tom travel

Some times you might think that everything goes wrong.  Like the car breaks down on the way to Spain, the rental cars windows get smashed in, or you run all out of money in the middle of a foreign city.  Some things I have had, I don,t remember how I lost them.

I ate a meal for the price of a juice in a little bar advertizing Free Walks and Flamenco.  I ate and the European town swirled around me.  I stepped outside for air, and walked down one of those tiny Barcelonian alleys with my ukulele out.  Careful, the people had warned, that the police dont see you playing that, or they will take your instrument.  But I was not busking, only walking.  There is a girl singing along, a song I don't recognize.  There is a guy with headphones on, smiling, asking where I am from.  I am Travis, and I tell him where from.  'Travis Travel' he says, smiling good naturedly.  Are you hungry?

I told him I wasn't, that I had just eaten a meal for the price of a juice at a little bar with Free Walks and Flamenco, but a few minutes later, Tom (you hav never had tapas?) and I were drinking and laughing and eating tapas at a fine little diner at 10 on a Thursday night.

Tom is tall, his english sounds to me like UK English but it wears a thick Belgian accent on it, which makes it jovial and blunted, like a young boy jumping over things.  Tom has scruff on his face, not shaved in a day or two, and a smile even when hes a bit ticked off.  He is simply spoken and honest and I liked him right off. 

He knew I was on my last few euros, but I told him my whole story of coming to Barcelona with some friends and how I had a ride back and money in France, if I survived the city long enough to see it.  He said I could sleep at his hotel with him for this night and the next but then his girlfriend was coming from Belgium and I would have to find another place.  I had a room at the hostel that night; but I would take him up on his offer on Friday.

I shall not soon forget that night and that tapas.  The food is not so important to me (wild mushrooms on garlic bread, cheese in a thing, soft calamari, risotto) or the drinks that I want to remember (beer beer beer irish-coffee cava cava) it was the freeness that I felt with that new friend of mine.  To be honest and feel like this guy really cared for me like a person compassionate and undertanding cares for another person, but to be treated as a genuine equal regardless of nationality or status or anything.  Not that I haven't felt that before, but Tom is one of these guys that just helps a person feel that way, and he put me right at ease.

We talked about 'the Good Semaritan' story, he played me a song he had created on the computer, I gave him a Fugatives cd which the house played a track from.  We laughed and felt grand and I thought to myself: "my oh my, a person can be in 'dire straights' (bad news), but if he has a friend, he knows he's alright."

And we were all right and just fine and we carreened out of the tapas bar, not feeling all drunk, only elated to be friendful and free.  Around the corner we went; out came the ukelele and we started to sing, making up songs with three Danish guys that came out of a bar.  Not a minute went by before the police were on us (what for singing and playing a ukulele) and they off with my (sisters) ukulele and off with my passport and into a car these things went, the car drove off then, and I am sure if not for the seasoned Europeans around me I would have been quite out of luck.

My new friends, Tom, and one of the Danish fellows called Michael, were trying to talk and reason with the Spanish police; who wrote us a ticket with no price on it, no name on it, and a scribbled hand written address of where to go in the morning if we wanted to bail out the ukulele.  Sign here, he said to me, and the Dane and Tom both go 'ah no you dont! first give him back his passport'.  It was a very interesting experience to be there for.  Hello, foreign police.

Every day there is protests in Barcelona.  One day the SpanAir crew was 100 strong (more maybe) outside of a big government building.  One night I passed the same government building to a line of people being silent for peace.  Over a quarter of the population of Spain is unemployed, I hear.  I don't know how our issues are related, America, but maybe we can help each other.

Next day I met Tom, he was the only guy on the street with shorts and sandles.  His story is, he worked from 17 to now he's in his early 30s, spending but saving enough money to see him around the world now, if he wants.  He leans back in his chair by the beach, smiles through his sunglasses.  "I could sit here all day", and he could, but our mission is to get the ukulele back, so we walk all over town.

How Tom and I walk all over town is this: after three blocks we have to pee, and to use the bathrooms we have to buy something.  Tom will say "I've already told you, I drink too much. That's true." and order us a beer.  We drink the beer, wlk three blocks, and have to pee.  One time we had to walk 4 blocks then take the metro.  We had to pee really bad after that, so we stopped for a beer and a tapas.

We made it to the police station place at 4, they closed at 2.  You'll have to come back tomorrow.

Tom, sayz I, I just don't feel welcome here.  This place wont allow me to play my music, I don't have any money, and if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have any friends.  I keep thinking I should have stayed in Paris and gone slowly, maybe gone to visit my friend Guisane whos got horses in the country, I really like horses, and I like Paris and Guisane and Matilda, and the cold isn't even that bad.

And Tom said to me that it wasn't about the money or anything, that I just had to know what I wanted to do and then do it.  I asked him then to loan me the money for a train to Paris, and I was going to get a different guitar and tell Kim and Joe just to meet me there.  And Tom did it, you know.  He loaned me all the money I needed, I to get it back to him somehow, and we had our last round at the train station.

I think I'm having second thoughts now; I told him (can you picture me, all indesisive as usual).  He said 'its because of the money, now you think you've got options.   But you can't think like that.  The money is not what's important (the bike is not whats important, the ukuleles not whats important).  No, its knowing what you really want to do, and then doing it.

Well I want to go slow(er).

I want to visit Europe, and meet the people, and that might take forever.

I got to Mathilde's this morning, and she wasn't home, but Ankara looked at me, let me in.  She doesn't speak much english and my French is pitiful, but here I am, in her home, eating with people who are so much like my friends and yet so different, and wonderful to know.  I spent the whole afternoon (all of it from noon to dark), with Patrique, who has sons my age and a beard, who told me in his 100 English words some of the finest things I have ever heard.  He said, and I'll leave you with it.

"it is not important to run; because in the end there is death."