somewhere between b and v

Exactly one year ago, on September 13, 2008, I was performing in San Francisco with the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony.

In the audience was Andrés, a teacher from Valencia, Spain whom I met through tennis. He was spending a three-month sabbatical in San Francisco to flee the routine and reflect on his life. I might have done something like that myself. I might have done it twice.

Now, a year later, we are in Valencia together, one day after I watched him play in a tennis tournament in Barcelona.

My first impression as we entered Valencia was that this was a town much like Taipei. The colors and height of the buildings, the street-level store fronts and the higher story apartments, and the width of the streets - everything made me feel as if I had returned to Taipei. It was a good feeling.

The main attraction in Valencia is without a doubt Ciutat de las Arts y las Ciènces, City of the Arts and Sciences, designed by Santiago Calatrava. Now I have heard of the name Calatrava, but I had no idea he was from Valencia. Andrés took me to La Ciutat, and it truly took my breath. You'll understand why once I get my lazy ass working and post some pictures for you. In La Ciutat, one finds an opera house, an Imax theatre, an oceanographic park - all housed in unique architecture that reminds me at once of spaceships and of vertebrae: it's that cool!

In the evening, Andrés and I strolled through the old part of Valencia in light rain. Suddenly, I've left the future and returned to the past. There were towers, cobblestone roads, and draw bridges. I felt hundreds of years younger. The one odd thing was that it was exceptionally bright at night. There were some high-wattage lights placed every few meters on all the streets. Andrés explained that the lesbian mayor ordered these lights installed to make Valencia safer at night. Does she think that bad things don't happen in broad daylight? She must have never visited Wall Street.

Somewhere along Calatrava's Umbracle and Lesbian Mayor's crime-free fantasy land, Andrés gave me a quick lesson in Spanish: there is no v sound in Spanish. The v is pronounced somewhere between the English b and v. The sound arises out of nowhere.

Sort of like far-away friends.