The heat of the meat

A meat stand in Spain.

So here I am, updating again. God, I'm good. Anyway, I still haven't posted much about my trip, so I am going to start with Barcelona. In Barcelona, there is a huge outdoor marketplace with hundreds of stands, teaming with people. A substantial number of these stands sell nothing but fish and meat, and the flies in the neighborhood are acutely aware of this fact.

I was feeling a little low by the end of my trip, when I was in Barcelona. I had already been away from home for two weeks, and as anyone who has tried to wrestle me out of my apartment for more than 20 minutes knows, this was quite a feat for me. The fact that it was about 6934 degrees didn't help much either.

So I did the only someone in my position would reasonably do, I bought copious amounts of meat.

Apparently the Spainards are really into ham. The guidebooks warned vegetarians that their requests for no meat in their meal would not rule out pork because, "That's not meat, it's ham." Ham in Spain is a separate food group.

So I started out by purchasing some of the ham of the black-footed pig. Then I set my sights upon some sort of other unidentified meat, which although unknown was still appealing in its own way. Unfortunately, I don't speak a word of Spanish except the ones I learned on the bus in middle school which consisted primarily of, "chinga tu madre," "puta," and "pindejo." I just pointed and waved Euros around like the maniacal American that I am until my hands were filled with rich, succulent, cured meats.

Cat, my vegetarian travelling companion for that leg of the trip had been uncharacteristically quiet during my meat frenzy. Finally she looked at me and said, "Lina, you know it's illegal to bring meat back into the States, right?"

My jaw dropped. Meat fell from my hands like rain. The ramifications of foreign meat's legality during the customs process hadn't even occurred to me. But it was too late to turn back now. I had bought the meat, and goddammit I was going to bring it home.

A midget buying meat in Barcelona.

After considering my options for a while, I decided to buy some salt cod to round off the equation and then dragged Cat through the city in search of Ziploc bags to keep my meat as sanitary as possible. For I had decided to give the meat as a gift to my Daddy (biological, not financial) who had the good sense to have a life-threatening emergency the day before I left on my trip. If anything would cure my father, it would be salted Spanish meats.

So I packed the meats in three Ziplocs a piece, and then smashed them into the very back of my now humongous backpack. I was going to have to make it through customs without letting on that I had a crapload of meat in my luggage. Inadvertently, I had become a meat smuggler.

On the plane, they passed out a customs form. I scanned it quickly and my eyes immediately lit upon 11(b).

11. Mark an X in the Yes or No box. Are you bringing with you:
b. meats, animals, or animal/wildlife products?

I looked around nervously, and left it blank. Finally, I turned to the businessman in the seat next to me, and said, "We don't actually have to tell the truth on these things, do we?"
He looked at me and said sarcastically, "I think that's the idea, actually."

My resolve strengthened, I checked "NO," and prepared to disembark.

I picked up my bag at the luggage carousal, and marched into the customs line, as nonchalantly as possible. It was only then that I noticed the officer cruising the line with a beagle who looked like it may have been trained to kill backpacking young people. Logically, I knew that the pooch's job was to catch drug smugglers. But how could a dog resist barking when he smelled delicious Jamon Iberico?

Luckily, my backpack was in the most logical place it could be, on my back, and the dog ignored it in favor of sniffing luggage closer to the ground. When I finally got to the desk I handed the clerk my form (which was filled with lies, of course) and stood there nervously as she tapped away at her computer. Finally, she looked at me and said, "I have one question for you Ma'am." I stood there apprehensively as she examined my paperwork again, and then finally looked up and said, "Well, did you have fun?"