We really know little else about the vital railroad / pork connection, so we applied for further intelligence from our top scientist, Maxmillian Kutz, who works at our spacious research facility in Bayonne, New Jersey (conveniently located next to the Christmas Depot). His usual terse reply: I'm Jewish. My co-workers are either Muslim, or vegetarian, or both.
When pressed further, Max agreed to spend a couple of weeks researching pork, assuming that the Executive Committee would pay-off his tab at George's Pub N Grub. His $2380 report: Talk to the Spaniards. They're the experts.
Wx4's California Executive Council immediately elected to fly to Spain, and take a side trip on Morocco's Marrakech Express. Chief Financial Officer J. Barns Bidwell, covered the cost by firing a few staff members and by replacing corn with sawdust in the intern's gruel.
Blue
Ribbon
Travel
Report:
Should any outsider doubt that the Spanish know and love ham, let him travel to Madrid. Our evidence comes in the form of the Museo del Jamon (Museum of Ham), whose outlets line the city streets with near Burger King-like frequency.
The Museo's U.S. equivalent, we suppose, would be Lou's Living Donut Museum, located not far from the Wx4 executive offices. Both are retail establishments that are short on museum and long on gift shop.
At any rate, you've never seen so much ham, bacon, salami and less-identifiable pork products in your life as you will find in Spain. Lest you forget about this meat's central role in the Spanish diet, many restaurants post faded photographic menus of their offerings: ham and eggs; bacon and eggs; ham, bacon and eggs; ham sandwiches; ham and cheese sandwiches; ham ham ham spam bacon & ham There's nothing like a greying photo of a greasy plate of ham n' eggs to get those salivary glands pumping...yum yum!
The production of ham in Spain is an exacting science, and the categorization of ham types and qualities can be quite confusing to the unintiated, so our research gurus have thoughtfully come up with an EZ Identification Chart that arrays the Spanish ham universe in comprehendible form:
As you will note, there is a considerable difference in appearance between the three types. This is because, in the pig world, you are what you eat.
The highest quality ham, Bellota, comes from cork oak acorn-fed pigs. This type has been rare since the 1960's cork wallpaper craze in the States, which denuded many Spanish forests of their oak trees. The next best is Recebo, whose donors feed on acorns and various cereal grains. This way the meat still retains some of that acrid flavor that California Indian women spent most of their existence trying to pound / leach out of their acorn mush (aside: acorns were the ham of the CA Indians - some consumed a ton of the oak nuts per annum). Serrano is the cheap stuff: all grain-fed. Should an American tourist wander in to the Museo to order a cut of Serrano, the Spanish customers will invariably point and whisper about the Yanqui estupido ( as gracious hosts, the only difference between the Spanish and French is their respective languages). Of course, the Museo's butcher will have a big smile for the ignorant Americano, since that hunk of Serrano probably has sat shunned on a dusty shelf next to the rat trap for several months.
To summarize Spanish ham: After five days of exclusive subsitence on ham/bacon and whatever was fried in its renderings, Wx4 staff has elected to replace our traditional Easter ham with tacos.
With the ham issue burnt to a turn, we progressed on to sampling Spain's cultural and architectural heritage, which turned out to be less distressful to the G.I. tract than a plate of greasy ham.
The first thing that we noticed is that architectural heritage can impinge upon your driving freedom, especially should you plow into a typical old city center in your Hummer H-1: see box, below.
Secondly, we began to appreciate Spain's now- deceased dictator, Francisco Franco. In a weird way, he saved many of Spain's historic buildings: 1) he stiffed his benefactors, Hitler and Musselini, by refusing to join them in WWll - thereby saving his country's cities from the incendiary flattening that Dresdin and Hamburg suffered. 2) After the war, Franco's iron-fisted behavior stifled Spain's economic developmet until his death in 1975 (boomers - Chevy Chase on SNL:This breaking news just in. Generalísimo Francisco Franco is still dead!). Also, because Franco stayed neutral, he didn't qualify for the usual oodles of money that we heap upon our conquered enemies. Thus Franco saved Spains old buildings from bombs and developers. What a guy! After Franco's death, Spain's economy eventually took off (their freeways are better than ours, Americanos), but by then preservation was the norm.
above: Cordoba's new RENFE estacion
below: RENFE estacion at Ronda (a famous place), Malaga Province
ON THE ORIGIN OF RAILROAD MANAGEMENT: We attempted to investigate Spanish claims that this cave near Ronda, the Cueva del Gato, contained crude paintings of trains drawn by Neandertal railroad protomanages. Sadly, the cave was closed for the winter, so we were unable to verify in person that this indeed could have been the habitat of the planet's first raiload management.
Wx4 scientists are skeptical of the Spaniards' claims, because, and please follow us on this: nice guys finish last, and Cro-Magnons aced out Neandertals in the old genetic destruction derby. Neandertals must have been nice guys who baked cakes to welcome the first invading Cro-Magnons, only to discover too late that the latter's table manners really sucked. Therefore, Wx4 scientists conclude that no way could railroad managers have evolved from those friendly-to-the-point-of-extinction Neandertal folks.
Rather, Wx4 is inclined to go along with the theory that Cro-Magnons focal-grouped the concept of railway management up in Les Eyzies, France, where railroad workers found the first Cro-Magnon skeletons under a rock.
Incidentally, the pictured cave mouth supposedly resembles a cat. We thus estimate that Spain must have some particularly ugly cats.
Those of you with a curious-about-all-things bent should read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. He goes on at long length to explain how little researchers know about modern man's forebearers; thus Wx4 is happy to increase the scanty knowledge base with our above conclusions, which seem more rational than some of the theories floating around the scientific community.
If you haven't yet read our description of Ronda (a famous place), you're missing
a proverbial tour de farce; some of Jack Daniels' OUR best work.
Typical street scene in old Toledo: Yep, this is a bonafied street - all of two meters (that's 6.5 feet, Nordamericano) wide. The Wx4 van's side mirrors cleared these thousand year old walls on each side by the width of a hand. The main boulevard, however, is much wider: two buses can pass each other with only light-to-moderate sheet metal damage.
(above) the lifeboats appear OK; (below) Tanger, Morocco - note that Staff Photographer, J. Cornelius Bidwell wishes to point out that this photo has not been massaged in Photoshop (further below: more harbor)
Upon boarding, we noticed telltale signs of advanced oxidation (rust) everywhere, thus the purpose of our first excursion to the poop deck was to check out the hulls of the life boats. The train to Marrakech left in the late evening, so we were in no particular hurry. This was good, since most of the surrounding tankers anchored in the Straits seemed to be making better headway than the venerable Boughaz. We elected to sit far in the aft, because the diesel fumes from the engine room permeated the rest of the boat. Perhaps, the ferry company piped the fumes in on purpose to convice the passengers that this was a modern (post-coal-burning-steam-engines) vessel. Our guess is that the Boughaz just barely made the diesel cut.
Two-and-a-half hours later, we made landfall at Tanger (a.k.a. Tangier): the Boughaz's pumps must have been in good repair, A short six-people-in-a-taxi ride took us to the city's brand-spanking-new ONCF (Office National des Chemins de Fer) train station.
For the next three hours we hogged the only two benches in the depot (known fact: Moroccans love to stand and observe Americans act like Americans) and watched the intense scrubbings of two floor washer-ladies, neither of whom even slowed to suck in an extra breath of air during that time. On our return trip morning arrival, these same two gals were still at it, while their male supervisors stopped smoking cigarets for a few minutes to fumble with, and argue about the operation of, a new floor polishing machine. Wx4 salutes you ladies! We had never before seen a floor that was TOO clean to eat off of. We like to think that pure dedication drives your non-stop labor...and that railroads are an international fountainhead of enlightenment. (continued below)
(above) Tanger's new station; (below) an arriving train from somewhere, powered by ONCF #DF113; (further below) the tail car of our train, an old coach converted into a REP (rear end power) car
The our accomodations on the sleeper were basic, but clean. Our compartments held four vinyl-covered foam mattresses on two steel bunk beds. We found freshly-laundered pillows, blankets and sheets stacked neatly on the beds: U make yer own. The car's single commode was a different matter: it reaked in the tradition of the Third Word / Amtrak (on the return, it was worse - the toilet was overflowing before we ever left Marrakech). Two of our staff shared a compartment with a couple of genial South African women, and we thought this and the whole sleeping arrangement interesting, in that Morocco is a Muslim country (albeit more secular than most). The sleeper seemed to be occupied mostly by foreigners and local businessmen, so ONCF must conclude that all of this is the foreign women's concern, not theirs.
Actually, we lucked out in getting sleeping quarters at all, considering that we showed up at the ticket window and depended upon the mercy of Allah for room. From what we could gather using our limited knowledge of French, sleeping space is usually sold out many days, or weeks in advance. On our up trip we were not so lucky: coach. Take note, future riders.
The slow ride took all night, but the ONCF's meter gauge track generally seemed to be smoother than Union Pacific's. Sunrise along the tracks was a delight for us novice visitors: red clay villages; sheep herders; donkey carts.
A hint of trouble:
Upon arrival in Marrakech, we decided to snap a few equipment photos, starting with the second class coach below. The employee that you see in the photo was the only person visible in the yard across from the depot. This we thought remarkable, considering the hordes of humanity that we have encountered in some third world railroad facilities.
Next, we spied the loaded baggage, and the baggageman spied us and gave us the evil eye, as if we were spies (below). He, along with much of the world, must not like Americans, we concluded as we turned around to find other photo ops, only to walk into the face of the station security guard, who wore a pained expression as he gave us the universal no photography sign: a pantomimed combination of swatting flies and cutting throats. We may have been able to continue our work with a suitable payoff, but we decided that the wise (and, ahem, cheapest) course would be to play the good guests and make our retreat.
The incident was still on our minds when we boarded our train to head back for Tanger. We figured that King Mohammed V, Morocco's ruler, must be feeling a little insecure, what with all of the radical Islamic insurgants molesting North Africa. The line of thinking must be that
(above) a village at sunrise from the train
(below) French tourists peruse the stalls in the Marrakech bazaar
