A Comedy of Errors - Act 1

We are on a train heading out of Madrid toward Longroño, the jumping off point and capital of La Rioja region, and while it has been a fun few days, it has been a trying few days. I thought Bret was going to crack this morning in the Atocha Train Station as we fumbled about trying to store our bags in lockers, and 12$ and 35 minutes later we had achieved a simple task that should have cost 5$ and 3 minutes. As one minor debacle after another seemed to take place, I’m learned that food can quiet an angry beast.

With that said, on the morning of the 24^th, we hit the ground running. Our first random stop was the Museo del Jamón. Much to my surprise, Bret broke out the camera and started filming.

“Wow!” we thought. “They must really love Jamón. So much so that they’ve created a museum in its honor!” When we passed the Museo del Jamón at a second, third, and fourth different location, being the savvy travelers we are, we quickly realized it was a chain restaurant. For travelers on the go-go, it is a really inexpensive, quick option for lunch, and what makes it even more convenient is that the menu items and prices are displayed on the wall in big pictures. It would be a vegetarian’s nightmare, however, with leg after leg of ham hanging from the walls. JWT approved cheap eats – Museo Del Jamón.

As the day wore on, I got choked by a Darth Vader - who was wearing hiking boots -and startled by a mime. But honestly, who knew they talked?

The mime was locked in stillness pretending to eat a shoelace, and thinking I was all witty with the camera rolling on me, I asked, “Are you going to eat that or just stare at it all day?”

Not only did he talk, but he spoke in very calm, clear English. You can only imagine how taken aback I was when he answered, “Nope. Just gonna stare at it. It’s not edible.”

Moments later Bret challenged the most out of shape Spider-Man I have ever seen to a balancing contest. Not only was Spider-Man out of shape, but his tights were so tight, I felt as if I had been invaded by his bulge.

A Comedy of Errors - Act II

Side bar: We have two video cameras; one which is a palm size HD camera with no audio input - which we were going to use for filler shots - and one that is quite a bit larger and heavier, which we were going to use for interviews. The older, heavier video camera has an audio input for the mic. The mic while practical and certainly ads to the production value, is also kind of a prop we use to get people’s attention; it at least gets them to pause and momentarily assume we possess at least an ounce of professionalism. (Fake it till you make it)

As it goes, however, all of the video we took with the interview camera, which was the majority of the Madrid video, is null and void because it requires a firewire port to export the video. Bret’s Mac Air does not have a firewire port. Big problem.

***

And so we wondered about the city Saturday afternoon for several hours just having a good time and stopping along the way here and there for a beer. As you may or may not know, with every drink you are served in Spain, you are also given a plate of tapas. What we came to discover was that if you drink enough beer at lunch, then you can actually fill yourself up on tapas and you don’t need to eat lunch.

From our liquid and tapas lunch, we proceeded to the Parque del Campo del Moro at Palacio Real to do some more filming whereby we set up a tripod to tell you a little bit about what we’re doing, or at least attempting to do. I have to say, I actually thought it was quite good. We did about six takes to try to keep it short and tight; meanwhile curious onlookers laughed at the spectacle that was under way.

We called it a rap and I suggested we head back to the hotel – sorry, I missed an ‘s’ – the hostel, Cat’s Hostel, Madrid to be specific where we shared a room with four other travelers. It is quite a nice, modern hostel with a Turkish feel, equipped with a bar that feels like you are in a catacomb, free Wifi, and a lounging area with a Turkish feel. While I probably could have used some rest, Bret had another plan and his momentum carried us forward in the name of good times, so who whom was I to break our stride. (Ain’t nothing gonna break Jack Will Travel’s stride.)

We stopped at the hostel for a moment to pick up some belongings and much to our surprise, our two Brazilian roommates were gone. Basically all they did the two days we were there was sleep unitl 2 or 3pm, wake up, and start the party again. Nice guys, but how can you not be when you are that well rested. We also met a new roommate named Travis from Berkley, California.

***

My one-and-only goal for the evening was to find a local pub to watch the US soccer team play Spain, and since Travis was a soccer fan as well, we asked him to come along. Our motley crew took the Metro up a few stops to get out of the Plaza del Sol in the hopes of finding a pub that wasn’t so touristy, and after passing up an Irish bar that smelled like puke, we made our way to a local pub filled with Spanish rebel-rousing futbol fans. I was curious how we would be received but it seemed to go quite well on the whole. And I must say; the Spanish were graceful losers. But really, who could have predicted the United States would beat the number one ranked soccer/futbol team in the world, 2-0? You can only imagine the look on the Spanish fan’s faces when they walked in off the street and saw the zero next to the Spanish score. What I also appreciated was that fact that it took some effort to get Bret to watch the soccer game because its not really his thing, but by the second half, Bret was calling plays and saying things like, “Clinical tackle...Oh come on! He wasn’t offside...The defense has to drop back!”

During half time we went out on the street to interview some locals and wound up interviewing Travis, but when we heard a group of Americans walk by, I flagged them down to chat. They were halfway down the street before they turned around and the next thing we knew we were chatting it up with Pamela from Wisconsin. Pamela and her crew were on their way to another bar but said they would come back – and they did. The next thing we knew the three of us had turned into a posse of jovial Americans relishing in a win of epic proportions.

Pamela and company brought us to El Tigre, a bar that these American students frequented. Jack Will Travel bar fact: Turns out when a girl is ordering your drinks for you in a crowded bar in Spain, or probably anywhere for that matter of fact, except a gay bar, service is more efficient and you are given overflowing helpings of tapas.

After wandering about Plaze del Sol into the late ours of the evening trying to find our way home, we finally reached our hostel and slept until 12:30pm the next day, but when we awoke, the Brazillian brothers were still snoozing, not to see the light of day for several more hours.

A Comedy of Errors - Act III

We had things to accomplish on Thursday, but first we had to cancel a segment we were going to do. We had arranged to do a segment on a business called Adventurous Appetites whereby the owner had waived the 50 Euro fee in exchange for us promoting his business on video. In the end, it wasn’t so much the previous night that made us cancel but the jet lag.

All day walking about Thursday we were lagging - and walking we did. We had three very simple goals to accomplish; buy our train ticket, go to an outdoor store to get a camping towel and a few other missing pieces of our camping kit, and make an undisclosed stop in Retiro Park, a giant park near Atocha Train station.

To make a long story short, I had received an email from a friend of a friend who told me if we needed ANYTHING, the place to go was El Corte Ingles, a giant department store in the heart of Plaza del Sol. Bret is not one to hit touristy places, in fact, he may have broken out in hives when we walked into El Corte Ingles - the first time that is. I had to push him to get him into this store, and when I asked about outdoor gear in my less than broken Spanish, they took me to the luggage department. This language barrier cost us about four hours.

I felt Bret getting antsy so we decided to split and find the outdoor store in Plaza del Sol on our own, or as Pamela told us the night before, just off of the Opera Metro stop. We scoured the area for hours and even went into hostels and hotels asking for this mythological giant outdoor store. We walked in circles until, quite by accident, we came upon El Corte Ingles again. Should we try it one more time, I asked?

“If they have camping gear in there, I’m going to hate it even more than I did the first time,” Bret said.

As it turns out, we discovered the 6^th floor had everything we needed, and in hindsight, we probably should have just bought a regular towel. Yes, every ounce counts when backpacking; and yes these towels are considerably lighter than your regular bath towels; and yes, we could have had a lot more free time in Madrid, but I would say it was worth four hours of wandering the streets of Madrid seeing far more than we might have otherwise.

After walking about Retiro Park, we had plans of finding a nice authentic Spanish restaurant to eat at while working on Jack Will Travel videos and writing. While we did find a happening neighborhood called Anton Martin, which was full of bars sporting young, attractive, stylish professionals, we wound up eating outdoors at an Indian restaurant, where it seemed as if we were in an Indian District. That’s how we roll in Jack Will Travel.

We were so tired we bagged finding a place to work and instead found ourselves back at the hostel where a pub crawl was starting at 1am. It was at this time that we discovered all of the video we had shot in Madrid could not be transferred to Bret’s Mac Air. Over the course of the next week, this would be the first of many challenges we would face, and perhaps one of the smallest.

In the adjacent room, Phish was playing, which Bret observed isn’t really a good sign for us; just indicative that the crowd was a bit young and not what we were looking for. Their youth, or perhaps our age was reinforced around midnight when a new roommate who arrived commented to us “Seems like you guys are kinda old,” and then quickly reframed his statement by saying, “Well, older I mean.” If he had any social graces, he might have known that that is an “inside thought.”

This was not Jack Will Travel’s scene, at least not what we were looking for.

What we learned that night is that it turns out people in hostels don’t go out, and instead party at the hostel, and this in turn makes getting a decent nights sleep somewhat of an effort. I guess that is why it is a hostel and not a hotel though, because people are on a budget.

As we have said, this is an organic process, and what it seems this first leg of the journey has unearthed is that Jack Will Travel is not a travel web-show that shows you how to travel, but rather how not to travel. In truth, Jack Will travel has never been good in the city. Jack Will Travel is more about getting off the beaten path, and that’s what we intend to do in the Rioja region.

Stay tuned for more blundering and general tomfoolery. Additional observations include:

• Prostitutes in Spain have a strong marketing pitch, for instance, although there might be a language barrier, they will hand you some take-away collateral in your native language, such as “suck and fuck = 30 Euros”
• Vietnamese cigarettes give you headaches
• Cities suck money out of you
• Mimes sometimes do talk
• It’s not hard to find an Irish bar in Ireland

Chapter 5: In Real Time