Salisbury was empty and closed. Shop after shop, one street after the other. A city after a hurricane and an English town during a bank holiday aren’t as different from each other as one would expect.

As soon as we saw the cathedral, we did what anybody else would have done and set out to find a pub. We found The New Inn, which was really anything but new. It had everything you want in a pub: ceiling beams, good red ale, hot food, and beautiful young barmaids rating solid sevens and eights on the wench scale, with serious revealing tops, and so much to show, the kind that make old men smile behind their pipes in the utmost satisfaction and say: “ah, the English way of life.”

About a quarter of the villagers was there too: the families, a few couples, and a handful of men in shirts and pullovers who talked about rugby and golf. One of the finer pubs so far.

Ah, the English way of life.

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Ernest Hemingway (left) and Joris Ivens, Guadalajara, 1937

"Yes," she said. "I see. The stew; as usual. Como siempre. Things are bad in the north; as usual. An offensive here; as usual. That troops come to hunt us out; as usual. You could serve as a monument to as usual."

"But the last two are only rumors, Pilar."

"Spain," the woman of Pablo said bitterly. Then turned to Robert Jordan. "Do they have people such as this in other countries?"

"There are no countries like Spain," Robert Jordan said politely.

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Tarragona, Day Three

Spanish Sunday ghost town. The bells toll clear across these empty streets - only ghosts and stray cats are out tonight and me.

Tarragona, Day One

I have been warned against the local waters. It is said that by drinking them the locals become crazy and by showering in them they lose all their hair. No es bueno. I have not decided if I should feel scared or right at home.

 (typo t-shirt, SixPack Artists)

”Come,” said the Lord again, “I will make a covenant between me and you. I, I will not measure you out any more distress than you need to write your books.”’

Isak Dinesen, in The Young Man with the Carnation

The three of us stuck in that long, long, southbound train - could we have been more different? Not easily.

Rodrigão, always silent, who knew the capital of Samoa and the typical dish of the Ukraine and which explorers had attempted the northwestern passage. He is a veritable gentle giant - even if he was very tempted to slap the little girl in pink still. Pipa, hiding from the plebs behind purple sunglasses. She was still not sure why we weren't flying to Lisbon instead - it was so fast and easy, and there's always bubbly in first class. And yours trully, of course. I spent four hours trying to figure out what I had left at home this time.

Rodrigo: The three of us, travelling, we could make a reality show.
Pipa: It would be so great. The Brains, the Diva and the Idiot.
YT: Wait a minute. Which of us would be the idiot?