My Adventures in Europe with Jaime
In the last issue of Villa Villa Cola I wrote about going to
Europe with Jaime. In case you missed the last issue I left
off by saying that these dudes that we stayed with thought that
Jaime and I were lesbians. Now I'm going to pick up where I
left off.
We decided to leave Madrid and go to Vitoria, a small town
in Spain, where we were to meet Sergio and Danny. We were
referred to these young bucks via Luis, the North Cal
Distribution owner that liked to say the F word a lot. We get
on the train to go to this place, because these dudes are suppose
to be hard core punks according to Luis, and Jaime's aching
to get wasted. We get on the train all right, but getting off
wasn't so easy. When we thought that we had arrived in Vitoria
we couldn't figure out how to open the damn door. We were
running around like ants whose house just got flooded. You
have to understand that they don't tell you what stop you're
at so if you fall asleep you're screwed. Unfortunately Jaime
and I both fell asleep, and we had no idea where we were when
we woke up. Now we're scrambling to get our houses on our backs,
and to get the hell out of the train. We didn't figure out
how to open the door on time so the train took off with us still
inside, and it's a good thing too, because we were trying to
get off in the wrong town anyway.
It's about three in the
morning when we get to Vitoria and Danny and Sergio are there
waiting. This is our first experience with a major cultural
difference. We get out of the train and meet up with our new
friends and they immediately give both of us kisses on the cheek.
This is a first for both Jaime and I so we're a little taken
back. Jaime decides that she doesn't like this aspect of
European culture. I decided that I like it I just wasn't used
to it yet. We stay at Danny's house who still lives with his
parents. His Mom does our laundry for us and I stink up the
room with my dirty socks, that I throw out the window later.
This little town has two really fun skateparks. One has a
cement vert ramp and mini ramp and a bowl with a rail going
into it. It also has a wacky snake run type thing that's pretty
disfunctional. It does have some pretty nice tags on it; one
of my favorites said "punta religion". Jaime ripped the ass
out of her pants here, and learned bad words in Spanish while
smoking "hashish" with the locals. I just skated a lot, and
let the language barrier be my excuse for not talking to anybody.
The other park was two half pipes butted up against each other.
I found this park quite fun, but we didn't skate it much because
all of the locals chilled at the other park. There was quite
a few "rollers"(in America these are referred to as roller
bladers among other things), so I guess I just like geeky spots
or something. I would like to take this time to thank Danny
and everyone else that helped us out by letting us corrode their
homes. Danny gave us chocolate milk and croissants every
morning; Danny if your reading this thanks for the hospitality.
This local boy fell in love with Jaime, but Jaime wasn't interested. Sergio asked Jaime if she had found herself a little
boyfriend. Jaime said, "No, I don't like boys" this caused
some very vicious rumors about me and Jaime's sexuality. Somehow
word of this got to the boys in Madrid, and that's why they
thought we were lesbians, besides why else would we not hook
up with them. Vitoria was a really fun place to skate and
everybody there was friendly towards us. If you ever go to
Vitoria, Spain be sure to stop by VSD skateshop owned by Danny
and Sergio the hospitable Spanish boys.
Jaime and I decided it was time to move our stinky selves
out of Spain, and into France. The train ride from Spain to
France was brutal. I think I still have a kink in my neck from
sleeping sitting up in a box squashed between two people. France
and the French are messed up to me, but it could be because
the culture that I was brought up in is different. For one
they don't know anything about personal space. They feel very
comfortable talking three inches from your face. Secondly
they're very open about sex, and they aren't afraid to say,
"Will you fuck me tonight?" I know this because I was asked
that very question twice. They also think that the French way
is the best way and the only way. I was interrogated a number
of times because I couldn't speak French. A question like,
"Why don't you speak French?" although they knew I was American,
was asked numerous times. Jaime and I went to Marsielle France,
and we got scared away by the French boys. The park there is
seriously insane, but there were so many rollerbladers and little
French boys breathing down our necks that we couldn't cope.
We only stayed there for one and a half days.
We decided that France wasn't for us, so we went to
Switzerland instead. Switzerland is the most beautiful place
that I have ever been. The mountains are so big and jagged
that it seemed as though they cut through the sky and never
returned. Everybody has huge flower gardens next to their little
cottage houses. Jamie and I ended up in Luassane; a small town
with a huge crystal clear lake. We heard there was a skatepark
in this town, but we never ended up going to it because everybody
said that it was for "rollers". We skated the local jock blocks,
where I spent most of my time in awe of the lake, and dreaming
about riding on a swan. During this time we lost the boy that
could speak English, and had said that we could stay at his
house. Jaime and I sat on the waxed blocks, and hoped that
the boy would come back. A bongo playing boy came up and offered
us some cheesy goodness which we were very grateful for. He
couldn't speak a word of English, but somehow Jaime mimed to
him that we were going to spend the night at his house. He
motioned for us to follow him, and since we didn't have any
other plans we followed, hoping that we were going to a safe
place to sleep. We ended up at some sort of squat situation.
All of the walls were spray painted, and it was just plain
crazy looking. The bongo playing boy used our French to English
dictionary to tell us that he was unemployed. That's about
the only English he ever spoke to us besides making farm animal
noises to convey his dislike for McDonalds food. We stayed
at this guy's house, or whatever you want to call it.
The next
day we all rented a paddle boat that had a big slide on it.
We paddled around on the lake, and chased swans for a while
until we got really hot. I think bongo boy was pretty stoked
because Jaime and I stripped down to our underwear, and slid
into the lake. The lake was so big that I was getting a little
worried about sharks, but then I remembered that sharks don't
live in lakes. This little swim was a real liberating moment
in our trip; we felt truly refreshed. After our bathing
excursion we received a little tour of Luassane, and then we
left on the train.
Our next stop was Munster, Germany. This is where Jamie
and I had a major falling out, and we paid some serious
consequences for it. I don't want to rehash past conflicts,
so let's just say that we had some difference of opinion. On
this cold day in Munster, Germany Jaime and I decided to split
up. The problem with this idea was that neither of us knew
anything about Munster, and we didn't make any definitive plans
to meet up later. We both just skated off in different
directions. I have to admit that I was really happy to be alone
for a while just cruzing around in Germany, but then I realized
that it was getting quite cold, and that Jaime had the only
key to our locker with our backpacks in it. It was starting
to get late, and all I had was the clothes on my back, and my
skateboard. I started to panic a little because I didn't know
how I was going to find my little travel buddy. I decided that
the best thing to do would be to find a skateshop. Sounds easy
enough, right? Europe is very different than most of America
because their communities aren't set up in nice block formations.
This makes it very difficult to find anything, plus I can't
speak a word of German. Here I am scrambling around Germany
on my skateboard completely lost, and I only have a T-shirt
on. There were big gray clouds that persisted on blocking the
sun from keeping my goose bumps away. It's getting later and
later, and I still can't find the damn skateshop, and I'm not
even sure Jaime will be there once I do find it. At this point
I get frantic, and end up skating in circles for three hours.
Finally I get a clue and find one of the two skateshops in
Munster. I step inside, and there's no sign of Jaime. I ask
the people at the front counter if they have seen a little brown
haired skater girl. In their weak broken English they tell
me that she was just there, but decided to go to the other
skateboard shop. This basically put me back to where I started
because every time somebody would give me directions they would
just tell me street names in their thick German language that
I just couldn't understand. I had twenty minutes before every
shop in Munster would close. The people at the skateshop that
I was at tried to give me very precise instructions, but I knew
it wouldn't be good enough. I scuddadled out of the shop in
search for Jaime once again. Of course I got lost trying to
find the other shop, but by some miracle, possibly God, I
happened upon the skateboard shop by pure chance. I walked
inside, and there was Jaime drinking tea watching skateboard
videos. It was pretty disturbing to see her peacefully drinking
tea, while I had been frantically searching for her ass all
day, but more than that I was really relieved that I had found
her before the shop closed.
This whole trip before this incident, Jaime and I had worked
together as a team, now that we had been seperated for a day,
things got kind of weird. This may be hard for someone whose
reading this to understand, but Jaime and I had magical powers
or something when it came to finding somewhere safe to sleep
every night. Once we weren't using teamwork in order to find
places to stay for free we ended up staying with some serious
nerds. When I found Jaime she said that she had found some
people we could stay with that night, but they were kind of
dorky. We were suppose to meet them for dinner, and then we
were going to decide if we wanted to stay with them. This whole
time I'm thinking, I've never met somebody that is supposedly
a nerd that I couldn't handle being around for a day or two.
Well, after meeting these guys that Jaime and I were supposedly
going to stay with, I quickly changed my mind. I have never
met anyone more nerdy than these two guys in my entire life.
We got to the restaurant, and they immediately started
taking pictures of me and Jaime. They both had huge thick
glasses, and were wearing basketball jersey tanktops over tshirts
that hung down to their knees. One of them had peged cargo
pants on, and the other one was just wrong. They seriously
snorted and drooled when they laughed. It was so disturbing.
I feel like a real snob talking about them this way, but they
were seriously like nothing I've ever seen. Imagine for a second
the nerd of elementary school. Now, imagine that person ten
times as nerdy, that's these guys. Literally, I wouldn't be
suprised if somebody told me that they were mentally retarded,
except for the fact that they could carry on conversation
somewhat understandably. Jaime and I were pretty freaked out
by these guys, so we told them that we had to run some errands,
and that we would meet back with them later. We actually decided
that we couldn't possibly stay with these freaks, so we were
going to search out other options.
It was already getting pretty
late, so we didn't have much time. In the meantime we skated
this park with a huge cement bowl that neither of us touched,
and a snake run that was pretty useless, at least to Jaime
and I. We were hoping to meet some possible hosts here, but
there was only a bunch of high school kids smoking cigaretes.
It started to rain, so we headed back to the city. It was about time for us to go, and meet those nerds, and we still didn't
have any luck finding somewhere else to stay. We decide that
we were just going to have to stay with the geeks, and try to
make the best of the situation. We met the two geeks, and they
were all excited, and being really dorky. We went to the train
station with them and got our backpacks. There's much more on
this little story, and other Europe adventures to come.
villavillacola@mindspring.com
