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September 19, 2007
Stirring Up Trouble in Europe Without a Corkscrew
Flying always makes me catch a cold. My theory is that the dry air weakens your body's natural defenses so your lungs may act as a giant petri dish for whatever frightening diseases are being hacked and coughed up by the unwashed multitudes. I wonder in a contest between school teachers, flight attendants, and cockroaches as to who would win for having the strongest immune system? Perhaps that is too cruel. I actually have nothing against teachers or cockroaches.
In the past week I have been on eight different flights. I have been sleep deprived, delayed, and even dropped off on a strange corner by a taxi driver insisting that my new apartment is six blocks from the address I gave him. I am not in my correct state of mind.
I am working on a temporary assignment in Logroño, Spain. I am living with a colleague of mine who is also new to this city. He is a saint, his name is Luis. In our house there is a patôis of Peruvian Spanish, German, and English being spoken.
Luis has been in Logroño a full week before I arrived. He did an excellent job beating down the trails to the finding the best walking route to the office as well as finding the best wine that €3 can buy. He also found the way to "el Campo," a giant Spanish big-box style store that is easily three times the size of the largest Wal Mart I have ever seen north of the Rio Grande.
Our apartment is spacious and nice and came furnished but is lacking in many of the essentials. First on Laslow's Hierarchy of Needs is food and we needed the ability to cook simply at home. We filled our baskets with the essentials: things to eat and the tools to eat them. With 10 minutes before the store was to close we had only a few final remaining items to buy on our list, one of them being a corkscrew.
Have you ever had a little cold suddenly erupt into something much more awful? Perhaps even the symptoms of your little cold nearly completely vanish, lulling you into a false sense of security? Then wham! something new and truly terrible hits you?
In the middle of el Campo I felt my head getting light. I felt oddly disconnected from the ground and yet my entire body was acutely attuned to ever part that ached. With poor Luis holding the basket I reached for the 1 liter bottle of olive oil when it slipped from my weakened grasp and broke next to his shoe.
From next to me I hear, "oh great, now I have to clean it up!" The only English I have heard spoken here in the wild as spoken by the Central American worker who was probably doing her final sweep of the last isle before she was to return home to her loving family for a loving meal that evening after working her third shift. I apologized the best I could, offered to help and then got the heck out of her way.
Oil had splashed everywhere. Both of our baskets were covered in the stuff (and not a slice of bread to find anywhere). One of Luis's bright red suede Adidas had become oil-stained (I am trying to convince him to oil-stain the other one to match). When we brought our merchandise to the woman to be rung up, she commented in Spanish, "your things are all covered in oil." I could only reply, "yes, it is true. It was an adventure." She didn't even crack a smile, in fact she frowned a bit and informed me that they don't take American Express.
This morning I missed my alarm on my phone and woke up at 10:30 all pasty-eyed and cold. I felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean breathing a scuba tank full of cheesecake. Today was the day one of the executives flew from the States to see how things are coming. I think I am going to stay in tonight. Too bad I still don't have a corkscrew.
Posted by jordanh at September 19, 2007 1:35 PM
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