Travelogue

Or should I say travel-logged? On my way down to Argentina I wrote excitedly on how amazing my traveling experience was. My way back was no less fun, but it seemed frustratingly prolonged.

I got to Ezeiza International Airport at 17:00 (13:00 PDT), hung out with Sus, got her situated and checked into the American terminal, and then began my search for United. They didn’t exist quite yet. I searched over the entirety of the terminal until upon asking a lady at the info desk, I found that their terminal didn’t open until 5:30. I found the United kiosk (one where American had 6) checked in for my flight a good 3 hours early (Sus’s flight was two hours before mine) and paid my airport tax. Yes, you have to pay to leave the country, no matter who you are. This, along with the 21% sales tax on goods and a few other taxes make for a means of supporting the leftist social programs throughout the country at the expense of the middle class. Security was minimal, customs was a joke. (Though the tones to let one know where to go next played the first three notes of the Sesame Street theme, which of course got me whistling the entire rest of the evening.) This led me to the best part of International Airports: Duty Free shopping.

I was walking through all the chocolate, cigarettes, expensive clothes and wine when I got to the Scotch. I’ve had an… unhealthy relationship with whiskey for a while. I love it and hate it at the same time. I’m infatuated with Scotch, but I couldn’t tell you why. I had promised myself some Johnny Walker Blue upon my retirement as HRM with Unitrans, but my partner in crime, the Operations Manager decided to go sober as soon as he gave up the position and I couldn’t justify buying a 750ml bottle of Blue by myself.

I walked past bottles of Red, Black, Green and Gold, and didn’t see a single bottle of Blue. That is, until I picked up a bottle of Gold and behind it was the smallest most adorable thing I’d ever seen: a 250 ml bottle of Blue, priced Duty Free at $55. I scooped it up and strutted over to the check out, settling in behind a gentleman who seemed to be the sole reason for the lack of any Blue in the whole shop. He was walking out with several bottles, more than 10 times in volume what I was planning to purchse. He was debating in Castellano with a friend or acquaintance, equally well dressed and advanced in years, about the merits of single malt vs blended scotch. This acquaintance was wondering why he was throwing all his money away on expensive blended scotch, when he should be drinking single malt. They traded insults and laughs for a while, until I was noticed with my tiny bottle. Apparently nobody drinks scotch in their early twenties because they seemed rather surprised. They laughed at my miniature portion, comparing it to the dragons hoard of scotch already on the conveyor belt, and naming mine el hijo pequeño. I asked the gentleman not standing in line if he had a recommendation for single malt scotch, having spent the last few minutes piecing together what Spanish I knew and concentrating furiously to ask the question. He pointed to my lapel pin and asked me which language I preferred, I answered with Ingles and he led me around giving me a dissertation on the merits of different scotches in perfect English.

I walked out with a bottle of The Glenlivet 18 year for only slightly more than I had planned on spending on my tiny bottle of Blue, though this was much to the disappointment of the other Caballero.

I met up with Sus in the Airport and I fretted on how I was going to find the BART station in SFO, she responded with “ask someone.” I almost fell back in my chair. I had been so used to planning and plotting and thinking ahead because, though I could comprehend about 45% of what everyone said and generally get the gist of what I as being told, I had a much harder time speaking than listening comprehension. I had forgotten that I could talk to people I didn’t know in English once again. Granted, I found that once back in the States I was still responding to waiters or other people with things like “si” or “esta bien.”

My flight to Washington was incredibly interesting. I was seated in the very back row, between the window and a 250 pound marine sergeant. We met as I was idly complaining to myself that airlines should load from the back to the front, as everyone stops and loads their carry-ons in the overhead bins and slows the whole loading process down. He wholeheartedly agreed with me and then we followed each other to the back of the plane serendipitously sitting next to each other. I learned he was the senior staff sergeant of his platoon. (so, senior NCO that rides around with his LT in a nifty Hummer while keeping tabs on the 8 or so squads). He’d been down in Argentina teaching their marines how to swim. I laughed, starting with, “well if any branch needs to know how to swim outside of the…” he cut me off with “don’t say navy.” I was actually going to mention the PJs or SEALs, but I guess any special forces needs to be in the best condition. Anyways, we talked about deployment, active duty, military families, the Argentinean military and its history, and then he was bumped up to business class. He mentioned he knew the flight crew from the way down there, they had chatted and some of them knew he was a serviceman. I’d like to think they bumped him into an empty seat because of that.

I had plenty of room to stretch out until about an hour or so into the flight. An elderly gentleman complained to the stewardess that some punk in front of him was jamming the seat into his legs, and wouldn’t compromise or stop. She seated him next to me and we started empathizing about being tall (he was 6’4). This gentleman was very opinionated and very ready to debate. I was reading a four week old copy of the Economist (it was either that or skymall) and he started talking to me about all sorts of issues. My favorites were music and Islam.

I told him I had been studying music in Argentina, and had just graduated with a music degree. He was curious of the music that I listened to, being a youngster and all that jazz. I told him I was open to al sorts of music, that on my ipod I had everything from classical, to jazz, to punk, classic rock, Funk, techno, broadway music, Irish traditional music, Mexican hip-hop...

He scoffed a bit.

I asked him what he listened to, and he mumbled a bit and then returned with what my favorite bit of music I saw in Argentina was. I told him I couldn’t decide, I saw a few concerts, an avant garde opera, contemporary music accompanying a modern dance show, and of course tons of street musicians and tango everywhere. Oh yeah, and the musical Rent in Spanish, which I had never seen in English.

He responded “I bet you like that one, Rent.” He spat out the name of the play, as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth. I responded that I did and he chuckled, content that he had sized me up correctly. I asked him why he didn’t, he said the musical style was terrible and that it was the beginning of the end for Broadway. I could only respond that my interpretation of music is that its purpose is to evoke emotion, and I’ve never really found an other form that is so successful at this task than Broadway musicals. The combination of a story and the style of music, interweaving lines, layering different songs on top of each other and all the harmony just draws something out of me that other music is unable to do. I asked him if he liked the show Man of La Mancha, my favorite musical, and he responded that he did. I argued that there was little to no difference in style between the music of the two shows, only in the story and instrumentation. He decided he had had enough and left me to my ipod while he dragged out a book; a treatise on Islamic Jihad.

The cover claimed it to be an unbiased study done by an Islamic center, but when the gentleman showed it to me, it seemed rather anti-Islamic to me. I was told that he had read a good ten books on the religion and this was by far the best one. He asked me if I had studied Islam, I told him that outside of a comparative religion class in high school, I hadn’t really devoted too much time to it. He made the claim that I shouldn’t believe anyone who would tell me that Islam is a religion of peace. That Islamist apologists were full of bull. He said that the basis of the religion was absolute faith, fundamentalist devotion. Without devoting yourself completely to Allah you were nothing. He told me that our Jeffersonian principles of debate and reason had made us weak, (apparently American and Christian were synonymous terms in his eyes) and that there was no compromise with the unyielding faith of Islam.

I was taken aback but he proceeded to find passages in his book, to illustrate his point. Each chapter started with a passage from the Koran, and then its interpretation and the implementation of this interpretation by fundamentalist Muslims throughout history. There was a trend that the interpretations of the Prophet's words became less and less tolerant of other religions or people, but it was like taking passages from the old testament and applying them to Christianity today. The last pages of the book looked at the death toll taken by Islam on every continent throughout the ages. I shook my head in disgust, as a study like this taken without context seemed only to be hate propaganda, especially when put in the hands of a christian who was already convinced that Islam was the enemy. After reading things to me about buying the protection of Islam, the right for Muslims to take Jews as slaves and destroy Christian art, he told me that he "could only admire Mohammed, certainly a clever man to be the architect of the greatest sham in history."

That’s where I lost it.

I asked him where I could find a comparable study of Christianity, because now I was thoroughly interested in what that had to say. The death tolls taken by Christians on every continent. How many lives destroyed by slavery by citing that these men were created inferior. How much greed and corruption in his church, buying salvation throughout the dark ages, repression of women, Crusades, Inquisition, Witch Hunts, Bookburnings, Willful ignorance, repression of science, using Latin to keep the lower classes illiterate and away from all forms of learning.

I only stopped when I realized he was watching the in flight movie. I smiled and plugged my headphones in and watched Flawless. He was asleep when the movie was over.

In the morning we discussed coffee, skiing in Patagonia and the humidity of the east coast before he shook my hand and left the airplane.

My flight from Dulles to SFO was uneventful. I gave up my seat so a married couple could sit next to each other and sat again in the last row of the plane, though by myself this time. I watched Definitely Maybe and Be Kind Rewind and napped a bit before stepping off the plane at 11:00 am Pacific time, 22 hours since I set foot in the airport in Buenos Aires. I got my luggage, climbed the escalator to the top to a monorail to BART and got on the Pittsburg / Bay point train.

I overheard two women from New York confused over where they needed to go to get to Powell Street; they were worried they were on the wrong line (there’s only one that goes to the Airport). I thought that people from New York would be accustomed to trains and subways and the like, but I just took one over to the map and pointed out Powell Street, at which every line that goes through SF stops. I got off at the Embarcadero station, walked up and out, and down the street for some cool air. It was colder in San Francisco than it had been in Buenos Aires when I left. I then got on the Richmond train, took it to Amtrak, Amtrak to Davis, walked to Campus, caught the G line and walked the final half a block to my house. I traveled thousands of miles and right to my door without using an automobile and without relying on anyone else. It was a good feeling, though it was overpowered eventually by the grody feeling of not having showered in over 40 hours, after lugging about 70lbs around the city of Davis in July. By 16:00 PDT I was home, 27 hours after I left Buenos Aires.