Michael & Jerusalem: Sevilla! More Rambling About Dogs, Cars, Political Unrest, and Toilet Design As I Slowly Work My Way Towards Something Vaguely Resembling A Point

Europe has all of the cutest dogs; literally all of them. You might think your American dogs are cute and wonderful and you might be right, but they are all inferior to the cuteness of the European puppy populace. The only reason your mutt looks like the cutest dog in the world to you is that you haven't been adequately exposed to the marvels of perfection that parade around and poop in European cities nonchalantly, like they're *not* divinely infused vessels of transcendental godly beauty. The canine cuteness caliber baseline in America is just lower; try not to get angry about it. (This might be the most incendiary thing I've said in my blog thus far. I can't wait for my first hate mail!)

In Sevilla, however, they've managed to dull the effect of the dreadfully debilitating dog adorability by inundating the streets with doodoo. I don't know if it's that the dogs feel entitled to poop wherever they want, or more that the dog-owners themselves don't feel remotely responsible for the defecated doggy detritus being deposited all over the walkways. (I'm going to attempt to stop putting so much work into my alliterations.) So I'm exaggerating a little bit, but nonetheless there is poop in Sevilla. I'm going to let that statement stand on it's own because it feels like it deserves it.

Not only is there dog poop on the street at times, but horses as well. You can always tell you're getting into the tourist area because there's a little ridge of horse poop forming a backwards ditch (so a hill?) in the middle of the street. (It fits into the normal cobblestone pattern in oddly pleasing ways.) I think there's more dog poop in the tourist areas too, interestingly enough. (Passive-aggressive tourist-hating dog-owners? hyphen-hyphen!!?)

My time in Spain has also improved my ability to sleep through lots of noise. I don't know if it's being environmentally conscious or just the result of incredibly high energy prices (essentially the same difference. In that there is not one. [When I take idioms and cliches out of their normal context I feel like I have to explain them more.]) (It's interesting to see how far you have to take one of those out of context before they no longer sound like they make sense. For some you have to go really far, but for some it's as simple as extracting the aquatic animal from its marine environment or getting a box of Sweet-tarts from your snarky whiny annoying grabby 10-month-old nephew.) (I don't think that's what I meant to do with those but maybe it worked? Neither of those sound especially easy.)

(I promise there's a relevant point hidden somewhere in this tangent.)

(reset) I don't know if it's because Spaniards/Europeans are more environmentally conscious or if it's just because energy prices are incredibly high, but they tend to put a lot more effort into conserving heat and electricity. Also they're not obsessed with temperature controlling the living bejeezus out of any and every walled structure, unlike America, so temperatures inside buildings and cars tend to be a lot closer to the outside temperatures. Most light switches outside of bedrooms have timers on them, and every toilet has multiple buttons on it. (EVEN POOPING IS MORE COMPLICATED IN EUROPE. I'd like to apologize profusely for the frequency with which fecal matter has become a subject of discussion in this particular blog post.)

My tentative point in all of that iswas that they use windows extensively for light and heat/wind--much more than Americans use them. My point in all of that iswas that the windows are always open at night (because otherwise people would have to sleep in an infernal heat rivaling that of the greatest furnaces of the popular Christian conception of the underworld.) (Connecting my tangents back to my original thoughts is exhausting; I should stop trying to have some kind of logical narrative thread.) (Usually I'd follow a comment like that with a radical descent into disorganized mildly entertaining textual chaos and use it as an excuse to cover a lot of abstractly informative proverbial ground quickly, but at this point I really want to finish making the point that I was working on a paragraph and a parenthetical aside and another paragraph ago.)

The windows are always open and Spaniards are always driving so while you lie in bed every night you're gently lulled to sleep by roaring engines and loud, dissonant, frequent honking. (I believe we've already discussed these car horn characteristics.) It was surprisingly easy to get used to actually, and now I fall asleep in cars TWICE as fast. (Which makes it quite fast. I'm pretty sure I'm the world record-holder, but it's not official yet because the people from Guinness won't get into cars with me.) Also it makes me dream about Spain so that's nifty.

But in spite of all the feces, car horns, and heat waves, Sevilla is a fascinating city filled with a quivering and pulsating native culture (whoops; by that I mean a vibrant native culture. vibrant. That came out a little weird the other way.) Sevilla is a big university city and an enormously touristic city. (It should be noted that in Europe, "university city" roughly translates as "city.") So there's lots of foreigners (non-Spainers) wandering through the city center (because Sevilla is beautiful and cultural, which I'll get into in a little bit) and a lot of young adults attending the university there, which also means that there's an enormous amount of unemployed young adults there, because, student or not, young people don't have jobs in Spain. (Unfortunate fact; luckily fútbol has recently given unemployed Spaniards a reason to *joyously* fill the streets with shouting, rather than with any of the more *aggressive* adverbs. [such as: 'angrily,' 'furiously' and 'justifiably pissededly at the governmentedly and big businessedly'])

(I hope that was intelligible.) I did see a lot of protests while I was in Sevilla, and at one point the entire main street of the city was filled with marching angry Spaniards, in what basically amounted to a noisy, opinionated parade--so mad that it totally forgot to bring floats. (Or were they mad because they forgot to bring floats...)