Barcelona isn’t really Spain.  Spain for the locals means Madrid.  This is Catalan they will insist.  But, Barcelona isn’t really Catalan either.  It’s Europe.  Its part Paris, part Rome, and yes, part Madrid.  Perhaps the most cosmopolitan blended city on the continent.    

I don’t really know what I was thinking.  Maybe it was the fact that it was so easy to get into the Mezquita Cordoba because Cordoba just isn’t the biggest of tourist towns or that I had pre-arranged tickets to Alhambra so I just had to get into the entry line.  Or Maybe it was because it was November and therefore the off season.  So it didn’t occur to me that getting tickets for Sagrada Familia on a Friday around, say, noon would be that difficult of a thing, right?  Uhhhhh, yeah. 

It’s an understatement to say that Sagrada Familia is mind-numbingly fantastic on the outside.  You don’t have to be there to figure that out, pictures can tell you that.  A friend of mine told me before hand to prepare to see construction (despite being over a century old, it’s not scheduled for completion for another couple of decades) and, sure to form, scaffolding lined the top pillars of the basilica.  Ordinarily, this would detract from a buildings appeal, but it didn’t seem to matter in Sagrada Familia case because the rest of the church is so overwhelming.  What was surprising was the inside, which was nearly as grand as the external part of the church.  In so many ways, the interior felt exactly like it should feel…having a more simplified modern form (unlike the more gaudy older cathedrals) alongside contemporary art flair, but still maintaining all the ornate trappings like high columns, stain glass windows, organs, and alters that one expects in a more traditional European cathedral.  That Guadi’s design was able to thread that needle is quite awe-inspiring.     


In front of Sagrada Familia

Upon leaving, I wondered down to Ciutadella Park. The area is another one of those fantastic parks that Europe is known for.   In the North-East corner is a magnificent fountain with three different layers, griffin statues guarding the outside, and a giant walk-behind stone structure topped off with a gold chariot from which the fountain pours through a mesh of tropical vegetation.  In another corner is the long pink and Spanish tiled Catalonian Parliament – which was unfortunately closed for official business the day I was there.  Yet another corner has a local zoo, with a mid-sized castle-like structure with a sign etched into the stone that said something about dragons.   To the north side, races a wonderful little walkway known as Calle de Roger de flor that is topped off with the Arc de Triomf (Arch of Triumph)  which was built to welcome guest to a nineteenth century international exhibition  and resembles a pink brick version of its older, more prestigious brother in Paris.  

Marching along, I eventually made it out to the pier.  Strangely there was a ton of foot tracking going on and off of the pier, too much even for a wonderful Friday evening stroll.  Naturally, I followed it, until eventually discovering that there was a complete mall way out there in the sea.  Nothing special about the mall, save perhaps that it actually had shops in it, compared to the recession era dead-malls that you find around where I live.  Back on terra firma, there’s a giant thin pole shaped statue with Christopher Columbus pointing towards the west.  Quaintly, a crow was perched on the end of Chris’ finger.

Barcelona is known worldwide for its nightclubs, bars, and other mysteries of the night.  And it was Friday night, so where else was I going to be? Um, at a pick-me up soccer game.  Actually, I couldn’t have asked for a better expression of local culture.  The players, all in their early twenties, were – by my American standards – extremely talented.  You could tell they had played their entire life.  The pitch was quite small, a slab of concrete, lined by four foot high concrete walls beneath another ten feet of chain linked fence.  The setting was typically urban, with giant residential building sporting laundry drying outside the windows.  A cool November breeze blew off the sea that was only a short few blocks away.  The tranquility of the setting was in a word…perfect.


Colombus statue on the left.  Pick-up urban soccer on the right.

My intent the next morning was to climb Montjuic and see Barcelona’s 1992 Olympic Stadium.  But a few buildings down my block there was a Mexican food restaurant that was advertising Chilequiles and I just had to see what that was all about.  I opened the door and loudly in English mentioned that I wanted some Chilequiles.  The bartender, hearing my American English, grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, lifted it up and said “Heeeyyyy”.  There was only one other guy in the restaurant at the time, and yeah, already at 9:30am they were snookered.  I spent the next 45 minutes eating migas and dodging requests to do shots.  The bartender spoke flawless American English because it turned out that while he was from Galicia (Northwest Spain) his mother was from Alabama.  He was a self-proclaimed and rather proud “Galician redneck”.   The guy at the end of the bar turned out to be the owner, an American government hating American from San Francisco.  You get that occasionally from American ex-pats in Europe.  Most of them are there for a variety of reason, but some because they just can’t live in the U.S. anymore.  In any case, he was nothing but pleasant to me.  At one point, I asked the owner why he opened a Mexican food restaurant in Barcelona.  “Well”, he said, “because I wanted some tacos.”  I guess that’s one way to do it, going to the store and buying some would have been my first option.   The owner told me about his club around the corner and welcomed me to it that evening.  Without saying it, somehow I knew I wouldn’t show up.  As I’m heading out the door, the bartender again offers me a free shot.  I was on vacation, so out of sheer amusement and novelty I relented.  The bartender offered up a toast.  “A toast to what?” I asked.  His response, “A toast to a couple of a-holes who are making you do a shot at 10 o’clock in the morning.”

Up ahead lay Montjuic and the Olympic Stadium.  The climb to the top isn’t that arduous, just confusing.  Along the way, I passed some Saturday morning soccer games, dirt roads, and a really amazing park.  Typical of European parks, this had the statues, tiled fountains, and a closed restaurant inside, all with an “at altitude” setting.   Around the corner, there was a huge line to get into the Olympic Stadium.  Oh my God, please tell me this is a dream chance to see a big name Spanish soccer team in action.  I curled around the side over to the ticket booths and lo and behind there were the signs for today’s event…Monster Truck Jam.  I thought it a pity that a self-proclaimed Galician redneck had to work during this glorious event.  As an American, I also felt the need to apologize to everyone for bringing this scourge to their doorstep. 

The path down the other side of the stadium led to a wonderful series of waterfall walls and the multi-story Olympic torch.   It was here, looking down at the base of Montjuic where I had a rather bizarre internal conversation.  Lying at the base of the hill was a baseball diamond with the scoreboard lit up as if there had just been a game.  As an American you see baseball fields all the time, so initially it didn’t even register.  Then I had a “Hey! That’s a baseball diamond in Spain” kind of moment.  Next came the “Wow, I’m kinda impressed that there is much demand for that sort of thing.” Followed by a “No, dummy, it’s for the Olympics” 

Wondering back down on the other side of the mountain, you pass by a number of interesting areas.   There are several other venues of obscure sports, all padlocked up and looking like they haven’t been used in a while, that should serve as a warning for any city thinking they’ll get a lot of millage out of the non-locally popular sports facilities once the games move on.  There is a terrific set of views overlooking Barcelona with an eye in particular on the Sagrada Familia.  There was a little café, with tons of activity going on top of its roof, way more activity than you would expect for a café of that size on a Saturday at noon.  I soon saw why…the roof was the dump off ground for a series of cable cars.  I felt stupid that there had been such an easy way up, especially since it looked like the tram started near my hotel.  Even more so when I recalled that I had been told about the tram to the top a couple of nights before by the Irish speaking German guy in Valencia.  At the time, it just didn’t register what he was talking about.
 
By mid afternoon, I was at a museum dedicated to one of my favorite artists, Pablo Picasso.  If you want to see the evolution of a world famous painter, this is the place to go.  You start off with a young Picasso’s works when he was trying to be a classical painter.  From there, you pass through a couple of rooms dedicated to his brilliant blue period where the themes were the forgotten and downtrodden sides of humanity and which had the same intense effect as Goya’s set of dark paintings in the Prado a few days before.  On the back half, you get to the paintings that Picasso is really known for, the shapes and abstract design of cubism and surrealism.  The museum ends with a huge collection of forty or so bizarre interpretations on Velázquez’s Las Meninas.  In many ways, seeing the way Picasso used it and the power that it had over him really heightened Velazquez’s original work in a way that I didn’t appreciate when I was standing in front of it at the Prado.

The beaches of Barcelona proved that no city can have everything.  No they weren’t oil-slick near the seawall Galveston bad, but we’re not talking about Miami Beach here either.  Still, even in the winter, they were entertaining enough with the usual mixture of inline roller skating dog walkers that you seem to find on every beach.   The best thing about them was that some guy had made a lazy Homer Simpson sand castle for tips.


Homer.  Not one of the works by Picasso, I assure you.

I spent the first part of that Saturday evening on La Ramblas.  Lined by dance clubs, souvenir shops, and Turkish Doner Kebab houses, La Ramblas is basically a never ending street festival.   Sure there are painters, and there are a few modern musicians, you even get the occasional Spanish musical troupe serenading ladies on a balcony, but what it really is, is a lot, and I mean a lot of is those human statues.  I’m supposed to pay you money just to stand there? Actually, there was one decked out in all copper who was dressed like a Western cowboy, that I regret not tipping for a picture.  Besides all of commotion, primarily you just feed off the electricity of the crowd as you walk up and down the street.    

My last night in Spain was spent at a sports bar.  This, however, was no ordinary evening.  The Spanish National side was taking on the hated English in an international friendly.  Despite Barcelona considering itself Catalonia, and not Spain, it loves the Spanish side.  Mostly because something like, oh, eighty percent of the Spanish team seems to come from the home town squad.  And despite being in Barcelona, the English pub I went to was well blended.  I would say it was one third, one third, one third: English, Spanish, other.  Of course, it’s also possible that it just felt that way because the English were just so much more boisterous (obnoxious?).  Shortly after halftime, the Three Lions scored and the crowd erupted.  In the eightieth minute and still up one to love, I was treated to a real life somewhat-less-than-sober rendition of “God Save the Queen” by the heavily accented Brits.  It was charming.  It was a perfect testament to the cosmopolitan nature of Barcelona and would have been a perfect ending for my trip to Spain.

The next morning I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to catch the bus to the airport.  About a block away from my hotel, there was a group of men arguing in the middle of the street.  Two of them, clearly English and clearly out the whole night partying were walking away, one of them grabbing on to his front pants pocket and exclaiming loudly “who grabs someone here?” to his buddy.  I should have sensed something wrong and walked around the block, but I thought it was just a couple of drunks who had an argument and figured that if I ignored them, they would ignore me.  They didn’t.   A huge block of muscle, six foot three, and in his mid-twenties started walking alongside me, talking to me in Spanish.   Eventually, with the wall at my right, he got directly in my path.  I felt a person from behind reaching for my wallet in my front right pants pocket.   There’s a second in time that just vanished and when I realized what was happening, I found that I had leaped to my left a few feet and was yelling at the top of my lungs for them to get the hell away from me.  Pure instinct.  My wallet remained safely in my pocket.  I walked about thirty feet more and then glanced around; the big guy was standing there in the middle of the street staring at me.  Outnumbered and lugging a big backpack, I would have made an easy target.  I guess they just wanted money and it was safer for them to take it from people who wouldn’t make a fuss.

The pick pocket attempt couldn’t detract from Spain.  It’s a wonderful, beautiful, historic, invigorating, fascinating country.  The Prado, Mezquita Cordoba, Sagrada Familia, Toledo, and the Alhambra…all magnificent.   Spain is a truly amazing place to visit, especially when you end up bring back both memories and your wallet. 

There wasn’t anything in particular that drew me to the place other than the fact that it was a stop in between.  Looking at a map, the way I figured, it would be about a four hour train ride from Grenada to Valencia, spend the evening, and then another couple of hours from Valencia to Barcelona.  Some things stood in the way of that.  First, Spain’s train system, while qualitatively the same as the rest of Europe, doesn’t seem to have the same scope.  There’s just not as many lines, running to as many places, at as many times between major cities as you encounter elsewhere on the continent.  Also, Spain is bigger than I expected.  Quite a lot bigger; so I consistently under-estimated travel times.  Add those two to the fact that the bus I decided to take (because the train times were terrible) stopped every forty-five minutes or so and you end up with a nine hour bus trip.  If there is a silver lining to all this, it’s that the last third of the trip, along the Mediterranean Sea is really quite beautiful. 

I spent an evening and then the following morning in Valencia and felt like it was enough.  In fairness to Valencia I didn’t see a whole lot of it.  In fairness to me, I didn’t feel there was a lot to see.  Ok, so I missed the City of Arts and Sciences and yes, I would have liked to see that, but otherwise, well.    I saw the Valencia Cathedral, and it is indeed nice, but Europe has tons of nice cathedrals.  I ate Paella Valenciana, which might be Spain’s national dish, and it tasted fine, but also felt like an over-rated version of chicken and rice.  And I went to the giant Central Market, which admittedly was way more entertaining than I expected, but really how much mileage can you get out of visiting a market? 

One thing that was unusual about Valencia was that I kept running into the same folks.  There was this guy who I would have swore was Irish (or at least British) who I initially got my hotel directions from and then ran into in a completely different section and started up a conversation with.  Turns out he was actually German and he had absolutely no idea how he acquired his British Isles accent.  There was a lady at the café where I ate the Paella who had a dog named Salvador with a bum back leg that was hit by a car a while back and the lady couldn’t help but rescue it.  The next morning, about three-quarters of a mile away, a lady with a dog named Salvador with a bum back leg crossed my path.  But the weirdest was when checking into my hostel and then this guy shocked me by saying “I know yooooouuuuu!”  Then he continued, “you stayed at the such and such hostel in Madrid and I…I was the clerk.  And now you’re in Valencia.”  At that moment, I did recognize him.

My fear had been realized.  The bus had broken down.  Actually, it wasn’t that bad, only a flat.  But it still meant we were toast.  The puncture had actually happened coming into the town at the prior stop.  But that didn’t stop us from loading and unloading some folks.  On we went, until a few minutes later those of us in the back could feel a whoosh and the air going out of the right side tire.  Still, we pressed on, to the next town, thirty minutes away, until when unloading more folks, the driver finally noticed.  So the bus was totally unloaded…bags and all.  And we sat there, me, talking to the only people who spoke English, a middle aged couple from western Ireland, while we waited an hour for a replacement bus to pick us up.   

Grenada is an amazing city; famed for the Alhambra and the mixture of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures.  The city, for the most part, resides on a plain in between some impressive mountains.  But in one section, the city developed on the side of an upwards slopping hill.  Up on top, I searched for the Mirador de San Nicolas (Lookout of St. Nicholas), which I was told had some of the most impressive views of Grenada and the Alhambra.  At the top was this little park containing a small playground and covered with red bricks and a few trees.  As a lookout, it was a bit disappointing since one had maneuver to a few select spots to take pictures above the houses and the surrounding trees.   Over the course of twenty or thirty minutes, I felt somewhat relieved that at least I’d managed a few select pics that (hopefully!) might come out ok.  So, I started trudging back down the hill, only to notice signs for the lookout in a different direction.  Whoops.  So when I find the real lookout, well, it was fantastic and the pictures, also so. 


View from the real Mirador de San Nicolas.  Tip: pictures come out better when you take them from the right place.

Crawling down the hill along the river, I looked for the old Arab baths that I was never able to find (I tried a few times.)  Eventually, I made my way down to the old Jewish Quarter and got some of Spain’s famed Tapas.  At tapas restaurants in the States, tapas are often presented as a series of glamorous bite-sized tasty morsels of exotic origin.  They can be, but in Spain they’re usually just basic finger food. Grenada is the only place left in Spain where they do tapas the traditional way; buy a drink get a free (usually cheap low-end) tapas.  But I wanted the real thing, which meant actually having to paying for them (around $15 US for a plate) and the area around this common area in the old Jewish Quarter was supposed to deliver.  It did.

What can be said about the Alhambra that hasn’t already been said?  Nothing really.  The Alhambra is a fourteenth century fortress and palace of Moorish origin but that has been added to by Christian leaders since.  It was designed to be a paradise on Earth.  It comes close.

The starting point for my exploration was the Alcazaba.  On the far end of the Alhambra, the Alcazaba is in some was the most generic, which is not the same as least impressive.  The Alcazaba is basically the fortress part of the Alhambra, with giant brown walls, fascinating walkways, old prison cells, and the most amazing views of the city below.  At the very tip of the Alcazaba is a giant bell used even today to celebrate the important days in the city.  The area doesn’t take a lot of time to explore, less than an hour, which is a good thing because it’s all I had and it’s an area you’re only allowed to go through once on a single ticket.

The highlight of the Alhambra is a royal complex known as the Nasrid Palaces.  The area itself is rather small (a few rooms) in comparison to the rather sizable outer sections.  For this reason, and the fact that they are the most sought after sights, visitors are only allow inside the royal complex and precise times (miss your time and they won’t let you in).   After waiting a while in the queue, the entry to the royal complex is rather sedate, just a small door guarded by two high walls and a very limited amount of decoration.  The opening room itself is rather small and simple, unlike most of the royal complex and almost has an oriental touch to it.  On the far end of the room is a half closed off area with beautiful arched windows overlooking the city.

The palace really gets started in the Cuerto Durado (golden room).  The most outstanding feature on this room is a giant, gold colored wall featuring all manner of integrate geometric design that was reminiscent of the wall at the old synagogue in Toledo (see pictures in that article).  In the center of the room lies a small fountain that looks like a three-foot water filled tulip.   Through the two doors of the gold wall lies the boxy and rather unnoticeable Mocarabes Gallery.

The zenith of the Alhambra tour is the Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of the Myrtles).  It is Grenada’s Eiffel Tower; it’s Grenada’s Great Wall.  The patio is the picture you see on all the city’s guidebook covers.  The long barren wall lined by sidewalks and hedges with a long narrow pool of water in the middle.  At the south end, is a series of archways and one of those tulip shaped fountains.  But the pictures are always taken the other direction, to get the narrow pool of water in the same shot as the majestic looming tower.   Passed a rather elaborate series of arches lies the Comares Hall, with its high ceiling, more arches and windows and more fascinating geometric design.

After a couple of rather average residential rooms are next.  One is the former residence of King Charles the V; the other of the American writer Washington Irving.  The rooms themselves are rather uninspiring, but occupy fantastic real estate located between the Comares Hall and a wonderful little courtyard.  The tour then wonders over to the Sala de dos Hermanas (Two Sisters room), which is unquestionably grand with its white marble, delicate arches, and most impressively it’s highly unique asterisk shaped ceiling.  The co-star of the Alhambra, the Patio de los Leones (Court of the Lions), was unfortunately under heavy renovation with the famed lion fountain sealed away under a blanket of construction tarps.

Beyond the Nasrid Palaces, the Alhambra is mostly for wondering around.  There is the grand Palace of Charles the V with its interior circular series of columns that give it a more classical feel.  On the day I was there, the Palace was hosting an exhibition to MS Escher, which even in a place as amazing as the Alhambra could still draw attention.   Otherwise, the Alhambra is more views, arches, fountains, pools, palm trees, gardens, Moorish style buildings, and the like.  Perhaps the most underappreciated area of the Alhambra complex is the Generalife, which always has second billing to the Nasrid Palaces, but where thorough its parks and gardens is one of the greatest places in the world to take an evening stroll.   


On the left, check out the cat just hanging out in the Patio de los Arrayanes.  A section of the Generalife is on the right.

I couldn’t figure out what they were.  There were simply way too many of them to be organized by man.  But they were arranged in such nice ranks and files that nature couldn’t have done it.  Despite being short and stumpy, they were way too tree-like to be Spain’s famous wine vines -- that much I knew.  But driving past hill after hill of them, it was killing me that I didn’t know what they were.  So as I’m sitting there racking my brain trying to figure out what they are, the bus passes by an olive oil processing plant.  Oh.


Those are olive trees

I’d mentioned previously that I had an uncanny sense of direction coupled with a consistent notion of thinking distances were shorter than they actually turn out to be.   I assumed this was just at the micro “street” level, but my distance failure appears to occur at the macro level as well.  Because Europe is much smaller than the US, I have this distorted sense that everything is small.  Spain, however, is big….  roughly two-thirds the size of Texas.  Which translated into that two hour bus trip I was expecting turning into four hours.  

I arrived in Cordoba just in the nick of time.  Normally, I like doing morning travel so I can get to the destination by early afternoon with plenty of time procure a map, find my residency, and settle in.  No such luck with Cordoba, by the time I got out of Madrid, and with the distance further than expected, I arrived in Cordoba right before 7pm.  And more importantly, right before the tourist booth closed.  Without a map, there is no way that I could have found my hostel through the beautiful, winding, white building line streets of Cordoba.   Cordoba might very well be the most beautiful mid-sized town up close at night, but it’s impossible to get around in.  

After checking in, I went down to the famed Mezquita Cordoba.   Naturally, at that hour it was closed, but even locked up at night, the mosque was imposing.  After venturing around it a few times, I wondered across a nearby bridge.  The bridge itself is delightful; an excellent spot for both people watching and camera shots.  Along the way, one passes by a religious monument fronted by dozens of burning candles.   


Images of Cordoba.

After returning from the bridge, I went and grabbed some grub.  Ordinarily, I find the food in Europe overrated, but this place, right on the corner of the Mosque was exceptional.  What made it so, were these meatballs that were dipped in North African styled spices and had a hint of mint, served on pallet of vegetables, rice, and peppers.  Combine that with a couple of glasses of delicious Spanish Tio Pepe white wine and it can make for a wonderful evening.   

Ordinarily the interior of the Mezquita is open for two sessions: one in the morning, one in the afternoon.  Sunday, which is what day it was, is the exception, where only the afternoon session is available.  Nevertheless, the courtyard was open and that, in and of itself, is a treat.  The courtyard displays row upon row of what looked to be citrus trees of sorts.   Overlooking the courtyard, is the grand Spanish styled tower (fans of Texas Tech would recognize it as an inspiration for the Administration building.) In the center is a small pool of water and in its center is a small, delicate, geometrically precise looking water wheel.  I’m not sure of the water wheels origin, but I imagined that some Moorish scholar-engineer put it there to demonstrate to Western Christendom the Arabs’ command of algebra.

So for the remainder of the morning, until the interior of the Mezquita opened up in the afternoon, I walked the wonderful streets of Cordoba.  In that, there is all manner of sights to behold.  The aforementioned winding, cobblestone, white wall lined streets were a pleasure in themselves.   An old workshop water house exists at the end of the bridge.  An ancient set of Roman ruins, unfortunately quite guarded by an iron gate, but nonetheless impressive, stands in the center of the city.  At the top of a hill, near a church, undergoing Catholic mass, was a band, marching up and down the streets.  It seemed there was a complete and constant feast for the eyes, the ears, and the mind at every moment.


The marching band in Cordoba on the left.  The author inside the Mezquita Cordoba on the right.
          
It might be the greatest interior of any structure anywhere.   The Mezquita was actually laid out around the year 600 as a Christian Visigoth church, but took on most of its current look a century and a half later when the Moors went to work.  Later, in the thirteenth century, when the Christians took the area back under the reconquista, they found the structure too beautiful to destroy.  Instead, a cathedral went up in its center and shrines to sacred saints began to line its walls.  The most prominent, drawing feature of the Cathedral-Mosque is the unending series of hypostyle arches, a mix of red and white at their top like two upside-down peppermint candy canes linked together, that form a divine presence.  I walked around and through them several times and then finding that I didn’t want to leave, walked around them a few more times.  In fact, knowing that I may not return and awashed in the buildings presence made it painfully difficult to leave. 

Cordoba was probably my favorite place in Spain.  I’m probably only one of ten people in this world who has also been to Grenada who will actually admit that.  Everyone loves Grenada – and it is very easy to see why – but for some reason the smallness and charm and beauty of Cordoba really captivated me.

I tried something new to maximize my time in country.  I worked the day and then took a red-eye.  I figured it wouldn’t be a problem; it’s the slow season which is why I was able to take off the time anyway, but had an unexpected emergency at the end of the work day and got out later than usual and rushed to catch the plain.  Ughh.

The other novelty about the trip over was that I transferred through Heathrow.  I’d been to London before, but it was always via Gatwick.  Heathrow is a mess.  This is especially true if you’re in and out flights are between terminals, which was my case.    Helpful airport authorities there are pretty much non-existent, they seem not to announce which terminal gate your flight is going out of until the absolute last second, and the time between terminals can be extensive.  I took a shuttle between several of them and it was quite illuminating to see the operation, how all those people and cargo flow between the various outgoing planes is quite simply amazing. 

I arrived in Madrid in the late afternoon, found my hostel, and wondered through the rain soaked streets.  The first evening was really all about surviving jet lag.  After dinner, I ended up spending the evening at the hostel talking to this mid-twenties Aussie who was traveling around Europe trying to find herself.  I remember doing that, not in Europe of course (I was in my late twenties before my first trip to Europe), but along hours and hours of open roads in the Western United States.  I never did find myself.  I not even sure if it’s possible to find oneself.  I don’t remember if it was a conscious decision or not, but at a certain age you simply give up trying and accept that you are who you are.  But her outlook was refreshingly hopeful nonetheless. 

I spent my first full day in Madrid in Toledo.  I hadn’t planned on going that day, but the closure of the Palacio Real for official business altered my schedule.  It’s only a thirty minute train ride out there, so quite doable as a daytrip.  After a short walk up the road, you come across an old stone bridge, the river, a hill behind it, a massive stone gate, and on the hilltop is the ancient city of Toledo, it’s homes and businesses, museums and cathedrals, all open before you.   There’s not much to say about Toledo, other than it’s magnificent.  A small, hilltop city with curved, cobblestone streets, gift shops, and churches that is so very walk-able.   So for several hours, that’s what I did. 

At some point along my walk I came across Iglesia de los Jesuitas (Jesuit Church), which advertised that you could see the best views in the city for a couple of Euros.  They know their audience.  It’s not a particularly famous church and it’s not a particularly crowded time of year, so it was me and two or three others kind of middling around.  The inside of the church is charming and comfortable, and worth twenty minutes or so, but the real action is climbing up to the towers.   After fifteen minutes or so wondering around I climbed the towers.   The towers themselves aren’t that tall, a few stories up really, but gain elevation due to the fact that the building is situated on a high point of the city.  At the top, the wind howled about a small room whose windows were covered in meshed metal netting.  After taking a few disappointing photos, I realized that there was a door to an outdoor walkway that crossed between the two towers.  Absent the metal mesh, the views were amazing.  The photos taken by yours truly, well, not so much.   Even Ansel Adams probably had an off day.

Coming down the hill, I ran across an old Jewish Synagogue El Transito.  The synagogue was founded in the early fourteenth century and has served as the Sephardic Jewish museum in the region since the beginning part of the twentieth.  The interior is divine, highlighted by a room with a high front wall covered in ornate geometrical designs, Hebrew inscriptions, and narrow arches.  Beyond that is the Sephardic museum.   The word Sephardic represents the Jewish people from Spain who were expelled from the country in 1492, the same year that the Moors were defeated and Columbus “discovered” the Americas.    The museum features maps of the Jewish arrival in and expulsion from Spain, artifacts of pre-expulsion Sephardic Jewish culture, and notes and videos on the culture as it exists today.  All the information alongside the exhibits was in Spanish, but to compensate, each room had a series of pamphlets in most of the primary European language (English, German, French, etc…) and Hebrew explaining what was in that particular room.  Visitors are expected to take the pamphlet, use it in that room, and drop it back in the box for the next visitor.  Unfortunately, only French and Hebrew visitors seem to get that system, which made it somewhat hard for an English speaker like me to gain context.


Images of Toledo, Spain

After the synagogue, I ended up roaming around the edges of the city, catching some excellent views of the countryside and then over to the main government plaza.  By then it was dusk, when the city turns even more gorgeous with its narrow cobblestone streets, gas styled street lamps, and the interplay of light and dark.  Unable to stay, I worked my way back down the hill to the station and caught the train back to Madrid.

After breakfast the next morning, came the Palacio Real (Royal Palace).  I arrived about thirty minutes before opening and watched as an enterprising accordion player set up shop.  He was really good.  Once inside and past security and a bookshop, the palace opens up into a giant courtyard that is good for picture taking activities.  Soon thereafter, the tour weaves you through a series of rooms that left me with the feeling that I was visiting a second-rate version of the Residenz in Munich.   The one exception to this was the throne room, which just screamed power.  Though smaller than I expected, it was magnificent, with an imposing scarlet red as the dominate color, high ceilings, elegant chandeliers, the Spanish coat of arms behind the thrones themselves, and most impressively four gold (or gold plated) lions their legs lifted on giant spheres guarding the approach to the throne. 

Beside the throne room, most of the palace was a bit of a letdown.  The other notable exception was the armory which alone was worth the price of admission.  The armory was in its own corner away from the main living quarters section and contains an inordinate number of Renaissance pieces dealing with all manner of pain and warfare: conquistador armor, peasant weapons, horse armor, crossbows, early pistols and smoothbores, shields, spears, swords, and half a dozen things that are unrecognizable.   Simply the best collection of Renaissance armory I have ever seen assembled in one place.

The professional photos in the tourist brochures prove it; the Plaza Mayor is classy, elegant, and simply oozing in the sophistication and charm of the Old World.  So when I got there it looked like this:


Sr. Pantalonescuadrados disfruitale en la Plaza Mayor.

Oh yes, and remember that it’s America that’s been cheapened. 

There was a food festival within the plaza.  Twenty-five or so non-descript white booths lay in the middle of the plaza making those glorious picture taking opportunities you see in the brochures impossible.  At least, they had real variety: Spanish, French, Central American, South American, Indian, Chinese, and various others sorts of cuisines available.  Unfortunately for me, it was a waste, I had just eaten.  But as an adventure in local culture, it proved to be somewhat entertaining. 

After the Plaza, I hiked over to El Riterio.  Parks are one of the most underrated activities in Europe and El Riterio is a gem.  The park has the usual facilities like tennis courts and English gardens and lakes and giant monuments and tree-lined (or over-hanging) walkways.   Quite calming really.  The weather during my visit in Madrid was uniformly bad, but I had managed to largely avoid the rain through a combination of luck and timing (when it rained, I did indoor activities/no rain…outdoor).  But at El Riterio luck run out and timing couldn’t help.    To make matters worse, my € 3 umbrella gave out.   No, it wasn’t a hurricane force downpour, but I wasn’t exactly dry by the time I made it indoors.

I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to do the Prado.  Sure, it’s one of the best art museums in Europe and the premier collection of Spanish art anywhere in the world, but having spent time in Italy in the Spring, I was still a little art museum’d out.  Missing it would have been a mistake.  In any case, the rain forced my hand (the Prado is right next to El Riterio Park).   I didn’t get to the crown jewel of the gallery, Velázquez’s Las Meninas, until the very end.   To be honest, at the time…I thought, “Meh, What’s the big deal?” (More on this later).   But Goya’s set of “Black Paintings” were unexpectedly brilliant, haunting, and intense.   So much so, that I wished that I could have lived in Madrid, or better yet, that series of rooms, so that I could see them whenever I wanted. 

In general, I felt there was something missing from Madrid and I wasn’t the only one to think that.  The Aussie girl who was out trying to find herself was the first to point it out.  I’m guessing that she didn’t find what she was looking for there.  For a city that was a capital of an empire which ruled from Tierra del Fuego to San Francisco Bay for four centuries, Madrid certainly didn’t have as much stolen booty as one would expect.  Hats off to the English in that regard, they really know how to pillage a place clean.

So I just wanted to throw out some economic thoughts that have been swimming around in my head the last couple of days:

Charles Krauthammer’s comment that the stimulus didn’t work:

The other night on some talking heads show, Charles Krauthammer commented that the stimulus didn’t work.  Charles wasn’t the first to say this.   I’ve heard variations of his argument several times and they all have the same basic theme;  Some variable, say unemployment or total GDP, was at X and now post-stimulus it’s at worst than X, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.  Spurious.  This fails because of what one of my grad professors refers to as the “but for” condition.  “But for” the stimulus, what would the economy look like?

To give an example, let’s say we have a hypothetical economy that appears to be healthy but is really the result of an asset bubble.  Let’s pretend that we have a large number of dangerously over-leveraged financial firms that are trading in illiquid, non-transparent securities backed by no money down, interest only mortgages made on over-priced houses sold to subprime barrowers who lied about their income.   Then one day, a major over-leverage financial firm, let’s call Mehland Bros., collapses and all the other financial firms began to worry about their own accounts receivable and then hold on to every dime of money they can instead of leading it out or buying equity in growing firms.    This withdrawing of credit causes our overall hypothetical economy to collapse by -10%.  Enter the government, who throws all kinds of fiscal and monetary stimulus at the troubled economy and raises it by 5% in the positive direction.  The total impact of these two vectors is still -5%.   Does that mean the stimulus didn’t work? No, in our example it did, it just didn’t work well enough.  It just made a bad economy less bad, and that’s a good thing. 

I’m not sure how to go about proving empirically that Keynesian stimulus works, though, no doubt, some very smart people have probably worked on this.  The problem, as far as I can tell, is that you don’t have a control group.  You just have one economy with those exact characteristics to work on.  So the highly contested debates about this in econ departments are largely theoretical (disclosure: at less than full resource usage in the economy, I happen to be in the believer’s camp).   The point being, Mr. Krauthammer may or may not be right about the stimulus not working but his evidence was nothing of the sort.  Normally I give people the benefit of the doubt, but I have my doubts with Mr. Krauthammer.  I think his real goal here was to attack a political opponent he can’t stand – sound arguments be dammed – and in this he was probably effective. 

Arguments against the bail out

As far as I can tell, those opposed to bailing out Wall Street after the collapse of Lehman Bros do so for four main reasons:

1. Libertarian Argument: the idea here is that providing bailouts, no matter how positive from a utilitarian/greater good standpoint, just isn’t the proper role of government.  Governments are there to enforce voluntary contracts and provide courts, military, police and maybe a few other things, but being a lender of last resort is not one of them.

2. Unjust reward:  in essence, we’re rewarding the Wall Street bankers who got us into the mess and that’s simply unfair to the taxpayers who are put at risk in providing fresh funds.

3. Moral Hazard: Bankers had a choice - they could go for low risk/low reward or high risk/high reward.  Except when they went for the high risk and lost, we bailed them out.  Now they know that the government will bail them out the next time they get in trouble, so what’s to stop them from swinging for the fences?  The seeds of a future financial crisis were sown with our bailout on this one.

4. Adverse Selection: in a healthy economy the strongest firms get bigger and crappy firms that make bad decisions go out of business.  If we are bailing out the weak, we are short circuiting this natural selection process to our own determent.

I’m not even going to try to untangle the complicated debates on the proper role of government in argument #1 here.  That will have to left to another day.  On arguments #2 and #3, however, I think opponents of the bailout are absolutely and self-evidently correct.  Argument #3 is especially troubling to me.  Argument #4 I’m a little more skeptical of because I believe that lots of very strong firms in the confusion and hysteria would have been taken down with the weak.   Moreover, there would have likely been fewer firms that survived, exasperating the “too big to fail” problem.   

That said, opponents rarely consider the reverse.   What would have happened if we didn’t bail out the financial sector?  I find it almost inconceivable given the lack of transparency and interconnectedness that existed up on Wall Street at that time (and still does) that there would not have been a classic “run on the banks” (this time by other financial services actors as opposed to depositors) who were all demanding the safest, most liquid assets they could get their hands onto and dumping anything less at fire sale prices had the government not stepped in.  The drying up of credit and all of its second order effects would have meant economic calamity.  Would the financial industry have come back with the strongest firms the winners?  Sure, as Paul Krugman noted, in like 10 years.  Who wants to wait that long?  The time frame here does matter and as Keynes once famously quipped “in the long run we’re all dead.”

So that to me is the real choice: 1) bail them out and reward the undeserving, increase the likelihood of a future financial crisis, and keep some crappy firms around or 2) don’t bail them out and go through a financial crisis far, far worse than the terrible one we are experiencing.  I opt for option 1, but I can understand someone who opts for 2 who acknowledges the tradeoffs. 

Update: It's been argued by someone whose opinion I trust that we should not have bailed out the banks but simply recapitalized them.  "Bail out" in this case was a poor choice of words in my discussion above.  What I was focused on was recapitalization.  The distinction is important as recapitalization could involve something like temporarily nationalizing the banks (through say a FDIC mechanism), wiping out equity holders, and giving bond holds a painful haircut.  On the surface, I see pros and cons to this approach: you've got government playing an even more direct role in the credit markets than I'm confortable with, on the other hand the moral hazard issue is of far less consern.  I'll have to think about this.  

The $8 trillion bail out

A lot of folks were angry at Congress over the TARP bail out and the ARRA stimulus package.  Despite all the Sturm und Drang over those to Bills, this article seems to indicate what a lot of us already long suspected, that the real action was on the monetary side of the house.  Now I haven’t seen Bloomberg’s methodology and I’m not sure how much of this would have been normal overnight type trading that would have occurred anyway had the financial crisis never taken place, but even if it’s half right, it would dwarf Congressional actions.  If you read through the comments (and if you want to see some truly terrifying economic illiteracy that explains why our country can’t solve its problems you’ll read through the comments), you’ll note how much anger is directed at the Fed.  I believe that’s misdirected.  If you want to get mad, I would submit that you shouldn’t get mad at the Fed for supplying eye-watering bits of liquidity in a time of economic crisis, under many circumstances that’s exactly what a central bank should do.   You should get mad at the sources of the economic crisis that caused the Fed to supply eye-watering bits of liquidity.

Top 20 college football rivalries:

1. Alabama/Auburn – the Iron Bowl is about pure HATE.  Not strong dislike.  HATE.
2. Army/Navy – 364 days of the year the US Army and Navy have each other’s backs.  This day is different.
3. Michigan/Ohio St – whether it’s the Horseshoe or the Big House,  it’s Woody Hayes or Bo Schembechler, this de facto Big 12, err…, 10 championship is one of the greatest shows in sports.
4. Texas/Oklahoma – played for about a zillion years in the half-way between neutral site Cotton Bowl – one half crimson and cream, one half burnt orange
5. Texas/Texas A&M – very few moments in spectator sports are as intense as the swaying crowds at Kyle Field ordering their team to saw varsities horns off.  This contest will be missed.
6. Cal/Stanford –“Oh, the band is out on the field” – ‘nuff said.
7. Harvard/Yale – only Ivy nerds could come up with the classic headline “Harvard beats Yale 29-29” and have it make complete sense
8. Oklahoma/Nebraska – how many Big 8 championships came down to this?  All of them.
9. Miami/Florida St – Bobby will be seeing wide rights in his sleep
10. USC/UCLA – admit it, when you read the name in your head, you did it in Keith Jackson’s voice.
11. Florida/Florida St – Florida and Florida State just want to beat Miami.  Florida and Florida State want to destroy each other, burn down their houses, shoot their dog, and then go after their neighbors
12. Michigan/Notre Dame –the two best fight songs go head-to-head.
13. West Virginia/Pitt – it’s a brawl…in the backyard
14. Utah/BYU – nobody outside of the SLC valley may care about the Holy War, but they sure as Hell do
15. USC/Notre Dame – after the Celtics/Lakers and Redskins/Cowboys, the best long distance rivalry in American sports
16. Kansas/Missouri – KU is still bitter about that whole Bleeding Kansas thing.  At least they’re not using real bullets anymore.
17. Florida/Georgia – you name your game the “World’s largest outdoor cocktail party” and you know things will get out of control
18. Oregon/Oregon St – the uncivil Civil War
19. Oklahoma/Oklahoma St  - Bedlam is Okie Lite’s super bowl
20. Grambling/Southern – even without the legendary Eddie Robinson stalking on the sidelines, this is the HBU super bowl.  Plus the bands are just plain badass.  

My friend, Dave “the Economist” was in town for a conference.  In honor of him, I’d thought I’d publish my Top 10 most important Economists list:

10. R. Coase – One of my professors used to say that Coase only produced one good idea in his entire life.  Maybe, but it (Coase Theorem) was a doosey.  I’m also impressed by the impact this had on the development on O. Williamson’s (Nobel Laureate 2009) Transaction Cost Economics (TCM).  In some ways, TCM is evidence for the pursuit of pure theory.  I had an entire semester class in grad school dedicated to Organizational Theory and came away feeling the field is crap.  But, TCM is essentially the child of the marriage of Chester Bernard’s Org Theory and Coase Theorem, and I’m fascinated by TCM, proving yet again that something good can arise from something so crappy.

9. D. Ricardo – really the father of global economics who introduced the world to the concept of comparative advantage.

8. R. Thaler – so this one is a little more apparitional than realized, but I strongly feel that Behavioral Economics (the Thaler kind not the Becker kind) is where the field of economics is heading.   You could argue for D. Kahneman (Nobel Laureate 2002) as the person who should take this title since he is far more noted in it.  But even Kahneman will admit that Thaler was the one who kicked the field off, so I’m going with him.  The problem with Behavioral Economics in my mind is that while they have smashed the Chicago School’s Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) to bits, they have left nothing in its place.  After all, how do you model irrationality?  D. Ariely, a brilliant man in his own right, believes they will eventually get there.  Ariely may have about 50 IQ points on me, but I’m still not convinced.  We may be stuck with EMH for lack of an alternative.

7. K. Marx –so my definition of most important economists consists of some combination of economic theory development and influence.  No one, save my #2, for good or for ill (mostly for ill) has been as influential as Marx.  In time, I suspect, Marx’s influence will fade, but he’s had a profound influence to the present.  Plus, his ideas that automation will eventually eliminate/lower value of jobs might be a Luddite fantasy but still has influence and is worthy of consideration, particularly in times like these…during recessions.

6. E. Fama – no theory has been as dominate in economics in the last thirty years as the Efficient Market Hypothesis.   That said, it’s taken its hits lately (and in academic circles appears to be in slow decline).  I’m not quite where R. Lowenstein is when he stated "The upside of the current Great Recession is that it could drive a stake through the heart of the academic nostrum known as the efficient-market hypothesis"1, but I do think it should have died as a accurate representation of reality when D. Kahneman and A. Tversky demonstrated that empirically indifference curves cross (something that rationally isn’t supposed to happen).  So while I believe that healthy skepticism is in order, I think models built off of EMH are probably better in most cases than a random guess and there’s still something to knowing how folks would act if they were totally rational.

 5. P. Samuelson – arguably the greatest pure academic economist the US ever produced.  When it comes to economic theories, Dude’s name is on everything.  And he crosses so many fields, from applied welfare economics and public finance to where I first encountered him, international economics. 

4. M. Friedman – I could have put F. von Hayek or L. von Misses in this slot, but I find Friedman’s Chicago School monetarist view point far more sophisticated and nuanced than the Austrian School and his influence on the public through his Free to Choose series more profound.    Add to this, that Friedman basically wrote the seminal paper of the topic of exchange rates, and he’s an easy pick at four.

3. J.M. Keynes – father of modern macroeconomics  and -- wait for it -- Keynesian economics that introduced the world to such concepts as the short-run and multiplier effects, as well as the architect of the Bretton Woods system that dominated exchange rates for a quarter century.   Though Keynes’ economic reputation seems to wax and wane inversely with the economy, Politicians (except Speaker Beohner) and central bankers always seem to rediscover him when things get bad.

2. A. Smith – the challenge isn’t explaining why the father of economics is this high on the list, the challenge is explaining why he isn’t #1.   As the inspiration for one of the driving forces of the twentieth century…capitalism…Smith provided early insight into how things like individual selfishness aggregated and economies of scale could raise the standard of living for billions of people.

1. A. Marshall – Marshall’s technical contributions to theory reads like a Microeconomics 101 class: supply and demand, marginal utility, curve shifts, elasticity, producer/consumer surpluses, etc… All those diagrams and much of the quantification from your High School Econ class that you love or hate, ya that was him. 

Honorable Mentions: G. Akorlof, K. Arrow,  G. Becker, E. Heckscher, H. Hotelling, I. Fischer, John K. Galbraith, J. Hicks (my #11), P. Krugman, A. Laffer, W. Leontief, J. Nash, J. von Nuemann, B.G. Ohlin, V. Pareto, E. Phelps, R. Shiller, H. Simon, G. Stigler, J.E. Stiglitz, and G. Tullock.

Notes: A list like this is hard for categorization reasons.  Von Nuemann and Nash were really mathematicians who had a profound influence over economics (and many, many other areas) through the construction of game theory.  Arrow was economist whose most profound impact is on Political Science.  Kahneman is a psychologist by trade and even admits to limited knowledge in the area of economics (yet he won the Nobel Prize in Economics for good reason). People like Locke, Hobbs, J.S. Mills and Henry George are left off the list, despite their contributions, because I considered them to be more as moral philosophers, yet Adam Smith probably considered himself more of a moral philosopher since the idea of “economist” didn’t really exist until he kick started the field.  I not sure I can provide an consistent reason why someone was “in” for consideration as an economist while others were “out”; I just went with my gut.

1. My favorite critique of the Efficent Market Hypothesis was by former Harvard President, Secretary of the Treasury, and Director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, who famously began a paper, "There are Idiots.  Look around."

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas. – Rush, The Trees

Texas was trying to create its perfect world.  A world where they got boat loads of money from their own network.   A world where all the other teams in their conference would be at a recruiting disadvantage.  A world where they, along with Oklahoma, were dominate enough to split conference championships, but where the conference with the likes of Oklahoma State, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, A&M, Texas Tech, and in the old’n days K-State, was solid enough that if they went undefeated they could make a legitimate case to play for the national title.  Losing Nebraska was a hit, but the ‘horns and the ‘huskers never got along anyway.  Colorado was no great loss.  But A&M going should be an indication to Austin, though they are wont to admit it, that they overplayed their hand.  

There are so many scenarios in play that it boggles the mind.  I won’t state my reputation on which one will play out; my purpose here is really to try to grasp the universe of the possible: I think it’s highly likely that Texas A&M will move to the SEC.  The SEC appears to want an inroad into the State of Texas and A&M has already walked itself so far out of that ledge that its admin will be run out of town by the alumni if they stick around in the Big XII without some serious graveling from Texas, which Texas will not do.  One key question is who the SEC’s 14th team will be.  My first pick would have been Florida State, but U of Florida seems to have killed that idea off.  Despite protest from Virginia Tech they have to be considered a strong candidate.  Also possible is one of the North Carolina schools, especially UNC-Chapel Hill, but would they leave the b-ball happy ACC and their rivalry with Duke for the SEC?  Tough to say.

There’s also been talk of Missouri moving to the SEC, which I didn’t believe at all until I heard of a Oklahoma delegation visiting both College Station and Colombia, and still believe is remote.  One problem with Missouri from a SEC prospective is that having another team out west means that you will likely have to split a natural rivalry along the east/west divide.  The most likely candidate is Alabama/Auburn.    Would the SEC be willing to do that for a so-so team?   If Missouri does get an invite, it will probably blow kisses to the SEC with one hand, while holding the phone for one last shot at the Big 10 on the other.  It’s a long shot but not impossible to imagine the Big 10 grabbing Missouri before it’s too late, reaching over to get Rutgers for the NYC market, and then settling down at 14 awaiting a Notre Dame that seems unwilling to come.  If this does happen, watch for things to get really chaotic as the ACC pillages the Big East in a bid for survival.  Under this scenario, if the Big 10 says no, Missouri leaves the moribund Big XII for the safety of the SEC.  

Oklahoma is another interesting case.  They figure to somehow land on their feet, but with some scary moments.   Oklahoma would probably get an invite from the SEC to help form 16, but do they really want to do that?  The best of all worlds for Oklahoma is to be in a good conference which they can use as a spring board for championships, but not one that is too good like the SEC, where they would be just another top flight contender.  Two other factors come to mind: 1) would going to the SEC hurt Oklahoma’s recruiting in Texas? I think so.  2) what about Oklahoma State?  The SEC probably doesn’t want two teams in a state with only 3.7 million people.  The Sooners would probably ditch the cowboys if they had to but not without considerable political pain on their side.  The Big 10 probably would not take Oklahoma without Texas, and I just don’t see Texas going north (using it as leverage for a threat – yes – but actually doing it – no).  Would the PAC-12 take the Sooners in some sort of package deal without the ‘horns?  Hmmm…unclear.

The Big XII has said that if A&M does leave they’d pick up some other team.  Arkansas has been mentioned but that’s a pipe dream.  Notre Dame has also been thrown other there and there is something to it in that they’d be able to keep their network deal in the Big XII vs. the Big 10, but ND loves their independence and would have to give up more natural rivalries up north, so I think this is at best a 50-to-1 shot.  Pittsburg, West Virginia, and Louisville just don’t fit geographically, and smack of desperation from the Big XII.  SMU has already announced they would be very interested in the Big XII – a smart move on their part – but it probably only improved their odds from 1% to 2%.  TCU might also be asked.  It would be a plum for them to reunite with Texas, Tech, and Baylor, but I think it would be crazy for TCU to leave the BCS-automatic qualifier Big East for the mess that is the Big XII unless the Big East begins to look moribund itself. 

BYU seems the most likely target for Big XII expansion and looks like a push from a competitive standpoint after the loss of A&M (the loss of rivalries is another matter).  BYU will try to get Oklahoma and Texas to commit to years in the Big XII.  They’ll get it only if Texas wants to try to use this as an excuse to bind the rest of the Big XII to their Longhorn Conference.  Otherwise, BYU really doesn’t have much leverage here…going to the Big XII seems a no-brainer for them.  If they go, they’ll be in a BCS conference and get to host a few top notch teams from time to time.  And when the Big XII eventually falls apart, BYU will be back to…well, independent, the status quo of today.  No skin off of their back.  My best guess is that the Big XII picks up BYU, survives for a few years, before crashing into something else.

Though less likely than BYU, Houston also looks like another viable potential target for the Big XII.  From a Big XII standpoint, this begins to look a lot like the Southwest Conference 2.0, which is both good –return to old rivalries – and bad – the four breakaways left the old SWC for a reason.  Houston is a commuter school without a huge amount of local support and their on campus facilities are atrocious, but it does have an ace in the hole…UT-Austin would love to play at Reliant.  If Houston is asked into the Big XII, I think they take it.  The Big XII may look like it isn’t long for this world, but a chance to prove it can play in the big leagues for whatever comes next may be too much for Houston to resist.

One wild card in all this is the PAC-12.  It’s easy to see the PAC-12 sitting tight at 12.  But when you look at their realist prospects of expansion if it comes to that, Boise State could be considered – a long shot really, but it really would be the PAC-12 trying to pick off the best of the Big XII before someone else does.  And if things got chaotic – the SEC went to 16, the Big 10 to 14, Missouri gone from the Big XII would this force the PAC-12’s hand?  At some point the PAC-12 could try the high risk approach – invite Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State as long as 3 out of 4 agree to come.  If Missouri has gone somewhere, I think Oklahoma takes it, and if Oklahoma does, State and Texas Tech probably do too.  UT-Austin will have offers from the Big 10 and SEC at this point, but I don’t believe they’d really consider them.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s either the PAC-16 or independence.  Texas wouldn’t lose any natural rivalries going indie, Tech, OU, and Okie State would all quickly agree to a home-and-home with UT if asked so long as they weren’t forced onto the Longhorn Network, but Texas has already stated they don’t want to go indie, probably because they’ve seen how irrelevant that’s made Notre Dame.  The question for the PAC-12 and this high risk proposal, could they live with a conference with just Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and say Kansas, if UT does go independent or that more risk than they are willing to accept? 

Which leads me back to my original question of where the Red Raiders land?  Tech has some valuable qualities: a winning football team the last twenty or so years (and let’s face it conference realignment is mostly about football), improving academics due to a growing state population and the spillover effect from both Texas and A&M looking to curtail enrollment growth, inroads into the DFW area, a major university in a state of 27M known for being football recruiting’s happy hunting round.  Will that be enough?  Almost certainly not without UT-Austin or OU and possibly both.  The SEC is a rather remote possibility.  The Big 10 probably wouldn’t take us even with Texas.  Which leaves a Big XII held together with shoestrings and bubble gum, PAC-16 expansion, or (barf!) football irrelevancy in the Mountain West Conference as Tech’s only real options.    In the short run, I see the weakened Big XII as Tech’s place, but there seems to me to be a pretty short half-life on that conference, so I can only hope a PAC-16 option still remains viable. 

I’d like you all’s thoughts on other combinations that I may have missed, or what you think the odds are on the combination I’ve outlined. 

Migrating downtown seems only natural once you’ve settled into a new city. I’d seen several pictures of Munich with Karlsplatz as a hallmark. Karlsplatz is a large plaza with a giant sprinkler type fountain that kids love to play in on hot Bavarian days and a medieval castle looking gate on one side. On the other side is the real entrance to the city center. Virtually the entire city center seems to revolve around the Frakenkircke, which is not nearly as scary as it sounds. Frankenkirch is a giant cathedral with an immense steeped red room and two giant towers that top off with a couple of green onion shaped balls. Otherwise, it’s pretty similar to a lot of other central European cathedrals.

It was Saturday night, I was in Munich, and as far as I was concerned there was only one place that a tourist new to the city should be on a Saturday night: Hofbrauhaus. I figured going in that in reality Hofbrauhaus would just be a bunch of tourist tying to gain an "authentic" German beer garden experience just like me. And it was. Even though it seats about a thousand people, the place was jammed to the hilt and places where hard to find. At Hofbrauhaus, you basically have large tables in which groups of strangers crowd around drinking from steins bigger than my head. Even though I was single, I still had to circle around a few times to find an open spot. Eventually, I got one near the oom-pah band and next to a group of Norwegians who had been there most of the day. Two of them were surprisingly fine, the third one…well, I didn’t have too much time to enjoy their conversation before the mostly sober ones had to rescue their friend. Quickly, they were replaced by a wonderfully mixed group of Argentineans celebrating a birthday. Soon thereafter, some Italians dropped in. I figure that if you sit there long enough you can cycle through every nation in the world. Except Germans, perhaps, didn’t encounter many locals there or at least ones that weren’t trying to sell me something.


Just a regular Saturday night at the Hofbrauhaus

The next morning I wondered over to the Residenz. The Residenz is an enormous palace that was formally the home of the Bavarian monarchy. The place takes on a video-game level feel with several series of rooms all seemingly having the same game plan and all of them gaudy beyond imagination. Here’s a series of Rococo inspired rooms in red and white, here’s some baroque style rooms in green and yellow, here’s some whatever style rooms in whatever and whatever. And that goes on and on and on. I’m not sure how a royal family kept track of all the rooms or whether they ever came close to using them. The other thing you note about the Residenz is the impact of war. Virtually, every room in there is one that was rebuilt from bombing during WWII. Most of the furniture and décor were time pieces not necessarily native to the Residenz itself. Still you have to give the Bavarian government credit, they’ve done a masterful job rebuilding, and you wouldn’t know it was recreated if they didn’t tell you.

Residenz of Munich

Sunday afternoons are an extremely popular day at Munich’s Englisher Garden. The Englisher Garden is a two centuries old urban park larger in size than NYC’s Central and it comes complete with Greek style temples and Japanese pagodas. On Sunday afternoons, you see all manners of people there: families picnicking, athletic types jogging, groups of twenty-somethings throwing around Frisbees, pet owners chasing dogs, and nudists. Yes, that’s right, there’s a nudist section right smack in the middle of this enormous urban park. Now, I know what you’re thinking…it’s probably just a bunch of overweight, fifty something guys as the nudists, right? Yup. It’s pretty shocking as you’re just minding your own, walking down the bike path and there’s Mr. Natural emerging from an icy cold river. Fortunately for all of us, I have no pictures of this traumatic moment to share.

By late afternoon, I hit the Deutsches Museum. The D.M. is billed as one of the greatest science and technology museums on the planet. I can believe it. The museum encapsulates everything from wooden water wheels to genetic engineering, from Native American canoes to WWII Messerschmitt aircraft. It contains James Watt’s Steam Engine and the first Diesel engine. Most of signage, but not all, is in English as well as German. I made the mistake of showing up with only two hours ‘til close. Give yourself a bit more time.

I had originally planned to spend the next day at Dachau. Partly this was because I couldn’t think of a better day to see a concentration camp than Monday the 13th. Partly, it was because I wanted to leave a city I was falling for, Munich, on a high note by seeing Neuschwanstein last. But it wasn’t meant to be, Dachau is closed on Mondays.

A couple of days before I ran across this local tour company organizing trips out to Neuschwanstein. I’m usually a pretty independent traveler, but having been at it for a couple of weeks, I was basically spent. I was sick of figuring out train and bus schedules, the best restaurants to eat in, and reading maps. I figure that it probably costs me $15 more to go with an English speaking guide (and by English, I mean English English), but what it made up for in my time was probably worth it. Plus, the group I went with was good company for the trip.

It’s a couple of hours by train and bus out there. We arrived in the Fussen (meaning "foot" in German – as in the foot of the mountains) around noon and grabbed some currywurst before pushing on. A few miles short of the castle you pass by these weird turquoise blue rivers turned that color due to the sediments in them. Eventually, the castle comes into view on your right. From the pictures, I thought it would be waaaay up in the mountains, but it’s not, it’s on a hill in the transition zone; one side is mostly a plain, the other side is peaks. For the last few hundred feet, you can walk, take a bus, or an expensive horse drawn carriage. We took the bus. Before entering the castle, we headed over to a bridge crossing near a waterfall that was a few hundred feet away from the castle and took pictures. The bridge itself was packed (at least until you get to the other side – everyone stops at the opening) but the views of the castle and the valley below are extraordinary.  

Neuschwanstein. Good choice, Walt.

It’s gorgeous. Neuschwanstein is Sleeping Beauty’s castle after all. It was also, by morbid coincidence, the 125th anniversary to the day of the castle’s creator Mad King Ledwig’s murder. A satellite truck broadcasting the anniversary sat near the opening gate. An enormous archway greets visitors at the entrance with the magnificent tower hanging quickly in the background. Built in the late nineteenth century, the castle combines aspects of medieval and modern, of the gaudiness of the Residenz of Munich with the austerity of Salzburg’s castle. Yet, the interior seems to miss the target on both styles. There’s a lot of folks that will tell you it’s not worth going into the actual castle, the real action is the views outside. It is worth it, but I can see their point. To me, the inside was just impressive enough. If nothing else, seeing the rather small but elaborate king’s bedroom chamber was worth something. And the views of the outside from the castle’s windows are divine.

While at the train station in Fussen, our tour guide ran a poll. Who wanted to stay in Fussen and grab a bite? Indifferent either way, I didn’t vote. But the group opted to explore the little town. And what a charming little town of 25K or so it is. Row houses of yellow, white, and other light colors seem to dot the town. Here’s a fountain. There’s a small statue. The restaurant we chose had better food that you normally get in a tourist trap; the prices weren’t any better. Still there’s enough interesting little corners, shops, and turns to make the town worth a couple of hours if you can spare it.

The next morning was Dachau.

The Dachau site was chosen because of its transportation network and its proximity to a major city. There’s a railroad leading up to the prisoners’ gate, but prisoners’ rarely used it, they were forced to walk. There’s a sign on the front of the gate "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work makes free") which I used to think was just some cold blooded shit the Nazis did to make the prisoners think they had a chance. But the guide explained that wasn’t the case, it was meant for the free folks outside, to convince them that these people deserved to be in there, and that there was a way for them to earn their way out. The prisoners’ themselves knew they were in a world of shit. The prisoners were then marched in a room where all of their personalized IDs and possessions were taken and they were given a number. That number is who they would be from now on. After which, they were stripped down, made to shower, deloused, and given a uniform that they hoped might fit. On the uniform was a badge indicating their "crime".

Dachau was the original concentration camp. The template for all others. Contrary to common knowledge (including mine), it wasn’t an extermination camp like Auschwitz II. At Dachau, the point was to work and starve you to death. It was originally created to house German political prisoners of the state, but as the war raged on, that criteria became less meaningful. It started out as hell and grew progressively worse: rooms became more crowded, lice more plentiful, food less available, beatings more frequent, guards more sadistic. The rules were purposely made contradictory so that no one could ever follow them. The point was to break you; to take away your humanity.

Images of Dachau. The entrance to the gas chamber is on the right.

The guides are amazingly candid. As Germans, it must be a struggle for them, but that might also be the only way to cope. No honest question, no matter how difficult, was off limits and no answer was rose colored. My guide used something like the phrase, "From the Nazis’ viewpoint…" several times, not to rationalize or excuse, but more to put it in accurate historical context. There was a horrific four minute video, which children under 12 aren’t even allowed to watch, of the first few days after the Americans liberated the camp. My guide coolly and calmly described the grotesque scene. Only once, at the very end, did editorializing creep into her presentation, when she turned to the consequences of racism.

As unsettling as the main camp is, nothing…nothing can prepare you for the crematorium. You cross the "neutral zone", pass the main fence, into a separate area. On the other side of the fence, there’s a building that looks like a bricked long house. The area around it has a cemetery feel. On the left side of the interior of the building is a waiting room, and then an undressing room, and then the showers. Unlike at other sites, it’s not clear if the gas chamber at Dachau was ever used. Though, that thought doesn’t make you feel much better. Beyond the gas chamber are the furnaces where the bodies were cremated. There’s no doubt that these were used. The prisoners that worked this side of the fence, stayed on that side of the fence, and were purged from time to time, to keep them from talking.

After being there, I was silent for the next half hour. I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say that didn’t sound trite or stupid.

I couldn’t let Dachau be the last thing I saw in this wonderful city. Even though it was the summer, I wondered over to the Oktoberfest field hoping to find some small inkling of the future party. But there was nothing there, just a big open dirt spot with some construction crews milling around. So I wondered over to this authentic German restaurant the guy at the hostel told me about. That would have to be it. The restaurant was a new but old looking wooden building with waitress wearing classical Germanic dresses and served food with unpronounceable names. I have no idea what I ate, but it was wonderful. So was Europe.