Field trip and the Donkey Masters

Last weekend, two guys form the lab and I left on a field trip to the south of Spain and several stops along the way. We passed throuch Castilla-La Mancha twice. It is truly the Kansas of Spain, with windmills and quiltwork of crops. It's really big too, I think it might be a similar size to kansas as well. I had a frustrating time because the other guys were on a really tight schedule and I had a really hard time finishing my work in the alotted time, also my field methods just were not working out at most sites. At least i got to see the study sites that everyone is using and starting getting an understanding of the Stipa steppes of the Meditteranean, and I used my time as well as I could. We had a site in Alicante, then went over to Murcia to Carrascoy. Carrascoy is the site that everybody hates because it is hot as balls, and for some unknown reason there are swarms of flies. After dealing with that site in the afternoon we treated ourselves to a swim and a night on the beach not so far away. It was near a town called Portman (doesn't sound very Spanish) which is full of guiris. Many signs are in English and you have to ask people if they speak Spanish. Guiri is the derogatory term for the rich foreigners, mostly British but also German and American, that have been buying the entirety of the Meditteranean coast. Theres actually British pubs in some of the guiru towns that don't serve Spanish. How insulting is that? It's just so British! The beach seemed like a great idea when we got there because the weather was awesome and cool and beer tastes pretty good on the beach. but that night really hurt us because all of our gear got wet due to humid air, there were mosquitos out all night, there was a really bright moon....and finally there were helicopters flying over us all night. We had to get up at 6:30 after really not sleeping. We had two stops in Murcia, then we stayed in Castilla-La Mancha. After two sites the next day, I had to get the train to Madrid because I had an appointment with the Donkey masters.

Theres some back story: I had been waiting for two months for the police to send me a letter notifying me that it was time to come in and get fingerprinted. Naturally I started to think the letter was never sent. Of course there is no way to find out. You can call all day, nobody will answer the information line. There's no way to check your status online. I was getting antsy because I thought I only had 2 more weeks to complete this stuff. So the only option was to go to the giant high security police station and wait hours in line to ask. Andrea went as my interpreter, and she explained what we wanted to a policeman at the gate who told us to wait in line 2, the medium sized one. It took maybe 3 hours to get in. People are jerks in there, there was a chinese immigrant there who was being berated by one of the helpful customer service personnel. Apparently he thought that if he spoke faster and shouted, suddenly her spanish comprehension would improve. Luckily, when it was our turn we were called by the other guy. He informed us that we had waited in the wrong line if we wanted information. He told me I already had an appointment to get fingerprinted (news to me), so we should not have waited in the line for making appointments for getting fingerprinted. Seriously, most people have to do this: waste a day waiting in line making an appointment to be fingerprinted, waste another day in line waiting to actually be fingerprinted, the waste another half day in line to pick up your national ID card. All this horseshit occurs over about 3-4 months!!! The appointment, which I cannot choose and which is compulsory, was June 18, right in the middle of the field trip. The day after we went to the station the goddamned letter arrived with my appointment information, so the entire previous morning had been wasted on nothing. So that's why i needed to take the train home before the field trip was over...to get fingerprinted.

So i woke up at 6:00 and took the train the the police station. i was told by the Colombians to get there early, so i was there at 7:00, 2 hours before they opened. there were the three lines, each with a little sign at the beginning. One sign said Huellas (Fingerprints)and one sign said Citas (Appointments). So clearly these two are totally vague, is the fingerprints line for getting fingerprints, or for making appointments for getting fingerprints, or both? Is the appointments line for making an appointment to get fingerprinted, for existing appointments, or for making some other kind of appointment., or all three? The coppers weren't there to ask yet...besides so far they have a 100% bad information rate, so why ask them anything? So I started asking people what they were in line for and came to the logical conclusion that most available evidence points toward the Citas line. I waited in line all the way through the metal detector to the doorway where I could have been printed, when a cop asked me what I was there for, then told me I had waited in the wrong line. I was supposed to wait in the Huellas line, which I forgot to mention wraps around the block. So, a fair thing to do would be to put me at the back of the Huellas-line people that had made it past the metal detector. This would put me at the approximate point I would have been had I stood in the right line. But no, he made me leave and go to the back of that line. Finally at 1:00 I had made i through that line, and sat down to talk to the first nice person of the day who was checking my documents. One of the documents was a payment form to pay the 10 euro fee, which I had filled out. It turns out they do not accept payment there, I was supposed to have paid in my bank and had the bank stamp the form certifying that i had paid. Why? I don't know, if the high security police station is not a secure place to make a payment what is? Now I didn't really understand what I was supposed to do although she tried explaining in Spanish slowly, and in bad english (which was kind of her)....but I was told to leave and go to the bank to get proof that i paid, and come back (without waiting in a line this time!). At first I thought maybe this was something I could do at an ATM, but of course the nearby ATM was broken. But I found a branch of my bank and paid using my ATM card (have you ever heard of such a weird process, it's totally new to me). Then I had to go back, show my permission to return to the same policeman who had kicked me out...who actually looked remorseful, and go back inside. I had to bring my own passport photos (3) and give them to them. Two months ago I had already delivered 3 passport photos at another police station. I think every cop has me in their wallet so they can show their friends and family the new foreigner in spain. Why don't they just have a fucking camera, like the DMV? I don't know. Finally, i got fingerprinted, it took 5 minutes. The lady who printed me was a surley hooch who seemed to think she was having a bad day. Bad day my ass, she got paid for her 8 hours, probably got enough sleep, and had lunch. She told me I had to come back in forty days to get the card. I still don't know if they will tell me or if I just drop by and waste my day in a line to find out. At 2:00pm I got home, 8 full hours of that hellhole.

Spanish and Latino people have told me that this kind of beaurocracy is the same everywhere...that is BULLSHIT! The Spanish have mastered it and the latinos inherited it from the spanish. There is just no fucking way that Sweden, or Germany does things this way because those people are organized. Even the US is better, provided you are not coming from Mexico. Heres some tips for not being a donkey institution: 1) just put up a couple signs with decent information about what the different lines are for, it would cost almost nothing and take only 10 minutes. Because the place is full of foreigners it makes sense to have signs in Spanish, English, and Chinese. There are people walking all over the place totally confused about what is the right line. Sure the place is swamped by too many people coming in...but easily half of the clusterfuck is due to NO AVAILABLE INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN YOU ARE THERE 2) If you have an information phone, answer the goddamned thing. 3) Get a camera. 4) if you charge a fee, ACCEPT PAYMENT, 5) Don't have people wait in one line to make an appointment to do something, then wait in another to actually do the thing...have one line, 6) Lay out the entire process in simple terms on a placard outside, and on a website, and 7) as soon as a person is assigned an ID number they should be able to go online and check their status. who knows if the post office lost your precious letter. How could you tell?

I'm off riding in the mountains tommorrow, something I do like about Spain that doesn't require 10 papers and 3 passport photos. Its too hot to do a mega ride, so I'm going to Rascafria, spending the night, and coming home Sunday. Might also try to climb Puerto de Navafria or Los Cotos if I feel like a tough guy.