Day 22: Superagente salvaje y el reino de la calavera de cristal

BARCELONA, Spain -- At this time of year, Spain seemingly trades its native population for the entire population of Western Europe: while Spaniards head for Ireland in August (I have firsthand knowledge that Ireland is brimming with Spaniards in August), the Germans, French, English, Italians and let's not forget Americans wander through the Alhambra with their screaming children, or sport blistering sunburns on the Costa Brava, or walk up and down the Ramblas in Barcelona ordering pitchers of sangría and marveling at the human statues while their pockets are picked. It's a strange little turnabout, but such is July/August in Europe.

Anyway, with all these multilingual tourists to please, the Spanish movie theaters have a full slate of ok-to-terrible American movies on hand, all dubbed into Spanish, and with titles translated for the most part faithfully. Still, I get a kick out of the translated titles, as they're not exact word-for-word translations, rather they shoot for a nice approximation of the overall feeling of the movie. I've already mentioned Dos colgaos muy fumaos: fuga de Guantánamo (Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo), which is maybe the best translation I've ever seen for an American movie. Here's hoping that the first Harold and Kumar installment was translated as Harold y Kumar: La película más tonta que has visto nunca (Harold and Kumar: The Dumbest Movie You've Ever Seen).

Here are some other translations of American movie titles currently in the theaters, and my re-translation of the Spanish translation back into English:

• Forgetting Sarah Marshall = Paso de ti = Forget About You
• Into the Wild = Hacia rutas salvajes = Toward Wild Routes
• Inspector Gadget = Superagente 86 = Superagent 86 (huh?)
• X-Files: I Want to Believe = X-Files: Creer es la clave = X-Files: Believing is the Key
• Made of Honor = La Boda de Mi Novia = My Girlfriend's Wedding (again, huh?)
• Sex in the City = Sexo en Nueva York = Sex in New York (self-explanatory. As if there's only one City, right? As I've always said, The City varies depending on where you live. I mean, for some Michiganders, Kalamazoo is probably "The City")
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull = Indiana Jones y el reino de la calavera de cristal = Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (and we have our winner!)
  

Day 21: La Alhambra

GRANADA, Spain --
You've seen the grand 14th century Arab fortress and palace with its mudéjar tiles and intricate designs...


...now try the beer!

Day 16: ¡Adiós, Madrid!

MADRID, Spain -- Of course in my last hour in the library, I've found two or three books that would have been useful, but that I wouldn't be able to get my hands on until tomorrow. But this is my last day in Madrid, so it is not to be. I've gotten some research and writing done; I've been to a museum or two I had never seen before; I've purchased books, DVDs and a CD of curiously rockabilly '80s movida madrileña music with which to amaze and delight my students and colleagues; I have eaten six bowls of gazpacho; I have gone running in the Parque del Retiro three times; I have randomly run into three people I knew at Berkeley; I have walked through the Puerta del Sol in the sweltering heat with a million rabid rebajas shoppers at my heels; I have watched insipid Spanish television; I have been here for the National Tribunal's final report on the 2004 Madrid bombings, for an ETA attack in Cantábria, and for the capture of ETA commandos in the País Vasco; I have seen the oldest Plaza de tientos (see photo) in Castilla la Mancha, where the toros más bravos used to be put to the test; I have purchased empanada at my favorite panadería in Malasaña; and I have observed the sociology of personal fan-use by women on the Metro.

It's been a gas, Madrid, but it's time to go.

Day 14: CCAVM

MADRID, Spain --
Spotted at the FNAC: the primera temporada of Cómo conocí a vuestra madre, right next to Las chicas Gilmore and La familia Addams. I was glad to see that whoever translated the title knew the premise, and didn't go with the easy but erroneous Cómo conocí a tu madre. And that makes me wonder how they're translating How I Met Your Mother in Latin America: ¿Cómo conocí a su madre? ¿Cómo conocí a la madre de Ustedes? ¿Ché, cómo conocí a la pendeja de tu madre?

My attempts to locate the real Gael have thus far proven fruitless. He must be off in a drum circle somewhere.

Day 12: Off the Wall in Salamanca

SALAMANCA, Spain -- A quick visit to this University town and I noticed that there's a lot of subversive stuff they're putting on the walls around here.

Exhibit A:Graffiti, 16th Century-style
It's said that back in the day when you earned your degree in Salamanca you'd get your name written in bull's blood (sangre de toro, now a popular Spanish wine!) on the campus walls. Man, all I got was a lousy diploma!

Exhibit B:

Franco
The Spanish government passed a law in 2007 that was supposed to get rid of all the vestiges of the Generalísimo, but the conservative municipal government in Salamanca rejected it earlier this year, maintaining Franco's bust alongside reliefs of all the previous rulers of Spain around the periphery of the Plaza Mayor. At least he's often splattered with three bands of paint representing the colors of the Republican flag, though it's a small consolation.

Exhibit C:

El astronauta

One of the lower portions of the façade of the Cathedral was manhandled to such an extent by visitors that they had to completely redo it: and they decided to have a little fun by forgoing apostles in favor of an astronaut, and replacing gargoyles with a dragon licking an ice cream cone.

Day 9: iJam(ón)

Forget the 3G iPhone. I want an iJam. Or an iJam nano. Actually, I think I may have had one for dinner last night.

Day 8: ¿Dónde está la biblioteca? ¡Allí! ¡Vámonos!

MADRID, Spain -- Not too long ago, I was invited to be a representative of the Spanish Department in a preliminary planning meeting for the redesign of the Amherst library. We were told to let our imaginations run wild: what would our dream college library consist of? Computer centers staffed by IT professionals, film and new media pods with couches grouped around the screen, a café with WiFi and decent coffee, access from any side of the building, sweet faculty offices... When I got a word in edgewise, I agreed with some of these high-tech, 21st-century ideas, but also brought up what really concerns me: the books. Somehow, I was hoping that the books themselves would not get lost in this drive to rebuild the library into a hybrid of a Starbucks and your living room. In fact, I mentioned the need to encourage the undergraduates to spend more time with the books, maybe by putting a few comfortable chairs in the stacks and letting natural light filter down into the grotto.

At the National Library in Madrid, it's all about the books. A comfortable chair? P'shaw! A place to commune with your friends? Try the park. Space to spread out? I think not. At the Biblioteca Nacional, you check your creature comforts at the door, the librarians walk around in white scrubs, the air conditioning falters when the reading room is packed elbow-to-elbow with heated scholarship, and when the light blinks red at your assigned desk, you get up out of your straight-backed chair and go retrieve three books. When you're finished with those, you can have some more, but don't get greedy.

In fact, hold on. My light is flashing.

OK, I'm back. The Biblioteca was much more lo-fi when I first started coming in 1998. Instead of personal red lights, there was a communal board up on the wall, and you had to watch it as though you were waiting for your train track to be announced in order to know if your three books were ready. No one had laptops and there was no WiFi, so I, like everyone around me, was taking notes longhand. There were computers, but the collection hadn't been transferred entirely, so there was still a card catalog to deal with.

Ten years later, things are a little fancier, there's a digital collection, laptops are everywhere, but these chairs are still uncomfortable and the red light is blinking again and Cervantes shoots you icy stares from atop his frilly collar in every room^*, and I think it must all just be to remind us that we have to suffer a little to get anything done in this crazy, mixed-up, academic world.


^* Note to Professor T: Today I'm sitting under Seneca...

Day 5: Paella, paella, paella, paella, goose!

VALENCIA, Spain -- Tonight I partook of la quinta paella -- the fifth of five paellas -- over the course of a little over 48 hours. Valencia is the birthplace and proud keeper of the Spanish paella tradition, and I agree: it's better here. The first two paellas we ate al fresco at a traditional Valencian barraca, a waterside grass-roofed house in the heart of La Albufuera, a national park with a long, skinny lagoon where paella was, in fact, born.














The next two were at La Pepica, an historic seaside restaurant in the city that ol'Ernest Hemingway made famous in his posthumously published novel The Dangerous Summer. I was able to confirm at La Pepica that the mixing of arroz negro (which gets its hue from squid ink) and the paella variation we had before us (not technically paella valenciana, which includes rabbit), is not a faux pas. In fact, to me it recalls the classic New York black and white cookie: such culinary harmony. Served with lemon and alioli, a spread of garlic and olive oil whipped to a creamy consistency, we had no trouble polishing them off.













It just seems right to spend a beautiful Sunday in Valencia eating nothing but paella, so we topped it off with a paella mixta (with chicken, green pepper, shrimp, and chirlas -- tiny bite-sized clams) crafted by Mario, who claims that having summered in a town south of Valencia as a kid makes him a self-styled homemade paella expert. Judging by his paella, I have no reason to doubt this argument. It was a little sickly-looking only because we lacked azafrán (saffron), which gives paella that warm yellow glow.

Sadly, after I leave Valencia tomorrow, I'm going to have to start thinking about something other than food.

Day 4: Mmm...pescado

VALENCIA, Spain -- Scenes from the Mercado Ruzafa:

Fish

SJB thinking about fish

Tender bunnies

Day 2: The Phone Company Behind the Curtain

BARCELONA, Spain -- Last night I took a walk around the Gothic Quarter where I'm staying, and headed over to the Cathedral, which is illuminated at night. I was dismayed to discover that not only was the Cathedral not illuminated last night, but it's covered in scaffolding and undergoing major renovations. That's fine: I'm sure it needed it, and I can live with some scaffolding. But, no, instead we're forced to look at huge drawings of what the Cathedral would have looked like, had the scaffolding not been there. And an annoying advertisement for Telefónica, Spain's national phone company, superimposed over the drawings. And their three-language plea to "buy a stone," and support the renovations. Whatever happened to the collection basket?
Tomorrow, the iPhone hits Spain, and Telefónica, magnanimously, will be giving away iPhones in exchange for a two-year contract, monthly usage quotas, and new customer's male heir. Spain's general lag in technology is nothing new, as my attempts to get a wireless internet connection to work in the country's most forward-looking city has proven, so I'm curious how this iPhone thing will pan out. Last time I checked, Macs were as scarce as Jews around here, but maybe things have changed.
Then again, judging by Telefónica's self-serving advertisement on Barcelona's second-most famous Cathedral, maybe they haven't.

Spain, Day 1: SJB y Kumar en Barcelona

BARCELONA, Spain -- I was welcomed to El Prat airport this morning by a whistling throng of protesters, protesting something I couldn't quite discern, as well as a reporter from Spanish Television who wanted to know why the wait through customs was so long. Unfortunately, I fulfilled only one of her two qualifications: I spoke Spanish, but I'd gone through customs in the relatively serene Amsterdam airport, avoiding the hullabaloo in Barcelona.

Now, as I jetlaggedly reaquaint myself with the city, I have a few observations:

• Apparently the soccer star Ronaldo is losing his hair, because he's on billboards for a hair replacement treatment system.

• Dunkin' Donuts is called Dunkin' Coffee. As I will not eat there, I will not be able to confirm or deny the availability of donuts.

• The new Harold and Kumar movie has been translated as "Dos colgaos muy fumaos: fuga de Guantánamo," which I would translate back to English as something like: "Two Really Stoned Stoners: Escape from Guantanamo." I will not be seeing this movie.

• Food report (aka B-smack shout-out): lunch of grilled monkfish with clams and a glass of cava, plus a euro's worth of figs, all found at the Boquería, a marketplace off the Ramblas.

More to come...