friends. But I had no such experience myself. I have only been to Synagogue on those four occasions. The only Hebrew I know is the Hannukah prayers, and that's memorization more than actual comprehension.

So I float, tradition-less, through a young secular country, and obsess over strange things. I have always felt a connection to the Holocaust even though my Jewish grandparents were born in New York. Gas masks disturb me like nothing else. I spend ten minutes of rare hour-long Skype call with my brother talking about German history from World War II to now. I text my friend John, a grad student studying the holocaust and genocide, at 10 am on a Monday morning, asking for clarifications on the Nazi-Soviet conflict and the differences between communism, socialism, and fascism during the Cold War. I am becoming an encyclopedia on the lives of strangers that lived in a country that dissolved just months before I was born.

I am German; I am Jewish. But actually I am neither; I am American and Unitarian. My passport says I have been to Germany, and soon it will say I have been to Israel, but my passport was issued by the United States of America. My passport says, in the form of seven stamps at the back, that I have pretended to travel between East and West Berlin, places that no longer exist except in the experiences of millions of now-just-German citizens. The truth lies in the date of the stamps, 30 Oktober, 2011, 22 years after the fall of the Wall.

I read my books; I write my play. I listen to Led Zeppelin and Bowie records and disappear into the 70s.  I try to tell the stories of people I never knew, a place I have never been to, because Berlin and Germany are unified again now. A place and people that have nothing to do with a twenty-five year old girl from Chicago who lives in New York and has never been anything but American, who has never fled any kind of persecution or oppression and is only now becoming "woke" enough to realize the police state we live in. (Please watch Citizenfour. I don't know what to do about what I learned from it, but just watch it.)

Daily I feel small, alone though by my own choosing. I have always been independent, but now I exist like a satellite in orbit of the lives around me, away from family, friends, sometimes sanity. I shut out the problems of 21st century New York to despair in those of Cold War Berlin, and still try to find a way to make the two eras talk to each other as we shut out refugees, and threaten the building of new walls, and want to increase surveillance on possible terrorists, and barring an entire faith population from our country. I would have lived a different life as a German Jew in the 40s. I would have lived a different life as an Eastern German in the 70s. But those lives are still being lived now, by different faiths in different countries, and I just want people to wake up. 

That's what my play is for, if I can ever finish it. As I read and research more, I feel the scope expanding, sure it will one day soon escape my grasp. There are such big concepts at play. My access point is a history I was never taught but almost lived, from so many angles.

I wear still in this moment my name tag from the Birthright event tonight. It says my name, my trip organizer - Tlalim Israel Outdoors, and my departure date.  I feel suddenly just now, like I'm wearing a yellow star, but without the danger. "This is when she will claim her history." It labels me as at least Jewish-adjacent, with a date for the homeland. Getting on a plane, not a train, in safety, not in fear. To celebrate something that was once supposed to be hidden, shameful, dirty. To confront a lost heritage, color in a missing part of my identity as I have tried to do so many times on so many trips. 

For me, my Jewish-ness is tied up in my German-ness, two identities that were once so at odds, though my existence as a union of the two is not uncommon. Both cultures are shadowed by a history of conflict - and Israel isn't exactly history's most peaceful country, and that at only sixty-seven years old. I sit here, at 11 pm on a Thursday night in New York, trying to come to terms with all of my perceived history that is not mine at all - that of Germany, of Israel, of Jusaism, and, after a while, of America, that to which I can actually lay claim but don't know how. What is the meaning of being American?  Freedom? Fear? God and guns? So much of what America stands for seems either false or terrible. But then again, I have never been interrogated simply because I wished to travel, or had a boyfriend from another country, or because I dissented from my leader's politics. I can say what I want. I suppose it's just a question, now, of whether it is heard, or whether I want it to be.

The Ravenclaw Common Room

January 19, 2013:

I was pretty sure I'd posted something since New Year's, but clearly I was wrong. Things, unsurprisingly, got busy. Starting New Year's Eve I worked 11 straight days at Potter, then my roommate Anna arrived and there was Ikea shopping to be done and then Ikea furniture to be built and more trips to Kmart and decorating and being excited and still going to work all the time.

Things are really coming along here! Our kitchen is furnished with a nifty expandable table that Anna and I constructed all on our own and real wooden (not plastic) chairs. The living room has become a little separate area with a loveseat we got for free from a friend of Anna's, and a blue and bronze (Ravenclaw) rug, and a coffee table and TV stand. Gifts from my mom arrived, some pots and pans and a toaster, so our kitchen is starting to be functional. Soon after its arrival the couch was draped in Anna's blanket that portray's Sirius's flight on Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban. I found blue curtains to match the rug, so the living room/kitchen is well decked out in blue and bronze, with a Ravenclaw banner between the windows.

My room now has a bed, dresser, and desk, constructed by myself and my friend Joe, whose screwdriver has saved all of our Ikea purchases from being half-finished piles of particleboard and screws. Having furniture is pretty exciting after over 2 weeks of just me and an air mattress. I'm actually pretty impressed with how well we pulled things together in such a short span of time. I will say, we did have the Ravenclaw banner and the Prisoner of Azkaban blanket before we had a kitchen garbage can, so we all know where our priorities lie. Anna and I have never pretended to be anything else though, and that is why we are perfect roommates. Well, that and we're both super neat.

---

Well that never got posted either. January was a month full of moving, shopping (for the apartment), furniture building, and work.

February was full of work. And a visit from my mom! In her short time here she got to visit two of my workplaces - the Harry Potter exhibition and Fuerza Bruta, making her the only member of my family so far who has seen the show. We also spent a day doing the Broadway thing, catching performances of The Other Place starring Laurie Metcalf (of Roseanne and Steppenwolf) and The Heiress, with several famous people including David Strathairn, Jessica Chastain, and Dan Stevens, plus my favorite, Judith Ivey. Both productions were really well done and not things I would have sought out on my own, so go Mom. (Admittedly, we did try for rush tickets to Once and took a stab at lotto for Book of Mormon but it's what we actually saw that counts, right?) We also spent a day in New Jersey with family during the "big snowstorm" (read: regular snowstorm) that hit that first weekend in February, but Mom made it home okay after a couple canceled flights the same day. (I went back into the city to work.)

Also in February: the Phelps twins (who play the Weasley twins) came to Discovery. I didn't meet them; I was miserable for four days. The end.

Aside from Potter and Fuerza, I'm still teaching Sunday school, a constant joy, chalenge, and learning experience as I navigate working with a boisterous group of 6-10 kids ages 3 and 4. They are always a surprise, and perhaps sometimes I expect too much of them or am ambitions in our activities, but it's always worth a shot. I think people underestimate how astute and intelligent young kids really are, just because their vocabulary isn't as developed yet.

And, beyond Sunday school, I get to continue with another passion, stage combat. Twice a week I assist with the classes at NYU, where my teacher and fight master is training kids this semester in unarmed combat as well as rapier and dagger. I learn a lot just from watching the students learn, and even more when I get up to help them adjust mistakes. They ask questions that make me think more and watch better, and become more aware of those same things in myself so that I'm getting better all the time, even if I don't so much as throw a punch in class. Soon I'll also get to take a single sword class, testing in my fourth weapon with the Society of American Fight Directors in May. (I might recertify in RnD just to try and recommend, because I'm a stubborn perfectionist and I love RnD.)

Life is pretty good right now. Busy, the way I like it. There is a little bit of a gaping hole looming in late April, after the Potter exhibit closes and my almost-full-time job disappears completely, leaving me with "only" three part-time jobs, but I know something will come up. I'm pursuing some possible lighting gigs at the moment, working on a play (still, God, help me), and maybe, you know, I'll just take a couple weeks to relax a little before finding something for the summer. Who knows. What should be, will be.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the phenomenon/machine/enterprise/commercial entity/community/business thing that is Harry Potter a lot since I've been working at the exhibit, and I have tons of thoughts about it all now that I'm involved from this new perspective, but that is a post for another day. Perhaps Friday, when I actually have a day off, before I head to free nights at MoMa (which I haven't visited in nearly 3 years) and then Fuerza. (So when I say a day off, I mean the day time. Not, like, the whole day.)

Nox.

Last Day in London (Day 5)

Our last day in London we took our time in the morning to repack our things so we'd be ready to leave for our very early flight. Then around noon mom and I headed to Westminster Abbey for a communion service which meant we got to see the nave of the abbey for free (like I did when I went to the organ recital there in December). We did look around a little and saw where Charles Darwin is buried in scientists' corner. Too bad poets' corner isn't in the nave. All I really want is to see Shakespeare. :(

The service was fine, I like the sharing of the peace. Telling people "peace be with you" seems like a good thing to do. During the communion, since we don't normally take communion, we got a blessing from the (fairly young) priest instead, and I'm down with the whole "light and love of God be with you" idea, too.

After the service we took an unfortunately roundabout way of getting to Harrods and therefore didn't have much time there, but we got to see some expensive clothes, the memorial to Princess Diana, and in the windows outside there were lots of crowns designed by famous designers as well as a replica of Queen Elizabeth's coronation dress (again for the jubilee). Very sparkly.

Then it was time for tea! We had made reservations the day before for us and Kerry to have afternoon tea at St. Paul's because we planned to go to evensong at the cathedral. We ended up having lots of problems with the underground because of signal delays, so we ended up taking a cab and still being 15 minutes late. On the way we got to see some parts of London we hadn't been to though, so it wasn't too bad.

Tea was awesome. Mom and I both had peppermint tea while Kerry had chamomile (bit of a stressful day, she had). They brought over a tiered platter with three kinds of finger sandwiches (cucumber and butter, egg salad and watercress, and salmon and cream), biscuits with clotted cream and jam, and for dessert some little ginger cookies and custard tarts with berries and grapes(?) on top. Three of everything, a mini serving for each of us, and it was all delicious. While we were eating a group of five clergymen came in - among them the young priest from St. Paul's. Crazy.

Crazier still was that all of the sudden we were rushed out at 4:30 - half an hour before their tea times end, because of a function happening in the crypt, where the restaurant was. We weren't asked to pay or told how much we owed or anything, and we kind of hesitatingly walked to the door, but no one stopped us so we left. Three free teas for the price of one taxi ride wasn't so bad. Thanks, St. Paul!

Turns out the priests or whatever and the function were part of the service we were going to - not a regular evensong service at all, but the installation of the very reverend David John Ison as the dean of St. Paul's. We made it through over an hour of long hymns we couldn't sing along to and a sermon and a parade of church officials (and I know what a virger is now) before we respectfully left during the stat of yet another hymn, which wasn't the last.

Mom and I thought about going to the Victoria and Albert museum, which is open late on Fridays, but we were all tired so instead the three of us went to a pub by Kerry's for dinner and a pint. Despite being a traditional
English pub, the place served Thai food, but it was very good and we were hungry, so no complaints for sure. Kerry and I had originally planned to go out dancing that night, but both still being tired, we decided to buy a bottle of Bailey's continuing our tradition and drink at home and take a nap before leaving at 2 am to head for the bus to the bus to the bus to the airport. Yep.

So much thanks and love to Kerry for all her hospitality and for making us laugh and thinking we're funny instead of absolutely nuts. Can't wait to see you in NYC next time!

And then, we were on to Madrid...

For Halloween I was a Berliner

We continue the Berlin saga with Monday. Halloween, which isn't a big deal in Berlin. I got a slow start Monday morning (because it was cloudy and there was no reason not to) but eventually went out to start my day, following an itinerary I had created the night before to make the most sense of the many things in many different neighborhoods that I wanted to visit.


I went first to the oldest Jewish cemetery in Berlin which was closed in the mid-19th century because it was full and was destroyed in 1943 by the Nazis. Because they destroyed literally everything that they couldn't make money off of or directly benefit from. Outside of the cemetery is a memorial to the murdered Jews of either Germany or just Berlin, I can't remember which exactly. Anyway the only thing remaining in the cemetery is a replica of Moses Mendelssohn's grave, as he is buried there. It is a very pretty place, though, as it's been declared a green space and has many trees and the ground is covered in ivy. Plus, as it was fully autumn in Berlin, the trees were all a beautiful gold and there were leaves all over the ground. That's where I wrote one of my Unnamed Poems for Berlin. (There may be more to come in that series.) Berlin felt like a really good place to connect with my Jewish heritage - I wasn't raised Jewish, though I sometimes observe the holidays, moreso as I've grown older, but I feel a connection to that part of my family's history. One of the things many UUs (at least of my generation) talk about is feeling a lack of religious heritage or historical identity. I think that's also sort of a symptom of being American, part of such a young country. I'm American, but nobody's heritage is really American; mine is German and things that could be German like Russian and Polish, or as I usually describe it, Eastern European things that don't tan. So being in Berlin, and especially in a quiet, empty, beautiful place like that cemetery was really an incredible time for reflection and meditation. Yeah I need to write another poem that captures some of that, because really not everything about Berlin was depressing.


After the cemetery I walked to Kunsthaus Tacheles. I don't know what "tacheles" means but kunsthaus means art house. It was a huge building entirely covered inside and out by graffiti, and the top floor had an art exhibit on canvas too. There was also a sculpture park behind it that I explored that reminded me of Socrates Sculpture Park if it was put into a trash compactor and moved to post-Cold War Berlin. Kusthaus Tacheles reminded me a little bit of PS 1, so it was kind of like being in Queens for an hour.


For lunch I went to a French restaurant, recommended by the guidebook as cheap and delicious (and apparently where Jessica and our friend EV went all the time when EV was studying in Berlin last semester). It was a three course meal for 7.50. I had pate because I didn't know what it was but now I think I might know (please don't actually tell me) and I won't be eating it again. The main course was some kind of meat and potatoes in a really delicious mushroom sauce, and dessert was a tasty chocolate cake. The place is owned by a guy named Jean-Claude who's really friendly and sounds French no matter what language he's speaking (I heard French, English, and German). He says magnifique a lot. He made me smile and sitting in that restaurant I felt so grateful for my luck, to study abroad, to travel, to be learning so much in Berlin, including about myself, and to have found such a great place to eat. This semester is really teaching me to be grateful for food. I told Jean-Claude that his meal was better and cheaper than anything I ate in Paris, and that was true. (I probably couldn't afford really good food in Paris.)


Next I headed to the Deutsche Guggenheim because it's free on Mondays. It was a total disappointment, just a one-room exhibition and a gift shop. Good thing it was free. The exhibition was vaguely interesting, but it was literally smaller than most of the galleries in Chelsea so I moved on pretty quickly.


Having got my art on, I went back to my history lessons and returned to Checkpoint Charlie, which we had kind of breezed past during our walking tour. I really knew nothing about it, since we don't really learn about the Cold War in school. We would generally get through WWII, maybe the Civil Rights Movement, and then spend like one day on anything after 1968, mostly mentioning that Nixon and Reagan existed and the space race happened, and then it was time for finals. So I learned a ton about the Cold War on this trip and I'm kind of obsessed with it now. Probably going to end up watching a bunch of movies from the 60s. I've never seen Dr. Strangelove.


After visiting Checkpoint Charlie I embarked on a visit through an open air exhibit called Topographie des Terrors, which is located on a block that used to be full of Nazi-occupied buildings, most of which got severely destroyed during WWII and all of which got demolished in the 1950s. As early as 1987 this exhibit opened (in West Berlin, right against the wall, before it fell) and it consists of a lot of empty space and informational plaques showing you where you stand and what used to be in that exact spot and what the Nazis did there. It was really intense, as the site included a prison and there is a section of the wall remaining there which includes graffiti that says things like "madness" and "why." There's a documentation center inside that traces the history of WWII from 1933 to 1945, but I couldn't read that story again that day so I just looked at the special exhibition, which was a series of newly-discovered photos of a town of Jews being deported to a ghetto and several property auctions of the deported people's possessions. Cheerful stuff.


When I finally got out of there I went to the Jewish Museum, which Jessica told me was great. And it was probably the most impressive museum I've ever been to. It was also the scariest. Recently a new building was designed and attached to the old building, and this new building was created by a genius architect. The building is designed to be disorienting; none of the rooms are perfectly square, the floor slopes (slightly) through most of the museum, and there are no windows, just glass gashes in the facade of the building. (And I went at night, so it was just dark anyway.) The lowest level of the museum is composed of three "axes" which represent Jewish history - the axis of exile, the axis of the Holocaust, and the axis of continuity, which is the only part that leads to the rest of the museum. The axes of exile and the Holocaust were full of items left behind by people who got deported, letters sent, photos, etc. And at the end of the axis of the Holocaust was the tower of the Holocaust. I didn't know what this was, but I went in it. It was an unlit, unheated space spanning the four floors of the museum. Once the door shut it was completely dark and cold and I could hear sounds from outside. It was quite possibly the scariest place I've ever been in my life, and that's probably the point. Once I figured out where the door was I got away from there as fast as possible and went through the rest of the museum, which was very interesting, thorough, and well done. I probably went through a little quickly and it still took me two and a half hours.


Then I went home and talked to Jessica about the museum and then went to bed and thankfully didn't have nightmares.


Tuesday was a beautiful day and I began with a visit to the East Side Gallery, which way east, and is the longest remaining section of the Wall, over a kilometer (metric systemmm). It was painted by several artists in 1990 and restored in 2009 for the 20th anniversary of the fall. I'm really glad I went, because it was refreshing and joyous to see something so expressive and powerful and artistic coming out of something so oppressive and horrible. I took lots of pictures so I'll say more when I get those uploaded.


Then I went to the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Reichstag. Though I couldn't actually get in to the Reichstag, because you have to make a reservation or something, but the guidebook didn't tell me that. So I took some pictures outside, and then headed back to Jessica's apartment to get some work done before going out for the night. I got (not as good) currywurst by Jessica's place, packed as much as I could, then tried to accomplish some reading of my Spanish play. I did, a little.


And then I went out for one last theatre event in Berlin. The Rocky Horror Show. A confession: I had never seen it live before. Sacrilege, I know. But now I get to say the first time I saw it was in Berlin, so whatever. I paid a little more for a seat than I had planned but figured it evened out with my 2 euro seat at the Berliner Ensemble and ended up with a great seat. I thought the whole thing might be in German, which wouldn't matter since I know the story, but it was almost entirely in English. The narration (performed by a man who looked an awful lot like John O'Hurley) was in German, but all the songs and dialogue were in English so I got to sing along and had a great time. I realized it had been a very long time since I had seen a drag queen, and then realized how it might be weird that I generally see drag queens on a fairly regular basis. A nice joke for me to laugh at while the narrator was sharing snide remarks in German with the audience. All the performers were very talented and had incredible voices, and the sets and costumes were great. The only thing I really didn't like was that the musical direction seemed to lean so pop-influenced and lost some of the harder rock edge I'm used to hearing. Also I counted and I think the lighting designer used a total of twelve stationary lights in the show; 99% of it was lit with moving lights which is just ridiculous and unnecessary even if you have the money. He did a few cool things with filling space (as in literally the air) with color, but most of it seemed show-offy and arbitrary, which occasionally fit the aesthetic of the show but was mostly just annoying. For me. As a lighting nerd.


Came back to Jessica's apartment on a theatre high, packed up all my stuff, planned to leave at 5am for real this time and not wake up obscenely late, chatted with Jessica a little, and went to sleep. Oh it should be noted Tuesday was the first day I managed to get everywhere I wanted to go without ever getting on a train going the wrong direction or to a completely irrelevant place. Finally. On the fifth day. That's how complicated their system is.


And I successfully woke up on time and made it to the airport just fine and got back to Madrid in time for my 12:30 class. Bonus points for me.


Photos and possibly more poems to come about Berlin.


Tomorrow I'm going to Toledo, because it's fiesta - Nuestra Señora de la Almudena, the patron saint of Madrid. Weee!

More Mallorca Photos!!!

Okay. Here we go.

Rose Window. Lighting design to the max.

Main altar, altered by Gaudí from 1900 to 1914.
(The pun was for Brian.)

I didn't do anything to this picture. That is purely the effect of morning sunlight through stained glass windows on an organ.

Windows and walls of color.

I don't know what I look like I just did something mischievous... I really didn't, I swear.

Cross of St. Barbara

Really big candlestick. (Stranger for scale.)

Cross.

Unaltered photo of the floor - stained glass light!

Catalan. WTF. Are you Italian, French, or Spanish?

Chapel.

Artsy shot of the altar. Of course.

Artsy shot of stained glass.

My favorite.

I sort of smile in front of the altar?

Guuuuhhh.

I mean come on. Seriously.

Courtyard aerial shot.

Front of the cathedral.

This picture was an accident. I was really zoomed in and I didn't know it.

Swimming in the sea!

Hibiscus at the Arab Baths garden.

Apparently they have Devil's Snare in Spain?

Pretty!

Sunday's breakfast.

Miró!

He made me laugh.

Pretty sure this is a guy carrying a chalice. I guess this means we can claim Miró was a UU.

Turtleturtle.

Miró's studio.

Um. The beach.

White sand beaches, but Lindsay's still whiter. Damn you, Eastern European genes!

Me, smiling at the beach!

Sunset over the marina (view from my balcony).

Sunrise the morning I left.

You can just see the silhouette of the cathedral... AMAZING.

Falling in Love in/with Paris

Paris. Paris, je t'aime. It's the truth. I fell in love this weekend, and was so sad to leave. Paris was like a combination of the things I love about New York and Chicago and Madrid in one city. Somehow it's fast and busy and metropolitain but relaxed and elegant and spacious. I walked everywhere and took the metro a million times. There's so many different neighborhoods, so much to see and do, and I got into all the museums for free because my six-month student visa makes me a "long term resident" of the EU under the age of 26!

I flew to Paris Thursday night on a pretty uneventful flight. I slept some on the plane but happened to wake up in time to see the Eiffel Tower lit up from the plane, so I accomplished some sightseeing before ever landing on the ground. We deplaned away from an actual gate, so for the first time I descended a set of stairs onto the tarmac like they do in all the old movies. When I got to the airport, I followed signs (in French, Spanish, and English) for "Paris by train," planning to take public transit to my hostel, which I had figured out before I left. Unfortunately the train station within the airport was a good 15 minute walk from my gate and when I got there I found out trains weren't running from that station for some reason (which I never did figure out, because I took the train there on Sunday night just fine). Anyway by the time I walked back to the signs for "Paris by bus" I figured out that the bus had stopped running for the night. I thought about just sleeping in the airport, but as I was going to have to pay for my hostel anyway and I just wanted to sleep in a bed, I ended up taking a taxi. The most expensive cab ride of my life. Not gonna go there.

But, I got to my hostel in the Latin Quarter, checked in, and went to bed in a room I was sharing with five other people. When I finally saw the room in daylight, I was very pleased with how clean it was, and the hostel had a really cool aesthetic as well. I didn't take any pictures of it, but you can check it out here. It was certainly nice to have an ensuite bathroom, which I didn't have at my hostel in Palma. I showered Friday morning and enjoyed breakfast in the hostel - a croissant, a roll, coffee, and granola cereal. A good start to the day.

I didn't have any particular plans for how to spend my time in Paris, and my friend who is studying there for the semester had class during the day, so I used the hostel computers to start some investigating of where I could pass some time. While checking a destination on the (free!) map I picked up at the hostel, I realized there was a free walking tour at 11 and it was about 10:15, so I set out on a walk to Saint Michele to join the tour. I only got a little lost on the way and arrived just a few minutes late while they were still getting organized, so it worked out well. The free tour is operated by a company called New Europe, which does free walking tours in a bunch of European cities including Barcelona, Madrid, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin (which I'm going to do this Saturday). All of their tour guides are native English speakers who have moved to the cities they give tours of. My tour guide was named Arnaud (pronounced R-no), but he's not French, his parents are just mean. He's from LA, where he met his wife Jennifer, who is French, and they moved back to Paris three years ago.

So Arnaud showed us all over Paris - the walking tour took almost four hours including a short coffee break in the middle. We saw Notre Dame, the "New Bridge," a statue of Henry IV the party king, the outside of Saint Chapelle, the Louvre, the Musee D'Orsay, the Grande and Petit Palaces, the Tuileries Gardens, the Eiffel Tower, the Obelisk, the Arc de Triomphe, and so much more. I learned a ton about the history of Paris and got oriented to the city, and Arnaud taught us how to recognize French scam artists and pickpockets. He was really funny and at the end of the tour led those of us who wanted to go to a restaurant where they have a deal for New Europe tours for lunch. I got to try French wine, a white that I really liked, and had salmon, which was just okay. It had a flavorful sauce on it though which was nice since Spanish food is so plain. Arnaud told us before he left that he would be leading the Montmartre walking tour at 6pm on Sunday night if anyone wanted to join him again, and I did, with my new friend Ganesh.

Ganesh was also on the walking tour and was also traveling alone, and we both wanted to go to the Louvre Friday night, so after lunch we wandered around together and headed towards the Louvre which was free for anyone under 26 after 6pm. Ganesh has been traveling around Europe for the last six weeks and will be finishing his trip next week in Madrid, but is unfortunately leaving before I get back from Berlin. (Hi Ganesh, welcome to my blog where I talk about you.) Guys, Ganesh majored in aerospace engineering and just got his masters in 5 years. And he went to the Bronx High School of Science like my dad!

So we went to the Louvre. We're pretty sure the rules of time and space do not apply in this building, because every time we tried to figure out where we were on a map either on a wall in the building or the one we carried with us, things didn't match up. We did eventually make it to the Mona Lisa - there are so many signs pointing you to it you'd think the Louvre cares as little about the rest of the art there as most people coming to see the Mona Lisa do. It was about the size I was expecting, since I'd been told in the past it's pretty small. Might be a little overrated, to be honest. We also saw over the course of two hours: The Winged Victory of Samothrace, that famous portrait of Louis XIV, the Venus de Milo, and the Code of Hammurabi, which was probably the most impressive because it's essentially 4000 years old and if you could read Mesopotamian heiroglyphics, you could still read it today, carved in stone. After that we ran out as fast as we could, having been thwarted by the Louvre at every turn when trying to navigate the three wings and four floors of the most famous museum in the world. (For the rest of the weekend if anything went wrong, we blamed it on the Louvre. It's now our favorite exclamation, Looouvre! We're trying to make it a thing.) It seemed like we'd spent years in the museum, though it had only been two hours. Seriously the whole thing was like living in a surrealist film.

Post-expedition in the Louvre, we decided to go to Montmartre for dinner near Ganesh's hostel. (He had just gotten in that morning and hadn't even fully checked in yet.) I first tried to get in contact with Stephanie, my friend, but she apparently doesn't have much internet access on the weekends and the phone number she gave me was answered by a French woman. And then my phone died. So I sorta gave up on that. Ganesh and I weren't terribly hungry, as we'd had a big lunch, so we found a little cafe and shared a crêpe filled with cheese and mushrooms and - wait for it - crêpe flamboyant. Yeah. flaming crêpe. The waiter brought it to the table, just a plain crêpe, then poured some kind of orange liquor over it (Ganesh knows what it's called), and then SET IT ON FIRE. I mean, the flames weren't huge, and I couldn't really get a good picture of it, but people don't set food on fire right in front of you too often, so it was still pretty exciting and delicious.

Also in this little cafe was a group of probably a dozen Brits who were all playing some strange game with complicated rules. There was a guy in charge who would give a pair of initials, and then each of the (unclearly defined) teams had to name someone with those initials. Scoring seemed to be based on the type of person named. We figured out you get a point for fictional characters, two points if they're dead, and three points if they're Spanish. Don't know what happens if you name a real, living, non-Spaniard. It was funny when they got into arguments over whether or not people were dead. Including Harry Potter, which got Ganesh and I briefly involved as we told them that of course he died but wasn't dead. We wanted to play too, but they left before we had the chance. They were good entertainment though. After dinner we were both really tired, so we said goodnight and I headed home via metro to my hostel and to bed. It seems that everyone I was sharing the room with also spoke English, although I think the rest of them were from England or New Zealand.

Saturday morning was much like Friday morning, early shower and breakfast so that I could meet Ganesh near the Musee D'Orsay before it opened. It was pretty cold, as the morning was cloudy and it's also actually fall in Paris; highs were in the low 50s. We got in line around 9:15 because it opened at 9:30, but found out around 9:40 that the union, which had been on strike the day before, was going to be voting at some point to decide whether they were opening that day or not. We decided not to risk a fruitless long wait in the cold (good chocie, as they were still on strike that day), and headed instead to the original Shakespeare & Company (near Saint Michele, so I had passed it on my walk to the walking tour the day before), a bookstore that has a branch on Broadway right by the Tisch building. Shakes & Co. was closed until 11 and it was just after 10, so we sought out a patisserie to grab a coffee to warm up in the meantime. This was enough of a challenge, as it seems most things don't open until at least 11 on weekends in Paris. But we found a place, had coffee and split a piece of flan-like cake (we thought it was creme brulee, oh well) and returned to the bookstore at 11.

It was everything I want a bookstore to be. I want to live there. It was packed floor to ceiling with books of every kind on everything. There were books on shelves under the stairs. There was a shelf on a diagonal along the side of the stairs full of books. There was an entire wall of Shakespeare. It felt kind of like what I imagined Flourish and Blotts to be like when I started reading Harry Potter. We spent a good hour in the bookstore. I found (but didn't buy, somehow) British editions of Harry Potter, but instead purchased a copy of Patti Smith's Just Kids, because it's a book I want to own anyway, and I wanted to own a book from the original Shakespeare and Company.

After working very hard to separate ourselves from the bookstore, we went to the Saint Michele station where I took a train to Versailles and Ganesh headed to meet a friend of a friend for a flight over/near Paris. Fortunately for both our plans it cleared up over the next hour, and I spent a very sunny afternoon at Versailles, which I also got into for free with my visa! The tour of the palace alone took about two hours (accompanied by an audio guide) and was really impressive, of course. The epitome of French royal grandeur. I thought about going to the gardens after, but I'd seen them from the palace, which I think gives better views of their patterns than you can get walking through them, and I was pretty tired of walking. I had, after all, spent essentially the entirety of Friday walking. So I went back to the train and headed back to my hostel to figure out some things for Sunday and relax for a little bit.

Ganesh and I reconvened outside the Comedie Francaise around 7:30, because Arnaud had told us that an hour before the show they release tickets for 5 euros. However we showed up about 5 people too late, because a few people in front of us (and everyone behind us) didn't get tickets. We were disappointed, but started wandering to find dinner. We saw, sort of by accident, the really lame light show of the Eiffel Tower from across the Seine, and then decided to eat near my hostel, because everything near where we were was closed. All the French places were excessively expensive, but we found a reasonably priced Japanese place, and as I hadn't had any kind of Asian food in the last two months, I was happy. Plus it was just a block from my hostel so right after dinner I got to fall back into bed.

Sunday morning was my earliest start yet, as I was planning to go to mass at Notre Dame at 8:30. It was still kinda dark when I left my hostel, duffel bag in tow. I was a tiny bit late to mass due to train complications, but I was there for most of it and it was all in French and I'm still not Catholic so I was going to be confused anyway. Notre Dame actually wasn't as impressive as the cathedral in Mallorca, but I walked around it and took a few pictures after the service and then headed to Ganesh's hostel to drop off my bag before our day of adventures. (Thank goodness we became friends, or I would have been hauling luggage all over Paris.)

Our first stop was the Rodin Musem (not risking another pointless wait at D'Orsay), which was small and lovely. Saw The Thinker and The Kiss and a lot of other really impressive works, plus a very nice garden. One particular sculpture is definitely a major inspiration for a theatre piece I want to create with Colleen when I get back to New York. After the Rodin Museum we headed, quite early, to the Comedie Francaise again to make sure we got tickets. We succeeded and then rushed to eat a quick lunch before the show.

We tried to find a cheap coffee shop but instead ended up at Le Pain Quotidien. Yes, they have them in America, but not like this, and it was affordable. We couldn't really read the French menu, but figured out (thanks to Ganesh's questionable four years of high school French) that something said Belgian waffles with red fruit. We both ordered that, and I got an amazing (though overpriced) hot chocolate, which I had been craving all day. The waffles were amazing, crispy on the ouside and soft on the inside, with powdered sugar, raspberries, and strawberries. Perfection. They came with a sprig of mint on top, which I put in my hot chocolate at Ganesh's suggestion, which was such a good idea. Awesome lunch and we made it to the show on time.

The Comedie Francaise is where Moliere performed right before he died. It's so famous and was incredible to be in that space. We saw a Marivaux play titled The Game of Love and Chance. I of course didn't understand anything, and the production wasn't that good, though I think the actors were pretty talented, so it wasn't a life-changing experience, but I'm glad I went. Especially since it was only 5 euros. Mediocre costumes and set, confusing sound design, almost non-existent lighting design. But I tried something new.

We did go check on D'Orsay, which was in fact still on strike, so we went back to Montmartre to just sit for a bit at Ganesh's hostel before the walking tour, which started just ten minutes away. We reunited with Arnaud and met some new people as we walked around an incredible part of Paris. Our tour started right in front of the Moulin Rouge which is not as impressive in real life as they make it look in the movie. The walk was amazing though, as we saw where van Gogh lived with his brother, where Picasso traded paintings for food, where he lived with Modigliani, where Toulouse-Lautrec painted. It was really inspiring to see where so many famous artists got their starts back in the bohemian days of Paris. The artist in me couldn't get over it. It was also particularly beautiful as day turned to night during the tour. We walked around and went into the Sacre Coure, church of the sacred heart, and saw the amazing mosaics on the walls and ceiling. No photos allowed though.

The tour ended at a little bar close to the artist's square, where we were each given a free (very generous, thanks Arnaud!) glass of wine. Well, it was a paid tour so I guess I got a free tour with a 9 euro glass of wine or vice versa or something... Anyway a good deal. While in the bar Ganesh and I talked to a few other young people on the tour. One was a guy from Chicago (of course), there was a girl from Canada studying abroad in Lyon, and another girl from Canada studying abroad in - this is unreal - Birmingham, UK. Birmingham is where the Mötley Crüe show is that I'm going to in December, and I now have a place to stay or at least stash my stuff if I need it. Serendipity, man. The five of us wandered around Montmartre looking for a place to eat and settled on a nice place with a heated outdoor patio. I had incredible chicken with a mushroom sauce - definitely not something you could get in Spain. We all kind of shared a communal meal; three of our group got full courses with an appetizer and a dessert, so there was plenty for everyone to try. The chocolate mousse was amazing.

After dinner we said goodnight to our new friends (exchanging names for facebook contact, of course. 21st century...) and Ganesh and I walked back to the Moulin Rouge to get some night shots. It is prettier at night, for sure. Then we walked back to his hostel, where I made sure I had all my stuff. Ganesh walked me to the subway stop (not far, but he's a gentleman) where we said our goodbyes until we reunite in New York in 2012 - with B52 cheesecake, right, Ganesh?

I fell asleep on the train because I knew I was taking it all the way to the end of the line. I got out and headed to my part of the terminal to find the comfiest bench I could to sleep on. I actually figured out a fairly comfortable way to sleep despite the armrests. Half an hour later though I was woken up by police officers who asked to see my passport and then asked if I was traveling, I guess to make sure I wasn't just a well-dressed bum sleeping in a really obvious place in the airport. Then I went back to sleep for a few hours and woke up around 4:30 because I was really cold. I figured out this was because people had started arriving to the airport, meaning the doors were opening a lot letting in cold air from outside. I went through security and slept a bit longer at my gate. We boarded again on the tarmac, which this time was annoying because the bus took forever and it was really cold and I just wanted to get on the plane and go back to sleep. I think I did fall asleep before we ever took off. Definitely missed the security spiel, but it's always the same. Woke up briefly during the flight because there was some kind of scary turbulence, but we landed safely back in rainy Madrid before 9am, and I successfully returned to school, already missing Paris.

That might be almost all of what I have to say about Paris. I'm still working on editing the pictures (along with the remaining ones from Mallorca, no worries). I don't have anything to do tomorrow night other than pack for Berlin, so hopefully I can upload some then!

Mallorca Without a Map Part III

Here it is, the long awaited conclusion to my trip to Mallorca, which feels like it was ages ago now.

So. Sunday. Most importantly about Sunday, it was finally sunny! Finally Palma looked like what I thought it would. I got up early to go to mass at the cathedral, which was about the most beautiful thing that's ever happened. It was of course entirely in Spanish, but the only other Catholic mass I've been to was also in Spanish, so... And I actually followed most of what was going on, I think. The organ music was incredible, the atmosphere was perfect, and the stained glass lighting was so incredible. All buildings should have stained glass and face east. I don't really know how to put the rest of it into words.

After the cathedral I went to the Arab baths, because my little tourist guide that I acquired the day before said they were the only remaining example of Muslim architecture in Palma. Well, they turned out to be two little dark rooms that weren't very interesting or different in any major way I could tell, but the gardens outside them were pretty and I sat there for a while and enjoyed the fresh smells. It actually smelled a little like my grandpa's garden. Maybe there was dill somewhere?

By the time I left the baths I was really hungry, so I sought out a place to have breakfast, which was coffee and a croissant as usual. (I have a picture of this somewhere but I'm writing this blog at school, where I do not have my pictures.) After breakfast I made a quick stop at Caixa Forum, which is a free museum (there's one in Madrid, too) but it was kinda lame. There were only two exhibitions open, and neither of them interested me very much. But it was in an old hotel, so the building was kind of interesting.

From there I took the bus to the Miró museum, which was really cool. There was a lot of his work there, and a sculpture garden which was pretty, and I got to see his studio and his house. I don't think any of his better known works are there, but there were a lot of little drawings and paintings with bright colors and funny figures.

I spent a couple hours in the museum, but then the sun was calling me to the beach. I had brought my bathing suit in my bag, so I changed clothes and headed to the beach, Cala Major, one of the best beaches in Mallorca according to my guide. And also in between the Miró museum and my hostel. There will of course be pictures of the beach in an upcoming post: I've never seen such clear water. I swam out past where I could stand and could still see the bottom. The beaches were also so clean, and I spent some time just laying in the sun and reading Harry Potter (and drinking my giant 1.5 litre bottle of water that I bought for 70 cents). It was also fun to watch kids playing with families. After about two hours though I was getting hot and figured I should try to avoid getting really sunburned, so I went back to the hostel to shower before finding food.

By the time I was looking for lunch, it was around 5 pm, and everything was closed or only serving drinks. It didn't help that it was Sunday, when everything is closed anyway. I couldn't even buy something from a grocery store. I ended up eating some mediocre but reasonably priced food at a little place across the street from the hostel. Later I went for another walk to watch the sun set, but then went back to the hostel, made sure I was all packed up, and went to bed early since I knew I had an early morning.

Monday morning I was up and out before the sun. I took the bus to the airport and got to see the sun rising a bit over the sea from the bus. Quick breakfast at the airport, quick flight back to Madrid, and then straight to class and on with life... (Pictures soon to come, I hope, but I'm in the middle of midterms right now, which is really confusing since I've never really had midterms.)

Mallorca Without a Map Part II

Day 2: All that I want to do is figure out how to create a cathedral in a blackbox. Top priority.

I didn't set my alarm for Saturday morning and so even though I went to sleep around 11 Friday night, I didn't wake up until 9:30 or so the next morning. Still catching up on lost sleep from Brian's visit. I took my time getting ready and then stopped in the lobby of the hostel to ask how to get to the Cathedral. The woman who owned the place (who spoke English) didn't seem to know but she asked another woman, in Spanish, what to do. The Spanish woman started telling me, and I mostly understood, but when both I and the hostel owner asked what the name of the stop was for the Cathedral, we must have all gotten confused somewhere in the bridge between Spanish and English, because I got told something that sounded like "alseo." So I headed off to the bus stop and looked for my stop on the route. I didn't see anything like that. But I got on the bus.

Took this picture for my brother, who loves the Simposons - Spain also loves Los Simpson

Eventually I got off back at Plaça de Espayna, because I at least knew where that was and I knew a lot of busses stopped there and I hoped maybe I could just look at a map and walk to the cathedral. First I decided to find someplace for breakfast, and after a lot of wandering stumbled upon a cool little place called ÖMyGood! where I got an amazing croissant and coffee for cheap. I also met the really nice waitress (who smiled at me a lot and had a cool haircut) and I asked her how to get to the cathedral. She told me to take the bus because it was too far to walk, but about 15 minutes later (after a bit of a search for the bus stop), I ended up at last at "catedral."

Alexander Calder statue in the garden

This is how pretty the view was on a CLOUDY day.

I think this is a historical museum or something with the name Almundena in it.

I am officially terrible at smiling in pictures if I take them myself.

A little wandering through plazas and following some paths through a garden led me to a beautiful view of the sea even on a cloudy day like Saturday. After stopping for a few pictures, I worked my way around to the entrance to the cathedral. 

And that's just the outside... I took probably almost 100 pictures inside, and I still need to edit them, so there will be a separate post of Cathedral pictures. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. When I walked in, I skipped the first room of holy relics to get into the sanctuary. (Is that what you call it in a cathedral? UU problems.) And I almost cried it was so breathtaking. I just stood for a while, then I sat for a while, then I went back to the first room and actually walked around the whole place to look at every little thing, and all the individual chapels. It was too much for words, and I was probably there for about two hours.

Eventually I left but decided to come back for mass the next day (I know, right?) and then took some time walking around the whole outside of the building.

This is technically the front door.

After I left the cathedral, I walked back through the plaza and watched a guy played with his dog, who eventually invited me over, and we had a nice chat (in Spanish) for a while while I played with his dog. He asked why I was traveling alone and why to Mallorca on a cloudy weekend. Haha. I asked him and his friend if they knew where the Miró museum was (because I had been told it was close) but they had no idea and directed me instead to a tourist information office.

At the tourist office, I got a map! And even better actually was a little tourist guide with information about museums and sights. Based on that I decided to go next to Bellvere Castle, because I wasn't sure I'd have enough time at the museum that day and the castle wasn't open on Sunday anyway. First I sought out lunch, ate, and went to catch the bus. I had just missed the 3, but saw I could take the 46 instead. HOWEVER, what the book doesn't tell you is that the 46 is a circular line with two slightly different routes, and I, of course, got on the wrong one. So after about 45 minutes on the bus and understanding only vaguely where I was, I asked the bus driver where to get off for the castle. He directed me, and I followed signs to the grounds of the castle.

Here's the thing. The castle is in the middle of the Bellvere woods. So what the book doesn't tell you is that if you take the bus, you still have to walk about a mile (based on the time it took me) to get from outside to the castle. Through woods, where there's not really a sidewalk next to the road. Fun times. But I made it up to the castle, paid a euro (wooo student id card!) and wandered around the castle.

This is the only tower of the castle. And you can't actually go in it.

The castle is a circle?

View of the cathedral past the marina! AAAAHHH!

Look, I smiled in a picture!

Hello, self-timer. (Still not smiling.)

Scale model of what I walked through to get to the castle... I think I came from the bottom of this picture somewhere. Ridiculous.

So by the time I finished with the castle I knew I didn't really have time for anything else that day, so I just walked back out of the woods (through a different, shorter way!) and took the bus back to the hostel, where I ran into my friend again and talked for a while. He had been in Mallorca for a few days before I got there, but all he was going the whole time was a little walking around and reading on the beach. No interest really in seeing the sights, which I thought was weird, but to each his own. It did get a little annoying though when he was then teasing me for being tired, since he'd sat around all day and I'd been literally hiking through woods and having religious experiences.

Well, that's day two! Day three and cathedral pictures still to come... (This is a long process! But a good excuse to not work on my presentation that's due Tuesday, which happens to be about Gaudí.)