A Nightmare on Spanish Streets

I know that catching a cold is really just a part of life, but life has a tendency of getting in the way sometimes and when you’re traveling it can really complicate matters. For example, getting medicine or going to the doctor in a city where you don’t speak the language is a nightmare. A real, honest to God, nightmare! If you think medical terms can be difficult to say in English, try looking them up in French or in Spanish and then repeating what you read to a nurse. I learned this the hard way in Spain when I went to the nurse to get something for my runny nose, headache, and chest cough. Rough spanish meets rough english meets Charades and thirty minutes later, she gave me fifty pills and advised me to take one every eight hours. I couldn’t read the labels and was slightly unsure of her verbal directions, but figured that anything was better than nothing and I needed help if I was going to get through Spain.

Oh, Spain…

At La Boqueria

I love Barcelona, but will definitely have to return someday and do it right. The architecture, the people, the language, and the food are all so divine and so vast that you need time to really explore it. I, unfortunately, was being a tourist while simultaneously fighting a nasty cold. So I spent the first few days alternating between bed and the Barri Gotic, the Gothic city center. There I visited the Market of la Boqueria, where I was amazed by the food presented, and La Plaça Catalunya, where I sat for hours with a box of tissue watching street performers and tourists. The highlight of my time in the Gothic Center was visiting the World Press Photography exhibition at Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. The photos were mind blowing and I will definitely be on the lookout for this exhibition for years to come.

 Gustavo Cuevas' photograph of the goring of bullfighter Julio Aparicio from the exhibition

Like I said before, Barcelona is huge and although I visited a few places I hadn’t even scratched the surface. Unfortunately, any attempt to explore further outside of the city center was complicated by my cold. I missed two walking tours and repeatedly got lost having fallen asleep on the train. As a result, I spent the very last day sprinting around the city trying to see Barcelona’s main sites from a 2 ½ hour hop on- hop off bus tour. Nightmare! Thankfully, I did get a chance to see the works of famous Spanish architect, Antonio Gaudi, which includes La Pedrera and my favorite Casa Batllo, with its tiled roof made to look like dragon scales. From the tour I also saw the Caixa Forum, Barcelona Palace and the Olympic Village. What I didn’t get to explore at length were Frank O’ Gehry's Peix (Fish) sculpture and Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, which are the two main attractions I wanted to see. Sigh…

 La Pedrera

Staying on schedule, I left Barcelona and took the train to Bilbao. I came to Bilbao for two reasons. The first was to meet up with my friend Santiago who had just finished his Master’s program in Bilbao. I met Santiago in Venice and he offered to be my Basque Country guide before heading back to Columbia to resume work with the U.N. The second reason I wanted to go to Bilbao was because there are only five Guggenheim Museums in the world and Bilbao, a city of roughly 400,000 people, plays host to one of them; completely unusual. Not only do they have a Guggenheim, but, as mentioned before, the museum was designed by architect Frank O. Gehry. This building is considered one of his best works and the fact that it’s in Bilbao says more about the quality of life there than anything else.


My train to Bilbao arrived late in the evening and Santiago and his friend picked me up and took me to my hotel. I was still feeling sick, but I was determined to get through the last days of my trip in good spirits. So, I popped my last pill for the day and headed out.

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

“Where are we going tonight,” I asked, trying to sound chipper and up for the night’s events.


“We are taking you to a weekend Basque tradition,” they answered and we walked.



Bilbao is absolutely lovely, especially at night, and it’s very walkable. As we headed to our destination, walking along the riverfront, passing little shops and quaint squares, I couldn’t help to notice how into Christmas the Bilbotarras (people of Bilbao) were. Everywhere you looked, shops, streetlights and anything not moving was decorated to the hilt and heaped with lights, trees and bows. Apparently the decorations had been streamlined this year due to the economic crisis, which is actually a scary thought because the display was already amazing.

City Hall, Bilbao

We continued down narrow, cobbled streets until we arrived at a long corridor of bars packed with people mingling and drinking everywhere. Santiago’s friend explained that the area we were walking through was Bilbao’s historical old town district known for its seven streets, Zazpikaleak or Las Siete Calles it’s called. This particular street is where the traditional tavern crawl is done on the weekends. Jokingly, he explained the rules saying, “You start at one bar at one end of the street, have a drink, talk and then head to the next bar. You do this all night until you get to the other end of the street and can’t walk anymore.” The length of the street and the number of bars, not to mention the number of people, suggested that this was going to be a very long night.


“I’m on meds, so I’m not drinking alcohol. I’m sticking to tea,” I informed them.

The Riverfront, Bilbao

This sounded like a great plan, but the very first bar didn’t serve tea or coffee, so I had to be content to just hang out listening to the Spanish conversations flowing all around me and occasionally be pulled this way or that way to meet this or that person. Still serving as my Basque country guide, Santiago introduced me to a wine only made in Bilbao. “This is the Basque National drink.” Santiago said. “It’s light; I think you would like it. Here take a sip of mine.” It’s just a sip, I thought to myself as I tasted the sweet, smooth, drink with ridiculously high alcohol content.


This is when the real nightmare began…

Ten minutes after my sip, my mouth started to water, my internal organs felt like they were congealing, and suddenly I was dizzy. I thought it would pass, so I waited it out swallowing my spit to quell the uneasiness and pretending to understand the woman speaking to me. Five minutes more and it got violent; the way in which it attacked my stomach suggested I was in trouble. “Where are the restrooms,” I blurted, loudly in English, interrupting several conversations around me. “Towards the back,” Santiago offered, pointing in the distance.


I made my way back there, soundlessly berating myself for mixing alcohol and prescription drugs. I’m not eleven, I know better than this!Unfortunately, hindsight was of no help, as the line to the bathroom was ten people deep! “I cannot be that chick that throws up in the club,” I thought to myself trying to muster up my fleeting pride. Two minutes later, the line hadn’t moved and realizing that I just might be that chick, I high-tailed it for the streets. Pushing my way through a mass of people, I said “pardon me” in English, Japanese, and Croatian, but could not, for the life of me, remember how to say it in Spanish, which is the easiest!


Desperately, I ran down the corridor, sweating, stumbling and searching for a quiet place, an alley off the main stretch, a port-a-potty, ANYTHING!! I finally found an empty side street and ducked down it, spilling the contents of my stomach all over a shopkeeper’s steps and dropping to the ground in exhaustion. Nightmare! In the distance I could hear people coming down the street and not wanting to appear like the drunken, black, lady in the alley, I slowly picked myself up and leaned against a building hiding my face. Pride…


“Thank God that that is over,” I thought as I collected myself. The people passed and I gently made my way back to the bar. Mid way down the corridor, the viciousness that attacked my body earlier and moved north suddenly reappeared, this time moving south and FAST. WTF?!!! I raced back into the bar, really shoving people this time and not apologizing for it, and quickly told Santiago and his friends that I was ill and was leaving. Then I turned around and ran back out before he could offer to take me back to the hotel. I cannot have witnesses to the events of this evening! Pride…


Trying to remember the directions from which we came, I prayed HARD while awkwardly swaying down streets lit by f’ing Christmas lights that were once beautiful, but were now only making me dizzier. “Heavenly Father. Jesus. Mercy. Oh my God.” Taking my passport and credit cards out of my purse and putting them in the back of my pants like a gun, I was mindful enough to know that anyone could rob me at this point and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it! “Oh, Christ the Lord. Jesus. Please God.” It’s one thing to puke in public, but there’s absolutely no excuse for anyone between the ages of seven and seventy to shit their pants in public. “Father. Christ the King. Help me, Jesus.” I came to a busy intersection and God must have heard me because out of nowhere appeared a taxi stand I hadn’t seen before. Of course there was a line…


If anyone or anything was going to go in the streets of Bilbao, it was going to be my pride first; Pride definitely goeth before the fall! I jumped the short taxi line, hopped into the first taxi, threw my hotel key card into the driver’s lap and pleaded, “Rapido, Por Favor. Emergencia! Andale, arriba, arriba,” like a crazy woman. He took one look at my face, one look at my key card, put the car in gear and ran two lights getting to my hotel in record time. Not waiting for change, I overpaid him, and raced through the lobby like Freddie Kruger was chasing me. Riding to the seventh floor in that slow ass elevator I started crying! “I’m not going to make it! I’m really not going to make it! Oh, my God! Why did I put my passport back there?!”

I made it and twenty minutes later, I sat in a bath tub calling my mother. “I think I should go to the hospital,” I told her. “What happened? Are you okay? Where are you? Do we need to come out there?” She asked, panicking and shooting off questions before I could answer. Finally, I recounted the events of the evening and once I finished, all I could hear was hysterical laughter on the other end of the phone. “It’s out of your system now,” she said in between big guffaws. Parents can be so cold sometimes… This was literally the worst night of my life and here she is dying of laughter.

Pintxos!

The next day I woke up late, threw out the remaining pills, and contacted Santiago to apologize for deucing out on him and his friends. His only gripe was that I hadn’t called once I made it back safely and since I didn’t want to explain what happened, I just apologized again and let it ride. We met up later for a trip to the Guggenheim and a mini tour of the rest of Bilbao, which included the Alhóndiga a new uber-modern, interactive, community, exhibition hall and media center built in the center of Bilbao. Since Bilbao is also known as a gastronomy epic center in Spain, we also went to dinner and ate Pintxos, which are Bilbaoan tapas consisting of really elaborate toppings on toasted French bread. Over dinner, Santiago said, “So what happened last night? By the look on your face, I knew it wasn’t good.”

I responded, "It wasn’t and I honestly don’t know if I’m even going to tell people about it.” Thinking it over and still trying to revive the last of my dying pride, I added, “If I do decide to write about it and you read it, can we please act like it never happened?”

“Wow. That bad, huh?”

Nodding my head in disgust, I replied, “A nightmare! I’ll never forget Spain, that’s for sure.”

Supermarket Vending Machine in Train Station

Casa Batllo