Meanwhile, Back in the School Cafeteria
Sometimes an entire group of people can be in such a good mood that they lose themselves to a situation and just have a great time in an odd circumstance. Today was really the start of our motorcycle ride through the Pyrenees. We are actually going from Barcelona up into the Pyrenees and then up to the Basque Country to trek across the top of the Spanish coastline, called España Verde, to trace the famous Camino de Santiago as far west as Santiago de Compostela and then down to Porto, Portugal. This morning we all suited up and headed over to the rental bike place a few klicks from our hotel. There we waited in the parking lot where the bikes were positioned as the rental folks sorted themselves out (it was a Catalonian holiday today, so they were not otherwise open). We were all in good spirits since we all enjoy these adventures and getting geared up with brand new 2022 BMW R1250GS’s is a pretty sweat deal. The chase van was with us since many of the people had to suit up with their riding gear in the parking lot while we waited. The parking lot had that yard sale look about it as everyone was focused on getting their bikes properly geared up and loaded so as not to be the cause of any group delay. We all had to sign rental documents and then orient ourselves to our specific bikes, hoping that nothing was amiss, which it was not. Unfortunately, somewhere in the commotion a suspicious-looking woman wandered into the otherwise fairly remote parking lot and asked a few questions. Then, as we packed up for departure, team leader Skip realized he was missing his backpack. He went through the usual machinations of turning the van inside out twice with he help of several other people, then calling the hotel in the hopes that he had left it there. It dawned on us that for the second time in a day, our group had been victimized by the local larceny crowd. Skip’s backpack with its passport, laptop and several thousand dollars in cash had been stollen. These Spanish Light-Fingered Louies were getting the better of us.
Needless to say, this was not a great way to start the day. Skip has become a great friend to all of us over the years, so we hated to see this happen to the guy who helps us all out when we invariably need help during these trips. I suppose it could have been worse for the group dynamics if this had happened to another paying guest, but we still felt bad for Skip since this would involve an unscheduled return to Barcelona tomorrow for him in hopes that the U.S. Consulate would be able to get him a temporary passport on a same-day basis. Meanwhile, while Skip skedaddled to the hotel to make his emergency arrangements, we all followed Kaz like the little ducklings we become on these rides. Our first stop was at the Monastery of Montserrat, which was a crowded place on a Catalonian holiday like today (La Mercè Festival). It was so crowded and we were all reeling from our victimizations, so I stayed with the bikes while the others checked out the monastery. I always say, you seen one monastery, you’ve seen them all (actually, our buddy Bruce said that as he sat with me to smoke his Cohiba cigar),
From Montserrat, we headed due north into the lower Pyrenees. Kaz chose to stop for lunch in the town of Solsona. Given that it was a holiday, there were limited choices, but he picked what he could find open. For the last twenty-seven years, whenever we have entered an eating establishments we have caused some form of commotion. Even though we are, for the most part, genteel sorts, we are still bikers and therefore suspect. We got the withering stare from the locals who occupied almost all the tables. Then the head waitress came over and was all about finding room for us. She settled on giving us the upper level, which we had all to ourselves. We helped her move the tables around and the place had a look of a kindergarten with scattered tables and chairs and paper table cloths.
Our waitress was very pleasant and accommodating and told me to take a picture of the daily menu since they only served their blue-plate specials on special days like today. I did just that and then did my best to translate the menu for everyone at the table. There were several underlying problems with this plan. First of all the menu was from a chalkboard and it was done in a very chalky way that was hard to decipher. There was also way too much information on the small board, so each item ran in to the other with no clear delineation. Apparently those items above an arbitrary line were a starter course and those below were a main course. Everything was Prix Fixe for €12. But then there was the fancy script lettering. They don’t even teach script in U.S. schools any more and the fancier they are the harder it is to read them. There is also the problem of both the language/vocabulary along side the overall culinary knowledge gap that leaves me wondering what some perfectly logical local eater would know by virtue of it being a local dish.
This made ordering more than a little challenging (did I forget to mention the Catalonian country accent as well?). And then there are the eccentricities of our. If you know the reference, there are very few Harrys and lots of Sallys. All the Sallys want what they want and they want it on the side. None of that translates linguistically or culturally very well. Of particular note is the senior citizen ploy of splitting a dish between husband and wife. That simply doesn’t work in the Prix Fixe world.
The next problem came in the ordering. It seems the waitress was expecting that for the nine of us we would order nine starters and nine entrees. Where could she have gotten that idea? When I couldn’t get any of my team to play by anything close to the Prix Fixe handbook rules, I just filled out the list with random additions off the somewhat limited menu. I kept wanting to tell the waitress that none of this nonsense was reflecting badly on her, but that was somewhere beyond my subtle communication skills and her somewhat limited comprehension skills. It makes no never mind how much of it was attributed to either.
And then the food started coming and that’s when it got even more interesting. Each plate held one item that was more or less unidentifiable. Was that tuna fish on the salad? Was the seafood pasta filled with shrimp? And mostly, what kind of meat exactly was on that skewer or just rolling around on the plate? We started squabbling like children, less about who wanted or got what, but entirely based on what the hell was on each plate. The range of possibilities was broader than you think. At one point we didn’t know if we were dealing with sausage, pork, shish-kebab, turkey, chicken, turkey or beef (or maybe lamb). The term mystery meat sprang into my head as a reminder of my boarding school days. The mood was anything but upset. We had ample food to satisfy everyone’s hunger if not their palate. We were all in a great mood so when I tried to get the table’s attention by clapping, that unexpectedly set off a round of spontaneous applause. The joint was jumping and despite (or even perhaps because of) the weird array of unidentifiable meats, we were all having the best time while poor old Skip was hightailing it to the hotel to sort out his problem. He was in detention and we were at lunch, but not just any lunch.
We had managed to find the noisiest and strangest place to eat imaginable. But our high spirits were not deterred in the least. We were at fourth period lunch in junior high in the cafeteria. The only thing we didn’t do was have a food fight. Maybe next time we are drunk on great roads, nice cool weather and knee-scraping, we will follow through with a food fight as well.