Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Weighing the luggage

I take up the offer of the pharmacist from whom I bought a nail clipper yesterday and take my large backpack and my rolling suitcase there to be weighed.The pharmacist, a short-haired, clean-faced woman in her sixties is not at all put out. Indeed, she makes me get on the scale with the backpack to assure that the weight is as accurate as possible. The backpack is slightly under the limit, and the suitcase slightly over. If I get to the airport first thing, I can hopefully sort out any problem there: in my experience, arriving early for check in finds the personnel in a more forgiving frame of mind than later, when time pressure brings out the worst in everyone.

I return to the hotel with the bags and grab a coffee at Girasol down the street. While I wait for it to be prepared, I eye the back page of El Correo de Galicia. It seems that the adult son of Cayetana, Duchess of Alba, the most titled aristocrat in Europe, was visiting Santiago yesterday. He enjoyed tapas outdoors at a restaurant, Abastos 2.0, next to the Mercado de Abastos. Curious what sort of place a Duke might eat in, I head there.

Surprisingly, it is down another street from Praza de Certvantes, which I have crossed tens of times this trip. In Santiago, you are always going around in circles, but also always stumbling on sections of the city you never knew existed. I find the market, which is at its busiest now, in the late morning. Abastos 2.0 is an unpretentious spot, a glassed in rectangle of stone with a small, narrow kitchen on one side, and tables on the other, along with outdoor tables. Judging from the backpackers enjoying late-morning tapas and beer, its popularity is not limited to aristocrats.

I return to the hotel to write a note of appreciation to Alberto Conde, whose columns in La Voz de Galicia I enjoyed so while here. I found the offices of the newspaper, but the receptionist had no idea who he was. It is said that Spaniards are reluctant to acknowledge the gifts of those among them, preferring to find fault than to celebrate, so I hope to offer a countervailing gesture. Fortunately, the clipping has the newspaper's e-mail, so I am able to compose my homage and forward it in care of the editorial offices.

As to the point about the mindset of Spaniards, I would add my perception that self-importance is the national vice. At numerous points, I have found myself in conversation in Spanish with one or another person who took it upon themselves to declare a thing this way or that. At the police station I had to obtain a ticket for the queue from a woman sitting next to the machine. When I told her what I needed, she told me that unless I had a death certificate no one would give me anything, and that she wanted to make sure that I understood that before I sat down and waited. In fact, when I spoke with Jose Manuel de la Casa Vadillo, the supervisor of the D.N.I. section, I got all that I needed in the way of information to solve my problem.

This morning, when I was at the pharmacist's, a woman was waiting for a prescription to be filled. She overheard the pharmacist and I talking after the luggage was weighed, making the conversion from kilos into pounds. She threw herself in to the discussion.

"But you are fine --you only have 22 kilos, and you say the limit is 44--"

She had not recognized that a kilo is 2.3. pounds, and that I was slightly over the limit. The pharmacist explained her error to her, at which point the woman retracted her opinion and took the opposite point of view.

Another example: The priest who celebrated Mass in the Capilla de la Communion of the Cathedral yesterday morning came in a few minutes before the hour. He began preparing the altar table for the celebration. Seeing me sitting in the empty chapel, he asked me why I was not standing. I could not entirely hear what he was saying, so I stood up to hear him better and said "What? What?" --at which point he recognized that I was not from Santiago, smiled and said nothing more --although by then I was standing. The priest is apparently used to having Mass goers get to their feet when he enters a chapel, and took my recumbent posture for disrespect.

After Mass, in another part of the Cathedral, a homeless man was sitting against one of the pillars. The security guard came over, said a few words, and returned to where the man was sitting. Bellowing, the guard said,

"The doctor says 'Do you need medical assistance?'" --I walked away so as not to be in the way. Leaving the Cathedral a few minutes later, I saw emergency personnel impatiently ordering the man --by now on a stretcher-- to blow air into a plastic bag. "Blow! You have to blow!"

And a final example: I entered the crypt of Saint James the Apostle to pay my respects earlier in the week during a point when there were few people in the area. I came to say a prayer and knelt before the grill, but not before spying a middle aged man in casual dress standing behind me. He was about to take a picture in contravention of the request that the area --like that behind the altar where the Saint's bust lies-- lie beyond the reach of cellphones, videocameras and other photographic devices.

Feeling self-important myself perhaps, I told the man photographs of the crypt were not allowed. Whereupon, he let loose with a torrent of argument:

"Where does it say that? What do you know? Who are you to tell me I cannot photograph here-- Stick to your prayer and leave me alone." I said my prayer and left the crypt, leaving the man, posing his photograph.

If, as I thought after a month there, every man is a king in France, in Spain, he is an emperor.