After three months of staying put in New Zealand, we finally made a long trip.
Long in terms of distance, as well as duration. For the past three years, most of our travel has been within New Zealand and a week in Fiji. However, the month-long vacation is what brings out all the stories. And here are some stories from Spain!
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Note: (This is an unedited transcript)
If you meet almost anybody who lives in India, you will find that they speak about three languages.
Anyone on the street, rich or poor, wherever they come from, probably know or speak three languages. It percolates into schools too. When I was in school, we had to give tests and exams in four languages – Hindi, Marathi, English, and of course later French.
The languages don't stop at school. On the street, I used to play cricket with guys who spoke Gujarati. So I know a little bit of that too. My grandparents and parents spoke in Konkani, which is another regional language. Learning languages is a part of how you grew up in India.
It's not surprising, that I decided I could easily take on another language: Spanish.
I went to the bookstore and got this cassette tape series. Like many language learning systems, it didn't teach you much language at all. All it did was give you these phrases so that if you went to a restaurant, you could order a meal, you could find the toilet. Or if you got on a train, you could get directions—or a window seat.
One of the first phrases that I learned was “es este el train para Cordoba?” which is, “is this the train for Cordoba?”
Now even if you speak to people who speak Spanish on a regular basis, there is no opportunity to use this phrase. Which is why I have never been able to use the phrase until we had to get on a train—in Spain.
The trains in Spain, they're absolutely stunning.
Renfé, the local carrier, hurtles from one place to another at 300 kilometers an hour. You're sitting there, you're drawing, eating some food and there's this massive table in front of you. There's lots of leg room too. Let's say it's a perfect journey, but only if you're going from point to point and you can speak the language, which was mostly the case except when we were headed to Granada.
We traveled for a month and yet we chose just three or four places.
And in this case, we chose southern Spain. And so we went to Valencia, to Sevilla and from there to Málaga. And it's in Málaga that we learn that we have to change trains. Just 20 minutes after we board the train, we have to get off at a place called Antequera. We then have to catch another train that takes us to Granada.
This doesn't seem like much of a problem, because all we have to do is go to the other platform. However, as we reach Antequera, the train slows down and then seems to come to a halt, but we can't get the door to open.
There's another problem. No one else seems to be getting off at Antequera.
We're pressing buttons near the door. It won't budge. The train shudders. It moves a few inches. You press more buttons, the doors won't open. It shudders again. It moves a little bit. Still won't open. And now people around us have noticed that we're in trouble and they're trying to help us to open the doors, but the doors won't budge.
This train is headed to Madrid and we have no intention of going to Madrid. We want to get off at Antequera and get to Granada. So we're slightly panicked.
It's at this point that the doors fly open.
We get on the platform and there's absolutely nobody. It's just the two of us. Anyway, we've got a job to do. We've got a train to catch. So we roll our bags down this very empty platform and then go downstairs.
There's a guy there that says “Si, the train is on that side.”
So we follow the instructions and when we get to the other side another train comes in. But there's a problem because the sign above says train to Málaga and we just came from Málaga so we don't want to go back. But the lone person at the platform says no no no this is the train for Granada. And so we get on the train.
But now we are reasonably stressed. We are pretty wound up from all of this train not stopping and no one at the platform and no one getting off and us being the only ones and now possibly getting in the train that's going the wrong direction. And the only recourse is to ask an official.
So there are a couple of people on the train and I turn to this woman and the first thing that comes to my mind is: “Es esté el train para Cordoba?”
And there's this look of panic in her eyes and she goes, “No, no, no, this is not the train for Cordoba. This is the train for Granada.”
Which is where we were going anyway. And there was this sense of relief. But after all of these years, I had the chance to use my phrase. And it came out at this panic moment and of course it's now a really cool memory. So there you go. That was our first story but there are more to come so hang in there.
When we fly business class in New Zealand, we get to take a lot of luggage.
You can take three carry-on bags and two or three bags. I did a calculation at one point in time and I came to the conclusion that you could take about 96 kilos. That's about 200 pounds.
However, Renuka packs the bags. I pack the cameras and all the equipment, but she packs all the clothes and stuff. And she prides herself on reducing the weight down to almost nothing. So that we sometimes travel with just 10 kilos per bag. That's about 20 kilos (4o pounds). and that's for the entire month.
She's so fussy about reducing the amount of luggages that we carry that at one point in time she had a rubber band in her hand and she said, “Do we really need to take these rubber bands with us.” It's that kind of crazy packing which ensures that we have almost nothing when we travel.
However, we travel with a lot of chocolate.
We give this to people along the way. The woman at the reception, someone at a cafe, and of course if we meet some friends, then they get some chocolate as well. And on this occasion, we were flying by Lufthansa, and it was the Easter weekend, and they gave us these big chocolate bunnies, these Lindt chocolate bunnies.
For people who travel with so much chocolate, more chocolate is not going to help. After we checked into our hotel, we went downstairs, and we gave the receptionist, Anna Maria, we gave her a chocolate bunny. She was ecstatic that we thought of her.
One of the reasons why is because people in hospitality become invisible.
People do transactions with them. They ask them where to go, what to eat, but they don't see them as people and they feel that. They feel that they are just there for the transaction and so they become transactional.
And it is at this point in time when you give something to someone that you see a reaction you're not expecting. Almost instantly she said, “Oh, I'm going to give this to my son. I'm I'm so excited.” And that was that. And we went out for our Valencia street walk. When we got back, she said, “Have you had breakfast?”
Generally, we avoid the buffet breakfast at hotels
There is just too much food. Plus we're traveling for a month, so there's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And we don't have brunch. We never have brunch. I hate brunch. For one you have to wake up late to have brunch but why waste a perfectly good reason to sit down and eat? When there are three meals in a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I want have to have every breakfast, every lunch, and every dinner.
To get back to the story, we gave her the chocolate, we went out for a walk, we came back and she said, “Have you had breakfast?” And we said no. And she said, “Go to the counter and tell them that it's on me.”
And so we got breakfast, not for one day, but for the second day and the third day we paid and she was really annoyed. She was like, “You should have not paid for it. It's on me.” This series of breakfasts were at the start of our journey while we were in Valencia and then as we got to Granada the same thing seemed to occur.
I was outside a cafe called Cafe Alhambra and I was taking pictures of the staff.
And it's not unusual because there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of tourists that get to Spain every year. Cafe Alhambra is one of the more popular places to go to.
They serve these really nice churros and it's not unusual for people to take loads of photographs.
In fact, on the day that I was taking photographs, there was another guy who was taking photographs, so there were two of us. Now, the thing about my photography is that I don't budge from one point, sometimes the same tile, the same square for an hour. So Renuka would come up to me and she had no problem finding me because I was in the same spot and taking pictures. And I spent probably a couple of hours taking the pictures.
But what I often do—well actually I always do— is ask permission and then I get to know the people.
I get to know their names, I get their phone numbers on WhatsApp and so I'll get to know people like Alma or Patricia or José and I've got their numbers. So when I get back to the hotel I'll download the photos, process them and send it to them on WhatsApp.
That's not what most of the photographers do. They just take the photos and they walk away. And so again what is happening here is we're not necessarily giving them chocolate, but they have gone from invisible to visible. Plus the photographs are really good, and they're in black and white, which always causes them to gasp because there is a surprise factor with black and white photography.
Well, we decided to go for breakfast to that place the next day, and after we finished our breakfast, the woman came up to us, and she said something that sounded like “he metado”, and I couldn't understand what she meant. And with her hands she goes, “No charge.” But I couldn't figure out what “he metado” meant.
I went back to the hotel happy, but quite confused.
We returned the next day for breakfast. The woman who was there on the first day, wasn't around on the second day. However, by now I'd been taking a lot of photos and sending them. And so on the second day, the girl behind the counter, said what sounded like “he metado” and yet again I couldn't understand what was being said.
My Spanish is reasonably good and I can understand about 60 to 70 percent of what people are saying to me, but in this case I didn't know what was being said. Early next morning when I was talking to the receptionist at the hotel, I brought this up and he said, “They're not saying ‘he metado'. They're saying ‘invitado', which means you are our guest.”
Ah, so that's what they were saying the whole time.
When we went on the third day, we took a bar of chocolate. Now, I want you to understand the irony of the situation. This is a churreria, which is where they serve churros which you dip in chocolate. So they've got oodles of chocolate going out in cups to all the people that come to this place. And yet when we took this tiny bar of chocolate, which we took from New Zealand, of course, they were so excited. All of the staff wanted to know whether they were going to get a piece of that chocolate.
The manager and the staff, they all gave us a big hug.
They wanted their photographs taken with us, well, we got treated like royalty—or rather like family. We were not guests anymore. Plus, for the third and the last time on this trip, we heard the term “invitado”. And so we had breakfast after breakfast after breakfast, never having to pay for it.
Not that we set out to get free breakfast.
We just set out to give a little bit of New Zealand to the rest of the world. And also to make sure that people don't feel invisible in the work that they do and they enjoy doing. Which in turn brings us to the third story and the final one in this episode. And it has nothing to do with people, but has something to do with windows.
Eventually you have to get to Barcelona—or rather we had to get to Barcelona—because that's where the big airport is and that's where you get the flight and you go off to Vancouver and then back to Auckland, New Zealand.
And the boss, Bruce Springsteen, was in town and he had Obama and Steven Spielberg and all these fancy people at his concert. So what it meant for us was that the prices of the hotel were double. It was half the price before we got there and half the price after we got there, or rather normal prices, but while we were there, it was double the price. What struck me as I got to the hotel room was that we couldn't hear any sound and we were on quite a busy street.
It was called Rambla de Catalunya, which is not the main Rambla that you know of in Barcelona if you've been to Barcelona. This was much quieter, but still, I couldn't hear any honking, couldn't hear any people speaking, nothing. And that's when I discovered soundproofing. Now, we all know that you can kind of soundproof a house.
But this soundproofing was so cool that once we go back to New Zealand, I looked up a company that did the soundproofing, and we put it in all our bedrooms. And ever since we've gotten back and done the soundproofing, I can't hear anything outside.
I can hear the lawnmower if it's just outside the window.
And I could probably just detect that motorcyclist who lives just across the street. And who is one of the reasons why we have soundproofing. But this hotel, Hotel Casa Sagnier, if you're interested, it made all the difference. because now I get really good sleep every night.
P.S. One of the things that is really annoying when you travel such a long distance is jet lag because it might be 12 o'clock in the afternoon in Granada and then it is midnight in New Zealand. So there is a huge difference in terms of time. And when we got back, it seemed like we were not jet lagged at all.
However, a couple of days later, I found myself waking up at 1.30 in the morning. And then instead of trying to go to sleep, I just read from 1.30 to maybe 4 in the morning and then I'd go off to bed again and wake up at 7 o'clock.
And for me, that's a great accomplishment. I know you know that I wake up at 4 a.m. And while that's a really cool thing, the problem that I have is that I cannot sleep past 4 or 5 a.m. I struggle with, I don't know, maybe it's the sounds outside that wake me up or maybe it's just the body clock that wakes me up.
But it's a great pleasure to sleep till 7 a.m. And because of this crazy jet lag and reading from 1.30 to 4 in the morning, I went through a whole week of waking up at 7 in the morning, and I was delighted, absolutely delighted.
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