At first, this photo of a stop by Obama in San Francisco’s Chinatown didn’t seem like too much to me. Then, I looked at it closer and realized that I had missed a serious what the fuck moment. Look at that dude in the window just above the frowning black-suited Secret Service guy’s shoulder. What’s up with him? Did he see Obama on a Jumbotron or something? I mean, the man is right there, in front of him, giving Chinese fertility handshakes (trust me, they’re much better than the milkshakes) to any and all. San Franciscans are damned weird.

Salitja isn’t much as far as villages go. Sure, there’s a nice couple of old buildings, a church, donkeys, and what not (especially the what not), but really, it’s sorta in the middle of nowhere, a bit west of the Girona airport. But, when they decide to have a cured meats fair, you’d think you were trying to get in to the Metropolitan Museum the same time a tour bus rolls up. Everyone from villages and even large towns nearby all show up to pick up tasty vittles, or at least to sample, since Catalans love freebies. Hell, even the Minister of Security for Catalonia showed up, but that was more annoying than anything else as it incurred a large police presence.

But that’s the thing, I remember people trying to have small fairs like this, not in a village, not in my hometown of Oroville (population 35,000), but in San Francisco and there would be no one. People in California (and I assume the US at large) have no interest in these types of things. I don’t know why as there are tasty, tasty meats, olives, brunyols, churros, wines, and a whole lot more to be had. I guess in the US, going to a sports bar or mall on the weekend is a great deal more important. Naturally, if given the choice, I’ll take village meat conferences over Budweiser and the Niners any day.

For those who don’t study that thing called history, there was a point in Catalonia where you were either Catalan, Spanish, or Catalan trying to hide the fact you’re Catalan by seeming to be Spanish. Well, there were actually many such periods, but the one I’m referring to was most of the 20th century. That third group sucked a large wad of turd. Calling them sell-outs is a bit generous as they saw their heritage as a people who were rooted in peasantry despite the fact that the concept of the country of Spain is something of a joke as it’s made up of former kingdoms that all existed long before it.

Anyways, long history lesson short, there are many Catalans who toss up a botifarra and embrace all implied aspects to said peasantry. As you can see above this was just one dude in a recent tractor parade in a village called Salitja. To say that he wears that tractor like a second skin would be like saying that flag isn’t Spanish.

For her date, I created this bizarre character that I really don’t know how quite to describe. I had a work colleague who was really in to flamenco dancing. She invited me out to some performance that her school was having which was fine. What wasn’t fine, or more to the point, was just weird, was this singer who, when he wasn’t belting out something in Spanish to drown out the rather pleasant guitarist was shooting off, “Olé” in to the mic. It became something of a one word vocabulary which was then lent to the dude that the girl in the film meets.

And that’s really it, shot with a full crew, on tape, on a very nice Panasonic camera just before everyone switched over to tape-less shoots. The main glory that this film received was a childhood friend telling me, “Dude, this doesn’t suck!”, a bunch of German work colleagues of said friend’s brother running around spouting “Olé!” for a week, and having it play in a very small film festival in San Francisco that took place at a brewery.

Either due to drinking for free at the brewery or some other misguided thought that film actually has any worth these days, I kept the original close, not letting it out of my site, thinking I’d be able to sell it somewhere. In all truth though, at some point, I wanted to edit it down a bit as one of the actor’s performance wasn’t as great as I’d hoped on the day of the shoot. But this excess of free editing time never came. So, here I am posting it out for the Interwebs to enjoy; this film that I made over half a decade ago.

I also took advantage of that time spent there and went around to the wineries in the Stellenbosch area. Today, the resulting guide for Stellenbosch is now out. It took awhile to get it done, but I’m generally working on four guides at a time, so one can understand why it took so long to get everything balanced out.

I think it turned out well. It gives a good, general overview of the area that someone can pick up on their e-reader tablet or Apple device to take with them when they travel there. Handy in that you don’t have to lug yet another book with you. And, everyone should try and make the trek down to Cape Town. It’s an absolutely glorious place to visit. Just mind the baboons.

Those who bemoan public transportation in the US tend to point to Europe, drooling slightly, and state, “But, but, it’s soooo awesome over there! Why can’t we have that?” Obviously the simple answer is that NYC does have that and the rest of the US used to have it that good before everyone got auto-erotic-fixation in the 1950′s and we ripped out all the old train rails so they wouldn’t be coming back any time soon.

Of course, even though Europe has great public transportation, it comes at a cost; namely that the cost of using it keeps going up. The 10 ride booklet in Barcelona, known as the T-10 and good for use on any system of the city be it metro, bus, tram, etc., has increased 61% in the last 10 years. The latest increase was at the start of 2012 where it went from €8.25 to 9.25, a 12% increase in a time of less and less jobs and less and less money to those that still have them.

This type of increase isn’t atypical. I saw it in San Francisco with the Muni doubling over a period of eight years when the price had held steady for the 10 years prior to that. Most people just sucked it up and paid it. A few would try and do things like leave transfers at bus stops that still had time on them (you get 90 minutes to transfer to another line). Of course, the infrequency of San Francisco public transportation often made that a non-option and now with the Clipper Card, even less so.

The Barcelonins are trying a similar tact with their T-11 project. Basically, when you use your tenth ride and get off a bus or out of the metro, you leave the ticket somewhere so that someone else can pick it up to use within the 75 minutes allotted for transfers. They even have an app to let people know where one has been left or to search for one where you are.

In Barcelona, this actually works as the public transportation is incredibly frequent. Unfortunately, even with doing this and eeking out another 11th ride from the 10 ride ticket, the transportation system still gets their price increase/blood money but it functions to give a “botifarra” in their general direction. And here I’m sure all visitors to Barcelona thought that the residents enjoyed riding bikes for their health as opposed to the truth that the money saved in cycling allows more money to be spent on food.

As you can see in the photo above, there is a general premise that there are days in the year wherein you can relax on a lawn chair, in the shade, and be quite happy. Today was not one of those days as the northern reaches of Catalonia were blanketed by snow. Ironically, these weren’t the coldest temperatures had as of late, but the mix of proper degrees below Celsius and precipitation made for a decent dusting this morning. Naturally, given that current news media is nothing if not inspirational, they’ve dubbed this, the “Siberian Peninsula”.

All of this is nothing short of ironic as last Sunday I had stood outside grilling some meat with friends who were up from Barcelona for the day and commenting on the fact that at the end of January we were able to stand outside and grill meat. Other parts of the world obviously did not have such luxury. It appears that those other parts of the world have made a layover here, at least through the weekend.

It’s important to point out that, unlike San Francisco, where civilization collapses when there is the slightest sprinkle of rain, most everything is still working fine in Catalonia. All the trains are running, the roads are open, and asshole hunters are meandering through the woods with shotguns in the early hours of the morning looking for… whatever it is you go to hunt in the snow.

While completely fascinated by it, I still don’t care for the Tramuntana which means I will probably never be able to be a resident of Figueres, shucks. Nothing new there, but what was new was experiencing la Tramontane while up shopping at Auchan in France. It’s just as squirrely a creature up there. As you can see above, it was blowing so hard that they had to close the revolving doors (which are apparently called a “tourniquet”) lest some squawking Southern-accented Frenchie get launched in to Auchan’s cheese region. And no, that’s not a French allusion to something sexual.

Lately, for Spaniards the only thing more important than cigarettes and bitching about the economy has been the now-defunct Megaupload. For thousands, maybe even millions, this was how the people of Spain watched movies and TV shows. In the case of movies, it was often due to the fact that there is still in place this asinine system of releasing a blockbuster film from the US months after its Los Angeles debut. That and the fact that people are kinda/have pretty much always been broke meant that the shutdown of Megaupload has left Spaniards with little to watch.

Seeing as how people can’t afford to have more kids either (usually the #2 option after watching TV) you’d think that they’d all be flocking to the movie theaters to fill up their corporeal hours. But, as it turns out, they’re not. In fact, the same weekend that Megaupload was taken down, ticket sales dropped 18% when compared to the same weekend in 2011.

It’s rather bizarre and as Pau Brunet is quoted saying in the article, you can’t make a large judgment based solely on one weekend. I would agree and people will have to watch and see if there is a general downward trend in theater attendance if Spain continues to be deprived of Megaupload and others like it.

In case you hadn’t heard, last Sunday, Croatians voted to join the EU which isn’t actually going to happen until July 1, 2013, but still you need to get these referendums out of the way. As a citizen, I could have voted in this. As a citizen living not in Croatia, I missed the registration date by one day though…

There was a bit of “will they? won’t they?” put out in the news, but in reality, it was going to be inevitable. Not because the EU is one giant party right now, but for a number of reasons, which from my viewpoint, are some of the following:

• As much as anyone wants to say otherwise, Croatia is dinky. At 4.5 million people, it’s nearly half the size of the San Francisco Bay Area. You just can’t remain independent of something like the EU when you’re that size. Germany could pull this off, but not Croatia.
• As has been the case lately, this New York Times article poorly suggested that they will be facing a “flood of immigrants”. Really? In a country with over 20% unemployment? Does the author of the story know about a country called Spain that had immigrants back before its economy went in the toilet? People flooding in from other EU countries is not going to make someone vote No.
• Then, also from that same article, there was the fear of economic undercutting by “cheap Italian eggs”. There may be some of that, but the bigger issue right now if the undercutting of European grocery items by cheap Chinese ones. Also on that front, all the cheap Argentine wines are thrashing Croatia’s winemakers because they’re just too expensive for most Croats. All of this is an instance where being the EU might actually help if the union takes a more protectionist stance these days.
• Croatia needs better access to EU money. There are several infrastructure projects to complete and even though it means taking on loans, they need to finish them to increase productivity.
• Also needing help is EU support in fighting crime. Friends have told me that Zagreb is getting to be like the Wild West and given how close it is to the borders of Slovenia and Hungary, they’ll need them as allies to try and ratchet that back down, in theory.
• Most anyone young in Croatia would have voted yes to the referendum as ironically, they want to leave the country and try to find work abroad. While selling ice cream to lobster-ed beach tourists in the summer has its merits, it’s not a long term career path.
• Lastly, if they didn’t vote Yes now, they would have had the referendum put before them again in six or so months. So basically, there was no choice but Yes.