May 8, 2006 Cinco de Mayo 2006 9:19pm Berlin (Blücherstr. 40) Hola! Que tal? As you can see, I have finally re-entered a Spanish speaking country, Spain. We flew there for a week and returned last Sunday. I deeply yearned for the ocean and to swim, not to mention it was nice to take a break from correcting English grammar. Olé. We flew into Palma de Mallorca (Spanish island in the Mediterranean)late at night, picked up our car from Hasso car company which is like the best car company I´ve ever rented for. It was cheap, had free insurance, they gave us a brand new car, and in a wonderful relaxed Spanish way, they merely glanced to see if an auto was returned when I dropped it off effortlessly. Olé. After driving around in the rain for 2 hours we finally found our empty hotel. We were literally the only guests in the 100 room hotel which had no idea we´d made a reservation. Well, the weather cleared up wonderfully, we had blue skies and sun almost all week (although it was chilly with the constant wind)…but the hotel never really got it together. They had issues with their hot water, fax machines, phones, internet, breakfast (cook on holiday), you name it. There was no German business ethic, but then again, Spaniards are more alive. They were all very nice, and we seemed to have a streamline of free drinks coming for our inconvenience. That sure worked for me! Olé. Mallorca is a charming island. It´s filled with lots of little Mallorquín pueblos\villages. They are so charming with their matching paint and green window shutters! Some of them are just so peaceful. You can catch a glimpse into what life on the Mediterranean was like 30 or more years ago. Near the turists are of course the generally turisty things that come with them. Away from the tourists it´s so calm; you can hear mostly the wind and the gentle clanging of the sheep´s bells in the distance. Olé Mallorca is bigger than Kauai. There are little roads all over it, which seem to be a huge ´connect the dot´ maze made out of round-a-bouts. You could hardly drive a few kilometers without slowing down for the next round-a-bout, and then you have to constantly check and see what the list of pueblos are so you can inch your way, dot (town) by dot (town) in the direction of your final destination. So we just enjoyed driving slowly around their roads. One funny thing was that like EVERY road is marked, and leads to Palma (the capital). Joel has this theory that the road makers made a mistake on the order and printed 700 saying `To Palma´ instead of 70, so they needed to use them up by marking what direction Palma was in even the most remote corner of the island. My theory is that the Spaniards are tired of Italians stealing all the attention, and they are determined to re-create the old cliché `All roads lead to Rome´ into ´All roads lead to Palma`. Anyhow, it was fun to drive through these incredibly narrow cobble stone roads that were created for pedestrians and horses in the middle ages and see what we found. It was like driving through history. Men with canes and mediterranean berets, planted flowers galore, old Catholic churches… It was like you had no freedom to make a decision where to go once you entered into a town. There were always these tiny one way streets that led you in the direction of some predetermined point, and you could merely follow the flow and hope you could maneuver the turns with cars parked along the sides. Olé. We stayed on the east side in Cala Bona. Too bad nobody mentioned to us that the west side is like 100 times more beautiful, quaint, natural, and traditional so we had to drive two hours each way each day to get there. (Keep this recommendation in mind if heading there and stay in the west.) It was worth it though, it was so mountainous and scenic with olive and fruit plantations and beautifully terraced cliffs. Olé. My friend Lee (we met in Thailand) came over to visit us from Denya (near Valencia on the mainland). It was cool to see him and explore the island with him for a few days. He speaks perfect Castilian Spanish and English so we have fun blending them. The three of us saw a nice sunset over the ocean and had lots of picnics with the tasty brown Mallorquin bread, olives, olive oil and cheese. Olé. My biggest disappointment about the journey was that I didn´t get to swim. The water temperature was simply too cold. Given that swimming and being near the ocean were my main reasons for going, it was an expensive missed attempt at taking a swim! Well, at least the weather was nice and I got to enjoy the sun. Olé. Did you know that Mallorca technically doesn´t speak Castilian Spanish? Spain has five official languages (not dialects) and on this island they speak Mallorquin, which is actually a bit like a dialect of Catalan. It was reasonably close, so most of the time I understood the signs fine, but it certainly has a huge French/Catalan flair. None the less I really enjoyed diving back into Spanish!! Oh how wonderful it is to be able to express myself without having to strain my brain to figure out which of the THIRTY German options of how to say the word ´the´ I should use in a given situation. Olé. Well, off to a movie in the Mt. Fuji shaped Potsdamer Platz. Enjoy May, love,                               Timory P.S. You know they hardly ever say Olé in Spain (except in a bullfight)?, its just an outdated, but fun, stereotype now.